Luke 1:1-4 Forasmuch as many have taken in hand St. Luke’ s preface These four verses arc a preface, and a very valuable preface, because they are a declaration from the author himself of the manner in which we are to regard his work. I. St. Luke gives us to understand that HE HIMSELF WAS NOT AN OF THE EVENTS HE IS ABOUT TO RECORD, but that ha had taken pains to inquire, and had a perfect understanding of all the history of the Lord Jesus Christ. II. St. Luke tells us that he had undertaken to write his Gospel BECAUSE MANY HAD TO DO THE SAME THING BEFORE. The question arises whether he means us to understand that he is adding one more to authentic and trustworthy histories already existing, or whether he intended rather to supersede and correct unauthorized and imperfect histories. Possibly neither the one view nor the other is entirely and exclusively true. It may be that St. Luke was aware that authentic histories were already in existence, but he may have known also that other and spurious accounts had been composed, and therefore have been desirous of helping Theophilus to choose the true and reject the false by setting down for his use such an orderly account of the life of Jesus Christ as he himself had been able to collect. III. Again, WHO WAS ? Some have thought that the name, signifying as it does “ one who is dear to God,” does not refer to any one particular person; it is probable, however, that Theophilus was a real person, perhaps an important man at Antioch, St. Luke’ s city, for whose confirmation in the faith St. Luke was induced to write. Quite in keeping with the general scheme of God’ s government that this should have been so. Works which are instinct with the Spirit of God often go far beyond their immediate aim. The Epistles, which are the precious inheritance of the universal Church, were addressed originally to particular portions of the Church, some of them only to individuals, and the greater number of them were called forth by circumstances which have long passed away. And so we need not be surprised to find that a Gospel addressed to Theophilus has become the possession of all throughout the world who follow his good example. IV. Lastly, let it be noticed that St. Luke did not write to Theophilus with the purpose of giving him his first notions of Christian truth, BUT ONLY OF HIM IN THE OF THOSE THINGS IN WHICH HE HAD BEEN ALREADY OR . This was almost of necessity the course which would be followed in the time of the apostles; but it is also the course which is generally followed by ourselves now: we do not gain our first notions of Christian truth from Scripture or indeed from any written book; we are instructed and catechized by our fathers and mothers and teachers, and when we come to years of discretion, and are able to think for ourselves, we find from careful study of God’ s Holy Word that those things which we have learnt as children are indeed the truth of God which is able to make us wise unto salvation through faith in Jesus Christ. (Bishop Harvey Goodwin.) The purpose of the Gospel I. THE TO THIS GOSPEL IS THE HIGHEST FOR THE ACCOUNT OF THE PURPOSE OF ITS . Theophilus, whoever he was, was already a disciple, and had been instructed in the things which were most surely believed in the Church. He desired to know the certainty of those things. St. Luke believed that it was his vocation to give him what he wanted. If Theophilus was an individual, he represented the need of the Church generally. That which was good for him might, if God pleased, be good for ages to come. II. MANY, ST. LUKE SAYS, HAD THIS TASK BEFORE HIM. They had taken in hand to set forth A of the things, &c. The declaration had been made already--contained in the preaching of the apostles and their helpers. What was wanted was a continuous narrative of the things which made the substance of the declaration, for it was a declaration of things, not of opinions. The preaching concerned a Person, the narrative must exhibit a Person. Who the “ many” were St. Luke does not say. Nor does he pronounce upon the merits or demerits of his predecessors. That was not his calling. There was a better judge than he of the genuine and the spurious. We may safely affirm that he was not afraid if the experiments to produce a life of our Lord were ever so numerous; if some of them were ever so confused and erroneous. He could not believe the word which he preached unless he had confidence that what was true would live, that what was false would be, sooner or later, divided from it. III. The next clause of the introduction has perplexed many, perhaps has given pain to some. WHAT! ARE WE NOT ABOUT TO READ THE STORY OF AN EYE-WITNESS? St. Luke does not claim that character. He has received these records from those who were eye-witnesses. He has examined their reports carefully. He does not say that he ever saw Christ whilst He was walking in Galilee or Judaea. He seems to imply the contrary. Now here is a difference between him and some of the other evangelists, perhaps between him and all the other three. Is it a difference which puts him below them? According to their own judgment and confession, assuredly it is not. They tell us that they did not understand the words and acts of Jesus whilst they were walking with Him, whilst they were eye-witnesses of what He did. They misapprehended the particular words and acts. They misapprehended their relation to each other. They misapprehended the Person who was the Speaker of the words and the Doer of the acts. What they all say--what no one says so frequently as the beloved disciple--is, that the things which they could not understand at first came to them with full power and revelation when they saw Him no more. No doubt to be eye-witnesses of a fact or a person is an honourable distinction, but an eyewitness may glorify himself on that distinction, and attribute a worth to it which no careful student of evidence will concede. There are qualities necessary in an eye-witness besides his eyes. One who possesses these qualities may tell us what they do not tell, may open to us the very sense and purpose of what they do tell. It is so in all cases: if we believe the evangelists--those of them who were eye-witnesses--it is preeminently so in this case. IV. WHAT DOES ST. LUKE MEAN BY THE WORD? If the expression occurred in St. John’ s Gospel it would cause no perplexity. We should assume at once that he was speaking of the Word which was in the beginning and was made flesh. But it has been customary to assume that no other of the evangelists ever fell into this kind of language. I cannot doubt that the apostle who survived to the end of the age was specially appointed to remove confusions which had haunted the readers of the earlier Gospels. But every Jew could read, as well as St. John, that the Word of God had come to Isaiah, or Jeremiah, or Ezekiel. Every Jew who read their prophecies believed they had conversed with this Word as with a living person. The thought, “ He with whom we have conversed is that same Person--He has in human flesh revealed Himself to us,” was not a strange speculation, the refinement of a later age. It was the simplest way of connecting the old world with their day. It was the great escape from the rabbinical traditions which buried the Divine Person under the mere letter of the books. Formally to assert the force of the prophetical phrase--to make it prominent before all others--was not St. Luke’ s calling.The King, the Christ, is his subject. If we admit any direction of the minds of those who wrote these books--indeed, any special callings of men in this world at all--we can perceive why the tasks of the different evangelists should be different. We can perceive also why each should inevitably at times adopt forms of speech which appear more characteristic of another. V. “ IT SEEMED GOOD TO ME ALSO.” Some may cry, “ Was he not then taught by the Spirit of God?” I imagine that he who described the Day of Pentecost, and referred the whole existence and work of the Church to the Spirit of God, had quite as awful a feeling of His government over himself as any of us can have. The freedom of his language shows me how strong his feeling was; our sensitiveness and unwillingness to connect the Spirit with the operations of the human intellect, indicate the weakness of ours. We ask for distinctions about the degrees and measures in which the Spirit has been or will be vouchsafed. The Evangelists make no such distinctions. I think they dared not. VI. The next clause teaches us much on this subject, and would teach us more if it had not been unhappily perverted in our version. What St. Luke says is that it seemed good to him to write, HAVING OUT ALL THINGS WITH CAREFUL FROM THEIR SOURCE, JUST as a man traces the source of a river from its mountain-bed through all its windings. Instead of being absolved from this diligence by the presence of the Divine Spirit, he felt himself obliged by that Spirit to spare no labour, not to omit the most solicitous examination of what he heard, not to give himself credit for understanding it at the first, but to wait for that clear, penetrating light which could distinguish between his own impressions and the truth of things, VII. There is one word more in this preface which I cannot pass by. St. Luke professes to write to Theophilus IN ORDER. The narrative is to be an orderly or continuous one. Can we then discover that order? Clearly it is very different from that of common biographers. I think you will find that what the evangelist traces are the steps by which a King claimed dominion over his subjects; how they were prepared for Him; how He was prepared for going forth among them; how He manifested the powers of His kingdom; how He illustrated the nature of it; what kind of opposition He encountered; what battles He fought; who stood by Him; who deserted Him; how He seemed to be vanquished; how He prevailed at last. The more steadily we keep before ourselves the thought of a Kingdom of Heaven--a kingdom actual in the highest sense, explaining the nature and forces of every kingdom that has existed on the earth, showing what in those kingdoms must abide, what must pass away--the more shall we adhere to the letter of the Gospels, the more shall we enter into their spirit. (F. D. Maurice, M. A.) Pulpit Notes 1. The reason which Luke gives for writing this Gospel would seem at first sight to be an excellent reason for not writing. It is thought by superficial persons to-day that there are already sufficient religious books before the world. What is the error of such reasoning? Forgetfulness of the fact that Christianity presents different aspects to different minds, so that no statement of it can ever exhaust its intellectual and spiritual riches. Every Christian student writes a life of Christ for himself. The facts of Christianity are few and simple, but the truths arising out of them are innumerable and profound. The preaching of the Word can never be the same by any two men who diligently inquire into its meaning for themselves and fearlessly express the results of their investigation. 2. At the time of Luke’ s writing, the facts of Christianity were not only known as matters of current turnout--they were most surely believed. Not enough that the events of the Christian history be not discredited. They must be received with all faith and love, and become elements of our own spiritual life. When this is realized a new emphasis will characterize the tone of the Church. 3. Noticeable that Luke enters upon his work with the utmost candour and fearlessness. Does not propose to evade anything or skilfully slur over anything. Distinctly says that he will begin at the beginning, and trace the whole history through all its windings, difficulties, and successes. This is precisely what is wanted for our own day, viz., a distinct and complete idea of the ground which is occupied by Christian history. 4. The principle of tradition runs through this prefatory note in a remarkable manner. First of all come the eye-witnesses and ministers of the Word; then come the writers with whom they were immediately associated; then come such men as are represented by the “ most excellent Theophilus;” and afterward would come the persons to whom Theophilus communicated the information with which he had been put in trust. Thus one age becomes the debtor of another, and we ourselves are to-day the treasurers of the ages. (Joseph Parker, D. D.) The preface to the Gospel I. From this preface to St. Luke’ s Gospel we learn, first, THAT THERE WERE ALREADY IN THE ’ S DAY MANY “ GOSPELS” : “ Forasmuch as many have undertaken to draw up a consecutive account concerning those matters which have been fully established among us.” Christianity has ever been the grand inspirer of Christendom’ s literature. Probably more has been written about Jesus Christ, His character and teaching and work, than about all other things put together. For it is not in religious books alone that we see the signs of His presence and sway. We can scarcely take up a volume on any grave subject--ethical, philosophical, historic, biographic, aesthetic--without ever and anon catching at least glimpses of the passing shadow of the Son of Mary. The unconscious tributes of literature to Jesus the Nazarene arc surprisingly many and emphatic. And, observe, our evangelist does not censure these attempts at biography. He does not hint that those memorabilia are to be rejected. For aught we know, some of these sketches were as truly inspired as the Gospel of St. Luke himself. What though they have not come down to us? There is reason for believing that some Scriptures--for instance, a letter of St. Paul to the Corinthians--have been lost. But this does not detract from the worth of those we do have. Eternity will not exhaust what memoirs of the Divine Man we do have. II. From this preface to St. Luke’ s Gospel, we learn, THE SOURCE OF THE GOSPELS: “ Even as they delivered them unto us, who from the beginning were eye-witnesses and ministers of the Word.” The source and basis, then, of these primitive Gospels was the contemporaneous oral gospel or tradition of the original apostles. Need I add that it is still the only kind of tradition which the Church is at liberty to accept as the authorized gospel and doctrine of Jesus Christ? III. From this preface to St. Luke’ s Gospel, we learn, THAT IS WITH FREE-WILL: “ It seemed good to me also to write unto thee in order, most excellent Theophilus.” So far as his own consciousness was concerned, he seems to have set himself to his task spontaneously, and arranged his narrative as seemed to him best. Yet the judgment o! the Christian sense from the beginning has been that in thus composing his recital he was Divinely inspired. These facts cast light on the doctrine of inspiration. They show that one may be inspired, and yet act with entire freeness. The sacred writers have often been compared to AElolian harps, played on by the Holy Spirit or Divine Breath of God. The comparison is beautiful and just, so far as it goes. But it does not cover the whole truth; it fails to recognize the human element in inspiration. But let the sacred writers be compared to different musical instruments, for example, a flute, a cornet, a trumpet, an organ, &c., played on, indeed, by one and the same Divine Breath, but giving forth different melodies, according to the character of each distinct instrument; and the comparison becomes more complete and just. The source of the melody is Divine, and common to them all; the character of the melody is human, varying according to the temperament and peculiarity of the writer. IV. From this preface to St. Luke’ s Gospel we learn THAT OUR WAS TO WRITE A GOSPEL: “ Having traced the course of all things accurately from the first.” His habits of observation as a physician would naturally lead him to scrutinize closely all alleged facts. He at least would know whether the Church of his day was following cunningly devised myths. In short, he exercised the “ critical faculty.” V. From this preface to St. Luke’ s Gospel we learn our ’ S PURPOSE IN WRITING: “ That thou mightest know the certainty concerning the things wherein thou wast instructed.” For knowledge of facts rather than theories was then, as it still is, the need of the times. Such is the preface to the Gospel according to St. Luke. And as St. John’ s prologue may be taken as the prologue to the Gospel, so St. Luke’ s preface may be taken as the preface to the Gospels. And this suggests our first concluding thought: The advantage of having several Gospels. And herein is an immense advantage. First, the having several Gospels is a key to the detection of imposture: where the testimony is false, it is perilous to multiply witnesses. Again, the having several Gospels helps us to understand better the myriad-sided Divine Man. And yet the four Gospels are but one Gospel. This is the circumstance which makes it so profitable for us to study the Gospels in synchronous lessons. The habit protects us from partial and unsymmetrical views; for the Gospels, like stones in mosaic, are mutually complemental. Secondly, let us thank God that He prompted His servants to note down, so early in the Christian era, statements of the apostolic testimony; for the rich result is that, instead of uncertain and fickle tradition, we have permanent contemporary records. Lastly, be thou thyself a Theophilus, Friend of God; and the Spirit will write a Gospel to thee also. (G. D. Boardman.) Introductory consideration The four evangelists are so called, not in same sense as Ephesians 4:11, but to designate them as evangelical historians. The nature and degree of correspondence between the four furnish a strong proof of the credibility of each and all. I. THE AUTHOR OF THIS GOSPEL TO BE LUKE. Companion of St. Paul (Acts 16:1-40. to end; 2 Timothy 4:11). A physician (Colossians 4:14). Said also to have been a painter, but no more authority than a very late tradition for this statement. If, however, he did not paint the faces of the Virgin and her Son with the colours of the limner, he did what was of much more importance; he, in this book, drew to the life an exquisite portraiture of their character, which continued with us long after the masterpieces of the ancient painters have vanished, and which will continue to the end of time--the antidote of superstition, the guide of the serious inquirer, and the admiration of all good men. II. THE DIVINE OF THIS GOSPEL. 1. The Church took great care to distinguish genuine Gospels from spurious. Clear testimony to the universal reception of these four, and only these, as canonical from the beginning. 2. If Luke was one of “ the seventy,” then was he also miraculously qualified to compose this history; if not, yet both his human and Divine qualifications for the work might be safely rested solely on his being called to preach the Gospel, and to act and write under the eye and approval of St. Paul. 3. Various circumstantial particulars respecting the destruction of Jerusalem, foretold in this Gospel, and nowhere else, have been exactly fulfilled. 4. Mutual dependence and connection of this Gospel and the other three. (James Foote, M. A.) The power of truth St. Luke had no authority to suppress these other Gospels, nor does he reprehend or calumniate them; but he writes the truth simply, and leaves it to outswear falsehood; and so it has done. Moses’ rod has devoured the conjurors’ rods, and St. Luke’ s story still retains the majesty of the Maker, and theirs are not. (Dr. Donne.) Luke and Theophilus Luke a physician, like the few; Theophilus a patient, like the many. (J. J. Van Oosterzee, D. D.) Historical belief in the Divine truth of Christianity 1. Its necessity. 2. Its certainty. 3. Its insufficiency when unaccompanied by a living faith. (J. J. Van Oosterzee, D. D.) Luke Isaiah 1. The predecessor of believing searchers. 2. The condemner of unbelieving searchers of Scripture. (J. J. Van Oosterzee, D. D.) The highest aim which a Christian anther can propose to himself 1. To correct what is faulty. 2. To strengthen what is weak. 3. To arrange what is confused. (Ibid.) Most excellent Theophilus Civil dignities and honours not destroyed, but ennobled, by citizenship in the kingdom of God. (J. J. Van Oosterzee, D. D.) The fear of God makes men truly great and excellent. (Starke.) St. Luke’ s preface Luke is the only one of the synoptists who begins his Gospel with a preface. His preface is historico-critical, while the introduction of John is historico-doctrinal. The prominent points in this short preface are-- 1. It cautions us against erroneous or defective statements of facts. 2. It directs us to the apostles as eye-witnesses of the life of Christ. 3. It proves the faithfulness of the evangelist in tracing the facts to the primitive source. 4. It brings out the human side in the origin of the sacred writings. 5. It teaches that “ faith cometh by hearing,” and that the gospel was first taught by catechetical instruction or oral tradition, but then written down by reliable witnesses for all ages to come. This written Gospel is essentially the same with the preached Gospel of Christ and the apostles, and together with the Epistles is to us the only pure and infallible source of primitive Christianity. (P. Schaff , D. D.) The order in Divine things From faith to knowledge; from knowledge to still firmer faith. (Van Oosterzee.) Other narratives of Christ’ s life It appears from this that narratives of the actions of Jesus, and of the events connected with His life and ministry, had been written by many individuals before Luke composed his history. This fact proves that the actions ascribed to Jesus had made a great noise in the world, and that a high degree of curiosity had been excited to peruse everything recorded concerning Him. Can we then suppose that Luke refers to these writings or to the other Gospels? We have reason to believe that Matthew’ s Gospel was originally written in Syro-Chaldaic, which was the language spoken by the Jews in our Saviour’ s time, and that it was not translated into Greek till some time afterwards. Mark’ s Gospel was short, and John’ s was not published till many years had elapsed after the destruction of Jerusalem. But as the evangelist says that many had undertaken to record the actions attributed to Jesus, it is evident that he alludes to more than one or two productions. Besides, though not asserted, it is implied, that the writings referred to were either defective or incorrect, for if they contained no arrors, nor were marked by great defects, the fact that they were numerous was a reason against adding to their number. We conclude, then, that Luke does not here refer to any of the other Gospels. Who, then, could be the writers of those narratives of which the evangelist did not approve? Were they the friends or the enemies of Christianity? There is no reason for supposing that the Scribes and Pharisees ventured to publish anything in writing against Jesus or His religion. They seem at first to have been satisfied by circulating false reports respecting His Resurrection, and afterwards by endeavouring to overwhelm Christianity by the strong arm of persecution. It is probable, therefore, that the objectionable narratives to which Luke refers were written by the friends of Christianity. But the zeal of friends has frequently been more injurious to the Christian religion than the malice of its enemies. We can easily conceive the pernicious consequences that may have arisen from erroneous statements, exaggerated facts, and fanciful explanations, given by honest but ignorant or ill-informed writers. The most judicious and effectual remedy was accordingly adopted by St. Luke. It consisted in making a proper selection and accurate statement of the most important facts as procured from the most undoubted authority. This, accordingly, was done; and the consequence has been that all the defective or erroneous accounts of our Saviour which were then circulated have entirely disappeared, as darkness flies at the approach of the morning sun, while the Gospels which contained the only correct history have been duly valued, copied, and preserved. (J. B. Thomson, D. D.) Many workers needed Luke undertook to be very minute and exhaustive in his statement of gospel facts. He was going to do better than many other writers had done. He says so with cool frankness: “ Forasmuch … to me also.” That is a curious expression. We expected him to say, Forasmuch as many have done this work, there is no need for me to do it. But he makes the very fact that there were other writers, a reason why there should be one more. That was good reasoning; it should prevail in all the lines and departments of Christian life and action. The contrary policy often supersedes it, and brings ministers and churches into great discomfort and enfeeblement. Men will say, You have so many helpers, you have no need of me. They are always more or less dishonest men--not intentionally so; intentional dishonesty is perfectly vulgar and wholly detestable, and nobody lays claim to it; but when men say, There are so many preachers, I need not be one: so many deacons, I need not be another: so many helpers, there is no need of me--they are not conducting a Christian argument, they are with all their graciousness unconsciously jealous and spiteful. Luke reasoned in the right way; he said, Many men are taking up this subject, I will do what I can in it; I think I can beat some of them. (Joseph Parker, D. D.) The preface the best part of the book Will the book be as good as the preface? I fancy not--when the subject is Jesus Christ. The first sentence is often the best. Why? Because the subject grows. No man can ever prepare his imagination for the glory of that theme. The young preacher feels this; he buckles to with a brave heart, and says he will work honestly all day, and pray most of the night, and produce such discourses as will satisfy his best ambition. He empties his inkhorn, does all he can, and then puts his young hand upon his mouth and says, Unprofitable! I have failed. I had an ambition high as heaven, bright as the unclouded noon; but I have failed! He does not do justice to himself. The Lord does not pronounce that judgment upon him. He says, Thou hast not failed; industry never fails; conscience always succeeds; thou hast won a right bright crown I Cheer thee I It is not the man who has failed; it is the God who has exceeded all ever thought of in prayer, all ever dreamed of in poetry. Still, we expected more from Luke than from the others, and we get more. He does not see some things as Mark saw them. It is fashionable--shall we say, with due mental reservation, pedantic?--to point out that Luke was the observing writer. Mark observed a good many things that Luke never saw, or at least never recorded. Matthew also had his own way of looking at things; and as for St. John, what was he looking at? Apparently at nothing, for his inner eyes were fastened on the soul of Christ. If Luke had sharp eyes, what ears John had! for he heard whisperings of the heart, throbbings and beatings and sighings: and what a gift of expression I for he turned all that he heard into noble, sweet music for the soul’ s comforting in all the cloudy days of Church time. But Luke says he will set down things “ in order” ; the others have been good historians, but a little wanting in the power of grouping and classifying; good historians, but poor editors; Luke will break things up into chapters, and verses, and paragraphs, and sections, and he will attend to chronological sequence. We need mechanical men in the Church, people who know when to begin a new paragraph, and to codify laws, and to do a good many useful little things. (Joseph Parker, D. D.) Religion a reality In spite of our professions and general convictions, we do not give to the truths of the gospel their full weight as infallible certainties; we do not embrace them as realities. I. IT IS A REALITY THAT GOD IS SUPREME; THE , AND THAT HE CLAIMS THE LOVE AND THE ENTIRE OF ALL HIS . II. IT IS A MOST AWFUL FACT THAT A AGAINST THE ETERNAL KING HAS TAKEN PLACE IN THIS WORLD, AND THAT WE ARE ALL DEEPLY IN ITS . III. THE OF SINNERS, UNDER THE ABOVE , BY THE SON OF GOD IS A MOST PACT TO US IN THE HOLY . IV THAT THE OF THIS GREAT , ON YOUR PART, MUST BE A REALITY. V. IS A REALITY IN ITS GREAT AND HAPPY EFFECTS, WHICH ARE AND . (Essex Remembrancer.) To write unto thee in order In order A work wall shaped into an artistic whole a history advancing by well-marked steps, and systematically progressive; an inter-connection easily perceptible of causes and effects--these for a Greek mind constituted the best material for carrying conviction. Now it is precisely this kind of evidence which is to be drawn from the third Gospel. And the preamble leads us even to think that such was the deliberate intention of the author. (Professor Godet.) If it be said that Luke says that he wrote “ in order” (ἐνταξει), I answer that there are other orderly arrangements besides those of time and place; and that if a work is a religious memoir, the arrangement would be regulated, though not exclusively, by the reference of the facts to the religious end in view. (Prebendary Row.) Most excellent Theophilus Most excellent Theophilus The person to whom the Gospel is addressed. The name “ Theophilus” signifies a lover, or beloved of God; but it would be very unnatural to suppose, with some, that the word is here used as a feigned name, to signify any Christian. Though this method has been adopted by other writers, it is not agreeable to the practice of the inspired. Theophilus is plainly the same real individual to whom the book of the Acts of the Apostles also is addressed. He is here styled “ most excellent.” This was an honorary title bestowed on persons high in office, and of nobility, somewhat similar to the title of “ excellency” with us. Thus it is given to Acts 23:26) and to Festus (Acts 26:25). Theophilus, therefore, was not only a Christian, but a nobleman, and probably high in office. Thus, though “ not many mighty, not many noble, were called,” yet some such were called from the first; and thus some such are still found among the faithful. Such instances ale highly important and pleasing. Not but that the soul of the meanest peasant is, in itself, as precious as the soul of the most illustrious nobleman--not but that the salvation of every soul transcends in importance every worldly consideration; but in reference to the probable effect on others, there is an undeniable difference. Every good man may be of some service to the cause of Christ; but when rank, office, wealth, and talent are engaged, God may be considered as Himself putting more powerful means in operation; and when His own blessing is superinduced, the good effects are correspondingly extensive. (James Foote, M. A.) Courtesy From this form of address, used by an inspired writer, may be fairly deduced the lawfulness and propriety, generally speaking, of giving to men the ordinary titles of respect. As to our Lord’ s teaching His disciples not to be called rabbi, and to call no man father, or master, on earth, Scripture must be interpreted consistently with itself, and that passage, of course, consistently with such as this; and this rule of interpretation leads to the conclusion that Christ forbade, not the use of common terms in common life, but the assumption, on the one hand, and the yielding, on the other, of any human authority in matters of religion which might at all interfere with His own. They err, therefore, who think there is any propriety or religion in assuming a singularity in such things, or in sturdily refusing what are usually considered marks of civility and respect. It is unworthy at once of the Christian and of the man to be guilty of hollow hypocrisy or fawning servility; but it is both dutiful and adorning to be courteous, and to give honour to whom honour is due. (James Foote, M. A.) Dedication of books It has been usual with authors to dedicate their works to particular persons, sometimes with the design of securing their patronage, sometimes merely as a mark of respect and affection, and sometimes with a particular view to the benefit of the individuals themselves. The dictates of inspiration needed not, it is true, the support of any human authority; yet it would not have been unworthy of Divine wisdom to have adopted such secondary means. While this dedication is (1) an obvious expression of high regard to Theophilus, it distinctly states that (2) his personal improvement was what Luke greatly desired. Though immediately addressed to Theophilus, this book, like the rest of Scripture, comes, with the stamp of Divine authority, for the edification of all who may peruse it. (James Foote, M. A.) Most excellent Theophilus I. HUMAN TITLES HAVE A WHEN APPLIED TO MEN. Many called “ excellent” ; this “ friend of God” was “ most excellent.” II. MEN MAY BE , YET LITTLE KNOWN. III. TITLED FEW IN NUMBER--one Theophilus. IV. WELL TO HAVE A GOOD NAME--“ Theophilus” ; better to deserve it--“ most excellent.” V. Such HAS ITS MARKS. 1. Anxious to know things of Christ from beginning. 2. To know their certainty. VI. SUCH HAS ITS . 1. Approved of God--such friendship is not one-sided. 2. Approval of the highest order of men--Luke. 3. The honour of having an authentic and inspired history of Christ dedicated to him. 4. His name thus rescued from utter oblivion (Biblical Museum.) Theophilus This name, of Grecian origin, though it is sometimes used by the Jews, leads us to suppose that the noble person who bore it was a Greek. We must add that, in dedicating this work to him, St. Luke was probably not thinking only of the use he would personally make of it. The publication of a book was at that time a much more costly undertaking than it is now, since every copy had to be made by hand. By accepting the manuscript which was dedicated to him, the wealthy Theophilus became what was called the patron or, as we should now say, the sponsor of the book. He undertook to make it known, to have copies made of it, and to circulate these amongst those about him, or who belonged to the same nation as himself. The ancient Judaeo-Christian romance, entitled, “ The Clementines,” of about the year 160, makes Theophilus a man of high position in Antioch, who, after having listened to the preaching of Peter, gave up his palace to be used as a church. (Professor Godet.) The certainty of those thingsCertainties Part of the value of this short and simple introduction consists in its quite undesigned manifestation of the true historic character of Christianity. In the good sense Luke was a sceptic first, in order that he might be a rational and strong believer. Anything more truly scientific than his method I cannot imagine. It is the method of every candid historian who wishes to set down only what is genuine and authentic. When he speaks here of “ the certainty” of some particular things, he means substantially what the Apostle Paul means when he speaks of “ the gospel of God,” “ the gospel of which he was not ashamed,” and of “ Jesus Christ and Him crucified.” Is that first “ certainty” enough for us still? Everything, we are told, is being tried by this practical test, by what it can do, and by the honest feeling men have to it, and we must not complain if the test is applied even to supernatural religion. We do not complain. It is quite true that we ought to be able by this time to furnish much practical corroboration of the truth and worth of Christianity which did not and could not exist in the apostolic days. I will therefore mention some of the practical and secondary “ certainties” which, when duly considered, will tend greatly to confirm and enforce those which are primary and principal. I. IT IS CERTAIN THAT NO STYLE OR TYPE OF HUMAN IS HIGHER THAN THE TYPE; THAT NONE IS SO HIGH. Theoretically it ought to be so. Practically it is so. II. IT IS CERTAIN THAT THE FAITH ENABLES THOSE WHO REALLY HAVE IT TO BEAR THE STRAIN AND OF LIFE--the sorrow, the pain, whatever they may be, as they could not be borne without it; and it is quite certain that we do not know of anything else which has the same upholding and consolatory power. III. IT IS CERTAIN THAT ALONE KEEPS AN OPEN DOOR FOR US OUT OF THIS WORLD INTO ANOTHER AND A BETTER. IV. IT IS CERTAIN THAT, AT THIS MOMENT, THERE IS ONLY ONE IN THE WORLD THAT CAN, FROM ITS VERY NATURE, BE TO EVERY PART OF IT; only one religion which, as a matter of fact, is being diffused by those who believe in it and adhere to it, in a spirit of entire impartiality, “ among all nations, kindreds, peoples, and tongues.” Christianity is, as it has ever been, the only really missionary religion in the world. The poor Turk has no missionary in any Christian country. Educated Hindoos come to our universities, but although they can speak our language as well as we ourselves, and although they know that there is entire religious freedom in this country, who among them preaches Hindooism, or seeks a footing for it among the English people? On the other hand, every Christian individual and every Christian community stand committed, in simple fidelity to their Master, and in obedience to the very law of their life, to go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. (Alexander Raleigh, D. D.) The tone of the New Testament on certainty in religion The more closely this tone of certainty is studied the more soul-striking the phenomenon becomes, both in its substance and in its accessories. What led these four evangelists, and these writers of the letters on doctrine and life, to speak one and all in this uniform style of intense belief? Was it the blind certainty of ignorant fools? Was it feigned all through? Were they deceived by appearances? They at least believed what they wrote. They seem utterly regardless of calumny and misrepresentation, like men who know that they are right. They speak with a strength of persuasion and assertion which still moves the world. They teach-- 1. That man has lost himself by losing She knowledge of his God; and that he can recover himself, with the knowledge of his own nature and eternal destiny, only by recovering the knowledge of his Maker. 2. That God is to be loved through being known in His work of nature and redemption. 3. That certainty is essential for the peace of the soul. 4. That certain knowledge of God’ s works and ways is essential to growth in Christian character. 5. That the quality of the moral excellence required by the gospel under such a character is impossible of attainment apart from confidence in the possession of God’ s love and life eternal. (Edward White.) Importance of a firm religious belief I envy no quality of the mind or intellect in others, be it genius, power, wit, or fancy; but I should prefer a firm religious belief to every other blessing, for it makes life a discipline of goodness; creates new hopes, when all earthly hopes vanish; and throws over the decay, the destruction o! existence, the most gorgeous of all lights; awakens life even in death, and from corruption and decay calls up beauty and divinity; makes an instrument of torture and shame the ladder of ascent to Paradise; and, far above all combinations of earthly hopes, calls up the most delightful visions of palms and amaranths, the gardens of the blest, the security of everlasting joys, where the sensualist and the sceptic view only gloom, decay, annihilation, and despair. (Davy.) The Bible really believed The son of Selina, the Countess of Huntingdon, whose zeal in the extension of the gospel is well known, was unhappily an unbeliever, but reverenced his pious and venerable mother. “ I wish,” said a peer to him, “ you would speak to Lady Huntingdon; she has just erected a preaching-place close to my residence.” His lordship replied, “ Gladly, my lord; but you will do me the favour to inform me what plea to urge, for my mother really believes the Bible.” (Baxendale’ s Illustrations.) The Christian faith is founded on facts It is important from time to time to be reminded that the real claims of the Christian faith, speaking of it in its largest sense, upon our obedience and reverence are founded on facts which hardly any one of any name or fame disputes, and which, in fact, have hardly ever been disputed. (Dean Stanley.) The tone of certainty Apart from criticism as to its cause, this is the most wonderful phenomenon in all literature. If the New Testament is not “ the judge that ends the strife, when wit and reason fail,” at least it speaks in that tone of absolute and invariable certainty which we should expect to accompany a revelation from the living God. And, as a matter of fact, it is this certainty which armed the martyrs of Christ in the early centuries to confront the direst sufferings in defence of the faith; as it is also this which makes it so exceedingly difficult in our times to overthrow Christianity by a set of mere critical peradventures, which are like brittle glass spears breaking against a shield of diamonds. (E. White.) The witnesses of the gospel facts These first spectators of “ the heavenly vision” of “ God manifest in the flesh” are themselves gradually raised into transcendent certainty; and then their testimony, and teaching, and life, transfuse that certitude into those who receive their word. That is according to the general law of life. The generations of men are related intellectually and spiritually. There is a vital unity in humanity--what the French call a solidarity. What human nature once really saw, subjected to every test, and was compelled to believe, humanity still sees through the organs and perceptions of its former members. Inheritance in all departments runs through the world. We believe all our national histories because “ our fathers have told us.” But this is only the first stage of belief. Honest souls can test the traditional and historical by spiritual insight, and then they say--to the all-perceiving and all-reporting humanity--“ Now we believe not because of thy saying, for we have seen Him ourselves, and know that this is indeed the Christ, the Saviour of the world.” (E. White.) Testimonies of experience At night, when a railroad train, having stopped at a station, is about to start again, in order that the conductor may know that everything is as it should be, the brakeman on the last car calls out through the darkness, “ All right here!” and the next man takes up the word, “ All right here!” and the next echoes, “ All right here!” and so it passes along the line, and the train moves on. It does me good to sit here while you speak of the life you are guiding through the world’ s darkness, and pass the word from one to another, “ All right here!” All is right everywhere when the heart is right. (H. W. Beecher.) Power of personal testimony Thomas Bilney was aa ardent young convert, and longed to do something for his Master. Hugh Latimer was a zealous Roman Catholic priest, who preached against the Reformation. Bilney went to him, and told him that he wished to confess. In the privacy of the confessional, he told him the whole burning story of his conviction, conversion, and new-found happiness. The Spirit helped, and Latimer’ s heart was probed and changed. From that hour Latimer gave his life to the cause he had before opposed, and sealed his testimony with his blood. Infidels neglect to examine the Bible Sir Isaac Newton set out in life clamorous infidel; but, on a nice examination of the evidences for Christianity, he found reason to change his opinion. When the celebrated Dr. Edmund Halley was talking infidelity before him, Sir Isaac Newton addressed him in these or the like words: “ Dr. Halley, I am always glad to hear!you when you speak about astronomy, or other parts of the mathematics, because that is a subject you have studied, and well understand; but you should not talk of Christianity, for you have not studied it. I have; and am certain that you know nothing of the matter.” This was a just reproof, and one that would be very suitable to be given to half the infidels of the present day, for they often speak of what they have never studied, and what, in fact, they are entirely ignorant of. Dr. Johnson, therefore, well observed that “ no honest man could be a Deist, for no man could be so after a fair examination of the proofs of Christianity.” On the name of Hume being mentioned to him, “ No, sir,” said he, “ Hume owned to a clergyman in the Bishopric of Durham that he had never read the New Testament with attention.” (Student’ s Handbook to Scripture Doctrines.) Examination convincing Conspicuous in John Randolph’ s library was a family Bible. Surrounding it were many books, some for, and others against, its truthfulness as an inspired revelation. One day Mr. Randolph had a clergyman as his guest, and the family Bible became a topic of conversation. The eccentric orator said, “ I was raised by a pious mother (God bless her memory!), who taught me the Christian religion in all its requirements. But alas! I grew up an infidel--if not an infidel complete, yet a decided Deist. But when I became a man, in this, as well as in political and all other matters, I resolved to examine for myself, and never to pin my faith to any other man’ s sleeve. So I bought that Bible; I pored over it; I examined it carefully. I sought and procured those books for and against it; and when my labours were ended, I came to this irresistible conclusion--the Bible is true. It would have been as easy for a mole to have written Sir Isaac Newton’ s treatise on “ Optics,” as for uninspired men to have written the Bible.” Christianity courts examination But I am anxious you should never let slip the fact that Christianity itself puts the scales and weights into your hands, and starts you on this universal verifying process. When I was a senior scholar I was dazed and bewildered by a man three times my age seeking to shake my faith in the Gospel by assuring me that the Bible was averse to investigation, shrunk from the full light of day, and could only maintain its ground with those who were prejudiced in its favour. Glad was I to find that Christianity rejoices in all light, welcomes it from every quarter, accepts with thankfulness the aid of all the sciences and arts, and urges us to imitate the Bereans, who did not assent to Paul’ s words without searching the Scriptures and using the best test they knew, so that they might only believe what was absolutely true, and hold nothing fast except that which was undeniably good. Forget not, then, it is Christianity itself that says, “ Prove all things. Examine thoroughly. Get at the core of things. Be not deceived by appearances. Go from facts principles, from the letter to the spirit. Be not cheated by any alloys. Light the fires of examination, put on your crucible, cast in your metallic ores, and heat the furnace to its hottest, and then take away with you the pure gold of goodness and truth.” (J. Clifford, D. D.) The Bible tested The Bible has been tried in the ages of the past by godless men like Voltaire; it has been tried by the best classes like Wilberforce; it has been tried by educators like Alexander; it has been tried by men in every conceivable position, in prosperity and in adversity, and it has stood the test. You need not be afraid to build your hopes upon it for time and for eternity. (Dr. John Hall.) Afraid of being convinced At Cairo, Gobat entertained high hopes of the conversion of a learned Mohammedan teacher, Sheik Ahmed, which were doomed to disappointment. After many interviews, in which be appeared deeply impressed and ready to receive Christ as his Saviour and God, Gobat lost sight of him. Three months later he says, “ I met him one day in the street. I asked him why he had not called for so long a time, to which he naively replied, ‘ The last time I was with you I felt that if I went to you again I should be convinced of the truths of Christianity, and be consequently obliged to avow myself a Christian, for which I should have been killed. I therefore resolved to see you no more until my heart should be hardened against your arguments.’” (Memoirs of Bishop Gobat.) Triumph of the Word In the diamond fields of South Africa a diamond was found, celebrated lately under the title of fly-stone; placed under a magnifying glass you see enclosed in all its brilliancy a little fly, with body, wings, and eyes in the most perfect state of preservation. How it came there no one knows; but no human skill can take it out. So in Holy Scripture the Spirit of God is found in a place from which no power of man can remove it. Infidelity and criticism have now done their utmost, and it is a kind of satisfaction to know that more powerful advocates of infidelity can hardly be found in the future than there have been in the past. All kinds of weapons have been employed, but the result has been triumph for the Word. (Dr. McEwan.) Luke 1:5A certain priest named Zacharias.--Mark how immediately the historian betakes himself to the collateral line. Something very suggestive in this. No one life independent of other lives. As every text has its context, so every life has relationships and associations which must in some degree be understood before itself can be made altogether intelligible. Hence we find that biography is much indebted to its background of contemporary and incidental events. The particularity of Luke’ s statements is noticeable. He does not hurry his reader over names and circumstances which a critical inquirer would like to know something about. On the contrary, he sets down the names of kings, priests, and others, and so gives the critic the utmost opportunity of testing his accuracy by the light of collateral history. (Dr. Joseph Parker.) The priestly descent of the Forerunner Whereas, alike in narrative and apostolic argument, the Lord Himself is “ separated” in His lineage from the priestly race (see Hebrews 7:14), it is otherwise with John the Baptist. By father and by mother he was descended in the “ priestly” line. This twofold fact seems to me worth accentuating in three elements of it. 1. It strikingly differentiates historically the priesthood of our Lord from the ancient priesthood, which was a thing simply of inheritance by blood. 2. It is to be emphasized in that John the Baptist never claimed that priestly succession that he might have done as the son of Zacharias and Elisabeth. Surely this declinature to enter himself heir to so august an office is extremely noticeable! It was self-chosen, but also Divinely ordered, seeing that John was to usher in that very kingdom of grace that was destined to unconsecrate and abolish the old order of things. 3. I call attention to it further, because it could scarcely fail that the “ blue blood” of the priesthood in John would have its influence in winning him audience and giving him authority with the multitudes who flocked (later) to his imperious summons. (Dr. Grosart.) Priesthood in the davis of our Lord As the office was hereditary, the number of the priesthood had become very great in the days of our Lord, so that, according to the Talmud, in addition to those who lived in the country, and came up to take their turn in the temple services, there were no fewer than 24,000 settled in Jerusalem, and half that number in Jericho. This, however, is no doubt an exaggeration. Josephus is more likely correct in estimating the whole number at somewhat over 20,000. But even this was an enormous proportion of clergy to the population of a country like Judaea. They must have been a more familiar sight in the streets of Jerusalem, and in the towns and villages, than the seemingly countless ecclesiastics in the towns and cities of Spain or Italy at this time. (Dr. Geikie.) “ Of the course of Abia” Abia--Abijah in the Old Testament. When the priests had become numerous, David divided the whole body into twenty-four classes or “ courses,” which were appointed to do service in weekly rotation, so that each of the courses had to attend at the temple twice in the year for a week each time. Of the twenty-four courses that of Abijah was the eighth. Of the number that went into captivity only four of the courses returned, and that of Abijah was not one of them. But these four were divided into twenty-four, in order to reproduce the former distribution; and, to render the analogy more complete, they received the same names as the original courses. (Dr. Kitto.) The priestly orders The word ephemeris means first “ a daily ministry” (Hebrews Mishmereth), and then a class of the priesthood which exercised its functions for a week. Aaron had four sons, but the two elder, Nadab and Abihu, were struck dead for using strange firs in the sanctuary (Leviticus 10:1-20.). From the two remaining sons, Eleazar and Ithamar, had sprung in the days of David twenty-four families, sixteen from the descendants of Eleazar, and eight from those of Ithamar. To these David distributes by lot the order of their service from week to week, each for eight days inclusively from sabbath to sabbath (1 Chronicles 24:1-19; 2 Chronicles 31:2). After the Babylonish exile only four of the twentyfour courses returned--a striking indication of the truth of the Jewish saying, that those who returned from the exile were but the chaff in comparison of the wheat. The four families of which the representatlves returned were those of Jedaiah, Immer, Pashur, and Harim (Ezra 2:36-39). But the Jews concealed the heavy loss by subdividing these four families into twenty-four courses, to which they gave the original names, and this is alluded to in Nehemiah 13:30 (“ I… appointed the wards of the priests and the Levites, every one in his business” ). This arrangement continued till the fall of Jerusalem (A.D. 70), at which time, on the ninth of the month Abib (August 5th), we are told by Josephus that the course in waiting was that of Jehoiarib. Reckoning back from this, we find that the course of Abijah went out of office on October 9, B.C. 6. The reader should bear in mind that our received era for the birth of Christ was only fixed by the abbot Dionysius Exiguus in the sixth century, and is probably foul years wrong. (Archdeacon Farrar.) There may be succession in a forsaken Church. It remained when Christ was crucified, the Spirit quenched. (Van Doren.) Luke 1:6 Both righteous before God Observance of God’ s ordinances “By walking in the ordinances,” they walked likewise “ in all the commandments of the Lord; “ that being the means whereby they did this. (Bishop Beveridge.) Performance of duties God communicates Himself with great variety to His saints, now in this ordinance and now in that, on purpose that He may keep up the esteem of all in our hearts. Take heed, therefore, Christian, that thou neglect not any one duty. How knowest thou but that is the door at which Christ stands, waiting to enter into thy soul (John 2 Thessalonians 3:16)? (W. Gurnall.) All God’ s commands to be observed God’ s commandments hang together; they are knit and woven together like a fine web, wherein you cannot loosen a single stitch without danger of unravelling the whole. If a man lives in the breach of any one of God’ s commandments, if he allows himself to indulge in any one sin, none can tell where he will stop. There is no letting any one devil into our souls without the risk of his going and fetching “ seven other devils wickeder than himself” ; and the purer the house may hitherto have been, the more eager will they be to come and lodge in it. (A. W. Hare.) Unity of Zacharias and Elisabeth They were one in-- 1. Affection. 2. Interest. 3. Christ. (VanDoren.) A model coupler Observe here-- 1. The sweet harmony of this religious couple in the ways of God; they both walked in the commandments of God. It is a happy match when husband and wife are one, not only in themselves, but in the Lord. 2. The universality of their holiness and obedience: they walked, not in some, but in all the ordinances and commandments of the Lord. Such as will approve themselves to be sincerely religious must make conscience of every known duty, and endeavour to obey every precept and command of God. 3. The high commendation which the Holy Spirit of God gives of this their religious course of holiness and obedience: they are pronounced blameless. To live without gross sin is our holiness on earth; to live without any sin will be our happiness in heaven. Many sins may be in him that has true grace; but he that has truth of grace cannot allow himself in any sin. Truth of grace is our perfection on earth; but in heaven we shall have perfection as well as truth. 4. A pattern for their imitation who wait at God’ s altar, and are employed in and about holy things. All ministers of the gospel ought to be what Zacharias and Elisabeth are here said to be, blameless; that is, very innocent and inoffensive in their daily conversation. (W. Burkitt, M. A.) Like stock, like fruit It is not in the power of parents to traduce holiness to their children; it is the blessing of God that feoffs them in the virtues of their parents, as they feoff them in their sins. There is no certainty, but there is a likelihood of a holy generation when the parents are such. Elisabeth was just as well as Zachary, that the forerunner of a Saviour might be holy on both sides. If the stock and the graft be not both good, there is much danger of the fruit. It is a happy match when the husband and the wife are one, not only in themselves, but in God; not more in flesh than in the Spirit. Grace makes no difference of sexes; rather the weaker carries away the more honour because it has had less helps. (Bishop Hall.) It may or may not carry benediction with it to be born into a household historically and by hereditary office renowned; but, coeteris paribus, it is a beatitude to have both father and mother “ righteous” as before God, and “ blameless” as before the world. How mournful to very tragedy is falsification of such a godly lineage, words are poor to tell I It is to set the whole home-life to sweetest music to have husband and wife, father and mother, agreed in religious faith and character, as it is to introduce inevitable discords when both are not so--when, perchance, children and servants see the husband (father) living “ without God,” and the wife (mother) bearing an aching heart as she enforcedly goes alone to “ the sanctuary,” and alone has “ prayer” in the household. (Dr. Grosart.) Zacharias and Elisabeth Parentage of great men interesting. Parental influence generally determines intellectual, social, and largely moral standing. Introducing the story of one who was pronounced by the highest authority to have no superior among his predecessors or contemporaries Matthew 11:11), the sacred writer detains us a little with the character of his parents. View the text as a beautiful exhibition of personal and family religion. I. A OF . Their religion was-- 1. Sincere--“ before God.” 2. Irreproachable--“ blameless” (Philippians 2:15). 3. Practical--“ walking in all,” &e. II. A PICTURE AND PLEDGE OF FAMILY . What is said of one is said of “ both” --a pious pair. Look at this in its bearing upon-- 1. Their mutual comfort. Christian young men and women, let this be one of the first things at which you look seriously when you begin to contemplate the life union. 2. Their domestic life. Imagine them at their rural home in the hill-country. Mutual kindness, united prayer, quiet ways of doing good, &c. 3. Their parental duties. Surely their personal piety had something to do with their selection as parents of forerunner. Personal religion the main qualification for training of children. (John Rawlinson.) Characteristics of true righteousness In order to this we must be “ justified by faith through our Lord Jesus Christ,” for “ the man unto whom the Lord will not impute sin, is he whose transgression is forgiven.” Another characteristic of the righteous man is that, “ in his spirit there is no guile,” or, as the Irish boy expressed this, he must be “ dane inside.” See how David prayed for these blessings (Psalms 51:1; Psalms 51:7; Psalms 51:10). Then those who are righteous have all right principles in them (Galatians 5:22-23). A king of England once took a Romish fighting-bishop prisoner. The Pope sent a demand, “ Set my son free.” In reply, the king sent the bishop’ s helmet and coat of mail, and asked, “ Is this thy son’ s dress?” Those who are righteous before God will also be righteous before men. (H. R. Burton.) Transparent in character In the cathedral of St. Mark, in Venice--a marvellous building, lustrous with an Oriental splendour far beyond description--there are pillars said to have been brought from Solomon’ s Temple; these are of alabaster, a substance firm and durable as granite, and yet transparent, so that the light glows through them. Behold an emblem of what all true pillars of the Church should be--firm in their faith, and transparent in their character; men of simple mould, ignorant of tortuous and deceptive ways, and yet men of strong will, not readily to be led aside, or bent from their uprightness! A few such alabaster men we know; may the great Master Builder place more of them in His temple! (C. H.Spurgeon.) The blameless pair I. To consider and illustrate the character described in the text; and-- II. To present some reasons why all who have entered the marriage state should endeavour to make it their own. 1. The first thing which demands attention in the character of this truly excellent and happy pair is, that they were righteous before God. It is, indeed, very easy to be righteous in our own estimation; nor is it very difficult to be righteous in the estimation of our fellow creatures; but it is by no means equally easy to be righteous in the estimation of God. He is constantly with us; He sees our whole conduct; nay, more, He reads our hearts. To be righteous before Him, then, is to be really, inwardly, and uniformly righteous. It is to be the same persons in every situation, and on all occasions: the same at home and abroad, in solitude and in society. Try yourselves by this rule. Would men think you righteous, did they know you as perfectly as God knows you? 2. Again: this pair walked in all God’ s commandments and ordinances blameless. It is mentioned as an effect and a proof of their being righteous. These two words, though nearly synonymous, are not perfectly so. The commands of God are His moral precepts, or those precepts which are designed to regulate our temper and conduct on all occasions. By His ordinances are meant those religious rites and institutions which He has directed us to observe. Some pretend to obey God’ s commands, while they neglect His ordinances. Others visibly observe His ordinances, but neglect His commands. The term walk signifies a course of life. To walk in God’ s commandments and ordinances, is to have the heart and life constantly regulated by them. It is not to step occasionally into the path of duty, and then take many steps in a different path; but it is to pursue this path with undeviating steadiness and perseverance. This pious pair did not select such commandments as were easy, or reputable, and neglect others. Nor did they observe those only, which they had little temptation to omit; but, to use the language of the psalmist, they had respect to all God’ s commandments. What is now, under the Christian dispensation, implied in walking in all the ordinances and commandments of the Lord, blamelessly? 1. It implies the exercise of repentance toward God, and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. These are the two first and great commands of the gospel. Until we begin to perform these duties, we cannot be righteous before God, nor walk in any of His commandments or ordinances; for inspiration hath declared, without faith it is impossible to please Him. 2. Walking in all God’ s commandments and ordinances blamelessly, implies great diligence in seeking a knowledge of them. No man can regulate his conduct by a rule, with which he is unacquainted. As well might a mariner find his way to a distant port, without ever looking to his chart or compass. That copy of the Old Testament, which Zacharias and Elisabeth possessed, was doubtless worn with frequent use. It must have been their daily counsellor and guide. 3. Walking in all God’ s commandments and ordinances blamelessly, implies a careful performance of all the duties which husbands and wives owe each other. 4. Walking in all the commandments and ordinances of God blamelessly, implies a careful performance, on the part of parents, of all the parental duties which He has enjoined. 5. Walking in all God’ s ordinances and commandments blamelessly, implies the maintaining of the worship of God in the family. 6. Walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blamelessly, implies a suitable concern for the present and future happiness of servants, apprentices, and dependents. 7. Walking in the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blamelessly, implies a careful performance of all the duties which we owe our neighbours. 8. Walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blamelessly, implies a proper use of the temporal good things which are entrusted to our care. Lastly: Walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blamelessly, implies a sacred observance of the Sabbath, a diligent attendance on the public worship of God, and a commemoration of Christ at His table. Having thus considered and illustrated the character brought to view in the text, I proceed, as was proposed-- II. To state some reasons why all who have entered the marriage state should endeavour to make it their own. 1. God approves, and requires you to possess, such a character. He commands you to be righteous before Him. 2. Consider how much it would promote your present happiness to possess such a character. Where can happiness be found on earth, if not in such a family as has now been described? 3. Permit me to remind you how greatly such a family would honour God and adorn religion. It would, indeed, in such a world as this, be like one of those ever verdant islands, which rise amidst the wide ocean of Arabian sands, and whose constant verdure leads the weary and thirsty traveller to seek for the hidden spring which produces it. It is, perhaps, impossible for an insulated individual to exhibit all the beauty and excellence of Christianity; because much of it consists in the right performance of those relative duties, which he has no opportunity to perform. But in a religious family, a family where both husband and wife are evidently pious, religion may be displayed in all its parts, and in the fulness of its glory and beauty; and one such family will do more to recommend it, and to soften the prejudices of its enemies, than can be effected by the most powerful and persuasive sermon. (E. Payson, D. D.) Domestic life In this short account there is much to interest and instruct us; “ they were both righteous.” The priest maintained the sanctity of his character by marrying a daughter of Aaron; a daughter of Aaron’ s piety as well as of his flesh. The union, cemented by affection, was strengthened by piety. Thrice happy pair! united to God and to each other! who can separate you? what can harm you? Life with all its trials; death with all its terrors; all things shall work together for your good. If congeniality is necessary to happiness in any state, surely in that which is most interesting and important. “ How can two walk together except they be agreed?” Besides, if the families of God’ s people are to be the nurseries for the Church, it is indispensable that both parents should be righteous. I. THE OF THEIR --“ They were righteous before God.” II. THE RULE OF THEIR --“ The commandments and ordinances of the Lord.” III. THE OF THEIR --“ Walking in all the commandments,” &c. Religion, wherever it exists, will leave its own entire impression upon the character; not one feature, but every feature of the “ new man” will be developed; the duties to man, as well as those we owe to God, will be conscientiously regarded. IV. THE OF THEIR . The text adds to the preceding description of their character “ blameless;” not sinless. Happy is it for the interests of the Church when a blameless consistency marks its professors, more especially when its professors, like Zacharias and Elisabeth sustain public and important stations; the priest emphatically should be “ blameless;” if the tongue of slander should attack him, it should meet with no second accuser. To be thus “ blameless” requires a constant dependence upon the grace of God. (Essex Remembrancer.) Luke 1:7 And they had no child Virtue rewarded after long trial Observe here-- I. This holy pair, Zacharias and Elisabeth, were fruitful in holy obedience, but barren in children; a fruitful soul and a barren womb are consistent, and often meet together. This religious couple made no less progress in virtue than in age, and yet their virtue did not make their age fruitful. II. Elisabeth was barren in the flower of her age, but much more so in old age. Here was a double obstacle, and consequently a double instance of Divine power in the birth of John the Baptist, showing him to be a prophet very extraordinary, and miraculously sent by God. III. When Almighty God in old time did long delay to give the blessing of children to holy women, He rewarded their expectation with the birth of some eminent and extraordinary person. Thus Sarah, after long barrenness, brought forth an Isaac; Rebecca, a Jacob; Rachel, a Joseph; Hannah, a Samuel; and Elisabeth, St. John Baptist. When God makes His people wait long for a particular mercy, if He sees it good for them, He gives it at last with a double reward for their expectation. (W. Burkitt, M. A.) Opposite wonders in the conception of Christ and of John A just soul and a barren womb may well agree together. Among the Jews barrenness was not a defect only, but a reproach; yet, while this good woman was fruitful of holy obedience, she was barren of children; as John, who was miraculously conceived by man, was a fit forerunner of Him that was conceived by the Holy Ghost, so a barren matron was meet to make way for a virgin. (Bishop Hall.) Here was desolation without murmuring. Blessings long withheld are more intensely prized. (W. H. Van Doren, D. D.) The society of children We are all brought nearer to Christ through childhood. Dr. Arnold used to say that no one could continue long in a healthy religious state unless his heart was kept tender by mingling with children, or by frequent intercourse with the poor and the suffering. The grief of being childless But, notwithstanding all the satisfaction and inward peace of innocent and godly lives, in spite of the natural pride they, doubtless, felt in the consideration that must have been shown them, as born of a priestly ancestry, stretching back through fifteen hundred years, and though they must have had round them the comforts of a modest competency, there was a secret grief in the heart of both. Elisabeth had no child, and what this meant to a Hebrew wife it is hard for us to fancy. Rachel’ s words, “ Give me children, or else I die,” were the burden of every childless woman’ s heart in Israel. The birth of a child was the removal of a reproach. Hannah’ s prayer for a son was that of all Jewish wives in the same position. To have no child was regarded as a heavy punishment from the hand of God. How bitter the thought that his name should perish was for a Jew to bear, was seen in the law which required that a childless widow should be, forthwith, married by a dead husband’ s brother, that children might be raised up to preserve the memory of the childless man, by being accounted his. Nor was it enough that one brother of a number acted thus: in the imaginary instance given by the Sadducees to our Lord, seven brothers, in succession, took a dead brother’ s wife, for this object. The birth of a child was therefore a special blessing, as a security that the name of his father “ should not be cut off from among his brethren, and from the gate of his place,” and that it should not be “ put out of Israel.” Ancient nations, generally, seem to have had this feeling, and it is still so strong among Orientals, that after the birth of a first-born son, a father and a mother are no longer known by their own names, but as the father and mother of the child. There was, besides, a higher thought of possible relations, however distant, to the great-expected Messiah, by the birth of children; but Zacharias and Elisabeth had reason enough to sorrow at their childless home, even on the humbler ground of natural sentiments. They had grieved over their misfortune, and had made it the burden of many prayers, but years passed, and they had both grown elderly, and yet no child had been vouchsafed them. (Dr. Geikie.) Luke 1:8-10 While he executed the priest’ s office The priest’ s office The duties of the priests were many and various. It was their awful and peculiar honour to “ come near the Lord” (Exodus 19:22). None but they could minister before Him in the Holy place where He manifested His presence: none others could “ come nigh the vessels of the sanctuary or the altar.” It was death for any one not a priest to usurp these sacred prerogatives. They offered the morning and evening incense; trimmed the lamps of the golden candlestick, and filled them with oil; kept up the fire on the great altar in front of the Temple; removed the ashes Of the sacrifices; took part in the slaying and cutting up of victims, and especially in the sprinkling of their blood, and laid the offerings of all kinds on the altar. They also announced the new moons, which were sacred days like the Sabbaths, by the blowing of trumpets. But this was a small part of their duties. They had to examine all cases of ceremonial uncleanness, especially leprosy, clearing those who were pure, and pronouncing others unclean; to estimate, for commutation, the value of the countless offerings made to the Temple, and to watch the interior of the Temple by night. They were required, moreover, to instruct the people in the niceties of the law, and to give decisions on many points reserved, among us, to magistrates, The priests, in fact, were, within certain limits, the judges and magistrates of the land, though the Sanhedrim, which was the supreme court in later Jewish history, was composed of chief priests, laymen, and scribes, or Rabbis, in apparently equal numbers. (Dr. Geikie) His lot When a course came up to relieve the one that had served the preceding week, the particular services of the priests were determined by lot. Certain services were accounted more honourable than others, and in this way all contention respecting them was avoided. The most honourable of all was that of going into the Holy place to offer incense upon the golden altar. And on the occasion before us this distinguished office devolved upon the aged Zacharias. (Dr. Kitto.) The providence in chance How often it happens that that which falls to our lot by apparent chance, does in reality so fall by the guidance of God’ s hand! (Bishop Goodwin.) Priestly functions How solemn the service in which Zacharias is now employed! The sacrifice being slain, whose smoke was now ascending to heaven, and every preparation being made in the court, he proceeds to transact for the nation, and particularly for the assembled multitude, whom he leaves behind him. Advancing with slow and solemn step, and with the smoking censer in his hand, towards the sanctuary, he puts aside the outer curtain and disappears from their sight. Imagination follows him in, where, except on pain of destruction, no other mortal could enter. What must be his feelings in going on with the service of the incense! All without is silent as death, and all within is so stilly impressive, that he is almost afraid to draw his breath. No mortal eye beholds his conduct; but the eternal Jehovah, who will be sanctified in them that draw nigh, surrounds him with His more immediate presence. Take heed, Zacharias, to thy demeanour, lest thou be smitten in the greatness of thine iniquity, or lest thy hand, stretched forth rashly, be withered; or lest, through any fault of thine, the Lord deny His blessing to the people. He places on the golden altar the censer with the incense, with whose cloudy perfume the apartment is filled and rendered fragrant, that the Lord may smell a sweet savour. (James Foote, M. A.) Zachariah’ s prayer heard The answer to Zachariah’ s prayer was-- 1. Earnestly desired. 2. Long delayed. 3. Promised in a surprising manner. 4. Incredulously waited for. 5. Gloriously vouchsafed. (Van Oosterzee.) Order in the performance of religious duties Here note-- 1. That none but a son of Aaron might offer incense to God in the temple; and not every son of Aaron either; nay, not any of them at all seasons. God is a God of order, and hates confusion no less than irreligion. And as under the law of old, so under the gospel now, no man ought to take this honour upon him but he that is called of God, as was Aaron. 2. That there were courses of ministration in the legal services, in which the priests relieved one another weekly. God never purposed to burden any of His servants with devotion, nor is He pleased when His service is made burdensome, either to or by His ministers. 3. That morning and evening, twice a day, the priests offered up their incense to God, that both parts of the day might be consecrated to Him who was the Maker and Giver of their time. This incense offered under the law, represents our prayers offered to God under the gospel. The ejaculatory elevations of our hearts should be perpetual; but if twice a day we do not present God with our solemn invocations, we make the gospel less officious than the law; and can we reasonably think that Almighty God will accept of less now that would content Him then? (W. Burkitt, M. A.) Joint offering of priest and people 1. While the incense was burning, the people were praying: while the priest sends up his incense in the temple within, the people send up their prayers in the court without. The incense of the priest and the prayers of the people meet, and go up to heaven together. It is a blessed thing when both minister and people jointly offer up their prayers for each other at the same throne of grace, and mutually strive together in their supplications, one with, and one for, another. 2. Observe how both priest and people keep their place and station: the priest burns incense in the holy place, and the people offer up their prayers in the outward court. The people might no more go into the Holy place to offer up their prayer, than Zachary might go into the Holy of Holies to burn incense. Whilst the partition-wall stood betwixt Jew and Gentile, there was also a partition betwixt the Jews themselves. But now under the gospel, every man is a priest to God, and may enter the Holy of Holies by the blood of Jesus. But, Lord! what are we the better for this great and gracious freedom of access to Thee, if we want hearts to prize and improve our privilege from Thee? (W. Burkitt, M. A.) Supplication the Church’ s power At the moment when the effectual work of propitiation and intercession goes forward within the temple--what is seen without? The whole multitude of the people, bending in silent awe, seconding the priestly office and making it in some sense their own, joining their faith to the sacrifice, and lifting their hearts with the rising incense-cloud, are in supplication before God. This can represent nothing else than the power of the united prayers of the Christian congregation, aiding and supporting the official work of the threefold ministry and the holy offices of the Church, in declaring Christ to the world The question before us, then, thrown open in its broadest form, will be this: Are we using the devotional power of the Church in due proportion to its other powers? If in any of our undertakings we fail, there is very little doubt that we fail because we did not expect enough and ask enough of God--for that expectation is only another name for faith; and that asking is prayer. Men say, “ Religion is a thing between a man and his Maker” ; and though it is often said to palliate some inexcusable neglect of an open religious confession before men, yet it is profoundly true. There are two parties, and only two. The business of religion, therefore, is to bring offerings to Him, and, in answer to our prayers, to take blessings from Him. This, with the sacred sentiments, affections, and actions which belong to that holy intercourse, is the first business of the Church. So, Christians, we stand, in this sacred and redeemed creation, always at a temple door. No doubt there are mysteries. What temple was ever without its suggestion of mystery? Even a very deep and strong human love has its mysteries. But nevertheless, the Light falls down from the Throne. God is there. The door is swung open. We are near to Him; He is near to us. The Mediator and Intercessor is praying there for us. Our prayers are joined with His. The reconciliation is accomplished. The next step follows irresistibly. Every movement of religious life among us must get its power and direction from the Spirit of God. If you would find the true secret of spiritual success, you need not seek for it in the admirableness of the plan, the shrewdness of the management, the numbers that subscribe, or the eloquence of the advocates. You might better seek it in some very obscure chambers, some out-of-the-way corners, some closets with the doors shut, where men or women, or children in whose breasts God has a Temple of His own-never heard of at the public meetings, poor and simple-hearted and of stammering lips--kneel with their great-hearted and prevailing petitions, not discouraged by the slowness of the answer, trusting not in themselves but only in the Lord Almighty. These are the “ multitude praying without.” The finest and firmest machinery in the world is so much dead material without these prayers. I suppose most of you have seen some elaborate and costly specimen of mechanism, standing still: every little screw and bolt of the complicated system in its place; every post and bar, flange and transom, secure; every bright lever and arm, wheel and tooth, tempered and tested--the whole a splendid embodiment and trophy of intellectual ingenuityand determination--yet silent and inert as icicles, till some lifted gate or open valve lets in the mysterious motive-power which makes it a sure and mighty servant of a purpose beyond it. So are all our best religious measures, till the breath of the church’ s prayers joins them to the Spirit from on high. We look into the Bible records of the beginnings and growth of God’ s kingdom on the earth. On every spot where that kingdom struck root we see a group of men bending in prayer. When the Eastern magi were brought by the star to Bethlehem, all their intellectual strength bowed itself down to a little Child; they taught nothing, proposed nothing--they did not even speak; it was simply an offering; the signification of it was the submission of knowledge to faith. It was worship. From page to page, in the Acts of the Apostles, they are shown to us together looking upward. When an order in the ministry, an apostle, or a missionary, was to be set apart or sent out, special prayer signalized the ceremony. At the meeting and parting of Christian friends, on their sacred errands, they knelt and prayed. If one of their number was imprisoned, prayer was made for him day and night. The whole fiery heart of the Church of Christ was in instant communication with its ascended Head. And what followed? Why, this was the period when the Church grew before men’ s eyes with such swiftness that a thousand converts were gathered in the time that it takes us to gather ten. And so the periods of prayer have always been the periods of life. A lingering doubt casts up its faithless suggestion at these words: “ Is not the Church constantly praying? Yet where is the fulfilment of the promise?” The answer is found under another word, “ the prayers of faith.” We may be sure that the measure of the faith is the measure of the power of the prayer, and that the measure of such prayer is, sooner or later, the measure of the blessing we receive. We very often mistake the strength of our desire for the strength of our faith. (Bishop F. D. Huntingdon.) Symbol of united prayer In some of our most familiar illustrated newspapers there were, a little while ago, beautiful pictures of the recently-completed Cologne Cathedral. Looking at it very attentively there came back to mind thoughts and suggestions which are always started by the presence of a large Gothic building; and these have been so long associated with our cathedrals and spired churches, that we have almost ceased to question whether they really embody the essential idea of the Gothic architecture. Surely such a building as we have in mind is the illustration in stone of the idea of “ United Prayer.” It is a series of points and pinnacles, from the ground to the top of the great spire. Every window is a pointed arch; every buttress goes up to a point; every roof ridge is guided off into little uplifting spires; the great roof itself points up; and the whole building seems to unite in the great spire, which pierces away into the sky, and seems to carry the united cry of the whole building up to God. (R. Tuck.) Remarkable effect of united prayer Well-known are the immediate and lasting effects of the sermon, entitled “ Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” which President Edwards preached at the time of “ The Great Awakening.” It was believed that the sermon owed much of its success to the earnest petitions of a few believing persons, who spent the whole of the previous night in a prayer-meeting in the vicinity (Enfield). These prayers were made the more earnest by the fear that God, who was blessing other places, would in just indignation pass them by. (Hervey’ s “ Manual of Revivals.”) The social feelings in large gatherings If we were all cold units like stones, and could take cur places side by side with no sense or consciousness of the presence of another, how chilled the thing would bet If, coming together, each was conscious that on his right or left was an enemy present--a carping critic, a cold atheist--how those who care at all for the thing would be chilled and withered! You all feel that, having a common purpose and a living sympathy, heart blends with heart and mind with mind. Ay, and thus Divine mercy uses and sanctifies one of the mightiest forces of human life. Men never know the fulness of their life and force except in sympathy. They catch the contagion of a prevailing temper. They grow warm by friction with those who are in active movement. They become confident and resolved by reason of the concensus of numbers. The drops that make up the ocean wave become mighty and resistless when united and swayed in one direction. (J. Aldis.) Luke 1:11 An angel of the Lord Angelic visits The angels will come to us when we are doing the Lord’ s business--even though that business be routine, and we have become almost weary with its mechanical repetition, yet the radiant messenger can find us in our obscurity, and open before us new and enchanting prospects. Are you impatient for the coming of the angel? Then by so much you are leaving incomplete the work to which you have been Divinely called. It is better to work steadily for the Master than to be waiting fretfully for the vision of angels. (Dr. Parker.) Absence from the sanctuary Suppose Zacharias had not been there. Suppose that his functions had been to him nothing except perfunctory services, and he had absented himself. Might not the great annunciation have been transferred? Instead of Zacharias might not Simeon have been chosen? and instead of Elisabeth, Anna? I pause to put the question, for I wish to arouse your half-day attendants in God’ s house, to a recognition of how possible it is to miss of a special blessing when we are not in the way, and place, and time of religious duty. I knew of a case wherein an “ anxious inquirer” would have heard the sermon that brought deliverance and peace to her five years sooner had she been in God’ s house on the day it was originally preached. As it was she walked for five years in gloom, and at last heard it semi-accidentally. (Dr. Grosart.) Intercourse between visible and invisible world The narrative of an angelic visitation does not bring us into a supernatural region. We are in one already. The Temple-worship meant nothing if there were not an actual established intercourse between the visible and invisible world. (F. D. Maurice.) Angels present in church I think I see in this passage that a more special blessing attends the prayers offered up by God’ s ministers at the hours appointed by the Church, and that angels are more particularly present to carry up the sacrifice of prayer and praise then offered by the priest, on which hang (as it were) the supplications of the whole congregation. Consider this, O my soul, and let it be a constant incitement to thee never to forsake the house of thy God, when opportunity offers for thee to join thy prayers with those of all thy fellow-Christians. (Dean Hook.) The angels as observers and witnesses The holy angels of God are observers of our prayers and good actions on earth, and the relaters and remembrancers of them in heaven. Not but that the all-seeing God of Himself knows and takes notice of all the good actions of men, and records them to perpetuity in the most faithful register of His Omniscience; but He would have His holy angels to be conscious of our good actions, not only that they might congratulate our happiness, as fellow-servants and members with us, under Christ, their and our Lord and Head, but also and especially that they might be the witnesses of His righteous judgment at the last day, when His Son shall come in His glory with millions of His holy angels to judge the world. (Bishop Bull.) Seeing the angels According to Holy Scripture, we are surrounded by angels (2 Kings 6:17; Psalms 34:7), whom God employs to defend us; but in our ordinary condition we have not the perception necessary to make us aware of their presence. For this we need a peculiar state of receptivity. That was the state of Zacharias at this time. He had been prepared for it by the sanctity of the place, by the solemnity of the service which he was about to fulfil, by his lively sympathy with those who prayed for national deliverance, and finally by the sense of his own domestic trial. (Prof. Godet.) Reality of the spirit world To me the spirit world is tangible. It is not peopled with ghosts and spectres, shadows and outlines of beings, but with persons and forms palpable to the apprehension. Its multitudes are veritable, its society natural, its language audible, its companionship real, its love distinct, its activities energetic, its life intelligent, its glory discernible; its union is not that of sameness, but of variety brought into moral harmony by the great law of love, like notes which, in themselves distinct and different, make, when combined, sweet music. Death will not level and annul those countless differences of mind and heart which make us individual here. Heaven, in all the mode and manner of expression, will abound with personality. There will be choice, and preference, and degree of affinity there. Each intellect will keep its natural bias, each heart its elections. Groups there will be, and circles; faces, known and unknown, will pass us; acquaintance will thrive on intercourse, and love deepen with knowledge; and the great underlying laws of mind and heart prevail and dominate as they do here, save in this, that sin, and all the repellance and antagonisms that it breeds, will be unknown, and holiness supply in perfect measure the opportunity and bond of brotherhood. (Murray.) Character of the angels “ The very names assigned to angels,” says Dwight, “ by their Creator, convey to us ideas pre-eminently pleasing, fitted to captivate the heart and exalt the imagination; ideas which dispel gloom, banish despondency, enliven hope, and awaken sincere and unmingled joy. They are living ones; beings in whom life is inherent and instinctive; who sprang up under the quickening influence of the Sun of Righteousness, beneath the morning of everlasting day; who rose, expanded, and blossomed in the uncreated beam, on the banks of the river of life, and were nourished by the waters of immortality. They are spirits, winged with activity, and formed with power, which no labour wearies and no duration impairs; their faculties always fresh and young, their exertions unceasing and wonderful, and their destination noble and delightful, without example, and without end. They are burning ones, glowing with a pure and serene, with an intense and immortal flame of Divine love; returning, without ceasing, the light and warmth which they have received from the great central Sun of the universe, reflecting with supreme beauty the image of that Divine luminary; and universally glorious, although differing from each other in glory.” The annunciation to Zacharias Ah, friends, if God were as strict to punish us for our distrust of His word as he was to punish Zacharias for his, how many of us also would He strike dumb! Who knows but that some of the calamities which befall us are really punishments for our own unbelief? This incident of the annunciation to Zacharias is rich in lessons. I will mention but two. First, the ministration of angels. In fact, the Bible from beginning to end is radiant with angels. And as it was in the past, so it is to-day. Angels are still ministers of God, executing His will alike in the physical and in the spiritual world. What though we do not see angels? It does not follow that, because they are invisible, they are therefore, according to our scientific tests, unreal or inoperative. In fact, it is the invisible things which are the most real. Did any human being ever see the Holy Spirit? Yet what Christian doubts His existence? Were our spiritual eyes open, as were the eyes of Elisha’ s servant at Dothan, doubtless we also would see all around us horses and chariots of fire circling to protect us. Lastly: Hours of worship are hours of angels’ annunciation. Not that we may ever expect in this teen of the world to behold visions of angels; for ours it is to have something better than to have glimpses of supernatural figures; ours it is to have the presence of the Holy Spirit Himself. Luke 1:12 He was troubled Terrifying effect of supernatural appearances Such has usually been the effect of supernatural appearances, even on good men, as is exemplified in Manoah, David, Paul, and others. 1. Man’ s weakness is incapable of easily bearing the glory of such appearances. 2. His sinfulness naturally makes him afraid that the heavenly messenger may be sent to him in displeasure. Hence appear the wisdom and goodness of God in employing, as the heralds of gospel salvation, not angels but human beings, whose terror does not make us afraid. If, however, we shall be so wise for ourselves as to receive the gospel, and to take the Lord of angels for our Lord, then we shall be prepared without fear to meet, not one angel, or a few angels, but the whole angelic host, with the Lord at their head--that host from which the ungodly will shrink in dismay, but which the ransomed shall gladly join round about the throne, to the number of ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands. (James Foote, M. A.) Angelic glory awakening fear It was partly the suddenness, partly the unexpectedness, and partly the glory of the apparition, that affrighted this good man. Glorious and sudden apparitions do affright even the holiest and best of men. We cannot bear the sight and presence of an angel without consternation and fear, in our frail and sinful state. O happy hour when, mortality and sin being taken out of our natures, we shall not only behold the glorified angels without fear, but the glorious God with delight and love I Lord! let me now see Thee by faith, hereafter by sight. (W. Burkitt, M. A.) Sight rather than faith the cause of fear He that had wont to live and serve in the presence of the Master, was now astonished at the presence of the servant; so much difference is there betwixt our faith and our senses that the apprehension of the God of spirits by faith goes down sweetly with us, whereas the sensible apprehension of an angel dismays us. Holy Zachary, that had wont to live by faith, thought he should die, when his sense began to be set on work; it was the weakness of him, that served the altar without horror, to be daunted with the face of his fellow-servant. In vain do we look for such ministers of God as are without infirmities when just Zachary was troubled in his devotions with that wherewith he should have been comforted: it was partly the suddenness and partly the glory of the apparition that affrighted him. (Bishop Hall.) Luke 1:13 But the angel said unto him, Fear not Human life on earth known in heaven From the speech of Gabriel it is clear that human life, in its beginning’ , course, purpose, and destiny, is known in heaven before it is manifested on earth. This is not the case with exceptional men only, but with all men. This should throw a joyous solemnity around life. Human life is intended to be the realization of a heavenly plan. Inquire what it is, accept it with all thankfulness or submission, as the case may be, and live in God. John was to be as conspicuous amongst men as a mountain is conspicuous amongst the lowlands. But did not God make the valleys as well as the hills? In great lives we only see the lines of Divine movement and purpose more clearly because of their apparent exaggeration; in humbler lives the lines are all there. This communication made by Gabriel suggests two inquiries. 1. Has every life a guardian angel? 2. Is every life reported in heaven by the angelic watcher? (Dr. Parker.) Light will arise in due time The barrenness necessitated the annunciation. The annunciation transfigured the barrenness. Is it not often exactly thus with trying and bitter and “ reproach” bringing experiences of the believer? We are denied what we fain would have; we have what we would fain have been denied. We feel ourselves of those who “ walk in the darkness,” and have “ no light.” Well! do we “ trust” in the Lord, and “ stay ourselves upon God” ? If only we do, sooner or later, I am satisfied increasingly, “ light will arise.” It may not come when we wished it, nor as we wished it, but come it does. (A. B. Grosart, LL. D,) Consider the exquisite connexion of the whole, the gradually-attained climax of the Divine message from the lips of the angel from before the throne. The messenger of joy begins with the mention of the accepted prayer, promises a son, gives him a high name, foretells for him a distinguished office. But the greatest tidings are yet to come: the longed-for coming of the Messiah, whose forerunner this child is to be. To quote Pfenninger: “ How tenderly interwoven, how intimately connected, the Divine with the human story I It is one of the chief perfections of a drama that all its occurrences should essentially hang together; that none of them should appear extraneous or isolated; and where are these conditions better observed than in the Divine narratives of Holy Writ? The grandest, Divinest story in the world blended at its first most human commencement with the human heart-history of a childless wedded pair, who pray to God for a son.” This is certainly true, although the prayer here referred to can hardly have been confined to such a petition. The heavenly message, however, retrospectively includes former prayers, and has three separate clauses--first, the birth of a son to Zacharias; last, the coming of the Lord Himself; and as connecting link between the two, the announcement that this son shall make ready the way of this very Lord. (Rudolph Stier) The “ Fear-nots” of the Bible The “ Fear-nots” of the Bible provide an all-sufficient vade-necum for the timid and distressed. There is no apprehension possible to man which has not its complementary reassuring promise in God’ s Word. (Anon.) Long-offered prayers The prayer of Zacharias was most probably an old prayer, going back many years, ere Elisabeth was old. But apparently unanswered prayers are not disregarded prayers. Old, very old prayers often and often bring down blessings unexpected. (A. B. Grosart, LL. D.) The Bible abounds in assurances that all faithful earnest prayer will be heard, cannot but be heard. And Christian experience proves the truth of the Divine assurance. Let us rejoice (1) That we are permitted to pray; (2) That we are commanded to pray; (3) That all true prayer is heard; (4) That with God to hear is to answer and help. Disappointed and weary suppliant, fear not, thy prayer is heard. And to know that it is heard is to know that in God’ s good way and time it shall be answered. (Anon.) Prayer heard though not immediately answered I can stand in the rooms of my office in New York, and communicate with the men in the fifth story. If I want to speak to the foreman of the printing office, I go and blow the whistle, and talk through the tube. And I know that the message has got up there and that he heard it. I do not see him, and he does not answer back; but I have no doubt that, having received the message, he will attend to my wants. Soft seems to me that sometimes we speak to God in heaven, as it were through an invisible medium. He does not answer immediately, but, nevertheless, we know that He is there, and that, even if we do not conceive of Him, He conceives of us; and we send our thought or prayer up, and let it alone, and do not fret or worry about it. (H. W.Beecher.) Unanswered prayer accepted Prayers which are not answered at once, nor, perhaps, for a long time afterwards, may nevertheless be accepted. God’ s people are apt to forget this; and that it is with prayer, to borrow an illustration from commercial transactions, as with a bill, which, though accepted, is often not paid till months or years have elapsed. Our heavenly Father knows best what to give; and also how, and where, and when to give it. Were its answer always to follow prayer, as the peal roars upon the flash, I suspect that we would be as ready in spiritual as we are in earthly matters to look only to secondary causes, and forget God’ s hand--coming to look upon our prayers as being the cause of the answer, as much as we are in the habit of regarding the flash of lightning, without any reference to God, as the cause of the peal of thunder. (T. Guthrie, D. D.) And thy wife Elisabeth … John This promised son is added to a series whose birth has already been miraculously foretold. Isaac, Samson, Samuel. The significant names of both Zacharias [The Lord remembers] and Elisabeth [God of the oath, or covenant] are mentioned by the angel, to point out the rich fulfilment of their prophetic meaning, but the appointed name of this promised son transcends theirs. An era of new and fuller grace begins with him. Later, the name (=the grace of God) receives its special explanation, in that the stern preacher of repentance is found only to lead from grace to grace. John is the last but one of the seven names [Ishmael, Isaac, Solomon, Josiah, Cyrus, John, Jesus] given by God in Holy Scripture to those still unborn, and the seventh name is Jesus. (Rudolf Stier.) Angelic solicitude 1. Observe how apprehensive this good angel was at Zachary’ s surprising fear, and encourages him against it. The holy angels, though they do not express it in words, yet pity our frailties, and suggest comfort to us. The evil angels, if they might, would kill us with terror; the good angels labour together for our tranquility and cheerfulness. 2. The comfortable words spoken by the angel to Zacharias. God sometimes hears our prayers, and bestows His mercies, when we least expect; yea, when we have given over looking for what we asked. 3: The name which the angel directed Zachary to give his son: John, which signifies gracious; because he was to open the kingdom of grace, and to preach the grace of the gospel through Jesus Christ. The giving of significant names to children has been an ancient and pious practice; names which either carried a remembrance of duty or of mercy in them. (W. Burkitt, M. A,) Acceptable prayer defined Prayer is the offering of our sincere desires to God. It involves a sense of our unworthiness and necessities. 1. Penitence (Psalms 51:17). 2. Faith (Hebrews 11:6). 3. Sincerity (Jeremiah 29:13). 4. Fervency (James v 16). 5. Love (1 Timothy 2:8). 6. Delight in God (Isaiah 25:9). 7. Perseverance (Ephesians 6:18). 8. Humble submission to God’ s will (Micah 7:7). 9. In the name of Christ (Ephesians 3:12). 10. With confession of our sins (1 John 1:9). Jewish prayers were chiefly praise and benedictions. Always answered, but in God’ s sovereign way. (W. H. Van Doren, D. D.) The efficacy of prayer “ Then you have not been modified in any way as to the efficacy of prayer?” asked his visitor. Mr. Spurgeon laughed. “ Only in my faith growing far stronger and firmer than ever. It is not a matter of faith with me, but of knowledge, and everyday experience. I am constantly witnessing the most unmistakable instances of answers to prayer. My whole life is made up of them. To me they are so familiar as to cease to excite my surprise; but to many they would seem marvellous, no doubt. Why, I could no more doubt the efficacy of prayer than I could disbelieve in the law of gravitation. The one is as much a fact as the other, constantly verified every day of my life. Elijah, by the brook Cherith, as he received his daily rations from the ravens, could hardly be a more likely subject for scepticism than I. Look at my Orphanage. To keep it going entails an annual expenditure of about £10,000. Only £1400 is provided for by endowment. The remaining £8000 comes to me regularly in answer to prayer. I do not know where I shall get it from day to day. I ask God for it, and He sends it. Mr. Muller, of Bristol, does the same on a far larger scale, and his experience is the same as mine.” (Pall Mall Gazette.) Prayers answered at last During a long course of years, even to the closing fortnight of his life, in his last sickness, Dr. Judson lamented that all his efforts in behalf of the Jews had been a failure. He was departing from the world saddened with that thought. Then, at last, there came a gleam of light that thrilled his heart with grateful joy. Mrs. Judson was sitting by his side while he was in a state of great languor, with a copy of the Watchman and Reflector in her hand. She read to her husband one of Dr. Hague’ s letters from Constantinople. That letter contained some items of information that filled him with wonder. At a meeting of missionaries at Constantinople, Mr. Schauffler stated that a little book had been published in Germany giving an account of Dr. Judson’ s life and labours; that it had fallen into the hands of some Jews; and had been the means of their conversion; that a Jew had translated it for a community of Jews on the borders of the Euxine, and that a message had arrived in Constantinople asking that a teacher might be sent to show them the way of life. When Dr. Judson heard this his eyes were filled with tears, a look of almost unearthly solemnity came over him, and, clinging fast to his wife’ s hand as if to assure himself of being really in the world, he said, “ Love, this frightens me, I do not know what to make of it.” “ To make of what? “ said Mrs. Judson. “ Why, what you have just been reading, I never was deeply interested in any object, I never prayed sincerely and earnestly for anything, but it came; at some time--no matter how distant the day--somehow, in some shape, probably the last I should have devised, it came! “ What a testimony was that I It lingered on the lips of the dying Jud-son; it was enbalmed with grateful tears, and is worthy to be transmitted as a legacy to the coming generation. The desire of the righteous shall be granted. Pray and wait. The answer to all true prayer will come. In Judson’ s case the news of the answer came before he died, but it was answered long before. So we may know of the results of prayers and toils even while we sojourn here; but if not, what sweet surprises shall await us in the great beyond! (North-Western Christian Advocate.) Luke 1:14 Many shall rejoice at his birth An ideal child Could some parents foresee how wicked some of their children would become, instead of rejoicing, they would grieve at their birth; they would wish they had never been born. John, however, was to be a great comfort and honour to his parents. And many besides of their acquaintances, and of the people at large, were to rejoice when they should see that the circumstance of his birth, and of his early life, prognosticated that he was to become a public blessing. Four leading particulars are mentioned, on account of which men should rejoice. 1. His eminence in wisdom and piety. “ Great in the sight of the Lord.” A holy and devoted servant of God, and preacher of righteousness. 2. His unworldliness. A Nazarite (Numbers 6:1-27.). Not only the ministers, but all the people of God, should abstain from sin, be temperate in all things, superior to earthly pleasures and cares, and a peculiar people in all respects, distinguished from men of the world. 3. His spiritual-mindedness. Conceived in sin like others, yet “ filled with the Holy Ghost, even from his mother’ s womb.” Argument in favour of infant baptism: born in sin, and capable of regeneration, why should they not be admitted to the sacrament? Happy they who are indeed filled with the Holy Ghost and sanctified from infancy! They never know what it is to have a mind altogether dark, or a heart altogether depraved. They cannot remember the time when there was not in them a prevalent tendency to what is good. 4. His usefulness. Resembling Elijah (a) in the bent of his mind; (b) in the success of his ministry. (James Foote, M. A.) Prophetic description of the Baptist Here the angel declares to Zachary, what kind of son should be born unto him, even one of eminent endowments, and designed for extraordinary services. The proof of children makes them either the blessings or crosses of their parents. What greater comfort could Zachary desire in a child, than is here promised to him? 1. He hears of a son that should bring joy, to himself and many others; even to all who expected the coming of the Messiah, whose forerunner the Baptist was. 2. That he should be great in the sight of the Lord: that is, a person of great eminence and great usefulness in the Church. A person of great riches and reputation is great in the sight of men; but the man of great ability and usefulness, integrity and serviceableness, is truly great in the sight of the Lord. They are little men in the sight of the Lord, who live in the world to little purpose; who do little service to God, and bring little honour and glory to Him. 3. It is foretold that he should drink neither wine nor strong drink; that is, he should be a very temperate and abstemious person, living after the manner of the Nazarites, though he was not separated by any vow of his own, or his parents, but by the special designation and appointment of God only. It was forbidden the priests under the law to drink either wine or strong drink, upon pain of death, during the time of their ministration Leviticus 10:9). And the ministers of Christ under the gospel are forbidden to be lovers of wine (1 Timothy 3:3). 4. He shall be filled with the Holy Ghost from his mother’ s womb; that is, he shall be furnished abundantly with the extraordinary gifts of the Holy Spirit, which shall very early appear to be in him, and upon him. 5. His high and honourable office is declared; that he should go before the Messiah, as His harbinger and forerunner, with the same spirit and zeal and courage against sin, which was found in the old prophet Elias, whom he so nearly resembled. 6. The great success of his ministry is foretold; that he should “ turn the hearts of the fathers,” &c. (W. Burkitt, M. A.) Social joys There is a joy which overflows the domestic goblet, and goes out to make strangers glad. Every life ought to be a social bless-rag. The religious man always is so--necessarily, because he does not live unto himself. (Dr. Parker.) Useful lives How many I could quote to whose labours we owe the precious discoveries which daily add to our welfare and our comfort! Who has not rejoiced at the birth of him who discovered the art, at once so wonderful, and so easy, of printing. What an agent of progress that man has been, and what treasures of knowledge he has helped to spread all over the world. And which of us, when hurried along at full speed over some of our railways towards those we love, or on a pleasant trip to some beautiful country, has not blessed the memory of Papin, the unlucky inventor of the steam engine, who suffered so much for the sake of science. (A. Decoppel.) Luke 1:15-16 For he shall be great in the sight of the Lord True greatness What is greatness? Scarcely two persons among us would give the same reply to that question. All would admit that it denotes pre-eminence, but each would have his own preference as to the department in which it was to be manifested. Some would associate it with power, some with courage, some with eloquence, and some, perhaps, with wealth; yet each would think of it as conferring an advantage on its possessor, and so putting others at a corresponding disadvantage. The really great man is he whom holiness and love combine to inspire for the service of his generation by the will of God. 1. He who wins this greatness does not attain it at the expense of others. 2. We may win this greatness anywhere. 3. This greatness is satisfying to its possessor. The highest commendation one can earn is this--“ He hath done what he could;” and the noblest life-record is that which comes nearest to His of whom it was said that “ He went about doing good.” That is fame, though no earthly herald may trumpet it abroad, for Christ shall proclaim it on the day of days before the assembled universe. (Dr. W. M. Taylor.) Character of John the Baptist He was no selfish lover of his own soul, too fearful of pollution to touch society, but a magnanimous reformer, great in his love alike of man and of righteousness. He was too much the pupil of Divine freedom and discipline to be the child of any school, the spokesman of any sect. His faith was the fruit of inspiration as opposed to experience. His education made him a preacher who lived as he believed, possessed of the courage to summon men to a like life and faith. (A. M.Fairbairn, D. D.) A strange greatness The child was to be great in the sight of the Lord. According to the verdict of our Lord passed afterwards, he was the greatest of those born of women until His time. Yet what a strange greatness! A poor man, living in the wilderness the life of an anchorite, and at length beheaded by a wicked king, buried by his disciples, and nothing more heard of him! There is another person mentioned in this chapter who was also called great. Herod the king, mentioned in the fifth verse, is commonly known as Herod the Great, but he was not great in the sight of the Lord, only great in the sight of himself and of his court, and of those who admired his skill in adding to his kingdom. Which was the really great man? Which will appear to be great when the magnitude of men is tested by God, and when men are weighed in the righteous balances of God’ s judgment? (Bishop Goodwin.) In the sight of the Lord We are what we are in God’ s sight, not what men think us, not what we think ourselves, but what He sees and knows that we are, nothing more, nothing less. (Dean Church.) And shall drink neither wine nor strong drink His drink was water of the river. He lived on locusts and wild honey. Men felt in him that power of mastery which is always granted to perfect self-denial. (Archdeacon Farrar.) And he shall be filled with the Holy Ghost Take it as a broad fact in nature that there is no such thing as emptiness. If any corner of the world is vacated even for an instant, something else will come in instantaneously to fill up the empty space. So by the constitution of human nature there is no possibility of emptiness in the soul of man. The spiritual nature “ abhors a vacuum.” If a man will not let good into his life, evil must and will possess it. If he would eject evil from his life, he can only do so by letting good into it. The most striking recognition of the principle occurs in Paul’ s letter to the Christians at Ephesus. He is taking them to” task with reference to certain abuses which had crept into their Church. Prominent among these was drunkenness. “ Be not drunk with wine,” says the apostle, “ but be filled with the Spirit.” Wine versus the Spirit! The disease was not drunkenness. The drunkenness was a casual episode. The souls of these men had an empty chamber which must be filled. Their legitimate food was God. This was rejected or neglected. But the void remained. That could not be neglected. It must be filled with God or with a substitute. We may choose this substitute for ourselves, but we cannot not-choose it, for nature abhors a vacuum. The Ephesians had made their choice--it was wine. This was what Paul saw. To cure it how was he to proceed? He could not enjoin abstinence. The problem was not the drink, but the vacuum. He must make some proposal, therefore, about the vacuum. “ Fill yourselves,” he says, “ with the Spirit of God.” There is a valid relation between the stimulus of intoxicants and the stimulus of religion. Either, so far, will carry out the law of filling the vacuum. But merely to adjure a man not to be filled with wine is to command an impossibility. You must give him another stimulus equally absorbing, intenser, richer, and when the sensual passion is high and strong your substitute must be supreme. There is only one thing which will absorb it quite--the more abundant life of God. (Professor Drummond.) The choice is not between God and an empty heart. Man is like a house situated between two winds. On the one side comes the wind from a dreary, bleak desert, laden with fog and disease, blowing across things foul and rotten. The other side of the house fronts the sunlight, and winds that blow from the wide, fresh sea, and over gardens, orchards, and blooming fields. Every one must decide to which side he is going to open. Both doors cannot be shut. You can only get the dismal, fatal door shut by opening wide the door that looks to the sea of eternity, and the sunshine of God. The wind blowing in through this open door keeps that door of ruin shut. (Dr. Joseph Leckie.) And many of the children of Israel, &c. I. To be “ children of Israel” not necessarily equivalent to being spiritually “ sons of Abraham” (John 8:39). II. As a historical fact the children of Israel over and over again turned from the Lord, and at the beginning of the Baptist’ s ministry nearly the whole nation had sunk into religious formalism. III. But repentance was still possible to Israel after ages of unfaithfulness. Still they might turn to the Lord their God. John’ s message was “ Repent!” and his preaching produced the effects here foretold (see Luke 3:7-14). IV. “ He shall turn.” Recognition of human instrumentality in the doing of the work which only the Spirit of God can do--the production of conviction leading to conversion. (J. R. Bailey.) Goodness is greatness “ Nothing can make a man truly great, but being truly good, and a partaker of God’ s holiness.” “ A dram of goodness is worth more than all worldly greatness.” Wealth, honour, power, may constitute a person great in the estimation of man; but faith, love, and true holiness are necessary to secure for us God’ s approbation. (Henry R. Burton.) Abstinence and promotion When General Grant was in command of the army before Vicksburg, a number of officers were gathered at his headquarters. One of them invited the party to join in a social glass; all but one accepted. He asked to be excused, saying that he “ never drank.” The hour passed, and each went his way to his respective command. A few days after this the officer who declined to drink received a note from General Grant to report at headquarters. He obeyed the order, and Grant said to him, “ You are the officer, I believe, who remarked the other day that you never drank?” The officer modestly answered that he was. “ Then,” continued the General, “ you are the man I have been looking for to take charge of the Commissary Department, and I order that you be detailed to that duty.” He served all through the war in that responsible department, and afterwards, when General Grant became President, the officer who never drank was again in request. The President, needing a man on whom he could rely for some important business, gave him the appointment. (Christian Chronicle.) Abstinence and health Before I became an abstainer I was much subject to fainting fits. I even fainted in the pulpit, and my life was a burden; and when I had made up my mind to abstain my medical man came from London and said, “ If you do you will probably die. You want the ‘ whip’ for your constitution.” I did not believe him, and I said, “ Very well, doctor, then I’ ll die, and there’ s an end of it.” But I have not died. And when I met that medical man in London three days since I said, “ Now, doctor, what do you think of it?” He said, “ You beat me altogether. I was never more mistaken in any case in my life. And now let me tell you that if there was no such thing as alcohol I should have to put up my shutters. Nearly all the illnesses that come before me have, in one sense or another, come from that; not always from the personal indulgence of the patients, but because this is hereditary.” (Canon Basil Wilberforce.) A great man A man who can be satisfied with nothing less than that which is real and right; who is content to count all things loss for the attainment of a spiritual aim, and to fight for it against all enemies; who deems truth the bread of life and makes its pursuit his daily labour--he is a great man. Personal influence in conversion Dr. Tyng, speaking of personal influence, mentions a young lady whom no storms of snow or rain ever kept from her class. One after another of her scholars, he says, would come to him, and when he would ask the question, “ What has led you to seek a Saviour’ s love?” they would mention her name, until, he says, “ I traced twenty.five, at least, of my young people who were converted through her prayers and labours, and among them that beloved son of mine, at whose bedside I sat for sixteen long hours, wondering why God had taken him and left me behind. This was the character of that girl. Nothing kept her back.” Conversion must be a complete surrender When Henry VIII. had determined to make himself head of the English Church, he insisted upon it that Convocation should accept his headship without limiting and modifying clauses. He refused to entertain any compromises, and vowed that “ he would have no tantrums,” as he called them. Thus when a sinner parleys with his Saviour he would fain have a little of the honour of his salvation, he would save alive some favourite sin, he would fain amend the humbling terms of grace; but there is no help for it, Jesus will be all in all, and the sinner must be nothing at all. The surrender must be complete, there must be no tantrums, but the heart must without reserve submit to the sovereignty of the Redeemer. (C. H. Spurgeon.) Importance of one conversion It is impossible to overrate the importance of the conversion of one soul to Christ, or of the hardening of one heart in sin An old Puritan doctor writes a book more than two hundred years ago, called “ The Bruised Reed,” which falls into the hands of Richard Baxter, and leads his penitent spirit to its trust in Christ. Baxter’ s ministry is like that of a giant in his strength, and when he dies his “ Call to the Unconverted” goes preaching on to thousands to whom Baxter himself had never spoken with human tongue. Philip Doddridge, prepared by his pious mother’ s teaching, hears this piercing “ Call,” devotes the summer of his life to God, and becomes a “ burning and a shining light.” Doddridge’ s “ Rise and Progress” fell into the hands of Wilberforce, and led him to thought and to prayer. Wilberforce’ s “ Practical View” cleared the faith and fired the zeal of a clergyman in the sunny South, and he wrote the simple annal of a Methodist girl, which has borne fruit of blessing in every quarter of the globe; for who has not heard of Legh Richmond and “ The Dairyman!s Daughter” ? And then the same book had a ministry in the bleak North, and in a country parish found out a Scottish clergyman who was preaching a gospel which he did not know, and he embraced the fulness of the glad tidings, and came forth a champion for the truth, “ furnished in all things and ready,” until all Scotland rang with the eloquence of Thomas Chalmers. (W. M. Punshon, D,D.) Character and work of John Much of the wisdom of Providence appears in fitting the instrument to the work. The work appointed to John was to reclaim the nation from its departure from God, to rouse a people sunk in insensibility and impenitence, to preach repentance, to proclaim the approach of the kingdom of heaven, to usher in a higher economy, a new dispensation; and for all this he was admirably qualified. He was endued with the spirit and power of Elias. His spirit was undaunted and unyielding; he rebuked the pride of kings. He was indifferent and insensible alike to the charms of pleasure, the allurement of pomp, the smiles of power, and the frowns of greatness. His whole soul was concentrated in his object. He was superior to the world; its forms and fashions made no impression on his mind, and left no traces. He was austere in his manner, abstemious in his food, rustic in his apparel; he partook of the wildness of the wilderness in which he first made his appearance. (Robert Hall.) Luke 1:17 The hearts of the fathers to the children Drawing lightning Science tells us that the best defence against lightning in a thunderstorm is found, not in defiance of it, but in a silent discharge of it. Go right towards it fearlessly with a pointed plantina wire, and it will follow a fixed law of harmless dispersion. Is there any way by which the power of one of God’ s curses can be drawn, so as to avert the terrible stroke of Divine wrath? Let us see. This text refers us directly back to the final utterance of the Old Testament. There are four books in the Bible which end with a curse: Malachi, Lamentations, Isaiah, and Ecclesiastes. The Hebrew scribes were always accustomed to repeat the verse just before the last in these cases, so as to close the reading with something besides a malediction. It is not easy to see how that helps the matter in the present instance, for the preceding prediction seems to have been uttered merely to introduce the warning. And perhaps it is just as profitable to believe that the best way to avoid the judgments of God is to guard carefully against deserving them. After the last seer under the ancient dispensation had spoken the words which the evangelist quotes, the heavens were closed for four hundred years. Jehovah had not another message to send. His people had offended him. Justice comes almost fiercely forth, and bars the gate of revelation, because children are despised. And not until four centuries of silence had given time for repentance, would those bolts be withdrawn. Even then it is a little child who advances to turn the massive key. History wanders sadly in confusion among the captivities and Maccabean usurpations. Only an infant can join the Testaments. Luke is the next man to Malachi. The sternest of all Israel’ s prophets reappears in the sternest of all heralds to the Church … A wild threat, four hundred years old, is suddenly removed in a flash of benediction. The curse of Malachi is omitted in Luke--the lightning is drawn. The gospel fulfils the law when it accepts children. God receives the fathers into favour and communion again, when their hearts are turned to their offspring … How much are you doing in this day of gospel privilege to bring the hearts of fathers back to their children? Do we need another prophet, with his hairy raiment and his leathern girdle, to come forth from the wilderness? (C. S. Robinson, D. D.) The pioneer of the gospel Whereas Matthew and Mark introduced John Baptist to the notice of their readers at the advanced period of his preaching in the wilderness of Judea, and his baptising his followers in Jordan, Luke commences with the Baptist’ s genealogy and birth, and states many particulars relating to his early history, which, though they had been far less remarkable in themselves, would have been interesting in reference to one who afterwards became so conspicuous, but which are peculiarly important as additional evidences of the Divine mission, and additional illustrations of the office both of the Baptist himself, and of that illustrious Deliverer and King before whom he was to proceed as a pioneer to clear the way. (James Foote, M. A.) The prepared people All life is a preparation to meet God. This is the clue of life’ s labyrinth. Preparations are often confused things. They are times of unsettling, full of noise and disorder, and apparent contradiction; till the end comes, and explains it all. So this world--it is made up of strange things, which move above us and within us, and seem to have little purpose and no concert. They range wildly. There are beginnings without endings; and there are endings without beginnings. A great many things do not fit. It is hard to tell what it all means. It is a pleasant thought to remember that your preparation, as it goes on, day by day, is only a reflection of what is going on in the other world. There, too, it is all preparation. The saints and the angels are all busy preparing. The preparations of earth are to meet the preparations of heaven. He has prepared His mercy, and He has prepared His truth. It is a prepared heaven; it is a prepared kingdom; a prepared city; a prepared throne; a prepared seat. And when both preparations are complete--a prepared soul, and a prepared heaven--what perfectness! what love! what rest! what quietness! What and if the Pure should come, and find impurity? What and if the Holy should come and find irreverence? What and if the Spirit come, and find nothing but flesh? What and if Wisdom come, and find ignorance? What and if Love come, and find selfishness and unkindness? First, you must be prepared to know your Lord when He comes. This John taught very expressly. He placed the people in a position that they should know and recognize Christ when He should arrive. You must have read Him in the prophecies--you must have walked with Him in the gospel--you must have sat with Him in all the manifestations of His grace--you must have traced Him in His reflections about the universe--you must have felt His inward dwelling in you by the Holy Ghost. Then He will be no new, strange Christ to you when He comes. And if you would be “ prepared for the Lord,” you must have a deep sense of sin. “ Repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” No one must stand there who has not learnt to stoop very low. Thirdly, you must be exact, faithful, diligent in your daily proper duties--doing whatever you do heartily--a man of large charities--a man of unselfish habits--a man of strict integrity in business--a man of self-government--a man of moderation--a man of content--a man of humility. “ Hethat hath two coats, let him impart to him that hath none; and he that hath meat, let him do likewise.” “ Exact no more than that which is appointed you.” Fourthly, you must be baptized--not with the baptism of water only, but with the baptism of the Spirit; and not with the baptism of water and of the Spirit only, but with the baptism of shame, of scorn, of suffering, of death--“ baptized with the Holy Ghost, and with fire.” And fifthly, you must be much in the use of the ordinances--loving the shadows till the substance comes. (J. Vaughan, M. A.) The spirit and power of the Baptist The spirit and power of Elijah rested upon the Baptist, and the same gift is needed by us now. For, what is the end and purpose of all the religious activity we see abroad and at home, but to turn people’ s hearts to wisdom, to make ready a people prepared for the Lord? Let us see, then, what was this spirit and power which made the Baptist so successful? And notice, to begin with, it was nothing wonderful, nothing out of the way. We are expressly told that “ John did no miracle.” The spirit and power of the Baptist is, therefore, a gift within the reach of every one of us. I. OBSERVE, FIRST, HIS FOR GOD. No halting between two opinions. The Baptist was not “ a reed shaken with the wind,” but one who had considered matters well, and comes to a firm decision respecting the salvation of God. II. NOTICE, NEXT, HIS FROM THE WORLD. He lived as much as possible in retirement, communing with his own soul and with God, While in the world, he was never of the world. III. , ONCE MORE, HIS BOLD, TO THE TRUTH. 1. Before all classes of his countrymen, from the lowest to the highest. 2. In spite of opposition and persecution. Conclusion: Such qualities as these made the Baptist a power for good, and thus was he in the spirit and power of Elias. Are we following in his steps? There must be found in us these same qualities, if our life is to be as grand a moral success as was his. 1. The same decision. Half-heartedness is of no use at all in what concerns the soul. 2. The same unworldliness. Not necessarily separation from the world--that is for the few; but (what is found by many to be a far harder thing) living in the world, doing its duties faithfully and well, and at the same time living the higher life that is hidden with Christ in God, and looking for the new heaven and the new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness. 3. The same stedfast witnessing to the truth. (1) In heart. (2) In word. (3) In action. An upright and honest life is the best testimony to the spirit and power in which we move, and it will carry us triumphantly over every obstacle and difficulty that we encounter, until we reach the peaceful haven where we would be, and bask in the perpetual sunshine of the presence of God. (George Low, M. A.) The wisdom of the just Let us try the wisdom of the religious choice by the happiness which follows. I. There is a content and satisfaction in the mind, from the very consciousness and remembrance of our having listened to the voice from heaven. II. I next observe, that the gospel brings happiness to every sincere believer, by giving him the blessing of peace in the assurance of pardon. III. The wisdom of the just, however it may be called in question, however reviled, by unconverted or ungodly men, who cannot possibly appreciate or understand it, is manifested through the whole course of the believer’ s life. “ He that walketh uprightly, walketh surely.” “ The way of the wicked is as darkness: they know not at what they stumble: “ they are continually encompassed with evil, without ascertaining the cause or the cure. “ But the path of the just is as the shining light, which shineth more and more unto the perfect day.” IV. But the wisdom of the just is not to be fully known on this side the grave There will come a day, when it will appear even to the slowest of belief, without a shadow and without a doubt. “ When the Lord comes to make up His jewels,” the preciousness of those jewels, and the joy of being gathered amongst them, will be perfectly manifest, both to friends and foes; to the one, by their admission into His heavenly kingdom; to the other, by their being cast away. (J. Slade, M. A.) The spirit and power of Elias whom John closely resembled in-- 1. The endowments of his mind. 2. The habits of his life. 3. The exercise of his ministry. (C. Simeon.) How, and in what sense, was Malachi’ s prediction of the Messenger fulfilled in John the Baptist? To this question the New Testament furnishes a singularly full and abundant reply. It really seems as though, not only the mind of the Baptist, but also the minds of all who speak of him, were steeped in the prophecy of Malachi, and saturated with it. There is hardly a word said of or by him which does not take new meaning and force so soon as we read it in the light of Malachi’ s lamp. In St. Matthew’ s Gospel (chap. 3.), we have our fullest account of the Baptist’ s appearance and ministry. We are there told that his first word, his master-word, was “ Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” ; that is, “ Take a new view; get a new mind; think; think back on your habits and ways, and mend them; for the King, long promised to your fathers, is about to appear.” This was the very mission which Malachi ascribed to the messenger of the Lord. John’ s peculiar mode of life, as described in the same chapter, tends to the same conclusion (Matthew 3:4). Doubtless John assumed these outward marks of resemblance to the great Tishbite, in order to call attention to the inward resemblance between them as a sign that he had come “ in the spirit and power of Elijah.” The same reason for a sad and austere life existed in both eases. The “ preacher of repentance” should himself be a penitent. Elijah and John, each in his turn, came forth as a personification of repentance, showing the people, in his own conduct, what their conduct should be. Both these austere voices from the wilderness called men to repent, both sought to “ turn the hearts of men back again” to God. (Samuel Cox, D. D.) A father reconciled to his son A mother in New York whose son had got into dissipated and abandoned habits, after repeated remonstrances and threats, was turned out of doors by his father, and he left vowing he would never return unless his father asked him, which the father said would never be. Grief over her son soon laid the mother on her dying bed, and when her husband asked if there was nothing he could do for her ere she departed this life, she said, “ Yes, you can send for my boy.” The father was at first unwilling, but at length, seeing her so near her end, he sent for his son. The young man came, and as he entered the sick-room his father turned his back upon him. As the mother was sinking rapidly, the two stood on opposite sides of her bed, all love and sorrow for her, but not exchanging a word with each other. She asked the father to forgive the boy; no, he wouldn’ t until the son asked it. Turning to him, she begged of him to ask his father’ s forgiveness; no, his proud heart would not let him take the first step. After repeated attempts she failed, but as she was just expiring, with one last effort she got hold of the father’ s hand in one hand, and her son’ s in the other, and exerting all her feeble strength, she joined their hands, and, with one last appealing look, she was gone. Over her dead body they were reconciled, but it took the mother’ s death to bring it about. So, has not God made a great sacrifice that we might be reconciled--even the death of His own dear Son? (D. L. Moody.) Luke 1:19-23I am Gabriel, that stand in the presence of God “ I am Gabriel. ” Names of angels The name Gabriel signifies “ The mighty messenger of God.” The Bible knows of only two heavenly personages who are invested with a name: Gabriel (Daniel 8:16; Daniel 9:21), and Michael (Daniel 10:13; Jude 1:9, &c.). This latter namesignifies, “ Who is like God? “ Here the critic asks sarcastically whether Hebrew is spoken in heaven? But these names are evidently symbolical; they convey to us the character and functions of these personalities. When we speak to any one, it is naturally with a view to be understood. When heaven communicates with earth, it is obliged to borrow the language of earth. According to the name given him, Gabriel is the mighty servant of God, employed to promote His work here below. It is in this capacity that he appears to Daniel when he comes to announce to him the restoration of Jerusalem; it is he also who promises Mary the birth of the Saviour. In all these circumstances he appears as the heavenly evangelist., The part of Gabriel is positive; that of Michael is negative. Michael is, as his name indicates, the destroyer of every one who dares to equal, i.e., to oppose God. Such is his mission in Daniel, where he contends against the powers hostile to Israel; such also is it in Jude and in the Apocalypse, where he fights, as the champion of God, against Satan, the author of idolatry. Gabriel builds up; Michael overthrows. The former is the forerunner of Jehovah the Saviour; the latter, of Jehovah the Judge. (F. Godet, D. D.) “ And Zacharias said unto the angel,” The circumstances under which Zacharias doubted, seem to have been very much like those under which Abraham believed; and as Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him for righteousness; so Zacharias disbelieved, and it was counted to him for sin. And if it be thought that such a sin was heavily punished, it is to be observed (1) that we are not sufficient judges of any sin and of the punishment due to it; (2) that the dumbness of Zachariah was not merely a punishment, but also a sign; it was a punishment for want of faith, but it was at the same time a medicine to strengthen and confirm him. So it may often be, in the merciful providence of God, that the bitter draughts of His displeasure are tonics for the soul’ s health. (Bishop Goodwin.) “ I am Gabriel,” We have heard of this angel before, and we lose something unless we look back to the circumstances with which he was previously connected. This, then, was the same angel who appeared to Daniel, to explain to him the time that was to elapse until the coming of the Messiah (Daniel 9:21-27). This being the case, we see at once the special fitness that the same angel should be employed to announce the near accomplishment of that which he had so long predicted. It is the same angel, moreover, who was sent a few months later to announce the birth of the Messiah Himself, as now of His harbinger. The same considerations apply to both transactions. (Dr. Kitto.) The judgment on Zacharias Zacharias is a striking example of the ills a good man may have to suffer as the result of his unbelief. I. HIS AND . He was a genuine believer. He was well instructed and greatly enlightened. He held a high office as priest. He had been peculiarly favoured. Soothing comfort had just been administered to him. This comfort had been given in answer to his own petition. He staggered at a promise which others implicitly believed. II. WHAT THEN WAS THE FAULT OF ? His fault was that he looked at the difficulty. III. HIS PENALTY. Mercy tempered judgment. He was not struck dead, and the chastisement did not invalidate the promise. Do not be satisfied with being weak in faith. Let the utter unbeliever tremble. If a good man was struck dumb for unbelief, what will become of you who have no faith at all? (C. H. Spurgeon.) If incredulity, much more open doubt and disbelief, were now thus dealt with, how awfully numerous would be the additions to the family of the dumb! (A. B. Grosart, LL. D.) He had seen a vision But evidently this was not the ecstasy of a visionary man who imagined simply what he desired; for when the promise was made, he doubted and questioned. (Lyman Abbot.) “ He beckoned unto them” To have a child thou deem’ st so strange a thing, That thou art made a child for wondering. Whilst for a sign too eagerly thou dost call, Except by sign thou canst not ask at all. (Richard Crashaw.) “ Remained speechless” That tongue which moved the doubt, must be tied up. He shall ask no more questions for forty weeks. (Bishop Hall.) Telling the news at home I can conceive the rapid gladness with which Zacharias, when his office for the week was fulfilled, sped up Olivet and across the rolling plain towards Bethlehem, and up to the hill-country of Judaea, with the strange and wondrous message that a twenty or thirty years’ old prayer was about to be answered in God’ s gift of a son to them. How Elisabeth received the intelligence is left, with fine modesty, in silence. His “ stylus” would tell what his tongue could not. (A. B.Grosart, LL. D.) Grieving because of unbelief 1. Christians are saying to the world either that God is false to his promises, or that God is true. You dishonour him by unbelief. You honour him by faith, the utmost honour you can give him. A German writer gives this incident in the life of Johannes Bruce, the founder of the order of the Carmelites, who, though a Romish priest, was a saint indeed, distinguished for his love to God and his faith. The convent was poor; and the friars, dependent on charity for daily bread, were often compelled to console themselves with the passage, “ Man does not live by bread alone.” One day the brethren found, when they had assembled for dinner, that their whole stock of food was a single piece of dry bread. They sat down; they asked God’ s blessing upon their crust. Then Johannes arose, and poured forth such words of encouragement and consolation concerning the love of Christ and the great promises He had given His people, that all of them arose delighted and refreshed, and, without partaking of their bread, returned to their cells. They had scarcely reached them, when the bell rang at the convent-gate, and a man entered with a large basket of provisions, which were carried, with a letter, to the prior, who was on his knees praying. He read, the letter dropped from his hands, and he began to weep bitterly. The porter, surprised, said, “ Why do you weep? Have you not often said that we should weep for nothing but our sins?” Johannes replied, “ Brother, I do not weep without reason. Think how weak the Lord must see our faith to be, since He is unwilling to see us suffer want a single day without sending visible aid. He foresaw that before evening we should despond, unless He sent immediate help to our faith by means of this charitable gift. It is because we possess so little confidence in the rich Lord in whom we are encouraged to trust, that my tears flow.” (From sermon by Charles Finney.) Unbelief a sin Mr. Marshall, author of a treatise on Sanctification, in his early years, was under great distress for a long time, through a consciousness of guilt and a dread of the Divine displeasure. At last, mentioning his case to Dr. Thomas Goodwin, and lamenting the greatness of his sins, that able divine replied, “ You have forgotten the greatest sin of all, the sin of unbelief, in refusing to believe in Christ, and rely on His atonement and righteousness for your acceptance with God.” This word in season banished his fears. He looked to Jesus, and was filled with joy and peace in believing! (Handbook to Scripture Doctrines.) As soon as the days of his ministration were accomplished: Trusting God and continuing in duty A friend of mine once asked the wife of Havelock how her husband bore himself during the terrible conflicts in India. She replied, “ I know not. But I know he is trusting in God and doing his duty.” These glorious words may bind us all together; wherever we are, if those who know us best can say with certainty, when asked about us, “ They are trusting in God and doing their duty,” we shall have the blessed peace that was given to Havelock. (Dean Stanley.) Sticking to duty An artilleryman at Waterloo was asked what he had seen. He replied that he saw nothing but smoke. The artilleryman was next asked what he had been doing. He replied that he had “ just blazed away at his own gun.” (T. Guthrie, D. D.) Dumb Here is a sign for incredulity: he had been as good have believed without a sign. (Bishop Andrewes.) Belief If, then, utter unbelief is utter repression of the best in man, and if further partial belief is partial escape from this galling bondage, what must complete faith in God be, entire acceptance of His Son as Eternal Righteousness, unclouded hope in the perpetuated life of the soul, but the free expression, the joyous utterance, the complete realization of the whole spiritual life of man? Whatever destroys the best in human life cannot be true. It is impossible to believe that the best life of the individual, the family, the nation; it is impossible to believe that the heroism of the solitary soul fighting its solitary but momentous battles, the purity and sweetness and selfsacrifice of home, the advancing righteousness of our land and all lands--spring out of beliefs that are a fountain of lies. Whatever destroys human life must be a lie; whatever builds it into strength and beauty must be true. Human life, in order to complete realization of its best possibilities, needs a God, needs a Christ, needs a hereafter, needs Supreme Love as its minister, needs a supreme manifestation of that Love, and a timely future in which to do its will and enjoy its ministrations. The Jewish priest asked for a sign whereby he might know the angel’ s message to be true. The sign came. Dumbness was his sign. The amazed soul, trying to believe, and yet afraid, in accepting the faith of its fathers, of building its hope upon a dream, asks for a sign. The sign is given; the dumbness that falls upon the speaking, singing spirit is the sign that unbelief is disease. The priest silent at the altar, with his prayers unsaid, his thoughts unspoken, his praise unsung, his worship unuttered, is but the type of the soul in the dumbness of doubt, in the paralysis of unbelief, its whole best life denied expression, and shrivelling under the doom of an eternal sentence of repression and death. The priest at the altar, but no longer silent; the priest at the altar, naming his firstborn, his tongue loosed and uttering in sublime, prophetic strains his whole grateful life--is a type of the soul that has found the utterance of faith, from which all paralysis, all dumbness, has passed away, whose thought, feeling, and volition, mind, heart, and will, are winning their noblest expression; whose whole life is in the attainment of its eternal satisfaction. (G. A. Gordon.) Luke 1:24 And hid herself five months Modesty a retiring grace Desirous of plucking one of the elegant sea-anemones, you extend your hand; but, at the slightest touch, its beautiful coronet begins to curl, and incurve in the form of a cup. If further annoyed, the rim of this cup contracts more and more, until the animated blossom, now transformed into a shrivelled, shapeless mass, and receding all the time from the rude assault, retires under the cover of its rocky fortress, or clings with such tenacity to the stone to which it is attached, that you will sooner tear it to pieces than make it forego its grasp. (Hartwig.) Modesty Virgil, who was called the Prince of the Latin Poets, was naturally modest and of a timorous nature when people crowded to gaze upon him, or pointed at him with the finger with raptures: the poet blushed, and stole away from them, and often hid himself in shops to be removed from the curiosity and admiration of the public. The Christian is called indeed to let his light shine before men; but then it must be with all meekness, simplicity, and modesty. (Buck.) Luke 1:26-30 And the virgin’ s name was Mary The Annunciation 1. The messenger sent from heaven to publish the news of the conception of the Son of Gad--an angel. An evil angel was the first author of our ruin; a good angel could not be the author of our restoration, but is the joyful reporter of it. 2. The angel’ s name--Gabriel, the power of God. 3. The place the angel is sent to--Nazareth. An obscure place, little taken notice of; “ yea, a city in Galilee, out of which arises no prophet: even there the God of prophets condescends to be conceived. No blind corner of Nazareth can hide the blessed virgin from the angel. The favours of God will find out His children wherever they are withdrawn. 4. The person to whom the angel is sent--a virgin espoused. For the honour of virginity Christ chose a virgin for His mother; for the honour of marriage, a virgin espoused to a husband. 5. The message itself. The angel salutes the virgin as a saint; he does not pray to her as a goddess. Full of grace she was then, full of glory she is now. 6. The effect which the sight and salutation of the angel had upon Mary--she was afraid. But in her case, as in all, the fears of holy persons end in comfort. 7. The character which the angel gives of Him who should be born of her--“ Great … Son of the Highest.” Great in respect of (1) His person, (2) offices, (3) kingdom. (W. Burkitt, M. A.) Mary’ s home-life We have very little to guide us in our conception of the scene. Scripture never quite withdraws the veil which protects, quite as much as it conceals, the life of the mother of our Lord; but we venture reverently to arrange and draw together some side-lights which it is permitted us to catch. There is quiet Nazareth itself, nestling (as only villages in Palestine do) high up in a circlet of protecting hills, like one of those flower-baskets, with creepers hanging over the sides, which we see sometimes caught up between projecting points in a rockery garden. Nazareth, so still, so shut in from the world around, that it is not once mentioned in connection- with any single event in the whole of the Old Testament; not once in the Talmud, where names of obscure places occur in plenty; fist once even in the pages of garrulous Josephus, who enumerates no less than 204 towns and cities in Galilee. “ Verily, Thou art a God that hidest Thyself,” we feel constrained to say, as we contemplate the future home of Jesus; and we ask for notching better than to enter into the tranquil spirit of the hush of the little mountain town as we venture now to look more closely at her whose home it was. Mary was a “ virgin betrothed” ; that is all, as yet, that we know about her. To us she is literally “ without father, without mother, without descent, having neither beginning of days nor end of life.” We have absolutely no clue at all to the interior or the surroundings of her village home. Was she spinning at her wheel, or grinding at the mill, or reading some roll of the prophets? Or was she just then sitting and musing over the great event of the last few days-her betrothal? The last we fancy most likely; for angels’ visits, like dreams that are hallowed, argue a preoccupation of the mind in some direction kindred to their holy purpose. So Mary may have been looking back and looking forward: back on the past even, uneventful life, over which now there has moved a spirit of change, and which she can scarcely believe, perhaps does not even wish, ever to be quite the same again: and forward to she hardly knows what; only she is vaguely conscious of new aspirations, timid forecastings, undefined fears. And then, as all faithful Jewish women rightfully might, she would allow herself in some dim dreams of motherhood, and it might even be up for coming events cast their shadows before--that the unbidden thought would just creep across her mind that her betrothed husband and herself were both of the tribe of Judah; and was she to blame for taking to herself the sacred hope which was the heritage of every mother who belonged to the tribe that Jacob had blessed? Then came the angel, familiar to us now in name and mission, but none the less a sign and a wonder at his actual appearance. What form did the angel take? In what voice did he speak? How was he known to be an angel at all? are questions which rush into our minds at once. They will never be answered; we know no more than is written, and the inspired narrative lays upon us the responsibility of unquestioning faith. One point is left to our imagination--the angel’ s look. We fancy that his kind, steady, searching gaze must have been more eloquent almost than his prefatory words: “ Hail, Accepted, the Lord be with thee; blessed thou among women.” (E. T. Marshall, M. A.) Angelic visitations Their airy and gentle coming may well be compared to the glory of colours flung by the sun upon the morning clouds, that seem to be born just where they appear. Like a beam of light striking through some orifice, they shine upon Zacharias in the Temple. As the morning light finds the flowers, so they found the mother of Jesus; and their message fell on her pure as dewdrops on the lily. To the shepherds’ eyes they filled the midnight arch like auroral beams of light; but not as silently, for they sang more marvellously than when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy. They communed with the Saviour in His glory of transfiguration, sustained Him in the anguish of the garden, watched Him at the tomb; and as they had thronged the earth at His coming, so they seem to have hovered in the air in multitudes at the hour of His ascension. The occasions of their appearing are grand, the reasons weighty, and their demeanour suggests and befits the highest conception of superior beings. Their very coming and going is not with earthly movement. They are suddenly seen in the air, as one sees white clouds round out from the blue sky on a summer’ s day, that melt back even while one looks upon them. (H. W. Beecher.) The mother of Jesus--a woman’ s sermon to worn All we know about Mary should appeal very forcibly to the heart and the imagination. The Child, and not the mother, is the chief theme of our talk and our thought, it is true; but no woman, and certainly no mother, can talk of the wonderful events of Bethlehem without thinking with tenderness as well as awe of Mary the mother of Jesus. From first to last she holds our eyes and moves our hearts, presenting us, as she does, with a perfect delineation of womanhood and motherhood; and our lives would probably be more full of love and helpful ministries if we gave more time to the study of her character. It may be asked, Why, when every pious Hebrew matron would have been thankful for the high and unique honour of being the mother of the Messiah, a poor, unknown, and retired virgin should have been chosen. A very little thought will suffice to show the suitability of Mary, and will also direct the mind to the womanly qualities which God honours. 1. Humility. It was this which made Mary great. Never did she obtrude herself upon the world, or try to get to herself the least share of her Son’ s glory. The part given her, she was content to perform with absolute self-abnegation and obedience. Lowly she was when the angel made his wonderful announcement to her; and meek and lowly of heart she remained to the end. 2. Submission. She accepted her lot, whatever it might be, without any complaint, or any attempt to have things otherwise. 3. Quietness. She was always more ready to be silent than to speak. From how many mistakes must she thus have been saved. 4. Fidelity. Not only at first, but to the very last, she rose to the tasks imposed upon her, and fulfilled the commands of God. “ Not what I wish, but what I ought to do,” was the rule she followed. (Marianne Farningham.) Mary to be held in honour Probably there was never any created being of-all the created worlds, put in such honour as this woman, chosen to be the Lord’ s mother i all the more truly our mother, that from her begins the new-born human race. To her it is given, even to grow the germ-life of the Divine Man, Son of the Father, in its spring. And her behaviour is beautiful enough to even meet an occasion so high. That grace of bearing, that sweet, devout modesty, such as became the motherhood of everlasting innocence; that watching of her miraculous Boy, that could so easily be telling His wonders, with a weak mother’ s fondness, in the street, but which still she was treasuring in her heart; that wondrous propriety of silence at the cross, allowing her no wail of outcry in that hour, lest she might be making herself a part of the scene. O ye lilies and other white harbingers of spring, culled so often by art to be symbols of her unspotted motherhood, what can ye show of silent flowering in the white of purity, which she does not much better show herself? We seem just now, in these modern times, to be assuming that Mary is gone by, and the honours paid her ended; and if we choose to let our hearts be barbarized in the coarse, unappreciating prejudices that have been, so far, our bitter element, there certainly are finer moulded ages to come. Is it too soon even now to admit some feeling of rational shame, that we have been weak enough to let our eyes be so long plastered with this clay? Doubtless it must be the first thing with us, after we have entered the great world before us, to get cleared, and assured, and at home in our relations to the Son of Man Himself. After that our next thing, as I think, will be to know our mother, the mother of Jesus; for no other of the kingdom, save the King Himself, has a name that signifies more. And I make no question that, when the great hierarchs and princes of other worlds and ages, who are challenged to pay their hosannas in the highest, throng in to meet us, they will ask, first of all, for the woman by whom, under God’ s quickening overshadow, Christ the Eternal Son of God, obtained His life-connection with the race, and His birth into practical brotherhood with it. As the sages of the East, guided by the star, brought out their tribute to the Child at her knee, so these ancients of God will come in with us, wanting above all to know the woman herself, at whose royal motherhood, and by it, Immanuel the King broke into the world and set up His kingdom. And higher still is she raised by the recognition of her Son Himself; for as she is yearning always fondly after Him, so will He never disallow His old time filial feeling towards her, but will ever clothe her with such honours, really Divine, as fitly crown the part she bore in His wonderful story. (Horace Bushnell, D. D.) Mary’ s true place in Christian esteem It is impossible to worship the Virgin, because the very exquisiteness of her character stands in her being a perfect type of human nature, pure and simple; her native womanly grace and innocence are her chief charm. Deify her, and, besides other things, you wrong the whole human race; you depose her from her rightful place at the head of Christian women; you cheat Christ’ s sisters of their sweet queen, and say, in effect, that you can do nothing with a pure life and a humble spirit but make an idol of it. Give us back the mother of our Lord; we want her here with us on earth, that our maidens and our matrons, feeling her to be one of themselves, may learn from her, in each event of life, how to receive God’ s will about themselves. It is a presumptuous interference with God’ s own ordering of the Incarnation, to take the mother of Jesus out of the category of earthly women, and to set her already on a throne in heaven. Was Christ born of a woman or was He not? If He was, let us accept the mystery with all its consequences, reverently limiting our thoughts and fancies by the extent to which God has thrown back the veil … It should be equally impossible to tolerate unscriptural legends about Mary. Men do not gild gold, or paint white frames for snow-wreaths; and do they not see what violence they do to the most retiring character in the world by dragging it to the front, and setting it on a throne, and making it an arbiter of the destinies of men? It is because we feel so strongly that Mary is just as God would have her in herself that we resent all apocryphal accounts of her doings, and deplore all unauthorized additions to her life; these fancied embellishments of the loveliest of womankind, only serve to hide from us what she really and genuinely was from God. We can forgive the false taste of a worship which professes to be sensuous; but we feel bound to protest against the tampering, in faith and doctrine, with the character and very being of her who is the cherished heritage of every Christian soul. (E. T. Marshall, M. A.) The blessed among women 1. Poor, yet rich. 2. Troubled, yet meditative. 3. Proud, as a virgin, yet obedient as a wife. 4. First doubtful, then believing. (Van Oosterzee.) Blessed of God The angel’ s salutation of Mary may be applied to Christians in all the holy seasons of life, such as baptism, confirmation, the time of chastening, the day of death. (Wallin.) Encouragement to the humble It ought to be highly encouraging to those whose lot is cast in the quiet walks of life--who occupy quiet, private, and unobtrusive stations--to observe how great honour was put on one humble as themselves; and how, in the faithful discharge of simple duties, and the making use of the appointed means, such piety has been attained as has never been surpassed, and perhaps rarely equalled. Mary had undoubtedly poverty to struggle with, and she was not placed in any conspicuous part, where great things were to be done and endured for God. Up to the time of the visit from the angel she had probably lived in the unaffected life which presents daily the same duties--perhaps daily the same hardships--the life of that great mass of human beings of whom the world never hears--who, some with more, others with less, of external pressure, rise in the morning to begin a round of humble occupations, of which, if night brings the close, the morrow will bring the repetition. Yet, living such a life as this, performing the daily duties which devolve on members of low, and perhaps straitened, families--duties on which there is nothing to throw splendour, and which may seem little favourable to deep spirituality--did Mary grow so rich with the graces of piety, as to be the fittest for the high honour which God had in store for woman. After this, let no one repine at not being called to eminent station, as though it were necessary to be great in office in order to being great in the virtues or rewards of religion. It has been well said that no man is to complain of want of power or opportunity for religious perfection. The devout woman in her closet, praying, with much zeal and affection, for the conversion of souls, is in the same order of arrangement, as to grace in general, as he who, by excellent doctrines, put it into a more forward position to be actually performed. (H. Melvill, B. D.) Blessed among women Next to the blessed Child, the Virgin Mother is the central figure of the Nativity. She is one of the noblest and loveliest characters in the Bible. I. The saddest page in the world’ s history, is THE STORY OF WOMAN’ S WRONGS. The law of strength has been always the world’ s rule of conduct, the weaker has had to go to the wall. Woman, because of her more delicate physical organization, has been the victim of man’ s superior strength, the prey of his basest passions, the slave of his injustice and tyranny. To justify himself in his oppression he has represented her as worthy only of contempt. Hesiod calls women “ an accursed brood, chief scourge of the human race.” AEschylus speaks of her as, “ the direst evil of State and home.” Socrates thanked God daily that he had been born a human being and not an animal; free and not a slave; a man and not a woman. “ Slacken the rein,” said Cato, “ and you will afterward strive in vain to check the mad career of that unreasoning animal.” Seneca calls her, “ an imprudent, wild creature, incapable of self-control.” The Romans habitually spoke of the majesty of man, the imbecility, weakness, and frivolity of women. “ Better that a thousand women should perish, than that one man should cease to see the light.” But with Christianity new ideas of the dignity and glory of womanhood came into life. The Son of God was born of a woman. “ Christ,” says Augustine, “ was born of a woman, that neither sex might despair.” By its reverence for the Virgin Mother the Christian Church wove into its deepest thought a new conception of womanhood, and did much to cancel the contempt thrown upon her in the person of Eve. If woman was guilty of the world’ s first sin, on her breast its Redeemer was nourished; and Bethlehem atoned for Eden. Eve was withdrawn as the representative of woman, and the mother of Jesus replaced her. Hence among the early Christians the position of woman was greatly changed. She shared with man the responsibilities of religion, the sufferings of persecution, the love of God, the hope of Heaven. II. But this is not all that the worship of the Virgin meant. Before Christ came, IT WAS THE OF THE MALE SEX WHICH WERE AS DIVINE. Force, strength, courage, mental concentration--these were the qualities regarded ‘ as of highest worth. But Christ proclaimed the Divine nature of qualities quite the opposite of these--meekness, gentleness, patience, purity, obedience, love. It is the peculiar feature of Christianity, that it exalts, not strength, intellect, courage, but gentleness, lovingness, helpfulness, purity. But these are especially womanly virtues--qualities of character in which women usually surpass men. So this worship of the virgin grew up in a world wearied by violence and passion and selfish strength, of masculine ambitions and grasping resolves, sighing for some form of strength and glory which should be consistent with tenderness, and gentleness, and sweet affection. In a world trodden by armies, corrupted by lust, dominated by ambition, this worship of the Virgin was a strong and living protest against force and war and sensuality; a silent assertion of the glory of purity, goodness, and love. When the attributes of God and Christ were lost from view, that sweet and beautiful idea of womanhood shed gentle lustre amid dungeons and scaffolds and battlefields, and did something at least to mitigate their cruelties. It hung upon the walls of the churches, it looked down from chamber and from hall, it pleaded at the corners of the street, and it melted through the imagination of cruel and sensual men, as a heavenly vision pleading for humanity. Mrs. Jameson, in her “ Legends of the Madonna,” says: “ In the perpetual repetition of that beautiful image of the Woman highly favoured, there, where others saw only pictures or statues, I have seen this great hope standing like a spirit beside the visible form--in the fervent worship once given to that gracious presence I have beheld an acknowledgment of a higher as well as a gentler power than that of the strong hand, and the might which makes right; and in every earnest votary one who, as he knelt, was in this sense pious beyond the reach of his thought, and devout beyond the meaning of his will.” And woman greatly encourages his error when she accepts his estimate of worth rather than Christ’ s, and bestows her admiration upon the lower and more masculine attributes, instead of recognizing the higher glory of her own womanhood. Gail Hamilton’ s sarcasm, “ Come girls, let us be men,” finds an echo in much of the life of to-day, when it ought to carry its own refutation. The Bible gives woman a glory of her own. Let her take up and wield the spiritual sovereignty that is her everlasting birthright. Let man learn to be grateful to woman for this undoubted achievement of her sex--that she, often in despite of him, has kept Christendom from lapsing into barbarism, has kept mercy and love from being overborne by those two greedy monsters, money and war. Let him remember that almost every great soul, which has led forward and lifted up the race, has been inspired by some noble woman. “ A man discovered America, but a woman equipped him for the voyage.” The noblest qualities of both are blended in Jesus Christ. In Him is the woman’ s heart and the man’ s brain; womanly gentleness, manly strength. We do not worship Christ and Mary, for in Christ we find all that was sought in Mary. III. There is still another truth striving for utterance in this worship of the Virgin, and this is, THE NEED WHICH THE HUMAN HEART FEELS OF A HUMAN AS WELL AS DIVINE SAVIOUR. (J. H. McIlvaine, D. D.) The Annunciation In the introduction of Jesus Christ to the world it would seem as if all laws of nature were to be suspended, that He Himself might be the crowning miracle of the universe. Even in the birth of His forerunner, God took the case into His own hand in a manner which excited the surprise and provoked the unbelief of servants who were walking in all His own ordinances and commandments blameless. In the birth of Christ law was not only suspended, but treated as if it had never had any existence, showing how easy it would have been for the Almighty to have founded society upon a totally new basis. The value of these miracles is seen as to their scope or purpose most vividly in the life of Jesus Christ. From the very beginning, in itself and in its surroundings it was to be a life distinct from all other existence. The manner in which both Elisabeth and Mary received the communications is precisely that in which the heart receives the tidings of the great salvation. The idea of salvation overpowers all who apprehend it with any distinctness. It would seem as if every soul had to undergo a period of questioning and doubt and wondering before it realizes the ineffable peace and cloudless radiance of perfect trust. The reply which the angel made to Mary’ s question, “ How shall this be? “ shows distinctly that there are questions arising out of spiritual revelation which may be put with out violating the Divine purpose of secrecy. Mary’ s point of rest must be ours; wonder was not allayed, nor was difficulty removed, yet the heart was given up to the possession of the Almighty. The gospel is to be received in the same way. Its doctrines will excite surprise and provoke inquiries, and it is possible that the answers to human questioning may but carry the mind to some higher plane of mystery. There it must rest, not in knowledge, but in faith, and the eyes of the heart must be opened when the vision of the understanding is unequal to the light. The whole incident may be used as teaching-- 1. That human life is accessible to angelic ministry. 2. That the great surprises of life should be held in check by religious faith, lest they unbalance the mind, and unfit it for ordinary occupations. 3. That the omnipotence of God should be regarded as the solution of all mystery and the guarantee of all safety. (Dr. Parker.) Mary, the mother of Jesus 1. There has been a large recoil of unbelief from these first chapters of Matthew and Luke. How comes it, many ask, if this be any proper history of facts, that it is made up so largely of poetic material? (1) First, we must observe, there is a great facility of verse in the Hebrew and Syriac tongues, so that minds but a very little excited almost naturally break into the couplet form of utterance. (2) Next, the Incarnation itself is an event so conspicuous and glorious, that everybody knowing it ought to be taken by some great mental commotion, lifted by some unwonted inspiration. (3) Furthermore, I will even dare to aver that the manner of this Incarnation-story is natural, and is cast in a form of the strongest possible self-affirmation. It comes to pass in just the only way conceivable or credible. 2. At this point my subject, which is Mary, the mother of Jesus, takes a most remarkable turn. Suddenly she drops out of improvising, out of song and singing joy, into a very nearly total and dumb silence; giving us to hear no spoken word again, save in a very few syllables, and but twice in her whole after-life. Not by the poverty of her nature that she is silent. Self-retention is the almost infallible token of a strong, deep character. 3. Jesus, a Man of thirty years old, goes to a wedding. And there we are let into a new chapter, at the very hinge of His public life, and the new relation He is to have to His mother. No reprimand, however, in His words to her save under the English idiom. 4. Look now for a moment at the home-basis Mary has provided for Jesus in the prosecution of His ministry. We see His mother’ s family all engaged for Him and with Him, and even if they do not believe in Him, they will stick fast by Him, we can see, in divinest and most faithful love. 5. Mary’ s behaviour at the cross fitly ends her story. She “ stood” --a word of strong composure. Doubtless she remembers the word of Simeon--“ Yea, a sword shall pierce through thine own soul also.” But there shestands, in the beloved disciple’ s company, holding fast the decencies of sorrow, as if the proprieties of the worlds were upon her. How long after this she lived we do not know. But we could most easily believe that when her mind was opened at the Pentecost, to the meaning of her Son’ s great mission, she was at once so astounded and exalted by the awful height of her relationship, that her soul took wing in the uplift of her felt affinity with the Highest, and was gone! But we have no such traditions. 6. Her disappearing from us, however, does not bring her story to an end; it only prepares our final appearing to her, on a higher plane of life, where she will most assuredly be the centre of a higher feeling than some of us may have imagined. Probably there was never any created being of all the created worlds put in such honour as this woman, chosen to be the Lord’ s mother; all the more truly our mother, that, from her begins the new-born human race. “ Hail, thou highly favoured!” “ Blessed art thou among women.” (Horace Bushnell, D. D.) “ Thou hast found favour,” Mary is not a dispenser of favour, but a recipient of it, with and for the rest of us; the type and germ of the Church. (Rudolf Stier.) Mary a typical Jewess Being of royal lineage, Mary undoubtedly cherished in her bosom the traditions of her house with that secret fervour which belongs to enthusiastic natures. Like all Judean women, we are to suppose her intensely national in her feelings. She identified herself with her country’ s destiny, lived its life, suffered its sufferings, and waited and prayed for its deliverance and glories. This was a time of her nation’ s deep humiliation. The throne and sceptre had passed from Judah. Conquered, trodden down, and oppressed, the sacred land was under the rule of Pagan Rome; and Herod, the appointed sovereign, was a blaspheming, brutal tyrant, using all his power to humiliate and oppress; and we may imagine Mary as one of the small company of silent mourners, like Simeon, and Anna the prophetess, who pondered the Scriptures and “ looked for salvation in Israel.” (Harriet B. Stowe.) Mary the flower of a selected race In part, our conception of the character of Mary may receive light from her nationality. A fine human being is never the product of one generation, but rather the outcome of a growth of ages. Mary was the offspring and flower of a race selected, centuries before, from the finest physical stock of the world; watched, trained, and cultured, by Divine oversight, in accordance with every physical and mental law for the production of sound and vigorous mental and bodily conditions. Her blood came to her in a channel of descent over which the laws of Moses had established such a watchful care--a race where marriage had been made sacred, family life a vital point, and motherhood invested by Divine command with an especial sanctity. As Mary was, in a certain sense, a product of the institutes of Moses, so it is an interesting coincidence that she bore the name of his sister, the first and most honoured of the line of Hebrew prophetesses--Mary being the Latin version of the Hebrew Miriam. She had also, as we read, a sister, the wife of Cleopas, who bore the same name, a custom not infrequent in Jewish families. It is suggested that Miriam, being a sacred name, and held in high traditionary honour, mothers gave it to their daughters, as now in Spain they call them after the Madonna as a sign of good omen. (Harriet B. Stowe.) God’ s presence with His people How important to have God with us everywhere! The late John Wesley, after a long life of labour and usefulness, concluded his course in perfect peace and holy triumph. A short time before his departure, when a person came into his room he tried to speak to him, but could not. Finding his friend could not understand him; he paused a little, and then with all his remaining strength he cried out, “ The best of all is, God is with us.” And then raising his feeble voice, and lifting up his dying arm in token of victory, he again repeated, “ The best of all is, God is with us.” Paul, when a prisoner, had the presence of God. Turn to 2 Timothy 4:16-17 : “At my first answer no man stood with me, but all men forsook me: I pray God that it may not be laid to their charge. Notwithstanding, the Lord stood with me, and strengthened me.” It was a noble saying of his (Romans 8:31): “ If God be for us, who can be against us?” (Henry R. Burton.) The glory of Mary No woman that ever lived on the face of the earth has been an object of such wonder, admiration, and worship, as Mary, the mother of our Lord. Around her, poetry, painting, and music have raised clouds of ever-shifting colours, splendid as those around the setting sun. Exalted above earth, she has been shown to us as a goddess, yet a goddess of a type wholly new. She is not Venus, not Minerva, not Ceres, nor Vesta. No goddess of classic antiquity, or of any other mythology, at all resembles that ideal being whom Christian art and poetry presents to us in Mary. Neither is she like all of them united. She differs from them as Christian art differs from classical, wholly and entirely. Other goddesses have been worshipped for beauty, for grace, for wisdom, for power. Mary has been the goddess of poverty and sorrow, of pity and mercy, and as suffering is about the only certain thing in human destiny, she has numbered her adorers in every land, and climate, and nation. In Mary, womanhood, in its highest and tenderest development of the mother, is the object of worship. Motherhood, with large capacities of sorrow, with the memory of bitter sufferings, with sympathies large enough to embrace every anguish of humanity! Such an object of veneration has inconceivable power. (Harriet B. Stowe.) Calmness of Mary We see in all this that serious, calm, and balanced nature which was characteristic of Mary. Habitually living in the contemplation of that spirit-world revealed in the Scriptures, it was no very startling thing to her to see an angel standing by her; her thoughts had walked among the angels too long for that, but his enthusiastic words of promise and blessing agitated her soul. (Harriet B. Stowe.) Absence of self-consciousness One morning, according to the old legend, “ as she went to draw water from the spring or well in the green open space at the north-west extremity of the town,” the Angel met her with the Salutation. And Mary was troubled at the tidings and the praise. It was the trouble of a beautiful unconsciousness. She had never thought of herself, never asked herself whether she were pure or lovely, did not care what people thought of her, made no effort to appear to the little world of Nazareth other than she was A rare excellence in man or woman, this fair unconsciousness!--rarer than ever now. Our miscalled education, which looks chiefly to this, how a young girl may make a good figure in society, destroys often from the earliest years the beauty of unconsciousness of self. There are many who have never had a real childhood, never been unconscious, who possess already the thoughts and airs of womanhood, and who are applauded as objects to admire, instead of being pitied as victims of an unnatural training. Their manners, conversation, attitudes, are the result of art. Already they tremble, as we do, for the verdict of the world. They grow up and enter into society, and there is either a violent reaction against conventionality, or a paralyzing sensitiveness to opinion, or a dull repose of character all but equivalent to stagnation. We see many who are afraid of saying openly what they think or feel, if it be in opposition to the accredited opinions of the world; we see others who rejoice in shocking opinion for the sake of making themselves remarkable--perhaps the basest form of social vanity, for it gives pain, and does notspring from conviction. Both forms arise from the education which makes the child self-conscious. It is miserable to see how we actually take pains to root out of our children the beauty of the Virgin’ s early life, the beauty of a more Divine life in Christ--the beauty of unconsciousness of self. (Stopford A. Brooke, M. A.) Mary’ s piety The Angel does not say, observe, that the favour of God has found her, but that she has found favour with Him, The expression, it is true, may be used in either way, to indicate what God has undertaken to do for her, or what she has obtained by the suit of her gentle, sweet-minded prayers. It is most naturally taken in this latter way; giving us to see how she has been waiting before Him, from her tender girlhood onward, asking of Him grace for a good life, and questioning His oracle as to what she is to do, or to be. She has read the prophets too, as we may judge, and her feeling, like all the religious feeling of her nation, is leavened in this manner, by infinite yearnings for the coming of that wonderful unknown Being called Messiah. And so her opening womanly nature has been stretching itself Messiahward, and configuring itself inwardly to what the unknown Great One is to be. Sighing after Him thus, in the sweet longings of her prayers, she is winning such favour, and becoming inwardly akin to Him in such degree, as elects her to bear the promised Child of the skies, and be set in a properly Divine motherhood before the worlds! Ah, yes, Mary, canst thou believe it? That which the prophets of so many ages drew you into praying for; that which angels in God’ s highest and most ancient realms have been peering from above to look into, that for which the fulness of time has now come--that special thing of God’ s counsel, supereminent favour, His greatest miracle, His unmatched wonder, His one thing absolute, which lets nothing ever come to pass that can be put into class with it-even that thou hast gotten a call from God to mediate for tim world, bearing it as thy Holy Thing, the fruit of thy sweet and maidenly prayers. (Horace Bushnell, D. D.) Luke 1:31 Call His name Jesus The name “ Jesus” Bernard has delightfully said that the name “ Jesus” is honey in the mouth, melody in the ear, and joy in the heart. I rejoice in that expression on my own account, for it gives me my share of the delight, and leads me to hope that, while I am speaking, the sweetness of that precious name may fill my own mouth. Here also is a portion for you who are listening: it is melody in the ear. If my voice should be harsh, and my words discordant, you will yet have music of the choicest order, for the name itself is essential melody, and my whole sermon will ring with its silver note. May both speaker and hearer join in the third word of Bernard’ s sentence, and may we all find it to be joy in our hearts, a jubilee within our souls. Jesus is the way to God, therefore will we preach Him; He is the truth, therefore will we hear of Him; He is the life, therefore shall our hearts rejoice in Him. His transporting name is an ointment poured forth, and its scent is varied so as to contain the essence of all fragrances. I. THE NAME OF JESUS IS A NAME ORDERED AND . Like Himself it came down from heaven, for an angel brought it. 1. It is the best name He could bear. To be the “ Saviour” is His glory. 2. It is the most appropriate name He could receive. God the Father, who knows Him best, sees this to be His grand characteristic, that He is the “ Saviour,” and is best represented by this name. 3. It is a name which must be true, since Infinite Wisdom has selected it. A “ Saviour” He must be upon a grand scale, continually, abundantly. II. OUR LORD WAS CALLED BY THE NAME “ JESUS” BY MAN. The God of heaven by His angel appoints the Child’ s name, but He leaves it to Joseph and Mary to announce it. Those who are taught of God, joyfully recognize that Christ is salvation, and without a question name Him thus. III. THE NAME HAD BEES WORN BY ANOTHER, BUT IS NOW FOR HIM ALONE. Jesus and Joshua are the same word: Joshua the Hebrew form, Jesus the Greek. The son of Nun was a type of the son of Mary. Jesus of Nazareth alone can save fully from sin. IV. THIS NAME OUR LORD WITH HIS PEOPLE. He declares His relation to them. It is to them that He is a Saviour (Matthew 1:21). V. THE NAME “ JESUS” IS ONE WHICH HIS MAIN WORK. 1. He “ saves” by taking all the sins of His people upon Himself. 2. He “ saves” His people by bearing the penalty due to their sins. 3. He “ saves” by driving out the vipers of sin from the heart, and implanting in their stead fresh and holy objects, ambitions, motives. VI. THIS NAME IS ONE WHICH IS BY FACTS. Given Him before He had done anything, while yet a babe, has He not earned it? Does He not well deserve the name He bears? VII. THIS NAME IS CHRIST’ S NAME FOR EVER. 1. It is a home name. Given Him by His own mother. 2. It is a heart name. Full of the music of love--moving our affections, and firing our souls. 3. It was His death name. Written over the cross. 4. It is His resurrection name. 5. It is His gospel name. 6. It is His heaven name. There He is ever adored as the “ Saviour.” Let us go and tell of this name; let us continually meditate upon it; let us love it henceforth and for ever. (C. H.Spurgeon.) The Incarnation The Incarnation was-- 1. A fact, revealed in life, words, works. 2. An unfathomable miracle, unprecedented, intimate, voluntary union of Divinity with humanity. 3. A glorious benefit; it is the glory, the light, the life of men. (Van Doren.) Signification of the name Jesus Means Saviour. Salvation is the beginning and end of revelation Substance of gospel truth. 1. Light. 2. Life. 3. Liberty. 4. Pardon. 5. Sanctification. 6. Comfort. 7. Peace. 8. Hope. 9. Triumph. Christ was and is a Saviour such as the world needs, not as the Jews expected. (Van Doren.) The name of Jesus 1. Jesus, the Babe of Bethlehem. 2. Jesus, the Saviour of the world 3. Jesus, the Mediator between God and man. 4. Jesus, the Judge of all man kind. (A. F. Barfield.) The miraculous conception Had the narrative of the miraculous conception occurred in the literature of a heathen nation, it would justly have raised doubts. But in the sober verses of the Gospels, written by Jews, it takes a far different character. The idea was altogether foreign to the Jewish mind. The Hebrew doctrine of the unity of God, and of the infinite elevation of the Divine Being above man, the profound regard of the Jews for the married state, and their abhorrence of unwedded life, make it impossible to imagine how such a thought could ever have risen among them. The improbability of its being invented by a Jew is heightened by the fact, that, though lofty thoughts of the nature of the Messiah were not wanting in some Israelites, the almost universal belief was that He was to be simply a man, who would receive miraculous endowments on His formal consecration as Messiah. (Dr. Geikie.) The name “ Jesus” An old divine has somewhere said: “ There is majesty implied in the name ‘ God.’ There is independent being in ‘ Jehovah.’ There is power in ‘ Lord.’ There is unction in ‘ Christ.’ There is affinity in ‘ Immanuel;’ intercession in Mediator;’ and help in ‘ Advocate;’ but there is salvation in no other name under heaven but the name of’ Jesus’” (Acts 4:12). A Freedman’ s teacher writes of a coloured woman who, having learned her alphabet, said, “ Now I want to learn to spell Jesus, for ‘ pears like the rest will come easier if I learn to spell the blessed name first.’ A good many things “ come easier when we learn that name first.” (Student’ s Handbook to Scripture Doctrine.) Fulness of meaning in the name Jesus So the name of “ Jesus,” the Saviour--a word often pronounced with little estimate of its meaning--will grow in the experience of believing hearts, the hearts of the redeemed, as all “ the height, and depth, and length, and breadth” of its unspeakable tenderness, and patience, and love, are more and more in the lapse of ages disclosed to faith; till that name shall be as much more precious than all human names of tenderness and love, as the whole material universe, if crystalized into one huge diamond, would be more precious than one atom of common dust! Do not think we exaggerate. It is impossible to exaggerate the glory of the love “ which passeth knowledge,” the value of the “ riches” which are “ unsearchable. (G. W. Heacoek.) The lock of the heart A lock was shown to Gotthold, constructed of rings, which were severally inscribed with certain letters, and could be turned round until the letters represented the name “ Jesus.” It was only when the rings were disposed in this manner that the lock could be opened. The invention pleased him beyond measure; and he exclaimed, “ Oh that I could put such a lock as this upon my heart! “ Our hearts are already locked, no doubt, but generally with a lock of quite another kind. Many need only to hear the words “ gain,” “ honour,” “ pleasure,” “ riches,” “ revenge,” and their heart opens in a moment; whereas to the Saviour and to His holy name it continues shut. The divinity of the name Jesus “ Jesus” was to be the special and peculiar name of the virgin’ s Son. It fulfilled prophecy (Isaiah 42:2). 1. This name was new to the Saviour, who was before called “ The Word of God,” “ The Son of God,” “ The Wisdom of the Father,” &c. 2. It now gained a significance it never heretofore possessed. 3. It became the antitype. Joshua as leader of the chosen people into the Promised Land, and Josedech as high priest, are eminent types of Jesus Christ. By Divine appointment our Lord received this name, implying-- I. THE OF THE SON. A name to be imposed upon any one, implies the subordination of the recipient to the giver. God the Father alone could have any proper right or authority over Jesus Christ. II. THE PERFECT OF THE FATHER. He alone perfectly knew the office, end, and effects of the Son coming into this world. III. A SIGN OF SPECIAL . A God-given name always means special favour and goodwill to the person it is bestowed on. Abraham, Jacob, Samson, Peter, Paul, &c. Conclusion: This name of Jesus being Divine must be-- 1. Reverenced and honoured. 2. Loved. 3. Obeyed. Then will its salvation become our own. (James Merchant.) The preciousness of the name Jesus Jesus! Name stupendous and venerable; a font of mercy; an abyss of judgment; wishing to be loved rather than feared. He took the name of Saviour rather than that of Judge. The sinner must hide as did Adam, or despair as did Cain, when he is without Jesus; but with Him he repents in hope, and rejoices in pardon and grace. This name of Jesus is-- 1. Of the highest import to the faithful (John 1:12). The power by no work of ours; which we cannot take away; a grace given to the willing only; by the conformation of the will and love wholly to God. 2. The one refuge for the penitent. 3. The security in conflict. This name supported many martyrs in their fierce trials. It acts upon the unseen powers of sin. 4. A loving yearning in those using it. It brings before the mind all the cost, agony, and suffering by which our salvation was wrought out by Jesus. 5. An ineffable joy to those loving it. It tells of a past work, a present gain, a future glory. (P. von Hartung.) The efficacy of this name The name of Jesus-- 1. Consoles the afflicted. Honey in the mouth; melody in the ear; joy in the heart. It speaks of love, pardon, peace. 2. Arms against dangers. 3. Quiets the soul. 4. Renders all prayer profitable. Engrave this name on thy tongue, and if that fail on thy heart, have it ever in thy hand; by it direct thy every thought, word, deed. (M Faber.) The name of Jesus a New Year watchword Name of Jesus a watch word for New Year. An excellent and precious treasure; a treasure-house, full of all help, guidance, and comfort. 1. To prodigals, unconverted, ungodly (Acts 4:12; Acts 3:16). 2. To disciples--partakers of the righteousness of God in Him--full of fightings without and fears within, “ the name of the Lord,” &c. Proverbs 18:10). 3. To Christian Church-workers (Colossians 3:17). 4. To the bereaved and afflicted, missing this year from the family and Church well-beloved names (Hebrews 13:8). Take this watchword in four different applications. I. IN CHURCH LIFE. Perilous times, owing to sinful lives and divided interests of those belonging to the Church. Ship toiling through heaving waves, storm-tossed, timbers strained, sails rent; but look at her name, “ Jesus,” and know that she must crest every wave, and weather every storm, till the haven be reached. The name of Jesus teaches of holiness and unity; truly borne, it will rebuke sin and division; known in its saving power, it will make Christians holy in Him, and one in Him. II. IN THE WORLD. We have to live in the world, unsympathizing, scoffing, persecuting. We must not tolerate or countenance sin. Go into the world with the name of Jesus in your heart, and let it not be tainted with evil; hallow the world’ s work by it, and let the world’ s habits and customs testify of it. As Columbus leaped to plant the banner of Spain upon the new-found world, plant on the unknown land of the New Year the Cross--seize the year for Jesus; carry His name everywhere; let everything bearits impress. The name of Jesus teaches of purity and resolution; truly known it will make the Christian in the world pure in heart, and resolved to stand his ground. III. IN TIMES OF TROUBLE. That were a strange year which should bring us no trouble. As well might we look for a year of undimmed sunshine, without clouds or rain. There will be dark, dreary days, biting frosts, heavy storms and tempests and it is for our good in reaping the fruits of the earth that it is so. In like manner afflictions, trials, sicknesses, losses, disappointments, will come, and for our good, to the bringing forth of the peaceable fruits of righteousness. What does the Christian say to such prospects? He trusts in the name of Jesus and fears no evil, He knows in whom he has believed. The name of Jesus is his comfort and stay and peace. It teaches him resignation and unshaken trust. IV. IN THE HOUR OF DEATH. This may come during the present year. The name of Jesus is the password to heaven. It teaches, in the moment when this world passes away, simple faith in His merits and mediation, by whom alone we can be saved. Other experiences may or may not be ours: death must be. How shall we meet it? Leaning on what rod or staff? The name of Jesus, and faith in His name, is the only sure refuge, and the only secure hope, (Thos. H. Barnett.) Luke 1:32 He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest The greatness of Jesus The title of “ Great” is one which the wisdom of this world recognizes, though I am not sure that it always gives the title fairly. We have Alexander the Great, Charles the Great, Frederick the Great, and so on. The epithet has usually been applied to those whose great powers have been manifested chiefly in the subjugation of their fellows to their own will. This kind of manifestation is the most conspicuous, it involves the most open exercise of power, and is most mixed up with the gratification of human ambition, and pride, and vanity; but, undoubtedly, those who have most permanently and extensively influenced their fellows, have been those whose conquests have been in the regions of thought, in things spiritual--the founders of religions, the authors of philosophies, the great discoverers, the great teachers. A man like Alexander has ceased for centuries to be a living power in the world; but the great founder of Buddhism, e.g., is still affecting the daily lives and habits of something like a quarter of the whole population of the world. A great captain is like a brilliant meteor, but the author of a new thought, or a new system of thought, is like a fixed star. I. THINK OF CHRIST’ S AS A MAN. Estimate in any just way the influence produced upon the world’ s history by His life and deeds; can there be any doubt that He is the greatest man who ever lived? Whose life has been the most like a seed in this world, rising up with the irresistible power of growth, and bringing forth fruit after its kind? Whose religious teaching has been practically most potent in subduing to itself the highest intellects the human race has produced? In the most tattered rags of humanity, Jesus Christ stands forth so conspicuously as the King of men, that there are few, who do not, in Some form or another, bow the knee before Him. II. CHRIST’ S AS GOD. It is the light of Divine majesty and condescension shining through the rags of humanity, that makes the whole history intelligible. “ He shall be great! “ nay, He is great in the midst of the humiliation of the Cross itself. That humiliation was self-sought, and only adds emphasis to the declaration and promise of the text. III. CHRIST’ S IS TO . He is great now. But He is to be greater still--not absolutely, but relatively--in the magnitude of His Kingdom and the universality of His sway. IV. ALL MAY PROMOTE THE OF CHRIST. This is the noblest aim of man. Men are willing enough to make themselves great, to get themselves on in the world, to promote their own interests, wealth, glory, and within reasonable limits it is right that this should be so but the privilege of the believer is to transfer his zeal for promoting his own greatness to the promotion of the greatness of Christ. (Bishop Harvey Goodwin.) The grandeur of Christ This subject far transcends all utterance. Jesus is such a One that no oratory can ever reach the height of His glory, and the simplest words are best suited to a subject so sublime. Fine words would be but tawdry things to hang beside the unspeakably glorious Lord. I can say no more than that He is great. If I could tell forth His greatness with choral symphonies of cherubin, yet should I fail to reach the height of this great argument. I will be content if I can touch the hem of the garment of His greatness. I. HE IS GREAT FROM MANY POINTS OF VIEW. I might have said, from every point of view; but that is too large a truth to be surveyed at one sitting Mind would fall us, life would fall us, time would fail us; eternity and perfection will alone suffice for that boundless meditation. But from the points of view to which I would conduct you for a moment, the Lord Jesus Christ is emphatically great. 1. In the perfection of His nature. Peerless and incomparable; Divine, and therefore unique. He is all that God is; and He is all that man is as God created him. As truly God as if He were not man; and as truly man as if He were not God. 2. In the grandeur of His offices. He comes to rebuild the old wastes, and to restore the fallen temple of humanity. To accomplish this He came to be our Priest, our Prophet, and our King; in each office glorious beyond compare. He came to be our Saviour, our Sacrifice, our Substitute, our Surety, our Head, our Friend, our Lord, our Life, our All. He is the Standard-bearer among ten thousand. Who is like unto Him in all eternity? 3. In the splendour of His achievements. He is no holder of a sinecure; He claims to have finished the work which His Father gave Him to do. Is it not proven that He is great? Conquerors are great, and He is the greatest of them. Deliverers are great; and He is the greatest of them. Liberators are great, and He is the greatest of them. Saviours are great, and tie is the greatest of them. They that multiply the joys are men truly great, and what shall I say of Him who has bestowed everlasting joy upon His people, and entailed it upon them by a covenant of salt for ever and ever? 4. In the prevalence of his merits. He has such merit with God that He deserves of the Most High whatsoever He wills to ask; and He asks for His people that they shall have every blessing needful for eternal life and perfection. 5. In the number of His saved ones. 6. In the estimation of His people. 7. In the glory of heaven. 8. On the throne of the Father. II. “ He shall be great,” and He is so, for HE DEALS WITH GREAT THINGS. 1. It was a great ruin He came to restore, great sin that He came to do away, great pardon that He came to bestow. 2. He has great supplies to meet our great wants. 3. He is a Christ of great preparations. He is engaged before the throne, today, in preparing a great heaven for His people; it will be made up of great deliverance, great peace, great rest, great joy, great victory, great discovery, great fellowship, great rapture, great glory. III. HIS WILL SOON APPEAR. It now lies under a cloud to men’ s bleak eyes. They still belittle Him with their vague and vain thoughts; but it shall not always be so. (C. H. Spurgeon.) The greatness of Christ The Saviour of men, and the example for all, must be the isolated one, the unparalleled Man in human history. He must be both like us and unlike us--like us in so far as His human nature is concerned: He must be born, He must increase in stature, be in subjection to His parents, and be subject to all the ordinary conditions of human nature as it develops itself from infancy to manhood. In all this He is like us--for otherwise He could not be our pattern and our Saviour. Then, again,He must be unlike us, or how could He be that One whom we are to imitate, and of whose fulness we must all partake? Christ as a Man was unlike all other men. He alone of all great men is the unparalleled One of all history; and the conviction of this truth suggests that more than man is here--more than a great and unparalleled man: it is none other than the “ Sonof the Highest.” (Bishop Martensen.) The Incarnation The plan of salvation is likened unto a vine which has fallen down from the boughs of an oak. It lies prone upon the ground; it crawls in the dust, and all its tendrils and claspers, which were formed to hold it in the lofty place from which it had fallen, are twined around the weed and the bramble, and, having no strength to raise itself, it lies fruitless and corrupting, tied down to the base things of the earth. Now, how shall the vine arise from its fallen condition? But one way is possible for the vine to rise again to the place from whence it had fallen. The bough of the lofty oak must be let down, or some communication must be formed connected with the top of the oak and at the same time with the earth. Then, when the bough of the oak was let down to the place where the vine lay, its tender claspers might fasten upon it, and, thus supported, it might raise itself up, and bloom, and bear fruit again in the lofty place from whence it fell. So with man: his affections had fallen from God, and were fastened to the base things of earth. Jesus Christ came down, and by His humanity stood upon the earth, and by His divinity raised His hands and united Himself with the Deity of the Everlasting Father: thus the fallen affections of man may fasten upon Him, and twine around Him, until they again ascend to the bosom of the Godhead, from whence they fell. (Watts.) The higher life In one of his essays upon the phenomena of nature, Bacon tells of a mountain so high that no storm ever disturbs its air. Its climate knows little vicissitude. The clouds cannot float so high. The sunshine is constant by day, and the night comes late and the morning comes soon. So peaceful is that summit that a traveller having written some words in the white ashes of his camp fire, found the words still there after a score of years had passed. What an Elysian field is that I far above tornado and lightning shafts, and the miasma of the marsh and the battlefields of men. A fable in part, but an emblem of those heights where dwell those mortals who have reached the widest and deepest education and affections and the purest ethics. As in classifying physical beauty we feel constrained to make distinctions between a violet and an oak, or between a cascade with its murmur and mist, and a cathedral with its spire and arches, and between a trailing vine and a range of mountains, and must change our words with the change of feeling in the soul, and to the rose say “ beautiful,” to the oak “ grand,” “ pretty” to the violet, and “ sublime” to the mountain, so we must divide into many parts the attractiveness of humanity, and must confess some to be witty, some pretty, some beautiful, some learned, and then when already the heart is full of admiration it perceives one more class rising above all other grades of mortality--those morally and mentally great. In this grouping all ages may meet. The infinite love of the Creator is in nothing more manifested than in this, that He has made this moral height accessible to all. Not all can be rich, beautiful, witty, young; but all can climb upward to the higher life. It is not the mere privilege of all, but the pressing duty of all. The heights are large, and voices full of mercy and of alarm are bidding those in the valley to “ go up higher.” God is represented as being in the holy mountains, and thither He expects His children to come. The heights are everywhere. They are seen in each profession and pursuit. There are merchants who grovel in the mire and whose gains stand for fraud, and there are merchants whose wealth tells of the industry, and growth, and welfare of the people. There are lawyers low and high--lawyers who are always upon the side of criminals, and concerning whose health and presence criminals are said to make inquiry before they plan a new crime; other lawyers, to whom men repair for help when they feel that their cause is just, and the points of law and equity must be placed clearly before jury or bench. There are writers low, and writers who are lofty. The former are witty and verbose in the defamation of character and in detailing the sins of society--these are the remains of human coarseness that are being slowly but steadily eliminated from all written thought, and therefore in greater multitude appear the writers of the pure school whose editorials, or essays, or books, or poems come into all homes as welcome as the beams of the morning sun … Said one of the greatest poets: “ On every height there lies repose.” This peace is not found elsewhere. It is not a sleep, not an easy existence of inaction, but a repose that comes from the sublimity of the landscape, and from the matchless purity of the air. It is not to be wondered at that the human mind, while sitting in the long past ages at the loom of thought, wove for the Deity such an attribute as “ The Highest.” And it is not robe wondered at, that when Christ came with His faultless words and deeds, with His boundless friendship and upper forms of thought, the admiring world felt that He was a Son of the Highest--figures of speech which should be taken up afresh by our far-off age. We have read in the ocean and in the storm and in the stupendous size of the universe, that the Creator has power. We have seen in the marvellous laws of mind and material that He has wisdom. We read the Divine love in the entire pageant of life, animal and rational, and we read the Divine eternity in the awful age of the universe, which drinks up millions of years as the sun dries up dewdrops; but we have omitted to ]earn from the high in thought, and industry, and art, from their eternal beauty and repose, that God is also “ The Highest.” Far above the sun, far above the suns to us unseen, is enthroned the world’ s God--the God of all worlds--on a height undreamed of by mortals. His mansions are there. Compared with this summit, the mount in the poetic philosophy of Lord Bacon sinks down and becomes a part of time’ s vale of tears. God is on the heights, and all those minds in this lower world which love the higher life arc steadily walking up the slope of this range, hidden now perhaps by mist, but covered with light beyond the clouds. (David Swing.) Forgotten great ones What a roll of greatness should we have were there tables of marble, or brass, or gold in which were engraven the names of those who in all times and places have attempted to attain mental and spiritual excellence. It is a sad thought that what is called history is only a page from a vast, grand, but lost, volume. Violence and reckless ambition impressed into service all the chroniclers of the past, and that kind of greatness we see in Christ was not often asked to sit for its picture, It was too high for the surrounding kings and their hosts of sycophants. It would require a whole London of Westminster Abbeys to hold the urns of the noble ones whose very names are forgotten. The loss is great to the present, for many minds see a preponderance of evil in our age, and are not sure that our world was planned by benevolence, to which desponding minds an adequate conception of the continuous glory of man would be a welcome inspiration. There has been a succession of minds on the heights, and these have signalled to each other in all the years of man upon our globe. What ones are visible, are only a few wanderers from the mighty herd. Solon and Moses studied at the Egyptian Heliopolis indeed, but of the many thousands of men always studying there, it cannot be possible that the honours were all borne away by a Hebrew and a Greek. At that educational centre, thousands and tens of thousands came and tarried and went while centuries passed along. It must be that the few names that have come to us are only types of a great army which was scattered over the prolific East. Aspasia was not the only intellectual powerful woman of the age of Pericles. She was the one brought into the foreground by her alliance with a powerful king; others having her education and her beauty and power lived and died in a fame that could not cross the gulf of many centuries. Nor was Cleopatra the only Greco-Egyptian woman who could speak and write in all the tongues of the Mediterranean coast, but she was one made historic by the accidents of crowns and vices, leaving us to assume that there were other women, many who equalled her in learning, and passed far above her in all higher worth. Thus history is only a page out of a lost volume. As those who dig in the sands of the Swiss lakes, or in the deserted cave-homes of man and beast, or who explore the ruins of Mycenae, toss out a few implements or a few carved bones or a few jewels worn once by beauty, so history casts up out of the vast sepulchre where the ages sleep traces only of an absent world. (David Swing.) Jesus not a fabrication “We can learn,” says Theodore Parker, “ but few facts about Jesus. But measure Him by the shadow He has cast into the world, and by the light He has shed upon it, and shall we be told, that such a man never lived--that the whole story is a lie? Suppose that Plato and Newton never lived, that their story is a lie; but who did their works, and thought their thoughts? It takes a Newton to forge a Newton. What man could have fabricated a Jesus? None but a Jesus.” Christ the ideal representative of humanity It is no use to say that Christ, as exhibited in the Gospels, is not historical, and that we know not how much of what is admirable is superadded by the tradition of the followers. Who among His disciples, or among their proselytes, was capable of inventing the sayings ascribed to Jesus, or of imagining the life and character revealed in the Gospels? Certainly not the fishermen of Galilee; as certainly not St. Paul, whose character and idiosyncrasies were of a totally different sort; still less the early Christian writers, in whom nothing is more evident than that the good which was in them was all derived from the higher source. About the life and sayings of Jesus there is a stamp of personal originality combined with profundity of insight, which, if we abandon the idle expectation of finding scientific precision where something very different was aimed at, must place the Prophet of Nazareth, even in the estimation of those who have no belief in His inspiration, in the very first rank of the men of sublime genius of whom our species can boast. When this pre-eminent genius is combined with the qualities of probably the greatest moral reformer and martyr to that mission who ever existed upon earth, religion cannot be said to have made a bad choice in pitching on this man as the ideal representative and guide of humanity; nor even now would it be easy, even for an unbeliever, to find a better translation of the rule of virtue from the abstract in the concrete than to endeavour so to live that Christ would approve our life. (John Stuart Mill.) Divine humanity realized in Christ Dr. Philip Schaff mentions the testimony of Dr. De Wette, one of the ablest and most learned sceptical critics of Germany. After all his brilliant scepticism Dr. De Wette wrote, a few months before his death: “ I know that in no other name can salvation be found than in the name of Jesus Christ, the Crucified; and there is nothing loftier for mankind than the Divine humanity realized in Him, and the kingdom of God planted by Him. Luke 1:33 And He shall reign--Christ’ s everlasting kingdom The everlasting kingdom. There is no reason to doubt that the right and true and the holy shall have the victory. All dominions hostile to Christ must give way. All kingdoms incompatible with His must be dissolved. The kingdoms of this world have their symbols in the lion, the bear, the leopard, and the fourth dreadful and terrible beast: and by a law universally proved, their passions and discord shall precipitate their own destruction. But Christ’ s kingdom has nothing anarchical, because it has nothing sinful in it; it has not one element of decay, because into it nothing that defileth can enter. Suns shall grow pale, stars shall become dim; the crescent shall wane, the crucifix shall fall from the hands of him that holds it; and Christ’ s kingdom shall extend over all the earth, and all shall bless Him, and be blessed in Him. We see already tokens of that day. I take a bright view of the coming days. What progress do knowledge, science, education, Christianity, the Bible, make everywhere throughout the world at this moment? Do we not see the whole human family drawing nearer to each other? Do we not see the two great nations, America and England, speaking a tongue that promises more and more every day to become the tongue of the whole world? Do we not see all languages, however diversified, becoming reducible to two, three, or four at the very most,--Christians becoming less earthly, and Christianity less alloyed? What are these but the tokens of the approaching glory; voices in the wilderness, preparing the way of the Lord; messengers sent before to announce that the bridegroom cometh? I see flowers of paradise begin to bloom in many a desert. I see upon all sides the sea of barbarism and superstition begin to ebb, and many a dove take wing, and fly over the length and breadth of the world’ s chaotic flood, giving tokens that the Prince of Peace is on His way, warning us that the sound of His approach already breaks upon the ear. Let us hail the twilight; let us urge on, as far as we can, the coming day. (Cummings.) Christ the key to the world’ s history The great Swiss historian, John Von Muller, gives the result of his life-long labours, extracted, he says, from seventeen hundred and thirty-three authors, in seventeen thousand folio pages, in this striking confession: “ Christ is the key to the history of the world. Not only does all harmonize with the mission of Christ; all is subordinated to it. When I saw this,” he adds, “ it was to me as wonderful and surprising as the light which St. Paul saw on his way to Damascus, the fulfilment of all hopes, the completion of philosophy, the key to all the apparent contradictions in the physical and the moral; here is life and immortality. I marvel not at miracles; a far greater miracle has been reserved for our times, the spectacle of the connection of all human events in the establishment and preservation of the doctrine of Christ.” (Prof. Henry B. Smith.) Luke 1:34-35 The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee Of Christ’ s Incarnation These words are the angel’ s answer to Mary, who, understanding the angel as speaking of a thing presently to be done before Joseph and she should come together, desires to know how she, being a virgin, should conceive. Here-- 1. The angel tells her how she should “ conceive and bring forth a Son,” namely, by the power of the Holy Ghost, which is the power of the Highest, the Spirit of God being the true God, and so the Highest. The way of the Spirit’ s powerful working to this miraculous conception, is denoted by two words. One is, that the Holy Ghost should come upon her, not in an ordinary way, as in the conception of all men (Job 10:8, “ Thine handshave made me, and fashioned me together round about)” ; but in an extraordinary way, as on the prophets, and those that were raised to some extraordinary work. The other is, that the power of the Highest, which is infinite power, should overshadow her, to wit, make her, though a virgin, to conceive by virtue of the efficacy of infinite power, by which the world was created, when the same Spirit moved on the waters, cherished them, and framed the world. 2. He shows what should follow on this miraculous conception, namely, that the fruit of her womb, the child she should bear, should be called “ the Son of God.” Where the angel teaches two things. (1) The immaculate, sinless conception of the child Jesus, that holy thing, a holy thing though proceeding from a sinful creature, not tainted with sin, as all other children are. The powerful operation of the Divine Spirit sanctified that part of the virgin’ s body of which the human nature of Christ was formed, so that by that influence it was separated from all impurity and defilement. So that, though it proceeded from a creature infected with original sin, there was no sin or taint of impurity in it. This was a glorious instance of the power of the Highest. (2) He tells the virgin, that therefore, seeing that child to be thus conceived, he should be called, that is, owned to be, “ the Son of God.” He says not, Therefore that holy thing shall be the Son of God, for he was the Son of God before, by virtue of His eternal generation; but, therefore he shall be called, i.e., owned to be really so, and more than a man. I. I AM TO SHOW WHO SHE WAS THAT WAS THE MOTHER OF CHRIST AS MAN. Christ as God had no mother, and as man no father. But His mother as man was Mary. She was the seed of Abraham; and so Christ was that seed of Abraham, in whom all nations were to be blessed (Galatians 3:16). She was of the tribe of Judah (Luke 3:33), and of that tribe Christ by her did spring (Hebrews 7:14). She was also of the family of David, as appears by her genealogy (Luke 3:1-38.), and therefore Christ is called the Son of David, as the Messiah behoved to be. She was, however, but a mean woman, the family of David being then reduced to a low outward condition in the world, having long before lost its flourishing state; so that our Lord “ sprung up as a root out of a dry ground “ (Isaiah 11:1; Isaiah 53:2). II. I COME TO SHOW WHAT WE ARE TO BY CHRIST’ S MAN. It implies-- 1. That He had a real being and existence before His incarnation. He truly was before He was conceived in the womb of the virgin, and distinct from that being which was conceived in her. “ What and if ye shall see the Son of Man ascend up where He was before?” (John 6:62). Yea, He was with His Father from all eternity, before any of the creatures came out of the womb of nothing. 2. That He actually took upon Him our nature. He assumed the entire nature of man into the unity of His Divine person, with all its integral parts and essential properties; and so was made or became a real and true man by that assumption. Hence it is said (John 1:14), “ The Word was made flesh.” But though Jesus Christ had two natures, yet not two persons, which was the error of Nestorius, who lived in the fourth century. Again, though “ the Word was made flesh,” yet it was without any confusion of the natures, or change of the one into the other: which was the heresy of the Eutychians of old, who so confounded the two natures in the person of Christ, that they denied all distinction between them. Eutyches thought that the-union was so made in the natures of Christ, that the humanity was absorbed and wholly turned into the Divine nature; so that, by that transubstantiation, the human nature had no longer being. But by this union the human nature is so united with the Divinity, that each retains its own essential properties distinct. The properties of either nature are preserved entire. It is impossible that the Majesty of the Divinity can receive any alteration; and it is as impossible that the meanness of the humanity can receive the impression of the Deity, so as to be changed into it, and a creature be metamorphosed into the Creator, and temporary flesh become eternal, and finite mount up into infinite. As the soul and the body are united, and make one person, yet the soul is not changed into the perfections of the body, nor the body into the perfections of the soul. There is a change indeed made in the humanity, by its being advanced to a more excellent union, but not in the Deity; as a change is made in the air when it is enlightened by the sun, not in the sun which communicates that brightness to the air. Athanasius makes the burning bush to be a type of Christ’ s incarnation; the fire signifying the Divine nature, and the bush the human. The bush is a branch springing from the earth, and the fire descends from heaven. As the hush was united to the fire, yet was not hurt by the flame, nor converted into the fire, there remained a difference between the bush and the fire, yet the properties of fire shined in the bush, so that the whole bush seemed to be on fire. So in the incarnation of Christ, the human nature is not swallowed up by the Divine, nor changed into it, nor confounded with it: but they are so united, that the properties of both remain firm: two are so become one, that they remain two still; one person in two natures, containing the glorious perfections of the Divinity, and the weakness of the humanity. The fulness of the Godhead dwells bodily in Christ. 3. Christ’ s becoming man implies the voluntariness of this act of His in assuming the human nature. III. I proceed to show that CHRIST WAS TRUE MAN. Being the eternal Son of God, He became man, by taking to Himself a true body and a reasonable soul. He had the same human nature which is common to all men, sin only excepted. He is called in Scripture “ man,” and” the Son of man, the seed of the woman, the seed of Abraham, the Son of David,” &c.; which designations could not have been given unto Him, if He had not been true man. The actions and passions of His life show that He had true flesh. He was hungry, thirsty, weary, faint, &c. For certainly if the Son of God would stoop so low as to take upon Him our frail flesh, He would not omit the nobler part, the soul, without which He could not be man. We are told that Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, the one in respect of His body, the other in respect of His soul. The sufferings of His body were indeed very great; it was filled with exquisite torture and pain; but His soul sufferings were much greater, as I observed in a former discourse. IV. I come now to show WHAT WE ARE TO BY CHRIST’ S BEING BY THE POWER OF THE HOLY GHOST IN THE WOMB OF THE VIRGIN MARY. To open this a little three things are to be considered here. I. The framing of Christ’ s human nature in the womb of the Virgin. The matter of His body was of the very flesh and blood of the virgin, otherwise He could not haw been the Son of David, of Abraham, and Adam, according to the flesh. Indeed God might have created His body out of nothing, or have formed it of the dust of the ground, as He did the body of Adam, our original progenitor: but had He been thus extraordinarily formed, and not propagated from Adam, though He had been a man like one of us, yet He would not have ban of kin to us; because it would not have been a nature derived from Adam, the common parent of us all. It was therefore requisite to an affinity with us, not only that He should have the same human nature, but that it should flow from the same principle, and be propagated to Him. And thus He is of the same nature that sinned, and so what He did and suffered may be imputed to us. Whereas, if He had been created as Adam was, it could not have been claimed in a legal and judicial way. The Holy Ghost did not minister any matter unto Christ from His own substance. Hence Basil says, Christ was conceived, not of the substance, but by the power, not by any generation, but by appointment and benediction of the Holy Ghost. 2. Let us consider the sanctifying of Christ’ s human nature. I have already said that that part of the flesh of the Virgin, whereof the human nature of Christ was made, was purified and refined from all corruption by the overshadowing of the Holy Ghost, as a skilful workman separates the dross from the gold. Our Saviour was therefore called “ that holy thing “ Luke 1:35). Now this sanctification of the human nature of Christ was necessary. (1) To fit it for personal union with the Word, who, out of His infinite love, humbled Himself to become flesh, and at the same time out of His infinite purity, could not defile Himself by becoming sinful flesh. (2) With respect to the end of His incarnation, even the redemption and salvation of lost sinners; that as the first Adam was the fountain of our impurity, so the second Adam should also be the pure fountain of our righteousness. He that needed redemption himself could never have purchased redemption for us. 3. We are to consider the personal union of the manhood with the Godhead. To clear this a little, you would know-- (1) That when Christ assumed our nature, it was not united consubstantially, so as the three persons in the Godhead are united among themselves; they all have but one and the same nature and will: but in Christ there are two distinct natures and wills, though but one person. (2) They are not united physically, as the soul and body are united in a man: for death actually dissolves that union; but this is indissoluble. So that when His soul was expired, and His body interred, both soul and body were still united to the second person as much as ever. (3) Nor yet is this such a mystical union as is between Christ and believers. Indeed this is a glorious union. But though believers are said to be in Christ, and Christ in them, yet they arc not one person with Him. But more positively, this assumption of which I speak is that whereby the second person in the glorious Godhead did take the human nature into a persons! union with Himself, by virtue whereof the manhood subsists in the second person, yet without confusion, as I showed already, both making but one person Immanuel, God with us. So that though there be a twofold nature in Christ, yet not a double person. Again, as it was produced miraculously, so it was assumed integrally; that is to say, Christ took a complete and perfect soul and body, with all and every faculty and member pertaining to it. And this was necessary, that thereby He might heal the whole nature of the disease and leprosy of sin, which had ceased upon and wofully infected every member and faculty of man. Christ assumed all, to sanctify all. Again, He assumed our nature with all its sinless infirmities: therefore it is said of Heb 2:17), “ In all things it behoved Him to be made like unto His brethren.” But here we are to distinguish between personal and natural infirmities. Personal infirmities are such as befall particular persons, from particular causes, as dumbness, deafness, blindness, lameness, leprosies, &c. Now, it was no way necessary that Christ should assume these; but the natural ones, such as hunger, thirst, weariness, sweating, bleeding, mortality, &e. (Romans 8:3). Again, the human nature is so united with the Divine, that each nature still retains its own essential properties distinct. The glory of His Divinity was not extinguished or diminished, though it was eclipsed and obscured under the veil of our humanity; but there was no more change in the hiding of it, than there is in the body of the sun, when he is shadowed by the interposition of a cloud, And this union of the two natures in Christ is an inseparable union; so that from the first moment thereof, there never was, nor to all eternity shall there ever be, any separation of them. V. I now proceed to show way CHRIST WAS BORN OF A VIRGIN. That Christ was to be born of a virgin, was prophesied and foretold many ages before His incarnation, as Isaiah 7:14. The Redeemer of the worldbehoved to be so born, as not to derive the stain of man’ s nature by His generation. It was most conformable to the infinite dignity of His person, that a supernatural and a Divine person be concerned as an active principle in it. By His being born of a virgin the holiness of His nature is effectually secured. Christ was an extraordinary person, and another Adam; and therefore it was necessary He should be produced a new way. Thus we may be thoroughly satisfied-- 1. That Christ had a true human body; and that though He was made in the likeness of sinful flesh, He had not merely the likeness of flesh, but true Luke 24:39; Hebrews 2:14). 2. That He had reasonable soul, which was a created spirit, and that the Divine nature was not instead of a soul to Him. 3. That Christ’ s body was not made of any substance sent down from heaven, but of the substance of the Virgin (Galatians 4:4). He was “ the seed of the woman” (Genesis 3:15), and the fruit of Mary’ s womb Luke 1:42), otherwise He had not been our brother. 4. That the Holy Ghost cannot be called the Father of Christ, since His human nature was formed, not of His substance, but of that of the Virgin, by His power. 5. That though as to the nativity of Christ there was nothing as to the way of it extraordinary, but He was at the ordinary time brought forth as others Luke 2:22-23), and that as a general truth. “ A woman, when she is in travail, hath sorrow, because her hour is come” (John 16:21), yet He was born without sin, being “ that holy thing.” He could not have been our Redeemer, had He not been so (Hebrews 7:26). 6. That the reason why Christ was born without sin, and the sin of Adam did not reach Him, was because He came not of Adam by ordinary generation, not by the blessing of marriage, but by a special promise after the fall. I shall conclude all with some . 1. Jesus Christ is the true Messiah promised to Adam as the seed of the woman, to Abraham as his seed, the Shiloh mentioned by Jacob on his deathbed, the Prophet spoken of by Moses to be raised from among the children of Israel, the Son of David, and the Son to be born of a virgin. 2. Behold the wonderful love of God the Father, who was content to degrade and abase His dear Son, in order to bring about the salvation of sinners. 3. See here the wonderful love and astonishing condescendency of the Son, to be born of a woman, in order that He might die in the room of sinners. What great love to sinners, and what unparalleled condescension was here! 4. See here the cure of our being conceived in sin, and brought forth in iniquity. 5. Christ is sensibly touched with all the infirmities that attend our frail nature, and has pity and compassion upon His people under all their pressures and burdens (Hebrews 2:17-18). (T. Boston.) The life of separation The question that is uttered by Mary is not for a moment an utterance of incredulity. It is really the utterance of a believer who accepts the message that God has sent her, but who is conscious of difficulties in the way of its fulfilment. “ How can I ever “ be a mother, how can I ever be a mother of the Messiah Christ? The conditions--the fixed, the unalterable conditions--of my life make that to be for me an impossibility. ‘ How can this be, seeing I know not man?’” The words, of course, teach us this truth, that Mary was conscious that there was to the Divine promise and its fulfilment in her what seemed like a mighty barrier. We cannot say for certain whether the old legend is true; but it has always seemed to me that these words of our Lady bear out its truth in a most remarkable way. I refer to the old story that when St. Mary was quite a child she was taken up by her parents to the Temple, and that she there dedicated herself to serve God by a life of separation, and in the state of lifelong virginity, under the direct inspiration of the Holy Spirit of Love. And certainly that there was the existence of some such special barrier as this seems to be recognized and confessed in the question we are now considering. For just consider what her position was. She had been already espoused unto an old man called Joseph; and if their union was to have been the marriage union under its ordinary conditions, the message of Gabriel to Mary would simply have been under, stood by her in this way, that she should be, in the course of nature, the mother of David’ s Greater Son. We know quite well that one of the great longings of every Jewish maiden down through the ages had been to become the mother of the Messiah; and it was this longing that made the thought of virginity utterly abhorrent to the whole spirit of Judaism. If, then, Gabriel had come to Mary when she was about to enter the married life under ordinary conditions she would never have been staggered by the Divine promise, and would never have seen any difficulty in the way of its fulfilment. In her humility she might have felt unworthy of it, but she would have bowed her head in pure and simple submission, and would have said--not the first--but her second word: “ Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to Thy word.” But what she says is this: “ How can this be, seeing I know not man.” What does this lead me to recognize? This fact, that already the love of God had done this for Mary--it had led her to a life of separation, it had led her to deliberately turn away from the state of life which was the common longing of the daughters of Israel; that she had already separated herself from man as a necessary preliminary condition of consecrating herself to God; and that the motive of this had been the love of God. Mary is emphatically revealed to us in the Bible not simply as a woman of devotion, but a woman whose devotion takes especially the contemplative form. “ She kept all His sayings and treasured them in her heart;” she was one who was continually looking up at God with the fixed eye of wrapt contemplation; she was the pure in heart, and she saw God. And as she gazed on the vision of God’ s beauty and lived in the recognition of God’ s love, the love of God took possession of her heart in wondrous fulness and power; and as she gave herself up to be moulded by that love her first response to its working was the response of separation. Now Christian life is always a life of separation. That is its first aspect. We are taught this by the lessons of olden times. If you go back to the history of Israel, the Chosen People could only consecrate themselves to God in the Church in the wilderness and in the land of Canaan when they had come out of Egypt and had been separated from it by the separating waters of the Red Sea. Why, the very term whereby the Christian society is known shows this,--I mean the Greek equivalent to our word “ Church.” Now what is the Ecclesia. The Eccleisa is a people called out. Out from what? Out from the world. As long as the present condition of things continues, the Church and the world can never be coextensive terms. The Church will always be found to be an Ecclesia, an election; in other words a people of separation, separate by privilege of course, but separate by responsibility also. And separation is the first essential feature of every true Christian life. In this separation there are two things to be remembered. In the first place, the separation is the act of God. It is God who separates, as He teaches us, when speaking to His people of old He says to them, “ Be ye holy, for I am holy, who have separated you to be My people.” God separated His people to Himself, first, by the passage of the Red Sea, and then by the sprinkling of the blood when Moses came down from Mount Sinai. And so it is with us. We are separated by God’ s act. The great act of separation with us is the act of Holy Baptism. We have been separated by God’ s act, and we are to respond to it now by coming out and by being separate. Separate from what? Now here we must be very careful as we work our way, for we have to avoid two distinct difficulties. We have to avoid practically making the Church and the world the same, and saying that the Church has, so to say, to put a gloss over the world; and, on the other hand, we have to avoid an unpractical, uncommon sense trancendentalism, which is contrary to the example of Christ and the spirit of His gospel. That marvellous Eucharistic prayer of our Lord seems to teach the plain truth about this matter: “ I pray not that Thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that Thou shouldest keep them from the evil.” What He prays for is this--not that He may have a people living in absolute isolation from society, but that He may have a people going out into the society of their day, living lives of loyalty to Christ where Christ’ s name is denied, living lives of bold obedience to principle while passion sways the conduct of the many. Well, then, what we understand by the world is society as far as it is swayed by passion and desire, and not by principle and loyalty to Christ. In other words, the world is godless and corrupt society; and from that we must come out and be separate. Woe be to us if we fail in loyalty to Christ here. We shall bear, to our own shame before men, angels, and God, the brand of moral cowardice, and a more degrading brand than that cannot be stamped on any man or woman’ s brow. Again, what are we to understand by separation? Well, we know in the Jewish days there were different degrees of separation. There was, for instance, the separation of the tribe of Levi for the diaconate, the separation of the family of Aaron for the priesthood, the separation of the Nazarites for a life of special strictness. Then, above all, there was the life of separation which marked off every Jew from the Gentiles as he obeyed the requirements of the Jewish law. So, again, in the Church there are different forms of separation. I. To mention the highest of all, THERE IS THE TO WHAT WE CALL . There are those to whom the voice comes which has found its expression in the 45th Psalm, verses 10 and 11. There is a state of life created by Christ in His Church, to which men and women are attracted to follow Him in poverty, in chastity, and in obedience; and of all forms of separation, that of the religious life is the most intense in its expression. II. Then, again, THERE IS THE OF . I want to mention three especially. 1. First of all, come family ties. Always think highly of the family. There is no sphere in life in which woman can minister better, in which she can do greater work for God, for the Church, and for those for whom Christ lived and died, than within the limits of the home. 2. Then there are those who are called aside by sickness, those whom God in His wonderful way leads by constrainings that must be submitted to, to a separation not only from the world outside, but sometimes even from the family within. As the world would say, they are apparently useless for life. But Do; they are led by God within the veil. Like the priest of Israel who twice daily entered into the Holy Place, and stood by the alter of incense alone and offered its sweet savour to God; so these are led by God by a wonderful separation to do a higher work than that of ministering, and that is the work of intercession. 3. Then, again, I cannot help thinking that there is a third way in which God separates some in His providential leadings, and that is by a retiring disposition. I do not for a moment say that you ought to give way to that self-consciousness which to many makes intercourse with the world one long agony. But there are many of you who go through life sorely weighted by that shyness, that self-consciousness, which makes you always think that nobody cares for you. It may be that even this temperament is a revelation of the will of God for you, and that by it he has separated you from much social joy and from many opportunities of exercising visibly holy influence, in order that you may be numbered with that hidden band whose ministry is the secret ministry of intercession rather than the ministry of open work. And, believe me, all these family ties, all these providential visitations of sickness and of temperament, are separations created by God, to which it is our wisdom, as it is our duty, to be submissive and obedient. III. Then, again, THERE IS THE OF TO THE INNER OF THE SPIRIT, “ We are not under the law, but under grace.” Many, we know, would like to have a definite law telling them what they may do and what they may not. You may go to a concert, but not to a theatre, you may ,go to a dinner party, but not to a ball--everything put down as clear as it can be. And we know that in former days Puritanism did attempt something of the kind; but it ended in failure, as it was bound to do. For we have not simply to deal with abstract laws, but we have to deal with individual characters. Cannot you see how it may be harmful for one to go where to another it would not only be not harmful, but positively helpful. So, outside the great Moral Law, God does not lay down any hard and fast rule, He does not legislate for our amusements. He put us under the guidance of the Spirit. Some people go with a clear conscience where others cannot go but with a guilty conscience. The great law of Christian life here is this--always be true to conscience; never allow yourself to do what you believe to be contrary to God’ s Will for you, but do not limit another Christian’ s liberty by your own rule of conduct or your own conviction as to what is lawful or expedient. Ah! be sure of it, separation will always mark off those whose lives are ruled by principle where lives are generally ruled by passion. What is the great principle that rules conduct in the world? Is it not undisciplined desire? That is the one great thing men live for--to gratify desire. But when Christ really comes into the heart the pain of pains is to grieve Him, and the joy of joys is to please Him, because we love Him. In no mere metaphorical language, we really love Him, and to give Him joy is our joy. How can we henceforth go out into the world and deny Him, and not rather there own Him gladly, by proved obedience to His manifested will? Last of all, love separates in yet another way. Love melts. It first renews, and then inspires, and then it melts. It has often happened even in the love of this world, that intercourse has begun with revulsion, but then love came in after a time, and the one who has been misunderstood is seen as she really is; and then comes grief for all the past, and with that grief comes of necessity the desire for reparation, the ready confession of wrong-doling and full purpose of amendment of life. And so it is with us. We loved not God, we knew not what He was; and then came a revelation of Him in Christ, and then the free gift of His Spirit in our hearts brings upon us a deep grief. I grieve that I should have sinned against a love so great, so long enduring--this recognized love of God melts me down into contrition, it makes me hate all my past life, until continuance in it is an impossibility, it brings me to his feet in confession, it raises me to go forth and show my sorrow for a life conformed to the world in the dead past by separation from the world in the living present. Such is the first thought that we have to notice. The life of a Christian is a life of separation because it is a life lived in the power of the love of God. (Canon Body.) The miraculous conception I. THE OF THE AS AN ARTICLE OF THE FAITH. It is evidently the foundation of the whole distinction between the character of Christ in the condition of a man and that of any other prophet. Had the conception of Jesus been in the natural way, His intercourse with the Deity could have been of no other kind than the nature of any other man might have equally admitted; than the prophets enjoyed, when their minds were enlightened by the extraordinary influence of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Scriptures speak a very different language: they tell us, that “ the same God who spake in times past to the fathers by the prophets, hath in these latter days spoken unto us by His Son;” evidently establishing a distinction of Christianity from preceding revelations, upon a distinction between the two characters of a prophet of God, and of God’ s Son. Moses bore to Jesus, as we are told, the humble relation of a servant to a son. And lest the superiority on the side of the Son should be deemed a mere superiority of the office to which He was appointed, we are told that the Son is “ higher than the angels; being the effulgence of God’ s glory, the express image of His person; “ the God whose throne is for ever and ever, the sceptre of whose kingdom is a sceptre of righteousness.” And this high dignity of the Son is alleged as a motive for religious obedience to His commands, and for reliance on His promises. It is this, indeed, which gives such authority to His precepts, and such certainty to His whole doctrine, as render faith in Him the first duty of religion. But we need not go so high as to the Divine nature of our Lord to evince the necessity of His miraculous conception. It was necessary to the scheme of redemption, by the Redeemer’ s offering of Himself as an expiatory sacrifice, that the manner of His conception should be such that He should in no degree partake of the natural pollution of the fallen race whose guilt He came to atone, nor be included in the general condemnation of Adam’ s progeny. On the other hand, it were not difficult to show that the miraculous conception, once admitted, naturally brings up after it the great doctrines of the atonement and the incarnation. The miraculous conception of our Lord evidently implies some higher purpose of His coming than the mere business of a teacher. The business of a teacher might have been performed by a mere man enlightened by the prophetic spirit. II. Having seen the importance of the doctrine of the miraculous conception as an article of our faith, let us, in the next place, consider THE OF THE BY WHICH THE FACT IS . We have for it the express testimony of two out of the four evangelists,--of St. Matthew, whose Gospel was published in Judea within a few years after our Lord’ s Ascension; and of St. Luke, whose narrative was composed (as may be collected from the author’ s short preface) to prevent the mischief that was to be apprehended from some pretended histories of our Saviour’ s life, in which the truth was probably blended with many legendary tales. It is very remarkable, that the fact of the miraculous conception should be found in the first of the four Gospels,--written at a time when many of the near relations of the holy family must have been living, by whom the story, had it been false, had been easily confuted; that it should be found again in St. Luke’ s Gospel, written for the peculiar use of the converted Gentiles, and for the express purpose of furnishing a summary of authentic facts, and of suppressing spurious narrations. Was it not ordered by some peculiar providence of God, that the two great branches of the primitive Church, the Hebrew congregations for which St. Matthew wrote, and the Greek congregations for which St. Luke wrote, should find an express record of the miraculous conception each in its proper Gospel? Or if we consider the testimony of the writers simply as historians of the times in which they lived, without regard to their inspiration, which is not admitted by the adversary,--were not Matthew and Luke--Matthew, one of the twelve apostles of our Lord, and Luke, the companion of St. Paul--competent to examine the evidence of the facts which they have recorded? Is it likely that they have recorded facts upon the credit of a vague report, without examination? (Bishop Horsley.) The difficulty of Mary’ s situation It is not, commonly, sufficiently seen what an advance these words are upon the angel’ s previous announcement, and how simply appalling they must have sounded to the trembling listener. There had been nothing as yet which suggested a single step beyond the ordinary course of nature, and mothers are proverbially capable of believing in any the most exalted future for their children; but now words had been spoken which proposed to change the whole tenor of her life and being, and demanded little short of an agony of faith. Nay! may she acquiesce without sin? Her betrothal--what can it mean?--is to be ignored, and her child is to recognize no earthly father. What will the world say, that little world--all the more terrible because it is so little--of society in Nazareth? And how shall she break it to Joseph? And, then, she may remember some dreadful story she has overheard her elders tell in low, stern tones; how some betrothed maiden had been suspected of what she herself was now called upon to brave, and how there had been a trial, and she had been pronounced guilty; and then they had brought her out to the door of her father’ s house, and the men of her city had stoned her to death: the only way, they said, of putting away evil from among them. And she was conscious that she must brave all this, practically, alone; there was no prophet, in her case, who would make himself responsible for her integrity, and explain it all to the people, and give them a sign, and convince them that it was all from God. The angel there before her might be very real to her, but when he has disappeared and left her--people do not very readily believe in angels’ visits to their neighbours; will she ever be quite sure herself? (E. T. Marshall, M. A.) Rome--her new dogma, and our duties First, then, WHAT IS THE ? It is, that the Blessed Virgin Mary was herself, by a miraculous interposition of God’ s providence, conceived without the stain of original sin. That the nature, therefore, with which she was born into this world was, from the first moment in which she began to exist, not that nature which all inherit who “ naturally are engendered of the offspring of Adam,” but another nature; free from that fault and corruption which, as an hereditary taint, infects every member of the fallen race who is naturally born into this world. II. And now let us see, secondly, THE UNDER WHICH THIS IS . They are those of the Church’ s anathema and the condemnation of God. Whosoever henceforth shall deny it is condemned as an heretic. “ Let no man,” says the decree, “ interfere with this our declaration, pronunciation, and definition, or oppose or contradict it with presumptuous rashness. If any should presume to assail it, let him know that he will incur the indignation of the Omnipotent God, and of His blessed apostles Peter and Paul.” III. Thirdly, let us consider OUR REASONS FOR TO THIS . First, then, we object to it as the unlawful addition of a new article to the Creed. And here, first, we must establish that it is such an addition. There can be no mistake as to this matter. Before the promulgating of this decree, any one within the Roman communion might, as she teaches, deny, with St. Bernard and St. Augustine, the doctrine of the immaculate conception of the virgin and be saved; since that 8th of December, whosoever denies it must be lost. It is, therefore, on their showing, anew and necessary article of a Christian man’ s faith. Every lawful addition then to the Creed must be made in accordance with these conditions. And now, if we try this newly-propounded article by these conditions, we shall be able to prove its unlawfulness. For, first, it lacks the condition of the assent of the whole body of the faithful. It is assented to neither by the Eastern, nor by our own branch, of the universal Church. It is true that this argument will not weigh with Rome, because, after the exact pattern of the old Donatist schismatics, she claims to be exclusively THE catholic body, and makes, as they did, communion with herself the one condition of communion with her Lord. But to all beyond these comparatively narrow limits, this argument against her intrusive article is of itself unanswerable. But next it falls under the same condemnation, because it is not the old truth held from the beginning, but a new proposition, which was not received by the primitive Church. To prove this, we need but to compare a few of the plainest facts of history with the very words of the decree by which this dogma has been now promulgated. “ The Church,” it declares, “ has never ceased to lay down this doctrine, and to cherish and to illustrate it continually by numerous proofs, and more and more daily by splendid facts. For the Church has most clearly pointed out this doctrine, when she did not hesitate to propose the conception of the Virgin for the public devotion and veneration of the faithful. By which illustrious act she pointed out the conception of the Virgin as singular, wonderful, and very far removed from the origins of the rest of mankind, and to be venerated as entirely holy; since the Church celebrates festival-days only of the saints.” Here, then, we have (1) an admission that, for the validity of the decree, it must be possible to assert that it is the ancient truth which it enacts; and next (2) the rest pretended proof which can be given that the doctrine was thus held of old. From what remote antiquity then is this proof drawn? The answer is well worthy of notice. The earliest date which the Pope can give for any declaration of the dogma, is that of the “ illustrious act by which the Roman Church proposed the conception of the virgin for the public devotion of the faithful.” And when that “ act” was wrought we may learn from a decree of Alexander VIIth, the earliest of his predecessors whom the Pope dares to quote by name, as having “ protected and defended the conception as the true object of devotion.” For this decree informs us, that “ this pious, devout., add laudable institution emanated from our predecessor Sixtus the IVth.” Now Sixtus IVth succeeded to the papacy almost at the close of the fifteenth century; so that this is the earliest act which the Pope can allege to prove his proposition, that “ the Church has never ceased to lay down this doctrine.” But even this is not all; since we cannot fully estimate the falsehood of this reference until we compare it with the decree itself. For this, so far from implying, even at that late period, the implicit holding of the doctrine which is here insinuated, actually provides a special prohibition to guard against any being led by the fact of the festival to condemn those who deny the immaculate conception, “ because the matter has not been decided by the Apostolic See.” Of so late a growth is this doctrine in the Roman communion itself, and so signally does this its novelty condemn its promulgation as an article of faith. We are able to disprove by positive evidence the only other conceivable suggestion by which it could be justified, namely, that though not enunciated sooner, yet that within the bosom of the Church the doctrine was held implicitly from early times. For in answer to this, we assert not only that there is no evidence for it, but that the voice of catholic antiquity distinctly contradicts such a supposition. “ Of thee,” for instance, says one, speaking of our Lord’ s nativity, “ He took that which even for thee He paid. The mother of the Redeemer herself, otherwise than by redemption, is not loosed from the bond of that ancient sin.” “ He, therefore,” says the great Augustine, “ alone who was at once made Man and remained God, had never any sin, nor took a flesh of sin, although tie came from a maternal flesh of sin. For that of flesh which He took He either purified to take it, or in the taking purified it;” and so say all their own greatest authorities. Hear the judgment on this point of one of their bishops, by no means the least learned of their canonists:--“ That the Blessed Virgin,” says Melchior Canus, “ was entirely free from original sin, is nowhere held in Holy Scripture, taken in its literal sense; but on the other hand, in them is delivered the general law which includes all the sons of Adam without any exception. Nor can it be said that this teaching descended to the Church through the tradition of the apostles, since such traditions have come down to us only through those ancient and holy writers who succeeded the apostles. But it is evident that those ancient writers had not received it from those before them … All the saints who have mentioned this matter have with one mouth asserted that the Virgin Mary was conceived in original sin. This St. Ambrose lays down, this St. Augustine repeatedly; this St. Chrysostom, this Eusebius Emissenus, this Remigius and Maximus, this Beds and Anselm affirm; this St. Bernard and Erhardus, bishop and martyr, with a multitude besides: this doctrine none of the saints have contravened.” Neither implicitly, then, nor in open declaration, has this dogma been a doctrine of the Church of old. IV. But once more, and above all; since the canon of Holy Scripture was complete, No OF COULD EVER BE IN THE CREEDS, WHICH COULD NOT BE SHOWN TO ACCORD WITH THAT WRITTEN WORD OF GOD. And when tested by this rule, the unlawfulness of this attempt will be most clearly proved. For not only is there no passage which can be alleged as even tending to prove it, but against it stand arrayed the clearest sentences of Holy Writ. “ For,” says St. Paul, after examining the case alike of those without the law, as the heathen, or under the law, as the mother of Christ; “ For there is no difference, for all have sinned” --and therefore Mary--“ and come short of the glory of God; being justified,” not by immaculate conception, but “ freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.” And again, “ There is none righteous, no, not one.” But next V. we object, not only to any introduction of a new dogma, but we object also in particular to this as, to say the least, HAVING DIRECT TO HERESY. For it is no mere speculation; it is full of deadly consequences. For, first, if in the course of the Divine process for working out our salvation, our fallen nature was pure from spot of sin in any one before that in the person of Jesus Christ our Lord it was through the operation of the Holy Ghost, sanctified wholly by the union of His Godhead with it, then is that one, and not He, the first fountain of new life to our corrupted race. This teaching, therefore, points us not to Christ, but to Mary, as the wellhead of our restored humanity; and thus does it directly shake the great doctrine of the incarnation. And then, further, if that nature which He thus took in the womb of His virgin mother was not that which she, like others, inherited from Adam, but one made by God’ s creative power to exist under new conditions of original purity, how can we say that He indeed took from her our very nature? Then was that quarry whence was dug that flesh which He united to His Godhead, not of our fallen, but of a new and different, nature; and then is His perfect brotherhood with us destroyed. And yet once more: this last conclusion leads us to another reason why, in God’ s name, we protest against this dogma. For it is not merely accidentally that it thus endangers our faith in the true incarnation of our Lord, and points our eyes from Him to His mother as the medium between God and us; but this dangerous delusion is a part, and the crowning part, of a whole system which really places on the Mediator’ s throne the virgin mother instead of the incarnate Son. For this is the grand characteristic of the whole Roman system of Mariolatrous imposture. It does confer upon the Virgin Mary the Mediator’ s office. The whole system of Rome does make the Virgin Mother the special mediator between God and man. It teaches sinners to look to her as more tender, more merciful, more full of pity, more able to sympathize with their infirmities, than is that true High-priest, who is such as “ became us,” because He is fitted by the perfect holiness, and yet true brotherhood with us, of the nature He assumed, “ to have compassion upon the ignorant, and upon them that are out of the way.” Amongst all its defacement of the truth of Christ, this is perhaps the plainest and one of the most hideous features of Roman superstition. VI. Lastly, brethren, suffer me to lay before you SOME OF THE DUTIES WHICH, AS IT SEEMS TO ME, ARE UPON US BY THIS SAD OF DEEP WITHIN THE ROMAN CHURCH. 1. The first is that which, however inadequately, I have felt bound to attempt this day to discharge. It is to protest anew against this monstrous effort to corrupt, by man’ s additions, the revealed truth of God. 2. Next, surely it is our duty, with all sadness of soul, to make on behalf of those who have so deeply fallen, our humble intercessions with our long-suffering Lord. 3. Again, the sight of this evil surely enforces upon us another duty. For the sake of truth and for the love of souls, we, whose rule of faith is God’ s Word, and whose interpreter of Scripture is true catholic consent, are bound to hold faster than ever to these our real principles. 4. But we have yet another duty, as we contemplate this fearful spectacle; we have to separate ourselves from its evil. (Bishop Samuel Wilberforce.) Luke 1:37 Nothing shall be impossible God’ s omnipotence It certainly is not possible for us to be in a position where omnipotence cannot assist us. God hath servants everywhere; and, where we think He has none, His word can create a multitude. There are “ treasures hid in the sand,” and the Lord’ s chosen shall eat thereof. (C. H.Spurgeon.) The scorn of impossibility It is not a lucky word, this same impossible: no good comes of those who have it so often in their mouth. Who is he that says always, There is a lion in the way? Sluggard, thou must slay the lion, then; the way has to be travelled. In art, in practice, innumerable critics will demonstrate that most things are henceforth impossible; that we are got, once for all, into the region of perennial commonplace, and must contentedly continue there. Let such critics demonstrate; it is the nature of them: what harm is in it? Poetry once demonstrated to be impossible, arises the Burns, arises the Goethe. Unheroic commonplace being now clearly all we have to look for, comes Napoleon, comes the conquest of the world. It was proved by fluxionary calculus, that steamships could never get across from the farthest point of Ireland to the nearest of Newfoundland: impelling force, resisting force, maximum here, minimum there, by law of Nature and geometric demonstration. What could be done? The Great Eastern could weigh anchor from Bristol Port; that could be done. The Great Eastern, bounding safe through the gullets of the Hudson, threw her cable out on the capstan of New York, and left our still moist-paper demonstration to dry itself at leisure. “Impossible” he, cried Mirabeau, “ ne me dites jamais ce bete de mot” (Never name to me that blockhead of a word). (Thomas Carlyle.) Luke 1:38 Behold the handmaid of the Lord Mary’ s quiet acceptance of greatness Nothing impresses us more than the calmness with which, after the first trouble was past, the virgin received the message of the angel. She was not dazzled nor excited by her glorious future. She was not touched by any vanity. “ Behold the handmaid of the Lord.” In nothing more than in this is the simple greatness of her character displayed. What was the reason of this? It was that the thought of God’ s presence with her destroyed all thought of self. She could not think of her greatness otherwise than as bestowed by God. “ He that is mighty hath magnified me.” She could not feel the flutter of vanity. It died in the thought of the glorious salvation which was coming to her country and the world. She was nothing; God was all. Do you want a cure for that false humility, that mock modesty, which says, “ I am not worthy,” and trumpets its denial till all the world knows that an honour has been offered; which, while it says with the lips, “ It is too great for me,” feels all the time in the heart that self-consciousness of merit which betrays itself in the affected walk and the showy humility? Would you be free from this folly? Learn Mary’ s secret. Feel that God is all; that, whether He makes you great, or leaves you unknown, it is the best for you, because it is His work. Do you want a cure for that unhappy, restless vanity, ever afraid, yet ever seeking to push itself forward; ever shy, yet ever trembling on the verge of impertinence; which shows itself to inferiors in rank in a bustling assumption of superiority which suspects it is not superior, and to superiors in rank by an inquietude, an ignorance of when to speak and when to be silent, sometimes by a fawning submission, sometimes by an intrusive self-assertion? Learn Mary’ s secret. Feel that you are the child of God, not the servant or the master of any man, but the servant of Christ, who was the servant of all. Vain! What have any of us to be vain of? Rank? wealth? beauty? pomp of household? dress? splendour of appearance? A few years, and we are lying in the chill earth of the churchyard; our eye dead to admiration, our ear to praise; and the world--whose smile we forfeited eternal life to court--regrets us for an hour, and then forgets. And that is human life! No; it is the most miserable travesty of it. We stand in the presence of God. What are all the adventitious advantages of rank or wealth to Him, or to us in Him? Only the tarnished spangles, the tinsel crowns, the false diamonds, which are the properties of this petty theatre which we call the world. Once be able to say in your heart, “ behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me as He will,” and vanity and all its foolish fluttering tribe of small victories over others, of pushing meannesses, of restless desires, of little ostentations, will abandon your heart for ever. The true greatness, wealth, nobility, is to be at one in character with the everlasting goodness, truth, and love of God; to be great with the magnanimity of Christ, to be rich in all the eternal virtues, to be noble among the aristocracy of the best men. He who possesses these can never be vain, and the way to possess them is the Virgin’ s way--to be the servant of God, to do His will. (Stopford A. Brooke, M. A.) Ready acquiescence in God’ s will How fit was her womb to conceive the flesh of the Son of God, by the power of the Spirit of God, whose breast had so soon, by the power of the same Spirit, conceived an assent to the will of God! and now, of a handmaid of God, she is advanced to the mother of God. No sooner hath she said, “ Be it done,” than it is done; the Holy Ghost overshadows her, and forms her Saviour in her own body. (Bishop Hall.) Mary’ s answer exhibits 1. Genuine humility, with joyful faith. 2. Quiet resignation, with active zeal. 3. Faithful love, with unwavering heroism. (Van Doren.) Reasons for submission to the will of God I. THE OF GOD. It is that of a Father. Whatever we have, it is God’ s more than ours. II. THE AND JUSTICE OF GOD. III. THE MERCY AND OF GOD. IV. THE ALL- OF GOD. V. THE OF GOD. (D. Beaumont.) The call of God It was the answer of profound and humble obedience to the greatest call ever addressed from heaven to a mortal creature. Sudden, undreamt of, overwhelming--interrupting in the most startling manner the daily curse of an obscure human life, breaking in on its privacy, and laying on it the most awful of charges--it was a call to prepare for being the instrument of the final and complete accomplishment of God’ s highest words and most amazing work. It was a call to be the last link in a chain which, beginning from God Himself, and composed of that august line of chosen souls who in all ages had carried forward His purpose and His promise, was to end in man brought at last to the utmost and most inexpressible closeness unto God--the human mother of the Eternal Son. It was a call to such a pinnacle of unearthly and unapproachable greatness that the consequences involved in it, and the price which it might exact, must have confounded and baffled all anticipation and forethought. What might have to come before the glory, who could conjecture? What might she not have to be, to endure, to surrender, to look forward to, who in a moment learned, in the depth of her obscurity, that she had been chosen, and was called out of all mankind, to be the mother of the “ Son of the Highest,” the “ Son of God,” the “ Christ.” It is idle, it is profane to attempt to imagine the mind and soul of a human being like ourselves at such a moment. In its sudden translation and lifting up out of all the ordinary conditions of human life, in the tides of honour and rapture, of crushing shame and consciousness of the Divine election, of possible sacrifice and certain triumph, it could be like nothing that man has ever gone through. But whatever passed before the thought of that blessed one while the angel’ s words were setting before her the lot to which she had been appointed, and the place she was to fill in the eternal history, her instant expression of character was that of absolute self-surrender to all that she was called to--of perfect readiness for all that might be required of her. “ Behold the handmaid of the Lord, &c.” (Dean Church.) When Mary uttered these words of sweet and humble sublimity, she at once received the rankling sword-thrust into her soul, and steeped her soul in a balm that healed, and more than healed all possible sword-thrusts. (Professor Warfield.) The handmaid of the Lord I. Let your attention be called to THE GRAND EVENT HERE AND MADE KNOWN. It is clear that He who was to be a perfect sacrifice must have a purer origin than fallen man; supernatural. “ The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee,” &c. II. MARY’ S ANSWER TO THIS . “ Behold the handmaid,” &c. 1. That this obedient saint was using the language and expressing the sentiments of God’ s people in all ages. The title of Moses was “ the servant of God” (Daniel 6:20; Psalms 116:16). Ready obedience. 2. We are not less bound to the service of God under the gospel; the titles of servants and handmaids do as much befit us, as they did the people of old. St. Paul and St. James style themselves “ servants of God.” 3. A word to those who can say, “ Whose I am, and whom I serve.” This is your world of trial, and you may expect difficulties to draw you aside. The Master’ s rule is best found in His word, “ Be it unto me according to Thy word.” Let us receive with humility and gratitude the entire Word of God. With what delight must the angel have received Mary’ s pious answer to his communication: and when he returned and told it in the court of heaven, there would be joy in the presence of the rest of the angels of God: so when your hearts respond to the messengers of grace. (J. Slade, M. A.) Blessedness of resignation I have at times caught a glimpse of the comfort which it yields to the spirit when I merge my will into God’ s will, when I resolve to have no will of my own separate from God. I feel quite assured that this renunciation of self and entire devotion to God’ s service would give a simplicity and grandeur to my existence; would throw an unclouded sunshine over all my ways; would raise me above the cares and provocations of this life; would enhance even my sensible gratifications, and superadd those gratifications of a higher order, which constitute the main and essential blessedness of heaven. O, my God, may it be thus with me! (Dr. Chalmers.) The life of consecration As Mary uttered this word, she laid herself upon God’ s altar in absolute abandonment to God’ s will, that He might do in her, and through her, whatever pleased Him. I. If we consider the THAT AND LED UP TO THIS GREAT , we shall see, in Gabriel’ s conversation with her, three arresting things. 1. Gabriel made clear to her what her vocation was. This is the first condition of a rightly lived life--it must be lived in obedience to the recognition of the vocation of God. Each of us has been created for a definite end, and to fill a special sphere in life. 2. Gabriel’ s converse with Mary revealed also the power in which that vocation was to be realized. She must abandon herself to the power of the Holy Ghost. 3. Gabriel indicated also the condition under which alone the Divine vocation could be realized, and that was by the consent of her own will. God could not take possession of Mary without her free response to His call. II. THE LIFE OF IS OF NOT SIMPLY A LIFE OF FROM THE WORLD, BUT A LIFE OF TO GOD. 1. If consecration to God is the condition of a rightly-lived life, since it is an action, it is an action which must take place at some time in our lives. It must be definitely entered into. 2. If this life of consecration is one which we definitely enter into, it must be continuously persevered in. You cannot consecrate yourself in a moment, so as to secure perseverance in a consecrated life. We can only live the consecrated life when, having entered into it by an act of self-surrender, we live in obedience to consecrating grace. 3. The life of consecration must be lived in a God-assigned sphere. If Mary had turned aside from the vocation of God, and with all possible zeal had sought to serve Him elsewhere, and in other spheres than He had appointed, her life would have been a life, not of consecration to God, but one of self-pleasing. For you must remember this, that it is quite possible for a religious life to be a self-pleasing life. We may be apparently leading the most heroic lives of self-sacrifice, and, after all, our lives may be lives of self-pleasing all the time, for they are lived in a self-chosen sphere; and the question which every one who seeks to be consecrated to God must ask himself is this--Lord, where wouldest Thou have me to be? And then--Lord, what wouldest Thou have me to do? And then--Lord, what wouldest Thou have me suffer? We must be where God would have us be, we must do what God would have us do, we must suffer what God would have us suffer, if our life is to be consecrated to God, and not dedicated to self. It is so important that we should remember that all right spheres in life are God-assigned. God calls one man to the priesthood, another to serve Him in lay life; God calls one to religion, another to secular life; God calls one to serve Him in married life, and another to serve Him in single life; God calls one to serve Him in wealth, and another in poverty; but the essential law of living a life of consecration to God is a hearty, generous embrace of the God-assigned sphere of life. Hearty, generous embrace--no mere resignation. What have we Christian people to do with resignation? We have to rise to something much higher than resignation; we have to leap forward in response to Divine vocation, because it is the vocation of God. III. THE OF TO THE DIVINE IS TO THE HOLY GHOST. What is God’ s great purpose in putting us in the sphere of life in which we are? I do not answer this question with dogmatic confidence, but my belief is that the primary purpose of God’ s dealing with His people is--formation of character; that we are placed in our spheres of work, wherever they may be, rather for what God means to do in us than what God means to do by us. I know quite well that wherever God places us He means to do a work by us; but--I repeat it--I believe that God’ s primary purposes of His dealings withus is not the work He does by us, but the work He wills to do in us. IV. IMPLIES PAINFUL . Mary would naturally shrink back from response to this vocation for two reasons. 1. The call might seem too high for her. How many there are who shrink back from living generous, Christian lives in the world because they think that, if they are really to make up their minds to live lives consecrated to Christ and of loyalty to God “ in among the haunts of men,” they will be taking up a position which is too hard and difficult for them to maintain. What underlies many a poor, miserable, dwarfed Christian life is this cowardice which is so common among us. It is undeniably the fact that whole surrender to God does of necessity involve painful consequences; for they who thus give themselves up to God are called to know the fellowship of Christ’ s suffering. It is quite true that consecration to God is going to Calvary. Unless we are prepared to know the fellowship of Christ’ s sufferings, we cannot really and truly say this second word of Mary’ s. 2. But there is another thing that would have made her shrink back from her vocation, and that was the suspicion and calumny that would follow upon her consecration. Ere long men were pointing at her with the finger of scorn, and even Joseph was thinking of putting her away. And one thing is certain--is it not?--that men who go out into the world to try to lead a godly life often find themselves exposed to its calumny. Its hatred of goodness will make it only too ready to believe any scandalous story that is spread abroad about any one who lives for God. It is a fear of the condemnation of the world which holds so many back from God. Yet Mary faced it all; though her response meant such awful nearness to God, though it involved such great sacrifice as to bring upon her intense shame, boldly she said, “ Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to Thy word.” IN , let me point out how that this life of consecration is the fruit of love. It is love that consecrates. Love is based on gratitude, and Mary recognized the-fact gratefully that God had the right to claim her to use as He willed. “ Behold the handmaid,--the slave of the Lord--be it unto me according to Thy word.” “ O God, I am Thine handmaid, Thy slave; Thy right over me is absolute; I cannot for a moment refuse to obey Thy voice.” And so it is. God has upon us a threefold claim, each springing from an act of love. 1. The first is the claim of creation. Here we are in God’ s world not of our own will, but of His will. 2. But God has a second claim upon us, and that is the claim of redemption. The eternal Christ, the Son of God, came into the world, became the Child of Mary, and passed to the cross. He gave Himself--every portion of Himself--upon the tree for us--His mind, His heart, His will, each member of His sacred body. Behold it quivering upon the cross! Why? That He might buy us for His own. 3. But there is one other reason, and that is gratitude for regeneration. O mystery of mysteries! To think that you and I, sin-stricken as we are, should not only have been redeemed, but that we should have been “ married to the Lord!” To think that He who in His humanity is the fairest of God’ s creation, should have stooped from the height of His Father’ s throne to the deep depths of our fallen state, and not simply have brought us forgiveness, but that He should have embraced us in His arms, and brought us to His sacred heart, and made us with Him one--bone of His bone and flesh of His flesh! To think of this, and all this as within the bounds of truth! Grasp the mystery of regeneration, and what follows? Consecration to God, abandonment to Christ. As the wife consecrates herself to her husband, so the regenerate to the great Bridegroom of the Church. Whole surrender is my duty; whatever He asks, that I yield. Creation, redemption, regeneration--revelation after revelation of God’ s love, kindle in my heart gratitude, and then lead me to take myself wholly up to God’ s altar and lay myself down there a living sacrifice at God’ s feet, as I cry, “ Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to Thy word.” (Canon Body.) Luke 1:39-45 And Mary arose in those days and went into the hill country The home of Zacharias Juttah, an ancient priestly town, is held by the Greek Church to be the birthplace of St. John the Baptist, and as such it is the goal of pilgrimage to thousands of Greek Christians each year. Support to this view is believed to be found in the words of St. Luke, which, in our version, speak of the Virgin Mary as journeying “ into the hill country with haste, to a city of Judah.” This, it is held, should be “ to the town Judah “ or Juttah, since it would be vague in the extreme to speak merely of “ a city of Judah.” On this ground, so great authorities as Reland, Robinson, and Riehm think this place was actually the residence of Zacharias and Elisabeth, and the birthplace of the Baptist it is a large stone village, standing high on a ridge; but some of the population live in tents. Underground cisterns supply water, and on the south there are a few olive trees, but the hill and its neighbourhood are very stony, though the vine must in ancient times have been extensively cultivated, since rock-cut winepresses are found all round the village. There are, besides, some rock-cut tombs, which also date from antiquity. But, poor though the country looks and is, the population are very rich in flocks, the village owning, it is said, no fewer than seven thousand sheep, besides goats, cows, camels, horses, and donkeys. The hills everywhere are very rugged and stony, consisting of hard crystalline limestone; but the valleys, which are numerous, have good soil in them, some of them being especially fertile. The vineyards and olive plantations on the west, north, and south of Hebron--for the east side of the town has none--appeared like a great oasis in the desert, though the Negeb is very far from being a desert as things are judged in such a land as Palestine. (C. Geikie, D. D.) Went into the hill country: Mary’ s journey It will prove an interesting exercise to trace on the map the route which this Jewish maiden must have taken in going down across the plain of Esdraelon, from Nazareth southward. It was doubtless the same general path to which she had been accustomed, from her ordinary journeys to the Holy City, at the solemn annual feasts. But just now her mind was in a strange new frame of feeling. Each familiar locality, so crowded with history and devout reminiscences of her nation’ s annals, would, under these present circumstances, make on her imagination a far deeper impression than usual. We must remember this, for it gives help in the interpretation of her song. Out from under the shadows of western hills, she would come into full view of the whole country, quite across to Mount Carmel, on the desolate ridge of which Elijah defied and conquered the priests of Baal. Megiddo, where Josiah lay dying; Jezreel, where Ahab sinned; the brook Kishon, beside which Deborah sang, after Sisera was slain--these were close at her feet. Before long she would arrive at Shechem, and seem to hear the old burden of cursing and blessing echoing from Ebal and Gerizim. Perhaps she paused a moment beside Joseph’ s grave; perhaps she sat to rest, and quenched her thirst at Jacob’ s well. A little further down she would reach Jerusalem, “ beautiful on the sides of the north,” and catch glimpses of the golden-roofed temple shining in the sun. Diminutive Bethlehem next would have to be passed, and her tired feet would tread the lonely path that goes by Rachel’ s tomb. Her eyes would roam over the verdured fields where David tended his father’ s flocks, and caught the starry figures of the eighth and the nineteenth psalms. And while she lingered on such a spot, she would think of Ruth returning with Naomi after bidding Orpah farewell. Hard hills are those which now she would have to climb, before she could reach the cave of Machpelah, or discover the small houses of Hebron in the distance. Of this we have no detail. But it aids us much afterward to keep it in mind; for it shows how she went thinking all the way to her destination. We meet her first in the story in the presence of Elisabeth, dwelling, perhaps, almost beneath the shade of Abraham’ s oak in Mamre. (C. S. Robinson, D. D.) The power of sympathy The dialogue is brief; those two women talked together as only two women could talk who perfectly understood each other. Mary heard Elisabeth hay, “ Whence is this to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?” Her troubles had been so hard, her joys had been so great, and her silent heart had been so full of both of them, that her relief must have been sudden and overwhelming. When the sweet face of that pure, unmarried maiden saw in the joyous countenance of that incorruptible Jewish matron the sign that she would be welcomed as faultless and true, oh, in that supreme moment, she could answer only with a song, and pour forth her gratitude in nothing less than the inspired numbers of a New Testament psalm! (C. S. Robinson, D. D.) Religious intercourse When serious persons are met together, the example of Mary and Elisabeth teaches them how they ought to be employed. Let not the time be wasted on trifles: but needful and becoming attention being paid to the demands of courtesy and common life, let the concerns of religion occupy a prominent place in their conversation. Such intercourse is most acceptable to God, and will be most advantageous to yourselves. 1. It will be the means of your being better informed, for “ the lips of the wise increase knowledge.” 2. It will operate as a check on all that is evil, and as a stimulus to all that is good. 3. It will give an opportunity of comparing your experience, which will greatly encourage and edify you in the faith and obedience of the gospel. 4. It will elicit many a latent spark of affection and zeal. 5. It will support your mind under temptation, and steel your heart with resolution to act a decided part in life; for it will convince you and keep you in mind that there are some of the same sentiments with yourself, anxiously watching your conduct, and deeply concerned for your stability. Nor can you deem it a light matter that you will find those who will be safeguards to you in the time of prosperity, and will not forsake you in trouble. The hour of sorrow, sickness, dissolution, is drawing on apace--an hour in which worldly associates would withdraw, as conscious of their unfitness for such a scene; or, if they remained, would prove but miserable comforters; but an hour in which those who know and love the truth would delight to stand by you, to suggest comforting and edifying thoughts, and assist in cheering the last moments and smoothing the pillow of death. Seek the society of the pious, and you form a friendship which, although interrupted for a season by death, will be renewed with increased endearment, where infirmity no longer troubles, nor separation divides. (James Foote, M. A.) Mary’ s visit to Elisabeth The next step taken by Mary is in accordance with the calmest practical good sense, and displays an energy and a control over other minds which must have been uncommon. She resolves to visit her cousin Elisabeth in the mountain country. The place was supposed to be near Hebron, and involved a journey of some twenty miles through a rugged country. For a young maiden to find means of performing this journey, which involved attendance and protection, without telling the reason for which she resolved upon it, seems to show that Mary had that kind of character which inspires confidence, and leads those around her to feel that a thing is right and proper because she has determined it. (Harriet B. Stowe.) The subordination of personal joys Remarkable that Elisabeth allowed herself to be swallowed up in the greater icy of Mary. Did not felicitate herself, but pronounced the mother of her Lord blessed among women. Her ecstatic reference to her own babe is in marked consistency with the whole tone of her spirit. These were some of the real blessings of the advent of Jesus Christ. Before He was yet born the promise of His coming sent gladness into human hearts. The mother rejoiced, and her coming child seemed already to share His mother’ s ecstasy. All this typical. The coming of Christ should always be associated with the creation of new and higher joys. The exclamation of Elisabeth shows how possible it is for all our tenderest interests and proudest hopes to be absorbed in noble Christian emotion. If ever a woman could be tempted to exalt her own comforts and expectations, so as to shut out from her view the condition of other people, Elisabeth was surely exposed to such a temptation. The case, however, was not one of each woman rejoicing in selfish anticipations of her own happiness; already there was a payment of homage when homage was the price of self-suppression--a beautiful proof this, that the work that was done in the case of Zacharias and Elisabeth was the work of the Holy Ghost. Probably there is no finer test of the religiousness of our spirit than the subordination of our personal joys to the gladness which is demanded by the presence and claims of Jesus Christ. (Dr. Parker.) The speech of Elisabeth must be regarded as an inspired speech St. Luke seems to assert as much when he says that she was “ filled with the Holy Ghost,” and that she spake out with a loud voice and described the blessed virgin as the mother of her Lord. And observe that in this inspired speech Elisabeth addresses Mary in the very phrase which the angel had already used, “ Blessed,” &c. Observe also the manner in which Elisabeth speaks of the blessed virgin’ s faith. There is a peculiar emphasis in the phrase, “ Blessed is she that believed.” It was her faith, in the one great instance in which it was tried, which made her, as it were, a fellow-worker with God, and gave her the high honour and privilege of being something more than a mere passive instrument in the great work of human redemption. (Bishop Goodwin.) Happiness communicated doubles itself The blessed maid, whom vigour of age had more fitted for the way, hastens her journey into the hill-country to visit that gracious matron whom God had made a sign of her miraculous conception. Only the meeting of saints in heaven can parallel the meeting of these two cousins: the two wonders of the world are met under one roof, and congratulate their mutual happiness. When we have Christ spiritually conceived within us, we cannot be quiet till we have imparted out” joy. (Bishop Hall.) Blest earth, whereon she trod, Put forth your fragrance sweet: Blest hills that felt her feet, The mother with her God. More blest ye friends, whose guest She now doth silence break, Of heavenly things to speak, And where her footsteps rest. (Parisian Breviary.) Luke 1:45 And blessed is she that believeth,-- Blessedness of firmly believing Doubting nothing! That is the secret of liberty, of efficiency, of success in every work which is undertaken by men: a confidence in the practicability, in the value of the work, in the Divine authority which imposes it upon us as an obligatory work, and in the Divine providence and power which will bring it to a successful performance. It is the secret of success, of enthusiasm in any secular enterprise. You see it in the inventor who is perfectly certain of the combination of instruments by which he is to accomplish a certain result--a result which is of value and importance to mankind. Nothing can hinder his endeavour, nothing can obscure or damp his enthusiasm, because he is certain of ultimate success. You see it in the teacher who knows that he has a truth to communicate to men, a truth which it is of importance to them to apprehend and to understand, who is not groping among uncertainties as he speaks it, who is not vaguely feeling after conjectures while he utters it, who is able to affirm it to others, because he has it affirmed in his own intelligent and intuitive spirit--the principle which he is declaring to the world. Kepler said: “ God has waited so many centuries for an observer of the heavens, I can wait for years for an interpreter of those observations.” And every man who as certainly knew that he had apprehended truth and had it conveyed to others has been reinforced, inspired by this confidence, and gone to his work doubting nothing. See it in the soldier who knows, because he knows the commander, that the order which has been given is wise, practicable, needful; that no life will be wasted which can be saved, and no endeavour commanded which is not indispensable to the great result. See it in the sailor who trusts his clock and his compass, and is absolutely certain that the sun, of which he takes the meridian observation, will not tell him a lie, but will point out exactly the point on the ocean where the ship at that moment is; and he goes on his course, after his observation, doubting nothing, knowing where he is as exactly as if the commerce of nations had built at that very spot a beacon and had labelled it in immense letters of light in all the languages of the world: “ This is at such a point on such a meridian.” He knows as certainly as he could know then, when he has caught the ray of the sun upon his instrument, where he is on the ocean, which to others seems pathless and intricate. Everywhere, then, this confidence is the condition of enthusiasm and of success, and in Christian enterprises, precisely as in secular enterprises, it is a confidence not merely in the usefulness of the work, but in the Divine authority which connects itself with that work, and the Divine care and the Divine affection, the Divine impulse which attend us in our endeavours to perform it. (R. Storrs.) Saving faith I. IN THE OF ITS NATURE. II. IN THE OF ITS OBJECTS. III. IN THE OF ITS GROUNDS. IV. IN THE OF ITS ACTS. V. IN THE OF ITS . “ Blessed is she that believeth; for there shall be a performance,” and only a performance when we believe. (William Dawson.) Trust in God Mary’ s faith, astounding in itself, the most supreme example probably of perfect trust in God and absolute self-devotion to Him that human flesh has ever given, was all the more striking to Elisabeth on account of its contrast with the unbelief of her own husband under a far less severe trial. No wonder that when Mary appeared before her spirit-illuminated eyes, she seemed the embodiment of Faith--that modest virgin, with clasped hands, whom Hermas saw in vision, though whom the elect of God are saved, and from whom spring all the Christian graces as fair daughters of a fair mother. Mary is thus, in Elisabeth’ s eyes, the most blessed of women, because the most faithful; and it suits well that the first psalm of the New Testament should take the form of a praise of the fundamental evangelical virtue. (Professor Warfield.) Luke 1:46-55 My soul doth magnify the Lord Mary’ s song Mary was on a visit when she expressed her joy in the language of this noble song. It were well if all our social intercourse were as useful to our hearts as this visit was to Mary. “ Iron sharpeneth iron; so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend.” Mary, full of faith, goes to see Elisabeth, who is also full of holy confidence, and the two are not long together before their faith mounts to full assurance, and their full assurance bursts forth in a torrent of sacred praise. This praise aroused their slumbering powers, and instead of two ordinary village women, we see before us two prophetesses and poetesses, upon whom the Spirit of God abundantly rested. When we meet with our kinsfolk and acquaintance, let it be our prayer to God that our communion may be not only pleasant, but profitable; that we may not merely pass away time and spend a pleasant hour, but may advance a day’ s march nearer to heaven, and acquire greater fitness for our eternal rest. I. MARY SINGS. 1. Her subject is a Saviour. She hails the incarnate God. 2. Her peculiar delight was that this Saviour was to be born of her. 3. The choice poem before us is a hymn of faith. No Saviour was yet born: nor had the Virgin any evidence as yet, such as carnal sense requires, that He would be. But faith has its music as well as sense--music of a diviner sort. If the viands on the table make men sing and dance, feelings of a more refined and ethereal nature can fill believers with a hallowed plentitude of delight. 4. Her lowliness does not make her stay her song; nay, it imports a sweeter note into it. The less worthy I am of His favours, the more sweetly will I sing of His grace. 5. The greatness of the promised blessing did not give her an argument for suspending her thankful strain. Although she appreciated the greatness of the favour, she did but rejoice the more heartily on that account. 6. The holiness of God did not damp the ardour of her joy. On the contrary, she exults in it. She weaves even that bright attribute into her song. 7. Mark how her strain gathers majesty as it proceeds. 8. She does not finish her song till she has reached the covenant--the softest pillow for an aching head, the best prop for a trembling spirit. II. SHE SINGS SWEETLY. 1. She praises her God right heartily. Evidently her soul is on fire. 2. Her praise is very joyful. 3. She sings confidently. 4. She sings with great familiarity. It is the song of one who draws very near to her God in loving intimacy. 5. While her song was all this, yet how very humble it was, and how full of gratitude. She wants a Saviour; she feels it; her soul rejoices because there is a Saviour for her. She does not talk as though she should commend herself to Him, but she hopes to stand accepted in the Beloved. Let us take care that our familiarity has always blended with it the lowliest prostration of spirit, when we remember that He is God over all, blessed for ever, and we are nothing but dust and ashes. He fills all things, and we are less than nothing and vanity. III. SHALL SHE SING ALONE? Yes, she must, if the only music we can bring is that of carnal delights and worldly pleasures. The joy of the table is too low for Mary; the joy of the feast and the family grovels when compared with hers. But shall she sing alone? Certainly not, if this day any of us, by simple trust in Jesus, can take Christ to be our own. If Christ be thine, there is no song on earth too high, too holy, for thee to sing; nay, there is no song which thrills from angelic lips, no note which thrills archangel’ s tongue, in which thou mayest not join. (C. H. Spurgeon.) My soul doth magnify the Lord The keynote of a choice sonnet. When your own heart is lifted up, then lift up the name of the Lord. Exalt Him when He exalts you. If you cannot magnify God, it is probably because you are magnifying yourself. May the Lord cut self down, and make nothing of you, and then you will make everything of Him. When you sink in your own estimation, God will rise in your esteem. I. HERE IS AN FOR ALL PEOPLE. All who know the Lord, and have been born into His family, may “ magnify “ Him. 1. It is an occupation which may be followed by all sorts of people. None are too humble or lowly to do this. 2. This occupation can be followed in all places. The occupation sanctifies the place. 3. It can be fitly performed in solitude. 4. It requires no money. 5. It does not require great talent. The soul may sing, although the voice cannot. 6. It is the grandest occupation that mortals can engage in. II. A REMEDY FOR SELF-. Mary had received a great promise. Nature would have bid her magnify herself; grace taught her to “ magnify the Lord.” Following the prompting of grace, she dealt a deathblow to the temptation to pride, and rendered praise where due. III. A FOR HOLY . This was evidently the overflow of a full soul. 1. Wonder. 2. Expectation. 3. Awe. 4. Humility. 5. Calm thought. Mary’ s utterance is full, many-sided, and natural, and yet most spiritual. It breathes the purest and the holiest emotions. IV. A REASON FOR . It Would be well to be wrapped up in this spirit with regard to everything. 1. Our own providential condition. 2. Our glances into futurity. 3. The salvation of our fellow-men. V. A GUIDE IN OUR . This will keep us right. (C. H. Spurgeon.) Rejoicing in God When Mary speaks here of her soul and her spirit, she means to describe exhaustively the whole inward immaterial being of man--its higher and its lower elements--the seat of reason and personality, as well as the seat of affection; that which we have in common with the lower animals, as well as that which distinguishes us from them as immortal beings. The whole inward being, she says, enters on this work of joyful praise--soul and spirit alike. And the reason is that the human soul is so constructed that contact, real contact, with God affords it the highest pleasure, of which such language as Mary’ s is the natural, the unexaggerated, expression. Without God, man, viewed on the highest side of his nature, is but a spent force--incomplete, inexplicable. With God, he attains the complement, the explanation, of his mysterious being. These words express-- I. THE WHICH MAN’ S REASON AT CONTACT WITH GOD. God satisfies some of the deepest yearnings of our intellectual nature, e.g1. The desire to find some common principle and comprehensive law explaining seeming irregularities. 2. The desire to know the real causes of things. II. THE WHICH GOD YIELDS TO THE OR . 1. The emotion of awe. God alone is great in Himself, distancing all possible competition. 2. The love of beauty. 3. Filial affection. III. TO THE . God supports and justifies conscience. He gives to conscience basis, firmness, consistency. He relieves its anxieties. He reconciles by a fuller revelation its questionings about Himself. (Canon Liddon.) True praise 1. Clear eye to estimate God’ s works. 2. A glad heart to rejoice in them. 3. A loosened tongue. (Van Doren.) I. Thankful joy. II. Humble joy. III. Hopeful joy. IV. God-glorifying joy. (Van Doren.) Religious joy Mary’ s praise is very joyful--“ My spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour.” The word in the Greek is a remarkable one. I believe it is the same word which is used in the passage, “ Rejoice ye in that day and leap for joy.” We used to have an old word in English which described a certain exulting dance, “ a galliard.” That word is supposed to have come from the Greek word here used. It was a sort of leaping dance; the old commentators call it a levalto. Mary, in effect, declares, “ My spirit shall dance like David before the ark, shall leap, shall spring, shall bound, shall rejoice in God my Saviour.” When we praise God, it ought not to be with dolorous and doleful notes. Some of my brethren praise God always on the minor key, or in the deep, deep bass; they cannot feel holy till they have the horrors. Why cannot some men worship God except with a long face? I know them by their very walk as they come to worship: what a dreary pace it is! How solemnly proper and funereal indeed! They do not understand David’ s Psalm-- “ Up to her courts with joys unknown, The sacred tribes repair.” No, they come up to their Father’ s house as if they were going to jail, and worship God on the Sunday as if it were the moat doleful day in the week. It is said of a certain Highlander, when the Highlanders were very pious, that he once went to Edinburgh, and when he came back again he said he had seen a dreadful sight on Sabbath, he had seen people at Edinburgh going to kirk with happy faces. He thought it wicked to look happy on Sunday; and that same notion exists in the minds of certain good people hereabouts; they fancy that, when the saints get together, they should sit down and have a little comfortable misery, and but little delight. In truth, moaning and pining is not the appointed way for worshipping God. We should take Mary as a pattern. All the year round I recommend her as an example to fainthearted and troubled ones. “ My spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour.” Cease from rejoicing in sensual things, and with sinful pleasures have no fellowship, for all such rejoicing is evil. But you cannot rejoice too much in the Lord. I believe that the fault with our public worship is that we are too sober, too cold, too formal. (C. H. Spurgeon.) The Magnificat--its structure and contents A majesty truly regal reigns throughout this canticle. Mary describes first her actual impressions (verses 46-48a): then she rises to the Divine fact which is the cause of them (verses 48b-50): she next comtemplates the development of the historical consequences contained in it (Luke 1:51-53); lastly, she celebrates the moral necessity of this fact as the accomplishment of God’ s ancient promises to His people (Luke 1:54-55). The tone of the first strophe has a sweet and calm solemnity. It becomes more animated in the second, in which Mary contemplates the work of the Most High. It attains its full height and energy in the third, as Mary contemplates the immense revolution of which this work is the beginning and cause. Her song drops down and returns to its nest in the fourth, which is, as it were, the amen of the canticle. This hymn is closely allied to that of the mother of Samuel (1 Samuel 2:1-36), and contains several sentences taken from the Book of Psalms. Is it, as some have maintained, destitute of all originality on this account? By no means. There is a very marked difference between Hannah’ s song of triumph and Mary’ s. While Mary celebrates her happiness with deep humility and holy restraint, Hannah surrenders herself completely to the feeling of personal triumph, in her very first words breaking forth into cries of indignation against her enemies. As to the borrowed Biblical phrases, Mary gives to these consecrated words an entirely new meaning and a higher application. The prophets frequently deal in this way with the words of their predecessors. By this means these organs of the Spirit exhibit the continuity end progress of the Divine work. Every young Israelite knew by heart the songs of Hannah, Deborah, and David; they sang them as they went up to the feasts at Jerusalem; and the singing of psalms was the daily accompaniment of the morning and evening sacrifice, as well as one of the essential observances of the Passover meal. (F. Godet, D. D.) The Magnificat--external characteristics It is worth much just in itself as a Christian hymn. 1. Begin with the poetry of it. It strikes us with wonder in these modern days that a peasant woman of Galilee should be able to chant in so exalted a strain. But we know “ a pure heart makes the best psalter.” And she was speaking out of the abundance of hers. Yet never was such an occasion, never was such an angelic preparation; never--surely never before--was such a theme! Israel’ s Messiah was on His way, God was about to manifest Himself on earth in the flesh! 2. Observe also the Israelitish aspect of the song. It would be easy to parallel almost every expression in Mary’ s poetry by an utterance very similar in the anthems of the temple service. The mechanical structure is not very difficult, for the Hebrew and Syrian languages are easily wrought into rhymeless verses. There is extant now a Gospel in Hebrew; those who can read it are interested in noting the idioms followed here in the Magnificat, The mind of this woman was filled with the old prophets’ imagery. Her whole thoughts were tinged with what she had studied and committed to memory. So this song has been exquisitely compared to what might have been expected from “ some ideal Puritan maiden,” whose mind was so imbued and saturated with the Scriptural forms of expression, that it would fall unconsciously into inspired phrases when she spoke. 3. Then observe the femininity of this song. No one but the queen of her sex could possibly have composed it. Mark the delicacy of turn in the sentences, the mingling of dignity with humility; the majesty, as sublime as Ezekiel’ s, and the tenderness, more gentle than John’ s. For this shows the mind and heart of just the one woman whom Elisabeth could call the “ Mother of her Lord.” (C. S. Robinson, D. D.) The Magnificat--internal characteristics 1. Mary’ s instant devotion. She does not pause to return Elisabeth’ s greeting; she dues net wait to pass back the congratulation; she seems to think only of God above. 2. Her evangelic faith. She felt the need of a Saviour, just as much as any one else. A great word this, Saviour. Here first it appears in the New Testament; the word which the heathen orator said afterward he found on a tomb that he passed on one of his journeys, “ Salvator, a new word, but very beautiful as it appears to me.” 3. Her personal humility. How sweetly she says, “ He hath regarded the low estate of His handmaiden.” What was this Galilean damsel, poor and lonely now, that she should have been singled out for so exalted a lot? There is in her whole demeanour, during this pathetic part of her history, an unusual poise and serenity. She was not even frightened or abashed by the angel; she meekly received his announcement, neither overcome nor unduly elated in her prospects. As she acquiesced then, she sings now. 4. Her lofty ambition. Her heart rises to its supreme elevation. “ From henceforth,” &c. She is glad with her whole heart that the chance is going to be given her to become a blessing. She is peerlessly ambitious, not to De rich, prospered, honoured, famous, but--to do good. 5. Her voluminous praise. Mary makes each Divine attribute in succession record God’ s glory in a new light. Holiness, grace, power, justice, beneficence. 6. Her magnificent patriotism. She passes almost unconsciously from God’ s attributes to God’ s people. The finest thing in the Magnificat is this adoring ascription of praise to God for what He had done for her country and her race. “ He hath holpen,” &c. (C. S. Robinson, D. D.) The Magnificat Mary’ s song of praise is-- 1. The climax of all the hymns of the old covenant. 2. The beginning of all the hymns of the new. (Van Oosterzee.) This hymn exhibits deep conviction of the reception of the highest favours combined with personal humility. (C. S. Robinson, D. D.) All the perfections of God glorified in the gift of the Saviour 1. Grace. 2. Power. 3. Holiness. 4. Mercy. 5. Justice. 6. Faithfulness. (C. S. Robinson, D. D.) Mary’ s canticle This is the first canticle, or song of praise, recorded in the New Testament, composed by the Blessed Virgin with unspeakable joy, for designing her to be the instrument of the conception and birth of the Saviour of the world. Observe-- 1. The manner of her praise. Her soul and spirit bear their part in the work of thanksgiving. As the sweetest music is made in the belly of the instrument, so the most delightful praise arises from the bottom of the heart. 2. The object of her praise. She does not magnify herself, but the Lord; yea, she does not rejoice so much in her Son as in her Saviour. (1) Thus she implicitly owns and confesses herself a sinner; for none need a Saviour but sinners. (2) By rejoicing in Christ as her Saviour, she declares how she values herself, rather by her spiritual relation to Christ as His member, than by her natural relation to Him as His mother. 3. Observe how she admires and magnifies God’ s peculiar favour towards herself, in casting an eye upon her poverty and lowly condition; that she, a poor, obscure maid, unknown to the world, should be looked upon with an eye of regard by Him who dwells in the highest heavens. As God magnified her, she magnifies Him. 4. She thankfully takes notice that it was not only a high honour, but a lasting honour, which was conferred upon her, “ All generations,” &c. She beholds an infinite, lasting honour prepared for her, as being the mother of a universal and everlasting Blessing, which all former ages had desired, and all succeeding ages should rejoice in, and proclaim her happy for being the instrument of. 5. Observe how she passes from the consideration of her personal privileges to the universal goodness of God. She declares the general providence of God towards all persons; His mercy to the pious, His justice on the proud, His bounty to the poor. Learn, hence, the excellency and advantageous usefulness of the grace of humility; how good it is to be meek and lowly in heart. This will render us lovely in God’ s eye; and though the world trample upon us, He will exalt us to the wonder of ourselves and the envy of our despisers. 6. Observe how she magnifies the spiritual grace of God in our redemption--“ He hath holpen His servant Israel,” i.e., blessed them with a Saviour, who lived in the faith, hope, and expectation of the promised Messiah; and this blessing she declares was-- (1) The result of great mercy; (2) the effect of His truth and faithfulness in His promises. (W. Burkitt, M. A.) The visit of Mary to Elisabeth In glancing at the Magnificat, observe, first, that it is marked by that peculiar characteristic of Hebrew poetry known as parallelism. Our rhythm is the rhythm of metre, our rhyme is the rhyme of sound. The Hebrew rhythm was the rhythm of clause or statement, the Hebrew rhyme was the rhyme of thought and sentiment; or, as Ewald beautifully expresses it, “ The rapid stroke as of alternate wings,” “ The heaving and sinking as of the troubled heart.” Hebrew poetry is as much nobler than the classic as rhyme of thought is nobler than rhyme of sound. When will our colleges teach Job, and David, and Isaiah, and Habakkuk, as well as Homer, and Virgil, and Dante, and Shakespeare? Again, observe the intensely Jewish character of the Magnificat, alike in its phraseology and in its reminiscences. Once more, observe how, in the holy strains of the Magnificat, the Old Testament glides into the New. Mary’ s cadences are the interlude between law and gospel--at once the finale to the old covenant and the overture to the new--and so linking Sinai and Calvary, temple and church, Moses and Jesus. Very beautiful is the picture, this mutual greeting of aged Elisabeth and youthful Mary; it is the emblem of the mutual greeting of type and antitype, of law and grace. Such is the story of the visitation. All deep feeling is essentially poetical. And as there is a profound relation between devotion and poetry, so there is a profound relation between devotion and music. Accordingly, music is an essential, vital part of public worship. “ Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; in all wisdom teaching and admonishing, one another with psalms, and hymns, and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts unto God” Colossians 3:16). But devotion is even more than a song, it is a life. And here even the deaf and dumb may sing, singing and making melody in their hearts to the Lord. Oh, how many spiritual Beethovens there are! There are in this loud, stunning tide Of human care and crime, With whom the melodies abide Of the everlasting chime; Who carry music in their heart Through dusky lane and wrangling mart, Plying their daily task with busier feet, Because their secret souls a holy strain repeat. What God is like our God, who giveth songs in the night, turning the raven’ s croak into the nightingale’ s warble! God be praised! there is such a thing as rhythm of life, an inward life-psalm, and so an outward--heaven the phone, earth the anti-phone. Our heavenly Father, Thy will be done, as in heaven so on earth! The real liturgy, after all, is the service of daily character. (G. D.Boardman.) The Magnificat Bible contains accounts of three remarkable women whose lips broke forth into a song of pious exultation and profound gratitude. Miriam (Exodus 15:20), Hannah (1 Samuel 2:1), and Mary, mindful of the honours and benedictions with which she is about to be crowned as the mother of the Messiah. It is a threefold expression of mercy. I. THIS SONG MARY’ S SENSE OF THE DIVINE MERCY SHOWN TO HER . II. THE SONG THE DIVINE MERCY TO OTHERS IN GENERAL. III. THE SONG POINTS OUT GOD’ S SPECIAL MERCY TO HIS PEOPLE. (Dr. Dolittle.) The song of Mary I. THE ELEMENT IN IT. 1. That all generations would call her blessed. 2. That her Son would be a blessing to Israel. II. HER REASONS FOR . 1. That God did not regard the conventional distinctions among men (Luke 1:48). 2. The greatness of the blessing (Luke 1:49). 3. That God had cast dishonour on pride and vanity, and had honoured humility (Luke 1:50-52). 4. That God gives favours through His mercy (Luke 1:54), not through His justice, &e. Helplessness is the strongest argument to secure Divine help. 5. Because of the blessing which was to come to Israel through God’ s remembrance of His promises (verse 54-55). Her heart had yearned that Zion and her nation might be blessed.” (Preacher’ s Monthly.) A new song This song is in its substance the fit utterance of all hearts in whom Christ is born the hope of glory. It must never be forgotten that whenever Christ has entered into the human heart, a new song has been put into the mouth of the believer. Christianity in the heart means music in the life. A religion without joy is a landscape without the sun. Christianity without elevation is as an eagle with broken wings. Christianity has given to the world more poems, hymns, anthems, and manifold utterances of triumph and joy than any other influence which has touched the nature of mankind. Truly it has made the dumb man eloquent and turned silence itself into singing; and as for those of low degree and no account, it has in innumerable instances brought them to the front and invested them with supreme attraction and commanding influence. (Dr. Parker.) The Virgin’ s character 1. We have here a type of that character in which Christ is for ever being born. To the pure, the humble, and the unselfish, the Blessedness of blessedness was given. When the angel appeared to her she was troubled at the tidings and the praise. It was the trouble of a beautiful unconsciousness. A rare excellence in man or woman this fair unconsciousness I rarer than ever now. The unconscious life of Mary--what a charm those who possessed it might exercise upon the world! 2. Look next at the Virgin’ s quiet acceptance of greatness. 3. Her idea of fame. 4. This large conception of womanly duty this which is the patriotism of the woman, was not absent from the Virgin’ s character. She rejoiced in being the means of her country’ s blessing (Luke 1:54-55). She forgot her own honour in God, she forgot herself in her country. And this is that which we want in England-women who will understand and feel what love of country means and act upon it. This is the woman’ s patriotism, and the first note of its mighty music--a music which might take into itself and harmonize the discord of English society--was struck more than 1800 years ago in the song of the Virgin Mary. (Stopford Brooke.) “ My Saviour” I. THE PLEA OF THE , II. THE SONG OF THE SAVED. III. THE STAFF OF THE . IV. THE ANTHEM OF HEAVEN. (Stems and Twigs.) The beatitude of Mary, the mother of the Lord These words contain at once-- (a) A prophecy; (b) a command, because spoken in the fulness of inspiration; (c) a revelation. Why should all generations call her blessed? I. THE FIRST BROAD AND GENERAL ANSWER IS THIS: She occupies in one--and that a subject of the highest importance--a unique position as the example. 1. There was a strong and vivid faith. 2. Humility. 3. The entire simplicity of self-surrender. II. The fulfilment of this beatitude is to be found, above all, in THE DIGNITY OF HER OFFICE. Mary was called in the beginning of redemptive love to co-operate, by the grace that was given to her, in the effecting of the mystery of the Incarnation, which is the foundation-truth of Christianity. III. She was THE MOTHER OF THE SON OF GOD. That strikes the keynote of the beatitude. Beautiful picture always--the mother and her child; and the great prototype is that heavenly vision--nay, that historical reality--Jesus and Mary. Nearness and devotion to Jesus were her beatitude, and may be ours. (Canon Knox Little.) The Magnificat, as it exemplifies the life of joy You know the circumstances under which it was uttered. Recall them briefly to mind. In the cottage of the Annunciation the call of God had come to her; she had responded to it; she had given herself by a magnificent act of abandonment into the manipulation of the Divine Hand: “ Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to Thy word.” And even as she spoke--for there is no delay with God--the mystery of mysteries was wrought out, and the Incarnate had taken up His dwelling within her very person, and she was the shrine, the ark, of the Eternal Son of God. It cannot have been that she could have undergone such a crisis as this without its having an effect upon her inner being. Could Christ have been in her without illuminating her intellect, without communicating fervour to her heart, without acting mightily on her will? Who should be the first to taste the reality of the Incarnation? Who but the earthly instrument through whom it is wrought out. Who should first sing the hymn that tells of the thrilling experiences of those who know the touch of the Incarnate? Who but the dear mother in whom He abode. But for the moment her lip is sealed; she cannot speak as yet. There is within her a thought too big for utterance, and she cannot speak of it until she has received some confirmation from without. She has got a secret; with whom shall she share it? With whom but her cousin Elisabeth. She rises and goes from Nazareth into the hill-country with haste, into a city of Judah where Elisabeth is dwelling with her husband Zacharias, and as she enters the house she salutes Elisabeth, and hereupon Elisabeth utters her beatitude, “ Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb. And whence is this to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me?” Thus the mystery that has been wrought out in her has been by God revealed to another; it is no longer a secret that she must keep to herself; she may share it with another; she may know the joy and sympathy of communicating it to another. As thus the message of Gabriel is confirmed, Mary said, “ My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour.” Cannot you follow, step by step, the whole of this wondrous experience that led up to the utterance of this hymn of hymns? And yet how was it that Mary was thus enabled to utter this wondrous hymn? It is an unique hymn. Amidst all the poetic compositions which are the treasure of the world to-day, is there one hymn which in its chaste and wondrous beauty surpasses the Magnificat? Why, its loveliness has attracted generation after generation, and its beauty is as intensely felt to-day as in any previous age of the Church. And who was it who composed it? A poor, simple, peasant maid, probably some sixteen years of age, untrained in all the culture which generally precedes the composition of a hymn so exquisitely perfect and so beautiful as this. Whence was this poor, simple maiden of Galilee enabled to give utterance to a hymn which through eighteen centuries of Christendom has expressed fully, and more than expressed, all the adoring worship of mighty spirits in their vision of the Incarnate God? Mary was taught this undoubtedly by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Yes; but how? By the action of the Spirit upon her whole being, upon her whole nature, her soul, her Psyche, and then upon her spirit, her Pneuma--the emotional and moral part of her nature; and then upon her very lips. Her lips were touched with a live coal from God’ s altar, and in perfect language they gave expression to the perfect music of her sanctified inner nature as it thrilled under the touch of the Holy Ghost, “ My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour.” What illumination there is in it, how deep she saw into the mystery of the Incarnation, how, above all, was she enabled to look forward and prophetically to foretell its magnificent results! What fervour there is in it, chastened, I know, but how intense! And whence came this rapt fervour that finds expression in this hymn? Surely she who is revealed to us in it cannot be a maiden in her early youth! What a strength there is in it! Whence comes it all but through the action of the Spirit, giving fervour, giving love. Yes; it was the Spirit of God that drew forth from Mary’ s nature all the wondrous music that finds expression in her unequalled hymn. And again, what is it that fills Mary with this joy that inspires her with this hymn? What inflames, what energizes her whole being? It is the vision of Jesus Christ. She looks within--not around, not above, but she looks within, and the eyes of herunderstanding, enlightened by the Spirit of God, fall upon the wondrous vision of the Babe indwelling. She is indeed Christopheros--the Christ-bearer. O mystery of mysteries, within her tabernacles the very Eternal Son of God Himself, and every step she treads from Nazareth she bears within herself the burden of her Incarnate God! And as she looks on the Presence of Jesus Christ dwelling within her, her whole being thrills with a joy hitherto untasted by the sons and daughters of men. For her joy is not primarily joy in God as He is in Himself, but it is primarily joy in God Incarnate. Why? There is in Mary, first of all, as she gazes on Jesus, joy in the revelation of the love of God. She knew what God had wrought for man; she knew that God had taken in her very person, lowly as she was, human nature into union with the personality of the Divine Son, and she knew why. Now, if you look at the Magnificat, you will see what were the three elements in her joy in her vision of Christ. 1. She rejoiced in the revelation of God’ s saving love. 2. She rejoiced in Christ as revealing God’ s ennobling love. “ I am high and lifted up, I have been magnified; but my magnificence is an act of God’ s grace, it is the result of God’ s condescension. God has come to me not simply to set me free from the trammels of sin by His saving love, but, having set me free from sin by His gift of salvation, He has embraced me, He has brought me near to Himself in close and mystic union.” And Mary’ s second joy in the vision of her Child was the joyful recognition of her elevation. 3. But more than that, there was in her vision of Jesus a third joy, the joy of union with God, and that a twofold union. First the joy of the union of contemplation. As Mary looked upon Jesus she saw mirrored in Him the beauty of God. There she sees the vision of His might--God is powerful. There is then the vision of His holiness--God’ s power is blended with righteousness. There is then the vision of His mercy--it is tempered by His compassion. There is then the revelation of His wisdom underlying His mysterious elections. There is the revelation of His justice, showing that He deals with men according to their moral position. Above all, there is the revelation of His faithfulness, for ever true to His blessed word. And as Mary gazed upon her Son she saw God--God in all the beauty of His perfection, and, as she saw God in Christ, God took possession of her whole being, and she rejoiced in the union of contemplation. But more than that, she rejoiced in her co-operation with Him. As she gazed upon Jesus, she knew that she had responded to God’ s call; and, therefore, her life was a life of joy; in the knowledge of her union with her God as His chosen instrument in His great work. And so we learn this great truth, that the life of Mary was a life of joy. Before we con-elude, we may pass on to one other thought in connection with her life of joy--it was not a selfish joy. It is remarkable how, in the Magnificat, Mary begins with her personal experiences, but soon passes on from that to identify herself with the human race. Mary looks ahead and sees what the effect of the birth of her Son is to be on the world, how it is to ameliorate the whole condition of human life, how the oppressed are to be set free from their oppression, the hungry to be fed, the helpless to be assisted. And as she looks forward and sees the effect of the Incarnation on the race, Mary rejoices with the joy of a perfect charity, with the joy of the second Eve of our race, with each member of which she was so specially identified, because she was the mother of Him who is indeed the Son of Man. And so it ever is. Christian life is truly a life of joy. What strikes the keynote of life in the Church? Is it not the Holy Eucharist? What does the term mean? Joy, thanksgiving. It is not penance that strikes the keynote of Christian life. True, as we shall see next week, there is an under-current of the note of penance for ever blending with the thanksgiving of the Church on earth; there is a sorrow that tempers and beautifies its joy; but for all that, it is not at the tribunal of penance that the keynote of Christian life is struck. It is struck at the altar morn by morn, and it rings out there clear and distinct in the Holy Eucharist. We are baptized into Christ that we may live our lives beneath the shadow of the altar; we are baptized into Christ that we may live lives that are true to the Eucharistic note that there is struck; we are baptized into Christ in order that the experience of Mary may be our abiding experience, and the song, Magnificat, be our continuous song. Is it not so? What did Mary rejoice in as she sang Magnificat? In the indwelling of Jesus Christ. And in strange real mystery the blessing of Mary becomes the blessing of her children. Did not our Lord once say--“ Whosoever shall do the will of God, the same is My brother, and My sister, and mother.” What do you understand these words to mean? Are they not words which cannot be fully understood outside the limits of His Church and divorced from the mystery of the Eucharist? But in His Eucharist their meaning is clear and distinct. For what was the privilege of the Incarnation? That Mary was the Christ-bearer. What is the joy of the Eucharist? That we each become a Christ-bearer. “ He that eateth My flesh and drinketh My blood dwelleth in Me and I in him. So, then, as we go forth on our way into the world from the altar of God we bear about within us Christ. “ I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.” (Canon Body.) The reverence due to the Blessed Virgin I. IN WHAT THE VIRGIN MARY IS BLESSED. 1. In her the curse pronounced on Eve was changed into a blessing. Eve was doomed to bear children in sorrow, but now this very dispensation was made the means of bringing salvation into the world. All our corruption can be blessed and changed by Christ. The very punishment of the fall, the very taint of birth-sin, admits of a cure by His advent. 2. When Christ came as the seed of the woman, He vindicated the rights and honour of His mother. From that time, marriage has not only been restored to its original dignity, but even gifted with a spiritual privilege, as the outward symbol of the heavenly union subsisting betwixt Christ and His Church. 3. Mary is doubtless to be accounted blessed and favoured in herself, as well as in the benefits she has done us. Who can estimate the holiness and perfection of her who was chosen to be the mother of Christ? If to him that hath, more is given, and holiness and Divine favour go together (and this we are expressly told), what must have been the transcendant purity of her, whom the Creator Spirit condescended to overshadow with His miraculous presence? What, think you, was the sanctified state of that human nature, of which God formed His sinless Son--knowing, as we do, that “ what is born of the flesh, is flesh,” and that “ none can bring a clean thing out of an unclean” ? II. This being so, WHY ARE WE NOT TOLD MORE ABOUT THE BLESSED VIRGIN? 1. Scripture was written, not to exalt this or that particular saint, but to give glory to Almighty God. Had Mary been more fully disclosed to us in the heavenly beauty and sweetness of the spirit within her, she would have been honoured, her gifts would have been clearly seen; but the Divine Giver would have been somewhat less contemplated, because no design or work of His would have been disclosed in her history. He would have been seemingly introduced for her own sake, not for His, and we should have been in danger of resting in the thought of her, the creature, more than God the Creator. Thus it is a dangerous thing, it is too high a privilege, for sinners like ourselves, to know the best and innermost thoughts of God’ s servants. It is in mercy to us that so little is revealed about the blessed virgin, in mercy to our weakness, though of her there are “ many things to say,” yet they are “ hard to be uttered, seeing we are dull of hearing.” 2. The more we consider who Mary was, the more dangerous will such knowledge of her appear to be. Other saints are but influenced or inspired by Christ, and made partakers of Him mystically. But, as to Mary, Christ derived His manhood from her, and so had an especial unity of nature with her; and this wondrous relationship between God and man, it is perhaps impossible for us to dwell upon without some perversion of feeling. For, truly, she is raised above the condition of sinful beings, though by nature a sinner; she is brought near to God, yet is but a creature; and seems to lack her fitting place in our limited understandings, neither too high nor too low. We cannot combine in our thought of her all we should ascribe with all we should withhold. Hence, we had better only think of her with and for her Son, never separating her from Him, but using her name as a memorial of His great condescension in stooping from heaven, and not abhoring the virgin’ s womb. Nothing is so calculated to impress on our minds that Christ is really partaker of our nature, and in all respects man, as to associate Him with the thought of her, by whose ministration He became our brother. (J. H. Newman, D. D.) True womanly fame A true woman’ s thought I For so far as a woman is sincere to the nature God has given her, her aspiration is not so much that the world should ring with her fame, or society quote her as a leader of fashion, but that she should bless, and be blessed in blessing. It is not that she should not wish for power, but that she should wish for a noble, not an ignoble power. It is not that she should not wish to queen it in this world, but that she should wish to queen it, not by ostentation of dress or life, nor by eclipsing others, but by manifestation of love, by nobility of gentle service, by unconscious revelation in her life and conscious maintenance in others by her influence, of all things true and pure, of stainless honour in life, of chivalrous aspiration in the soul. At home or in the wider sphere of social action her truest fame is this, that the world should call her blessed. The music of that thought sounds through every line of the virgin’ s psalm. And there is no sadder or uglier sight in this world than to see the women of a land grasping at the ignoble honour, and rejecting the noble; leading the men, whom they should guide into high thought and active sacrifice, into petty slander of gossip in conversation, and into discussion of dangerous and unhealthy feeling; becoming, in this degradation of their directing power, the curse and not the blessing of social intercourse--becoming what men in frivolous moments wish them to be, instead of making men what men should be; abdicating their true throne over the heart to grasp at the kingdom over fashion; ceasing to protest against impurity and unbelief, and giving them an underhand encouragement; turning away from their mission to bless, to exalt, and to console, that they may struggle through a thousand meannesses into a higher position, and waste their Divine energy to win precedence over their rival; expending all the force which their more excitable nature gives them, in false and sometimes base excitements day after day, with an awful blindness and a pitiable degradation; exhausting life in amusements which fritter away, or in amusements which debase, their character; possessing great wealth, and expending it only on self, and show, and shadows; content to be lapped in the folds of a silken and easy life, and not thinking, or thinking only to the amount of half a dozen charitable subscriptions--a drop in the waters of their expenditure--not thinking that without “ their closed sanctuary of luxurious peace,” thousands of their sisters are weeping in the night for hunger and for misery of heart, and men and children are being trampled down into the bloody dust of this city, the cry of whose agony and neglected lives goes up in wrath to the ears of God. This is not our work, you say, this is the work of men. Be it so if you like. Let them be the hands to do it; but who, if not women, are to be the hearts of the redemption of the poor from social wrong? As long as the women of England refuse to guide and to inspire, as long as they forget their nature, and think of pleasure instead of blessing, as long as they shut their ears to the agony of the cities of this land, that they may not be disturbed in their luxury, and literature, and arts, so long men will, as they have ever done, take the impulse of their lives from them and do nothing chivalrous, nothing really self-sacrificing, nothing very noble and persistent for the blessing of the world. The regeneration of society is in the power of the woman, and she turns away from it. All future English generations might call her blessed, and she prefers that they should call her fashionable! (Stopford A. Brooke, M. d.) The Virgin Mary; or, true blessedness The Virgin Mary is the woman of all others whom truly to contemplate is to revere. She stands alone among the women of the earth. She occupies a position that is unique in the history of the world--the most illustrious of all her sex, “ whom all generations shall call blessed. I. IN UPON THE OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN, THERE ARE TWO ERRORS TO BE AVOIDED. 1. The error of the Roman Church--“ Mariolatry,” i.e., the exaltation of Mary to a position that no created being can occupy, a position scarcely inferior to that of Christ Himself, the appealing to her to bring her influence to bear on her Son, as though He needed thus influencing, as though any one could be more tender, more compassionate, more truly sympathetic than that all-merciful High Priest, who is “ touched with the feeling of our infirmities,” having been “ tempted in all things as we are,” “ bone of our bone, flesh of our flesh.” 2. On the other hand, there is the opposite error, which is doubtless a reaction, a recoil from this undue exaltation of the Blessed Virgin--I mean the error of the puritanical school of thought, which, by a kind of rebound, throws itself into the opposite extreme, and, almost dreading the very mention of her name, seems to deny to her the respect which is surely due to her, and which is claimed for her in Holy Scripture. II. WHAT THOSE SPECIAL VIRTUES WERE THAT SHONE FORTH IN THE VIRGIN MARY, those graces and characteristics that give such beauty to our conception of her saintliness. 1. Humility. The burden of the Magnificat is the greatness of God and her own littleness, the marvellous condescension of “ the high and lofty One who inhabiteth eternity,” in stooping so low to visit one so poor and so humble as she was. Humility, what a beautiful virtue it is! and yet how difficult to acquire! How easy it is to mistake it. There are so many spurious imitations of it; there is so much dissimulation in the world that it is sometimes difficult to distinguish between a mock humility and the genuine virtue. It is so necessary that the motive be the right one. True humility consists not merely in appearing lowly to others, it is the being lowly, lowly in one’ s own estimation, lowly in heart. It is to recognize what God is, and what we are. It is the only garb that befits weak and erring mortals such as we are. 2. Simplicity of character. How much this grace is needed among us--in words, in dress, in demeanour. 3. Faith. “ Blessed is she that believed.” Faith, what is it? It is to take God at His word, it is to rest the soul on Him, to trust Him, to surrender the whole being, body, soul, and spirit, to His keeping. A person strong in faith is one who can rise above the poor paltry objects of this earth, and “ endure as seeing Him who is invisible.” Conclusion: If we would do the will of God, if we would be blessed as Mary, there must be in us the qualifications that Mary possessed--humility, simplicity, faith. Humility, that God may dwell in us; simplicity, that we may be true children of God; faith, that God’ s voice may be heard and obeyed. Oh, how beautiful must such a life as this be! the life of God in the soul--“ I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.” (Rowland Ellis, M. A.) The Magnificat Every burst of true religious life is accompanied by its burst of religious poetry. This is marked in our own most popular hymn-books by the names of Luther, Wesley and Whitfield, Keble and Newman. St. Luke’ s Gospel shows us that it was so just before our Lord’ s appearance. All through that Gospel, indeed, an attentive ear can catch choral vibrations. Its close is anthem-like. But more especially is this the case with its opening chapter. The air is full of song. The whole field is in flower. I. LET US LOOK AT THE IN WHICH THE IS SET. Mary was misconstrued by the world. She was called upon to bear the cross which is heaviest for the purest souls--a cross of shame. In Nazareth she could not remain. She turned to the spot towards which she seemed to be invited by an angel’ s lips, and pointed by an angel’ s finger. A light twinkled for her among the hills. If, as seems most probable, Elisabeth lived at Hebron, the journey would be, for a traveller supplied with the best horses of the country, one of seven or eight hours; for one unable to procure such help, about twice that length of time. The journey lies through one of the sternest and wildest routes in Palestine. The solitude is the most desperate which travellers of experience have ever traversed. The scenery is so stern that the very mountains of Moab, touched as they are with a beautiful rosy tint, present a contrast which is almost a relief. At the end of her second or third day’ s journey--probably late on the third--lines of blue smoke, piercing a sky touched by the twilight shadows, told the Virgin that she was drawing near to Hebron. The softer and more humanised character of the landscape might insensibly communicate a measure of relief to that aching heart. Yet Hebron was a spot which could scarcely be entered without solemn associations, by one whose spirit habitually breathed and moved in the atmosphere of the Old Testament Scriptures. It not only included the grotto of Machpelah, the last resting-place of Sarah, of Abraham, of Isaac, Rebekah, Leah, Jacob. Its foundation ascended to an antiquity which just exceeded that of Tanis, in Egypt. Long before the Canaanites came, the gigantic shapes of Anakim and Rephaim moved through the primaeval forests by which it was surrounded. The Canaanites gave it the name of Arba, a great warrior of the Anaks (Kirjath-arba). These distant and marvellous recollections must impress the least susceptible imagination. However this may have been, there must have beer a pathos in the quiet worn of the gentle maiden as she saluted Elisabeth. Elisabeth, for her part, knew her cousin’ s voice, even before she saw her pale and suffering face. And in the power of the Holy Spirit, the babe within her quickening, and seeming to leap into joyous life, she spoke with a thrilling and exultant voice, that swelled and rang out in ecstatic welcome to the mysterious incarnation into whose presence she was brought. Two thoughts here naturally occur. 1. It was nothing but a brief, unrecorded salutation, probably of one or two words, which drew out the amazing and magnificent acknowledgment, that came home to Elisabeth with the power of the Holy Ghost, and, for a while, stirred her very frame, elevated her spirit, ennobled and transformed the tones of her voice into a rich and stately music. Here, as is so often the case, God’ s work is done by an unconscious influence going forth from His servants. Even handkerchiefs and aprons lead to high manifestations of the powers that are lodged in the gospel. When souls are steeped, day by day, in prayer and prolonged realization of the presence of God, more especially when they are in sorrow, or bearing the cross, a sweet contagion goes forth from them. A mere act of common courtesy and affection perhaps, as in the case of Mary’ s salutation, touches the deepest spiritual chords in other hearts. 2. It certainly should not be overlooked that, in the presence of the incarnate Lord, Elisabeth’ s child leaped and quickened beneath her leaping heart. It is strange, then, that believing people should assume that very young children are necessarily insusceptible of grace. Such an assumption is not reasonable. “ The first springs of thought,” said a great philosopher, “ like those of the Nile, are veiled in obscurity.” What influences may be made to stir those unknown springs, what elements may be mingled with those obscure waters, we cannot tell, and therefore we are not in a position to deny, in the presence of a counter-affirmation of the Word of God. II. WE NOW PROCEED TO THE ITSELF. After the prominence given to the loud ecstatic utterance of Elisabeth (verse 42), it seems certain that the delicate pencil of St. Luke presents us with a real contrast in a single word. “ And Mary said.” Elisabeth’ s utterance and supernatural possession by the Holy Ghost was instantaneous; it was a single and exceptional burst, a momentary elevation. But, during those months, when her very frame was the shrine of the Christ of God, Mary was habitually steeped in the Spirit, habitually absorbed in the great Presence by which she was inhabited. There is a noble quiet in the one word said. But that quiet does not exclude a great and special joy, which gushed up within her soul and spirit at the words of Elisabeth. For those words are pervaded not only by enthusiastic acknowledgment of Mary’ s purity, but by enthusiastic recognition of the secret in her soul, of the truth of which she was the favoured depositary. Every one who is possessed by a great unpopular truth, finds that unpopularity one of the severest of trials. He may, indeed, and he must bring it forth to others; but he will be plied with sarcasms in the world, with texts and anathemas even in the Church. There is a joy of the purest and rarest kind, when some one at last says, “ The truth which possesses you has taken possession of me also. I understand you.” Such was Mary’ s joy when she said, in the rhyme-thought of Hebrew poetry, the second rhythm at once repeating and passing beyond the first--“ My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit did exalt upon that God who is my Saviour.” Let us examine the personal traits, and the general religious principles, by which the Magnificat is pervaded. 1. Of these personal traits, humility is, no doubt, the chief. Mary, in the Magnificat, does not profess humility; she practises it. Favoured, indeed, she is. Yet (as the word so translated implies) she has no thought of that which she is--only of that which, in God’ s free grace, she has received. In the second line she counts herself among the lost whom He has brought into a state of salvation. Her joy and exultation repose upon that God who is her Saviour. Her woman’ s heart does, indeed, throb as it thinks of the cry which arises from the heart of redeemed humanity, as it turns to the grace which she has received--“ For lo! from hence on, all the generations shall call me blessed.” But why? “ For He that is mighty hath done to me great things, and holy is His name.” “ He who hath a gift,” writes an excellent old divine, “ and is puffed up by it, is doubly a thief; for he steals the gift, and the glory of it also; and both are God’ s.” 2. The religious principles by which the Magnificat is pervaded are these. Mary’ s soul is full of faith in the tenderness and power of God--in the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ. And she believes intensely in the victory of that Incarnation: in the sure triumph of God. With the instinct of a prophetess, she sees an outline of all history, and compresses and crushes the vast drama into four strong rugged words--still as the rocks, obscure as the mists or troubled sunlights that veil them, the secrets of God, whose meaning men see when a great revolution is over, and which then goes back into silence for centuries again. “ He hath put down the lords of dynasties from thrones.” That dethronement includes not Herod only, though it may have begun from the Idumaean usurper. Scribes and Pharisees, men of action and science; pontiffs, powerful with a power not of God; men of action which is not heavenly, and science which is not true; Mary sees them sink, or their thrones stand untenanted, if they stand at all. Not always by the earthquake of war and revolution. In an old Greek city, a modern engineer once remarked a mass of stone, many tons in weight, lifted up for several feet from the ground, and hanging, as if suspended in the air. On looking more closely, he saw that the root of a huge fig-tree had performed this achievement. By exercising an even, continued pressure, every moment of the twenty-four hours, for about three centuries, it had fairly lifted off this stupendous weight. Something of this strong, yet gentle and gradual work is done by the influence of Christianity. A miracle of lifting is performed. The tyrant is hurled from his throne, “ not by might, not by power.” III. WE MAY PROCEED TO DRAW SOME LESSONS, AND , FROM THE . 1. It will not, we think, offend those earnest Christians who object upon principle to parts of the English Liturgy, or even to liturgies in general, if we venture--surely in no spirit of offence or controversy--to give expression to the reasons which probably induced our Reformers to retain this poem in the Reformed Prayer-book. A manual of public prayer, they doubtless thought, would scarcely be complete without the Magnificat, and other poems of the New Testament. A Scriptural service should reproduce the Bible essentially. In the Old Testament it should incorporate the Psalms. In the New Testament there are but few Divine songs. But there are some, and surely they are there for good reasons. We can scarcely fail to remark that there is much caprice in the taste for hymns. It is, in the midst of fluctuation and mutability, a great thing to have some hymns in public service whose permanence is insured by their being strictly scriptural. 2. Not without propriety is the Magnificat placed in the public service. It comes after the Old Testament lesson. Now the Magnificat was breathed by Mary with the Old Testament promise fully before the gaze of her soul. “ In remembrance of His mercy,” she exclaims, “ as He spake to our fathers, to Abraham, and to his seed for ever.” She stood, as her song stands with us, between the two Testaments. 3. By using the Magnificat we fulfil her own prophecy, “ All generations shall call me blessed.” Some, in a superstitious horror of superstition, forget this. She is blessed. Blessed because chosen out from all the mothers of Israel, and of the earth, to an inconceivable privilege. Blessed, because consecrated as a temple for the Eternal Word; by ineffable conjunction, uniting to Himself that human nature which was conceived and born from her. 4. Personal lessons. We may well apply Mary’ s words to ourselves for a mercy common to all. Jesus Himself teaches us that her blessedness is ours; that so there is a strange family likeness between us and her (Matthew 12:48-50). In a family which possesses some one specially gifted member, we often see looks of him in others. So the likeness of Christ is reproduced, generation after generation, in all the children of God. Again, praise should be our work. The brute rolling in the dust of our roads is said to have inherited associations of the free desert sands. The dog, scraping and turning before he lies down to rest, similarly acts from a blind reminiscence of progenitors in the prairie grass. Much more do men inherit the instinct of that praise, of which the Magnificat is the purest expression. Once more, joy and peace are part of our purchased inheritance. When we read or join in the Magnificat, let us see to it, that that peace is ours which will make its words true for us. (Bishop Wm. Alexander.) The Virgin Mary’ s joy The events in Mary’ s life which lead to this burst of joy. I. The first event to be noticed in her life, IS THE HIGH HONOUR GOD PUTS ON HER. We find her, in an earlier part of this chapter, living at Nazareth, a city or town of Galilee. Little, however, is said of her rank or condition there. But suddenly comes down an angel from heaven to her, salutes her as the highly favoured of Jehovah, and announces to her that she is the destined mother of the world’ s Saviour. We often tell you, brethren, that there may be many an unexpected affliction and sorrow awaiting you in the future; we may tell you now that there may be too in that future many unlooked for joys and honours awaiting you. These things, like all others, are in the hands of a sovereign God, and in His wise and holy sovereignty He often pours them out abundantly where they are the least expected. “ He hath regarded the lowliness of His handmaiden,” says Mary, as though recognizing the pleasure He takes in exalting the humble, and surprising them with manifestations of His love. II. We see next in Mary’ s life THE PAINFUL TRIAL WITH WHICH THIS HIGH HONOUR WAS . One moment’ s thought, brethren, will bring this to your minds. The angel appeared to her privately. None saw or heard him but herself. When she tells of his visit and message, who will believe her? and if she is not believed, what in a short time will be her situation: Her character ruined, the world scorning her, her friends mourning over her, and worse--her betrothed husband, the object perhaps of her warmest youthful affections, lost to her, loving her still but casting her off may, her very life endangered, for she will be charged with an offence which, by a Jewish law, is death. Dearly, some would say, will she pay for the honour intended her. But when does God bestow honour on any one without calling on him to pay something for it? We could not bear the Divine mercies, were it not for the afflictions, the sorrows and mortifications, which generally accompany them. III. Observe next in Mary HER BOTH IN THE HONOUR AND IN THE TRIAL HER. Moses, when God Himself appears to him at Horeb, and makes known to him that He has chosen him to be the deliverer of His people, begins to debate the matter with God, telling Him He has made a mistake, and chosen a wrong instrument for the accomplishment of His purpose. “ Who am I,” he asks, “ that I should go unto Pharaoh, and that I should bring forth the children of Israel out of Egypt? “ Mary rises above it all. The angel delivers his message to her. There is no bidding him pass her by and go elsewhere, no telling him of her unworthiness, no obtruding of herself or her own feelings in any way. “ Behold the handmaid of the Lord,” she says: “ be it unto me according to thy word.” And that is real humility, which leads us to regard ourselves as God’ s servants. But Mary was a thoughtful as well as an humble woman. It is more than probable, therefore, that all the consequences which must naturally follow the honour designed for her, rushed at this moment into her mind. The tone of her answer seems to intimate this. And a word from her, we are ready to say, would have averted these consequences. “ Go,” she might have said to the angel, “ to my parents, or go to some of my neighbours and friends, or go to Joseph and tell him what is to happen to me. Save those kind hearts from sorrow, and me from shame.” But not a word of the kind comes from her. She looks on honour and dishonour, evil report and good report, with the same calmness. “ Come what will,” she seems to say, “ be it unto me according to thy word.” We must now look at her joy. 1. It is clear that it was a joy WITH BOTH AND . At Nazareth, Mary’ s home, all was still dark as before. Ye! Mary is happy; she magnifies the Lord and her spirit rejoices. But what is the promised joy of the gospel? This entry is longer than a Bible module can hold. The rest is at https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/bi/ Luke 1:56-80 Now Elisabeth’ s full time came that she should he delivered The nativity of John the Baptist That which was miraculous at the beginning became natural towards the close. This is seen in the case of Elisabeth, as recorded in the fifty-seventh verse. True also of spiritual generation. Begins in mystery and proceeds to prove itself by all that is practical in behaviour. The work of the Holy Ghost in the heart of man can never be explained; it will ever be as miraculous as the overshadowing of Mary, or the overruling of nature in the case of Elisabeth; but, as the motherhood of Mary and Elisabeth was never doubted, so Christian life in all its tempers and charities will establish itself in the confidence of men notwithstanding the miracle in which the new life began. The neighbours and cousins of Elisabeth were proceeding upon the usual plan of naming the child. They would have dragged down the miraculous to the ordinary, and surrounded this speciality of Divine favour with all that was ancient and traditional in the family. They knew not that another and better kindred was about to be inaugurated, and in fact that the whole law of kinship was about to undergo revolution and sanctification. Think of the particularity of Divine providence in giving this child’ s name. Did not God say unto Moses, “ I know thee by name” ? Did not Jesus call Zacchaeus by name? Could not God give every child his name, as well as number the hairs of his head, and take charge of all his going in the world? Zacharias confirmed the decision of Elisabeth, and so determined the name of the child, notwithstanding the wonder and apparent opposition of the neighbours and cousins. When the mouth of Zacharias was opened, the language of praise and exultation seemed to pour from his grateful and thankful lips like a river which for a season had been impeded. This speech gives us insight into the meaning of inspiration, for it is distinctly said that Zacharias was filled with the Holy Ghost and prophesied. What then is the meaning of Divine inspiration? Mark the pure and sublime religiousness of the speech. From beginning to end it lives and glows with the name of God. Any professed inspiration that leads men down to superficiality and contracted views of life, and to the praise of secondary causes, is presumptively false. Any inspiration that leads men to profounder reverence, to higher aspiration, to nobler charity, is presumptive]y true. The inspiration of Zacharias recognized most emphatically the preceding inspiration with which God had favoured His Church. Zacharias seems to be standing in the midst of that summer of which Old Testament times were but the spring. And as, on the one hand, his inspiration seemed to contract the past until Abraham lived but yesterday; so, on the other, it contracts the future, and makes John already the full-grown messenger and herald of the Messiah. This is what inspiration does for a man; when it does less it may be suspected or denied. The child grew! The child waxed strong in spirit 1 The child lingered in the deeper parts of the wilderness until the time of his showing forth unto Israel had ripened! “ He that believeth shall not make haste.” The days we spend in silence and obscurity are not wasted, for what man ought to hasten into the Lord’ s work as if the Lord had been waiting for him in the weakness of impatience? We shall be better prophets as we become better students. In the silent time we are gathering elements, consolidating character, and undergoing discipline, all of which will be wanted when the trumpet calls us to the battle. (Dr. Parker.) The birth and training of John the Baptist Such is the story of the birth and training of the Harbinger. The story suggests many lessons. I will mention but two. I. It is a fine illustration of the proverb, “ COMING EVENTS CAST THEIR SHADOWS BEFORE.” It was meet that the King of kings, in making advent, should have His avant-courier. Yes, it was meet that the Sun of Righteousness should have His morning star. II. THE PLACE OF IN THE LIFE. For it cannot be denied that Christ’ s religion demands as one of its essential conditions self-denial. Presupposing a fallen, inverted nature, where the outward has usurped the inward--the flesh, the spirit--Christianity undertakes a restoration of the primal order, proposing victory in the very sphere of defeat. Thus, St. Paul himself buffeted his own body, and brought it into bondage. It was true of Moses, of David, of Daniel. Our blessed Lord Himself went into the wilderness, and fasted forty days and forty nights. So, also, many of the noblest characters in Christian history have been ascetics: witness a Basil, Gregory Nazianzen, Chrysostom, Jerome, Columba, Augustine of Canterbury. Their power lay, in part at least, in their asceticism. It certainly was so in the case of John of the Desert. His hermit-life gave him simplicity of manners, freedom from the entanglements of society and the elaborate artifices of a complicated civilization. It also gave him self-reliance, fortitude, courage. An ascetic life is ever apt to make what in some respects is a grand character. Yet an ascetic life is fraught with perils. It tempts to self-righteousness, morbid gloom, and fanaticism. We only need recall the abominable vices of the mediaeval monks--their indolence, avarice, hypocrisy, and sensuality--to be certified that monasticism has no just place in the Christian economy. Happy the day for those European countries when the monasteries were suppressed! No, man was made for man. He may escape society, but in escaping society, he disowns duty. The leaven of the kingdom must be put into the meal of the world. The asceticism which Jesus Christ, alike by word and by example, demands is self-denial, not for self-denial’ s own sake, but for the sake of others. (G. D. Boardman.) To children I. THE NAMING OF JOHN. “ His name Is John,” not may be, or ought to be, but is. And why was it so clearly, fully, and inevitably settled? Simply because God had decided the matter, and good old Zacharias never dreamt for a moment of questioning that decision. The Word of God settles matters, and allows of no appeal. II. THE OF JOHN. “ John” signifies the grace, or gift of God. And who but the eternal God Himself could give him such a name as this? III. THE OF JOHN. He was the “ gift of God” in a peculiar sense. He was a man “ sent from God,” too, for a special purpose. But his character was undoubtedly “ the gift of God,” and an instance of His grace and mercy. How entirely he seems to have lost himself in his office! Are you showing, by a holy and consistent and unblameable walk, that your name of “ Christian” has been given from above? (Study and Homiletic Monthly.) These opening chapters of Luke very jubilant Heaven and earth sing, angels and men. The high occasion justifies it. Song even from the dumb! Yes. He had doubted the word of the angel, and so was stricken dumb. Unbelief cannot sing. But Zacharias is rebuked; no longer of doubtful mind. Now he sings, rises into rapture. His song rather of Christ than of John. No wonder. Who ever stops thought with the herald, the ambassador? There is a psalm of life as well as song of the hour; and all hour-songs are to deepen that life-psalm. (G. B. Johnson.) Naming a child It was likewise not customary among the Arabs to give the children names which had never been borne by any person in the family. When, therefore, on the seventh day after Mahomet was born, his grandfather invited the members of the tribe of the Koreischites to a feast, the guests asked, after the conclusion of it, what name he would give his grandson, on whose account he had treated them so magnificently; when he said, Mahomet. They replied, “ Then you mean to give him a name alien to his family.” The same custom prevails among some North American tribes. Lafitua says, “ Among the Hurons and Iroquois they always retain in every family a certain number of names of the ancestors of the family, both of men and women. These names are quite peculiar to them, and it is presumed to be generally known that they belong to such or such a family. Now in every family it is the custom, as it were, to revive, to call back to life, those members of it who have made themselves famous. They therefore look out at the same time the names of those whom they revere, and give them to such of their descendants as are to represent them. The latter acquire more or less consideration in proportion as those who formerly bore these names were distinguished for their qualities, virtues, or deeds. The Jews had, in the same manner, certain names in every family which they took care to preserve; and these were taken only from the father’ s family, as appears from what passed, according to the Scripture, at naming John the Baptist. But among the Hurons and Iroquois the names of the boys are at present taken, as formerly among the Lycians, from the family of the mother only.” (Biblical Treasury.) Birth and naming of the Baptist Three-fourths of a year before portentous events had intimated the return of prophecy and miracles to Israel--Zacharias in the temple. One-fourth of a year since, another manifestation from heaven--Mary and Gabriel. Expectation high! Gleam of sunshine in darkness, Music in storm. Hills of Zion shining with early rays of twilight. And now “ the morning star” shining bright in the cold, chilly dawn, heralds the speedy rising of the Sun of Righteousness with health and healing in His wings! For it was now to be seen that what God promised should be performed. I. THE BIRTH OF JOHN. 1. Remember circumstances of his being promised, and the astonishing testimony to the divinity of future Jesus, when the two mothers met. 2. Now the promises begin to be accomplished. John born. Neighbours and kinsfolk rejoice with her. A subject of attention, for it was (1) miraculous; (2) promised. II. NAMING OF . 1. Circumcision, eighth day. A duty. Analogy in baptism (Colossians 2:11-12). Baptism also should be in infancy. 2. Naming took place then. So Christian name is given at baptism, not by registration. III. THE MIRACLE (verse 64). Reward to faith. IV. ’ SONG OF PRAISE. Christ came, not to make men sullen, low, morose, desponding; but to pour out blessings in rich abundance, and to turn the captivity of His people “ as the rivers in the south.” Has this song been realized in you? Is God visiting you? Has darkness vanished, and the true light shone in you? Make sure! Don’ t grasp the shadows of time, and lose the substance of eternity. (G. Venables, S. C. L.) The dumb learning to praise God A beautiful incident occurred only a short time since in the school to teach mutes articulation and lip-reading, at Mystic River, Connecticut. Miss P., an interesting graduate of one of the oldest institutions for the education of deaf mutes, having a desire to learn to speak and read the lips of her speaking friends, was recommended by her old principal to try Mr. Whipple’ s school, and she entered it last term. She made rapid progress, and was much aided by the natural alphabet, the invention of her teacher. This alphabet curiously suggests sound, or the right position of the organs to utter sound, as well as form; and whenever a mute pupil can read and write it, he or she can generally give any of the forty sounds of our difficult language with great precision and discrimination, and often with remarkable correctness. This young lady, filled with enthusiasm at every step, mastered the alphabet with little difficulty, and one day came to her teacher with something written on her slate, which she asked him to correct, her mind being agitated with emotion. It proved to be the Lord’ s Prayer, put into the language of articulation. Perceiving her agitation, the teacher could scarce restrain his own tears as he corrected a few unimportant errors of pronunciation, and delicately returned it. The next morning the young lady came exultingly to her teacher, exclaiming: “ I prayed last night for the first time in my life with my voice;” and neither of them could restrain their emotions. He ventured to ask her if she had ever prayed before. “ Oh, yes; I have thought my prayers, but I never spoke before.” “ My lips shall praise Thee, O God.” “ Attend to the voice of my supplications, O Lord.” Praising God “ Praise is the rent-charge we owe to God” for His blessings. David said, “ As long as I live I will praise the Lord,” In ancient places of Christian worship it was arranged that one set of worshippers should keep on praising God, till another set came, so that praise might always be going up to heaven, night and day. Commodore Good-enough, when dying, said, “ I have not breath left to praise God for all His mercies.” Mr. Wesley’ s last words were, “ I’ ll praise! I’ ll praise!” Swiss herdsmen at sunset call forth, “ Praise ye the Lord!” This shout is repeated from one to another till every valley, peak, and hill reverberates with the ascriptions of gratitude to the Giver of all good. In the last four Psalms, how many exhortations we have to praise God! In the last verse of the last Psalm we read, “ Let every thing that hath breath praise the Lord.” (H. R. Burton.) Luke 1:66 What manner of child shall this be?--Great expectations When a child is born (as we say) to the purple; when an heir to the throne is announced; or when we stand beside the cradle of some unconscious little successor to a great historic title, to a vast estate, or to accumulated wealth of other kinds--how do we busy ourselves with speculations as to what may be in store for such a child? Descending to lower strata in social life, how common it is to forecast a great future, if the child should early display great ability, high intellectual gifts, special aptitudes for a particular branch of study! Yet very often, in such cases, the thoughts we harbour are but the most foolish “ castles in the air.” We direct our hopes to external things; we dazzle our imagination with splendid prospects of a great career; and by “ greatness” mean publicity, honours, wealth, rank, and a frequent mention in the newspapers. Ah, how mistaken, how ill-judged, how far below (not above) the true mark are our fond anticipations for our children. Let us try to learn this lesson from the text. What was it, probably, that the friends and neighbours of this distinguished priestly family expected for the new-born child? We can hardly doubt what it would be, when we reflect on the circumstances of the time. So pious a circle, and one so conversant with the Temple and its services, as these familiar friends of the priest Zacharias, would be sure to tinge all their thoughts with religion. And, therefore, in their answers among themselves to this question, we may confidently assume that a high spiritual destination would be assigned to him as a champion of Israel against the world. “ Surely this child,” they may have said, “ will become--as Joab was to David--a mighty and unconquered captain in the armies of the coming Messiah; his sword will be red with the blood of Jehovah’ s enemies; and, like the heathen before Judas Maccabaeus, so the bated Roman legions will go down before his avenging onset.” Or, should their thoughts take a more peaceful turn, “ The child,” they might say, “ will be (like his father) a faithful priest of God; and will fulfil, in the future history of our nation, as prominent a part as Zadok and Jehoiada in the days of old. At the very least, he will be a writer of books--such as ‘ Daniel,’ or ‘ The Book of Enoch’ --books that will touch the heart of Israel to the very quick; or, it may be, a preacher, a prophet, an Elijah--a prominent, a powerful, a striking, an impressive personage, ever to the front when some conflict shall be imminent with the false priests of Baal, or when the modern Jezebels and Ahabs are to be publicly smitten with the curse of an avenging God.” But if such dreams were among their sanguine anticipations for this wonderful child, we know how utterly they were mistaken. The event has taught us how much more spiritual, how much more worthy of all these wonderful antecedents, was the result than these pious Jews had been able to imagine. The result was this: first, for many long years no publicity at all, but a quiet and meditative life in the wilderness; and after that preparation was complete, even then no protracted public ministry amid obedient and awe-stricken crowds, but a brief mission to prepare the way for Him who was to come, abruptly closed by imprisonment; and after that, no dramatic execution, while tearful multitudes pressed around the scaffold to dip their handkerchiefs in the martyr’ s blood, but only a swift stroke amid the dungeon’ s gloom, a ghastly comedy of horror when a dancing-girl brought in upon a charger the prophet’ s head, and a secret burial by a handful of terrified disciples. Such is the irony of history. Such is the answer to the question of the text. (Canon G. H. Curteis.) Internal history of the Baptist There are, for every man that lives upon this earth, two histories unfolding simultaneously. There is the external history of his career; and there is the internal history of his character, of his soul. In the case of the Baptist, as in every other case, we can only read the mysterious secrets of the “ hidden man,” by the few visible tokens that are given us. Now, in the Gospels we have five tokens given, by the help of which we can reconstruct the whole character of the man. I. WE HAVE THE FACT OF HIS , OF PRIVACY AND OF SWEET, SERENE ALONE WITH NATURE AND WITH GOD, AT THE CLEAR CALL TO IRKSOME PUBLIC DUTY. It is no easy task to preach repentance to swaying and restless crowds. It is not pleasant to stand as a public target for questioners of every kind, and casuists of every degree, to shoot their arrows at. Yet thus stood John the Baptist. His answers in public show that he had not misused his opportunities in retirement. II. ANOTHER TOKEN OF HIS , WHICH IS IN THE GOSPELS, IS HIS LOYALTY. “ Look not to me, but to another who is greater than I.” A sign of the noblest self-devotion. This worship of a higher Being guards the heart against all approaches of vanity and self-worship, and repels every base thought of self-interest. III. THERE IS YET ANOTHER IN THE BAPTIST, WHICH BRINGS HIM INTO VERY CLOSE CONTACT WITH MANY LOYAL YET SOULS AT THE PRESENT DAY. It seems that, at one time, he was even afflicted with doubt (Matthew 11:2-3). Most kindly, gently, and patiently was that question answered by our Lord. And we may, therefore, gather encouragement for ourselves under any similar difficulties. We may be sure that if we, in like manner, take an honest and straightforward course, not letting our doubts withdraw us from our Saviour, but rather bring us nearer and closer to Him, we shall receive the same gentle and sufficient reply, an appeal to personal experience, to what we have ourselves “ heard and seen.” IV. ANOTHER OF THIS SAINTLY MAN IS TO BE FOUND IN HIS REBUKE OF SIN, EVEN WHEN IT WAS DRAPED AND GILDED AND UNDER WELL-SEEMING NAMES, IN THE PALACES OF RINGS. V. BUT THE MOST FEATURE OF ALL IN HIS WAS HIS SELF-. We know too well that even self-denial is a virtue of high and difficult attainment. Much more difficult is a genuine and unaffected self-humiliation. But most difficult of all is self-effacement in Christ--“ that spiritual” “ depth, attained also by. St. Paul, which says (feeling what it says) “ I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me. The Baptist is a type of those who resolve, at all risks, to discharge their duty and to deliver the message entrusted to them by God, without one single thought of self, or one transient wish to appear themselves in the matter. No indolence; no cowardice; but they are content to be only “ a voice ‘ --to preach God’ s Word, not their own, to pursue some truth which is not to enhance their own reputation; to advocate some cause which is not to redound to their own advantage. (Canon G. H. Curteis.) The future of a child Stars have been interrogated and thought to prophesy and proclaim the future of a child, so that to this day “ born under an unlucky star” is passed into a proverb. I. THE OF . “ What, then, shall this child be?” 1. What God designs it. God had a plan of life for this child of Zacharias and Elisabeth. 2. What training makes it. The fashioning power of parents and teachers is very great. God’ s plan may be marred in our hands. The life of John Stuart Mill proclaims the wonderful power that a parent can wield over the plastic nature of the child, and how instruction and training may shape a life. Great men owe much to pious parents like Zacharias and Elisabeth. II. THE OF GOD WITH . “ For the hand of the Lord was with him.” This stimulated the question. Curiosity as to the future of a child becomes greater when there are-- 1. Marks of the supernatural. This was the case with John. 2. Tokens of the Divine protection. The myth of Romulus and Remus, suckled in their infancy by a she-wolf, enshrines a truth--those destined for greatness are under the special protection of the Almighty. The apostolic John Wesley was miraculously saved in childhood from a burning house. 3. Early evidences of greatness. Providence is shown in such evidences, leading, as they often do, to special care in education. This is what all should desire for their children, that the hand of the Lord may be with them. (Canon Vernon Hutton, M. A.) A question and answer at the birth of a child 1. The natural question--“ What manner of child shall this be?” 2. The satisfactory answer- “ The hand of the Lord will be with him.” (Van Oosterzee.) “ What manner of child shall this be?” 1. How far above our asking is the Divine gift very often! 2. How wonderful are the possibilities for weal or woe in a child! Shall our children prove John Baptists, voices for Christ? or shall they falsify our own allegiance to Him? 3. How blessed it is to have a child associated with Christ from the outset! I covet for our children this association with the Lord. I would have His name, His story, His words, His gospel, their earliest memories and their dearest child-experiences. 4. What of kindred dedication of children to-day? Where are the Abrams, Hannahs, and Zachariases of this age? How few Christian parents yield their children up to the service of God? 5. How many of those who “ feared” and asked “ What manner of child?” &c., received him and received the Lord? One asks wistfully, whether, when the thirty years were passed, and John the Baptist, and then the Lord came forth, many or any watched for their coming and welcomed their manifestation. I gladly believe that some would, some must. (A. B.Grosart, DD.) A sermon to parents “ What manner of child shall this be? “ Will it grow up to manhood or womanhood, or will the flower be nipped in the bud? And if it grow to man’ s estate, what kind of a man will it make? Wise, virtuous, useful; or foolish, vicious, profligate? Such questions as these associated with the birth of childhood. The true parent will not be content simply with asking “ What manner,” &c., but realizing that the answer to that question depends very largely upon home-training and influence, will set to work to make that training and influence of such a character as will, under God, produce the best results. To assist you in this work will now be my aim. I begin by reminding you that your child is fearfully and wonderfully made. It is a “ Trinity in Unity.” It is made up of three parts. And each of these parts must be cultivated and developed in order to a complete and noble manhood. I. YOUR CHILD HAS A BODY THAT TO BE BUILT UP AND . II. YOUR CHILD HAS A SOUL THAT NEEDS TO BE AND . By the soul I mean that moral and intellectual part of your child’ s nature which distinguishes it from, and raises it above, the brutes that perish. III. Your CHILD HAS A NATURE WHICH NEEDS TO BE AND AND AND WATCHED OVER. Observe-- 1. This threefold development should be simultaneous. 2. We should begin early, should look for signs of early piety, and should interpret these as indications that God Himself is at work in their young hearts. Our children have visions of God much earlier than we are accustomed to think. Let us encourage them to foster these visions, to listen to the voice of God within, to respond to the wooings of His love. This done, we need not trouble ourselves with the question, “ What manner,” &c., but may safely and joyfully leave our children in God’ s hands, feeling assured that His grace will prove more than sufficient for all their needs, that His love will never see them want any good thing, and that His spirit, which has begun the good work in their souls, will carry it on to perfection. (W. Fox.) A sermon to children Every boy and girl might well ask about himself or herself, “ What manner,” &c. I want you to think about what you are going to be. It is not chance that decides. The fruit comes out of the blossom; the flower out of the bud; the man out of the child. You are beginning now to be the men and women that you will be. Here are some things that you can do, or get done for you. For we can go for help to One who is able to do very much more than we ask or think. I. MEND THE LITTLE FAULTS NOW. II. BE NOW WHAT YOU WOULD LIKE TO BE WHEN YOU ARE GROWN UP. 1. Be truthful. 2. Be kind and pleasant. III. TAKE WITH YOU TWO THINGS MORE THAN ANY OTHER GIFTS THAT YOU EVER READ OR HEARD OF. 1. A golden key--PRAYER. 2. A charm which I would have you wear not next to your heart, but in the heart itself. The charm is this--try always to please Jesus. IV. And yet the most wonderful part remains, that if we come to Jesus, and seek Him as our Saviour and Helper, the child will become an angel of God. (Mark Guy Pearse.) Indications in childhood “Childhood shows the man as morning shows the day.” Moses, Joseph, Samuel, David, Obadiah, Josiah, Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego, John the Baptist, John the Apostle, Timothy, Washington, John Wesley, and multitudes of other goodly children have lived to be men famous for their godliness and usefulness. The Arabians put an ant into the hand of a new-born infant and say, “ May the boy turn out clever and skilful.” We pray that from the childhood blossoms we have in our homes and schools there may develop flowers which will fill every circle where they move with fragrance, spiritual beauty, and joy; or that, in other cases, the buds now attach ing themselves to some branch which is joined to the True Vine, may be twigs or branches themselves in years to come, bearing fruit for the glory of God and the benefit of mankind. (H. R. Burton.) A child misjudged A poor doctor, who had met with great misfortunes, lay on his deathbed, saddened by the thought that he was leaving a large family behind him, without any provision for its maintenance. Not long before his death, his youngest child was born, a scrawny, puny babe, weighing five or six pounds. The mother was worn out, and was apparently to be left poor, friendless, and alone, with her great family of little ones. But--that baby! Every one said: “ What a mercy if that child should die! What can she do with it? What a blessing if it should die!” The poor mother almost thought so too. But the unwelcome babe would not die. He made a struggle for life, and won the battle. To-day his memory is revered as that of Dr. John Todd, the author of “ The Student’ s Manual,” and of other works of eminent usefulness, by means of which, “ being dead, he yet speaketh.” No mother knows what she has in her cradle. (Baxendale’ s Anecdotes.) The mystery of moral development The beginning of Nero’ s reign was marked by acts of the greatest kindness and condescension; by affability, complaisance, and popularity. The object of his administration seemed to be the good of his people; and when he was desired to sign his name to a list of malefactors that were to be executed, he exclaimed, “ I wish to heaven I could not write I” He was an enemy to flattery, and when the Senate liberally commended the wisdom of his government, Nero desired them to keep their praises until he deserved them. Yet this was the wretch who assassinated his mother, who set fire to Rome, and destroyed multitudes of men, women, and children, and threw the odium of that dreadful action upon the Christians. The cruelties he exercised towards them were beyond description, while he seemed to be the only one who enjoyed the tragical spectacle. Oh, human depravity, what a monster! Divine grace alone can change it and make it holy. (Handbook to Scripture Doctrines.) Luke 1:67-79 And his father Zacharias was filled with the Holy Ghost The song of Zacharias I. Preliminary questions. In the opening portion of St. Luke’ s Gospel, there is a definiteness of time, place, and circumstance, which makes us feel that we are not breathing in the air or looking through the deceptive light of legend. We are not travelling in dreamland, for we can measure distances. The objections which have been made in modern times to this statement are derived from two elements in the narrative-- (1) from the account of various angelic appearances; (2) from the recorded bursts of ecstatic or prophetic song. 1. As to the angelic appearance in these opening chapters. Unquestionably here, as elsewhere, throughout, and to its very close, St. Luke’ s is the Gospel of the holy angels. The existence o! angels rests upon the same witness as the whole supernatural life. There must be something of fitness in the times of their manifestation, and in the persons to whom they make themselves known. In a material age they cease to appear. There must be a certain saintly second-sight--a something angelic in the angel seen. All depends upon the initial point of view. From ours it is not incredible, but rather probable, that Gabriel should have come to Zacharias and Mary; that songs of acclamation should have rung out over Bethlehem. We are come to an innumerable company of angels. Well, too, may we be impressed by the gravity and reserve of the scriptural account of angelic appearances. Man receives no random invitation to a heedless intimacy on the one hand; to a Socinian heresy of angel cultus on the other. Of all the countless hosts of heaven, Scripture condescends to make but two known to us by name--Gabriel and Michael. 2. But, in reference to these opening scenes of St. Luke’ s Gospel, it has further been objected that these sacred songs, these bursts of Hebraic poetry, are unmistakably like art, or legend; that the critic is irresistibly impelled to see them in a piece of fancy work, like the songs in Tennyson’ s “ Queen Mary.” There are a few considerations which remove this obstinate prejudice of modern criticism. If labour and genius are the only possible creators of any form of literature, these songs, of course, can scarcely be genuine. But if, as a matter of fact, prophecy exists; if Jesus Christ be its chief and central subject, it is only natural that, after an interval of 400 years, it should awaken again, just as he was about to visit the earth; that the father of God’ s chosen servant, who was to go as a messenger before Messiah’ s face, should be filled with the Holy Ghost, and prophesy. (1) The Benedictus was, no doubt, formed in the heart of Zacharias during the long months of enforced muteness, when he was dumb, and not able to speak. After nine months of silence it came streaming out like the molten metal when issue is given to it. (2) The pious Hebrew would have no such material difficulties as those which have been suggested above. For Hebrew poetry was not fettered by the laws of an inexorable prosody. It did not exact the exquisite and severe modulation of classical scansion. Psalm like strains rushed spontaneously to the lips of those who lived in the circle of the Old Testament writings, and spake its language. Moreover--and this is most important of all--the whole substance and tenor of the Benedictus shows that it was not moulded by art; that it does not bear the same relation to the gospel history as the speeches of Pericles or Hannibal to the narratives of Thucydides and Livy. From what point of view must Zaeharias have spoken? The sight of Christ which he enjoyed was far beyond that of any of the psalmists in clearness. Yet the picture which he drew must have been painted in Hebrew colours, and set in a Jewish framework. A later writer, in an age pre-eminently without critical tact and subtlety, would never have contented himself with putting these oracular utterances into the lips of Zacharias. No doubt the Christian Church has, almost from the beginning, used these songs in daily worship. By doing so she interprets them of Jesus. But the question is not, in the slightest degree, how the Christian Church understands this and the other songs, when they have been permanently committed to writing. The question is whether, after the cross and resurrection, after all things were fulfilled, she could, by any conceivable self-restraint, have managed to write them in such a strain? These songs would rather have been like the Apocalyptic strains, “ Worthy is the Lamb that was slain.” The mind which wrote the Benedietus, under the condition of a full historical knowledge of the gospel, must either have been an earnest or a deceptive mind. For an earnest mind, such reserve upon the subjects which were in the front rank of its affections, would have been unnatural; for a deceptive mind it would have been, ex hypothesi, impossible. Thus, the Benedictus is impossible at a date either earlier or later than that to which it is assigned by the third evangelist. Such visions of the light just dawning, such a conception of the general character of the approaching redemption, with such reserve--rather such silence--as to the mode in which it was to be carried out in detail; such silver brightness on the edge of the mist, such dimness in its heart; such strange eloquence and reserve--could only have come from one who stood on the thin border-line between the two dispensations--on the infinitesimal space between the two vast ranges before and behind. A little more, and the song would have been purely Christian; a little less, and it would have been purely Jewish. II. We proceed to draw some lessons from the song itself. 1. It is well to remember who and what Zacharias was. Zacharias was a holy and religious priest. The employment of Zacharias was that of a minister of a Divinely ordained ritual. Now true revelation does not deal with the spirit of man mechanically. The thought and utterance take the mould and colour of the mind, which the spirit freely uses. The form of the revelation is adapted to the natural tendencies and whole condition of him who is the Holy Ghost’ s voice or pen. The prophet priest Ezekiel views the Church under the image which would naturally occur to one who had been trained in such an element--the image of a temple. The priest prophet Zacharias views the life of all the emancipated children of God as one continuous worship, one endless priestly service--“ That we, fearlessly, having been once for all delivered from hand of enemies, should continually do Him worship. In holiness and righteousness before Him all the days that we have.” This is the essence and use of all the true ritualism of God. One word summed up the whole meaning and purpose of the priestly life of Zacharias--to do God service, to be worshipping Him. This word, this Ich Dien of the faithful priesthood, he makes the Ich Dien of every child of God. The one true priest, whose coming is so near, shall enable all the redeemed people to perform the true service of priests, to celebrate God’ s worship in the long festivity of a perpetual freedom. The motto of Christ’ s kingdom of priests comes fitly from the lips of an inspired priest. The meaning of the Old Testament ritual is given, as best became the fitness of things, by one who was “ of the order of Abia.” These words are sung in hundreds of churches. It is well that singers should be taught to sing “ gracefully,” as well as heartily, to the Lord. But both choirs and congregations should keep the words of Zacharias ever before them, “ Without fear to do Him the worship and service of a life.” 2. The place which is occupied by the Benedictus in the reformed Prayer Book is significant and interesting. It is placed immediately after the second lesson at morning service, which is always from one of the Gospels, Epistles, or the Apocalypse. Zacharias was the first New Testament prophet; and this is almost the first gospel hymn. The voice and song of such a one may fitly be heard immediately after our first reading from the New Testament. It does not, perhaps, seem a mere fancy to see in the contents of the Benedictus a reference to the work of the Christian ministry. Zacharias was a father as well as a priest. He turns, with a burst of joy, which was not merely natural, to his babe, and places him among the goodly company of the prophets--“ And thou too, child, shalt be called prophet of the Highest. For onward thou shalt go, on, in front of the Lord, to prepare His ways; To give knowledge of salvation to His people.” But what was to be done by the child of Zacharias is to be done by Christ’ s ministers, who “ prepare and make ready a people for His second coming.” And the simple reading of the simple gospel in the second lesson is a specimen, as it were, and epitome of all this work. III. This utterance of Zacharias is something more than a song or poem. It is a treatise on salvation. 1. Its Author--“ Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, For He hath raised up a strong salvation for us.” 2. Its cause--“ On account of the tender mercy of our God.” 3. Its essence--“ Salvation, consisting in remisssion of sins.” 4. Its blessedness and privileges--“ Being delivered out of the hand of our enemies, to serve Him without fear.” 5. Its consequence--“ In holiness and righteousness before Him all our days.” All who have ever understood the Psalmist’ s deeply pathetic cry, “ Make the reproach which I am afraid of to pass over,” will also understand the preciousness of the privilege. We conclude by citing the image with which the song concludes. It is derived from a caravan which has lost its way, when the wayfarers “ sit down” in the darkness, which is like the shadow of death, to perish in their helplessness. Then, in the high heavens, a glorious star makes its Epiphany. So often as we sing this hymn with true spiritual worship, with hearts full of the sense of that salvation which consists in remission of sins, the old song may be as full of life and joy as any new hymn. The Hymn of Zacharias is the strain of the “ Pilgrims of the Night.” (Bishop Willliam Alexander.) Zachariah’ s canticle 1. Observe that no sooner was Zachary recovered and restored to his speech, but he sings the praises of his Redeemer, and offers up a thanksgiving to God. The best return we can make to God for the use of our tongue, for the giving or restoring of our speech, is to publish our Creator’ s praise, to plead His cause, and vindicate His honour. 2. The subject matter of Zachary’ s song. What is the particular and special mercy which He praises and blesses God for? It is not for his own particular and private mercy, namely, the recovery of his speech, though undoubtedly he was very thankful to God for that mercy; but he blesses and praises God for catholic and universal mercies bestowed upon His Church and people. 3. In this evangelical hymn there is a prophetic prediction, both concerning Christ and concerning John. (1) Concerning Christ, he declares that God the Father had sent Him of His free mercy and rich grace, yet in performance of His truth and faithfulness, and according to His promise and oath which He had made to Abraham and the fathers of the Old Testament. Where note-- (a) He blesses God for the comprehensive blessing of the Messiah--“ visited,” i.e., in the incarnation of Jesus. (b) The special fruit and benefit of this gracious and merciful visitation--the redemption of a lost world. (c) The character given of this Saviour and Redeemer--“ horn of salvation,” i.e., a royal and glorious, strong and powerful, Saviour to His Church and people. The horn in Scripture signifies glory and dignity, strength and power; as the beauty, so the strength of the beast lies in his horn; now Christ being styled a horn of salvation intimates that He Himself is a royal and princely Saviour, and that the salvation which He brings is great and plentiful, glorious and powerful. (d) The nature and quality of that salvation and deliverance which the Son of God came to accomplish for us. Not a temporal deliverance, as the Jews expected, from the power of the Romans; but spiritual, from the hands of sin and Satan, death and hell; His design was to purchase a spiritual freedom and liberty for us, that we might be enabled to serve Him without fear, i.e., without the servile and offending fear of a slave, but with the dutiful and ingenuous fear of a child. Learn hence, that believers, who were slaves of Satan, are by Christ made God’ s freemen; and, as such, they owe God a willing, cheerful, and delightful service without fear, and a constant, persevering service all the days of their life. (e) The source and fountain from which this glorious Saviour and gracious salvation arose and sprang, viz., from the mercy and faithfulness of God. (2) Concerning John, he prophesies-- (a) The nature of His office. (b) The quality of his work. He was to be a herald and harbinger to the Most High; as the morning star, foretelling the glorious arising of the Sun of Righteousness. 4. Zachary, having spoken a few words concerning his son, returns instantly to celebrate the praises of the Saviour, comparing Him to the rising sun, which shone forth in the brightness of the gospel to enlighten the dark corners of the world. (W. Burkitt, M. A.) Deliverance at hand When an English garrison, during the Indian Mutiny, was besieged at Lucknow, and was almost momentarily expecting the fall of the city, a sick woman started up from her slumber, crying, “ We’ re saved! Don’ t you hear the music? They’ re coming! They’ re coming!” No one else could hear that music; yet, in a few hours, a relieving force arrived, and the garrison was saved. This prophecy of Zacharias is like the far-off music of the coming salvation. Compare in Motley’ s “ Dutch Republic” the account of the relief of Leyden. The state of the world before the coming of Christ may be compared to that of shipwrecked men clinging to a rock in the midst of the sea. There is no safety for them where they are, and no safety in themselves. With what joyous eyes is it that they behold a boat coming to their rescue from the distant land! So in the case of lost humanity, salvation had to be brought. A man crossing a heath one dark night fell into a pit. He tried in vain to get out, calling loudly for assistance all the while. Soon people gathered to his assistance, and a rope was lowered to him. He grasped it, and was drawn up into the light. So mankind cannot be uplifted from the pit of sin, except by salvation brought from above. (Sunday School Times.) God’ s faithfulness Like the song of Mary, this prophecy of Zacharias tells of God’ s faithfulness in His promises. In ancient times there was a beautiful rite of hospitality. Friends residing in different countries gave each other emblems, on the presentation of which each could claim the hospitality of the other. And when they both were dead, the son of one could call upon the son of the other for the same hospitality by presenting his emblem. The promises made to the father were fulfilled to the son. So down through the ages the Jews waited for the fulfilment of the promises made to Abraham. But to us it is given to see in clearer light their complete fulfilment, and how that came neither too late nor too soon. (Sunday School Times.) The song of Zacharias I. Let us join Zacharias in his song of praise for that great deliverance of which John was the harbinger. The blessings here celebrated were not confined to Jews, but are common to all God’ s “ people. Salvation is ever the same in substance, and much the same in its form and means. II. It becomes us to be thankful that the light of the gospel has visited our own land in particular. Through God’ s mercy we have been lifted out of idolatry, impurity, and misery, into the knowledge of the truth. Let us see that the “ light” is shining into our hearts, and that we are walking in it. III. Deliverance from enemies through the gospel. Saved from sin; taken out of the power of our spiritual foes. IV. Serving God without fear. 1. External peace and security. 2. Internal state of mind produced by religion. At peace with God; delighting in Him as a Father and Friend. (James Foote, M. A.) The parental relationship There are men and women known in history chiefly by their relation to their children. They were godly men and women; men and women of ability and usefulness in their day; but their pre-eminent place in the world is as parents. This fact should be a stimulus and a source of hope to every parent. Whatever a father or a mother may have done or have failed to do up to the present hour, there is that child to be looked after, to be loved and cared for, to be trained and prayed over, to have faith in behalf of. In that child there may lie the hope and the joy of multitudes, and the hope and the joy of the parents as well. How this ought to nerve us and give us cheer as we toil and pray for the child of our hearts. That child may rise up to call us blessed, and, for his sake, all generations may call us blessed. It is for us to do our duty by our children. It may be for us to have a reward in them beyond all other rewards we have in and for our earthly course. You are the father, or the mother, of that child. How much of good does that portend to him? How much of good it may portend to you! (H. C.Trumbull.) The source of true power “ Filled with the Holy Ghost” --that was fitness for praising God acceptably, and for proclaiming His truth acceptably, in the days of Zacharias. It was not that Zacharias was filled with enthusiasm, filled with earnestness, filled with knowledge, filled with poetic fervour; but that he was filled with the Holy Ghost. That gave his words power, and, because of that fact, his words are in our ears and on our lips to-day. There is no other source of true power in God’ s service in this age, or in any age. To be a good parent, a good teacher, a good preacher, a good Bible student, a good man, or a good woman, one needs to be filled with the Holy Ghost; there is no substitute for this. (H. C.Trumbull.) Songs composed under stress of deep feeling On the night before her execution, Mary Queen of Scots composed a short prayer, and sang it over by herself because she could not sleep. The words are very musical in the Latin which she used, expressing the passionate wish of a captive to escape: “ O Lord God Almighty! my hope is in Thee! O Jesus beloved, now liberate me! In durance the drearest, in bonds the severest-- My desire is to Thee! In sighing and crying, on bended knees lying, I adore--I implore Thou would’ st liberate me!” When Madame Guyon and her faithful maid were imprisoned, she composed songs for her comfort. “ And then,” says she, “ we sang them together, praises unto Thee, O our God! It sometimes seemed to me as if I were a little bird, whom the Lord had placed in a cage, and that I had nothing to do now but sing!” Religious value of song Bishop Jewel, writing to Peter Martyr, March, 1560, says: “ Religion is now somewhat more established than it was. The people are everywhere exceedingly inclined to the better part. Ecclesiastical and popular music has much conduced to this result. For as soon as they had once commenced to sing publicly in only one little church in London, immediately not only the other neighbouring churches, but even the towns far distant, began to vie with each other in the same practice. At times you may see at Paul’ s Cross, after sermon, six thousand persons, old and young, of both sexes, singing together and praising God. This sadly annoys the priests and the devil, for they see that by these means the sacred discourses sink more deeply into men’ s minds, and that their kingdom is shaken and shattered at almost every note.” The song of Zacharias It is emphatically the song of a man whose tongue is unloosed; who for the first time has entered into the meaning of the books which he has been reading since his childhood, of the services in which he has been engaged ever since he became a priest. A speech may be invented with tolerable success for a general on the eve of a battle, though such as have really come down to us stir the blood far more; but the mimicry of this kind of feeling must have been odious and contemptible. I know not where you could find the stamp of fraud more clear and ineffaceable than on a document which attempted it. If the words of Zacharias have lasted to our day, and have been accepted by men of different races as vital and true words--as words which speak to and speak forth the human heart within them--I cannot persuade myself that they bear that stamp of insincerity. (F. D. Maurice, M. A.) Spontaneous spiritual song One can’ t help thinking that the mind and heart of Zacharias during all those nine months had been filling with this song. And now it bursts forth at once--as a flower suddenly bursts out where there was but a green-sheathed bull yesterday. This song is as spontaneous as that of a lark, and as lyrical. As David found a prayer in his 2 Samuel 7:27), so Zacharias found a song in his. (A. B.Grosart, D. D.) It is a wonderful scene in the house of the old priest Zacharias that we are permitted to witness. The priest’ s lips had long been sealed. In silence he had awaited the fulfilment of the Divine promise. His tongue was not to be loosed till the word of the Lord had been fulfilled, that his first utterance might be praise to God for His wonderful works. It was manifest that a new era was beginning--the era of the long-expected redemption of Israel. This is the strain of Zacharias’ hymn of praise. Just as a mountain stream, which, after being long hemmed in, finds at last an outlet, leaps along in tumultuous gladness, so does the long pent-up emotion of Zacharias’ heart flow forth in a rapture of praise, “ Blessed be the Lord,” &c. We feel that this is not the expression simply of his own personal, fatherly gladness. It is the rejoicing song of all who looked for redemption in Israel, thus finding utterance through him. We observe that it was-- I. A Tree OF (verses 67-70), and-- II. A TIME OF (verses 71-79). (Professor Luthardt.) Emotion breaking out into speech A vivid emotion of love and gratitude is very apt to break out into speech, either in the form of a public testimony for Christ, or in the voice of song. I have known a prayer meeting, at a time of awakening, to become like an aviary, for God had put a new song into scores of mouths. (T. L. Cuyler.) Changed by the Spirit No man or woman amongst you knows what he might be if he were filled with the Spirit. What is that rough Luther? He is only fit to have been a killer of bullocks, or a feller of oaks in the forest; but fill Luther with the Holy Spirit and what is he? He takes the bull of Rome by the horns, slays wild beasts of error in the great arena of the gospel, and is more than a conqueror through the might which dwelleth in him! Take John Calvin--fit naturally to be a cunning lawyer, cutting and dividing nice points, judging this precedent and that, frittering away his time over immaterial niceties; but fill him with the Holy Ghost and John Calvin becomes the mighty master of grace, the reflection of the wisdom of all past ages, and a great light to shed a brilliant ray even till the Millennium shall dawn I Chief, and prince, and king of all uninspired teachers, the mighty seer of Geneva, filled with the Spirit of God is no more John Calvin, but a God-sent angel of the Churches! (C. H.Spurgeon.) Luke 1:68 Visited and redeemed His people Visited 1. To visit is the work of one that comes to do a charitable office to a sick person, according to that place (Matthew 25:1-46.), “ I was sick and ye visited Me.” So Christ came into this world because it languished of a sore disease. 2. To give a visit to another is a voluntary courtesy, an act of kindness that hath no compulsion or unwillingness in it: for he that visits any place or persons, if he did not like them he might keep away; but you cannot imagine more promptness and readiness in any one than there was in our Saviour, to be humbled to that baseness to take our nature upon him. 3. There is not only willingness, but friendliness in the appellation: no man visits another but in the profession of a friend; therefore St. Paul says upon the Incarnation (Titus 3:4), “ the kindness and love of God our Saviour toward man appeared.” (Bishop Hacket.) Redeemed 1. Now captivity must be presupposed on our part, because we did await and expect redemption. 2. As his goodness is amplified from our captivity, so the redemption is the more valuable, because none else could have plucked us out of those fetters but the Holy One, our Lord and Master. 3. And let it make a third animadversion, that the manner of our redemption doth greatly exaggerate the most meritorious compassion of the Redeemer; there hath been redemption wrought by force and victory, so Moses brought the Israelites with an high hand out of the slavery of Egypt: there is a redemption which is wrought by intercession and supplication; so Nehemiah prevailed with King Cyrus, to dismiss the Jews out of the Babylonish captivity: or thirdly, either gold, or silver, or somewhat more precious is laid down to buy out the freedom of that which is in thraldom; that’ s the most costly and estimable way when value for value is paid; or fourthly, the body of one is surrendered up for the ransom of another, life for life, blood for blood; and greater charity cannot be shown than to bring redemption to pass by such a compensation. So St. Peter extols that act in our Saviour; says he, “ Ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, but with the blood of Christ, as a lamb undefiled.” So out of His own mouth (Matthew 20:28). 4. As all mankind that is flesh and blood in every man and woman is honoured by His visitation, so all without exceptions are beholden to His redemption. Zachary the priest with all his innocency, who is said to have been blameless and righteous before God, yet he blesseth God that he was redeemed. Having thus spoken of the benefits of visitation and redemption, I should leave my treatise very imperfect if I should not speak of the receivers; very briefly therefore concerning them upon whom all was conferred, “ He hath visited and redeemed His people.” It is certain that the generations of mankind are meant by this word, the sons and daughters of Adam, and none others. (Bishop Hacket.) Difficulty of defining redemption If you should expect from me a discourse in which I should explain redemption, I must follow the example of that philosopher of ancient times who, when some asked a definition of God, said I must first ask for a week to prepare my reply; after that week is passed I must ask a second, and again a third, and so on till I had at last declared that I never could end my demand for time. For the more that philosopher meditated on God, the less was he able to give a definition; and the more I meditate on redemption, the less can I explain it. (Adolphe Monod.) Realizing redemption Dean Stanley tells us that Dr. Arnold used to make his boys say, “ Christ died for me,” instead of the more general phrase, “ Christ died for us.” “ He appeared to me,” says one whose intercourse with him never extended beyond these lessons. “ to be remarkable for his habit of realizing everything that we are told in Scripture.” (Life of Dr. Arnold.) God’ s great redemption John Frederick Oberlin put off all earthly comfort to redeem a barren district of France from poverty and ignorance, with his own pick axe beginning the building of a high road from Ban de la Roche up to the city of Strasburg. But here was a highway to be constructed from the squalor of earth to the heights of heaven. Clarkson pleaded before the English Parliament, and the Russian Emperor, against the slave trade. But here was the question of deliverance for a hundred thousand millions of bondmen. Aye! it was the pounding off of an iron chain from the neck of a captive world. I think it was the greatest and most absorbing thought of God’ s lifetime. I do not think that there was anything in all the ages of the past, or that there will be in all the ages of the future, anything to equal it, The masterpiece of eternity I There were so many difficulties to be overcome! There were such infinite consequences to be considered! There were such gulfs to bridge, and such heights to scale, and such immensities to compass! If God had been less than omnipotent, He would not have been strong enough; or less than omniscient, I do not think He would have been wise enough; or less loving, would have been sympathetic enough. There might have been a God strong enough to create a universe, and yet too weak to do this. To create the worlds, only a word was necessary; but to do this work required more than a word. It required more than ordinary effort of a God. It required the dying anguish of an Only Son. (Dr. Talmage.) Luke 1:70 As he spake All God’ s promises are fulfilled Look over your lives, O Christians I and you cannot find one hour when God’ s promises have failed you. Look over the history of His people, and it is full of promises fulfilled; but there is not a fragment of a broken promise to be found. When Elisha’ s servant was afraid because the armies of Syria were besieging them in Dothan, Elisha prayed that his eyes might be opened; and the servant saw that the mountain was full of horses and chariots round about Elisha. If God touches our eyes, we too shall see all our own life and all history full of God’ s fulfilled promises round about us. As when Milton’ s archangel spoke-- “ To confirm His words, out flew Millions of flaming swords, drawn from the thighs Of mighty cherubim.” So God speaks a promise, and out fly millions of facts and experiences to confirm His words. Faithfulness of God Far, far above all comprehension is the truth and faithfulness of God. He never fails, nor forgets, nor falters, nor forfeits His word. Afflictions are like clouds, but the Divine truthfulness is all around them. While we are under the cloud we are in the region of God’ s faithfulness; when we mount above it we shall not need such an assurance. To every word of threat, or promise, prophecy or covenant, the Lord has exactly adhered, for He is not a man that he should lie, nor the son of man that he should repent. (C. H. Spurgeon.) Mercy of God boundless Like the ethereal blue, it encompasses the whole earth smiling upon universal nature, acting as a canopy for all the creatures of earth, surmounting the loftiest peaks of human provocations, and rising high above the mists of mortal trangression. Clear sky is evermore above, and mercy calmly smiles above the din and smoke of this poor world. Darkness and clouds are but of earth’ s lower atmosphere: the heavens are evermore serene, and bright with innumerable stars. Divine mercy abides in its vastness of expanse, and matchless patience, all unaltered by the rebellions of man. When we can measure the heavens, then shall we bound the mercy of the Lord. Towards his own servants especially, in the salvation of the Lord Jesus, He has displayed grace higher than the heaven of heavens, and wider than the universe. O that the atheist could but see this, how earnestly would he long to become a servant of Jehovah! (C. H. Spurgeon.) Immovableness of the Divine promises A swallow having built its nest upon the tent of Charles V., the Emperor generously commanded that the tent should not be taken down when the camp removed, but should remain until the young birds were ready to fly. Was there such a gentleness in the heart of a soldier toward a poor bird which was not of his making, and shall the Lord deal hardly with His creatures when they venture to put their trust in Him? Be assured He hath a great love to those trembling souls that fly for shelter to His royal courts. He that buildeth his nest upon a Divine promise shall find it abide and remain until he shall fly away to the land where promises are lost in fulfilments. (C. H. Spurgeon.) Luke 1:73 The oath which He sware The purpose of God’ s oath God doth not give it to make His word or promise sure and steadfast, but to give assurance and security to us of their accomplishment. Every word of God is sure and certain truth itself, because it is His; and He might justly require of us the belief of it, without any further attestation. But yet, knowing what great objections Satan and our own unbelieving hearts will raise against His promises, at least as to our own concerns in them, to confirm our minds, and to take away all pretences of unbelief, He interposes His oath in this matter. (John Owen.) God’ s covenants A covenant is a contract, or a compact, between two agreeing parties, that, on certain conditions being observed by one party, the other will do as specified. God made a covenant of works with our first parents, that if they obeyed His commands they should enjoy His favour and blessings. Since the fall, God has made a covenant of grace by faith with mankind, that, trusting in Him, through atonement, they should be saved and blessed. God entered into covenant with Abraham and his descendants (Genesis 17:2-14). God covenants with us that He will answer our believing prayers; that He will teach and guide those who are willing and obedient; that He will fulfil to us all His exceeding great and precious promises, if we perform the simple, easy, reasonable conditions attached to them. Then God will ever be faithful to His engagements. “ Suppose,” said one, “ God were not to fulfil His promises to you.” “ Then,” was the reply of the Christian lady addressed, “ He would lose more than I should.” This would be the fact, for in such a case God would lose the glory of His Divine faithfulness, truth, holiness, justice, mercy, love, &e. But this is an utter impossibility. God “ cannot lie,” therefore we may each say, with David, “ He hath made with me an everlasting covenant, ordered in all things, and sure.” (H. R. Burton.) Luke 1:74 Being delivered out of the hand of our enemies Delivered from the hand of the enemy While labouring among the wild tribes of the Druses, a messenger from one of their chiefs, whose influence it was important to secure, sent a message entreating Mr. Gobat to visit him. The latter, however, was unable to do so in consequence of indisposition, h second messenger repeated the invitation, but still, contrary to Mr. Gobat’ s expectations, he was prevented from complying with the chief’ s wishes, h third messenger prevailed on him to set out, by the assurance that if he went at once he might spend the night with the chief, and be ready to return in the morning, so as to join a ship about to sail for Malta, in which Mr. Gobat was anxious to embark. On their journey the guides lost them selves in the mountain paths. Having at last, with some difficulty, regained their route, they suddenly saw by the light of the moon that a hyena had laid itself down across the path exactly in their way. They threw stones to frighten it, when the animal sprang up and ran along the path which the party were to travel. A superstition is prevalent among the Druses, that “ the way a hyena goes is an unlucky one.” The natives refused, accordingly, to go farther, and Mr. Gobat had to retrace his steps, greatly perplexed at the obstacles which had hindered a journey apparently of so much consequence to his mission. When in Malta he received a letter from a friend in Lebanon, stating that he had been visited by the chief, who, with much agitation, had spoken to him as follows:--“ Your friend is truly a servant of God, and God has preserved him; for I wished to draw him to my village in order to murder him. Therefore I sent message after message to him; but God has delivered him from the hand of his enemies.” (Memoirs of the late Bishop Gobat.) God’ s interposition In a Western cabin, far away from all other residences, there sat a Christian mother rocking her babe to sleep. The husband and the father had been called suddenly off on business, and there had been no defence provided for that house that night in the wilderness. As the mother sat there in the cabin rocking her babe to sleep, miles away from any other tenement, glancing to the floor she saw a ruffian’ s foot projecting from under the table. Having rocked her child to sleep she put him in the cradle, and then knelt down and said: “ Oh I Lord, keep this child; keep me. Oh! Thou who never slumbereth, watch over our cabin tonight. Let no harm come to us. If there be those abroad who wish us ill, bring them to a better mind. The Lord have mercy upon all wanderers, all who do deeds of violence and death. Bring them to Thyself--bring them to pardon and to heaven.” As she arose from the prayer the ruffian came out from under the table and said: “ There will be no harm to you to-night. Pray for me, I am the wanderer that you spoke of. Pray for me.” Years passed on, and that Christian woman sat in a great meeting called in the interest of reform. There was a great orator that day to be present, and as he preached righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come, his eye fell upon the countenance of that woman. His cheek was blanched and he almost failed in his speech. At the close of the meeting they joined hands, and a few words of conversation passed, and some one said: “ Why, where did you form the acquaintance of that orator?” “ Never mind,” she said, “ I have known him many years.” Who was it watching the mother that night? Who was it watching the babe? Who was tit that brought the ruffian to God in repentance for his sin? Who is it that watches all our cradles, and all our tables, and all our homes, and all our way? Blessed be His glorious name for ever. He is a shelter to which we may all run. He is a fortress in which we may all be safe. (Dr. Talmage.) Might serve Him without fear Serving the Lord in holiness I. The conveyance made in this covenant--“ That He would grant unto us,” &c. II. The benefits secured to us in this conveyance. Let us then attend-- I. TO THE MADE IS THIS . In this two things may be observed. 1. The parties in whose favour this conveyance is made. Us, the seed of Abraham. So in this gospel, the Covenant is held out to you all, as heaven’ s blank bond for grace and glory, that whosoever will, may fill his own name in it, by applying the same to himself in the way of believing. 2. The manner of the conveyance. It is by way of grant or gift, for so the word is. But observe the gift is to us, and so it is to be understood in respect of us, to be a free gift. In respect of the Lord Jesus, it is not so. All the benefits of the covenant, to be bestowed on His spiritual seed, are made over to Him on a valuable consideration. God gives us to serve our Redeemer, because Christ served Him perfectly in our room and stead. II. To THE SECURED TO US IN THIS , even the sum of the benefits of the covenant of grace. 1. The principal benefit, which stands here under the notion of the end, namely, serving the Lord. “ That He would grant unto us, that we being delivered out of the hands of our enemies, might serve Him.” O that men would learn this lesson, that any service we do to God, if right service, it is a benefit of the covenant, bestowed On us, for Christ’ s sake. Then would they learn that God is not debtor unto them for it, but they are debtors to free grace on that very account. And the more they do for God, and the better that they do it, they are always the deeper in debt to free grace, Ephesians 2:8-10). This benefit of the covenant, that we might serve Him, imports three things: 1. The privilege of God’ s service. God is a master of infinite glory and power, so that to be admitted into His service is the greatest privilege. How do men value themselves, in that they are of an earthly king’ s household, servants to one who wears a crown? But what a small thing is that, in comparison of this, to be the fellows of angels, in being taken into the service of Jehovah, the Lord of heaven and earth. It is a great part of heaven’ s happiness. “ For there His servants shall serve Him.” 2. Strength and ability for His service. “ And I will strengthen them in the Lord, and they shall walk up and down in His name, saith the Lord.” “ He that abideth in Me, and I in him,” saith Jesus, “ the same bringeth forth much fruit; for without Me ye can do nothing.” “ For His grace is sufficient for us, and His strength is made perfect in weakness.” 3. Acceptance of the service. For without faith it is impossible to please God. Concerning this covenant service, two things are further to be remarked. 1. The kind of service to God, in which sinners are instated by the covenant of grace; for there is a great difference of services. Now-- (1) This is not bond service, the service of slaves, who work their work for fear of their master’ s whip. “ Wherefore we have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear, but we have received the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry Abba, Father.” (2) It is not hired service, so much work for so much wages. But-- (3) It is an honorary service. So the word used by the Holy Ghost, in the text, signifies to minister, which is an honorary kind of service, such as kings and priests had when put into their office. Thus Christ hath made His people kings and priests unto God. They are a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God, by Jesus Christ. Let us now attend-- 2. To the qualities of the service. They are these: (1) It is universal, which the service of these remaining under the first covenant never is. “ Then shall I not be ashamed, when [ have respect unto all Thy commandments.” We are to serve Him in holiness and righteousness. These answer to the whole holy law as a rule of life. That grace is held forth in the covenant, which you are to embrace for sanctification, as well as justification. And it is a full covenant for that purpose, as for all other purposes of salvation. (2) It is a perpetual and lasting service. The first covenant required a lasting service, but secured not man from breaking the service. But the second covenant secures the perpetuity of the service, that, however fickle the believer is, yet he shall serve the Lord all the days of his life. It imports that he shall serve the Lord for ever and ever, in heaven, after death. We are now to consider, secondly, the subordinate benefit, namely, deliverance from our enemies, which stands here as a mean in order to the end, namely, God’ s service. “ That we, being delivered out of the hands of our enemies, might serve Him.” It is evident from the structure of the words, both in our version, and in the original especially, that the service is the end of the deliverance, and the deliverance the means of the service. As God said of Israel in Egypt, so doth He say of all His people; “ Let My son go, that he may serve Me.” They cannot serve the Lord till once they be delivered. This may also direct you in your management of this solemn occasion of grace and salvation. 1. If ever you would be capable to serve the Lord, seek that you may be delivered from your spiritual enemies, taken out of their hands who keep you in bondage. 2. If ever you would obtain that deliverance from your spiritual enemies, seek it in the covenant, in a way of believing. “ And if the Son make you free, you shall be free indeed.” Lastly, Seek that deliverance, that you may serve the Lord. Many seek deliverance by Christ, that they may live at ease in the embraces of their lusts, free from the fear of hell. (T. Boston.) Serving the Lord in holiness I. THE . We, being delivered out of the hands of our enemies. I shall reduce these to four. 1. They are delivered from the law. Not from the law as a rule of life in the hand of a Mediator, standing in the covenant of grace; but from the law as a covenant, under which all men are in their natural state (Romans 6:14-15). They are delivered from the curse of it. From the commanding power of it. For how can it have a commanding power over them who are not under it? But they are as completely freed from it, as death can make a wife free from her husband. 2. From sin. Though they are not free from the indwelling of it in this life, and molestation by it, yet they are freed from its guilt of eternal wrath, by which it binds over the sinner to the revenging wrath of God. “ There is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus.” They are freed also from the dominion of sin. “ Sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under the law, but under grace.” 3. From death. Our Lord’ s words are, “ Verily, verily, I say unto you, if a man keep My saying, he shall never see death.” Lastly, from Satan, though not from molestation by him in this life; yet from under his power and dominion. Let us now-- II. Take notice of the covenant service, WHICH IS THE DESIGN OF THIS ; and not only the design of the deliverance, but also of the deliverer: which, therefore, shall certainly take effect in the delivered. I take it up in three things, according to the text. They shall serve the Lord-- 1. As sons serving their Father. Love to their Father will set them to work. 2. They shall serve Him universally. “ Then shall I not be ashamed, when I have respect to all Thy commandments.” They will serve the Lord internally and externally. 3. They will serve Him constantly. “ I have inclined my heart to perform Thy statutes alway, even unto the end.” Let us-- III. SHOW THE BETWIXT THE AND SERVICE. 1. None can serve the Lord in this right manner, till once in the first place, they are delivered: no more than a dead corpse can rise and serve you Ephesians 2:1-10). 2. The soul being once thus delivered, will certainly serve the Lord “ in holiness and righteousness before Him.” Use 1. The sanctification of sinners is the chief subordinate end of the covenant of grace, or of the gospel, standing next to the glory of God. Use 2. They in whom the spirit of legalism, hypocrisy, and apostasy reigns, have no part nor lot in this matter. Lastly, as ever you would evidence yourselves God’ s covenant people, partakers of this deliverance, serve no more the devil and your own lusts. (T. Boston.) The practical nature of Christianity I. The first blessing resulting from the Incarnation of Christ is FROM OUR ENEMY. Man’ s worst enemy is the devil and sin. In one sense it may be said we are not freed from these, for temptation besets the path of the Christian all through life; and the best and holiest men must with shame confess that they day by day offend. Yet is it true that since the coming of Christ the power of the devil on earth is much diminished, our Lord having seen him like lightning fall from heaven, and having by His descent into hell triumphed over the dismal powers of despair and hell. Strong as temptation is, we know that no one is tempted beyond what he is able to resist, and if he have recourse to the passion of Christ he will obtain not only a victory but a crown. II. The next result of Christ having come in the flesh is, THAT WE MAY SERVE HIM WITHOUT FEAR. To every son of Adam sufficient grace is given to save him, though, alas I we see too many neglect so gracious a gift. But if the work of Christ be thus enabling, what an obligation it lays on all to occupy with that precious talent. God has done all this to enable you to render to Him that service, which is not only perfect freedom, but the true end and happiness of the creature, the very purpose for which all things were called into being. And this service is without fear. The relation with God into which we are brought through His Divine Son is a filial one. We have received the adoption of sons, and therefore the more we act as dutiful children, the more we shall love our kind parent; and when love is perfect, then, we are told, it casts out fear. The fear thus cast out is distrust of God’ s goodness and mercy, or the dread of ever being separated from His holy care. But we are not for a moment to believe that any supposed advance in the spiritual life entitles us to take liberties with the honour of Him, at whose sight the whole earth trembles. III. THIS SERVICE IS IN AND . Holiness has been defined to be purity and strength, the clean heart and the strong will dedicated as an offering to God; and righteousness is the same as justice, and may be taken either for that one great quality, whereby we render both to God and to man what is due, or else for that habitual charity, which contains the whole cycle of the Christian duties. IV. THIS SERVICE IS AND --“ All the days of our life.” 1. No man is really safe till his trial is over. A blight may come over the soul; temptation, hitherto successfully resisted, may at length be succumbed to; conscience drugged, the soul may finally be lost. (1) This thought should make us all humble. (2) Watchful. (3) Prayerful. (4) Thankful for the merciful warning, “ Be not high-minded, but fear.” 2. We must be ever advancing. It takes a long and a weary time to destroy the traces of old gin, and form ourselves upon the model of the new man. Even at the end we shall be far short of the ensample proposed to us, but there is comfort in the thought that even if we are not now what we ought to be, there is no necessity for staying as we are. God is ever calling us, and aiding us in our faintest efforts to obey that call. He mercifully deals with us both by prosperity and by adversity, if we only will submit to His loving discipline. (Bishop A. F. Forbes.) Delivered from fear How safe Noah, his family, and all the creatures in the ark were when God shut them in, and took them under His protection! A man dreamed that he was enclosed in a steel house, and though enemies came with guns, bayonets, and swords to kill him, he was perfectly safe. How much more secure are those who have God for their Refuge, Shield, and Protector. During a terrible storm at sea, a Christian officer was perfectly calm and fearless. His wife expressed surprise at this, when he drew his sword, and placing the point close to her breast, said, “ I could kill you.” “ But,” she replied, “ I am not afraid, because I know you love me, and you won’ t hurt me.” ‘“ So I fear not,” responded he, “ because God loves me, and He won’ t hurt me.” Knox was said never to have feared the face of any man. Chrysostom said once, “ Go, tell her,” (Queen Eudoxia) “ that I fear nothing but sin.” (H. R. Burton.) Serving God and the fear of man “ Where in my deep distress I determined to call on God I wanted to be sure that no one should hear me. I went to the woods, where, at the foot of a large tree, I had pled alone a thousand times without the least fear of intrusion. But now I could not feel alone. Some one was on the other side of the tree. I walked round it, but still felt that some listener, eluding me, was on the other side. In this way I actually walked several times around the tree. Stopping, I said: What are men or devils that I should quail before them when seeking Jehovah? Then I prayed, and if the assembled universe had been there I should have prayed.” (Dr. Finney.) Tormenting fear of God And as I was brought up under the influence of fear of my parents, so I was also brought up under the influence of fear of God. I do not believe that there is any creature in India that goes before monstrous-mouthed idols with more quaking than I felt when I thought of Jehovah. I used to read those hymns of Watts, where he threw blood on the blazing throne, and quenched indignation, and brought forth love and mercy; and if I have not been through purgatory under the experience bred by the view presented in those hymns, nobody has I That which I hungered for and needed from the beginning was not terror. I was terrified enough. I had too much fear. And I remember perfectly--all eternity will not burn it out--when a change came over my feelings. I was walking near [Jane Seminary (where I studied theology without a hope), and was working over a lesson that I was to hear recited; and the idea dawned on me, not that there had been a covenant formed between God and His Son, but that Christ revealed the nature of God, whose very soul was curative, and who brought Himself and His living holiness to me, because I needed so much, and not because I was so deserving; and that instant the clouds rose, and the whole heaven was radiant, and I exclaimed, “ I have found God!” and it was the first time I had found Him. Good His name was; and I went like one crazed up and down through the fields, half crying, half laughing, singing and praying and shouting like a good Methodist. (H. W. Beecher.) Luke 1:75 All the days of our life The holy and their heavenly prospects True, all our lives long we shall be bound to refrain our soul and keep it low; but what then? For the books we now forbear to read, we shall one day be endued with wisdom and knowledge. For the music we will not listen to, we shall join in the song of the redeemed. For the pictures from which we turn, we shall gaze unabashed on the beatific vision. For the companionship we shun, we shall be welcomed into angelic society and the communion of triumphant saints. For the pleasures we miss, we shall abide, and evermore abide, in the rapture of heaven. It cannot be much of a hardship to dress modestly, and at small cost, rather than richly and fashionably, if, with a vivid conviction, we are awaiting the “ white robes of the redeemed.” And, indeed, this anticipation of pure and simple white robes for eternal wear may fairly shake belief in the genuine beauty of elaborate showiness, even for such clothes as befitted in the present distress. (Christina G. Rossetti.) Holiness What is the base line of the Bible? It is sin. And it is not one of the chief reasons why the Bible is made so little of that men do not realize what sin is--how dreadful and how fatal it is? What is the horizontal line of the Bible? It is holiness. That is where earth and heaven meet. But on that horizon line there is only one point of sight, it is where God and man meet in Christ, in whom alone holiness can be found. (John Munro Gibson.) Ambition to excel in holiness “ There is nothing,” it might have seemed when the first settlers of Massachusetts established the English race on the cheerless shores, the barren rocks, the trackless forests of this continent. Yet there was everything; there was the hope of a new world; there were the elements of a mighty nation, if only those who followed after sustained the high spirit and great resolves of those who had gone before. It was but two days ago that I read in the close of a volume written by the founder of the venerable village of Concord, a sentence which ought to bring at once the noblest encouragement and the sternest rebuke to every citizen of this Commonwealth. “ There is no people,” says Peter Bulkley, in his Gospel Covenant, in the year 1646, to his little flock of exiles, “ There is no people but will strive to excel in something. What can we excel in if not in holiness? If we look to numbers, we are the fewest; if to strength, we are the weakest; if to wealth and riches, we are the poorest of all, the people of God throughout the whole world. We cannot excel, nor so much as equal, other people in these things; and, if we come short in grace and holiness, we are also the most despicable people under heaven. Strive we therefore to excel, and suffer not this crown to be taken away from us, (Dean Stanley.) Luke 1:77 To give knowledge of salvation Source of salvation All great rivers, unlike some great men who have begun life in lowly circumstances, boast a lofty descent. It is after the Alpine traveller has left smiling valleys beneath him, and toiling along rugged glens and through deep mountain gorges, reaches at length the shores of an icy sea, that he stands at the source of the river, which, cold as the snows that feed it, and a full-grown torrent at its birth, rushes out from the cavern of the hollowed glacier. Yet such a river, in the loftiness of its birth-place, is but an humble image of salvation. How high its source! “ He showed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb.” (T. Guthrie, D. D.) God a great forgiver Mr. Fleming, in his “ Fulfilling of the Scriptures,” relates the case of a man who was a very great sinner, and for his horrible wickedness was put to death in the town of Ayr. This man had been so stupid and brutish a fellow, that all who knew him thought him beyond the reach of all ordinary means of grace; but while the man was in prison the Lord wonderfully wrought on his heart, and in such a measure discovered to him his sinfulness, that, after much serious exercise and sore wrestling, a most kindly work of repentance followed, with great assurance of mercy, insomuch that when he came to the place of execution he could not cease crying out to the people, under the sense of pardon and the comforts of the presence and favour of God, “ Oh, He is a great forgiver! He is a great forgiver!” And he added the following words: “ Now hath perfect love cast out fear. I know God hath nothing to lay against me, for Jesus Christ hath paid all; and those are free whom the Son makes free.” (Arvine.) Nature silent concerning salvation. On one occasion the late Dr. Newton was travelling in a railway carriage, when he found himself in the presence of an infidel, who soon began to obtrude his opinions upon his fellow passengers, declaring his contempt for the Bible, adding that he did not need it; the book of nature affording him all the information that he required on religious and moral subjects. Dr. Newton, observing a young man in the company who might receive some injury from these remarks, deemed it his duty to interfere. Looking at the infidel, he said, “ The book of nature, sir, that you have mentioned, is a large volume, and he is a very learned man that is acquainted with all its contents. Yet there is one subject on which I think it gives no information.” “ Indeed,” said the infidel, “ what is that?” “ What is that,” rejoined Dr. Newton, “ it is salvation.” “ Salvation!” exclaimed the infidel. “ Aye, salvation,” rejoined the Doctor. “ Every man is sensible from what passes in his own conscience that he has done wrong, and that that which all people confess to be morally wrong, everywhere meets our sight. To do wrong renders us liable to punishment, and therefore we need salvation. But where do you find anything about salvation in the book of nature? Do you find it in the grass of the fields, either when it grows or when it fades away? Do you find it in the ever-varying surface of the sea? or in the clouds as they pass over your head? The book which you too exclusively admire was written too soon for the purpose of instructing men with respect to the nature and method of salvation. It was written before there was sin in the world, and therefore before salvation was needed.” The infidel stood aghast, and said not a word. Luke 1:78 Through the tender mercy of our God Christ’ s advent I. A VERY VIEW OF THE STATE OF MANKIND BEFORE CHRIST CAME. “ Darkness and the shadow of death.” 1. Ignorant of the moral character of God. 2. Ignorant of the purity of God’ s law. 3. Ignorant as to the evil nature and dreadful consequences of sin. 4. Ignorant as to the true source of happiness. 5. Ignorant regarding the future state. II. A VERY OF THE SAVIOUR. “ The Dayspring.” 1. The great source of light; (1) Natural; (2) intellectual; (3) rational; (4) spiritual. 2. The dayspring is gradual and progressive. (1) Revelation has waked fuller and fuller throughout the ages. (2) The increasing enlightenment of individuals. 3. The dayspring is certain and irresistible. The darkest moral clouds must eventually succumb to the bright beams shed by the Sun of Righteousness. 4. The day-spring is free, and common to all. III. A VERY OF THE DESIGN OF CHRIST’ S MISSION. 1. TO give light. He has shown Himself (1) in the dignity of His person; (2) in the perfection of His atonement; (3) in the fulness of His grace; (4) in the willingness to save which He has manifested; (5) in the discovery He has made of the means of cleansing from moral guilt. 2. To give peace. (1) Peace with God; (2)peace with our fellow-men; (3) peace with ourselves. Notice in conclusion: 1. The infinite condescension of Jehovah in inter posing on our behalf. 2. The Christian’ s duty and privilege. (1) His duty is to trust in the Lord in time of darkness. (2) His privilege sometimes is to walk in the light of God’ s countenance. 3. The miserable state of those who hear the good news, and yet hold aloof. 4. If the pleasures of religion be so great upon earth, what must be the enjoyment of believers in the upper world? (Dr. Scott.) The tender mercy of our God The original is, “ The mercy of the heart of our God.” This seems to mean not only tenderness, but much more. The mercy of the heart of God is, of course, the mercy of His great tenderness, the mercy of His infinite gentleness and consideration; but other thoughts also come forth from the expression, like bees from a hive. It means the mercy of God’ s very soul. The heart is the seat and centre of life, and mercy is to God as His own life. Mercy is of the Divine essence; there is no God apart from His heart, and mercy lies in the heart of God. Nor is this all; the mercy of God’ s heart means His hearty mercy, His cordial delight in mercy. Remission of sins is a business into which the Lord throws His heart. He forgives with an intensity of will and readiness of soul. God made heaven and earth with His fingers, but He gave His Son with His heart in order that He might save sinners. The eternal God has thrown His whole soul into the business of redeeming men. I. God shows His tender mercy in that HE DEIGNS TO VISIT US. He has not merely pitied us from a distance, and sent us relief by way of the ladder which Jacob saw, but He has Himself visited us. 1. God’ s great visit to us is the incarnation of our blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. 2. The proclamation of the gospel in a nation, or to any individual, is a visit of God’ s mercy. 3. He has visited some of us in a more remarkable manner still, for by the Holy Spirit He has entered into our hearts, and changed the current of our lives. He has turned our affections towards that which is right by enlightening our judgments. He has led us to the confession of sin, He has brought us to the acceptance of His mercy through the atoning blood; and so He has truly saved us. II. God shows His tender mercy in that HE VISITS US AS THE FROM ON HIGH He does not come to us in Christ, or by His Spirit, as a tempest, as when He came from Paran, with ten thousand of His holy ones, in all the pomp of His fiery law; but He has visited us as smiling morn, which in gentle glory floods the world with joy. He has come, moreover, not as a blaze which will soon die down, but as a light which will last our day, yea, last for ever. After the long dark and cold night of our misery, the Lord cometh in the fittest and most effectual manner; neither as lightning, nor candle, nor flaming meteor, but as the sun which begins the day. 1. The visitation of the Lord to us is as the dayspring, because it suits our eye. Day, when it first breaks in the east, has not the blaze of burning noon about it; but peeps forth as a grey light, which gradually increases. So did Christ come; dimly, as it were, at first, at Bethlehem, but by and by He will appear in all the glory of the Father. So does the Spirit of God come to us in gradual progress. The revelation of God to each individual is made in form and manner tenderly agreeable to the condition and capacity of the favoured one. He shows us just so much of Himself as to delight us without utterly overwhelming us with the excess of brightness. 2. The visits of God are like the dayspring, because they end our darkness. Our night is ended once for all when we behold God visiting us in Christ Jesus. Our day may cloud over, but night will not return. 3. Christ’ s coming into the world is as the morning light, because He comes with such a largeness of present blessing. He is the Light which lighteneth every man. There is other light. 4. Christ’ s coming is as the dayspring, because He brings us hope of greater glory yet to come. The dayspring is not the noon, but it is the sure guarantee of it; and so the First Advent is the pledge of the glory to be revealed. III. There is another instance of great tenderness in this, that THE LORD VISITS US IN OUR WRY LOWEST ESTATE. God comes to us as the morning, which does not wait for man, nor tarry for the sons of men. He gives with gladness to those who have no deservings of any kind (Romans 5:6; Romans 5:8). He comes to us when we are-- 1. In our sins. 2. In darkness. 3. In ruin. IV. Our God shows His tender mercy, in that HE VISITS US WITH SUCH AND JOYFUL RESULTS. Imagine a caravan in the desert, which has long lost its way, and is famishing. The sun has long gone down, and the darkness has caused every one’ s heart to droop. All around them is a waste of sand, and an Egyptian darkness. There they must remain and die unless they can find the track. They feel themselves to be in a fearful case, for hungry and thirsty, their soul fainteth in them. They cannot even sleep for fear. Heavier and heavier the night comes down, and the damps are on the tents, chilling the souls of the travellers. What is to be done? How they watch! Alas, no star comforts them! At last the watchmen cry, “ The morning cometh!” It breaks over the sea of sand, and, what is better, it reveals a heap which had been set up as a waymark, and the travellers have found the track. The dayspring has saved them from swift destruction by discovering the way of peace. Conclusion: If the tender mercy of God has visited us; let us exhibit tender mercy in our dealings with our fellow-men. (C. H.Spurgeon.) The gradual development of redemption Our subject matter is the gradual development of redemption, like the sun, “ shining more and more unto perfect day.” I. THERE IS A IN ALL THE WORKS OF GOD. In the physical sphere, gradual development is a universal law. At first, all was a chaos of lifeless matter, then vegetable life appeared, then low forms of brute life, then the mammal, and then the man. The world did not reach its present state in a few seconds--the chaos did not become a cosmos in an hour. In the first day’ s work we only see power; but in the second day’ s work we see wisdom; and in the third day’ s work we see goodness; and thus from step to step we advance, until the sixth day brings forth the crowning glory, man, the lord of creation, filled with the harmonies of the skies. Creation is not a fungus-growth, but a gradual oak-growth In the intellectual and moral spheres there is gradualness. Even our consciousness develops. Natural consciousness develops gradually, and the reflective consciousness of the profound thinker is only a further development of the natural. We grow step by step. Our education proceeds gradually. The prince and the pauper must begin with the alphabet and the multiplication table, and then onward, “ line upon line, and precept upon precept.” Our great discoveries have been gradual. How slowly did the astrology of the ancients develop into our nineteenth-century astronomy! How gradually did the alchemy of the fathers grow into the modern chemistry of a Faraday! And, again, in the moral sphere there is gradual development. The new man in Christ Jesus is not made of full stature all at once. For a time, he is “ a little one in Christ,” then he “ grows in grace,” and, finally, he reaches unto “ the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.” II. WE REASON FROM ANALOGY THAT THE WE FIND IN NATURE AND MAN MAY ALSO BE IN THE OF , FOR GOD IS THE AUTHOR OF BOTH. The God of the rock and star is also the Cod of the Bible, and we are not surprised to find this gradual development in Revelation four thousand years intervening between the fall of the first Adam and the advent of the second Adam. Redemption grew as the world grew--it grew as the human grace grew--slowly. As far as we know, God was powerful enough to bring aboutredemption sooner; but for some wise purpose, He left the world in the dim starlight for forty centuries. Why this slowness? He is never in a hurry, for He “ seeth the end from the beginning.” The march of the Hebrews from Egypt to Canaan, if they had taken a direct route, would have only occupied them a few months; but the Lord kept them in the lone desert for forty years. The Divine is never in a hurry. Jesus Christ spent thirty years on earth before He performed one miracle--no hurry! And, indeed, we rejoice in this gradualness. We cordially thank God for it. And why? Simply because a full-orbed revelation all at once would overwhelm us. If the natural sun were to reach its meridian at once, the tender green of earth would be reduced to ashes. “ O God, how gracious Thou art to reveal Thyself gradually unto us in a manner adapted to our weak capacities. It is no punishment to withhold these mighty mysteries from us, but a mercy.” And, besides, friends, we would not be satisfied with a little Christ, that could be fully and completely revealed in a century or two. We are great sinners, and we need a great Christ to save us--a Christ that demands, not six thousand years, but all the countless years of eternity to reveal Him to the full. And, blessed be God, that Christ is to be found in our glorious gospel. And let us not think that the development of relation is yet at an end. No, far from it. III. THE OF FROM STAGE TO STAGE. (J. O.Davies.) Waiting for the dayspring Many a hoary seer longed for the dayspring, but saw it not. A sweet Welsh evangelist has a very striking illustration on this point. About Christmas time, John the elder brother is expected home from London by the midnight train. All the younger children are in ecstasy, and they all wish to stay up until his arrival. “ Pray, father, let us stay up to wait John home,” is the universal petition. But the reply is, “ No, my dear ones, it will be too long for you to wait; you must go to rest; you shall see John in the morning--not sooner.” Friends, the ancient prophets expected a Saviour--their Elder Brother Jesus. How delighted they would be to see Him in the flesh; but they were compelled to enter the cold bed of the grave before His arrival. David cried, “ Father, let me see the Horn of Salvation of which I sang so well.” “ No, My child, you must retire.” Job implored, “ Father, let me see my living Redeemer.” “ No, My child, you must retire; but you shall see him after you awake on the resurrection morning.” Malachi cried, “ Father, I am about the last of them all; do let me see the Sun of Righteousness of which I sang so sweetly.” “ No, My child, you must retire to rest; it will be too long for you to wait.” And they silently retired into their cold graves to rest. But at last, hoary-headed Simeon advanced, and earnestly implored, “ Oh! my Father, the train is nearly in, according to my brother Daniel’ s table; do let me stay up to see the Consolation of Israel.” “ Yes, My child, thy request is granted,” said the Father, and the old saint was allowed to see the daybreak, and so delighted was he with its splendour that he prayed for death--(what a strong saint!)--“ Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen Thy salvation, which Thou hast prepared before the face of all people--a light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of Thy people Israel! “ Thank heaven, the Sun has risen, and the world is now enveloped in a glorious day! (J. O. Davies.) The mercy of God A living sense of the tender mercy of God should actuate us in the path of duty, and on the way to heaven. In what respects the tender mercy of God is displayed towards His creatures. I. IN THE WHICH GOD HAS THOUGHT FIT TO ASSUME TOWARDS HIS . He feels towards us as a parent for His offspring Who but a father would have devised such a scheme of redemption? II. IN THE GOOD HIS TENDER MERCY IS . The merciful arrangement which marks the course of human life. For instance, an infant is more dependent upon the aid of others than any other creature; to meet this necessity, God has graciously made the strongest of all human instincts that of a mother’ s affection for her child. Here His tender mercy is abundantly shown. Again, as we advance in life, God’ s mercy is no less exhibited. It was necessary for Him to mark His disapprobation of sin by what is called a curse. Instead of bodily deformity and constant pain, the curse was that we should labour, which is at once a great source of health and happiness. Even death is so introduced to us that he ceases in his approach to wear the aspect of the king of terrors, and is regarded as a kind friend come to relieve us of weariness and pain. The mercy of God is evident in the affections incident to life; saints, apostles, and martyrs have experienced the blessedness of suffering. Then think of the positive blessings with which God has, in His mercy, chosen to sweeten the cup of mortal existence. We are born in a Christian land; health, &c. How improving to our souls must be a right consideration of the Divine mercies. (A. Garry, M. A.) God’ s mercy towards a dark world I. THE OF THE WORLD TO THE ADVENT OF CHRIST. 1. A state of ignorance. 2. A state of danger. II. THE MERCY OF GOD TOWARD THE WORLD IN THAT . 1. Undeserved. 2. Unsolicited. 3. Seasonable. III. THE MANNER IN WHICH THE MERCY OF GOD WAS . 1. He sent His son to enlighten it in its ignorance. 2. He sent His son to guide it in its danger. (G. Brooks.) Darkness and danger There are beneath the suburbs of the ancient city of Rome many dark and narrow passages, excavated in the soft stone. These are called the catacombs, and were used as burial places by the early Christians. These passages are very many, crossing and re-crossing each other, and stretching for an immense distance underground in a most bewildering manner. So complicated and puzzling is this labyrinth of subterranean galleries that it is most dangerous to explore them without a guide. A young artist once ventured to visit them alone, taking with him a few candles, and ensuring his safe return by a ball of twine, one end of which he fastened securely outside. After a time, he sat down to sketch in one of the gloomy recesses, having, as he thought, made his end of the clue safe under a stone. But rising suddenly to alter his sketch, he overturned and extinguished his candle. He hastened to strike a match, but found that through some forgetfulness only two or three remained, and in his nervous haste he failed to get these to ignite. He now hurriedly sought the line to guide him back to the entrance, but he could nowhere find it. It had slipped from its place. In vain he sought for it; casting himself on the ground, he felt for it in every direction, but could nowhere discover it. He despaired of ever again reaching the daylight; he thought he must die of hunger, wandering through the hopeless maze of those dark passages; but just as he threw himself in utter despondency once more on the earth, he felt something beneath his hand. It was the twine--and he was safe! Thus the Gentiles “ sat in darkness” ; thus the heathen world groped after truth. They were lost in the gloomy recesses of ignorance and doubt. But the good news of a Redeemer came like a guiding clue, leading them into the warmth and light and sunshine of Christianity. (W. Hardman, LL. D.) The necessity and glory of Christ The dayspring signifies the sun. The worship of the sun was the greatest of the heathen worships. How glorious the sun is! How necessary! An apt emblem of the necessity and the glory of Christ. Without Him we could have no check, no conscience, and therefore no peace, and no confidence. But then, if Christ be so necessary, how is it that men can live in ignorance of Him? Are there not blind men in the world? They are very apt images of unbelievers The sun brings up corn and fruit for them as for us. They feel his warmth, and seek it out, not to see him, but because it is warmer. So men of the world are helped and comforted by the virtues of Christians, and what goes on unseen by themselves. And so they are honest, and so forth, because it is the best policy, and sheds a sunny glow over their lives. And all the while they have never seen or known Him, and have only heard of Him with the hearing of the ear. The blind do not see the sun in summer rising higher in the heavens; they only feel that it is warmer. So these do not see Christ’ s kingdom enlarging itself, but only rejoice that there is more honesty and kindliness abroad. In this way the world feels and knows that it is the better for Christ’ s coming. Very different is it with those whose eyes are opened, and who really see. They know in whom they have believed. They are guided into the way of peace. (Bishop E. Steere.) The dayspring from on high We may notice three things in the text:-- I. A OF A MOST BLESSED FACT--“ The daypring from on high hath visited us.” II. THE SOURCE AND ORIGIN OF THAT BLESSED FACT “ Through the tender mercy of our God.” III. ITS DIVINE FRUITS AND .” TO give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death; to guide our feet into the way of peace.” I. In looking at these three points connected with, and springing out of the text, I shall rather invert their order; and consider, first, the original spring and source of the blessings mentioned in the text. This is set forth in the words, “ Through the tender mercy of our God.” Mercy is the source and fountain of all our spiritual blessings. But what is mercy? It embraces several particulars. 1. It embraces a feeling of pity and compassion. But pity and compassion do not fill up the whole idea of mercy; for we read, that God’ s “ tender mercies are over all His works” (Psalms 145:9). Thus the Lord, in sparing Nineveh, “ remembered even the cattle (Jonah 4:11). And when He caused the waters of the deluge to assuage it was because he “ remembered Noah, and every living thing, and all the cattle that was with him in the ark” (Genesis 8:1). There is in the bosom of their Creator mercy and pity even for the brute creation. As full of mercy, He also “ relieveth the fatherless and widow” (Psalms 146:9); and “ loveth the stranger, in giving him food and raiment” (Deuteronomy 10:18). 2. We must, therefore, add to the idea of pity and compassion, another mark, that of pardon, in order to show what mercy is as extended to the family of God. For the Lord’ s people are sinners; and as such, being transgressors of God’ s holy law, need pardon and forgiveness. 3. But in order to complete the full description of mercy, we must ever view it as flowing through the blood and obedience of Immanuel. Mercy, was not, like creation, a mere display of an attribute of Jehovah. If I may use the expression, it cost the Godhead a price: “ Ye are bought with a price” (1 Corinthians 6:20). But there is an expression in the text that heightens, and casts a sweet light upon this mercy. It is there called tender mercy; literally, as it is in the margin, “ bowels of mercy.” Not mere mercy; but “ tender mercy.” Not cold and naked mercy; but mercy flowing forth out of the bowels of Divine compassion. Now nothing but “ tender mercy” could ever look down with compassion upon the sons of men, or pluck out of the depths of the fall such ruined wretches. But to view mercy in its real character, we must go to Calvary. II. But we pass on to consider that solemn declaration, that blessed fact contained in the words--“ Whereby the dayspring from on high hath visited us.” There is a connection, you will observe, betwixt the “ tender mercy of God,” and the visiting of “ the dayspring from on high.” The “ tender mercy of God” is the fountain, and the “ visiting of the dayspring from on high” is the stream. Let us then endeavour, if God enable us, to unfold the mind of the Spirit in the words. First. What is meant by the expression “ dayspring?” By “ dayspring” is meant the day-dawn, the herald of the rising sun, the change from darkness to light, the first approach of morn; in one word, the spring of the day. But what is this “ dayspring” spiritually? It is the intimation of the rising of the Sun of Righteousness. It is not the same thing as the Sun of Righteousness; but it is the herald of His approach; the beams which the rising sun casts upon the benighted world, announcing the coming of Jesus, “ the King in His beauty.” This expression was singularly applicable in the mouth of Zacharias. The Lord of life and glory had not then appeared; He was still in the womb of the Virgin Mary. But His forerunner, John, had appeared as the precursor, the herald of His approach, and was sent to announce that the Sun of Righteousness was about to arise. But there is another, an experimental meaning, connected with the words. “ The dayspring from on high” is not to be confined to the approach of the Son of God in the flesh; but it may be extended to signify the appearance of the Son of God in the heart. Now, “ the dayspring from on high” visits the soul with the very first Divine intimation dropped into the conscience respecting the Person, work, love, and blood of the Son of God. Until this day-dawn beams upon the soul, it is for the most part ignorant of the way by which a sinner is to be saved. But the first “ dayspring from on high” which usually visits the soul is from a view by precious faith of the glorious person of Immanuel. Until we see by the eye of faith the glorious Person of “ Immanuel, God with us,” there is no day-dawn in the heart. But, in looking at the glorious Person of the Son of God, we catch a faith’ s view of His atoning blood, and see it to be of infinite dignity. So also with respect to the glorious righteousness of Immanuel. But what a sweetness there is in the expression, “ visited us!” What is conveyed by it One idea contained in it is, that it is the act of a friend. If I have a friend, and I visit him, my visit is a mark of my friendship and affection. But another idea connected with the word “ visit,” is that of unexpectedness. Is it not so sometimes naturally? We have an unexpected visit. We may have been looking for our friend to call; but the time passes away, and no well-known rap is heard at our door. We wonder why our friend delays his coming so long. But perhaps, when we are least expecting it, the form of our friend appears. So spiritually. We may be longing and languishing, hoping, and expecting the visit of the day-spring from on high;” but it does not appear; the Lord delayeth His coming; there is no intimation of His appearing, no putting in of His hand by the hole of the door, no looking in through the lattice, no glimpse nor glance of His lovely countenance, But perhaps, when least expected, and least anticipated; when the mind is so deeply sunk as scarcely to dare to hope, so shut up in unbelief as hardly able to vent forth a sigh, “ the dayspring from on high” will visit the soul, and be all the more precious for coming so suddenly and unexpectedly. III. But this “ day-spring from on high” visits the soul to produce certain effects. Two of them are specified in the text. “ To give light to them that sit in darkness, and in the shadow of death;” that is one: “ to guide our feet in the way of peace;” that is the other. 1. “ To give light to them that sit in darkness, and in the shadow of death.” Is this what “ the dayspring from on high” visiting us is to do? Must we not then know something of the experience here described to be blest with the visit? But let us look at the words a little more closely. “ To such as sit in darkness.” What is the darkness here spoken of? Is it merely what I may call moral darkness? Natural darkness? No; it is not the darkness of unregeneracy; it is not the darkness of sin and profanity; nor is it the darkness of a mere empty profession. These things are indeed darkness, gross darkness; but those who are thus blinded by the god of this world never sit experimentally in darkness. They are like the Jews of old, who said, “ We see; therefore their sin remaineth.” “ We dark? we ignorant? we scorn the idea.” Such is the language of empty profession. Bat the Lord’ s own quickened, tender-hearted family often painfully know what it is to sit in darkness. But whence does this darkness arise. Strange to say, it arises from light. Darkness as darkness is never seen. Darkness as darkness is never felt. Light is needed to see darkness; life is required to feel darkness. There are children in Hungary born and bred at the bottom of a mine. Do these children ever know what darkness is, like one who comes down there out of the broad light of day? Were they not told there was a sun above--did not some tidings of the light of day reach their ears, they might live and die ignorant that there was a sun in the heavens. So spiritually. Man, born and bred in the depths of nature’ s mine, does not know that he is dark; but when Divine light enters into his soul, that discovers to him his darkness; for it is the light which makes manifest all things; as the apostle says, “ But all things that are reproved are made manifest by the light; for whatsoever doth make manifest is light” (Ephesians 5:13). Thus, it is the light of God’ s teaching in a man’ s conscience that makes him know his darkness; and Divine life in his soul makes it felt. But what does darkness imply? The absence of everything that brings light and peace into the heart. But there is one word in the text which conveys to my mind much, that is, “ sitting in darkness.” They are not represented as standing; that might imply a mere momentary transition from light to darkness. They are not represented as running; that might imply they would soon get out of the darkness. They are not represented as lying down; that might lead to suppose they were satisfied with their darkness. But they are represented as sitting in darkness. Then surely they are not dead. Nor do they sit at ease and at rest; but are in that posture, because they can neither move backward or forward, nor turn either to the right hand or to the left. In ancient medals that were struck when Jerusalem was led captive by the Romans, she is represented as sitting on the ground. The same thing is intimated in Psalms 137:1-2. “ By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down; yea we wept, when we remembered Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof.” Sitting was with the ancients the posture of mourning. Job “ sat down among the ashes;” (Job 2:8); and his friends “ sat down with him upon the ground” (verse 13). “ Her gates,” says Isaiah Isaiah 3:26), “ shall lament and mourn; and she, being desolate, shall sit on the ground.” Sitting implies also a continuance in the state; a waiting, a watching, a desiring, a looking out for the light to come. But again. There is another word added, which throws light upon the character of those who are visited from time to time with “ the dayspring from on high.” They sit not only in darkness, but in the shadow of death. How expressive this word is--“ the shadow of death!” There are several ideas, in my mind, connected with the word. We will look, first, at the idea contained in the expression “ death.” Death with respect to the family of God wears two aspects. There is death experimental in their hearts, that is, deadness in their frames; and there is death temporal--the separation of soul from the body. Each of these kinds of death casts at times a gloomy shadow over the souls of God’ s people. The word is very expressive. They are not sitting in death: were they sitting there, they would be dead altogether; but they are sitting in the shadow of death. Observe, death has lost its reality to them; it now can only cast a shadow, often a gloomy shadow, over their souls; but there is no substance. The quickening of the Spirit of God in them has destroyed the substance of death spiritually; and the death and resurrection of Jesus has destroyed the substance of death naturally. Yet, though the gloomy monster, deadness of soul, and that ghastly king of terrors, the death of the body, have been disarmed and destroyed by “ Immanuel, God with us;” yet each of them casts at times a gloomy, darkling shadow over the souls of those that fear God. Is not your soul, poor child of God, exercised from time to time with this inward death? Deadness in prayer, deadness in reading the word, deadness in hearing the truth, deadness in desires after the Lord, deadness to everything, holy, spiritual, heavenly, and divine? Do you not feel a torpidity, a numbness, a carnality, a worldliness, that seem at times to freeze up every desire of your soul? I do. O how this cold, clammy monster death seems to wrap its benumbing arms around a man’ s soul! I have read of a voyager, who, whilst looking for shells on a desert rock, was suddenly caught in the arms of a huge polypus, a sea monster. The sickening sensation produced by this cold and clammy monster clasping him with his huge suckers, and drawing him to his jaws to devour him, he describes as being unutterable, and he was only rescued by the captain’ s coming to his aid with a knife. I may compare, perhaps, our frequent deadness of soul clasping its arms around every desire of our heart, to the clasping of this poor man in the clammy arms of the sea monster. How it benumbs and paralyzes every breathing of our soul Godward! How all prayer, all panting desire, all languishing affection, all spirituality and heavenly-mindedness, all solid worship, all filial confidence, all the fruits and graces of the Spirit are blighted and withered by the deathliness that we so continually feel! 2. But there is another word added, another result of the visiting of “ the dayspring from on high” --“ to guide our feet into the way of peace.” The way of peace? Does not that comprehend all? Do those that fear God want anything but peace? What do we want? The way of war, of enmity, of rebellion, of restlessness? No. We want the way of peace. But what is implied in the expression? Peace implies two things. It implies, first, reconciliation from a state of enmity; and secondly, the felt enjoyment of this reconciliation in the heart. But we want guiding in the way. And when “ the dayspring from on high” visits the soul, it guides the feet into the way. There is something very sweet in the expression. It does not drive, does not force, but opens a door, and enables the soul to enter in; discovers the way, and gives the soul faith to walk in it. (J. C. Philpot.) The tenderness of God God is not only energetic, but tender also in action. He is the God of the dewdrops, as well as the God of the thundershowers; the God of the tender grass blade, as much as of the mountain oak. We read of great machines which are able to crush iron bars, and yet they can touch so gently as not to break the shell of the smallest egg; as it is with them, so it is with the hand of the Most High: He can crush a world, and yet bind up a wound. And great need have we of tenderness in our low estate; a little thing would crush us; we have such bruised and feeble souls, that unless we had One who would deal tenderly with us, we must soon be destroyed. There are many soul diseases to which a tender hand alone can minister; just as there are many states of body which need tender and patient nursing, and which cannot otherwise be successfully dealt with, even by any amount of skill. This tenderness we see continually in action, in woman’ s ministrations in ordinary life. Her voice has notes more sweet and soft than can be distilled from any instrument of music; her hand has a touch more delicate and fine than ever the breath of any summer’ s breeze; it is to her that man carries the stories of his sorrows; it is she that has to soothe his heavy, aching head; well as he thinks he can do without her, in the more exciting scenes of life, he finds he is not independent when the time comes for suffering and grief. And what makes woman equal to sustaining the heavy burden thus cast upon her? How comes the ivy to be able to sustain the oak around which it used to cling, ornamenting it, while it owned its lordship and strength I She does all in the power of the tenderness of her nature; rugged and uncouth would life indeed be if such tenderness were withdrawn. But pass away to Divine things--from woman, to Him that was born of woman, and what do we find but tenderness of action in Him? That tenderness which in any of mankind is but a spark from the fire, is perfect in His bosom; its fulness is there; and it is continually being shown to them. (P. B. Power, M. A.) Explanation of the imagery A caravan misses its way, and is lost in the desert; the unfortunate pilgrims, overtaken by night, are sitting down in the midst of this fearful darkness, expecting death. All at once a bright star rises in the horizon and lights up the plain: the travellers, taking courage at this sight, arise, and by the light of this star find the road which leads them to the end of their journey. (F. Godet, D. D.) The night of humanity It may seem strange that we should call the condition of our race before Christ’ s appearance night--darkness and shadow of death. But what is the meaning of its being night? It is night where the light is wanting that lightens our way, in whose brightness we are able to distinguish and understand the value of the things around us; that light that shows us where there are ways to walk in, the aims which we should pursue, and the means by which we may attain them. Where there is such certainty of knowledge and work there is day; where that is wanting, the light can only be a dim one; even with open eyes, all knowledge is only fancy, all work only groping in the dark. There no life can bring forth fruit; it may be filled with all kinds of beautiful dreams, but only with dreams; but upon the dream follows an awakening with more bitter pain the more beautiful the dreams were Was it really night upon the earth, before the Saviour came? Yes, we dare not judge otherwise: it was night. Men had indeed attempted to make artificial light, but it did not really illuminate. The focus in which at last all rays must converge, in order to show themselves as truth, was wanting. It was really night--cold, dark, unlovely night. (R. Rothe, D. D.) The Dayspring from on high: Christ as the Dawn This splendid figure of speech is taken from the dawn of morning on the night. And in order to understand fully the force of the rhetoric, we must bear in mind one of the natural phenomena of those eastern regions. So pure is the atmosphere there, so far south, that clouds in the sky are not usual save in the rainy season. There seems really nothing to hinder the sun’ s going down, nothing to get in the way of his rising again. When he sets, he goes abruptly behind the adjacent hill; when he rises, he comes up unannounced, and in a quick moment is altogether on hand for his daily work--that is to say, there is positively no twilight, as we describe it, in those latitudes. The instant the day reaches its natural close, the sun appears to slide down the sky without any leave-taking. Just so when the dawn starts. When yesterday’ s monarch dismisses himself, and it is time for to-day’ s to succeed him, there he is, unheralded and serenely unhurried, calmly seated in his shining pavilion of clear Mr. Zacharias seizes this astonishing figure, and turns it to account. For four centuries it had been dark--dark with sin, ignorance, oppression--and now in one excited instant of disclosure, the Sun of Righteousnesshad risen with healing in His wings. No wonder his heart was full; no wonder his dumbness gave way, and his glad voice lifted such a song! Let us keep singing on, and always singing on about the dayspring from on high which has visited us. The light of the gospel is a gleam of the light of heaven. Oh, what will the full splendour of the noon be by and by? When the Gauls had tasted the wine of Italy, they began to ask where the grapes grew, and they would never be quiet till they came there. (C. S.Robinson, D. D.) The sun an emblem of Christ The sun is the fountain of light to this lower world. Day by day it rises on us with its gladdening beams, and with the return of light is connected the sense of reviving power in ourselves; invigorated health and cheerfulness; renewed and willing application to appointed duties. God Himself has made it the ruler over the day. All nature seems to own its influence. The flowers that drooped, or closed their leaves during the night, expand themselves again when the sun arises. The gorgeous colours with which the clouds that were lately dark are now illuminated, bespeak the return of the absent king; and the clouds themselves are scattered at his approach. The loathsome or savage creatures that love darkness now “ get them away together, and lay down in their dens. Man goeth forth to his work and to his labour until the evening.” Christ is to the moral world what the sun is to the natural world; the source of life, and health, and motion. He is the “ Sun of Righteousness,” because the robe of righteousness in which His people “ shine” is the light from Him which they reflect; and on this account His Church is said to be “ clothed with the sun.” And the inward righteousness also, in which they are created anew after the image of God, is derived from His illuminating presence in their hearts. And He rises on us “ with healing in His wings,” because He brings with Him, day by day, spiritual health to those who are diseased in soul, comfort to those who mourn, rest to the weary and heavy-laden. The world had long lain in darkness and the shadow of death, waiting with earnest expectation for the first tokens of the “ dayspring from on high,” even as travellers in a starless night, or as they that watch in loneliness and weariness, wait with eager longing for the burst of morning. At length the Sun of Righteousness arose, when He who was with the Father from all eternity was born at Bethlehem, and took our nature upon Him. And as the light from the morning sun travels with inconceivable speed to the remotest corners of the earth, and penetrates into the darkest recesses, so did the light from the Sun of Righteousness penetrate the dark places of the earth. It scattered the mists of ignorance and sin, and called forth from the garden of God’ s Church those fruits and flowers which it could never otherwise have borne. Nor is His power to heal and comfort diminished by the lapse of years. As the sun in the heavens has the same quickening and cheering power over the material world, as in the day when God first formed it and set it in the heavens; so have the beams of the Sun of Righteousness the same efficacy to heal the wounded conscience, and to comfort the afflicted soul, as when they first shone upon His humble followers. (Bishop Trower.) Safety in the light of day A band of fugitives were crossing an eastern desert. The night was dark, but they determined to push on. Soon they lost their way, and had to spend the night in anxiety and fear. It seemed as if the night would never pass. But almost all at once the sun arose, bringing daylight and showing the way of safety. Not one of them ever forgot that sun-rising. So to us, in our wanderings, the Dayspring has arisen, pointing out the way of safety. Illustrate by the case of a man in an open boat, or a traveller crossing a moor at night, and uncertain of his way A cloud passes from the sky, and the polestar is seen. Then he knows the way of safety. (Sunday School Times.) Christ our Dayspring How pertinent is that question of the Almighty as it breaks from the whirlwind, “ Hast thou commanded the morning since thy days, and caused the dayspring to know his place?” He who has adjusted the movements of all the orbs of light, brings the glow of the newborn day to gladden those who wait for the retiring darkness. Christ our dayspring burst upon the world in the prophetic period of the Divine arrangement. Our spiritual sun-rising, so long waited for, came for the banishment of sin, and the introduction of all righteousness. Christ is the only dayspring of light to the darkened soul. The visible creation, conveying by symbols and material manifestations the thoughts of God, can bring to rest to a soul in which there is a constant strife between conscience and passion The political aspects of society will afford little hope; success in measures of reform will seem hardly valuable enough to compensate for their outlay of exertion, science, in all its departments, will appear but as a perplexing maze, till our dayspring, knowing its place in the counsels of Infinite Wisdom is seen above them all, heralding the splendours of redemption. Agnosticism would be the sad inheritance of all, just leading us to know that we could not know; that the secrets of the universe could never be explained; that we, ourselves, were but perplexities and contradictions, if our dayspring, shining above all science, over all human wants and industries, above all human ignorance, will, and pride, could not be seen by faith, verified by fact, and relied upon by experience. (John Waugh.) God’ s tender mercy My proclamation certifies to thee, O trembling heart, that this mercy is tender mercy. Thy bones are broken to-night, thy heart is wounded, thy spirits are dried up, and thou art ready to despair; but I tell thee that God has tender mercy for such as thou art. As I sat in the hospital, yesterday, and saw the many cases of maimed limbs and gushing wounds, I could but think how tender the nurses ought to be, and how downy should be the surgeon’ s finger as he set the broken bone or bound up the sore. Doubtless there are some persons who have iron bands and hard hearts, and so, while they are bone-setting or binding up wounds, they do it roughly, and cause the patient much pain. But, O sinner, therein is the tender mercy of our God set forth, which, like a dayspring from on high, hath visited us; “ a bruised reed will He not break, nor quench the smoking flax.” He crowneth us with loving-kindnesses, and with tender mercies; He bindeth up the broken in heart, and healeth all their wounds. Like as a mother comforteth her children, even so doth the Lord comfort His people, and like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear Him. My Lord is as gracious in the manner of His mercy as in the matter of it. Glory be to His name! O sinner, come to the gentle Jesus and live. (C. H. Spurgeon.) Sunshine We think that all our city folk ought somehow to get every week a few hours in the clear, unmixed sunshine as the Lord pours it out of the heavens. Last Sabbath was a day of unusual duties, and Monday morning, with loud-clamouring work all about us, we said our call this morning is to the fields. We made a bold dash, and at a speed that no one dared halt, we were soon beyond the city limits. As we hastened past, a brother clergyman shouted, “ Whither away?” We answered--“ In quest of sunshine!” And was there ever a brighter luxury? The cup of the morning had been washed out by a shower; the leaves, autumn-turned, shivered their fiery splendour across the path; the hum of the city became fainter, and we found what we wanted floating on the lake, tangled in the bushes, rippling among the green grass, dripping from the sky--sunshine. Glorious sunshine! With it we filled our eyelids, our mouth, our hands. We opened our entire physical capacity to take it in. We took out our soul and saturated it in the lush light. We absorbed it in all our pores, and rolled it around our nerves; and after we could hold no more inside, lifted our face and held it so aslant that it ran down over us--the sunshine. What do the blind do without seeing it? How can the factory employees get on without feeling it? Let all the ministry on Monday morning be turned out into it. By the following Saturday night it will ripen all the acidity out of the sermons. The world wants more sunshine in its disposition, in its business, in its charities, in its theology. For ten thousand of the aches, and pains, and irritations of men and women, we commend the sunshine. It soothes better than morphine. It stimulates more than champagne. It is the best plaister for a wound. The good Samaritan poured out into the fallen traveller’ s gash more of this than wine and oil. Florence Nightingale used it on Crimean battle-fields. Take it into all the alleys, on board all the ships, by all the sick-beds. Not a phial full, nor a cup full, nor a decanter full, but a soul full. It is good for spleen, for liver complaint, for neuralgia, for rheumatism, for failing fortunes, for melancholy. We suspect that heaven itself is only more sunshine. (Dr. Talmage.) Philosophy and Christianity Philosophy, in the night of Paganism, was like the fire-fly of the tropics making itself visible, but not irradiating the darkness. But Christianity, revealing the Sun of Righteousness, sheds more than the full sunlight of those tropics on all that we need to see, whether for time or eternity. (Coleridge.) Beholding the sun I have read that near the North Pole, the night lasting for months and months, when the people expect the day is about to dawn, some messengers go up on the highest point to watch; and when they see the first streak of day they put on their brightest possible apparel, and embrace each other and cry, “ Behold the sun!” and the cry goes through all the land, “ Behold the sun!” Some of you have been trudging on in the darkness of sin. It has been a long and wearisome night for your soul; but now I cry, “ Behold the Sun of Righteousness rising with healing in His wings!” or, to quote from the chapter that I read at the beginning, “ The Dayspring from on high hath visited us to give light to them that are in darkness.” Behold the sun! Behold the sun! Would God that every blinded eye might now see it! (Dr. Talmage.) A light in a dark place A steamboat was once carrying a load of passengers up one of the Western rivers. It was a very dark night. The waters were dark, the soil was black, and not a star was to be seen. The air was full of sleet and mist, and altogether it made a night when “ the darkness could be felt.” The steamboat had struck a snag, and was leaking very fast and beginning to sink. The captain at once ran her ashore and lashed her to the bank. The plank was thrust out, and everybody was requested to go ashore just as quickly as possible. It was thought that if all could only lighten the boat they might save it, while if all remained on board, all would soon go down together. But it was so dark, the passengers could not see either the plank or the shore. The sleet was falling thick and covering everything with ice. The cold wild waters of the river were rushing past beneath, and not offering a very warm reception to any who might fall over. So the company all stood still, not daring to move. Like Paul, they chose “ to stay with the ship.” They seemed to feel that it was better to stay and share the fate of the boat than to step off--they knew mot where; “ better to endure the ills they had, than to fly to those they knew net of.” The captain was as much perplexed as the people. To urge them to hurry off might produce a panic, and make them rush off and push one another into the river. Yet he knew they could not remain long on deck without danger. But he was equal to the emergency. Calling from the upper deck, he told them to be quiet and wait, and he would land them all safe on shore. He then leaped on to the bank with some of his men, and, taking a basket of pitch coal and arranging it in a proper place, he struck a match and lit it. In a few moments it blazed up bright and clear, and, in the words of John Hay. “ Burnt a hole in the night.” The whole hillside, and bank, and boat, and river, just glowed in the brightness. It was a wild but beautiful scene--darkness everywhere but just there where they needed light. All excitement and fear ceased, and the people calmly and safely passed one by one over the plank to the solid shore. Never did light seem so grateful and so beautiful as it did shooting up there in that dark place. The expression, “ light in a dark place,” gained a new meaning to all who felt its blessedness on that dark and perilous night. The Bible speaks of Christ as a “ light to them that sit in darkness,” and His truth as a “ light that shineth in a dark place.” There are a great many dark places in our life, but there is no darker place than our sins. Everybody has been troubled about these, and nobody ever knew what to do with them. A great many people don’ t think anything about them. So those men on that steamboat might have lain down and gone to sleep. They might say, “ We cannot see the way off, and we may just as well take our ease.” So men often forget their sins and feel easy about them. But whenever they do think of them, they are troubled and don’ t know what to do with them. They don’ t know how to get rid of them, and the wisest men have been just as much in the dark as the most ignorant. This has always been a very dark place. The river is very wild, the shore is unseen and the way to it is unknown. A great many people have stood here, like those men on the steamboat, waiting for light and not knowing what to do. Christ lets light shine right on this dark place. He shows how men can get rid of their sins and be forgiven. He shows us the way. He is the way. The river is just as deep, and the shore is just as far off as it was before, but we can see it all, and find our way to where it is safe and solid. When we come to see how fearful it is to be in the dark, and not know what to do, we can then know how beautiful and grateful it is to have a “ light shining in a dark place.” (R. Cordley, D. D.) We notice then I. THE ORIGIN OF OUR --“ the tender mercy of our God.” But though it be true that all the attributes of God were engaged in planning and in executing the work of our redemption, it must be observed, that the mercy of God appears by far the most conspicuous. What is its nature? Mercy is the pity of the heart; that I believe will be admitted by all to be a fair and correct rendering of the word. Is there not misery enough on the part of man to excite the mercy and compassion of God? We ask, again, to what extent was the mercy of God exercised in the work of human redemption? It extends to the utmost limits of the human family. Mercy then, originated the plan of human salvation. Let us consider-- II. ITS . This plan was not developed all at once; it was communicated under different dispensations and by progressive degrees, as the minds of men were prepared to receive it. The dayspring from on high, the great light, the great luminary of our world, is come. Now, light is remarkable for the power of communication: everything, you know, is tinged and irradiated by the light of the sun. The light which the sun sends forth, as the great medium of light, diffuses itself everywhere; and here we have a fair representation of the power of communication which Jesus Christ possesses, in reference to the knowledge which is essential to the happiness of man; for wherever He is, there is light; wherever His word is, there is truth; and it is said of this word of His, “ the entrance of it giveth light.” Light, again, is remarkable for the rapidity of its flight. Display but a glimmering taper on the summit of a mountain, and it reaches the eye, placed at any given distance, in a moment. And here we may be reminded of the rapidity of the flight of mercy, to meet the misery of man. And we may be reminded here, too, of another important fact, connected with this part of our subject--the disposition there ever is, on the part of the Saviour, to meet the case of a poor penitent sinner, or an afflicted believer. But again, light is remarkable for its purity and grateful influence. The influence of light is the most agreeable, notwithstanding the velocity with which it moves, to that most delicate of all our organs, the eye. It is a pleasant thing to behold the sun. When this light directed you to the Lamb of God, and when, in the exercise of your faith, you availed yourselves of the benefits resulting from His redeeming acts, how grateful was its influence! It communicated light to your understanding, and peace and joy unspeakable to your hearts. But the text tells us that it came “ from on high.” Why, then, Jesus Christ Himself must have existed before He came into this world; and if He existed before He came into the world, He must have existed as God Almighty. Now, that this was the case, is very clear, from various parts of Scripture. “ In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God: the same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made.” But, in the text, we read of Him in regard to His human nature. The dayspring from on high assumed the nature of man below, and in that nature became man’ s suffering substitute. He came from on high--He visited us for this purpose. I stated before, and I must now recur to it, that the light to which our text alludes, was gradual in its communication. There was a ray of it to shine on the patriarchs, a brighter ray still shone on the minds of the prophets; but it was when the types received their accomplishment in the plains of Bethlehem--that the words of this text were literally verified. “ The dayspring from on high visited us,” coming to this world of ours to diffuse His light and life, and liberty, and salvation, from one end of the earth to another. III. THE GRAND DESIGN OF THIS AMAZING EVENT--“ To give light,” says the inspired writer--to whom? “ to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death.” By this darkness we arc to understand the ignorance which is common to man; and, by death, we are to understand that moral death which reigns in the minds and spirits of men, together with that eternal death, to which, as sinners, we are exposed. Now, where a shadow is, the substance cannot be far off. We need not here go into the state of the heathen world, at the time of our Saviour’ s advent, for it must be generally known to every one now hearing me: it was indeed a state of darkness and death; nor into the state of the Jewish people, for it too, was a state of ignorance. But, on what subjects does He enlighten men? First of all, touching the being and perfections of God. If you go into the records of the wisest and best of the heathen philosophers, whether of Egypt, Greece, or Rome, you find no clear and distinct revelation existing respecting God tie came, next, to enlighten men touching their own moral state and condition. Now, that all is not right with man must be obvious. Is man happy? He is not--he is miserable as well as wicked. Well, then, there must be something wrong; something must have happened to our world. Let us, then, thank God that, in the midst of darkness and misery, we have the great light shining upon us, telling us how sin entered our world, the end to which it would lead, and the extent to which it would prevail, if we were not delivered from its power. But He came to give light upon another subject--He came to give the light of salvation. If He had merely discovered to us our disease and left us to perish in it, we should have been the worse, in place of being bettered, by our knowledge. But we come, brethren, to the light; and here we find mercy and truth met together, and righteousness and peace embracing each other--truth inflexible as a rock, and mercy, tender as a parent’ s tears, yearning over you with infinite compassion. He came to give light upon another subject--namely, the rule of our duty. What, then, must be the rule? Take it, first, in reference to God, it commands us to love Him supremely; take it in reference to man, and it enjoins thus much upon us--“ Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them; for this is the law and the prophets.” But Christ came to give light on another subject--a future state. But Jesus Christ came to give more than light: He came to give peace--“ to guide our feet into the way of peace.” I can merely mention particulars here. To procure peace was the grand object of our Saviour’ s advent. He was to be called “ the repairer of the breach--the restorer of the paths to dwell in.” And as He came to procure peace, He came also to apply it. You will easily perceive a difference between peace procured and peace applied. He came to give peace--He came also to maintain it in the hearts of His people, causing it to grow and increase more and more, until the subject of it is, at last, brought home to himself to be one with the Lord. Did our salvation, then, originate in the mercy of God? Let us learn from it a lesson of humility. But again, were the developments of this mercy gradual? Did it not all shine out at once? What lesson ought we to derive from this circumstance? Mark this, then; your Christianity ought to be progressive--purer, and having more of principle to-day than yesterday; and more of principle, purity, and disinterestedness to-morrow than to-day. It should be gradual and progressive in its progress, both as to principle and practice. Lastly: Was this light sent for the good of the whole world? Then let us endeavour to diffuse it universally throughout the world. (W. Toase.) Luke 1:80 And the child grew John’ s secluded life Not in sandy deserts like those of Arabia, but in the wild, waste region south of Jericho and the fords of Jordan to the shores of the Dead Sea. This was known as Araboth or ha.Arabah. This region, especially where it approached the Ghor and the Dead Sea, was lonely and forbidding in its physical features, and would suit the stern spirit on which it also reacted. In 1 Samuel 23:19, it is called Jeshimon, or “ the Horror.” John was by no means the only hermit. The political unsettlement, the shamelessness of crime, the sense of secular exhaustion, the widespread Messianic expectation, marked “ the fulness of time.” Banus the Pharisee also lived a life of ascetic hardness in the Arabah, and Josephus tells us that he lived with him for three years in his mountain cave on fruits and water. But there is not in the Gospels the faintest trace of any intercourse between John or our Lord and His disciples, with the Essenes. The great Italian painters follow a right conception when they paint even the boy John as emaciated with early asceticism. In 2Es 9:24, the seer is directed to go into a field where no house is, and to “ taste no flesh, drink no wine, and eat only the flowers of the field,” as a preparation for “ talking with the Most High.” (Archdeacon Farter.) Satisfactions of solitude Charles the Fifth, after a life spent in military exploits and the active and energetic prosecution of ambitious projects, resigned, as is well known, his crown, sated with its enjoyment. He left these words, as a testimony, behind him:--“ I have tasted more satisfaction in my solitude in one day than in all the triumphs of my former reign. The sincere study, profession, and practice of the Christian religion have in them such joy as is seldom found in courts and grandeur.” (Baxendale’ s Anecdotes.) Solitude a good teacher St. Bernard said, in writing to a pious friend, “ If you are seeking less to satisfy a vain curiosity than to get true wisdom, you will sooner find it in deserts than in books. The silence of the rocks and the pathless forests will teach you better than the eloquence of the most gifted men.” (Fenelon.) Solitude helps to mature thought Whenever Michael Angelo, that “ divine madman,” as Richardson once wrote on the back of one of his drawings, was meditating on some great design, he closed himself up from the world. “ Why do you lead such a solitary life?” asked a friend. “ Art,” replied the sublime artist, “ is a jealous god; it requires the whole and entire man.” During his mighty labour in the Sistine Chapel he refused to have any communication with any person, even at his own house. (L D’ Israeli.) The youth of John the Baptist I. INQUIRE INTO THE REASONS WHY THE YOUTH OF JOHN WAS SPENT IN . 1. Purity of his mind shrank from a society so devoid of true religion 2. Privations fitted him for the self-denial with which he afterwards attracted the people. 3. Arrangements also well adapted to prevent any such intimacy with Christ in His youth, as might have excited suspicion of a collusion betwixt them. 4. In such retirement John enjoyed, undisturbed, that communion with the Deity so delightful to eminent piety like his. II. THE WHICH THIS ACCOUNT OF JOHN’ S YOUTH HOLDS OUT TO THOSE WHOSE VIEWS ARE POINTED TO THE . Entire seclusion not required of them, but let them retire as often as they can, and prefer the calm of solitude to the bustle of dissipation. III. THE LESSONS HELD FORTH BY THE YOUTH OF JOHN TO THE YOUNG IN GENERAL. The wisdom and advantage of frequent retirement. 1. What opportunities of improvement solitude will present to you. 2. From what temptations it will detach you. 3. To what solidity of character it will form you. 4. How it will prepare you for the seclusion of days of darkness. (Dr. Belfrage.) The retirement of John was I. A OF HIS RIGHTS. II. A -OFF FROM THE THEN JUDAISM. III. A UNIQUE OF THE TRUE NATURE OF GOD. He believed that there, in the desert, as really as in the Temple, was the “ God of the Temple” to be found and worshipped. IV. Observe that GOD THE HOLY SPIRIT TO HIM IN THE DESERTS. (A. B. Grosart, LL. D) Every life has its desert period Those grand solemn days when God calls us out of the world’ s noises to commune in deep consultation with Him until the soul’ s purposes are shaped, and the characters of our immortal spirits formed. These are the days of destiny, the birth-hours of all that is really great in us, times when we are truly born again, if we will be, or when we rush back and plunge into the troubled sea of unregenerate existence, never to find rest. If we look back down the long line of God’ s heroic ones, each had his wilderness. Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, dwelt all their lives in the grand deserts of existence, and tabernacled with God. Moses, David, Daniel, Elijah, Jeremiah, yea, all God’ s great ones, were caused to turn their backs on a world and face the truths of the living God, until those truths rose up to them to march in triumph, through the opposition of men and devils, to glorious victory. Now, as then, God calls us to the wilderness-school--calls us out to uncover the great purposes of truth before us, and sends us back to stand up for Him, regardless of all the surgings of sin, applause, fear, or death. Here, and here alone, is the safety of any Church, age, or man, in “ the kingdom of God within,” trueness to the ideal of life realized, as the soul in its lone consecration stretches itself on the naked will of God, and feels the strong beatings of His eternal purposes of truth, justice, and love. (Bishop Penriek,) Waxed strong in spirit We need strong men--Elijah-like, John-the-Baptist-like men in these “ perilous times,” and “ spiritual” strength is incomparably the strongest, the most celestial, the most Christly of all strength. (A. B. Grosart, LL. D.) . Luke 2:1-7A decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed There is no grand reason, you see, given why Mary and Joseph should go to Judaea.The angel who is said to have announced the coming birth does not appear again to tell them that they must travel, since otherwise the Son of David will not be connected with His ancestral dwelling-place. They go because every one else is going. A decree of the Caesar obliges the man to register himself in the village, whatever it is, to which he belongs. It may be an awkward contrivance, as a modern writer says it is, to make the conception of royalty fit with the facts. Assuredly the critic, or any ingenious man in this day, could have invented a better tale. And if forgers of that day had, as he supposes, an unlimited command of supernatural incidents, these poor peasants might have been transported by any kind of celestial machinery to the spot in which they were required to be. Nor can we doubt that a Frenchman now, or an Oriental then, would have introduced such an event with becoming pomp. If it was part of the scheme that the birth should be humble, he would have taken pains that we should observe that part of it. There would have been starts of surprise, exclamations at the stooping of the Highest of all to the lowest place. Here is nothing of the kind. Events, the belief of which has affected all the art and speculation of the most civilized nations in the modem world, are recorded in fewer words, with less effort, than an ordinary historian, or the writer of a newspaper, would deem suitable to the account of the most trivial transaction. Such marvellous associations have clung for centuries to these verses, that it is hard to realize how absolutely naked they are of all ornament. We are obliged to read them again and again to assure ourselves that they really do set forth what we call the great miracle of the world. If, on the other hand, the mind of the evangelist was possessed by the conviction that he was not recording a miracle which had interrupted the course of history, but was telling of a Divine act which explained the course of history and restored the order of human life, one can very well account for his calmness; if that conviction was a true one, we might account for the impression which his brief sentences have made on later ages. That the poll-tax of the first emperors should be the instrument of bringing forth the King before whom the Caesars were to bow, would then seem one of those incidents in the drama of the universe which discover a God who is not suddenly interfering to untie knots that are too difficult for human hands, but who is directing all the course of the action, from the beginning to the catastrophe; not crushing the wills of the persons in the drama, but leading them on, by methods which we cannot see or conjecture, to fill their places in it. And the birth in the manger would be felt, not as an embellishment of the narrative, but as a part of the revelation. The King, who proves His title and His Divinity by stooping to the lowest condition of His subjects, is brought into direct contrast with him who had risen by intrigues, proscriptions, and the overthrow of an ancient order, to be hailed as the Deliverer and highest God of the earth. (F. D. Maurice, M. A.) The child and the emperor Was that infant at Bethlehem no more than a subject of the Roman emperor? Was Christianity the mere product of these outward favouring circumstances? Not so. It is true that from these circumstances the fulness of time took its shape and colour. Without that shelter it would not have been, humanly speaking, what now it is. But the spark of life itself was independent of any local or national state. The very characteristic of the life of Christ is that which soared above any such local limit. Therefore it is that He was born, apart from all the stir and turmoil of the world, in a humble stall, in a dark cavern, in a narrow street of an obscure mountain village. Therefore it is that He lived for thirty years in the secluded basin of the unknown, unconsecrated Nazareth; that He passed away without attracting a single word of notice from any contemporary poet or philosopher of that great court, which has made the reign of Caesar Augustus proverbial to all time as the “ Augustan age.” Born under the empire, there was in Jesus Christ nothing imperial, except the greatness of His birth. Born under the Roman sway, there was nothing in Him Roman except the world-wide dominion of His Spirit. From Caesar Augustus comes out a decree that all the world should be taxed, subdued, civilized, united. All honour to him for it! All vigilance, all exertion, all prudence, be ours to watch and seize all the opportunities that are given to us. But it is from God that there come these flashes of life and light, of goodness and of genius, which belong to no age, but which find their likeness in that Divine Child, which was born, not of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. This, then, is the double principle of which the birth of Christ is the most striking example; external circumstances are something, but they are not everything The inward life is the essential thing; but for its successful growth it needs external circumstance. There are a thousand ways in which this double lesson is forced upon us, but the most striking illustration is still to be found in the contrast of the same double relation to the circumstances of world, century, country, or Church in which we live. And, on the other hand, there is our own separate existence and character with its own work to do--its own special nourishment from God. (Dean Stanley.) A political era associated with high religious experiences It was remarkable that the birth of Christ should take place in connection with the process of a great political engagement. Whilst men were moving from all quarters, in response to the decree of Caesar Augustus, the angels of heaven were gathering around the world’ s greatest event. We need historical landmarks to help our memory of the best things. Blessed is that nation whose political eras are associated with the highest religious experiences. (J. Parker, D. D.) Historical difficulties of the census Great as are the historic difficulties in which this census is involved, there seem to be good independent grounds for believing that it may have been originally ordered by Sextius Saturinus, that it was begun by Publeius Sulpicius Quirinus, when he was for the first time legate of Syria; and that it was completed during his second term of office. In deference to Jewish prejudices, any infringement of which was the certain signal for violent tumults and insurrections, it was not carried out in the ordinary Roman manner, at each person’ s place of residence, but, according to Jewish custom, at the town to which their family originally belonged. The Jews still clung to their genealogies and to the memory of long-extinct tribal relations; and though the journey was a weary and distasteful one, the mind of Joseph may well have been consoled by the remembrance of that heroic descent which would now be authoritatively recognized, and by the glow of those Messianic hopes to which the marvellous circumstances of which he was almost the sole depositary would give a tenfold intensity. (Archdeacon Farrar.) The empire of Rome and the stable at Bethlehem I. 1. Consider the decree that went forth from the emperor. How important it must have appeared to the Roman authorities! 2. Consider also the scene that night at Bethlehem. Little knew the people who were filling that inn whom they were turning out! II. 1. Learn that God is working in all the events of life, great or small; bringing out of them issues very different from the issues intended by the actors in those events. Emperors are but officials in God’ s Temple, and their decrees are but means by which He carries out His. 2. Learn that God’ s work does not appeal to the outward senses. It is born at lowly Bethlehem rather than in powerful Rome or in self-righteous Jerusalem. Yet it lasts to eternity. 3. Learn also how the work of Christ in us is like His work in the world. He has to be born in each one of us. (Canon Vernon Hutton, M. A.) God overrules Augustus, while sending forth his edicts to the utmost limits of the East, little knew that on his part he was obeying the decrees of the King of kings. God had foretold that the Saviour should be born in Bethlehem. In order that this might be accomplished He made use of Augustus, and through this prince the order was given for the census of the whole people. At the sight of those wars and revolutions that upset the world you feel inclined to imagine that God no longer governs the world or those in it. You are mistaken, God permits that these awful catastrophes should take place, just for the salvation and perfection of this or that person whom the world knows not. (De Boylesve.) God’ s time arrives I. DIVINE POWER IN THE . II. WISDOM (1) in the time; (2) place; (3) circumstances. III. . IV. . Hiding His wonders from unbelievers. V. Love (John 3:16). (Van Doren.) 1. Caesar Augustus. Son of Octavius and Aria; licentious and treacherous. Superstitious--oft borne to the temple before day, for prayer. Generous, vain, ambitious, warlike, another Louis XIV. Cruel--three hundred senators and two hundred knights murdered with his consent. Defeated at sea, he dragged Neptune’ s statue into the sea. His daughter Julia, by her infamy, embittered his last days. Reigned 44 years, died aged 76. A long and splendid reign. In Augustus, see man’ s nothingness, amid earthly splendour. In Mary, see highest destiny, amid earthly meanness. (Van Doren.) The birth of Jesus Christ There is a fine propriety in celebrating once a year the nativity. Our ignorance of the date is no valid objection. We do not hesitate to date our letters and documents Anno Domini 1887, although in doing so we commit an error of at least four years, and perhaps six. The all-important thing here is not the time of the nativity, but the fact of the nativity. And, if one day in every week the Church of Immanuel celebrates the resurrection of her Lord, is it unbecoming that she should one day in every year celebrate that nativity without which there had never been either resurrection or redemption, or even the Church herself? And now let us attend to the story of the birth of Immanuel. More than seven centuries before the birth of Jesus Christ, the prophet Micah gave utterance to the following remarkable prophecy: Thou, Beth-lehem Ephratah, Which art little to be among the thousands of Judah, Out of thee shall One come forth unto me Who is to be ruler in Israel; Whose goings forth are from of old, From everlasting. That same Almighty God who, through the restlessness of a Persian monarch, had rescued from annihilation the national stock from which His Anointed was to spring, prepared a birthplace for His Anointed through the edict of a Roman emperor. For, when the fulness of the time had come, and the Christ was to be born, Caesar Augustus issued a decree that all the world should be enrolled. And thus a minute prophecy, a thousand times imperilled in the course of seven centuries, was at last minutely accomplished. Oh, who does not feel that a God is here? Who can resist the conviction that this God has had from the beginning His purposes, and actually controls every movement of every human will? Yet there is no reason for supposing that Augustus Caesar, in issuing his decree for a universal census, was conscious that in so doing he was preparing the way for the accomplishment of an ancient prediction. A Roman, he cared nothing for the Hebrews. A pagan, he knew nothing of Messianic prophecies. His issuing a decree of enrolment was nothing unnatural or extraordinary; it was one of the commonest acts of a political ruler, and he himself was one of the most methodical of men. Yet who can doubt that Caesar Augustus, in issuing this decree, was accomplishing a predetermined purpose of the Ancient of Days? Nevertheless, nothing is clearer than this: Caesar Augustus, in publishing this edict, and Joseph and Mary, in visiting Bethlehem in accordance with its requirements, acted as perfectly free, voluntary beings. Now, I have not alluded to this matter for the purpose of attempting to solve a frequently propounded problem--namely, the reconciliation of Divine sovereignty and human freedom. Considered practically in its matter-of-fact aspect, this subject presents no difficulty. It is only when we pry into that domain of infinite problems which God has not opened to us that we become bewildered and lost. Duty, not metaphysics, is our rule for life. Let me conclude with three reflections. I. THE BIRTH AT AND ALL INFANCY. AS Athena was fabled to have sprung full-grown and panoplied from the cloven brow of Zeus, so the Christ and Son of God might have descended into humanity an unborn, adult Adam; for the distance between babe and man is infinitely less than the distance between man and God. But, no; He descended into humanity through the avenue of birth and babyhood, coming, like any other infant, under the law of growth, and so consecrating all life from cradle to grave, hallowing birth as well as death. The birth at Bethlehem made babyhood a sacred thing. And so the very infancy of Jesus is a gospel. II. THE OF THE HOLY FAMILY AT ’ S INN WAS A OF THE WORLD’ S OF JESUS CHRIST EVER SINCE. It is, I repeat, a picture of the world’ s treatment of Jesus Christ ever since. It does not repulse Him; it simply has no room for Him. The world seizes the inn; Christianity must put up with a stable. (G. D Boardman.) Luke 2:4 Which is called Bethlehem Description of Bethlehem The town is picturesque in the highest degree. Its fortified walls have long vanished, but its position on a long, narrow ridge, has confined it to the limits of three thousand years ago, and its houses, very probably, are just the same in appearance as those of the time of David, or even earlier. In fact, we have before us an old Jewish city such as men inhabited in the Bible ages. But its picturesqueness is the best of it, for the streets are as far from being clean as those of other Eastern towns. Rivulets of abomination run across them or stand in puddles, for scavengers are unknown, and the masterless, homeless dogs cannot eat all the garbage. The main street is largely occupied by workshops, or rather arches, with no window, which is not much loss in such a climate. Looking in, one sees that the floor is covered with men sitting cross-legged, hard at work making carved rosaries from the stones of the Dora palm, or the common date, or olive wood; crosses from fig-wood, stained black; fancy trifles from the asphalt of the Dead Sea; endless souvenirs of the town in olive-wood; but, above all, cutting medallions from the mother-of-pearl oyster-shells of the Red Sea, or engraving them with the story of our Lord from His birth to His death. In this one art alone there are, perhaps, 500 workmen engaged. The staple industry of the town is in fact the manufacture of endlessly varied mementos of Bethlehem to be sold, after they have been blessed by the priests, to the pilgrims. This being a Christian town, the wives and daughters often sit with their husbands or brothers: a strange sight in the East, but one that goes far, by what it suggests, to account for the general prosperity. The buildings show that no masons could be better than the Bethlehemites, though there are not many good houses except in the front street and even this has its better and its worse end. Inside, some are, of course, very superior to others, and it is the same with the workshops. Here is one, where men and women are busy making beads for rosaries. All the men are on the ground, cross-legged; the women sit on low pieces of wood, their bare feet visible outside their dress. Mat baskets, or large wooden bowls, of beads cut from olive rods, are on the ground; one man saws a small piece of wood fixed upright in a vice, another turns the beads at a most primitive lathe, driven by a cord stretched on a bent fiddle-stick arrangement. The work-bench consists of some beams on the ground, but one man has a vice fixed in the earth, and is filing something vigorously; the women have fiddle-bows of their own, but the string is a fine saw to cut the beads apart. The long stick which they dissact with this tool rests on an upright, and is held straight by the left hand. The workshop of Joseph at Nazareth could not have been simpler, or, I might say, ruder, for this one seems originally to have been a small cavern in the hillside, the front being filled in, except the door, with masonry, to fit it for its present purpose. The roof is ceiled with a coating of reed-stalks, which sadly needs repair; the walls are in their natural roughness; the floor is the limestone; the door might have been made by one of Noah’ s carpenters, so roughly is it put together. A woman outside, with a nearly naked child astride her shoulder, he, r forehead and neck bright with coins, is looking in, with ourselves, at the busy scene. Turning up one of the short, steep side lanes, I found a second street parallel with the principal one, but dirtier. At some points, on the lower side of the main street, houses extend a short way down the hill, with stairs outside. One I noticed with the stone wall built on the edge of the limestone, so that the view was uninterrupted to the bottom of the valley. A very rickety hand-rail guarded the inner side; such a rail as the whole West could not match; made of natural wood, rough, bent, gaping, set on the steps, held in its place one knew not how. Stairs and house alike were built in arches; the wooden railing alone vindicating the rude backwardness of the East. Two women sat grinding corn on the landing above the first flight; a young woman and a young man were enjoying an interview lower down, and a miserable-looking old woman surveyed the world from above. (G. Geikie, D. D.) The Church of the Nativity The entrance to the Church of the Nativity faces an open space; the promenade of older Bethlehemites, and the playground of younger. Old marble pillars lie side by side in one part of it, and serve as a seat for the weary or idle, and a centre of activity for urchins, who must clamber over something, even in the city of David. The old arched gateway into the church has been long ago filled up with heavy square stones, to resist attack, and now the only entrance is by a small door, less than three feet broad, and hardly four feet high; but it is well that the proudest have to stoop in entering a building so venerable. Contemporary evidence proves that it was built by order of Constantine, so that it is the oldest church in Palestine, perhaps in the world. Within,you are in the presence of sixteen centuries, and tread ground hallowed by the footsteps of nearly fifty generations of believers in the Crucified One. You find yourself in a small, bare porch, once approached through a spacious quadrangle on the open space outside, with covered ways, lined with rows of pillars, in front and at the sides, and provision for baptism and oblation in the centre, From this, three spacious arched gates led into the ancient porch, which ran along great part of the west end of the church; but two of the gates have been entirely built up, and, as we have seen, only a very small doorway, is left in the third, for fear of the Mahommedans. The porch is dark, and is divided by walls into different chambers. Inside, the venerable simplicity is very impressive. You face the east end, which Isaiah 170 feet from the western wall, and, proceeding to the centre, find yourself under a nave which rises in a pointed roof about thirty feet over the capitals of the great pillars, nineteen feet high, which support an aisle on each side. A clerestory, with five arched windows at each side, admits abundant light. The aisles are flat-roofed, supported in the centre by a row of eleven massive pillars, while another row of the same number holds up the straight beams of the lofty nave, the windows over which correspond to the spaces between the columns below. Once elaborately painted, there is now little ornament left on them, except some faint indications of former pictures of saints, and armorial bearings and mottoes, left eight hundred years ago by the Crusaders, with whose greatest chiefs it was a great matter to have their names emblazoned in the church of the Nativity. The columns, each one mighty whole, are of reddish limestone with white veins, and rest on great square slabs, the capitals being Corinthian, and the architraves very simple. The pointed roof of the nave was once richly painted and gilded, but this glory has long ago departed; and the spaces between the high windows at its sides were formerly covered with marbles and mosaics, but though the marbles remain, the mosaics survive only in fragments. When perfect, these represented, on the south side, the seven immediate ancestors of Joseph, the husband of the Holy Virgin. Above them, concealed by curtains, are niches containing altars, on which books of the Gospels rest; and on a line with these is a strange mosaic of coloured glass, on a gilded ground, representing a huge plant, the creation of some one’ s brain long ago, not the imitation of any natural growth. A short way down the aisle stands the ancient baptismal font, eight-sided, with an inscription in Greek on a table below, over a small sculptured cross “ (Given) as a memorial, before God and for the peace and forgiveness of the sinners (who presented it), of whom the Lord knows the names.” Humble enough I But all the more likely to be noted above. It brings one in mind of the dying request of the once imperious Alfonso de Ojeda, erewhile the haughtiest knight of Castile, yet in the end lowly before his Saviour--that they should bury him at the entrance to the Cathedral at Havana, that every one, as he went in, might tread on the dust of so unworthy a worm. A wall on the east side of this many-pillared square space, runs across aisles and nave alike; the former ending here, though the nave really extends beyond this line to the east end of the church, which is rounded into a projecting half-circle, or apse; the secret chamber of the Greek altar and choir, for in Greek worship both are hidden from the congregation by a screen. This apsidal end, with two similar semicircles at the two ends of the transept, gives the shape of a Latin cross to the whole building. Descending the steps from the raised floor of the eastern part of the nave, and turning sharply to the left, a half-sunk arched doorway leads you down by thirteen steps to the Chapel of the Nativity; once a rude cave; now paved and walled with marble, and lighted by thirty-two lamps. About forty feet from east to west, it is only sixteen wide and ten high, and, of course, would be totally dark but for the artificial illumination, for it lies immediately under the great choir, at the very east of the church. The roof is covered with what had once been striped cloth of gold; three huge candlesticks, with candles rising higher than your head, stand at the back; and in front, between two marble pillars, a large picture of the Nativity, and some small ones below it, rest on a projecting shelf of marble, forming the altar. Below this is a shrine unspeakably sacred to millions of our fellow Christians. It is semi-circular, arching outwards above, and at most only four feet high. Fifteen silver lamps burn in it, night and day, lighting up the painted marbles which encrust it; and in the centre of its small floor is a silver star--marking the spot, it is believed, over which the Star of the East once rested--with an inscription, at the sight of which, I frankly confess, I wept like a child: “ Hie de Virgine Maria Jesus Christus natus est.” A Turkish soldier, gun in hand, and fez on head, stood a few steps behind, but I forgot his presence. Pilgrims kneeled down and kissed the silver which spoke a story so infinitely touching, and I did the same. There is no reason, so far as I can see, to doubt that in this cave, so hallowed by immemorial veneration, the great event associated with it actually took place. Nor is there any ground for hesitation because it is a cave that is regarded as the sacred spot. Nothing is more common in a Palestine village, built on a hill, than to use as adjuncts of the houses, the eaves with which all the limestone rocks of the country abound making them the store-room, perhaps, or the workshop, or the stable, and building the dwellings before them so as to join the two. (G. Geikie, D. D.) Illustrious pedigree in obscurity It need not surprise us that the representatives of such an illustrious ancestry should be found in a station so obscure. In the book of Judges, we find a grandson of Moses reduced to engage himself as family priest, in Mount Ephraim, for a yearly wage of “ ten shekels, a suit of apparel, and his victuals.” At the present day, the green turban which marks descent from Mahomet is often worn in the East by the very poor, and even by beggars. In our own history, the glory of the once illustrious Plantagenets so completely waned, that the direct representative of Margaret Plantagenet, daughter and heiress of George Duke of Clarence, followed the trade of a cobbler in Newport, Shropshire, in 1637. Among the lineal descendants of Edmund of Woodstock, sixth son of Edward I., and entitled to quarter the royal arms, were a village butcher, and a keeper of a turnpike gate, and among the descendants of Thomas Plantagenet, Duke of Gloucester, fifth son of Edward III., was included the late sexton of a London church. The vicissitudes of the Jewish nation for century after century; its deportation to Babylon, and long suspension of national life; its succession of high priestly rulers, after the return; its transition to the Asmonean line, and, finally, the reign of the Idumean house of Herod, with all the storm and turmoil which marked so many changes, had left, to use the figure of Isaiah, only a root in a dry ground, an humble citizen of Nazareth, as the heir of its ancient royalty. Subsidiary lives Hence, sometimes one life will appear to have been almost solely devoted to the more selecting, developing, and energizing another. For example, remember Hannah. Her lot was an exceedingly humble one. It seemed linked with a purpose no more extraordinary than that of a hundred other Hebrew mothers. She came to Eli at least twice in the temple; yet so unobtrusive and so unremarkable was she, that she had each time to introduce herself to the busy man, and repeat her name and errand. To wean the infant Samuel, and bring him a little coat every year, was about all we know of the purpose for which Hannah’ s life was set in the infinite counsels of heaven. So of Andrew: he was one of the chosen twelve, and there is one pattern of cross that bears his name, because he was martyred upon it. But all we positively read about a man so true and good, is that he brought Simon Peter to Jesus. So of Joseph, the Nazarene carpenter; he shows himself in the early history of the Bethlehem babe; but Scripture, after it has exhibited how useful he was in guarding the reputation of the Virgin-Mother, dismisses him so suddenly that nobody knows where he was buried, or even where he died. (R. Robinson.) Christ born in Bethlehem 1. The place where Christ was born is observable. Not Nazareth, but Bethlehem, in accordance with Micah’ s prediction. We may suppose that the Blessed Virgin little thought of changing her place, but to have been delivered of her Holy Burden at Nazareth, where it was conceived. Her house at Nazareth had been honoured by the presence of the angel; yea, by the overshadowing of the Holy Ghost; that house there, we may suppose, was most satisfactory to the Virgin’ s desire. But He who made choice of the womb where His Son should be conceived, it was fit He should also choose the place where His Son should be born. And this place, many hundred years before, was foretold should be Bethlehem. 2. How remarkable was the providence of God in bringing the Virgin up from Nazareth to Bethlehem, that Christ, as it was prophesied of Him, might be born there. How the wisdom of God overrules the actions of men, for higher or nobler ends than they aimed at. The emperor’ s aim by this edict was to fill his coffers; God’ s end was to fulfil his prophecies. 3. How readily Joseph and Mary yielded obedience to the edict and decree of this heathen emperor. It was no less than four days’ journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem; how just an excuse might the Virgin have pleaded for her absence I What woman ever undertook so hazardous a journey, when so near her delivery? And Joseph, no doubt, was sufficiently unwilling to draw her forth into so manifest a hazard. But as the emperor’ s command was peremptory, so their obedience was exemplary. We must not plead difficulty for withdrawing our obedience to supreme commands. “ How did our Saviour, even in the womb of His mother, yield homage to civil rulers and governors I The first lesson which Christ’ s example taught the world, was loyalty and obedience to the supreme magistrate. 4. After many weary steps the holy Virgin comes to Bethlehem, where every house is taken up by reason of the great confluence of people that came to be taxed; and there is no room for Christ but in a stable; the stable His palace, the manger His cradle. Oh, how can we be abased low enough for Him who thus neglected Himself for us! ( W. Burkitt, M. A.) Christ’ s lowly birth The lowly birth of the Saviour of the worm is-- 1. Surprising, when we consider who He is that comes. 2. Intelligible, when we ask why He comes. 3. A cause of joy, when we see for whom He comes. (J. J. Van Oosterzee, D. D.) Christ’ s threefold birth The threefold birth of the Son of God. 1. Begotten of the Father before all worlds. 2. Born of flesh in the world. 3. Born of the Spirit in us. (F. W. Krummacher, D. D.) Birth of the Son of God It is necessary for a due celebration of Christmas, that we should recognize the Son of God in the new-born child; for, without this recognition, we should lack-- (1) the full reason for and due appreciation of, this celebration; (2) we should observe it without the right spirit; and (3) fail to obtain its true blessing. (Kuchler.) Christ’ s birth in Bethlehem The Son of God born in the little town of Bethlehem, a proof-- (1) that the Lord certainly performs what He promises; (2) that with God nothing is impossible; (3) that nothing is too mean or too lowly for God. (Fuchs.) Christmas a children’ s festival The festival of Christmas a children’ s festival; feral. 1. It leads us to a Child. 2. It fills the world of children with joy. 3. Its duo celebration demands a childlike spirit. (Florey.) Christ’ s birth in an inn Christ was born in an inn, to intimate-- (1) That He was homeless in this world; (2) that He was a pilgrim on earth, as we ought to be; (3) that He welcomes all comers, and entertains them, but without money and without price. (Matthew Henry.) The birth of Jesus the new birth of the human race 1. Without the birth of Jesus, the new birth of mankind is impossible. 2. With it, the new birth is begun. 3. By it, the new birth is assured. (J. J. Van Oosterzee, D. D.) Luke 2:6 The days were accomplished The birth of Christ The whole of the world’ s history led up to this night. It is the hinge on which the history of man turns. The whole of mankind from Adam waited for this night. All the prophets, from righteous Enoch to John the preacher of repentance, laboured to prepare the way for Him who came on this night. The Word was made flesh to sanctity human nature. God descended to man, to raise man to God. Christmas is the feast of salvation for all mankind. The heathen were at this time celebrating their Saturnalia, in remembrance of the Golden Age, which indeed had never been since sin was in the world, an age when, they said, all the world was full of light, and joy, and innocence. But these were times for ever gone by, times from which every century was removing them further morally, as well as actually. Yet, see! how Christmas comes to turn the vain and wistful backward look into a look forwards. The evening and the morning form the day according to the Divine reckoning, not the morning and the evening. First comes darkness, and then light; first sadness, then joy; first desire, then fulfilment. Christ came to bid the old heathens turn away from contemplation of the past, and through Him look to the coming of the true Golden Age, the age when, from the new heavens and the new earth, sin and sighing shall have fled; when He, who is the Wonderful, the Counsellor, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace, shall reign in righteousness, and of His kingdom there shall be no end. Christ has not, indeed, founded on earth the Golden Age such as the Gentiles lusted after, any more than He came to be the Messiah such as the Jews longed for; He did not come to give peace to the world itself, but an inner peace, a peace that is hid with Christ in God--not such as the world giveth--a peace which cannot be broken and taken away, a peace to be won through conflict and storm and anguish. He came not to give earthly riches and prosperity, but the true riches, which are spiritual: The Incarnation has made that possible which before was impossible. The heathen looked back to the reign of Peace and Innocence and Plenty as something past and unattainable. Christ shows it as future, and opens the kingdom of the Golden Age to all. Earth and heaven are united. Man is made a citizen of Heaven, a member of the Golden Kingdom that is preparing and awaiting its manifestation. On earth man is subject to temptation, with the world ever striving to stamp out and destroy the spiritual kingdom, as Herod, its type, sought to destroy the infant Messiah; on earth, but not of it, man waits and prepares himself, and prays, “ Thy kingdom come,” knowing that the manifestation of the sons of God in the coming Golden Age cannot be till God’ s will is done by His subjects on earth as it is done by the denizens of heaven. At the heathen Saturnalia all distinction between slave and master was done away, to return into full force when the feast was over. Christmas shows us Him who is very God made the servant of all, taking on Him the form of a servant, made in the likeness of flesh, that He might redeem men from slavery, and set them free in the glorious liberty of childhood to God. And as on this day the birth of the visible sun was kept, because the days have been shortening, and now appear to lengthen again, Christ calls the Gentiles to look away from the sun that rules the day to Himself, who is the true Light of the world, the Sun of Righteousness, rising with healing on His wings, who comes with promise of a day eternal, in which there will be no created sun or moon, or humanly-made candle, but the Lord God will be the light, and there shall be no night more. (S. Baring-Gould, M. A.) The joy of Christmas Christmas Day is characteristically different from other festivals, such as Easter or Whitsunday. It has a softer, tenderer, more domestic interest about it. It falls in with other feelings, and blends with some of the closest and dearest associations of family life. A first-born child in common life--born, it may be, after a season of gloom and distress; an heir, it may be, of a throne, or born in the humblest life, what is a first-born child but the sweet and happy embodiment of hope and promise, of happy days, of daily developing delight, of good and noble manhood? So it is in our common everyday life; and those who do not know it of their own, know it well for their friends, how deeply, thankfully sinks into the heart of man the delight of a newborn, a first-born child. So, I say, of common life and ordinary families. But this day saw the birth, not of the first-born of ordinary human parents, but of the Child of heaven and earth, the Child of God and man, the Child for whom both heaven and earth were waiting in anxious expectation of redemption and restitution, the Child of hopes unspeakable-hopes that could not be frustrated to those who would hold them fast; the Heir of heaven, the Heir of earth, the Heir in whose inheritance all men might regain the inheritance of their Father’ s kingdom … Then let us keep this holy day with peaceful, happy, Christian thankfulness. Let it be a day of sober joy, of outpouring charity, of mutual Christian love, of deepminded peace. It is a day of family concord; a day for special parental love, and special filial duty and obedience; a day on which the internal affection of families should be warmest and brightest; a day that should know of no bickerings or irritations between those of the same household, brothers and sisters, fellow-servants, and all others. It is a day for neighbourly kindness, mutual forgiveness, interchange of all friendly offices. It is a day which, opening our hearts in grateful love to God, should open them also in brotherly kindness to one another, and help us all on towards that blessed goal which we all hope to reach, and which none will reach so surely as those who are doing their best to enable others to reach it also. (Bishop Moberly.) The greatest event on the smallest of scales And in speaking of the greatness of the event of Christmas Day, let us observe further one peculiarity of its outward circumstances that conveys to us a special lesson concerning greatness of all kinds. This decisive world-historical birthday took place in a small inn of a small village of a small province of a small nation. It was the greatest of events on the smallest of scales. There are some who think that all events and characters are to be measured by the magnitude of the stage on which they appear; there are some who are perplexed by the thought that this globe, on which the history of man is enacted, is now known to be a mere speck in the universe: there are some who are startled on learning for the first time that the heathen world far outnumbers the Christian, and that the famous Indian teacher, Buddha, counts myriads more worshippers than Christ. But the moment we go below the surface we find that the truth conveyed to us by the birth of the world’ s Redeemer in the little village of Bethlehem is the likeness of a principle which ramifies far and wide. It was once said to me by a distinguished American, “ The truth which needs especially to be impressed upon us Americans is that bigness is not greatness.” It was a truth which a well-known English philosopher had already impressed upon his American audience with a courage which they were honest enough to appreciate. The fact is that the great nations of the world have almost always been amongst the smallest in size. Europe is diminutive compared with any of the other continents, and yet Europe is certainly the seat and centre of the world’ s history. Athens in its greatest days was as nothing compared with Babylon and Nineveh, and yet Athens was the eye of the world’ s civilization. Palestine was not nearly half the size even of our own little island, and yet Palestine is the cradle of the world’ s religion. (Dean Stanley.) On the most striking circumstances that distinguished the birth of the Redeemer I. HIS AND . Ancient mythology teems with instances of a fictitious correspondence between Divine and human kind. In that credulous age, whoever had the good fortune to excel his competitors in wisdom, arts, or arms, boasted an alliance with heaven. Even the best among them did not scruple to blast maternal honour for the sake of this imaginary distinction. But, fantastical as it was in them, it is an evidence to us, that the idea was then sufficiently popular to warrant and protect the fact from implicit reprobation when it happened. Indeed the various impostures of this kind, which mark the annals of paganism, most probably resulted from some of the earliest predictions of the Messiah’ s birth, which might be propagated among the heathen by tradition, as it was preserved among the Jews by Scripture. II. The era of Christ’ s nativity, interesting as it was to the children of men, was NOT BY ANY OF THOSE FULSOME FORMS OF WHICH MARK THE BIRTH OF THE GREAT. His kingdom was not of this world, and He deigned not to borrow its rites. But His insignia are stamped in the heavens (Matthew 2:2). Angels announced His advent with strains of highest rapture. III. THE WORLD WAS LITTLE by this event so essential to its welfare. This, perhaps, is the most extraordinary circumstance of all, that dignified and distinguished that occasion. Those already specified were evidently adapted by Providence to assert the importance, and attest the truth of His character. But what shall we say of the meanness, the ignominy, the contempt to which the Son of God condescended in taking upon Him the form of a man? The gospel accounts sufficiently for this. It is intended to suppress the arrogant, and elevate all the milder sensibilities of the heart. Christ came to inculcate the principles of virtue and religious wisdom; not to swell the passions, or stimulate the wishes of ambition, but to refine fallen and degraded human nature; not to pamper the appetites of men, but to wean them from the sensual and temporary enjoyments of this life, by those of a rational, spiritual, and immortal kind. It was, indeed, one capital object of this Divine embassy, to set the insignificance of those things which dazzle our senses, and mislead our hearts, in the strongest and most affecting point of view. And how could He do it more effectually than by the poverty and abjection in which He made His appearance and progress through life? The most likely means of detaching His disciples from the world, was giving them in this manner an example of living above it. They cannot consistently be covetous of distinctions, which are so uniformly despised by their Master. : Do not imagine that this festival requires no preparation of you. Let one and all “ prepare the way of the Lord, and make straight His paths.” Come, ye miserable sinners, laden with the insupportable burden of your sins; come, ye troubled consciences, uneasy at the remembrance of your many idle words, many criminal thoughts, many abominable actions; come, ye poor mortals, condemned first to bear the infirmities of nature, the caprices of society, the vicissitudes of age, the turns of fortune, and then the horrors of death, and the frightful night of the tomb; come, behold the Wonderful, the Counsellor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace; take Him into your arms, learn to desire nothing more when you possess Him. (B. Murphy.) Luke 2:7 Her first-born Son Birth of Christ the Lord I. CHRIST’ S TO THE POOR. 1. When He came in so lowly circumstances, consenting to lay His head in a manger, none of the pomps of royalty about Him, how touchingly and tenderly He spoke to the vast majority of the world. There is a bond of sympathy between Him and the multitude whose condition is one of struggles, deprivations, and anxieties. Here is a warrant of His love; here is something to secure their confidence, draw out their hearts, lead them to admiration. 2. How plain, in the light of this event, is the folly of estimating men by their birth or surroundings. What a rebuke on the worldliness of earth, on our unseemly regard for temporal surroundings. If Christ, the King of kings, the Saviour of the world, the Son of the Highest, could take so lowly a station, we are weak indeed, if we judge men hereafter by the canopy on their cradles or the jewels on their swaddling-bands. II. THE OF INFANCY. Why was Christ a babe? To link Himself at every stage with humanity; to indicate the sweetness and preciousness of infant life. In that quaint, fragile casket--a babe--is the jewel of an immortal soul. There lie the germs of immense possibilities. The soul is as yet in embryo, but it is there. He turns against his better nature, against the teachings of Christ’ s life, who has no interest in the new-born babe. III. THE OF THE TO THE . HOW little do we know of the material circumstances of Christ’ s life! Even this great event, His birth, is shrouded in comparative darkness. God would show us the comparative insignificance of temporal things. Christ came to teach spiritual truth. IV. Christ’ s coming was THE PIVOTAL EVENT OF THE WORLD’ S HISTORY. From Bethlehem shall go forth an influence that shall move the world. That Divine Babe is the salvation of a ruined earth! (A. P. Foster.) The miraculous conception not unreasonable Let me dispute the case with a mere natural man, How doth the harvest of the field enrich the husbandman? It is answered, By the seed which is sown in the ground. Say again, How came seed into the world to sow the ground? Surely you must confess that the first seed had a Maker, who did not derive it from the ears of wheat, but made it of nothing by the power of His own hand; says St. Austin, “ then God could make a man without the seed of man in the Virgin’ s womb, who made seed for the corn before ever there was earing or harvest.” Nay, there is an instance for it in the little bees, as the poet doth philosophize, they do not bring forth their young ones, as other creatures do, by the help of male and female together; but they gather the seed which begets the young ones from the dew of leaves, and herbs, and flowers, and so they bring them forth. (Bishop Hacket.) Christ born without the curse of the flesh The Virgin conceived our Lord without the lusts of the flesh, and therefore she had not the pangs and travail of women upon her, she brought Him forth without the curse of the flesh. These be the Fathers’ comparisons: as bees draw honey from the flower without offending it, as Eve was taken out of Adam’ s side without any grief to him, as a spring issues out of the bark of the tree, as the sparkling light from the brightness of the star, such ease was it to Mary to bring forth her first-born Son; and therefore having no weakness in her body, feeling no want of vigour, she did not deliver Him to any profane hand to be dressed, but by a special ability, above all that are newly delivered, she wrapt Him in swaddling clouts. (Bishop Hacket.) Christ wrapped in swaddling clothes Now these clouts here mentioned which were not worth the taking up, but that we find them in this text, are more to be esteemed than the robes of Solomon in all his royalty; yea, more valuable than the beauty of the lily, or any flower of the field or garden, which did surpass all the royalty of Solomon. I may say they are the pride of poverty, for I know not in what thing poverty may better boast and glory than in the rags of Christ. (Bishop Hacket.) 1. The strange condition of the mother, that she brought forth a Son, who by nature was no bearer, for she was a virgin. 2. The strange condition of the Babe, the first-begotten Son of God was the first-born Son of flesh and blood. 3. The strange condition of the place, that she laid Him in a manger. 4. The strange condition of men, that there was no room in the inn for Jesus and Mary. (Bishop Hacket.) The Christ-child Mother and child! What more beautiful sight, and what more wonderful sight is there in the world? What more beautiful? That man must be very far from the Kingdom of God--he is not worthy to be called a man at all--whose heart has not been touched by the sight of his first child in itsmother’ s bosom. The greatest painters who have ever lived have tried to paint the beauty of that simple thing--a mother with her babe: and have failed. One of them, Rafaelle by name, to whom God gave the spirit of beauty in a measure in which He never gave it, perhaps, to any other man, tried again and again, for years, painting over and over that simple subject--the mother and her babe--and could not satisfy himself. Each of his pictures is most beautiful--each in a different way; and yet none of them is perfect. There is more beauty in that simple everyday sight than he or any man could express by his pencil and his colours. And as for the wonder of that sight I tell you this: That physicians, and the wise men who look into the laws of nature, of flesh and blood, say that the mystery is past their finding out; that if they could find out the whole meaning, and the true meaning of those two words, “ mother” and “ child,” they could get the key to the deepest wonders of the world--but they cannot. And philosophers who look into the laws of soul and spirit say the same. The wiser men they are, the more they find in the soul of every new-born babe, and its kindred to its mother, wonders and puzzles past man’ s understanding. This then we are to think of--God revealed, and shown to men, as a babe upon His mother’ s bosom. It was only in the Babe of Bethlehem that the whole of God’ s character shone forth, that men might not merely find Him and bow before Him, but trust in Him and love Him, as one who could be touched with the feeling of their infirmities. A God in need! a God weak! a God fed by mortal woman! a God wrapt in swaddling clothes, and laid in a manger! If that sight will not touch our hearts, what will? God has been through the pains of infancy, that He might take on Him not merely the nature of a man, but all human nature, from the nature of the babe on its mother’ s bosom, to the nature of the full-grown and full-souled man, fighting with all his powers against the evil of the world. All this is His, and He is all; that no human being, from the strongest to the weakest, from the oldest to the youngest, but may be able to say, “ What I am, Christ has been!” (C. Kingsley.) The Advent exalts human relations Why was it that the Eternal Son, when He abandoned that “ glory which He had with the Father before the world was,” and determined to be “ the Man Christ Jesus,” was pleased to make His apparition on the scene of the world even as others do; to be the infant and the child before He was the man; to be subject to the filial obligation in the fulness of its legitimate extent; and to be all this in a situation in which such ties were stripped of all that could recommend them, apart from their own intrinsic value--a situation in which wealth could not adorn, nor authority dignify them? Assuredly one prominent reason was that, separating, by means so much more intelligible than argumentative statements, what was essentially excellent in human nature from its depravations and corruptions, He might bestow a special dignity upon those primary connections of human life upon which the rest so mainly depend, and in which the tenderer and better affections of the heart find, and were meant by our Creator to find, their peculiar sphere of exercise. Nothing can more truly show that nature and revelation came from the same hand, than the assumption into revelation of all that is innocent in nature. When God, as Creator of the world, bound together all the variety of human connections by all the variety of corresponding affections, He wrought a work destined for everlasting. Dispensations may change, but these things are not meant to change. And thus it is that, when from the perusal of the New Testament a man descends into the charities of social life, things do not seem changed in their position, but wonderfully beautified in their complexion; a Diviner glow rests upon them and a holier sanctity. There is a change, but it is a change that adorns without disturbing. It is as if a man who had lived in a twilight world, where all was dimly revealed and coldly coloured, were suddenly to be surprised with the splendour of a summer noon. Objects would still remain, and relations be still unbroken; but new and lovely lights and shadowings would cover them: they would move in the same direction as before, but under an atmosphere impregnated with brighter hues, and rich with a light that streamed direct from heaven. I. Then, by what means could this high result have been attained with such force, directness, and certainty, as has been effected in the adoption by our God of those very connections? So far, you can perceive a strong reason for the manner of Christ’ s incarnation--for His advent among us in the simplicity of our ordinary manhood. You can perceive that it conferred an inexpressible dignity upon the relation, above all others, of the mother and the child. II. I would add that of His design to exalt this as well as the other natural relations, to make them high and sacred elements in the religion He was about to establish, a most lovely proof is insinuated in the constant employment of all these connections and feelings to symbolize the eternal realities of the spiritual world. III. The passage before us speaks not merely of the “ first-born,” but of her who bore Him, and whose mysterious agonies were unsupported by the aids of wealth and the appliances of luxury; who was rejected when she would have given to the Immortal Infant the common comforts of that trying hour; and who had to place among the beasts of the field, less insensate than man, the “ life of the world” thus cast forth to die. How wondrous, how unfelt before or since, the communion of that mother and that Son! With the full remembrance of His supernatural descent, to sit at the same daily table for all those long and untold years that preceded the public ministry of the great prophet; to recognize in Him at once the babe of her bosom and the God of her immortality; to catch, ever and anon, those mystic echoes of eternity which the deeper tones of His converse would reveal, and to behold, plainer and plainer, as He grew, the lineaments of the God impressed upon the wondrous inmate of her humble home; surely these were experiences to dignify that mother in our thoughts; yea, to give a glory and a hallowing to maternity itself for ever. IV. One point, above all others, added a peculiar interest to that wondrous connection. The virgin and her Son stood alone in the world! alone in the long line of the human race! He, with whom she was so awfully, yet endearingly connected, could acknowledge no earthly father, no author of His humanity, but that overshadowing Spirit by whose mysterious operation He had been invested with our nature. In that awful hour of Bethlehem there must have mingled with the sorrows of the outcast Virgin the trembling joys of one who knew herself the supernatural channel of the Hope of the human race. And though she might own to the feebleness of the woman in that hour of trial, and deplore amid the unworthy accompaniments of such a scene that “ low estate” of “ the handmaid of the Lord” which had reduced her to them, yet as she gazed upon that Eternal Child in whom was bound up the regeneration of Israel, of the world, “ her soul could magnify the Lord and her spirit rejoice in God her Saviour.” (W. Archer Butler.) The Saviour and the manger For ourselves Christmas Day is one of universal joy; for Jesus Christ’ s sake, who as on this day was born, there is a loving sadness. His birth overshadowed His life. His very coming into the world was a heavy prophecy of sorrow. I. BORN A BABE. Unable to do anything; He was mocked in the hour of His Passion; as being weak and foolish; as one unable to reply to Herod and to Pilate (Isaiah 53:17). The burden of our nature was laid upon Him all through His earthly life, which was one long course of sacrifice for others. The weak and suffering are often the workers of the world. II. BORN WITHOUT A . “ No room for Him in the inn” ; whilst living, no home for Him in Jerusalem or elsewhere (Matthew 8:20). In death He had no tomb or sepulchre of His own. Quite possible to do a mighty work for the world, and yet have no lot or portion in it. III. BORN IN . Just after midnight; died in darkness “ over the whole land,” just after midday. The Light of the world came into it at dark, to make it bright with His presence, which presence being taken away, left it dark again. Type of a soul once enlightened, fallen away into the darkness of sin (Matthew 6:23). IV. BORN ON A HARD COUCH. Born in a stable, laid in a manger, He died extended and reposing upon the bitter couch of the cross. A birth, life, and death in hardship. This world a school of discipline to holy souls. V. BORN BETWEEN TWO ANIMALS. The ox and the ass were with Him at His birth. He was compelled to breathe out His soul between two thieves, and during His life He received sinners. Conclusion: Every life repeats itself. Marvellous concord between Jesus Christ the Child and Jesus Christ the Man, the manger and the cross, the beginning and the end. (M. Faber.) There was no room for them in the inn No room for Christ in the inn I. There were OTHER REASONS WHY CHRIST SHOULD BE LAID IN THE MANGER. 1. It was intended thus to show forth His humiliation. Would it not have been inappropriate that the Redeemer who was to be buried in a borrowed tomb should be born anywhere but in the humblest shed, and housed anywhere but in the most ignoble manner? The manger and the cross, standing at the two extremities of the Saviour’ s earthly life, seem most fit and congruous the one to the other. 2. By being in a manger He was declared to be the king of the poor. In the eyes of the poor, imperial robes excite no affection, but a man in their own garb attracts their confidence. Great commanders have readily won the hearts of their soldiers by snaring their hardships and roughing it as if they belonged to the ranks. 3. Further, in being thus laid in a manger, He did, as it were, give an invitation to the most humble to come to Him. We might tremble to approach a throne, but we cannot fear to approach a manger. 4. Methinks there was yet another mystery. This place was free to all. Christ was born in the stable of the inn to show how free He is to all comers. Class distinctions are unknown here, and the prerogatives of caste are not acknowledged, No forms of etiquette are required in entering a stable; it cannot be an offence to enter the stable of a public caravanserai. So, if you desire to come to Christ, you may come to Him just as you are; you may come now. 5. It was at the manger that the beasts were fed; and does the Saviour lie where weary beasts receive their provender, and shall there not be a mystery here? Alas, there are some men who have become so brutal through sin, so utterly depraved by their lusts, that to their own consciences everything manlike has departed; but even to such the remedies of Jesus, the Great Physician, will apply. Even beastlike men may come to Christ, and live. 6. But as Christ was laid where beasts were fed, you will recollect that after He was gone beasts fed there again. It was only His presence which could glorify the manger, and here we learn that if Christ were taken away the world would go back to its former heathen darkness. Christianity itself would die out, at least that part of it which really civilizes man, if the religion of Jesus could be extinguished. II. THERE WERE OTHER PLACES BESIDES THE INN WHICH HAD NO ROOM FOR JESUS. 1. The palaces of emperors and the halls of kings afforded the Royal Stranger no refuge. 2. But there were senators, there were forums of political discussion, there were the places where the representatives of the people make the laws, was there no room for Christ there? Alas I none. 3. How little room there is for Him in what is called good society. There is room there for all the silly little forms by which men choose to trammel themselves; room for frivolous conversation; room for the adoration of the body; there is room for the setting up of this and that as the idol of the hour, but there is too little room for Christ, and it is far from fashionable to follow the Lord fully. 4. How little room for Him on the exchange. 5. How little room for Him in the schools of the philosophers. 6. How little room has He found even in the Church. Go where ye will, there is no space for the Prince of Peace but with the humble and contrite spirits which by grace He prepares to yield Him shelter. III. THE INN ITSELF HAD NO ROOM FOR HIM. This was the main reason why He must be laid in a manger. 1. The inn represents public opinion. In this free land, men speak of what they like, and there is a public opinion upon every subject; and you know there is free toleration in this country to everything-permit me to say, toleration to everything but Christ. 2. The inn also represents general conversation. Speech is very free in this land, but ah! how little room is there for Christ in general talk. 3. As for the inns of modern times--who would think of finding Christ there? IV. HAVE YOU ROOM FOR CHRIST? V. If you have room for Christ, then THE WORLD HAS NO ROOM FOR YOU. It had no room for Joseph or Mary, any more than for the Babe. Who are His father, and mother, and sister, and brother, but those who receive His word and keep it? So, as there was no room for the Blessed Virgin, nor for the reputed father, remember there is no room in this world for any true follower of Christ. 1. No room for you to take your ease. 2. No room for you to sit down contented with your own attainments. 3. No room for you to hide your treasure in. 4. No room for you to put your confidence. 5. Hardly room of sufferance. You must expect to be laughed at, and to wear the fool’ s cap in men’ s esteem. Will you enlist on such terms? Will you give room for Christ, when there is henceforth no room for you? (C. H.Spurgeon.) Christ outside of the inn 1. This was partly the result of ignorance. Had they known He was the Messiah, doubtless they would have acted otherwise. 2. But partly also the result of selfishness. Had there been more of a generous humanity in their hearts, some fitter place would have been found for Mary and her child. I. We may take this inn as AN EMBLEM OF THE UNGODLY WORLD. What is the essential distinction between an inn and a home? In the one, as in the other, a number of individuals dwell together, but “ home” involves the idea of vital unity--common life, feeling, experience. In an inn no mutual fellowship; each thinks only of his own interests. When Christ was born, the Roman Empire was just one huge inn, with no real cohesion, no vital unity, amongst the various provinces. Into this world of aggregated interests Christ came; and there was no room for Him. Even the Jewish nation, to whom more especially He came, was split up into sects and parties, each pursuing its own objects, although living under the same roof of a common history and a common religion; and so, when He came unto His own, they received Him not. Is it not the same in the world now? II. AN EMBLEM OF MANY AN . Many a household does not at all realize the idea of a “ home.” Its members cat and sleep under the same roof; but this is more like an arrangement of temporary necessity than of loving choice. They need Christ as a bond of union; but they do not feel their need of Him, and so for Him they have no room. III. AN EMBLEM OF THE WORLDLY HEART. It might be thought the very spirit of selfishness would impart unity to the worldling’ s nature. But no, for while his desires are imperious, they are often mutually conflicting. He needs a governing principle--Christ dwelling in the heart. (T. C.Finlayson.) Room in the soul for Christ As the palace, and the forum, and the inn, have no room for Christ, and as the places of public resort have none, have you room for Christ? “ Well,” says one, “ I have room for Him, but I am not worthy that He should come to me.” Ah! I did not ask about worthiness; have you room for Him? “ Oh,” says one, “ I have an empty void the world can never fill!” Ah! I see you have room for Him. “ Oh! but the room I have in my heart is so base!” So was the manger. “ But it is so despicable!” So was the manger a thing to be despised. “ Ah! but my heart is so foul!” So, perhaps, the manger may have been. “ Oh I but I feel it is a place not at all fit for Christ!” Nor was the manger a place fit for Him, and yet there was He laid. “ Oh! but I have been such a sinner; I feel as if my heart had been a den of beasts and devils!” Well, the manger had been a place where beasts had fed. Have you room for Him? Never mind what the past has been; He can forget and forgive. It mattereth not what even the present state may be if thou mournest it. If thou hast but room for Christ He will come and be thy guest. Do not say, I pray you, “ I hope I shall have room for Him;” the time is come that He shall be born; Mary cannot wait months and years. Oh! sinner, if thou hast room for Him let Him be born in thy soul to-day: “ To-day if ye will hear His voice harden not your hearts as in the provocation.” “ To-day is the accepted time; to-day is the day of salvation.” Room for Jesus! Room for Jesus now! “ Oh!” saith one, “ I have room for Him, but will He come?” Will He come indeed! Do you but set the door of your heart open, do but say, “ Jesus, Master, all unworthy and unclean I look to thee; come, lodge within my heart,” and He will come to thee, and He will cleanse the manger of thy heart, nay, will transform it into a golden throne, and there He will sit and reign for ever and for ever. My Master wants room! Room for Him! Room for Him! I, His herald, cry aloud, Room for the Saviour! Room! Here is my royal Master--have you room for Him? Here is the Son of God made flesh--have you room for Him? Here is He who can forgive all sin--have you room for Him? There is He who can take you up out of the horrible pit and out of the miry clay--have you room for Him? Here is He who, when He cometh in, will never go out again, but abide with you for ever to make your heart a heaven of joy and bliss for you--have you room for Him? ‘ Tis all I ask. Your emptiness, your nothingness, your want of feeling, your want of goodness, your want of grace--all these will be but room for Him Have you room for Him? Oh! Spirit of God, lead many to say, “ Yes, my heart is ready.” Ah! then He will come and dwell with you. (C. H. Spurgeon.) Christ waiting for room Were a man to enter some great cathedral of the old continent, survey the vaulted arches and the golden tracery above, wander among the forests of pillars on which they rest, listen to the music of choirs, and catch the softened light that streams through sainted forms and histories on the windows, observe the company of priests, gorgeously arrayed, chanting, kneeling, crossing themselves, and wheeling in long processions before the great altar loaded with gold and gems; were he to look into the long tiers of side chapels, each a gorgeous temple, with an altar of its own for its princely family, adorned with costliest mosaics, and surrounded, in the niches of the walls, with statues and monumental groups of dead ancestors m the highest forms of art, noting also the living princes at their worship there among their patriarchs and brothers in stone--spectator of a scene so imposing, what but this will his thought be: “ Surely the Infant of the manger has at last found room, and come to be entertained among men with a magnificence worthy of His dignity “ But if he looks again, and looks a little farther in--far enough in to see the miserable pride of self and power that lurks under this gorgeous show, the mean ideas of Christ, the superstitions held instead of Him, the bigotry, the hatred of the poor, the dismal corruption of life--with how deep a sigh of disappointment will he confess: “ Alas, the manger was better and a more royal honour!” (Horace Bushnell, DD.) Room in the heart for Christ Christ was straitened for room in the inn, and thrust into the stable, that you might open your heart wide, and enlarge it, to give him a habitation to content Him. First, beloved, periculosum est inter delicius poni; ‘ tis full of peril to rest among pleasures and delights; it is better to go to the house of mourning than to the house of feasting Ecclesiastes 7:2). Adam had his habitation among the sweet savours and most delightful recreations of the garden of Eden; his senses were so filled with objects of pleasures, that he forgot the Lord: therefore Jesus Christ, the second Adam, who came to restore all that was lost, pitched upon the worst corner of the house, where there were no delights at all to move temptation. King’ s houses, and well furnished mansions have their occasions of lewdness, but she laid her Son in a manger. Learn from hence to condescend unto the humility of Christ if you mean to ascend unto His glory; for as the custom of those regions was, this manger was a vault cut out of a rock, as low a place as He could cast Himself into; but no man projects so wisely to raise up, mighty building as he that lays a low foundation. It is reported of Sextus Quintus, how he was so far from shame that he was born in a poor cottage, that he would sport with his own fortune, and say he was born in a bright resplendent family, because the sun looked in at every cranny of the house; it is not the meanness of the place that can justly turn to any man’ s scorn, nor doth a magnificent palace build up any man’ s reputation. Holofernes had a costly tent to cover him, and yet was never the honester; and it was a pretty objection of Plutarch’ s against the vain consumption of cost upon the decking of our houses. What do we mean, says he, to be at such cost to deck our chambers? Why will we pay so dear for our sleep, when God, if you please, hath given you that for nothing? the slenderest place served our Saviour to cover His head, “ she laid Him in a manger.” (Bishop Hacket.) Christ seeks entrance into the heart Why, since Christianity undertakes to convert the world, does it seem to almost or quite fail in the slow progress it makes? Because, I answer, Christ gets no room, as yet, to work, and be the fire in men’ s hearts He is able to be. We undertake for Him as by statecraft and churchcraft and priestcraft. We raise monasteries for Him in one age, military crusades in another. Raymond Lull, representing a large class of teachers, under took to make the gospel so logical that he could bring down all men of all nations, without a peradventure, before it. Some in our day are going to carry everything by steam-ships and commerce; some by science and the schooling of heathen children; some by preaching agents adequately backed by missionary boards; some by tracts and books. But the work, however fitly ordered as respects the machinery, lingers, and will and must linger, till Christ gets room to be a more complete inspiration in His followers. They gave Him the stable when they ought to be giving Him the inn, put Him in the lot of weakness, keep Him back from His victories, shut Him down under the world, making His gospel, thus, such a secondary, doubtfully real affair, that it has to be always debating in the evidences; instead of being its own evidence, and marching forward in its own mighty power And yet Christ has a patience large enough to bear us still; for He carne to bear even our sin, and He will not start from His burden, even if He should not be soon through with it. All the sooner ought we to come to the heart so long and patiently grieving for us. Be it ours to make room for Him, and to stretch ourselves to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ. (Horace Bushnell, D. D.) Shutting out Jesus Unless the Holy Spirit has been really given, these are the words which we may see written up here, and there, and everywhere--even in this professedly Christian land--“ No room for Jesus here!” You can scarcely find an inn literally--a hotel, a public-house, or a beer-shop--where these words are not too plainly written up “ No room for Jesus here.” They are written, too, over the doors of how many so-called places of amusement--theatres, ball-rooms, and such like: “ No room for Jesus here!” But not only so; over how many places of business are there these same words! In how many private houses--drawing-rooms, dining-rooms, parlours, and kitchens--may we look up and see the same sad words--“ No room for Jesus here!” And written on all these why? “ Who dares,” you say, “ to write such words?” They write them--every one writes them, wherever he goes, who has an unchanged heart; for upon every heart that is not changed--whether it beats in the bosom of a prince or a peasant, of a professing Christian or a professing heathen--the same sad, solemn words are written deep--“ No room for Jesus here!” (Henry Wright, M. A.) Christ found in lowly places And very like this world was that inn. Room and smiling welcome for the rich and the reveller: no room for the heavy-laden and the poor. And very like--because that which we see without in others we can find within ourselves, if we look--is our own heart unto that inn. Room, ample room, for pride and display, luxury and indolence: no room for humility and meekness, self-denial and holy work. Yet, as surely as Christ was born, nigh upon 2,000 years ago, in a manger, so is He born now in lowly homes and hearts. Does not your own experience correspond with this? Have you not found Christ in poverty rather than in plenteousness, in suffering rather than in merriment, in solitude rather than in multitudes, in the stable rather than the inn? When have you prayed most vehemently? When have you seemed to know most clearly that you had a soul which could never die, though the body might be buried in a week? it has been, when you have been sent away from the din and excitement of the world, to the lonely, silent places of affliction; affliction in others, or in yourself, alike meant to lead us unto Christ. To be always in the inn, always and altogether in the uproar, and heat, and enjoyment of the world; that would be death to us as Christians, death to our spiritual life. (Canon S. Reynolds Hole.) The disowned Saviour You are all familiar, perhaps, with the story of Ulysses, the great Greek warrior, king of the island of Ithaca, and one of the most illustrious heroes of the Trojan war. After an absence from his home for twenty years--years consumed in wars and wanderings--he returned to his island empire to find his palace beset by a circle of gay young lords, who were not only consuming his substance and wasting his resources in riotous living, but were adding insult to injury, on the one hand by usurping the reins of power in his dominions, and on the other by their infamous proposals, or, at least, by mutually vying for the hand of his beloved and longsuffering Penelope. Wisely, he did not at once make himself known. Had he done so, it might have cost him his life. Nay, doubtless, had he promptly revealed himself in his own proper character, these graceless suitors would not have hesitated instantly to put him out of his own house--incontinently and unceremoniously to order him off his own premises and out of his own kingdom. More likely still, they would have taken measures effectually to compass his death. Do you say that that was pretty rough treatment? I agree with you; and yet it was not more so than that which, eighteen hundred years ago, was accorded to the Son of Man. When the Saviour of men came into this world, His own world, the world He had made with His own hands and was about to redeem with His own blood, there was yet found in it no room for Himself. No room! Hustled out of the inn where others found accommodation, the Divine Son of Mary and of God was left to creep into the world, as it were, through a back door--to be ushered into His earthly existence surrounded only by the wondering beasts of the stall. (R H. Howard.) Christ waiting to find room On the birth and birthplace of Jesus there is something beautifully correspondent with His personal fortunes afterwards, and also with the fortunes of His gospel, even down to our own age and time. He comes into the world as it were to the taxing, and there is scant room for Him even at that. My subject is the very impressive fact that Jesus could not find room in the world, and has never yet been able to find it. I. SEE HOW IT WAS WITH HIM IN HIS LIFE. Herod’ s massacre of innocents; parents unable to understand Him, to take in conception of His Divine childhood; John the Baptist growing doubtful, and sending to inquire whether He is really the Christ; Rabbis with no room in their little theologies for His doctrine; His own disciples getting but slenderest conception of His person and mission from His very explicit teachings. II. So IF WE SPEAK OF , it might seem as if Christ had certainly gotten room, so far, to enter and be glorified in human society. But (a)what multitudes of outlying populations are there that have never heard of Him. And (b) of the states and populations that acknowledge Him, how little of Christ, take them altogether, can there be said to be really in them? III. To take a closer inspection. GREAT UTTERLY REJECT HIM, AND STAY FAST IN THEIR SINS. They have no time to be religious, or the sacrifices are too great; some too poor, others too rich. Some too much honoured, and some too much want to be. Some in their pleasures, some in their expectations. Some too young, some too old, &c. The great world thus under sin, even that part of it which is called Christian, is very much like the inn at Bethlehem, preoccupied, crowded full in every part, so that, as the mother of Jesus looked up wistfully to the guest-chambers that cold night, drawing her Holy Thing to her bosom, in like manner Jesus Himself stands at the door of these multitudes, knocking vainly, till His head is filled with dew, and His locks are wet with the drops of the night. IV. HAS BEEN QUITE AS NARROW, QUITE AS SORE A AS . V. AND THE WORK OF SCIENCE, CALLING ITSELF , IS MORE EQUAL TO ITS THEME. VI. But the most remarkable thing is that, when the old niggard dogma of a bigot age and habit give way, and emancipated souls begin to look for a new Christianity and a broader, worthier faith, just then everything great in the gospel vanishes more strangely than before. Faith becomes mere opinion, love a natural sentiment, piety itself a blossom on the wild stock of nature. Jesus, the Everlasting Word, dwindles to a mere man. The Holy Spirit is made to be very nearly identical with the laws of the soul. The new Christianity, the more liberal, more advanced belief, turns out to be a discovery that we are living in nature just as nature makes us live. Salvation there is none; nothing is left for a gospel but development, with a little human help from the excellent Person, Jesus. Is it not time that Christ cur Master should begin to be more fitly represented by His people. Be it yours, then, to make room for Him, even according to the greatness of His power--length, breadth, depth, height. (H. Bushnell, D. D.) A fit nursery for the Holy Child We try to realize the scene and situation of which the text tells us; and we feel that the stable and the manger were not a fit nursery and cradle for the Holy Child. The best house in Bethlehem, and the fairest chamber in it, would have been honoured by that wondrous birth And pious fancy, offended at the lowly birthplace of the Lord, has constructed legends in the hope to hide its shame. They say that the cave in which the Virgin rested glowed with a glorious light as soon as she entered it, and that this light, excelling the brightness of the sun, remained within the cave as long as she was there. We share the feeling out of which such legend grew. And yet, while lamenting that, through want of room, the Saviour should have been born in such a lowly place, it may be that we are not giving Him the best accommodation that we can. For want of room He may be pushed away into some cold corner of our hearts, and to some small apartment of our thoughts. Even in our worship He has often less room than He claims. There is not a precious thing we have that does not owe some of its preciousness to Him. Our lives would be sad indeed, and all our merriment would be but a surface thing, like a hollow laugh or ghastly smile, that seeks to hide our inward wretchedness, were it not for those bright hopes that Christ has enabled us to cherish. If we trace them back to their source we shall find them all in Him. Let us find room for Him then amid all the gladness of this season and all the pleasures of this day. (E. A. Lawrence.) A fit prelude to a life of poverty, humiliation, and sacrifice By a vision of the night God could have prepared the keeper of the inn for the reception of the world’ s Saviour; by a message conveyed by angelic lips He could have commanded the most sumptuous welcome which earth’ s palaces could afford; He who created the beauties which smiled on the bosom of paradise could have called into existence a garden blooming with flowers which never graced primeval Eden, and amid its blushing charms the “ Rose of Sharon” might have budded. But no! In God’ s estimation, what difference is there between a palace and a manger? Whatever Christ touched He dignified. The king, untouched by Christ, is blind and miserable and naked. The pauper in whose heart Christ abides is gifted with loftiest dignity. Christ shed a glory round that Eastern stable. Had infant Caesars pillowed their heads in the manger it would have been a manger still; but Christ having found a cradle there, the manger is henceforth distinguished by such a glory as never shone on the palaces of kings. (Dr. Parker.) No room for Christ NO ROOM FOR JESUS. He was cradled in a manger; His own angels sung the hymn Of rejoicing at His coming, Yet there was no room for Him. Oh, my brothers, are we wiser, Are we better now than they Have we any room for Jesus In the life we live to-day? (Anon) Not much room for our Lord Jesus Has there been, or will there be; Room for Pilate and for Herod-- Not for Him of Calvary. Room for pleasures--doors wide open, And for business,--but for Him Only here and there a manger, Like to that at Bethlehem. NEW PRINCE, NEW POMP. The inns are full; no man will yield This little pilgrim bed; But forced He is with silly beasts In crib to shroud His head. Despise Him not for lying there First what He is inquire: An Orient pearl is often found In depth of dirty mire. Weigh not His crib, His wooden dish, Nor beasts that by Him feed; Weigh not His mother’ s poor attire, Nor Joseph’ s simple weed. This stable is a prince’ s court, The crib His chair of state; The beasts are parcel of His pomp, The wooden dish His plate. The persons in that poor attire His royal liveries wear; The Prince Himself is come from heaven: This pomp is praised there. With joy approach, O Christian wight Do homage to thy King; And highly praise this humble pomp Which He from heaven doth bring. (R. Southwell.) That night in Bethlehem, if Joseph had gone to some house and made them thoroughly understand that the Lord of Glory was about to be born in that village, they would have said, “ Here is the best room in our house. Come in; come in. Occupy everything.” But when Joseph asked at this house and that house and the other house, they said, “ No room on the floor, no room on the lounge, no room for Christ.” Ah! that has been the trouble in all the ages. The world has never had room for Him. No room in the heart, for here are all the gains and the emoluments of the world that are coming up to be enrolled, and they must find entertainment and lodging. Every passion full. Every desire full. Every capacity of body, mind, and soul full. No room for Christ. Room for all unholy aspirations, room for self-seeking, room for pride, room for Satan, room for all the concerted passions of darkness, but no room for Jesus. I go into a beautiful store. I find its shelves crowded with goods, and the counter crowded, and the floor crowded. It is crowded even to the ceiling. They have left just room enough in that store for commercial men, for bargain-makers, for those who come to engage in great mercantile undertakings, but no room in that store for Christ. I go into a house. It is a beautiful home. I am glad to see all those beautiful surroundings. I am glad to see that the very best looms wove those carpets, and the best manufactory turned out those musical instruments. There is no gospel against all that. But I find no Christ in that household. Room for the gloved and the robed; room for satin sandals and diamond head-gear; room for graceful step, and obsequious bow, and the dancing up and down of quick feet; room for all light, and all mirth, and all music; but--hear it, O thou Khan of Bethlehem--hear it, you angels who carolled for the shepherds in Bethlehem--no room in that house for Christ! No room in the nursery, for the children are not taught to pray; no room in the dining-hall, for no blessing is asked on the food; no room in the sleeping apartment, for God’ s protection is not asked for the night. Jesus comes, and He retorts. He says, “ I come to this world, and I find it has no room for Me; but I have room for it. Room in My heart--it beats in sympathy with all their sorrows. Room in My Church--I bought it with My blood. Room in heaven. Room in the anthem that never dies. Room in the banner procession. Room in the joys eternal. Room in the doxologies before the throne. Room for ever.” (Dr. Talmage.) A night in a Syrian inn I found the house consisted of only one very lofty room, about eighteen feet square. Just within the door a donkey and a yoke of oxen stood; and I soon perceived that rather more than one-third of the room was set apart for cattle, where the floor, which was on a level with the street, was of earth, and partially strewn with fodder. Suddenly the idea entered my mind that it must have been in such a house as this that Christ was born. I imagined Joseph anxiously seeking rest and shelter for Mary after her long journey. All the guest-chambers were already filled. The raised floor was crowded with strangers who had, like them, come to be taxed. But Joseph and Mary may have taken refuge from the cold in the lower part of the room. The manger was very likely close by Mary’ s side, hollowed out at the edge of the dais, and filled with soft winter fodder. I raised my head and looked at one of the mangers, and I felt how natural it was to use it as a cradle for a newly-born infant. Its size, its shape, its soft bed of fodder, its nearness to the warm fire always burning on the dais in mid-winter, would immediately suggest the idea to an Eastern mother. (Rogers.) No room for Jesus Before you utterly damn this unnamed Jewish innkeeper and his seemingly unfeeling guests, pray be reasonable, and consider three things in abatement. (1) That you bring to the judgment a culture in the humanities which you owe entirely to this Jesus, who had not yet been born; and (2) that the inn-keeper had reasons for his conduct quite as valid as those which are perpetually allowed among men; and (3) that towards this very same Jesus you and I have behaved much worse than did these people whom we are so forward to denounce. I. As to the first. MEN ARE GUILTY OF HOLDING THEIR FELLOWS TO ACCOUNT FOR A MEASURE OF LIGHT AND CULTURE WHICH THOSE FELLOW-MEN DO NOT POSSESS, BUT WHICH THEIR JUDGES DO. II. But as to the second--LET US SEE WHAT REASONS THE INN-KEEPER, AND WHETHER THE MASS OF MANKIND WOULD NOT THINK THOSE REASONS QUITE VALID. 1. He turned them off because they were not known. It is a busy time. The imperial edict for the enrolment of the provinces is bringing multitudes from the country to town. At this juncture two unknown people present themselves. One is a young woman. Her condition betrays itself. Who are they? The inn-keeper does not know them. Now, under the circumstances, would not such a reception as they received in Bethlehem be awarded to persons in similar condition at a majority of houses in Christendom on any Christmas Day? 2. Their appearance and the condition of their luggage were against them. You know what is meant by a “ carpet-bag” , on one hand, and on the other by a “ Saratoga trunk” and what a bid for attention a man makes by his luggage. Little did Joseph and Mary have. The inn-keeper had his regular customers. They were substantial citizens from the neighbouring country. To bring in two strangers for a night might be to drive off a dozen good, responsible customers for ever. For you must mark that the real glory of Mary and Jesus was unknown to this tavern-keeper, and was really unsuspected. 3. They were poor and could not pay. It would have greatly increased the bill of a rich couple who should have demanded the turning of a guest from his apartments to make way for themselves in an emergency. III. Now in the third case, after you have considered the difference made in our culture by the blessed Jesus, and all the reasons which the inn-keeper had for turning Mary into the stable because he had no room for her and Jesus in the inn, before you pronounce sentence, make some little examination into the question whether we have not treated Jesus worse than He was treated in Bethlehem. The decision of that question will obviously much depend upon the space in our hearts and lives which Jesus is allowed by us to occupy. Are there not some of us who never permit Him to come upon our premises? So present is He everywhere among men by the power of His principles and His Spirit, that it is not possible to exclude Him utterly, and yet, so far as our responsibility is concerned, we do keep Him out to the whole extent of our failure to give Him a welcome to our thoughts, to our affections, and to our activities. Does He have ample welcome to all these departments of our existence? Does He have the chief place in our thoughts--the best place in our love--the largest place in our work? Is He welcomed and honoured? 1. Jesus is kept out of your heart because you do not know Him. Your ignorance is wilful. Recollect that He does not come unborn to you, as He did to the inn-keeper in Bethlehem. He comes to you with all His history of growth and beauty, of truth and activity, of self-denial and suffering, of love and power. The innkeeper of Bethlehem will rise up in the Judgment with many men of this generation and condemn them--because he turned away an unaccredited woman, and you reject the acknowledged Lord of Glory. 2. And you have the inn-keeper’ s second reason: it will drive other guests away. Perhaps it would turn other guests out of your heart, perhaps not. If any depart because Jesus came, you ought to be glad of their departure. Here is a whole room full of the members of the large family of the Pleasures. They are many, and they are exacting. They take large space, for they live widely. Many of them are most deceptive, having stolen the garb and imitated the manners of the most reputable and solid Enjoyments. These latter are the most pleasant and among the most respectable guests that the heart can entertain. They will stay with Jesus,. while those wild and giddy and profitless things you call Pleasures would better have no place in your affections. You were not born to be amused, but to be disciplined. And there is Business, taking up almost all your heart and head, and crowding you, and calling you, and bothering you, until you are so nervous that you can hardly eat or sleep. Room for darkness, and no room for light; room for foulness, and no room for purity; room for death, but no room for life! Every story from attic to basement crowded, and Jesus turned out into the stable! 3. But the inn-keeper sent Mary to the stable because it would not be remunerative to entertain her in his house. He would have been compelled to turn out some well-known and liberally-paying guests. You know Him to be a Prince, for whose sake every reasonable man would think it quite the proper thing to dismiss any other guest. Does not “ pay” to entertain Jesus! Did you ever know a man who took Jesus into his intellect, and worked up his studies under that Great Master, and not grow in profoundness of thought and width of range of intellectual vision? Did you ever know an artist give Jesus a lodging, and not thereby have all his aesthetic nature quickened and purified and brightened? Did you ever know any man to conduct any business for Jesus, permeating his life with the Spirit of Jesus, basing his plans on the principles taught by Jesus, and laying every profitable income of his trade as a tribute at the feet of Jesus, who did not thrive and increase and have happiness along the whole line of his business career? Is He going away? It may be that your years are drawing to a close. Has He grown weary of your insulting dismissals? Stop! Lord Jesus Christ! O Son of Mary, stop! Do not leave such of the readers of this page as have said to Thee, “ No room!” It must not be. I seem to hear these busy men in future knocking passionately and desperately at the gate of mercy, but without love of Jesus, and out of the solemn profoundness of eternity there comes the crushing echo, “ No room!” And conscience shrieks to them, “ No room! No room among the crowns and songs and glories of heaven for the hearts that had no room for Jesus!” (C. F. Deems, D. D.) Luke 2:8-9 In the same country shepherds The shepherds and the Magi at the cradle of Christ (with Matthew 2:1-12). I. THE COMES FIRST TO THE CRADLE OF CHRIST, BUT THE SAGE COMES TOO; THE JEW FIRST, BUT ALSO THE GENTILE. Here we have-- 1. A prophecy that, as in His cradle the Lord Jesus received “ in a figure” the homage of the entire world, so at last, in happy, glorious fact, He will receive the adoration of all kindreds and tribes, drawing all men unto Himself by virtue of His cross. 2. A consolation, viz., that even the poorest, the simplest, the least gifted and accomplished, find a welcome from Him, and may Lake rank among the very first in His kingdom. 3. A lesson--that whatever may be the distinctions which obtain among us elsewhere, we are all one in the service of Christ, and should use our several gifts for each other’ s good,--the shepherd singing his song to the sage, and the sage telling the story of his star to the wondering shepherd. II. WE MAY LEARN FROM THE STORY THAT IT IS NOT SO MUCH IN THE NUMBER AND OF OUR GIFTS, AS IN THE USE WE MAKE OF THEM, THAT OUR TRUE WELFARE AND CONSIST. The shepherds, ignorant men, condemned to a life of hard toil and scanty fare, tied and bound by the claims of their craft, with few opportunities for joining in the public worship of the Temple, or for listening to the instructions of the Rabbis. Yet, at the bidding of the angel, they leave their flocks, and hasten to Bethlehem to verify the good tidings. The wise men from the East had, in some sort, even fewer advantages and aids than the shepherds. No direct message from heaven was vouchsafed to them. They see a new sign in the sky. They believe that it foretells the advent of some great one upon the earth. How hard it must have been for them to leave the luxuries and honours, and, above all, the scientific pursuits of the Persian palace, in order to encounter the toils and perks of a long and hazardous journey, on the mere chance of finding their conclusion verified! What a noble faith in their scientific inductions, or in the inward leading of God, is implied in their encountering so great a risk or so slight a chance of being bettered by it! III. If it be true that our place in Christ’ s service and regard depends on our fidelity in using our gifts rather than on the abundance of our gifts, IT IS ALSO TRUE THAT THE ONLY GENUINE IS THAT WHICH LEADS US FORWARD AND UPWARD. The sages and the shepherds were men who looked before as well as after, men who knew little and were aware of it, or men who knew much and yet accounted that much but little compared with what God had to teach. Let us be followers of them, ever looking for more truth while we walk by the truth we know. And, walking in the light we have, it will grow larger and purer; using the gifts we possess, more will be added unto us. (S. Cox, D. D.) The shepherds 1. The time, the place, the tidings, the listeners, are all in unison. The shepherds were on historic ground. On those same slopes, on those same hill-sides, David of old had fed his father’ s flocks, and it was from those same fields that he went forth at God’ s command to exchange his shepherd’ s crook for the royal sceptre, and his lowly dress for the purple of a king. It was on these fields, rich with precious memories, that the shepherds lay. It was night, and the sky was cloudless. Hill and dale slept under the beauty of the clear moon, and the quiet flocks were gathered to the shelter of the fold. To such a scene came the first tidings of the world’ s peace. Not to man’ s busy haunts, where even in the hush of night the cry of sorrow is heard, and the trouble in man’ s heart goes on, but to those peaceful folds, sleeping in the bosom of the voiceless hills. The home of peace is not in the world’ s great centres, but among the shaggy woods and grassy vales and solemn hills. And when the angels came with their messages of peace to earth they came to such a scene as that. They did not choose the Temple in Jerusalem, and from its lofty pinnacle flash their glory on a slumbering city--that would have been at variance with the character of their message, and discordant with the unostentatious spirit of their King. 2. And that humble shepherds were the first to receive the glad tidings is as instructive as it is strange. The event itself was unparalleled, and the simple announcement of it was destined, like a stone cast into the still lake, to extend its influence in ever-widening circles; yet it was to men lowly and obscure, without worldly place or power of any kind, that the first proclamation was made. In the world’ s view it would have been deemed an utter waste to brighten the sky with angels, and pour down from the steeps of glory cataracts of tumultuous song, for a few poor shepherds. But no consideration speaks more real comfort to our hearts than this. It shows us plainly that there is no respect of persons with God; that in His eye the loftiest and the lowliest are as one. 3. But not only was the message of the angels given to shepherds, it was given to them while they were pursuing their work. Idle men do not receive visions. It is not in the working up of spiritual ecstasy, but in the sober and honest discharge of life’ s duties, that we are most likely to find God and be found of Him. 4. The shepherds were “ sore afraid.” But their fear soon gave place to action. When the angels had gone away, they said one to another, “ Let us now go even unto Bethlehem and see” --not if the thing is come to pass, but--“ this thing which is come to pass.” They did not arise and go because they doubted, but because they believed. Ah! it was a grand journey of faith--this of the shepherds from the sheep-folds to the manger, worthy to be inserted in the eleventh of Hebrews. What is our attitude towards the Divine announcements? 5. Having seen the Infant Saviour, they immediately made known their story, first to Mary, who kept all these things and pondered them in her heart, and then to the busy crowd of travellers bustling about the inn. No sooner had they found Christ for themselves, than they made it known abroad that they had found Him. 6. But we do not part company with them here. We are told in the twentieth verse that they “ returned” --returned to their ordinary work, to their flocks and folds, to those vales and hills from which they had come, now for ever bright to them with something of the angels’ glory, and there, in their own quiet life, they “ fought the good fight, and kept the faith.” God does not call every man to be an apostle. He wants preachers in private as well as in public. He wants the glad tidings to be told in sheepfolds, and in markets, and in shops, as much as in places set apart for the proclamation. And if for you the world has been transfigured, and common things have received the impress of heaven by the vision of God’ s salvation, then in the place where your daily lot is cast, in the sphere of your common duties and labours, stand forth a witness for righteousness and for God, preach tile gospel of peace and salvation to the sin-stricken, sorrow-laden men and women all around you. (H. Wonnacott.) This angel is the first evangelist He is a type of what gospel-preaching should be. 1. His message is good news. The gospel not a threat nor a law, but news of salvation. 2. To all the people--not merely to an elect few. To all classes--not merely to the intelligent and refined. 3. The cause of this joy proclaimed is the advent of Christ, i.e., the Messiah, the Anointed One, the great High Priest who makes atonement for the past sins of His people; a Saviour because He saves His people from their sins themselves. 4. The attestation of His Divinity (Luke 2:12). The evidence of His Divinity is His love--the fact that He is placed under all the limitations of humanity Philippians 2:5-8). 5. Notice also the first approach of the Divine message always produces fear in the heart (verse 9), and the message of the gospel to the affrighted heart is ever the same, “ Fear not.” 6. The convert becomes at once a preacher to others (verse 17). 7. The shepherds publish. Mary ponders. Both the active and the meditative temperament have a place in the Church of Christ. (Lyman Abbott, D. D.) Highest and lowest brought together The shepherds were chosen on account of their obscurity and lowliness to be the first to hear of the Lord’ s nativity, a secret which none of the princes of this world knew. And what a contrast is presented to us when we take into the account who were the messengers to them. The angels who excel in strength, these did God’ s bidding towards the shepherds. Here the highest and lowest of God’ s rational creatures are brought together. The angel honoured a humble lot by his very appearing to the shepherds; next he taught it to be joyful by his message. (J. H. Newman.) Finding the Lord in daily duties The wise woman of Medina went long pilgrimages to find the Lord, but in vain; and, despairing, she returned to her daily duties, and when there engaged she found the Lord she had elsewhere sought in vain. (See Trench’ s Poems.) Dignity bestowed on those following their daily calling Moses received his credentials as the legate of the Almighty and the lawgiver of a new nation while keeping the flocks of Jethro. Gideon threshed wheat by the wine-press when the angel brought him his commission, and the enemies of Israel fled before “ the sword of the Lord and of Gideon.” Saul going to seek his father’ s asses found a kingdom for himself; and Samuel waited to anoint David while they fetched him from “ those few sheep in the wilderness.” Elisha was ploughing when “ Elijah passed by” and cast the mantle of prophecy upon him, and Amos among the herdmen of Tekoa saw God’ s judgments upon Philistia and Tyre. It was while Zacharias “ executed the priest’ s office before God in the order of his course” that the angel Gabriel brought him “ joy and gladness,” and all mankind the earnest of a new and glorious dispensation--and the first mortals that ever heard “ the sons of God shouting for joy” were a band of shepherds watching their flocks on the Judean hills. (Amelia S. Barr.) Joy often follows fear Learn in the first place from this that a scene that may open in darkness and fright may end in the greatest prosperity and advantage. These shepherds were alarmed and startled; but how soon their consternation ended in exultation and jubilee. Those shepherds may in their time have had many a fierce combat with wolves, and seen many strange appearances of eclipse, or aurora, or star-shooting. But those shepherds never saw so exciting a night as that night when the angel came. And so it often is that a scene of trouble and darkness ends in angelic tones of mercy and of blessing. That commercial disaster that you thought would ruin you for ever, made for you a fortune. Jacob’ s loss of Joseph opened for him the granaries of Egypt for his famine-struck family. Saul, by being unhorsed, becomes the trumpet-tongued apostle to the Gentiles. The ship splitting in the breakers of Melita sends up with every fragment on which the two hundred and seventy-six passengers escape to the beach the annunciation that God will deliver His ambassadors. The British tax on tea was the first chapter in the Declaration of American Independence. Famine in Ireland roused that nation to the culture of other kinds of product. Out of pestilence and plague the hand of medical science produced miracles of healing. It was through bereavement you were led to Christ. The Hebrew children cast into the furnace were only closeted with the Son of God walking beside them, the flames only lighting up the splendour of His countenance. And at midnight, while you were watching your flocks of cares, and sorrows, and disappointments, the angel of God’ s deliverance flashed upon your soul, crying, “ Fear not. Behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy which shall be to all people.” If I should go through this audience to-day, I would find that it was through great dark-hess that you came to light, through defeat that you came to victory, through falling down that you rose up, and that your greatest misfortunes, and trials, and disasters have been your grandest illumination. (Dr. Talmage.) The shepherd’ s an honourable calling Hunters and warriors make a great figure in the world; but he that feeds the sheep is more honourably employed than he who pursues the lion. The attendance of man upon these innocent creatures, which God hath ordained for his use, is an employment which succeeded to the life of Paradise. The holy patriarchs and servants of God were taught to prefer the occupation of shepherds. Their riches consisted in flocks and herds; and it was their pleasure, as well as their labour, to wait upon them in tents, amidst the various and beautiful scenery of the mountains, the groves, the fields, and streams of water O happy state of health, innocence, plenty and pleasure--plenty without luxury, and pleasure without corruption! How far preferable to that artificial state of life; into which we have been brought by over-strained refinement in civilization, and commerce too much extended; when corruption of manners, unnatural, and consequently unhealthy, modes of living, perplexity of law, consumption of property, and other kindred evils, conspire to render life so vain and unsatisfactory, that many throw it away in despair, as not worth having. A false glare of tinselled happiness is found amongst the rich and great, with such distressing want and misery amongst the poor, as nature knows nothing of, and which can arise only from the false principles and selfish views and expedients of a weak and degenerate policy. (Wm. Jones.) Several of the most gracious Divine manifestations, and most interesting discoveries, concerning the Messiah, were made under the Old Testament, to men who followed this occupation, as, e.g., to Abraham, Moses, David. In like manner, a singular honour was now preparing for the shepherds of Bethlehem, who, from the reception they gave the heavenly message, and the part they afterwards acted, appear to have been believing and holy men, whom Divine grace had taught and prepared to welcome a coming Saviour. (James Foote, M. A.) Tending flocks by night It is only in the cool months that sheep feed through the day. In the greater part of the year they are led out to pasture only towards sunset, returning home in the morning, or if they be led out in the morning they lie during the hot hours in the shade of some tree or rock, or in the rude shelter of bushes prepared for them (Son 1:7). They are taken into the warmth of caves or under other cover during the coldest part of winter; the lambs are born between January and the beginning of March, and need to be kept with the ewes in the field, that the mothers may get nutriment enough to support the poor weak creatures, which cannot be taken to and from the pasturage, but must remain on it. That many of them die is inevitable, in spite of the shepherd’ s utmost care, for snow and frost on the uplands, and heavy rain on the plains, are very fatal to them. Nor is their guardian less to be pitied. He cannot leave them day or night, and often has no shelter. At times, when on his weary watch, he may be able to gather branches enough to make a comparatively dry spot on which to stand in the wild weather, but this is not always the case. I have heard of the skin peeling completely from a poor man’ s feet from continued exposure. By night, as we have seen, he has often, in outlying places, to sleep on whatever brush he may gather; his sheepskin coat, or an old rug or coverlet, his only protection Perhaps it fared thus with the shepherds of Bethlehem, eighteen hundred years ago, when they were “ abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.” (C. Geikie, D. D.) Attend to your own business The business of these shepherds that night was staying out of doors to watch their sheep. It was while they were attending to their business that they had a visit from the angels. If they had been at home, or out at a party, or even in a prayer-meeting, when they ought to have been in that sheep-field on the Bethlehem hillside, they would have missed a sight of the angel of the Lord. If they had been playing on harps at a sacred concert, or ornamenting pottery for a synagogue fair, or even carrying an offering up to the temple at Jerusalem, when sheep-watching was their duty, they would not have heard that song of the angels, or seen the glory of the Lord round about them, or received first of all the good tidings for a lost race. The best place in all the world to be is at the post of duty. Nowhere else can such blessings, temporal or spiritual, be fairly looked for. If the Lord has a good gift or a glad message to one of His children, He sends it to the place where the child ought to be found. If the child is not there, he fails of getting what he might have had to rejoice over. Day or not--night and day, be where you belong. If your duty calls you to stay at home, stay there, and never suppose that you can have a bigger blessing anywhere else. If your duty calls you to be on a steamer, or a railway car, out in the streets or the fields, at a party or a prayer-meeting, in a store or a factory, at a concert or a church-service, in the home of a friend to give counsel or cheer, or in a dwelling of poverty to administer relief, be there, at whatever cost or risk is demanded, and understand that it is safest and best for you to be there only. (Sunday School Times.) Shepherds fit persons to receive the gospel message The news of Christ’ s birth is a message for an angel to deliver, and it had been news for the best prince on earth to receive. Yet it fell not out amiss that they to whom it first came were shepherds; the news fitted them well. It well agreed to tell shepherds of the yearning of a strange Lamb, such a Lamb as should “ take away the sins of the world;” such a Lamb as they might “ send to the Ruler of the world for a present” --Isaiah’ s Lamb. Or, if ye will, to tell shepherds of the birth of a Shepherd. Ezekiel’ s Shepherd: “ Behold, I will raise you a Shepherd,” “ the Chief Shepherd” (1 Peter 5:4); “ the Great Shepherd” (Hebrews 13:20); “ the Good Shepherd that gave His life for His flock” (John 10:11). And so it was not unfit news for thepersons to whom it came. (Bp. Lancelot Andrewes.) The annunciation to the shepherds Who the angel was, we are not told. Quite probably it was the same angel who had already made annunciation to Zacharias in the temple, to Mary at Nazareth, to Joseph in his slumber--even the same Gabriel, Strength of God, who, five centuries before, had made annunciation to the exile by the Ulai. The glory of the Lord which shone round about these shepherds was doubtless that same miraculous effulgence in which Deity had been wont in the earlier ages to enshrine Himself, and which the rabbins called the Shechinah. Diversified as well as extraordinary were the appearances of that Shechinah in ancient days. It had gleamed as a flaming sword, turning every way, to keep the way of the tree of life; it had flickered as a lambent flame in the brier-bush of Horeb; it had hung as a stupendous canopy over the mountain of the law; it had hovered as a glittering cloud above the cherubim overshadowing the mercy-seat; it had marshalled the hosts of Israel for forty years, towering like a pillar of cloud by day and like a pillar of fire by night; it had filled the temple of Solomon, flooding it with a brightness so intense that the priests could not enter to minister; it was to be the radiant cloud which should enfold out of sight the ascending Lord; it will be the great white throne on which that ascended Lord will descend when He returns in the pomp of His second advent. But never had it served a purpose so august and blissful as on this most memorable of nights when, after centuries of eclipse, it suddenly reappeared and shone around the astonished shepherds. Well might the effulgent cloud now return, as though in glad homage to the Incarnation; for on this night is born He who is to be His own Church’ s true pillar of fire-cloud, to marshal her through sea and wilderness into the true promised land. Oh, since the day was as the night when Jesus Christ died, let us be grateful that the night was as the day when Jesus Christ was born. But where shall we find this mighty Deliverer? How shall we know Him when we see Him? The sign is twofold. The first sign is this: “ Ye shall find a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes.” The Christ of God might have descended an archangel, glittering with celestial emblazonry. And it is a sign as powerful as simple. Had He descended otherwise, we might not have believed so easily in the reality of the Incarnation. We might have said that He was an angel. But when we behold Him a helpless little Babe, we feel that the Incarnation was no acting--no phantom. We feel that Deity has in very truth come down within our sphere, linking His fortunes with ours, taking our life, like ourselves, at its germ as well as at its fruit, sharing with us the cradle as well as the grave, the swaddling clothes of Mary of Bethlehem as well as the burial linen of Joseph of Arimathea. But the angel gives a second sign: “ Lying in a manger.” Not, then, in choice apartments of an inn, not in sumptuous nurseries of the opulent, not in palaces of royalty, was the King of kings and Lord of lords to be cradled; but in a crib, amid the beasts of the stall. And this was to be one of the secrets of his kinghood. In fact, all society is built up from below. “ The roof is most, dependent upon the foundation than the foundation upon the roof. Nearly all, if not quite all, the movements which have changed the thinking and determined the new courses of the world have been upward, not downward. The great revolutionists have generally been cradled in mangers, and gone through rough discipline in early life. Civilization is debtor to lowly cradles, and unknown mothers hold a heavy account against the world.” --“ Ecce Deus,” by Joseph Parker, D.D. (G. D. Boardman.) By night Wherefore at night this Babe of Glory was born that He might turn the night into day. (Bishop Hacker.) Philosophy discovered by humble men The heathen make much ado, and relate it not without admiration, by what mean and almost despised persons the deep knowledge of philosophy was first found out and brought to light. As Protagoras earning his living by bearing burdens of wood; and Cleanthes no better than a Gibeonite, fain to draw water for his liberty. Chrysippus and Epictetus mere vassals to great men for their maintenance, yet these had the honour to find out the riches of knowledge for the recompense of their poverty; but the day shall come that these philosophers will wonder that they found out no more than they did, and be astonished that silly shepherds were first deputed to find out one thing more needful than all the world beside, even Jesus Christ. Tiberius propounded his mind to the Senate of Rome, that Christ, the great Prophet in Jewry, should be had in the same honour with the other gods which they worshipped. (Bishop Hacker.) The Good Shepherd that giveth His life for His sheep, would first be manifested to those good shepherds that watched over their sheep. (Bishop Hacker.) Surely these shepherds had heavenly meditations in their minds, and were most religiously prepared, when His ambassador of heaven did approach unto them. And you, my beloved, I speak to one with another, if that innocency and harmlessness were in you that was in them, you would think many a time that a Divine beam did shine upon your soul, and that you had your conversation with angels. (Bishop Hacker.) The first to see Christ at His final advent There are two sorts of persons noted for finding out Christ more eminently than others, the shepherds before all others after He was born, and Mary Magdalen the first of all men and women, as far as we read, after His resurrection. The shepherds were vouchsafed their blessing, because they watched by night, a hard task if you consider the time of the year; and Mary was so prosperous because she rose very early in the morning to seek her Lord. It is hard to say whether ever she slept one wink for care and grief, since the Passion of our Saviour; and God knows who shall be the first that finds Him at His second coming in Glory, when He shall come also like a thief in the night; but whosoever he be, this I am sure of, he must be none of them that sleep in gluttony(that are heavy with surfeiting and drunkenness, with chambering and wantonness, he must watch or be fit to waken to find the Lord. (Bishop Hacker.) A watchful shepherd Suffer not your eyelids to shut, but sift and shake your own heart; examine yourself, remember what a blessing it is to be a watchful shepherd, that an angel of comfort may come and sing salvation unto you. (Bishop Hacker.) A flock to look after To include you all, every man and woman in the application, suppose you are nobody’ s keeper but your own; why be watchful and prudent over the safety of your own soul; and when I have spoke that word, your soul, I perceive instantly that you have a whole flock to look to, and it is all your own, the affections and passions Of your mind, them I mean; it you bridle their lust and wantonness, if they do you reasonable service, you have a rich flock, sheep that shall stand upon the right hand of God: if they usurp and fill you full of uncleanness, they are a flock of goats, that shall be condemned unto the left. What says Cato of our affections? They are to be governed like a flock of sheep, you may rule them altogether so long as they follow and keep good order, but single one out alone, and it will be unruly and offend you; as who should say all our affections must be sanctified to God, the whole flock; let one passion have leave to straggle and all will follow it to destruction. Let the watchfulness of the heart especially be fixed upon this flock, the desires, the passions over all that issues out of the soul (Bishop Hacker.) 1. The Lord did put on this glorious apparel, even a robe of light to express the Majesty of His Son, who was born to save the world. 2. This lightsome apparition about the shepherds, a type of the light and perspicuousness which is genuine and proper to the gospel. 3. The dark night was brightened with a shining cloud at our Saviour’ s nativity, to signify that He should be a light of consolation to them that sate in the dark night of persecution and misery. The most obscure things shall be made manifest unto His light, and the thoughts of all hearts shall be revealed unto Him. 4. No sooner was the world blest with the birth of this holy Child, God and Man, but the angels put on white apparel, the air grows clear and bright, darkness is dispelled; therefore let us cast off the works of darkness and walk as children of the light; the earth Should be more innocently walked on to and fro, because Christ hath trod upon it; our bodies kept clean in chastity, because He hath assumed our nature and blessed it. 5. A glimpse of some celestial light did sparkle at His birth to set our teeth on edge to enjoy Him who is Light of lights, very God of very God, and to dwell with Him in that city which hath no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it, for the Glory of God did enlighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof. I conclude with St. Paul (Colossians 1:12). (Bishop Hacker.) Luke 2:10I bring you good tidings of great Joy.Christmas-day lessons 1. The whole thought and idea of all that is told us about Christmas Day suggests the consoling, the cheering thought, that however gloomy our lot, however distressed our portion, God, the Almighty God, has not forsaken us. 2. There is the truth which the heathen, and we must also add, which Christians have often been very slow to acknowledge, that the Divine is only another word for the perfectly good, that God is goodness, and that goodness is God. 3. Let me take one special mark of the life of Christ which extends through the whole of it, by which His career from the cradle to the grave is distinguished from that of any of the other founders of religions. Let me sum it up in one expression which admits of many forms: He was the Mediator between the Divine and human, because He was the Mediator, the middle point, between the conflicting parts of human nature. (Dean Stanley.) The joy-producing power of Christianity 1. What is Christianity itself, that is said to have this power of producing joy? It is that system of influence, which was designed of God, and which is destined to educate the whole human race to perfect manhood. 2. When we say that Christianity tends to produce joy, we are instantly pointed to the wretched condition of things which exists. Men say, “ Christianity produce joy! Have there ever been such bloody wars as it has produced? such quarrelling and dissensions? Where is your joy? Besides, these flighty angels may have said something about joy, but what did the Master Himself say! Did He not say ‘ Take up your cross’ &c.?” I do not say, however, that Christianity instantly produces joy. I do not say that it produces joy always. While man is being educated into, I concede that there is much suffering. But it is not suffering for the sake of the suffering--not aimless void and useless suffering. 3. But while this grand education is evolving we must not think that joy is absent wholly, and we must not pass too summarily by what has actually been gained by Christianity in the production of joy in the world. The earliest period of Christian life I suppose to have been transcendently joyful. The apostles had nothing that men usually call elements of happiness. Yet I will defy you to find in literature, ancient or modern, so high a tone of cheerfulness as you will find in their history. And since the days of the apostles how many Christian men have there not been who have been lifted up into that sphere where joy abode with them. There is yet to be a revelation of what Christianity has done for the internal man. The whole range of joy throughout the world has been augmented and elevated. The civilized world in ancient times was never so happy as it is now. The world is better off to-day than it was at any five hundred years previous. Agassiz says that the growth of a plant is in three stages: first, by the root, which is invisible, and is the slowest and longest; second, by the stem, which is perhaps not half as long; third, by maturation or ripening, which is the quickest of all. So it is in history. The past has been largely occupied with root-growth in moral things. The present may be considered the period of growth by the stem. And I think we are standing on the eve of a period of growth by maturation and ripening. It is for me, therefore, a very joyful thought, not only that we have a religion which is joy-producing in its ultimate fruits, but that, looked upon comprehensively, it has already produced vast cycles of joy, and is going forward, not having expended half its force yet, to an era in which joy producing shall be more apparent, and upon a vaster scale, and with more exquisite fruit, and in infinite variety. (H. W. Beecher.) Glad news Christianity is glad news. I. BECAUSE IT REVELED GOD TO MAN. Consider the state of the world before Christianity was born. Here and there an old sage had groped his way to a knowledge of the alphabet of truth. Here and there the Divine Spirit had communicated to a tribe or nation so much of the Divine wisdom that they lived faithful to their marriage vows, knew the blessings of home, acknowledged the rights of property and life to such an extent that they would not steal nor kill. But of God they knew little--of the life beyond the grave nothing. But when Christianity was born, a sun arose into the darkness of the world. Men saw what they had felt must be, but what they had never before seen. And chiefest among all sights revealed, stood God. The heavens were no longer a vacuum, Christianity told them that God is their Father. II. BECAUSE IT MAN TO HIMSELF. Never till Jesus was born--never till he had lived and passed away--did man know the nobility of his species. Never until God dwelt in the flesh could any man know what flesh might become. Never until the fulness of God was in man bodily, might the race get even a hint of that Divine receptiveness that, above all else perhaps, most nobly characterises human nature. III. BECAUSE IT REVEALS GOD IN MAN. The proclamation of the angels is confirmed in our experience and corroborated by our knowledge that the birth of Christianity was indeed “ glad news” to men, because it brought God out of distance and darkness into light, and made Him nigh, as He is nigh who shares our burdens, consoles our sorrows, and in every pinch and stress of disastrous fortune rescues us from peril and saves us from loss. (W. H. Murray.) Christian joyfulness Have you no song in you to-day? Have you received no mercy that can make you tuneful? Do you not know that birds sing when they get wings? And shall God wing you with powers and yet you remain silent? Look abroad over the world and see how it is being lifted towards Christ; how the old barbarisms are melting away; how the dungeons of old oppressions are crumbling into ruins; how the tyrannies that trampled on men are being shorn of their power. See the torch and the sword drop from the hand of persecution, now nerveless, but once potent to strike and to light the martyr’ s fire! Hear the chains of slavery snap! The ring and clash of the fetters falling from wrist and ankle sound round the world. What is doing it! Jesus is doing it. The Galilean has triumphed! Old things are passing away; behold, all things are becoming new! Is there no joy in our hearts at the sight of all this? Shall we sit stolid and unmoved while before our eyes the influence of the Birth is moving to its triumph, Should we do so, Religion would disown us as unworthy of her favours, and piety itself rebuke us as incapable of gratitude. (W. H. Murray.) Joy born at Bethlehem In our text we have before us the sermon of the first evangelist under the gospel dispensation. The preacher was an angel, and it was meet it should be so, for the grandest and last of all evangels will be proclaimed by an angel when he shall sound the trumpet of the resurrection, and the children of the regeneration shall rise into the fulness of their joy. The key-note of this angelic gospel is joy--“ I bring unto you good tidings of great joy.” Nature fears in the presence of God--the shepherds were sore afraid. The law itself served to deepen this natural feeling of dismay; seeing men were sinful, and the law came into the world to reveal sin, its tendency was to make men fear and tremble under any and every Divine revelation. But the first word of the gospel ended all this, for the angelic evangelist said, “ Fear not, behold I bring you good tidings.” Henceforth, it is to be no dreadful thing for man to approach his Maker; redeemed man is not to fear when God unveils the splendour of His majesty, since He appears no more a judge upon His throne of terror, but a Father unbending in sacred familiarity before His own beloved children. The joy which this first gospel preacher spoke of was no mean one, for he said, “ I bring you good tidings” --that alone were joy: and not good tidings of joy only, but “ good tidings of great joy.” Man is like a harp unstrung, and the music of his soul’ s living strings is discordant, his whole nature wails with sorrow; but the son of David, that mighty harper, has come to restore the harmony of humanity, and where His gracious fingers move among the strings, the touch of the fingers of an incarnate God brings forth music sweet as that of the spheres, and melody rich as a seraph’ s canticle. I. THE JOY mentioned in the text--whence comes it, and what is it? 1. A great joy. 2. A lasting joy. 3. A pure and holy joy. But why is it that the coming of Christ into the world is the occasion of joy? The answer is as follows: (1) Because it is evermore a joyous fact that God should be in alliance with man, especially when the alliance is so near that God should in very deed take our manhood into union with His Godhead; so that God and man should constitute one Divine, mysterious person. From henceforth, when God looks upon man, He will remember that His own Son is a man. As in the case of war, the feud is ended when the opposing parties intermarry, so there is no more war between God and man, because God has taken man into intimate union with Himself. Herein, then, there was cause for joy. (2) But there was more than that, for the shepherds were aware that there had been promises made of old which had been the hope and comfort of believers in all ages, and these were now to be fulfilled. (3) But the angel’ s song had in it yet fuller reason for joy; for our Lord who was born in Bethlehem came as a Saviour. “ Unto you is born this day a Saviour.” God had come to earth before, but not as a Saviour. The Lord might have come with thunderbolts in both His hands, He might have come like Elias to call fire from heaven; but no, His hands are full of gifts of love, and His presence is the guarantee of grace. 4. This Saviour was the Christ. “ Anointed” of God, i.e., duly authorized and ordained for this particular work. (5) One more note, and this the loudest, let us sound it well and hear it well. “ which is Christ the Lord.” Now the word Lord, or Kurios, here used is tantamount to Jehovah. Our Saviour is Christ, God, Jehovah. No testimony to His divinity could be plainer; it is indisputable. And what joy there is in this; for suppose an angel had been our Saviour, he would not have been able to bear the load of my sin or yours; or if anything less than God had been set up as the ground of our salvation, it might have been found too frail a foundation. II. Follow Me while I briefly speak of THE PEOPLE. to whom this joy comes. 1. Observe how the angel begins, “ Behold I bring you good tidings of great joy, for unto you is born this day.” So, then, the joy began with the first who heard it, the shepherds. “ To you,” saith he; “ for unto you is born.” Beloved hearer, shall the joy begin with you to-day?--for it little avails you that Christ was born, or that Christ died, unless unto you a Child is born, and for you Jesus bled. A personal interest is the main point. 2. After the angel had said “ to you,” he went on to say, “ it shall be to all people.” But our translation is not accurate, the Greek is, “ it shall be to all the people.” This refers most assuredly to the Jewish nation; there can be no question about that; if any one looks at the original, he will not find so large and wide an expression as that given by our translators. It should be rendered “ to all the people.” And here let us speak a word for the Jews. How long and how sinfully has the Christian Church despised the most honourable amongst the nations! How barbarously has Israel been handled by the so-called Church! Jesus the Saviour is the joy of all nations, but let not the chosen race be denied their peculiar share of whatever promise Holy Writ has recorded with a special view to them. The woes which their sins brought upon them have fallen thick and heavily; and even so let the richest blessings distil upon them. 3. Although our translation is not literally correct, it, nevertheless, expresses a great truth, taught plainly in the context; and, therefore, we will advance another step. The coming of Christ is a joy to all people. “ Goodwill towards” --not Jews, but “ men “ mall men. There is joy to all mankind where Christ comes. The religion of Jesus makes men think, and to make men think is always dangerous to a despot’ s power. It is joy to all nations that Christ is born, the Prince of Peace, the King who rules in righteousness. III. THE SIGN. The shepherds did not ask for a sign, but one was graciously given. Wilful unbelief shall have no sign, but weak faith shall have compassionate aid. Every circumstance is therefore instructive. The Babe was found “ wrapped in swaddling clothes. 1. There is not the remotest appearance of temporal power here. 2. No pomp to dazzle you. 3. Neither was there wealth to be seen at Bethlehem. 4. Here too, I see no superstition. 5. Nor does the joy of the world lie in philosophy. God’ s work was sublimely simple. Mysterious, yet the greatest simplicity that was ever spoken to human ears, and seen by mortal eyes. In a simple Christ, and in a simple faith in that Christ, there is a deep and lasting peace, an unspeakable bliss and joy. (C. H. Spurgeon.) God incarnate, the end of fear I. As to THE FEAR of the text, it may be well to discriminate. There is a kind of fear towards God from which we must not wish to be free. There is that lawful, necessary, admirable, excellent fear which is always due from the creature to the Creator, from the subject to the king, ay, and from the child toward the parent. To have a holy awe of our most holy, just, righteous, and tender parent is a privilege, not a bondage. Godly fear is not the “ fear which hath torment;” perfect love doth not east out, but dwells with it in joyful harmony. The fear which is to be avoided is slaving fear--that trembling which keeps us at a distance from God, which makes us think of Him as a Spirit with whom we can have no communion, as a Being who has no care for us except to punish us, and for whom consequently we have no care except to escape if possible from His terrible presence. 1. This fear sometimes arises in men’ s hearts from their thoughts dwelling exclusively upon the Divine greatness. Is it possible to peer long into the vast abyss of Infinity and not to fear? Can the mind yield itself up to the thought of the Eternal, Self-existent, Infinite One without being filled first with awe and then with dread? What am I? An aphis creeping upon a rosebud is a more considerable creature in relation to the universe of beings than I can be in comparison with God. We have had the impertinence to be disobedient to the will of this great One; and now the goodness and greatness of His nature are as a our rent against which sinful humanity struggles in vain, for the irresistible torrent must run its course, and overwhelm every opponent. What does the great God seem to us out of Christ but a stupendous rock, threatening to crush us, or a fathomless sea, hastening to swallow us up? The contemplation of the Divine greatness may of itself fill man with horror, and cast him into unutterable misery! 2. Each one of the sterner attributes of God will cause the like fear. Think of His power by which He rolls the stars along, and lay thy hand upon thy mouth. Think of His wisdom by which He numbers the clouds, and settles the ordinances of heaven. Meditate upon any one of these attributes, but especially upon His justice, and upon that devouring fire which burns unceasingly against sin, and it is no wonder if the soul becomes full of fear. Meanwhile, let a sense of sin with its great whip of wire flagellate the conscience, and man will dread the bare idea of God. 3. Wherever there is a slavish dread of the Divine Being, it alienates man most thoroughly from his God. Those whom we slavishly dread we cannot love. Here is the masterpiece of Satan, that he will not let the understanding perceive the excellence of God’ s character, and then the heart cannot love that which the understanding does not perceive to be loveable. 4. Fear creates a prejudice against God’ s gospel of grace. People think that if they were religious they would be miserable. Oh, could they comprehend, could they but know how good God is, instead of imagining that His service would be slavery, they would understand that to be His friends is to occupy the highest and happiest position which created beings can occupy. 5. This fear in some men puts them out of all heart of ever being saved. Thinking God to be an ungenerous Being, they keep at a distance from Him. 6. This wicked dread of God frequently drives men to extremities of sin. 7. This fear dishonours God. 8. This fear hath torment. No more tormenting misery in the world than to think of God as being our implacable foe. II. THE CURE FOR THIS FEAR. God with us: God made flesh--that is the remedy. 1. According to the text they were not to fear, because the angel had come to bring them good news. He who made the heavens slumbers in a manger. What then? Why, then God is not of necessity an enemy to man, because here is God actually taking manhood into alliance with Deity. Is there not comfort in that? 2. The second point that takes away fear is that this man who was also God was actually born. He is more man than Adam was, for Adam never was born; Adam never had to struggle through the risks and weaknesses of infancy; he knew not the littlenesses of childhood--he was full-grown at once; whereas Jesus is cradled with us in the manger, accompanies us in the pains and feebleness and infirmities of infancy, and continues with us even to the grave. 3. Christ’ s office is to deliver us from sin. Here is joy upon joy. III. APPLY THE CURE TO VARIOUS CASES. Encouragement to the weak, the sinful, the lonely, the tempted. There is no cause for any to keep away from God, since Jesus has come to bring all to Him. (C. H. Spurgeon.) The joyful tidings of Christmas Now, if, when Christ came on this earth, God had sent some black creature down from heaven (if there be such creatures there) to tell us, “ Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men,” and if with a frowning brow and a stammering tongue he delivered his message, if I had been there and heard it, I should have scrupled to believe him, for I should have said, “ You don’ t look like the messenger that God would send--stammering fellow as you are--with such glad news as this.” But when the angels came there was no doubting the truth of what they said, because it was quite certain that the angels believed it; they told it as if they did, for they told it with singing, with joy and gladness. If some friend, having heard that a legacy was left you, should come to you with a solemn countenance, and a tongue like a funeral bell, saying, “ Do you know so-and-so has left you £10,000?” Why, you would say, “ Ah! I dare say,” and laugh in his face. But if your brother should suddenly burst into your room, and exclaim, “ I say, what do you think? You are a rich man. So-and-so has left you £10,000!” Why, you would say, “ I think it is very likely to be true, for he looks so happy over it.” Well, when these angels came from heaven, they told the news just as if they believed it; and though I have often wickedly doubted my Lord’ s good will, I think I never could have doubted it while I heard those angels singing. No, I should say, “ The messengers themselves are proof of the truth, for it seems they have heard it from God’ s lips; they have no doubt about it, for see how joyously they tell the news.” Now, poor soul thou that art afraid lest God should destroy thee, and thou thinkest that God will never have mercy upon thee, look at the singing angels and doubt if thou darest. Do not go to the synagogue of long-faced hypocrites to hear the minister who preaches with a nasal twang, with misery in his face, whilst he tells you that God has goodwill towards men; I know you won’ t believe what he says, for he does not preach with joy in his countenance; he is telling you good news with a grunt, and you are not likely to receive it. But go straightway to the plain where Bethlehem shepherds sat by night, and when you hear the angels singing out the gospel, by the grace of God upon you, you cannot help believing that they manifestly feel the preciousness of telling. Blessed Christmas, that brings such creatures as angels to confirm our faith in God’ s goodwill to men! (C. H. Spurgeon.) The joy of Christmas The incarnation, such a great and manifold blessing to our race, must bring with it a feeling of joy; and not to our race alone, but also to other beings whose destinies are bound up with ours. The nativity brought joy-- 1. In heaven, to the angel spirits. Their ruin was now repaired (Isaiah 51:3). Zion here represents those who are ever beholding the Father’ s face; who rejoice that the loss to their heavenly country is now made good, for the Lord will be able to lead all the faithful thither, where with the angels they will be in eternal joy. 2. In the unseen world, to the faithful departed, Joyful to the old fathers, it is their longed-for redemption. Adam’ s sin brought our race into captivity to the devil. Redemption began to-day. 3. In the world, among all people. Joy for the new manifestation. He who before was invisible was made visible to-day by opening the eyes of the human race. The light of wisdom has put to flight all the darkness of ignorance, and brought joy in the place of despair. (Anon.) Joy at the birth of Jesus To us men, more than to the angels or to any other created beings, is this day’ s joy. It is the great festival of humanity. He who was born to-day was-- I. A . Delivering us from the servitude of sin and Satan--a worse bondage than that of Egypt. Think what songs of praise (Exodus 15:1) are due to Jesus Christ to-day, who, by the baptism reddened by His blood, hath delivered us from the power of our spiritual foes. II. A SURETY. Taking upon Himself all our debts and the condemnation of their punishment. A new, the greatest and unheard-of benefit Colossians 2:14). He came to-day to remit that vast debt, of sin which God alone could pay; that the bond might be burnt in the fire of His love, or be affixed to the cross on Mount Calvary. III. A . Prepared and willing to heal all diseases, again and again, without fee or reward, without pain to the patient Matthew 9:12; Luke 4:23). IV. A SUN TO THE WORLD. Enlightening a darkness more dense than any natural or physical darkness (John 1:9; John 9:5). A light-- 1. Eternal. 2. Cheering. 3. Glorifying. V. A GUIDE TO THE TRUE AND BLESSED LIFE (Micah 2:13). Going before in difficulties, smoothing rough ways. VI. A OF THE WORLD. Sustaining us in the way with “ living bread.” VII. A PRINCE OF PEACE. Bringing peace-- 1. With God. 2. To one’ s own conscience. 3. With each other. (Psalms 11:6-7.) VIII. A SAVIOUR. Who will, after this life, bring us safely to the blessed and eternal country and being. Think on all these things and say (Psalms 117:1). (M. Faber.) Joy follows sorrow It is the presence, or the memory, of something avoided, which gives point to our warmest rejoicings. In man grief is linked on to happiness, and suffering to joy. Just as a life without need of care is not a happy life, so if there were no fasts there could be no feasts You must have shadow to show the light. So if there had been no fall there could have been no rising again. If there had been no Adam, there could have been no Christ. It was not only for His own pleasure, and not at all for His own profit, but for us, that Christ was born. Not for Adam, nor the old patriarchs, nor for very wicked men, but because we are what we are--that is why God must needs deny His own nature, and be born. Thus thelittle Infant Child appeals to us, as from the cross the Saviour crucified. Shall we then be sad and sorrowful on such a day? It is not sadness to remember an escape from danger, nor sadness to see a harbour in a storm. Those to whom this Christmas-time is not all mere pleasure, but whose sad memories and present troubles are too heavy, may sympathize with the Child born to suffer, and rejoice in the Lord born to save. It is for you to whom the world is not too dear, that you may have a world where sorrows enter not, that Christ was born. And for those who have no weight of care and sorrow, let the memory of Christ make them generous and thoughtful and kindhearted; not hard and selfish in their enjoyment, but longing to make all as merry and lighthearted as themselves, remembering that the first Christmas gift was given by God to us, when the Son of God gave to mankind Himself. (Bp. E. Steere.) Good tidings The gospel may be called “ good tidings.” -- 1. Because it is so beneficial. 2. Because it is so appropriate. 3. Because it is so personal, 4. Because it is so unexpected. 5. Because it is so subservient to the illustration of all the other dispensations of God toward us. (G. Brooks.) The duty of Christian joy We are incapable of omniscience in the region alike of enjoyment and of suffering. God has so made the eye of this body that it discerns not the animalcules swallowed in water, nor the tiny reptiles that are crushed by each tread of the foot. This limitation of the natural vision is a type to us of a principle which is the very condition of being. We are not to scrutinize sufferings which we cannot alleviate. We are not to allow pain to annihilate pleasure. We are not to set God’ s dispensation of sorrow at variance with God’ s other dispensation of joy. Where there is the remotest chance of alleviating, there we are to be keen-sighted in investigation. The eye is to be open--but let it be the natural eye, not the microscope. We are not intended so to realize the woe which cannot be mitigated, as to foster a general depression of tone, or a practical insensibility to the blessings which are largely mingled (none can deny it) in the cup of human being. It is needful, too, that we should none of us so enjoy as to forget the suffering which is for another and which shall be for us. On this ground, with this view, to this extent, we are bound to remember, and to take into our reckoning, the hardships, the calamities, and the miseries, which abound in the world. But it is not by refusing to rejoice that we shall really either learn to feel or learn to bear. (J. Vaughan.) The gospel to be presented as great joy It is the bounden duty of each one of us, in his own place and sphere, to present the gospel to the world as good tidings--of great joy--to all people. If we once lose this view of it, we have parted with its chief power over one large section at least of mankind. To the young, to the strong, to the busy, to the happy, it is idle to offer a consolation which they need not, or a gloom which they repudiate. Tell them that the gospel is a great joy--that it heightens all other joys, that it makes that everlasting which else must be temporal, that it makes the strong man stronger, and the young man younger, and the wise man wiser, and the delightful man more delightful, and thus completes and perfects every part and every kind of human vigour and of human usefulness and of human hope--you make Christ then what prophecy writes Him, the Desire of Nations; and you make the gospel what the angel calls it, great joy, and to all people. Nor do you, in so painting it, detract from any one of its charms for the struggling and the sorrow-laden. “ The spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because He hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor. He hath sent me to heal the broken-hearted, to appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness.” (J. Vaughan.) Christmas Day the turning point Do you remember that Christmas Day is the first day in the year in which the days begin to lengthen? On the 21st, the 22nd, the 23rd, and the 24th of December they are substantially at a standstill; but on the 25th of December the hand of the poetic year cuts one lock from the head of darkness, and hangs it like a star on the forehead of the day; and to-day is a minute longer than yesterday. And the sun will not go back now. It has set its face toward the summer; and though there are going to be great storms in January, though vast shrouds of snow will cover the ground, yet you know and I know that the sun has gone to its farthest limit, and has begun to turn back; and that just as sure as nature is constant in her career, that sun is retracing his steps with summer in his bosom, and that there are fruits, and there are flowers, and there is a whole realm of joy coming. You have no doubt of this in the natural world. And I say that though the days of the world’ s winter are not over, yet I believe that the Sun of righteousness has gone as far away as He ever will, and has turned, and is coming back; and that there is to be a future summer of joy and rejoicing in things spiritual as well as in things temporal. (H. W.Beecher.) Heathen religions and Christianity There have been many religions which have made men much more joyful than Christianity has; but they played upon the nature just as it was, and never sought to change it. The religion of the Greeks was a gay and festive religion. They wreathed themselves with flowers; they anointed themselves with sweet perfumes; they surrounded their temples with every attraction; they invoked every pleasure that they could think of; they sought to make the hour of their worship a beautiful and charming hour. They sought joy without seeking manhood. Theirs was a religion which took men just where they were, and left them where they were, and wrung out of them all the joy that there was in them at that point of development--and that was all. But Christianity takes men, and says, “ Ye are capable of mightier things than these,” and so begins to open up the nature, to accord the nature, to discipline the nature, and make manhood vaster with the volume of joy by-and-by wrung out of their faculties--so vast that it shall transcend immeasurably that which was possible in the beginning or at the earlier stages. It is a great comfort to me, that have looked with so much sympathy upon the whole long requiem of time past, and upon the groaning and travailing in pain until now that is in the world, to believe, as I do heartily believe, that the future of Christianity is to be far brighter, and that the day of struggle is comparatively past. (H. W. Beecher.) All creatures interested in the incarnation of Christ Men did share in Him in His own sex and person; women in the womb that bare Him; poor men in the shepherds, great ones in the sages of the East; the beasts by the stable whereto He was born; the earth in the gold that was offered; the trees in the myrrh and frankincense; and to reckon up no more, the heavens in the star that blazed. All the works of God, even they which by natural obedience bless Him and magnify Him for ever, did claim some office to make one in the solemnity when their Creator was born. Why surely some room was left for the angels. It was fit they should be in the train at the inauguration of this mighty Prince, and their place, according to their dignity, was very honourable; they were God’ s ambassadors, and as if they had a patent to use their office frequently, they had many errands from heaven--to Mary, to Joseph. (Bishop Hacker.) Behold Of which word standing in this place I note three things--admiration, demonstration, and attention. 1. Ecce, see and admire this is the greatest wonder that ever was. If you love to cast your eyes upon that which is miraculous, look this way, and see the greatest miracle that ever was brought to light. 2. To cry out unto the shepherds, behold, is an adverb of demonstration. Things hard by make us look towards them more than those that are farther off; we sit still and muse upon that which we hope will come to pass, but when we hear the bridegroom coming, then we bustle and look out. And though the senses of our body do not fix themselves upon Him, yet faith will perceive Him strongly and certainly that He is truly present; faith will assure itself how He stands at the door and knocks, and how it hears His voice. Furthermore let this demonstrative direction put you in mind to live so justly and inoffensively as if you did always behold God in the flesh. But-- 3. Ecce, behold, it cloth not beg, but command, attention. When the Lord sends a messenger, is it not fit to note him diligently, and to ponder his sayings in your mind? (Bishop Hacker.) Good news to all people A good harvest is not welcome to one village, but it is gladsome to the whole country round about; and when spoils are divided after the vanquishing of an enemy, every soldier is enriched, and hath his share. Such a communicative blessing is our Saviour’ s incarnation--every man fills his bosom with the sheaves of the harvest; everyChristian soldier that fights a good warfare plucks somewhat from the spoils of the enemy. (Bishop Hacker.) The birth of Jesus I. THE . One of the dignified sons of light. An ambassador from heaven to earth, from God to man. A service of unrivalled glory and benevolence, calculated to excite wonder and abundant praise. By the redemption which is in Christ angels become our brethren, our friends, and our companions for ever. It is Probable their joys and honours are greatly enhanced by the work of the Messiah. II. THE PERSONS . Jewish shepherds. What a contrast between the ambassador and those to whom he appeared. How different, too, to the doings of men and to human expectations. It would have been supposed the tidings should have been given to kings, or philosophers, or assuredly to the priests. But God’ s ways are not our ways. In all the work and life of Christ God poured contempt upon worldly glory and distinctions. III. THE MESSAGE . 1. The angel describes the person of Him who is born. (1) Saviour. (2) Christ. (3) The Lord. 2. He announces His birth. The end of prophecy. The fulfilment of types. The fulness of the times. 3. He affirms this to be an event of good tidings. Tidings of Divine grace and salvation--all others are insignificant in comparison. Life, light, happiness, eternal glory. 4. He notices the universal application of these good tidings. (1) To the Jew first. “ You.” (2) “ All people.” None shut out. How comprehensive. Wherever we find even a horde of wandering savages, Christ is born for them. Application: 1. Is the end of Christ’ s birth answered in you? 2. If so, rejoice. 3. Caution against the temptations of the season. Let your joy be “ in the Lord.” (Jabez Burns, D. D.) The angel’ s message to the shepherds 1. The time. Not in the meridian splendour of the sun, when his unnumbered glories might have added to the lustre of the scene, and charmed and gratified senses and imagination. Silence of night is more favourable to devotion than bustle of day. The errand of the heavenly messengers was of a religious nature, therefore they arrive in the darkness and stillness of night. Long before this silent hour the sun had set in the western sky. The stars appeared, and the moon could not certainly withhold her light and her attendance upon such an occasion; everything conspired to direct the pious mind to solemn contemplation. 2. The persons. Not to rulers or great men was the message sent, but to humble shepherds. Why, then, say the poor, that religion is not for them, that they are neglected and forgotten? It was to poor men that this wondrous announcement was made. 3. The tidings revealed. Were they not “ good tidings’ ? Would not the poor afflicted and oppressed debtor, who was just about to be dragged by a merciless creditor from his home and family, to be shut up in prison, esteem it glad tidings if he should be in that hour informed that one, completely able, had sent an express messenger to the hard-hearted creditor, saying, “ Place all this man’ s debt to my account; set him at liberty to go home to his afflicted wife and famishing children” ? And was it not good tidings to the children of Israel in Egypt when Moses was sent by God to be their deliverer, and to lead them to the promised land? But what is here announced far exceeds the joy of such occasions as these, for they refer to temporal concerns, this to eternal. (H. Venn, M. A.) Great joy is often 1. Secret. 2. Silent. 3. Childlike. 4. Modest. 5. Elevated. Christ is the only source of rational joy among fallen men. (Van Doren.) The Christmas festival festival for the whole world 1. This it is designed to be. 2. This it can be. 3. This it must be. 4. This it will be. (J. J. Van Oosterzee, D. D.) The message to the shepherds I. HOW SURE IS GOD’ S WORD. Ages had rolled by since the promise was first made. Saints had waited; types had prefigured; prophets had foretold: at last, when all preparation is complete, the Divine decree is accomplished. II. HOW ARE GOD’ S WAYS. III. HOW IS GOD’ S . God, and yet man; a babe, and yet Lord of all. How great the Father’ s love; how wonderful the Son’ s condescension! (W. S. Bruce, M. A.) Christianity a cheerful religion It is necessary for some people to remember that cheerfulness, good spirits, light-heartedness, merriment, are not unchristian nor unsaintly. We do not please God more by eating bitter aloes than by eating honey. A cloudy, foggy, rainy day is not more heavenly than a day of sunshine. A funeral march is not so much like the music of angels as the song of birds on a May morning. There is no more religion in the gaunt naked forest in winter than in the laughing blossoms of the spring, and the rich ripe fruits of autumn. It was not the pleasant things in the world that came from the devil, and the dreary things from God; it was sin brought death into the world and all our woe; as the sin vanishes, the woe will vanish too. God Himself is the ever-blessed God. He dwells in the light of joy as well as of purity, and instead of becoming more like Him as we become more miserable, and as all the brightness and glory of life are extinguished, we become more like God as our blessedness becomes more complete. The great Christian graces are radiant with happiness. Faith, hope, charity--there is no sadness in them; and if penitence makes the heart sad, penitence belongs to the sinner, not to the saint. As we become more saintly, we have less sin to sorrow over. No; the religion of Christ is not a religion of sorrow. It consoles wretchedness, and brightens with a Divine glory the lustre of every inferior joy. It attracts to itself the brokenhearted, the lonely, the weary, the despairing; but it is to give them rest, comfort, and peace. It rekindles hope; it inspires strength, courage, and joy. It checks the merriment of the thoughtless who have never considered the graver and more awful realities of man’ s life and destiny; but it is to lead them through transient sorrow to deeper and more perfect blessedness, even in this world, than they had ever felt before the sorrow came. (T. Dale, M. A.) The great birthday I. THE BIRTH OF CHRIST SHOULD BE THE SUBJECT OF SUPREME JOY. We have the angelic warrant for rejoicing because Christ is born. It is a truth so full of joy that it caused the angel who came to announce it to be filled with gladness. He had little to do with the fact, for Christ took not up angels, but He took up the seed of Abraham; but I suppose that the very thought that the Creator should be linked with the creature, that the great Invisible and Omnipotent should come into alliance with that which He Himself had made, caused the angel as a creature to feel that all creatureship was elevated, and this made him glad. Besides, there was a sweet benevolence of spirit in the angel’ s bosom which made him happy because he had such gladsome tidings to bring to the fallen sons of men. 1. The birth of Christ was the incarnation of God. This is a wondrous mystery, to be believed in rather than to be defined. Mankind is not outlawed or abandoned to destruction, for, lo! the Lord has married into the race, and the Son of God has become Son of Man. This proves that God loves man, and means man’ s good; that He feels for man and pities him; that He intends to deliver man and to bless him. 2. He who was born is unto us a Saviour. Those who will be most glad of this will be those who are most conscious of their sinnership. If you would draw music out of that ten-stringed harp, the word “ Saviour,” pass it over to a sinner. “ Saviour” is the harp, but “ sinner” is the finger that must touch the strings and bring forth the melody. 3. This Saviour is Christ the Lord, and there is much gladness in this fact. We have not a nominal Saviour, but a Saviour fully equipped; one who, in all points, is like ourselves, for He is Man, but in all points fit to help the feebleness which He has espoused, for He is the Anointed Man. The godlike in dominion is joined with the human in birth. 4. The angel called for joy, and I ask for it too, on this ground, that the birth of this child was to bring glory to God in the highest, on earth peace, goodwill toward men. The birth of Christ has given such glory to God as I know not that He could ever have had here by any other means. We must always speak in accents soft and low when we talk of God’ s glory; in itself it must always be infinite and not to be conceived by us, and yet may we not venture to say that all the works of God’ s hands do not glorify Him so much as the gift of His dear Son, that all creation and all providence do not so well display the heart of Deity as when He gives His Only-Begotten, and sends Him into the world that men may live through Him? What wisdom is manifested in the plan of redemption of which the incarnate God is the centre! What love is there revealed! What power is that which brought the Divine One down from glory to the manger; only Omnipotence could have worked so great a marvel! What faithfulness to ancient promises! What truthfulness in keeping covenant! What grace, and yet what justice! II. Let us consider TO WHOM THIS JOY BELONGS. 1. It belongs to those who tell it. 2. It belongs to those who hear it. 3. It belongs to those who believe it. III. How THAT JOY SHOULD BE . 1. Proclaim the Saviour. 2. Sing God’ s praises. 3. Spread the news--as the shepherds did. 4. Ponder this miracle of love--as Mary did. 5. Go and do good to others. Come and worship God manifest in the flesh, and be filled with His light and sweetness by the power of the Holy Spirit. (C. H. Spurgeon.) Christ’ s Nativity 1. Observe the interest which the angels felt on the occasion. While men’ s minds are intent on the decree of the emperor, theirs are centred on Christ. 2. Not only did an angel appear to the shepherds, but the glory of the Lord shone round about them. Evidence of a message immediately from God. 3. The effect it had upon the shepherds. Sore afraid, but afterwards cheered. 4. The object proclaimed is the “ Saviour.” Not themselves, but Christ. 5. The good news was common to all people, not to one nation only. 6. The good news, though common to all people, was more immediately addressed to the shepherds, who like many others were waiting for the consolation of Israel. The gospel is addressed to individuals, as if they only were the objects of it. Salvation is directly offered to every soul. 7. In this heavenly message particular attention is paid to time, place, and other circumstances, to show their agreement with ancient prophecy. Not even an angel may speak anything contrary to the Scriptures (Galatians 1:8). I. THE SUBJECT OF THE ANGELIC MESSAGE, AND SEE WHAT GOOD TIDINGS ARE IN IT. 1. The birth of Jesus Christ was itself good news. The great object of prophecy from the beginning of the world, and the hope of the Church in all ages. 2. The gracious design of His incarnation imparted good tidings to a guilty and ruined world. 3. The way of salvation, which was effected by the coming of Christ, forms an essential part of the good tidings brought to us by the angel. Repentance and remission of sins preached among all nations. II. THESE TIDINGS ARE MATTERS OF JOY, OF GREAT JOY TO ALL PEOPLE. The word used is strong, and only used for such great occasions as the joy of harvest or an important victory; but is fully applicable to this subject. 1. The coming of Christ was the joy of the Old Testament Church, while they lived only in hope of this great event (Isaiah 25:9; John 8:56). How much more when it is fully realized. 2. All the joy of believers during the lifetime of our Saviour centred entirely in Him. 3. All the joy in the times of the apostles had an immediate reference to Christ and His salvation. The apostles triumphed in every place, but it was because the savour of His name was spread abroad. 4. Christ and His salvation made all their troubles and sorrows light and momentary; yea, they counted not their lives dear for His sake. The history of the primitive Church is a history of sufferings in the cause of Christ, and of joy and rejoicing in His holy name. This also is the way for us to bear up under all the sorrows, trials, and afflictions of this life. III. INQUIRE WHAT IS TO RENDER THESE GOOD TIDINGS A MATTER OF REAL JOY TO US. It is an undoubted fact that they do not produce joy in all: they did not then, and they do not now. Many think the tidings of the gospel not worth hearing. Many who hear, neglect them, or feel no interest in them. Some who seem to rejoice for a time become indifferent, and afterwards wither away. 1. To become the subject of real joy, these tidings require to be believed as true, and to be received with the utmost cordiality. 2. It requires a deep conviction of our guilty, lost, and ruined state, which is presupposed by the gospel, and which must be felt and realized before it can convey to us tidings of great joy. 3. A cordial reception of the gospel itself, as revealing the only way of salvation; obeying it from the heart, and receiving the truth in love. (Theological Sketch-book.) The first Christmas I. THAT A SCENE OF FRIGHT OFTEN BECOMES A SCENE OF . Joseph’ s way to authority led through the pit, slavery, and prison. How many through affliction have found spiritual triumph. II. WE SEE WHY CHRIST FINDS SO POOR A UPON EARTH. ROOM for outward pomps, but none for the lowly Son of God. In yonder store there is room for trade, for money, but no room for Christ. There is no war between prosperity and Christ. III. THAT WHILE VIRTUE IS OFTEN FORCED TO PLAIN , IS WITH FINE . Guilt on the throne, innocence in the cabin; Nero in the palace, Paul a prisoner; Nebuchadnezzar walking in the hanging gardens, Shadrach in the fire. Remember the order: first the manger; second, the cross; third, the crown. IV. THAT JOY IS A ELEMENT IN . (Dr. Talmage.) The first Christmas morning I. THE ADVENT OF CHRIST WAS GOOD TIDINGS TO THE SLAVE. When He came, a large part of the race were held in abject servitude. Slavery prevailed extensively in cultivated Greece, in imperial Rome, and even in Palestine--in the very shadow of the temple of the Most High. Some Roman masters held from ten to twenty thousand slaves, and the condition of the slave was hard in the extreme. He was treated and held simply as a “ thing” ; bought and sold as men deal in sheep and horses, he was absolutely the property of his master; he had no rights as a man--no place under the law; could be beaten, scourged, and put to death at the will of the master. Such was the condition of half the world when the angel choir sang their Gloria in Excelsis. But that song was the death-knell to human bondage. The Infant that lay in the manger hard by was to be the great Deliverer. Glorious emancipation! Glorious harbinger of that spiritual liberty which Christ is yet to achieve! II. THE ADVENT OF CHRIST WAS GOOD TIDINGS TO THE . The mass of men belong to the labouring class--are forced to earn their bread in the sweat of their brows. The honour, the dignity, of labour was not at all understood before Christ’ s advent. Philosophers taught that all forms of manual labour were degrading. In Rome only three kinds of occupation were considered respectable, viz.: medicine, commerce, and architecture. Free men had to work side by side with slaves. But Christ taught a new doctrine. He consecrated and made honourable all honest labour, both by the precepts He taught and by His own example. And just as the spirit and teachings of the great Master prevail, the labouring classes will be elevated and prosperous, and human society will approximate the heavenly world. III. THE ADVENT OF CHRIST TO EARTH THE TRUE IDEA OF . The ancients had no just conception of man as man. At best, he was considered of no account, except as related to the State or the crown. IV. THE ADVENT OF CHRIST WAS GOOD TIDINGS TO THE FAMILY. The ancients had very imperfect ideas about it. Marriage was simply the means the State had to produce citizens. But, oh, the power, the blessedness, of the religion of Jesus on the family !V. THE ADVENT OF CHRIST WAS GLAD TIDINGS BECAUSE IT GAVE THE WORLD A NEW HOPE, The song of the angels on that eventful Christmas morning was the song of hope to a despairing world. (D. W. Lusk.) Good tidings of great joy The sweet air of the gospel hath some harsh tidings, to take up the cross, and endure unto blood, and death, but these were tidings of joy. 1. Joys are of several sizes, this is a great one, nay, none so great. 2. Joys and great ones are quickly done, this is joy that shall be and continue. 3. A man may be a conduit-pipe to transmit joy to others, and have no benefit himself; this is joy to you, to every ear that hears 2:4. A good nature would not engross a blessing, but desires to have it diffused, and so was this joy to all people. The angel said unto them, “ Fear not.” What should they not fear: first, non a splendore divine, let not their hearts be troubled because the glory of the Lord shone round about them, Sore eyes are distempered at much light, and it is a sign there is some darkness within us all, which loves not to be discovered; that the best of us all are much perplexed if any extraordinary brightness flash upon us. (Bishop Hacket.) Fear not So if there be not a mixture of fear with our love, it falleth asleep, it waxeth secure, and loseth her Beloved. If the comfort of our joy be not allayed with some fear, ‘ tis madness and presumption. Again, if our fear be not intermixed with the comfort of some joy, ‘ tis sullenness and desperation. As the earth cannot be without summer and winter to make it fruitful, the pleasure of the one and the austerity of the other make up the revolution of a good year, so faith is the parent both of a cloudy fear, and a smiling hope: faith begets fear in us in regard of our own weakness, and hope in regard of the goodness of God; hope ariseth out of the faith of the gospel, and fear out of the faith of the law. These cannot be parted. (Bishop Hacket.) That bondage which makes us liable to judgment is naught; but the fear which issues from a conscientiousness of that bondage flying to God that it may fly from judgment is holy and good. Briefly, let them thus be compared together; a filial fear, which loves God for His own goodness, is like a bright day which hath not a cloud to disfigure it; a servile fear, that dreads God because it dreads the wrath to come, is like a day that is overcast with clouds, but it is clearer than the fairest moonshine night. It is good to have the spirit of adoption, but it is better to have the spirit of bondage than the spirit of slumber; it is good to be in Canaan, but it is better to be in the wilderness than in Egypt; it is good to be a child, but it is better to be a servant than a stranger to the Lord. (Bishop Hacket.) This, then, is another fear which belongs to our allowance, but there is a fear which hath a nolite set before it, an immoderate horror of heart, a symptom of desperation, or at least of infidelity and diffidence; this is that quivering with which God strikes His enemies, as a tree is shaken by the wind to unfasten it from the root. (Bishop Hacket.) Nothing, you see, is comfortable to them that have not the true comforter, the Holy Spirit in their soul. (Bishop Hacket.) Satan feels some horror that gnaws and torments him, but he feels not the blessing of that fear which should discipline him from sin, and amend him. (Bishop Hacket.) Then it were good, methinks, that discretion and consideration of Christ’ s merciful gospel did mitigate their zeal, who think they are bound to thunder nothing so much to the people as fears, and terrors, like the writer of Iambiques that spoke anger and poison to put Archilochus into desperation. Let vices be threatened, but let the hope that accompanies true repentance go together. Let judgment be put home to the obdurate conscience, but let mercy be an advocate for tile broken in heart. Let the strictness of law and the curse thereof fetch a tear from our eyes; but let the ransom of our sins be set before us, and that Christ will wipe all tears from our eyes. St. Paul wished himself at Corinth, not to affright them, but to rejoice with the brethren; as it was said of the mild nature of the Emperor Vespasian, he never sent any man from him discontent, but gave him some comfort and satisfaction. So the gospel is such a sweet demulcing lesson, that if it be truly preached it must always revive the heart, it cannot leave a sting behind it. You see the angel delights not to scare, but to comfort the shepherds, “ Fear not.” (Bishop Hacket.) Gospel joy continuous This spiritual gladness and festivity is the principal assistance to vanquish Satan, and all desperate doubts with which he would perplex our conscience: it is a royal joy which comforts us that we shall be heirs of a glorious kingdom; it is a sanctified joy which gives us promise that we shall not only be kings but priests for ever, to offer up the sweet odours of our prayers to God; it is a superlative joy which cries down all other petty delights, and makes them appear as nothing; it is endless joy of durance and lasting for ever and ever; for my text says it is “ joy that shall be unto you.” Times of feasting have a period, every man is glutted at last; he that hath his fill of sport is weary by the late of night, and glad to take his rest. But the joy that you have in Christ is with you all the year, in all your sorrow, in all your adversities; it sleeps with you, it grows old with you, it will change this life with you, and follow you into a better: “ And My joy shall no man take from you,” says our Saviour (John 16:22). Christmas joy was not only for the first twelve days when the Son of God was born, but for all the twelve months of twelve hundred years, and many hundreds after them unto the world’ s end. So St. Peter cloth solace us with black sails of sorrow; as if he had never made a saving voyage. All their laughter is like the joy of Herod’ s birthday.; dancing, and revels, and offering of great gifts last for a while, but before evening you shall see an alteration; and when their surfeited tables are removed away, the last service in the platter is the head of John the Baptist. But the mirth which we have in the Mediator of our salvation is a song which hath no rest in it, nor ever shall have a close. We begin the first part here, that we may sing the other part in psalms and hallelujahs with the saints for ever. As Christmas is celebrated part of the new year, and part of the old, so it is joy that is in this life, and shall be in the life to come. (Bishop Hacket.) The nativity of our Lord, tidings of great joy 1. Let us consider that the nativity doth import the completion of many ancient promises, predictions, and prefigurations concerning it; that whereas all former dispensations of favour and mercy were as preludes or preambles to this; the old law did aim to represent it in its mysterious pomps; the chief of providential occurrences did intimate it; the prophets often in their mystical raptures did allude to it, and often in clear terms did express it; the gracious designs of God, and the longing expectations of mankind being so variously implied in regard thereto; now all is come to be fulfilled, and perfected in most clear, most effectual, most substantial accomplishment. Now what can be more delightful, or satisfactory to our mind, than to reflect on this sweet harmony of things, this goodly correspondence between the old and new world; wherein so pregnant evidences of God’ s chief attributes (of His goodness, of His wisdom, of His fidelity and constancy), all conspiring to our benefit, do shine? Is it not pleasant to contemplate how provident God hath ever been for our welfare? what trains from the world’ s beginning, or ever since our unhappy fall, He hath been laying to repair and restore us? how wisely He hath ordered all dispensations with a convenient reference and tendency to this masterpiece of grace? how steady He hath been in prosecuting His designs, and how faithful in accomplishing His promises concerning it? If the “ holy patriarchs did see this day, and were glad” ; if a glimpse thereof did cause their hearts to leap within them; if its very dawn had on the spirits of the prophets so vigorous an influence, what comfort and complacence should we feel in this its real presence, and bright aspect on us! 2. Let us consider what alteration our Lord’ s coming did induce, by comparing the state of things before it with that which followed it. The old world then consisting of two parts, severed by a strong wall of partition, made up of difference in opinion, in practice, in affection, together with a strict prohibition to one of holding intercourse with the other. Such was the state of the world in its parts; and jointly of the whole it may be said that it was “ shut up under sin” and guilt, under darkness and weakness, under death and corruption, under sorrow and woe: that no full declaration of God’ s pleasure, no clear overture of mercy, no express grant of spiritual aid, no certain redemption from the filth or the force of sin, from the stroke of death, from due punishment hereafter; no encouragements suitable to high devotion, or strict virtue, were anywise in a solemn way exhibited or dispensed before our Lord’ s appearance: so that well might all men be then represented as Cimmerians, “ sitting in darkness, in the region and shadow of death.” Now the Spirit of God (the Spirit of direction, of succour, of comfort spiritual) is poured on all flesh. “ Now the grace of God, that bringeth salvation, hath appeared to all men.” Now Jew and Gentile are reunited and compacted in one body; walking in the same light, and under obligation to the same laws. But farther, that we may yet more nearly touch the point-- 3. Let us consider that the nativity of our Lord is a grand instance, a pregnant evidence, a rich earnest of Almighty God’ s very great affection and benignity toward mankind; for, “ In this,” saith St. John, “ the love of God was manifested, that God sent His only begotten Son into the world:” and, “ Through the tender mercies of our God,” sang old Zachariah, “ the Day-spring from on high did visit us:” this indeed is the peculiar experiment, wherein that most Divine attribute did show and signalize itself. And what greater reason of joy can there be, than such an assurance of His love, on whose love all our good dependeth, in whose love all our felicity consisteth? What can be more delightful than to view the face of our Almighty Lord so graciously smiling on us? Should we not be extremely glad, should we not be proud, if our earthly prince by any signal mark would express himself kindly affected to us? How much more should we resent such a testimony of God’ s favour t how worthily may our souls be transported with a sense of such affection! 4. We may consider our Lord’ s nativity, as not only expressing simple good-will, but implying a perfect reconciliation, a firm peace, a steady friendship established between God and us or that it did not only proceed from love, but did also produce love to us. Now, then, what can be more worthy of joy than such a blessed turn of affairs? How can we otherwise than with exceeding gladness solemnize such a peace? 5. Our Lord’ s nativity doth infer a great honour, and a high preferment to us: nowise indeed could mankind be so dignified, or our nature so advanced as hereby: no wisdom can devise a way beyond this, whereby God should honour His most special favourites, or promote them to a nearness unto Himself. This is a peculiar honour, to which the highest angels cannot pretend; “ for He took not the nature of angels, but He took the seed of Abraham.” And is it not good matter of joy to be thus highly graced? When are men better pleased than when they are preferred; than especially, when “ from the meanest state, from the dunghill, or from the dust, they are raised to be set among princes, and made to inherit the throne of glory” ? 6. Finally, if we survey all principal causes of joy and special exultation, we shall find them all concurring in this event. Is a messenger of good news embraced with joy? Behold the great Evangelist is come, with His mouth full of news, most admirable, most acceptable: He, who doth acquaint us that God is well pleased, that man is restored, that “ the adversary is cast down,” that paradise is set open, and immortality retrieved; that truth and righteousness, peace and joy, salvation and happiness are descended, and come to dwell on earth. Is the birth of a prince by honest subjects to be commemorated with joyous festivity? Behold a Prince born to all the world! a Prince undertaking to rule mankind with sweetest clemency and exact justice. May victory worthily beget exultation? See the invincible warrior doth issue forth into the field, “ conquering and to conquer” : He that shall baffle and rifle the strong one, our formidable adversary; that shall rout all the forces of hell, and triumph over the powers of darkness. Is a proclamation of peace, after rueful wars, to be solemnized with alacrity? Behold then everlasting peace between heaven and earth, a general peace among men. Is satisfaction of desire and hope very pleasant? Behold the “ desire of all nations, the expectation of Israel,” He for whom the whole creation groaned, is come. Is recovery of liberty delectable to poor slaves and captives? Behold the “ Redeemer is come out of Sion” ; the precious ransom, sufficient to purchase the freedom of many worlds, is laid down. Is an overture of health acceptable to sick and languishing persons? Behold the great Physician, endued with admirable skill, and furnished with infallible remedies, is come, to cure us of our maladies, and ease us of our pains. Is mirth seasonable on the day of marriage? Behold the greatest wedding that ever was is this day solemnised; heaven and earth are contracted; divinity is espoused to humanity; a sacred, an indissoluble knot is tied between God and man. This entry is longer than a Bible module can hold. The rest is at https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/bi/ Luke 2:11 For unto you is born this day Lessons from the birthday of Christ The birthday of Christ!--a name which connects with the familiar associations of home-life the opening of the heavens to human hope, the inconceivable grace and condescension of Almighty God, the beginning of a state of things on earth in which God our Maker has united Himself for ever with humankind. I. . In thinking of Christ’ s birthday, we are between two dangers. It may have become a mere name and word to us, conventionally accepted and repeated, but conveying no really living meaning; or it may have come with such fulness of meaning as to overwhelm and confound our thoughts, making us ask, “ How can such things be?” Let us remember that “ God is Love;” and that the mystery of the incarnation is the manifestation of that infinite Love. Let us try to take a true measure of the unspeakable majesty and living goodness with which we have to deal. II. PURITY. The Incarnation was the mind and atmosphere of heaven, coming with all the height of their sanctities into human flesh--a spectacle to make us stop and be thoughtful, and consider our own experience of life and society. Let us pass from things which fashion and custom do not mind, but which do lower the tone and health of soul and character, which often tempt and corrupt it; let us turn away our eyes from what, however captivating and charming, is dangerous to know and look at, to the little child and His mother, and learn there the lesson of strength, of manliness--for purity means manliness--of abhorrence of evil. III. . The human mind cannot conceive any surrender of place and claims, any willing lowliness and self-forgetfulness, any acceptance of the profoundest abasement, comparable to that which is before us in the birth, and the circumstances of the birth, of Jesus Christ. The measure of it is the measure of the distance between the Creator and the creature, and the creature in the most unregarded, most uncared-for condition, helpless, unknown, of no account for the moment among the millions of men whom He had made, and whose pride, and loftiness, and ambition filled His own world. There He was for the time, the youngest, weakest, poorest of them all; and He came thus, to show what God thinks of human pride, ambition, loftiness. He came thus, to show how God despises the untruth of self-esteem, the untruth of flattery, and to teach how little the outward shows of our present condition answer to that which, in reality and truth, it is worth while for a living soul, an immortal being, to be. IV. THE LESSON OF NOT PUTTING OUR TRUST IN THE ARM OF FLESH. Contrast the birthday of Christ with the purpose of His coming--to reform, conquer, and restore the world. Of all that mighty order which was to be, of all that overwhelming task and work before Him, here were the first steps, in the lowest paths of human life! He it was to whom was committed this great work of God. Not in the way which men understood or anticipated, not by forces and measures suggested by their experience, but in the exact way of God’ s perfect holiness and righteousness. He began and finished the work which the Father gave Him to do. In the utter unlikelihood of His success, there is a lesson for us. In doing His work, and in doing our own work, we are often sorely tempted to depart from His footsteps. In doing His work, in maintaining His cause, in fighting for His kingdom, it has always been too common for man to think, that all the same means are available which are used in human enterprises, that success depended on the same conditions, that it was impossible without employing weapons which were not like His. They have trusted to energy, strength, sagacity; they have distrusted the power of single-hearted obedience, prayer, patience, faith, self-sacrifice, goodness; they have thought it weak to be over-scrupulous; they have forgotten how far beyond the reach and touch of human power are the fortunes of the kingdom of the Most Holy. And so in doing our own work, it is hard for us all not to do the opposite to what our Master did; hard not to trust to the arm and the ways of flesh, instead of trusting with our eyes shut the path of duty, truth, obedience. The trader has before him the way of unflinching honesty, or the way in which custom and opinion allow him to take advantage and make shorter cuts to profit and increased business; which path will he take? Will he have faith in principle, and perhaps wait, perhaps lose; or will he do as others do, and, highly respecting principle, yet forget it at the critical moment? The young man entering into life wishes to get on. Will he trust to what he is, to his determination to do right, to straightforwardness and simplicity, to God’ s blessing, or what God has blessed and promised to bless, or will he push his fortunes by readiness to appear what he is not, by selfishness, by man-pleasing, by crooked paths and questionable compliances? The boy has to do his lessons and satisfy his teachers. Will he be content to appear no cleverer than he is, to be conscientious, diligent, faithful, dutiful, whatever comes of it; or will he be tempted to save himself labour and trouble by shorter and easier ways which many will tell him of, and gain credit for what he has no right to? Here, to warn us, to teach us, to comfort us, in all our varied conditions and employments, we have the beginning of Christ’ s conquest of the world. The footsteps of His great progress begin from the cradle of the nativity. V. AND JOY. Sometimes we feel hardly in tune for the rejoicing of Christmas. It contrasts sharply with the bitterness of a recent bereavement, the sorrowful watch round a hopeless sick bed. Or it may be, while we are saluting our Lord’ s coming with hymns and carols of childlike exultation, and repeating the angelic welcome to the Prince of Peace, that by a terrible irony, the heavens around us are black with storm and danger: that great nations are involved in the horrible death-struggle of war; that day by day men are perishing by every form of carnage, and suffering every form of pain; and that by each other’ s hands. We almost ask, in such a case, whether it is not mockery to think of gladness. Yet it is in place even then; and Christmas claims it from us. Those great gospel songs which heralded the Incarnation of the Son of God--the Magnificat, the Benedictus, the Song of the angels--were themselves but the prelude to the life of the “ Man of Sorrows.” They are followed immediately by Rachel weeping for her children at Bethlehem, and the flight from the sword of Herod. But yet in those dreadful days on earth, of blood and pain and triumphant iniquity, there was peace in heaven and the joy of the angels; for amid the cloud and storm of the conflict which men could not see through, the angels knew who was conquering. He is conquering, and to conquer still. All falsehood, cruelty, selfishness, oppression, and tyranny, are to fall before Him. Amid the darkness of our life, the hope of man is still on Him, as fixed and sure as ever it was. He will not disappoint man of his hope. (Dean Church.) The message of the shepherds I. How SURE IS GOD’ S WORD! II. How ARE GOD’ S WAYS! III. How IS GOD’ S ! (W. S. Bruce, M. A.) The two advents I. THE FIRST COMING WAS IN , the glory hidden; the second will be in power, the glory revealed. II. THE FIRST CONING WAS TO AN OF LABOUR AND ; the second will be the inauguration of coronation and triumph. III. IN FIRST COMING CHRIST MADE ; in second He will prove how His work has sped. IV. IN FIRST COMING HE INVITED MEN TO AND PEACE; in second He shall descend to bless the believing, but judge the impenitent. Lessons: As we are sure concerning the record of the first advent, let us also be as to the prediction of the second. Have we used the first so as to be prepared for this? (G. McMichael, B. A.) Unto us a child is born I. 1. Consider the revelation thus delivered by the angel--“ Unto you is born a Saviour.” Jesus is horn a Saviour; we do not make Him a Saviour; we have to accept Him as such. Neither does salvation come from us or by us, but it is born to us. 2. Consider the outward sign by which the Saviour was to be known--“ A babe lying in a manger!” Children are the saviours of society: the human race renewing itself perpetually in the freshness and innocence of childhood is prevented from becoming utterly corrupt. This is just the lesson the world needed. Philosophy, art, law, force, all had tried to raise mankind out of sin, and all had failed. In the fulness of time “ unto us a Child is born,” and in the weakness of that Childhood, the human race is renewed, its flesh comes again “ as the flesh of a little child.” II. 1. What a message from heaven to a world weary of life and sick with sin--“ Unto you is born a Saviour!” 2. What a message to those who are trusting in the pride of intellect, or in the pride of wealth, or in the pride of earthly position, or in the pride of character--“ This shall be the sign: a Babe wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger!” The signs which betoken the presence of the Eternal are not always such as commend themselves to men’ s reasoning, for we are living among shadows which are not realities, although we mistake them for such. (Canon Vernon Hutton, M. A.) The nature of Christ’ s salvation He is not a temporal Saviour: He is not a Saviour from mere temporal calamity; He is not a Saviour such as the saviours among the Jews were, who had emancipated them from their civil foes; but He is a Saviour from spiritual evils. He saves us from spiritual darkness by His Word; from the pollution and power of sin, by His merit and grace; from the bondage of Satan, by His energy; from hell, by becoming a curse for us, that we may attain eternal life. His salvation extends to the soul as well as the body; to eternity as well as to time. (Dr. Beaumont.) Universality of the gospel offer In the further prosecution of this discourse, we shall first say a few words on the principle of the gospel message--good-will: Secondly, on the object of the gospel message--men--it is a message of good-will to men: And, Thirdly, on the application of the gospel message to the men who now hear us. I. When we say that God is actuated by a principle of good-will to you, it sounds in your ears a very simple proposition. There is a barrier in these evil hearts of unbelief, against the admission of a filial confidence in God. We see no mildness in the aspect of the Deity. Our guilty fears suggest the apprehension of a stern and vindictive character. It is not in the power of argument to do away this impression. We know that they will not be made to see God, in that aspect of graciousness which belongs to Him, till the power of a special revelation be made to rest upon them--till God Himself, who created light out of darkness, shine in their hearts. But knowing also that He makes use of the Word as His instrument, it is our part to lay the assurances of that Word, in all their truth and in all their tenderness, before you. II. We now proceed, in the second place, to the object of the gospel message--men--a message of good-will to men. The announcement which was heard from the canopy of heaven was not good-will to certain men to the exclusion of others. It is not an offer made to some, and kept back from the rest of the species. It is generally to man. We know well the scruples of the disconsolate; and with what success a perverse melancholy can devise and multiply its arguments for despair. But we will admit of none of them. We look at our text, and find that it recognizes no outcast. Tell us not of the malignity of your disease--it is the disease of a man. Tell us not of your being so grievous an offender that you are the very chief of them. Still you are a man. The offer of God’ s good-will is through Christ Jesus unto all and upon all them that believe. We want to whisper peace to your souls; but you refuse the voice of the charmer, let him charm never so wisely. And here the question occurs to us--how does the declaration of God’ s good-will in the text consist with the entire and everlasting destruction of so many of the species? In point of fact, all men are not saved. We hold out a gift to two people, which one of them may take and the other may refuse. The good-will in me which prompted the offer was the same in reference to both. God in this sense willeth that all men shall be saved. There is no limitation with Him; and be not you limited by your own narrow and fearful and superstitious conceptions of Him. III. But this leads us, in the last place, to press home the lesson of the text on you who are now sitting and listening around us. God, in the act of ushering the gospel into the world, declares good-will to man. He declares it therefore to you. Now, you are liable to the same fears with these shepherds. You are guilty; and to you belong all the weakness and all the timidity of guilt. (T. Chalmers, D. D.) Christ the Saviour At the very utterance of the name Saviour, every heart exults with a delight otherwise unknown. To the generous breast, no other object is so beautiful, no other sound so welcome. Never do we shed such rapturous tears, or feel so passionate a joy, as when we witness the heroism and the self-devotion of some act of magnanimous deliverance. Power softens into loveliness, when thus exerted. Danger and toil, encountered in such a cause, impart a stern, yet irresistible attraction. It is thus we think of the patriot, bleeding for the freedom of his country; of the philanthropist, regardless of his own security amidst pestilence, and darkness, and the ministers of death, that he may release the wretched captive, and break the yoke of the oppressor; of the advocate, defending the house of the widow or the heritage of the orphan, and turning into mockery the venality of accusation, and the menaces of vengeance; of the statesman, who stands forth single-handed, but with a dauntless heart, to turn back the flood of tyranny or faction, when threatening to engulf in common ruin the welfare of his people and the safety of mankind; and of the pilot, adventurously urging his way through the pitiless and maddening surge, that he may snatch some solitary victim from the horrors of shipwreck, and bear him, naked and shivering, to the shore. What, then, shall be the glory of Him who plunged, with all the consciousness of unsheltered peril, into the very depths of misery, to rescue the perishing soul! Or what shall be the measure, either of our admiration or our gratitude, when we celebrate, beholding its last triumphs, the emancipation of a world! Advocate, Friend, Brother, these are beloved names; and, like a grateful odour, they give life to the drooping spirit; but if the name of Saviour be more endearing than them all, then what is that ravishment of love with which the rescued sinner shall hail at length the blessed name of Jesus! (S. McAll.) The Saviour’ s love Like the sunshine that falls with magical flicker on pearl and ruby, lance and armour, in the royal hall, yet overflows the shepherd’ s home, and quivers through the grating of the prisoner’ s cell; pours glory over the mountain-range; flames in playful splendour on the wave; floods the noblest scenes with day, yet makes joy for the insect; comes down to the worm, and has a loving glance for the life that stirs in the fringes of the wayside grass; silvers the moss of the marsh and the scum of the pool; glistens in the thistle-down; lines the shell with crimson fire, and fills the little flower with light; travels millions and millions of miles, past stars, past constellations, and all the dread magnificence of heaven, on purpose to visit the sickly weed, to kiss into vividness the sleeping blooms of spring, and to touch the tiniest thing with the gladness that makes it great: so does the Saviour’ s love, not deterred by our unworthiness, not offended by our slights, come down to teach and bless the meanest and the lowliest life in the new creation. He restores the bruised reed; the weakest natures share His visits, and revive beneath His smile. (Charles Stanford, D. D.) The great announcement I. A Saviour is BORN. II. A SAVIOUR is born. III. A Saviour is born unto you. IV. THIS DAY. (Van. Doren.) A Saviour from spiritual ruin I know not how, but when we hear of saving, or mention of a Saviour, presently our mind is carried to the saving of our skin, of our temporal state, of our bodily life; further saving we think not of. But there is another life not to be forgotten, and greater the dangers, and the destruction there more to be feared than of this here, and it would be well sometimes we were reminded of it. Besides our skin and flesh, a soul we have, and it is our better part by far, that also hath need of a Saviour; that hath her destruction out of which, that hath her destroyer from which she would be saved, and those would be thought on. Indeed, our chief thought and care would be for that; how to escape the wrath, how to be saved from the destruction to come, whither our sins will certainly carry us. Sin will destroy us all. And to speak of a Saviour, there is no person on earth has so much need of a Saviour as has a sinner. Nothing so dangerous, so deadly unto us, as is the sin in our bosom; nothing from which we have so much need to be saved, whatsoever account we make of it. From it comes upon us all the evil of this life, and of the life to come, in comparison whereof these here are not worth speaking of. Above all, then, we need a Saviour for our souls, and from our sins, and from the everlasting destruction which sin will bring upon us in the other life not far from us. Then if it be good tidings to hear of a Saviour, where it is but a matter of the loss of earth, or of this life here; how then, when it comes to the loss of heaven, to the danger of hell, when our soul is at stake, and the well-doing or un-doing of it for ever? Is not such a Saviour worth hearkening after? (Bp. Lancelot Andrews.) Christ the Saviour of men What does that word Christ mean, and what does it teach us? To the Jew of that day, and even to the Pagan, there could have been no doubt as to the meaning of this word Christ, the Christos, the Anointed, one representing to him some person who had been publicly set apart to some great office among men. Anointing was that act by which, especially among the Jews, a man was set apart to some Divinely appointed office among the people; the prophet who was to speak to the people from God, the priest who was to minister to the people in holy things for God, the king who was to rule in God’ s glory over God’ s own people, were solemnly set apart by anointing to their office. What they would have called anointing we now call consecration--the publicly and divinely ordered sanctioning and setting apart of a man for an office in which he is to minister unto men and for God. This is anointing, and more than this, it implies that with the appointment and consecration came a power and a grace to fit a man for the office he received. When our Lord, then, is called the Anointed One, the Christ, it means that He is the One of all humanity, who is divinely consecrated and set apart to noble office and high service, and whose whole life and being is filled with the Divine light necessary for doing the work of that office--the Anointed, consecrated One, in whom all consecration and Divine unction centres for the performance of all offices. And every one of these offices, observe, was in the service of mankind. The prophetic office was His, and He claims it as His own when He says, “ The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, for He hath anointed Me” --what for? “ to preach the gospel to the poor.” The prophet’ s office was an office to serve mankind as their teacher, their guide, and their counsellor. The priestly office was His, and for what? That He might offer Himself as a Lamb without spot or blemish to God, and, having entered by a new and living way with His own blood, should live for intercession and sacrifice, coming forth with blessings for God’ s people. God made Him king over them, and gave Him heaven for an inheritance--for what? That He might rule them in righteousness and peace. Prophet, Priest, King: in each one of these He was the servant of mankind, and so He says of Himself, “ The Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister.” King of kings and Lord of lords He is, but Servant of servants to His brethren, and the lordship and the kingdom that He won was won by faith and suffering, won by faithful service, and He served that He might reign, and through it all He was sustained by the in dwelling power of the Spirit of God, who gave not the Spirit by measure unto Him. This is the idea of the Christ, the consecrated One. It means One whose whole life on earth, whose whole life ever since He has left this earth, was devoted, is devoted, to the service of mankind. (Bishop W. C. Magee.) A consecrated life Not so long ago the inhabitants of the Sandwich Islands were sorely smitten and plagued by leprosy. They resolved at last to gather all the lepers from the islands round about, all tainted with the slightest symptoms of leprosy, and banish them to one island, where they should dwell and perish slowly, while the rest of their fellow citizens were saved from the plague--and they did so. And this band of pilgrims, on a pilgrimage of death, were gathered on the shore of one of these islands, about to depart by a ship which would carry them away for life, and standing on the shore was a priest, a Roman Catholic priest, and he saw this multitude going away without a shepherd to care for their souls, and he said, “ Take me, let me go amongst them; I will dwell amongst these lepers, and will give them the ministrations of religion which otherwise they would be without.” He went, and for some time his courage sustained, and his ministrations blessed that people amongst whom he had cast his lot for life, for he might never leave that place; and then we hear in a letter, written by himself calmly and cheerfully, how that the disease has at last assailed himself, and that his hours of labour are numbered, and before him lies the death of slow and hideous decay to which he had doomed himself that he might save others. In that man was the heart of the priest; in that man was to be seen a manifestation of the Spirit of Christ, the Anointed One; full surely on that soul rested the Divine unction that strengthens and blesses men for noble deeds of sacrifice; and there is not one of us who, in our boasted Protestantism, might be disposed to look down upon “ the benighted priest,” there is not one of us who might not say, “ Let my soul be with his soul in the day when men will have to give an account before the judgment seat of God.” (Bishop W. C. Magee.) The good news is for each and all It is very pleasant to hear good tidings for all the rest of the world; but it is pleasanter to know that we have a personal share in the benefits of which those tidings tell. There may be safety to others who are endangered, and not to us. The lifeboat may come and go, and we be left on the wreck. Bread may be distributed to the hungry, and we fail of a share which shall keep as from starving. The physician may bring health to many, and pass us by unnoticed. All of our condemned fellows might be pardoned, and we have no release. Unless the good tidings are to us also, we cannot welcome them with boundless joy, however glad we are that there is help for others. The writer found himself, in the fortunes of war, a prisoner in the Libby, at Richmond. One evening, as the prisoners lay down to sleep, the story was whispered among them that a flag-of-truce boat had come up the river, and that some one of their number was to be released the next day. That was glad tidings for all. But the question in every prisoner’ s mind was, “ Am I to be released?” There were many dreams of home that night on that prison floor. In the early morning, after roll-call, there was breathless expectancy for the name of the favoured prisoner. It was the name of Chaplain Trumbull. Those glad tidings had a meaning for him they could not have for any of his companions. To him there came that day the message of deliverance from bondage, and he passed out from the prison-house thanking God that the message was to him. “ Unto you” is a Saviour born. Whoever you are, whatever are your sins there is salvation for you. (H. C. Trumbull.) Joy in the Saviour fully received He is the most joyful man who is the most Christly man. I wish that some Christians were more truly Christians: they are Christians and something else; it were much better if they were altogether Christians. Perhaps you know the legend, or perhaps true history of the awakening of St. Augustine. He dreamed that he died, and went to the gates of heaven, and the keeper of the gates said to him, “ Who are you?” And he answered, “ Christianus sum,” I am a Christian. But the porter replied, “ No, you are not a Christian, you are a Ciceronian, for your thoughts and studies were most of all directed to the works of Cicero and the classics, and you neglected the teaching of Jesus. We judge men here by that which most engrossed their thoughts, and you are judged not to be a Christian but a Ciceronian.” When Augustine awoke, he put aside the classics which he had studied, and the eloquence at which he had aimed, and he said, “ I will be a Christian and a theologian;” and from that time he devoted his thoughts to the Word of God, and his pen and his tongue to the instruction of others in the truth. Oh I would not have it said of any of you, “ Well, he may be somewhat Christian, but he is far more a keen money-getting tradesman.” I would not have it said, “ Well, he may be a believer in Christ, but he is a good deal more a politician.” Perhaps he is a Christian, but he is most at home when he is talking about science, farming, engineering, horses, mining, navigation, or pleasure-taking. No, no, you will never know the fulness of the joy which Jesus brings to the soul, unless under the power of the Holy Spirit you take the Lord your Master to be your All in all, and make Him the fountain of your intensest delight. “ He is my Saviour, my Christ, my Lord,” be this your loudest boast. Then will you know the joy which the angel’ s song predicts for men. (C. H.Spurgeon.) The lesson of Christmas In the light of the Son of God becoming flesh, we dare not degrade or defile ourselves. We see how base an apostasy it is to abnegate the Divine prerogative of our being. The birth of Christ becomes to us the pledge of immortality, the inspiration of glad, unerring, life-long duty to ourselves. And no less does it bring home to us the new commandment of love to our brethren. It becomes the main reason why we should love one another. If men were indeed what Satan makes them, and makes us try to believe that they solely are--hopelessly degraded, unimaginably vile; if human life be nothing at the best but the shadow of a passing and miserable dream, I know not how we could love one another. We could only turn with loathing from all the vice and blight, the moral corruption, the manifold baseness of vile, lying, degraded lives. How is all transfigured, how is the poorest wretch earth ever bore transfigured, when we remember that for these Christ became man, for these He died I Shall we, ourselves so weak, so imperfect, so stained with evil, shall we dare to despise these whom Christ so loved that for them--yea, for those blind and impotent men, these publicans and sinners, these ragged prodigals of humanity still voluntarily lingering among the husks and swine--for these, even for these, He, so pure, so perfect, took our nature upon Him, and went, step by step, down all that infinite descent? Despise them? Ah! the revealing light of the God-man shows too much darkness in ourselves to leave any possibility for pride. If we have learnt the lesson of Christmas, the lesson of Bethlehem, let us live to counteract the works of the devil; let it be the one aim of our lives to love and not to hate; to help, not to hinder; to succour them that are tempted, not to add to and multiply their temptations; to make men better, not worse; to make life a little happier, not more deeply miserable; to speak kindly words, not words that may do hurt; to console and to encourage, not to blister and envenom with slanderous lies; to live for others, not for ourselves; to look each of us not on his own things, but on the things of others; to think noble thoughts of man as well as of God; to be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ has forgiven us. (Archdeacon Farrar.) A Saviour The Esquimaux have no word in their language to represent the Saviour, and I could never find out that they had any direct notion of such a Friend. But I said to them, “ Does it not happen sometimes when you are out fishing that a storm arises, and some of you are lost and some saved?” They said, “ Oh yes, very often.” “ But it also happens that you are in the water, and owe your safety to some brother or friend who stretches out his hand to help you.” “ Very frequently.” “ Then what do you call that friend?” They gave me in answer a word in their language, and I immediately wrote it against the word Saviour in Holy Writ, and ever afterwards it was clear and intelligible to all of them. (Colemeister.) Christmas day explains two dispensations Those who have travelled in mountainous countries know how the highest crest of the mountain range is always known by seeing from that point, and that point only, the streams dividing on either side. Even so it is with the event of this day. The whole, or nearly the whole, history of the ancient world, and specially of the Israelite people, leads us up to it as certainly on the one side, as the whole history of later times, especially of the Christian world, leads us up to it from the other side: Other events there are which explain particular portions of history; other birthdays can be pointed out; other characters have arisen which contain within themselves the seed of much that was to follow. There is none which professes like this to command both views at once, and thus, even if we knew no more concerning it, we should feel that a life and character which so explains two dispensations comes to us with a double authority. Either would be enough to constitute a claim to our reverence; both together make a claim almost irresistible. (Dean Stanley.) Christ born in the city of David A poor casket to contain so great a Jewel. “ Thou Bethlehem,” says the Prophet Micah, “ the least among the princes of Judah;” yet big enough to contain the Prince of heaven and earth. Little Zoar, says Lot, and yet Zoar was big enough to receive him and his children safe out of the fire of Sodom. Mean Bethlehem, unless the angel had spoke it, the prophet foretold it, and the star had showed it to the wise men, who would not have gainsaid that the Saviour of all men could be laid in such a village? The Roman historian made a marvel that so noble an emperor as Alexander Severus was, could come out of Syria, Syrus Archisynagogus, as they called him in scorn. Behold that emperor’ s Lord, comes not only out of Syria, but out of the homeliest corner in Syria, out of the despicable tributary city of David. (Bishop Hacker.) A Saviour But that the name may not be an empty sound to us as it was to them, consider these three things. 1. With what honour it was imposed. 2. What excellency it includes. 3. What reverence it deserves. (Bishop Hacker.) His words, His actions, His miracles, His prayers, His sacraments, His sufferings, all did smell of the Saviour. Take Him from His infancy to His death, among His disciples and among the publicans, among the Jews, or among the Gentiles, He was all Saviour. (Bishop Hacker.) The sun enlightens half the world at once, yet none discern colours by the light but they that open their eyes; and a Saviour is born unto us all, which is Christ the Lord: but enclasp Him in thine heart as old Simeon did in his arms, and then thou mayest sing his “ Nune Dimittis,” or Mary’ s “ Magnificat,” “ My spirit rejoiceth in God my Saviour. (Bishop Hacker.) Christ’ s birth city The Athenians were proud of Pompey’ s love, that he would write his name a citizen of their city. For a princely person to accept a freedom in a mean corporation is no little kindness; how much more doth it aggravate the love of Christ to come from heaven, and be made a citizen of this vile earth, to be born after a more vile condition than the most abject of the people. (Bishop Hacker.) The merit of Christ’ s birth For, as we say of the sin of Adam, the act passed away at the first, but the guilt remains upon his posterity: so our Saviour was born upon one particular day which is passed, but the merit and virtue of it is never passed, but abides for ever. (Bishop Hacker.) 1. Then with reverend lips and circumcised ears let us begin with the joyful tidings of a Saviour. 2. Here’ s our participation of Him in His nature, natus, He is born, and made like unto us. 3. It is honourable to be made like us, but it is beneficial to be made for us; “ unto you is born a Saviour.” 4. Is not the use of His birth superannuated, the virtue of it long since expired? No, ‘ tis fresh and new; as a man is most active when he begins first to run--He is born this day. 5. Is He not like the king in the Gospel who journeyed into a far country, extra orbem solisque vias, quite out of the way in another world? no--the circumstance of place points His dwelling to be near--He is “ born in the city of David. 6. Perhaps to make Him man is to quite unmake Him; shall we find Him able to subdue our enemies, and save us, since He hath taken upon Him the condition of human fragility? Yes, the last words speak His excellency and power, for He is such a “ Saviour as is Christ the Lord.” (Bishop Hacker.) A Saviour It comprehends all other names of grace and blessing; as manna is said to have all kind of supers in it to please the taste. When you have called Him the glass in which we see all truth, the fountain in which we taste all sweetness, the ark in which all precious things are laid up, the pearl which is worth all other riches, the flower of Jesse which hath the savour of life unto life, the bread that satisfieth all hunger, the medicine that healeth all sickness, the light that dispelleth all darkness; when you have run over all these, and as many more glorious titles as you can lay on, this one word is above them, and you may pick them all out of these syllables, “ a Saviour which is Christ the Lord.” (Bishop Hacker.) The nativity Let us consider the message itself, the foundation of all our spiritual joy. I. WHAT IS HE WHO IS BORN? He is “ a Saviour,” a Deliverer. Good indeed are the tidings of a saviour. Delightful to one languishing On a bed of pain and sickness is He that comes with power and skill to heal and to restore. Most joyful to the wretch condemned to die for his crimes, is the sound of pardon. II. WHAT ARE THE TITLES GIVEN TO THIS SAVIOUR? 1. He is “ Christ.” As His name, Jesus, signifies a saviour, so Christ signifies the anointed. He is an anointed Saviour. Thus is He distinguished from all other saviours. The title “ Christ” also teaches us His office. 2. He is “ the Lord.” High and glorious name I He is Jehovah. He is “ Lord” by right of creation, in His Divine and eternal nature. He is “ Lord” by right of inheritance; man, as Mediator between God and man. He is more particularly our “ Lord” by redemption. These names, then, “ Christ, the Lord,” show Him, an all-sufficient Saviour; show Him, God and man united in one Person: as man to suffer, as God to redeem. (E. Blencowe, M. A.) Luke 2:12 And this shall be a sign unto you.--What the angels said to the shepherds was, “ This shall be the sign unto you; ye shall find a babe,” a babe like any other, “ wrapped in swaddling clothes,” differing from other babes only in the lowliness of His birth, “ lying in a manger.” The absence of any adventitious source of interest, anything awe-inspiring in the circumstances of the birth of Christ, was no mere casual incident; it was eminently significant, characteristic of His life, a symbol of His sway. The identification of “ signs” with “ wonders” was the common error of the Jews. All Israel was expectant of the Messiah. The reason why they received Him not was that they could not recognize the Divine in the ordinary. A babe was born in Bethlehem: only by those who shared the mother’ s prophetic insight was the mystery of God’ s interposition seen in His birth. Angels sang of His advent; their song was mute save to the listening ear of a few shepherds. And this is the common error of us all. “ He that receiveth a prophet,” says Christ, “ in the name of a prophet, shall receive a prophet’ s reward.” Yes, we respond, that is well; we all shall know a prophet when we see him. But Christ also says, “ Whoso shall receive a little child in My name re-ceiveth Me.” He who is blind to the Christ in the little child may also fail to see the prophet when he comes. Such as Christ was manifested here, such did He ever continue. He would steal into the life of humanity as a babe twines round a mother’ s heart. He would draw men to Him by the charm and sweetness of human sanctity; and to those who were thus attracted to Him and abode in His fellowship, there came at length the revelation that this was the Divine. The cross lay hidden in the manger of Bethlehem. He was already bearing the only cross a babe can bear, poverty and man’ s contempt; sweetened by a mother’ s care, the symbol of that affection of pious hearts which never failed Him throughout His vexed and troubled history; and hallowed by the Father’ s approval of the well-beloved Son, in whom, now as ever, He was well pleased. The sacrificial purpose and saving energy of His life already appeared. “ Though He was rich, yet for our sakes,” &c. The mother of Jesus and the adoring shepherds must have been struck by the contrast between the honour of His annunciation and the meanness of His birth; between the splendours of the angelic host, and the manger where He lay. Eighteen centuries of Christian history have taught us that herein is no contrast, but profound consistency. What honour could the world have rendered the Son of God which would not have more sharply contrasted with His character and mission than poverty and the world’ s neglect? There is nothing in common between Christ and the luxury of wealth, the ostentation of a palace, the statecraft of a Court. The manger of Bethlehem is the sign of the Messiah; the lowly, self-accepted lot of Jesus is the seal of His divinity. Men soar, God stoops; ambition is human, condescension is Divine. When God reveals Himself for man’ s salvation it can only be by sacrifice; and the more complete the sacrifice, the fuller is the revelation. (A. Mackennal, D. D.) The sign of Jesus Christ What a wonderful contrast between this verse and that which follows! What greatness on the one side, what humility on the other! That humility is the sign of the greatness. I. The sign of humility by which the entrance of Jesus into the world was announced, is found throughout the whole course of His history. II. The same contrast is found in the institutions which Jesus has left to preserve in His Church the remembrance of His benefits. III. There is, again, this same contrast of grandeur and humility to mark, with a Divine seal, the Church of Jesus Christ. 1. In its origin, composed of obscure persons from lowest ranks of a small unknown people. 2. As it exists to-day wherever the true Church is to be found. IV. The same sign of humility will enable us to recognize the worship with which God is pleased. V. The sign of humility which is constantly found in Christ, and in all that springs from Christ, must be found also among His disciples. (Horace Monod.) Lessons of the holy manger At the cradle of Christianity, we may observe something of the predestined form both of Christian doctrine and Christian life. In the bud we trace the probable shape and colour of the coming flower. When standing at the source of a river we can determine at least the general direction of its course. In the Sacred Infancy, too, we may discern, without risk of indulgence in over-fanciful analogies, a typical portraiture of the Christian creed, and a precious lesson for good Christian living. To the theologian and the practical Christian, the sign of the manger and of the swaddling clothes is at least as full of meaning now as it was of old to the shepherds of Bethlehem. I. LOOK THEN AT THE CREED OF THE CHURCH. It has two sides, two aspects. It is one thing to sight, another to faith. To sight, it is wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a manger. To faith, it is revealed from heaven as supernatural and Divine. II. Consider THE MORAL IMPORT OF THE MANGER-BED OF THE INFANT JESUS. The world-wide principle of spiritual death needed to be expelled by a stronger and not less universal principle. It demanded a regenerating force, resting not on theory but on fact, a principle human in its form and action, but Divine in its strength and origin. Such a privilege we find in the Babe, wrapped, &c. This was indeed the Divine Word, engrafted on human nature, and able to save the souls of men. The Incarnation was the source of a moral revolution. By saving man it was destined to save human society. It confronted sensuality by endurance and mortification. It confronted covetousness by putting honour upon poverty. It taught men that a man’ s highest life consisteth not in the abundance of the things that he possesseth. But its great lesson was a lesson of humility. In the humiliation of the Highest, the nations read the truth which the incarnate Lord taught in words:--“ Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven.” For us men humility is the law of progress, because it is the admission of truth. At Christ’ s manger may we learn the blessed temper which makes faith, repentance, perseverance, easy, and to which are promised the crowns of glory, worn by the blessed around His throne. (Canon Liddon.) The babe: A Christmastide meditation The Incarnation was the great event in the world’ s history. Nothing can rival in interest to us the coming of God in our mortal flesh; the shadowing of Deity in a human form, so that we might see Him; the manifestation of Deity in a saving love, so that we might be drawn to Him; the shinings in our humanity of a Divine purity; which should at once reveal to us our sins; and deliver us from their power. I. OUR SAVIOUR WAS A REAL MAN. All are alike at birth--babes. Christ came as we came. He passed through the entire experience of human life, starting from the cradle, right up to and beyond the tomb. II. OUR SAVIOUR WAS SIMPLY A MAN. “ Ye shall find the babe” : just a babe, no more. No accident of birth limited Jesus to any part of the community; there were none of those things about Him on which men pride themselves. He belongs to all, however humble, obscure, poor, simple, needy. III. HE WAS A LOVING MAN. A babe is the emblem of the mightiest thing on earth--love--the sunshine of the Divine radience. IV. He was, for the most part, A MAN. There never seemed to be any room for Him, from His birth onwards. V. HE IS ALL IN ALL TO THOSE WHO RECEIVE HIM. 1. To find this Babe will be the beginning of truest peace to our own hearts. 2. To find this Babe will be the beginning for us of a better, nobler life. 3. To find this Babe will give to us the true spirit of brotherhood and charity. (R. Tuck, B. A.) The sign of the manger Let us think what is the connection here. A sign--a signal: how so? In what sense did the mode and circumstance of the birth make it typical of the thing which Christ comes to do? What is that thing which Christ comes to do? He has come to be the God-man, the Redeemer, the Emmanuel, and the Saviour--the God for us, and God with us, and God in us--of the fallen, the sinful, the erring and straying man. Now, to be this, He must first incorporate Himself with men, take the flesh and blood, the nature and body and spirit of the race which He comes to save. He must first of all incorporate Himself--not with a man, or a few men, but with humanity--with man as man, and not with certain privileged specimens and choice individuals of the race. He has come to undo the fall. He has come to bear the sins, to wipe away the tears, to take the sting out of the death of the Adam race as a whole; therefore He must not only take flesh and blood--become one of us and live our very life: that is not enough. He must go down to the very rock from which we are hewn, and He must put on our nature--not in its ornamental but in its bare form--not as it may deck itself in the embellishment of rank or wealth, of social distinction or philosophical culture, but as it is in itself and in the commonest experiences of its humblest children. If the Divine Saviour had appeared in any other form than this, He would have misled men as to the thing which He came to do, and as to the relation in which He desired to stand as to the lower and the lowest portions of the human family. The sign of the helpless babe and the manger cradle was no capricious or accidental idea; for, inasmuch as it is Christ the Lord, therefore ye shall find Him not in the miraculous strength of an instantaneous maturity, and not in the guest-chambers of a king’ s palace, but as a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger. There was a connection and a congruity between the sign and the reality; for thus it was that Christ became, not the faith of a few, but the Saviour of all. None are poorer, none are humbler, none are less learned, none are less noble after the flesh, than He. None can say now, “ His is the religion of the educated--of the philosophical--of kings and princes--His is the religion which admits or which favours a position of comfort or respectability, and I am none of these, so Christ is not for me.” And when, at this Christmas season, wealth surrounds itself with all its luxuries of mind and body, and thinks it much if, for a moment and in the most perfunctory way, it remembers the poor, we feel how slight must be the hold of these self-indulgers upon the faith which they profess to honour. If we would know the mystery of Christmas; if we would read the riddle of the angel; if we would know why he said, “ The Saviour is born, and the sign is the manger,” we should turn our steps to some poor man’ s chamber with its highbacked chair and its open Bible. We shall hear that man say, “ Oh, I love both to be abased and to abound. I am instructed both to be full and to be hungry, for Christ the Lord was born this day for our salvation, and His first earthly resting place was a yard and a manger.” (Dean Vaughan.) Divine things veiled under earthly forms This shall be your sign: not the march of a conqueror, not the splendour of a king, but the Babe wrapped in swaddling bands and lying in a manger! Wherever God is, the presence is secret. What, for example, is the Book of God--the Bible--but an example of this sanctity in commonness: a heap of leaves, marked with ink and hand, stamped with signs for sounds, multiplied by printing-press and steam-engine, conveyed hither and thither by railways, bought and sold in shops, tossed from hand to hand in schools and homes, lost and dissipated by vulgar wear and tear? But go back to its composition. What was the Bible as it came forth originally, book by book, and chapter by chapter, from the mind which thought, and from the hand which wrote it? Was it not written, after all, both in composition and in dictation, like any other work of poetry or philosophy, of history or fiction--by the brain and nerve power of common-human beings? Was it not given forth line by line from the lips of a Paul sitting at the tent-making, or some other evangelist alternating between preaching and handicraft--by the utterance of sounds in an imperfect human language to some obscure Persis or other amanuensis reporting? Yet in that Book of books, thus material, thus earthly, thus human in its circumstances, there lies concealed the very breath and spirit of God Himself, mighty to stir hearts, and mighty to regenerate souls. The swathing bands of sense and time enclose the living and moving power which is of eternity, which is Divine. Nay, the sign of the true Deity is the fact that the form is human. Take another example of this from another of God’ s instruments of communication. What is that vessel for holding common water, which is the appendage of every Christian place of worship? Is there anything in that laver--that font--but what is of the earth, and of the very commonest of all earth’ s gifts for refreshing and purifying? “ What can be the use,” some might inquire, “ of bringing that earthly water into the House of God’ s worship, as though we had forgotten our Master’ s own words, ‘ God is a Spirit’ ? What significance can there be--certainly what virtue--in sprinkling those few drops of common water upon the forehead of a child, with or without a particular form of sacred words accompanying? What, again, can be less intelligible than that sight of that little frugal table of common bread and common wine, standing there in front of the congregation? How can eating and drinking in God’ s house affect, in any degree, for good the soul of the worshipper?” We can but answer that Christ our Master commanded the one sacrament as the appointed way of dedicating a new life to His service, and that He appointed the other sacrament as commemorative of His own death and passion--as instrumental, also, in nourishing the soul that in it feeds upon Him by faith. And though it would be presumptuous, indeed, to attach any value to a form of man’ s invention, we feel that the presumption would be all the other way if we neglected an ordinance of Jesus Christ, because it was either too mysterious for us, or too carnal. Nay, we can almost read in the very simplicity a signal of His working, who, when He came on earth came as a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, and made it a sign of His presence that He was lying in a manger. But the same thing which is true of the Bible and of the sacraments, is true also of the Church and of the Christian. Where is it, we ask, that God in Christ dwells most certainly, most personally, on this earth? It is no word of man’ s invention which answers, to the Church--“ Ye, collectively, are the temple of God,” and, to the Christian “ your body is the shrine of the Holy Ghost, which is in you.” Yet if we look at the men and the women and the children thus spoken to, we see nothing but human beings, frail and fallen, occupied for a large part of their life in the employments and the relaxations, in the talk and in the seeking, which are common alike to the righteous and the wicked, and which would equally be theirs if they had neither faith nor heaven. The treasure of the Divine light is always held in earthen vessels; not until the pitcher is broken at the fountain shall the full radiance shine out so as to be read of all men. Meanwhile the sign of God is the commonness. Christ came not to take men out of the world, but to consecrate and keep them in it. Coming to redeem earth, He takes earth as it is: not the ideal, but the real; and makes this the very token of His being amongst us--that we find a helpless babe and a manger cradle. (Dean Vaughan.) The practice of swathing infants When the Gospels were translated in our venerable version, it did not occur to any of the translators that the word “ swaddling clothes” would ever be an obsolete word, needing to be illustrated by a description of ancient or foreign customs. And yet so it is at this day. The usage which is alluded to in this word is to us entirely strange. Few things among the old world customs, I venture to say, strike some of us as more outlandish--more pitiable even--more entirely removed from our notions of good care and right training--than the swaddling of little helpless babies, as it is practised, for instance, in Germany. I do not believe an American mother can generally pass one of those poor little Wickelkinder, strapped down on its back to a pillow by spiral after spiral of convoluted bandages, without longing to apply the scissors and let the little prisoner go free. And yet it is only a few generations since this way of treating new-born children prevailed, with variations and aggravations, in all nations, even the most civilized. We owe our own emancipation, in this land and century, from this and other artificial traditions, to no other single influence so much as to a remarkable book published in the middle of the last century by a citizen of Geneva--the “ Emile” of Jean Jacques Rousseau. It speaks thus of the universally prevalent treatment of an infant child as it had continued to his day: “ Scarcely does the child begin to enjoy the liberty of moving and stretching its limbs, when it is placed anew in confinement. It is wound in swaddling clothes, and laid down with its head fixed, its legs extended, its arms at its sides. It is surrounded with clothes and bandages of all sorts that prevent it from changing its position. It is a good thing if they do not even draw the bands so tight as to hinder respiration, and if they have the foresight to lay it on its side to avoid the danger of strangulation … The inaction and constraint in which the child’ s limbs are confined must necessarily disturb the circulation, hinder the child from gaining strength, and affect its constitution … Is it possible that such cruel constraint can fail to affect the character of the child, as well as its physical temperament? Its first conscious feeling is a feeling of pain and suffering. It finds nothing but hindrances to the motions which it craves. More wretched than a criminal in irons, it frets and cries. The first gifts it receives are fetters; the first treatment it experiences is torture.” Such was the practice of a hundred years ago in the highest families of the most civilized country in the world. In many lands, partly owing to this very protest, the practice is better now. But in the slow-going East the common practice of the nursery is no better, and it is probably no worse than it was nineteen hundred years ago. But it is worse than anything we ever see or hear of ill this part of the world. In fact, it comes nearer to the binding of an Indian papoose to a board, than to anything that we are accustomed to see in the families of Christendom. Once wound around with these swathing-bands, sometimes with an addition of fresh earth against the skin, and packed in their cradles like a little mummy in its coffin, the poor little babies are expected to stay there, all cries and complaints notwithstanding; they are not removed by their mothers even for such necessary occasions as to be fed. I have heard pitiful stories told by missionaries’ wives, and by missionary physicians, in the East, of the sufferings of little infants in consequence of the obstinate persistence of parents in a usage which we clearly see to be so unreasonable and unnatural. (Leonard W. Bacon.) The sign of the swaddling clothes Is it not strange, you will ask, that when the shepherds were given a sign by which they should know their new-born Saviour, they should be told, not of something distinguishing Him from all children beside, but of something common to all the infants that were born that night in all Judea? “ Ye shall find wrapped in swaddling clothes.” Why not say, according to the instincts of heathen mythology, Ye shall know Him by the bees that gather to suck the honey of His lips, or the strangled serpents that lie about His cradle? Why not say, according to the suggestions of Christian legend and art, Ye shall know Him by the aspect of supernatural majesty, which it shall be the dream and the disappointment of all the world’ s artists to attempt to portray? Or, Ye shall know Him by tile halo of celestial light beaming from His brow, as in the “ Holy Night” of Correggio, and filling the rude stall with an unearthly brightness? Or, Ye shall know Him by some accessories worthy of so royal a birth, by gifts of gold and myrrh and frankincense that strew the humble shed? The very question brings its answer: You are to know Him from all these natural dreams of a fond imagination, from the hopeful prognostications of Hebrew mothers, or the impatient fancies of fanatics, or the artful fictions of impostors taking advantage of the general expectation with which the very atmosphere of Palestine was saturated, to set forth some feigned Messiah--you are to know Him from all these by the fact that He is just the opposite of all such imaginings--that He is to all appearance just a helpless human infant, the most helpless thing in the whole creation, bound and bandaged in swaddling clothes. And if you would know how to distinguish Him from other such, it is not by His grandeur but by His poverty. There is no room in the inn for such as He; and they have laid Him in the manger, among the cattle The sign given to the shepherds is a sign also to us--that we find the Holy Child wrapped in swaddling clothes. Illustrious men have sometimes had an honest pride in inscribing upon their escutchon, beneath a noble crest, the symbol of the humble mechanic rank in which they had their origin. So the Church of Christ, beneath the diadem of supreme royalty, quarters upon its shield, beside the cross and the thongs, the manger and the swaddling bands, and invites the world to read the blazon. That family group which the painters of every later age have been essaying to depict--the carpenter with his simple, uninquisitive faith obedient to heavenly visions, the pure Virgin with her unskilled maiden tenderness pondering strange memories in her heart, both leaning over the Wonderful, but understanding not the saying which He speaks to them--these speak over again to us the language of that prophet who first called his child “ Immanuel,” “ Behold we and the Child whom the Lord hath given us are for signs and for wonders from the Lord of hosts.” (Leonard W. Bacon.) Naturalness of the truly great To illustrate the use of such a sign as was given to the shepherds, let me suppose some traveller accustomed to the splendour and reserve of royal courts visiting the city of Washington, and asking, on his way to the White House, how he should find the President. We should tell him, “ You may know him by this sign. He is a plain man, plainly dressed in a black suit, and you will find him in the centre of the thickest crowd, and everybody coming up to shako hands with him. First, he is not distinguished in the way you expect him to be; and, secondly, he is unmistakably distinguished in just the opposite way.” But for some such “ sign” as this our traveller might naturally mistake for the President some attache of a South American Embassy standing apart in a halo of dignity and a light blaze of gold lace. This “ wrapped in swaddling-clothes and lying in a manger” was just the sign the shepherds needed. And we do well if, looking for the Christ, we take heed to it ourselves. We are not yet safe from the error of them of old time, who thought to find the Lord clothed in soft raiment and dwelling in king’ s palaces. (Leonard W. Bacon.) Christ’ s humility In His nativity, and in His temptation (Mark 1:13), Christ was among beasts. Believers, ambitious of high place, forget their Master’ s cradle. A manger is here honoured above a thousand glittering thrones. It is an ornament of His royalty, a throne of His glory. He comes in humility; He reigns in humility; He leads by humility. The manger and the cross are stumbling-blocks to many. His infancy and death are still rocks, wrecking human pride. (Van Doren.) The sign of the Incarnation Christmas is full of surprises. It brings in, as no other event ever did, the element of mystery, of wonder. Its testimony is, God became manifest in the flesh. The Eternal Word was joined with a perfect human nature. The miracle of the Incarnation transcends every other that has been and will be wrought. It is in itself a wonder so great that all the accompaniments of the birth of Jesus sink into comparative insignificance. We are, I fear, inclined to forget the majesty of the fact in the strangeness of its surroundings. We count it a wonderful thing that He should have been born in the stable of a country inn, whereas the real wonder is that such a birth should take place anywhere, and so I ask you to contemplate one of the signs by which the shepherds of Bethlehem were to find and know the incarnate God--“ Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes.” I. It reminds us, by way of analogy, of a fact which constitutes the most trying element in the mystery of the Incarnation, namely, that GOD THEREBY CAME WITHIN CERTAIN . HOW an uncreated and omnipresent, that is, a boundless, Infinite Being could be contracted within the circumference of a human life is the most puzzling problem of revelation. The impossibility of our understanding this is a temptation, not perhaps to deny, but to forget the deeper meaning of the Christmas feast. Remember, then, that within these swathing bands which encircled the infant form of Jesus there was bound the nature of a Being more than human, even God Himself. Men may call this an unreasonable tax upon our faith. It is rather a sign of God’ s condescension to human weakness. The whole secret of the history of idolatry among the Jews and the Gentiles was a longing for some visible manifestation of Him whom they felt they must worship. Man instinctively longs for some incarnate form, some Word of his Maker manifest in the flesh, some finite manifestation of the Infinite Father. And the birth of Jesus, the enshrining of God within a human form, the swathing of that power, which otherwise knows no bounds, was but an answer to man’ s desire. II. The sign holds good, not only of the nature of Christ, but likewise of THE LIFE WHICH, FROM FIRST TO LAST, HE LIVED. That also was like every purely human life, hemmed in. It unfolded according to the ordinary laws of growth. His babyhood was as real as His manhood. He increased in wisdom as well as stature. He learned gradually the wisdom which all the world now confesses. The common idea which people have of Jesus is that, being Divine, He was exempt from the ordinary conditions of common men; that He never knew constraint; that there were no barriers opposing Him, no bands fettering the free exercise of that Divine power which lay hidden within Him. Yet duty was sometimes hard for Him. He longed to do things which He might not attempt, because the higher and more spiritual dictates of His conscience forbade it. The kingdoms of this world and their glory looked as fair and tempting to His soul as they do to ours. But the law of righteousness, the swathing-bands of duty, the rules of obedience which God throws around us, likewise constrained Him. III. The manner of the Incarnation shows GOD’ S OF HUMAN NATURE. If you are ever tempted to despise human nature because you see it now and then wearing disagreeable phases, or to think ill of, nay, to slight, your friends, remember God’ s estimate of them. He does not thus stoop and toil to save the worthless. From being a King He descended to the lowest form of human life, entered the world in utter helplessness, was wrapped in swaddling clothes, and during all His development here on earth never rose above that form of a servant which He had taken. And He did all this, because even fallen man was dearer to His heart than the world of lost angels. (E. E. Johnson, M. A.) Great things from small beginnings Not, Ye shall find the angel in the heavens, the king on his throne, the young prince in a palace, the commander at the head of his armies, but “ the babe in a manger.” How strange are God’ s ways of working out His strange plans! It is not by might, nor by power, that His agencies accomplish their vast work. The least things are often the greatest in His providence (1 Corinthians 1:27-29). It may be the shepherd boy with his sling who gains victory over the mailed giant in whose presence the whole army of Israel stands trembling; it may be the tinker in Bedford Jail who writes a masterpiece in religious literature, to be honoured for centuries for its work and its worth; it may be the unschooled clerk from a Boston shoe-store who proclaims the gospel with a fervency and power which the best-cultured divines of all Christendom have not attained to; or it may be in the most unprepossessing child of your school or class that the grandest possibilities for the kingdom of Christ to-day lie hid. (H. C. Trumbull.) The fitness of the sign “ This shall be the sign,” saith the angel. “ Shall be” ; but should it be this? No; how should it be? Let us see. Why, this shall be the sign; ye shall find the Child, not in these clouts or cratch, but in a crimson mantle, in a cradle of ivory. That, lo, were somewhat Saviour-like I But in vain take we upon us to teach the angel; we would have--we know not what. We forget St. Augustine’ s distingue tempera; as the time is the angel is right, and a fitter sign could not be assigned. Would we have had Him come in power and great glory? and so He will come, but not now. He that cometh here in clouts will one day come in the clouds. But now His coming was for another end, and so to be in another manner. His coming now was “ to visit us in great humility,” and so His sign to be according. Nay, then, I say, first go to the nature of a sign; if Christ had come in His excellency, that had been no sign, no more than the sun in the firmament shining in his full strength. Contrary to the course of nature it must be, else it is no sign. The sun eclipsed, the sun in sackcloth; that is signum in sole, “ the sign indeed” (Luke 21:25). And that is the sign here: the Sun of Righteousness entering into His eclipse begins to be darkened in His first point, the point of His nativity. This is the sign, say I, and that had been none. (Bishop Lancelot Andrewes.) The sign nothing; the treasure all Make of the sign what ye will; it skills not what it be, never so mean. In the nature of a sign there is nothing, but it may be such; all is in the thing signified. So it carry us to a rich signature, and worth the finding, what matter how mean the sign be? We are sent to a crib, not to an empty crib; Christ is in it. Be the sign never so simple, the signature it carries us to makes amends. Any sign with such a signatnm. And I know not the man so squeamish, but if, in his stable and under his manger, there were a treasure hid, and he were sure of it, but thither he would, and pluck up the planks, and dig and rake for it, and be never a whir offended with the homeliness of the place. If, then, Christ be a treasure, as in Him are “ all the treasures of the wisdom and bounty of God,” what skills it what be His sign. With this, with any other, Christ is worth the finding. He is not worthy of Christ who will not go anywhither to find Christ. (Bishop Lancelot Andrewes.) Christ born in a manger At midnight from one of the galleries of the sky a chant broke forth. To an ordinary observer there was no reason for such a celestial demonstration. If there had been such brilliant and mighty recognition at an advent in the House of Pharaoh, or at an advent in the House of Caesar, or the House of Hapsburg, or the House of Stuart, we would not so much have wondered; but a barn seems too poor a centre for such delicate and archangelic circumference. The stage seems too small for so great an act, the music too grand for such unappreciative auditors, the windows of the stable too rude to be serenaded by other worlds. I. THAT NIGHT IN THE MANGER WAS BORN FOR ALL THE POORLY STARTED. He had only two friends--they His parents. No satin-lined cradle, no delicate attentions, but straw and the cattle, and the coarse joke and banter of the camel drivers. From the depths of that poverty He rose, until to-day He is honoured in all Christendom, and sits on the imperial throne in heaven. Do you know that the vast majority of the world’ s deliverers had barnlike birthplaces? Luther, the emancipator of religion, born among the mines. Shakespeare, the emancipator of literature, born in a humble home at Stratford-on-Avon. Columbus, the discoverer of a world, born in poverty at Genoa. Hogarth, the discoverer of how to make art accumulative and administrative of virtue, born in a humble home at Westminster. Kitto and Prideaux, whose keys unlocked new apartments in the Holy Scriptures which had never been entered, born in want. Yea, I have to tell you that nine out of ten of the world’ s deliverers were born in want. I stir your holy ambitions to-day, and I want to tell you, although the whole world may be opposed to you, and inside and outside of your occupations or professions there may be those who would hinder your ascent, on your side and enlisted in your behalf are the sympathetic heart and the almighty arm of One who, one Christmas night about eighteen hundred and eighty years ago, was wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a manger. Oh, what magnificent encouragement for the poorly started! II. Again, I have to tell you that IS THAT VILLAGE BARN THAT NIGHT WAS BORN TO MEN, whether you call it kindness, or forbearance, or forgiveness, or geniality, or affection, or love. It says, “ Sheathe your swords, dismount your guns, dismantle your batteries, turn the warship Constellation, that carried shot and shell, into a grain ship to take food to famishing Ireland, hook your cavalry horses to the plough, use your deadly gunpowder in blasting rocks and in patriotic celebration, stop your lawsuits, quit writing anonymous letters, extract the sting from your sarcasm, let your wit coruscate but never burn, drop all the harsh words out of your vocabulary--Goodwill to men.” III. Again, I remark that BORN THAT NIGHT IN THE VILLAGE BARN WAS UNION WITH OTHER WORLDS. Move that supernatural grouping of the cloud banks over Bethlehem, and from the special trains that ran down to the scene I find that our world is beautifully and gloriously and magnificently surrounded. The meteors are with us, for one of them ran to point down to the birthplace. The heavens are with us, because at the thought of our redemption they roll hosannas out of the midnight sky. IV. Again, I remark that THAT NIGHT BORN IN THAT VILLAGE BARN WAS THE ’ S HOPE. Some sermonizers may say I ought to have projected this thought at the beginning of the sermon. Oh, no! I wanted you to rise toward it. I wanted you to examine the cornelians and the jaspers and the emeralds and the sardonyx before I showed you the Kohinoor--the crown jewel of the ages. Oh, that jewel had a very poor setting! The cub of the bear is born amid the grand old pillars of the forest, the whelp of a lion takes its first step from the jungle of luxuriant leaf and wild flower, the kid of the goat is born in cavern chandeliered with stalactite and pillared with stalagmite. Christ was born in a bare barn. Yet that nativity was the offender’ s hope. Over the door of heaven are written these words, “ None but the sinless may enter here.” “ Oh, horror,” you say, “ that shuts us out!” No. Christ came to the world in one door, and He departed through another door. He came through the door of the manger, and He departed through the door of the sepulchre; and His one business was so to wash away our sin that after we are dead there will be no more sin about us than about the eternal God. I know that is putting it strongly, but that is what I understand by full remission. All erased, all washed away, all scoured out, all gone. Oh! now I see what the manger was. Not so high the gilded and jewelled and embroidered cradle of the Henrys of England, or the Louis of France, or the Fredericks of Prussia. Now I find out that that Bethlehem crib fed not so much the oxen of the stall as the white horses of Apocalyptic vision. Now I find the swaddling clothes enlarging and emblazing into an imperial robe for a conqueror. (Dr. Talmage.) The Child in the manger I. Learn from this story of the birth of Jesus, in the first place, that IS NOT ALWAYS OF . When princes are born, heralds pro claim it, and flags wave it, and cannon thunder it, and illuminations set cities on fire with the tidings; but when Christ was born there was no demonstration of earthly honour or homage. Poor, and, if possible, getting poorer, and yet the recognition of the angel host proves the truth of the proposition that indigence is no sign of degradation. In all ages of the world there have been great hearts throbbing under rags, gentle spirits under rough exterior, gold in the quartz, Parian marble in the quarry, and in the very stables of poverty wonders of excellence that have been the joy of the heavenly host. Poetry, and science, and law, and constitutions, and commerce, like Christ, were born in a manger. Great thoughts that seem to have been the axle-tree on which the centuries turned, started in some obscure corner, and had Herods who tried to slay them, and Iscariots who betrayed them, and Pilates who unjustly condemned them, and rabbles who crucified them, and sepulchres which confined them until they broke forth again in glorious resurrection. Men are, like wheat, worth all the more for being flailed. Strong character, like the rhododendron, is an alpine plant which grows best in the tempest. There arc a great many men who are now standing in the front rank of the Church of God who would have been utterly useless had they not been ground and hammered in the foundries of disaster. II. Again, I learn from the text that IT IS WHEN WE ARE ENGAGED IN OUR LAWFUL THAT WE HAVE DIVINE MADE TO US. If these shepherds had gone that night into the village, and risked their flocks among the wolves, they would not have heard the song of the angels. In other words, he sees most of God and heaven who minds his own business! We are all shepherds, and we have large flocks of cares, and we must tend them. I know there are a great many busy men who say, “ Oh, if I had only time, I would be good. If I had the days and the months and the years to devote to the subject of religion, I should be one of the best of Christians.” A great mistake are you making. The busiest men are generally the best men. There is no point from which you can get clearer views of duty than at the merchant’ s counter, or the accountant’ s table, or on the mason’ s wall. III. Again, the story of the text STRIKES AT THE POPULAR FALLACY THAT THE OF CHRIST IS AND GRIEF-. The music that broke through that famous birth-night was not a dirge, but an anthem. It shook joy over the midnight hills. It not only dropped among the shepherds, but it sprang upward among the thrones. The robe of righteousness is not black. The religious life is not all weeping and sighing, and cross-bearing and warfare. Christianity does not frown on amusements and recreations. It quenches no light. It defaces no heart. Among the happy it is the happiest. Heaven itself is only a warmer love and a brighter joy. IV. Again, I learn from this subject, WHAT ENDINGS COME FROM SMALL AND . The New Testament Church was on a small scale. The fishermen watched it. Small beginnings, but glorious endings. A throne linked to a manger. Mansions of light at God’ s right hand associated with stables of poverty. V. I learn, finally, from this story of the birth of Christ, THE RESULT OF A SAVIOUR’ S MISSION. Have you ever thought how strangely this song of peace must have sounded to the Roman Empire? Why, that Roman Empire gloried in its arms, and boasted of the number of men it had slain, and with triumph looked at conquered provinces. Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica, Macedonia, Egypt, had bowed to her sword, and crouched at the cry of her war eagles. Their highest honours had been bestowed upon Fabius and Scipio and Caesar. It was men of blood and carnage that they honoured. With what contempt they must have looked upon a kingdom the chief principle of which was to be goodwill to men, and upon the unarmed, penniless Christ, who, in Nazarene garb, was about to start out for the conquest of the nations. If all the blood which has been shed in battle were gathered together in one great lake, it would bear up a navy. The blow that struck Abel into the dust has had its echo in the carnage of all the centuries. If we could take our stand on some high mountain of earth, and have all the armies of other ages pass along, what a spectacle! There go the hosts of the Israelites through scores of Red Seas, one of them of water, the rest of blood. There go the armies of Cyrus, lifting their infuriate yell over prostrate Babylon. There goes Alexander, with his innumerable host, conquering all but himself, and making the earth to reel under the battle gash of Persepolis and Chaeronia. There goes the great Frenchman, down through Egypt like one of its own plagues, and up through Russia like one of its own ice-blasts. Host after host. Tramp tramp, tramp. Coming down to our day, I appeal to the grave-trench under the shadow of Sebastopol, and turning to India I show you fallen Delhi, and Allahabad, and the inhuman Sepoys, and the regiments of Havelock avenging the insulted flag of Great Britain. On this, the day before Christmas, I bring you good tidings of great joy. A Saviour for the lost. Medicine for the sick. Light for the blind. Harbour for the bestormed. Eternal life for the dead. (Dr. Talmage.) Luke 2:13 With the angel a multitude of the heavenly host The angel’ s song I. THE PASSAGE AS IT LIES BEFORE US IN THE HISTORY. II. MAKE SOME REMARKS UPON THE SUBJECT. 1. If this be the song and taste and sentiment of heaven, what is the taste and sentiment of the men of the earth who call themselves wise, and call us fools for believing the Bible? 2. We learn from the song that no goodwill from heaven can be communicated to man, nor any peace on earth, but what is consistent with the glory of God. 3. Herein are afforded sufficient encouragement and direction to every believing heart. (R. Cecil, M. A.) A multitude of the heavenly host In that distant age, as by no means since, the ministry of angels was familiar to the human mind--was required to answer, in fact, the necessities of human thought. On occasions infinitely less important than the birth of One whose name should be called Jesus, the Saviour, the angels then came and went in the universe freely, because in mind and for mind the universe was what it was. Since then not one has come. So the impression made then by its being said that this event was made illustrious by the attendance of a multitude of the heavenly host, and that which is made now, cannot be wholly the same. With all our ideas of the universe, it is infinitely more wonderful now than it was then. As it is so much more wonderful, it is so much more difficult to realize in thought. And so it is with reference to all else that is wonderful in the story of that birth to which the thoughts of the best part of the human race go back as to no other event in all human history. The modes of thought and of expression with regard to all that are unchanged by the lapse of ages--in the letter unchanged--but are they actually the same in spirit to us as they were in another age under cruder and almost opposite conditions of human thought? So shadowy has the angelic host become to mortal men now, to whom in their direst need or in their loftiest ecstasies no angels come, that the joy of that angelic host over the birth of the Saviour of mankind, so far from communicating itself to the Christian world of to-day, as it did once, is never felt save at Christmas, and then it would be hard to say by whom. This is not as it should be. To the thought of Christian men and women eighteen centuries ago the angelic host and their joy were real. Why should they not be so to our thought too? That these men and women were even as we are is the key to all history. With all that there is in our modern modes of thought to make the supernatural seem to us in fact, however it may be in name, one and the same thing with the incredible or faintly believed--with all that there is of this in our modern modes of thought, that which is in them, too, of a powerful apprehension of the idea of Christ’ s life as the most signal manifestation of the Divine, is enough, if it be only well and truly considered, to make the angelic host and their song as real to us as ever they were to any generation of men--much more real, at any rate, than they have been to many in this generation. (J. Service, D. D.) Music Music has been called the speech of angels. I will go further and call it the speech of God Himself. Without words it is wonderful--blessed--one of God’ s best gifts to men. But in singing you have both the wonders together, music and words. Why is there music in heaven? Because in music there is no self-will. It goes on certain laws and rules which man did not make, but has only found out. Music is a pattern of the everlasting life of heaven, because in heaven, as in music, is perfect freedom and perfect pleasure; and yet that freedom comes not from throwing away law, but from obeying God’ s law perfectly; and that pleasure comes not from a self-will, and doing each what he likes, but from perfectly doing the will of the Father who is in heaven. And that in itself would be sweet music, even if there were neither voice nor sound in heaven. Some of us may not be able to make music with our voices; but we can make it with our hearts, and join in the angel’ s song this day, if not with our lips, yet in our lives. Christmas has always been a day of songs, of carols, and of hymns; and so let it be for ever. For on Christmas Day, most of all days (if I may talk of eternal things according to the laws of time) was manifested on earth the everlasting music which was in heaven. (Charles Kingsley.) Suddenly, or spirit and understanding There are two classes of persons between whom a mutual distrust exists, because they fail to appreciate each other’ s attitude toward the events of the universe. I. The first class expects all things to come to pass gradually, so that their courses may be traced. The motive of this class is intellectual; the mind wants to correlate facts. Sudden transitions, having been hitherto supposed to argue the absence of natural causes, are unwelcome to the scientific mind. II. The other class cares little for natural causes, but rather delights in things supposed to be unexplainable by any but extra-natural interventions. It knows that worship is the highest exercise of the mind, and it desires sudden and mysterious events to quicken the feeling of reverence. III. Between these extremes our text mediates by affirming the sudden occurrences, but associating them by a copulative, rather than an adversative conjunction with the things that went before them. In this it has the authority of many scientific men (notably Dr. Maudsley), who assert that there are indeed leaps and sudden changes and specific differences, while they assign them to natural causes, thus contrasting them only with other events and things, not with nature as a whole, and connecting them copulatively instead of adversatively with other phenomena. Nor does this destroy the value of such events as calls to worship. The surprise caused by a sudden event often wakes up a sleeping sense of reverence whether the event is explainable or not. God means to surprise us, but He does not mean to put us to confusion. The scientific mind is compelled by the facts to concede the actual occurrence of sudden and surprising events. With the universe full of God the devout mind can afford to concede the presumptive universality of natural causes. Science has kept saying “ not suddenly;” religion has reiterated “ but suddenly;” the Bible calmly says “ and suddenly.” The “ and” suits science, the “ suddenly” suits religion. Let us seek to be devout and scientific both, and sing with spirit and understanding. (American Horniletic Review.) The birth of our Lord The manner and spirit in which we ought to spend Christmas. I. LET US ASCRIBE GLORY TO GOD. The Lord incarnate is placed before us; the Conqueror of Satan; the Saviour of man is thus revealed. Surely, if our hearts can be touched by the motive of gratitude to God for His mercies, we must feel it in the commemoration of the arrival of His Son. Surely we must feel some inclination this day to join the angelic host in “ blessing, praising, and magnifying His Holy Name.” II. LET US SPREAD PEACE ON THE EARTH. All animosities should cease. If God desire to be at peace with us, let us imitate the heavenly pattern set us at Bethlehem. All is peace in heaven, and it is our duty to promote it on earth. III. LET US TOWARDS MEN. IV. Let me impress upon you TO , when this day and year have been added to the past, and even to the end of your lives, THE SEVERAL GRACES TO WHICH I HAVE . Becoming as they are at this season, they become us always. (A. Garry, M. A.) The song of the angels I. THE SONG ITSELF. I. The song consists of a proclamation of peace. We are in a state of hostility and alienation. Not an easy thing to restore peace, consistently with the Divine nature and glory. Not only is the birth of Christ the occasion of a proclamation of peace between us and God, but it restores peace to our own mind. There is also peace made with our fellows and neighbours and kindred, and with the whole creaturely universe. II. THE SONG AS SUNG ON THIS --that is, as sung by ANGELS. 1. They are the most intellectual part of God’ s creation; they have the purest intellect. 2. Observe not merely their intellectuality by their disinterestedness and impartiality. We are ourselves interested in the whole affair; not so with them. They were never polluted. 3. Their unanimity in singing it. There was no jarring string in that song; no dissenting voice in that harmony. Salvation affects heaven as well as earth. Lessons: 1. A lesson of gratitute to God. 2. Kindness to each other, especially the poor. (J. Beaumont, D. D.) The nativity of our Lord Jesus Christ His own appearance was despicable; that of His retinue was most magnificent. He who was the ancient of days became a helpless infant: He who was the light of the sun, comes into the world in the darkness of the night: He who came that He might lay us in the bosom of the Father, is Himself laid in the manger of a stable. But though meanly welcomed on earth, yet heaven makes abundant amends for all. I. For the first it is said that AN COMPANY OF THE HOST PRAISED GOD. Strange that they should make this day of heaven’ s humiliation their festival and day of thanksgiving. 1. The holy angels rejoiced at the birth of Christ, because it gave them occasion to testify their deepest humility and subjection. To be subject to Christ while He sat upon the throne of His kingdom, arrayed with unapproachable light, controlling all the powers of heaven with a beck, was no more than His infinite glory exacted from them: but to be subject to Him in a cratch, when He hid His beams, was not obedience only but condescension. Now the time is come when they may express their fidelity and Obedience in the lowest estate of their Lord. 2. The angels rejoiced at the birth of Christ because the confirmation of that blessed estate of grace and glory, wherein they now stand, depended upon His incarnation. The government of all creatures is laid upon His shoulders. He is the “ head of all principality and power” (Col Ephesians 1:10). The Mediator confirms them in their holy estate; therefore they rejoiced at the birth of Christ, wherein they saw the Godhead actually united to the human nature; since the merit of this union, long before that, prevailed for their happy perseverance. 3. The holy angels rejoiced at the birth of Christ, from the fervent desire they have of man’ s salvation. II. WHAT THIS SONG IN IT? 1. God’ s glory. God’ s glory is of two sorts, essential and declarative. The abasing nativity of Jesus Christ is the highest advancement of God’ s glory. This is a strange riddle to human reason, for God to raise His glory out of humiliation. (1) In the birth of Christ God glorified the riches of His infinite wisdom. This was a contrivance that would never have entered into the hearts either of men or angels. It is called the wisdom of God (1 Corinthians 1:24). The question was how to satisfy justice in the punishment of sinners, and yet to gratify mercy in their pardon. (2) The birth of Christ glorified the almighty power of God. Is it not almighty power that the infinite Godhead should unite to itself dust and ashes, and be so closely united, that it should grow into one and the same person. (3) By the birth of Christ God glorified the severity of His justice. His Son must rather take flesh and die than that this attribute should remain unsatisfied. (4) By the birth of Christ the truth and veracity of God is eminently glorified, by fulfilling many promises and predictions. (5) The birth of Christ glorifies the infinite purity and holiness of God. (6) Hereby the infinite love and pity of God are eminently glorified. 2. Peace on earth. (1) Peace mutually, between man and man. (2) Peace internally, with a man’ s self, in the region of his own spirit and conscience. (3) Peace with God. Christ was sent into this world as a minister of peace, as a mediator of peace. (a) All the precepts of His doctrine do directly tend to the establishing of peace among men. Christianity teaches us not to offer any injury to others. Christ forbids private revenge and retaliating of wrongs. (b) The examples of Christ all tend to peace. But Christ says Matthew 10:34-35), we must distinguish between the direct end of Christ’ s coming into the world and the accidental issue of it. 3. The infinite love and goodwill that God hath shown towards men. (1) If you consider the Person sent, this will exalt the goodness of God toward us. He lay under no necessity of saving us. (2) Consider the manner and circumstances of Christ’ s coming into the world, then will appear the infinite love and goodwill of God. That Christ was sent, as from the Father, freely: as to Himself, ignominiously. (3) The infinite goodwill of God in sending Jesus Christ into the world appears to be glorious and great, if you consider the persons to whom He was sent. This love is pitched upon froward, peevish, and rebellious creatures. (4) It is evident from these many great benefits, of which, by Christ’ s coming, we are made partakers. (E. Hopkins, D. D.) The glory of the heavenly host an argument for more than bare necessity in the service of God May not sundry ceremonies be left out, say they, and yet our religion be sound and entire? Indeed, our ceremonies are not necessary in themselves we grant it; why, and what if such great cathedral churches had not been built, nor such rich costly ornaments bestowed upon the roof, upon the choir, upon the Communion Table, might not prayers be read, and sermons preached with poorer habiliments and in meaner places? Well, no man denies but God was faithfully served in dens, and rocks, and caves of the earth, when the apostles and prophets were persecuted. Besides, there are that complain, when one minister may sufficiently and audibly read service to the congregation: frustra fit per plura, what a needless thing it is, to have a choir of singers discharge that, which ordinarily is no more than one man’ s labour? They that make these objections, let them consider what errors they fall into. They may as well tax God Himself for sending a multitude of angels to congratulate the birth of His Son, when two or three would have done the business; for out of the mouth of two or three witnesses shall every word be justified. Why should a reasonable man think it fit to glorify God with bare scanty provision? God hath given us full measure of all His blessings, and running over; therefore no decent ceremony is superfluous, no rich ornament too gorgeous, no strain of our wit too eloquent, no music too sweet, no multitude too great to advance His name, who hath exalted us by the humiliation of His Son, and made us capable to live with angels in heaven, because Christ was content to lie among beasts in a manger. (Bishop Hacker.) Multitude pleasing to God And remember that there is no variation or change in God; as He appointed many angels to sing out His birth, so to this time and for ever He loves to be glorified by multitudes. Let two or three be gathered together in His name rather than one separatist alone; but if you will multiply those two or three to hundreds, to thousands Of souls, O then His desire is upon them that fear Him, and upon those thwackt congregations that call upon His name. He that invited the guests in the Gospel did not think his feast well bestowed till his room was full; therefore he bid his servants scour the highways and bring them in, that his number might be augmented. I commend your private exercises of prayer between God and your own heart, that your Father that sees you devout in secret may reward you openly: but those prayers which you would have most prosperous and successful, send them up in the thickest press of prayers, when a great assembly open their lips together. He that joins his spirit with the spirit of the Church shall be heard as if he prayed with ten thousand voices. (Bishop Hacker.) Trust the heavenly forces O see how many legions He can command” from heaven, and then say, it is a vain thing to trust in the forces of man; it is the Lord that hath powers and principalities in store to awe the world: lo, He cometh with a multitude of the heavenly host. (Bishop Hacker.) One good work quickly followed by another The choir was not long a-tuning, but the hymn was sung immediately after the sermon was ended, like a chime that follows a clock without distinction of a minute: one good work follows another incontinently without any tedious pause or lingering respite. Quick motions of zeal and devotion are ever most acceptable. Procrastinating of time is the ready way to be taken tardy like the foolish virgins. (Bishop Hacker.) Church Psalmody If Asaph and that choir did lift up their note with all sorts of musical instruments in the old law, while the sacrifice was burning upon the altar, I am sure we have much more cause, not in imitation of Asaph, but of the angels, to praise the Lord with psalms, and hymns, and spiritual songs. Luther, I know not upon what reason, unless it were because the angels in my text did begin the gospel with melody, he makes psalmody to be one of the notes of the orthodox Church of Christ. The voice of man certainly is to praise God in its best tunes and elegancies: and the reasons why musical notes are most fit and necessary amidst our Christian prayers are these four: 1. Rules of piety steal into our mind with the delight of the harmony, The Agathyrsians, even to Plato’ s days, were wont to sing their laws, and put them in tune, that men might repeat them in their recreations. 2. It kindles devotion, and fills the soul with more loving affections. Make a cheerful noise to the God of Jacob, says David. As the noise of flutes and of trumpets inspire a courage into soldiers, and inflame them to be victorious, so the psalms of the Church raise up the heart, and make it leap to be with God; as if our soul were upon our lips, and would fly away to heaven. 3. An heavy spirit oppresseth zeal, and that service of God is twice done which is done with alacrity: and our Christian merriment by St. James’ s rule is, singing and making melody to the Lord. When our Saviour and His company were sad the night before His Passion, to put away that heaviness they sang an hymn, when they went to Mount Olivet. 4. To sing some part of Divine doctrine is very profitable, because that which is sung is most treatibly pronounced; the understanding stabs long upon it, and nails it the faster to the memory. (Bishop Hacker) Angelic insight So my text lets you see, that if men be silent, and set not forth the praise of the Lord, the angels will speak, and give Him glory. It were a great shame for the Commons to be rude and irrespectful towards their king, when the nobles and princes of the people are most dutiful and obsequious; so when the Cherubins devote their songs to extol the most High, it were a beastly neglect in man, a worm in respect of a Cherubin, not to bear a part in that humble piety: but to speak after the method of reason, had it not been more proper for the angels at this time to have proclaimed Christ’ s poverty than His power, His infancy than His majesty, His humility in the lowest, rather than His glory in the highest? If there were any glory coming out of this work of the Incarnation, it may seem we had it rather than our Saviour, and He lost it. But the piercing eye of those celestial spirits could see abundant honour compassing Christ about, where ignorant man could espy nothing but vileness and misery. 1. They celebrate the glory of God’ s justice in sending His Son made of a woman, and made under the law, to suffer for us that had sinned against the law, because that justice would not receive man into favour without a satisfaction. 2. They divulge the honour of Christ unto the ends of the world, for the mercy that came down with Him upon all those that should believe in His name; if His justice was not forgotten in their song, surely His mercy should be much more solemnized. The angels for their own share were unacquainted with mercy, ‘ twas news in heaven till this occasion happened; for those rebellious ones of their order that had sinned, they found no grace to remit their trespasses; properly that is called mercy, but a thing so rare and unheard of in heaven, that as soon as ever they saw it stirring in the earth, they sing “ Glory to God in the highest.” 3. They praise the Lord on high for the Incarnation of His Son, because the dignity of the work was so from Himself, that no creature did merit it, none did beseech or intercede unto Him for it, before He had destinate it, nothing but His own compassion could move Him to it. (Bishop Hacker.) The song of angels 1. They knew, in the first place, the glory and greatness of that Being who was cradled in the manger. 2. The angels knew the sinfulness and misery from which the Saviour came to rescue fallen man, as we have never known them. 3. These visitants, again, knew, as we do not, the happiness of that state to which Christ’ s mission would raise us. We have seen, then, that angels praised God with such lively fervours, because they had so much clearer views than we of what Christ came to accomplish, when He was born at Bethlehem. (W. N. Lewis, D. D.) Luke 2:14 Glory to God in the highest The angels’ song (A Christmas sermon) First heard above the plains of Bethlehem it is one day to be heard over all the world. Its sweet melody is to be woven into every language which men have learnt to speak. The angels are to hear it in all dialects and tongues. It is to be the choral response of a gladdened world to the birthday joy which was once poured forth upon the shepherd hearts at Bethlehem. I. WE OWE -TIDE TO . II. LET US THE OF -TIDE WITH “ PEACE ON EARTH AND GOOD-WILL TO MEN.” III. THERE IS JOY IN OF THE PARTIAL OF THIS DIVINE AMONGST THE FAMILY OF MAN. IV. HOW MAY THE ADVENT OF CHRIST BE MADE TO REPEAT ITSELF THIS -TIDE? Whenever peace and goodwill mightily prevail amongst men, that is a time when Christ has a fresh hold upon human hearts. V. We may not forget that THERE ARE HOMES WHICH WILL DEPEND FOR JOY UPON THE CAREFUL THOUGHT AND OF OTHERS. VI. THERE ARE SOME WHOSE HEARTS WILL RE WITH WHICH WILL CROWD AROUND THIS HAPPY PERIOD. (W. Dorling.) A Christmas carol I. How DID THE OF CHRIST BRING GLORY TO GOD? 1. In the fulfilment of prophecy. 2. In the salvation of man. 3. In exhibiting God’ s love without detracting from any other attribute. II. How PEACE ON EARTH? 1. It was not peace at first certainly. Describe the state of the world, especially Palestine, when Christ came, and during succeeding years. 2. But in proportion as Christ is known and felt, there will surely be peace on earth. 3. Peace in the city, town, or village in which Christians dwell. 4. Peace in the family. 5. Peace in the heart. 6. And all this will result from the practice of the principles of that religion whose Founder was cradled in Bethlehem’ s manger, for that religion (1) Subdues the passions; (2) Regulates the life; (3) Elevates the soul. III. How GOOD-WILL TOWARD MEN? 1. When one makes a present to another we look upon it as an expression of good-will. The value of the present is often indicative of the measure of esteem or good-will. God has given us His greatest, choicest gift, for He bestowed His only Son. 2. God’ s good-will becomes even more apparent when we contemplate our own guilt. 3. What have you to say in answer to all this? All God requires from us in recognition of His love is our heart. And if we give Him our heart, we shall surely give our service. Have you given yours to Him? (A. F. Barfield.) The Divine method in the world This is the key-note, not only of the Christian message, but of Divine religion from the beginning. It is ours to follow, not to precede; to ask what has been the Divine method, not to ask what it should have been; and when once we begin to have some light on that view, then it will be ours to ask what are the signs of accomplishment. I. WHAT HAS BEEN THE DIVINE METHOD? 1. We learn that there is a Divinity in this world which secures the direction of growth, but leaves the operative influences that produce it, and the working out of results to great natural laws. 2. We learn that the Divine method implies great length of time. 3. We learn that one universal and insuperable difficulty has been in teaching men how to live together peaceably. II. WHAT, NOW, IS THE AND THE , THE ENTIRE WORLD, OF GOOD-WILL AND PEACE, OR THE ART OF LIVING ? 1. The possibility of happiness among the poor, who constitute by far the largest part of the human race, has been so immensely increased as to form a broad platform on which to put our feet and form an estimate of the gains that have been made. 2. In the mind of the very labourers themselves there is springing up a spirit of organization and thrift, 3. There is coming, gradually, the admission of the great under-class of the human family to a participation in government. 4. The influence of nation upon nation must also be taken into consideration in estimating the advance of the latter-day glory. The globe has become but a single neighbourhood. 5. Look at how God has been raising up four great languages on the globe which ultimately, I think, will result in one. Look at what treasure is stored up in the French, in the German, in the English, and in the Latin. Shall I add the Greek--the language of science? The language of men, the language that contains the doctrines of independence, of liberty, of, I trust, man in man, is the English tongue. It is spoken more widely over the globe than any other. I rejoice with exceeding great joy that the English tongue is a charter of liberty to the human race. III. IF YOU ACCEPT THE OF THE NEW , THEM along the lines of experience, showing what is the Divine method of working upon the human race, the angels that sang peace and good-will at the Advent will not be long delayed before they will sing again. I shall hear that song, not here but yonder. And perhaps joined with it will be the outcry of this glorious achievement which seems to us to have lingered, but that has not lingered, according to the thought of God, who hath done and is doing all things well, and who is the Conqueror of conquerors, the King of kings, the Lord of lords, my Saviour and my God, your Saviour and your God. Trust Him; rejoice in Him; love Him; and reign. (H. W. Beecher.) The angels’ text Such was the text of the angels on the night of our Saviour’ s birth; and to that text our Saviour’ s life furnished the sermon. I. The first words of it are, “ GLORY TO GOD!” and a most weighty lesson may we draw for ourselves from finding the angels put that first. A world is redeemed. Millions on millions of human beings are rescued from everlasting death. Is not this the thing uppermost in the angels’ thoughts? No, it is only the second thing. The first is, Glory to God! Why so? Because God is the giver of this salvation; nay, is Himself the Saviour, in the person of the only-begotten Son. Moreover, because in heavenly minds God always holds the first place, and they look at everything with a view to Him. Now, I would have you look to God in exactly the same manner. Whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, you should do all to God’ s glory. Then will you be like the angels who began their text with, Glory to God! II. The next branch of the text is “ PEACE ON EARTH.” Our Saviour Himself is the Prince of Peace-- 1. Because His great purposes were to bring down peace to man. 2. Because He made it one of His prime objects to plant and foster peace within man. Peace was His legacy to His apostles. 3. But what kind of peace? Truly every kind which man can enjoy. (1) Peace of conscience; (2) peace of heart; (3) peace of a mind at ease about worldly matters; (4) peace and union between brethren, that we may all make up one body under Jesus Christ our Head. Now, let each of us ask himself with all seriousness, Do I feel anything of this godly peace? III. There is a third part of the angels’ text, namely, “ GOOD-WILL TO MEN:” and a very important part it is. For it sets forth the ground of our salvation. It was no excellency or merit of ours that drew our Saviour down from heaven. It was the wretchedness of our fallen state. Herein, as St. Paul tells us, “ God commendeth His love toward us,” &c. (Romans 5:8). But though this love of God for His sinful creatures is worthy of all gratitude and praise, the good-will declared in the angels’ text means something more than mere love. The word which we translate “ Goodwill,” is a word very full of meaning, and signifies that mixture of goodness, and kindness, and wisdom, which tends to good and wise plans. The good-will then in the angels’ text is no other than the great and merciful purpose of our redemption. Have we any proper sense and feeling of this good-will? I have spoken to you on the angels’ text, and in so doing have spoken of man’ s salvation. The end of the whole is God’ s glory; the means is peace on earth; the sole motive is goodness and loving-kindness to us miserable sinners. IV. There are still three words in this text which I have not noticed. The angels did not simply say, “ Glory to God;” but, “ GLORY TO GOD IN THE HIGHEST,” that is, in heaven. Here is a wonderful, a glorious, a soul-sustaining scene opened to us. The angels in the very presence of God are moved by our sufferings and our redemption. Shall they glorify God for His goodness to us, and shall we forget to glorify Him for His goodness to ourselves? (A. W. Hare.) Christmas Day There is considerable difference of opinion as to what is the best reading and the best rendering of this passage. According to Dean Alford and the Revised Version, we should understand it to mean, “ Peace among men towards whom God has a good-will” --that is, in whom He is well pleased. According to the Vulgate the meaning should be, peace to men who exhibit a good-will. This is the sense adopted by Keble in his Christmas hymn. The reading of the Authorised Version is not, perhaps, the best; but, as being more familiar, and at the same time so thoroughly in harmony with the spirit of the day, I will venture to take it as a motto. 1. It must be confessed that the conduct of professing Christians has often been such as to make the angels’ song sound like an ironical sarcasm, rather than an eulogy. Church history, for example, to a passionate lover of peace and good-will, must be very melancholy reading. 2. But I hear some one say,” things are improved now-a-days.” Well, yes, I suppose they are a little. Still many of those who call themselves Christians seem to be characterized by the very opposites of peace and good-will. I remember that in the preface to the second edition of his Belfast Address, Professor Tyndall said he was not surprised at the bitter things which had been uttered against him by Christians, when he remembered how bitterly they were in the habit of recriminating one another. “‘ Tis true, ‘ tis pity; pity ‘ tis, ‘ tis true.” Peace and good-will--peace, or the absence of quarrelsomeness; good-will, or the actual performance of deeds of kindness, are essential characteristics of genuine discipleship. 3. Let us, today, apply this test of discipleship to ourselves. Of all the provisions made for our spiritual welfare, nothing, perhaps, more helpful than the periodical recurrence of days like the present. 4. But it was Christ’ s aim that every day should be in this respect a Christmas Day. Is that the case with us? There was a curious institution in the Middle Ages called the ecclesiastical truce or peace of God. Feuds legally stopped for four days a week. The bell tolled on a Wednesday. All hostilities were to cease till the following Monday. And until the Monday they were suspended; but then they were always faithfully resumed. Shall it be so with us? After mani-resting peace and good-will on the 25th of December, must we relapse again into practical paganism on the 26th? We cannot be always making presents, but we may be always doing good. 5. When peace and good-will are universal, human society will be, as Christ wished to make it, a heaven upon earth. For lo! the days are hastening on By prophet-bands foretold, When with the ever-circling years Comes back the age of gold-- When peace shall over all the earth Its blessed banner fling, And the whole world send back the song Which now the angels sing. (Professor A. W. Momerie.) The angelic hymn The song consists of three propositions, of which two are parallel, and the third forms a link between the other two. In the first, “ Glory to God in the highest places,” the angels demand that, from the lower regions to which they have just come down, from the bosom of humanity, praise shall arise, which, ascending from heavens to heavens, shall reach at last the supreme sanctuary, the highest places, and there glorify the Divine perfections that shine forth in this birth. The second, “ Peace on earth,” is the counterpart of the first. While inciting men to praise, the angels invoke on them peace from God. This peace is such as results from the reconciliation of man with God; it contains the cause of the cessation of all war here below. These two propositions are of the nature of a desire or prayer. The verb understood is ἔστω, let it be. The third, which is not connected with the preceding by any particle, proclaims the fact which is the ground of this twofold prayer. If the logical connection were expressed, it would be by the word for. This fact is the extraordinary favour shown to men by God, and which is displayed in the gift He is bestowing upon them at this very time. The sense is: “ for God takes pleasure in men.” In speaking thus, the angels seem to mean, “ God has not be stowed as much on us (Hebrews 2:16)” The idea of “ good-will” recalls the first proposition, “ Glory to God!” while the expression, towards men,” reminds us of the second, “ peace on earth!” (F. Godet, D. D.) The Gloria in excelsis In the account of this eventful night, the words heard are alone mentioned; one might be pardoned for wishing we had also the score! We all know how an interesting strain of melody will fix itself in our memories; sometimes we can hardly keep from humming it over, repeating snatches of it we have caught, and rehearsing to others the way it went, so as to give an idea, It may be that the shepherds remembered parts of this; but if so, we have no means of ascertaining it. Only the words reach us; but they are well worth the study of the world. The startling abruptness with which this seraphic anthem fell on the ears of the shepherds that first Christmas night, adds greatly to the dramatic effect of the scene. Hardly lingering for their leader to end his communication, that choir of singers “ suddenly” burst forth with loud volume of exquisite harmony, celebrating the praises of Jehovah, whom they saw in a fresh field of splendid display. There were a vast number of singers--“ a host,” that is to say, an army; “ an army celebrating a peace.” Surely there was enough to inspire their music; and great armies of voices sing together quite often with immense power of rich and voluminous harmony. It was an exaggeration, no doubt, but ancient history gravely records that, when the invader of Macedon was finally expelled, the victorious Greeks, who heard the news and so learned that freedom had come, and fighting was over, and home was near, raised along the lines and throughout the camp such a shout of “ Sorer! Soter!” --“ a Saviour! A Saviour!” --that birds on the wing dropped down. It may have been so; but what was that little peninsula of Greece, as compared with this entire race redeemed from Satan unto God? What were the actual words of this angels’ song? It is well that we all recollect them--“ Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill towards men!” Three stanzas in one hymn. 1. The first of them, and the foremost in thought, is “ Glory to God in the highest.” This is not a prayer at all, but an ascription. It was no time to be asking that God be glorified, when the whole universe was quivering with new disclosure of a “ Gloria in Excelsis,” such as blind men could see and deaf men could hear. Those angels did not pray--Glory be to God--but they exclaimed--Glory is to God in the highest! And then they rush rapidly into an enumeration of particulars. The connection of thought is close. Glory to God in the highest, because peace has come on the earth, and goodwill has already gone out toward men. These angels are making proclamation that the rebellious race is for evermore subdued. No longer was this planet to circle around among loyal worlds in space, flaunting the defiant flag of a belligerent in the kingdom of heaven. Men should be redeemed; sin should be positively checked; all the ills of a worn-out and wretched existence should be banished; poverty should be removed, sickness and death find a Master; Satan should be foiled by Immanuel in person. Hence this entire vision, which flashed on the awakened intelligence of the angels and inspired their song, was simply reversive and revolutionary. The whole earth seemed to rouse itself to a new being. Cursed for human sin, it saw its deliverance coming. The day had arrived when streams and lakes should gleam in the sunshine, when the valleys should smile and laugh and sing, when flowers should bloom and stars should flash--all to the glory of God! 2. Then “ peace on earth” ; God was at last in the world reconciling it unto Himself; the hearts of His creatures were coming back to Him; their allegiance was to be restored, their wills were to be subjugated, their minds were to be enlightened; thus peace over all the world would be established, God’ s wrath would be averted, and the long wrestle of man with Satan would reach its end. For when men are really at peace with God, they will come to peace with each other. 3. And so, at last, “ goodwill toward men.” That ends this song of the angel; that is what ought to be the beginning of each Christmas anthem and carol. God loves us; oh, how touchingly does the aged Paul in one place tell his young brother Titus about that “ kindness and love of God our Saviour toward men! “ God cherishes only goodwill toward any of us. Even the wicked; He takes no pleasure in their death. He would rather they would turn unto Him, and live. Oh, happy day is that in which He tells us all this unmistakably, with perfect plainness. Brethren, if God so loved us, then ought we also to love one another. “ All ye are brethren.” Away with all fancied superiorities and aristocracies on the common Christmas day--the gladsome birthday of Christi Herdsmen are on a visit to a carpenter at an inn; and they are told to go to the outhouse to find him! Beasts are standing by a manger in which lies the Child--King David the Second I But, for a]! this seems so democratic and small, please remember that a choir of angels have been singing outside. Who among us is too proud to listen? (C. S. Robinson, D. D.) The angelic anthem In this Divine anthem we are taught that-- I. THE WAS A BRIGHT OF THE GLORY OF GOD. Hitherto the holy angels had seen the glory of the Divine justice in the punishment of their sinning compeers; and something like mercy in the suspension of the sentence pronounced on man. But here they see justice and mercy blended in a wonderful manner; and they give vent to their ecstasy in shouts of praise. II. THE WAS THE MEANS OF PEACE UPON EARTH. 1. Sin had created war in every man’ s own bosom. Christ alone can put an end to that war, by procuring pardon of sin, peace for the conscience, tranquillity for the passions, subordination of the appetites--reconciling reason to conscience, and conscience to the law of God. 2. Sin had created a horrible war between man and man. Strife, envy, jealousy, oppression, ambition, prevailed; Christ came to preach and exemplify universal charity. Wherever the influence of His gospel is felt, peace follows between man and man; wherever His government is established, man embraces his brother. 3. Sin had caused war between man and his Maker. Terrible contest--the potsherd striving with Him who made it. Christ reconciles God and man. He is Himself both God and man; so He can both pardon sin and bestow needed grace. III. THE WAS A DISPLAY OF THE OF GOD TO MAN. 1. Most astonishing condescension. 2. Unparalleled love. 3. Prodigious disinterestedness. 4. Universality. All are included in this goodwill. IV. WHAT OUGHT TO BE OUR VIEWS, AND , AND CONDUCT. 1. They should be laudatory. We have far more occasion to praise God for the Incarnation, than the angels. 2. We should proclaim the Saviour to others. In trying to kindle a brother’ s faith and devotion, our own will burn brighter and clearer. (John Stephens.) I. The choir--singers from the new Jerusalem. II. The theme--salvation. III. The listeners--dwellers in heaven and earth. (Van Doren.) The angels’ song What does the angels’ song announce to men? 1. Bethlehem’ s miracle. 2. Jesus’ greatness. 3. The Father’ s honour. 4. The Christian’ s calling. 5. Heaven’ s likeness. (J. J. Van Oosterzee, D. D.) A Christmas motto “ With malice toward none, with charity for all.” This truly Christian motto of President Lincoln, sounds almost like an earthly echo of the heavenly anthem, and certainly proves its power and influence in the history of the world. (P. Schaff, D. D.) The first Christmas carol I. . The angels sang something which men could understand--something which will make men much better if they will understand it. The angels were singing about Jesus who was born in the manger. We must look upon their song as being built upon this foundation. They sang of Christ, and of the salvation which He came into this world to work out. 1. They said that this salvation gave glory to God in the highest--that salvation is God’ s highest glory. God is glorified in every dewdrop that twinkles in the morning sun. He is magnified in every wood-flower that blossoms in the copse, although it lives to blush unseen, and waste its sweetness in the desert air. He is glorified in every bird that warbles on the spray; in every lamb that skips the mead. All created things extol Him. Is there aught beneath the sky, save man, that does not glorify God? Do not the stars exalt Him, when they write His name upon the azure of heaven in their golden letters? Do not the lightnings adore Him, when they flash His brightness in arrows of light piercing the midnight darkness? Do not thunders extol Him, when they roll like drums in the march of the God of armies? Do not all things exalt Him, from the least even to the greatest? But though creation may be a majestic organ of praise, it cannot reach the compass of the golden canticle--Incarnation! There is more in that than in creation, more melody in Jesus in the manger than there is in worlds on worlds rolling their grandeur round the throne of the Most High. See how every attribute is here magnified. Lo! what wisdom is here. God becomes man that God may be just, and the justifier of the ungodly. Lo! what power, for where is power so great as when it conceals power? Behold, what love is thus revealed to us when Jesus becomes a man! Behold what faithfulness! How many promises are this day kept; how many solemn obligations discharged? 2. When they had sung this, they sang what they had never sung before. “ Glory to God in the highest,” was an old, old song; they had sung that from before the foundations of the world. But now, they sang as it were a new song before the throne of God; for they added this stanza--“ on earth, peace.” They did not sing that in the Garden of Eden. There was peace there, but it seemed a thing of course, and scarce worth singing of. But now man had fallen, and since the day when cherubim with fiery swords drove out the man, there had been no peace on earth, save in the breast of some believers, who had obtained peace from the living fountain of this incarnation of Christ. Wars had raged from the ends of the world men had slaughtered one another, heaps on heaps. There had been wars within as well as wars without. Conscience had fought with man; Satan had tormented man with thoughts of sin. There had been no peace on earth since Adam fell. But now, when the newborn King appeared, the swaddling band with which He was wrapped up was the white flag of peace. 3. And, then, they wisely ended their song with a third note. They said, “ Goodwill to man.” Philosophers have said that God has a goodwill toward man; but I never knew any man who derived much comfort from their philosophical assertion. Wise men have thought from what we have seen in creation that God had much goodwill toward man, or else His works would never have been so constructed for their comfort; but I never heard of any man who could risk his soul’ s peace upon such a faint hope as that. But I have not only heard of thousands, but I know them, who are quite sure that God has a goodwill towards men; and if you ask their reason, they will give a full and perfect answer. They say, He has goodwill toward man, for He gave His Son. No greater proof of kindness between the Creator and His subjects can possibly be afforded than when the Creator gives His only begotten and well beloved Son to die. Though the first note is God-like, and though the second note is peaceful, this third note melts my heart the most. II. . Does not this song of angels stir your hearts with happiness? With confidence? III. . The angels sang, “ Glory to God,” &e. But I look around, and what see I in the wide, wide world? I do not see God honoured. I see the heathen bowing down before their idols; I see tyranny lording it over the bodies and souls of men; I see God forgotten. IV. Now, I have one more lesson for you, and I have done. That lesson is . I wish everybody that keeps Christmas this year, would keep it as the angels kept it. Now, Mr. Tradesman, you have an opponent in trade, and you have said some very hard words about him lately. If you do not make the matter up to-day, or to-morrow, or as soon as you can, yet do it on that day. That is the way to keep Christmas, peace on earth and glory to God. And oh, if thou hast anything on thy conscience, anything that prevents thy having peace of mind, keep thy Christmas in thy chamber, praying to God to give thee peace; for it is peace on earth, mind, peace in thyself, peace with thyself, peace with thy fellow men, peace with thy God. And do not think thou hast well celebrated that day till thou canst say, “ O God, ‘ With the world, myself, and Thee I ere I sleep at peace will be.’” And when the Lord Jesus has become your peace, remember, there is another thing, goodwill towards men. (C. H. Spurgeon.) Spreading the news of peace At the close of the last war with Great Britain, I was in the city of New York. It happened that, on a Saturday afternoon in February, a ship was discovered in the offing, which was supposed to be a cartel, bringing home our commissioners at Ghent from their unsuccessful mission. The sun had set gloomily before any intelligence from the vessel has reached the city. Expectation became painfully intense as the hours of darkness drew on. At length a boat reached the wharf, announcing the fact that a treaty of peace had been signed, and waiting for nothing but the action of our government to become a law. The men on whose ears these words first fell rushed in breathless haste into the city to repeat them to their friends, shouting as they ran through the streets, “ Peace, peace, peace!” Every one who heard the sound repeated it. From house to house, from street to street, the news spread with electric rapidity. The whole city was in commotion. Men bearing lighted torches were flying to and fro, shouting like madmen, “ Peace, peace, peace!” When the rapture had partially subsided, one idea occupied every mind. But few men slept that night. In groups they were gathered in the streets and by the fireside, beguiling the hours of midnight by reminding each ether that the agony of war was over, and that a worn out and distracted country was about to enter again upon its wonted career of prosperity. Thus, every one becoming a herald, the news soon reached every man, woman, and child in the city; and in this sense the city was evangelized. All this, you see, was reasonable and proper, but when Jehovah has offered to our world a treaty of peace, when men doomed to hell may be raised to seats at the right hand of God, why is not a similar zeal displayed in proclaiming the good news? Why are men perishing all around us and no one has ever personally offered to them salvation through a crucified Redeemer? (Dr. Wayland.) The perfections of the Incarnation Before the Incarnation God showed some, but not all, His perfections. He showed-- 1. His goodness, in creating man after His own image. 2. His love, when He led Eve and the animals to Adam. 3. His pity, by clothing Adam and Eve with coats of skins. 4. His power, in creating the world out of nothing. 5. His justice, in expelling our first parents from Paradise, deluging the wicked world, wasting the cities of the plain. 6. His wisdom, confounding the tongues of the builders of Babel. 7. His providence, in saving Egypt by means of Joseph. In the Incarnation these perfections shone out with greater clearness. We note here-- I. THE OF GOD. He clothed Himself with our nature, that His virtues, grace, and glory, yea, and Himself, He might communicate to us. 1. Naturally, by preserving the order of nature. 2. By the supernatural order of grace. 3. By His particular personality. II. THE LOVE OF GOD. Seen in the close union between God and man Romans 8:32). 1. He became incarnate to suffer and die for man. 2. And that for man, His enemy. III. THE PITY OF GOD. In person coming to relieve our miseries, making Himself capable of sorrow and suffering (Hebrews 4:15). IV. THE POWER OF GOD. Uniting the highest nature with the lowly nature of man; the human and the Divine, without any confusion of substance, in unity of person. V. THE JUSTICE OF GOD. Not rescuing man from sin and death by might or by power, but paying a full and sufficient satisfaction for all men’ s sins: making an infinite satisfaction for infinite sin. VI. THE WISDOM OF GOD. In planning the redemption of man. Neither man nor God, singly, could redeem man; it needed a God-man to do this. VII. THE OF GOD. Which saw how to help and enrich man, when he was poor and naked, and destitute of all things. (M. Faber.) A dying saint This doxology of the angels has sometimes filled the thoughts of dying saints. The final words of the Rev. Edward Perronet, author of the hymn, “ All hail the power of Jesus’ name,” were, “ Glory to God in the height of His Divinity! Glory to God in the depth of His humanity! Glory to God in His all-sufficiency! and into His hand I commend my spirit.” The last words, too, of Rev. Doctor Backus, first President of Hamilton College, were, “ Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill toward men.” Universal peace Happy the day when every war-horse shall be houghed, when every spear shall become a pruning-hook, and every sword shall be made to till the soil which once it stained with blood I This will be the last triumph of Christ. Before death itself shall be dead, death’ s great jackal, war, must die also; and then there shall be peace on earth, and the angel shall say, “ I have gone up and down through the earth, and the earth sitteth still, and is at rest: I heard no tumult of war nor noise of battle.” (C. H.Spurgeon.) The song of the angels I. THE SCENE. It was a fine Eastern night, not cold like one of our Decembers, with frosts or nipping gales freezing through blood and marrow. “ The shepherds were abiding in the fields,” i.e., making their bivouac in them. The evangelist’ s style seems to quiver with the sudden surprise which came upon the shepherds. “ And lo, an angel of the Lord came upon them, and glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they feared with sore fear. And that angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, as being that which shall be to all the people of God.” His message declares four things. The wondrous Child to be born is a Saviour, who conies in pity for a fallen race; Christ, who, as the Anointed One, has so long been expected; the Lord, who is Divine as well as human; in David’ s city, to fulfil literally the oracle of Micah, and the anticipations which might have been awakened by the Psalm that speaks of a great Priest-king in connection with Bethlehem, and God’ s remembrance of David’ s life of affliction. “ And this shall be a sign unto you;” a sign, in its quiet but amazing contrast to all exhibitions of this world’ s royalty. “ Ye shall find a babe, wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger” Among the angels of heaven there was silence until the point when that angel visitant to the shepherds had touched the lowest point in the abyss of the humiliation: The armies of earth raise a shout or song. The armies of heaven (the “ heavenly soldiers,” as it is grandly rendered in the old English version) have theirs--but it is a song of peace. Much of that choral ode was, probably, unheard by mortal ears--lost in the heights above. One fragment alone of the song is preserved. It is a triplet. 1. “ Glory to God in the highest.” The angels speak from the point of view of this earth. We may understand either “ Let it be,” or “ It is.” If the former, they pray that from the bosom of humanity glory may rise to God in the highest heaven. If we understand the latter, they affirm that it does, at that moment, actually ascend. There is a little poem, possibly more beautiful in idea than in execution, which tells of a child dying in a workhouse. As her simple hymn, “ Glory to Thee, my God, this night,” ascends from the pallet-bed, it floats up and up, until the last faint ripple touches the foot of the throne of God. Then, wakened by the faint, sweet impulse, a new strain of adoration is taken up by angels and archangels, and all the company of heaven--a grander and a fuller “ glory.” Something in this way, in this passage, the angels seem to view the best adorations of this earth. 2. “ On earth peace.” The peace spoken of in Scripture as effected by the Incarnation, is fourfold--between God and man; between man and angels; between man and man; between man and his own conscience. It is, of course, too darkly true, that as regards one form of this peace--that between man and man--history seems a long cynical satire on the angels’ words. The earth is soaking with blood at this moment, and families are in mourning for the slain in battle. Still, among Christian nations, and in the case of Christian soldiers, there are soft relentings, sweet gleams of human--or rather superhuman--love. Society, too, is full of prejudice and bitterness. In our homes there are tempers which drop vitriolic irritants into every little wound. It was a wholesome memory of the angels’ song which led men to examine their souls at Christmas, and to seek for reconciliation with any between whose souls and theirs stood the veil of quarrel or ill-will. But there is something beyond this. It means enmity done away, harmony restored, not only with one’ s fellow-man, but with oneself. The unholy man has no true feeling of friendship, no friendly relations with himself. Worst of all, man may be in a state of estrangement from God, from Christ, from His Church, from hope--hostile in his mind, which lies immersed, and has its very existence in those evil works of his. 3. (For, understood) “ Among men is good-will.” It is well known from Keble’ s beautiful lines, and his note upon Pergolesi’ s setting of the Vulgate version, that some manuscripts read, “ among men of goodwill.” This interpretation, though it may please the fancy at first, will scarcely be accepted by the maturer judgment. (1) It is not very concurrent with St. Luke’ s universal aim, and constant setting forth of the bold broad sympathy of the purpose of the Incarnation. God’ s love, at that moment, would not be viewed by the angels as restricted to the comparatively righteous. It was a work whose result was to be offered to all our fallen race through Him who is the son of Adam. Men of goodwill, according to the Scripture use of the word, might be too high an attribute even for the elect people of God. The third line appears to give tile cause and foundation of the two which precede it. The “ Babe wrapped in swaddling clothes” is He who not only brings, but is personally the Truth, the Peace, the Righteousness, the Salvation, the Redemption. Just as He is the personal Peace, so is He the personal incarnate Good-will. There is glory to God in the highest. And there is peace upon earth, for God’ s goodwill is amongst men. It is the equivalent of Emmanuel--God with us. II. We may now OBSERVE WHERE THE ANGELS’ HYMN STANDS IN THE LITURGY. In the Roman missal it is found at the beginning of the office; with us it is taken up immediately after we communicate, just before the parting blessing. In that magnificent burst of praise, the “ Angelic Hymn,” or “ Gloria in Excelsis,” is the basis of all that follows. “ Glory be to God on high, and on earth peace, goodwill towards men.” “ We praise Thee” for Thy greatness. “ We bless Thee” for Thy goodness, thus made known to us by the voice of angels. “ We worship Thee” in our hearts, with beseeming outward reverence. “ We glorify Thee, we give thanks to Thee for Thy great glory, O Lord God, heavenly King, God the Father Almighty” --glorifying and giving thanks with the confession of the mouth. Then we address the sacrificed Son, the Lamb, who is also our God. “ O Lord, the only begotten Son, Jesus Christ. O Lord God, Lamb of God, Son of the Father, that takest away the sins of the world, have mercy upon us.” It is thus indicated that He is the subject of the angelic song, that to Him there is glory in the highest, with the Father and the Holy Ghost. “ Thou only, O Christ, with the Holy Ghost, art most high in the glory of God the Father.” We worship with angels--in angels’ words. We worship them not. Therefore into the texture of our eucharistic “ Gloria in Excelsis” is woven a golden thread from another New Testament song--the poem of victory upon the sea of glass. A psalmist had exclaimed, “ They shall praise Thy name, great and terrible; holy is it. Exalt ye Jehovah our God, and worship at the mountain of His holiness; for holy is the Lord our God.” The writer of the Apocalypse hears it applied to Jesus. And His believing Church incorporates this into her golden commentary of praise upon the “ Gloria in Excelsis.” “ Thou only art holy, O Christ.” Only He is holy of Himself: of His holiness we have all received. To an ignorant and superstitious woman, now many years ago, a kindly visitor read the Gospels, with little but the most simple commentary, and without a single word of controversy. A day or two before her death, the poor woman mentioned a dream which she had, valuable only because it appeared to be the reflection of her waking thoughts. She seemed to be in a vast and magnificent church, thronged with thousands upon thousands. High in the distance rose a glorious altar, with a living form towering above it--the Lamb as it had been slain; below, down to the rails which separated the altar from the body of the church, were orders of angels, stoled and vested priests, the Virgin-mother. Moved by some impulse, one after another came to the chancel-gate, and was either received inside with a burst of joy that filled the distance, or sorrowfully sent away. At last the dying woman presented herself in her turn. Sternly, yet not without a tone of regret, a priest put her back, and said, “ You cannot pass.” Sweetly, with tender sorrow, an angel whispered, “ Alas! I cannot help you.” With trembling voice, the mother of Jesus told her that “ her prayers could not open those gates, nor open a way to the eternal presence of her Son.” Then, with an exceedingly great and bitter cry, the woman was turning away, to wander she knew not where, when suddenly the form above the altar--not white, and wan, and stirless, like the crucifix, but living and glorious--stood by the guarded gate. And He opened it, and bade her come in and fear not. “ For,” said He, “ those who come unto Me I will not cast out.” And a glorious music arose in the distance. In the same spirit, in this hymn, we pass by saints and angels, and raise our chant, “ Thou only art holy.” None holy, and therefore none tender as Christ. In thanksgiving for angels’ food we borrow angels’ words. The song of angels is our communion song. May it not also be made our communicant’ s manual? For instance, let us take that single line, “ on earth peace.” That man who did something to insult or injure me--that, perhaps, very wretched woman, with her bitter tongue and cutting jeer--have I forgiven her for Christ’ s sake? This evil peevish temper, which embitters the fountains of family life, have I set about sweetening it? Am I trying to improve it? This dark hopelessness of God’ s forgiveness, this despair of the power of God’ s Spirit to help and sanctify, this unbelief in grace, as if an apostle’ s pen had never written, “ How much more shall the blood of Christ purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?” this unbelief in the power of the Cross, this faithlessness which turns the bread of the sacrament into a stone in our bands, and makes us too deaf to hear “ for thee!” again and again- is this passing away? Am I ready to take Him at His own word? If not, I cannot really join in the “ Gloria in Excelsis.” I have nothing to say to one line, at least, of the blessed triplet--“ On earth peace” --and therefore the whole harmony is untuned for me. The first “ Gloria in Excelsis” died away over Bethlehem. What then? “ It came to pass, as the angels were gone away from them into heaven, then the men, even the shepherds, said one to another, Let us now go even unto Bethlehem.” The men, the “ shepherds” (so the Evangelist seems to say), represent the whole race of men. Even so, the Church keeps unending Christmas, keeps a new Christmas with every communion. The shepherds did their simple work of announcement. “ They made known abroad the saying which was told them concerning this Child;” while Mary, with her deeper and more reflective nature, “ kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart.” Then “ the shepherds returned, glorifying God” for His greatness, and “ praising Him” for His goodness, laying the foundation for their glorification and praise “ upon all the things which they bad heard and seen, as it was told unto them.” The glory and music of angels did not tempt them from their work, but made them do it more gladly upon their return. There was more of heaven about it. So will it ever be with those who seek Him faithfully, and join truly in the “ Gloria in Excelsis.” (Bishop Wm. Alexander.) 1. Glory to God in the highest. This glory arises from three sources--the matter of the gospel, the manner of its dissemination, and the effects it has produced upon the hearts and habits of men. 2. Glory to God arises from the manner and success of the dissemination of the Word of God, as well as from its matter and contents. 3. Glory is given to God from the effects which this gospel produces among men. In the experience of many it already begins a new heaven and a new earth. II. “ On earth peace.” Let us first ascertain the nature of this peace, and secondly, the way in which the Word of God promotes it, in order that we may be able to seek peace also, and pursue the right way of hastening on its reign. There is the peace of ignorance, but this is the peace of delusion. There is peace from compromise, but this is the peace of hell. True peace between man and God, or between man and man, can flourish on true principle, and on nothing else. Let us briefly glance at a few features of this goodwill; next, at the way in which God exerts it, and lastly, infer the manner in which we also should show goodwill toward our fellowmen. It is a distinctive goodwill. Why did God pass by the angels that fell, and throw the arms of love around the children of men? It was also an undeserved goodwill. Before the Saviour came we lifted up no cry for the interposition of the mercy of God. Such is God’ s goodwill, and such His way of showing it. God will show His goodwill to the sinner, just by showing him his sin and his peril. If you saw a brother asleep, amid the darkness of night, enjoying the most delightful dreams, and at the same hour the house on fire around him, would you show him more goodwill by leaving him undisturbed, or by rousing him rudely from his sleep, and pointing his eye to the danger of his situation? This is God’ s way of manifesting His goodwill to men. (J. Gumming, D. D.) Angels’ acclamations There never was such an apparition of angels as at this time; and there was great cause; for-- 1. There was never such a ground for it, whether we regard the matter itself, the incarnation of Christ. 2. Or whether we regard the benefit that comes to us thereby. Christ by this means brings God and man together since the fall. I shall especially stand upon those words; but somewhat is to be touched concerning the apparition of these angels. 1. The circumstances of their apparition. They appear to poor shepherds. God respects no callings. He will confound the pride of men, that set so much by that that God so little respects, and to comfort men in all conditions. 2. Again, the angels appeared to them in the midst of their business and callings; and indeed God’ s people, as Moses and others, have had the sweetest intercourse with God in their affairs; and ofttimes it is the fittest way to hinder Satan’ s temptations, and to take him off, to be employed in business, rather than to struggle with temptations. 3. And then they appeared to them in the night. God discovers Himself in the night of affliction. Our sweetest and strongest comforts are in our greatest miseries. God’ s children find light in darkness; nay, God brings light out of darkness itself. We see the circumstances then of this apparition. He calls these angels “ a heavenly host” in divers respects, especially in these: (1) An host for number. Here are a number set down. A multitude is distinct from an host; but in that they are an host, they are a multitude; as Daniel 7:10. “ Ten thousand times ten thousand angels attend upon God.” And so, Revelation 5:11, there are a world of angels about the Church. In Hebrews 12:22, we are come to have communion with an “ innumerable company of angels.” Worldly, sottish men that live here below, they think there is no other state of things than they see. There is another manner of state and frame of things, if they had spiritual eyes to see the glory of God, and of Christ our Saviour, and their attendants there--an host, a multitude of heavenly angels. (2) An host likewise implies order; or else it is a rout, not an host or army. “ God is the God of order, not of confusion” (1 Corinthians 14:33). If you would see disorder, go to hell. (3) Again, here is consent; an host all joining together in praising God: “ Glory to God on high.” Christ commends union and consent Matthew 18:20). Agreement in good is a notable resemblance of that glorious condition we shall enjoy in heaven. (4) An host of angels, it shows likewise their employment. But here is our comfort; we have a multitude, an host of angels, whose office is to defend the Church, and to offend the enemies of the Church, as we see in Scripture. (5) Again, an host implies strength. We have a strong garrison and guard. Angels severally are strong creatures. We see one of them destroyed all the first-born in Egypt; one of them destroyed the host of Sennacherib the Assyrian in one night. “ And suddenly there was,” &c. “ Suddenly,” in an unperceivable time, yet in time; for there is no motion in a moment, no creature moves from place to place in a moment. God is everywhere. “ Suddenly,” it not only shows us-- 1. Somewhat exemplary from the quick despatch of the angels in their business we pray to God in the Lord’ s Prayer, “ Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven;” that is, willingly, “ suddenly,” cheerfully:-- 2. But also it serves for comfort. If we be in any sudden danger, God can despatch an angel, “ a multitude” of angels, to encamp about us “ suddenly.” What is the use and end of this glorious apparition? In regard of the poor shepherds, to confirm their faith, and in them ours; for if one or two witnesses confirm a thing, what shall a multitude do? If one or two men confirm a truth, much more an host of heavenly angels. Therefore it is base infidelity to call this in question, that is confirmed by a multitude of angels. And to comfort them likewise in this apparition. We see by the way that for one Christian to confirm and comfort one another, it is the work of an angel, an angelical work; for one man to discourage another, it is the work of a devil. Thus much for the apparition. 3. Now the celebration is “ a multitude of the heavenly host praising God.” The word signifies “ singing” as well as praise. It implies praise expressed in that manner; and indeed “ praising God,” it is the best expression of the affection of joy. The angels were joyful at the birth of Christ their Lord. Joy is no way better expressed than in “ praising God;” and it is pity that such a sweet affection as joy should run in any other stream, if it were possible, than the “ praising of God.” God hath planted this affection of joy in the creature, and it is fit he should reap the fruit of his own garden. It is pity a clear stream should run into a puddle, it should rather run into a garden; and so sweet and excellent an affection as joy, it is pity it should be employed otherwise than “ in praising God” and doing good to men. They express their joy in a suitable expression--“ in praising God.” The sweetest affection in man should have the sweetest employment. See here the pure nature of angels. They praise God for us. We have more good by the incarnation of Christ than they have; yet notwithstanding, such is their humility, that they come down with great delight from heaven, and praise and glorify God for the birth of Christ, who is not their, but our Redeemer. Some strength they have. There is no creature but hath some good by the incarnation of Christ; to the angels themselves, yet, however, they have some strength from Christ, in the increase of the number of the Church; yet He is not the Redeemer of angels. And yet see, their nature is so pure and so clear from envy and pride, that they even glorify God for the goodness showed to us--meaner creatures than themselves; and they envy not us, though we be advanced, by the incarnation of Christ, to a higher place than they. Let us labour therefore for dispositions angelical, that is, such as may delight in the good of others, and the good of other meaner than ourselves. And learn this also from them: shall they glorify God for our good especially, and shall we be dull and cold in praising God on our own behalf? There is some difference in the readings. Some copies have it, “ On earth peace to men of goodwill,” to men of God’ s goodwill; and so they would have it two branches, not three. If the word be rightly understood, it is no great matter. 1. First, the angels begin with the main and chief end of all. It is God’ s end; it was the angels’ end, and it should be ours too, “ Glory to God on high.” 2. Then they wish the chief good of all, that whereby we are fitted for the main end, “ peace.” God cannot be glorified on earth unless there be peace wrought. 3. Then, thirdly, here is the ground of all happiness from whence this peace comes: from God’ s goodwill; from his good pleasure or free grace “ to men of God’ s goodwill.” To begin with the first: “ Glory to God in the highest.” The angels, those blessed and holy spirits, they begin with that which is the end of all. It is God’ s end in all things, His own glory. He hath none above Himself whose glory to aim at. And they wish “ Glory to God in the highest heavens.” Indeed, He is more glorified there than anywhere in the world. It is the place where His Majesty most appears; and the truth is, we cannot perfectly glorify God till we be in heaven. There is pure glory given to God in heaven. There is no corruption there in those perfect souls. There is perfect glory given to God in heaven. Here upon earth God is not glorified at all by many. In the mean time, let me add this by the way, that in some sort we may glorify God more on earth than in heaven. Here upon earth we glorify God in the midst of enemies; He hath no enemies in heaven; they are all of one spirit. In this respect, let us be encouraged to glorify God, what we can here: for if we begin to glorify God here, it is a sign we are of the number that He intends to glorify with Him for ever. The verb is not set down here; whether it should be, Glory is given to God; or whether, by way of wishing, “ Let glory be given to God;” or by way of prediction or prophecy for the time to come, “ Glory shall be to God,” from hence to the end of the world. The verb being wanting, all have a truth. “ Glory to God on high.” Glory is excellency, greatness, and goodness, with the eminency of it, so as it may be discovered. There is a fundamental glory in things that are not discovered at all times. God is always glorious, but, alas! few have eyes to see it. In the former part of the chapter “ light” is called the “ glory of the Lord” (verse 9). Light is a glorious creature. Nothing expresseth glory so much as light. It is a sweet creature, but it is a glorious creature. It carries its evidence in itself; it discovers all other things and itself too. So excellency and eminency will discover itself to those that have eyes to see it; and being manifested, and withal taken notice of, is glory. In that the angels begin with the glory of God, I might speak of this doctrine, that the glory of God, the setting forth of the excellencies and eminencies of the Lord, should be the end of our lives, the chief thing we should aim at. The angels here begin with it, and we begin with it in the Lord’ s Prayer, “ hallowed be Thy name.” It should be our main employment (Romans 11:36). “ Well then, the incarnation of Christ, together with the benefits to us by it, that is, redemption, adoption, &c., it is that wherein God will show His glory most of all. That is the doctrinal truth. The glory and excellency of God doth most shine in His love and mercy in Christ. Every excellency of God hath its proper place or theatre where it is seen, as His power in the creation, his wisdom in His providence and ruling of the world, His justice in hell, His Majesty in heaven; but His mercy and kindness, His bowels of tender mercy, do most appear in His Church among His people. God shows the excellency of His goodness and mercy in the incarnation of Christ, and the benefits we have by it. Many attributes and excellencies of God shine in Christ, as--His truth: “ All the promises of God are yea and amen in Christ” (2 Corinthians 1:20). And then His wisdom, that he could reconcile justice and mercy, by joining two natures together. Likewise here is justice, justice fully satisfied in Christ. And of His holiness, that He would be no otherwise satisfied for sin. Therefore “ glory to God in the highest heavens,” especially for His free grace and mercy in Christ. Now that you may understand this sweet point, which is very comfortable, and indeed the grand comfort to a Christian, do but compare the glory of God, that is, the excellency and eminency of God’ s mercy, and goodness, and greatness of this work of redemption by Christ, with other things. 1. God is glorious in the work of creation. “ The heavens declare the glory of God,” and the earth manifests the glory of God. 2. Nay, the glory of God’ s love and mercy shined not to us so, when we were in Adam; not in Adam, for there God did good to a good man: He created him good, and showed goodness to him. That was not so much wonder. But for God to show mercy to an enemy, to a creature that was in opposition to Him, that was in a state of rebellion against Him, it is a greater wonder and more glory. That which I shall next stand upon, shall be to show (1) how we may know whether we glorify God for Christ or no; (2) and then the hindrances that keep us from glorifying God for this excellent good; (3) and the means how we may come to glorify God. 1. For the first, of glorifying God in general, I will not speak much. It would be large; and the point of glorifying God is most sweetly considered, as invested in such a benefit as this, when we think of it, not as an idea only, but think of it in Christ, for whom we have cause to glorify God, and for all the good we have by Him. (1) First, then, we hold tune with the blessed angels in giving glory to God, when we exalt God in our souls above all creatures and things in the world; when we lift Him up in His own place, and let Him be in our souls, as He is in Himself, in the most holy. God is glorious, especially in His mercy and goodness. Let Him be so in our hearts, in these sweet attributes, above all our unworthiness and sin. For God hath not glory from us till we give Him the highest place in our love and joy and delight, and a]l those affections that are set upon good, when they are set upon Him as the chief good; then we give Him His due place in our souls, we ascribe to Him that divinity, and excellency, and eminency that is due to Him. (2) Then again, we give glory to God for Christ, when we take all the favours we have from God in Christ, when we see Christ in everything. “ All things are ours because we are Christ’ s” (1 Corinthians 3:23). (3) Then again, we give glory to God when we stir up others. All the angels consent. There was no discord in this harmony of the angels. (4) Again, we glorify God in Christ, when we see such glory and mercy of Christ, as it doth transform us and change us, and from an inward change we have alway a blessed disposition to glorify God, as I showed out of 2 Corinthians 3:18. Therefore if we find that the knowledge of God in Christ hath changed our dispositions, it is a sign then we give glory to God indeed. For to glorify God is an action that cannot proceed but from a disposition of nature that is altered and changed. The instrument must be set in tune before it can yield this excellent music, to glorify God as the angels do; that is, all the powers of the soul must be set in order with grace by the Spirit of God. (5) Again, we glorify God when we take to heart anything that may hinder, or stop, or eclipse God’ s truth, and obscure it; when it works zeal in us in our places as far as we can; when it affects us deeply to see the cause of religion hindered any way. If there be any desire of glorifying God, there will be zeal. (6) Again, if we apprehend this glorious mystery of Christ in the gospel aright, it will work in us a glorious joy; for joy is a disposition especially that fits us to glorify God. 2. This being so excellent a duty, to which we are stirred by the angels, “ Glory to God on high,” &c., what are the main hindrances of it that we give not God more glory? (1) The main hindrances are a double veil of ignorance and unbelief, that we do not see the glorious light of God shining in Jesus Christ; or else if we do not know it, we do not believe it; and thereupon, instead of that blessed disposition that should be in the soul, there comes an admiration of carnal excellencies, a delighting in base things. (2) So likewise unbelief, when we hear and see and know the notion of mercy and of Christ, and can dispute of these things, like men that talk of that they never tasted of. 3. Now, the way to attain to this glorious duty, to glorify God. (1) First, therefore, if we would glorify God, we must redeem some time to think of these things, and bestow the strength of our thoughts this way. The soul being the most excellent thing in the world, it is fit it should be set on the excellentest duty. (2) Now, to help this, in the next place, beg of God the “ Spirit of revelation” to discover to us these things in their own proper light, “ for they are spiritually discerned.” (3) And let us labour daily more and more to see the vanity of all things in the world. “ Peace on earth.” The same holy affection in the angels that moved them to wish God to have his due of glory from the creature, it moves them to wish peace to men likewise; to show this, by the way, that there can be no true zeal of God’ s glory but with love to mankind. They were not so ravished with the glory of God as to forget poor man on earth. Oh no! They have sweet, pure affections to man, a poorer creature than themselves. Therefore let them that are injurious and violent in their dispositions, and insolent in their carriage, never talk of glorifying God, when they despise and wrong men. There are some that overthrow all peace in the earth for their own glory, but he that seeks God’ s glory will procure peace what he can; for they go both together, as we see here, “ Glory to God in the highest, peace on earth.” Now, their end of wishing peace upon earth, it is that men might thereby glorify God, that God being reconciled, and peace being stablished in men’ s consciences, they might glorify God. Hence observe this likewise, that we cannot glorify God till we have some knowledge of our peace with him in Christ. The reason is, peace comes from righteousness. Christ is first the “ King of righteousness,” and then “ King of peace;” righteousness causeth peace. Now, unless the soul be assured of righteousness in Christ, it can have no peace. For can we heartily wish for the manifestation of the glory of him that we think is our enemy, and him that we have no interest in his greatness and goodness? The heart of man will never do it, therefore God must first speak peace to the soul--the angels knew that well enough--and then we are fit to glorify God. “ Peace on earth.” What is peace? It is the best thing that man can attain unto, to have peace with his Maker and Creator. Peace, in general, is a harmony and an agreement of different things. 1. First, there is a scattering and a division from God, the fountain of good, with whom we had communion in our first creation, and His delight was in His creature. 2. Then there is a separation between the good angels and us; for they being good subjects, take part with their prince, and therefore join against rebels, as we are. 3. Then there is a division and scattering between man and man. 4. And then there is a division and separation between a man and the creature, which is ready to be in arms against any man that is in the state of nature, to take God’ s quarrel, as we see in the plagues of Egypt and other examples. 5. And they have no peace with themselves. Then if we be at peace with God, all other peace will follow; for good subjects will be at peace with rebels, when they are brought in subjection to their king, and all join in one obedience. Therefore the angels are brought to God again by Christ. And so for men, there is a spirit of union between them. The same Spirit that knits us to God by faith, knits us one to another by love. This entry is longer than a Bible module can hold. The rest is at https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/bi/ Luke 2:15 Let us now go even unto Bethlehem, and see Bethlehem’ s wonder Every year the Christian heart takes, in thought, the shepherd’ s pilgrimage to Bethlehem. In this district lay the fields of Boaz in which Ruth gleaned. Here the son of Obed was born. David was anointed in Bethlehem. Best of all, in Bethlehem was Christ revealed. It was not without significance that Bethlehem, “ The House of Bread,” should be the birthplace of Him who had come down from heaven to be the Bread of Life for men, and that He, who was in after years to be the Friend of the people and Saviour of the world, to be Himself so straitened as often to have nowhere to lay His head, should commence His earthly pilgrimage within the precincts of a stable. Let us ask what it was that the Bethlehem manger contained. I. A VIRGIN’ S CHILD. II. ISRAEL’ S MESSIAH. III. THE WORLD’ S SAVIOUR. IV. GOD’ S SON. Transcendent mystery! Thought is paralyzed when it attempts to conceive how the Eternal could become a child of days, how the Infinite could be reduced to dimensions, how the Adorable Creator could become one with His own creature. Let it kindle our gratitude that we can understand something of the purpose of this sublime mystery, if even we can learn nothing of its manner. The Son of God became incarnate, that He might reveal the Father, that He might exemplify human virtue, that He might take away our sins, and that He might be able thereby to make us partakers of His own Divine nature. (T. W.) The first pilgrims to the stable of Bethlehem 1. Their pilgrim mind. 2. Their pilgrim staff. 3. Their pilgrim hope. 4. Their pilgrim joy. 5. Their pilgrim thanksgiving. (J. J. Van Oosterzee, D. D.) How men receive the good news of God I. 1. In order that man may possess the blessings which are brought upon earth in the Person of the Incarnate Word, he must be willing to obey the Divine Voice which bids him seek if he would find. 2. The shepherds are not content with wondering at the Divine mystery which has been made known to them, nor yet with listening to the angelic song, but they hasten to Him who is born their Saviour. Being thus obedient they are filled with the angelic spirit, and they are also able to glorify God for that which they have seen and heard. Simple faith and obedience lift up the humblest to share in the work of the angels of God. 3. Yet there are many, who hearing these things, regard them only with idle and fruitless wonder (Luke 2:18) instead of pondering them in their hearts as Mary did. II.--1. The gospel message that God is made man is for ever ringing in our ears. How does it affect us? There are many who are ready to study Christian doctrine as an interesting phase of human thought, or as a bright poetic vision, but who never find the Child of Bethlehem as a Saviour in very deed. 2. If we have thus found Him, our belief will show itself, either (1) by summoning us to enter into the company of those elect few who, like Mary, are absorbed in meditation on the Divine mysteries, or (2) by giving us power to praise and glorify God in the common occupations of daily life, in union with these shepherds who returned to the work of their sheepfolds, filled with a new life from on high. 3. Let us pray, at any rate, we be not among those to whom the gospel is a mere matter of curiosity and empty wonder, exercising no influence on their lives, and forgotten in the excitement of some new incident of an unusual kind. (Canon Vernon Hutton, M. A.) The faith of the shepherds, true faith 1. Its foundation. (1) God’ s Word. (2) God’ s deed. 2. Its properties. (1) Emotion of heart. (2) Activity of life. 3. Its aim. (1) The spreading of the kingdom of God upon earth. (2) The glory of God. (Hatless.) The shepherds as patterns for imitation 1. They seek the Child in the stable and the manger. 2. They spread the gospel message everywhere. 3. They praise God with thankful joy. (Ahlfeld.) The shepherds’ celebration of Christmas 1. Their going. 2. Their seeing, 3. Their spreading abroad the saying. 4. Their return to their avocations. (Arndt.) A pilgrimage to Bethlehem God gives men information to put them upon action. No sooner are the shepherds informed of the Saviour’ s birth, than they say, “ Let us, then, go and see Him.” It will be well for us to imitate them, and take a pilgrimage to Bethlehem. I. Let us go to Bethlehem, and see DEITY . It was necessary for our redemption that the Saviour of men should be a man; for the same nature that sinned must bear the punishment of sin. In what manner the human nature was united to the Divine, we cannot tell. It is enough for us to know that it was so united (Matthew 1:23; John 1:1; John 1:14; 1 Timothy 3:15-16). Jesus Christ is God manifested in the flesh. Let us go to Bethlehem, and see this great sight. Angels desire to look at it. Glorious mystery! II. Let us go to Bethlehem, and behold MAN . The redemption of fallen, guilty, helpless man, was the grand design of the Saviour’ s birth. There is something delightful in the name “ Saviour.” Cicero, the Roman orator, said, that when travelling in Greece, he saw a pillar inscribed with this word--Saviour. He admired the fulness of the name, but he knew not its Christian meaning. How much more may the redeemed sinner admire it! We must have perished, had He not come and saved us. III. Let us take another turn to Bethlehem, and see SATAN RUINED. Ever since, in the garden of Eden, he seduced our first parents, Satan has ruled the children of disobedience, and led men captive at his will. At the birth of Christ his throne began to totter, and it will go on shaking until it is utterly destroyed. Christ by His death has destroyed him that had the power of death, and by His rising again has delivered all who were held in bondage by Satan. (George Burder.) Teaching from Christ’ s cradle You all feel more or less the trials, the mystery of life, its sufferings and its sins. One and One only can alleviate for you those trials, can explain that mystery, can remove that suffering, can heal those sins. Would you understand anything either of this life or of the life beyond? You can only do so by watching the life of your Saviour, by coming to Christ’ s cradle, by standing behind His cross, by sitting with the deathless angel in His forsaken tomb. Follow Him with the eagle eye of faith, and then you may see the heavens open and Jesus Christ standing on the right hand of God. I ask you, then, for a moment or two to stand with me beside the cradle of your Lord, in the manger at Bethlehem, and catch something of what we there may learn. 1. Some of you are poor. How glad for you, beyond all utterance, should be the meaning of Christmas! Your Lord was, as you are, poor--as poor as any of you. The lot which He chose for His own was your lot. Look at your own little children with love and reverence, for He, too, was the child of the poor. Your rooms, in garret or in cellar, are not more comfortless than that manger at Bethlehem; nor is your labour humbler than His in that shop of the village carpenter at Nazareth. It was to the poor, to the humble, to the ignorant, to those poor shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flocks by night, that the heavens flashed forth with angel wings. They were the first to see in that cradle the Blessed Child. Cannot you, in heart or mind, go with them. Let Christ’ s cradle teach you to respect yourselves, to reverence with a nobler self-esteem the nature which He gave you and took upon Himself, and which, by taking upon Himself, He redeemed. 2. And some are rich. Oh I come ye also to the manger-cradle of your Lord, for rich men did come both to His cradle and to His tomb. From the far East came those three wise men--the “ three kings of the East,” as they are called--they came, as the rich should come, with the gifts, willing and humble gifts, not doled forth with murmurs as a burden, but lavished as a privilege with delight. First of all they gave, as we all may and must give, themselves--the gold of worthy lives, the frankincense of holy worship, the myrrh of consecrated sorrow. They might have kept their gold and their treasures for their own selfishness, for their own gratification, for the enhancement of their personal luxury, for the enrichment of their sons and daughters. They might have stamped their substance with a vulgar commonplace possession; but do not you think it was happier for them that they made their gifts immortal by offering them at the cradle of their Lord? You may do the very same thing to-day. You may give your gifts at the cradle of your Lord to-day. If you give to one of the least of these your brethren, you give it unto Him. 3. Many of you are sorrowful. So was He. Whatever be the form of your sorrow, and it may be very varied--be it loneliness, or agony of body, or anxiety of mind, or the sorrows inflicted by the vulgarity or baseness of other men--He bore it all, even to the cross. That soft and tender Child by whose cradle we stand to-day, the shadow of His cross falls even on His cradle, the crimson of His sunset flushes even His golden dawn; and, perfected by suffering, He would teach every one of us out of our sorrows to make springs of tenderness and strength and beauty. 4. All of you are sinners; and to you the news of that birth is indeed “ Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace and goodwill towards men.” While you may see there how much God hates the sin, you may see also how tenderly, how earnestly He loves the sinner. Let us come to this cradle: let the lepers come, and let the outcasts come, and the mourners with their tear-stained cheeks, and the sinners with their broken hearts, and the young man with his selfwill and his strong unconquered passions, and the poor with their struggling lives, and the rich with their many temptations, and let them kneel and drink freely of the waters of Siloam which flow softly, and let them bathe their sick and shivering souls in the golden tide of heaven’ s beatitude, and stand in the circle of heaven’ s own free light, undarkened by any shadow; let them escape the errors what, darken the mind, the lusts which destroy the body, the sins which corrupt the soul; and so one and all wish one another a happy Christmas time, as I do from my heart to all of you today. (Archdeacon Farrar.) The festival of Christmas This, “ Let us now go even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing,” &c., was the resolution of the shepherds on the original Christmas Day. May it be our own I “ Come and see,” is written upon the gospel. There is no secrecy and no concealment in it. It challenges inquiry. I. WE HAVE A FACT BEFORE US: “ UNTO YOU IS BORN A SAVIOUR.” It is a summary of revelation. 1. It presupposes a ruin. 2. It assumes that salvation must come from without. 3. It declares that the Deliverer, though He comes from without the creature, must enter into it by incorporation. There must be a birth to bring in the Saviour into the Cosmos. “ Unto you is born a Saviour” --Incarnation makes Him such. II. When we try to obey the summons the first thing which we notice is, that DAY IS THE OF AS A WHOLE. It presents to us, not so much one part or one element of the gospel, but rather the intervention of God in Christ to save sinners as a single and complete act, containing in itself all that was necessary to give it validity and efficacy. III. But the festival of Christmas, though its foundation lies so deep, has a thought for all natures. It is in an especial sense THE , OF THE SIDE OF . IV. Christmas is by common consent THE OF THE FAMILY AND THE HOME. (Dean Vaughan,) Let us now go even unto Bethlehem And what shall we find when we get there? I. THAT OTHERS HAVE BEEN THERE BEFORE US. 1. Here are the shepherds. Let us ask them to tell their story. They say that they were watching their flocks on the hill-side, with no sounds to break the stillness but the occasional bleating of the sheep, when suddenly they became aware that they were in the presence of a glory brighter than that of noonday. An angel stood there, and as they shrank in affright from the wondrous vision, the angel spoke, and said, “ Fear not,” &c.” And then there appeared with him “ a multitude of the heavenly host praising God,” &c. And-- When such music sweet, Their heart and ears did greet, As never was by mortal fingers strook, Divinely warbled voice Answering the stringed noise, As all their souls in blissful rapture took The air such pleasure loathe to lose, With thousand echoes still prolonged each heavenly close. The anthem died away. The light faded from the hills. The angelic host departed. And the shepherds leaving their flocks, as afterwards the woman John 4:28 left her waterpot, set out to see the new-born Saviour whom the angels sang. They found what? The splendour and magnificence befitting His birth who was heir of all things, and King of kings? No, but “ Mary and Joseph, and the babe lying in a manger.” And still, though that was what they saw, they returned glorifying and praising God. 2. But not only the shepherds--others also, and men very different from these, have been to Bethlehem before us. They are not shepherds but sages. They have come not from some near hill-side. They are travel-stained and weary, for they have travelled long and far. They tell us that they have seen a new star, blazing and flashing in the sky, and that, led by that star, they have come to the place where lay the young Child and His mother; have worshipped Him, and presented to Him precious gifts. And now, their quest ended and rewarded, and the star having paled before the Sun of Righteousness who has arisen with healing in His wings, they are wending their way home by another route, with a new hope born in their hearts. 3. And not only shepherds and sages, but a countless multitude through all the Christian centuries, have been heart-pilgrims to Bethlehem before us, and have declared that “ this thing which had come to pass” was the one thing needed to give them peace here below and the hope of heaven hereafter. II. BUT WHAT WENT THEY ALL OUT TO SEE, ANN WHAT SHALL WE SEE IF, LIKE THEM, WE GO NOW EVEN UNTO ? 1. The reality of Christ’ s humanity. 2. The self-sacrificing power of Divine love. Our gladness cost Christ grief. Our salvation His humiliation. 3. The perfection of Christ’ s example. As we stand by the manger and know that that cradle means the cross, let us pray that “ the same mind may be in us which was also in Christ Jesus.” (J. R. Bailey.) This thing I. Is of supreme interest as an event in the world. Outweighs all other great events of history. II. Has to do with all time and all men. III. Should be seriously inquired into by each one of us personally. IV. Should receive our serious attention without delay. 1. Because you are losing happiness in proportion to your neglect of Christ. 2. Because you are missing the Divine method of spiritual life and heavenward growth. 3. Because with present conduct are bound up the solemn issues of the eternal future. (W. Manning.) The visit of the shepherds I. How came they to make this visit? They were directed by the angel. II. There was no delay in the visit: “ Let us go now.” That is the secret of finding Christ. III. Why did they go away rejoicing? Because they found everything just as God had said. So if we seek and find Jesus we shall go joyfully on our journey. (Sermons for Boys and Girls.) Which is come to pass Every Divine prophecy has its counterpart and fulfilment sooner or later in the events of human history. If God has said, “ It shall come to pass,” the time will come at which men shall say, “ It is come to pass.” (J. R. Bailey.) Which the Lord hath made known to us Mark that. When there is anything specially important it is the Lord that makes it known to us. You would never have heard a syllable of this, if the Lord had not made it known to you. (T. Mortimer, B. D.) The adoration of the shepherds I. THE TRUTH . “ The shepherds said one to another, Let us now go even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing which is come to pass, which the Lord hath made known unto us.” It will be felt at once that there was very little room in their case for scepticism. The manner of the revelation had been supernatural, and they could scarcely doubt the correctness of the information who had received it through the ministration of angels. The inquiry must be conducted in a humble and teachable spirit. It is of no use coming to it at all if we come in the spirit of self-sufficiency. Some men seem wonderfully baffled by the mysteries there are in grace. And, after all, it is no real calamity that there is mystery connected with all the departments of knowledge. Twilights are not altogether destitute of enjoyment: even the indistinct apprehension of truth has its pleasures; and these experiences do but herald the coming light. The objector may say, “ Then what is the use of inquiring? You ask us to test the truth concerning Christ, and then you practically check our inquiry by telling us that there is mystery and that we must trust!” “ Not so,” we reply. All we want you to see is that nature and revelation are alike in this respect, that in each department there are profound mysteries, problems you cannot solve; and just as you accept this in reference to the former, and take this for granted in all your researches into her domain, so we ask you candidly to accept this in relation to the latter; and further, just as you search into Nature, and form your own conclusions from what you can clearly apprehend, so we ask you in the same spirit to test the claims of Christ. Be assured His life and character, and His influence and power over human hearts will bear the closest scrutiny; and if the investigation is approached in the right spirit, then, despite all mysteries, the inquirer shall be led to Christ, and adoringly shall say unto Him: “ Thou art the Son of God: Thou art the King of Israel!” “ Immanuel, God with us.” II. THE TRUTH . “ And they came with haste, and found Mary, and Joseph, and the babe lying in a manger. And when they had seen it they made known abroad the saying which was told them concerning this child.” Let us look at these first heralds or proclaimers, that we may get a little stimulus, as Christian workers, from what is recorded respecting them. Clearly, they were not men of culture: they were humble, unpretending shepherds. Yet, for all this, they were genuine preachers of the truth concerning Christ. The lack of intellectual endowments or of educational advantages must not be pleaded in excuse for the neglect of this duty. “ Go, tell the good news to thy neighbour.” “ Let him that heareth say, Come!” These men, if unlettered, could at any rate speak from experience. They had heard the voice from heaven and had seen the young child. And it was this personal experience which fitted them for service and inspired them with a true enthusiasm. And then, their hearts were full of love. The scene they had witnessed had touched their hearts with love to the new-born King, and the sweet songs of angels to which they had listened, proclaiming “ peace on earth and goodwill toward men,” had fired their souls with the spirit of a true brotherhood. Dr. Tholuck relates how that one who had been a great traveller said to him that he had scarcely ever fallen into company with fellow-travellers without speaking to them of the heavenly journey. Tholuck almost questioned the propriety of forcing such conversation. “ Ah,” responded his friend, “ I endeavoured never to speak till I was certain, that I loved. I figured to myself that we are all brothers one of another, and this never failed to soften my heart, and when there was love in mine I soon found a bridge into that of the stranger. It was as though the breath of God had drawn out a thread from the one and had fastened it to the other.” Nor must we overlook the fact that these proclaimers kept to the one theme, Christ. They made known “ the saying” concerning Christ, but they did so with a view of leading those who heard them to Him. III. THE TRUTH . “ And the shepherds returned glorifying and praising God for all the things which they had heard and seen, as it was told them.” They not only tested and proclaimed the truth concerning Christ, but they exemplified it in their conduct and life. Too many, alas I are content with a very defective Christian life and character. The eminent Church historian, Neander, in speaking of the Stoics, remarks that there were many among them who did nothing more than make an idle parade of the lofty maxims of the ancient philosophers, embellishing their halls with their busts, whilst their own lives were abandoned to every vice. And even so there are to be found among the professed disciples of Jesus those who are very unworthy representatives of Him, and who by their failings bring dishonour upon His cause. (S. D. Hillman, B. A.) Quiet thoughts, after high revelations I pretend not, brethren, to sum up in these few words what such aims and endeavours should be; but to set forth the spirit of them is enough. 1. You cannot, for example, go to seek Him “ in the flesh,” who was sought of old time in the stable at Bethlehem; but there are other humble roofs, and uninviting abodes, where you may seek, and haply find, “ the Lord of life!” For Christ yet abides with His own; and very especially among the poorest and most helpless of His flock. Go to them, and you go to Him. Keep up a kindly, habitual compassion for their trials. 2. So again, you have no heaven-sent marvels of which to tell; you cannot report to others of the descent of the Angel of the Lord; nor of the gathering of an host of “ ministering spirits” from above, chanting their adoration “ to God and the Lamb!” But you can tell, perhaps, of the peace you may yourselves have read beneath the burning stars of some Christmas night. You can tell, perhaps, of some rough way that you yourselves have trod, and found, by God’ s grace, consolation and “ hope in its end.” 3. And need I point to one deeper and dearer realization of our subject yet? It stands in the fact that this sacred season has many opportunities for Holy Communion; for that best and most privileged way in which we can “ keep the Feast.” He will be veiled in His Sacrament, as aforetime in His flesh; but the same Immanuel, “ God with you!” And, surely, you will return to your own paths and your own ways, like your prototypes of Bethlehem, praising and glorifying God for all the benefits that He hath done unto you; having received the Cup of Salvation, and having been answered in the name of the Lord! (J. Puckle, M. A.) The significance of Christmas I. Here is a lesson of doctrinal theology. II. A lesson of intellectual theology. A new revelation of God is given to man in the incarnate Christ. III. A lesson in experimental theology. IV. A lesson in emotional theology. It is a theophany of love. V. A lesson of practical theology. The shepherds and wise men came in the spirit of earnest consecration. VI. A lesson of consolation, of gladness, of rapture. (C. Wadsworth, D. D.) Faith outliving its special occasions The trial of men’ s faith comes after God’ s awakening angels have gone away. To us God’ s favouring messengers are stripped of their miraculous raiment. They take the shape of merciful providences to relieve and comfort us, of Christian ordinances to strengthen us, festivals to reawaken our thanksgiving, and human hearts to enrich the poverty of ours with their affection. In the fresh mercy of some gracious deliverance, from sadness or pain or accident or threatened sorrow, men cast their thank-offering into the treasury of the Church, and wonder that they should ever be forgetful of God’ s care. In the stillness of a sanctuary, when all the harmonies of holy times and places seem to shut out temptation, to set open the windows of heaven, and fill the uplifted spirit with hearty praise, men say, “ Would to God all days and places were like this; for when faith, and zeal, and charity never would grow cold!” In the warmth of the feast it is easy to be glad. But these hours pass by. The angels are gone away into heaven. The festive lights are put out; the temple-doors are shut; the winter snow lies white and smooth on the little grave in the burial-ground. The world comes crowding, beseeching, flattering, threatening, almost forcing its way back, with its noise and its guilt, into the unguarded and yielding heart. Then comes the test of the reality, the sincerity, the power, of your Christian principles. When the song ceased, the first Christmas Eve, and the bright host vanished from the sky, the shepherds did not fall asleep again, and so have only a dream to tell the next morning. They verified the vision, like earnest and constant men. Secondly: Such willingness to watch and seek commonly leads, as it does here, to an equal readiness to believe when the promise is fulfilled, and they that have sought Christ find Him. They might have said--and if they had been modern philosophers, conceited critics, or ambitious naturalists, they would have been very sure to say--to each other, “ Beware how you believe; these, to be sure, are extraordinary phenomena; they look very much as miracles are said to look--brilliant figures plainly seen by many witnesses, nay, by our own eyes, and articulate melodies from their tongues!--but possibly electricity, meteorology, optics, or acoustics may explain them all;--light or sound.” They say, “ We will look into our books. It is extremely unlikely that nature would interrupt her order, or let in new light by a new channel. Let us take care not to be ridiculed for believing too much.” Glories of heaven and earth, grander than telescopes ever pierced among the stars, or hammers ever uncovered in the rocks, pass by, and there is no vision to behold them. Spiritual things not seen for want of spiritual senses! God knew whom He was choosing when He opened Heaven on those clear-hearted keepers of simple flocks. They discredited neither messenger nor message. Thirdly: When faith is prompt, honest, and manly, like this, it comes out as it does in these brave men, to an open confession. The shepherds said what they said frankly, “ one to another,” and with one consent. So they did not hide their purposes, or play fast and loose with their convictions. Will those men who have resolved to go to Bethlehem and see, really arise and go? Many a Christian life falters and fails in every congregation between these two. Will resolve pass on into action, and a good faith confirm and demonstrate itself in good works? Yes, “ they came with haste, and found Mary and Joseph, and the Babe lying in a manger. Visions are transient; the festival is but for a day; the angels go away into heaven. But the indwelling Christ abides. (F. D. Huntingdon, D. D.) Luke 2:16-18 And they came with haste.The course pursued by the shepherds is vividly typical of that which should be pursued by all Christian inquirers. 1. A process of inquiry. 2. The joy of distinct confirmation. 3. A bold proclamation of the truth which has been realized. The gospel is self-propagating. Wherever it makes a convert it makes a preacher. Have we made known abroad what we ourselves have experienced of the power and love of Christ? Would that all the Lord’ s people were prophets! We want more than the formal sermon. We need the simple personal testimony of every believing heart. In the case of Mary, it is plain that silence must not always be regarded as a sign of indifference. Her joy and her wonder were too great for speech. She had, indeed, had her period of exultation, and the calmness which followed was but the natural expression of a chastened feeling. (J1. Parker, D. D.) Birthday contrasts On the 5th of September, 1639, in the faubourg St. Germain, of Paris, then a little village surrounding the palace of King Louis XIII., was crowded the blue blood of France. Around that royal home of the kings of France had gathered all that was noble, all that was great in the land, in honour of the birth of a child to the king. In an antechamber within the palace the bishops of the Church were waiting to christen the child on its birth. Soon a nurse entered the room, bearing the child upon a pillow, and kneeling, she said, “ Sire, it is my honour to bring you this son and heir.” The proud king carried the babe to an open window, and, addressing the waiting multitudes, exclaimed, “ My son, gentlemen, my son!” The bells rang, the people shouted, and for a week France was wild with joy. The 19th of March, 1812, 173 years later, was the eve of another great birthday in France. The little Corsican, the man of destiny, was on the throne. He had put away one wife and taken another, and the birth of a child was expected. Twenty-one guns were to be fired if a daughter was born, a hundred if the child was a boy. On the 20th of March, at six o’ clock in the morning, the booming of cannon was heard. All Paris waited and listened. When the twenty-second gun was heard a mighty shout arose, and there was great rejoicing in every part of France. The dynasty of Bonaparte had a son and heir. It is impossible, men and brethren, as we come together this morning to celebrate the anniversary of another birth that the contrast between that one and these should be overlooked. There was no royalty in Bethlehem; the palace was a stable, the cradle was a manger, but what a contrast paid to Him born at that time by a whole world for eighteen centuries. The child born in St. Germain was Louis XIV., the Grand King, who ruled for many years, who first said, “ I am the State.” But he lived to see that the sun of his dynasty was setting. The other son died ere he had reached man’ s estate, obscure and neglected. Five years after the guns had fired in honour of his birth his father was a prisoner of war. Looking back to that manger in Bethlehem, we see stepping from it a royalty which has governed the world. What a conquest, what a history is His! It is told in one of the apocryphal books that when Jesus was born in Bethlehem the earth stopped on its axis, and movement upon it suddenly ceased. A great light, an ineffable joy, had come upon the world, and that light, that joy, eighteen crowded busy centuries has not diminished. (Bishop H. C. Potter.) The gospel a source of wonder Many are set a-wondering by the gospel. They are content to hear it, pleased to hear it; if not in itself something new, yet there are new ways of putting it, and they are glad to be refreshed with the variety. The preacher’ s voice is unto them as the sound of one that giveth a goodly tune upon an instrument. They are glad to listen. They are not sceptics, they do not cavil, they raise no difficulties; they just say to themselves, “ It is an excellent gospel, it is a wonderful plan of salvation. Here is most astonishing love, most extraordinary condescension.” Sometimes they marvel that these things should be told them by shepherds; they can hardly understand how unlearned and ignorant men should speak of these things. But after holding up their hands and opening their mouths for about nine days, the wonder subsides, and they go their way and think no more about it. There are many of you who are set a-wondering whenever you see a work of God in your district. You hear of somebody converted who was a very extraordinary sinner, and you say, “ It is very wonderful!” There is a revival; you happen to be present at one of the meetings when the Spirit of God is working gloriously: you say, “ Well, this is a singular thing! very astonishing!” Even the newspapers can afford a corner at times for very great and extraordinary works of God the Holy Spirit; but there all emotion ends; it is all wondering, and nothing more. Now, I trust it will not be so with any of us; that we shall not think of the Saviour and of the doctrines of the gospel which He came to preach simply with amazement and astonishment, for this will work us but little good. On the other hand, there is another mode of wondering which is akin to adoration, if it be not adoration. Let me suggest to you that holy wonder at what God has done should be very natural to you. That God should consider His fallen creature, man, and instead of sweeping him away with the bosom of destruction, should devise a wonderful scheme for his redemption, and that he should Himself undertake to be man’ s Redeemer, and to pay his ransom price, is, indeed, marvellous! Holy wonder will lead you to grateful worship; being astonished at what God has done, you will pour out your soul with astonishment at the foot of the golden throne with the song, “ Blessing, and honour, and glory, and majesty, and power, and dominion, and might be unto Him who sitteth on the throne and doeth these great things to me.” Filled with this wonder, it will cause you a godly watchfulness; you will be afraid to sin against such love as this. You will be moved at the same time to a glorious hope. If Jesus has given Himself to you, if He has done this marvellous thing on your behalf, you will feel that heaven itself is not too great for your expectation, and that the rivers of pleasure at God’ s right hand are not too sweet or too deep for you to drink thereof. Who can be astonished at anything when he has once been astonished at the manger and the cross? What is there wonderful left after one has seen the Saviour? The nine wonders of the world! Why, you may put them all into a nutshell--machinery and modern art can excel them all; but this one wonder is not the wonder of earth only, but of heaven and earth, and even hell itself. It is not the wonder of the olden time, but the wonder of all time and the wonder of eternity. They who see human wonders a few times, at last cease to be astonished; the noblest pile that architect ever raised, at last fails to impress the onlooker; but not so this marvellous temple of incarnate Deity; the more we look the more we are astonished, the more we become accustomed to it the more have we a sense of its surpassing splendour of love and grace. There is more of God, let us say, to be seen in the manger and the cross, than in the sparkling stars above, the rolling deep below, the towering mountain, the teeming valleys, the abodes of life, or the abyss of death. Let us then spend some choice hours of this festive season in holy wonder, such as will produce gratitude, worship, love, and confidence. (C. H. Spurgeon.) Holy work for Christmas This text seems to indicate four ways of serving God, four methods of executing holy work and exercising Christian thought. Each of the verses sets before us a different way of sacred service. I know not which of these four did God best service, but, I think, if we could combine all these mental emotions and outward exercises, we should be sure to praise God after a most godly and acceptable fashion. I. SOME ABROAD THE NEWS. 1. They had something to rehearse in men’ s ears well worth the telling. They had found out the answer to the perpetual riddle. 2. That “ something” had in it the inimitable blending which is the secret sign and royal mark of Divine authorship; a peerless marrying of sublimity and simplicity; angels singing!--singing to shepherds! Heaven bright with glory!--bright at midnight! God--a Babe! The Infinite--an Infant a span long! The Ancient of Days--born of a woman! What more simple than the inn, the manger, a carpenter, a carpenter’ s wife, a child? What more sublime than a multitude of the heavenly host waking the midnight with their joyous chorales, and God Himself in human flesh made manifest? 3. The shepherds needed no excuse for publishing their news, for what they told they had first received from heaven. When heaven entrusts a man with a merciful revelation, he is bound to deliver the good tidings to others. 4. They spoke of what they had seen below. They had, by observation, made those truths most surely their own which had first been spoken to them by revelation. No man can speak of the things of God with any success until the doctrine which he finds in the Book he finds also in his heart. II. SOME KEPT BY HOLY WONDER, , AND . III. ONE, AT LEAST, , , THOUGHT UPON THESE THINGS. 1. An exercise of memory. 2. An exercise of the affections. 3. An exercise of the intellect. IV. OTHERS GOD, AND GAVE HIM PRAISE. 1. They praised God for what they had heard. 2. They praised God for what they had seen. 3. They praised God for the agreement between what they had heard and what they had seen. (C. H. Spurgeon.) Many ways of serving God Some people get the notion into their heals that the only way in which they can live for God is by becoming ministers, missionaries, or Bible women. Alas! how many of us would be shut out from any opportunity of magnifying the Most High if this were the case. Tile shepherds went back to the sheep-pens glorifying and praising God. Beloved, it is not office, it is earnestness; it is not position, it is grace which will enable us to glorify God. God is most surely glorified in that cobbler’ s stall where the godly worker, as he plies the awl, sings of the Saviour’ s love, ay, glorified far more than in many a prebendal stall where official religiousness performs its scanty duties. The name of Jesus is glorified by yonder carter as he drives his horse and blesses his God, or speaks to his fellow-labourer by the roadside, as much as by yonder divine who, throughout the country like Boanerges, is thundering out the gospel. God is glorified by our abiding in our vocation. Take care you do not fall out of the path of duty by leaving your calling, and take care you do not dishonour your profession while in it; think not much of yourselves, but do not think too little of your callings. There is no trade which is not sanctified by the gospel. If you turn to the Bible, you will find the most menial forms of labour have been in some way or other connected either with the most daring deeds of faith, or else with persons whose lives have been otherwise illustrious; keep to your calling, brother, keep to your calling! Whatever God has made thee, when He calls thee abide in that, unless thou art quite sure, mind that, unless thou art quite sure that He calls thee to something else. The shepherds glorified God though they went to their trade. (C. H.Spurgeon.) Christmas work Every season has its own proper fruit: apples for autumn, holly berries for Christmas. The earth brings forth according to the period of the year, and with man there is a time for every purpose under heaven. At this season the world is engaged in congratulating itself and in expressing its complimentary wishes for the good of its citizens; let me suggest extra and more solid work for Christians. As we think to-day of the birth of the Saviour, let us aspire after a fresh birth of the Saviour in our hearts; that as He is already “ formed in us the hope of glory,” we may be “ renewed in the spirit of our minds;” that we may go again to the Bethlehem of our spiritual nativity and do our first works, enjoy our first loves, and feast with Jesus as we did in the holy, happy, heavenly days of our espousals. Let us go to Jesus with something of that youthful freshness and excessive delight which was so manifest in us when we looked to Him at the first; let Him be crowned anew by us, for He is still adorned with the dew of His youth, and remains “ the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever.” The citizens of Durham, though they dwell not far from the Scotch border, and consequently in the olden times were frequently liable to be attacked, were exempted from the toils of war because there was a cathedral within their walls, and they were set aside to the bishop’ s service, being called hi the olden times by the name of “ holy work-folk.” Now, we citizens of the New Jerusalem, having the Lord Jesus in our midst, may well excuse ourselves from the ordinary ways of celebrating this season; and, considering ourselves to be “ holy work-folk,” we may keep it after a different sort from other men, in holy contemplation and in blessed service of that gracious God whose unspeakable gift the new-born King is to us. (C. H.Spurgeon.) Second Christmas Day And what can better befit us than to do as these shepherds did? I. THEY THE WITH AND AWE. When “ the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them, they were sore afraid.” They instantly thought of God, and referred the whole thing to its proper Divine source. A right mind and a right learning sees God in everything, and beholds in the commonest ongoings of the universe the manifestations of eternal Power and Godhead, as energetic in character, and as wonderful in results, as the setting up of the stars on high, or the calling forth of the world from its nothingness. It sees in every light that shines from heaven the herald of present Deity, and is ready to fall down in holy reverence at every new signal from the sky, as verily the forthcoming of the Almighty Creator and King of the universe, before whom every knee should bow, and every tongue confess, with trembling adoration. But we need especially to know and feel that it is the same dreadful Majesty that approaches us in the proclamation of the Christ. For where the gospel speaks, there God and His angels are. II. THE WHAT THE TOLD THEM. Their ready persuasion in this respect also serves to show how self-evidencing the true gospel is to minds that are unprejudiced and really open to it. Its obstructions are ethical. Its absence in those to whom the gospel is faithfully preached is not the result of the absence of sufficient demonstration, but of the absence of heart and will to be convinced, and to own allegiance to the truth. Men have intuition enough on this subject to do away with dialectics. III. THE THE LIGHT THEY . They were not satisfied with the mere hearing of the new-born Saviour, but must needs go and see what had occurred. Faith is an active principle. It cannot know of a Saviour and not go in search of Him. Let the impediments be what they may, it will on. There is a most important sense in which He is still here. He is in His word, in His sacraments, in His Church. This is now the Bethlehem to which we must go to seek Him. IV. THE WERE AMPLY FOR THEIR PAINS. They found the Saviour whom the angel announced. Earnestly seeking, they also joyfully find. V. THE , HAVING FOUND THE CHRIST , FREELY HIM BEFORE THE WORLD. “ When they had seen, they made known abroad the saying which was told them concerning this child.” Christianity deals with men as individuals. But man is a social being, and social results must necessarily follow from the intense impulses which faith kindles in the individual soul. And as our existence must needs affect others, so our personal experiences also have relations, and are meant to have effects, beyond our individual selves. VI. THE TO THEIR FLOCKS GOD. True religion was not meant to take men away from the ordinary pursuits of life, but to go with us into them to consecrate them, and to give us new comforts in them. (J. A. Seiss, D. D.) Luke 2:19 And pondered them in her heart Mary’ s musings Great things were these which she kept, and most fit for earnest pondering. Great were they to all, greatest to her, the “ highly favoured” amongst women. Life was opening strangely upon her; and the last few months had crowded into their narrow compass all that was most fit to stir the very depths of her spirit. Brought up in the, comparative seclusion which shut in Jewish damsels, the angel of the Most High had stood suddenly beside her, and troubled her mind by the strangeness of his salutation. Then had followed the fears and hopes which the promise of that angel-visitor had interwoven with her very being. The “ Desire of all nations” was at last to come, and she should be indeed His mother. From her should spring that mighty Redeemer, to give birth to whom had been the earnest longing of every Jewish mother. What hopes and wonder must have filled her soul! At length the months of waiting passed away, and the gracious birth was come, the promised Child was born, the Son of hope was given; and still how much was there upon which to muse and ponder! There was the full tide of a mother’ s love for the Babe which slept beside her; there was the awful reverence of her pious soul for the unknown majesty of Him who of her had taken human flesh. Depths were all around her, into which her spirit searched, in which it could find no resting-place. How was He, this infant of days, the Everlasting Son? How was He to make atonement for her sins and the sins of her people? When would the mystery begin to unfold itself? As yet it lay upon her thick and impenetrable; all was dark around her; mighty promises and small fulfilments seemed to strive together in the womb of time. The angel had called Him Great, the Son of the Highest; but He lay there on her bosom weak and wailing as any other babe. He was to sit upon the throne of David; yet He was cradled in a manger. Angels broke on mortal sight, to make His birthplace known: yet none but the shepherds of Bethlehem had heard their message. A star from heaven guided eastern magi to His feet; but they made their offerings in a stable. She was “ highly favoured” who had borne Him; yet a sword should pierce through her own soul. All was full of contradictions; yet amidst all she was unmoved. To the eye of a passing observer she might have seemed perhaps insensible--such a quietness there was about her. Did she know her own greatness? Did she feel the strangeness of all around her? Did her soul yearn over this Babe, and reach, forth to comprehend His unknown destiny? or was she indeed destitute of kindling feelings? No; “ she kept all these things and pondered them in her heart” ; not one escaped her; but the current of her soul flowed far too deeply to babble forth its emotions. The “ ornament of a quiet spirit” shrouded the mighty swellings of her heart. She was in God’ s hands: this one thought was her anchor. “ Behold the handmaid of the Lord” : this was her talisman … So that this is the lesson taught us in the character of the Virgin Mary. The blessedness of cultivating a quiet, trusting spirit, a deep inward piety, a calm, waiting soul, by musing on God’ s dealings. This was what distinguished her; this was the groundwork of that strength and nobleness of character which we trace in her. This, therefore, we should likewise cultivate, who would share her blessedness. For this will be to us too, of God’ s blessing, a means of acquiring that pious cheerfulness of temper which is the natural mother of high and noble conduct. It is not in a loud profession or an obtrusive exterior, but in its silent inner power of bowing our will to that of God, of filling our common life with His presence, that true religion shows itself. (Bishop Samuel Wilberforce.) Significant silence respecting Mary How small a space does Mary hold in the New Testament! how vast a space in the history of the Church! Observe the silence of the record respecting her. Shakespeare, the highest among all who haw conceived the human heart or portrayed human life, is marked above all others, as the New Testament is, by the use of significant silence in representing character--led by his deep instinct to know that whatever is peculiarly fine or high can only in this way be hinted to the apprehension. The highest traits of his highest women especially, and in their highest moments, are indicated--how? Just by a few words, a few touches, coming in between silences of far deeper tone, and so the exquisite outline of those wonderful characters is made out. I find the same in the New Testament. Nothing in it is, to me, so deep and bottomless in meaning and effect as the silences of Christ--a stroke or two, a few lines, giving figure and expression to the formless deep lying below. And the same as to Mary. How few the touches!--only just enough to mark out and give character to the deeps of silence, as, when you hear a strain of music at night, the stillness which follows it is made richer still and more musical than any possibility of sound. The evangelists, having given us certain facts as to Mary, do afterwards almost nothing but remain quiet, and not interfere with the inferences of the Christian heart as to the beautiful nature and wonderful consciousness of the virgin mother. Nothing is said as to her feelings--(silence)--but we understand from a general sense of her character, how meek and submissive that silence is. In things which are above her thought, and which seem to men impossible, in things which bring glory to her, or in things which bring shame, the characteristic of this woman is deep, meek, silent submission; and this, as it is the natural top of true womanhood, so also is it of true Christianity. What she was, her son was also in His wider and grander relations to God. (A. G. Mercer, D. D.) The inwardness of Mary’ s character Observe what I may call the inwardness of Mary’ s character. On several occasions, when a common nature would have exulted, when vanity would have babbled, or when common wonder and doubt would have gone asking for explanations, it is said of her, “ Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart.” Now this would not have been repeated as it is, if it had not been a peculiarity and observable. This I call inwardness. There was a hush of awe about it, a disposition to keep a sacred thing sacred; to hide the depths of the heart away from common talk, and to keep their inexpressible-mess hidden to God; to keep all doubts and demurs submissively for His solution; to “ judge nothing before the time” ; to draw inward, and compose and hush the entire nature at the footstool of God; in short, her whole heart seems to have been expressed in the one sentence, “ Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to Thy word.” (A. G. Mercer, D. D.) Hearing should be followed by meditation Musing makes the fire to burn, and deep and constant thoughts are operative, not a glance or a slight view. The hen which straggles from her nest when she sits a brooding, produces nothing; it is a constant incubation which hatches the young. So when we have only a few straggling thoughts, and do not set a-brooding upon a truth, when we have flashes only, like a little glance of a sunbeam upon a wall, it does nothing; but serious and inculcative thoughts (through the Lord’ s blessing) will do the work. (T. Manton, D. D.) Value of meditation Any benefit to be derived from hearing the Word exceedingly depends on meditation. Before we hear the Word, meditation is like a plough, which opens the ground to receive the seed; and after we have heard the Word, it is like the harrow which covers the new-sown seed in the earth, that the fowls of the air may not pick it up: meditation is that which makes the Word full of life and energy to our soul. What is the reason that most men come to hear the Word, as the beasts did in Noah’ s ark: they came in unclean, and they went out unclean? The reason is, because they do not meditate on the truths they hear; it is but just like putting money into a bag with holes--presently it falls out. The truths they hear preached are put into shallow, neglected memories, and they do not draw them forth by meditation. It is for this reason, that hearing is so ineffectual. Hearing the Word merely is like indigestion, and when we meditate upon the Word, that’ s digestion: and this digestion of the Word by meditation produces warm affections, zealous resolutions, and holy actions; and therefore, if you desire to profit by hearing the word, meditate. (H. G.Salter.) Comfort by meditation Meditation, as it advances the graces of the soul, so the comfort of the soul. God conveys comfort to us in a rational way; and although He is able to rain manna in the wilderness, and to cast in comfort to our souls without any labour of ours, yet usually He dispenses comfort according to the standing rule. He that does not work shall not eat--he that does not labour in the duties of religion shall not taste thesweetness of religion. Now, meditation is the serious and active performance of the soul to which God has promised comfort. The promises of the gospel do not convey comfort to us as they are recorded in the Word merely, but as they are applied by meditation. The grapes, while they hang upon the vine, do not produce that wine which cheers the heart of man: but when they arc squeezed in the wine-press, then they yield forth their liquor, which is of such a cheering nature. So the promises which are in the Word barely, do not send forth that sovereign juice which cheers our hearts; but when we ponder them in our souls, and press them by meditation, then the promises convey the water of life to us. Meditation turns the promises into marrow (Psalms 63:5-6); it conveys the strength of them to our souls. (H. G. Salter.) Meditation nourishes the soul Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh; and our best abundance of the heart must be slowly and in quietness prepared. The cattle, when they rest, are yet working to prepare from the grass that sweetest and moat wholesome of beverages--milk. So must we prepare the abundance of the heart. If the milk of our word is to flow from us nourishingly, we must turn the common things of life--the grass--by slow and quiet processes, into sweet wisdom. In retired, meditative hours, the digesting and secreting powers of the spirit act; and thus ourselves are nourished, and we store nourishment for others. (T. T. Lynch.) Meditation must be experienced to be appreciated The advantage of meditation is rather to be felt than read. He that can paint spikenard, or musk, or roses, in their proper colour, cannot with all his art draw their pleasant savour; that is beyond the skill of his pencil. (T. Swinnock.) The Incarnation a subject for devout study No one can absolve himself from the duty of spiritual thought. The words which I have chosen for a text presents the duty to us with almost startling force. The mother of the Lord had received that direct, personal, living revelation of the purpose and the working of God which none other could have; she had acknowledged in the familiar strain of the Magnificat the salvation which He had prepared through her for His people; she might well seem to have been lifted above the necessity of any later teaching; but when the simple shepherds told their story, a faint echo as we might think of what she knew, she “ kept all these things, &c.,” if haply they might show a little more of the great mystery of which she was the minister: she kept them waiting and learning during that long thirty years of silence, waiting and learning during that brief time of open labour, from the first words at the marriage feast to the last words from the cross. And shall we, with our restless, distracted lives, with our feeble and imperfect grasp on Truth, be contented to repeat with indolent assent a traditional confession? Can we suppose that the highest knowledge and the highest know ledge alone is to be gained without effort, without preparation, without discipline, and by a simple act of memory? Is it credible that the law of our nature, which adds capacity to experience and joy to quest, is suddenly suspended when we reach the loftiest field of man’ s activity? 1. The SPIRIT of our study of the Incarnation must be love illuminated by faith, attested by the heart. 2. It follows that the AIM of our study will be vital and not merely intellectual. 3. If we have felt one touch of the spirit which should animate our contemplation of Christ Born, Crucified, Ascended, for us: if we have realized one fragment of the end to which our work is directed, we shall know what the IS. know what it is to see with faint and trembling eyes depth below depth opening in the poor and dull surface of the earth; to see flashes of great hope shoot across the weary trivialities of business and pleasure; to see active about us, in the face of every scheme of selfish ambition, powers of the age to come; to see over all the inequalities of the world, its terrible contrasts, its desolating crimes, its pride, its lust, its cruelty, one over-arching sign of God’ s purpose of redemption, broad as the sky and bright as the sunshine; to see in the gospel a revelation of love powerful enough to give a foretaste of the unity of creation, powerful hereafter to realize it. To us also the Christ has been given. To us also the message of the angels has been made known. To us also the sign of the Saviour has been fulfilled. Happy are we--then only happy--if we keep all these things and ponder them in our hearts. (Canon Westcott.) The profoundest mystery yet is the origin of child-life It is an unexplored history. The sublimest results often are in the child, and yet not a step can we trace with definiteness backward to know the cause of which this is the little effect. The future beams with revelations in its behalf; but of the particles which go to make it up who can guess? Who knows anything about it? The great Sphinx--standing alone in Egypt half-buried in the sand--what mind conceived that? what hand carved it? what has it to say for itself? or who shall speak for it? Yet every cradle has a sphinx more unreadable and mysterious than the old Sphinx of the desert. It is chiefly this future over which parents brood. A mother’ s heart is a miracle. She sees what is not there. She creates what she sees and recreates it when a breath blows it all away. She loves what has no lovable quality. The child is a mere prophecy. These feet shall yet walk, but not now. These eyes shall beam, but now they sleep. These hands shall work, or caress, or carve, or carry the sword, but they are helpless now. “ She kept all these things and pondered them in her heart” is true of every Mary, and of every other name by which the mother is known. She ponders the miracle of the babe, and is herself another miracle creating the life which is to come, and which is purely the myth of her imagination. The things spoken by the angels and the shepherds of the Messiah, the mother of Jesus pondered, and every mother is a Mary, and ponders the little traveller knocking at the door of life or sleeping in the hospitable cradle. The unwritten poetry of a mother’ s heart would give to the world a literature beyond all printed words. (H. F.Beecher.) THE VIRGIN MARY TO THE CHILD JESUS, Sleep, sleep, mine Holy One! My flesh, my Lord I what name? I do not know A name that seemeth not too high or low, Too far from me or heaven. My Jesus, that is best I that word being given By the majestic angel whose command Was softly as a man’ s beseeching said, When I and all the earth appeared to stand In the great overflow. A light celestial from his wings and head Sleep, sleep, my saving One. The slumber of His lips meseems to run Through my lips to mine heart. And then the drear sharp tongue of prophecy With the dread sense of things which shall be done, Doth smite me inly, like a sword. (Mrs. E. B. Browning.) THE MOTHER MARY. Mary, to thee the heart was given, For infant hands to hold, Thus clasping, an eternal heaven, The great earth in its fold. He came, all helpless, to thy power, For warmth, and love, and birth; In thy embraces, every hour He grew into the earth. And thine the grief, O mother high, Which all thy sisters share, Who keep the gate betwixt the sky And this our lower air. And unshared sorrows, gathering slow; New thoughts within thy heart, Which through thee like a sword will go, And make thee mourn apart. For, if a woman bore a son That was of angel-brood, Who lifted wings ere day was done, And soared from where he stood; Strange grief would fill each mother-moan, Wild longing, dim and sore; “ My child! my child I He is my own, And yet is mine no more.” So thou, O Mary, years on years, From child-birth to the cross, Wast filled with yearnings, filled with fears, Keen sense of love and loss. (G. MacDonald.) Missings of mother I think that the most wonderful book that could be written would be a book in which an angel should write all the thoughts that pass through a faithful mother’ s mind from the time that she first hears the cry of her child, and knows that it is born into the world, and rejoices in the midst of her griefs; from the moment of her absorption, or annihilation, pouring herself into the child. Her wonderful gladness of fatigue; her unwillingness to divide her care with any; her heroic sacrifice of all that is brightest and best in life, with no prospect of remuneration except the satisfaction which she feels in serving that little mute and helpless child--these are past description. (H. W. Beecher.) Luke 2:20 And the shepherds returned Dignifying common life And then they returned to their fields, to their flocks, to their ordinary life; giving thus a beautiful example of pious diligence and fidelity in their vocation. An extraordinary privilege has been granted to them. They are not lifted up by it into pride and pretension and self-sufficiency and idleness. They are cheered by it in their common toil. This is all the gospel that some of them would hear on earth. They would die, probably, as they lived, tending their sheep, before the Good Shepherd openly appeared. In their example, they sanctify, they glorify, what we call common life. They dignify the duty, it may be the drudgery of the day. But what, after all, is common life? It is a relative phrase. Common life to these shepherds is the keeping of the sheep on those very fields where David was shepherd-boy before them, where Ruth gleaned after the reapers. Common life to the angels lies in the heavenly spheres, serving at the bidding of the King. This visit to the earth, on such an errand, is a remarkable exception to their ordinary experience. It is, if we may use the phrase, a point of high romance in their history. (Dr. Raleigh.) This is how all true-minded, simple-hearted inquirers have returned from their Christian investigations. It is questionable whether any man has ever closed the Bible in a mood of dissatisfaction who opened it with reverent determination to know how far it was a testimony from heaven. Christian investigation is not finished until it has brought into the heart a joy altogether unprecedented. The mere letter never brings gladness. Critics and disputants have found little in the Bible but a great waste of words; but penitent and earnest inquirers have returned from its examination with hearts overflowing with a new and imperishable joy. (J. Parker, D. D.) Shepherds glorifying God for the birth of a Saviour We will contemplate the things for which, and the manner in which, they glorified God, and will inter mingle some practical reflections. I. WE WILL THE MATTERS FOR WHICH THEY AND PRAISED GOD. These were the things, which they had heard and seen. 1. They glorified God that the promised Saviour was now born. They seem to have been some of those pious people who looked for redemption in Israel. 2. They rejoiced that this Saviour was born for them. The angel says, “ Unto you is born this day a Saviour.” Conscious of their impotence and unworthiness, they felt their need of a Saviour, and esteemed it a matter of great joy that He was come to bring salvation to them. They doubtless admired the distinguishing grace of God in visiting them first of all with the glorious tidings. 3. The shepherds rejoiced that the Saviour was horn for others, as well as themselves. “ I bring you good tidings,” says the angel, “ which shall be to all people.” 4. The shepherds glorified God for what they had seen, as well as what they had heard. II. THE MANNER IN WHICH THEY HIM. 1. They glorified God by faith in the Saviour, whom He had sent. They believed the heavenly message. By faith in the Redeemer we give glory to God. 2. They glorified God by a ready obedience. Being informed by a heavenly messenger where the Saviour lay, they came to Him with haste. They made no delay, but immediately obeyed the Divine intimation. Faith operates in a way of cheerful obedience. 3. They glorified God by confessing and spreading the Saviour’ s name. “ When they had seen Him, they made known abroad what had been told them concerning the Child.” They were not ashamed to own Him as the Messiah, even in His infant state. You see that true faith will prompt you to honour Christ before men. 4. They glorified God by an attendance on the means of faith. The angel who announced the Saviour’ s birth gave them a token by which they might know Him. “ This shall be a sign to you. Ye shall find the babe wrapt in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. And they came with haste, and found as he had told them.” God gave them a particular sign for the confirmation of their faith; and He has appointed standing means to strengthen and enliven ours. Jesus Christ is exhibited to us in His Word, in His sanctuary, and at His table. Here we are to seek Him, and converse with Him, that we may increase our faith and warm our love. 5. They glorified God with the voice of praise. (J. Lathrop, D. D.) The changed world The day after Christ’ s birth was a new day in the world’ s history. The old era had passed, the new had begun; and only the angels knew what a revolution had been wrought by the quiet power of God. The wonder has grown with the years. Christianity has been an increasing miracle of the Lord’ s presence on earth. That song, which a few shepherds heard, has sung itself into the thought of the world, and is the keynote and harmony of all peace and goodwill on earth. I. THE CHANGE OF THE WORLD’ S HISTORY IS A FACT. The influx through Christ of a new power into the life of humanity is a known fact of experience, as certain as the battle of Gettysburg, or the dawn of day. This fact of the new power in the world, through the birth of Christ, belongs to a series of facts. The religion of the Bible presents a continued succession, and reveals an exalted order of facts. Christianity is a positive religion of historical facts from Moses to Christ, from Christ to the last Church organized and the last communion table spread. II. THE NATURE AND REAL OF THIS FACT. 1. In Christianity we breathe a different air. Midway down the Simplon Pass the traveller pauses to read upon a stone the single word “ Italia.” At this point he passes a boundary live, and every step makes plainer how great has been the change from Switzerland to Italy. The air becomes warm and fragrant, and vines line the wayside, and below, embosomed in verdure, Lake Maggiore expands before him. As that traveller rests at evening-time, he recognizes that the entrance into a new world was marked by the word “ Italia” upon the stone on the pass. Humanity has crossed a boundary line: up to Bethlehem, bleak and cold--down from Bethlehem, another and a happier time. 2. This new transforming power was, to the disciples, Jesus Himself. He made all things new to them. 3. Jesus has been to the world a new revelation of God. God is essentially and eternally Christlike. 4. Jesus is also a new revelation of man. Man is in Christ another man. You pass a man in the streets, and you used to feel that you did not want to know or help such a poor creature--he lived below your world, and his name was not found in your book of life. Now it is different, for you have been baptized into the name of Christ, in whom our whole common humanity exists, redeemed and capable of a great salvation. : We close by asking ourselves, “ Am I living, by faith in the Son of God, in this changed world?” Is it, in the history of my soul, the day before, or the better day after, Christmas. (Newman Smyth, D. D.) Luke 2:21 For the circumcising of the Child Circumcision and baptism The teaching of Jewish circumcision resembles the teaching of Christian baptism. Both exhibit the putting away of the filth of the flesh; the first by a wounding of the body (which aptly recalls the severity of the elder dispensation); the second by an outward washing. This, which may be called the practical bearing of the present festival (Circumcision of Christ, 1st January), is brought out in the collect for the day, wherein we beseech God to grant us “ the true circumcision of the spirit.” And it is worth observing that this was seen, from the very first, to be the mystical teaching of the rite. Thus Moses, in the book of Deuteronomy (which abounds in the loftier class of doctrine), speaks plainly (Deuteronomy 10:16; Deuteronomy 30:6) of circumcising the heart; and the prophets (Jeremiah 4:4) use the same expression. St. Stephen’ slanguage, when he addressed his countrymen for the last time (“ Ye stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears,” Acts 7:51), seems to show that this continued throughout the whole history of the Jewish people to be the well-understood meaning of the rite; while St. Paul’ s witness on the point (Romans 2:28-29) is express. It is interesting to observe how closely this observance was connected with holy baptism, besides being typical of the Christian sacrament, and, indeed, a kind of anticipation of it: a rite performed in infancy, and made the occasion of bestowing a new name. (Dean Burgon.) Spiritual nature of circumcision Circumcision was the seal of the gospel covenant made by God with Abraham (Genesis 17:2; Genesis 17:4; Genesis 17:9); which the law, added--as the apostle teaches (Galatians 3:17)--four hundred and thirty years after, could not disannul. This was a covenant of faith, quite distinct from the covenant of works (Exodus 24:8) made through Moses; it was an evangelical, not a legal, covenant. And it foreshadowed what was to be in the latter days, though the people knew it not, would not know it. They relied on being naturally descended from Abraham, and gave no heed to our Saviour’ s declaration that, if they were indeed Abraham’ s children, they would do the works of Abraham (John 8:39); in other words, that God’ s promise to the patriarch’ s seed was a spiritual promise, fulfilled to as many as showed the like faith with himself Galatians 3:7; Galatians 3:29). While, therefore, our Saviour’ s submission to be circumcised--whereby, in one respect, He fulfilled all righteousness--conveys an obvious lesson of obedience, and conformity to the laws of the Church, to which we belong; the gospel fulfilment which Christ gave to that sacred rite, and to the covenant with Abraham of which it was the seal and pledge, brings to mind the high spiritual teaching of all His other ancient laws, the design of which was to guide man’ s heart to the future Messiah. God’ s ancient law was spiritual throughout; no dead letter, but a living reality, trying the very heart and reins. (Dean Burgon.) The circumcision of our Lord There is no part of our Saviour’ s life uninteresting, or that will not yield instruction. We ask, then, why did He submit to circumcision? 1. Christ was circumcised in order to fulfil the law. By His perfect obedience to all its precepts, He abolished its force and condemning power over every transgression. For us He was circumcised and baptized; for us He exhibited entire legal obedience, that He might bring us under the tender, merciful, encouraging covenant of the gospel, by “ fulfilling all righteousness.” 2. Christ’ s circumcision was necessary to obtain for Him a hearing among His own people. The Jews looked upon every uncircumcised person as unclean. Christ could have had no access to them without submitting to this ceremony. To manifest Himself of the seed of Abraham, to satisfy in this respect the requisitions of His nation, to substantiate His pretentions to be their Messiah, and deprive them of what would have been an unanswerable plea for rejecting Him, He graciously condescended to endure this painful rite. What an example has He set us of the excellency of submitting to privations and pains in advancing the happiness of our fellow-beings! Did Jesus bear the marks of an humbling rite in His own precious body, that His own people, when He came to them, might not be offended in Him; and shall not we yield to all innocent compliances with the habits and feelings of others, which may facilitate our usefulness to them, and bear with contentment the labours and crosses, self-denials, expenses, and cares, which may be necessary in promoting their salvation or happiness? 3. The institution of this ceremony, and Christ’ s compliance with it, suggests to us the propriety and efficacy of visible rites and sacraments. Here was a seal of a covenant established by God. It was to be a token for distinguishing the faithful, a sign of cleansing from pollution, and an assurance of blessing from Jehovah. Without some visible rite it is hardly conceivable how this or any Church could be preserved distinct. Some sacrament is necessary, and, if necessary, obligatory upon every one who would support the Church, for which it is hallowed, and enjoy all its privileges. Accordingly, all systems of religion have had their rites, mysteries, symbols. What circumcision was to the Jews, baptism is to Christians. Both of Divine appointment, significant of incorporation into the Church of God, requiring faith, representing purification from the defilements of sin, and implying consequent self-denial, holiness, obedience. 4. In the circumcision of Christ we are strikingly taught the propriety of submitting to all the precepts and institutions of the revelation under which we live. Christ was made under the law, consequently the law had authority over Him. With singular truth, He might have asked, “ Can I be benefited by this rite, and by these simple ceremonies?” With peculiar force He might have inquired, “ What connection can there be between these outward forms and My spirit; what efficacy can they have upon My heart?” With more propriety than any mortal He might have said, “ I can be safe and perfect without all these.” But he did not stop to scruple their utility; He did not find fault with their nature. They were ordained by the Being who established the law under which He lived. This was sufficient for Him. And so throughout His life. He kept the passover; He observed the Sabbath; He went up to the feasts; He neglected no precept of the revelation which He knew came from God, and was authoritative till superseded by His new and better dispensation. In this conduct of His life our Saviour has set an example, excellent in itself, and fit for His disciples to revere. It points to us the necessity of obeying every precept, and observing every rite to which the gospel gives the seal of Divine authority. To neglect baptism or holy communion because, as men think, they may be as good and as safe without them, or because they cannot see their efficacy, is taking a ground which the all-perfect Son of God was too modest to assume. Whether men may be saved without these means, how they effect what is attributed to them, whether they are the best which might have been selected, are points with which we have nothing to do. The questions which concern us are, Whether Christ instituted baptism and the eucharist; and, if He did, whether His injunctions are binding upon us or not? On this plain ground every man may easily form a just determination concerning the propriety of observing all the precepts and institutions of the revelation under which he lives. His observance of them should be a simple act of faith and obedience, by which he should testify both to God and men. (Bishop Dehon.) Early suffering Thus early did Jesus suffer pain for our sakes, to teach us the spiritual circumcision, the circumcision of all our bodily senses. As the east catches at sunset the colours of the west, so Bethlehem is a prelude to Calvary, and even the Infant’ s cradle is tinged with a crimson reflection from the Redeemer’ s cross. (Archdeacon Farrar.) The circumcision of Christ (First Sunday after Christmas.) I. THE RITE OF WHICH, AS ON THIS DAY, WAS TO THE INFANT JESUS HAD A TWOFOLD . 1. Its existence was a testimony that mankind is fallen and needs purification. 2. Circumcision was not only an act of humility, it was also an act of obedience to the law of God. II. THE OF JESUS THUS REVEALS TO US THE ON WHICH HIS HUMAN LIFE WAS BUILT, VIZ., AND . Can there be truer foundations for any human life than these? Is it not the very ideal of Christian childhood? Humility, which is the expression of our own insufficiency; obedience, which is the recognition of our dependence upon God. III. It has been well pointed out by many devout Christian thinkers that THE HUMAN LIFE WHICH THE SON OF GOD LIVED IN THE FLESH IS THE VERY SAME AS THE LIFE WHICH HE LIVES IN US; it is produced in the same manner, and progresses according to the same law. After His spiritual birth in us comes our spiritual circumcision (Colossians 2:11). As this life grows within us, we shall find that it has also its epiphany, its baptism, its temptation, its active ministry, its passion, its cross, its resurrection. Enough for us to-day to consider its circumcision. Not without reason do we pray in the Litany, “ By Thy holy nativity and circumcision, good Lord deliver us.” IV. The circumcision was distinguished from all other acts of our Lord’ s humiliation IN THAT IT WAS WITHOUT ANY GLORY, and was accepted by Him without any protest from God or man, declaring that He needed it not for His own sake. Yet there was even in His circumcision a glory bestowed upon Him which men could not at the time recognize, but which has proved to be the greatest of all the honours of His incarnate life. IT WAS THEN THAT THERE WAS UPON HIM THE NAME OF JESUS, God our Saviour. The name thus given Him in His humiliation has become the name in which He has triumphed over His enemies, the name which has been blessed by millions of penitent sinners, and adored in rapture by ten thousands of His saints. V. Trembling, anxiously, WE ARE LOOKING FORWARD INTO THE OF A NEW YEAR. If we begin the year in the spirit of Him who began His earthly life in humility and obedience, we may know that, however galling to our natural unrenewed will may be the humility which alone becomes us, however difficult may be the obedience which God demands from us, there is yet to be manifested a glory that exalteth, in comparison with which the trials of this present life are but as nothing. (Canon V. Hutton, M. A.) The year begins with Thee, And Thou beginn’ st with woe, To let the world of sinners see That blood for sin must flow. Thine Infant cries, O Lord, Thy tears upon the breast, Are not enough--the legal sword Must do its stern behest. Like sacrificial wine Poured on a victim’ s head Are these few precious drops of Thin,, Now first to offering led. They are the pledge and seal Of Christ’ s unswerving faith Given to His Sire, our souls to heal, Although it costs His death. “ Jesus,” the watchword I. FOR THE CHURCH AND FOR THE HOME. II. FOR JOY AND FOR SORROW. III. FOR LIFE AND FOR DEATH. (Dr. Gerok.) The circumcision and naming of the Child Boys were circumcised eight days after their birth. Tradition said that this day was chosen because the mother ceased to be unclean on the seventh day if she had borne a boy. He who circumcised the child used the following words: “ Blessed be the Lord our God, who has sanctified as by His precepts, and given us circumcision.” The father of the child continued: “ Who has sanctified us by His precepts, and has granted us to introduce our child into the covenant of Abraham our father.” The child was named the same day, because it was said that God changed the names of Abraham and Sarah when He gave the covenant of circumcision. (E. Stapler, D. D.) The circumcision of Christ 1. It signifies purification. Christ committed no sin, but stood for sinful man. 2. It signified obedience (Genesis 17:12). He was “ made under the law” Galatians 4:4). 3. It signified consecration. This ordinance was part of the covenant between God and the Jewish nation, whereby they were to be counted “ a peculiar treasure” unto God “ above all people” (Exodus 19:5). (D. Hughes, M. A.) New Year’ s Day I. WAS A RITE WHICH TOLD OF A PAST. The first account of it occurs in the history of Abraham, in whose case Paul says it was given as a sign and seal of the righteousness which is obtained by faith (Romans 4:11). The state of uncircumcision was thus a state of unrighteousness. Paul also tells the Colossians, that they had been dead in their sins and the uncircumcision of their flesh (Colossians 2:13). Circumcision, therefore, carried with it the remembrance and acknowledgment of a bad and unsatisfactory past. It told of alienation from God, and of faithlessnesses and infidelities. It carried with it a retrospect of failure and sin. Even the circumcision of “ the holy child Jesus,” was an acknowledgment of the fallen condition of the race, with which he identified Himself, in its humiliation, that He might become its perfect Saviour. II. WAS A SIGN OF THE CUTTING OFF AND CASTING AWAY OF SIN. The fleshly incision was a token of a spiritual one, which consisted in separation from moral impurity and evil (Romans 2:29). III. BUT SET APART TO , AS WELL AS SEVERED FROM . It was the ceremony of initiation into the covenant, and pledged the subject to obey it. It was part of the redemption-work of Christ to obey the law. IV. AND FIXED ON CHRIST HIS TRUE NAME. V. But, for the encouragement of those who feel their deficiencies and miseries, there is still one other particular connected with the text. HE WHOM GOD HATH TO BE OUR JUDGE, TOOK THE NAME OF JESUS. He is a Saviour, and a great one. Hopefully His circumcision day so proclaims Him to us. Yea, saith the apostle, “ He is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by Him” (Hebrews 7:25). (J. A.Seiss, D. D.) Luke 2:22; Luke 2:24 The days of her purification The presentation in the temple I. 1. Consider the inner meaning of the law which was here fulfilled by the Infant Jesus. Ever since the day that Israel had been delivered from bondage by the death of the first-born of the Egyptians, the first-born had been considered especially dedicated to the service of God. 2. Here the First-born, not of Mary only, but of all creation, is presented to the Father. Is He not the Only-begotten Son, begotten before all worlds? Now that He has come in the substance of our flesh He is the true Head of the human race, the First-born of a restored humanity. It is as such that He makes His first visit to Jerusalem--type of the heavenly Jerusalem--the Church of the First-born; and His first entry into the Temple, the Home of God upon earth. 3. “ Unto us a Son is given;” as the Son of Man, the Hope of the Human Race, our First-born, He is presented to the Father as our best and only offering. From this day forward He is “ in the presence of God for us.” 4. Inasmuch as we are members of Christ, we too are presented in His presentation. We also become the first-born, joint-heirs with Him, the first-fruits of creation, a royal priesthood, a chosen nation. II. 1. Realize that we are ever being presented in the Temple of God through our union with our Head, even Jesus Christ. 2. Realize this especially in the Holy Eucharist, in which we plead before our Father the one perfect and sufficient sacrifice and oblation for the sins of the whole world, and at the same time, sharing in His life, we offer and present ourselves a reasonable, holy, and lively sacrifice. 3. Realize that as the first-born is especially claimed for the service of God, this sacrifice of ourselves must include the offering of our first-born, our best energies, our truest thoughts, our highest talents, our richest possessions. (Canon Vernon Hutton, M. A.) Dedication to God from early youth In congratulating Simeon and Anna on having seen the salvation of Israel, we should not overlook the fact, that by long preparation and longing they made themselves worthy of embracing the Saviour. If you desire the same happiness, make the same preparation Do not defer it to your old age, but in order to ensure the friendship of Jesus then, devote yourself to Him now I. THIS IS A WELCOME TO GOD. 1. God has a predilection for youth, and selects them as His instruments to attain His designs. Joseph, David, Daniel, Stephen. 2. The young are eminently fit for heaven (Matthew 14:14). 3. So much the more does He value the self-sacrifice of youth, the devotion to Him from childhood being (1) Firstlings (Genesis 4:4). He who dissipates him youth, and in old age turns to God, offers fruits of which the sweetest have been tasted by the devil; and ears, the best grain of which has been taken by him. (2) A sacrifice free from selfishness. (3) A. stainless offering (Malachi 1:8). (4) An example to other’ s. II. VERY FOR ONESELF. 1. Because you are led to perfection, which is the true beauty and riches of man. (1) Virtue is a tree that strikes deeper roots in young hearts. Greater susceptibility--fewer storms internal and external. The coldness and miseries of life are not so much felt. The soul is not yet enervated by passions, nor petrified by custom and stupidity. (2) The stem of this tree is harder and more solid. Virtue, like vice, is hardened into habit and passion. The conversion of old age is often unstable. (3) This tree bears more delicious fruits, and in greater measure. The wine first taken from the press is the most delicious. Virtue is an art acquired by exercise. 2. Because you will gain happiness here on earth. (1) Inner peace--the consciousness of being God’ s friend. (2) The prospect of proximate, abundant, eternal reward. (3) The love and esteem of all who are of good will. 3. Happiness in the next world. (Q. Rossi.) Consequences of good education Mary is the happiest mother, because she carried in her arms the best Child. Where is there a father or mother who would not desire to have good children? The attainment of this wish is often frustrated by parents themselves. Yet they would find urgent motives to realize it, if they would consider the happy results of giving a wise and religious education to their children. I. TO THE PARENTS. Children well educated are-- 1. An honour to their parents. Their good name reflects on those who brought them up. 2. Their joy, consolation, and help, in every condition of life. 3. Their eternal crown. II. TO THE . Parents wish nothing more than to see their children happy. Now it is on good education that-- 1. Their temporal happiness depends. 2. Their eternal weal. You have planted for heaven, and in heaven, therefore, you will reap your reward. No dowry equals this. III. TO . 1. In regard to the family (Psalms 3:2; Psalms 3:8). 2. In regard to civil society. Good and bad morals are rapidly spread and are kept up for a long time. (Tirinus) The purification The question meets us, If the blessed Virgin conceived the Son by the operation of the Holy Ghost, and if He Himself were absolutely and entirely pure, then what need of purification? What defilement was there, from which the Virgin Mother could be purified? And an answer is ready to hand which seems abundantly sufficient, namely, that as Jesus was circumcised, so Mary was purified; in each case there was submission to the letter of a Divine law, and there was no desire and no attempt to establish an exception. Our Lord was a Jewish boy, and was treated as Jewish boys were treated; Mary was a Jewish mother, and acted as Jewish mothers were wont to act. Our English version speaks of the days of her purification, and this is what we might have expected, but it should not be concealed that the best copies of the original Scriptures give, some of them His, some of them their purification; and there can be little doubt that this last form of the sentence is the correct one (so Revised Version). It would seem to indicate that, in the popular belief and feeling of the Jews the sacrifice which was instituted for the purification of the mother (Levit. 12.) did in reality also apply to the child; and this being so, St. Luke appears not to have hesitated to use a phrase, which, literally interpreted, would imply the need of purification on the part of our blessed Lord Himself. This is only another instance of the complete and unreserved manner in which the Head of our race is identified with ourselves. Perhaps the most interesting point in these verses is the incidental testimony to the poverty of the Holy Family. The offering might be a lamp and a turtle-dove if the parents were rich, and two doves or two pigeons if they were poor. Hence the mention of the “ pair of turtle-doves or two young pigeons” marks the worldly condition of the Blessed Virgin and Joseph; they came with the poor man’ s and poor woman’ s offering; and thus again the poverty of our Lord was declared in the most striking manner during His infancy. (Bishop Goodwin.) The days of purification When the fixed time of purification was passed (seven days for a boy and fourteen for a girl), the mother still remained at home thirty-three days for a boy and sixty-six for a girl. Then she went up to the Temple. (E. Stapfer, D. D.) Her forty days were no sooner out than Mary comes up to the Holy City. She comes with sacrifices, whereof one is for a burnt-offering, the other for a sin-offering; the one for thanksgiving, the other for expiation; for expiation of a double sin--of the mother that conceived, of the Child that was conceived. We are all born sinners, and it is a just question whether we do more infect the world, or the world us. They are gross flatterers of nature that tell her she is clean. But, O the unspeakable mercy of our God I we provide the sin, He provides the remedy. Every poor mother was not able to bring a lamb for her offering; there was none so poor but might procure a pair of turtles or pigeons. God looks for somewhat of every one, not of every one alike. Since it is He that makes differences of abilities (to whom it were as easy to make all rich), His mercy will make no difference in the acceptation. The truth and heartiness of obedience is that which He will crown in His meanest servants. A mite, from the poor widow, is more worth to Him than the talents of the wealthy. The blessed Virgin had more business in the temple than her own. She came, as to purify herself, so to present her Son. Every male that first opened the womb was holy unto the Lord. He that was the Son of God by eternal generation before time, was also, by common course of nature, consecrated unto God. It is fit the Holy Mother should present God with His own. Her first-born was the first-born of all creatures. It was He whose temple it was that He was presented in, to whom all the first-born of all creatures were consecrated, by whom they were accepted; and now is He brought in His mother’ s arms to His own house, and, as man, is presented to Himself as God. Under the gospel we are all first-born, all heirs; every soul is to be holy unto the Lord; we are a royal generation, an holy priesthood. Our baptism, as it is our circumcision, and our sacrifice of purification, so is it also our presentation unto God. Nothing can become us but holiness. O God! to whom we are devoted, serve Thyself of us, glorify Thyself by us, till we shall by Thee be glorified with Thee. (Bishop Hall.) No myth A mythus generally endeavours to ennoble its subject, and to adapt the story to the idea. If, then, the gospel narrative were mythical, would it have invented, or even suffered to remain, a circumstance so foreign to the idea of the myth, and so little calculated to dignify it as the above. A mythus would have introduced an angel, or, at least, a vision, to hinder Mary from submitting the child to a ceremony so unworthy of its dignity; or the priests would have received an intimation from heaven to bow before the infant, and prevent its being reduced to the level of ordinary children. (A. Neander.) Early dedication to the Lord The old Romans used to hold the face of all their new-born infants towards the sky, to denote that they must look above the world to celestial glories. We solemnly and prayerfully dedicate our children to God in baptism, &c. And, remembering their immortality and the uncertainty of their life, should we not also constantly devote them to God, and train them for Him and for heaven! My dear mother’ s prayers with and for me influenced me more to what is good than any earthly thing besides ever did. Richard Cecil spoke of his mother as one that had great nearness to God in prayer, and he says she was to him as an angel of God in her counsels and prayers, which most deeply impressed him. At a college were one hundred and twenty young men were studying for the ministry, it was found, as the result of special inquiry, that more than a hundred of them had been converted mainly through a mother’ s prayers and labours. But Sunday-schoolteachers, ministers, church members, young people themselves, and everybody should join in loving, prayerful efforts to present young people and others to the Lord. And if God’ s grace be obtained for them, will they not be restrained from evil, and also led to good? Then children themselves should humbly, earnestly, lovingly, and through faith in Christ, present themselves to the Lord. A dear boy, who was soon after killed in a moment, prayed, “ Lord, make me quite, quite ready, in ease Jesus comes for me in a hurry.” (Henry R. Burton.) Early piety a safeguard In one of the public enclosures of Philadelphia the fountain was recently left to play all night. During the hours of darkness a sharp frost set in; and those who passed by next morning found the water, still playing indeed, but playing over a mass of gleaming icicles. But that was not all. The wind had been blowing steadily in one direction through all these hours, and the spray had been carried on airy wings to the grass which fringed the pool in which the fountain stood. On each blade of grass the spray had fallen so gently as hardly to bend it, descending softly and silently the whole night long. By slow and almost imperceptible processes each blade became coated with a thin layer of ice; by the same noiseless processes each layer grew thicker, until in the morning what before had been a little patch of swaying grass was a miniature battleground of upright, crystal spears, each holding within it, as its nucleus, a single blade of grass, now cold, rigid, and dead. In human life, in like manner, it may seem a light thing leave a young heart outside of Christ’ s fold, and exposed to the “ cold winds of the world’ s great unbelief.” There is no violent transformation of the character in such a case. Yet silently and surely the world’ s frost settles upon the flowers of the heart, covering them with the chill spray of doubt, binding them with soft bonds which harden into chains of ice, encasing them in a coat of crystal mail, polished, cold, and impenetrable. You have met persons in whose heart this freezing process has been accomplished. You have seen beneath the icy surface the nucleus of good which might have grown to so fair a harvest, just as you have seen the dead blade of grass preserved at the core of the icicle. You can do little now for either the person or the plant: nothing but heaven’ s sunshine can melt the ice which holds them in its deadly thrall. But you can take care that none of those for whom you are responsible will be left out in the world’ s cold, to suffer so deadly a change. You can bring them within the warm influences of Christian life, where no frost will gather upon them, and where the soul’ s highest powers will be gently wooed to their best growth. Training children for the Lord An aged Christian, a widow of fourscore years, relates the following experience of her early days. When she first entered upon her married life, she and her husband could lock their cottage door, and go together, forenoon and afternoon, to the house of God. After the birth of their first son they had to enjoy this privilege in turn; one going in the forenoon, and the other in the afternoon. But the sickness or fretfulness of the child not unfrequently detained the mother at home during the whole of the Sabbath. This she felt to be a great privation. On one such occasion a neighbour, coming in to inquire about her welfare, found her in tears. The dejected young mother was a Christian; she had early been brought to the knowledge of the truth as it is in Jesus; she was a lover of the Lord’ s house, and of the Lord’ s day; she trusted in Jesus as her Saviour; but she had not yet learned lovingly to accept all His discipline. There were things connected with it “ too painful for her.” She did not know what was to compensate her for tile want of the days in the courts of the Lord; and so she told her neighbour the cause of her dejection. “ Woman,” replied her neighbour, in the broad dialect of that land, “ d’ ye no mind the word that says, ‘ Take this child, and nurse him for Me; and I will give thee thy wages’ ?” It was a word in season; and, with greater or less power, it sustained and comforted that mother during the whole of her subsequent nursing of ten children. Her home in the valley of the Tweed was long ago exchanged for one on the banks of the Mohawk. But the God whose Word thus comforted her in early womanhood is with her still when she is old and greyheaded; and she can gratefully speak of her eleven children, nursed for Him, as all walking in the ways of God on earth, or taken away to another home into which sickness and death can never come. (Mothers’ Treasury.) Holy education of children Good laws will not reform us, if reformation begin not at home. This is the cause of all our misdeeds in Church and State, even the want of a holy education of children. (R. Baxter.) Permanence of early impressions The late Rev. Richard Knill, a most devoted and useful missionary in Russia, returned home to his native village. It so happened that he slept in the chamber where he had slept as a boy. All night long he lay awake thinking of the mercy and goodness of God to him through life. Early in the morning he looked out of a window, and saw a tree in the garden beneath which his mother had prayed with him forty years before. He went out, and on the same spot knelt down and thanked God for a praying mother. Here was the reward of a mother who trained her children in the way to heaven. Luke 2:22; Luke 2:24 The days of her purification The presentation in the temple I. 1. Consider the inner meaning of the law which was here fulfilled by the Infant Jesus. Ever since the day that Israel had been delivered from bondage by the death of the first-born of the Egyptians, the first-born had been considered especially dedicated to the service of God. 2. Here the First-born, not of Mary only, but of all creation, is presented to the Father. Is He not the Only-begotten Son, begotten before all worlds? Now that He has come in the substance of our flesh He is the true Head of the human race, the First-born of a restored humanity. It is as such that He makes His first visit to Jerusalem--type of the heavenly Jerusalem--the Church of the First-born; and His first entry into the Temple, the Home of God upon earth. 3. “ Unto us a Son is given;” as the Son of Man, the Hope of the Human Race, our First-born, He is presented to the Father as our best and only offering. From this day forward He is “ in the presence of God for us.” 4. Inasmuch as we are members of Christ, we too are presented in His presentation. We also become the first-born, joint-heirs with Him, the first-fruits of creation, a royal priesthood, a chosen nation. II. 1. Realize that we are ever being presented in the Temple of God through our union with our Head, even Jesus Christ. 2. Realize this especially in the Holy Eucharist, in which we plead before our Father the one perfect and sufficient sacrifice and oblation for the sins of the whole world, and at the same time, sharing in His life, we offer and present ourselves a reasonable, holy, and lively sacrifice. 3. Realize that as the first-born is especially claimed for the service of God, this sacrifice of ourselves must include the offering of our first-born, our best energies, our truest thoughts, our highest talents, our richest possessions. (Canon Vernon Hutton, M. A.) Dedication to God from early youth In congratulating Simeon and Anna on having seen the salvation of Israel, we should not overlook the fact, that by long preparation and longing they made themselves worthy of embracing the Saviour. If you desire the same happiness, make the same preparation Do not defer it to your old age, but in order to ensure the friendship of Jesus then, devote yourself to Him now I. THIS IS A WELCOME TO GOD. 1. God has a predilection for youth, and selects them as His instruments to attain His designs. Joseph, David, Daniel, Stephen. 2. The young are eminently fit for heaven (Matthew 14:14). 3. So much the more does He value the self-sacrifice of youth, the devotion to Him from childhood being (1) Firstlings (Genesis 4:4). He who dissipates him youth, and in old age turns to God, offers fruits of which the sweetest have been tasted by the devil; and ears, the best grain of which has been taken by him. (2) A sacrifice free from selfishness. (3) A. stainless offering (Malachi 1:8). (4) An example to other’ s. II. VERY FOR ONESELF. 1. Because you are led to perfection, which is the true beauty and riches of man. (1) Virtue is a tree that strikes deeper roots in young hearts. Greater susceptibility--fewer storms internal and external. The coldness and miseries of life are not so much felt. The soul is not yet enervated by passions, nor petrified by custom and stupidity. (2) The stem of this tree is harder and more solid. Virtue, like vice, is hardened into habit and passion. The conversion of old age is often unstable. (3) This tree bears more delicious fruits, and in greater measure. The wine first taken from the press is the most delicious. Virtue is an art acquired by exercise. 2. Because you will gain happiness here on earth. (1) Inner peace--the consciousness of being God’ s friend. (2) The prospect of proximate, abundant, eternal reward. (3) The love and esteem of all who are of good will. 3. Happiness in the next world. (Q. Rossi.) Consequences of good education Mary is the happiest mother, because she carried in her arms the best Child. Where is there a father or mother who would not desire to have good children? The attainment of this wish is often frustrated by parents themselves. Yet they would find urgent motives to realize it, if they would consider the happy results of giving a wise and religious education to their children. I. TO THE PARENTS. Children well educated are-- 1. An honour to their parents. Their good name reflects on those who brought them up. 2. Their joy, consolation, and help, in every condition of life. 3. Their eternal crown. II. TO THE . Parents wish nothing more than to see their children happy. Now it is on good education that-- 1. Their temporal happiness depends. 2. Their eternal weal. You have planted for heaven, and in heaven, therefore, you will reap your reward. No dowry equals this. III. TO . 1. In regard to the family (Psalms 3:2; Psalms 3:8). 2. In regard to civil society. Good and bad morals are rapidly spread and are kept up for a long time. (Tirinus) The purification The question meets us, If the blessed Virgin conceived the Son by the operation of the Holy Ghost, and if He Himself were absolutely and entirely pure, then what need of purification? What defilement was there, from which the Virgin Mother could be purified? And an answer is ready to hand which seems abundantly sufficient, namely, that as Jesus was circumcised, so Mary was purified; in each case there was submission to the letter of a Divine law, and there was no desire and no attempt to establish an exception. Our Lord was a Jewish boy, and was treated as Jewish boys were treated; Mary was a Jewish mother, and acted as Jewish mothers were wont to act. Our English version speaks of the days of her purification, and this is what we might have expected, but it should not be concealed that the best copies of the original Scriptures give, some of them His, some of them their purification; and there can be little doubt that this last form of the sentence is the correct one (so Revised Version). It would seem to indicate that, in the popular belief and feeling of the Jews the sacrifice which was instituted for the purification of the mother (Levit. 12.) did in reality also apply to the child; and this being so, St. Luke appears not to have hesitated to use a phrase, which, literally interpreted, would imply the need of purification on the part of our blessed Lord Himself. This is only another instance of the complete and unreserved manner in which the Head of our race is identified with ourselves. Perhaps the most interesting point in these verses is the incidental testimony to the poverty of the Holy Family. The offering might be a lamp and a turtle-dove if the parents were rich, and two doves or two pigeons if they were poor. Hence the mention of the “ pair of turtle-doves or two young pigeons” marks the worldly condition of the Blessed Virgin and Joseph; they came with the poor man’ s and poor woman’ s offering; and thus again the poverty of our Lord was declared in the most striking manner during His infancy. (Bishop Goodwin.) The days of purification When the fixed time of purification was passed (seven days for a boy and fourteen for a girl), the mother still remained at home thirty-three days for a boy and sixty-six for a girl. Then she went up to the Temple. (E. Stapfer, D. D.) Her forty days were no sooner out than Mary comes up to the Holy City. She comes with sacrifices, whereof one is for a burnt-offering, the other for a sin-offering; the one for thanksgiving, the other for expiation; for expiation of a double sin--of the mother that conceived, of the Child that was conceived. We are all born sinners, and it is a just question whether we do more infect the world, or the world us. They are gross flatterers of nature that tell her she is clean. But, O the unspeakable mercy of our God I we provide the sin, He provides the remedy. Every poor mother was not able to bring a lamb for her offering; there was none so poor but might procure a pair of turtles or pigeons. God looks for somewhat of every one, not of every one alike. Since it is He that makes differences of abilities (to whom it were as easy to make all rich), His mercy will make no difference in the acceptation. The truth and heartiness of obedience is that which He will crown in His meanest servants. A mite, from the poor widow, is more worth to Him than the talents of the wealthy. The blessed Virgin had more business in the temple than her own. She came, as to purify herself, so to present her Son. Every male that first opened the womb was holy unto the Lord. He that was the Son of God by eternal generation before time, was also, by common course of nature, consecrated unto God. It is fit the Holy Mother should present God with His own. Her first-born was the first-born of all creatures. It was He whose temple it was that He was presented in, to whom all the first-born of all creatures were consecrated, by whom they were accepted; and now is He brought in His mother’ s arms to His own house, and, as man, is presented to Himself as God. Under the gospel we are all first-born, all heirs; every soul is to be holy unto the Lord; we are a royal generation, an holy priesthood. Our baptism, as it is our circumcision, and our sacrifice of purification, so is it also our presentation unto God. Nothing can become us but holiness. O God! to whom we are devoted, serve Thyself of us, glorify Thyself by us, till we shall by Thee be glorified with Thee. (Bishop Hall.) No myth A mythus generally endeavours to ennoble its subject, and to adapt the story to the idea. If, then, the gospel narrative were mythical, would it have invented, or even suffered to remain, a circumstance so foreign to the idea of the myth, and so little calculated to dignify it as the above. A mythus would have introduced an angel, or, at least, a vision, to hinder Mary from submitting the child to a ceremony so unworthy of its dignity; or the priests would have received an intimation from heaven to bow before the infant, and prevent its being reduced to the level of ordinary children. (A. Neander.) Early dedication to the Lord The old Romans used to hold the face of all their new-born infants towards the sky, to denote that they must look above the world to celestial glories. We solemnly and prayerfully dedicate our children to God in baptism, &c. And, remembering their immortality and the uncertainty of their life, should we not also constantly devote them to God, and train them for Him and for heaven! My dear mother’ s prayers with and for me influenced me more to what is good than any earthly thing besides ever did. Richard Cecil spoke of his mother as one that had great nearness to God in prayer, and he says she was to him as an angel of God in her counsels and prayers, which most deeply impressed him. At a college were one hundred and twenty young men were studying for the ministry, it was found, as the result of special inquiry, that more than a hundred of them had been converted mainly through a mother’ s prayers and labours. But Sunday-schoolteachers, ministers, church members, young people themselves, and everybody should join in loving, prayerful efforts to present young people and others to the Lord. And if God’ s grace be obtained for them, will they not be restrained from evil, and also led to good? Then children themselves should humbly, earnestly, lovingly, and through faith in Christ, present themselves to the Lord. A dear boy, who was soon after killed in a moment, prayed, “ Lord, make me quite, quite ready, in ease Jesus comes for me in a hurry.” (Henry R. Burton.) Early piety a safeguard In one of the public enclosures of Philadelphia the fountain was recently left to play all night. During the hours of darkness a sharp frost set in; and those who passed by next morning found the water, still playing indeed, but playing over a mass of gleaming icicles. But that was not all. The wind had been blowing steadily in one direction through all these hours, and the spray had been carried on airy wings to the grass which fringed the pool in which the fountain stood. On each blade of grass the spray had fallen so gently as hardly to bend it, descending softly and silently the whole night long. By slow and almost imperceptible processes each blade became coated with a thin layer of ice; by the same noiseless processes each layer grew thicker, until in the morning what before had been a little patch of swaying grass was a miniature battleground of upright, crystal spears, each holding within it, as its nucleus, a single blade of grass, now cold, rigid, and dead. In human life, in like manner, it may seem a light thing leave a young heart outside of Christ’ s fold, and exposed to the “ cold winds of the world’ s great unbelief.” There is no violent transformation of the character in such a case. Yet silently and surely the world’ s frost settles upon the flowers of the heart, covering them with the chill spray of doubt, binding them with soft bonds which harden into chains of ice, encasing them in a coat of crystal mail, polished, cold, and impenetrable. You have met persons in whose heart this freezing process has been accomplished. You have seen beneath the icy surface the nucleus of good which might have grown to so fair a harvest, just as you have seen the dead blade of grass preserved at the core of the icicle. You can do little now for either the person or the plant: nothing but heaven’ s sunshine can melt the ice which holds them in its deadly thrall. But you can take care that none of those for whom you are responsible will be left out in the world’ s cold, to suffer so deadly a change. You can bring them within the warm influences of Christian life, where no frost will gather upon them, and where the soul’ s highest powers will be gently wooed to their best growth. Training children for the Lord An aged Christian, a widow of fourscore years, relates the following experience of her early days. When she first entered upon her married life, she and her husband could lock their cottage door, and go together, forenoon and afternoon, to the house of God. After the birth of their first son they had to enjoy this privilege in turn; one going in the forenoon, and the other in the afternoon. But the sickness or fretfulness of the child not unfrequently detained the mother at home during the whole of the Sabbath. This she felt to be a great privation. On one such occasion a neighbour, coming in to inquire about her welfare, found her in tears. The dejected young mother was a Christian; she had early been brought to the knowledge of the truth as it is in Jesus; she was a lover of the Lord’ s house, and of the Lord’ s day; she trusted in Jesus as her Saviour; but she had not yet learned lovingly to accept all His discipline. There were things connected with it “ too painful for her.” She did not know what was to compensate her for tile want of the days in the courts of the Lord; and so she told her neighbour the cause of her dejection. “ Woman,” replied her neighbour, in the broad dialect of that land, “ d’ ye no mind the word that says, ‘ Take this child, and nurse him for Me; and I will give thee thy wages’ ?” It was a word in season; and, with greater or less power, it sustained and comforted that mother during the whole of her subsequent nursing of ten children. Her home in the valley of the Tweed was long ago exchanged for one on the banks of the Mohawk. But the God whose Word thus comforted her in early womanhood is with her still when she is old and greyheaded; and she can gratefully speak of her eleven children, nursed for Him, as all walking in the ways of God on earth, or taken away to another home into which sickness and death can never come. (Mothers’ Treasury.) Holy education of children Good laws will not reform us, if reformation begin not at home. This is the cause of all our misdeeds in Church and State, even the want of a holy education of children. (R. Baxter.) Permanence of early impressions The late Rev. Richard Knill, a most devoted and useful missionary in Russia, returned home to his native village. It so happened that he slept in the chamber where he had slept as a boy. All night long he lay awake thinking of the mercy and goodness of God to him through life. Early in the morning he looked out of a window, and saw a tree in the garden beneath which his mother had prayed with him forty years before. He went out, and on the same spot knelt down and thanked God for a praying mother. Here was the reward of a mother who trained her children in the way to heaven. Luke 2:25-35 Whose name was Simeon Readiness for God’ s will “ Some years ago,” says a lady, “ I made the acquaintance of an old peasant in a little German village, where I for some time resided. He was called Gottlieb, a name which has the very beautiful signification, ‘ The love of God.’ The old man was well worthy of it, for if ever heart was filled with love to God and to all God’ s creatures it was his. Once when walking I came upon him as he was stooping to pick up a fallen apple. ‘ Don’ t you weary, Gottlieb,’ I asked, ‘ stooping so often, end then lying all alone by the roadside?’ ‘ No, no, miss,’ he answered, smiling, and offering me a handful of ripe pears, ‘ I don’ t weary; I’ m just waiting--waiting. I think I’ m about ripe now, and I must soon fall to the ground; and then, just think, the Lord will pick me up! O miss, you are young yet, and perhaps just in blossom; turn well round to the Sun of Righteousness, that you may ripen sweet for His service.’” (New Cyclopaedia of Anecdote.) Waiting for the Lord Everybody knows and loves the story of the dog Argus, who just lives through the term of his master’ s absence, and sees him return to his home, and recognizes him, and rejoicing in the sight, dies. Beautiful, too, as the story is in itself, it has a still deeper allegorical interest. For how many Arguses have there been, how many will there be hereafter, the course of whose years has been so ordered that they will have just lived to see their Lord come and take possession of His home, and in their joy at the blissful sight, have departed! How many such spirits, like Simeon’ s, will swell the praises of Him who spared them that He might save them. (Augustus Hare.) Waiting for the chariot Mrs. Cartwright, wife of the famous American preacher, was, after her husband’ s death, attending a meeting at Bethel Chapel, a mile from her house. She was called upon to give her testimony, which she did with much feeling, concluding with the words: “ The past three weeks have been the happiest of all my life; I am waiting for the chariot.” When the meeting broke up she did not rise with the rest. The minister solemnly said, “ The chariot has arrived.” Simeon’ s blessed hope I. SIMEON’ S . He was “ waiting.” He did not wish that the tabernacle of his body might be dissolved; but he did hope that, through the chinks of that old battered tabernacle of his, he might be able to see the Lord. II. THE OF THIS . He had the consolation for which he waited, and all the people of God now have it, in Jesus. But a little while ago I heard of an ungodly man who had a pious wife. They had but one daughter, a fair and lovely thing; she was laid on a bed of sickness: the father and mother stood beside the bed; the solemn moment came when she must die; the father leaned over, and put his arm round her, and wept hot tears upon his child’ s white brow; the mother stood there too, weeping her very soul away. The moment that child was dead, the father began to tear his hair, and curse himself in his despair; misery had got hold upon him; but as he looked towards the foot of the bed, there stood his wife; she was not raving, she was not cursing; she wiped her eyes, and said, “ I shall go to her, but she shall not return to me.” The unbeliever’ s heart for a moment rose in anger, for he imagined that she was a stoic. But the tears flowed down her cheeks too. He saw that though she was a weak and feeble woman, she could bear sorrow better than he could, and he threw his arms round her neck, and said, “ Ah! wife, I have often laughed at your religion; I will do so no more. There is much blessedness in this resignation. Would God that I had it too!” “ Yes,” she might have answered, “ I have the consolation of Israel.” There is--hear it, ye despisers, and wonder, and perish!-there is consolation in Israel. Ah! it is sweet to see a Christian die; it is the noblest thing on earth--the dismissal of a saint from his labour to his reward, from his conflicts to his triumphs. The georgeons pageantry of princes is as nothing. The glory of the setting sun is not to be compared with the heavenly coruscations which illumine the soul as it fades from the organs of bodily sense, to be ushered into the august presence of the Lord. When dear Haliburton died, he said, “ I am afraid I shall not be able to bear another testimony to my Master, but in order to show you that I am peaceful, and still resting on Christ, I will hold my hands up;” and just before he died, he held both his hands up, and clapped them together, though he could not speak. Have you ever read of the death-bed of Payson? I cannot describe it to you; it was like the flight of a seraph. John Knox, that brave old fellow, when he came to die, sat up in his bed, and said, “ Now the hour of my dissolution is come; I have longed for it many a-day; but I shall be with my Lord in a few moments.” Then he fell back on his bed and died. III. THE OF THIS FACT. 1. There is consolation in the doctrines of the Bible. What sayest thou, worldling, if thou couldst know thyself elect of God the Father, if thou couldst believe thyself redeemed by His only-begotten Son, if thou knewest that for thy sins there was a complete ransom paid, would not that be a consolation to you? Perhaps you answer, “ No.” That is because you are a natural man, and do not discern spiritual things. The spiritual man will reply, “ Consolation? ay, sweet as honey to these lips; yea, sweeter than the honeycomb to my heart are those precious doctrines of the grace of God.” 2. There is consolation in the promises of the Bible. Oh! how sweet to the soul in distress are the promises of Jesus! For every condition there is a promise; for every sorrow there is a cordial; for every wound there is a balm; for every disease there is a medicine. If we turn to the Bible, there are promises for all cases. 3. Not only have we consolatory promises, and consolatory doctrines, but we have consolatory influences in the ministry of the Holy Spirit. (C. H.Spurgeon.) Scripture biography of Simeon What a biography of a man? How short, and yet how complete! We have seen biographies so prolix, that full one half is nonsense, and much of the other half too vapid to be worth reading. We have seen large volumes spun out of men’ s letters. Writing desks have been broken open, and private diaries exposed to the world. Now-a-days, if a man is a little celebrated, his signature, the house in which he was born, the place where he dines, and everything else, is thought worthy of public notice. So soon as he is departed this life, he is embalmed in huge fulios, the profit of which rests mainly, I believe, with the publishers, and not with the readers. Short biographies are the best, which give a concise and exact account of the whole man. What do we care about what Simeon did--where he was born, where he was married, what street he used to walk through, or what coloured coat he wore? We have a very concise account of his history, and that is enough. His “ name was Simeon;” he lived “ in Jerusalem;” “ the same man was just and devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel: and the Holy Ghost was upon him.” Beloved, that is enough of a biography for any one of us. If, when we die, so much as this can be said of us--our name--our business, “ waiting for the consolation of Israel” --our character, “ just and devout” --our companionship, having the Holy Ghost upon us--that will be sufficient to hand us down not to time, but to eternity, memorable amongst the just, and estimable amongst all them that are sanctified. Pause awhile, I beseech you, and contemplate Simeon’ s character. The Holy Ghost thought it worthy of notice, since he has put a “ behold” in the sentence. “ Behold, there was a man in Jerusalem, whose name was Simeon.” He doth not say, “ Behold, there was a man in Jerusalem, whose name was King Herod;” he doth not say, “ Behold, there was a man in Jerusalem, who was high priest;” but “ Behold!” --turn aside here, for the sight is so rare, you may never see such a thing again so long as you live; here is a perfect marvel; “ Behold,” there was one man in Jerusalem who was “ just and devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel; and the Holy Ghost was upon him.” His character is summed up in two words--“ just and devout.” “ Just” --that is his character before men. “ Devout” --that is his character before God. He was “ just.” Was he a father? He did not provoke his children to anger, lest they should be discouraged. Was he a master? He gave unto his servants that which was just and equal, knowing that he also had his Master in heaven. Was he a citizen? He rendered obedience unto the powers that then were, submitting himself to the ordinances of man for the Lord’ s sake. Was he a merchant? He overreached in no transaction, but pro-riding things honest in the sight of all men, he honoured God in his common business habits. Was he a servant? Then he did not render eye-service, as a man-pleaser, but in singleness of heart he served the Lord. If, as is very probable, he was one of the teachers of the Jews, then he was faithful; he spoke what he knew to be the Word of God, although it might not be for his gain, and would not, like the other shepherds, turn aside to speak error, for the sake of filthy lucre. Before men he was just. But that is only half a good man’ s character. There are many who say, “ I am just and upright; I never robbed a man in my life; I pay twenty shillings in the pound; and if anybody can find fault with my character, let him speak. Am I not just? But as for your religion,” such a one will say, “ I do not care about it; I think it cant.” Sir, you have only one feature of a good man, and that the smallest. You do good towards man, but not towards God; you do not rob your fellow, but you rob your Maker. Simeon had both features of a Christian. He was a “ just man,” and he was also “ devout.” He valued the “ outward and visible sign,” and he possessed also the “ inward and spiritual grace. (C. H.Spurgeon.) The waiting Church All the saints have waited for Jesus. Our mother Eve waited for the coming of Christ; when her first son was born, she said, “ I have gotten a man from the Lord.” True she was mistaken in what she said: it was Cain, and not Jesus. But by her mistake we see that she cherished the blessed hope. That Hebrew patriarch, who took his son, his only son, to offer him for a burnt offering, expected the Messiah, and well did he express his faith when he said, “ My son, God will provide Himself a lamb.” He who once had a stone for his pillow, the trees for his curtains, the heaven for his canopy, and the cold ground for his bed, expected the coming of Jesus, for he said on his death-bed--“ Until Shiloh come.” The law-giver of Israel, who was “ king in Jeshurun,” spake of Him, for Moses said, “ A prophet shall the Lord your God raise up unto you, of your brethren, like unto me: Him shall ye hear.” David celebrated Him in many a prophetic song--the Anointed of God, the King of Israel; Him to whom all kings shall bow, and all nations call Him blessed. How frequently does he in his Psalms sing about “ my Lord” ! “ The LORD said unto my Lord, Sit thou at my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool.” But need we stop to tell you of Isaiah, who spake of His passion, and “ saw His glory” ? of Jeremiah, of Ezekiel, of Daniel, of Micah, of Malachi, and of all the rest of the prophets, who stood with their eyes strained, looking through the dim mists of futurity, until the weeks of prophecy should be fulfilled--until the sacred day should arrive, when Jesus Christ should come in the flesh? They were all waiting for the consolation of Israel. And, now, good old Simeon, standing on the verge of the period when Christ would come, with expectant eyes looked out for Him. Every morning he went up to the temple, saying to himself, “ Perhaps He will come to-day.” Each night when he went home he bent his knee, and said, “ O Lord, come quickly; even so, come quickly.” And yet, peradventure, that morning he went to the temple, little thinking, perhaps, the hour was at hand when he should see his Lord there; but there He was, brought in the arms of His mother, a little babe; and Simeon knew Him. “ Lord,” said he, “ now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace, according to Thy word: for mine eyes have seen Thy salvation.” “ Oh,” cries one, “ but we cannot wait for the Saviour now!” No, beloved, in one sense we cannot, for He has come already. The poor Jews are waiting for Him. They will wait in vain now for His first coming, that having passed already. Waiting for the Messiah was a virtue in Simeon’ s day; it is the infidelity of the Jews now, since the Messiah is come. Still there is a high sense in which the Christian ought to be every day waiting for the consolation of Israel. I am very pleased to see that the doctrine of the second advent of Christ is gaining ground everywhere. I find that the most spiritual men in every place are” looking for,” as well as “ hastening unto,” the coming of our Lord and Saviour. I marvel that the belief is not universal, for it is so perfectly scriptural. We are, we trust, some of us, in the same posture as Simeon. We have climbed the staircase of the Christian virtues, from whence we look for that blessed hope, the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. (C. H. Spurgeon.) The consolation of Israel Piscator observeth that “ the consolation of Israel” is the periphrasis of Jesus Christ; because all the consolation of a true Israelite, as Jacob’ s in Benjamin, is bound up in Christ. If He be gone, the soul goeth down to the grave with sorrow. As all the candles in a country cannot make a day--no, it must be the rising of the sun that must do it, the greatest confluence of comforts that the whole creation affordeth, cannot make a day of light and gladness in the heart of a believer; no, it must be the rising of this Sun of Righteousness. (G. Swinnock.) Waiting is good but hard service Waiting is often the best kind of service a man can render. Indeed we call a good servant a waiter. But it is commonly harder to wait than to work. It was hard for the children, the night before Christmas, to wait until morning before they knew what presents they were to have. Yet there was nothing for them to do but to wait. And if they only would wait, the morning would come--and with it all that had been promised to them for the morning. How hard it is to wait for the fever to turn, when we are watching by a loved one’ s bedside, and our only hope is in waiting. It is hard to wait from seedtime to harvest, from the beginning of the voyage to its end, from the sad parting to the joyous meeting again, from the sending of a letter until its answer can come back to us. How much easier it would be to do something to hasten a desired event, instead of patiently, passively waiting for its coming. It is so much easier to ask in faith than to wait in faith. The minutes drag while the response tarries. (H. C. Trumbull.) Waiting is harder than doing Waiting is a harder duty than doing. In illustration of this compare Milton’ s beautiful sonnet on his blindness, and that part of “ The Pilgrim’ s Progress” which tells of Passion and Patience. Jesus Himself had to wait patiently for thirty long years before He entered upon His mission. In a certain battle a detachment of cavalry was kept inactive. It was hard for the men to do nothing but wait, while the fight was going on before them. At last, in the crisis of the battle, the command was given them to charge, and that body of fresh men, sweeping down like a torrent, turned the tide of battle. So, in the battle of life, waiting is often the surest means to victory. And it is comforting to know that where we see only the unsightly bud, God sees the perfect flower; where we see the rough pebble, He sees the flashing diamond. (Sunday School Times.) Patient waiting Those who have read the story of Agamemnon will remember the glorious beauty of its opening. A sentinel is placed to watch, year after year, for the beacon-blaze, the appointed signal to announce the taking of Troy. At last it is lighted up; on many a hill the withered heath flares up to pass on the tidings being given; from many a promontory the fire rises in a pillar, and is reflected tremulously on the ridged waves, till at last it is lighted upon the mountains, and recognized as the genuine offspring of the Idean flame. And then the sentinel may be relieved. Even so it is with Simeon. He is a sentinel whom God had set to watch for the Light. He has seen it, and he feels now that his life-work is over. (Bishop Wm. Alexander.) Simeon and the child Jesus 1. It is saying much for Simeon that he was both a just and a devout man. These two features of Christian character are needful tile one to the other. A just man may be rigidly and legally righteous, yet his character may be hard and cold; but a devout man is one of a warmer, gentler spirit, who is not only good, but makes goodness attractive. Simeon’ s devout spirit adorned his justice, and his just spirit strengthened his devotion. 2. No Christian grace is finer than the grace that waits for the consolation of Israel. Waiting higher than working. The passive virtues of the Christian require and display a greater faith and a profounder humility than the active. To those who wait in faith, submission, and holy living, the consolation of Israel will always come. 3. All Christians may not depart in raptures, but they may at least expect to “ depart in peace.” Many good people are greatly concerned lest they should not be ready to die. If we are ready to live we may leave dying to the Lord. Simeon’ s life had been passed in peace with God. In the same peace he was ready to die. 4. The salvation of Christ is no meagre and limited scheme. It is for all peoples. Christ is both “ a light to lighten the Gentiles,” and “ the glory of God’ s Israel.” Before His throne will be gathered at last “ a great multitude whom no man can number.” “ He shall see of the travail of His soul, and shall be satisfied.” But what will satisfy His infinite heart, if the kingdom of Satan at last outnumbers His own? 5. Christ has always been “ spoken against,” but Christianity lives, and is going on in the world “ conquering and to conquer.” (E. D. Rogers, D. D.) Simeon: saint, singer, and seer Simeon’ s song was the first human Advent hymn with which the Saviour was greeted, and it has been sung constantly in the Church ever since. I. Contemplate A SAINTLY . II. See further THE SAINT’ S , resting upon (1) the word of prophecy; (2)a definite personal promise (Luke 2:26). III. Now think of THE SAINTLY . Simeon saw Christ. The promise was fulfilled. The vision was enough to satisfy the soul. IV. Let us listen to THE SAINT’ S SONG. HOW honourable was the position which Simeon occupied in uttering this song! A long chain of saints, stretching through the ages, was completed in him. They expected, he realized. They had all died, not having received the promise, he received. They had only foreseen, he actually touched Christ. He struck the first chords of that song which has been taken up already by the ages, and will go on vibrating and increasing in volume so long as earth stands or heaven endures. V. THE SAINTLY of Simeon must not be unnoticed. If there is to be glory, there must also be suffering. He gives a hint of Gethsemane and of Calvary. A sword was to pass through Mary’ s heart. Here is the “ first foreshadowing of the Passion found in the New Testament.” It should save us from surprise that Christianity has had to pass through such vicissitudes. The Saviour came to His throne by way of the cross, and His truth will come to be the one power among men by way of frequent dispute and temporary rejection. VI. THE SAINT’ S FOR DEATH is suggested in his own words. There is a tradition that this was his “ swan-song” --that he passed into the other world when he had finished it. More fitting words with which to die could not easily be found. What a contrast the dying words of such a saint present to the words of the worldling! It is said that Mirabeau cried out frantically for music to soothe his last moments; that Hobbes, the deist, said, as he gasped his last breath, “ I am taking a fearful leap into the dark” ; that Cardinal Beaufort said, “ What I is there no bribing death?” Men with the Christian light have met death in another way. When Melancthon was asked if there was anything he desired, he said, “ No, Luther, nothing but heaven.” Dr. John Owen said at last, “ I am going to Him whom my soul loveth, or rather, who has loved me with an everlasting love.” John Brown of Haddington could say, “ I am weak, but it is delightful to feel one’ s self in the everlasting arms.” George Washington could say, “ It is all well.” Walter Scott, as he sank in the slumber of death, “ Now I shall be myself again.” Beethoven, as he could almost catch the melody of the mystic world, “ Now I shall hear.” Wesley could cheerily meet death with the words, “ The best of all is, God is with us.” Locke, the Christian philosopher, exclaimed at dying, “ Oh, the depth of the riches of the goodness and knowledge of God!” Stephen said, “ Lord Jesus, receive my spirit” : Paul, “ having a desire to depart” ; and, “ to die is gain.” All such utterances accord with the last words of Simeon. Inquiry as to the character of the individual life, hope, and preparation for the future should be the outcome of these thoughts. Useful and important lessons all may learn as they contemplate the character of the venerable Simeon--saint, singer, and seer. (F. Hastings.) Simeon: a sermon for Christmas Simeon, we are told, waited for the Consolation of Israel. In that short but striking word we discover a thought unknown to the ancient world, and one which gives the Jewish nation incomparable grandeur. Israel is a people that waits. Whilst the other nations grow great, conquer, and extend here below; whilst they think only of their power and visible prosperity, Israel waits. This little people has an immense, a strange ambition; they expect the reign of God on earth. Much that was carnal and selfish mixed up with that ambition. But the truly pious understood in a different way the consolation of Israel. In their ease, the question was, before everything else, spiritual deliverance, pardon, salvation. Yet how few they were who were not tired of waiting! For more than four hundred years no prophet had appeared to revive their hope. The stranger reigned in Jerusalem. Religious formalism covered with a winding sheet of lead the whole nation. The scoffers asked where the promise of Messiah’ s coming was. Yet in the midst of that icy indifference, Simeon still waits. Consider-- I. THE OF HIS HOPE. II. THE OF HIS FAITH, In a poor child brought by poor people to the temple he discovers Him who is to he the glory of Israel, and--something more wonderful still, and wholly foreign to the spirit of a Jew--Him who is to enlighten the Gentiles. It is the whole of mankind that Simeon gives as a retinue to the child which he bears in his arms. Never did a bolder faith launch out into the infinite, basing all its calculations on the Word of God. III. THE IN HIS SOUL BY THE WITH WHICH FAITH FILLS HIM. All these feelings summed up in one--joy; the joy of a soul overwhelmed with the goodness of God, joy which is breathed out in song. What is the principle of that joy? It is a Divine peace. “ Now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace.” And on what does that peace rest? On the certainty of salvation. “ Mine eyes have seen Thy salvation.” You who know this joy, keep it not to yourselves! (E. Bersier, D. D.) A representative man Sometimes one man seems to stand as the representative of the whole human family. It was so in this instance. All the expectations, desire, hope, and assurance of better things which have moved the heart of man, seem to have been embodied in the waiting Simeon. His occupation is appropriately described by the word waiting. He had probably seen a long lifetime of varied spiritual service, and had passed through his full share of human suffering; and now, with all this discipline behind him, he had nothing to do but to wait for the disclosure of the supreme mercy of heaven. At his age he could not be long, in the usual order of things, before he saw death; and yet, between him and that grim sight there lay the promised revelation of the very beauty of the Father’ s image. The coming of Simeon into the Temple, though an ordinary act, was invested with extraordinary feeling and significance. Sometimes the habitude of a whole life will suddenly disclose new meanings and adaptations, and the most beaten ground of our routine will have springing up on it unexpected and precious flowers. Persist in going to the house of God, for the very next time you go you may be gladdened by rare revelations! A beautiful picture is this taking of the child into the arms of Simeon, this lifting up of the old man’ s face, and this utterance of the saint’ s prayer! Let imagination linger upon the pathetic scene. It is thus that God closes the ages and opens the coming time. The old man and the little child, whenever they come together, seem to repeat in some degree the interest of this exciting scene. Every child brought into the temple of the Lord should be in his own degree a teacher and a deliverer of the people; and every venerable saint should regard him as such, and bless God for the promise of his manhood. It is amazing at how many points we may touch the Saviour. There is Simeon with the little child in his arms, and in that little life he sees the whole power of God, and the light that is to spread its glory over Israel and the Gentiles. Simeon might have given his prayer another turn; he might have said, “ Lord, let me tarry awhile, that I may see the growth of this child. I am unwilling to go just yet, as great things are about to happen, such as never happened upon the earth before; I pray Thee let me abide until I see at least His first victory, and then call me to Thy rest.” This would have been a natural desire, and yet the old man was content to have seen and touched the promised child; and he who might have died in the night of Judaism, passed upward in the earliest dawn of Christianity. Simeon saw the salvation of God in the little child. Others have seen that salvation is the wondrousness and beneficence exemplified in the full manhood of Christ. Some have been saved by a simple act of faith; others have passed into spiritual rest through doubt, suffering, and manifold agony. Some have gone “ through nature up to nature’ s God” ; and others have found Him in the pages of revelation, in bold prophecy, in tender promise, in profound legislation, in gracious and healing sympathay. Thus there are many points at which we touch the great saving facts of the universe; the question is not so much at what point we come into contact with God as to be sure that our progress is vital and progressive. (J. Parker, D. D.) Aged evangelists The first evangelists were old people. When the King of kings put off the glory of His heavenly state, and came into this world, no person pronounced His name, or even recognized His face on the day of His first public appearance, but one old man and one old woman. I. THE FIRST MAN IN THIS WORLD WHO WAS TO BE AN WAS AN AGED MAN. An old father named Simeon. Historically, we know nothing about him, not even that he was old; but all tradition says that he was so, and it is the fair, inevitable inference from the spirit of the story that he had reached a stage when, in all human probability, he would not have to live much longer. I think that he began to walk up to the temple with short breath and slow step, and that age had set a seal upon him, which, like the red cross upon a tree marked by the steward to come down, told that he was soon to die. Yet he had in cypher a secret message from heaven, by which he knew that he was safe to live a little longer, It looks as if he had belonged to the predicted few who spake often one to another in the dark hour just before the Sun of Righteousness rose, and that in answer to a great longing to see the Saviour “ it was revealed to Him by the Holy Ghost that he should not see death until he had seen the Lord’ s Christ.” We are not told when this revelation was made. If in his early manhood, it must have been a strange, charmed life that he led ever after. At last the long-looked-for express came. Did he hear in the air or did the voice whisper in his soul words like these: “ Go to the temple; the Lord whom you seek shall suddenly come to His temple this day” ? We only know that “ he came by the Spirit into the temple.” No particular stir in the street that morning, as the old man hurried along, to mark anything out of the common way. No one knows what kind of being Simeon expected to see, but we know that his faith was not shaken by the sight of His King coming as a mere child. All his soul flamed up. The old face shone like a lamp suddenly lighted; then to the delight of the mother and to the amazement of the officiating priests, who almost thought him out of his mind, this servant of the Master in heaven took the child in his arms and spoke like the prophet Isaiah. Let no believer be afraid to die. When the time comes, you will find that, little by little, He has cleared out all the impediments that now seem to you so great; you will be as really to go as Simeon was; and if you look for Him as he did, you will find that Jesus clasped close to you is still “ the antidote to death.” II. THE FIRST WOMAN IN THIS WORLD WHO WAS TO BE AN WAS AN AGED WOMAN. Let us take short notes of what is said about her. 1. The fact of her great age is stated. The style of the statement is obscure, but the meaning seems to be that she was a widow about eighty-four years of age; that seven years out of the eighty-four she had been a wife, and that she was quite a young girl when she married. Then she had lived long enough, like Noah, to see an old world die, and a new world born. 2. She was a prophetess God had said by an ancient seer, “ On My servants and on My handmaidens I will pour out in these days of My Spirit.” As the sun sends out shoots of glory and tinges of forerunning radiance to tell that he is coming, so, before the Day of Pentecost was fully come, we have foretokens of it in the prophetic flashes that shone out from the souls of Simeon and Anna. 3. She was of the tribe of Asher. Not an illustrious tribe. No star in the long story of its darkness until now. It had, however, one honourable distinction. To it had been left a peculiar promise, the richest gem in the old family treasure: “ And of Asher he said … As thy days, so shall thy strength be.” The old prophetess could say of this promise, “ I am its lawful heiress. Long have I known it, and always have I found it true. In my young days, in my days of happy wifehood, in my days of lonely widowhood, in my days of weary age; as my days, my strength has been.” 4. “ She departed not from the temple, but served God,” &c. (verse 37). Looking and listening for the Lord of the temple, she thought that His foot on the stair might be heard at any moment, and she would not be out of the way when He came. When the temple shafts, crowned with lily-work, flashed back the crimson sunrise, she was there; when the evening lamps were lighted, she was there; when the courts were crowded, she was there; when the last echoes of the congregation died away, still she was there; her spirit said, “ One thing have I desired of the Lord,” &c. (Psalms 27:4). 5. She took part in making known the joyful tidings. Simeon was in the act of speaking, “ and she, coming in that instant, gave thanks likewise unto the Lord, and spake of Him,” &c. (verse 38). We try in vain to picture her delight. It had been her habit to speak about the glory of which her heart was full to the people who came at the hour of prayer; and now, at this most sacred hour, we are sure that in her holy rapture she would stop this person, put her hand on that, and say in spirit, whatever her words may have been: “ Look there on that little child; He is all that we have been looking for; folded up in that lovely little life is all our redemption; that bud will burst into wondrous flower some day. Whoever lives to see it, mark my words, that child will grow up to be the Redeemer of Israel.” First things are significant things, especially at the opening of a new dispensation. When, therefore, we find in the gospel-story that the first evangelists were old people, both old and young should take the hint. Old Christians must never tell us any more that they are past service. God has no such word as “ superannuated” written against any name in His book. The young Christian, joyful with a soul that colours all things with the freshness and glory of its own morning, can never say of the old Christian, “ I have no need of thee.” No hand can turn back the shadow on the dial of time; no spell can change the grey hair into its first bright abundant beauty; no science can discover the fountain of youth told about in Spanish tales of old romance; but the grace of God can do infinitely more than that. It can keep the heart fresh; it can make the soul young when the limbs are old. When strength is made perfect in weakness; when many years have run their course; when we are obliged to change the tense in speech about your labours, as Paul did when he said, “ Salute the beloved Persis, who laboured much in the Lord,” but feel all the while that you are more “ beloved” than ever; when, “ coming in,” you “ give thanks to the Lord” ; when your inmost life can say, “ My hand begins to tremble, but I can still take hold of the everlasting covenant; my foot fails, but it is not far from the throne of grace; my sight fails, but I can see Jesus; my appetite fails, but I have meat to eat that the world knows not of; my ears are dull, but I hear Him, and He hears me; my memory is treacherous, but I remember the years of the right hand of the Most High, and delight to talk of His doings” ; when you can thus preach Jesus, be assured that few evangelists do more for the gospel. No sermon moves us more deeply than that of an old, happy, Christian life, and no service more confirms our faith. (C. Stanford, D. D.) Simeon and Anna Simeon had come up by special revelation; Anna needed no such token. Surely her leading was the best. Simeon needed the message, but if Christ had come as a thief at first, as He will at last, Anna would have been there. (A. Whyte, D. D.) The same man was just and devout To be devout means to live always with the consciousness of God’ s presence; to walk with Him, as the old Scriptures put it, so that all thoughts and acts are thought and done before Him, and ordered so as to be in tune with His character. It means to live in worship of Him, so that honour is paid in everything to that which is God, to truth and mercy, justice and purity. But to be devout without being just is almost useless. For this kind of devotion is liable to extravagances of feeling which dim the clear sight of things. There is nothing more common than the prophecies M pious men who map out the future and run into the wildest follies. The prophet must be a just man, and that means not only the habit of right doing which devoutness almost secures, but the habit of right thinking. (Stopford A. Brooke.) It is hard to wait, and few can do it well But God was with Simeon, and high hopes, and faith. God with him; he had no lonely hours, and it is the loneliness of the heart that makes waiting so bitter. He had that ineffable Presence with him, consciousness of whom would make life Divine, could we but possess it; and the glory of God’ s life and thought had filled his heart with song. To wait, then, was not hard; for every hour brought peaceful joy, and every joy was a new pledge of the last and most glorious joy. But along with this life with God, and flowing from it as a source, were those high hopes and faiths which were his companions in this abiding old age. Waiting was no hardship to one So companied. (Stopford A. Brooke.) The expectant Simeon We here see three different periods in the career of a believer. I. WAITING. 1. For what? Consolation. The heart requires this (Hebrews 6:18). Redemption. No consolation except through redemption. God’ s salvation. The Lord Jesus Christ the sum and substance of it all; for when he saw Him he was satisfied. 2. Relying on what? God’ s Word. 3. Where? In the Temple. Perhaps because he looked for a special blessing in the house of God (Isaiah 56:7). Perhaps because of prophecy Malachi 3:1). Learn that the Holy Ghost never supersedes Scripture, but leads men to trust it, and wait in faith for the promised blessings. Observe also that He leads men to the sanctuary of God; not to neglect church, but to look for a blessing in it. II. FINDING. We do not know how long he waited. Perhaps years. At length a very insignificant party entered the Temple. A man with a young woman and Child. Poor people. Proved by turtle doves (Leviticus 12:8). 1. He recognizes the sacred character of the Child. The believer recognizes Christ as his Saviour, though men in general may think nothing of Him. 2. He receives Him into his arms (Hebrews 11:13). 3. He blesses God. III. HAVING FOUND. 1. He is at peace. 2. He is ready to die. 3. He is sure of the Divine salvation. (Canon Hoare.) The Consolation of Israel I. THE , UNDER WHICH THEY THEIR MESSIAH, is beautifully expressed in these words of Simeon--THE OF ISRAEL. II. Having shown you under what character the Messiah was expected by Simeon and his friends, I proceed now, in the second place, to consider the STATE OF MIND IN WHICH THEY AWAITED HIS ARRIVAL. 1. Simeon waited in full confidence for the Consolation of Israel. He had received the promises of God concerning the coming of that Just One, and by faith he was persuaded of them, and embraced them. He entertained no doubts of their being fulfilled in their season. 2. Simeon waited for the Consolation of Israel with ardent desire. The Incarnation of the Son of God was not merely an event of whose certainty this excellent man was assured: he regarded it as an event most desirable, most happy for himself. 3. Once more; the state in which Simeon awaited the birth of the Messiah, was a state of holy preparation. For the same man was just and devout; and both he and his friends appear to have been very constant in their attendance on the public worship at the Temple. (J. Jowett, M. A.) Christ our Consolation I. Let us ask ourselves what it is that is here described by the words “ the Consolation of Israel.” Israel was God’ s own people. For all the duties, for all the trials, for all the sufferings of life, what had the Greek, what had the Roman, to furnish him, as compared with the poorest peasant in Israel, with one who could go forth in the strength of the Lord his God, and make mention of His righteousness only; who could stay himself on his God in trial, and in suffering could say, “ It is Jehovah, my covenant God: let Him do what seemeth Him good” ? Which of them could ever cry out, as death drew on, “ I have waited for Thy salvation, O Lord?” Of which of them could it ever be said, amidst all the void and unsatisfied yearnings of this life, “ When I awake up after Thy likeness I shall be satisfied” ? So that, as compared with the nations round, Israel’ s Consolation was already abundant. Still, Israel had, and looked for, a Consolation to come. God’ s people differed in this also from every people on earth. When, then, we use the words “ the Consolation of Israel,” we mean Christ in the fulness of His constituted Person and Office as the Comforter of His people. And when we say “ waiting for the Consolation of Israel,” we imply that attitude of expectation, anxious looking for, hearty desire of, this Consolation, which comes from, and is in fact, Christ Himself. First, then, Christ is the Consolation of His people, inasmuch as He THEM FROM THE BONDAGE OF SIN. But, again, Christ consoles His people not only from guilt, but Is SORROW. It is His especial office, as we saw, “ to bind up the broken heart; to give the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness.” (H. Alford, M. A.) Luke 2:26 And it was revealed unto him by the Holy Ghost The leading of the Spirit Observe that Simeon found Christ in the temple, being conducted thither by the Holy Ghost. There was an ancient promise, “ The Lord whom ye seek shall suddenly come to His Temple,” and this probably drew the holy man to the courts of the Lord. But the Lord might have come, and Simeon might not have been there, or the good old man might have been occupied in some other court of the holy place; but being led of the Spirit he came to the appointed spot at the very time when the mother of Christ was bringing the Babe in her arms to do for Him according to the law. In this Simeon is an instance of the truth that they find Christ who are led by the Spirit, and they alone. No man ever comes to Christ by his own wit and wisdom, nor by his own unprompted will: he alone who is drawn of the Spirit comes to Christ. We must submit ourselves to Divine teaching and Divine drawing, or else Christ may come to His temple, but we shall not perceive Him. (C. H. Spurgeon.) Simeon’ s felicity How highly favoured was Simeon! A glorious anticipation truly for a pious Israelite to entertain! A stupendous assurance to carry about with him! How must it have stirred his inmost soul at times to think upon it! At one time, joy--at another, alarm--must have filled his heart; joy at the thought that God was about to visit and redeem His people; alarm, for who might abide the day of His coming, and who should stand when He appeared? Every rumour which reached him must have made his pulse throb and his heart beat; for he knew that he was destined to look upon Him to whom all type and all prophecy for four thousand years had been steadily pointing His words of recognition, the inspired hymn which bears his name, must doubtless have flowed from his burning lips like words of fire. His embrace must surely have been an act of unspeakable gratitude, wonder, and joy! (Dean Burgon.) Blessedness found in the path of duty Let us put ourselves in his position from the day that he received the promise, and consider, as far as may be, not merely what we should have felt, but how we should have acted, had we been in his place. It may be thought that we should have adopted one of the most probable opinions as to the manner in which Messiah would appear, and have anxiously expected His manifestation. We might perhaps have gone out of our way in this pursuit; and when the time grew long, we might have fancied that we were called upon to take some step in order to meet the Divine condescension half way. But what was the course adopted by devout Simeon? We find him frequenting the Temple faithfully, as aforetime; until, on a certain day, which was like every other day except in its results to him, the desire of his soul was gratified. A humble pair enter, and the mother bears in her arms a little Babe. There is nothing to distinguish that group from ordinary worshippers. Nay, their attire and their offering bespeak great poverty. Simeon is made aware by a sudden revelation of the Spirit, that in that helpless Child he beholds the Lord’ s Christ: whereupon he takes Him up in his arms, and blesses God, and pours out his soul in solemn thankfulness. Surely the lesson to be derived from this incident is the same which is taught us by many a page of Holy Scripture besides; namely, that blessedness is to be found in the path of duty. This lesson we dare not overlook, or neglect. Every one is apt to think that there is something in his own position, peculiarly uncongenial to holiness; that his own path of life is peculiarly difficult and embarrassing. Especially are men prone to think that the common round of daily duties affords but little time, and presents yet fewer opportunities, for the service of God. The daily task is so humble, or so uncongenial; so simply worldly, or so extremely private, that many who desire a closer walk with God are apt to wish that they were not exactly what and where they are; but, indeed, almost anything besides. It is our own infirmity, if we thus think. God requires at our hand good things, not great things. He can do without us; and it is He who does in us all that we ever seem to do well. Moreover, if He does but find in us a perfect willingness to serve Him, let us be well assured that He will minister to us occasions of holiness; or rather, that we shall find ample room for the execution of our best designs and desires, in those same daily duties, that same lowly round of perhaps distasteful task, which we half dislike and half despise. (Ibid.) Simeon’ s character 1. The Holy Ghost, his Leader. 2. Faith, his consolation. 3. Piety, his life. 4. The Saviour, his joy. 5. To depart for heaven, his desire. (Van Doren.) “ In the huge Temple, deck’ d by Herod’ s pride, Who fain would bribe a God he ne’ er believed, Kneels a meek woman, that hath once conceived, Tho’ she was never like an earthly bride. And yet the stainless would be purified, And wash away the stain that yet was none, And for the birth of her immaculate Son, With the stern rigour of the law complied: The duty paid received its due reward When Simeon bless’ d the Baby in her arm; And though he plainly told her that a sword Must pierce her soul, she felt no weak alarm, For that for which a prophet thanked the Lord Once to have seen, could never end in harm.” (Hartley Coleridge.) The fear of death destroyed by a sight of Christ Our text is a joyful exclamation of a venerable old saint upon seeing the Lord’ s Christ. It seems that when his eyes once looked upon Jesus, he never wished them to gaze on aught more on earth. Hence he exclaimed, “ Now, Lord, lettest Thou Thy servant depart inpeace.” We remark-- I. THAT GOD ALWAYS HONOURS PRE- DEVOTED MEN. Them that honour Me,” saith the Lord, “ will I honour.” Undevout minds are too worldly, too apathetic, too dull to hear the secret whispering of heaven. ‘ Tis the spiritual ear alone that can hear the still small voice that comes across the universe from the spirit-world; ‘ tis the spiritual eye alone that reads the secrets of eternity, that sees passing in review before it the realities of the hidden state. Some simple-hearted Christians were once returning from chapel; they had been to hear the holy Bramwell preach. One of them said to the other, “ How is it that Mr. Bramwell has always something new to tell us?” “ Ah!” said the other, “ I can tell you how it is; he lives very much nearer the gates of heaven than many of us, and God tells him things He does not tell other people.” And so it was with Simeon. He lived very much nearer the gates of heaven than many of his day; and God honoured him by telling him this great fact. It was revealed unto Simeon that he should not see death till he had seen the Lord’ s Christ. II. SIMEON WAS A MAN OF PRE-EMINENT TO GOD. “ And, behold,” say the Scriptures, “ there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon.” Observes an eminent divine, “ No doubt there were many persons in Jerusalem named Simeon besides this man, but there was none of the name who merited the attention of God so much as he in the text.” There are four things said about him in the text, every one of which is an evidence of his great devotedness. It is said of him that he was just, devout, that he waited for the Consolation of Israel, and that the Holy Ghost was upon him. You cannot dispense with one of these elements from eminent piety, reconciliation, devoutness, a waiting upon God, and the possession of the Holy Ghost. A virtuous man said, a philosopher is the noblest work of God; but we would rather say a Christian, a devout man, is the noblest work of God. Such a man is God’ s jewel, His friend; ‘ tis with him God delights to dwell; ‘ tis to him God will tell His secrets; on him confer His richest houours. Simeon was such a man; God honoured him by telling him the great fact, that before death should close his eyes, he should see the Lord’ s Christ. III. THAT THOUGH SIMEON WAS AN DEVOTED MAN, HE HAD GREAT IN A SIGHT OF THE OBJECT HE SO DESIRED. What Simeon wanted was to see the Lord’ s Christ. Unbelief would suggest to him, “ Simeon, you are an old man, your day is almost ended, the snow of age is upon your head,, your eyes are growing dim, your brow is wrinkled, your limbs totter, and death cannot be at a great distance; and where are the signs of His coming? You are resting, Simeon, on a phantom of the imagination--it is all a delusion.” “ No,” replies Simeon, “ I shall not see death till I have seen the Lord’ s Christ. Yes, I shall see Him before I die.” But unbelief would again suggest, “ But remember, Simeon, many holy men have desired to see the Lord’ s Christ, but have died without the sight.” “ Yes,” says Simeon, “ I shall see the Lord’ s Christ.” I imagine I see Simeon walking out on a fine morning along one of the lovely vales of Palestine, meditating on the great subject that filled his mind. He is met by one of his friends--“ Peace be with you: have you heard the strange news?” “ What news?” replied Simeon. “ Do you not know Zacharias, the priest?” “ Yes, well.” “ According to the custom of the priest’ s office, his lot was to burn incense in the temple of the Lord, and the whole multitude of the people were praying without. It was the time of incense, and there appeared unto him aa angel standing on the right side of the altar of incense, and told him that he should have a son, whose name should be called John: one who should be great in the sight of the Lord, who should neither drink wine nor strong drink, and he should be filled with the Holy Ghost from his infancy, and that he should go before the Messiah in the spirit and power of Elias, to turn many of the people of Israel to the Lord, and make ready a people prepared for the Lord. The angel was Gabriel, that stands in the presence of God, and because he believed not the angel, he was struck dumb.” “ Ah!” says Simeon, “ that is an exact fulfilment of the prophecy of Mal 4:5-6. This is the messenger of the Lord, to prepare the way; this is the forerunner; this is the morning star; the day dawn is not far off; the great Messiah is on His way--is nigh at hand. I shall not see death till I have seen the Lord’ s Christ.Hallelujah! the Lord shall suddenly come to His Temple.” Simeon ponders these things in his heart, and time rolls on. I imagine I see Simeon again on his morning meditative walk. He is again accosted by one of his neighbours: “ Well, Simeon, have you heard the news?” “ What news?” “ Why, there’ s a wry singular story almost in everybody’ s mouth. A company of shepherds on the plains of Bethlehem were watching their flocks; it was the still hour of night, and the mantle of darkness covered the world; a bright light shone around the shepherds, a light above the brightness of the midday sun; they looked up, and just above them appeared an angel glowing in all the lovely hues of heaven; the shepherds became greatly terrified, and the angel said to them, ‘ Fear not, behold I bring you glad tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.’” “ This is the Lord’ s Christ. I shall not see death till I have seen the Lord’ s Christ.” Simeon said to himself, “ They will bring Him to the Temple to circumcise Him.” Away went Simeon, morning after morning, to see if he could get a glimpse of Jesus. Perhaps unbelief suggested to Simeon, “ You had better stop at home this wet morning; you have been so many mornings and have not seen Him, you may venture to be absent this once.” “ No,” says the Spirit, “ you must go to the Temple.” Away went Simeon to the Temple. He would no doubt select a good post of observation. Look at him there, leaning his back against one of the pillars of the Temple; how intently he watches the door! He sees one mother after another bringing her infant to the Temple to be circumcised; he surveys the face of every child. “ No,” says he, as his eye scans the countenance, “ that is not He, and that is not” ; but at length he sees the Virgin appear, and the Spirit told him that that was the long-expected Saviour. He grasped the Child in his arms, and pressed Him to his heart, and exclaimed, “ Now, Lord, lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace, according to Thy word, for mine eyes have seen Thy salvation.” Between Simeon and an awakened sinner there is one point of agreement: they both desire to see one object--the Lord’ s Christ. “ What must I do? I want help: to whom must I look? “ Behold, a ray of light breaks in upon him--one single, but bright ray; it keeps him from utter despair, it gives him a faint hope, it enables him tremblingly to say, “ Before I see death, I shall see the Lord’ s Christ.” 1. Unbelief suggests, “ How do you suppose that you will be permitted to see the Lord’ s Christ? Do you think the great Jehovah, whose majesty almost confounds the cherubim and seraphim--at least compels them to cover over their bright faces with their wings, and fall before His throne in deep adoration--whose temple is all space, whose arm is around all worlds, who inhabits eternity, at whose bidding the sun lights up his fire, whose empire is so vast that were an angel, with the lightning’ s swiftness, to fly in a direct line from the centre, he would not in millions of years sweep the outskirts of His creation, ‘ who sits upon the highest heavens, and sees worlds infinite dance beneath Him as atoms in the sunbeam, you an atom, a shade, a moth, a worm, a flower of the field to-day, and not tomorrow, in the morning, and not to-night, not master of a moment, not a match for a breeze, a dream, a vapour, a shadow,’ a sinner born to die--how do you suppose He will show you the Lord’ s Christ?” Replies the awakened sinner, “ One thing I know: I dare not die till I have seen the Lord’ s Christ. He cares for my body: will He be less concerned about my soul? Will He arrange all nature to minister to my bodily wants, and leave my soul to perish? No; that is unlike Him.” 2. Unbelief again suggests: “ Are not your sins too great in magnitude and multitude to be forgiven?” 3. But unbelief again suggests, “ Do you suppose that the sins of an age can be pardoned in a moment of time--sins that have spread over years of your life?” When we have seen Christ, the sting of death is gone. Simeon pressed the Lord’ s Christ to his heart, and then he never wished his eyes to gaze on aught more of earth; and when the believing penitent has Christ in his heart, the hope of glory, then he is not afraid of death. A fact will bear out this statement. Some time since, a minister of the gospel was called upon to visit a dying woman. He ascended a flight of stairs that led into a miserable-looking garret; for, though clean and neat, there was scarcely an article of furniture to give an air of comfort to the chamber of death. In one corner of the room there was a bed--a bed of straw! On it lay a dying female, pale, and worn to a skeleton; she was near the verge, the trembling verge, of eternity. The minister drew nigh and said to her, “ Well, my friend, how do you feel? What are your prospects for the eternity which is just about to open upon you?” She looked up in the minister’ s face with a countenance bright with heavenly radiance, and beaming with a brightness she had caught gazing on the visions of God, and said, “ Oh I sir, “ Tis Jesus, the first and the last, Whose Spirit shall guide me safe home. I’ ll praise Him for all that is past, And trust Him for what is to come.” Christianity can make a bed of straw into a bed of down--can convert a gloomy sick chamber into the vestibule of heaven, a chamber where the soul unrobes and plumes herself for her flight. (J. Caughey.) Luke 2:27 Brought in the Child Jesus Dedicating children to the Lord When the Duke of Kent was dying, he desired that the little princess Victoria should be placed beside him, and then he offered a very affecting prayer that “ if ever she became the Queen of England, she might rule in the fear of God. ” How many of our noble Queen’ s virtues and good deeds have resulted doubtless from her godly training I In my first Circuit I knew the excellent family of the late eminent Rev. Benjamin Field. At his birth his very godly father solemnly dedicated him to God. He began to preach in his seventeenth year, and by his ministry and by his very good “ Handbook to Scripture Doctrines,” he has been useful to thousands. Holy children generally live to be “ great in the sight of the Lord,” and, if faithful, with God’ s blessings, eminently useful. (H. R. Burton.) Singleness of aim Parents should have one single object before them regarding their children, and that is, to bring them up for the Lord. To that everything else should give way. The natural tendency is to bring them up very genteelly, very respectably, to educate them for some station where they can make a great deal of money. This is the natural tendency on the part of parents. Well, they may obtain the desire of their hearts, but to the injury of the souls of their children. How I would press this on the hearts of my brethren! Of course I do not at all mean they should not have the best of education, and such an education as will be suitable to their station in life. But everything should give way to this point: my son, my daughter, are to be brought up for the Lord. My son, my daughter, are to become heirs of the kingdom that fadeth not away. Everything ought to give way to this one point. If we do not keep this before us, we shall constantly take wrong steps. Let me give an illustration. A Christian gentleman of good position in life articled his son to a very wicked lawyer, notoriously wicked. This son used to come home on the Saturday afternoons to spend the Lord’ s day with his family. There he attended family prayers. He used to say strong things about his father’ s petitions, such as, “ My father prays for me that God would preserve me in the midst of temptation; he puts me in the lion’ s mouth, and then asks God to preserve me!” (George Muller.) Luke 2:29; Luke 2:31 Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace Nunc Dimittis I. Let us start with this great general principle which is full of comfort that EVERY MAY BE ASSURED OF IN PEACE. This is no privilege peculiar to Simeon, it is common to all the saints, since the grounds upon which this privilege rests are not monopolised by Simeon, but belong to us all. 1. All the saints have seen God’ s salvation, therefore should they all depart in peace. It is true, we cannot take up the infant Christ into our arms, but He is “ formed in us, the hope of glory.” It is true, we cannot look upon Him with these mortal eyes, but we have seen Him with those eyes immortal which death cannot dim--the eyes of our own spirit which have been opened by God’ s Holy Spirit. A sight of Christ with the natural eye is not saving, for thousands saw Him and then cried, “ Crucify Him, crucify Him.” 2. Believers already enjoy peace as much as ever Simeon did. No man can depart in peace who has not lived in peace; but he who has attained peace in life shall possess peace in death, and an eternity of peace after death. 3. We may rest assured of the same peace as that which Simeon possessed, since we are, if true believers, equally God’ s servants. The same position towards God, the same reward from God. 4. Another reflection which strengthens this conviction is, that up till now all things in their experience have been according to God’ s Word. The promises of God, which are “ Yea and amen in Christ Jesus,” are sure to all the seed: not to some of the children is the promise made, but all the grace-born are heirs. If, then, Simeon, as a believer in the Lord, had a promise that he should depart in peace, I have also a like promise if I am in Christ. 5. The departure of the child of God is appointed of the Lord. “ Now lettest Thou,” &c. The servant must not depart from his labour without his Master’ s permission, else would he be a runaway, dishonest to his position. 6. The believer’ s departure is attended with a renewal of the Divine benediction. “ Depart in peace,” saith God. It is a farewell, such as we give to a friend: it is a benediction, such as Aaron, the priest of God, might pronounce over a suppliant whose sacrifice was accepted. Eli said unto Hannah, “ Go in peace, and the God of Israel grant thee thy petition that thou hast asked of Him.” Around the sinner’ s death-bed the tempest thickens, and he hears the rumblings of the eternal storm: his soul is driven away, either amid the thunderings of curses loud and deep, or else in the dread calm which evermore forebodes the hurricane. II. SOME ARE OF A SPECIAL TO DEPART IS PEACE. When do they feel this? Answer: 1. When their graces are vigorous. 2. When their assurance is clear. 3. When their communion with Christ is near and sweet. 4. Saints have drawn their anchor up and spread their saris, when they have been made to hold loose by all there is in this world; and that is generally when they hold fastest by the world to come. 5. Saints are willing to depart when their work is almost done. Ah, Christian people, you will never be willing to go if you are idle. You lazy lie-a-beds, who do little or nothing for Christ, you sluggish servants, whose garden is overgrown with weeds, no wonder that you do not want to see your master! 6. One other matter, I think, helps to make saints willing to go, and that is when they see or foresee the prosperity of the Church of God. Good old Simeon saw that Christ was to be a light to lighten the Gentiles, and to be the glory of His people Israel; and therefore he said, “ Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace.” It must have reconciled John Knox to die when he had seen the reformation safely planted throughout all Scotland. It made dear old Latimer, as he stood on the fagot, feel happy when he could say, “ Courage, brother, we shall this day light such a candle in England as shall never be blown out.” III. THERE ARE WORDS TO US TO THE LIKE TO DEPART (See Psalms 23:4; Psalms 37:37; Psalms 116:15; Isaiah 57:2; 1 Corinthians 3:22; 1 Corinthians 15:54; Revelation 14:13). These promises belong to all believers; each of them is a sure word from God. (C. H. Spurgeon.) The Hunt Dimittis It seems singular to see these two faces resting so closely together. Infancy and old age are met; second childhood holds first childhood by the hand while it sings a wonderful song. I. The first thing that strikes our notice here is THE OFFERED OF THE PARADOX OF LIFE. How extraordinary is the disparity between these two persons, and yet how absolutely the one seems to rest in the other! Jesus lies safely in Simeon’ s arms; Simeon reposes his life for all the untold future in Jesus’ Messiahship. Simeon’ s soul is held up for ever by the Little Child whose body he now holds in his hands! We can explain nothing in this strange scene without considering that Jesus was the true Messiah, and the Messiah was the incarnate God. II. So this presents another lesson: here is A STYLE OF PIETY FOR AN . There are faiths and religions, there are rituals and creeds, there are persuasions and experiences, enough almost to fill the world. Only some of them do not meet the end for which they have been commended. Many a man has what he calls his religion; and it does very well when shielded and sheltered, but it goes out ignobly in darkness and betrayal under the wild rush of discipline, or the hurricane gusts of tempestuous passion. It is evident that here in Simeon’ s case we find a perfectly settled rest for any human soul. His full content with it is edifying and unmistakable. He was willing to take his eternal life on Christ’ s own terms, and so he was perfectly satisfied. It mattered nothing to him that he was an old man, and this was a Babe, nor that he was a wise:ann, and this was only a peasant Infant forty days old; he expressed his entire contentment with the plan which infinite wisdom had devised for human reliance. Men may as well start with this; they must begin by accepting terms already made, and cease trying to make new ones. Felix Neff once told even a minister this: “ There is much truth in your sermon, but it lacks one important thing: you still wish men to go to Jesus with lace sleeves, instead of going to Him in rags as they are.” III. We find here AN AND OF THE EXACT PURPOSE OF THE GOSPEL. It will be well to put alongside of this song Simeon’ s prophecy, which comes just after it. This good old man tells that young mother precisely what her Child was “ set” for Christ was appointed to prostrate men from self-dependence, and raise them again into full union with Himself. His heart would be pierced in suffering, and so would Mary’ s, before the history should be finished. But Christ’ s sufferings would work out an atonement, by which sinners might be saved. IV. A LESSON OF TRUST FOR NEW FROM AN OLD . Picture just that instant in which this old man stands gazing down upon the face of the Infant for the first time. Was this all to which mighty generations had been looking during those thousands of years that were gone? Was it just this weak little peasant Babe that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had seen afar off, and been glad to see? Was He what the ancient prophets had descried in the distance, as they stood peering off from the watchtowers of a militant Zion, the flashing seer-light in their eyes as they sang? Was this the King, whom King David had so celebrated in his Psalms? Alas for the poor show the new Monarch now made I Yet Simeon accepts Him I Just remember that it was everything or nothing to this old man to make his decision. No halfway allegiance would do. Jesus was the Messiah, or nothing. Surrender to Him would carry time and eternity with it, and he surrendered. V. A PICTURE OF FOR DEATH. Note the language carefully. Simeon does not use a prayer; he makes a declaration. He does not say--now let me depart; he says--now Thou dost let me depart. We feel certain that this man has been waiting a good while. Such unusual preparedness for departure was the general growth of years. It was no sudden explosion of experience, but must have had its increments of spiritual increase as many and as various as the rings of fibre in the trunk of a palm-tree. There is an old age full of querulous complaint and peevishness, under every on-coming of infirmity. It wears itself out in discontent; it often vanishes at the last, and makes no sign. On the other hand, there is an old age like this of the illustrious Simeon. The soul has leaned its all on God, and is perfectly satisfied because it knows it is perfectly safe. Not even severe trial can alter the permanence of such trust. For heaven seems the only true thing in the universe, and death is nothing but a kind of rough way of going to it. Remember the beautiful inscription upon Dean Alford’ s tombstone; how it describes a grave: “ The inn of a traveller on the way to Jerusalem” (C. S. Robinson, D. D.) Simeon’ s Canticle The “ Nunc Dimittis” may supply us with useful lessons. 1. Its position in the service of our Reformed Church is an indication of honour paid to the written Word. The New Testament is exalted by the appointment of the Song of Simeon to be used after the second lesson from Scripture at evening service. The New Testament is full of Jesus. The Church has been rent with disputes about the nature of His presence in the sacrament of His love. Every Christian knows that there is a presence also in the Word of His truth. More especially, the thought, the breath, the very heart of Christ may be felt in the Gospels. When we read or hear them, we embrace Him as Simeon did. We cease to be critics when, with the aged saint, we hold Him in our arms. 2. More broadly, the “ Nunc Dimittis” is also a Missionary strain. It is fittingly recorded by St. Luke, the Pauline Evangelist, who was as truly the Evangelist, as St. Paul was the Apostle, of the Gentiles. In Simeon’ s Song we have the history of the ages in one short sentence, in three pregnant clauses, at once original, concise, and oracular. To the Gentiles, Messiah is ever giving “ light” ; to the Jews, He is ever bringing “ glory.” 3. This canticle has a tone which is peculiarly suitable to the evening, and may profitably be applied in this spirit by believers of every Church. It is a soothing voice which sings for those who have had a long day’ s work. It fits into the golden melancholy of the sunset time, or the later hours, when the lamps are lighted in the sanctuary. It is as a prayer with which a mother taught us to lie down in our beds. 4. The “ Nunc Dimittis” has always seemed suitable as a prayer for a holy death. In some of the old services there was a touching way of referring Simeon’ s song to our departure, and to the thought of those who rest in peace. When it was sung in “ Holy Week,” just at its close the choir burst out into the funeral anthem--“ In the midst of life we are in death.” The Song of Simeon, thought over with prayer, may lead us to exclaim with Paul, “ I desire to be dissolved and to be with Christ.” Simeon’ s holy soul can find no home and rest on the water-floods of life; it desires to return into the ark with the olive-branch of peace. And if any wish to depart in peace like Simeon, let him come in the guidance of the Spirit to the Temple. Let him expect Christ. Let him receive his Saviour into his arms of faith, and cradle Him upon a heart of love. The Old Testament often takes a dark view of death. The writer shudders as he writes. The last words of the great Italian poet, Leopardi, were, “ I cannot see you any longer,” with a deep sigh. The last words of the sceptical Hamlet are--“ the rest is silence.” The only Psalm which, in a like spirit, ends as it began, with gloom, is the 88th-- Lover and friend hast Thou removed from me; My intimates are--Darkness. In such passages as these death is viewed as it is for us all, naturally. But Simeon seems to stand for a gentle picture of the Law--wearied with lifelong effort, worn out with age, ready to embrace the gospel, and so “ depart in peace.” It is of profound and soothing significance that one, who may be almost termed “ the last Old Testament saint,” finds death sweet. For him the promise of the Psalmist is fulfilled-- This God is our God for ever and ever; He is our guide, gently leading us over death. For narrrow though the bridge seems to be that spans the chasm, it is yet broad and strong for those who are thus guided. That bridge is the Cross of Christ. (Bp. Wm. Alexander.) Nunc Dimittis This is a beautiful hymn of sunset--the sunset of the life of a good man which may also be called a hymn of sunrise, for there may be seen in it both the closing of a life and the beginning of a new one. Death is referred to in it, not as the flowing of twilight into darkness, but as a departure. The hymn is a thanskgiving for spiritual blessings, for a Divine light which had been planted by God in the soul, come to its meridian after much patience and long waiting. Beautiful thoughts, bearing fruit in beautiful words, rise in the midst of this noontide. God had sown this thought or impression in Simeon, in his old age, when he had begun to walk through the valley of the shadow. We know by experience how some favourite thought or idea in us may become like a living companion, go with us in our walks, and be with us in our occupations, even in our sleep. So was the Divine impression with Simeon. God is continually giving His children hallowed thoughts and impressions. Simeon’ s case may say this to us: “ Hold the good thoughts which come to you through prayer and other means of grace.” If we do this they will certainly bring us peace and consolation. (E. G. Charlesworth.) Our last days should be our best days Orators, though in every part of their speech they use great care and diligence, yet in the close of all they set forth the best of their art and skill, to stir up the affections and passions of their hearers, that then they may leave at the last the deepest impression of those things which they would persuade. Thus ought all of us to do, our whole life being nothing else but a continued and persuasive oration unto our God, to be admitted into His heavenly kingdom; but, when we come to the last act and epilogue of our age, then it is that we must especially strive to show forth all our art and skill, and that our last words may be our best words, our last thoughts our best thoughts, our last deeds our best deeds; whereby stirring up,-as it were, all the affections of God, and even the bowels of compassion, unto us. We may then, as the sun, though always glorious, yet especially at its setting, be most resplendent when we draw near unto our western home, the house appointed for all living. (Udall.) The last scene The evening praises the day, the last scene commends the act. The rivers, the nearer they draw to the sea, the sooner they are met by the tide. Though to guide a vessel safely along in the ocean argues much skill, and such a pilot is worthy of praise; yet at the very entrance into the haven, then to avoid the rocks, and to cast anchor in a safe road, argues most skill, and deserves most praise. Musicians reserve the sweetest strain for the close of the lesson. (G. Swinnock.) Sweet when fading As the perfume of May boughs is sweetest when they are about to fade, so, like them, I endeavour to make the close of my life sweet and fragrant by a worthy deportment and an honourable name. (Scriver.) Some hearts, like evening primroses, open most beautifully in the shadows of life. Simeon’ s Canticle These words are a sweet canticle, or swan-like song, of old Simeon, a little before his dissolution. He had seen the Messiah before by faith, now by sight, and wishes to have his eyes closed, that he may see nothing after this desirable sight. It is said of some Turks, that after they have seen Mahomet’ s tomb, they put out their eyes, that they may never defile them after they have seen so glorious an object. Thus did old Simeon desire to see no more of this world, after he had seen Christ the Saviour, but sues for his dismissal. Note here-- 1. That a good man having served his generation, and God in his generation, faithfully, is weary of the world, and willing to be dismissed from it. 2. That the death of a good man is nothing else but a quiet and peaceable departure; it is a departure “ in peace” to the God of peace. 3. That it is only a spiritual sight of Christ by faith that can welcome the approach of death, and render it an object desirable to the Christian’ s choice. 4. Holy Simeon, having declared the faithfulness of God to himself in the gift of Christ, next celebrates the mercy of God in bestowing this invaluable gift of a Saviour upon the whole world. The world consists of Jews and Gentiles; Christ is “ a light” to the one, and “ the glory” of the other. A light to the blind and dark Gentiles, and the glory of the renowned Church of the Jews; the Messiah being promised to them, born and bred up with them, living amongst them, preaching His doctrine to them, and working His miracles before them; and thus was Christ “ the glory of His people Israel.” (W. Burkitt, M. A.) Simeon’ s Song The swan-like song of old Simeon. He speaks like a merchant who has got all his goods on shipboard, and now desires the master of the ship to hoist sail and be gone homewards. Indeed, what should a Christian, who is but a foreigner here, desire to stay any longer for in the world, but to get this full lading in for heaven? (W. Gurnall.) Death tests “ Charles, our people die well,” said John Wesley to his brother. Why is not that a proper test? We take death-bed words without an oath in a court of justice; a man is honest, if ever, in the moment when the great shadow is coming. Think of the martyr Ridley, the night before he was burned alive at the stake. One of his pitiful friends offered to sit up with him in the prison. “ Oh, n!” said the good man, “ what would you do with yourself? I mean to go to bed, and sleep as quietly as ever I did in my life. My breakfast to-morrow will be sharp and painful; but I am sure my supper will be right pleasant and sweet!” (C. S. Robinson, D. D.) Death welcome with Jesus near When his end was near, Dr. Grierson of Errol, after various Psalms and portions of Scripture had been read to him, asked his children to conclude by singing the hymn, “ Safe in the arms of Jesus.” After they had sung it, he said, “ I feel ram safe there. Death has no power nor fear for me at all now.” And when told that it was drawing near the morning, he exclaimed, “ Oh, let me go, for the day breaketh! I feel Jesus very near by me. Dear Lord, let me go!” Light in death The day before he died, John Holland, turning with his own hand to the eight chapter of the Romans, bade Mr. Legh read it: at the end of every verse he paused and gave the sense to his own comfort, but more to the joy and wonder of his friends. An hour or two after, on a sudden, he said, “ Oh, stay your reading! What brightness is this I see? Have you lighted any candles? “ No, it was replied; it is the sunshine. “ Sunshine!” he said; “ nay, it is my Saviour’ s shine. Farewell, world: welcome, heaven!” Ready to start A saintly man, when nearing his end, once remarked: “ I am just like a package that is all ready to go by train; packed, corded, labelled, paid for--waiting for the express to take me to glory!” Release from school Dr. Judson once said, “ I am not tired of my work, neither am I tired of the world; yet, when Christ calls me, I shall go with the gladness of a boy bounding away from school. Death will never take me by surprise: do not be afraid of that; I feel so strong in Christ.” Simeon’ s Song His Song may give us a glimpse of the man himself, for in it his habitual beliefs, convictions, and hopes rise to their highest and frankest expression. I. In Simeon’ s Song we have A NOBLE OF LIFE. KNOW art Thou relieving, or setting free, thy slave, O Master , according to Thy word, in peace.” Simeon regards himself as a sentinel whom, by His word or promise, the Great Master, or Captain, had ordered to an elevated and dangerous post, and charged to look for and announce the advent of a great light of hope, a light which was to convey glad tidings of great joy. To him life, or at least his own life, shaped itself as the task of a watchman, or a sentinel on duty--who has to face rough weather and smooth as he paces his weary beat, to confront the fears and hidden perils of the darkness, in order that the camp he guards may be secure; but who is sustained, under the burden of anxiety and weariness, by the hope of receiving a signal, of seeing a light arise in the darkness, which will not only release him from his post, but will also bring the tidings, or the prediction, of a great and final victory. A very noble, though by no means a perfect conception of human life, which is too large and complex to be rendered by any one image. A conception, moreover, which may be very helpful to us in many of the conditions in which we are placed. When life grows as weary and monotonous to us, through the prolonged pressure of samely duties, as to the watchman fixed to Agamemnon’ s roof or to a dog chained to a post; or when the zest of youth has passed and the infirmities and disabilities of age, or disease, accumulate upon us; or when we are weighed down with a burden of cares, anxieties, and fears, many of which are gross and palpable enough, but to some of which we can hardly give a name; when flesh, or heart, fail us, or both fail us, it surely would sustain and comfort us were we to remember that our post has been appointed us by the Great Captain who makes no mistake; that the duties and the burdens allotted to us have an end of discipline and love, and are intended to make us stronger, wiser, better; and that, however long it may delay its coming, a great Light is to arise upon us; that it is this for which we are watching and serving: and that it will bring with it glad tidings of great joy for all people as well as for us. II. In Simeon’ s Song we have A NOBLE OF DEATH. In his view, the sentinel was also the slave, and the discharge of the sentinel was also the manumission of the slave. Relief from toil, relief from danger, relief from bondage--can any conception of death be more welcome and attractive to weary, world-worn, sinful men? Only one thing could render it more attractive and complete, and this we, who have the mind of Christ, are bound to supply: viz., that our relief from toil will not be an exemption from work, but an added capacity for labour which will take all toil and weariness out of it; that our relief from danger will not release us from that strife against evil in which even the holy angels are engaged, but will bring us an immortal strength and serenity in virtue of which we shall carry on the conflict without fear, and cherish the sure and certain hope that evil must in the end be overcome of good; and that our relief from bondage will not be a discharge from service, but will bring us a vigour and a grace which will make our service a delight, since henceforth we shall serve as sons and not as slaves. III. We have A NOBLE OF . Simeon does but show the true prophetic, i.e., the true catholic, spirit when he conceives of the salvation of God as extending to the Gentile as well as the Jew, and delights in a mercy as wide as the world. And we fall short of that spirit, we sin against the revelation of the Old Testament no less than that of the New, so often as we affect any special personal interest in the fatherly love and compassion of God, or even when we conceive of His salvation as confined to the Church. The Church has been elected, as the Jewish race was elected, solely for the sake of the world, solely that it may carry the news and the power of salvation to those who are outside its pale. If we have seen the Light, it is that we may bear witness to the Light; that we may announce its rising, reflect its splendour, and believe that it will shine on till the darkness is past and every shadow has fled away. If we are sentinels, it is that we may guard and save the whole camp, and not simply our own company or our own regiment. (S. Cox, D. D.) The glory and work of old age The greatness of man is chiefly in this, that he can say to pain, I will endure; and to death, I will conquer its fear; and to old age, I will not be querulous. The glory of man is chiefly in this, that Christ enables him to go beyond the Stoic, and to say to pain, I will not only endure, but I will make suffering a step towards progress; and to death, I will not only conquer its fear, but open it as the portal of ampler life; and to old age, I will not only not be querulous, but will, therein and thereby, finish my inner development before I go. To crystallise into finished perfection was the aim and the ideal of the Stoic. To grow for ever is the aim and the ideal of the Christian. Death ended the effort and the pain of the Stoic. Death continues the effort, without the pain, of the Christian. What were the gains which blessed Simeon’ s age? I. POWER. He saw the Child and he knew that It was the Saviour of the world. This is the glory of a Christian’ s old age--vividness of spiritual vision. II. Another remarkable gain blessed the old age of Simeon, the possession of A LIBERAL VIEW. We find the old man set free from the exclusiveness and bigotry of his time and of his youth. Those were strange words upon the lips of a Jew--“ a light to lighten the Gentiles!” They had been said before. But it was not a common thought, nor a national thought, at the time of Christ’ s coming. Those who heard Simeon would be likely to call him a dangerous Liberal. Tolerance and a wide religious view are natural to old age, and it is very pitiable when we find it without them. III. Simeon wins the crowning blessing of old age--DEEP PEACE. We cannot win that quiet till just before the close. IV. But what is the SPECIAL WORK OF old age? It is partly outward, partly inward. Its outward work is the spreading of charity; the using of experience for the help of others. Its inward work is, however, the most important-the edifying of the heart in noble religion by consideration of the past; the rounding of the soul into as great perfection as possible, in filling up the broken edges of the sphere of life, in consolidating the world of our ideas. In wonder, and in joy that he has been so cared for, and so led into maturity, all thought of self passes from the old man’ s life, and he throws his whole being in gratitude at the feet of his Saviour and his God. It is, in fact, the first touch, even before death, of the pure and perfect life, the first faint throb of the exquisite existence into which he is going to enter, the half-realization on the borders of the world of light, while yet within the glimmering shadow, of what communion with God may mean. Then, indeed, he feels what Simeon felt when the long-repressed cry rose to his lips, for he sees the very Christ: “ Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant,” &c. (Stopford A, Brooke.) Simeon felt that little hand that lay hidden in his bosom as if it was fast loosening the silver cord. He speaks less like a living man than as a kind of Lazarus, alive indeed, but bound. “ Lord, loose me,” he prays. Younger men must work with the Messiah--his day was done. (A. Whyte, D. D.) Death viewed without terror The Bible seldom speaks of death by its own ugly name. It rather chooses to use expressions which veil its pain and its terror; and so does common speech. But the reason in the two cases is exactly opposite. The Bible will not call death “ death,” because it is not a bit afraid of it; the world will not, because it is so much afraid of it. The Christian view has robbed death of all its pain and terror. It has limited its power to the mere outside of the man, and the conviction that death can no more touch me than a sword can hack a surbeam, reduces it to insignificance. Death is a Liberator in the profoundest sense. It is the angel who comes in the night to God’ s prisoned servant, striking the fetters from his limbs, and leading him through the iron gate into the city. Death is a departure which is an emancipation. (A. Maclaren, D. D.) Death is release If one had watch’ d a prisoner many a year, Standing behind a barred window-pane, Fettered with heavy handcuff and with chain, And gazing on the blue sky far and clear; And suddenly some morning he should hear The man had in the night contrived to gain His freedom, and was safe, would this bring pain? Ah! would it not to dullest heart appear Good tidings? (Helen Hunt.) Sift therefore the agreeableness of those two parts, attend to these particulars: 1. Here is a supplicant the servant of the Lord--“ Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant.” 2. The petition of his soul--“ to depart.” 3. The time which he sets--“ Now, Lord, now ” 4. He pleads that he was well prepared to depart, for his heart was in peace, “ Lord now ” 5. The assurance in which he trusted that God would grant him his desire, for it was according to His word. 6. And principally: Here is the reason upon which he framed his desire why he would depart, he had seen that which his soul waited for before it flitted away, “ For mine eyes have seen Thy salvation.” (Bishop Hacker.) Servant of God It is great humility to confess one’ s self a servant, but it is no little dignity to profess one’ s self such a servant, to be the servant of God, and not the servant of men by vile obsequiousness, nor the servant of a man’ s own passions by lust and sensuality, nor the servant of sin by giving place unto the devil, this is a freedom that excels all other liberty. (Bishop Hacker.) Simeon knew the instant of his dissolution was at hand, and yet he sang away the remainder of his life with joy; as who should say, fly away my soul, fly away like a dove and take thy rest, for now I see that the promises of grace and mercy are true; here is Christ thy Saviour in thy hands, thine eyes do see, thine arms do support thy salvation; though thou departest thou shalt not go from Him, for He is man on earth to comfort thee, and God in heaven to glorify thee. (Bishop Hacker.) Satisfied As who should say, if I had been summoned to leave my station before this day came, my soul had been in bitterness, and I had been gathered to my fathers in sorrow, but now my pilgrimage hath been prolonged till I am full of happiness, now I am fledged with all my feathers to fly away, for what will satisfy him upon earth whom the sight of a Saviour will not satisfy? He was far stricken in years, and yet not mellow enough to drop off from the tree till the nativity of Jesus was fulfilled, and he a witness of it. He looked many a long look before he beheld his Saviour. And this is the nature of God’ s promises, they are seldom accomplished till his faith hath been thoroughly tried to whom they are made, and that he doth even languish with expectation. Some will say perhaps, O, I have waited long, this will never fall out as God hath promised. (Bishop Hacker.) The best sight Again, reason good he should ask of God to close his eyes, for they could never do him such good service any more, as they did at that instant, when they saw that mighty God in the visible form of a little Infant. The superstition and the barbarisms of the Turks being so well known, I do assent to some stories reported of them, which may seem incredible to civil nations. I instance in this particular, that when some of their zealots have made a pilgrimage to Mecca to do their adorations to the tomb of Mahomet, they presently draw hot burning steel before their eyes to put them out, that they may never see any other spectacle, after they have been honoured to see that monument of their prophet. Far better a great deal, and without superstition, might Simeon say, “ Mine eyes have seen Thy salvation, O Jehovah, now draw their curtains before them, that they may never hereafter see the iniquities of men.” (Bishop Hacker.) Death better than degeneration O let me not survive to see the infidelity of mine own nation: O let me not live to see Him crowned with thorns. (Bishop Hacker.) Excessive spiritual joy The Redeemer is come, let my fetters therefore be broken off; my joy is excessive and superlative, this frail flesh cannot contain it: The new wine is poured in, O let the old bottles break. Thou hast granted me more than ever Thou didst grant to any prophet upon earth; therefore exalt me to Thy saints in heaven. (Bishop Hacker.) Seeing the invisible Blessed were the eyes both of his soul and body: his bodily eyes did see the happiest sight in heaven and earth, but the eyes of his soul did respect that which is invisible. (Bishop Hacker.) Christ embraced He comes with much impotency and weakness, to be presented in the Temple, and to be redeemed after the custom of the law, with five shekels of silver, but He will redeem us both from the bondage of the law, and from the bondage of sin, with the five wounds of His body. If such salvation as this were only to be glanced upon perfunctorily, this sage Israelite would have been contented to have seen Him, and rested there; but forasmuch as we must incorporate our Saviour in our souls, and endeavour that there be a real union ‘ twixt Christ and us: therefore in the verse before my text, Simeon took up our Saviour into his arms, and St. John makes that a great mystery of his own, and his brethren’ s happiness, that their hands had handled the Word of Life. This doth not only betoken faith, but exceeding love; we hug them in our arms whom we have in dear estimation, we catch them in our arms, as if we would grow together: so if we love the Lord sincerely, we are one with Him, and He with us; we dwell in Him, and He in us. (Bishop Hacker.) Old age If any are entitled to a peaceful departure, it is those who, like the aged Simeon, have passed through not only the springtime and summer of life, but also through its autumn and winter. To few is it given to do this. For most of us, life closes before old age brings its burdens, its sorrows, or its triumphs. Stern, indeed, is the task which old age imposes upon those who enter her service. The departure of one friend after another, till all the companions of earlier and later years have disappeared, and one belongs to a generation not his own; the gradual failure of the faculties in which have lain the joy and pride of life; the conscious enfeebling of mind and body alike; the defeat, and often the entire reversal, of all one’ s dreams for the progress and happiness of the race; and the adoption by the world of manners and fashions repugnant to every instinct in which one has been reared,--what trial has youth or manhood to compare with these? All the more beautiful is it, then, when the approach of old age, far from chilling heart or soul, touches life with a more radiant light than had belonged to it before, and brings the powers to a certain dignified maturity; reminding one of the lingering days of Indian summer, when, just as we have ceased to look for sunny skies, and are prepared for November’ s chilly air, and have bade farewell to the last of the roadside flowers, a soft and dreamy haze falls upon the landscape, coming as if from another clime, and bringing with it a loveliness with which spring and summer can hardly vie. Sometimes, old age seems to loss its withering touch entirely, and, instead of blighting, to bring the intellectual powers to their highest vigour. The wisdom of experience, the deepening insight, into truth, ant stronger habits of independent judgment come to aid the mind or will and make them capable of their best work. It brings often a beautiful spirit of tolerance. Through many years of waiting and watching, they have learned the lesson, not of despair, but of hope. They have discovered that human systems are transient, the eternal truth and right abiding. The activity of younger minds, instead of awakening jealousy or discontent, moves their admiration, as the poor cripple or worn invalid looks admiringly upon the agile movements of children at their play, and marvels with longing, yet with pride, at his companion’ s prodigal activity. The years, as they have passed, have taught them charity of judgment and confidence in men’ s nobler motives. Youth, as we know, is almost of necessity one-sided and limited in its judgments, and liable to bitter prejudices. Again, old age brings not only tolerance and breadth: it brings also, at times, in its rarer manifestations, a vivid and living interest in passing events, which more than makes up for the forced inactivity which age imposes. If they cannot themselves share in the world’ s activity, they rejoice that others should. Removed from the toil and scenes they love, they find their compensation in living in the efforts and experiences of younger souls, whose life is still before them. No hearts so young, no hopes so immature, but their sympathies are enlisted for them. Men marvel at their cheerfulness and unfailing animation, little knowing that they have learned the secret of perpetual youth. Where the affections are fresh and the sympathies warm and comprehensive, old age may touch the head with frost and leave furrows upon the brow, but it cannot reach the heart. Again, age seems to bring to those who know how to meet it a more serene and undisturbed happiness than belongs to any other period of life. Happy old age, I suppose, is that which has accumulated resources during its active years sufficient for its years of inaction. It has a full mind. It has thronging memories of a busy past. It has the remembrance of eager and serious effort while effort was possible. It has mental as well as physical faculties which bear witness of thorough use, and which have earned for themselves the right to repose. It has vital sympathies enlisted so long in great interests as feel still the glow of their old enthusiasms. Then come the composure, the peace, the dignity, which often make old age so winning and attractive. The din of life is far away. Its rancours and enmities have lost their sting. What dignity and grace it lends to the home! How much more, even in its infirmities, it adds to the life around it than it can possibly receive from it; not simply through whatever is venerable in its aspect or demeanour, but rather through the gentle bearing and tender sentiment which it calls into being, and without which our lives would be bare and rude indeed I What can be a better training for childhood than to grow up by the side of venerable forms, whom all are treating with honour and respect? What more refining influence, as one advances in years, than the tender solicitude, the loving care, the gentle deference, which it is the privilege of youth to offer to age? If age would be weary and solitary without youth at its side, youth would certainly be raw and uncouth without the softening presence of age. (E. H. Hall.) A martyr’ s death-song These words have been the triumphant death-song of true martyrs. One of them, in the fourteenth century, Maximilian Hostialick, told the officer on the scaffold that he would repeat the song of Simeon, and then the executioner might do his duty. He accordingly lifted up his voice: “ Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace, according to Thy word; for mine eyes have seen Thy salvation” ; and then fell the blow that severed his head from the body. (A. C. Thompson, D. D.) Peace of a dying Christian Joseph Addison, the renowned author and linguist, after enduring much physical suffering with fortitude, sent for the young but dissipated Lord Warwick. He came and said, “ Dear sir, you sent for me. I believe and hope you have some commands. I shall hold them most dear.” “ See,” said the dying saint, “ in what peace a Christian can die!” and breathed his life out like a sleeping infant. Christ immediately known and embraced Simeon knew Christ as soon as he saw Him, and embraced Him as soon as he knew Him, and enjoyed Him as soon as he embraced Him. So some know the Word of God as soon as they hear it, and believe it as soon as they know it, and feel the comfort of it as soon as they believe it; but others hear it as though they heard it not, like deaf adders, that stop their ears at the voice of the charmer. (H. Smith.) Prepared For there was nothing which had not a tongue to speak for God. Everything was prepared for Him before He came to be revealed. He came not in the beginning nor in the ending. He came not in the ending, that we which come after Him, might long for His second coming. He came not in the beginning, because that such a Prince as He should have many banners and triumphs before Him. He came not in the beginning, because the eyes of faith should not be dazzled in Him, and lest they which should live in the latter times should forget Him and His coming, which was so long before; even as you forget that which I have said as soon as you are gone hence. He came not in the beginning, because if He had come before man had sinned, man would have acknowledged no need of a physician; but He came when man had sinned, and had felt the smart of sin. For when they were cast out of Paradise, they ran unto Christ, as the Israelites did to the serpent. He came not in the beginning, but in the perfect age of the world, to show that He brought with Him perfection, perfect joy, perfect peace, perfect wisdom, perfect righteousness, perfect justice, perfect truth; signifying thereby, that notwithstanding He came in the perfect age thereof, yet He found all things imperfect (H. Smith.) The waiting of Simeon Simeon also waited or the consolation of Israel, until he had embraced in his arms Him whom he so long longed to see and feel. How many waiters be there in the world, yet few wait as Simeon did; but some wait for honour, some for riches, some for pleasures, some for ease, some for rewards, some for money, some for a dear year, and some for a golden day, as they call it; but Simeon waited, and expected with many a long look, until he had seen and embraced Christ Jesus, the light of the Gentiles, the glory of Israel, the salvation of all that with a faithful and zealous affection and love do wait for His coming, to the comfort of the afflicted, and to the terrifying of the wicked and the ungodly, which have not already waited, neither embraced Him, as Simeon did. (H. Smith.) Desiring death May not any man desire death? May not the fastened ship in a strange land desire to be loosed, to hasten to his longed-for port at home? May not a man imprisoned amongst bitter enemies desire to be set at liberty, to return to his own country, in freedom to live amongst his sweet friends? Are we not strangers here, and by unpeaceable, most deadly enemies, our own flesh, the world, and the devil, held prisoners in the chains of sin and manifold infirmities? and is not our home heaven, and the saints and angels our most dear friends? No marvel, then, that Simeon here desireth to be loosed, or let depart. (H. Smith.) Spiritual intimations “ And it had been revealed unto him by the Holy Spirit, that he should not see death, before he had seen the Lord’ s Christ.” This pre-intimation, be it observed, was not a mere presentiment; it was a direct revelation by the Holy Spirit. Yet, if Simeon had been questioned about it any time before this memorable day in the Temple, I doubt whether he would have affirmed that he was conscious of having received any distinctively supernatural communication. He probably would have answered: “ I have a strong conviction that I shall not die until I behold the Consolation of Israel.” However this may have been, I believe that something like this has often occurred in the history of the Church, and may often occur again. Although the Holy Spirit is a supernatural being, yet, generally speaking, He acts so naturally on our feelings and expectations that we are not distinctly conscious of being under His influence. Who shall venture to affirm that those strong presentiments which we sometimes have--for example, concerning the conversion of children or kindred, or the restoration to health and home of far distant sick friends--may not be intimations to us by that Holy One who is emphatically the comforter and teacher and guide and helper and inspirer of His people? If the Holy Spirit can act on us in respect to duty, as we believe He does, why cannot He act on us in respect to desire and foresight? But let us not imagine that every presentiment is His impulse. How often are our saintliest and intensest expectations disappointed! Blessed are we if, like the patriarchs, we die as well as live in faith, although we have not received the promised blessings, but only seen them, and greeted them from afar. In all events, no one who has ever heard the glad tidings need die before he has in the truest sense seen the Lord’ s Christ. (G. D. Boardman.) Coincidences “ And He came in the Spirit into the Temple.” The Holy Spirit then not only revealed to Simeon that he would not die before he had seen Jehovah’ s Anointed: the Holy Spirit also prompted Simeon to visit the Temple the precise hour the Divine Babe was to be brought in. Ah, little do we imagine how many of the blessed coincidences of life are really arranged by that Holy One under whose administration we are living. Little did Simeon, although looking for the Consolation of Israel, imagine that he would see the Lord’ s Christ that day in His Temple. Little did Joseph and Mary imagine that on that day the Divine Babe would receive such reverential salutation. Little did Cornelius in Caesarea and Peter in Joppa imagine that the Holy Spirit was arranging for them an interview momentous in consequences. Little did Philip and the treasurer of Ethiopia imagine that they would meet each other on the desert way between Jerusalem and Gaza. Little do we imagine that many of the so-called accidental conjunctions of life are really the gracious arrangements by One who, hidden behind earth’ s thrones and nature’ s laws, is administering the affairs of the universe in the interest of Christ and Christ’ s Church. When will the world and the Church learn that Almighty God is Ruler as well as Maker? The character of Jesus Christ is the universal, infallible prober. The same lancet which lays bare the healthy nerve, lays bare the diseased. The same glad tidings which disclosed and saved a Simon Peter, disclosed and doomed a Judas Iscariot. Jesus Christ is the touch-stone of human hearts. And, first, we cannot but be impressed by the universal welcome which greeted the infant Jesus. Toil welcomed Him in the adoration of the shepherds. Intellect welcomed Him in the adoration of the wise men. Infancy welcomed Him in the adoration of the unborn son of Elisaheth. Old age welcomed Him in the adoration of Simeon and Anna. And well might all classes thus welcome Him; for He is the Son of man, and so the Christ for all men. Secondly, nothing is more beautiful than a Christian old age. For it brings, as it did to Simeon, three beautiful things. First, it brings depth of spiritual insight: Simeon took the Child into his arms, and blessed God, saying, “ Lord, mine eyes have seen Thy salvation.” Secondly, it brings catholicity of spirit: “ Mine eyes have seen Thy salvation, which Thou hast prepared before the face of all; a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and the glory of Thy people Israel.” Thirdly, it brings peace in view of death: “ O Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace.” The truth is, age does not depend on years. Some are old at twenty, others are young at ninety. As the poet sings: “ We live in deeds, not words; in thoughts, not breaths; In feelings, not in figures on a dial: We should count time by heart-throbs. He most lives ho thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the best.” Age is far more a matter of indolence, and uselessness, and ennui, than of chronology. And a Christian old age is ever youthful. (G. D. Boardman.) Character and privilege of Simeon I. HIS , PIETY. Who is the devout man? The answer is brief. It is the man who, in consequence of inward, spiritual illumination, entertains correct views of God--of God’ s nature, character, government, worship, and grace; and who habitually feels, acts, and lives under the living influence of these views. It is the mart who has respect to God in all things; it is he who inherits and exhibits the moral glories of the great Father, walks in serene fellowship with Him in a world of storms, and lives and moves in His everlasting love. The devout man prays to his God in secret, makes His Book the reason and rule of duty, leans upon His kind arm when sorrows darken his path, and endeavours everywhere and always to glorify His holy name. But Simeon was not only devout, but also just. And who is the just man? The scriptural idea of him is vast and comprehensive. A just man is one who is universally right--right as to his condition, and right as to his character. His faith, his principles, his practice, are all right. Having accepted the Divine method of salvation, he is treated as though he were just; the Lord imputeth no iniquity to him. Having received the Divine Spirit, he is become actively just towards himself, his race, and his God. In law he is righteous: in life he is righteous. Such is the general idea the Bible gives of a just man. But, in the text, the phrase has evidently a limited signification. It denotes social rectitude. To be just to our fellow-men is to recognize, and, as far as we can, to protect their rights, civil, mental, religious. Now, between these distinct virtues there is an essential connection. They never do, they never can, exist separately. Strictly speaking, they are only two manifestations of the same thing. It is human holiness embracing at once the finite and the infinite as the spheres of its action. Men would sever devotion and morality; but the thing is impossible. Facts as well as philosophy prove it so. How can a truly devout man be unjust? And how can a just man be yet so unjust as to neglect his God? The two virtues we speak of, then, necessarily co-exist. But although these two qualities never exist independently of each other, yet it is a matter of fact, that in many a good man they are far from being equally developed. One man is very devotional as to the current of his thoughts, associations, feelings, hopes, and desires, and yet very defective, to say the least, in the discharge of his social obligations. Another man is remarkably exact, punctual, and conscientious in all his relative duties, who nevertheless is, or appears to be, very careless and cold in the offices of devotion and in the higher exercises of religion. How is this? In the history of practical godliness are four things which it would be well to remember: that different men excel in different virtues; that the same men excel in different virtues at different periods of their history: that in no man do all the virtues shine with equal radiance; and, finally, that the best of men are far from perfection here. Thus we have glanced at the virtues of Simeon; their nature, development, and mutual relation. In him they shone beautifully and harmoniously. His love to God produced universal propriety of conduct towards men; and that is what I would call true religion. II. I now proceed to notice THE PUBLIC SPIRIT OF SIMEON. That is beautifully expressed in these words--“ Waiting for the Consolation of Israel.” He was not only a just and devout man, but he was also writing for Him who was to be Israel’ s consolation and glory and the Gentiles’ light. Simeon was not a man of a narrow, contracted, selfish mind. Oh! no. His thoughts, desires, solicitudes, and hopes were not limited to himself, nor to his own nation; his heart burned for the public good; he was an observer and interpreter of public events. Through the Divine medium of prophecy he surveyed the far-spread scenes of futurity. He had long waited for the day of the Lord: at last it sweetly dawned upon his hopes. Faith and prayer ever wait for those eras of light and renewal, by a succession of which God has promised to draw humanity nearer and still nearer to Himself. Simeon waited for the coming of Messiah: expectation was the habitual attitude of his spirit; it was the theme of his conversation; the breath of his prayers; the bright beam that ever cheered the long path of his pilgrimage. In the teachings of the synagogue, in the sacrifices of the Temple, in the changes which were passing over the institutions of his people, the devout patriarch saw the prophetic signs of the Son of man. His constant waiting for Christ kept his affections in a state of healthy excitement, spiritualized his piety, shed an unearthly lustre around his general character, and raised him far above the men of his age. Simeon gives three distinct views of Jesus. He refers to Him as the object of human hostility; as the cause of great moral revolutions; and, finally, as the source, the Divine source, of spiritual blessings. 1. The text refers to Christ as an object of human enmity, as a sufferer. He was to be a “ sign to be spoken against” --the mark of evil men and evil spirits. 2. Simeon pointed to Jesus as the cause of great moral revolutions. He was to be “ for the fall and the rising of many in Israel” --“ the thoughts of many hearts were to be revealed.” Here two great effects are attributed to the presence of Jesus on earth; a revelation of human thoughts, and a revolution in human affairs. One of the mighty works which Jesus came to accomplish was to set men to think--to think with freedom, earnestness, and force; and this He actually did to an extent before unknown. His aim was not to affect the mere surface of our nature, to alter only its moral forms and fashions; but to send His influence down to its very centre. He set mind in motion; He touched the mysterious springs of its power: and this He did by the conjoined influence of two things--His truth and His character. Both these were original, perfect, Divine. The impulse which He thus imparted to our nature has been deepening and widening ever since. He originated a succession of improving changes which can no more be stopped than the course of the stars. The living power of the gospel, by rousing humanity to action, elicited its true character: opposing elements were set in commotion; the good and the evil rose to the surface; and thus “ the thoughts of many hearts were revealed.” Simeon foresaw also that the Holy Child would be for the fall and rising of many. Here, again, we meet another wonderful principle--we say principle--for risings and failings in our world are not mere accidents or chances, but events regulated by a fixed law; and that law is administered by the Divine Mediator. We fancy we can see emblems of these moral changes--these risings and failings--even in the material world. The motions of the heavens--the processes of matter everywhere around us--the revolutions of the seasons--continually remind us of them. This revolutionary principle seems to be in constant operation in the government of our disordered race. It pervades the internal and the external history of humanity; it presides over all the alterations which take place in the ideas, the characters, and the institutions of men. How very remarkably was its energy displayed during the first age of Christianity. Then truth rose higher than it had ever done before: then error and ignorance began to fall; and, blessed be God! they have been falling and falling and falling ever since. Then the old schools of religious teachers fell; and a new one rose under the inspirations of Jesus, which is one day to fill the world with its doctrine. Then the first covenant disappeared, to give place to a better one. Then, in a word, the ancient Church fell, and the new rose into being; and the rise of this new society was one of the grandest results of Christ’ s descent to our earth; it was, if we may be allowed the expression, the incarnation of one of the sublimest ideas of the Son of God. 3. Simeon speaks still more definitely of the Saviour. He represents Him as the source of all spiritual blessings. Three precious gifts, he predicted, would flow from this Divine Fountain; light, consolation, and glory. He is the light of men. We have already spoken of Christ as the quickener of mind: we must not forget, however, that the great instrument He employs is truth. Having thus meditated a little on the personal holiness of Simeon, and on his enlarged view of Jesus as the Saviour of the world, let us for a few minutes look on the glory that was shed on his latter end. I. He was permitted to embrace the Holy Infant. He had been studying the predictions and types of the law; he had been long waiting for the Wonderful One, to whom they pointed; and now he was blessed with His presence. “ Then took he Him up in his arms, and blessed God.” As he took the Incarnate One into his arms, the sunshine of heaven broke upon his soul: as he pressed Him to his heart, ideas, emotions, and beatitudes unutterable at once overwhelmed it like a flood, and before he uttered a word of gratulation to the blessed mother, he turned to God, and breathed his praises there: he blessed God. Oh! there are hours when the heart is too full to speak to any but its God. What a dreadful thing it is to see death before we see Christi See death we all must--we all shall, and that soon; perhaps unexpectedly. But have we seen Christ? Have we embraced Christ? Have we, by faith, seen the Divine grandeur of His person, the transcendent excellence of His character, and the preciousness of His cross, as the medium of pardon and the means of perfection? II. Simeon was willing--I may say more--he was desirous to die. “ Lord,” said the happy man, “ Lord, now lettest Thou thy servant depart in peace, according to Thy word: for mine eyes have seen Thy salvation.” This is a comprehensive sentence, and admits of a copious interpretation. First, with what calmness he viewed death. To him, it was only the letting him go--the departing from one place for another, and a better. I have seen, he said, all that is worth seeing in this narrow shadowy sphere; I have seen what I was most anxious to see; now let me be loosed, that I may soar to the world of the blessed. Again: he viewed his death as being entirely under the control of God. How soothing and sustaining this idea of death. The time, the place, the circumstances of our departure, are all preordained by our Father’ s love. III. Finally, he viewed the last scene as overspread with peace. “ Now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace.” The departure of the just is peaceful. He has peace with heaven, with earth, and with his own nature. (Caleb Morris.) The Song of Simeon I. Let us notice THE of these words. It is an affecting circumstance, that although our Lord came to abolish the whole ceremonial law, He himself submitted to it all. The object of this visit to the Temple was twofold. It was, in the first instance, for Mary’ s purification. Wonderfully, brethren, amidst all His mercies to us, does s holy God keep up the remembrance of our sinfulness, and command us also to keep it up. We cannot even show our gratitude, lay a thank-offering upon His altar, without approaching His altar in the character of sinners. A grateful heart and a contrite heart must go together. Another object was accomplished by this visit. To keep up the remembrance of His mercy in sparing the sons of the Israelites when those of the Egyptians were destroyed, it was the command of God, that in all succeeding generations, the first-born of Israel, both of man and beast, should be considered as His property. “ Sanctify to Me,” he says, “ all the first-born, it is Mine.” The child was to be brought to the Temple as an acknowledgment of God’ s right to him, and then, after the appointed sum was paid and certain ceremonies gone through, he became free. And this is the ground on which we rest the honour that we pay to our Christian sacraments. They are no more in themselves than the long abolished ceremonies of the Jewish Temple, but, like those ceremonies, they are of Divine appointment, and, according to the example of our Saviour Christ, we will revere them. We may now place before us the scene connected with the text. We must conceive of Mary, her own purification over, as standing in the Temple with the ministering priests before her and a company of other worshippers around her. And then we must imagine an aged man approaching, gazing for a moment at the heavenly Babe in her arms, then taking it into his, and, with a look upwards, bursting forth in the hearing of them all into this happy song. II. Let us consider the HE IN IT. We feel at once that it is happiness he expresses, not that overflowing of delight and joy which we see in Mary at Elisabeth’ door, but a calm, subdued happiness; the happiness of one who has been long accustomed to strong emotions, and knows how to govern and restrain as well as indulge them. We are not told that Simeon was an old man, but it is probable from the narrative that he was so, and his happiness seems to be the happiness of old age, less lively and exuberant than that of youth, but as heart-felt and deep or deeper, and, like deep waters, quiet and serene. But in what did Simeon’ s happiness consist? 1. In praise for a blessing given. “ He took Him up in his arms, and” --what? gave utterance at once to the joy that thrilled within him I When some of us have a mercy sent us, we must welcome it, we say; have a little time allowed us to feel that it is ours, to examine it, and delight ourselves in it. Then comes late and slow the thought, that we owe this mercy to a gracious God, and must thank Him for it. But this is because our joy in our mercies is not holy joy. Holy joy is like the joy of heaven--its natural language is praise, and its happiest language is praise. Blessings become sweeter to us when they draw forth our praise. And it is this looking on Christ as a Saviour provided for us by the everlasting Jehovah, that leads the soul to feel so thankful for Him and rejoice so much in Him. 2. A hope realized was another part of Simeon’ s happiness at this time. The history represents Simeon to us at first as under the influence of hope. 3. There was yet something more in this man’ s happiness--delight in a glorious prospect opened to him. Let God give the real Christian what spiritual blessing he may, he immediately longs for more. The blessing he has received seems to bring into his view other blessings, and to kindle his desires for them. With him, therefore, hope realized is a new impulse given to hope. III. Let us now endeavour to draw from his happiness SOME USEFUL FOR . And in doing so, we must regard ourselves, brethren, as dying men. Simeon speaks here as a dying man. Job, Elijah, Jonah, all cried out, “ Let me die,” but they were some of the very worst words these men ever uttered. They were tired of God’ s dealings with them, weary of the discipline or the work He had allotted them, and they wanted to get away from them. This entry is longer than a Bible module can hold. The rest is at https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/bi/ Luke 2:29; Luke 2:31 Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace Nunc Dimittis I. Let us start with this great general principle which is full of comfort that EVERY MAY BE ASSURED OF IN PEACE. This is no privilege peculiar to Simeon, it is common to all the saints, since the grounds upon which this privilege rests are not monopolised by Simeon, but belong to us all. 1. All the saints have seen God’ s salvation, therefore should they all depart in peace. It is true, we cannot take up the infant Christ into our arms, but He is “ formed in us, the hope of glory.” It is true, we cannot look upon Him with these mortal eyes, but we have seen Him with those eyes immortal which death cannot dim--the eyes of our own spirit which have been opened by God’ s Holy Spirit. A sight of Christ with the natural eye is not saving, for thousands saw Him and then cried, “ Crucify Him, crucify Him.” 2. Believers already enjoy peace as much as ever Simeon did. No man can depart in peace who has not lived in peace; but he who has attained peace in life shall possess peace in death, and an eternity of peace after death. 3. We may rest assured of the same peace as that which Simeon possessed, since we are, if true believers, equally God’ s servants. The same position towards God, the same reward from God. 4. Another reflection which strengthens this conviction is, that up till now all things in their experience have been according to God’ s Word. The promises of God, which are “ Yea and amen in Christ Jesus,” are sure to all the seed: not to some of the children is the promise made, but all the grace-born are heirs. If, then, Simeon, as a believer in the Lord, had a promise that he should depart in peace, I have also a like promise if I am in Christ. 5. The departure of the child of God is appointed of the Lord. “ Now lettest Thou,” &c. The servant must not depart from his labour without his Master’ s permission, else would he be a runaway, dishonest to his position. 6. The believer’ s departure is attended with a renewal of the Divine benediction. “ Depart in peace,” saith God. It is a farewell, such as we give to a friend: it is a benediction, such as Aaron, the priest of God, might pronounce over a suppliant whose sacrifice was accepted. Eli said unto Hannah, “ Go in peace, and the God of Israel grant thee thy petition that thou hast asked of Him.” Around the sinner’ s death-bed the tempest thickens, and he hears the rumblings of the eternal storm: his soul is driven away, either amid the thunderings of curses loud and deep, or else in the dread calm which evermore forebodes the hurricane. II. SOME ARE OF A SPECIAL TO DEPART IS PEACE. When do they feel this? Answer: 1. When their graces are vigorous. 2. When their assurance is clear. 3. When their communion with Christ is near and sweet. 4. Saints have drawn their anchor up and spread their saris, when they have been made to hold loose by all there is in this world; and that is generally when they hold fastest by the world to come. 5. Saints are willing to depart when their work is almost done. Ah, Christian people, you will never be willing to go if you are idle. You lazy lie-a-beds, who do little or nothing for Christ, you sluggish servants, whose garden is overgrown with weeds, no wonder that you do not want to see your master! 6. One other matter, I think, helps to make saints willing to go, and that is when they see or foresee the prosperity of the Church of God. Good old Simeon saw that Christ was to be a light to lighten the Gentiles, and to be the glory of His people Israel; and therefore he said, “ Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace.” It must have reconciled John Knox to die when he had seen the reformation safely planted throughout all Scotland. It made dear old Latimer, as he stood on the fagot, feel happy when he could say, “ Courage, brother, we shall this day light such a candle in England as shall never be blown out.” III. THERE ARE WORDS TO US TO THE LIKE TO DEPART (See Psalms 23:4; Psalms 37:37; Psalms 116:15; Isaiah 57:2; 1 Corinthians 3:22; 1 Corinthians 15:54; Revelation 14:13). These promises belong to all believers; each of them is a sure word from God. (C. H. Spurgeon.) The Hunt Dimittis It seems singular to see these two faces resting so closely together. Infancy and old age are met; second childhood holds first childhood by the hand while it sings a wonderful song. I. The first thing that strikes our notice here is THE OFFERED OF THE PARADOX OF LIFE. How extraordinary is the disparity between these two persons, and yet how absolutely the one seems to rest in the other! Jesus lies safely in Simeon’ s arms; Simeon reposes his life for all the untold future in Jesus’ Messiahship. Simeon’ s soul is held up for ever by the Little Child whose body he now holds in his hands! We can explain nothing in this strange scene without considering that Jesus was the true Messiah, and the Messiah was the incarnate God. II. So this presents another lesson: here is A STYLE OF PIETY FOR AN . There are faiths and religions, there are rituals and creeds, there are persuasions and experiences, enough almost to fill the world. Only some of them do not meet the end for which they have been commended. Many a man has what he calls his religion; and it does very well when shielded and sheltered, but it goes out ignobly in darkness and betrayal under the wild rush of discipline, or the hurricane gusts of tempestuous passion. It is evident that here in Simeon’ s case we find a perfectly settled rest for any human soul. His full content with it is edifying and unmistakable. He was willing to take his eternal life on Christ’ s own terms, and so he was perfectly satisfied. It mattered nothing to him that he was an old man, and this was a Babe, nor that he was a wise:ann, and this was only a peasant Infant forty days old; he expressed his entire contentment with the plan which infinite wisdom had devised for human reliance. Men may as well start with this; they must begin by accepting terms already made, and cease trying to make new ones. Felix Neff once told even a minister this: “ There is much truth in your sermon, but it lacks one important thing: you still wish men to go to Jesus with lace sleeves, instead of going to Him in rags as they are.” III. We find here AN AND OF THE EXACT PURPOSE OF THE GOSPEL. It will be well to put alongside of this song Simeon’ s prophecy, which comes just after it. This good old man tells that young mother precisely what her Child was “ set” for Christ was appointed to prostrate men from self-dependence, and raise them again into full union with Himself. His heart would be pierced in suffering, and so would Mary’ s, before the history should be finished. But Christ’ s sufferings would work out an atonement, by which sinners might be saved. IV. A LESSON OF TRUST FOR NEW FROM AN OLD . Picture just that instant in which this old man stands gazing down upon the face of the Infant for the first time. Was this all to which mighty generations had been looking during those thousands of years that were gone? Was it just this weak little peasant Babe that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had seen afar off, and been glad to see? Was He what the ancient prophets had descried in the distance, as they stood peering off from the watchtowers of a militant Zion, the flashing seer-light in their eyes as they sang? Was this the King, whom King David had so celebrated in his Psalms? Alas for the poor show the new Monarch now made I Yet Simeon accepts Him I Just remember that it was everything or nothing to this old man to make his decision. No halfway allegiance would do. Jesus was the Messiah, or nothing. Surrender to Him would carry time and eternity with it, and he surrendered. V. A PICTURE OF FOR DEATH. Note the language carefully. Simeon does not use a prayer; he makes a declaration. He does not say--now let me depart; he says--now Thou dost let me depart. We feel certain that this man has been waiting a good while. Such unusual preparedness for departure was the general growth of years. It was no sudden explosion of experience, but must have had its increments of spiritual increase as many and as various as the rings of fibre in the trunk of a palm-tree. There is an old age full of querulous complaint and peevishness, under every on-coming of infirmity. It wears itself out in discontent; it often vanishes at the last, and makes no sign. On the other hand, there is an old age like this of the illustrious Simeon. The soul has leaned its all on God, and is perfectly satisfied because it knows it is perfectly safe. Not even severe trial can alter the permanence of such trust. For heaven seems the only true thing in the universe, and death is nothing but a kind of rough way of going to it. Remember the beautiful inscription upon Dean Alford’ s tombstone; how it describes a grave: “ The inn of a traveller on the way to Jerusalem” (C. S. Robinson, D. D.) Simeon’ s Canticle The “ Nunc Dimittis” may supply us with useful lessons. 1. Its position in the service of our Reformed Church is an indication of honour paid to the written Word. The New Testament is exalted by the appointment of the Song of Simeon to be used after the second lesson from Scripture at evening service. The New Testament is full of Jesus. The Church has been rent with disputes about the nature of His presence in the sacrament of His love. Every Christian knows that there is a presence also in the Word of His truth. More especially, the thought, the breath, the very heart of Christ may be felt in the Gospels. When we read or hear them, we embrace Him as Simeon did. We cease to be critics when, with the aged saint, we hold Him in our arms. 2. More broadly, the “ Nunc Dimittis” is also a Missionary strain. It is fittingly recorded by St. Luke, the Pauline Evangelist, who was as truly the Evangelist, as St. Paul was the Apostle, of the Gentiles. In Simeon’ s Song we have the history of the ages in one short sentence, in three pregnant clauses, at once original, concise, and oracular. To the Gentiles, Messiah is ever giving “ light” ; to the Jews, He is ever bringing “ glory.” 3. This canticle has a tone which is peculiarly suitable to the evening, and may profitably be applied in this spirit by believers of every Church. It is a soothing voice which sings for those who have had a long day’ s work. It fits into the golden melancholy of the sunset time, or the later hours, when the lamps are lighted in the sanctuary. It is as a prayer with which a mother taught us to lie down in our beds. 4. The “ Nunc Dimittis” has always seemed suitable as a prayer for a holy death. In some of the old services there was a touching way of referring Simeon’ s song to our departure, and to the thought of those who rest in peace. When it was sung in “ Holy Week,” just at its close the choir burst out into the funeral anthem--“ In the midst of life we are in death.” The Song of Simeon, thought over with prayer, may lead us to exclaim with Paul, “ I desire to be dissolved and to be with Christ.” Simeon’ s holy soul can find no home and rest on the water-floods of life; it desires to return into the ark with the olive-branch of peace. And if any wish to depart in peace like Simeon, let him come in the guidance of the Spirit to the Temple. Let him expect Christ. Let him receive his Saviour into his arms of faith, and cradle Him upon a heart of love. The Old Testament often takes a dark view of death. The writer shudders as he writes. The last words of the great Italian poet, Leopardi, were, “ I cannot see you any longer,” with a deep sigh. The last words of the sceptical Hamlet are--“ the rest is silence.” The only Psalm which, in a like spirit, ends as it began, with gloom, is the 88th-- Lover and friend hast Thou removed from me; My intimates are--Darkness. In such passages as these death is viewed as it is for us all, naturally. But Simeon seems to stand for a gentle picture of the Law--wearied with lifelong effort, worn out with age, ready to embrace the gospel, and so “ depart in peace.” It is of profound and soothing significance that one, who may be almost termed “ the last Old Testament saint,” finds death sweet. For him the promise of the Psalmist is fulfilled-- This God is our God for ever and ever; He is our guide, gently leading us over death. For narrrow though the bridge seems to be that spans the chasm, it is yet broad and strong for those who are thus guided. That bridge is the Cross of Christ. (Bp. Wm. Alexander.) Nunc Dimittis This is a beautiful hymn of sunset--the sunset of the life of a good man which may also be called a hymn of sunrise, for there may be seen in it both the closing of a life and the beginning of a new one. Death is referred to in it, not as the flowing of twilight into darkness, but as a departure. The hymn is a thanskgiving for spiritual blessings, for a Divine light which had been planted by God in the soul, come to its meridian after much patience and long waiting. Beautiful thoughts, bearing fruit in beautiful words, rise in the midst of this noontide. God had sown this thought or impression in Simeon, in his old age, when he had begun to walk through the valley of the shadow. We know by experience how some favourite thought or idea in us may become like a living companion, go with us in our walks, and be with us in our occupations, even in our sleep. So was the Divine impression with Simeon. God is continually giving His children hallowed thoughts and impressions. Simeon’ s case may say this to us: “ Hold the good thoughts which come to you through prayer and other means of grace.” If we do this they will certainly bring us peace and consolation. (E. G. Charlesworth.) Our last days should be our best days Orators, though in every part of their speech they use great care and diligence, yet in the close of all they set forth the best of their art and skill, to stir up the affections and passions of their hearers, that then they may leave at the last the deepest impression of those things which they would persuade. Thus ought all of us to do, our whole life being nothing else but a continued and persuasive oration unto our God, to be admitted into His heavenly kingdom; but, when we come to the last act and epilogue of our age, then it is that we must especially strive to show forth all our art and skill, and that our last words may be our best words, our last thoughts our best thoughts, our last deeds our best deeds; whereby stirring up,-as it were, all the affections of God, and even the bowels of compassion, unto us. We may then, as the sun, though always glorious, yet especially at its setting, be most resplendent when we draw near unto our western home, the house appointed for all living. (Udall.) The last scene The evening praises the day, the last scene commends the act. The rivers, the nearer they draw to the sea, the sooner they are met by the tide. Though to guide a vessel safely along in the ocean argues much skill, and such a pilot is worthy of praise; yet at the very entrance into the haven, then to avoid the rocks, and to cast anchor in a safe road, argues most skill, and deserves most praise. Musicians reserve the sweetest strain for the close of the lesson. (G. Swinnock.) Sweet when fading As the perfume of May boughs is sweetest when they are about to fade, so, like them, I endeavour to make the close of my life sweet and fragrant by a worthy deportment and an honourable name. (Scriver.) Some hearts, like evening primroses, open most beautifully in the shadows of life. Simeon’ s Canticle These words are a sweet canticle, or swan-like song, of old Simeon, a little before his dissolution. He had seen the Messiah before by faith, now by sight, and wishes to have his eyes closed, that he may see nothing after this desirable sight. It is said of some Turks, that after they have seen Mahomet’ s tomb, they put out their eyes, that they may never defile them after they have seen so glorious an object. Thus did old Simeon desire to see no more of this world, after he had seen Christ the Saviour, but sues for his dismissal. Note here-- 1. That a good man having served his generation, and God in his generation, faithfully, is weary of the world, and willing to be dismissed from it. 2. That the death of a good man is nothing else but a quiet and peaceable departure; it is a departure “ in peace” to the God of peace. 3. That it is only a spiritual sight of Christ by faith that can welcome the approach of death, and render it an object desirable to the Christian’ s choice. 4. Holy Simeon, having declared the faithfulness of God to himself in the gift of Christ, next celebrates the mercy of God in bestowing this invaluable gift of a Saviour upon the whole world. The world consists of Jews and Gentiles; Christ is “ a light” to the one, and “ the glory” of the other. A light to the blind and dark Gentiles, and the glory of the renowned Church of the Jews; the Messiah being promised to them, born and bred up with them, living amongst them, preaching His doctrine to them, and working His miracles before them; and thus was Christ “ the glory of His people Israel.” (W. Burkitt, M. A.) Simeon’ s Song The swan-like song of old Simeon. He speaks like a merchant who has got all his goods on shipboard, and now desires the master of the ship to hoist sail and be gone homewards. Indeed, what should a Christian, who is but a foreigner here, desire to stay any longer for in the world, but to get this full lading in for heaven? (W. Gurnall.) Death tests “ Charles, our people die well,” said John Wesley to his brother. Why is not that a proper test? We take death-bed words without an oath in a court of justice; a man is honest, if ever, in the moment when the great shadow is coming. Think of the martyr Ridley, the night before he was burned alive at the stake. One of his pitiful friends offered to sit up with him in the prison. “ Oh, n!” said the good man, “ what would you do with yourself? I mean to go to bed, and sleep as quietly as ever I did in my life. My breakfast to-morrow will be sharp and painful; but I am sure my supper will be right pleasant and sweet!” (C. S. Robinson, D. D.) Death welcome with Jesus near When his end was near, Dr. Grierson of Errol, after various Psalms and portions of Scripture had been read to him, asked his children to conclude by singing the hymn, “ Safe in the arms of Jesus.” After they had sung it, he said, “ I feel ram safe there. Death has no power nor fear for me at all now.” And when told that it was drawing near the morning, he exclaimed, “ Oh, let me go, for the day breaketh! I feel Jesus very near by me. Dear Lord, let me go!” Light in death The day before he died, John Holland, turning with his own hand to the eight chapter of the Romans, bade Mr. Legh read it: at the end of every verse he paused and gave the sense to his own comfort, but more to the joy and wonder of his friends. An hour or two after, on a sudden, he said, “ Oh, stay your reading! What brightness is this I see? Have you lighted any candles? “ No, it was replied; it is the sunshine. “ Sunshine!” he said; “ nay, it is my Saviour’ s shine. Farewell, world: welcome, heaven!” Ready to start A saintly man, when nearing his end, once remarked: “ I am just like a package that is all ready to go by train; packed, corded, labelled, paid for--waiting for the express to take me to glory!” Release from school Dr. Judson once said, “ I am not tired of my work, neither am I tired of the world; yet, when Christ calls me, I shall go with the gladness of a boy bounding away from school. Death will never take me by surprise: do not be afraid of that; I feel so strong in Christ.” Simeon’ s Song His Song may give us a glimpse of the man himself, for in it his habitual beliefs, convictions, and hopes rise to their highest and frankest expression. I. In Simeon’ s Song we have A NOBLE OF LIFE. KNOW art Thou relieving, or setting free, thy slave, O Master , according to Thy word, in peace.” Simeon regards himself as a sentinel whom, by His word or promise, the Great Master, or Captain, had ordered to an elevated and dangerous post, and charged to look for and announce the advent of a great light of hope, a light which was to convey glad tidings of great joy. To him life, or at least his own life, shaped itself as the task of a watchman, or a sentinel on duty--who has to face rough weather and smooth as he paces his weary beat, to confront the fears and hidden perils of the darkness, in order that the camp he guards may be secure; but who is sustained, under the burden of anxiety and weariness, by the hope of receiving a signal, of seeing a light arise in the darkness, which will not only release him from his post, but will also bring the tidings, or the prediction, of a great and final victory. A very noble, though by no means a perfect conception of human life, which is too large and complex to be rendered by any one image. A conception, moreover, which may be very helpful to us in many of the conditions in which we are placed. When life grows as weary and monotonous to us, through the prolonged pressure of samely duties, as to the watchman fixed to Agamemnon’ s roof or to a dog chained to a post; or when the zest of youth has passed and the infirmities and disabilities of age, or disease, accumulate upon us; or when we are weighed down with a burden of cares, anxieties, and fears, many of which are gross and palpable enough, but to some of which we can hardly give a name; when flesh, or heart, fail us, or both fail us, it surely would sustain and comfort us were we to remember that our post has been appointed us by the Great Captain who makes no mistake; that the duties and the burdens allotted to us have an end of discipline and love, and are intended to make us stronger, wiser, better; and that, however long it may delay its coming, a great Light is to arise upon us; that it is this for which we are watching and serving: and that it will bring with it glad tidings of great joy for all people as well as for us. II. In Simeon’ s Song we have A NOBLE OF DEATH. In his view, the sentinel was also the slave, and the discharge of the sentinel was also the manumission of the slave. Relief from toil, relief from danger, relief from bondage--can any conception of death be more welcome and attractive to weary, world-worn, sinful men? Only one thing could render it more attractive and complete, and this we, who have the mind of Christ, are bound to supply: viz., that our relief from toil will not be an exemption from work, but an added capacity for labour which will take all toil and weariness out of it; that our relief from danger will not release us from that strife against evil in which even the holy angels are engaged, but will bring us an immortal strength and serenity in virtue of which we shall carry on the conflict without fear, and cherish the sure and certain hope that evil must in the end be overcome of good; and that our relief from bondage will not be a discharge from service, but will bring us a vigour and a grace which will make our service a delight, since henceforth we shall serve as sons and not as slaves. III. We have A NOBLE OF . Simeon does but show the true prophetic, i.e., the true catholic, spirit when he conceives of the salvation of God as extending to the Gentile as well as the Jew, and delights in a mercy as wide as the world. And we fall short of that spirit, we sin against the revelation of the Old Testament no less than that of the New, so often as we affect any special personal interest in the fatherly love and compassion of God, or even when we conceive of His salvation as confined to the Church. The Church has been elected, as the Jewish race was elected, solely for the sake of the world, solely that it may carry the news and the power of salvation to those who are outside its pale. If we have seen the Light, it is that we may bear witness to the Light; that we may announce its rising, reflect its splendour, and believe that it will shine on till the darkness is past and every shadow has fled away. If we are sentinels, it is that we may guard and save the whole camp, and not simply our own company or our own regiment. (S. Cox, D. D.) The glory and work of old age The greatness of man is chiefly in this, that he can say to pain, I will endure; and to death, I will conquer its fear; and to old age, I will not be querulous. The glory of man is chiefly in this, that Christ enables him to go beyond the Stoic, and to say to pain, I will not only endure, but I will make suffering a step towards progress; and to death, I will not only conquer its fear, but open it as the portal of ampler life; and to old age, I will not only not be querulous, but will, therein and thereby, finish my inner development before I go. To crystallise into finished perfection was the aim and the ideal of the Stoic. To grow for ever is the aim and the ideal of the Christian. Death ended the effort and the pain of the Stoic. Death continues the effort, without the pain, of the Christian. What were the gains which blessed Simeon’ s age? I. POWER. He saw the Child and he knew that It was the Saviour of the world. This is the glory of a Christian’ s old age--vividness of spiritual vision. II. Another remarkable gain blessed the old age of Simeon, the possession of A LIBERAL VIEW. We find the old man set free from the exclusiveness and bigotry of his time and of his youth. Those were strange words upon the lips of a Jew--“ a light to lighten the Gentiles!” They had been said before. But it was not a common thought, nor a national thought, at the time of Christ’ s coming. Those who heard Simeon would be likely to call him a dangerous Liberal. Tolerance and a wide religious view are natural to old age, and it is very pitiable when we find it without them. III. Simeon wins the crowning blessing of old age--DEEP PEACE. We cannot win that quiet till just before the close. IV. But what is the SPECIAL WORK OF old age? It is partly outward, partly inward. Its outward work is the spreading of charity; the using of experience for the help of others. Its inward work is, however, the most important-the edifying of the heart in noble religion by consideration of the past; the rounding of the soul into as great perfection as possible, in filling up the broken edges of the sphere of life, in consolidating the world of our ideas. In wonder, and in joy that he has been so cared for, and so led into maturity, all thought of self passes from the old man’ s life, and he throws his whole being in gratitude at the feet of his Saviour and his God. It is, in fact, the first touch, even before death, of the pure and perfect life, the first faint throb of the exquisite existence into which he is going to enter, the half-realization on the borders of the world of light, while yet within the glimmering shadow, of what communion with God may mean. Then, indeed, he feels what Simeon felt when the long-repressed cry rose to his lips, for he sees the very Christ: “ Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant,” &c. (Stopford A, Brooke.) Simeon felt that little hand that lay hidden in his bosom as if it was fast loosening the silver cord. He speaks less like a living man than as a kind of Lazarus, alive indeed, but bound. “ Lord, loose me,” he prays. Younger men must work with the Messiah--his day was done. (A. Whyte, D. D.) Death viewed without terror The Bible seldom speaks of death by its own ugly name. It rather chooses to use expressions which veil its pain and its terror; and so does common speech. But the reason in the two cases is exactly opposite. The Bible will not call death “ death,” because it is not a bit afraid of it; the world will not, because it is so much afraid of it. The Christian view has robbed death of all its pain and terror. It has limited its power to the mere outside of the man, and the conviction that death can no more touch me than a sword can hack a surbeam, reduces it to insignificance. Death is a Liberator in the profoundest sense. It is the angel who comes in the night to God’ s prisoned servant, striking the fetters from his limbs, and leading him through the iron gate into the city. Death is a departure which is an emancipation. (A. Maclaren, D. D.) Death is release If one had watch’ d a prisoner many a year, Standing behind a barred window-pane, Fettered with heavy handcuff and with chain, And gazing on the blue sky far and clear; And suddenly some morning he should hear The man had in the night contrived to gain His freedom, and was safe, would this bring pain? Ah! would it not to dullest heart appear Good tidings? (Helen Hunt.) Sift therefore the agreeableness of those two parts, attend to these particulars: 1. Here is a supplicant the servant of the Lord--“ Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant.” 2. The petition of his soul--“ to depart.” 3. The time which he sets--“ Now, Lord, now ” 4. He pleads that he was well prepared to depart, for his heart was in peace, “ Lord now ” 5. The assurance in which he trusted that God would grant him his desire, for it was according to His word. 6. And principally: Here is the reason upon which he framed his desire why he would depart, he had seen that which his soul waited for before it flitted away, “ For mine eyes have seen Thy salvation.” (Bishop Hacker.) Servant of God It is great humility to confess one’ s self a servant, but it is no little dignity to profess one’ s self such a servant, to be the servant of God, and not the servant of men by vile obsequiousness, nor the servant of a man’ s own passions by lust and sensuality, nor the servant of sin by giving place unto the devil, this is a freedom that excels all other liberty. (Bishop Hacker.) Simeon knew the instant of his dissolution was at hand, and yet he sang away the remainder of his life with joy; as who should say, fly away my soul, fly away like a dove and take thy rest, for now I see that the promises of grace and mercy are true; here is Christ thy Saviour in thy hands, thine eyes do see, thine arms do support thy salvation; though thou departest thou shalt not go from Him, for He is man on earth to comfort thee, and God in heaven to glorify thee. (Bishop Hacker.) Satisfied As who should say, if I had been summoned to leave my station before this day came, my soul had been in bitterness, and I had been gathered to my fathers in sorrow, but now my pilgrimage hath been prolonged till I am full of happiness, now I am fledged with all my feathers to fly away, for what will satisfy him upon earth whom the sight of a Saviour will not satisfy? He was far stricken in years, and yet not mellow enough to drop off from the tree till the nativity of Jesus was fulfilled, and he a witness of it. He looked many a long look before he beheld his Saviour. And this is the nature of God’ s promises, they are seldom accomplished till his faith hath been thoroughly tried to whom they are made, and that he doth even languish with expectation. Some will say perhaps, O, I have waited long, this will never fall out as God hath promised. (Bishop Hacker.) The best sight Again, reason good he should ask of God to close his eyes, for they could never do him such good service any more, as they did at that instant, when they saw that mighty God in the visible form of a little Infant. The superstition and the barbarisms of the Turks being so well known, I do assent to some stories reported of them, which may seem incredible to civil nations. I instance in this particular, that when some of their zealots have made a pilgrimage to Mecca to do their adorations to the tomb of Mahomet, they presently draw hot burning steel before their eyes to put them out, that they may never see any other spectacle, after they have been honoured to see that monument of their prophet. Far better a great deal, and without superstition, might Simeon say, “ Mine eyes have seen Thy salvation, O Jehovah, now draw their curtains before them, that they may never hereafter see the iniquities of men.” (Bishop Hacker.) Death better than degeneration O let me not survive to see the infidelity of mine own nation: O let me not live to see Him crowned with thorns. (Bishop Hacker.) Excessive spiritual joy The Redeemer is come, let my fetters therefore be broken off; my joy is excessive and superlative, this frail flesh cannot contain it: The new wine is poured in, O let the old bottles break. Thou hast granted me more than ever Thou didst grant to any prophet upon earth; therefore exalt me to Thy saints in heaven. (Bishop Hacker.) Seeing the invisible Blessed were the eyes both of his soul and body: his bodily eyes did see the happiest sight in heaven and earth, but the eyes of his soul did respect that which is invisible. (Bishop Hacker.) Christ embraced He comes with much impotency and weakness, to be presented in the Temple, and to be redeemed after the custom of the law, with five shekels of silver, but He will redeem us both from the bondage of the law, and from the bondage of sin, with the five wounds of His body. If such salvation as this were only to be glanced upon perfunctorily, this sage Israelite would have been contented to have seen Him, and rested there; but forasmuch as we must incorporate our Saviour in our souls, and endeavour that there be a real union ‘ twixt Christ and us: therefore in the verse before my text, Simeon took up our Saviour into his arms, and St. John makes that a great mystery of his own, and his brethren’ s happiness, that their hands had handled the Word of Life. This doth not only betoken faith, but exceeding love; we hug them in our arms whom we have in dear estimation, we catch them in our arms, as if we would grow together: so if we love the Lord sincerely, we are one with Him, and He with us; we dwell in Him, and He in us. (Bishop Hacker.) Old age If any are entitled to a peaceful departure, it is those who, like the aged Simeon, have passed through not only the springtime and summer of life, but also through its autumn and winter. To few is it given to do this. For most of us, life closes before old age brings its burdens, its sorrows, or its triumphs. Stern, indeed, is the task which old age imposes upon those who enter her service. The departure of one friend after another, till all the companions of earlier and later years have disappeared, and one belongs to a generation not his own; the gradual failure of the faculties in which have lain the joy and pride of life; the conscious enfeebling of mind and body alike; the defeat, and often the entire reversal, of all one’ s dreams for the progress and happiness of the race; and the adoption by the world of manners and fashions repugnant to every instinct in which one has been reared,--what trial has youth or manhood to compare with these? All the more beautiful is it, then, when the approach of old age, far from chilling heart or soul, touches life with a more radiant light than had belonged to it before, and brings the powers to a certain dignified maturity; reminding one of the lingering days of Indian summer, when, just as we have ceased to look for sunny skies, and are prepared for November’ s chilly air, and have bade farewell to the last of the roadside flowers, a soft and dreamy haze falls upon the landscape, coming as if from another clime, and bringing with it a loveliness with which spring and summer can hardly vie. Sometimes, old age seems to loss its withering touch entirely, and, instead of blighting, to bring the intellectual powers to their highest vigour. The wisdom of experience, the deepening insight, into truth, ant stronger habits of independent judgment come to aid the mind or will and make them capable of their best work. It brings often a beautiful spirit of tolerance. Through many years of waiting and watching, they have learned the lesson, not of despair, but of hope. They have discovered that human systems are transient, the eternal truth and right abiding. The activity of younger minds, instead of awakening jealousy or discontent, moves their admiration, as the poor cripple or worn invalid looks admiringly upon the agile movements of children at their play, and marvels with longing, yet with pride, at his companion’ s prodigal activity. The years, as they have passed, have taught them charity of judgment and confidence in men’ s nobler motives. Youth, as we know, is almost of necessity one-sided and limited in its judgments, and liable to bitter prejudices. Again, old age brings not only tolerance and breadth: it brings also, at times, in its rarer manifestations, a vivid and living interest in passing events, which more than makes up for the forced inactivity which age imposes. If they cannot themselves share in the world’ s activity, they rejoice that others should. Removed from the toil and scenes they love, they find their compensation in living in the efforts and experiences of younger souls, whose life is still before them. No hearts so young, no hopes so immature, but their sympathies are enlisted for them. Men marvel at their cheerfulness and unfailing animation, little knowing that they have learned the secret of perpetual youth. Where the affections are fresh and the sympathies warm and comprehensive, old age may touch the head with frost and leave furrows upon the brow, but it cannot reach the heart. Again, age seems to bring to those who know how to meet it a more serene and undisturbed happiness than belongs to any other period of life. Happy old age, I suppose, is that which has accumulated resources during its active years sufficient for its years of inaction. It has a full mind. It has thronging memories of a busy past. It has the remembrance of eager and serious effort while effort was possible. It has mental as well as physical faculties which bear witness of thorough use, and which have earned for themselves the right to repose. It has vital sympathies enlisted so long in great interests as feel still the glow of their old enthusiasms. Then come the composure, the peace, the dignity, which often make old age so winning and attractive. The din of life is far away. Its rancours and enmities have lost their sting. What dignity and grace it lends to the home! How much more, even in its infirmities, it adds to the life around it than it can possibly receive from it; not simply through whatever is venerable in its aspect or demeanour, but rather through the gentle bearing and tender sentiment which it calls into being, and without which our lives would be bare and rude indeed I What can be a better training for childhood than to grow up by the side of venerable forms, whom all are treating with honour and respect? What more refining influence, as one advances in years, than the tender solicitude, the loving care, the gentle deference, which it is the privilege of youth to offer to age? If age would be weary and solitary without youth at its side, youth would certainly be raw and uncouth without the softening presence of age. (E. H. Hall.) A martyr’ s death-song These words have been the triumphant death-song of true martyrs. One of them, in the fourteenth century, Maximilian Hostialick, told the officer on the scaffold that he would repeat the song of Simeon, and then the executioner might do his duty. He accordingly lifted up his voice: “ Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace, according to Thy word; for mine eyes have seen Thy salvation” ; and then fell the blow that severed his head from the body. (A. C. Thompson, D. D.) Peace of a dying Christian Joseph Addison, the renowned author and linguist, after enduring much physical suffering with fortitude, sent for the young but dissipated Lord Warwick. He came and said, “ Dear sir, you sent for me. I believe and hope you have some commands. I shall hold them most dear.” “ See,” said the dying saint, “ in what peace a Christian can die!” and breathed his life out like a sleeping infant. Christ immediately known and embraced Simeon knew Christ as soon as he saw Him, and embraced Him as soon as he knew Him, and enjoyed Him as soon as he embraced Him. So some know the Word of God as soon as they hear it, and believe it as soon as they know it, and feel the comfort of it as soon as they believe it; but others hear it as though they heard it not, like deaf adders, that stop their ears at the voice of the charmer. (H. Smith.) Prepared For there was nothing which had not a tongue to speak for God. Everything was prepared for Him before He came to be revealed. He came not in the beginning nor in the ending. He came not in the ending, that we which come after Him, might long for His second coming. He came not in the beginning, because that such a Prince as He should have many banners and triumphs before Him. He came not in the beginning, because the eyes of faith should not be dazzled in Him, and lest they which should live in the latter times should forget Him and His coming, which was so long before; even as you forget that which I have said as soon as you are gone hence. He came not in the beginning, because if He had come before man had sinned, man would have acknowledged no need of a physician; but He came when man had sinned, and had felt the smart of sin. For when they were cast out of Paradise, they ran unto Christ, as the Israelites did to the serpent. He came not in the beginning, but in the perfect age of the world, to show that He brought with Him perfection, perfect joy, perfect peace, perfect wisdom, perfect righteousness, perfect justice, perfect truth; signifying thereby, that notwithstanding He came in the perfect age thereof, yet He found all things imperfect (H. Smith.) The waiting of Simeon Simeon also waited or the consolation of Israel, until he had embraced in his arms Him whom he so long longed to see and feel. How many waiters be there in the world, yet few wait as Simeon did; but some wait for honour, some for riches, some for pleasures, some for ease, some for rewards, some for money, some for a dear year, and some for a golden day, as they call it; but Simeon waited, and expected with many a long look, until he had seen and embraced Christ Jesus, the light of the Gentiles, the glory of Israel, the salvation of all that with a faithful and zealous affection and love do wait for His coming, to the comfort of the afflicted, and to the terrifying of the wicked and the ungodly, which have not already waited, neither embraced Him, as Simeon did. (H. Smith.) Desiring death May not any man desire death? May not the fastened ship in a strange land desire to be loosed, to hasten to his longed-for port at home? May not a man imprisoned amongst bitter enemies desire to be set at liberty, to return to his own country, in freedom to live amongst his sweet friends? Are we not strangers here, and by unpeaceable, most deadly enemies, our own flesh, the world, and the devil, held prisoners in the chains of sin and manifold infirmities? and is not our home heaven, and the saints and angels our most dear friends? No marvel, then, that Simeon here desireth to be loosed, or let depart. (H. Smith.) Spiritual intimations “ And it had been revealed unto him by the Holy Spirit, that he should not see death, before he had seen the Lord’ s Christ.” This pre-intimation, be it observed, was not a mere presentiment; it was a direct revelation by the Holy Spirit. Yet, if Simeon had been questioned about it any time before this memorable day in the Temple, I doubt whether he would have affirmed that he was conscious of having received any distinctively supernatural communication. He probably would have answered: “ I have a strong conviction that I shall not die until I behold the Consolation of Israel.” However this may have been, I believe that something like this has often occurred in the history of the Church, and may often occur again. Although the Holy Spirit is a supernatural being, yet, generally speaking, He acts so naturally on our feelings and expectations that we are not distinctly conscious of being under His influence. Who shall venture to affirm that those strong presentiments which we sometimes have--for example, concerning the conversion of children or kindred, or the restoration to health and home of far distant sick friends--may not be intimations to us by that Holy One who is emphatically the comforter and teacher and guide and helper and inspirer of His people? If the Holy Spirit can act on us in respect to duty, as we believe He does, why cannot He act on us in respect to desire and foresight? But let us not imagine that every presentiment is His impulse. How often are our saintliest and intensest expectations disappointed! Blessed are we if, like the patriarchs, we die as well as live in faith, although we have not received the promised blessings, but only seen them, and greeted them from afar. In all events, no one who has ever heard the glad tidings need die before he has in the truest sense seen the Lord’ s Christ. (G. D. Boardman.) Coincidences “ And He came in the Spirit into the Temple.” The Holy Spirit then not only revealed to Simeon that he would not die before he had seen Jehovah’ s Anointed: the Holy Spirit also prompted Simeon to visit the Temple the precise hour the Divine Babe was to be brought in. Ah, little do we imagine how many of the blessed coincidences of life are really arranged by that Holy One under whose administration we are living. Little did Simeon, although looking for the Consolation of Israel, imagine that he would see the Lord’ s Christ that day in His Temple. Little did Joseph and Mary imagine that on that day the Divine Babe would receive such reverential salutation. Little did Cornelius in Caesarea and Peter in Joppa imagine that the Holy Spirit was arranging for them an interview momentous in consequences. Little did Philip and the treasurer of Ethiopia imagine that they would meet each other on the desert way between Jerusalem and Gaza. Little do we imagine that many of the so-called accidental conjunctions of life are really the gracious arrangements by One who, hidden behind earth’ s thrones and nature’ s laws, is administering the affairs of the universe in the interest of Christ and Christ’ s Church. When will the world and the Church learn that Almighty God is Ruler as well as Maker? The character of Jesus Christ is the universal, infallible prober. The same lancet which lays bare the healthy nerve, lays bare the diseased. The same glad tidings which disclosed and saved a Simon Peter, disclosed and doomed a Judas Iscariot. Jesus Christ is the touch-stone of human hearts. And, first, we cannot but be impressed by the universal welcome which greeted the infant Jesus. Toil welcomed Him in the adoration of the shepherds. Intellect welcomed Him in the adoration of the wise men. Infancy welcomed Him in the adoration of the unborn son of Elisaheth. Old age welcomed Him in the adoration of Simeon and Anna. And well might all classes thus welcome Him; for He is the Son of man, and so the Christ for all men. Secondly, nothing is more beautiful than a Christian old age. For it brings, as it did to Simeon, three beautiful things. First, it brings depth of spiritual insight: Simeon took the Child into his arms, and blessed God, saying, “ Lord, mine eyes have seen Thy salvation.” Secondly, it brings catholicity of spirit: “ Mine eyes have seen Thy salvation, which Thou hast prepared before the face of all; a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and the glory of Thy people Israel.” Thirdly, it brings peace in view of death: “ O Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace.” The truth is, age does not depend on years. Some are old at twenty, others are young at ninety. As the poet sings: “ We live in deeds, not words; in thoughts, not breaths; In feelings, not in figures on a dial: We should count time by heart-throbs. He most lives ho thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the best.” Age is far more a matter of indolence, and uselessness, and ennui, than of chronology. And a Christian old age is ever youthful. (G. D. Boardman.) Character and privilege of Simeon I. HIS , PIETY. Who is the devout man? The answer is brief. It is the man who, in consequence of inward, spiritual illumination, entertains correct views of God--of God’ s nature, character, government, worship, and grace; and who habitually feels, acts, and lives under the living influence of these views. It is the mart who has respect to God in all things; it is he who inherits and exhibits the moral glories of the great Father, walks in serene fellowship with Him in a world of storms, and lives and moves in His everlasting love. The devout man prays to his God in secret, makes His Book the reason and rule of duty, leans upon His kind arm when sorrows darken his path, and endeavours everywhere and always to glorify His holy name. But Simeon was not only devout, but also just. And who is the just man? The scriptural idea of him is vast and comprehensive. A just man is one who is universally right--right as to his condition, and right as to his character. His faith, his principles, his practice, are all right. Having accepted the Divine method of salvation, he is treated as though he were just; the Lord imputeth no iniquity to him. Having received the Divine Spirit, he is become actively just towards himself, his race, and his God. In law he is righteous: in life he is righteous. Such is the general idea the Bible gives of a just man. But, in the text, the phrase has evidently a limited signification. It denotes social rectitude. To be just to our fellow-men is to recognize, and, as far as we can, to protect their rights, civil, mental, religious. Now, between these distinct virtues there is an essential connection. They never do, they never can, exist separately. Strictly speaking, they are only two manifestations of the same thing. It is human holiness embracing at once the finite and the infinite as the spheres of its action. Men would sever devotion and morality; but the thing is impossible. Facts as well as philosophy prove it so. How can a truly devout man be unjust? And how can a just man be yet so unjust as to neglect his God? The two virtues we speak of, then, necessarily co-exist. But although these two qualities never exist independently of each other, yet it is a matter of fact, that in many a good man they are far from being equally developed. One man is very devotional as to the current of his thoughts, associations, feelings, hopes, and desires, and yet very defective, to say the least, in the discharge of his social obligations. Another man is remarkably exact, punctual, and conscientious in all his relative duties, who nevertheless is, or appears to be, very careless and cold in the offices of devotion and in the higher exercises of religion. How is this? In the history of practical godliness are four things which it would be well to remember: that different men excel in different virtues; that the same men excel in different virtues at different periods of their history: that in no man do all the virtues shine with equal radiance; and, finally, that the best of men are far from perfection here. Thus we have glanced at the virtues of Simeon; their nature, development, and mutual relation. In him they shone beautifully and harmoniously. His love to God produced universal propriety of conduct towards men; and that is what I would call true religion. II. I now proceed to notice THE PUBLIC SPIRIT OF SIMEON. That is beautifully expressed in these words--“ Waiting for the Consolation of Israel.” He was not only a just and devout man, but he was also writing for Him who was to be Israel’ s consolation and glory and the Gentiles’ light. Simeon was not a man of a narrow, contracted, selfish mind. Oh! no. His thoughts, desires, solicitudes, and hopes were not limited to himself, nor to his own nation; his heart burned for the public good; he was an observer and interpreter of public events. Through the Divine medium of prophecy he surveyed the far-spread scenes of futurity. He had long waited for the day of the Lord: at last it sweetly dawned upon his hopes. Faith and prayer ever wait for those eras of light and renewal, by a succession of which God has promised to draw humanity nearer and still nearer to Himself. Simeon waited for the coming of Messiah: expectation was the habitual attitude of his spirit; it was the theme of his conversation; the breath of his prayers; the bright beam that ever cheered the long path of his pilgrimage. In the teachings of the synagogue, in the sacrifices of the Temple, in the changes which were passing over the institutions of his people, the devout patriarch saw the prophetic signs of the Son of man. His constant waiting for Christ kept his affections in a state of healthy excitement, spiritualized his piety, shed an unearthly lustre around his general character, and raised him far above the men of his age. Simeon gives three distinct views of Jesus. He refers to Him as the object of human hostility; as the cause of great moral revolutions; and, finally, as the source, the Divine source, of spiritual blessings. 1. The text refers to Christ as an object of human enmity, as a sufferer. He was to be a “ sign to be spoken against” --the mark of evil men and evil spirits. 2. Simeon pointed to Jesus as the cause of great moral revolutions. He was to be “ for the fall and the rising of many in Israel” --“ the thoughts of many hearts were to be revealed.” Here two great effects are attributed to the presence of Jesus on earth; a revelation of human thoughts, and a revolution in human affairs. One of the mighty works which Jesus came to accomplish was to set men to think--to think with freedom, earnestness, and force; and this He actually did to an extent before unknown. His aim was not to affect the mere surface of our nature, to alter only its moral forms and fashions; but to send His influence down to its very centre. He set mind in motion; He touched the mysterious springs of its power: and this He did by the conjoined influence of two things--His truth and His character. Both these were original, perfect, Divine. The impulse which He thus imparted to our nature has been deepening and widening ever since. He originated a succession of improving changes which can no more be stopped than the course of the stars. The living power of the gospel, by rousing humanity to action, elicited its true character: opposing elements were set in commotion; the good and the evil rose to the surface; and thus “ the thoughts of many hearts were revealed.” Simeon foresaw also that the Holy Child would be for the fall and rising of many. Here, again, we meet another wonderful principle--we say principle--for risings and failings in our world are not mere accidents or chances, but events regulated by a fixed law; and that law is administered by the Divine Mediator. We fancy we can see emblems of these moral changes--these risings and failings--even in the material world. The motions of the heavens--the processes of matter everywhere around us--the revolutions of the seasons--continually remind us of them. This revolutionary principle seems to be in constant operation in the government of our disordered race. It pervades the internal and the external history of humanity; it presides over all the alterations which take place in the ideas, the characters, and the institutions of men. How very remarkably was its energy displayed during the first age of Christianity. Then truth rose higher than it had ever done before: then error and ignorance began to fall; and, blessed be God! they have been falling and falling and falling ever since. Then the old schools of religious teachers fell; and a new one rose under the inspirations of Jesus, which is one day to fill the world with its doctrine. Then the first covenant disappeared, to give place to a better one. Then, in a word, the ancient Church fell, and the new rose into being; and the rise of this new society was one of the grandest results of Christ’ s descent to our earth; it was, if we may be allowed the expression, the incarnation of one of the sublimest ideas of the Son of God. 3. Simeon speaks still more definitely of the Saviour. He represents Him as the source of all spiritual blessings. Three precious gifts, he predicted, would flow from this Divine Fountain; light, consolation, and glory. He is the light of men. We have already spoken of Christ as the quickener of mind: we must not forget, however, that the great instrument He employs is truth. Having thus meditated a little on the personal holiness of Simeon, and on his enlarged view of Jesus as the Saviour of the world, let us for a few minutes look on the glory that was shed on his latter end. I. He was permitted to embrace the Holy Infant. He had been studying the predictions and types of the law; he had been long waiting for the Wonderful One, to whom they pointed; and now he was blessed with His presence. “ Then took he Him up in his arms, and blessed God.” As he took the Incarnate One into his arms, the sunshine of heaven broke upon his soul: as he pressed Him to his heart, ideas, emotions, and beatitudes unutterable at once overwhelmed it like a flood, and before he uttered a word of gratulation to the blessed mother, he turned to God, and breathed his praises there: he blessed God. Oh! there are hours when the heart is too full to speak to any but its God. What a dreadful thing it is to see death before we see Christi See death we all must--we all shall, and that soon; perhaps unexpectedly. But have we seen Christ? Have we embraced Christ? Have we, by faith, seen the Divine grandeur of His person, the transcendent excellence of His character, and the preciousness of His cross, as the medium of pardon and the means of perfection? II. Simeon was willing--I may say more--he was desirous to die. “ Lord,” said the happy man, “ Lord, now lettest Thou thy servant depart in peace, according to Thy word: for mine eyes have seen Thy salvation.” This is a comprehensive sentence, and admits of a copious interpretation. First, with what calmness he viewed death. To him, it was only the letting him go--the departing from one place for another, and a better. I have seen, he said, all that is worth seeing in this narrow shadowy sphere; I have seen what I was most anxious to see; now let me be loosed, that I may soar to the world of the blessed. Again: he viewed his death as being entirely under the control of God. How soothing and sustaining this idea of death. The time, the place, the circumstances of our departure, are all preordained by our Father’ s love. III. Finally, he viewed the last scene as overspread with peace. “ Now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace.” The departure of the just is peaceful. He has peace with heaven, with earth, and with his own nature. (Caleb Morris.) The Song of Simeon I. Let us notice THE of these words. It is an affecting circumstance, that although our Lord came to abolish the whole ceremonial law, He himself submitted to it all. The object of this visit to the Temple was twofold. It was, in the first instance, for Mary’ s purification. Wonderfully, brethren, amidst all His mercies to us, does s holy God keep up the remembrance of our sinfulness, and command us also to keep it up. We cannot even show our gratitude, lay a thank-offering upon His altar, without approaching His altar in the character of sinners. A grateful heart and a contrite heart must go together. Another object was accomplished by this visit. To keep up the remembrance of His mercy in sparing the sons of the Israelites when those of the Egyptians were destroyed, it was the command of God, that in all succeeding generations, the first-born of Israel, both of man and beast, should be considered as His property. “ Sanctify to Me,” he says, “ all the first-born, it is Mine.” The child was to be brought to the Temple as an acknowledgment of God’ s right to him, and then, after the appointed sum was paid and certain ceremonies gone through, he became free. And this is the ground on which we rest the honour that we pay to our Christian sacraments. They are no more in themselves than the long abolished ceremonies of the Jewish Temple, but, like those ceremonies, they are of Divine appointment, and, according to the example of our Saviour Christ, we will revere them. We may now place before us the scene connected with the text. We must conceive of Mary, her own purification over, as standing in the Temple with the ministering priests before her and a company of other worshippers around her. And then we must imagine an aged man approaching, gazing for a moment at the heavenly Babe in her arms, then taking it into his, and, with a look upwards, bursting forth in the hearing of them all into this happy song. II. Let us consider the HE IN IT. We feel at once that it is happiness he expresses, not that overflowing of delight and joy which we see in Mary at Elisabeth’ door, but a calm, subdued happiness; the happiness of one who has been long accustomed to strong emotions, and knows how to govern and restrain as well as indulge them. We are not told that Simeon was an old man, but it is probable from the narrative that he was so, and his happiness seems to be the happiness of old age, less lively and exuberant than that of youth, but as heart-felt and deep or deeper, and, like deep waters, quiet and serene. But in what did Simeon’ s happiness consist? 1. In praise for a blessing given. “ He took Him up in his arms, and” --what? gave utterance at once to the joy that thrilled within him I When some of us have a mercy sent us, we must welcome it, we say; have a little time allowed us to feel that it is ours, to examine it, and delight ourselves in it. Then comes late and slow the thought, that we owe this mercy to a gracious God, and must thank Him for it. But this is because our joy in our mercies is not holy joy. Holy joy is like the joy of heaven--its natural language is praise, and its happiest language is praise. Blessings become sweeter to us when they draw forth our praise. And it is this looking on Christ as a Saviour provided for us by the everlasting Jehovah, that leads the soul to feel so thankful for Him and rejoice so much in Him. 2. A hope realized was another part of Simeon’ s happiness at this time. The history represents Simeon to us at first as under the influence of hope. 3. There was yet something more in this man’ s happiness--delight in a glorious prospect opened to him. Let God give the real Christian what spiritual blessing he may, he immediately longs for more. The blessing he has received seems to bring into his view other blessings, and to kindle his desires for them. With him, therefore, hope realized is a new impulse given to hope. III. Let us now endeavour to draw from his happiness SOME USEFUL FOR . And in doing so, we must regard ourselves, brethren, as dying men. Simeon speaks here as a dying man. Job, Elijah, Jonah, all cried out, “ Let me die,” but they were some of the very worst words these men ever uttered. They were tired of God’ s dealings with them, weary of the discipline or the work He had allotted them, and they wanted to get away from them. This entry is longer than a Bible module can hold. The rest is at https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/bi/ Luke 2:32A light to lighten the Gentiles The light of the Gentiles I. EXPLAIN THE IMPORT OF THE TEXT. 1. The character of Jesus is exhibited under the image of light--the most glorious of all the creatures of God. (1) Among the properties of light are penetration and universality. Light would have been an inappropriate image, in reference to Christ, had He not intended to illuminate the world. Not to a district, not to an empire, not to one quarter of the globe, does that glorious boon--light--confine its influences. It visits all in their turn. It burns within the torrid zone, it reaches the dark and distant poles; it proceeds with a gradual, yet inconceivable speed, in its restless career, till it has enlightened the whole. (2) Light is a source of comfort (Ecclesiastes 11:7). (3) Another quality of light is purity. It is this which renders it a fit emblem of Deity (1 John 1:5). 2. The subjects of His influences--“ The Gentiles” --i.e., all nations that have not yet heard the tidings of the gospel in Him. 3. The result of the manifestation of Christ to the world will be universal illumination. He rises upon the nations to “ lighten” them. II. APPLY ITS TO . 1. Examine the principles on which they are founded. (1) They are founded in nature. The same cause should produce the same effects. Whoever sincerely loves the Saviour will feel a proportionate attachment to His laws, His people, His interests. He cannot sit down indifferent to the last, any more than he can consent to break the first. (2) They are founded on the purest principles of reason. Missionary effort must be used as a means, to bring about the end in view--the spread of the gospel. God employs in the meantime human instruments for the carrying out of His Divine purposes. (3) They are founded on the purest principles of humanity. The gospel is the only effectual remedy of all this world s evil and misery. (4) They are founded on the purest principles of patriotism. Religious lethargy precedes national ruin; patriotism, therefore, calls for the support of religious zeal. (5) They are founded on the purest principles of religion. 2. The considerations by which we are encouraged. (1) Revelation. (2) Experience. (3) Existing circumstances. Is there not crying need throughout the world of those consolations which the gospel alone can bring, and of the Saviour whom the gospel alone proclaims? (W. B. Collyer, D. D.) Christ the light of all nations He gives the light of truth, of spiritual sight, of knowledge, of holiness, of joy, of heaven. The natives of arctic regions put on their holiday attire, and enthusiastically welcome the returning sun, when after months of absence, he again revisits them with his rays. How much more should we rejoice in the light of “ the Sun of Righteousness?” There was a light once on or near the Goodwin Sands, called “ The light of all nations,” because it was supposed that some of all nations would see it. The “ light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” will one day “ cover the earth.” When Christ gives us light, we must reflect it (see Matthew 5:14-16). The lighthouse, when its lights burn truly, will warn the mariner against danger, and enable him to pursue the right and safe way. So we may each guide some from the darkness and danger of sin, to the light and safety of God’ s mercy in Christ. (Henry R. Burton.) Light an emblem of Christ There is no figure more common nor more beautiful in the Scriptures, than that by which Christ is compared to “ light.” Incomprehensible in its nature, itself first visible, and that by which all else is so; “ light” represents to us Christ, whose generation none can declare, but who must shine on us ere we can know aught aright whether of things Divine or human. Pure, uncontaminated, though visiting the lowest parts of the earth, and penetrating the most noisome recesses; what is “ light” an image of, if not of that Divine Mediator, who contracted no stain, though born of a woman, in the likeness of sinful flesh? Instrumental in all the processes of vegetation, so that, without its vivifying power, the earth could not yield its kindly fruits, nor expose its verdant hues, what is “ light” but the emblem of that source of illumination, of whom the Evangelist declares that “ He was the Light and Life of men” ? And without searching too narrowly into the particular sources by which this resemblance might be proved, we may say that Christ is to the material world what the sun is to the natural; and wherever the gospel has been published and received as a communication from God, the darkness has fled, as night flies before the day; and we know, that wherever the revelation made through Christ has been dispersed, wherever it has vouchsafed its cheering rays, the clouds of ignorance, and superstition, and irreligion have vanished, and holiness purity, and morality have illumined the horizon. It has done more. It has hung the very grave with bright lamps, and re-kindled the blazings of an almost quenched immortality. (H. Melvill, B. D.) And the glory of Thy people Israel--Christ the glory of His people We shall now employ the natural Israel as a type of the Lord’ s elect ones, and surely there is no straining of the text, when we say that Jesus Christ is the glory of the spiritual seed, the redeemed people. And why, with evident propriety, may the saints of God be compared to Israel? 1. Surely because God has made a covenant with them as He did with Jacob. 2. We may be compared with Israel, again, because if we be the children of God we have learned to wrestle with the angel and prevail. 3. It may be that you have another likeness to Israel in the fact that you are much tried. Faith must be tried. God had one Son without sin, but He never had a Son without the rod. 4. The true Israel, which are spiritually the Church of Christ, are said, according to the text, to be the Lord’ s people. (1) By His eternal choice. (2) By redemption. (3) By voluntary dedication of yourselves to Him. I. When we say that Christ is our glory, we mean that WE GET ALL THE GLORY WE HAVE THROUGH HIM. Some men go to the schools for glory, others to the camps of war. In all kinds of places men have sought after honour, but the believer saith that Christ is the mine in which he digs for this gold, Christ is the sea in which he fishes for this pearl; he gives up all other searchings and looks for glory in Jesus, and nowhere else. 1. The glory of election. 2. The glory of redemption. 3. The glory of adoption. 4. The glory of justification. 5. The glory of sanctification. Thus I might continue showing you that there is not a single treasure which a Christian possesses which does not come to him through Christ. He has nothing in which he can glory but what he is sweetly compelled to say of it, “ I gained this in the market of Calvary; I found this in the mines of a Saviour’ s suffering; all this came to me through my bleeding, buried, risen, coming Lord, and He shall have the glory of it as long as I live.” II. WE SEE A GLORY IN CHRIST which swallows up all other glories, as the sun’ s light conceals the light of the stars. 1. In Christ’ s person. 2. In Christ’ s sufferings. 3. In Christ’ s resurrection. 4. In Christ’ s ascension. 5. In Christ’ s intercession. 6. In Christ’ s second advent. III. The text is true in the sense that WE GIVE GLORY TO HIM. There is life in a look at the Crucified One. There is life in simple confidence in Him, but there is life nowhere else. God send to His Church an undying passion to promote the Saviour’ s glory, an invincible, unconquerable pang of desire, and longing that by any means King Jesus may have His own, and may reign throughout these realms! In this sense, then, Jesus is and must be the glory of His people. IV. But there is another sense--namely, FROM JESUS IS ALL THE GLORY WHICH IS PUT UPON HIS PEOPLE. Whatever glory they have, and they have much in the eyes of angels, and much honour in the eyes of discerning men, it is always the reflection of the Saviour’ s glory. I know some holy men and women for whom I cannot but feel the deepest and intensest respect, but the reason is because they have so much of my Master about them. I think I would travel many miles to talk with some of them, because their speech is always so full of Him, and they live so near to Him. V. The text may be read in this sense: Christ is the glory of His people, that is to say, THEY EXPECT GLORY WHEN HE COMES. Our glory is laid up. When you follow Jesus in resurrection, what glory! But we must not begin to speak of that, for we should never leave off at all if we began to talk about that glory--the glory of perfection, the glory of being delivered from sin, the glory of conquest, having trodden Satan under our feet; the glory of eternal rest, the glory of infinite security, the glory of being like Christ, the glory of being in the light and brightness of God, standing, like Milton’ s angel, in the very sun itself. If you want to know what heaven is, you can spell it in five letters, and when you put the five letters together they sound like this: Jesus. That is heaven. It is all the heaven the angels round the throne desire to know. They want nothing better than this, to see His face, to behold His glory, and to dwell in it world with out end. VI. THE DRIFT OF THE SUBJECT. 1. We would give a word of warning to those of you who seek your glory anywhere else, because as surely aa you do so, even if you meet with honour for a time, you will have to lose it. It is always ill to put your treasure where it will be stolen from yon. Now, suppose you seek your glory in your learning. Well, well, well! Let the sexton take up your skull after you have been dead a little while, and what learning will there be in it, what show of wisdom will be found in it when it is resolved into a little impalpable brown powder? What will your science, and your mathematics, and your classics do for you in death and judgment? Suppose you seek your glory in fame, and become the favourite of the nation as a great soldier. When the grave-digger rattles your old bones about, what will that signify? You will have great fame, you say, and men will talk about you. But he who hath his glory in Christ, when he openeth his eyes in the next world will see Christ, and so behold his glory safe, and firmly entailed upon him. 2. Another word, and that is a word of rebuke. There are some preachers we know of, and I suppose there will always be some of the genus, who preach, preach, preach, but they never preach what is Israel’ s glory. They talk of anything but Christ. 3. There are some of you to whom I have a last word to say, and that is, some of you love Jesus Christ, but you are ashamed to say so. Now, since He is the glory of His people Israel, I shall be afraid of you and for you if you do not make Him your glory. (C. H. Spurgeon.) Christ the glory of Israel Christ was the glory of Israel. 1. Because He was a Jew by birth. 2. Because His history has vindicated all that was peculiar in the Jewish polity. 3. Because He confined His personal ministry to the Jews. 4. Because He has stamped the impress of Jewish thought on the mind of man. 5. Because He has invested the condition and prospects of the Jews with universal interest. (G. Brooks.) The glory of Israel There was salvation in this sight: there was light in it; and there was glory in it also. He will be--said Simeon--“ the glory of Thy people Israel.” The prophet Isaiah was speaking of this same Saviour, when he said “ They shall hang on Him all the glory of His Father’ s house” Isaiah 22:24). The chief glory that a nation has is made up of the wise, and good, and great, and useful men who have belonged to it. We speak of Washington as the glory of America. We feel it an honour to belong to the nation which could claim Washington as one of its people. In Holland they call William, Prince of Orange, the glory of their nation. England, our grand old mother country, has had so many wise, and good, and great men, that it is hard to tell which to speak of as the best and greatest. They all help to make up the glory of the people of England. And any one who was born in England may feel it an honour to belong to a country which has produced so many good and great men. And in the same way it is the glory of the Jewish nation, or of Israel, as a people, that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Saviour of the world, belonged to their nation. Jesus was a Jew. And the Jewish people may well feel it an honour to belong to the nation among whom He was born. It is true in this sense that He is “ the glory of His people Israel.” (Dr. Newton.) Luke 2:34-35 Behold, this Child is set for the fall and rising again of many Simeon’ s prediction This prediction has a very gloomy aspect, and speaks with a tone of sad foreboding in strange contrast to the riant tone of the song of thanksgiving which immediately precedes it. But was it too gloomy for the facts? Was not every jot and tittle of it fulfilled within three and thirty years of its utterance? Is it not still finding a wide and large fulfilment? 1. When the word of Christ comes home to you, whether it come to quicken you to a new life, or to convince you of some truth which you had not recognized before, or had not reduced to practice, do not be amazed and discouraged if you stumble at it, if it awaken doubt and contradiction in your hearts, if you find it hard to believe, and still harder to live by. It is no strange thing which is happening to you, but the common and normal experience of all who believe in Him. The advent of Christ in the heart, His coming in power, must resemble His advent into the world, must create a strife between the good and the evil in your nature, must disclose so much that is evil in you as to make you fear goodness to be beyond your reach. How, but by the conviction of sin, can you be made penitent, and driven to lay hold on the salvation which takes away sin? And the oftener Christ comes, the nearer He draws to you, the more fully He enters into your life--the deeper will be your conviction of sin, of a tainted and imperfectnature; till, at times, you will fear as if a sword had been thrust it.to your very soul. This, indeed, is what He comes to you for; to separate between the evil and the good, to make you conscious of evils you did not suspect, so conscious that you hate and long to be delivered from them. 2. But this is not the only comfort or encouragement which the prediction of Simeon suggests. If he had not foreseen the nearer and immediate results of Christ’ s advent, we might have distrusted him when he spake of its distant and ultimate results. If he had not told us of the conflict and sorrow, the self-exposure and self-contempt to which a faithful reception of Christ subjects us, we could hardly have believed him when he speaks of Christ as the Consolation for all sorrow, and the Light which is to glorify the whole dark world. But when we find all that he said of the nearer results of Christ’ s coming to be true, we can hardly help believing him when he speaks to us of its happy ultimate results. Simeon has approved himself a faithful witness; we have found in our own experience that Christ is a Rock of stumbling and offence, a Signal which calls out all the opposition of an imperfect nature, a Sword which pierces the very soul and divides the evil in us from the good, a Touchstone which reveals our most secret thoughts and bents; let us also believe that He will be our Consolation, our Light, our Glory. 3. We may well believe it. Per augusta ad augusta, through a narrow way to a large place, through much struggle with many difficulties to a glorious end, through conflict to victory, seems the very motto of the Christian life. And this thought also is contained in Simeon’ s prediction, which is so framed as to imply that it was by a Divine intention, and in order to realize a gracious Divine end, that Christ was to bring strife on the earth, to kindle an inward war, to disclose the lurking evils of the human heart. He was set, “ in order that the thoughts of many hearts should be revealed” --set by God for this very purpose. So that when our thoughts are exposed, when we have to endure the inward conflict between evil and good, when the word of Christ pierces and rends our hearts, all is according to a Divine order, a Divine intention; all is intended to prepare and conduct us to that Divine end, the salvation of our souls. It is all meant to prepare us for a time in which our souls shall be so flooded and suffused with the Divine Light that there shall be no more darkness in us, so penetrated with the Divine Glory that sin and sorrow and shame shall for ever flee away. And if this be God’ s intention, if this is the end to which He is conducting us, who will not bear the strife and pain and self-contempt of this present imperfect life with patience, nay, with courage and with hope? (S. Cox, D. D.) Christ the rising and fall of many This however cannot be all that is meant by Christ’ s being set for the fall of many. They who remain just as they were, and where they were, cannot be said to fall. Falling implies some change: and they who have fallen must be in a worse state than before they fell. Now this is dismally true. They who, having heard of Christ, have not believed in Him, and do not believe in Him--they who do not believe in Him in the scriptural sense of believing, that is, with the heart and soul, as well as with the understanding--they who have not a living faith in Him, and do not show it by living a life of faith--they who, having heard of Christ, do not believe in Him in this sense, are indeed in a worse state than they would have been in, had Christ never come into the world. They are in a worse state, because they are in a more hopeless state. The last chance of salvation has been tried on them; but in vain. Everything that could be done has been done for them, but in vain. God has poured forth all the riches of His grace and mercy and love on them; but in vain. Their hearts continue as hard as the naked rock, as dry as the sandy desert. Nothing, it has been proved, can soften them; nothing can refresh them; nothing can make them bear fruit. The Comforter has been sent to us. If we refuse His comfort, if we reject His salvation, we must continue uncomforted and unsaved for ever. Yet this is not all. The state of those, who, having heard of Christ, have no living faith in Him, but continue in their sins, is not only worse than if they had never heard of Christ, because it is more hopeless; it is also worse, because it is more sinful. For the sinfulness of any action is to be measured, not by the nature of the action itself, but by the character and condition of the doer. It is in him, not in the action, that the sin lies; and its sinfulness will always vary, in proportion as he knows it to be sinful, and as he has had stronger motives and helps for struggling against it. Moreover we all feel that for a child to behave ill to a kind and loving father is far worse, far more inexcusable, than if its father had been harsh and neglectful. These, then, are the two qualities which deepen the sinfulness of sin. When it is a sin against knowledge, it becomes doubly sinful; and its sinfulness increases in proportion as that knowledge is clear and certain. And when it is also a sin against love, it then becomes tenfold sinful; its sinfulness still growing worse and worse, in proportion to the strength of the motives whereby our love has been appealed to. These are the rules we are wont to make use of in judging one another. It is our own rule too, in our dealings with each other, as well as the rule of the gospel, that to whom much is given, of him much shall be required. They who, with the knowledge of Christ, live like heathens, we have already seen, are far more sinful than the heathens: and thus to them the coming of Christ has been the occasion of falling. They have fallen, because they have not risen; and because, by remaining where they were, they are so much further below what they ought to be. But the coming of Christ has also given us new duties. We have higher motives, a higher mark set before us. We are bound to strive after more heavenly aims. We are bound to seek after a more heavenly purity. So that the gift of the gospel is accompanied with a twofold danger. If we abide in our former ways, it renders those ways more sinful: and it imposes higher duties upon us, the neglect of which covers us with fresh guilt. For in this way also has the coming of Christ been a dismal occasion of falling to many. Many have hated the light, because their deeds were dark, and have either tried to quench the light, or finding their efforts to do so were vain, have wrapt themselves up in still thicker darkness. Thus was it with the Jews. To them the coming of Christ was an occasion of falling. Through Christ’ s coming they were no longer the chosen people of God. They forfeited their rank among nations, and became wanderers on the face of the earth, wanderers still more forlorn than when they wandered under Moses in the wilderness. So, too, was the coming of Christ an occasion of falling even to the heathens. For although, having gods many, and lords many, they had been ready to receive any new idol, that the folly or wickedness of man enthroned in the heavens, yet, when the true God, as revealed in the person of His Only-begotten Son, was made known to them, they too tried to quench His light with blood. And even now there are still found those who openly hate and blaspheme God and His Christ, and thus have fallen into deeper sinfulness through Christ’ s coming. Alas, it is a fearful and ghastly thought, how many millions on millions of souls will have received no benefit by Christ’ s atonement, how many millions on millions of souls may perhaps be among those for whose fall that blessed Child was set. This must surely have been the worst part of the agony by which Christ’ s spirit was rent on that awful night in the garden, the thought of the millions of souls to whom He should only be an occasion of falling. It is a thought the sting of which nothing can take away, except when the soul is rapt in adoration of the perfect holiness, and perfect justice, and perfect love of God. (J. C. Hare.) Christ’ s mission Simeon makes this declaration emphatically in reference to Israel; but he makes it prophetically in reference to the Gentile world, and to the multitudes which to the end of time shall come under the sound of the gospel. I. We propose to THIS OF OUR SAVIOUR’ S MISSION. Illustrations may be borrowed from almost every circumstance in His work, and from every perfection in His personal ministration. 1. His very appearance in the first instance illustrated forcibly, and in some cases painfully, the truth of this declaration, that, on His entrance into our world, and on His revealing Himself by the ministry of His word, He should have been for the falling and for the rising again of many in Israel. But when Christ came, and His appearance was so contrary to all their expectations had led them to look for, they were prepared, not to receive Him, but positively to reject and dishonour Him. And so the appearance of Christ in the world is a stumbling-block to the present day. On the other hand, in reference to the appearance of Christ, He is set for the rising again of many in Israel. This was true of His temporal appearance among the people of Israel. While the princes and the rulers of that period passed Him by with scorn, and refused to listen to His Divine instruction, it is beautifully said that “ the common people heard Him gladly.” There was something in the very humility of His circumstances, in the poverty of His life, in the lowliness of His outward walk and conversation, which brought Him near to them, and them near to Him. 2. We receive a second illustration of the truth of this declaration from the mystery of the Redeemer’ s person. This representation of our Saviour’ s character was in His own time, has been in every succeeding age, and is in our time, the occasion of the falling and the rising again of many. There were many in His day who made it a stumbling-stone and a rock of offence. There was nothing in the history of the Jewish people which gave them such sore offence, and excited such bitter hatred to the kind Jesus Christ, as His announcing Himself to be the Son of God, and claiming equality with the Father it was on this very ground that they persecuted Him through life; and it is very remarkable that on this very ground they at last put Him to death on the cross. Now, on the other hand, this very representation of our Saviour’ s person is life from the dead to those who believe in His name. 3. The ministry of Jesus Christ is also another method of illustrating the truth of this declaration: “ This child is set for the fall and the rising again of many in Israel.” Our Lord’ s ministry on earth was remarkable for the effect it had on those to whom it was directed. What was the falling away of the Jews in this instance was the gathering of the Gentiles. 4. This declaration is still further illustrated if we consider the death which Jesus died. Those who disbelieve, and disbelieve Him as a dying Saviour making atonement for sin, disbelieve the only remedy for sin, and fall fearfully from His presence. But on the contrary, where shall we find any representation of the Redeemer like the representation of the Redeemer crucified and dying, and rising again as the means of renewing our spirits, confirming our confidence, and elevating our hope. He died, but it is for the rising again of many. 5. Then, finally, it may be illustrated in the dispensation and economy of the gospel. But while it is for the rising again of many, it is also for the fall of many. The gospel dispensation has brought everything to an extreme; there is the extreme of mercy, and there is the extreme of judgment; God has discovered to us His grace, as we have never seen it; and God is discovering to us also His righteousness and His justice as was never shown before. “ Behold,” for it is remarkable, “ this Child is set for the fall and the rising again of many in Israel.” 1. It is remarkable if we consider the great intention of Christ in coming into our world. Nothing can be more explicit than the intention of our Saviour and of the gospel in their appearance amongst us. 2. It is the more remarkable, in the second place, because the evil arising to us from the testimony of Christ is to be found in ourselves, and not in the Saviour. If it is said that Christ in His appearance shall be for the fall and rising again, for the condemnation as well as the salvation, of many, it is not so much descriptive of the intention of His coming as of the effect of His coming. But “ behold” --let it be considered remarkable, fix your attention on it, that this arises from their own perversity, their own unbelief, their own sin. We are exhorted thus to behold and improve it because we have a serious concern in it. (A. Reed.) The exhibition of Christ tries the human heart This subject naturally divides itself into two branches, which require a distinct consideration. I. Let us consider, THAT GOD CHRIST BEFORE THE MINDS OF MEN, IS ORDER TO TRY THEIR HEARTS. 1. The truth of this observation appears from what the prophets foretold concerning the feelings and conduct of men towards the Messiah, when He should make His appearance in the flesh, and perform His mediatorial work among them. David predicted that He would alarm the fears, and awaken the enmity and opposition of the world against Him. “ Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the Lord and against His anointed, saying, Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us.” 2. It appears from the history of Christ, that He fulfilled the predictions which went before concerning Him, and tried the hearts of all, who either heard Him preach, or saw His miracles, or were any way acquainted with Him. He was a sign universally spoken against. Some heard Him gladly; but others heard Him with disgust and indignation. Some admired His miracles; but others despised and blasphemed them. 3. The exhibition of Christ after His death, through the medium of the gospel, tried the hearts of the whole Jewish nation. 4. Ever since the days of the apostles, the character of Christ, displayed in the gospel, has tried the hearts of the whole Christian world. 5. It appears from the very character of Christ, that He cannot be exhibited to the minds of men without trying their hearts. His character, above all others, is adapted to draw forth the feelings of the human heart. Wherever He is exhibited in all His excellences, offices, and designs, He must necessarily try the hearts of men in some very important respects. And, first, in regard to God. God, therefore, by exhibiting Christ in the gospel, tries the hearts of men in respect to Himself. He certainly made it appear that the Jews were His enemies, by the instrumentality of Christ. In the second place, the exhibition of Christ necessarily discovers the secrets of men’ s hearts towards themselves, as well as towards God. Christ, in the course of His life, and more especially at His death, laid open the guilt and ill desert of sinners. Besides, thirdly, the exhibition of Christ as a Mediator, discovers men’ s feelings in regard to the terms of salvation. The next thing proposed is-- II. To show that GOD TRIES THE HEARTS OF MEN THROUGH THE MEDIUM OF CHRIST, IN ORDER TO FIX THEIR FUTURE AND FINAL STATE. “ Behold, this Child is set for the fall and rising again of many.” God intends to make men happy or miserable for ever, according to the feelings of their hearts towards the Son of His love. And there appears to be a propriety in God’ s treating men according to their love, or hatred of Christ, because their feelings towards Christ afford a proper criterion of their true characters. If they love Christ, they love Gad; but if they hate Christ, they hate God. If they love Christ, they love the good of the universe; but if they hate Christ, they are enemies to all good. The character of Christ is the most infallible test of all human characters. Improvement: 1. Since it is God’ s design in exhibiting Christ before men, to try their hearts and prepare them for their final state, it becomes the ministers of the gospel to make Christ the main subject of their preaching. 2. If God means to try the hearts of men, and prepare them for their final state through the medium of the gospel, then He has an important purpose to answer, by sending it where He knows it will be rejected. 3. If the exhibition of Christ be designed to form men for their future and eternal state, then they are in a very solemn situation while they are hearing the gospel. 4. If the gospel tries the hearts and forms the characters of those who hear it, then sinners may easily and insensibly fit themselves for destruction. 5. We learn from what has been said in this discourse, that all who hear the gospel may know, before they leave the world, what will be their future and final state. (N. Emmons, D. D.) Christianity the test of character We shall briefly consider in what respects Christianity proves itself the grand test of men’ s dispositions. 1. It puts to the proof whether or not men love truth. 2. The gospel is a test of men’ s hearts as affected with regard to God. 3. In respect to humility, the gospel tries and ascertains the state of the heart. 4. A fourth respect in which tile gospel is a test of your character is whether you are true, or not, to your own interest; whether you have wisdom to choose the right relief for your misery, the proper supply for your wants. 5. Lastly, Christianity is a test of our obedience or disobedience to the will of God. “ If God is a Master, where is His fear? If God is a Father, where is His honour?” A few words of improvement may appropriately conclude this important subject. 1. Wherever the gospel is propounded, it is a test of character to each individual who hears it: and whoever does not receive it will hereafter stand confessed to God as having “ loved darkness rather than light, because his deeds were evil.” 2. The rejection of Christianity is entirely voluntary: it arises from the spirit of pride, the preference of falsehood, the love of sin: but where shall we look for criminality, if not in an evil mind? 3. The trial of character here is only preparatory to the last trial hereafter. (R. Hall, M. A.) Christ’ s knowledge of man “ That the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.” I. Yes, THAT IS THE CLAIM WHICH CHRIST HAS UPON US--THAT HE KNOWS US. AS it is said, “ He knew what was in man;” and He does not merely know our faces and our forms, but our true selves. You know nothing of any science or thing until you know its hidden inner secret. How different it is to know about a thing and to know what is within a thing. Superficial knowledge is that of the surface, of the skin; and profound knowledge is that which is organic and descends to the foundation. You know every man has within him an amazing secret realm of thought and emotion; I may go a step further and say, it is unknown to himself, and most men never have more than very occasional glimpses into the “ within the veil” of their own minds; most men are not at home within themselves; they do not dwell there. Even those men who do suppose that they are well acquainted with their own minds, often deceive themselves. II. MAN HAS A GREAT HIDDEN NATURE, WAITING FOR AND . But how secret. This it is which makes the relationship of the pastor and the teacher frequently so sacred; it is felt that he can fathom the great deep of the human soul. You may illustrate it from so poor a piece of machinery as a watch; a watchmaker descends into the mystery; he knows it; and if he professes to know and does not, great mischiefs and mistakes result. Or, look at the human body and its diseases. I had a friend who was ill; he had three doctors who attended him; they gave him up; they looked at symptoms and phenomena; they were ignorant of the law; another came, touched the mainspring and restored him to health. Look I and here the image is more pertinent; look at the schoolmaster and educator, the teacher, the boy. I knew a minister in his early childhood; he was a very wild, a strong-willed boy: his parents punished him severely, again and again--they were pious people; at last they tried another method, they took him downstairs, after they had closed the shop at night, and they knelt down on either side of him, and they prayed, they both prayed for him, and they wept. “ Oh!” said he to me, “ I could not stand that, I tried, and I prayed, and they conquered.” He is an eminent minister now. They had touched the mainspring; there is a mainspring in all of us, and we bless the man who reveals it to us; he who can touch it, rules us--be he general, poet, statesman, or preacher. III. Yes; this is Christ’ s claim upon us; He knows us; HE IS THE TRUE OF THE HIDDEN NATURE OF MAN. “ He therefore taught as one having authority, and not as the Scribes.” And hence the word of the prophecy of Simeon, which I have read as a text, is to be taken by the side of His precious word. Christ is “ a light” --“ a light,” says Simeon, “ to lighten the Gentiles, and to be the glory of Thy people Israel.” “ That was the true light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.” What do we mean by light, but that which makes manifest the interior chambers of our nature? Yes! to know man is the great indispensable of all teaching. Rare knowledge and wonderful! IV. Yes, AND OF HUMAN NATURE IS TO ALL . You see the painter! he will tell you that knowledge of anatomy is essential to success; he needs the knowledge of muscular action, to give life to his picture--a knowledge of internal action to external development. Thus you see in Christ knowledge of humanity. His whole teaching reveals adaptation, fitness to complete imperfect man! Hence, because of Christ’ s transcendental knowledge, Christianity cannot be realized on earth. It is always over and beyond man. But a terrible thing it is to be with one who entirely knows us, and reads us through and through like a book--by observation, like Foster--by intuition, like Shakespeare; but to many it is only moral anatomy or surgery. The greatest knowledge of man is by sympathy. And Christ knew the World of the Human Heart by sympathy. Have you not noticed that scarcely any mind can cross the broad disc of our Lord’ s even temporary association, without revealing, as it passes, its state? It seems as if any mind coming into the neighbourhood of His Divine character is compelled to yield itself up, not only to His perfect knowledge--but, in the memorable events of His life, is illustrated bow that which is done in secret is proclaimed on the house-tops. Amazing would seem the attraction of our Lord’ s character, by which He drew to Him most opposite beings. He held them by their affection to Him. He held them by their hostility to Him. He revealed their love, their hatred, and their fear. Christ’ s character was like that ancient mirror which, if held up before the face, did not reveal the face, but the thought. V. THE OF OUR LORD HAD THE SAME AS HIS ; it revealed the thoughts of the heart. All His parables removed the abstract ideas of the human soul into the region of home life. Thus Christ shows how He knows our inner nature, and speaks to the inner world of motive and imagination. VI. 1. He knew. Mark, His knowledge was and is absolute. We speak of many, and say, “ They know human nature by observation or by intuition.” Properly, Christ’ s knowledge is neither the one nor the other; the first says, I know human nature because I look at it; the second says, I know human nature because I look at myself, and find myself related to it. Christ knew it because He made it. 2. Hence His authority over man. Man felt His knowledge. 3. He revealed our thoughts in His sympathy, he knew what was in man; hence His sympathy with men. Yes, His sympathy with man! VII. Christ not only revealed the thoughts of many hearts by eliciting their peculiar moral character, but HE SPOKE TO THE HEART OF MAN IN ALL AGES, BOTH BY HIS NEEDS AND BY HIS WORDS; He transformed the great instincts of men in all ages into absolute revelations. Christianity has revealed and authenticated to men what had been for ages suspected, or hoped, or feared. VIII. 1. He saw human nature was dark. He came to enlighten it. “ I am the light of the world.” 2. He saw the hardness as well as the darkness of man. He came to soften the world’ s heart. “ He knew what was in man.” 3. He consecrated humanity. He revealed the holy destiny of man, for “ He knew what was in man.” 4. “ That the thoughts of many hearts might be revealed.” He came to sublime and to crown human nature, to reveal to man His brightest, boldest thought--Eternal life--Immortality. (E. P. Hood.) The detector of the heart It may be profitable for us, then, to inquire: I. IN WHAT MANNER DOES THE GOSPEL BECOME A OF THE HEART? There are two ways in which this detection and unveiling are most apparent and most important. 1. By its authoritative conveyance of truths and facts, it detects and prostrates the pride of human reasoning. 2. By the requirement of an uncompromising decision of character. Let us now inquire-- II. WHAT ARE THE AND WHICH WE SHOULD DEDUCE FROM THESE VIEWS OF THE GOSPEL. 1. That the ministry of the gospel ought to be so conducted as to secure, as much as possible, this important object of discrimination and detection. 2. Every hearer of the gospel should feel constrained to bring home to his own heart the great test of character. 3, How greatly to be loved and prized is that gospel, which can give hope to the sinner even on the detection of his guilt and danger. (H. F. Burder, D. D.) The first prediction of the Cross I. 1. This is the first announcement that the way of the Holy Child must be the way of sorrows. The angel had spoken of the throne of David; the shepherds had brought a message of peace; Simeon foretells the Cross. Yet this prophecy is called a blessing! “ He blessed them!” Blessedness is not the same as external prosperity. Blessedness is obedience to the will of the Father. 2. Mary has to learn that she, too, must suffer with her Child. “ A sword shall pierce through thy own soul.” This is her blessing! Is it not true that the coming of the Eternal Word in human flesh has brought a blessing upon human sufferings, which are henceforth linked with His? 3. Simeon foresees that the Christ must suffer because His life would be violently opposed to the principles by which men were guiding their lives. He is among men as the Incarnate Word, reading their inmost thoughts, and revealing to them their true selves. Therefore must He be for the salvation of some and for the condemnation of others; therefore must He be a Sign that is spoken against. 4. Human suffering arises from the breach of the Divine order which was made when man chose his own will rather than God’ s. The Divinely-ordered human life is lived by the Word made-flesh. Inasmuch as the Divinely-ordered life is in direct opposition to the self-centred lives of fallen men, it must come into collision with them and must suffer. At the same time, by its very perfection, and by its hold on the true Centre--the Divine Will--it must condemn all that falls short of it or opposes it. II. 1. Contemplate in the Child here presented to the Father, the One Perfect Human Life, unfolding itself amidst the evil antagonisms of selfish human nature. 2. Learn that it follows that all who will live godly in Christ Jesus must suffer persecution (2 Timothy 3:12). (Canon Vernon Hutton, M. A.) Fall and rise Christ is set for the fall of some and the rising of others. 1. It is not otherwise. 2. It cannot be otherwise. 3. It ought not to be otherwise. 4. It will not be otherwise. (J. J. Van Oosterzee, D. D.) Struggle and triumph The sign spoken against. 1. In its continual struggle. 2. In its certain triumph. (J. J. Van Oosterzee, D. D.) Dual aspect of Christ’ s Advent Simeon added this probably as an explanation of an expression he had just used in his burst of inspired song. “ The glory of Israel” was a phrase already consecrated in religious language. It commonly meant the Sacred Presence or Shekinah between the cherubim over the ark of the covenant. Israel, as St. Paul in later years pointed out, had indeed many a prerogative among the nations. Israel was God’ s adopted family; Israel inherited the covenants--those early understandings between earth and heaven, of which the great patriarchs had been the favoured recipients; to Israel God had revived in its completeness the moral law; Israel offered to God a worship, the nature and details of which had been Divinely ordered; Israel, so rich in the past, was also the people of the future; the promises were its endowment for the coming ages, and in the fathers or patriarchs Israel had not merely a store of precious memories, but a lasting possession. The patriarchs were the property of their descendents to the end of time; but the true glory of Israel was this, that of its stock and blood “ as concerning the flesh, Christ” --whose Incarnation the Sacred Presence over the ark prefigured--“ Christ came, who is all over all, God blessed for ever.” All else that Israel was or had--its sacred books, its typical ritual, its ideal of righteousness in the moral law, its great saints and heroes--all else pointed on and up to this its supreme prerogative But what would it mean in fact, in history? Would all Israelites hasten to recognize their true title as a race to greatness? Would all hearts join in one outburst of thankful praise when the glory of Israel presented Himself to His countrymen? Simeon feels it his duty to check unwarranted expectations which his earlier words might have seemed to raise. 1. Christ’ s coming into the world was not to have a uniform effect upon human souls. It would act on one soul in one way, and on another in another: it would act differently on the same soul at different periods of its history. It is Christ’ s wish to bless every one with whom He comes in contact; but His goodwill is limited by the free action of men, who are left at liberty to accept or reject Him as they choose. The spiritual world is not ruled mechanically. The truth and grace of God only act upon men with good results so far as they are willing that they should so act. That Christ’ s Advent should have great results was inevitable. It acted as a moral shock upon the existing fabric of thought and life, dispelling illusions, and making men think and choose. None could regard Christ with indifference. He stirred the emotions of all. 2. Of the two effects of Christ’ s Advent, Simeon mentions first the fall of many in Israel. Bold paradox--to associate His blessed name, who came to be the health and Saviour of men, with spiritual failure. Yet this was what prophecy had led men to expect. And it is what actually happened. When Christ appeared as a public teacher, He was “ despised and rejected” by the great majority of the Jewish people. Even such as heard Him gladly at first, joined the priests and rulers at last in the cry, “ Crucify Him.” Only a few clung firmly to Him through it all. 3. When our Lord had His own way with souls, it was to raise them to newness of life. To come into contact with Him--sympathetic contact--was to touch a life so intrinsically buoyant and vigorous that it transfused itself forthwith into the attracted soul, and bore it onwards and upwards. The “ rising again” of which Simeon speaks is not the future resurrection of the body, but the present moral and spiritual resurrection of believers’ souls. (Canon Liddon.) Use and abuse of God’ s gifts Everything that comes from God is naturally fitted and originally intended for good. But His gifts are often perverted, and become, though not the cause, yet the occasion, of evil. I. IT IS SO WITH COMMON . They are all good things in themselves, but they prove advantages or disadvantages according to our use of them. 1. Riches. When properly received and used to the glory of God and good of men, riches are a great blessing; but when coveted, or rested in as the chief good, or abused in extravagance and profligacy, they become the root of all evil, and drown men in destruction. 2. Greatness. In God’ s hand it is to make great, to give power and honour to men; and those great men who conduct themselves in a manner becoming their exalted station, are honourable and happy indeed; but the more pre-eminent in station men are, the more sinful and ruinous is their misconduct. 3. Learning is justly accounted honourable and valuable; and it actually not only promotes a man’ s worldly distinction, but proves a blessing in the highest sense of the word, when consecrated to God, and possessed in humility and virtue; but there are few greater curses than learning misapplied, usurping the place of the wisdom which is from above, or coexisting with habits of immorality. 4. Health is a blessing, without which all other earthly blessings are of little avail; and when spent in piety and usefulness, it enables men to rise to a high degree of credit and success, and even moral excellence; but when its stability is presumed on to encourage men to proceed in a career of dissipation, and its vigour wasted on crimes, or on trifles, it becomes the occasion of multiplied evils and of deep degradation. 5. Affliction is kindly sent for the benefit of transgressors; and when its voice is listened to, it recalls them from their wanderings; but when it is unimproved, it only hardens men more and more, and sinks them deeper and deeper in misery. 6. Nor is it otherwise with life itself. “ Skin upon skin,” one piece of valuable property after another--nay, “ all that man hath, will he give for his life.” Every man is bound to praise the Almighty Author and Preserver of his life; and the life that now is, when rightly improved, is the means of rising to the happiness of the endless life which is to come; but life spent and closed in nature’ s guilt and depravity, is to all who so spend it and so close it, the forerunner of the second death, so that it would have been better for them never to have lived at all. II. THE SAME APPLIES WITH RESPECT TO CHRIST’ S COMING INTO THE WORLD. He came to bless all mankind; but His coming may only increase our condemnation. (James Foote, M. A.) Treatment of Christ and the gospel 1. Remember that the gospel must prove the means either of your rise or of your fall. It is, then, a matter of infinite moment, involving all that is important in your endless character and destiny. 2. Speak not against Christ, but for Him. Beware of speaking lightly of Him, or His ordinances, doctrines, people. On the contrary, espouse His cause, and embrace every opportunity of remembering Him to others. 3. Let all the sufferings and indignities of the Redeemer be matter of grief to you. Your sins made them necessary. 4. Suffer the gospel to have its proper heart-searching effect on you. That “ the thoughts of many hearts shall be revealed,” is a result not to be deprecated, but desired; in order that what is right and pleasant may be cherished, and what is wrong corrected. God sees all now, and one day He will reveal all. It will then be too late to think of amendment. The present is the time for any salutary discovery. (James Foote, M. A.) Christ--the fall and rise of many Wherever Christ Jesus comes, with whomsoever He may come in contact, He is never without influence, never inoperative, but in every case a weighty result is produced. There is about the holy Child Jesus a power which is always in operation. He is not set to be an unobserved, inactive, slumbering personage in the midst of Israel but He is set for the falling or for the rise of the many to whom He is known Never does a man hear the gospel, but he either rises or falls under that hearing. Observe, then, the two sides of the truth--Jesus always working upon men with marked effect; and, on the other hand, man treating the Lord Jesus with warmth either of affection or opposition; an action and a reaction being evermore produced. Why is this? 1. Because of the energy which dwells in the Lord’ s Christ, and in the gospel which now represents Him among men. The gospel is all life and energy; like leaven it heaves and ferments with inward energy, it cannot rest till it leavens all around it. It may be compared to salt which must permeate, penetrate, and season that which is subject to its influence. It is no more possible for you to restrain the working of the gospel than to forbid the action of fire. Stand before the fire, it shall warm and comfort you; thrust your hand into it, it shall burn you. It must work, because it is fire. And so with yonder sun. Though clouds may hide it from our sight at this moment, yet for ever does it pour forth, as from a furnace mouth, its heat and light. Nor could it cease to burn and shine, unless it ceased to be a sun. As long as it is a sun, it must permeate surrounding space with its influence and splendour. Do you wonder that the Sun of Righteousness is of yet Diviner energy? 2. Jesus Christ and His gospel are matters of such prime necessity to mankind, that from this cause also there must always be an effect produced by Christ. He is as necessary to our souls as the air is to our bodies. If we receive Him, we live; if we will not receive Him, we must die. It is unavoidable that it should be so. You cannot reject the Saviour, and be a little damaged thereby; there is no alternative but that you utterly perish. 3. The position in which Jesus Christ meets men makes it inevitable that He must have an effect upon them. He stands right in men’ s way. They must decide about Him one way or the other. 4. He was appointed for this very thing. “ Set.” It was for this very end He came. See the husbandman take the fan. You observe the heap of mingled wheat and chaff lying on the floor. He begins to move the fan to and fro till he has created a breeze of wind. What happens? The chaff flies to the further end of the threshing floor, and there it lies by itself; the wheat, more weighty, remains purified and cleansed, a golden heap of grain. Such is the preaching of the gospel. Such is Christ: he is the separater of those who will perish from those who shall be saved. The fan discerns and discovers, it reveals the worthless and manifests the precious. Thus hath Christ the fan in his hand! Or, take another metaphor, which we find in the prophets, “ Who may abide the day of His coming? and who shall stand when He appeareth? for He is like a refiner’ s fire, and like fuller’ s soap.” You see the refiner’ s fire. Notice how it burns and blazes. Now, it turns to a white heat; you cannot bear to look on it. What has happened? Why, the dross is divided from the silver and the alloy from the gold. The refiner’ s fire separates the precious from the vile. And so the gospel reveals the elect of God, and leaves to hardness of heart the finally impenitent. Where it is preached, the men who accept it are precious ones of God, His elect, His chosen; the men who reject it are the reprobate silver. So shall men call them, for God hath rejected them. Mark too, the fuller’ s soap. The fuller takes his soap, and exercising his craft upon yonder piece of linen marked with many stains and colours, you see how these foul things fly before the soap, and the fair fabric alone remains. Both spots and linen feel the power of the soap. So cloth the gospel take the polluted fabric of humanity and cleanse it: the filth departs and flies before it, and the fair linen remains. Such are the saints of God; when the gospel comes to them they are purified thereby, while the wicked, as foul spots, are driven away in their wickedness. Having thus set forth the great truth of the text, I purpose now to answer briefly one or two questions. I. WHO ARE THOSE THAT FALL BY CHRIST. In Christ’ s day the question was not difficult to answer. Those that fell by Christ were-- 1. The holders of tradition, who gave men’ s sayings higher authority than God’ s commands. 2. The externalists. 3. The self-righteous. 4. The wiseacres. 5. The sceptical. Very much the same sort of people as fell by Christ then fall by Christ now. II. TO WHOM WILL THE LORD JESUS BE A RISING AGAIN? He will be a rising again to those who have fallen. Dost thou confess, “ I have fallen” ? Dost thou acknowledge, “ I possess a fallen nature” ? Dost thou lament thou hast fallen into sin? O my brother, He will be thy rising. He cannot uplift those who are not brought low. Note, again, those that rise in Him are those who are now willing to rise m Him. Jesus is set to raise you up. III. There are SOME WHO SHALL BOTH FALL AND RISE, AGAIN IN CHRIST; to whom Christ shall give such a fall as they never had before, and such a rise as shall be to their eternal resurrection. But what a fall was there when I learned that if salvation was of works, it could not be of grace, and if it was of grace it could not be of works; the two could not be mixed together. Then I said I would hope in the performance of the duties which the gospel inculcates; I thought I had power to do this; I would repent, and believe, and so win heaven. But what a fall I had, and how each bone seemed broken when He declared to me, “ without Me, ye can do nothing.” Ah, this is how Christ saves souls. He gives them a fall first, and afterwards He makes them rise. You cannot fill the vessel till it is empty. There must be room made for mercy by the pouring out of human merit. You cannot clothe the man who is clothed already, or feed him who has no hunger. But this fall which Jesus gives us is a blessed fall. He never did throw a man down without lifting him up afterwards. “ I kill and I make alive; I wound and I heal,” these are attributes of Jehovah Jesus. IV. We shall conclude with a few words upon the last part of the text. The text tells us that the Lord Jesus is “ A SIGN THAT SHALL BE SPOKEN AGAINST.” 1. Christ was a sign of Divine love. In Him God reaches the climax of benevolence, and man exhibits the climax of deadly hate. The greatest gift provokes the greatest hostility, and the loftiest sign brings forth the most virulent opposition. 2. Christ was a sign of Divine justice. A bleeding Saviour, the Son of God deserted by His Father, the thunderbolts of vengeance finding a target in the Person of the Well-beloved, herein is justice revealed most fully. I hear not that other signs of vengeance have been spoken against. Men have trembled, but have not railed. Sodom and Gomorrah with bowed head confessed the justice of their doom. Egypt engulphed in the Red Sea saith nothing of it; none of her records contain a single blasphemy against Jehovah for having swept away the nation’ s chivalry. The judgments of God, as a rule, strikes men dumb with awe! But this, which was the greatest display of Divine hatred of sin, where the Son of God was made to descend into the lowest depths as our substitute, this provokes to-day man’ s uttermost wrath. Know you not how many are continually railing at the Cross? The Crucified is still abhorred. How matchless is the perversity of human nature, that when God displays His justice most, but blends it sweetly with His love, the sign is everywhere spoken against! 3. Christ was the sign of man’ s communion with God, and of God’ s fellowship with man. A ladder reaching from earth to heaven; a connecting bridge between creature and Creator. But alas! man does not want to be near his Maker, and hence he rails at the means provided for communion. 4. Christ is the sign of the elect seed, the representative of the holy, the newborn, the spiritual; and hence, as soon as the carnal mind, that knoweth not God nor loveth Him, perceives Christ and His gospel, it at once stirs up the depth of its malevolence to put down Christ if it be possible. But they shall never put Him down. They may speak against the gospel, but here is our joy, that Christ will raise up His people, and will certainly give the fall to His enemies. The ark of the Lord can never fall before Dagon; but Dagon must fall down before the Lord’ s ark. (C. H. Spurgeon.) Christ reveals hearts Eastern fable tells of a magic mirror that remained clear and unsullied when the pure-hearted looked into it, but became troubled and obscure when the glance of the guilty fell upon it. So the owner of that mirror could always tell the character of those who looked into it. Such a test we have in Jesus. We can tell a man’ s nature by knowing what he thinks of Christ, and thus “ the thoughts of many hearts” are “ revealed.” (Sunday School Times.) Christ spoken against There are four reasons why they speak against Him; that is, as the true Christ of God. I. Ignorance, men not knowing their need of Him; many of the relations he bears therefore appear to the natural man to be superfluous; he does not know his need, and therefore speaks against it in ignorance. II. The native enmity of the mind. “ The carnal mind is enmity against God;” men will naturally speak against that that they have an antipathy to. III. Because they are too much taken up with the world, and they do not like to be interrupted. Now we must pursue the world, must enjoy the world; to become one of these religious mopes would be to spoil all our pleasures. Thus they have an idea that there is something very gloomy about religion, and so they speak against it, especially the truth. IV. The natural man has a vague idea that the threatenings of God are mere words; that” whoever the Lord may send to hell,” says the natural man, “ I can’ t believe He will send me there.” (J. Wells.) This Child These are the words of Simeon. A beautiful picture--age and childhood meeting together, a gentle shoot and the full ripe corn in the ear, a sapling and a full-grown oak ready for transplantation into that realm where the saints of God flourish with an immortal life and glory. I. A CHILD. A wonderful thing. A seed containing a world of unknown possibilities. It makes parents glad. It should do so. A gift of God, a pledge and proof of the gracious tenderness which rules the world. But a child should also make parents thoughtful. Children are not mere play-things--ornaments, but undeveloped powers--slumbering volcanoes, which may burst out with desolating eruptions; or shrouded lights, that shall emerge in fuller and brighter radiance from year to year, shedding gladness and blessing all around. II. “ BEHOLD THIS CHILD.” Have we not sometimes wished that some Simeon could have taken a child of ours in his arms and become prophetic with respect to his destiny? But it is not permitted--graciously so. We know, however, that the future of children is not a thing of chance, nor is it determined only by what the child is in itself. Otherwise the parental relationship would be largely nullified. A child has its own native powers and tendencies, but they are capable of regulation or perversion. The doctrine of Scripture is that the child will be much what the parent makes him. III. THE HISTORY OF THIS CHILD WAS TO BE ONE OF A NATURE, AND THE MOTHER WAS TO ENDURE SAD WOE. “ A sword shall pierce,” dec. This not uncommon for mothers. Simeon, however, blessed the parents in spite of the sorrow that would be mingled with the lot of Jesus and their own. Blessedness not the same as continuous happiness or pleasure. A pathway of uninterrupted joy may not be a blessing. “ Blessed are they that mourn,” dec. Christ’ s life was blessed when He was tempted, had not where to lay His head, was alone upon the mountain, was robed in mock royalty, beaten, spit upon, agonized in the garden, died upon the cross. No one could call Him happy, hut He was blessed. IV. THIS CHILD WAS SET FOR THE FALL AND RISING AGAIN OF MANY IN ISRAEL: The effect different in different persons. Not, however, intended to be different. The purpose of God is good and gracious. All His gifts are intended for benefit--health, prosperity, afflictions. How differently are we affected by the same things! Children in the same house, under the same training, &c. 1. Falling-- (1) In aggravated degradation; (2) augmented guilt; (3) humiliation and repentance. 2. Rising again. (1) Faith. (2) Forgiveness. (3) Holiness. (4) Heaven. The words of Simeon are for this day, for this nation, for you. This Child which was set forth then is still set forth, until in the counsels of heaven the last day shall break upon the world, and the throne of judgment shall be erected where now stands the throne of grace. This Child is still the turning-point upon which are centred the destinies of the world. This Child is not for a race, but for the world; not for an age, but for all time. This Child you have heard of from your infancy. You have not heard so much of any child as this. This child runs as a golden thread through the history of the world. You may neglect Him, but you cannot escape Him. You may despise Him, but you cannot escape Him. You may hate Him, but you cannot escape Him. It cannot be with you as it is with a heathen who has never heard of His name, and upon whom the glory of His brightness has never risen. (E. Mellor, D. D.) Christ is set for the ruin of many I. How TRUE IS THIS . Undoubtedly the Son of Man came not to destroy souls, but to save. In boundless love He has sacrificed Himself for the world, and opened heaven by His cruel death. Nevertheless, he is set to the ruin of many. 1. Many are destitute of holy faith, which is the gate of life and the ground of eternal salvation. 2. Many are destitute of Divine charity, which we must possess in addition to faith, if we would be saved. II. HOW IS THIS . Dreadful are the consequences to those for the ruin of whom Christ is set. 1. They forfeit the price of their redemption. 2. They lose the eternal happiness destined for them. (Joseph Schuen.) What Christ was to be to different people I. What this Child was to be to His enemies--an object of opposition and an occasion of ruin, II. What He was to be to His mother--a cause of acute suffering (by sympathy). III. What He was to be to His people--the Author of their recovery or restoration. IV. What He was to be to all man kind--a test or touchstone of their moral and spiritual state. (G. Brooks.) The prophecy of Simeon While Joseph and the mother were still marvelling at the words spoken by the old man concerning Jesus, he turned to them, and with a solemn blessing first pronounced upon those who were privileged to have so near a place on earth to the Saviour of mankind, spoke these words to His mother only, “ Behold this Child,” &c. He is placed, or laid, as a firmly-planted rock, with a twofold result and purpose--the fall of some, the rising of others. Two passages of the prophetIsaiah, the one from the eighth and the other from the twenty-eighth chapter, seem to be here brought together; as also in the ninth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, and in the second chapter of the First Epistle of St. Peter. God places this Child in Zion as a precious corner-stone, a sure foundation. Whosoever will may build upon Him the house of his habitation, and rise into a holy temple, safe from the storms of time and the devastations of judgment. He is set for the rising of many. But if men will not thus use Him, as the foundation-stone of a safe and sure dwelling, then (according to the other passage) they will find Him a stone of stumbling and a rock of offence. He will be like an obstructing rock in their path--even to them who stumble at the word, being disobedient. God will not move Christ out of the way because men are perverse enough to stumble over Him. This Child is set, by a hand not of man, to be either for the rising (if they will have it so), or else for the fall (if they will have it so) of many in Israel. A solemn responsibility! We must either rise by Christ or fall--which we will. “ And for a sign spoken against.” A sign, in the Scripture use, denotes something or some one pointing to God, to God’ s being, to God’ s working. Christ is a sign. He came upon earth to point to God. But this sign, like every other, may be, and commonly is, gainsaid, or spoken against. For one who accepts it, for one who, because of Christ, sees and believes in and lives for God--many cavil, many reject, and many neglect the gospel. This in all times. But most of all when He was Himself amongst men. Then indeed gainsaying ran on into open violence. Such is the warning uttered in the ears of His mother, over the little Infant lying still and helpless in the arms of the aged saint. “ Yea,” he adds, “ a sword shall pierce through thy own soul also.” She who is now rejoicing in the blessedness of being her Lord’ s mother, must learn that no one comes so near Christ without partaking in His sufferings. For us the prophecy of Simeon is recorded. Let us try and judge ourselves by it, that we be not judged of the Lord. To which purpose, in our case, is this child set? To which of two purposes? for our fall, or for our rising? 1. For our fall, if we let the word come to us unheeded, to be snatched away by the tempter; if we receive the word for a moment with joy, but take no heed to its watering by the Spirit’ s grace, to its growth by the sunshine of God’ s presence, by the dew of God’ s blessing; if we allow the word to become choked in us by cares and riches and pleasures of this life, so that it brings no fruit to perfection; if we continue in sin that grace may abound. This Child is set for the fall of many. And, oh, my friends, perhaps we have scarcely yet said of how many. It is not only the utterly hardened, not only the avowed unbeliever, not only the scoffer, the dishonest, or the impure, who stumble at the great stumbling-stone; it is quite as often the mere neglecter, the mere procrastinator, the merely undecided, the almost Christian, who shows what he is by his treatment of the Saviour and the great salvation. Not to be with Christ is, He says it Himself, to be (in His judgment) against Him. 2. Let us listen, in this day of opportunity and of blessing, to the alternative here set before us. This Child is set for the rising of many. What is this “ rising” ? and in whom is it verified? It is a rising out of darkness, out of the low, misty valley of sense and worldliness, into the clear light and pure knowledge of Him whom truly to know is eternal life. It is a rising out of misery and sin. “ Set for the rising of many,” the text says. Who, then, are these? They are those who feel their need of Christ. And which of us has not cause to do so? (Dean Vaughan.) Man saved or destroyed by the truth Every man who has heard the word of salvation has some kind of connection with Christ. Christ is offered to each of us, in good faith on God’ s part, as a means of salvation, a foundation on which we may build. A man is free to accept or reject that offer. If he reject it, he has not thereby cut himself off from all contact and connection with that rejected Saviour, but he still sustains a relation to Him; and the message that he has refused to believe is exercising an influence upon his character and his destiny. The smallest particle of light falling on the sensitive plate produces a chemical change that can never be undone again, and the light of Christ’ s love once brought to the knowledge and presented for the acceptance of a soul, stamps on it an ineffaceable sign of its having been there. The gospel once heard is always the gospel which has been heard. Nothing can alter that. Once heard, it is henceforward a perpetual element in the whole condition, character, and destiny of the hearer. Christ does something to every one of us. His gospel will tell upon you. It is telling upon you. If you disbelieve it, it is not the same as if you had never heard it. Never is the box of ointment opened without some savour from it abiding in every nostril to which its odour has been wafted. Only the alternative, the awful “ either, or,” is open for each--the “ savour of life unto life, or of death unto death.” (A. Maclaren, D. D.) The dual aspect of Christ’ s advent St. Paul experienced, in his own person, the double effect of the advent of Christ into the world set forth in Simeon’ s language--first, the repulsion which made him so bitter a persecutor, and next the attraction which made him so glorious an apostle. And of this double experience Augustine was a second great example. There are many in our modern world who are thinking and speaking and living in opposition to the eternal Christ. It may be, as in the case of Paul, in the case of Augustine, in their earlier days they have, from whatever cause, taken a fright at religion; they have been repelled by some caricature of it, or some inconsistency on the part of its professors, or by taking only one aspect of its doctrines and claims into consideration; or by a sense of their present inability to comply with its demand upon the conscience and upon the heart; but it is a happiness to think that Christ is still there in the firmament of the heavens, in the midst of the Church, among the golden candlesticks, set not merely for the fall, but for the rising again of many a soul in Israel. It is to be hoped that brighter days await those wanderers, many of whom are most assuredly children of the kingdom who have lost their way, but will not lose it for ever. A nearer sight, a constraining sense of the Divine Redeemer’ s claims, will come when men see that He can, and does, give by His Spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, to those who ask Him. When they take into account the works which He did of old, the words which He spake, the impression which He made when He was upon the earth; when they see the society which He founded, the creed which radiates from and centres in His person, and which is more widely accepted now, eighteen centuries after His death, than ever before, they may reconsider their prejudices: they may say less than they mean when they admit that there is something to be said for Christianity after all; they may rise from the tomb into which they had fallen-the tomb of doubt, the tomb of care, the tomb of evil living--into the glorious liberty of the children of God. (Canon Liddon.) Christ set for our fall an upraising How is He set for our fall? That seems very strange. It is not God’ s purpose that the revelation of good produces fall. We must seek any explanation rather than one which shakes the central pillar of the universe, and turns God into a Master of evil. No, the real explanation lies in ourselves, in what we know and see men do of their own will. Good and evil lie before men, and they choose evil. There is a state of heart which naturally turns away from or hates the life of Christ and the spirit of its work. There is no kinship between Him and it. When His goodness is flashed upon such men, it sends them into violent hatred of it. He is set for their fall. But it is their own deeds that have brought them to that condition--not God’ s will. This is the condemnation, that men loved darkness rather than light. Why? Because their deeds were evil. Plainly, then, if we wish to rise into a new life and a higher one when the revelation of goodness is made to us, if we wish Christ to be set for our rising, the first thing to do is to love light; and in order to love it, to make our deeds good. Never mind having, high ideals, until you have got your daily actions and thoughts right. It is a simple promise, but it is eternally true and sure: “ To him that ordereth his conversation aright will I show the salvation of God.” We must be akin to Christ before we tan receive Christ. To such, when He comes home to the heart, when we feel Him rushing on us, He comes in resurrection-power, sot for our rising. And we rise, shaking off our sins, our dark thoughts, the burden of our sorrow, the besetting of self, the curse of indifference, impatience, and sloth into a new life. It is like the unbinding of the earth in spring. Thus is Christ set for our rise and fall. It is a solemn thing to watch a man when that testing comes to him. The hour strikes when he is called on to choose between two ways of acting, and he knows God is in one and the devil in the other. What is this? It is Christ set before him for his rise or fall; Christ come to reveal his inward thoughts, his inward strength or weakness. It is a judgment-hour; and years of evil fall, or of righteous growth rest upon the hour. And still more grave is it when Christ is set before a nation for its fall or rising again. All great ideas are set for the rise and falling of men, for life and for death. Of this law the strongest instance in history is that which accompanied the coming el Christ. His ideas made the world into two camps. Nor has the power of Christ’ s spiritual thoughts ceased to do this kind of work. Through the solitary contest in each man’ s soul, and his own choice of good or evil; through the contest in every community, in every nation, in the whole world, men and nations rise and fall, and the silent separation ever going on accumulates the materials for the last great judgment when this dispensation of time is over and another shall begin. That day is not what has been pictured in poetry. It will be the magnificent indications of God’ s ways to men; the clear, unmistakable revelation of the holiness and justice and truth of God. Men shall see then. The time of doubt and casuistry and shadow will be over; all thoughts shall be revealed, and we shall know ourselves and know God. This entry is longer than a Bible module can hold. The rest is at https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/bi/ Luke 2:36-38 And there was one Anna, a prophetess First female testimony to Christ 1. Excited by long expectations. 2. Based on personal sight. 3. Given with full candour. 4. Sealed by holy walk. 5. Crowned by a happy old age. (Van Doren.) Anna an example to the aged Let me recommend to all persons advanced in life her spirit of holy abstraction--an abstraction, not from duty, but from the sins, and cares, and vanities of the world. It is difficult to conceive a more unbecoming, or more pitiable object, than a person, whether male or female, far advanced in years, but still engrossed with the trifles of time. It will not be supposed that it is meant to say that aged believers should not be truly happy and cheerful; but very different is the joy of God from the gaiety of the world; very different is the rational and devout placidity from the unreflecting and ill-timed mirth. The vain attempt to go on as formerly, in defiance of the ravages of time, and the failing of nature; the affectation of the dress, manners, and enjoyments of youth, in the midst of the infirmities of age; the haunt of giddy amusement resorted to with feeble and tottering steps; the wreathy garland on the withered brow; the world still predominant at threescore and ten, or fourscore; the heart barricaded against the admission of serious thoughts, and full of the things of sense, when a very short space of time must shut the scene, and dispel every dream, and fix the destiny for ever’ ;--alas! alas! let who will admire this and call it pleasant, every wise man must feel disposed to exclaim, How incongruous, how absurd, how melancholy, how sinful! But an aged Christian, justly estimating the circumstances in which he is placed, contented, thankful, grave, pious, and consistent--how becoming, how engaging, and how venerable! A very little reflection, too, must suffice to show the impropriety of the aged spending the small remainder of their time in unprofitable amusements, and also the impropriety of others encouraging them to do so. If it be so that some who are far advanced into the vale of tears, spend some hours of almost every lawful clay in any such manner as merely kills the time, it is truly to be much lamented. If indeed their mind be in such a state of dotage as to unfit them for anything useful, there may be some excuse for the habit; but it must be criminal and very hurtful, as long as they are in possession of ability to distinguish right from wrong, and to make any preparation for the unseen world on which they are verging. Far other employments ought to engage them. It was not thus that aged Anna sought her amusement and solace. Let the aged get interested, deeply interested, about the things of God, and they will not then stand in need of any expedients which are, to say the least, of doubtful propriety. Let them, like Anna, as far as strength permits, regularly and devoutly frequent the temple of God. Let them be much in religious exercises at home. Let them speak to others on the subject of religion. Let their lips, which must soon be closed, speak for Christ while they can. Advices from persons of their experience may be well taken, when those from persons of less standing may be despised. Let them study in all things to adorn the doctrine of God their Saviour, that their hoary heads may be crowns of glory, being found in the way of righteousness. Thus, that God who hath taught, guided, and blessed them from their youth, will not forsake them when they are old; they shall safely and happily come to their grave in their full age, like a shock of corn in its season. (James Foote, M. A.) Piety in the aged I. PIETY IN THE AGED AND THE PROMISE WHICH GOD HAS MADE OF LONG LIFE TO THOSE WHO FEAR HIS NAME. II. PIETY IN THE AGED CROWNS THOSE WHO POSSESS IT WITH HONOUR. III. PIETY IN THE AGED TO OTHERS. IV. PIETY IN THE AGED A OF THE AND OF . Concluding inferences: 1. We should imitate the pious aged. 2. How thankful should the children of pious and aged parents be. 3. The departure of aged Christians from our midst reminds us who remain that the ranks before us are thinning out, and that we are pressing up to the forefront of the line. We should see to it, then, that we have their piety, and can honour their place. (Preachers’ Treasury.) The prophetess Anna A very beautiful completion of a very beautiful picture. Simeon standing there alone as the representative of humanity is isolated; is there nowhere a companion who may share the riches of this new joy? The other side of human nature must be represented, and that deficiency is made up by the presence of the venerable prophetess. There they stand as father and mother of the whole race, giving hospitality and welcome to Him who came to save the world. They stood, as it were, at the front door of the world’ s house, and spake to the young King in the name of the captives He came to deliver. There are some womanly characteristics in this passage which should be noted. 1. Anna departed not from the Temple--persistent, faithful, constant, and thus a woman pre-eminently. 2. She served God with lastings and prayers night and day--self-denial, profound devotion, continual watching. 3. Where Simeon prayed, Anna gave thanks. It would seem as if there was just the faintest touch of self-consideration in the prayer of Simeon, as he wished to be gone from scenes that wearied him; but the prophetess, eighty and four years old, constant through all changes, hopeful through all fears, was willing to linger longer, for she spoke nothing of her own release, but thanked God for His mercy, and comforted many that looked for redemption in Jerusalem. Blessed are they who can sing in their old age, and turn all their own experience into comfort for those who mourn. (J. Parker, D. D.) The story of a lonely woman’ s work Our text presents us with the picture of a lonely woman, old, and a widow. Could a less attractive subject be chosen? There is something interesting in a young widow; but who cares to look at an old one, whose charms have long since faded, whose eyes are dim, whose hair is white, whose face is wrinkled, and whose hands are tremulous? But there is a beauty that does not depend upon youth, a loveliness that wears well, and cannot be washed out even by tears, a charm that comes in answer to the prayer, “ Let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us,” Of this beauty Anna, the prophetess, had a full share; and the story of her life, briefly as it is told, is not devoid of interest. Anna, “ the gracious,” as her name signifies, was the daughter of Phanuel, evidently a man who lived as one who saw the face of God. While still very young the maiden was wedded, and for seven happy years youth and love filled her heart with gladness. But at the end of that time the shadow of death passed over the Jewish home and hid the light, and stilled the song, and filled the house with mourning. What was she to do, that young widow with her life before her? She had surely some excuse for joining that innumerable company of disappointed women who talk of blighted lives, and are themselves a blight upon everything that Comes near them. But she let “ the useful trouble” of her life soften and sanctify her. She put her trust in the God of Israel, and received with meekness the chastening of His hand. She took herself and her sorrow to the Temple. And there a new longing and a new love took possession of her;. for were they not all looking for the Messiah, and might not the time of His coming be near? She would consecrate herself to God and to His service in the Temple. Other women could not do it; the sweet clamour of the children, and the wishes of their husbands kept them at home; but she would have her pleasures too, and the joy of the Lord should be her strength. And so the young widow took her place, and day by day, and year by year, returned to it. The sun touched Olivet with golden beams and left it again in shadow more times than she could count. The fig trees blossomed and shed their fruit, the valleys drank up the early and the latter rain, the tender grapes became ripe and were gathered, the corn showed first the green blade, and then the full ears; the feasts came round with their joyous assemblings; and, year after year, Anna was in the Temple, neither wretched nor useless. God gave to her the gift of prophecy. She saw what some eyes could not see, and she had power to utter the Divine revelations which were made to her. Complacently and tranquilly she saw the years pass away until eighty-four had seamed her face, and bent her form. But He whom she had served with such fidelity and devotion had a wonderful joy in reserve for her yet. Coming into the Temple one day, as usual, she heard an unusual sound. Simeon, with tremulous voice, was singing that new song, which has been continued by the Church ever since. In his arms he held the Child Jesus; and, seeing Him, what could Anna do but take up the strain of thanksgiving, and pour out her soul in praise? And then she found that, after all, her work was not over. She had known what it was to wait long, and others were waiting still. She could not keep the good news to herself. She became the first evangelist of His advent in the city of her King, and “ spake of Him to all them,” &e. We are taught at least three things by the brief biography which Luke has written of Anna. 1. What is the best cure for loneliness?--Something to do, and the determination to do it. 2. What is woman’ s work in the Church, and who are the women to do it? More and more every year it is coming to be understood that there are departments which women can excellently fill. There are thousands of devoted women scattered about in different parts of our country who, in quiet places, and by womanly methods, are doing an immense amount of good. More Annas to spend their days in God’ s Temple, and speak a kindly word to those who are in darkness: women who have a ready hand to take up any duty which would not otherwise be done--these are the women that are needed. But it is lonely women especially who are called to Christ’ s work. 3. God will most richly reward the services of the faithful. No one knows exactly what the reward will be, for He delights to give us surprises of joy. (Marianne Farningham.) Occupation of Anna Anna was of the tribe of Asher, and therefore a Galilean. She was eighty-four years of age, and had thus lived through the long sad period of war, conquest, and oppression which had intensified, in every Jewish heart, the yearning for national deliverance by the promised Messiah. Her long life had been spent in pious acts and services. She had never married again a fact, mentioned by St. Luke, in accordance with the feeling of the day, to her honour, but had been, in the words of St. Paul, “ a widow indeed,” trusting in God, and continuing in supplications and prayers night and day. She might in truth be said to have lived in the Temple; having very likely come from Galilee to be near the holy place, and thus able to give herself up to religious exercises, on the spot, where, in the eyes of a Jew, they were most sacred. Such a woman must have been well known in a place like Jerusalem. Catching the burden of Simeon’ s words as she passed, she too, like him, forthwith thanks God that the promise of the Messiah is now, at last, fulfilled. There could have been few, however, to whom the glad tidings of such a Saviour were welcome, for, though the heart of the nation was burning with Messianic hopes of a political kind, we are told that Anna was able to tell them to all in Jerusalem who looked for a redemption of a higher type. (Dr. Geikie.) Beautiful old age Sometimes the sun seems to hang for a half-hour in the horizon, only just to show how glorious it can be. The day is done; the fervour of the shining is over, and the sun hangs golden--nay, redder than gold--in the west, making everything look unspeakably beautiful, with the rich effulgence which it sheds on every side. So God seems to let some people, when their duty in this world is done, hang in the west, that men may look on them, and see how beautiful they are. There are some hanging in the west now. (H. W. Beecher.) Luke 2:37 Which departed not from the Temple Neglectors of public worship I know that there are not a few who say that they can edify as well or better at home. Hence these eat their morsel alone. But, so far as I have ever known them, they are neither to be envied nor imitated. They have always been feeble, sickly, useless, spiritual dyspeptics; while as certainly all observation has shown me, and all experience has proved to me, that they who neglect the house of prayer, or come to it reluctantly and rarely, are invariably dull in their spiritual conceptions, cold in their affections, wavering in their convictions, and useless in Christian work, while they are easily led away by the force of temptation. (J. Aldis.) Blessedness of public worship On the other hand, quite as certainly all who through long years have been early and constant in their attendance on the means of grace, who have planned carefully and toiled hard that they might be so, who have brought to the exercises of religion an attentive mind and a living heart, have, so far as my observation has extended, been distinguished for the cheerful trustfulness of Christian hope, for the consistent devotedness of Christian life, for diligence and success in Christian work; while they have been to all their brotherhood an example, an inspiration, and a joy. (J. Aldis.) Delight in being in God’ s house A minister had noted among the most regular attendants at his church an aged woman. On all occasions she was in her place--always in time--always attentive. He sought her out and visited her, and great was his astonishment to find this poor woman so deaf as to be unable to hear a single word. By means of a slate he entered into conversation with her, and his first inquiry was, “ Why, being too deaf to hear one word of the service, are you so regular in your attendance at the house of God?” “ Oh, sir,” she replied, with warm tears swelling up from her eyes, “ it is my Father’ s house, and I love to be there. He meets me in His own sanctuary, and I can, in spirit, join in the prayer and praise, though the words of others may not reach me; and as Jesus speaks to my soul, I hear the whispers of His love, though my outer ears are dead to all the sounds of earth. I love to be in the assembly of God’ s people, because they are the people of God, the children of my Father, and and it is very pleasant to be in such good company, though I can no longer converse with them. There is now very little left that I can do for the cause and the kingdom of my Redeemer, besides trying to set a right example. My day for active effort is past, and all I can now do is to seek to influence others by the power of a humble and earnest life. Even this will soon be over, and while the opportunity remains I would improve it for my Master’ s glory. He did not in His last hour of deepest agony forget us poor sinners; and shall we weary of our lightest yoke, and throw it off before our last hour has come?” What a powerful reproof was this aged woman’ s example to those who, with faculties still unimpaired, and strength unabated by the infirmities of age, yet wilfully absent themselves from God’ s house! Served God with fastings and prayers. Fastings and prayers It has been said that her form of piety was Jewish rather than Christian; but must not St. Paul have had her in his eye when he speaks of the true type of the Christian widow as “ trusting in God and continuing in supplications and prayers night and day” ? (1 Timothy 5:5.) Her piety was certainly not of that stamp which finds most favour amongst us now-active, bustling, energetic, and so assumed to be the most useful; but have we not gone much too far in despising the contemplative, ascetic, prayerful life? Who knows what may not have been the use of Anna’ s lastings and prayers, in preparing hearts to receive the Lord? God, we doubt not, answered her many supplications in ways which could not be traced out, but which will assuredly be known at the last. Her life of fasting and devotion was evidently her calling of God, known and approved by Him. And may not, in this very day, the life of religion amongst ourselves be owing not only to sermons, and visitings, and meetings, but to the prayers of the few scattered handfuls of worshippers who here and there are constant at daily service? It has been rightly said, that “ the abuses which have attended often on the practice of a monastic life, should not render us insensible to the duty of spending large portions of our time in meditation, and prayer, and fasting.” (M. F. Sadler.) Luke 2:39-52 Now His parents went to Jerusalem every year at the feast of the Passover The life of Jesus I. JESUS CHRIST IN HOME LIFE. “ And He went down with them, and came to Nazareth, and was subject unto them.” 1. We see Him settling down to the relationships of home. But Jesus Christ was perfectly content in the home circle. He did not complain of its narrowness and confinement. For He did not judge life by its magnitude, but by the principle which animates it; He did not judge life by its conspicuousness; but by the spirit which inspires it. The tiny speck on the lady-bird’ s wing is as round a circle as that of the world. The sphere which a tear makes is as mathematically perfect as that of yonder sun. It makes not the slightest difference in the real merit of a book whether it is printed in large or small type; in either case the meaning is precisely the same. Some people seriously object to the privacy of home--the type is too small to please their fancy; they must act their part on the public stage, in the corners of the streets, and in the synagogues--they dearly love a large type. But the Saviour spent thirty years in the privacy of home, and never once complained of its narrowness and obscurity. 2. We are further taught that He faithfully discharged the duties of home--the duties which devolved on Him as a son in the family. Each memberof the family has its respective services to perform, and harmony always depends upon the right adjustment, the proper balancing, of distinct interests. “ He went down with them, and came to Nazareth, and was subject unto them.” He might have been wiser than they; but superior knowledge does not justify insubordination. 3. And the context shows that in all this He was doing His Father’ s work. “ Wist ye not that I must be about My Father’ s work?” And if home life were not an integral department of that work, it would have been utterly impossible for Jesus Christ to have submitted to it. But home life is a Divine life, a type, possibly, of the inner life of the Godhead. The Bible represents God as a Father, it describes Him as having a family, it sets Him forth as having a home. Home life is a Divine life, and by serving it we do God’ s work. II. JESUS CHRIST IN SOCIAL LIFE. 1. Here we see Him settling down to the relationships of society, and that the most corrupt society in the whole world. Nazareth would have ranked among the choicest towns of Palestine; but its inhabitants were notorious far and near for their impiety, recklessness, and heathenism. “ Every prospect pleases, and only map is vile.” Strange that God should choose depraved Nazareth to be the dwelling-place of His Son for thirty years 1 We would have imagined that a select and secluded spot would have been chosen where He would have been kept from all contact with sin, and where He would have been partitioned off from other children, and thus secured against the contagion of evil. But that was not God’ s idea of holiness. Glass-house virtue He did not covet. For the dove to keep her wing pure and unsullied amid the free air of heaven is not so very difficult--indeed the difficulty is to soil it; but to keep it white and clean amongthe pots is quite another matter, and harder far to accomplish. From early infancy Jesus Christ had to face vice; from the outset He had to grapple with sin. His virtue must be sinewy, manly, tried, and triumphant. Earthly parents may here learn a very precious lesson: not to put too much confidence in glasshouse virtue--it generally withers on its first exposure to the rude winds of the world. Children may be ruined in one of two ways: either by being permitted to visit all kinds of wicked places and witness all manner of obscene spectacles without let or hindrance; or by being kept too strictly aloof from all society and guarded too narrowly against the approach of other children, for when the protection is withdrawn, as withdrawn it surely must be, and they are left to fight for themselves, they will almost necessarily succumb to the first assault of temptation. And conservatory children may be very pleasing to look at so long as they are under shelter; but the first storm will make a sad havoc among their branches. Let children learn from the first how to defend themselves against physical and moral foes alike. 2. We further learn that He discharged with the utmost fidelity the duties of society, the duties that devolved upon Him as a citizen of Nazareth. “ He went down with them, and came to Nazareth,” and there, adds the evangelist very significantly, “ He grew in favour with God and men.” I confess to a strong liking for the phrase that “ He grew in favour with men.” He knew what it was to luxuriate in the golden opinions of His neighbours. And let none of you, young people, despise the favour of men; to please society is not altogether an unworthy aim. Favour with God must precede favour with men. “ He grew in favour with men.” This supposes that He was studious of the little proprieties of every-day life. There are men who cling with indomitable tenacity to the fundamental verities; rather than relax their hold of them, they will go cheer fully to the stake to die. But they are culpably regardless of the little politenesses of social intercourse--they never grow in favour with men. They remind one of a rugged granite rock, firm, solid, and white under the meridian light; but no flower grows in its clefts, no snowdrop or foxglove, no primrose or daisy, softens the untarnished hardness. They are men of strong principles, but of ungracious disposition; they never grow in favour with men. 3. And in leading the life of a citizen the context shows He was doing the work of God. “ Wist ye not that I must be about My Father’ s business?” If there is a must in it, it is evident He cannot leave it; and that in going down to Nazareth He continued to be about it. The truth is, society is a Divine institution; and in serving it we do God’ s work. Jesus Christ lived in Nazareth to realize the Divine idea of a citizen, to reduce to actuality, to embody in a life, the thought as it existed in the Divine mind. Men had to see the perfect life acted out before their eyes. He was not of the world--not of it in its way of thinking, not of it in its way of feeling, not of it in its way of living; not of it, yet in it. Anti as He was, so are we--placed in the midst of society, and yet of a Divine citizenship. The highest ideal of Christian life is city life. “ Ye are a city set on a hill.” The life of innocent humanity was a garden or rural life. “ The Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden, and put man there.” It was a free, simple, country life. “ But ye are come to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem,” and your life henceforth must be city life. III. JESUS CHRIST IN LIFE. “ He went down with them, and came to Nazareth.” 1. By thus entering into industrial life He shows that work may be made sacred. 2. He further shows that work is not incompatible with the highest religious attainments. 3. By following a trade, He further showed that the highest purpose of work is not fortune but discipline. I suppose we cannot all get on in this world of ours, and my text reminds us of another who worked very hard, who followed His trade diligently, but did not get on very well except towards Gethsemane, Calvary, and the grave. He can sympathize with you; He stands by your side, ready to share your burden; He stoops, He bends; may you have the grace to roll it on His shoulders! What is Christianity? God bending beneath and bearing aloft the burden of the world. If work does not better your earthly condition, it will improve your heart; if it does not add to your fortune, it will considerably augment your manhood; if it will not bring you affluence in this life, it will help to qualify you for a more abundant entrance on the rich, profound life on yonder side the grave. IV. JESUS CHRIST IN HIS OR TEMPLE LIFE. 1. The context shows us that He was in His Father’ s house, and that whilst there the blessed and glorious truth of His Sonship dawned upon Him. All rich natures, all deep and fertile natures, feel an attraction towards God’ s temple. There is so much mystery appealing powerfully to the worshipful faculty, so much solemn grandeur subduing the heart and carrying it captive, such sublimity and loftiness in the service of the temple, though outwardly it be but a barn, that it gives ample scope for the imagination. Hence all rich, poetical natures find their proper food and their appropriate atmosphere in the service of God’ s house. 2. He was in the Temple, asking and answering questions. His mind thirsted for knowledge. But as Christ was free from sin, His insight was quicker, clearer, deeper than ours. An intellect twelve years old free from sin will astonish intellects fifty years old tainted by the disease. The water-lily, growing in the midst of water, opens its leaves, expands its petals, at the first pattering of the shower, whilst other flowers in the same neighbourhood are quite insensible to the descent of the raindrops. Why? Because reared in water, it has quicker sympathy with rain. And so with the Lily of our Humanity: His soul, planted, as it were, in the midst of the ocean of omniscience, rejoiced in knowledge with a quicker and more refined sympathy than has ever been witnessed before or since in the history of our race. 3. Observe, further, His total absorption in His Father’ s work. “ Wist ye not that I must be about My Father’ s business?” Literally, “ in My Father’ s business.” Not about it, but in it. (J. C. Jones.) The training of Jesus Christ Observe, then, just where the real difficulty lies: it lies not in the fact of growth; it lies in the fact of incarnation, or the Divine birth itself. For the distance between the Babe of Bethlehem and the Man of Nazareth is infinitely less than the distance between man and God. But Christ’ s growth, be it carefully observed, implies no sort of imperfection. It is no sign of imperfection in a peach tree that it does not bear peaches in spring. And this growth does not seem to have been marked by anything striking. Had it been, the presumption is that his biographers would at least have hinted it. The very silence here of the evangelists is thrilling, for it brings the Divine Man within the range of our human sympathies and affections, thoroughly identifying Him with our average humanity. He grew up, as grows His own kingdom, without observation. “ Wist ye not that I must be in My Father’ s house, about My Father’ s business?” All these years the heavenly Plant has been unfolding, and now appears the first blossom. 1. There was the school of home. I do not refer here to the lessons consciously taught by parents so much as to the lessons unconsciously taught by the home institution itself. We are trained for the celestial home in the school of the terrestrial, learning the heavenly sonhood in the exercise of an earthly, the universal brotherhood in the sphere of a personal. Home--that is to say, true home--is the best soil for the germination and growth of large, solid, abiding character. Christ’ s stay of thirty years beneath His mother’ s roof is an eternal glorification of the home institution. 2. There was the school of subordination. Loyalty is the mother of royalty. 3. There was the school of toil. There is no reason for supposing that Joseph and Mary were especially poor, and therefore that Jesus was brought up in absolute poverty. Ah, how this educates Him for sympathy with what must ever be the preponderating class of humanity, the working-class. 4. There was the school of society. No desert education was His, like that of His forerunner, John the Baptizer. He must feel the quickening, broadening, rounding power of society. 5. There was the school of isolation. What though He was brought up in society? Society comprehended Him not. Even His brothers, sons of His own mother, did not believe on Him. For the foundations of character are laid in moral solitude. Man’ s grandest victories are, and ever must be, won single-handed. 6. There was the school of the synagogue. Every day in the week, and three times every Saturday or the Jewish Sabbath, Jesus went to the synagogue, where He saw a model of the ark of the covenant, and the scrolls of the sacred books, and joined in the prescribed prayers, and listened to the reading of the two lessons--the one from the law, the other from the prophets. 7. There was the school of providence. Daily providence was His daily teacher. 8. There was the school of nature. 9. There was the school of routine. Doubtless it was the same unbroken, monotonous routine of family and workshop and synagogue, week after week, month after month, year after year. The frequent and tedious drill is the best preparation for the battle paean. 10. There was the school of delay. During those long thirty years Jesus doubtless often yearned to enter at once upon His glorious mission as the Christ of God and the Saviour of men. Not that enterprise and courage and energy are not praiseworthy. They are most noble traits. But there is such a thing as prematurity, and prematurity is apt to mean failure. This lesson of patience is especially needed in our times and land. It is an age of swift things, morally as well as physically. Young man, patiently abide your time. There is no heroism like the heroism of patience, no majesty like the majesty of self-confluence. 11. There was the school of temptation. And temptation is not only essential to character-disclosing, temptation is also essential to character-building. 12. There was the school of experience. For there is no education like the education of personal experience. Nothing can take the place of it: neither wealth, nor genius, nor splendid opportunities, nor indomitable will. And as in nature, so in morals: the slower the crystallization, the more perfect and abiding. And all this was as true for the Christ as it is for you and me. Such is the story of the home-life of the Divine Man. As that Greater than Solomon was rearing that temple nobler than Moriah’ s, no stroke of hammer, or axe, or any tool of iron was heard. “ No workman’ s steel, no ponderous axes rung, Like some tall palm the noiseless fabric sprung,” The great lesson, then, of the home-life at Nazareth is this: Every-day life our training-school for heaven. (G. D. Boardman.) First Sunday after Epiphany But let us now direct our attention more particularly to the youthful Saviour’ s visit to the Temple, as narrated in this day’ s Gospel. 1. It appears from this record, that his parents were punctual and regular in their attendance upon the appointed services of religion. They were poor. They also lived very far away. By actual experiment, I found it two days and a half hard riding, upon active horses, from Nazareth to Jerusalem. But they found no excuse in these things for failing to be present in the holy city when the feast of the Passover came round. 2. It appears that, as soon as Jesus had reached His twelfth year, these pious parents took Him with them on their annual visit to the sacred city and Temple. At any rate, they took Him with them, an example which it would be well for all parents to note and follow. 3. It appears that this visit of the young Saviour to the holy city and Temple was the means of an enlarged and astonishing spiritual awakening to Him. Mind left to itself stagnates and fails of proper fruitfulness. The quickening spark needs to be applied to kindle it into living flame and power. New subjects were thrown in upon His human intellect. A new world opened to His soul and seized upon His heart, already in holy and peaceful harmony with the deepest underlying Spirit of all. It was not a conversion, for He needed no converting. It was not the implantation of the new life; for He never was dead to holy things. But it was the opening of His human faculties, the quickening of their activities, to grasp the objects which were to fill and enlist His powers, which marked the commencement of that higher consciousness and ampler realization of the truth, in meek and zealous obedience to which He from that time forward went forth, and which was the active principle of all His subsequent life and deeds as the Redeemer el the world. Brethren, will any one look these facts in the face and say, that there is no use for children to come to the temple of God! I know of a boy, who, at fourteen years of age, walked a series of miles from his home, to a strange place, to see a synodical convention. He started out in the morning, and returned at night, without partaking of a meal during his absence, and repeated the same on the day following. And from what he saw and heard during those two days, there was formed in his heart the purpose to devote himself to the gospel ministry. That purpose he also carried into effect, against the dissuasion of his bishop, the disapprobation of his father, and all the disadvantages of the absence of pecuniary resources. That contact with the assembled ministers of the Church, brought about by no particular object save to gratify a general desire for information, and without having spoken a word to any of them, touched a cord, and awoke a feeling, which gave shape and direction to his whole after life. And that boy is your preacher to-day! Nor can you know what living seeds of transforming power, and fruitfulness in virtue and grace, may be planted by a single visit of a youth to the temple of God! See to it, then, that your children are early brought into connection with all the ministrations of the sanctuary. 4. It also appears from this record, that even the pious Joseph and Mary expected much less from this carrying of the youthful Jesus to the temple, than actually occurred. Ah yes, there is often more going on in the hearts of children than their parents, who know them best, suppose or believe. The purest waters are those that run deepest under ground, before they show themselves; and there may be much more in our children, and in the very line of our most anxious desires, than we would for a moment think of ascribing to them. 5. Finally, it appears from this record, what that was which from earliest youth most powerfully absorbed Christ’ s feelings and attention, and what in His view is the proper thing supremely to enlist and engage the young. “ How is it that ye sought Me? wist ye not that I must be about My Father’ s business?” He had relations in heaven paramount to all relations of kindred and blood on earth. (J. A. Seiss, D. D.) The early years of Christ Conceiving of Him then, as in a transition from childhood to manhood, as in a process of training for the highest of works, we ask what lessons are to be gathered from His silent years? I. We shall conclude that GOD HIS SON, BORN OF A WOMB, MADE UNDER THE LAW, FOR HIS FUTURE OFFICE, BY THE OF THE FAMILY STATE. “ And was subject to His parents.” The family state, we cannot doubt, was most happily devised, according to the original plan of uncorrupt human nature, not only for the preservation and physical welfare of the child, but also for the development of all the higher qualities of man. It is the beginning and the condition of society. He who passes out of its healthy training into the larger circle of fellow-citizens or fellow-men, has a foundation already laid for all social sympathies, for the conception of human brotherhood, for the exercise of good will in every form. It is also the condition of, and the preparation for, all law. The dependent being, trained up in it to listen to higher authority and wisdom, to give up self-will and practice self-control, becomes fitted for the loyal life of the citizen, and for obedience to God. Thus it was meant, according to the primaeval plan, that the infant mind should be disciplined in the family for a life of law and of love--law which should lead the soul up to the great central Lawgiver of the universe, and, love, which should embrace the brotherhood of souls, and God, the Father of all. His soul was fitted for its work by entering into the great relations of humanity. II. JESUS PASSED THROUGH THE OF A LIFE OF HUMBLE . “ Is not this the carpenter?” Here we have two things to notice, the discipline of a life of industry upon the Son of Man, and the influence of the lowly position which He thus assumed among His brethren of mankind. We must conceive, then, that during these years of labour as a carpenter, the Son of Man had time, even amid His work, for noble and holy thoughts. Nor ought we to lay out of account the patience which sedulous manual labour would bring along with it. I may add, that the helpfulness of our Lord in His calling tended to strengthen the principle of helpfulness to mankind, or of unwearied benevolence. But the patient helpfulness of Jesus, as He did His work well in and for the family, inured His holy mind to the hard toils of that glorious life of love, in which we learn, on one occasion, that He had not time so much as to eat bread, and gave Himself up to works of mercy so earnestly that His friends thought Him mad. What other training could have equally encouraged His unwearied devotion to the hard, slow work of doing good? But the obscurity of the sphere in which Jesus moved, aided the graces of His character, such as meekness and lowliness, and also enlarged His power of usefulness. Here we notice only the last particular, leaving the others for future remark. It is often thought to add to a man’ s power among men, if he is born in a high place, and commands the respect of mankind as well by his ancestry and station, as by what he is. But the power to act upon men, so far as it depends on feeling with them, and being felt with by them, is generally abridged by position above the major part of mankind. Hence it is, that those monarchs who have risen from the people can know them better, and come closer to their admiration and their hearts, than such as have inherited the throne. Hence, too, those reformers are likely to be most successful, who add to other advantages that of a lively interest in and comprehension of the great mass of men, which their birth and early education has encouraged. The son of the miner, at Eisleben, with his homely, earnest peasant-soul, and his manly courage, was fitter to attract and mingle with his countrymen, was better able, when his mind had become enlarged by study, to spread the Protestant Reformation, than if he had been the son of an Emperor of Germany, or one of the princes of the empire. Such a personage, if he could have understood and preached the gospel, would have found that a gulf was fixed between him and his people. III. THE SILENT YEARS AT ENABLED HIM TO LONG AND DEEPLY ON THE . A striking characteristic of our Lord, from the first moment of His public ministry onward, is His reverence for and familiarity with the Scriptures. Here, then, in this sequestered village, away from the emptiness of Pharisaical learning, and from Sadducean scepticism, He was reared on the Divine Word in its simplicity, was fortified by it against temptation, studied its promises of a coming Messiah, and became ready to apply it to the varying circumstances of practical life. He trained mankind through the Jews; He made His Son a Jew that He might build up on the old foundation the new truths of a religion for the world; and in order that Jesus Himself might be trained up for this work He chose this simple method of placing Him alone with the ancient Scriptures, away from human teachers and comments, that the pure truth of God might fill His mind. IV. The life of retirement which Jesus led at Nazareth WAS FITTED TO NOURISH SOME OF THOSE MEEK AND GRACES OF WHICH SHONE BEYOND IN HIM. I name first patience, or willingness to wait until the right time was come. The same discipline which perfected the patience, perfected also the calmness of Jesus. His obedience grew, through His years of waiting, deeper and heavenlier became His calmness. This discipline of His still years gave strength also to His retiring spirit, or modesty. I only add, that the retirement of Nazareth was fitted to nourish simplicity of feeling and character. It has been made a definition of a wise and pure life to live according to nature. The simplicity and honesty of the man Christ Jesus were, no doubt, nourished and perfected in a simple, godly family, in a simple village, away from much of the gloss and falsehood which abounded in Judea. We might conceive of Divine wisdom taking just the opposite method of calling it forth, that of placing Jesus in close neighbourhood to formal and false Pharisees, so that His education should consist in loathing the characters which He should see around Him. That strength would come from such a discipline we cannot doubt; and yet the other plan, which was in fact chosen, seems the best for a harmonious perfection of the whole character, and especially for the predominance of the gentler virtues, ( T. D. Woolsey, D. D.) The personality of Jesus The Man in germ, the personality in the making, we see but once, yet the once is almost enough. The Child has come with His parents to Jerusalem. The city, the solemnities, the Temple, the priests, the sacrifices, the people, have stirred multitudinous new thoughts in the Boy tie becomes for a moment forgetful of His kin, conscious of higher and Diviner relations, and seeks light and sympathy where they were most likely to he found--in the Temple and with the doctors. It is an eminently natural and truthful incident. The Ideal Child, wise in His innocent simplicity, seeks the society of simple but learned age, feels at home in it, wonders only, when sought and found, that it could be in His mother’ s mind other than it was in His own. The light that streams from the question, “ Wist ye not that I must be among My Father’ s matters,” in His house, in search of His truth, mindful of His purposes? illumines the Youth and makes Him foreshadow the Man. For He, who as Boy, was anxious to be absorbed in His Father and His Father’ s affairs, became as Man the conscious abode of God. Here, indeed, emerges the sublimest and most distinctive feature of His personality. In Him, as in no other, God lived; He lived as no other ever did in God. Their communion was a union which authorized the sayings, “ I and the Father are one” ; “ He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father.” His consciousness was full of God, was consciousness of God. (Principal Fairbairn, D. D.) Glimpses of the Divine Childhood This beautiful and only glimpse of the Boyhood of our Saviour is full of interest. It enables us to behold Jesus on this memorable occasion through the medium of others’ feelings. We can often more vividly represent to ourselves a scene, and take in its meaning, when we are told what thoughts and feelings it stirred in the minds of actual spectators. By simple and natural touches the story before us fixes our thought upon Mary and others, but especially upon the mother, and the changing feelings of her heart during these few days. By the side of Mary, then, let us first approach, and study the behaviour of the Divine Child, so perplexing at the time to her, so charged with significance in the reflection of after-days, and now so full of light and holy beauty to all disciples of Jesus and students of His life. 1. The story opens with a powerful stroke of pathos. A child is lost! A mother’ s heart is thrown into agony. Several details left to be filled up by the imagination. Caravan had set out early in morning. A large group of relatives and friends of Joseph and Mary’ s house amidst the throng. Taken for granted that Jesus was among them until night began to fall, and it was time for Him to come to His parents’ tent to rest. Nightfall made the discovery all the more terrible. Let us picture to ourselves the state of His mother’ s mind during those three weary days that followed--perhaps not to the Temple that Joseph and Mary first bent their steps. Narrative seems to hint that they were quite at a loss to imagine where the Child was. At length, however, in the course of their search, their steps are directed to the Temple. There were connected with the sacred edifice a number of halls or class-rooms, where the Rabbis met and instructed their scholars. Amongst these Rabbis there arose from time to time true and weighty moral teachers, who directed attention to something more important than the curious mystical speculations and interpretations which form so large a part of the Talmud. Of these the most famous was Hillel, whose memory was quite fresh, and whose influence was still great in the Temple schools. There is little doubt that our Lord recognized a true spirit in this eminent Rabbi; and it has been shown that there are striking points of resemblance between their teachings. To that school Jesus went, and taking His seat among the scholars, proceeded to put His questions, and to listen to the teacher’ s answers; for this was the customary mode of instruction in the Jewish schools; and a great part of the rabbinical books consists of the answers to such questions. 2. Here, then, a scene opens before us in the Temple school which is impressed upon us as a very remarkable one. We are invited to look upon it through the eyes of the bystanders, who, we are told, were filled with wonder and astonishment. But what was so astonishing 7 What was it that made this Child the focus of every gaze--that drew upon Him the profound attention of bearded sages, of venerable brows, that awakened the curiosity of young and old? Not, probably, the fact that a Boy of twelve was to be found in such a place and occupation; for at that age He would be regarded by the Jews as “ a son of the law.” It was the extraordinary intelligence of His remarks and replies, His “ understanding,” i.e., His mental grasp, His insight into things. 3. Joseph and Mary coming in were likewise “ amazed” at the scene. In their case the wonder seems more difficult of explanation; and it is instructive to ponder the fact for a moment. Is it not often so, that parents or relatives are blind to that which is most significant in their children? Joseph and Mary must have been aware of the great destiny promised to Jesus; they could not possibly have forgotten all the Divine marks that were attached to His birth and infancy. And yet they were astonished when His destiny began to unfold itself before their eyes. Must we not all reproach ourselves with some such fault? Our eye rests so strongly on the outward, the circumstantial side of life that our interest is drawn away from the real and spiritual. 4. The contrast of the calmness of the Child with the astonishment of those around Him deepens our impression of the meaning of the scene. “ Why did ye seek Me? Did ye not know that I must be about My Father’ s business?” or, “ in My Father’ s house?” “ Where should you have expected to find Me, but in this chosen and beloved spot?” This sense seems to us natural, suggestive, appropriate. If we take the phrase in the wider sense, a meaning is yielded only less suggestive. But either way a profound devotion to God and to His kingdom is expressed in the language of the Divine Child--an absorption in these high thoughts as all-commanding and supreme over ordinary relations and affections. His words were not understood, we are told, by those nearest to Him in earthly relation. There was in their idea of life no key to unlock the enigma of this mysterious Child. But the words were deeply treasured and pondered over in the mother’ s heart, till Divine Providence, gradually unclosing this bud of Heavenly growth grafted on an earthly stock, into a flower of immortal beauty, brought the long-hidden meaning of the scene to light. 5. Thus early, then, we behold our Saviour in His Divine and native relations to His Father, and to the kingdom of spirit; thus early we trace the signs of His indelible consecration to the service in which He was to spend His days and to shed His blood, and through which He was to rise to be spiritual and universal Lord. But what a completeness it gives to the picture, and how are we touched on the side of our human affections when we read that “ Jesus went down with them, and came to Nazareth, and was subject to them.” Supremacy of His relations to His heavenly Father did not mean the forgetting or ignoring of lower relations. 6. Turn a parting glance at the scene, and read it, no longer by the light of other’ s eyes, but by the light which the Holy Spirit has given us through the word of the gospel. Let us be thankful for the ministry of children. All that is simple and innocent, inquiring and truth-loving in them, should remind us of the Divine Child and of His ministry to our souls. When tempted to lose ourselves in the materialism of the age, or in the busy cares or pleasures of the present world, let us think of Him as, in the Temple, He seems with uplifted finger to be saying, “ I was born to other things!” And so may grace be given us to follow Him, that we may be brought in the fellowship of the Spirit into childhood to God, and to dwell in the heavenly Temple of our Father, to go no more out for ever. (E. Johnson, M. A.) Nazareth Travellers tell us that the spot where Jesus grew up is one of the most beautiful on the face of the earth. Nazareth is situated in a secluded, cup-like valley amid the mountains of Zebulon, just where they dip down into the plain of Esdraelon, with which it is connected by a steep and rocky path. Its white houses, with vines clinging to their walls, are embowered amidst gardens and groves of olive, fig, orange, and pomegranate trees. The fields are divided by hedges of cactus, and enamelled with innumerable flowers of every hue. Behind the village rises a hill five hundred feet in height, from whose summit there is seen one of the most wonderful views in the world--the mountains of Galilee, with snowy Hermon towering above them to the north; the ridge of Carmel, the coast of Tyre, and the sparkling waters of the Mediterranean to the west; a few miles to the east, the wooded, cone like bulk of Tabor; and to the south the plain of Esdraelon, with the mountains of Ephraim beyond. The preaching of Jesus shows how deeply He had drunk into the essence of natural beauty and revelled in the changing aspects of the seasons. It was when wandering as a lad in these fields that He gathered the images of beauty which He poured out in His parables and addresses. It was on that hill that He acquired the habit of His after-life of retreating to the mountain-tops to spend the night in solitary prayer. The doctrines of His preaching were not thought out on the spur of the moment. They were poured out in a living stream when the occasion came, but the water had been gathering into the hidden well for many years before. In the fields and on the mountain-side He had thought them out during the years of happy and undisturbed meditation and prayer. (J. Stalker, L. A.) Luke 2:40 And the Child grew, and waxed strong in spirit.Our Lord’ s early years upon earth Notice a few things which are remarkable in our Lord’ s Childhood, and which are too often wanting in that of others. 1. His obedience to His earthly parents. 2. A childhood of privacy and seclusion. He was kept in the background, not paraded by His parents as an instance of precocious excellence or intellect. He drank in the pure breezes of heaven, and was in secret. 3. A genuine thirst for improvement (Luke 2:46, &c.). How unlike that raging appetite for mere amusement which begins in our days so early, and has turned the very literature of the young into a jest and plaything. What we seek is something to make us laugh, something which may present to us the ludicrous side of everything, and turn away from us the real and the sobering. What Christ sought at the age of twelve years was knowledge, and He sought that knowledge in the courts of His Father’ s house. 4. A spirit of docility. He sought knowledge even from men little qualified, indeed, to impart it, but who yet occupied the position to which it belonged to teach. 5. Christ’ s childhood was stamped with a sense of duty, and elevated by a lofty aim. A sense of His relation to God, of the meaning and responsibility of life, of a work to be done on God’ s earth in which He was Himself to be a fellow-worker with His Father--these motives had already dawned upon Him at that young age, and gave an unwonted seriousness to a childhood in all else so natural. 6. Notice the testimony which Christ’ s childhood bears to God’ s patience in working out His purposes; to what we may call the gradual character of God’ s works. “ In due time” is written upon all of them. 7. Our Lord’ s early life was the consecration, for all time, of what are regarded, by way of distinction, as the more secular and the humbler callings. (S. P. C. K. Sermons.) The holy Child Jesus Christ might have been made full-grown at once. Adam was, and our Lord is called “ the last Adam,” “ the second man” ; that is to say, Adam was a type or figure of Christ. One might have expected, therefore, that our Lord would be what Adam had been, a man sent into the world full-grown. Infancy, childhood, boyhood, are very humbling conditions. Why did Christ submit to them? 1. Our Lord’ s condescension is infinite, and therefore, in coming into the world, He desired to stoop as low as possible, in order to set us the more striking example of lowliness of mind. Therefore tie preferred, for His entrance into the world, the condition of an unconscious babe, and of a child dependent upon its parents, to that of a full-grown and independent man. 2. Our Lord, out of His infinite compassion for us, earnestly desired to sympathize with men in all their trials, and in every condition in which they can be placed, in eider that He might bless and comfort them by His sympathy. So He came in by the usual gate--infancy. 3. One can quite see this, that for a grown-up person never to have known childhood, a home, or a mother’ s care, would cut them off from all the most beautiful and tender associations of our nature. It makes a man tender, as no other thought can, to look back on his childhood and early home, on the strong interest which his parents used to take in him, and on the sacrifices which they were at all times ready to make for him. Now our Lord was to be infinitely tender, in order that He might attract the miserable and suffering to Himself; and He was to exhibit all the beauties and graces of which human nature is capable; and therefore it was that He willed to have a home of childhood, and to be dependent upon a mother’ s care, and to lisp His earliest prayers at a mother’ s knee, which is the way in which all of us first learn to pray. These experiences contributed to make His human soul tender. Concluding lessons: 1. Take to Him all your little troubles and trials in prayer, and assure yourselves that He is most ready to hear and help you. Why did He become a child, but to assure children of His sympathy with them? 2. Take Him for your example. Observe His love of God’ s house, His teachableness, His desire for instruction, His submission to His parents (while all the while He was their God), His growth in wisdom and in favour with God and man; and try to copy Him in these points. 3. Trust with all your heart in the goodness which He as a child exhibited, and which was perfect goodness, such as yours can never be. Only for the sake of that goodness of His will God forgive your faults. (Dean Goulburn.) The growth of children “ The Child grew.” Of course the Child grew. Every child grows. There is not a child in the world who is not older to-day than he was yesterday, and who, if he lives, will not be older to-morrow than he is to-day. And whatever needs to be done for a child while he is young as now ought to be done to-day. He will have outgrown the possibility--if not the need--of such doing for him when to-morrow is here. Childhood is quickly lost. It is not to be regained. Unless it is improved as it passes, it is unimproved for ever. A child grows by night and by day, whether he is cared for or neglected. Oh, how soon the child has outgrown the possibilities of training in the nursery, of a mother’ s training, of a father’ s training, of a teacher’ s training! And when he has outgrown all these, who but God can reach him? If you would do your work for your child, you must do it now--or never, Have that in mind with your every breath; for with every breath your child is growing away from his plastic and impressible childhood. (H. C. Trumbull.) No abasement in growth There is no abasement in the fact that Jesus grew as any other boy grows. The apple of June is perfect as a June apple, though it has not come to its maturity. The acorn is perfect as an acorn, just as the oak is perfect as an oak. Jesus was a perfect Boy, as He was a perfect Man. If Jesus was content to grow slowly, should not we? The mushroom may spring up in a night; it is many a year before the sturdy oak attains its full growth. (Sunday School Times.) The source of Christ’ s growth When one sees a river flowing deep and strong through a parched country, as the Ganges in India, he becomes desirous of knowing something about its source. He follows it up, and finds that it comes from the cold hills of the north, issuing it may be, in full flood from beneath a glacier. So the source of Jesus’ growth in spirit and wisdom is here told--“ The grace of God was upon Him.” (Sunday School Times.) Youthful piety of Christ There are three parts of our nature mentioned in the Bible--the body, the soul, the spirit. “ The body” is what the animals have in common with us; it is the part of us in which we feel hunger, thirst, and weariness--the part which is fed by food cud rested by sleep. “ The soul” means the feelings and affections; it is the part of us which feels pity for distress, fear of danger, anger at an insult, and so forth. “ The spirit” is that higher part of our nature, which makes us reasonable beings; it is by the action of our spirit that we think of God, set Him before us, pray to Him, fear Him, worship Him. It is, then, a great thing to say of any child, and it could only be said of a good and holy child, that he “ waxes strong in spirit.” It means not that he becomes taller, nimbler, cleverer, but that his conscience becomes more and more formed as he grows up, his will more steady in doing what is right and avoiding what is wrong, his prayers to God more earnest, his sense of God’ s presence more keen, his dread of sin stronger. Alas! it is the very opposite with children in general. Their conscience, which was once tender, becomes hardened as they get to know more; they soon shake off any dread of sin and the fear of God; their will weakly yields to temptation, until it becomes easy and natural to yield. And it is added, “ He was filled with wisdom.” The words imply that wisdom kept on flowing, like a running stream, into His human soul; there were, in His case, none of those thoughts of levity and folly, by which childhood is commonly marked. “ And the grace of God” (meaning both the favour of God, and the precious influence of His Holy Spirit) “ was upon Him.” When the sun shines out upon the dewdrops that cover the tender grass of spring in the early morning, how beautiful is each spangled bead of dew, glistening with all the colours of the rainbow t Such was the childhood of the Holy Child! The dews of God’ s Spirit rested upon Him without measure. And the sunshine of God’ s favour beamed out upon Him, as “ the Child of children,” in whom--and in whom alone of all children that had ever been born--God the Father was well pleased. How early can a child love God, yearn towards God, hope in God, trust in God? I cannot say. Probably much earlier than we suppose. Do not the youngest infants stretch their tiny arms, and smile graciously when their mother comes into the room? They are not too young to show that they love and trust their parents; I do not know why it should be impossible for them to love and trust their heavenly Father, especially if He should give His grace to them “ without measure,” as was the case with our Lord. Perhaps you say, “ It is impossible for a child in arms to understand or know anything about God.” How can any one be sure of that? It was foretold of John the Baptist, that he should be “ filled with the Holy Ghost, even from his mother’ s womb” ; and if this was the case with him, how much more must it have been the case with the Lord Jesus? Have you one single feeling of affection and trust towards your heavenly Father, as He had? Do you even wish to have some such feeling The wish is something, no, it is much; let it lead you to pray for the feeling, and in due time the feeling will come. If your earthly parents would deny you nothing that is good for you, which they had it in their power to give, “ how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him?” (Dean Goulburn.) Growth under ordinary events These words, applied by St. Luke first to John the Baptist and then to our Lord, simply express an everyday occurrence--what we habitually take for granted as the natural course of things. This very fact--that they are so simple, so natural, so completely on the level of our common life--gives them the rich meaning that they possess for us. For they teach us that the Divine method of life is quite different from what we should expect; that each man may find in and about him, in his endowments and in his environments, just what he requires for the accomplishment of his work. We need not go from our proper place in order to discipline ourselves for God’ s service; we need not strive after gifts which He has not entrusted to us, or forms of action which are foreign to our position, in order to do our part as members of His Church. It is enough that we grow and wax strong under the action of those forces by which He moves us within and without, if we desire to fulfil, according to the measure of our powers, the charge which He has prepared for us. Thus it was that John the Baptist, the stern, bold preacher, grew up in the desert according to the angel’ s message--a lonely boy, a lonely youth, until the days of his showing unto Israel, communing only with the severest forms of nature and with the most awful thoughts of God. Thus it was that Jesus lived in the calm seclusion of a bright upland valley, in the Jewish fellowship of a holy home, subject to His parents and in favour with God and man, until His hour came. In that silent discipline of thirty years, there was no anxious anticipation of the future, no wistful lingering on the past; the past, used to the utmost, was the foundation of the future. (Canon Westcott.) God’ s mode of training men We are always inclined to look for some joy or sorrow, as that which shall stir the energies of our souls; for some sharp sickness or bereavement, as that which shall make us trust more faithfully in God; for some blessing or deliverance, as that which shall bring us to love Him with tender devotion. But when these exceptional events happen, they do but reveal to us what we have already become; then, at length, when our eyes are opened, we see ourselves; then we know what we are; then we realize the value of little things, the abiding results of routine; then we marvel, it may be, to know assuredly that we despised Christ when He came to us in strange disguises; or it may be that we welcomed Him in the least of His little ones, or in the most insignificant of His workings. Great occasions do not make heroes or cowards; they simply unveil them to the eyes of men. Silently and imperceptibly, as we wake and sleep, we grow and wax strong, or we grow and wax weak; at last some crisis shows us what we have become. (Canon Westcott.) Great results from secret processes The facts of the material world help us to feel the reality of this still and secret process which is the universal law of life. The ground on which we stand, the solid rocks which lie beneath it, are nothing but the accumulated results of the action of forces which we observe in action still. A few drops of rain gather on the hillside, and find an outlet down its slope; grain by grain a channel is fashioned, fresh rills add their waters to the flowing stream, and at last the runlet which a stone might have diverted from its course has grown into a river which no human force can stem. The sapling is planted on an open ridge, straight and vigorous; season after season the winds blow through its branches; it bends and bends and rises again, but with ever-lessening power; and when years have gone by, and the sapling has become a tree, its strange distorted shape bears witness to the final power of the force which at each moment it seemed able to overcome. And so it is with all of us. From small beginnings flow the currents of our lives, from constant and unnoticed impulses we take our bias; the stream is ever gathering strength; the bend is ever being confirmed or corrected. At any time of this life, our character is represented by the sum of our past lives. There is not one act, not one purpose, which does not leave its trace, though we may be unable to distinguish and measure its value. There is not one drop which does not add something to the flowing river, not one branch which does not in some way shape the rising tree. The appointed duty, heartily or carelessly gone through, makes us weaker for the next effort. The unkind word spoken, or the kind word not spoken, makes us less tender when our love is next needed; the evil thing done, or the evil thought cherished, makes a vantage-ground for the tempter when he next assails us. The prayer neglected, or said with the lips only, makes it harder for us to seek God when we next desire to find Him. The Communion superstitiously slighted, or superstitiously frequented, makes it more and more difficult for us to see life transfigured by the brightness of a Divine presence. In this way it is that we grow and wax weak, happy only if some day of reckoning startles us by the sense of our loss, and if we are constrained to offer to God in the humblest spirit what remains. And, on the other hand, every faithful answer to the least claim upon our service, every manful contest for the right, every painful struggle with self-indulgence, every sore temptation met in the name and strength of Christ, every striving towards God in prayer and praise, is fruitful for the future--fruitful in self-sacrifice, in courage, in endurance, in the joy of Divine fellowship. (Canon Westcott.) Childhood disparaged by the ancients In those brief sketches of Christ which are called the Gospels, eighteen years of experience are wholly wanting. The best explanation of the omission is, that in that epoch, and in almost all past periods, child life was not a matter of importance. It did not enter largely into literature, nor into the category of the great things of the world. In some nations the death-day rather than the birthday was celebrated, because the latter period was associated with fame or learning or some other form of merit, while the birthday enjoyed no association of worth--it was only the period of all shapes of weakness. In the most of the ancient philosophies the reasonable soul did not come to the body until it was about twenty years old. According to one of the old Rabbis a man was free at twelve, might marry at eighteen or twenty, should acquire property until he was thirty, then intellectual strength should come, and at forty the profoundest wisdom should appear. Amid just what opinions of this nature the youth of Jesus was spent is not known, but at least this is true that He lived in an era when early life seemed to possess but small worth, and no scholar or biographer encumbered with such details his record or oration or poem. Not only do we know little about the early life of Jesus, but the early years of Caesar, and Virgil, and Cicero, and Tacitus lie equally withdrawn from the public gaze. Old biographies make their first chapter out of the actual beginnings of the public service. (David Swing.) An address to children on the Child Jesus The Child Jesus grew. He did not stand still. Although it was God Himself who was revealed to us in the life of Jesus Christ, yet this did not prevent Him from being made like unto us in all things, sin only excepted. And so in all things He is an example for us to imitate. Each one, whether old or young, must remember that progress, improvement, going on, advance, change into something better and better, wiser and wiser, year by year, is the only way of becoming like Christ, and therefore like God. The world moves, and you and all of us must move with it. God calls us all ever to something higher and higher, and that higher stage we must reach by steadily advancing towards it. There are three things especially which the text puts before us as those in which our Lord’ s earthly education, in which the advance and improvement of His earthly character, added to His youthful and childlike powers. 1. Strength of character. Christ waxed strong in spirit. What we all want is a stout heart to resist temptation, a strong hardy conscience which fixes itself on matters of real importance and will not trifle or waste its powers on things of no concern. We must earnestly seek this strength. It comes to those who strive after it. 2. Wisdom. To gain this--to have your mind opened, to take in all that your teachers can pour into it--you are sent to school. You need not be old before your time, but you must even now be making the best use of your time. These are the golden days which never come back to you, which if once lost can never be entirely made up. Seek, therefore, for wisdom, pray for it, determine to have it, and God who gives to those who ask for it, will give it to you. Try to gain it, as our Lord gained it when He was a child, by hearing and by asking questions, i.e., (a) by being teachable, humble, modest, and fixing your attention on what you have to learn; (b) by trying to know the meaning of what you learn, by cross- questioning yourselves, by inquiring right and left to fill up the blanks in your mind. 3. The grace or favour of God, or, as it says in Luke 2:52, the favour of God and man. Our Lord possessed God’ s favour always, but even in Him it increased more and more. It increased as He grew older, as He saw more and more of the work which was given Him to do; He felt more and more that God was His Father, and that men were His brothers, and that grace and loving-kindness was the best and dearest gift from God to man, and from man to man, and from man to God. He was subject to His parents. He did what they told Him; and so He became dear to them. He was kind, and gentle, and courteous to those about Him, so that they always liked to see Him when He came in and out amongst them. So may it be with you. Look upon God as your dear Father in heaven, who loves you, and who wishes nothing but your happiness. Look upon your schoolfellows and companions as brothers, to whom you must show whatever kindness and forbearance you can. Just as this beautiful building in which we are assembled is made up of a number of small stones beautifully carved, every one of which helps to make up the grace and beauty of the whole, so is all the state of the world made up of the graces and goodnesses not only of full-grown men and women, but of little children who will be, if they live, full-grown one day. (Dean Stanley.) The Child Jesus, a pattern for children 1. The Child Jesus was diligent scholar. He did not “ hate” to go to school. He did not neglect His tasks, or slur them over anyhow, or think, as perhaps some of you think, that getting out of school was the best part of the whole business. We might be quite sure that He diligently attended to the wise Rabbis who asked and answered questions, who uttered so many wise and witty proverbs, and told so many pretty stories, if only because He Himself was, in after years, so wise in asking and answering questions, and spoke so many proverbs and parables which the world will never let die. But we can do more and better than merely infer what a good scholar He was. We can see Him while He was yet a lad, going to school of His own accord, and staying in it when He might have been climbing the hills or running through the fields with His friends (Luke 2:41-46). 2. This good scholar was also a good son. The Hebrew boys of our Lord’ s time were very well bred. They were taught good manners as well as good morals. They were enjoined, both by their parents and their masters, to salute every one they met in the street, to say to him “ Peace be with thee.” To break this rule of courtesy, they were told, was as wrong as to steal. And the Boy Jesus was well brought up, and was full of courtesy, kindness, goodwill; for not only did He grow in favour with men in general, but He had a large circle of kinsfolk and friends who loved Him and were glad to have Him with them (Luke 2:44). We know, too, that He had never grieved His parents before, in His eagerness to learn, he let them go on their way home without Him. For when they had found Him in the Temple, they were so astonished that He should have given them the pain of seeking Him sorrowfully, that they cannot blame Him as for a fault, but can only ask Him why He had treated them thus. He must indeed have been a good son to whom His mother could speak as Mary spoke to Jesus. 3. He was also a good child of God. Always “ about His Father’ s business” --feeling that He must be about it, wherever He went, whatever He did. The one great thing He had to do, the one thing which above all others He tried to do, was to serve God His Father; not simply to become wise, and still less to please Himself, but to please God by growing wise in the knowledge and obedience of His commandments. (S. Cox, D. D.) Superstitious reverence of Christ’ s person guarded against After informing us that Jesus was filled with wisdom, the evangelist adds, that the grace of God was upon Him. Now as the grace of God is not said to have been in but upon Him, it seems intended to express something not internal, but obvious to the senses. Hence it has been supposed that here the grace of God denotes a Divine gracefulness. In confirmation of this opinion it has been said, that in several passages there are allusions to something highly graceful, dignified, and impressive in His manner. Thus, the officers of the chief priest declared that never man spake like this man; and even the inhabitants of Nazareth were delighted at first with the words full of grace which He uttered. It is particularly to be remarked, however, that neither in the four Gospels, nor in any of the other books of the New Testament, has any description been given of the personal appearance of our Saviour. There is not, indeed, to be found the slightest allusion to the subject. Yet, of the founder of every other religion, whether true or false, some description, however concise, has been preserved. Thus, we are told that Moses, when a child, was extremely beautiful. Tim followers of Mahomet have described their pretended prophet in a minute manner; and the persons of most of the eminent sages of antiquity have been delineated by their disciples. But of the external appearance of Jesus no record is left. Why this singular omission? Were not the apostles of Jesus attached to their Master? Yes: their attachment was stronger and more disinterested than the world ever witnessed, for they suffered everything and sacrificed everything for His sake. But the omissions of inspired writers are never to be ascribed to oversight, but to the design of an over-ruling Providence. Nothing, therefore, was to be inserted in the Sacred Records concerning Jesus which might lead to a superstitious veneration of His person, and thus draw away the attention of His followers from His sublime doctrines and precepts, and the perfection of His character. (James Thomson, D. D.) The development of Christ through the influences of outward nature The Ebionites thought the natural humanity of our Saviour’ s early life unworthy of a Divine person, and denied His essential divinity. To them, Christ was, till His baptism, a common man. It was at His baptism that He received from God, as an external gift, the consciousness of His Divine mission and special powers for it. We, however, do not hold the necessary unworthiness of human nature as a habitation of the Divine. We hold, with the old writer, that man is “ the image of God.” Hence instead of looking upon Christ’ s youth and childhood and His common life as derogatory to His glory, we see in them the glorification of all human thought and action in every stage of life. The whole of humanity is penetrated by the Divine. This is the foundation-stone of the gospel of Christ. On it rest all the great doctrines of Christianity, on it reposes all the noble practise of Christian men, and we call it the Incarnation. But this re-uniting of the divinity and humanity took place in time, and under the limitations which are now imposed upon humanity. The Divine Word was self-limited on its entrance our into nature, in some such sense as our spirit and thought are limited by union with body. Consequently, we should argue that there was a gradual development of the person of Christ; and this conclusion, which we come to a priori, is supported by the narrative in the Gospels. We are told that Jesus “ increased in wisdom,” that He “ waxed strong in spirit,” that He “ learned obedience,” that He was “ made perfect through suffering.” This is our subject--the development of Christ. And, first, we are met with a difficulty. The idea of development seems to imply imperfections passing into perfection--seems to exclude the idea of original perfection. But there are two conceivable ideas of development; one, development through antagonism, through error, from stage to stage of less and less deficiency. This is our development; but it is such because evil has gained a lodgment in our nature, and we can only attain perfection through contest with it. But there is another kind of development conceivable, the development of a perfect nature limited by time. The plant is perfect as the green shoot above the earth--it is all it can be then; it is more perfect as the creature adorned with leaves and branches, and it is all it can be then; it reaches its full perfection when the blossom breaks into flower. Such was the development of Christ. He was the perfect child, the perfect boy, the perfect youth, the perfect flower of manhood. A second illustration may make the matter clearer. The work of an inferior artist arrives at a certain amount of perfection through a series of failures, which teach him where he is wrong. Such is our development. The work of a man of genius is very different. He has seen, before he touches pencil, the finished picture. His first sketch contains the germ of all. His work is perfect in its several stages. Such was Christ’ s development--an orderly, faultless, unbroken development, in which humanity, freed from its unnatural companion, evil, went forward according to its real nature. It was the restoration of humanity to its original integrity, to itself, as it existed in the idea of God. Think, then, of His development through the influence of outward nature. From the summit of the hill in whose bosom Nazareth lay, there sweeps one of the widest and most varied landscapes to be seen in Palestine. It is impossible to over-estimate the influence which this changing scene of beauty had upon the mind of the Saviour as a child. The Hebrew feeling for nature was deep and extended. By care, then, alone, the Child Jesus was prepared to feel the most delicate shades of change in the aspect of outward nature. But as He was not only Hebrew but the type of pure humanity, we may, without attributing to Him anything unnatural to childhood, impute to Him the nobler feelings which are stirred in the Western and Northern races by the modes of natural beauty. (Stopford A. Brooke, MA.) The early development of Jesus I. “ The Child grew.” Two pregnant facts, lie was a child, and a child that grew in heart, in intellect, in size, in grace, in favour with God. Not a man in child’ s years. No hotbed precocity marked the holiest of infancies. The Son of Man grew up in the quiet valley of existence--in shadow, not in sunshine, not forced. II. This growth took place in three particulars-- 1. In spiritual strength. I instance one single evidence of strength in the early years of Jesus: I find it in that calm, long waiting of thirty years before He began His work. 2. In wisdom. Distinguish wisdom from (1) information, (2) talent. Love is required for wisdom--the love which opens the heart and makes it generous. Speaking humanly, the steps by which the wisdom of Jesus was acquired were two-- (a) The habit of inquiry. (b) The collision of mind with mind. Both these we find in this anecdote: His parents found Him with the doctors in the Temple, both hearing and asking them questions. 3. In grace. And this in three points-- (1) The exchange of an earthly for a heavenly home. “ My Father’ s business,” “ My Father’ s house.” (2) Of an earthly for a heavenly parent. (3) The reconciliation of domestic duties (Luke 2:51). (F. W. Robertson, M. A.) Apocryphal stories of the Infancy The Holy Spirit of God must have touched Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John with the spirit of “ selection,” which saved them from such miracle-mongering. For Christ--the Christ that I adore--rises above these pitiful tales. (George Dawson.) A bishop’ s dream of our Lord’ s childhood There was once--as Luther tells us--a pious, godly bishop who had often earnestly prayed that God would show him what Jesus was like in His youth. Now once the bishop had a dream, and in his dream he saw a poor carpenter working at his trade, and beside him a little boy gathering up chips. Then came in a maiden clothed in green, who called them both to come to the meal, and set bread and milk before them. All this the bishop seemed to see in his dream, standing behind the door that he might not be seen. Then the little boy began and said, “ Why does that man stand there? Will he not come in also, and eat with us?” And this so frightened the bishop that he woke. But he need not have been frightened, for does not Jesus say, “ If any man hear My voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and sup with him, and he with Me.” And whether the dream be true or not, we know that Jesus in His childhood and youth looked and acted like other children, “ in fashion like a man,” “ yet without sin.” (Archdeacon Farrar.) St. Edmund’ s vision of the Child Jesus There was once a boy whose name was Edmund Rich, and who is called St. Edmund of Canterbury; and his brother tells us that once, when, at the age of twelve, he had gone into the fields from the boisterous play of his companions, he thought that the Child Jesus appeared unto him, and said, “ Hail, beloved one!” And he, wondering at the beautiful child, said, “ Who art Thou, for certainly thou art unknown to me?” And the Child Jesus said, “ How comes it that I am unknown to thee, seeing that I sit by thy side at school, and wherever thou art, there do I go with thee? Look on My forehead, and see what is there written.” And Edmund looked, and saw the name “ Jesus.” “ This is my name,” said the child; “ write it on thy heart and it shall protect thee from evil.” Then He disappeared, on whom the angels desire to look, leaving the little boy Edmund with passing sweetness in his heart. (Archdeacon Farrar.) Jerome’ s love for the Child Jesus There lived, fifteen hundred years ago, a saint whose name was Jerome, and he loved so much the thought of the Child Christ, that he left Rome, and went and lived for thirty long years in a cave at Bethlehem, close by the cavern-stable in which Christ was born. And when men wished to invite him by earthly honours to work elsewhere, he said, “ Take me not away from the cradle where my Lord was laid. Nowhere can I be happier than there. There do I often talk with the Child Jesus, and say to Him, ‘ Ah, Lord I how can I repay Thee?’ And the Child answers, ‘ I need nothing. Only sing thou Glory to God, and peace on earth.”’ And when I say, ‘ Nay I but I must yield Thee something’ ; the Holy Child replies, ‘ Thy silver and thy gold I need not. Give them to the poor. Give his only thy sins to be forgiven.’ And then do I begin to weep and say, ‘ Oh, Thou blessed Child Jesus, take what is mine, and give me what is Thine!’” Now in this way, by the eye of faith, you may all see the Child Jesus, and unseen, yet ever near, you may feel His presence, and He may sit by your side at school, and be with you all day to keep you from harm, and to drive away bad thoughts and naughty tempers, and send His angels to watch over you when you sleep. (Archdeacon Farrar.) Jesus the Friend of children Once there was carried into a great hospital a poor little ragged miserable boy, who had been run over in the streets and dreadfully hurt. And all night he kept crying and groaning in his great pain? and at last a good youth, who lay in the bed next to him, said, “ My poor little fellow, won’ t you pray to Jesus to ease your pain? “ But the little wretched sufferer had never heard anything at all about Jesus, and asked who Jesus was. And the youth gently told him that Jesus was Lord of all, and that He had come down to die for us. And the boy answered, “ Oh, I can’ t pray to Him, He’ s so great and grand, and He would never hear a poor street-boy like me; and I don’ t know how to speak to Him.” “ Then,” said the youth, “ won’ t you just lift your hand to Him out of bed, and when He passes by He will see it, and will know that you want Him to be kind to you, and to ease your pain?” And the poor, crushed, suffering boy lifted out of the bed his little brown hand, and soon afterwards he ceased to groan; and when they came to him in the morning the hand and the poor thin arm were still uplifted, but they were stiff and cold; for Jesus had indeed seen it, and heard that mute prayer of the agony of that strayed lamb of His fold, and He had grasped the little, soiled, trembling hand of the sufferer, and had taken him away to that better, happier home, where He will love also to make room for you and me, if we seek Him with all our hearts, and try to do His will. (Archdeacon Farrar.) Religion in childhood “I can never,” said the late Rev. George Burder, “ forget my birthday, June 5, 1762. It was on a Sabbath; and after tea, and before family worship, my father was accustomed to catechize me, and examine what I remembered of the sermons of the day. That evening he talked to me very affectionately, and reminded me that it was high time I began to seek the Lord, and to become truly religious. He particularly insisted upon the necessity of an interest in Christ Jesus, and showed me that, as a sinner, I must perish without it, and recommended me to begin that night to pray for it. After family worship, when my father and mother used to retire to their closets for private devotion, I also went to my chamber, the same room in which I was born, and then, I trust, sincerely and earnestly, and, as far as I can recollect, for the first time poured out my soul to God, beseeching Him to give me an interest in Christ, and desiring, above all things, to be found in Him. I am now an old man, but reflecting on that evening, I have often been ready to conclude, that surely I was then, though a little child, brought to believe in Christ.” Christ our example in youth In what respects, then, is the youth of CHRIST AN EXAMPLE TO US 1. First, it is an example to us of personal piety, and that from our earliest years. “ The grace of God was upon Him,” is the evangelist’ s expression in our text; whilst, a few verses lower down, we have him saying, “ And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man.” 2. Again, in the youth of Christ we have an example of diligence in the use of means for our mental progress and improvement. “ He was filled with wisdom,” says our text. And after His Visit to the Temple, it is said again, “ He increased in wisdom.” The youth of Christ, then, we consider, may fairly be cited as furnishing us with an example of the dignity, and value, and importance of intellectual culture. 3. We note next that Christ in His youth was an example of reverent submission to parental authority. “ And He went down with them, and came to Nazareth, and was subject to them.” 4. Further, Christ in His youth is an example to us of the duty of a heartfelt and entire consecration of ourselves to the Divine service. “ Must ye not that I must be about My Father’ s business?” was the question of the Holy One to His parents, when they found Him in the Temple. 5. Once more, Christ in His youth is an example to us of patient and contented acquiescence in our providential lot however adverse, however obscure, however disappointing to the expectations which our friends may have formed for us, or which we, in our foolish pride, may be tempted to form for ourselves. (D. Moore, M. A.) Luke 2:41-42 And when He was twelve years old.Making a Jewish boy a son of the Law The following description refers to ceremonies now practised:--“ A few days ago I attended a very interesting service in a Jewish synagogue. A boy just twelve years old was brought by his father to be admitted as a member of the synagogue; there were present the parents of the boy, his brothers and sisters, his friends, and some few strangers. After several ceremonies had been performed, the priests read a portion of the law in Hebrew; the boy then stepped forward to the desk or platform, near the centre of the building, and read from a roll of parchment, in a clear distinct voice, a short psalm. A pause ensued, and then the old man addressed the boy in a few brief sentences, telling him that he had attained to years of discretion, and knew the difference between right and wrong, great responsibility rested on him; that it was his duty to follow the good and shun the evil; that it became him to show that the instruction he had received had not been given in vain; that he must diligently practise that which he knew to be right; be obedient to his parents, kind and affectionate to his brothers and sisters, charitable to those who needed his help, and faithful to the religion he had been instructed in. Then, placing his hand on the boy’ s head, he prayed earnestly that the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, would bless the lad, would preserve him from danger and from sin, and make him a wise and good man, if he should be spared to enjoy length of days; or, if his life should be short, that he might be admitted to the presence of God in heaven.” (Biblical Things not Generally Known.) The Holy Family on pilgrimage Every year they went up to Jerusalem. Very pleasant must their journey have been. Very different was it from the journeys we make in this Western isle. No wide road led from Nazareth to Jerusalem. The eighty miles of ground that stretched between the village and the city was only crossed by narrow paths. The journey had to be made on foot. Here and there would be a mule carrying some one too feeble to walk the whole distance. Each village on the route would furnish its little cluster of pilgrims, and as the new-comers mingled with those who were already in the pilgrim band, pleasant would be the greetings passing from one to another. We can picture them to ourselves as they wind through the valleys and at times cross the brow of a projecting hill. We can hear their voices raised in song, raised so that the hills resound, and the awakened echoes bid you think that the mountains are clapping their hands for joy. You perhaps have noticed in the Psalms as they are given in the Bible, here and there, the heading, “ Song of Degrees.” They are the psalms which the pilgrims sang at they stepped along--processional hymns we might call them. Turn to two of them (Psalms 122:1-9.) and see how wonderfully fitting are their words for that exulting singing which the pilgrims would encourage one another to give utterance to. “ We can well imagine Psalms 122:1-9, being sung by the pilgrims when first the walls and palaces of the Holy City appeared in sight. The Gospel tells that when Jesus was twelve years old He was for the first time taken by His parents on pilgrimage to Jerusalem. You may be sure that He would take a boy’ s delight in the journey. It was one which would enable Him to open His eyes upon His Father’ s beautiful world, and to see beyond the blue mountains which always seemed so mysterious in the distance as He looked upon them from the vale of Nazareth. We may be sure that He would be on the look-out with all a boy’ s eagerness, for the first view of the distant towers of the Holy City. He would enjoy, too, the companionship of the other pilgrim-boys. There were, as the story itself tells us, many of His kinsfolk among the pilgrim band, and He would pass from one group to another, and be welcomed by all whom He approached. When the solemn days at Jerusalem were ended, the company of pilgrims started back for their homes. The Child Jesus tarried behind in Jerusalem. You all know how Joseph and Mary sought Him. I will not now ask you to contemplate the scene in the Temple portico, where He was at length discovered. It is a scene of great beauty, and one on which the thoughts of Christian teachers and Christian artists have reverently pondered ever since it has been described on the Gospel page. But the story of our Lord’ s pilgrimage is one on which our thoughts may well rest, one which we may well take to our homes and ponder over. We have in it an example set which we should never lose sight of. When twelve years old, children were considered old enough to go with their parents to the great worship of the whole year at Jerusalem. The way of the pilgrimage was made glad with songs such as would stir the young heart. In our Christian services, too, we ought to think of children just as did the dwellers in the Holy Land, in their Jewish Services. Again, all life long we should be conscious that we are but sojourners and pilgrims upon earth. “ Here we have no continuing city, but we seek one to come.” (H. N. Grimley, M. A.) Important things wrought silently and secretly You have, perhaps, seen a beautiful rose, soon after it has unfolded its blossom. You looked at it yesterday, as you passed it in the garden, or watered it in the window, and it was only a rosebud, a little knot of fragrant petals, wrapped up together and clinging to one another. You visit it to-day, and you find that during the night a change has taken place. The knot has untied itself, the petals have separated from one another, and now form, not a knot, but a little cup, in which are some drops of the morning dew, a cup more delicately tinted than the finest porcelain, and breathing forth delicious odours. The rose has just opened its breast to the sun. But how long a time has it taken to bring about this result! First, there was the planting the root, which lay under the soil all the winter, and showed no sign of life. But though it showed no sign of life, it was not dead. Nursed for a time by the warmth and moisture of the earth, it was bursting underground; and in the spring it pushed up a little green sprout, which very gradually became a stem, and the stem grew taller every day, and at length a bud formed as the crown of it. And the bud swelled and swelled day by day, and at length one morning you found it with its breast open as I have described. And all this was done quite secretly, without any noise to call attention to it. Now, in the Song of Solomon, our Lord, speaking of Himself by the mouth of the prophet, calls Himself “ the Rose of Sharon.” And in Isaiah it is foretold of Christ, “ He shall grow up before Him” (i.e., before God) “ as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground.” And this opening of the rose is something like the opening of our Lord’ s human soul, when He reached the age of twelve. Up to that period the Gospel history is quite silent as to anything thought, or said, or done by Him. No doubt much was going on in His human mind; no doubt He had many thoughts and feelings, all of them holy, pure, and beautiful, the exact model of what a child’ s thoughts and feelings ought to be; but God has screened them from us, and not been pleased to tell us what they were. At twelve years old, however, the bud unfolds itself; our blessed Lord becomes fully conscious who He is; and we hear Him speaking and calling God His Father, and are allowed a glimpse into His mind and thoughts. And what beautiful fragrant thoughts they are! Do not estimate the importance of events, then, by the noise they make in the world. The events which startle us most are not always those of greatest consequence. Men often stare and gaze at that which is the least worthy of attention. What is it, think you, which interests the holy angels most? a great battle? a great triumph? the fall of a great city or a great empire? Rather it is the growth and progress of God’ s kingdom in the hearts of single persons--the battle against sin which this man is fighting in Christ’ s strength, the triumph over sin which that man is winning by Christ’ s grace; in a word, the inner life of men, the life of the immortal spirit--not that life which is acted in history, and related by historians. And the better and holier we become, the more shall we be interested in what interests God and holy angels. (Dean Goulburn.) On the way to Jerusalem The herdsmen of Nazareth were ignorant and poor; still they complied with the law, and at ]east once every year went up to Jerusalem after the custom of the feast. In the procession on one such occasion there was a family, the head of which was a plain, serious-looking middle-aged man, with whom the world has since become acquainted as Joseph. His wife, Mary, was then about twenty-seven years of age, gentle, modest, sweet-spoken, of fair complexion, with eyes of violetblue, and hair half brown, half gold. She rode a donkey. James, Joses, Simon, and Jude, full-grown sons of Joseph, walked with their father. A child of Mary, twelve years old, walked near her. It is not at all likely that the group attracted Special attention from their fellow-travellers. “ The peace of the Lord be with you!” they would say in salute, and have return in kind. More than eighteen hundred years have passed since that obscure family made that pious pilgrimage. Could they come back and make it now, the singing, shouting, and worship that would go with them would be without end; not Solomon, in all his glory, nor Caesar, nor any, or all of the modern kings, would have such attendance. Let us single out the Boy, that we may try to see Him as He was--afoot like His brethren, small, growing, and therefore slender. His attire was simple: on His head a white handkerchief, held in place by a cord, one corner turned under at the forehead, the other corners loose. A tunic, also white, covered Him from neck to knees, girt at the waist. His arms and legs were bare; on his feet were sandals of the most primitive kind, being soles of ox-hide attached to the ankles by leathern straps. He carried a stick that was much taller than Himself. The old painters, called upon to render this childish figure on canvas, would have insisted upon distinguishing it with a nimbus at least; some of them would have filled the air over its head with cherubs; some would have had the tunic plunged into a pot of madder: the very courtierly amongst them would have blocked the way of both mother and son with monks and cardinals. The Boy’ s face comes to me very clearly. I imagine Him by the roadside on a rock which He has climbed, the better to see the procession winding picturesquely through the broken country. His head is raised in an effort at far sight. The light of an intensely brilliant sun is upon His countenance, which in general cast is oval and delicate. Under the folds of the handkerchief I see the forehead, covered by a mass of projecting sunburned blond hair, which the wind has taken liberties with and tossed into tufts. The eyes are in shade, leaving a doubt whether they are in brown, or violet like His mother’ s; yet they are large and healthfully clear, and still retain the parallelism of arch between brow and upper lid, usually the characteristic of children and beautiful women. The nose is of regular inward curve, joined prettily to a short upper lip by nostrils just full enough to give definition to transparent shadows in the corners. The mouth is small, and open slightly, so that through the scarlet freshness of its lines I catch a glimpse of two white teeth. The cheeks are ruddy and round, and only a certain squareness of chin tells of years this side the day the Magi laid their treasures at His feet. Putting face and figure together, and mindful of the attitude of interest in what is passing before Him, the Lad as I see Him on the rock is handsome and attractive. When the journey shall have ended, and His mother made Him ready for the court of the Temple, He may justify a more worshipful description; we may then see in Him the promise of the Saviour of men in the comeliness of budding youth, His sad destiny yet far in the future. (Author of “ Ben Hur.”) The silence of Scripture instructive There is inspiration in the silence of Scripture. The Holy Spirit records only this one incident in the life of Jesus from His infancy to the beginning of His ministry. He thus teaches that quietness and modesty are the best ornaments of youth. And by the special character of this one incident which He has chosen to record, He teaches that the first duty of children is to resort to God, in His House, and in His appointed means of religious instruction and grace; and the second, to be subject to parents and others who are over them in the Lord. (Bishop Chris. Wordsworth.) Religious training As soon as the Child Jesus was old enough to join in public worship, His parents took Him with them to the Temple. It was not enough to set Him a good example. They proposed to train Him in the right way. Whatever a child ought to do, his parents ought to see that he does do. If he likes to do it, so much the better. If he does not like to do it, so much the more need is there that his parents should make him do it. Prayer and praise and reverence and devotion, and obedience and right being and right doing in all things at home, and worship and attentive hearing in the House of God, are duties which parents ought to see that their children attend to. If the children fail in these things, the parents cannot count themselves free of responsibility of blame. (H. C. Trumbull.) Luke 2:43 When they had fulfilled the days The gospel of the Childhood We notice in the Child Jesus-- 1. A holy disposition. It was this which led His mother to bring Him with her to the Temple, and which led Him to tarry there after His mother had gone away. A holy disposition is the source and fountain of all goodness: the soft wax out of which is moulded the image of love, purity, obedience James 3:17). 2. A love for God’ s house. He loved the Temple far better than the forum or market-place. He willingly remained in the house of His heavenly Father--the attribute of a good Son. 3. A desire for holy conversation. He was found not playing with other boys; not engaged in idle sports: but conversing with the old men in the Temple; listening to words of soberness, truth, and wisdom. 4. A deep sense of spiritual relationship. Loving and obedient as He was to His earthly parents, yet He placed His spiritual Father before them. As says Augustine, He loved the Creator before the generator. 5. A loving reverence towards His parents. He was subject to them. Who? To whom? God to man. Humility seen in its highest power. : The child is ever the father of the man. Let us take care to form and fashion the child-minds committed to our keeping after this glorious and pure model. (William of Auvergne.) Filial obedience Our Lord furnishes us with a striking example of filial obedience. He was true God, the Creator and Lord of all; yet He submits Himself to His mother after the flesh, and to His foster-father also, for our imitation. From His holy example let children learn, in relation to their parents-- 1. To love them honestly, sincerely, devotedly; to repay them somewhat for the great love which their parents have expended upon themselves. 2. To answer them respectfully. 3. To render them honest obedience. (Ephesians 6:1-2; Colossians 3:20.) The disobedient child makes the sinful man. 4. To succour them in need. It is dreadful ingratitude to do nothing for those who have done so much for us. Our blessed Lord had a care for His mother even on the cross. A noble Roman lady ministered of her breast to her mother in prison. Remember, finally, that filial love ever commands a blessing. (J. Clichtove.) Revelation of perfect child-life The life of the child is threefold. It is lived not in the world; it is the life of home, and church, and school. Think of Jesus in His child-life as a pattern for Christian children. I. HOME LIFE. 1. Obedience to parents. This is a prime principle in home life--the germ of all other obedience, social and national A habit of life which is needful, in order that we may be led to obedience to Christ. 2. Subjection to home authority. Too much self-will now-a-days in children; they are impatient of restraint, want to be their own masters, to strike out walks of life when very young. Our Lord probably wrought at His reputed father’ s trade. Anyhow, He was subject to His parents, i.e. (1) Never gainsaid their authority. (2) Never crossed their wishes. (3) Never questioned their right to His time. (4) Never murmured or rebelled against them in word or deed. II. CHURCH LIFE. 1. Religion is for children as well as for those grown up. Children are members of Christ’ s Church, and should be trained as such. 2. Like the Jews, let us early teach children Holy Scripture. We are more favoured than they, in having the gospel to impart to our little ones. 3. Child-life is passed, as it were, between the font and the holy table. With confirmation child-life, strictly speaking, ends. 4. Let the child ever be taught to look forward with longing and hope to the time when he may go up to the great Christian feast, Holy Communion. 5. Let religious duties be made a custom, so that, as with Jesus, they may be instinctively kept up in later years of manhood. III. SCHOOL LIFE.. Education a question of the day. Religious education the only legitimate form for a Christian child. But the child’ s part is in accepting and seeking knowledge. 1. Children must be content to learn. Teaching is necessary. Even Jesus received instruction. 2. Children should be encouraged to inquire into things. (Thos. H. Barnett.) Ungrudging service “ When they had fulfilled the days” --St. Joseph and the blessed Virgin did not only attend the Passover, which was celebrated on the fourteenth day of the first month at even, but stayed in Jerusalem also all the days of the feast of unleavened bread; and thus did not leave the city to return home till the afternoon of the eighth day after their arrival. They were not in duty bound to stay so long; they might have gone back sooner without doing anything wrong, provided that, for all the days of the feast which followed the Passover they had been careful not to eat any leavened bread at their own home. But devout people, as they were, do not consider how little of their time they can give to God without doing wrong, but give Him as much as ever they can, and delight in worshipping Him. Think of this, when you are tempted to shorten your prayers, or to drop for the day your reading of Holy Scripture, or to feel the hours of Sunday a restraint and a weariness, and to long that they would fly faster. Prayer and Scripture and Sunday are only dull because your heart is not in them, because you do not try to throw your mind into them, and so to create for yourself an interest in them. If your heart were in them, be sure you would find them the purest of all pleasures, and wish you had a longer time to give to them, not a shorter. (Dean Goulburn.) Passover duties and employments It will be interesting to know how St. Joseph and St. Mary spent the days which they are here said to have “ fulfilled,” especially when we remember that they had the Holy Child with them, whose human mind, we may be sure, would drink in eagerly everything which He saw in the Temple worship. Where, then, in the first place, did they live during these days? Some of the country people who came up to keep the Passover were accommodated in private houses. This was the case with our Lord and His disciples, who ate together His last Passover in a private house, to which He directed them by the token of a man carrying a pitcher of water, who should enter into it. It was usual in these cases for the guests to leave behind them, as a kind of payment for their accommodation, the skin of the lamb, and the utensils employed in cooking it. But very often such accommodation was not to be found; every inn and private house in Jerusalem was quite full, and in this case people from the country were obliged to lodge without the walls in a tent which they brought with them. Perhaps St. Joseph and St. Mary may have been all the more ready to do this, because, having the Holy Child with them, whose life had already been sought by those in power, they may have thought it prudent not to be seen in the city more than was absolutely necessary. St. Joseph would have to go to the Temple on the afternoon of the fourteenth of Abib to kill his Passover lamb, and probably he would take our Lord with him. The Holy Child watched the slaughter of the lamb, as the blood gushed forth from the wound into the golden cup held by one of the priests to receive it, and was then splashed out in one jet at the foot of the altar of burnt-offering. Then they returned to their tent, carrying the carcase of the lamb with them, and prepared the supper, of which, probably, as their household must have been too small for the lamb, and as ten people at least were required to make a Passover company, some of St. Joseph’ s family or neighbours partook with them. The first thing would be to roast the lamb, which was usually done by running two skewers of pomegranate wood, one lengthwise through the body of the creature, and another crossing it through the breast and forelegs, so that the lamb had the appearance of being crucified, and then placing it carefully in the midst of an oven, the bricks of which were made red-hot, but not allowing it to touch the sides. Then they would spread the table, and place on the sideboard, ready at hand, a plate of unleavened bread (large thin biscuits), another of bitter herbs, such as endive, or wild lettuce, and a vessel containing a thick sauce, made of the consistency of clay, to remind them of the brickmaking in Egypt, into which sauce everything eaten at the supper was to be dipped. Last would come the partaking of the supper. St. Joseph, as head of the family, would take a cup of red wine in his hand, and, after saying a grace, taste it and pass it round. Then the herbs were placed on the table and partaken of; then the unleavened bread; and, that being done, the roasted lamb was brought in and placed before the head of the family. But before it was eaten, a second cup of wine was filled; and then it was customary for some child (perhaps, in this case, it may have been our Lord Himself) to ask the head of the house, “ What meaneth this service?” In reply, the reason of keeping the Passover was recited, &c., after which Psalms 123:1-4; Psalms 114:1-8. were sung. Then the lamb was carved and eaten; a third and a fourth cup of wine succeeded; and then all was concluded by singing Psa_115:-18. (Dean Goulburn.) Luke 2:44-45 And they sought Him among their kinsfolk Out of company with Jesus It seems scarcely credible that that fond mother--that model of what a mother ought to be--could have gone a whole day’ s journey without Jesus; but she did. And one can understand too how she fell into this error. She had a great many things to think about. She had been meeting a good many friends at the feast. Those were stirring times. People had been coming up from all parts of Judaea and Galilee with tidings of an upheaving in the minds of the people and a general expectation was pervading the whale population; a hope of approaching liberty; a desire to break the tyrant thrall of Rome. So, doubtless, there was a good deal to talk about, and no doubt the Virgin Mary was deeply interested in what she heard. Joseph, too, would have a good deal to communicate to those with whom he came in contact. So they wore very busy, and very interested; and in their business and in their thronging interest they forgot the absence of the Lord Jesus Christ, and they went for a whole day’ s journey concluding that He was with them when He was net. Let us ask ourselves, “ How is it that Christians lose the sense of the fellowship of Jesus?” What are the dangers we have most to guard against in this respect? I. The danger arising from WITH OUR FELLOW-MEN. II. The danger arising from . I do not for a moment mean to charge this against the blessed mother of our Lord. At the same time, the circumstances of the case suggest such a possibility, and the possibility suggests a lesson to ourselves. III. The danger of losing the consciousness of the presence of Christ IN , is a danger, I believe, that specially belongs to this day. IV. The danger OF LOSING CHRIST IN HIS SERVICE. Work for Christ has its own peculiar dangers. (W. H. M. H. Aitken, M. A.) Religious supposition “ Supposing Him to have been of the company” --what a pity they did not make sure! Have we got beyond a slowuncertain, “ I hope,” “ I suppose Jesus is with me” ? If you must suppose, suppose He is not with you. Suppose there is no home and no welcome for you at the journeys end? Of whatever else you may be uncertain, be sure about this. Where did they lose Him? Not in Nazareth, but in the city. It is sadly easy to lose Christ in a great city with all its pleasures and blandishments. This city is the sepulchre of many a young man’ s piety, the end of many a parent’ s hopes. Jesus is lost since you came to the city, and you are likely to be lost too, unless you find Him again. They lost Him at a feast. Where the company of Jesus is put in peril stop from the feast. They lost Him in a crowd. How many miss Jesus in the noise and bustle! Be resolute to have your quiet hours. Seek first the kingdom of heaven. But they turned back and sought Him. Jesus is lost and Jesus must be found. Have you sought Him? Like Joseph and Mary, your way lies in another direction. Break away from everything. Go after Jesus until you find Him. (J. JacksonWray.) “ Supposing Him to have been in the company” I. THIS WAS A MOST NATURAL . 1. Christ’ s parents did not expect to find Him wandering alone. He loved society. Jesus was not one whose company would be shunned because of His ill-manners; rather would it be courted because of the sweetness of His disposition. He would not make Himself disagreeable, and then crown that disagreeableness by stealing away from those whom He had vexed. They knew the sweetness of their dear child’ s character and the sociableness of His disposition, and, therefore, they supposed Him to have been in the company. 2. They never suspected that He would be found in any wrong place. We never look for Jesus where a question of morals might be raised, for He is undefiled. Let His example be followed by all in this. II. THIS BROUGHT THEM GREAT SORROW. From this I gather that, with regard to the Lord Jesus, we ought to leave nothing as a matter of supposition. Do not suppose anything about Jesus at all. Do not suppose anything about His character, His doctrine, or His work; go in for certainty on such points. 1. Do not suppose Him to be in your hearts. Outward ceremonies convey no grace to graceless persons. 2. Do not ever suppose that Christ is in our assemblies because we meet in this house. Christ is not present where He is not honoured. All your architecture, music, learning, eloquence, are of small account; Jesus may be absent when all these things are present in profusion, and then your public worship will only be the magnificent funeral of religion, but the life of God will be far away. Our question every Sunday morning ought to be, “ What think ye; will He come to the feast?” for if He does not come to the feast it will be the mockery of a festival, but no bread will be on the table for hungry souls. 3. Let us not take it for granted that the Lord Jesus is necessarily with us in our Christian labours. Do we not too often go out to do good without special prayer, imagining that Jesus must surely be with us as a matter of course? Perhaps we thus conclude because He has been with us so long, or because we feel ourselves fully equipped for the occasion, or because we do not even think whether He is with us or not. This is perilous. If Jesus is not with us, we toil all the night and take nothing; but if Jesus is with us, He teaches us how to cast the net, and a great multitude of fishes are taken. III. THE made by these two good people MAY US. This is for the children. Jesus is here an example to them, for He was at this time a child. Suppose He had been in the company returning to Nazareth? How would He have behaved Himself? 1. I am sure when the whole company sang a psalm, He would have been among the sweetest singers. No inattention or weariness in Him when God was to be praised. 2. I feel persuaded that Jesus would have been found in that company listening to those who talked of holy things. Especially would He have been eager to hear explanations of what He had seen in the Temple. He would have been anxious to share with the grown-up people all the solemn thoughts of the day. 3. I feel sure also that if He had been in the company going home, He would have been the most obliging, helpful, pleasing child in all the company; if anybody had needed to have a burden carried, He would have been the first to offer; if any kindly deed could be done, He would be first in doing it. IV. HIM TO BE IN OUR COMPANY IN ALL HIS , what then? 1. How happy will such company be! 2. How united His people will all become! 3. How holy they will all grow! How teachable; how lively I how earnest; how confident. V. JESUS HAS BEEN IN THE COMPANY, WHETHER WE HAVE SEEN HIM OR NOT. (C. H. Spurgeon.) The disappearance of Jesus Every child is a treasure to the heart of an affectionate parent; but the Holy Child Jesus must have been so sacred and precious a treasure to His mother and her husband that one wonders how they could ever have lost sight of Him. Perhaps it may have happened in this way: when they were about to return, they would doubtless give Him notice that they were going home, and would expect Him to follow. But, in the hurry of packing and starting, they would necessarily take their eyes off from Him for some time, and then He would find His opportunity to withdraw to the Temple. It must be remembered that hundreds of other pilgrims would be on the move homeward at the same moment. All those who lived north of Jerusalem, forming an immense caravan, would start with Joseph and Mary, and go by the same road. This would create great confusion; and, amidst a general lading of mules and asses and a general preparation for the day’ s journey, a single child might be easily missed. Moreover, we are told by some writers that it was the custom in these pilgrimages for all the men to travel in one company by themselves, and all the women in another, the boys travelling, as it might happen, either with their father or their mother. If this was the case, it is easy to understand how neither our Lord’ s mother nor her husband were made uneasy by missing Him. St. Joseph would say, “ He is with His mother, no doubt” ; and the blessed Virgin would say, “ Doubtless Joseph is taking care of Him.” (Dean Goulburn.) A lost Christ Some years ago an institution for the blind was erected in one of our large towns. The committee put their wise heads together, and decided that as the building was for the blind, for those who could not see--there was only waste of money and no reason in going to the expense ofwindows. Scientific ventilation and heating was provided, but no windows, because--as the committee very logically put it--it was no use in the world providing light for those who cannot see it. Accordingly, the new Blind Asylum was inaugurated and opened, and the poor sightless patients settled into the house. Things did not go well with them, however. They began to sicken, one after another; a great languor fell on them, they felt always distressed and restless, craving for something, they hardly knew what; and after one or two had died, and all were ill, the committee sat on the matter, and resolved to open windows. Then the sun poured in, and the white faces recovered colour, and the flagging vital energies revived, the depressed spirits recovered, and health and rest returned. I think this is not unlike the condition of a vast number of people. Christ Jesus is the Sun of the soul, the Light of the world. It is He who gives health and rest to the heart, and fills the soul with that peace which passes man’ s understanding. But there are a good number who, in their wisdom, think they can do without Him; they are the wise committee men sitting on their own case, and building up walls to shut them selves in and shut Him out. They cannot see Jesus, the light of the world; therefore, they can live without Him. Have you ever noticed what an expression of peace there is on the faces of those whose walk is with God, as contrasted with the unrest that characterizes the faces of those living without God in the world--not necessarily bad people, but living chiefly for the world, in a windowless asylum of their own construction. I. A great number who do not realize their unrest. So engrossed in daily work, so full of hopes and schemes, they can think of nothing else. Fond of the bustle and excitement of active life. DO not know they are travelling along the road of life without Christ; do not as yet feel their loss and need of Him. II. They become uneasy. Becoming aware that all is not quite right, they look for what they want in the wrong place. They seek distraction, when it is rest they need, and pleasure instead of peace. Then they give themselves up to tittle-tattle with kinsfolk and acquaintance, and try to find happiness in society. But it will not do. Jesus Christ is not there, and it is He they need. III. The last stage is not taken by all; it is well for those who do take it. Christ is found in the Temple. Enthroned on His altar, made known in the breaking of the bread, He waits to enter into, refresh, strengthen, and give perfect peace to the hungry soul, weary with the unsatisfying food of the world. (S. Baring-Gould, M. A.) Seeking the lost Christ I. WHERE CHRIST WAS LOST. 1. In the city. 2. At a feast. 3. In a crowd. II. How AND WHERE HE WAS SOUGHT. 1. Immediately the loss was realized. 2. Sorrowfully. 3. In the Temple. 4. With perseverance and continuity. III. HOW THIS SEARCH WAS . 1. Christ was found. 2. Christ spoke Divine words to His parents. 3. Christ went back with them to Nazareth, and was more precious to them than ever. (E. D. Solomon.) Easy to lose Christ Perhaps our Lord’ s parents had been a little to blame in ever taking their eyes off Him. Perhaps they had been too eager and careful about their homeward journey, and not mindful enough of the Holy Child. If so, they were punished by the dreadful anxiety which they must have felt in looking for Him, and by the still more painful void which His absence would make in their family circle. When people are not careful to keep the Lord with them, He easily escapes. A little heedlessness, a little want of watchfulness, a little more eagerness and hurry about worldly things than there is any necessity for--and the Divine Presence slips away. We may have really spoken to Him in our prayers, or in church, and have been comforted by the thought that we have done so. And then we may dismiss altogether the thought of His presence, and make no effort to call it back. We may forget that His eye is upon us, and do and say things in a fit of temper and excitement which we could not do and say if we felt He was looking on. And then we shall be punished by having to search for Him with labour and dryness of spirit. We must try to live in His presence, to be always conscious of it, even when not directly thinking of Him. This is the great secret of perfection (Genesis 17:1). Great peace and quietness of heart is to be found in always having our eye upon Christ. (Dean Goulburn.) Luke 2:46 After three days they found Him in the Temple The finding of Jesus in the Temple I. A lesson to boys and young men--THE OF AND TO A MOTHER. II. Teachers may learn THE BEST METHOD OF , by asking and answering questions. III. Mothers are by this incident reminded that THEIR HAVE OTHER THAN THOSE OF THIS WORLD. IV. A lesson for all: JESUS, LOST IN THE BUSTLE AND OF THE CROWD, IS ALWAYS TO BE FOUND AGAIN IN THE TEMPLE. (D. Longwill.) The Saviour lost and found Jesus Christ is only lost by sin; when lost, He must be found by repentance and grace. I. WE MUST KNOW OF OUR LOSS We often lose Him, at first, without knowing it, just as His parents did; we, like them, sooner or later find out our loss. 1. We must know of our loss if we would seek to regain it; we should not seek Jesus Christ if we did not know that we had lost Him. The beginning of salvation is the knowledge of sin. He who does not know that he sins, is not willing to suffer correction. 2. We must know of our loss, or we can never render God fitting honour and glory for our recovery from it. II. OUR WAY MUST BE . We must look back, by examination of conscience, over that past life during which we have lived without Jesus Christ. 1. Sweep all sin away by our detestation of it (Luke 15:8). 2. Cover all our defilements in the robe of grace, that we may be meet for Jesus Christ (Son 3:2). III. THE LOSS MUST BE MOURNED FOR. Contrition follows examination. 1. Undo, as far as possible, the dishonour done to God. 2. Punish sin in ourselves. The heart being the fount of sin, we afflict it with sorrow and remorse. IV. WE RETAIN OUR . 1. NO gain to have found Jesus Christ with sorrow and hurt, if He be lost again. 2. A second time we may not be able to find Him. (M. Faber.) Jesus at home in the Temple It is easy to understand that the Temple must have had a wonderful attraction for Him, so that He found it very difficult to tear Himself away from it. Our Lord, having now ceased to be an infant, and become a child, was fully conscious who He was. He was now able to look back to His former state of existence, when He lay in His Father’ s bosom from all eternity, and was worshipped as a Person in the blessed Trinity by the holy angels. As His faculties opened, it would dawn upon His memory what He had been. Now, therefore, mark the effect upon Him, when He sees for the first time the services of the Temple. The Temple was a little figure or model of heaven; the Temple music of the praises of God continually sung in heaven; the Temple services of the pure and holy worship which the angels continually offer in heaven Hebrews 8:5). When He saw the Temple services for the first time, they struck a chord in His memory, which vibrated sweetly and solemnly. The priests and Levites, offering their sacrifices and their incense, and singing their psalms, reminded Him of the blessed angels paying their homage to God and chanting His praises in heaven. He had never been the like upon earth before; and it is quite probable that, in a world of sin and sorrow, the blessed Jesus (even as a child) felt out of place, and away from His true home. Can you not imagine a person who had passed his early childhood in a southern clime, where there were birds of rich plumage, lovely stars at night, being suddenly banished to the North Pole, where his eye rests upon nothing but ice and snow, and all the beauties of nature seem to be locked up by a perpetual winter? Suddenly a bunch of bright flowers, or a bird of beautiful plumage, is brought to him as a gift from the south. It reminds him of his native country, and brings back in a moment the flowers, birds, and landscapes of that happy land. Something of this sort may have been our blessed Lord’ s memories, on seeing in early childhood the services of the Temple. He would feel that the Temple gave a true idea of His Father’ s house in heaven--was His Father’ s house on earth. Now a Father house is a home; and what dutiful child is there who does not love home; who is not drawn towards home, when away from it; who does not feel it to be a place of shelter, security, happiness, and peace, and cling to it accordingly? (Dean Goulburn.) Christ engaged in Bible study Jesus was not satisfied with worship alone, nor yet with passive hearing of Bible expositions. He wanted a share in Bible study. He had questions to ask of the teachers, and He was willing to be questioned. Although He was the Son of God, He felt the need of Bible study; and, feeling that need, He went into the Bible school, where the need could be met. If there is a man nowadays who thinks that he doesn’ t need Bible study, or that it is beneath his dignity to be in the Bible school, he either seems to suppose that he knows more than Jesus knew, or he seems to count it hardly safe to be on the same plane with the Son of God. Yet there are men and women who put a high value on worship, and none at all--for themselves--on social Bible study. They are regularly at the preaching services, but never in the Sunday School. Poor, needy, conceited creatures! (H. C. Trumbull.) The power of simplicity One striking feature in the life of Christ upon the earth is the unexpected places where we find Him. His advent was a surprise in its humbleness. Reason would never have deigned to stoop to a manger for a Messiah. Philosophy would scarcely have dreamed of pointing out the Christ of God with plane and hammer at the carpenter’ s bench. Faith itself was surprised to discover Him as a lad among the bearded doctors of Israel. But there He is. The great-browed scholars of the Temple do not in the least suspect the character of the wonderful Child standing in their midst. They debate with Him and are puzzled at His arguments. Their ritualism will not hold together before that young and radiant face. How little the Masters realize that from those tender lips, pronouncing such sublimely simple things, shall fall words of fire which shall utterly consume all their traditions! That gentle youth, astray from His mother, by His quiet life, and innocent language, shall ere long expose and overthrow the last vestige of pretentions and priestly religion, and establish a living religion, vital with an energy which shall conquer death and the grave. The Rabbins have handled the parchment so long and mumbled the letter so much, that they cannot understand the gospel of the Child. How often does Christ stand among the learned systems and schemes of this world, unknown and unsuspected, because so simple and unobtrusive! (Alexander Clark.) Christ in the Temple school It was not in the more sacred parts of the Temple, nor in the Holy Place, nor even in the Court of the Altar of Burnt-offering, that our Lord was found. There were chambers in the precincts of the Temple, which were used sometimes for the meetings of the Sanhedrim, sometimes as schools where the doctors might teach. This last was a very proper arrangement: for the training of young persons in God’ s Jaw is a work of piety most acceptable to God, and may be fitly carried on in the house of prayer. Perhaps our Lord, during the eight days of His parents’ stay at Jerusalem, may have been attracted by the schools in the Temple, and have liked to linger there and to hear what was going on. And so His parents may have thought of seeking Him in these schools, feeling that, if in Jerusalem at all, He was sure to be there. Let us observe that what drew Him to the Temple was not only the beautiful and solemn worship which went on in it, but the teaching which was given there. He loved not only prayer and praise, but learning also. Oh, that there were more children like Him! while there are some who like the Church service well enough, if it is conducted with stateliness and music, how very few are there who show a desire for religious instruction, who take great pleasure in their preparation for confirmation, and listen to sermons eagerly, trying to get what good they can out of them. (Dean Goulburn.) The spirit and method in which to learn The young should be eager to learn, as Christ was in His boyhood. 1. He showed a thirst for the knowledge of God’ s law, when but twelve years old; and how are we to judge of what is wrong in us, but by taking Him as our model, and asking what there is in us, which does not watch with His example? As a ruler applied to a line which we have drawn with our hand, shows that it is not straight, so our Lord’ s example, applied to any particular piece of human conduct, shows at once how far it is from being what it ought to be. 2. Our Lord submitted to learn of the appointed teachers of His nation. It is not surely very much that He should require of us submission to all in authority over us. 3. We see also that quite the best way of learning is for the pupil to ask questions of the teacher. Only let them be thoughtful questions. Nothing will more open the mind of the taught than the explanation of a difficulty which has been raised in the mind by something the teacher has said. Very often the question will be useful to the teacher as well, leading him into some new and interesting train of thought upon an old and well-worn subject. Questions force people to think. (Dean Goulburn.) Answers I. Christ gives a clear answer about the spiritual world. II. Another cry of the soul is answered by Jesus when He tells us, that God is the heavenly Father of mankind. III. The Lord Jesus answered another question of humanity by showing that our heavenly Father knows the secret inner life of every man. IV. Jesus answers the cry of the soul by telling us, that our Father’ s business is the highest work of humanity. (W. Birch.) Luke 2:48 Son, why hast Thou thus dealt with us?--Perplexity in presence of mystery This question of the mother of Jesus reveals an experience of the human heart which is very common, which is most common in the best hearts and those who feel their responsibility the most. The Virgin Mary is the perpetual type of people who, entrusted with any great and sacred interest, identify their own lives with that interest and care for it conscientiously; but who, by and by, when the interest begins to manifest its own vitality, and to shape its own methods, are filled with perplexity. They cannot keep the causes for which they labour under their own care. As His mother asked of Jesus, so they are always asking of the objects for which they live, “ Why hast thou thus dealt with us?” Such people are people who have realized responsibility more than they have realized God. Just as Mary felt at the moment when she asked this question, that Jesus was her Son more than that He was God’ s Son, so there is a constant tendency among the most earnest and conscientious people to feel that the causes for which they live and work are their causes more than that they are God’ s causes, and so to experience something which is almost like jealousy when they see those causes pass beyond their power and fulfil themselves in larger ways than theirs. For such people, often the most devoted and faithful souls among us, there must be some help and light in this story of Jesus and His mother. (Phillips Brooks, D. D.) A parent’ s wonder The first and simplest case of this experience is that which comes nearest to the circumstances of our story. It comes in every childhood. It comes whenever a boy grows up to the time at which he passes beyond the merely parental government which belonged to his earliest years. It comes with all assertion of individual character and purpose in a boy’ s life. A boy has had his career all identified with his home where he was cradled. What he was and did he was and did as a member of that household. But by and by there comes some sudden outbreak of a personal energy. He shows some disposition, and attempts some task, distinctively his own. It is a puzzling moment Mike for the child and the parent. The child is perplexed with pleasure, which is almost pain, to find himself for the first time doing an act which is genuinely his own. The parent is filled with a pain which yet has pride and pleasure in it, to see his boy doing something original, something which he never bade him do, something which perhaps he could not do himself. The real understanding of that moment, both to child and parent, depends on one thing--upon whether they can see in it the larger truth that this child is not merely the son of his father, but is also the son of God. If they both understand that, then the child, as he undertakes his personal life, passes not into a looser, but into a stronger, responsibility. And the parent is satisfied to see his first authority over his son grow less, because he cannot be jealous of God. It is a noble progress and expansion of life when the first independent venture of a young man on a career of his own, is not the wilful claim of the prodigal, “ Give me the portion of goods that falleth to me,” but the reverent appeal of Jesus, “ Wist ye not theft I must be about My Father’ s business?” (Phillips Brooks, D. D.) Divine as well as human education Who is there of us that is not aware that his soul has had two educations? Sometimes the two have been in opposition; sometimes they have overlapped; sometimes they have wholly coincided; but always the two have been two. Our own government of ourselves is most evident, is the one which we are most aware of, so that sometimes for a few moments we forget that there is any other; but very soon our plans for ourselves are so turned and altered and hindered that we cannot ignore the other greater, deeper force. We meant to do that, and look! we have been led on to this. We meant to be this, and lo! we are that. We never meant to believe this, and lo! we hold it with all our hearts. What does it mean? It is the everlasting discovery, the discovery which each thoughtful man makes for himself with almost as much surprise as if no other man had ever made it for himself before, that this soul, for which he is responsible, is not his soul only, but it is God’ s soul too. The rex-e-lation which came of old to the Virgin Mother about her Child--not your Child only, but God’ s Child, too; yours, genuinely, really yours, but, behind yours and over yours, God’ s. That is the great revelation about life. When it comes, everything about one’ s self-culture is altered. Every anticipation and thought of living changes its colour. It comes sometimes early and sometimes late in life. Sometimes it is the flush and glow which fills childhood with dewy hope and beauty. Sometimes it is the peace which gathers about old age and makes it happy. When ever it comes it makes life new. See what the changes are which it must bring. First, it makes anything like a bewildering surprise impossible. When I have once taken it into my account that God has His plans for my soul’ s culture, that these plans of His outgo and supersede any plans for it which I can make, then any new turn that comes is explicable to me, and, though I may not have anticipated it all, I am not overwhelmed, nor disturbed, nor dismayed by it. I find a new conviction growing in my soul, another view of life, another kind of faith. It is not what I had intended. I had determined that as long as I lived I would believe something very different from this which I now feel rising and taking possession of me. It seems at first as if my soul had been disloyal to me, and had turned its back faithlessly upon my teaching. I appeal to it, and say, “ Soul, why hast thou thus dealt with me?” And it answers back to me, “ Wist ye not that I must be about my Father’ s business? Did you not know that I was God’ s soul as well as your soul? This is something which He has taught me.” Then again, the true man will have one great purpose in living, and only one. He will try to come to harmony with God, to perfect understanding of what God wants and is trying to do. Let me not be trying to make one thing out of this soul of mine while He is trying to make entirely another! As Mary went back with her Son, realizing, out of His own mouth, that He was not only her Son, but God’ s; as she settled down with Him to their Nazareth life again, must not one single strong question have been upon her heart, “ What does God want this Son of His to be? O let me find that out, that I may work with Him.” And as you go into the house where you are to train your soul, realizing, through some revelation that has come to it, that it is God’ s soul as well as yours, one strong and single question must be pressing on you too--“ What does God want this soul of mine to be? O, let me find that out, that I may work with Him.” And how can you find that out? Only by finding Him out. Only by understanding what He is, can you understand what He wants you to do. And understanding comes by love. And love to God comes by faith in Jesus Christ. Christ’ s strange dealings with His people The words may usefully remind us that the dealings of the Lord Jesus with those who sincerely love and serve Him are often very strange. Not only does He try them by ordinary troubles, such as loss of health and loss of friends, but sometimes He takes away from them all spiritual comfort, and leaves their souls dark and disconsolate. Once they had joy and peace in believing, but they have it no longer now. Perhaps it is that they have grown lukewarm and self-sufficient, and He withdraws Himself from them for a time, to make them seek Him with greater earnestness. Where this is the case, people must go on seeking till they find. The dryness and hardness of our minds in prayer may be a sore distress to us, but we must not give over praying: we must be content to seek Him sorrowing. Where we cannot pray as we would, we must pray as we can. We must not “ faint,” but determine to make ourselves heard at heaven’ s gate. And then it shall be “ but a little,” and we shall find Him whom our soul loveth. And when we have found Him, we must be careful to hold Him, and “ not let Him go.” One who knows the Saviour’ s love, and lives in habits of holy intercourse with Him, must, as it were, keep His eye upon Him constantly by Christian watchfulness and an effort to realize His presence everywhere. Let such an one lose Him by wilful disobedience, or careless self-indulgence, or by relaxing in prayer and in the effort to believe, and there will be nothing but “ sorrowing” till He is found again. Most merciful is it of God, when we are living without Christ, to hedge up our way with thorns, to make conscience uneasy, worldly pleasures unsatisfactory, and even religious exercises disappointing and irksome. Anything is wholesome, however bitter, which drives us to His side, and keeps us there. (Dean Goulburn.) The manliness of Christ There is something at first sight wilful indeed, possibly courageous, but not manly, in a boy of twelve staying behind his parents in a strange city without their knowledge or consent; something thoughtless, almost ungracious, in the words of reply to Mary’ s question. The clue to this apparent divergence from the perfect manly life is given with rare insight and beauty in Mr. Holman Hunt’ s great picture--at any rate, the face and attitude of the boy there seemed for the first time to make clear to me the meaning of the recorded incident, and to cast a flood of light upon those eighteen years of preparation which yet remained before He should be ready for His great work. The first sight of Jerusalem and of the Temple has stirred new and strange thoughts within Him. The replies of the doctors to His eager questionings have lighted up the consciousness which must have been dimly working in Him already, that He was not altogether like those around Him-the children with whom He used to play, the parents at whose knees He had been brought up. To the young spirit before whose inward eye such a vision is opening all human ties would sink back, and be for the moment forgotten; and, when recalled suddenly by the words of His mother, the half-conscious dreamy answer, “ How is it that ye sought Me?” &c., loses all its apparent wilfulness and abruptness. And so, full of this new question and great wonder, He went home to the village in Galilee with His parents, and was subject unto them; and the curtain falls for us on His boyhood and youth and early manhood. But, as nothing but what is most important and necessary for understanding all of His life which we need for our own growth into His likeness is told us in these simple narratives, it would seem that this vivid light is thrown on that first visit to Jerusalem because it was the crisis in our Lord’ s earthly life which bears most directly on His work for our race. If so, we must, I think, allow that the question, once fairly presented to the boy’ s mind, would never again leave it. Day by day it would come back with increasing insistency, gathering power and weight. (Thomas Hughes.) The Mother and Son There has descended into Mary’ s humble home a treasure too great for heaven itself to contain. What wonder if she fails to understand the value of this Divine Son; if she wholly mistakes the meaning of His absence? What wonder if she applies to His case the common-place rebuke, “ Thy father and I have sought Thee sorrowing” ? Nay, but we may be told it was inexcusable in one who remembered the marvels of His birth, and all that then occurred, to chide Him for resorting to the Temple, and to be astonished that He sat with doctors and heard and questioned them. Twelve years of meek obedience in common household tasks and duties had passed since His birth. Miracles, which are meant to witness to doctrines, were not, we may be sure, performed to startle the carpenter’ s humble family, and she had forgotten in some measure the significant tokens of the past, and the dutiful boy was to her the future carpenter, the support of her age, the inmate of her home, or of some frugal home like hers, to the end, and the air of authority sat easy upon her, for her right had not been disputed. But other rights asserted themselves now. The light within Him breaks forth now from behind the Tell of flesh. “ How is it that ye sought Me? Wist ye not,” &c. Other claims and ties supersede, or soon shall do so, the calm family life. He shall dwell with that Father who, in His baptism, His transfiguration, His death, will attest that this One is the Son of God. He shall seek for brethren and for children in all whom the ties of a common faith in His Father unite to Him. His work shall not be with the axe and hammer in Joseph’ s workshop, but it shall lie in turning souls from darkness to light, from death to life, from the power of Satan unto God. What wonder if the mother after the flesh cannot at once train her ear to the full compass of this new revelation. She will acquiesce, but not till she has painfully learned the plan of God in the life of battle with all forms of evil, which He shall lead, in the face of Satan and his host, where she is not; where she shall be met, if she venture into its sphere, by words of strangeness, “ Woman, what have I to do with thee?” (John 2:4). Some have entertained angels unawares; but the King whom angels serve is a sojourner under her roof; she has to unlearn the speech of a mother, and learn that of a worshipper of the adorable Son of God and her Redeemer. She must cease to command and to admonish, and kneel with the rest of us before the Cross that was raised for all our guilty race alike. (Archbishop Thomson.) Sorrow for grieving a mother When Garibaldi saw any one looking at his mother’ s picture the tears started into his eyes. He felt remorse at having, by his adventurous life, been a source to her of cruel anxiety. He believed in the power of her prayers to preserve him from the effects of his own temerity, and on the field of battle, or in the storm at sea, he never lost courage, because he thought he saw her kneeling before God and imploring for him the Divine protection. A mother’ s solicitude The parents of Robert Moffat were both pious, and his mother’ s heart was set upon his “ knowing from a child the Holy Scriptures.” When about to leave Inverkeithing, in Fifeshire, where he was in service in the Earl of Moray’ s gardens, for a situation in Cheshire, she earnestly besought him to promise, before going, that he would read the Bible every day, morning and evening. Sensible of his own weakness, and of, perhaps, his boyish disinclination, he parried the question. But at the last moment she pressed his hand. “ Robert,” she said, imploringly, “ you will promise me to read the Bible, more particularly the New Testament, and most especially the Gospels--those are the words of Christ Himself; and then you cannot possibly go astray.” There was no refusing then; it was the melting hour. “ Yes, mother,” he answered, “ I make you the promise.” He knew, as he remarked in relating the circumstances, “ that the promise, once made, must be kept. And oh,” he added, “ I am happy that I did make it!” (Hand and Heart.) Luke 2:49 Wist ye not that I must be about My Father’ s business The Epiphany of work 1. The Epiphany before us is, in the first place, that of the two lives, the seen and the unseen, the relative and the personal, the human relationship to the Divine. Let us try to place ourselves in imagination in those Temple precincts, and picture the entrance of the distressed and bewildered mother after two days and nights of weary and watchful searching. Regardless of His mother’ s anxiety, He has been sitting in the Temple courts. “ Son, why hast Thou thus dealt with us?” was a natural question; and it fell not on a deaf ear, but on an unupbraiding conscience. “ How is it that ye sought Me?” The rebuke is turned back upon herself. “ Wist ye not that I must be about My Father’ s business?” (Original: “ In the things of My Father.” I prefer here the Authorized Version to the Revised.) It was a hard stern lesson for the heart of the mother. She lives only in Him; but He has now another life, and another being. Such is her first lesson in the mystery of the two lives, the twofold relationship. This lesson we have all to learn for ourselves, and to learn also for one another. What a unity does this give to the human being, to have a life above this life, a business, a home, a Father, away from the desultoriness, the dissipation, which are so wearying and deteriorating to all that is the man in us. “ My Father,” --a word of concentration, a word significant of the gathering into one of all the interests and affections which before were scattered abroad. This the one purpose of all education with the name, to make real to the young life this spiritual sonship; and this the one principle of all true human dealing, so to recognize in one another the secret of the Divine relationship, that we neither seek to engross for ourselves hearts which belong to another, nor run any risk of seducing from their rightful allegiance those whom God has appropriated to His own possession. Yet, secondly, of Him who has just spoken of this as a matter of course, that He shall be absorbed in His Father’ s business, it is written in the other half of the text that, “ He went down with them, and came to Nazareth, and was subject unto them.” We are brought here into the very heart of the great mystery--God manifest in the flesh. And this is all that is told us of the boyhood of the Saviour--this and one brief hint besides, as to the occupation of His time in manual labour. This, then, as to its outward shape and form, was His Father’ s business; the inner life went on unknown and unnoticed. He was growing all this time in wisdom; but the one feature of the thirty years is the . All else is taken for granted--the industry and the piety and the beautiful example--and this only is dwelt upon. “ He was subject unto them.” “ He humbled Himself,” St. Paul writes, as the characteristic of the whole of His earthly life--“ He humbled Himself, and became obedient.” From this beginning it was but a natural process to the long self-repression of the village-home and the drudging workshop; thence to the baptism in Jordan, and the temptation in the desert; thence into the homeless unrests of the ministry, the scorn and rejection of men, the dulness and coldness even of His own, and at last the agony of Calvary, and the shameful death of the cross. Though He was a Son, yet He “ learned obedience by the things which He suffered.” After Him let us struggle, living the life of faith which realizes the Father in heaven, feeling it His business as our business which makes the knowledge of Him our one submission, and suffers no other allegiance to interfere or compete with this; yet, on the other hand, counts no human subordination, and no personal sacrifice misplaced or undignified, may it but reproduce in faintest reflection the great Epiphany when “ He went down with them,” &c. “ Let your light so shine before men,” &c. (Dean Vanghan.) A grand purpose A measureless weight of conviction is in that Boy’ s word, “ I must.” A Divine necessity, recognized with blended awe and joy, has Him in its grip. “ I must” do My Father’ s work. A grand purpose fills His being, and His whole nature is bent on its accomplishment, a purpose exalting duty above all human ties and all human pleasures, and embracing within itself the highest ideal of being and doing. Difference of purpose marks man from man. Men take rank in the scale of manhood according to the elevation and purity of their aims. It is a sign of unique capability that the Boy Jesus should soar to the Divine, and embrace it with His whole soul. “ I must be about My Father’ s house and work.” (J. Clifford, D. D.) A plea for a rejected translation The necessity of our Lord’ s being in His Father’ s house could hardly have been intended by Him as absolutely regulating all His movements, and determining where He should be found, seeing that He had scarcely uttered the words in question before tie withdrew Himself with His parents from that house, and spent the next eighteen years substantially away from it. On the other hand, the claim to be engaged in His Father’ s concerns had doubtless frequently been alleged both explicitly and implicitly in respect of the occupations of His previous home life, and continued to be so during the subsequent periods of His eighteen years’ subjection to the parental rule; His acknowledgment of that claim being in no wise intermitted by His withdrawal with His parents from His Father’ s house. Intimations of a more general kind seem to the writer easily capable of being read between the lines of the inspired narrative, which increase the probability that the Authorized translation, rather than the rendering of the Revisers, expresses the meaning of the evangelist. (R. E. Wallis, Ph. D.) The spiritual development of Christ I. THE FIRST DAWNING OF HIS . II. THE FIRST DAWNING OF HIS TO HIS FATHER. III. THE RESULTS OF THESE UPON HIS LIFE. Eighteen years of silence, and then--the regeneration of the world accomplished, His Father’ s business done. (Stopford A. Brooke, M. A.) The first recorded words of Jesus We are grateful that the Spirit of God has given us this first word of our Lord Jesus, and we love it none the less because it is a deep word. We are not surprised that even as a child the Son of God should give forth mysterious sayings. Stier, to whom I am much indebted for thoughts upon this subject, calls this text “ the solitary floweret out of the enclosed garden of thirty years.” What fragrance it exhales I It is a bud, but how lovely! It is not the utterance of His ripe manhood, but the question of His youth; yet this half-opened bud discovers delicious sweets and delightful colours worthy of our admiring meditation. We might call these questions of Jesus the prophecy of His character, and the programme of His life. In this our text He set before His mother all that He came into the world to do; revealing His high and lofty nature, and disclosing His glorious errand. This verse is one of those which Luther would call his little Bibles, with the whole gospel compressed into it. I. Here we see THE HOLY CHILD’ S . 1. He evidently perceived most clearly His high relationship. 2. He perceived the constraints of this relationship. Here we have the first appearing of an imperious “ must” which swayed the Saviour all along. We find it written of Him that “ He must need go through Samaria,” and He Himself said, “ I must preach the kingdom of God” ; and again to Zaccheus, “ I must abide in thy house” ; and again, “ I must work the works of Him that sent his.” “ The Son of Man must suffer many things, and be rejected of the elders.” “ The Son of Man must be lifted up.” “ It behoved Christ to suffer.” As a Son He must learn obedience by the things which He suffered. This Firstborn among many brethren must feel all the drawings of His sonship--the sacred instincts of the holy nature, therefore He must be about HisFather’ s business. Now I put this to you again, for I want to be practical all along: Do you and I feel this Divine “ must” as we ought? Is necessity laid upon us, yea, woe laid upon us unless we serve our Divine Father? Do we ever feel a hungering and a thirsting after Him, so that we must draw nigh to Him, and must come to His house, and approach His feet, and must speak with Him, and must hear His voice, and must behold Him face to face? We are not truly subdued to the son-spirit unless it be so; but when our sonship shall have become our master idea, then shall this Divine necessity be felt by us also, impelling us to seek our Father’ s face. As the sparks fly upward to the central fire, so must we draw nigh unto God, our Father and our all. 3. He perceived the forgetfulness of Mary and Joseph, and He wondered. 4. He perceived that He Himself personally had a work to do. II. THE HOLY CHILD’ S HOME. Where should Jesus be but in His Father’ s dwelling-place? 1. His Father was worshipped there. 2. There His Father’ s work went on. 3. There His Father’ s name was taught. III. THE HOLY CHILD’ S . He spent His time in learning and inquiring. “ How I pant to be doing good,” says some young man. You are right, but you must not be impatient. Go you among the teachers, and learn a bit. You cannot teach yet, for you do not know: go and learn before you think of teaching. Hot spirits think that they are not serving God when they are learning; but in this they err. Beloved, Mary at Jesus’ feet was commended rather than Martha, cumbered with much service. “ But,” says one, “ we ought not to be always hearing sermons.” No, I do not know that any of you are. “ We ought to get to work at once,” cries another. Certainly you ought, after you have first learned what the work is: but if everybody that is converted begins to teach we shall soon have a mass of heresies, and many raw and undigested dogmas taught which will rather do damage than good. Run, messenger, run! The King’ s business requireth haste. Nay, rather stop a little. Have you any tidings to tell? 1. Learn your message, and then run as fast as you please. 2. This Holy Child is about His Father’ s business, for He is engrossed in it lids whole heart is in the hearing and asking questions. There is a force, to my mind, in the Greek, which is lost in the translation, which drags in the word “ about.” There is nothing parallel to that word in the Greek, which is, “ Wist ye not that I must be in My Father’ s?” The way to worship God is to get heartily into it. 3. The Holy Child declares that He was under a necessity to be in it. “ I must be.” He could not help Himself. Other things did not interest the Holy Child, but this thing absorbed Him. You know the story of Alexander, that when the Persian ambassadors came to his father’ s court, little Alexander asked them many questions, but they were not at all such as boys generally think of. He did not ask them to describe to him the throne of ivory, nor the hanging gardens of Babylon, nor anything as to the gorgeous apparel of the king; but he asked what weapons the Persians used in battle, in what form they marched, and how far it was to their country; for the boy Alexander felt the man Alexander within him, and he had presentiments that he was the man who would conquer Persia, and show them another way of fighting that would make them turn their backs before him. It is a singular parallel to the case of the Child Jesus, who is taken up with nothing but what is His Father’ s; because it was for Him to do His Father’ s work, and to live for His Father’ s glory, and to execute His Father’ s purpose even to the last. IV. Let us, lastly, learn This HOLY CHILD’ S SPECIAL LESSON TO THOSE. OF US WHO ARE SEEKERS. 1. DO I address any children of God who have test sight of Christ? Mark, dearly beloved ones, if you and I want to find our Lord we know where He is. Do we not? He is at His Father’ s. Let us go unto His Father’ s: let us go to our Father and His Father, and let us speak with God, and ask Him where Jesus is if we have lost His company. 2. One more word, and that is to sinners who are seeking Christ. It will all come right if you will just think of this-- (1) that Jesus Christ is not far away; He is in His Father’ s house, and that is everywhere; (2) that He is always about His Father’ s business, and that is, saving sinners. (C. H. Spurgeon.) The motto of Christ’ s life We have heard of a custom, kept up by some good men, of choosing, each New Year’ s morning, a word or a sentence which should be their motto for the twelvemonth they had commenced. But Jesus of Nazareth seems to have made this choice once for all early in His career. He has recorded it; and we now ought to give it a full recognition as the prevailing and controlling principle of His wonderful life; “ Wist ye not … ?” I. THIS ONLY SO FAR AS WE ADMIT HIM TO RE THE MASTER AND MODEL OF OUR . If it be true, as we so often assert, that the Christian life is merely Christ’ s life imitated and reproduced, then His motto is ours also. We write it up over our doorway; we make it the seal of our correspondence; we emblazon it upon our carriage panels; we engrave in on our plate; we stamp it upon our coin; even the ring on our finger, and the buckle on our shoe’ s latchet, bears the same inscription and device. Each devout and true Christian, that is, gives himself and signs himself over unto God. II. Hence, here is a TEST OF THE OF OUR . III. There is an FOR SUCH A MOTTO in the interpreting of one’ s occupation in life. Many a man works in his vocation, without looking on it as a “ calling” at all. Remember, your business is not yours only, but your “ Father’ s” too. IV. This motto likewise will serve admirably to exhibit what is THE NEED OF A SOUL disturbed with the discovery of its sins and exposure. Write across any merely moral and correct life this saying of Jesus. It will make you think of the line in red ink merchants sometimes print on their cards when they have changed their address; it is on the card, not in it. A worldly life requires not regulation only, but regeneration. The change must be radical. It is not the twist of the threads, but the threads which make the fabric of the character wrong. V. This motto will settle what are one’ s SAFE TO THE WORLD AROUND. The line must be drawn at the point where the world yields wholly to the “ Father’ s business.” VI. Right here comes the decision, also, concerning the OF QUOTING CHURCH MEMBERS FOR . The imperfections of others are no excuse for oneself. Being a Christian does not consist in proving other people to be hypocrites. The motto of Jesus says nothing about church members’ business, but the “ Father’ s.” VII. This motto will show, in like manner, THE REASON FOR SUCH SORE AS WE , when those who promise well for a while fall away suddenly into sin. They have only been living a surface life of dependence on self. Their purpose has gone no higher than mere conduct. Whereas the end of Christian life in all its outgoings is Jesus Christ Himself. Wealth is gained that the owner may use it for Christ. Learning is acquired in order to teach our fellow-men about Christ. Out from the plane of human history springs one mysterious life, the model of all worthy existence. There it stands in the Scriptures out against the clear sky, visible to a hundred generations. The pattern of our life is found in the characteristics of that: the motive of our life is to be found in the love we bear for that: the corrective of our life is to be found in laying it alongside of that: and the stability of our Christian life is to be found in the unfailing help it receives from that. We are held up from falling, not by our hold upon Jesus’ hand, but by His hold upon ours; we love Him because He first loved us; united to Him we can be sure He will sustain us in temptation. VIII. This saying will AID US IN OPEN ISSUES wherever we are. Compromises are an invention of the devil. Keep up the boundaries between good and evil. On the one side is right, on the other is wrong; on the one peril, on the other safety; on the one truth, on the other falsehood; on the one those who are of the world, worldly, on the other those who are about the “ Father’ s business.” (G. S. Robinson, D. D.) Christ about His Father’ s business I. NOTE THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST, It was a spirit of undivided consecration to the will of God His Father. It was a spirit urged onward by an absolute necessity to serve God. “ Wist yet not that I must?” There is a something in Me which prevents Me from doing other work. I feel an all-controlling, overwhelming influence which constrains Me at all times and in every place to be about My Father’ s business; the spirit of high, holy, entire, sincere, determined consecration in heart to God. 1. What was the impelling power which made Christ say this? (1) The spirit of obedience which thoroughly possessed itself of His bosom. (2) A sacred will to the work which He had undertaken. (3) He had a vow upon Him--the vow to do the work from all eternity. 2. What was His Father’ s business? (1) To send into the world a perfect example for our imitation. (2) The establishment of a new dispensation. (3) The great work of expiation. II. IMITATE THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST. Be about your Father’ s business with all earnestness, because that is the way of usefulness. You cannot do your own business and God’ s too. You cannot serve God and self any more than you can serve God and mammon. If you make your own business God’ s business, you will do your business well, and you will be useful in your day and generation. Again, would you be happy? Be about your Father’ s business. Oh, it is a sweet employment to serve your Father. (C. H.Spurgeon.) The Epiphany of Christ’ s Childhood Christ is thoroughly a child, thoroughly a youth, thoroughly a man. In every stage of His life He is a representative of human life at that stage. He is not an unnatural child or boy; but He shows His Divine nature in the natural ways and forms of childhood. His humanity is perfect; not marvellously or strangely precocious. We may draw all the usual features of human child-life out of this story. I. Take first the ACTIVE DELIGHT IN A NEW , which so belongs to all children. Manhood loses it. Disappointment takes off the edge. It is Christ’ s first visit to Jerusalem, and He is sensitively and zestfully full of it. He is alive to all the surroundings of His country’ s capital and centre. Thus He is the champion of childhood, insisting that its natural features (such as inquisitiveness), must be met and gratified; showing that through them God was manifested in His life, that they are not wrong in themselves, that they may be channels of the Holy Spirit’ s action. Delight and liberty are the simple creed of childhood. It would save many a young life from future excess; it would keep in the family many a prodigal and wanderer, and early emigrant, if this feature of a true, full child were at once recognized; if parents would not only look for a child’ s trust and obedience, but also for his activity. II. TO SELF. Childhood never argues sophistically, contrary to the impulses of its nature, as a man delights to do often. “ How is it … ?” “ How could I help going into My Father’ s temple and talking of Him and speaking for Him? It is the great impulse, and duty, and mission of My life. And I but obeyed it. Did you not know I would be here? How could you expect anything else?” Here was a perfect, holy nature, saying in its childhood “ I must,” and there was nothing more to be said in answer. III. : sense of Fatherhood, and of a family. Remember every child has a heavenly as well as an earthly father and home. Besides the second commandment in our Lord’ s code there is the first. Religion is but a higher application of the principles of morality, the doing for God what you do for man; being filled with the sense of God’ s Fatherhood as with that of earthly parentage; carrying dutifulness from the home of one to the higher home of the other. I remember going through a cave of stalactite, hung with glistening pendants, and capable of wonderful reflections, but shut away from all sunlight and gleam of heaven’ s power. A simple torch won marvellous effects from those waiting walls. But it was a great longing all the while in one’ s mind. Oh for one stream of daylight through all this sleeping glory?! If earth, made light, will so lighten it, what would the light of heaven do? So one looks with regret on much of the sweetness of life: upon a filial son; upon a life whose earthly affection lights it up with gleams of bright beauty, but with none of heaven’ s light streaming through its filial devotion, to give it the supreme glory of a life of a son of God, delighting in being about the Father’ s business; flinging over it the life which you see in Christ, in this Epiphany of His childhood. (Frederick Brooks.) Childhood to be dedicated to God Life must be wholly a manifestation of God. Every age is of value. Each section of life brings its own contribution to the perfected Christian character. Childhood has its own forces, its own kinds of strength and power, which other parts of life do not furnish; and they must be used in developing the man of God. You lose something if you put off religion to your later years. Your religious character never feels the benefit and power of these child forces, which do not belong to later life. You know the value of an overture in music; how its simplicity helps all the remainder of the more elaborate variations and movements. You could not start at once into the midst of the symphony or oratorio, and intelligently enjoy and use it. So youth brings its own peculiar contribution to the harmony of godly, Christly living. That is the teaching of the Boyhood of Christ. As the day without its dewy morning and all its influences; as the day beginning with hot noon; so is a life which begins for God at late years. We disjoint our religious lives, not seeing that ‘ the child is the father of the man,’ and that all our days must be bound each to each by natural piety. Christ puts them altogether again, shows God in and through all of them, even in and through boyhood, and says, “ It is not merely that you may be God’ s at the end; it is that all from the beginning may be His; and that at the end you may have a product towards which every stage of living has assisted.” Oh, may Christ, the truest human child that has ever lived, win all the freshness and young strength there is yet in us for His Father. (Frederick Brooks.) The constraining motive What could compel the God who was equal to the Father? Was it not the constraint of His own loving and obedient heart? He must be about His Father’ s business, because He could not help it. To obey the Father was to obey the impulse of His own heart. He had undertaken to do His Father’ s will, and in doing it He did what was emphatically His own will. They were so completely one, theft Christ was compelled to be about His Father’ s business. This word must is no strange word to us women. We know well enough what it means. We, too, have rendered the obedience of love, which is the only kind of obedience worth the name. Is there any sweetness in all the world that can equal that which comes from obedience to our soul’ s beloved? The must is not a yoke which other hands have laid upon us; it is the outcome of our own hearts. It never thinks of possible reward or possible punishment, There is no need of a set of rules, or of verbal commands, much less of urging words. We obey because we must; because otherwise the hunger of our love could never be satisfied; because if there were a must not instead of a must, all the joy and gladness would go out of our life. We should not know what to do with our lips, and hands, and hearts, if we might not employ them for our dearest. But think what this must means in the text. “ I must be about My Father’ s business.” Is the Divine love within us less strong than the human? Are we Christ-like in this respect? Can we say, “ I delight to do Thy will, O God” ? Would it not change our lives a little if we felt this must as Jesus felt it? Would it not make of us better women, because better Christians? We feel that we must be about the business of our husbands, our children, or our friends; bat we too often regard our Father’ s business as something for our leisure moments only, to be taken up or left according to convenience. There is too often no must in this case. And this is the reason of much of the sorrow which is in our lives. We know so little of Christian joy, because we know so little of perfect obedience. We are Marthas, who are cumbered about much serving, rather than Marys, whose whole souls go out in love to the Master. Let us start afresh, and begin at the beginning. Let us abide with our Father, until, knowing Him better, we love Him more; and then say to all the hindering influences that are round about us, “ Wist ye not that I must be about my Father’ s business?” (Marianne Farningham.) The earthly and the heavenly parentage It was a hard, stern lesson for the heart of the mother; she lives only in Him, but He has now another life and another being. Such is her first lessons in the mystery of the two lives, the twofold relationship. For a considerable portion of the life of all men, the two relationships are at one. The parent represents God to the child, and the child sees God through the parent. It is a sweet and lovely time for the mother, which nature perhaps would bid her protract. She feels that only good can come of it, so pure and so heavenward are her own aspirations for her child. Cannot the son continue to seek heaven only through her? is there any moral blank, is there any spiritual necessity to forbid her saying as a thing for all time and for all life, “ So be it, it is good for us to be thus” ? Yes, she must learn the great lesson, “ All souls are Mine; as the soul of the parent, so also the soul of the son is Mine” ; and God is the speaker. She must bend her neck to this discipline, or it will be the worse for her and for her child. The child has a Father in heaven, and at the first dawn of reason he must be about his Father’ s business. There are parents who have sought to perpetuate the spiritual infancy, to stand between God and the boy, to be still the conscience keeper and the mediator even when the open consciousness of the relationships direct and immediate should have warned them off as from holy ground. They have done so, and the Nemesis has been sharp and swift, the devotion diverted from God has found its object in Belial or Mammon. The mother may divert, but she cannot retain it. (Dean Vaughan.) God’ s business the only work for man Here is the true thought for us, not only that all true work which we do is God’ s work, but that work which is not of God is net work, does not properly exist in the universe at all. “ There is no work but Thine.” When we first take up our place and labour, we mistake the meaning of our life. We think we are born to do our own will, and we act upon our thought. Straightway all our work becomes selfish: we toil and struggle for ourselves, we are an end unto ourselves; and the result is that we find our work becoming mean; our view of life contemptuous; ourselves ignoble. But when the root idea of life is changed, when we know that we are here to do God’ s will, and that His will is love to us and all, the impulse and end of our work are altered. We accept the duties laid upon us, and are not anxious to make them into advantages to self. We think, “ God has placed me here and told me to do this. He is right, and knowledge and good must flow to all if I am faithful. I am His instrument; through me He is making a phase of Himself known to man; through me He is doing a portion of His mighty labour.” The thought transfigures our view of the universe; immediately work becomes unselfish and sanctified, life is ennobled, the commonest drudgery is rendered beautiful, suffering is gladly borne. Men call us aside to the pursuit of pleasure, to the passion of excitement, to the fame and honour we may win, to seek our own will and gain it. “ Hush,” we say, “ we live now in deeper joy than you can know, we have loftier excitements. Fame, honour, they are in His hand and not in ours. My own will! I have my will when I do His will.” How magnificent a thing might life become could we but turn away from all temptations to do our own will, and say to the tempters, were they even father or mother--say in the strength of Christ--“ I cannot; wist ye not that I must be about my Father’ s business?” (Stopford A. Brooke, M. A.) About His Father’ s business At His mother’ s tender reproach He turns, and lifts His dreamy eyes towards her--eyes that have been only intent on the sacred scroll before Him, and raised only to the grave faces of the official teachers around Him. For the first time He is aware of His own absorption. It seems incredible to Him that those nearest and dearest should be out of sympathy with Him at such a moment--unconscious of the spiritual influences which to Him were all in all--of the fascination of the law--of the solemnities of the Temple, from which He had not been able to tear Himself. He stands still, rooted to the spot; He has one more question to ask, not of the priest, but of His parents: “ Wist ye not that I must be about My Father’ s business?” It sounded like a simple home appeal--had He not always been zealous about the carpentering business in the workshop of His reputed father at Nazareth--should He be less zealous about the work the heavenly Father was carrying on in Him at Jerusalem? A call so distinct--an opportunity so unique--a combination so complete--in the Temple--sitting in the midst of doctors, both hearing them and asking them questions; there was indeed business--more profitable beyond compare than anything to be found at Nazareth; there was at last edification beyond all human handicraft. He could not choose but be there--until called back. I must, He said--such moments of spiritual constraint fashion our lives. I must speak out, I must give it up, I must strike the blow, make the sacrifice, sound the matter to its depths, be alone in prayer, search out one who can teach or guide me, if only for a single brief hour, or for one fugitive day at a certain crisis--under the constraint of guiding events, a spiritual voice, a Divine leading. I must sit in the Temple, hear, inquire. I feel this leap into the future, this sudden growth in wisdom. I can make no mistake--the revelation is too cogent, too inward, too harmonious. I am being dealt with. I cannot choose, but hear and be as I am. I must be about My Father’ s business. (H. R.Haweis, M. A.) Earnestness exemplified The Rev. N. Haycroft, in urging earnestness as an essential qualification in a Sunday-school teacher, says:--The narrative of a colporteur in Spain, on one occasion, will best illustrate this point. He was travelling on foot through the provinces, selling Bibles. At the close of a long and weary day’ s journey, he approached, hungry and footsore, the outskirts of a village, where he met a Roman Catholic priest, who asked him what he had in his pack. The colporteur replied, “ Bibles and Testaments; and I shall be happy to sell you one.” “ Can you sell me a real Bible?” “ Yes; a real Bible for real money.” He unshouldered his pack, and the priest purchased a Testament. Just as he was about to depart he said to the colportuer, “ You seem to have travelled far to-day!” “ Yes, I have,” was the answer; “ but it is about my Master’ s business.” “ You are footsore and wayworn.” Yes; but it is all about my Master’ s business.” “ Your Master must have a very faithful servant in you,” said the priest. The colporteur, not liking to expatiate on his own merits, was inclined to cut the conversation short, anal prepared to pursue his journey. The priest interposed, and pressed him to remain and lodge with him all night. “ No,” said the colporteur; “ I cannot accept your hospitality, for I must be about my Master’ s business.” “ But you must lodge somewhere, so that you may as well come with me.” After some persuasion he went. Having spent a useful hour or two together, they retired for the night. The priest was an early riser, and at six o’ clock in the morning he called to his housekeeper to know wether the stranger was up yet. “ Oh yes! “ said she,” he has been gone from here this three hours; and the last words he said were, ‘ I must be about my Master’ s business.’” Here was earnestness;--and remember there is no qualification for a high pursuit like earnestness. Luther was in earnest; and he pressed on till he had secured the glorious Reformation. Howard was in earnest; and he rested not till he had visited all the prisons of Europe, and made their sorrows patent to the world. Wilberforce, and Clarkson, and Buxton were in earnest; and they persevered till they had obtained the liberation of the slave. Napoleon was in earnest in his ambitious projects; and step by step he dashed on to victory, nor rested till he had trampled under foot the thrones of Europe, and made himself the arbiter of the destinies of the world. His one saving quality was earnestness. Need of diligence in God’ s service What a lesson for all young people! You think you need not begin serving God just yet. You have plenty of years before you. How do you know that? Do people never die young--suddenly, without warning? Begin at once to redeem the time. Say to yourself each morning-” My soul, thou hast to-day a God to glorify, a Christ to imitate, a soul to save, a body to keep under, time to redeem, temptation to overcome--verily, I must be about my Father’ s business.” (Dean Goulburn.) Attending to God’ s business Dr. Parr, in his Life of Archbishop Ussher, relates that while that prelate was once preaching in the church at Covent Garden, a message arrived from the Court that the king wished immediately to see him. He descended from the pulpit, listened to the command, and told the messenger that he was then, as he saw, employed in God’ s business, but as soon as he had done he would attend upon the king to understand his pleasure; and then continued his sermon. (Baxendale’ s Anecdotes.) Self-forgetfulness in the Lord’ s work There is in New York a Christian lady, who surely is one of the bravest of the brave. It was found necessary that the surgeons should perform upon her a severe and dangerous operation, and for that purpose she was taken from her home to a private room in the City Hospital. The probabilities were against her living through the operation, but it was the only hope of relief. She stood face to face with probable death under the surgeon’ s knife, to say nothing of her great suffering from her disease. It might have been supposed that her anxiety for her children, her own suffering, and her great danger would have so filled her mind, that she would have done well had she fixed her thoughts on heaven, borne her sufferings meekly, and waited in unshaken faith for her summons home. But she was one of God’ s heroines. She found that the skilled nurse who had charge of her was not a Christian, and she lost sight of herself, in the desire to bless the soul of this stranger. She requested the nurse to read the Bible aloud to her, and selected such passages as she believed most likely to rouse the nurse to repentance. She talked to her about religion, prayed with her and asked God to give her this soul before He called her home; and the prayer was answered. We are glad to be able to add that the lady recovered, and it is likely she owed her life, humanly speaking, to her zeal for her Lord’ s work. For her thoughts were thus withdrawn from herself, so that sorrow for her loved ones and shrinking from suffering and dangers did not wear her nerves and exhaust her vitality. The spirit of Christ’ s life Such a sentence at this time in His career is solitary in its grandeur, and rears its head like a sunlit peak, flashing its golden light backward along His infancy and boyhood, revealing its hidden progress and interpreting its experiences; reaching forward to the day of His baptism, and even to the hour in which He offers Himself a sacrifice for the sins of the world; and proving that the “ element” present in this early utterance makes this but one of a series of luminous summits of the same mountain range. Look into the consciousness out of which that saying leaps. It bespeaks a soul that lies like an unruffled lake in the broad and beaming sunshine of the Father’ s face. It is as surprising in its frankness as it is marvellous in its fulness. As if it were a flash of a divinely religious genius, we listen and ponder and admire; as when, for the first time, the spirit is spell-bound before Angelo’ s Moses, or when Milan Cathedral, a splendid mass of perfected thought and finished loveliness, first stands out revealed to our gaze in theclear sunlight of heaven. (J. Clifford, D. D.) Christ our example “ Wist ye not that I must be about My Father’ s business?” Let us then--First, state the circumstances in which He now was. Secondly, concede what was peculiar in His case. And thirdly, explain what is common between Him and you on this subject. I. And, first, WITH REGARD TO THE IN WHICH HE NOW WAS. A remarkable veil is thrown over the Saviour’ s infancy, His childhood, His youth, and His private life. But there is a difference between Him and us, and I therefore pass on-- II. Secondly, TO CONCEDE WHAT WAS IN HIS CASE. There was much that was peculiar. 1. His relation was peculiar. God was His Father in such a sense, as He is not ours. 2. The business He had to accomplish for His Father was peculiar. He said in His intercessory prayer, “ I have glorified Thee on earth, I have finished the work which Thou gavest Me to do.” This was, to interpose as a Mediator between God and us; to lay His hands on us both; to finish transgression. No, “ He trod the wine-press alone, and of the people there was none to help Him.” 3. His obligations were peculiar. “ I must be about My Father’ s business.” He was not originally under this obligation. He incurred it for our sakes. Lastly, His answer was peculiar. Never was there before, and never can there be again, a child to be addressed in a state like this. Though, therefore, His reply was exactly pertinent as regarded Himself, yet it is not proper in all respects for others. Yet where there is no equality, there may be a likeness. Though in all things He has the pre-eminence, He is the model of the new creation, and we are predestinated as Christians to be conformed to the image of God’ s own Son. And now I come to the-- III. Third part of my subject, in which I purpose TO EXPLAIN WHAT IS COMMON BETWEEN HIM AND YOU ON THIS SUBJECT. 1. God is your Father. 2. That there is a business which your Father has assigned you. We call it your Father’ s business, because He will punish all who neglect it, and graciously reward those who observe it. What is this business? You have the Scriptures; search the Scriptures. There you will find it described both negatively and positively. There you will learn that it is to avoid that which is evil and to cling to what is right. 3. Remember that this business you are under an obligation to regard and pursue. It is not to be observed as a thing of indifference; not as an optional thing; but you must be about your Father’ s business. You are under the obligation of justice in this business. Whatever talents you possess, or blessings you enjoy, they come from Him, and He never relinquished His property in any one of them. 4. His answer is to be your answer, to all those who would interfere with your concern in this cause, you must say as He did, “ Wist ye not that I must be about my Father’ s business?” There are many who will in various ways do this; but for the present we may rank them under five classes. And in the first class we put those whom I shall call wonderers. The apostle says, “ The natural man knoweth not the things of God, because they are spiritually discerned.” They wonder with regard to your conduct. Second class, we put reproachers. That which you do from the conviction of conscience many will ascribe to obstinacy or hypocrisy, or to a wish to excite notice and to distinguish yourself. Third class, I put the hinderers. There are some persons who have nothing in the world to do themselves, and very naturally judge of others by themselves. Fourth class, I put bigots. There are some persons who seem to possess nothing like judgment, and are never able to distinguish between things that differ. Fifth and last class are complainers. But to conclude. Here is a beautiful example to the young. The youthful Redeemer, my dear children, of twelve years old, is saying, “ I must be about My Father’ s business.” Oh! be influenced by this example; and remember what He says, “ They that seek Me early shall find Me.” (W. Jay.) How we must make religion our business From this example of our blessed Saviour, in making His Father’ s work His business, we learn this great truth:--That it is the duty of every Christian to make religion his business. For the illustrating and unfolding of this, there are three questions to be resolved:-- I. What is meant by religion? II. Why we must make religion our business? III. What it is to make religion our business? . WHAT IS MEANT BY ? . The second question is, why WE MUST MAKE OUR ? I answer, because religion is a matter of the highest nature; while we are serving God, we are doing angels’ work. . The third question is, WHAT IT IS TO MAKE OUR ? I answer: it consists principally in these seven things:-- 1. We make religion our business, when we wholly devote ourselves to religion. “ Stablish thy word unto thy servant, who is devoted to thy fear” Psalms 119:38); as a scholar who devotes himself to his studies makes learning his business. 2. We make religion our business, when we intend the business of religion chiefly. It doth principatum obtinere [“ gain the pre-eminence” ] “ Seek ye first the kingdom of God” (Matthew 6:33); first in time, before all things, and first in affection, above all things. 3. We make religion our business, when our thoughts are most busied about religion. 4. We make religion our business when our main end and scope is to serve God. 5. We make religion our business, when we do trade with God every day. “ Our conversation is in heaven” (Philippians 3:20). 6. We make religion our business, when we redeem time from secular things for the service of God. A good Christian is the greatest monopolizer: he doth hoard up all the time he can for religion: “ At midnight I will rise to give thanks unto Thee” (Psalms 119:62). 7. We make religion our business when we serve God with all our might. USE.I. . BRANCHI. Hence learn, that there are few good Christians. Oh, how few make religion their business t Is he an artificer that never wrought in the trade? Is he Christian that never wrought in the trade of godliness t How few make religion their business! 1. Some make religion a complement, but not their business. 2. Others make the world their business. “ Who mind earthly things” Philippians 3:19). . Hence see how hard it is to be saved. USEII. TRIAL. Let us deal impartially with our own souls, and put ourselves upon a strict trial before the Lord, whether we make religion our business. And for our better progress herein, I shall lay down ten signs and characters of a man that makes religion his business, and by these as by a gospel-touchstone, we may try ourselves:-- . He who makes religion his business cloth not place his religion only in externals. “ He is not a Jew who is one outwardly” Romans 2:28). . He who makes religion his business avoids everything that may be a “ hindrance” to him in his work. III. He who makes religion his business hath a care to preserve conscience inviolable, and had rather offend all the world than offend his conscience. “ I thank God, whom I serve from my forefathers with pure conscience” (2 Timothy 1:3). . He who makes religion his business, religion hath an influence upon all his civil actions. . He who makes religion his business, is good in his calling and relation. Relative grace cloth much grace religion. VI. He who makes religion his business hath a care of his company. He dares not twist into a cord of friendship with sinners: “ I have not sat with vain persons” (Psalms 26:4). Diamonds will not cement with rubbish. VII. He who makes religion his business keeps his spiritual watch always by him. The good Christian keeps his watch candle always burning. VIII. He who makes religion his business, every day casts up his accounts to see how things go in his soul. IX. He who makes religion his business will be religious, whatever it cost him. X. He that makes religion his business lives every day as his last day. RULES FOR MAKING OUR . RULE I. If you would make religion your business, possess yourselves with this maxim, that religion is the end of your creation. RULE II. If you would make religion your business, get a change of heart wrought. RULEIII. If you would make religion your business, set yourselves always under the eye of God. RULEIV. If you would make religion your business, think often of the shortness of time. RULEV. If you would make religion your business, get an understanding heart. RULE VI. If you would make religion your business, implore the help of God’ s Spirit. MOTIVEI. The sweetness that is in religion. All her paths are pleasantness Proverbs 3:17). MOTIVE II. The second and last consideration is, that millions of persons have miscarried to eternity, for want of making religion their business. They have done something in religion, but not to purpose: they have begun, but have made too many stops and pauses. ( T. Watson, M. A.) The business of youth 1. To regain the knowledge of God. 2. To renew intercourse with God. The business of youth is-- 3. To return to the service of God, “ All we like sheep have gone astray, we have turned every one to his own way.” “ Ye were as sheep going astray, but are now returned unto the shepherd and to the bishop of souls.” By the service of God, I intend, a life of filial obedience to God’ s will. His service does not consist in mere prayers and praises, in reading Scripture, and in attending public worship; even activity in spreading religion, blended with devotional exercises, does not compass God’ s service; that service consists in doing and in suffering all God’ s will, and His will embraces every act, and claims every hour. The business and the service in which you are occupied, may be made a course of duty to God: perform what you have to do, as unto God; do it according to God’ s will; do it in the spirit of obedience to God; and in your worldly calling you will glorify Him; your conduct will exhibit the holiness, the justice, and the goodness of His will; your spirit will manifest His nature; your circumstances will display His power and His love; the place of your daily labour will be as much the temple of your ministrations, as the place where the seraphs cry; and your avocations as truly worship, as is their song of “ Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord Almighty.” This is the business of youth: through the provisions of the gospel, to regain the knowledge of God--to renew intercourse with God--to return to the service of God--in one word, to “ Remember the Creator.” Youth are expected to be thus occupied, by the highest authority and by the holiest beings. This expectation is reasonable:--Because, 1. The season of youth is the right time for the commencement of this business--it is the right time, because the youth is as much the creature of God as he ever can be--it is the right time, because the time in which God requires it to be begun. “ In the days of thy youth, remember thy Creator.” I do not deny that religion is often entered upon during manhood, and sometimes in old age; but it is too late; not too late for salvation, but too late to be right. God has not given men a discharge from His service during youth delay is, therefore, sin. Are mid-day and evening only ruled by the sun? does the earth nourish only the full-grown tree, or the full-blown flower? then why should life’ s morning be without God, and the plants of youth without a place in God’ s vineyard? The expectation is reasonable:-- 2. Because, in the youthful stage of life, there is no peculiar impediment to the pursuit of this business. There are impediments, and they are great, and they are many: a fallen nature, an adversary in Satan, and an evil world, involve them. But these sources of opposition exist in every stage of life; and, I ask, when are they most full and powerful? Youth has nothing in it, as youth, presenting impediments. The peculiar features of early life are these:--The character is unformed--habits are not fixed--the spirits are buoyant--cares are not heavy; but in these features of youth we find facilities, not obstacles. The Scriptures and the ordinances of religion are as adapted to youth as to old age; if they supply strong meat for men, they yield also milk for babes. God is not slow to be found of the young, to hold fellowship with them, and to introduce them to His service. “ I love,” saith God, “ them that love Me, and them that seek Me early shall find Me.” The expectation is reasonable:-- 3. Because, nothing so promotes the happiness of life, as the early pursuit of this business. Distinguish happiness from mere pleasurable feeling: the latter is not always the state of a godly man. But if a quickened intellect, if shelter from many moral evils, if fellowship with that Being whose wisdom and knowledge and influence are infinite, if peace of mind, if securing the chief end of life, if the love and care of God, if the prospect of a glorious immortality can constitute happiness, then it is found in the knowledge, in the fellowship, and in the service of God. The season of youth is the time in which happiness is most ardently sought; and if the young but become occupied with that which we have called the business of life, they not only secure in youth the purest and most solid enjoyment which can be found on earth, but they treasure up happiness for manhood and old age, yea, even to eternity. Godliness will promote the welfare of the young in their business. The godly youth attends to business with diligence and fidelity, and (performing his duties in the spirit of prayer) with the prospect of success. He performs everything as unto God--he acts by God’ s guidance, he inherits God’ s blessing. Any wise master will value greatly a pious apprentice, a godly assistant, a religious servant. Sunday religion--mere Bible-reading religion--mere church- and chapel-going religion, all employers, pious and profane, agree to abhor, but the reality in a youth all must prefer. (S. Martin, D. D.) My Father’ s business Once, a great Roman emperor had conquered a great country and he had come back to Rome, and he was having what is called “ a triumph.” He was going up with great pomp, chariots, and soldiers, and great hosts of people! A very little boy ran out of the crowd that was looking at the emperor, and was running up to him, when the crowd put him back, and said, “ Don’ t you know it is the emperor?” The boy replied, “ Yes, he is your emperor, but he is my father!” “ My father!” “ That great king is your emperor, but he is my father!” A man once said, “ Life is a thread; but the thread is in my Father’ s hand, so it is all rightQ” Do you understand that? What a blessed thing it is to be able to say, “ My Father!” Beautiful words, aren’ t they? I don’ t know any words like them. “ My Father!” “ It is no use unless you can say, “ My.” My dear boys and girls, can you look up into that great Father’ s face, and say, “ He is my Father” ? “ I must be about my Father’ s business.” (J. Vaughan, M. A.) Busy I have read a little fable about a hard frost. When everything was frozen there was one little stream running still. It was not frozen, and somebody said to the little stream, “ Little stream, why aren’ t you frozen?” The reply was, “ I am too busy to be frozen. I am going too fast, too quickly, to be frozen.” The best way is to be very busy--have plenty to do. Father’ s business I should like to say something about a man who wrote a very clever book. At one time he did not believe in God. One day he was wanting a little water, and he knocked at a cottage door and asked for some water. A little girl opened the door, and he said to her, “ Will your mother give me a little water to drink?” She replied, “ Come in, sir; my mother will be happy to give you some water.” He went in, and saw the little girl had been reading the Bible; and he said to her, “ What, getting your task done?” She said, “ No, sir, no task. I am reading my Bible.” “ Yes,” he said, “ you are getting your tank out of the Bible.” “ No, sir,” she repeated, “ I am reading the Bible.” He said to her, “ Do you love the Bible?” In a childish way she replied, “ I thought everybody loved the Bible.” This struck him very much. This little girl loved her Bible; it was no task to her, but a pleasure. He went home and read the Bible for himself. That was the beginning of it. She was “ doing her Father’ s business.” How did it become God’ s business? And it is the great business of our day, to be reading the Bible, praying, thinking; and in our private devotions. Luke 2:50-51 And was subject unto them-- Obedience to parents How significant a sentence! God, whom the angels obey, is subject to Joseph and Mary I Children, behold your model, and learn from the example of Jesus to be obedient to your parents. I. BY . Reverence is required-- 1. By the law of nature. (1) God has planted in the hearts of men a reverential feeling towards those to whom they owe their lives. Hence, even the heathen honour their parents. (2) Reverence is due to every superior from his subjects; consequently due to parents from their children, because they are the God-given superiors and guardians. 2. By the duty of gratitude. The parents are, next to God, the greatest benefactors of their children; it is from them that they receive food, clothing, education. 3. By an explicit commandment of God (Exodus 20:12). (1) The first commandment with promise (Ephesians 6:1-8). (2) The most dreadful, because of the threats imposed upon its violation (Deuteronomy 27:16). II. BY LOVE. Love is required-- 1. By God Himself (Proverbs 30:17). 2. By reason. Parents love their children, wherefore they deserve to be loved in return. The children of the Gentiles loved their parents, AEneas carried on his shoulders his old father out of Troy. 3. Love is excited by the example of good children. Joseph. Jesus. III. BY DEEDS. 1. Obedience, which is required (1) by nature; (2) by God Himself. 2. By active charity in their necessities. Children must (1) bear their imperfections and infirmities; (2) console them in their adversities and relieve their wants if necessary; (3) assist them in their advanced age; (4)in time of dangerous illness provide for spiritual and medical help; (5) pray for them. Conclusion: If children would comply with these duties towards their parents, their reward would be temporal and eternal happiness. (Wansidal.) The Holy Family There is a pious legend that St. Luke, an artist as he was, painted several pictures of Jesus and Mary; however this may be, we know at any rate that he drew some lovely pictures of the youth of Jesus, and of the Holy Family in which he dwelt. I. THE VIRTUES OF THE HOLY FAMILY. 1. Fear of God. This was manifested by their journey to Jerusalem, made by Mary the tender Virgin, though not required by law, and by Jesus hardly yet bound by law. An admonition to Christian families not to stay away from public worship. 2. Their activity. (1) Joseph was a carpenter, and supported the Holy Family by handiwork. Mary managed the household. Jesus assisted both of them. (2) They were united in their daily works. Co-operation. 3. Peacefulness and meekness. II. THE VIRTUES OF THE THE HOLY FAMILY. 1. Joseph. An Israelite indeed, in whom was no guile; a model to all. (1) His willingness to yield to God’ s arrangements. Protection of Mary. Flight into Egypt. (2) His loving care of Jesus and Mary. 2. Mary. Full of grace; a model to all women. (1) Her innocence, resignation, humility. (2) Her discretion and love of retirement. 3. Jesus is your model, ye sons and daughters. (1) His conduct at the Temple school. He manifested His knowledge, but without ostentation. (2) His obedience. This is the touchstone of the inner value of a child, and the path to wisdom and happiness. (3) His growth in wisdom and grace. (Weinzierl.) Development of Christ through the influences of home In the life of Christ we have the actual union of pure Divinity with ordinary human life. He traversed all its stages--childhood, boyhood, youth, and manhood; He touched all that was universally common to pure humanity in each, and from henceforth there is no life, even to the very lowest, in which the real may not become what it is in its purity--the ideal; no office, no work, which, done in His spirit, the making of a book or the digging of a garden, may not accord with the highest imagination of your spirit, and chime in with your most poetical vision of perfection. Trace the influence of His home-life upon the character of Christ. I. IT HIS LOVE OF MAN UPON A SURE . He grew naturally in love. It was a normal, slow development of the affection which was to die for the world. II. IT IN HIS MIND A DEEP SENSE OF THE OF AND SOCIAL . He gives no sanction to the error of those who think that in separation from all domestic and social ties they can live more purely and worship God with a more entire devotion; that a systematic contempt for all the bonds which bind mother to son, and wife to husband, is a proof of the highest spirituality; whose spiritual religion consists in a denial of the natural piety of the heart, and whose efforts for a reformation of human nature are founded on a denial of human nature. Think of Him at the marriage feast; at the grave of Lazarus; see how tenderly He deals with the widow of Nain, and afterwards with His own mother at the Cross. III. . IV. . The source of the tears He shed over Jerusalem arose, humanly speaking, in the heart of His mother. (Stopford A. Brooke, M. A.) The home at Nazareth I. In this one verse we are admitted to see the home life of Jesus. Home life is the God-appointed training ground of the human character; from the home life of childhood springs the maturity of manhood for good or for evil. II. 1. Let children and young people learn from the example of the Divine Child that home life, with all its little duties and trials, is the discipline which God has appointed as the best training for the duties and trials of a wider sphere. 2. Not infrequently when in youth the spiritual eye is opened to the things of God, and a desire is kindled after a higher life, there follows a restlessness which rebels against the irksomeness of the small details and daily duties of common life. At such a time it is well to remember that it was immediately after the Child Jesus had recognized more clearly the Divine mission to which He was summoned, that He went down to Nazareth and there lived in subjection to His earthly guardians, conscious that in so doing He was most truly “ about His Father’ s business.” 3. Let parents also learn, from the example of the Virgin Mother, to reverence the child-mind. (Canon Vernon Hutton, M. A.) Every duty has its proper place and time The fact that Jesus loved Bible study did not keep Him from going with His parents when they called Him, or from obeying them so long as they had a right to His obedience. Duties never conflict. The wish to go to a prayer-meeting, or to a Sunday school, or to any other church service will not justify the neglect of any well-defined duty elsewhere. God approves of no devotion on the part of any servant of His which makes that servant less loving and considerate and faithful toward mother, sister, wife, or child. (H. C. Trumbull.) The true order of obedience The only acts recorded of Christ’ s childhood are acts of obedience--to God His heavenly Father, and also to His earthly parents. He thus shows what the special duty of childhood and youth is; and teaches what the true order of obedience is, viz., that the foundation of obedience to man is to be laid in obedience to God; a lesson made more cogent by the particular circumstances of our Lord’ s relationship to Joseph, which was not one of natural, but of putative filiation; and therefore teaches the duty of obedience to parents, natural, civil, and ecclesiastical. (Bishop Chris. Wordsworth.) The filial dutifulness of Jesus He was subject--He, the great God of heaven and earth, continually submitted Himself to His parents. In little things doubtless; for domestic life consists of little things; and submission could not otherwise have been shown. If they sent Him on a message to a neighbour, He the Great Sender of the apostles, delivered the message faithfully. If they bade Him sweep the house and search for a lost coin, He, “ the wisdom of God,” who seeks diligently for lost souls, did even as He was bade. If they taught Him joiner’ s work, and showed Him how to make a plough or a yoke for oxen, He, who lays on men an easy yoke and a light burden, learned cheerfully and gladly, and threw His mind into the trade. If they bade Him work in their little plot of garden ground, and train the creepers or water the flowers, He, the great Dresser of the vineyard of His Church, who rears souls by the Jews of His grace and the discipline of His providence, Look in hand the water-pot and the gardening tools. (Dean Goulburn.) A great love and a great lesson A great love, inasmuch as He yielded this submission in our nature for our sakes; and we are freely welcome to all the benefits of it. A great lesson; for, if submission were the law of His life, how much more fitting is it that it should be the law of ours I Oh, that we may embrace the love I Oh, that we may learn the lesson! In doing both these things the Christian life consists. (Dean Goulburn.) Home duties The earthly call found Him, too. It was His duty, when found, to go with His parents, and He went. Ponder that. Hint of universal significance. Never trust a heavenly call which bids you neglect your obvious duties whilst they remain such. The things that lie near to your hand, round about you, are as much the Father’ s business as anything else. Don’ t think that being off to early, communion, and neglecting, your children, and your husband and your housework, is doing your Father s business. Don’ t suppose that charity out of the house, and dancing attendance on the clergyman to the neglect of hearth and home, is your Father’ s business. Learn of the Saviour. When the home claim came He immediately left what, at the moment, was of absorbing interest to Him; He left the excitement of Jerusalem, the high pressure atmosphere of religious emotion--with its thrills of new knowledge and its vistas of new thought--and went quietly back eighty miles to the little rustic hamlet in thenorth, and the carpenter’ s shop at Nazareth. What divinity lies here I What Divine philosophy and Divine life, which is also a most human, a most simple, a most homely life. (H. R. Haweis, M. A.) The obedience of childhood There is an Oriental proverb which says, “ The first deities which the child has to acknowledge are its parents” ; and another, that “ Obedient children are as ambrosia to the gods.” The parent is to the child God’ s representative in a sense. Jesus places filial obedience and obedience to God together when He says (Luke 2:49), “ Wist ye not that I must be about My Father’ s business?” If a king places a viceroy over a portion of his dominions, it is the duty of loyal subjects to obey the viceroy. If they make war against the viceroy, they are actually making war against the king who appointed him. So a child disobeying its parents is disobeying God. And obedience is made easy by love. What wings are to a bird, or sails to a ship, love is to the child. Heaven is high, and the path of obedience slopes up to it. (Sunday School Times.) Christ’ s life of submission Though the words, “ He was subject unto them,” apply especially to the period of our Lord’ s youth, they would be a perfectly true motto for His course in after-years. His whole life was one of subjection and submission. He submitted Himself, and He taught submission, to every ordinance of man for the Lord’ s sake. He submitted to receive John’ s baptism though He had no need of it. He submitted to pay the tax for the support of the Temple, though, as the only-begotten Son of the Father, whose house the Temple was, He was rightfully exempt from the tax. He bade the Jews submit themselves to the Romans who had conquered them, and render unto Caesar the dues which were Caesar’ s. He bade His disciples observe and do all that the Scribes and Pharisees enjoined, because they sat in Moses’ chair, and held a position of authority. And, finally, He became obedient unto the sentence of death, drinking with the utmost meekness, even to the dregs, the cup of suffering which the Father had given Him. (Dean Goulburn.) Obedience to parents The Rev. Herbert Palmer, master of Queen’ s College, Cambridge, who died in 1647, was remarkable for his dutiful affection to his parents, not only when he was a child, but during his whole life. He was peculiarly attentive to his pious, aged mother; promoting, to the utmost of his power, both her temporal and spiritual comfort, even to the day of her death, which happened not long before his own. He used frequently to enforce this duty in his ministry, observing the emphasis which God puts upon it through the whole of the Scriptures. He used to say that he had noticed the effects of disobedience to parents, so that he scarcely ever knew undutiful children escape some visible judgment of God in the present life; he also thought that the mischiefs which occur in society frequently take their rise in the contempt of parental authority. Mr. Cecil’ s obedience When the Rev. Richard Cecil was but a little boy, his father had occasion to go to the India House, and took his son with him. While he was transacting business, the little fellow was dismissed, and told to wait for his father at one of the doors. His father on finishing his business went out at another door, and entirely forgot his son. In the evening, his mother missing the child, inquired where he was; on which his father, suddenly recollecting that he had directed him to wait at a certain door, said, “ You may depend upon it, he is still waiting where I appointed him.” He immediately returned to the India House, and found his dear boy on the very spot where he had been told to remain. He knew that his father expected him to wait, and therefore he would not disappoint him. The Christian family 1. The family gives a practical solution to the great problems of moral truth. It is the typical form of the vast organizations that belong to human life. It teaches subordination in love, and subordination is only another word for fitting together. 2. Order and government are likewise taught in the family, and it is the government or order which springs from paternal love that carries with it a sense of its fitness and its necessity. Love is the supreme governor. 3. It is in the family that we for the first time learn with some degree of clear intelligence what is the meaning of vicarious suffering. 4. The family also teaches, as we can scarcely find it taught otherwise, the true doctrine of sin and penalty. It is of the first importance that we should frame our theology respecting sin and penalty, not on the theory of universal civil governments, which is an artificial thing, derived from the ideas of different nations, and which has never been wisely administered. The administration of pain and penalty in governments and courts is exceedingly rude and imperfect; but the administration of pain and penalty in the family is beautiful from the beginning to the end. The mother’ s frown, the mother’ s refused kiss, the mother’ s hand, carries pain, or the execution of penalty; but it is never odious, and it is never cruel. 5. We learn in the family likewise the doctrine of the liberty of law. Nowhere else is there more law than in the household law unwritten, but well understood; and yet there is no law there that violates love. 6. We learn also, from the household, the true nature of forgiveness--what it is, and the conditions of it. Harmony with the spirit of love is forgiveness. (H. W. Beecher.) The eighteen silent years These eighteen years are of immeasurable importance in any human life. They cover the period when human nature is most impressionable, most receptive, most plastic. The seeds of all future production are sown then. Year by year, month by month, day by day, the life is built up--life physical, moral, spiritual. By processes slow hut sure, never to be undone, by steps never to be retraced, development is gained, the coil of life is lengthened and unwound. At thirty the man’ s character is formed. What he will be in the future depends on what he is then. Now, it is the history of this time--all-important--that St. Luke describes in these verses “ obscurely bright” ; revealing, yet enveloping in sacred and profound mystery, the life of the Second Adam who regenerates, redeems the world. What is here recorded is the earthly and human side of Christ’ s preparation for that work. What you and I are to-day, what the Church is to-day, what the world is to-day, is the outcome of those eighteen silent years. Study, then, this short, sweet record of the human life of Jesus Christ; and study it, not only to admire, but to imitate. Our motto should be--“ Christ for me, Saviour, example, Lord: I for Christ, scholar, follower, servant.” In this record we may trace some lessons which may enable us the better to fight the good fight. 1. Submission. The characteristic virtue of childhood, its natural and necessary condition. The daily round of home life, with its routine of duties, its continual calls for submission, often all the more difficult to obey because we cannot, even to ourselves, dignify them with the name of hardships or great trials--this Christ has consecrated by these eighteen silent years. 2. Work. Doing each day’ s work in its appointed time--be the work what it may--fitted Him for the future, when the work was different. Surely the lesson is not what you do, but how you do it. 3. Growth. (1) This does not necessarily mean imperfection. The child is not to blame because he is not a man all at once. It is the law of his being to grow. He lives by growth. Up to his measure he may be perfectly developed; but that measure, that capacity, is continually expanding. So we learn to think of growth as inseparable from healthy human life, of progress as the law of our nature, of increase in wisdom as perfectly compatible with all moral and spiritual excellence. In Christ this earth has for once been permitted to witness the natural development of a sinless childhood--development, not by sudden miracle, but by Divine indwelling. The glory that dwelt in Jesus shone in those eighteen quiet years in the orderly progress, step by step, of the boy to the youth, the youth to the man. For (2) nothing can be more plain than this, that the Lord’ s humanity was real indeed. Every line of the gospel tells us this; every word of these verses, which record, while they do not reveal, these eighteen years. We do not doubt it, indeed; perhaps we dwell on it with appreciation and thankfulness. But let us never forget that the same Lord, who thus lived and toiled, rose, ascended, lives, reigns. It is not simply by contemplation, even devout contemplation, of the perfectly human Jesus, that our spirits live. It is by personal fellowship with the God-man, as human now as ever, but God then in the days of His flesh, as now. This is the message of redemption, God’ s message to the Church and to the world, to the soul that suffers, sins, dies, to the world that sickens, staggers, swoons--God made man for you! (John Brown, M. A.) God’ s lessons slowly learned All these eighteen years were years of preparation. Thirty years of obscurity, and only two, or at the most three, of active work. “ What extraordinary want of proportion! what failure of moral perspective!” we should have said. But God’ s lessons are only to be slowly learned. Mark this point. See, then, how Christ used the discipline of this preparation. See Him when He cams forth from the thirty years of silence and toil. See Him as He moved among men--calm, unruffled, unresting indeed, but unhurried. Did He not know the depth of human need? “ Lord, to whom shall we go but to Thee for words to express man’ s utter emptiness? Who has gauged sin like Thee? Who sees sin as the man does who views it in Thy light?” Did Christ, then, not feel how short the time is? Well, He knew that “ the night cometh, when no man can work.” Yet, knowing man’ s need and life’ s shortness, He moves among men like a wise physician in a sick-room, the only one not flurried, not distracted, because the only one who adequately knows at once the greatness of the crisis, and the right remedies to use. Whence, then, hath this Man this wisdom and these marvellous gifts? How knoweth this Man letters, having never learned? Surely the answer on the human side is this: Because He has used rightly the opportunities of preparation, the times of waiting All that we mean by the discipline of life. Remember, then, that God’ s lessons are only to be slowly learned. “ First the blade; then the ear; after that” --not before--“ the full corn in the ear.” “ What is the use of all this drudgery, all this taking pains, all this monotonous attention to little wearisome details of duty? I want to strike out boldly for the shore. I am tired of buffeting with these tiresome little waves” :--it is the child’ s voice that speaks thus, not the full-grown man’ s. Experience teaches that painful, laborious learning must go before successful activity. Day by day you go on drudging, slipping, failing, hoping, blundering: at last the moment comes when you find out that you have mastered your lesson, and you sweep along the icy path with confidence and power. So in all things. God’ s lessons are to be mastered only by the man. First you receive some spiritual truth--say, e.g., the fact of personal sinfulness--as an outside thing altogether; then by degrees it becomes more real and living; you begin to see that it has a meaning for you as a thing to be striven after; until, at last, you hardly know how, it becomes a part of your very self, nothing in the world for you more real than this, your sinful soul in God’ s presence. Fully to attain such knowledge you must do as Jesus did--go apart by yourself along the divinely-chosen road of difficult duty--content to fill a little space, if God be glorified--ready to learn, ready to obey, because, above all, more ready to pray. All this can only be deliberately, consciously chosen, as an act of the whole man, when you have mastered the spiritual alphabet, the sinful soul drawn and drawing toward the Divine Saviour. It is blessed, though it is very hard, and we learn but slowly, to be taught by Him. So, so only, we find rest to our souls. No higher wish can be framed, no better prayer offered than this: that all may be able to learn those lessons of daily life which Christ Himself had practised before He taught. Christ an example in filial duties 1. First, we may remark, that the subjection of our Lord to His parents was that of love. Again, the love of children to their parents should manifest itself in a ready compliance with their wishes, and in a disposition to correct everything in the temper or conduct which gives them pain. 2. Another point in the subjection of Christ to His parents worthy of notice is, that it was yielded to those who were so much His inferiors. 3. Again, the subjection of Christ to His parents included obedience to them. 4. And another point in our Lord’ s example of subjection to His parents is, the returns He made to them. If we were favoured in childhood with wise and religious guardians, they have laid us under a debt of obligation for which we can never be too thankful to them and to God. Jesus Christ toiled as a carpenter with His father until nearly thirty years of age, and probably supported the family after Joseph’ s death; while many a young lad among us feels that he is hardly dealt with if he does not receive his earnings before he comes of age. (W. H. Lewis, D. D.) Subjection of children “ Whatever else you teach, or omit to teach, your children,” said the Rev. T. Scott, “ fail not to teach them subjection, and that to the mother as well as the father. This is as essential to their own welfare, temporal and eternal, as to that of the family, the Church, and the State. Establishing authority--which is quite consistent with kindness and affection--so that from childhood they shall never deliberately think of having or doing what a parent disapproves; this is the greatest safeguard you can place around young persons. Subjection to authority is God’ s ordinance, essential to the belief and practice of religion. If it be true,” he adds, “ that there are more pious women than men,” he ascribes it much to this circumstance, “ that they are more used to restraint and subjection.” Duty to parents A pious servant girl, who had “ lived out” for a number of years, and laid by a considerable sum of money, hearing that her aged parents were feeble and in needy circumstances, left her situation, and went home to take care of them. She spent her savings for their comfort, making the money last as long as possible; but in time it was all gone, and her own health began to fail. Worldly-wise friends uttered their sympathetic regrets that she should have spent all her supply when she needed it so much herself. “ I have only done my duty to my parents,” she said. “ God will provide for me somehow. He will never let me perish for doing right.” God did provide for her. She was able to continue her loving ministrations till the death of both her father and mother; and then a whole applauding neighbourhood united to place her in circumstances of comfort for the rest of her life. Gratitude to parents I thank God for two things--yea, for a thousand; but for two among many--first, that I was born and bred in the country, of parents that gave me a sound constitution and a noble example. I never can pay back what I got from my parents. If I were to raise a monument of gold higher than heaven, it would be no expression of the debt of gratitude which I owe to them for that which they unceasingly gave, by the heritage of their body and the heritage of their souls, to me. And next to that I am thankful that I was brought up in circumstances where I never became acquainted with wickedness. (H. W. Beecher: from his last public letter.) His mother kept all these sayings in her heart “ His mother kept all these sayings in her heart” Not in her memory, nor her understanding, nor her diary, but in her heart--that well of silence in the bosom of true motherhood, where all freshest, purest waters are kept fresh and pure. Infiltered there, and stored by loving thought, they are not vapourized and shallowed by much talk, and seem to be only the sweeter the deeper fill they make. Her family story she cannot carry into the street, or even speak of with her friends. And things are occurring with her Jesus every day, in which stamps and signatures of His divinity are distinctly, and even visibly, manifest, but which cannot be advertised without becoming tokens of weakness in the mother and precocity in the child. She sometimes wants to even strike a song of triumph, but her loudest song will be silence--a hymn that she keeps hid in her heart, as she does all the sayings and great acts of her wonderful Son. (H. Bushnell, D. D.) The memory of the heart They tell us that memory is one of the intellectual powers. I think that the strongest memory is a power of the heart. There are memories of the intellect which are short-lived and evanescent; they are like the morning cloud that vanishes away. But the things that are kept in the heart are not evanescent; they last for ever. There are those who complain of having short memories, but how often does it spring from want of sufficient interest? If we could transfer our duties from the intellect to the heart, we should rarely forget them. Love photographs impressions of the past, in colours that do not fade; the things which are kept in the heart are kept for ever. (G. Matheson, D. D.) Luke 2:52 And Jesus increased in wisdom-- A pattern childhood and youth 1. He grew, not in stature only, but in wisdom and favour with God and man. Christ, as Divine, must have had all knowledge and power from the first. But subjecting Himself to the laws of human development, He thereby consented to an unfolding which, in childhood should exhibit a perfect Child, in youth a perfect Youth, in manhood a perfect Man. It was the unfolding of a perfect bud into a perfect flower. At each advancing step He was only evincing larger measures of that wisdom and moral excellence which, in possibility and germ, were in Him from the first. 2. He was content with an obscure and humble home. In these days there is everywhere a great crowding into cities and populous towns. These are thought to have peculiar advantages for the training and education of children. But have not the solid men, for whose living in it the world has most reason to be grateful, oftenest come from hillsides and homes like that of Nazareth? It is in obscure places that youth escapes the wasting strifes of ambition, the unproductive chase after vanities; that he learns not only “ to scorn delights and love laborious days,” but to think his own thoughts and to stand alone. The wise youth is content just where it has pleased God to place him. If the station is lowly and the lot obscure, he does not chafe and repine; he rather gives thanks. 3. He was a winning example of filial piety and obedience. For thirty years He was contentedly subject to parental guidance and authority. It is the discipline of a well-ordered home which makes good citizens. It is a blessing, above all others, to grow up in a house where the gospel rule prevails. There it is that foundations are laid for every moral virtue. There is the best safeguard of purity. It is there that one learns the sweetness of lowly ambitions and the surpassing wealth of pure affection. 4. It is time to speak of His self-subjection to the discipline of helpful industry. He was called “ the carpenter’ s son.” He was Himself the carpenter. Justin Martyr, who lived as near to Him as we do to George Washington, speaks of Him as “ a worker in wood,” and says that He “ made ploughs and yokes and other implements relating to husbandry.” After Joseph’ s death, the care of His mother would devolve upon Him. It is therefore proper to think of Him as early sharing the lighter labours of His home. His little feet bear Him on many a helpful errand for His mother. Pitcher in hand, He runs for water to the well. To kindle the fire He gathers and brings the wood. Soon, with growing limbs, He begins to wield the hammer, the axe, and the saw in the shop; to invent and shape toys for Himself and useful things for the house. In the process of time, He settles into a more patient industry. In the little village on the hillside of Nazareth, He is “ the carpenter.” And such a shop as that in which He wrought, must have been I Do you think He ever made reckless promises, and failed to keep them? Do you think He ever did poor work, and charged the price of good? That He ever concealed a flaw, or tried to get the better of another in trade--can you believe that? 5. He was not in undue haste to have done with the work of preparation and to enter upon His public ministry. In such backing lies the strength of all great workers. Have we not often seen men of ripened age, men of whom the world never so much as heard the name, suddenly burst upon the stage of action, assume an easy leadership, and carry off the best prizes of emolument and honour? They are equal to the places they attempt to fill. They endure. Such men have taken time for preparation. They have both knowledge and self-knowledge. They have that self-control which comes of quiet introvision. They have root; and a root grows: it is not made; only to an extent can it be forced. 6. The childhood and youth of Jesus were marked by delight in the truths and ordinances of religion. At twelve years old, when taken to Jerusalem, His feet swiftly bare Aim to the Temple. Let no parent, or teacher, or worker in the Lord’ s vineyard look upon a child as too young to be interested in holy things. Little feet linger where earnest words are spoken about (God and duty to Him. Little minds are full of wonder concerning the very deep things of the world unseen. Little hearts would gladly know and choose the way of grateful and loving service. Childhood’ s years may be given to God. And oh, what glory and safety and blessedness it is to have begun thus early. 7. He made His most earthly work a service unto His Father. Back at Nazareth He was all the time doing His Father’ s business, just as truly as when sitting among the doctors in the Temple. There is a time to pray, and there is also a time to read, and a time to work. Give to each its own time. And if, in each, your purpose is equally to do the will of God, and bring honour to Him, He is just as well pleased with the one as with the other. Go where God bids you go, abide where He would have you abide, and do each hour the work He appoints for that hour; do all in faith and love, and for His glory; for the rest you need have no fears. Thus the lowly can win as sweet a smile and as large a reward as those who fill the highest places. He is with us in life’ s valleys as truly as on the mountain-tops. The little child can come as close to His heart as the great king. It is not a great name, or a giant intellect, or conspicuous service, which God wants. It is only a trusting and obedient heart. Who cannot, who would not, give that? (H. M. Grout.) Progress in spiritual things Religion is a generous and noble thing, in regard to its progress; it is perpetually carrying on that mind, in which it is once seated, towards perfection. Though the first appearance of it upon the souls of good men may be, but as the wings of the morning, spreading themselves upon the mountains, yet it is still rising higher and higher upon them, chasing away all the filthy mists and vapours of sin and wickedness before it, till it arrives to its meridian altitude. There is the strength and force of the Divinity in it; and though, when it first enters into the minds of men, it may seem to be “ sown in weakness,” yet it will raise itself “ in power.” As Christ was in His bodily appearance, He was still increasing in wisdom, and stature, and favour with God and man, until He was perfected in glory; so is He also in His spiritual appearance in the souls of men: and accordingly the New Testament does more than once distinguish of Christ, in His several ages and degrees of growth in the souls of all true Christians. Good men are always walking on from strength to strength, till at last they see God in Zion. Religion, though it hath its infancy, yet it hath no old age: while it is in its minority, it is always in motu; but, when it comes to its maturity, it will always be in quiete; it is then “ always the same, and its years fail not” ; but it shall endure for ever. (John Smith.) Orderly development An orderly development; none of your monstrous athletes; none of your mere intellectual book-worms; none of your emaciated, hysterical saints and ascetics; none of your hermits or fanatical antisocial visionaries. He grew in body, in mind, in soul, and heart; stature, wisdom, favour--human and Divine. Is not that parable of childhood writ clear! Is not the message to you and to your children? Follow the lines, not of your crushed, but of your restrained, controlled, and regenerate nature. Learn, like Him, by the things that you suffer, undergo, have to put up with. Learn, before you teach; obey, before you command; going in and out amongst men, toil hand and heart about the Father’ s business, and with an ear ever attuned to the voices in the upper air, until we all come in the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ. (H. R. Haweis, M. A.) Christ’ s growth in wisdom The increase of Jesus in wisdom during this period was-- 1. Real. Jesus had to learn from the words of others what as yet He knew not; and that was entirely unknown to Him as a child, which He had a glimpse of as a boy, conjectured as a youth, and first clearly perceived as a man. 2. Unchecked. In attributing to the Lord Jesus the relative imperfection of childhood, we must carefully avoid imputing to Him the failings of childhood. His life showed no trace of childish faults, to be hereafter conquered. The words of John (Matthew 3:14) show, on the contrary, what impression was made by His moral purity when thirty years of age, and the voice from heaven (Matthew 3:17) sets the seal of the Divine approval on the now completed development of the Son of Man, a seal which the Holy One of Israel would only have offered to absolute perfection. 3. It was effected by means-- (1) Careful home-training. (2) The natural beauties of the neighbourhood of Nazareth. (3) The Scriptures. (4) The annual journeys to Jerusalem. (5) Prayerful communion with His heavenly Father. 4. Normal, and so an example of what our development should be in fellowship with Him. (J. J. Van Oosterzee, D. D.) The growth of Jesus in wisdom Our Lord’ s body grew in stature, so that, when He reached manhood, He had attained fair and comely proportions. And while the body grew, His human mind grew also; His human intelligence unfolded itself gradually into full blossom, in the same manner as the mind and intelligence of other children, only, doubtless, in a much greater degree. Perhaps you cannot understand how this could be. To grow in wisdom must imply that the person who grows is, at a more advanced age, wiser than when He was younger; knows something, understands something, which he did not know, and understand before. But how could this be in His ease? you may reasonably ask. Was He not God, you may say, even when He was quite a young child? And how can God be ignorant of anything, or fail to understand anything? Now it is true, doubtless--absolutely true--that our Lord, even while he was a child, was the everlasting God. But it is true also that He was “ God manifest in the flesh,” God sinking Himself down to the low level of human nature. He became really and truly for our sakes an infant, a child, a youth, a man. He did not merely seem to be human, but He actually was human. Now in order that He might be really and truly a man, He consented, in His wonderful condescension, not to call into exercise those powers which He had as God. You can quite understand a person having strength, but not using it. A man might have the strength of a giant, who might choose to exert Himself very little, might never walk above a few yards, might not employ his hands in any harder work than turning over the leaves of a book or reeling off a skein of silk. And in like manner a man may have a perfectly strong and good eyesight, but he need not use it farther than he pleases. He may shut his eyes altogether, in which case he will see nothing. He may only half open them, in which ease he will see but dimly and confusedly; or he may go and live in a dungeon, where only a few straggling rays of light pierce the gloom; and then, however good his eyesight may be, he will for the first few seconds be able to see nothing; but when the eye has adjusted itself to the circumstances in which it is placed, he will begin to make out the forms of things around him, but will not see their colours, or have any power at all of examining them closely. This may help you to understand how our Lord, while He had in ]dis Divine nature all power and all knowledge, yet, when He made His appearance among us as man, was ignorant of certain things, and unable to do certain things. In coming into the world, He, by His own free will and consent, limited Himself to do the things which a man could do, and to know the things which a man could know. He came into our poor, narrow, dark nature, just as a free man might come out of the light of day into a narrow, dark, prison-dungeon, and there consent to be shut up. Such an one might have the power of walking miles, but in the dungeon he can only walk a few paces; he might have a very keen eyesight, but in the dungeon he cannot even see to read. Christ took a nature which, till He took it, was not His own, and accommodated Himself to the feebleness and ignorance of that nature--limited Himself, if I may use the expression, to the walls of it. (Dean Goulburn.) Christ’ s increase in the favour of God We may compare our Lord’ s period of growth, during which He was prepared for His work, to the gradual execution of some great piece of sculpture, a bust or a statue. Let us say that the marble chosen for the work is a piece without flaw, spotless white, without a single vein running through it. Thus our Lord’ s human nature, unlike that which all of us inherit, was perfectly free from all tendency to evil; holy, harmless, undefiled at His very birth. But a white block of marble, though white when it is drawn from the quarry, can be made a more perfectly beautiful thing by being chiselled into an exquisite form. And a human nature, which was originally sinless, may be made a more perfectly beautiful thing by being disciplined through grace, and through the experience of suffering, into the perfect likeness of God. And you can quite understand how a sculptor, who is daily at work upon a statue, has an increasing satisfaction in it, as the work becomes more and more perfect, views it with greater pleasure and complacency to-day, when it has received so many flourishing touches, than he did some months ago, when it was a mere resemblance of the human form in outline. The work increases in favour with him daily; and when it is finished, he is then perfectly satisfied. Thus it was that Jesus, as a man, “ increased in favour with God.” (Dean Goulburn.) On the education of children It is not, alas, according to this model, that the generality of Christians form their children. We behold them principally intent on procuring for them worldly accomplishments, while they totally neglect to make them acquainted with the great duties of Christianity. 1. The human mind cannot be too early impressed with religious principles. The prudent will, indeed, be careful not to make that a burden which should be a pleasure; they will be content to unfold the gospel principles by degrees, as the youthful mind is able to receive them. 2. Nature only requires a little gentle assistance to perfect all her productions. You have seen a tender plant springing upon a fertile soil, what though tall and straight, and promising to become the pride of the forest, since one unlucky stroke may have crushed its aspiring head, and forced it from its natural direction, from that moment it bended and grew downwards to the earth, instead of towering to the skies. Thus, the human mind while young and pliable, is in perpetual danger of growing luxuriant by too much indulgence, or losing all its strength by the unnatural restraint of too much severity, to be suppressed by misfortune, checked by disappointment, or chilled by penury. How liable is it to deviate from the straight line of rectitude and honour, by the fascination of example, and the influence of imitation; to folly, vice, and ruin. It is the pleasing but important task of parents and guardians, to direct and defend this young and delicate production; leading it from lower degrees of perfection to higher, from the nursery to the field of action, till it is adorned with the fairest honours, enriched with the most precious fruit, and ripe for transplanting to the paradise of God, where it shall bloom afresh under the immediate sunshine of heaven, and flourish for ever in immortal beauty and perfection. 3. The prejudices received in youth are sometimes so violent and inveterate, that even maturity of years, the admonition of friends, the principles of hope, fear, honour, and religion, are unable too often to restrain them. Nay, the best of all teachers, experience, frequently attempts, but in vain, to cure the maladies of a wrong education. It is nonsense to expect a harvest, where the seed time has been lost, and you must be disappointed, who wish to reap where you have not sown. 4. The least indulgence of the bad inclinations of children, sometimes produces the most fatal effects in society. Witness David’ s indulgence of Amnon--it produced incest; of Absalom--it produced assassination and a civil war; of Adonijah--it produced a usurpation of the throne and crown. Observe, again, how God punished Eli, who neglected to correct duly the crimes of his children. Can you, O parents, hear these awful truths, and not shudder at the idea of indulging the least vicious propensity in your children? But let me turn from those gloomy images, to hold up to your view the picture of a parent’ s care, rewarded in a wise and virtuous offspring. These will be your pride and glory in the day of your health and strength; but in the gloomy and melancholy season of sickness and old age, they will be the light of your eyes, and the cordial of your fainting spirits; and as once with tender care you watched their tender infancy, so shall they with pious duty support your failing strength, soften the pangs of a dying hour, close your eyes in peace, and eventually follow you to that world where love and bliss immortal reign. (B. Murphy.) God’ s favour to be sought Jesus won the favour of man by seeking the favour of God. It is not so important that man should be pleased with us as that God should. But man’ s favour is more likely to be won through seeking God’ s favour than in any other way. If we are always asking how those about us will look at us; if we give large weight in our thoughts to the opinion of our fellows; if we endeavour to so shape our course as to win popular approval, we are by no means sure to have what we strive for; we may fall far short of the coveted favour of man; and, moreover, may utterly lack God’ s approval, whether man likes or dislikes us. But if we are always asking how God will look at our course; if we give large weight in our thoughts to His opinion and His commandments; if we seek to shape our course to win His approval, we are sure to get what we most long for; and we are surer of having also the favour of man than we could be through any other course. If God is our friend, He can secure to us man’ s approval. The best of human friends cannot win for us God’ s favour. (H. C.Trumbull.) The secret of the growth of Jesus See the daisy. It opens its petals when the light dawns, and closes them at sunset. It is in the right place to absorb out of earth and atmosphere the nutritive forces it needs, and it grows. Go into a garden and ask what all these various plants are doing. They toil not neither do they spin; they have no visible machinery and yet they are all capturing sunbeams and converting them into fragrances, essences, flowers and fruits for the welfare of the world. Does your boy trouble about growth as he eats and drinks and plays? No! He takes no thought for the morrow’ s growth. Flowers and children, rightly placed, grow. Get a piston and place it where the steam is and it will go. Put your water-wheel in the stream, and it turns. Man takes advantage of the energies close to hand and multiplies his forces a million-fold. So long as we are in the wrong place we cannot grow. The secret of the growth of Jesus is that He starts in the right place and keeps in it to the very end; He lives in and for God; is bathed with the warm light, and refreshed by the pure breath and nourished by the sweet fellowship with, and work for, the Father. (J. Clifford, D. D.) The silent growth of Jesus It is perplexing to some of us that there should be eighteen years of unbroken silence in such a life as Christ’ s. We have asked what was Jesus at 17, 20, and at 25? and though no audible voice responds to us, yet the silence, read in the light of the wonderful work accomplished in His brief ministry, is itself a sign of the depth, continuity, and fulness of the moral growth. All growth is silent. When nature is baptized in the fulness of spring forces, you hear not a rustle. The whole movement takes place secretly and silently, and the world comes up anew without the sound of trumpet or the message of herald: God builds His temples without the sound of hammer. His great moral structures go up from day to day without noise, His kingdoms come without observation, notwithstanding the moment of their arrival may be one of tempest and storm. Tyndall says” “ All great things come slowly to birth. Copernicus pondered his great work for thirty-three years; Newton, for nearly twenty years, kept the idea of gravitation before His mind; for twenty years also, he dwelt upon his discovery of fluxions; Darwin, for twenty-two years pondered on the problem of the origin of species, and doubtless he would have continued to do so had he not found Wallace upon his track.” So Jesus stayed in His place, did His carpentry, was obedient to His parents, accepted the restraints of His position, silently devoured the many chagrins of His lot, met His cares with a transcendent disdain, drank in the sunlight of His Father’ s face, and possessed His soul in perfect patience, though urged by deep sympathy and throbbing desire to save men. No boasting, no hurry, no impatience, but a quiet maturing of power, and then so clad was He in strength that He never lost an opportunity through delay or marred a bit of His work by haste. When Perseus told Pallas Athene that he was ready to go forth, young as he was, against the fabled monster Medusa the Gorgon, the strange lady smiled and said, “ Not yet; you are too young, and too unskilled: for this is Medusa the Gorgon, the mother of a monstrous brood. Return to your home and do the work which awaits you there. You must play the man in that before I can think you worthy to go in search of the Gorgon.” It is hurry that enfeebles us. The three ages of Christian life God in Christ has appeared among men to raise up again fallen humanity. In order to do this, He laid hold upon it, in the cradle, and left it only at the tomb; passing through all the stages of its growth, traversing in succession all the ages of life, sanctifying our nature at all periods of our existence, and causing us to see in His person, from the moment when He came into the world till that of His exaltation in glory, the perfect type of innocence and holiness. It is thus that He became in turn an infant, youth, man; an infant, obedient and submissive; a young man without reproach and keeping Himself pure from all defilement of the flesh and of the world: a full-grown man showing us in His character and in His conduct the model of absolute perfection. He stopped there; for He by whom and for whom are all things ought: not to fail; it was necessary that He should offer Himself a sacrifice in all the vigour of age and in all the fulness of life: it was not becoming that He should present to us the picture of decrepitude and old age. But as there has been a birth of the Son of God in the Man Jesus, a growth of the God-man in the person of the Redeemer, so there has been, there is, and there will be, to the end of time, a birth and growth of Christ in all the souls belonging to Him. Christ is truly born. He grows up, He developes Himself in His people. There is in turn, in their case, the infant, the youth, and the grown-up man, and He completes in them the work of His grace till they come to the height of His perfect stature. (J. H. Grandpierre, D. D.) The humanity of Christ That Jesus was really a man. Here it may be observed, I. That He was really man BECAUSE HE HAD A HUMAN BODY. It was formed and fashioned in His mother’ s womb by the great Parent of all flesh. So it was, says the inspired writer, that while His mother was at Bethlehem, “ the days were accomplished that she should be delivered.” II. He was really man BECAUSE HE HAD A HUMAN SOUL AS WELL AS A HUMAN BODY. This is necessarily implied in what is said of Him in the text. He “ increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man.” Here both His wisdom and piety are asserted; and we know that these are properties of the soul, and not of the body. III. That Christ was properly a human person will appear, if we consider THE STATE AND IN WHICH HE WAS PLACED WHILE HE LIVED IN THIS WORLD. For-- 1. He was fixed in a state of dependence. 2. He was placed under law, which implies that He was a human moral agent, and accountable to God like other men. We are told that “ when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth His Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law.” 3. That Christ was placed, like all other men, in a state of probation from His birth to His death. I now proceed to improve the subject. 1. If Christ was really man, then the Arian notion of His pre-existence before He came into the world is entirely unscriptural and absurd. The Arians suppose that Christ was the first and noblest of created beings, and existed before the foundation of the world. For it is absurd to suppose that Christ had both a human soul and a super-angelic soul, and that both these were personally united with the Second Person in the Trinity, and so constituted Him a Divine Person. The true scriptural doctrine of Christ’ s divinity is founded upon the true scriptural doctrine of Christ’ s having a human body and a human soul, which was personally united with the second person in the Godhead. It is necessary, therefore, to believe the real humanity, in order to believe the real divinity of Christ. It has been found by observation and experience, that the denial of Christ’ s humanity directly leads to the denial of His divinity. 2. If Christ had a human body and a human soul, then we cannot account for the early depravity of children through the mere influence of bad examples, or bodily instincts and appetites. He was an infant, but He did not sin in infancy. He had a frail, mortal body, but it did not corrupt His heart. He lived in a wicked world, where He saw many bad examples, but they did not lead Him to follow them. He was a free moral agent, but He never chose to sin. 3. If Christ was really a man, then there is no natural impossibility of men’ s becoming perfectly holy in this life. 4. If Christ was really man, then God is able to keep men from sinning consistently with their moral agency. 5. If Christ was really man, then there is no absurdity in the doctrine of the final perseverance of saints. 6. If Christ was really man, then there is no reason to suppose that men possess a self-deter mining power, or a power to act independently of the Divine influence and control. 7. If Christ was really man, then His conduct is a proper example for all men to follow. 8. If Christ was really man, then He is well qualified to perform all the remaining parts for His mediatorial office. In particular, to perform the part of an intercessor. 9. If Christ be really a man, then they will be unspeakably happy, who shall be admitted into His visible presence, and dwell with Him for ever. (N. Emmons, D. D.) . Luke 3:1 Now in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar The fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar In this year, which fell between August, A.. 28, and August, A.D. 29, the Roman empire lay under the shadow of the darkest years of the tyrant, now an old man of seventy-one. Among those alive at the time, and remembered since, for good or for evil, the elder Pliny--afterwards, when a Roman admiral, killed at the first eruption, in historical times, of Mount Vesuvius--was a child of four; Vespasian, hereafter, with his son Titus, to crush Jerusalem, was full of the ambitions and dreams of a youth of nineteen; Caligula, one day to horrify the world by the spectacle of an insane despot at the head of the empire, was a lad of sixteen; Claudius, one day to be emperor, was a poor lame trembling man of thirty-eight; and among the marriages of the year was that of the daughter of the ill-fated Germanicus, from which, nine years later, was born Nero. Pontius Pilate had been two years procurator of Samaria, Judaea, and Idumea; Herod Antipas had been reigning for about thirty-two years over Galilee and Samaria, and was now a man of about fifty; and Philip, his brother, about the same age, and of the same standing as ruler, was still tetrarch of the rest of the land beyond the Jordan, living a quiet life, usefully and worthily. (Dr. C. Geikie.) The date Singularly enough this very exactness is a source of difficulty. Augustus Caesar died, and was succeeded by Tiberius in August, A.D. 14. Reckoning from this date, the fifteenth year of Tiberius was from August, A.D. 28, to August, A.D. 29. But this does not fit with the date which, onother grounds, we are led to assign to the beginning of our Lord’ s ministry, viz., A.D. 27. The solution, however, is simple and satisfactory. The reign of Tiberius as sole emperor began at the death of Augustus; but he had been joint emperor with Augustus--a sort of vice-emperor--for two years previously. The word used by St. Luke, translated “ reign,” by no means implies sole empire, but applies with perfect accuracy to this share in the government, which had special reference to the provinces. We therefore understand the fifteenth year of Tiberius to have begun in August, A.D. 26. (E. R. Condor, D. D.) Lysanias It has been said that St. Luke erred in stating that Lysanias was tetrarch of Abilene in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar. [Strauss, “ Leben Jesu,” § 44. Lysanias, it is said, died sixty years previously, and St. Luke has ignorantly made him alive, being deceived by the fact that Abilene continued to be called the Abilene of Lysanias, after its former ruler, for sixty or seventy years subsequently. Now, here it is in the first place assumed, without any word of proof, that the Lysanias who died B.C. 34, once ruled over Abilene. Secondly, it is assumed, also without any word of proof, that Abilene came to be known as the Abilene of Lysanias, from him. I venture to assert that there is absolutely no ground for believing that the old Lysanias was ever ruler of Abilene; and I venture to maintain that Abilene came to be called the Abilene of Lysanias from a second or later Lysanias, a son of the former one, who is the person intended by St. Luke. Till recently, Christian apologists were defied to show historically that there was ever more than one Lysanias, and were accused of inventing a second to escape a difficulty. But a few years since a discovery was made which must be regarded by all reasonable persons as having set the whole matter at rest. This was an inscription found near Baalbek, containing a dedication of a memorial tablet or statue to “ Fenodorus, son of the tetrarch Lysanias, and to Lysanias, her children,” by (apparently) the widow of the first and the mother of the second Lysanias. Fenodorus was already known as having succeeded the first Lysanias in his government. It is thus clear that there were, as previously suspected, two persons of the name, a father and a son, and there is not the slightest reason for doubting that the latter was tetrareh of Abilene in the fifteenth of Tiberius. (Professor Rawlinson.) Luke 3:2 Annas and Caiaphas being the high priests Annas and Caiaphas The way in which these two names occur in the New Testament has given some trouble to commentators. They are found in St. Luke’ s Gospel, mentioned both together at the commencement of the preaching of John the Baptist, and are there called “ the high priests.” St. Matthew, in the narrative of our Lord’ s trial, speaks only of Caiaphas, and calls him “ the high priest.” But St. John, who also mentions Caiaphas as “ the high priest,” tells us that Jesus, after His arrest, was first brought to Annas, as if he were of chief importance, and then was sent by him to Caiaphas, Lastly, in the Acts, we have Annas called the high priest, and the name of Caiaphas mentioned at the same time, but no title is given to the latter. But we know from Josephus that Annas (Ananus), who was father-in-law to Caiaphas, was made high priest by Quirinus (Cyrenius), A.D. 7, and continued in that office for seven years, when he was deprived of it by Valerius Gratus, and was never chosen to be high priest afterwards. It is clear, however, that from the earliest times down to a date after the composition of the Acts of the Apostles, there were often circumstances under which two men were called high priests at the same time. That one who had once been high priest, but had ceased to be in office, would still be called high priest, is evident from that principle which is laid down in several places in the Talmud, that “ you may elevate in the matter of a sacred thing, or office, but you cannot bring down.” As with us, “ once a bishop, always a bishop.” We see, therefore, that when Annas had been high priest, it was not only likely that he would continue to be so called, but that, according to Jewish usage, he could be called nothing else. The age of Annas, and the influential position naturally occupied by one who had been acting high priest himself, whose son had twice held the same office, and who was father-in-law to the present high priest, are sufficient to warrant the action of the crowd in taking Christ to Annas first; while in the passage of the Acts, the mention of Annas at the head of the list, with the title of high priest, was nothing more than was due to his years and to the relationship in which he stood to Caiaphas, while the omission of the high priest’ s title after the name of Caiaphas is no more a proof that he was not also high priest than the language of St. Mark’ s Gospel, where it is said, “ Go your way, tell His disciples, and Peter,” is evidence that Peter was not one of the disciples. (J. Rawson Lumby, D. D.) The Word of God came unto John An important statement The events of the first verse, as compared with the events recorded in the second, are of the most trifling importance. In the first instance there is a list of govern mental personalities and districts, and in the second verse there is the solemn fact that the word of God came unto the forerunner of our Lord. This juxtaposition of events is remarkably suggestive as bearing upon what is current in our own day. The world has a large list of its own appointments, regulations, and authorities, which reads most imposingly: on the other hand there are single sentences bearing upon spiritual life and work which totally eclipse the pomp of royal nomenclature and dominion. Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate, Herod, Philip, and Lysanias, are names which will perish from the roll of the highest factors of human history and service; but the name of John will be remembered and reverenced as the highest name known amongst men before the building up of the distinctive kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ. The word of God came unto John. This is a most remarkable expression, showing that John did not run before he was sent, and showing also that God knows where to find men when He wants them for any work in the world. John in the wilderness is nobody, but the word of God entering into this same John kindles him into a light that is seen afar. The true minister of God is charged with the word of Heaven. That which he speaks he speaks not of himself, he simply pronounces and proclaims with earnestness and persistency the truth which has been breathed into his own heart by the Spirit of God. The sword in the scabbard is a useless weapon, but when grasped by the hand of the trained soldier carries with it alike death and victory. It is, indeed, possible to have received the word of God as a commandment to go forth, and yet to have stifled the great conviction. There are men who are silent to-day in the Church, who, if faithful to their convictions, would be heard in loud protest against evil, and vehement proclamations as the apostles of Christian truth. -Grieve not the Spirit! Quench not the Spirit! We do not begin by quenching the Spirit; the deadly work begins by grieving the sacred presence. It is to be noted that John was in the wilderness when the word of God came unto him. Time spent in solitude is not misspent if the ear be bent towards God, and our love be listening for the coming of His word. (J. Parker, D. D.) Teachings of the wilderness Few Bible characters are so strangely fascinating to the devout reader as that of John the Baptist. In the wilderness God came to him; in the wilderness he was equipped for public service; from the wilderness he began his missionary work. This fact suggests three ideas of practical importance. I. THE NATURE OF LIFE. 1. Solitude. 2. Abstemiousness. 3. Privation. II. THE LESSONS OF LIFE. What John was taught in the wilderness gave him his regal manhood, viz., the high moral lessons of-- 1. Self-denial. 2. Humility. 3. Courage for what is true and holy. “ Separate from the world, his breast Did deeply take and strongly keep The print of heaven.” III. THE REASON OF GOD’ S IN THE . The “ word” was a call to active endeavour in the busy world. The wilderness had done its work, that is, had made John a fit person in the sight of God to be called to the important work of heralding the ministry of Christ. That same “ word of God “ is constantly coming to us all in all the great and little wildernesses of life. In all ages notable instances of such visitations have been recorded. Moses, Luther, Wordsworth, amongst the hills and vales of his native Westmoreland; Carlyle, who, in the wilderness of Craigenputtock, heard and obeyed a call to preach in his books repentance as the first and last need of his age. If we would be true to our higher nature we must cultivate the love of solitude. “ Morn is the time to act, noon to endure, But O! if thou wouldst keep thy spirit pure, Turn from the beaten path by worldlings trod, Go forth at eventide in heart to walk with God.” And if to solitude there be added suffering in our wilderness, let us despise it not. Though often dreary, it has its charms, its blessings. God may be found there. (J. McGavin Sloan.) John in the wilderness Wide as was the moral and spiritual difference between the two great prophets of the Jordan wilderness, and the wild ascetics of later times, it is for this very reason important to bear in mind the outward likeness which sets off this inward contrast. Travellers know well the startling appearance of the savage figures who, whether as Bedouins or Dervishes, still haunt the solitary places of the East, with a cloak--the usual striped Bedouin blanket--woven of camel’ s hair thrown over the shoulders, and tied in front on the breast; naked except at the waist, round which is a girdle of skin, the hair flowing loose about the head. This was precisely the description of Elijah, whose last appearance had been on this very wilderness, before he finally vanished from the eyes of his disciple. This, too, was the aspect of his great representative, when he came, in the same place, dwelling, like the sons of the prophets, in a leafy covert, woven of the branches of the Jordan forest, preaching, in raiment of camel’ s hair, with a leathern girdle round his loins, eating the locusts of the desert, and the wild honey or manna which dripped from the tamarisks of the desert region, or which distilled from the palm-groves of Jericho. To the same wilderness, probably that on the eastern side, Jesus is described as “ led up” by the Spirit--up into the desert-hills whence Moses had seen the view of all the kingdom of Palestine--“ with the wild beasts” which lurked in the bed of the Jordan, or in the caves of the hills, “ where John was baptising, beyond Jordan.” (Dean Stanley.) John’ s life in the desert A soul lost in the greatness of eternal truths, like that of John, may well have risen to an indifference to the comforts, or even ordinary wants of the body, otherwise almost impossible. We have no record of his daily life, but that of one who, in saintliness of spirit, trod in his steps, is still preserved. Saint Antony, in the deserts of Egypt, was wont to pass whole nights in prayer, and that not once, but often, to the astonishment of men. He ate once a day, after the setting of the sun; his food was bread with salt, his drink nothing but water. Flesh and wine he never tasted. When he slept, he was content with a rush mat, but mostly he lay on the bare ground. He would not anoint himself with oil, saying that it was more fit for young men to be earnest in subduing the body, than to seek things which softened it. Forgetting the past, he, daily, as if beginning afresh, took more pains to improve, saying over to himself, continually, the apostle’ s words--“ Forgetting what is behind, stretching forth to what is before” ; and mindful, too, of Elijah’ s saying, “ the Lord liveth, before whom I stand” --he said, himself, that the ascetic ought ever to be learning his own life from that of the great Elias, as from a mirror. The picture may not suit in some particulars, but as a glimpse of the mortified life of the desert, in its best aspect, it may serve to realize that of John, in the loneliness of the rough wilderness of Judaea. (Dr. C. Geikie.) John in the wilderness Here St. John the Baptist spent long years of solitary musing on the things of God, till his soul kindled into irresistible ardour, which drove him forth among men to plead with them to prepare for the coming of the Messiah. During the hot months it is a land of scorpions, lizards, and snakes, Be that his experience readily supplied him with a comparison for his wicked contemporaries, whom he denounced as “ a generation of vipers.” Wild bees make their combs in the hollows of the limestone rocks; the aromatic thymes, mints, and other labiate plants, sprinkled over the face of the wilderness, furnishing them with honey, which is more plentiful in the wilderness of Judaea than in any other part of Palestine. They thus provided for him a main article of his diet, while in one wady or another, or in soma cleft, there was always water enough to quench his thirst. Locusts, the other article of his food, are never wanting in this region, and, indeed, are to this day eaten by the Arabs in the southeast of Judaea, the very district where John lived; by those of the Jordan valley, and by some tribes in Gilead. They stew them with butter, and travellers say--for I myself have never tasted them--that they are very like shrimps in flavour. (Dr. C. Geikie.) Luke 3:3 The country about Jordan-- The river Jordan The river Jordan rises in the Anti-Lebanon, to the north of Jerusalem. Imagine that you are looking, as your glance may be directed towards me, to Jerusalem; yonder on your right is Hermon. The river Jordan rises in the Anti-Lebanon range, 1,700 feet above the sea level. There are many streams that contribute to it in its first flow, it is disputed which of them is the real source. The streams gather; they enter the waters of Merom, the first little lake. From that they pass, and, after a course of a few miles, they enter a larger lake, and one more familiar to us all, and endeared to us all, the Lake of Gennesaret, the Sea of Galilee. They pass through this lake, which is itself between six and seven hundred feet below the sea level. It is said that their current may be traced through the lake. They pass from the Lake of Galilee and go down, and ever clown, until they enter into what we now call the Dead Sea, the Lake Asphaltites. Now, reading the Scripture, we cannot discover the wonder of this lake, and this itself is noticeable. The Scripture instructs us respecting the Jordan and the events that occurred on its sides, but modern travel tells us that in all the wonders of the world there is none, of its kind, comparable to the great chasm of the Jordan. It is the lowest of rivers. We go to the margin of the sea, and there we count ourselves indeed low. We descend from the mountains to the sea. Near the sea, as, e.g., in Cornwall, there are sometimes mines; you descend those mines, and of course you are below the sea level. The Jordan is a river that flows down and down, till, when it enters the Dead Sea, it Isaiah 1,300 feet below the level of the Mediterranean, below our ordinary holiday seaside level, and if you try the depth of the water itself, you find there is another 1,300 feet before you reach the bottom. The waters of the Dead Sea are briny, sour, smarting; they hang about your skin like oil; they enter into any chaps of the skin and torment you. They are so heavy that if you go in and bathe you can, as it were, sit on the waters. Heavy, salt, sour, sharp, are these terrific waters--waters of death, flowing towards Jerusalem from the north, but lying far below Jerusalem, as they pass it on the east, for the mountain city Isaiah 2,600 feet above the level of the sea--the Mediterranean; and the river Jordan as it enters its lake of death Isaiah 1,300 feet below the level of that sea, or 4,000 feet below the level of Jerusalem; and again the bottom of that lake--the sunken sea-- Isaiah 1,300 feet below its surface. There is no parallel to this in the globe--none. You do not get a hint of it in the Bible. Does it mean anything? If I take a poker and dash a coal to pieces for the sake of feeding my fire, do I care how the fragments split? Not I. But I arrange the fragments presently that they may burn in the most agreeable manner. Does anybody suppose that Jehovah made the world as a man splits a coal for the Christmas fire, caring even less for the arranging of the parts or pieces; that He made a height here and a hollow there, and a broad river here and a comparatively narrow but foaming cataract there, without any purpose or meaning in His arrangements? Does any one suppose that in the placing of such a people as Israel there was no correspondence between the character and story of the people and the kind of country that they occupied? Do not think it. “ Sodom” is a proverb of wickedness, and the Sodomites lived in the lowest place on the globe. “ Jerusalem” is a name of glory, and Jerusalem is the mountain city of the world. Is there no meaning there? The one river, so called, of Palestine is as crooked as a serpent. It rushes on, muddy and foaming, like a maddened sinner, and it loses itself utterly in the sea of death, a sea without an outlet, a sea without a city on its shore, a sea without any animation of boats and traffic upon its surface, a sea without fish--not without its aspects of occasional loveliness though--and a sea that sends forth from its surface waters purified invisibly into the heavenly air. Wonderful seal Does this mean anything, or does it mean nothing?… The Jordan is the river of judgment. There is no such emblem of a sinner in the world as the river Jordan. There is no such emblem of the prohibitive law of Moses in its ultimate results as the Jordan and the lake into which it enters. The sinner goes down, down, and the end of his way is death. The prohibitive law drives us down, down, and the end of it is the sentence of death. Die we must if sin drive us on; dead we are if we understand not the law spiritually. But were we born to be destroyed? No; but to be saved. Were we born to be driven on by mere impulse? No; but to be rescued from such “ driving.” Were we born to enter into and be lost in the deep, the to us, as it were, unfathomable brine? No; but to be raised from it, purified, exalted. There is the Dead Sea: here the living Jerusalem. You look up--the living Jerusalem: you look down--the Dead Sea. From the heights of Jerusalem we look down and think of the Dead Sea as the sea from which we are rescued. We think of the Jordan, muddy, swollen, rapid, and know that not such is now the course of our life; but that we are rescued from such a course, and that we are to enter into “ life” itself by Jesus Christ, who died to become the rescuer. (T. T. Lynch.) Symbolism of the Jordan Pass from the thought of the Jordan to that “ river of God which is full of water,” whatever river may be by this phrase specially denoted in the Psalms, and recall this fact, that Jerusalem is especially the city of waters. Springs of water and subterranean streams are there in so much that if you are on the site of the old temple of Jerusalem, you may lay your ear to the ground and hear water running underneath, running, running. It is a wonderful thing. In the Church when it is most desolate, lay but your ear to the ground and you shall hear the waters of God running, running. The earth shall not perish of thirst, then? No, it shall not. The river of God, it is full of water. Glorious river! Will He keep it full? He will. Has not He kept the Nile “ in its courses” through these thousand, thousand years? Has not He kept all the great rivers in the world; and He will keep the river of His own truth, of His own love running, running. Fear not, then; deliver thyself up, as to the “ flesh,” to Jordan. Let Jordan make away with thee, and the swellings of Jordan carry thee down, down. Let his twenty-seven cataracts, or some of them, sweep thee on. Care nothing for the descents of Jordan. God will make away with thee by the current of Jordan, and yet will give thee to dwell by the river of His love and mercy, the river of which He will make us to drink; the river beside which trees of life grow; the river about which the Beautiful City is builded, the City of God so glorious and so peaceful. Believe in this river and take the imagery of Scripture, and use it as you will, this way to-day and another way to-morrow, yet always so as to enable your heart to trust and love God more and more, and you will rejoice that Scripture, as it were, is written in cipher; not merely in English, or Latin, or Greek, or Hebrew, but in cipher; in the language of hieroglyph, so that the more a man has of the Holy Ghost in his heart, the more he finds the Holy Ghost’ s meaning and comfort as he reads the ancient Word. (T. T. Lynch.) Baptism in the Jordan The Jordan was regarded by the Israelites as the glory of their country, for it is the only river in Palestine which always flows in a copious stream, though its sunken, tumultuous, twisted course, which, between the Sea of Galilee and the Dead Sea, winds for some two hundred miles over a space only about sixty miles in direct length, has made it useless, for navigation, or as an attraction to human communities, except at the plain of Jericho. The great miracle when the Hebrews passed over made it sacred to them, so that its waters were already regarded with reverence when Elisha commanded Naaman to wash in them as a cure for his leprosy. Hallowed still more by the preaching of John and the baptism of Christ, the Jordan has been the favourite goal of all pilgrimages to the Holy Land in every age since the first Christian centuries. As early as the days of Constantine, to be baptized in its waters was deemed a great privilege, while in the sixth century Antoninus relates that marble steps led down into the water on both sides at the spot where it was believed our Lord had been baptized, while a wooden cross rose in the middle of the stream. Upon the eve of the Epiphany, he adds, “ great vigils are held here, a vast crowd of people is collected, and after the cock has crowed for the fourth or fifth time, matins begin. Then, as the day commences to dawn, the deacons begin the holy mysteries, and celebrate them in the open air; the priest descends into the river, and all who are to be baptized go to him.” Holy water was even in that early age carried away by masters of vessels who visited it as pilgrims, to sprinkle their ships before a voyage; and we are told that all pilgrims alike went into the water wearing a linen garment, which they sacredly preserved as a winding-sheet to be wrapped round them at their death. The scene of the yearly bathing of pilgrims now is near the ford, about two miles above the Dead Sea, and each sect having its own particular spot which it fondly believes to be exactly that at which our Saviour was baptized. The season of baptism has been changed from the colder time of Epiphany to that of Easter, and as the date of the latter feast differs in the Roman and Greek Churches, no collisions take place. Each Easter Monday thousands of pilgrims start in a great caravan from Jerusalem under the protection of the Turkish government, a white flag and loud music going before them, while Turkish soldiers, with the green standard of the Prophet, close the long procession. On the Greek Easter Monday the same spectacle is repeated, four or five thousand pilgrims joining in this second caravan. The streets of Jerusalem are, for the time, deserted, to see the vast cavalcade set out: women in long white dresses and veils, men in flowing robes and turbans, covering the space outside the walls and the slopes and hollow of the Valley of Jehoshaphat in a particoloured crowd, eager to see the start. At last the procession streams from the gate and pours along the camel-track towards Bethany and the Jordan; some on foot, others on horseback, or on asses, mules, or camels The broad space between the Sultan’ s Spring and Eriha is soon an extemporized town; tents of all sizes rising as by magic, while at night the plain is lighted up by the flames of countless fires, Next morning they start from this resting-place before sunrise, and march or ride by the light of the Passover moon towards the brink of the Jordan, but the pace of such a confused throng is slow. To help them on the first stages of their way multitudinous torches blaze in the van, and huge watchfires, kindled at the sides of the road, guard them past the worst places, till, as daylight breaks, the first of the throng reach the sacred river. Before long the high bank above the trees and reeds is crowded with horses, mules, asses, and camels in terrible confusion; old, young, men, women, and children, of many nationalities, all pressing together in seemingly inextricable disorder. Yet they manage to clear themselves after a time, and then, dismounting, rush into the water with the most business-like quiet, too earnest and practical to express much emotion. Some strip themselves naked, but most of them plunge in clad in a white gown, which is to serve hereafter as a shroud, consecrated by its present use. Families bathe together, the father immersing the infant and his other children that they may not need to make the pilgrimage in later life. Most of them keep near the shore, but some strike out boldly into the current; some choose one spot, some another, for their bath. In little more than two hours the banks are once more deserted, the pilgrims remounting their motley army of beasts with the same grave quiet as they had shown on leaving them for a time, and before noon they are back again at their encampment. They now sleep till the middle of the night, when, roused by the kettledrums of the Turks, they once more, by the light of the moon, torches, and bonfires, turn their faces to the steep pass up to Jerusalem in such silence that they might all be gone without waking you if you slept near them. It was thus with a great caravan of pilgrims who encamped a few yards from my tent near the Lake of Galilee. Noisy enough by night, with firing of pistols and guns, they struck their tents and moved off in the morning without breaking my sleep. (C. Geikie, D. D.) Preaching the baptism of repentance The preacher and his message I. THE . You can often guess a man’ s style or the character of his message from his personal appearance and demeanour. I presume it is because of this that Scripture, a book intended for man’ s salvation, should still find space here and there for notices of the personal appearance of some of its chief actors and characters. John Baptist, like Elijah, was a thorough man. We are told that his raiment was of camel’ s hair, that he had a leathern girdle round his loins, and that he lived upon the poorest of food; but I wonder why all this is described, unless to show us that there are times and crises in the history of nations and of towns when a true man cannot live in society. God help the towns and communities that drive a John Baptist into the wilderness that he may there live and thrive and gather mental and spiritual strength. II. HIS MESSAGE. 1. What he preached was a gospel of Divine origin. There can be no other. A human-made gospel is a self-condemned thing. You cannot manufacture a gospel--it comes like the grace of God; it comes like a breath of heaven filling the soul and commanding a rugged, rough man even in the very wilderness to cry out, “ I am a preacher.” It is inspiration--“ the word of the Lord came.” If the gospel be not Divine, it is nothing. 2. This gospel is an old-fashioned one. A recent writer has declared that the producers of truth are very few, that the jobbers in truth are many, and that the retailers of truth are numberless. I believe it is precisely the same with the gospel. The originators of the gospel are few--Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; I know none other. The jobbers in the gospel are many, alas; and the retailers of the gospel are numberless. But it is the one gospel, and it must be an old-fashioned one, because the thing that called it into existence is as old as tile history of mankind. What called the gospel into the world? Man’ s helplessness and sin. 3. Notice, further, that the gospel according to John Baptist is a self-accredited thing. It has its credentials within itself. It does not need inspiration to tell me that such a verse as “ God is love” is inspired: there is the fragrance of heaven upon that thought. 4. This gospel is a simple, intelligible gospel. It is said of Moliere that he would allow no play of his to be published in which there was a single word which his slave did not understand. Simpleness was the secret of his success, as it was of Shakspere, Milton, and John Bunyan. They don’ t manufacture, as it were, long words, they speak in the language of nature, and that is pre-eminently the great qualification and sign of the gospel of God. 5. Now, let us notice the universal tone of John Baptist’ s gospel. “ All flesh shall see the salvation of God.” How unlike a Jew is this style! Let us all--ministers, Sunday-school teachers, &c. beware of preaching the gospel in a narrow way. Do not cramp it; give it free currency, and be sure that the gospel you preach is not your own, but God’ s. 6. The subject-matter of the Baptist’ s gospel is “ Repent.” When a man’ s heart is wrung with grief for sin there is not, and there never has been, any gospel that can be preached to him save this. Repentance means atonement; atonement demands love; and the harsh, brassy sound of the call to repentance may bring a man face to face with the more mellow, happier music of the spheres of glory--“ God is love.” (J. B.Meharry, B. A.) John Baptist’ s preaching The preaching of the Baptist was-- 1. Stern, as was natural to an ascetic whose very aspect and mission were modelled on the example of Elijah. The particulars of his life, dress, food--the leathern girdle, mantle of camel’ s hair, living on locusts and wild honey--are preserved for us by the other evangelists, and they gave him that power of mastery over others which always springs from perfect self-control, and absolute self-abnegation. Hence “ in his manifestation and agency he was like a burning torch; his whole life was a very earthquake; the whole man was a sermon.” 2. Absolutely dauntless. The unlettered Prophet of the desert has not a particle of respect for the powerful Sadducees and long-robed, luxurious Rabbis, and disdains to be flattered by their coming to listen to his teaching. Having nothing to hope for from man’ s favour, he has nothing to fear from man’ s dislike. 3. It shows remarkable insight into human nature, and into the needs and temptations of every class which came to him--showing that his ascetic seclusion did not arise from any contempt of, or aversion to, his fellowmen. 4. It was intensely practical. Not only does it exclude all abstract and theological terms such as “ justification,” &c., but it says nothing directly of even faith or love. In this respect it recalls the Old Testament, and might be summed up in the words of Balsam, preserved in Micah 6:8. 5. Yet, though it still belongs to the dispensation of the shadow, it prophesies of the dawn. His first message was “ Repent” ; his second, “ The kingdom of heaven is at hand.” 6. It does not claim the credentials of a single miracle. Without a “ sign” it stirred to its depths the heart of a sign-demanding age. What enormous moral force, then, it must have possessed. 7. It had only a partial and temporary popularity. The lamp is laid aside when the sun has dawned. (Archdeacon Farrar.) Repentance the first thing A ship’ s company rise against their officers, put them in chains, and take the command of the ship upon themselves. They agree to set the officers ashore on some uninhabited island, to sail to some distant port, dispose of the cargo, and divide the amount. After parting with their officers they find it necessary, for the sake of self-preservation, to establish some kind of laws and order. To these they adhere with punctuality, act upon honour with respect to each other, and propose to be very impartial in the distribution of their plunder. But while they are on their voyage one of the company relents and becomes very unhappy. They inquire the reason. He answers, “ We are engaged in a wicked cause.” They plead their justice, honour, and generosity to each other. He denies that there is any virtue in it. “ Nay,” he declares, “ all our equity, while it is exercised in pursuit of a scheme which violates the great law of justice, is in itself a species of iniquity.” “ You talk extravagantly,” they reply; “ surely we might be worse than we are if we were to destroy each other as well as our officers.” “ Yes wickedness admits of degrees; but there is no virtue of goodness in all our doings; all has arisen from selfish motives. The same principles which led us to discard our officers would lead us, if it were not for our own sake, to destroy each other.” “ But you speak so very discouragingly; you destroy all motives to good order in the ship; what would you have us do? Repent; return to our injured officers and owners, and submit to mercy.” “ Oh, but this we cannot do: advise us to anything which concerns the good order of the ship, and we will hearken to you.” “ I cannot bear to advise in these matters. Return, return, and submit to mercy!” (A. Fuller.) The religion of penitence The only religion possible to man is the religion of penitence. The righteousness of man cannot be the integrity of the virgin citadel which has never admitted the enemy; it can never be more than the integrity of the city which has been surprised and roused, and which, having expelled the invader with blood in the streets, has suffered great inward loss. A true penitent’ s feeling towards sin I once walked into a garden with a lady to gather some flowers. There was one large bush whose branches were bending under the weight of the most beautiful roses. We both gazed upon it with admiration. There was one flower on it which seemed to shine above all the rest in beauty. This lady pressed forward into the thick bush, and reached far over to pluck it. As she did this, a black snake, which was hid in the bush, wrapped itself round her arm. She was alarmed beyond all description; and ran from the garden, screaming, and almost in convulsions. During all that day she suffered very much with fear; her whole body trembled, and it was a long time before she could be quieted. That lady is still alive. Such is her hatred now of the whole serpent race, that she has never since been able to look at a snake, even though it were dead. No one could ever persuade her to venture again into a cluster of bushes, even to pluck a beautiful rose. Now this is the way the sinner acts who truly repents of his sins. He thinks of sin as the serpent that once coiled itself round him. He hates it. He dreads it. He flies from it. He fears the places where it inhabits. He does not willingly go into the haunts. He will no more play with sin than this lady would afterwards have fondled snakes. (Bishop Merd.) Luke 3:4 The voice of one crying in the wilderness Self-effacement John Baptist is a type of those who resolve, at all risks, to discharge their duty and to deliver the message entrusted to them by God, without one single thought of self, without one transient wish to appear themselves in the matter. There is no indolence here, nor cowardice. There is simply an absence of any ambition to be prominent, and of any desire to hear their name whispered among the crowd. It is enough to be a “ voice” --to preach God’ s Word, and not their own; to pursue some truth which is not to enhance their own reputation; to advocate some cause which is not to redound to their own advantage. Alas 1 how few are such persons; but how precious in proportion to their rarity I If any of us, then, be on the way to the attainment of this high grace, let us be supremely careful that our own selfeffacement be both genuine in itself and be a sacrifice offered to a worthy cause. For if I merely surrender to the first comer, or abdicate in favour of some worse person than myself, the very humility that “ should have been for my wealth, becomes to me an occasion of falling.” Instances are not uncommon, in every one’ s circle of acquaintance, where a man has surrendered not his pleasures, or his advantages, but his principles, to some other person’ s opinion. But if a single person’ s private opinion be sometimes thus overpowering, what must the combined force of a thousand people’ s opinion, of “ public opinion,” be! Every one, it is obvious, has a visual horizon of his own, in the centre of which he lives and moves and has his being; and just so every one has a social circle--“ a world” (as the Bible calls it) of his own, amid which he lives, and which reacts too often with fatal influence upon his character. We must, by prayer and watchful circumspection, safeguard this precious grace of humble self-effacement, lest we expend it on unworthy objects. (Canon G. H. Curteis.) Admission to the kingdom I. 1. The one thing that is essential in order that we may enter the kingdom of God is that we should be sincere. It was the evident sincerity of John the Baptist which drew around him the sinners of Judea, even rough soldiers and mercenary tax-gatherers. He demands sincerity in return. He could not do with professions unless they were accompanied by fruits worthy of repentance. 2. But there were those who came out to John’ s baptism in insincerity. II. It is not necessarily a proof of sincerity that we are keenly interested in the religious movements which are agitating men’ s minds. It is a better test when we are willing, in all simplicity, to put away those special sins which are hindering us from surrendering ourselves to the rule of God. (Canon Vernon Hutton, M. A.) The voice in the wilderness “ When the tale of bricks is doubled, then comes Moses” : this is an apothegm familiar among the Jews even to the present day, and rehearsed in their stories of the past. But Moses came twice; and, the first time, he was abruptly rejected. The “ Prophet like unto Moses,” promised and at last announced to our sin-enslaved race as the Redeemer, was introduced by a forerunner, who was not accepted any more than his Master. John the Baptist was ultimately beheaded for his reward of fidelity; and the Lord Jesus was crucified. Thus it comes about that Christ’ s sad history strikes back on John’ s, and gives it an unexpected interpretation. Very true have proved those words of Heinrich Heine: “ Wheresoever a great soul in this world has uttered its thoughts, there always has been Golgotha.” Affairs had now reached the last crisis. Pontius Pilate was misgoverning Judea, filling history with extortions and infamies of crime. A new Herod, worthy of the name, was shaming the people with villainous lusts and defections in faith, his desperate morals fitly keeping pace with his downward career in apostasy. Suddenly was heard a voice in the wilderness. There was singular pathos in it, as there is in all human tones that have power. But it had, besides that, a sort of vibrating ring in it which intimated a challenge. Experts say that idiots, even in the midst of a gibbering frolic, will pause abruptly to listen to the sound of a musical instrument; perhaps some vague recollection of primal harmonies in a healthy nature before it was shattered may be awakened at the stir near by; the soul seems seeking to render answer, but only succeeds in giving wistful attention. That was not a loud voice in those days down by the Dead Sea, but all Judea heard it, and up the Jordan it rushed with more than the usual celerity; it certainly in due time reached the villagers in the land of Gennesareth, for some of them journeyed at once towards it--notably, Simon son of Jonas, and John, and James, and Andrew, who were destined to figure in the train of Jesus Christ. (C. S. Robinson, D. D.) The reality of the Baptist John the Baptist was a reality. This poor world of ours has been so often trifled with, that it has learned to be satisfied thoroughly only with what is honest and true. There could be no ordinary possibility of mistaking such a man; he was genuine. And he shook that miserable generation of hypocrites as might have been expected. Virgil tells us that when AEneas descended into Hades to visit his father, he came to Charon’ s ferry across the dark river; as he stepped into the light boat, accustomed to carry only spirits, so heavy a burden of a real and living man made the craft tremble and creek dismally through all the length of its sewed seams. We can presume that the hollow forms of social life in those wretched days were writhed and strained, if not shattered, by an uncompromising reality of manhood like that of John the Baptist at the Jordan. He was a man among the shadows of men. He had an actual “ idea.” He shook off the shams of religion, and told souls a great deal more about religion itself than they ever knew before. He put himself within the reach of living people, and down on their planes of existence. Only he shred away the veils and tinsels and mockeries of an outward show, and with an unsparing hand tore up the traditions and mere commandments of Pharisees. Repentance is not alike in all Let every man come to God in his own way. God made you on purpose, and me on purpose, and He does not say to you, “ Repent, and feel as Deacon A. feels,” or, “ Repent, and feel as your minister feels,” but, “ Come just as you are, with your mind and heart and education and circumstances.” You are too apt to feel that your religious experience must be the same as others have; but where will you find analogies for this? Certainly not in nature. God’ s works do not come from His hand like coins from the mint. It seems as if it were a necessity that each one should be in some sort distinct from every other. No two leaves on the same tree are precisely alike; no two buds on one bush have the same unfolding, nor do they seek to have. (H. W. Beecher.) The Baptist’ s gospel John, too, had a gospel to preach, though at the first sounding of it there was terribleness enough in the tone. John preached the baptism of repentance, but, behold, it was repentance with hope, repentance and the remission of sins. John the Baptist is not a mere historic figure; his ministry represents a great fact which has a prominent place in the spiritual transformation and progress of mankind; his voice of repentance must always be first heard; his call to humiliation must always, in the first instance, bow down the soul; and after the thunder and fire of his ministry will come the still small voice of redeeming and welcoming love. John did not appear before his contemporaries without connection with all the solemn and beautiful past of Jewish history. Though he came from the wilderness, yet, as to the spiritual aspects of his ministry, he came up from the region of holy prophecy, and upon him there rested the benediction of holy men of old. It is something, after all, to feel that, as preachers of repentance and grace, we are not speaking in our own name, or clothing our words with the petty authority of merely personal position; the ages repeat their demands in our voices; the prophets are heard again when we speak in the name of Jesus Christ. John’ s speech seemed to be regulated by the music of prophecy. This quotation from the Book of Isaiah is like the sounding of a military march, the anthem of those who move on to momentary battle, followed by everlasting triumph. In this prophecy it will be observed that there is the same combination of the human and Divine which is found throughout the whole of the gospel scheme: men are called upon to make straight paths for the Lord, and they are also called upon to work out their own salvation; they are exhorted to prepare the way, as they were commanded to roll away the stone from the door of the sepulchre; and when they have done their little part, there comes the full outflow of the Divine sympathy, power, and love. Nothing can exceed in minuteness and completeness the description which is given in verses 5 and 6. The sixth verse contains the grandest utterance that can possibly be put into human words, “ All flesh shall see the salvation of God.” (J. Parker, D. D.) Character and mission of the Baptist These words, quoted by John the Baptist, had been spoken seven hundred years before by Isaiah. Nearly three hundred years after that, Malachi closed the course of Scripture with these remarkable words: “ Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet,” &c. Then intervened a period of four hundred years, during which the voice of prophecy was mute, and all that was left to guide the Israelite was that of which Malachi reminded him in the previous verses: “ Remember ye the law of Moses My servant.” And then, when these four hundred years were closed, suddenly, immediately before the Messiah’ s advent, there appeared in the wilderness a wonderful man, living a life like that of Isaiah and Elias, applying to himself this prophecy of Isaiah, and having applied to him by Christ that of Malachi concerning Elijah. I propose to endeavour to answer these two questions. 1. By what right, and in what sense, are these two prophecies, the one originally spoken by Isaiah of himself, and the other distinctly marking out a particular man Elias, referred to John the Baptist? And-- 2. In what sense was John the forerunner of the Redeemer, preparing His way before Him? I. Now, to understand on what principle these words are applicable to John, we must carry along with us the leading principle of prophecy. It is not merely a prediction of separate events, but far rather an announcement of principles; through the interpretation of the present the prophets predicted the future; for the announcement of every principle connected with a fact is a prediction of all future events that shall occur under similar circumstances. For instance, the astronomer, in the announcement of the eclipse, has so plainly discovered the principles that regulate it as to be able to foretell without a doubt the very moment of its return. Thus it was that our Lord and the prophets applied their prophecy. The prophet Malachi uses the name of Elijah, and says, “ Before another great and dreadful day come, another man shall rise up in the same spirit as Elijah.” Our blessed Lord applies this prophecy to John the Baptist. He told men that “ Elias truly shall first come and restore all things,” but that the Elias that was to come was not the Elias they had expected, but one in the spirit and power of Elias, who should turn the hearts of the fathers, &c. He thus reminded them that what the prophet meant was not a resurrection of the man, but of his spirit. II. In the next place we return an answer to the second question proposed--In what sense was John the forerunner, &c. The expression of theprophet a figurative one. In Eastern countries, when a monarch desired to pay a visit to a distant part of his dominions, he was accustomed to send his messengers before him to demand of the inhabitants of every part through which he was to pass that they should make his road easy by filling valleys and cutting through hills. Precisely in the same way was John the Baptist to prepare the way for Christ. He came proclaiming a King, declaring the conditions without which the kingdom could not come, and without which the King could not reign. The first of these conditions was this: he prepared the way for Christ by declaring private righteousness preparatory to public reformation. “ Change yourselves, or to you at least no kingdom of God can come.” 2. John prepared the way for the advent of the Messiah by a simple assertion that right is right, and wrong, wrong. 3. The Baptist prepared the way for the Messiah by teaching simple truths, falling back upon first principles. Observe that all this was to prepare the way for Christ--it was not Christ. Yet in all ages the baptism of John in the laver of duty must precede the baptism of Christ in the laver of self-sacrifice. (F. W. Robertson, M. A) JOHN THE BAPTIST. “ Also of John a calling and a crying Rang in Bethabara till strength was spent, Cared not for counsel, stayed not for replying, John had one message for the world--REPENT. John, than which man a sadder or a greater Not till this day has been of woman born; John, like some iron peak by the Creator Fired with the red glow of the rushing morn. Thus, when the sun shall rise and overcome it, Stands in his shining desolate and bare, Yet not the less the inexorable summit Flamed him his signal to the upper air.” (F. W. H. Myers.) Preparing the way of the Lord in worship The way of the Lord should be prepared in our hearts. If we would have the Lord come to us in our Sabbath worship, we must think of Him in our week-day work. As it often is now, when the Sabbath comes, the gathered rubbish of a whole week must be cleared away. The way of the Lord is blocked up by the remembrance of the week’ s cares, h man brings his business right up to the borders of the Sabbath, and, of course, the Sabbath itself is full of it. Boxes and barrels, bales, dry goods, groceries and hardware, remain over in the mind from the week’ s work and worry. Now, a man has no more right to take these things with him in his thoughts, than to leave his goods exposed for display and sale in his store. If it were not for disturbing others, he might just as well take his ledgers and invoices with him to church, and be making out his bills and checking off his goods while there, as to be doing these things in his thought all day. He might just as well wheel his boxes and bales right into the aisle, as to have them present to mental vision all the time. Jesus drove out the traders from the temple with a scourge of cords. But if He should come into our modern churches and drive out all who in their thoughts have brought money, and merchandise, and trade into the house of God, He would leave some very small congregations. If all the business that is planned in church were really transacted there, it would make that a busier place than ever the Jewish Temple was in the days of the Passover. If we would enjoy the Sabbath as a day of rest and communion with God, we must drive these money-changers of our thought out from the sacred temple of our hearts, and let those hearts be again the temples of the Holy Ghost. We must prepare for the day, not merely by laying aside our work, but by excluding it from our hearts, that God may come and dwell there. Thus, in all things, we must prepare for God’ s work. We must lay our plans for it, and shape our affairs for it. The Lord comes to reign, if He comes at all. We must so prepare the way that He can come and can reign. There must be forethought as well as good will; preparation as well as diligence. It is true the Lord sometimes comes suddenly to His temple. But when He thus comes, “ Who shall abide the day of His coming? for He shall be like a refiner’ s fire.” All may assist in preparing the way of the Lord Not one little brown and withered leaf falls to the ground on one of the November days but the shape of the plant is changed; so there is not one little act of yours, one whispered prayer that His kingdom may come, but becomes a factor in the world’ s redemption. If I can only place one little golden brick in the pavement of the Lord’ s highway, I will place it there, that coming generations may walk thereon to the heavenly city. (Phillips Brooks, D. D.) Various ways in which the way of the Lord has been prepared Strangely, too, the movements of science, art, and commerce seem to wait on ministerial life. Printing had just been invented in time to give the Bible to the people in the period of the Reformation. The magnetic needle was applied to navigation to send that Bible and its preachers to all lands. The spirit of exploration, which has sought out every island, and is now engaged in revealing the character of Central Africa and the steppes of Asia; the study of all languages; the preparation of grammars and lexicons; the knowledge of the currents of the air and the water, of the powers of steam and electricity--all these are so many voices crying, “ Prepare ye the way of the Lord!” They are so many indications that when man will carry God’ s message all the power of Omnipotence waits on his service. (M. Simpson, D. D.) St. John the Baptist How shall we picture John the Baptist to ourselves? Great painters, greater than the world seems likely to see again, have exercised their fancy upon his face, his figure, his actions. We must put out of our minds, I fear, at once, many of the loveliest of them all; those in which Raffaelle and others have depicted the child John, in his camel’ s hair raiments, with a child’ s cross in his hand, worshipping the Infant Christ. There is also one exquisite picture, by Annibale Caracci, if I recollect rightly, in which the blessed Babe is lying asleep, and the blessed virgin signs to St. John, pressing forward to adore Him, not to waken his sleeping Lord and God. But such imaginations, beautiful as they are, and true in a heavenly and spiritual sense, are not historic fact. For St. John the Baptist said himself, “ I knew Him not.” The best picture of him which I can recollect is the great one by Guido, of the magnificent lad sitting on the rock, half clad in his camel’ s-hair robe, his stalwart hand lifted up to denounce he hardly knows what, save that things are going all wrong, utterly wrong to him; his beautiful mouth open to preach he hardly knows what, save that he has a message from God, of which he is half conscious as yet--that he is a forerunner, a prophet, a foreteller of something and some one which is to come, and which yet is very near at hand. The wild rocks are around him, the clear sky is over him, and nothing more. There, aloft and in the mountains, alone with nature and with God, he preaches to a generation sunk in covetousness, superstition, party-spirit, and the rest of the seven devils which brought on the fall of his native land, and which will bring on the fall of every land on earth, preaches to them, I say, what? The most common, let me say boldly, the most vulgar--in the good sense of the old word--the most vulgar morality. He tells them that an awful ruin was coming unless they repented and mended. How fearfully true his words were the next fifty years proved. The axe, he said, was laid to the root of the tree; and the axe was the heathen Roman, even them master of the land. But God, not the Roman Caesar only, was laying the axe. The people, the farming class, came to him with, “ What shall we do? ‘ : He has nothing but plain morality for them. The publicans, the renegades who were farming the taxes of the Roman conquerers, and making their base profit out of their countrymen’ s slavery, came to him, “ Master, what shall we do?” He does not tell them not to be publicans. He does not tell his countrymen to rebel, though he must have been sorely tempted to do it. All he says is, “ Make the bad and base arrangement as good as you can; exact no more,” &c. The soldiers, poor fellows, came to him. Whether they were Herod’ s mercenaries, or real gallant Roman soldiers, we are not told. Either had unlimited power under a military despotism, in an anarchic and half-enslaved country; but whichever they were, he has the same answer to them of common morality, “ You are what you are; you are where you are. Do what you have to do as well as you can. Do no violence to any man,” &c. Ah, wise politician, ah, clear and rational spirit, who knows and tells others to do the duty which lies nearest them; who sees (as old Greek Hesiod says) how much bigger the half is than the whole; who, in the hour of his country’ s deepest degradation, had Divine courage to say, “ Our deliverance lies, not in rebellion, but in doing right.” But he has sterner words. Pharisees, the separatists, the religious men, who think themselves holier than any one else; and Sadducees, materialist men of the world, who sneer at the unseen, the unknown, the heroic, came to him. And for Pharisee and Sadducee--for the man who prides himself on believing more than his neighbours, and for the man who prides himself on believing less--he has the same answer. Both are exclusive, inhuman, while they are pretending to be more than human. He knew them well, for he was born and bred among them, and he forestalls our Lord’ s words to them, “ O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come? “ (Charles Kingsley, M. A.) Luke 3:5 Every valley shall be filled The King’ s highway I. VALLEYS MUST DE UP. 1. Inattention. 2. Apathy. 3. Despondency. II. MUST BE DOWN. 1. The mountain of pride must be reduced. (1) The pride that will not make full confession of sin. (2) The pride that will not receive the kingdom of heaven as a little child. (3) The pride of reason that will not accept salvation until its mysteries are comprehended. (4) The pride of worldly professors. 2. The mountain of presumption must be depressed. (1) Sinners are presumptuous when, without forsaking their sins, they attempt to believe for salvation. (2) Professors arc presumptuous when they expect the work of God to revive in the Church without exerting themselves to promote a revival. (3) While we work as though everything depended upon working, we must trust as though everything depended upon trusting. 3. The hills of ingratitude must be brought low. III. THE CROOKED PLACES MUST BE . 1. Prejudice. 2. Jealousy. 3. Censoriousness. 4. Covetousness. IV. THE ROUGH PLACES MUST BE . 1. The ugly rock of Sabbath desecration must be removed. 2. That rut of drunkenness must be filled up. 3. Those sinks of immorality must be filled--lying, cheating, oppression, uncleanness. 4. The rough places of instability must be smoothed. (Prof. F. W. Macdonald, M. A.) Preparing the way of the Lord Before John, the wilderness preacher, the mountains of Pharisaic pride were levelled, the valleys of Sadducean unbelief were filled up, the tortuous vices of the courtly Judean were corrected, and the rude ignorance of the Galilean smoothed and reformed. (Canon Liddon.) Road-makers (To children.) In ancient times, especially in Eastern lands, when an emperor or king was travelling through his dominions, men were sent before them to prepare the way. Sometimes they had to make a new road through pathless wildernesses and rocky passes, hewing down trees, cutting a level way along steep or rugged hill-sides, clearing away rocks, and making embankments across valleys, and bridges over streams. Or sometimes the old road was overgrown with bushes and brambles, or washed away by floods, or covered with rubbish which the winter storms and swollen torrents had brought down from the mountains. In some Eastern lands, even at this day, travellers tell us how the roads are often so destroyed in the rainy season, that before a governor or high officer of state makes a journey, the highways must be mended and made ready for him to travel speedily and safely. So when the prophet Isaiah was speaking of the coming of the Lord Jesus, he foretold that some one would be sent by God to “ prepare the way,” &c. Look at the Gospels and you will see that the messenger whom God sent to prepare the way for His beloved Son was John the Baptist. Now, how did John prepare the way? There were four things which he taught the people, in order to make ready their hearts for the Lord Jesus. I. TO EXPECT HIM. II. TO FEEL THEIR NEED OF HIM TO SAVE THEM FROM THEIR SINS. III. TO REPENT OF ALL SIN. IV. TO HEARKEN TO HIM, AND BELIEVE, LOVE, AND OBEY HIM WHEN HE CAME. NOW, if the Lord Jesus were coming to the place where you live, would you not be glad if you were invited to help to prepare the way for Him? Would you not think it a great honour and happiness to take one stone out of His way? Oh yes! Your heart would dance for joy, and perhaps your feet too. Who would not like to be a pioneer for Jesus, the King of kings? Well, but don’ t you know that He really wishes to come; not to pass along the streets, but to come into the homes and hearts of all the people, not to pay a visit, but to dwell there? Then what hinders His coming? Only that people arc not ready for Him. Do you know what God calls a heart that does not love and fear Him? He calls it “ a stony heart” Ezekiel 36:26). Well then, if you do not love and trust and try to obey the Lord Jesus as your own Saviour and King, don’ t you see that there is one stone to be taken out of His way? How? Just by coming to Him in prayer to make you truly His. (E. R. Conder, D. D.) Valley and mountain Every valley shall be filled; that the people might know what our Lord would do, to exalt the mercy of God to undone sinners, who, like valleys, lay very low under despondency of spirit; John bid them repent, which the law did not admit of. This word repent is a most sweet word, and tends to advance mercy and God’ s free grace, and so to fill up those valleys, I mean despairing and desponding sinners. When God sends a messenger to rebels, and commands them to repent and believe, a sweet pardon be sure is comprehended therein; and this tends to fill up or exalt two valleys. 1. The lowly and desponding soul. 2. The mercy of God is exalted, which was one grand design of God in sending His Son to satisfy Divine justice; for mercy and Divine goodness could not be raised to run level with justice, until our Saviour had made a complete satisfaction for our sins. I. But before I proceed, let it be considered (as I conceive) that the grand obstructions or obstacles which lie in the way of God’ s being reconciled to sinners, and of sinners’ reconciliation unto Him, are comprehended by these metaphorical expressions. 1. The haughty Jews and Pharisees, who were swelled with pride; yea, like lifted up high mountains and hills; how did the Pharisee glory, “ God, I thank Thee I am not as other men, nor as this publican” ? 2. They were like mountains, in respect had to their legal privileges, being God’ s covenant people, boasting “ They had Abraham to their father, and never were in bondage” (John 8:33). John Baptist in his ministry strove to level these mountains, when he saw them coming to his baptism, “ O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come?” 3. The Jews and Pharisees might be compared to mountains and hills, in that they boasted they had the key of knowledge, and were the only teachers and masters of Israel, and that all besides themselves were ignorant and foolish persons. Do but read what holy Paul speaketh of them, to bring them down level with the ground. II. Sin (as Mr. Caryl notes, speaking of this very text) may be also meant by these mountains. III. By mountains here also may be meant, or refer unto those great oppositions our Lord Jesus met withal, in His working out our salvation. 1. From men. 2. From the devil. These stood in His way like mighty mountains, like as Sanballet stood as a mountain in the way of Zerubbabel (a type of Christ): “ And who art thou, great mountain? Before Zerubbabel, thou shalt become a plain” (Zechariah 4:7). IV. As valleys may refer to despairing sinners, so mountains and hills may refer to haughty and presumptuous sinners; I speak not here of self-righteous persons. V. Valleys may refer to the low estate of mankind, or of God’ s elect, as considered dead in the first Adam, or as under the law and curse thereof. (B. Keach.) The crooked shall be made straight 1. Crooked may refer to men’ s crooked opinions; they speak not right of God; they do not judge according to the straight and equal glory of all the perfections of God’ s holy nature; nor according to the straight rule of His holy law, but magnify the glory of His mercy, to the eclipsing the glory of His justice; and of this crooked opinion are the Socinians, and all that magnify the pardoning grace of God, without having respect to a plenary satisfaction, made to the justice and law of God by Jesus Christ. 2. Crooked things may refer to those false and crooked ways of worship which many walk in; ways which Christ never instituted or appointed: the Word of God is the only rule for worship, and administration of ordinances. Now all pretended ordinances and Divine worship, that doth not exactly agree with this rule, but vary in matter or manner from it, are crooked way. 3. Crooked may refer to the lives and conversations of men; the law of God (as it is in the hand of Jesus Christ) and the glorious gospel is the only rule of our lives; and all whose lives and conversations do not agree with that rule, are crooked ways. 4. Crooked may also refer unto men’ s crooked spirits; how cross and uneven are some men’ s hearts and spirits to the word and will of God. “ The carnal mind is enmity against God, it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be” (Romans 8:7). (B. Keach.) Luke 3:6 The salvation of God Salvation all of God We are to be saved, not by what we are worth ourselves; not by that which we have attained. Looking at ourselves in some sense as a piece of art, a picture, a statue, or an exquisite piece of machinery, we are not worth saving. In and of ourselves, there is nothing worth preservation. And all the work that we have ever done on our own character and nature does not amount to any considerable value. If we are saved, it will not be because of that which we have succeeded in doing; it will be because of that which has been done upon us and in us by another and higher artist-hand. If we inherit salvation in the life which is to come, if we enter upon a life of immortality in blessedness, it will be because we are saved by grace. (H. W. Beecher.) God’ s part and man’ s part in salvation A ship is stuck on a mudbank, and, the tide going out, it careens over, and there it lies, like many discouraged Christians. They do not need the anchor. The anchor is out, though. By and by the tide begins to come in, little by little. The captain calls up the crew, and orders them to hoist in the anchor. It is hoisted in and stowed away. “ Trim the sails,” is the next command, and that is obeyed. The tide is still coming in, coming in, coming in; and by and by the vessel floats off; and the crew look up with admiration, and say, “ What a captain we have! It was the hauling in of the anchor and the trimming of the sails that saved us. The captain gave his orders, they were obeyed, and then she floated.” No, it was not the captain’ s doings. The Lord God, who swings the stars through the heavens and exerts His power upon the ocean, did it. The captain merely foresaw the coming of the tide, and adapted the circumstances of the vessel to influences which existed before. (H. W.Beecher.) Christ the only way of salvation Mrs. Bennet, wife of John Bennet, minister of an Independent Church in Cheshire, the day before she died, raised herself into a very solemn attitude, and with most striking emphasis delivered, in the following language, her dying testimony to the truth as it is in Jesus:--“ I here declare it before you that I have looked on the right hand and on the left--I have cast my eyes before and behind--to see if there was any possible way of salvation but by the Son of God; and I am fully satisfied there is not. No 1 none on earth, nor all the angels in heaven, could have wrought out salvation for such a sinner. None but God Himself, taking our nature upon Him, and doing all that the holy law required, could have procured pardon for me, a sinner. He has wrought out salvation for me, and I know that I shall enjoy it for ever.” (Clerical Library.) O that all flesh, that is, all men that believe, may 1. See the glory of God’ s wisdom in His contriving the way of our salvation by Jesus Christ. 2. The glory of His infinite love, mercy, and Divine goodness. 3. The glory of His infinite justice and holiness, in that His justice is as much exalted in and by Christ, as His love and mercy. Thus in respect of all the glorious attributes of God, the glory of God is in and by Jesus Christ revealed. Take the glory of God here, for His glory personally considered, 1. How doth the glory of God the Father shine forth herein, or what revelation is there of it in the gospel! 2. How is the glory of God the Son revealed also! 3. How is the glory of God the Holy Ghost likewise revealed and magnified! And all this is done and displayed in Jesus Christ the Mediator. And all flesh shall see it; that is, not the Jews only, but also the Gentiles, or all nations; i.e., some in all nations; nay, the whole world at last. Luke 3:7-8 Then said he to the multitude that came forth John and the populace It is a matter of some interest, even as a memoir of ancient manners, to conceive the various and strikingly marked aspect of the multitude that now fled to John in the desert. There stood the Pharisee, covered from head to heel with the emblems of his sanctity, the haughtiest and most scornful of men; but then, for once, divested of his spiritual influence, and asking, “ What shall I dote be saved?” There stood the splendid and voluptuous scribe--the man of affected philosophy, for once feeling that he had a soul to be saved. There stood the grasping and the iron hand of the publican, the common tribute gatherer, laying his accumulated gains before the feet of the prophet, and bowing down to the dust. There stood the moldier, subdued and hardened by the barbarous habits of his life, until he became a merciless murderer, there he stood, flinging down his sword at the feet of the prophet, and imploring to be purified from blood by the waters of baptism. In the midst of these kneeling and humble thousands stood the prophet full of the Holy Ghost, in utter defiance of human power, undaunted by the voice of human authority, and undismayed by the barbarism of the multitude, tendering to all alike the words of judgment: “ Ye men of sin, ye splendid voluptuaries, who now cry out for mercy, show not by your words but by your deeds that you have abjured sin; and you, ye haughty despisers of all men’ s virtue, be ye holy. Ye jealous and persecuting Pharisees, cast off your self-righteous praises, rend the heart and not the garment, be humble, contrite, and holy.” (G. Croby, M. A.) Necessity of warning A man left to himself will go to the devil. If he turns away from his sin, it is because of some outside pressure. The attraction of gravitation is seen in souls as well as in all material things. They fall by their own weight. If you see them going upwards, you may be sure that a strong hand or a strong wind has been under them to start them in that direction. Sinners need to be warned of their danger. The responsibility is on us to warn others, and to heed the warnings which come to us. Who has warned you? Whom have you warned? (H. C.Trumbull.) Taking warning Waldus, a rich merchant in Lyons, seeing one drop down dead in the streets, went home, and repented, changed his fife, and became a preacher, and was the father and founder of the people called Waldenses. ‘ Tis good to take warning by others’ harms, and by the sight of their death, to look after our own life. (Venning.) Warnings of God As the mother bird shrieks when the hawk is in the sky, that her young ones may hide themselves under her wings, so God, the Father of men, utters His voice of warning against sinners, that they may rush to His mercy’ s protection, before the devouring lion of hell overtake them in destruction. (John Bate.) The Baptist’ s heraldry Nor is it difficult to account for this widespread and profound agitation. In the first place, the people were chafing under the yoke of pagan Rome. Remembering that they were Jehovah’ s covenant-people, their yearning for deliverance naturally took on a religious form. Again, there was at this time among the Jews, and perhaps throughout the East, the expectation, more or less distinct, of one who was to be a heaven-sent deliverer. Hearing of the sanctity of Judea’ s hermit, how natural that the Jews, weary of bondage and shame, should flock to John in the hope that he was the promised one. Again, there is in asceticism something which is fascinating. It betokens an exceptional, earnest, character; and men are ever moved by the exceptional, especially when it takes the form of terrible moral earnestness. And John was a terribly earnest ascetic. And therefore all Israel flocked to his preaching, feeling the thrall of his magnetism, even as idolatrous Israel centuries before had swayed under stormy Elijah, and as voluptuous Italy centuries afterward bowed before stern Savonarola, and frivolous France centuries still later grew solemn before saintly Lacordaire. Once more, John’ s message was a message of terror. No soothing words were his, no soporific platitudes. So it was in Assyria when heathen Nineveh robed herself in sackcloth before the denunciation of Hebrew Jonah. So it was in France when awakened Europe wept and groaned before the Tartarean oratory of St. Bernard. So it was in New England when Northampton church-member and and Stockbridge Indian quailed and wailed before the wrathful eloquence of Edwards. How, then, came such persons to the Jordan to listen to the wrathful eloquence of the stern apostle of repentance? Ah, there are times when the proudest, most worldly of natures are stirred to their very depths. There are times when even the Pharisee finds that his rubric is too narrow and icy, and that he has been living a hollow life. There are times when even the Sadducee feels his moral nature asserting itself at cost of every barrier of unbelief and moral petrifaction. There are times when conscience speaks louder than will or passion. Thus did the desert-preacher rightly divide the word of truth, giving to each his appropriate share, not demanding of the publican repentance for the Pharisee’ s self-righteousness, nor of the Sadducee penitence for the soldier’ s crime. In this respect, at least, John of the desert was a model preacher. Would God, all the ministers of His word were as faithful! (G. D. Boardman.) Insincere penitents Fra Rocco, a Dominican, preached a celebrated penitential sermon on one occasion; when all the audience were in terror and fell on their knees, showing every sign of contrition. Then he cried, “ All who are truly penitent, hold up your hands!” Every man in the vast multitude held up his hand. Then he said, “ Holy Archangel Michael, thou who standest with adamantine sword at the judgment-seat of God, cut me off every hand which has been held up hypocritically.” Every hand dropped. (E. P. Hood.) Appropriate preaching It is related of John Wesley that, preaching to an audience of courtiers and noblemen, he used the “ generation of vipers” text, and flung denunciation right and left. “ That sermon should have been preached at Newgate,” said a displeased courtier to Wesley on passing out. “ No,” said the fearless apostle; “ my text there would have been, ‘ Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world!’” (Baxendale’ s “ Anecdotes. ”) Folly of arguing about instead of escaping from coming wrath “ Many have puzzled themselves,” says John Newton, “ about the origin of evil. I am content to observe that there is evil, and that there is a way of escape from it; and with that I begin and end.” One of the most exquisite mechanisms of torture devised, by the Hohenstaufen family, during the height of their despotic control, was a cell which gradually shrunk in upon itself, the walls day by day contracting, till the prisoner was finally crushed in the pressure of their embrace. For a day or so he would perceive no alteration--at first he would doubt the evidence of his senses; but at last the fearful truth would burst upon him that day after day the dimensions of his cell became smaller, and that in its slow but certain contraction he would, if he remained, be finally destroyed. Suppose that a door opened to him, and a voice said: “ Escape for your life--now is the time. To-morrow will be too late.” Is it likely he would sit down and say, “ I do not understand the principle of this complex piece of mechanism. I prefer investigating it, and will stay behind for the purpose” ? And yet what does the man around whose heart sin is gradually winding itself closer and closer do but this when he rejects Christ’ s gospel? Human reason alone tells him that a heart swathed in the bandages of wrath, or pleasure, or passion, can never, until released, be fit for the peace and love of heaven. Experience tells him that the terrible thraldom is every day becoming closer and closer, so that soon he must be crushed in its folds. The gospel tells him, escape for thy life! And why, oh, reader, when thy only thought should be about such escape, wilt thou sit down and speculate upon the causes of thy imprisonment?--causes unto which, when thus confined, thou canst never penetrate. Fly through the open door, and in the omniscience of the next world thou wilt know why sin was permitted for time. Take heed lest, by remaining where thou art, thou findest that for the impenitent sin is the portion for eternity. Earnestness is needed in warning others The energy of the manner of the late Rowland Hill and the power of his voice are said to have been at times overwhelming. While once preaching at Wotton-under-Edge, his country residence, he was carried away by the impetuous rush of his feelings, and raising himself to his full stature, be exclaimed, “ Beware, I am in earnest; men call me an enthusiast, but I am not: mine are words of truth and soberness. When I first came into this part of the country, I was walking on yonder hill; I saw a gravel-pit fall in, and bury three human beings alive. I lifted up my voice for help, so loud, that I was heard in the town below, a distance of a mile: help came and rescued two of the poor sufferers. No one called me an enthusiast then--and when I see eternal destruction ready to fall upon poor sinners, and about to entomb them irrecoverably in an eternal mass of woe, and call on them to escape by repenting and fleeing to Christ, shall I be called an enthusiast? No, sinner, I am not an enthusiast in so doing.” Luke 3:8 Fruits worthy of repentance Fruitfulness Every living fruit-tree is in some measure fruitful; though some bring forth more fruit, some less, yet all bring forth some. All living Christians are thriving and bearing fruit; though some are more eminent for growth and proficiency in grace, yet all bring forth “ fruits meet for repentance.” The hypocrite, like a dead stake in a hedge, continues at a stay, is without good fruit, nay, grows more rotten every month; but the true saint, like the living tree, the longer he continues rooted in Christ the more abundant he is in the work of the Lord. (George Swinnock.) Fruit-bearing the test of life When we see the effigy or portraiture of any king stand still without motion, exquisitely graven in metal or painted out in lively colours, we know that, for all the eyes and mouth and nose it has, there is no life in it. So, when we see professors of religion without the powerful practice of godliness, and supreme officers of state without the administration of justice, we can safely conclude that the life of God is not in them; that they are not actuated by any Divine principle within, but are mere idols and images of vanity. (C. Leslie.) Deceptive appearances Those persons who practise devotion, and who fail to do works of faith and charity, are like trees in blossom. You think there will be as much fruit as flower, but there is a great difference. (Vianney.) The life must accord with the profession His religion is in vain whose profession brings not letters testimonial from a holy life. Sacrifice without obedience is sacrilege. (W. Gurnall.) Thou callest thyself Christian; but we question whether thou hast a right to the title; thy conduct is too contrary to that sacred name, which is too holy to be written on a rotten post. (W. Gurnall.) Repentance results in change of action Just as the whole ship turns in obedience to the helm, so the change of mind produces a change of life. Here comes in the well-known story of the storekeeper who could not recollect the sermon; she only knew that after it she went straight home and destroyed all her light weights. A Hindu candidate for Christian baptism was asked what evidence he had to offer of his conversion. “ Formerly,” he said, “ I was proud, and delighted in evil, but since I heard the words of Jesus, I delight in these things no more.” (Sunday School Times.) Repentance shows itself The real thing always shows itself. Whether it is love, or friendship, or generosity, or gratitude, or trust, or repentance, it will evidence its genuineness in something more than profession. There are shams and there are realities in all these spheres, and the differences between them will stand out in the long run. There is a great deal of sorrow over sin and over sinning that is not repentance. The guilty prisoner is sorry that he got caught. The guilty man who has not got caught is sorry that so much of evil and trouble comes of his wrong doing. There is sorrow because of the results of sin, in every sinner’ s soul. But that is not repentance, Repentance is the turning away of the soul from sin as sin; it is the turning toward something better than sin. This state of mind will show itself in conduct that gives proof of sincerity. Sinful courses will be abandoned. Reparation will be made. A new course of living will be adopted. In word and in action there will be fruits worthy of the name of true repentance. (H. C. Trumbull.) Change of mind involves change of practice The fruits worthy of repentance are the renunciation of formerly indulged sins, and the performance of formerly neglected duties. We, ourselves, would not give credit to a man who said he was sorry for having offended us, but who still went on repeating the same offence: as little need we suppose we are penitents if we persevere in our disobedience to God. Repentance begins, and chiefly consists in a change of mind; but that change must evidence itself, and if it be real it will evidence itself in outward reformation and in an exemplary life. John called on his hearers to let it be seen, by their subsequent conduct, that they were converts indeed. (James Foote, M. A.) Motives to repentance Motives to repentance are found in, 1. Divine precepts. 2. Penalty. 3. Promises. 4. The danger of delay. Time may fail. The Spirit’ s aid may be refused (John 3:27). Habits are formed (Jeremiah 13:23). The will is inefficient (John 6:44). The flower of existence spent in sin; blind and lame, a mere wreck brought at last to God. (W. H. Van Doren, D. D.) Repentance is more than penance-doing One of Luther’ s happiest moments was when, reading in his Greek Testament, he found that repentance meant a change of mind rather than penance-doing. A captain at sea discovers that by some mistake the steersman is steering the ship directly for the rocks. How is the danger to be avoided? By scrubbing the decks or setting the men to the pumps? No I these things are good enough in their own time, but if the ship is to be saved, one thing must be done--her course must be changed. So the captain utters a few quick words, and the ship turns and speeds away from the hanger. John’ s preaching was in like manner. A call to men to turn from the dangerous rocks of sin, and to make for the only safe haven. (Sunday School Times.) Fruits meet for repentance A coal merchant in one of our American cities was approached by a minister in regard to the salvation of his soul. The merchant declared it an impossibility for him ever to become a Christian. He gave as a reason his mode of business. For a long term of years, he had, according to a too general custom, given short weight. He had thus grown rich, and now felt the inconsistency of seeking religion without restitution. This was impossible: many of his customers were dead, others beyond his knowledge. The thought of the poor who had paid for coal they never received rested heavily on him. He asked the minister if he thought the substitution of a gift to the poor would be acceptable to God. The minister advised him to try it. A large donation, more than equal in amount of his unjust gains, was accordingly made, and the merchant sought God in earnest. He was happily converted, and is to-day a prominent member of the Church. Proof of turning from sin One of two infidel companions was converted to God. He went to tell his sceptical friend, who was surprised, and sneered at him. “ Well,” said the Christian, “ I have a duty to do to you, and I have scarcely slept two nights for thinking of it. I have got four sheep in my flock that belong to you. They came into my field six years ago, and I marked them with my mark. They are in my field with the increase of them. I have laid awake, groaned over it, and I have come to get rid of it. I will do what you will, go to prison, pay the money, or restore the property.” The infidel began to tremble. “ If you have got them sheep you are welcome to them; I don’ t want nothing of you, if you will go away; something must have got hold of you I don’ t understand I You may keep the sheep if you will only go away.” “ No,” said the Christian, “ I must settle this up.” He counted out the value of the four sheep, 6 per cent interest, and then put double the amount down. This was turning from sin. (G. Bowden.) The necessity of penitence I. IS FOR THE SINNER, in order to be reconciled to God. 1. According to the written Word of God (Luke 13:5; John 3:5).No excuse. No grace in case of negligence. 2. According to the example of all the saints. David. Magdalen. Peter. 3. Reason teaches its necessity. (1) As satisfaction for the guilt, the injury against God (Matthew 5:26). (2) As atonement (Zechariah 1:3; Ezekiel 18:21). (3) As punishment. Man is the author of sin. The Divine Justice owes it to itself to resent every attack upon the moral order (Psalms 37:33). (4) As spiritual remedy. To repair moral damage--the balsam to heal the wound, after the arrow has been taken out. Exciting zeal, conferring grace, setting aside the occasions of sin. II. IS TO THE JUST. 1. No one is sure of justification. 2. Every one offends daily in little things, and for every sin satisfaction must be made. 3. After the remission of guilt and eternal punishment, there remains yet temporal punishment to expiate. Call to mind the rigour of the ancient Church, of her penitential canons, etc. 4. Every one is liable to fall, while he lives. “ Fruits worthy of repentance” are like a hedge of thorns around the paradise of virtues. (Valke.) The ministry of John Baptist 1. Moral, not theological, in its aim. 2. Faithful, not temporizing in its appeal. 3. Symbolic, not superstitious, in its ritual. 4. Humble, not haughty in its spirit. (Dr. Thomas.) A father brought to repentance It pleased God to visit one of the daughters of a wicked father with mortal sickness; but before her death she was instrumental in exciting the attention of her parent to the concerns of his soul. “ Father,” inquired the dying child, can you spell “ repentance” ? The artless question, through the blessing of God, was effectual to awaken concern. “ Spell repentance!” repeated the astonished father; “ why, what is repentance?” Thus he became desirous of knowing, and ultimately was taught its sacred meaning; and discovered that he had been a stranger to it, both in theory and experience. He also discovered that he needed repentance; that he was a guilty condemned sinner, deserving God’ s wrath and everlasting misery; and repentance unto life was granted to him. He spelled out his Divine import; and obtained an acquaintance with that Saviour whom God has exalted to give repentance and remission of sins; and by bringing forth the fruits of righteousness, he in afterlife supported and adorned his Christian profession. A call for John the Baptist John had a word and a sign. The word was--Repent; and the sign was-Baptism. Word and sign were intimatelyrelated. His was the baptism of repentance. The word commanded. The sign accepted. A great moral and religious impulse swept wave-like over the people. The baptism of repentance became the order of the day. But, unfortunately, in the degree that the baptism became a fashion it also became a form. John’ s soul was too upright to be blinded by what looked like success. His language, its directness, and the form with which he clothed his ideas, all showed how radical was the thing he aimed at. The axe, winnowing, uprooting, fire-cleansing, were the symbols that naturally expressed his violent and stormy thoughts and intents. What would John the Baptist say, if he were now to come into our churches and pulpits? He would fiercely denounce all shows and shams in religion. He would scathe and scatter with the lightnings of his indignation all moral delusions. He would demand the putting away of all unholiness. He would say, “ Let us have soundness and solidness, sincerity and spiritual mindedness, or nothing at all.” No doubt there would be a sensation. Well-bred people would be scandalized. Prudent men would say, “ You must use milder language, sir, or we shall have the church empty.” And the prophet would reply, “ Exactly; that is what I have come for. I have come to drive either the sinners or their sins out of the churches.” The great truth to be carried home is, that genuine repentance must always precede the kingdom of God. There is a repentance that is easy and cheap, and is worth as much as it costs or a little less. Repentance is-- (1) Not a piece of ceremonialism; (2) more than an emotion, an excitement; (3) a resolve, an action against sin. The call to repent is a call to action. It means, change your mind about wrong-doing; change your whole course of moral thought, feeling, conduct. It must be personal and spring from a personal source. The kingdom of heaven is at hand, and it is as full of promise as of judgment. (W. Hubbard.) Repentance The word is often used for the compunction with which one may reflect on a particular sin. Whether such compunction procures the forgiveness of the sin, seems to me a question which it is rather too bold to ask, but which is quite unimportant to have answered, unless forgiveness of sins were the same thing as forgiveness of sin. They are entirely different, and there is an equal and exactly corresponding difference between repentance in the sense just mentioned, and in that signified by the word which in the New Testament expresses the condition to which forgiveness of sin is attached. The Greek word denotes a change of mind, heart, or disposition, which is equivalent to the cessation of sin as a habit or state. Sins may be repented of without any such annihilation of sin. And without such annihilation I venture to doubt whether God Himself could forgive sin, any more than He could make two contrary propositions identical, or the same thing to be and not to be at the same time. (Bishop Thirlwall.) The ministry of John An awful ministry truly! The gospel concludes with benediction but it invariably begins with sword and fire. One of the first things that a true minister has to do is to destroy false hopes. It is thus that John did when he broke in thus rudely upon the traditional hopes of those who heard him. They were living securely in the facts that Abraham was their father, and their reasoning was that if Abraham was their father they themselves were necessarily good, and their moral position was invincible. John takes the roof off this house of refuge, and pours the Divine storm upon their heads. He throws down the walls within which they had enclosed themselves, and sends the floods of Divine judgment along the courses of their foundations. But there is a word of hope even in this storm of vengeance. John declares the possibility of repentance even on the part of a generation of vipers. The Christian teacher ought not to content himself with mere denunciation. Let him be faithful in describing the real character of those who hear him; but when he has done so, let him see that they do not die of despair, for want of the hopeful word of repentance. A severe thing this to say about Abraham was it not? The meaning is that hereditary piety is of no use; that we are not good simply because we have a good ancestry; and that as for mere history, God is able to make it out of the very stones under our feet. (J. Parker, D. D.) A parable of the fig-trees What fruits arc meet for repentance? To that question let me reply with a parable. You remember that as our Lord went from Bethany to Jerusalem He saw a fig-tree by the wayside, full of leaves, and came to it that He might eat of its fruit. But when He reached it, He found nothing but leaves on it. The conscious tree withered beneath His rebuke. This story is familiar to you all: but perhaps you did not know that three other fig-trees were growing hard by, near enough to hear what passed between Christ and the fruitless tree, and to mark how it withered beneath His curse. Yet there were such trees, or we shall assume that there were. And being observant and reflective trees they were very much alarmed to see that “ the axe was laid to the roots of the trees,” and that “ every tree which brought not forth good fruit would be hewn down and cast into the fire.” They said among themselves: “ We, indeed, have some fruits; but, oh, how fowl We will do better next year, lest we should likewise perish.” The seasons passed; the winds blew, the rains fell, the sun shone; and now, at last, “ the time of figs” has come round again. We take the road to Bethany, to see how these three trees have kept their purpose of amendment. 1. We approach the first tree; and looking at it attentively, we are surprised and grieved to find that, though it is thick with broad tender leaves, it has but little fruit, and that but poor. We say, “ How is this?” And the tree replies, “ I waited day after day, month after month, and no prophet passed this way. Why should I trouble myself? I have done more than last year. I have some fruits to show, and many leaves. Why should I not be content? No prophet will ever pass this way again; or if a prophet should come, I have done enough to save myself from his curse.” This tree has not brought forth fruits meet for repentance; for it has done nothing from love, and very little from fear. 2. We advance to the second tree; and on this also we find only a few figs: but they are very large and good. We do not for a moment mistake it for a cumberer of the ground; its few but large fruits show plainly through the leaves. Yet the tree wears an aspect of sadness, and waits with some apprehension to hear what we have to say to it. Noting its aspect of settled grief, we do not ask, “ Why are your fruits so few when your purpose was so earnest? “ We say, “ Be not sad and discouraged O tree, because you have borne but little fruit; rather be glad that your fruit is so fine and sweet. You will do more and better next year, if you hold fast to your purpose of amendment, and soon your fruit will be as abundant as it is good.” This tree has brought forth fruits meet for repentance; for it has done well, and is sorry that it has not done better. 3. We pass on to the third tree; and on this we find much fruit indeed, but its fruit is exceedingly various in quality; some of the figs are large and sweet, but some are so small and rude that there is little chance of their being brought to perfection. In haste to prevent us from giving it more than its due, it says, “ It grieves me that my fruit, which is so abundant, is yet so poor. I have discovered in myself, since I resolved to amend, both a power that I knew not of, and an impotence which I did not suspect. I did not know I could do so much as I have done; but I did think that what I could do, that I should do well. Power is mine; alas, that I should so have wasted it! but, alas, weakness is also mine; and though I can do much, I do it but to little purpose!” This third tree, like the second, has brought forth fruits meet for repentance; for it has done much and would fain have done better: and, therefore, we bid it be of good heart, and leave it with good hope that, as it has already borne much fruit, so, in due time, all its fruit will become perfect. 4. But here some humble soul may cry out, “ Alas, sir, I am no fruit-tree! I am but as a thorn or a brier. Have you no word of comfort, or promise for me?” Surely I have. “ Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir-tree,” &c. In the kingdom and garden of Christ strange transformations take place. However wild and barren your nature may be, if you crave comfort and promise, that is, if you honestly desire to amend, there is a power in Christ capable of making you better. You are repenting of the past; and He will show you how, in the future, even you may “ bring forth fruits meet for repentance.” (T. T. Lynch.) Tests of religious life I. FALSE TESTS ARE FOUND IN THE OF . “ We have Abraham,” &c. This may be regarded-- 1. As a sentimental advantage: related to the past. Their Church not a thing of yesterday. 2. As an ecclesiastical advantage: they were related to a privileged past. 3. As a moral advantage: they were related to a worthy past--had a noble ancestry. II. THE TRUE TEST FOUND IN THE OF . This-- 1. The demand of Scripture. Insisted upon by-- (1) prophets (Isaiah and Micah); (2) apostles; (3) the Lord. 2. The demand of society. In relation to-- (1) secular questions; (2) religious questions. The test is applied everywhere. III. HOW MAY BE GAINED? Only by union with Christ. “ Abide in Me,” &c. (John 15:4-5). (W. Glyde Tarbolton.) We have Abraham to our father Pride of ancestry Pride of ancestry is a common evil, and it was very prevalent among the Jews. I. LET US ATTEND TO A FEW GENERAL REMARKS ON THE PASSAGE, 1. It must be admitted that it was once a privilege to have Abraham for a father. It was in consequence of the Israelites being the children of Abraham, that unto them pertained the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises. It was, therefore, one of the first honours, to belong to the family of Abraham (Deuteronomy 33:29; Psalms 105:42; Romans 9:4). 2. It was no unusual thing for the Jews, in their most degenerate state, to boast of their descent from this eminent patriarch. 3. To be descended from pious parents is still a privilege, which we should carefully improve. A heathen philosopher blessed God that he was born at Athens; and have we not greater reason to bless Him that we were born in a Christian country, and descended from godly ancestors. David mentions the piety of his mother as a motive for devoting himself to the service of God, and as a reason of his having obtained mercy. “ Oh, Lord,” says he, “ truly I am Thy servant; I am Thy servant, and the son of Thy handmaid; Thou hast loosed my bonds.” And in giving a solemn charge to his son, he uses similar language, “ Thou Solomon, my son, know thou the God of thy father” (2 Timothy 1:5; Psalms 116:16). 4. Though it is an honour to be descended from pious ancestors, yet we are warned against trusting in it as a substitute for personal religion. “ Think not to say within yourselves, we have Abraham to our father” ; for so had Ishmael and Esau; and yet they were none the better for it. Do not imagine that this will be any excuse for sin, or a sufficient plea for mercy. II. Consider THE REASONS THAT SHOULD CAUTION US AGAINST PLACING ANY ON NATURAL DESCENT, as giving us a title to eternal life, or rendering us more secure from the wrath to come. 1. The children of pious parents are defiled with original sin as well as others, and therefore have the same propensities to evil. Corruption runs in the blood, though grace does not. Though the Jews themselves were circumcised, their children were horn in uncircumcision; and were by nature children of wrath, even as others (Psalms 51:5; Ephesians 2:2-3). 2. In too many instances, the children of religious parents, like the prodigal son, have grown weary of restraint, and indulged in those criminal excesses which are common to the most abandoned characters. What were the sons of Eli, and the sons of Aaron; their conduct, and their end! Guilty of intemperance, impurity, and profaneness, they died under the visible marks of Divine displeasure. That excellent prince Josiah had four sons, and they all proved wicked. Benjamin was so called, to denote that he was the son of his father’ s right hand; and yet most of the left-handed men we read of in Scripture were Benjamites, as if it were intended to show that the course of events and the formation of character are oftentimes the reverse of what we had reason to expect. 3. It is still more painful to observe, that some of the best of men have had the very worst of children, who have been a grief and a dishonour to their parents. The sweetest wine makes the sharpest vinegar, and the most promising children sometimes turn out the worst of characters. Nabal the churl was of the posterity of the noble and disinterested Caleb. Absalom who murdered Amnon, and Amnon who defiled his sister, were the sons of David, the man after God’ s own heart. 4. Our being the children of pious parents merely can no more effect our salvation, than our being the children of wicked parents can effect our destruction; personal character being that alone by which our future state will be determined. 5. The futility of every plea arising from our connection with pious ancestors is also evinced in what is alleged by the sacred writer, that God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham. He who gave Abraham a son when he was past age, and afterwards raised him up in a figure from the altar, can be at no loss to give him a spiritual seed as numerous as the stars of heaven. (B. Beddome, M. A.) Regeneration I. Now with regard to these stones. I shall pass Joshua by with his stones, and the heathen soldiers also, and give you a Scriptural proof that ruined sinners with stony hearts are the persons really meant--sinners that are like stones--and I will give you a passage of Scripture that confirms this statement without the possibility of contradiction, because it is God’ s own. If you turn to the seventh chapter of the Prophet Zechariah you will find what God says about them, “ They refused to hearken, and pulled away the shoulder and stopped their ears that they should not hear, yea, they made their hearts as an adamant stone.” Why, they are as incapable of feeling as stones--they are as helpless as stones. But mark a little further, for I want you to have a right and an humbling view of the Fall, he is worse than a stone; find a stone where you will, it has got no enmity in it. I grant it is hard and helpless, and immoveable, but it has got no enmity in it. Now, my Bible tells me expressly that, “ the carnal mind is enmity against God.” II. But I am very anxious, having said thus much in as concise terms as I could, to lead on your attention to the almighty grace put forth, “ God is able.” How does He manage to raise up children? Does He do as a mason would, hew out the stones and carve them, and shape them, and cut them? That is the way men make Christians. I know they get hold of these rough stones, and they say they are very rude and very ignorant, perhaps very licentious, perhaps very immoral, perhaps very unjust and dishonest, very ugly rough forbidding stones, such as one hardly likes to have in one’ s sight; but forth comes one of these skilful masons, and cuts them, and carves them, and polishes them very nicely with the tools of education and superstition. Take your stone, and carve it as handsomely as you can, and work it into a statue as tall as any of you, and give the handsomest features that any of you possess, and throw the most graceful robes around it that can be worn, and paint it what colour you please, it is a stone after all--and that is a striking emblem of thousands who pass for Christians. But when God works, He puts the Spirit of life from God into a poor sinner’ s heart; it is another and a new principle; a holy life that cannot sin. And observe here, that He invariably exercises His own absolute sovereignty. But just mark further. This new life which God Himself imparts and bestows, this quickening by the power of the Holy Ghost according to the sovereignty of His own will, is nourished and trained up by Him. I should like to detain you a moment longer here to mark, that when Jehovah thus exercises His absolute sovereignty, and quickens sinners to newness of life, He excludes all vain boasting, all creature pretensions. III. Now let us, for a moment or two, glance at the nature thus bestowed. Peradventure you will say, “ You have surely taken up this all along.” Well, I must say a little more about it. And, first of all, it is relative, and claims relationship with Abraham--“ children unto Abraham.” Well, why not unto some Gentile parent? Why not relationship to some among the heathens that surrounded John while he was thus speaking? Why, beloved, if you will consult the statement of the Holy Ghost by the apostle, you will find what is really descriptive of all the children of Abraham, whether Jews or Gentiles. “ So then,” he says, after a lengthened argument, “ they that are of faith are the children of faithful Abraham.” Now this is the relationship that is bestowed upon them. Come a little closer into apprehension of it. Abraham’ s faith “ talked with God as a man talketh with his friend” ; more than that,--Abraham’ s faith pleaded with God, and even proposed terms and conditions for the saving of Sodom, because his brother Lot was there. Abraham’ s faith was such as constituted him “ the father of the faithful” ; consequently, the sons must be something like him--they must be partakers of like precious faith.” (J. Irons.) False reasoning The Pharisees taught that no child of Abraham could perish. His name was thus used as a shield to turn aside the arrows of truth. But we must remember that ties of blood, ancestral piety, or rites of the Church, cannot save. Abraham’ s blood, without Abraham’ s faith, will avail only to condemn. The Church of saints and martyrs can give the unrenewed no passport to heaven. Paul in the pulpit would perish, if Paul were not in Christ. It is a terribly perilous doctrine among the Romanists, that a wicked “ Catholic” (so-called) is more certain of reaching heaven than the best Protestant who ever lived. (Various.) False reliance It was not that the Jews were to disown their descent from Abraham, but that they were not to rely on that descent as their means of salvation. There is a great deal of this looking to one’ s stock or to one’ s surroundings as a hope of heaven. One thinks that his mother’ s prayers will save him. Another, that his Church-membership is a fair ground of confidence. Another, that his being included in a good congregation will sweep him over danger. Every expectation of this sort is even more foolish than the confidence of the Jews in their earthly parentage. Begin not to say anything of the kind in your heart as a source of hope; and if you have begun to say it, quit it forthwith, and find something to rest in that will stand the test to which your faith must finally be subjected. (H. C. Trubull.) Luke 3:9 The axe is laid unto the root of the trees Radical and seminal reform It seems to me a total mistake to apply the words of the Baptist, “ And now also the axe,” &c. , to any work ordained for man. When the appointed time comes, God does indeed show forth His justice by sweeping away that which is utterly corrupt. Yet even the Son of God, in His human manifestation, came not to destroy, but to save. Assuredly this is the only part of His office which we are called to discharge. As His ministers, we are to be ministers of salvation, not of destruction. The evil in ourselves, indeed, we are to pluck up, branch and root; but in our dealings with others, unless we have a special office committed to us by the laws of family or national life, our task will mainly be to contend against evil by sowing the seeds of good, not by radical reforms, but by seminal. The satirist, the rhetorician, the moralist, will indeed try the former, and will therefore fail. The Christian has a higher power entrusted to him, the power of God’ s goodness and mercy, the gospel of redemption and salvation; not the woes of the Trojan prophetess, who could gain no credence, but the glad tidings of the kingdom of heaven. And if he relies on this power, he will succeed where others must needs fail. (A. W. Hare, in “ Guesses at Truth. ”) The axe lying at the root We may learn from it, in the first place-- I. THE KIND OF FRUIT WHICH GOD FROM US. In our text it is called “ good fruit” ; and, in the eighth verse, “ fruits meet for repentance.” With what propriety, my brethren, are fruits like these denominated “ good.” They are the result of a good principle, even of that “ godly sorrow” which worketh repentance to salvation, not to be repented of; they proceed from a good source, for they are the fruits which the Holy Spirit Himself produces in the heart and life which He controls; and they accord with the Divine revelation and with the Divine will, “ for He hath showed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord thy God require of thee, but to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?” II. THE MEANS WHICH GOD EMPLOYS TO RENDER US OF THIS KIND OF FRUIT, AND WHICH SHOW HOW IT IS THAT HE SHOULD EXPECT IT FROM US. In the first place, God has endowed you with a capacity to produce this kind of fruit. A stone is not capable of producing the fruits of a tree, because it is destitute of vegetable life. A tree is not capable of producing the fruits of instinct and sagacity, because it is destitute of animal life. And the beasts of the field are not capable of producing the fruits of reason and of conscience, because they are destitute of intellectual and moral life. Nor are such fruits required from them. God never requires from His creatures any actions which they are naturally incapable of performing. “ But there is a spirit in man, and the inspiration of the Almighty hath given him understanding.” He has endowed us with reason and with affections. You retain the ability, but you have lost the disposition, to exercise the mind aright. You may destroy the eye by which you behold the surrounding universe; you may destroy the link that binds your spirit to your mortal flesh: but your responsibility to God, and your immortality of existence, you cannot destroy, you cannot touch. Secondly: In order to enable you to bring forth this good fruit, God has supplied you with the gospel of His Son. The gospel contains also the motives to fruitfulness; and these motives are the most powerful that can be presented to the mind. And the gospel contains also the promise of that Divine influence by which fruitfulness is infallibly secured! for “ He giveth His Holy Spirit to them that ask Him.” Thirdly: God has visited you with various dispensations of providence, and with various convictions of conscience, all of which have been intended to direct your attention to the gospel, that thereby you might bring forth fruits meet for repentance. III. THE OF SOME PERSONS, ALL THE MEANS WHICH THE GOD OF MERCY HAS . 1. Some of these unfruitful persons are sensual and profane. Their bodies and their souls are given to sin. 2. Some of these unfruitful persons are intellectual, and moral, and amiable. 3. Some of these unfruitful persons are professors of the gospel. They are branches in the vine, but they bear no fruit. IV. THE AXE WINCH IS LYING AT THE ROOT OF SUCH PERSONS. “ And now also the axe is laid unto the root of the trees.” This “ axe” may therefore be considered as emblematical of death, at which period the character and condition of the fruitless, as well as of others, will be decided and fixed for ever. 1. The axe which is lying at your root reminds you of the patience and long-suffering of God. If you had had a servant in your family who had cared as little for you as you have cared for God, would you have continued him in your house as long as God has continued you? No, my brethren, you would not. You would have cut down the tree, and you would have dismissed the servant. 2. The axe which is lying at your root reminds you of the critical circumstances in which you are placed. Remember that, though you have not yet been hewn down, the axe is actually lying at your root. The axe has not to be prepared; it has been prepared, and sharpened. The axe has not to be brought to you from a distance; it has been brought, and is now lying at your root. 3. The axe which is lying at your root has sometimes admonished you of its being there. You have seen others fall under its influence; but have you never felt it yourself? Has the cold iron never sent its chilling influence through your frame? V. THE AWFUL TO WHICH SUCH PERSONS ARE DOOMED. “ Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire.” The nature of this condition is indescribably terrible. There is an awful peculiarity even in the death of a fruitless sinner. “ He is hewn down.” And the language intimates at once his own unwillingness to die, and the determined and penal manner in which his death is inflicted. The certainty that this condition will be incurred by the finally impenitent is another sentiment which our text conveys--a certainty so sure and perfect, that the event is spoken of as having actually taken place. “ He is hewn down, and cast into the fire.” If you die unfruitful, your destruction is as certain as your death. (J. Alexander, D. D.) Little value set on trees in the East The remarkably broad statement implied in this bold figure of speech must strike a European as somewhat extraordinary; and yet there is more of literal truth in it than one would at first thought be disposed to imagine. The fact is, in Western Asia trees, as trees, are but little valued. The fruit-trees are preserved and nourished with great care; but nearly all other trees are cut down for fuel, mineral fuel being exceedingly scarce. An exception is made in favour of poplars. These are permitted to grow to their full height for the sake of the long beams they supply. (Biblical Things, &c.) The destructive axe This is judgment--destruction. The axe is not for planting, or pruning, or dressing, or propping, or protecting, but for cutting down. The axe against Israel was the Roman host, and many such axes has God wielded, age after age. Every judgment is an axe: pestilence is God’ s axe; famine God’ s axe; adversity God’ s axe. There is a great difference between the axe and the pruning-knife. Yet some of God’ s judgments are both in one--an axe to the ungodly, a pruning-knife to the saint. It is God’ s axe, not man’ s; its edge is sharp; it is heavy; it will do its work well. (H. Bonar, D. D.) The axe laid to the root of the tree I. THE ROOT. That which bears up the branches, and on which the trees and branches stand and grow. 1. The root, then, was the covenant God made with Abraham and his natural seed or offspring, which covenant did, in a mystical sense, as clearly bear up the national church of Israel and all the trees (i.e., members or branches thereof) as common natural root doth the tree or trees growing out of it. 2. By the root may also be intended the foundation of all the Jews’ hopes, confidence, and outward privileges. 3. By root, in a more remote sense, may be meant the state and standing of every ungodly, unbelieving, and impenitent person. II. THE TREES. Men and women, but chiefly the seed of the stock of Abraham, according to the flesh, of whom the national church of the Jews was made up, and did consist; as also, all wicked and unbelieving persons whatsoever, who embrace not the offers of grace in the gospel, or believe not in Jesus Christ. III. THE AXE. 1. The dispensation of God’ s providence, or time. Time is pictured with a scythe, but then man is compared to grass; but it may be pictured with an axe, since men are compared to trees; a scythe is no fit instrument to cut down trees. 2. The axe also may refer to the gospel: the Word of God is an axe to hew and square some persons for God’ s spiritual building, and to cut down others also, as trees that are rotten, and bear no good fruit; “ Therefore,” saith the Lord, “ I have hewn them by the prophets” ; and what follows, mark it, “ I have slain them by the words of My mouth” (Hosea 6:5). 3. The axe may refer to men, whom God makes use of, as instruments in His hand, to cut down and destroy a wicked and God-provoking people; hence wicked rulers and kings, whom God raises up, as instruments in His hand, to chastise and cut clown a rebellious people, are called “ His sword, and the rod of His wrath and indignation” (Psalms 17:14). 4. By the axe may in general be meant God’ s wrath; however it is, or may be executed, or upon whom, wrath will sooner or later cut down all the ungodly, both false Churches and tyrannical powers of the earth, and all who continue in unbelief and in rebellion against God. The laying the axe to the root discovers the final fall and ruin of sinners, whether considered as a Church or as particular persons; dig up or cut down the root, and down falls the body and all the branches of the tree. Or are you self-righteous persons? Do you build on your own righteousness, like the Jews and hypocritical Pharisees? If so, the axe will cut you down also. You must bring forth good fruit, every soul of you, or perish; and this you cannot do till your hearts are changed, and so you become good trees. Make the tree good, and then the fruit will be good; “ an evil tree cannot bring forth good fruit,” &c. All works of regenerate persons--yea, their religious duties--are but dead works, not good fruits; nor can they bring forth good fruits unless they are planted by faith into Jesus Christ. Nay, I must tell you that gospel-holiness will not save us; it must be the righteousness of God by faith. (Benjamin Keach.) The discovery of hypocrisy 1. It cutteth the Sabbath-breaker to hear his profaneness still cried out upon; it cutteth the adulterer to hear his viciousness continually found fault with; it cutteth the drunkard to hear his excess so often threatened; it cutteth the rioter and voluptuous liver, that his course should ever and anon be so eagerly reproved. And so, in the other particulars, it doth even enrage men’ s hearts that the Word of God cloth so meet with them, as it were, at every turn; and it causeth many to come to hear it no more than they needs must, because, though they set a face upon it, and would make themselves and others believe that it is not so; yet this same sharp axe of the Word, when the edge thereof is turned towards them, doth strike some wound or other into them almost at every sermon. So that as Scripture hath avouched it, so common use will not suffer it to be untrue, that the ministry of the Word is a sharp axe, which hath a biting edge, and cutteth and pierceth where it goeth. The use of it, in a word, is to justify and to maintain to the faces of all gainsayers that that very Word which they hear daily, and which they would fain make themselves and others believe is but an idle word, is indeed and in truth the very Word of God. 2. Another thing in the axe is, that as it cuts, so it frameth and fashioneth the hearers to a place in the spiritual building in God’ s Church. And as a crooked and knobby tree must first be hewn and squared, and cut again and again, before it can sort with the rest of the building, so must we also be even cast, as it were, in a new mould, and transformed into a new shape, before we can have a place in God’ s spiritual house. There is a great deal of crookedness and corruption must be pared from us; we must pass under the workman’ s tool before we can be an habitation of God by His Spirit. Now, the means to frame us to become fit for the Lord’ s building is the public ministry of His Word. By it the Lord cloth lop off the superfluity of our corruption; thereby He doth smooth us and make us plain and compact, and join us in, as it were, by certain mortices and joints with the rest of that holy frame, that being once fast coupled unto it, He may preserve us ever unto Himself. Therefore we find in Scripture that as the Church of God was never destitute of this workmanship, so likewise those whom His pleasure was to bring into the society of His chosen--they were framed thereby, and first felt the power and edge of the Word before they were linked together with God’ s people. 3. It followeth, an axe put to the root of the trees; that is (as I have expounded it), urged and applied to men’ s consciences, laid and pressed to the hearts of the hearers, For look what the root is unto the rest of the tree; the same is the heart to the whole man. Nathan the prophet laid the axe to the root when he told David, “ Thou art the man.” So did Elias, when he said to Ahab, “ It is thou and thy father’ s house that have troubled Israel.” So did Amos, when he preached at Bethel, the king’ s own chapel, the destruction of the king’ s own house. So did Hanani, when he said plainly to the king that he had done foolishly not to rest upon the Lord. So did Zachariah, when he told Joash he should not prosper if he forsook the Lord. So did John the Baptist, when he spake directly to the Pharisees, and called them a viperous generation, and when he told Herod to his face he might not have his brother’ s wife. So did Christ, when He preached woe to the Scribes and Pharisees, “ Woe to Chorazin and Bethsaida.” So did Peter, when he told the Jews, “ You, I say, have crucified and slain the Lord of life.” So did Paul, when he called them “ foolish Galatians.” It is to no purpose, as it were, to stand hacking at the branches, and to strike here and there upon the outward rind; but a man must go to the root, and knock at the door of every man’ s conscience, that every soul may tremble, and men at the least may be convinced against the day of reckoning. “ If thou doest not well,” saith God unto Cain, “ sin lieth at the door.” Sin is like a cruel beast, which lieth sleeping at the door of every man’ s heart. It must be awaked and stirred up, that men may see their danger. (S. Hieron.) Unfruitful trees cut down. “ The axe is laid unto the root of the trees” in the East with a significance which we can hardly understand in the West. It is not merely because the tree cumbers the ground in a physical sense; to even shade-trees-trees of any sort--are greatly to be desired throughout the Holy Land. But the fruit-trees are all taxed; and if unfruitful, they are a heavy incumbrance. If a tree bears no fruit, it brings its proprietor in debt, and that to the most merciless of creditors, a tax-farmer. Some four years ago, when the taxes were heavy and the olive product light, multitudes of olive-trees were cut down on the spurs of Lebanon. It was cutting off the owners’ means of support in the future; but that was still in the future, and uncertain. In the immediate present, all that the proprietor could see was cruelty, oppression, and taxes. Future starvation was not a heavier burden than present hunger, with debt as a load above it. It is probable that this is just the same sort of cumbering the ground which was the troublesome one in old times. Space could be spared in the ground for a tree whose only use was ornament; wild trees are still allowed for that purpose; but a fruit-tree which bore a tax is quite a different matter, and probably was so then. The fruit-trees paid a religious tithe; and the secular government could scarcely have been less exacting. The tax on fruit-trees, too, is a heavy one. Read any recent work on the political condition of Egypt, and see how much every palm must pay. Travellers are often surprised at the extra charges which they have to pay--more than the natives--for the use of a horse or a boat; but they forget that the Government is on the look-out for those who own the boat or the horse, and is apt to get the lion’ s share of all such seeming extortions. (Professor Isaac H. Hall.) Sternness necessary When we lay the axe to the root of the tree--when we hew off men’ s very members, when we snatch them like brands out of the fire, when we make them to see their own faces in the law of liberty, the face of a guilty, and therefore cursed, conscience--there will be need of much boldness. A surgeon who is to search an inveterate wound, and to cut off a putrified member, had not need to be faint-hearted, or bring a trembling hand to so great a work. (Bishop Reynolds.) Luke 3:10-14 What shall we do then?Common sense applied to everyday duties I. JOHN BETWEEN THE EASE-, SELFISH, AND AND HIGH-PLACED OF JUDAISM, AND “ THE ” (Matthew 3:7). II. HE RISES ABOVE THE AND OF THE PUBLIC OPINION OF HIS IN A WAY. Publicans. Soldiers. III. HE IS IN HIS . Whilst he counsels the owner of “ two coats” to show the reality of his avowed “ change of character” and new-born life, of which repentance is the sign, he still leaves him “ one” ; and the man having food he would not have starve whilst he relieves, or that he may relieve the starving, but share only. There was no communism, no sinking of the individual in the mass, or rights of property in the properties of right. Simply a proof of unselfishness, of caring for others, is set before the first inquirers. He puts his finger unerringly on the besetting sin. When I was in Palestine and Syria, and Asia Minor, and the dominions of Turkey generally, I felt that if to-day a John the Baptist were to have the old question asked him by the pashas and other tax-farmers, his answer would go to the root of the evils that are bleeding to death the entire dominions of the sultan. One gets a glimpse herein of how far-reaching really, though local and personal seemingly, was the Baptist’ s answer and counsel, “ Extort no more,” etc. I can well conceive that some of those who had asked, “ What shall we do?” must have winced under the plain-spoken answer. The answer must have darted like a lightning bolt across the inquirers’ lives, at once illumining specific acts, and by the immediate encompassing darkness and silence, as John passed to his next group of inquirers, shutting them up to self-examination and self-abasement. The same observation applies to the counsel addressed to the soldiers. They, too, had a “ besetting sin.” The teacher warns them that he knows all about them, and their violent, outrageous, evil ways, when set free from discipline, and on semi-marauding expeditions. And so he sends home to their consciences the brave and needed counsel, “ Do violence,” dec. The last thing demanded all John’ s high-hearted courage and fidelity to the truth, to put it so unqualifiedly. Here again, in all probability, if not certainty, he spoke to men’ s “ businesses and bosoms.” There were secret or more audible complaints, murmurs, accusations. John has heard these, has inquired into them, has come to a conclusion on the matter: and so they get it articulately, and without touch of currying favour: “ Your wages are sufficient--you are well paid for all that you do--be content.” Your mere enthusiast, your mystic, your man preoccupied about his functions and dignities, never would have been thus solid-sensed, thus practical, thus reasonable. IV. HE IS IN HIS . AS with our Lord (generally) “ the people,” and “ the publicans,” and “ the soldiers,” gave assent and consent by silence. To us, on the first blush of it, John’ s advice has the look of a come-down from the molten warnings and accusations that immediately preceded, and out of which the inquiries were born. But their silence showed that to them the counsels were adequate, not trivial; wen to the root of their necessities. They recognized--and we shall do well to follow in their steps--that Christian life is not made up of so-called great things, or evidenced by ecstasies, and high and higher emotion, but is constituted of habitual putting into our “ walk and conversation,” in DEEDS which we profess to know and believe. The most evangelical preacher and teacher may fearlessly answer, as John the Baptist did, every-day and ordinary inquirers, with no fear of not thereby “ preaching” or “ teaching” the gospel. For it was of these very exhortations that it is written, “ With many other exhortations, therefore, preached he good tidings unto the people.” These answers enshrine living principles for all time. To-day, with so much giving out of what we can spare and never feel it, when the very thing is to feel it, we need to be recalled to the first answer, to the gospel fact that our generosity must be after this type, of taking the coat off our back (if need be) to let our brother-man have “ one,” as we still have; and that we are to feed others, not with food different from our own, by paltry gradation of inferior, inferiorer, inferiorest, and a mocking thought, “ It’ s quite good enough for the like of them,” but with our very own food. It would again overturn tables, ay, in God’ s own house, and all through the commercial world and the learned professions, if John’ s second answer were but vitalized by present-day acceptance and influence, “ Extort no more,” &c. In different ways and degrees extortion--taking advantage of opportunity and circumstance--is a still wide-reaching sin. You that call yourselves Christians, and haste to be rich, beware! Then, in conclusion, how burning and high-hearted was the third answer--to the soldiers. As Dr. Reynolds put it: “ There is room to suppose that the answer previously given to the publicans might be regarded by the soldiers as some kind of justification for their own high-handed acts. John tore off the cloak which their professional position was drawing over their selfishness, and he bade them terrorize no one, and bring no vamped-up worthless accusation. The professional soldier of modern times might be offended by such plain speaking. Armed authority is always open to the temptation of working on the emotion of physical fear.” (Dr. A. B. Grosart.) The questions of conscience and the answers of truth The voice crying in the wilderness had awakened an answering echo in the breasts of the multitudes. The axe which God was already laying at the root of the tree was the Roman Conqueror of the land, and the tree fell when, with great slaughter, Jerusalem was taken, and of her goodly temple not one stone was left upon another. Well might the people tremble as their consciences, quickened from their long lethargy by the stern and powerful preaching of this Elijah of later days, awoke to the sense of their moral and spiritual degradation. For the moment, as often before in their history, this greatly-sinning, though highly-favoured people seemed ready to repent. They listened to John’ s burning words, and cried out to him, “ What shall we do then?” It was the right question to ask, if only they had been possessed of the abiding spiritual conviction and the strength of purpose which would have enabled them to turn John’ s answers to good account. It was the question of Saul of Tarsus, of the Philippian jailor, of the multitude on the day of Pentecost. And it is the question which every awakened soul must ask, cannot help asking. Three classes came to John with this question. The answers which he returned to them were one and all directed against the vices and temptations peculiar to his questioners as respective classes. Doubtless from our Christian standpoint there is something defective in these utterances. To fulfil all these behests would not, it will be said, make any man a Christian. But it must be remembered that John himself was not a Christian. Great though he was, the least in the kingdom of heaven was greater than he. He was a preacher of righteousness. Upon him, last among men, the mantle of the old prophets had fallen. And his words are the echoes of those which had been spoken so long before: “ Is not this the fast that I have chosen,” &c. (Isaiah 58:6-7). John’ s preaching of repentance was intended to pave the way for the Christian doctrine of the righteousness which comes by faith. And when at length Christianity did come and preach to men, it had something more to say than either John or any of his predecessors, but not one word of that Old Testament inculcation did it unsay, for it had not come to destroy, but to fulfil. John’ s words were true, though they were not the whole truth. And the world has not yet grown so wise, or generous, or honest, as to have risen above the need for such moral teaching as this. The answers of John to these conscience-stricken inquirers contain underlying principles suitable to men of all callings, and in all ages, who desire to lead sober, righteous, and godly lives. I. THE PURSUIT OF ONE’ S SECULAR CALLING AND DAILY IS NOT WITH THE DESIRE TO LEAD A LIFE. John does not say to these questioners, “ Quit your callings for others in which you will be less exposed to difficulty and danger” ; but “ Do the right thing in the situation in which you find yourselves.” Even as Paul wrote to the Corinthians (1 Corinthians 7:24), “ Brethren, let every man, wherein he is called, therein abide with God.” While there are some perhaps among the many employments which obtain amongst men, in which no Christian man can consistently engage, for most of us, and for ordinary circumstances, the advice is good and sound, “ Do not quit your occupation or grow restless and uneasy in it, as if you could not serve God honestly in it as in another. But see to it that you serve God in it, and that meanest duties are done from highest motives.” II. OUR OUGHT TO ENTER INTO AND FIND ONE OF ITS GREAT SPHERES OF ACTION IN OUR DAILY LIFE AND . If business is not incompatible with religion, it is only because it is possible for us, and demanded of us, that we infuse the spirit of religion into our businesses. The difference between our Sundays and our week-days to be done away, or at all events lessened, not by degrading Sunday to the level of other days, but by elevating them to its level, in regard to the spirit we breathe, and the principles that govern us, and the consciousness of God’ s presence with us. III. WE MUST BRING THE WHICH GOD GIVES US TO BEAR CHIEFLY AGAINST THE TO WHICH WE ARE EXPOSED. Some of our temptations arise out of our own evil hearts. Others are incidental to existence in a world like this. Against these general onslaughts we have all in common to strive. But there are temptations peculiar to us as individuals, or as members of a certain class--arising from the circumstances in which we are placed, and the positions we hold. It was so with the publicans and soldiers who came to John, and his advice to them was, “ Oppose yourselves with all your might to the besetments which assail you in your respective callings.” And what is true of the peculiar dangers arising from position and circumstance is true also of those which have their origin in personal disposition and temperament. Let us all strive so to live that men shall not be able to point to glaring inconsistencies in our lives--that they may see that our religion is no mere profession, but a living power, which has all our life and thought and conduct under its sway, which can sanctify the trivial round and common task, and transmute the base metal of our ordinary acts and occasions and duties into the gold of the cheerful obedience of loving hearts and consecrated lives. (J. R. Bailey.) Preaching producing discomfort I remember one of my parishioners at Halesworth telling me that he thought “ a person should not go to church to be made uncomfortable.” I replied that I thought so too; but whether it should be the sermon or the man’ s life that should be altered so as to avoid the discomfort, must depend on whether the doctrine was right or wrong. (Archbishop Whately.) The proof of effectual preaching Do you not know that a man may be preached to liturgically and doctrinally, and never be touched by the truth, or understand that to which he listens? Suppose I were to preach to you in Hebrew, how much would you understand? Now, when I preach so that a banker, who has all along been sitting under the doctrinal preaching, but has never felt its application to his particular business, feels the next day, when counting his coin, a twinge of conscience, and says, “ I wish I could either practise that sermon or forget it,” I have preached the gospel to him in such a way that he has understood it. I have applied it to the sphere of life in which he lives. When the gospel is preached so that a man feels that it is applied to his own life, he has it translated to him. And it needs to be translated to merchants and lawyers, and mechanics, and every other class in society, in order that all may receive their portion in due season. (H. W.Beecher.) Powerful preaching When Massillon preached at Versailles, Louis XIV. paid the following most expressive tribute to the power of hiseloquence. “ Father, when I hear others preach, I am very well pleased with them; when I hear you, I am dissatisfied with myself.” The first time he preached his sermon on the small number of the elect, the whole audience were, at a certain part of it, seized with such violent emotion, that almost every person half rose from his seat, as if to shake off the horror of being one of the cast-out into everlasting darkness. (Percy.) Effect of true preaching It was a beautiful criticism made by Longinus, upon the effect of the speaking of Cicero and Demosthenes. He says the people would go from one of Cicero’ s orations, exclaiming, “ What a beautiful speaker! What a rich fine voice! What an eloquent man Cicero is!” They talked of Cicero; but when they left Demosthenes, they said, “ Let us fight Philip!” Losing sight of the speaker, they were all absorbed in the subject; they thought not of Demosthenes, but of their country. So, my brethren, let us endeavour to send away from our ministrations the Christian, with his month full of the praise--not of “ our preacher,” but of God; and the sinner, not descanting upon the beautiful figures and well-turned periods of the discourse, but inquiring, with the brokenness of a penitent, “ What shall I do to be saved?” Giving to the needy A man doesn’ t need to be rich before he shows whether he is generous or not. Nor is a man’ s generosity to be limited to one-tenth of his income. Dividing one’ s scantiest store with others is a duty, quite as clearly as giving out of one’ s abundance. A great many wish that they were rich, in order that they might be generous; but unless one gives freely while he has little, he could not give freely if he had much. Generosity often diminishes with one’ s growing wealth; it never, never, never increases with one’ s worldly accumulations. And mark you, the giving which tells in God’ s ears is giving to the destitute; not giving to friends and relatives who already have something. Most of the holiday giving, and the birthday giving, and the free-hearted and open-handed giving, in this world, is to those who are already well-to-do in life. That is all very well in its way--as a means of pure personal enjoyment; but it is not charity, not any sign of a love toward God. If you would show that you are God’ s children, and would do your duty as in God’ s sight, let him that hath two coats give to him that hath none, and let him that hath meat do likewise. (H. C. Trumbull.) Two coats The Jews of the first century always wore the tunic and mantle or robe. These were the two indispensable garments. As a rule the Jew had at least two complete suits in his possession that he might be able to change often. A man must be very poor to have only one cloak; and yet this is what Christ enjoined on His disciples. According to Luke’ s Gospel He said one day: “ If any man would go to law with thee and take away thy cloak, let him have thy coat also.” This precept can be understood; a robber would naturally lay hold first of the outer garment. But Matthew puts it the other way: “ If any man will take thy coat, let him have thy cloak also.” Under this form it is harder to understand, and we may well suppose that in transcribing the copyists have misplaced the two words coat and cloak. (E. Stapler, D. D.) A self-denying gift People wondered why George Briggs, Governor of Massachusetts, wore a cravat but no collar. “ Oh,” they said, “ it is an absurd eccentricity,” and they said, “ he does that just to show himself off.” Ah! no. That was not the character of George Briggs, Governor of Massachusetts, as I might intimate by a little incident which occurred at Pittsfield, Mass., just after a meeting of the American Board of Foreign Missions. My brother was walking on one side of the Governor, and on the other side of the Governor was a missionary who had just returned from India. The day was cold, and the Governor looked at the missionary and said, “ Why, my friend, you don’ t seem to have an overcoat.” “ No,” said the missionary, “ I haven’ t been able to purchase an overcoat since I came to the country.” Then the Governor took off his great cloak and threw it around the missionary and said, “ I can stand this climate better than you can.” Governor Briggs did not do anything just to show off. This was the history of the cravat without any collar. For many years before he had been talking with an inebriate, trying to persuade him to give up the habit of drinking, and he said to the inebriate, “ Your habit is entirely unnecessary.” “ Ah!” replied the inebriate, “ we do a great many things that are not necessary. It isn’ t necessary that you should have that collar.” “ Well,” said Briggs, “ I will never wear a collar again if you will stop drinking.” “ Agreed,” said the other. They joined hands in a pledge that they kept for twenty years, kept until death. That is magnificent. That is gospel, practical gospel, worthy of George Briggs, worthy of you. Self-denial for others. Subtraction from our advantage that there may be an addition to somebody else’ s advantage. (Dr. Talmage.) Duty of helping the poor When a Christian lady once came to Carlyle and asked what she should do to make her life more useful, he replied,” Seek out some poor friendless lassie and be kind to her.” The blessedness of giving One of the best things said by the late George Peabody is this, spoken at a reunion at his native town:--“ It is sometimes hard for one who has devoted the best part of his life to the accumulation of money to spend it for others; but practise it, and keep on practising it, and I assure you it becomes a pleasure.” The pulpit in politics “ What shall we do?” each asks in turn. Observe the Baptist’ s method in reply. He was able to answer that question because he had a firm hold of a few fundamental principles--righteousness, equity, love. That was his charm, his power, his resource. He was not political, but he dealt with politicians; nor military, but he dealt with soldiers; nor mercantile, but he dealt with finance; hence we may learn, by the way, the relation of the pulpit to politics. Unless the preacher can raise politics out of the sphere of party spirit, let him keep silence; but when a Government policy infringes on the moral plane, when and where it can be tested by common principles of righteousness, equity, and love, then its policy is as much the preacher’ s sphere of comment as murder, theft, or selfishness. If any Government, e.g., is culpably indifferent for years to the state of Ireland, and can only be roused to activity by Parnellism: when I observe that the Indian budget, upon which hangs the well-being of distant millions, is proverbially discussed by an apathetic group in an empty House: when I see the men of Parliamentary authority combine to crush out the risings of freedom in Egypt with brute force, simply because influential speculators want a high rate of interest for their money on an iniquitous loan--why, it is time to ask, “ ought the pulpit to keep silence?” Certainly not. The policy infringes on the moral sphere, and has to be judged by the same Divine principles to which the Baptist invariably appealed. Aye, and I will go further and say that the temper of political debate is also a matter for pulpit comment. When public time is wasted, crises at home and abroad neglected, and the whole tone of the House lowered because two political gladiators want to have a stand-up fight, and the honourable members are content to form a ring, is such wanton fooling as that in high places not to be arraigned by those who profess to view party conduct by the light of a morality which seems unknown to party politics? (H. R. Haweis, M. A.) John’ s counsels to inquirers John’ s touch was throughout light but firm, and quite infallible in particulars, just because he appealed to simple and universally intelligible principles of right and wrong. Listen to his answer to the people generally. “ You want to know what to do? Do the right thing now. There’ s a man without a cloak, the sun’ s going down, he’ s over-heated, he’ ll catch fever--you’ ve got an extra wrap, give it him. That woman yonder is fainting for a little food, she was so eager to be baptized she forgot her provision basket--you have more than you want, give her some. To the publican, or portitor, who paid so much to the Government for the right of collecting the taxes, and then got as much more as he could by squeezing the people: “ You tyrants, you extortioners, every one knows your trade, and is willing to give you your margin of profit; well, don’ t exact more.” To the soldiers: “ You Jacks-in-office, don’ t levy blackmail by threatening to accuse innocent persons. Don’ t use the prestige of the Roman arms to oppress the civilian in the provinces, and don’ t mutiny and keep striking for higher pay; respect the people whom you ought to protect, and the master whom you profess to serve.” This was pretty smart and practical teaching. The man of the crowd could not go home and say that the man of the desert knew nothing about him. He could go home and “ repent” ! Do what you can The Baptist’ s answer to the question of the people, “ What shall we do?” is exceedingly remarkable if we consider that John’ s mission was to prepare the way for Christ. If this question were put to many amongst ourselves, who profess to lead men to Christ, they would answer--“ You can do nothing. All works of men in your unreconciled state are displeasing to God. You can in no way, by any works of your own, further your own salvation. It is the worst of errors to think so.” But the Baptist, filled with the Holy Ghost from his mother’ s womb, gives an answer implying the very reverse. It is--“ You must do something. You must do what is in your power. You can, at least, give food and raiment to the poor starving creatures around you. Begin with this. If you begin thus with denying your selfishness, God will soon show you a more excellent way--the way of grace in His Son. But till that Son comes and reveals Himself to you, do what your hand finds to do. Do some good to your fellow-creatures. The way for you to obtain mercy is to be merciful.” Now, in saying this, did St. John in the least degree swerve from his mission of preparing the way for Christ by preaching of repentance? No, not for a moment. When the people asked him what they were to do to avoid the wrath to come, it was a plain sign that God had touched their hearts with some degree of repentance, and this repentance was no repentance at all unless it cut at the root of their selfishness, and every unselfish, self-denying act would deepen it. Notice, also, that St. John said this to the masses. Instead of saying to them, “ You have little to give, and so God will excuse you from contributing,” he says to them, “ Whatever you have that you do not absolutely need, give it.” Looked at in this light, the words are very strong, very searching. If they make such a demand on the crowds, what do they make on the few who have abundance of this world’ s goods? Of course such words as these of the Baptist are to be understood in the light of common sense: men are not to give, to enable others to be idle. The best commentary on the passage, according to Jerome, Isaiah 2 Corinthians 8:13-14. (M. F. Sadler, M. A.) Luke 3:13 Exact no more than that which is appointed you-- Oppressions and extortions of tax-gatherers Present-day conditions of Eastern lands painfully illustrate the continuance of some of the most demoralizing customs of the past. When the crop is reared, and while the winnowing is actually going on upon the threshing-floor, the tax-gatherer stands by and appropriates one-tenth as soon as the work is completed. The Mahommedan government adopts the oppressive system of the Romans, sells the tithes to the highest bidder, for a sum of money which he is ready enough to pay in advance. This purchaser, or farmer of the taxes, has then to make his profits on the transaction by forcing the most extravagant payments from the people, and in so doing he is armed with irresponsible authority. The tithe-gatherers go through the land, employing every device for the purpose of overreaching the cultivators of the soil, and obtaining from them more than their dues. The farmers are strictly ordered not to thresh their grain before the tax-gatherers are ready, which is the means of additional extortions. Crops, therefore, sometimes remain heaped upon the threshing-floors for many weeks, the distressed owners not daring to thresh and harvest them, and being compelled both to watch them by day and night, and to devise means to protect them from being wet with showers. (Biblical Things not generally known.) Exacting more than was just In the Edinburgh Weekly Review we find some anecdotes relating to the Rev. William Anderson, D.D., more than fifty years pastor of the John Street United Presbyterian Church, of Glasgow, who died some time ago. He was one of the most eminent and beloved ministers of that city. He was once expounding the 15th Psalm, and had come to the word “ usury” --“ He putteth not out his money to usury.” “ Does that mean,” he asked, “ taking ten per cent or more? Not entirely. It means also the spirit in which the ten per cent is taken. There was once in this Church a poor widow, and she wanted twenty pounds to begin a small shop. Having no friends, she came to me, her minister. And I happened to know a man--not of this Church--who could advance the money to the poor widow. So we went to this man--the widow and I--and the man said he would be happy to help the widow. And he drew out a bill for £20, and the widow signed it, and I signed it too. Then he put the signed paper in his desk and took out the money and gave it to the widow. But the widow, counting it, said: ‘ Sir, there is only £15 here.’ ‘ It is all right,’ said the man; ‘ that is the interest I charge.’ And, as we had no redress, we came away. But the widow prospered. And she brought the £20 to me, and I took it myself to the office of the man who lent it, and I said to him: ‘ Sir, there is the £20 from the widow.’ And he said: ‘ Here is the paper you signed, and if you know any other poor widow I will be happy to help her in the same way.’ I said to him: ‘ You help the widow! Sir, you have robbed this widow, and you will be damned!’ And, my friends, I kept my eye on that man. And before six months were over, God smote him, and he died.” We can still recall, after many years, the creep of soul with which we listened to the closing sentences, and the vivid glimpse we got of a Divine retribution falling suddenly on a bad man. The law of exaction It gives us a fresh sense of the greatness of that reformer who makes this answer to see in it how free he was from the infirmities of his class. It is comparatively easy to see that things are wrong, and that they ought to be changed and righted. It is less easy, but still not uncommon, to have the courage that denounces wrong and that rebukes its perpetrators. It is quite another thing to have the practical insight and the patient determination that can discover a remedy for abuses and point the way to its successful application. There are wrongs that have been denounced and then forgotten, as though their denunciation and their repression were identical. And by such a course the moral sense of a community, of a man, becomes dulled, and at length slumbers and is inert. People see that behind the passionate voice there is wanting the guiding hand; that the scream of indignation somehow exhausts the impulse of reform, and that men who are eager in general terms to tell other men what they ought to do are quite powerless often to tell them how to do it. It explains the confidence with which men followed John the Baptist that he not only rebuked their vices, but that he showed them how to forsake them. “ What shall we do?” “ Do I” Bald John, “ do something for your brother-man, Instead of hoarding, spend. Instead of accumulating, give. It is not much to do, but it is a beginning. Get your shrunken heart enlarged a little by making it sensible of the needs of others. Exact no more than that which is appointed. It is a law for all men, and of manifold application. Let us see this morning, as the preacher in the wilderness turns on it the strong, full light of this personal application, what that is which it has to say to us. At the base of every man’ s consciousness is the sense of his relationship to God. While we are arguing about the existence of such a Being; the deepest convictions of men are more or less candidly owning it as beyond argument. Next to a man’ s relations to his Maker are his relations to his fellows, and here the personal consciousness is far less certain or clear. What each one of us owes to our neighbour--in what spirit we shall maintain our business or social relations with our fellow-men--what is human brother hood, and how men shall practically illustrate it--these are questions concerning which many people are in frequent and serious perplexity. If you are a capitalist, and I am a tradesman, or a farmer, or a labourer, the time will almost inevitably come when in one way or another you will have me in your power. You are stronger than I am, like the Hebrew or Roman publicans. You may do with impunity things that I cannot. Above all, owing to my necessities, it may easily be that you have obtained a knowledge of my affairs, which gives you, in our business dealings, an overwhelming advantage. You can “ freeze me out” after one fashion or another. You can foreclose on me, if I am a little behind in my interest. We read of men in civic place who, entrusted with the care of the stranger and the immigrant, make them welcome to these shores by robbing, and even ruining them. And our cheeks flush at an infamy so shameless and so inhuman. But here is some imposing personage to whom men bow obsequiously on ‘ Change, and who finds a hospitable welcome at the tables of eminent Christian citizens, who only differs from the immigrant runner or a boarding-house striker in the bulk and the boldness of his transactions! In essence these are of precisely the same nature, for they are both trading upon the ignorance of the unsuspecting and wringing their profits out of the poverty of the poor and the weakness of the weak. To all such, and to you and me, just in so far as we are tempted by their success to descend to their methods, the gospel speaks in plain and stern rebuke, “ Exact no more than that which is appointed you.” And no less does it say to that other life which most of us live in homes. Here, as between man and woman, parent and child, master and servant, there is a large field for undue and unwarrantable exactions. How many sweet and gracious relationships, begun in love, and cemented, it may be, by mutual sympathies, have been spoiled at length by a temper which was all the time throwing itself back upon its wifely or husbandly rights, and exacting not only these but more than these with a petulant impatience and peevish and fault-finding querulousness, a harsh imperiousness, which thought only of itself! In every such relation there is one who is stronger and one who is weaker. “ I wish,” said a father to his son’ s teacher, “ that I could at least persuade my son to treat me like a gentleman.” “ Suppose,” replied the other, “ that you try the effect of treating him like a gentleman!” Does it ever occur to some of us that because God has constituted the family as a Divine institution in which the parent is king, it does not follow that our sovereignty is to be an absolute despotism. Few of us are in danger of working seven days in the week. Some of us would be happier if we did a little more work on the remaining six. But this at least we can do--we can protect on Sundays the rights of those who work for us. (Bishop H. C. Potter.) Luke 3:14 And the soldiers likewise The lawfulness of arms The common argument, founded on this for the lawfulness of the military profession, seems unanswerable. It is true that war is contrary to the mild spirit of Christianity, and that the guilt of it must be always chargeable, at least on one side. But there are several professions for which there would be no use, were it not for human depravity and injustice; e.g., there would be no use for magistrates or for civil or criminal law at all, were it not for the lawless and disobedient. So, though it is often a delicate point to settle when war becomes just or necessary, its justice and necessity in some cases are beyond dispute, and therefore the employment of the soldier must, generally speaking, be a lawful one. But, to look no farther than to the authority before us, when soldiers under concern about salvation and the path of duty applied to John for direction, would that intrepid teacher have hesitated a moment, if their profession had been unlawful, to tell them so, and to exhort them to quit it immediately, whatever might have been the consequence? Instead of this, however, he tells them how to conduct themselves in it. (James Foote, M. A.) Encouragement for soldiers Notwithstanding the too general prevalence of impiety and immorality in the military life, there are many honourable exceptions. We read of the believing and humble centurion of Capernaum, who said that he was not worthy that Christ should come under his roof, and that if He would but speak the word his servant should be healed; which led our Lord to declare, that He had not found so great faith, no, not in Israel. We read, too, of Cornelius, a centurion of the Italian band, a devout man, who feared God with all his house, and gave much alms to the people, and prayed to God always, and to whom Peter was sent, more fully to instruct him. There is something peculiarly interesting in almost every case in which genuine religion decidedly influences the mind and conduct of a soldier. These principles must be sincere, and of considerable strength, which enable him to overcome the varied temptations with which he is beset. The trials of his physical and mental courage have been severe, and his opportunities of observation have been extensive. The result of all this is the obvious, and, in the eye of the enlightened Christian, the very adorning and engaging, union of frankness with caution, of complaisance with faithfulness, of meekness with manliness, and of the knowledge of the world, from which, however, he is separated, with the knowledge of God, in which he continues to grow, and under the influence and in the comfort of which he is prepared, if it be the will of God, to live, and equally prepared, if it be the will of God, to die. Let no soldier be so infatuated as to imagine, that his profession will be sustained as a satisfactory excuse for his impiety, when he comes to stand before the judgment-seat of God: for whatever be the difficulties in his way, he is offered Divine aid in proportion to these difficulties, if he apply for it. Let no soldier imagine that, because he is a soldier, irreligion, or profane swearing, or violence, or intemperance, or licentiousness in him, can possibly be passed over, unless he exercise repentance towards God and faith towards the Lord Jesus Christ, unless he be actually reformed and converted. On the other hand, let no soldier who is in earnest about his salvation be discouraged. Let him be prepared to set at nought the profane and unhandsome sneers with which he may expect to meet. Let him study at once to live like a Christian, and to be exemplary in the duties of his profession, and then even those who affect to despise will inwardly respect him, and even in their own estimations appear small before him. Outrages by soldiers The soldiers, so necessary as a class in all such civil constitutions as those of the East, receive advice of which the Zabtiehs, or Turkish soldier-police, of today stand in great need; especially in provinces more remote from the capital. The outrages they commit, in violence done to men and women; and the false accusations which they bring to ruin them, would scarcely be believed here; and indeed they are mostly too shocking to relate. The writer remembers a case which occurred in Cyprus while he was there, where the Zabtieh had been too brutal and fiendish in his behaviour in the house of a newly-married couple. But not daring to resist him openly, the wife had managed to cajole him into drinking heavily, and when drunk the husband stabbed him to the heart. The soldierpoliceman is an object of dread in every country village. His coming can scarcely be looked upon as anything but a calamity. In many cases--always, indeed, in actual service--it would be hard fare for him to be content with his wages, or rations. But the people with whom they are quartered, or whom they come to “ protect,” would doubtless be glad to give peaceably out of their deep poverty enough to support the soldiers, if they might thus be relieved of their violence and false accusations. (Professor Isaac H. Hall.) Disastrous result of a false report I have read that a foolish young English clerk--fond of practical jokes--once said to a friend, “ Have you heard that E &Co., the bankers, have stopped payment?” He merely meant that the banking-house had, as usual, closed up for the night. But he amused himself by seeing how he had startled his friend. He did not stop to explain his real meaning. His friend mentioned the alarming report to another: the rumour spread. Next day there was a “ run upon the bank,” and Messrs. E &Co., were obliged to suspend payment. The silly youth did not mean to burn down the commercial credit of a prosperous house: he only meant to amuse himself by playing with fire. And a kindred mischief to his is perpetrated by every one who retails contemptible gossip, or gives birth to a scurrilous slander. “ An abomination to the Lord is the false witness who speaketh lies, and he that soweth discord among brethren.” (Dr. Cuyler.) Refusing to act unjustly While Athens was governed by the thirty tyrants, Socrates, the philosopher, was summoned to the senate-house, and ordered to go with some other persons, whom they named, to seize one Leon, a man of rank and fortune, whom they determined to put out of the way, that they might enjoy his estate. This commission Socrates positively refused. “ I will not willingly,” said he, “ assist in an unjust act.” Chericles sharply replied, “ Dost thou think, Socrates, to talk in this high tone, and not to suffer?” “ Far from it,” replied he: “ I expect to suffer a thousand ills, but not so great as to do unjustly.” Example of contentment John Wesselus of Groningen, who was one of the most learned men in the fifteenth century, and was, on account of his extensive attainments, called “ the light of the world,” having been once introduced into the presence of the pope, was requested by that pontiff to ask for some favour for himself. “ Then,” said Wesselus, “ I beg you to give me out of the Vatican Library a Greek and a Hebrew Bible.” “ You shall have them,” said Sixtus; “ but, foolish man, why don’ t you ask for a bishopric, or something of that sort?” Said Wesselus, “ Because I do not want such things.” Cato and Marius Curius Care, a pattern of moderation, was very early taught the happy art of contentment, by the following circumstance:--Near his country seat was a cottage, formerly belonging to Marius Curius, who was thrice honoured with a triumph. Care often walked thither, and reflecting on the smallness of the farm and the meanness of the dwelling, used to meditate on the peculiar virtues of the man, who, though he was the most illustrious character in Rome, had subdued the fiercest nations, and driven Pyrrhus out of Italy, cultivated this little spot of ground with his own hands, and, after three triumphs, retired to his own cottage. Here the ambassadors of the Samnites found him in the chimney-corner dressing turnips, and offered him a large present of gold; but he absolutely refused it, remarking, “ A man who can be satisfied with such a supper, has no need of gold; and I think it more glorious to conquer the possessors of it, than to possess it myself.” Full of these thoughts, Cato returned home; and taking a view of his own estates, his servants, and his manner of life, increased his labour, and retrenched his expenses. The secret of contentment An Italian bishop struggled through great difficulties, without repining or betraying the least impatience. One of his intimate friends, who highly admired the virtues which he thought it impossible to imitate, one day asked the prelate if he could communicate the secret of being always easy. “ Yes,” replied the old man; “ I can teach you my secret with great facility; it consists in nothing more than making a right use of my eyes.” His friend begged of him to explain himself. “ Most willingly,” replied the bishop. “ In whatever state I am, I first of all look up to heaven, and remember that my principal business here is to get there; I then look down upon the earth, and call to mind how small a place I shall occupy in it when I die and am buried; I then look abroad into the world, and observe what multitudes there are who are in all respects more unhappy than myself. Thus I learn where true happiness is placed; where all our cares must end; and what little reason I have to repine or to complain.” Two sorts of blessings “ It is a great blessing to possess what one wishes,” said some one to an ancient philosopher; to which the wise man immediately replied, “ It is a greater blessing still, not to desire what one does not possess.” Contentment Those who preach contentment to all, do but teach some how to dwell in misery; unless you will grant content desire, and chide her but for murmuring. Let not man so sleep in content, as to neglect the means of making himself more happy and blessed; nor yet, when the contrary of what he looked for comes, let him murmur at that providence which disposed it to cross his expectation. I like the man who is never content with what he does enjoy; but by a calm and fair course, has a mind still rising to a higher happiness. But I like not him who is so dissatisfied as to repine at anything that does befall him. Let him take the present patiently, joyfully, thankfully; but let him still be soberly in quest of better; and indeed it is impossible to find a life so happy here, as that we shall not find something we would add to it, something we would take away from it. The world itself is not a garden, wherein all the flowers of joy are growing; nor can one man enjoy the whole of those that are there. There is no absolute contentment here below; nor can we in reason think there should be; since whatsoever is created, was created tending to some end, and till it arrives at that end, it cannot be fully at rest. (Owen Felltham.) Content with his position Joe Martin, an Indian chief, residing in New Brunswick, was interrogated by a professional gentleman who held an important office under Government, whether he would accept the commission of a captain among the Indians, which, he observed, it was in his power to procure for him; to which the Indian made the following reply:--“ Now Joe Martin love God, pray to God; now Joe Martin humble; certain not good to make Indian proud; when Indian proud, him forget God: for this reason Joe Martin never must be captain!” He accordingly declined it. Contentment It is not so much the large stars shining on a dark night that makes the sky luminous, but the multitude of little ones, all doing their best in their separate places. There are comparatively few of the large ones--not enough by any means to light up the infinite reaches of spacebetween us and them--and so here is the need of the little ones. Are you pining in your place for the honour of a large star? Be content; your mission is just as high a one as that of the largest orb that shines. Though not equal in size, you may yet be in brightness. Keep steadily to your appointed place, making all the light you can, and you are the largest star in the eyes of the great God who ruleth over all. Luke 3:15 Whether he were the Christ or not The Baptist’ s attitude towards Christ Observe here-- 1. How the extraordinariness of the Baptist’ s person, the earnestness of his preaching, the acceptableness of his doctrine, and the exemplariness of his conversation, drew all persons to an admiration of him; insomuch that they began to think within themselves, whether he were not the Messiah Himself. He plainly tells them he was not, but only His servant, His harbinger, and forerunner. 2. The high opinion which John had of Christ. “ He is mightier than I” ; i.e., a person of greater authority, dignity, and excellency, than myself. 3. The humble and low estimation that the Baptist had of himself. “ The latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to unloose” : a proverbial speech, implying that he was unworthy to do the lowest offices, and meanest services for Christ. How well does humility of mind, a humble estimate and low opinion of themselves, become the messengers and ministers of Christ. 4. John does not only declare the dignity of Christ’ s person, but the excellency of His office. “ He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire.” As if he had said, I only wash the body with water, but Christ cleanses the soul by the operation of His Holy Spirit, which is as fire in its effects, purifying the hearts of His people from sin, and consuming their lusts and corruptions; yet at the same time having fiery indignation, and flaming judgments, to destroy and burn up impenitent sinners like dry stubble. It is observable in Scripture, that Christ is represented by one and the same metaphor of fire, in a way of comfort to His children, and in a way of terror to His enemies; He is fire unto both. He sits in the hearts of His people as a refiner’ s fire; He is amongst His enemies as a consuming fire: a fire for His Church to take comfort in, a fire for His enemies to perish by. 5. The Baptist compares Christ to a husbandman, and the Jewish Church to a barn-floor; the office of a husbandman is to thresh, fan, and winnow His corn, separating it from the chaff, preserving the one and consuming the other. (1) The Church is Christ’ s floor. (2) This floor Christ will purge, and that thoroughly. (3) The Word of Christ is the fan in His hand, by and with which He will thoroughly purge His floor. The Church is compared to a floor, because of the mixture of good and bad in it, saints and sinners, hypocrites and sincere Christians, just as in a threshing-floor there is straw as well as grain, chaff as well as corn, tares as well as wheat, cockle and darnel as well as good seed. But Christ will purge His Church; purge it of its corruptions, without destroying its essence or existence, by the fan of His Holy Word, accompanied by the wing of discipline. (W. Burkitt, M. A.) No true teacher can suffer himself to live upon mistaken impressions The people mused whether John were the Christ or not. An unreal and self-seeking man would have turned this doubtfulness to his own account. This was John’ s temptation. Jesus was tempted in one direction and John in another; but in each case the temptation was direct and real. Every ministry must be tempted, as must every Christian. Have you ever been tempted to regard yourself as some great one? Have you not covered up your poor and withering name with the reputation of strong and brilliant men? Have you not received applause for originalities which you have but quoted from others? John’ s declaration concerning Christ is most remarkable. He says nothing about preaching the gospel or dying for the sins of the world, nor about the great evangelical mission; the declaration relates solely to baptism, and to the discrimination of character. But what a baptism! and what a discrimination! There can be no mistake about any man who has received the baptism of fire; the fire will either illuminate or consume him, so that he will be either a light shining afar, or a scorched and barren soul that has quenched the Spirit. Baptism by water can only be initial or symbolical; baptism by fire is the great testimony of God to the soul’ s purification and acceptance. John points to two distinct uses of fire: Jesus will baptize with fire, and with fire unquenchable will He burn the chaff. This is precisely what the gospel does. It is a savour of life unto life, or of death unto death. (J. Parker, D. D.) Luke 3:16I indeed baptize you with water Significance of John’ s baptism 1. John’ s baptism was a carrying on of the office of the law. Neither repentance avails without grace, nor grace without repentance; for repentance must first condemn sin, that grace may blot it out. So then John, becoming a type of the law, baptized to repentance, Christ to grace. 2. John’ s baptism was higher than Jewish rites, but imperfect. Moses baptized, but with water, and before this, in the cloud and in the sea; but this was typically, as St. Paul also pronounces the sea a type of the water, the cloud a type of the Spirit, the manna a type of the bread of life, the drink a type-of the heavenly draught. John also baptized, and he no longer Judaically, for he baptized not with water only, but to repentance; but not as yet altogether spiritually, for it is not added “ with the Spirit.” The perfection of Christ’ s Baptism, which John’ s lacked, is that it is with the Spirit. 3. John’ s baptism was preparatory and initiatory to the gospel. He baptized not with the Spirit, but with water; because, unable to remit sins, he washed the bodies of the baptized with water, but not their hearts with forgiveness. Why then did he baptize, since by baptism he did not free from sin, except that maintaining the order of his precursorial office, he, who by his birth had gone before His birth, should by baptizing also go before the Baptism of the Lord? And he who by preaching had been made the precursor of Christ, should by baptizing also be His precursor through the image of His Sacrament. (E. B. Pusey, D. D.) I indeed baptize you with water The symbol must be interpreted by the circle of ideas in which John moved, and which he variously expressed. Its suggestive cause is as hard to determine as it is unimportant. The rite may have formal affinities with the lustrations of the Essenes or the ablutions of proselytes; but it has a material significance of its own. John placed it in a relation with confession of sin and repentance, that made it the symbol of certain spiritual realities--evil recognized and repudiated; good perceived and chosen. In this connection its use may have been suggested by such words as, “ Wash you, make you clean,” or, “ In that day there shall be a fountain opened,” &c. (Zechariah 13:1). But his baptism was the symbol of another and no less significant fact; the baptized were not simply the penitent, but the expectant, men consecrated to a great hope. And so John was but true to the best genius of his people when he made his baptism represent, not simply an individual change, but a social fact--entrance into a society prepared for the kingdom which was at hand. The “ baptism unto repentance “ was also a baptism unto hope: as the first, it was the sign of a renounced past; as the second, it was the symbol of a new future. The Baptist’ s idea of this new future was embodied in the phrase, “ the kingdom of heaven.” He could indifferently say, “ The kingdom of heaven is at hand,” and, “ After me cometh One mightier than I.” He loved indeed to contrast his own meanness and the King’ s greatness. He was not worthy to bear His sandals, to loose His shoe’ s latchet. He was but the friend of the Bridegroom; the Bridegroom was to come. He only baptized with water, the mighty One who was coming would “ baptize with the Holy Ghost and with fire.” (A. M. Fairbairn, D. D.) Humility the test of a great man I believe the first test of a truly great man is his humility. I do not mean by humility doubt of his own power, or hesitation of speaking his opinions; but a right understanding of the relation between what he can do and say, and the rest of the world’ s sayings and doings. All great men act only know their business, but usually know that they know it; and are not only right in their main opinions, but they usually know that they are right in them, only they do not think much of themselves on that account. Arnolfo knows he can build a good dome at Florence; Albert Durer writes calmly to one who has found fault with his work, “ It cannot be better done” ; Sir Isaac Newton knows that he has worked out a problem or two that would have puzzled anybody else; only they do not expect their fellow-men, therefore, to fall down and worship them. They have a curious under-sense of powerlessness, feeling that the greatness is not in them, but through them; that they could not do or be anything else than God made them--and they see something Divine and God-made in every other man they meet, and are endlessly, foolishly, incredibly merciful. (John Ruskin.) Humility beautifies A just and reasonable modesty does not only recommend eloquence, but sets off every great talent which a man can be possessed of. It heightens all the virtues which it accompanies. Like the shades in paintings it raises and rounds every figure, and makes the colours more beautiful, though not so glaring as they would be without. (Addison.) Adult and infant baptism A river of baptism ought to be a river of death. You are baptized in the Jordan. How? Need we then care how? As antiquarians we would like to know how John the baptizer dealt with those who came to him: we would like to know whether they were dipped in the stream, or whether water was poured upon them from the stream. But now, ask your own conscientious affections whether the answer to this question, spiritually, is worth one sixpence to us, or, at any rate, of special importance? It is not. As antiquarians, it is very interesting to us, and we feel sure that if we knew the outward literal truth, we should get some suggestion from it. But we know at least this: the people that John baptized, and that disciples of Jesus baptized, were adults. That is clear enough. Well, then, if at that time adults were baptized, surely circumstances may occur again in which any rational person will allow that adults may again be baptized. The truth is, that it was not man that invented infant-baptism, but through the Lord God’ s providence at, as we think, the suggestion of His Spirit, that it arose. When people had been baptized, and children were born to them, that they never would let grow up into the heathen state in which they themselves had been when they were baptized, how natural that they should, by a water-rite, adapted from the rite with which they were familiar, hallow these children to the Lord God! What are we baptized for, by the Holy Spirit, into a new life, but that our old life may perish? “ I wish my old life,” a man may say,” to be taken from me by the Jordan and carried down to the Dead Sea as soon as possible. Oh, let me be utterly rid of it; let my God save me by the death of the old man and the resurrection of the new.” All that is outward is of value only for its significance and its suggestiveness. (T. T. Lynch.) One mightier than I cometh Expectation And what is the man who, having no expectations, is always casting back his thoughts into a retrospect? Almost universally a melancholy man. And what is the man who sees nothing but the present? A drudge in his work, and a sensualist in his pleasures. But what is the man who throws himself into that which is beyond him? At least, an energetic man, and, if he be a Christian, a happy one. Have you never observed that every one’ s character is determined by what he is living up to? Why is the Mahommedan an idle and self-indulgent man? Because he lives up to a corporeal, and indolent, and sensuous heaven. Why is the Brahmin a man of apathy? Because, after all his transmigrations, he has nothing to expect--according to his creed--but annihilation, absolute annihilation. Whydoes the believer grow holy and loving, but because he is always realizing in his mind the heaven of holiness and love to which he is going? Certainly, expectation is a duty. But God has done with this faculty of expectation, what He has done with all the natural powers and habits of the human mind--He has sanctified it, and elevated it. And this is the way God has done it--He has thrown into it first, truth, then affection, and then great delight,so He has made it hope. What is it? Expectation with desire. It is quite certain that God intended that man should be ruled by hope. “ The seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent’ s head.” Observe, at once, the mind was sent off into the future for its comfort. It was the same with Abraham--he had nothing, he was to have everything. The Jews lived by their prophecies. Nor less, but rather more, it is the key of the New Testament. What the Messiah of Bethlehem was under the former dispensation, Christ made the Holy Ghost to His disciples. Wait, wait till you receive the promises. And now what is the aim, the consolation, the theme, the life of the whole Church, but the coming back of her dear Lord? But what I wish you to notice in this long line of expectation is, that the next thing in the succession is always greater and better than that which preceded it. David’ s reign was one appointed in the prospective; but David’ s reign was only the shadow of the higher empire of Christ. Zion’ s power and beauty were predicted; but chiefly as the type of the Church of the gospel. The gospel itself was infinitely greater than all its foreshowing; Jesus was a greater prophet than Moses. And we have Christ’ s own warrant to say that the Holy Ghost was a larger gift to the Church than even His own personal presence--more pervasive, more effective. And then higher and higher still, in ranges where the mind loses itself in floods of glory, the swelling tide rolls on and never stops. If you could read it so, brethren, whenever anything happy comes to you--an answered prayer, a gift of God--you may always hear it--saying, “ I am only a pledge of something else; there is something better than I am behind.” “ One mightier than I cometh.” Why it should have pleased God to place everything in such a scale of ever-ascending grandeur and goodness, we can only faintly glimpse. But, assuredly, it is always exalting Him in His unapproachable height, while it is always humbling us in our sense of ignorance and preparation. (J. Vaughan, M. A.) The latchet of whose shoes Loosing the shoe-latchet I. NO FORM OF HOLY SERVICE IS TO BE LIGHTLY SET BY. 1. Little works for Christ, little shoe-bearings and latchet-loosings, often have more of the child’ s spirit in them than greater works. Outside, in the streets, a man’ s companion will do him a kindness, and the action performed is friendly; but for filial acts you must look inside the house. There the child does not lend money to its father, or negotiate business, yet in his little acts there is more sonship. Who is it that comes to meet father when the day is over? and what is the action which often indicates childhood’ s love? See the little child come tottering forward with father’ s slippers, and run away with his boots as he puts them off. The service is little, but it is loving and filial, and has more of filial affection in it than the servants bringing in the meal, or preparing the bed, or any other more essential service. It gives the little one great pleasure, and expresses his love. So also in little acts for Jesus. 2. In little acts for Christ it is always to be remembered that the little things are as necessary to be done as the greater acts. If Christ’ s feet be not washed, if His sandals be not unloosed, He may suffer and His feet may be lamed, so that a journey may be shortened, and many villages may miss the blessing of His presence. So with other minor things. We remember the old story of the losing of the battle through the missing of a single nail in a horse-shoe, and peradventure up to this moment the Church may have lost her battle for Christ, because some minor work which ought to have been done for Jesus has been neglected. Many a cart comes to grief through inattention to the linch-pin. A very small matter turns an arrow aside from the target. Human destiny often turns upon a hinge so small as to be invisible. Never say within yourself, “ This is trivial.” Nothing is trivial for the Lord. Never say, “ But this surely might be omitted without much loss.” How knowest thou? If it be thy duty, He who allotted thee thy task knew what He did. Do not thou in any measure neglect any portion of His orders, for in all His commands there is consummate wisdom, and on thy part it will be wisdom to obey them, even to the jots and tittles. 3. Little things for Christ are often the best tests of the truth of our religion. Obedience in little things has much to do with the character of a servant. In small things lie the crucibles and the touchstones. The Goldsmiths’ Hall mark is a small affair, but you know true silver by 2:4. Mark also with regard to little works, that very often there is about them a degree of personal fellowship with Christ which is not seen in greater work. The smallest act of service done for Christ has an importance all its own. 5. God accepts our worship in little things. He cares no less for the turtledove offering than for the sacrifice of bullocks and rams. II. OUR OWN . We are sure to feel this when we come practically into contact with any real Christian service. Let a man begin earnestly to work for the Lord Jesus, and he will soon find out that he is unworthy of the meanest place in the employ of one so gracious. 1. When we recollect what we used to be. 2. When we recollect what we are. 3. Have we not to confess, in looking upon what we have done for Christ, that we have far too much eye to self in our conduct? 4. Because, when we have gone to the lowest, Jesus always goes lower down than we have done. III. THIS OUGHT TO , NOT US. Since I do so badly when I do my best, I will always do my utmost. Since it comes to so little when the most is done, I will at least do the most. (C. H. Spurgeon.) Latchet The sandals were of hard leather, and were fastened on with straps; the leather of which was doubtless then, as now, the skin of the camel or hyena. (E. Stapfer, D. D.) He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire The promise of a baptism of fire When John the Baptist was going round Judaea, shaking the hearts of the people with a call to repent, they said, “ Surely this must be the Messiah for whom we have waited so long.” “ No,” said the strong-spoken man, “ I am not; the Christ but One mightier than I cometh; He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire.” This last expression might have conveyed some idea of material burning to any people but Jews; but in their minds it would awaken other thoughts. It would recall the scene when their father Abraham asked Him who promised that he should inherit the land, “ Lord, whereby shall I know that I shall inherit it?” The answer came thus: he was standing under the open sky at night, watching by chosen sacrifices, when, “ Behold a smoking furnace,” &c. (Genesis 15:17). It would recall the fire which Moses saw in the bush; the fire which came in the day of Israel’ s deliverance, as a light on their way; the fire which descended on the Tabernacle; which shone in the Shekinah; which touched the lips of Isaiah; which flamed in the visions of Ezekiel; and which was again promised to Zion, not only in her public, but in her family, shrines, when “ the Lord will create upon every dwelling-place of Mount Zion, and upon all her assemblies, a cloud and smoke by day, and the shining of a flaming fire by night.” In the promise of a baptism of fire they would at once recognize the approach of new manifestations of the power and presence of God; for that was ever the purport of this appearance in “ the days of the right hand of the Most High.” (W. Arthur, M. A.) The baptism of the Spirit I. NATURE OF THE BAPTISM . John’ s baptism was introductory and transitional; Christ’ s was to be spiritual, quickening, and searching. Apparent mixture of metaphors. “ Baptism means cleansing, and fire means warmth. How can warmth cleanse? No heart is pure that is not passionate, no virtue safe that is not enthusiastic. And such an enthusiastic virtue (and much more) Christ came to introduce.” The baptism of the Holy Ghost and of fire comes upon all--either for sanctification or destruction, according to the way in which it is received. II. THE NEED OF SUCH A BAPTISM. 1. It was needed in the time of John. What was wanted was a moral power that should at once (1) Enlighten; (2) Convince; (3) Convert; (4) Inspire with well-founded hope. 2. Such a baptism is needed now. (1) In the Church; (2) In the world. III. THE ONLY SOURCE WHENCE SUCH A BAPTISM COULD COME. 1. From heaven. 2. Through Christ. IV. THE BAPTISM . On the day of Pentecost there was the baptism of the Holy Ghost. The world received a new life. There was also the baptism of fire in the destruction of Jerusalem, and the overthrow of Rome. Every genuine revival a baptism of the Holy Ghost. Every time of sore national distress or humiliation a baptism of fire. V. A . Have we been baptized by the Spirit? Such a baptism is-- 1. Needful. 2. Possible. Test: Are we bringing forth the fruits of the Spirit? Galatians 5:22-23.) VI. A DUTY. To pray for the baptism of the Spirit, on ourselves, on the whole Church of God, and on the world. VII. A WORD OF WARNING. There will be a baptism of fire for individuals and nations that despise the warnings of the Spirit. (E. W. Wilson.) The Spirit’ s Baptism Baptism of the Spirit. (1) Of truth, to enlighten us; (2) of power, to renew; (3) of grace, to comfort; (4) of love, to unite. (W. H. Van Doren, D. D.) Inward fire For us to be baptized with the Holy Ghost is to be baptized with fire. The existence within us of false tendency and proclivity makes it a flame. Once let it fall on us, and straightway there is turmoil; straightway some hot work begins. Here is a man wholly at ease and quiet in a pleasant paradise--though it be a fool’ s paradise of self-content and free self-gratification; but a breath from on high stirs in him at last, a breath of higher impulse and inspiration; and now a struggle sets in, in which the soul sways to and fro, and burnings of remorse and repentance are suffered, with daily self-reprovings and self-crucifixions. The man is no longer at peace with himself, but in a great heat of controversy; no longer a tranquil universe, but a troubled conjunction of antagonisms. His life becomes, as the Scripture represents it, “ a battle,” “ a warfare.” A fire of discontent is kindled within him; there rages in him the flame of a conflict between the Spirit and the flesh. When Christ began of old to baptize with the Holy Ghost, it was a baptism of fire. And even so is it still. The stirring within man of the better self, of the Spirit from above, is invariably more or less with “ confused noise and garments rolled in blood.” Our God, when He touches us, is a “ consuming fire.” Not out of Christ, as we have it explained sometimes, but in Christ; for from the God in Christ proceeds the Spirit; and where the Spirit breathes in human breasts there is burning. (S. A. Tipple.) Fire purifies everything Louis XIV. had granted a pardon to a nobleman who had committed some very great crime. M. Voisin, the Chancellor, ran to him in his closet, and exclaimed, “ Sire, you cannot pardon a person in the situation of M--.” “ I have promised him,” replied” the King, who was ever impatient of contradiction; “ go and fetch the great seal.” “ But, sire--.” “ Pray, sir, do as I order you.” The Chancellor returns with the seals; Louis applies them himself to the instrument containing the pardon, and gives them again to the Chancellor. “ They are polluted now, sire,” exclaims the intrepid and excellent magistrate, pushing them from him on the table; “ I cannot take them again.” “ What an impracticable man!” cries the monarch, and throws the pardon into the fire. “ I will now, sire, take them again,” said the Chancellor; “ the fire, you know, purifies everything.” (Baxendale’ s Anecdotes.) John’ s baptism inferior to Christ’ s The inferiority of the baptism of John to Christian baptism is declared by the holy Baptist himself. This difference (water … Holy Ghost) he alleges as the proof of his own inferiority to his Lord, and as resulting from it. This difference our Lord also inculcated (Acts 1:11), when He instituted His own baptism. The baptism of John was preparatory, the Baptism of Christ perfective; the baptism of John invited to repentance, the Baptism of Christ gave grace upon repentance; the baptism of John stood on the confines of the promised land, was allowed to see it, led men to the borders of it, guided them to it, but itself brought them not into it; higher than the law, as he whose baptism it was, was greater than any born of the sons of men, yet less also than the least in the kingdom of heaven; greater than the baptisms of the law, as being nearer to the Redeemer, but yet restrained within the precursorial office, still a shadow of the good things to come, not the reality itself, though brought so near to the Sun of Righteousness as all but to be kindled with His beams, as all but to convey that which could only be conveyed by Him in whom alone, as being God as well as man, we could be reborn as sons of God; who alone shed His precious blood for the sins of the whole world, and in baptism washes and cleanser His Church with it. (E. B.Pusey, D. D.) Luke 3:17 Whose fan is in His hand--Christ’ s floor and fan I. THE -FLOOR MAY DE AS THE CHURCH, INTO WHICH ALL ARE ; or, even in a wider sense still, it may include all those who, though they have made no public profession of faith in Christ, yet secretly hold some theory of Christianity which they deem sufficient for themselves; or, even a step further, it may and does include those who respect Christ and build their own schemes of salvation. Indeed it includes every man who says, “ By this creed, or by this philosophy, or by this life, I will abide the issue of eternity.” Thus we see how wide this threshing-floor is, and that in fact, while it is true that Christ came not to condemn the world, but to save it, the very salvation that He brings and so freely offers to all condemns and blows away the rejected as chaff. II. THE FAN IN HIS HAND MAY SUGGEST TO US THE BY WHICH HE PURGES HIS FLOOR, THE CHAFF FROM THE WHEAT. Christ had no sooner come and entered upon His public ministry than He began to “ purge His floor.” 1. His Word acts as a fan. Many of the multitudes that followed Jesus took offence at His words, as witness John 5:3-16. Many who approach the floor of Christ are swept away before they fairly come by His words; one cannot bear salvation by grace, another is blown away by the new birth, another by this and by that doctrine. 2. But there are others who are not blown away by the Word. When you hear them talk you wonder at their severe and unflinching orthodoxy. For such Christ has another fan. It is one that tests the character: the new birth. Many a chaffy professor of orthodoxy is blown away by this; for even if they do not recognize it themselves, others see how surely they are separated. 3. Still this is brought to another trial. Many say “ Oh, yes; I know even the day and the hour of my regeneration.” Well! if it is so, the fruits of your new birth will be seen in a new life. Salvation means separation from sin. The demand for a holy life oftentimes proves too much for the chaffy professor who can relate a glowing experience, and he is swept from the floor and heaped up with the rest of the chaff. 4. Again, the Master comes with the fan of affliction, and tries His wheat, as He did Job. There is much meaning in the words, “ He that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved.” III. THUS IT IS THAT THIS PURGING PROCESS IS GOING ON ALL THE TIME, AND WE FIND THE CHAFF BLOWN AWAY. HOW many drop out of our churches, and go we know not where I But still much chaff remains among the wheat, and doubtless will remain until He come again, and then the floor will be thoroughly purged; the hail of that day will sweep away every refuge of lies, every hypocrite’ s cloak will be rent off, every self-deceived one will be undeceived, and the sheep shall be separated from the goats, the chaff from the wheat. “ The wheat will He gather into His garner,” &c. Who shall abide the day of His coming? (G. F. Pentecost, D. D.) Judaism and Christianity What were the characteristics of the revolution which Christianity wrought in the world? I. IT WAS . It proclaimed war against the principles opposed to it. There are certain times in history when a great shock is necessary, and those are the greatest men who can see this and boldly risk the danger. There are times when it is too late to expect that the world can be saved by the instillation of good, times when the chaff is so multitudinous and so rotten that the wheat is in a double danger, the danger of being lost, the danger of being corrupted. The only thing then is to burn up the chaff at once with a fire which will not touch the wheat. Christ saw that the time had come, that the whole world of Jews and heathens was so choked up with chaff that a slow process would be ruin. He seized the moment, He accepted its dangers, and He sent forth ideas which flew along like flame, consuming, destroying, but also assimilating. II. But if Christianity was destructive as a revolution IT was ALSO . If Christ sent forth ideas which consumed the chaff, He sent them forth also to gather the wheat into the garner. No noble feeling, or true thought, either in Judaism, or heathenism, perished. They were taken up and woven into the new fabric, e.g., Roman law, culture, architecture--religion. III. Its third element was A POWER. Neither Greek science nor Roman culture had power to spread beyond themselves. It was of the first importance that some civilizing influence should arise which should permit of free development--which should save the world from the dilemma of being made altogether in the Roman pattern, or of remaining in barbarism. This was the work of Christianity, and it was done by its ministers, in the first place, not as apostles of culture, but as persons who spoke to the common wants of the spirit of man. The missionary spirit was the product of love to Christ. The civilization of the barbarians was the product of the missionary spirit. We also have our revolutions. That which is true about the great movements of the world is not without its personal interest to us, nor without its analogies in our life. The inner revolutions also, if it is towards God, is (1) destructive; (2) preservative; (3) civilizing, or sanctifying to the whole man. (Stopford A. Brooke, M. A.) Christ’ s winnowing fan Christ did not go out of His way to choose His followers; the call itself was the fan He bore in His hand. That call imposed upon men the necessity of making a great resolution, of sacrificing a good deal. On the other hand, what did it offer? What equivalent could be expected by those who made the sacrifice? The call, which had acted as a test upon some directly by requiring from them an effort which they were not prepared to make, would winnow away others more gradually as soon as it was understood to offer no prospects which could tempt a worldly mind. In this way, without excluding any, Christ suffered the unworthy to exclude themselves. He kept them aloof by offering them nothing which they could find attractive. And all those who found Christ’ s call attractive were such as were worthy to receive it. Such a winnowing of men as He accomplished is not unique in its kind. Every high-minded leader who gathers followers round him for any great purpose, when he calls to selfsacrifice and has no worldly rewards to offer, does something similar. And, therefore, in tracing the history of many other movements which have agitated great numbers, we are often reminded of those parables of Christ that begin, “ The kingdom of heaven is like ” The quality which carries a man through the ordeal is faith. Such then, is the new test, and it will be found the only one which could answer Christ’ s purpose. Every other good quality which we may wish to make the test of a man implies either too little or too much. (Ecce Homo.) The autumn-fire A hidden fire burns perpetually upon the hearth of the world. Scientific men call it by the hard name of eremacausis, which means quiet, or slow burning. We see its effects in the fading of leaves, in the rusting of iron, and in the mantling of the rosy blush upon the cheek of youth. Every tree is a burning bush. In autumn this great conflagration becomes especially manifest. Every blade of grass in the fields and every leaf in the woodlands is cast into the great oven of nature; and the bright colours of their fading are literally the flames of their consuming. By this autumn-fire God every year purges the floor of nature. All effete substances that have served their purpose in the old form are burnt up, and only what has the promise of life and usefulness passes scathless through the ordeal. The straw and the chaff are consumed, and the wheat remains. As God thus purges His floor in nature, so He does in grace. We have a striking example of the effect of this autumn-fire in the removal of the effete things of the Levitical institution. The Mosaic dispensation had become dead ripe. Jesus came in the autumn of the world, when all things had grown ripe and old, and all growth had closed. He came to gather in the harvest of all previous dispensations. He came to cast fire upon the earth, to burn up the chaff of withered and effete institutions. His was a fiery baptism, which thoroughly purged His floor--which consumed the stubble and the withered foliage of the old growth that had served its purpose in the religious culture of a former age, and prepared them for being worked up into the new developments of the springtime of grace. The baptism of John was a process at purification; but it was only a baptism of water. Water can only remove superficial impurities; it cannot take away what is ingrained; it can cleanse surface and accidental or temporary stains, but it cannot change the nature of anything. And so the baptism of John could produce ceremonial purity, but it could not cleanse the sinful heart, or transform the erring and polluted mind. The baptism of Jesus, on the other hand, was a baptism of fire, and fire penetrates every substance submitted to its action, and changes it into its own nature. The fire of life in nature burns up all its decay and prepares it for new growth. And so in the fulness of time Jesus passed like an autumn fire over all the dead products of human attainment, thoroughly purging His floor. He caused, by the same fire of grace, to grow in spring freshness and beauty that fruit which is unto holiness, and whose end is everlasting life. But not once only in the end of the world did Jesus come to purge His floor with this sacred fire. He is coming continually, and His fire of purification is unquenchable. In each of these partial and temporary consumings He anticipates and foreshadows what He will do in the great and final judgment. In each human heart this sacred autumn fire of purification is burning as a vestal flame. To each human being the apostolic precept is uttered, “ Quench not the Spirit,” put not out the heavenly fire. (H. Macmillan, D. D.) Christ’ s fan A fan is a certain instrument which the husbandman uses to cleanse, or purge his corn from the chaff, evil seeds, and all filth whatsoever. Now John Baptist alludes to such an instrument as this. 1. By Christ’ s fan is meant His Word, His holy gospel, especially the doctrine thereof; it is by this He cleanses and purges His floor. “ Now you are clean through the word I have spoken unto you.” 2. The dispensation of God’ s providence: for this was also a fan in Christ’ s hand, by which He fanned away those unbelieving Jews, and so purged His floor; I mean, the time was now come that their national, legal, and external church-state must be pulled down and dissolved, the dispensation was changed, the priesthood changed, and right of Church membership changed. So that unless they receive Christ, believe in Christ, and are found gracious persons, fit wheat for Christ’ s spiritual garner or gospel Church (which is built up of lively stones), as chaff the gospel dispensation like a fan purges them out. 3. Christ hath also another fan in His hand, viz., the fan of Church discipline. And many persons falling into sin, are purged like chaff out of His floor thereby. (1) Sometimes some evil and corrupt persons, who get among God’ s people (or into His Church) and pass awhile for wheat, i.e., for gracious persons, yet in time God suffers them to fall into one temptation or another, by which means they are fanned away. The holy Jesus by His wise providence, making a discovery of them, and their evil tempers and dispositions. (2) Others, whom Christ would have purged out of His Church, may be suffered to such in some evil, corrupt, and dangerous principle, or errors in fundamentals, like that of “ Hymeneus and Alexander” (1 Timothy 1:20); whose errors being discovered are purged out. (3) Also many fall into notorious and scandalous sins, and are purged out by this fan. Also (4) some who are chaff, or unsound Christians, may be suffered to take up undue offences against the Church, or Churches to whom they do belong, and by giving way to temptation, they may become unreconcilable, magnifying their own wisdom and self-conceitedness, so by a secret hand of God be discovered and purged out. 4. Jesus Christ hath also another fan in His hand to purge His floor, or cleanse His wheat from the chaff, filth, and defilement of sin, namely the Holy Spirit; and by this means He cleanses and purifies, in a gracious manner, the souls of His own people: “ Such were some of you; but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God” (1 Corinthians 6:11). What filthy creatures wore those Corinthians, before the Lord Jesus by His Spirit had purged and sanctified them. Faith, of the operation of God, is a most excellent grace; it is by faith in the blood of Christ that we come to be purged from the guilt of sin; faith applying His merits and righteousness unto the soul in justification; and such is the nature thereof, that it makes holy the hearts and lives of all such persons in whom it is by the Spirit wrought or infused in sanctification; “ And hath put no difference between them and us, purifying their hearts by faith” (Acts 15:9). Yea, it cleanseth them “ from all filthiness of flesh and spirit, that they may perfect holiness in the fear of God” (2 Corinthians 7:1). But let me tell you that the Spirit and grace of Christ, in this respect, is as a fan, and rather to cleanse the saints, by purging out the chaff of corruption, which naturally is in their hearts and lives, than to purge hypocrites and false professors out of the Church, and to that I principally refer here. 5. Moreover, Christ hath the fan of persecution, or the sufferings of the cross, and all other afflictions which He brings upon His people, which He uses to purge and purify their souls, and His Churches too. And from hence afflictions are compared to a refiner’ s fire: “ He shall sit as a refiner’ s fire, and purifier of silver.” He, that is, the Messiah, i.e., our Lord Jesus Christ; this His work, viz., to purge His people, who in this place are compared to silver and gold, that is refined; as in my text they are likened unto wheat. In this He is compared to a refiner, and hath His furnace; in the other to a husbandman, and so hath His fan. Both these texts allude to the same thing, and doing the same work, namely, to sever and separate the clean from the unclean, the gold from the dross, the chaff from the wheat. (Benjamin Keach.) The fan of separation Scripture abounds with comparisons drawn from the various occupations of the husbandman, e.g., threshing and winnowing Isaiah 21:10; Jeremiah 15:7). The visible Church may be considered as Christ’ s floor here On this floor, or in the visible Church, there is a mixture of wheat and chaff--of really believing and holy people, with hypocrites and ungodly persons. A separation, however, will be made between them. Christ is omniscient to discriminate character; and omnipotent to put His will into execution. He distinguishes and separates characters-- (1) by the doctrines of His Word; (2) by the dispensations of His providence; (3) by the convictions of His Spirit. By these means, a considerable distinction and discovery of character is made even now, and it will be completed at the Judgment. (James Foote, M. A.) Only Christ can use the fan How well it fits Him, and He it!Could Satan’ s clutches snatch the fan, what work would he make! He would winnow in a tempest, yea, in a whirlwind, and blow the best away. Had man the fan in his hand, especially in distracted times, out goes for chaff all opposite to the opinions of his party. But the fan is in so good a hand it cannot be mended. Only His hand who knows hearts is proper for that employment. (Thomas Fuller.) The design of the gospel is to separate the good from the bad I. ‘ Tis supposed in the text, that good and evil are really different in kind, absolutely and intrinsically, essentially and in the nature of things. This appears in the similitude under which good and bad men are here represented, of wheat and chaff; which are not mere external arbitrary denominations, but things in their whole nature and kind really and essentially different. The whole foundation of religion, and of God’ s governing the world at all, as a moral governor, relies entirely upon this principle--that every man is, as to his moral character, what his own behaviour and practice makes him, really and intrinsically, and by as certain and determinate a distinction; as wheat and chaff are, by their real and proper natures, different from each other. II. A distinct declaration, that the great design of God, as in every dispensation of religion in general, so in the gospel more particularly, is to separate the evil from the good by proper trials; and that this design will be effectually accomplished by Christ--in the present life partly, and to certain degrees; in the future life perfectly, totally, and finally. By temptations, therefore, of all kinds, is the sincerity of men’ s virtue distinguished in the present life. III. From hence (I say) arises one obvious and general inference, of great extent and of the highest importance-that whatever doctrine in religion has any tendency to persuade men, or make them imagine that they can be in any degree the better for their profession of the gospel of Christ, any otherwise than as their knowledge of the gospel of Christ makes them to be better and more virtuous men: that is, in the language of my text, whatever tends to persuade men that chaff may pass for wheat, while it continues to be only chaff, is a direct mockery of God, and deceit upon themselves. “ Little children,” says the apostle, “ let no man deceive you: he that doeth righteousness is righteous.” (S. Clarke, D. D.) Luke 3:18; Luke 3:20 He shut up John in prison Herod Antipas The view here given of the character, conduct, and history of Herod Antipas is full of matter for awful reflection and serious admonition. 1. The mysteriousness of the ways of Providence. That a man so worthless should be permitted to cut short the labours and the life of so holy and useful a character, and that, too, in order to gratify the revenge of an abandoned adulteress, and to reward the vain exhibition of a giddy damsel, must, no doubt, at first appear strange. Yet the anger of God overtook: he persecutors before they left this world; and as for the holy sufferer, his work was done; and it was easy for his Lord to recompense to him his temporal sorrows a hundredfold in the world of glory. 2. The danger of power without grace. It is common to wish for power, and to envy those in whose hands it is; but when it is held without principle, it is fraught with peril, not only to those over whom it is exercised, but to those by whom it is possessed. They are generally borne away by the temptations which it presents to the gratification of caprice, luxury, covetousness, oppression, revenge, and every evil passion; and however prosperous their career may seem for a season, their end is generally destruction, and their memory is abhorred. 3. What is sin in the meanest is also sin in the highest. The judgment of God is impartial, and in every case He will render to each according to his deeds. 4. An awful commentary on human depravity. 5. The dreadful consequences which often result from the violation of the seventh commandment, and from intemperance. 6. We should learn to take reproof in good part. Well had it been for Herod if he had submitted to John’ s rebuke and acted on it. 7. Sin, when pointed out, must be renounced. This man reverenced John, and yet lived and died in sin. Let us not do as he did. (James Foote, M. A.) John’ s rebuke of Herod The life of John the Baptist divides itself into three distinct periods. Of the first, we are told that he was in the deserts until his showing unto Israel. This period lasted thirty years. The second is a shorter one. It comprises the few months of his public ministry. In the third we are to consider him as the tenant of a compelled solitude, in the dungeon of a capricious tyrant. A rare man, one of God’ s heroic ones, a true conqueror; one whose life and motives it is hard to understand without feeling warmly and enthusiastically about them. One of the very highest characters, rightly understood, of all the Bible. In the verse which is to serve us for our guidance on this subject there are two branches which will afford us fruit of contemplation. I. THE OF . “ Herod being reproved by John for Herodias.” There are three things we remark in this truthfulness of John. 1. Its straightforwardness. 2. Its unconsciousness. 3. Its unselfishness. II. THE FAILURE OF LIFE. “ Shut up John in prison.” The first thought which suggests itself is that a magnificent career is cut short too soon. At the very outset of ripe and experienced manhood the whole thing ends in failure. John’ s day of active usefulness is over. The crowds that listened to his voice, we hear of them no more. Herod heard John gladly, did much good by reason of his influence. What was all that worth? The prophet comes to himself in a dungeon, and wakes to the conviction, that his influence had told much in the way of commanding attention, and even winning reverence, but very little in the way of gaining souls-the bitterest, the most crushing discovery in the whole circle of ministerial experience. All this was seeming failure. And this, brethren, is the picture of almost all human life. In the isolation of John’ s dying hour there appears failure again. The martyr of truth dies privately in Herod’ s dungeon. We have no record of his last words. There were no crowds to look on. We cannot describe how he received his sentence. Was he calm? Was he agitated? Did he bless his murderer? Did he give utterance to any deep reflections on human life? All that is shrouded in silence. He bowed his head, and the sharp stroke fell flashing down. We know that, we know no more--apparently a noble life abortive. And now-- III. Let us ask the question--WAS ALL THIS INDEED FAILURE? NO, it was sublimest victory. John’ s work was no failure. He left behind him no sect to which he had given his name, but his disciples passed into the service of Christ, and were absorbed in the Christian Church. Words from John had made impressions, and men forgot in after years where the impressions first came from, but the day of judgment will not forget. John laid the foundations of a temple, and others built upon it. He laid it in struggle, in martyrdom. It was covered up like the rough masonry below ground, but when we look round on the vast Christian Church, we are looking at the superstructure of John’ s toil. There is a lesson for us all in that, if we will learn it. Work, true work, done honestly and manfully for Christ, never can be a failure. We are treading upon a bridge of martyrs. The suffering was theirs--the victory is ours. IV. In conclusion, we make three remarks. 1. Let young and ardent minds, under the first impressions of religion, beware how they pledge themselves by any open profession to more than they can perform. 2. We get from this subject the doctrine of a resurrection. John’ s life was hardness, his end was agony. Be content to feel that this world is not your home. Homeless upon earth; try more and more to make your home in heaven, above with Christ. 3. Devotedness to Christ is our only blessedness. (F. W. Robertson, M. A.) John Baptist’ s imprisonment Josephus gives some interesting particulars respecting the imprisonment and murder of the Baptist, which are not supplied in the gospel history. Herod Antipas, son of Herod the Great, was at that time tetrarch of Galilee and Peraea, and had married the daughter of Aretas, an Arabian king, whose territories abutted on his own. When he was at Rome, however, he stayed at the house of his half-brother Philip, whose wife Herodias he conceived a passion for. Antipas made known his passion, and Herodias readily enough consented to leave Philip and go with him. The daughter of Aretas was divorced, and Herodias duly installed in her place. John the Baptist had the courage to denounce this infamous marriage; and by and by Herod Antipas, under pretence that he feared John’ s popularity with the multitude might lead to disturbances, apprehended and imprisoned him. John was sent to Machaerus, or M’ Khaur, on the eastern side of the Dead Sea, where Herod had both a city and fortress. The site and ruins of Machaerus were identified by Canon Tristram in his visit to the Land of Moab in 1872. It was from this spot, then, that John sent two of his disciples to Christ to ask, “ Art Thou He that should come?” And it was here that Salome, the daughter of Herodias, danced before Antipas, and won for her infamous mother the head of John the Baptist. (Biblical Things Not Generally Known.) John like Elijah As the first Elijah reproved King Ahab for the murder of Naboth and the seizure of his vineyard, so the second Elijah rebuked King Herod for his lust. (W. Bull.) Reproving a king Dr. Hickington, chaplain to Charles II., used to preach at the king’ s vices. This the king took to himself; and so, one day, he said, “ Doctor, you and I ought to be better friends; give up being so sharp on me, and see if I don’ t mend on your hand.” “ Well, well,” quoth the doctor, “ I’ ll make it up with your Majesty on these terms: as you mend, I’ ll mend.” The king reproved It is said that Henry the Great of France took much pleasure in conversing with an honest and religious man of low situation in life, who used great freedom with his Majesty. One day he said to the king, “ Sire, I always take your part when I hear any man speaking evil of you; I know that you excel in justice and generosity, and that many worthy things have been done by you. But you have one vice for which God will condemn you, if you do not repent--I mean the unlawful love of women.” The king, it is said, was too magnanimous to resent this reproof, but he long felt it like an arrow in his bosom; and sometimes said that the most eloquent discourses of the doctors of the Sorbonne had never made such an impression on his soul as this honest reproof from his humble friend. Excommunicating a prince William IX., Duke of Aquitaine and Earl of Polctiers, was a violent and dissolute prince, and often indulged himself in improper behaviour at the expense of religion. Though he had contracted a very suitable marriage, and one with which he was satisfied for some time, he parted from his wife without reason, to marry another who pleased him better. The Bishop of Polctiers, by name Peter, could not brook so great a scandal; and having employed all other means in vain, he thought it his duty to excommunicate the duke. As he began to pronounce the anathema, William furiously advanced, sword in hand, saying, “ Thou art dead if thou proceedest.” The bishop, as if afraid, required a few moments to consider what was most expedient. The duke granted it, and the bishop courageously finished the rest of the formula of excommunication. After which, extending his neck, “ Now, strike,” said he, “ I am quite ready.” The astonishment which this intrepid conduct produced in the duke disarmed his fury, and saying, ironically, “ I don’ t like you well enough to send you to heaven,” he contented himself with banishing him. Moral courage Dr. Harris, the minister of Hanwell, during the Civil Wars, frequently had military officers quartered at his house. A party of them, being unmindful of the reverence due to the holy name of God, indulged themselves in swearing. The doctor noticed this, and on the following Sunday preached from these words--“ Above all things, my brethren, swear not.” This so enraged the soldiers, who judged the sermon was intended for them, that they swore they would shoot him if he preached on the subject again. He was not, however, to be intimidated; and, on the following Sunday, he not only preached from the same text, but inveighed in still stronger terms against the vice of swearing. As he was preaching a soldier levelled his carabine at him; but he went on to the conclusion of his sermon, without the slightest fear or hesitation. Luke 3:18; Luke 3:20 He shut up John in prison Herod Antipas The view here given of the character, conduct, and history of Herod Antipas is full of matter for awful reflection and serious admonition. 1. The mysteriousness of the ways of Providence. That a man so worthless should be permitted to cut short the labours and the life of so holy and useful a character, and that, too, in order to gratify the revenge of an abandoned adulteress, and to reward the vain exhibition of a giddy damsel, must, no doubt, at first appear strange. Yet the anger of God overtook: he persecutors before they left this world; and as for the holy sufferer, his work was done; and it was easy for his Lord to recompense to him his temporal sorrows a hundredfold in the world of glory. 2. The danger of power without grace. It is common to wish for power, and to envy those in whose hands it is; but when it is held without principle, it is fraught with peril, not only to those over whom it is exercised, but to those by whom it is possessed. They are generally borne away by the temptations which it presents to the gratification of caprice, luxury, covetousness, oppression, revenge, and every evil passion; and however prosperous their career may seem for a season, their end is generally destruction, and their memory is abhorred. 3. What is sin in the meanest is also sin in the highest. The judgment of God is impartial, and in every case He will render to each according to his deeds. 4. An awful commentary on human depravity. 5. The dreadful consequences which often result from the violation of the seventh commandment, and from intemperance. 6. We should learn to take reproof in good part. Well had it been for Herod if he had submitted to John’ s rebuke and acted on it. 7. Sin, when pointed out, must be renounced. This man reverenced John, and yet lived and died in sin. Let us not do as he did. (James Foote, M. A.) John’ s rebuke of Herod The life of John the Baptist divides itself into three distinct periods. Of the first, we are told that he was in the deserts until his showing unto Israel. This period lasted thirty years. The second is a shorter one. It comprises the few months of his public ministry. In the third we are to consider him as the tenant of a compelled solitude, in the dungeon of a capricious tyrant. A rare man, one of God’ s heroic ones, a true conqueror; one whose life and motives it is hard to understand without feeling warmly and enthusiastically about them. One of the very highest characters, rightly understood, of all the Bible. In the verse which is to serve us for our guidance on this subject there are two branches which will afford us fruit of contemplation. I. THE OF . “ Herod being reproved by John for Herodias.” There are three things we remark in this truthfulness of John. 1. Its straightforwardness. 2. Its unconsciousness. 3. Its unselfishness. II. THE FAILURE OF LIFE. “ Shut up John in prison.” The first thought which suggests itself is that a magnificent career is cut short too soon. At the very outset of ripe and experienced manhood the whole thing ends in failure. John’ s day of active usefulness is over. The crowds that listened to his voice, we hear of them no more. Herod heard John gladly, did much good by reason of his influence. What was all that worth? The prophet comes to himself in a dungeon, and wakes to the conviction, that his influence had told much in the way of commanding attention, and even winning reverence, but very little in the way of gaining souls-the bitterest, the most crushing discovery in the whole circle of ministerial experience. All this was seeming failure. And this, brethren, is the picture of almost all human life. In the isolation of John’ s dying hour there appears failure again. The martyr of truth dies privately in Herod’ s dungeon. We have no record of his last words. There were no crowds to look on. We cannot describe how he received his sentence. Was he calm? Was he agitated? Did he bless his murderer? Did he give utterance to any deep reflections on human life? All that is shrouded in silence. He bowed his head, and the sharp stroke fell flashing down. We know that, we know no more--apparently a noble life abortive. And now-- III. Let us ask the question--WAS ALL THIS INDEED FAILURE? NO, it was sublimest victory. John’ s work was no failure. He left behind him no sect to which he had given his name, but his disciples passed into the service of Christ, and were absorbed in the Christian Church. Words from John had made impressions, and men forgot in after years where the impressions first came from, but the day of judgment will not forget. John laid the foundations of a temple, and others built upon it. He laid it in struggle, in martyrdom. It was covered up like the rough masonry below ground, but when we look round on the vast Christian Church, we are looking at the superstructure of John’ s toil. There is a lesson for us all in that, if we will learn it. Work, true work, done honestly and manfully for Christ, never can be a failure. We are treading upon a bridge of martyrs. The suffering was theirs--the victory is ours. IV. In conclusion, we make three remarks. 1. Let young and ardent minds, under the first impressions of religion, beware how they pledge themselves by any open profession to more than they can perform. 2. We get from this subject the doctrine of a resurrection. John’ s life was hardness, his end was agony. Be content to feel that this world is not your home. Homeless upon earth; try more and more to make your home in heaven, above with Christ. 3. Devotedness to Christ is our only blessedness. (F. W. Robertson, M. A.) John Baptist’ s imprisonment Josephus gives some interesting particulars respecting the imprisonment and murder of the Baptist, which are not supplied in the gospel history. Herod Antipas, son of Herod the Great, was at that time tetrarch of Galilee and Peraea, and had married the daughter of Aretas, an Arabian king, whose territories abutted on his own. When he was at Rome, however, he stayed at the house of his half-brother Philip, whose wife Herodias he conceived a passion for. Antipas made known his passion, and Herodias readily enough consented to leave Philip and go with him. The daughter of Aretas was divorced, and Herodias duly installed in her place. John the Baptist had the courage to denounce this infamous marriage; and by and by Herod Antipas, under pretence that he feared John’ s popularity with the multitude might lead to disturbances, apprehended and imprisoned him. John was sent to Machaerus, or M’ Khaur, on the eastern side of the Dead Sea, where Herod had both a city and fortress. The site and ruins of Machaerus were identified by Canon Tristram in his visit to the Land of Moab in 1872. It was from this spot, then, that John sent two of his disciples to Christ to ask, “ Art Thou He that should come?” And it was here that Salome, the daughter of Herodias, danced before Antipas, and won for her infamous mother the head of John the Baptist. (Biblical Things Not Generally Known.) John like Elijah As the first Elijah reproved King Ahab for the murder of Naboth and the seizure of his vineyard, so the second Elijah rebuked King Herod for his lust. (W. Bull.) Reproving a king Dr. Hickington, chaplain to Charles II., used to preach at the king’ s vices. This the king took to himself; and so, one day, he said, “ Doctor, you and I ought to be better friends; give up being so sharp on me, and see if I don’ t mend on your hand.” “ Well, well,” quoth the doctor, “ I’ ll make it up with your Majesty on these terms: as you mend, I’ ll mend.” The king reproved It is said that Henry the Great of France took much pleasure in conversing with an honest and religious man of low situation in life, who used great freedom with his Majesty. One day he said to the king, “ Sire, I always take your part when I hear any man speaking evil of you; I know that you excel in justice and generosity, and that many worthy things have been done by you. But you have one vice for which God will condemn you, if you do not repent--I mean the unlawful love of women.” The king, it is said, was too magnanimous to resent this reproof, but he long felt it like an arrow in his bosom; and sometimes said that the most eloquent discourses of the doctors of the Sorbonne had never made such an impression on his soul as this honest reproof from his humble friend. Excommunicating a prince William IX., Duke of Aquitaine and Earl of Polctiers, was a violent and dissolute prince, and often indulged himself in improper behaviour at the expense of religion. Though he had contracted a very suitable marriage, and one with which he was satisfied for some time, he parted from his wife without reason, to marry another who pleased him better. The Bishop of Polctiers, by name Peter, could not brook so great a scandal; and having employed all other means in vain, he thought it his duty to excommunicate the duke. As he began to pronounce the anathema, William furiously advanced, sword in hand, saying, “ Thou art dead if thou proceedest.” The bishop, as if afraid, required a few moments to consider what was most expedient. The duke granted it, and the bishop courageously finished the rest of the formula of excommunication. After which, extending his neck, “ Now, strike,” said he, “ I am quite ready.” The astonishment which this intrepid conduct produced in the duke disarmed his fury, and saying, ironically, “ I don’ t like you well enough to send you to heaven,” he contented himself with banishing him. Moral courage Dr. Harris, the minister of Hanwell, during the Civil Wars, frequently had military officers quartered at his house. A party of them, being unmindful of the reverence due to the holy name of God, indulged themselves in swearing. The doctor noticed this, and on the following Sunday preached from these words--“ Above all things, my brethren, swear not.” This so enraged the soldiers, who judged the sermon was intended for them, that they swore they would shoot him if he preached on the subject again. He was not, however, to be intimidated; and, on the following Sunday, he not only preached from the same text, but inveighed in still stronger terms against the vice of swearing. As he was preaching a soldier levelled his carabine at him; but he went on to the conclusion of his sermon, without the slightest fear or hesitation. Luke 3:21 Jesus also being baptized--Meeting of Jesus with John The people, I read, “ mused,” wondering if John were the expected Messiah. John, too, mused, we may be sure. “ Words! words! words!” at the end of each long sultry day, as he laid him down in some rocky cave what time the sun sank suddenly and the stars hung like balls of fire in the purple sky, and the cry of the wild beast was heard as he stole forth to drink at the fords of the Jordan. ‘ I can baptize them with water. I can tell them to repent. Poor forlorn sheep upon the mountains--where shall they find their shepherd? I am the voice crying in the wilderness--where is the Divine Prophet? I baptize with water--who will give them the fiery baptism of the soul? Who will help them to seek, and nerve them to act? “ And then came One on a certain still morn, early, it may be, before the heat of the day, with only a few zealous stragglers about, waiting for baptism, and John met Him by the Jordan river. Needless to explain. Soul met soul. John knew his Master as surely as did frail Peter when he cried out, “ Depart from me, for I am a sinful man” ; or doubting Thomas when, heart-struck, he murmered, “ My Lord, and my God!” “ I have need,” were John’ s first words--yea, we all have need face to face with Jesus--“ I have need to be baptized of Thee.” And then came the first words of Christ’ s ministry, they struck the keynote of the gospel, “ Suffer it to be so now, for thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness.” The heart of Christianity lies there; Christ the Companion of man, the Example of man. The Saviour, because the revelator of a Divine union between God and man, a spiritual life in man. And on the morrow the Baptist saw Him walking by the river, and pointing Him out, exclaimed, “ Behold the Lamb of God!” &c. Message to the Ages! Call to every Pilgrim of the night! Be of good cheer, thy help is nigh. God in Christ is your Saviour, because Christ in human nature means Christ in you, the Divine power revealed in every man, as he is able to receive and use it. Let that vision remain with us. Blessed gleam of the morning light I Behold Jesus going down into the Jordan to be baptized, one with us, never more to be separated from us--Great Elder Brother, dear Friend! Close to us in the waters of purification, close to us in the burden and heat of the day, close to us in the shadow of our Gethsemane, close to us in the Calvary of our pain, the Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the world. (H. R. Haweis, M. A.) Christ and John The relation between Jesus and John resembles two stars following each other at a short distance, both passing through similar circumstances. The announcement of the appearing of the one follows close upon that of the appearing of the other, it is the same with their two births. This relation repeats itself in the commencement of their respective ministries; and lastly, in the catastrophes which terminate their lives. And yet, in the whole course of the career of these two, there was but one personal meeting--at the baptism of Jesus. After this moment, when one of these stars rapidly crossed the orbit of the ether, they separated, each to follow the path that was marked out for him. (F. Godet, D. D.) Jesus baptized I. 1. The preaching of John the Baptist was the sign that the active ministry of the Messiah was now to begin. The Incarnate Word had been hidden among men. His presence must now be manifested and His kingdom set up. 2. His first act in passing from His hidden to His active life, is to identify Himself with that sinning race in whose likeness He had come. 3. This humiliation was temporary and voluntary--“ Suffer it to be so now,” i.e., “ for the present time” ; “ for thus it becometh us” --not “ it is necessary” --“ to fulfil all righteousness.” 4. Notice how He who in His boyhood “ must be about His Father’ s business,” in His manhood must “ fulfil all righteousness.” II. 1. There is a deep sense in which this undergoing the baptism of John was a fulfilling all righteousness. It was a revelation that man’ s nature needs not merely improvement but renewal. Baptism represents the death of the old man and the resurrection of the new. 2. It is that He who thus humiliated Himself for us may fulfil all righteousness in us that we pray, “ By Thy baptism,… good Lord, deliver us.” (Canon Vernon Hutton, M. A.) The significance of Christ’ s baptism One purpose of His baptism our Lord Himself mentions, in order to satisfy the scruples of the reluctant Baptist; “ Suffer now, for thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness.” The first and obvious sense of this is, that since the baptism of John was of God, it became Him, as being born in the people to whom God had given it, to submit Himself to it as the ordinance of God. But then, other grounds might be included in this, as involved in the character and person of Him who thus submitted Himself. The words may have been left, on purpose, undefined, in order to comprehend the more. “ He added not,” says St. Jerome, “ the righteousness of the law, or of nature, that we might understand both.” The righteousness fulfilled was in Him humility surpassing all thought, in that while God He received the baptism of the sinners whose nature He had taken; in Him it was love, which is the fulfilling of the law, in that He received that which He needed not, that they who need it might the more gladly receive it; and so it may be also that He was baptized, not only to give an example of obedience, or healthfully to shame those who to their destruction would have disdained it, but in it to fulfil all righteousness by cleansing the sinful nature in the likeness whereof He had come, and to impart to it as a whole the righteousness which He should afterwards communicate, one by one, to those who came to the baptism which He had thus consecrated. And again, all righteousness may thereby have been fulfilled in it, in that an everlasting righteousness was thereby brought in, and the element consecrated whereby the justifying efficacy of His meritorious Cross and Passion were to be conveyed to all believers. The one sense will not exclude the other; as of all our blessed Saviour’ s actions and words, it is to be believed that they have a manifold depth and meaning, of which each application brings out but one portion; these gifts are a “ precious stone,” “ whithersoever it turneth, it prospereth.” (E. B.Pusey, D. D.) Christ submitting to baptism In presenting Himself for baptism, Jesus had to make, as others did (Matthew 3:6; Mark 1:7), His confession of sins. Of what sins, if not of those of His people and of the world in general? He placed before John a striking picture of them, not with that pride and scorn with which the Jews spoke of the sins of the heathen, and the Pharisees of the sins of the publicans, but with the humble and compassionate tones of an Isaiah (chap. 63.), a Daniel (chap. 9.), or a Nehemiah (chap. 9.), when they confessed the miseries of their people, as it the burden were their own. He could not have gone down into the water after such an act of communion with our misery, unless resolved to give Himself up entirely to the work of putting an end to the reign of sin. He did not content Himself with making a vow. He prayed, the text tells us; He besought God for all that He needed for the accomplishment of this great task, to take away the sin of the world. He asked for wisdom, for spiritual strength, and particularly for the solution of the mystery which family records, the Scriptures, and His own holiness had created about His person. We can understand how John, after hearing Him confess and pray thus, should say, “ Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world!” (F. Godet, D. D.) Christ’ s baptism gives virtue to ours His last action, or rather passion, was His baptizing with blood; His first was His baptization with water: both of them wash the world from their sins. Yea, this latter did not only wash the souls of men, but washeth that very water by which we are washed; from hence is that made both clean and holy, and can both cleanse and hallow us. (Bishop Hall.) The scene of Christ’ s baptism A river that had never been navigable, flowing into a sea that had never known a port? A river almost equal in length to our own Thames, but with no great city gathered upon its banks, and winding through no grand or picturesque scenery Such was the river of God, of which the Hebrew psalmist sung; the sacred river of Old Testament story, upon which Lot, the wandering emigrant, once lifted up his eyes; which Jacob, returning from exile, crossed with his staff, and over which had passed the descendants of the patriarch’ s twelve sons--a mighty nation, emancipated, and brought from afar, to inherit the land. Since then, along its shores, the tide of many a momentous battle had rolled; its waters had washed the leper clean; and among its pink oleanders and yellow marigolds, prophets had lingered in meditation, or listened at midnight to messages from heaven that made their skin creep. It was while standing on its brink that Elijah, the chief of an illustrious line, had been swept up in the chariot of the whirlwind; and by the sound of its waves, David, the prince of kings, had both thundered in victorious fight, and wept in misery. But now, at last, there is a new thing--a surprising thing. At one of the upper fords of this ancient river, the Redeemer of the world appears: not working marvellous works, or drawing crowds around Him by the magic of His gracious words, but meekly applying to receive at the hands of the reforming preacher of the day, who had been pronouncing the nation morally unclean, and calling it to repentance--a most humiliating rite; a rite which was understood to express the recipient’ s conviction of sin, and his need of purification. (N. R. Wood.) The baptism of Christ There is one thing for us to remember, in conclusion: namely, that the baptism which St. John preached, but which he hesitated to administer to the spotless and holy Jesus, had its meaning most fully expressed only when it became administered to Him; for what was it intended to set forth? The nation’ s conscious burthen of sin! And who, of all the multitudes that flocked to be baptized, felt that burthen as Christ did? Some there were, doubt less, among the throng, who mourned truly and deeply their transgressions and the transgressions of the time; devout men, like the greyhaired Simeon, who had long been dissatisfied with themselves and with the existing state of things; but not one, even of the most profoundly stirred and quickened of these, felt the ugliness and horror of their sins, and of Israel’ s corruption, as He felt it. He not only confessed and repented with the people, but for them; suffering in His righteous soul what they ought to have suffered, and did not, nay, could not; offering to God what they ought to have offered, and failed to offer, nay, were unable to offer--an adequate feeling of sin, an adequate sorrow and atonement for it. They truly confessed and repented only in Him; in Him was presented the perfect confession and repentance, of which, at their very best, they fell far short. (N. R. Wood.) John’ s baptism reached its fullest expression in Christ’ s submission to it See the mother, in the midst of a group of little ones, mingling her tearswith theirs, at the father’ s grave. They feel that they have lost something precious; but it is she alone who feels, as she stands bowed among them, how much they have lost. They all kneel together on the sod, and the eyes of all are alike swimming with grief: but what is their impression of the bereavement they have sustained, in comparison with hers? What is their anguish for themselves, compared with her anguish for the fatherless ones? Weep as the children may, the full bitterness of their loss is borne, not by the children, but by the mother who weeps with them. So when Christ joined with the multitude in their baptism of contrition, to none of them were their sins half so burdensome and oppressive as they were to Him; none of them endured, under their deepest convictions, the half of that which He endured for them. The meaning of St. John’ s baptism reached its fullest expression in His submission to it, upon whom there was laid the iniquity of all; who, being at once the sinless one and the loving one, saw sins and sinners with God’ s eyes, and felt, in reference to them, with God’ s heart. (N. R. Wood.) The baptism of Jesus The cry of John the Baptist was: Repent; and his baptism was that of repentance. What, then, was the meaning of our Lord’ s baptism? It could not signify that He repented. It was a symbolical act followed by that of which it was the symbol--the baptism of the Holy Ghost. Learn-- I. THE OF THE OF BAPTISM. That to which our Lord submitted cannot be considered indifferent by any of His disciples. II. OF GOD’ S , AND TO, ARE OFTEN THE OF . “ Being baptized and praying, the heaven was opened,” &c. Rites unintelligently or superstitiously performed often hide the truth and lead into dangerous error; but when understood as symbolizing or declaring a living truth they are often important aids in teaching truth, and in stimulating to the acquiring of spiritual blessing. (D. Longwill.) The baptism of Christ It was-- I. THE OF HIS HUMAN TO MAN AND TO GOD. II. By this act tie bound together in submission to His Father’ s WILL THE OLD AND NEW , AND HIMSELF AS THE CENTRAL POINT OF HISTORY. III. IT HIM KING OF THE KINGDOM, AND TO ALL MEN THAT HIS OF THAT KINGDOM HAD BEGUN. IV. HOW DOES CHRIST’ S BAPTISM SPEAK TO US? We have rites of consecration, but these are not the parallels in our lives to this moment in the life of Jesus. There are hours of consecration in our lives of which none know but God and ourselves. (Stopford A. Brooke, M. A.) The inauguration Christ’ s example shows that obedience to the Divine Spirit of the time ever brings fuller disclosures and attestations of the Divine blessing. The heavens are opened to every obedient man, and the Spirit of God descends on the last as on the first. John’ s baptism had gone no further than repentance; but Christ, standing with the dove resting upon Him, showed that there was a baptism unto holiness. By John’ s baptism men were put into a right relation to the past: but as they followed Christ they were put into a right relation to the future; from the negative condition of repentance they passed to the affirmative attitude of holiness. This is the culmination of human history. We have come through man, servant, prophet, messenger, up to Son. The very nomenclature is pregnant with sublime moral significance. We pass from “ made,” to “ begotten,” from “ upright” to “ beloved,” from the “ us” of the creating Trinity to the “ my” of the benignant Father, from the “ very good” of the first Adam to the “ well-pleased” of the second. (J. Parker, D. D.) The inauguration of Christ The baptism of Christ was, first of all, the public announcement and inauguration of Christ to His work. John the Baptist had conic “ to bear witness of the Light,” and now his work was nearly done. One last act remained to be done, the solemn setting apart of the Christ to His redeeming work. The baptism closed our Lord’ s private life and began His public ministry. He who had gone down into the water known to men as “ the Son of Mary,” came up thence declared to be “ the Son of God,” The baptism, with the opened heavens, and the Spirit descending like a dove, and abiding on Jesus, and the witness borne by the voice of God Himself, was the sublime inauguration of the Saviour of the world to His great mission. From that hour John’ s prophetic work was done. It expired, to use Davison’ s beautiful image, as Old Testament prophecy had expired, with “ the gospel upon its tongue.” (G. S. Barrett, B. A.) The people were baptized There are many of every sort of people--as we may read--saved in the gospel, but of Pharisees we find none but one, namely, Nicodemus; no sort of men are further from the kingdom of God than proud justiciars. For as a vessel full of one liquor is not capable of another, so the soul which is filled with a vain conceit of her own righteousness, is not capable of the grace of Christ. Grace entereth not into such a soul, because it is full, neither doth grace find any place to dwell therein. There is no place for grace to enter in, where merit hath possession: what thou attributest to merits, is wanting to grace. I will none of that merit which excludes grace. (Bishop Cowper.) The Baptism of Christ 1. He would hereby honour the ministry of man, in that He submits Himself unto it, and seeketh to it with much pains and labour. 2. As He was baptized, not by an angel or prince, but by a homely man that lived like an hermit in an austere manner of life for diet and clothing; so must not we account baser of the sacraments for the meanness of the man, if a lawful minister, seeing Christ refused not the sacrament at John’ s hands; neither must we from the meanest minister, seeing the least in the kingdom of God is greater than John. 3. Christ was content to wash in a common water, in the flood Jordan; He feared no infection from it, though Naaman the leper were washed there; though the Pharisees and hypocrites washed there: yet He takes no exception, contracts no uncleanness; so the wickedness of another communicant doth not prejudice him that is rightly prepared, though he communicate with him in the sacrament, yet not in his sin. Although He undertook not the sacrament as a sacrament of regeneration, or as a symbol of new life, yet He did-- (1) As it was a sacrament of Christian society (1 Corinthians 12:13), for as by it the faithful are set into His body, so would He by it be set into the body of the saints, and take on Him the common mark and privilege of His members; even as we see kings and princes, by whom all hold their freedom, will sometimes be made free, and so receive a public testimony of association from their people; and lo, here our Prince in the colours of a common soldier. (2) As baptism is a symbol of affliction, so He would undertake it; so Mark 10:38) Christ calls His cross and death by the name of baptism. (3) Christ would be baptized, not to wash Himself, but us; not to put off sin as we, but to put on our sin, that so our sin in Him might be washed away, that He might sanctify this sacrament. Again, this is for our instruction, to note the excellency and dignity of this sacrament, and what esteem we ought to have it in; the Lord comes to the servant a tedious journey to seek it; yet many of us, when it is brought to us, turn our backs upon it. What price set they upon it who flee forth of the Church when this sacrament is to be administered? Shall Christ that needed it not, come to it, and shall we that need it run from it? This I will add to what I have elsewhere largely delivered, that whosoever do not present themselves with due reverence and meditation, but run out carelessly and profanely when baptism is administered, they be far from Christ’ s example, and little comfort can they have of their baptism, but may well fear, lest those mysteries and benefits offered and sealed to a member of the congregation belong not to them; for if they did they would own them, and not run contemptuously from them; as good never baptized, as never meditate on it. But, were thyself to take no good by the sacrament, in calling to mind thine own covenant made in baptism, with the fruit in thyself, yet good order requires thy presence. 1. Because the ordinance belongs not only to the infants’ parents and sureties, but to the whole congregation, as the entering of a free man into a corporation is by the whole. 2. God looks it should be graced, and not scorned by turning thy back upon it. Were it not a most irreverent contempt to run out from the Word? and is it not also to run from the seal? especially the blessed Trinity being met to such a purpose, to seal such benefits to a member of that congregation? 3. Thy presence is requisite to help the infant by prayer, to join with the congregation in prayer and in praise for the ingrafting of a member into Christ’ s body. But what law or ordinance was there for baptism, to which Christ must be subjected? It was decreed by the whole Trinity. 1. That Christ should be initiated by this ceremony, wherein also He must manifest Himself the Author of all purity and cleanness. 2. John had preached it, and showed the necessity of it by Divine authority. 3. He would not only subject Himself to His Father’ s ordination, but also for our sakes, the virtue of whose baptism depends upon His, as also give us help by His example, and therefore would Himself do that which He commanded others to do. 4. Christ as Mediator, and in our stead, was to be made our righteousness 1 Corinthians 1:30); three ways: (1) In being made an offering for us, by which He was to abolish our sin and curse, and by His most perfect obedience satisfy the whole law for us. (2) By applying that righteousness purchased by His blood, which else we could never have had benefit by. (3) By appointing and sanctifying means and instruments for that application, called the ministry of the Spirit, whereof one branch is the laver of water in the Word. And thus, as in our stead, He stood in the general, bound by the will and ordinance of God, in Himself to sanctify baptism for us. (T. Taylor, D. D.) The baptism of Christ I. St. Matthew gives us THE REASON WHY THIS BAPTISM TOOK PLACE. “ Suffer it to be so now,” He said to John, “ for thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness.” He was anxious to obey every Divine law, to conform to every Divine institution, to work out and complete a righteousness extensive as the Divine commands. And this answer exhibits the Saviour to us in two characters, each illustrating the propriety of His baptism. 1. He stands here as the Representative of His people. Now they are an unclean people. We argue from His appearing in their form, that He was the Representative of His sinful people; and then we argue from His being their Representative, that it became Him to be baptized. 2. He was also their Head; standing in the relation to them of a Leader or Chief. The Captain of our salvation puts on Himself the garb in which He arrays His soldiers. The Commander submits first to the oath that He enjoins on His followers. II. Let us look now at His BAPTISM ITSELF. 1. The first circumstance that strikes us in it, is His simple obedience to the Divine law. It bids you obey the Divine law, not scan it. It bids you do the will of God, not criticise it. The will of God must be done, and every command of God obeyed. 2. And notice the humility manifested here, the amazing condescension of Christ. He was now coming forth among men to make known His high pretensions. And how does He appear? Working miracles and doing wonders? Bursting forth like the sun in his brightness, “ glorious in his apparel, travelling in the greatness of his strength” ? No; “ He cometh from Galilee to Jordan unto John to be baptized of him.” We can hardly form one faint idea of the extent of this degradation. Not indeed a sinner, but appearing as one, assuming a character He had bidden angels and archangels loathe. The manger, the stable, the carpenter’ s hut and the carpenter’ s toil--they were all as nothing; no word of His had poured contempt on any one of them: but to be the thing He had branded; to come forth into sight as though He were the character He abhorred; verily, brethren, this was the infinite abasement of an infinite God. 3. And mark also the devotion the Saviour manifested on this occasion. III. We come now to our third subject--THE EVENT WHICH THE SCENE OF WE HAVE BEEN . “ It came to pass,” says the evangelist, “ that Jesus also being baptized and praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Ghost descended in a bodily shape like a dove upon Him, and a voice came from heaven, which said, Thou art My beloved Son; in Thee I am well pleased.” 1. Observe here the greatness of Christ; His dignity. And it is a remarkable fact that throughout His life, whenever we see Him signally abased, we generally see His Father putting on Him signal honour. He is born in a manger, but a star in the heavens proclaims His advent, and over Him are ringing the songs of angels. 2. We see here also the Messiahship of Christ. First comes the voice of prophecy, marking out the future Messiah as one on whom the Spirit of the Lord was to descend and rest; one who, at His entrance on His office, was to be anointed with the spirit, just as earthly monarchs and priests were anointed with the holy oil. Besides, in all this there was a special reference to John himself. 3. But this event establishes another point. While it proves the reality of our Lord’ s Messiahship, it declares His qualifications for the discharge of this office. The Spirit descended on Him in Jordan to qualify Him for what we may call the moral part of His great work; to enable Him to reach the mind of man, and influence and rule it. He Himself tells us so. Led by the Spirit He had received, He first goes into the wilderness to have His own faith and obedience put to the test; and when He had been taught there by His own experience, what this Spirit could do for the suffering and tempted, He begins His public ministry at Nazareth by declaring the qualifications bestowed on Him for the discharge of His office. “ The Spirit of the Lord,” He says, “ is upon Me, because He hath anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor; He hath sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind; to set at liberty them that are bruised.” And this Spirit abode on Him. St. Matthew informs us that the dove “ rested,” as well as descended on Him; and St. Luke speaks of Him as going up from the river into the wilderness, “ full of the Holy Ghost.” His blessed gifts are made over to Him, placed at His disposal; and for this purpose, that He may communicate them to whomsoever He will. 4. We are taught also here the high estimation in which the anointed Saviour is held by His Father; the complacency and delight with which He regards Him. From a review of this history we learn, first, the importance which God attaches to His own ordinances, the honour He puts on them. “ We see here also the insufficiency of ordinances. Baptism, though administered by a prophet and received by Christ, was powerless; or if it had any efficacy, that efficacy was limited; it evidently left much undone. It could not touch the soul of Jesus; it did not qualify Him for His mediatorial work. To accomplish these ends, the Holy Ghost comes down from on high, rests and abides on Him. (C. Bradley, M. A.) And praying. Christ praying To most, if not to all of us, the fact that our Saviour prayed is in itself a wonder. This does not, however, seem to have struck the gospel-writers. Prayers of Christ precious, as showing how completely human He became, living like ourselves, a life of dependence, of communion, and of submission. I. THE ON WHICH THE SAVIOUR IS HAS SAID TO HAVE PRAYED. AS undergone by Christ, the rite of baptism would seem to have had a twofold meaning. 1. It was intended to be symbolic of His entire oneness with the race He came to save. 2. It was intended to be emblematic of His complete consecration to the salvation of the race to which He came. II. THE REASONS WHICH LED HIM TO PRAY. 1. We are not to suppose that Christ’ s praying on this occasion (a) arose from any doubt in His mind as to the propriety of the work on which He was entering; (b) sprang out of any misgiving as to His own appointment to it; (c) was due to any uncertainty as to His personal fitness for it. No, but-- 2. Bearing in mind the meaning of the baptism with which His prayer was associated, we may imagine that His prayer on this occasion would spring-- (a) from His pure passion for the glorification of the Father; (b) from His intense longing for the salvation of the world; (c) from His vivid anticipation of the difficulties which lay before Him; (d) from His keen prevision of the sorrows that awaited Him. III. THE WHICH CAME TO OUR SAVIOUR’ S PRAYER. 1. There was a special communication of the Divine Spirit. 2. There was a special assurance of the Divine complacency. Practical lesson: PRAYER A FOR SERVICE. (B. Wilkinson, F. G. S.) For the first, He was now baptized, and in regard of that He prayed, and teacheth us-- 1. In that He first was baptized, and then prayed, that we must be first cleansed and sanctified, and then pray: men must lift pure hands with pure hearts in every place (Isaiah 1:16). In receiving the sacrament a holy heart knows that he hath to do with God, and lifteth itself above sensible elements; it labours to approve itself to God, and looks not at men, but at God and His covenant, and renews itself with faith, repentance, and invocation. 2. In that Christ goeth to God for a blessing upon the sacrament received, we learn that all the grace, holiness, and efficacy of any sacrament is to be obtained, continued and increased by the means of prayer. For the second, Christ prayed in respect of that He was to do. 1. He was now to be declared that great Prophet of His Church Deuteronomy 18:18). And the whole ministry of the New Testament was now to be delivered and consecrated in Him, and therefore undertaking this great work, He goeth to His Father for blessing and success in it. 2. He was now in a solemn manner by sundry testimonies from heaven to be set apart for the work of redemption, and the salvation of man being lost: a ministry which men and angels were all too weak for; and no marvel, if He pray to His Father for sufficient strength and grace to undergo the same. 3. He knew that the heavens were to be opened, and therefore He will be in prayer, to show the power of prayer, that it pierceth the heavens, and entereth the presence of God, and prevaileth for a blessing. 4. The Spirit was to descend upon Him, and therefore He would be in prayer to teach us that the prayers of God’ s children are of that force that they bring down the Holy Ghost with all graces upon earth. 5. That faithful prayer doth cause God to give some evident testimony upon those with whom He is well pleased. 6. That whatever we take in hand, we must reverently undertake it with prayer, but especially two things above others. (1) The part of God’ s holy worship. (2) The duties of our callings. 2. Such is our weakness, as when we do anything the best we can, we had need to pray to do it better, and for pardon that we have done it no better: which if it be true in external things and duties, wherein we are better acquainted; much more in spiritual, wherein our ability is much less. 3. We never receive so much favour from God, but we still stand in need to crave more; nor never so little, but that we have much to be thankful for. This doctrine serves to reprove such as content themselves with the work of God’ s worship; that come to the word and sacraments, but beg not a blessing of God beforehand; whereas Christ Himself contented not Himself with the outward means, but prayed for a blessing. And this is the very cause why men find so little taste, strength, and power in these ordinances, because God’ s blessing goes not with the means; and therefore it is sundered from His own ordinances, because it is not asked. Is it any marvel, that when men come carelessly, carnally, and profanely, without reverence and religion to the exercises of religion, that they go away as brutishly as they come; and the longer they thus profane God’ s holy things, the more senseless and incurable they grow by them, more hardened and hopeless. What good hath many a man gotten by customable coming to the word and sacraments many years together? for their knowledge, babes may pose them in principles; for their conscience, we may as soon prevail with children of three years old, to sit reverently and attentively, as some of three or fourscore, who in the morning are so sleepy, as it were fitter they were at home in their beds, or take order to bring their beds with them: and for their profitableness in their places, or reformation of anything in public, or in their private families, or their own person, God nor man can see no such thing. Now would I ask these men as old as they be, how often they can remember they have humbled themselves before God, that He would bless the Word unto them, and them to understand it, and make conscience of it, to reform their ways, to comfort their consciences? Alas, dead men! this is a strange motion to them; and now we conclude, no blessing asked, none obtained, but a curse accompanied them further to harden them: whereas humble and feeling prayer would have opened the heavens and fetched down the Spirit to have accompanied the ordinance; and so some testimony would have been seen, that God had been better pleased with them and their work. 3. It is a notable fence against sin: for, as the more sin prevails, the less can a man pray; for the more he prays, the less is he overtaken with sin. When the true man is assaulted, if he cry for help, the thief runs away; and so doth sin (a thief which ever doggeth and besetteth us to rob us and steal away grace) if we can cry mightily to God. 4. Acquaint thyself with God; for the times come when nothing will stand by thee but His help; and therefore use prayer, to be familiarly acquainted with Him: know Him now in the time of thy prayer, that He may know thee in the day of thy distress. (T. Taylor, D. D.) Conduct without prayer He knoweth truly how to live well, who knoweth how to pray well. But best actions without prayer, which obtain grace to them, are like bodies without spirits: yea, as the body without breathing cannot live to do any work competent to a natural life: so the soul, without prayer, can do no work that truly is spiritual. (Bishop Cowper.) The heaven was opened. No wit followeth, that we speak of those three admirable events, which followed the prayer of Christ. 1. The sensible opening of the heavens. 2. The visible descending of the Holy Ghost. 3. The audible voice of God the Father, witnessing to many both eye and ear-witnesses the solemn instalment and induction of Christ into His office and work of mediation and ministry. Wherein we must know, that as there never was in all the world so high and excellent an office as Christ’ s was (for the greatest of kings, and the high priest, who yet were with great state and observation anointed and deputed to their offices, were but shadows of this), even so God would have Christ entered into it with such magnificence and glory as never man was, nor creature is capable of. At the coronation of a prince, with what glory, pomp, and sumptuousness, even to admiration, is he brought forth with his nobles and subjects! But all this is but earthly glory, from earthly men to an earthly king. But now at the coronation of the Prince of Peace, God sets Himself from heaven to honour it; and for this purpose He doth more familiarly, and yet more gloriously reveal Himself unto all mankind, than He had ever before done from the creation of the world; and never was any ceremony in all the world so honoured as this baptism of Christ was. The ancient sacrifices of God’ s institution were honoured by- manifest signs of His gracious presence, as by the fire which came from heaven continually to consume them: the Ark was honoured with special signs of His glorious presence, sitting between the cherubims, answering by oracle and voice unto cases propounded: the Temple itself at Jerusalem, at Solomon’ s prayer and dedication, was filled with the glory of God, manifested in that cloud that filled the House of the Lord (1 Kings 8:10), and this cloud still watched over the Tabernacle (Exodus 40:34). But these were all but shadows to this, wherein the Lord did not cloud and vail His presence, or reveal His presence in some sign; but the Divine Majesty manifested itself distinctly, as we may say, in person, yea, in the distinction of all the three Persons, the Father testifying His delight in His dear Son, the Son standing in Jordan, and receiving His Father’ s testimony; and the Holy Ghost descending in the visible shape of a dove. It seemeth therefore to be true, that the heaven was sensibly divided and rent in twain, even as the earth was when Korah and his company were swallowed up. Now the reasons why the heavens were opened were sundry. 1. To manifest the truth and certainty of the other signs which followed, that seeing the heavens opened, they might not conceive that either the dove or the voice came from any other place. 2. To show that howsoever Christ stood there as a weak man, and in similitude of sinful flesh, yet He was the Lord from heaven heavenly, of whom was verified (John 3:31) “ He that is come from heaven is above all.” 3. That as His person, so likewise His doctrine was Divine and heavenly (Luke 3:34). He whom God hath sent, speaketh the words of God: and this was the special work of His doctoral office, to reveal the will of His Father. “ No man hath seen God at any time, the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, hath declared Him” (John 1:18). The power also and grace, whereby He wrought miracles, was not from Beelzebub, but from heaven. 4. To show that His office, into which He was now entered, was and is to open heaven again for us, who by sin had shut it against ourselves; He hath made our way unto the throne of grace. And thus this second Adam standeth in opposition with the first; He shut us out of paradise, a token that we were shut out of heaven: but this lets us into the paradise of God again. The heavens are opened by His passion, not by His baptism Hebrews 10:19). They are opened by His death as by a common cause, which must be specially and singularly applied, and that is by baptism: therefore it is said, “ We are baptised into His death “ (Romans 6:3-4), that is, to have benefit by His death. Note hence, that Christ by fulfilling all righteousness, hath set heaven open unto us, and consequently the justification of a sinner is not only by the obedience of His passion, but also by His active obedience in fulfilling the law. (T. Taylor, D. D.) Like a dove upon Him The dove-like descent of the Spirit on Christ Hence then, we may observe, that the religion of Jesus consists in a dove-like temper. This observation we will endeavour to illustrate. That we may proceed with safety, we will give no indulgence to imagination, but will strictly follow the allusions which we find in Scripture. 1. The dove is an emblem of purity. In the law of Moses this was reckoned a clean bird, and it was selected for an offering in the ceremony of purification. His precepts, His doctrines, His example teach us to be holy, undefiled, and separate from sinners. 2. Christ directs His disciples to be harmless as doves. The same meek and inoffensive spirit which was in Him must also be in us. 3. The dove, in the book of Canticles, is an emblem of cheerfulness and joy. “ Lo, the winter is past and gone, the flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come: the voice of the turtle is heard in our land.” The dove-like temper of the gospel is sweet, serene, and pleasant. 4. Doves are distinguished by their mutual fidelity and love. To this social and affectionate property there are frequent allusions in Scripture. The bridegroom, in the book of Canticles, calls the bride by this, among other endearing names: “ O my dove, let me see thy face, and hear thy voice, for thy voice is sweet, and thy face is comely.” People in affliction are described as “ mourning like doves” who have lost their companions. Mutual love is the temper of the gospel. 5. The dove is a defenceless bird. Hence she is described as “ dwelling in the clefts of the rocks, and in the secret places of the stairs” ; and as “ flying to her windows” in times of danger. In this view she is an emblem of Christian faith and humility. True believers, sensible of their weakness, and of the dangers which attend them, trust not in themselves, but in the power and grace of their Saviour. 6. The excellent glory, which descended like a dove and rested on Jesus, might be intended to represent the beauties of His Church, adorned and dignified by the graces of His Spirit. The dove, which is a beautiful bird, is a natural emblem of the virtuous and good works which distinguish the Christian character. “ Though ye have lien among the pots, yet ye shall be as the wings of a dove, covered with silver, and her feathers with yellow gold.” 7. The dove, which is a fruitful bird, is, by Isaiah, made an emblem of the increase of the Church in her happy and prosperous periods. Then converts shall fly unto God’ s altar, “ as doves to their windows.” (J. Lathrop. D. D.) The Spirit likened to a dove 1. Our subject suggests to us that the Spirit of Christ usually comes to the soul in a mild and gentle manner. His operations are as His fruits, dovelike, sweet, and kind. The benevolent and friendly nature of the dispensation which Christ was about to introduce, was intimated in the manner of the Spirit’ s descent. The law, which was a ministration of death and condemnation, was delivered to the people with circumstances of terror and amazement. As His manner of teaching, so the doctrines which He taught were kind and gracious. 2. Our subject farther teaches us, that they only are led by the Spirit of God, who are of a dove-like temper. It is absurd then to impute to an uncommon influence of the Spirit any error of conduct, excess of passion, extravagance of zeal, or bitterness of censure; for the Spirit comes like the dove. 3. Our subject reminds us of our obligation to adorn with good works our Christian character, and to recommend to the choice of others the religion which we profess. We should resemble the dove, whose wings are covered with silver, and her feathers with yellow gold. The beauty of religion much depends on our maintaining the more amiable and engaging virtues; such as charity, peaceableness, humility, and meekness. 4. Our subject teaches us our obligation to labor for the increase of Christ’ s Church--not only to enter into it ourselves, but also to encourage others to come and join themselves to it. In semblance of a dove I. The Holy Ghost descended in a bodily shape LIKE A bow. 1. The dove was a bird of purity. You know it was used by the poor in sacrifices, and therefore was considered clean. 2. The Holy Spirit is like a dove because it is a harmless creature. The dove never hurts the tiniest bird with which it comes into contact. The Holy Spirit is not compared to the eagle, nor to the hawk, nor to the vulture--birds of prey; but to the dove--a harmless creature. 3. The Holy Ghost is like a dove because the dove is such a gentle creature. His influences are most benign. 4. The Holy Spirit is like the dove, too, because the dove has very keen eyesight. In the Book of Canticles we read, “ Thou hast dove’ s eyes.” Doves are remarkable for great keenness of vision. The Holy Spirit “ searcheth all things.” 5. The Holy Spirit is like the dove because the dove was an emblem of peace and of spring. The dove brought the olive leaf back in her mouth, indicating to Noah that the waters had subsided, and that the deluge of wrath would soon be gone. The dove, too, is mentioned in the Canticles as being a herald of spring: “ The time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in the land.” And whenever the Holy Spirit comes to a man’ s heart, there is a sign that that heart will be at peace with God. 6. The Holy Ghost, lastly, is like a dove because the dove was given to mourning. “ I did mourn as a dove,” says Isaiah. “ The Spirit also helpeth our infirmities” --takes our infirmities upon Himself. His work is of a loving nature. II. Secondly, we have THE OF CHRIST. Much is taught in the connection of the text concerning the mission of Christ, while our text itself gives the chief elements of His character. First of all, we have something concerning His mission. It was divinely ordained, for God sent the Holy Spirit to testify to the world that He was commissioned by Him to undertake man’ s redemption. We have here the purpose of His mission. Heaven was opened, and the Holy Ghost descended. It was the purpose of Christ to open heaven. The first Adam closed heaven against us. But the character of Christ was developed by the influence of the Holy Ghost. Jesus did not achieve His work by virtue of the divinity that was in Him only, but by virtue of the Spirit’ s graces upon Him. The dove was harmless. Christ said, “ I am meek and lowly in heart.” The dove was given to mourning. Jesus was “ a Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.” The dove wag innocent. Jesus Christ was purity personified. “ Which of you convinceth Me of sin?” said He. He was holy, harmless, undefiled, and in an emphatic sense, the dove was emblematic of Him. III. IT is so ALSO WITH A . There is no true character which is not built up by the influence of the Holy Spirit. The dove is defenceless. It has nothing to protect it except the rocks, and when pursued its only refuge is to fly thither. The Christian has nothing to protect himself against the wiles of the devil and the allurements of the world, except “ the Rock of Ages.” The dove keeps to its own company. It is delighted when it is with its fellows. So the Christian feels at home when he gets among characters of like nature. The dove mourns in the absence of its mate; and the character which the Holy Spirit gives to us is such as to make us mourn when our Lord Jesus is away, so that we have no rest if we be separated from Him. You cannot have this character except by the personal application of the Holy Spirit to your heart. (T. Gamble.) The Holy Spirit descending like a dove I. First, as the brooding of the Spirit of God upon the face of the deep produced order and life in the beginning, so does He impart new life to the soul, and open the eyes of the understanding, that we may behold the wonders of God’ s law. II. Again: In the fact that the Holy Ghost descended upon the Lord Jesus in the form of a dove, we are reminded that quietness is often essential to many of the operations of grace. “ A very restless person Will never be very godly, and a very godly one will never be very restless. ‘ Be still, and know that I am God.’” III. Another point suggested by the text is, that as the dove is an appropriate emblem of love, so the soul which is influenced by the blessed Spirit will abound in love to God, and love to His people. The steeple of an old village church was to be pulled down, in order to prepare the way for some modern improvements, and a long rope was fastened near the top of it, that it might be kept from crushing the building in its fall. Soon everything was ready, and the master-carpenter shouted aloud to the men to pull. As the old steeple began to tremble, and sway from side to side, a beautiful white dove was observed to fly round and round, not daring to go in at its accustomed place, and yet evidently unwilling to depart. She seemed to be aware that a great calamity was about to happen, while a hundred voices shouted, “ See that dove!” “ Poor thing!” the head carpenter observed, “ she must have young ones up in the steeple.” Again the workmen gave a vigorous tug at the rope, and the old steeple reeled and tottered. The distress of the poor dove became so great, that every one felt sorry for her, and not a word was spoken. The bird hovered a moment on her wings, and at the instant that the creaking timbers began to topple over, she darted into the steeple and was hid from view. When the rubbish was cleared away, she was found lying between her two young ones--all three crushed to death I The devoted bird was willing to die with and for them, but she could not save them. There was a spectacle of devoted love--love even unto death! IV. I remark, in the fourth place, that the descent of the Holy Spirit, in the form of a dove, should remind us that gentleness is a distinguishing mark of Christian character in which most of us have very much to learn. Audubon, the ornithologist, relates this incident in his autobiography: “ A man, who was once a pirate, assured me that several times, while at certain wells dug in the burning, shelly sands, the soft and melancholy notes of the doves awoke in his heart feelings which had long slumberbed, melting his heart to repentance. So deeply was he moved by them--the only soothing sounds he had ever heard during his life of horrors--that through them he was induced to escape from his vessel, abandon his turbulent companions, and return to a family deploring his absence, and he now lives in peace in the midst of his friends. ” “ I beseech you by the gentleness of Christ,” was St. Paul’ s exhortation to the Christians of Corinth (2 Corinthians 10:1); and, “ Gentleness,” he assures the Galatians (v. 22), is one of the prominent fruits of the Spirit. Henry Martyn, whose temper was naturally not the gentlest, wrote in his journal, “ I walked into the village where the boat stopped for the night, and found the worshippers of Call by the Sound of their drums and cymbals. I did not speak to them on account of their being Bangalees; but being invited to walk in by the Brahmins, I went within the railings, and asked a few questions about the idol. The Brahmin, who spoke bad Hindostanee, disputed with great heat, and his tongue ran faster than I could follow, and the people shouted applause. I continued to ask my questions, without making any remarks upon the answers … The man grew quite mild, and said it was “ good words,” and asked me seriously, at last, was idol-worship true or false? I felt it a matter of thankfulness that I could make known the truth of God, though but a stammerer; and this I also learned, that the power of gentleness is irresistible. Once more: the dove has always been the type of purity, and the Holy Spirit is the purifier of the heart. When He gains an entrance into it, sin and uncleanness must depart. (J. N. Norton, D. D.) The Holy Spirit like a dove So here the Spirit would appear in the shape of a dove, to note-- 1. What kind of Spirit Christ’ s was. 2. What kind of gifts they were which were collated and bestowed upon Him: and-- 3. What was the fruit of those gifts. (J. Taylor, D. D.) The Divine Spirit in the ministry Note, as Christ was set apart both by the ministry of man, and by the Spirit, by the visible appearance of which God would manifest that He was fitted thereunto; so in all those that are set apart by man to the ministry, must be an apparent descending of the Spirit though not in visible shape, yet in evident gifts and graces. (J. Taylor, D. D.) The Spirit of God like unto Himself The Spirit of God is everywhere like to Himself, both in the head and members, as the same juice is in the root and branches, in the tree and fruits. Look what were the fruits of the Spirit in Christ, the same also are in the members (Galatians 5:23). (J. Taylor, D. D.) The Divine Trinity engaged in redemption Here, then, for our further comfort, we have to consider how the three Persons of the Blessed Trinity concur together to work the great work of our redemption; for here is the Father designing, ordaining, proclaiming; here is the Son accepting, and the Holy Ghost anointing. (Bishop Cowper.) The Holy Ghost as dove The Spirit that descended on Jesus like a dove was to become, and became, when breathed abroad by Him, a consuming fire (Luke 3:16). Why, in its descent upon Him, was it the gentle brooding of a dove? May we not answer with a word, that in Him it encountered no sinful force, no mass of evil passion or unworthy disposition, to contend with; but only beautiful germs to develope, only rights, sympathies, and aspirations to encourage, and direct, and intensify? Yes; it found in Him only that which was accordant and congenial; the Holy Child to be expanded into the Holy Man; nothing contrary to it, the withstanding of which would have struck out a flame; nothing to burn against and burn up, in order to His perfecting; no false will of affections to be resisted by and to resist, until it was conquered. The Spirit from above just lighted and spread its wings, and sat brooding upon the Divine simplicity of the wholehearted Nazarene. True, He had to endure in Himself a fiery baptism, as the result of the descent upon Him from above. But it was through His contact, thus Spirit-charged, with the bad element surrounding Him, that He suffered what He suffered; not through the contact of the Spirit with any bad element in Him. It met with nothing in Him to cause a painful flame; touching which it had to become a purging devouring fire. It abode upon Him like a dove brooding over its nest. (S. A. Tipple.) Thou art My beloved Son, in Thee I am well pleased The voice from heaven I. THE PERSON WHOSE VOICE IT WAS IS GOD THE FATHER; for He saith, “ Thou art My beloved Son.” Every testimony receives validity and authority from the testator, therefore this must needs be sound and good. God had given testimony to Christ by many famous men, even all the prophets, and now lately by John Baptist, who was greater than a prophet, that Christ was greater than he; yea, more, had given testimony of Him by a multitude of heavenly angels (Luke 1:30; Luke 13:1-35). But not content with all this, He gives from heaven His own testimony of Him. 1. To strike us with reverence in receiving this testimony, which hath this privilege above other parts of Scripture, that it was uttered by God’ s own mouth, not by men or angels. 2. To confirm us in the truth of the testimony, proceeding from Him who is prima veritas, truth itself (not only true) in His essence, and much more in His words and works, who cannot be deceived, nor deceive us. 3. To show the necessity of believing this testimony, being the first and only principle in Christian religion, without which foundation laid can be no religion nor salvation, as we see in the Jews and Turks. That we might more firmly believe in the Son of God for life, God’ s own mouth testifieth so honourably of Him. 4. That such a glorious commendation of this testimony might stir up our best attention and affections in the unfolding of it, we have here the word of a King which was never stained, and that not uttered by any herald or a lord chancellor, but from His own mouth, which carrieth more weight with it. If God speak, woe to him that hears not. II. THE PLACE WHENCE--FROM HEAVEN. For these reasons: 1. For more authority to the person of Christ, whom God from heaven doth honour. And if God thus honour Him, how ought we to honour Him? 2 Peter 1:17.) He received of God the Father honour and glory, when there came such a voice to Him from the excellent glory, “ This is My beloved Son” ; which was verified not only in the time of His Transfiguration, but here also. 2. Because the testimony contains the sum of the whole gospel, to declare that the doctrine of the gospel, which Christ delivered to the world, was from heaven, because God from heaven so testifieth it to be. Wherein it differs from the doctrine of the Law, which, although God renewed from heaven in the tables of stone, yet was it written in the heart of man by nature. So was not the gospel. But as after the Fall it was immediately delivered by God to Adam in the promise, so here by the same voice from heaven confirmed to be Divine and heavenly. 3. In respect of us, that we should more carefully attend to the testimony itself proceeding from the excellent glory, and that from the mouth of the God of glory sitting in His chair of estate, seeing the word of a King in that place is more regarded. The contempt of the Law given upon Mount Sinai, in the hand of angels, was required at their hands; how shall they then escape that despise Him that speaketh from heaven? (Hebrews 2:2-3.) The Law being transgressed, the gospel from heaven moderateth and pardoneth a man; but the gospel from heaven being despised, what can plead for him? 4. To show the extent of the gospel, that it is to be preached, and binds to the faith of it all the people under heaven. And herein it was not to be inferior to the Law, which God would have acknowledged His own by uttering it from heaven, and that not before He had sent Moses down, lest it should have been thought to be His, although it was so loud and piercing, as it could not possibly be but Divine, not human. III. THE MANNER OF THE --BY AN AUDIBLE AND VOICE. HOW the Father uttereth this voice it is needless to inquire, seeing we know that He who made the tongue can either speak without a tongue or by secret inspiration and revelation, as to Isaiah (2 Kings 20:4). or frame a tongue and organs of voice at His pleasure, to utter and make known His will and good pleasure to His creatures, or speak by creatures, as angels in human shape, or other creatures--sensible, as Balaam’ s ass; or insensible, as the bush of fire. It is much more material to inquire into the end and use of it, which was to make the Son of God known unto the world, that the faith of men might be fixed on Him for salvation. 1. Hence, note, in that the Lord from heaven teacheth by voice His wonderful care, that will not suffer us to want any means to help us in the knowledge of the means of salvation. He had taught them and us before, by the sense of sight, seeing the heavens opened, and the Spirit visibly descending; and now He teacheth the ear by a voice, for He knows our dulness, security, slow ness of heart to believe, and applies Himself every way to help us. He setteth out His glory by His works and creatures; He addeth His Word confirmed by many powerful miracles; to his audible Word He hath annexed His visible Word, the sacraments; He hath set up a constant ministry in His Church, and every way fitted it to the edification of His people, as so He may now say, What could I do more for thee, O Israel? Is God thus careful of our profiting every way? Then how damnable and excuseless shall the carelessness of the most be in the matter of their salvation I In which regard it had been good for many a man that God had never made His will known to him, that he never had heard the Word, or received the sacraments, for all but tend to his deeper condemnation, because of his neglect and formal use. When our Saviour said of Judas, “ It had been good for him he had never been born,” did not He in effect say the same, It bad been good for him he had never been a disciple of Christ, never had heard Christ, or preached Christ, because the more excellent means he had, the greater was his sin and judgment. Again, hereby God cleareth His righteous judgment in the just damnation of the wicked and unbelievers. O Israel, thy destruction is of thyself. Say not, What can I remedy it, if God will not save me? Nay, what can God do more than He hath done? He hath given thee strong and excellent means, and preached the gospel from heaven by His own mouth, and sent it to all nations under heaven in their own language in an audible and intelligible voice. If thou wilt now wilfully refuse the means, thy blood be upon thy own head; that which will die, let it die. Thou art in the sea of thy sins, ready to be drowned, good help is offered, but thou refusest it, and must die in thy sin. Thy case is that of Jerusalem: “ How often would I have gathered thee, and thou wouldst not!” 2. Note, that it is God’ s pleasure that we should be taught the matter of salvation by voice, and attend to that. Here was a visible opening of the heavens, a glorious presence of the Spirit in the shape of a dove resting on Christ; but when the Lord will have Christ published and proclaimed the Messiah, this must be done by voice. “ Thou heardest a voice, but sawest no image, therefore take heed to thyself, and corrupt not thyself by any image” (Deuteronomy 4:12; Deuteronomy 4:14). 1. Herein His mercy hath appointed a familiar and fit instruction, meet for our weakness, not coming to His Church in His own Majesty. 2. Herein He advanced our nature, teaching us great mysteries by such as ourselves, sanctifying the tongues of men, and not angels. 3. Herein He magnifies His power, who by so weak means worketh salvation. Earthen vessels are used, that the power may be seen to be of 2 Corinthians 4:7). The voice of men by God’ s power conquers the world. 4. Hereby He tries our obedience, whether we will yield to a weak voice, whereas He might force us by power. Reasons: If God look on us in our selves, and in the common mass, we are so covered over with sin, as He must needs pronounce of us as once He did of mankind, “ It repenteth Me that I have made man.” He must needs bring the curse of the Law on our necks. But looking on us through Christ, He changeth His voice, that as when we behold a thing through a red, or green, or coloured glass, everything looks as the colour of the glass. So God beholding us through Christ, we receive the dye and tincture of His blood and obedience, and so are justified and accounted innocent and pure. And thus, as it is said of the Church (Ezekiel 16:14),we recover our former beauty, which is made perfect through His beauty. (T. Taylor, D. D.) Thirty years of age Years of silence and preparation In the humble home at Nazareth Jesus spent thirty years; most marvellous in this, that nothing marvellous is recorded of them. Goodness was so perfect, duty so evenly performed, the lustre of holiness so mild and steady, that brothers and sisters and rude Nazarene neighbours came to take all this as a matter of course, saw in it nothing superhuman; and when at last the disguise was laid aside, and the prophet-king of Israel, the promised Messiah, stood unveiled, they could still only stupidly ask, “ Is not this Jesus, the carpenter?” Imagination may strive to withdraw the veil which inspiration has left drawn over these thirty years--the precious episode of the visit to Jerusalem. For some minds the attempt will have an irresistible fascination, to others it will be utterly distasteful; and neither may judge the other. But faith and love should never lose sight of the lessons which speak in the very silence of those years. Ten times as much of life as our Lord Jesus occupied in public ministry He spent in private life, preaching no sermon, initiating no public movement, working no miracle. The Divine ideal of perfect holiness in childhood, youth, and manhood was realized during thirty years in a life of obscure privacy, mechanical toil, and home affection and duty. (E. This entry is longer than a Bible module can hold. The rest is at https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/bi/ Luke 3:23; Luke 3:38 Which was the son of Adam, which was the son of God Genealogies As we glance through the list of names given in these chapters (Matthew 1:1-25. and Luke 3:1-38.), we see that few could claim a higher descent than could the carpenter Joseph and the gentle woman to whom he was espoused. They were both lineally descended from the ancient kings of the proud tribe of Judah--from Solomon and David--and, going further back, from the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob--from Shorn, from Seth, from Adam. Their family tree in one place covered a space of 2,000 years; in another of more than 4,000 years. Yet they were poor, humble, unrecognized. In the lapse of time there are fluctuations and undulations. While some families have their flows, others have their ebbs. While some rise in wealth and consequent honour, others glide into poverty and insignificance. The old stock wears out, the new tree takes its place. The world, constituted as it is, recognizes lineage only when it is accompanied by wealth. By itself it is a voice from the past, and nothing more. Could we read the history of men’ s lives, and trace their descent, we should have plenty of examples of this. We see it in our own times. Examples crowd on us without difficulty. It is not long since the gallant son of an emperor died as a simple soldier in the British uniform. It is asserted that the last scion of a kingly race, sprung from the warrior Cid, eked out a miserable existence--neglected, half-starved--in London, where he died a few years ago.The descendants of one of the most remarkable men of the sixteenth century are a poor peasant family in a Midland County to-day--decent folk enough, but certainly “ unhonoured and unsung.” Such was the case with the gentle Mary of Nazareth. Some people boast of their patrician birth. The boasting, at least, confers no merit upon them. If Mary wished, she might with reason have boasted too. Though a peasant, she sprang from kings; though poor, her ancestors were wealthy; though humble, one of her forefathers was the wisest of men. But her claim to honour came not from the past--it was reflected back from the future. It was not due to the long line of an unbroken pedigree, but from Him she was to bear … With the exception of the two of our Lord, there are no genealogies in the New Testament, whereas there are several in the Old Testament. Moreover, St. Paul, himself descended from Jacob’ s youngest son, wrote this counsel to Timothy, “ Neither give heed to endless genealogies,” and to Titus, “ Avoid foolish question and genealogies … for they are unprofitable and vain.” Is there no significance in this? Family records were scrupulously guarded under Judaism; they were ignored, even condemned, under Christianity. Why so? Because Christianity’ s principle sweeps away all walls of partition, blots out all records, tears down all red lines which may separate man from man. Christianity teaches that each and every man, whoever he be, is a brother; and each and every woman a sister. Christianity abrogates and denounces whatever tends to pride, or assumption, or superciliousness, or self-conceit. It teaches that in God’ s sight, prince and beggar, patrician and peasant, are on the same level. It teaches gentleness and thoughtfulness and politeness towards all. It teaches that the highest claim to descent is to be a true child of God; the highest society, true membership with Christ; the highest inheritance, that which we have if we only keep it--the kingdom of heaven. (C. E. Drought, M. A.) The genealogies in Matthew and Luke In the first Gospel the genealogy of Jesus is placed at the very beginning of the narrative. This is easily explained. From the point of view indicated by theocratic forms, scriptural antecedents, and, if we may so express it, Jewish etiquette, the Messiah was to be a descendant of David and Abraham (Matthew 1:1.) This relationship was the sine qua non of His civil status. It is not so easy to understand why Luke thought he must give the genealogy of Jesus, and why he places it just here, between the baptism and the temptation. Perhaps, if we bear in mind the obscurity in which, to the Greeks, the origin of mankind was hidden, and the absurd fables current among them about autochthonic nations, we shall see how interesting any document would be to them, which, following the track of actual names, went back to the first father of the race. Luke’ s intention would thus be very nearly the same as Paul’ s, when he said at Athens (Acts 17:26), “ God hath made of one blood the whole human race.” But from a strictly religious point of view, this genealogy possessed still greater importance. In carrying it back not only, as Matthew does, as far as Abraham, but even to Adam, Luke lays the foundation of that universality of redemption which is to be one of the characteristic features of the picture he is about to draw. In this way he places in close and indissoluble connection the imperfect image created in Adam which reappears in every man, and his perfect image realized in Christ which is to be reproduced in all men. But why does Luke place this document here? Because now Jesus enters personally on the scene to commence His proper work. With the baptism, the obscurity in which He has lived until now passes away; He now appears detached from the circle of persons who have hitherto surrounded Him and acted as His patrons--viz., His parents and the forerunner. He henceforth becomes the He (verse 23), the principal personage of the narrative. This is the moment which very properly appears to the author most suitable for giving His genealogy. The genealogy of Moses, in the Exodus, is placed in the same way, not at the opening of his biography, but at the moment when he appears on the stage of history, when he presents himself before Pharaoh. In crossing the threshold of this new era, the sacred historian casts a general glance over the period which thus reaches its close, and sums it up in this document, which might be called the mortuary register of the earlier humanity. There is, further, a difference of form between the two genealogies. Matthew comes down, while Luke ascends the stream of generations. Perhaps this difference of method depends on the difference of religious position between the Jews and the Greeks. The Jew, finding the basis of his thought in a revelation, proceeds synthetically from cause to effect; the Greek, possessing nothing beyond the fact, analyzes it, that he may proceed from effect to cause. But this difference depends more probably still on another circumstance. Every official genealogical register must present the descending form; for individuals are only inscribed in it as they are born. The ascending form of genealogy can only he that of a private instrument, drawn up from the public document with a view to the particular individual whose name serves as the starting-point of the whole list. It follows that in Matthew we have the exact copy of the official register; while Luke gives us a document extracted from the public records, and compiled with a view to the person with whom the genealogy commences. (F. Godet, D. D.) The double genealogies of Christ as the Son of David The general facts are these-- 1. The genealogy in St. Matthew descends from Abraham to Jesus, in accordance with his object in writing mainly for the Jews; whereas St. Luke’ s ascends from Jesus to Adam, and to God, in accordance with his object in writing for the world in general. 2. The generations are introduced in St. Matthew by the word “ begat” ; in St. Luke by the genitive with the ellipse of “ son.” 3. Between David and Zerubbabel St. Matthew gives only fifteen names, but St. Luke twenty-one; and they are all different except that of Shealtiel (Salathiel). 4. Between Zerubbabel and Joseph St. Matthew gives only nine generations, but St. Luke seventeen; and all the names are different. The difficulty as to the number of the generations is not serious. It is a matter of daily experience that the number of generations in one line often increases far more rapidly than that in another. Moreover the discrepancies in these two lists may all be accounted for by noticing that Matthew adopts the common Jewish plan of an arbitrary numerical division into tesseradecads. When this system was adopted, whole’ generations were freely omitted, for the sake of preserving the symmetry, provided that the fact of the succession remained undoubted (cf. Ezra 7:1-5 with 1 Chronicles 6:3-15). The difficulty as to the dissimilarity of names will of course only affect the two steps of the genealogies at which they begin to diverge, before they again coalesce in the names of Shealtiel and of Joseph. A single adoption, and a single levirate marriage, account for the apparent discrepancies. St. Matthew gives the legal descent through a line of kings descended from Solomon--the jus successionis; St. Luke the natural descent--the jus sanguinis. St. Matthew’ s is a royal, St. Luke’ s a natural pedigree. (Archdeacon Farrar.) Our Lord’ s descent 1. These verses completely establish that essential point in the evidence of the Messiahship of Jesus, viz., His descent from David, Judah, and Abraham. Let this confirm our faith in His Divine mission; let us give our careful attention and firm adherence to the exact and particular doctrines which He teaches; and show a ready obedience to the precepts which He enjoins. 2. Among the ancestors of our Lord, there are found persons of various descriptions and characters. (1) Though His line frequently runs through the elder brother, it also often runs through a younger brother of the family, which shows that God follows His own sovereign will, and in the course of His providence often makes the first last and the last first, putting down the great and exalting those of low degree. (2) In this genealogy, too, are found some who were originally Gentiles, and strangers to the covenants of promise, as Rahab and Ruth; a circumstance which gave early proof that in Jesus Christ there was to be neither Greek nor Jew, and that the blessings of His salvation were to be proposed to every nation under heaven. (3) In His pedigree there are found some individuals who were of abandoned character, and yet He was not thereby disgraced. (4) It shows that grace does not run through families, but is the special gift of God to individuals. (5) Our Lord’ s condescension in accepting such a descent. 3. A glance at these generations which have passed away, naturally suggests a variety of reflections--plaintive, humble, and instructive. (1) All must die. (2) The sad consequences of sin. (3) The vanity of the world. Some few of these obtained celebrity, but how little it avails them now! Of how many the memory, and even the name, has utterly perished! How miserable are they who have no name but that which is written in the earth, and no portion but for this life I Let us seek to gain a more substantial honour. (James Foote, M. A.) A binding corner-stone See what a binding corner-stone the Lord Jesus is, knitting together not man to man only, Gentiles with Jews, but man with God also; and that not by a personal union only, which He hath perfected in Himself, but by a spiritual union also by which He unites all the members of His mystical body in a blessed peace and fellowship with God; and this hath He now begun, and shall perfect in the end. (Bishop Cowper.) From Christ according to the Spirit Then our instruction is, that though neither our names nor our fathers, be in the catalogue of Christ’ s progenitors; yet if we be in the roll of His children and brethren, we shall have comfort sufficient: though He be not come of us according to the flesh, if we be come from Him, according to the Spirit, as His sons and daughters by regeneration, we shall be blessed in Him, even as they were. (Bishop Cowper.) The genealogical table A mournful yet instructive study. Take a few of the reflections arising from such a study. 1. Every individual life belongs to the great whole--the solemn ever-rolling stream of human being. No man liveth unto himself; we transmit power, weakness, even depravity. 2. Though the individual dies, the race moves on; no one being is essential to the continuance of the world; the greatest dies, yet the world hardly misses the service of his industrious hand; the most eloquent ceases his speech, yet the roar in the living air is none the less. 3. How few men of surpassing reputation there have ever been, considering the innumerable hosts of human generations; how few of these names do we know anything about--only one here and there, as David, Abraham, Enoch; but of the mass, who knows anything? 4. Yet there may be great usefulness where there is no renown; our names will perish when we cease to live, yet within the limits of our day, how much good may we do! 5. Even though a great succession may seem to be interrupted, or to have died cut, it may revive again. In this table we come to very low points, yet how the life rises, how the glory returns! “ Cast down, but not destroyed.” It is often thus with the spiritual seed of the Messiah, yet there has ever been a seed to serve Him, and a remnant to uphold the honour of His name. (J. Parker, D. D.) The genealogy of Christ We learn: I. GOD’ S TO HIS PROMISE. II. THE ETERNAL NEVER WORKS . III. THE HUMAN RACE IS VERY CLOSELY . IV. THE OF DEATH. V. THE ALL- OF CHRIST’ S MISSION. VI. CHRIST THE APEX OF THIS PYRAMID AND THE CROWN AND GLORY OF THE RACE. (J. Ossian Davies.) Sacred and secular Jewish names The following possible explanation of the divergencies between the two genealogies of our Lord is deserving of consideration. The Jews, like other nations, gave more than one name to each individual. The life of a Jew was essentially twofold: he was a member of a civil state, and he was at the same time a member of a theocracy; his life was both political and religious. This distinction seems to have been preserved in the giving of names. Traces of the double name are found throughout the course of Scripture history. It is highly probable that the sacred name imposed at birth would be entered in a different list from the common name by which a man was known in his civil relationships. The conclusion to which we are brought is that we have before us two such registers, one drawn from public, and the other from private sources; or, as is conjectured above, one from a civil genealogy, the other from writings laid up in the Temple. In support of this view, we may note that in the genealogy in Luke--the evangelist whose opening chapters show a close familiarity with the interior of the Temple, and what took place there--the names appear to have a sacred character. Even an English reader may remark at a glance the different aspect of the two lists. That in Luke contains, with striking frequency, the familiar names of distinguished patriarchs, prophets, and priests, and thus confirms the impression that his genealogy, rather than that of a Matthew, is of a purely religious character. This hypothesis receives a remarkable confirmation by a comparison of the dates of the two lists with the dates of the first building, the destruction, and the second building of the Temple. What, then, is the relation between the two genealogies before Solomon’ s time, when there was no Temple? and during the lives of Salathiel and Zorobabel, who flourished at the time of the Babylonish captivity, when again, for seventy years, there was no Temple? It is precisely at these periods that only one list exists. The divergence in Luke’ s genealogy from that of Matthew is exactly coincident with the periods during which the Temple was standing. What explanation of this striking fact can be more natural than that at the point where the two genealogies unite there was but one list to refer to, and that the absence of entries in the sacred register required it to be supplemented by a reference to the state chronicles? (Biblical things not generally known.) Luke carefully guards against the notion of this being the real descent, by introducing the words “ as was supposed” ; it was the legal descent, Joseph being legally the Lord’ s father; and from Joseph as the supposed father, St. Luke carries up the pedigree to the commencement of all things, that is, the creation of the man. Matthew brings down the descent from Abraham; Luke carries it up to Adam and so to God; and as the descent from Abraham was the most important for those children of Abraham who were looking for the fulfilment of the promises made to their forefathers, so the possibility of ascending to Adam and to God was the most important fact for the race of mankind at large, who had all fallen in Adam, and all looked for redemption through Christ. Dry as the long list of names in Luke may seem, it may truly be said that no passage of Scripture contains more of the essence of the gospel; Jesus is the true second Adam, because He is linked with the first; Jesus and Adam are the two heads of the human race, and they are both of them sons of God, Adam by creation, Jesus Christ by eternal generation; and so it may be said that the genealogical chain, by which Luke linked the first Adam and the second Adam together, is that chain upon which the redemption of mankind and all human hopes depend. (Bishop Harvey Goodwin.) Why have we Joseph’ s genealogy, not Mary’ s? If Joseph’ s genealogy, as presented in either of the Gospels, determines our Lord’ s birth as the lineal descendant of David, and the legal heir to the throne, his genealogy is all-important; while that of Mary, as it would not, according to Hebrew law, have decided the question of descent, would have been invalid as a document. “ Familia matris nonfamilia” is an ancient maxim among the Jews, and it has Divine sanction (see Numbers 1:26). The law that descent is reckoned on the father’ s side only, “Filius sequitur patrem” --a law recognized by all civilized nations--is not contradicted by the one or two exceptional instances in which the name of a woman’ s ancestor was adopted by her husband and transmitted to her offspring (Numbers 32:41; comp. 1 Chronicles 2:21-23; Ezra 2:61). A descent of this kind was not counted a true descent in any case in which the genealogy was sought (see Ezra 2:62), and gave no legal claim. Joseph is distinctly honoured, in the Scripture, with the recognition of his legal parentage of Jesus. (G. W. Butler, D. D.) The Divine root of the human pedigree The pedigree of our Lord, as given by the Evangelist of the Gentiles, ends with a wonderful leap, a leap from earth to heaven. Noah was the son of Lamech, &c., &e. Enos was the son of Seth, Seth was the son of Adam, Adam was the son of--God. There is no bolder word in Scripture, none that strikes us with a deeper surprise and awe. Most of us have, doubtless, wondered at times why, when space was so valuable, Luke should have inserted in his Gospel “ this barren list of names.” But the pedigree is of immense value, if for nothing else, yet for this, that it connects the second Adam with the first, that it places a son of God at either end of the list; that it makes us out to be the children of God both by nature and by grace, by birth and by second birth. For, of course, if Adam was the son of God, we are all the children of God, since we are all children of Adam; there is a Divine element in our nature as well as a human element, a capacity for life and holiness as well as a liability to sin and death. In the light of our text-- I. EVEN THE MOST FACTS OF OUR INWARD GROW A LITTLE MORE CLEAR TO US. Double or divided nature of which every man is conscious. In worst of men something good; something bad even in best. That which is good we derive from God, our true Father, the sole source and fountain of good; that which is evil in us we inherit not from Adam only, but from all our earthly parents. II. SO DOES THE DEEPEST OF THE NEW BECOME CLEARER TO US: the philosophy which underlies the teaching of our Lord and of the two greatest of His interpreters, St. Paul and St. John. That teaching may be briefly summed up thus: Christ is the Eternal Word by whom all things were created, by whom therefore Adam, or man, was created. Hence Christ is, as St. Paul calls Him, the Head of every man. It is in Him that we live and move and have our being. Then, too, we begin to understand all those difficult and perplexing passages in the writings of St. Paul, which declare our essential oneness with Christ. The second Adam was before the first Adam, and called Him into being. Hence He could die for all. Hence He lives for all, and we all live in and by Him. In short, all the sentences of the New Testament, which have sounded most mystical and obscure, and which may have seemed too good to be literally true, become true and plain to us so soon as we understand that Adam was the son of God, and that Adam was made by Him without whom nothing was made, and apart from whom nothing can subsist. III. THE OUTCOME OF THESE IS MOST WELCOME AND MOST to as many of us as love life and desire to see good. For, however weak and sinful we may be, we have not, as we sometimes fear, to persuade God to enter into a fatherly relation to us, and to begin to love us. He is our Father; He does love us. Nor have we, as we still oftener fear, to ask Him to redeem us from the yoke and tyranny of our sins. He has redeemed both us and all men, once for all, by the incarnation and sacrifice of Jesus Christ our Maker, our Head, and therefore our Representative. We have only to recognize existing and accomplished facts. We bare only to believe that He is our Father, has been our Father ever since we had any being, and can never cease to be our Father. We have only to accept the salvation He has wrought, and which stands waiting for us and urging itself upon us. There need be, there can be, no change in God, or in the Son of God; it is we in whom a change is wanted. They are, they have done, they are doing, all that we can desire them to be or do. And so soon as we know that, and believe it, we shall become all that we desire to be, and receive all that we long to enjoy. (S. Cox, D. D.) The two genealogies of Jesus Christ And yet in these very genealogies of Jesus Christ there are hinted profound truths well worthy of our most serious consideration. Let us rapidly glance at some of them. I. And, first, THE FACT THAT THERE IS ANY AT ALL IS . For it is conceivable that the Son of God might have descended into the world an unborn Gabriel, or a full-grown, unmothered Adam. The Word has indeed become flesh, bone of our bones and flesh of our flesh. II. Again, observe THE ITSELF. How many and striking its vicissitudes! How thrilling some of its names! How momentous some of the events it recalls! Glance for a moment at some of these peculiarities. For example, how profound the obscurity and hinted shame which rested over Bethlehem’ s manger, as suggested by the evangelist’ s comment: “ Being, as was supposed, the son of Joseph.” How homely His descent, as indicated by the fact that eighteen of His immediate ancestors are unknown except by name! How illustrious His descent, as indicated in such names as Zerubbabel, Josiah, Hezekiah, Jehoshaphat, Solomon, David, Boaz, Jacob, Abraham, Noab, Enoch, Seth, Adam! What dark scenes in Hebrew history are recalled by such names as Jehoiachin, Amon, Manasseh, Ahaz, Jehoram, Rehoboam, Bathsheba, Tamar! How thrilling the vicissitudes of David’ s line, as vibrating in the stories of Rehoboam, Joash, Esther, the Maccabees, the Virgin Mary! Verily, the genealogy of Jesus Christ is a book of startling providences. And it is a significant fact that, since the birth of the Divine Man, the Davidic pedigree has been hopelessly lost, so that none but Jesus of Bethlehem can claim from the Hebrew genealogical tables to be David’ s promised Son, and so David’ s Lord, even Jehovah’ s very Christ. But Jesus Christ was not only the Son of David and the Son of Abraham, He was also the Son of Adam even that seed of the woman who, as had been foretold by the gates of Eden, would crush the serpent’ s head. Thus, the genealogy of Jesus Christ includes all extremes and all vicissitudes, so that he is in very truth the Son of man. And not only is He the Son of man, He is also the Son of God. III. Lastly, THE OF JESUS CHRIST IS THE OLDEST IN THE WORLD. Men think it a great thing to have an ancient lineage. But here is a lineage which is older than that of William of Normandy, or Romulus, or Priam, or Nimrod, or Adam. Verily, His goings forth have been from of old--from the days of eternity. Verily, here is the Ancient of Days. Ah! the true heraldry is the device of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world; the true shield is the crimson escutcheon of the Cross. Dost thou, O friend, belong to the lineage of Jesus Christ? If so, thy name has already been entered in the heavenly register, even the Lamb’ s roll of life. Live, then, worthily of thy sonship. (G. D. Beardman.) Thoughts I. THERE IS MUCH IN GOOD LINEAGE. Virtues and vices are borne along on the current of blood from generation to generation. Such is the energy of moral qualities that they may be modified but rarely eradicated by transmission from parent to child. As surely as the blood of the racer tells in its fleet-footed offspring, the virtues and vices of David are felt down the line of his generation. II. SIN HAS TAINTED THE BLOOD OF THE BEST RACES OF MEN, and frequently makes itself manifest. All have sinned and have come short of the glory of God. There is no exception. III. GOD’ S GRACE CAN FLOW THROUGH VERY CROOKED HUMAN . Men who are spiritually dwarfed and ill-shaped can be made, in God’ s providence, to help along very strait principles and policies. God makes manifest His great wisdom and power by the vastness of the results He works out through weak human instrumentalities. What could be meaner and more cruel than the murder of Uriah by David? Yet God made the wife of this murdered man the channel through which the blood of Abraham flowed into the veins of Joseph. IV. No MAN STANDS ALONE. We are all parts of a vast organism. Asa and Jothan and Solomon each saw the life which he lived from his birth to his grave; but this was not the most important part of his life. That which followed his death, that which he lived in his descendants, was more far-reaching and wrought still greater results. (American Homiletic Review.) . Luke 3:23; Luke 3:38 Which was the son of Adam, which was the son of God Genealogies As we glance through the list of names given in these chapters (Matthew 1:1-25. and Luke 3:1-38.), we see that few could claim a higher descent than could the carpenter Joseph and the gentle woman to whom he was espoused. They were both lineally descended from the ancient kings of the proud tribe of Judah--from Solomon and David--and, going further back, from the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob--from Shorn, from Seth, from Adam. Their family tree in one place covered a space of 2,000 years; in another of more than 4,000 years. Yet they were poor, humble, unrecognized. In the lapse of time there are fluctuations and undulations. While some families have their flows, others have their ebbs. While some rise in wealth and consequent honour, others glide into poverty and insignificance. The old stock wears out, the new tree takes its place. The world, constituted as it is, recognizes lineage only when it is accompanied by wealth. By itself it is a voice from the past, and nothing more. Could we read the history of men’ s lives, and trace their descent, we should have plenty of examples of this. We see it in our own times. Examples crowd on us without difficulty. It is not long since the gallant son of an emperor died as a simple soldier in the British uniform. It is asserted that the last scion of a kingly race, sprung from the warrior Cid, eked out a miserable existence--neglected, half-starved--in London, where he died a few years ago.The descendants of one of the most remarkable men of the sixteenth century are a poor peasant family in a Midland County to-day--decent folk enough, but certainly “ unhonoured and unsung.” Such was the case with the gentle Mary of Nazareth. Some people boast of their patrician birth. The boasting, at least, confers no merit upon them. If Mary wished, she might with reason have boasted too. Though a peasant, she sprang from kings; though poor, her ancestors were wealthy; though humble, one of her forefathers was the wisest of men. But her claim to honour came not from the past--it was reflected back from the future. It was not due to the long line of an unbroken pedigree, but from Him she was to bear … With the exception of the two of our Lord, there are no genealogies in the New Testament, whereas there are several in the Old Testament. Moreover, St. Paul, himself descended from Jacob’ s youngest son, wrote this counsel to Timothy, “ Neither give heed to endless genealogies,” and to Titus, “ Avoid foolish question and genealogies … for they are unprofitable and vain.” Is there no significance in this? Family records were scrupulously guarded under Judaism; they were ignored, even condemned, under Christianity. Why so? Because Christianity’ s principle sweeps away all walls of partition, blots out all records, tears down all red lines which may separate man from man. Christianity teaches that each and every man, whoever he be, is a brother; and each and every woman a sister. Christianity abrogates and denounces whatever tends to pride, or assumption, or superciliousness, or self-conceit. It teaches that in God’ s sight, prince and beggar, patrician and peasant, are on the same level. It teaches gentleness and thoughtfulness and politeness towards all. It teaches that the highest claim to descent is to be a true child of God; the highest society, true membership with Christ; the highest inheritance, that which we have if we only keep it--the kingdom of heaven. (C. E. Drought, M. A.) The genealogies in Matthew and Luke In the first Gospel the genealogy of Jesus is placed at the very beginning of the narrative. This is easily explained. From the point of view indicated by theocratic forms, scriptural antecedents, and, if we may so express it, Jewish etiquette, the Messiah was to be a descendant of David and Abraham (Matthew 1:1.) This relationship was the sine qua non of His civil status. It is not so easy to understand why Luke thought he must give the genealogy of Jesus, and why he places it just here, between the baptism and the temptation. Perhaps, if we bear in mind the obscurity in which, to the Greeks, the origin of mankind was hidden, and the absurd fables current among them about autochthonic nations, we shall see how interesting any document would be to them, which, following the track of actual names, went back to the first father of the race. Luke’ s intention would thus be very nearly the same as Paul’ s, when he said at Athens (Acts 17:26), “ God hath made of one blood the whole human race.” But from a strictly religious point of view, this genealogy possessed still greater importance. In carrying it back not only, as Matthew does, as far as Abraham, but even to Adam, Luke lays the foundation of that universality of redemption which is to be one of the characteristic features of the picture he is about to draw. In this way he places in close and indissoluble connection the imperfect image created in Adam which reappears in every man, and his perfect image realized in Christ which is to be reproduced in all men. But why does Luke place this document here? Because now Jesus enters personally on the scene to commence His proper work. With the baptism, the obscurity in which He has lived until now passes away; He now appears detached from the circle of persons who have hitherto surrounded Him and acted as His patrons--viz., His parents and the forerunner. He henceforth becomes the He (verse 23), the principal personage of the narrative. This is the moment which very properly appears to the author most suitable for giving His genealogy. The genealogy of Moses, in the Exodus, is placed in the same way, not at the opening of his biography, but at the moment when he appears on the stage of history, when he presents himself before Pharaoh. In crossing the threshold of this new era, the sacred historian casts a general glance over the period which thus reaches its close, and sums it up in this document, which might be called the mortuary register of the earlier humanity. There is, further, a difference of form between the two genealogies. Matthew comes down, while Luke ascends the stream of generations. Perhaps this difference of method depends on the difference of religious position between the Jews and the Greeks. The Jew, finding the basis of his thought in a revelation, proceeds synthetically from cause to effect; the Greek, possessing nothing beyond the fact, analyzes it, that he may proceed from effect to cause. But this difference depends more probably still on another circumstance. Every official genealogical register must present the descending form; for individuals are only inscribed in it as they are born. The ascending form of genealogy can only he that of a private instrument, drawn up from the public document with a view to the particular individual whose name serves as the starting-point of the whole list. It follows that in Matthew we have the exact copy of the official register; while Luke gives us a document extracted from the public records, and compiled with a view to the person with whom the genealogy commences. (F. Godet, D. D.) The double genealogies of Christ as the Son of David The general facts are these-- 1. The genealogy in St. Matthew descends from Abraham to Jesus, in accordance with his object in writing mainly for the Jews; whereas St. Luke’ s ascends from Jesus to Adam, and to God, in accordance with his object in writing for the world in general. 2. The generations are introduced in St. Matthew by the word “ begat” ; in St. Luke by the genitive with the ellipse of “ son.” 3. Between David and Zerubbabel St. Matthew gives only fifteen names, but St. Luke twenty-one; and they are all different except that of Shealtiel (Salathiel). 4. Between Zerubbabel and Joseph St. Matthew gives only nine generations, but St. Luke seventeen; and all the names are different. The difficulty as to the number of the generations is not serious. It is a matter of daily experience that the number of generations in one line often increases far more rapidly than that in another. Moreover the discrepancies in these two lists may all be accounted for by noticing that Matthew adopts the common Jewish plan of an arbitrary numerical division into tesseradecads. When this system was adopted, whole’ generations were freely omitted, for the sake of preserving the symmetry, provided that the fact of the succession remained undoubted (cf. Ezra 7:1-5 with 1 Chronicles 6:3-15). The difficulty as to the dissimilarity of names will of course only affect the two steps of the genealogies at which they begin to diverge, before they again coalesce in the names of Shealtiel and of Joseph. A single adoption, and a single levirate marriage, account for the apparent discrepancies. St. Matthew gives the legal descent through a line of kings descended from Solomon--the jus successionis; St. Luke the natural descent--the jus sanguinis. St. Matthew’ s is a royal, St. Luke’ s a natural pedigree. (Archdeacon Farrar.) Our Lord’ s descent 1. These verses completely establish that essential point in the evidence of the Messiahship of Jesus, viz., His descent from David, Judah, and Abraham. Let this confirm our faith in His Divine mission; let us give our careful attention and firm adherence to the exact and particular doctrines which He teaches; and show a ready obedience to the precepts which He enjoins. 2. Among the ancestors of our Lord, there are found persons of various descriptions and characters. (1) Though His line frequently runs through the elder brother, it also often runs through a younger brother of the family, which shows that God follows His own sovereign will, and in the course of His providence often makes the first last and the last first, putting down the great and exalting those of low degree. (2) In this genealogy, too, are found some who were originally Gentiles, and strangers to the covenants of promise, as Rahab and Ruth; a circumstance which gave early proof that in Jesus Christ there was to be neither Greek nor Jew, and that the blessings of His salvation were to be proposed to every nation under heaven. (3) In His pedigree there are found some individuals who were of abandoned character, and yet He was not thereby disgraced. (4) It shows that grace does not run through families, but is the special gift of God to individuals. (5) Our Lord’ s condescension in accepting such a descent. 3. A glance at these generations which have passed away, naturally suggests a variety of reflections--plaintive, humble, and instructive. (1) All must die. (2) The sad consequences of sin. (3) The vanity of the world. Some few of these obtained celebrity, but how little it avails them now! Of how many the memory, and even the name, has utterly perished! How miserable are they who have no name but that which is written in the earth, and no portion but for this life I Let us seek to gain a more substantial honour. (James Foote, M. A.) A binding corner-stone See what a binding corner-stone the Lord Jesus is, knitting together not man to man only, Gentiles with Jews, but man with God also; and that not by a personal union only, which He hath perfected in Himself, but by a spiritual union also by which He unites all the members of His mystical body in a blessed peace and fellowship with God; and this hath He now begun, and shall perfect in the end. (Bishop Cowper.) From Christ according to the Spirit Then our instruction is, that though neither our names nor our fathers, be in the catalogue of Christ’ s progenitors; yet if we be in the roll of His children and brethren, we shall have comfort sufficient: though He be not come of us according to the flesh, if we be come from Him, according to the Spirit, as His sons and daughters by regeneration, we shall be blessed in Him, even as they were. (Bishop Cowper.) The genealogical table A mournful yet instructive study. Take a few of the reflections arising from such a study. 1. Every individual life belongs to the great whole--the solemn ever-rolling stream of human being. No man liveth unto himself; we transmit power, weakness, even depravity. 2. Though the individual dies, the race moves on; no one being is essential to the continuance of the world; the greatest dies, yet the world hardly misses the service of his industrious hand; the most eloquent ceases his speech, yet the roar in the living air is none the less. 3. How few men of surpassing reputation there have ever been, considering the innumerable hosts of human generations; how few of these names do we know anything about--only one here and there, as David, Abraham, Enoch; but of the mass, who knows anything? 4. Yet there may be great usefulness where there is no renown; our names will perish when we cease to live, yet within the limits of our day, how much good may we do! 5. Even though a great succession may seem to be interrupted, or to have died cut, it may revive again. In this table we come to very low points, yet how the life rises, how the glory returns! “ Cast down, but not destroyed.” It is often thus with the spiritual seed of the Messiah, yet there has ever been a seed to serve Him, and a remnant to uphold the honour of His name. (J. Parker, D. D.) The genealogy of Christ We learn: I. GOD’ S TO HIS PROMISE. II. THE ETERNAL NEVER WORKS . III. THE HUMAN RACE IS VERY CLOSELY . IV. THE OF DEATH. V. THE ALL- OF CHRIST’ S MISSION. VI. CHRIST THE APEX OF THIS PYRAMID AND THE CROWN AND GLORY OF THE RACE. (J. Ossian Davies.) Sacred and secular Jewish names The following possible explanation of the divergencies between the two genealogies of our Lord is deserving of consideration. The Jews, like other nations, gave more than one name to each individual. The life of a Jew was essentially twofold: he was a member of a civil state, and he was at the same time a member of a theocracy; his life was both political and religious. This distinction seems to have been preserved in the giving of names. Traces of the double name are found throughout the course of Scripture history. It is highly probable that the sacred name imposed at birth would be entered in a different list from the common name by which a man was known in his civil relationships. The conclusion to which we are brought is that we have before us two such registers, one drawn from public, and the other from private sources; or, as is conjectured above, one from a civil genealogy, the other from writings laid up in the Temple. In support of this view, we may note that in the genealogy in Luke--the evangelist whose opening chapters show a close familiarity with the interior of the Temple, and what took place there--the names appear to have a sacred character. Even an English reader may remark at a glance the different aspect of the two lists. That in Luke contains, with striking frequency, the familiar names of distinguished patriarchs, prophets, and priests, and thus confirms the impression that his genealogy, rather than that of a Matthew, is of a purely religious character. This hypothesis receives a remarkable confirmation by a comparison of the dates of the two lists with the dates of the first building, the destruction, and the second building of the Temple. What, then, is the relation between the two genealogies before Solomon’ s time, when there was no Temple? and during the lives of Salathiel and Zorobabel, who flourished at the time of the Babylonish captivity, when again, for seventy years, there was no Temple? It is precisely at these periods that only one list exists. The divergence in Luke’ s genealogy from that of Matthew is exactly coincident with the periods during which the Temple was standing. What explanation of this striking fact can be more natural than that at the point where the two genealogies unite there was but one list to refer to, and that the absence of entries in the sacred register required it to be supplemented by a reference to the state chronicles? (Biblical things not generally known.) Luke carefully guards against the notion of this being the real descent, by introducing the words “ as was supposed” ; it was the legal descent, Joseph being legally the Lord’ s father; and from Joseph as the supposed father, St. Luke carries up the pedigree to the commencement of all things, that is, the creation of the man. Matthew brings down the descent from Abraham; Luke carries it up to Adam and so to God; and as the descent from Abraham was the most important for those children of Abraham who were looking for the fulfilment of the promises made to their forefathers, so the possibility of ascending to Adam and to God was the most important fact for the race of mankind at large, who had all fallen in Adam, and all looked for redemption through Christ. Dry as the long list of names in Luke may seem, it may truly be said that no passage of Scripture contains more of the essence of the gospel; Jesus is the true second Adam, because He is linked with the first; Jesus and Adam are the two heads of the human race, and they are both of them sons of God, Adam by creation, Jesus Christ by eternal generation; and so it may be said that the genealogical chain, by which Luke linked the first Adam and the second Adam together, is that chain upon which the redemption of mankind and all human hopes depend. (Bishop Harvey Goodwin.) Why have we Joseph’ s genealogy, not Mary’ s? If Joseph’ s genealogy, as presented in either of the Gospels, determines our Lord’ s birth as the lineal descendant of David, and the legal heir to the throne, his genealogy is all-important; while that of Mary, as it would not, according to Hebrew law, have decided the question of descent, would have been invalid as a document. “ Familia matris nonfamilia” is an ancient maxim among the Jews, and it has Divine sanction (see Numbers 1:26). The law that descent is reckoned on the father’ s side only, “Filius sequitur patrem” --a law recognized by all civilized nations--is not contradicted by the one or two exceptional instances in which the name of a woman’ s ancestor was adopted by her husband and transmitted to her offspring (Numbers 32:41; comp. 1 Chronicles 2:21-23; Ezra 2:61). A descent of this kind was not counted a true descent in any case in which the genealogy was sought (see Ezra 2:62), and gave no legal claim. Joseph is distinctly honoured, in the Scripture, with the recognition of his legal parentage of Jesus. (G. W. Butler, D. D.) The Divine root of the human pedigree The pedigree of our Lord, as given by the Evangelist of the Gentiles, ends with a wonderful leap, a leap from earth to heaven. Noah was the son of Lamech, &c., &e. Enos was the son of Seth, Seth was the son of Adam, Adam was the son of--God. There is no bolder word in Scripture, none that strikes us with a deeper surprise and awe. Most of us have, doubtless, wondered at times why, when space was so valuable, Luke should have inserted in his Gospel “ this barren list of names.” But the pedigree is of immense value, if for nothing else, yet for this, that it connects the second Adam with the first, that it places a son of God at either end of the list; that it makes us out to be the children of God both by nature and by grace, by birth and by second birth. For, of course, if Adam was the son of God, we are all the children of God, since we are all children of Adam; there is a Divine element in our nature as well as a human element, a capacity for life and holiness as well as a liability to sin and death. In the light of our text-- I. EVEN THE MOST FACTS OF OUR INWARD GROW A LITTLE MORE CLEAR TO US. Double or divided nature of which every man is conscious. In worst of men something good; something bad even in best. That which is good we derive from God, our true Father, the sole source and fountain of good; that which is evil in us we inherit not from Adam only, but from all our earthly parents. II. SO DOES THE DEEPEST OF THE NEW BECOME CLEARER TO US: the philosophy which underlies the teaching of our Lord and of the two greatest of His interpreters, St. Paul and St. John. That teaching may be briefly summed up thus: Christ is the Eternal Word by whom all things were created, by whom therefore Adam, or man, was created. Hence Christ is, as St. Paul calls Him, the Head of every man. It is in Him that we live and move and have our being. Then, too, we begin to understand all those difficult and perplexing passages in the writings of St. Paul, which declare our essential oneness with Christ. The second Adam was before the first Adam, and called Him into being. Hence He could die for all. Hence He lives for all, and we all live in and by Him. In short, all the sentences of the New Testament, which have sounded most mystical and obscure, and which may have seemed too good to be literally true, become true and plain to us so soon as we understand that Adam was the son of God, and that Adam was made by Him without whom nothing was made, and apart from whom nothing can subsist. III. THE OUTCOME OF THESE IS MOST WELCOME AND MOST to as many of us as love life and desire to see good. For, however weak and sinful we may be, we have not, as we sometimes fear, to persuade God to enter into a fatherly relation to us, and to begin to love us. He is our Father; He does love us. Nor have we, as we still oftener fear, to ask Him to redeem us from the yoke and tyranny of our sins. He has redeemed both us and all men, once for all, by the incarnation and sacrifice of Jesus Christ our Maker, our Head, and therefore our Representative. We have only to recognize existing and accomplished facts. We bare only to believe that He is our Father, has been our Father ever since we had any being, and can never cease to be our Father. We have only to accept the salvation He has wrought, and which stands waiting for us and urging itself upon us. There need be, there can be, no change in God, or in the Son of God; it is we in whom a change is wanted. They are, they have done, they are doing, all that we can desire them to be or do. And so soon as we know that, and believe it, we shall become all that we desire to be, and receive all that we long to enjoy. (S. Cox, D. D.) The two genealogies of Jesus Christ And yet in these very genealogies of Jesus Christ there are hinted profound truths well worthy of our most serious consideration. Let us rapidly glance at some of them. I. And, first, THE FACT THAT THERE IS ANY AT ALL IS . For it is conceivable that the Son of God might have descended into the world an unborn Gabriel, or a full-grown, unmothered Adam. The Word has indeed become flesh, bone of our bones and flesh of our flesh. II. Again, observe THE ITSELF. How many and striking its vicissitudes! How thrilling some of its names! How momentous some of the events it recalls! Glance for a moment at some of these peculiarities. For example, how profound the obscurity and hinted shame which rested over Bethlehem’ s manger, as suggested by the evangelist’ s comment: “ Being, as was supposed, the son of Joseph.” How homely His descent, as indicated by the fact that eighteen of His immediate ancestors are unknown except by name! How illustrious His descent, as indicated in such names as Zerubbabel, Josiah, Hezekiah, Jehoshaphat, Solomon, David, Boaz, Jacob, Abraham, Noab, Enoch, Seth, Adam! What dark scenes in Hebrew history are recalled by such names as Jehoiachin, Amon, Manasseh, Ahaz, Jehoram, Rehoboam, Bathsheba, Tamar! How thrilling the vicissitudes of David’ s line, as vibrating in the stories of Rehoboam, Joash, Esther, the Maccabees, the Virgin Mary! Verily, the genealogy of Jesus Christ is a book of startling providences. And it is a significant fact that, since the birth of the Divine Man, the Davidic pedigree has been hopelessly lost, so that none but Jesus of Bethlehem can claim from the Hebrew genealogical tables to be David’ s promised Son, and so David’ s Lord, even Jehovah’ s very Christ. But Jesus Christ was not only the Son of David and the Son of Abraham, He was also the Son of Adam even that seed of the woman who, as had been foretold by the gates of Eden, would crush the serpent’ s head. Thus, the genealogy of Jesus Christ includes all extremes and all vicissitudes, so that he is in very truth the Son of man. And not only is He the Son of man, He is also the Son of God. III. Lastly, THE OF JESUS CHRIST IS THE OLDEST IN THE WORLD. Men think it a great thing to have an ancient lineage. But here is a lineage which is older than that of William of Normandy, or Romulus, or Priam, or Nimrod, or Adam. Verily, His goings forth have been from of old--from the days of eternity. Verily, here is the Ancient of Days. Ah! the true heraldry is the device of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world; the true shield is the crimson escutcheon of the Cross. Dost thou, O friend, belong to the lineage of Jesus Christ? If so, thy name has already been entered in the heavenly register, even the Lamb’ s roll of life. Live, then, worthily of thy sonship. (G. D. Beardman.) Thoughts I. THERE IS MUCH IN GOOD LINEAGE. Virtues and vices are borne along on the current of blood from generation to generation. Such is the energy of moral qualities that they may be modified but rarely eradicated by transmission from parent to child. As surely as the blood of the racer tells in its fleet-footed offspring, the virtues and vices of David are felt down the line of his generation. II. SIN HAS TAINTED THE BLOOD OF THE BEST RACES OF MEN, and frequently makes itself manifest. All have sinned and have come short of the glory of God. There is no exception. III. GOD’ S GRACE CAN FLOW THROUGH VERY CROOKED HUMAN . Men who are spiritually dwarfed and ill-shaped can be made, in God’ s providence, to help along very strait principles and policies. God makes manifest His great wisdom and power by the vastness of the results He works out through weak human instrumentalities. What could be meaner and more cruel than the murder of Uriah by David? Yet God made the wife of this murdered man the channel through which the blood of Abraham flowed into the veins of Joseph. IV. No MAN STANDS ALONE. We are all parts of a vast organism. Asa and Jothan and Solomon each saw the life which he lived from his birth to his grave; but this was not the most important part of his life. That which followed his death, that which he lived in his descendants, was more far-reaching and wrought still greater results. (American Homiletic Review.) . Luke 4:1 And Jesus being full of the Holy Ghost returned from Jordan, and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness The temptation of Christ How is the temptation of Christ to be understood? As a history, a parable, a myth, or an undesigned, though not accidental, compound of the three? Let us begin-- 1. With what ought to be a self-evident proposition. As Jesus was a moral being, whose nature had to develop under the limitations necessary to humanity, we must conceive Him as a subject of moral probation. He could not escape exposure to its perils. But again-- 2. We must here conceive the temptable as the tempted. In the person and life of Jesus there was no seeming, A real humanity cannot escape with a fictitious temptation. Though our narrative may be termed by pre-eminence The Temptation, it was not simply then, but always, that Jesus was tempted. The devil left Him only “ for a season” ; returned personified now as Peter, now as Judas, and again as the Jews; met Him amid the solitude and agony of Gethsemane, in the clamour, mockery, and desertion of the cross. But-- 3. How could Jesus be “ tempted in all things, like as we are, yet without sin” ? Is not temptation evil? We must consider-- I. HOW THE TEMPTED COULD DE THE SINLESS CHRIST. And-- 1. What is temptation? Seduction to evil. It stands distinguished from trial thus: trial tests, seeks to discover the man’ s moral qualities or character; temptation persuades to evil, deludes, that it may ruin. God tries; Satan tempts. 2. The forms of temptation. It may be either sensuous, imaginative, or rational; perhaps it is never so powerful as when its forces approach the mind together, and at once through the senses, the imagination, and the reason. 3. The sources of temptation. It may proceed either (1) from self, or (2) from without self. If the first, the nature must be bad, but not of necessity radically bad; if the second it may be innocent, but must be capable of sinning. If now the temptation comes from without, three things are possible--it may speak either-- 1. To still fluid evil desires and make them crystallize into evil action; or-- 2. To innocence, and change it into guilt; or-- 3. Supply it with the opportunity of rising into holiness. Illustrations: of (1) Macbeth; of (2) Hubert, in “ King John” ; of (3) Isabella, in “ Measure for Measure,” the play that so well expounds its own saying-- “ Tis one thing to be tempted, Esealus, Another thing to fall.” Isabella, lovely as pure, most womanly in her unconscious strength, stainless among the stained, loving her doomed brother too well to sin for him, triumphs over his tears and entreaties, the wiles and threats of the Deputy, and emerges from her great temptation chaster, more beautiful in the blossom of her perfect womanhood, than she had been before. 4. We are now in a position to consider the temptation of Christ in relation to His sinlessness. Temptation implies (1) ability in the tempted to sin or not sin. Jesus had, to speak with the schoolmen, the posse non peccare, not the non posse peccare. Had He possessed the latter, He had been intemptable. (2) Evil must be presented to the tempted in a manner disguised, plausible, attractive. (3) The tempter must be sinful, the tempted may be innocent. Our discussion conducts, then, to but one conclusion; temptation was not only possible to the sinlessness, but necessary to the holiness, of Christ. II. THE PLACE WHERE THE IS NOT WITHOUT . Into which wilderness Jesus was led we do not know--whether the wild and lonely solitudes watched by the mountains where Moses and Elijah struggled in prayer and conquered in faith, or the steep rock by the side of the Jordan overlooking the Dead Sea, which later tradition has made the arena of this fell conflict. Enough, the place was a desert, waste, barren, shelterless, overhead the hot sun, underfoot the burning sand or blistering rock. No outbranching trees made a cool restful shade; no spring upbursting with a song of gladness came to relieve the thirst; no flowers bloomed, pleasing the eye with colour, and the nostril with fragrance; all was drear desert. Two things may be here noted--the desolation, and the solitude. The desolation must have deepened the shadows on His spirit, increased the burden that made Him almost faint at the opening of His way. And He was in solitude--alone there, without the comfort of a human presence, the fellowship of a kindred soul. Yet the loneliness was a sublime necessity. In His supreme moments society was impossible to Him. Out of loneliness He issued to begin His work; into loneliness tie passed to end it. The moments that made His work Divinest were His own and His Father’ s. III. BUT MUCH MORE THAN THE SCENE OF THE IS THE PLACE WHERE IT STANDS IN THE HISTORY OF THE LIFE AND MIND OF JESUS. Just after the baptism and before the ministry; just after the long silence and before the brief yet eternal speech; just after the years of privacy, and before the few but glorious months of publicity. We must study the temptation through the consciousness of Jesus. The temptation and the assumption by Jesus of the Messianic character and office are essentially relented. The one supplies the other with the condition and occasion of its existence. When He was driven into the wilderness three points must have stood out from the tumult of thought and feeling preeminent. 1. The relation of the supernatural to the natural in Himself; or, on the other side, His relation to God as His ideal human Son. 2. The relation of God to the supernatural in His person, and the official in His mission; and 3. The nature of the kingdom He had come to found, and the agencies by which it was to live and extend. And these precisely were the issues that emerged in His several temptations. They thus stood rooted in the then consciousness of Christ, and related in the most essential way to His spirit. (A. M.Fairbairn, D. D.) The temptation of the King You may expect me to begin with warning you not to think of the temptation as Dante and the men in the Middle Ages thought of it, or as Luther and the men at the time of the Reformation thought of it, or as Milton and the Puritans thought of it. I shall do no such thing. I believe they all thought of it imperfectly; that they impaired the beauty of the clear, sharply-chiselled marble, by colouring born from their own fancy and the fancy of their times. But they have shown with what intense reality this record has come to them in the most terrible moments of their existence. If they have seen it through a mist, it has not created the mist; it has done more than all other lights to dispel the mist. We may learn something from each teacher which the other could not tell us. Their mistakes may warn us of those into which we are likely to fall. If God gives us grace to enter heart and hand into the conflict which He has appointed for us and our time, we shall read this passage of St. Luke more simply than those read it who have gone before us. 1. He was led by the SPIRIT. That is the characteristic of the acts of the Son in all we read from this time onwards. He has been baptized with His Father’ s Spirit. He is guided by that Spirit whithersoever He goes. He does not choose for Himself whether He shall be in the city or the wilderness. Here is the secret of His power. 2. The wilderness into which He went, says Renan [“ Life of Jesus “ ], “ was HAUNTED, TO POPULAR BELIEF, BY DEMONS.” We surely do not want the authority of a learned man to endorse so very probable a statement. No doubt popular belief filled Jewish deserts, as it fills all deserts, with demons. The curious fact is, that this being the case, the evangelists, who are supposed to have been the victims of all popular beliefs, do not suggest the thought of demons in this desert. They say much of demons elsewhere. That which they speak of here is far more serious and awful. 3. Being forty days tempted of THE DEVIL. The difference is all-important. We are not in the region of dark forms which haunt particular spots. We have been brought into the spiritual region. 4. “ IN THOSE DAYS HE DID EAT NOTHING,” &c. Another exhaustion of outward circumstances. Hunger may be the tempter’ s instrument quite as much as food. Is there no gospel in the announcement that the anguish of hungry men has been felt by the Son of Man--the King of Men? 5. “ And the devil said unto Him, IF THOU BE THE SON OF GOD,” &c. Now we begin to perceive the principle of the temptation, its real force. A stone may serve as the instrument of solicitation; the natural craving for food may be all that is spoken to; but this is the speech: “ If Thou be the Son of God.” “ The words at Thy baptism cannot be true, if Thou art not able to exercise this power for the relief of Thy own necessities.” He must do something of Himself and for Himself. What is His name worth otherwise? 6. His name is worth this: “ IT IS WRITTEN, MAN SHALL NOT LIVE BY BREAD ALONE,” &c., i.e., “ I claim the words because they are written of man.” He can depend upon the Word of God. 7. A KING IDEALLY PERHAPS. But actually is the world His? Is it His Father’ s? “ And the devil taketh Him up into an high mountain,” &c. How was He taken to the mountain? Did He see with His eyes or only with His mind? I know these questions occur to us all. They have occurred to me. And I can only find this answer to them: I am reading of a temptation presented by a spirit to a spirit. If Christ saw all those kingdoms ‘ with His bodily eye, still it must have been his spirit which took in the prospect. The devil is reported to have said something which seems most plausible. All appearances in that time confirmed his words. The most religious men in times since have thought that he spoke truly. They have said that the kingdoms of this world and all the glory of them are his. I want to know if there is One whom I can trust who declared that they were not his, who would not do him service. I read these word: 8. “ GET THEE BEHIND ME, SATAN,” &c. Did One in human flesh indeed say, “ Adversary, get thee behind Me. All these things are the Creator’ s, not thine.” Then is not this a gospel to us all? 9. “ AND HE BROUGHT HIM TO , AND SET HIM ON A OF THE TEMPLE,” &c. I need not discuss the question how He was brought to Jerusalem, how He was set on a pinnacle of the temple. I should say the temptation was the most real that could be. He was actually tempted to try whether God would bear Him up, if He cast Himself down. He was actually tempted by a text of Scripture to give that proof of His Sonship and of His Father’ s faithfulness. Whatever were His circumstances, that thought was presented to His spirit by the evil spirit. And so we know that He was tempted like as we are. Every man hears, at some time or other, a voice whispering to him, “ Go out of the place in which you are put. Do something extraordinary. Do something wrong. See whether God will not help you. Can you not depend upon His promise that He will?” Is Scripture false? I accept this story. I believe that voice is the voice of the tempter. And therefore I want to know if the argument from Scripture has been answered, and how we may treat that and like arguments. 10. Hear and consider this: “ AND JESUS , SAID, THOU SHALT NOT TEMPT THE LORD THY GOD.” The Son of God once more claims the right to obey a commandment--the right to trust and to depend. Once more He claims that right for us. We may abide where we are placed, for our Father has placed us there. If He were not the Lord our God we might make experiments on that which He would do for us supposing we broke His law. Because He is we may submit to it and rejoice in it. 11. We are told that “ THE DEVIL FROM HIM FOR A SEASON.” Such seasons of rest, of freedom from doubt, of joyful confidence, are, I suppose, vouchsafed to the soldiers of Christ after periods of terrible conflict, as they were to the chief Captain. But the inward battle was to prepare Him, as well as them, for battles in the world. The enemy in the wilderness must be encountered there. (F. D. Maurice, M. A.) The temptation of Christ If we would understand this narrative, and profit by it, we must accept it as the record of a spiritual conflict of the most intense severity. The baptism, with its accompanying sign, brings Jesus for the first time under the full burden of His life’ s work, as the Messiah. This is the key to the temptation. The question is, How did Jesus Himself understand His Messiahship at the time of the temptation and afterwards? Evidently, in His view, it involved these two things at least--Power, and suffering. Here, in the wilderness, there is opened out to Him, for the first time, in full perspective, the thorny path of suffering, closed by the ignominious death of the cross; and, along with this, the consciousness of power infinitely vaster than was ever wielded by mortal man either before Him or since. The ideal of Messiahship is set before Him; will He shrink from it, or will He embrace it? Will He try to pare it down to something easier and less exacting, or will He accept and embrace it in all its rugged severity; never employing the superhuman power which is involved in it, to smooth His path, to mitigate a single pang, or to diminish by one atom the load of suffering imposed upon Him? Yes; the ideal of Messiahship, the perfect pattern of Messiahship, how to realize it? how to embody it in noble action, and yet more noble suffering?--that is the question of the wilderness; that is the key to the temptation; that has to be debated and resolved upon there, and then pursued, firmly and fixedly, in spite of all the tempter’ s assaults, until He can say upon the cross,” It is finished” ; “ Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit.” (D. J.Vaughan, M. A.) Temptation assails even the holiest Temptation does not cease as we rise in She scale of moral elevation. Even Jesus, the highest, the holiest, the Messiah, was tempted; as truly as the vilest drunkard or profligate amongst ourselves is tempted, though in a very different way. Temptation never ceases, but it alters its form. As we rise in the moral scale by victory over it, it rises also, becomes more refined, takes a subtler and (if we may say so)a nobler form; so that to know what a man’ s temptations are, is to know what the man himself is. We may be known by our wishes, our hopes, our fears; and we may be known also by our temptations. To fall short of the ideal of the Messiahship was the Messiah’ s temptation. It was sin in its most refined and subtle form of shortcoming, failure, missing the mark. With Him it was no question of transgression; He was far above that; it was missing the ideal, nothing more, nothing worse, a mere trifle, we might think; yet to Jesus Himself this to us seeming trifle was agony. And is there not an ideal for every one of us? Is it not in us to be something, which we are not yet; to fill our place in the world, however small it be, in a higher, better, nobler way than we have yet learned to fill it? Lessons from the temptation I. THE HOLIEST NATURES ARE NOT EXEMPT FROM . II. TIMES OF AND MAY BE BY SEASONS OF AND TRIAL. III. OUR TO GOD DOES NOT DEPEND UPON THE CHANGES OF OUR . IV. IS NO AGAINST . (Homiletic Magazine.) Our Saviour’ s temptation I. The first reflection which this great fact excites in my mind is, that I HAVE A SAVIOUR WHOSE LIFE IS SOUND TO MINE BY IN , as well as in sorrow, and all the kind affections of the heart. Even His holiness did not escape trial. It attained its perfection through trial. The path of human virtue must always lie through many temptations; and even then it is not left without its great Exemplar and Guide. In the desert I have a Companion, and it is my Master. His example could not instruct me how to overcome temptation, unless He also had struggled with it; for the conquest necessarily supposes the struggle. There is no victory without warfare. II. I am next led to inquire BY WHAT MEANS OUR SAVIOUR OVER HIS , that so I may learn how to triumph also, in the evil time, over the evil one. I find that He triumphed by the power of religious principle, by the force of piety, by bringing the most holy of all holy thoughts, that of obedience to God, in direct opposition to every solicitation of sense, and every suggestion of self-interest. On every side from which He was assailed, this was His ready and sure defence. Then temptation took another shape. Jesus was placed on a pinnacle of the temple, and was urged to cast Himself down, on the specious plea, perverted from Scripture, that God would send angelic aid to His own Son, to prevent His suffering any harm. Thy duty is obedience, and not display. The trials which God appoints, He will give thee His aid to bear, and His grace will be sufficient for thee; but how canst thou look for His aid in trials which thou hast rashly invited, and the issue of which thou hast dared, not for His glory but for thine own? One earnest, trusting, patient thought of God, would have saved many s man from destruction, who once thought himself quite safe, and was thought so, too, by the world, and yet, in the encounter with temptation, has miserably perished. Why was he not safe? Because he placed his safety in himself, and not in God, and only discovered his mistake when it was too late--perhaps not even then, but went down to ruin darkly. Why does not the thought of God come in the straits of temptation? Because it is not a familiar thought; because we do not make God our friend, and admit Him into the daily counsels of our bosom. (F. W. P. Greenwood.) From heights to depths From the Jordan of glorification to the wilderness of temptation. This is the way of God; as with Christ, so with the Christian; and moreover-- 1. An old, and yet an ever new way. 2. A hard, and yet a good way. 3. A dark, and yet a light way. 4. A lonesome, and yet a blessed way. (J. J. Van Oosterzee, D. D.) Christ an example in temptation For, as commentators on Aristotle observe that his rule many times lies hid and is wrapped up in the example which he gives, so we need scarce any other rules for behaviour when we are tempted, than those which we may find in this story of our Saviour’ s combat with our enemy. And our Saviour may seem to bespeak His brethren, even all Christians, as Abimelech doth his soldiers: “ What you have seen me do, make haste, and do likewise” (Judges 9:48). (A. Farindon, D. D,) Temptation renders virtue possible “ Take away this combat with our spiritual enemy, and virtue is but a bare naked name, is nothing.” If there were no possibility of being evil, we could not be good. What were my faith, if there were no doubt to assault it? What were my hope, if there were no scruple to stagger it? What were my charity, if there were no injuries to dull it? Then goodness is fairest when it shines through a cloud; and it is difficulty which sets the crown upon virtue’ s head. Our Saviour was made glorious by His temptations and sufferings; so must we [be] by ours. (A. Farindon, D. D.) The temptation of Christ in the wilderness The first thing that strikes us here is that Jesus was not master of His own movements. An unerring voice, which He knew to be from heaven, sent Him into the lonely wilderness--the place where no society or communion could disturb the law of development of t/is character--in order to be tempted in that solitude. He could not have gone thither Himself, aware of the trial before Him, without tempting God. The next thing which arrests our attention and, at first, our wonder, is that He was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. What a fearful and solemn glimpse is here given to us of the moral agencies of the universe. Good and evil, infinite good and absolute evil, good and evil in personal substance, with that intense antipathy to one another that souls of the largest grasp and depth must feel, are in restless action around a human soul. And if such parties were concerned in the temptation something of importance must have depended on the result. But in what form, it may be asked, did this tempter place himself in the way of Jesus? Did he keep to his spiritual incorporeal nature, or take a body, and become visible to eyes of flesh? Was the temptation transacted before the mind of Christ, or was its sphere more outward, concerned with bodily phenomena and human language? In the first place, the agency of Satan elsewhere, in the New Testament, is that of a spiritual being, and, so far as I am aware, corporeal form is never ascribed to him. In the second place, suppose the Saviour to be carried to an exceeding high mountain, yet the spherical form of the earth would allow the eye to take in but a very minute portion of the kingdoms of the world and of their glory. We must, then, either dilute the narrative, as many do, by understanding these expressions in a hyperbolical sense of the little tract of country around Palestine, or must resort to a second miracle, in order to conceive of the broad earth spread outward and upward before our Lord’ s eye. What need, then, of the high mountain, and why might not the same sight be obtained without leaving the wilderness? In the third place, it is noteworthy that the narrative makes no mention of the return of Jesus from the temple and from the mountain, just as if, in some sense, He had gone there while He remained in the desert in another. And, in the fourth place, if the temptation was addressed to the bodily senses of the Lord, it loses its insidious character, and becomes easier to be resisted. I am constrained, therefore, to believe that the transaction was a spiritual one, a conflict between light and darkness in the region of the mind, in which a real tempter assailed Christ, not through His eyes and ears, but directly through His feelings, and imagination. After the same manner, the prophets of the Old Testament passed through events in vision, of which they speak as we should speak of realities. Thus Jeremiah must have been in prophetic vision when he took the linen girdle to Euphrates to hide it there and went again in quest of it, as also when he took the cup of wrath from God’ s hand and gave it to the nations to drink. So, too, Ezekiel was transported from Chaldea to Jerusalem in that remarkable vision, the narrative of which occupies the chapters of his prophecies from the eighth to the eleventh. Hoses, again, it is commonly believed, narrates only a symbolical vision, where he speaks of himself as marrying an adulteress at the command of God. The martyr Stephen, also full of the Holy Ghost, saw Jesus standing at the right hand of God, not in bodily shape, but in a form presented to the mind’ s eye, and yet expressive of a great reality. If, now, the Scriptures allow us to interpret the events of the temptation in this way, we can see that greater strength is thereby given to the suggestions of Satan than if they had been addressed to the bodily organs. The power over the mind of a highly endowed being through the imagination, may indefinitely exceed that which is exerted through the sight. Multitudes have been seduced by that faculty, which paints absent or distant objects in colours of its own, whom no beauty or pleasantness lying in objects of sight could have led into sin. The world of imagination is more fascinating to their elevated mind than this outward world with all its shows and riches. The phantom, which has something heavenly in it, cheats and betrays them, while they turn aside from the obvious snares of visible things. But we pass on from this point, to a more important and indeed to an essential remark, that the temptations were intended not for Jesus in His nature as a man, but for Jesus in His official station as the Messiah. God was not putting it to the test, whether a certain good man or good prophet would yield to evil or conquer it, but whether Jesus was qualified for His office--whether He would remain true to the spiritual idea of the Messiah, or would fall below it under temptation. Nor was the tempter in this case anxious simply to lead a good man into sin, but he was striking at the root of salvation; his aim was to undermine the principles of the kingdom of heaven. This thought is the key to the story of the temptation. It explains why the temptation occurred when it did, at the commencement of Christ’ s public work, and shows the greatness of the crisis. The question whether Jesus would be made to adopt the worldly idea of the Messiah’ s kingdom was one of life and death for mankind. And again, had Christ followed the suggestions of the tempter, He could not have taken on Him the work of our salvation. The form of a servant, which He freely assumed, involved subjection to all the physical laws which control our race, and the endurance of all sufferings which the Father should lay upon Him. But if, by His inherent power, He had now relieved His own hunger, He would have escaped from the form of a servant, and even from subjection to the Divine will; and, on the same principle, He never could have been obedient to death--even the death of the cross. But to the sophistry of the tempter Christ had a ready reply. “ It is written, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God,” that is, “ I may not, because entitled to His protection, appeal to it against the laws of His providence, to rescue me from dangers into which I have entered unbidden.” As thus viewed, our Lord’ s reply is given in the same spirit with His former one during the first temptation. He subjected Himself freely to physical law, and His Messiahship depended on His self-chosen humiliation. His choice of means, however, for securing His kingdom would in the end amount to a choice between two kingdoms, the one, severely spiritual, introduced by moral and religious forces only, the other becoming worldly by its alliance with the world of outward influence and temporal glory. The instinctive shrinking from harm and difficulty, which belongs to us all, would lead Him to choose the worldly way of doing good, would prejudice His mind in favour of the easier and quicker method. But He held on to His spiritual conception of His office, kept His obedience, and triumphed. Satan approached Christ in the belief that He was capable of taking false views of His office, through which He might be led into sin. Another remark which we desire to make is, that the narrative, as interpreted, shows the subtlety and insinuating character of the temptation. The acts to which Christ was solicited were not sins, so much as misjudgments in regard to the means to be used for gaining the highest and noblest ends. And these misjudgments would consist, not in the use of means plainly and boldly sinful, but of such as involved a departure from the true idea of the Messiah’ s earthly mission. But it is more important to remark, that the narrative is too refined and too full of a somewhat hidden, but consummate wisdom, to grow out of the imaginings of the early Church. It is no rude picture of assaults which might befall a holy man in solitude, but an intellectual and moral struggle, which put it to the proof whether Christ would be true to the spiritual idea of the Messiah. It involves a conception of the Messiah’ s kingdom which the early Church did not entertain until some time after the death of our Lord; how then could it be elaborated by crude Galilean disciples of Christ, whose views were full of that earthly mixture which the narrative condemns? (T. D.Woolsey, D. D.) Christ’ s temptation a help to us For as He hath taught us both by His word and ensample to prepare ourselves to the battle, and bestir ourselves like those who fight under His colours; so, in the next place, there is a kind of influence and virtue derived from His combat, which falls as oil upon us, to supple our joints, and strengthen our sinews, and make each faculty of our souls active and cheerful in this exercise. (A. Farindon, D. D.) Full of the Holy Ghost The back strengthened for the load It was in the prospect of His temptation that the Lord Jesus received this fulness of the Holy Spirit. This presents a new aspect of the bestowment of the Spirit. He was not only filled with the Holy Ghost, but it was in the very crisis of need He was so anointed. The back will be strengthened for the load, the heart nerved for the blow. I fear we all deplorably fail to realize this, and so impoverish ourselves of the Spirit. It was upon the Lord Jesus being thus filled with the Holy Spirit that He was tempted. “ Comfort ye, comfort ye,” my fellow-believers, from that. It is when a child of God is fullest of grace; when he has been declared to be a “ son,” even a “ beloved son” of God; when he has made a public profession of Christianity, that he is most of all exposed to temptation. (A. B. Grosart, D. D.) Returned from Jordan Baptism does not exempt from temptation The temptation of the Lord having followed His baptism, tells us not to trust to baptism for escape from temptation. (A. B. Grosart, D. D.) Spiritual favour a time of trial That our entering upon a special service for God or receiving a special favour from God, are two solemn seasons which Satan makes use of for temptation. Though this may seem strange, yet the harshness of such a providence on God’ s part, and the boldness of the attempt on Satan’ s part, may be much taken off by the consideration of the reasons hereof. 1. On Satan’ s part. It is no great wonder to see such an undertaking, when we consider his fury and malice. The more we receive from God, and the more we are to do for Him, the more doth he malign us. So much the more as God is good, by so much is his eye evil. 2. There are in such cases as these several advantages, which, through our weakness and imperfection, we are too apt to give him; and for these he lieth at the catch. (1) Security. We are apt to grow proud, careless, and confident, after or upon such employments and favours; even as men are apt to sleep or surfeit upon a full meal, or to forget themselves when they are advanced to honour. Enjoyments beget confidence; confidence brings forth carelessness; carelessness makes God withdraw, and gives opportunity to Satan to work unseen. And thus, as armies after victory, growing secure, are oft surprised; so are we oft after our spiritual advancements thrown down. (2) Discouragement and tergiversation is another thing the devil watcheth for. By his assaults he represents the duty difficult, tedious, dangerous, or impossible, on purpose to discourage us, and to make us fall back. (3) The fall or miscarriage of the saints at such times is of more than ordinary disadvantage, not only to others--for if they can be prevailed with to lay aside their work, or to neglect the improvement of their favours, others are deprived of the benefit and help that might be expected from them--but also to themselves. A prevailing temptation doth more than ordinarily prejudice them at such times. 3. As we have seen the reason of Satan’ s keenness in taking those opportunities, so may we consider the reasons of God’ s permission, which are these:-- (1) Temptations at such seasons are permitted for more eminent trial of the upright. (2) For an increase of diligence, humility, and watchfulness. (3) For a plentiful furniture of experience. Temptation is the shop of experience. (R. Gilpin.) Temptation after privilege After high favours showed to God’ s children, come shrewd pinches, as after warm, growing, comfortable weather in the spring come many cold pinching frosts: what a sudden change is this I Is this He, of whom erewhile the Lord said, “ This is My Son,” and doth He now send, and set his slave upon Him to vex and bait Him? (D. Dyke.) Temptation after baptism The history of our Lord’ s temptation ought never to be contemplated apart from that of His baptism. We shall miss much of its significance, if we dissociate it, even in thought, from the solemn recognition of the Son by the Father, the salutation of Him from heaven, and the full consciousness of His Divine nature into which He was thus brought. The Church of old did not shrink from calling her Lord’ s baptism His second nativity. In that baptism He received His heavenly armour, and now He goes forth to prove it, and try of what temper it is. Having been baptized with water and the Holy Ghost, He shall now be baptized with the fire of temptation; even as there is another baptism, the baptism of blood, in store for Him: for the gifts of God are not for the Captain of our salvation, any more than for His followers, the pledge of exemption from a conflict, but rather powers with which He is furnished, and, as it were, inaugurated thereunto. With regard to the temptation: it is quite impossible to exaggerate the importance of the victory then gained by the second Adam, or the bearing which it had, and still has, on the work of our redemption. The entire history, moral and spiritual, of the world revolves around two persons, Adam and Christ. To Adam was given a position to maintain; he did not maintain it, and the lot of the world for ages was decided. All is again” at issue. Again we are represented by a Champion, by One who is in the place of all, whose standing shall be the standing of many, and whose fall, if that fall had been conceivable, would have been the fall of many, yea of all. Once already Satan had thought to nip the kingdom of heaven in the bud, and had nearly succeeded. If it had not been for a new and unlooked-for interposition of God, for the promise of the Seed of the woman, he would have done it. He will now prove if he cannot more effectually crush it, and for ever; for, should Christ fail, there was none behind, the last stake would have been played--and lost. (Archbishop Trench.) Washed and not soiled Then, when He was washed, did the devil attempt to soil Him. (A. Farindon, D. D.) Satan’ s malice His malice is so great that he is never at rest. He watcheth every good thing in its bud, to nip it; in its blossom, to blast it; in its fruit, to spoil it. (A. Farindon, D. D.) The power of habit to resist temptation What we are surely possessed of, we can hardly lose. And such a possession, such an inheritance, is true piety, when we are once rooted and built up, and established in it. It is a treasure which no chance can rob us of, no thief take from us. A habit well confirmed is an object the devil is afraid of. Oh, the power of an uninterrupted obedience, of a continued course in the duties of holiness! It is able to puzzle the great sophister, the great god of this world. (A. Farindon, D. D.) Was led by the Spirit Led by the Spirit We are to consider the leader. He was led by the Spirit. 1. That the state of a man regenerate by baptism is not a standing still. We must not only have a mortifying and reviving, but a quickening and stirring spirit (1 Corinthians 15:45). 2. As there must be a stirring, so this stirring must not be such, as when a man is left to his own voluntary or natural motion; we must go according as we are led. For having given ourselves to God, we are no longer to be at our own disposition or direction. (Bishop Andrewes.) The Divine leading a security in temptation The Children of Israel made no scruple to pitch their tents within the borders of their enemies if the pillar of cloud did remove before them; so wheresoever the grace of God doth carry a man, God’ s glory being his undoubted end (without all vain delusions, and carnal reservations) he may be bold to venture. (Bishop Hacket.) Tempting the Tempter Have you seen little children dare one another which should go deepest into the mire? But he is more childish that ventures further and further, even to the brim of transgression, and bids the devil catch him if he can. I will but look and like, says the wanton, where the object pleaseth me; I keep company with some licentious persons, says an easy nature, but for no hurt, because I would not offend our friendship. I will but bend my body in the house of Rimmon, when my master bends his, says Naaman; I will but peep in to see the fashion of the mass, holding fast the former profession of my faith. Beloved, I do not like it when a man’ s conscience takes in these small leaks; it is odds you will fill faster and faster, and sink to the bottom of iniquity. (Bishop Hacket.) Led by the Divine Spirit The grounds upon which I will insist are these. 1. We must be led by the Spirit before we can work anything which is good. 2. I will unfold how we are led by initiating or preventing grace, when we arc first made partakers to taste of the hopes of a better life. 3. I will show how we are led by preparatory grace, which goes before the complete act of our regeneration. 4. With what great and mighty power the Spirit doth lead us in converting grace. 5. How we are led by subsequent grace and sanctification, which cooperates and assists us after our conversion. (Bishop Hacket.) Temptations not to be sought In that the evangelists do not say that Christ cast Himself upon a temptation, neither did go to undertake it till He was led to it, we note, that whatever may be the advantage of a temptation by the Spirit’ s ordering of it, or what security from danger we may promise to ourselves upon that account, yet must we not run upon temptations; though we must submit when we are fairly led into them. The reasons of this truth are these:-- 1. There is so much of the nature of evil in temptations that they are to be avoided if possible. 2. To run upon them would be a dangerous tempting of God; that is, making a bold and presumptuous trial, without call, whether He will put forth His power to rescue us or not. When do men run uncalled and unwarrantably upon temptation? (1) When men engage themselves in sin and apparent wickedness, in the works of the flesh. For it can never be imagined that the holy God should ever by His Spirit call any to such things as His soul abhors. (2) When men run upon the visible and apparent occasions and causes of sin. This is like a man’ s going to the pest-house. (3) When men unnecessarily, without the conduct either of command or urging an unavoidable providence, do put themselves, though not upon visible and certain opportunities, yet upon dangerous and hazardous occasions and snares. (4) Those run upon temptation, that adventure apparently beyond their strength, and put themselves upon actions good or harmless, disproportionably to their abilities. (5) They are also guilty that design an adventure unto the utmost bounds of lawful liberty. (6) Those also may be reckoned in the number of such as rush upon their danger, who go abroad without their weapons, and forget in the midst of daily dangers the means of preservation. (R. Gilpin.) Led by the Spirit The devil was the instrument of the temptation, but God ordained it. (G. S. Barrett.) The Divine purpose in the temptation It was the last act of His moral education; it gave Him an insight into all the ways in which His Messianic work could possibly be marred. If, from the very first step in His arduous career, Jesus kept the path marked out for Him by God’ s will without deviation, change, or hesitancy, this bold front and steadfast perseverance are certainly due to His experience of the temptation. All the wrong courses possible to Him were thenceforth known; all the rocks had been observed; and it was the enemy himself who had rendered Him this service. It was for this reason that God apparently delivered Him for a brief time into his power. This is just what Matthew’ s narrative expresses so forcibly: “ He was led up by the Spirit to be tempted.” When He left this school, Jesus distinctly understood that, as respects His person, no act of His ministry was to have any tendency to lift it out of His human condition; that, as to His work, it was to be in no way assimilated to the action of the powers of this world; and that, in the employment of Divine power, filial liberty was never to become caprice, not even under a pretext of blind trust in the help of God. And this programme was carried out. His material wants were supplied by the gifts of charity (Luke 8:3), not by miracles; His mode of life was nothing else than a perpetual humiliation--a prolongation, so to speak, of His Incarnation. When labouring to establish His kingdom, He unhesitatingly refused the aid of human power--as, e.g., when the multitude wished to make Him a King (John 6:15); and His ministry assumed the character of an exclusively spiritual conquest, tie abstained, lastly, from every miracle which had not for its immediate design the revelation of moral perfection, that is to say, of the glory of His Father Luke 11:29). These supreme rules of the Messianic activity were all learned in that school of trial through which God caused Him to pass in the desert. (F. Godet,D. D.) Into the wilderness The danger of solitude As a deer that is struck knows by instinct what a danger it is to be single, and therefore will herd himself if he can; so do not separate yourself from the face of men upon temptation, that is the way to betray your soul, but unite your force against the tempter by mixing yourself with good men. (Bishop Hacket.) Christ’ s a lonely life But I reduce all to this head. The solitude of the wilderness did best befit Him in this work, because He began, continued, and ended the work of the Mediatorship by Himself, and by no other assistance. (Bishop Hacket.) Humility Much better it is to be humble with Christ in a barren desert, than to be proud with Adam in a delicious paradise. (Bishop Hacket.) Man sociable God hath made man a sociable creature, if the contagion of the world doth not make him unsociable. (Bishop Hacket.) Solitude favourable to temptation Solitude affords a great advantage to Satan in the matter of temptation. This advantage ariseth from solitude two ways: 1. First, As it doth deprive us of help. They can mutually help one another when they fall; they can mutually heat and warm one another; they can also strengthen one another’ s hands to prevail against an adversary. 2. Secondly, Solitude increaseth melancholy, fills the soul with dismal apprehensions; and withal doth so spoil and alter the temper of it that it is not only ready to take any disadvantageous impression, but it doth also dispose it to leaven and sour those very considerations that should support, and to put a bad construction on things that never were intended for its hurt. (R. Gilpin.) Spiritual victory in spite of disadvantage Here we have an image of the conflicts betwixt Ishmael and Amalek, the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent. God, to gain the greater glory to Himself, gives all the advantages that may be to the enemies of His Church. How unequal was the combat and contention betwixt Luther a poor monk, and the Pope, and so many legions of his creatures? They had the sword of most magistrates to sway at their pleasure, great power, and great authority, yet Luther took the prey out of their teeth, as poor David overthrew the great Goliath. (D. Dyke.) Christ in the wilderness What a contrast between that gracious, noble Form and the scene in which it is set! The Bible delights in contrasts. On Calvary, e.g., it shows us the cross, and One hanging on it, the very incarnation of beauty and patient love and gentleness--the perfect Man, the perfect God--and there all around Him surge the angry crowds full of hale and wickedness and every corruption. So here we behold that same Holy Being standing in the midst of the picture of desolation--oh, how desolate that desert even in the light of the noonday!--how much more desolate at night, when the imagination filled it with its own fears and mysteries and terrors! But more horrid than the darkness, more terrible than wild beasts, than any earthly terror, is the dark presence of Satan. There they stand alone together, the Son of God and the spirit of evil; and we know that they are to be the figures in some great transaction. What was the mighty event? It was the greatest event that has ever occurred on earth except the Incarnation, Crucifixion, and Resurrection of our Lord. It was to be the greatest battle ever fought on the earth--the battle between Satan, the personification of hate and vileness and all that is repulsive, and the incarnation of purity and holiness. (F. C. Ewer, D. D.) Retirement preparatory to action It has been said that Christ by His example sanctioned the eremitical life, the retirement into the deserts of the old hermits, to spend their lives in contemplation. To some extent only is this true. Christ sanctioned retirement, but He made retirement from the world preparatory to active mission work in the world. Where the old hermits misread His teaching was in this, that they retired to the deserts and did not leave the deserts again--they made that a cul-de-sac which should have been a passage. The example of our Lord seems to us in this age of high pressure to be of special importance. We look too much to the amount of work done, rather than to the quality of the work. This is the case in every branch of life, in every industry, in every profession; and it cannot be denied that in the present day the hurry of life is so great that men have not the patience to study and to appreciate good work; so long as it has a specious appearance of being good, it is sufficient. But in spiritual work, we must consider that the eye of God is on us, and that we are labouring for Him, not for men, and, by His retirement for prayer and fasting into the solitude of the desert, Christ puts into our hands the key to the door of all thorough and efficacious work in the spiritual sphere,--it must be well considered, well prayed over, and well prepared for. Every plant has its hidden life that precedes its visible and manifested life; the seed, or bulb, or tuber spends a time in accumulating to itself vital force or energy, during which period it appears to be dormant. Then, when it has taken the requisite time, it begins to grow, it throws up its leaves and flowers. The leaves and flowers are no spontaneous development out of the root, they have been long prepared for in the hidden life and apparent sleep of the seed or root underground. All life is initiated by a hidden period of incubation. And all healthy human activity has also its still unperceived phase of existence. Christ shows us that it is the same in the spiritual life. The forty days and nights--I may say the whole of the hidden life at Nazareth--was the seed germinating, and the three years’ ministry was the manifestation of the life. (S. Baring-Gould, M. A.) Scene of the temptation The scene of the temptation was the wilderness. What wilderness we are not told; and all which it imports us to note is that it was a wilderness, in which this encounter of the good and the evil, each in its highest representative, took place. There could have been no fitter scene, none indeed so fit. The waste and desert places of the earth are, so to speak, the characters which sin has visibly impressed on the outward creation; its signs and its symbols there; the echoes in the outward world of the desolation and wasteness which sin has wrought in the inner life of man. Out of a true feeling of this, men have ever conceived of the wilderness as the haunt of evil spirits. In the old Persian religion, Ahriman and his evil spirits inhabit the steppes and wastes of Turan, to the north of the happy Iran, which stands under the dominion of Ormuzd; exactly as with the Egyptians, the evil Typhon is the lord of the Libyan sand-wastes, and Osiris of the fertile Egypt. This sense of the wilderness as the haunt of evil spirits, one which the Scripture more or less allows (Isaiah 13:21; Isaiah 34:14; Matthew 12:43; Revelation 18:2), would of itself give a certain fitness to that as the place of the Lord’ s encounter with Satan; but only in its antagonism to paradise do we recognize a still higher fitness in the appointment of the place. The garden and the desert are the two most opposite poles of natural life; in them we have the highest harmonies and the deepest discords of nature. Adam, when worsted in the conflict, was expelled from the garden, and the ground became cursed for his sake. Its desert places represent to us what the whole of it might justly have been on account of sin. Christ takes up the conflict exactly where Adam left it, and, inheriting all the consequences of his defeat, in the desert does battle with the foe; and, conquering him there, wins back the garden for that whole race, whose champion and representative He was.(Archbishop Trench.) The world a wilderness “ The earth a wilderness!” you will say. “ Oh, but it is full of scenes of beauty; has it not its running streams, and flowery leas, and wooded slopes, and leaning lawns? How glorious its sunsets! How fair its gardens, all filled with fragrant flowers!” Yes, the earth has its beauties, but they are not the true, the essential beauties. Go you to Quarantania: there you shall find also a certain beauty--the beauty of wild sublimity--the mountain peak, the trenchant rock, the dark ravine with its rugged sides; yet it is a howling wilderness. Quarantania has a certain beauty, and so has earth. But compare the desert, stern, barren, desolate, with the fair gardens of Italy, and great as is the gulf between these, it is not so vast as the gulf between this world that we call so fair and the Golden Jerusalem, of which we are citizens. All that is most bright and glorious here is dull and harsh and pale compared with what God is keeping for us there. Is not the earth filled with mountains of disappointments? with snares, sufferings, griefs, ingratitudes? Oh! the wilderness of this world. What a contrast with the paradise of God! (F. G. Ewer, D. D.) The forty days in the wilderness We make a mistake when we think that those forty days were all days of temptation and sorrow. They must have been, on the contrary, days, at first, of peaceful rest, of intense joy. Alone with God, driven by the Spirit into the wilderness, the Saviour dwelt in the peaceful thought of His union with His Father. The words spoken at the baptism, the fulness of the Spirit’ s power within Him had filled His human heart with serene ecstasy. He went into the wilderness to realize it all more fully. It was then in this spiritual rest and joy that we may reverently conceive the beginning of the wilderness life was passed. As such, it was the first pure poetry of the perfect union which was to arise between the heart of man and the Spirit of God; the springtime of the new life; the first clear music which ever flowed from the harmony of a human spirit with the life of the universe. But now we meet the question, “ How did this become test, temptation?” To understand this we must recall the two grand ideas in His mind: 1. That He was at one with the Father--that gave Him His perfect joy. 2. That He was the destined Redeemer of the race. To the first peaceful days had now succeeded days when desire to begin His redemptive work filled His soul. And the voice in His own soul was echoed by the cry of the Jewish people for their Messiah. He was urged, then, by two calls, one within, and one without. But--and here is the point at which suffering and test entered--these two voices directly contradicted one another. As soon as Christ turned to the world with the greeting of His love, He heard coming from the world an answering greeting of welcome, but the ideas which lay beneath it were in radical opposition to His own. The vision of an omnipotent king and an external kingdom was presented to His Spirit as the ideal of the Jewish people. It came rudely into contact with the vision in His own heart of a king made perfect by suffering, of a kingdom hidden at first in the hearts of men. It is not difficult to see the depth and manifoldness of the tests which arose from the clashing of these two opposed conceptions. (Stepford A. Brooke, M. A.) The solitary place No: we must be led into some secret and solitary place, there to fast and pray, to fit and prepare ourselves for the work which we have to do, there to taste how sweet the Word of God is, to ruminate and chaw upon it as it were and digest it, to fasten it to our very soul and make it a part of us, and by daily meditation so to profit that all the mysteries of faith and precepts of holiness may be, as vessels are in a well-ordered family, ready at hand to be used upon any occasion, (A. Farindon, D. D.) Luke 4:2-4 Being forty days tempted of the devil.And in these days He did eat nothing The temptation of Christ; A great part of the force and power of Christ’ s example here is lost upon men, through their slipping it aside, by secretly imagining that, after all, His case and theirs are wholly different. They read of His being tempted; and as they do not disbelieve the Scriptures, they admit in a certain way that He was--that is, they never question it. But, practically speaking, and meaning by temptation such temptations as they yield to, they do not believe that He was tempted; they have a secret reserve--“ Christ was tempted, as far as He could be tempted; but how could He who was God as well as man be really tempted? What was there in Him to tempt?” By such questions the practical example of our Lord is set aside; and men lose the benefit designed for them in Scripture, in its narrative of these awful struggles of the prince of darkness with the Captain of our salvation. 1. To be truly tempted, Christ must be truly man. Unless His temptations, sufferings, and death were all wrought in appearance only, there must be that nature truly in Him which is capable of these accidents. And this, in its fullest significance, is the doctrine of the Catholic Church. And to the full perception of this truth, it must be noted, that the nature He took was the human nature as it was in His mother; not, as some have fancied, the nature of Adam before his fall; for how should He have obtained that nature from the Virgin Mary, who herself possessed it not? and if He had, how could He have been “ in all points tempted like as we are, sin only excepted” ? for we know not that in Adam’ s body were all those sinless infirmities which dwell in ours, and which indeed we acknowledge in our Lord’ s. Before the fruit of the forbidden tree had poisoned the currents of his blood, we know not that pain, and weariness, and sickness could have invaded that body which from God’ s hand had come forth “ very good,” and which, we doubt not, by the fruit of the tree of life was to have been strengthened till it could not taste of death. But the body which Christ assumed was subject, like our own, to those infirmities which have not in them the nature of sin, and yet which sin has brought into our nature. The contrary opinion has arisen from the pious but mistaken fear, lest in allowing that Christ took the very nature of His mother, we should, unawares, allow that He took what was sinful; but the true answer to this apprehension is, that the Eternal Son took to Himself in the womb of the Virgin, not a human person, but humanity--humanity, which, if it had been impersonated in one of us would have been sinful, but which could not be sinful until it was a person, and was never a person till it was in the Christ. “ To His own person” (says Hooker) “ He assumed a man’ s nature.” The flesh, and the conjunction of the flesh with God, began at one instant. And that which in Him made our nature uncorrupt, was the union of His Deity with our nature. 2. These two natures, though thus conjoined in one person, were not confounded the one with the other; neither was the proper Godhead of the Son diminished by inferior admixture, nor the humanity swollen out of the true limits of its essential properties by the alliance of Deity. To it, indeed, Deity added that infinite worth which made it a fit sacrifice for sin; to it that grace of unction unmeasured, by which it was held up ever without spot of iniquity; but still each nature was separate and unconfused; and thus, in the unity of the Godhead could Christ declare on earth that the Son of Man was in heaven; thus could He truly suffer and die in His human body, though the Godhead is impassable and immortal; thus could He, in His human soul, be “ in an agony,” though Deity can never suffer; thus could He pray, “ Father, not My will, but Thine, be done,” while He could declare, “ I and My Father are one.” Here, then, was the provision made for the reality of His temptation: for in whatever way Satan can approach us from without, by the influences of a spiritual presence, as suggesting to the imagination, and throwing into the mind, that which is at once temptation, and becomes sin as soon as the will has given to it the first beginnings of assent; in this same way are we enforced, by the verity of His human soul, to believe that the Son of God could be approached by Satan. So that to make His exposure to temptation perfect, we must suppose no sinless avenues to its approach, which in us are open, closed in Him. The fiery darts, indeed, found in that most true loyal soul no sinful tendencies on which to fall; they were cast back at once from the confines of His imagination by a will truly in accordance with the will of the Father, and dwelt in beyond measure by the present influence of the Spirit of all grace. So that, with a perfect exposure to temptation, spot of sin there could be clearly none. (Bishop S. Wilberforce.) The reality of our Lord’ s contest with Satan When we read of the tempter approaching with his wiles Him whom we know to be the Lord incarnate, God the Maker of all being, we have something of the feeling with which we read of those imaginary conflicts in which man is supposed to strive with beings of a higher order: we feel, that is, as if there could be no real contest; that it is but the apparent acting out of what would be naturally impossible. When we compare the paltry baits with the infinite worthiness of Him to whom they were proffered, we feel so sure of the conclusion, that, knowing the craft and subtlety of the tempter, we cannot believe that he could thus attempt to turn aside the perfect uprightness of God’ s only Son. Here, then, we need the recollection, that to him had not been made the revelation we possess of Christ’ s eternal power and Godhead; that from him was kept secret the virginity of Mary and Him who was born of her, as also the death of our Lord--three of the mysteries the most spoken of in the world, yet done in secret by God; that all he knew was that this was the champion of man, the Holy One of God, the Second Adam, with whom, as with the first, was to be his great struggle for the dominion of the world. He knew that he had triumphed once, by like temptations, over the same nature unfallen; and how should it fare better now?… When we look at the temptation in this light, how strikingly does it fall in with the whole course of God’ s revealed dealings! Throughout the Old Testament Satan is scarcely mentioned; and in the New he is less emphatically the enemy of God than of Christ, as if between the prince of this world and the Son of Man must be the mighty struggle. The devil (says Augustine) was to be overcome, not by the power of God, but by His righteousness. (Bishop S. Wilberforce.) Lessons from our Lord’ s temptation As this subject will yield both motives and measures for obedience, so too will it supply us with directions for the due resisting of temptation. The Commander suffered Himself to be tempted, that He might teach His soldier to contend, says Augustine; He taught thee to bear, and He taught thee by bearing. A broad light is thrown by it on every part of temptation. 1. We see the need of watching alway. No height of piety is a sufficient safeguard against danger. We must, therefore, be prepared for conflict, not merely with the principle of evil, but with an actually living, subtle, and most powerful enemy. The principle of evil can mean nothing else than our own inward inclinations to it. By this our Master could not have been tempted, for He had no evil inclination; either, therefore, He could not be tempted, or it must be by a spirit external to Himself, and having, therefore, truly a separate existence. 2. We see the sort of wiles against which we must watch. The evil which seems farthest off is often the nearest. The fast of forty days had surely shown the absolute dominion with which the flesh was curbed in Him to whom the tempter came; yet is His first temptation a suggestion that He should turn the stones around Him into bread. 3. We see, too, with how prompt a readiness the forms of temptation are exchanged. It is not one, and then rest. From sensuality and doubt, how easily did Satan turn to presumption, and from that pass over to the baits of earthly glory, as instruments wherewith to beguile that human heart which only was for ever proof against his snares! And so, when we have resisted the coarser temptations of sensuality or a thirst for worldly advancement, how readily do self-applauding thoughts spring up to poison the purged soil of the heart; or, when we have shut out the louder solicitations of evil, are we drawn unawares, and, if need be, by the very words of Holy Writ, into an attempt to worship God in some new way, and so to approach His altar with an abominable offering of a party-zeal or self-taught service! Conclusion: And so, all through the struggle, how full of teaching is our blessed Lord’ s example! With what a perfect patience did He endure the struggle to the end; not, as we are wont to do, fretting under it, and peevishly longing for the “ rest of the garner,” while it is God’ s will that we should still be “ planted in the field.” And yet, with this entire patience, how prompt was His resistance, never yielding for a moment to that which He endured to the end. How directly was the sword of the Spirit raised against each following temptation, and how did it pierce through the fraud! And as there is here full instruction how to resist the evil one, so is there, too, a sure earnest of our victory. Satan dared, indeed, to assault our Lord, but He did not triumph over Him. He overcame the devil in our nature, that we might be partakers of His triumph. From us He took flesh, that we from Him might have salvation. In Him we were tempted; in Him we vanquish Satan. He has passed through the battle; but He will not forget those whom He has left to follow Him. He is God over all; but He has not ceased to be the Virgin’ s Son. Let us trust more in His sympathy, and cast ourselves more on His care. (Bishop S. Wilberforce.) The hour of triumph is the hour of temptation There was at college, m my day, a young man whose career ran side by side with mine. We matriculated at the same time, and at the same time took our degree. This young man was like unto him of whom we read in the Gospel, “ the only son of his mother, and she was a widow.” To his undying honour be it said he remembered that his mother was a widow, and that she looked to him then as she had once looked to his father. Most careful was he never to spend more than was needful, knowing that each shilling he spent left so much less in that widow’ s purse. Most indefatigable was he in his reading, knowing that it depended on his position in the class-list whether he could secure his fellowship and so provide a home for that widowed mother. Day after day would he sit over his books; and night after night, when all else was shrouded in darkness, the flickering lamp in that student’ s room would tell of the midnight reader. Throughout the whole of that university career, never was known a more earnest nor a more frequent worshipper in the house of God. Regularly as the hour for Divine service came round, so regularly was that widow’ s son seen to enter that house of prayer. Days, and months, and years, rolled on, and at length the eventful day arrived, when--examinations passed, successfully passed--the tidings went rapidly round from mouth to mouth that the pattern son and student had nobly won his class, his first class. That evening I sought my friend, yea, and I found him; but where? in what condition? There, on the floor of his room, almost senselessly drunken, lay the dutiful son, the pattern student, the frequent and earnest worshipper. Alas! alas I how truly had the tempter marked his time; the hour of that young man’ s triumph was the hour of his fall. (D. Parker Morgan, M. A.) The existence of evil spirits It is one of the most ruinously successful artifices of the great adversary of men, to persuade them that he has no existence; for thus he throws them off their guard, and makes them believe that from him, at least, they have nothing to fear; and thus the very sentiment which would appear to them to annihilate his being, completely establishes over them the plenitude of his power. The doctrine of Scripture in reference to the fallen angels has been most usually opposed by the weapons of ridicule--a mode of attack which says little for the goodness of the cause in which it is employed; for why resort to an expedient so very low, and so far from pious, if solid argument were at command? In opposition, however, to the commonly-received opinions on this subject, reason is sometimes appealed to, not only by declared infidels, but, what is far more strange, by some who assume the Christian name. But why should these opinions be reckoned improbable, or absurd? So far is the existence of beings only spiritual from being improbable, that when it is considered that the Creator Himself is a pure spirit, it is in itself more probable and mere easy to be supposed, that He should form creatures purely spiritual, than creatures partly spiritual and partly material. Nor is it at all improbable that angels should fall, any more than that man should have fallen. Nor, again, is it improbable that both the holy and the fallen angels should be employed, or permitted, to take some part in the affairs of men; that they do so is at least quite capable of proof, though not an original dictate of reason. Were it in our power to visit distant worlds, we should, without question, occasionally do so: and we should, on these visits, not be altogether unconcerned spectators of what is going on, but should in some cases interfere, properly or improperly, according to our different views and dispositions. The same thing, then, may be considered as probable with regard to angels, both good and bad. It is to be supposed that they do thus visit us and act among us, unless, indeed, they be positively prohibited by God. Nor is there any impossibility, or improbability, in the nature of things, that spirits should communicate to us thoughts both holy and sinful. We communicate thoughts to each other, in various ways, of which, if we had not been constituted exactly as we are, it would have been impossible for us to form any conception. Hence it follows that there may be other ways of communication still which we cannot conceive. It will not be disputed that angels communicate their thoughts to each other, and yet we cannot comprehend how they do so; why, then, should our ignorance of the manner in which they ascertain our thoughts, and communicate thoughts to us, be viewed as a proof that no such intercourse can exist? It may, indeed, be objected, that when men hold such intercourse with men, they are conscious of the presence and actings of each other; whereas they are not conscious either of the presence or of the communications of good or bad spirits, and therefore ought to conclude against such presence and such communications. To this we reply, that if such consciousness be demanded, there are many well-authenticated instances of it, in which men have been sensible of the presence and words and actings of these spirits. Notice, however, to what an extreme of impiety and atheism it would lead, to say that ideas cannot be conveyed to us by any being of whose presence and acts we are not conscious; for this would exclude the great Creator Himself from all access to the souls he has made. Both reason and Scripture lead us to believe that God does direct our minds, though we are not sensible of His presence and agency. Why, then, may not the same thing hold substantially with regard to the holy and fallen angels? Thus the objection, by proving too much, proves nothing. Is there not then, on the whole, something rational in the idea that good angels may promote man’ s holiness, and evil angels his disobedience? On the supposition of that agency being equal on both sides, man would be no loser. On the supposition of the favourable influence being at least more general than the unfavourable, man would be obviously a gainer. It is possible, too, that the permission of some unfavourable interference might serve important purposes to man, and be overruled for the greater glory of God. Thus the subject has a very different aspect in the eye of reason, from what some profane witlings and self-conceited objectors pretend. Viewed, again, in the light of revelation, though many points are left obscure, there are many points cleared up, on the subject of the fallen angels. We are told that they were originally holy and happy in heaven, like those who are now confirmed in blessedness; that one of them of high rank, now called Satan, or the devil, by way of horrid eminence, instigated by pride and ambition, rebelled against God, and was joined in his rebellion by a great multitude of the heavenly host; that they were banished from heaven; that no means are appointed for their recovery; that they are reserved under chains of darkness unto the judgment of the great day; that though they are in general confined, they, and especially their chief, are permitted, at times, to go a certain length in their endeavour to extend the dominion of sin to which they are prompted by their malice and wickedness; that the devil was the successful tempter of our first parents; that he has been instrumental in many of the crimes and calamities of mankind; that he opposed the Sou of God, and excited to His crucifixion; that he and his associates have habitually acted, as far as they could, as the deceivers and destroyers of men; that they will continue in the same desperate course till the end of time: and that then their power will be crushed, and they will be left to lie for ever under the load of guilt and misery which they have brought upon themselves. (James Foote, M. A.) Christ tempted, yet sinless There is a difficulty connected with our Lord’ s temptation, which has, I suppose, more or less clearly presented itself to every one who has sought at all to enter into the deeper significance of this mysterious transaction. The difficulty and dilemma may be stated thus: Either there was that in Christ which more or less responded to the temptation--how then was He without sin, seeing that sin moves and lives in the region of desires quite as really as in that of external acts? or there was nothing in Him that responded to the suggestions of the tempter--where then was the reality of the temptation, or what was the significance of that victory which in the wilderness He won? The secret of the difficulty which these alternatives present to our minds, so that sometimes it appears to us impossible that Christ’ s temptation should have had anything real in it, leaving Him as it did wholly unscathed, lies in the mournful experience which we in our own spiritual life, have made, namely, that almost all of our temptations involve more or less of sin, that the serpent leaves something of his trail and slime even there where he is not allowed to nestle and make his home. Conquerors though we may be, yet we seldom issue from the conflict without a scratch--a hurt it may be which soon heals, but which has left its cicatrice behind it. The saint, if he shine as a diamond at last, yet it is still as a diamond which has been polished in its own dust. For we may take up arms against the evil thought, we may rally the higher powers of our souls, and call in the might of a Mightier to put the evil and its author to flight, yet this we seldom do till it has already found some place within us. Our acquiescence may have been but momentary yet even the moment during which the evil was not abhorred and loathed is irreconcilable with the idea of an absolute holiness, which is as a mirror whose perfect brightness no lightest breath has ever troubled or tarnished for an instant. The reconciliation of an entire sinlessness in Christ with the reality of the temptations to which He was exposed lies in this, that there was never in Him this momentary delectation; even as there need not be in us; and would not be, if we always were, and had always in time past been, upon our highest guard. (Arch bishop Trench.) Christ’ s conflict and ours The temptation in the wilderness is the image of the conflict of the Christian life. 1. The temptation. 2. The enemy. 3. The attack. 4. The weapon. 5. The victory. 6. The crown. Finally, the question: If you fight against Christ, how can you still have courage; if you fight under Christ, how can you still be anxious? (J. J. Van Oosterzee, D. D.) Typical temptations The three temptations of the Lord typify those employed against men by Satan at the different stages of life. Sensuality is especially the sin of the youth, ambition especially that of the man, avarice especially that of the old man. Whoever has overcome the first of these three temptations must count upon the second; whoever sees the second behind him will soon be covertly approached by the third. But in all temptations, we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. Over against forty days’ temptation in the first stand the forty days’ peace and joy in the second life of the Lord. (J. J. Van Oosterzee, D. D.) Comfort from Christ’ s temptation Christ was tempted even as we are, yet without sin. This word is-- 1. A light for our blindness. 2. A spur for our slackness. 3. A staff for our weakness. (Rautenberg.) Temptation There is no sin in being tempted: for the perfect Jesus “ was in all points tempted like as we are.” Temptation does not necessitate sinning: for of Jesus, when tempted, we read “ yet without sin.” Not even the worst forms of it involve sin: for Jesus endured without sin the subtlest of temptations, from the evil one himself. 1. It may be needful for us to be tempted-- (1) For test. Sincerity, faith, love, patience, are thus put to proof. (2) For growth. Temptation develops and increases our graces. (3) For usefulness. We become able to comfort and warn others. (4) For victory. How glorious to overcome the arch-enemy. (5) For God’ s glory. He vanquishes Satan by feeble men. 2. Solitude will not prevent temptation. (1) It may even aid it. Jesus was tempted in the wilderness. (2) Nor will fasting and prayer always keep off the tempter; for these had been fully used by our Lord. (C. H. Spurgeon.) The fasting and temptation of Jesus What is Christ doing in this long solitude and silence of the wilderness? To say that He is fasting does not satisfy our inquiry. Who has not wished many times that he could have the record of these forty days? We know that He is not bewailing His sins; nor afflicting Himself purposely in penances of hunger and starvation; nor wrestling with the question whether He will undertake the work to which He is called. But these are negations only, and I think we shall be able to fix on several important points where we know sufficient in the positive to justify a large deduction concerning the probable nature of the struggle through which Jesus is here passing. 1. He has a nature that in part is humanly derived. But now it is opened to Him that He is here not as here belonging; that He is sent, let down into the world, incarnated into human evil. 2. It is not to be doubted that He had internal struggles of a different nature, growing out of His hereditary connection with our humanly disordered and retributively broken state. I refer, more especially, to what must have come upon Him under the law of bad suggestion. 3. It is not to be doubted that His human weakness made a fearful recoil from the lot of suffering, and the horrible death now before Him. 4. There comes upon Him also, at the point of His call or endowment, still another and vaster kind of commotion, that belongs even to His Divine nature. The love He had before to mankind was probably more like that of a simply perfect man. Having now the fallen world itself put upon His love, and the endowment of a Saviour entered consciously into His heart, His whole Divinity is heaved into such commotion as is fitly called an agony. 5. Once more, the mind of Jesus, in His forty days’ retirement and fasting must have been profoundly engaged and powerfully tasked in the unfolding of the necessary plan. (H. Bushnell, D. D.) Satan adapts his temptations Whensoever he tempteth he taketh this advantage, if he can discover or obtain it. He is wiser than to set sail against wind and tide, to row against the stream; therefore he labours all he can to find which way the stream of man’ s affections runs; and to what sins his relations, his calling, or his opportunities lay him most open and obnoxious; accordingly he lays his snares, and spreads his net. When he meets with a proud man, him he tempteth with high thoughts: when he meeteth with a covetous man, him he tempteth to the love of the world; he lays a golden bait of profit before his eyes: the adulterous he leads to the harlot’ s house. For howsoever it be true, that every man hath in him a principle suiting to every sin; yet it is a truth too, that every man is not equally active for, or disposed unto every sin; and every man hath not every particular sin predominant in him: now Satan, when he seeth what is predominant in any man, then he fashioneth and frameth a temptation suitable. (Caryl.) Temptations in youth The temptations assail you most fiercely now, at the outset of your life. You are like those who have to build the breakwater against the sea. And the great struggle with the waves is for the foundation; every stone laid is laid in fiercest struggle; after the foundation, the work can proceed, Now, you are laying the foundation. Yield once to temptation, let but once the tempter be your master, and he may lead you for evermore in chains. Be strong and be very courageous. “ Take to yourself the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand in this evil day, and having done all to stand!” (H. Wonnacott.) Christ not harmed by temptation His purity will not be sullied by temptation. Temptation cannot defile. The unclean bird, as he flaps his black wings in flight, may throw his shadow on the whiteness of the mountain snow, but it is not stained. The clear blue of highland lake may be darkened by overshadowing blackness, but the lucid depth is undefiled. Christ may be tempted, but temptation harms only as it is entertained, and dallied with, and obeyed. (H. Wonnacott.) Face to face with Satan Perhaps very few of you know how a man feels when, for the first time, he finds himself, as I remember finding myself, within a few inches of a serpent--when he sees the cobra di capello rearing its head ready to strike, and knows that one stroke of those fangs is death--certain death. That moment he experiences a varied passion, impossible to describe. Fear, hatred, loathing, the desire to escape, the desire to kill, all rush into one moment, making his entire being thrill. Now, take two men: one is in the face of that serpent; the other is in the presence of the old serpent called Satan, the devil; one is in danger of the sting; the other is in danger of committing sin. Which of the two has most reason to flee?(W. Arthur, D. D.) The best of men not exempt from temptation Felix Neff was often heard singing praises to God, when alone in his room. Worldly men said of him: “ What a singular being! he seems unhappy, and yet, when he is alone, he is always singing!” It was because Neff rejoiced in the Lord. Yet his friends relate that he had also great spiritual trials. He said that he was sometimes so assailed by the adversary of souls, that he seemed to himself to be surrounded with ruins, and he lost for a moment even the hope of being saved. But soon he resumed courage. “ He who has taken me into fellowship with Himself is faithful,” said he; “ and if, on account of my many unfaithfulnesses, He hides for a moment His face, I hope ever in Him: I know in whom I have believed! “ Meaning of tempt” The word “ tempt,” in the simple notion of it, signifies to try, to experiment, to prove, as when a vessel is pierced, that the nature of the liquor it contains may be ascertained. Hence God is said sometimes to tempt, and we are commanded as our duty to tempt, or try, or search ourselves to know what is in us, and to pray that God would do so also. So temptation is like a knife that may either cut the meat or the throat of a man; it may be his food or his poison, his exercise or his destruction. (J. Owen, D. D.) Satan is sometime incessant in temptations, and sets upon us with continued importunities Here we may note a distinction of temptations, besides that of invisible and visible: that some are movable and short fits, and as it were skirmishes, in which he stays not long, and others are more fixed and durable. We may call them solemn temptations, in which Satan doth, as it were, pitch down his tents, and doth manage a long siege against us. (H. Gilpin.) Christ tempted with good If any one say He was not moved by any of those temptations, he must be told that then they were no temptations to Him, and He was not tempted; nor was His victory of more significance than that of the man who, tempted to bear false witness against his neighbour, abstains from robbing him of his goods. For human need, struggle and hope, it bears no meaning; and we must reject the whole as a fantastic folly of crude invention, a mere stage show; a lie for the poor sake of the fancied truth. But asserting that these were real temptations if the story is to be received at all, am I not involving myself in a greater difficulty still? For how could the Son of God be tempted with evil? In the answer to this lies the centre, the essential germ of the whole interpretation: “ He was not tempted with evil, but with good” ; with inferior forms of good, that is, pressing upon Him, while the higher forms of good held themselves aloof, biding their time, that is, God’ s time. I do Dot believe that the Son of God could be tempted with evil, but I do believe that He could be tempted with good--to yield to which temptation would have been evil in Him--to the universe. (G. Macdonald, LL. D.) The three temptations In these three characteristic temptations we are-- 1. To look for the central principles of Christ’ s work brought to the test at the outset of His career. 2. To discern, in some degree at least, the central points of the trial of all human souls which our Lord felt in all its intensity. (H. Wace, D. D.) We will consider I. THE TEMPTED. I would say here that I believe in one malignant powerful spirit. I believe the devil has a personal existence. He must have influenced the mind of Christ in one of two ways; either immediately, or by means of external agency. Which was it? Judge ye. II. THE TEMPTED. Notice three things. 1. The fact that pure human nature should have been tempted thus at all. Jesus had no sympathy with evil, yet here we find evil coming in contact with Him. 2. This temptation assailed Him immediately after His investiture with singular glory. 3. These temptations came to Christ just as He was beginning His great work of mediation on earth. III. THE . Notice I. The scenes. (1) In the wilderness; (2) in the holy mountain; (3) in the holy city. 2. There is an appropriateness between each of these temptations, and the scenes where they occurred. (1) The first is the temptation of poverty. (2) The second to greatness and officialism. (3) The third to ostentation. 3. In each temptation, Christ was either tempted to use a wrong end or to use wrong means to secure His end, and this is the whole of temptation. : You who are tempted, remember-- 1. That the only pure Being on earth was tried by three dreadful temptations. 2. That our nature has vanquished temptation. 3. That He who was tempted and overcame is our Friend and Brother, and High-priest. (Caleb Morris.) The general elements of the temptations I. ABUSE OF POWER. II. OF TRUTH. “ It is written,” said the tempter. III. MAKING PRESENT THE END OF LIFE. (Caleb Morris.) The nature of the three temptations I. IN THE FIRST, TO CONVERT STONES INTO BREAD, Christ, if He had yielded to it would have sinned against-- 1. The law of spiritual self-government. 2. The laws that govern natural life. 3. The law of miracles. II. IN THE TO FALL DOWN AND WORSHIP. 1. The essence consisted in the giving up of spiritual power to worldly grandeur. 2. The tempter sinned (1) against the spirit of the Bible; (2) against the unity of the Bible; (3) against the authority of the Bible. III. IN THE TO CAST HIMSELF DOWN FROM THE OF THE TEMPLE, CHRIST WAS TEMPTED TO DO THREE THINGS. 1. To seek personal applause. 2. To use unnatural means to secure it. 3. In doing all this, falsely to trust to God for protection. (Caleb Morris.) The secret of victory The history of these temptations furnishes us with the principles on which they may be vanquished. Not by fasting; for He was tempted while He was fasting. Not by retiring from the world; for He was tempted while He was alone. But by the deep indwelling of truth. Not by outward truth, but by truth m us. A man may have truth in his book, and his book in his pocket. He may have it in his creed, and have it in his brain, and yet not possess one truth that will enable him to conquer a single temptation. Christ repelled temptation by indwelling truth. Christ repelled temptation by a threefold statement: “ Man shall not live by bread alone” ; “ Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God” ; “ Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.” These words may be summed up--man by God; man for God; man according to God. (Caleb Morris.) The design of the three temptations 1. To arouse in Jesus a painful sense of the contrast between the abundance due to His Divine greatness and the miserable destitution in which He found Himself. 2. To provoke Him to win universal empire by a sudden exhibition of Divine power rather than by a patient manifestation of the Divine character. 3. To lead Him to presume on the favour and love of which the voice from Heaven had just assured Him. (F. Godet, D. D.) Tempted like as we are There is-- I. AN APPEAL TO . It is here that temptation first and most strongly besets a youth. The great turning question of life is, “ Am I to be the body’ s; or is the body to be mine, and mine for God’ s?” He only can be truly said to live who, by faith in God’ s Word and obedience unto Him, seeks constantly to serve the Lord. II. AN APPEAL TO . The same insidious temptation is, in one form or another, repeated in the case of every man; and for the most part, in the commencement of his career, he has to fight the battle, or to yield himself a captive. God’ s way to honour and power and wealth is still steep, and arduous and rugged; and to the man who is wearifully exerting himself to overmaster its difficulties, Satan comes, offering his short and easy road to the summit of his ambition--in how many cases, alas! with the most complete success. Avoid the devil’ s short cuts, and make the words of our Lord, “ Thou shalt worship,” &c., the motto of your lives. Listen to the words of Havelock when told that there were prejudices against him in certain quarters on account of his religion: “ I humbly trust that in that great matter I should not change my opinions and practice, though it rained garters and coronets as the reward of apostasy.” III. AN APPEAL TO FAITH. This as insidious as the rest. Jesus had already repelled the tempter by expressing His confidence in God, and allegiance to His Father; and to that very principle which had before foiled him, he addresses himself now; as if he had said, “ Dost thou trust God? come, and I will place thee in circumstances such as will make manifest to all His guardian care of Thee.” The principle of Christ’ s answer is this: We are never to be guilty of tempting Providence by setting either His natural or spiritual laws at defiance. If we are in danger, in God’ s service, we may rely that He will be with us. But we have no right to imagine that He will suspend the law of gravitation, whenever we choose to leap over a precipice; or that He will suspend the spiritual laws which regulate the actions of our souls, whenever we put ourselves in the way of temptation. : YOU may overcome every temptation by giving up the fortress of your soul to this same Jesus, who vanquished Satan here. (W. M. Taylor, D. D.) The devil’ s real character disclosed We learn much of Satan, our great adversary, from the different ways in which he attempted to lead our Lord astray. I. THE POVERTY OF SATAN. How little he has to offer Christ--not so much as bread, only stones. II. HIS . Repelled once, he returns to the attack, and asks for adoration to be given him, a lost and fallen angel, by the Lord of heaven and earth. III. His weakness. He did not cast our Lord down: not even bind Him; no power to force--he can only try to persuade. Sin is not so strong as it is often represented. IV. HIS CRAFT. 1. He attacks the Lord’ s weakness by fasting. As the general surveys the most likely time to raise the siege of a beleaguered city, so the devil always watches his opportunity. 2. He pretends to ask a most simple request, when it is really hard and most difficult. 3. He graduates his temptations. In the first temptation, he places himself before man; then, before an angel; lastly, in the place of God. All sin is graduated. V. HIS LIES. He promises-- 1. That which he has not to give. 2. That which he has no intention of giving. : 1. Fear not this devil. 2. Ever watch for him. 3. Meet him boldly, and you will overcome him. (M. Faber.) The devil the architect of evil The devil is the great architect of wickedness, as Christ is the Prince of life and righteousness. The devil the accuser and defamer of God Here in this chapter the devil doth “ strive to put out the very eye of God’ s providence,” that he might shake Christ’ s faith, as it were, and drive Him to distrust. He accuseth His wisdom in our retirement and secret sins, and that with some scorn: “ Tush, God doth not see it: nor is there knowledge in the Most Psalms 73:11). He accuseth His justice, and puts stout words into our mouths when we deny our obedience: “ It is in vain to serve the Lord: and what profit is there that we have kept His ordinances?” Malachi 3:14.) He defames His mercy, when, remembering our sins, we fall under them, as a burden too heavy for us (Psalms 38:4), and as if God had “ forgotten to be merciful” (Psalms 77:9). He roars loud against His very power in the mouth of a Rabshakeh, and would persuade the Israelites that to say God should deliver them was nothing else but to deliver themselves up to famine and thirst (2 Kings 18:30). He casts his venom upon all the Divine attributes, and makes them the inducements to sin, which are the strongest motives to goodness. He never presents God to us as He is, but in several forms and all such as may drive us from one attribute to run us on another. He presents Him without an eye, that we may do what we list; without a hand, that we may trust in a hand of flesh; without an ear, that our blasphemies may be loud. He makes us favourable interpreters of Him before we sin, and unjust judges of Him when we have sinned. He makes Him a libertine to the presumptuous, and a Novatian to the despairing, sinner; being a liar in all, whose every breath is a defamation. Nulla spud cum tuttis ratio vincendi, as was said of king Philip: “ He is not ashamed of any lie that may lead us from the truth.” And as he defameth God unto us, so in every sin almost he accuses us unto ourselves. In the heat of our zeal he accuseth us of madness, that we may be remiss; and in our meekness he chargeth us with folly, that we may learn to be angry. In our justice he calls us tyrants, that we may yield it up unto unnecessary pity; and in our compassion he urgeth the want of justice, that, to put on the new man, we may put off all bowels of mercy. He accuseth our faith to our charity, and persuades us that for all our good works we are none of the faithful; and our charity to our hope, as if it were so cold it could kindle no such virtue within us. From religion he drives us on to superstition, and from the fear of superstition into that gulf of profaneness which will swallow us up. And then, when he hath us in his nets, when he hath by accusing us unto ourselves made us guilty indeed, when by accusing our virtues he hath brought us to sin, he draws his bill of accusation, and for one sin writes down a hundred. (A. Farindon, D. D.) Why is he called the devil? The word signifies a slanderer or accuser. And he accuseth-- 1. To God; 2. To man. 1. To God he accuseth man; hence called the accuser of the brethren (Revelation 12:1-17.). And thus he accused Job (Job 2:1-13.). 2. To man. He accuses (1) God Himself, as to our first parents, as envying their felicity, and over-hardly dealing with them in their restraint of that fruit, and so still he doth in the matter of reprobation and the commandments of the law. (2) He accuses or slanders the graces of God, he brings an ill name upon them to discredit them with us. Thus he slanders zeal to be rashness, justice to be cruelty, wisdom to be craft, mercy to be fond softness, humility to be baseness. (3) He slanders the servants of God, that they are hot, fiery, furious, factious, enemies to Caesar, curious, proud, &c. (4) His neighbours, and such with whom he hath to deal, by suggesting false suspicions and surmises against them. (5) His own self, by enraging his conscience against him. Now Satan especially is an accuser, in accusing us to God and our own consciences. And he cloth this specially-- (a) After the committing of some grievous sin which he tempted us unto. Before he seemed our friend, and put upon sin a goodly vizor, but now he plucks it off, and urges us to desperation. (b) In some more grievous trial, and specially at the hour of death. (c) At the day of judgment. 1. It being the devil’ s office to be an accuser or slanderer, let us take heed of doing such ill offices. Let the devil have his own office, let us not go about to take it out of his hands. 2. Since the devil is an accuser, it must make us wary over our ways, as we are wary in our worldly estates of the promoter, of pickthanks, and talebearers. He will accuse falsely when there is no cause, much more then will he accuse when we give him cause by our sins. Howbeit, even here will he be a false accuser and slanderer, by making that to be treason which is but patty larceny, and sins of infirmity to be the unpardonable sin against the Holy Ghost. (D. Dyke.) Let us not aid our accuser Let us then say with Joseph, “’ How can I commit this wickedness, and sin against God’ (Genesis 39:9), who would save me? and how can I commit this, and help the devil, my enemy, to accuse me?” In the affairs of this world we are very sly and cautious, and will not give any advantage to those whom we suppose to be no well-willers unto us. Nay, many times we abstain from things not unlawful, in the presence of those we do not love, because we fear whatsoever we do will be misinterpreted, and can expect no better gloss than that which malice will make. And shall we be so confident on the greatest enemy of mankind as to help his malice, and to further and promote the desire which he hath of our ruins? Shall I fill this accuser’ s mouth with arguments against myself, and even furbish and whet the sword of my executioner? This is a folly which we cannot but be ashamed of; and yet in every sin we commit, we commit this folly. But yet, in the last place, as St. John saith, “ If we sin, we have an Advocate” (1 John 2:1); so say I, If we sin, and the devil put up his bill of accusation against us (as most certainly he will), let us learn to accuse ourselves; and that will make his accusation void, and cancel his bill. From a broken and a contrite heart let us say, “ We have sinned,” and he hath nothing to say. Let us confess our sins, and we have put the adversary to silence. (A. Farindon, D. D.) Why was Christ tempted? 1. That we might see the horrible rage and senseless madness of the devil against God and our salvation. 2. That we should know how fit it is there should be trials of ministers before they enter into their functions. 3. That ministers might know who will be their special adversary they must conflict with in their ministry. 4. That we might see how fit it is that ministers and men of great callings should be fitted and prepared for the good discharge of them by temptation, and by their own experience might learn to relieve others (2 Corinthians 1:4). 5. To give us warning to look to ourselves. If Satan durst set upon Christ, who was as green wood, and had abundance of moisture to quench the heat of his fire, what then will he do to us that are dry, and quickly set on fire? 6. To overcome our temptation with His as He did our death with His. For as death lost his sting lighting on Christ, so also Satan’ s temptations, and the foil He gave Satan was for us. 7. That by suffering that which was the desert of our sins, his love towards us might appear the more. 8. That there might be some answering to the Israelites being forty years in the desert in many trials and temptations. A day answering a year, as there was before in Christ’ s going into Egypt. 9. That our Lord might the better know how to pity, and tender, and relieve us with comforts, when we are in temptation. They pity us most in our sicknesses, that have felt the same themselves. (D. Dyke.) Why Christ would submit to be tempted 1. Thus was Christ evidenced to be the second Adam, and the seed of the woman. His being tempted, and in such a manner, doth clearly satisfy us that He was true Man 1:2. This was a fair preludium and earnest of that final conquest over Satan, and the breaking down of his power. 3. There was a more peculiar aim in God by these means of temptation to qualify Him with pity and power to help (Hebrews 2:18; Hebrews 4:15). 4. The consequence of this experimental compassion in Christ was a further reason why He submitted to be tempted, to wit, that we might hare the greater comfort and encouragement in the expectancy of tender dealing from Him. 5. A further end God seemed to have in this, viz., to give a signal and remarkable instance to us of the nature oftemptations; of Satan’ s subtlety, his impudency. That neither height of privilege, nor eminency of employment, nor holiness of person, will discourage Satan from tempting, or secure any from his assaults. The best of men in the highest attainments may expect temptations. Grace itself doth not exempt them. 1. For none of these privileges in us, nor eminencies of grace, want matter to fix a temptation upon. The weaknesses of the best of men are such that a temptation is not rendered improbable, as to the success, by their graces. 2. None of us are beyond the necessity of such exercises. It cannot be said that we need them not, or that there may not be holy ends wherefore God should not permit and order them for our good. Temptations, as they are in God’ s disposal, are a necessary spiritual physic. The design of them is to humble us, to prove us, and to do us good in the latter end Deuteronomy 8:16). Nothing will work more of care, watchfulness, diligence, and fear in a gracious heart, than a sense of Satan’ s designment against it. 3. The privileges and graces of the children of God do stir up Satan’ s pride, revenge, and rage against them. This is also of use to those that are apt to be confident upon their successes against sin through grace. Satan, they may see, will be upon them again; so that they must behave themselves as mariners, who, when they have got the harbour, and are out of the storm, mend their ship and tackling, and prepare again for the sea. That there may be temptations without leaving a touch of guilt or impurity behind them upon the tempted. It is true this is rare with men. The best do seldom go down to the battle, but in their very conquests they receive some wound; and in those temptations that arise from our own hearts, we are never without fault; but in such as do solely arise from Satan, there is a possibility that the upright may so keep himself, that the wicked one may not so touch him as to leave the print of his fingers behind him. But the great difficulty is, How it may be known when temptations are from Satan, and when from ourselves? To answer this I shall lay down these conclusions: 1. The same sins which our own natures would suggest to us, may also be injected by Satan. 2. There is no sin so vile, but our own heart might possibly produce it without Satan. 3. There are many cases wherein it is very difficult, if not altogether impossible, to determine whether our own heart or Satan gives the first life or breathing to a temptation. 4. Though it be true, which some say, that in most cases it is needless altogether to spend our time in disputing whether the motions of sin in our minds are firstly from ourselves or from Satan, our greatest business being rather to resist them than to difference them; yet there are special eases wherein it is very necessary to find out the true parent of a sinful motion, and these are when tender consciences are wounded and oppressed with violent and great temptations, as blasphemous thoughts, atheistical objections, &c. As Joseph’ s steward hid the cup in Benjamin’ s sack, that it might be a ground of accusation against him, so doth the devil first oppress them with such thoughts, and then accuseth them of all that villainy and wickedness, the motions whereof he had with such importunity forced upon them; and so apt are the afflicted to comply with accusations against themselves, that they believe it is so, and from thence conclude that they are given up of God, hardened as Pharaoh, that they have sinned against the Holy Ghost, and finally that there is no hope of mercy for them. All this befalls them from their ignorance of Satan’ s dealings, and here is their great need to distinguish Satan’ s malice from their guilt. 5. We may discover if they proceed from Satan, though not simply from the matter of them, not from the suddenness and independency of them, yet from a due consideration of their nature and manner of proceeding, compared with the present temper and disposition of our heart. As-- 1. When unusual temptations intrude upon us with a high impetuosity and violence, while our thoughts are otherwise concerned and taken up. 2. While such things are borne in upon us, against the actual loathing, strenuous reluctancy, and high complainings of the soul, when the mind is filled with horror and the body with trembling at the presence of such thoughts. 3. Our hearts may bring forth that which is unnatural in itself, and may give rise to a temptation that would be horrid to the thoughts of other men. 4. Much more evident is it that such proceed from Satan, when they are of long continuance and constant trouble. Application: The consideration of this is of great use to those that suffer under the violent hurries of strange temptations. 1. In that sometime they can justly complain of the affliction of such temptation, when they have no reason to charge it upon themselves as their sin. Satan only barks when he suggests, but he then bites and wounds when he draws us to consent. 2. That not only the sin but the degree also, by just consequence, is to be measured by the consent of the heart. (R. Gilpin.) The design of Christ’ s temptation 1. For faith, that the temptations of Christ have sanctified temptations unto us: that whereas before they were curses, like unto hanging on a tree; now, since Christ hath been both tempted and hanged on a tree, they be no longer signs and pledges of God’ s wrath, but favours. A man may be the child of God notwithstanding, and therefore he is not to receive any discouragement by any of them. 2. Besides the sanctifying, it is an abatement, so that now when we are tempted, they have not the force they had before: for now the serpent’ s head is bruised, so that he is now nothing so strong (as he was) to cast his darts. Also the head of his darts are blunted. (Bishop Andrewes.) Tempter and accuser And therefore if we be wise, let us resist him in the first, give no place to him when he is a tempter, so shall we not fear him, when he is an accuser, nor feel him as a tormenter. (Bishop Cowper.) The wicked free frets temptation So Satan troubles not such as are under his power already; such as are empty of grace he desires not to winnow, for what have they in them to be sifted out? The dog barks not at the dumb sticks, but at strangers: when the door is wide open, and there is free ingress and egress, there is no knocking; but if once shut up, then still one or other is rapping and bouncing. The wicked have the doors of their hearts set wide open to Satan, therefore he raps not there by tentation, but at the godlies, that shut and bar up this door against him. They then that brag they were never troubled with Satan’ s temptations, do thereby profess their want of grace. If they had any spiritual treasure this thief would be dealing with them. If they had been taken out of the hands of Satan by the power of Christ, he would have raged, and took on, labouring with all his might to recover his prey. This entry is longer than a Bible module can hold. The rest is at https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/bi/ Luke 4:3 If Thou be the Son of God The devil’ s preface Satan knows how to write prefaces: here is one. He began the whole series of his temptations by a doubt cast upon our Lord’ s Sonship, and a crafty quotation from Scripture. He caught up the echo of the Father’ s word at our Lord’ s baptism, and began tempting where heavenly witness ended. He knew how to discharge a doubleshotted temptation, and at once to suggest doubt and rebellion--“ If” “ command.” I. THE TEMPTER ASSAILS WITH AN “ IF.” 1. Not with point-blank denial. That would be too startling. Doubt serves the Satanic purpose better than heresy. 2. He grafts his “ if” on a holy thing. He makes the doubt look like holy anxiety concerning Divine Sonship. 3. He “ ifs” a plain Scripture. “ Thou art My Son” (Psalms 2:7). 4. He “ ifs “ a former manifestation. At His baptism God said, “ This is My beloved Son.” Satan contradicts our spiritual experience. 5. He “ ifs” a whole life. From the first Jesus had been about His Father’ s business; yet after thirty years His Sonship is questioned. 6. He “ ifs” inner consciousness. Our Lord knew that He was the Father’ s Son; but the evil one is daring. 7. He “ ifs” a perfect character. Well may he question us, whose faults are so many. II. THE TEMPTER AIMS THE “ IF” AT A VITAL PART. 1. At our sonship. In our Lord’ s case he attacks His human and Divine Sonship. In our case he would make us doubt our regeneration. 2. At our childlike spirit. He tempts us to cater for ourselves. 3. At our Father’ s honour. He tempts us to doubt our Father’ s providence, and to blame Him for letting us hunger. 4. At our comfort and strength as members of the heavenly family. III. THE TEMPTER THAT “ IF” WITH . 1. YOU are alone. Would a father desert his child? 2. You are in a desert. Is this the place for God’ s Heir? 3. You are with the wild beasts. Wretched company for a Son of God I 4. You are an hungered. How can a loving Father let His perfect Son hunger? Put all these together, and the tempter’ s question comes home with awful force to one who is hungry and alone. When we see others thus tried, do we think them brethren? Do we not question their sonship, as Job’ s friends questioned him? What wonder if we question ourselves! IV. WHEN , THE TEMPTER’ S “ IF” IS HELPFUL. 1. As coming from Satan, it is a certificate of our true descent. (1) He only questions truth: therefore we are true sons. (2) He only leads sons to doubt their sonship: therefore we are sons. 2. As overcome, it may be a quietus to the enemy for years. It takes the sting out of man’ s questionings and suspicions; for if we have answered the devil himself we do not fear men. 3. As past, it is usually the prelude to angels coming and ministering to us. (C. H.Spurgeon.) The force of an “ if” What force there is often in a single monosyllable! What force, for instance, in the monosyllable “ if,” with which this artful address begins! It was employed by Satan, for the purpose of insinuating into the Saviour’ s mind a doubt of His being in reality the special object of His Father’ s care, and it was pronounced by him, as we may well suppose, with a cunning and malignant emphasis. How different is the use which Jesus makes of this word “ if” in those lessons of Divine instruction and heavenly consolation, which He so frequently delivered to His disciples when He was on earth l He always employed it to inspire confidence; never to excite distrust. Take a single instance of this: “ If God so clothe the grass of the field, which to-day is, and to-morrow is cast into the oven, shall He not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?” What a contrast between this Divine remonstrance and the malicious insinuation of the great enemy of God and man! (Dean Bagot.) Oh, this word “ if” ! Oh, that I could tear it out of my heart! O thou poison of all my pleasures! Thou cold icy hand, that touchest me so often, and freezest me with the touch! “ If! I!” (Robert Robinson.) The beginning of temptation I. The first step towards God is faith in Him and His love. The first step away from Him is doubt. Therefore the devil begins all temptation by seeking to inspire the human soul with doubt. He sought to make Eve doubt God’ s loving purpose towards her by his “ Yea, hath God said?” II. 1. How often are we tempted to doubt God’ s love! Especially is this the case when we are left for a time without any sensible tokens of His presence. 2. How shall we meet this temptation? By reliance on the Word and the promise of God. Is there not in His Word food for the hungry, solace for the lonely, comfort for the desponding? (Canon Vernon Hutton, M. A.) That where Satan carries on a main design and end he bestows most of his pains and skill in rendering the means to that end plausible and taking The end is least in mention, and the means in their fit contrivance takes up most of his art and care. The reasons whereof are these-- (1) The end is apparently bad, so that it would be a contradiction to his design to mention it. It is the snare and trap itself, which his wisdom and policy directs him to cover. His ultimate end is the destruction of the soul. This he dare not openly avouch to the vilest of men. (2) The means to such wicked ends have not only an innate and natural tendency in themselves, which are apt to sway and bias men that way, but are also capable of artificial improvement, to a further enticement to the evils secretly intended; and these require the art and skill for the exact suiting and fitting of them. (3) The means are capable of a varnish and paint. He can make a shift to set them off and colour them over, that the proper drift of them cannot easily be discovered; whereas the ends to which these lead cannot receive, at least so easily with some, such fair shows. It is far easier to set off company-keeping, with the pleasurable pretences of necessity or refreshing divertisement, than to propound direct drunkenness, the thing to which company-keeping tends, under such a dress. If it be demanded, How and by what arts he renders the means so plausible? I shall endeavour a satisfaction to that query, by showing the way that Satan took to render the means he made use of in this temptation plausible to Christ, which were these: (1) He represents it as a harmless or lawful thing in itself. Who can say it had been sinful for the Son of God to have turned stones into bread, more than to turn water into wine? (2) He gives the motion a further pretext of advantage or goodness. He insinuated that it might be a useful discovery of His Sonship, and a profitable supply against hunger. (3) He seems also to put a necessity upon it, that other ways of help failing, He must be constrained so to do, or to suffer further want. (4) He forgets not to tell Him that to do this was but suitable to His condition, and that it was a thing well becoming the Son of God to do a miracle. (5) He doth urge it at the rate of a duty, and that being in hunger and want, it would be a sinful neglect not to do what He could and might for His preservation. (R. Gilpin.) First, shipwreck of faith, then of obedience The devil here seeing Him in great want and hunger, would thereby bring in doubt, that He was not the Son of God, which is not a good argument. For whether we respect the natural tokens of God’ s favour, we see they happen not to the wisest and men of best and greatest knowledge, as appeareth in Ecclesiastes 9:11, or the supernatural favour of God. We shall see Abraham forced to fly his country into Egypt for famine (Genesis 10:12). So did Isaac Genesis 26:1). And Jacob likewise was in the same distress Genesis 43:1). Notwithstanding that God was called the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, yet were they all three like to be hunger-starved. Yea, not only so, but for their faith many were burned and stoned, of whom the world was not worthy (Hebrews 11:37). So fared it with the apostles; they were hungry, naked, and athirst (1 Corinthians 4:11). (Bishop Andrewes.) Joy and comfort ruined by doubt Hope, joy, peace, thankfulness, repentance, obedience, prayer, patience, worship--all these will vanish away like a morning mist before the sun if the devil can make you distrust with such a temptation as this, “ If thou,” &c. (Bishop Hacket.) Certitude of salvation 1. That the Holy Ghost doth beget a true and an humble assurance in many of the faithful touching the remission of their sins in this life. 2. The Holy Ghost doth beget this assurance in them, by causing them to examine what good fruits they have produced already from a lively faith, and do resolve to produce thereafter. 3. This comfortable assurance is not the formal act of justifying faith, but an effect which follows it. 4. This assurance is not alike in all that are regenerate, nor at all times alike. 5. No mortified humble Christian must despair, or afflict his heart, because scruples arise in his mind, so that he cannot attain to a strong confidence or assurance in Christ’ s mercies. He that can attain but to a conjectural hope, or some beginnings of gracious comfort, shall be blessed before God, who will not quench the smoking flax. (Bishop Hacket.) All Christians have not the same degree of assurance Every tree doth not shoot out its root so far as another, and yet may be firm in the ground, and live as well as that whose root is largest. So every faith streteheth not forth the arms of particular assurance to embrace Christ alike, and yet it may be a true faith, that lives by charity, repentance, and good works; some faith abounds with one sort of fruits, some with another. God is delighted with all that are good, and He will reward them. In all kind of Divine conclusions some are more doubtful spirited than others. (Bishop Hacket.) Faith assaulted We see it is the devil’ s endeavour to call into question the truth of God’ s Word. God had said, “ Thou art My Son,” and now he comes with his “ If Thou be the Son of God.” In the Word of God there be specially three things-- 1. Commandments. 2. Threatenings. 3. Promises. Secondly, faith is the very life of our lives, and the strength of our souls, without which we are but very drudges and droils in this life. “ The Holy Ghost fill you with all joy in believing” (Romans 15:13). “ And believing, ye rejoiced with joy glorious and unspeakable” (1 Peter 1:8). Therefore the devil, envying our comfort and our happiness, would rob us of our faith, that he might rob us of our joy. Thirdly, faith is our choicest weapon, even our shield and buckler to fight against him, “ whom resist steadfast in the faith” (1 Peter 5:9). Therefore, as the Philistines got away the Israelites’ weapons, so doth Satan, in getting away faith from us, disarm us and make us naked. “ For this is our victory whereby we overcome, even our faith” (1 John 5:1-21.). And in this faith apprehending God’ s strength lies our strength, as Samson’ s in his locks; and, therefore, the devil, knowing this, labours to do to us which Delilah did to Samson, even to cut off our locks. (D. Dyke.) Affliction no argument against sonship If any man should be used like a dog, or a bear, yet as long as he sees human shape and discerns the use of human reason in himself, he would still, for all this usage, think himself to be a man. So though the children of God be used here in this world as if they were wicked, yet as long as they feel the work of grace, and the power of God’ s Spirit, they must still hold themselves to be God’ s children. (D. Dyke.) This stone bread--The plea of necessity That Satan usually endeavours to run his temptations upon the plea of necessity, and from thence to infer a duty. The reasons of this policy are these: 1. He knows that necessity hath a compulsive force, even to things of otherwise greatest abhorrencies. 2. Necessity can do much to the darkening of the understanding, and change of the judgment, by the strong influence it hath upon the affections. Men are apt to form their apprehensions according to the dictates of necessity. 3. Necessity offers an excuse, if not a justification, of the greatest miscarriages. 4. Necessity is a universal plea, and fitted to the conditions of all men in all callings, and under all extravagancies. The tradesman, in his unlawful gains or overreachings, pleads a necessity for it from the hardness of the buyer in other things. We may observe three cheats in this plea of necessity. 1. Sometimes he puts men upon feigning a necessity where there is none. 2. Sometimes he puts men upon a necessity of their own sinful procurement. 3. Sometimes he stretcheth a necessity further than it ought. This must warn us not to suffer ourselves to be imposed upon by the highest pretences of necessity. (R. Gilpin.) To open this a little further, I shall add the reasons why Satan strikes in with such an occasion as the want of means to tempt to distrust, which are these:-- 1. Such a condition doth usually transport men beside themselves. 2. Sense is a great help to faith. Faith, then, must needs be much hazarded when sense is at a loss or contradicted, as usually it is in straits. That faith doth receive an advantage by sense, cannot be denied. But when out ward usual helps fail us, our sense, being not able to see afar off, is wholly puzzled and overthrown. The very disappearing of probabilities gives so great a shake to our faith that it commonly staggers at it. It is no wonder to see that faith, which usually called sense for a supporter, to fail when it is deprived of its crutch. 3. Though faith can act above sense, and is employed about things not seen, yet every saint at all times doth not act his faith so high. 4. When sense is nonplussed, and faith fails, the soul of man is at a great loss. The other branch of the observation, that from a distrust of providence he endeavours to draw them to an unwarrantable attempt for their relief, is as clear as the former. That from a distrust men are next put upon unwarrantable attempts, is clear from the following reasons: 1. The affrightment which is bred by such distrusts of providences will not suffer men to be idle. Fear is active, and strongly prompts that something is to be done. 2. Yet such is the confusion of men’ s minds in such a ease, that though many things are propounded, in that hurry of thoughts they are deprived usually of a true judgment and deliberation. 3. The despairing grievance of spirit makes them take that which comes next to hand, as a drowning man that grasps a twig or straw, though to no purpose. 4. Being once turned off their rock, and the true stay of the promise of God for help, whatever other course they take must needs be unwarrantable. 5. Satan is so officious in an evil thing, that seeing any in this condition, he will not fail to proffer his help; and in place of God’ s providence, to set some unlawful shift before them. 6. And so much the rather do men close in with such overtures, because a sudden fit of passionate fury doth drive them, and out of a bitter kind of despite and crossness--as if they meditated a revenge against God for their disappointment--they take up a hasty wilful resolve to go that way that seems most agreeable to their passion. Application: Failures or ordinary means should not fill us with distrust, neither then should we run out of God’ s way for help. He that would practise this must have these three things which are comprehended in it. 1. He must have full persuasions of the power and promise of God. 2. He that would thus wait upon God had need to have an equal balance of spirit in reference to second causes. 3. There is no waiting upon God, and keeping His way, without a particular trust in God. But let the strait be what it will, we must not forsake duty; for so we go out of God’ s way, and do contradict that trust and hope which we are to keep up to God-ward. But there are other cases wherein it is our duty to fix our trust upon the particular mercy or help. I shall name four; and possibly a great many more may be added. As-- 1. When mercies are expressly and particularly promised. 2. When God leads us into straits by engaging us in His service. 3. When the things we want are common universal blessings,, and such as we cannot subsist without. 4. When God is eminently engaged for our help, and His honour lies at stake in that very matter. (R. Gilpin.) Stones turned into bread How many are there that turn, not stones into bread, but lies, flatteries, base shifts, into silver and gold, yea, jewels and precious stones? Others turn stones, yea, precious stones, and their whole substance into bread, into meats, drinks, and apparel, and wastefully lavish God’ s good creatures on idle backs and bellies, using this as a means to procure something their affections want. (D. Dyke.) How many sins the devil couched and infolded in this one It teaches us not to measure actions by the outward appearance. What a matter is it to eat bread when one is hungry? but we see what a matter it would have been here in Christ. A little pin, specially being poisoned, may prick mortally, as well as a great sword. Adam’ s eating the fruit seems a small matter to flesh and blood, which wonders that so small a pin should wound all mankind to the death. But Adam’ s sin was not simply the eating of the apple, but the eating of the apple forbidden by God. There was the deadly poison of that little pin. And there also the devil so handled the matter, that all the commandments were broken in that one action. As the first table in his infidelity, doubting both of God’ s truth and goodness, contempt of, and rebellion against God, preferring of Satan before God, and in the profanation of that fruit he ate, which was a sacrament. And for the second table, he broke the fifth commandment, in his unthankfulness to God his Father, that gave him his being, and had bestowed so many blessings upon him. The sixth in the murder of himself and all his posterity, body and soul. The seventh in his intemperancy. The eighth in touching another’ s goods against the will of the Lord. The ninth in receiving the devil’ s false witness against God. The tenth in being discontent with his estate, and lusting after an higher. Take we heed now of the deceit of sin. It shows little sometimes, but oh the bundle of mischief that is lapped up in that little! (D. Dyke.) The aim of Satanic temptation not always apparent Like a waterman, he looks one way and rows another. The special thing he shot at, indeed, was to make Christ call in question the truth of that oracle that sounded at Jordan, to think through unbelief that He was not the Son of God. But yet the words of the temptation seem to import that he sought only the working of the miracle. And yet the devil would rather a great deal He would never work the miracle, so He would doubt Himself not to be the Son of God. For this would have been the greater foil. This discloses to us one of Satan’ s mysteries. Sometimes he will tempt us to some sin, to which yet he cares not much whether we yield or no, hoping to get a greater conquest of us by not yielding. As thus, when by not yielding we grow proud, vain-glorious, secure, confident; wherein the devil seems to deal like a cunning gamester, that hides his skill, and loses two or three games at the first, that he may win so much the more afterwards. (D. Dyke.) God not served for temporal profit If every good Christian were satisfied at all times with temporal blessings, we should appear to serve God for our own profit, that we might lack nothing which concerned this transitory life. (Bishop Hacker.) The eye to look to heaven God doth not suppeditate bread always to him that is His son, that he may loathe this world, and look for a recompense for all this misery, not among these hard-hearted generations of men, but among the habitations of the blessed. (Bishop Hacker.) Hereafter It is my turn to want for awhile, I shall be replenished hereafter. (Bishop Hacker.) Better than bread Though a good man labour and watch, and cannot earn the bread of his carefulness, yet he shall fill his bosom with better fruits, for occasion is given hereby to the righteous to exercise these three spiritual graces, Prayer, and Patience, and Charity. (Bishop Hacker.) The devil’ s bread There are others under these, indeed, yet of a most vile condition, that eat their bread by wrongful dealing, when it is grounded with the devil’ s millstones; and according to Aristotle, my former director, these may be ranged into three sorts: Such as maintain themselves with no calling, such as use a bad calling, and such as cheat in a good calling. We must eat our bread by prayer to God, and good employment in the world, that is, by the duty of invocation, and by the fruits of our vocation; therefore he that fills up no place or part in a commonwealth to earn his gains must needs take the devil’ s counsel to live by unjust means, command that these stones be made bread. (Bishop Hacker.) Bad bread By extortion and usury we may make stones into bread, that is the devil’ s alchemistry: or haply we may make bread of nothing, when a man gets a thing by another’ s oversight (Genesis 43:12). Or else, what and if we can overreach our brother in subtilty, and go beyond him with a trick of wit or cunning t “ Let no man defraud or oppress his brother in any matter: for the Lord is avenged of all such” (1 Thessalonians 4:6). The one is called” the bread of violence and oppression” (Proverbs 4:17); the other, “ the bread of deceit.” (Bishop Andrewes.) The first temptation Though in form sensuous, it is in essence moral or spiritual. What constituted it a temptation-where lay its evil? Christ had to live His personal life (1) within the limits necessary to man, and (2) in perfect dependence upon God. Had He transgressed either of these conditions, He had ceased to be man’ s ideal Brother or God’ s ideal Son. His supernatural power existed not for Himself, but for us. The ideal Son could not act as if He had no Father. He conquered by faith, and His first victory was like His last. The taunts He had to bear on the cross--“ He saved others, Himself He cannot save,” &c. were but a repetition of the earlier temptations; and then, as now, though the agony was deeper, and the darkness more dense, He triumphed by giving Himself into the hands of the Father. (A. M. Fairbairn, D. D.) The first assault I. THE SATANIC . TO have complied with it would have been a violation of what, on reflection, appeared to Jesus to be the Father’ s will. II. THE REPLY OF OUR LORD--“ It is written, man shall not live,” &c. This reply-- 1. Disposes most effectually of all the arguments which are commonly urged in defence of modern excesses. 2. Points to man’ s higher nature as his distinguishing possession. 3. Teaches that man is not dependent on bread or material sustenance even for his lower life, but on the sustaining Word of God. (W. Landels, D. D.) Life not a necessity In excuse for some offence against the moral law, it was said to our great English moralist of the last century: “ A man must live.” “ Sir,” said Dr. Johnson, “ I do not see the necessity.” That was the Stoic form of the principle enunciated in our Lord’ s reply, but our Lord invests it with an infinitely higher character by expressing it in the gracious tones of the gospel. It was true in the highest sense that a man must live; but his life does not consist in the mere gratification of his bodily cravings, or even the natural desires of his mind and heart, or even in his life here. The essential life of his nature consists in his living and acting in harmony with the will of God. (H. Wace, D. D.) Appositeness of the temptation The temptation was shrewdly contrived to meet the peculiar circumstances. Remember that the desert and the Dead Sea, lying in the basin of the barren hills, were a figure of the desolation brought on the world by sin, and that probably our Lord, from the wilderness, looked over this picture of death, and saw in it a figure of the scene of His moral operation. Now Satan steals up to Him, holding out a dead stone, and asks Him to begin His work by transforming that stone. As He is about to make the desert fruitful, and the wilderness blossom as a rose, and the Sea of Death become a lake of living water, let Him begin His work symbolically, with a stone of this district. Very probably the temptation was not to turn the piece of black stone into white wheaten bread, but into the homely, hard rye, black bread, which nourishes, but is no dainty. On the way to Jericho, and, indeed, all around the Dead Sea, are to be found in chalk beds, masses of flint, of rounded shape, which the Arabs suppose to be the olives, apples, melons, and other fruit of the time of Sodom and Gomorrah, which, at the overthrow of the cities, were turned into stone. Some of these stones have the size and shape of loaves, and it is possible that Satan took one of these rounded masses of flint, and, with his undercurrent of bitterness and scorn, offered it to Christ, supposing Him to share the popular superstition about them. If we may expand his words, they ran thus: “ See this loaf-like flint stone! No doubt it was once bread in one of the houses of Sodom, but God overthrew the wicked city, and the bread was turned into stone. Now, O Son of God--that is, if you are the Son of God--as you have come to undo the work of destruction wrought by sin, and to bring life into a world subject to death, show your power on this stone, and turn it back into the loaf of bread which it once was.” (S. Baring-Gould, M. A.) These stones They were, perhaps, those siliceous accretions, sometimes known under the name of lapides judaici, which assume the exact shape of little loaves of bread, and which were represented in legend as the petrified fruits of the cities of the plain. The pangs of hunger work all the more powerfully when they are stimulated by the added tortures of a quick imagination; and if the conjecture be correct, then the very shape and aspect and traditional origin of these stones would give to the temptation an added force. (Archdeacon Farrar.) Crystallization The stones called “ Elijah’ s melons,” on Mount Carmel, and “ the Virgin Mary’ s peas,” near Bethlehem, are instances of crystallization well known in limestone formations. They are so called as being the supposed produce of these two plats turned into stone, from the refusal of the owners to supply the wants of the prophet and the saint. (Dean Stanley.) Luke 4:4 And Jesus answered him saying, It is written, that man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God The armoury of Scripture In the plague time none will go abroad without some preservative. None will go forth into the fields, but take at least a staff with them for fear of the worst. Those that travel will not ride without their swords; those that know they have enemies will never go forth unweaponed; and kings always have their guards. Now all of us having Satan’ s temptations, and our enemies ready for us at every turn, we had need daily to resort to the armoury of the Scriptures, and there to furnish ourselves; for when this word shall be hid in our hearts, and enter into our souls, then shall we prevail both against the violent man and the flattering woman, that is, against all kind of temptations, whether on the right or on the left hand. “ I have hid Thy word,” saith David (Psalms 119:1-176.), “ in mine heart, that I might not sin.” (D. Dyke.) All need the Scriptures Cast not off the study of the Scriptures only to the ministers. Though the law be not thy profession, yet thou wilt have so much skill in it, as to hold thy inheritance, and to keep thy land from the caviller. So here, though divinity be not thy profession, yet get so much skill as to keep thy heavenly inheritance against Satan’ s cavils. As any is more subject to Satan’ s temptations, so hath he greater need of the Scriptures. (D. Dyke.) The written word It is written of Augustine, that lying sick on his bed, he caused the seven penitential Psalms to be painted on the wall over against him, in great letters; that if after he should become speechless, yet he might point to every verse when the devil came to tempt him, and so confute him. “ Blessed is he that hath his quiver full of such arrows, they shall not be ashamed.” Blessed is he that hath the skill to choose out fit arrows for the purpose, as the fathers speak out of Isa 49:2. Christ saith affirmatively of the Scriptures, that “ in them is eternal life” (John 5:39). Negatively, that the cause of error is the not knowing of them Mark 12:24). David saith it was that that made him wiser than his enemies, than his teachers, and than the ancients (Psalms 119:98-99; Psalms 110:1-7). So the error of the former times was in yielding too far to the devil’ s policy, by sealing up the Scriptures, and locking the storehouse and armoury of the people. The like policy we read of (1 Samuel 13:19); when the Philistines had taken away all smiths and armour, then they thought they were safe. So in the time of darkness, the devil might let them do their good works, and what they list, and yet have them still under his lure, that he might offend them at his pleasure, that had no armour to resist him. All the children of God had a right and property in the law of God, as appeareth by Christ’ s words (John 10:34). He answered them, that is, the common people, “ Is it not written in your law?” As though He should say, The Scripture is yours. (Bishop Andrewes.) Safety in the Scriptures We are penned up into the Scriptures as into our sheepfolds, while we contain ourselves within them there we are safe; the wolf may howl, but he cannot bite us. There we are in the tower of David, where we cannot be assaulted; but as David acknowledgeth: “ If my delight had not been in Thy law, I should utterly have perished in my trouble.” (Bishop Hacket.) Grace the life of bread It is the grace of God which gives meat in due season so that health and comfort go together with it. And heretofore I have used this similitude to give it light. Sometimes when we apply physic for any disease, we are bid to seethe such and such herbs in running water, and then to drink the water. If this help us, we all know it was not the water which did the sick man good, but the decoction of the infusion. So it is not bread nor drink, considered barely in itself, which doth nourish the body, but the blessing of God infused into it. Daniel, and the three children of the captivity that were with him, prospered better with pulse and water than any of the Babylonians with the continual portion of the king’ s meat. (Bishop Hacket.) God better than bread I am sure this makes it evident that you will neither trust God nor nature unless all the art which luxury and wantonness can excogitate be added unto it. As Elkanah said to Hannah his wife, “ Am not I better to thee than ten sons?” So let it run in your mind, as if the Lord spake it to you in your ear, “ Am not I better unto thee than all the corn in the fields; than all the cattle upon a thousand hills; than all the cookery in the world that can be sweet upon the palate? What is bread? What is a plentiful table without My benediction?” (Bishop Hacket.) The best half of man lives not by bread The better half of man, which is the soul and spirit, lives not by material bread, but by the Word of God. (Bishop Hacket.) Bread and life 1. Our acceptance of the principle reasserted by Christ that “ Man [the man, God-fearing, God-trusting] liveth not by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.” 2. Be more anxious to have God’ s blessing, with the lowliest and poorest fare, than the richest without it. 3. With reference to the temptation to “ turn stones into bread,” let me ask if none of you have been tempted by this very snare?--Beware! Proverbs 20:17). 4. Is there not a great amount of this “ living by bread alone” ? Are not provision for the wants of the body, and gathering, scraping together of the things of the present life, the all in all with many? (A. B. Grosart, LL. D.) God and bread How shall we live? Multitudes of people are asking that question to-day with peculiar earnestness. The text offers an answer. It strikes out, in a sentence, a theory of living. The two theories of living are here squarely confronted. Satan, as the prince of this world, announces his, and tries to win Christ’ s assent to it. “ Man lives by bread and by bread alone.” Christ replies, “ Man lives not by bread, but by God.” Man lives by God’ s gifts only, as God is behind them: man’ s real support is not in the gifts but in the Giver. I. WHAT IS COVERED BY THIS WORD “ BREAD” ? It covers the whole visible economy of life. For what are the mass of men spending their energies? For food and raiment and position--for the abundance and superfluity of these things. Now I am not blind to men’ s natural and pardonable anxiety about such things. Food and raiment are parts of God’ s own economy of life in this world; and Christ Himself saith, “ Your Heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things.” But I am speaking of the false position in which men put these things--of their tendency to separate them from God, and to seek to live by them alone. The gifts are to be sought through the Giver. Men often seek food and raiment without reference to God, and often in ways forbidden by God; whereas Christ says, “ Seek God first.” II. If our Lord had yielded to the temptation, HE WOULD HAVE HIMSELF TO THE BREAD-THEORY AS THE LAW OF HIS KINGDOM, NO LESS THAN OF HIS OWN LIFE. He would have said, by changing the stones into bread, “ As I cannot live without bread, so My kingdom cannot thrive so long as men’ s worldly needs are unsupplied. My administration must be a turning of stones into bread. It must make men happy by at once miraculously removing all want and suffering from the world, and inaugurating an era of worldly prosperity.” We know that this has not been Christ’ s policy. Social prosperity is based on righteousness. Here, then-- III. We have CHRIST’ S THEORY OF LIFE, AND SOCIAL. Man lives by God’ s gifts, but not by the gifts only. By bread, but not by bread alone. Bread is nothing without God. Bread points away from itself to God. Bread has a part in the Divine economy of society; but it comes in with the Kingdom of God, under its laws, and not as its substitute. The man who lives by bread alone has nothing when bread is gone. The practical working of the two theories is written down in lines which he who runs may read. What is my theory of life? Is it Christ, or Satan? Is it bread alone, or bread with God? (M. R. Vincent, D. D.) Not by bread alone With this weapon, taken from the armoury of Deuteronomy, Jesus foiled the first recorded attack of His implacable enemy and ours. It is not the voice of the Church alone that may be heard on this matter to-day. I. THE WORLD’ S ARE AGAINST THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE, WHICH WOULD MIND TO THE MOLOCH OF LUXURY. 1. “ Man shall not live by bread alone,” but by every scientific fact, is the evangel of Science. 2. “ Man shall not live by bread alone,” is the burden of Philosophy. 3. “ Not by bread alone,” chimes in the voice of Art. 4. “ Not by bread alone,” throbs in divinest music from the poet’ s lyre. But all these voices declare only half the truth--the negative side of it. II. THE IS THE ONLY MAN WHOSE ANGLE OF VISION TAKES IN THE SWEEP OF THE HORIZON OF TRUTH. “ Man shall not live by bread alone,” He declares, “ but by every word of God.” What is every word of God? 1. Science is a word of God. 2. Philosophy, in so far as she has defined, expressed, and enforced truth, has spoken for God. 3. Have not Art and Culture and Poetry voices for God? or are they merely voices of man? We hold that they are truly prophets of God. So far we have the sympathy of many minds not Christian. They say, “ Here end the words of God.” We say. 4. “ Here begin the words of God.” Revelation, especially the revelation of the Incarnate Word, is the clearest and noblest word of God, because it is addressed to the soul of man. All others are but echoes of this Incarnate Word. (W. Skinner.) The true support of human life The first lesson these words read to us is this. I. THAT WE ARE NOT SOLELY ON THINGS FOR THE AND OF OUR LIFE. II. They teach us TO REFUSE TO HOLD OR SUPPORT OUR LIFE IN ANY WAY APART FROM GOD’ S WORD. III. They point to the truth that THERE IS A LIFE TO WHICH BREAD DOES NOT . (Studens.) God’ s word the bread of man’ s life 1. The craving for Divine truth in the souls of men was never so much of an imperious passion as it is at the present day. Men have been imposed upon by fictions long enough. If they are to have true life they must have the very truth and substance of things for their nourishment. 2. Consider also how imperative has become the demand for beauty, and art, and poetry. There may be goodness in the world that is never touched by the beauty of art, and is all unconscious of the inspiration of Divine poetry; but it has not the abundant life which Christ came to bring. 3. Another of those cravings in which our best life is founded is in the personal relations which are so necessary to us. In fellowship lies a great part of the strength and joy of life. We cannot truly live without it. 4. And this brings us to consider the deepest and highest personal relation, which is the great end of our creation and redemption, the relation which we have with Christ and through Him with the Father. This relation is the bread of life to us--the vital nourishment and enrichment of our noblest being. (C. Short, M. A. , D. D.) The mystery of life I. TRUTHS IN THIS SAYING. 1. Life is valuable and ought to be preserved. Man is to live; nothing can be compared with life--wealth, honour, reputation, dignity, position, rank--what is all that compared with life? Life is an invaluable boon; it is theday of grace, the day of opportunity, the day of responsibility. 2. Life is sustained by the use of appointed means. We are not to expect life to be sustained by miracle. 3. Life is dependent upon the great power of God. He is the great Author of everything, and Arbiter of the destinies of all. 4. God has a variety of means by which He can support life. When He sees fit, He can and does support life by miraculous agency. II. ERRORS BY THIS SAYING. 1. It censures the loose opinions of those who hope to live upon pleasure. Christ says, Men are to live upon bread. There is a very serious character about life. To expect any one to liv upon pleasure is like asking a hungry man to a painted banquet; there is the form of food, but it cannot minister to his support. 2. It condemns the conduct of those who toil only for bread. Another world has claims, as well as this. 3. It corrects the doubts and unbelief of many concerning Divine Providence. 4. It suggests the means of life for the higher nature of man. (George Smith.) Christ’ s miracles reserved for others That to which Satan here challenges the Lord was not sinful in itself, but would have been sinful for Him. To have complied, would have been a defeat of His whole mediatorial work. If on each sharper pressure of the world’ s suffering and pain upon Himself, He had fallen back on the power which as Son of God He possessed, and so exempted Himself from the common lot of humanity, where would have been the fellow-man, the overcomer of the world by His human faith, and not by His Divine power? The whole life of faith would have disappeared. At His Incarnation the Lord had merged His lot with the lot of the race; the temptation is, that He should separate Himself from them anew: “ Son of God, put forth Thy power.” When in some besieged and famine-stricken city, when in hard straits during the march through some waterless desert, a captain or commander refuses special exemptions from the lot of his suffering fellow-soldiers, when a Cato pours upon the sands the single draught of water which has been procured in the African desert and brought for his drinking, such a one in his lower sphere acts out what the Lord in the highest sphere of all was acting out now. He who made the water wine, could have made the stones bread; but to that He was solicited by the need of others, to this only by His own. And this abstinence of self-help was the law of His whole life, a life as wonderful in the miracles which it left undone as in those which it wrought. (Archbishop Trench.) Christ’ s reply assumes our immortality Suppose bread fails. Suppose the body literally starves, and the man dies, as we say. Is Christ’ s theory disproved? By no means. Christ’ s choice led Him to the cross, and many a follower of His has been forced to choose between the bread-theory and death. When God says that man shall live by His Word, He means by “ life,” far more than the little span of human years, with their eating, and drinking, and pleasure, and gain-getting. This utterance of the world’ s Redeemer assumes the fact of immortality. To live by the Word of God is to share the eternal life of God. The bread-life is but the prelude and faint type of this. It gets all its real meaning and value from this. Human life is nothing if it does not foreshadow the larger life of eternity: and when the lower physical life fails for lack of bread, the man does not cease to live: he only begins to live, and to prove that if man cannot live by bread alone, he can live by God alone. (Marvin R. Vincent, D. D.) The rival theories of life tested The practical working of the two theories is written down in lines which he that runs may read. Before you is the picture of the Man of Sorrows, who had not where to lay His head, reviled and spoken against, walking by His bard road to the garden and to the cross, and yet deliberately choosing to live by God rather than by bread; and you see the choice vindicated by the peace and poise of that life, by the enthusiasm of its faith, by its heavenly joy in its work, by its evergrowing power over the life of the world, by the adoration and love and praise daily wafted towards it from millions of souls: and all this while the worldly dominion He refused has proved a vanished shadow, while the old empires have gone down in ruin, and their pleasures have turned to a corruption which is an offence in the world’ s nostrils. The old city which rang with the cry of “ Bread and the Circus!” is only a monument now. The tourist wanders over the Palatine, and peers down into the choked vaults of the Caesars’ palaces; and the antiquarian rummages where Nero’ s fishponds gleamed, and climbs along the broken tiers of the Coliseum, from which the culture and beauty and fashion of Rome looked down with delight upon Christian martyrs in the fangs of tigers. As you look on this picture, surely you will take fresh heart; surely you will win a new faith in Christ’ s theory; surely you will not dare, with the glory of that life before you, to take the baser theory of the prince of this world, to choose the life which is by bread alone! Man lives by the Word of God The Word. Now what is a word? The human heart is peopled with thoughts and feelings hidden away in its secret lanes and alleys, and what is a word but a silver chariot that rolls out through the portals of the lips bearing some denizen of the palaces and hovels that fill the heart’ s hidden courts? What are words but the commerce of mind with mind? Words are ships that go to and fro freighted with thoughts, feelings, affections; and there are silver words like the white-winged sloops and schooners, graceful words like the beautiful yachts, iron words like the steamships, barbed words like the man-of-war: words are sometimes sweet as tossed flowers, sometimes sharp and stinging like a shot arrow; words are the commerce of mind with mind, and yet if one finite mind needs a hundred and fifteen thousand words to express its thoughts, how many words, think you, could alone be adequate to express the infinite mind of the Infinite God? And because the infinite words are so many, and man must live by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God, and as these words are innumerable, He hath found out a way of summing them all up in one word--the Word of God. It is by this Word only that men can live. (F. C. Ewer, D. D.) The Word of God in truth and duty The Word of God includes two notions, one of revelation and one of commandment. Whenever God speaks by any of His voices, it is first to tell us some truth which we did not know before, and second to bid us do something which we have not been doing. Every Word of God includes these two. Truth and duty are always wedded. There is no truth which has not its corresponding duty. And there is no duty which has not its corresponding truth. We are always separating them. We are always trying to learn truths, as if there were no duties belonging to them, as if the knowing of them would make no difference in the way we lived. That is the reason why our hold on the truths we learn is so weak. And we are always trying to do duties as if there were no truths behind them; as if, that is, they were mere arbitrary things which rested on no principles and had no intelligible reasons. That is the reason why we do our duties so superficially and unreliably. When every truth is rounded into its duty, and every duty is deepened into its truth, then we shall have a clearness and consistency and permanence of moral life which we hardly dream of now. (F. C. Ewer, D. D.) The higher life in man The temptation of Jesus was not a splendid solitary victory of divinity over human conditions. It was the assertion of the possible victory that waits for every man who, like Christ, has in him the power of divinity. Jesus found in His human consciousness the original purpose of human life. He brought it out clearly. He said, It is not the Divine prerogative alone. Here it is in man--the power to live, not for comfort, but for truth and duty. Here it is in this humanity of Mine, along with all else that is truly human, all My tastes and propensities, all My aches and pains. Here it is in Me, and, no other men have found it in themselves, “ It is written,” &c. And men, all the more clearly since Jesus showed it there, are always finding in their own consciousness and in the prolonged consciousness of their race which we call experience or history, this same higher capacity or higher necessity of man. They find it in their own consciousness. What do we make of every strong young man’ s discontent with the actual conditions of things before he settles down into the limited contentment, the sense that things are about as good as they are likely to be, which makes up the dull remainder of his life? Question yourself, and see how there is something in you which rebels when the lower expediency of any action is set before you as its sufficient justification, how something rises up in you and tells you that there is a higher expediency, and makes you want to sweep away the worldly maxims which you cannot confute, but which you know are false. Sometimes there comes in all of us a strong, deep craving to give up this endless, complicated search after what it is safe or proper or fashionable to believe, and just to seek what is true; and to get rid of these thousand artificial standards of what a man is expected to do, and, come of it what will, simply do what is right: and when we are simply asking, “ What is right?” the answer always comes. The deeper power in man There always is this deeper power in man, and men are always finding it there. I think we are amazed not at the rarity, but rather at the abundance, of the power of martyrdom. When a great cause breaks out in war, and needs its champions, how wonderful it is to us, with our low notions of humanity, to see the land with its furrows full of the deserted ploughs from which the men have run to go and die for principle, and save their country. How wonderfully frequent are the stories that we hear of men giving their lives to do their duty. The exception is where the engineer of the railroad train which is rushing into certain ruin deserts his post; not where he stands still and calm, and is found with the iron clenched in his dead hand. No doubt, if he had time to think of it at all, he would be surprised at himself in the terrible instant when his quick resolve was made. He reaches down through the ordinary standards of his life, and takes up the deepest one of all, and says, “ Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God; and the Word of God which is my duty now says, ‘ Stand and die’ ; and so I cannot live except by dying.” And in spite of all the men who are sacrificing their convictions to their interests, there are thousands of men who might be at the head of things, and rich and famous, if they would only give up what they think is true for bread. Oh, it is very common I Men find in their own nature necessities which they must submit tot and they do submit to them. We can hear in their submission, though it makes them very poor, something of chat same trumpet-like triumph and exaltation which I think we always feel in those words from the lips of the sick and hungry Jesus, “ Not by bread alone, but by the Word of God.” Rectitude is better than profit When Mr. Russell Lowell was called as a witness before the Senate Committee to give evidence on International Copyright, he lifted up the whole discussion from the level of interests and expediences into the clear air of duties and moralities. He said, “ I myself take the moral view of the question. I believe this is a mere question of morality and justice. One could live a great deal cheaper, undoubtedly, if he could supply himself from other people, without either labour or cost. But at the same time-well, it was not called honest when I was young, and that is all I can say. I cannot help thinking that a book which was, I believe, more read, when I was young than it is now, is quite right when it says, ‘ Righteousness exalteth a nation.’ I believe this is a question of righteousness. If I were asked what book is better than a cheap book, I should answer that there is one book, and that one is a book honestly come by.” Remembering what is written It is related of the late Lord Ampthill, British Ambassador to the Court of Berlin, that during his mission in Rome he possessed a huge boa constrictor and interested himself in watching its habits. One day the monster escaped from the box where he supposed it was asleep, quietly wound itself around his body, and began gradually to tighten its folds. His position became extremely perilous; but the consummate coolness and self-possession which had enabled him to win many a diplomatic triumph befriended him in this dangerous emergency. He remembered there was a bone in the throat of the serpent which, if he could find and break he would save himself. He was aware that either he or the snake must perish. Not a moment must be lost in hesitation. He deliberately seized the head of the serpent, thrust his hand down its throat, and smashed the vital bone. The coils were relaxed, the victim fell at his feet, and he was free! In all wickedness there is weakness, and it is a grand thing to discern the vulnerable spot and to be ready with the exact truth, fact, promise, which deals death to the foe. This insight and power are given to all who prayerfully study God’ s Word. (Christian Journal.) Man liveth not by bread alone I. ADAM’ S BRIEF LIFE NOT BY BREAD ALONE IN EDEN. 1. The angels living by the Word of God alone without bread. “ He maketh His angels spirits; and the highest of their heavenly host, those amongst them that “ excel in strength “ live only by” hearkening to the voice of His Word.” The prince of this world in his first estate lived by the Word of God, but he kept not that Word, for “ His Word is truth,” and he “ abode not in the truth,” but became “ a liar and the father of it.” 2. The ox living by bread alone without the Word of God. To the ox his Creator gave “ every green herb for meat,” but without imparting the knowledge of his Maker, or capacity for acquiring it. The beast of the field was formed by the Word of God, and sustained by His power; but with no command either what to eat or from what to abstain, with no consciousness of good or evil, of obedience or transgression, and with no conception of the great Being to whom He owed his life. He ate the grass without sin and without holiness, and lived by grass alone without the Word of God. As he was formed, so he liveth on from generation to generation to the world’ s end, “ asking no questions.” 3. Adam living by bread with the Word of God. “ In the image of God made He man,” and He made him for communion with Himself. He did not evolve him from any beast of the field after its likeness, but fashioned him in His own likeness, “ a little lower than the angels,” leaving the ox utterly and for ever incapable of entering into the heart or mind of man; but creating man capable at once of entering into His own thoughts, and of loving and being consciously loved by the invisible God. From the day of man’ s creation he lived by bread, but not for one hour by bread alone without the Word of God. Of every tree of the garden he might freely eat; but the liberty was by the Divine Word in express permission, and in so eating man lived. II. ISRAEL’ S LIFE NOT BY BREAD ALONE IN THE . 1. Israel redeemed from Egypt and day by day fed by the hand of God. One chief end of the forty years’ travelling through the wilderness was to train Israel to know that man doth not live by bread only, but by the Word of God; showing us both how high a place this lesson takes in the Divine teaching, and how slow men are to learn it. 2. Ransomed men learning to live not by bread alone. When the three thousand converts at Pentecost were baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, “ they did eat their meat with gladness and singleness of heart, praising God.” It was repentance unto life and deliverance from condemnation that had been granted them from heaven; and they had no care “ what they should eat or wherewithal they should be clothed.” But for the first time in their lives they had learned that man does not live by bread only, but by every word of God; the eating of their daily food became part of their higher and everlasting life; and receiving it from the hand of a reconciled Father, they lived not by bread alone, but by bread with the Word of God that sanctified it to them. III. THE SON OF MAN’ S WHOLE LIFE ON EARTH NEVER BY BREAD ALONE. (The Expositor,) God in means The very heathen apprehended this point very well; they made their goddess Providence to be the midwife of nature, showing that nature could do nothing without the power of God’ s providence. And hence, though the wiser of them acknowledge but one God, yet to every several creature gave they the name of God, as of Ceres to the corn of Bacchus to the wine, of Neptune to the waters, to show that the power of God was in these creatures, and that it was not so much they, but God in them, and with them that wrought. What a shame then for Christians to repose and secure ourselves in these outward means? Oh, when one hath gotten a great living, and great friends, we say, Oh, he is made for ever. God that can break the staff of bread, can break the staff of friends, riches, favour, and all such means as we trust to. As He did the staff of physic to Asa (2 Chronicles 15:1-19.) As He restrained the fire (Daniel 3:1-30.) from hurting and from burning, so can He also from helping and from warming. If we want means, then let us not only seek to them, but to God. And if we have them, though in never such strength and abundance, yet let us as earnestly crave God’ s blessing and help, as we would do in our greatest want. For what have we when we have the means? Have we God locked up in the means? No, we have but dead things, unable to help without God. Therefore in the fourth petition, Christ teacheth the greatest princes that swim in wealth, to pray for their daily bread, as the poorest beggar. 2. This teaches us never to use meats, drinks, marriage, physic, recreation, apparel, habitation, or any other of God’ s creatures without prayer. This sanctifies them all (1 Timothy 4:4), nor yet otherwise to go about any business. (D. Dyke.) Living by the Word In this case the temptation seems to refer to natural hunger, but the answer of our Lord goes deeper, even to the life itself. I. THE WORDS OF MY TEXT, TAKEN IN THEIR LOWEST SENSE, IN WHICH SATAN THEM, ARE SIMPLY TRUE. Man does not live by bread alone; he needs raiment, shelter, and a thousand other things, not included in bread alone. Man creates nothing. From the grain that springs up after his planting and furnishes “ bread to the eater and seed to the sower” to the lightnings of heaven that flash along the lines of His proriding, carrying His messages over continents and under oceans to the uttermost parts of the earth--all, all is of God, the result of His inward thought and His spoken Word, and we are living now, as never before, in all the history of our race, not by bread alone but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. But man is an intellectual being and-- II. HIS LIFE MORE THAN BREAD. Nothing satisfies human intelligence but the Word, “ every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.” The human mind is so constituted as to recognize every expressed idea of the Divine mind. Take English literature, for instance, and what is there in it that deserves to live and that will live, that does not in some degree express the Divine thought. Take the bad books that are printed--literary garbage, rightly excluded from the mails, and hauled out and dumped with other garbage on waste places. How it shuns the light I Literature can only live, and bless mankind, that has in it the Word of God. Mark the history of our own English literature. It had its rise in the fourteenth century in the translation and publishing of the Holy Scriptures by John Wickliffe. It gathered new life in the times of the English Reformation when the same Word was freely given to the people, and reached its zenith, intellectually considered, in the reign of King James at the hands of Shakespeare and Lord Bacon. Literature lost none of its strength, but became purer in the days of Milton and more religious during the revival period under Whitfield and the Wesleys. Take out of our literature all that is inspired by the Bible and all that expresses the Divine Word in creation, and little would remain worth saving. Yes, man lives by ideas. God’ s ideas inscribed, it may be, on the unhewn tables of stone that build up the foundations of the earth, or they may wave in beauty on the green banners that adorn its surface, or shine with resplendent glory in the heavens above us, wherever they exist they are God’ s ideas. The scientist in his deepest researches only discovers them. He is engaged in translating an ancient manuscript, and if he dares to say there is no God he is trying to translate a book that has no author. But the meaning of Christ’ s answer to the tempter is deeper and broader than this. Man never truly lives until the conditions of his moral nature are met and satisfied. This is a fact too often overlooked by the epicurean and the scientist, and it will remain a fact even after these worthies have exhausted all their resources in trying to prove that man is nothing more than an intellectual brute. III. MAN’ S MORAL LIFE MORE THAN BREAD AND IDEAS. Man is as truly moral as he is intellectual and physical. His moral nature can no more be fed on bread than his physical powers can be sustained by pure thought. If in the Divine word provision has been made for the body and the mind it would be a strange and inexplicable oversight if no word has been spoken of sufficient vitality to meet the wants of man’ s moral nature. And this oversight, if it exists, is all the more grievous from the tact that man’ s happiness in this life depends absolutely upon his moral condition. (H. O.Cushing.) Extraordinary means God is not tied to the second ordinary causes, but He can do that without them which He can do with them. This will appear in these particulars: 1. God sometimes works without the means at all, as in the first creation of the chaos, and in Christ’ s healing of many diseases. 2. God some times works by ordinary, but those weak and insufficient, means in the order of nature. As when the bunch of figs healed Hezekiah’ s sore (2 Kings 20:1-21.); as when Jacob’ s rods laid before the sheep of one colour, and made them conceive, and bring forth parti-coloured ones (Genesis 30:1-43.); when the wind brought the Israelites quails in such abundance (Exodus 16:1-36.); when Gideon’ s three hundred soldiers got the victory (Judges 7:1-25.); and Jonathan and his armour-bearer alone chased away and slew so many of the Philistines (1 Samuel 14:6). 3. God otherwhiles works altogether by unusual and unwonted means: such as was manna in the desert. 4. God sometimes works not only by means diverse from, but quite contrary unto, the ordinary. As the blind man’ s eyes are restored with clay and spittle (John 9:1-41.); and Jonah is saved by being in the whale’ s belly. (D. Dyke.) Unlawful means not needed He needs not His own lawful, much less thy unlawful, means. Unlawful it was under the law to couple an ox and an ass together, how much more to couple God’ s holy and just providence, and thine unholy and unrighteous means? (D. Dyke.) Luke 4:5; Luke 4:8 And the devil, taking Him up into an high mountain, showed unto Him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time Satan a close solicitor 1. The importunity of Satan: he is upon our Saviour again: “ Again the devil taketh Him up.” 2. The variety of his shifts: from the pinacle of the Temple “ he taketh Him up to an exceeding high mountain.” 3. Note by what gate or passage he would enter his temptation: by the eye; he shows a goodly object unto Him. 4. The dignity of the object: he shows Him kingdoms. 5. For the amplitude and generality: “ All the kingdoms of the world.” 6. In their most amiable and desirable shape he showed them in their glory. 7. Satan showed himself to be an arch juggler, or prestidigitator, as artists call it, for St. Luke adds, that he showed all this “ in a moment of time.” A close solicitor, and a diligence worthy to be commended, if it had been in a good cause; but they that are in a wrong way are most zealous in their course, and negotiate for hell more urgently than we do for heaven. (Bishop Hacker.) Temptation recurrent But that tyranny is uncessant, the hatred of the devil hath no stint; expect it, be ready for it, and let it not sting your conscience with horror if you find somewhat within you always warring against the Spirit; temptations are not like some diseases, which are not incident to a man above once in his life, escape once and secure for ever, but like hereditary infirmities which are ever recurring to torment the flesh. A quotidian is more like to be cured, if it be well looked to, than an ague whose paroxysms keep longer distance. (Bishop Hacker.) Principle not place the safeguard But it is not the shifting to this place or that place that breeds contrary affections in a good man. Where there is an inward principle of goodness, firm and sure under every cope of heaven the mind is unalterable. (Bishop Hacker.) Reviewed temptation His mouth was stopped, and he was set non plus in the former temptation, yet how soon doth he begin to open his mouth again? He was repulsed, yet he comes to fight again. He hath many strings to his bow, and many arrows in his quiver. When one way takes not he tries forth with another; yea, he will make proof of all ere he leaves. (Bishop Hacker.) The eye the portal to the heart There is nothing so soon enticed and led away as the eye; it is the broker between the heart and all wicked lusts that be in the world. And therefore it was great folly in Hezekiah to show his robes and treasure (Isaiah 39:2), as he was told by the prophet; itstirred up such coals of desire in them that saw them, as could not be quenched till they had fetched away all that he had, and all that his ancestors had laid up, even till that day. It is the wisdom that is used nowadays, when men would have one thing for another, to show the thing they would so exchange; as the buyer showeth his money, and the seller his wares in the best manner that he can, each to entice the ether (by the eye) to the desire of the heart. (Bishop Andrewes.) Fancy enticed His power and work upon the fancies of men is none of the least of his ways whereby he advanceth the pleasures of sin. That he hath such a power, hath been discoursed before, and that a fancy raised to a great expectation makes things appear otherwise than what they are, is evident from common experience. The value of most things depends rather upon fancy than the internal worth of them, and men are more engaged to a pursuit of things by the estimation which fancy hath begat in their minds, than by certain principles of knowledge. Children by fancy have a value of their toys, and are so powerfully swayed by it, that things of far greater price cannot stay their designs, nor divert their course. Satan knows that the best of men are sometimes childish, apt to be led about by their conceits, and apt in their conceits to apprehend things far otherwise than what they are in truth. (R. Gilpin.) The after-claps of sin We, knowing this craft, must labour in these temptations to see that which the devil hides, and to apprehend the fearful after-claps. Let us labour to see Jael’ s nail as well as her milk; Delilah’ s scissors as well as her bosom; the snake’ s poison as well as her embrace; and the bee’ s sting as well as her honey. (D. Dyke.) True sight after sin The devil blinds us so that we see not till afterward, as Genesis 3:1-24., “ Then were their eyes opened.” (D. Dyke.) Distance lends enchantment to the view Put a bit of broken glass, or a shred of worthless mica, in a ploughed field, and let the sun shine upon it, and it sparkles as vividly as that gem which “ spills its drop of light” on the finger of beauty. “ Afar off,” it is a glory: near, just a bit of broken glass, or shred of mica. My dear friends, beware of the “ glory,” the “ splendour” that seems to show very substantially at a distance, but which needs only to be approached to prove unreal. I remember very well how, up in the Italian and Styrian Alps, many an apparent sky-kissing range of yet mightier Alps seemed to tower, white and lustrous, over what we had deemed the loftiest peaks. They were but vanishing clouds, climbing higher than the peaks, but with no base--showing fair, glitteringly, astonishingly, unutterably beautiful, but carrying within them the rain that drenches, and the lightning that smites and the blast that loosens the roaring avalanche. “ Take heed” to this artifice of the world’ s “ show” at a distance and from the mountain top. There is delusion and peril in the “ splendour.” (A. B. Grosart.) And the devil taketh Him up into an high mountain Here the temptation seems eminently gross. Yet devil-worship can assume many forms, and some of these may be most refined. Worship is homage, and homage to a person, real or supposed, representative of certain principles, modes of action, and aims. What it here means seems evident enough. Jesus is recognized as seeking a kingdom, as intending, indeed, to found one. His aims are confessed to be more than Jewish, not national, but universal; not an extension of Israel, but a comprehension of the world. It is known that His purpose is to be the Messiah, not of the Jews, but of man. The only question is as to the nature of His kinghood and kingdom. The kingdom here offered is one not of the Spirit, but “ of the world.” And “ world” here means not what it may be to the good, but what it is to the bad it and its kingdoms may be won at once, and will be, if Jesus worships the devil, i.e., makes evil His good, uses unholy means to accomplish His ends. It is as if the tempter had said, “ Survey the world, and mark what succeeds. Away there in Italy lives and rules the emperor of the world, a selfish, sensual man, whose right is might. Over there in Caesarea sits his red-handed, yet vacillating, procurator. In your own Galilee a treacherous and lustful Herod reigns, its deputy lord. Up in Jerusalem are priests and scribes, great in things external, the fierce fanatics of formalism. Everywhere unholy men rule, unholy means prevail. Worldliness holds the world in fee. By it alone can you conquer. Use the means and the men of Caesar, and your success will be swift and sure. Worship me, and the kingdoms of this world are thine.” The temptation was subtly adapted to the mood and the moment, and was as evil as subtle. Bad means make bad ends. Good ends do not justify evil means; evil means deprave good ends. So a Messianic kingdom, instituted and established by worldliness, had been a worldly kingdom, no better than the coarse and sensuous empire of Rome. And Jesus, while He felt the force, saw the evil of the temptation, and vanquished it by the truth on which His own spiritual and eternal city was to be founded, “ Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God,” &c. (A. M.Fairbairn, D. D.) The force of this temptation Could it be other than a temptation to think that He might, if He would, lay a righteous grasp upon the reins of government, leap into the chariot of power, and ride forth conquering and to conquer? Glad visions arose before Him of the prisoner breaking jubilant from the cell of injustice; of the widow lifting up the bowed head before the devouring Pharisee; of weeping children bursting into shouts at the sound of the wheels of the chariot before which oppression and wrong shrunk and withered, behind which sprung the fir-tree instead of the thorn, and the myrtle instead of the briar. Could He not mould the people at His will? Could He not, transfigured in snowy garments, call aloud in the streets of Jerusalem, “ Behold your King” ? And the fierce warriors of His nation would start at the sound; the ploughshare would be beaten into the sword, and the pruning-hook into the spear. Ah, but when were His garments white as snow? Not when He looked to such a conquest; but when, on a moment like this, He “ spake of the decease which He should accomplish at Jerusalem.” But how would He, thus conquering, be a servant of Satan: I will not inquire whether such an enterprise could be accomplished without the worship of Satan. But I will ask whether to know better and do not so well, is not a serving of Satan? whether to lead men on in the name of God as towards the best, when the end is not the best, is not a serving of Satan? whether to flatter their pride by making them conquerors of the enemies of their nation instead of their own evils, is not a serving of Satan? Nothing but the obedience of the Son, the obedience unto death, the absolute doing of the will of God because it was the truth, could redeem the prisoner, the widow, the orphan. But it would redeem them by redeeming the conquest-ridden conqueror too, the strife-giving jailor, the unjust judge, the devouring Pharisee. He would not pluck the spreading branches of the tree; He would lay the axe to its root. It would take time; but the tree would be dead at last--dead, and cast into the lake of fire. It would take time; but His Father had time enough and to spare. It would take courage and strength and self-denial and endurance; but His Father could give Him all. The will of God should be done. Man should be free--not merely man as he thinks of himself, but man as God thinks of him. He shall grow into the likeness of the Divine thought, free not in his own fancy, but in absolute Divine fact of being, as in God’ s idea. The great and beautiful and perfect will of God must be done. (George Macdonald, LL. D.) This was a temptation which every worker for God, weary with the slow progress of goodness, must often feel, and to which even good and earnest men have sometimes given way--to begin at the outside instead of within, to get first a great shell of external conformity to religion, and afterwards fill it with the reality. It was the temptation to which Mahomet yielded when he used the sword to subdue those whom he was afterwards to make religious, and to which the Jesuits yielded when they baptized the heathen first, and evangelized them afterwards. (J. Stalker, M. A.) This was of all the temptations the most awful and searching. It was the only one of the three in which Satan suggests no doubt of the Divine Sonship and Divine glory of Christ. Could a Divine Son rightly refuse the houour and glory of a son? Could it be anything but a sin to turn His back on the only way that seemed to lead straight up to His throne? Was not this a “ tempting” of God? How solemn and heart-searching are the lessons it may teach all those who profess to be servants of God among men; lessons which, perhaps, were never more needed than in the present day. 1. The conversion to Christ of the unconverted, and the evangelization of the masses, absorb the energies and the efforts of the Church. But the intensity of this passion for saving men may itself become a peril to the Church. In its zeal to save souls it may become indifferent to the means by which they are saved. 2. To resort to worldly and carnal methods for the extension of Christ’ s kingdom; to lose faith in the power of the gospel of Christ to do its own work, and to win its own way in the world is treason to Christ and to God; it is the worship of the devil. (G. S. Barrett, B. A.) What would the result have been if Christ had yielded! There can be little doubt that in one sense Satan would have fulfilled his promise. No cross would have stood at the end of Christ’ s earthly life. There would have been louder Hosannas than Jerusalem ever offered Him as its King; there would have been vaster throngs of people proclaiming Him their Messiah and Lord; a more splendid homage from the rich and great, from rulers and Pharisees, would have been laid at His feet; in a word, Christ would have received the crown of worldly dominion and glory. But at what a cost! The great burden of human guilt would have been left still resting on the world; the heart of man would have been still weary and heavyladen; the hope of immortal life would have been left a yearning and a longing, unsatisfied and unfulfilled; and the kingdom of God among men would have been unfounded and unknown. Christ would have lost the kingdom by appearing to gain it. The promise of the devil, like all his promises, would have turned out a black and terrible lie. He would have given the kingdoms of this world and the glory of them to our Lord, but only alter Christ had given Himself to the devil. Satan would have lost nothing of his kingdom, for he would have been king of the world’ s King. Appearing to resign his sovereignty for a moment he would have secured it for ever. The temptation on the mountain 1. The vision was a splendid one, well fitted to appeal even to a mind that was actuated by no vulgar ambition. 2. The desire for power here appealed to is one of which the noblest natures are susceptible. 3. It was not a wrong thing, nor at variance with His mission, that Christ should contemplate the prospect of becoming universal King. 4. The prospect held out to Him was well-fitted to stir the loftiest and holiest ambition. 5. It may well, then, foster our reverence for His character, while it teaches us lessons of the greatest practical importance, that although His universal dominion would lead to such blessed results, He would not procure or hasten it by entering into compromise with, or doing the slightest homage to, wrong. 6. Paying homage to evil with a view to the easier and speedier accomplishment of good is a sin to which the Church has always been powerfully tempted. 7. Christ’ s kingdom is not of this world. It is neither formed on worldly principles nor furthered by worldly measures. (W. Landels, D. D.) An high mountain The “ high mountain” is most probably Abarim, with its three peaks of Pisgah, Peer, and Nebo. From the western point, Peer, Balaam overlooked the tents of Israel and blessed them, when brought there by Balak to curse the people. From the northernmost peak, Nebo, above Baal Maon, a complete panorama of the Dead Sea is obtained. Thence it was that She Lord God showed Moses “ all the land of Gilead unto Dan, and all Naphtali, and the land of Ephraim, and all the land of Judah … unto Zion” (Deuteronomy 34:1-4). Now Satan takes Christ to the point where Moses stood to view the Promised Land which he was not to enter. And here again we notice a covert sneer. “ O Thou Prophet of the Most High, like unto Moses, who comest to lead the people of God out of bondage into liberty, to restore again the kingdom to Israel! Thou wilt, may be, do what Thou undertakest. But what will be the result to Thyself?. Wilt Thou profit in any way by it? God gave to Moses a hard forty years in the wilderness, and instead of rewarding him with rest at the end, let him see the Promised Land from afar, even from this spot, and let him die without allowing him to set foot on it. That is how God deals with His prophets, and that is how He will deal with Thee! “ And as he spake may be the eye of the Son of Man rested on far-off Calvary, which is visible from this spot. Then Satan went on with the contrast: But!--I reward my servants at once. Come, bend the knee to me, and I will give Thee glory, and power, and dominion in the present.” And there rose a mirage of the desert, and in that mirage was a vision of palaces and palm trees, and glittering sheets of water, on which gay barges sailed, apparently very real, but it was only a phantom scene painted in the unwholesome vapours that rose from the Dead Sea, and from the hot bituminous desert sands and rocks. A phantom splendour over desolation and death. That was what Satan offered. And observe likewise the difference between his offers and those of God, offers which he makes quite unabashed, and emphasizes. God gives present pain and future glory; Satan gives present satisfaction and future wretchedness. Only note how he pitches on one half of each offer, and contrasts only the present, say ing nothing of the future. God gives present sadness, Satan present satisfaction; and he utters not a word about the future. The vision was but for a moment. Satan “ showed unto Him, in a moment of time, all the kingdoms of the world” ; the desert mirage does not last long, but while it lasts it is thoroughly deceptive. So it is with the gifts of Satan; they are but for a moment, and then they vanish away, and leave dust, and ashes, and barrenness, and death behind. (S. Baring.Gould, M. A.) Satan’ s short cut The devil fits his temptation nicely to his purpose. Christ is about to begin His mission, and to found His kingdom, which is to be universal, to extend throughout the world. Satan shows Him how to make the kingdoms of earth His own instantaneously, by doing homage to himself. No need then for Calvary, no laborious preachings, no persecutions, no martyrdoms, no sowing in tears, no casting of the bread on the waters and patient expectance of the result after many days. The kingdoms of the world will become the kingdoms of Christ at once, if He will conform to the world, and acknowledge the Evil One as supreme--if He will allow the presence of evil, legislate for it, accept it, and not fight against it. But this offer of Satan is an usurpation of power--of God’ s power. No compromise with evil. “ Get thee behind Me, Satan.” Satan’ s methods An illustration of Satan’ s method of beguiling to destroy, was one day witnessed by the writer when rambling near Scawfell. His guide said he thought he could find a trout, and stooping down over the grassy bank of a small mountain-stream, remained for a few minutes perfectly quiet, excepting a slight motion of the arm. Presently he brought up a large fish. He knew where it was likely to be; he gently touched its back, drew his hand lightly backwards and for wards, soothed and charmed his victim, then grasped and captured it. So “ the devil’ s policy is to tickle his victims to death, and damn them with delights” (Newman Hall, LL.B.) Elation no temptation to Christ The temper had tried the Son of Man through the power of depression; he now tries him by me power of exaltation. He had sought to vanquish Him by the scourge of poverty; he now seeks to overcome Him by the vision of plenty. He had brought Him down into the valley, and had tempted Him by the dangers of humiliation; he now carries Him up to the mountain and tempts Him by the dangers of elevation. Why was the Son of Man superior to all circumstances? Only because He was superior to all sin. The sinless heart will be free from temptation everywhere. It will neither be reduced by the exigencies of the valley of humiliation, nor by the allurements of the mountain of elevation; it will not turn the stones into bread to avoid the famine; it will not bow the knee to Baal to purchase a crown. (G. Matheson, M. A. , D. D.) Luke 4:6-7 All this power will I give Thee The devil’ s bounty His bounty is treacherous. (D. Dyke.) Bounty attractive Bounty in a master is a great attraction to his service. (D. Dyke.) Satan’ s promises 1. That the very desires of abundance and greatness are in themselves unlawful, though we desire them not upon such conditions as here the devil offers them. We are commanded (1 Timothy 6:8) to be content with mere necessaries, for food and raiment. 2. That the devil in these promises deceives us, and that three ways, (1) Sometimes not giving all the things promised, but the contrary. Adam was promised to be like God Himself, but how well he obtained it, witness God’ s bitter scoff, “ Behold, man is become as one of Us” (Genesis 3:1-24.). (2) The devil deceives us in his promises, in getting far better things of us, than we have of him. For in these contracts with the devil we make Esau’ s pennyworth, sell heaven for a mess of pottage; Glaucus’ exchange, gold for copper. We are as foolish as children that lose their parents and their own liberty, and suffer themselves to be stolen away for an apple. Yea, as the bird that accepts of the fowler’ s meat, but buys it full dearly with her own life. 3. That all these things he promises are vain and insufficient to give true content. For (1) they are inferior unto us as men, much more as Christians. A thing worse than thyself cannot make thee better. Gold and silver are inferior to thee. (2) They are fickle and fugitive, therefore well shown here in a moment, because they glide away, as the running water, and in representation, because they have no substance, but are mere shadows and vanishing shows. 4. Meditate of the excellent reward of the life to come. (D. Dyke.) Toleration not donation Now the devil turns toleration into donation, connivance and permission into approbation, and that which is done at some times and in some places he makes constant and general. This is the trick of devilish liars thus to piece out things by addition. A little truth shall be enough to face out and colour over many lies. (D. Dyke.) Mortifying the carnal desires This being so dangerous and prevailing a temptation that hath wounded so many, it must teach us to strengthen ourselves against it. Which that we may do, two main remedies must be used. The first is the mortification of our fleshly members, the eye and the ear of old Adam. If a man should come to a dead man, and promise him never so many kingdoms, and show him never so much honour and glory, he is nothing moved. Now mortification makes us dead men to the world, as blind men to this goodly sight of the Word, and as deaf adders to the charms of this charmer. (D. Dyke.) Giving; Divine and Satanic But, on the other hand, what a difference between all other “ I will gives” and the “ I will give” of Jesus l After the ringing of changes by good Richard Clerke on the tempter’ s “ I will give,” let the sweet bell-sounds of the Lord’ s promise-words rise and swell through your memories--“ Come unto Me, all ye that are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28); “ Ask whatsoever thou wilt, and I will give it” (Mark 6:22); I will give you the sure mercies of David” (Acts 13:34); “ I will give thee a crown of life” ; “ I will give him the morning-star” I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life freely (Revelation 2:10; Revelation 2:28; Revelation 21:6). Thus is it also in the Old Testament, in historic book and prophecy and Psalm. (A. B. Grosart.) Satan offering stolen goods And before whom could he have told this tale, to be taken in a lie so soon, as by driving this bargain with Christ? As if a thief should steal plate, and offer to sell it to the owner; or a plagiary, filtch a great deal out of a book, and rehearse it for his own before the author. So the tempter had robbed Christ of that honour and majesty which was most properly His own (I mean he robbed Him of it by the blasphemy and falsehood of his tongue), and then brings it to Christ to barter it away for other merchandise. (Bishop Hacker.) Satan’ s attempted bribery of Christ There was, let us remember, nothing coarse or common in the suggestion which Satan here brought before the mind of Christ. He appealed to an attribute of man which, though often misdirected and abused, was originally a heaven-born instinct, designed to lift him above all other earthly creatures, viz., ambition and a desire for power. There is by nature something kingly in each human soul. Man was made for ruling. God set him at the first to be a lord in Eden. And, knowing that Christ had come to establish here upon earth that kingdom which the throne of David but faintly symbolized, the tempter spread before His soul a vision of universal dominion, offered Him the sceptre of worldwide sovereignty, with all the glory belonging thereto, adding this promise, “ Everything shall be yours, without the Cross, without the cost of pain, or toil, or sacrifice, if you will only make the very slight and harmless, because secret, acknowledgment of indebtedness to me. All these things will I give Thee, if Thou wilt bend in reverence to receive them at my hands.” Was that vision a mere dream? Was the offer all a lie? If so, where was the temptation? There must have been at least some truth in it. Think of the political condition of the world at that time. There were many kingdoms, but over them all spread the one consolidating and ruling power of Rome. Her law reached everywhere. Her empire stretched from the Atlantic to the Euphrates, a distance of more than three thousand miles, and from the Danube on the north, and the friths of Scotland, to the cataracts of the Nile and the African desert. All the tribes and nations inhabiting this immense territory had surrendered their independence and were fused into one political system. Moreover, that empire was tottering towards its fall. It was ready to accept even then a new Leader, even as only a little while later on it did in its helplessness accept the new faith. Can we who know how men have risen from the lowest to the highest worldly positions, doubt the possibility of Christ’ s reaching, without supernatural help, the place which Julius Caesar gained? Suppose by skilful management, and by a little concession here and a little there, He had united the three rival factions of Judaea, the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the Herodians, taking for a basis this last, which was a political party favouring the dominion of Rome. That first step might have led on gradually to the grand result which the tempter showed Him. All this any shrewd and far-discerning man could have thought of as possible. On the other side, and as the only alternative, Christ saw a lonely path, leading through Gethsemane and its terrible agony, and rising, step after step, up to Calvary and its awful Cross. He knows beforehand His rejection and betrayal, the scourging, the mocking, and the borrowed sepulchre. Even now, amid the solitude of the wilderness and its solemn stillness, He hears that bitter, maddened cry, “ Away with Him! Crucify Him! We will have a Caesar for our king, and no one else.” That is, He knows that if He now accepts the tempter’ s offer, instead of being afterwards rejected by “ His own” nation, He will become their acknowledged king. And beyond those three years of ministry and of conflict which He Himself must endure, He sees at least nineteen centuries during which His Church must fill up that which remains behind of His appointed sufferings, praying meanwhile for the coming of His kingdom. “ Save Thyself,” the tempter said, “ and spare Thy followers. Take the Crown without the Cross.” It was a proffered bribe. The question was whether Christ should sacrifice principle, or whether He should sacrifice Himself; whether He should reach that end for which He had come into the world by God’ s appointed way, or by one easier; in short, whether He should make duty or policy the law of His life. You know the decision and the answer. Nevertheless, let me read it in your ears, for the voice of this very temptation comes often to us all, and therefore the Voice of the Victor is never without its lessons. (E. E. Johnson, M. A.) Unprincipled success is failure What looks outwardly like the highest worldly success, may, nevertheless, be the worst kind of failure, because it has been purchased at the price of honesty and principle. It is not so very difficult to gain riches and social position, to secure control over this or that kingdom of earth, provided a man will bend all his energies towards that particular end, and at the same time crush down every conscientious scruple that rises to protest in God’ s name against the unrighteousness of the methods he is using. Christ would not march to His kingdom except by a king’ s highway, and along an unswerving path of loyal integrity. In the worship and also in the service of God, that is to say, both by making Him supreme, and then, instead of folding our hands, using every power we have in the work to which He calls us, we too can resist the power of him who comes whispering with honeyed, sympathetic voice, “ Peer, weary, unsuccessful one let me show you an easier way.” (E. E. Johnson, M. A.) The temptation to doubt God’ s present government of the world While we maintain most firmly the simple and literal truth of the facts of the temptation as recorded by the evangelist, utterly renouncing the scepticism that would resolve them into oriental imagery; yet we see in them some thing far beyond the mere facts, the absolute truth of which we nevertheless maintain. They are symbols full of meaning, symbols of what was going on all through the human life of the Redeemer, and of the struggle which all must maintain who would follow in His steps. The very order in which they are related is expressive. Beginning, as they did, with a suggestion that He should abuse the high powers with which He was endued, by providing through them for the gratification of appetite now sharpened by long fasting--passing on, when He had triumphed easily over this coarser temptation, to the more ensnaring and alluring bait of promised success through a compromise with evil; and when this also had been thrust aside, seeking to lift up into presumption that most holy soul--what is this but the history of man’ s temptation, first amidst the passions of youth, then in the scheming worldliness of middle life, and last of all in the self-confident elation which has caused the fall of many who had hitherto run well? 1. Many have believed, from his audacious taunt and the silence with which Christ dismissed it, that Satan has, to a great degree, the power to which he here lays claim; they secretly admit, in their suspicions at least, that he does bestow the good things of this life; that in this sense, rather than as being the tyrant over the faction of earthly and wicked hearts, he is “ the prince of this world.” (1) Mischievous effects of this doctrine. Allow for a moment that the world is in any sense under the dominion of Satan, that it has been committed to him, and the whole scheme of God’ s government becomes entangled in hopeless contradiction. Such a thought, admitted even in its lowest degree, must take from the heart its power of striving against sin, and of labouring to relieve the misery around it. Nothing can keep this in vigorous action but the undoubting confidence that we are at every turn really in the hand of a good and holy and Almighty Governor, and that He is now ruling all things, and disposing all things according to His own counsel; angels and men and every created being but carrying out His will; the holy and the just doing it from love; the unholy and rebellious bowed by its irresistible compulsion. Without the living energy to which this thought gives birth, who could strive alone against the multitude of evil doers; and what would there be to redress all the apparent contradictions of the mighty entanglement of this world? We must be entirely certain, in the depth of our hearts, that in all the maze (as it would seem) around us, there is to be traced a wise and a mighty plan, working out its harmonious accomplishment, that the kingdom of the “ Stone cut out without hands “ is even now set up; that this world is not renounced by God; that in the Church of the redeemed, each one of us may work with and for God, just as surely as the angels of heaven. For then, and never before, shall we see in every duty an opportunity of service; in every sorrow a messenger of love, and in every threatened peril the fiery squadrons of the heavenly host shielding the true servants of the Highest. (2) The nature of the fraud here used by Satan. We do not deny that sin is often so far successful as to gain for a time, for the sinner, certain specific objects that he has desired, or that the righteous are often kept bare of those outward good things which the wicked possess; but we affirm that this is not (as Satan would have us believe) because any power is committed to the evil one, or that he is allowed to suspend, even for a moment, God’ s righteous government, and so to reward his own followers; but that these objects of men’ s desire are given and withheld by God Himself, as a moral governor, upon a strictly moral rule, and in exact accordance therewith; that they are given to the wicked in anger, and withheld from the righteous in love; that they are given by Him, who has appointed certain results to follow from certain causes; who permits, therefore, the activity and the earnestness and the labour of the evil to work out for them those results which activity and earnestness and labour will, through His appointment, in general attain: but that even in giving these He marks the gift with His anger. For even when the particular object is attained, its possession does not bring with it that which the evil man had promised to himself, and which made it desirable in his eyes. He gets it; and it is barren and joyless. And herein is the juggling of the great deceiver. He promised the gift as his reward, and he promised with it the enjoyment of it; but as, even when the end is gained, it is not of his giving, so neither can he give with it the enjoyment of it. God bestows the objects desired, but puts in a sting with the gift, and so the followers of the evil one are cheated. 2. Concluding applications of this truth. (1) Warning. Which of us is not oftentimes tempted to believe this lie of Satan? Who is not tempted, by doing evil, or by enduring evil, or by winking at evil (all different forms of worshipping the evil one) to seek for some advantage which will (as it seems) be held back from him if he walk straight on along the narrow path which leads unto life? Who has not had a place to gain in the life-race, steps to make good in the world-struggle, a family to push, a fortune to better, a powerful friend to gain or to keep, some weak point to cover by a falsehood, or some simulated virtue to make shine in the eyes of others? And who has not known, if he searched his heart at such a time, the flattering voice of expediency, and the grating harshness of truth? I ask you, in the sight of God, how have you acted at such times? How are you acting now when they arise? Take up this thought in its simplicity, without doing away by artifice its strength, and then try your lives by it; try by it your daily conduct, whether in the shop, family, counting-house, senate, or wherever your lot may be cast. God’ s rule follows you into every act of every day; His sentence of anger or of approval is ever pronounced, ever executed. No one sin can prosper in God’ s world. That which flatters the most is commonly in the end the keenest torturer of him who yields to it. (2) Encouragement. Christian man I this God is your God for ever and ever; He shall be your guide even unto death. He is your Father, if you be a true and earnest believer in the Lord Jesus Christ. Here is comfort for you in every trial; in the midst of the world’ s sorrow, here is joy. You must be truly happy, for God is with you; you must be truly rich, for you possess all things in Him. This thought reverses in an instant every earthly calculation. (Bishop S. Wilberforce.) The devil’ s bargain As it was proposed to Christ at the opening of His ministry, so mostly is it offered to men’ s acceptance in the opening of their youth. Practically it was the same bargain that was made with our first parents in the garden. I. A BARGAIN. II. A BARGAIN. 1. In the quantity. 2. In the quality of the article purchased. III. A DEAD BARGAIN. Consider-- 1. The sin of it. 2. The humiliation of it. (T. Whitelaw, M. A.) Satan’ s offer Are men and women ever tempted in this way, and in our day? I think so. 1. There is the danger generally of pursuing legitimate ends by unlawful and unrighteous means. 2. The temptation to pious frauds, the suppression, misrepresentation, or obscuring of the truth in the supposed interests of religion. 3. With regard to our own personal salvation, the idea that there is some royal road into the glories and blessedness of the eternal kingdom. (Gordon Calthrop, M. A.) Two mountain scenes The offer was empire, and the price was worship. Jesus Christ said “ No,” and came down from the mountain as poor as He was when He was taken up. So much, you say, for throwing away the great opportunities of life. But read again Matthew 28:16-18, “ The disciples went away into Galilee into a mountain where Jesus had appointed them … And Jesus came and spake unto them saying, All power is given unto Me in heaven and in earth.” Put these two mountain scenes together. (J. Parker, D. D.) A plausible lie “ For that is delivered unto me.” One of the additions made by Luke to our knowledge of the temptations is the monstrous assumption of power and royalty on the part of the tempter. There is something fearful in the language which he uses--God had never given over the power to Satan. “Thine,” we truly confess in our prayer to our Father in heaven, “ is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory.” It was a lie, such as might have been expected to proceed from the “ father of lies.” Yet there was sufficient appearance of truth to make the lie plausible. Anybody looking upon the world would say, especially at the time of the Temptation, that the power and glory were acknowledged by general consent to belong to the prince of evil. Thank God that it is not so, and thank God that Jesus Christ came into the world to prove how false Satan’ s words were, and to claim the power and the glory wholly for God His Father. (Bishop Harvey Goodwin.) The bait of worldly prosperity A literary angler in the lochs of Scotland was wont to catch trout in a singularly suggestive fashion. The bait consisted of a pellet made of chloroform paste. No sooner had a trout taken one of these pellets into his mouth, than it fell into a sweet sleep. All efforts at escape were prevented; it could instantly be drawn to the shore. Prosperity acts similarly upon many. They are lulled to spiritual slumber, and easily become Satan’ s prey. If that is a man’ s peril, what worse can happen to him than so-called success? (G. T. Coster.) Satanic fascinations Not unlike this is the experience sometimes of many Christian brethren. Those who are of a fervid temperament and lively imagination, can tell of similar fascinations. The adversary is the readier to practise them upon persons of this description, because their natural love of excitement and the vividness of their sensations seem to promise him a surer triumph; indeed, he is often far too successful in bearing their spirits up to his enchanting heights. For this purpose he commonly employs some outward means. These he will gather, for instance, from the fine arts, as they are everywhere abused to worldliness and the pleasures of sin. Thus at one time it is a beautiful picture, at another the witcheries of poetry, at another, the sweetness of melody, or the sublimity of musical composition, whereby he dissolves their spiritual firmness. Sometimes, if only some sweet mazy melody softly undulating from a distance, be listened to, as one sits musing in the solitary chamber, his sorcery may prove successful. (Dr. Krummacher.) The world possessed by Satan Who can number the hundreds of millions whose souls he secures in his manifold chains, in the bands of sin and ignorance, in countless spiritual prisons and cells, under Mohammedan imposture, or in pagan idolatry; in the strong delusions of the Talmud, or under the dogmas of the seven hills; in heaven-defying rationalism, pantheism, or atheism. Surely, without any arrogant claim, Satan might say, “ All this is mine!” For the little which is not his, the “ lodge in the garden of cucumbers,” the “ worm Jacob,” the despised handful of Israel, is, as compared to the giant domains of this prince of fallen angels, but as a drop to the ocean. What is there in the whole world that the devil has not usurped for the extension and establishment of his kingdom, and made subservient, especially in the present age, to his infernal plans? Are not most of our pulpits and professional chairs still his? May not the same be said of the greater part of our public journals and newspapers? Are not our assemblies, associations, and clubs chiefly devoted to his service? And which of the sciences or of the fine arts is exempt from perversion to his interests? Almost everything in the world has he contrived to draw by little and little into subservience to his cause. Who deals out poetry in that deluge of romance and comedy which inundates the world with millions of infidel falsehoods and unholy ideas? Who is the invisible manager and conductor of those sensual operas, elysian concerts, and other entertainments, whereby music, that gift bestowed to praise withal the perfections of Jehovah, stands prominent as the destroyer of souls, because it is now made to breathe subtle poison into human hearts? Who is it that has stationed his camp behind the ramparts of modern philosophy, and aims from thence to inflict the most wicked and deadly blows on the gospel of peace? Who is it that has schemed and palmed upon Christendom that fashionable modern religion sweetened with effeminate taste, and spiced with lax and godless morality, which lulls people into a deep spiritual slumber, from which but too late the thunder of judgment will awaken them? From whom does all this originally proceed but from the father of lies, the old serpent, the dragon of the bottomless pit? Nor let us be surprised that he even speaks of “ giving” what is certainly within the compass of his power. (Dr. Krummacher.) The flesh and Spirit in conflict “ God made all things,” saith Lactantius, “ to set two armies in array” --the flesh and the Spirit; sense and reason; man whom He made after His own image, and the prince of this world. And therefore He hath mixed, as it were, an appearance of good with that which is evil, various and delectable pleasantness in the things of this world, that by those fair allurements in show there may be a possibility of inducement into that evil which is not seen: and He hath blended an apparency of evil with that which is good, that, by those sorrows and labours which are distasteful to the eye, there may be a possibility in us of refusing that good which is covered with such horror. But the present pleasure He checketh with fear of punishment, and the present horror and sharpness He sweetens with hope of reward; that we may see more with our mind than with our eye; that when our sense would join with evil because of its colour, our reason may fly from it because of its smart; and when the flesh declines goodness because it is irksome, the spirit may embrace it because it hath the promise of a reward; that when the devil speaketh fair, we may shut our ears, because we know his words are as swords; and when God nails us to the cross, we may bless His name, because He means to crown us. (A. Farindon, D. D.) Gifts Satanical There are gifts Satanical as well as gifts Divine; and the world has always abounded with persons who have owed their enjoyments, treasures, honours, titles, and rank, to Satanical ministration or superintendence. For our great adversary has always his pay and his prize-money in readiness for any who will follow his banner, and he has various methods of handsomely remunerating their zeal in his service. (Dr. Krummacher.) To be right is to be rich How, then, as to the truth of the doctrine that to be right is to be rich? To test that doctrine ye; must get into the very heart of the sufferer himself. He will show you the compensations of a righteous life; he will tell you how sweet is the bread eaten in secret, how holy and all-comforting is the approval of a good conscience, and how infinite is the independence of the soul whose trust is in God. In such a case the poverty is wholly on the outside; the soul is clothed in more than purple and fine linen, and is rich with more than gold. Outside, things are rough enough undoubtedly; the storm does not spare the roof, nor do the rags keep away the biting wind, yet somehow the man who is right has a quiet and thorough mastery over the circumstances which fret and vex the mere surface of his life. The king is within. The fountain of his joy is not dependent on the clouds, but on “ the river of God, which is full of water.” “ The ungodly are not so, but are like the chaff which the wind driveth away.” (J. Parker, D. D.) Satan’ s bid for the soul A story is told of Rowland Hill, the eccentric preacher. Lady Ann Erskine was passing by in her carriage, and she asked her coachman who that was that was drawing such a large assembly. He replied that it was Rowland Hill. “ I have heard a good deal about him,” she said; “ drive up near the crowd.” Mr. Hill soon saw her, and saw that she belonged to the aristocracy. He all at once stopped in the midst of Ms discourse and said, “ My friends, I have something for sale.” This astonished his hearers. “ Yes, I have something for sale; it is the soul of Lady Ann Erskine. Is there any one here that will bid for her soul? Ah, do I hear a bid? Who bids? Satan bids. Satan, what will you give for her soul? ‘ I will give riches, honour, and pleasure.’ But stop. Do I hear another bid? Yes, Jesus Christ bids. Jesus, what will you give for her soul? ‘ I will give eternal life.’ Lady Ann Erskine, you have heard the two bids--which will you take?” And Lady Ann fell down on her knees, and cried out, “ I will have Jesus.” The devil lies when he promises, but Christ always keeps His word. Sold to the devil Laura Phillips, “ a pretty and well-educated young woman,” committed suicide in Omaha the other day. She took blood from her own veins, and wrote with it the following note, which was found on her pillow: “ I, Laura Phillips, hereby sell my soul to the devil, in consideration for which he agrees to give me wealth, beauty, and the power to overcome all my enemies.” She left a comfortable home in Iowa three years ago, and went step by step into the slough of degradation. (Newspaper.) The soul sometimes sold for the smallest things It does not require a devil to tempt you. The smallest thing can tempt. As poor John Bunyan said once, something kept tempting him to sell Christ. If he stooped to pick up a pin the voice said, “ Sell Him for that! sell Him for that!” And men sell their honour for things as cheap. A pin will do it; a sweet smile; a fair face; the ruby wine; the love of money. All, for what has not a man sold his soul! (George Dawson.) Satan a tyrant though he may seem a parasite When we are once sure, Satan is a tyrant; till then, he is a parasite. There can be no safety if we do not view as well the back as the face of temptation. (A. B. Grosart.) Wrong moral conditions cannot be productive of happiness Look at the price required for the supremacy offered to Christ--“ If Thou wilt fall down and worship me” ! But consider what it is to worship at the wrong altar! It is to debase the affections, to bring the best energies of the soul under malign influence, and to forfeit the power to enjoy the very things which it is supposed to purchase. Worship expresses, though it may be feebly, the worshipper’ s supreme ideal of life; if, therefore, it be offered to an evil spirit, the whole substance and course of life will be deeply affected by the error. What if the very act of false worship disqualify the soul for relishing any supposed or undoubted joy? Offer a man long draughts of the choicest wines if he will first drench his mouth with a strong solution of alum, and what are the choicest wines to him then? They cannot penetrate to the palate, they are absolutely without taste, and they mock the appetite they were meant to gratify. So, if a man put his moral nature under false conditions, and create anarchy between himself and the principle of eternal righteousness, no matter what fortune or honour may accrue to him, his power of serene enjoyment is gone, and he becomes burdened and plagued by his very successes. This will be the first point insisted upon by the moralist; in the plainest words he will say, “ The promise is very great, but it is a lie to begin with, and the man who sells his soul to get it will soon find that he is neither more nor less than a dupe of the devil.” (J. Parker, D. D.) Luke 4:8 Get thee behind Me, Satan; for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve.--The necessity of a quick and speedy rejection of a sinful motion is, then, beyond dispute, and there needs no more to be said for the explanation of this direction, but an account of what is implied in a speedy denial. It contains these four things:-- 1. That it must issue from a fixed determination against sin. 2. This positive denial must be also wisely jealous of Satan, in motions that are unlikely, or that may seem light, little, and not directly intended. 3. The refusal must be so quick, that it may be ready to take the temptation by the throat. 4. When this is done, we must endeavour to maintain and stick to our first disallowance. (R. Gilpin.) Service joined to worship Dr. Thomas Taylor similarly, but in his own original way, observes:--“ God must not only be worshipped, but also served. The distinction is easily observed. For a man may in heart and gesture honour another to whom he owes but little service. And this word in the Hebrew is taken from servants, who, besides inward reverence and outward worship, owe to their masters their strength, labour, and service, yea, frank and cheerful obedience. And suppose any man have a servant who will be very complimental, and give his master cap and knee and very good words, yet when his master commands him anything, he will not do it--here is honour, but no service; and denying service, he plainly showsthat his honour is but dissembled and hypocritical. So as this service to God, as to earthly masters, stands-- (1) In ‘ fear’ and reverent inward affection; (2) In dutiful and ready obedience in all holy and civil [moral] actions. For-- 1. These two, God in the Scriptures hath everywhere joined together; and therefore no man may separate them. ‘ Oh that there were in them such an heart to “ fear” his, and to keep My commandments!’ (Deuteronomy 5:29). ‘ Now, therefore, fear the Lord and serve Him in uprightness, else choose you: for I and my house will serve the Lord’ (Joshua 24:14-15). ‘ Let us hear the end of all, Fear God and keep His commandments’ Ecclesiastes 12:13), which is all one with ‘ fear God and serve him.’ 2. This service is a fruit of fear, and a true testimony of it, for fear of God is expressed in service; and if a man would make true trial of his fear he may do it by his service.” (A. B. Grosart.) Temptation firmly rejected The nature of temptations, as dangerous or infectious, doth sufficiently enforce a necessity of their speedy removal. Things of danger require a sudden stop. If poison be taken into the body, we speedily labour to cast it up, or to overcome it by antidotes. We labour to stay the spreading of a gangrene presently. Who thinks it fit to delay when fire hath taken hold upon a house? The very opportunity of help is in the speediness of the endeavour. It is too late to bring water when the house is consumed, too late to apply a remedy when the disease hath conquered. They that consider what a temptation is will see no reason to move slowly in opposing. (R. Gilpin.) The devil quotes Deuteronomy The Law (we know) is a great cooler to presumption. (Bishop Audrewes.) True worship: The essentials of true worship I. THE OBJECT: The Lord God. II. THE : 1. Meditation; 2. Realization; 3. Personal communion. (A. F. Barfield.) The service of God I. HE HAS THE RIGHT TO CLAIM OUR SERVICE. His right is threefold. He is-- 1. Our Creator. 2. Our Preserver. 3. Our Redeemer. II. HIS CLAIM UPON US IS FOR OUR AND WHOLE-HEARTED SERVICE. “ Him only.” You cannot serve Him and anything else that is contrary to Him. Our “ reasonable service “ is the presentation of ourselves. III. HIS SERVICE CONFERS THE HIGHEST HONOUR UPON THOSE WHO IT. To serve self and sin is to sink always deeper into the depths of degradation. To serve God is to be exalted to the position of fellow-labourer with Him in the accomplishment of His purposes. IV. HIS SERVICE IS THE ONLY SERVICE WHICH IS FREEDOM. “ I will walk at liberty, for I seek Thy precepts.” V. THE SERVICE WHICH HE HAS A RIGHT TO DEMAND HE YET TO ENTREAT. He seeks for no compulsory obedience. The only service acceptable in His sight is that which springs from love. “ My son, give Me thy heart.” (J. R. Bailey.) Satan cannot stand a text “ What’ s wrang wi’ ye nee? I thocht ye were a’ richt,” said a ragged boy, himself rejoicing in the Saviour, to another, who a few nights before professed to be able to trust Jesus, but who had again begun to doubt. “ What’ s wrung wi’ ye nee? Man, I’ m no richt yet,” replied the other, “ for Satan’ s aye tempting me.” “ And what dae ye then?” asked his friend. “ I try,” said he, “ to sing a hymn.” “ And does that no send him away?” “ No; I am as bad as ever.” “ Weel,” said the other, “ when he tempts ye again, try him wi’ a text; he canna staun then.” Unflinching fidelity to God Be not in haste to be rich or to be famous or to be admired. “ Make haste slowly,” says the proverb, and it means just this--Make haste in God’ s way; take everything you can get from God, take nothing from the devil. Most powerfully was this illustrated in the life of the noble Havelock. For many years in the army he struggled against the arbitrary character of official patronage, and the odious abuses of the purchase system; and he, who in the end was the redeemer of the Indian Empire, was for a dreary while only a lieutenant. Yet how did he bear himself under it? As a Christian soldier, after the pattern of the Lord here, he placed the worship of the Lord first, and that he would not renounce for anything that man could name. Hear his words, and they are worthy of being written in letters of gold; yea, the spirit which utters them manifests a nobler courage than that which won so many fights and rescued the forlorn garrison at Lucknow. Here they are: “ Let me ask you, my good friend, what you mean by prejudices against me. Tell me plainly. I am not aware of any. Old and others used to tell me that it was believed at the Horse Guards and in other quarters that I professed to fear God, as well as to honour the Queen, and that Lord Hill and others had made up their minds that a man could not be at once a saint and a soldier. Now, I dare say any such authorities must be right, notwithstanding the example of Colonel Gardiner, Cromwell, and Gustavus Adolphus. But, if so, all I can say is, that their bit of red ribbon was very ill bestowed upon me; for I humbly trust that in that great matter I should not change my opinions and practice, though it rained garters and coronets as the reward of apostasy.” (W. M. Taylor, D. D.) Motto for the tempted There is in the south of France, on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, a huge tower, forming part of the fortifications by which St. Louis secured his embarkation for his troops for the last crusade. It is called the Tower of Constance, and in it were imprisoned during the reign of Louis XIV., Protestant women who would not renounce their faith at the request of the great king. In this lonely tower there is a gloomy chamber in which these women passed their lives, and there carved with some rude instrument on the pavement of the prison this one word, “ Resist.” It is ascribed to Marie Duran, who, for being sister to a French pastor, was there confined for more than forty years. She found her great resource, her great consolation, in carving out this word for any one who should hereafter come to read it there. (Dean Stanley.) Luke 4:9; Luke 4:13 And he brought Him to Jerusalem, and set Him on a pinnacle of the Temple, and said unto Him, If Thou be the Son of God, cast Thyself down from hence It is Satan’ s policy in tempting to run from one extreme to another Reasons of this policy are-- 1. The avoiding of one extreme gives the soul such a swing, if care be not used to prevent it, that they are cast more than half way upon the other. 2. While men avoid one extreme by running into another, they carry with them such strong impressions of the evil they would avoid, and such fierce prejudices, that it is not an ordinary conviction will bring them right, but they are apt to be confident of the goodness of the way they take, and so are the more bold and fixed in their miscarriage. That as distrust on the one hand, so presumption on the other, is one of his grand designs. Show what presumption is. It is in the general a confidence without a ground. 1. It is made up of audacity--which is a bold and daring undertaking of a thing--and security. 2. The ground of it is an error of judgment. A blind or a misled judgment doth always nourish it. 3. In its way of working it is directly opposite to distrust, and is a kind of excessive though irregular hope. 1. Then it is presumption, when from external or subordinate means men expect that for which they were never designed nor appointed of God. 2. When men do expect those fruits and effects from anything unto which it is appointed, in neglect or opposition to the supreme cause, without whose concurrent influence they cannot reach their proper ends--that is, our hopes are wholly centred upon means, when in the meantime our eye is not upon God. 3. It is a presumption to expect things above the reach of our present state and condition. 4. When men expect things contrary to the rules that God hath set for His dispensations of mercy, they boldly presume upon His will. 5. It is also a presumption to expect any mercy, though common and usual, without the ordinary means by which God in providence hath settled the usual dispensations of such favours. 6. When ordinary or extraordinary mercies are expected for an unlawful end. Having thus proved that presumption is one of the great things he aims at, I shall next discover the reasons of his earnestness and industry in his design, which are these-- 1. It is a sin very natural, in which he hath the advantage of our own readiness and inclination. 2. As it is easy for Satan’ s attempt, so it is remote from conviction, and not rooted out without great difficulty. 3. The greatness of the sin when it is committed, is another reason of his diligence in the pursuit of it. 4. The dangerous issues and consequences of this way of tinning, do not a little animate Satan to tempt to it. It was no small piece of Satan’ s craft to take this advantage, while the impression of trust in the want of outward means was warm upon the heart of Christ. He hoped thereby the more easily to draw Him to an excess. For he knows that a zealous earnestness to avoid a sin, and to keep to a duty, doth often too much incline us to an extreme, and he well hoped that when Christ had declared Himself so positively to depend upon God, he might have prevailed to have stretched that dependence beyond its due bounds, taking the opportunity of His sway that way, which, as a ship before wind and tide, might soon be over-driven. (R. Gilpin.) Satan watches the wind They admire how it comes to pass that their temptations should so suddenly alter, that when Satan seems to be so intent upon one design, he should so quickly change, and urge them presently to a different or contrary thing; but they may know that the devil watcheth the wind, and spreads his sail according to the advantage which ariseth from our answer or repulse. So that if we would but plough with our own heifer, and observe our frame of spirit, we should easily find out this riddle. For as it is in disputings and arguings of men, replies beget new matter for answer, and so do they multiply one another; thus are temptations altered and multiplied, and out of the ashes of one assault repelled, another doth quickly spring up. (R. Gilpin.) The influence of place in temptation As long as Noah was in the ark in the midst of the waters, he had in him no presumptuous thought; but sitting under the vine in his vineyard, he was overcome therewith. And just Lot 2 Peter 2:8) in Sodom, had no fit time or place to be presumptuous; but when he dwelt in the mountain in security, then he committed incest with his daughters, being made drunk by them. David, so long as he was persecuted by Saul, tossed up and down from post to pillar, had no leisure to be presumptuous; but in the top of his turret, when he was at rest in his palace. (Bishop Andrewes.) The same devil But though it be not the same temptation, yet it is the same devil in both places. (Bishop Andrewes.) Pride seeks the pinnacle All other sins keep out of the way, as well as they can, but pride is not ashamed to be manifested, nay, it loves to have witnesses of its folly and insolency. (Bishop Hacker.) Satan loves open sins This is that itch which Satan hath rubbed upon self-admiring pride, sometime to be gazed upon at one place, sometime at another, by the court, by the theatre, by the congregation assembled to praise God, by the whole city, if it be possible, as it was purposed in this temptation. But the more publication pride makes of itself, the more scandal is given, the more scandal the more guiltiness, and the more guiltiness the greater condemnation. Satan loves these open, these flaming sins, that weak ones may run to them like moths to the light of a candle, and be touched and scorched with coming near them. (Bishop Andrewes.) The holy Temple defiled And above all places on earth if he make us his instruments to defile the holy Temple, God’ s glory is put to the greatest scandal and reproach. And this is brought to pass so many ways, that it is plain to see there hath been a most witty complotter in the treachery. 1. When any prelate is so puffed up that he thinks himself too great to be a doorkeeper in God’ s house, but will be higher than all the Church, and set on the top of the pinnacle, who, sitting in the Temple of God, exalts himself above all that is called God. 2. The temple is defiled by setting up idols in the courts of our heavenly King, even in the midst of thee, O thou sanctuary of the Lord. 3. By offering up unclean sacrifice, either false doctrine, or impious prayers, or superstitious worship, or corrupted sacraments. 4. When men set their foot within the sacred tabernacle with carnal thoughts, with worldly imaginations, with no zeal or attention. 5. To bring any profane work, any secular business within those walls which are consecrated to the name of the Lord. (Bishop Andrewes.) Satan not discouraged by failure The manner is, after one hath taken a foil, his courage will fail. The angel would have been gone, when he saw he could not prevail over Jacob (Genesis 32:26). But it is not so here with the devil. For when he saw that his first temptation would not prevail he trieth another. (Bishop Andrewes.) A new assault made out of vanquished temptation He is not only content to take a foil, but even out of the same thing wherewith he was foiled maketh he matter of a new temptation, a new ball of fire. Out of Christ’ s conquest, he makes a new assault; that is, since he will needs trust, he will set him on trusting; he shall trust as much as he will. As the former tempted him to diffidence, so this shall tempt him to precedence. (Bishop Andrewes) 1. It is a favourite snare of the tempter to “ take “ men, ay, Christian men, to “ pinnacles.” 2. It is to “ tempt” God, to do anything wrong on the plea of imagined or intended good to others. 3. Too many make the same mis-use of the Bible that the devil did. 4. The believer must appropriate to himself the Bible promises and commandments. 5. Obedience must be kept abidingly in mind. 6. We must never sunder means from ends. 7. Let the tempted realize the great protecting hands. (A. B.Grosart.) A pinnacle of the Temple The “ pinnacle” is properly the wing of the temple-buildings, not of the main building itself. The pinnacle has been supposed to be the pediment of the three-storied royal hall, which Herod had erected at the southern corner of the temple area, and which reached to the mouth of the Tyropoeon, and stood high above the ravine of Cedron, where it turns into the Valley of Hinnom. Josephus thus describes it. “ It was an astonishing work of art, the like of which was nowhere else to be seen, for the valley was so deep, that when any one standing on the top looked down into it, he lost his head. Above this, Herod erected a portico of four storeys of pillars, of such extraordinary height, that when any one ascended to the parapet, so as to look down from the roof on the entire depth of building and natural precipice, he stood a chance of becoming giddy before his eyes reached the bottom of the abyss.” The parapet here, no doubt, formed a low pediment, such as is common to the gables of Grecian temples. On the top of this pediment stood Jesus, with Satan by Him. A great commotion, and, indeed, a riot was caused in Jerusalem, by the erection of a golden Roman eagle, on the Temple gate, as crowning the pediment, by Herod the Great, about 4 B.C. The eagle was torn down and broken in pieces by the rioters. It was a symbol both of Roman power and of Jupiter, the king of the gods. Now--perhaps in covert reference to this incident-Satan plants the Lord on the apex of the pediment of Herod’ s great four-storied hall, or, possibly on the entrance gate, on the very pedestal from which the golden eagle had been thrown down. (S. Baring-Gould, M. A.) The devil where least expected During the past week I had a nosegay of flowers brought me. I handled them, and they passed through the hands of my household. They had been in the house four-and-twenty hours, when, going into the room where they were, I observed a serpent issuing from among the flowers. When I approached it darted about the room, shooting out its poisoned fangs. I thought, “ How like the ‘ old serpent the devil,’ coming to us hidden in those beautiful flowers, where we least expected to find anything so dangerous! “ (J. Stuchbery.) Christ in the pinnacle Looking down from that dizzy height, He could see the marble pavement and the people walking upon it. “ Cast Thyself down from hence.” He could have done it. Sustained by angel hands, kept secure by His own inherent power, He could have descended without harm into the midst of the people. No doubt it would have brought Him great applause from the idle and wonder-mongering crowd, but whose tears would it have wiped away, whose aching heart would it have comforted, whose sickness would it have healed? Never, never, would the Lord of love put forth His power for such a useless, fruitless, purpose as that; and He kept his Divine resources in all their virgin freshness and fulness. He kept them untouched till presently the lepers crossed His path and He could cleanse them, till presently the dying were within His reach and He could lift them into life again, till the broken-hearted were by His side, and He could dry up the fountain of their woe and make their broken hearts to be whole again. (C. Vince.) Satan busy during spiritual exercises To the “ holy city,” to the holiest place in the holy city, the Temple, is the Lord Jesus “ taken” by the tempter, and there afresh tempted. Whither then will not the tempter enter? What “ light-flaming battlement” will be not over-leap? My dear friends, we must be “ vigilant” everywhere; at all times, and in all places: in the house of God; at the family altar; within our closets; beside our opened Bible. I would even say that most of all must we “ watch unto prayer” in these holy scenes and seasons. For it is with the “ roaring lion,” who ever “ goes about seeking whom he may devour,” as with the beasts of prey in the forest. I remember once, when camped on the shores of one of the great lakes of America, that in the stillness of the pine-forest, within whose shadows our camp-fire was lit, it was a sight to see the wild beasts stealthily stealing to their watering-places. It so chanced that in the tangled jungle opposite us, there was one of their lurking-places; and as the moonlight streamed its wan radiance over it, I could see the fierce creatures couched behind a shattered pine. Why there? Because from beneath its roots, gushing from out the ferns, was a spring of water. Thither the “ flocks and herds,” came, and just as they lapped their refreshing draught, out sprang at a bound the wehr-wolf or other terrible beast. It is precisely so with us. While the believer is quenching his soul’ s longings and thirstings at the well of salvation, the adversary crouches to make his fatal spring. Alas, alas l that so many “ of the flock” are borne way. (A. B. Grosart, D. D.) 1. The tempter comes a second time with an “ if.” Doubt is to potent a thing to be lightly or readily abandoned. 2. The tempter goes from extreme to extreme. This seems to be a favourite device of the evil one. 3. The tempter is very successful in tempting professing Christians with his “ If [=since] son thou be of God, cast Thyself beneath.” Everyday observation will satisfy that there are two classes who fall before this snare. There is first of all the man who has newly proved the power of the “ gift” of “ faith” to produce absolute trust. Strong in that trust, there is the danger of thinking of and relying more upon the gift than the Giver; and of acting upon the grace in possession as semi-independent, instead of looking to Him who holds all grace in His own hands. Presumption inevitably comes out of that; self-confidence, rashness, “ high thoughts,” and all under the guise of an unquestioning faith. My dear friends, search and see if you are not liable to presume upon your Christian character, and to run risks such as you should else shrink from. 4. The tempter seeks first to lead into sin, and then to justify the sin by Scripture. 5. The tempter can only persuade, never compel. “ Satan can tempt and persuade us, but he cannot force us to sin, or he cannot cast thee down unless thou ‘ cast thyself down.’” (A. B. Grosart, D. D.) What was the evil in this suggested act? It was twofold, evil alike on the Godward and on the manward side. 1. In the first aspect it meant that God should be forced to do for Him what He had before refused to do for Himself--make Him an object of supernatural care, exempted from obedience to natural law, a child of miracle, exceptional in His very physical relations to God and Nature. 2. In the second aspect it meant that He was to be a Son of wonder, clothed with marvels, living a life that struck the senses and dazzled the fancies of the poor vulgar crowd. In the one case it had been fatal to Himself, in the other, to His mission. Special as were His relations to God, He did not presume on these, but, with Divine self-command, lived, though the supernatural Son, like the natural child of the Eternal Father. His human life was as real as it was ideal. The Divine did not supersede the human, nor seek to transcend its limits, physical and spiritual. And His fidelity to our nature has been its pre-eminent blessing. No man who knows the spirit of Christ will presume either on the providence or the mercy of God, because certain that there remains, even in their highest achievements, the dutiful servants of Divine wisdom and righteousness. He who came to show us the Father, showed Him not as a visible guardian, not as an arbitrary, mechanical providence, but as an invisible presence about our spirits, about our ways, source of our holiest thoughts, our tenderest feelings, our wisest actions. The Only-begotten lived as one of many brethren, though as the only one conscious of His Sonship. And, perhaps, His self-sacrifice reached here its sublimest point. He would not, and He did not, tempt the Lord His God, but lived His beautiful and perfect life within the terms of the human, yet penetrated and possessed by the Divine. (A. M. Fairbairn, D. D.) The temptation to presumption “ If God is to be so trusted, try Him. Show thyself His darling. Here is the word itself for it. Take Him at His word.” Again, with a written word, the Lord meets him. And He does not quote Scripture for logical purposes--to confute Satan intellectually, but as given even Satan the reason of His conduct. If the Father told Him to cast Himself down, that moment the pinnacle pointed naked to the sky. If the devil threw Him down, let God send His angels; or, if better, allow Him to be dashed in pieces in the valley below. But never will He forestall the Divine will. The Father shall order what comes next. The Son will obey. In the path of His work He will turn aside for no stone. There let the angels bear Him in their hands if need be. But He will not choose the path because there is a stone in it. He will not choose at all. He will go where the Spirit leads him. (George Macdonald, LL. D.) The temptation of display I. THE ATTACK. 1. It was a temptation to presumption. 2. The object o! this presumption was display. 3. The temptation was presented with an excuse in Scripture. II. THE REPULSE. 1. Our Lord again quotes Scripture, partly (a) for the same reason as formerly, for that which is good when rightly handled must not be abandoned because evil persons abuse it; and partly (b) because Scripture is best interpreted and balanced by Scripture. 2. The words quoted by our Lord show that He regarded the act of presumption suggested by Satan as an insult to God. (W. F. Adeney, M. A.) Illustrations Walker was treated less respectfully. William thought him a busybody, who had been properly punished for running into danger without any call of duty, and expressed that feeling, with characteristic bluntness on the field of battle. “ Sir,” said an attendant, “ the Bishop of Derry has been killed by a shot at the ford.” “ What took him there?” growled the king. (Macaulay’ s History of England.) Wellington, of an officer killed: “ What business had he lurking there? Shall not mention him in my despatch.” Trusting and tempting providence You may rely upon God for protection, solace, help, but not if you are foolhardy. No miracle will do for you what you can do for yourself. Jesus might have come down by the staircase; there was no need to get down the other way--tempt providence, and providence will fail you to a certainty. If you are idle and feckless, no philosopher’ s stone will turn your dross into gold. If you have weak lungs and expose yourself recklessly to chill, God’ s icy wind will slay you in spite of your prayers. If you neglect the laws of health and live fast, you will soon sink from the heaven of health into the hell of disease. If, from the pinnacle of desire, you leap into the pit of lust, you shall die mangled. If, from the pinnacle of greed, you plunge into the gulf of peculation, you fall crushed. The moral order of the universe will not be suspended for you--“ Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.” (H. R.Haweis, M. A.) Pinnacle of the Temple Some places are as dangerous for our souls as the pinnacle of the Temple was for the body. (D. Dyke.) Cast Thyself down from hence Humility employed in the service of pride That He might fall down bodily, and be proud spiritually, and so he thrust together a frivolous presumption, and a dangerous descension. How much is humility abused when pride will wear the colours of that great virtue to deceive the world. There was gross ambition in Absalom’ s stooping to steal the hearts of the people. As a kite will sweep the earth with his wings, that he may truss the prey in his talons, and fly aloft to devour it, so all the crouches and submissions which an ambitious man makes are to get somewhat what he seeks for, and to clamber to promotion. This is observed, because Satan impels Christ to cast Himself down, not for true humility’ s sake, but upon vainglory to flutter in the air, that all Jerusalem might take notice how precious He was to the care and custody of all the angels. (Bishop Hacket.) Election no reason for presumption I see now who is the author of that fallacy which, I fear, hath cost many a soul the loss of eternal life, that such as assure themselves they are elect ones, they are the sons of God, may make bold with their Father’ s mercy, may rely upon it, and now and then transgress His commandments for their pleasure, or profit, or some other fleshly consideration; there is no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus; God sees no sin in the righteous-though they fall they shall rise again; and many more such deluding axioms as they apply them, which I beseech you return back again to hell with him that invented them. (Bishop Hacket.) Trusting too much As, seeing the water of distrust will not extinguish His faith, but that He would trust in God, he endeavoureth now by Scriptures (that magnify the providence of God, and the confidence we are to put in Him) to set Him as far gone in the other extreme, by presuming or trusting too much, that so the fire, which before he would have quenched, may now so flame out as not to keep itself within the chimney, but to set the whole house on fire. (Bishop Andrewes.) Vice coloured with virtue The devil sees that against God’ s children oftentimes he can have no other advantage, than that which they had against Daniel (Daniel 6:1-28.) in the law of his God, in the graces of God’ s Spirit, and therefore he dyes his bad clothes in good colours, and paints the foul faces of sin with the colours of graces and virtues to deceive us; as here he presents presumption to Christ under the colour and in the habit of faith; and so now covetousness, of frugality and good husbandry; drunkenness and carousing of healths, of good fellowship; sottish sloth, of quietness (Ecclesiastes 4:3), unlawful sports both in regard of the nature of the games, as dice. What need have we not to be carried away with everything that hath a show of goodness, or of indifferency, but to bring these painted strumpets of the devil to the light, yea, and to the heat of the Word of God, and then their painting shall melt away, and we shall see their beauty came only out of the devil’ s box? (D. Dyke.) For it is written, He shall give His angels charge over thee Satan quoting the Psalms A man would have thought Satan would have skipped the Book of the Psalms though he had searched over all the Scripture beside. It is the volume of joy, of consolation, of alacrity, the very songs of angels. “ Is any man merry, let him sing psalms,” says St. James. Is there any use of that sweet harmony for him that lives in perpetual torment? (Bishop Hacket.) Scripture not defiled by Satanic uses I will not put myself to the task to go any further in this reckoning; for all schisms and heresies, and almost all sins, will shroud under the patronage of the Word of God. Yet such is the pureness of that fountain, that it is not puddled, though dirty swine do wallow in it; nay, though the devil himself run headlong into it, as he did into the sea. Here he tumbles about in this psalm to cast dirt upon it, yet the psalm is no whit less sacred and venerable than it was before. (Ibid.) Misuse of Scripture no argument against its use It is no disgrace nor disparagement to the Scriptures to proceed from Satan, nor any occasion to make us leave cur hold; for Christ answereth again, and striketh with the same weapon wherewith He was stricken, showing us that it is lawful to use a text well, against them that do abuse a text; and if Christ’ s example be our precedent, then we may allege Scripture against depraved Scripture. For the bee may gather honey on the same stalk that the spider doth poison. And though a swashbuckler kill a man with his weapon, yet a soldier may lawfully knit a sword to his side; and though there be many piracies committed on the sea, yet may the merchants traffic; or though some surfeit by gluttony, yet may others use their temperate diet. And if the devil change himself into an angel of light, shall therefore the angels lose their light? Misquoted Scripture “ In the ways” all is safe. Out of the ways all is perilous. Satanic use of Scripture I shall show to what base designs he makes it subserve. 1. He useth this artifice to beget and propagate erroneous doctrines. Hence no opinion is so vile, but pretends to Scripture as its patron. 2. He makes abused Scripture to encourage sinful actions. 3. By this imitation of the commands and promises of God, he doth strangely engage such as he can thus delude unto desperate undertakings. 4. He sometimes procures groundless peace and assurance in the hearts of careless ones by Scripture misapplied. Lastly: This way of Satan’ s setting home scriptures proves sadly effectual to beget or heighten the inward distresses and fears of the children of God. It is a wonder to hear some dispute against themselves, so nimble they be to object a scripture against their peace, above their reading or ability, that you would easily conclude there is one at hand that prompts them, and suggests these things to their own prejudice. And sometime a scripture will be set so cross or edgeway to their good and comfort, that many pleadings, much time, prayers, and discourses cannot remove it. I have known some that have seriously professed scriptures have been thrown into their hearts like arrows, and have with such violence fixed a false apprehension upon their minds, as that God had cut them off, that they were reprobate, damned, &c., that they have borne the tedious, restless affrightments of it for many days, and yet the thing itself, as well as the issue of it, doth declare that this was not the fruit of the Spirit of God, which is a spirit of truth, and cannot suggest a falsehood, but of Satan, who hath been a liar from the beginning. (R. Gilpin.) Scripture falsely cited Another point of Satan’ s unfaithful dealing with Scripture is his false citation of it. It is nothing with him to alter, change, or leave out such a part as may make against him. If he urge promises upon men, in order to their security and negligence, he conceals the condition of them, and banisheth the threatening far from their minds, representing the mercy of God in a false glass, as if He had promised to save and bring to heaven every man upon the common and easy terms of being called a Christian. If it be his purpose to disquiet the hearts of God’ s children, to promote their fears, or to lead them to despair, then he sets home the commands and threatenings, but hides the promises that might relieve them, and, which is remarkable, he hath so puzzled some by setting on their hearts a piece of Scripture, that when the next words, or next verse, might have eased them of their fears, and answered the sad objections which they raised against themselves from thence, as if their eyes had been holden, or as if a mist had been cast over them, they have not for a long time been able to consider the relief which they might have had. This hiding of Scripture from their eyes, setting aside what God may do for the just chastisement of His children’ s folly, is effected by the strong impression which Satan sets upon their hearts, and by holding their minds down to a fixed meditation of the dreadful inferences which he presents to them from thence, not suffering them to divert their thoughts by his incessant clamours against them. (R. Gilpin.) The Word of God Now, brethren, I would have you remember two things throughout, in our Lord’ s use of Scripture, in this sore contest. First: As towards Himself and His own human, and therefore, it might be supposed, infirm heart. It is, you see, the sole argument which He uses, the sole guide which He takes, the sole source of strength on which He throws Himself. You see nothing added to it, no consideration from any other quarter, of reason, or convenience, or ultimate gain; no calculations of any kind called in to give it fresh power, or an influence not properly its own. It is thrust boldly, nakedly, solitarily forward, by its own strength alone sustained. Secondly: It is clearly implied that the powerful spirit who was tempting Him, was quite as well aware as He Himself that God’ s word was immutable and unconquerable; and that it contained within itself all that faith needed to resist his utmost assaults. He knew full well that all spiritual strength and comfort was contained in it; nay, a clothing of the soul that rested on it with the very power of Him who spake it in His truth and holiness, and victory to tread all sin and temptation under foot. With all his subtlety, therefore, and devices of a bad wisdom, he has nothing to reply to the bold and straightforward declaration of God’ s will. He is struck dumb. It seems, after this, useless before Christians, to give any reasons why it should be so, seeing that we have such a witness to it; but one or two immediately occur to every thoughtful person, which I will just suggest. 1. Almighty God is the very truth itself, and it is no more possible for Him to utter what is false than for the glorious and blessed sun to shoot forth darkness instead of light. 2. He is all-powerful, as well as all true, and therefore, if He be bent upon executing His will, whatever it be, it is impossible to resist it. 3. He is all good, and gracious, and loving, and hath poured the riches of His mercy into the book which He has given unto us; and so far from dreading these perfections of His nature, which make all that He has said unchangeable, and grieving that it cannot be blotted out--herein is our joy, as sons of God by adoption and grace, that “ it is written” that heaven and earth shall pass away, but not one tittle of that blessed writing! And now, only turn for a moment to what it is in this temptation of Satan of which our Lord affirmed that it was the Word of God, and found strength whereby, in the hour of His great need, to vanquish the tempter, and bring down angels out of heaven to minister to Him! For you may be sure, that the sinless Lamb of God, who took our nature upon Him, that we might be raised to the purity of His, seeing that He was flesh and blood in all things, sin only excepted, hath recorded His own temptations, because He knew full well, by the wisdom that was in Him, that the very same would assault us! Look well, dear brethren, to this! 1. Though it be true, that we must all labour in the” station to which God has called us, and by the sweat of our brow must eat bread, yet that is not the first thing; that is not the great, the one thing needful. “ The kingdom of God is not meat, or drink, but righteousness, and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost.” “ My meat,” saith our Lord, and therefore ours, “ is to do the will of My Father which is in heaven!” “ Thou shalt not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.” “ Look at the lilies of the field, how they grow I they toil not, neither do they spin I and yet your heavenly Father clotheth them I Shall He not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?” In one word, “ It is written,” and it cannot be changed. Again--look at this: Do you never tempt the Lord your God? that is, presume upon His aiding and protecting you, where He has not promised to do so, but the contrary, and so bring a curse upon the soul, and not a blessing I But, you may say, can we trust God too much P or throw our whole souls with too unreserved a love and confidence upon His fatherly care? But to presume on His love when our heart is elsewhere, and when we refuse to obey His evident commandments, is death to us! Again, it is written, “ Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.” Thirdly: Do we fall down and worship Satan? “ It is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve!” Finally: Before we part, let me once more impress upon you, that all this, and much more of the like import, is written, and that to tell you so is the same thing as to tell you that it will all come to pass, as sure as man is sinful and ignorant, and God wise, holy, and true. And in more than one sense it is thus written: for first of all--you find it in the holy book! There it is, and fire cannot burn it out, nor water wash it out, nor all the wishes and struggles of ungodly men make it less, even by a single letter. It is written, therefore, not only in a book, but in the eternal counsels of God, out of the depths of which, in the fulness of time, it hath all issued forth to us. It has been written from everlasting to everlasting, that thus it shall be. But there is one more book, dear brethren, in which this blessed, and eternal, and unchangeable word must be written, if we would be the better or the more blessed for it. In our own hearts--in our souls, in the fleshly tablets within us, and not on stone tables, or paper books, must the Word of God be engraven by the Spirit. So long as it remains an outward thing, merely spoken or merely written, it is only condemnation; it hath a sword in its hand, and killeth. (J. Garbett, M. A.) The devil quoting Scripture The failure of the tempter has not deterred mankind from venturing on the same appeal, with no very unlike design. Among the crowd of pilgrims who throng the pages of his allegory, Bunyan depicts one Mr. Selfwill, who holds that a man may follow the vices as well as the virtues of pilgrims. “ But what ground has he for so saying?” is Mr. Greatheart’ s query. And old Mr. Honesty replies: “ Why, he said he had Scripture for his warrant.” “ The devil can quote Scripture for his purpose; An evil soul producing holy witness Is like a villain with a smiling cheek, A goodly apple rotten at the core.” Such is Antonio’ s stricture on Shylock’ s appeal to Jacob’ s practice; and there is a parallel passage to it in the next act, where Bassanio is the speaker:-- “ In religion, What damned error, but some sober brow Will bless it and approve it, with a text Hiding the grossness with fair ornament.” Shakespeare embodies in Richard of Gloucester a type of the political intriguer; as where the usurper thus answers the gulled associates who urge him to be avenged on the opposite faction:-- “ But then I sigh, and with a piece of Scripture Tell them that God bids us do good for evil. And thus I clothe my naked villainy With old odd ends, stolen forth of holy writ; And seem a saint when most I play the devil.” An unmitigated scoundrel in one of Mr. Dickens’ s books is represented as openly grudging his old father the scant remnant of his days ; whereupon the author interposes this parenthetical comment: “ Is any one surprised at Mr. Jonas making such a reference to such a book for such a purpose? Does any one doubt the old saw that the devil quotes Scripture for his own ends? If he will take the trouble to look about him, he may find a greater number of confirmations of the fact in the occurrences of a single day than the steam-gun can discharge balls in a minute.” (F. Jacox.) The religious devil “But what is this I see? Satan himself with a Bible under his arm, with a text in his mouth? No devil is so dangerous as the religious devil.” So writes Bishop Hall, speaking of the temptation of Christ. There are two classes of devils, the religious and the irreligious--both in reality irreligious--and the former more so than the latter; but these make no show or pretence of religion, whereas those do. St. Paul had to contend with them. Speaking of false apostles, he wrote: “ And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light,” &c. The religious devil has often been enthroned as the head of the Church on earth; he has at one time or another enjoyed the emoluments of every bishopric in Europe; there is scarcely a monastery of which he has not been abbot; there are not many pulpits from which he has not preached, for he is to be found in every denomination. A religious devil has been known to join a Church, and go from one Church to another, from one denomination to another, in order to secure customers in the congregation. (H. S. Brown.) Satan’ s many disguises No player hath so many several dresses to come in upon the stage as the devil hath forms of temptation; but he is most dangerous when he appears in Samuel’ s mantle, and silvers his foul tongue with fair language. (Gurnall.) The Word of God the end of controversy To dispatch this out of hand, the misconstruing the Word of God is the beginning of all strife; the true allegation of it is the end of a controversy. (Bishop Hacket.) Satan God’ s ape That the Scripture is alleged in a perverse apish imitation, because Christ had alleged Scripture before. Thus hath the devil always been God’ s ape, as in sacrifices, washings, tithes, priests, altars, oracles of the heathen, all which he did apishly imitate, and counterfeit the like to those in the Church of God, thinking by this means to disgrace the ordinances of God. (D. Dyke.) The abuse of Scripture That the abuse of the Scriptures must not take away the use of it. Christ doth not give over alleging Scripture because the devil abused it. The honest traveller doth so much the more wear his weapon and his sword because the thief useth the same weapon. (D. Dyke.) And Jesus answering said unto him, It is said, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God Faith distinguished from presumption Thou shalt not tempt, &e. Is there any law which can be laid down which will serve in all cases to distinguish faith from presumption, which will warn us when we are no longer honouring God by our trust, but dishonouring Him by our unbelief? There is, and it is as follows The moment trust in God presumes to break any one, even the least, of the laws of God, and then expects God to save it from the consequences of its disobedience, it is not trust, but unbelief; it is not faith, but presumption; it is not honouring, it is tempting, God. (G. S. Barrett, B.A.) Our Lord’ s quotations from the Scriptures The words of all the three answers to the tempter come from two chapters of Deuteronomy, one of which (chapter 6.) supplied one of the passages for the phylacteries or frontiers worn by devout Jews. The fact is in every way suggestive. A prominence was thus given to that portion of the book which made it an essential part of the education of every Israelite, The words which our Lord now uses had, we must believe, been familiar to Him from His childhood, and He had read their meaning rightly. With them He may have sustained the faith of others in the struggles of the Nazareth home with poverty and want. And now He finds in them a truth which belongs to His high calling as well as to His life of lowliness. (Dean Plumptre.) The inductive study of the Scriptures What the Saviour did here was to fill out and complete the interpretation of the passage which Satan had repeated, and He did that by showing from various passages the conditions within which alone the former could be rationally and intelligently accepted. Now the procedure of the Lord in this instance plainly implies that one portion or saying of Scripture is to be read in connection with all other portions of it, and is to be understood and interpreted only in that sense which is in harmony with every other utterance of the sacred oracles. What Nature is to the physical philosopher, Scripture is to the theologian. In prosecuting a systematic examination of the Scriptures there are three things in reference to which we must be always on our guard. 1. We must see to it that all the passages brought together have a real bearing on the subject in hand. 2. We must see to it that we give to each passage its own legitimate weight--no more, no less. 3. We must see to it that our induction of passages is complete. (W. M. Taylor, D. D.) Spiritual acuteness There is a story of a limner, that to show his art, drew a white line so small that it could hardly be discerned; another, to show that he could excel him, drew a black line through the middle of it. It required an acute sight to detect either. But our Saviour at first view immediately discerned the black line of temptation to run through the plausible advice that Satan gave Him. (White.) Tempting God And surely one principal and notorious offence is committed when a man exposeth his life to unnecessary dangers, upon an ill-grounded confidence that God will bring him off with safety. 2. The Lord is tempted when we will not believe Him, unless we see signs and wonders, and provoke Him to let us see some print of His omnipotence, or we will fall out, and trust Him no more. 3. There is another crooked branch, much like unto the former, growing out of the same root; not simply by declining natural means, but by declining all means; having no calling, using no labour, cashiering all providence, and yet expecting to live and thrive as well as they that eat the bread of carefulness by the sweat of their brows. 4. Then they shall stand for the fourth, that make holy vows, and bind themselves in a perpetual obligation, where God hath given no promise of assistance, that they shall be able to perform them. 5. Fifthly, to use such things again, which either always or for the most part have been unto us an occasion of sinning, is to tempt the Lord, whether He will let those things prevail against our souls which so often have proved unto us an occasion of falling. 6. And sixthly, this smells of a most audacious spirit, provoking wrath, and urging, the patient God to indignation, when you make slight of all the terrors and miacies in the law, as if they were high words; but do what you will they shall never fall upon you. This was the first imposture that Satan put upon our first parents. (Bishop Hacket.) Tempting Providence To go into any peril, however great, at the call of duty, trusting that God will protect, is faith. To go into any peril, when there is no call of duty, trusting that God will protect, is presumption. Every one can see that, as a general principle, presumption is not faith. Both are trust in God; but faith is reasonable trust, presumption is unreasonable trust. Faith is trusting God, where He has told us and because He has told us to trust Him. Presumption is trusting that God will do what would suit us, though He has never said He would. I know that the two trusts shade off into each other; and it is difficult, in some cases, to say whether to trust that God will provide, will order, will protect, is faith or presumption. Many virtues have a black shadow that keeps near them, a corresponding vice into which they melt by imperceptible gradations. Who will say exactly where courage ends and foolhardiness begins; where tact ends and trickery begins? But then it is just here that each man’ s own conscience and common sense must guide him. We read in the history of that same great king who has already been named of a case in which the tempting of God’ s providence brought instant and awful consequence. During a battle in Flanders, King William was giving his orders under a shower of bullets, when he saw with surprise and anger among the officers of his staff, one Michael Godfrey, a mercantile man, the Deputy-Governor of the Bank of England. A foolhardy curiosity to see real war had brought him there. The king said, sharply, “ Sir, you ought not to run these hazards; you are not a soldier; you can be of no use to us here.” “ Sir,” answered Godfrey, “ I run no more hazard than your Majesty.” “ Not so,” said William; “ I am where it is my duty to be; and I may without presumption commit my life to God’ s keeping; but you” The sentence was never finished; at that moment a cannon-ball laid Godfrey dead at the king’ s feet. I do not venture to talk of judgments. But here the man’ s death was beyond all question the consequence of his temerity. Now that we have thought of the general truth set forth in the text, I wish to show you its application to certain particular cases, with which we are all quite familiar. I. The text tells us, if it tells us anything, THAT WE OUGHT NOT, , TO GO IN THE WAY OF DISEASE. Well, there are some people who, if they would not fail of their duty, must just trust in God’ s providence, and run that risk. This is part of their vocation; to this they are called of God. To them the promise is, that His angels will keep them; for here is their way, the way God has set them; and in that way God has said He will protect His people, heartily doing their appointed work. The doctor, fulfilling his noble calling; the nurse; the minister. It is no tempting of Providence if such as have been named be near the sick, even where sickness is most malignant. But there it ends. To go, when you are not needed; when you can do no good; when you may carry away fatal infection to others: that is doing what Christ in my text forbids. II. There is another familiar instance in which my text is disregarded, which one constantly hears named as a singular folly and eccentricity, but which, in the light of the word of our Master, looks something more serious than folly. There are many men, as we all know, whose business, and daily work, lies upon the sea, fishermen and sailors; and there are others also who are many times called to be upon the sea. Now, God has made us so, and made the waters so, that if we fall into deep water and sink beneath its surface, we must soon die; two minutes, and, as a rule, life is gone. But God has made us so, and made the waters so, that in two or three weeks we may each acquire a simple art, that needs no machinery, no tools, nothing but the limbs God gave us, and skill to use them, and courage got in their use; and then, this simple art acquired, we may fall into deep water, and be just as safe and as much at our ease as on dry land. Now, strange to say, a great many of those men whose work is on the waters will not take the trouble of learning this simple art, the knowledge of which, the exercise of which for five or six minutes, may some day just decide the question, Whether or not their poor children shall or shall not be left fatherless little paupers. III. And now let us think of a third case in which the warning in my text should be laid to heart by all of us. THIS IS AS THOUGHT AND IN THE MATTER OF OUR WORLDLY MEANS; the laying by in prosperous times against the rainy day which may come; the provision to be diligently made by the head of every family, while health and strength last, for the support of wife and children after he is taken away. The Savings Bank and the Life Insurance Company are sacred institutions as much as any institutions can be. It is tempting Providence when a workingman, earning large wages, does not try to lay by something which may be a stay should sickness come, or work fail. He ought to go to the Savings Bank as regularly as he goes to the church. Then it is tempting Providence, in another walk of life, when a professional man, earning a considerable income, spends it all, though knowing it must cease with his life, never caring what is to become of his wife and children if he dies. IV. Surely it is a tempting of God’ s providence IF WE NO NOT TAKE EVERY MEANS TO PREVENT THE CHOLERA FROM COMING, AND TO PREPARE FOR IT SHOULD IT COME. He has put within our reach means that conduce to the health of the community. We know that impure air, and impure water, and filthy dwellings, and drunkenness, are direct invitations to the cholera; and though no authority, however stringent and searching, can compel individuals to be clean and sober, yet an enlightened, efficient magistracy has great power. We know that it is tempting Providence to pray without working, and yet that all our work will go for nothing without God’ s blessing sought by prayer. All through my discourse I have been pointing out to you what you are bound, as reasonable creatures, to do for yourselves. Do it; but after all is done you must still pray for God’ s blessing on it; you must still trust in His providence. True faith in Him will do its own best as though it could do all; and then remember that without His blessing it can do nothing. That is our way, and by God’ s grace we shall go on in it. By God’ s grace. (A. H. K. Boyd, D. D.) Presumption 1. In a way of distrust. (1) Some will not believe the gospel except they see a miracle or hear an oracle. Christ representeth their thoughts (Luke 16:30). (2) Some will not believe God’ s providence, but make question of His power and goodness, and care over us and our welfare, when He hath given us sufficient proof thereof. (3) Some will not be satisfied as to their spiritual estate without some sensible proof or such kind of assurance as God usually vouchsafeth not to His people. 2. In a way of presumption; so we tempt God when, without any warrant, we presume of God’ s power and providence. (1) When without call we rush into any danger, or throw ourselves into it, with an expectation God will fetch us off again. (2) When we undertake things for which we are not fitted and prepared, either habitually or actually, as to speak largely without meditation. The heinousness of the sin. 1. Because it is a great arrogancy when we seek thus to subject the Lord to our direction, will, and carnal affections. 2. It is great unbelief, or a calling into question God’ s power, mercy, and goodness to us. 3. It looseneth the bonds of all obedience, because we set up new laws of commerce between God and us; for when we suspect God’ s fidelity to us, unless He do such things as we fancy, we suspect our fidelity to Him. 4. It is wantonness, rather than want, puts us upon tempting of God. 5. It argues impatiency--“ They soon forgat His works; they waited not for His counsel, but lusted exceedingly in the wilderness, and tempted God in the desert” (Psalms 106:13-14). 6. The greatness of the sin is seen by the punishments of it. One is mentioned--“ Neither let us tempt Christ, as some of them also tempted, and were destroyed of serpents” (1 Corinthians 10:9). (T. Manton, D. D.) He departed from Him for a season The devil leaveth Him He had run out his line, and tried all his strength, our Saviour stood it out till His enemy tilted the very dregs of his gall, and drew them out. He that undertakes an ill cause cannot except, but the hearing of it was very fair, if he may plead out his matter till he can say no more; so the tempter cannot say he was cut off before he came to a period, he was provided of better arguments, but he was stopped from proceeding, he could not make these cavils for shame, for his departure was not commanded until he ended all his temptation. (Bishop Hacket.) Satan ashamed Another reason why he fled from the presence of Christ is, he was so beaten out of all falsehoods and inventions by the evidence of truth, that he was ashamed to appear any longer before the face of the Conqueror. (Bishop Hacket.) Breathing time The use of it shall come home to ourselves thus: The Lord sometimes takes off our foe from us and gives us breathing time after temptations, it is but for a season, not to flatter ourselves with quietness and security, but to repair our ruins to keep out the batteries that will ensue. It is but a refreshing after the fit of an ague, the sick day is coming again. Like a calm upon the sea, while a sweet gale blows what sensible man will not have all things ready for a tempest. Remember the parable, Luke 11:1-54. And what the unclean spirit said, “ I will return into my house from whence I came.” (Bishop Hacket.) A feigned departure A fox will stretch himself for dead that poultry may come into his reach and never fear him; yet if they do stalk towards him, they shall find to their cost he is not past doing mischief. So the tempter will give back, as if he were fled for ever, but he departs only for a more seasonable opportunity, and will return again with seven spirits worse than himself, when you are worse prepared. (Bishop Hacket.) The life of temptation The circle of attack had been exhausted. All possible temptation had been summed up, and had failed. Creation, providence, redemption, had each furnished the ground of attack. Body, soul, and spirit had each been assailed. But in vain. The triumphant Lord had been “ tempted in all points, like as we are, yet without sin.” But the words which immediately follow are of dark and ominous significance: “ He departed from Him for a season.” What do these words mean? To what further and future conflicts do they point? Can we discover in the after narrative of the Gospels any light on these mysterious words? Yes, four or five times at least in our Lord’ s after-life did specific temptation occur. 1. The first of these renewed assaults occurs in John 6:15. The miracle of the feeding of the five thousand had just taken place and had made a profound impression on the multitude. They resolved at once to proclaim Jesus as their Messianic King. Once more the former temptation was repeated. How did Christ meet it? Withdrew into a mountain to pray. 2. A little later on a still more remarkable repetition of the same temptation in which the tempter was none other than one of Christ’ s own disciples, is recorded in the Gospel of Matthew. Christ had been unfolding to His disciples, how that He must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer many things, &c. Matthew 16:21, &c.). Simon Peter took Him, and began to rebuke Him, saying, Be it far from Thee, Lord. In these words another than Peter had spoken to Christ. Satan had come again. The Lord turned and said unto Peter, almost repeating the very words He had spoken to Satan, “ Get thee behind Me, Satan,” &e. And then follow the words, so solemn and piercing, which told the disciples that the only way to the kingdom of God on earth is the way of the cross: “ Whosoever would save his life,” &c. 3. The third recurrence of this temptation took place nearly at the close of Christ’ s earthly life, and just before the anguish of Gethsemane. Multitude crying Hosanna (Mark 11:9-10). Once more the earthly crown seemed within our Lord’ s grasp. The conflict, however, did not fully begin until the day but one after this triumphal entry. Certain Greeks had desired to see Jesus. In them Christ sees the first fruits of His redeeming work among the Gentiles. “ The hour is come,” He says, “ that the Son of Man should be glorified.” But the mention of His own glorification at once suggests the dark and sorrowful way through which alone it could be reached. For one moment there was a human shrinking from the cup. “ Father,” He cried, “ save Me from this hour.” The next words check the natural shrinking--“ But for this cause came I unto this hour.” And the answer quickly came. Voice from heaven spake of which we only read at the great crises of His life. The victory was once more won, and with new and triumphant joy Jesus cries, “ Now is the judgment of this world; now shall the prince of this world be cast out,” &c. 4. One final crisis in the life of Jesus is recorded in the Gospels. Hitherto each successive assault had been beaten back, and now the time of conflict was drawing to a close. Gethsemane still intervened between the struggle in the upper room and the crucifixion, and it is in Gethsemane that the last conflict takes place. The last damning act of ingratitude is consummated in the traitor’ s kiss, but as Jesus is betrayed into the hands of men, the last words He utters in the garden disclose the presence of a vaster hostility than even the hatred of the son of perdition: “ This is your hour, and the power of darkness,” &c. (Luke 22:53). 5. Possibly during the crucifixion there was a recurrence of another of these three wilderness temptations. The very words that Satan used challenging Christ to prove His Divine Sonship by a miracle, are again heard in the scornful mockery of the crowd beneath the cross, “ If Thou art the Son of God, come down from the cross” (Matthew 27:42). But Christ’ s triumph in the wilderness over Satan was only augmented in the voluntary obedience of the eternal Son to death, even the death of the cross. He had come to save others, and Himself He would not save. 6. It is impossible to believe that the instances of temptations which we have been considering were all the temptations which Christ endured subsequently to His temptation in the wilderness. His life, from first to last, was a tempted life. Was there no temptation to our Lord (1) in the poverty of His earthly life? (2) in the hopeless indifference and deadness of the people? (3) in the activities of His public life--activities so incessant that we read that there was not, at one time, “ leisure so much as to eat” ? 7. The life of temptation was also a life of uninterrupted victory. It is in this light that the sinlessness of Jesus becomes amazing. It is idle to imagine that it is possible to get rid of the supernatural in the Gospels by blotting out the miracles wrought by Jesus. The miracle of Jesus remains--the miracle of a will ceaselessly assaulted, but as ceaselessly victorious; the miracle of a goodness touching, like the sunlight, the darkest and most festering pollutions of this world and remaining as untainted as the sunlight by contact with impurity. (G. S. Barrett, B. A.) How to vanquish temptation In his charge to the newly-ordained ministers Dr. Pope, when ex-President, referred to a certain teacher of the Church who, on one occasion, asked his pupils by what means they sought to vanquish the temptation to worldly lusts, One answered “ By prayer I” Another, “ By endeavouring to realize what the punishment of transgression will be!” The third, however, replied, “ When the tempter comes I simply say, The place is occupied pass on!” “The best way to keep tares out of a bushel,” says an old writer, “ is to fill it with wheat.” Christ the devil’ s master Timms had a very wicked master, whose ridicule of all religion was sad to hear. Coming up to his old servant one flay, he said, “ Timms, I hear you’ re converted.” “ Yes, master, praise the Lord” “ Can you tell me who’ s the devil’ s father?” said the master. “ I dinno as I can, but I can tell ‘ e who’ s ‘ is master, and that’ s the Lord Jesus Christ; He clean licked him when He had the fight with him; and, master, I can tell ‘ e who’ s the devil’ s servant. You be, master, and accordin’ to my knowledge of him you be servin’ a bad master.” (Sword and Trowel.) Angelic ministry after temptation That God maketh use of the ministry of angels in supporting and comforting His afflicted servants. Why doth God make use of the ministry of angels? and how far? 1. To manifest unto them the greatness and glory of His work in the recovering mankind, flint their delight in the love and wisdom of God may be increased. 2. To maintain a society and communion between all the parts of the family of God. 3. To preserve His people from many dangers and casualties, which fall not within the foresight of man, God employeth “ the watchers,” as they are called in the Book of Daniel, Daniel 4:13; Daniel 4:17, for He is tender of His people, and doth all things by proper means. Now the angels having a larger foresight than we, they are appointed to be guardians. 4. Because they are witnesses of the obedience and fidelity of Christ’ s disciples, and, so far as God permitteth, they cannot but assist them in their conflicts. Thus Paul; “ We are made a spectacle unto the world, and--angels and to men” (1 Corinthians 4:9). (T. Manton, D. D.) Resisting Satan I. THE KIND OF . 1. It must not be faint and cold. Some kind of resistance may be made by general and common graces; the light of nature will rise up in defiance of many sins, especially at first, before men have sinned away natural light; or else the resistance at least is in some cold way. But it must be earnest and vehement, as against the enemy of God and our souls. 2. It must be a thorough resistance of all sin, “ take the little foxes,” dash “ Babylon’ s brats against the stones.” Lesser sticks set the great ones on fire. The devil cannot hope to prevail for great things presently. 3. It must not be for a while, but continued; not only to stand out against the first assault, but a long siege. II. TO IT. 1. Because he cannot overcome you without your own consent. 2. The sweetness of victory will recompense the trouble of resistance. It is much more pleasing to deny a temptation than to yield to it; the pleasure of sin is short-lived, but the pleasure of self-denial is eternal. 3. Grace, the more it is tried and exercised, the more it is evidenced to be right and sincere (Romans 5:3-5). 4. Grace is strengthened when it hath stood out against a trial; as a tree shaken with fierce winds is more fruitful, its roots being loosened. Satan is a loser and you a gainer by temptations wherein you have approved your fidelity to God; as a man holdeth a stick the faster when another seeketh to wrest it out of his hands. 5. The more we resist Satan, the greater will our reward be (2 Timothy 4:7-8). The danger of the battle will increase the joy of the victory, as the dangers of the way make home the sweeter. 7. The Lord’ s grace is promised to him that resisteth. God keepeth us from the evil one, but it is by our watchfulness and resistance; His power maketh it effectual. III. WHAT ARE THE GRACES THAT ENABLE US IN THIS ? I answer, the three fundamental graces, faith, hope, and love. (T. Manton, D. D.) Luke 4:9; Luke 4:13 And he brought Him to Jerusalem, and set Him on a pinnacle of the Temple, and said unto Him, If Thou be the Son of God, cast Thyself down from hence It is Satan’ s policy in tempting to run from one extreme to another Reasons of this policy are-- 1. The avoiding of one extreme gives the soul such a swing, if care be not used to prevent it, that they are cast more than half way upon the other. 2. While men avoid one extreme by running into another, they carry with them such strong impressions of the evil they would avoid, and such fierce prejudices, that it is not an ordinary conviction will bring them right, but they are apt to be confident of the goodness of the way they take, and so are the more bold and fixed in their miscarriage. That as distrust on the one hand, so presumption on the other, is one of his grand designs. Show what presumption is. It is in the general a confidence without a ground. 1. It is made up of audacity--which is a bold and daring undertaking of a thing--and security. 2. The ground of it is an error of judgment. A blind or a misled judgment doth always nourish it. 3. In its way of working it is directly opposite to distrust, and is a kind of excessive though irregular hope. 1. Then it is presumption, when from external or subordinate means men expect that for which they were never designed nor appointed of God. 2. When men do expect those fruits and effects from anything unto which it is appointed, in neglect or opposition to the supreme cause, without whose concurrent influence they cannot reach their proper ends--that is, our hopes are wholly centred upon means, when in the meantime our eye is not upon God. 3. It is a presumption to expect things above the reach of our present state and condition. 4. When men expect things contrary to the rules that God hath set for His dispensations of mercy, they boldly presume upon His will. 5. It is also a presumption to expect any mercy, though common and usual, without the ordinary means by which God in providence hath settled the usual dispensations of such favours. 6. When ordinary or extraordinary mercies are expected for an unlawful end. Having thus proved that presumption is one of the great things he aims at, I shall next discover the reasons of his earnestness and industry in his design, which are these-- 1. It is a sin very natural, in which he hath the advantage of our own readiness and inclination. 2. As it is easy for Satan’ s attempt, so it is remote from conviction, and not rooted out without great difficulty. 3. The greatness of the sin when it is committed, is another reason of his diligence in the pursuit of it. 4. The dangerous issues and consequences of this way of tinning, do not a little animate Satan to tempt to it. It was no small piece of Satan’ s craft to take this advantage, while the impression of trust in the want of outward means was warm upon the heart of Christ. He hoped thereby the more easily to draw Him to an excess. For he knows that a zealous earnestness to avoid a sin, and to keep to a duty, doth often too much incline us to an extreme, and he well hoped that when Christ had declared Himself so positively to depend upon God, he might have prevailed to have stretched that dependence beyond its due bounds, taking the opportunity of His sway that way, which, as a ship before wind and tide, might soon be over-driven. (R. Gilpin.) Satan watches the wind They admire how it comes to pass that their temptations should so suddenly alter, that when Satan seems to be so intent upon one design, he should so quickly change, and urge them presently to a different or contrary thing; but they may know that the devil watcheth the wind, and spreads his sail according to the advantage which ariseth from our answer or repulse. So that if we would but plough with our own heifer, and observe our frame of spirit, we should easily find out this riddle. For as it is in disputings and arguings of men, replies beget new matter for answer, and so do they multiply one another; thus are temptations altered and multiplied, and out of the ashes of one assault repelled, another doth quickly spring up. (R. Gilpin.) The influence of place in temptation As long as Noah was in the ark in the midst of the waters, he had in him no presumptuous thought; but sitting under the vine in his vineyard, he was overcome therewith. And just Lot 2 Peter 2:8) in Sodom, had no fit time or place to be presumptuous; but when he dwelt in the mountain in security, then he committed incest with his daughters, being made drunk by them. David, so long as he was persecuted by Saul, tossed up and down from post to pillar, had no leisure to be presumptuous; but in the top of his turret, when he was at rest in his palace. (Bishop Andrewes.) The same devil But though it be not the same temptation, yet it is the same devil in both places. (Bishop Andrewes.) Pride seeks the pinnacle All other sins keep out of the way, as well as they can, but pride is not ashamed to be manifested, nay, it loves to have witnesses of its folly and insolency. (Bishop Hacker.) Satan loves open sins This is that itch which Satan hath rubbed upon self-admiring pride, sometime to be gazed upon at one place, sometime at another, by the court, by the theatre, by the congregation assembled to praise God, by the whole city, if it be possible, as it was purposed in this temptation. But the more publication pride makes of itself, the more scandal is given, the more scandal the more guiltiness, and the more guiltiness the greater condemnation. Satan loves these open, these flaming sins, that weak ones may run to them like moths to the light of a candle, and be touched and scorched with coming near them. (Bishop Andrewes.) The holy Temple defiled And above all places on earth if he make us his instruments to defile the holy Temple, God’ s glory is put to the greatest scandal and reproach. And this is brought to pass so many ways, that it is plain to see there hath been a most witty complotter in the treachery. 1. When any prelate is so puffed up that he thinks himself too great to be a doorkeeper in God’ s house, but will be higher than all the Church, and set on the top of the pinnacle, who, sitting in the Temple of God, exalts himself above all that is called God. 2. The temple is defiled by setting up idols in the courts of our heavenly King, even in the midst of thee, O thou sanctuary of the Lord. 3. By offering up unclean sacrifice, either false doctrine, or impious prayers, or superstitious worship, or corrupted sacraments. 4. When men set their foot within the sacred tabernacle with carnal thoughts, with worldly imaginations, with no zeal or attention. 5. To bring any profane work, any secular business within those walls which are consecrated to the name of the Lord. (Bishop Andrewes.) Satan not discouraged by failure The manner is, after one hath taken a foil, his courage will fail. The angel would have been gone, when he saw he could not prevail over Jacob (Genesis 32:26). But it is not so here with the devil. For when he saw that his first temptation would not prevail he trieth another. (Bishop Andrewes.) A new assault made out of vanquished temptation He is not only content to take a foil, but even out of the same thing wherewith he was foiled maketh he matter of a new temptation, a new ball of fire. Out of Christ’ s conquest, he makes a new assault; that is, since he will needs trust, he will set him on trusting; he shall trust as much as he will. As the former tempted him to diffidence, so this shall tempt him to precedence. (Bishop Andrewes) 1. It is a favourite snare of the tempter to “ take “ men, ay, Christian men, to “ pinnacles.” 2. It is to “ tempt” God, to do anything wrong on the plea of imagined or intended good to others. 3. Too many make the same mis-use of the Bible that the devil did. 4. The believer must appropriate to himself the Bible promises and commandments. 5. Obedience must be kept abidingly in mind. 6. We must never sunder means from ends. 7. Let the tempted realize the great protecting hands. (A. B.Grosart.) A pinnacle of the Temple The “ pinnacle” is properly the wing of the temple-buildings, not of the main building itself. The pinnacle has been supposed to be the pediment of the three-storied royal hall, which Herod had erected at the southern corner of the temple area, and which reached to the mouth of the Tyropoeon, and stood high above the ravine of Cedron, where it turns into the Valley of Hinnom. Josephus thus describes it. “ It was an astonishing work of art, the like of which was nowhere else to be seen, for the valley was so deep, that when any one standing on the top looked down into it, he lost his head. Above this, Herod erected a portico of four storeys of pillars, of such extraordinary height, that when any one ascended to the parapet, so as to look down from the roof on the entire depth of building and natural precipice, he stood a chance of becoming giddy before his eyes reached the bottom of the abyss.” The parapet here, no doubt, formed a low pediment, such as is common to the gables of Grecian temples. On the top of this pediment stood Jesus, with Satan by Him. A great commotion, and, indeed, a riot was caused in Jerusalem, by the erection of a golden Roman eagle, on the Temple gate, as crowning the pediment, by Herod the Great, about 4 B.C. The eagle was torn down and broken in pieces by the rioters. It was a symbol both of Roman power and of Jupiter, the king of the gods. Now--perhaps in covert reference to this incident-Satan plants the Lord on the apex of the pediment of Herod’ s great four-storied hall, or, possibly on the entrance gate, on the very pedestal from which the golden eagle had been thrown down. (S. Baring-Gould, M. A.) The devil where least expected During the past week I had a nosegay of flowers brought me. I handled them, and they passed through the hands of my household. They had been in the house four-and-twenty hours, when, going into the room where they were, I observed a serpent issuing from among the flowers. When I approached it darted about the room, shooting out its poisoned fangs. I thought, “ How like the ‘ old serpent the devil,’ coming to us hidden in those beautiful flowers, where we least expected to find anything so dangerous! “ (J. Stuchbery.) Christ in the pinnacle Looking down from that dizzy height, He could see the marble pavement and the people walking upon it. “ Cast Thyself down from hence.” He could have done it. Sustained by angel hands, kept secure by His own inherent power, He could have descended without harm into the midst of the people. No doubt it would have brought Him great applause from the idle and wonder-mongering crowd, but whose tears would it have wiped away, whose aching heart would it have comforted, whose sickness would it have healed? Never, never, would the Lord of love put forth His power for such a useless, fruitless, purpose as that; and He kept his Divine resources in all their virgin freshness and fulness. He kept them untouched till presently the lepers crossed His path and He could cleanse them, till presently the dying were within His reach and He could lift them into life again, till the broken-hearted were by His side, and He could dry up the fountain of their woe and make their broken hearts to be whole again. (C. Vince.) Satan busy during spiritual exercises To the “ holy city,” to the holiest place in the holy city, the Temple, is the Lord Jesus “ taken” by the tempter, and there afresh tempted. Whither then will not the tempter enter? What “ light-flaming battlement” will be not over-leap? My dear friends, we must be “ vigilant” everywhere; at all times, and in all places: in the house of God; at the family altar; within our closets; beside our opened Bible. I would even say that most of all must we “ watch unto prayer” in these holy scenes and seasons. For it is with the “ roaring lion,” who ever “ goes about seeking whom he may devour,” as with the beasts of prey in the forest. I remember once, when camped on the shores of one of the great lakes of America, that in the stillness of the pine-forest, within whose shadows our camp-fire was lit, it was a sight to see the wild beasts stealthily stealing to their watering-places. It so chanced that in the tangled jungle opposite us, there was one of their lurking-places; and as the moonlight streamed its wan radiance over it, I could see the fierce creatures couched behind a shattered pine. Why there? Because from beneath its roots, gushing from out the ferns, was a spring of water. Thither the “ flocks and herds,” came, and just as they lapped their refreshing draught, out sprang at a bound the wehr-wolf or other terrible beast. It is precisely so with us. While the believer is quenching his soul’ s longings and thirstings at the well of salvation, the adversary crouches to make his fatal spring. Alas, alas l that so many “ of the flock” are borne way. (A. B. Grosart, D. D.) 1. The tempter comes a second time with an “ if.” Doubt is to potent a thing to be lightly or readily abandoned. 2. The tempter goes from extreme to extreme. This seems to be a favourite device of the evil one. 3. The tempter is very successful in tempting professing Christians with his “ If [=since] son thou be of God, cast Thyself beneath.” Everyday observation will satisfy that there are two classes who fall before this snare. There is first of all the man who has newly proved the power of the “ gift” of “ faith” to produce absolute trust. Strong in that trust, there is the danger of thinking of and relying more upon the gift than the Giver; and of acting upon the grace in possession as semi-independent, instead of looking to Him who holds all grace in His own hands. Presumption inevitably comes out of that; self-confidence, rashness, “ high thoughts,” and all under the guise of an unquestioning faith. My dear friends, search and see if you are not liable to presume upon your Christian character, and to run risks such as you should else shrink from. 4. The tempter seeks first to lead into sin, and then to justify the sin by Scripture. 5. The tempter can only persuade, never compel. “ Satan can tempt and persuade us, but he cannot force us to sin, or he cannot cast thee down unless thou ‘ cast thyself down.’” (A. B. Grosart, D. D.) What was the evil in this suggested act? It was twofold, evil alike on the Godward and on the manward side. 1. In the first aspect it meant that God should be forced to do for Him what He had before refused to do for Himself--make Him an object of supernatural care, exempted from obedience to natural law, a child of miracle, exceptional in His very physical relations to God and Nature. 2. In the second aspect it meant that He was to be a Son of wonder, clothed with marvels, living a life that struck the senses and dazzled the fancies of the poor vulgar crowd. In the one case it had been fatal to Himself, in the other, to His mission. Special as were His relations to God, He did not presume on these, but, with Divine self-command, lived, though the supernatural Son, like the natural child of the Eternal Father. His human life was as real as it was ideal. The Divine did not supersede the human, nor seek to transcend its limits, physical and spiritual. And His fidelity to our nature has been its pre-eminent blessing. No man who knows the spirit of Christ will presume either on the providence or the mercy of God, because certain that there remains, even in their highest achievements, the dutiful servants of Divine wisdom and righteousness. He who came to show us the Father, showed Him not as a visible guardian, not as an arbitrary, mechanical providence, but as an invisible presence about our spirits, about our ways, source of our holiest thoughts, our tenderest feelings, our wisest actions. The Only-begotten lived as one of many brethren, though as the only one conscious of His Sonship. And, perhaps, His self-sacrifice reached here its sublimest point. He would not, and He did not, tempt the Lord His God, but lived His beautiful and perfect life within the terms of the human, yet penetrated and possessed by the Divine. (A. M. Fairbairn, D. D.) The temptation to presumption “ If God is to be so trusted, try Him. Show thyself His darling. Here is the word itself for it. Take Him at His word.” Again, with a written word, the Lord meets him. And He does not quote Scripture for logical purposes--to confute Satan intellectually, but as given even Satan the reason of His conduct. If the Father told Him to cast Himself down, that moment the pinnacle pointed naked to the sky. If the devil threw Him down, let God send His angels; or, if better, allow Him to be dashed in pieces in the valley below. But never will He forestall the Divine will. The Father shall order what comes next. The Son will obey. In the path of His work He will turn aside for no stone. There let the angels bear Him in their hands if need be. But He will not choose the path because there is a stone in it. He will not choose at all. He will go where the Spirit leads him. (George Macdonald, LL. D.) The temptation of display I. THE ATTACK. 1. It was a temptation to presumption. 2. The object o! this presumption was display. 3. The temptation was presented with an excuse in Scripture. II. THE REPULSE. 1. Our Lord again quotes Scripture, partly (a) for the same reason as formerly, for that which is good when rightly handled must not be abandoned because evil persons abuse it; and partly (b) because Scripture is best interpreted and balanced by Scripture. 2. The words quoted by our Lord show that He regarded the act of presumption suggested by Satan as an insult to God. (W. F. Adeney, M. A.) Illustrations Walker was treated less respectfully. William thought him a busybody, who had been properly punished for running into danger without any call of duty, and expressed that feeling, with characteristic bluntness on the field of battle. “ Sir,” said an attendant, “ the Bishop of Derry has been killed by a shot at the ford.” “ What took him there?” growled the king. (Macaulay’ s History of England.) Wellington, of an officer killed: “ What business had he lurking there? Shall not mention him in my despatch.” Trusting and tempting providence You may rely upon God for protection, solace, help, but not if you are foolhardy. No miracle will do for you what you can do for yourself. Jesus might have come down by the staircase; there was no need to get down the other way--tempt providence, and providence will fail you to a certainty. If you are idle and feckless, no philosopher’ s stone will turn your dross into gold. If you have weak lungs and expose yourself recklessly to chill, God’ s icy wind will slay you in spite of your prayers. If you neglect the laws of health and live fast, you will soon sink from the heaven of health into the hell of disease. If, from the pinnacle of desire, you leap into the pit of lust, you shall die mangled. If, from the pinnacle of greed, you plunge into the gulf of peculation, you fall crushed. The moral order of the universe will not be suspended for you--“ Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.” (H. R.Haweis, M. A.) Pinnacle of the Temple Some places are as dangerous for our souls as the pinnacle of the Temple was for the body. (D. Dyke.) Cast Thyself down from hence Humility employed in the service of pride That He might fall down bodily, and be proud spiritually, and so he thrust together a frivolous presumption, and a dangerous descension. How much is humility abused when pride will wear the colours of that great virtue to deceive the world. There was gross ambition in Absalom’ s stooping to steal the hearts of the people. As a kite will sweep the earth with his wings, that he may truss the prey in his talons, and fly aloft to devour it, so all the crouches and submissions which an ambitious man makes are to get somewhat what he seeks for, and to clamber to promotion. This is observed, because Satan impels Christ to cast Himself down, not for true humility’ s sake, but upon vainglory to flutter in the air, that all Jerusalem might take notice how precious He was to the care and custody of all the angels. (Bishop Hacket.) Election no reason for presumption I see now who is the author of that fallacy which, I fear, hath cost many a soul the loss of eternal life, that such as assure themselves they are elect ones, they are the sons of God, may make bold with their Father’ s mercy, may rely upon it, and now and then transgress His commandments for their pleasure, or profit, or some other fleshly consideration; there is no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus; God sees no sin in the righteous-though they fall they shall rise again; and many more such deluding axioms as they apply them, which I beseech you return back again to hell with him that invented them. (Bishop Hacket.) Trusting too much As, seeing the water of distrust will not extinguish His faith, but that He would trust in God, he endeavoureth now by Scriptures (that magnify the providence of God, and the confidence we are to put in Him) to set Him as far gone in the other extreme, by presuming or trusting too much, that so the fire, which before he would have quenched, may now so flame out as not to keep itself within the chimney, but to set the whole house on fire. (Bishop Andrewes.) Vice coloured with virtue The devil sees that against God’ s children oftentimes he can have no other advantage, than that which they had against Daniel (Daniel 6:1-28.) in the law of his God, in the graces of God’ s Spirit, and therefore he dyes his bad clothes in good colours, and paints the foul faces of sin with the colours of graces and virtues to deceive us; as here he presents presumption to Christ under the colour and in the habit of faith; and so now covetousness, of frugality and good husbandry; drunkenness and carousing of healths, of good fellowship; sottish sloth, of quietness (Ecclesiastes 4:3), unlawful sports both in regard of the nature of the games, as dice. What need have we not to be carried away with everything that hath a show of goodness, or of indifferency, but to bring these painted strumpets of the devil to the light, yea, and to the heat of the Word of God, and then their painting shall melt away, and we shall see their beauty came only out of the devil’ s box? (D. Dyke.) For it is written, He shall give His angels charge over thee Satan quoting the Psalms A man would have thought Satan would have skipped the Book of the Psalms though he had searched over all the Scripture beside. It is the volume of joy, of consolation, of alacrity, the very songs of angels. “ Is any man merry, let him sing psalms,” says St. James. Is there any use of that sweet harmony for him that lives in perpetual torment? (Bishop Hacket.) Scripture not defiled by Satanic uses I will not put myself to the task to go any further in this reckoning; for all schisms and heresies, and almost all sins, will shroud under the patronage of the Word of God. Yet such is the pureness of that fountain, that it is not puddled, though dirty swine do wallow in it; nay, though the devil himself run headlong into it, as he did into the sea. Here he tumbles about in this psalm to cast dirt upon it, yet the psalm is no whit less sacred and venerable than it was before. (Ibid.) Misuse of Scripture no argument against its use It is no disgrace nor disparagement to the Scriptures to proceed from Satan, nor any occasion to make us leave cur hold; for Christ answereth again, and striketh with the same weapon wherewith He was stricken, showing us that it is lawful to use a text well, against them that do abuse a text; and if Christ’ s example be our precedent, then we may allege Scripture against depraved Scripture. For the bee may gather honey on the same stalk that the spider doth poison. And though a swashbuckler kill a man with his weapon, yet a soldier may lawfully knit a sword to his side; and though there be many piracies committed on the sea, yet may the merchants traffic; or though some surfeit by gluttony, yet may others use their temperate diet. And if the devil change himself into an angel of light, shall therefore the angels lose their light? Misquoted Scripture “ In the ways” all is safe. Out of the ways all is perilous. Satanic use of Scripture I shall show to what base designs he makes it subserve. 1. He useth this artifice to beget and propagate erroneous doctrines. Hence no opinion is so vile, but pretends to Scripture as its patron. 2. He makes abused Scripture to encourage sinful actions. 3. By this imitation of the commands and promises of God, he doth strangely engage such as he can thus delude unto desperate undertakings. 4. He sometimes procures groundless peace and assurance in the hearts of careless ones by Scripture misapplied. Lastly: This way of Satan’ s setting home scriptures proves sadly effectual to beget or heighten the inward distresses and fears of the children of God. It is a wonder to hear some dispute against themselves, so nimble they be to object a scripture against their peace, above their reading or ability, that you would easily conclude there is one at hand that prompts them, and suggests these things to their own prejudice. And sometime a scripture will be set so cross or edgeway to their good and comfort, that many pleadings, much time, prayers, and discourses cannot remove it. I have known some that have seriously professed scriptures have been thrown into their hearts like arrows, and have with such violence fixed a false apprehension upon their minds, as that God had cut them off, that they were reprobate, damned, &c., that they have borne the tedious, restless affrightments of it for many days, and yet the thing itself, as well as the issue of it, doth declare that this was not the fruit of the Spirit of God, which is a spirit of truth, and cannot suggest a falsehood, but of Satan, who hath been a liar from the beginning. (R. Gilpin.) Scripture falsely cited Another point of Satan’ s unfaithful dealing with Scripture is his false citation of it. It is nothing with him to alter, change, or leave out such a part as may make against him. If he urge promises upon men, in order to their security and negligence, he conceals the condition of them, and banisheth the threatening far from their minds, representing the mercy of God in a false glass, as if He had promised to save and bring to heaven every man upon the common and easy terms of being called a Christian. If it be his purpose to disquiet the hearts of God’ s children, to promote their fears, or to lead them to despair, then he sets home the commands and threatenings, but hides the promises that might relieve them, and, which is remarkable, he hath so puzzled some by setting on their hearts a piece of Scripture, that when the next words, or next verse, might have eased them of their fears, and answered the sad objections which they raised against themselves from thence, as if their eyes had been holden, or as if a mist had been cast over them, they have not for a long time been able to consider the relief which they might have had. This hiding of Scripture from their eyes, setting aside what God may do for the just chastisement of His children’ s folly, is effected by the strong impression which Satan sets upon their hearts, and by holding their minds down to a fixed meditation of the dreadful inferences which he presents to them from thence, not suffering them to divert their thoughts by his incessant clamours against them. (R. Gilpin.) The Word of God Now, brethren, I would have you remember two things throughout, in our Lord’ s use of Scripture, in this sore contest. First: As towards Himself and His own human, and therefore, it might be supposed, infirm heart. It is, you see, the sole argument which He uses, the sole guide which He takes, the sole source of strength on which He throws Himself. You see nothing added to it, no consideration from any other quarter, of reason, or convenience, or ultimate gain; no calculations of any kind called in to give it fresh power, or an influence not properly its own. It is thrust boldly, nakedly, solitarily forward, by its own strength alone sustained. Secondly: It is clearly implied that the powerful spirit who was tempting Him, was quite as well aware as He Himself that God’ s word was immutable and unconquerable; and that it contained within itself all that faith needed to resist his utmost assaults. He knew full well that all spiritual strength and comfort was contained in it; nay, a clothing of the soul that rested on it with the very power of Him who spake it in His truth and holiness, and victory to tread all sin and temptation under foot. With all his subtlety, therefore, and devices of a bad wisdom, he has nothing to reply to the bold and straightforward declaration of God’ s will. He is struck dumb. It seems, after this, useless before Christians, to give any reasons why it should be so, seeing that we have such a witness to it; but one or two immediately occur to every thoughtful person, which I will just suggest. 1. Almighty God is the very truth itself, and it is no more possible for Him to utter what is false than for the glorious and blessed sun to shoot forth darkness instead of light. 2. He is all-powerful, as well as all true, and therefore, if He be bent upon executing His will, whatever it be, it is impossible to resist it. 3. He is all good, and gracious, and loving, and hath poured the riches of His mercy into the book which He has given unto us; and so far from dreading these perfections of His nature, which make all that He has said unchangeable, and grieving that it cannot be blotted out--herein is our joy, as sons of God by adoption and grace, that “ it is written” that heaven and earth shall pass away, but not one tittle of that blessed writing! And now, only turn for a moment to what it is in this temptation of Satan of which our Lord affirmed that it was the Word of God, and found strength whereby, in the hour of His great need, to vanquish the tempter, and bring down angels out of heaven to minister to Him! For you may be sure, that the sinless Lamb of God, who took our nature upon Him, that we might be raised to the purity of His, seeing that He was flesh and blood in all things, sin only excepted, hath recorded His own temptations, because He knew full well, by the wisdom that was in Him, that the very same would assault us! Look well, dear brethren, to this! 1. Though it be true, that we must all labour in the” station to which God has called us, and by the sweat of our brow must eat bread, yet that is not the first thing; that is not the great, the one thing needful. “ The kingdom of God is not meat, or drink, but righteousness, and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost.” “ My meat,” saith our Lord, and therefore ours, “ is to do the will of My Father which is in heaven!” “ Thou shalt not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.” “ Look at the lilies of the field, how they grow I they toil not, neither do they spin I and yet your heavenly Father clotheth them I Shall He not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?” In one word, “ It is written,” and it cannot be changed. Again--look at this: Do you never tempt the Lord your God? that is, presume upon His aiding and protecting you, where He has not promised to do so, but the contrary, and so bring a curse upon the soul, and not a blessing I But, you may say, can we trust God too much P or throw our whole souls with too unreserved a love and confidence upon His fatherly care? But to presume on His love when our heart is elsewhere, and when we refuse to obey His evident commandments, is death to us! Again, it is written, “ Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.” Thirdly: Do we fall down and worship Satan? “ It is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve!” Finally: Before we part, let me once more impress upon you, that all this, and much more of the like import, is written, and that to tell you so is the same thing as to tell you that it will all come to pass, as sure as man is sinful and ignorant, and God wise, holy, and true. And in more than one sense it is thus written: for first of all--you find it in the holy book! There it is, and fire cannot burn it out, nor water wash it out, nor all the wishes and struggles of ungodly men make it less, even by a single letter. It is written, therefore, not only in a book, but in the eternal counsels of God, out of the depths of which, in the fulness of time, it hath all issued forth to us. It has been written from everlasting to everlasting, that thus it shall be. But there is one more book, dear brethren, in which this blessed, and eternal, and unchangeable word must be written, if we would be the better or the more blessed for it. In our own hearts--in our souls, in the fleshly tablets within us, and not on stone tables, or paper books, must the Word of God be engraven by the Spirit. So long as it remains an outward thing, merely spoken or merely written, it is only condemnation; it hath a sword in its hand, and killeth. (J. Garbett, M. A.) The devil quoting Scripture The failure of the tempter has not deterred mankind from venturing on the same appeal, with no very unlike design. Among the crowd of pilgrims who throng the pages of his allegory, Bunyan depicts one Mr. Selfwill, who holds that a man may follow the vices as well as the virtues of pilgrims. “ But what ground has he for so saying?” is Mr. Greatheart’ s query. And old Mr. Honesty replies: “ Why, he said he had Scripture for his warrant.” “ The devil can quote Scripture for his purpose; An evil soul producing holy witness Is like a villain with a smiling cheek, A goodly apple rotten at the core.” Such is Antonio’ s stricture on Shylock’ s appeal to Jacob’ s practice; and there is a parallel passage to it in the next act, where Bassanio is the speaker:-- “ In religion, What damned error, but some sober brow Will bless it and approve it, with a text Hiding the grossness with fair ornament.” Shakespeare embodies in Richard of Gloucester a type of the political intriguer; as where the usurper thus answers the gulled associates who urge him to be avenged on the opposite faction:-- “ But then I sigh, and with a piece of Scripture Tell them that God bids us do good for evil. And thus I clothe my naked villainy With old odd ends, stolen forth of holy writ; And seem a saint when most I play the devil.” An unmitigated scoundrel in one of Mr. Dickens’ s books is represented as openly grudging his old father the scant remnant of his days ; whereupon the author interposes this parenthetical comment: “ Is any one surprised at Mr. Jonas making such a reference to such a book for such a purpose? Does any one doubt the old saw that the devil quotes Scripture for his own ends? If he will take the trouble to look about him, he may find a greater number of confirmations of the fact in the occurrences of a single day than the steam-gun can discharge balls in a minute.” (F. Jacox.) The religious devil “But what is this I see? Satan himself with a Bible under his arm, with a text in his mouth? No devil is so dangerous as the religious devil.” So writes Bishop Hall, speaking of the temptation of Christ. There are two classes of devils, the religious and the irreligious--both in reality irreligious--and the former more so than the latter; but these make no show or pretence of religion, whereas those do. St. Paul had to contend with them. Speaking of false apostles, he wrote: “ And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light,” &c. The religious devil has often been enthroned as the head of the Church on earth; he has at one time or another enjoyed the emoluments of every bishopric in Europe; there is scarcely a monastery of which he has not been abbot; there are not many pulpits from which he has not preached, for he is to be found in every denomination. A religious devil has been known to join a Church, and go from one Church to another, from one denomination to another, in order to secure customers in the congregation. (H. S. Brown.) Satan’ s many disguises No player hath so many several dresses to come in upon the stage as the devil hath forms of temptation; but he is most dangerous when he appears in Samuel’ s mantle, and silvers his foul tongue with fair language. (Gurnall.) The Word of God the end of controversy To dispatch this out of hand, the misconstruing the Word of God is the beginning of all strife; the true allegation of it is the end of a controversy. (Bishop Hacket.) Satan God’ s ape That the Scripture is alleged in a perverse apish imitation, because Christ had alleged Scripture before. Thus hath the devil always been God’ s ape, as in sacrifices, washings, tithes, priests, altars, oracles of the heathen, all which he did apishly imitate, and counterfeit the like to those in the Church of God, thinking by this means to disgrace the ordinances of God. (D. Dyke.) The abuse of Scripture That the abuse of the Scriptures must not take away the use of it. Christ doth not give over alleging Scripture because the devil abused it. The honest traveller doth so much the more wear his weapon and his sword because the thief useth the same weapon. (D. Dyke.) And Jesus answering said unto him, It is said, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God Faith distinguished from presumption Thou shalt not tempt, &e. Is there any law which can be laid down which will serve in all cases to distinguish faith from presumption, which will warn us when we are no longer honouring God by our trust, but dishonouring Him by our unbelief? There is, and it is as follows The moment trust in God presumes to break any one, even the least, of the laws of God, and then expects God to save it from the consequences of its disobedience, it is not trust, but unbelief; it is not faith, but presumption; it is not honouring, it is tempting, God. (G. S. Barrett, B.A.) Our Lord’ s quotations from the Scriptures The words of all the three answers to the tempter come from two chapters of Deuteronomy, one of which (chapter 6.) supplied one of the passages for the phylacteries or frontiers worn by devout Jews. The fact is in every way suggestive. A prominence was thus given to that portion of the book which made it an essential part of the education of every Israelite, The words which our Lord now uses had, we must believe, been familiar to Him from His childhood, and He had read their meaning rightly. With them He may have sustained the faith of others in the struggles of the Nazareth home with poverty and want. And now He finds in them a truth which belongs to His high calling as well as to His life of lowliness. (Dean Plumptre.) The inductive study of the Scriptures What the Saviour did here was to fill out and complete the interpretation of the passage which Satan had repeated, and He did that by showing from various passages the conditions within which alone the former could be rationally and intelligently accepted. Now the procedure of the Lord in this instance plainly implies that one portion or saying of Scripture is to be read in connection with all other portions of it, and is to be understood and interpreted only in that sense which is in harmony with every other utterance of the sacred oracles. What Nature is to the physical philosopher, Scripture is to the theologian. In prosecuting a systematic examination of the Scriptures there are three things in reference to which we must be always on our guard. 1. We must see to it that all the passages brought together have a real bearing on the subject in hand. 2. We must see to it that we give to each passage its own legitimate weight--no more, no less. 3. We must see to it that our induction of passages is complete. (W. M. Taylor, D. D.) Spiritual acuteness There is a story of a limner, that to show his art, drew a white line so small that it could hardly be discerned; another, to show that he could excel him, drew a black line through the middle of it. It required an acute sight to detect either. But our Saviour at first view immediately discerned the black line of temptation to run through the plausible advice that Satan gave Him. (White.) Tempting God And surely one principal and notorious offence is committed when a man exposeth his life to unnecessary dangers, upon an ill-grounded confidence that God will bring him off with safety. 2. The Lord is tempted when we will not believe Him, unless we see signs and wonders, and provoke Him to let us see some print of His omnipotence, or we will fall out, and trust Him no more. 3. There is another crooked branch, much like unto the former, growing out of the same root; not simply by declining natural means, but by declining all means; having no calling, using no labour, cashiering all providence, and yet expecting to live and thrive as well as they that eat the bread of carefulness by the sweat of their brows. 4. Then they shall stand for the fourth, that make holy vows, and bind themselves in a perpetual obligation, where God hath given no promise of assistance, that they shall be able to perform them. 5. Fifthly, to use such things again, which either always or for the most part have been unto us an occasion of sinning, is to tempt the Lord, whether He will let those things prevail against our souls which so often have proved unto us an occasion of falling. 6. And sixthly, this smells of a most audacious spirit, provoking wrath, and urging, the patient God to indignation, when you make slight of all the terrors and miacies in the law, as if they were high words; but do what you will they shall never fall upon you. This was the first imposture that Satan put upon our first parents. (Bishop Hacket.) Tempting Providence To go into any peril, however great, at the call of duty, trusting that God will protect, is faith. To go into any peril, when there is no call of duty, trusting that God will protect, is presumption. Every one can see that, as a general principle, presumption is not faith. Both are trust in God; but faith is reasonable trust, presumption is unreasonable trust. Faith is trusting God, where He has told us and because He has told us to trust Him. Presumption is trusting that God will do what would suit us, though He has never said He would. I know that the two trusts shade off into each other; and it is difficult, in some cases, to say whether to trust that God will provide, will order, will protect, is faith or presumption. Many virtues have a black shadow that keeps near them, a corresponding vice into which they melt by imperceptible gradations. Who will say exactly where courage ends and foolhardiness begins; where tact ends and trickery begins? But then it is just here that each man’ s own conscience and common sense must guide him. We read in the history of that same great king who has already been named of a case in which the tempting of God’ s providence brought instant and awful consequence. During a battle in Flanders, King William was giving his orders under a shower of bullets, when he saw with surprise and anger among the officers of his staff, one Michael Godfrey, a mercantile man, the Deputy-Governor of the Bank of England. A foolhardy curiosity to see real war had brought him there. The king said, sharply, “ Sir, you ought not to run these hazards; you are not a soldier; you can be of no use to us here.” “ Sir,” answered Godfrey, “ I run no more hazard than your Majesty.” “ Not so,” said William; “ I am where it is my duty to be; and I may without presumption commit my life to God’ s keeping; but you” The sentence was never finished; at that moment a cannon-ball laid Godfrey dead at the king’ s feet. I do not venture to talk of judgments. But here the man’ s death was beyond all question the consequence of his temerity. Now that we have thought of the general truth set forth in the text, I wish to show you its application to certain particular cases, with which we are all quite familiar. I. The text tells us, if it tells us anything, THAT WE OUGHT NOT, , TO GO IN THE WAY OF DISEASE. Well, there are some people who, if they would not fail of their duty, must just trust in God’ s providence, and run that risk. This is part of their vocation; to this they are called of God. To them the promise is, that His angels will keep them; for here is their way, the way God has set them; and in that way God has said He will protect His people, heartily doing their appointed work. The doctor, fulfilling his noble calling; the nurse; the minister. It is no tempting of Providence if such as have been named be near the sick, even where sickness is most malignant. But there it ends. To go, when you are not needed; when you can do no good; when you may carry away fatal infection to others: that is doing what Christ in my text forbids. II. There is another familiar instance in which my text is disregarded, which one constantly hears named as a singular folly and eccentricity, but which, in the light of the word of our Master, looks something more serious than folly. There are many men, as we all know, whose business, and daily work, lies upon the sea, fishermen and sailors; and there are others also who are many times called to be upon the sea. Now, God has made us so, and made the waters so, that if we fall into deep water and sink beneath its surface, we must soon die; two minutes, and, as a rule, life is gone. But God has made us so, and made the waters so, that in two or three weeks we may each acquire a simple art, that needs no machinery, no tools, nothing but the limbs God gave us, and skill to use them, and courage got in their use; and then, this simple art acquired, we may fall into deep water, and be just as safe and as much at our ease as on dry land. Now, strange to say, a great many of those men whose work is on the waters will not take the trouble of learning this simple art, the knowledge of which, the exercise of which for five or six minutes, may some day just decide the question, Whether or not their poor children shall or shall not be left fatherless little paupers. III. And now let us think of a third case in which the warning in my text should be laid to heart by all of us. THIS IS AS THOUGHT AND IN THE MATTER OF OUR WORLDLY MEANS; the laying by in prosperous times against the rainy day which may come; the provision to be diligently made by the head of every family, while health and strength last, for the support of wife and children after he is taken away. The Savings Bank and the Life Insurance Company are sacred institutions as much as any institutions can be. It is tempting Providence when a workingman, earning large wages, does not try to lay by something which may be a stay should sickness come, or work fail. He ought to go to the Savings Bank as regularly as he goes to the church. Then it is tempting Providence, in another walk of life, when a professional man, earning a considerable income, spends it all, though knowing it must cease with his life, never caring what is to become of his wife and children if he dies. IV. Surely it is a tempting of God’ s providence IF WE NO NOT TAKE EVERY MEANS TO PREVENT THE CHOLERA FROM COMING, AND TO PREPARE FOR IT SHOULD IT COME. He has put within our reach means that conduce to the health of the community. We know that impure air, and impure water, and filthy dwellings, and drunkenness, are direct invitations to the cholera; and though no authority, however stringent and searching, can compel individuals to be clean and sober, yet an enlightened, efficient magistracy has great power. We know that it is tempting Providence to pray without working, and yet that all our work will go for nothing without God’ s blessing sought by prayer. All through my discourse I have been pointing out to you what you are bound, as reasonable creatures, to do for yourselves. Do it; but after all is done you must still pray for God’ s blessing on it; you must still trust in His providence. True faith in Him will do its own best as though it could do all; and then remember that without His blessing it can do nothing. That is our way, and by God’ s grace we shall go on in it. By God’ s grace. (A. H. K. Boyd, D. D.) Presumption 1. In a way of distrust. (1) Some will not believe the gospel except they see a miracle or hear an oracle. Christ representeth their thoughts (Luke 16:30). (2) Some will not believe God’ s providence, but make question of His power and goodness, and care over us and our welfare, when He hath given us sufficient proof thereof. (3) Some will not be satisfied as to their spiritual estate without some sensible proof or such kind of assurance as God usually vouchsafeth not to His people. 2. In a way of presumption; so we tempt God when, without any warrant, we presume of God’ s power and providence. (1) When without call we rush into any danger, or throw ourselves into it, with an expectation God will fetch us off again. (2) When we undertake things for which we are not fitted and prepared, either habitually or actually, as to speak largely without meditation. The heinousness of the sin. 1. Because it is a great arrogancy when we seek thus to subject the Lord to our direction, will, and carnal affections. 2. It is great unbelief, or a calling into question God’ s power, mercy, and goodness to us. 3. It looseneth the bonds of all obedience, because we set up new laws of commerce between God and us; for when we suspect God’ s fidelity to us, unless He do such things as we fancy, we suspect our fidelity to Him. 4. It is wantonness, rather than want, puts us upon tempting of God. 5. It argues impatiency--“ They soon forgat His works; they waited not for His counsel, but lusted exceedingly in the wilderness, and tempted God in the desert” (Psalms 106:13-14). 6. The greatness of the sin is seen by the punishments of it. One is mentioned--“ Neither let us tempt Christ, as some of them also tempted, and were destroyed of serpents” (1 Corinthians 10:9). (T. Manton, D. D.) He departed from Him for a season The devil leaveth Him He had run out his line, and tried all his strength, our Saviour stood it out till His enemy tilted the very dregs of his gall, and drew them out. He that undertakes an ill cause cannot except, but the hearing of it was very fair, if he may plead out his matter till he can say no more; so the tempter cannot say he was cut off before he came to a period, he was provided of better arguments, but he was stopped from proceeding, he could not make these cavils for shame, for his departure was not commanded until he ended all his temptation. (Bishop Hacket.) Satan ashamed Another reason why he fled from the presence of Christ is, he was so beaten out of all falsehoods and inventions by the evidence of truth, that he was ashamed to appear any longer before the face of the Conqueror. (Bishop Hacket.) Breathing time The use of it shall come home to ourselves thus: The Lord sometimes takes off our foe from us and gives us breathing time after temptations, it is but for a season, not to flatter ourselves with quietness and security, but to repair our ruins to keep out the batteries that will ensue. It is but a refreshing after the fit of an ague, the sick day is coming again. Like a calm upon the sea, while a sweet gale blows what sensible man will not have all things ready for a tempest. Remember the parable, Luke 11:1-54. And what the unclean spirit said, “ I will return into my house from whence I came.” (Bishop Hacket.) A feigned departure A fox will stretch himself for dead that poultry may come into his reach and never fear him; yet if they do stalk towards him, they shall find to their cost he is not past doing mischief. So the tempter will give back, as if he were fled for ever, but he departs only for a more seasonable opportunity, and will return again with seven spirits worse than himself, when you are worse prepared. (Bishop Hacket.) The life of temptation The circle of attack had been exhausted. All possible temptation had been summed up, and had failed. Creation, providence, redemption, had each furnished the ground of attack. Body, soul, and spirit had each been assailed. But in vain. The triumphant Lord had been “ tempted in all points, like as we are, yet without sin.” But the words which immediately follow are of dark and ominous significance: “ He departed from Him for a season.” What do these words mean? To what further and future conflicts do they point? Can we discover in the after narrative of the Gospels any light on these mysterious words? Yes, four or five times at least in our Lord’ s after-life did specific temptation occur. 1. The first of these renewed assaults occurs in John 6:15. The miracle of the feeding of the five thousand had just taken place and had made a profound impression on the multitude. They resolved at once to proclaim Jesus as their Messianic King. Once more the former temptation was repeated. How did Christ meet it? Withdrew into a mountain to pray. 2. A little later on a still more remarkable repetition of the same temptation in which the tempter was none other than one of Christ’ s own disciples, is recorded in the Gospel of Matthew. Christ had been unfolding to His disciples, how that He must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer many things, &c. Matthew 16:21, &c.). Simon Peter took Him, and began to rebuke Him, saying, Be it far from Thee, Lord. In these words another than Peter had spoken to Christ. Satan had come again. The Lord turned and said unto Peter, almost repeating the very words He had spoken to Satan, “ Get thee behind Me, Satan,” &e. And then follow the words, so solemn and piercing, which told the disciples that the only way to the kingdom of God on earth is the way of the cross: “ Whosoever would save his life,” &c. 3. The third recurrence of this temptation took place nearly at the close of Christ’ s earthly life, and just before the anguish of Gethsemane. Multitude crying Hosanna (Mark 11:9-10). Once more the earthly crown seemed within our Lord’ s grasp. The conflict, however, did not fully begin until the day but one after this triumphal entry. Certain Greeks had desired to see Jesus. In them Christ sees the first fruits of His redeeming work among the Gentiles. “ The hour is come,” He says, “ that the Son of Man should be glorified.” But the mention of His own glorification at once suggests the dark and sorrowful way through which alone it could be reached. For one moment there was a human shrinking from the cup. “ Father,” He cried, “ save Me from this hour.” The next words check the natural shrinking--“ But for this cause came I unto this hour.” And the answer quickly came. Voice from heaven spake of which we only read at the great crises of His life. The victory was once more won, and with new and triumphant joy Jesus cries, “ Now is the judgment of this world; now shall the prince of this world be cast out,” &c. 4. One final crisis in the life of Jesus is recorded in the Gospels. Hitherto each successive assault had been beaten back, and now the time of conflict was drawing to a close. Gethsemane still intervened between the struggle in the upper room and the crucifixion, and it is in Gethsemane that the last conflict takes place. The last damning act of ingratitude is consummated in the traitor’ s kiss, but as Jesus is betrayed into the hands of men, the last words He utters in the garden disclose the presence of a vaster hostility than even the hatred of the son of perdition: “ This is your hour, and the power of darkness,” &c. (Luke 22:53). 5. Possibly during the crucifixion there was a recurrence of another of these three wilderness temptations. The very words that Satan used challenging Christ to prove His Divine Sonship by a miracle, are again heard in the scornful mockery of the crowd beneath the cross, “ If Thou art the Son of God, come down from the cross” (Matthew 27:42). But Christ’ s triumph in the wilderness over Satan was only augmented in the voluntary obedience of the eternal Son to death, even the death of the cross. He had come to save others, and Himself He would not save. 6. It is impossible to believe that the instances of temptations which we have been considering were all the temptations which Christ endured subsequently to His temptation in the wilderness. His life, from first to last, was a tempted life. Was there no temptation to our Lord (1) in the poverty of His earthly life? (2) in the hopeless indifference and deadness of the people? (3) in the activities of His public life--activities so incessant that we read that there was not, at one time, “ leisure so much as to eat” ? 7. The life of temptation was also a life of uninterrupted victory. It is in this light that the sinlessness of Jesus becomes amazing. It is idle to imagine that it is possible to get rid of the supernatural in the Gospels by blotting out the miracles wrought by Jesus. The miracle of Jesus remains--the miracle of a will ceaselessly assaulted, but as ceaselessly victorious; the miracle of a goodness touching, like the sunlight, the darkest and most festering pollutions of this world and remaining as untainted as the sunlight by contact with impurity. (G. S. Barrett, B. A.) How to vanquish temptation In his charge to the newly-ordained ministers Dr. Pope, when ex-President, referred to a certain teacher of the Church who, on one occasion, asked his pupils by what means they sought to vanquish the temptation to worldly lusts, One answered “ By prayer I” Another, “ By endeavouring to realize what the punishment of transgression will be!” The third, however, replied, “ When the tempter comes I simply say, The place is occupied pass on!” “The best way to keep tares out of a bushel,” says an old writer, “ is to fill it with wheat.” Christ the devil’ s master Timms had a very wicked master, whose ridicule of all religion was sad to hear. Coming up to his old servant one flay, he said, “ Timms, I hear you’ re converted.” “ Yes, master, praise the Lord” “ Can you tell me who’ s the devil’ s father?” said the master. “ I dinno as I can, but I can tell ‘ e who’ s ‘ is master, and that’ s the Lord Jesus Christ; He clean licked him when He had the fight with him; and, master, I can tell ‘ e who’ s the devil’ s servant. You be, master, and accordin’ to my knowledge of him you be servin’ a bad master.” (Sword and Trowel.) Angelic ministry after temptation That God maketh use of the ministry of angels in supporting and comforting His afflicted servants. Why doth God make use of the ministry of angels? and how far? 1. To manifest unto them the greatness and glory of His work in the recovering mankind, flint their delight in the love and wisdom of God may be increased. 2. To maintain a society and communion between all the parts of the family of God. 3. To preserve His people from many dangers and casualties, which fall not within the foresight of man, God employeth “ the watchers,” as they are called in the Book of Daniel, Daniel 4:13; Daniel 4:17, for He is tender of His people, and doth all things by proper means. Now the angels having a larger foresight than we, they are appointed to be guardians. 4. Because they are witnesses of the obedience and fidelity of Christ’ s disciples, and, so far as God permitteth, they cannot but assist them in their conflicts. Thus Paul; “ We are made a spectacle unto the world, and--angels and to men” (1 Corinthians 4:9). (T. Manton, D. D.) Resisting Satan I. THE KIND OF . 1. It must not be faint and cold. Some kind of resistance may be made by general and common graces; the light of nature will rise up in defiance of many sins, especially at first, before men have sinned away natural light; or else the resistance at least is in some cold way. But it must be earnest and vehement, as against the enemy of God and our souls. 2. It must be a thorough resistance of all sin, “ take the little foxes,” dash “ Babylon’ s brats against the stones.” Lesser sticks set the great ones on fire. The devil cannot hope to prevail for great things presently. 3. It must not be for a while, but continued; not only to stand out against the first assault, but a long siege. II. TO IT. 1. Because he cannot overcome you without your own consent. 2. The sweetness of victory will recompense the trouble of resistance. It is much more pleasing to deny a temptation than to yield to it; the pleasure of sin is short-lived, but the pleasure of self-denial is eternal. 3. Grace, the more it is tried and exercised, the more it is evidenced to be right and sincere (Romans 5:3-5). 4. Grace is strengthened when it hath stood out against a trial; as a tree shaken with fierce winds is more fruitful, its roots being loosened. Satan is a loser and you a gainer by temptations wherein you have approved your fidelity to God; as a man holdeth a stick the faster when another seeketh to wrest it out of his hands. 5. The more we resist Satan, the greater will our reward be (2 Timothy 4:7-8). The danger of the battle will increase the joy of the victory, as the dangers of the way make home the sweeter. 7. The Lord’ s grace is promised to him that resisteth. God keepeth us from the evil one, but it is by our watchfulness and resistance; His power maketh it effectual. III. WHAT ARE THE GRACES THAT ENABLE US IN THIS ? I answer, the three fundamental graces, faith, hope, and love. (T. Manton, D. D.) Luke 4:14-15 And Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit into Galilee The higher spiritual life Jesus returns to Galilee in the power of the Spirit. This is full of interest in every way. 1. As bringing up the question of Christ’ s Divinity. Can One who is Divine receive augmented powers? Especially can He from another co-equal Spirit? To this inquiry it may be replied that Christ’ s life on earth was the Divine circumscribed. The power of the Spirit that rested upon Christ brought forth no new elements, but it brought out the Divine element previously existing. 2. Interesting as a study of the life of Christ, it becomes even more so in its connection with ourselves--with the whole sphere and operation and possibilities of the human mind. A like experience will be traced in the apostles’ lives. At the time of His death they were very little advanced, except in personal affection for Him, beyond Nicodemus, or other devout and spiritually-minded Jews. He had told them to stay in Jerusalem until some great change should come upon them. And He declared what that change should be--power from on high; the power of the Holy Ghost. And then came the Pentecostal experience. 3. We find traces in the early Church to show that there were those who received this special power over and above mere ordinary endowments. 4. In every age there have been those to whom these disclosures have been made, pre-eminently the case with John Wesley, who laboured years, as he regarded it, in bondage, and at last came out in the power of the Spirit. 5. Lastly, many now living are distinctly conscious that this same impulse, this same clothing of extraordinary power remains on earth. Men’ s faculties are telescopic. Used in their lower state they are, as it were, undrawn cut. They are capable of being brought to a condition in which they will be a hundred times more than in their ordinary condition. The consciousness of this transcends all other evidences of the Divine life. : Many of you are longing for the renewal of life. Here is the instrument of your power. This is what you need; this is what we all need--that higher life which comes by the Spirit of God. (H. W. Beecher.) The power of the Holy Ghost There was no great natural capacity in Harlan Page; and yet he was an apostle; and his life has quickened the lives of tens of thousands since he has been gone. Being dead, he yet speaks. But he had the Holy Ghost rising upon him. There are men who say but little; and yet they give you anew ideal. They shine as stars in the heavens. And there can be no accounting for it, except on the ground of the dynamic influence of spiritual life and spiritual power in this world. There are men who stand in the centre of circles, and all rise up and call them blessed; and nobody can tell why, except that they bring heaven near, and bring invisible things near, and gain faith, and strengthen their moral tendencies, and see God, and have the power to reflect what they see upon other persons. It is these men who have the higher region of their soul enlightened by the Spirit of God, that do the most for other men; that set aside scepticism, that convince the unconvinced, that penetrate the unconverted through with a new and eternal sense, both of their lacks and of their possibilities and hopes. It is these men who are joined together, and who receive their power of life and of working from God, that, after all, are the lights of the world. (H. W. Beecher.) Effects of the indwelling of the Spirit Dr. Daniel Steele says, “ Soon after Dr. Finney’ s conversion he received a wonderful baptism of the Spirit which was followed by marvellous effects. His words uttered in private conversation, and forgotten by himself, fell like live coals on the hearts of men, and awakened a sense of guilt which would not let them rest till the blood of sprinkling was applied. At his presence, before he opened his lips, the operatives in a mill began to fall on their knees and cry for mercy, smitten by the invisible currents of Divine power which went forth from him. When, like a flame of fire, he was traversing western and central New York, he came to the village of Rome in a time of spiritual slumber. He had not been in the house of the pastor an hour before he had conversed with all the family, the pastor, children, boarders, and servants, and brought them all to their knees seeking pardon, or the fulness of the Spirit. In a few days almost every man and woman in the village and vicinity was converted, and the work ceased from lack of material to transform, and the evangelist passed on to other fields, to behold new triumphs of the gospel through his instrumentality.” (Lightning Flashes.) Spiritual power Dr. Steele mentions another case, not, however, so well known in this country as that of Professor Finney. He says, “ Another rare instance of extraordinary spiritual power is that of Father Carpenter, of New Jersey, a Presbyterian layman of a past generation. A cipher in the Church, till anointed of the Holy Ghost, he immediately became a man of wonderful spiritual power, though of ordinary intellect, and very limited education. In personal effort, hardened sinners melted under his appeals and yielded to Christ. Once in a stage-coach going from Newark to New York, he found six unconverted men and one believer his fellow-passengers. He began to present the claims of Jesus, and so powerfully did the Spirit attend the truth, that four were converted in the coach, and the other two after reaching New York. At his death it was stated that by a very careful inquiry it had been ascertained that more than ten thousand souls had been converted through his direct instrumentality. (Lightning Flashes.) Luke 4:16 And He came to Nazareth, where He had been brought up: and, as His custom was, He went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day The tides of the Spirit The moment was overcharged with a certain sad intensity. Since last He stood upon that spot, a change had passed upon Him; a light, long struggling with the clouds, and often drowned in a golden haze of mystery, had cleared itself within Him; He was no longer at His own disposal, nor free to rest upon the trodden paths; but the sacred dove was ever on the wing before Him; and now alighted on the synagogue of Nazareth, and there, where He naturally fell into the attitude of docility, left Him to speak the word of supernatural power. Never is it so hard to follow and trust a higher inspiration, as amid the crowd of customary things. If ever Jesus could yield to misgivings of what was committed to Him it would be in that place. There, in the presence of those at whose feet He used to sit--there, where He first heard and pondered Israel’ s hope, and watched a holy light on other faces, not knowing that it was reflected from His own--how could He stand up and draw the great words of Isaiah upon Himself, and say aloud, “ This is the hour. Lo! it is I.” But He had emerged from the desert that lay between the old life and the new. The very Spirit of God had driven Him thither to hear what could be said against itself. And now, He was no longer His own. No flitting of the Spirit, off and on. It rested with Him now. And so He could bear those native scenes again, for they lay in another light; the hills of Nazareth were transfigured before Him; from all things round the chill and weary aspect had fled, that makes them press with the weight of usage; and He stood amid the well-known groups, as some immortal friend might return and look in among us here, with unabated love, but with saintly insight into meanings hid from us. Lifted then into the full power of the Spirit, whither, as least congenial, does He take His heavenly point of view? To the village synagogue, on the stated day of rest; nothing newer, nothing higher; but just the place and time which had been sacred to the fathers. The first thing which He did, under freshest inspiration, was to resume the dear old ways, to fall in with the well-known season, to unroll the same venerable page; only to find a new meaning in words that had long carried their rhythm to His heart. We are sustained then by the sympathy of the highest inspiration, when we make it our “ custom,” too, to illuminate in our calendar some holy day, and to raise near every cluster of our dwellings a house where “ prayer is wont to be made.” Against the Christian habit of seasonal and local worship the truth is often urged that God is a Spirit, eternal and omniscient, abiding neither in “ this mountain” nor in that “ Jerusalem,” and bearing equal relation into every mind and moment. In the occasionalism of piety I see, however, not its shame but its distinctive glory. For of all God’ s agencies and manifestations, it is the lowest that are least mutable, and most remain the same from first to last; whilst the highest have ever a tidal ebb and flow--moving in waves of time, and surprising hidden inlets of space with their flood. Be assured then that in your ancient usages of seasonal and local worship, in seeking here to meet at intervals the high tides of God’ s Spirit, you are in harmony with His sublimest providence--with a law of variation transcending any physical uniformity over which “ it sweeps. Reverence the holy custom, shelter from heedless slight the living impulse that week by week calls you hither to remember, to aspire, to pray. Bring only the pure, lowly, childlike hearts, tender to everything except the sins you must confess--full of hope for the world and trust in God; spread out an eager and a gentle spirit for the dropping of fruitful seeds from Holy Writ and saintly hymn; freshen the fading vow of self-sacrificing love; and your worship here will not only resemble His who, in fulness of the Spirit, “ went as His custom was,” &c., but prepare for a higher communion where “ your life is hid with Him in God.” (J. Martineau, LL. D.) Synagogue worship The Jewish synagogues were open every day for three services, but as those of the afternoon and evening were always joined, there were, in reality, only two. It was the duty of every godly Jew to go to each service, for so sacred was daily attendance that the Rabbis taught that “ he who practised it saved Israel from the heathen.” The two market days, Monday and Thursday, when the country people came into town, and when the courts were held, and the Sabbaths, were the special times of public worship. Feast days and fasts were also marked by similar sacredness. (Dr. Geikie.) A good example in attending public worship Of good Archbishop Leighton it is said, that the Sabbath was his delight, and no slight hindrance could detain him from the house of prayer. Upon one occasion, when he was indisposed, the day being stormy, his friends urged him, on account of his health, not to venture to church. “ Were the weather fair,” was the reply, “ I would stay at home but since it is otherwise, I must go, lest I be thought to countenance by my example, the irreligious practice of allowing trivial hindrances to keep me back from public worship.” (Life of Leighton.) Evil of neglecting public worship Of the late venerable Dr. Waugh, his biographer records that, in his ministerial visitations, his nationality was often strongly displayed, and this with most beneficial effect, both in sentiment and language. When, without any adequate cause, any of his hearers had failed to attend public ordinances so regularly as he could have wished, and would plead their distance from the chapel as an excuse, he would exclaim in the emphatic northern dialect, which he used on familiar occasions to employ, “ What, you from Scotland! from Melrose! from Gala Water! from Selkirk! and it’ s a hard matter to walk a mile or two to serve your Maker one day in the week! How many miles did you walk at Selkirk?” “ Five.” “ Five!” “ And can ye no walk twa here? Man!your father walked ten or twal (twelve) out, and as many hame, every Sunday i’ the year; and your mither too, aften. I’ ve seen a hunder folk and muir, that aye walked six or seven--men, women, and bairns too: and at the sacraments folk walked fifteen, and some twenty miles. How far will you walk the morn to mak’ half-a-crown? Fie! fie I But ye’ ll be out wi’ a’ your household next Sabbath, I ken. O my man, mind the bairns I If you love their souls, dinna let them get into the habit of biding awa’ In the kirk. All the evils among young folk in London arise from their not attending God’ s house.” Such remonstrances, it may easily be imagined, were not often urged in vain. (Baxendale’ s Anecdotes.) The synagogue service The order of service was certainly fixed and invariable in the time of Christ. The supreme moment of the service was that of the reading of the law, for the great end of meeting was to hear and study the law. Prayer preceded this exercise, and the reading of a passage chosen from the prophets, followed by the benediction, closed the service. In the opening prayer there were several distinct portions. It began with the recitation of the Shema (three passages of the law, viz., Deuteronomy 6:4-9; Deuteronomy 11:13-21; Numbers 15:37-41). Then came the eighteen blessings. During this solemn recitation, the people remained standing with their faces turned towards Jerusalem and the Holy Place. The reciter stood before the chest containing the manuscripts. Any member of the assembly could be called on by the president to perform this important duty. Minors alone were excepted, and Christ may have very likely taken His turn in these introductory prayers, both at Nazareth and at Capernaum. The people responded with a loud Amen at the close of each prayer. The reading of the law followed. The Chazzan took the sacred scroll out of the chest, removed its case, and placed it before the first reader. The seven members who had been chosen, rose, and read in turn at least three verses each. The first reader before beginning used a short formula of benediction, which he repeated also at the end. The Torah was divided into one hundred and fifty-three sections. In three years the whole was read through. Subsequently these sections were made three times as long, and the whole law was read through in one year. The Chazzan remained all the time close to the reader, and watched that he made no mistake, and read nothing unsuitable for a general audience. To the reading and its translation was always added a commentary, a sort of homily, to which great importance came to be attached in the Christian Churches, and which subsequently developed into the sermon. The reading of the law being over, the one who had recited the opening prayer read a portion from one of the prophets. This was called the closing lesson, because it completed the service. The reader was chosen by the head of the synagogue. He read three verses in succession, and then translated them (into Aramaic). Christ one day read one of these closing lessons in the synagogue at Nazareth. It is possible, however, that He may have chosen the passage Himself. We notice that it consists of only two verses. This was allowable, because He proposed to make some comment on it. The final benediction was then pronounced, and the assembly broke up. (E. Stapfer, D. D.) Jesus of Nazareth admired but rejected If we were to single out one place as illustrating more perhaps than any other place St. John’ s remark, “ He came to His own and His own received Him not,” that place would surely be Nazareth. I. Observe THE VALUE WHICH THE LORD PUTS UPON THE PUBLIC MEANS OF GRACE--“ As His custom was.” Although there was very little life or spirituality in the synagogue services, yet Jesus was a habitual worshipper there. What a lesson for those who excuse themselves on such grounds as that-- 1. They can pray as well at home. Do they? 2. The service is not quite to their mind (Hebrews 10:25). II. THE ACCOUNT WHICH CHRIST GAVE AT OF HIS OWN OFFICE AND . III. THE EFFECT BY OUR OUR’ S AT , 1. Admiration and astonishment. 2. But, mingled with this, contempt. 3. And so Christ and His salvation are rejected. (G. T.Harding, M. A.) An inaugural discourse The first sermon of Jesus at Nazareth, a standard for the minister of the gospel at the beginning of His work. The narrative imparts to the minister of the gospel pregnant suggestions. I. In reference to the POINT OF VIEW from which he is to consider his work. 1. Origin. 2. Matter. 3. Object of preaching. II. In relation to the MANNER in which he must perform his work. His preaching must be, as here-- 1. Grounded on Scripture. 2. Accommodated to the necessity of the hearers. 3. Presented in an attractive manner. III. In relation to the FRUIT upon which he can reckon in this labour. Nazareth shows us-- 1. That blossoms are as yet no certain signs of fruit. 2. That this fruit may be blasted by the most unhappy causes. 3. That the harvest may turn out yet better than at the beginning it appears (there in the synagogue were Mary, and also the “ Lord’ s brethren,” who afterwards believed; and if the Saviour did not work many miracles at Nazareth, He yet wrought some) (Matthew 13:58). IV. In relation to the TEMPER in which he is to begin a new work. 1. With thankful recollections of the past. 2. With holy spiritual might for the present. 3. With joyful hope for the future. Happy the teacher who is permitted to begin his preaching under more favourable presages than Jesus began His in the city where He was brought up. (J. J. Van Oosterzee, D. D.) View of Nazareth Sheets of smooth rock; fields of hinge boulders, between which, at times, there was scarcely room to pass; acres of loose stones of all sizes, no path or track visible--parts so steep that to hold on to the horse’ s mane was a help--everything unspeakably rough and difficult--such was the way up the face of the rocks to get to the tableland on which Nazareth stands. After a time spots of green appeared on the wide, unearthly desolation, and some lean cattle were to be seen picking up poor mouthfuls among the stones. Further on was a larger, but still very small, spot of green. Goats and sheep alone could find sustenance in such a weird place. After an hour’ s ride, during which we passed both camels and donkeys toiling up the face of the hill with heavy loads, we came to a spring at the wayside, now running, but dry in summer. At last, all at once, a small valley opened below, set round with hills, and a pleasant little town appeared to the west. Its straggling houses, of white, soft limestone, and mostly new, rose row over row up “ the steep slope. A fine large building, with slender cypresses growing around it, stood nearest to us; a minaret looked down a little to the rear. Fig-trees, single and in clumps, were growing here and there in the valley, which was covered with crops of grain, lentils, and beans. Above the town the hills were steep and high, with thin pasture, sheets of rock, fig-trees, and now and then an enclosed spot. The small domed tomb-shrine of a Mahommedan saint crowned the upper end of the western slope. Such was Nazareth, the home of our Lord Numerous hills, not grassy like those of England, but bare, white, and rocky, though here and there faintly green, shut in Nazareth from the outer world; the last heights of Galilee, as they melt away into the plain of Esdraelon. Their long, rounded tops have no wild beauty, and there are no ravines or shady woods to make’ them romantic or picturesque; indeed, so far as the eye reaches, they are treeless, or very nearly so … The water of Nazareth is mainly derived from rain-cisterns, for there is only one spring, and in autumn its supply is precarious. A momentous interest, however, gathers around this single fountain, for it has been in use for immemorial ages, and, no doubt, often saw the Virgin and her Divine Child among those who frequented it morning and evening, as the mothers of the town, many with children at their side, do now. The water comes through spouts in a stone wall, under an arched recess built for shelter, and falls into a trough at which a dozen persons can stand side by side. Thence it runs into a square stone tank at the side, against which gossips at all hours delight to lean. The water that flows over the top of the trough below the spouts makes a small pool immediately beneath them, and there women wash their linen, and even their children; standing in the water, ankle-deep, their baggy trousers--striped pink or green--tucked between their knees, while those coming for water are continually passing and repassing with their jars, empty or full, on their heads. The spring lies under the town, and as the Nazareth of ancient times, as shown by old cisterns and tombs, was rather higher up the hill than at present, the fountain must in those days have been still farther away from the houses. (C. Geikie, D. D.) The synagogue A synagogue generally stood on the highest piece of ground in a city, or near it; it was oblong, and the end opposite to the entrance pointed towards Jerusalem. There were the seats of the elders, and in the midst, at this end, was the ark with a lamp always burning before it, in which was preserved the roll of the Law. Before it also was an eight-branched candlestick, lighted on the highest festivals. A little way down was a raised platform, on which several persons could stand at once, and in the middle rose a pulpit, in which the reader stood to read those lessons which were not from the books of Moses. The roll of the Law was taken with great solemnity out of the ark, and unrolled by the Rabbi, so that the congregation might not look on the writing. The lessons from Moses were so arranged that the books of the Law were read through once in three years. Much less ceremony was shown about the second lesson, which was taken from the prophets and historical books. On week-days, not less than twenty-one verses were read; on the Sabbath, not more than three, five, or seven. After this lesson followed the exposition, or interpretation. The Scriptures were read in Hebrew, but the Hebrew was unintelligible to the Jews after their return from the Babylonish captivity, consequently the interpreter translated or expounded what he had read in the Aramaic or Syro-Chaldee tongue. The reader stood when reading the prophets, but was allowed to sit or stand for the historical books. Originally the prophets and historical books had not been read in the synagogue service, but when Antiochus Epiphanes forbade the reading of the Law, in the services of the Sabbath, the prophets and other books had been substituted for those of Moses, and when this restriction was withdrawn the Jews continued reading the prophets, but read the Law as well, as of old, in the place of honour. (S. Baring. Gould, M. A.) Christ’ s mission I. THE GREAT IN WHICH OUR LORD EXALTED--“ The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me.” As this was what distinguished the Lord, so it ought to distinguish His Church. II. THE GREAT MESSAGE OUR LORD HAD TO DELIVER--“ TO preach the gospel to the poor,” &c. III. THE GREAT WORK OUR LORD HAD TO --“ To heal the broken-hearted,” &c. (J. P. Chown.) The Christ as a preacher Christ read the appointed lesson for the day (which happened to be the day of Atonement), but not the whole of it. He had not come to proclaim the day of the vengeance of our God. The gospel is primarily a deliverance shadowed by the year of Jubilee; it embraces the physical and social ills of men, and their spiritual ills. The inextricableness with which they are united in the words of Christ suggests the profound mystery of body and spirit, mind and matter, environment and spiritual history. In these words we find a theology and a life, a doctrine and a practice, and that the two are inseparable. Pass now to this preaching of Christ. I. ITS . Without doubt we have here the key-note to His entire teaching. It is the peculiarity of Christ’ s preaching that He pierces at once to the centre of His great delivering system, and plants His ministry upon it. The peculiar feature of this quotation from Isaiah, which Christ makes His own, is its doubleness: poor, captives, blind, bruised physically and morally, but chiefly morally. Let no man think that there is any gospel of deliverance or helpfulness for him, except as it is grounded in a cure of whatever evil there may be in him--evil habits, or selfish aims, or a worldly spirit. II. ITS . Suppose some questioner had arisen in that synagogue of Nazareth and asked Jesus, not as to the substance of His preaching, for that was plain enough, but what was the ground of it, on what ultimate fact or reason it rested. I think the answer would have been of this sort: “ I am making in this gospel a revelation of God, showing you His very heart. This is what God feels for you; this is how He loves and pities you; this is what God proposes to do for you, to cheer you with good news, and open your blind eyes, and free your bruised souls and bodies from the captivity of evil.” III. ITS POWER. In one sense its power lay in its substance; m another, in the philosophy or ground of it; but there was more than come from these; there was the power that resided in Him who spoke these truths. In what lay the commanding power which made them wonder at His words? Not in any impressiveness of manner, or felicity of presentation. These are elements of power, but they do not constitute power. The main element of power in one who speaks is, an entire, or the largest possible comprehension of the subject. Here we have the key to the power with which Christ preached. He saw the meaning of the Jewish system. He knew what the acceptable year of the Lord meant. He pierced the whole symbolism to its centre, and drew out its significance. He saw that God was a deliverer from first to last, and measured the significance of the fact. The whole heart and mind of God were open to Him. This was the power of Christ’ s preaching; He saw God; He understood God; He knew what God had done, and would do; the whole purpose and plan of deliverance and redemption lay before Him as an open page. We cannot measure this knowledge of the Christ, we can but faintly conceive it. But the measure of our conception of it is the measure of our spiritual power over others. ( T. T. Munger.) Jesus at Nazareth Observe I. THE PLACE IN THE TEXT. 1. The obscurity of Christ’ s private life. 2. We see in it God’ s estimation of the world’ s pomp and glory. 3. We see honest industry honoured by the Saviour. II. WHAT JESUS DID ON HIS VISIT TO . 1. The place to which He resorted. “ The synagogue.” 2. This place was identified with former associations. “ As His custom was.” 3. The time when Christ went into the synagogue was the Sabbath. 4. What Jesus did in the synagogue. 5. The portion of the Sacred Scriptures which HE read. Application: 1. Give especial heed, &c., to the Holy Scriptures. 2. Let Scripture be the test of all your views and doctrines, &c. 3. The rule of your life, &c. (J. Burns, D. D.) Christ’ s first sermon I. THE ACCOUNT WHICH JESUS GAVE OF HIS MISSION. 1. He refers to His Divine qualification. (1) The Spirit was upon Him in unbroken plenitude. (2) He had the Spirit always with Him. 2. He refers to the fulfilment of a striking prophecy. Every word of God is pure, true, unalterable. 3. He declares the character of His work. (1) To preach the gospel to the poor. (2) To heal the broken-hearted. (3) Deliverance to the captives. (4) Recovering of sight to the blind. (5) He sets at liberty those that are bruised. (6) He proclaimed the year of jubilee to the people. The very reverse of their former state, made known the joyful sound of peace and plenty, of rest and festivity. The gospel era is emphatically “ the acceptable year of the Lord.” II. THE EFFECT IT UPON HIS . 1. They listened with marked attention. This was proper, necessary, pleasing. Some have their eyes closed in sleep, some gaze about, some look into their Bibles and hymn books; but they fixed their eyes upon the speaker. 2. They were filled with astonishment and wonder. No doubt at His wisdom, but equally so at the tenderness, condescension, and love with which He spake. 3. They were spell-bound, however, by prejudice. 4. They attempted to murder the Son of God. Truth flashed upon their minds, but they hated it; it exasperated them, and they tried to cast the messenger of mercy headlong down the hill, &c. Application: 1. To you Jesus has come with the message of life. 2. You stand in need of the blessings He bestows. 3. Do not allow prejudice to make Christ a stone of stumbling and rock of offence. 4. Embrace the message, and live. 5. Put on Christ, and profess Him to the world. (J. Burns, D. D.) Jesus at Nazareth Let us notice the chief points of interest connected with Christ’ s first appearance as the Messiah, proclaiming the gospel in the home of His childhood. I. THE PLACE. He was ready to preach where He had been known all His life. Many resolve to become disciples of Christ as soon as they get away among strangers. They say they have not courage to follow Him amongst their own friends. Every one knows their past sins. Their friends would laugh at them. Their changed lives would attract general attention. But, the greater the change, the more reason for showing it at home. Jesus had no past sins laid to His charge when He went back to His own home to preach glad tidings. If your past character has been upright, the remembrance of it will give weight to your testimony as a disciple of Christ. If your past life has been evil, no one will be so moved by the genuineness of the change in you as those who knew you before your conversion. II. THE . He preached in the synagogue. It was His custom to attend there. He always worked through the regularly organized channels for religious labour, and among those who professed to be religious. There are those who profess to be followers of Christ, who stand apart from the Churches because of the imperfections of Christians. They cannot work with or enter into fellowship with Christians. But they find no warrant for this in the example of Jesus. The Jewish Church was corrupt; yet He worked in and with and through it, till they cast Him out. III. THE TIME. He preached on the Sabbath. He used holy time for holy work. His work was always holy, always appropriate to time and place. But He honoured the Sabbath in its true meaning as the day of worship. IV. THE SUBJECT. It was a text from the Bible. No one ever expounded the Scriptures as He did. He was Himself the Word. God had spoken through the prophets. His Word of old had been the revelation of Himself. Now the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us. The living speech and living speaker revealed the mind of God. His words were spirit and life. But they never thrust into the background what had been already spoken. Those who would follow Christ will love the Bible, and will grow holy by receiving and obeying it, and will persuade others through it to believe on Jesus Christ. Without it we are defenceless against the attacks of the adversary. V. THE SOURCE OF THE ’ S POWER. The Spirit of the Lord was upon Him. It empowered Him to make known the gracious message of salvation, and Himself the Saviour. Before leaving the world He bestowed this Divine gift on His disciples, and it is promised to every one who believes on Christ and seeks it. He is ready to anoint every believer for service. Whoever empties himself of pride, self-seeking, all sin, and asks for that gift simply that he may glorify God, will receive it. VI. THE SERMON. He was Himself the explanation of His text. His presence spoke and made His words luminous. VII. THE OF THE SERMON. His hearers lacked the sense of the Divine presence. They were filled with worldliness and pride, and could not appreciate the heavenly gifts which Christ brought. With no consciousness of inner want, they sought only outward things. They judged Him first by His personal appearance and manner, and the graciousness of His words; they were pleased. Then they remembered His humble position in society, and their impression began to change. Then they recalled the fame of His miracles, and they began to desire to be entertained by wonders. Then they saw that He was exposing their prevailing sins, and they were enraged. But the truth which He presented they could not discern, and they saw the frame not the picture; the vessel, not the contents. They sought entertainment, flattery, agreement with themselves, not truth. They thrust for ever salvation and their Saviour, with murder in their hearts. VIII. THE ESCAPE. The only wonder which they would be likely to remember was that by which He separated Himself from them for ever. A mob is always unreasoning. Some sudden feeling or event may change its purpose as quickly as it was started. Many times the courage and firmness of a single man has dispersed enraged multitudes. When Marius, once the honoured consul of Rome, was being dragged to execution by a yelling, cursing crowd, he fixed his eye on the man who came forward to kill him, with the words, “ Slave I dost thou dare to kill Marius?” The soldier dropped his sword and fled, and with him the panic-stricken mob. When Napoleon came back to France from exile, and met the troops sent to oppose him, they, at the sight of him, changed their purpose, and welcomed him as their commander. Jesus, with the majesty of grace and truth, so awed His enemies, that their rage was restrained, and He passed through them unharmed. But oh i had they welcomed the Prince of Peace, even at that last moment, how different their destiny would have been. (A. E. Dunning.) The new teacher Jesus emerged from the desert to enter on His great career. The season was the spring. And within as without all was springtime. He “ returned in the power of the Spirit into Galilee,” and Galilee felt and owned the Spirit and the power. In the homes of its peasantry and the hamlets of its fishermen, on the shores of its beautiful sea, in the towns and villages that stood on its banks, and were mirrored in its waves, He preached His gospel. Only His own Nazareth refused to hear Him. Thither, indeed, He had gone, had entered the synagogue on the Sabbath, as His custom was, and had stood up to read. To Him the place was full of sacred associations. He had there, as boy and youth and man, listened for hours and days to the voice of God. But others had their associations as well as He, and theirs were not always as sacred as His. The synagogue was often the scene of strife. The conflict of opinion was not unknown there. The men of Nazareth had their personal rivalries and spites, and when One whom they knew, so far as the senses can know, rose and read, and applied to Himself the prophetic words, they received His gracious speech with incredulous wonder. But when He proceeded to speak with authority, to rebuke their unbelief, to quote against them their own proverbs, then they “ were filled with wrath,” &c. And He went His way, and found elsewhere men who heard gladly His words of power. The strange thing about the new Teacher was not His having been untaught and a carpenter. The great creative spirits of Israel had never been the sons of a school. The Rabbi was qualified rather than disqualified for his office by a handicraft. But the strange thing was the new Teacher Himself. He stood distinguished from all the Rabbis who had been, or then were, in Israel. Of the points that made Him pre-eminent and unique, three may be here specified. 1. The relation between His person and His word. The Teacher made the truth He taught. His teaching was His articulated person, His person His incorporated teaching. 2. The consciousness He had of Himself and His truth; its authority and creative energy. 3. His knowledge of His truth and mission, throughout perfect and self-consistent. His first word revealed His purpose, expressed His aim. “ Had Christ at first a plan?” is a question often discussed. “ Plan” is a word too mechanical and pragmatic. Christ had at the beginning the idea He meant to realize. The evidence lives in the phrase most frequent on His lips, “ the kingdom of heaven.” (A. M. Fairbairn, D. D.) The gospel for the Gentiles If I read this narrative for the first time I should pause at the words, “ glorified of all,” knowing that there would be a thunderstorm before long. Here is Christ, with more wisdom in Him than all the world besides; and yet, “ as His custom was, He went into the synagogue,” &c. What did He go there for? They could teach Him nothing. Men and women now, on the plea that they learn nothing, that there is nothing fresh to hear or know or learn at church, very seldom come. And many of you who come to hear me, come not to worship God. So I turn and read this history of how Christ, who was the fountain of life, the wisest of the wise, went, “ as His custom was,” &c. “ He stood up for to read.” Here stands a teacher from whose teaching men shall date for all time, and He is about to choose a text. What it was you know. Who could wonder that the eyes of all were fastened upon Him. They had never heard the words read as He read them. “ They wondered at the gracious words,” &c. They found them gracious, and they said, some of them honestly, some of them meanly, “ Is not this Joseph’ s son?” Now watch for the storm. He tells them a terrible truth which they don’ t like. As long as they thought He was going to preach all these things to the Jewish nation it was all right, but the moment they hear that these things are to be done to the Gentiles, oh! then the storm comes. You know what they had heard--that God’ s love was big enough to reach Sarepta. These people had sound right views. Think of that! And what did Christ do to anger them? He told them that God’ s love reached even to Sidon; that His heart was deep enough to take in the leprous Naaman. What shocking things to tell the people, weren’ t they? And what effect did they have? They were proud of Him ten minutes ago; but now they are going to throw Him headlong over the brow of the hill. Has there ever been any picture like that?--the sunny morning; the welcome Christ; the teacher kissed; the teacher thrown down the precipice. And what brought it about? He discussed of the largeness of God’ s love. I often see these things. It does not belong to this history only. (George Dawson, M. A.) Habit and holiness Here, in our text, is one case of Jesus conforming to a good common custom--perhaps not only following the custom, but getting help from it to promote His own spiritual life. From this one well-authenticated custom of Jesus in regard to Sabbath observance, I purpose, in connection with the text, to set before you the value and use of habit, as an aid to holy life and character, placed by God’ s providence within our reach, and which we are bound, as wise men, to turn to account. The capacity of forming habits is a very valuable part of human nature, as originally framed by God. By doing a thing often, we come to do it easily, and even to contract a liking and craving to do it. Sometimes this facility and inclination grow up before we are aware of it, in matters where we did not intend it. Moreover, it is a power as ready for bad uses as for good, so that it requires observation and guidance. It is by habit and use that workroom in the various arts and trades learn to manipulate skilfully the various tools and materials which they employ. Similarly, by gradual training, both animal and vegetable natures may be wonderfully modified-by more or less light, water, warmth, food, or motion. It is the alteration of these conditions that determines life and death, beauty and deformity, success and failure. Many of the evils that give us the greatest annoyance in society are largely the result of neglected or misdirected habits or customs. It is no new thing to employ the force of habit in connection with piety; it has already been done very systematically in past ages. In fact, it is only in comparatively recent times, and in connection with Protestant Churches especially, that the power of habit has been neglected. Under the Romish system there was both great use and abuse of habit and custom. At present we are in the midst of a reaction and protest against former abuses. All the details of rule and discipline, as laid down for monks and nuns, had for their aim the utilizing of habit on the side of virtue and holiness. But, in many cases, this was carried to excess, and rules became ridiculous when emphasized as important in themselves, whereas they were only means to an end. Such rules applied to dress, to hours of devotion, to repeating certain formulae, to the period of sleep, to regulation of diet. When this was pushed beyond reasonable bounds, the system was open to ridicule, as an attempt to make virtue by machinery. But these ancient extravagances of certain branches of the Christian Church are no reason why habit should not be studied and utilized for the same purposes within proper limits. Habit, in excess, is formalism or routine, and is near of kin to hypocrisy. This was the besetting sin of the old Pharisees. In the same way, habit or custom, in excess, becomes a system of ceremony, or ritualism, which is just old Pharisaism renewing its youth, but in adaptation to the Christian System. Warned by these errors--but mindful that there is also in habit a mighty power for good--let us consider a few of those matters in which habit is desirable. 1. The instance in the text applicable to Jesus--the custom of being present at public worship every Sabbath. How great an aid is this to everything that is good I It puts us in the way of the chief means of grace; it puts us in the way of the best human companionship. 2. A habit of prayer. The prayer to which I refer specially at present is family and personal prayer. Public or common prayer is implied in Sunday observance and churchgoing. If there is no habit of family prayer, the prayer is not likely to be made at all. All the details of family worship imply arrangement--a certain hour--a fixed place--books at hand--a person responsible for conducting the service. Family worship thus becomes one of the most beautiful features of domestic order in every house where it is duly attended to. Its omission becomes at once a mark and cause of disorder. Personal prayer no less depends on habit and custom for its maintenance. 3. Labour may be the subject of another of those good habits, in a religious point of view. At first sight it might seem as if a habit of labour, while good and useful in itself, had little to do with religion. These idle, aimless existences are the most unhappy condition possible for reasonable beings. Far better is it for a man to hold on steadily in his work to the end, and nobly wear out, than rust wearily and unprofitably. It is a calamity when a man cannot work by reason of old age or sickness. The man who has acquired the habit of labour has got possession of that honest power which will advance him alike in a worldly and moral point of view, and which will keep him out of many temptations. 4. A habit of learning may well form the sequel to a habit of labour. It is in always aiming to learn something new that we secure for ourselves real improvement and progress, carrying the purposes of youth and early manhood into advanced years. There are various ways in which this habit of learning may develop itself. The simplest, perhaps, is obser-ration for one’ s self; and the next in simplicity, conversation with one’ s neighbours, so as to add their observation or information to one’ s own. But far more valuable are books and professed teachers, who have made a specialty of some subject. A habit of spending leisure time in careful, definite reading on matters useful in ordinary life, is one of the most noble exercises in which a man can train himself. 5. The last matter that I shall at present name as a fit subject for a good habit is charity. A custom of this noble sort could not be formed or maintained save by very deliberate effort and self-sacrifice. Thus have we considered the place and utility of habit from a Christian point of view. (J. Rankin, D. D.) Our Lord’ s visit to Nazareth I. HIS ARRIVAL AT . “ He came to Nazareth, where He had been brought up.” A man of reflection and feeling piety will always be affected when he comes to the place where he was brought up. 1. What was Nazareth? It was a small town of the Zebu-lonites, in Galilee, seventy-two miles north of Jerusalem, and west of Mount Tamar. “ Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?” 2. How came He to be brought up here? 3. How was He brought up there? 4. How came He to Nazareth, since He was there brought up? Because He had been absent from the place: He had been to the baptism of John. For a considerable time He visited other places, where He performed His first miracles; and having thus gained a well-deserved renown, this would serve to favour His introduction to His townsmen and His relations: and thus He came to Nazareth where He had been brought up. II. HIS PRIVATE THERE BEFORE HE --“ And, as His custom was, He went into the synagogue on the sabbath day, and stood up for to read.” 1. The time was the Sabbath. 2. The place was the synagogue. Synagogues were scattered all over Judea, and were in every country where the Jews lived. They were places sacred to devotion and instruction. They were not expressly of Divine appointment, like the Temple, but they arose from the moral exigencies of the people; and were peculiarly serviceable in maintaining and perpetuating the knowledge of Moses and the prophets. They are supposed to have originated in the days of Ezra. 3. The action--“ He stood up for to read.” Bless God that you have the Scriptures in your own hand, and in your own language; and that you are allowed to read them, and that you are commanded to read them. III. This brings us to HIS . “ And there was delivered unto Him the book of the prophet Esaias; and when He had opened the book, He found the place where it was written, The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He hath anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor, He hath sent me to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord.” 1. This was the text. 2. But observe the attention of the audience--“ And He closed the book, and gave it again to the minister, and sat down: and the eyes of all them that were in the synagogue were fastened on Him.” It is very desirable to see an audience attentive, as the mind follows the eye, and the eye affecteth the heart. 3. Then observe the sermon itself--“ And He began to say, This day is this Scripture fulfilled in your ears.” (1) First, He asserts His qualification for His mission--“ The Spirit of the Lord God is upon Me.” (2) Then He asserts the design of His office--“ He hath anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor.” IV. WHAT WAS THE EFFECT OF THE SERMON? They were struck with admiration; but admiration seems to have been all that they felt--“ And they wondered at the gracious words that proceeded out of His mouth; and they said, Is not this Joseph’ s son?” What reception does Jesus Christ meet with from us? (W. Jay.) Luke 4:18-22 The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He hath anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor The acceptable year of the Lord Every Christian would wish to know what were the first words spoken by Jesus as a preacher of good tidings. Two of the evangelists seem to gratify this natural curiosity. According to Matthew the Beatitudes were the inaugural utterances of the Galilean gospel; according to the third evangelist, not the sermon on the mount, but the sermon in the synagogue of Nazareth. There is reason to believe that neither of the sermons occupied the place of an inaugural discourse. Luke himself knows of things previously done, and we may assume said also, in Capernaum (verse 23). Why then does he introduce this scene at so early a place in the narrative? He has selected it to be the frontispiece of his Gospel, showing by sample the salient features of its contents. Probable that for St. Luke’ s own mind the emblematic significance of the scene lay chiefly in these two features: the gracious character of Christ’ s discourse, and the indication in the close of the universal destination of the gospel. These were things sure to interest the Pauline evangelist. It is a worthy frontispiece, in respect both of the grace and of the universality of the gospel. 1. In the first place the text of Christ’ s discourse was a most gracious one; none more so could have been found within the range of Old Testament prophecy. Made more gracious than in the original by the omission of the reference to the day of vengeance, and by the addition of a clause to make the Messiah’ s blessed work as many-sided and complete as possible. 2. If Christ’ s text was full of grace, His sermon appears to have been not less so. That this was so the evangelist indicates when he makes use of the phrase “ words of grace” to denote its general character. That phrase, indeed, he reckoned the fittest to characterize Christ’ s whole teaching as recorded in his Gospel, and on that very account it is that he introduces it here. 3. In respect of the universal destination of the gospel, the scene is also sufficiently significant. The attempt on the life of Jesus foreshadows the tragic event through which the Prophet of Nazareth hoped to draw to Himself the expectant eyes of all men. The departure of Jesus from His own town is a portent of Christianity leaving the sacred soil of Judea, and setting forth into the wide world in quest of a new home. 4. The two features most prominent in this frontispiece are just the salient characteristics of the Christian era. It is the era of grace, and of grace free to all mankind. And on these accounts it is the acceptable year of the Lord. It is acceptable to God. It should be acceptable to us. (A. B. Bruce, D. D.) The interrupted sermon In the course of His first preaching tour Jesus came to Nazareth. It was the Sabbath. He entered the synagogue “ according to His custom.” Observe--for the greatest revolutionist the world had ever seen the current forms and church services of the day sufficed. He was even willing to pour the new wine into the old bottles till the old bottles burst. He enters the village synagogue--His parish church. He offers to read the lesson; He ascends the pulpit; the clerk hands up a roll of the prophet Isaiah; before Him are a curious medley of faces--the eastern women veiled behind lattice-work on one side, the men of the village with a sprinkling of the tradesfolk and gentry on the other. He unrolls the scroll and finds the place, Isaiah 61:1. I wish our clergywould always take care to find the right place--the suitable text--the passage in season. In this case it was actually the lesson for the day. So out of routine the Lord brings life. He reads, “ The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me.” Ah, without that spiritual concentration in the pulpit as well as in the pew, priest may preach and people may hear in vain: “ He has anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor.” Yes, you neglected, suffering people, the Saviour of the world places you on a level with the favoured of the earth. The permanent and the spiritual belongs to you as much as to them; the same Father; the same love revealed; the same heaven beyond--are for you. “ To heal the broken-hearted.” What a lift there is for the sorrowful in the sympathy of God, that steals like summer light into the darkened room; no despair can ever quite keep it out. “ Recovery of sight to the blind.” The mists of passion, the clouds of prejudice, the veil of selfishness, the pall of spiritual ignorance, lo, at a touch the scales fall off, you see yourselves as others see you, you know as you are known, your heart grows pure, you see God. “ To preach the acceptable year of the Lord.” There He stopped. The next words of Isaiah are, “ The day of vengeance of our God.” He would not break into that new train of thought which might clash with the spirit of His sermon. The last words of the text should be words of peace, though the end was to be tumult. “ He closed the book, and sat down” to deliver His sermon. We shall never know what the sermon was. It began with a searching application; no beating about the bush. “ This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears.” It ended with that fierce storm of invective which was the Lord’ s dauntless reply to the rage of an envenomed minority. He has fascinated the majority. They “ wondered at the gracious words,” &c.; but the conceited gentry could not bear to be lectured by “ a Carpenter,” and they soon let Him know it. “ Enough of that,” they cried. “ A sign! a sign! you can do wonders at Capernaum; give us a taste of your quality here. A miracle is worth all this talk--unwholesome, democratic talk about the poor, and a message for all men, and pray what is to become of us if we are to be mixed up with the rabble?” It was all over with the sermon. The knot of malcontents expressed their dissent loudly, and were resolved to break up the meeting. So Christ cast His bread upon the waters. The last words maddened His adversaries, but they struck the second key-note of His ministry. The first was “ peace on earth; goodwill towards men.” A gospel of healing, liberty, illumination, and comfort for all, beginning with the lowest of the people. The second key-note was an implacable opposition to bigotry, heartlessness, and formalism. “ You want a sign? You shall have one. My signs are the seals of my teaching. Those who accept my teaching get my signs. You will have none of my message, you shall have none of my miracles. You are no better than your fathers, who persecuted the prophets. Were they not outcasts and rejected wanderers? There were many widows in Israel, but Elias only healed the Gentile’ s son at Sarepta. There were many lepers in those days, but Eliseus only healed Naaman the Syrian. Syrian lepers and Gentiles go into the kingdom before you.” They would hear no more; they rose in their fury, hustled Him out of the building, hurried Him up the steep, rocky path to the summit of the hill, and would have cast Him down, but His friends, doubtless some of those sturdy Galilean fishermen, rallied around Him and got Him clear of the village. In one way or another He passed through the crowd, on His way back to Capernaum and the Galilean shore. He left Nazareth, never apparently to return. The secluded mountain village had indeed cast Him out--the world received Him. (H. R. Haweis, M. A.) The matter of Christ’ s preaching I. I preach that the great atonement for sin has been offered. II. I preach that the guilty may be forgiven. III. I preach that the slave may be emancipated. IV. I preach that the lost inheritance may be regained. (G. Brooks.) The Gospel and the poor That our Lord’ s ministry was eminently a ministry for the poor is a commonplace which need not be insisted on. His relations were poor people, with the associations, the habits, the feelings of the poor. He passed among men as the carpenter’ s Son. He spoke, it would appear, in a provincial north-country dialect, at least commonly. His language, His illustrations, His entire method of approaching the understandings and hearts of men, were suited to the apprehension of the uneducated. When He spoke the common people heard Him gladly. When He was asked by what signs He could prove His claims, He replied, among other things, “ The poor have the gospel preached to them.” His first disciples were poor men. As they looked back upon it, the grace of His example was felt by His disciples and servants to consist pre-eminently in this:--“ That, though He was rich,” &c. 1. Notice the marked connection, in this and other passages, between the preaching of the gospel to the poor, and the gift of the Eternal Spirit. 2. The work of preaching the gospel to the poor is far from being either commonplace or easy. Notice two mistakes which have been made in undertaking it. (1) It has failed sometimes from a lack of sympathy with the mental condition and habits of the poor. (2) The other mistake has been in an opposite direction. Men who have sympathized warmly with the mental difficulties of the poor have endeavoured to recommend the Christian faith sometimes by making unwarranted or semi-legendary additions to it, and sometimes by virtually mutilating it. 3. These considerations, then, may lead us to reflect that the connection implied in the text between the presence of the Spirit and the task of evangelizing the poor, is not, after all, so surprising. To be sympathetic, yet sincere; true to the message which has come from heaven, yet alive to the difficulties of conveying it to untutored minds and hearts; sensible of the facilities which a few unauthorized additions or mutilations would lend to the work in hand, yet resolved to decline them--this is not easy. For such a work something higher is needed than natural quickness of wit or strength of will, even His aid who taught the peasants of Galilee in the upper chamber to speak as with tongues of fire, and in languages which men of many nations could understand. And the effort for which He thus equipped them continues still; and His aid, adapted to new circumstances, is present with us as it was with them. (Canon Liddon.) Ministry for the poor To awaken a spiritual interest in the poor is my object. 1. The outward condition of the poor is a hard one, and deserving of our sympathy--though not necessarily wretched. Give them the Christian spirit, and they would find in their lot the chief elements of good. 2. The condition of the poor is unfriendly to the action and unfolding of the intellect--a sore calamity to a rational being. 3. I proceed to another evil of poverty--its disastrous influence on the domestic affections. 4. Another unhappy influence exerted by poverty is that it tends to breed discontent, envy, and hatred--hence crime. 5. I pass on to another sore trial of the poor--the temptation to make up for their anxieties and privations by resorting to debasing gratifications--drink, &c. Yet-- 6. The highest culture is in reach of the poor, and is sometimes attained by them. The great idea on which human cultivation especially depends is that of God. 7. We are solemnly bound, therefore, to cherish and manifest a strong moral and religious interest in the poor. Every man whom God has prospered is bound to contribute to this work. The Christian ministry is a blessing to all, but above all to the poor. If there be an office worthy of angels, it is that of teaching Christian truth. The Son of God hallowed it by sustaining it in His own person. (W. E. Channing, D. D.) Christ the great Harmonizer The gospel is the great harmonizer of all the conflicting interests of human society. It alone can elevate the “ masses” ; it alone can reclaim the fallen. Dr. Alexander M’ Leod, in his “ Christus Consolator,” says that “ when Orsted first exhibited to Frederika Bremer the beautiful and now familiar experiment of sand-grains upon a glass plate arranging themselves, under the influence of a musical note, in symmetrical and harmonious figures, this reflection passed through the mind of the lady: ‘ A human hand made the stroke that produced the note. But when the stroke is made by the hand of the Almighty, will not the note then produced bring into exquisitely harmonious form those sand:grains which are human beings, communities, nations? It will arrange the world in beauty, and there shall be no discord, and no lamentation any more.’” This is right. That divinely musical note is the preaching of the glorious gospel of Christ. The power of Christ’ s sympathy Some time ago, a Christian young lady was visiting a lunatic asylum, and her soul was filled with sadness and pity with the sights she saw. By and by she was led into a room where there was but one patient, a young girl of the same age as herself. She was standing in the corner of the room, her face almost touching the wall. IN stony hopelessness she stood, immobile and rigid as a statue. She neither looked nor spoke. She might have been as dead as the statue she represented but that she still stood on. It was a heart-breaking spectacle. “ Will you speak to her?” asked the doctor, “ we can do nothing with her. She has been thus for days; but one like yourself might move her.” The young lady, trembling with emotion, with one upward cry to heaven for help, stepped forward, gently laid her hand on the listless form and, with tears in her eyes, spoke one sentence of yearning sympathy and compassion. The poor patient turned, gazed for one moment, her form quivered, and she burst into tears! The doctor exclaimed, “ Thank God, she may be saved!” The visitor could never recall the words she had used; but they had done their work. This poor, wrecked girl, who thought that nobody knew or cared for her, had felt the heart that pitied her, the hand stretched our to help her. O the power of tears! the magic of sympathy I It is the sympathy of Christ that calls a mad, despairing world to itself--to its better self. (Christian Journal.) The cold comfort of worldly philosophy Some years ago (says Dr. M’ Cosh) I had a call at my house in Ireland by a young nobleman with whom I was at that time intimate, and who has since risen to eminence as a statesman (I mean Earl Dufferin), who introduced to me his friend Lord Ashburton. The nobleman introduced took me aside and said, “ You know that I have lately lost my dear wife, who was a great friend of Mr. Carlyle’ s; and I have applied to Mr. Carlyle to tell me what I should do to have peace, and make me what I should be. On my making this request he simply bade me read Goethe’ s ‘ Wilhelm Meister.’ I did so, and did not find anything there fitted to improve me. I went back to Mr. Carlyle, asking him what precise lesson he meant me to gather from the book; and he said, ‘ Read “ Wilhelm Meister” a second time.’ I have done so carefully, but I confess I am unable to find anything there to met my anxiety; and I wish you to explain, if you can, what Mr. Carlyle could mean.” I told him that I was not the man to explain Carlyle’ s meaning--if, indeed, he had any definite meaning. I told him plainly that neither Goethe nor Carlyle, though men of eminently literary genius, could supply the balm which his wounded spirit needed; and I remarked that Goethe’ s work contained not a little that was sensual. I did my best to point to a better way, and to the deliverance promised and secured in the gospel. I do not know the issue, but I got an eager listener. Carlyle wished to persuade his mother, a woman of simple but devoted piety, that his advanced faith was the same as that which she held firmly, and so much to her comfort, only in a somewhat different form. But, in fact, the mother’ s faith was crushed in the form in which the son put it, when it became a skeleton, as different from the life which sustained her as the bones in our museums are from the living animal. (Dr. M’ Cosh’ s “ Certitude, Providence, and Prayer.”) Prayer helps emancipation This instructive anecdote relating to President Finney is characteristic. A brother who had fallen into darkness and discouragement was staying at the same house with Dr. Finney over night. He was lamenting his condition, and Dr. F., after listening to his narrative, turned to him with his peculiar earnest look, and with a voice that sent a thrill through his soul, said, “ You don’ t pray: that is what’ s the matter with you. Pray--pray four times as much as ever you did in your life, and you will come out.” He immediately went down to the parlour, and taking the Bible, he made a serious business of it, stirring up his soul to seek God as did Daniel, and thus he spent the night. It was not in vain. As the morning dawned he felt the light of the Sun of Righteousness shine upon his soul. His captivity was broken; and ever since he has felt that the greatest difficulty in the way of men being emancipated from their bondage, is that they “ don’ t pray.” The bonds cannot be broken by finite strength. We must take our case to Him who is mighty to save. Our eyes are blinded to Christ the Deliverer. He came to preach deliverance to the captive, to break the power of habit; and herein is the rising of a great hope for us. Christ the Emancipator A doctrine with which the hearts of men are universally in sympathy. Men want the restrictions and limitations around them to be destroyed. It is not merely the few who are actually in dungeons that want it. Thousands are in dungeons, around whom no stone wall is reared. Men in general have a consciousness of being prisoners, without actually being under military rule and ward. Men are bearing bonds, and are bruised, who are not in the actual relation of service; the consciousness of circumscription, of limitation, and of suffering under various forms of bondage, is universal. 1. The first blow which Christ strikes for the enlargement of men’ s liberty wears the appearance of the opposite; it is at the tyranny of sense and sensuousness in the individual. Man cannot run away from himself. Christ emancipates him from this bondage by introducing him into the higher course of nature; into that sphere in which, in his relations to God, he is acted upon precisely as in a family children are acted upon by the living presence and power of a good father and mother. Then the Divine influence becomes more active in him than the flesh, and he achieves a victory over himself--the nobler nature having gained ascendancy over the lower. 2. Christ delivers us from our bondage to secular conditions. The light and life that we receive by faith make us superior to our circumstances, so that we can maintain our manhood, not only in spite of adverse surroundings, but even by reason of them; working out through adversity and trouble what men in prosperity and joy fail to find. 3. Christ is an Emancipator in another way also. There is a power given to men through faith in Him, to set themselves free from the great source of those cares, infirmities, and annoyances which chiefly afflict life. If pride be essential to a noble character-and it is; if the love of praise be one of the civilizing elements--and it is; if both of these influences conjoined under right directions and inspirations tend to ennoble, to soften, to sweeten, and to beautify human nature--and they do: on the other hand, pride and vanity in their corrupt forms tend to bring upon men in the most acute ways many sufferings which afflict them--for our troubles are mainly of our own making. He who is nervously sensitive to praise is in great distress when he fears the withdrawal of praise or popularity. He who has an intense consciousness of his own excellence and desert is continually harried and annoyed and irritated by a lack of that respect and appreciation of which he has himself so supreme a sense. All the world are over-proud, or over-vain, or both; but he who has subdued his pride, and, by the love of God shed abroad in his heart, has turned it to higher and nobler uses; he who, lacking nothing of sensibility to praise, yet believes in the presence of God, wants praise only for supernal things, and disdains the offering of praise for things meagre and mean and low and vile; because he sets his standard, not according to the current ideas of human society, and not according to the ways of men who are unillumined, but according to that higher and nobler manhood which was revealed in Jesus Christ--he is emancipated from this universal bondage. 4. Christ emancipates from the bondage which comes through ignorance and superstition. It is for men to choose whether they will govern themselves or be governed. It must be one or the other. (H. W. Beecher.) Christ’ s method of emancipation How strangely Christ comported Himself! The Jewish people were at that time living under one of the worst forms of Roman despotism, and there was a universal desire all over Palestine that the land should be emancipated; yet He never said one word to that effect, or performed one act towards that purpose. The prisons of Judea were crowded, to be emptied by the executioner, and hundreds of thousands were lying in hopeless darkness; yet we do not hear of Him taking up a single case. There was slavery, with all its cursed attendant influences, spread through the civilized world; yet in all our Lord’ s discourses we do not find a single word of reference to this condition of affairs. When He died there was not one prison less in the land, nor one prisoner; there had been no casting away of chains or manacles, and the black darkness of the people had not been lightened. Nor did His apostles, when they took up His work after Him, disturb the order of society, or revolutionize government by the sword. On the contrary, they enjoin most explicitly, “ Obey the magistrates; obey the powers that be; obey the laws that are meant for good, however badly they may be administered.” And so men sometimes say that Christ did nothing at all, that He came on a fool’ s errand. But, remember, there are different ways of doing the same thing. Christ came to raise the human race, to develop it one step higher, to construct kingdoms, establish arts, rear manufactories, elevate knowledge--to make men happier, truer, more perfect everywhere. He came to dothis, not by working outwardly, but by working inwardly. He did not come to found new institutions, or to overturn old institutions. He came to produce such a state of heart in man throughout the whole race, that the unavoidable outworkings of this new power would be Ultimately to change all institutions and redeem the world from animalism, crime, and oppression. Look at this internal working of Christ. He deals with men, not in the mass, but one by one; and He deals with the moral sentiments, subjecting all the others to them. The whole order inside a man is changed by the influence of Christianity from lower to higher, from flesh-man to spirit-man. The sovereign and central force employed in this transformation is love. Christ undertakes to reconstruct the dispositions of men by bringing into supreme agency this transcendent love. 1. Christ’ s gospel was a more perfect disclosure of the great natural law as applied to men than had ever been understood, or is understood to-day. There is an unused principle in the human soul which, brought out by the stimulus of the Divine afflatus, can cleanse the whole lower nature of man and deaden the passions, not by direct attack, but by giving principle and authority to their opposites, and shape to the inspiration-the central principle--love. It was there before Christ came, only men did not know it; and so, until brought out by Christ, it was a dead thing. He has put life into it, and through it into men. 2. Christianity never has been, and never can be, contained wholly in the New Testament. The gospel is only a hint and a guide to a higher nature, which needs to be developed. If I take a handful of wheat from my granary, there is a promise of a hundred bushels in it--only a promise, however. It must be sown before the promise can be realized. So with the gospel. Everything of knowledge that tends to the elevation of the human family is an unfolding of Christianity. If there is anything good for man, capable of reconstructing his nature, it is part and parcel of that human nature which is broader than the earth and deeper than eternity; it is part of that Divine nature by which a man is raised up to the glorious florescence of manhood and carried up to the angels; and I hold and rejoice in everything that develops man, and assists in the building of the new world. 3. The progress of this new kingdom has been very much hindered by the materializing influences of man. (1) The incarnation of spiritual forces in outward institutions. Men are always apt to pay more attention to the form than to the spiritual reality it embodies. (2) The substitution of ideas for forces. What is being a Christian but to be the embodiment of tender-heartedness, generosity, self-denial, self-sacrifice--a desire for the welfare of others, even though at the expense of yourown? What is Christianity, if not this? Names are nothing; being is everything. The power of the gospel is the promulgation of dispositions. It is the heart-life. The heart wears the crown, ,and the intellect is its servant, walking behind it, asking what it shall and shall not do. (3) The substitution of worship for morality. How can a man who is living in sin love God? How can a man be a partaker of the love of peace and joy if he has not the spirit of long-suffering, gentleness, forgiveness, within him? Morality is God’ s method when developed to the uttermost. Men will not be accepted for being so obsequious to God, while they remain indifferent to their fellows. (4) The substitution of justice for Divine love. When we can open spring flowers by spring frosts, when we can ripen summer fruits by summer thunder-storms, and bring tranquillity by tempests, then you may by rigour and threat have God’ s work in the soul--God’ s humility, love, patience, self-sacrifice, forbearance, temperance. We hardly know our God under such doctrine. Oh, Sun of Righteousness! Thou art not known by the tempest, nor by the earthquake, but by-the still, small voice--love; and religious truth will never be thoroughly understood until men are transformed into love, with that system which enthrones God as the universal cause, who knows how to suffer most because He loves. 4. The road to liberty is a very simple one. Once change the unit and you change the sum; begin with changing individuals, and you transform local public sentiment. Laws, customs, and institutions must take on the same form. No royal road to liberty, largeness, and freedom, except that which comes from the perfection and exaltation of human nature; no true nobility until mankind touch mankind, neighbourhood neighbourhood, nation nation. We are scattered here and there. When are we to collect in communities like bands of Christian graces all attuned to each other, working out a visible result? When that time comes men will say, “ Human nature never was so beautiful before as it is here.” That is gospel. It appeals to, and changes, the heart. (H. W. Beecher.) The slavery of unrest We do not require to be delivered from Egyptian bondage, or Grecian cruelty, or the Roman yoke; but we have lust, and we have passion, and we have the restlessness of care, and we have the fears of anxiety, and we have vanity and ambition, and a thousand other incendiaries and tyrants which abuse our bosom while yet under the bondage of sinful nature, and which still abuse the peace and welfare of all who have not been emancipated by the Cross of Christ. The captivity of sin seems no captivity to many. There are sleeping draughts of pleasure with which tim devil serves his servants. There are vain shows of pride, and castle-buildings of ambition, and dreams of wealth, by which the spirits of people are charmed away from the thought of their condition. But it is a miserable trick played off on the immortal soul, and at every instant it is liable to a fearful exposure. It is a fabric of grandeur built over a horrid sepulchre, on which it totters and shakes, and at length falls on the ambitious wight who trusted thereto. It is a wretched bondage to be captive to sin, though you were at large without any on the earth to make you afraid. It is not the narrowness of the dungeon, or of his knowledge, wealth, or power, that makes a man a slave; it is the disrepose, the unrest of the mind, the coveting the things we cannot have, the fearing of things we cannot avoid, the meeting of things we cannot brook, the hoping for things we cannot have, the enjoying of things we cannot keep. Thus to be, is to be in slavery; and not to be thus, is to be free What unchristian man is there who is not thus? There is a discord between our spiritual man and this our earthly habitation, which nothing but the religion of Jesus can appease. (E. Irving, M. A.) The acceptable year of the Lord: Jubilee year If you turn to Leviticus 25. you will see what the arrangements of the Jewish jubilee were. It wasintended to cure four great political evils which oppressed that nation, and which have oppressed many nations since--viz., slavery, debt, chronic pauperism, and alienation of the land from the people. The Jewish jubilee was a system intended to abolish by anticipation all these four great evils. Every fiftieth year every man who had been a slave was set free; he could not be kept in slavery after that year of jubilee. Every one was then restored to freedom; the nation took a fresh start of freedom. Men became slaves for various reasons; they might have been captured in war, they might have sold themselves into slavery in the payment of debts, or in several other ways--but in the year of jubilee all were set free. There might have been an accumulation of debts which they were unable to pay off altogether, but at this jubilee debts were all cancelled. Chronic pauperism was to be cured by making certain provisions every seventh year and fiftieth year, by which those who had sunk through incapacity, or illness, or intemperance, or from whatever cause it might be--at this time they had an opportunity of starting again. It was not possible for any family to part with its hereditary property irrecoverably: at the year of jubilee all went back to its original owners. Such was the system; but there is no proof that it was ever carried out. Neither the Old Testament nor any other history affords the slightest evidence that these laws were ever observed as a whole. When they are examined, one can see such difficulties that it would require strong evidence to convince us that such laws had worked at all. Still they remained on the statute-book, and therefore formed the ideal and the hope of the people; but the ideal never came. Why did it not come? Because these laves presupposed a condition of morality, of brotherliness, of good feeling among the people, which never existed. When laws are pitched in too high a key they become as it were dead laws. The laws do not precede morality; they follow it, they perpetuate, they register it. A nation tins to raise its standard of morality; then the laws can be made which will perpetuate that morality; but you cannot make the laws first. It would be of no use for any Government now to make some law far above the standard of existing morality, because the law could not be worked. That was the case in Judah. It would presuppose a willingness to part with their property, a willingness to give up their slavery; it would presuppose willing industry again on the part of the people, and a greater level of mental and moral equality among them than ever existed; and so the law remained simply a dead letter. (J. M. Wilson, M. A.) The jubilee spirit in Christianity The Jewish jubilee was a legislation which never worked. Let us see what Christianity has done instead in the way of social reform. 1. Christianity has abolished slavery. Not by preaching direct political action, but by preaching the equality of all men as children of God. It has given men a new interest in one another, and a new relationship to one another, secretly transforming human character, so that slavery became impossible and melted away as ice--which will not melt under blows--melts before the sun. 2. If, again, you consider how cruelly debtors were oppressed, you will see how wonderfully that has been changed by the influence of Christ. Some of the best Romans that ever lived complacently consigned their debtors to slavery; and in other countries debtors were imprisoned and their lives rendered hopelessly miserable; but Christianity has greatly altered such things, and has compelled mankind to treat debtors with humanity. 3. The evil of chronic pauperism still faces us, and we can see no conceivable method of getting rid of it, except by a wider spread of true Christian feeling among the whole population. What else can we look to? Legislation? How can legislation do it? Legislation will not make people industrious, and skilful, and self-restraining. Nothing else but Christian principles of love and virtue will do that. 4. Alienation of land. Legislation could not completely get rid of this evil, for the simple reason that the nation is not yet good enough. If to-day there were three acres and a cow given to every man in England, before ten years, or even one year, had elapsed there would be some with thirty acres and ten cows, and the rest with none. The nation has not sufficiently advanced in morality, industry, and self-control for such an equality to exist, and the attempt to force it would only produce idleness. But reform will come in the way Christ indicated: it will come from the inner spirit. When men become better, then happiness and prosperity will naturally follow. There is no cure for the evils of this world--its competition, and crushing, and failure--except this inner reform of the spirit, the faith in Christ, and the love of God and of man. Like all God’ s laws, it works slowly; but it is sure, and in the end it will bring about that for which it was framed. The joy of acquiring liberty In the dark days of American slavery, a very fine Mulatto woman and her nearly white boy were raffled for. Two kind men paid a share each for the woman and her boy, so that they might have two chances for their freedom. After all the others who had a share in that lottery had thrown the dice, the poor woman was so overpowered by hopes, fears, and solicitude, that she could not throw for herself. Her boy, therefore, threw for her, and was unsuccessful. Then the boy had to throw for himself, and there many hopes and prayers that he might win. And he did, and the joy of the mother and son, on acquiring their liberty, was indescribable. So Jewish parents and their children rejoiced in the year of jubilee as they went forth from bondage to liberty, and from poverty to posseses the inheritance of their fathers. But, when “ Christ makes us free,” by “ the truth,” from spiritual ignorance, sin, Satan, and evils, into “ the glorious liberty of the children of God,” with its precious and eternal heritage of blessings, we then feel-- “ A day, an hour of virtuous liberty, Is worth a whole eternity of bondage.” (Henry R. Burton.) Nazareth and its good news The Lord here, quoting Isaiah, states His mission to be the preaching of the acceptable year of Jehovah. Let us inquire what the acceptable year of the Lord is, and how He preached it. I. THE YEAR OF THE LORD. This expression corresponds to that of Paul, “ the accepted time,” “ the day of salvation” (2 Corinthians 6:2); and means that there is a time when God accepts or shows favour to the sinner. It is what Ezekiel calls “ the time of love” ; what our Lord calls “ the time of visitation” (Luke 19:44); and what we usually call “ the day of grace.” Every era has its character, and the character of this is “ grace.” In it the long-suffering of God gets full vent to itself, and His almighty love is pouring itself down upon an unworthy world. II. How CHRIST THIS YEAR. This preaching of the acceptable year was to run through His whole life and ministry. 1. In His person He preached it; for His mere presence upon earth among sinful men was an announcement of it. Grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. 2. He preached it by what He did. He went about healing all manner of sicknesses, and all manner of diseases. 3. He preached it by what He did not do. He did no deeds of terror, and wrought no miracles of wrath or woe. 4. He preached it by what He said. His words were all of grace; and even the sharp rebukes against scribes and Pharisees were the warnings of grace, not of wrath. (H. Bonar, D. D.) The work of Christ I. OUR FIRST INQUIRY SHALL BE THE OR OF THE PERSONS IN MY TEXT. It seems clear that this whole passage is metaphorical! for, allowing that a literal sense may be applied to parts of it with propriety, yet there are other parts which will not bear that sense. These images serve only to present, under different aspects, the sad state of those whom Christ came to deliver, and the blessed effects of that deliverance. 1. Their actual condition is represented as very deplorable; for what image can express greater misery than that of captives treated with the barbarous rigour of those times; immured in dungeons; loaded with fetters; bruised with stripes; perhaps like Zedekiah, the unfortunate king of Judah, deprived of sight as well as liberty. Yet this is a very just image of every man’ s condition who is under the power of sin. 2. Yet it is possible that there may be this state of sin, comprehending all these awful circumstances of misery and danger, without any concern about it, or even any distinct perception of it. This, however, is by no means the case with the persons here represented. They are not only captives, but they are broken-hearted in their bondage. All such expressions denote the true Christian temper, that which our Lord inculcated under the names of humility and poverty of spirit; and which both Christ and His apostles meant by the more significant word, “ repentance.” It includes a consciousness of demerit; a due sense of the evil of sin. This frame of mind may comprehend different degrees, or even kinds, of uneasiness, on account of sin. The metaphors which are here used illustrate these. It is one kind of distress to feel the pressure of poverty; it is another to endure the yoke of bondage; and a third, to lose the organ of sight. II. BLESSED BE GOD, HOWEVER, THERE ARE SOME WHO KNOW THEIR , AND ARE HUMBLED ON ACCOUNT OF IT. These are the persons intended in my text, and such will gladly hear the gracious office which the Redeemer sustains to save them. This office is here delineated under several views. Is the state of sinners described as a state of great suffering? Christ brings them deliverance. As a state of bondage? He grants them liberty. Under the image of a broken heart? He communicates peace and consolation. Or under that of poverty? He tells them of recovered birthrights, and of a glorious inheritance above. Let us briefly consider these several offices. 1. Christ takes away the sin of those who truly repent and apply to Him by faith. 2. They are freed also from the power of sin. 3. It is the office of the Saviour to impart peace to the soul. 4. The title to a glorious inheritance is also conferred by Him upon those that believe. As in the year of jubilee every inheritance which had been sold reverted to its original owners; as every debt was cancelled and every captive set free--in the same way does the gospel proclaim a jubilee to repenting sinners. It institutes a new order of things for them; with new resources, and hopes, and privileges, and prospects. (J. Venn, M. A.) The gospel jubilee Such is the tendency of Christianity; such are the gifts of the Holy Ghost poured out upon the Church; and such is the spiritual jubilee; such the acceptable year of the Lord which Christianity proclaims to the world and the misery thereof. I. THE JUBILEE OF THE GOSPEL AS REGARDS THE FIRST by Christ and His apostles. II. THE OF MANKIND. III. THE MISERY AND SORROW THIS HAS BEEN FROM TIME TO TIME IN . The tendency of Christianity and the gospel is to infuse, in proportion as it is understood, brotherly love, and sympathy with every effort which is made for the relief of individual suffering, as well as for the emancipation of the world. It is directly opposed to oppression and cruelty; it abstains from questions of earthly politics and disputes about particular forms of government; it avoids all factious and dangerous innovations, and goes to the support of existing order, which, although it may in some cases be defective, is infinitely better than the wild disorder of uncontrolled passion and fierce self-love. It therefore enjoins obedience to the magistrates, and calls upon its followers to “ fear God and honour the king,” giving thanks always for all things unto God the Father, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. And I apprehend the union of these two points shows the tendency of Christianity to dispose all governors, propagators of laws, and all in authority, towards all measures of relief, justice, equity, and the consideration of the poor. It is the means of communicating every blessing to society, and insensibly tends to break every yoke, and set right every disorder. (Bishop Daniel Wilson.) Preaching the gospel I. Let us notice that JESUS CHRIST BEGAN HIS WORK IN WITH A FROM THE BIBLE. The source of all Christian power is in “ preaching the Word.” II. It is well to keep in mind that WE HAVE A MUCH LARGER BIBLE THAN JESUS HAD. We have the New Testament as well as the Old Testament: what He spoke as well as what He expounded. It is not what we say about the truth that helps and saves souls, but the truth. III. When people come to us for help, the thing to do is simply to FIND IN THE WORD FOR THEM. IV. CURIOUS AND THAT ASK HAVE THE SORT OF ANSWERS IN THE WORD. AS to grounding our hope firmly, Matthew 7:24 is better than anything we can say ourselves. To encourage a man who fears ridicule, Mark 10:48 is excellent and effective. Exodus 2:1-10 is a far better illustration of God’ s care for children than that stock story of the “ little child in the corn-field.” Once a member of our Church came to me to ask what she ought to try to look at when she shut her eyes in prayer. And all I could think of was to read her two or three verses about Bartimaeus. A smile ran over her whole face as she rose suddenly, and said, “ Good morning.” Then I asked whether her question had got the answer. “ Oh, yes” ! she replied, gratefully; “ I ought to see what the blind man did before his eyes were opened; he saw he was blind, and he seemed to see Jesus there waiting to be prayed to.” V. WE MUST BE WITH GOD’ S WORD in order to use it skilfully. The times arrive often very suddenly in which we are called to make answer or to give advice; and to work powerfully one must work ingeniously. The gifted authoress of “ English Hands and Hearts” once saw a man close by the brink of a river, and believed he was going to commit suicide. It seemed perfectly clear to her that if she should appear to suspect his purpose, he would avoid her, and wait till she passed out of sight. So she quietly kept on her walk, but, as it approached the spot where he was watching, she said aloud, as if just to herself, Psalms 46:4. It was all she could do. Two years afterwards a speaker in Exeter Hall related the incident in his own sad life, and told how the text saved him and converted him, and now he added the wish that he might some time know the Christian woman who had done him the favour. So they met and clasped hands, and thanked God together. But how did she happen to know the right verse, then? Such a thing did not happen: that lady knew her Bible thoroughly. VI. We should be PATIENT ANY HELPFUL IS OTHERS how and where to find the proper passages for Christian effort. VII. We can find here the WE SEEK FOR SOME that appear so mysterious, AND FOR SOME that are so admirable. Those Christians have done most service who have in every instance trusted the Word for the power of the truth in it. Dr. James W. Alexander put in one of his letters, near the end of his career, the statement that, if he were to live his public life over again, he would dwell more upon the familiar parts and passages of the Bible, like the story of the ark, the draught of fishes, or the parable of the prodigal son. That is, he would preach more of the Word of God in its pure, clear utterances of truth for souls. When the saintly Dr. Cutler of Brooklyn died, the Sunday School remembered that he used to come in every now and then during the years of his history and repeat just a single verse from the superintendent’ s desk; and the next Lord’ s Day after the funeral they marched up in front of it in a long line, and each scholar quoted any of the texts that he could recollect. The grown people positively sat there and wept, as they saw how much there was of the Bible in the hearts of their children which this one pastor had planted. Yet he was a very timid and old-fashioned man; he said he had no gift at talking to children; he could only repeat God’ s Word. Is there anybody now who is ready to say that was not enough for some good? (C. S.Robinson, D. D.) Christ the fulfilment of prophecy On an artist’ s table some colours are lying. You glance at them, and that is all, for to you they have no meaning. A month after you come in, and you are attracted by a beautiful picture. The picture has been painted with the colours you saw before, but how different is it now when they are harmoniously blended. So Jesus Christ gathers into harmony in Himself the before ill-understood prophecies and types of the Old Testament; only then we see what they fully mean. It is like the children’ s picture-block puzzles. Take the pieces from the box, and you have a number of blocks of all sizes, colours, and shapes. Build them back, carefully fitting them into each other, and when each is in its proper place, you find you have a complete picture. So the types and prophecies are only understood when they are fitted into Christ. Jesus, then, takes some pictures from the Book of Isaiah, and declares that these show forth His mission. The first picture is that of a messenger bringing good news to the poor--news of a kingdom prepared for them; the next shows a message of consolation brought to those in sorrow; the third is the picture of one promising liberty to some men shut up in a narrow cell; in the fourth a blind man is receiving his sight at the healing touch of a prophet; in the fifth the bonds are being struck from the feet of men whose limbs have been bruised by the irons; and the sixth shows the open gate of heaven. (Sunday School Times.) A full text When we have once measured these words, we shall be reminded of the tent of the Arab chief: when folded it could be carried in his hand, but when spread it was wide enough to shelter his whole tribe. A study of the incident under which they were spoken in the synagogue of Nazareth is peculiarly rewarding, because it looks off in so many directions; into remote Jewish history, into present customs, to the nature of the gospel, to its manifold methods of working, to the heart of Gad, to the inspiration of Christ; and, finally, it discloses the weakness and evil of human nature when its prejudices and traditional thoughts are assaulted. It is as rich in material and association that a book could legitimately be made from it. It would be a book historical, ecclesiastical, political, theological, ethical, psychological, and the treatment would not be forced. (T. T.Munger.) Deliverance both physical and moral The peculiar feature of this quotation from Isaiah, which Christ makes His own, is its doubleness. “ The poor” --but men are poor in condition and in spirit. “ The captives” --but men may be in bondage under masters or circumstances, and also under their own sin. “ The blind” --but men may be blind of eye and also in spiritual vision. “ The bruised” --but men are bruised in the struggles of this rough world, and also by the havoc of their own evil passions. Which did Christ mean? Both, but chiefly the moral, for He always struck through the external forms of evil to the moral root, from which it springs, and of whose condition it is the general exponent. And He always passed on to the spiritual end to which external betterment points. He was no reformer playing about the outward forms of evil--hunger, poverty, disease, oppression--giving ease and relief for the moment. He does indeed deal with these, but He puts under His work a moral foundation, and crowns it with a spiritual consummation. Dealing with these, He was all the while inserting the spiritual principle which He calls “ faith.” Unless He can do this He is nearly indifferent whether He works or not. If you cannot heal a man’ s spirit, it is a small thing to heal his body. It you cannot make a man rich in his heart and thought, it is a slight matter to relieve his poverty. At the same time, Christ will not separate the two, for they are the two sides of one evil thing. Poverty and disease and misery mostly spring out of moral evil. They are not the limitations of the finite nature, but are the fangs of the serpent of sin And so Christ sets Himself as the Deliverer from each, the origin and the result, the sin at the root, and the misery which is its fruitage. (T. T. Munger.) Christ the true Liberator and Enlightener of the world Bartholdi’ s gigantic statue of “ Liberty Enlightening the World” occupies a fine position on Bedloes Island, which commands the approach to New York Harbour. It holds up a torch, which is to be lit at night by an immense electric light. The statue was cast in portions in Paris. The separate pieces were very different in appearance, and, taken apart, of uncouth shape. It was only when all were brought together, each in its right place, that the complete design was apparent. Then the omission of any one would have left the work imperfect. In this it was an emblem of Holy Scripture. We do not always see the object of different portions; nevertheless each has its place, and the whole is a magnificent statue of Jesus Christ, who is the true “ Liberty enlightening the world,” casting illuminating rays across the dark rocky ocean of time, and guiding anxious souls to the desired haven. (Freeman.) Christ alone can heal the brokenhearted I could build a Corlears engine, I could paint a Raphael’ s “ Madonna,” I could play a Beethoven’ s “ Heroic Symphony” as easily as this world can comfort a broken heart. And yet you have been comforted. How was it done? Did Christ come to you and say: “ Get your mind off this; go and breathe the fresh air; plunge deeper into business” ? No. There was a minute when He came to you, perhaps in the watches of the night--perhaps in your place of business, perhaps along the street--and He breathed something into your soul that gave peace, rest, infinite quiet, so that you could take out the photograph of the departed one and look into the eyes and face of the dear one and say: “ It is all right; she is better off; I would not call her back. Lord, I thank Thee that Thou hast comforted my poor heart. I thought I should go crazy for a while, but the rough sea has become the smooth harbour. Oh, how hard it was for me to give her up, and I shall never be the “ man that I was before; but the Lord gave and the Lord taketh away, blessed be the name of the Lord.” There are Christian parents here to-night who are willing to testify to the power of this gospel to comfort. Your son had just graduated and was going into business, and the Lord took him. Or your daughter had just left the young ladies’ seminary, and you thought she was going to be a useful woman and of long life; but the Lord took her, and you were tempted to say: “ All this culture for nothing.” Or the little child came home from school with the hot fever that stopped not for the agonized prayer, or for the skilful physician, and the little child was taken. Or the babe was lifted out of your arms by some quick epidemic, and you stood wondering why God ever gave you that child at all, if so soon He was to take it away. And yet you are not repining, you are not fretful, you are not fighting against God. What has enabled you to stand all the trial? “ Oh,” you say, “ I took the medicine that God gave my sick soul; in my distress I threw myself at the feet of a sympathising Saviour, and when I was too weak to pray, or to look up, He breathed into me a peace that I think must be the foretaste of that heaven where there is neither tear, nor a farewell, nor a grave.” Come, all ye who have been out to the grave to weep there--come, all ye comforted souls, get up off your knees. Is there power in this gospel to soothe the heart? Is there power in this religion to quiet the worst paroxysm of grief? Tell me. There comes up an answer to comforted widowhood, and orphanage, and childlessness, saying: “ Ay, ay, we are witnesses!” (Dr. Talmage.) Christ the Healer of the broken-hearted I. THE OF THE PERSONS SPOKEN OF IN THE TEXT is one of extreme distress and misery. They are broken-hearted. All their happiness is gone. All their hopes are blasted. Nothing is left to them but wretchedness and despair. 1. It implies that they have a sorrowful consciousness of the existence of this evil within them. 2. They are also dissatisfied with their condition, and earnestly desire deliverance from it. Like men oppressed with sickness, they are not in a state in which they can be at ease. 3. They are sensible likewise of the deadly nature of the disease under which they are suffering. They know that it is a mortal disease; not merely painful and loathsome, but dangerous and fatal. 4. To this sorrowful consciousness of their sinfulness, this dissatisfaction with their condition, and this dread of futurity, is added a despair of healing their spiritual diseases by any means of their own. II. But why does the Physician of souls thus deal with us? Why cannot He apply His healing balm at once to our wounds? WHY MUST WE BE BROUGHT INTO SO A STATE, BEFORE WE ARE MADE WITH PARDON AND PEACE? 1. In answer to this inquiry we may observe, that God thus afflicts His penitent children, in order that sin may be embittered to them; that they may have a heartfelt knowledge of the misery and shame which it is able to produce, and thus learn to regard it with hatred and fear. 2. The sinner is made broken-hearted, that he may be willing to be healed by Christ in His way and on His terms. 3. A further reason why the returning sinner is thus torn and smitten, may be, that the deliverance vouchsafed to him may be more highly valued. 4. It may also be the will of God to give the penitent a deep sense of his wretchedness, in order that the great Physician of his soul may be more warmly loved. III. Let us proceed to consider THE WHICH THE BEFORE US IS TO AFFORD TO EVERY MOURNER. 1. It plainly implies that it is the will of God that the brokenhearted should be healed. He has sent a Messenger from heaven to bring peace to them. 2. The declaration in the text teaches us also, that God has given to Christ authority and power to heal the broken-hearted. 3. The declaration before us assures us, too, that Christ is willing to heal all the broken-hearted who apply for His aid; that He is ready to exercise the authority and power which He has received. Here, then, is a rich source of encouragement to every mourner. The God against whom he has sinned, has sent a Messenger from heaven to heal him; and He whom He has sent, rejoices to bind up the broken-hearted. He has infinite compassion to pity, as well as infinite power to relieve. A review of our subject points out to us, first, the persons to whom the ministers of the gospel are to administer comfort. 2. The text affords us, secondly, a test by which we may try our spiritual comfort. 3. We may infer also from the text, that true contrition of heart is one of the greatest blessings which God can bestow on man. 4. The text reminds us, lastly, of the sin and folly of despair. (C. Bradley, M. A.) Luke 4:22-24 Ye will surely say unto Me this proverb, Physician, heal Thyself The treatment of Christ by the Nazarenes 1. No man should be undervalued on account of humble parentage. If a man behave well himself, even the sins of his parents ought not to be imputed to him as a fault, much less ought their lowly condition in life. Indeed, the greater the obscurity from which a man has emerged, and the more numerous and formidable the difficulties with which he has had to struggle, the more praise is due to him for aiming at honourable distinction. Let us be ready to acknowledge ability, and to esteem worth, wherever found. And let not those who have risen in life be ashamed of their humble parentage, or undervalue or forget their kindred and early friends. 2. We should not neglect the lessons taught in the proverb, “ No prophet is accepted in his own country, or of his own kindred.” Honourable exceptions there may be to this; but it states what is generally the case among men. (1) Prejudice against those who have risen above the station in which they were born. (2) Envy at their rising above one’ s own position. (3) Curiosity, and desire for novelty influence men against those they are well acquainted with. What comes from a great distance is generally reckoned of great value. 3. The sinfulness of objecting to the more extensive diffusion of religious privileges, and of refusing to rejoice in the good of other countries, under the pretence that all our exertions should be limited to our own country. Home has the first, but not the only claim. We ought not to shut our hearts against any call to attend to the spiritual welfare of men. There is a tide in the affairs of men and of the Church--a tide, not of chance, but of providential influence and arrangement; that tide of favourable circumstances we cannot command; it is our duty, therefore, to avail ourselves of its flow, lest it ebb away, and the opportunity be lost. And as neither at Nazareth, nor at Capernaum, was the ministry of our Lord without some success, so may we hope that no Scriptural attempts, whether at a distance or at our own door, will ultimately prove altogether in vain. 4. Let us beware of resembling in any way the Nazarenes in their more violent hatred of Christ, and of the truth, here described; and beware also of the causes which led to that hatred. They began by cavilling at His plans, and ended by raging and setting themselves against the Lord and His anointed. They were too proud to submit to the righteousness of God. This spirit is rife still. Let us remember we have no “ rights” with respect to God; let us gladly fall in with His plans, and thankfully accept of His offered mercy. Submission to free grace is the only way of safety, and of holiness and comfort; it changes the slavish and mercenary spirit into the spirit of the freedman and child; and the obedience of the life will be secured as the cheerful homage of the reconciled and grateful heart. (James Foote, M. A.) The preaching of Christ a pattern for His ministers I. THE CHARM OF CHRIST’ S . 1. He was not simply a human teacher. Hence the tone of authority which He alone might assume. 2. Preaching was in His hands altogether a new thing. 3. A singular gracefulness in His manner. 4. Popular style of discourse. 5. Evangelical doctrine, suited to men’ s needs. He spoke of those Divine truths which are the hope of guilty captives, and the balm of the brokenhearted; He brought tidings of great joy, messages of mercy suited to their nature as intelligent, immortal, responsible creatures, and at the same time to their circumstances as lost sinners. II. Some of the chief TO SECURE SUCCESS to a human ministry. 1. It should give a prominent exhibition to the great peculiarities of the gospel. Redemption through the Cross of Christ must be the preacher’ s constant theme. 2. This prominent exhibition of the Cross should always be combined with a tender solicitude for the salvation of souls. Eternal consequences are at stake. With all earnestness the message, therefore, must be urged. 3. Simplicity of style. Brilliant images and pompous language may excite wonder, but will not instruct or convince. Plain truths should be con veyed in plain words. Illustrations may be used, but only such as add clearness to the discourse. III. BY WHAT MEANS SUCH A MAY BE FORMED AND . 1. A profound acquaintance with the gospel, in its adaptation to all the varieties of human character and condition. 2. Entire consecration to the ministerial office. 3. Eminence in personal piety. 4. The habitual recognition of scriptural encouragements and motives, and especially the anticipation of the final results of the ministry, wilt not fail to exert a beneficial influence on the mind of the minister. (E. Steane.) The rejection of God’ s prophets and its results I. 1. The spirit of detraction is the surest sign of a small and vulgar soul. 2. Jesus goes on to anticipate the objection with which His opponents will meet this announcement of Himself, and in which they will demand a miracle as proof of His claim. To such a spirit He could vouchsafe no sign; indeed, miracles would have been no sign to such. 3. At the same time He would warn them that God ever finds work for His prophets to do. If their own countrymen will not receive them, there are others who will. The widows and the lepers of Israel may not care to be comforted or healed by them, but there are widows in Sarepta and lepers in Syria who enter upon the blessings which are despised by the children of the kingdom. 4. The passive rejection of the Christ cannot for long remain passive. They who reject Him passively are miserably conscious that it is He who is rejecting them. Roused to anger (which is, in reality, terror), they actively rebel against Him, and seek to destroy Him. II. Not infrequently we are conscious that the voice of God is speaking to us through one whom we have known familiarly, who, it may be, is inferior to us in age or worldly position, or whom in past years we ourselves have patronized. There is a temptation to weaken the force of the call by depreciating the instrument through which it comes. (Canon Vernon Hutton, M. A.) Self-healing In one of his familiar epistles to Rome’ s greatest orator, then dejected at the loss of Tullia, Sulpicius made this appeal: “ Do not forget that you are Cicero; one who has been used always to prescribe for and give advice to others; do not imitate those paltry physicians who pretend to cure other people’ s diseases, yet are not able to cure their own; but suggest rather to yourself the same lesson which you would give in the same case.” Dr. South asks in one of his sermons, adverting to the study of physic, “ Do not many shorten their days, and lose their own health, while they are learning to restore it to others?” But the proverb invites to a larger than merely professional application. Selden, in his Table-talk, says, “ Preachers say, Do as I say, not as I do. But if a physician had the same disease upon him that I have, and he should bid me do one thing, and he do quite another, could I believe him?” The practice of men, says Sir Thomas Browne, in his “ Religio Medici,” holds not an equal part with, yea, often runs contrary to, their theory: “ we naturally know what is good, but naturally pursue what is evil; the rhetoric wherewith I persuade another cannot persuade myself.” Byron chuckled crowingly over Beccaria, when he was told in Italy of that philosopher, who had published “ such admirable things against the punishment of death,” that as soon as his book was out, his servant, “ having read it, I presume,” stole his watch, and the master while correcting the proofs of a second edition, did all he could to have the man hanged. Angelo, in “ Measure for Measure,” with all his fair show in the flesh, of superiority to it, was no such perfect practitioner. Rather he was to be consigned to the category of those “ ungracious pastors” of whom Ophelia spoke, when she thanked Laertes for his excellent counsel and hoped withal he would abide by it in his own life and conversation. “ But, good my brother, Do not, as some ungracious pastors do, Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven; Whilst, like a puff’ d and reckless libertine, Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads, And recks not his own read.” (Francis Jacox.) The art of healing Our Lord’ s choice of this proverb in reference to Himself was peculiarly appropriate, when we remember how large a portion of his work consisted of healing the sick. It is probable that already His fame had gone abroad, not only as a teacher but as a healer, and that the wonderful cures which He had effected caused His name to be in all men’ s mouths, and led to the expectation in Nazareth to which He referred, that He would do in His own home what He had already been doing elsewhere. All through His career He represents Himself as the great physician. He is the wise physician who can combine with his knowledge of the body the more subtle knowledge of the soul. Few men depend for effective work more upon their character than doctors. Perhaps the only class of persons whose labour becomes useless when character is departed, to a more marked degree than that of physicians, is that of ministers of religion. Of course there have been cases, well-known to fame, of physicians failing utterly in the moral side of their nature, and yet, by reason of a peculiar genius and indomitable energy, still gaining a name, and becoming wealthy and influential. But such persons are rather the marks and beacons whereby we must direct our way, and avoid the dangerous places where we may become utterly wrecked. As a general, almost universal rule, the reputation of the physician must be spotless. He must know no fear and be subject to no reproach. Where can be found a better strength and inspiration for such noble life than in the religion of Jesus Christ? (D. D. Bevan, LL. D.) The proverb applied to our relation to foreign missions Is it not a fact, and is not the slow progress of mission-work among the heathen to be accounted for, to some extent, by the fact, that we, add other so-called Christian nations supply in our relations to heathen peoples, and in the aspect which much of our own national and social life presents to them, the very worst commentary imaginable upon the truths which our missionaries teach them? Can we expect to be able to win the world for Christ so long as it is evident that we have not submitted ourselves to His gracious yoke, and do not carry into practice the precepts He enjoined? Have not many of these heathen nations a right to turn round upon us, when we send them missionaries, attack their systems of religion, and make long prayers for their conversion, and to address us in the words of our text, “ Physician, heal thyself” ? 1. Take first the figure we cut in the matter of our international relations. 2. Are we as a mercantile community possessed of clean hands in the matter of the fabrics we send out into the markets which these people’ s necessities provide. 3. What do Chinese, and Hindoos, and Japanese, find among us, in our own land, when they visit us? Should we have any right to resent the taunt, if, when we bid them embrace our religion, they should point the finger of scorn at us, and say, “ Physician, heal thyself” ? 4. But it may be said, “ It is a merely nominal Christian nation or society which exhibits these wide and gross departures from the spirit and practice of the Christian religion. It is the Christian Church which sends out missionaries to the heathen. Well, what is likely to be the feeling with which intelligent heathens regard the attempts of the Christian Church to convert them? Are they not sure to smile at our efforts, and to say to us, “ Heal yourselves before you undertake to cure us. Apply the knife to the cancer which festers at the heart of your own society, before you undertake the amelioration of the condition of ours; convert your own countrymen first and then shall you have free access to ours; then will you prove to us, in the most convincing way, that your religion is all that you profess it to be” ? 5. Have not our denominational rivalries been often transplanted, and set in operation among peoples who cannot understand the merits of our disputes, or the grounds of our contending polities; and have they not inclined them, confused and confounded as they must be by distinctions and claims which are to them incomprehensible, to wash their hands of the responsibility of deciding between so many conflicting opinions, and to say to us, “ Learn to agree among yourselves as to what your religion is: learn, above all, to manifest more of its spirit in your relations to one another, before bringing it to is, and trying to persuade us to accept it” ? 6. What, then, is the practical outcome of all this? Not that we should withdrawn single missionary from his work, or relax a single aggressive endeavour, or reduce by a single penny the amount of our contributions to the missionary cause, No! let us rather redouble our zeal and multiply our gifts. But above all let us see to it, that as a people, as Churches, as members of Christ’ s Church, we no longer belie our teachings and profession by our example and our life. (J. R. Bailey.) To the inconsistent Christian I. BY WHOM ARE THE OF CHIEFLY ? 1. By infidels. 2. By rationalizing believers. 3. By eminent Christians. II. FOR WHAT PURPOSE ARE THE OF ? 1. TO invalidate the evidence of the Divine origin of Christianity. 2. To bring discredit on evangelical religion. 3. To elevate the standard of Christian attainment. III. ARE NOT SO AS THEY ARE TO BE. 1. All are not Christians who usurp the name. 2. All Christians are not responsible for the shortcomings even of genuine Christians. 3. All Christians are men, and in trying them by the standard of their religion, the same allowance must be made for them as for other men. 4. Christians should be judged by their general conduct, and not by individual actions. 5. Christians should be compared with men who are their peers in everything except their religion. IV. THE OF FURNISH NO VALID AGAINST THE DIVINE ORIGIN OF . 1. It does not recommend, or palliate, or defend them. 2. It makes ample provision for their removal by the doctrines it teaches, by the precepts it delivers, by the motives it presents, by the spiritual influence it promises. 3. It has produced many of the finest specimens of human character the world, throughout the whole course of its history, has ever witnessed. 4. It has exercised an indirect influence, of a most elevating description, on multitudes who are strangers to its saving power. 5. It has exercised on its most inconsistent disciples an ameliorating efficacy, to which no system of philosophy or religion can adduce parallels. V. THE OF FURNISH NO VALID TO THE OF GRACE, AS THEY ARE CALLED. 1. These doctrines leave all the usual arguments for a holy life untouched. 2. They remove that invincible obstruction to a holy life which arises from a sense of guilt, and from a self-righteous and superstitious attempt to earn, by personal merit, pardon and acceptance. 3. They furnish, in the love of God in Christ, the most powerful motive to a holy life that has ever been urged. 4. They secure an adequate supply of the influence of the Holy Spirit. VI. THE GRIEF WHICH THE OF SHOULD AWAKEN IN FELLOW-. 1. Because inconsistent professors bring dishonour on the names of God and of the Saviour. 2. Because inconsistent professors lower the general standard of Christian attainment. 3. Because inconsistent professors hang as a dead weight on the energies of the Church. 4. Because inconsistent professors are little likely to be brought to a saving acquaintance with Christ. VII. THE DUTIES WHICH THE OF IMPOSE ON THE FRIENDS OF CHRIST. 1. A habitual watchfulness over their conduct. 2. A conscientious discharge of relative duty. 3. A foregoing of certain rights and privileges for the good of others. 4. Thorough adoption of the great principles of Christianity. 5. Prayer. VIII. REAL OF . 1. It is inconsistent to live in the wilful and habitual practice of known sin. 2. It is inconsistent to pursue a doubtful course of action, without seeking to ascertain whether it is right or wrong. 3. It is inconsistent to conform to worldly habits of thinking and acting. 4. It is inconsistent to be chargeable with vices which respectable men of the world abhor. 5. It is inconsistent to be indifferent to the progress and prosperity of the cause of Christ. (G. Brooks.) Luke 4:26 Save unto Sarepta Description of Sarepta The ruins of Sarepta are scattered over the plain, at intervals, for more than a mile: one group is on the coast, and may be the remains of the ancient harbour. These lie on a tongue of land which forms a small bay, and pleasantly varies the monotony of the otherwise unbroken coast line. Fine crops brighten part of the plain around, though only the small village of Surafend, the modern representative of the ancient town, is actually surrounded by green. Sarepta was famous for its wine in the early Christian centuries, but it got its name in the Hebrew Bible--Zarpath--from its being in still older days a chief centre of the glass works of Phoenicia--the word meaning “ melting-houses.” It belonged to the territory of Sidon, and must have been a large place, if we may judge from the number of rock-tombs at the foot of the hills. Its supreme interest, however, to all Bible readers lies in its connection with the great Prophet Elijah. A place is still shown at the old harbour where a Christian Church once stood, on the alleged site of the widow’ s house in which the prophet lived. But no value is to be attached to such a localization, though the spot is still called “ The Grave of Eliiah,” in the belief that he finally died there. During the reign of the Crusaders, Sarepta was strongly fortified, and made the seat of a bishop, who was subject to the Archbishop of Sidon; but as early as the end of the thirteenth century it had sunk into utter desolation. Legend has tried to identify it with the home of the Syrophcenician woman whose daughter Christ healed, but there is no ground for this fancy. Its fame must always rest, for Christians, on the noble lesson of faith in God taught by the prophet on the one hand, and by the great-hearted widow on the other. (C. Geikie, D. D.) All men are thought of by God There is a place in each mother’ s heart for every child that is given her, and do you not suppose there is a place in God’ s heart for every child that He has created? Do you not suppose that all men stand before Him plain, and individual, and distinct? Yes, you stand before God as if there were not another man in the universe. As men stand before us without mistake of identity, and as all that we think and feel of them we think and feel of them as individuals, so we stand before God, and all that He thinks and feels of us He thinks and feels of us as individuals. He calls every one of us by name, and He does it a great deal more than we know. How much does the child know of the thoughts of the mother who sings and rocks its cradle while it sleeps, and breathes its name? When the child is gone from home for a visit or for school, how much does it know of the thoughts that are beaded and strung, pearl-like, before God, on its account, or of the frequency with which its name is uttered? If the child could follow its father’ s and mother’ s voice, in the closet and elsewhere, how often would it hear its own sweet name sounding all the way up to heaven! And if this is so with earthly parents, may we not suppose, when we remember the boundlessness of God’ s love, that there is not a child of His on which He does not bestow special thought and attention? (H. W.Beecher.) Luke 4:28; Luke 4:31 And all they in the synagogue, when they heard these things, were filled with wrath Nazareth; or, Jesus rejected by His friends I. WHO WERE THESE OF CHRIST? They have their types and representatives now. 1. They were those who were nearest related to the Saviour. They were the people of His own town. 2. They were those who knew most about Christ. The whole story of the wondrous Child was known to them. 3. They were people who supposed that they had a claim upon Christ. They no doubt argued, “ He is a Nazareth man, and of course He is in duty bound to help Nazareth.” II. WHY THEY THUS REJECT THE MESSIAH. 1. I should not wonder but what the groundwork of their dissatisfaction was laid in the fact that they did not feel themselves to be the persons to whom the Saviour claimed to have a commission. Observe, He said, in the eighteenth verse, that He was “ anointed to preach the gospel to the poor.” Now, the poorest ones in the synagogue may have felt pleased at that word; but as it was almost a maxim with the Jewish doctors that it did not signify what became of the poor--for few but the rich could enter heaven--the very announcement of a gospel for the poor must have sounded tothem awfully democratical and extreme, and must have laid in their minds the foundation of a prejudice. Did not some of them say, “ We have worn our phylacteries, and made broad the borders of our garments; we have not eaten except with washen hands; we have strained out all gnats from our wine; we have kept the fasts, and the feasts, and we have made long prayers, why should we feel any poverty of spirit? “ Hence they felt there was nothing in Christ’ s mission for them. When He next mentioned the broken-hearted, they were not at all conscious of any need of a broken heart. They felt heart-whole, self-satisfied, perfectly content. What is the acceptable year of the Lord to us, if it is only for bruised captive ones? We are not such. At a glance you perceive, my brethren, the reason why in these days Jesus Christ is rejected by so many church-going and chapel-going people. 2. I entertain little doubt but what the men of Nazareth were angry with Christ because of His exceeding high claims. He said, “ The spirit of Jehovah is upon Me.” They started at that. And so men now reject Christ because He sets Himself too high, and asks more of them than they are willing to give. 3. Another reason might be found in the fact that they were not for receiving Christ until He had exhibited some great wonder. They craved for miracles. Their minds were in a sickly state. A young man yonder has said to himself, “ If I had a dream, as I hear So-and-so had, or if there should happen to me some very remarkable event in providence, which should just meet my taste; or if I could feel to-day some sudden shock of I know not what, then I would believe.” Thus you dream that my Lord and Master is to be dictated to by you! You are beggars at His gate, asking for mercy, and you must needs draw up rules and regulations as to how He shall give that mercy. 4. Again, and perhaps this time I may hit the head of the nail in some cases, though I suppose not in many in this place, part of the irritation which existed in the minds of the men of Nazareth was caused by the peculiar doctrine which the Saviour preached upon the subject of election. He laid it down that God had a right to dispense His favours just as He pleased, and that in doing so He often selected the most unlikely objects. They did not like this. The doctrine of free grace to the needy is ever a stumbling-block to men. 5. They loved not such plain personal speaking as the Saviour gave them. 6. They could not bear to hear Him hint that He meant to bless the Gentiles. III. And now, WHAT CAME OF IT? 1. They thrust the Saviour out of the synagogue, and then they tried to hurl Him down the brow of the hill. These were His friends, good, respectable people: who would have believed it of them? You saw that goodly company in the synagogue who sang so sweetly, and listened so attentively, would you have guessed that there was a murderer inside every one of their coats? It only needed the opportunity to bring the murderer out; for there they are all trying to throw Jesus down the hill. We do not know how much devil there is inside any one of us; if we are not renewed and changed by grace, we are heirs of wrath even as others. 2. But what came of it? Why, though they thus thrust Him out, they could not hurt the Saviour. The hurt was all their own. (C. H. Spurgeon.) Men seldom see the great in what is about them We ride without eyes under Greylock, and go to the White Mountains for sublimity. The moon in Venice, and the sky in Naples, have more charm than here at home. The weeds of other climates become our flowers, and our flowers seem to us but weeds. There is little heroism, little devotion and nobility on our square mile; there are no epics or lyrics of human deed and feeling sung in our streets; the great, the beautiful, the excellent, is at a distance. Why we think thus it may be hard to tell, unless it is from instinctive reverence on the one hand, and on the other because the realization of greatness makes us aware of our own littleness, and so provokes us to every danger. So that what we read of here is no strange history, but only an illustration of a daily fact: a great spirit rejected by friends and neighbours; it is only the carpenter’ s Son, the boy who grew up in the midst of us, and now, forsooth, claiming to be a prophet! And so they drive Him out of their city. (T. T. Munger.) Cause of the Nazarenes’ wrath What was actually the cause of the sudden upboil of these men’ s wrath? It was that their selfesteem was wounded. Christ declared that only the humble and meek would be able to receive Him. Elijah was persecuted, and received only by one poor widow. Naaman was unworthy to be healed till he humbled himself to dip in despised Jordan. The men of Nazareth understood the inference. It was not flattering to their pride; they could not be fed and healed unless they became humble, and submitted to the Lord’ s Christ. This they would not do--and they cast Him out of their city. As with Christ, so with His Church, and with His messengers. As long as they preach a gospel which does not touch man’ s pride and lower his selfesteem, they wonder at the graciousness of the gospel; but the moment it bids them not to be wise in their own conceits, insists on submission of body, soul, and reason to Christ, and calls to a lowly walk and self-abasement, then men rise up against the Church, and its ministers, and against the true gospel of Christ, and would, if they could, cast it out of their city, and hurl it from their thoughts. (J. Baring. Gould, M. A.) Capernaum It lay on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee, and was, in Christ’ s day, a thriving, busy town. The highway to the sea, from Damascus to Ptolemais--now Acre--ran through it, bringing no little local traffic, and also opening the markets of the coast to the rich yield of the neighbouring farms, orchards, and vineyards, and the abundant returns of the fisheries of the lake. The townsfolk thus, as a rule, enjoyed the comfort and plenty we see in the homes of Peter and Matthew, and were even open to the charge of being “ winebibbers and gluttonous,” which implied generous entertainments They were proud of their town, and counted on its steady growth and unbounded prosperity, little dreaming of the ruin which would one day make even its site a question. (Dr. Geikie.) Dr. Robinson, Captain Conder, and others place the site of Capernaum at Khan Mingeh, a spot of unique interest and beauty. Captain Conder certainly adduces strong reasons in favour of this hypothesis. (L. Oliphant.) Not far from the banks of the Jordan stands Capernaum (now Tell. Hum), and here we find ourselves in the very centre of the Lord’ s Galilean ministry. It was at Capernaum that He dwelt. This was the “ startingpoint of His journeys, and to this He returned after going about from place to place doing good. (E. Stapfer, D. D.) Blindness of prejudice A lady who excelled in making wax flowers and fruit was often criticised severely by her friends, and her work decried, as she thought, unjustly. She convicted them by showing an apple, which they as usual found fault with, one as to the shape, another as to colour, and so on. When they had finished, the lady cut the apple and ate it. (Baxendale’ s Anecdotes.) Overawed by the Spirit The Rev. Charles G. Finney gives, in the words following, an account of the effects of a Christian look on a certain occasion:--“ I once preached, for the first time, in a manufacturing village. The next morning I went into a manufacturing establishment to view its operations. As I passed into the weaving department, I beheld a great company of young women, some of whom, I observed, were looking at me and then at each other, in a manner that indicated a trifling spirit, and that they knew me. I, however, knew none of them. As I approached nearer to those who had recognized me, they seemed to increase in their manifestation of lightness of mind. Their levity made a peculiar impression upon me; I felt it to my very heart. I stopped short and looked at them, I know not how, as my whole mind was absorbed with their guilt and danger. As I settled my countenance upon them, I observed that one of them became very much agitated. A thread broke. She attempted to mend it; but her hands trembled in such a manner that she could not do it. I immediately observed that the sensation was spreading, and had become universal among that class of triflers. I looked steadily at them, until one after another gave up, and paid no more attention to their looms. They fell on their knees, and the influence spread throughout the whole room. I had not spoken a word, as the noise of the looms would have prevented my being heard if I had. In a few minutes all work was abandoned, and tears and lamentations filled the room. At this moment the owner of the factory, who was himself an unconverted man, came in, accompanied, I believe, by the superintendent, who was a professed Christian. When the owner saw the state of things, he said to the superintendent, ‘ Stop the mill.’ What he saw seemed to pierce him to the heart. ‘ It is more important,’ he hurriedly remarked, ‘ that these souls should be saved than that this mill should run.’ As soon as the noise of the machinery had ceased, the owner inquired, ‘ What shall we do? We must have a place to meet where we can receive instruction.’ The superintendent replied, ‘ The mule-room will do.’ The mules were run up out of the way, and all the hands were notified, and assembled in that room. We had a marvellous meeting. I prayed with them, and gave them such instructions as at the time they could bear. The Word was with power; and within a few days, as I was informed, nearly every hand in that great establishment, together with the owner, had hope in Christ.” (Bate’ s Influence of Mind on Mind.) Remarkable change in the conduct of a mob A missionary who had been sent to a strange land to proclaim the “ gospel of the kingdom of God” and who had passed through many hardships and was often in danger of losing his life, through the persecutions excited against him, came to a place where he had often before, at no small risk, preached Christ crucified. About fifty people who had received good impressions from the Word of God, assembled: he began his discourse; and after he had preached about thirty minutes, an outrageous mob surrounded the house, armed with different instruments of death, and breathing the most sanguinary purposes. The preacher then addressed his little flock to this effect, “ These outrageous people seek not you but me, if I continue in the house, they will soon pull it down and we shall be all buried in its ruins, I will therefore in the name of God go out to them and you will be safe. As soon as the preacher made his appearance the savages became instantly as silent and as still as night: he walked forward and they divided to the right and to the left, leaving a passage about four feet wide for himself and a young man who followed him to walk in. The narrator who was present on the occasion goes on to say, This was one of the most affecting spectacles I ever witnessed, an infuriated mob without any visible cause (for the preacher spoke not one word) became in a moment as calm as lambs. They seemed struck with amazement bordering on stupefaction; they stared and stood speechless, and after they had fallen back to right and left to leave him a free passage, they were as motionless as statues. They assembled with the full purpose to destroy the man who came to show them the way of salvation, but he, passing through the midst of them, went his way. (Dr. Adam Clarke.) Luke 4:28; Luke 4:31 And all they in the synagogue, when they heard these things, were filled with wrath Nazareth; or, Jesus rejected by His friends I. WHO WERE THESE OF CHRIST? They have their types and representatives now. 1. They were those who were nearest related to the Saviour. They were the people of His own town. 2. They were those who knew most about Christ. The whole story of the wondrous Child was known to them. 3. They were people who supposed that they had a claim upon Christ. They no doubt argued, “ He is a Nazareth man, and of course He is in duty bound to help Nazareth.” II. WHY THEY THUS REJECT THE MESSIAH. 1. I should not wonder but what the groundwork of their dissatisfaction was laid in the fact that they did not feel themselves to be the persons to whom the Saviour claimed to have a commission. Observe, He said, in the eighteenth verse, that He was “ anointed to preach the gospel to the poor.” Now, the poorest ones in the synagogue may have felt pleased at that word; but as it was almost a maxim with the Jewish doctors that it did not signify what became of the poor--for few but the rich could enter heaven--the very announcement of a gospel for the poor must have sounded tothem awfully democratical and extreme, and must have laid in their minds the foundation of a prejudice. Did not some of them say, “ We have worn our phylacteries, and made broad the borders of our garments; we have not eaten except with washen hands; we have strained out all gnats from our wine; we have kept the fasts, and the feasts, and we have made long prayers, why should we feel any poverty of spirit? “ Hence they felt there was nothing in Christ’ s mission for them. When He next mentioned the broken-hearted, they were not at all conscious of any need of a broken heart. They felt heart-whole, self-satisfied, perfectly content. What is the acceptable year of the Lord to us, if it is only for bruised captive ones? We are not such. At a glance you perceive, my brethren, the reason why in these days Jesus Christ is rejected by so many church-going and chapel-going people. 2. I entertain little doubt but what the men of Nazareth were angry with Christ because of His exceeding high claims. He said, “ The spirit of Jehovah is upon Me.” They started at that. And so men now reject Christ because He sets Himself too high, and asks more of them than they are willing to give. 3. Another reason might be found in the fact that they were not for receiving Christ until He had exhibited some great wonder. They craved for miracles. Their minds were in a sickly state. A young man yonder has said to himself, “ If I had a dream, as I hear So-and-so had, or if there should happen to me some very remarkable event in providence, which should just meet my taste; or if I could feel to-day some sudden shock of I know not what, then I would believe.” Thus you dream that my Lord and Master is to be dictated to by you! You are beggars at His gate, asking for mercy, and you must needs draw up rules and regulations as to how He shall give that mercy. 4. Again, and perhaps this time I may hit the head of the nail in some cases, though I suppose not in many in this place, part of the irritation which existed in the minds of the men of Nazareth was caused by the peculiar doctrine which the Saviour preached upon the subject of election. He laid it down that God had a right to dispense His favours just as He pleased, and that in doing so He often selected the most unlikely objects. They did not like this. The doctrine of free grace to the needy is ever a stumbling-block to men. 5. They loved not such plain personal speaking as the Saviour gave them. 6. They could not bear to hear Him hint that He meant to bless the Gentiles. III. And now, WHAT CAME OF IT? 1. They thrust the Saviour out of the synagogue, and then they tried to hurl Him down the brow of the hill. These were His friends, good, respectable people: who would have believed it of them? You saw that goodly company in the synagogue who sang so sweetly, and listened so attentively, would you have guessed that there was a murderer inside every one of their coats? It only needed the opportunity to bring the murderer out; for there they are all trying to throw Jesus down the hill. We do not know how much devil there is inside any one of us; if we are not renewed and changed by grace, we are heirs of wrath even as others. 2. But what came of it? Why, though they thus thrust Him out, they could not hurt the Saviour. The hurt was all their own. (C. H. Spurgeon.) Men seldom see the great in what is about them We ride without eyes under Greylock, and go to the White Mountains for sublimity. The moon in Venice, and the sky in Naples, have more charm than here at home. The weeds of other climates become our flowers, and our flowers seem to us but weeds. There is little heroism, little devotion and nobility on our square mile; there are no epics or lyrics of human deed and feeling sung in our streets; the great, the beautiful, the excellent, is at a distance. Why we think thus it may be hard to tell, unless it is from instinctive reverence on the one hand, and on the other because the realization of greatness makes us aware of our own littleness, and so provokes us to every danger. So that what we read of here is no strange history, but only an illustration of a daily fact: a great spirit rejected by friends and neighbours; it is only the carpenter’ s Son, the boy who grew up in the midst of us, and now, forsooth, claiming to be a prophet! And so they drive Him out of their city. (T. T. Munger.) Cause of the Nazarenes’ wrath What was actually the cause of the sudden upboil of these men’ s wrath? It was that their selfesteem was wounded. Christ declared that only the humble and meek would be able to receive Him. Elijah was persecuted, and received only by one poor widow. Naaman was unworthy to be healed till he humbled himself to dip in despised Jordan. The men of Nazareth understood the inference. It was not flattering to their pride; they could not be fed and healed unless they became humble, and submitted to the Lord’ s Christ. This they would not do--and they cast Him out of their city. As with Christ, so with His Church, and with His messengers. As long as they preach a gospel which does not touch man’ s pride and lower his selfesteem, they wonder at the graciousness of the gospel; but the moment it bids them not to be wise in their own conceits, insists on submission of body, soul, and reason to Christ, and calls to a lowly walk and self-abasement, then men rise up against the Church, and its ministers, and against the true gospel of Christ, and would, if they could, cast it out of their city, and hurl it from their thoughts. (J. Baring. Gould, M. A.) Capernaum It lay on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee, and was, in Christ’ s day, a thriving, busy town. The highway to the sea, from Damascus to Ptolemais--now Acre--ran through it, bringing no little local traffic, and also opening the markets of the coast to the rich yield of the neighbouring farms, orchards, and vineyards, and the abundant returns of the fisheries of the lake. The townsfolk thus, as a rule, enjoyed the comfort and plenty we see in the homes of Peter and Matthew, and were even open to the charge of being “ winebibbers and gluttonous,” which implied generous entertainments They were proud of their town, and counted on its steady growth and unbounded prosperity, little dreaming of the ruin which would one day make even its site a question. (Dr. Geikie.) Dr. Robinson, Captain Conder, and others place the site of Capernaum at Khan Mingeh, a spot of unique interest and beauty. Captain Conder certainly adduces strong reasons in favour of this hypothesis. (L. Oliphant.) Not far from the banks of the Jordan stands Capernaum (now Tell. Hum), and here we find ourselves in the very centre of the Lord’ s Galilean ministry. It was at Capernaum that He dwelt. This was the “ startingpoint of His journeys, and to this He returned after going about from place to place doing good. (E. Stapfer, D. D.) Blindness of prejudice A lady who excelled in making wax flowers and fruit was often criticised severely by her friends, and her work decried, as she thought, unjustly. She convicted them by showing an apple, which they as usual found fault with, one as to the shape, another as to colour, and so on. When they had finished, the lady cut the apple and ate it. (Baxendale’ s Anecdotes.) Overawed by the Spirit The Rev. Charles G. Finney gives, in the words following, an account of the effects of a Christian look on a certain occasion:--“ I once preached, for the first time, in a manufacturing village. The next morning I went into a manufacturing establishment to view its operations. As I passed into the weaving department, I beheld a great company of young women, some of whom, I observed, were looking at me and then at each other, in a manner that indicated a trifling spirit, and that they knew me. I, however, knew none of them. As I approached nearer to those who had recognized me, they seemed to increase in their manifestation of lightness of mind. Their levity made a peculiar impression upon me; I felt it to my very heart. I stopped short and looked at them, I know not how, as my whole mind was absorbed with their guilt and danger. As I settled my countenance upon them, I observed that one of them became very much agitated. A thread broke. She attempted to mend it; but her hands trembled in such a manner that she could not do it. I immediately observed that the sensation was spreading, and had become universal among that class of triflers. I looked steadily at them, until one after another gave up, and paid no more attention to their looms. They fell on their knees, and the influence spread throughout the whole room. I had not spoken a word, as the noise of the looms would have prevented my being heard if I had. In a few minutes all work was abandoned, and tears and lamentations filled the room. At this moment the owner of the factory, who was himself an unconverted man, came in, accompanied, I believe, by the superintendent, who was a professed Christian. When the owner saw the state of things, he said to the superintendent, ‘ Stop the mill.’ What he saw seemed to pierce him to the heart. ‘ It is more important,’ he hurriedly remarked, ‘ that these souls should be saved than that this mill should run.’ As soon as the noise of the machinery had ceased, the owner inquired, ‘ What shall we do? We must have a place to meet where we can receive instruction.’ The superintendent replied, ‘ The mule-room will do.’ The mules were run up out of the way, and all the hands were notified, and assembled in that room. We had a marvellous meeting. I prayed with them, and gave them such instructions as at the time they could bear. The Word was with power; and within a few days, as I was informed, nearly every hand in that great establishment, together with the owner, had hope in Christ.” (Bate’ s Influence of Mind on Mind.) Remarkable change in the conduct of a mob A missionary who had been sent to a strange land to proclaim the “ gospel of the kingdom of God” and who had passed through many hardships and was often in danger of losing his life, through the persecutions excited against him, came to a place where he had often before, at no small risk, preached Christ crucified. About fifty people who had received good impressions from the Word of God, assembled: he began his discourse; and after he had preached about thirty minutes, an outrageous mob surrounded the house, armed with different instruments of death, and breathing the most sanguinary purposes. The preacher then addressed his little flock to this effect, “ These outrageous people seek not you but me, if I continue in the house, they will soon pull it down and we shall be all buried in its ruins, I will therefore in the name of God go out to them and you will be safe. As soon as the preacher made his appearance the savages became instantly as silent and as still as night: he walked forward and they divided to the right and to the left, leaving a passage about four feet wide for himself and a young man who followed him to walk in. The narrator who was present on the occasion goes on to say, This was one of the most affecting spectacles I ever witnessed, an infuriated mob without any visible cause (for the preacher spoke not one word) became in a moment as calm as lambs. They seemed struck with amazement bordering on stupefaction; they stared and stood speechless, and after they had fallen back to right and left to leave him a free passage, they were as motionless as statues. They assembled with the full purpose to destroy the man who came to show them the way of salvation, but he, passing through the midst of them, went his way. (Dr. Adam Clarke.) Luke 4:32 For His word was with power The word and power Witness the ministry of Chalmers. It is said that Professor Young, who occupied the chair of Greek in the university, on one occasion “ was so electrified that he leaped up from his seat upon the bench near the pulpit, and stood, breathless and motionless, gazing at the preacher, until the burst was over, the tears all the while rolling down his cheeks.” Dr. Wardlaw describes one scene he witnessed as follows:--“ It was a transcendently grand, a glorious burst. The energy of the Doctor’ s action corresponded. Intense emotion beamed from his countenance. I cannot describe the appearance of his face better than by saying, as Foster said of Hall’ s, it was ‘ lighted up almost into a glare.’ The congregation--in so far as the spell under which I was allowed me to observe them--were intensely excited, leaning forward in the pews like a forest bent under the power of the hurricane, looking steadfastly at the preacher and listening in breathless wonderment. One young man, apparently by his dress a sailor, started to his feet and stood till it was over. As soon as it was concluded there was (as invariably was the case at the close of the Doctor’ s bursts) a deep sigh, or rather a gasp for breath, accompanied by a movement through the whole audience.” (Bishop Simpson.) His word was with power We remember having heard a departed friend tell how, when a boy, he was taken by his father, one still, summer evening across the Northamptonshire fields--I believe it was to the little village of Thrapstone--to hear Robert Hall. It was one of those old village chapels, with the square galleries. As in the instance of Chalmers, the place was crowded with plain farmer folk and a sprinkling of intelligent ministers and gentry from the neighbourhood. The minister came m, a simple, heavy, but still impressive-looking man, one whose presence compelled you to look at him. In due course he announced his text, “ The end of all things is at hand; be sober and watch.” Quite unlike Chalmers, his voice was not shattering, but thin and weak. There was no action at all, or only a kind of nervous twitching of the fingers; more especially as the hand moved and rested upon the lower part of the back, where the speaker was suffering almost incessant pain. As he went on, beneath the deepening evening shades falling through the windows of the old chapel, his voice first chained and then charmed and fascinated his hearers one after another; the whole place seemed as if beneath a great spell. As he talked about “ the end,” the spell upon the people seemed to begin to work itself out into an awful, fearful restlessness; first one, then another, rose from their seats, and stood stretching forward with a kind of fright and wonder. Still there was no action, only the following on of that thin voice, with a marvellous witchery of apt and melodious words, but through them “ the end of all things” sounded like some warning bell. More people rose, stretching forward. Many of those who rose first, as if they felt some strange power upon them, they knew not what, got up and stood upon their seats until, when the great master ceased, dosing his passionate and pathetic accents, the whole audience was upon its feet, intensely alive with interest, as if each one had heard in the distance the presages and preludes of the coming end, and felt that it was time to prepare. My friend used to speak of that never-forgotten moment, that summer evening in the old chapel as one of the most memorable of his life. (E. Paxton Hood.) Spiritual power known only by its effects Nor is it the only exhibition of power. Consider the chemical affinity that draws together the acids and alkalies. Think of the magnetic power which makes the steel filings, though in the midst of dust and rubbish and clippings of tin and brass, leave them all and fly up and kiss the magnet. It touches the pivoted needle, and men and treasures are secure upon the stormy ocean by its unerring guidance. The winds blow ever so fiercely; the waves roll ever so furiously; the vessel pitches as though it would founder; and yet that strange influence, unseen, unheard, unfelt, holds the needle in its place. Who can tell what is power? We see it in its effects; we measure it in its results. (Bishop Simpson.) The presence of Christ a source of power There is a beautiful legend of St. Chrysostom. He had been educated carefully; was a man of culture, and devoted to his calling; and yet in his earlier ministry he was not remarkable for his success. At one time he had what seemed to be a vision. He thought he was in the pulpit, and in the chancel and round about him were holy angels. In the midst of them and directly before him was the Lord Jesus; and he was to preach to the congregation assembled beyond. The vision or the reverie deeply affected his spirit.. The next day he ascended the pulpit he felt the impression of the scene. He thought of the holy angels as if gathered around him; of the blessed Saviour as directly before him--as listening to His words, and beholding His Spirit. He became intensely earnest; and from that day forward a wonderful power attended his ministrations. Multitudes gathered around him wherever he preached. Though he had the simple name of John while he lived, the ages have called him Chrysostom, the “ golden-mouthed.” (Bishop Simpson.) The causes considered that made our Lord’ s word with power I shall endeavour to show, therefore, that the word of our blessed Lord was always attended with power-- I. From the truth and disinterestedness of His doctrines, and the superior excellence of His sentiments. II. From the gracious manner in which those sentiments were delivered. III. From the openness and sincerity of His reproof; and-- IV. From His example. (J. Hewlett, D. D.) Luke 4:33-37 And in the synagogue there was a man, which had a spirit of an unclean devil The expulsion of the unclean spirit I. Observe THE THE UNCLEAN SPIRIT MADE concerning the Redeemer. Here Christ’ s righteousness and purity are admitted. 1. He is declared to be “ the Holy One of God.” (1) God’ s Son--God’ s Servant. (2) Having God’ s holy nature and attributes. (3) Formal as to His manhood by the overshadowing of the Holy Ghost. (4) Coming into the world to exhibit in all its complete excellency God’ s holy law. (5) On the holy mission of redeeming men from sin, and bringing them to the blessedness of personal holiness. (6) In the world for the express purpose of setting up a holy kingdom--a kingdom of righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost. 2. This confession was bold and public. 3. It was deprecatory. The language of dread. The demons knew their time was limited, their power circumscribed, and that their hellish rule and dominion was to be overthrown by the Son of God. II. Observe THE COURSE CHRIST ADOPTED. 1. Rebuke. 2. Expulsion. III. Notice THE RESULTS WHICH . 1. The unclean spirit gives a last struggle to injure his victim. 2. He came out of the man. 3. The people gave homage and glory to Christ. 4. The fame of Christ was spread abroad. Application: 1. The unrenewed mind is under the power of the unclean spirit. 2. Those who are thus influenced are in circumstances of misery and peril. 3. Christ alone has power to save and deliver. 4. In the gospel this deliverance is proclaimed. (Jabez Burns, D. D.) Demoniacal possession Should the possessed mentioned by the evangelists be regarded simply as persons afflicted after the same manner as our lunatics, whose derangement was attributed by Jewish and heathen superstition to supernatural influence? Or did God really permit, at this extraordinary epoch in history, an exceptional display of diabolical power? Or, lastly, should certain morbid conditions, now existing, which medical science attributes to purely natural causes, either physical or psychical, be put down, at the present day also, to the action of higher causes? These are the three hypotheses which present themselves to the mind. Several of the demoniacs healed by Jesus certainly exhibit symptoms very like those which are observed at the present day in those who are simply afflicted; e.g., the epileptic child (Luke 9:37). These strange conditions in every case, therefore, were based on a real disorder, either physical or physicopsychical. The evangelists are so far from being ignorant of this, that they constantly class the demoniacs under the category of the sick, never under that of the vicious. The possessed have nothing in common with the “ children of the devil.” Nevertheless these afflicted persons are constantly made a class by themselves. On what does this distinction rest? On this leading fact, that those who are simply sick enjoy their own personal consciousness, and are in possession of their own will; while in the possessed these faculties are, as it were, confiscated to a foreign power, with which the sick person identifies himself. How is this peculiar system to be explained? Josephus, under Hellenic influence, thought that it should be attributed to the souls of wicked men who came after death seeking a domicile in the living. In the eyes of the people the strange guest was a demon, a fallen angel. This latter opinion Jesus must have shared. Strictly speaking, His colloquies with the demoniacs might be explained by an accommodation to popular prejudice, and the sentiments of those who were thus afflicted; but in His private conversations with His disciples, He must, whatever was true, have disclosed His real thoughts, and sought to enlighten them. But He does nothing of the kind; on the contrary, He gives the apostles and disciples power to “ cast out devils” (Luke 9:1), and to tread on “ all the power of the enemy” (Luke 10:19). In Mark 9:29 He distinguishes a certain class of demons that can only be driven out by prayer and fasting. In Luke 11:21 He explains the facility with which He casts out demons by the personal victory which He had achieved over Satan at the beginning. He therefore admitted the intervention of this being in these mysterious conditions. If this is so, is it not natural to admit that He who exercised over this, as over all other kinds of maladies, such absolute power, best understood its nature, and that therefore His views upon the point should determine ours? Are there not times when God permits a superior evil power to invade humanity? Just as God sent Jesus at a period in history when moral and social evil had reached its culminating point, did not He also permit an extraordinary manifestation of diabolical power to take place at the same time? By this means Jesus could be proclaimed externally and visibly as the conqueror of the enemy of men, as He who came to “ destroy the works of the devil” in the moral sense of the expression. As to the present state of things, it must not be compared with the times of Jesus. Not only might the latter have been of an exceptional character; but the beneficent influence which the gospel has exercised in restoring man to Himself, and bringing his conscience under the power of the holy and true God, may have brought about a complete change in the spiritual world. Lastly, apart from all this, is there nothing mysterious, from a scientific point of view, in certain cases of mental derangement, particularly in those conditions in which the will is, as it were, confiscated to, and paralyzed by, an unknown power? And after deduction has been made for all those forms of mental maladies which a discriminating analysis can explain by moral and physical relations, will not an impartial physician agree that there is a residuum of cases respecting which he must say: Non liquet? Possession is a caricature of inspiration. The latter, attaching itself to the moral essence of a man, confirms him for ever in the possession of his true self; the former, while profoundly opposed to the nature of the subject, takes advantage of its state of morbid passivity, and leads to the forfeiture of personality. The one is the highest work of God; the other, of the devil. (F. Coder, D. D.) The demoniac in the synagogue Strange men in strange places I Think of a devil being in the synagogue! It is the same to-day. The sanctuary draws into itself all sorts of human character; not only the rich and the poor, but the best and the worst are there. Evil knows good and hates it. Evil is not so powerful in reality as goodness, though apparently much mightier. Jesus is greater than all evil spirits. “ Art Thou come to destroy us?” is a significant inquiry. “ For this purpose was He manifested, that He might destroy the works of the devil.” (J. Parker, D. D.) The King casting out evil spirits The superstition which connects demons with a wilderness has been used to explain our Lord’ s temptation. That explanation has nothing to do with the story given us by the evangelists. They describe the encounter of the Spirit of Christ with the spirit of evil; the test of their veracity lies in the experience of human beings in cities as much as in deserts, in one period as much as another. It seems to me, then, most reasonable, not only for the sake of anything which may have been peculiar to that time, but for the sake of every time, that the evangelist should give these victories over demons a prominent place in the history of Redemption. The impression produced in the synagogue of Capernaum is the simplest testimony to the nature of such a sign. “ What a word is this? “ they said. There was the sense of One who did not charm ‘ away evils by a look or a touch. The calm Divine energy with which He declared that the kingdom of God was indeed among men--that God’ s power was manifesting itself as of old in breaking fetters, insetting captives free--this came forth in the command that the unclean spirit should depart. The evil spirit was not the man’ s lord. The kingdoms of this world and the glory of them were not his. Holiness was mightier. (F. D. Maurice.) Possessed by the devil An affecting case was that of William Pope, of Bolton, in Lancashire. At this place there is a considerable number of deistical persons, who assemble together on Sundays to confirm each other in their infidelity. The oaths and imprecations that arc uttered in that meeting are too horrible to relate, while they toss the Word of God upon the floor, kick it round the house, and tread it under their feet. This William Pope, who had been a steady Methodist for some years, became at length a professed Deist, and joined himself to this hellish crew. After he had been an associate of this company some time, he was taken ill, and the nature of his complaint was such, that he confessed the hand of God was upon him, and he declared he longed to die, that he might go to hell, many times praying earnestly for damnation. Two of the Methodist preachers, Messrs. Rhodes and Barrowclough, were sent for to talk to and pray with the unhappy man. But he was so far from being thankful for their advice and assistance, that he spit in their faces, threw at them whatever he could lay his hands upon, struck one of them upon the head with all his might, and often cried out, when they were praying, “ Lord, do not hear their prayers!” If they said, “ Lord, save his scull” he cried, “ Lord, damn my scull” often adding, “ My damnation is sealed, and I long to be in hell!” In this way he continued, sometimes better and sometimes worse, till he died. He was frequently visited by his deistical brethren during his illness, who would fain have persuaded the public he was out of his senses, which was by no means the ease. The writer of this account saw the unhappy man once, but never desired to see him again. Mr. Rhodes justly said he was as full of the devil as- he could hold. (Simpson’ s “ Plea for religion.”) The testimony of the evil spirit to Christ, and His refusal to accept it Earth has not recognized her King; but heaven has borne witness to Him, and now hell must bear its witness too. But what could have been the motive to this testimony, thus borne? It is strange that the evil spirit should, without compulsion, proclaim to the world the presence in the midst of it of the Holy One of God, of Him who should thus bring all the unholy, on which he battened, and by which he lived, to an end. Might we not rather expect that he should have denied, or sought to obscure, the glory of Christ’ s person? It cannot be replied that this was an unwilling confession to the truth, forcibly extorted by Christ’ s superior power, seeing that it displeased Him in whose favour it professed to be borne, and this so much that He at once stopped the mouth of the utterer. It remains, then, either to understand this as the cry of abject and servile fear, that with fawning and flatteries would fain avert from itself the doom which, with Christ’ s presence in the world, must evidently be near; or else to regard this testimony as intended only to injure the estimation of Him in whose behalf it was rendered. There was hope that the truth itself might be brought into suspicion and discredit, thus receiving attestation from the spirit of lies; and these confessions of Jesus as the Christ may have been meant to traverse and mar His work. The fact that Christ would not allow the testimony goes some way to make this the preferable explanation. Observe it is not here as elsewhere, “ The Lord rebuke thee,” but He rebukes in His own name and by His own authority. (Archbishop Trench.) Christ at Capernaum I. HIS --“ He came down to Capernaum, a city of Galilee, and taught them on the Sabbath days. And they were astonished at His doctrine: for His Word was with power.” 1. Observe the place--Capernaum. 2. The season--“ The Sabbath days.” Not that He forebore on other days; His lips always “ dropped like an honey-comb.” 3. Then the impression. II. LET US PASS FROM HIS TO HIS MIRACLE. 1. Let us glance at the subject of this miracle. It was “ a man who was possessed of a spirit of an unclean devil.” Satan has much to do in the synagogue--much more than in many other places. In Macgowan’ s “ Dialogues of Devils” there is this relation. Two infernal spirits having met, one of them very warm and weary, and the other cool and lively; after a little explanation it was found that he who was cool and lively, had been at the playhouse where he had nothing to do, where they were all with him, where they were all of one mind, all doing his work: whereas the other who was warm and weary, said, “ I have been at a place of worship, and I had much to do there; to make some sleep; to induce some to hear for others instead of themselves; to lead the thoughts of some, like the fool’ s eye, unto the ends of the earth; to pick up as fast as I could the seed which was sown in the heart; and to turn away the point of the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God, lest it should pierce even to the dividing of soul and body, and of the joints and marrow, and be a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.” I hope, none of you employ him thus. (1) First, aversion. “ Let us alone” --as it is in the margin,--“ away” ; be off. Satan wished to have nothing to do with Christ. (2) Then it expressed fear--“ Art Thou come to destroy us?” (3) It expressed commendation--“ I know Thee, who Thou art, the Holy One of God. Here, you see, the devil not only believed much, but talked well. 2. Let us look at the Author of this miracle, and we shall see how the enemy of souls is under the dominion of the Lord Jesus; that though an adversary, yet he is restrained, he is chained. 3. Then, as to the spectators--“ They were all amazed, and spake among themselves, saying, What a Word is this l for with authority and power He commandeth the unclean spirits, and they come out.” Oh! if they had but improved as well as admired! III. THEN HERE IS HIS FALSE--“ And the fame of Him went out into every place of the country round about.” Who does not rejoice in this spread of His fame? Who does not wish His fame everywhere spread abroad? Gratitude requires you to be thus employed. For benevolence requires you to be thus employed, Many are perishing; and they are perishing for lack of knowledge, and the knowledge of Him; for “ to know Him is eternal life.” (W. Jay.) Luke 4:37 And the fame of Him went out into every place of the country round about The fame of Jesus I. Now, you will plainly perceive that my drift is as usual this morning. I want all my time, and strength, and power to spread the fame of Jesus in every place throughout the country. Well, then, WE WILL NOTICE THREE OR FOUR THINGS IN WHICH HE IS AND MUST BE FAMED. First of all, His fame is spread abroad with regard to the majesty of His Person. Moreover, He is famed for the offices which He sustains. Here a multitude will rush on my attention, but I will limit myself to the three which are well known and constantly dwelt upon. He is far-famed as a Prophet. And is He not famed as a Priest? Moreover, He is far-famed in His office as a Potentate. But we hasten on just to mark that our precious Christ is famed in the relative ties which He condescends to own. He is not ashamed to call His Church brethren. But let me just touch upon the extraordinary works which seem to have been the cause of the expression--“ His fame was spread in every place of that country round about.” What had He done? He had cast out devils, He had raised the dead, He had restored Simon’ s wife’ s mother from the fever, He had removed the uncleanness of those who were possessed by an unclean spirit, He had wrought prodigies and miracles; and yet, though He had done so many mighty works among them, the enemies believed not on Him. And yet this caused Him to be far-famed. Moreover, His fame was not only to be published on account of the mighty works which He had done, but they were only typical, though real in their instances, of the greater work pertaining to His errand upon earth. And here I must limit myself to three things He does for sinners, that has spread His fame down to this hour, and shall do it while I have a voice to utter it, and to all eternity. He has redeemed sinners, He has rescued sinners, and He has received sinners, and all these acts publish his fame. II. Now LET US GLANCE, IN THE SECOND PLACE, AT THE AGENTS TO SPREAD HIS FAME. I cannot help mentioning, in the first place, His kindred, when He was sought for among His kinsfolks, and could not be found. And so in many other instances of His literal history which we now pass over to come to the point spiritually. It is His kindred that publish His fame. That is, those who are allied to Him by grace. Moreover, I beseech you to mark that no partaker of life Divine can consider it a matter of little importance in his life, that the fame of Jesus should be spread by him. And if you are doing nothing or saying nothing to spread the fame of Jesus, do not tell me you are related to Him. Bat not only do His kindred spread His fame; even His enemies must do it. I put this in contrast. You will recollect the Apostle Paul rejoiced in this: “ There are some that preach Christ of good-will, and some that preach Christ out of envy and strife.” Further, mark that this precious, glorious, far-famed Jesus is exalted, and His fame is spread by the objects of His attention, for whom He wrought so much. III. But I must hasten to a close with A WORD OR TWO TO THE RESULTS. And I will only mention two--the results among the wicked surrounding Him, and the results among the objects of the Father’ s love given to Him. (J. Irons.) Luke 4:38-39 And He arose out of the synagogue and entered into Simon’ s house Simon’ s wife’ s mother Suffering is to be found everywhere, in the public synagogue and in the private house. Even Peter’ s house was not exempt. The chosen ones are tried as by fire, and the rod proves their election. (J. Parker, D. D.) Simon’ s house How came Peter to have a house at Capernaum? Poor fishermen do not often have two houses, May it not be that, finding the Lord Jesus was frequently at Capernaum, Peter thought it best to have a dwelling there, that he might be always present when the Master was preaching, and that he might do his best to entertain Him between whiles? I like to think that the servant changed his place of abode for the Master’ s sake. Would it not be well if many Christian people had some little consideration when they are choosing a house, as to whether it will be convenient for the hearing of the Word? (C. H. Spurgeon.) Sickness produces seriousness Professor Henry Drummond, the author of “ Natural Law in the Spiritual World,” has been very earnestly at work in the revival in the Edinburgh University. His addresses have been intensely evangelical, and have been wondrously powerful in their effects on the students. One anecdote seemed to have touched them deeply. Substantially it was to this effect:--Some years ago, in the University, there was a fine, manly fellow, a medical student, a very Hercules in strength, but as gentle and lovable as he was strong. He was immensely popular, the captain of the football club, and not a cricket match was considered complete without him. He was a man of good intellectual gifts as well. He caught typhoid fever while attending the Royal Infirmary, and soon he lay dying in a private ward. One of the house physicians, an earnest Christian and successful soul-winner, spoke to him about God and eternity. The dear fellow listened, became anxious, and eagerly heard the story of redeeming love. “ Will you give yourself to Jesus?” asked the doctor. He did not answer for a space, and then, earnestly regarding the man of God, he said, “ But don’ t you think it would be awful mean just to make it up now, at my last gasp, with One I have rejected all my life?” “ Yes, it would be mean; but, dear fellow, it would be far meaner not to do it. He wants you to do it now, for He has made you willing, and it would be doubly mean to reject a love that is pursuing you even to death.” The dying man saw the point, and apprehending the greatness of that exceeding love, he cast himself upon the Eternal Heart of Mercy and passed away in sweet peace and blessedness. Blessed results of sickness When God would rescue a man from that unreal world of names and mere knowledge, He does what He did with Job--He strips him of his flocks, and his herds, and his wealth; or else, whatis the equivalent, of the power of enjoying them--the desire of his eyes falls from him at a stroke. Things become real then. Trial brings man face to face with God--God and he touch; and the flimsy veil of bright cloud that hung between him and the sky is blown away; he feels that he is standing outside the earth with nothing between him and the Eternal Infinite. Oh I there is something in the sick-bed, and the aching heart, and the restlessness and the languor of shattered health, and the sorrow of affections withered, and the stream of life poisoned at its fountain, and the cold, lonely feeling of utter rawness of heart which is felt when God strikes home in earnest that forces a man to feel what is real and what is not. This is the blessing of affliction to those who will lie still and not struggle in a cowardly or a resentful way. It is God speaking to Job out of the whirlwind, and saying: “ In the sunshine and the warmth you cannot meet Me; but in the hurricane and the darkness, when wave after wave has swept down and across the soul, you shall see My Form, and hear My Voice, and know that your Redeemer liveth.” (F. W. Robertson.) The ministry of gratitude I. The fact that this restored woman began at once to minister to Christ and to His disciples proves THE OF HER CURE; and there are no better ways of proving the thoroughness of our conversion than by conduct similar to hers. Suppose the patient had lain there and had begun to talk about how she felt, how much better she was, what a strange sensation passed through her when the Saviour rebuked the disease, and how strangely well she felt; yet if she had not risen up, but had lain there still, there would have been no evidence of her restoration, at any rate none that you or I could judge of. So when persons tell us that they have felt great changes of heart, we must see their outward ministerings for Christ. If their actions be holy, if their lives be purified, then shall we know, but not till then, that their nature is renewed. Suppose this good woman, still lying upon her bed, had begun to say, “ Well, I hope I am healed,” and had begun to express some feeble expectation that one day she would be able to exercise the functions of health, we could not have known that she was restored. Something more was wanted than mere hopes and expectations. Note the nature of the acts which this restored woman performed, because they are symbolical of the best form of actions by which to judge of a person being renewed. 1. Her duties were humble ones. She was probably the head of the household, and she began at once to discharge the duties of a housewife: duties unostentatious and commonplace. Attention to humble duties is a better sign of grace than an ambition for lofty and elevated works. 2. Remember, too, that this good woman attended to home duties. She did not go down the street a hundred yards off to glorify Christ; she, I daresay, did that afterwards; but she began at home: charity begins there, and so should piety. That is the best religion which is most at home at home. Grace which smiles around the family hearth is grace indeed. 3. She attended to suitable duties, duties consistent with her sex and condition. She did not try to be what God had not made her, but did what she could. 4. One other point before leaving this; these things become a conclusive proof of grace in the heart, when they are voluntarily rendered as this good woman’ s ministry was. I do not read that she was asked to do anything for Christ, but it suggested itself to her at once, without command or request. Her work was done promptly, for “ immediately she arose” and did it. Promptness is the soul of obedience. II. This woman’ s ministry showed THE OF HER CURE. And, beloved, it is one mark of a work of grace in the soul when the converted man becomes at once a servant of Christ. The human theory of moral reformations makes time a great element in its operations. If you are to reclaim a great offender you must win him from one vice first, and then from another; you must put him through a process of education by which he gradually perceives that what he has been accustomed to do is bad for himself, and wakes up to the conviction that honesty and sobriety will be the best for his own profit. Time is required by the moral reformer, or he cannot develop his plans. He ridicules the idea of effecting anything in an hour or two. III. Peter’ s wife’ s mother, in ministering to Christ proved HER OWN . Her acts of hospitality were an exhibition of her thankfulness. Brethren, if we want to evidence our gratitude to Christ we had better do it in the same way as she did. IV. This woman’ s ministering to Christ proved THE OF THE . He who healed her of the fever did not need her to minister to Him; He who had power to heal diseases had certainly power to subsist without human ministry. If Christ could raise her up, He must be omnipotent and Divine; what need, then, had He of a woman’ s service? Yet He condescended to accept it. What condescension that He should accept ministry from His own creatures; what gentleness that He so often chose woman’ s ministry. He came to earth, and the first garments of His infancy were wrapped about Him by a woman’ s hands, and here He dwelt till at last He died, and holy women bound Him up in the cerements of the tomb and laid Him in the sepulchre. It seems easy enough to believe that the Blessed Virgin and Mary Magdalene and other holy women were honoured of God; but that you, dear sister, should be allowed to take a part in His service--is not this marvellous? Will you not bless Him, and minister with the utmost cheerfulness because you feel it to be so great a grace? (C. H. Spurgeon.) All may minister for God On our birthdays our little children love to give their father something, if it is only a bunch of flowers out of the garden, or a fourpenny piece with a hole in it; they like to do it to show their love; and wise parents will be sure to let their children do such things for them. So is it with our great Father in heaven. What are our Sunday-school teachings and our preachings, and all that, but these cracked fourpenny pieces? Just nothing at all; but the Lord allows us to do His work for His own love’ s sake. His love to us finds a sweetness in our love to Him. I am most thankful that in the Church there is room for such a variety of ministries. Some brethren are so queerly constituted that I cannot tell what they were made for; but I believe if they are God’ s people there is a place for them in His spiritual temple. A man who was accustomed to buy timber and work it up, on one occasion found a very crooked stick of wood in his bargain, and said to his son as he put it aside. “ I cannot tell, John, whatever I shall do with it; it is the ugliest shaped piece I ever bought in my life” ; but it so happened while building a barn that he wanted a timber exactly of that shape, and it fitted in so thoroughly well that he said, “ It really seems as if that tree grew on purpose for that corner.” So our gracious Lord has arranged His Church, so that every crooked stick will fit in somewhere or other, if it be only a tree of His own right hand planting: He has made it with a purpose, and knows when it will answer that purpose. How this ought to rebuke any who say, “ I do not see what I can do.” Dear friend, there is a peculiar work for you; find it out--and methinks it will not be far off: the exercise of a little reflection will soon enable you to discover it. Be grateful that this is a certain fact, without exception, that every child of God who has been healed has some ministry which he can render to Christ, and which he ought to render at once. Bless God, dear brother, that He counts you worthy to suffer for His name’ s sake. You know the old story of Sir Walter Raleigh. When Queen Elizabeth, one day, came to a miry place in the road, he took off his cloak for her to walk upon. Did he regret it? No, he was delighted at it, and half the court wished for another muddy place that they might be able to do the same. Oh, you that love your Lord, be willing to lie down for Christ’ s sake, and pave the miry parts of the way by being despised for His name’ s sake. This honour you should covet, and should not shun. Arise and minister, ye healed ones; and as for you who are not healed, may you believe in Him who is able to restore you with His touch. He is mighty to save. Believe in Him and you shall live. (C. H. Spurgeon.) A sympathetic physician The pious, good-natured Dr. Helm had no time, as he was wont to say, “ to get ill.” Always busy, ever pleased to visit the cottage of the poorest as the mansions of the rich, all classes of Berlin joined to do honour to the good old man on the jubilee of his fiftieth year of service. The festivities lasted three days. The constant noise and excitement had made the doctor more than usually tired. Late at night a poor woman came to beg him to visit her child, who was taken suddenly ill. The servants had orders to send all applications away, as the doctor felt he needed rest; but the woman, knowing the house, managed to get to the doctor’ s private room to plead her cause. Still Dr. Heim said he could not go. After all had retired to rest Madame Heim said to her husband, “ What is the matter with you, doctor? Why don’ t you sleep?” “ Because I can’ t,” he said; “ it’ s a curious thing with my conscience; I must go and see that child.” He rang the bell, and forgetting his fatigue, ran to the sick child, whom he was the means of restoring to health. After the visit he returned and slept soundly. (Baxendale’ s Anecdotes.) Luke 4:40; Luke 4:42 Now when the sun was setting, all they that had any sick Now when the sun was setting When the sun set another sun arose. The eventide of nature brought the morning of restoration. Nature perishes: Grace is eternal. Come to Christ when you can--early in the day, or in the shades of evening--He is ever ready. In Luke 4:42 mark an attempt to localise Christ. This is often done even now. But He is not to be parochially or congregationally shut in. He is the light of every life. He must gather His sheep from every hill, and call His own from unexpected places. (J. Parker, D. D.) The miracles of healing at Capernaum These words form a very vivid contrast with what is recorded in the former part of this chapter. In Nazareth He did no mighty works. Could not, not would not. It was not because the people there didn’ t want help. It was as bad to be sick up there as in Capernaum. But it was because of their unbelief. Then in wonderful contrast comes this story of Capernaum. That contrast we can still make. We may have this Nazareth, Jesus in the midst with all His healing power, and yet our hearts unblessed; or it may be to us Capernaum, and Jesus moving in and out amongst us, laying His hands on every one of us and making us whole. I. THE SCENE HERE . The sun was setting; the mountains were lifting up their heads into the golden crimson, and the lake was bathed in the sunset hues. Across the rocky paths came wearied ones from the inland villages with withered limbs; blind men groping their way and asking piteously if they were right; deaf men trying to read the signs of His coming in everybody’ s face; and, across the lake, boat-loads of sick ones, the glassy surface of the lake just broken by the ripple of the oar; and thus they came, until what a sight it was about the gate of the city! II. FOLLOW THE MASTER THROUGH THE WARDS OF HIS . NOW the whisper runs through the crowd, “ He comes.” He comes--those eyes of His all filled with compassion; and moving about amongst them, “ He laid His hands on every one of them.” No poor woman was thrust away outside; no poor little child was forgotten. 1. Notice that the power of the Lord is a healing power--“ not to condemn the world.” And 2. See how the Lord uses this power--with what gentleness. 3. Notice how the Lord deals with men in their individuality--“ every one of them.” III. Look AT THE SICK ONES. First, here is a heathen woman. Here stands a sturdy Roman soldier who has been maimed in some fight, &c. In Christ’ s hospital every case is peculiar. (New Outlines of Sermons on New Testament.) God’ s Kingdom Which kingdom? There is (1) the kingdom of nature; (2) that of providence; (3) that of glory. But none of these is the kingdom I am going to talk about. There is another kingdom, the kingdom of His grace, the kingdom in the hearts of men, called the kingdom of God in my text. I. THIS KINGDOM IS ONE; THE OF THE EARTH ARE MANY. The kingdom of God does not resemble any of these. It is a spiritual kingdom. II. THE OF THIS WORLD ARE NOT HAPPY, THE KINGDOM OF GRACE IS. III. THE OF EARTH ARE BY FORCE; THE THRONE OF GOD’ S KINGDOM IS IN THE OF ITS . III. THE OF EARTH DECAY; THE KINGDOM OF GOD NEVER. IV. Practical questions: 1. Are we members of this kingdom? 2. If not, are we willing to become members? (E. G. Gange.) Imposition of hands This rite is a symbol of any kind of transmission, whether of a gift or an office (Moses and Joshua, Deuteronomy 34:9), or of a blessing (the patriarchal blessings), or of a duty (the transfer to the Levites of the natural functions of the eldest son in every family), or of guilt (the guilty Israelite laying his hands on the head of the victim), or of the sound, vital strength enjoyed by the person who imparts it (cures). It is not certainly that Jesus could not have worked a cure by His mere word, or even by a simple act of volition. But, in the first place, there is something profoundly human in this act of laying the hand on the head of any one whom one desires to benefit. It is a gesture of tenderness, a sign of beneficial communication such as the heart craves. Then this symbol might be morally necessary. Whenever Jesus avails Himself of any material means to work a cure--whether it be the sound of His voice, or clay made of His spittle--His aim is to establish in the form best adapted to the particular case, a personal tie between the sick person and Himself; for He desires not only to heal, but to effect a restoration to God, by creating in the consciousness of the sick a sense of union with Himself, the organ of Divine grace in the midst of mankind. This moral aim explains the variety of the means employed. Had they been curative means (of the nature of magnetic passes, for example) they could not have varied so much. But as they were addressed to the sick person’ s soul, Jesus chose them in such a way that His action was adapted to its character or position. In the case of a deaf mute, He puts His fingers into his ears; He anointed the eyes of a blind man with His spittle, &c. Thus their healing appeared as an emanation from His person, and attached them to Him by an indissoluble tie. Their restored life was felt to be dependent on His. (F. Godet, D. D.) The Great Physician We have here a picture of Jesus as the Great Physician of soul and body, the Divine restorer of health to both body and mind. It is never to be forgotten how He thus met the sufferings of humanity, and brought effective deliverance as none other ever could or ever will bring, to a world ever groaning and travailing in pain. And what He did then, He is doing still. We cannot now see His earthly Form, nor do we look for miracles to be wrought upon us; but each of us has his own peculiar care or trouble, and needs the Divine Physician to relieve his distress. 1. True, there are earthly reliefs, and it is our duty to make proper use of them; but they are all more or less temporary and fleeting. (1) For the body: medical relief and advice, &c. Yet these can give no immunity from disease. And most remedies soon lose their power. (2) For the mind: distraction, pleasure, &c. These also are but the results of the experience of others, but they have no last in them, and they may only make the pain worse to bear than before. 2. True also, that if present relief is not to be had, we may still be buoyed up by earthly hope. But alas! how often is this but “ hope deferred,” which “ makes the heart sick” ; and how often is the miserable and weary sufferer brought to such a state that the only earthly hope left him is the hope that he may soon be done with earth altogether, and his poor pained body be laid to rest in the grave! Oh, how vain are all earthly hopes, and how doomed to disappointment are those who trust in them. But, thank God! our Christian philosophy is not so cold. We have more than this. I. A PRESENT HELP. We have learned that present, earthly, personal comfort is not such a grand object after all; that there are higher things, and better things, within our reach. What are these? Growing better, being sanctified, making this life not an end but a beginning and preparation for a higher and better life. Not only so, but we can go to Jesus as truly as could the friends at Capernaum, and help to take our sufferers there. Nor have we far to go. He is always at hand, and always accessible. Moreover, He is unchangeable; not like earthly friends and comforts, but always the same; the truest help in any and every kind of suffering--whether of mind, body, or estate, as many a soul has proved, in sickness, poverty, anxiety, loneliness. II. A FUTURE HOPE. If, in spite of every aid, the burdens of life press heavily on us, we have more than the silence of the grave to look for; we know that while our body sleeps, our soul is with Christ in paradise, and that one day there will be a happy reunion. Conclusion: Let us first find the way ourselves to this present help and future hope, and then we shall be able to point our friends to it and to Jesus who is indeed our only help and our only hope. And then, one word more for our comfort. You will remember that our blessed Lord was not done with the sufferers when He laid His hands upon them and conferred present relief in trouble. They might go home with glad hearts, and enjoy the blessing of God, but a time would come when they might again suffer in body or in mind, and when they would at last have to give up all hope of earthly remedy. But Jesus was not forgetting them. Tired and wearied as He was, He rose up a great while before day, and departed into a solitary place, and there prayed. He was blessing them even more in His absence than while with them in bodily presence. Even so is it still with the sufferers and with the healed. Jesus is not only ever blessing us with divine comfort and strength, but He is pleading for us with the Father. He knows the pain of each heart, and He will bless us and it for our good if we will but go to Him. (George Low, M. A.) Luke 4:42 That He would not depart from them How to prolong the gracious visits of Christ I. WHAT MEANS SHOULD BE TO PROLONG THE VISITS OF CHRIST? I answer, generally, we must endeavour to render His continuance with us agreeable to Himself; and to avoid or banish from among us everything which tends to render it otherwise. When we wish to induce an earthly friend to reside with us as long as possible, we naturally endeavour to render his residence with us agreeable; for no person will voluntarily continue long in a disagreeable place, or in unpleasant society. But more particularly; if we would prolong our Saviour’ s gracious visits, either to ourselves, to our habitations, or to the place in which we reside, we must show Him that we greatly desire and highly value His presence. No person will consent to stay long with those by whom his presence is not desired. Least of all will those consent to this who are sensible of their own worth, and who know that there are other places where they would be more welcome. Now our blessed Saviour is perfectly sensible of His own worth. He knows that, great and powerful as He is, He can confer no favour upon a Church or upon individuals more valuable than His gracious presence. He, therefore, justly expects that we should prize it accordingly, and consider everything else as nothing in comparison with this. The fact is, that, when we prefer any object to Christ, we make an idol of that object, and set up that idol in His presence. And can we expect that He will continue long with those who prefer an idol before Him? 1. The more He seems to depart from us, the more earnestly must we follow Him with our prayers and supplications, saying, with Jacob, We will not let Thee go, except Thou bless us; and, like the persons mentioned in our text, staying Him that He may not forsake us. 2. With prayer we must unite penitence. Especially must we repent of those sins which have been the probable cause of His beginning to withdraw. Without this, even prayer will not avail, as is evident from the case of Joshua, when his army was repulsed before Ai. 3. If we would prevent the Saviour from depriving us of His gracious visits, we must receive them with profound humility and a deep sense of our unworthiness of such a favour. 4. H we would prevent the Saviour from leaving us, we must assign sufficient reasons why He should prolong His stay. The glory of His Father, the honour of His great name, the welfare of His people, the prosperity of His cause, are each of them reasons of sufficient weight to influence His conduct; and while either of these reasons requires His stay we may be sure that He will not leave us. 5. If we would prevent Christ from leaving us, we must furnish Him with employments, and with such kind of employments as are suited to His character. Now the ruling passion of our Saviour is the love of doing good. “ My meat,” says He, “ is to do the will of My Father and to finish His work.” And again He says, “ It is more blessed to give than to receive.” Agreeably, we find that, when on earth, He went about doing good, and, where He found opportunities of doing the most good, there He always made the longest stay. II. SOME OF THE REASONS WHICH SHOULD INDUCE US TO EMPLOY THESE MEANS. 1. We ought to employ these means, because a neglect of them will infallibly grieve and offend our Redeemer. 2. The blessed effects which result from the gracious visits of Christ, furnish another reason why we should employ all proper means and make every possible exertion to induce Him to prolong them. 3. Another reason which should induce us to employ these means, may be found in the evils which result from the Saviour’ s departure. These evils are in full proportion to the benefits which result from His presence. 4. The conduct of impenitent sinners affords another reason why we should do this. (E. Payson, D. D.) Luke 4:43I must preach the kingdom of God to other cities-- A precedent for preachers Christ thus admired and desired to stay in Capernaum, would not so do, as having an eye to His ease or conveniency there, but must be at the pains to preach elsewhere. Teaching us that we must not measure our services from ourselves or conveniences, nor in them seek our own ease or acceptance among men; but so carry them as may be most for God’ s glory and our own sound comfort. Our Saviour Christ admitted not their motion, but made them this answer in the words of the text, “ Surely I must also preach.” Wherein consider five points. 1. The work which Christ must do--He must “ preach.” 2. The necessity of it--“ I must.” 3. The matter what He must preach--“ the kingdom of God.” 4. The object or people to whom--“ to other cities also.” 5. The bond of this necessity--“ For therefore I am sent.” I. THE WORK IS . Thus preaching is called the setting out of the mystery of Christ, and a publishing of the mystery of the gospel, and the revealing of a mystery hid since the world began. Hence observe the greatness of the work of preaching, and the great estimation of it, for which end the Son of God Himself came from heaven. The great work of God considered in the means seems vile and base, and nothing more stunneth the minds of carnal men than the baseness of the means, compared with the magnificence of the effects. It might seem ridiculous to the men of Jericho that the blast of rams’ horns and sound of trumpets should batter down stone walls, and no marvel but that they smiled at such unlikely means; but yet it was so: so this work of preaching in the eye of a carnal man is but foolishness, as 1 Corinthians 1:21, but yet “ to them that are called, it is the power of God to salvation.” Here behold weakness encountering and overmastering strength, simplicity overreaching policy, and God’ s power prevailing in His own weak means. II. The second part of the text is THE OF --“ I must preach.” It depends not upon His will, or left to His discretion; but He must do it. Now, much more necessity lieth on us His ministers. Now if we be bound to preach, ye are bound to hear; if we be bound to deliver the Word, ye are bound to receive the Word, not as the word of man; but as it is indeed the Word of God, with all reverence, duty, and piety. III. The third point is THE MATTER OF THIS : the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God is twofold. 1. Of grace. 2. Of glory. In the former God reigneth in us. In the latter we reign with God. The former is in this life, the latter in the life to come. The one issuing into the other, and both of them becoming one: for we read not of God’ s kingdoms in the plural, but of His kingdom, which is but one. This is that tabernacle of God which is with men. To this kingdom God calleth us by preaching, and here it must be begun by righteousness, repentance, mortification, and shall have fulness hereafter. All men desire to partake in the kingdom of Christ and glory, but few will be subject to his Father in the kingdom of grace. We to whom God hath committed the preaching of His Word must have care to further this kingdom and bring in many to be subjects of it, expecting that glorious recompense of shining as the stars in the firmament for ever and ever. IV. THE PERSONS TO WHOM CHRIST MUST PREACH--“ to other cities.” As the sun compasseth the world and stayeth in no one part, so Christ the Sun of Righteousness never settleth in any one place, but seeketh to disperse everywhere His blessed light. It had been in Christ’ s power Himself to have kept one place always, and have sent His disciples to all other, but He would not: that we should by His example learn not to shun labour, but employ our pains and diligence in building the kingdom of God, and in seeking and saving that which is lost. Thus was Christ as a compassionate Physician, who not being sent for, offereth His care and pains, as willing to save such as are in danger. V. The bond of this necessity--“ for therefore am I sent.” He should betray the end of His coming if He should not preach. The point we must here learn is that every man must serve the end and use that he is called unto, and carefully discharge the trust committed unto him (Romans 12:7-8). The heathen held it as shameful and dangerous to fail in matter of trust, as if the party had committed theft. (T. Taylor, D. D.) . Luke 5:1; Luke 5:3 And it came to pass, that, as the people pressed upon Him to hear the Word of God The gospel and the masses What could have been the wonderful secret power by which the great Prophet of Galilee drew all men after Him? 1. One simple and very intelligent element in it was the way in which he recognized the wholeness of human nature, that, at the bottom, peer did not differ from peasant, nor monarch from villager. 2. And not only did He recognize the wholeness of human nature, hut also its many diversified needs. 3. He was sinless, and yet He never had a harsh word for the sinners--provided they were not hypocrites. 4. He had the tenderest feelings for those who enjoyed fewest opportunities. 5. He recognized the natural or social wants which are common to all men. Feeding five thousand; making wine at wedding. 6. He disdained no man. . Oh that God would give us grace to preach fully, faithfully, wisely, lovingly this gospel in the spirit, and with the simplicity and abounding sympathy with which it was first preached in the cities and on the mountain slopes and by the lake shores of Galilee; and then I believe the people would be found pressing to hear it as they pressed then. (Bishop Fraser.) The Word of God I. THE WORD OF GOD THAT IS NOW AMONG US. II. THE URGENCY TO HEAR IT. Of diffusive religion we have abundance; a concentrative Christianity is what we require. III. THE PEOPLE WHO ARE ITS , AND TOO OFTEN ITS HEARERS. TWO great classes; those who know the revelation of the will of God through Christ as a mass of doctrines and commands demanding from our understandings a simple assent to their truth; and those who know it in such a sense and degree, as that it becomes the pervading principle of all their actions. Beware of the Christianity of the formalist. When rightly received, “ the Word of God is quick and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword.” (W. A. Butler, M. A.) To hear the Word of God One of the finest conceivable pictures presented in this verse--people pressing to hear the Word of God! They often pressed to see Christ’ s miracles, and to listen to His parables, with more or less of mere curiosity; but in this case the motive was spiritual and pure. Why do people attend the sanctuary? To hear the word of man? Then will there be debate, opposition, doubt, or at best, admiration, fickle and selfish. The remedy is partly in the hands of ministers themselves. When they insist upon delivering the message of God without any admixture of human speculation, their spiritual reverence and earnestness may carry a holy contagion amongst the people. God’ s Word should always be supreme in God’ s house. “ Them that honour Me, I will honour.” (J. Parker, D. D.) The Lake of Gennesaret It is the centre of the ministry of our Lord; it is not too much to say of it what Dean Stanley has said, “ It is the most sacred sheet of water that the earth contains.” The Rabbins say, “ I have created seven seas, saith the Lord, but out of them I have chosen none but the sea of Gennesaret.” In the day of our Lord, it was a scene of teeming life as well as the centre of a peculiarly hushed and hallowed solitude. No doubt, as compared with many quarters of the globe, it was secluded; but still its shores and its waves were the way of traffic. It was situated in the midst of the Jordan valley, or the great thoroughfare from Babylon and Damascus into Palestine; hence it was “ the way of the sea beyond Jordan.” Along its banks a wondrous vegetation spread, and full of especially beautiful birds and flowers and fruits. What a scene it must have presented--fishermen by hundreds on the Lake; in hamlets around the numerous shipbuilders; and the sails and boats of pleasure flying before the frequent gusts from the mountains. There was no other spot which would so instantly have been a conductor to the words of our Lord. There is a Divine providence in even the very spot itself. The dwellers of the Sea of Galilee were free from most of the strong prejudices which, in the south of Palestine, raised a bar to Christ’ s reception. There were the people of Zabulon and Nephthalim, by the way of the sea beyond Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles. They had sat in darkness; but for that very reason they saw more clearly the great light when it came to them in the region of the shadow of death. There He came, to that spot, to preach the gospel to the poor, the weary, and the heavy laden, to seek and to save that which was lost. Where could He find what He sought so readily as in the ceaseless turmoil of those busy waters and teeming villages? Roman soldiers, centurions quartered with their slaves; here, too, the palaces of the princes. Hardy boatmen, publicans, and tax-collectors sitting at the receipt of custom, women who were sinners from neighbouring Gentile cities and villages. Thus all was prepared to concentrate and give effect to the power of His teaching by the Lake. (E. Paxton Hood.) Description of the lake The Sea of Galilee is shaped like a pear, with a width at the broadest part of 6.75 miles, and a length of 121; miles; that is, it is about the same length as our own Windermere, but considerably broader, though in the clear air of Palestine it looks somewhat smaller. Nothing can exceed the bright clearness of the water, which it is delightful to watch as it runs in small waves over the shingle. Its taste, moreover, is sweet, except near the hot springs and at Tiberias, where it is polluted by the sewerage of the town. There is much more level ground on the eastern side than the western, yet the western side was always, in Bible times, much more thickly peopled by the Hebrews than the other; partly from the fact that “ beyond Jordan” was almost a foreign country; partly because the land above the lake on the east was exposed to the Arabs; and in some measure also because it always had a large intermixture of heathen population. (Geikie’ s “ Holy Land and the Bible.”) Description of the surrounding scenery The original population of the shores of the lake was Sidonian, and when Tyre and Sidon were founded on the shores of the Mediterranean they moved westward, but the town of Bethsidon still retained the name given it by its first inhabitants. The richest part of the shores was at the north-west, where is a luxuriant plain of half-moon shape, walled out from the north and west winds by mountains, and exposed to the sun. This was where the princes and the nobles had their country residences, and the gardens were filled with all kinds of flowers and fruit. The lake was called by its first colonists, Cenuereth, or the Harp, from its shape. The Jews thought so highly of its beauty that they said, “ God created seven seas--but for Himself He elected but one, and that the Lake Gennesareth” ; and again, “ It is the Gate of Paradise.” Josephus says, “ It is a district where Nature seems to have constrained herself to create an eternal spring, and to gather into one spot the products of every one.” To the present day the date-palm, citrons, pomegranate, indigo, rice, sugar-cane, grow there; cotton, balsams, vines, thrive; the purple grapes are as big as plums, and the bunches weigh twelve pounds. Here also the fig-tree yields her fruit throughout the year, ripening every month. The Jews call Gennesareth the Garden Lake, and if there were any place in Palestine that could recall the lost Paradise, it was this fruitful, beautiful tract, watered with its five streams. At Chammath, about two miles south of Tiberias, are hot springs, of old much used for baths, and half an hour’ s walk above Tiberias a cold spring of beautiful water bursts out of the mountain side, and pours down to the lake in five or six streams. At Tabigha also are hot springs, that gush streaming down into the blue waters of the lake. Now the neglect of mismanagement of the Turkish Government have led to the devastation of this beautiful corner of the world, and many of the foreign plants once introduced into it have died out, or are disappearing. We can only guess what a garden of delight it must have been in the time of our Lord, when the aqueducts were in working order, and canals carried water to all the gardens and fields. (S. Baring-Gould, M. A.) Attractiveness of the true preacher Let a man be a true preacher, really uttering the truth through his own personality, and it is strange how men will gather to listen to him. We hear that the day of the pulpit is past, and then some morning the voice of a true preacher is heard in the land, and all the streets are full of men crowding to hear him, just exactly as were the streets of Constantinople when Chrysostum was going to preach at the Church of the Apostles, or the streets of London when Latimer was bravely telling the truth at St. Paul’ s. (Phillips Brooks, D. D.) The personal power inpreaching The nameless and potent charm of intense personality cannot all go down into a dead book. Truth in personality is where the hidings of power are. We look in vain along the pages of Whitefield for the secret of his mighty effectiveness. We search the famous sermon of Edwards, and wonder what there was in it that moved men so. It was not the sermon on the printed page; it was the sermon in the living preacher. While men are men, a living man before living men will always be more than white paper and black ink. And therein will for evermore lie the supremest possibilities of pulpit power, which no competing press, however enterprising and ubiquitous, can rival. The Founder of Christianity made no mistake when He staked its triumphal progress down through all ages, and its victorious consummation at “ the end of the “ world,” on “ the foolishness of preaching.” He chose the agency in full view of the marvels of these later centuries, and the pulpit is not therefore likely to be despoiled of its peculiar glory and made impotent to its work by any device born of the inventive genius of man. (Dr. Herrick Johnson, of Chicago.) A remarkable pulpit I have seen in different countries some very wonderful pulpits, some of them exquisitely carved in stone or wood, some of them richly inlaid with the choicest mosaics, some of them illustrating scenes from the Bible. Perhaps the loveliest pulpit I have ever seen is in a place where you would least expect to find it. In Italy you often see places that are called Baptisteries--that is, places built specially for the baptism of children. In the old city of Pisa there is a most lovely Baptistery, and in it the most beautiful pulpit, which every one who sees greatly admires; but, strange to say, it cannot be used, because there is such a wonderful echo in the building that the preacher’ s voice could not be heard. If you speak quite softly in it you hear a sound as of a great choir right up in the roof, and so the pulpit can only be admired and not used. But the pulpit from which Christ preached on this occasion was a very simple one; it was not richly carved, nor beautifully decorated, nor of massive form. It was only a tiny boat resting upon the bosom of a lake. (W. A. Herder.) The preaching of Christ The form of the preaching of Jesus was essentially Jewish. The Oriental mind does not work in the same way as the mind of the West. Our thinking and speaking, when at their best, are fluent, expansive, closely reasoned. The kind of discourse which we admire is one which takes up an important subject, divides it out into different branches, treats it fully under each of the heads, closely articulates part to part, and closes with a moving appeal to the feelings, so as to sway the will to some practical result. The Oriental mind, on the contrary, loves to brood long on a single point, to turn it round and round, to gather up all the truth about it into a focus, and pour it forth in a few pointed and memorable words. It is concise, epigrammatic, oracular. A Western speaker’ s discourse is a systematic structure, or like a chain in which link is firmly knit to link; an Oriental’ s is like the sky at night, full of innumerable burning points shining forth from a dark background. Such was the form of the teaching of Jesus. It consisted of numerous sayings, every one of which contained the greatest possible amount of truth in the smallest possible compass, and was expressed in language so concise and pointed as to stick in the memory like an arrow. Read them, and you will find that every one of them, as you ponder it, sucks the mind in and in like a whirlpool, till it is lost in the depths. You will find, too, that there are very few of them which you do not know by heart. They have found their way into the memory of Christendom as no other words have done. Even before the meaning has been apprehended, the perfect, proverb-like expression lodges itself fast in the mind. (James Stalker.) Attention to the Word of God I. The circumstance mentioned in the first verse of the text was A NATURAL OF OUR LORD’ S OFFICE AND . “ The people pressed upon Him to hear the Word of God.” Jesus Christ was “ that Prophet which should come into the world.” He brought down a message of mercy from heaven to earth; a message of pardon for the guilty, of life to the dead, and of salvation to those who were utterly and eternally lost. They were astonished at His doctrine; for He taught them as one having authority. They “ pressed upon Him to hear the Word of God.” And surely it is not too much for us to expect to witness a continuance of the same spirit. If God has indeed sent His Son and His servants to communicate an authentic revelation of His will to man, these teachers must be listened to by all who understand their own character and circumstances, and the great ends for which they live. II. Such AN TO THE WORD OF GOD IS MATTER OF AND DUTY AND . We are all bound to receive Divine instruction, and to receive it in the mode contemplated in the text. The law of Moses directed that, at stated seasons, there were to be holy convocations of the people; when they were to be collected in masses, to engage in holy duties, to enjoy holy delights, to receive holy light and power, and thereby to be filled for those high and holy ends for which they existed as a separate people. In the gospel, Christians are commanded not to forsake the assembling of themselves together. They are to “ exhort one another.” Along with these commands, there are “ given unto us exceeding great and precious promises.” “ In all places where I record My name I will come unto thee, and I will bless thee” (Exodus 20:24; Matthew 18:20). We are bound to give this attendance on the word and worship of God, because He requires it. We are bound to do this, because we ourselves have need of it. If the highest archangel in heaven were commanded to frequent religious assemblies, as a learner, and as a worshipper, he would not refuse. This was done by Him who has received “ a name which is above every name.” As the Mediator, Jesus Christ was subject to the Father; and He testified that subjection by a devout regard for His ordinances. He was a stated attendant on the services of the Temple. But we are not merely creatures: we are also sinners. We are not only subject to our Maker’ s authority; we need our Maker’ s mercy. If we would obtain His blessing, we must seek it in the way of His own appointment. In any other way He has not promised it; in any other way we have no right to expect it. It does not mean that the vulgar and illiterate must go to Church, but that men of science and literature are at liberty to stay away. A man may be as great a philosopher as Socrates or Plato; but then he is a creature and a sinner. He must therefore attend to his Creator’ s word; he must kneel at his Creator’ s feet. Neither can political rank at all free us from this great obligation. A man may be a lord, a duke, a king, or an emperor; yet he must imitate the example of Him who is Lord of lords, and King of kings. No man is excused on the ground of poverty and meanness. It may mortify him excessively to exhibit his rags before a large and respectable congregation; but Christ hath left us an example that we should tread in His steps. His piety and poverty were great and manifest. The plea of a high and refined spirituality of mind will be equally unavailing. It is useless to say, “ I have no need to observe the mere forms of piety, since I enjoy its spirit and its power.” III. The men of bustle and business are sometimes disposed to look upon all this attendance on the Word of God AS SO MUCH LOST TIME, AND AN WITH THE OF LIFE. If such excuses could ever be seasonable, they might have been urged by the fishermen of Galilee, on the occasion referred to in the text. They had toiled all the night before, and caught nothing. They were now in the act of washing their nets, in order at the earliest opportunity to go to sea again and make another attempt. Several of them, it is probable, had families dependent on their industry and success. Under such circumstances they might have said, “ Lord, we have no time to hear sermons now. It is impossible for us to comply with your request, and to spare our boat for preaching purposes at present. We must follow our employment, or our debts cannot be paid, nor our children’ s wants supplied.” But not a word of objection or excuse was heard. What follows proves that in the end they suffered no loss. Know, therefore, that there is a providence; a blessing of the Lord which maketh rich. IV. THE WORD OF GOD TO BE AND OBEYED. We may always venture to carry out its instructions into practical effect in the face of every difficulty and discouragement. But Peter reasoned on a different principle, and came to a different conclusion. He called Jesus “ Master,” and was consistent with himself. Many of us talk like servants while we act like masters. We say, “ Lord, Lord,” but do not the things which He enjoins. But Peter understood his duty better. When the Master commands, the servant’ s business is, not to argue, but to obey. V. THAT WORD OUR ON ACCOUNT OF ITS POWER TO REACH AND CONTROL THE HUMAN HEART. The Author of the Bible knows what is in man. He can speak to the heart of His own creatures. His Word touches the hidden springs of thought and feeling, and thus turns us about whithersoever He will (Hebrews 4:12). Peter found this by experience. The sermon was heard, and such was the silent and secret but powerful effect of Divine truth upon his heart, that he saw his unutterable guilt and depravity as in the light of open day; and became so agitated with grief and terror, that, in the end, he fell down at Jesus’ knees, exclaiming, “ Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord” (Luke 5:8). You will soon be brought to the same temper, if you listen to the same Teacher. VI. IT IS NOT , HOWEVER, TO THAT THIS WORD WILL US TO A REST AND PEACE, WHICH IMPLIES AN FROM WORLDLY . When the disciples were favoured with the immediate presence of Christ, and were in the very act of receiving a miraculous blessing at His hands, we scarcely expected to hear anything of a broken net and a sinking boat. Yet both these inconveniences were experienced on this memorable occasion. The afflictions of a good man only tend to heighten his gratitude, by more abundant displays of the Divine faithfulness and love. It was wonderful that the net should be suffered to break; but it was more wonderful that, after this accident, the fishes were not lost. It was wonderful that the boat should be suffered to begin to sink; but it was more wonderful that, in such a state, they should all come safe to land. God often reduces His people to the last extremities, and then shows them His salvation. The vessel which bears the saints to glory is often in a leaky and sinking state. All hope of being saved is not unfrequently taken away. Yet, while they have an ear to hear, and a heart to obey, they continue to float. VII. THE ARISING FROM. AN TO THE WORD OF GOD ARE NOT TO ; THEY EXTEND TO OTHERS. While attention to the Word of God teaches us the duty of instructing others, it also gives us the disposition to make the attempt. Piety and charity are inseparably connected. (Samuel Jackson.) The attractive power of the gospel Jesus as a preacher “ drew.” What was the attraction? He used no rhetorical device to produce an effect. His method was startling in its novelty. He did not follow the customs of His age. Though claiming to be a religious teacher, He did net adopt the conventional role of a priest or scribe. But to really appreciate the spirit of the Preacher we must understand His doctrine. The message He brought men made it imperative that His attitude towards them should be that of large-hearted sympathy. Now, there are some things I want you to see as the result of this exposition. 1. The first is that the gospel of Christ, when proclaimed in the proper spirit, never fails to touch the heart. In a sermon of Bishop Fraser’ s I read the following story: A well-known Anglican Bishop was announced to preach in a certain church. A tradesman in the parish, the leader of a set of Atheists, made up his mind to go and hear him. He listened attentively, and after the sermon he said to some one, “ If that bishop had argued, I would have fought with him; but there was no arguing about him; he preached to us simply about the love of God, and that touched me.” Let the gospel be preached with the simplicity and sympathy with which it was first preached in Galilee, and people will still be found pressing to hear. 2. The next thing I want you to see is, that the gospel and spirit of Christ are the powers that have been refining and elevating society ever since He lived and taught. Slowly, almost insensibly, the gospel has been making its way in society. 3. The last thing I want you to see is, that the gospel and spirit of Jesus alone have the power to make humanity noble and good. What a principle this is on which to base individual, social, and political life--God is the Father of all men and has given His Son to redeem them from death; all men are the sons of God, bound to obey Him with loving and filial spirit; each man owes to every other man the duties of a brother. Were that principle realized the happiness of the world would far surpass the dreams of the most ardent socialist. Getting rich by methods that injure others would be unknown. (S. If. Hamilton, D. D.) Luke 5:1; Luke 5:3 And it came to pass, that, as the people pressed upon Him to hear the Word of God The gospel and the masses What could have been the wonderful secret power by which the great Prophet of Galilee drew all men after Him? 1. One simple and very intelligent element in it was the way in which he recognized the wholeness of human nature, that, at the bottom, peer did not differ from peasant, nor monarch from villager. 2. And not only did He recognize the wholeness of human nature, hut also its many diversified needs. 3. He was sinless, and yet He never had a harsh word for the sinners--provided they were not hypocrites. 4. He had the tenderest feelings for those who enjoyed fewest opportunities. 5. He recognized the natural or social wants which are common to all men. Feeding five thousand; making wine at wedding. 6. He disdained no man. . Oh that God would give us grace to preach fully, faithfully, wisely, lovingly this gospel in the spirit, and with the simplicity and abounding sympathy with which it was first preached in the cities and on the mountain slopes and by the lake shores of Galilee; and then I believe the people would be found pressing to hear it as they pressed then. (Bishop Fraser.) The Word of God I. THE WORD OF GOD THAT IS NOW AMONG US. II. THE URGENCY TO HEAR IT. Of diffusive religion we have abundance; a concentrative Christianity is what we require. III. THE PEOPLE WHO ARE ITS , AND TOO OFTEN ITS HEARERS. TWO great classes; those who know the revelation of the will of God through Christ as a mass of doctrines and commands demanding from our understandings a simple assent to their truth; and those who know it in such a sense and degree, as that it becomes the pervading principle of all their actions. Beware of the Christianity of the formalist. When rightly received, “ the Word of God is quick and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword.” (W. A. Butler, M. A.) To hear the Word of God One of the finest conceivable pictures presented in this verse--people pressing to hear the Word of God! They often pressed to see Christ’ s miracles, and to listen to His parables, with more or less of mere curiosity; but in this case the motive was spiritual and pure. Why do people attend the sanctuary? To hear the word of man? Then will there be debate, opposition, doubt, or at best, admiration, fickle and selfish. The remedy is partly in the hands of ministers themselves. When they insist upon delivering the message of God without any admixture of human speculation, their spiritual reverence and earnestness may carry a holy contagion amongst the people. God’ s Word should always be supreme in God’ s house. “ Them that honour Me, I will honour.” (J. Parker, D. D.) The Lake of Gennesaret It is the centre of the ministry of our Lord; it is not too much to say of it what Dean Stanley has said, “ It is the most sacred sheet of water that the earth contains.” The Rabbins say, “ I have created seven seas, saith the Lord, but out of them I have chosen none but the sea of Gennesaret.” In the day of our Lord, it was a scene of teeming life as well as the centre of a peculiarly hushed and hallowed solitude. No doubt, as compared with many quarters of the globe, it was secluded; but still its shores and its waves were the way of traffic. It was situated in the midst of the Jordan valley, or the great thoroughfare from Babylon and Damascus into Palestine; hence it was “ the way of the sea beyond Jordan.” Along its banks a wondrous vegetation spread, and full of especially beautiful birds and flowers and fruits. What a scene it must have presented--fishermen by hundreds on the Lake; in hamlets around the numerous shipbuilders; and the sails and boats of pleasure flying before the frequent gusts from the mountains. There was no other spot which would so instantly have been a conductor to the words of our Lord. There is a Divine providence in even the very spot itself. The dwellers of the Sea of Galilee were free from most of the strong prejudices which, in the south of Palestine, raised a bar to Christ’ s reception. There were the people of Zabulon and Nephthalim, by the way of the sea beyond Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles. They had sat in darkness; but for that very reason they saw more clearly the great light when it came to them in the region of the shadow of death. There He came, to that spot, to preach the gospel to the poor, the weary, and the heavy laden, to seek and to save that which was lost. Where could He find what He sought so readily as in the ceaseless turmoil of those busy waters and teeming villages? Roman soldiers, centurions quartered with their slaves; here, too, the palaces of the princes. Hardy boatmen, publicans, and tax-collectors sitting at the receipt of custom, women who were sinners from neighbouring Gentile cities and villages. Thus all was prepared to concentrate and give effect to the power of His teaching by the Lake. (E. Paxton Hood.) Description of the lake The Sea of Galilee is shaped like a pear, with a width at the broadest part of 6.75 miles, and a length of 121; miles; that is, it is about the same length as our own Windermere, but considerably broader, though in the clear air of Palestine it looks somewhat smaller. Nothing can exceed the bright clearness of the water, which it is delightful to watch as it runs in small waves over the shingle. Its taste, moreover, is sweet, except near the hot springs and at Tiberias, where it is polluted by the sewerage of the town. There is much more level ground on the eastern side than the western, yet the western side was always, in Bible times, much more thickly peopled by the Hebrews than the other; partly from the fact that “ beyond Jordan” was almost a foreign country; partly because the land above the lake on the east was exposed to the Arabs; and in some measure also because it always had a large intermixture of heathen population. (Geikie’ s “ Holy Land and the Bible.”) Description of the surrounding scenery The original population of the shores of the lake was Sidonian, and when Tyre and Sidon were founded on the shores of the Mediterranean they moved westward, but the town of Bethsidon still retained the name given it by its first inhabitants. The richest part of the shores was at the north-west, where is a luxuriant plain of half-moon shape, walled out from the north and west winds by mountains, and exposed to the sun. This was where the princes and the nobles had their country residences, and the gardens were filled with all kinds of flowers and fruit. The lake was called by its first colonists, Cenuereth, or the Harp, from its shape. The Jews thought so highly of its beauty that they said, “ God created seven seas--but for Himself He elected but one, and that the Lake Gennesareth” ; and again, “ It is the Gate of Paradise.” Josephus says, “ It is a district where Nature seems to have constrained herself to create an eternal spring, and to gather into one spot the products of every one.” To the present day the date-palm, citrons, pomegranate, indigo, rice, sugar-cane, grow there; cotton, balsams, vines, thrive; the purple grapes are as big as plums, and the bunches weigh twelve pounds. Here also the fig-tree yields her fruit throughout the year, ripening every month. The Jews call Gennesareth the Garden Lake, and if there were any place in Palestine that could recall the lost Paradise, it was this fruitful, beautiful tract, watered with its five streams. At Chammath, about two miles south of Tiberias, are hot springs, of old much used for baths, and half an hour’ s walk above Tiberias a cold spring of beautiful water bursts out of the mountain side, and pours down to the lake in five or six streams. At Tabigha also are hot springs, that gush streaming down into the blue waters of the lake. Now the neglect of mismanagement of the Turkish Government have led to the devastation of this beautiful corner of the world, and many of the foreign plants once introduced into it have died out, or are disappearing. We can only guess what a garden of delight it must have been in the time of our Lord, when the aqueducts were in working order, and canals carried water to all the gardens and fields. (S. Baring-Gould, M. A.) Attractiveness of the true preacher Let a man be a true preacher, really uttering the truth through his own personality, and it is strange how men will gather to listen to him. We hear that the day of the pulpit is past, and then some morning the voice of a true preacher is heard in the land, and all the streets are full of men crowding to hear him, just exactly as were the streets of Constantinople when Chrysostum was going to preach at the Church of the Apostles, or the streets of London when Latimer was bravely telling the truth at St. Paul’ s. (Phillips Brooks, D. D.) The personal power inpreaching The nameless and potent charm of intense personality cannot all go down into a dead book. Truth in personality is where the hidings of power are. We look in vain along the pages of Whitefield for the secret of his mighty effectiveness. We search the famous sermon of Edwards, and wonder what there was in it that moved men so. It was not the sermon on the printed page; it was the sermon in the living preacher. While men are men, a living man before living men will always be more than white paper and black ink. And therein will for evermore lie the supremest possibilities of pulpit power, which no competing press, however enterprising and ubiquitous, can rival. The Founder of Christianity made no mistake when He staked its triumphal progress down through all ages, and its victorious consummation at “ the end of the “ world,” on “ the foolishness of preaching.” He chose the agency in full view of the marvels of these later centuries, and the pulpit is not therefore likely to be despoiled of its peculiar glory and made impotent to its work by any device born of the inventive genius of man. (Dr. Herrick Johnson, of Chicago.) A remarkable pulpit I have seen in different countries some very wonderful pulpits, some of them exquisitely carved in stone or wood, some of them richly inlaid with the choicest mosaics, some of them illustrating scenes from the Bible. Perhaps the loveliest pulpit I have ever seen is in a place where you would least expect to find it. In Italy you often see places that are called Baptisteries--that is, places built specially for the baptism of children. In the old city of Pisa there is a most lovely Baptistery, and in it the most beautiful pulpit, which every one who sees greatly admires; but, strange to say, it cannot be used, because there is such a wonderful echo in the building that the preacher’ s voice could not be heard. If you speak quite softly in it you hear a sound as of a great choir right up in the roof, and so the pulpit can only be admired and not used. But the pulpit from which Christ preached on this occasion was a very simple one; it was not richly carved, nor beautifully decorated, nor of massive form. It was only a tiny boat resting upon the bosom of a lake. (W. A. Herder.) The preaching of Christ The form of the preaching of Jesus was essentially Jewish. The Oriental mind does not work in the same way as the mind of the West. Our thinking and speaking, when at their best, are fluent, expansive, closely reasoned. The kind of discourse which we admire is one which takes up an important subject, divides it out into different branches, treats it fully under each of the heads, closely articulates part to part, and closes with a moving appeal to the feelings, so as to sway the will to some practical result. The Oriental mind, on the contrary, loves to brood long on a single point, to turn it round and round, to gather up all the truth about it into a focus, and pour it forth in a few pointed and memorable words. It is concise, epigrammatic, oracular. A Western speaker’ s discourse is a systematic structure, or like a chain in which link is firmly knit to link; an Oriental’ s is like the sky at night, full of innumerable burning points shining forth from a dark background. Such was the form of the teaching of Jesus. It consisted of numerous sayings, every one of which contained the greatest possible amount of truth in the smallest possible compass, and was expressed in language so concise and pointed as to stick in the memory like an arrow. Read them, and you will find that every one of them, as you ponder it, sucks the mind in and in like a whirlpool, till it is lost in the depths. You will find, too, that there are very few of them which you do not know by heart. They have found their way into the memory of Christendom as no other words have done. Even before the meaning has been apprehended, the perfect, proverb-like expression lodges itself fast in the mind. (James Stalker.) Attention to the Word of God I. The circumstance mentioned in the first verse of the text was A NATURAL OF OUR LORD’ S OFFICE AND . “ The people pressed upon Him to hear the Word of God.” Jesus Christ was “ that Prophet which should come into the world.” He brought down a message of mercy from heaven to earth; a message of pardon for the guilty, of life to the dead, and of salvation to those who were utterly and eternally lost. They were astonished at His doctrine; for He taught them as one having authority. They “ pressed upon Him to hear the Word of God.” And surely it is not too much for us to expect to witness a continuance of the same spirit. If God has indeed sent His Son and His servants to communicate an authentic revelation of His will to man, these teachers must be listened to by all who understand their own character and circumstances, and the great ends for which they live. II. Such AN TO THE WORD OF GOD IS MATTER OF AND DUTY AND . We are all bound to receive Divine instruction, and to receive it in the mode contemplated in the text. The law of Moses directed that, at stated seasons, there were to be holy convocations of the people; when they were to be collected in masses, to engage in holy duties, to enjoy holy delights, to receive holy light and power, and thereby to be filled for those high and holy ends for which they existed as a separate people. In the gospel, Christians are commanded not to forsake the assembling of themselves together. They are to “ exhort one another.” Along with these commands, there are “ given unto us exceeding great and precious promises.” “ In all places where I record My name I will come unto thee, and I will bless thee” (Exodus 20:24; Matthew 18:20). We are bound to give this attendance on the word and worship of God, because He requires it. We are bound to do this, because we ourselves have need of it. If the highest archangel in heaven were commanded to frequent religious assemblies, as a learner, and as a worshipper, he would not refuse. This was done by Him who has received “ a name which is above every name.” As the Mediator, Jesus Christ was subject to the Father; and He testified that subjection by a devout regard for His ordinances. He was a stated attendant on the services of the Temple. But we are not merely creatures: we are also sinners. We are not only subject to our Maker’ s authority; we need our Maker’ s mercy. If we would obtain His blessing, we must seek it in the way of His own appointment. In any other way He has not promised it; in any other way we have no right to expect it. It does not mean that the vulgar and illiterate must go to Church, but that men of science and literature are at liberty to stay away. A man may be as great a philosopher as Socrates or Plato; but then he is a creature and a sinner. He must therefore attend to his Creator’ s word; he must kneel at his Creator’ s feet. Neither can political rank at all free us from this great obligation. A man may be a lord, a duke, a king, or an emperor; yet he must imitate the example of Him who is Lord of lords, and King of kings. No man is excused on the ground of poverty and meanness. It may mortify him excessively to exhibit his rags before a large and respectable congregation; but Christ hath left us an example that we should tread in His steps. His piety and poverty were great and manifest. The plea of a high and refined spirituality of mind will be equally unavailing. It is useless to say, “ I have no need to observe the mere forms of piety, since I enjoy its spirit and its power.” III. The men of bustle and business are sometimes disposed to look upon all this attendance on the Word of God AS SO MUCH LOST TIME, AND AN WITH THE OF LIFE. If such excuses could ever be seasonable, they might have been urged by the fishermen of Galilee, on the occasion referred to in the text. They had toiled all the night before, and caught nothing. They were now in the act of washing their nets, in order at the earliest opportunity to go to sea again and make another attempt. Several of them, it is probable, had families dependent on their industry and success. Under such circumstances they might have said, “ Lord, we have no time to hear sermons now. It is impossible for us to comply with your request, and to spare our boat for preaching purposes at present. We must follow our employment, or our debts cannot be paid, nor our children’ s wants supplied.” But not a word of objection or excuse was heard. What follows proves that in the end they suffered no loss. Know, therefore, that there is a providence; a blessing of the Lord which maketh rich. IV. THE WORD OF GOD TO BE AND OBEYED. We may always venture to carry out its instructions into practical effect in the face of every difficulty and discouragement. But Peter reasoned on a different principle, and came to a different conclusion. He called Jesus “ Master,” and was consistent with himself. Many of us talk like servants while we act like masters. We say, “ Lord, Lord,” but do not the things which He enjoins. But Peter understood his duty better. When the Master commands, the servant’ s business is, not to argue, but to obey. V. THAT WORD OUR ON ACCOUNT OF ITS POWER TO REACH AND CONTROL THE HUMAN HEART. The Author of the Bible knows what is in man. He can speak to the heart of His own creatures. His Word touches the hidden springs of thought and feeling, and thus turns us about whithersoever He will (Hebrews 4:12). Peter found this by experience. The sermon was heard, and such was the silent and secret but powerful effect of Divine truth upon his heart, that he saw his unutterable guilt and depravity as in the light of open day; and became so agitated with grief and terror, that, in the end, he fell down at Jesus’ knees, exclaiming, “ Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord” (Luke 5:8). You will soon be brought to the same temper, if you listen to the same Teacher. VI. IT IS NOT , HOWEVER, TO THAT THIS WORD WILL US TO A REST AND PEACE, WHICH IMPLIES AN FROM WORLDLY . When the disciples were favoured with the immediate presence of Christ, and were in the very act of receiving a miraculous blessing at His hands, we scarcely expected to hear anything of a broken net and a sinking boat. Yet both these inconveniences were experienced on this memorable occasion. The afflictions of a good man only tend to heighten his gratitude, by more abundant displays of the Divine faithfulness and love. It was wonderful that the net should be suffered to break; but it was more wonderful that, after this accident, the fishes were not lost. It was wonderful that the boat should be suffered to begin to sink; but it was more wonderful that, in such a state, they should all come safe to land. God often reduces His people to the last extremities, and then shows them His salvation. The vessel which bears the saints to glory is often in a leaky and sinking state. All hope of being saved is not unfrequently taken away. Yet, while they have an ear to hear, and a heart to obey, they continue to float. VII. THE ARISING FROM. AN TO THE WORD OF GOD ARE NOT TO ; THEY EXTEND TO OTHERS. While attention to the Word of God teaches us the duty of instructing others, it also gives us the disposition to make the attempt. Piety and charity are inseparably connected. (Samuel Jackson.) The attractive power of the gospel Jesus as a preacher “ drew.” What was the attraction? He used no rhetorical device to produce an effect. His method was startling in its novelty. He did not follow the customs of His age. Though claiming to be a religious teacher, He did net adopt the conventional role of a priest or scribe. But to really appreciate the spirit of the Preacher we must understand His doctrine. The message He brought men made it imperative that His attitude towards them should be that of large-hearted sympathy. Now, there are some things I want you to see as the result of this exposition. 1. The first is that the gospel of Christ, when proclaimed in the proper spirit, never fails to touch the heart. In a sermon of Bishop Fraser’ s I read the following story: A well-known Anglican Bishop was announced to preach in a certain church. A tradesman in the parish, the leader of a set of Atheists, made up his mind to go and hear him. He listened attentively, and after the sermon he said to some one, “ If that bishop had argued, I would have fought with him; but there was no arguing about him; he preached to us simply about the love of God, and that touched me.” Let the gospel be preached with the simplicity and sympathy with which it was first preached in Galilee, and people will still be found pressing to hear. 2. The next thing I want you to see is, that the gospel and spirit of Christ are the powers that have been refining and elevating society ever since He lived and taught. Slowly, almost insensibly, the gospel has been making its way in society. 3. The last thing I want you to see is, that the gospel and spirit of Jesus alone have the power to make humanity noble and good. What a principle this is on which to base individual, social, and political life--God is the Father of all men and has given His Son to redeem them from death; all men are the sons of God, bound to obey Him with loving and filial spirit; each man owes to every other man the duties of a brother. Were that principle realized the happiness of the world would far surpass the dreams of the most ardent socialist. Getting rich by methods that injure others would be unknown. (S. If. Hamilton, D. D.) Luke 5:4 Launch out into the deep, and let down your nets for a draught Out of the deep I. RECALL THE EVENT. 1. It is not work that tries men and women, half as much as it is the disappointment which unsuccess brings. 2. The best and only real recreation which any soul can find is that which comes from resting in the Lord, and in abiding patiently upon Him, in the faith that He doeth all things well, even when He asks us to labour on without finding any immediate reward. II. CHRIST TAKES HIS PEOPLE INTO THE DEEP. There was in the crisis hour of St. Peter’ s personal history a striking coincidence between his outward and his inward experience--a parable of all Divine dealings with men. 1. Think of the present attitude of the world towards revealed truth. It shrinks from launching out into the deep. The prevailing tendency is towards the superficial rather than the substantial. We aim at greatness instead of thoroughness. Men have pushed their investigations in every direction; but they are disposed to stop just where the problem deepens into anything like mystery, and where faith must take the place of sight. Whenever I meet with one of these flippant retailers of modern objections to Holy Scripture, and hear him making light of revealed truth, and ventilating with imperiousness his opinion that the Bible is largely a myth, I always feel like asking such a man: “ My friend, have you ever pushed out from the shallow into the depth of these questions? Have ever your knees touched the waters of God’ s mighty sea? Have you ever gone, alone with Christ, away from the shore and its noisy multitude, to where His waves are mountains?” 2. In the workings and leadings of His providence, God sometimes takes us out of the region of shallow, everyday experiences, into those which are very deep and solemn. There are depths of sorrow, of affliction, and doubt and depression, of poverty and bodily sickness, of temptation, of penitence and shame, and of spiritual weakness; and some of them are mysterious, unfathomable. There is, in such cases, no use in trying to see bottom. Now and then the soul is tempted to think that chance, or accident, or lack of foresight, or an enemy of some kind, has lured him out there, just to drown him or to fill him with terror, Nay, it was a loving Guide who led you thither. (E. E. Johnson, M. A.) Advancement in prayer Prayer has small beginnings; but it should be progressive, never stationary. It is a science needing practice, and practice in it, as in other sciences, will make perfect. Our Lord bade St. Peter thrust out a little from the land; then He made him launch out into the deep. Our first prayers are a thrusting out a little from the land, a little disengagement of the thoughts, of the affections, from earth. But if we would gain anything, we must not rest satisfied with this, but must, at Christ’ s word, launch forth into the deep of spiritual communion with God. I. Prayer, to be efficacious, must be . All the powers of the mind must be drawn off from other matters, and concentrated on Him whom you are addressing. The wandering imagination has to be recalled from those objects about which it plays, like a butterfly round garden flowers, that it may rest on God. The memory is called away from the affairs of ourselves, that it may be used to supply food for the meditation in which we are engaged. The understanding is withdrawn from musing and irrelevant objects, that it may reason and reflect on the matter of our prayer and on the nature of Him to whom we pray. Finally, the will, which runs after a thousand objects which it desires, loves, and takes pleasure in, is fixed on God, and strives to conform itself to the Divine will, producing affections and forming resolutions such as the subject of meditation and devotion exacts. II. Prayer should be . After St. Peter had received Jesus into his vessel, he thrust out a little from the land. So, in prayer, the thoughts which are attached to earth, like the moorings of a boat, must be flung loose, or the vessel cannot put to sea. III. Prayer must be EARNEST. While disengagement resembles a sportsman raising his gun to his shoulder, and recollection represents him sighting his object, earnestness is the charge of powder with which his gun is loaded. IV. Prayer must be . Vague prayer without a purpose is never very earnest, nor can it be effectual. A good plan is to take one grace at a time, and ask for that, then another, and so on. Definiteness is the bullet to hit the mark. V. Prayer must be . This proves that we are in earnest, that we really desire that for which we ask. (S. Baring. Gould, M. A.) Launching out into the deep We have toiled in the narrows too long, and have taken little by our toil. Look round you in this nineteenth century of Christendom, and survey what ought to be a kingdom of heaven. We must launch out into the deep, the great human deep, which is in Christ’ s dominion, and not in the devil’ s, and let down our nets for a draught. We have learnt wisdom perhaps from our faults, our follies, our failures. The Church has toiled in the shallows surrounding her coasts among the souls she could get within her pale. But rarely has man, in his simple human relations and activities, been suffered to feel that as man he was dear to Christ, and a subject of His kingdom. The great evangelical movement began with a noble attempt to fulfil this command. The evangelists saved our State. Voltaire wrote to d’ Alembert, when the revolutionary yeast was beginning to work: “ We have never pretended to enlighten the cobblers and the maid-servants; we leave that to the apostles.” In a few years those cobblers and maid-servants were flooding the gutters of Paris with the best blood of France; while in England the apostles had tamed them. But the evangelical movement, as the years passed on, shut itself up more and more to its Churches, and treated the great human world, the world of secular thought, activity, and interest, as quite outside its pale. Christ points us to the broad ocean, the great human deep--the relations, the energies, the industries, and the interests, the thoughts, and the sympathies of men, in their physical, intellectual, social, and political life; these we claim for His kingdom, these be it ours to win to His love. Instead of saving souls out of the world, let us save the world with the souls in it. (J. Baldwin Brown, B. A.) Encouragement to work for God, though unsuccessful 1. Have we to contend in our work with a feeling of its having been fruitless? In the case of sensible labour, there always is some result. How different, on the contrary, is the case of the labourer in the world of mind! Does the feeling of the fruitlessness of our spiritual work oppress and summon us to conflict, or do we bear it lightly? There arc men who know this feeling very well, but, in a certain measure, feel comfortable in it. 2. If the feeling of dejection is now threatening to overcome us, let us not indulge it; let us ask rather how to change it into the joyful confidence of success! And whither shall we go? Where Peter went; with Jesus we find help. The same Peter who now complains, “ Lord, we have toiled,” &c., how differently he had, a few moments after, to judge! But still more. Had he not laboured in vain, the Lord had not found him, nor he the Lord. We see here, in a very evident example, how deceitful the feeling of fruitlessness is, and how we should not let ourselves be taken in by it. But not only that--we have also a security for it that labour for spiritual purposes can never be in vain. (Professor Rothe.) Fishing too near shore “ Launch out into the deep.” I. This Divine counsel comes, first, to all those who are paddling in THE MARGIN OF BIBLE . My father read the Bible through three times after he was eighty years of age, and without spectacles; not for the mere purpose of saying he had been through it so often, but for his eternal profit. John Colby, the brother-in-law of Daniel Webster, learned to read after he was eighty-four years of age, in order that he might become acquainted with the Scriptures. There is no book in the world that demands so much of our attention as the Bible. Yet nine-tenths of Christian men get no more than ankle-deep. Walk all up and down this Bible domain! Try every path. Plunge in at the prophecies, and come out at the epistles. Go with the patriarchs, until you meet the evangelists. Rummage and ransack, as children who are not satisfied when they come to a new house, until they know what is in every room, and into what every door opens. Open every jewel-casket. Examine the sky-lights. For ever be asking questions. Put to a higher use than was intended the Oriental proverb, “ Hold all the skirts of thy mantle extended when Heaven is raining gold.” The sea of God’ s Word is not like Gennesaret, twelve miles by six, but boundless; and in any one direction you can sail on for ever. Why, then, confine yourself to a short psalm, or to a few verses of an epistle? The largest fish are not near the shore. Sail away, oh ye mariners, for eternity! Launch out into the deep. II. The text is appropriate to all OF SHALLOW . Doubts and fears have in our day been almost elected to the Parliament of Christian graces. Doubts and fears are not signs of health, but festers and carbuncles. You have a valuable house or farm. It is suggested that the title is not good. You employ counsel. You have the deeds examined. You search the record for mortgages, judgments, and liens. You are not satisfied until you have a certificate, signed by the great Seal of the State, assuring you that the title is good. Yet how many leave their title to heaven an undecided matter! Christian character is to come up to higher standards. We have now to hunt through our library to find one Robert M’ Cheyne, or one Edward Payson, or one Harlan Page. The time will come when we will find half a dozen of them sitting in the same seat with us. The grace of God can make a great deal better men than those I have mentioned. Christians seem afraid they will get heterodox by going too far. III. The text is appropriate to all who ARE ENGAGED IN WORK. The Church of God has been fishing along the shore. We set our net in a good, calm place, and in sight of a fine chapel, and we go down every Sunday to see if the fish have been wise enough to come into our net. We might learn something from that boy with his hook and line. He throws his line from the bridge: no fish. He sits down on a log: no fish. He stands in the sunlight and casts the line: but no fish. He goes up by the mill-dam, and stands behind the bank, where the fish cannot see him, and he has hardly dropped the hook before the cork goes under. The fish come to him as fast as he can throw them ashore. In other words, in our Christian work, why do we not go where the fish are? It is not so easy to catch souls in church, for they know that we are trying to take them. With the Bible in one pocket, and the hymn-book in another pocket, and a loaf of bread under your arm, launch out into the great deep of this world’ s wretchedness. IV. The text is appropriate TO ALL THE . Every sinner in this house would come to God if he thought that he might come just as he is. People talk as though the pardon of God were a narrow river, like the Kennebec or the Thames, and that their sin draws too much water to enter it. No; it is not a river, nor a bay, but a sea. I should like to persuade you to launch out into the great deep of God’ s mercy. I am a merchant. I have bought a cargo of spices in India. I have, through a bill of exchange, paid for the whole cargo. You are a ship-captain. I give you the orders, and say,” Bring me those spices.” You land in India. You go to the trader and say, “ Here are the orders” ; and you find everything all right. You do not stop to pay the money yourself. It is not your business to pay it. The arrangements were made before you started. So Christ purchases your pardon. He puts the papers, or the promises, into your hand. Is it wise to stop and say, “ I cannot pay for my redemption” ? God does not ask you to pay. Relying on what has been done, launch out into the deep. (Dr. Talmage.) Luke 5:5 Master, we have toiled all the night, and have taken nothing: nevertheless, at Thy word--Obedience to the word of Christ How very much may simple obedience partake of the sublime l Peter here appeals, quite naturally, to one of the grandest principles which rule among intelligent beings, and to the strongest force which sways the universe. Great God, it is “ at Thy word” that seraphs fly and cherubs bow! Acting in conformity with “ Thy word,” we feel ourselves to be in order with all the forces of the universe, travelling on the main track of all real existence. Is not this a sublime condition, even though it be seen in the common deeds of our everyday life? I. “ At Thy word” should apply TO ALL THE AFFAIRS OF LIFE. 1. I mean, first, as to continuance in honest industry (1 Corinthians 7:20). Be diligent. Labour on in hope. Your best endeavours will not of themselves bring you prosperity; still, do not relax those endeavours. God has placed you where you are; move not till His providence calls you. Do not run before the cloud. Let not despondency drive you to anything rash or unseemly. 2. As to seeking for employment, if you have none. Go on seeking. Let men see that a Christian is not readily driven to despair; nay, let them see that when the yoke is made more heavy the Lord has a secret way of strengthening the backs of His children to bear their burdens. 3. It may be that you have been endeavouring in your daily life to acquire skill in your business, and you have not succeeded, or you have tried to acquire more knowledge, so that you could better fulfil your vocation, but hitherto you have not prospered as you could wish. Do not, therefore, cease from your efforts. Christians must never be idlers. Our Lord Jesus would never have it said that His disciples are a sort of cowards who, if they do not succeed the first time, will never try again. At His word let down the net once more: He may intend largely to bless you when by trial you have been prepared to bear the benediction. II. Is MATTERS OF We must at the word of Christ let down the net again. III. The great principle of our text should be applied TO OUR --soul-winning. Our method of catching men is by letting down the net of the gospel. Each believer has a warrant to seek the conversion of his fellows. The word of the Lord is a warrant which justifies the man who obeys it. It will leave us guilty if we do not obey. This warrant from Christ is one which, if we be in the state of heart of Simon Peter, will be omnipotent with us. It was very powerful with Simon Peter. 1. He was under the influence of a great disappointment. Yet he let down the net. 2. This command in Peter overcame his love of ease. 3. The command of Christ was so supreme over Peter that he was not held back by carnal reason. Reason would say, “ If you could not catch fish in the night, you will certainly not do so in the day.” But when Christ commands, the most unlikely time is likely, and the most unpromising sphere becomes hopeful. 4. The lesson to you and me is this: Let us do as Peter did, and let down the net personally, for the apostle said, “ I will let down the net.” Cannot you do something yourself--with your own heart, lips, hands? 5. And you had better do it at once. You may never have another opportunity; your zeal may have evaporated, or your life may be over. (C. H.Spurgeon.) The power of God’ s word “ At Thy word” --here is the cause of causes, the beginning of the creation of God. “ By the word of the Lord were the heavens made,” and by that word was the present constitution of this round world settled as it stands. When the earth was fruitless and dark, Thy voice, O Lord, was heard, saying, “ Let there be light,” and “ at Thy word” light leaped forth. “ At Thy word” day and night took up their places, and “ at Thy word” the waters were divided from the waters by the firmament of heaven. “ At Thy word” the dry land appeared, and the seas retired to their channels. “ At Thy word” the globe was mantled over with green, and vegetable life began. “ At Thy word” appeared the sun and moon and stars, “ for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years.” “ At Thy word” the living creatures filled the sea, and air, and land, and man at last appeared. Of all this we are well assured, for by faith we know that the worlds were framed by the word of God. Nor is it in creation alone that the word of the Lord is supreme, but in providence, too, its majestic power is manifested, for “ the Lord upholdeth all things by the word of His power.” Snow and vapour and stormy wind are all fulfilling His word. His word runneth very swiftly. When frost binds up the life-floods of the year, the Lord sendeth forth His word and melteth them. Nature abides and moves by the word of the Lord. So, too, all matters of fact and history are beneath the supreme word. Jehovah stands the centre of all things, as Lord of all He abides at the saluting-point, and all the events of the ages come marching by at His word, bowing to His sovereign will. “ At Thy word,” O God, kingdoms arise and empires flourish; “ at Thy word” races of men become dominant, and tread down their fellows; “ at Thy word” dynasties die, kingdoms crumble, mighty cities become a wilderness, and armies of men melt away like the hoar frost of the morning. Despite the sin of men and the rage of devils, there is a sublime sense in which all things from the beginning, since Adam crossed the threshold of Eden even until now, have happened according to the purpose and will of the Lord of hosts. Prophecy utters her oracles, and history writes her pages, “ at Thy word,” O Lord. (C. H.Spurgeon.) Peter and nature in harmony It is wonderful to think of the fisherman of Galilee letting down his net in perfect consonance with all the arrangements of the ages. His net obeys the law which regulates the spheres. His hand consciously does what Arcturus and Orion are doing without thought. This little bell on the Galilean lake rings out in harmony with the everlasting chimes. “ At Thy word,” saith Peter, as he promptly obeys, therein repeating the watchword of seas and stars, of winds and worlds. It is glorious thus to be keeping step with the marchings of the armies of the King of kings. (C. H. Spurgeon.) “ At Thy word” the watchword of the saints “ At Thy word” has been the password of all good men from the beginning until now. Saints have acted upon these three words, and found their marching orders in them. An ark is builded on dry land, and the ribald crowd gather about the hoary patriarch, laughing at him; but he is not ashamed, for, lifting his face to heaven, he saith, “ I have builded this great vessel, O Jehovah, at Thy word.” Abraham quits the place of his childhood, leaves his family, and goes with Sarah to a land of which he knows nothing, crossing the broad Euphrates, and entering upon a country possessed by the Canaanite, in which he roams as a stranger and a sojourner all his days. He dwells in tents with Isaac and Jacob. If any scoff at him for thus renouncing the comforts of settled life, he lifts also his calm face to heaven, and smilingly answers to the Lord, “ It is at Thy word.” Ay, and even when his brow is furrowed, and the hot tear is ready to force itself from beneath the patriarch’ s eyelid, as he lifts his hand with the knife to stab Isaac to the heart, if any charge him with murder, or think him mad, he lifts the same placid face towards the majesty of the Most High and saith, “ It is at Thy word.” At that word he joyfully sheathes the sacrificial knife, for he has proved his willingness to go to the utmost at the word of the Lord his God. If I were to introduce you to a thousand of the faithful ones who have shown the obedience of faith, in every case they would justify their acts by telling you that they did them “ at God’ s word.” Moses lifts his rod in presence of haughty Pharaoh, “ at Thy word,” great God! Nor does he lift that rod in vain at Jehovah’ s word, for thick and heavy fall the plagues upon the children of Ham. They are made to know that God’ s word returneth not to Him void, but fulfilleth His purpose, whether it be of threatening or of promise. See Moses lead the people out of Egypt, the whole host in its myriads! Mark how he has brought them to the Red Sea, where the wilderness doth shut them in. The heights frown on either side, and the rattle of Egypt’ s war-chariots is behind. How came Moses so to play the fool and bring them here? Were there no graves in Egypt that thus he brought them forth to die on the Red Sea shore? The answer of Moses is the quiet reflection that he did it at Jehovah’ s word, and God justifies that word, for the sea opens wide a highway for the elect of God, and they march joyfully through, and with timbrels and dances on the other side they sing unto the Lord who hath triumphed gloriously. If in after days you find Joshua compassing Jericho, and not assailing it with battering rams, but only with one great blast of trumpets, his reason is that God has spoken to him by His word. And so right on, for time would fail me to speak of Samson, and Jephthah, and Barak: these men did what they did at God’ s word; and, doing it, the Lord was with them. (C. H. Spurgeon.) A net for each one to let down Peter only let down one net, and there was the pity of it. If John and James and all the rest had let down their nets, the result would have been much better. “ Why?” say you. Because, through there being only one net, that net was overstrained, and broke. If all the nets had been used, they might have taken more fish, and no net would have been broken. I was reading some time ago of a take of mackerel at Brighton; when the net was full, the mackerel slicking in all the meshes made it so heavy that the fishermen could not raise it, and the boat itself was in some danger of going down, so that they had to cut away the net and lose the fish. Had there been many nets and boats, they might have buoyed up the whole of the fish; and so they might have done in this case. As it was, many fish were lost through the breaking of the net. If a Church can be so awakened that each individual gets to work in the power of the Holy Spirit, and all the individuals combine, then how many souls will be captured for Jesus l Multitudes of souls are lost to the blessed gospel because of our broken nets, and the nets get broken because we are not well united in the holy service, and by our unwisdom cause loss to our Master’ s cause. Ministers need not become worn out with labour if all would take their share: one boat would not begin to sink if the other boats took a part of the blessed load. (C. H. Spurgeon.) Many are in need through their own fault “ We have toiled all the night, and have taken nothing.” This complaint is often heard nowadays, also. Although many poor people may assert, with perfect truth, that they have laboured hard, yet there are many others whose poverty is through their own fault. Some of the faulty occasions are the following. I. . Many show neither zeal nor industry in the discharge of the duties of their calling. Poverty is the necessary consequence. 1. According to the testimony of Scripture (Proverbs 18:9; Proverbs 21:5). 2. Reason and experience. How can he catch fishes who will not let down his net? II. . 1. Many dissipate their property through folly. (1) They have not learned how to save. (2) They do not live according to their means. (3) They attempt rash speculations, through greed of gold. 2. Through extravagance in food and dress (Proverbs 21:17; Proverbs 23:11). III. WANT OF FEAR OF GOD. 1. God deprives those who do not fear Him of His blessing. 2. He visits them with sickness, and all kinds of misfortune. (J. J. Haubs.) Christ’ s words, and not our own judgment, are our law “ Sir,” said the Duke of Wellington to an officer who urged the impossibility of executing the directions he had received, “ I did not ask your opinion; I gave you my orders, and I expect to have them obeyed.” Such should be the obedience of every follower of Jesus Christ. The words which He has spoken are our law, not our judgment or fancies. Perseverance necessary The fishermen at Mentone keep on fishing with their great net; ay, by the score these fishermen take it out and haul it in again, and frequently they get no more than one little sardine for their pains. Many and many a time no more than they can hold in their hand is the produce of the casting of a net which covers acres of the sea. But why do they go on? Because they are fishermen, and cannot do anything else. Now, we are praying men, and there is nothing else we can do but wait upon the Lord. So if, after many a throw of the net of prayer, we get but one small answer, we will try again, for this is all we can do. Let us continue instant in prayer. (C. H. Spurgeon.) At Thy word These fishermen are not the men who could be charged with originating the gospel. Yet let us not suppose that there was no fitness in them for the work they had to do. Their very occupation was one which bred and nourished those very qualities which would stand them in good stead as the apostles of Christ. Their calling was one which demanded observation, that they might discern the times most favourable. They had to scan narrowly the sky, and discern whether there were signs of a coming tempest, for the Sea of Galilee was treacherous, and would often rise into fury in a few moments. Hence they needed both prudence and courage. And they needed both patience and perseverance too. The previous night had been one of no new experience to them. The new day was to be the greatest in their lives. They were to be clothed with a new mission, and strengthened for it by a new experience. The secret of their success was to be revealed to them by a miracle, the memory of which would nerve and strengthen them in the days to come. The command, “ Launch out,” &c., was a strange one, but still it was the command of the Lord. I. TO THE WORD OF CHRIST. Wise to have authority for every work we undertake. Enough for the soldier that he has the authority of his officer, for the officer that he has the authority of his general, for the ambassador that he has the authority of his king, and for the Christian labourer that he has the authority of Christ. “ Nevertheless,” said Peter--that is, not because of success, but in spite of failure--“ at Thy word I will let down the net.” And still the word “ nevertheless” is on the lips of the Church. Difficulties in the way of missionary enterprise. Arguments of those who hold that heathen races should be allowed to remain undisturbed in their religions. The slow progress we are making. “ Nevertheless, at Thy word,” &c. We must walk by faith, not by sight, not only in our own personal life, but in looking at the progress of the kingdom of Christ. “ It is not given to you to know.” These are the Saviour’ s words. It is enough for us to feel assured that patient labour cannot, will not, fail, and to say, amid all discouragement and delay, “ Nevertheless,” &c. II. THE RESULT OF THIS . It had in it not much of cheerfulness, nor perhaps, any faith, but it was obedience under trying circumstanses, and as such it was crowned with success. The failure of the previous night was not unforeseen or unarranged. Christ was in that failure as much as in the success that followed it. The lesson was--empty nets without His blessing and full nets with it. And this lesson they were to remember henceforth when they should become fishers of men. Be sure that Peter would remember that morning on the day of Pentecost, when at the first casting of the gospel-net he enclosed 3,000 souls; and a few days after, when, on casting the net again, there were added to the Church 5,000 souls. The night of failure was not without its lesson and benefit. We can do worse than fail--we can succeed and be proud of our success, and burn incense to our net, and despise those who fail, and forget the Hand whose it is to give or to withhold. (E. Mellor, D. D.) The spiritual fishing First, the state of the world, which is as the sea. Secondly, the state of the Church, which is as a ship or boat in the sea. Thirdly, the state of men by nature, who be as fishes, ranging after their own disposition uncaught. Fourthly, the state of ministers, who be as fishers. Fifthly, the state of the gospel preached, which is the hook, or bait, or net to take souls. I. AND THE STATE OF THE WORLD IS AS THE SEA IN A FOUR-FOLD RESPECT. 1. Because of the general unstableness of the things thereof. The unsettledness of that vast creature, the sea, is well known. It is in a continual motion (it cannot rest), it ebbs and flows perpetually: sometimes (at a spring tide) it swells to that bigness that the banks cannot contain it; sometimes, again, it falls back so low, that a man must go far from the bank before he can come near it. It is (under God) chiefly governed by the moon, the which there is no one thing more subject unto chance, it being never beheld two nights together in one proportion. Thus is the world, whether we look upon the general states of kingdoms or the personal estates of particular men, either for their goods or for their bodies, we see nothing but a continual alteration. Crowns are translated from head to head, and sceptres pass from one hand to another; fenced cities are made heaps, and walled towns become as the ploughed fields; they which were once fastened as with a nail in a sure place, and having set their nests on high, dreamed of nothing but perpetuities for them and theirs, are suddenly thrown out of all, and rolled and turned like a ball. 2. Because of the tumultuousness of it. Who is ignorant of the storms and grievous tempests which are at sea? 3. The world resembles the sea by the oppression that is in it. At sea the lesser fishes are a prey to the great ones; and in the world the rich and mighty swallow up the poor; one man bites and devours another. 4. In respect of the sway the devil bears in it. Observe what is in the Psalm, “ The sea is great and wide, there is that leviathan whom the Lord hath made to play therein.” Now, look how this monster domineers in the sea, so doth Satan here in the world; therefore he is called the god of this world. II. The next thing is touching the Church. THE STATE THEREOF IN THE WORLD IS LIKE THE STATE OF A SHIP OR BOAT UPON THE SEA; and that especially in this respect--because it is subject to continual tossings. 1. The troubles of His Church and the afflictions of His people do make His power and mercy to be known; even as the skill of a pilot is most to be seen in a storm: “ My power is made perfect through weakness.” 2. For their good. First, it makes them to look upward with the greater fervency. The second use serves to teach us (because the Church of God is as a ship in this sea of the world) the necessity of furnishing ourselves with such things as appertain to this spiritual voyage. Not to insist upon many, two things especially must be looked to. III. THE THIRD THING IS THE STATE OF MEN. The fish to be catched out of this sea and to be brought into this ship are men. “ Thou shalt catch men from henceforth.” And well in this arc we compared unto the fish. For as the fishes skip and play and take their pleasure in the sea and are unwillingly taken in the net, and labour to get out, and, being in the boat, would fain, if they could, leap back into the sea, so naturally we take pleasure in our sinful ways. IV. THE FOURTH THING IS OF THE STATE OF THE . Here are two things. 1. The state of the minister. 2. The labour, business, and work of the minister. Of the first thus we see: That is no superfluous or needless function, but a calling of great necessity for the winning and saving of men’ s souls. Secondly, thus: That the calling of the minister is no idle calling, but a calling of labour, a calling of much business and of great employment. V. The last thing is, THAT THE NET IN WHICH MEN MUST RE TAKEN IS THE OF THE GOSPEL. The comparison agreeth fitly after this manner. The preaching of the gospel is like to a net-- 1. In the general drift and use. The use of a net is to take fish, the drift of preaching is to bring in souls. 2. In the ordering of it. It is not that net lapped up together that bringeth in the draught, but hailed out at length, and spread forth, that closeth the fish; it is the opening and unfolding of the gospel, the stretching it out by preaching, which doth encompass souls. There may a fish or two hang in the net, being let down on a heap, but that is a chance, and is no wise adventuring. The Word read, and so brought in (as it were) in gross, may (by the mercy of God) take some; but we have no warrant from thence to make a rule general. Again, it is need that the net be strong, otherwise the greater kind will break through and make all the labour and charge to be in vain; so it is meet that the doctrine he well strengthened out of the Word of God, that if it be well proved, that it be well pressed and applied, that the consciences of the hearers may be convicted, and that they may see it is God and not man with whom they have to do: for, a man shall meet with many froward and wilful and violent natures that will not be held in, but when they feel themselves within the net will cry, “ Let us break their bands, and cast their cords from us “ : so that even a kind of violence may be used to keep them from destruction. 3. In the success of it. Many a draught the poor fisherman makes and taketh nothing, yet he leaveth not off. Many a time is the net of preaching shot forth, and yet none converted thereby; so it pleaseth God to exercise the patience of His servants. Yet still the work must be followed, and the Lord’ s leisure must be waited for. Often doth the net enclose many which yet after break away, and many are at first drawn in by the power of the gospel which yet afterwards slide back and return again to their own profaneness. (S. Hieron.) Unsuccessful fishing persevered in I. THE FAILURE . 1. They had “ toiled.” Everything in this world comes to be a “ toil” after a time. Any kind of labour, whether of mind or body, and even pleasure, is devoid of permanent satisfaction. 2. “ All the night.” Incessant labour, with no result but failure. The process is familiar-- (1) In personal life. After all our efforts and struggles, we confess with a sigh that we do not seem to grow any better. (2) In work for God in various spheres. Only failure seems to meet us. No decrease in moral evil; little advance. II. THERE MUST BE REASON FOR SUCH FAILURE. The general reason is the absence of Divine blessing. “ Except the Lord build the house,” &c. He alone is the Author of all good. But there are further considerations to be taken into account. 1. Perhaps God has not been present in our efforts. They may have lacked-- (1) Simplicity of motive. (2) Earnestness of devotion. (3) Humble dependence and prayerfulness. 2. Human perversity may for a time be permitted to have its way. The reason for this is hidden now; we shall know one day why it is so. Or-- 3. God may have withheld His blessing-- (1) To try our faith. (2) To teach us how better to labour. (3) In order to some greater and more blessed result, e.g., Jacob. III. NOTE THE OF FAITH. In spite of failure the apostles did not despair. So should it be with us. 1. The command of Christ is our warrant for labour. 2. And suggests the better performance of work. (1) Better preparation “ cleaning nets.” (2) Greater skill and care. (3) Deeper humility. Thinking less of our own part in the work. (4) More perseverence. (5) Stronger faith in the Great Worker whose instruments we are. 3. Such labour is bound to be ultimately successful. Because of His Word and our obedience. When, and how, we know not. In His time and way. But surely and certainly. (George Low, M. A.) The disappointed seamen Now, if we search into the grounds and reasons of these disappointments by the hand of Providence, we shall find them reducible to a threefold cause and reason. 1. The sovereign pleasure of God so disposes it. 2. The good of the people of God requires it. 3. The manifold sins of men in their callings provoke it. 1. The sovereign pleasure of God so disposes it. He is the Rector of the universe, and as such will still assert His dominion. If Providence had alike prospered every man’ s designs, and set them upon a level, there had been no occasion to exercise the rich man’ s charity or the poor man’ s patience. Nay, without frequent disappointments, itself would scarcely be owned in successes, nor those successes be half so sweet to them that receive them, as now they are. The very beauty of Providence consists much in these various and contrary effects. 2. And if we consider the gracious ends and designs of God towards His own people, it appears needful that all of them, in some things, and many of them in most things (relating to their outward condition in this world), should be frustrated in their expectations and contrivances. For if all things here should succeed according to their wish, and a constant tide of prosperity should attend them-- (1) How soon would sensuality and earthliness invade their hearts and affections! Much prosperity, like the pouring in of much wine, intoxicates, and overcomes our weak heads and hearts. Can a Christian keep his heart as loose from the smiling, as from the frowning world? (2) How soon would it estrange them from their God, and interrupt their communion with Him I He had rather you should miss your desired comforts in these things, than that He should miss that delightful fellowship with you which He so desires. (3) How loth should we be to leave this, if constant success and prosperity should follow our affairs and designs here! 3. And as disappointments fall out as the effects of sovereign pleasure, and are ordered as preventive means of such mischief, which prosperity would occasion to the people of God; so it comes as a righteous retribution and punishment of the many evils that are committed in our trading and dealings with men. It is a hard thing to have much business pass through our hands, and no iniquity cleave to them and defile them. And, from among many, I will here select these following evils, which have destroyed the estates and hopes of many. (1) Irreligious and atheistical neglect and contempt of God and His worship, especially in those that have been enlightened and made profession of religion. (2) Injustice and fraud is a blasting sin. A little unjust gain mingled with a great estate will consume it like a moth. (3) Oppression is a blasting sin to men’ s estates and employments. (4) Falsehood and lying is a blasting sin to our employments; a sin which tends to destroy all converse and disband all civil societies. (5) Perjury, or false swearing, is a blasting sin. The man cannot prosper that lies under the guilt thereof. It now remains that we apply it. Inference 1. Doth God sometimes disappoint the most diligent labours of men in their lawful callings? Then this teacheth you patience and submission under your crosses and disappointments. Consideration 1. And, in the first place, if thou be one that fearest God, consider that disappointments in earthly things fix no mark of God’ s hatred upon thee. The bee makes a sweeter meal upon two or three flowers, than the ox that hath so many mountains to graze upon. Consideration 2. And what if by these disappointments God be carrying on the great design of His eternal love upon thy soul? This may be the design of these providences; and if so, sure there is no cause for thy despondencies. Consideration 3. Be patient under disappointments; for if you meekly submit and quietly wait upon God, He can quickly repair all that you have lost and restore it by other providences double to you. Consideration 4. And why should it seem so hard and grievous to you for God to disappoint your hopes and purposes, when you cannot but know that you have disappointed His expectations from you so often, and that in greater and better things than these? Inference 2. If it be so, then labour to make sure of things eternal, lest you be eternally disappointed there also. (J. Flavel.) Luke 5:6; Luke 5:11 And when they had thus done, they enclosed a great multitude of fishes, and the net brake The desponding encouraged I. IS THE DUTIES OF LIFE OUR BEST MAY APPEAR . Always discouraging to toil without success: in learning, business, religion. Our failures often arise-- (1) through inexperience; (2) through indolence; (3) through impatience. None of these the case with Peter however. An experienced fisherman, and had toiled all the night. Continued fruitlessness ought to awaken candid investigation. Are we in a right sphere of labour? Are we labouring in a right spirit? We may be, and yet our best endeavours appear fruitless. II. IN THE DUTIES OF LIFE: WE MUST OBEY THE OF CHRIST. 1. In obeying Christ, Peter’ s faith rose above natural difficulties. 2. In obeying Christ, Peter’ s faith rested on Christ’ s command “ At Thy word.” No one else could have persuaded him to let down the net. 3. In obeying Christ, Peter’ s faith led to decisive action--“ I will let down the net.” Cultivate the habit of decision. The decisive man will catch his fish while the negligent man is preparing his nets. III. IN THE DUTIES OF LIFE, WE SHALL BE . Success may be delayed for a time; but it will come. At the very moment of our failure God purposes to fill our nets. (J. Woodhouse.) “ The livelong night we’ ve toiled in vain, But at Thy gracious word I will let down the net again: Do Thou Thy will, O Lord.” So spake the weary fisher, spent With bootless, darkling toil, Yet on his Master’ s bidding bent, For love and not for spoil. So day by day, and week by week, In sad and weary thought, They muse, whom God hath set to seek The souls His Christ hath bought. Full many a dreary, anxious hour We watch our nets alone In drenching spray and driving shower, And hear the night-bird’ s moan. At morn we look and nought is there Sad dawn of cheerless day! Who then from pining and despair The sickening heart can stay? There is a stay--and we are strong! Our Master is at hand, To cheer our solitary song, And guide us to the strand. In His own time; but yet awhile Our bark at sea must ride Cast after cast, by force or guise All waters must be tried. Should e’ er Thy wonder-working grace Triumph by our weak arm, Lot not our sinful fancy trace Aught human in the charm. Or, if for our unworthiness, Toil, prayer, and watching fail, In disappointment Thou canst bless, So love at heart prevail. (J. Keble.) Weariness and faith I. It is A voice OF FATIGUE AND TRYING TO STEADY ITSELF FOR FRESH EFFORT. II. IT IS THE VOICE, ALSO, OF DEFEAT AND TRYING TO RALLY ITSELF FOR FRESH . III. The word “ Nevertheless” introduces THE GRAND AND OF THE TEXT. Gather into one all the heads and threads of discourse--we are weary of the monotony of life, weary of the perpetual round of doing and being, disappointed with the result of life, with what we are to-day in Thy sight--beings occupying a point and not more, between two eternities. Nevertheless, at Thy word, because Thou speakest in our ears today and sayest, “ Launch out into the deep, the inscrutable future, the future of time and of eternity” ; yes, at Thy word--otherwise we were languid and depressed and disappointed and could not--at Thy word we will once again, to-day, let down the net. (Dean Vaughan.) The Galilean fishers Our subject is perseverance in duty in the absence of seeming success. 1. Illustrate it by the circumstances of our earthly life. Let duty always take precedence of pleasure; let recreation never be thought of till it is fairly earned: let no engagements be entered into beyond what can be met, and no expenditure be indulged in beyond a man’ s income. Let no neglect of our own prudence, and our own duty, be excused by the idle plea of relying upon God’ s providence without ourselves exercising the self-help on which God’ s providence is conditional. On such principles, as a general rule, success will reward effort, and the net judiciously cast will not fail to enclose the fish. There are, of course, exceptions. Without any fault on the part of the workman his labour may be in vain. What shall those do who may truly say, “ we have toiled all night,” &c.? Give up in despair? Nay. Let down the net again. 2. Apply this to higher industries. The case of a soul seeking heaven. The work of preacher, Sunday-school teacher, Bible-woman, tract-distributor, Christian missionary. (Newman Hall, LL. B.) Faith triumphant in failure Miracles of our Lord are parables. Because the record is literally true that it is spiritually instructive. The terms success and failure have a large range in human life. Some men are born, we say, to succeed. Nothing that man possesses can, however, guarantee results. Circumstances which man controls not, changes which he cannot foresee, have a wide operation, and under their influence it is seen again and again that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong. Failure comes where success was certain; success where every one foresaw failure. If a man has found heaven he may bear to have lost earth. But is it not true that failure has place also in spiritual things? Is there no such thing as a toiling all the night and taking nothing in the matters of that world which is of the soul and of eternity? The history of the Church of Christ is full of answers to that question. What long dark nights has it had to toil through! But of this we are sure, that the long toil of the night, however little rewarded, was essential to the marvellous success of the morning. The attitude of the true Church on earth has ever been characterized by the brief words selected as the topic of this sermon, “ Faith triumphant in failure.” And how shall we say that the case stands now for us? Are we living in a night or in a morning? It is far better to be labouring in the blackest night, than to fancy ourselves gathering with Christ when we are indeed scattering without Him. But for ourselves, and for others, let faith triumph over failure. I know that every failure is a proof of the want of faith. I know that if faith were present, failure could not be. But there is such a thing as faith, after defeats, returning to the charge, and it is in that that the test of our Christianity lies. A man who can come back to Christ, and say, “ Lord, I have slept at my post; I have let my oars drop; I have often left my net unmended until it could enclose nothing; I have suffered weariness to make me indolent, and long disappointment to make me hopeless. I have clone all this, but yet--even now--even thus late--I will, once again, at Thy word, let down my net, and wait Thy blessing,” that man may have many faults, he may be much behindhand, he may be full of infirmity and of sin, but he has the root of the matter in him; he has a little faith, and according to that faith shall it be to him. That man knows something, however little, of a faith triumphant in failure. Christ stands, as of old, upon the shore, and asks us of our welfare. He enters, as of old, into the little vessel which contains our fortunes: He feels for its frailness, He will guide its fittings, He will steer it for us into the haven where we would be. Hitherto we may have toiled and taken nothing; but if, at His word, we will now let down the net, He will bring into it that which shall be sufficient for us, and man’ s failure shall be Christ’ s success. (Dean Vaughan.) A night of toil: the philosophy of failure The sea-shore was often the Lord’ s retreat. By the shore lines of Galilee He wandered, and amid the voiceful hush of nature His soul found rest. Our scene opens in the morning on that sea made so sacred with associations of our Lord. On the beach, drawn up a little, were two fishing-boats. They had been out all night, trying, but unsuccessfully, all waters. The fishermen were washing their nets some little distance away with disconsolate faces. A night spent in toiling, and the morning dawning upon no fruit of effort, might well make them sad. These men had apparently failed, but there were elements in their failure which led to success. I. CHRIST CAME TO THEM WHEN THEY WERE FEELING THEIR FAILURE. But He found them working. II. THEIR WORKING THUS IN FAILURE AND THEIR TO TRY AGAIN THEIR FITNESS FOR HIGHER WORK. The Lord was choosing gospel-pioneers. There was in these men-- 1. Natural aptitude. 2. Industry. 3. Foresight. 4. Willinghood. III. LET US HEAR CHRIST’ S WORDS OF EFFORT AS TO US--“ Launch out into the deep.” 1. There are prayers unanswered and we are weary. You have, perhaps, been hugging the shore of self--throw yourself and yours more upon the deep of God s unfailing faithfulness and mercy. 2. You have been fishing in shallow waters, teaching your children, your scholars, your people, with that which was cheaply got and therefore little worth. Launch out into the ocean of God’ s truth. 3. You have had your religious crotchets. Launch out into broader spiritedness, deeper sympathies, more catholic charity. “ O, stirring words of living power, Ye speak to every heart; Ye bid all selfishness away, And slothful ease depart. Where’ er there is a soul to cheer, Where’ er the mourners weep, There, bear the healing balm of love, ‘ Launch out into the deep!’ O, watchword brave for those who sail Across the sea of life, Steer far away from every rock With awful dangers rife. Leave all the shallows and the neap; Far in the distance keep; Strike boldly right amid the waves ‘ Launch out into the deep!’” (W. Scott.) Gospel for the fifth Sunday after Trinity This was the final call of the disciples. Notice with what exquisite skill it is managed. I. There is THE CROWD UPON CHRIST TO HEAR THE WORD OF GOD. To a shepherd they might seem sheep to be folded; to a gardener, plants to be tended; but to a fisherman they would suggest swarming fish, ready to be swept into a net. Then comes the miraculous draught, the “ great multitude of fishes” corresponding with the multitude of the people. What could be more appropriate? II. Then we have THE DIVINE POWER OF CHRIST OVER THE OF THE DEEP, HIS POWER OVER THE HEARTS AND MINDS OF MEN. Probably Peter (whom we may take as representative of the rest) may have smiled when he heard the command (Luke 5:4). But he obeyed. And when he saw the draught of fishes, and caught a glimpse of hundreds and thousands of human beings drawn into the meshes of the gospel-net. III. THE EFFECT OF THE MIRACLE WAS TO REVEAL THE TRUE OF CHRIST TO PETER AND TO REVEAL PETER TO HIMSELF. Before Isaiah could go as a messenger to the people he must have a vision of the Holy God, and be bowed down under a sense of his own sinfulness. So with Peter. Whether he clearly saw at this time the whole truth of the Godhead of Christ it may be hazardous to affirm. But this is clear, that he felt himself in the presence of One who represented the holiness of God. And he shrank from Him, yet was attracted towards Him. “ Depart from me” ; but his inner heart says, “ Stay with me.” The work was done. “ They forsook all and followed Him” (verse 11). (G. Calthrop, M. A.) The miraculous draught of fishes I. We have here TO . II. LEARN THAT OF SIN IS BY OF CHRIST. III. Learn that IS THE BEST FOR UPON WORK. IV. Learn HOW TO RESPOND TO A GREAT CALL--BY ALL. (D. Longwill.) Place of the miracle in the history The interest in this case centres not in the miraculous element, but in the two questions: Is the incident historical? and is it in its true place in the history? The circumstances that the narrative is found only in one of the Synoptical Gospels, and that not, as we might have expected, the one containing the Petrine tradition; that an incident is recorded in the appendix to the fourth Gospel so similar as to suggest the hypothesis of a duplicate; and that an emblematic significance is assigned to the occurrence in the words reported to have been spoken by Jesus, lend plausibility to the notion that we have to do here not with an actual event, but simply with a symbolic story invented to embody the promise made to Peter by his Master that he should become a fisher of men. Of those who are prepared to recognize in the incident something more than a metaphor transformed into a fact, some have doubted whether it is in its true place in Luke’ s Gospel, and ought not rather to be assigned to the post-resurrection period, as in the fourth Gospel. In this connection stress is laid on the exclamation of Peter on seeing the great draught of fish, “ Depart from me,” &c., which, as connected with the period of the first call to the discipleship, seems to lack point and appropriateness, but gains deep meaning when conceived of as spoken by Peter when his humiliating denial of his Lord was fresh in his recollection. But one has no great difficulty in imagining such an excitable, impressionable man as Peter uttering the words at any time, without any special occasion for calling his sin to mind, viewing them simply as an expression of reverence. Strauss characterizes Peter’ s fear as superstitious, and not at all New-Testament like. Granted, but what then? Was it to be expected that the disciples at the time of their first call should be men of the New Testament in their thoughts and feelings? On the contrary, was it not the very aim of their vocation that they might be associated with Christ, and in His company gradually imbibe the spirit of the new Christian era, the era of the better hope, when we no longer stand off in fear, but draw nigh to God in filial trust? Peter’ s exclamation, as reported by Luke, is in keeping with the initial period of discipleship, and just on that account it supplies no ground for transferring the incident to the later period when discipleship was about to pass into apostleship. At that late time Peter might have more reason than ever before for calling himself a sinful man, but his sense of unworthiness was not so likely then to express itself in the form of a “ Depart from me.” Looking at the incident in connection with its probable aim, it seems equally appropriate at the beginning and at the end of the history. Christ’ s purpose was to inspire Peter with enthusiasm for his spiritual vocation. There was a need for this at both periods, and in view of this fact it becomes credible that the narratives of Luke and John are not variations of the same history, but records of distinct events. The earlier event served the purpose of winning Peter to the life of discipleship, the later of inspiring him with devotion to the heroic career of the apostolate. (A. B. Bruce, D. D.) The nature of the miracle As for the nature of the action recorded, it has been variously conceived as a miracle of power controlling the movements of the fish and directing them into a particular course, or of supernatural knowledge of the place where the fish were to be found at a certain moment, or of prophetic clairvoyance in the exercise of a faculty natural to man, but possessed by Jesus in a preternatural degree, or so far as Jesus was concerned a mere act of trust in a special providence of God making itself subservient to His designs. It is not necessary, and the narrative does not enable us, to decide peremptorily between these various views. We arc not even absolutely shut up to the belief that there was a miracle in the case in any form or degree. It is not an impossible supposition that the knowledge possessed by Jesus was such as might be obtained by observation. Traces of such a great shoal of fish might be visible on the surface to any one who might be looking in the proper direction. A well-known writer [Canon Tristram] remarks, “ The density of the shoals of fish in the Sea of Galilee can scarcely be conceived by those who have not witnessed them. Frequently these shoals cover an acre or more of the surface, and the fish, as they slowly move along in masses, are so crowded, with their back fins just appearing on the level of the water, that their appearance at a little distance is that of a violent shower of rain pattering on the surface.” But, while this description clearly proves the possibility of becoming aware of the presence of a shoal by observation, the supposition that our Lord acquired the knowledge which enabled Him to give directions to the fishermen in this way, is rendered very improbable by the fact that the draught of fish appeared to Peter marvellous not only in itself, but in connection with the agency of Jesus; for that he recognized Jesus as somehow the cause of the extraordinary and utterly unlooked-for success is manifest in his words. Yet it is noticeable that the narrative does not lay stress on that agency in explaining the emotions of Peter and his companions, but simply on the quantity of fish taken (Luke 5:9). And it may be admitted that the purpose of the transaction did not absolutely demand a miracle. Christ’ s aim was not merely to attach the disciples to Himself, but to fire them with zeal for their new vocation. For that end what was wanted was not a mere miracle as displaying supernatural power or knowledge, but an experience in connection with their old vocation which, whether brought about miraculously or otherwise, should take possession of their imagination as an emblem of the great future which lay before them in their new career as apostles, or fishers of men. The phenomenal draught of fish, however brought about, fulfilled this purpose better than a small take would have done, even though the fish had been expressly created before the eyes of the disciples. Such a miracle would have filled them with astonishment and wonder, but it would not have awakened in their breasts wondering thoughts and high hopes in reference to the work and progress of the Divine Kingdom. (A. B. Bruce, D. D.) All through the long night’ s mist and rain, In open sea or near the shore, They cast their nets, yet still in vain; They found but failure evermore. ‘ Twas time to cleanse from tangled weed, And lay them on the beach to dry: When lo! in hour of utmost need, They heard the voice of Jesus nigh. They cast their nets again, and lo! So large the haul of fish they take, The meshes gape, and scarce they know If they shall land them ere they break. And then a chill of sudden fear, As though the veil of sense were rent, And they, frail men, were brought too near The scope of some Divine intent. Oh, could they bear that presence dread, Before whose keen and piercing sight Lie bare the hearts of quick and dead, The world’ s great Teacher, Light of light What wonder if from pallid lips The cry bursts out, “ Depart from me” ? Too bright that full apocalypse For man’ s sin-darkened eyes to see. “ Sin-stained am I, and Thou art pure Oh, turn Thy steps some other way; How shall I dare Thy gaze endure? How in Thy stainless presence stay.” Yet chiefly when unlooked-for gains Our skill-less, planless labours bless. And we, for weary labour’ s pains, Reap the full harvest of success; We wonder at the draught we take, The latent powers that bud and grow! Ah, can we dare our work forsake, And follow where He bids us go? “ Yes, fear ye not,” so ran His speech “ Fishers of men ye now must be, Where’ er the world’ s wide waters reach, By gliding stream or stormiest sea.” So only can we hope restore, So only conquer shame and fear, And welcome, from the eternal shore, The voice that tells “ our Lord is near.” (Dean Plumptre in “ Poet’ s Bible.) Christ with the Galilean fishermen 1. The rank of life from which Jesus Christ chose the men who were to be the chief ministers of His religion, is worthy of particular notice. We see that His ministers were, in general, of lowly station; and yet we at the same time know that their instructions and influence, far surpassed those of the most learned and powerful men the world had ever seen. Principles were disseminated by fishermen and tent-makers, which, from the very first, excited the admiration of many, and which, in the process of time, effected a complete revolution in the religious sentiments of the civilized world. Does not this afford an irrefragable argument for the Divine origin of the gospel? Whence had such men such things? Let us beware of neglecting anything they delivered. 2. Let us mark the honour here put on honest industry. Duty requires us to be diligent in the proper duties of our station and profession in life. No matter how humble our employment, Christ will accept us in it, visit us in it, and bless us in it. 3. The success of human industry depends on the blessing of Providence. If given, let us thank God for it; if withheld, let us not murmur, but cheerfully acquiesce in the Divine will. 4. An encouraging example of implicit and persevering obedience to the Divine commandment. 5. Instruction to ministers, in their employment being compared to that of fishermen. (1) Arduous. (2) Requiring watchfulness. (3) Exercising patience. 6. The necessity of forsaking all, in order to follow Christ. (James Foote, M. A.) The blessed fishermen Blest-- (1) by the gracious presence of Jesus; (2) by the rich gift of Jesus; (3) by the gracious call of Jesus. (Heubner.) The just means of gaining temporal blessing 1. God’ s word. 2. Labour. 3. Trust in God. 4. Acknowledgment of personal unworthiness. 5. Right use of the blessing. (Heubner.) The remarkable transitions in the life of faith 1. From disappointment to surprise. 2. From want to plenty. 3. From joy to terror. 4. From fear to hope. (Van Oosterzee.) The faith of Peter Peter’ s faith-- (1) was tried; (2) endured; (3) was changed into sight. (Van Oosterzee.) The obedience of faith 1. Its ground. 2. Its nature. 3. Its blessing. (Van Oosterzee.) An image of the preaching of the gospel 1. The wide-reaching command (Luke 5:4). 2. The hard labour (verse 50). 3. The sole might (verse 56). 4. The rich fruit (Luke 5:6-7). 5. The right temper (Luke 5:8). 6. The highest requirement of the evangelical function (Luke 5:10-11). (Van Oosterzee.) Peter an example for us 1. Hear when the Lord speaks. 2. Labour when the Lord commands. 3. Believe what the Lord promises. 4. Follow whither the Lord calls. (Fuchs.) Blessing in our temporal calling 1. On what it depends. 2. Of what nature it is. 3. For what it inspirits us. (Lisco.) Failure and success I. THE ’ S FAILURE. 1. It was simply failure; disgrace did not attend it. They had done their best, and it was not their fault that they were unsuccessful. Better to say, “ I toiled all the night, and caught nothing,” than, “ I cast in the net, and caught one thousand fish without an effort.” 2. It was overruled for good. God often teaches that the years of plenty are from Him, by prefacing them with years of famine. 3. It did not produce despair. 4. No faithful toil is without reward. What we call failure is, in God’ s account, oftentimes brightest success. II. THE ’ S SUCCESS. 1. It was miraculous. In two respects--that they caught so many, and, though the net brake, saved all. 2. But by ordinary means. No success without diligent labour. 3. They had much anxiety--“ The net brake.” Yet this apparent accident was a source of good--co-operation. 4. Their minds seem to have been pervaded by deepest awe. “ They beckoned” --not shouted, as in ordinary circumstances they would have done. 5. To enjoy success, we must have a present Lord. 6. Success should lead us to follow Christ more fully. (R. A. Griffin.) The two draughts of fishes We have heard of some ministers who could say that they had often preached from the same text, but they had never delivered the same discourse. The like may be said of Christ. He often preached upon the same truth, but it was never precisely in the same manner. We have read in your hearing this morning the narrative of two miracles (Luke 5:1-39. and John 21:1-25.) which seem to the casual observer to be precisely alike; but he who shall read diligently and study carefully, will find that though the text is the same in both, yet the discourse is full of variations. In both the miraculous draughts of fishes, the text is the mission of the saints to preach the gospel--the work of mancatching--the ministry by which souls are caught in the net of the gospel, and brought out of the element of sin to their eternal salvation. I. Is THESE TWO THERE ARE MANY POINTS OF . They are both intended to set forth the way in which Christ’ s kingdom shall increase. 1. First you will perceive that in both miracles we are taught that the means must be used. In the first case, the fish did not leap into Simon’ s boat to be taken; nor, in the second case, did they swarm from the sea and lay themselves down upon the blazing coals that they might be prepared for the fisherman’ s feast. No, the fishermen must go out in their boat, they must cast the net; and after having cast the net, they must either drag it ashore, or fill both boats with its contents. Everything is done here by human agency. It is a miracle, certainly, but yet neither the fisherman, nor his boat, nor his fishing tackle are ignored: they are all used and all employed. Let us learn that in the saving of souls God worketh by means; that so long an the present economy of grace shall stand, God will be pleased by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe. Every now and then there creeps up in the Church a sort of striving against God’ s ordained instrumentality. God getteth the most glory through the use of instruments. 2. Again, in both our texts there is another truth equally conspicuous, namely, that means of themselves are utterly unavailing. In the first case you hear the confession, “ Master, we have toiled all the night and have taken nothing.” In the last case you hear them answer to the question, “ Children, have ye any meat?” “ No” --a sorrowful No. What was the reason of this? Were they not fishermen plying their special calling? Verily, they were no raw hands; they understood the work. Had they gone about the toil unskilfully? No. Had they lacked industry? No, they had toiled. Had they lacked perseverance? No, they had toiled all the night. Was there a deficiency of fish in the sea? The Great Worker who does not discard the means would still have His people know that He uses instrumentality, not to glorify the instrument, but for the sake of glorifying Himself. He takes weakness into His hands and makes it strong, not that weakness may be worshipped, but that the strength may be adored which even makes weakness subservient to His might. 3. Thirdly, there is clearly taught in both these miracles the fact that it is Christ’ s presence that confers success. Christ sat in Peter’ s boat. 4. In both instances the success which attended the instrumentality through Christ’ s presence developed human weakness. We do not see human weakness more in non-success than in success. In the first instance, in the success you see the weakness of man, for the net breaks and the ships begin to sink, and Simon Peter falls down with--“ Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.” He did not know so much about that till his boat was filled; but the very abundance of God’ s mercy made him feel his own nothingness. In the last case, they were scarcely able to draw the net because of the multitude of fishes. Brethren, if you or I would know to the fullest extent what utter nothings we are, if the Lord shall give us success in winning souls we shall soon find it out. II. THERE ARE ALSO SEVERAL POINTS OF . The first picture represents the Church of God as we see it; the second represents it as it really is. The first pictures to us the visible, the second the invisible. Luke tells us what the crowd see; John tells us what Christ showed to His disciples alone. The first is common truth which the multitude may receive; the next is special mystery revealed only to spiritual minds. Observe, then, carefully, the points of divergence. 1. First, there is a difference in the orders given. In the first, it is, “ Launch out into the deep, and let down your nets for a draught.” In the second it is, “ Cast the net on the right side of the ship.” The first is Christ’ s order to every minister; the second is the secret work of His Spirit in the word. The first shows us that the ministry is to fish anywhere and everywhere. All the orders that the Christian has, as to his preaching, is, “ Launch out into the deep, and let down your net.” He is not to single out any particular character; he is to preach to everybody. The secret truth is, that when we are doing this, the Lord knows how to guide us, so that we “ cast the net on the right side of the ship.” That is the secret and invisible work of the Spirit, whereby He so adapts our ministry, which is in itself general, that He makes it particular and special. 2. In the first instance you will clearly see that there is a distinct plurality. The fishermen have nets--in the plural; they have boats--in the plural. There is plurality of agency employed. 3. Thirdly, there is another difference. In the first case, how many fish were caught? The text says, “ a great multitude.” In the second case, a great multitude are taken too, but they are all counted and numbered. “ A hundred and fifty and three.” What was Peter’ s reason for counting them? We cannot tell. But I think I know why the Lord made him do it. It was to show us that though in the outward instrumentality of gathering the people into the Church the number of the saved is to us a matter of which we know nothing definitely, yet secretly and invisibly the Lord has counted them even to the odd one, He knoweth well how many the gospel net shall bring in. I, as a preacher, have nothing to do with counting fish. My business is with the great multitude. Splash goes the net again! Oh Master I thou who hast taught us to throw the net and bring in a multitude, guide into it the hundred and fifty and three! 4. Yet again, notice another difference. The fish that were taken the first time appear to have been of all sort. The not was broken, and therefore, doubtless some of them got out again; there were some so little that they were not worth eating, and doubtless were thrown away. “ They shall gather the good into vessels and throw the bad away.” In the second case, the net was full of great fishes; they were all great fishes, all good for eating, all the one hundred and fifty-three were worth the keeping, there was not one little fellow to be thrown back into the deep again. The first gives us the outward and visible effect of the ministry. We gather into Christ’ s Church a great number. And there will always be in that number some that are not good, that are not really called of God. Sometimes we have Church-meetings in which we have to throw the bad away. We have many blissful meetings where it is gathering-in the fish--and what big hauls of fish has God given to us! Glory be to His name l But at other times we have to sit down and tell our fish over, and there are some who must be thrown away; neither God nor man can endure them. Thus is it in the outward and visible Church. Let no man be surprised if the tares grow up with the wheat--it is the order of things, it must be so. 5. Yet again, you notice in the first case the net broke, and in the second case it did not. Now, in the first case, in the visible Church the net breaks. My brethren are always calling out, “ the net is broken 1” No doubt it is a bad thing for nets to break; but you need not wonder at it. We cannot just now, when the net is full, stop to mend it; it will break. It is the necessary consequence of our being what we are that the net will break. There are several other points of difference, but I think we have hardly time to enlarge upon them. I will only hint at them. In the first case, which is the visible Church, you see the human weakness becomes the strongest point; there is the boat ready to sink, there is the net broken, there is the men all out of heart, frightened, amazed, and begging the Master to go away. In the other case it is not so at all. There is human weakness, but still they are made strong enough. They have no strength to spare, as you perceive, but still they are strong enough, the net does not break, the ship goes slowly to land dragging the fish; and then, lastly, Simon Peter pulls the fish to shore. Strong he must have been. They were just strong enough to get their fish to shore. So in the visible Church of Christ you will often have to mourn over human weakness; but in the invisible Church, God will make His servants just strong enough--just strong enough to drag their fish to shore. The agencies, means, instrumentalities, shall have just sufficient force to land every elect soul in heaven, that God may be glorified. Then, notice, in the first case, in the visible Church they launched out into the deep. In the second case, it says they were not far from the shore, but a little way. So to-day our preaching seems to us to be going out into the great stormy deep after fish. We appear to have a long way to reach before we shall bring these precious souls to land. But in the sight of God we are not far from shore; and when a soul is saved, it is not far from heaven. To us there are years of temptation, and trial, and conflict; but to God, the Most High, it is finished--“ it is done.” They are saved; they are not far from shore. In the first case, the disciples had to forsake all and follow Christ. In the second, they sat down to feast with Him at the dainty banquet which He had spread. So in the visible Church to-day we have to bear trial and self-denial for Christ, but glory be to God, the eye of faith perceives that we shall soon drag our net to land, and then the Master will say, “ Come and dine” ; and we shall sit down and feast in His presence, with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of God. III. The time is gone, and I close by ONE AMONG MANY LESSONS WHICH THE TWO IN COMMON SEEM TO TEACH. In the first ease, Christ was in the ship. Oh, blessed be God, Christ is in His Church, though she launch out into the deep. In the second case, Christ was on the shore. Blessed be God, Christ is in heaven. He is not here, but He has risen; He has gone up on high for us. But whether He be in the Church, or whether He be on the shore in heaven, all our night’ s toiling shall, by His presence, have a rich reward. That is the lesson. (C. H.Spurgeon.) The disappointing night and the successful morn I. THE NIGHT OF . 1. A most unlikely disappointment. 2. The disappointment of skilled men. 3. A disappointment in spite of devoted labour. 4. This disappointment was most disheartening. II. THE MORNING OF SUCCESS. 1. It was success that was not very probable. The best time for fishing had gone--the night. Not unfrequently the work of which we have least hope in the end gives us most joy. History of missions, e.g., to South Sea Islands. “ In the morning sow thy seed,” &c. 2. It was success through the use of the old means. 3. It was success in the old sphere. 4. It was success realized by the very men who had previously failed. 5. It was success consequent on the Lord’ s presence and on a believing obedience to His word. 6. It was success of the most complete character. 7. It was success in the joy and blessing of which others shared. Those in “ the other boat” were called upon to help. 8. It was success which had the most gracious results. (1) Led to the adoring recognition of the Lord’ s presence and power (Luke 5:8). (2) Filled the minds of all with grateful astonishment (Luke 5:9-10). (3) Was the pledge and promise of greater things (Luke 5:10), (4) Led to completest devotion on the part of those concerned (Luke 5:11). (R. M. Spoor.) The sinking fishing-boat a symbol of the ruinous tendency of abounding prosperity When is a man most likely to go wrong morally? When he is in suffering? Hardly so. Prosperity puts him to a far severer test. On the ground nobody gets giddy and falls, but on a pinnacle many a one, having lost the steady nerve and firm foothold, has trembled, reeled, and rolled down. How few can bear success t Let a man steal a march on his fellows, outstrip them in the boisterous race for riches, “ get on in the world,” as we phrase it, and the chances are that he will deteriorate. Noble exceptions there are to the rule, never more than in our own day. Many rise in character as they rise in circumstances. But, alas I numbers do the exact opposite: as they go up in possessions, they go down in mind, down in heart, down in conscience. Gray, in his charming Elegy, speaks of “ chill penury” freezing “ the genial current of the soul.” It may do, but the pleasant, soothing zephyr of wealth certainly tends to relax manly vigour and induce baneful lethargy. There are certain fish which flourish best when lowest in the sea; severe pressure is evidently, in some way, adapted to their nature; when raised near the surface they invariably degenerate. It is so, too often, with men; when raised, they descend. Alexander the Great was all right as long as he had to cope with his enemies; difficulty did not daunt but develop him. On he went from strength to strength, carrying everything before him. But the day that saw his final obstacle removed beheld the first step taken in a retrograde direction. Conquest surrounded him with luxuries; all the elaborate appliances of civilization were placed within his reach; he had but to lift his hand, and the prolific, varied resources of distant and neighbouring lands were at his command. The enervating influences of these things were, however, only too speedily manifested. The Macedonian hero dwarfed into the effeminate ben vivant; Spartan simplicity gave way to requirements as multitudinous as they were vicious, and to make his ruin complete, the world’ s conqueror died from the effects of a disgraceful drunken brawl! (T. R. Stevenson.) A new year’ , word for business people “ Out of the ship.” The Lord Jesus had been preaching in synagogues; but there were very many outside who wanted to hear Him, and whom He wanted to reach. So He entered into a boat belonging to one of His disciples that was drawn up on the beach, and when it was thrust a little way from the shore He sat down and taught the people. I. JESUS SEEKS A PULPIT RIGHT IN THE MIDST OF DAILY LIFE. He comes to each of us and asks us to let Him have our daily occupation as His preaching-place. II. LOOK AT THE BOATS WHICH THE LORD JESUS USES. 1. It was the boat of a disciple. He never thrusts Himself upon any. Can we afford to receive the Lord aboard of our ship? 2. It was the boat of an ardent and loving disciple. How eagerly Simon received Him into the boat! 3. It was the boat of a busy disciple. Hard-working disciples who can toil all night, if need be--their’ s is the business from which Christ will preach. III. LOOK AT THE . They were washing their nets. The Lord will never help us to catch fish with dirty nets. IV. Then as to THE SERMON WHICH THE LORD WOULD PREACH from the daily occupation. 1. Considerateness for other people. These men would have to go off again at sunset to fish, and they had toiled all the previous night. But that others might see and hear Jesus, they leave their nets, they thrust out the ship, and they wait upon the Lord. A sermon that was never so much needed as it is to-day. 2. Faithfulness. The crying want of our times is this, that men should see and hear Jesus in the boat of every disciple. Faithfulness on the part of His disciples goes furthest to give men faith in their Lord and Master. V. Then there are TWO OR THREE OTHER THAT GROW OUT OF THE . 1. It goes well with the boat when Christ is on board. 2. Notice that while the Lord said “ nets” (Luke 5:4), Simon said “ net” (Luke 5:5). And he took up the first that came to hand. Ah, Simon, the blessed Master knows more about fishing than you think. And, my brethren, He knows as much about your business as about Simon’ s. Their net brake (Luke 5:6), so they needed the nets after all. 3. Think of the fishing-net giving the disciples the most amazing manifestation of Jesus they had seen. Ah, so it is when Jesus is in the business, the common daily work of life shall bring glorious manifestations of the Lord’ s presence and power. 4. The fisherman who takes Christ on board is promoted to the rank of an apostle. To serve Jesus in the common round of daily life is the way up to the highest and most splendid service for the King. 5. When Jesus is in the ship everything is in its right place. The cargo is in the hold, not in the heart. Cares and gains, fears and losses, yesterday’ s failure and to-day’ s success, do not thrust themselves in between us and His presence. “ Goodness and mercy shall follow me,” sang the Psalmist. Alas when the goodness and mercy come before us, and our blessings shut Jesus from view I Here is the blessed order--the Lord ever first, I following Him, His goodness and mercy following me. (Mark Guy Pearse.) Failure, faith, and fortune I. FAILURE. “ Toiled--nothing.” Failure may be caused by (a) lack of aptitude; (b) deficiency of energy; or (c) want of perseverance. Notwithstanding skill, exertion, and persistence, here was failure. 1. The plea of disappointment. 2. That plea urged as a reason for relinquishing toil. II. FAITH. “ Nevertheless, at Thy word,” &c. The fishermen were learning of Christ; their confidence and hope were growing. They had Christ’ s word to rely on, and have not we? 1. Faith in exercise. 2. A right resolve taken. 3. A new venture made. III. FORTUNE. 1. Unexpected abundance. 2. An act of kindness compensated. 3. Plenty the reward of obedience. 4. Success the providence of the Lord Jesus Christ. IV. Note THE RESULTS OR THE MIRACLE. 1. The perception of Christ’ s glory. 2. Christ’ s majesty producing, humility. 3. A new vocation indicated. 4. Abandonment of all for Christ’ s service. (M. Braithwaite.) The three F’ s--a parable of fishing 1. Through a long weary night four men sat in their boats on the Sea of Galilee. They are not novices in the art of fishing, but old experienced hands. They do not idle away their time. They toil hard. They toil hard--dropping their nets and drawing them up again, empty. The story of that vexatious night of disappointment is told, next day, by one of their number in this one sentence, “ Master, we have toiled,” &c. It could all have been compressed into the one sad word, FAILURE. And this is the word which many pastors and Christian workers may feel themselves obliged to write underneath many of their undertakings and efforts. But God holds us responsible only for duties, never for results. Not by human might, or power, but by His Spirit, is success to be reached. A Paul may plant, or a Peter may fish, but God only can give the increase. 2. Now let us turn over the leaf, and begin Chapter II. It is no longer midnight, but morning. The early sun sparkles on the blue waves of Gennesareth. Two fishermen are on the beach, washing their nets; two others, John and James, are mending theirs in a boat. Jesus comes in sight, followed by a jostling crowd. He wants elbow-room, and space to address the throng, and so He calls for Peter’ s boat and makes it His floating pulpit. As soon as His discourse is over, He begins to think of His hungry and disappointed disciples. So He gives the order to Simon. There was a great deal of human nature in Peter. He felt just as you and I have felt a hundred times. He said, “ We have been toiling all night, and have taken nothing.” Had he stopped short right there he would have got a rebuke for the shameful sin of giving up. He was despondent over the past; but he was not despairing for the future. So out bolts that ringing reply, “ Nevertheless,” &c. Noble words! There spake out a resolute and a relying FAITH. Faith set the bow of Peter’ s little smack right towards the deep water, and then laid hold of the oar. This is precisely the same thing which we pastors, and Sunday-school teachers, and parents must do straightway. Invite Jesus into our undertakings, for we cannot fail if He is with us in the boat. Then let us pull out into the deep water of thorough, conscientious, faithful work. The fish are in the deep water, not near the shore. 3. What will be the result sooner or later? Look at those disciples in the boat and you will see. They have lowered their net, just as Jesus told them to do. Lo, a multitude of fishes swarming in! The net is breaking. Peter signals to John to bring his boat alongside and help to save the prodigious haul. Up comes the other smack. The two vessels are soon so overloaded that they begin to sink; and Peter throws himself down in awe-struck wonder, and cries out that he is unworthy of such a miraculous blessing. That was Peter’ s way of saying just what we pastors have often said when the revival was glorious, and we felt how much more God had done for us than we deserved. How sweet was Christ’ s answer! “ Follow Me, and I will make you a fisher of men.” And so the loaded boats are pulled ashore, and the happy day’ s work ends in a FULNESS of blessings. Here are the three F’ s. The first is a sad one, and teaches us that when we rely upon an arm of flesh our hardest toils may end in Failure. The second is the watchword of all wise action, and all holy endeavour--it is the golden word Faith. And when we take Jesus with us in obedient trust, we bring back a Fulness of success. (T. L. Cuyler, D. D.) This paragraph 1. Illustrates Christ’ s indirect method of working. He often gives commands, the exact bearing of which it is difficult or impossible to see. 2. Illustrates the proper treatment of the Divine word on the part of man. 3. Shows the proper effect of God’ s rule over inferior things. There is enough in any display of Divine power to humble us, if we did but open our eyes to see the way of the Most High. 4. Illustrates the ever-heightening and ever-widening vocation of mankind. (1) “ Thou shalt catch men.” God does not call men downward but upward, when they are faithful to their trust. (2) Men need to be caught, for they have gone astray from God. (3) Man must catch men. (4) The art of catching men is a Divine art. It is easy to amuse them, and not difficult to instruct them; but to catch them in the holy sense of this promise to Peter, is an art taught only by the Master Himself. 5. Shows that Jesus Christ does not put men into the ministry simply because they are unfortunate in secular concerns. Peter had caught nothing all night, and in the morning he was turned into a minister! Do not people plan to put their least gifted and least successful children into the Church? It is sometimes said that they do. Christ seemed to say to Peter, “ See, there are fish enough yet in the water; but you leave your occupation at the very moment of your highest success. I don’ t make a minister of you because there is no other way in which you can make a morsel of bread, but for infinitely higher reasons.” So to-day there are men in the ministry who could have caught fish enough and been highly successful in the ordinary work of life. Give them credit for good motives. (J. Parker, D. D.) Christ the Lord of nature We must not minimize this miracle by deeming that Christ, either by marvellous sagacity or superhuman omniscience, knew of the presence of this great shoal at that time and spot. Rather, we must not only see in Jesus “ the Lord of nature, able, by the secret yet mighty magic of His will, to guide and draw the unconscious creatures, and make them minister to the higher interests of His kingdom” ; but we must also recognize in Him the second Adam exercising that dominion over the fish of the sea, which was part of the grant of empire given originally to man. That there should be this great herd of fish was not in itself miraculous; what was miraculous was that its appearance should be thus timed, that it should coincide with Christ’ s word and subserve His purpose. (W. J. Deane, M. A.) Reasons for the miracle Various reasons have been offered for the special applicability of this miracle. 1. Thus was Peter repaid for the loan of his boat, even as the widow of Sarepta was rewarded for her charity to Elijah by the unfailing resources of the barrel of meal and the cruise of oil; as the Shunamite hostess was requited for her kindness to Elisha by the restoration of her son to life; as the house of Obed-Edom was blessed when it gave shelter to the ark of the Lord; as Christ Himself testified that a cup of cold water given to one of His disciples should not lose its reward. 2. Also, Jesus was thus preparing His apostles for their coming call; they might see that in casting in their lot with Him and in abandoning their gainful trade, they were entering the service of One who was able to provide for their bodily life as well as for the wants of their soul; One who taught them that “ godliness is profitable for all things, having promise of the life which now is, and of that which is to come.” 3. Still more might Simon see herein a prophecy of the future, an adumbration of the success that awaited the preachers of the gospel, as they in obedience to the word of Christ cast their nets into the sea of the world. 4. Here, too, is a lesson for all; how little we can do by our own skill or wisdom, how much when we take Christ with us in our work. His Word teaches us how, and where, and when to labour, and following that Divine Teacher we are sure of success. (W. J. Deane, M. A.) A broken net “ The net brake.” That net is the Church; and the history of the Church is, alas I a history of the tearing of its meshes, and the breaking away of its fish. Heresy and schism have troubled the Church from the apostolic period; and Christ in this miracle showed that it would be so, lest we should be discouraged; but He also showed the remedy for it--a remedy we have not sufficiently taken to heart. When the net wastorn, then Peter beckoned to his partners to help to receive the draught. And by this we are shown that the true remedy for heresy and schism is unity. Sad it is that there should be so much separation among the Apostolic Churches; that the Eastern Church, and the Church which claims to be founded by St. Peter, and our own English Church, should all be engaged in fishing on our own several accounts, with mangled nets, from which many escape, and in which only few are saved. When the Churches recognize the real cause of their failure, repent of their haughty and narrow isolation, and draw together, and call to each other to help, then, and then only, will they be filled to the bulwarks, so that they seem almost about to sink. (S. Baring-Gould, M. A.) Use of partners There cannot be a better improvement of society than to help us in gain, to relieve us in our profitable labours, to draw up the spiritual draught into the vessel of Christ and His Church. Wherefore hath God given us partners, but that we should beckon to them for their aid in our necessary occasions? Neither doth Simon slacken his hand, because he had assistants. What shall we say to those lazy fishers, who can see others to the drag, while themselves look on at ease, caring only to feed themselves with the fish, not willing to wet their hands with the net? what shall we say to this excess of gain? (Bishop Hall.) Luke 5:8 When Simon Peter saw it he fell at Jesus’ knees, saying, Depart from me What it was that Peter saw To understand the action and the words of Simon Peter, we must know what it was that he saw. The place was the shore of the Lake of Galilee, and the time was early in the first year of the ministry of Christ. Already men were talking of the great prophet, and wondering who and what He was; and no doubt the fishermen had thought and spoken much of Him. One day Christ came; He went straight to Simon’ s ship, and from it He taught the people, while Simon Peter listened. And then followed that great wonder of the miraculous draught of fishes, which astounded all beholders. That was what Peter saw. But he saw more; he saw in all this what was like a call to him; not yet a direct one, but one which he could not help but understand. When you see a grand action, it is a call to you to imitate it; when you hear of a noble deed, it is a call to you to correct whatever of littleness or meanness may be in your own soul; when you see others walking with God, it is a call to you to join them, and to walk even as they. Sympathetic natures need no explanation at such times; they take in at once the meaning of the voices which they hear as they go on through life. Simon Peter felt what he saw; he felt how it bore on him; and feeling it, instantly and profoundly, his first motion was to draw back in alarm, and to pray the Lord to depart from him. (Morgan Dix, D. D.) Two kinds of shrinking from Christ Does this remind you of another scene? It must, if you are thoughtful, and accustomed to interpret scripture by scripture. It was the very thing that the Gadarenes and Gergesenes did, when Christ revealed Himself to them in His holiness, and manifested forth His glory. Compare the narratives; they run almost exactly parallel. The place was the same--the Lake of Gennesaret or its immediate shores. The main personage in each scene is the same--Christ, the power of God, and the wisdom of God. The state of preparation in human minds is the same--the Gadarenes had heard of Christ, and so had Peter. The time was the same--just after a startling miracle. The act in each case was the same, nay the very words are the same; the people of Gadara prayed Him that He would depart out of their coasts; and Simon Peter cried, “ Depart from me, O Lord.” But yet, notwithstanding all these correspondences, in time, in place, in deed, in result, in word, there was a difference which outweighs all agreement. Not farther asunder are the poles of this globe, not wider apart are east and west, than were the spirit of the men of Gadara and the soul of Simon Peter. Nor could the final results have been more diverse. The men of Gadara never saw Christ again; Peter never left Him. They kept all they had, and lost the Lord; he kept the Lord, and lost all else. And then the histories diverge, as streams part, never again to be united, but to flow farther and farther away from each other. On the one hand a low, material, worldly life drags sluggishly forward, passing into darkness and silence, and descending into shame and everlasting contempt: while the other, fixed on Jesus, and developed in Him, groweth more and more unto the perfect day; the name becomes an immortal name, the man is numbered with the saints in glory everlasting, and the very record of his life tells with tremendous moral force, even down to this far-off day, and here in this remote land, and is helpful, and precious, and stands like a tower of strength amidst the waves of this troublesome world. (Morgan Dix, D. D.) Peter’ s cry of despairing love The feeling of St. Peter, as he uttered this cry, is not unmixed with sensations of reverence and love. True, it contains within it elements of terror; it is not the language of that perfect love which casts out fear; it is lower than the awe which inspires angels and just men made perfect as they are conscious of the imperfections and limitations of creaturely existence in the presence of the great Alpha and Omega of all creation. But it is the cry of despairing love, not of despairing hate; the cry of one who yearns after an unattainable height, not of one who is content to wallow in the mire of his sins. I. Undoubtedly it was the effect of FEAR BY A SENSE OF SIN. The consciousness of standing before a Being of infinite holiness produces in sinful man a thrill of moral agony; the force of contrast brings into strong relief the hideous, intolerable deformity of sin; in the light of that presence sin becomes exceeding sinful, and the yawning depths of iniquity which lie hid in man’ s nature are no longer veiled by the mists of custom and long habit. Man for the most part is unconscious of the real foulness of his sin; the moral atmosphere around him is charged therewith; he imbibes its taint at every breath; the world around him is penetrated with it; it enters into him at every pore, it suffuses itself more or less over his whole nature. Hence arises the further realization of sin which results from growth in holiness, the explanation of the seeming difficulty that the saintliest of mankind confess themselves the greatest sinners. Men living at a distance from God are actually without any standard by which to measure their deflection from the Divine law. Only when a man begins to ascend the hill of God, to make his way out of the foul miasma amid which he has been living and moving, can he in any measure discover the real proportions of things, or bring home to his heart the miserable and loathsome forms of evil by which he has been hitherto surrounded. II. St. Peter’ s words seem to arise out of some feeling of BETWEEN HIS HUMAN WILL AND THE WILL OF AN ALL-HOLY GOD. There is, alas l even in regenerate nature, a certain amount of antagonism towards the good and acceptable and perfect will of God. We can none of us be brought into the immediate presence of God without being conscious of the claim which is made upon us thereby of striving after a more complete renunciation of our own lusts and desires, a more entire conformity to that likeness which we instinctlively feel to be the law and pattern of redeemed humanity. At this, man’ s nature rebels. III. These words seem to spring also from a . An intensified form of the centurion’ s faithful saying (Matthew 8:8). St. Peter had been treating our Blessed Lord too much as a mere man; he had been mingling familiarly in His company, listening to Him as a mere human teacher; and now the consciousness lights up within him that God was in that place and he knew it not--that he had been standing at the very gate of heaven. : Wounded with a sense of exceeding sinfulness, or conscious of a will struggling against the Divine purpose, or penetrated with a feeling of unworthiness, you may be ready to exclaim, “ Depart from me,” &c. Yet in that cry is the earnest of your acceptance, not of your rejection. In that cry lies a sure augury of future success. It is the first step towards penitence, self-examination, confession, and God’ s absolving word. (S. W. Skeffington, M. A.) Peter’ s confession of sin Observe well what it was which led to this conviction of guilt in Peter’ s soul. Not terror, or judgment; not any view of the anger and justice of the Being with whom he had to do. It was simply the reception and consciousness of a very great and exceeding kindness. This made him love what he admired; and the love and the admiration which he felt to God became, by an easy change, hatred and detestation against himself. He was softened at the moment that he was convinced; and upon his melted heart and conscience he wrote the large, deep characters of sin, 1. The greatest and surest test of every man’ s state before God is this--How does he feel toward sin? It is a great thing to have faith enough to see the requirements of a holy God; faith enough to be conscious that there is a distance; faith enough to fear. 2. There is no feeling in Peter’ s breast akin to the desire to get rid of his religious thought. He was asking rather that which he thought he ought to ask, than what he wanted to ask. The humility was real; but it was not enlightened. It was exactly what every man ought to say and feel, if he saw only his own breast, and did not see the bosom of God. 3. This feeling operates differently, according to the moral temperament, or according to the stage in which a man may happen to stand in the Divine life. (1) In one, it becomes despair. The soul dares not to admit the thought that it could ever be received into the love of God. The dread of the sin of presumption--from which it is the farthest off--is always haunting it. The very name and joys of heaven seem a mockery to him. (2) In another man it destroys all sense of God’ s mercy. Peace, instead of being a fact, established by the Cross, and simply taken, is always a thing put off and off to some distant future. What is this but putting Christ away? (3) Others seek an intermediate agency between Christ and their soul. 4. It is an unspeakable comfort to know that this awful prayer, which Peter made in ignorance, was not answered. Christ did not depart from him. Thank God, He knows when to refuse a prayer. He never leaves those who are only ignorant. (J. Vaughan, M. A.) The sense of sin in the Saviour’ s presence Such has ever been the effect of God’ s presence felt and realized by a human soul. Even the sinless angels veil their faces, and worship with an awful reverence before the throne on high; how much less can man’ s nature, penetrated with the mystery of sin, endure without agony the blinding light and holiness of God! Thus Adam and his wife, in the first moments of self-conscious guilt, hid themselves among the trees of the garden from the presence of the Lord God; the people of Israel trembled at the foot of Sinai, and entreated to hear the voice of God no more; Manoah fears death as the consequence of the vision of God; the blameless Daniel falls prostrate and weakened before the great Angel of the Covenant; Isaiah is oppressed with a painful sense of guilt after witnessing the adoration of the Eternal. And even when God Incarnate on earth had concealed beneath the tabernacle of our humanity the rays of His Divine glory, and talked with man face to face, yet there were moments when the glory of the Divine nature flashed forth from behind the thin veil of flesh, and confounded the awe-struck senses of the beholders. There were moments at which even His enemies were driven back, and fell before His presence; and many more occasions on which the hearts of apostles and friends failed them for fear when they felt that God was, indeed, in the midst of them. (S. W. Skeffington, M. A.) The terror of the law This is a cry which has a long story behind it. It carries us far back as we trace it step by step along the pages of the Old Testament. St. Peter is testifying to his hold on the significance of the law. His words carry us back to the voice of Adam as he saw God draw near in the evening amid the pleasant garden, and he knew the chill of a terrible fear and hid himself among the trees. Ever since that dismal day there had been in man a blind terror lest his Father should come too near him. This is the terror which passes like a shudder through primitive faiths, and turns savage religions into acts of alarm, into rituals of panic. Men are nervous, discomfited, when their God is near; and the very cruelties of these savage faiths are cruelties of fear. They know not the secret of their dread; they cannot syllable the confession, “ I am a sinful man.” They only know the fear, and passionately, and at any cost, beseech God to depart out of their coasts. This is the terror which is at work to purge witchcraft. Jacob fleeing from his home, when he awakes at Bethel, exclaims, “ How dreadful is this place; this is none other but the house of God.” It is the terror, this terror with its deep ground-tone, which meets us, in its simplest and most natural fashion, in Manoah, when the vision of the angel did wondrously and vanished, and he cried to his wife, “ We shall surely die, because we have seen God.” And we know its utterance, its stormy utterance, in the mouths of Israel, at the foot of Sinai, as they cried to Moses, not “ Bring us near to God,” but “ Set bounds lest He break forth upon us. Why should we die? If we hear the voice of the Lord our God any more, we shall die.” (Canon Scott Holland.) The nearer to God, the sharper the anguish It is not the gross and carnal only, or the ignorant, who know this start, this touch of shame. The cry breaks from the lips of the purest and the highest; and it breaks from them with intenser violence, and with more startling passion. The nearer to God, the sharper the anguish, and the more vehement the protestation, “ Depart from me.” It is Job, with his whole heart aflame with righteousness, after a life which--as it lay there under his human review--looked so fair and high and blameless; it is he who is stricken with theancient fear as he sees God with the seeing of the eye, and thus abhors himself. And it is Isaiah, the evangelical prophet, who crowds into hot words the fullest passion of the old cry (Isaiah 6:1-5). So has it ever been, until the last word of the last prophet is there to tell us how he wondered lest He, for whom they had all, one after another, so ardently waited, should consume them by His very coming: “ Who shall abide the day of His coming? Who shall stand when He appeareth? for He is like a refiner’ s fire.” (Canon Scott Holland.) Peter’ s surprise and fear It was not at all surprising to him that Jesus should draw very near, and should ask for his boat, and with him launch out. He was not alarmed or disturbed at such an invitation; rather, everything in it to him was most natural and most habitual. There seemed nothing to herald a spiritual crisis; it is the old task of the fisherman to which he is used, the task familiar to him all his days. From earliest childhood he had lived with the nets and the boats on the edge of those home waters. It is the old art that would be his surely till death should lay him to sleep, or till be became too old to do more than watch the younger men take his place in the old haunts. Everything stood for him that morning as it had ever been; nothing seemed ready for any great shock or surprise. No word of expectancy gathered over that sleeping scene. There lay the broad waters as they had lain a thousand times before under his eyes; there stood the hills, quiet and ancient and unmoved; and the same sky bent over him as had ever bent over him, familiar and dear; and the same shores spread away with the old curves and creeks and headlands, and villages greeting him with all that motionless image of home. What symptom was there of that coming joy? How should he expect anything at all? He was too weary to expect much, for he had toiled long and taken nothing. It was but in a dull, passive acquiescence that he pushed out his boat. Aimless and dispirited as he was how could he guess that it was to be the very last time that he would ever be as he had always been, the very last time that he would sit there on the shore mending his nets. Suddenly, like a flash of lightning, the moment is upon him; there is a start, a wonder, as the fish swarm into the net. What is it, this strange draught? What is it but a stroke of luck? Nay, a finger is upon him, admonitory and masterful, a thrill shoots through him, and he tingles as with a touch of flame. He turns to look at Him who sits there close by him in the boat. Who is He, and what? So quiet He seems, so human, so near, so serene; yet an awe has fallen upon Peter, and a terror shakes him. Very near and very intimate the Master is, and yet how is it that behind these steady human eyes there grows a terror--a terror as of the fires of Sinai or the thunderings of Horeb? How is it that within that quiet, gentle voice of His, there seems to be ringing the sound of that trumpet that grows louder and louder, until Israel fell on their faces afraid? The Master sits as He had always sat, and looked as He had always looked; and yet this tremor, this dread, as of a guilty thing surprised! It is the old-world fear, it is the ancient dismay that has fallen upon him, such as fell upon Isaiah when he saw the Lord high and lifted up between the cherubim. He cannot be mistaken; his true and pure spirit reads off the secret at a glance and at a flash. How, he knows not; but it is God upon whom He is looking. He is sure of it. He is seeing God, and therefore he cannot endure it; God very near; he sees Him with the seeing of an eye, as Job of old, and therefore he abhors himself in dust and ashes. (Canon Scott Holland.) The awakening of St. Peter After his first interview with Christ, Peter went home to his daily work. The words Christ had spoken to him were allowed to sink deep into his heart. There was a pause in life before the next impression was made upon him. For the first time in his life the unlearned fisherman had been recognized by one greater than himself. We may imagine in some degree what were his thoughts as he lay at night within his boat, rocked on the indolent surge of the lake, letting his thoughts wander with his eyes among the stars, and hearing nothing but the cry of the wild fowl on the lake, and the rustle of the oleander on the shore: “ Shall I meet Jesus once again, or will He forget me in the greatness of His work?” And one fair morning, as he sat on the glittering beach of shells, mending his nets, his desire was answered. By all that Peter had gone through there had been kindled in his soul the first sparks of love to Christ, fitly mingled with veneration. But as yet there had been no spiritual element connected with them, and Christ’ s object was to awaken more than friendship. Peter loved, reverenced, believed; but he had not linked his love and reverence and faith to any profound feeling such as knits the forgiven sinner to a forgiving Father. And it is in what now took place, in the awakening of the slumbering forces of the spirit, that Peter was lifted into another and a higher, though a more sorrowful and more tempted life. Peter’ s expression of his emotion reveals one of those states of mingled feelings which seem too strange to be understood, but which we feel to be true to our human nature. It was a mixture of repulsion and attraction, of fear that repelled, of love that drew. “ Depart from me,” &c., that was the cry of his lips, and it rose half out of fear at the revelation of holiness, half out of shame at the revelation of his own sinfulness. But with this was something more. His fear and shame sprang out of his lower self; but he could not remain in fear or shame with that wonderful and tender face looking down upon him, as he knelt among the nets. His higher being rose in passion to meet the encouragement of Christ. That which was akin to Christ in him saw and recognized with joy--joy that took then the garments of a noble sorrow, the beauty of holiness in Christ; remembered that this holiness had come to meet him, sought him out and loved him--and at the thought, all his nobler nature darted forward with a cry, repelled the lower that would have exiled Christ through fear, and threw him down, forgetting all else in utter love and broken-hearted humbleness, at the feet of Christ. “ Depart from me--no, never, my Lord and Master, never leave me. There, in Thy holiness, can I alone find rest; in being with Thee always alone salvation from my wrong-doing; in loving Thee with all my heart alone the strength I need to conquer fear, and passionate impulse, and weakness in the hour of trial.” Yes, that is the great step which takes us over the threshold into the temple of a spiritual life with God. And the life which succeeds that revelation of holiness and sin is no life of mere feeling. “ Follow Me,” said Christ, “ and I will make you a fisher of men” ; and Peter left all and followed Him. This part of the story does not tell us to throw aside our daily work, unless it should happen that we have a special apostolic call; but it does tell us to change our motives, our ideas, our aims: to live the life of Christ, the life that gives up life to others. Conviction of sin in the mind of Peter We have here a specimen of the Redeemer’ s method of teaching. He taught by actions. His miracles had a voice. The advantage of this symbolic teaching twofold: 1. It was a living thing. 2. It saves us from dead dogmas. Our thoughts branch off into two divisions. I. THE MEANING AND OBJECT OF THE MIRACLE. More than all others it taught God’ s personality. The meaning and intention of every miracle is to break through the tyranny of the words “ law” and “ Nature.” II. THE EFFECTS ON PETER’ S MIND. The sense of personal sin. 1. When we come to look at the cause of this we see that the impression was (a) partly owing to the apostle’ s Jewish education. The Jews always recognized the personality, of God, therefore this only awoke what was acknowledged before; (b) partly also it was produced by the pure presence of Jesus Christ. Wherever the Redeemer went, He elicited a strange sense of sin. And this is not the case only in our Redeemer’ s personal ministry, but it is so wherever Christianity is preached. 2. The nature of this conviction of sin in Peter’ s bosom. There is a remorse which is felt for crime, but this was not Peter’ s case. The language of holy men when they speak of sin is startling. In order to understand it, and to comprehend Peter’ s conviction of guilt, we must look at the three principles which guide the life of three different classes of men. (a) Obedience to the opinion of the world; (b) The standard of a man’ s own opinion; (c) The light of the life of God. The first of these makes the man of honour; the second, the man of virtue; the third, the man of saintliness. Up to this time Peter had lived an upright man, full of self-reliance; from this time he began to walk lowly and learnt self-forgetfulness. This is the way in which Christ produces conviction of sin--by placing before us infinite love, infinite loving-kindness, and a perfect humanity. We fall in the dust before this, and say, “ We are sinful men, O Lord.” We are sinners, we have erred exceedingly, and we have seen the infinite charity of God stream forth in the majesty of Jesus Christ. It is possible for us to bear the splendour of that presence only when love has taken the place of fear, and we feel that we need fear nothing, neither death nor hell nor men. (F. W. Robertson, M. A.) Humility Few stories in the New Testament are as well known as this. Few go home more deeply to the heart of man. Most simple, most graceful is the story, and yet it has in it depths unfathomable. Great painters have loved to draw, great poets have loved to sing, that scene on the Lake of Gennesaret. The clear blue water, land-locked with mountains; the meadows on the shore, gay with their lilies of the field; the rich gardens, olive-yards, and vineyards on the slopes; the towns and villas scattered along the shore, all of bright white lime-stone gay in the sun; the crowds of boats, fishing continually for the fish which swarm to this day in the lake; everywhere beautiful country life, busy and gay, healthy and civilized--and in the midst of it, the Maker of all heaven and earth sitting in a poor fisher’ s boat, and condescending to tell them where the shoal of fish was lying. It is a wonderful scene. Let us thank God that it happened once on earth. Though our God and Saviour no longer walks this earth in human form, He is near us now and here. There is in us the same heart as there was in St. Peter for evil and for good. When he found suddenly that it was the Lord who was in his boat, his first feeling was one of fear. Do we never feel the thought of God’ s presence a burden? God grant to us all, that after that first feeling of dread and awe is over, we may go on, as Peter did, to the better feelings of admiration, loyalty, worship; and say at last, as Peter said afterwards, “ Lord, to whom shall we go? for Thou hast the words of eternal life” But do I blame St. Peter for saying, “ Depart from me,” &c. Who am I, to blame St. Peter? Especially when even the Lord Jesus did not blame him, but only bade him not to be afraid. And why did the Lord not blame him, even when he asked Him to go away? Because St. Peter was honest. He said frankly and naturally what was in his heart. He spoke not from dislike of our Lord, but from modesty; from a feeling of awe, of uneasiness, of dread, at the presence of One who was infinitely greater, wiser, better than himself. And that feeling of reverence and honesty is a Divine and noble feeling--the beginning of all goodness. Peter felt unworthy to be in such good company. He felt unworthy--he, the ignorant fisher-man--to have such a guest in his poor boat. “ Go elsewhere, Lord,” he tried to say, “ to a place and to companions more fit for Thee. I am ashamed to stand in Thy presence. I am dazzled by the brightness of Thy countenance, crushed down by the thought of Thy wisdom and power, uneasy lest I say or do something unfit for Thee; Thou knowest not what a poor miserable creature I am at heart--Depart from me; for I am a sinful man, O Lord.” There spake out the truly noble soul, who was ready the next moment, as soon as he had recovered himself, to leave all and follow Christ; who was ready afterwards to wander, to suffer, to die upon the cross for his Lord; and who, when he was led out to, execution asked (it is said) to be crucified with his head downwards, seeing that it was too much honour for him to die looking to heaven, as his Lord had died. Do you not understand me yet? Then think what you would have thought of Peter, if, instead of saying what he did, he had said, “ Stay with me, for I am a holy man, O Lord. I am just the sort of person who deserves the honour of Thy company; and my boat, poor though it is, more fit for Thee than the palace of a king.” (Charles Kingsley.) The sense of sin evoked by Christ and Christianity When Simeon, on the verge of life, uttered his parting hymn within the Temple, he told Mary, with the infant Jesus in his arms, that, by that child, “ the thoughts of many hearts should be revealed.” Never was prophecy more true; nor ever perhaps the mission of our religion more faithfully defined. For wherever it has spread, it has operated like a new and Diviner conscience to the world; imparting to the human mind a profounder insight into itself; opening to its consciousness fresh powers and better aspirations; and penetrating it with a sense of imperfection, a concern for the moral frailties of the will, characteristic of no earlier age. The spirit of religious penitence, the solemn confession of unfaithfulness, the prayer for mercy, are the growth of our nature trained in the school of Christ. The pure image of His mind, as it has passed from land to land, has taught men more of their own hearts than all the ancient aphorisms of self-knowledge, has inspired more sadness at the evil, more noble help for the good that is hidden there; and has placed within reach of even the ignorant, the neglected, and the young, severer principles of self-scrutiny than philosophy had ever attained. The radiance of so great a sanctity has deepened the shades of conscious sin. The savage convert who before knew nothing more sacred than revenge and war, is brought to Jesus, and, as he listens to that voice, feels the stain of blood growing distinct upon his soul. The voluptuary, never before disturbed from his self-indulgence, comes within the atmosphere of Christ’ s spirit; and it is as if a gale of heaven fanned his fevered brow, and convinced him that he is not in health. The ambitious priest, revolving plans for using men’ s passions as tools of his aggrandisements, starts to find himself the disciple of One who, when the people would have made Him King, fled direct to solitude and prayer. The froward child blushes to think how little there is in him of the infant meekness which Jesus praised; and feels that, had he been there, he must have missed the benediction, or more bitter still, have wept to know it misapplied. Nay, so deep and solemn did the sense of guilt become under the influence of Christian thoughts, that at length the overburdened heart of fervent times could endure the weight no longer; the Confessional arose, and it became the chief object of the widest sacerdotal order which the world has ever seen, to soothe the sobs, and listen to the whispered record of human penitence. Everywhere the Christian mind proclaims its need of mercy, and bends beneath the oppression of its guilt; and since Jesus began to “ reveal the thoughts of many hearts,” Christendom, with clasped hands, has fallen at His feet and cried, “ We are sinful men, O Lord.” In nurturing this sentiment, in producing this solemn estimate of moral evil and quick perception of its existence, the religion of Christ does blot perpetuate the influence of His personal ministry. (J. Martineau, LL. D.) Illumination A flash of supernatural illumination had revealed to him both his own sinful unworthiness and who He was who was with him in the boat. It was the cry of self-loathing which had already realized something nobler. It was the first impulse of fear and amazement, before they had had time to grow into adoration and love. St. Peter did not mean the “ Depart from me” ; he only meant--and this was known to the Searcher of hearts--“ I am utterly unworthy to be near Thee, yet let me stay.” How unlikewas this cry of his passionate and trembling humility to the bestial ravings of the unclean spirits, who bade the Lord to let them alone; or to the hardened degradation of the filthy Gadarenes, who preferred to the presence of their Saviour the tending of their swine! (Archdeacon Farrar.) Self-loathing in view of infinite purity We read in profane history of an old woman who fell mad on seeing her deformity in a looking-glass. There is enough in the view which the mirror of the Word gives us of our individual character, if not to drive us to derangement and despair, to prostrate us in the dust of self-abasement and self-abhorrence; and still more affecting and overpowering does this view of ourselves become in the presence of the Infinite Purity. The impression made by Christ’ s holiness I. In the first place, A VIEW OF THE OF JESUS CHRIST AWAKENS THE FEELING OF . It is absolutely perfect. The character of Jesus is fathomless; and what has been remarked of Christianity by one of the early Roman bishops, may with equal truth be said of the character of its Author: “ It is like the firmament; the more diligently you search it, the more stars will you discover. It is like the ocean; the longer you regard it, the more immeasurable will it appear to you.” When the characteristic qualities of Christ are distinctly beheld in their holy and spotless beauty by a sinful man, the contrast is felt immediately. The instant that his eye rests upon the sinlessness of Jesus, it turns involuntarily to the sinfulness of himself. He realizes that he is a different man from “ the man Christ Jesus;” and that except so far as he is changed by Divine grace, there can he no sympathy and union with Him. This is a proper and blessed mood for an imperfectly sanctified Christian. It corresponds with the facts of the case. How can pride, the essence of sin, dwell in such a spirit? It is excluded. II. , IN THE SECOND PLACE, WITH A VIEW OF CHRIST’ S , IS THAT OF CHRIST’ S DAILY LIFE. When this with its train of holy actions passes before the mind of the believer, it produces a deep sense of indwelling sin. This sense of sin as related to justice should hold a prominent place in the Christian experience; and in proportion as it is first vividly elicited by the operation of the law, and then is completely pacified by a view of Christ as suffering “ the just for the unjust,” will be the depth of our love towards Him, and the simplicity and entireness of our trust in Him. Those who, like Paul and Luther, have had the clearest perception of the iniquity of sin, and of their own criminality before God, have had the most luminous and constraining view of Christ as the” Lamb of God.” III. Having thus directed attention to the fact that there is such a distinct feeling as guilt, we remark, in the third place, THAT THE OF THE AND DEATH OF CHRIST BOTH ELICITS AND IT, IN THE . Whoever beholds human transgression in the light of the Cross, has no doubts as to the nature and character of the Being nailed to it; and he has no doubts as to his own nature and character. The distinct and intelligent feeling of culpability forbids that he should omit to look at sin in its penal relations, and enables him to understand these relations. The vicarious atonement of Christ is well comprehended because it is precisely what the guilt-smitten conscience craves in its restlessness and anguish. The believer now has wants which are met in this sacrifice. His moral feelings are all awake, and the fundamental feeling of guilt pervades and tinges them all; until in genuine contrition, he holds up the Lamb of God in his prayer for mercy, and cries out to the Just One: “ This oblation which Thou Thyself hast provided is my propitiation; this atones for my sin.” Then the expiating blood is applied by the Holy Ghost, and the conscience is filled with the peace of God that passeth all understanding. “ Then,” to use the language of Leighton, “ the conscience makes answer to God: ‘ Lord, I have found that there is no standing in the judgment before Thee, for the soul in itself is overwhelmed with a world of guiltiness; but I find a blood sprinkled upon it that hath, I am sure, virtue enough to purge it all away, and to present it pure unto Thee. And I know that wheresoever Thou findest that blood sprinkled, Thine anger is quenched and appeased immediately upon the sight of it. Thine hand cannot smite when that blood is before thine eye.’” We have thus considered the effect, in awakening a sense of sin, produced by a clear view of the character, life, and death of Christ. But how dim and indistinct is our vision of all this! It should be one of our most distinct and earnest aims, to set a crucified Redeemer visibly before our eyes, (W. G. T. Shedd, D. D.) Peter’ s confession I. Remark his “ I am a sinful man.” II. His --“ Depart from me, O Lord!” The following things seem to be implied. 1. Great fear and distress. Few, unless they have been in something of the same situation, can guess at the various agitations of Peter’ s mind. What a sense he now had of his own vileness, and what views of the excellency of Christ I Rebecca alighted from her camel when she saw Isaac, and prostrated herself before him: and whatever opinion we may have entertained of ourselves before, sure I am, that we shall be sensible of our own nothingness when we view ourselves in the light of the Divine perfections. 2. It implies modesty and diffidence, which kept him at a distance from Him who not only admits, but invites to the greatest nearness. Peter felt on this occasion somewhat like the centurion, when he said, “ I am not worthy that thou shouldst come under my roof.” 3. This request bespeak a rashness and inconsideration, much remaining darkness and ignorance. That might be applied to Peter here, which is said of him in another place: “ He wist not what to say, for he was sore afraid.” (B. Beddome, M. A) Fifth Sunday after Trinity Let us consider, with reference to this subject-- I. The truth of Peter’ s confession. II. The unreasonableness of his petition. That Peter was a sinful man, who can possibly doubt? He was the child of Adam, inheriting his corrupt nature; and it must therefore needs be that he was a sinner before God. With some, the alarms of conscience are soon appeased; such heavings of the soul within are lulled speedily to rest. Some endeavour to quiet them by sedatives, or soothing applications, altogether inadmissible. “ Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” Such are the gracious purposes of God towards us. To depart from Him, because we are sinners, would be to reverse the order of Heaven’ s law and appointment. What is it, however, which will cause God to depart from us, or ourselves to desire that He should do so? Every kind and form of wilful and habitual sin; all unfaithfulness to God. (H. J. Hastings, M. A.) Luke 5:10 Fear not; from henceforth thou shalt catch men Fishing for men To be good fishermen we must be-- I. OF THE FISHING. II. WITH THE FISHES. In following the analogy, we may observe that, because of his acquaintance with the fishes, the fisherman knows-- 1. Where to fish. A novice would throw in his line anywhere; but not so the fisherman. Fishes of various sorts must be sought in various localities, and in some places you may seek in vain for any. Many a man has “ toiled all the night and has taken nothing,” simply because he has been trying in the wrong place; while others round about him have “ made a good tide.” For one sort he may go to the quiet lake and the gentle stream; for another to the open sea or the deep channel; while for others he has to go out into the great wide ocean. And in our spiritual fishing we must learn where to catch men. We may find opportunities in the quiet lakes of our own domestic circles, or in the pleasant streams of our social friendships. Because of his acquaintance with the fishes, the fisherman also knows-- 2. How to fish. Like men, fishes differ very much in their dispositions and habits, so that what would be suitable for catching one class would not be successful with another. For instance: While some must be drawn, others must be driven. I have seen fishermen, after casting their net, row round about it, making as much noise as possible with their oars, in order to frighten the fishes into it; while, in other instances, a bright light has been burned in the boat to allure them, if possible, into the snare. It is exactly so with men. Some are caught in shoals, while others must be caught singly. There are some that never can be taken in a net, and there are others that can never be taken with a line. You must go about it very cautiously. The fish is a shy creature, and many would-be sportsman has driven away all chance of success by his incautious procedure. Almost anybody can cast a net, but it requires an expert to use the line. People can successfully address large assemblies, who are ill at ease when in personal intercourse with the ungodly. This is a work that demands all our skill and care. You may see a wonderful example of this in our Saviour’ s conversation with the woman at the well. I have been in the same boat with several persons, each provided with similar lines, hooks, and bait; and yet some have been as wonderfully successful as others have been strangely unfortunate. The secret, to those who understood fishing, was obvious. The good fisherman, knowing exactly how to manage and tempt his prey, could, with inferior apparatus, secure success; while the novice, with the best patent gear, might sit, and wait and watch in vain. The application is easy. Seek to allure men! Make your Christianity an attractive thing! Surround all you do with the genuine sunshine of the Bible! Reveal Christ, and He “ will draw all men unto Him.” Again, his acquaintance with the fishes will teach the fisherman-- 3. When to fish. “ A word in season, how good it is!” Some fishes are to be caught when the tide is high; others, when it is low; and others, when it is “ slack.” Some can be obtained only in cloudy weather, and others may be caught when the sky is clear and bright. For some the daylight is needful, and for others there is no time like the night. And the fit season for approaching men may be equally various. As in fishing, so, as a rule, with men, the best time to seek them is during “ the slack” of the tide. It is not well to make the attempt during either the full swing of the flood, or of the strong rush of the ebb. Indeed, no ordinary lead would carry your bait to where they are. You must seek men when they are quiet. It is worthy of observation that most fishes arc caught best in cloudy weather. When the sky is murky and lowering, then the fisherman puts out to sea. This certainly suggests to us the appropriateness of Christian words in seasons of sorrow. III. MORALLY TO BE . Piety, patience, perseverance, and every Christian grace will be needful in this work. Its difficulties are neither few nor small. (W. H. Burton.) Catching men alive Thou shalt catch men. The word “ catch” is different from any word that has been used concerning the fish, and expresses the catching alive of the prey to be caught; so that the phraseology of our Lord seems to carry with it the thought that fishers of men are to toil for living creatures, and that unless they be caught alive they might as well not be caught at all. How well would it be for all those who are called to be fishers of men, to remember that their work is not to fill their boat with fishes which may serve as food for themselves, but to catch living men and make them servants of the Most High God. (Bishop Goodwin.) Fishers of men The design of this miracle was twofold. It was intended-- 1. To produce an immediate effect upon the minds of Peter and the rest, to deepen their faith in the Master who had called them, and to set forth His power, His watchfulness, His love. But still more-- 2. To take effect in the future; it was emphatically a prophetic miracle--to be looked back to and to yield inexhaustible comfort again and again amid the heavy cares and discouraging tasks of the years to come, when the gospel-net had been finally put into their hands, and they had become “ fishers of men.” St. Peter was to translate into spiritual language all that belonged to his old fisherman’ s life. He was to understand that it had been in a homely, but still most real, way a preparation for the new unearthly service to which Christ was calling him. So you may remember the simple shepherd-life of David is set forth in the seventy-eighth Psalm as a preparatory discipline for kingly rule. And so, according to the fancy of an early writer, the trade of tentmaker followed by Saul of Tarsus prefigured the work which lay in store for Paul the apostle, as the maker of tabernacles for the people of God, the founder of Churches all over the known world. (Canon Duckworth.) The promise that Peter should become a fisher of men was made still more impressive by a great symbolical miracle. 1. The number of fish caught at Jesus’ word represented the men he should some day take. 2. As he fished all night and caught nothing, so had he afterwards to labour long in Israel without winning a single human soul. 3. So, too, at Jesus’ word, he put further out into the deep of the great Gentile world, and drew there a great draught. 4. Last of all, there were two boats to fill--the Gentile-Christian and the Jewish Christian Churches. Then the net began to tear, and the opposition of these two sections threatened the Church with a grievous schism. But the draught was brought safely to land, to the confounding of the circumcised Jew, through whose instrumentality this Divine action had been brought about. (B. Weiss.) Men-catchers The man who saves souls is like a fisher upon the sea. 1. A fisher is dependent and trustful. 2. He is diligent and persevering. 3. He is intelligent and watchful. 4. He is laborious and self-denying. 5. He is daring--not afraid to venture upon a dangerous sea. 6. He is successful. He is DO fisher who never catches anything. (C. H.Spurgeon.) There is as much analogy as contrast between the first and second vocations of the sons of Jonas and Zebedee. 1. Like the fisherman, the minister of the gospel must be furnished with a good net, i.e., he must be conversant with the Scriptures, and mighty in them. 2. Like the fisherman, he must be acquainted with the sea, i.e., the world, and not fear to confront its perils in pursuance of his calling. 3. Like the fisherman, he must now mend, now cast his nets. 4. Like the fisherman, he must labour perseveringly, and wait patiently. 5. Like the fisherman, he must enter into the spirit of his vocation, i.e., he must be animated with the enthusiasm of the holy ministry. 6. Like the fisherman, he must dare to expose his life (Acts 20:24). 7. Like the fisherman, he must draw in his net after having cast it. (C. Babut, B. D.) Sympathy a bait It is a fact of which we can scarcely make too much, that nothing baits the gospelfisherman’ s hook like sympathy. (Dr. J. Clifford.) Purposeless sermons Are an insult to God and man. A sermon that aims at anything short of catching men is a mistake. Let us beware of converting means into ends. (Dr. J. Clifford.) Catching bait The fisherman, however, thinks far less of his gathering bait than he does of his catching bait, in which he hides his hook. Very numerous are his inventions for winning his prey, and it is by practice that he learns how to adapt his bait to his fish. Scores of things serve as bait, and when he is not actually at work the wise fisherman takes care to seize anything which comes in his way which may be useful when the time comes to cast his lines. We usually carried mussels, whelks, and some of the coarser sorts of fish, which could be used when they were wanted. When the anchor was down the hooks were baited and let down for the benefit of the inhabitants of the deep, and great would have been the disappointment if they had merely swarmed around the delicious morsel, but had refused to partake thereof. A good fisherman actually catches fish. He is not always alike successful, but, as a rule, he has something to show for his trouble. I do not call that man a fisherman whose basket seldom holds a fish; he is sure to tell you of the many bites he had, and of that very big fish which he almost captured; but that is neither here nor there. There are some whose knowledge of terms and phrases, and whose extensive preparations lead you to fear that they will exterminate the fishy race, but as their basket returns empty, they can hardly be so proficient as they seem. The parable hardly needs expounding: great talkers and theorizers are common enough, and there are not a few whose cultured boastfulness is only exceeded by their life-long failure. We cannot take these for our example, nor fall at their feet with reverence for their pretensions. We must have sinners saved. Nothing else will content us: the fisherman must take fish or lose his toil, and we must bring souls to Jesus, or we shall break our hearts with disappointment. (C. H. Spurgeon.) Sucking off the bait Walking to the head of the boat one evening, I saw a line over the side, and must needs hold it. You can feel by your finger whether you have a bite or no, but I was in considerable doubt whether anything was at the other end or not. I thought they were biting, but I was not certain, so I pulled up the long line, and found that the baits were all gone; the fish had sucked them all off, and that was what they were doing when I was in doubt. If you have nothing but a sort of gathering bait, and the fish merely come and suck, but do not take the hook, you will catch no fish; you need killing bait. This often happens in the Sunday-school. A pleasing speaker tells a story, and the children are all listening; he has gathered them; now comes the spiritual lesson, but hardly any of them take notice of it, they have sucked the bait from the hook, and are up and away. A minister in preaching delivers a telling illustration, all the ears in the place are open, but when he comes to the application of it the people have become listless; they like the bait very well, but not the hook; they like the adornment of the tale, but not the point of the moral. This is poor work. The plan is, if you possibly can manage it, so to get the bait on the hook that they cannot suck it off, but must take the hook and all. Do take care, dear friends, when you teach children or grown-up people, that you do not arrange the anecdotes in such a way that they can sort them out, as boys pick the plums from their cakes, or else you will amuse but not benefit. (C. H.Spurgeon.) Over-cautious fishermen A very zealous revivalist of our acquaintance was wont to say that over-cautious preachers were like fishermen who refuse to cast forth the net for fear they might catch a devil-fish. (From Hervey’ s “ Manual of Revivals.”) Sinners must be taken out of their native element We must never be satisfied till we lift sinners out of their native element. That destroys fish, but it saves souls. We long to be the means of lifting sinners out of the water of sin to lay them in the boat at the feet of Jesus. To this end we must enclose them as in a net; we must shut them up under the law, and surround them with the gospel, so that there is no getting out, but they must be captives unto Christ. We must net them with entreaties, encircle them with invitations, and entangle them with prayers. We cannot let them get away to perish in their sin, we must land them at the Saviour’ s feet. This is our design, but we need help from above to accomplish it: we require our Lord’ s direction to know where to cast the net, and the Spirit’ s helping of our infirmity that we may know how to do it. May the Lord teach us to profit, and may we return from our fishing, bringing our fish with us. Amen. (C. H. Spurgeon.) The draught of fishes This miracle illustrates-- I. THE LOW LEVEL OF A LIFE WITHOUT CHRIST FOR ITS MASTER. Fishing had become to these men the chief end and whole aim of living. Up to this time their life was exceedingly narrow. It had no horizon wider than the sea which held their food and supplied their trade. Thus they would have lived and died, but for the call and commission of Christ. The secular ideal of life always binds men to earth. Only Christ can raise it. II. THE TRUE BETWEEN AND , Our Lord lived a carpenter before He died a Saviour. Through all His early manhood He consecrated manual toil by His own example, and so He wedded the daily and spiritual life for ever in one. Here He sanctions Simon’ s business, even while crowning it with a higher calling. Our Lord is master both of business and religion; no drudgery is too low or mean to become, when done for Christ’ s sake, the very service of God. How this transfigures the net of the fisher, the miner’ s pick, the grocer’ s scales, the clerk’ s tape: in each of them can be discerned a humble tool for the accomplishment of the Divine will. The servant’ s broom, thus held, becomes a sceptre in the hand that holds it. III. THE SECULAR LIFE, TO CHRIST, BECOMES A SCHOOL FOR THE LIFE. It was in doing His daily work for Christ’ s sake that Peter took his first and most needed lesson in apostleship--the lesson of humility. And thus it is, through the arts and implements which are the most familiar, that the Lord is always seeking to lift men up from secular to spiritual lives. As the Eastern astrologers were pointed to the Redeemer’ s cradle by a star; as the woman of Samaria, in the very act of drawing water out of Jacob’ s well, was led to dip and drink of the sweeter waters of life; as Peter, the fisherman, by a surprising draught of fishes was made lowly enough to catch men--so through the humblest art or calling of the daily life, the Lord is reaching down hands to train and mould us for a purer spiritual life and service. The counting-room is no longer narrow, when thus its higher use as schoolroom of the soul is recognized. Dollars and cents no longer degrade men when they learn to read on their face, not the name of Caesar only, but the holier seal and superscription of God. The irritating cares of home cease to fret the housekeeper’ s spirit when she begins to treat them as part of that ministry by which the Lord seeks to make her a more profitable servant. IV. THE NOBLE OF A LIFE IN ALL ITS TO THE LORD. Not all at once; we cannot enter school and graduate the same day. It needs many lessons; line upon line of experience; but success does come at last. V. LESSONS. 1. The service of the Lord is always the truest service we can render to ourselves. We have all something to give up to become followers of Jesus. Yet give it up! Yours will be a strange experience if the things you give up for Christ’ s sake do not soon look small beside the things you have gained. They will be, in comparison, as the Sea of Galilee to the world, as the worth of a fish to the value of an immortal man. 2. No business on earth is worth following for its own sake. It may be an honest and innocent business; but if it be not also a Christian calling, and that by our own most deliberate choice, it will certainly dwarf the higher nature of him who follows it. It may keep us alive. It may bring us gains. But what are life and wealth worth, in any sober man’ s estimate, when thus secured? The “ successes” of millionaires have been commonly the worst mistakes of life. There is a higher law reigning over all trades, professions, occupation (1 Corinthians 10:31). 3. The climax of all callings is to be a fisher of men. (J. B. Clark.) The noblest calling An eminent New England divine, in his last sickness, was asked by a friend, “ What seems to you now the greatest thing?” “ Not theology,” said this prince of theologians; “ not controversy,” again replied this chief of debaters; “ but,” gathering up his last breath to speak the words, while his spirit hovered at the gate of heaven, “ the greatest thing in the world is to save a soul.” He spoke of what he knew, for he had felt the joy of delivering many; and could the witness of all saints, from Peter down to the last ascended, be taken, would it not be the same, “ the greatest thing on earth is to save a soul” ? The “ net” of a genuine Christian life You and I may never be heroes of a Pentecost; we are not masters of the great seine, which Peter and John of old, and some modern disciples, shoot out and catch men by the thousands; but have we not some humble hand-net with which we can take a few? Along our coast line, for some years, men have been setting up what they call “ weirs,” consisting of a series of enclosed ponds, connected with each other by openings, and terminating, at last, in a netted fence running far out into the bay. Against this netted fence the fish, in their progress, strike, and, following it down, they are safely enclosed, at last, in the smallest pond where they are easily captured when the tide is out. Like this netted arm, running far out into the busy world, is a genuine Christian life. It has none of the special gifts of a Finney or a Moody, but in the coming and going tides more than one soul is arrested by this standing net of a godly life. Unconsciously guided by the holy barrier in their way, they are drawn into stiller waters, and when the tide goes out at last, many, I believe, will be found taken for Christ, and taken by fishers of men whose chief skill has been to stand, to stand firm and without rent, in the midst of a restless sea. (J. B. Clark.) Catch men by love Would you be a fisher of men? And do you ask, How may I succeed? Love is the best pilot, the only wise interpreter. Love men as Christ loved them, and you will not mourn your small skill or limited chance. Love will soon show you your own best way. To catch men without love is as hopeless as to catch fish without a net. Love is the net. There never was a wicked sinner unsoftened by a pure and steadfast love. There never was a wayward scholar who did not reward the faithful, patient love of his teacher. Let our love be only such that we can pray as Christ prayed for men, can weep as Christ wept over them, can bleed as Christ bled for them, can stretch our arms of help as wide as He stretched His on the cross of sacrifice I Then we shall be able to catch men, for so He drew us, and so He is drawing the world to Himself. “ Fear not,” He seems to say to all who love, yet shrink from this holy calling, “ fear not; love men, and you shall catch them.” (J. B. Clark.) Ministerial lessons Christ’ s method of training His ministers for their high office was very remarkable. It was by a miracle, especially designed to represent, in a figure, their future office, me that the homely trade in which they were engaged was for ever hallowed to be the emblem of the gathering into the Church of such as should be saved. 1. The unwearied patience and consummate skill, without which the fisherman cannot be successful in alluring his prey, are, no doubt, fit illustrations of that constancy of purpose and that heavenly wisdom which are such important elements in the character of the Christian teacher. 2. And, perhaps, the fact that the four disciples had toiled all night and taken nothing, and yet were ready, at their Master’ s bidding, again to let down the net for a draught, is recorded as an instance of that unwavering faith in the Divine promise, and that patient continuance in well-doing, which had prepared these simple-minded peasants of Galilee for that office in which the Christian minister has only to obey, while he leaves results in a higher hand, and, even when he fears he has bestowed labour in vain, still to labour on, in reliance upon the assurance that God’ s word shall not return to Him void. 3. But perhaps the chief ministerial lesson which our Lord intended to convey to the minds of His apostles was this--that as even the fisherman, in spite of all his skill, must still depend on the power of Him whose is the sea, for He made it, so all the success of the gospel preacher is of the Lord alone. (J. S. Hoare, B. D.) Fishers of men I. NONE SHOULD ENTER THE BUT THOSE WHO ARE CALLED OF CHRIST, There are other voices to which young men are apt to listen. 1. There is the voice of the love of a life of literary ease. The young man has a passion for books; his daily toil seems to him mean and degrading; and he fancies that if he were in the ministry he would have nothing to do but to study, and that study would be a lifelong and ever-increasing delight. At the best he becomes a respectable bookworm, who hates preaching, which so greatly interferes with his studies; but he must preach or starve, and so he preaches sermons about the gospel--very learned sermons--which do his hearers about as much real good as would an admirable lecture on the chemistry of food delivered to a number of farm labourers who at the close of a day’ s toil had hurried into a kitchen! hungry for food. 2. There is a voice of the ambition to be respectable, genteel! 3. There is the voice of the love of publicity. Sometimes a little success in delivering half a dozen addresses to a Sunday School, or in making as many speeches in a debating society, turns a young man’ s brain, and he is sure that his proper place is in the ministry. 4. There is still another voice to which many young men are apt to listen, imagining that it is indeed the voice of Christ calling them to devote themselves to the ministry--the voice of a sincere desire to do good. This desire is quick and powerful in the heart of every young man who has really given himself to Christ. But it is a pitiable mistake to imagine that the call to do good and the call to become a preacher of the gospel is one and the same thing. To none of the voices that I have named should a young man listen when he is debating the question whether he should devote himself to the ministry of the Word. Before he takes that solemn, and in many cases irrevocable step, he should be very sure that it is the voice of Christ that he has heard saying to him, “ Follow Me, and I will make you a fisher of men.” II. BUT--this is the second fact that should be pondered--WHEN A MAN HAS HEARD THAT CALL HE SHOULD OBEY IT AT ANY COST. It may be that he cannot do so without making sacrifices; like Simon and Andrew, James and John, he may have to leave behind him nets, boats, valuable fishing-tackle, and dear friends; he may have to give up great present advantages, still greater prospective advantages; but like those of whom this narrative speaks to us, he should cheerfully forsake all, and follow Christ. Amos, the herdsman, was as true a prophet of the Lord as Isaiah, although he was reared in a palace. The other young man is in the counting-house; he is the eldest son of the successful head of the firm; he knows that in due time he will be a partner in the firm; he, too, is called, clearly called--he has no doubt that it is Christ’ s voice he hears--yet he hesitates, for the nets and boats that will have to be left are too many and too valuable; he reminds himself of the fact of which of I have reminded you, that it is not in the ministry only that a man can do good, and so, with this excuse, which he knows is for him a lie, he silences the Voice that calls so clearly. And hence comes that fact, which all the Churches deplore, that so few young men come forth from the middle and upper ranks of society to serve our Lord Jesus Christ as preachers of His Word. This was Garibaldi’ s most effective appeal to his fellow-countrymen:--“ Soldiers, your efforts against overwhelming odds have been unavailing. I have nothing to offer you but hunger, thirst, hardship, death: let all who love their country follow me” (July 22, 1849). Such an appeal does Christ address to-day to the sons of our Christian merchants and landowners. (Christian Age.) Luke 5:11 And when they had brought their ships to land, they forsook all, and followed Him Imitation of the apostles I. WITH REGARD TO THOSE POINTS IN WHICH THE EXAMPLE OF THE AT THEIR CALL IS NOT TO BE , I would remark at once a wide difference betwixt their case and that of the generality of Christians, which is, that they were entering the ministerial office. Those whom they might convert, either from the errors of Judaism or the blindness of idolatry, might possibly become equally acceptable Christians in the sight of their Divine leader; but there would still remain a line of separation betwixt the two classes, and to each class peculiar duties were annexed. And besides this distinction which we have just noticed, there is another consideration which invests the situation of the apostles in a still more peculiar light. They were going to live day and night, and in constant companionship with one who, having “ all power given Him both in heaven and earth,” could, at any moment, supply their wants, whatever those wants might be: and in attending upon whom, therefore, they would be miraculously defended from all those evils which would infallibly overtake any one who now attempted literally to do as they were ordered. And in speculating upon our Saviour’ s purpose in this particular miracle, though the idea may not hitherto have occurred to you, it certainly does seem probable that He meant it to have this convincing effect; for that men, earning their precarious livelihood as mere fishermen on the Lake of Tiberias, probably dependent for their next day’ s meal on the fortune which attended their over-night’ s fishing, would naturally feel their trust much strengthened in our Saviour’ s character after such an exhibition of His miraculous power to help them, there cannot be a doubt. Christ foresaw, indeed, though as yet hidden from the apostles’ eyes, that dreadful cloud of persecution which was gathering on every side of them, which in a very short while burst in its first fury upon Calvary, and soon after took off each one of our Lord’ s immediate followers by the refined agonies of some cruel death. And having this foreknowledge of what would and must come, Christ took only for the attendants of His mission such as would be undisturbed from their purpose of final perseverance and endurance: such in fact only as, having previously resigned all affections for this world, would be able and willing to quit life at any moment through the martyr’ s blood-stained gate. But, my brethren, there are some points in which the example of the apostles must be imitated, if we would be Christians. In the first place, we must imitate the apostles in their readiness to resign all earthly things when put in competition with those of heaven. Secondly, we must imitate them in their liveliness of conscience, to distinguish the value betwixt the body and the soul. Thirdly, we must imitate their perseverance and final triumph, through faith, over the temptations of life and the terrors of death. (A. Garry, M. A.) Forsaking all This was indispensable to our becoming disciples. It is indispensable to our continuing disciples. 1. We are to feel habitually that we have nothing of our own. All idea of proprietary rights we are to relinquish. 2. And when the selfish counter pleas that oppose the claims of the rightful Master solicit my consent, I must hear only the one Divine call that bids me forsake all I have in devotion to this new Master. 3. And this renunciation of all must be made in the conviction that there is no use we can possibly make of ourselves and of what we have that can be so sweet, so wise, and so fruitful of good and of blessing, as to lay the whole down at Jesus’ feet. ( A. L. Stone, D. D.) Love to Christ supreme A Karen woman offered herself for baptism. After the usual examination, I inquired whether she could give up her ornaments for Christ. It was an unexpected blow. I explained the spirit of the gospel. I appealed to her own consciousness of vanity. I read to her the apostle’ s prohibition (1 Timothy 2:9). She looked again and again at her handsome necklace, and then, with an air of modest decision, she took it off, saying, “ I love Christ more than this.” (Dr. Judson.) Leaving all to follow Christ; The secretary of the Brighton Town Mission narrates the following: “ Miss B. was in the theatrical profession, earning as much at times as £21 a week. Through the agencies at work in connection with our hall, she was led to choose the one thing needful. But now came the struggle between duty to Christ and duty to her parents. As she expressed it, ‘ She could not have Christ and go on with her work; therefore, as she felt she would rather die than dishonour Him,’ although only seventeen, she made the happy choice. Every means was taken to win her back; her Bible was burned, her clothes taken from her, she was locked up in her room, she was sent from home, but flattery and persecution were alike in vain, she realized in its fulness the promise, ‘ My grace is sufficient for thee.’ She still holds on her way rejoicing.” Rejecting a kingdom for Christ This noble act has been left for a converted heathen in India to do for Christ. The account has lately been sent to this country by Mr. C. A. Elliott, C.B., the Commissioner of Assam, who says he supposes the man in question is the only man now alive who has rejected a kingdom for Christ. He was the heir of the Rajah of Cherra, U. Bor. Sing, of Khasia, India, and had been converted to Christianity by the missionaries. U. Bor. Sing was warned that in joining the Christians he would probably forfeit his right to be King of Cherra after the death of Ram Sing, who then ruled. Eighteen months afterwards Ram Sing died; the chiefs of the tribes met together, and unanimously decided that Bor. Sing was to succeed him as Slim (king), but that his Christian profession stood in the way. Messenger after messenger was sent to U. Bor. Sing urging him to go to the missionaries and recant. He was invited to the native council, and there asked to put aside his religious profession, and that then they would all acknowledge him as their king. His answer was, “ Put aside my Christian profession! I can put aside my head-dress or my cloak, but as for the covenant I have made with my God, I cannot for any consideration put that aside.” Another was therefore appointed king in his stead. Luke 5:12; Luke 5:15 Behold a man full of leprosy The leper cleansed I. LEPROSY AFFORDS A OF THE AND OF SIN. 1. This spiritual leprosy has rendered all our race unclean in the sight of God and in the judgment of His holy law. (1) It shuts us out from His presence, (2) and from a place among His people. 2. No skill or power of man can cure this disease. 3. This malady, if not healed, will issue in death. And remember, death is not cessation of being, but a state of awful terror, pain, and wretchedness. This is the issue to which sin is bringing its victims. 4. Yet, thank God, our case is not altogether hopeless; there is a cure. II. OBSERVE THE STEPS TAKEN BY THIS LEPER TO OBTAIN A CURE. Thus we may learn what the disposition is, in which we should endeavour to approach the Saviour, who alone can heal our spiritual leprosy. 1. The first thing I would notice in this leper’ s conduct is the eagerness and haste with which he ran to Jesus immediately he met Him. 2. His reverential selfabasement. His eagerness in seeking relief did not cause him to forget what was due to the character of Him from whom that relief was sought. 3. The confidence he entertained of Christ’ s power. Have not we far stronger grounds for this than he had? (J. Harding, M. A.) Two pulpits I. Observe HOW MANY THERE ARE IN THE BIBLE RECORD WHO GIVE HELP ALL ALONG THE AGES. Here are mentioned “ multitudes,” and among them two persons in particular--a leper and a paralytic. And that is all we know about any individual to whom that eventful day was the beginning of renewed life. No name, no history, no after career; but we suppose that these cripples are in heaven now, and we know that their story has helped thousands to be patient and cheerful on the way thither. It is of little consequence who we are; it matters more what we are. II. EVEN IN EXTREME OF DISEASE ONE MAY EXHIBIT A SUPREME AND FAITH. The cases of these two men were as bad as they could well be; yet did our Lord find in them faith enough to be healed. In the rooms of the American Tract Society, in New York, are still standing two objects which I studied for some meditative years, once a month, at a committee meeting. One is a slight framework of tough wood, a few feet high, so bound together with hasps and hinges as to be taken down and folded in the hand. This was Whitefield’ s travelling-pulpit--the one he used when, denied access to the churches, he harangued the thousands in the open air, on the moors of England. You will think of this modern apostle, lifted up upon the small platform, with the throngs of eager people around him, or hurrying from one field to another, bearing his Bible in his arms; ever on the move, toiling with Herculean energy, and a force like that of a giant. There, in that rude pulpit, is the symbol of all which is active and fiery in dauntless Christian zeal. But now, look again: in the centre of this framework, resting upon the slender platform, where the living preacher used to stand, you will see a chair--a plain, straight-backed, armed, cottage-chair--rough, simple, meagrely cushioned, unvarnished, and stiff. It was the seat in which Elizabeth Wallbridge, “ the dairyman’ s daughter,” sat and coughed and whispered, and from which she went only at her last hour to the couch on which she died. Here again is a pulpit; and it is the symbol of a life quiet and unromantic and hard in all Christian endurance. Every word that invalid woman uttered--every patient night she suffered--was a gospel sermon. In a hundred languages, the life of that servant of God has preached to millions of souls the riches of Christ’ s glory and grace. And of these two pulpits, which is the most honourable is known only to God, who undoubtedly accepted and consecrated them both. The one is suggestive of the ministry of speech, the other of the ministry of submission. III. AN OF THE MYSTERY AND THE PURPOSE OF . Pain is a sort of ordination to the Christian ministry. Pure submission is as good as going on a foreign mission. Souls may be won to the Cross by a life on a sick-bed just as well as by a life in a cathedral desk. IV. Hence, we may easily learn WHAT SHOULD BE THE CHIEF OF AN INVALID. NO one can preach from any pulpit without the proper measure of study. He must thoughtfully ascertain what will make his efforts most pertinent. 1. He will study doctrine. 2. He will study experience, too. A month ago I saw a brave soldier of the Cross who had been passing through a fiery history of years with broken health, which had taken him from the pulpit of his usefulness and bidden him look into the grave season after season. He was now only able to stand, and sought a new field. Only yesterday he visited me again; in his feebleness he lay on my couch while he talked. He had just come from putting the wife of his manhood, his patient helper and the stay of his home, in the bedlam of a madhouse. Poor in spirit and poor in purse, broken-hearted and alone, he feared he should break again. Yet there he lay, and spoke hopefully and gently. Oh, that valiant brother, quivering in every muscle, but bold and firm in his trustful courage, preached to me in my study as I know I never preached in my church! V. Some people recover from long illness; Christ heals them, as He did these men in the story. So there is one more lesson for convalescents: WHAT ARE THEY GOING TO DO WITH THEIR LIVES ? “ It is a solemn thing to die,” said Schiller, “ but it is a more solemn thing to live.” We know the story of the Scotch mother, whose child an eagle stole away; half maddened she saw the bird reach its eyrie far up the cliff. No one could scale the rock. In distraction she prayed all the day. An old sailor climbed after it, and crept down dizzily from the height. There, on her outstretched arms, as she plod with closed eyes, he laid her babe. She rose in majesty of self-denial and took it (as she had been taught in that land) to her minister. She would not kiss it till it had been solemnly dedicated unto God I What shall a man do with a life given back to him? (C. S.Robinson, D. D.) What has God done to save me? The divinely-offered key to a right appreciation of Christ’ s spiritual work, even to that which theologians call the Atonement, should be sought by observing how our Lord cleansed the lepers, made the blind to see, and the lame to walk. Let us endeavour to realize how He, whose name is the only name given under heaven among men whereby we may be saved, healed men’ s diseases, in order that we may understand, so far as it has been revealed, how He saves us from our sins. I. , FIRST, WHY JESUS HEALED. Not to show that He could, but because He pitied the sufferer. When asked to work miracles to prove His ability to do so, He habitually declined. Every act of healing wrought by Christ was an act of pure compassion. He never healed to attract attention to Himself. He often commanded those He healed to say nothing of their cure. II. , NEXT, HOW JESUS HEALED. 1. The fact that He had compassion upon them was itself the first step in the cure of many who came to Him. There are diseases in which recovery must begin by regaining lost self-respect. In Christ the most dissolute and disgraced found not only pity, but delicate considerateness. Think, e.g., of His treatment of this leper. We can scarcely conceive what the effect must have been upon a man who had for years been closeted with his loathsome self, or with still more loathsome fellow-sufferers--a man who might not eat with human beings unless the same deadly taint was upon them, nor appear in the street except jangling a bell to give warning of the peril his presence brought; who, if he patted upon the head a carrion dog, it must be instantly killed, lest it should brush against others and defile them, because he had touched it; who, if he saw his mother, his child, his wife approach, must fly or shout, “ Unclean, unclean! Keep afar!” We can scarcely conceive what the effect must have been upon such a man, when he saw Jesus draw nigh. The multitude attending the Saviour falls back as men shrink from the plague; for crowds are always cowards. But the Master approaches, and, paying no heed to the jangling bell, the warning cry, lays His hand upon him. For the first time for years the leper feels the touch of a hand that is not hardened by the awful malady. That touch must have made the leper a new man in heart before the quickened pulse could shoot new life into the decaying limbs. 2. In healing, Christ made effort. One must be blind to read the New Testament, and fancy Christ’ s cures cost Him nothing because He was Divine. It was because He was Divine that they cost Him so much. If you would seek beings incapable of suffering, you must not go up toward the angels and the great white throne, for there you will find “ the Lamb as it had been slain,” but down among the oysters. Do you ask, How did Christ bear men’ s diseases? Thus: He sighed, He prayed, He lifted them in His arms, He put His hands upon them, He drew them to His bosom, He groaned, He felt His strength go from Him, to heal their bodies. If He had done less, He would not have made manifest the longsuttering God; and His saving men’ s bodies, His bearing their infirmities and healing their diseases, would have been no illustration of the agony with which He wrestled in Gethsemane for the salvation of their souls. 3. In many instances Jesus employed known remedies in physical healing. He manipulated the palsied tongue and the stopped ears--“ put His fingers in the ears,” “ touched the tongue.” He covered the blind eyes with moist clay, a well-known Egyptian remedy for ophthalmia. He inquired minutely the symptoms of the demoniac boy. He bent over those He healed, He touched them, as careful physicians do. Thus He encouraged, not the breach, but the observance of God’ s order. He put honour, by His example, upon the use of scientific remedies. At times He healed by a word, without approaching the sick one. But He seems to have dispensed with remedies only when to employ them was impossible, or when they would have been obviously useless, or when there was a special reason for neglecting them. His example said to those apostles to whom miraculous powers were given, “ Use the best means; pray God to bless their use; and when you can do nothing more, pray.” And that is what every wise and instructed Christian tries to do. 4. In all Christ’ s healings there was conspicuously revealed the authority of absolute power. When He spoke, devils obeyed, the dead heard, the despairing hoped, the lost knew that they were found. (William B. Wright.) The touch of Christ; or, the power of sympathy A lady visiting an asylum for friendless orphan children lately watched the little ones go through their daily drill superintended by the matron, a firm, honest woman, to whom her duty had evidently become a mechanical task. One little toddler hurt her foot, and the visitor, who had children of her own, took her on her knee, petted her, made her laugh, and kissed her before she put her down. The other children stared in wonder. “ What is the matter? Does nobody ever kiss you?” asked the astonished visitor. “ No; that isn’ t in the rules, ma’ am,” was the answer. A gentleman in the same city, who one morning stopped to buy a newspaper from a wizened, shrieking newsboy at the station, found the boy following him every day thereafter, with a wistful face, brushing the spots from his clothes, calling a car for him, &c. “ Do you know me?” he asked at last. The wretched little Arab laughed. “ No; but you called me ‘ my child’ one day. I’ d like to do something for you, sir. I thought before that I was nobody’ s child.” Christian men and women are too apt to feel when they subscribe to organized charities that they have done their duty to the great army of homeless, friendless waifs around them. A touch, a kiss, a kind word, may do much towards saving the neglected little one who feels he is “ nobody’ s child,” teaching it, as no money can do, that we are all children of one Father. When Christ would heal or help the poor outcast, He did not send him money, but He came close and touched him. A leper’ s logic This man apparently had no doubt of our Lord’ s ability to heal him. It was about Christ’ s willingness that he was in doubt. As a rule, men do not naturally associate love and power; they believe in the existence of power far more readily than in that of love. Power seems to create distrust in love. 1. Perhaps because the world is so used to seeing power used arbitrarily and selfishly. 2. Because of the consciousness of sin. It was when Peter saw the Divine power of Christ displayed in the draught of fishes that he said, “ Depart from me,” &c. And in the light of this fact, the incident of our text has a peculiar force; for-- I. THE DISEASE FROM WHICH THIS MAN WAS WAS OF SIN. It was a decomposition of the vital juices, putrefaction in a living body; hence an image of death. The leper was treated throughout as a sinner. “ He was a dreadful parable of death.” The case of this leper, therefore-- II. GAVE OUR LORD AN , NOT ONLY TO DO A WORK OF MERCY AND LOVE UPON A MAN, BUT ALSO TO GIVE A OF HIS TO DEAL AND WITH A SINFUL MAN. Let US see how Christ’ s willingness comes out in this incident. 1. It is not repelled by an imperfect faith. 2. It was shown in Christ’ s express declaration. How striking is the way in which He meets that timid “ If Thou wilt” with “ I will.” (M. R. Vincent, D. D.) “ If Thou wilt” When the leper said, “ If Thou wilt,” he narrowed his appeal, and directed it to the will of Jesus. His faith in Christ’ s power was very much stronger that his faith in Christ’ s goodness. It contained much that was true, but did not contain much more that was equally true. Christ answered, not according to the imperfection of the appeal, but according to its possibility of being perfected. “ If Thou wilt” is fitting language for us, not because we doubt His goodness, but because we believe in His wisdom. If we learn that it is God’ s will that we should suffer and have disappointment, we hope amidst our pain, and know that our disappointment is after all the appointment of the wiser still, and that, whatever may be in the meantime withheld, the answer will be given at last, “ Be thou clean.” (J. Ogmore Davies) Leprosy I. ASPECT. 1. White pustules--eat away flesh--attacking one member after another--at last the bones. 2. Attended with sleeplessness, nightmare, and hopelessness of cure. 3. A living death. II. SOCIAL ASPECT. 1. Contagion. 2. Lived in a several house, or in bands at a distance from ordinary dwelling. 3. Went with head uncovered, crying, “ Room for the leper.” III. ASPECT. 1. Excommunication--no communion with the commonwealth of Israel. 2. In every way a type of the impenitent sinner. For-- 3. Sin is a living death; contagious, and separates from God. (F. Godet, D. D.) Socially restored, as well as morally And He charged him to tell no man. Assume that the true state of the case was that Jesus wrought a cure, and left it to the priest to declare the patient cured, and all becomes clear, natural, and Christlike. Two things had to be done to make the benefit complete--the disease had to be healed, whereby the sufferer would be delivered from the physical evil; and it had to be authoritatively declared healed, whereby the sufferer would be delivered from the social disabilities imposed by the law upon lepers. Jesus conferred one-half of the blessing, and He sent the leper to the priest to receive from him the other half. He did this, not in ostentation, or by way of precaution, but chiefly, if not exclusively, out of regard to the man’ s good, that he might be restored, not only to health, but to society. Hence, also, the injunction of silence. The prevention of unhealthy excitement among the people was only a secondary aim. The primary end concerned the man healed. Jesus wished to prevent him from contenting himself with half the benefit, rejoicing in restored health, and telling everybody he met about it, and neglecting the steps necessary to get himself universally recognized as healed. (A. B. Bruce, D. D.) Show thyself to the priest, &c. A certificate of the recovery of a leper could only be given at Jerusalem, by a priest, after a lengthened examination, and tedious rites. It will illustrate the bondage of the ceremonial law, as then in force, to describe them. With his heart full of the first joy of a cure so amazing, the leper had to set off to the Temple for the requisite papers to authorize his return, once more, to the roll of Israel. A tent had to be pitched outside the city, and in this the priest examined the leper, cutting off all his hair with the utmost care; for, if only two hairs were left, the ceremony was invalid. Two sparrows had to be brought at this first stage of the cleansing--the one, Go be killed over a small earthen pan of water, into which its blood must drop; the other, after being sprinkled with the blood of its mate--a cedar twig, to which scarlet wool and a piece of hyssop (Psalms 51:1) were bound, being used to do so--was let free in such a direction that it should fly to the open country. After the scrutiny by the priest, the leper put on clean clothes, and carried away those he had worn to a running stream to wash them thoroughly, and to cleanse himself by a bath. He could now enter the city, but for seven days more could not enter his own house. On the eighth day he once more submitted to the scissors of the priest, who cut off whatever hair might have grown in the interval. Then followed a second bath; and now he had only carefully to avoid any defilement, so as to be fit to attend in the Temple next morning, and complete his cleansing. The first step in this final purification was to offer three lambs, two males and a female, none of which must be under a year old. Standing at the outer edge of the court of the men, which he was not yet worthy to enter, the leper awaited the longed-for rites. These began by the priest taking one of the male lambs destined to be slain as an atonement for the leper, and handing it to each point of the compass in turn, and by his swinging a vessel of oil on all sides in the same way, as if to present both to the universally-present God. He then led the lamb to the leper, who laid his hands on its head, and gave it over as a sacrifice for his guilt, which he now confessed. It was forthwith killed at the north side of the altar, two priests catching its blood, the one in a vessel, the other in his hand. The first now sprinkled the altar with the blood, while the other went to the leper and anointed his ears, his right thumb, and his right toe with it. The one priest then poured some oil of the leper’ s offering into the left hand of the other, who, in his turn, dipped his finger seven times into the oil thus held, and sprinkled it as often towards the Holy of Holies. Each part of the leper which before had been touched with the blood was then further anointed with the oil, what remained being stroked on his head. The leper could now enter the men’ s court, and did so, passing through it to that of the priests’ . The female lamb was next killed, as a sin-offering, after he had put his hands on its head, part of its blood being smeared on the horns of the altar, while the rest was poured out at the altar-base. The other male lamb was then slain for a burnt-sacrifice; the leper once more laying him hands on its head, and the priests sprinkling its blood on the altar. The fat, and all that was fit for an offering, was now laid on the altar, and burned as a “ sweet-smelling savour” to God. A meal-offering of fine wheat meal and oil ended the whole; a portion being laid on the altar, while the rest, with the two lambs, of which only a small part had been burned, formed the dues of the priest. It was not till all this had been done that the full ceremony of cleansing, or showing himself to the priests, had been carried out, and that the cheering words, “ Thou art pure,” restored the sufferer once more to the rights of citizenship and of intercourse with men. No wonder that even a man like St. Peter, so tenderly minded to his ancestral religion, should speak (Acts 15:10) of its requirements as a yoke which “ neither our fathers nor we are able to bear.” (Dr. Geikie.) The moral of Luk 5:14 Unless we show ourselves to whomsoever is our priest after our healings and cleansings, and after the gift which is commanded us, we are less pure for having been so cleansed, and more diseased for having been so healed. There can be no greater evil than to be prosperous without being prayerful, and strong without being Godlike. You should never finish your successful commercial enterprise with the balancing of your account at the bank. The only duty of your restored vigour is not merely to pay your doctor’ s bill. Your healing and your prospering are from Israel’ s God; you had better tell Him of them, and tell Him without much ado with man by the way. Tell no man until you know how to speak devoutly, and see no man until you have seen God. You must obey with the new strength before you are free in the use of it. (J. Ogmore Davies.) Luke 5:15A fame abroad of Him True popularity That distinguished and excellent judge, Lord Mansfield, once observed: “ True popularity is not that popularity which is followed after, but the popularity which follows after. ” A fruitless expedient to prevent overcrowding Dr. Chalmers, when large audiences attended his services, sometimes announced in the morning that he would repeat the same sermon in the afternoon. On one occasion when he had made that announcement Dr. Wardlaw was present, and gives us an account of the scene. It was on one Sabbath evening. The seats were occupied an hour before the time, and the doors were closed and bolted. An immense crowd was without, and as soon as Chalmers opened the vestry door, in spite of the keepers, the front door was forced open and the crowd rushed in, completely filling all the vacant space. Chalmers was grieved, and administered a sharp rebuke to the audience. Walking home with him, Chalmers said to Wardlaw, “ I preached the same sermon in the morning, and, for the very purpose of preventing the annoyance of such a densely-crowded place, I intimated that I should preach it again in the evening. Have you ever tried that plan?” Wardlaw says: “ I did not smile. I laughed outright. ‘ No, no,’ I replied. ‘ My good friend, there are but very few of us that are under the necessity of having recourse to the use of means for getting thin audiences.’” (Bishop Simpson.) Luke 5:16-17 And He withdrew Himself into the wilderness and prayed Jesus praying What were the special reasons which led our Lord at this time to go away for prayer. I. THE NEED OF INWARD OF WHICH HE MUST HAVE BEEN . 1. Christ was full of the truest, tenderest sympathy. 2. His sympathy was invariably practical 3. It was intensely personal; general enough to embrace the multitude; particular enough to fix itself on the individual. We can imagine, therefore, how exhausted He must have been. II. THE FEELING OF SADNESS WHICH CAME TO HIM IN VIEW OF THE APATHY OF THE WHO WERE SO EAGERLY SEEKING HIM. If we are deeply concerned for the spiritual welfare of men we shall feel something of the same sadness. III. HIS OF THE DANGER TO HIS MISSION WHICH WOULD ARISE FROM A . Prayer is the only true preservative against the perils of success. Because of our success we are in danger-- 1. Of rushing on too fast. 2. Of becoming self-dependent. 3. Of growing unsympathetic. (B. Wilkinson,F. G. S.) The Redeemer an example of solitary prayer I. UPON WHAT ARE WE TO ACCOUNT FOR OUR LORD’ S FOR AND ? A man, though in blessed and ineffable union with God. Made in all points like unto His brethren, with the exception of His sinless purity. 1. The Redeemer would be impelled to cultivate solitude and devotion by the fervour of His piety. 2. Solitary communion with God was necessary to preserve His holy mind from the contaminations of the world, incidental to the possession of a material body, and his participation of human nature. 3. In solitude and prayer, the Redeemer was invigorated to pursue and to accomplish His great work. 4. Our Lord, by this habit of retired devotion, afforded an example and an illustration of His own doctrine, and condemned the hypocritical and ostentatious worship of the Jewish elders. II. WHAT MAY WE EXPECT TO DERIVE FROM THE EXAMPLE OF THE SAVIOUR IN THIS . To suppose the disciple in less need of perpetual supplies of grace than his Lord were folly and presumption. 1. Solitude is favourable to that calm, reflecting, and pensive state of the mind which is suitable to the higher duties of religion. 2. In devout seclusion, the realities of religion are brought more closely home to our consciences and our hearts, and we feel more deeply our individual concern in their truth and consequences. 3. A life of faith in opposition to a life regulated by the exclusive interests of the present world, can only be sustained by habits of private devotion. 4. It secures an effectual refuge amidst the sorrows and calamities of life. (W. Hull.) Christ and prayer 1. In what His prayers for the most part consisted we know not, but we know that one element, which must ever form an important part in our petitions, could have no place in His. He would not say, “ Forgive Me My trespasses.” 2. But though Christ prayed without seeking mercy, of which He had no need, He still truly and earnestly prayed. His devotions were not simply thanksgivings, utterances of praise and gladness, or ecstatic contemplations. 3. In the prayers of Christ, if in nothing else, we see abundant reason for our prayers. ( E. Mellor, D. D.) The exhaustion of pity The spirit is never so exhausted as when it is exhausted by being pitiful. For weariness of bone and muscle nature is very generous; rest for that may be found anywhere; the tree will do for shelter, and the stone for a pillow. Weariness of brain is harder to lay aside, and weariness of heart harder still. Brain and limb fail when the heart’ s power is gone. Jesus needed the day for work and the night for rest. The spirit must rest and be refreshed by spirit; we are revived again, and often brought to a lively hope through the ministry of life’ s friendships, and have been created anew by the consciousness of being understood. Christ had been understood neither when He spake nor acted, but had been wholly when He prayed. We, too, have need of a place apart where we may be refreshed from the presence of the Lord. (J. Ogmore Davies.) Solitude necessary Life must have its hours of holy solitude if it would be rich and strong. It is true that we can pray in the city; it is also true that the wilderness has charms of its own for meditative purposes. Silence helps speech. Loneliness prepares for society. Nature has special messages to exhausted workers. After the wilderness came the city, with all its activities and temptations. (J. Parker, D. D.) Prayer the breath of the spiritual man A celebrated performer upon the piano was continually familiar with his instrument, for he used to say, “ If I quit the piano one day I notice it; if I quit it two days my friends notice it; if I quit it three days the public notice it.” No doubt he correctly described his experience; only by perpetual practice could he preserve the ease and delicacy of his touch. Be sure that it is so with prayer. If this holy art be neglected, even for a little time, the personal loss will be great; if the negligence be continued, our nearest spiritual friends will notice a deterioration in tone and life; and if the evil should be long indulged, our character and influence will suffer with a wider circle. To be a master of the mystery of prayer one must pray, pray continually, pray hourly, pray at all times, pray without ceasing. A Christian should no more leave off praying than the musician should leave off playing; in fact, it is the breath of every spiritual man, and woe be to him should he restrain it! (C. H.Spurgeon.) A great man at prayer I had once been spending three weeks in the White House with Mr. Lincoln as his guest. One night--it was just after the battle of Bull Run--I was restless and could not sleep. I was repeating the part which I was to take in a public performance. The hour was past midnight. Indeed, it was coming near to the dawn, when I heard low tones proceeding from a private room near where the President slept. The door was partly open. I instinctively walked in, and there I saw a sight which I shall never forget. It was the President kneeling beside an open Bible. The light was turned low in the room. His back was toward me. For a moment I was silent, as I stood looking in amazement and wonder. Then he cried out in tones so pleading and sorrowful, “ O thou God that heard Solomon in the night when he prayed for wisdom, hear me: I cannot lead this people, I cannot guide the affairs of this nation without Thy help. I am poor and weak and sinful. O God, who didst hear Solomon when he cried for wisdom, hear me, and save this nation!” (James E. Murdock.) Public prayer not always the measure of private prayer My brethren, do we pray? There is many a minister--pardon me for saying so--who spends more time in public prayer than in private prayer, and not a few spend more time in preaching than in praying. Is this as it ought to be? A faithful pastor went once to see a young man who was a member of his Church, and he said to him, “ I have come to ask you if you are on good terms with your Father?” meaning his heavenly Father. The young man seemed very much taken aback, and said to him, “ Who told you about me and my father? We have not been on speaking terms for years.” “ Oh,” said the minister, “ I mean your heavenly Father; but this is very sad.” “ Oh, it is sad, and it grieves me in my heart,” said the young man. “ Oh,” said the minister, “ I have often spent an evening in your house, and I never noticed there was any estrangement between you and your father.” “ Ah, no,” says the young man, “ we have an arrangement, when we come together in company to act as if nothing had happened; but when we are alone there is no intercourse between us.” (C. Lockhart.) And the power of the Lord was present to heal them.-- The gospel’ s healing power I. THE POWER OF CHRIST IN THE GOSPEL IS MAINLY A POWER TO HEAL,. 1. It is a Divine power which comes from our Lord Jesus, because He is most surely God. It is the sole prerogative of God to heal spiritual disease. 2. Although our Lord Jesus healed as Divine, remember that He also possessed power to heal because of His being human. He used no other remedy in healing our sin-sickness but that of taking our sicknesses and infirmities upon Himself. This is the one great cure-all. 3. The power which dwelt in Christ to heal, coming from Him as Divine and human, was applicable, most eminently, to the removal of the guilt of sin. Reading this chapter through, one pauses with joy over that twenty-fourth verse, “ The Son of Man hath power upon earth to forgive sin.” Here, then, is one of the great Physician’ s mightiest arts: He has power to forgive sin. 4. This is not the only form of the healing power which dwells without measure in our glorious Lord. He heals the sorrow of sin. It is written, “ He healeth the broken in heart and bindeth up their wounds.” When sin is really manifest to the conscience it is a most painful thing, and for the conscience to be effectually pacified is an unspeakable blessing. Sharper than a dagger in the heart, or an arrow piercing through the loins, is conviction of sin. When Jesus is received by faith, He lifts all our sorrow from us in a moment. 5. Christ also heals the power of sin. 6. And He is able to heal us of our relapses. II. A second remark arises from the text: THERE ARE SPECIAL PERIODS WHEN THE POWER TO HEAL IS MOST . The verse before us says that on a certain day the power of the Lord was present to heal, by which I understand, not that Christ is not always God, not that He was ever unable to heal, but this--that there were certain periods when He pleased to put forth His Divine energy in the way of healing to an unusual degree. The sea is never empty; it is indeed always as full at one time as at another, put yet it is not always at flood. The sun is never dim, he shines with equal force at all hours, and yet it is not always day with us, nor do we always bask in the warmth of summer. Christ is fulness itself, but that fulness does not always overflow; He is able to heal, but He is not always engaged in healing. 1. On this occasion there was a great desire among the multitude to hear the Word. 2. The healing power was conspicuously present when Christ was teaching. 3. A further sign of present power is found most clearly in the sick folk who were healed by Jesus. 4. The particular time mentioned in the text was prefaced by special season of prayer on the part of the principal actor in it. III. WHEN THE POWER OF THE LORD IS PRESENT TO HEAL, IT MAY NOT BE SEEN IN ALL, BUT MAY BE SHOWN IN SPECIAL CASES AND NOT IN OTHERS. We do not find that this power was wanting among the publicans; we have an instance here of one of them who made a great feast in his house for Christ. Where, then, was the power lacking? Where was it unsought and unfelt? 1. It was, in the first place, among the knowing people, the doctors of the law. These teachers knew too much to submit to be taught by the Great Rabbi. There is such a thing as knowing too much to know anything, and being too wise to be anything but a fool. Beware of saying, “ Oh yes, yes, yes, yes, that is very applicable to So-and-so, and very well put.” Do not criticise, but feel. 2. Those, moreover, who had a good opinion of themselves were left unblest. The Pharisees I no better people anywhere, from Dan to Beersheba, than the Pharisees, if you would take them upon their own reckoning. 3. The people who stood by, as one observes, they did not come to be preached at, they came for Christ to preach before them. They did not come for Christ to operate upon them; they were not patients, they were visitors in the hospitals. 4. Those who felt not the healing power sneered and cavilled. When a man gets no good out of the ministry, he is pretty sure to think there is no good in the ministry; and when he himself, for want of stooping down, finds no water in the river, he concludes it is dry, whereas it is his own stubborn knee that will not bend, and his own wilful mouth that will not open to receive the gospel. IV. In the last place, I want Christian people here to observe that WHEN THE POWER OF CHRIST WAS PRESENT, IT CALLED FORTH THE ENERGY OF THOSE WHO WERE HIS FRIENDS TO WORK WHILE THAT POWER WAS . (C. H. Spurgeon.) Christ healing the sick 1. The infinitude of Christ’ s power. 2. The tenderness of Christ’ s power. 3. The beneficence of Christ’ s power. 4. The availableness of Christ’ s power. The conditions on which is secured the outflow of Christ’ s beneficent power. 1. Helplessness. Leper and paralytic men were unable to relieve themselves. 2. Humility. 3. Faith. (P. P. Davies.) Luke 5:18-26A man which was taken with a palsy Carried by four I. THERE ARE CASES WHICH WILL NEED THE AID OF A LITTLE BAND OF WORKERS BEFORE THEY WILL BE FULLY SAVED. Yonder is a householder as yet unsaved: his wife has prayed for him long; her prayers are yet unanswered. Good wife, God has blessed thee with a son, who with thee rejoices in the fear of God. Hast thou not two Christian daughters also? O ye four, take each a corner of this sick man’ s couch, and bring your husband, bring your father, to the Saviour. A husband and a wife are here, both happily brought to Christ; you are praying for your children; never cease from that supplication: pray on. Perhaps one of your beloved family is unusually stubborn. Extra help is needed. Well, to you the Sabbath-school teacher will make a third; he will take one corner of the bed; and happy shall I be if I may join the blessed quaternion, and make the fourth. Perhaps, when home discipline, the school’ s teaching, and the minister’ s preaching shall go together, the Lord will look down in love and save your child. II. We now pass on to the second observation, that SOME CASES THUS TAKEN UP WILL NEED MUCH THOUGHT BEFORE THE DESIGN IS . They must get the sick man in somehow. To let him down through the roof was a device most strange and striking, but it only gives point to the remark which we have now to make here. If by any means we may save some, is our policy. Skin for skin, yea, all that we have is nothing comparable to a man’ s soul. When four true hearts are set upon the spiritual good of a sinner, their holy hunger will break through stone walls or house roofs. III. Now we must pass on to an important truth. We may safely gather from the narrative THAT THE ROOT OF LIES IN SIN. Jesus intended to heal the paralysed man, but He did so by first of all saying, “ Thy sins are forgiven thee.” The bottom of this paralysis is sin upon the conscience, working death in them. They are sensible of their guilt, but powerless to believe that the crimson fountain can remove it; they are alive only to sorrow, despondency, and agony. Sin paralyses them with despair. I grant you that into this despair there enters largely the element of unbelief, which is sinful; but I hope there is also in it a measure of sincere repentance, which bears in it the hope of something better. Our poor, awakened paralytics sometimes hope that they may be forgiven, but they cannot believe it; they cannot rejoice; they cannot cast themselves on Jesus; they are utterly without strength. Now, the bottom of it, I say again, lies in unpardoned sin, and I earnestly entreat you who love the Saviour to be earnest in seeking the pardon of these paralysed persons. IV. Let us proceed to notice that JESUS CAN REMOVE BOTH THE SIN AND THE IN A SINGLE MOMENT. It was the business of the four bearers to bring the man to Christ; but there their power ended. It is our part to bring the guilty sinner to the Saviour; there our power ends. Thank God, when we end, Christ begins, and works right gloriously. V. OUR LORD WORKS THE DOUBLE MIRACLE, IT WILL BE . The man’ s healing was proved by his obedience. Openly to all onlookers an active obedience became indisputable proof of the poor creature’ s restoration. Notice, our Lord bade him rise--he rose; he had no power to do so except that power which comes with Divine commands. He did his Lord’ s bidding, and he did it accurately, in detail, at once, and most cheerfully. Oh! how cheerfully; none can tell but those in like case restored. So, the true sign of pardoned sin, and of paralysis removed from the heart, is obedience. VI. ALL THIS TENDS TO GLORIFY GOD. Those four men had been the indirect means of bringing much honour to God and much glory to Jesus, and they, I doubt not, glorified God in their very hearts on the housetop. Happy men to have been of so much service to their bedridden friend I When a man is saved his whole manhood glorifies God; he becomes instinct with a new-born life which glows in every part of him, spirit, soul, and body. But who next glorified God? The text does not say so, but we feel sure that his family did, for he went to his own house. Well, but it did not end there. A wife and family utter but a part of the glad chorus of praise, though a very melodious part. There are other adoring hearts who unite in glorifying the healing Lord. The disciples, who were around the Saviour, they glorified God too. And there was glory brought to God, even by the common people who stood around. We must, one and all, do the same. (C. H. Spurgeon.) Jesus’ method of doing good The first thing which He did was not the thing which He was expected by men to do. His first word seemed remote from the thing needing then and there to be done. The friends of that palsied man expected the famed Miracle-Worker to heal him; and instead, Jesus said only, “ Man, thy sins are forgiven thee.” That was not the first nor the last time that ecclesiastical logic has drawn a correct circle of reasoning by which the living truth has been shut out. Jesus stood for the moment looking upon the disappointed faces of His friends, and meeting the cruel eyes of His enemies. He knew that His word of Divine forgiveness, which seemed remote from the very present need of that palsied man, and which to the Pharisees was idle as a breath of air, was nevertheless the force of forces for the healing of the world. He knew how to begin His work among men, before any form of suffering, with a word which should bring down to the soul of man’ s need the power of the heart of God. The multitude looked on and saw the momentary failure, as it seemed, of the Christ of God. “ But Jesus, perceiving their reasonings,” &c. “ Whether is easier?” &c. Which is the greater force, the love of God forgiving sin, or the miracle of healing? Jesus began with the greatest work. The miracle, as it seemed to the people, was not the greater work which Jesus knew He was sent to accomplish. The physical miracle followed easily upon the diviner power of God’ s love which Jesus was conscious of possessing and exercising over the might of evil, when He said, “ Man, thy sins are forgiven thee.” The people, when they saw the lesser work done, not comprehending the power of God then and there present upon the earth, and working first the greater work of the forgiveness of sin, were amazed and filled with fear, and said, “ We have seen strange things to-day.” And this opinion of the people must be our opinion of these miracles if we do not know Jesus any better than those doctors of the law at Capernaum had learned Christ. But as in that case soon appeared, Jesus Christ was right in the way He chose to begin His work, and the people were all wrong. He did the harder thing first, and the easier thing next. And the method of the Church, following Christ’ s, is profoundly right. It is practically true, The gospel of Divine forgiveness we must put first; our benevolcnces second. Sin is first to be mastered; then suffering is more easily healed. ( Newman Smyth, D. D.) The gospel of forgiveness In this miracle many truths are presented to us; e.g., 1. A strong faith will overcome difficulties. 2. The readiness of Christ to welcome the needy, and to reward faith. 3. The enmity and opposition of the human heart. 4. The superiority of spiritual to temporal blessings. 5. Testimony given to the Divinity of Christ by His (1) forgiving sin; (2) searching the heart; (3) healing the body. But the central truth of the passage appears to be, the gospel of forgiveness preached to the poor. I. THE NEED IT MEETS. The figure presented to us: a paralysed man--helpless, incurable--a mere wreck. Three things combined in him. 1. Disease. 2. Poverty. 3. Poverty of spirit. He had a sense of sin--connected his misery with his sin--was softened, penitent. II. THE HOPE IT AWAKENS. Indefinite--but the hope of good. Had heard of Jesus. Drawn by the Father. The attraction exercised by Christ. All obstacles overcome. Jesus must be reached. III. THE IT BESTOWS. 1. Forgiveness. A word lightly used; little valued by many. But ask the friend, the child, the sinner who feels himself wrongdoer, and longs for reconciliation. 2. Manner of bestowment. (1) Immediate. (2) Free. (3) Complete. (4) Authoritative. (5) Effectual. IV. THE IT EXCITES. The spirit of opposition to grace always the same; the form differs. Here it was provoked by Christ’ s assumption; commonly by man’ s presumption. V. THE IT . Christ proves His power to forgive, confutes His adversaries, saves the man. The gospel may appeal to results. : Application to (1) The careless. (2) The anxious. (3) The healed. (Emilius Bayley, B. D.) Reflections on the healing of the paralytic 1. This passage suggests some serious consideration relating to the great numbers who sometimes assemble when the gospel is to be preached. Some hear with profit; but how many seem to hear in vain. 2. Be exhorted to imitate the benevolence of the four men who brought the paralytic to Christ. All who are themselves in health, strength, and comfort, ought to be ready to perform the various offices of humanity to those who are in sickness, or any trouble. 3. There are some things here for the consideration of the sick. The best use of sickness is for religious improvement. 4. It is delightful to think that the Son of Man has still power to forgive sin. (James Foote, M. d.) God interprets prayers In our prayers, Christ often hearkens more to our wants than our desires. He goes to the very root of the evil, which is sin; and we ought to imitate Him in our afflictions. They who, out of a spirit of charity, pray for others, receive frequently more than they ask. God interprets their prayers; because He understands better what charity asks in them, than they do themselves. (Quesnel.) Faith’ s reward The hand of faith never knocked in vain at the door of heaven. Mercy is as surely ours as if we had it, if we have but faith and patience to wait for it. (W. Burkitt.) The healing of the paralytic Here is an instance of the secondary services which men may render to each other. The men who carried the sufferer could not cure him. Still they could help him by kind and sympathetic attention. We should not shrink from the lower duties simply because we cannot discharge those which are higher. The method of approaching Christ adopted by them, and Christ’ s approval of it, show that the one thing to be particular about is to get to Christ, rather than to be fastidious as to the mere manner by which the object is accomplished. The great thing that Jesus Christ valued in men was faith. His answer to the faith of man was always in proportion to the fulness and courage of that faith. In this case He gave the very highest answer at once, with an apparent abruptness that startled the scribes and the Pharisees as if He had committed high blasphemy. Look at the harmony between the action of the men and the speech of Jesus. He did not receive them coldly, and test their sincerity by much questioning and seeming reluctance. On the contrary, no sooner did He see a special exhibition of faith in His power, than He instantly spoke the highest word which God Himself can address to the heart of man. Singularly enough, in this instance Jesus Christ passed from the high spiritual act of forgiveness to the high spiritual act of penetrating the hidden thoughts of those who were secretly accusing Him of blasphemy. The twenty-second verse shows the absolute fearlessness of Jesus, in that He did not wait for an audible expression of unbelief or aversion. He who could thus read the heart showed another phase of that great power by which He released man from the captivity of his guilt. The power is one; only in its application is it varied. In His further remarks upon this cage Jesus Christ shows that He can begin His work either from the highest spiritual or the highest physical point. It is curious to observe how sensitive were the scribes and Pharisees in the matter of the forgiveness of sins by any but God Himself, and yet how dull they were to draw the right inference from the fact that Jesus perceived their thoughts. The man who can read the thoughts of the heart has a presumptive claim to be considered able to do more than lies within the sphere of ordinary men. We find, however, that they passed from this instance of spiritual insight without a remark. This is a danger to which we are all exposed--the danger, namely, of seeing blasphemy where we ought to see Divinity, and of neglecting to construct the right argument upon such evidences of Christ’ s power as are patent to our own observation. The effect produced upon the minds of the spectators (Luke 5:26) was apparently satisfactory, yet not really and permanently so, or there could have been no recurrence of hostility. We see from this how possible it is to be amazed, even to glorify God and to be filled with fear, and yet to fall back from this high feeling into positive distrust and enmity. Feeling must be consolidated by understanding, or it will prove itself a poor defence in the day of repeated trial. Christianity is an argument as well as an emotion; and to separate them is to divide our strength and to miss the great purpose of Christian instruction. (J. Parker, D. D.) The story 1. Is an admirable commentary on the psalmist’ s words, “ Thy gentleness hath made me great.” As we follow the steps of the narrative, we feel how, by His gentleness, by the wise gradations of His approach to the paralytic’ s true need, Christ is gradually raising him into his best moods. 2. Reminds us that in His grace Christ rewards the very moods of faith and hope which He Himself has produced. He says, “ Be of good courage” ; and, at the word, courage springs up in our fearful hearts. He says, “ Thy sins are forgiven” ; and we are able to believe that He, who can forgive sins, can do for us whatever we may need. And then, having inspired faith and courage, He rewards them as though they were our virtues rather than His gifts: He bids us “ arise and walk,” to prove our victory over sin, to show that we have found new life in Him. So that the reward He bestows is--new and happier service. 3. Teaches that Christ often crosses our wish to supply our want. No doubt the supreme desire of the Galilean paralytic was deliverance from the palsy. But that is not the first thing Christ grants him. There must be faith before there can be healing; the man’ s sins must be forgiven before he can be made whole from his disease. But then, when our sins are really forgiven us, forgiveness implies a free restoration to health. (S. Cox, D. D.) The vicarious nature of faith We have here a distinct recognition of the value of intercessory prayer, or, if I may so express myself, of vicarious faith. God, we learn therefore, hears prayers of believing men offered up not for themselves but for others. 1. This doctrine is Scriptural. Abraham, Moses, &c. 2. This doctrine is reasonable. It can give a good account of itself before the bar of philosophy. It is a wise, God-worthy policy to encourage men to pray, live, and even die for one another, in the assurance that they pray not, live not, die not in vain. 3. The duty arising out of the foregoing doctrine is plain. It is without ceasing to desire and to pray for the well-being, spiritual and temporal, of all men, specially of those whose case Providence brings closest home to us. (A. B. Bruce, D. D.) Spiritual uses of affliction I. A CASE OF DIRE DISEASE. II. EVOKED. III. . IV. THE OF FAITH. V. A ORDER OF . VI. . VII. HUMAN BY JESUS MADE . VIII. HUMAN IN GLORY TO GOD. (D. Davies, M. A.) Who can forgive sins? I. Whether God can forgive sins or not, it is certain that NO OTHER BEING CAN. We have no right to forgive one another. We cannot forgive one another. Forgiveness, real and complete, can neither go nor come, can neither be given nor accepted, between man and man. As I have said before, God would have to die first. Eternity would have to end first. This is what conscience says to-day, will say to-morrow, and will say for ever. I am almost ashamed to be insisting upon any thing so elementary and axiomatic. But I dare not be ashamed of it. There is Something in the air which predisposes us to think lightly of sin. And I must warn you against it; and warn myself against it. Questions of conscience are only in part subjective and social. They are between us and the Unseen; between us and the Eternal; between us and the All-Just; between us and the All-Terrible. I do not see nor touch Him yet. But when this tired breast stops heaving, and this tired pulse stops beating, quick as thought, quicker than lightning, I shall be with Him, face to face. Only one question shall I then care to have answered: Can He forgive? I do not, dare not, can not forgive myself; can He forgive me? II. Let us ask, and answer this question now: Can God forgive? In the dainty, superficial thinking of our time, which comes of so much self-indulgence, softening the mental and moral fibre, Divine forgiveness is easy. It is assumed that suffering must cease some time. A bold assumption, in the face of a creation which has always sighed and groaned. If God is not impeached or disturbed by suffering to-day, why need He be to-morrow, or next day, or the next? Much is said also of our insignificance, and that, too, by men who, in other relations, make great account of the dignity of human nature. God, it is said, can suffer no loss at our hands. We cannot rob Him of any treasure. Somebody once asked Daniel Webster what was the most important thought that ever occupied his mind. The propriety of the question hardly equalled the solidity of the answer. “ The most important thought that ever occupied my mind,” said he, “ was that of my individual responsibility to God.” Psychology admits no possibility of forgiveness. On purely rational grounds, it is inconceivable. Plato could see nothing ahead but either penalty, or penance. Some speakers and writers of our time, affecting philosophy, are eloquent about work and wages, being and condition, character and destiny. Very well, gentlemen: but do you know what you are saying? You hate our iron-clad orthodoxy. But our creed, as you must yourselves admit, has some mercy in it; while your creed has no mercy in it at all. To be consistent, you should get rid of your idea of a personal God, as perhaps you have already. As you put things, this universe might just as well be governed by some impersonal Force. The laws are all alike, whether physical or moral. Atonement suggests and warrants the declaration that “ God is Love.” Somehow, on the basis of this atonement, and in pursuance of its purpose, God forgives. What is forgiveness? Not mere remission of penalty. Moral penalty never can be remitted without moral change. To forgive an offence that I know will be repeated is to be accessory to that offence, before and after. Divine forgiveness can go no farther than human forgiveness, and achieve no more. It must observe the same ethical laws. It must have the same high ethical tone. “ Go, and sin no more,” is always the condition of forgiveness. (R. D. Hitchcock, D. D.) Zeal will always find a way to accomplish its purpose It seems to have been a common practice with their (the Waldensian) teachers, the more readily to gain access for their doctrines among persons in the higher ranks of life, to carry with them a box of trinkets, or articles of dress, something like the hawkers or pedlars of our day; and Reinerius thus describes the manner in which they were wont to introduce themselves: “ Sir, will you be pleased to buy any rings or seals or trinkets? Madam, will you look at any handkerchiefs or pieces of needlework for veils; I can afford them cheap.” If, after a purchase, the company ask, “ Have you anything more?” the salesman would reply, “ Oh, yes; I have commodities far more valuable than these, and I will make you a present of them, if you will protect me from the ecclesiastics.” Security being promised, he went on: “ The inestimable jewel I spoke of is the Word of God, by which He communicates His mind to men, and which inflames their heart with love to Him.” (Milner.) A mother’ s belief that God would justify her faith for her son’ s conversion A touching story of a mother’ s faith is that of a dying Scotch mother, who in praying for and speaking of a wandering son, whom she had not heard from for years, said: “ O God, Thou knowest I consecrated Jamie to Thee when he was an infant in my arms. Thou knowest I have prayed for him with the prayer of faith--a mother’ s faith, every day ever since he was born. He is Thy child; Thou must go after him and find him, and bring him into the kingdom, for Thou hast promised, and Thou art faithful to fulfil Thy promises. Thou canst not lose my Jamie from the fold. I know that Thou wilt save Jamie for me, and I shall meet him in the land where none ever wander away from the green pastures and the still waters.” Faith honoured “ There is no use in keeping the church open any longer; you may as well give me the key,” said a missionary in Madras, as in the course of a journey he passed through a village where once so many of the natives had professed Christianity that a little church had been built for them. But the converts had fallen away, returned to their idols, and there only remained faithful the one poor woman to whom now the missionary was speaking. “ There is Christian worship in the village three miles off,” he added, noticing her sorrowful look; “ any one who wishes can go there.” “ Oh, sir,” she pleaded, most earnestly, “ do not take away the key! I at least will still go daily to the church and sweep it clean and will keep the lamp in order, and go on praying that God’ s light may one day visit us again.” So the missionary left her the key, and presently the time came when he preached in that very church crowded with repentant sinners; the harvest of the God-given faith of that one poor Indian woman. Rejoicing through forgiveness We now visit an old man of seventy-five, who had been a coachman and cabdriver in Paris. We have known him for ten years. His home is humble, but it was very interesting to look in from time to time on old Grimmer and his wife, both of them diligently cutting into strips a sort of coarse lace to try and earn something for their own support. He was a great sufferer through gout for the last two years, and when the thought came forcibly home to him that he could not live much longer, the sins of his past life weighed heavily upon his mind. ‘ You have no idea,’ he would say, ‘ of the sins I have committed during my long life, and if I only knew they were forgiven I should not be afraid to die.’ The feeling quite overpowered him. We visited him, and read God’ s Word with him, and after some months the light shone in upon him, and all was changed. But let him tell his own simple story; ‘ I know now my sins are all forgiven, for the sake of my Saviour, who died for me. Yes, though I am such a great sinner, God has forgiven me all. I used to be so frightened when I awoke at night, and seemed to see dreadful spirits round me; but now, when I am awake, I pray to God, and I seem to know He is in the room with me. One night I am sure I saw Jesus standing before me when I was praying.’ His faith was bright to the last, and he passed quietly away to ‘ the home above.’” (Miss Leigh’ s work in Paris.) “ Sixty-five years’ sins all forgiven” This was the language of Mrs. B--, who has been visited by the missionary for many years. She always received my visits, and was willing to hear the Scriptures read, but was totally blind to their spiritual application, and always said she was too bad to be forgiven; but this was as a cloak to cover her indulgence in sin. About nine months ago she manifested a deep concern about her spiritual condition. She said, “ It’ s no use talking to me, the day of grace is gone, I am afraid there is no hope for me.” I repeatedly visited her, read and prayed with her. She attended all the meetings, and would cry out, “ Lord, save me, if thou canst look upon a poor sinner like me! “ At night she was terrified with dreams.” My old man,” she said,” declared I was gone mad. I said, ‘ It’ s my sins, my sins!’ I didn’ t know what to do nor where to go. It was at the Mission-room last June that I heard distinctly a voice that said, ‘ Thy sins which were many are all forgiven thee.’ I felt such a change; I’ m an old woman, but I could dance for joy; it is wonderful the Lord Jesus forgave me. Sixty-five years’ sins all forgiven!” Omniscience of Christ Nature, in all her realms, lies open to His eye. No pearl of the deep, no metallic splendour of the mine, but shines to Him. No flower of a day, no tree of a century, no forest of a millennium, but has in petal, foliage, and gathering girth a history He intimately knows. No fish, glancing through the seas, no beast, wild or subdued, no bird, savage or harmless, but has a biography whose every incident is clear in the flame of His all searching eyes, and, pointing to man, He says: “ The very hairs of your head are all numbered.” And is He so minutely acquainted with man’ s decorating and living crown? He has as intimate acquaintance with the thoughts of man’ s mind and the feelings and aspirations of his soul. Every creature, small and great, every event of every life, every sin, sorrow, fear, and hope, lives simultaneously, completely, unerringly, in the light of His countenance. (G. T. Coster.) Christ can see through men He needed not that one should tell Him what was in men; He knew it. He, looking upon men, looked upon them as if they were glass, and as if their soul’ s machinery was perfectly visible within them. As we, looking upon a clock, see its whole mechanism, so Christ, looking upon men, seemed to see the interior men more than the exterior. (H. W. Beecher.) The simplicity of Christ’ s method of healing I looked the other day into old Culpepper’ s Herbal. It contains a marvellous collection of wonderful remedies. Had this old herbalist’ s prescriptions been universally followed, there would not long have been any left to prescribe for; the astrological herbalist would soon have extirpated both sickness and mankind. Many of his receipts contain from twelve to twenty different drugs, each one needing to be prepared in a peculiar manner; I think I once counted forty different ingredients in one single draught. Very different are these receipts, with their elaboration of preparation, from the Biblical prescriptions which effectually healed the sick--such as these. “ Take a lump of figs and lay it for a plaster upon the boil” : or that other one: “ Go and wash in Jordan seven times” ; or that other; “ Take up thy bed and walk.” One cannot but admire the simplicity of truth, while falsehood conceals her deformities with a thousand trickeries. (C. H. Spurgeon.) The purpose of Christ’ s miracles of healing It is not so easy a matter as it might seem, to explain the multitude of the miracles that are narrated or referred to in these Gospels which give us all that we know of the life of Jesus the Messiah. The accounts of them make up a large part of the four Gospels. Why is it that the three brief years of Christ’ s miracles should have been so largely consumed in these hundreds, thousands of acts of healing men’ s bodily ailments and infirmities, and even inconveniences? What was the purpose, and what was the result, of all these mighty works? 1. If the one object of Christ’ s miracles was directly to reduce the sum of human misery, then they were a failure; for their result was inappreciably small and insignificant. What a mere drop of solace in an ocean of agony 1 What an atom of comfort beside the huge, mountainous mass of human woe. 2. Such an object as that of arbitrarily interrupting the general course of human suffering by miraculous interference, not only was not accomplished by the power of Christ, but it ought not to have been accomplished it would not have been a blessing. The notion that there was too much pain and suffering in the world--more than was right, more than was best, more than was needed by mankind for their own good--the notion that God our Father had dealt hardly by His children, and that the Son of God, with a superior love, came down to mitigate the hardship which the Father’ s too great severity had imposed--is quite too much like some other of the obsolete notions of a mediaeval theology, and quite too much unlike the Word of God. For it is not true. God tolerates no pain in the world that can be spared. It was not in revenge or cruelty, but in that justice which is another name for love, that He pronounced on the apostate race the curse of toil and suffering and death. His curse was the best blessing that mankind, sinful, apostate, were capable of receiving. 3. The real answer is declared in the text. When God interferes to break the dreadful chain of moral causes that binds penalty to sin, He gives sign and token of the same, by breaking also the chain of physical cause and effect that holds the creation groaning under bondage to bodily pain and weakness. When He sends His only-begotten into the world, He adopts this way to signalize Him to the wretched, the poor, the hungry, the sick, the palsied, the sinful and unhappy of every land and language and century, as God’ s authorized Commissioner. 4. Christ’ s works, moreover, set before us the way of salvation--the way in which He gives it, the way in which we are to receive it. The miracles are parables--not the less parables for being also facts. And this miracle, in particular, shows the order in which the devil’ s works are destroyed by the Holy One of God--not first pain and sorrow, and then sin; but first sin, and then the pain, sorrow, death that sin has wrought. (Leonard W. Bacon.) The healing of the palsied I. THIS MIRACLE IS A PARABLE. 1. Of Divine power and love. 2. Of human faith. II. THE ’ S PRAYER. It was a wonderful prayer--so brief, so comprehensive, so affecting, so complete; stating the whole case, setting it forth in every particular, detailing every symptom of the malady, urging every argument of sympathy, calling for exactly the comfort and help that were required;--such was the prayer offered by the sick of the palsy, as his couch with its half-dead burden dropped on the ground at the feet of the Christ. What then did he say? Not one word! The silence which this strange intruder brought with him into the school of Christ was broken only by the voice of the Son of Man Himself--“ Son, be of good cheer; thy sins are forgiven thee.” He had told his story well. There was a dead and leaden limb hanging to a half-lifeless trunk. There was a hand shaking with the helpless tremor of the nerves that could do little more than tremble. There were the lips drooling and mowing, and the tongue lolling with a look like idiocy within the gate of speech, and the eyes, last refuge of the blockaded intellect, looking with longings that cannot be uttered toward Him who is the Life. And now do you ask. What did he may? Rather, What did he leave unsaid? It was an unspoken prayer, but not a prayer unuttered or unexpressed. I find, in the very nature of this sick man’ s malady, some instructive indications as to what is the prayer of faith, and what is faith that gives prevailing power to prayer. It is not without significance that so large aproportion of our Lord’ s miracles of healing were wrought on the blind and the palsied--the sufferers from those two forms of human infirmity which most discipline one to a sense of his own helplessness and need, and most educate him in the habit of confiding in the strength and wisdom and faithfulness of another. And as I meditate of blindness and palsy, I better understand the darkness and impotency of sis, and what is that faith by which we should commit ourselves to the infinite wisdom, love, and power of God. III. THE ANSWER WHICH THE PALSIED MAN TO HIS PRAYER. If it seemed at first, to any, that he had uttered no prayer at all, such will surely think at first that he received no answer at all. Very commonly this is true, in the Gospels, of the Lord’ s response to those who come to Him. “ Jesus answered and said,” we read; but the answer has no obvious relevency to what was asked (John 3:1-3). He answers, not the words, but what lay in the heart, behind the words. In such wise He answers the prayer of the palsied--a prayer that says, plainer than any words can say it, “ Lord, that I might be healed.” It seems no answer at all--“ Son, be of good cheer; thy sins are forgiven thee.” There seems to besome untold story here. There is more than palsy--there is sin; if not an anxious face, at least a troubled conscience. And there is a keen diagnosis on the part of the Great Healer, going deeper than the surface symptoms, reaching to the inmost roots of the trouble. And His answer is given accordingly. Observe in it-- 1. That the paralytic received the substance, though not the form, of what he had asked, to his entire satisfaction. For a similar case, see 2 Corinthians 12:7-10. Did the features of the paralytic, think you, betray to the gazing and murmuring scribes some sign of disappointment or discontent, when those majestic words were spoken down to him--“ Thy sins be forgiven thee” ? Is it ever those who cry mightily to God, who are found complaining that He is slack concerning His promises? And if not, then who are you that are finding fault--making bold to come between the saint and his Saviour, to complain that the covenant is not fully performed? If Christ is satisfied, and the suppliant soul is satisfied, who are we that we should interfere to measure the prayer against the answer, and remonstrate with the Lord that His ways are unequal. Nay, I take you all to witness-- 2. That this petitioner received more than the equivalent of what he had asked, by as much as it is a greater thing to suffer and be happy and joyful in the midst of suffering, than it is not to suffer at all. Many a sick man has implored the Lord for health and strength, and won a blessing greater than he asked, in learning “ how sublime a thing it is to suffer and be strong.” Many a bankrupt man, that had struggled, with anxious calculations and many an earnest petition, for deliverance from accumulating troubles, and seemed to find no answer from God, has been rewarded at last with the heavenly gift of grace to step majestically down from wealth to poverty, and has found a joy in low estate beyond what wealth could ever give. 3. But now observe, finally, that when he had received the equivalent of his prayer, to his full content; and when he had received “ exceeding abundantly above what he had asked” ; at last, this palsied man was given the identical thing which he had asked. Not for his sake--no, he did not ask it now. He was of good cheer--his sins were forgiven him. So far as appears, he was full of exceeding peace and content, craving nothing more, but wholly satisfied, the rest of his appointed time, to lie a helpless infant in the everlasting arms. No, it was not for his sake, but “ that ye may know that the Son of Man hath power,” &c. For now the palsy had accomplished its work and could be spared. It had brought the sufferer, and laid him low and helpless at the feet of Jesus to receive the forgiveness of his sins, and what more could it do for him? The time was come, at last, when it might be dismissed, but not till now. And Christ is not so unkind as to give healing so long as suffering is still needed. He is not less merciful than the Father, as He is not more merciful. Would you dare to ask that your grief, your pain, your burden should be taken away before its work was done? Could you bring your mind to wish that all these past hours, and days, and weeks, and weary months of suffering should have been in vain; and that God should call back these stern but kindly servants of His, while yet their mission was incomplete, and bid them Let him alone I sorrow is wasted on him I he is joined to his idols; let him alone? But now, the sick of the palsy is forgiven and at peace. The sickness has well fulfilled its painful but beneficent ministry, and He who is Lord over all the powers of life and death, that saith to this one, Come, and he cometh, and to another,! Go, and he goeth, may call away this sad-faced angel, and send him back to where, before the throne, they “ stand and wait” for some new bidding upon messages of love. (Leonard W. Bacon.) Strange things I. MARK THE STRANGE THINGS OF THAT DAY. 1. Power present to heal the doctors (Luke 5:17). 2. Faith reaching down to the Lord from above (Luke 5:19). 3. Jesus pardoning sin with a word (Luke 5:20). 4. Jesus practising thought-reading (Luke 5:22). 5. Jesus making a man carry the bed which had carried him (Luke 5:25). II. MARK THE STRANGE THINGS OF CHRIST’ S DAY. 1. The Maker of men born among men. 2. The Lord of all serving all. 3. The Just One sacrificed for sin. 4. The Crucified rising from the dead. 5. Death slain by the dying of the Lord. III. MARK THE STRANGE THINGS SEEN BY IN THEIR DAY WITHIN AND OTHERS. 1. A self-condemned sinner justified by faith. 2. A natural heart renewed by grace. 3. f soul preserved in spiritual life amid killing evils, like the bush that burned with fire and was not consumed. 4. Evil made to work for good by providential wisdom. 5. Strength made perfect in weakness. 6. The Holy Ghost dwelling in a believer. 7. Heaven enjoyed on earth. (C. H. Spurgeon.) Revivals of religion I. THIS TO PRAYER. It is said our Redeemer had withdrawn into the wilderness to pray; He had just come from the wilderness, where He had been engaged in earnest prayer with the Father, no doubt for the salvation of a lost world; for this was the errand upon which He came to our earth, this was the work which He took upon Him, and with reference to this work were all His engagements. We are sure His prayers, when presented to His Father, had a special and direct reference invariably to the salvation of a lost world. After thus praying He came forth, and it was then this extraordinary influence was present. In all ages, God hath made the execution of His gracious purposes to depend upon the exercise of the forth-putting of earnest prayer. Throughout the Old Testament dispensation, we find all those who were raised up by Him to bring about the spiritual or temporal deliverance of His people, were instructed to do so in the spirit of prayer. When the holy prophet Daniel was made aware that the set time to favour Zion was come, even after knowing this he did not restrain prayer, but gave himself to this duty as one which must be performed in order to the accomplishment of God’ s gracious purposes. II. THIS WAS IN WITH THE OF JESUS. Jesus had not only been praying, and was now in the spirit of prayer, but He was teaching, and the Lord hath made the salvation of the world to depend upon the faithful teaching of the doctrines of Christ: “ Go ye,” said our Redeemer, “ into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.” III. We observe THE OF THIS MAN WAS BROUGHT ABOUT BY MEANS. NOW the present state of the Christian Church, and this professedly Christian land, calls to extraordinary efforts. We have been trying for a length of time to get people by the door, and if the house has not always been crowded, as it has not in some instances (the more the pity), yet, in innumerable instances it has been crowded with devils, who kept out poor sinners, who prevented them from coming in: and there we have been too ready to leave them, because we were afraid of stepping out of the ordinary course--that we should do anything out of the usual way, lest the whole town should be in a stir, and that any of the people of God should think we were disposed to signalize ourselves. Now we wish you to be impressed with this; and beware, because you have happened to see a conversion affected by extraordinary means, of supposing that this is the only way, and that this way always succeeds, and no other will. It is an extraordinary way suited to extraordinary circumstances; and, I believe, extraordinary circumstances are more general than people are disposed to admit. But what will take place then? Why, if you act thus, there will be a great deal of excitement, and people will talk against it; they will say, oh, take care of excitement (for the excitement has been very great amongst us in several instances)--take care you do not excite the people. We ask them to specify any good reason why we should not try to excite the people, and then we will desist. Are they too susceptible? Is not the world affected with excitement in other quarters? There is plenty of excitement in the theatre, plenty of excitement in the ball-room, and no one attempts to fasten upon them the charge of enthusiasm. These men are most rational, the very lights of the world, fitted to expound everything that appears a mystery I It is only in the house of God, where the most stirring subjects are brought before us, that it is thought better to be as still as possible; that is, it is thought a perfect breach of decorum for there to be the slightest indication of sympathy in the statements made. We are in perfect bondage; we dare not utter our feelings lest some that stand by should say that we are enthusiasts. But then, if the Lord thus appear, if the Lord make bare His arm, they will say, oh, it is all sympathy it spreads from one to another. We admit that, to a considerable extent, sympathy is the means that God employs. But, further, if you thus get the Influence of God down upon the people, the power of Christ communicated to their hearts, and have the matter settled by the testimony of the Spirit, they will object to the suddenness of the conversion. God’ s way of salvation is very simple, and the person who has been brought to exercise a believing act will learn more in a few hours than he could by years of study previous to its exercise. (J. M’ Lean.) Forgiveness and healing I. THE SICK MAN AND HIS FRIENDS. 1. The sick man. 2. The sick man’ s friends. Several interesting particulars are suggested by their action in this matter. (1) They had faith in Jesus. It is only men of faith who can truly do good to others. If we do not believe in our hearts and souls that Jesus Christ can forgive and heal sinners, we shall certainly never bring any such to him. (2) Theirs was a practical faith. Faith is not merely a sentiment which believes something to be, but a vitalized affection which starts all our faculties into action and sets us to work to accomplish something. (3) Their faith was resourceful. There were difficulties in their path. (G. F. Pentecost.) Strange things The world is a-weary, and longs for something novel. The greatest stranger in the world is Jesus; and alas l He is the least seen, and the least spoken of by the most of men. If men would come and watch Him, they would see strange things. His person, His life, His death, are full of strange things. What He is doing now has as much as ever the element of strangeness and wonder about it. Life never grows stale to a companion of Jesus. Do you find it becoming so, and are you a believer? Seek the conversion of your family, and your neighbourhood. Seek to know more of Jesus at work among men. This will cause you to see stranger and stranger things, till you see the strangest of all with Christ in glory. (C. H.Spurgeon.) Two kinds of wonder Wonder at the work of God is natural, justifiable, commendable. He is a God of wonders. It is right to say of the Lord’ s doing, “ It is marvellous in our eyes.” We are to talk of all His wondrous works; but this must be in the spirit of devout admiration, not in the spirit of suspicion and doubt. A holy, grateful wonder should be indulged to the full; but a cold, sceptical wonder should be resisted as a suggestion from Satan. Faith accounts all things possible with God; it is unbelief that in credulously marvels at the work of His hand. (C. H. Spurgeon.) God’ s wonders Guthrie, of Fenwick, a Scotch minister, once visited a dying woman, whom he found very anxious about her state, but very ignorant. His explanation of the gospel was joyfully received, and she died soon afterwards. On his return home, Guthrie said, “ I have seen a strange thing to-day--a woman whom I found in a state of nature, I saw in a state Of grace, and left in a state of glory.” Luke 5:27-28 And saw a publican, named Levi, sitting at the receipt of custom A publican Publican was the name given to an employe of low degree, whose duty it was to get in the tribute money. He was the agent of the farmers-general, great personages who lived by their depredations, after the publicans themselves had kept back an exorbitant percentage on the money levied. The Talmuds often betray the scorn felt for the publicans. Their testimony was not accepted in a court of justice. Probable that the publicans were allowed no more rights than the heathen, and that the Court of the Gentiles alone was open to them. (E. Stapfer, D. D.) The Jews, who bore the Roman yoke with more impatience than any other nation, excommunicated every Israelite who became a publican; and the disgrace extended to his whole family. Nobody was allowed to take alms from one, or to ask him to change money for them. They were even classed with high-way robbers and murderers, or with harlots, heathen, and sinners. No strict Jew would eat, or even hold intercourse, with them. (Dr. Geikie.) AT THE RECEIPT OF CUSTOM. From fishers’ net, from fig-trees’ shade, God gathers whom He will; Touch’ d by His grace all men are made His purpose to fulfil. But not alone from shady nooks, Fresh with life’ s noontide dew From humble walks or quiet books, Calls He His chosen few. Out of the busiest haunts of life, Its most engrossing cares, Its mighty travail, daily strife, Self-woven golden snares-- He for His vineyard doth provide, His gentle voice doth move The world’ s keen votaries to His side, With its persuasive love. ST. MATTHEW THE APOSTLE. At once he rose, and left his gold; His treasure and his heart Transferred, where he shall safe behold Earth and her idols part; While he beside his endless store Shall sit, and floods unceasing pour Of Christ’ s true riches o’ er all time and space, First angel of His Church, first steward of His grace. (J. Keble.) The call of St. Matthew Matthew was the son of Alphaeus, or Cleopas who had married the sister, probably the elder sister, of our Lord’ s mother. Not unlikely that he was the Cleopas who walked to Emmaus (Luke 24:13-35). A holy family--Israelites indeed. To such a family, what calamity could be more terrible than that one of the sons should become a publican, a renegade to the Hebrew faith, a traitor to the Hebrew commonwealth? Levi had taken service with the Romans. Day by day, in their own city of Capernaum, he was to be seen sitting at the receipt of custom. Whenever boats came into the little port, it was his duty to take dues of them. Whenever a caravan reached the city, he had to take toll of the goods with which the weary camels were laden. And these tolls and dues were paid, not into the Jewish treasury, but into the purses of the Roman knights. For the true publicani were Romans of wealth and credit who “ farmed” the taxes of a province. In the collection of these taxes they commonly employed natives of the province, who were, as a rule, infamous for their extortions. Only the lowest and most profligate of the people would accept so degrading an office. What led Levi thus to wound and put to shame those who loved him so well? It may be that the very austerity of their piety alienated him from them. It may be that he was simply thoughtless and pleasure-loving. It would be a keen joy to the Lord Jesus to give joy to such good people as His uncle and aunt and cousins, to restore peace and union to the family in which He had lived so long. This was His pleasant errand this morning as He left the house in which His mother dwelt with her sister, and Cleopas, and their children, and passed through the city to the shore of the lake. As He passed through the official quarter, He saw Matthew sitting at the receipt of custom. Possibly He had not seen him for a long time. In all likelihood Matthew had hitherto slipped out of His way. But now at last He sees him sitting at his post. What a Divine constraining power there must have been in the words of Him who spake as never man spake! As He looks at Matthew, He says simply, “ Follow Me” ; and His cousin, so hardened and degraded by his sins, rises, leaves all--his work for the moment, his official post and wage--and follows Him as though drawn by an irresistible power. Hitherto he had been called Levi, after the son of Jacob. And the word “ Levi “ simply meant “ link.” But Jesus had found and saved him; and He brings him back to the old home a new man with a new name. Henceforth Levi, now a true and strengthening link, is to be called Matthew, i.e., the gift of God; the very moment he rises to the level and meaning of his old name, a new name, a new ideal is given him. A true gift of God was this recovered son to the wounded and sorrowful hearts of his father and mother end brethren. Matthew, then, was the scapegrace of a holy family. Father, mother, brothers, sisters were ashamed of him. Yet even he was not beyond the reach and sway of Christ. (S. Cox, D. D.) THE CALL OF MATTHEW. “ Arise and follow Me!” Who answers to the call? Not Ruler, Scribe, or Pharisee, Proud and regardless all. “ Arise and follow Me!” The publican hath heard; And by the deep Gennesaret sea Obeys the Master’ s word. Thenceforth in joy and fear, Where’ er the Saviour trod, Among the twelve his place was near The Holy One of God. His is no honour mean, For Christ to write and die; Apostle, Saint, Evangelist, His record is on high. (Dean Alford.) Following Christ I. THE REALITY OF THIS proved by-- 1. The change of occupation in obedience to Christ. 2. The sacrifice endured. 3. His identifying himself with Christ. 4. His concern for his fellow-men. II. LET US TRY BY THESE TESTS. 1. What is Christ’ s power over us? 2. What sacrifices are we making for Christ? 3. How do we identify ourselves with Christ? 4. What are we doing to bring others to Christ? (W. W.Patton, D. D.) God calls busy men to do His grander work God calls busy men to do His grander work. Moses, the shepherd; Shamgar and Elisha and Gideon, the farmers; James and John, Andrew and Peter, the fishermen; Matthew, the tax-collector; Luke, the physician, &c., &c. This same Jehovah-angel appears also to Joshua. The case of the Roman Cincinnatus, called by his people from the plough to be dictator of Rome, and saving it from the enemy, is also in point. Many of God’ s most distinguished workmen have been called from scenes of the humblest labour. It was when toiling over a shoemaker’ s bench that Carey’ s soul was filled with a zeal for missionary labour. Yet he became one of the most successful missionaries of his age. By his labours a magnificent college was erected at Serampore, sixteen flourishing stations were established, the Bible translated into sixteen languages, and the seed sown of a moral revolution in India. Morrison, another laborious missionary, was once a maker of shoe-lasts. Henry Martyn’ s father was a Cornwall miner. John Williams, of Erromanga, left the blacksmith’ s shop to teach the is landers of the Pacific the way of life. Dr. Livingstone supported himself through a course of study by working in a cotton mill. (Teacher’ s Storehouse.) Following Christ fully In the diary of the lamented Dr. Livingstone was found the following passage, written thirteen months before he died:--“ My own Jesus, my King! my life, my all I have given Thee; I dedicate my whole self to Thee. Accept me, O gracious Father, and grant that ere this year has gone I may finish my task. In Jesus’ name I ask it. Amen.” There is the key to the life of Dr. Livingstone. The call of Matthew I. CHRIST CALLS. 1. We cannot tell what preparation may have been previously made for this abrupt summons. If Matthew was son of the Alphaeus elsewhere named, then his connection with our Lord would account for it. 2. In any case we are sure that our Lord’ s appeal was reasonable. Resting on grounds intelligible to St. Matthew. 3. The call involved sacrifice. He was following a lucrative calling, and he had to abandon it. 4. Our Lord’ s calling is always substantially the same. (1) It bids us leave the world. (2) It bids us follow Him. Whatsoever is inconsistent with a close earnest following of Him must be abandoned. II. MATTHEW OBEYS. Mark the brevity, yet sufficient fulness, of the account given. This was all that was required of him, and he did it. 1. Great difficulties lay in his way. (1) His manner of life. (2) The peculiar character of his employment. (3) Perhaps also acquired habits in connection with his employment. 2. Yet his obedience was ready and prompt. (1) No rashness. He certainly knew what our Lord asked, and what he was bound to render. Christ repressed those who came thoughtlessly. (2) On the other hand, no vacillation or hesitation. III. THE REALITY OF HIS TO CHRIST. This was shown-- 1. By the evident sacrifice he made. An example to all who hear Christ’ s voice, and follow Him. No royal road to perfection. Jesus by suffering conquered, and all who follow Him must enter into the spirit of sacrifice. 2. By his seeking for Christ’ s communion. He “ made Him a great feast.” (W. R. Clark, M. A.) Matthew before, daring, and after his conversion Matthew is of the number of those saints who, once living in sin, gained heaven by perfect repentance. As a true penitent he deserves our veneration, which we shall best exhibit by learning from his life what we should do, and what avoid, in order to gain heaven. I. THE OF MATTHEW BEFORE HIS . 1. The occupation of a money-changer, which is perilous. 2. The trade of a usurer, which is vicious. 3. The office of a toll-collector, which was odious. II. THE SUPPER BY MATTHEW FOR THE LORD. 1. The reasons for which he prepared it. (1) To show his true joy, and to give an evidence of his willingness to forsake all things and to follow Jesus. (2) He would do the little He could, in order to gain the love of Jesus. (3) To give other publicans an opportunity of becoming acquainted with Jesus. 2. The reasons for which Jesus accepted the invitation to the supper. (1) To afford pleasure to Matthew, to encourage and reward him. (2) To exhort also other publicans, and to give them grace. 3. The reasons for which the Pharisees grumbled, and reprimanded the disciples. (1) To deceive the disciples, by making them distrust their Master, and to turn them from Jesus. (2) Because they envied Jesus. III. THE HONOURS OF ST. MATTHEW AFTER HIS . 1. He became an apostle. 2. An evangelist. 3. A martyr. LESSONS. 1. Let sinners learn from St. Matthew conversion without delay. 2. Let the converted learn from him zeal. 3. Let the zealous learn from him perseverence. (Laselve.) Great honour was put upon the simple work of the fisherman, and the keen pursuits of the custom-house, when Christ chose of fishermen and publicans to become His first disciples and His apostles. His parables, also, cast the same reflection of honour on all honest work. Let us then ask how our common business in warehouses and shops may bring glory to Christ. I. IN MAY BE FOUND A SERVICE FOR CHRIST. May be found; but, alas! sometimes it is lost; often it is not even sought. II. WE MUST NOT THINE TOO MUCH OF DAILY WORK, and set too great a price on it. III. WE SHALL SEEK TO GIVE OF THE FRUITS OF OUR TRADING TO CHRIST. All we spend may be spent with express thought of Him; but to make full proof of our ministry, we shall seek for special expenditure in works of Christian philanthropy. IV. WE SHALL BE WILLING TO GIVE UP, NOT ONLY THE FRUITS OF DAILY WORK, BUT DAILY WORE ITSELF, FOR CHRIST. It is not only to ministers that Christ says “ Follow Me.” Others also are called to self-sacrifice. To say that business keeps me from Sunday-school teaching, or that business keeps me from visiting the sorrowful, and taking help to the needy, may not be a plea that ever covers neglect in the sight of our great Master, Christ. His word may be, “ Then have less business. Follow Me.” It is possible that God calls one and another to make some sacrifice of apparent opportunities of making money, in order that there may be more time for spiritual service. Willingness to make sacrifice for Christ is essential to true discipleship. (T. Gascoigne, B. A.) Matthew obeys Christ’ s call Some years ago I remember having my notice drawn by a little picture that hung in the window of an Oxford book-shop; it was a simple German lithograph, and it represented the call of Matthew. I do not know the name of the artist, but he seemed to me to have caught the whole spirit of the scene. In the centre was Matthew himself, eagerly leaving his booth, with treasures of untold money lying untouched on the counter for his helpers to reckon. Before the booth was the crowd of fishers and traders entering the seaside city, almost aghast at the sudden leaving of the business by one till then so strict in all his dealings with them, so ever ready to receive tribute. And just behind appeared a company of Christ’ s disciples, not altogether unwondering at so ready a departure from all that wealth; half sorry for sacrifice so great; and yet half feeling, from what little they had learnt already of the Master, that He was worth the sacrifice. And in front was the Christ Himself, patient, tender, calling, waiting--the Lord of all, knowing calmly how life in the Father’ s kingdom was worth any earthly sacrifice, that the Father could yet give to His own all they ever might have need of. (T. Gascoigne, B. A.) Self-surrender It is related in Roman history that when the people of Collatia stipulated about their surrender to the authority and protection of Rome, the question asked was, “ Do you deliver up yourselves, the Collatine people, your city, your fields, your water, your bounds, your temples, your utensils, all things that are yours, both human and Divine, into the hands of the people of Rome?” And on their replying, “ We deliver up all,” they were received. The voluntary surrender which you, Christian, have made to Christ is equally comprehensive; it embraces all you are, and have, and hope for. (H. G. Salter.) Follow exactly Two persons were walking together one very dark night, when one said to the other, who knew the road well, “ I shall follow you, so as to be right.” He soon fell into a ditch, and accused the other with his fall. The other replied, “ Then you did not follow me exactly, for I have kept free.” A side step had caused the fall. There is like danger in not following Christ fully. On the calling of St. Matthew I. WE ARE TO LEAVE ALL OUR EVIL THAT WE MAY FOLLOW CHRIST. We must relinquish our former iniquities altogether, and without reserve. Suppose that St. Matthew, when Christ commanded him to become His follower, had answered, that he would attend upon Christ occasionally, when his occupation afforded him leisure: and that for the future, when employed in collecting tribute, he would commit acts of extortion only seldom. Would Christ have accepted such service? You muse surrender yourselves entirely to Christ. You must follow Him wholly. You must follow Him alone. When you reserve some favourite sin for your occasional gratification; is that to leave all for the sake of Christ? No man can serve two masters. II. WE MUST , FOR THE SAKE OF CHRIST, ALL OUR EVIL . This step is necessary to make repentance complete. St. Matthew not only relinquished his occupation, but abandoned it with gladness. You do not see him taking leave of his home with reluctance and sorrow. In conformity to this example every Christian is not merely to abstain, as by constraint, from sinful actions; but to glorify his God by cheerful obedience, and to bring his will under thankful subjection to his Redeemer. He is to be holy in thought, holy in heart, holy in his designs, holy in his wishes. III. We, like St. Matthew, ARE TO PRIVATE , IT WITH OUR TO JESUS CHRIST. Behold a decisive proof of sincerity l He does not honour his Saviour with his lips only. He glorifies the Son of God by making large sacrifices for His sake; by immediately making every sacrifice which is required. He counts all things but loss that he may win the approbation of his Redeemer. IV. We are to renounce our own righteousness; TO CAST AWAY ALL ON MERIT OF OUR OWN FOR WITH GOD. Why did St. Matthew become a disciple of Jesus Christ? Why did he leave all to be with that man of sorrows? Because he beheld in that man of sorrows one who bare our griefs; one who bare the sins of many, and made intercession for the transgressors. He recognized the appointed Saviour; the Lamb of God which took away the sins of the world. V. We must, in the last place, FOLLOW OUR UNTO THE END. Such was the stedfastness of St. Matthew. He remained constantly with Christ until the evening before the crucifixion. On that evening he showed, in common with the other apostles, what man is, when the Divine grace withdraws itself, and leaves him to his native weakness. All the disciples of Christ forsook Him and fled. Of that guilty flight St. Matthew was a partaker. After the Resurrection, he received, in conjunction with the other apostles, pardon and strength from his forgiving Lord. When Jesus had ascended into heaven, we behold St. Matthew continuing closely in prayer and supplication with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and the brethren; and bearing his part as an apostle in the election of a successor to the traitor Judas. Boldly remaining at Jerusalem, when havoc was made of the Church after the martyrdom of Stephen, he proved that he was not of those who have no root, and in time of persecution fall away. And the early history of the Christian Church informs us that, in the face of danger and death, he persevered until the end of his days in preaching the gospel of his Lord. From every Christian patient continuance in well doing is indispensably required. (Thomas Gisborne.) The duty of following Christ, as illustrated by the conduct of His disciples But, in the event which succeeds, we have an instance of still greaterpower than that which is involved in the healing of any temporal disease. We find Him controlling not merely the elements of nature, as he had often done, or the circumstances which conduce to the health of our temporal frames, as in the instance of the paralytic man, but we find Him swaying the very elements of the mind and will, and proving that the moral and the intellectual powers of man are no less subject to His sovereign control. “ After these things,” we are told, “ He went forth, and saw a publican, named Levi, sitting at the receipt of custom: and lie said unto him, Follow Me.” 1. In the first place, the individual named Levi, who is spoken of by St. Luke, is said to have been a publican--a term which is explained in some degree, when it is mentioned that he was found “ sitting at the receipt of custom.” It was thus that the name of publican became expressive, in their mind, of all that was abandoned and profane. There was nothing, for instance, in the character or condition of the individual before us to warrant his selection to this high and distinguished calling. There was no title existing in himself whereby he could claim it as peculiarly his own. He was a member of an obnoxious profession, and he was, so far as we know, unadorned with any lofty or brilliant attainments. We are not referring in the meantime to the condition of these men as poor and illiterate, and as affording from their original circumstances, as contrasted with the noble future discharge of their apostolic duties, a powerful argument for the truth and efficacy of our holy religion. We are referring to it simply as pointing out in the term, publican, in the present instance, and in the ideas which were usually associated with that term, the very condition in which by nature we are placed, and from which Christ is so willing to redeem us. Naturally, we say, there is nothing in any one of us to entitle us to selection on the part of Christ. On the contrary, there is everything that might lead Him to reject us, and dispose Him, in the purity of His character and the beauty of His own perfections, to pass us by as unworthy of His notice. In all our character and condition, naturally considered, and as seen in the light of His untainted holiness, there is nothing which His pure and omniscient eye can possibly desire. We are not engaged in His service. We are not contemplating His works. We are not endeavouring to ascend through the survey and admiration of these to the adoring contemplation of His excellence, or aspiring in the light of His perfections to have our natures assimilated to His. There is nothing of all this, when He comes to us on His errand of mercy, and calls upon us to follow Him as His disciples and His friends. We are engaged in the service of the world at that very time, intent, like the fishermen of Galilee, or the despised receiver of customs, on the affairs of a life which is only preparatory to another, but for which other we are not mindful or solicitous to prepare. Yes, my friends, we are either busied in the pursuit of some gainful and engrossing occupation, or we are sitting at destructive ease in the degradation of sin, reviewing our extending treasures, and yet thirsting to increase them. If active, we are not active in God’ s service--if at ease, we are not at ease in Zion, or because we have sought peace and found it of the Lord. We repeat, then, that we are selected by Christ in the exercise of free and sovereign compassion. We are called to be disciples of His, not because we have loved Him, but because He has loved us. 2. The inclination or willingness to follow onward to know the Lord, is not occasioned by any exercise of our own powers, but is wrought in us by the operation of Christ’ s own mighty power. But in Jesus there was nothing outwardly to distinguish Him. He was surrounded with no trappings of external dignity, no insignia of honour, no symbols of opulence or power. He was meek and lowly in His deportment--the reputed son of a carpenter; arrayed like the meanest of the people, and bearing in His aspect the suffering, yet subdued, expression of the man of sorrows. And yet He called the disciples, and they implicitly obeyed Him. No sooner did He issue the command than they hastened to fulfil it. He said to them, “ Follow Me,” and immediately they left all and followed Him. Now, we argue from this, that a great and decided change must have instantaneously passed upon their minds. The mere command of Jesus, considered apart from His divinity--considered apart from His power over the understanding and the heart, could never have produced this effect. We say, then, that the grace of God must have operated directly in this instance to the enlightenment of their minds, and the regulation of their wills. On no other principle can we account for the conduct they displayed. The Spirit of the Lord was with them, and at once they felt it to be their duty and their privilege to obey. They resembled the men who acknowledged Saul to be their king, when Samuel announced him to be the chosen of God to the throne of Israel, and when the children of Belial were despising and setting him at nought: they resembled these firm and devoted men, of whom it is said, in the expressive language of Scripture, “ that when Saul went up to Gibeah, there went up with him likewise a baud of men, whose hearts God had touched.” In the case of the disciples, God also had touched and influenced their hearts. 3. We would remark, that when the Spirit of God does touch our hearts, and the power of Christ is thus made manifest in our lives, we are at once enlightened as to two things--the right of Jesus to command, and His worthiness as a King and Saviour to be obeyed. All this was exemplified in the conduct of the disciples. True, they had not at this time the most clear views of His character, or the most spiritual notions of the kingdom He was to establish, but still they saw, or rather felt enough, to convince them that Christ was worthy of their obedience and love; and, therefore, without a moment’ s hesitation or reserve, they yielded the submission which He required, and determined to “ follow Him whithersoever He went.” We admit, then, that they were not enlightened all at once, and that they were still imperfect as to their conceptions of Christ’ s heavenly kingdom. But this is the way in which the Spirit of Divine grace in general acts upon the human understanding. He works in a gradual and progressive manner, disclosing more and more of the beauty of Christ, and of the loveliness of sacred truth, and shining inwardly upon the soul with somewhat of the brightening effulgence of that light of heaven, which rises at first with the faint dawnings of the eastern sky, until at last it opens and expands into the glorious lustre of the perfect day. But still the work of the Spirit leads us at once to exercise confidence in Christ. Now, the right which Christ has to the obedience of us all, is simply this: He has created us, and we are bound to serve Him; He has preserved us, and we are bound to honour Him; He has redeemed us, and we are bound to love Him. In every character and relation He is entitled to our love, and homage, and gratitude, and esteem. But superadded to this, there is now the powerful, the constraining tie of sovereign and redeeming love. In following Christ, my friends, we must follow Him to duty. When the Saviour issued His command to His disciples, there was before Him the chequered scene of His labours; and they, as the companions of His wanderings, had to go forth and mingle in the work. Again, my friends, we must follow the Saviour in the path of suffering. When Christ told His disciples to follow Him, He had yet before Him the scenes of His agony and death--the privations of His wanderings to feel, the hall of Pilate to encounter, the garden of Gethsemane to bear, the torture of the cross, in unmitigated anguish, to endure. And His disciples, whom He had called to follow Him, had likewise their griefs and sufferings to undergo. “ In the world ye shall have tribulation,” was the warning which He gave them. Not that the way of life is a dark and painful career, unsoothed by a single comfort, unalleviated by a single joy. The truth is, that the follower of Christ has joys which the world cannot understand, just as he has sorrows which it cannot share. He has a peace of mind which passeth knowledge, which rises far above the comprehension of the mere natural man; but then he has griefs which a stranger cannot interfere with. There is encouragement, however, the amplest and surest encouragement. Hear the language of Christ to His people: “ I will make My grace to be sufficient for you; I will perfect My strength in your weakness; I will guide you by My counsel, and receive you to My glory.” (W. Maclure.) Luke 5:29-30 And Levi made Him a great feast in his own house Levi’ s feast Text shows our Lord a guest at a great feast at which a company of publicans and others sat down with Him. Our Lord’ s example applicable to us all. That which Christ did always, His servants cannot be justified if they never do--the mixing with others, neither for business nor yet for pleasure, but, in the largest sense of the word, for charity. 1. It will then be seen how many persons there are who have need to be reminded of this duty. 2. One way of mixing with our brethren, in a manner most pleasing to Christ and useful to ourselves, is by holding frequent intercourse with the poor. (T. Arnold, D. D.) Religions joy associated with common occasions Some people are very much offended by the close connection of common joys with spiritual and religious events. “ Keep religion by itself,” they say, “ and let it be unmixed with any associations which may in the least tend to degrade it; and if you take pleasure, let it be wholly separated from religious occasions.” But the conduct of Christ is a perpetual witness to the fact that the most holy and momentous occurrence in our religious history may be associated with social enjoyment. The feast to which Christ was invited, and which He attended, was a feast which was given in connection with the choice and appointment of an apostle. The event is deserving of our attention inasmuch as it brings Christ before us in an aspect of His character which is often overlooked. We have looked to Him so much as the Christ who has gone away from the world that the simple gospel history of Christ in the world has been passed over by us, and we have almost felt that we were doing something wrong when we ascribed to Jesus Christ words and acts such as ordinary men would say and do. Yet here is the history to speak for itself--the record of One who, if He had been seen in our streets, and in our homes, might have been found living as we live, entering the dwellings of neighbours, with or without ceremony, speaking kindly to the old, the weak, the downcast, and being at home in the houses of rich and poor, Pharisee and publican, at the rich feast or the scant meal, and shedding around Him the fragrance of good feeling, and a genial warmth and light. And withal, here is the record of One, who, in all these simple and kindly courtesies, never forgot that it was the deepest cravings and wants in human nature which He had come to satisfy, and that His great mission was to bring men to God. (A. Watson, D. D.) The conversion of Levi I. JESUS SINNERS. “ Jesus saw a publican.” Jesus, brethren, sees all the sons of men. His eyes behold all classes. Christ saw Paul while, in his unconverted state, he was sitting at the feet of Gamaliel; and while he was afterwards occupied in persecuting the Christian Church; and He took not off His eyes from Paul till, in deep contrition and self-devotion, he cried out--“ Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?” Christ saw the woman of Samaria at Jacob’ s well, long before she had any idea that Christ’ s seeing her would issue in her salvation. Christ saw Zaccheus in the fig-tree before his conversion, and called him down to active service and eternal salvation. Christ saw Lydia of Thyatira, the seller of purple, long before she had any conception that her heart would be opened to hear the word spoken by St. Paul. But do not mistake my words. To prevent your conversion, Satan makes some of you imagine that, if you become religious, the Lord Jesus will wish you to neglect your proper callings. Far otherwise. He expects His people to be “ diligent in business, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord.” But, when Jesus beholds sinners with the eye of His pity, He does so with a view to their salvation. This we shall see, while we state our second point. II. JESUS CALLING SINNERS. Jesus said unto Levi, “ Follow Me.” There are, you observe, brethren, two kinds of call. There is the general call, and there is the effectual call. III. JESUS BY SINNERS. It is the cry of every true believer--“ What can I render unto the Lord for all His mercies? “ This was the cry of Levi’ s heart as soon as he was brought to a saving knowledge of his Redeemer. He was willing to do anything which would show his attachment to that Saviour, to whose love and mercy he was so much indebted. He, therefore, made for Jesus “ a great feast,” “ in his own house.” He then thought to show his respect for Christ by providing for Him a great entertainment; and, with a view to their spiritual benefit, he invited to it many of his old friends from among the publicans and his other companions. Now this, brethren, is one great proof of an effectual call. David, in his deep thankfulness for God’ s sparing mercy, said to Araunah the Jebusite--“ I will not offer burnt offerings unto the Lord my God of that which doth cost me nothing.” There are innumerable ways, brethren, in which we also can show our gratitude to Christ. Temporally and spiritually we can help Christ’ s brethren; and of such acts He declares, “ Ye have done it unto Me.” Those, therefore, of you who never make any sacrifice, either of your substance or your time, for Christ and Christ’ s work, have reason at once to conclude that you have heard the Saviour call, but that thus far that call has been unheeded. It is a great trial to a really spiritual man to mix with the world at all, whether on festive or on other occasions. And as soon as such mixing with the world ceases to be a trial, mischief has been done. But we come now to notice a remarkable interruption in the feast, and this interruption gave our Lord the opportunity of stating-- IV. THE BY THE GOSPEL. There never was any good done in this fallen world without some men objecting. When Nehemiah was building the walls of Jerusalem, “ What do these feeble Jews?” was the taunt of Tobiah and Sanballat. And, what is more observable, the objection generally proceeds from those who ought to be the last to make it. The objection often comes from those who profess to be the spiritual guides of the people. Look at the case before us. Here was Levi making a feast for publicans and sinners, with Jesus among the guests, with a view to their spiritual profit. And who can object to such a proceeding? The civil and the ecclesiastical rulers of the day--“ the scribes and Pharisees” --they object. They do not attack the Master; they attack the disciples. So is it now. Many objectors attack Christ’ s servants, but they little imagine that, in so doing, they are attacking Christ. If, therefore, you are attacked, brethren, for your piety, remember that no one was more attacked than was Christ Himself. You may safely leave your cause with Jesus, as your faithful Creator. He will answer every objection, and you shall hold your peace. It was so here. The scribes and Pharisees murmured against the disciples, and said--“ Why do ye eat with publicans and sinners?” To this question Jesus gave them a reply they little expected. He told them plainly, that was the object of His gospel. It was not meant for self-righteous formalists. It was meant for those who feel their guilt--for those who are sensible of their spiritual disease. I now add two other practical remarks. We see hence-- 1. The freeness of salvation. Medicine is for the sick. Salvation is for sinners. In all diseases there are outward symptoms. That precious blood, which He shed for our sins on the cross, is a never-failing remedy. It makes crimson iniquities as white as snow. It cleanses sins as red as scarlet, till they become as wool. 2. The peril of a worldly spirit. (C. Clayton, M. A.) Christ’ s call I. THIS CALM IS TO . 1. TO repentance, i.e., to begin life again. 2. To a feast, and its joys. II. THIS CALL WILT. BE IF WE DESIRE IT. 1. Having susceptible hearts. 2. If poor in spirit. 3. If we hunger after righteousness, i.e., desire the feast. III. How THE CALL IS MADE OF NONE EFFECT. 1. The worldly heart--pre-occupied--makes effectual calling impossible (Luke 14:16; Luke 14:20). 2. The “ wise and prudent “ do not like it (Matthew 11:25). 3. The stupid heart, wayside--no soil. 4. By levity. “ They made light of it.” (F. B. Proctor, M. A.) Luke 5:30 But the scribes and Pharisees murmur The Friend of sinners We cannot wonder at the scribes and Pharisees asking this question. I think that we should most of us ask it now, if we saw the Lord Jesus going out of His way to eat and drink with publicans and sinners. Make merry with them He could not, but He certainly so behaved to them that they were glad to have Him among them, though He was so unlike them in thought, and word, and look, and action. And why? Because, though He was so unlike them in many things, He was like them at least in one thing. If He could do nothing else in common with them, He could at least eat and drink as they did, and eat and drink with them too. Yes. He was the Son of Man, the man of all men, and what He wanted to make them understand was that, fallen low as they were, they were men and women still, who were made at first in God’ s likeness, and who could be redeemed back into God’ s likeness again. The only way to do that was to begin with them in the very simplest way--to meet them on common human ground. Self-respect would begin to rise in those poor sinners’ hearts when our Lord came to them and ate and drank with them. (Charles Kingsley.) Practical sympathy A city missionary was one day visiting one of the lowest and most degraded courts in London, and a woman said something like this to him:--“ You say you care for us, and are anxious about us; but it is a very easy thing for you to come from your clean, quiet home just to visit us. Would you come and bring your family, and live in this court, expose yourself to all these evils day by day, in order to lift us up?” The missionary felt he had hardly enough love for that: but Jesus dwelt with sinners, ate and drank with them as well as died to save them. (Biblical Treasury.) Sympathetic help A Boston minister a short time ago had occasion to look up a very poor family, and climbed up four flights of stairs in a noisome tenement house on his errand. His tap at the door was answered by Dr. Phillips Brooks, with a baby in his arms. Inquiry revealed the fact that the woman had been very lit, and sorely needed fresh air, but had no one with whom to leave her little baby. Phillips Brooks found her out, gave her tickets for a tram-car ride, and was staying tending the baby while she enjoyed it. Only from a large heart filled with the spirit of Christ could such an act of real kindness have sprung. (American Paper.) Frigid selfishness A great poet has represented the souls of thoroughly selfish men as encased in ice, alternately shivering and benumbed, with only enough of life to be conscious of the surrounding all-pervading death. This supreme selfishness, or rather indifference--this insensibility to What is generous and lofty, this prudent self-complacent, self-indulgent regard for one’ s own interests, is what our modern civilization, with its wonderful development of material wealth, has been drifting towards. And nothing can be more fatal to the highest interests and happiness of man. A splendid frost-work of society-sparkling like what we sometimes see around us after snow or rain on a winter’ s day--as beautiful, but also as cold and as fatal to all spontaneous outgushing of warm and generous life. (J. H.Thompson.) Christ in the company of social outcasts The Jews and Egyptians, and indeed other peoples, were very scrupulous with whom they ate, much as are the Hindoos to the present day. It will be remembered that Joseph Genesis 43:32) ate with his brethren apart, and the Egyptians by themselves, for it was an abomination to the latter to eat with Hebrews. And so the old Tobias, during the Assyrian captivity, exhorted his son not to eat and drink with sinners. Christ, by sitting down to table with these despised and excommunicate publicans, add with heathen, broke through the caste rules, of which separation at table was the most conspicuous symbol. He showed that this holding aloof from others, whether it were national or individual, was contrary to the principles of the gospel, against the fundamental laws of His Church. (S. Baring-Gould, M. A.) The Saviour and the publicans This question was asked partly in ignorance and partly in ill-will. Our Lord would not leave to His simple and timid disciples the task of answering the critics. First, He rebukes with stern irony the self-righteousness of the questioners, and then He explains. I. THE ANSWER SET FORTH THE GLORY OF OUR DIVINE SAVIOUR. “ The Friend of sinners” is one of our Lord’ s most glorious titles. God’ s condescensions reveal His glory more completely than His magnificence. 1. The glory of His work-” To call Sinners to repentance.” 2. The glory of His character--‘ , Which of you convinceth Me of sin?” II. A COMMENT ON THE ACTION AND HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF CHRIST. Like her Lord, the Church of Christ has entered into the life of sinful humanity to purify and elevate it. She may not cease to eat and drink with publicans and sinners. III. AS TO THE DUTY AND CONDUCT OF PRIVATE . In consorting with those who openly deny the truth of religion, or who live in flagrant violation of its precepts, there are two dangers to be guarded against. 1. We must keep clear of Pharisaism, that rank weed which so soon springs up in the souls of believers. 2. We must not voluntarily expose our souls to risks which are palpable and overwhelming, when no good can be done for the souls of others. Let us endeavour, when we arc thrown with others, be they who they may, to think of our Lord at Matthew’ s feast, and pray Him for His gracious help that we too, sinners though we be, may speak a word in season to him that is weary. (Canon Liddon.) Luke 5:31 They that are whole need not a physician, but they that are sick The soul’ s malady and cure The occasion of the words is set down in the context; Levi was called from the receipt of custom (he was a customhouse man), but Christ called him, and there went out power with the word, “ he left all, rose up, and followed Him. ” “ Levi made Him a great feast in his own house” ; a better guest he could not invite. Levi feasted Christ with his cheer, and Christ feasted him with salvation. I. THE DYING . They that are sick. Whence observe-- Doct. 1. That sin is a soul-disease--“ He hath borne our griefs” ; in the Hebrew it is our sicknesses. Man at first was created in a healthful temper, he had no sickness of soul, he ailed nothing; the soul had its perfect beauty and glory. The eye was clear, the heart pare, the affections tuned with the finger of God into a most sweet harmony. I. In what sense sin is resembled to sickness. 1. Sin may be compared to sickness for the manner of catching. (1) Sickness is caught often through carelessness: some get cold by leaving off clothes. (2) Sickness is caught sometimes through superfluity and intemperance. Excess produceth sickness. 2. Sin may be resembled to sickness for the nature of it. (1) Sickness is of a spreading nature, it spreads all over the body, it works into every part, the head, stomach, it disorders the whole body: so sin doth not rest in one part, but spreads into all the faculties of the soul, and members of the body--“ The whole head is sick, the whole heart is faint.” The memory is diseased; the memory at first was like a golden cabinet in which Divine truths were locked up safe; but now it is like a colander, or leaking vessel, which lets all that is good run out. The memory is like a searcer, which sifts out the flour, but keeps the bran. So the memory lets saving truths go, and holds nothing but froth and vanity. Many a man can remember a story, when he hath forgot his creed. Thus the memory is diseased; the memory is like a bad stomach that wants the retentive faculty, all the meat comes up again: so the most precious truths will not stay in the memory, but are gone again. The will is diseased; the will is the soul’ s commander-in-chief, it is the master-wheel; but how irregular and eccentric is it! The affections are sick: the affection of desire; a sick man desires that which is hurtful for him, he calls for wine in a fever; so the natural man being sick, he desires that which is prejudicial for him; he hath no desire after Christ, he doth not hunger and thirst after righteousness; but he desires poison, he desires to take his fill of sin, he loves death: the affection of grief; a man grieves for the want of an estate, but not for the want of God’ s favour; he grieves to see the plague or cancer in his body, but not for the plague of his heart: the affection of joy; many can rejoice in a wedge of gold, not in the cross of Christ. Thus the affections are sick and distempered. The conscience is diseased; “ their mind and conscience is defiled.” (2) Sickness doth debilitate and weaken the body; a sick man is unfit to walk: so this sickness of sin weakens the soul--“ When we were without strength Christ died.” In innoceney Adam was, in some sense, like the angels, he could serve God with a winged swiftness, and filial cheerfulness; but sin brought sickness into the soul, and this sickness hath cut the lock where his strength lay; he is now disarmed of all ability for service; and where grace is wrought, though a Christian be not so heart-sick as before, yet he is very faint. (3) Sickness doth eclipse the beauty of the body. This I ground on that Scripture, “ When Thou with rebukes dost correct man, Thou makest his beauty to consume away like a moth.” The moth consumes the beauty of the cloth; so a fit of sickness consumes the beauty of the body. Thus sin is a soul-sickness, it hath eclipsed the glory and splendour of the soul, it hath turned ruddiness into paleness;that beauty of grace which once sparkled as gold, now it may be said, “ How is this gold become dim!” That soul which once had an orient brightness in it, it was more ruddy than rubies, its polishing was of sapphire, the understanding bespangled with knowledge, the will crowned with liberty, the affections like so many seraphim, burning in love to God; now the glory is departed. Sin hath turned beauty into deformity; as some faces by sickness are so disfigured, and look so ghastly, they can hardly be known. (4) Sickness takes away the taste; a sick man doth not taste that sweetness in his meat; so the sinner, by reason of soul-sickness, hath lost his taste to spiritual things. (5) Sickness takes away the comfort of life; a sick person hath no joy of anything, his life is a burden to him. II. WHAT THE OF THE SOUL ARE. Only I shall name some of the worst of these diseases. Pride is the tympany of the soul, lust is the fever, error the gangrene, unbelief the plague of the heart, hypocrisy the scurvy, hardness of heart the stone, anger the phrenzy, malice the wolf in the breast, covetousness the dropsy, spiritual sloth the green sickness, apostasy the epilepsy; here are eleven soul-diseases, and when they come to the full height they are dangerous, and most frequently prove mortal. III. The third thing to be demonstrated is, THAT SIN IS THE WORST . To have a body full of plague sores is sad; but to have the soul, which is the more noble part, spotted with sin, and full of the tokens, is far worse; as appears. 1. The body may be diseased, and the conscience quiet: “ the inhabitant of the land shall not say I am sick.” He should scarce feel his sickness, because sin was pardoned; but when the soul is sick of any reigning lust, the conscience is troubled--“ There is no peace to the wicked, saith my God.” 2. A man may have bodily diseases, yet God may love him. “ Asa was diseased in his feet.” He had the gout, yet a favourite with God. 3. Sickness, at worst, doth but separate from the society of friends; but this disease of sin, if not cured, separates from the society of God and angels. 2. If sin be a soul-sickness, then how foolish are they that hide their sins; it is folly to hide a disease! 3. If sin be a soul-sickness, then what need is there of the ministry? If sin be a soul-sickness, then do not feed this disease; he that is wise will avoid those things which will increase his disease; if he be feverish, he will avoid wine which would inflame the disease; if he have the stone he will avoid salt meats; he will forbear a dish he loves, because it is bad for his disease: why should not men be as wise for their souls? Thou that hast a drunken lust, do not feed it with wine; thou that hast a malicious last, do not feed it with revenge. Doct. 2. That Jesus Christ is a soul-physician. Ministers (as was said before) are physicians whom Christ doth in His name delegate and send abroad into the world. I. That Christ is a physician; it is one of His titles--“ I am the Lord that healeth thee.” II. Why Christ is a physician. 1. In regard of His call; God the Father called Him to practise physic, He anointed Him to the work of healing--“ The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He hath anointed Me to preach the gospel: He hath sent Me to heal the broken-hearted.” 2. Jesus Christ undertook this healing work, because of that need we were in of a physician. Christ came to be our physician, not because we deserved Him, but because we needed Him; not our merit, but our misery, drew Christ from heaven. 3. Christ came as a physician out of the sweetness of His nature; He is like the good Samaritan, who had compassion on the wounded man. A physician may come to the patient only for gain; not so roach to help the patient as to help himself: but Christ came purely out of sympathy. III. The third particular is, that Christ is the only physician--“ Neither is there salvation in any other,” &c. IV. How CHRIST HEALS HIS . There are four things in Christ that are healing. 1. His word is healing--“ He sent His word, and healed them.” 2. Christ’ s wounds are healing; “ with His stripes we are healed.” Christ made a medicine of His own body and blood; the physician died to cure the patient. 3. Christ’ s Spirit is healing; the blood of Christ heals the guilt of sin; the Spirit of Christ heals the pollution of sin. But if Christ be a physician, why are not all healed? 1. Because all do not know they are sick; they see not the sores and ulcers of their souls; and will Christ cure them who see no need of Him? 2. All are not healed, because they love their sickness--“ Thou lovest evil” ; many men hug their disease. 3. All are not healed, because they do not look out after a physician. 4. All are not healed, because they do not take the physic which Christ prescribes them; they would be cured, but they are loath to put themselves into a course of physic. 5. All are not healed, because they have not confidence in their physician; it is observable when Christ came to work any cure, He first put this question, “ Believe ye that I am able to do this?” Millions die of their disease, because they do not believe in their physician. V. The fifth and last particular is, THAT CHRIST IS THE BEST . That I may set forth the praise and honour of Jesus Christ, I shall show you wherein He excels other physicians; no physician like Christ. 1. He is the most skilful physician; there no disease too hard for Him--“ Who healeth all thy diseases.” 2. Christ is the best physician, because He cures the better part, the soul; other physicians can cure the liver or spleen, Christ cures the heart; they can cure the blood when it is tainted, Christ cures the conscience when it is defiled; “ How much more shall the blood of Christ purge your conscience from dead works?” 3. Christ is the best physician, for He causeth us to feel our disease. 4. Christ shows more love to His patients than any physician besides. 5. Christ is the most cheap physician. 6. Christ heals with more ease than any other: other physicians apply pills, potions, bleeding; Christ cures with more facility. Christ made the devil go out with a word. 7. Christ is the most tender-hearted physician. He hath ended His passion, yet not His compassion. 8. Christ never fails of success. 9. Christ cures not only our diseases, but our deformities. The physician can make the sick man well; but if he be deformed, he cannot make him fair. Christ gives not only health, but beauty. Sin hath made us ugly and misshapen. 10. And lastly, Christ is the most bountiful physician. Other patients do enrich their physicians, but here the physician doth enrich the patient. Christ prefers all His patients; He doth not only cure them, but crown them. Christ cloth not only raise from the bed, but to the throne; He gives the sick man not only health, but heaven. But mine is an old inveterate disease, and I fear it is incurable. Though thy disease be chronical, Christ can heal it. But after I have been healed, my disease hath broken out again; I have relapsed into the same sin; therefore, I fear there is no healing for me. It is rare that the Lord leaves his children to these relapses. If Jesus Christ be a spiritual physician, let us labour to hasten the cure of our souls. Consider (1) What a little time we have to stay here, and let that hasten the cure. (2) Now is properly the time of healing, now is the day of grace, now Christ pours out His balsams, now He sends abroad His ministers and Spirit; “ now is the accepted time.” (T. Watson.) I. CHRIST IS MOST WITH THOSE WHO NEED HIM MOST. The sick need the physician II. OF SOUL IS THE NEED WHICH CALLS FOR CHRIST AS THE GOOD . III. IT IS FOR A MAN TO CONFESS HIS OF SOUP. BEFORE HE CAN BE HEALED BY CHRIST. (W. F. Adeney, M. A.) We have recently been told that there are no less than 1088 definite forms of disease to which our mortal bodies are liable. (Archdeacon Farrar.) The moral disease of humanity I. THERE IS A MORAL DISEASE IN THE HEART AND OF MAN. 1. Depraved mental appetite. 2. The faculty of vision is impaired. 3. Moral stupor and lethargic disposition of mind. 4. Feverish excitement of disposition. 5. Moral weakness and want of activity. II. THE BY WHICH THIS MORAL DISEASE IS . 1. It is universal in extent. 2. It is inherent in our constitution. 3. It is disastrous in its results. 4. It is incurable by anything less than Divine agency. III. THE REMEDY FOR HEALING THIS DISEASE the healing medicine of the gospel. 1. Universally adapted. 2. Absolutely free. 3. Infallibly efficacious. (W. Urwick.) The art of healing That the sick need a physician is an assertion which appeals to the dictates of common sense. 1. The ministrations of the art of healing are a beautiful imitation of those of Divine providence. Both are designed to restore what was lost, and to repair what is disordered. 2. How striking is the contrast between the art of medicine and the art of war. 3. The erection of hospitals and infirmaries for the poor is one of the distinguishing ornaments and fruits of Christianity, unknown to the wisdom and humanity of pagan times. (R. Hall, A. M.) Christianity a remedy for all diseases The gospel is not meant for the salvation of men who are so good that they hardly seem to need it, but for men that are bad--for the very worst of men. Admit all that can be said of the badness of the Chinese; admit the blackest portrait that can be correctly painted of them; admit that they are as bad as men can be out of hell--if I understand the matter rightly, you only make out a stronger case for sending them the gospel of Christ. There is a story told of a vendor of quack medicine, who sent out an advertisement to one of the Australian newspapers, and after enumerating all the diseases of which he could think, he added, “ If there be any disease peculiar to the colony, put that in, for my medicine will cure that too.” A statement that was not true of the quack medicine we can apply to the gospel of Christ. If there be any wickedness peculiar to the Chinese; if they are the worst specimens of humanity; if human depravity has assumed a type there which it does not present in any other part of the world, put all these in, for the gospel will cure them too. It is a remedy for all diseases, even the worst. (W. Landels.) Eagerness to find the Great -Physician Years ago, the bargemen who were associated with the coal mines on the River Ruhr, in Germany, were regarded as uncivilized and wicked beyond reclamation; but on one occasion a religious awakening broke out among them which astonished all who beheld its varied and striking phenomena. There was one man more particularly whose name of Wolf suggested only a few of the traits of his character: for a savage beast of the forest would have used its offspring better than this man used his household. To crown all, he was a drunkard, and no wolf could ever be charged with that abomination. Though too illiterate to read, the man still came under the influence which was abroad, and conscience smote him on account of past iniquities, until life was almost unendurable. In a state of despondency he went to a relative who was a Christian man, who after listening a while, remarked, “ I know a Physician who can cure you.” “ Where does he live?” cried Wolf, in extreme eagerness, “ I would gladly walk ten miles this night to find him.” The only reply to this was to preach Christ as the Great Physician, who saves from the effects of sin. When the penitent returned home he prayed long and earnestly, until his agony of mind was relieved, and he found peace. His appearance among his companions in labour struck them all with surprise. Instead of beating his wife, he became instrumental in her conversion, while the earnest power with which he preached Christ among the workers on coal barges was viewed with astonishment. Dr. Pinkerton, who sent home the particulars, remarked, “ the Holy Spirit confirmed his testimony. The holy fire spread from boat to boat; drunkards, thieves, and abandoned characters were made penitent.” Hundreds were converted, and houses which had been given up to riot and squalor became clean and attractive--the abodes of peace and love. (Sword and Trowel.) Conviction of sin necessary to a just sense of God’ s grace in salvation In multitudes of cases, they are entirely insensible of the malady that is preying upon them and hastening to its fatal issue in the death of the soul. And so long as they entertain this opinion of themselves, or remain insensible to their real condition as perishing in sin, it is plain that they cannot feel their need of the remedy provided for them in the gospel, and will not apply to the Divine Physician for the healing of their souls, or their recovery to spiritual health. Let us illustrate this point in a few particulars. And-- 1. I remark--those who feel themselves to be whole, in the sense of our text, can have no sincerity or earnestness in using the means of spiritual recovery. A man who is in doubt whether he is sick or well, will of course hesitate whether he shall ask advice of a physician, and after having asked it, he will show the same indecision and hesitancy in regard to taking the medicine prescribed by him. 2. While a man feels himself to be whole he can of course have no true conviction of sin. 3. While a man imagines himself to be whole, he cannot feel his need of mercy, and of course cannot ask for nor receive it as it is offered him in the gospel. 4. While a man feels himself to be whole, he cannot receive Christ as his Saviour, nor acceptably apply to Him for any one blessing of His mediation. 5. That while a man imagines himself to be whole he can have no real, abiding gratitude for redeeming mercy, even should he flatter himself that he has embraced Christ as his Saviour. In conclusion, I am led to remark-- 1. We see in view of our subject who they are that are in the greatest danger of being lost. 2. We see the necessity of preaching the law. By the law is the knowledge of sin. 3. We see why there is so little of deep and fruitful religion in many who profess to be Christians. They are wanting in a deep and abiding sense of the great evil of sin, and of their infinite indebtedness to the mercy of God in Christ in delivering them from the wrath to come. 4. We see why it is so difficult to persuade impenitent men to accept the salvation of the gospel. It is because they do not feel their need of such a salvation. (J. Hawes, D. D.) The Physician of souls The text hath three parts. 1. The patients. 2. The Physician. 3. The cure. I. THE ARE --“ not the whole.” Affirmatively--“ but the sick.” Is any man whole? 1. No man is whole by nature; in Adam all are deadly sick. 2. Some are whole in conceit only. And another cause of conceited soundness is the extenuation of sin. Let this therefore serve to convince these whole men, and let them see their estate, so as they may seek to the Physician, and not die senseless. The marks and spots of a deadly disease are these: 1. An ill stomach argueth bodily disease; so spiritual, if the Word be bitter, if thy mind rise against it, and the mouth of thy soul be out of taste, if thy memory keep not the doctrine of God, if by meditation thou digestest it not, and so sendest it into all parts of thy life, thou art sick indeed, though thou seemest never so whole. 2. When the body consumeth, the parts are weakened, the knees bow under a man, and with much ado he draggeth his limbs after him, there is certainly a bodily disease, though there be no complaint. So in the soul; when men are weak to deeds of piety, have no strength to conquer temptation, to suffer crosses and trials; to works of charity, mercy, or justice; but all strength of grace seems to be exhausted, here is a dangerous disease. 3. When the senses fail, the eyes grow dim, the ears dull, it is an apparent sign of a bodily or spiritual disease. A senseless is the sickest man, because he is sick though he be not sensible. Even so, when the eye-strings of the soul are broken, that they see not the light of grace, nor of God, which as the sun shines round about them; the ears hear not the voice of God, the feeling is gone, they have no sense of the great gashes and wounds of the lusts of uncleanness, drunkenness, covetousness, swearing, lying, malice against God and His servants; nay, no complaint, but rather rejoicing in these; the soul of such a man lies very weak, as a man for whom the bell is ready to toll. 4. Difficulty of breathing, or to be taken speechless, is a sign of a disease and death approaching. So in the soul, prayer being the breath of the soul, when a man can hardly fetch his breath, cannot pray, or with much ado can beg mercy, strength, and supply of grace; or when he is speechless, a man cannot hear him whisper a good and savoury word, but all is earthly, fruitless, or hurtful; here is a living corpse, a painted sepulchre, not a man of a better world. Thus negatively of the patient, or party, fit for cure. Affirmatively it is the sick man. And he is the sick man, that feels and groans under the pain and burden of his sin. The point this: Sin is the most dangerous sickness in the whole world, and fitly resembles bodily sickness. For-- 1. Sickness comes by intemperance: the temperate body is never sick; while we were in innocency we were in sound health, but through distemperature in our nature we were poisoned at first, and ever since our sins and lusts conceiving, bring forth sin and death. 2. Sickness weakeneth the body, and impaireth the vigour of nature; so cloth sin in the soul: experience showeth that after some sin we very hardly and weakly attempt any good thing for a long time. Sin hath weakened the faculties, darkened the understanding, corrupted the will, disordered the affections: thence this sickness. 3. Sickness brings pain and torment into the body; so doth sin into the soul. 4. Sickness continuing and lingering on the body, threateneth death, and without timely cure bringeth it; sin also, not removed by repentance, menaceth and bringeth certain death to body and soul. 5. Sickness is generally incident to all men. So the souls of all men are diseased by nature; even the souls of the elect, till they be healed by Christ. II. WE COME NOW TO THE . The Physician is our Lord Jesus Christ; as in the next word, “ I come not to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.” “ I am the Lord, that healeth thee” (Exodus 15:26). God challengeth this as a part of His own glory, by Christ to heal us. “ He maketh sore, and bindeth up; He woundeth, and His hands make whole” Job 5:18). “ Who healed thee of thy infirmities?” (Psalms 103:3). 1. As a skilful Physician He knoweth every man s estate perfectly. He knoweth what is man (John 2:1-25.), so doth no other physician. He saw the woman at the well to be an harlot. And (Matthew 16:7) He saw the reasoning of their hearts, when they thought He spake because they had no bread. 2. He knows the cure as perfectly as He cloth the disease. No physician knows all the virtues of all the simples and drugs he administereth; and besides, he is wholly ignorant of many. But Christ our Physician knows the infallible work of His remedies. 3. As a skilful Physician He prescribeth the fittest remedies. For in His word He appointeth physic for every disease of the soul; for pride, envy, covetousness, trouble of conscience, and other. 4. As a physician prepareth his patient for his physic, so Christ prepareth the party by faith to apply His remedies; by persuading the heart to believe, and to apply to the sore and wounded conscience the precious balms which Himself hath prepared. Else, as physic, not in the receipt, or box, or cupboard, or pocket can profit, unless it be applied and received, though it be never so sovereign; no more can this. 5. Christ goeth beyond all physicians, two ways. (1) In the generality of His cure. Some diseases are desperate, and all the physic in the world cannot cure them. But Christ can cure all; no disease is so desperate as to foil Him. (2) In the freedom of His cure. For first, He offereth His help and physic even daily in the preaching of His gospel. Now if Christ be the Physician, Christ must be magnified for our health. The Pope, by his pardons, masses, pilgrimages, and the like, cannot cure us. It is too great a price to pay. Nay, the angels can confer nothing to this cure. Lastly, if Christ be the Physician, here is marvellous comfort for afflicted souls pained and pined under the burden of sin. 1. He is a skilful doctor, He knows all our diseases and the remedies; thou mayst safely commit thyself into His hands, as His mother said to those servants, “ Whatsoever He commands, that do” (John 2:1-25.). Simple obedience is required, without reasoning or inquiry. All His sayings must we do. 2. He is able enough to cure us, because He is God Omnipotent, able to work an infinite cure: and only such a physician can bestead us, for all created power cannot help us. 3. He is as willing to help as able; being a merciful High Priest, compassed with infirmities, to have compassion on them that are out of the way. III. Having spoken of the patients, and of the Physician, we come now to the CURE, which is the third general; wherein consider-- 1. The confection. 2. The application. In the confection are-- 1. The Author. 2. The matter. 3. The virtue. The Author must be a man, and above a man. He must be a man, because man had sinned, and man’ s nature must satisfy; else God’ s justice and menace had not taken place. But withal, He must be above a man; even our Emmanuel (Isaiah 7:14), God with us. All this must our Physician do,by His lowest abasement. He must satisfy God’ s justice, appease His anger, triumph against enemies of salvation, subdue sin, foil the devil, overcome death, discharge all debts, cancel all obligations and handwritings against us, and after all be exalted to glory. Thirdly, He must be God to procure us those infinite good things we need, viz., to restore us God’ s image lost, and with it righteousness and life eternal. To defend soul and body against the world, the devil, hell, and all enemies. Next, the matter of the cure, and that is, “ the Physician’ s own blood” by which is meant His whole passion: “ By His stripes we are healed (1 Peter 2:19), His sickness brings us health. Next the virtue and preciousness of this cure. Oh, it was a powerful and precious blood I and that in five respects. 1. In respect of the qualtity: it is the blood incorruptible. All other diseases are cured with corruptible things (1 Peter 1:18). 2. In respect of the person: it was the blood of God (Acts 20:28). 3. In respect of the subject of it: no other cure or remedy can reach the soul. All other drugs conduce for healthful life, and work upon the body; but this makes for an holy life, and works upon the soul, the sickness whereof the most precious thing in the world cannot cure. 4. In respect of the powerful effects of it, above all other cures in the world: for-- (1) They may frame the body to some soundness of temperature, but this makes sound souls, according to the conformity of God’ s law. (2) They may preserve natural life for a while, but this brings a supernatural life for ever. (3) They may restore strength and nature decayed, but this changeth and bringeth in a new nature, according to the second Adam. (4) They cannot keep away death approaching, but this makes immortal. (5) They cannot raise or recover a dead man, but this raiseth both dead in sin, dead in soul, and dead in body. 5. In respect of time. All other physic is made of drugs created with the world, but this was “ prepared before the foundation of the world” (1 Peter 1:18). Again, all work of all other physic is done in death, but the perfection and most powerful work of this is after death. By all this take we notice of our extreme misery by sin; seeing nothing else can cure us, but the blood of the Son of God. If we had such a disease as nothing but the heart-blood of our dearest friends alive (suppose our wife, husband, mother, or child) could cure us, what a hopeless and desperate case were it? It would amaze and astonish the stoutest heart. But much more may it smite our hearts, that we have such a disease as nothing else but the heart-blood of the Son of God can cure. But those never saw their sin in this glass who conceive the cure as easy as the turning of a hand, a light “ Lord have mercy,” or an hour of repentance at death. 2. In this cure we may observe a world of wonders-- (1) Wonder and admire this Physician, who is both the Physician and the Physic. Was ever the like heard of in all nature? (2) Admire the confection: that the Physician must temper the remedy of His own heart-blood. He must by passion be pounded in the mortar of God’ s wrath; He must be beaten, smitten, spit upon, wounded, sweat water and blood, be trodden on as a worm, be forsaken of His Father; the Lamb of God must be slain; the just” suffer for the unjust. Dost thou not here stand and wonder? (3) Admire the power of weakness, and the Omnipotent work of this cure by contraries, as in the great work of creation; there the Son of God made all things, not out of something, but out of nothing; so in this great work of our cure by redemption, He works our life, not by His life, but by His own death; He makes us infinitely happy, but by His own infinite misery; He opens the grave for us, by His own lying in the grave; He sends us to heaven by His own descending from heaven; and shuts the gates of hell by suffering hellish torments. He honours us by His own shame; He breaks away our temptations, and Satan’ s molestations, by being Himself tempted. Here is a skilful Physician, tempering poison to a remedy, bringing light out of darkness, life out of death, heaven out of hell. In the whole order of nature one contrary resisteth another, but it is beyond nature that one contrary should produce another. Wonder. (4) Admire the care of the Physician, who provided us a remedy before our disease, before the world was, or we in it. (5) Admire His matchless love, who to save our souls, made His soul an offering for sin, and healeth our wounds by His own stripes. A physician showeth great love, if he take a little care above ordinary, though he be well rewarded, and made a great gainer by it. But this Physician must be a loser by His love; He must lose His glory, His life. Wonder, and wonder for ever. 3. How may we testify our love to Christ? (1) In profession and word we must magnify His great Work of redemption, and advance it in the perfection and virtue of it, as able of itself to purchase the whole Church. (2) As God’ s love was actual, so we must settle ourselves to His service. (3) According to His example, let us not love our lives to the death for His Revelation 12:11). Now we are to consider it in the application. For, what would it avail, to have the most skilful and careful physician, and the most rare, proper, and powerful medicine under the sun prescribed by him, if either it be not for me, or not applied to the disease or sore? And so our heavenly Physician hath taken care, not only for direction and confection, but also for application. Medicines must be received; for we must not look to be cured by miracle, but by means. Where consider-- 1. The persons to whom the cure is applied. 2. The means whereby. 3. The time when. For the persons, the text saith, “ all that be sick” ; that is, sensible and languishing under their sickness. And Psalms 147:3, “ He heals those that are broken in heart, and binds up their sores.” For the means whereby the cure is applied, it is faiths, we must bring faith to be healed. But when is this medicine applied? For time, there is no application but in this life; no curing after this life. Again, seeing there is a time to heal, come in season Ecclesiastes 3:3). Again, content not thyself only to hear of this remedy, but seek to know that it is applied to thee in particular, and to feel the virtue of it in thyself. How may I know it? As physic taken into the body works often so painfully, that men are even at the gate of death in their present sense, and no other but dead men, so this physic worketh kindly, when it worketh pain in the party, through the sense and sight of sin, apprehension of God’ s anger and utter despair in themselves. As physic kindly working delivers the party, not only from death, but such humours as were the cause of his sickness, at least that they be not predominant; even so must this physic rid us of our sin, and these peccant humours which were the matter of our sickness. As after application of proper physic we find a great change in our bodies, as if we had new bodies given us; so after the kindly work of this physic we may find ourselves cast into a new mould; this blood applied makes us new creatures, new men, having new minds, new wills, new words, new affections, new actions, new conversations. Our strength is renewed to Christian actions and passion; we are strong for our journey, for our combat, and strong to carry burdens, with a strong appetite, and digestion of the word; every way more hearty and cheerful. Thus having received our health, by means of this cure, wisdom commands us to be as careful to preserve our health as to attain it. Every wise man will be as careful to keep himself well as to get himself well. And to this purpose, we must remember the counsel of our Physician for maintaining our health attained. Among many direction prescribed, I mention four. 1. Not to be tampering with our own medicines, nor the medicines of Egypt, merits, pilgrimages, penance, or the like; nor any quintessence or mineral from the hand of any libertine teacher; but only such as we find prescribed in the Word of God, by our great Doctor. 2. To keep our health, we must keep good diet, both for soul and body. The best diet for the soul is to keep God’ s hours for our daily repast by the Word, in reading and meditating on it; which David regarded above his ordinary food. A liberal diet is best for the soul; but the best diet for the body is a spare diet, a sober and moderate use of meat, drink, and pleasure, for beating down and mortifying corrupt affections and lusts. 3. To preserve our health, we must strive to live in a good and wholesome air. If thou livest in a corrupt air, change it for a better. The worst air that can be is where worst men and worst company are. The air of a hot plague house is not so infectious as the contagious air of wicked company. 4. To preserve health, physicians prescribe the use of good exercises. The best exercises to use for the health of the soul are hearing and reading of God’ s Word; pray also, and meditate when thou art alone; with conference of good things in company. These are notable helps to bring thee through weaknesses, and keep thy soul in good plight, health, and cheerfulness. (T. Taylor. D. D.) Christ the Physician of men The grand design of Christ’ s mission into the world was that He might be the Physician of souls--that He might heal those who were subject to the disease of sin, and restore them to spiritual health, life, and happiness. I. OUR LORD WAS AND TO THIS OFFICE. II. CHRIST, AS THE GREAT OF SOULS, HAS A REMEDY OF . III. OUR IS OF SKILL. His understanding is infinite. He perfectly knoweth our frame. He knows all the distempers of our minds, with all their diversified forms and symptoms. IV. THE OF SOULS IS OF POWER AND . If with one hand He extends to us a bitter potion, with the other He upholds, strengthens, comforts us. V. HE IS AND . He seeks not ours, but us. His sole object is to do us good. VI. HE IS ALWAYS . NO disadvantage of place or condition can exclude from His aid. Nor is there a single individual who may not, on every occasion, obtain from Him the healing that he needs. (Peter Grant.) Luke 5:32I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance The Sin healer This conduct of Christ was not official or symbolic. It was His feeling as very God that led Him to this course. It opened to the world the very Divine nature. A disposition to heal men of sin is a greater manifestation of Divine rectitude than to exterminate sin by punishment. It is this thought that I shall attempt to draw out briefly, and apply to our own case and experience. I. To HEAR SIN EVINCES HATRED OF EVIL EVEN MORE THAN A SUMMARY OF IT. Consider the patience, the self-sacrifice, which is required to win men from evil habits, and from wicked dispositions. Now we measure our moral likes or dislikes by what they lead us to undergo. How much we love we can tell by how much we will bear for our affections; how much we dislike, by what effort we are willing to put forth to resist or avoid what is offensive to us. Consider a teacher who shall avenge himself of a pupil’ s disobedience by punishing, or by summarily excluding that pupil. How cheap is such riddance of mischief from his school! How is all summed up in one outburst of feeling! It is very painful and disagreeable, but it is short. But suppose that, instead of resorting to expulsion, with its disgrace, the teacher shall enter into the sympathy of the pupil by gentleness, by winning kindness, by forbearance, by devoting his very life to him, and shall set him upon reformation, and wait for him to reform, and endure while he is reforming. How much more does he, by such a course of conduct as this, evince his dislike of evil, than by merely excluding the pupil! What we will bear for the sake of getting rid of evil, measures how much we dislike it. II. A TO HEAL SIN IS THE OF MORAL . Men do not always see it to be so. It is a part of our lower thinking to believe that a thunderous exhibition, with a display of wrath and punitive judgment, is a more solemn and conclusive manifestation of the Divine abhorrence of sin. But an abhorrence of sin is more illustriously marked by gentleness and patience in healing it, than by any display of justice in punishing it. He that once conceives of the God that presides over the universe, and keeps all its elements intact and unharmed, as a God that makes Himself the medicine for those that are led away from purity, and becomes Himself the Saviour of sinners--he that once does this has a conception of rectitude in God, and of the Divine hatred of evil, such as he can get in no other way. III. A TO HEAL SIN DOES NOT TAKE AWAY FROM SIN ANY OF ITS DANGERS. It removes no barriers, and yields no encouragements. There are ways of dealing with evil that lead to the presumption that it is safe to sin because there is a chance for recovery, if harm begins to come upon the sinner; but the way in which Christ dealt with evil led to no such presumption. Where men fall into sickness by their excesses, is the tenderness on the part of the nurse an argument for the repetition of those excesses. The care and the kindness of a parent in restoring a son from downfall are never a reason with a grateful son for falling again. And the grace of God in Christ Jesus, that bears With sin, not because it is to be allowed, but because, being hateful. God addresses the whole energy of His Being and administration to the rescue of men from it-this does not take away anything from the fear of sin, nor furnish motives to transgression. IV. On the part of those who Ere healed, A TO HEAL SIN A , WHICH GROWS OUT OF THE NOBLER OF THE MIND, and which is therefore a true repentance--one that does not need to be repented of. It is no longer fear of consequences, nor even self-condemnation or conscience, that inspires reformation; it is an action of gratitude; a work of love. V. SUCH A THE DIVINE IN A LIGHT WHICH TENDS TO AND . It takes nothing away from the essential authority and monarchy of God; but it brings God into vital sympathetic relations to His creatures--especially where the remedy has been wrought out at the expense of His own life. The spectacle of a God that is clothed with a spirit of justice made firm in the administration of a righteous government, and of one that, loving justice, still finds rescue and release for the transgressor through the interposition of His own self--that spectacle is one that cannot but fill the heart of every pure and noble creature with admiration and confidence and love. God, by the very pains with which He sought to cleanse the heart and the conscience, testified to how dangerous was that sin that had disfigured the conscience and soiled the heart. With this brief statement, I remark-- 1. There is great encouragement for men that have given way to temptation and transgression, to turn back from evil, to repent, and to enter upon a course of right-living. One of the most wonderful of doctrines was the declaration of Christ that a man might be born again; not merely that he must be--which it true, if he would see the kingdom of heaven--but that he might be; that a man who had for years and years gone wrong, might, as it were, go back and call all the past nothing, and start over again. What would men give if they could do this in their secular affairs t Only God is on the side of the man that wants to return to the path of holiness. There is no parallel to the Divine helpfulness towards the erring anywhere out of the family. When men in secular relations and social connections have done wrong, nothing is on their side--everything is against them. The influences of this world tend to hold a man up in the beginning. 2. This exhibition of God in healing sin instead of punishing it, is the model for Christian dispositions. We must have the Spirit of Christ, or we are none of His. The mother that watches over her child, and that, seeing its faults, not so much punishes it as trains it out of those faults, devoting her life, day and night, to its welfare; the mother that wins her child out of evil into good--that mother stands as the child’ s saviour, reproducing the example and conduct of Christ towards her little one. Arc there those round about you that need succour and help: Have you done some things for them? 3. What will be the glorious disclosure of this Divine nature in heaven--the lovableness of God, the attractive beauty that there is in Him, so disclosed by the Saviour! (H. W. Beecher.) Self-righteousness giving way to penitence The man who thinks he is not so very bad, is no true penitent. “ I am the chief of sinners,” said holy Paul, and that is sure to be the feeling of the man who is truly penitent. A good Quaker told me once how he visited a sick neighbour, and began to talk to the man about soul-matters. Religion was all very good, the poor sick man acknowledged, but he could not see what need he had to concern himself abort it, for he had never done anybody any harm in his life. The good Quaker tried to convince him that he had lived without hope and without God in the world, and that he was not fit to die; that he had neither prayed nor worshipped, nor read his Bible, nor trained up his children in the fear of God, and he ought to feel himself a sinner in the sight of his Maker. The good Quaker knelt and prayed with him, and visited him again and again, and began to observe that the man gradually forgot to boast of his innocence; and, at last, seemed to be growing very tender, for he observed him in tears. At last he could conceal his state no longer, but burst out into weeping--“ I am too great a sinner,” said he; “ there is no mercy for me!” “ Thank God!” said the good Quaker, “ I have hope of thee now. Let us pray once more, and see if there be no mercy for thee.” The Quaker prayed, and the poor sinner prayed; and before they gave over, the sinner’ s soul was set free, and he rejoiced in the pardoning love of God. (Thomas Cooper.) Christ’ s errand I. WHAT IS THE PURPORT OF CHRIST’ S COMING INTO AND WORK IN TEE WORLD AS IN THE ? Universal and all-inclusive. The world. Whosoever. II. HERE, HOWEVER, AN . Some whom He did not come to call: the righteous. Who were these righteous? Wee e they really righteous? No, but only self-righteous. III. ARE THERE, THEN, ANY WHOM CHRIST DID NOT COME TO SAVE? NO. But so long as a man is self-righteous he is not saveable, he cannot hear and obey the call of Christ. Christ’ s errand is to the needy and the sinful. Let the self-righteous become conscious of his unrighteousness and sinfulness, and he becomes at once one of those whom Christ came to call. For-- IV. IN COMING TO CALL SINNERS HE TRULY CAME TO CALL ALL, for all are sinners. And thus is the apparent limitation, so far as His desire and purpose are concerned, shown not really to exist. He will have all men to be saved and to tome to a knowledge of the truth. (J. B. Bailey.) Criminality certainly appeared to Christ more odious and detestable than it did to His contemporaries. How strange, then, to find Him treating it more leniently I perfect justice here appears to take the very course which would be taken by injustice. It is true that the extremes do in a manner meet. Christ, representing the highest humanity, treats crime in a manner which superficially resembles the treatment of it by those in whom humanity is at the lowest stage. But the other toleration was barbarous. Christ’ s toleration is the newly-revealed virtue of mercy. (Ecce Homo.) There are two classes of men--the righteous who believe themselves sinners; and sinners who believe themselves righteous. (Pascal.) Luke 5:33-38 No man putteth a piece of a new garment upon an old The patched garment We appreciate easily the offensiveness of what is incongruous. It is fatal alike to beauty, to symmetry, and to effectiveness. A sparrow is not as beautiful as a bird of Paradise, yet the little brown bird is a pleasant sight. Try to fasten upon him the gorgeous plumage of the other bird, and you make him ridiculous at once. His beauty consists in being simply himself. An inferior thing that is constant to its own ideal, consistent, true, is a far more useful and a far more pleasurable thing than when you try to make it look like something else, or do the work of something else, or take it out of its place and put it in circumstances to which it has no adaptation. Take a plain stone wall, for instance. There is nothing very artistic about it, but if it be well and truly built, a simple wall and nothing else, it is not an unpleasing object. But now go to the ruins of that Gothic church, and bring away the sculptured keystone of an arch, the fragments of a carved screen, a column with an elaborately cut capital, and sundry pinnacles and gargoyles, and work these into the masonry of your wall, and set up your pinnacles along the top, and let your gargoyles protrude their hideous heads at intervals: you have made a ridiculous thing out of your stone wall. People at once see that something is there which belongs to quite another order of things. Everybody acknowledges the difference between the church and the plain wall, and the difference offends no one so long as each keeps its place and is simply itself. But the attempt to patch one with the other emphasizes the difference offensively. The rent is made worse: the beauty is taken from the church, and the wall is made ugly. (M. R. Vincent, D. D.) Theology must tally with experience I remember an old farmer who, when he was about sixty years of age, professed faith in Christ. He was full of zeal, and, for a time, was like a flaming torch in the neighbourhood. I never saw a man who seemed to feel so keenly the awful risk he had run in delaying his salvation so long. He could not be in a prayer-meeting without rising to warn his fellow-men against his mistake. But he was also an ignorant man, and his new experience only deepened his sense of his ignorance of the things of God; and he used to shut himself in his room with volumes on systematic theology, and painfully wade through their contents, and then come down to the prayer-meeting and attempt to reproduce what he had read; and you can easily imagine the result. So long as he kept to his own experience, so long as he was just himself, speaking of what he knew and felt, he spoke with power. The moment he cried to patch the theologian upon the plain farmer, he spoiled it all. The theology was ruined, and so was the personal experience. The ignorance which no one would have thought of in the plain man speaking out of a full heart, was thrust into prominence by the ridiculous attempt to play the part of a theological teacher. The rent was made worse. (M. R. Vincent, D. D.) The unity of the gospel The gospel is a unit, one and inseparable. It is sufficient unto itself. It asks no aid from any source outside of itself. It needs no combination to develop its peculiar virtues. The great truth it sets before men is Christ all, and in all. And it does its work for and in man upon the condition that it be received as it is; entire, adding nothing and subtracting nothing. It does not engage that there shall be virtue in its fragments apart from the whole. You may take up the lock of that rifle, and pull and snap it as much as you please, and it will be a good while before you shoot anything. You must combine it with the barrel and the stock, Neither lock, stock, nor barrel is good for anything, except as they together make up a rifle. Similarly, 1 cannot answer for the effect of a single Christian precept or doctrine disjoined from the whole. It is only a patch, cut out from a good, solid garment, and refusing to match with any other fabric. (M. R. Vincent, D. D.) No patch-work morality You say, and say honestly no doubt, that you want to be right and to do right, but you can accept the gospel only in part. Christ’ s moral code is all very well, but the doctrine of the new birth you cannot accept. So you go to cutting patches again. You cut the moral code clean from the new birth. You will keep Christ’ s precepts without being a new creature. You will sew the new code upon the old nature. Very well. Some people in a city think they will build a fountain. They engage an engineer, and a noted sculptor. A beautiful design is carried out in stone or bronze. The water is to pour from vases in the hands of sea-nymphs, and to spout from the horns of tritons. At last all is ready. The crowd assemble to witness the opening of the fountain. The signal is given, there is a little spirt from a jet here and there, and then all is dry as before. The stupid engineer has drawn his water from a point almost as low as the base of the fountain, and there is no head to send the water through the pipes. But a more competent workman comes to the rescue. He lays a large main. He leads it to a deep lake or reservoir far up above the town; and now, at the signal, the crystal waters shoot high into the air, and drape the beautiful forms with their falling spray. Oh, my friend, I greatly fear you have not rightly estimated that moral system of Christ. It is grander than you think; higher than you are aware; and to make your life flow through it to refresh the world, you will need something besides the pressure of your feeble will. Your reservoir is too low down. If your life is to fill that godlike out-line of virtue, its impulse must be Divine. If your impulse is earthly, your life will be earthly. That moral code was meant for a new man, and nothing but a birth from above, nothing but an impulse generated and maintained by God Himself, will ever enable you to live it. The new code and the new man will not be separated. If they shall not go together the gospel will be caricatured by you, and the new precepts will break loose continually from the old will and the old passions and the old habits, and the rent will be worse. (M. R. Vincent, D. D.) Worthlessness of a patched character Men talk of turning over a new leaf--of beginning over again. How many times you hear it. “ Yes, I have been careless, self-indulgent, hasty and passionate; I am going to try to do better.” Never does the old year strike its last hour, that hundreds and thousands of people are not lying wakeful and thoughtful upon their beds, or sitting with sober meditation in their closets, and gathering up their faculties into mighty resolutions for the year to come. “ I will swear no more. I will drink no more. I will go to the house of God. I will begin to read my Bible.” The resolutions are good and honest, no doubt. It is a good thing that one’ s attention has been called to those faults. It will be a better thing if he can carry out his resolution and master them; but, alas, neither the good resolutions nor their accomplishment go far enough. It is patch-work still; patching pieces of the gospel on the old nature; a temperance piece, and a Bible-reading piece, and a church-going piece, upon a nature which, in its very quality and essence, is estranged from God. The man gives up an indulgence here and there, says to God in effect, “ Your moral law may come and occupy this ground which has been occupied by my misdoing” ; but such an entrance of God’ s law is like the occupation of some remote outpost of a fortified town by an invader. The citadel is still unreached. The situation is commanded by the garrison of the town. There is no conquest until the invader gets in there. (M. R. Vincent, D. D.) Christianity will not amalgamate with Judaism If any of the Pharisees, moved by the miracles which Christ wrought, had felt disposed to receive Him as a teacher from God, the thing which they would most naturally have attempted would have been the making a compound of their own religion and the Christian, so that, whilst they kept what they liked most in their tenets and observances, they might have the advantage of the new revelation; and therefore, what Christ had to denounce in the case of these Pharisees was the lurking notion that Christianity might admit some admixtures from other religions, so that men might bring into its profession their own favourite theories, and find them amalgamate very well with its doctrines. This notion Christ denounces most emphatically. Christianity, though far enough from being a new revelation, required that the scene should be swept clear for its institutions, peremptorily refusing that there should be blended with the revealed mode of a sinner’ s acceptance anything of ceremonial ordinance, demanding to be received without admixture, or rejected without reserve. And it is against this that men in every age have rebelled. They have wanted not only to keep some part of their own favourite systems, but to keep it for the very end which, according to their own theory, it had heretofore answered. Thus generally with good works. It does not content them that Christianity demands good works, that it makes salvation impossible without them, and thus transfers to its system the favourite part of their own; they have been accustomed to account their works meritorious, and they would fain have Christianity account them so too; and this Christianity will not do. If it require and retain fasting and almsgiving, it will not allow them any justifying merit; it may be said to alter their character in granting them admission. Thus, whilst it has much in common with other systems, it is wholly against the being compounded with those systems, in order that the produce may give a mixed mode of obtaining salvation. (H. Melvill, B. D.) Christianity a new dispensation Our Lord is referring to the proposal to enforce the ascetic leanings of the forerunner, and the pharisaic regulations which had become a parasitic growth on the old dispensation, upon the glad simplicity of the new dispensation. To act thus was much the same thing as using the gospel by way of a mere adjunct to--a mere purple patch upon--the old garment of the law. The teaching of Christ was a new and seamless robe which would only be spoilt by being rent. It was impossible to tear a few doctrines and precepts from Christianity, and use them as ornaments and improvements of Mosaism. If this were attempted (1) the gospel would be maimed by the rending from its entirety; (2) the contrast between the new and the old system would be made more glaring; (3) the decay of the evanescent institutions would only be violently accelerated. (Archdeacon Farrar.) Suitable external forms Jesus here applies a great principle to all external rites and ceremonies. They have their value. As the wineskin retains the wine, so are feelings and aspirations aided, and even preserved, by suitable external forms. Without these, emotion would lose itself for want of restraint, wasted like spilt wine, by diffuseness. And if the forms are unsuitable and outworn, the same calamity happens, the strong new feelings break through them, “ and the wine perisheth, and the skins.” The coming of a new revelation meant the repeal of old observances, and Christ refused to sew His new faith like a patchwork upon ancient institutions, of which it would only complete the ruin. Thus He anticipated the decision of His apostles releasing the Gentiles from the law of Moses. (Dean Chadwick.) A mixed garment Just as it was forbidden by the law of Moses to wear a mixed garment of linen and of wool, so there was a deeper and a more essential incongruity involved in every attempt to patch the old and tattered garments of the law with the new and seamless robe of the gospel. Just as the insertion of a piece of undressed cloth, which shrinks when wetted, and takes along with it a part of the old and worn garment, does but increase the rent which it is designed to mend; just as the unfermented wine put into old skins, bursts the skins and perishes with them, even so our Lord declares that all attempts to combine the bondage of the law with the liberty of the gospel involves a fundamental ignorance of the nature and design of both. The two similitudes employed by our Lord seem to exhibit this truth in different ways. 1. The similitude of the old garment patched with a piece of new cloth seems more immediately applicable to external rites and ceremonies, such as the observance of those prescribed days and months and years which caused St. Paul to stand in doubt of the Galatian Church. 2. The similitude of the new wine seems to have reference to the inner life and spirit--the very life and soul of the Christian dispensation which could not be restrained within the trammels of the worldly sanctuary of Judaism. The history of the Church, in all after ages, teaches how greatly this lesson was needed, and how imperfectly it has been learned. (C. J. Elliot, M. A.) New cloth on an old garment This, we may add, is what the Church of Christ has too often done in her work as the converter of the nations. Sacramental ordinances, or monastic vows, or Puritan formulae, or Quaker conventionalities, have been engrafted on lives that were radically barbarous or heathen, or worldly, and the contrast has been glaring, and the rent made worse. The more excellent way which our Lord pursued, and which it is our wisdom to pursue, is to take the old garment and to transform it, as by a renewing power from within, thread by thread, till old things are passed away and all things are become new. (Dean Plumptre.) The broken bottles The doctrines of religion demand a certain suitableness, or preparedness, in the persons to whom they are taught; and if there be no attempt in the persons to fit themselves for the doctrines--to adapt the bottles to the wine--there is nothing to be looked for but that the doctrines will be wasted, and the persons, like the bottles, be only injured by what they have received. It may be the pure, the generous wine which is poured forth--the preacher may dispense nothing but the unadulterated gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. But the great mass of hearers come up to God’ s house without the smallest preparation of heart, with scarce a thought given beforehand to the solemn duty in which they are about to engage. In place of having been secretly in prayer that God would give unto them the hearing ear and the understanding heart; in place of having been endeavouring to purge out the old leaven of worldliness and prejudice, that so they might bring with them candid and unoccupied minds; they rush to the sanctuary, as they would to some scene of business or pleasure; conversing, perhaps, up to the moment of entering it on politics, or scandal, or commerce, or fashion; and continuing to give the same things their thoughts, when restrained by the place from giving them their tongues. And what is to be looked for from the attempt to pour the new wine into these unseasoned bottles, but that the wine will be lost and the bottles themselves broken? Yes--you are not to overlook this peculiarity in the parable--the bottles are broken through the action of the wine; not through any external violence, but simply through the workings of the generous liquid. It is thus with the moral facts which the parable illustrates. The preaching of the gospel is no inefficient thing, producing no injury where it produces no benefit is “ the savour of death unto death,” where it fails to be “ the savour of life unto life.” This may be little thought of by numbers who, perhaps, attend church regularly on Sundays, and spend the intermediate days as those who are ignorant of judgment to come. Yet it is of all hardening things the most hardening, to remain unrenewed under the preaching of the gospel. Alas l for an audience accustomed to hear the gospel, but to hear it only with the understanding whilst they shut up the heart! I may pour in the wine--but, at every fresh pouring, there is, so to speak, a fresh rent in the bottles. Every Sunday does but make the matter worse, dismissing the hearers to their engrossing pursuits, and their ensnaring amusements, but with another unimproved opportunity for which to account, another warning neglected, another effort on God’ s part resisted, and, therefore, another nerve added to the power of resistance. (H. Melvill, B. D.) New wine in old bottles As the action of organized churches has too often reproduced the mistake of sewing the patch of new cloth on the old garment, so in the action of enthusiastic or mystic sects, in the history of Montanism, Quakerism in its earlier stages, the growth of the so-called Catholic and Apostolic Church, which had its origin in the history of Edward Irving, we have that of pouring “ new wine into old bottles.” (Dean Plumptre.) Permanence of the old When Mr. Lincoln was a young man, he was awakened one night by the good deacon with whom he boarded, and told that the stars were falling and the world coming to an end. He looked out of the window, and saw the air full of meteors, but, looking beyond, he saw the grand old constellations firm in their places where he had always seen them from childhood; and he went to bed, feeling that all was well so long as the old constellations were unmoved. (D. E. Lancing, D. D.) . Luke 5:35 But the days will come when the bridegroom shall be taken away from them Duties are not to be pressed indiscriminately on all persons and at all times Our Lord makes fasting a duty, but, nevertheless, He excuses the children of the bridechamber while the bridegroom was with them, and then gives, as one reason for excusing them, the inexpediency of prescribing austerities to those yet young in His religion: it would only be likely to alienate and disgust them, driving them back to what they had abandoned, and thus making the rent worse, even as would the new cloth fastened on the old. Attend carefully to this. There is all the difference between keeping a duty entirely out of sight, and enjoining it only at a certain stage in Christian experience. Undoubtedly, as a Christian grows in grace he grows fitted for sacrifices, privations, and endurances, which would have quite overcome him if demanded at an earlier point of his career as a believer; and it is not so much Christian prudence as Christian truth to avoid requiring from the young convert what may justly be required from the practised disciple. If our duties grow, as they certainly do, with our Christian age, it is not merely inexpedient, it is actually erroneous, to ask a beginner to perform a task, or to bear a burden, for which he may not have strength till grown into a veteran. (H. Melvill, B. D.) Luke 6:1-2 And it came to pass on the second Sabbath after the first, that He went through the corn-fields The second-first Sabbath This is a very difficult phrase, and all explanations of it must be conjectural, as there is apparently no Sabbath designated by this name in any Rabbinical writing. One of the two following explanations seems most likely: 1. Either that it was the Sabbath which occurred during the Octave of Pentecost--the greatest Sabbath of the year being the Passover Sabbath (“ that Sabbath day was an high day” -- John 19:31); and the one occurring at the next greatest feast, that of Pentecost, would be the next greatest, or next-first, or “ second-first,” the Passover Sabbath being the first-first, or by far the greatest. The feast of Tabernacles would be the third. 2. But very many take it to be a Sabbath at the Passover, either the first Sabbath after the second day of that festival, from which the Sabbaths to Pentecost are numbered, or the last day of the feast, which was to be observed as a Sabbath. Whichever of these is the true meaning, it appears to me that St. Luke does not designate this day as the second-first, to mark the date when the transaction occurred, but to mark the peculiar holiness of the day. The disciples were, in their estimation, breaking no ordinary Sabbath, but one of the most sacred of all. (M. F. Sadler, M. A.) Pleaeing Sabbath impressions That Sunday of my childhood; the marvellous stillness of that day over all Lichfield town hill; that wondrous ringing of the bell; the strange interpretation that my young imagination gave to the crowing of the cock and to the singing of the birds; that wondering look which I used to have into things; that strange lifting halfway up into inspiration, as it were; that sense of the joyful influence that sometimes brooded down like a stormy day, and sometimes opened up like a gala-day in summer on me, made Sunday a more effectually marked day than any other of all my youthful life, and it stands out as clear as crystal until this hour. It might have been made happier and better if there had been a little more adaptation to my disposition and my wants; but, with all its limitations, I would rather have the other six days of the week weeded out of my memory than the Sabbath of my childhood. And this is right. Every child ought to be so brought up in the family, that when he thinks of home the first spot on which his thought rests shall be Sunday, as the culminating joy of the house-hold. (H. W. Beecher.) Exemplary Sabbath-keeping The Mayflower a name now immortal, had crossed the ocean. It had borne its hundred passengers over the vast deep, and after a perilous voyage had reached the bleak shores of New England, in the beginning of winter. The spot which was to furnish a home and a burial-place was now to be selected. The shallop was unshipped, but needed repairs, and sixteen weary days elapsed before it was ready for service. Amidst ice and snow it was then sent out, with some half a dozen pilgrims, to find a suitable place where to land. The spray of the sea, says the historian, froze on them, and made their clothes like coats of iron. Five days they wandered about, searching in vain for a suitable landing-place, a storm came on; the snow and the rain fell; the sea swelled; the rudder broke; the mast and the sail fell overboard. In this storm and cold, without a tent, a house, or the shelter of a rock, the Christian Sabbath approached, the day which they regarded as holy unto God; a day on which they were not to “ do any work.” What should be done? As the evening before the Sabbath drew on they pushed over the surf, entered a fair sound, sheltered themselves under the lee of a rise of land, kindled a fire, and on that little island they spent the day in the solemn worship of their Maker. On the next day their feet touched the rock, now sacred as the place of the landing of the pilgrims. Nothing more strikingly marks the character of this people than this act, and I do not know that I could refer to a better illustration, even in their history, showing that theirs was the religion of principle, and that this religion made them what they were. (A. Barnes, D. D.) The corn-field There are many lessons that the corn-fields teach. The world, children, is one great cornfield, and you are growing in it. Now a question arises, are you growing there as corn, or as the poppy, the cockle, and the blue-bottle? Whoever passes by, through the corn-fields, sees the purple flower, and admires it. But the farmer loves it not, for its seeds contain a noxious element, which greatly injures the corn around, and fills his flour with black specks. When ripe, the capsule contains black glossy aromatic seeds, and in them is the mischievous saponine. While the wheat has been ripening wholesome grain, the corn-cockle has been maturing poisonous seeds. Both plants drank of the same dew, basked in the same sunlight, were fanned by the same breezes; the wheat made little show of flower, but has produced a precious grain; the cockle blazed with beauty, and ripens an injurious seed. I would have you, children, make up your minds early what you are going to be in God’ s field, wheat or poppies; whether you are going to yield grain or blossom; whether you will be profitable or ornamental. I speak first to you girls. You will be called to live in the world, and to be, to some extent, ornaments in it. You will dress more gaily than boys, wear smart gowns, and ribbons, and feathers, whereas boys will clothe themselves in sober colours. There is, therefore, much more danger in your growing up to be cockle, and poppy, and blue-flower. I think that all the most showy flowers are without edible fruit. Dress modestly, becomingly, and prettily, against that there is no law; but as you value all that is holy, all that is eternal, do not let dress occupy your thoughts. There was a Duke of Tyrol, who went by the name of Frederick with the Empty Pockets. He had a little money in the coffer, so he spent it all in gilding the roof of the balcony that overhung the public square in Innsbruck. It is there still, with some of the gold still adhering to the tiles. There are plenty of men who act like Frederick with the Empty Pockets; all they have is laid on as exterior gilding, everything goes in making a great display. If they have money, it is exhibited in the most offensive and vulgar profusion; if they have a little learning, it is lugged in by the ears on all occasions; if they have some position it is made the most of. Gathered in bundles to be burned! Yes, that is the terrible end of the weed. The great lesson that I wish to impress on you, children, to day, is, to live for the future, and not for the present; to be concerned what fruit you shall bring forth, not what show you shall make. (S. Baring-Gould, M. A.) Christ arguing with the Pharisees We should naturally wish to know how a Divine Being would argue with men. We should expect that His arguments would be clear, convincing, and unanswerable, and, consequently, of that kind best adapted to the subject. In such expectation we shall not be disappointed. 1. Against the opinions of the Pharisees respecting the Sabbath, our Saviour’ s first argument was taken from the example of David. David, by partaking of the shew-bread, had broken a positive law; but the disciples of Jesus had violated no law. 2. The second argument is still more pointed. The priests in the temple service did not observe rest on the Sabbath; for, according to the strict letter of the law, their duties could not be performed without violating the Sabbath; yet no blame was attached to them. 3. The third argument advances a step higher. God prefers the duties of humanity to positive commandments, when it is impossible to observe both these. Therefore, even if the plucking and eating of ears of corn on the Sabbath had been prohibited, the mercy of God would have overlooked it in a case of necessity. 4. The fourth argument was, that the Sabbath was made for man; therefore it was lawful to do good on the Sabbath. Thus we see that, according to our Saviour, no act of necessity nor of mercy is a breach of the Sabbath. (J. Thomson, D. D.) Luke 6:5 That the Son of Man is Lord also of the Sabbath A spiritual man Lord of the Sabbath When is a son of man lord of the Sabbath-day? To whom may the Sabbath safely become a shadow? I reply, he that has the mind of Christ may exercise discretionary lordship over the Sabbath-day. He who is in possession of the substance may let the shadow go. A man in health has done with the prescriptions of the physician. But for an unspiritual man to regulate his hours and amount of rest by his desires, is just as preposterous as for an unhealthy man to rule his appetites by his sensations. Win the mind of Christ--be like Him--and then in the reality of rest in God, the Sabbath form of rest will be superseded. Remain apart from Christ, and then you are under the law again--the fourth commandment is as necessary for you as it was for the Israelite; the prescriptive regimen which may discipline your soul to a sounder state. It is at his peril that the worldly man departs from the rule of the day of rest. Nothing can make us free from the law but the Spirit. (F. W. Robertson, M. A.) Jesus and the two ideals I. THE TITLE HE GIVES HIMSELF. Son of Man. We find Him both humbled and exalted as the Son of Man. As the Son of Man He hath not where to lay His head; and as the Son of Man He claims authority to forgive sin, and is Lord even of the Sabbath-day. He applied this phrase to Himself in all the different aspects of His great life. In Him, as the Son of Man, humanity is again in its Sonship of God. II. THE CLAIM HE MAKES ON HIS OWN BEHALF, as Lord even of the Sabbath-day. The perfection of God and the perfection of man, as depicted in the Bible, are two distinct, and, out of their own spheres, incompatible ideals. These two ideals seem to have met in the Christ. He is humble and self-assertive, receptive and full. Authority and obedience meet in Him and blend. (J. Ogrnore Davies.) The Sabbath, a saving economy Sunday is God’ s special present to the working man; and one of its chief objects is to prolong his life, and to preserve efficient his working tone. In the vital system it acts like a compensation pond; it replenishes the spirits, the elasticity and vigour which the last six days have drained away, and supplies the force which is to fill the six days succeeding. In the economy of life it answers the same purpose as, in the economy of income, is answered by a savings-bank. The frugal man who puts asides a pound to-day, and another pound next month, and who, in a quiet way, is always putting by his stated pound from time to time, when he grows old and frail gets not only the same pounds back again, but a good many pounds besides. And the conscientious man who husbands one day of existence every week--who, instead of allowing the Sunday to be trampled and torn in the hurry and scramble of life, treasures it devoutly up--will find that the “ Lord of the Sabbath “ keeps it for him, and in length of days and a hale old age gives it back with usury. The savings-bank of human existence is the weekly Sunday. (North British Review.) Luke 6:6-11 And there was a man whose right hand was withered The ability of Christ to heal the withered energies of the human soul The miracle is a picture of sublime moral instruction. I. THE BEST OF THE SOUL ARE IN A . 1. Man’ s intellectual nature withered, and cannot attain to the inner meaning of Divine truth. 2. Man’ s moral nature withered, and cannot attain to the rich blessings of the gospel. 3. Man’ s compassionate sympathy withered, and not deeply sensitive to the woe occasioned by moral evil. 4. Hence, seeing that the best energies of man are withered, he cannot render to God the service due to Him. II. THE OF THE HUMAN SOUL ARE CAPABLE OF BY CHRIST. 1. We see from this narrative that Christ beholds the withered energies of the human soul with tender compassion. 2. That there is an intimate connection between the word of Christ and the restoration of the withered energies of the soul. 3. That the restoration of the withered energies of the soul is immediate, visible, and complete. 4. That the restoring of the withered energies of the soul can only be accomplished by Christ. III. THERE ARE MANY WHO HAVE BUT LITTLE WITH CHRIST IN HIS WORK OF SOUL-. 1. The Pharisees were cunning in their watching of Christ. 2. They were refuted in their contempt of Christ. 3. They were regarded by Christ with mingled feelings of pity and anger. IV. WHY DID THESE OPPOSE THE ACT OF CHRIST? 1. Because He did not fall in with their views as to the manner and time of the cure. 2. Because they were too proud in spirit to rejoice at the cure thus wrought. 3. Because they saw not the full meaning and blessing of the cure. (J. S.Exell, M. A.) The construction of the hand Tyndal writes of his ascent of the Weisshorn:--“ There is scarcely a position possible to a human being which at one time or another during the day I was not forced to assume. The fingers, wrist, and forearm were my main reliance, and as a mechanical instrument the human hand appeared to me this day a miracle of constructive art … I opened my note-book to make a few observations, but soon relinquished the attempt. There was something incongruous, if not profane, in allowing the scientific faculty to interfere where silent worship seemed the reasonable service.” (Hours of Exercise in the Alps.) Language of the hand With the hand we demand, we promise, we call, dismiss, threaten, entreat, supplicate, deny, refuse, interrogate, admire, reckon, confess, repent; express fear, express shame, express doubt; we instruct, command, unite, encourage, swear, testify, accuse, condemn, acquit, insult, despise, defy, disdain, flatter, applaud, bless, abuse, ridicule, reconcile, recommend, exalt, regale, gladden, complain, afflict, discomfort, discourage, astonish; exclaim, indicate silence and what not I with a variety and multiplication that keep pace with the words spoken by the tongue. Promptitude of faith If the man in our text had been a scholar, his thought most likely would have risen up in instant protest against Christ’ s command. Had he been a physicist, had he in particular been an anatomist, he could hardly have been healed. He would have thought too much. He would instantly have fallen into reasoning upon the utter anatomical and physiological impossibility of a withered hand stretching itself out; and such thinking would have been ruinous. It is here that religion and science break fellowship. Science thinks everything out. Thought is from its very nature surgical; it cuts in pieces. It is analytic, and unjoints and unhinges. Suppose that you are in the presence of a speaker that powerfully affects you. You realize his hand upon you and his mastery over you. This wakes up your inquisitiveness, and puts you upon asking the secret of his power, its elements. Thought begins at once to show how surgical it is; and before the speaker’ s address is completed you have his oratorical talent accurately and elegantly dissected; such a percentage due to figure, such a percentage to manner, to matter, and the rest. And yet the process of analyzing his power has, so far as relates to you, destroyed his power, and you go home with the pocketed ingredients of his power when you might have gone home with an inspiration. You thought too much and too nicely. And it is remarkable how Christ in His intercourse with His disciples laboured to keep their thoughts quiet. He never provoked argument. He indulges in no definition-making. Hews and wherefores He regularly discouraged. Nicodemus wanted the matter of the rebirth stated analytically. Christ declined. One of the disciples wanted a statement of the methods of the Spirit’ s operation. Christ declined. One trouble with our thinking powers is that they work at such a level as to create more problems than they solve. They are like a fly caught in a web, whose very struggles and buzzing only draw the tangled skein about it the more imprisoningly. All that saved the man in our story was that he did not stop to think. He pro-seeded as though there were no difficulties; and forthwith for him there were none. The unconverted men in our congregation can see just where this presses. All Christ’ s commands to you are in the present tense, which means that the command is issued without any allowance of time for comprehending the mysteries of salvation, or for acquiring power to become a saved man. It is simply levelled to the range of the instant; not because thought is not advantageous in some circumstances, but because it is not in point here. The paralytic, with never so much thinking, would never have seen his way clear to do as he was told. Giving ourselves to Christ is not a matter of understanding what we are doing, but a matter of doing; something as when you tell your boy to raise his hand; he does not know how he raises his hand, and you know no more about it than he as regards the physiological intricacies of the act. And if he were to decline raising it until he understood the matter, you would tell him to do it first and understand at his leisure; your command was aimed at his will, and his resort to the intricacies of physiology only a side issue raised to divert your attention from his insubordination. God’ s commands stand out of all relation to human power to grasp the problems, moral or theological, associated with obedience to those commands. God’ s commands are like the pole-star, which with swift intuition finds out the magnetic-needle as easily by night-light as by daylight, and beats upon it with relentless compulsion equally in the darkness and the sunshine. They are not a question of can, but a question of will; and with the will once trembling obediently on the verge of action, all needed resource of power is at its instant service. This is another lesson of our text. In the case of the paralytic, God’ s power came in just after the man’ s will to stretch forth his hand, and just before the stretching act. As he had the will to do, God furnished him the power to do with, and that made out the miracle. It was pretty much the same thing done divinely as is done humanly when a child goes tottering and clambering up a staircase that is too steep for it, and the parent takes hold of the child’ s hand liftingly. The child has the will to go up, and the parent puts some of his own strength at the service of that will; and in this way weakness does impossibilities by virtue of superior strength temporarily loaned. This is the incident of the paralytic turned into terms and relations of familiar experience. It is of the utmost necessity that we should feel that this case of the paralytic stands in Scripture to represent the continuous action of God, the continuous miracle of God, if you please, in so lending Himself to us as to match our power to the measure of our holy intents, and so making us able to do that which there is in us a righteous will to do; precisely as in our story Christ evened up the paralytic’ s power exactly to the level of his willingness. This ought not to disturb us as implying a familiar and presumptuous dependence upon the Divine resources and bounty. It is only doing in the spiritual realm what every man does in a greater or less measure in the physical one. The forces that we call natural, that we use in every foot-tread, in the transportation of every pound of merchandise by wind or by steam, in the carrying of every shuttle and revolution of every spindle, these forces are as truly grounded in God as are the influences that emanate from the Holy Ghost, and that work in us holier purposes and affections of heart. It is from Him that cometh down every good and perfect gift. We are His beneficiaries in everything. It is as much making use of God to unfurl our sail in the draft of the west wind as it is to spread out our unfilled capacities of emotion and action in the draft of a spiritual Pentecost. It is a part of God that He yields Himself in all this rich diversity of ways to piece out man’ s infirmity. There is no way in which we can so well serve Him as by letting Him serve us in our pursuit of holy ends. Religious ideas get their only value from their fitness to serve as conduits for the conveyance of Divine supply. We have all our city under-]aid with water-mains, but we prize them only because there is water in the reservoir that works down through those mains and presses up into our dwellings. Ideas do not strengthen us any more than the water-pipe refreshes or gas-pipe illuminates. And faith is not conceiving of God as an idea, but it is laying hold upon Him as a power and utilizing Him to the ends of holy living and Christian achieving, in just the same strenuous and practical way in which we lay hold on wind-pressure and steam-power, and let them even our resources up to the level of our secular ambition. If now the Church would link all its energies, all its devout desires as confidingly to the spiritual influences of God as the world links its ambitions to His cosmic energies of earth, sea, and air, hardly are there any results possible to be named that might not be achieved for the glory of God and the saving of men before the dawn of the approaching new century. And then one other lesson that follows on directly from this is the position of enlarged accountability and responsibility in which we are set. It is a common thing for us say that we are responsible for our use of the talents we have; that present power is the measure of accountability. It appears from what we have seen in our story and from the general drift of Scripture in fact, that our responsibility lies all the way around beyond the outer edge of our power and talent. The man in our text was responsible not only for his use of what was in him, but for what, as a result of his faith, he was able to have divinely added to him. All the way through Scripture God was continually commanding men to do more than they in themselves had the means to do, exactly as in our verse. One object of the miracle was to show that by faith we acquire a property in power that to our unfaith lies at an utter remove from us. We need some of the old-time audacity--some Pauline and Petrine presumption, which was audacious, not because it was uncalculating, but just because it was so grandly and discerningly calculating, and calculated not only on its own intrinsic force, but on a magnificent increment of working energy from on high. (G. H.Parkhurst, D. D.) The withered hand I. Discuss THAT , OF WHICH THE HAND IS A JUST AND SYMBOL, WHAT IT IS AND WHEREIN IT . II. I SHALL POINT OUT BRIEFLY WHAT CHRIST TO BE DONE, IN ORDER TO ITS REMOVAL. 1. “ There was a man” in the synagogue “ whose right hand was withered.” Here then are three distinct points to be noticed in our comment. (1) The organ was a hand. The hand, as you know, is the organ of touch. The sense of touch, then, brings us into closer connection with matter than any other sense. If I only saw an object, however steadily it might abide before my eyes, I might imagine it was an unreal vision.” “ Again, if I hear a sound, I experience” indeed a sensation; but it is not a sensation which irresistibly forces upon me the conclusion that matter exists. So it is with taste, considered in itself and abstractedly from touch, with which, how ever it is almost always combined. A flavour is a sensation which, if we did not touch the object that excited it, would not irresistibly force upon us the conviction that such an object existed. But touch--the actual handling of any object--does, as I think you will grant, force upon the mind such a conviction. But there are also realities of eternity, permanent and abiding, which will be felt and acknowledged to be realities, when Time and the mortal body have passed away. These realities are the truths of which revelation assures us--the truths, for example (I select a few as specimens out of a great mass) that an all-seeing Eye is about our path and about our bed, and spieth out all our ways--that God is a God who hears and answers prayer--that we must all stand before the judgment-seat of Christ, and receive the things done in the body. Can you be said to grasp, to touch them, to live under the influential conviction of their reality? Weigh now in your mind what must infallibly be the effect upon our character of the doctrine of future judgment and the peril of unrenewed men, if we possessed such an impression of its reality as might fitly be compared to the impressions of things material derived from the sense of touch. His hand was withered. While he had all the other senses complete, he had lost the power of feeling, so far as the chief organ of feeling was concerned. And such is the case with us with regard to the things of the Spirit and the realities of eternity. We can (as it were) see them, hear them, contemplate, gaze upon, attend, give heed to them, but we cannot (by nature) touch them. I feel that herein I am powerless, and I am sure that you must feel the same. My understanding follows along with their evidence, even unto the clearest mental conviction, but an abiding energizing persuasion of their deep reality, this I have not, and, what is more, I am incompetent of myself to produce it; my hand is withered. And until the Lord speaks the word of power, it must remain withered. (2) Our second remark on the case of this poor man was, that not both his hands were withered, but the better and more serviceable of the two. He could handle and feel to a certain extent, but it was only with his left hand. By what has already been said, it will have appeared that the spiritual faculty, corresponding to the bodily faculty of touch, is faith. Faith it is which realizes things eternal. And from the study of it we learn that this principle of faith does operate and energize, to a certain extent, even in those who are unrenewed in the spirit of their minds. And such most assuredly is the case. So far as his mere temporal interests are concerned, unrenewed man is no stranger to the occasional workings--nay, no stranger to the continuous life, of faith. Let us cast our eyes around us, and this will become sufficiently and incontrovertibly evident. Here is a man laying up for his family, or for himself in old age, subjecting himself to much self-denial, imposing upon himself many restrictions--with the view of meeting and providing against the future but foreseen emergency of his own death, or the natural decay of his faculties. And all such provision testifies to the existence of faith, testifies to the existence and operations of a faculty, which realizes things unseen, and what is this but faith? Alas! that when faith approaches the realities of eternity, the solid truths of revelation, and endeavours to realize them, it finds its powers shattered as to their highest and noblest exercise l The man’ s right hand is withered; he knows, indeed, still, what the sensation of touch is, for he can touch bubbles and toys and trifles, but anything weighty, anything of real substance and worth, he is incompetent to handle. He exercises just enough of the faculty to be aware how powerful it would be, if brought to bear on Divine verities, and to desire that it might be so brought to bear. But this is all. He can do no more, until God visit him in power. When our range of eyesight is for the first time enlarged by the telescope, it is no wonder if we run away hastily with the impression that we have gained a now sense. Such, however, is not the case; it is as the renewal of a withered hand, an old sense made competent to gather things. (3) A third point to be noticed in this man’ s state is the mode in which the organ was affected. The man originally had the use of the organ--it was the design of nature that he should use it--but disease had thwarted this design. The organ, however, remained still, though it hung powerless by the man’ s side. It was not cut off--not abolished. Brethren, in so far as man has no power of realizing things eternal, and the Divine verities of which Revelation assures him, he is an imperfect, a fallen being. This lamentable defect is a deviation, a deflection from the original image in which he was created. You know how influentially conversant man’ s body is with matter, with outward nature. I cannot stir, I cannot lift up my eyes, I cannot walk abroad without a continual influx of impressions from matter. Suppose, now, that my spirit were equally susceptible of impressions from the realities of eternity, that in its every motion it was swayed and influenced by these realities, that it received impulses from the invisible at every turn, this surely would be little less than complete renewal of my nature. It would be the recovery of me from my acquired infirmity, the restoration to health and vigour of the withered limb. And, oh 1 brethren, in every soul of man there exists a capability of such a restoration. No one is disqualified for recovery. In all there is the organ; if life can but be infused into it from above, all will be well. II. But I hasten on to point out briefly WHAT CHRIST US TO DO, IN ORDER TO THE REMOVAL OF THIS . We have said that He alone is competent to this removal--that man is utterly helpless and powerless in the work of his restoration. Brethren, God demands exertion and energy on our parts before He will consent to put forth that healing power, which alone can recover us from our soul’ s infirmity. He bids us act as recovered men, ere yet we be recovered, and only in our sincerely striving so to act, will He visit and bless us. And if there be one holy exercise rather than another to which I must give myself, it is that of prayer. The Lord only can restore me. Shall I not apply to Him for restoration? (Dean Goulburn.) Christ knew their thoughts A paper was recently read before the German Asiatic Society of Japan on the magic mirror of Japan. It really possesses no magical quality, but, owing to the peculiarity of its structure, the reflection of the sun from the mirror OH the wall or ceiling reveals the figures or letters written on the back of the mirror. Thus the deepest secrets, the hidden thoughts, the hidden purposes of the heart are brought out by the light God turns upon us, and will turn upon us. What is written out of sight in our spirits shall be written by a sunbeam on the wall. Not to save life is to destroy See yonder poor wretches whose ship has gone down at sea, they have constructed a poor tottering raft, and have been swimming on it for days; their supply of bread and water is exhausted, and they are famishing, they have bound a handkerchief to a pole and hoisted it, and a vessel is within sight. The captain of the ship takes his telescope, looks at the object, and knows that it is a shipwrecked crew. “ Oh!” says he to his men, “ we are in a hurry with our cargo, we cannot stop to look after an unknown object; it may be somebody perishing, and it may not be, but however, it is not our business,” and he keeps on his course. His neglect has murdered those who died on the raft. (C. H.Spurgeon.) Saving a limb To save a limb is a great thing. A poor young man was in a hospital who had crushed his arm at his work. The doctor said there was no help for it; his arm must be cut off or he must die. But the young man could not bear the thought of losing his arm, and said he would rather die first. But the lady at the head of the hospital did all she could to heal the young man’ s arm. She dressed it carefully, she watched night and day, and did whatever she could to keep up the young man’ s strength. And at last the arm was saved. The young man became quite well, and used to call that arm her arm, because she had been the means of saving it. It is a great thing to save a limb, but to save a soul is far greater. (G. T. Coster.) Christ heals without causing suffering My sister got her arm put out of joint. The neighbours of the country place came in, and they tried to put that arm in its place, and they laid hold and pulled mightily; they pulled until she was in anguish, but the bone did not go back to its place. After a while the surgeon came, and with one touch everything was adjusted. So we go out for Christian work, and for the lack of a sympathetic nature, or the lack of this gentleness of Christ, we make the wounds of the world worse, when some kind and gentle spirit comes along after us, and by one touch heals the torn ligaments, and the disturbing bones are rejoined. (Dr. Talmage.) The power of faith in the Saviour’ s word A Sunday-school teacher, when teaching his class on one occasion, left his seat and went round among his scholars with his watch in his hand. Holding it out to the first child, he said, “ I give you that watch.” The boy stared at it and stood still. The teacher then went to the next and repeated--“ I give you that watch.” The boy blushed, but that was all. One by one the teacher repeated the words and the action to each. Some stared, some blushed, some smiled incredulously, but none took the watch. But when he came nearly to the bottom of the class a small boy put out his hand and took the watch which the teacher handed to him. As the latter returned to his seat, the little fellow said gently, “ Then, if you please, sir, the watch is mine?” “ Yes, it is yours.” The elder boys were fairly roused by this time. “ Do you mean to say, sir, that he may keep the watch?” “ Certainly; I gave it to any boy who would have it.” “ Oh, if I had known that,” exclaimed one of them, “ I would have taken it.” “ Did I not tell you I gave it to you?” “ Oh, yes; but I did not believe you were in earnest.” “ So much the worse for you; he believed me, and he has the watch.” Saving faith is as simple as this. It just takes God at His word and trusts Him. (Theodore Monod.) Luke 6:7 And the scribes and Pharisees watched Him The wily watchers of the good I. THEY ARE EVER ON THE OUTLOOK FOB AN BREACH OF SOME LAW. 1. These men are cunning. 2. They are diligent. 3. They are malicious. II. THEIR GREAT DESIRE IS TO SLANDER THOSE WHOM THEY WATCH. III. THEY ARE NOT TO BE ALLOWED TO THE DUTY OF THE GOOD. Lessons: 1. Never be set by Satan to watch the conduct of the good to find defects. 2. Seek to find all the good in men you can. 3. Think of the heavenly watchers of the good. (J. S. Exell, M. A.) Unsabbatical The Pharisees are looking with keen hungry eyes upon One whom they have marked as their victim. To cherish these feelings, to be plotting murder, was not in their judgment at all unsabbatical. Their reverence for the law of God led them, so they believed, into this state of mind. (F. D. Maurice.) Luke 6:12 And continued all night in prayer to God Special protracted prayer If any man of woman born might bare lived without prayer it was surely the Lord Jesus. In some parts of prayer He could take no share, e.g., confession of sin. Then again, He had no need for self-examination each night, and no need to pray to be protected from sin each morning. Yet never was there a man more abundant in prayer. 1. Notice the place which Christ selected for prayer. The solitude of a mountain. Why? (1) To prevent interruption. (2) That He might be able to pray aloud. (3) To avoid ostentation. 2. The time selected. The silent hours of night. To some of us, the night might be most inappropriate and unsuitable; if so, we must by no means select it, but must follow our Lord in the spirit rather than in the letter. 3. Again, our Lord sets us a good example in the matter of extraordinary seasons of devotion in the protracted character of His prayer. He continued all night in prayer. I do not think that we are bound to pray long as a general rule. Force is its standard rather than length. When the whole soul groans itself out in half a dozen sentences there may be more real devotion in them than in hours of mere wire drawing and word spinning. True prayer is the soul’ s mounting up to God, and if it can ride upon a cherub or the wings of the wind so much the better, yet in extraordinary seasons, when the soul is thoroughly wrought up to an eminent intensity of devotion, it is well to continue it for a protracted season. We know not that our Lord was vocally praying all the time, He may have paused to contemplate; He may have surveyed the whole compass of the field over which His prayer should extend, meditating upon the character of His God recapitulating the precious promises, remembering the wants of His people, and thus arming Himself with arguments with which to return to wrestle and prevail. How very few of us have ever spent a whole night in prayer, and yet what boons we might have had for such asking! 4. Jesus has further instructed us in the art of special devotion by the manner of His prayer. Notice, he continued all night in prayer to God--to God. How much of our prayer is not prayer to God at all! That gunner will do no service to the army who takes no aim, but is content so long as he does but fire; that vessel makes an unremunerative voyage which is not steered for a port, but is satisfied to sail hither and thither. We must direct our prayers to God, and maintain soul-fellowship with Him, or our devotion will become a nullity, a name for a thing which is not. 5. Once more, we may learn from Jesus our Lord the occasion for special devotion. At the time when our Master continued all night in prayer He had been upbraided by the Pharisees. He fulfilled the resolve of the man after God’ s own heart. “ Let the proud be ashamed; for they dealt perversely with me without a cause: but I will meditate in Thy precepts.” So David did, and so did David’ s Lord. The best answer to the slanders of the ungodly is to be more constant in communion with God: (C. H.Spurgeon.) Christ an example to us in the choice of seasons for prayer I. OUR LORD WAS WONT TO PRAY WHEN ENGAGED, OR ABOUT TO ENGAGE IN ANY (Luke 3:21). The ordinances of grace must be sanctified to us by prayer, or we shall derive no benefit from them. II. OUR LORD PRAYED WHEN ABOUT TO ENGAGE IN MORE THAN USUALLY AND SERIOUS . AS here before the ordination of the apostles. III. ANOTHER SEASON FOR PRAYER IS A SEASON OF OR HONOUR (Luke 9:28-29). Strange as it may sound, yet, it is true, that they who receive most of the Lord’ s grace and goodness stand the most m need of the Lord’ s grace and goodness; they need grace to use abundant grace and goodness well. Pride of heart is often called into exercise by it; or, if not pride of heart, an undue love of that mercy--giving up the sou! to the enjoyment of it. IV. ANOTHER SEASON FOR SPECIAL PRAYER IS WHEN WE SEE OUR FRIENDS IN DANGER OR SORROW (Luke 22:32; John 17:1-26.). How can there be Christian love if the sorrows and wants of those we love do not excite prayer in us? V. ONE SEASON MORE I MENTION AS A SEASON OF --WHEN TROUBLE IS ON US OR TO COME Luke 22:44). Severe affliction is the season, of all others, for prayer. (Charles Bradley, M. A.) Private devotion Some, from the nature of their employments, or from mental constitution, or habit, do not find that they can often continue, or profitably continue, long at devotion at once; such may supply this, in a good measure, by frequency. Most clearly, however, sufficient time ought to be taken to get the mind fully engaged. When Christ, after labouring the whole day that was past, and having also to labour as soon as day dawned again, spent the whole night in prayer, it is a shame for any of His professing followers, however busy a life they may load, not to make a point of reserving from the cares of the day, or it may be, from the slumbers of the night, as much time as is necessary for morning and evening devotions. Mark, Christians, how the airy trifler gives the night-watch to devour the foolish romance; and how the pale student toils over the midnight lamp; and how, for the sake of this world’ s gain, some rise early and sit up late, and even work whole nights; and how the votaries of dissipating pleasure often spend the whole, or almost the whole, night in its pursuits; and then, though you will by no means think yourselves called on literally to spend whole nights in prayer, yet you will be ashamed and confounded when you think that a moderate tarrying before the throne of grace should ever have been unnecessarily neglected by you, or felt as a burden; and you will desire to give more of your time and of your heart to seasons of communion with your God. (James Foote, M. A.) Jesus praying all night On more than one occasion in the life of our Lord, it is recorded that He continued all night in prayer to God. What need was there that He should sacrifice rest and sleep in this way? He knew that His Father always heard His prayer. He gave us as the model for our prayer a form which can easily be repeated in half a minute. Was His Father unwilling to hear Him? Or was it because He could not bring His mind to the proper prayer-point, and so had to pray for hours, in order to learn how to pray for one moment with real faith? It could not be for either of these reasons. We may suppose then that our Saviour spent that long time in prayer as a delightful employment to Himself. He loved to commune with our God and His God. To Him it was better than meat to do the will of Him that sent Him. So, doubtless, it was more soothing and refreshing than sleep for Him to talk to His Father. Jesus praying and the Father listening; that was a harmony more entrancing than the songs of angels. But no; it was not for enjoyment alone that Jesus prayed all night. His prayers were poured into the deep heart of God as easily as the water pours over the rock into the chasm below. His heart unfolded to His Father as gently as a flower is kissed open by the breeze of a summer-dawn. But Christ had a definite purpose in the night-long prayer. (National Baptist) A night of prayer I. THE TEXT SHOULD US OF THE OF PRAYER. II. THE TEXT SHOULD IMPRESS US WITH THE FOR PRAYER. III. THE TEXT SHOULD US AS TO THE MANNER OF PRAYER. 1. Christians should have their seasons of secret prayer and of retirement from the world. 2. Christians should have special seasons set apart for prayer in view of special work. (D. MacEwen, D. D.) Prayer a preliminary to important steps in life We should give ourselves to special prayer when we are about to make any important changes in life: 1. Leaving home. 2. Entering on a business or profession. (1) That the temptations which cluster about our secular callings may not defile and degrade us. (2) That our secular blessings may be made in the highest sense a blessing to us. 3. Marriage. (B. Wilkinson, F. G. S.) A night of solitary prayer I. THE NIGHT OF NEEDFUL REST FOR PRAYER. II. THE SOUGHT FOR . The crisis at which our Lord had arrived-- 1. Originated the Christian ministry. 2. Began the Christian Church. 3. Involved the selection of His own betrayer. 4. Was a preparation for the full exposition of His doctrines. Sermon on the plain. III. THE CONDUCT OF OUR LORD US TO. 1. Lonely prayer. 2. Preparatory prayer. 3. Self-denying prayer. 4. Leisurely prayer--“ All the night.” 5. Lingering prayer--“ He continued.” 6. Blissful prayer--All night with God. (W. H. Jellie.) Here is the great secret of much that we see in the active life of Jesus. 1. Secret prayer. 2. Long prayer. Prayer calms and strengthens the soul. After prayer a man descends upon his work rather than rises strainingly towards it. (J. Parker, D. D.) JESUS PRAYING. He sought the mountain and the loneliest height, For He would meet His Father all alone, And there, with many a tsar and many a groan, He strove in prayer throughout the long, long night. Why need He pray, who held by filial right, O’ er all the world alike of thought and sense, The fulness of His Sire’ s omnipotence? Why crave in prayer what was His own by might? Vain is the question--Christ was man in need, And being man, His duty was to pray. The Son of God confess’ d the human need, And doubtless ask’ d a blessing every day, Nor ceases yet for sinful man to plead, Nor will, till heaven and earth shall pass away. (Hartley Coleridge.) All night in prayer There are three classes of minds which are in danger of making too long prayers. 1. One is the loose, unconcentrative, who cumber thoughts with many words, and make vain, i.e., empty, repetitions of the same idea. 2. Another consists of those who, mistaking the nature of importunity, think that the more they say, the more they shall get--not seeing that in so doing they are virtually making their prayers a purchase-price, which they present in payment of what they ask--and forgetting, or not considering, the true character of prayer--that it is only the opening channel in a man’ s mind, through which God may pour out into that mind His preordained and ready gifts. 3. And the third are they who, with a superstitious feeling, think that God will be angry if their prayers do not go to a certain extent, and so, in their intercourse with God, they stretch their prayers to a degree either inconsistent with their other duties, or incompatible with their own health. They do not know that oftentimes the very best prayer we ever pray, is not to pray, but to cast ourselves simply on the love of God. The general rule is, pray according to the condition of your heart. Do not let the prayer strain the thoughts, but let the thoughts determine and regulate the prayer. Pray as you feel drawn in prayer--or, in other words, as the Spirit of God in you leads and dictates. Nevertheless, the holler a man is, and the nearer heaven--the more, and the more continuously that man will be able to commune with God. (J. Vaughan, M. A.) All night in prayer The Rev. John Welch, of Ayr, was accustomed to retire many nights to his church and spend the whole night in prayer--praying with an audible and sometimes with a loud voice. His wife, fearing he would catch cold, went one night to his closet where he had been long at prayer, and heard him say, “ Lord, wilt Thou not grant me Scotland? “ and, after a pause, “ Enough, Lord, enough.” Once he got such nearness to the Lord in prayer that he exclaimed, “ Hold Thy hand, Lord; remember Thy servant is a clay vessel, and can hold no more.” Luke 6:13-16 And when it was day, He called unto Him His disciples: and of them He chose twelve, whom also He named apostles The call of the twelve Up till this time it can hardly be said that the kingdom of God was set up. At the hour of His widest popularity, yet at a crisis of gathering peril, in face of the people and the adversary together, He virtually sets up His kingdom. It was a moment of decision. It was a policy of safety, because a policy of boldness. It was an act of calm, foresighted courage, full in its simplicity of the moral sublime. Let us gather up and realize the circumstances. 1. Our Lord’ s night-long preparation for this step is worthy of devout attention. The veil of loneliness and of night is on that prayer. But may we not humbly venture so far at least into that night’ s solitary and sacred communings? Courage to go forward; wisdom to choose those whom His Father had chosen, and had given Him for that end. Can the Son of God be true brother to us all if at such an hour He needs not to ask these things for Himself? And for them, that they might rise to the height of their high calling. And for us, and for all the long line of Christian generations to be built up on these twelve foundations I May we not so read that long-night prayer of consecration and of intercession by our Priest and King? A lone dark watch on the cool hill-top, with the stars of God Looking calmly down on Him, and the great lake spread silently out below, as far from earthly care and sin, as near the heavens in their pureness, as may be--behold the oratory of the Son of Man. 2. When morning broke over the dark wall of the opposite shore, it showed Him pale from sleeplessness, but serene from prayer. Beneath Him, on the hill-side, was the gathering of His disciples. Man by man, He called whom He would by name; and man by man, the elect twelve left their wondering companions to take their places by the Master’ s side, to be for ever now chief councillors in His kingdom, the next in honour and the next in danger. Most of them have been heard of already in the narrative: Simon the Rock and his lesser brother, with the two sons of Thunder, whom He had called together from their fishing-nets to be four partners in the ministry; Philip of Bethsaida and his friend Nathanael, as together a year ago they found the Christ; two of the Lord’ s own brothers and the Capernaum publican just called two days before; and one Simon the Zealot and Thomas; and, last and strangest of all, that one, unsuspected as yet by any save Jesus, who was “ a devil.” “ The glorious company of the apostles,” the Church has called them in her hymn; but had we seen them that dawn, as they clustered round their King, we must have thought them a strange, unlikely, inglorious band. Twelve Galilean workmen, with average ability and the prejudices of their class; attracted indeed by the superiority of this Man, and yielding to His influence, but neither comprehending who He was, nor what He was to do; ignorant, rude, strong-passioned, ill-assorted: by these Twelve to lay the foundations of the Church of God so broad and deep that on them might be built the hopes of all mankind and the destinies of the saved, regenerated earth! Did ever means seem in more foolish disproportion to the end? Yet He did it. These foolish things (1 Corinthians 1:27) God chose to confound the wise. The might of Jesus’ spirit turned them to apostles; and to that dozen workmen on the hill all Christendom in all time has looked back as to the planters and fathers of its faith. It is always the same. For the humbling of human pride, and the practice of Christian faith, God works salvation for men by means which men despise. Look at that morning’ ! scene as the act of God our Saviour, and it will read you this lesson, that by using earthen vessels, soiled even and chipped, He would magnify the treasure of His strength, which groweth mighty to save through very weakness. Look at it as a great venture of the Son of Man launching His Father’ s cause upon the world, and it is the grandest example of faith, setting itself to achieve the impossible by the help of the Almighty. (J. O. Dykes, D. D.) The testimony of the apostles The institution of the apostleship opens a new and solemn era in the ministry of Jesus Christ, and St. Luke tells us that our Lord prepared for it in solitude, meditation, and prayer. A few days after one of those frequent meetings with the Pharisees, which were as the painful stages of the weary pilgrimage which was to end in the cross, Jesus left His disciples; He went up a mountain, and there, beneath the starry sky of the East, during the long and silent hours of night, He communed with God. Then, when the day came, He selected twelve men from among those who followed Him, and made them His apostles. He chose twelve, to indicate that these men were about to form upon earth the true people of God, the spiritual Israel of which the first was but a type. He chose them, poor, ignorant, weak, in order to show that the power by which they were to conquer the world came not of them, but descended from above. We shall study together the aims of this institution. Why did Jesus institute apostles, and how did they fulfil the mission with which they had been entrusted? I. Who says apostle, says . The twelve were to be the first missionaries of the gospel. Ignorant, poor, and without the least personal prestige, they dared to attempt the conquest of the world with no other arms than the Word of which they were the bearers. II. Howbeit, this role of messengers of God, which the apostles fulfilled with so much power and fidelity, does not constitute the whole of their original and unique ministry. If we study the question closely, we shall see that the apostles are above all, and in a special sense, the of Jesus Christ: the personal, ocular, and duly accredited witnesses of the person, acts, and teaching of their Master. III. THE OF THE IS NOW OBVIOUS. Let us go one step further, and consider whether this testimony is really worthy of belief. 1. They were sincere. But-- 2. A man may be mistaken though sincere. Were they? Well, in the name of my reason, I rise up against this revolting hypothesis, a thousand times more miraculous than the miracles it will not own; it is in the name of my reason that I assert that the delusion of a few Galileans cannot have produced moral harmony, that folly cannot have given birth to the loftiest reason, that hallucination cannot have invented Jesus of Nazareth! IV. But is there testimony sufficient for the Church? Evidently, no. It has pleased God that the eternal Christ, as well as the historical Christ, should have His witness from the very first days of the Church, and that is the profound signification of St. Paul’ s apostleship. V. Will our Protestant Churches continue to be apostolical Churches? Let this be our highest ambition--to be in our turn the witnesses of Christ. (E. Bersier, D. D.) The King choosing His ministers 1. The words “ when it was day,” recall the preceding verse. When the work most expressed His authority, He was still renouncing all independence. Every prayer is a renunciation of independence. Every prayer says, “ We can do nothing without Thee.” As His prayers were the essentially true prayers, they must have had this meaning perfectly, without any reservation. 2. That night in which He was not alone, because the Father was with Him, prepared Him to come down amidst the disciples whom He had gathered about Him. He had gathered them; they knew it. Each of them had heard a voice, more or less distinctly, bidding him come. Each had yielded to One who, he felt, had a right to command him. And now He takes twelve out of their number. He calls them apostles. They are to be sent forth. 3. Clearly they were distinguished from the other members of the little flock. What had caused the difference? Bid He merely like them better that the rest? Had they merited some greater honour at His hands? Had He discovered some peculiar capacity in them? All such questions would occur to these poor fishermen; would occur to them not less because they were poor fishermen. 4. The number which our Lord fixed upon for His apostles of course reminded them of the tribes into which their nation was divided. (F. D. Maurice.) Disciples and apostles Disciple means learner. Apostle means missionary. When, then, Jesus turned His disciples into apostles you see what an event it was! 1. It was really the flowering of that gospel which He had been pouring into them through all their discipleship. The plant fills itself with the richness of the earth. No noise is made. The whole transaction lies between the plant and the rich earth that feeds it through its open roots. All is silent, private, restricted. But some day the world looks, and lo! the process has burst open. Upon the long-fed plant is burning a gorgeous flower for the world to see. The long supply of nourishment has opened into a great display of glory. The earth has sent its richness through the plant to enlighten and to bless the world. The disciple has turned to an apostle. 2. Notice, when Jesus took this great step forward He did not leave behind His old life with His disciples. He chose out of the number of His disciples twelve, whom also He named apostles. They were to be disciples still. They did not cease to be learners when He made them missionaries. The plant does not cease to feed itself out of the ground when it opens its glorious flowers for the world to see. All the more it needs supply, now that it has fulfilled its life. And so this great epoch in the Christian Church was an addition not a substitution. 3. And notice yet another thing. It is out of the very heart of the discipleship that the apostleship proceeds. It is the very best, the choicest, as we say, of the disciples, that are chosen to be apostles. It is they who have listened to Him longest, and most intelligently, and most lovingly. Always it is the best of the inward life of anything, that which lies the closest to its heart, and is the fullest of its spirit, which flowers into the outward impulse which comes to complete its life. (Phillips Brooks, D. D.) The twelve apostles They were not great men, strong men, learned men, but they must have had qualifications of some kind for the position to which they were called. What were these qualifications? 1. They were good men. 2. They were men of sensitive mind, ready for Divine calls, open to Divine impulses. 3. They were men of simple, child-like heart--men who had great capacity for faith. (J. Foster.) The witness of the apostles 1. As their name implies, the apostles were men sent to do a given work. They did what they did because they were sent. 2. They were men with a definite work in hand; they had to witness to the world what their Master had been, and had done, and had suffered while they were with Him. 3. This witness they bore in three ways:-- (1) By their words--they preached Christ; (2) By their works--they built up the Church of Christ; (3) By their sufferings--they died for Christ. And if fourthly, it be asked why we should trust the witness of these apostles, I answer that their witness, as recorded by themselves or their reporters in the gospels, shows that they were at once sincere and accurate. (Canon Liddon.) Simon, whom He also named Peter, and Andrew his brother, James and John Brotherhood in Christ Two pairs of brothers. Significant and suggestive that twice in the small number of the twelve it should have happened that the natural tie of brotherhood was emphasized by a common call to the new life, and a common work in the same service. The world is covered with a network of brotherhoods. This network of brotherhoods, like every evident fact of life, sets us to ask three questions-- 1. What is its immediate cause? The cause of this interwoven network, this reticulation of life with life, is the whole system of nature by which each human being takes its start from another human being, and is kept, for a time at least, in associations of company and dependence with the being from whom it sprang, and with the other beings who have the same source with it. 2. What is the direct result of such relationships? They are full of mutual helpfulness and pleasure. 3. What is the final reason of this relationship? Here the answer is not so entirely clear and certain. But as we watch and think it seems to me that we are at least led to wonder whether one final cause or purpose of this interlacing of life with life, by natural and indissoluble kinships, may not be just this, the providing, as it were, of open communications, of a system of shafts or channels piercing this human mass in every direction, crossing and recrossing one another, through which those higher influences, which ought to reach every corner and every individual of the great structural humanity, may be freely carried everywhere, and no most remote or insignificant atom of the mass be totally and necessarily untouched. And if we look at Christ’ s larger method, at the way in which His work went on after it had gone beyond that earliest stage among his personal kindred, the same thing still appears. His truth ran abroad in the channels which were made by the natural relations of mankind. (Phillips Brooks, D. D.) Reflections upon the list of apostles In the service of Christ there is room and work for all sorts and conditions of men--for men of genius, for men of thought, for men of action. 1. Are we impetuous, adventurous, original? Christ has chosen and called US. If we are true to His call, we shall become steadfast as a rock, and, while we blunder on our way, we shall announce the coming and presence of the Lord. 2. Are we of those in whom the pale cast of thought is all sicklied o’ er with doubt? Christ has chosen and called us. If we are true to His call, we shall see that we may believe, until we can believe even greater things than we can see. 3. Are we practical men, conversant with affairs, capable of handling them to purpose Christ has chosen and called us, that we may be with Him, and preach His gospel, that we may bear witness to Him by a life which reflects His own; and if we are true to His call, we shall also be with Him where He now is, seeing and sharing His everlasting and indisturbable peace. (T. T. Lynch.) Our Lord’ s choice of apostles I. WHY DID OUR LORD CHOOSE ? 1. TO spread the Christian religion after His ascension. 2. To record and transmit to future ages the most important facts concerning Jesus--His miracles, doctrines, precepts. II. WHY WERE TWELVE THOUGHT ? 1. AS the apostles were to be witnesses to the world of facts of the highest importance, it was proper that they should not be too few. The consistent evidence of twelve men must be unexceptionable. Their thorough agreement as to the same facts, doctrines, and precepts, is remarkable and convincing, especially when we consider that after Christ’ s ascension they were so widely scattered as to shut off all possibility of collusion. 2. They were destined to propagate the gospel among many nations. They were not too numerous, in proportion to the duties assigned them. 3. If it be farther demanded why twelve were fixed on, rather than eleven, or thirteen, we can give no other answer, but that this was probably done to gratify the Jews, who might prefer twelve, as corresponding to the number of their tribes. III. WHY DID JESUS GIVE A TO THOSE WHOM HE ? (J. Thomson, D. D.) The apostolic band The choice of apostles is one of the most brilliant proofs of the adorable wisdom of the Saviour. 1. He chooses simple-minded, yet already measurably-prepared men. To some has the Baptist’ s instruction, to others the toilsome fisherman-life, or the active publican’ s office, been a more suitable school of preparation than a scientific preparation by Hillel or Shammal. 2. Few, yet very diverse, men. He works intensively before He begins to labour extensively on the kingdom of God that is to be founded. He will rather perfect some than only partially train many. Accordingly He trains them with and also by means of one another, and shows how fully His gospel accommodates itself to every point of human development, and how it is perfectly calculated for every one’ s individual necessities. 3. Some prominent to go with several less noticeable men whom He gathers together into a little company. So far as we can see, the beautiful figurative language used in 1 Corinthians 12:14-27, is also completely applicable to the organism of the apostolic circle. Had all been as distinguished as a Peter, a John, and as afterwards a Paul, the unity would have suffered by the diversity, and the one light would have been broken into altogether too many colours. (J. J. Van Oosterzee, D. D.) The catalogue of the apostles 1. A source of knowledge. This catalogue fills (1) a brilliant chapter in the history of mankind; (2) a sublime chapter in the history of Jesus; (3) a noteworthy chapter in the history of the Divine government. 2. A support of faith. It witnesses of (1) the truth; (2) the sublimity; (3) the divinity; (4)the imperishableness--of the gospel. 3. A school of life. It displays the image of the (1) condition, (2) intended work, and (3) prerogatives--of the Christian Church even in our days. Why was Judas Iscariot selected as an apostle A circumstance calculated to excite our wonder; that He who was perfect Himself, and who came into the world to establish a religion of purity and holiness, should choose for one of His constant attendants a man; who was unprincipled and incorrigible. Mistake on Christ’ s part was impossible John 2:25). 1. The testimony of Judas in favour of the purity of Jesus, renders the evidence complete. Judas, after committing his crime, was placed in that situation in which every fault, every accusation, every blemish, that he could bring against his Master, would have a tendency to palliate, if not to vindicate himself. 2. Judas testifies to all ages that the leading passions may be so bad, and the habits so inveterate, that the very best possible opportunities of improvement cannot be of any advantage. 3. The selection of Judas has furnished an excellent opportunity of teaching Christians another important truth: That if the means of instruction and improvement which Jesus Christ employed be neglected or perverted, no other means will be bestowed. (J. Thomson, D. D.) The traitor among the twelve It is natural to ask, Why was there a traitor among the twelve? and what good purpose was served by this development of iniquity, which He who rules over all was thus pleased to permit. Now, here was fulfilled, in the most striking way, the declaration that the wrath of men shall praise God, and the remainder of wrath He shall restrain. I. THE HISTORY OF JUDAS A PROOF OF THE TRUTH OF . 1. It is a proof of this, as it is a fulfilment of prophecy (Psalms 69:1-36; Psalms 109:1-31.; Zechariah 11:12, &c.). 2. It brings forward the testimony of an enemy, and a perfectly well-informed enemy, in support of Christianity. II. This history teaches us that THE OF AMONG OF , SHOULD NOT US AGAINST ITSELF. If even among the apostles such a case occurred, it need not greatly surprise us that something similar should take place in the Church from time to time. III. A MOST AWFUL WARNING TO ALL WHO PROFESS TO BE THE OF CHRIST, TO BEWARE LEST THEY FALL IN A SIMILAR WAY. (James Foote, M. A.) Zealots Simon called Zelotes has apparently two surnames in Scripture, but they mean the same thing. He is called Simon the Cananite in Hebrew--not because he was an inhabitant of Cana or a Canaanite, but that word, when interpreted, means precisely the same as the Greek word Zelotes. He was called Simon the Zealot. I suppose that he had this name before his conversion. It is thought by some that he was a member of that very fierce and fanatical political sect of the Jews, called the Zealots, by whose means the siege of Jerusalem was rendered so much more bloody than it would have been; but this does not seem very probable, for the sect of the Zealots had scarcely arisen in the time of the Saviour, and therefore we are inclined to think with Hackett in his exposition of the Acts, that he was so called because of his zealous attachment to his religion as a Jew, for there were some in the different classes of Jewish society who were so excessively full of zeal as to gain the name of Zealot. But it strikes me that he must have been a zealot after conversion too, for within that sacred circle which surrounded our Lord, every word was truth, and the Master would not have allowed any of His disciples to have worn a surname which was not expressive or truthful. May we so act and live that we might truthfully wear the title of Christian Zealots. I. LET US THE ZEALOT. 1. Zeal frequently expends itself on other things than religion. Politics. Science. Business. 2. The unconverted zealot, should his zeal expend itself upon religion, is generally exceedingly boastful. Jehu. 3. The unconverted zealot is generally an ignorant zealot (Romans 10:2). Probably there is more zeal to be found among the professors of false doctrine than among the followers of the truth. 4. The zeal of unconverted men is generally partial. It may be a zeal for something good, but not for everything that is good. Zealous he is for sect and party when the whole that the sect may hold is not of more value than the gnat, and yet great fundamental doctrinal truths are forgotten, as though they were of no value whatever. Brethren, may we be earnest men of God, but I pray that we may be zealous for all truth. 5. The zealot, again, while unconverted, is generally (if it be in his power) a persecutor. “ concerning zeal, persecuting the Church.” 6. His aims are often sinister. Let us beware of a zeal for lifting up ourselves. Zeal must be pure--fire off the altar. 7. The unconverted zealot is generally but temporary in his zeal. “ When he was sick,” says an old legend, “ the devil a monk would be” ; but when he got well--you know how he gave up his fine intentions. II. THE TRUE ZEALOT. 1. How his zeal manifests itself. (1) In his private dealings with God. He is zealous in repentance--his tears come welling up from his heart. Sin is not a little distasteful, but is exceedingly disgusting to him. His faith, too, is not merely a trembling recognition of truth, but it is a firm grasp of everlasting verities. The Christian zealot, when he is alone with God, throws his whole heart into His service. (2) In his prayers. He prays like a man who means it, and will take no denial. (3) In his jealousy for God’ s honour. Elijah. Phineas. Up with truth, and down with falsehood. A man is no zealot and cannot be called Zelotes, unless he has a holy jealousy for the honour of Christ, and His crown, and His truth. (4) In the abundance of his labours and gifts. Zeal labours for Christ. For a picture of zeal take St. Paul. How he compasses sea and land! Storms cannot stay him, mountains cannot impede his progress. O that we could live while we live; but our existence--that is all we can call it--our existence, what a poor thing it is! We run like shallow streams: we have not force enough to turn the mill of industry, and have not depth enough to bear the vessel of progress, and have not flood enough to cheer the meads of poverty. We are dry too often in the summer’ s drought, and we are frozen in the winter’ s cold. (5) By the anguish which his soul feels when his labours for Christ are not successful. Zeal must move not merely the tongue, or the foot, or the hand, but also the heart. (6) In a vehement love and attachment to the person of the Saviour. Nothing can make a man zealous like attachment to a person. When Napoleon’ s soldiers won so many victories, and especially in the earlier part of his career, when against such deadly odds they earned such splendid triumphs, what was the reason? The “ little corporal” was there, and whenever it came to a desperate rush he was the first to cross the bridge or charge the enemy, always exposing himself to danger; and their attachment to his person, and their love and admiration of his valour, made them follow at his heels, swift to victory. Have not we heard of those who threw themselves in the way of the cannon ball to save his life? There could not have been such triumphs if there had not been a man who knew how to govern men by attaching them to himself. And oh, the person of the Saviour! What attachment can there be equal to that which binds a Christian to his Lord? 2. This brings us now, in the next place, to think awhile of how this zeal is maintained and kept up. To keep up a good fire of zeal we must have much fuel, and the fire will partake of the quality of the fuel, so that it must be good firing to make holy zeal. (1) If I understand aright, zeal is the fruit of the Holy Spirit, and genuine zeal draws its life and vital force from the continued operations of the Holy Ghost in the soul. (2) Next to this, zeal feeds upon truths like these. It is stirred by the ruin of sinners. The very sight of sinners makes a right-hearted man zealous for their conversion. The wants of the age are enough, if a man has any sense of what eternal realities are, to make us zealous to the highest pitch. (3) And next, Christian zeal feeds itself upon a sense of gratitude. Look to the hole of the pit whence ye were digged, and you will see abundant reason why you should spend and be spent for God. (4) Zeal for God feeds itself upon the thought of the eternal future. It feels that all it can do is little compared with what is wanting, and that time is short compared with the work to be done, and therefore it devotes all that it has to the cause of its Lord. (5) Above all, zeal for God feeds itself on love to Christ. Lady Powerscourt says somewhere, “ If we want to be thoroughly hot with zeal, we must go near to the furnace of the Saviour’ s love.” (6) Above all, Christian zeal must be sustained by a vigorous inner life. 3. I have to close by commending zeal. In commending zeal, let me say, methinks it should commend itself to every Christian man without a word of mine, but if you must have it, remember that God Himself is zealous. “ The zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this.” Christ was zealous. We read of Him that the zeal of God’ s house had eaten Him up, and when He took the scourge of small cords and purged the Temple, John tells us that it was written of Him, “ The zeal of Thine house hath eaten Me up.” A prophet tells us that He was clothed with zeal as with a cloak. He had not zeal over a part of Him, but was clothed with it as with some great cloak covering Him from head to foot. Christ was all zeal. (C. H. Spurgeon.) Luke 6:17; Luke 6:19 And the whole multitude sought to touch Him: for there went virtue out of Him, and healed them all Christ the fountain of health The subject will be found to involve two considerations; what is the virtue which proceeds out of Christ? by what means is it appropriated to men? I. We begin by observing, that in addition to the superiority of our Lord’ s miracles in point of number over those of every other, there is also a great distinction in the manner of their achievement. The apostles, for example, nowhere pretend to have accomplished the prodigies which they performed by their own ability. The words of healing are, “ In the Name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk.” The distinction to which we advert is very obvious; the miracles of the apostles were wrought by an agency not their own; their touch, their voice, their shadow, had no inherent power to do cures; from Christ’ s own person went out immediately the virtue which healed them all. The difference is remarkable. It is as though the indwelling Godhead did so impregnate the human flesh with life-giving energy, that no sickness or weakness could remain after contact with that immaculate frame. There resided in that sinless body a fulness of grace. It was, as it were, a spring of life to the bodies of others; the virtue dwelt in it, and was drawn forth by an act of faith in the diseased. Such we conceive to be the original meaning of the text; and thus understood, it will be found accurately to describe also the influence of Christ upon ourselves. The fact is not only that God chose to regard the offspring of Adam as iniquitous, but that they really were so. Thus, we repeat, it is not sufficient to consider that Adam’ s fault placed his descendants in the position of criminals; it did really and actually render them corrupt. And what has Christ done for the vast family of man thus contemplated? We reply, in the words of the text, virtue goeth out of His body to heal them all. The Redeemer, we are told, took not on Him the nature of angels, but of men. Christ Jesus, the Second Adam, is set forth to be the Restorer of human nature. He removes the inherent disease, He destroys the natural defilement. From Him a new period commences; to all His disciples He is the new Stock, the Root, the Stem. II. It remains that we very briefly allude to THE MEANS BY WHICH THE HEALING VIRTUE WHICH RESIDES IN CHRIST, IS TO MAN. Now as respects the communication of the healing virtue of Christ’ s Manhood to our souls, we hesitate not to place it in the two Sacraments of Baptism and the Lord’ s Supper. These are between us and the Second Adam, what fleshly procreation is between us and the first Adam. There is healing virtue in the Second Adam; we obtain a share of it through our union with Him by His appointed ordinances. By the Sacraments we are spiritually connected with Christ, as closely as we are carnally connected with Adam and Eve. “ We are members of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones.” In Him was life, but how was this life to be communicated to others? In Him was purity, but how should it be transmitted? He was the Being set forth to make all things new, but how was a connection to be wrought out between Him and us t Indeed not by any carnal alliance, but in a new and living way. Through these Sacraments, duly administered and faithfully taken, virtue goeth out of Him for the healing of the nations. And in connection with the present subject of discourse, it seems appropriate to remind you, in conclusion, that whilst our Lord’ s Incarnation as a whole is full of healing virtue for all generations of believers, so are the several events of His life, taken separately, imbued with a similar efficiency. We have been very much struck with that most solemn part of the Litany, in which we call upon God the Son to deliver us, making mention of the various pains which He endured. “ By Thy holy Nativity and Circumcision; by Thy Baptism, Fasting, and Temptation” ; and then, in deeper and more thrilling strain, “ By Thine Agony and Bloody Sweat; by Thy Cross and PaSsion; by Thy precious Death and Burial, Good Lord, deliver us.” It is probable that by many the passage is only regarded as an adjuration to the Second Person to be merciful unto us, by the strong plea of what He has done and suffered. The Church reminds her Lord, if we may so speak, of His own sorrows, and by the thought of them claims His grace. But is this all? We think not. We believe there is implied in the awful supplication the truth, that every one of the Redeemer’ s acts, one by one recalled, is full of its own peculiar virtue. Thus in praying to be saved by His Nativity, we pray that we may be born anew unto holiness. The Collects for the days on which these single acts of Christ are commemorated, teach us what appropriate power belongs to each act. Turn to the Collect of the Circumcision. We find the mention of Christ’ s Circumcision connected with the true circumcision of our spirits, the mortification, i.e., of our hearts and all our members. The Fasting and Temptation of the Saviour, as brought before us on the First Sunday in Lent, are to enable us to subdue our flesh to the Spirit. His Cross and Passion are to convey to us the grace of patience like His own. His Burial is to qualify us to be buried with Him, that through the grave and gate of death we may pass to our joyful resurrection. And thus are we to regard everything that He did; every act of His is as it were sacramental in its nature, associated with its own appropriate grace. You will at once see what a stupendous importance is thus attached to the least action of Christ. Here, then, is the Fountain of our life; there is no sin so great that Christ cannot cleanse; no weakness so inherent which He will not strengthen. Neither time nor distance can set bounds to those health-giving streams which flow from Him. (Bishop Woodford.) Healing for the soul I. Then, as it respects the soul of man, THERE IS A DISEASE WHICH IS COMMON TO US ALL; AND THE ANALOGY BETWEEN THE SOUL AND BODY MUST HERE BE TO THE MOST . In the great majority of instances, you need not inform even a child of the existence in any individual of bodily disease; for, however incompetent he may be to investigate the cause, he is perfectly familiar with the effect. Sometimes the morbid affection disfigures the countenance, sometimes it distorts the shape, sometimes it impedes the motion and paralyzes the limbs; in one it affects the utterance, in another it obscures the faculties of the mind, in a third it is betrayed at intervals by convulsive starts and spasms of sudden agony, in a fourth it antedates the halting step and wasted form of age ere yet the noon of life is past, and causes its victim to walk abroad amongst the living, impressed in their sight with the ghastly lineaments of death. And are not the effects, or symptoms, of the spiritual disease precisely similar? But here, again, an important feature in the analogy is presented to us, by the expedients which men employ, whether of business, or pleasure, or intemperance, or excess, in order to stifle thought. These things act upon the soul like opiates on the body; they mitigate the present suffering, but they aggravate the symptoms of the disease; they obscure the perception of danger, but they enhance and accelerate the danger itself. Under this head, moreover, we may learn another lesson, namely, that a knowledge of the disease is a prerequisite to the seeking of the remedy. They who brought to the Lord Jesus all that were diseased, laid the sick before Him in the streets; but neither would the sick have consented to be brought, had they not been conscious of the malady within, nor would their friends and kindred have brought them, had they not discerned the symptoms of it, as developed and exhibited without. II. Such, then, being the disease, WHAT, IN THE NEXT PLACE, IS THE REMEDY? NOW, there can be no reasonable doubt, that on the occasion to which my text refers, and on other similar occasions, many sad effects of human infirmity and suffering, not a few of them incurable, and acknowledged to be so, by all human skill, because inaccessible to all known remedies, were exhibited in the presence of the Lord. We must set ourselves in right earnest to apply to the throbbing festering conscience the balm of Christ’ s atonement, and to embody in the life the features of Christ’ s example. III. Since, then, THE REMEDY FOR OUR DISEASE IS JUST AS AS THE EXTENT OF IT--for “ all that believe are justified freely” by God’ s grace--and since it is also unfailing in its efficacy, for “ the blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin” ; the narrative of the context is to teach us, next, the process of its application, In every ease they did what they could; and we should at least learn, from their example, this lesson, that what we can do we are not to leave undone. IV. it only remains, then, that we complete our view of this most instructive and interesting analogy, by looking at THE RESULT OF THE OF SUCH A REMEDY--that remedy being the blood of Christ applied by the prayer of faith, or, if you will, the prayer against unbelief. What this will be, we may gather from the narration of either evangelist, which speaks of recovery at once universal and complete. “ As many as touched Him,” said St. Matthew, or rather, as the margin reads, “ as many as touched it” (that is, the hem of the garment), “ were made whole” ; and as you have heard by St. Luke in the text, though there was a multitude around Him, “ there went virtue out of Him, and healed them all.” If the sick had not come, or had not been brought to Jesus, they would not have been healed; many blind were there in Israel, many lame, many palsied, many lepers, many demoniacs, many lunatics, who did not come, and therefore were not healed. But the amount of our individual responsibility depends upon the amount of our individual knowledge and of our individual opportunity; and if we know that all were healed who did come, or who were even brought, in faith, what greater encouragement and inducement can we desire for ourselves? (T. Dale M. A.) Christ healing bodily disease emblematic of the Church’ s functions “The whole multitude sought to touch Him; for there went virtue out of Him, and healed them all.” 1. Familiar as this statement must be to us, there is something in it truly wonderful and most worthy of admiration--I mean, that there is in the gospel this universal power to adapt itself to man. It constitutes perhaps its most wonderful and distinctive feature. We shall search in vain in any other system for its resemblance. In many systems, more or less of human invention--in systems of philosophy, so called--we may find attempts to remedy some of the evils under which man labours; one applies itself to one kind, and another to another; but often the remedy for one is fatal to the other. But the gospel is a universal remedy. In a word, there is truly no form of evil which the gospel of Christ does not meet and rectify; no want which it does not supply; no real good which it does not impart. 2. And scarcely less remarkable is it to observe how it takes hold of all the natural forms of character, and turns them to due account; how it enlists on the side of what is good even the natural temperaments of men. The burning zeal of a Peter, the restless energy of a Paul, the fervour and impetuosity of a John and James--it takes them all, sanctifies them all, concentrates them all on one holy end. These, and such like human dispositions, left to their natural courses, would have branched off into various forms of evil. But lo! they are touched by God’ s Spirit from above, the gospel pours down upon them its sanctifying influences, turns the dross into gold, and makes what would have been natural imperfections (to say the least) to become noble features in the Christian character. Such, my brethren, is the power of the gospel; such is the virtue which goes out of Christ to heal. For if we inquire how the gospel possesses and exerts this influence, the reply assuredly is--By making Christ known to us. And here, too, the incident before us is strikingly emblematic. The thronging multitude were healed by touching Christ; and to us the gospel is made “ the power of God unto salvation,” simply by bringing us, so to speak, into spiritual contact with Christ. The power of His blessed sacraments consists in this: holy baptism uniting us to Christ and giving us spiritual life in Him--the holy Eucharist sustaining that life through the communion of thebody and blood of Christ. And so the Word of the gospel is effectual to its appointed end by testifying of Christ. He is the centre and the source of all its blessings. 3. But now let us carry this emblematic style of our blessed Lord’ s teaching one step further. If we study the character of His ministry, there is no feature in it which we shall find more prominent than this: that it bore on its very front the aspect of mercy, and this not only in respect to the salvation of the soul from sin and misery, but also in a compassionate care for the bodily necessities of men. And now, my brethren, let us consider the application of this matter to ourselves. It is the high and holy prerogative of the Church to be on earth the representative of her Divine Master. Her highest and most glorious function--nay, we may say her only function--is to carry on and perfect the work of mercy which He began; ofspreading the knowledge of salvation through the world, and of blessing all who come within the influence of the Church’ s sphere. We all know, from the history of the Acts of the Apostles, how well the early Church sustained this blessed office; not only by working miracles while that power lasted, but also by her self-denying charity--by a common fund, abundantly supported by the liberality of the first Christians, for the relief of every want and of every woe, to which our fallen human nature is subject. Wherever the Church was planted, there a fountain of mercy and goodness was opened; there a tree was planted, “ whose leaves were for the healing of the nations.” It brought, indeed, richer mercies than the natural eye could see or the natural ear could hear--salvation for the immortal soul, deliverance from the bands of sin and death, and “ the glorious liberty of the children of God” ; but in its zeal for the salvation of the immortal soul, it did not overlook the transient sufferings of the perishing body. It did not wait until the blind eyes and the dull hearts could perceive and appreciate those higher blessings which it had to bestow; but it accompanied the Word of grace with acts of more ostensible mercy. (W. Dodsworth, M. A.) Christ’ s healing power Miracles, according to the records of Christ’ s life, were of most frequent occurrence, not occasional. They were the simple details of His life, coming as naturally from Him as acts of kindness from the benevolent heart or gifts from the charitable. It was thus He expressed His sympathy with the poor and suffering. In this way Christ showed His message of mercy to man, and revealed the nature of that redemption of the race which He began by living and dying for the world. In no other way could He so deeply have impressed the world with the distinctive character of His redeeming power. I. CHRIST’ S POWER TO HEAL THE SOUL IS IN HIMSELF ALONE. It is not easy to understand this--that Christ, and Christ alone, is the source of all healing. We can understand that a doctrine received by the mind shall restore the mind to health; or that the heart may find rest in some object on which it shall place its affections; but that it is only from Christ that this healing power comes--why, it is hard to conceive. Men cannot apprehend the truth of God, even as Jesus reveals it, without Divine aid. The reason is strong, the will vigorous, the understanding clear; but there is need of the power of God’ s Spirit, and that can only come through our personal touching of Christ. Power goes forth from Him--as the soul receives the Holy Ghost. II. CHRIST’ S POWER TO HEAL IS NOT , BUT ONLY UPON THOSE WHO GO TO HIM. There are always many who see Him, and yet do not know Him, and are not healed by Him? Why? Because they do not seek to touch Him. You must go to Him, not trust a mother’ s prayers--you must go yourself. Observe here, too, that the touch was effectual; touch His body and bodily disease was cured, because it was the touch of faith. Not the accidental touch, but the touch on purpose; not the touch which may be put forth out of curiosity, nor to escape the evil consequences of your sin; but the touch of the soul that wants to be healed. III. CHRIST’ S POWER IS TO HEAL ALL WHO TOUCH HIM. None were disappointed. None were too ill, too diseased. There was no asking, “ How came you in this state? Your own faults,” &c. (H. W. Butcher.) The philanthrophy of Christianity The power which Jesus Christ exercised over physical disease was a guarantee that as long as He lived He would be surrounded by great multitudes of people. Those who would never go to Him for spiritual gifts would be sure to find Him in the time of physical pain and fear. It is thus that, even now, God binds the human race to Himself. They hunger and thirst; they are in sorrow and great distress; times of impoverishment and desolation overtake them; and under such circumstances the better nature rises and yearns for protection and comfort. The Church should create for itself a large sphere of practical service, because there are many who cannot understand the metaphysics of Christianity who may be touched by its philanthropy. Jesus Christ’ s plan was to take hold of human nature as it chose to present itself to his attention; hence we find him not only speaking essential truths to Nicodemus, but attending to the bodily necessities of those who had no understanding whatever of the spiritual kingdom which He came to establish. (Dr. Parker.) Luke 6:17; Luke 6:19 And the whole multitude sought to touch Him: for there went virtue out of Him, and healed them all Christ the fountain of health The subject will be found to involve two considerations; what is the virtue which proceeds out of Christ? by what means is it appropriated to men? I. We begin by observing, that in addition to the superiority of our Lord’ s miracles in point of number over those of every other, there is also a great distinction in the manner of their achievement. The apostles, for example, nowhere pretend to have accomplished the prodigies which they performed by their own ability. The words of healing are, “ In the Name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk.” The distinction to which we advert is very obvious; the miracles of the apostles were wrought by an agency not their own; their touch, their voice, their shadow, had no inherent power to do cures; from Christ’ s own person went out immediately the virtue which healed them all. The difference is remarkable. It is as though the indwelling Godhead did so impregnate the human flesh with life-giving energy, that no sickness or weakness could remain after contact with that immaculate frame. There resided in that sinless body a fulness of grace. It was, as it were, a spring of life to the bodies of others; the virtue dwelt in it, and was drawn forth by an act of faith in the diseased. Such we conceive to be the original meaning of the text; and thus understood, it will be found accurately to describe also the influence of Christ upon ourselves. The fact is not only that God chose to regard the offspring of Adam as iniquitous, but that they really were so. Thus, we repeat, it is not sufficient to consider that Adam’ s fault placed his descendants in the position of criminals; it did really and actually render them corrupt. And what has Christ done for the vast family of man thus contemplated? We reply, in the words of the text, virtue goeth out of His body to heal them all. The Redeemer, we are told, took not on Him the nature of angels, but of men. Christ Jesus, the Second Adam, is set forth to be the Restorer of human nature. He removes the inherent disease, He destroys the natural defilement. From Him a new period commences; to all His disciples He is the new Stock, the Root, the Stem. II. It remains that we very briefly allude to THE MEANS BY WHICH THE HEALING VIRTUE WHICH RESIDES IN CHRIST, IS TO MAN. Now as respects the communication of the healing virtue of Christ’ s Manhood to our souls, we hesitate not to place it in the two Sacraments of Baptism and the Lord’ s Supper. These are between us and the Second Adam, what fleshly procreation is between us and the first Adam. There is healing virtue in the Second Adam; we obtain a share of it through our union with Him by His appointed ordinances. By the Sacraments we are spiritually connected with Christ, as closely as we are carnally connected with Adam and Eve. “ We are members of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones.” In Him was life, but how was this life to be communicated to others? In Him was purity, but how should it be transmitted? He was the Being set forth to make all things new, but how was a connection to be wrought out between Him and us t Indeed not by any carnal alliance, but in a new and living way. Through these Sacraments, duly administered and faithfully taken, virtue goeth out of Him for the healing of the nations. And in connection with the present subject of discourse, it seems appropriate to remind you, in conclusion, that whilst our Lord’ s Incarnation as a whole is full of healing virtue for all generations of believers, so are the several events of His life, taken separately, imbued with a similar efficiency. We have been very much struck with that most solemn part of the Litany, in which we call upon God the Son to deliver us, making mention of the various pains which He endured. “ By Thy holy Nativity and Circumcision; by Thy Baptism, Fasting, and Temptation” ; and then, in deeper and more thrilling strain, “ By Thine Agony and Bloody Sweat; by Thy Cross and PaSsion; by Thy precious Death and Burial, Good Lord, deliver us.” It is probable that by many the passage is only regarded as an adjuration to the Second Person to be merciful unto us, by the strong plea of what He has done and suffered. The Church reminds her Lord, if we may so speak, of His own sorrows, and by the thought of them claims His grace. But is this all? We think not. We believe there is implied in the awful supplication the truth, that every one of the Redeemer’ s acts, one by one recalled, is full of its own peculiar virtue. Thus in praying to be saved by His Nativity, we pray that we may be born anew unto holiness. The Collects for the days on which these single acts of Christ are commemorated, teach us what appropriate power belongs to each act. Turn to the Collect of the Circumcision. We find the mention of Christ’ s Circumcision connected with the true circumcision of our spirits, the mortification, i.e., of our hearts and all our members. The Fasting and Temptation of the Saviour, as brought before us on the First Sunday in Lent, are to enable us to subdue our flesh to the Spirit. His Cross and Passion are to convey to us the grace of patience like His own. His Burial is to qualify us to be buried with Him, that through the grave and gate of death we may pass to our joyful resurrection. And thus are we to regard everything that He did; every act of His is as it were sacramental in its nature, associated with its own appropriate grace. You will at once see what a stupendous importance is thus attached to the least action of Christ. Here, then, is the Fountain of our life; there is no sin so great that Christ cannot cleanse; no weakness so inherent which He will not strengthen. Neither time nor distance can set bounds to those health-giving streams which flow from Him. (Bishop Woodford.) Healing for the soul I. Then, as it respects the soul of man, THERE IS A DISEASE WHICH IS COMMON TO US ALL; AND THE ANALOGY BETWEEN THE SOUL AND BODY MUST HERE BE TO THE MOST . In the great majority of instances, you need not inform even a child of the existence in any individual of bodily disease; for, however incompetent he may be to investigate the cause, he is perfectly familiar with the effect. Sometimes the morbid affection disfigures the countenance, sometimes it distorts the shape, sometimes it impedes the motion and paralyzes the limbs; in one it affects the utterance, in another it obscures the faculties of the mind, in a third it is betrayed at intervals by convulsive starts and spasms of sudden agony, in a fourth it antedates the halting step and wasted form of age ere yet the noon of life is past, and causes its victim to walk abroad amongst the living, impressed in their sight with the ghastly lineaments of death. And are not the effects, or symptoms, of the spiritual disease precisely similar? But here, again, an important feature in the analogy is presented to us, by the expedients which men employ, whether of business, or pleasure, or intemperance, or excess, in order to stifle thought. These things act upon the soul like opiates on the body; they mitigate the present suffering, but they aggravate the symptoms of the disease; they obscure the perception of danger, but they enhance and accelerate the danger itself. Under this head, moreover, we may learn another lesson, namely, that a knowledge of the disease is a prerequisite to the seeking of the remedy. They who brought to the Lord Jesus all that were diseased, laid the sick before Him in the streets; but neither would the sick have consented to be brought, had they not been conscious of the malady within, nor would their friends and kindred have brought them, had they not discerned the symptoms of it, as developed and exhibited without. II. Such, then, being the disease, WHAT, IN THE NEXT PLACE, IS THE REMEDY? NOW, there can be no reasonable doubt, that on the occasion to which my text refers, and on other similar occasions, many sad effects of human infirmity and suffering, not a few of them incurable, and acknowledged to be so, by all human skill, because inaccessible to all known remedies, were exhibited in the presence of the Lord. We must set ourselves in right earnest to apply to the throbbing festering conscience the balm of Christ’ s atonement, and to embody in the life the features of Christ’ s example. III. Since, then, THE REMEDY FOR OUR DISEASE IS JUST AS AS THE EXTENT OF IT--for “ all that believe are justified freely” by God’ s grace--and since it is also unfailing in its efficacy, for “ the blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin” ; the narrative of the context is to teach us, next, the process of its application, In every ease they did what they could; and we should at least learn, from their example, this lesson, that what we can do we are not to leave undone. IV. it only remains, then, that we complete our view of this most instructive and interesting analogy, by looking at THE RESULT OF THE OF SUCH A REMEDY--that remedy being the blood of Christ applied by the prayer of faith, or, if you will, the prayer against unbelief. What this will be, we may gather from the narration of either evangelist, which speaks of recovery at once universal and complete. “ As many as touched Him,” said St. Matthew, or rather, as the margin reads, “ as many as touched it” (that is, the hem of the garment), “ were made whole” ; and as you have heard by St. Luke in the text, though there was a multitude around Him, “ there went virtue out of Him, and healed them all.” If the sick had not come, or had not been brought to Jesus, they would not have been healed; many blind were there in Israel, many lame, many palsied, many lepers, many demoniacs, many lunatics, who did not come, and therefore were not healed. But the amount of our individual responsibility depends upon the amount of our individual knowledge and of our individual opportunity; and if we know that all were healed who did come, or who were even brought, in faith, what greater encouragement and inducement can we desire for ourselves? (T. Dale M. A.) Christ healing bodily disease emblematic of the Church’ s functions “The whole multitude sought to touch Him; for there went virtue out of Him, and healed them all.” 1. Familiar as this statement must be to us, there is something in it truly wonderful and most worthy of admiration--I mean, that there is in the gospel this universal power to adapt itself to man. It constitutes perhaps its most wonderful and distinctive feature. We shall search in vain in any other system for its resemblance. In many systems, more or less of human invention--in systems of philosophy, so called--we may find attempts to remedy some of the evils under which man labours; one applies itself to one kind, and another to another; but often the remedy for one is fatal to the other. But the gospel is a universal remedy. In a word, there is truly no form of evil which the gospel of Christ does not meet and rectify; no want which it does not supply; no real good which it does not impart. 2. And scarcely less remarkable is it to observe how it takes hold of all the natural forms of character, and turns them to due account; how it enlists on the side of what is good even the natural temperaments of men. The burning zeal of a Peter, the restless energy of a Paul, the fervour and impetuosity of a John and James--it takes them all, sanctifies them all, concentrates them all on one holy end. These, and such like human dispositions, left to their natural courses, would have branched off into various forms of evil. But lo! they are touched by God’ s Spirit from above, the gospel pours down upon them its sanctifying influences, turns the dross into gold, and makes what would have been natural imperfections (to say the least) to become noble features in the Christian character. Such, my brethren, is the power of the gospel; such is the virtue which goes out of Christ to heal. For if we inquire how the gospel possesses and exerts this influence, the reply assuredly is--By making Christ known to us. And here, too, the incident before us is strikingly emblematic. The thronging multitude were healed by touching Christ; and to us the gospel is made “ the power of God unto salvation,” simply by bringing us, so to speak, into spiritual contact with Christ. The power of His blessed sacraments consists in this: holy baptism uniting us to Christ and giving us spiritual life in Him--the holy Eucharist sustaining that life through the communion of thebody and blood of Christ. And so the Word of the gospel is effectual to its appointed end by testifying of Christ. He is the centre and the source of all its blessings. 3. But now let us carry this emblematic style of our blessed Lord’ s teaching one step further. If we study the character of His ministry, there is no feature in it which we shall find more prominent than this: that it bore on its very front the aspect of mercy, and this not only in respect to the salvation of the soul from sin and misery, but also in a compassionate care for the bodily necessities of men. And now, my brethren, let us consider the application of this matter to ourselves. It is the high and holy prerogative of the Church to be on earth the representative of her Divine Master. Her highest and most glorious function--nay, we may say her only function--is to carry on and perfect the work of mercy which He began; ofspreading the knowledge of salvation through the world, and of blessing all who come within the influence of the Church’ s sphere. We all know, from the history of the Acts of the Apostles, how well the early Church sustained this blessed office; not only by working miracles while that power lasted, but also by her self-denying charity--by a common fund, abundantly supported by the liberality of the first Christians, for the relief of every want and of every woe, to which our fallen human nature is subject. Wherever the Church was planted, there a fountain of mercy and goodness was opened; there a tree was planted, “ whose leaves were for the healing of the nations.” It brought, indeed, richer mercies than the natural eye could see or the natural ear could hear--salvation for the immortal soul, deliverance from the bands of sin and death, and “ the glorious liberty of the children of God” ; but in its zeal for the salvation of the immortal soul, it did not overlook the transient sufferings of the perishing body. It did not wait until the blind eyes and the dull hearts could perceive and appreciate those higher blessings which it had to bestow; but it accompanied the Word of grace with acts of more ostensible mercy. (W. Dodsworth, M. A.) Christ’ s healing power Miracles, according to the records of Christ’ s life, were of most frequent occurrence, not occasional. They were the simple details of His life, coming as naturally from Him as acts of kindness from the benevolent heart or gifts from the charitable. It was thus He expressed His sympathy with the poor and suffering. In this way Christ showed His message of mercy to man, and revealed the nature of that redemption of the race which He began by living and dying for the world. In no other way could He so deeply have impressed the world with the distinctive character of His redeeming power. I. CHRIST’ S POWER TO HEAL THE SOUL IS IN HIMSELF ALONE. It is not easy to understand this--that Christ, and Christ alone, is the source of all healing. We can understand that a doctrine received by the mind shall restore the mind to health; or that the heart may find rest in some object on which it shall place its affections; but that it is only from Christ that this healing power comes--why, it is hard to conceive. Men cannot apprehend the truth of God, even as Jesus reveals it, without Divine aid. The reason is strong, the will vigorous, the understanding clear; but there is need of the power of God’ s Spirit, and that can only come through our personal touching of Christ. Power goes forth from Him--as the soul receives the Holy Ghost. II. CHRIST’ S POWER TO HEAL IS NOT , BUT ONLY UPON THOSE WHO GO TO HIM. There are always many who see Him, and yet do not know Him, and are not healed by Him? Why? Because they do not seek to touch Him. You must go to Him, not trust a mother’ s prayers--you must go yourself. Observe here, too, that the touch was effectual; touch His body and bodily disease was cured, because it was the touch of faith. Not the accidental touch, but the touch on purpose; not the touch which may be put forth out of curiosity, nor to escape the evil consequences of your sin; but the touch of the soul that wants to be healed. III. CHRIST’ S POWER IS TO HEAL ALL WHO TOUCH HIM. None were disappointed. None were too ill, too diseased. There was no asking, “ How came you in this state? Your own faults,” &c. (H. W. Butcher.) The philanthrophy of Christianity The power which Jesus Christ exercised over physical disease was a guarantee that as long as He lived He would be surrounded by great multitudes of people. Those who would never go to Him for spiritual gifts would be sure to find Him in the time of physical pain and fear. It is thus that, even now, God binds the human race to Himself. They hunger and thirst; they are in sorrow and great distress; times of impoverishment and desolation overtake them; and under such circumstances the better nature rises and yearns for protection and comfort. The Church should create for itself a large sphere of practical service, because there are many who cannot understand the metaphysics of Christianity who may be touched by its philanthropy. Jesus Christ’ s plan was to take hold of human nature as it chose to present itself to his attention; hence we find him not only speaking essential truths to Nicodemus, but attending to the bodily necessities of those who had no understanding whatever of the spiritual kingdom which He came to establish. (Dr. Parker.) Luke 6:20 Blessed be ye poor: for yours Is the kingdom of God Blessedness, rather than happiness, the want of man It is not merely happiness, whatever our shallow moralists may say, that is “ the aim and end of our being. ” Happiness implies merely the undisturbed enjoyment of the man. It may belong to the child, or to the selfish votary of the world. It may be spoken of the miser’ s gold, or of the successful prizes of ambition, or o! the gilded baubles of social folly. There is no moral meaning in it. But it is blessedness that alone can satisfy the mind and heart, which are living for another end than self; blessedness, which has no hap in it, no chance, no merely outward success. (E. A. Washburn, D. D.) The spirit of gospel morality The whole spirit of the gospel of Christ is in these beatitudes. It is at once a religion and a morality. It teaches us the essence of all Christian truth, which is in that real love of God, that is manifest in love of men, and holiness. Yet it is a Divine, a perfect morality. No other faith ever revealed itself in such personal teaching, in such living beauty, not of word, but of character. The Divine humanity of Christ and His religion stands forth here in this code, human yet more than man. If I were to put into language the morality of mankind, I should write the very opposite catalogue of beatitudes: Blessed are the rich. Blessed they who do not mourn. Blessed are the high-minded. Blessed they who hunger and thirst after the selfish gain. Blessed they who need no mercy. Blessed the cunning and cold of heart. Blessed they who win the battle of life. Blessed they who are prudent enough to escape persecution. It is this very excellence which always makes it appear to the mass of selfish men an unreal thing. Take any of those rules, and try for an hour to follow them out in practice, and the end would be that the Christian would be the laughing-stock of the crowd. And what is the inference? Why, the Author and Founder of this kingdom was probably one of the pure-hearted ideal enthusiasts of His time: His religion succeeded doubtless awhile, while it was the faith of a few poor devotees. But in proportion as it entered into the world, it lost of necessity this moral severity; and the Christianity of the Church and the world is little more than a civilized heathenism. We may admire much in the New Testament that is pure and beautiful. But we cannot call its morality a basis in any sense of human conduct, a Divine or authoritative standard for mankind. Such is the argument. And there is much that is plausible in it. It falls in with doubts that sometimes naturally rise in us as we read the gospel. It needs careful thought. For, if it be really so, it is plain that the gospel is no longer a standard of action, and cannot be Divine. Now, I would endeavour so to meet it as to set at rest such doubts, and to convince you that your religion is no gospel of dreamers, but a real, a practical morality for the man and the State. 1. I shall begin by granting freely everything that is fairly said of the Divine, absolute, ideal purity of Christ’ s morality. Nay, I shall claim it as its noblest character. He sets before us the highest ideal of personal conduct. And I maintain that there is no domain, where the mind and will of man are employed, which does not recognize and demand such an ideal. It is so in science. It is only as the man, who holds up before him always the noblest standard of knowledge, a perfection beyond what any has reached, who never acknowledges a limit to his growth--it is he who reaches a stature above the crowd. It is so in art. A Thorwaldsen works in the clay model, conscious that in his mind there is an ideal which guides his fingers as he slowly sees the clay take shape. It is so in social order. And is it not true, is it not far truer, of the moral law of life? There must be, not for the monk in his cell, not for the dreamy recluse, but for the man in his daily sphere, an ideal above the common standard of the world in which he lives. If I shoot my arrow at the mark, I aim above it; and why? Because the necessary power of gravitation will carry it to a degree below the straight line; only the higher aim can guide it aright. If I will reach the bank, I steer above it, because the tide draws the boat downward, and my course is made of the two forces. But this law of physics is as much verified in morals. There are in the atmosphere of the world, in our own weakness, and the weight of selfish passion around us, forces that always drag down the will, the affections, below even the mark of attainable goodness. If there be no nobler aim than the common law of society, the outward fear of justice, the rule of a selfish prudence, it will make us but an inferior character. And thus the religion of Christ gives us the ideal and perfect standard. It plants it in the motive. It claims the pure desire of an unselfish heart. It proves that its truth is Divine, because it does not compromise with our false passions, with our earthly appetites, with our worldly dissimulations. 2. This ideal morality is not unreal, but more real, from this very character. It has entered into every human calling. It has inspired every class of mankind. It has taught the lowliest labourer honest thrift. It has taught, too, the highest humility. It has purified the vices of trade. It has nourished domestic love. It has no less presided over the councils of State than over the private heart. It alone has inspired the enthusiasm of humanity. Even in its extravagances, the gospel of Jesus Christ has been the source of all that is heroic, beautiful, pure, Divine, in mankind. Yet it is no less real. If its tides thus reach by such high water-marks the superhuman power it may at times attain, it is no less in its ordinary flow we are to reckon the breadth of its channel. 3. And thus I reach its noblest witness, in the life of society. Am I told by the sceptic that it is this powerless ideal, this gospel of the anchorite, this lofty yet fruitless morality of a faded age? Bear witness for me, this miracle, grander than all of the New Testament, of Christendom itself. The upward tendency of gospel morality We are often told that the tendency of religious teaching is to make men indifferent to social improvement; to urge the poor to submit to false distinctions; to flatter the rich into the idea that they can keep their wealth, if they are charitable in alms. This is not the gospel. There is not a sentiment more contradictory to it. Not a cause of justice, of wise reform, not a true channel of social good it does not enforce; not a false barrier of caste it does not frown upon. It tells the wealthy that he is God’ s steward; it tells the poor he is to labour in every honest calling, yet to remember that his aim is the wealth of a pure conscience and a holy life. It makes all men one in the spirit of unselfish equality. It is our disposition, not our position, which makes the real difference between man and man in the standard of the gospel morality. It is the Christian principle of social union. Who has the Christian intellect? It is he who pursues knowledge in the desire, not of personal reputation, but of a truth that shall make the world wiser and happier for his toil; and in that poverty of spirit, whether it be a Kepler studying the stars, or a Raphael painting his Madonna, or a Hooker expounding the laws of his Church, it is a sacred calling. Who is the great man in Christ’ s definition? He who, if God hath made him a ruler in the State, rules in His fear, and loves justice and mercy more than his ambition. It is so in every calling. We may pursue our trade or profession for the noble end of a Christian life, or for money-getting and its rivalries. It is here we want our religion. Relation of this discourse to the Sermon on the Mount Men have doubted whether the discourse in Matthew 5:1-48; Matthew 6:1-34; Matthew 7:1-29, is to be regarded as an ampler account of that which begins with this verse. Many passages occur in both. The general scope and purport is the same. Yet, as St. Matthew says expressly that Jesus spake sitting, on the mountain, and St. Luke that He spake standing, and in the plain, it seems not very unnatural to suppose that the one (that given by St. Matthew) was a discourse delivered, as it were, to the inner circle of His disciples, apart from the crowd of outside hearers; the other (that preserved by St. Luke), a briefer and more popular rehearsal of the chief topics of the former, addressed, immediately afterwards, on descending from the hill-top, to the promiscuous multitude. And the formation of the hill which tradition has marked as the Mount of the Beatitudes lends itself naturally to this supposition. For modern travellers have marked, upon its eastern summit, a little circular plain exactly suited for the gathering of a smaller and more select audience; and again, on the lower ridge, between that eastern and another western horn of the same mountain, a larger space, flattened also to a plain, corresponding, it would seem, with singular exactness to the scene described by St. Luke, and to the presence of that larger concourse to which the second and briefer discourse is thus conceived to have been addressed. (Dean Vaughan.) A description of a poor-spirited man But now, I say, suppose God hath given grace, yet still there is a great deal of poverty. 1. As, in the first place, That grace thou hast, it hath need of continual supply. There is no Christian can live upon the grace he hath without new supply. God will not trust thee with the stock of grace; it is not in thy hand, but in the hand of Christ: and this is the condition of the strongest godly man in the world; he must go daily and continually to Christ to fetch new supply, or he cannot subsist. And this is the poor condition that we are in-this spiritual poverty even of the saints. 2. The poverty of the saints consists in this: the graces that they have are but small. Thy grace is like a little spark wrapped up in a heap of embers, so that the maid is raking a good while before she can see it. Surely thou art but poor, then. 3. Even those that are godly, they are very poor, for they are always needy. We use to say of a man or woman that is always in want, and always complaining, Surely they are poor people. 4. Their services are very poor services that they do perform. 5. Again, poor are the very saints, the godly, for little temptations doth overcome them; at least, unsettle them and put them out of frame. 6. Poor they are, further, for they have but little ability to help others. (J. Burroughs.) Poverty of spirit helpful to prayer Men that are men of estates, and rich men, when they come to a door for business, if so be that they cannot have presently what they desire, away they will go; they will not stand waiting. Why? Because they are rich, and so proud in a suitable way to their riches. But now, one that is poor, and come for an alms, is content to wait, especially if he knows that there is no other door for him to go to at that time; if, indeed, he thinks he may have it at some other door, he will not wait, but if he comes for an alms, and he must have it here or nowhere, he is content then to wait. So those that are truly poor in spirit, they arc content to wait at God’ s gates, knowing that there is no other door that they can have their alms only at the gates of God. (J. Burroughs.) The reason why God regards poverty of spirit 1. The great reason why the Lord hath such regard unto such, it is because this disposition doth best serve the great design that God hath of glorifying Himself in the world, namely, the lifting up of His free grace. God would have His glory from the children of men. But what glory? The lifting up of free grace, that is the glory that God would have above all other. God would have the glory of His power, the glory of His wisdom, the glory of His bounty, of His patience; aye, but that is not the glory that God doth look at most; but that He might magnify His free grace in His Son, that is the glory that God doth most delight in. Now, of all dispositions in the world, this disposition of poverty of spirit is that that serves God’ s end and God’ s design best; and therefore no marvel though God cloth so much accept of it. 2. Such a disposition makes the soul to be conformable even unto Jesus Christ. Now, when Christ shall see a spirit that hath a conformity to His, Christ looks upon it and saith, “ Here is one that is conformable to My Spirit. I was willing to be poor; and so is such a one. I was willing to empty Myself, and to be anything for the furtherance of the glory of My Father; and so do I see here such a poor creature that is willing to empty itself of anything that it hath, and is willing to give up itself for the glory of My Father and Me. Oh, blessed are these poor!” (J. Burroughs.) Promises to the poor in spirit 1. The first is this, that God loves to honour those that are willing to debase themselves. 2. That blessedness doth not consist in any worldly thing--“ Blessed are the poor.” There in nothing in this world can make them blessed; it is the kingdom of heaven that must make them blessed. If you would be happy, you must look beyond the world. 3. In that it is said in the present tense, theirs is the kingdom of heaven. From whence the note is this, that the saints of God live not only upon comforts that they shall have hereafter, upon the assurance of what they shall have, but upon present comforts. They have enough for the present to uphold their hearts, in all their poor and mean condition in which they are in respect of the world. 4. That heaven is now to the saints. There is comfort indeed! There is certainly no man or woman upon the earth shall ever go to heaven but such as hath heaven come down to them. First: To open to you what is the meaning of this; what doth Christ mean by the kingdom of heaven? And then, secondly, to apply the kingdom of heaven to such as are poor in spirit. I. THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN. There is the kingdom of God’ s power whereby He rules over the world; and then there is the kingdom that He hath given to His Son the Mediator. It is the second kingdom that is here meant. When God had made this world, He Himself reigned over it, and was the King of it. But the world that He made was spoiled with sin, and so God could not have that glory from the world that He made it for. Therefore, the Lord He was pleased to erect a new world, another spiritual, heavenly world, to glorify Himself in in another manner, more spiritual and heavenly than in the former world; and He makes His Son to be the King of that spiritual world--that new world which the Scripture speaks of when it saith, “ All old things are done away, and all things are become new” --which new world is begun in the work of grace in the hearts of the saints, and so carried on till it comes to eternal glory. Jesus Christ, He is the King of that world. Why is it called the kingdom of heaven? 1. It is called the kingdom of heaven because Christ is from heaven, who is the King thereof. 2. In distinction and opposition from or unto the kingdoms of the world. 3. Because that Christ His seat is now at the present in heaven. 4. Because that the way of His government it is spiritual and heavenly, not in an outward way. 5. Because it will certainly bring both soul and body to heaven at last. There is infinite blessedness in this kingdom of heaven. 1. For it is Christ the Mediator that gives the laws. But in this kingdom of heaven, that is a blessedness that thou hast a law from Him that loves thee more than His life; He was willing to lay down His life for thee that gives thee thy law. 2. The second thing in the blessedness of this kingdom of heaven is this, that Jesus Christ He now rules in the hearts of His saints, by His word and Spirit, a great deal more fully than He did in the times of the law, or in any way can be conceived. 3. All transactions between God and them are in this kingdom, and not to go out of this kingdom. So now, wert thou in the kingdom of God’ s power, as He is Creator of heaven and earth, and so rules the world, certainly any offence of thine would be eternal death to thee; and it is so with all those men and women that are, I say, only under the kingdom of God’ s power--that is, they are God’ s creatures, and God is their Creator, and so they have to deal with God as under the kingdom of His power; if they offend as creatures, God in that kingdom deals in a way of exact justice, so as to punish with death upon every offence. But now a believer brought into another kingdom, the kingdom of the Messiah, there he comes to have other privileges; so that when a believer offends he doth not go to answer in that court of His--to wit, the kingdom of His power--but he is to answer before the court of Jesus Christ, and Christ is to be the judge, and Christ He is to deal with them in that administration of His that He hath received from the loather, and so comes a believer to stand with comfort before God, notwithstanding all his offences and weaknesses, for the transaction is between God and Him within this kingdom, and not without it. 4. And then, further, from hence thou hast protection. Though thou beest poor and mean in thyself, thou hast Jesus Christ the Son of God that undertakes to protect thee, to deliver thee from evil, and to supply thee in all thy wants; that is the work of a king. 5. In this kingdom Christ undertakes to subdue all the enemies that are against thy spiritual and eternal good. 6. He, as a king, gives ordinances and gifts and administrations. All the ordinances, gifts, and administrations of the Church, they are given by Jesus Christ as the King of it, and thou that art poor in spirit, thou has right to them. 7. All the world is brought into subjection to this kingdom. 8. For this will bring thee at length to reign with Christ. (J. Burroughs.) Comfort to the poor in spirit 1. Consider He that is the King of this kingdom of heaven, He was poor Himself; your King was poor. 2. Consider this, Christ’ s poverty it was to sanctify your poverty. 3. This kingdom of heaven, it is so ordered out for the most part, that the poor in the world are the subjects of this kingdom. 4. The Lord hath so ordered things that the great transactions of this kingdom of heaven--that hath been opened unto you--hath been carried on by those that are mean and poor, not by the great ones of the world. 5. Hence follows, therefore, in the fifth place, that poverty it is no hindrance to the highest degree in this kingdom of heaven. Indeed, poverty it is a hindrance to degrees in the honours of a worldly kingdom. 6. Even those that are outwardly poor, if godly, they have right to all things in this world so far as may be good for them. It is said of Abraham Romans 4:13) that he was “ the heir of the world.” 7. In this kingdom are spiritual riches that may countervail to the full, and are infinitely good beyond all outward riches. 8. And then from all these follows, that hence the great temptations that those that are poor people are troubled withal may from the consideration of the blessing of the kingdom be taken away. What are they? 1. As, first, I am afraid that God goes out against me, and doth not bless me in anything that I go about; and so they are afraid, and under great bondage. 2. The second is, I am in a poor condition, and therefore despised. 3. And then a third temptation is, they are useless in the world. Nay, this text will answer this temptation, Thine is the kingdom. (J. Burroughs.) Our Lord’ s first text A fitting text for Christ’ s first sermon, for He came to this earth to bless. His life was a life of blessing; His one thought how He might bless others, make others happy. He died to bless, and His arms outstretched on the cross, His hands wide open, told how He yearned to bless to the last. He rose to bless, and with words of blessing He greeted those who mourned Him as dead. And when He ascended, He was still true to the work of His life, for the last His disciples saw of Him as He disappeared, were His hands outstretched in blessing. And still He lives to bless; on high He ever liveth to make intercession for souls; here on earth He draws nigh to bless in every Sacrament, in every act of worship, in each meditation, in each sermon, in each hour of prayer, always present by His Spirit to bless. I. WAS THE END FOR WHICH MAN WAS CREATED. God’ s intention for man was a life of beatitude. From God there came to him nothing but blessing. That the curse took the place of the blessing, misery of happiness, was not God’ s work, but man’ s, in abusing the power of freewill. But God would not leave man in his self-wrought misery. And so Jesus came to take away the curse of sin, and to bless mankind. II. THIS CAN ONLY BE OURS ON CERTAIN , 1. It is a blessedness to be found in God alone. To reach it, we must climb. Above the city of Edinburgh there is a great rock, overhanging it like a crouching lion. It is a dim, misty, foggy day, such as sometimes envelopes even the modern Athens of the North. We leave the busy streets, go out of the town, and find ourselves on the path which leads up the side of Arthur’ s seat. We have hardly taken a few steps ere we feel the mist is thinner, and we breathe more easily. Still we climb on, for the top is far above us; we can see it through the fog above us standing out sharp and clear against the sky. Still we climb, and the air becomes at every step more keen and bracing, and our lungs drink it in more freely, until at last we stand on the summit in the brightness of God’ s sunshine, while at our feet lies the city buried in the mist. Cannot you read the parable? We are always seeking for happiness; we cannot help it. It is a craving of our being as irresistible as that of hunger or thirst. It will not be crushed out or destroyed. And there are times when we think we have attained to it, and we laugh and sing as we stand in the sunshine. But it is short-lived. The mist creeps over us again, we shiver as we feel its cold dampness, and we murmur and complain in our disappointment. What is wrong? Ah! we have forgotten to climb. We have thought to find what we want on earth, apart from God, and we have failed, as thousands of souls have failed before us. 2. Jesus tells us this blessedness may be ours now. He speaks of the beatitudes in the present tense. Some people will tell us that the innocent joys of earth, the pure affections of home, the pleasures of the intellect, the beauties of nature or art, are only as the fading tints of the sunset, or the falling golden autumn leaves. Ah! but they forget that there is a Power which will fix these fleeting colours, permanize these passing joys. Use them as God intends, as guide-posts to Himself. 3. But Jesus tells us this blessedness is hereafter too. If He speaks in the present tense, He speaks still more in the future. Yes, it must be so, for true blessedness is in God, in God known and realized; and here we see through a glass darkly, here we know only in part; it is yonder that in a fuller knowledge of God we shall find a fuller blessedness. 4. Blessedness can never be selfish. No one can be happy save as he seeks to share his happiness with others. 5. There are degrees of blessedness. It is a mountain which we have to climb. (C. J. Ridgeway, M. A.) True happiness Beatitude is the perfect being of every creature. It is that condition in which there remains nothing to be desired, nothing to be obtained. I. MAN WAS MADE FOR THIS PERFECT . It is because he was created for it, that his whole life is spent in the pursuit of it. The human soul must strain after happiness, it cannot help doing so, for happiness is its necessary object. It seeks it with the energy with which the stone detached from the mountain rolls to its foot, drawn by gravitation. Not only so, but the sinner himself, in all his errors, seeks happiness. He is mistaken in the place where he seeks, but it is happiness which he seeks; and when he find out that he has not obtained that which he desired, he falls back into disgust, and gropes for it elsewhere. The traveller in the desert rushes forward when he sees the mirage, thinking it water, and plunges among sand-hills; he is mistaken in looking for water there, but it is a true thirst which has impelled him towards the spot. II. THAT IS GOOD AND , IN THIS WORLD IS GOOD AND BECAUSE IT DERIVES ITS GOOD AND BEAUTY FROM GOD. Riches, pleasure, gaiety, &c., arc not evil in themselves, but only when sought as final ends, without thought of God. When they are sought as sources of happiness, and not as reflections of the perfections which are in God, then they are evil. The creatures which God made arc good, but if we content ourselves with loving and devoting ourselves to the creatures, we are falling away from the Creator. A great bishop and doctor of the Church (Bellarmine) wrote a very lovely book, called “ The Ascent of the Mind by the Ladder of the Creature to God.” The creatures of God are guide-posts to God, not goals to which we are to run, and at which we are to lie down to rest. III. PERFECT OR IS ONLY TO BE FOUND IN GOD. All secondary good things are imperfect because they are created, and for the same reason they are not imperishable. The soul must have that which is perfect and enduring. What is perfect and enduring is in God alone. (S. Baring-Gould, M. A.) Christ’ s standard and the world’ s How thoroughly Christ’ s conception of blessedness contradicts the popular estimate of happiness. This Preacher seems studiously to reverse the world’ s judgment. He frames His words so as to fly in the face of public opinion and the consent of men. This startling contradiction between Christ and the world rests on a radical difference in their way of looking at human life. They do not mean quite the same thing with their beatitudes. It is of condition the world is thinking; Christ of character. When society claps hands to the cry, “ Oh, Felix!” “ Oh, lucky fellow!” “ Oh, rare success!” it is the fortunate circumstances of a man’ s lot of which society is thinking. It is the blessedness of having a great deal of money, of being always comfortable, of being environed with what may minister to pleasure, and able always to command what one desires--it is this blessedness of condition which society crowns with its beatitudes, and to which men pay the tribute of enjoying it. Alas for this blessedness, which is outside the man; the blessedness of circumstance, and accident, and transient condition; the blessedness which Time’ s scythe mows down like grass to be cast into the oven! Not condition does Jesus bless, but character. The happy man is the good man. Not what a man has, but what he is, is the ground of his blessedness. (J. Oswald Dykes, D. D.) God’ s grace is the source of blessedness The ground of blessedness is not made by our Lord to rest in the possession of character itself, but in that promised grace of God of which character is the condition. Some of the qualities here (Matthew 5:1-48.) called blessed might seem even to us to be their own reward. We can understand how it should be a blessed thing to be merciful, or pure, or pacific, though no promise were attached to these states of heart at all. With others it is not so. It is not in itself a good thing to be poor, or to mourn, or to hunger; but for us it becomes good, because otherwise we cannot be enriched, or comforted, or filled. Here the blessing is plainly not in the state of heart, but in that appropriate Divine gift which meets and answers such a state of heart. In every ease, therefore, there is a deeper Divine reason for the blessedness, which Christ’ s eye sees, where man’ s sees none. The sum of all the blessings which are here dropped along the course of a Christian’ s life, or rather, that comprehensive blessing which opens out as a man needs it into many forms: which becomes to the mourner comfort, to the meek inheritance, food to the hungry, and mercy to the merciful; which gives to the pure-hearted the vision of God, and adoption to the peace-makers: this inclusive formula of beatitude is “ the kingdom of heaven. The distinctively Christian character of the beatitudes The beatitudes may be truly regarded as an exposition of morality purely Christian; and in attempting to make some examination of them, we are to consider ourselves as being under the full light of Christian truth and grace, not dealing with abstract or general morality, but with that which belongs to God’ s saints in the Church of Christ, and is only possible to them--and to them possible only by the help of that Holy Spirit of whose blessed influence the saints arc permitted to drink in the Church. (Bishop Moberly.) Passive virtues first Mark how Jesus puts passive virtues in the foremost place. We can easily understand why He does this. 1. They are the foundations on which alone the superstructure of the active virtues can be built. 2. They are out of sight, and therefore are easily overlooked, their importance forgotten. 3. They were little thought of in the days when Jesus lived on this earth. (C. J.Ridgeway, M. A.) St. Luke’ s version of the Beatitudes In Luke’ s version of the Beatitudes they seem to refer to literal poverty, hunger, and sorrow. If the question be asked which of the two forms is the most original, our judgment inclines to that of Luke. Speaking generally, the more pregnant, kernel-like form of any saying of Jesus is always the more likely to have been that actually used by Him. Then the very breadth of the announcements in Luke is in favour of their being the authentic utterances of Jesus. It is intrinsically credible that He had something in His doctrine of happiness for the many, for the million; some such words as Luke puts into His mouth. The poor in spirit, the mourners for sin, the hungerers for righteousness, are a very select band; only a few of them were likely to be found in any crowd that heard Jesus preach. But the poor, the hungry, the sad, are always a large company; probably they embraced nine-tenths of the audience to which the Sermon on the Mount was spoken. Had He nothing to say to them; to catch their ears, and to awaken hopes in their heavy-laden hearts? Who can believe it that remembers that in His message to John Jesus Himself described His gospel as one specially addressed to the poor? We may, therefore, confidently assume that the Preacher on the Mount began His discourse by uttering words of good cheer to those present, to whom the epithets poor, hungry, sad, were applicable, saying, in effect, to such, “ Blessed are ye whom the world counts wretched.” It was a strange, startling laying, which might need much exposition to evince its truth and reasonableness, but it was good to begin with; good to fix attention, provoke thought, and awaken hope. Proceeding now to consider the import of these surprising declarations, we understand-- 1. That our Lord did not mean to pronounce the poor, hungry, and weeping “ blessed,” simply in virtue of their poverty, hunger, and tears. 2. The connection between these classes and the kingdom of heaven and its blessings is not quite so immediate. Yet Christ was not mocking His hearers with idle words. He spoke gravely, sincerely, having weighty truths in His mind, every one of which much concerned the children of want and sorrow to know. One of these, the most immediately obvious, was that the classes addressed were in His heart, that He cared for them, sympathized with them, desired their well-being; in a word, that He was the poor man’ s Friend. This at least is implied in the opening sentence of the sermon, “ Blessed are ye poor.” The mere fact that this was the opening sentence was most significant. 3. But Jesus meant to say more than this to the poor and sorrowful; more than, “ I feel for you” ; or,” The bliss of the kingdom is possible for you.” He meant to say this further; “ Just because ye are poor, and hungry, and sad, the kingdom of heaven is nearer to you than to others.” (A. B. Bruce, D. D.) Christ’ s paradoxical teaching He who taught in parables taught also in paradoxes. His thoughts are not our thoughts. It is as though He had said, Happy are the unhappy, honourable the dishonoured, great the little, and rich the poor. Well, we must follow Him. We must learn His language, we must judge His judgment, if we would ever rejoice in His salvation. (Dean Vaughan.) The title to the kingdom Surely this first opening of His mouth in systematic teaching was at once a gospel. The more we are poor, the more we are rich! O blessed and life-giving announcement to the sorrowful and self-despairing! Your sense of poverty is the very title-deed of your kingdom. (Dean Vaughan.) The possession of the kingdom The kingdom is theirs. Theirs already, by a right all their own. In this life they possess it. For they, alone of all men, live their citizenship. They know that without their King they are beggars; without their franchise they are outlaws; without their home above, they are houseless and shelterless and comfortless exiles. Whatever others can do, they cannot do without their kingdom. They declare plainly, at each step of life’ s journey, that they are seeking a country. And therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God; for He hath prepared for them a city. And as they get nearer to its golden gates, and have nothing between it and them but that narrow stream of death which a Saviour once crossed for them, it may well be that the ownership of which the text speaks becomes at last scarcely more a faith than a sight; they can catch the very sounds of the heavenly song, and discern the bright forms of those who were once faithful unto death, and now follow the Lamb whithersoever He goeth. (Dean Vaughan.) The kingdom for the poor The kingdom of God comes down to meet the sinner as low as is at all possible; asks the very least; takes us up just where sin and the law left us, stripped and wounded; and at the outset, when a man is at his poorest, it enriches him with its royal riches. Are you only “ poor” ? There is no question yet about what some human teachers are ready enough to put foremost, express or vehement mourning for sin. The seed of that, indeed, is in poverty of spirit. But anxious souls often impede their own coming to Christ, by exacting of themselves a certain keenness of feeling, so much heaviness of heart, or so many tears. Be content. Mourning will come soon enough in the order of Jesus. It is not our poverty by itself, but God’ s grace to us in our poverty, which makes sorrow flow. Jesus asks not for tears before He will bless; He asks only poverty. If you are so poor in grace that you cannot mourn, cannot hope or hunger as you would, can hardly pray, can only stand in dumb, desolate spiritual want before God, then you are poor enough. Poor enough to bring nothing but empty hands to God, and an empty heart; poor enough to take the heavenly kingdom as a gift from the most rich and bountiful Lord of it; poor enough to have a simple accepting faith when He says, “ It is yours!” (J. O.Dykes, D. D.) Poverty runs through every act of spiritual citizenship Poverty of spirit runs through every act of citizenship; it is the secret of its beginning, continuance, and final fruition. It is the secret of entrance into the kingdom, for it is the very essence of baptism. We bring the infant to be baptized because it is nothing, has nothing, can do nothing, and therefore we ask God, of His great mercy, to make the child an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven. It is the secret of perseverance, for poverty of spirit is the only fitness for the right use of every means of grace. In confirmation, he who comes urges this as his plea, “ I am weak, strengthen me by Thy Spirit, O my Father.” In holy communion the communicants pray, “ We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under Thy table.” In prayer our very posture reminds us that we are suppliants at the throne of grace. In every effort after holiness the Master’ s words are ever sounding in our ears, “ Without Me ye can do nothing.” In every work of love we can only hope it will be accepted with the words, “ She hath done what she could.” In every almsgiving we must say with David, “ All things come of Thee, and of Thine own have we given Thee.” And in final blessedness the attitude of the redeemed tells us that poverty of spirit belongs to the subjects of the heavenly kingdom, for see, they fall on their faces and cast their crowns at the feet of Him who sitteth upon the throne; and this is the song they sing, “ Thou art worthy,” etc. (Revelation 4:11). (C. J. Ridgeway, M. A.) How poverty of spirit may be attained We cannot attain humility by directly striving to become so; it must be caught by guile, not taken by storm. It can be ours only by the power of faith. What is faith? It is the eye of spiritual sight by means of which we see God. This is what we need, is it not? We make a false estimate of life; we miscalculate ourselves and what we are; we weigh with false scales what we have; we measure with an imperfect standard what we do; we go on our way deceived as to the true value of all around us by the mists of the valley through which we are journeying; we neglect to climb, to try to get into the clearer atmosphere where God is; nay, we forget God, we leave Him out of our lives, we neglect to give Him His rightful claim; even in our acts of worship He is sometimes absent from our thoughts. And so it must be with us to the end of life, unless by God’ s help we attain to the spirit of recollectedness of God’ s presence, in the power of which David sang, “ I have set God always before me; for He is on my right hand, therefore I shall not fall.”… Remember, this faith is ours already. It is God’ s gift to each one of us in our baptism. But it needs to be exercised, developed, trained by use; left alone it will grow weak until it dies. (C. J. Ridgeway, M. A.) Poverty favourable to piety in early times The word “ poor” admits of different degrees of extent. Being here opposed to the word “ rich” in Luke 6:24, it probably includes vaguely all who are not usually called rich. It will naturally be asked, How can such persons be declared blessed, or happy, or fortunate? Can any happiness arise from mere indigence? No, certainly, if we mean by happiness present feelings of pleasure. But might there not be circumstances attending indigence which might lead to beneficial consequences, or future happiness? That this is the meaning of our Saviour is evident from what is added: “ For the kingdom of God is theirs.” What, then, are we to understand by this? All that we can conclude is, merely that there were certain circumstances in the condition of the poor that would dispose them to receive the invitation of Christ more willingly than the rich. A rich man would not be inclined to make those sacrifices, and to expose himself to those sufferings to which all Christians, during the first ages, were liable. On the other hand, it was comparatively easy for a poor man to become a Christian; for he could lose little in this world, and would gain much in the world to come. (J. Thomson, D. D.) Our Lord’ s love of poverty Let us see how Jesus by His example and word teaches the love of poverty, and wherein that poverty consists which He loves so tenderly. I. His EXAMPLE. No one of us has chosen the circumstances of his birth. One is born in a poor hut, another in a magnificent palace. Our Saviour, being God as well as man, could have surrounded His human nature with a splendour surpassing human powers of conception. He who so clothes the lilies of the field that even Solomon, in all his glory, was not arrayed as one of them, could have clad His human body in a beauty far transcending that of all the lilies and flowers upon earth. He who created the precious stones and the glittering gold in the veins of the earth, and who gives the sun and the stars their splendour, could have built for Himself a palace, compared with which all palaces of men were mere hovels. But more than the beauty of flowers, more than the gorgeous glitter of diamonds and gold, more than the magnificence of palaces, more than the splendour of the sun, He loved poverty. He would be born as the bride of poverty, and the brother of the poor in spirit. In poverty came the Expected of nations into the world; in poverty He lived all His lifetime; in poverty He died on the cross. His whole life teaches us His love of poverty. II. His WORD. As Jesus commenced His earthly life with poverty, so His first doctrine preached in His Sermon on the Mount was, “ Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven,” thus intimating that, unless we be poor m spirit, we are not even able to understand His doctrine. He also pointed out to His disciples in the strongest terms the danger of worldly wealth. III. THE NATURE OF POVERTY. Now the question arises, Wherein does the poverty, without which we cannot be saved, properly consist? We distinguish four classes of men. 1. The first class comprises those who hart both riches and the love of them. These men are, in most cases, avaricious also. Men of this description are the farthest from Jesus Christ. 2. The second class comprises those who are enamoured with worldly goods, which, nevertheless, they do not possess; those who live in want, but vehemently, and with disquietude, long for the riches of which they are destitute. These men are in a worse condition than those who belong to the former class, for they have only the torment of an ungratified desire. 3. The third class comprises those who, although endowed with worldly wealth, preserve, nevertheless, poverty of spirit; who abound in temporal goods, but make good use of them, and are free from a lasting, vehement, and disquieting attachment to their possessions. 4. The fourth class comprises those who to temporal poverty unite poverty in spirit. Oh! that the poor would recognize how priceless a treasure is hidden in their poverty, if they be content with their condition, and joyfully embrace poverty for the sake of Christ. The world having neither joys nor consolations for those who are poor, doubly unhappy are they who forfeit the blessing belonging to poverty, by discontent and injustice. Christ repudiates them for their wickedness; the world for their poverty. (Bishop Ketteler.) Music chiefly the inheritance of the poor It is a curious fact that nearly all the great music of the world has been produced in humble life, and has been developed amid the environments of poverty and in the stern struggle for existence. The aristocracy has contributed very little to music, and that little can be spared without detriment. The enduring music has been the child of poverty, the outcome of sorrow, the apotheosis of suffering. Sebastian Bach was the son of a hireling musician. Beethoven’ s father was a dissipated singer. Cherubini came from the lowest and poorest ranks of life. Gluck was a forester’ s son. Lulli, in his childhood, was a page, and slept in palace kitchens. Haydn’ s father was a wheelwright, and his mother, previous to marriage, was a cook in the kitchen of Count Harrach. Mozart’ s father was a musician in humble circumstances, and his grandfather a bookbinder. Handel was the son of a barber and surgeon. Meluel was the son of a cook. Rossini’ s father was a miserable strolling horn-player. Schubert was the son of a poor schoolmaster. Cimarosa’ s father was a mason, and his mother a washerwoman. Schumann was a bookseller’ s son, and Verdi the son of a Lombardian peasant. Weber’ s father was a strolling actor and musician. Among all the prominent composers, but three were born in affluence--Auber, Meyerbeer, and Mendelssohn. Joy the inheritance of the poor The sunniest hearts I have ever found in my pastoral rounds have often been lodged in houses so poverty-stricken and obscure that even the tax-collector never found them. They were people who had very little of this world, but a great deal of the next. They took short views of this life; but long ones of the life to come. Living pretty much from “ hand to mouth,” they learn to trust God a great deal more than their prosperous brethren, who secretly trust--their own bank-accounts and government bonds. The happiest heart I encounter in Brooklyn belongs to an aged cripple, who lives on charity in a fourth storey. She is old and poor, and without relatives, and lost even the power of speech twenty years ago l By dint of hard effort she can make a few words intelligible. But I never saw that withered face distorted by a frown; and a few Sabbaths since, when she was carried in to the communion-table, I looked down from the pulpit into that old saint’ s countenance, and it “ shone like the face of an angel.” She lives every day on the sunny side of Providence, and feeds hungrily on the promises. Jesus knows where she lives. He “ ofttimes resorts thither.” She is one of His hidden ones. That old disciple will not have far to go when the summons comes from her Father’ s house. She lives near the gates now, and catches the odours and the music of that “ marriage supper” for which she has her wedding garment on. Would to God that some of the sourspirited, morose, and melancholy Christians of our acquaintance could drop in to that old woman’ s garret occasionally, and borrow a vial of her sunshine! (Dr. Cuyler.) Luke 6:21 Blessed are ye that hunger now; for ye shall be fllled Hunger and thirst Consider how much is conveyed in this figure. 1. Hunger and thirst are real things. We need no argument to prove this; we have all felt them for ourselves, even though it may have been in a very slight degree. Ay, how real they are He who spake of them well knew, for had He not but now ended His long fast of forty days in the wilderness? 2. They are active feelings that will assert themselves. The poor man may know his poverty, and yet be so accustomed to it as to have no wish to escape from it. The sick man may be too ill to want to get better, his only wish being to be let alone and die in peace. But hunger and thirst tell of a want within, a reaching after that without which they cannot be stilled. 3. They are intense, overpowering, and gain the mastery over the man, making him act contrary to the instincts of reason. What stories we have heard or read of the terrible extremities to which hunger or thirst have reduced men. Maddened by the desire of drink, they have drunk salt water, plunged into the sea to put an end to their sufferings, or drawn lots which should die to save the rest alive. Driven by gnawings of hunger, men have faced disgrace, and stooped to steal rather than suffer any longer. 4. They are universal, for they are felt by rich as well as poor; they are inseparable from our being, constituted as we are; they are God-implanted instincts. 5. They are lifelong. The man dying of thirst, able no longer to speak, opens his poor parched mouth, or looks his longing with his fevered eyes. The man perishing for lack of food holds out his thin, emaciated hands, and without a word begs for bread. But we need not to be told that Jesus is not speaking of bodily hunger, any more than of bodily poverty or bodily mourning. Just as the poverty He tells of may exist in the midst of the abundance of riches, and just as the mourning which He recommends may be found where eyes have never shed a tear, so hunger and thirst may be where there is plenty of food and drink. For every man is a sort of living sacrament. He has an outward and visible part--his body; but he has, too, an inward and spiritual part. And there is a close analogy between them. They have each similar feelings, desires, longings. And so the spirit of a man has its hunger and thirst. And this spiritual hunger and thirst are real things, are they not? They are active, asserting themselves, refusing to be ignored; they are intense, soul-agonizing, bringing, when unsatisfied, anguish and torment; they are universal, found in men of every age, and circumstance; they are life-long, with the man still as the breath of life quits his body. (C. J. Ridgeway, M. A.) Hunger fits man to embrace the kingdom The metaphor here chosen by our Saviour is the best and fittest that can be conceived to express a strong, powerful, active principle; for hunger is one of the strongest principles we know--it is an importunate desire, never satisfied till it obtains the means of gratification. The feeling of thirst is, perhaps, still stronger; for it is sufficient to absorb every other feeling, every other thought, and to confine the attention to the most immediate means of removing the distressing pain. For the same reason, that those who were not rich were in a favourable state to embrace Christianity, the hungry, who are also poor, would be in a similar situation; for, by embracing Christianity, all their nobler desires would be gratified. (J. Thomson, D. D.) Times of righteousness promised to the Church First, We shall open what this righteousness of Jesus Christ is which the saints do hunger and thirst after. Secondly, We shall show what their hunger and thirst is; the working of their hearts in their hungering and thirsting after this righteousness. Thirdly, What a desirable object this righteousness is; what there is in this righteousness that makes the saints so desire after it. Fourthly, Those that do thus desire after it are blessed. They are blessed for the present. Fifthly, That they certainly shall be filled with this righteousness. I. For the first, What this righteousness is that now we are speaking of. It is the righteousness which is for justification. II. Now the second thing that is to be opened, it is the work of the soul in the hungering and thirsting after this righteousness. 1. The soul doth clearly apprehend and is thoroughly convinced that it hath need of a righteousness to enable it to stand before the holy and righteous God. That is the first thing that raises this hunger and thirst. 2. The soul comes to be convinced of the insufficiency and imperfection of its own righteousness. 3. The soul comes to see that there is another righteousness beyond its own. 4. The soul likewise must be enlightened in the way of the gospel’ s making over this righteousness to the creature. Then mark how the soul puts forth itself in the hungering and thirsting after this righteousness. 1. In the first place, It doth feel it, it gets an assurance of it, it feels a mighty pain for the want of it; as you know in hunger and thirst there is a very great pain in the body till nature be supplied. 2. All other things whatsoever that you can tender unto a man that wants bread or drink, that is ready to perish for want of those things, tender what you will they are all nothing to him--he regards them as nothing, there is no savour in anything; come and bring him bags of gold or silver, it is bread that he must have; come and bring him brave suits of satin and velvet, what is that if he be ready to perish for want of bread? 3. As all things are nothing to him till this comes, so in hunger and thirst there is a might, strong desire, such a strong desire as the body is ready to faint if the desire be not satisfied, even to faint and die. So it is with the soul here; if I have not this righteousness I die, I faint and die--yea, I die eternally. 4. There are strong endeavours after it; that must needs be in hunger and thirst. We use to say that hunger will break through stone walls; there is no work accounted difficult to a man to get bread. 5. One that hungers and thirsts, his desires are resolute; there is power, and endeavours, and they are resolute; he doth not stand upon conditions, to indent this or that way, but let the endeavours be what they will be, and indeed this is the work of grace in the heart where a hypocrite fails. 6. Which is very observable: The soul is unsatisfied in this hunger and thirst till this righteousness doth come. A child that doth but play with his meat, or whose belly is full, may be crying after something that he sees, but you may put off a child with a rattle when his belly is full; but if he be thoroughly a-hungry, then offer him what rattles you will, yet he must have his hunger satisfied if he be hungry indeed: and so it is with the soul. (J. Burroughs.) Hunger a sign of health It is a good sign of a thriving Christian; not only of a living Christian, but of a thriving Christian. As you find it by experience in the body, when a man or woman begins to have a good appetite to their meat, to be hungry, we say, then they mend. A man that begins to have a stomach, to be hungry, and to taste his beer, he begins now to thrive: so it is with the soul. Thou hast not that growth that thy soul desires, but hast thou a stomach to thy meat, canst thou taste thy drink, canst thou taste the waters of life, canst thou say, These are sweet, oh that I might have more, I am athirst and desire after more? When thou comest to the Word, thou gettest some milk to nourish thee, and thou hungerest after more. It is an argument that thou art in a thriving condition, it is sign of health, that thy soul is hale, that thou hast not those distempers and corruptions that other men have. Desires meet Your desires and God’ s meet. There is nothing in the world that God doth more freely bestow than righteousness. No vacuities in mature If God will fill vacuities in nature, and will hear the ravens when they cry unto Him, will He not fill the emptiness of thy soul? God hath so ordered things in nature that there shall be no vacuity. Philosophers say “ that the world will sooner fall to nothing than there should be the least emptiness in the world,” but it must be filled with something or other. Now hath the Lord so appointed that there must not be the least vacuity in nature, but there must be something to fill it, surely the Lord will not suffer a vacuity in an immortal soul; but He hath something to fill that soul of thine that is empty for the present, and the Scripture tells us that the Lord fills every living thing with His blessing, and shall not a soul that hungers after righteousness, and the image of God, and the grace of the Spirit of God, shall it not be satisfied? There are many that desire, but their desires are cold and lazy desires, such as shall never do them good; and therefore false desires they may be known by these characters: 1. Their desires are false who satisfy themselves with ignorant desires. Hath God enlightened your hearts to see the excellency of grace, that is more precious than rubies, of more worth than the gold of Ophir? If it come not from these grounds they are but false desires. Many have a false appetite. 2. Such desires are false who satisfy themselves with foolish desires. Will we not account that man a foolish man that shall desire food--Oh that I find something to eat! oh that I had bread or meat!--but will not seek for it, will not take pains to get it? 3. When men’ s desires are absurd, such desires are false. They desire grace, and yet live in that which is quite contrary to grace. 4. Such as satisfy themselves in cold and weak desires, whose desires are turned all into wishings and wouldings; they could wish that they had grace, and oh that they had righteousness, oh that they were delivered from wrath to come I but they are not so peremptory upon it as to conclude, I must have it or I die. Now these desires they come to nothing, they will not grow up. 5. When men’ s desires are conditional. Conditional desires are false desires; that is thus, they would have grace and holiness so far as might stand with such and such ends, and to carry on such and such designs of their own--as to keep their estates and their liberty, their ease and credit in the world. 6. When men’ s desires are fleeting and unconstant desires, they have desires in some good moods, and in some pangs of conscience when the terrors of God are upon their spirits. But such desires as these they are hypocritical; they desire grace merely to serve their own turn, to stop the mouth of conscience, and not for grace sake. 7. When their desires are lazy desires, such are false desires; they are not willing to take pains for what they do desire. Blessed are ye that weep now: for ye shall laugh The blessedness of tears and mourning It sounds a paradox l We are wont to regard mourning and tears as evil things that come of sorrow and suffering. But here we are told of a mourning that, coming from some hidden source, flows on until it pours itself into the ocean of everlasting consolation. What can it mean? Certainly not that God really likes us to be always sad. The world of seen things around us, so bright, so beautiful, tells a very different tale. And yet methinks it tells us, too, that tears and blessings have to do with one another. Nature has its storms and rain; it has the bleak winds of spring, the thunder-clouds of summer, the falling leaves of autumn, the cold, dark days of winter, and we know now that this sad side of things is not the evidence of the existence of angry deities who dwell in the unseen, but that under the overruling hand of a wise and loving God there is in these things a blessing brought to us, and to the world in which we live. Ah, yes, it is true. Continual laughter is not profitable. There are times when laughter is unseasonable. Even the world pronounces those happy who can weep. Too much ease, and pleasure, and happiness, as the world counts happiness, wean the spirit away from Him in whom alone true blessedness can be found. There is need of sorrow to bring us back to Psalms 119:67). God chastens to bless. His punishments are always corrective, never vindictive. Test by this touchstone all that men say of God’ s dealings with mankind. Ay, answer with it the troubled promptings of your own conscience in the hour of trial and mourning. (C. J.Ridgeway, M. A.) The seriousness of the kingdom This is expressed in the same proverbial form as the two preceding beatitudes; and in proverbs, it is to be observed, that one example is selected to represent a class, or one feature to suggest a whole character. Thus, as weeping is generally accompanied with a serious frame of mind, or is the external symptom of sorrow, so it was probably employed to represent such a state (see Ecclesiastes 7:2-3). Never did any teacher present religion to the world with an aspect so forbidding as it is done by our Saviour in this passage. The Jews expected that the reign of the Messiah would be distinguished by wealth, grandeur, and joy. Our Saviour, therefore, took an early opportunity of undeceiving them, by showing them that those who possessed few or none of the good things of this world were much better fitted to be subjects in that kingdom, and even to exercise authority, than those who were favoured in a high degree with opulence and plenty. (J. Thomson, D. D.) The blessing to Christian weepers It is obvious that this blessing cannot apply to every kind of weeping; for there are tears shed for reasons altogether earthly, and there is a sorrow of the world that worketh death. But on all who weep as the disciples of Christ, or for the sake of Christ, or because of any penitential or truly Christian feeling, on all such this blessing rests. All such “ shall laugh,” that is, shall greatly rejoice. (James Foote, M. A.) The true joy of Christianity He bade them even rejoice; not merely be resigned, but jubilant, and here He struck that keynote of resounding triumph and exhilaration which remains to this day the most original and characteristic sign of the Christian life. Inextinguishable joy in the dungeon--at the stake--amidst ruin and physical pain and loss; that isChristianity. The Stoic bears; the Epicurean submits; the Christian alone exults--“ sorrowful, and yet always rejoicing.” (H. R. Haweis, M. A.) Spiritual mourning For the first, I may expound the point and the text both under one. You see the proposition what it is, every good mourner is in a happy condition. Here let us consider a little the terms to explicate them. Who is the party in speech? “ Blessed is the mourner,” saith Christ, in Matthew; “ Blessed,” saith He, in Luke 6:21, “ are the weepers.” Both these, mourning and weeping, are fruits of the same tree and root. There is a carnal mourning, when a man mourns for the presence of goodness, and for the absence of sin, because he is restrained, and cannot be so bad as he would be. There is a natural mourning, when a man mourns upon natural motives, when natural losses and crosses are upon him. There is a spiritual mourning, when a man mourns in a spiritual manner, for spiritual things, upon spiritual motives, as afterwards we shall show; when he mourns, because good things that are spiritually good are so far from him, and spiritual ills are so near to him. This is the mourner that Christ here speaks of, and this is the mourning that hath the blessing. Other mourning may occasion this through God’ s blessing, and may give some overture to this mourning, but the blessing belongs to the spiritual mourner and the spiritual mourning. “ Blessed are the mourners, for they shall be comforted.” This reason will not hold in all kind of mourning and all kind of comfort. It is no good argument to say, Blessed is the man that is in pain, for he shall be refreshed and relieved; blessed is the man that is hungry, for he shall be fed and have his wants supplied. But yet this argument holds good, “ Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted” ; namely, with God’ s comforts, with the comforts of the Spirit, with the comforts of the Word, the comforts of heaven. The comforts of God are beyond all the miseries and sorrows that a man can endure in this life; and though he do mourn and weep for them, yet notwithstanding, the comforts, the wages, will so far exceed all his sorrows that he is happy in this. He cannot buy spiritual comforts too dear, he cannot have them upon hard terms possibly. Yea, further, spiritual mourning carries comfort with it, besides the harvest of comfort that abides the mourner afterwards. There are first-fruits of comfort here to be reaped, so it is that the more a man mourns spiritually, the more he rejoiceth; the more his sorrow is, the more his comfort is. 1. He that mourns spiritually hath a good judgment, and therefore is happy. Spiritual affection it argues a spiritual judgment and understanding. For the affections work according as they receive information. A creature that is led by fancy hath brutish affections; a man that is guided with matter of reason hath rational affections, as we term them; but a man that hath his mind enlightened and sanctified hath holy affections. 2. It argues a good heart too. (1) A tender and soft heart. For a stone cannot mourn, only the fleshy heart it is that can bleed. (2) As his heart is tender, so also it is sound. It is a healthful soul and a healthful temper, as I may speak, that he hath. For mourning proceeds out of love and hatred; out of agreement, if it be a spiritual mourning, with that which is good, and out of a contrariety and opposition between us and that which is bad. And this is a right constitution and temper of soul, that makes a man happy. 3. As he is happy in the cause, so he will be happy in the effect, too, of his godly mourning. For godly sorrow and mourning brings forth blessed fruits and effects; the apostle in 2 Corinthians 7:10, seq., delivers divers of them, as there you see. (1) This is one thing in spiritual mourning; it secures and excludes a man from carnal and hellish mourning; yea, this orders him and saves him harmless from all other griefs. The more a man can mourn for his sins, the less he will mourn for other matters. So that this mourning prevents a great deal of unprofitable mourning. When a man bleeds unseasonably and unsatiably, the way to divert it is to open a vein and to let him blood elsewhere, and so you save the man. If he weep in a holy and spiritual manner, he shall be secured and preserved from poisonful and hurtful tears. (2) This is another happy effect of godly mourning, that spiritual and godly mourning alway doth a man good and never any hurt. Worldly sorrow, saith the apostle, causeth death. The more a man dies this way, the more he lives; the more he weeps, the more he laughs; and the more he can weep over Jesus Christ, the more lightsome and gladsome his heart is, and the more comfortably he spends his time. (3) This spiritual and godly sorrow and mourning is a sorrow never to be repented of, as the apostle there implies. All other sorrow a man must unsorrow again. (4) Spiritual mourning works repentance, saith the apostle: that is to say, it works reformation and amendment; it sets a man further from his sin, and brings him nearer to God, and nearer to goodness. 4. He is happy in regard of the event and issue of his mourning, because all shall end well with him, and all his tears shall one day be wiped away, and joy and gladness shall come in place; yea, he is happy in this, that spiritual mourning it is always accompanied with joy: that is a happy estate that tends to happiness. Use 1. If it be a happy man that mourns aright, we have reason, first, to bewail our unhappiness; unhappy time and unhappy men may we well say, touching ourselves, that vary so much from the mind and prescription of our blessed Saviour. “ Blessed,” saith our Saviour Christ, “ are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted.” “ Woe to you,” saith He, “ that now laugh.” We, on the other side, say, Woe to them that here mourn; happy are they that can here laugh and be merry. And as we vary in our judgment from our Saviour, so much more we vary in our practice from His direction and counsel. God saith, “ Humble yourselves that you may be exalted.” We on the other side say, Exalt ourselves, and we shall not be humbled. God saith, Throw down yourselves; we say, Secure ourselves. God saith, Afflict yourselves, and then you shall have comfort. The Lord saith, Let your laughter be turned into mourning, that so you may laugh. We on the other say, Let our mourning be turned into laughter, that so we may not mourn. And therefore when any grief, natural or spiritual, begins to breed or to grow on us, presently we betake ourselves to company, to sports and exercises, that may drown the noise of conscience, that may put out of our minds motives to spiritual grief and sorrow, and that may provoke us to carnal, or at the best to natural mirth and rejoicing. We think many times carnal sorrow, which in truth is but poison, will do us good, a great deal of ease; and when men have crossed us, and disappointed us, or dealt unkindly with us, we think we will go and weep it out; and when we have cried and blubbered a while, we think that we give ease to our souls, and content to our hearts. But when we come to spiritual mourning, which only is comfortable mourning, we think that undoes us. Many a man thinks he forfeits all his joy, all his peace, all his liberty, all his happiness, and he shall never see a merry day again in this world if he gives way to mourning for sin, to sound repentance, to works of humiliation, and examination of his own heart and ways. Use 2. Well, in the next place, we have another use, to take Christ’ s direction for comfort. Who would, who can be without it? Life is death without comfort. Every man’ s aim is to lead a comfortable life. Mark the way that Christ chalks out: “ Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted.” 1. We must first show you how spiritual mourning differs, and is discerned from other mourning. 2. How it is gotten. 3. How it is exercised. 1. For the first of this: Spiritual mourning is known by the objects. Such as the object is, such is the faculty. Spiritual mourning hath spiritual objects, either materially or formally, as they speak in schools. This spiritual mourning is busied about spiritual goods and spiritual ills. We will instance in this first. For, first, if a man would know whether his sorrow be spiritual sorrow or no, let him see how he mourns for the absence of spiritual good things, how he mourns for the absence of God, the chief good. That is spiritual sorrow, when a man mourns because he hath lost God in his graces, in his communion, and in his comforts. Now, in the next place, how shall a man do to get this spiritual mourning? First, He must labour to have a heart capable of grief and sorrow that is spiritual, a tender and soft heart. He must see that he have a disposition to holy mourning, able and inclinable so to do, when just opportunity and occasion is offered. Now how shall a man get this tender heart? Why surely he must go to God in His means and ordinances, who hath promised, as you heard, in the covenant, to take “ the stone out of our hearts, and to give us soft and fleshy hearts.” 1. Consider of a method that he must use; and then-- 2. Of motives to stir him up thereunto. 1. For method. (1) He must have respect to the time, that he do not let his heart lie fallow too long. Jeremiah 4:3, it is said, “ Plough up your fallow ground.” Ground, if it lie long unploughed, will require much pains to rear it and fetch it up, but if it be oft done, it will be the easier. To this end a man should every day be exercised in the duty of a godly mourning, every night reckon for the passage of that day, and say with thyself, What sin have I committed? What have I done? (2) For the time, a man must be sure to take God’ s time. When God calls on him, when God gives them the heart, and is ready to close and to join with him, then take the advantage, set upon godly mourning. So when the nature of grief is stirred by the occasion of the Word, then take the advantage of this, seize upon this for the king’ s use; set upon sorrow whilst it is there, turn it into the right stream, into the right channel; turn it for sin, weep for sin, and not for outward losses and crosses. Thus much for the time. 2. There is another thing to be done for the order, and that is this, that a man must be sure to give over carnal mirth and carnal mourning, if he will mourn spiritually. His carnal laughter must be turned into mourning, as James speaks (James 4:9); and his carnal mirth must be turned into spiritual mourning, too, or else he will never come to spiritual mourning. The motives are many. He that will mourn must look to these. Now, in particular, consider these motives. 1. It is needful for us to mourn. 2. It is seasonable for us to mourn. 3. It is profitable. And-- 4. It is comfortable. 1. It is needful to mourn in a spiritual manner. Whosoever hath sin must mourn. 2. As it is needful, so also it is very Seasonable. The very time tends that way, as it were; the season is the time of weeping; the Church of God weeps abroad. For sin is now grown to a fulness, to a ripeness. 3. As it is seasonable, so it is profitable: for godly mourning it never hurts, it always helps. Carnal sorrow leaves a man worse than it finds him. It makes him more sick and weak than it finds him. Spiritual sorrow leaves him better. 4. It is very comfortable. It doth wondrously refresh a man. We pass, therefore, from the doctrine here delivered, “ Blessed are the mourners,” and come to the reason of it, “ for they shall be comforted.” Let us join these together, and see how they do depend. The point will be thus much-- 1. That spiritual mourning it ends in spiritual mirth. He that can mourn spiritually and holily, he shall undoubtedly and certainly be comforted. Holy tears, they are the seeds of holy joy. For the clearing of it further, let us know that we have good security for it, 1. The promise of God: and then-- 2. The experience of God’ s people. The best proofs that may be. First, the Lord undertakes in His promise two things touching our comforts. 1. That all our godly sorrow shall end in true comfort. The next is-- 2. That all our godly mournings are attended and accompanied with comfort for the present. 1. For the first of these, you know the promise, sorrow and weeping shall fly away, and joy and gladness shall come in place (Isaiah 35:1-10., last verse), which place will refer you to many more. God hath made a succession of these things, as of day and night. His children’ s day begins in the night and in darkness, and ends in the day. God hath promised it shall be so; God hath appointed Christ, and fitted Him, and enabled Him to this word, that so it may be. God will take off the garment of mourning, and put on the garment of gladness in due time. 2. To this promise of God let us add the experience of God’ s people. If all this suffice not, let us consider of these reasons, and then we shall see that it is but reason that we should do so. 1. The first reason is drawn from the nature of sorrow and mourning. Sorrow is a kind of an imperfect thing, as it were. It is not made for itself, but for a higher and for a further end, to do service to something else, as it fares with all those that we call the declining affections. Hatred is servant to love; fear doth service to confidence; so likewise doth sorrow to joy. For God hath not appointed sorrow for sorrow’ s sake, but to make way for joy and true comfort. The physician doth not make a man sick for sickness’ sake, but for health’ s sake. But now the joy of a Christian man, a spiritual joy, it is a safe joy. It hurts no man, but doth a man good; it settles a man’ s mind, it strengthens his thoughts, it perfects his wits and understanding. It makes him to have a sound judgment; it makes for the health of his body; it makes for the preservation of his life; it doth a man good every way. There is no provocation in it, there is no danger in it. Thirdly, as a Christian’ s joy is best in that respect, that it is the safest, so in this, that it is the surest joy. For this joy is an everlasting joy. The righteous, then, hath the start of the wicked for matter of comfort and joy. He hath a more solid, a more safe and sure joy, a more sweet joy, a more reasonable joy a great deal than the other hath. As he is beyond him in his joy, so, in the next place, he is beyond him in his sorrow too. Our life must have comfort and sorrow. It is compounded of sweet and sour. As the year is compounded of winter and summer, and the day of day and night, so every man’ s life is made up of these two. He hath some fair and some foul days, some joy and some sorrow. Now, as the righteous is beyond the wicked in his joy and comfort, so is he beyond him in his sorrow. First, his sorrow is far better; it is a more gainful, a more comfortable sorrow than others’ is. They are beyond the sorrows of the wicked in all the causes and in all the circumstances of them. (1) The sorrow of the righteous proceeds from a better spring and fountain than the sorrow of the wicked. The sorrow of the godly comes from a sound mind, from a pure heart, from an inside that is purified from hypocrisy, from self-love, from private respects. Whereas, on the other side, the sorrow of the wicked comes from distemper of brain, from an utter mistake. Again, his sorrow comes from distemper of heart, from pride, from passion, from cursedness of heart and spirit, that he cannot stoop. (2) The sorrow of the righteous, as it hath a better spring, so it is busied and taken up about better objects, about better matters. A wicked man howls and cries, and takes on many times for a trifle, for a bauble; yea, many times, because he is disappointed and crossed in his lusts, in his base sins. The child of God finds himself somewhat else to do than to weep and to cry, and take on for trifles and vanities. He looks up to God, and is sorry he hath displeased Him. (3) The sorrow of the righteous is better than sorrow of the wicked in regard of the manner of their mourning. For the mourning of the righteous is a composed kind of sorrow. He mourns in silence; he weeps to the Lord; he carries it with judgment and discretion. His sorrow is a moderated sorrow; he holds it within banks and bounds. Whereas the sorrow of the wicked is a tempestuous, a boisterous, a furious kind of mourning and lamenting. He knows no mean. It is without hope. (4) Last of all, they differ much in the end and upshot of their mourning. Godly sorrow, it doth a man good. It humbles him, as we said. It drives him from all purpose, from all practice of sin; it makes him resolute against sin. This sorrow of the wicked, it hath not so good an issue. There is great difference when a woman breeds a disease and when she breeds a child. Well, then, to shut up this first reason, for information--upon which we have stood the longer, because carnal judgment will not credit this point--it is clear, the righteous man in prosperity is better than the wicked, and in adversity better. Whence he hath occasion to rejoice. A surgeon doth not lance and sear men because he would put them to pain, but because he would give them ease. The Lord of heaven delights not in wounding and grieving of His children; but therefore He calls them to sorrow, that so they might come to comfort. 2. The second reason may be drawn from the nature of this spiritual comfort and joy that we speak of. For spiritual joy is very strong: “ The joy of the Lord is your strength “ (Nehemiah 8:10). A strong thing is spiritual joy, and therefore it will overmatch, and overcome, and drink up, as it were, all our sorrows and fears in due time, as the sun overcomes the darkness of the night, and the fogginess of the mist in the morning. 3. A third reason may be drawn from the cause of our spiritual mourning and spiritual joy; for these are fruits that grow both from the same root. Spiritual joy and spiritual mourning, they come from the same fountain, from the same Spirit. The same Spirit, it causeth us to weep over Him whom we have pierced, and it causeth us also to rejoice in the Lord whom we have pierced: “ The fruit of the Spirit is joy,” saith the apostle Galatians 5:22). The same Spirit manageth and guideth both the one and the other. Carnal passions and affections they oppose one another, they fight one with another, because they are carried on headlong, without any guide or order at all. But spiritual affections they are subordinate and subservient one to another; the one labours to further and to advance another. Thus the more a man joys, the more he grieves; and the more he grieves, the more he joys. Joy melts the heart, and gives it a kindly thaw; grief, on the other side, it easeth the heart, and makes it cheerful and lightsome. 4. Lastly, a reason may be drawn from the effects of godly mourning. If they be considered, it will be cleared, that he that mourns spiritually shall end in comfort at the last; for this spiritual mourning, what will it do? First, it takes off the power and strength of corruption. It weakens sin, it pricks the bladder of pride, and lets out our corruption. Spiritual mourning it takes down a man, it humbles him; and an humble heart is always a cheerful heart, so far as it is humbled. Spiritual mourning, again, makes way for prayer. For spiritual mourning sends a man to God. It causeth him to utter himself in petition, in confession, and complaints to his Father; to pour out himself to the bosom of his God in speeches, in sighs, and tears, in lamenting one way or other. All this tends to comfort. The more a man prays, the more he hath comfort. “ Pray,” saith Christ, “ that your joy may be full” (John 16:24). Now, the more a man mourns spiritually, the more he prays; and therefore the more he is filled with true joy. Again, this spiritual mourning, it is a wondrous help of faith. It is a hopeful mourning; it helps a man’ s faith in the promises touching remission of sins. Now, the more a man’ s faith and hope is furthered, the more his joy is furthered. Still, the apostle speaks that they should rejoice in believing. Now, the more he mourns, the more reason he hath to believe that that furthers his faith; and therefore it advanceth his joy and comfort. This point, then, being thus cleared, let us a little make some use of it to ourselves. The use is threefold. 1. Here is one use of information touching others. Who is the happiest man in the world? And for the deciding of this question we must not go with it to Solon, to Plato, or to the philosophers, but come to a judge, the Lord Jesus. And what saith He to the point? Blessed and happy, saith He, are they that mourn. His reason is, “ for they shall be comforted.” So that here, then, is the trial of a man’ s state that is blessed. So that that man, then, that hath the best sorrow and the best joy, that man, then, is the happiest man. Now the Christian man is this man. (1) In many respects, this joy is a more solid joy than the joy of the wicked. The wicked man rejoiceth in face, but not in heart. This joy is rather in show than in substance. His joy is not rooted in himself. 3. wicked man hath no matter of comfort within himself, but his comforts they hang upon outward things. His comfort sometimes lies in the bottom of a pot; sometimes it lies in the bottom of a dish; sometimes in the heels of a horse; sometimes in the wings of a bird; sometimes in some base lust, or in some such filthy sin. Here lies the comfort of a wicked man; but now the comfort of the godly is not so. The joy of the righteous, it is a massy and a substantial joy. His afflictions indeed are light and momentary, but then his joy is everlasting, as I shall show anon. It is a joy that hath substance in it. The joy of the wicked, at the best, it is but a little glazed, it is but gilt over, but it is naught within; but the joy of the righteous it is a golden joy, it is beaten gold, it is massy and substantial and precious. As we said before, the root of his joy he hath it in himself, he hath matter of comfort in himself. There is faith and grace, there is truth. Nay, it is not rooted in himself only, but the root of it is in heaven, in his Head, in Christ. (2) The joy of the righteous, as it is a more solid, so it is a more safe joy than the joy of the wicked. A carnal joy is many times prejudicial to a man in his safety, therefore we may safely conclude the godliest man is the happiest man. 2. Now the next use is to the godly. First, a word of exhortation, and then a word of consolation. Stop up, my brethren, all the passages, dam them up if you can, that make way for worldly sorrow and for carnal grief, for this will come but too fast upon you; but, on the other side, pluck up the floodgates, and open all the passages, and give all the way to spiritual mourning and to godly tears. (1) Labour to mourn after spiritual things and spiritual persons. (2) Again, Is it so, that the Lord withdraws Himself in His ordinances, that we hear not the voice of His word, that we see not-our signs? “ There is not a prophet among us to tell us how long” (Psalms 74:9); let us then set ourselves to mourn, as the Church in that psalm. “ Lord, we see not our signs.” (3) Is it so, again, that in our mourning, we see the Church of God, those sorrowful-spirited men, that they are distressed and afflicted? Let us weep for these too. (4) Is it so, that the Church of God is foiled at any time by the adversaries? Let us take on, as Joshua did, “ rend your garments, and cast down ourselves before the Lord, and say, What shall we say, when Israel shall turn their backs and fly before their enemies?” (Joshua 7:8). (5) In short, is the Church of God in heaviness and lamentation? Oh, but how shall I know that my mourning is spiritual mourning? I suspect it much this way. And why? First of all, my sorrow begins in the flesh; I never mourned, I never went to God in prayer and fasting, or any exercise of religion, till God tamed me and took me down with crosses and afflictions; then when He laid load on me, I went to it, and not before. Well, my brethren, thus it may be: thy sorrow may begin in the flesh; but, if it end in the Spirit, all is well. Ay, but, will some say, my sorrow is more for outward things than for spiritual matters. ( grieve when I am sick, but it is for pain more than for sin. I mourn when I am poor, but it is because I am poor in purse, because I am poor in state, rather than in regard of my spiritual wants; and so for other matters too. My brethren, this is easily granted. There is no floor here but there is chaff as well as wheat with it. There is no precious mine here so rich but there is some dross as well as good gold, as well as good metal. So it is with a Christian. There is a mixture of flesh and spirit. And if it be so, it is spiritual sorrow, that thou canst shed some tears, vent some sighs and groans to God in spiritual respects, for spiritual losses, for spiritual evils. Here is matter of comfort, there is so much spiritual comfort, so much spiritual joy belongs to thee. But how shall I know that my mourning is spiritual mourning, when I cannot mourn for sin? I have abundance of tears for losses, and for crosses, and unkindnesses; but I am dry, and barren, and tearless, when it comes to matter of sin and offence, and trespass against God. Is this well, that a man should have tears at command for outward losses and crosses, and not shed a tear in prayer, and in repentance for sin? No, my brethren, it is not well; but how shall we do to amend this? Surely, even go to God and confess how it is; complain of thyself, and desire Him to amend it; and, if we condemn ourselves, God is ready to receive us. Ay, but the children of God are more plentiful in tears for sin than for outward things. Ay, in what sense? Not in regard of the bulk, but in regard of the worth, in regard of the value of their tears. One tear spent for sin is worth rivers of tears for outward matters. Further, it will be said, How shall I know my sorrow to be spiritual sorrow? I answer in a word-- 1. Look to the object, that it be universal, So in spiritual things: he that is spiritually sorry he mourns for the want of goodness wheresoever he seeth it, be it in himself or in other men, nay, be it in his enemies. 2. Our sorrow will be spiritual and holy if it be accompanied with prayer; for holy mourning makes way for prayer. 3. Again, it is spiritual sorrow, when it is accompanied with thankfulness. A carnal man, when he is pinched and twinged, and knows not which way to turn himself, he will be glad to cry, when he sees there is no other refuge in the world, but either he must cry or sink. But a man that is a spiritual mourner, he will be thankful as well as prayerful. (R. Sibbes, D. D.) Godly mourners shall be comforted 1. There is a foolish mourning, in which men and women are not blessed--that is, they mourn they know not for what. 2. A natural mourning; when there is a mourning merely because nature is pinched, and some evil hath befallen it, and you go no further. This hath not a blessedness in it. 3. A worldly mourning; worldly sorrow causes death; to mourn for the loss of worldly things as the great and the chief loss of all. This is not blessed, it causeth death; and-- 4. An envious mourning; when men mourn and are grieved for the good of others. Surely this is not blessed, but cursed. 5. And there is, further, a devilish mourning; when men and women mourn that they cannot have opportunity to satisfy their lusts. 6. And lastly, there is a hellish, desperate mourning; when men and women mourn in despair. This is hellish, and not blessed. These mourners are not blessed. And then all those that mourn in a gracious way. You will say, When doth one mourn in a gracious way and manner? Now, the ground of the blessedness ariseth, first, from the mourning itself; secondly, from the promise. Surely it is a blessed thing to be such a mourner. 1. Because that the lower our hearts are in our subjection to God in this mournful condition, the higher are our respects to God that brings us into this condition. 2. A mourning condition, when it is ordered by grace, it is a means of much good in the soul; it is that that takes away the rankness in the hearts of men. As weeds grow very rank in summer time, now in the winter the frost nips the weeds and keeps them under; but if it be a long frost it kills them. 3. It is that that delivers from many temptations. You think that jollity and bravery is the only happy life, but know there are a great many more temptations in that life than in a mournful condition. 4. They are blessed that are in a mournful condition, because God hath chosen for them that mourning condition in the most seasonable time. You know when a man is sick, then bitter things are more seasonable than sweet. Now we are all sickly poor creatures, and it is a great mercy of God in this time of our lives to choose for us a mournful condition--bitter things rather than sweet and luscious things. 5. And then especially here in this text, because they shall be comforted; it is but to make the comforts sweeter unto thee when they do come. You know that when a man would build a structure, a stately building, the stones that he intends principally to build withal are hacked and hewn, that so they may be comely and fit for his building; but as for other stones, they are not regarded as those that are thus polished which he intends to lay. So it is an argument that the Lord hath great things for thee, great comforts for thee; He is now preparing thee in this thy mournful condition for great comforts. 1. They shall be comforted. When? Why, they shall be comforted when the wicked shall be sorrowful (Isaiah 65:13). 2. And then, you shall be comforted; there is a time when the Lord will communicate unto you the choicest of His mercies. Now the Lord communicates Himself, but in a very small and little way in comparison to what He doth intend. And this comfort that the mourners shall have, shall be, first, a pure comfort. We have something that is sweet, but there is a great deal of mixture with our sweet. And then they are spiritual comforts. Their comforts shall come more firstly in their souls, and so they shall have comfort to their bodies by way of the eradiation, as I may so say, of the comfort that they shall have to their souls. 3. Divine comforts they are that they shall have--that is, all comfort is from God one wet or other, but from God more immediately. Here we have our comforts at second or third or fourth hand, but now there shall be comfort that shall be from God more immediately. And such comforts as are from the very nature of God Himself--that is, such comfort as God is comforted in, such joy as God joys in, and God joys with them in 2:4. It is a full comfort, “ Ask and you shall have, that your joy may be full.” 5. And then it shall be a strong comfort (Hebrews 6:18). 6. An eternal consolation; so yon have it in 2 Thessalonians 2:16; in 2 Timothy 2:11. As we read concerning Egypt, as there were more venomous creatures there than in other countries, so there was in no country more antidotes to cure them than in theirs. So, though religion may bring sorrow and trouble, yet there is nothing brings more cure and more help. (J. Burroughs.) The folly of men rebuked who are all for mirth 1. If thy mourning be gracious, thy very tears and sorrows is a great deal better than the wine of the men of the world; thy tears are more sweet and pleasing to God than the mirth of wicked men can be to them. 2. Consider this for thy comfort, it may be, if thou hadst not been a-mourning thou wouldst have been a-sinning, thou wouldst have been a-doing that whereby thou wouldst have darkened the glory of God. 3. Consider that all thy sorrows are measured out by God, who is thy Father; thou dost not lie at the dispose of wicked men to mourn how much they will, or when they will, but thou art at the dispose of God, who is thy Father. 4. Consider for thy comfort that Christ was a man of sorrows, and in thy sorrowing thou art but conformable unto Him; and why shouldst thou think that to be a burden wherein thou art made like to Jesus Christ? 5. Let this be for thy comfort, to consider thou hast an interest in Him that is the God of all consolation; the darkness of thy condition cannot hinder thine interest in God. And then consider that God suffers more by thy sins than thou canst suffer from God’ s hand in thy afflictions. The darkening of His glory in the least degree is a greater evil than any affliction that thou canst endure; and this should support thy spirit, to consider that God suffers more; and therefore thou shouldst not be unwilling to suffer something, seeing God suffers more than thou canst. 6. If thou wouldst be comforted, consider this: the way that God takes to comfort His saints, though thou hast it not in sense, thou mayest have it in faith; and therefore exercise faith, and fetch it in that way. Set faith on work in the promise, and let that bring out the comfort of the promise. Sense is not the way by which God comforts His people, and if we look for comfort in a sensual way we mistake ourselves; therefore let us labour to fetch in comfort from the exercise of faith. And indeed we should more prize those comforts that come from the exercise of our graces than from any sensible apprehensions. 7. Consider, though it be long before comfort come, yet this is no strange thing that thou art kept without comfort for a while. 8. Consider, that this is the time of mourning, and we know things are seasonable and best in their time. This is a Christian’ s seed-time. In the world we must have trouble, and through many tribulations we must enter into heaven. We know the husbandman; he is contented to endure storms and hardships in seedtime, with this consideration--the harvest is a-coming. So, though thou now sowest in tears, there is a time of reaping in joy. How we may so order our mourning that it may comfort us. Now for this I would entreat you to take notice of these rules. 1. In your mourning be sure that you keep good thoughts of God. Whatsoever your troubles be, let them not raise tumults and hard thoughts of God. 2. Be sure to take notice of all the mercy thou hast from God in the afflictions thou art in. Let not any affliction drown the mercy thou hast. It is very sad many times to see how one or two afflictions hinders the sight of many mercies that the saints do enjoy. A little thing will hinder the sight of the eye; a penny laid upon the eye will keep it from beholding the sun or the element above; so a little affliction, it darkens and hinders the soul from seeing a multitude of mercies; every little trouble darkens God’ s mercies. 3. Take heed of a sullen, dogged disposition, either towards God or man in thy sorrows. It is very usual for men in a troubled condition, when they are in sorrow, to add frowardness to mourning; but we should labour to take heed of this as a great evil. Labour for a quiet and meek spirit. 4. Take heed of determining against a comfortable condition in sorrow, that it will never come. Say not that comfort will never come, because thou hast it not for the present. (J. Burroughs.) How mourners should order their mourning Now, then, such as mourn thus for sin are blessed; for-- 1. By this they do much honour God. The sovereignty of God is honoured, and the holiness of God is honoured, and the justice of God is honoured. 2. It is a blessed thing to mourn for sin, because it is an evangelical grace. 3. Surely they are in a blessed condition, for it appears that they come now to have a right judgment. Their judgment is enlightened to understand what is truly good and truly evil, and to have a right temper of spirit. 4. This mourning for sin, it helps against all other mourning, it helps against other sorrows. 5. It is a means to prevent eternal sorrows. Certainly God will have every soul to know what sin means at one time or other. 6. It is that that fits for the grace of God. There is none that taste the sweetness of the grace of God in Christ more than those that are mourners for sin. Now one drop of mercy, how sweet is it; now it is worth more than ten thousand thousand worlds! 7. There is one more, and that is, they are blessed; why? because there are many promises that are made to those that mourn. That is certain--either a man’ s sin will make an end of his mourning, or a man’ s mourning will make an end of his sin, one of the two. If so be a man goes on in sin, he will leave off mourning, but if he doth not leave off mourning, he will leave off sinning; for certainly mourning for sin hath a special efficacy in it, it helps against the sin that thou dost mourn for. This bitter aloes that now thou hast is a special means for the helping against those crawling worms that are in thy soul. Hence, in the first place, the use might be very large, what shall become of those that rejoice in sin? And then surely mourning for sin is not melancholy; for one to mourn and be troubled for their sin is not to grow heavy and melancholy. It is the work of the Spirit of God that lays that weight of sin now upon the soul, because the Lord intends that this soul shall be blessed to all eternity. And do not think it a foolish thing for people to be troubled for their sin. (J. Burroughs.) Luke 6:22-23 Blessed are ye, when men shall hate you, and when they shall separate you from their company, and shall reproach you, and cast out your name as evil The necessity of persecution Persecution is no accident in Christian life. It is simply inevitable from the collision with evil of Christian righteousness when it becomes positive, especially when it becomes aggressive in the cause of peacemaking. It is the activity of Christian life which lays its own faggots, prepares for itself its own martyrdom. It is when the disciple follows in the wake of the first great Peacemaker, and from the side of God approaches the world’ s evil with implied rebukes and an open summons to it to repent, submit, and be at peace, that it is most certain to encounter the world’ s missiles. A very holy or unworldly life may be itself so telling a rebuke, even though a silent one, as to draw on some meek, pare souls dislike, and calumny, and malice. But it is the active, witness-bearing, and missionary type of Christian character which provokes the chief resistance. The Christianity of the wholly unpersecuted must be a Christianity defectively aggressive, which has not advanced sufficiently to the last stage, the stage of peacemaking. Nor is this all. Persecution is not simply inevitable as soon as the development of active Christian life leads it into collision with evil; it is an indispensable factor in the very development and perfecting of Christian life. Persecution is not indeed a grace; but persecution is the creator of a grace (James 1:3-4). (J. C.Dykes, D. D.) Bitterness of social and domestic persecution I cannot but think that this has been, on the whole, not less trying than outward and violent persecutions, for persons assailed by it have to bear their troubles mostly in secret. They have little sympathy from others; nor any of the rising of the spirit of passive (passing into active) heroism which, when men’ s eyes are on it, is naturally roused into energetic resistance. For, indeed, there are several things which tend to hold a man up in his visible endurance of visible persecution. He is as a champion of a cause; his personal bravery and earnestness, as well as his conscience, are on trial. He knows that even among those who hound on the cry of persecution against him, there are those who admire his firmness in bearing it. He believes that though overpowered himself, and put to death perhaps, yet suffering and death bravely borne leave a seed behind them which germinates and grows in spite of persecution, and is wont to outlive it. All these things and such as these mingle themselves up with the convictions of conscience, and strengthen it, when the persecution for righteousness’ sake takes place in the sight of men. But it is otherwise with all the secret and, if I may so call it, unpicturesque suffering of social or domestic life--the chill, and the estrangement, and the unkindness, and the evil report, and the misrepresentation, the thwarting and jealousy, all the details of inward and unseen misery which goes to make up the real persecution which has visited, and no doubt visits still, thousands of people whose hearts’ desire it is to serve God faithfully, and who are content to bear with evil for Christ’ s sake. And so I can hardly doubt that “ when that last account ‘ twixt heaven and earth shall be made up,” it will be found that the persecution of private and social life has been in total amount greater, and maybe its actual bitterness not less, and so its ultimate title of blessedness in Christ as great, as that of those who have been “ persecuted unto blood” for Christ’ s sake. (Bishop Moberly.) Why persecution is to be accounted a blessing 1. It tests and proves the worth of our religion. It tells us whether our Christianity is positive and aggressive, or whether it is only negative. 2. It forms character, it purifies the life, it develops graces--the great end of religion. 3. A necessary factor in the spiritual life. No cross, no crown. (C. J.Ridgeway, M. A.) Principles for suffering 1. Wherefore the first principle to enable Christians to suffer for righteousness is, that we should look on ourselves as sent into the world for this end, especially to bear witness to the truth. 2. The second suffering principle is this--It is better to lose for God than to enjoy for ourselves. 3. Whosoever suffers anything for God, in the midst of all their sufferings they are in a better case than their persecutors. 4. That it is a great deal better to suffer for Christ than to suffer for sin. 5. That God may make me suffer in spite of my heart. If I find a reluctancy in me to come off to suffer for Christ, I may be forced in spite of my heart to do it; and what comfort shall I then have in it? How much better is it to suffer freely and willingly for Jesus Christ than to be forced to suffer? and then there will be no exercise of grace in it, but I shall be merely passive. Christ can lay afflictions upon you, and diseases upon you. 6. No creature hath any good in it any farther than it is enjoyed in God, and improved for God. 7. The seventh suffering principle is this: There are no sufferings of any of the saints that they are called unto at any time, but they are ordered by God, for the time of the suffering, for the kind of the suffering, the continuance of the suffering, the instruments of the suffering. 8. That whenever we suffer for Christ, Christ suffers with us; we are partakers of His sufferings, and He is partaker of our sufferings (Isaiah 63:9). 9. There is more evil in sufferings before they come, in imagination, than when they are come. 10. That there is more evil in the least sin than in the greatest afflictions. It is an ill choice to choose the least sin rather than the greatest affliction. Now for the blessedness that there is in suffering, many things might be said, but I shall but present before you some short view of what blessedness there is in suffering persecution. 1. If God gives thee a heart to suffer for Him, thou hast in this a full evidence of the truth of thy graces, yea, and of the strength and the eminency of thy graces. 2. There is a great deal of honour in suffering. It is a speech of Ignatius, “ I had rather be a martyr than a monarch” ; and so you know Moses chose “ rather to suffer with the people of God, than to enjoy all the pleasures and riches of Egypt.” 3. It is a blessed thing to suffer for righteousness’ sake, for it is the highest and greatest improvement of men’ s abilities, graces, comforts, whatsoever they enjoy. It is the highest improvement that can be for them to suffer. Never are men’ s graces so improved as in times of suffering. As the spices have a more fragrant smell when they are beaten to powder that when they are whole; and so the saints’ graces are more fragrant in the nostrils of God, and do grow up more in the time of suffering than ever. 4. It is blessed, for those that suffer are under many blessed promises. Why, “ If you suffer with Him, you shall be glorified with Him.” Read 2 Timothy 2:12, and in Romans 8:1-39., there you have divers excellent expressions wherein there are most excellent promises to such as suffer in the cause of Christ (Matthew 19:29). (J. Burroughs.) Some arguments for the helping of saints to suffer First, to show the history how all the prophets, disciples, and the saints that have gone before have suffered great and hard things. Secondly, wherein the argument lies of rejoicing under persecution. Thirdly, what use we are to make of the persecution of the prophets. I could handle but the first. To proceed to the second: wherein lies the power of this argument? There is a fivefold strength in this argument, or rather five arguments in it. 1. The same spirit of wickedness that opposed them doth still prevail, and it is the same spirit of truth that is opposed. 2. Hence you may see that those that are dear and precious to God, that they may suffer hard things. 3. If so be God should deal with you otherwise than He did formerly with others, then it might discourage you; but they are no other things than His servants heretofore have suffered. 4. It is the way that God hath brought all His servants into heaven by. Why should you think that God will bring you in a better way than He did others? 5. That though the prophets have suffered such things, yet the truth of God prevails. (J. Burroughs.) Suffering for the truth’ s sake I. WE CANNOT BE OF JESUS WITHOUT . The contrast between the natural heart and the ideal Christian is not less marked to-day than it was eighteen hundred years ago. Nothing kindles so much hatred as evangelical love. II. According to the Saviour’ s declaration, IS A SOURCE OF . 1. It is a happiness to suffer for a noble cause. 2. The fact that suffering for truth brings with it its own reward is also a reason for joy, as it ensures the triumph of our cause. 3. “ Your reward is great in heaven,” said the Master, thus adding the consolation of a glorious hope to those which flow from duty performed. 4. This triumph of truth in heaven is not enough. It must have its glorious revenge on the very theatre of its humiliations and conflicts. The world must see how mistaken it was in rejecting it, and one day it will be forced to exclaim, “ O Galilean, Thou hast overcome.” (E. de Pressense, D. D.) The reward of the pious in heaven I. THE WHICH AWAITS THOSE WHO , THROUGH GOOD REPORT AND EVIL REPORT, IN A TO CHRIST, IS IN THE BY THE NAME OF REWARD. 1. It is inseparably joined to obedience, and promised as a motive to encourage and sustain 2:2. It will be bestowed as a mark of approbation, and acceptance of the obedience to which it is annexed. 3. It will be proportionate to the degree of religious improvement, to the work of faith and labour of love. II. THE OF TO EARTHLY REWARDS. 1. The rewards of heaven are certain. 2. They are satisfying. 3. They are eternal. (R. Hall, A. M.) Joy in persecution Somebody pushed good Mr. Kilpin into the gutter and slapped him on the face at the same time, and said, “ Take that, John Bunyan” ; whereupon the good man took off his hat and said, “ I would take fifty times as much as that to have the honour to be called John Bunyan.” Learn to look upon insults for Christ in the same light, and when they call you by an ill name do you reply, “ I could bear a thousand times as much as that for the pleasure of being associated with Christ in the world’ s derision.” (C. H. Spurgeon.) Doing right When the storm [concerning the slave trade] was at its highest, one of Mr. Buxton’ s friends asked him, “ What shall I say when I hear people abusing you?” “ Say!” he replied, snapping his fingers, “ say that. You good folk think too much of your good name. Do right, and right will be done.” (Life of Fowell Buxton.) The failure of persecution And so when bad men are not hardened in wickedness they can be won over by the good, but when they are they hate and persecute the good, whose mere silent lives rebuke them. It was thus that Sodom hated Lot; it was thus that the Ephesians expelled Hermodorus because he was virtuous; it was thus that the Athenians ostracised Aristides because he was just. “ The honourable and religious gentleman,” said a slave-holding member of Parliament, speaking of William Wilberforce, in the House of Commons. He was properly scathed in reply with the lightnings of the great man’ s eloquence, but the epithet spoke volumes with the silent, unconscious, inevitable rebuke of vice and protest for holiness by every true and righteous man. And mark, that when the bad, hating the good, sneer them out of court, repress them by violence, madden the blind multitude by lies against them, poison them as Socrates was poisoned, banish them as Epictetus was banished, burn them as Savonarola was burnt, execrate them as Whitfield was execrated, do not think that then the good have failed. Even in their ashes live their wonted fires, their voices even from the grave sound in the thunder’ s mouth, their dead hands pull down the stronghold of their enemies, and tyrants tremble at their ghosts. What was the nature of Jesus? Between two murderers He hung in agony upon the cross, amid the howlings alike of secular and religious hatred. Before three centuries were over that gibbet of torture and infamy sat upon the sceptres and shone upon the crowns of kings. (Archdeacon Farrar.) Sustained in persecution The annals of the Church furnish terrible illustrations of persecution, and how Christians have been sustained in trial. A youth who had manifested extraordinary patience under the greatest torture, said afterwards, that at the time of his agony an angel seemed to stand beside him, and pointing him to heaven, enabled him to rise in spirit superior to his pain. Pastor Homel, of the French Protestant Church, had his bones all so broken on the wheel that he survived but forty hours. But then, in his dying agony, he said, “ Though my bones are broken to shivers, my soul is filled with inexpressible joy.” (H. Burton.) On persecution I have a large field to go over, an Aceldama, “ a field of blood,” a Golgotha, “ a place of dead men’ s skulls,” where you shall see “ some stoned, some sawn asunder, some slain with the sword, others having trial of cruel mockings and scourgings, of bonds and imprisonment” Hebrews 11:36-37); but withal (what the eye of flesh cannot discover) blessedness waiting upon them, and shadowing them in the midst of horror. Here is a fair inscription upon a bitter roll, a pleasing preface to a tragical theme, a promise of pleasure in misery, of honour in dishonour, of life in death, of heaven in hell. Here we may see persecution making us strong by making us weak, making us rich by making us poor, making us happy by making us miserable, and driving us through this field of blood into Paradise. The parts of the text are manifestly but two: a blessing pronounced--“ Blessed are they that suffer persecution,” and a reason given--“ For theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” But we may, by a plain and natural deduction, make them three-- I. That they who begin in the other virtues and beatitudes must end in this; or, in the apostle’ s words, “ They that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution” (2 Timothy 3:12). II. That persecution bringeth no blessing but to those “ who suffer for righteousness’ sake.” III. That to those it doth: which comprehendeth the inscription, “ Blessedness” ; and the reason of the inscription, “ For theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” I. We find here persecution and blessedness joined together, wrought by the same hand, a hand of mercy, and like sweet and bitter water flow ing from the same fountain, a fountain of love. For it is God’ s love and mercy to give us a kingdom; and it is His love and mercy to bring us to it by sufferings, to bring us, as the apostle speaketh, “ through much tribulation,” through the noise and tumults of this world, to a place of rest (Acts 14:22). And the reason is as plain, even written with the sunbeams. 1. For, in this, God dealeth with them as a loving father; He doeth it “ for the trial, or rather the demonstration, of their faith” ; to make it appear that they do not “ make a profession of their love, when they hate Him in their heart” ; depend upon Him for their salvation and happiness, and, when persecution cometh, leave Him and exchange Him for the world, rather yield, and fall under the burden, than stand fast in the faith, and retain Him as their God. There must some occasion and opportunity be offered, some danger, some cross, that may fright me; and when I withstand all, and cleave fast unto Christ, then it will appear that I am His friend and servant. “ A mariner is best seen in a tempest, and a Christian is best known when persecution rageth.” 2. Therefore, in the second place, this is the reason why God suffereth this mixture of good and evil, why He suffereth tyrants and blood-thirsty men to go on and prosper in their ways. 3. Therefore, in the third place, if we consider the Church, which is at her best nothing else but a collection and a body of righteous men, we shall find that, whilst she is on the earth, she is militant; and no other title doth so fully express her. 4. For, in the last place, it cometh not by chance that the righteous are persecuted. What hath chance to do in the school of Providence? No; persecution is brought towards the righteous by the providence and wisdom of a loving Father. I have now brought you into this Aceldama, this “ field of blood,” where you may behold the ungodly for their own lust “ persecuting the poor” (Psalms 10:2), where you may behold hypocrites and deceitful men “ bending their bow, and shooting at the righteous in secret” (Psalms 64:4), and mighty men drawing their swords and drenching them in their blood. A sad sight, to see righteousness under the whip and harrow! But withal you may discover not only an angel going before them, as before the children of Israel in the wilderness, but Christ Himself leading them through these terrors and amazements to a place of refreshing, to “ a city not made with hands,” to “ the kingdom of heaven.” Oportet, “ They must suffer” ; but “ there remaineth a sabbath for the children of God” (Hebrews 4:9). Persecution is the lot, the inheritance of the righteous: that was our first part. II. andIII. We will now present you with the second: That every man that suffereth hath not title to this blessedness in the text, but only those “ who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake,” which comprehendeth all those duties which the gospel requireth at their hands who have given up their names unto Christ. For it is possible that a man may suffer for one virtue, and neglect the rest; may suffer to preserve his chastity, and yet be covetous. He can suffer for the law, and yet break it. 1. And, first, the cause; it must be the love of righteousness. For we see, as I told you, men will suffer for their lusts, suffer for their profit, suffer for fear, suffer for disdain. Be sure your cause be good, or else to venture goods or life upon it is the worst kind of prodigality in the world. 2. In the next place, as a good cause, so a good life, doth fit and qualify us to suffer for righteousness’ sake. Augustine--“ He dieth not the death of a martyr who liveth not the life of a Christian.” An unclean beast is not fit to make a sacrifice. The persecuted and persecutor imply and suppose one another, and are never asunder. 1. But let them that suffer have the first place. (1) And, first, “ knowing these terrors,” as the apostle speaketh (2 Corinthians 5:11), seeing persecution is, as it were, entailed upon the righteous person, seeing there is a kind of providence and necessity it should be so, let us learn, first, as St. Peter speaketh, “ not to think it strange concerning this fiery trial” (1 Peter 4:12); not to dote too much upon this outward gilded peace and perpetuity in public profession; or, when we see these things, think some strange thing is come unto us. For what strange thing is it that wicked men should persecute the righteous? that a serpent should bite, or a lion roar? that the world should be the world, and the Church the Church? (2) And, that we may not think it strange, let us not frame and fashion to ourselves a Church by the world. (3) And, therefore, in the third place, let us cast down these imaginations, these bubbles of wind blown and raised up by the flesh, the worse part, which doth soonest bring on a persecution, and soonest fear one; and let us, in the place of these, build up a royal fort, “ build up ourselves in our most holy faith” (Jude 1:20), and so fit and prepare our selves against this fiery trial. 2. And now, as we have brought the righteous person into this field of blood, and prepared and strengthened him against the horror of it; so must we bring the persecutor also, that he may behold what desolation he hath made. Why boasteth thou thyself in thy mischief, O mighty man? Psalms 51:1), that “ thou hast sped, that thou hast divided the prey” ? Judges 5:30). (A. Farindon, D. D.) Protestants separated for Christ’ s name’ s sake I. FROM WHOM CHRIST’ S SUFFER. II. WHAT IT IS WHICH THE OF CHRIST SUFFER. 1. Hatred. 2. Separation. 3. Reproach. 4. The casting out of their names. III. THE CAUSE OF THE OF CHRIST’ S . And here we meet-- 1. The pretended cause. “ They shall cast out your name as evil” ; they shall fasten, as much as in them lies, all manner of calumnies upon you; and report of you, not as indeed you are, but as they who hate you would have you thought to be. But as to others, the supposed evil in the matter that Christ’ s followers are charged with, is but a pretended cause of their being so evilly dealt withal. 2. The real cause for which they suffer. This is that which is at the bottom of all--it is for Christ’ s sake, for their respect unto Him and His institutions, His truths and ordinances, that His disciples suffer. And this we may deduce from the following scheme. I. It is for the truths of Christ, the doctrine owned, preached, and recommended by Him, that they thus deal with us. II. It is for the purity of His worship, because we would serve God according to His own will, and not according to their will-worship, that they thus abhor us. III. It is for His authority’ s sake, because we dare not take the government from off His shoulders (Isaiah 9:6), nor pay that respect to any frail man which is only due unto Him who is “ God blessed for evermore” (Romans 9:5)--or, if you will, it is because we dare not worship the beast--that they serve us thus. To sum up all in one--it is for the vindication of Christ in all His offices that we endure these indignities at their hands. Three consolatory inferences. 1. In that it is but from men--“ When men shall hate you” (Matthew 10:28). 2. It is “ for the Son of Man’ s sake” that we thus suffer. And if He had required greater matters of us, would we not have done them? 3. Christ has pronounced such sufferers blessed--“ Blessed are ye” (1) It is Christ’ s judgment on our case and condition. And He, we may truly say then, sees not as man sees. (2) It is not a bare opinion (though His could not be erroneous) that we are blessed, but it is Christ’ s effective sentence. His dicere is facere. Christ doth “ make” them blessed whom He “ pronounces” to be so; and He can make a blessed persecution. If He bless, who can curse? (Numbers 23:8). “ Lord, let them curse, but bless Thou” (Psalms 109:28). (P. Finke, D. D.) Luke 6:24 But woe unto you that are rich! for ye have received your consolation The danger of riches Unless we were accustomed to read the New Testament from our childhood, I think we should be very much struck with the warnings it contains, not only against the love of riches, but the very possession of them. That our Lord meant to speak of riches as being in some sense a calamity to the Christian is plain from His praises and recommendations of poverty. 1. The most obvious danger which worldly possessions present to our spiritual welfare is that they become practically a substitute in our hearts for that one object to which our supreme devotion is due. They are present; God is unseen. They are means at hand of effecting what we want; whether God will hear our petitions for these wants is uncertain. Thus they minister to the corrupt inclinations of our nature. 2. This, then, was some part of our Saviour’ s meaning, when He connects together the having with the trusting in riches. 3. The danger of possessing riches is the carnal security to which they lead; that of desiring or pursuing them is that an object of this world is thus set before us as the end and aim of life. It is a part of Christian caution to see to it that our engagements do not become pursuits. Engagements are oar portion, but pursuits are for the most part of our own choosing. 4. Money is a sort of creation, and gives the acquirer, even more than the possessor, an imagination of his own power; and tends to make him idolize self. And if such be the result of gain on an individual, doubtless it will be the same on a nation; and if the peril be so great in the one case, why should it be less in the other? (J. H. Newman, D. D.) The perils of rich men 1. One of the principal perils of rich men arises from their very exemption from many temptations to gross sin. Hence they are apt to think too well of themselves. 2. The rich man finds it very easy to do many kindly acts. It is very natural, therefore, that he should regard his own character and life complacently, and that he should think severely of the selfishness of these less fortunate than himself. 3. The rich man’ s Bible, with its morocco binding and gilt edges, has very much less in it than the poor man’ s Bible, bound in sheep. Pages which are read and re-read, which are marked, and scored, and thumbed in the one, are virtually mere blank paper in the other. 4. As the rich man loses many of the revelations of God’ s sympathy, compassion, and care, which inspire the poor with intense and passionate gratitude, so he loses some of the most urgent motives to communion with God, which often make the poor man devout. (R. IV. Dale, LL. D.) Danger of rich men A holy woman was wont to say of the rich: “ They are hemmed round with no common misery; they go down to hell without thinking of it, because their staircase thither is of gold and porphyry.” ( C. H. Spurgeon.) Riches; or, a knife for the canker To the love of money we trace the melancholy apostasy of Demas, the awful perfidity of Judas, the fatal lie of Ananias and Sapphira--all, and some of them distinguished, professors of religion. Be on your guard. Watch and pray. Their history is written for our instruction. Nor need any of His people who allow the love of money to entwine itself around their hearts, expect that in saving them God will do otherwise than the woodman, who, seeking to save a tree, applies his knife to the canker thai eats into its heart, or the ivy that has climbed its trunk and is choking it in its close embraces. (T. Guthrie, D. D.) Smothered by wealth Many of you are in imminent peril God is multiplying the sources of your power. Your resources are becoming numerous as the sands of the sea. I am not sorry, I am glad; but I am anxious that you should rise up in the midst of these things, and show yourselves greater than prosperity, and stronger and better on account of it. I dread to see a man smothered under his wealth. When a man, driving from the meadow, sits and sings cheerily upon his vast load of fragrant hay, how every one, looking upon him, thinks of his happiness and content l But by and by, at an unlucky jog, down goes the wheel and over goes the load, and the man is at the bottom, with all the hay upon him. Just in that way rich men are in danger of being smothered. The whole wain of your prosperity may capsize, and the superincumbent mass may hide from you the air and the sun of a true life. (H. W. Beecher.) Ye have received your consolation Let the full force of the word “ consolation” be observed. It is used by way of contrast to the comfort which is promised to the Christian in the Beatitudes. Comfort, in the fulness of that word, as including help, guidance, encouragement, and support, is the peculiar promise of the gospel. There is then something very fearful in the intimation of the text, that those who have riches thereby receive their portion, such as it is, in full, instead of the heavenly gift of the gospel. The same doctrine is implied in our Lord’ s words in the parable of Dives and Lazarus: “ Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things; but now he is comforted, and thou art tormented.” (J. H. Newman, D. D.) Conjunction and separation of woe and riches We will therefore show-- I. In what conjunction these two, woe and riches, do stand. II. How they may be sundered: find out why riches are so dangerous to receive, and how we may receive them without any danger. And with these we shall exercise your devotion at this time. “ Woe to rich men” ; which cannot be literally and generally true: for all rich men are not accursed. But it is the safest way to remove men as far from danger as may be. It is safest for some men to conceive feasting unlawful, that they may avoid gluttony; or sports unlawful, that they may not be wantons; to be afraid of an oath, that they may not be perjured; not to flatter themselves too much in the lawfulness of war, that they delight not in blood, but rather remember the lesson of Moses, or indeed of God: “ When thou goest out with the host against thine enemies, then keep thee from all wickedness” (Deuteronomy 23:9). 1. But so far is the world from having that opinion of riches, that they have goodly and glorious titles bestowed upon them. They commend themselves unto us under the honest names of “ thrift,” and “ frugality,” and “ wisdom.” What poor glass is a diamond, to him that is familiar with virtue! What trash is riches, to him who is filled with grace! What nicknames are the empty titles of secular honours, to him that knoweth the glory of a saint l What a nothing is the world, to him that hath studied heaven! 2. Further yet: Riches are accounted as necessaries, and as ornaments of virtue; and under that name we receive and entertain them. 3. Again: Riches are not only not necessary to religion and virtue, but rather a “ hindrance.” They take us down from our third heaven, and take us off from “ the contemplation” of future happiness, and bind our thoughts to the vanities of the earth, which so press them down and weary them that they cannot aspire. They are retinacula spei, “ fetters of our hope.” For “ now where is our hope?” (Job 17:15.) Even in the bowels of the earth.They are degraders of our faith. For whilst we walk in this vain shadow, how many degrees doth our faith fall back! The more we “ trust in uncertain riches” the less we trust in God (1 Timothy 6:17). They are coolers and abaters of our charity: for, they make us ungrateful to God, severe to ourselves, and cruel to our brethren. 4. Further yet: As riches are a hindrance and obstacle to good, so are they instrumental to evil. They facilitate and help it forward, and are as the midwife to bring it to its birth, which otherwise peradventure had died in the womb, in the thought, and never seen the sun. If sin make “ our members the weapons of unrighteousness,” riches are the handle without which they cannot well be managed. Every man cannot grind the face of the poor, every man cannot take his brother by the throat, every man cannot go into the foolish woman’ s house, every man cannot bribe a judge, every man cannot be as wicked as he would. And it may seem to be a part of God’ s restraining grace, to take riches from some men, as he took off the wheels of Pharaoh’ s chariots, that they may not pursue their brethren. But when the purse is full, the heart will more easily vent all the poison it hath, in a reproach, in contempt, in a blow, in an injury, in oppression. II. You have seen the rich and woe in a sad conjunction, a most malignant one as any astrology hath discovered. I am unwilling to leave them so; and therefore, in the last place, I must find out some means to put them asunder, that we may receive riches without danger; which is indeed “ to lead the camel through the needle’ s eye.” 1. We must bring riches into a subordination, nay, into a subjection, to Christianity. We may be rich, if we can be poor. 2. That the mind may be rightly affected, we must root out of it all love of riches. For if we set our hearts upon them, the love of them will estrange us from Christ, and make us idolaters. 3. I must bring you yet further, from not loving, not desiring riches, to contemning of them. For though I have emptied my store, and cast it before the wind, yet till I have made riches the object of my fear, till I can say within myself, “ This lordship may undo me,” “ These riches may beggar me,” “ This money may destroy me” --till in this respect I make it the object of my contempt, and look upon it as a bait of Satan, I am not so far removed but that still the woe hangeth over me. For as, when a man taketh a wedge of lead upon his shoulders, it presseth and boweth his body to the earth; but if he put it under his feet, it will lift and keep him from the ground: so, when we place riches above us, and look upon them as upon our heaven; when we prefer them before salvation, and make gain our godliness; it must needs be that they will press us down to hell: but if we keep them below as slaves, and tread them under our feet, and contemn them as dung in comparison of Christ, they will then lift us up as high as heaven. 4. Therefore, in the last place, let me commend unto you a godly jealousy of yourselves. Suspicion in such a case as this is very useful. 5. I am unwilling to leave the rich and the woe so near together, but would set them at that distance that they may never meet. To conclude then: Let us not be too familiar with riches, lest whilst we embrace them we take the plague, and the woe enter into our very bowels. The love of the world is a catching disease, and it is drawn on with dallying, with a very look. We do not traffic for gold where there are no mines: nor can we find God in the world. He that maketh Him his purchase, will find business enough to take up his thoughts, and little time left for conference and commerce in the world, scarce any time to look upon it, but by the by and in the passage, as we use to look upon a stranger. A look is dangerous; a look of liking is too much: but a look Of love will bury us in the world, where we are sown in power, but are raised in weakness; sown in glory, but are raised in dishonour. We rest and sleep in this dust; and when we awake, the woe which hung over our heads falleth upon us. (A. Farindon, D. D.) Luke 6:26 Woe unto you when all men shall speak well of you The dangers of praise “ Woe unto you, when all men shall speak well of you. ” 1. First of all, it is more than probable that, if they do so, their judgment of you is fallacious; you do not deserve it. “ In the like manner did their fathers unto the false prophets.” Men are fallible judges of one another’ s real character. 2. And yet, secondly, you must remark that, however fallacious, however false, the popular estimate, it has a direct tendency to carry us along with it. One would have imagined that no man could be misled, in his own judgment of himself, by anything that another, or that all the world, could say of him. 3. And then follow, in the third place, certain practical consequences; all of them, in a Christian point of view, serious and even disastrous. The first of these is, the loss of humility. 4. With the decay of humility comes the loss of watchfulness. 5. And with the loss of humility and the loss of watchfulness comes as a natural consequence the loss of strength. Praise is an essentially enfeebling and enervating thing. It relaxes the sinews of the mind as sultry weather those of the body. 6. Again, it is an effect of being well spoken of, to make a man covet that approbation and at last live for it. The praise of men has a direct tendency to attach us to earth, and to make us forget heaven. “ They loved the praise of men more than the praise of God.” And this leads us, in the last place, to suggest one or two cautions with which our Lord’ s words in the text ought to be guarded, lest they should too much discourage one class of hearers. There are those whose characters possess a beauty and a charm which make it absolutely impossible that they should not be loved. And if there be amongst us to-day some of whom all men do not speak well; some who, whether through fault or no fault of theirs, are neither generally popular nor in danger of suffering from this kind of temptation; do not (he words of the text, so wise in their counsel, and (like all our Lord’ s words) so wide in their application, suggest to them a sure ground of comfort under what at times they feel to be a heavy trial? (Dean Vaughan.) The woe of a favourable reputation In the life of Alexander Raleigh, D.D., we are told that at one period of his life, accusations were laid before the public in pamphlets which were well adapted to cause him pain and annoyance. The experience was new to him, who all his life had made no enemies. “ You have at last,” said one of his people to him, meeting him on the street, “ escaped one of the woes of Scripture;” Woe unto you when all men shall speak well of you! It is reported of Titus Vespasian, that when any spake ill of him, he was wont to say that he was above false reports; and if they were true, he had more reason to be angry with himself than the relator. And the good Emperor Theodosius commanded no man should be punished that spake against him; “ for what was spoken slightly,” said he, “ was to be laughed at; what spitefully, to be pardoned; what angrily, to be pitied; and if truly, he would thank them for it.” Luke 6:27-30 But I say unto you which hear, Love your enemies The ideal of Christianity This passage is in earnest. You are to do this. Why? In order that you may come into the family of God. Here is not simply an additional moral maxim, but it is a critical turning thing. Whereas nature says, “ Use all your powers of body and mind to repel injuries, and to punish those that are against you” ; the spiritual kingdom says, “ Use none of them; forgive, love, pray for, bless, help, carry a little heaven in your souls, and make it fair weather around about all those that are your enemies.” Is it possible that any such thing as that can take place? I have known some men that came very near to it. One thing is certain--Jesus, whose life was a commentary on His own doctrine, did attain it; and we find Him acting easily, familiarly on that very ground, returning good for evil. Is it a thing, then, that comes with conversion? Men are turned from darkness to light, from selfishness to benevolence; they are said to be converted, but does that state of mind come with conversion? I wish it did, and I know it does not. It is a thing that must be the result of spiritual education in men. Men never come to their graces all at once. It is a law that prevails in the spiritual kingdom as well as in the exterior kingdom, that we come to lower and higher gradations by processes of unfolding, step by step, little by little, continuously through periods of time. (H. W.Beecher.) On the love of enemies 1. By the love which is here enjoined we are not to understand the love of esteem or complacency, which in some respects is unreasonable and impossible; but that of benevolence or good-will. 2. The precept of the text evidently disallows and utterly excludes all kinds of revenge and retaliation. I. THE OF THIS DUTY. What can be more agreeable to reason and wisdom than to keep evil, so much as possible, out of the world; and when it is in to use all proper means to drive it out. Instead of this, as enmity lets it in, so revenge keeps it there and propagates it. II. THE OF THIS DUTY. General benevolence is general virtue; the true principle of a rational mind, and the great support and ornament of society. But in benevolence towards enemies there is additional worth, peculiar grace, for it raises men’ s minds, and exalts their affections to the sublimest pitch. III. THE AND WHICH REDOUND FROM THE OF THIS DUTY. Most evident they are, both in respect of society and every individual. 1. It would be of infinite service to the public if the precept in the text were generally observed and practised. Innumerable broils, feuds, and contentions, would be hereby prevented or soon stopped. Such a disposition, when rooted in the minds of men, would grow up in a firm bank against the overflowings of ill-will and the inundations of strife. The wrongs that were done would slide away gently, without spreading or giving much disturbance to the community; and in a little time be swallowed up and lost in the wide ocean of charity. 2. And as to the private advantages, they are manifestly great and unquestionable. The peace and tranquility of a man’ s own mind; the delight of exercising benevolence towards enemies, and of conquering a wild affection. (J. Balguy, M. A.) Love to enemies the outcome of Christianity The Roman Triumph, with its naked ostentation of revenge, fairly represents the common feeling of the ancients. Nevertheless, forgiveness even of an enemy was not unknown to them. They could conceive it, and they could feel that there was a Divine beauty in it, but it seemed to them not merely, like the other Christians virtues, more than could be expected of ordinary men, but almost more than could be expected of human nature itself, almost superhuman. A passage near the close of the Ajax of Sophocles will illustrate this. As there was nothing of the antiquarian spirit about Greek tragedy, as it probably never occurred to Sophocles that the ancient heroes he depicts belonged to a less civilized age than his own, but on the contrary, as he conceived them to be better and nobler than his contemporaries, we may fairly suppose the feelings described in this passage to be of the highest standard of the poet’ s own age, the age of Pericles. Ulysses, after the death of his enemy Ajax, is described as relenting towards him so far as to intercede with Agamemnon that his body may be decently buried, and not be exposed to the beasts and the birds. This may seem to be no great stretch of generosity. But the request is received by Agamemnon with the utmost bewilderment and annoyance. “ What can you mean?” he says, “ do you feel pity for a dead enemy?” On the other hand, the friends of Ajax are not less astonished, and break out into rapturous applause, “ but,” says Tencer, “ I hesitate to allow you to touch the grave, lest it should be disagreeable to the dead man.” The impression of strangeness which these words, “ Do you feel pity for a dead enemy?” produce upon us is a proof of the change which Christianity has wrought in manners. A modern dramatist might have written the words, if he had been delineating an extremely savage character, but Sophocles is doing no such thing. He is expressing the natural sentiment of an average man. (Ecce Homo.) An illustration of the influence of Christian teaching upon barbarous customs Had the Son of Man been in body upon the earth during the Middle Ages, hardly one wrong and injustice would have wounded His pure soul like the system of torture. The main forces in medieval society, even those which tended to its improvement, did not touch this abuse. Roman law supported it; Stoicism was indifferent to it; Greek literature did not affect it; feudalism and arbitrary power encouraged a practice which they could use for their own ends; and even the hierarchy and a State Church so far forgot the truths they professed as to employ torture to support the religion of love. But against all these powers were the words of Jesus, bidding men “ Love your enemies!” “ Do good to them that spitefully use you!” and the like commands, working everywhere on individual souls, heard from pulpits and in monasteries, read over by humble believers, and slowly making their way against barbaric passion and hierarchic cruelty. Gradually, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the books containing the message of Jesus circulated among all classes, and produced that state of mind and heart in which torture could not be used on a fellow-being, and in which such an abuse and enormity as the Inquisition was hurled to the earth. (C. L. Bruce.) The master-word of Christianity is love. (R. S. Storrs, D. D. , LL. D.) Loving our enemies a Christian duty From the words we may observe-- I. That innocence is not always a protection from injuries. II. That Christians must not recompense evil for evil. I shall-- I. Lay before you your PATTERN, and show you how Christ loved His enemies. And then-- II. I shall press the of Him in this respect. I. Our Saviour, the Son of God, when He was here on earth, had His enemies. Infinite purity, and the most extensive engaging goodness could not gain the love of all. II. Now I am next to show you how our blessed Saviour carried it toward His enemies; what spirit He was of under such indignities. Christ is spoken of in the Word of God as subduing His enemies in a twofold sense. 1. By His vengeance, when they have filled up the measure of their iniquities. 2. There is another sense in which Christ may be said to conquer and subdue His enemies; by His grace, by His Word and Spirit. Let us now inquire how Christ our great pattern manifested His love or good-will towards His enemies, and still shows Himself reconcilable to such as are so. 1. In His bearing their reproaches with meekness, and a tender concern for them, not using them with severity, any farther than He saw needful to convince them of their sin, and to awaken them to repentance. He did not render evil for evil, and railing for railing (1 Peter 2:21; 1 Peter 2:23). 2. In His forbearing to take vengeance on His enemies, as one that came not to judge the world, but to save the world. 3. Christ showed His love to His enemies in forgiving them, on condition of their sincere repentance. 4. Our blessed Saviour manifested His good-will towards His enemies, His desire of their conversion and salvation, in His labours for their good, His preaching the Gospel to any that would attend upon Him, in His warning, instructing, and entreating them. 5. In His praying for them. 6. In that charge mentioned before, which He gave His apostles after His resurrection from the dead, to preach repentance and remission of sins first at Jerusalem. I shall now close with two or three reflections on what has been delivered. 1. Let not those who have hitherto shown themselves enemies to Christ, despising His love, dishonouring His name, rejecting His gracious offers and abusing His gospel, despair of mercy, and think themselves utterly excluded from His favour. 2. Let the friends of Christ rejoice in their interest in His peculiar love. I am now to proceed to the consideration of the second thing proposed, to press the of our Lord in this respect. 1. The first thing to be considered is, who are our enemies. Not ministers who are ordained of God to show men their sins. Nor are rulers, such as bear the sword of justice. Nor are we to be offended with any that tell us of our faults, as if they were our enemies. This is not always a sign of men’ s disaffection to us, but sometimes of their good-will. Nor, further, are we to reckon all our enemies that differ from us in their opinions about religion. But let us see who may justly be called our enemies. Now, they are such as have ill-will, bitterness and rancour in their hearts against us. Now, how are Christians to behave themselves towards those that hate them, and wrong them? Why, corrupt nature presently dictates an answer; hate them in like manner, recompense evil for evil, take revenge. 2. What is meant by loving our enemies? Not taking complacency and delight in them; not entering into familiarity with them, and making them our intimates, as we would our particular friends. In short, we should be well affected towards them. Thirdly then, how are we to express our love to our enemies? 1. We must suppress all immoderate anger and passion. 2. We must express our good-will to our enemies by just faithful reproof. 3. We must not envy our enemies their ease and prosperity, nor wish that their circumstances were altered into worse, that God would lift up His hand against them, afflict and blast them. In the fourth place, we should be so far from desiring the adversity of our enemies, that we should pity them in their distress. 4. We must pray for our enemies. I am now to offer to your consideration some motives to this duty. 1. Consider the excellency of this duty. It is difficult indeed, but then there is a peculiar beauty in it, which tends greatly to adorn Christianity. 2. This is a duty expressly commanded in the gospel of Christ. 3. By such a disposition of mind as is recommended in the text we should be conformed to God. 4. We have the example of Christ our Lord. 5. We have also the example of the apostles of Christ, who themselves practised this duty. 6. Hatred and malice, when they lie fretting in the heart, and break out in their unchristian inhuman effects, can do no good, but must needs be unprofitable and unpleasant. Lastly, you shall not lose your reward. “ My prayer,” says David, “ returned into my own bosom” (Psalms 35:13). “ Love your enemies and do good; and your reward shall be great” Luke 6:35). (Thomas Whitty.) The duty of loving our enemies stated and explained I. Then, I am to STATE THE NATURE AND EXTENT OF THIS PRECEPT. There are two kinds of love which we must distinguish here; the love of approbation or esteem, and the love of benevolence or good-will. The love of approbation and the love of benevolence are, then, very distinct in their own nature. Our Saviour, at the same time that He expressed His disapprobation and dislike of Jerusalem for stoning the prophets, yet exemplified a very benevolent and compassionate regard for it, for He wept over it. Even resentment does not exclude benevolence, and we are very often angry at a person for committing a fault, even because we love him. And as our Saviour loved and compassionated the Jews, though He abhorred their ungenerous treatment of Himself and the prophets; so we ought, with the same god-like generosity of soul, to love the man at the same time that we detest his vices; just as we may have an affectionate regard for a person that lies ill, but have an aversion to the disease he labours under. As to the extent and degrees of this duty, the Scripture nowhere enjoins an undistinguishing beneficence to men whether friendly or injurious. We ought to do the most good we can. Now, by singling out men of fortune, whatever relations may endear them to us, as the objects of our favour, we contribute little or nothing to their real enjoyments; but by being, what God is in a higher degree, the helper of the friendless and forlorn, we make the heart of one that was ready to perish sing for joy. In the former ease our bounty is like a shower to the ocean; in the latter it is like a shower to dry and thirsty ground. This is a very important rule, viz., that the extreme necessity of even our enemies, much more of other persons, is to take place of the mere conveniency of friends and relations, and that we ought rather to relieve the distressed than to promote the happiness of the easy; however the practice of it be disregarded by the world. But to proceed; the Scripture does not require any acts of kindness to our enemy which are confessedly prejudicial to our own interests: for we are not to love our neighbour better than ourselves. Our mercy to our enemies must not be so far extended as to expose us to the mercy of our enemies. II. Having thus stated the nature and extent of this duty, I proceed, secondly, TO SHOW THE OF IT. 1. The great law of nature is an universal, active benevolence to the whole body of rational beings, as far as the sphere of our power extends. We were all sent into the world to promote one another’ s happiness, as being all children of the same Father, our Father which is in heaven. What Moses said to the contending Israelites is applicable to all mankind: “ Why do ye wrong one another, since ye are brethren? “ And no injuries can take away or cancel that unchangeable relation. For, do we do good to our nearest and dearest relations only because they are deserving? Do we not think ourselves obliged to serve them merely because they are relations? This relation is always a strong reason for doing good, when there is no stronger reason to supersede or set it aside. And this may serve to show, that however for ward persons of the first distinction in civil and military offices may be to engross to themselves the character of heroism or any uncommon degree of virtue; a man in a private capacity may be as truly a hero in virtue, as they can be in a larger and more public sphere of action. He is like one of the fixed stars, which though, through the disadvantage of its situation, it may be thought to be very little, inconsiderable, and obscure by unskilful beholders; yet is as truly great and glorious in itself as those heavenly lights, which, by being placed more commodiously for our view, shine with more distinguished lustre. For he shows, by his complacency, that he would have done the same if his abilities had been equal to his inclinations. 2. An argument may be drawn from the consideration of our own happiness. Now to cultivate the sweet and kindly passions, to cherish an affectionate and social temper, to beget in ourselves, by repeated acts of goodness, a settled complacency, good will and benevolence to all mankind in general, is a constant spring of satisfaction. To contract an unrelenting malice, sullenness, and discontent, to let a sudden discomposure of mind ripen into a fixed aversion and ill-will, to have a savageness of nature and an insensibility to pity; what is this but to make our breast, which should be the temple of God, as it were a den of savage passions? In acts of severity, even when necessary, there is always something that is irksome to a gentle and compassionate spirit, something of a harsh and ungrateful feeling within accompanies them; like armour, which, though we may be obliged to put it on for our necessary self-defence, yet always fits uneasy, cumbrous, and unwieldy. Some cool-thinking villains there may be, who can lay plots to injure others with a steadfast and sedate malice, and with an untoward complacency; their minds being like those nights, which are very calm, silent, and close, and yet very black and dark; nights in which there reigns a sullen stillness. But men of this stamp are very rare: the generality of mankind, when they strive to make others uneasy, certainly disquiet themselves, and work out the ruin of other men, as they should do their own salvation, with fear and trembling. 3. A third argument for the love of our enemies may be drawn from the forgiveness of them. Now, the forgiveness of our enemies is a duty incumbent on us: because, in the first place, malice is, as I showed before, destructive of our happiness: because, secondly, we cannot with any reason ask that of God which we are not willing to bestow: because, thirdly, all private revenge, and consequently the desire of it too, is in the nature of the thing unlawful; since if it were allowed, it would draw a fatal train of consequences after it, and make the world an Aceldama, or field of blood. We know that the malignity of the offence rises in proportion to the dignity of the person whom we offend: now, most people are inclined to think themselves much greater than they are; and consequently to think the offence committed against them to be so too; the consequence of which is obvious, if we were commissioned to revenge ourselves. The mists of passion would represent injuries bigger than they are, and it would be impossible to proportion the punishment to the indignity. In short, it can never be reasonable, that one man’ s reputation, fortune, or life should be sacrificed to another man’ s passion and malice. How are we to behave ourselves to those whom we forgive? Are we to behave ourselves to them as to enemies? Not as to enemies: for then we do not sincerely forgive them. Besides, it is unnatural to have a cold indifference to the happiness or misery of our fellow-creatures, when our minds are divested of all rancour towards them. Benevolence will naturally shed abroad in our heart its kindly and gentle beams, when the clouds, which the unfriendly passions cast over the soul, are removed and dispersed. 4. A fourth argument may be drawn from the nature of God. No creature ought to counteract his Creator. III. I proceed to show THE OF THIS DUTY. And here two sorts of men fall under our consideration: 1. Men of cool and deliberate malice, who, like lions lurking in secret places, can wait a considerable time, till, a convenient season offering itself, they spring to vengeance, and crush their unwary foe. Their resentment is like a massive stone, slowly raised; but, when once it is raised, on whomsoever it falls, it will grind them to powder. 2. The men of fire and fury, who immediately discharge the malignity of their passion in words or actions. As to the first set of men: it is certain that the same power of mind, which enables them to suspend the prosecution of their revengeful designs till a commodious opportunity, enables them likewise to get the better of their revengeful desires; for a passion so importunate and clamorous in its demands as revenge, if it cannot be curbed and controlled, cannot be suspended, and put off; and if it can be controlled, it can likewise be quelled and overcome. As to the second set of men, viz., the men of passion and fury, they indeed will tell you, “ God forgive them, it is their infirmity which they cannot help: they are apt to be transported into unseemly words and actions; but the storm is soon over.” These are the excuses of those, who, when their anger has spent itself, are very good-natured; and continue so, till fresh recruits of spirits enable their passions to take the field again. But the misfortune is, these notable excuses are quite spoiled, if we consider that these men can be, and are very often, upon their guard. They will not fall into an unseemly rage before a great person, whom they dread and revere. After all, it must be owned, that a provocation may be so shocking and flagrant, that nature may rebel against principle, and a desire of revenge may as naturally hurry away the soul as a whirlwind does the body. This is an extraordinary case, and no doubt a gracious God will make allowances for it. It is a common saying, that few people know their own weakness; but it is as true a one, that few people know their own strength till they are put to it, and resolved in the prosecution of any design. It has been often observed that our hatred is most implacable when it is most unjust. IV. And lastly, TO WITH SOME ADVICE. Let US reflect, that we cannot expect to be benefited by our Saviour, as a full sacrifice for sin, unless we imitate Him, as a complete model of virtue; and this we cannot do without forgiving and loving our enemies. Can a mind think anything here worth an implacable animosity, whose comprehensive views are raised as high as heaven, and extended as far as eternity? Let us think what would become of us at the last decisive day, a day decisive of our eternal happiness or misery, if God should deal with us with the same unforgiving disposition as we would deal with others. (J. Seed.) Of loving our enemies I. WHAT IS NOT THAT LOVE WHICH WE MUST SHOW OUR ENEMIES: this we shall find to exclude several things which would fain wear this name. 1. As first, to treat an enemy with a fair deportment and amicable language, is not the love here enjoined by Christ. Love is a thing that scorns to dwell anywhere but in the heart. The kindness of the heart never kills, but that of the tongue often does. Was ever the hungry fed, or the naked clothed, with good looks or fair speeches? These are but thin garments to keep out the cold, and but a slender repast to conjure down the rage of a craving appetite. But we are not to rest here; fair speeches and looks are not only very insignificant as to the real effects of love, but are for the most part the instruments of hatred in the execution of the greatest mischiefs. For it is oil that whets the razor, and the smoothest edge is still the sharpest: they are the complacencies of an enemy that kill, the closest hugs that stifle, and love must be pretended before malice can be effectually practised. In a word, he must get into his heart with fair speeches and promises, before he can come at it with his dagger. 2. Fair promises are not the love that our Saviour here commands us to show our enemies. For what trouble is it to promise, what charge is it to spend a little breath, for a man to give one his word, who never intends to give him anything else? And yet, according to the measures of the world, this must sometimes pass for a high piece of love. In a word, I may say of human promises, what expositors say of Divine prophecies, “ that they are never understood till they come to be fulfilled.” 3. But thirdly and lastly, to advance a degree yet higher, to do one or two kind offices for an enemy is not to fulfil the precept of loving him. It is like pardoning a man the debt of a penny, and in the meantime suing him fiercely for a talent. Love is then only of reality and value when it deals forth benefits in a full proportion to one’ s need: and when it shows itself both in universality and constancy. Other wise it is only a trick to serve a turn, and carry on a design. The skilful rider strokes and pleases the unruly horse, only that he may come so near him, as to get the bit into his mouth, and then he rides, and rules, and domineers over him at his pleasure. So he who hates his enemy with a cunning equal to his malice, will not strain to do this or that good turn for him, so long as it does not thwart, but rather promote the main design of his utter subversion, For all this is but like the helping a man over the stile, who is going to be hanged, which surely is no very great or difficult piece of civility. II. And thus having done with the negative, I come now to the second general thing proposed, namely, to show WHAT IS IN THE DUTY OF LOVING OUR ENEMIES. It includes these three things. 1. A discharging the mind of all rancour and virulence towards an adversary. 2. To love an enemy is to do him all the real offices of kindness that opportunity shall lay in our way. Love is of too substantial a nature to be made up of mere negatives, and withal too operative to terminate in bare desires. 3. The last and crowning instance of our love to our enemies, is to pray for them. For by this a man, as it were, acknowledges himself unable to do enough for his enemy; and therefore he calls in the assistance of heaven, and engages omnipotence to complete the kindness. He would fain outdo himself, and therefore finding his own stores short and dry, he repairs to infinity. Prayer for a man’ s self is indeed a choice duty, yet it is but a kind of lawful and pious selfishness. But when I pray as heartily for my enemy as I do for my daily bread; when I strive with prayers and tears to make God his friend, who himself will not be mine; when I reckon his felicity among my own necessities; surely this is such a love as, in a literal sense, may be said to reach up to heaven. For nobody judges that a small and trivial thing for which he dares to pray: no man comes into the presence of a king to beg pins. III. I come now to the third and last thing, viz., TO ASSIGN MOTIVES AND TO ENFORCE THIS LOVE TO OUR ENEMY; and they shall be taken-- 1. From the condition of our enemy’ s person, For the first of these, if we consider our enemy, we shall find that he sustains several capacities, which may give him a just claim to our charitable affection. (1) As first, he is joined with us in the society and community of the same nature. (2) An enemy, notwithstanding his enmity, may be yet the proper object of our love, because it sometimes so falls out, that he is of the same religion with us; and the very business and design of religion is to unite, and to put, as it were, a spiritual cognation and kindred between souls. (3) An enemy may be the proper object of our love, because, though perhaps he is not capable of being changed and made a friend by it (which, for any thing I know, is next to impossible), yet he is capable of being shamed and rendered inexcusable. 2. A second motive or argument to the same shall be taken from the excellency of the duty itself. It is the highest perfection that human nature can reach unto. The excellency of the duty is sufficiently proclaimed by the difficulty of its practice. Nothing certainly but an excellent disposition improved by a mighty grace, can bear a man up to this perfection. 3. The third motive or argument shall be drawn from the great examples which recommend this duty to us. (R. South, D. D.) Example of the early Christians Justin Martyr, one of the earliest writers, in his “ Apology “ to the heathen in behalf of the Christians, says, “ We who once hated and murdered one another, we who would not enjoy the hearth in common with strangers, on account of the difference of our customs, now live in common with them, since the appearance of Christ; we pray for our enemies; we seek to persuade those who hate us unjustly, that they may direct their lives according to the glorious doctrines of Christ, and may share with us the joyful hope of enjoying the same privileges from God the Lord of all things.” Example of Origen Origen, one of the greatest scholars and theologians of the Christian Church in the third century, when he was cruelly persecuted by Demetrius, and through his efforts excommunicated by the synod, beautifully exhibited the same mild and forgiving spirit. Speaking in his defence against the synod, he mentions wicked priests and rulers thus: “ We must pity them rather than hate them, pray for them rather than curse them, for we are created for blessing rather than cursing.” The Carthaginian Christians In the time of a great pestilence, Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage, in the third century, exhorts his flock to take care of the sick and dying, not only among their friends, but their foes. “ If,” says he, “ we only do good to our own people, we do no more than publicans and heathens. But if we are the children of God, who makes His sun to shine and His rain to descend upon the just and upon the unjust, who sheds abroad His blessings, not upon His friends alone, but upon those whose thoughts are far from Him, we must show this by our actions, blessing those who curse us, and doing good to those who persecute us.” Stimulated by their bishop’ s admonition, the members of the Church addressed themselves to the work, the rich contributing their money and the poor their labour. Thus the sick were attended to, the streets soon cleared of the corpses that filled them, and the city saved from the dangers of a universal pestilence. Mr. Burkitt and his injurers Mr. Burkitt observes in his journal, that some persons would never have had a particular share in his prayers but for the injuries they had done him! Mr. Lawrence’ s charge to his sons Mr. Lawrence once going, with some of his sons, by the house of a gentleman who had been injurious to him, charged them that they should never think or speak amiss of that gentleman on account of anything he had done against him, but, whenever they passed his house, they should lift up their hearts in prayer to God for him and his family. This good man had read our text to some purpose. A persuasive to love our enemies Negative holiness is short of Christianity more than the one half. It is not enough that we do others no ill, but we must do them good as we have access. Nor is it enough that we fly not out in passion and revenge on those who have wronged us, but we must love them. I. We shall consider THE DUTY OF LOVING OUR ENEMIES. And here I shall show who are to be understood by our enemies. In general, it aims at those about whom there is least to engage our love to them. 1. Does not the psalmist say, “ Do not I hate them, O Lord, that hate Thee? And am not I grieved with those that rise up against Thee? I hate them with perfect hatred: I count them mine enemies” ? (Psalms 139:21-22.) And does not Jehu the son of Hanani the seer say to King Jehoshaphat, “ Shouldst thou help the ungodly, and love them that hate the Lord?” (2 Chronicles 19:2.) (1) There is a hating of one’ s way and course, and a hating of one’ s person. It is not the latter that is meant in these passages, but the former. (2) There is a hatred opposite to a love of complacency, and a hatred opposite to a love of good will: the former is what we should bear to the enemies of God, and is there meant; the latter is not. Are not the prayers of the Church bent against the enemies of Christ? 1. Yea they are, and for them too, in different respects; the former in respect of their wicked works, the latter in respect of their persons. 2. It is to be understood of those who are adversaries to us, or are against us any manner of way, whether they in that matter be against God or not. And so it takes in-- (1) Those who are not truly and properly our enemies, but in our account and reckoning only are enemies to us. (a) Those whom we take for our enemies, but are really only smiting friends. (b) Those whom we take for our enemies, but are only competitors with us in a lawful way. There is so much selfishness in the world, and so little regard to the interest of our neighbour, that a great many imaginary enemies are made this way. (2) Those who are indeed our enemies, whom we reckon so, and who are truly what we reckon them. 1. Stated public enemies, who, in their principles and by open profession, are opposite to us, and practise accordingly. Such were the unbelieving Jews, particularly the Scribes and Pharisees, to the followers of Christ, inwardly hating them, openly cursing them. This party-enmity is frequent in the world, and it is the bane of the Church. 2. Stated private enemies, who set themselves in a course of enmity against such and such persons. Such enemies were Herod and Pilate to one another Luke 23:12). Such had Joseph’ s brethren against him, Ahab against Micaiah, and Absalom against his brother Amnon. This is frequent everywhere, spreading itself like venom among neighbours, yea, among relations, and among neighbours of all sorts. (1) Occasional enemies, who, upon particular emergent occasions, do wrong to us; but not from a stated enmity against us. If we are to love our stated enemies, much more these (Colossians 2:13). Both these kinds of enemies are of three sorts. 1. Heart-enemies, who in their hearts are set against us, burning with grudge, malice, and rancour at us. The text is plain as to our duty in that case, “ Do good to them that hate you.” 2. Tongue-enemies, who employ their tongues against us like swords, arrows, fire, and scourges. “ Bless them that curse you.” These are very dangerous enemies, and sometimes give very deep and galling wounds Psalms 57:4). And tongue-love will not pay that debt, it must be heart- Proverbs 10:18). Wit may furnish the former, but true wisdom must furnish the latter in that case. 3. Hand-enemies, who in their actions and deeds are enemies to us; not only in their hearts wishing us ill, and with their tongues speaking ill of us, but to their power, and as they have occasion, doing ill to us” Pray for them that despitefully use you, and persecute you.” Our Lord binds us even to love these, and that while they are doing against us. The corrupt heart’ s motion is to do ill for ill, but by grace we must do good for ill: that is heaven’ s exchange. II. I come to show WHAT THAT LOVE IS WHICH WE OWE TO OUR ENEMIES; We must love them. It is necessary to explain this, both negatively and positively. First, Negatively. We are not bound to love them-- I. So as for their sakes to be reconciled to and at peace with their sin. We must love and strive to please one another, but to edification, not to destruction. 2. Neither does this love bar seeking redress of wrongs in an orderly way. If God had meant that men should be in the earth, like the fishes in the sea, where the greater swallow up the lesser, without possibility of redress, nothing being left to the weaker but to yield themselves, He had never appointed the magistrate, “ a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil” (Romans 13:4). 3. Neither doth it bind us to a love of complacency in them. That is, we are not obliged to take delight in them, make them our intimate and familiar companions, associate with them as our friends, being in a course of enmity against God. Jehoshaphat was reproved for that (2 Chronicles 19:2). David makes it a mark of his sincerity, that he abstained from it (Psalms 139:21). Solomon tells us, “ He that walketh with wise men shall be wise: but a companion of fools shall be destroyed” (Proverbs 13:20). Secondly, Positively. There is a threefold love that uses to be distinguished. First, We owe to our enemies, our real enemies, a love of good-will Romans 13:9). 1. We must not wish them ill as ill to them (Psalms 40:14). We must pluck up the roots from which ill wishes to them do spring up. Envy, which looks with an ill eye on their welfare, and would eat it up (James 3:16); hatred, which blocks up all good from us to them (Leviticus 19:17); grudge, which is a train lying within the heart, ready to be blown up on occasion for mischief to them (Leviticus 19:18); and malice, which like a burning fire pursues them with ill-will (Ephesians 4:31). Our ill wishes Can do them no ill, but they do ourselves much. Every ill wish is an item in our accounts before God, and the reigning root of ill-will to our neighbour proves one to be naught (1 John 2:11). But this extends not to these two cases. (1) The wishing one an ill for good to him, e.g., the losing of such an one’ s favour, the having of which is a snare to his soul. (2) The wishing evil to a person for the good o! many, as that one who is a corrupter of others, and incorrigible in it, may be taken out of the way. 2. We must not take pleasure in any ill that befalls them, as ill to them Proverbs 24:17). 3. We must heartily wish them well (1 Timothy 1:5). “ Pray for them,” says the text. We must wish them the best things, that they may be for ever happy; may have favour and peace with God (Luke 33:34); and that for that cause God may grant them faith, repentance, and all other saving graces. For it is a vain wish, and worse than vain, to wish people happy, living and going on in their sins. 4. We must wish them well, as well to them (Psalms 122:8). Men may wish well to their enemies, from a mere carnal principle, not as being well for them, but for themselves. That is, they may wish them repentance, dec., for their own ease, not from any love to their souls. Secondly, We owe to our enemies, our real enemies, a love of beneficence, whereby we will be ready to do them good as we have access; and therefore says the apostle (1 John 3:18). 1. We must not practise revenge upon them, by doing one ill turn for another they have done us (Romans 12:19). 2. We must not withhold from them the good that is due to them from us by any particular tie; but must be sure to be in our duty to them, though they be out of their duty to us, “ Withhold not good from them to whom it is due, when it is in the power of thine hand to do it” (Proverbs 3:27). 3. We must be ready to do them good as Providence puts an opportunity in our hand. “ As we have opportunity, let us do good unto all men” Galatians 6:10). Now we must be ready to do them good-- (1) In their temporal interest. “ If thine enemy hunger, feed him: if he thirst, give him drink: for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head” Romans 12:20). (2) In their spiritual interest, contributing our utmost endeavours as we have access for their eternal happiness (Proverbs 11:30). (a) To speak for their good: for a good word is often of such usefulness to men, that it may be reckoned among good deeds. (b) To act for their good (Romans 12:20). III. The next general head is to show, THAT THIS LOVING OF OUR ENEMIES IS A MARK AND OF A CHILD OF GOD. 1. The living in malice and envy against any, is an evidence of one in the black state of nature, a child of hell. Hence says the apostle (Titus 3:3). 2. To love our friends and hate our enemies, is nothing above the reach of nature, corrupt as it is. 3. The want of it will evince the person to want the true love of God; and he who wants that, surely is not a child of God, but a child of the devil. 4. It is a necessary consequent of regeneration, and without that no man shall see heaven (1 John 3:9-10). 5. If we love not our enemies, we are not like God; and if we be not like Him, we are not His children: for all His children have His Spirit in them Galatians 4:6). And they all bear His image (Colossians 3:10). 6. If we love not our enemies, we have not the Spirit of Christ, and so are none of His (Romans 8:9). 7. Without this we are murderers in the sight of God, and so have no share in eternal life. “ Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer” (1 John 3:15). This shows us that-- 1. It is not easy to be a Christian indeed, however easy it is to take on the name and profession of it. 2. Christianity lies in a Christian or Christ-like disposition of heart, and a conduct of life agreeable thereto (James 1:22). 3. Those who pick and chose in religion, taking the easier, and not meddling with the difficult duties thereof laid before them, do but deceive themselves. 4. Christianity is the best friend of human society. O how happy might the world be if it should obtain! What peace, safety, and ease would there be among nations, in neighbourhoods, and in families? It would be an effectual quench-coal to all the fightings, quarrellings, jarrings, strifes, and wrongs, that take away the comfort of society. 5. There are few Christians in the world: the children of God’ s family are very rare; even as rare as they are who love their enemies. Hereby ye may discern, whether ye are the children of God or not. This is an evidence proposed by Christ Himself, the elder brother of the family. But ye may safely take the comfort of love to your enemies-- (1) If it be a loving of them in deed and in truth, and not in word and tongue only (1 John 3:18). Men for their own sake may give their enemies their best words and wishes, while these are but a white cover of black hatred. (2) If it be evangelical in its spring and rise. A good humour, some particular interest of men’ s own, may go far in the counterfeit of this. But the true love to our enemies rises from gospel principles. (3) If it be universal, not extending to some only for whom we retain a particular regard, but to all whom we take for our enemies. For if the spring of it be evangelical, it will be universal: since in that case the reason for bearing that love to one, is a reason for bearing it to all; for being in charity with all the world. To press this, let me suggest the following motives. 1. It is the command of God and His Son Jesus Christ. 2. Ye were baptized in the name of God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, all of you, and many of you have communicated in the Lord’ s Supper. Since ye have taken on the external badge of the family, walk as becomes members of that holy society. 3. The more ye have of this, ye are the more like God; the less ye have of it, ye are the more unlike Him. Here is your true glory. 4. This is the way to be useful in the world. 5. It will be much to your own advantage. 6. Your claim to the family of God depends on it. I shall conclude with a few directions. 1. Come to Christ, and unite with Him by faith (Hebrews 11:6). 2. Bear up in your hearts a deep sense of your sinfulness, with the faith of pardon thereof. 3. Ply your hearts with the believing thoughts of the beneficence of God to His enemies, and the love of Christ dying for His enemies to redeem them from wrath. 4. Consider that even your enemies were made originally after God’ s image Genesis 9:6), and they may be for all you know the objects of everlasting love; for whom special favour is secured by the eternal transaction. 5. As there are readily none, but they have something desirable about them; so fix ye upon that, and love them for it, as ye will love gold, though ye should find it in a mire. Beware lest the faults of others and their blemishes blind your eyes to their beauties and excellencies. 6. Consider them rather as objects of pity and compassion, than of hatred. 7. Consider the shortness of time, their and your own (Ecclesiastes 9:6). We have no time to spend in these petty quarrels of this world. (T. Boston, D. D.) Returning good for evil, the wisest course Thus, with intimate knowledge of our common life, does Jesus trace the workings of revengeful irritation down from the buffet which burns upon the cheek, to the neighbour who only pesters us with his borrowing. Everywhere he bids us substitute for the passion which calls for retaliation that nobler charity which repays evil with good. Shallow or selfish hearts are apt to say this is to put a premium on aggression, and meekly invite a repetition of it. No doubt there are foolish ways of yielding a literal obedience to this law, which would have no better effect than to provoke a second blow on the other cheek. Yet love is wise, not foolish; and often wiser in its generous confidence than selfishness in its calculating suspiciousness, which it terms prudence. God has made human souls more susceptible, on the whole, to kindness than to any other moral force; and such kindness as this, which can net only forgive, but suffer, offence, is fit to melt the rock and to tame the brute. Good, by the simple and lovely strength of its own goodness, does in the end overcome evil; or if it does not, it is because evil cannot be overcome. At all events, when a patient lover of men is trying, by unaffected meekness and unrequited generosity, to wear out the evil-doing of the bad and shame them into penitence, he is only taking the course which both God’ s wisdom has prescribed and God’ s own love has followed. It is not by His words only, but much more by His acts, that Jesus has fulfilled this law which substitutes generosity for revenge. In His person we see the supreme example of His own rule. (J. O. Dykes, D. D.) The good use of an enemy It was the opinion of Diogenes, that our life had need either of faithful friends, or sharp and severe enemies. And indeed our enemies oftentimes do us more good than those we esteem our friends; for a friend will often pass over ordinary failings, and out of respect, connivance, or self-interest, speak only what shall be grateful, or, at least, not displeasing; while aa enemy will catch at every error, and sets himself as a spy upon all our actions, whereby, as by a tyrant governor, we are kept impaled within the bounds of virtue and prudence, beyond whose limits if we dare to wander, we are presently whipped by him into the circle of discretion. Like the sergeant of a regiment, if we be out of rank, he checks us again into the place and file appointed us. To a fool, he is the bellows of passion; but to a wise man, he may be made a schoolmaster of virtue. An enemy also, not only hinders the growth and progress of our vices, but enkindles, exercises, and exalts our virtues. Our patience is improved, by bearing calmly the indignities he strives to load us with; our charity is enflamed by returning good for ill, and by pardoning and forgiving the injuries he does us; our prudence is increased by wisely managing ourselves in our demeanour, so as not to give him opportunity to wound us; our fortitude is strengthened by a manful repelling of scorns, and by giving occasions for the display of an undaunted courage in all our actions; our industry is strengthened and confirmed by watching all his attacks and stratagems; and by our contriving how we may best acquit ourselves in all our contests. And doubtless we ought, in another respect, to be thankful for an enemy. He causes us to show the world our parts and piety, which else perhaps might go with us to our dark graves, and moulder and die with us, quite unknown; or, could not otherwise well be seen, without the vanity of a light and ostentatious mind. Miltiades had missed his trophy, if he had missed an enemy in the Marathonian fields. Our enemies, then, are to be reckoned in the number of those by whom we may be rendered better if we will. As the hardest stone is the most proper for a basis, so there is not a better pedestal to raise a trophy of our virtues upon, than an outward enemy, if we can but keep ourselves from inward enemies, our vices and our weaknesses. (Owen Felltham.) Returning good for evil Difference between man’ s way of doing it and God’ s way. When we do it we fail in various ways. 1. Sometimes it is done through sycophancy or cowardice. 2. Through weakness or easy indulgence; we “ return good” to a spoilt child (or dependant) for evil which requires checking, by selfishly or idly ignoring it. 3. Through indifference or apathy, want of sensitiveness and real abhorrence of evil; we “ take no notice,” we condone and are tolerant of it, thinking thus to “ return good.” 4. We calculate that our good-returning will pay us; in praise and influence or reputation for instance. 5. We do it at the wrong time (i.e., what is good for the evil-doer at one time is bad for him at another) ; or we return a wrong (i.e., unsuitable) kind or form of good and in the wrong way; so that it is perverted and misunderstood, and becomes evil. 6. We do it so as to encourage the evil-doer to repeat his injury on another, perhaps more helpless; we harden him by impunity, we refuse to help him against himself. There is thus nothing more vitally important in returning good for evil than to be sure that it is good in the highest sense of the word; God’ s own good, not our selfish or shallow or one-sided notions of it. The difficult commandment I. THIS DUTY. 1. The objects--“ Enemies.” 2. The feelings we must exercise towards them--“ Love. “ (1) So as deeply to compassionate them--feel for them--and sincerely pity them. (2) That we forgive them. (3) That we pray for them. (4) That we are ready to relieve them, and do them good. (5) That we are willing to receive them to favour and friendship on signs of repentance. II. ENFORCE THIS DUTY. 1. On the ground of Christ’ s indisputable authority. 2. On the ground of Christ’ s blessed example. 3. Our acceptance with God is suspended upon 2:4. It is essential to true religion here, and to happiness hereafter. III. ANSWER . It is objected-- 1. “ That it is incompatible with self-love.” We reply, that we are not to love the injury, but the injurer; and the soul’ s sweetest felicity will thus be produced. 2. “ Revenge is sweet.” It is so to demons, and wicked men who possess the spirit of the wicked one. But mercy and pity only are really sweet to those who are renewed in their hearts by the saving grace of God. 3. “ Revenge is honourable.” It is false honour--the honour of a bad world, and of depraved hearts. It is the glory of the blessed God to forgive us, who have been enemies to Him; and it is our highest dignity to be conformed to His holy image. 4. “ It is impossible.” So it is to the carnal mind, without Divine aid, without crucifying our own carnal self. Stephen prayed for his murderers. And the blessed Jesus, who knows what is in man, and what he is capable of doing, and whose yoke is easy, has enjoined it; and therefore, however difficult, it is evidently possible. (J. Burns, D. D.) Love to an enemy During the American Revolutionary War there was living, in Pennsylvania, Peter Milier, pastor of a little Baptist Church. Near the church lived a man who secured an unenviable notoriety by his abuse of Miller and the Baptists. He was also guilty of treason, and was for this sentenced to death. No sooner was the sentence pronounced than Peter Miller set out on foot to visit General Washington, at Philadelphia, to intercede for the man’ s life. He was told that his prayer could not be granted. “ My friend!” exclaimed Miller, “ I have not a worse enemy living than that man.” “ What,” rejoined Washington, “ you have walked sixty miles to save the life of your enemy? That in my judgment puts the matter in a different light. I will grant you his pardon.” The pardon was made out, and Miller at once proceeded on foot to a place fifteen miles distant, where the execution was to take place on the afternoon of the Same day. He arrived just as the man was being carried to the scaffold, who, seeing Miller in the crowd, remarked: “ There is old Peter Miller. He has walked all the way from Ephrata to have his revenge gratified to-day by seeing me hung.” These words were scarcely spoken before Miller gave him his pardon, and his life was spared. A proof of the gospel being from God Henry Clay once replied to some sneering allusion to the character of American Evangelical Christianity: “ I do not know practically what the Churches call religion. I wish I did. But I do know what it effects.” And then reciting the case of a bitter feud between two neighbouring families in Kentucky which had kept the community in a ferment for years, but at last had been settled by the conversion of both parties, he said: “ I tell you that whatever will change a Kentucky feud into a fellowship so soon and effectively is of God. No power short of His could do it.” Doing good to an enemy In the old persecuting times there lived in Cheapside one who feared God and attended the secret meetings of the saints; and near him there dwelt a poor cobbler, whose wants were often relieved by the merchant; but the poor man was a cross-grained being, and most ungratefully, from hope of reward, laid as information against his kind friend on the score of religion. This accusation would have brought the merchant to death by burning if he had not found a means of escape. Returning to his house, the injured man did not change his generous behaviour to the malignant cobbler, but, on the contrary, was more liberal than ever. The cobbler was, however, in an ill mood, and avoided the good man with all his might, running away at his approach. One day he was obliged to meet him face to face, and the Christian man asked him gently, “ Why do you shun me? I am not your enemy. I know all that you did to injure me, but I never had an angry thought against you. I have helped you, and I am willing to do so as long as I live, only let us be friends.” Do you marvel that they clasped hands? (C. H. Spurgeon.) Returning good for evil Arcadius, an Argive, was incessantly railing at Philip of Macedon. Venturing once into the dominions of Philip, the courtiers reminded their prince that he had now an opportunity to punish Arcadius for his past insolences, and to put it out of his power to repeat them. The king, however, instead of seizing the hostile stranger and putting him to death, dismissed him loaded with courtesies and kindnesses. Some time after Arcadius’ s departure from Macedon, word was brought that the king’ s old enemy was become one of his warmest friends, and did nothing but diffuse his praises wherever he went. On hearing this, Philip turned to his courtiers, and asked, with a smile, “ Am not I a better physician than you?” Good for evil A man was seen one day going in a boat on a river with a large dog, which he wished to get rid of by drowning. He succeeded in throwing the animal into the water; but the creature sought to re-enter the boat. As the man was attempting to beat off the dog from the boat, he fell overboard, and would have been drowned, had not the dog seized him by his coat, and brought him to the shore. Love to enemies A few poor Cherokee women, who had been converted to Christianity, formed themselves into a society for the propagation of the gospel, which was now become so dear to them. The produce of the first year was about ten dollars, and the question was, To what immediate object this should be applied? At length a poor woman proposed that it should be given to promote the circulation of the gospel in the Osage nation; “ For,” said she, “ the Master has told us to love and do good to our enemies, and I believe the Osages are the greatest enemies the Cherokees have.” Dr. Mather’ s ambition It was the laudable ambition of Cotton Mather to be able to say, that “ he did not know of any person in the world who had done him an ill office, but he had done him a good one for it.” The Chinese monarch and the rebels A Chinese emperor being told that his enemies had raised an insurrection in one of the distant provinces, “ Come, then, my friends,” said he, “ follow me, and I promise you that we shall quickly destroy them.” He marched forward, and the rebels submitted upon his approach. All now thought that he would take the most signal revenge; but were surprised to see the captives treated with mildness and humanity. “ How,” cried the first minister; “ is this the manner in which you fulfil your promise? Your royal word was given that your enemies should be destroyed; and behold you have pardoned them all, and even caressed some of them!” “ I promised,” replied the emperor, with a gracious air, “ to destroy my enemies. I have fulfilled my word; for, see, they are enemies no longer; I have made friends of them!” Let every Christian imitate so noble an example, and learn to overcome evil with good. Literal obedience; or, rules versus principles It is said that many years ago an eminent minister of the gospel, who had been a great athlete in his youth, on returning to his native town soon after he had been ordained, encountered in the High Street an old companion whom he had often fought and thrashed in his godless days. “ So, you’ ve turned Christian, they tell me, Charley?” said the man. “ Yes,” replied the minister. “ Well, then, you know the Book says, If you’ re struck on one cheek, you’ re to turn the other. Take that” ; and with that he hit him a stinging blow. “ There then,” replied the minister, quietly, turning the other side of his face toward him. The man was brute enough to strike him heavily again. Whereupon the minister said, “ And there my commission ends,” pulled off his coat, and gave his antagonist a severe thrashing, which no doubt he richly deserved. But did the minister keep the command of Christ? He obeyed the letter of the rule: but did he not violate the principle, the spirit, of it? Hear the other story, and judge. It is told of a celebrated officer in the army that, as he stood leaning over a wall in the barrack-yard, one of his military servants, mistaking him for a comrade, came softly up behind him, and suddenly struck him a hard blow. When the officer looked round, his servant, covered with confusion, stammered out, “ I beg your pardon, sir; I thought it was George.” His master gently replied: “ And if it were George, why strike so hard?” Now which of these two, think you, really obeyed the command of Christ? the minister who made a rule of it and kept to the letter of the rule, or the officer who made a principle of it, and acting on the spirit of it, neglected the letter? Obviously, the minister disobeyed the command in obeying it, while the officer obeyed the command in disobeying it. And here we may see the immense superiority of a principle over a rule. Take a rule, any rule, and there is only one way of keeping it, the way of literal obedience, and this may often prove a foolish and even a disobedient way. But get a principle, and there are a thousand ways in which you may apply it, all of which may be wise, beneficial to you, and no less beneficial to your neighbour. (S. Cox, D. D.) Turning the other cheek A Swiss colporteur entered a three-story house, in which, according to the custom of the country, three different families lived. He began with the highest story, and sold copies of the Scriptures in this and in the next. On inquiring about the family on the ground-floor, he was warned not to enter, but he did enter. He found both the man and his wife at home. He offered his Bibles; his offer was replied to with abuse, and a positive order to leave the house instantaneously; he, however, stayed, urging them to buy and read God’ s holy Word. The man then rose in a violent rage, and struck him a severe blow on the cheek. Up to this moment the colporteur stood quietly with his knapsack on his back. He now deliberately unstrapped it, laid it on the table, and turned up the sleeve of his right arm, all the while steadily looking his opponent in the face. The colporteur was a very strong man. Addressing his opponent he said, “ Look at my hand--its furrows show that I have worked; feel my muscles--they show that I am fit for work. Look me straight in the face; do I quail before you? Judge, then, for yourself if it is fear that moves me to do what I am about to do. In this Book my Master says, When they smite you on one cheek, turn to them the other also. You have smitten me on one cheek; here is the other! Smite I I will not return the blow.” The man was thunderstruck. He did not smite, but bought the Book which, under the influence of God’ s Spirit, works marvels in the human heart. (W. Baxendale.) Bible precepts to be spiritually interpreted You cannot make language more explicit, yet I say that to carry it out literally would be to pervert human society so that there could be no such thing as Christianity in this world. I affirm this, not theoretically, but as the result of the revelation of God’ s providence among men, and as a fulfilment of God’ s teaching in revelation--that great unending perpetual revelation that is going on in the human raze. It would destroy the whole framework and order of society. That in a far-off state, that in the ripeness of human development, the law of non-resistance will have a universal application, I think to be more than likely; but that it should have a universal application now is not possible. Take another point, that of almsgiving. Do our friends, the Quakers, who insist upon the literal translation of the passage on the subject of non-resistance, take a literal view of this passage also? Do they put their hands in their pockets for all that ask of them, and draw them out full? No. “ This,” they say, “ you are to take in its spirit.” Yes, I say that you are to take it in its spirit, and not in its letter. A literal interpretation of it would slay mankind, almost. It would well-nigh destroy the business-life of organized society. It would break up fellowship between man and man. It would promote the very opposite of that which it is the object of the New Testament to inculcate. Take the spirit of the command. Interpret it as enjoining the practice of generosity, of helpfulness, of kindness one toward another. Accept it as inculcating a disposition in every man to look, not on his own things, but on the things of others. That is to say, make it a principle adaptable according to your feeling and judgment. (H. W.Beecher.) Cloak and coat The Jews of the first century always wore the tunic and mantle or robe. These were the two indispensable garments. The tunic was of linen. It fitted the figure, had sleeves and came down to the feet. It was worn next to the skin, or over an under-garment of linen very full and long. That of the rabbi, scribe, or doctor, was specially large, and yet was not to be visible more than a handbreadth under the mantle. The mantle or robe was worn over all. A man must be very poor to have only one cloak, and yet this is what Christ enjoined on His disciples. According to Luke’ s Gospel He said one day, “ If any man will take away thy cloak, forbid him not take thy coat also.” This precept can be understood; a robber would naturally lay hold first of the outer garment. But Matthew puts it the other way. Under this form it is harder to understand, and we may well suppose that in transcribing [Matthew’ s version] the copyist may have misplaced the two words coat and cloak. (E. Stapfer, D. This entry is longer than a Bible module can hold. The rest is at https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/bi/ Luke 6:31 And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise.What would we that men should do unto us? 1. That they should deal with us honestly. 2. That they should treat us generously. 3. That they should deal with us faithfully; warning us of any danger into which we are liable to fall. 4. That they should be patient with us. (H. S. Brown.) The royal law I. THE LAW ITSELF-- 1. Teaches us to take the initiative; to begin to do for others what we conceive they ought to do for us. 2. Teaches us that the standard we set up for others must be the measure of our own conduct. 3. Teaches us that the end of our duty is the good of humanity. II. THE WORKING OF THE LAW. 1. In the home-life. 2. In our social relationships. 3. In relation to business in all shapes and forms. 4. In relation to party politics. 5. In relation to church life. (J. B. Walton, B. A.) “ Do as you would be done by” Men who neglect Christianity nevertheless do acknowledge this precept; men of experience, practical, intelligent, when talked to upon the subject of religion will not scruple to say: “ My religion is this--‘ Do as you would be done by.’” And yet they fail to apply this to the claim of Jesus Christ upon them. All who have lived and died, all who are now living--all combined, have not the claim on my life that Jesus Christ has. I ask you how you dare to say that all your religion is “ Do as you would be done by,” if you fail to apply it to Him who has done so much for you. Do it, and you must dedicate all you have and all you are to His glory. (Dr. Deems.) Was the golden rule original? The gold in the Golden Rule is not its newness but its goodness. (A. Macleod, D. D.) The rule and the test of morality The light and warmth of the sun no more clearly bespeak the hand that formed it, than the excellence of this rule of conduct declares it to be from God. Although no rule is perhaps so universally admired, yet none is more universally broken. I. TO EXPLAIN THE RULE. In explaining the rule, let us examine the different parts of it. “ All things whatsoever.” This clause declares its universal extent. We may do some things, perhaps many things, to others which we would wish them to do to us, and yet in many other things be wholly and habitually selfish. A man, for example, may give food to the hungry, but Habitually overreach and defraud. No matter who he is, whether friend or enemy, if he is a fellow-creature, one of your own species, a man, you must be governed by this rule in all that you do toward him. “ Do ye even so.” In this clause we are directed not only to do the things themselves which we would that others should do to us, but also to the utmost exactness in doing so. What, then, are we to understand by the clause, “ Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you” ? It has commonly been supposed, by commentators, that a literal interpretation of this text is inconsistent with other plain scriptural duties, and that therefore the rule is to be explained by certain qualifications or restrictions not expressed in it; for our desires of good from others may be selfish and extravagant, and to make such desires the measure of what we are to do to others, would in many cases be doing what is not required, as well as what is forbidden. For example, a rich man may feel and say, “ If I were in that poor man’ s place and he in mine, I should wish him to give me his estate; and now, if I am to do as I would be done by, I am to show him the same kindness, and give him my estate.” This difficulty evidently arises from inadequate views of the text. The rule contains its own explanation and limitation. If I am to do to others as I would that they should do to me, then I am to love them as I love myself; not them more than myself, nor myself more than them. If, therefore, I were to give my estate, if I we’ re rich, to a poor man, I should do that which in this respect would imply that I loved him more than myself, which would be a palpable violation of the rule. Besides, how can I, putting myself in the poor man’ s place, wish another to give me his estate--wish that he should impoverish himself to enrich me, without violatingthe rule. In this very wish I am desiring my own happiness more than my neighbour’ s, and thus I counteract the very spirit and letter of the rule itself. In deciding what we would that others should do to us--i.e., in forming our desires of good from others--we are to remember that we are to cherish the same desires to impart good to them. Thus one desire is to check and regulate and define the other. Thus the rule aims directly at the utter extinction of all selfish inordinate desires of good, and requires simply that what we would on disinterested principles desire from others, were we in their circumstances and they in ours, we are to do to them. Let us examine this a little further. We are to do to others what we would on truly benevolent principles desire from them. The existence of the happiness of one man, other things being equal, is of equal value with that of another. The simple fact that the happiness of one of the two is mine, gives it no additional value. It has precisely the same value as when it is the happiness of another. All the value which I can reasonably attach to my happiness, because it is mine, he can us reasonably attach to his, because it is his. All that I am to myself he is to himself, and all that I am as it respects him he is as it respects me. The reason why I should regard his happiness as much as my own, circumstances being tile same, is as plain and conclusive as that things of equal value ought to be equally loved or desired. If my right lays him under obligation to me, his right lays me under the same obligation to him. There is a great diversity in the character and stations of men. It is very desirable there should be, and as it is not in our power so it is not our duty, on principles of true benevolence, to wish to alter them. There is, therefore, a consequent variety of duties owed to men. But we can easily determine, by the rule before us, what these duties are. Thus a ruler is to treat his subjects as he would wish to be treated were he a subject. But he is not bound to yield that submission to his subjects which, as a ruler, he justly demands of them. This he could not do without sacrificing the public good to private interest--i.e., he could not do it on disinterested principles. For, if he were a subject, he could not on such principles wish for the submission and obedience of a ruler to himself. A judge is not required to acquit, though he might on selfish principles wish, were he the criminal, to be acquitted, because he could not on benevolent principles wish the laws of justice to be abandoned, and the guilty to go unpunished. Thus, too, a parent or head of a family is not required to neglect to promote the welfare of his own household, to promote the welfare of his neighbours, because on truly disinterested principles he could not wish his neighbour to do so by him. So, also, an individual is not required to sacrifice his own happiness to promote an equal degree of happiness in another individual, because it is as right that the former should enjoy it, if but one can enjoy it, as that the latter should; and therefore the former could not, on truly disinterested principles, desire that the latter should do so by him. On the same principle we are not required to put our property into common stock for the equal benefit of all. This would tend, as a general rule, to promote so many evils, that if we were poor we could not, on benevolent principles, desire it. The amount of this rule of our Lord is, that in determining what our duty is to others, and in performing it, our selfishness is to have no voice and no influence. It is as if our Lord had said: Regard your neighbour in his wants, his rights, his happiness, as another self. Ask, then, how, as a reasonable, disinterested man, you would be treated by him: and treat him exactly in that manner. II. To ENFORCE THE DUTY. 1. God has commanded it. 2. The duty is obviously reasonable and right. 3. This rule has a most direct and effectual tendency to promote the happiness of men. 4. Obedience to this rule is the most ennobling character of man. The spirit inculcated is the very opposite of selfishness; and selfishness is the very substance of moral degradation. But behold the man who loves his neighbour as himself! Behold him raised, as it were to heaven, by the principles just described; behold his heart fixed on the good of his fellowmen, his friends, his enemies, his neighbour, and the stranger, as on his own happiness! What is there lovely, what of good report, what of moral beauty, that does not shine in such a character? Is it not real greatness to be like him? 5. We can neither be fit for, nor admitted into heaven without this character. It is impossible not to see in every page of the Scriptures the necessity of a fitness for heaven which consists in the subjugation of selfish to benevolent principles, and which are all summed up in one expressive term, “ Holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord.” Remarks: 1. We see that many things which are deemed consistent with this rule of Christ’ s are direct violations of it. Why does the duelist consent that his antagonist should take his life if he can do it? That he may have an opportunity to take that of a fellow-creature. Is this being willing to give up his life to another from motives of disinterested love? Must one or the other die; and rather than that his neighbour should die, does he consent to die himself? Why, too, is the gambler, or the man who takes undue advantage of his neighbour in trade, willing that others should do to him as he does to them? For the same reason substantially, as it respects the morality of the act that governs the duelist. They are willing that others should treat them thus, that they may obtain, or at least have the opportunity of obtaining, their neighbours’ property without an equivalent. For, if they are really willing their neighbours should have their property without an equivalent, why not give it to them directly? My hearers, such is the deception which men practise on themselves, in these and a thousand other cases. They are not willing to do as they pretend; the proof is, that they do not do it. They are at most willing to run the hazard of being injured themselves, for the privilege of injuring their neighbour. 2. We remark that there is very little genuine morality in the world. 3. How it would commend the religion of the gospel to all, if there were more of the spirit of the text manifested by its professors. 4. I cannot close without remarking, how much we all need a Saviour! I say all; for, let it be noticed, that to condemn what is wrong in the professors of religion, does not justify what is wrong in those who are not. (N. W. Taylor, D. D.) On the great Christian law of reciprocity between man and man Let a man, in fact, give himself up to a strict and literal observation of the precept in this verse, and it will impress a twofold direction upon him. It will not only guide him to certain performances of good in behalf of others,’ but it will guide him to the regulation of his own desires of good from them. For his desires of good from others are here set up as the measure of his performances of good to others. The more selfish and unbounded his desires are, the larger are those performances with the obligation of which he is burdened. Whatsoever he would that others should do unto him, he is bound to do unto them; and therefore, the more he gives way to ungenerous and extravagant wishes of service from those who are around him, the heavier and more insupportable is the load of duty which he brings upon himself. The commandment is quite imperative, and there is no escaping from it; and if he, by the excess of his selfishness, should render it impracticable, then the whole punishment due to the guilt of casting aside the authority of this commandment, follows in that train of punishment which is annexed to selfishness. There is one way of being relieved from such a burden. There is one way of reducing this verse to a moderate and practicable requirement; and that is, just to give up selfishness- just to stifle all ungenerous desires- just to moderate every wish of service or liberality from others, down to the standard of what is right and equitable; and then there may be other verses in the Bible, by which we are called to be kind even to the evil and to the unthankful. But most assuredly this verse lays upon us none other thing than that we should do such services for others as are right and equitable. The operation is somewhat like that of a governor or fly in mechanism. This is a very happy contrivance, by which all that is defective or excessive in the motion, is confined within the limits of equability; and every tendency, in particular, to any mischievous acceleration is restrained. The impulse given by this verse to the conduct of man among his fellows, would seem, to a superficial observer, to carry him to all the excesses of a most ruinous and quixotic benevolence. But let him only look to the skilful adaptation of the fly. Just suppose the control of moderation and equity to be laid upon his own wishes, and there is not a single impulse given to his conduct beyond the rate of moderation and equity. You are not required here to do all things whatsoever in behalf of others, but to do all things whatsoever for them, that you would should be done unto yourself. This is the check by which the whole of the bidden movement is governed, and kept from running out into any hurtful excess. And such is the beautiful operation of that piece of moral mechanism that we are now employed in contemplating, that while it keeps down all the aspirations of selfishness, it does, in fact, restrain every extravagancy, and impresses on its obedient subjects no other movement than that of an even and inflexible justice. This rule of our Saviour’ s, then, prescribes moderation to our desires of good from others, as well as generosity to our doings in behalf of others; and makes the first the measure of obligation to the second. There is nothing in the humble condition of life they occupy which precludes them from all that is great or graceful in human charity. There is a way in which they may equal, and even outpeer, the wealthiest of the land, in that very virtue of which wealth alone has been conceived to have the exclusive inheritance. There is a pervading character in humanity which the varieties of rank do not obliterate; and as, in virtue of the common corruption the poor man may be as effectually the rapacious despoiler of his brethren, as the man of opulence above him--so, there is a common excellence attainable by both; and through which the poor man may, to the full, be as splendid in generosity as the rich, and yield a far more important contribution to the peace and comfort of society. To make this plain--it is in virtue of a generous doing on the part of a rich man, when a sum of money is offered for the relief of want; and it is in virtue of a generous desire on the part of a poor man, when this money is refused; when, with the feeling that his necessities do not just warrant him to be yet a burden upon others, he declines to touch the offered liberality; when, with a delicate recoil from the unlooked-for proposal, he still resolves to put it for the present away, and to find, if possible, for himself a little longer; when, standing on the very margin of dependence, he would yet like to struggle with the difficulties of his situation, and to maintain this severe but honourable conflict, till hard necessity should force him to surrender. Let the money which he has thus so nobly shifted from himself take some new direction to another; and who, we ask, is the giver of it? The first and most obvious reply is, that it is he who owned it; but, it is still more emphatically true, that it is he who has declined it. It came originally out of the rich man’ s abundance; but it was the noble-hearted generosity of the poor man that handed it onwards to its final destination. Thus it is, that when Christianity becomes universal, the doings of the one party, and the desires of the other, will meet and overpass. The poor will wish for no more than the rich will be delighted to bestow; and the rule of our text, which every real Christian at present finds so practicable, will, when carried over the face of society, bind all the members of it into one consenting brotherhood. The duty of doing good to others will then coalesce with that counterpart duty which regulates our desires of good from them; and the work of benevolence will, at length, be prosecuted without that alloy of rapacity on the one hand, and distrust on the other, which serve so much to fester and disturb the whole of this ministration. To complete this adjustment, it is in every way as necessary to lay all the incumbent moralities on those who ask, as on those who confer; and never till the whole text, which comprehends the wishes of man as well as his actions, wield its entire authority over the species, will the disgusts and the prejudices, which form such a barrier between the ranks of human life, be effectually done away. It is not by the abolition of rank, but by assigning to each rank its duties, that peace and friendship and order will at length be firmly established in our world. We should not have dwelt so long upon this lesson, were it not for the essential Christian principle that is involved in it. The morality of the gospel is not more strenuous on the side of the duty of giving of this world’ s goods when it is needed, than it is against the desire of receiving when it is not needed. ( T. Chalmers, D. D.) The golden rule taught by an Indian Some time before the war between the English and the Indians in Pennsylvania broke out, an English gentleman, who lived on the borders of the province, was standing one evening at his door, when an Indian came and desired a little food. He answered, he had none for him. He then asked for a little beer, and received the same answer. Not yet discouraged, he begged for a little water; but the gentleman only answered, “ Get you gone for an Indian dog.” The Indian fixed his eye for a little time on the Englishman, and then went away. Some time after, this gentleman, who was fond of shooting, pursued his game till he was lost in the woods. After wandering a while, he saw an Indian hut, and went to it to inquire his way to some plantation. The Indian said, “ It is a great way off, and the sun is near going down; you cannot reach it to-night, and if you stay in the woods the wolves will eat you up; but if you have a mind to lodge with me, you may.” The gentleman gladly accepted the invitation, and went in. The Indian boiled a little venison for him, gave him some rum and water, and then spread some deer skins for him to lie upon; having done this, himself and another Indian went and lay at the other side of the hut. He called the gentleman in the morning, telling him that the sun was up, and that he had a great way to go to the plantation, but that he would show him the way. Taking their guns, the two Indians went forward, and he followed. When they had gone several miles, the Indian told him he was within two miles of the plantation he wanted; then, stepping before him, he said, “ Do you know me?” In great confusion, the gentleman replied, “ I have seen you.” “ Yes,” said the Indian, you have seen me at your own doer; and I will give you a piece of advice: when a poor Indian, who is hungry, and dry, and faint, again asks you for a little meat or drink, do not bid him ‘ get him gone for an Indian dog.’ “ So he turned and went away. Which of these two was to be commended, or which acted most agreeably to the Saviour’ s golden rule in the text? Luke 6:32-34 For if ye love them which love you, what thank have ye?-- The heroic in Christianity Our Master, evidently, from the verses before us, did not come into the world to teach us to conform to the ways of our fellow-men; but He would have us go far beyond the ordinary conduct of our fellows. If I were called to address an ordinary company of men and women upon feats of valour, I might speak with bated breath if I exhorted them to heroism in war; but if I had lived some thousands of years ago, and had been called upon to talk to Spartan warriors, all equipped for battle, men graved and scored with the scars of conflict, I should set no bounds to my exhortations; I would bestir them as a lion arouses the young lions and urges them to the prey. I should tell them that their name and parentage should not be disgraced by the idea of defeat, but that they must expect victory, and seize it as their right. No orator would have spoken to Spartans as to Boeotians: it was their very life and business to fight, and deeds of prowess were therefore to be looked for from them. Is it not so with you, ye followers of the Crucified? I. MUCH THAT IS GOOD MAY FALL FAR SHORT OF . Do not make the mistake of saying that moral excellence is not good. Some have broadly declared that there is no good thing in an unconverted man; but this is scarcely true. Many who are total strangers to the grace of God yet exhibit sparkling forms of the human virtues in integrity, generosity, kindness, courage, self-sacrifice, and patience. If the question be whether our character is the offspring of nature or of grace, it will be a sad thing if the verdict should turn out to be that it is the dead child of nature finely dressed, but not the living child of grace Divine. We may be decorated with gems which glitter and glow, and yet they may be mere paste, and none of them the work of God’ s Spirit. Observe the three things mentioned in the text against which there is no law, but of which much is to be spoken in commendation. These acts are good, but they do not come up to Christ’ s standard. 1. It is very proper and seemly that kindly feeling should awaken kindly feeling in return; that to those who are friendly to us we should be friendly also. We say “ Love begets love,” and it is natural that it should do so. Our duty is not merely to love those who love us, but to love them that hate and despitefully entreat us. 2. The next thing, in the verses before us, is grateful return. “ If ye do good to them which do good to you, what thank have ye?” It is a very right thing that if persons have served us we should endeavour to repay the benefit. Followers of Jesus are called upon to do good to those who have done them harm. You know the old saying, Evil for good is devil-like, evil for evil is beast-like, good for good is man-like, good for evil is God-like. Rise you to that God-like point. If a man has taken the bread out of your mouth, seize the first opportunity to help him to a livelihood. 3. Again, mention is made of helping others in a neighbourly way with the expectation of their returning the friendly deed. “ If ye lend to them of whom ye hope to receive, what thank have ye?” Temporary help is often rendered in the expectation that, if ever we are in the same need, we shall only need to ask, and receive like aid. I lend you an axe, and you will one day lend me a saw. I help you and you help me--a very proper thing to do, and the more of such brotherly and neighbourly co-operation the better, but still there is nothing so very virtuous in it. You as a Christian are to rise to something higher than this: to be ready to help without the expectation of being helped again. II. VIRTUE IS IN MANY , AND MIGHT BE CALLED HEROIC. In the point of love, kindness, consideration for men’ s needs, and desire to do good, the Christian life is to rise above every other, till it becomes sublime. Heathen moralists recommended kindness, but they did not suggest its being lavished upon enemies. I have been somewhat amused by the caution of Cicero. He says, “ Kindness must not be shown to a youth nor to an old man; not to the aged, because he is likely to die before he can have an occasion to repay you the benefit; and not to the young man, for he is sure to forget it.” Our Lord bids us seek no reward from men, and he assures us that then a greater reward will come. We shall by shunning it secure it. We shall find a reward in being unrewarded. Next, Luke 9:54-55, and you will see that the Christian is to rise above human passion in the matter of gentleness. In the elevation of his joy the Christian is also to rise above all other men. He may rejoice as they do in the common bounties of providence, but that joy is to hold very secondary rank. Even in his own success as a Christian worker he takes but measured satisfaction. Read Luke 10:20. The Christian is heroic, next, in his fearlessness (Luke 12:4). The true believer is to be willing to bear reproach; ay, and to bear much more than reproach, as saints of God have done times out of mind. See how far the true believer is lifted up above the world, as you turn to Luke 12:22, where the Lord bids us cultivate a holy ease of heart as to all temporal things. The rich man finds his wealth in his bursting barns, but the believer finds his treasure in the all-sufficiency of his God. Another point in which Christian heroism is seen is in humility and in delight in service. Turn to the fourteenth chapter and see our Lord’ s directions to His disciples not to seek out the highest, but rather the lowest room, for, saith He, “ Whosoever exalteth himself shall be abased, and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.” Habitually a Christian man is to have a modest esteem of himself. III. THE DUE FOR THE MOST HEROIC LIFE. 1. The economy of grace requires it. 2. Think again, brethren, we are helped to holy heroism by the reward which it brings; for our blessed Master, though He bids us spurn the thought of reward on earth, yet tells us that there is a reward in the thing itself. (C. H. Spurgeon.) The moral demands of the Lord Jesus Christ Here, for instance, is one of the maxims of Epictetus, “ It is possible that you observe some other person more honoured than yourself, invited to entertainments when you are left out, saluted before you are taken any notice of, thought more proper to advise with, and his counsel followed rather than yours. But are these forms of respect which are paid to him good or evil? If they deserve to be esteemed good, this ought to be matter of joy to you that that person is happy in them; but if they be evil, how unreasonable is it to be troubled that they have not fallen to your own share.” That was how a heathen moralist thought we ought to regard the honours paid to other men. I want to know whether many of us have passed far beyond him? If we consider our social life and our political and philanthropic movements, is it quite clear that we Christian Englishmen are in advance of this ancient Roman slave? Take another of the maxims of Epictetus, “ My duty to my father is to assist and take care of him, to support his age and his infirmities, to yield to him and pay him service and respect upon all occasions But you will say he is a rigorous and unnatural father. What is that to the purpose? Yon are to remember, this obligation to duty does not arise from the consideration of his goodness, but from the relation he bears to you. No failings of his can make him cease to be a father, and consequently none can absolve you from the obedience of a son. Your brother has done you an injury, but do not suppose that this dispenses with the kindness you owe him. You are still to observe what becomes you; not to imitate what misbecame him.” I think that I have known Christian men and women who have supposed that the harshness of a parent relieved them from their obligations as children, and that the injury they had received from a brother justified them in showing an unbrotherly and unsisterly spirit. Christ assumes that our standard of moral duty ought always to be loftier than that which exists among those who have never heard of His teaching. If, without self-reproach, we permit ourselves to indulge in a spirit which even heathen moralists condemned, how can we answer his question, What do ye more than others? Epictetus was originally a Greek slave. Let us turn to a man of another sort--Marcus Antoninus the Roman emperor. “ A branch,” he says, “ cut off from the adjacent branch must of necessity be cut off from the whole tree also. So, too, a man, when he is separated from another man, has fallen off from the whole social community.” How many of us have a profounder conception than the heathen emperor of the duty of avoiding personal quarrels, of suppressing the vanity, the resentment, the wilfulness and selfishness by which we might be separated from our neighbour and so cut off from the life of the race? Take his caution against forming hard judgments of others. He says, what is true in innumerable cases, “ Thou dost not even understand whether men are doing wrong or not, for many things are done with a certain reference to circumstances. And, in short, a man must learn a great deal to enable him to pass a correct judgment on another man’ s acts.” I wonder whether most of us, before passing hard judgments on others, remember how much we must know, before we can judge them fairly? Here is another maxim, “ Whatever any one else does or says, I must be good--just as if the gold, or the emerald, or the purple were always saying this--‘ Whatever any one does or says, I must keep my colour.’ It is royal to do good and to be abused.” Some of you are masters. Do you see clearly that whatever your servants” do or say “ you must be always just and kind and considerate to them? Some of you are workmen. Have you made up your minds that you must always be good workmen, no matter whether you have a good master or a bad master; that you must serve a bad master as faithfully and as zealously as you serve a good one? And whatever our position may be, is it the constant temper of our mind to “ do good,” whether we are praised for it or not--to “ do good” even when we are “ abused” for doing it? Again, “ If any man is able to convince me and show me that I do not think or act right, I will gladly change, for I seek the truth, by which no man was ever injured. But he is injured who abides in his error and ignorance.” It is not my experience that many Christian people cultivate this noble spirit. But what I am especially anxious to insist upon just now is that in the writings of heathen moralists there are maxims inculcating virtues which some Christian people have never thought of trying to attain. Their moral standard is so defective that in many points they are inferior to heathen men in their conceptions of duty. Christ assumes that His servants will be at least as clear-sighted as the heathen, and that the virtues which the heathen honoured we shall honour, and He goes on to require more. What this higher law is, in all its applications, we have to learn, and we learn it very gradually; it is one of the great subjects about which Christian men should be always learning. Christ has not given us a complete code, but He has given us specimens of the contrast between this higher law and the common laws recognized by ordinary men. We have to work out the whole code of Christian morals in the light of this teaching. This is the method of the new science. We have to take the virtues which are recognized as virtues by all the world honesty, industry, kindness, temperance, the spirit of cheerful contentment with our condition--and we have to learn for ourselves the larger requirements of Christ in relation to every one of them. The Spirit of Christ, if we seek His guidance, will lead us into all the truth. Every Christian man must be left very much to the guidance of the Spirit in these high matters. We can do something to help each other, but not very much. I should have to be a draper to learn what a Christian draper should do “ more” than other honest drapers; and a carpenter to learn what a Christian carpenter should do “ more” than other good carpenters; and a banker to learn what a Christian banker should do “ mere” than other upright bankers. The root of the whole matter lies in the fact that we are the servants of Christ, and that very much of the service we render to Christ consists in the service we render to our fellow-men, whether we are ministers, lawyers, mechanics, clerks, housemaids, milliners, merchants, or tradesmen. If we are zealous to please Christ we shall find many ways of doing it of which some of us, perhaps, have no conception; and this will result in nobler ideas of moral duty in all the common affairs of life. While many other men, in their business transactions, keep only just within the limits of the law which is administered by human tribunals, let Christian men be governed by the rules of a diviner equity. While many other men do public work as long as they are honoured for doing it, let Christian men go on doing it whether they are honoured or not, accepting it as the service to which God has appointed them. Let the Christian manufacturer recognize the Higher Law, in the quality of his goods, in his treatment of his partners and his men, and in his careful avoidance of whatever personal extravagances and whatever commercial risks and speculations might prevent him from paying his debts. Let the Christian builder be so exact in doing his work according to the specifications that his employers shall feel that a clerk of the works is a useless expense. Let the Christian carpenter and engine-fitter make the eye of the foreman unnecessary. But perhaps some of you will say that conduct of this kind will prevent you from getting on in the world; that if you act in the way I have described you will make money slowly; that if you do not push to the front and keep yourself there, you will never get your value recognized. The real reply--the Christian reply--to your objection is, that it is not your business to get on in the world, to make money, to have your worth recognized, but to serve God. You cannot serve both God and mammon. (R. W. Dale, LL. D.) Selfishness the essence of moral depravity I. Let us consider why SINNERS LOVE . It is plainly supposed in the text that sinners love themselves, for they are said to love those that love them, which could not be accounted for if they were wholly destitute of love to themselves. In other passages of Scripture, they are said to be lovers of their ownselves, and to seek their own things and not the things of others. But this is too evident from experience and observation to need any proof. Sinners certainly love themselves. But why? Every creature, perhaps, whether rational or irrational, takes pleasure in receiving its proper food; but this love to its food is not love to itself, or selfishness. The saint and the sinner may equally love honey, because it is agreeable to the taste; but this love to honey is neither interested nor disinterested love, and of course is neither virtuous nor vicious. Men never love any particular food from a moral motive, but from the constitution of their nature, in which they are passive, and have no active concern. The case is different in loving themselves. In this they properly act, and act from a moral motive. Sinners love themselves not because they are a part of the intellectual system, nor because the general good requires them to regard their personal happiness, but because they are themselves. They love their own interest because it is their own, in distinction from the interest of all other created or uncreated beings. This is a free, voluntary exercise, which is contrary to their reason and conscience, and which they know to be in its own nature wrong. Their interest is really no more valuable for being theirs, than if it belonged to others; and they themselves are no more valuable than other creatures of the same character and capacity. To love themselves, therefore, because they are themselves, is to love themselves from a motive peculiar to selfish creatures. II. We are to consider WHY SINNERS LOVE OTHERS. Our Saviour said to His disciples, that if they were of the world, the world would love them. And He said in the text that sinners love those that love them. For the same reason that sinners love themselves, they naturally love those that love them and are disposed to do them good. As they love their own interest because it is their own, so they love every person or object which serves to increase or preserve their own interest. They do not value and love others because they are valuable and worthy to be loved, but merely because they view them as means or instruments of securing or advancing their own personal happiness. They value their fellow-men for the same reason that they value their own houses and lands, flocks and herds. III. It remains to inquire WHY THERE IS NO MORAL IN THE LOVE WHICH SINNERS TOWARDS AND OTHERS? Christ supposes that they all know the nature of their love, and that there is nothing virtuous or praiseworthy in it. “ If ye love them which love you, what thank have ye?” We never thank men for loving themselves, nor for loving us merely for their own sake. It is the unanimous sentiment of mankind that there is no virtue in that love which flows entirely from mercenary motives. But why? Here then I would observe-- 1. That there is no moral goodness in the love which sinners feel and express, because it is not a conformity to that love which God feels and expresses. He is good unto all, and His tender mercies are over all His works. He seeks not only His own glory, but the real good of others. It bears no conformity to the love of God, which is the standard of all moral perfection. 2. The selfish love of sinners has no moral goodness in it, because it is no obedience to the Divine law. This law requires them to love God with all the heart, and to love their fellow-men as themselves. But when they love themselves because they are themselves, and love others only because they have received or expect to receive benefit from them, do they obey the Divine law? 3. There is no moral goodness in the selfishness of sinners, because it is the very essence of all moral evil. All the wickedness of Satan consists in his selfishness. He loves himself because he is himself, and loves only those who love him, because their love serves to promote what he considers as his cause and interest. : 1. If sinners may love themselves and others from mere selfish motives, then it is easy to account for all their kind and friendly conduct towards their fellow creatures, consistently with their total depravity. 2. If the moral depravity of sinners consists in selfishness, then the moral depravity of Adam consisted in selfishness, and not in the mere want of holiness. 4. If sinners are constantly under the governing influences of selfishness, then they must experience an essential change in their affections, in order to be saved. 5. If sinners love themselves because they are themselves, which is selfish and sinful, then after they experience a saving change from selfishness to benevolence, they love themselves in a manner totally different from what they did before. They love themselves in the same manner that God loves them. 6. Finally, it appears from this discourse that it is highly necessary to explain and inculcate the total selfishness of sinners. They never will believe that they are totally depraved, until they see wherein total depravity consists. (N. Emmons, D. D.) Luke 6:35 And ye shall be the children of the Highest The Christian aim and motive 1st. The Christian aim--perfection. 2nd. The Christian motive--because it is right and Godlike to be perfect. I. THE AIM IS THIS--to be perfect. “ Be ye therefore perfect.” Now distinguish this, I pray you, from mere worldly morality. It is not conformity to a creed that is here required, but aspiration after a state. It is not demanded of us to perform a number of duties, but to yield obedience to a certain spiritual law. Will not that inflame our pride, and increase our natural vainglory? Now the nature and possibility of human perfection, what it is and how it is possible, are both contained in one single expression in the text, “ Even as your father which is in Heaven is perfect.” The relationship between father and son implies consanguinity, likeness, similarity of character and nature. God made the insect, the stone, the lily; but God is not the Father of the caterpillar, the lily, or the stone. When, therefore, God is said to be our Father, something more is implied in this than that God created man. And so when the Son of Man came proclaiming the fact that we are the children of God, it was in the truest sense a revelation. He told us that the nature of God resembles the nature of man, that love in God is not a mere figure of speech, but means the same thing as love in us, and that Divine anger is the same thing as human anger divested of its emotions and imperfections. When we are commanded to be like God, it implies that God has that nature of which we have already the germs. And this has been taught by the incarnation of the Redeemer. Things absolutely dissimilar in their nature cannot mingle. Water cannot coalesce with fire--water cannot mix with oil. If, then, Humanity and Divinity were united in the person of the Redeemer, it follows that there must be something kindred between the two, or else the incarnation had been impossible. So that the incarnation is the realization of man’ s perfection. Here, however, you will observe another difficulty. It will be said at once--there is something in this comparison of man with God which looks like blasphemy, because one is finite and the other infinite. Let us, then, endeavour to find out the evidences of this infinitude in the nature of man. First of all we find it in this--that the desires of man are for something boundless and unattainable. The boundless, endless, infinite void in the soul of man can be satisfied with nothing but God. Satisfaction lies not in having, but in being. There is no satisfaction even in doing. Man cannot be satisfied with his own performances. A second trace of this infinitude in man’ s nature we find in the infinite capacities of the soul. This is true intellectually and morally. For there is no man, however low his intellectual powers may be, who has not at one time or another felt a rush of thought, a glow of inspiration, which seemed to make all things possible, as if it were merely the effect of some imperfect organization which stood in the way of his doing whatever he desired to do. With respect to our moral and spiritual capacities, we remark that they are not only indefinite, but absolutely infinite. Let that man answer who has ever truly and heartily loved another. Again, we perceive a third trace of this infinitude in man, in the power which he possesses of giving up self. In this, perhaps more than in anything else, man may claim kindred with God. Before passing on let us observe that were it not for this conviction of the Divine origin, and consequent perfectibility of our nature, the very thought of God would be painful to us. II. We pass on, in the second place, to consider the MOTIVE--“ Even as your Father which is in Heaven is perfect.” Brethren, worldly prudence, miscalled morality, say--“ Be honest; you will find your gain in being so. Do right; you will be the better for it--even in this world you will not lose by it.” The mistaken religionist only magnifies this on a large scale. “ Your duty,” he says, “ is to save your soul. Give up this world to have the next. Lose here, that you may gain hereafter.” In opposition to all such sentiments as these, thus speaks the gospel--“ Be ye perfect.” Why? “ Because your Father which is in Heaven is perfect.” Do right, because it is Godlike and right so to do. In conclusion, we observe, there are two things which are to be learned from this passage. The first is this, that happiness is not our end and aim. The Christian’ s aim is perfection, not happiness. The second thing we have to learn is this, that on this earth there can be no rest for man. The last thing we learn from this is the impossibility of obtaining that of which some men speak--the satisfaction of a good conscience. (F. W. Robertson, M. A.) Concerning the perfection of God I. THE OF THE DIVINE NATURE --“ As your Father which is in Heaven is perfect.” 1. I shall consider how we are to conceive of the Divine perfection, these two ways. (1) By ascribing all imaginable and possible perfection to God; absolute and universal perfection, not limited to a certain kind, or to certain particulars. Some things may seem to be perfection, which in truth are not, because they are plainly impossible, and involve a contradiction. And then there are some things which do argue and suppose imperfections in them; as motion, the quickness and swiftness whereof in creatures is a perfection, but then it supposeth a finite and limited nature. And there are also some imaginable degrees of perfection, which, because they are inconsistent with other perfections, are not to be admitted in the Divine nature. And in the Scripture we do everywhere find perfection ascribed to the nature, and works, and laws of God, to everything that belongs to Him, or proceeds from Him (Job 37:16). (2) As we are to ascribe all imaginable and possible perfections to God, so we are to separate and remove all manner of imperfection from Him. We must not obscure or blemish the Divine nature with the least shadow or blot of imperfection. 2. To lay down some rules by which we may rectify and govern our opinions concerning the attributes and perfections of God: the best I can think of are these following: (1) Let us begin with the most natural, and plain, and easy perfections of God, and lay them for a foundation, and rectify all our other apprehensions of God, and reasonings about Him, by these; and these are His power, wisdom, and goodness, to which most of the rest may be reduced. Right apprehensions, and a firm belief of these, will make it easily credible to us, that all things were made, and are governed by Him; for His goodness will dispose and incline Him to communicate being to other things, and to take care of them when they are made. (2) Let us always consider the perfections of God in conjunction, and so as to reconcile them with one another. Do not consider God as mere power and sovereignty, as mere mercy and goodness, as mere justice and severity; but as all these together, and in such a measure and degree, as may make them consistent with one another. Among men, indeed, an eminent degree of any one excellency does usually shut out some other; and, therefore, it is observed that power and moderation, love and discretion, do not often meet together; that a great memory and a small judgment, a good wit and an ill-nature, are many times found in conjunction. But in infinite perfection all perfections do eminently meet and consist together; and it is not necessary that one excellency should be raised upon the ruins of another. (3) Among different opinions concerning God (as there always have been and will be in the world) choose those which are farthest from extremity; because truth as well as virtue usually lies between the extremes. And here I will instance in that controversy, which has much disquieted the Church almost in all ages, concerning the decrees of God; about which there are two extremes; the one, that God peremptorily decrees the final condition of every particular person, that is, their everlasting happiness or misery, without any regard or consideration of the good or bad actions of men: the other, that God decrees nothing concerning any particular person, but only in general, that men found under such and such qualifications shall be happy or miserable, and puts it into their own power to qualify themselves. (4) Entertain no opinion concerning God that doth evidently contradict the practice of religion, and a good life, though never so specious and subtle arguments may be used to persuade it. Let us then look upon all knowledge that contradicts practice as vain and false, because it destroys its end. There are many things that seem probable enough in speculation, which yet we most pertinaciously deny, because they are not practicable; and there are many things which seem doubtful in speculation, and would admit of great dispute, which yet, because they are found true in practice and experience, are to be taken for certain and unquestionable. Zeno pretends to demonstrate there is no motion; and what is the consequence of this speculation, but that men must stand still? but so long as a man finds he can walk, all the sophistry in the world will not persuade him that motion is impossible. II. THE OF GOD IS AS A PATTERN FOR OUR . To show how far we are to imitate the perfections of God, and particularly what those Divine qualities are which our Saviour doth here more especially propound to our imitation. 1. That our imitation of God is certainly restrained to the communicable perfections of God, and such as creatures are capable of; as I have shown before. For it is so far from being a duty to affect or attempt to be like God in His peculiar perfections, that it was probably the sin of the apostate angels. 2. Our imitation of the Divine perfections, which are communicable to creatures, is likewise to be restrained to such degrees of these perfections, as creatures are capable of. For no creature can ever be so perfectly good as God is; nor partake of any other excellency, in that transcendant degree, in which the Divine nature is possessed of it. 3. But there is no manner of inconvenience in having a pattern propounded to us of so great perfection, as is above our reach to attain to; and there may be great advantages in it. The way to excel in any kind is to propose the highest and most perfect examples to our imitation. He that aims at the heavens, which yet he is sure to come short of, is like to shoot higher than he that aims at a mark within his reach. Besides that, the excellency of the pattern, as it leaves room for continual improvement, so it kindles ambition, and makes men strain and contend to the utmost to do better. And we may reasonably presume that to do all we can towards the fulfilling of this precept will be as acceptable to God, and as beneficial to ourselves, as if our power had been greater, and we had perfectly fulfilled it. 4. And lastly, Which will fully clear this matter; this precept cloth not oblige us to come up to a perfect equality with the pattern propounded to us, but only imports a vigorous imitation of it; that we be perpetually ascending and climbing up higher, still advancing from one degree of goodness to another, and continually aspiring after a near resemblance to God. And this seems to be no inconsiderable ingredient and enhancement of the happiness of heaven, that the holiness of good men (which is the similitude of God) is never at a stand, nor at its full growth and period; but that the glorified saints (yea, and blessed angels too) may be continually growing and improving, and they themselves still become better and happier to all eternity. III. All that now remains is to draw some useful from this discourse which I have made; and they shall be these two: 1. That the strongest and surest reasonings in religion are grounded upon the essential perfections of God. 2. That the truest and most substantial practice of religion consists in the imitation of God. (J. Tillotson, D. D.) Luke 6:36 Be ye therefore merciful, as your Father also is merciful The blessing of mercy “ Mercy” is the one great cry of human nature. We dare not ask for justice, we can only plead for mercy. We, who want so much mercy from God, must learn to show mercy to our fellow-men. How can we look to Him for mercy if we never show mercy, how can we ask forgiveness unless we forgive? Think of some of the ways in which we can show mercy. 1. We must show mercy and loving-kindness, practically, by deeds, not words. 2. We can show mercy by for giving those who injure us. Few things are more talked of, and less practised, than the duty of forgiveness. 3. Mercy ever brings its sweet reward. Every act of loving-kindness comes back to us with abundant interest. Once a farmer, out on the western prairies of America, started for a distant town, to receive some money due to him. As he left his house, his only child, a little girl, clung lovingly to him, and reminded him of his promise to bring her home a present. Late on the same night the farmer left the town on his way home. The night was very dark and stormy, and he was yet far from his home, and in the wildest part of the road, when he heard the cry of a child. The farmer thought that it might be the device of some robber, as he was known to carry money with him. He was weary and wet with his journey, and inclined to hasten on, but again the cry reached him. The farmer determined that whatever happened he must search for the child, if child there were. Groping in the darkness, at last he found a little figure, drenched with rain, and shivering with cold. Wrapping his cloak about the child, he rode homewards as fast as possible, but when he reached his house, he found it full of neighbours, standing round his weeping wife. One said to another, “ Do not tell him, it will drive him mad.” Then the farmer set down his bundle, and his wife with a cry of joy saw that it was their own lost child. The little one had set forth to meet her father, and had missed her way. The man had, without knowing it, saved his own daughter. (H. J. Wilmot-Buxton, M. A.) Imitation of the mercy of God What can be a more endearing motive to the mind of man, than to propose to him a resemblance to the most high God; to urge the conduct of the Father of the universe, as an example for his imitation. 1. The first excellence in the mercy of God which will naturally occur to our thoughts, as deserving our imitation, is its entire disinterestedness and perfect liberality. Our goodness, therefore, must be void of selfish and earthly motives. 2. Its universality. We must endeavour to do all the good we can to all around us, neither slighting the ignorant, nor despising the mean and indigent, nor abandoning the vicious and unworthy in their distress. (1) Although our mercy may and ought to be universal in will and intention, yet, in consequence of our little power, it must be very limited in reality and in effect (2 Corinthians 8:12). (2) This example of the unconfined extent of the Divine mercy does not hinder us from having a more particular regard to certain persons, and peculiar situations of distress (Galatians 6:10). 3. Its unwearied perseverance. Let us, like God, be “ not weary in well-doing.” 4. Its long-suffering patience. 5. Its readiness and willingness to forgive. (James Biddoch, M. A.) Practical manifestations of mercy In how many thousand instances does a man hold in his own hands the power of manifesting this blessed quality of mercy! You are an employer; there is some boy in your employment who commits his first transgression, perhaps not really conscious of the evil that he does. Perhaps in an unguarded moment he takes from you something that belongs to you. You do not injure society by exercising mercy towards that boy. How often is it the case that your judicious act of mercy, tempered by justice, has been the means of saving that boy from open exposure, from public punishment; how often it is the salvation of that boy! Do you suppose that it is justice in that case that the penalty of the law shall brand him--that he shall be marked as a criminal, that he shall be self-degraded? This is an instance which men of business will tell me often occurs, and can there be any doubt as to what justice is in that case? So I say, when a man’ s reputation lies at our mercy, we are bound to make all the allowance we can for his action. If he does a foolish thing, let us be disposed, as far as possible, to make allowance, to think what may have been the peculiar circumstances under which he did it. We are all called upon to exercise this prerogative of mercy, and that in innumerable forms. (E. H. Chapin, D. D.) Gospel for the fourth Sunday after Trinity I. WE ARE INCITED TO -OF OUR FATHER. We are His children, and children ought to resemble their parents (Ephesians 5:1, R.V.) II. AN APPEAL IS MADE TO OUR SELF-. It is a principle of the Divine administration that the standard you apply to others shall be applied to you. III. OUR LORD THE WAY IN WHICH WE MAY HOPE TO PASS UPON OTHERS. By being first jealous and severe judges of ourselves. (Homiletic Quarterly.) Man a child of mercy When God, in His eternal counsel, conceived the thought of man’ s creation, He called to Him the three ministers who wait constantly upon His throne--Justice, Truth, and Mercy--and thus addressed them: “ Shall we make man?” Then said Justice, “ O God! make him not: for he will trample upon Thy laws.” Truth made answer also, “ O God! make him not, for he will pollute Thy sanctuaries.” But Mercy, dropping upon her knees, and looking up through her tears, exclaimed, “ O God! make him. I will watch over him with my care through all the dark paths which he may have to tread.” Then God made man, and said to him, “ O man! thou art the child of Mercy: go and deal with thy brother.” (Crittenden.) A condition of receiving mercy Being sent for by a slave-holder who was seriously unwell, to pray with him, Father Craven approached his bedside and inquired if he had in his will bequeathed liberty to his slaves? “ No,” said the slave-holder, “ I have bequeathed them to my children.” “ Then,” said Father Craven, “ prayer will be of no avail--God will not show mercy to these who show none to their fellow-men.” So he bade him farewell. Soon after a second message was sent for Father Craven to visit the slave-holder and pray with him. He went and asked the slave-holder if he had emancipated his slaves? “ Yes,” said the slave-holder, “ I have now emancipated them by my will. Will you pray for me?” “ Certainly,” said the good man, and he knelt down and commended to God the soul of the sufferer, who seemed near his end. Father Craven agreed with John Jay, a leader in the American revolution, who said, “ Till America comes into the measure (of abolition) her prayers to heaven will be impious.” (Handbook to Scripture Doctrines.) An all-availing plea A minister belonging to the Calvinistic Methodists, in a country town, had taught his little boy, who is in his second year, each night before going to sleep, to repeat the prayer: “ God be merciful to me a sinner.” The other Sabbath, while the minister had gone to preach to a village congregation, the child upset the inkstand, and was told his father would whip him for the accident. The minister had no sooner returned, than the child climbed his knee, and putting his mouth close to the father’ s ear, softly whispered: “ Be merciful to me, a sinner, papa.” Moved by the ingenuity of the plea, the father kissed his boy, and could not find it in his heart to chide or correct the bright little fellow. Importance of mercy Mercy is in the air which we breathe, the daily light which shines upon us, the gracious rain of God’ s inheritance. It is the public spring for all the thirsty, the common hospital for all the needy. All the streets of the church are paved with these stones. What would become of the children, if there were not these breasts of consolation? It is mercy that takes us out of the womb, feeds us in the days of our pilgrimage, furnishes us with spiritual provision, closes our eyes in peace, and translates us to a secure resting-place. It is the first petitioner’ s suit, and the first believer’ s article, the contemplation of Enoch, the confidence of Abraham, the burden of the prophetic songs, and the glory of all the apostles, the plea of the penitent, the ecstasies of the reconciled, the believer’ s hosannah, the angel’ s hallelujah. Ordinances, oracles, altars, pulpits, the gates of the grave, and the gates of heaven, do all depend upon mercy. It is the loadstar of the wandering, the ransom of the captive, the antidote of the tempted, the prophet of the living, and the effectual comfort of the dying: there would not be one regenerate saint upon earth, nor one glorified saint in heaven, if it were not for mercy. (The Dictionary of Illustrations.) Mercy reciprocated The Marshall D’ Armont, having taken Crodon, ordered every Spaniard found in the garrison to be put to death. Though it was death to disobey orders, an English soldier ventured to save a Spaniard. He was arraigned for the offence, confessed the fact, and declared himself ready to suffer death if they would save the life of the Spaniard. Surprised at the request, they inquired why he was so much interested. “ Because,” replied he, “ in a similar situation, he once saved my life.” The marshall was so greatly pleased, that he granted him pardon, and saved the Spaniard’ s life as well. Provision for mercy Abraham Lincoln’ s doorkeeper had standing orders from him, that no matter how great might be the throng, if either senators or representatives had to wait, or to be turned away without an audience, he must see, before the day closed, every messenger who came to him with a petition for the saving of life. The law of love All that is really good is the outcome of the law of love, and its first result and inseparable companion is mercy. I. FORBEAR. 1. A passion for judging others seems to exist in men. Every one, however backward to amend himself, is ready to correct others. The origin of this spirit is too clear. Deep in man’ s native selfishness. Exalts self, depresses others. 2. Are we never, then, to judge? (1) One cannot help forming opinions. It would be indicative of a perverted conscience to regard all with equal complacency. Yes, but this is different from the glad readiness to judge. (2) Sometimes needful to speak as well as to judge. But not in a censorious spirit, or overbearing tone. (3) The example of Jesus is the solution of the difficulty. Reprove only when needful. Then in righteous indignation, or in sorrowful rebuke. II. FORGIVE. 1. Revenge is as natural to man as passing judgment. 2. Often as false and hypocritical, hiding itself under similar disguises. 3. Its root is ultimately the same. Selfishness--contradiction of the law of love. 4. Consequently condemned by example and spirit of Christ. His forgiving mercy was habitual, ready, cordial. III. GIVE. The more active side of mercy. Opposed to bargaining or exchange--no thought of return. An evidence of sonship of God. When we are merciful, we come nearest to the Divine perfection. (W. R. Clark, M. A.) Mercy I. ITS ACTS. 1. Consideration.2. Compassion. 3. Prayer. 4. Helpfulness, according to the need of the object. II. ITS OBJECTS. Our neighbour. 1. Erring (James 5:19-20). 2. Offending. 3. Under persecution. 4. In want. 5. In sickness. 6. In misfortune by the loss of good friends, or the unkindness of bad relations. III. THE MANNER OF ITS . Acts of mercy are to be performed-- 1. With readiness and forwardness of mind (2 Corinthians 9:7). 2. With modesty and humility (Matthew 6:1). 3. From a kind and merciful, not from a selfish and mercenary temper (Luke 6:32). 4. Without delay (Proverbs 4:23). 5. Bountifully (1 Timothy 6:18). 6. With minds full of gratitude to God (1 Chronicles 29:13; 1 Chronicles 29:17). 7. As to Christ Himself (Matthew 10:42). IV. THE TO THE . AS for external mercies, the Bible promises them very fully to the merciful. 1. Deliverance out of trouble (Isaiah 58:10; Psalms 41:1). 2. God’ s blessing on his labours and undertakings Deuteronomy 15:7-10). 3. The staving off of his trouble, and the lengthening of his tranquility (Daniel 4:27). 4. Plenty (Proverbs 19:17; Proverbs 3:9). B Honour (Psalms 112:9). 6. Deliverance from enemies (Psalms 41:2). 7. God s comforts in his sickness (Psalms 51:3). 8. A blessing on his posterity (Psalms 37:26). 9. More particularly, man’ s help in distress and God’ s providence. (J. Blair, D. D.) Are we merciful in our speech to men? Do we not sometimes take pleasure in making a criticism as sharp and pungent as we can make it? Do we in our literature, in our judgments of the political work or social life of others, strive to speak charitably; or rather, is it not a keen gratification to think that the world enjoys the criticism when the writer is sharp and piquant, and seasons his criticism with that unkindness which sends it home as the feather sends the arrow? (Bishop W. C. Magee.) Are we merciful as employers of others? Do we feel that those around us in domestic service, in business, should have their feelings carefully considered? Surely there is a sad want of thoughtful mercy amongst us all I There is no lack of that mercy which comes of being strongly appealed to, and which moves a man to give largely of his money, time, and energy, for the removal of suffering. But the thoughtful, considerate mercy which seeks to prevent suffering and to hinder crime is what we desire to see. (Bishop W. C. Magee.) The merciful The world of the natural man is by no means predominantly a merciful world. “ The tender mercies of the wicked are cruel.” A thoroughly bad man is seldom a kind man. The kindliness of a bad man is generally both capricious and selfish. At its best it lacks the essential condition of a Christian charity. Not everything which passes for kindness, not everything which is kindness, is “ mercy” in the sense here intended. There is another word in Scripture, which stands for pity, and the two ideas differ. 1. The objects of pity are the unhappy: the objects of mercy are the undeserving. (1) Mercy is seen towards those who have no claim upon us. The good Samaritan was merciful as well as pitiful; because the robbed and wounded man whom he succoured was wholly unconnected with him; was not only no relation, but even an alien and of a hostile race. (2) Mercy is shown, yet more strongly, towards those who have forfeited their claim upon us; those who had a claim, and have lost it. The prodigal son. 2. The nature of mercy. (1) Sympathy. A fellow-feeling with the undeserving. A deep consciousness of personal demerit, making me at once the equal and the brother of the undeserving. (2) This sense of fellowship with the sinner is accompanied with a sense of the evil of sin. By this it is prompted. (3) A desire for the good--the highest good--of the sinful. Mercy rests not in the fall. Mercy is not satisfied with bewailing the misery. Mercy expends not itself in sighs and tears, sits not down with the sorrow and the sinfulness which she both beholds and feels: she looks upward, and she looks onward--upward for help, onward to salvation; and is as ready to succour as she is prompt to sympathise. 3. The working of mercy. (1) Compassionate thoughts. Mercy, like every grace, has its seat within. We must begin with the heart. The thoughts of mercy will be disciplined into charitableness before she begins to speak or to do. She will recount inwardly the revelation of God concerning sin itself; how it first entered into the world; how it spread its reign hither and thither, till a flood of evil had hidden earth itself from heaven; how it works in the child, struggles for mastery in the man, and leads captive in unsuspected bonds souls born for immortality and for God. She knows how subtle are its workings, how fatal its delusions, how strong its chains. She pities even where she must condemn, and, where she cannot trust, she can at least hope still. (2) Compassionate thoughts come forth naturally into kindly words. The merciful man speaks mercifully. (3) Compassionate thoughts and kindly words will run on, lastly, into practical efforts. A man who has a feeling of compassion should always act upon it. (Dean Vaughan.) Mercifulness What is it to be “ merciful” ? Like other virtues, this, too, has its imitations, worthless and spurious. There is a mercy current among men which is merely an outlet for energy, or the fashion of the day. There is a mercy, so called, which is in reality a luxury, a refined sort of self-indulgence. There is a sort of mercy which people call charity, which gives, but without discrimination or thought. But these, none of these, are mercifulness. No, nor, on the other hand, is it to be confused with pity, a feeling of compassion for the unfortunate; nor has it to do with merely deeds of mercy, acts of kindness. For mercifulness and mercy do not mean the same thing. Mercifulness is what we are and what we do. Mercy, as men count it, may be all outside, no heart in it, or may take its rise from wrong or unworthy motives; while mercifulness must go down to the inner springs of actions, not stop short of guiding principles, have its roots in sound and holy motives. It deals with the quality of the deed rather than the quantity; it examines the texture of which it is made, not the smoothness or bright shimmer; it asks not whether it glitters, but whether it is gold with the true ring. 1. True mercifulness is a characteristic of those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, and they alone will be merciful in God’ s way, seeking not to please themselves, but to do His will “ who is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and plenteous in mercy.” 2. True mercifulness is always guided by meekness. It is exercised towards those who have ill requited our kindness, and are undeserving of our mercy. 3. True mercifulness can only be felt by those who have learned to mourn their sin, and in repentance turned unto God, and so have a fellow feeling with those who sin, and long to rescue them. 4. True mercifulness has, as its earliest beginning, poverty of spirit, for only those who in humility know themselves aright will never despair of others, or tire of showing mercy to the undeserving. (C. J. Ridgeway, M. A.) The mercifulness of God as seen in Christ 1. He was merciful to all, not to some. 2. His mercifulness was provident, thoughtful, wise, seeking the real good of men, marked by the discrimination of prudence, withholding to-day what will do harm instead of good, giving to one what He refuses to another, always keeping before Him as the only true object of mercifulness the well-being of those He came to succour. 3. His mercifulness is unchanging. Time does not wear it out, nor years weaken it. He was merciful even as He loved, unto the end. Many waters could not quench it, neither the floods drown it. The waters came in even unto His soul, suffering and anguish overwhelmed Him; but His mercifulness lived on; it burned like the beacon light of the lighthouse, undimmed by the great storm of affliction that raged around. Nor is He changed now. His mercifulness is as true in His exaltation as in His Passion Hebrews 2:17-18; Hebrews 7:24-25). (C. J. Ridgeway, M. A.) Christ’ s mercifulness and ours Compare what we call mercifulness with His. His a mercifulness which always kept God’ s glory in view, and ours so often centring about self. His a mercifulness shown towards those who were ever seeking His heart, and ours so easily quenched by the first appearance of ingratitude. His a mercifulness that recognized sin as the source of every man’ s misery, and ours so indifferent to the deepest needs of the men and women around us. His a mercifulness that stooped to help, that touched as well as pitied, and ours always bestowed with a gloved hand, and at a safe distance. His a mercifulness so catholic and wide in its embrace, and ours so narrow and limited by national or religious, or, worse still, party prejudice. His a mercifulness that was provident and wise, and ours capricious and thoughtless, giving to the professional beggar because she importunes us at the very door of the church, or to the man who in veriest cruelty drags little children, often hired for the purpose, through the wet and muddy streets, in the cold and wet, for they are never to be seen on fine days; while to calls that come from those that can guarantee their worth, or to the really poor who will not beg, or to the appeals which are made in God’ s house for definite objects, our mercifulness turns a deaf ear. Believe me, it is time for us to learn that true mercifulness is discriminating, thoughtful, wise. His a mercifulness that is always the same, ours so fitful, uncertain, unreliable. His a mercifulness that cost Him self-sacrifice, ours a doing or giving what will not even cost us a thought. His a mercifulness that permeated the whole man in every thought, and word, and deed, ours so superficial, so unreal, our thoughts often breathing harsh judgment upon others, our actions marked by so little consideration of those about us or below us to whom we might be merciful. (C. J. Ridgeway, M. A.) Christian mercy I. THE NATURE OF MERCY. 1. It has its seat in the heart. 2. It is a supernatural quality. 3. It is an active principle. (1) It will be manifested toward the inferior animals. (2) To those of our fellow-creatures who are under bodily affliction and misery. (3) It will extend to the spiritual miseries of our fellow-min. Mercy to the soul, is the soul of mercy. (4) Towards our greatest enemies. II. THE GROUNDS OF MERCY. 1. Because it is strictly enjoined by God. 2. Because we stand in constant need of Divine mercy. Were it withdrawn, there would be nothing before us but a fearful looking for of judgment. 3. Because our profession binds us to imitate Christ, who is the perfect pattern of mercy. In Him mercy was embodied. If we are His disciples, we will walk even as He walked. 4. We should be merciful because of the true pleasure which is associated with acts of mercy. 5. Because it is an express condition of our obtaining mercy. III. THE REWARDS OF MERCY. 1. A good name. 2. A peculiar interest in the kind and merciful arrangements of Divine providence. 3. The merciful are blessed with the prayers and blessings of the miserable whom they have relieved. 4. They shall be blessed with the public approval of Christ at the last day. Application: 1. Let the exercise of mercy be pressed on all Christ’ s disciples. Cultivate it. Rejoice in all opportunities of doing good. 2. Let the mercy of God to us be highly valued. We need it daily. Only one channel for its communication--through Christ. Only one way to obtain it--through faith in His word. 3. The unmerciful shall have judgment without mercy. What a dreadful portion to the guilty sinner! (J. Burns, D. D.) Luke 6:37 Judge not, and ye shall not be judged Judge not No man, avers Sir Thomas Browne, can justly censure or condemn another, because, in fact, no man truly knows another. “ This I perceive in myself; for I am in the dark to all the world, and my nearest friends behold me but in a cloud.”… Further, no man can judge another, because no man knows himself. The Vicar of Gravenhurst, in his position of parish priest, owns himself compelled to confess that the best people are not the best in every relation of life, and the worst people not bad in every relation of life; so that with experience, he finds himself growing lenient in his blame, if also reticent in his praise. “ Again and again I say to myself that only the Omniscient can be the equitable judge of human beings, so complicated are our virtue with our failings, and so many are the hidden virtues, as well as hidden vices, of our fellow-men.” If judge at all we dare and do, be it in the spirit and to the latter of Wordsworth’ s counsel:-- “ From all rash censure be the mind kept free; He only judges right who weighs, compares, and, in the sternest sentence which his voice pronounces, “ ne’ er abandons charity.” Never let it be forgotten, insists a Quarterly Reviewer, that there is scarcely a single moral action of a single human being of which other men have such a knowledge--its ultimate grounds, its surrounding incidents, and the real determining causes of its merits--as to warrant their pronouncing a conclusive judgment. “ Who made the heart, ‘ tis He alone Decidedly can try us; He knows each chord--its various tone, Each spring its various bias; Then at the balance let’ s be mute, We never can adjust it.” (F. Jacox.) Falsely judged It is related of a broker in one of the Italian cities, that his strict economy brought on him the reputation of miserliness. He lived plainly and poorly, and at his death a hundred thousand men in the city were ready to curse him until his will was opened, in which he declared that early his heart was touched with the sufferings of the poor in the city for the lack of water. Springs there were none, and the public wells were bad; and he had spent his life in accumulating a fortune that should be devoted to bringing, by an aqueduct, from the neighbouring mountains, streams that should pour abundantly into the baths and dwellings of the poor of the city; and he not only denied himself many of the comforts of life, but toiled by day and by night, yea, and bore obloquy, that he might bless his fellow-citizens. He is dead; but those streams pour their health yet into that city. A self-denying brother misjudged The majority of people are ever ready to judge the conduct of their neighbours--in other words, to “ cast the first stone.” But we have no right to judge others until we know all the circumstances that influence their conduct. In many cases we might imitate those we condemn, under like circumstances. A young man employed in a printing office in one of our large towns, incurred the ridicule of the other compositors, on account of his poor clothes and unsocial behaviour. On several occasions subscription papers were presented to him for various objects, but he refused to give his money. One day a compositor asked him to contribute for a picnic party, but was politely refused. Thereupon, the other accused him of niggardliness--an accusation which he resented. “ You little know,” he said, “ how unjustly you have been treating me. For more than a year, I have been starving myself to save money enough to send my poor blind sister to Paris, to be treated by a physician who has treated many cases of blindness similar to hers. I have always done my duty here in this office, and have minded my own business. I am sacrificing everything in life for another. Would either of you do as much? Could any one do more?” He had been judged without a knowledge of circumstances. We cannot read the heart of others, and in many cases to know all is to judge all. “ Judge not, that ye be not judged.” (Dr. Guyler.) Difficulty of judging aright While we are coldly discussing a man’ s career, sneering at his mistakes, blaming his rashness, and labelling his opinions--“ Evangelical and narrow,” or “ Latitudinarian and Pantheistic,” or “ Anglican and supercilious” --that man in his solitude is, perhaps, shedding hot tears because his sacrifice is a hard one, because strength and patience are failing him to speak the difficult word, and do the difficult deed. (George Eliot.) The censorious spirit 1. Springs not from the Divine but from the malign elements of our nature. 2. Some men exercise it under the form of a blunt, plain-speaking honesty. There is nothing so blunt as a bull; but a bull is not usually considered to be a good thing to have in orphan asylums or in society. Men, however, who have come up along that line of development, go bellowing and horning their way through life, and justify their action because they are blunt, honest, plain-spoken men. 3. Then there are men who “ hate hypocrisy,” and who are always and everywhere looking around and suspecting people. 4. There is another form of uncharitableness which in some respects is harder to bear than any other. That is where criticism is put in the form of wit. Gold and silver are gold and silver, whether they be in the shape of coin or not; but when they are in the shape of coin and are in circulation, they have a power which otherwise they would not have. 5. The spirit of uncharitableness adds to the irritations, and quarrellings, and sufferings of life. 6. To form judgments of men, so far as their superficial qualities are concerned, requires but little; but to form judgments of their character and disposition is one of the most elaborate and difficult things possible. (H. W.Beecher.) Concerning fault-finders “ Judge not and ye shall not be judged” ; by whom? By your fellow-men? It is to be feared that whether a man judge them or not, they will judge him. The most uncensorious man in the world will not escape the censure of the uncharitable; they will censure even his uncensoriousness, and pronounce him hypocrite or fool, because he speaks well of all. When your uncharitably-disposed man cannot find a vice in his neighbour, he is so disappointed and out of temper, that he begins to pull his neighbour’ s virtues to pieces. No, this is a warning of Divine judgments; judge not your neighbour lest God judge you. God will bring us into judgment for all our unkind and unfair judgments of our fellow-men. (H. S. Brown.) The judging spirit I. We do not hesitate to judge those whom God has placed in a condition, the effects of which, in character and habit, we have no means of correctly estimating. II. And even supposing actual sin in the case of the exposed man, still judgment on its proceeding from us may be a condemnation of ourselves. What should we have been in his place? III. In our common life the judging spirit places us in a hard, unfriendly attitude towards both God and man. IV. The judging spirit, with the injustice it leads to, often displays a remarkable ignorance of human nature which would certainly be corrected by something more of self-inspection, and by that generosity towards others which a thorough knowledge of one’ s self always excites in a just mind. V. There is one large part of our subject which I can only name: the habit of judging of the whole spirit and inward life of a man from the religion he has embraced. Creeds separate, as if the souls of men were of different natures, and one God were not the Father of all. (J. H. Them.) Against censoriousness “ Judge not.” I. WE HAVE NOT DATA. We see a few of the actions which a man performs, we hear a few of the words he utters; and that is all we know of him. Yet some of us imagine that, on the strength of this knowledge, we can form a complete and infallible judgment in regard to his moral worth. We could not make a greater or more foolish mistake. In order to arrive at a correct decision, we must know the history of the man’ s ancestors for hundreds of years past, and the different tendencies towards right and towards wrong which they have transmitted to him. “ Many of us are born,” says the author of “ John Inglesant,” “ with seeds within us which make moral victory hopeless from the first.” II. WE CAN NEVER SEE WHAT GOES ON IN ANOTHER’ S HEART. III. EVEN IF WE WERE WITH THE FACTS, WE SHOULD BE OF THEIR MORAL . This is owing partly to the misleading influence of self-esteem. According to an old Indian legend, there once appeared among a nation of hunchbacks, a young and beautiful god. The people gathered round him; and when they saw that his back was destitute of a hump, they began to hoot and jeer and taunt him. One of them, however, more philosophical than the rest, said: “ My friends, what are we doing? let us not insult this miserable creature. If heaven has made us beautiful, if it has adorned our backs with a mount of flesh, let us with pious gratitude repair to the temple and render our acknowledgments to the immortal gods.” This quaint legend illustrates very forcibly some of the curious delusions resulting from self-esteem. We are apt to plume ourselves even on our defects, and condemn those who differ from us merely because they differ. (A. W. Mornerie, M.A., D.Sc.) On censoriousness Whatever censuring is contrary to truth and justice, humanity and charity, civility and good manners, is here expressly forbidden. I. THIS IS -- (1) to pride and vanity; (2) to ill-will and envy; (3) to indolence and idleness. II. THE GREAT EVIL AND OF IT CONSIST IN THE FACT THAT-- (1) it implies great presumption and impiety towards God, inasmuch as it is an invasion of His prerogative; (2) it implies great injustice towards men; (3) it is great folly in respect of ourselves--“ With what measure we mete,” &c. (J. Balguy, M. A.) Christ warns us against judging I. WHAT IS HERE . It is plain that the thing forbidden is not the office, or the upright discharge of the office, of a magistrate or a judge. When provision is made, in a Christian town or state, for the due punishment of offenders against the tranquility of our streets or the security of our homes, there is nothing in this contrary to the will or precept of Christ. He was Himself a respecter of civil order, and of the authority by which it is maintained. Only let the heart of the judge, in the exercise of his office, be full of humility and of compassion; only let him remember that common infirmity, that universal sinfulness, in which he himself is the fellow and the brother of him who stands at his bar for judgment; only let him acknowledge with becoming thankfulness that Divine goodness, of grace and of providence, which alone has made him to differ; and his administration of justice may be the offspring of a Christian devotion, the exercise of a calling in which he was called, of a ministry acceptable and well-pleasing to God. 2. Nor do we understand Him to blame the expression in common society of a righteous displeasure against deeds and against doers of iniquity. It is no charity to call evil good, or to refrain, out of a misplaced tenderness, from calling evil evil. Only let us remember what we ourselves are, and where--sinners living amid temptations; and let us, therefore, speak in humility, in sincerity, and in truth. 3. Yet the world is full of such judgments as are here forbidden. (1) How little of our conversation upon the faults of others is in any sense necessary l Our judgments are most often gratuitous, willing, wanton judgments; passed in idleness and unconcern; prompted by no feeling of duty; far, far worse, therefore, than any dulness, than any silence. (2) And, if needless, then uncharitable too. How full of suspicion I How unwilling to allow a merit not patent 1 How ready to imagine a bad motive, where, by the nature of the case (man being the judge), we cannot see nor know it! (3) And how many of them are false judgments I (4) Inconsistent and hypocritical. It is always the sinner who suspects sin. It is the practised deceiver who imagines and imputes deceit. There is no real abhorrence of evil where there is a readiness to declaim against it. II. WHY IT IS . 1. There is a retaliation in such things. A law of retribution. The censorious man will have his censor, whereas the merciful man will be mercifully judged--both here and hereafter. Not that a mere abstinence from censorious judgment will purchase for a sinner exemption from the sentence due to his own sins; but this we may say, that a merciful spirit in judging others will both be regarded as an indication of good in the man otherwise not blameless, and will save him from that aggravation of guilt which belongs to him who has both sinned and judged. 2. Such judgment as is here forbidden is an invasion of God’ s peculiar office (Romans 12:19). 3. To judge is to betray in ourselves a root of self-ignorance, self-complacency, and self-righteousness. No man could thus judge, who really felt himself to be a sinner. 4. As the root of this unchristian judgment is in self-ignorance, so the fruit of it is definite injury to the cause of the gospel, to the soul of our neighbour, and, most of all, to our own. Who can love so unlovely a Christianity? Who is not disgusted and alienated by that religion which clothes itself in a garb so odious. 5. The whole spirit of the self-constituted judge is, in reality, a spirit of hypocrisy. When he professes to be distressed by the fault of his brother, he has, in truth, within him a tenfold greater fault of his own. He knows not his own weakness; he offers a strength which he has not. He cares not for the cure; he cares only for the distinction, for the superiority, of the healer. Conclusion: No man is fit, in his own strength, to be the counsellor or the guide of man. Every man has his own faults and his own sins; and it is only self-ignorance which makes him overlook them. If any man undertakes to judge another, he thereby judges himself. Let a man first look into himself, try and examine himself as in the sight of God, drag his own transgressions to the light of God’ s judgment, and pass sentence with an unsparing strictness upon his own omissions of duty and commissions of sin. (Dean Vaughan.) The danger of usurping God’ s prerogatives God has reserved three prerogatives royal to Himself--vengeance, glory, and judgment. As it is not safe for us, then, to encroach upon God’ s royalties in either of the other two--glory or vengeance--so neither in this, of judgment. We have no right to judge; and so our judging is usurpation. We may err in out judgment; and so our judgment is rashness. We take things the worse way when we judge: and so our judging is uncharitable. We offer occasion of offence by our judging; and so our judging is scandalous (De Isaiah 41:8; Romans 12:10; Romans 14:4). (Bishop Sanderson.) Of judging charitably I never yet knew any man so bad, but some have thought him honest, and afforded him love; nor any one so good, but some have thought him vile, and hated him. Few are so thoroughly wicked as not to be estimable to some; and few are so just, as not to seem to some unequal: ignorance, envy, and partiality, enter much into the opinions that we form of others. Nor can a man in himself, always appear alike to all. In some, nature has made a disparity; in some, report has blinded judgment; and in others, accident is the cause of disposing us to love, or hate; or, if not these, the variation of the body’ s humours; or, perhaps, not any of these. The soul is often led by secret motions and attachments, she knows not why. There are impulsive instincts, which urge us to a liking; as if there were some hidden beauty of a more magnetic force than what the eye can see; and this, too, is more powerful at cue time than at another. The same man that has now welcomed me with a free expression of love and courtesy, at another time has left me unsaluted at all. Yet, knowing him well, I have been certain of his sound affection, and have found it to proceed not from an intended neglect, but from an indisposedness, or a mind seriously busied within. Occasion rules the motions of the stirring mind: like men who walk in their sleep, we are led about, we neither know whither nor how. I know there are some who vary their behaviour out of pride, and in strangers I confess I know not how to distinguish; for there is no disposition but has a varnished visor, as well as an unpencilled face. Some people deceive the world; are bad, but are not thought so; in some, the world is deceived, believing them ill, when they are not. I have known the world at large to fall into an error. Though report once vented, like a stone cast into a pond, begets circle upon circle, till it meets with the bank that bounds it: yet fame often plays the cur, and opens when she springs no game. Why should I positively condemn any man, whom I know but superficially? as if I were a God, to see the inward soul. (Owen Felltham.) The absurdity of judging others One would have thought that experience must have convinced us, if not of the sin, yet of the absurdity of judging others. The ignorance, the blunders, of other people with regard to ourselves, strike home with startling force to our minds. We know the shame which we have felt, when they have praised us for actions whose motives deserved blame; we know how their disapproval has disheartened us, when we were making the bravest struggle to do right. We feel how little they can know of our deepest feelings--of our moments of fierce conflict, of passionate affection, of sharpest Suffering. There is nothing strange in this ignorance. But what is strange, is, that in the very teeth of this experience, we should calmly sit in judgment on others, and self-complacently try to determine the degree of their feelings, the depth or shallowness of their characters, the quality of their motives, and the precise measure of praise or blame which they deserve. (E. C. R.) The way to righteousness The way to righteousness lies in finding not other people’ s sins, but our own. (Olshausen.) The danger of judging others Of all the faults into which people are liable to fall, that of judging others is one of the most common. Pride, or envy, or a tinge of ill-nature, or an amalgamation of all three, causes them to arraign before the bar of their private judgment the actions, even the motives and thoughts of others. Many evils result from this. Even if we do not consider the habit as rather an ugly deformation of an otherwise lovable disposition, we may still see that it heralds into the soul some undesirable companions. 1. It engenders self-esteem and self-satisfaction in some. If a man always looks outside of himself, at the blots which mar the characters which he contemplates, he will forget what virtues he lacks himself. He will not be conscious of the beam that is in his own eye, yet he will imagine that he is quite capable of pulling out the mote in his brother’ s eye. He will, so to speak, put the large end of the contemplative telescope to his mental eye when he looks at his own heart; the small end when investigating his neighbour’ s. Consequently, there will be an inverse ratio in the investigation. His neighbour’ s motes will appear standing out in unjust relief; his own beams--the withered, shrivelled, sapless stanchion of self-love--the yawning chasm of avarice--the covert jungle of hypocrisy--the ungenial rock of pride--will become apparently very small, and in the distant prospect will have almost a charm about them. 2. Further, this spirit of judging others has the evil effect of providing untenable excuses for faults committed. People who are guilty of little sins, little failings, little excesses, are in danger of falling into this kind of error. They are, perhaps, aware of their shortcomings. They may even go so far as to acknowledge that they have them. But, in place of grappling with them and seeking to subdue them, they make excuses for them. And this is because they judge others. They compare themselves with others, and the comparison is prejudicial in their own favour. 3. And this judging of others prevents s healthy spirit of self-examination, and consequently of self-improvement. The man who continually pries into other people’ s affairs must neglect his own. So the man who looks out constantly with a critical eye on the motives of others, must be unaware of those which actuate himself. There is a means, indeed, by which we may benefit ourselves by a contemplation of others. We have it summed up in the saying of an old Roman writer--“ Look into men’ s lives, as into looking-glasses.” That is, judge them not, but seek to see yourself reflected in them. See them in their trials and temptations, see them in crises of thought and action, and consider how you would have fared in similar circumstances. This will help you to solve the problem of life, “ Know thyself.” It will also teach you to appreciate the Christian attributes of charity and forbearance. Conclusion: Man’ s heart, as it weighs and measures its judgment, is sometimes harsh and hard, and the picture of others which it conjures up is often a dark one. But behold arising in the soul the dayspring of the knowledge of the Most High; behold, awakening to a knowledge of self, the soul to which Christ shall give His light, and you will see that light reflected on to the contemplated scene. There may be shades, but there are bright, sunny spots, too, and even the shades take a fairer colour from their proximity. Seen with the eye, which faith, and hope, and love in Christ inspire, all hardness and harshness, all unkindly cynicism, all uncongenial sneers, all puerile ill-nature, all sordid envy, will gradually disappear. And as the beams in the one eye are thus plucked out, the motes in the other eye will be plucked out too. The one character will have its effect on the other. Christ’ s love is too great, too powerful, too immense, too vigorous, to loiter. It will push all before it. It will reflect itself on and on, like the dancing of sunbeams from wave to wave; and the motes and the mists and the fogs and the clouds--whatever they be--will disperse, even at His reflected light, making an entrance to prepare the soul for the full glory of His own presence. So may man’ s soul be a meet temple for the mighty Spirit. So may something of heaven’ s warmth be felt on earth. (C. E. Drought, M. A.) On rash and censorious judgment There is nothing more difficult in itself than to judge justly of the dispositions and conduct of other men; nothing more dangerous, or generally more hurtful, to the person who undertakes it; hardly anything more destructive of the peace and happiness of society; and but very few sins to which we have fewer temptations, and from which we can reap less pleasure or profit. And yet there is hardly anything that all of us undertake, with less diffidence of our abilities for the work--with less sense of our danger, or apprehension of the consequences; hardly any sin more universal, or in which inhumane and unthinking persons more persevere to the end of their lives. How few can lay their hands to their hearts, and say, “ I am entirely free from this guilt!” 1. Rash censorious judgment of the dispositions or conduct of others, must always arise from great disorder in the heart, and proves that it is powerfully influenced, either by pride, or envy, or malice; and therefore must be very hateful to Him who knows all the secret and original springs of every part of our conduct. 2. It is a very presumptuous disobedience of the will and laws of God. 3. It is an arrogant usurpation of the great prerogative of the Almighty Creator, and of the office of our Blessed Saviour; and an uncharitable invasion of the rights and privileges of our fellowmen. (James Riddoch, M. A.) The folly of judging others 1. We have no capacity to do so with truth and justice. To know, without judging, might be modesty and charity; but to judge without knowing, must be always indiscretion and cruelty; and we must always be without proper knowledge, when we presume censoriously and rashly to judge our neighbour’ s conduct. Upon what insufficient evidence do men venture to censure and slander others. (1) They judge by appearances. How often has an open and unsuspecting temper, and a consciousness of innocence and right intentions betrayed men into the appearance of faults which their hearts detested, and exposed them to the censure and condemnation of the world; while, on the other hand, a grave, cautious, and designing conduct has covered a multitude of sins, and procured esteem and applause to men who needed only to be known to be despised and detested. (2) They condemn upon hearsay. That coming fame is frequently a liar, we admit as a maxim established by long experience, and yet we make it the foundation of our rash and censorious judgments, and seem to think that it gives us a right to condemn others with the greatest freedom, vainly perhaps imagining that the guilt remains with him from whom we received the report, while at the same time we are repeating the crime, Rumour, however ill-founded, is favourably received; an unhappy curiosity makes us hearken with attention; a pernicious credulity makes us find it probable; and a desire of telling something new makes us propagate it. Thus, what at first was only the conjecture, suspicion, or invention of one person, grows up to be the belief of the multitude, and is raised, in their opinion, into certainty and fact. (3) There is a too common disposition to judge of the intention, by the event, and to estimate the general character by some particular errors. Nothing can be more unjust or uncharitable than this. Moses once “ spake unadvisedly with his lips,” though meekness and patience were the prevailing features of his character. St. Peter once denied his Master, though he sincerely loved Him. 2. By judging others we expose ourselves to very great danger. It is impossible for any one habitually to censure others, and to judge of their conduct with severity, without passing sentence against some of his own sins; and nothing can be more just, than that our Judge should ratify these judgments as far as they respect ourselves, and condemn us out of our own mouths. 3. We are rarely so much divested of passions and prejudices, as to be in a capacity to judge righteous judgment. Dislike, affection, interest, envy, connection, and a thousand other things to which we do not even ourselves advert, insensibly mislead the understanding, and bias the judgment. Men judge according to the passions and prejudices that prevail in themselves, rather than according to the virtues or vices that appears in their neighbour’ s conduct. Judging others forbidden I. THE FACULTY OF MAY BE TO . This happens when it is applied to the character of our neigh-bouts for the mere purpose of detecting faults. Now, the province assigned to us is the detection and correction of our own faults, which is a prior and more important duty; and which we have it in our power to perform more correctly and more usefully than we can do respecting the faults of others. Besides, till we discover and amend our own faults, we shall be very ill-qualified to reform the faults of our neighbour. II. THIS FACULTY MAY BE IN A AND MANNER. In forming our opinions respecting our neighbours, we are apt to judge without evidence, or from evidence very defective. Our knowledge of our neighbour’ s faults is obtained either by our own observation, or from the testimony of others. Our own observation is often partial and defective; and from ambiguous appearances we often draw hasty and harsh conclusions. In admitting the testimony of others we are often incautious. For we are apt to forget that many judge from their passions; that some who see only a part, fill up what is wanting by the exercise of imagination; that some, anxious only to amuse or surprise, delight in telling wonderful stories of their own creation; that many cannot see things as they are; and that others can repeat nothing correctly. It is a matter, then, of great importance to the justness of our opinions concerning our neighbour, as well as to our own respectability, to be able to distinguish among our acquaintances the persons in whose testimony we can confide. Now, we shall easily discover that the man on whose accuracy we can rely is not the man who employs himself in retailing the faults of his neighbours. (J. Thomson, D. D.) Judging others I. Consider ONE OR TWO THINGS WHICH OUGHT TO CHECK AND US IN OUR AND UPON OTHERS. 1. Let us think how little we really know. What we see is but a small part of what is unseen and what can never be seen. 2. Again, in judging of others, we are apt to overlook their difficulties and temptations. II. Consider THAT YOUR OF OTHERS IS THE MEASURE OF THAT WHICH MUST . If a man, then, is rigorous and severe--if he applies to the conduct of others a high standard, and if he expects that standard to be reached--finding fault and passing condemnation where it is not reached--he is virtually laying claim to a high knowledge of what right and wrong really are; and it is only just and reasonable that this knowledge should be the criterion to which his own conduct and life should be brought: he cannot complain if he is judged by what he actually knows. So far, we see how there is no vindictiveness in judging men as they have judged others. We cannot say that this result is attained all at once. Our Lord Himself was an instance to the contrary: He did not receive into His bosom what He had given out; He did great good, and sought the good of others, but He was requited with evil and with ingratitude. III. IT IS OUT THE SAME TRUTH IN WHEN CHRIST says, “ Why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’ s eye, but perceivest not the beam that is in thine own eye?” To a man with the spirit of penitence in him, his own faults are never made less than they are; and indeed the more he condemns himself, the more will he be ready to justify others. He feels the mote in his own eye to be as a beam, and he reserves his highest condemnation for his own faults and sins. IV. ARE WE, THEN, TO BE BLIND TO THE SINS OF THE WORLD AROUND US? Our Lord’ s teaching is calculated to enforce righteous judgment, not partial or false judgment. There is nothing in Christian teaching to sanction tolerance towards sin. It is not every kind of judgment which Christ condemns. Let the spirit of love be in the heart, and the spirit of true judgment will follow. 1. Before judging of the individual, then, in any ease, pause to think how much you really know, and let not your judgment of a man be formed on hearsay and imagination. 2. Remember that your judgment of others is the measure of that judgment which must overtake you. 3. Let your judgment of others take the tone of your judgment passed first on yourself. 4. Let all things be done tinder the remembrance of how much we ourselves owe to a love which is boundless, a forgiveness which has raised us from doubt and fear. (A. Watson, D. D.) Forgive, and ye shall be forgiven Forgiveness, human and Divine There is no point on which Christianity is more vital, searching, and severe than on this--the requisition of a forgiving spirit, as the highest form of benevolence or well-wishing towards our fellow-men. That we have an average good-nature towards good folks is all very well; that we forgive things done against us which we do not feel is all very well; but when an assault of any kind has been made in some tender and sensitive point, and we feel ourselves to be greatly wronged, then to have such a Divine sense of the great law of benevolence as that, under the stinging sensibility of the wrong, we can rise out of the selfness and think well of the offender--that is an example of Godlike love which evidences the Divine presence in the soul. A Christian man who hates, and will not forgive, is as much worse than an ordinary man, as salt that has lost all saltness is worse than common dirt; it is not good for manure; it is only good to make paths with. The only thing that it will not hurt is the bottom of one’ s foot. (H. W. Beecher.) Forgiving others In the Middle Ages, when the lords and knights were always at war with each other, one of them resolved to revenge himself on a neighbour who had offended him. It chanced that on the very evening when he had made this resolution, he heard that his enemy was to pass near his castle with only a few men with him. He determined not to let the opportunity pass. He spoke of his plan in the presence of his chaplain, who tried in vain to persuade him to give it up. The good man said a great deal to the duke about the sin of what he was going to do, but in vain. At length, seeing that all his words had no effect, he said, “ My lord, since I cannot persuade you to give up this plan of yours, will you at least come with me to the chapel, that we may pray together before you go?” The duke consented, and the chaplain and he kneeled together in prayer. Then the mercy-loving Christian said to the revengeful warrior, “ Will you repeat after me, sentence by sentence, the prayer which our Lord taught to His disciples?” “ I will do it,” replied the duke. He did it accordingly. The chaplain said a sentence, and the duke repeated it, till he came to the petition, “ Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive.” There the duke was silent. “ My lord duke, you are silent,” said the chaplain. “ Will you be so good as to continue to repeat the words after me, if you dare to do so?” “ I cannot,” replied the duke. “ Well, God cannot forgive you, for He has said so. He Himself has given us this prayer. Therefore you must either give up your revenge, or give up saying this prayer; for to ask God to pardon you, as you pardon others, is to ask Him to take vengeance on you for all your sins. Go now, my lord, and meet your victim. God will meet you at the great day of judgment.” The iron will of the duke was broken. “ No,” said he, “ I will finish my prayer. My God, my Father, pardon me; forgive me, as I desire to forgive him who has offended me; lead me not into temptation, but deliver me from evil.” “ Amen,” said the chaplain. “ Amen,” repeated the duke, who now understood the Lord’ s Prayer better than he had ever done before, since he had learned to apply it to himself. (Preacher’ s Lantern.) Christian forgiveness I. THE OF GOOD-WILL TOWARDS OUR ENEMIES. “ I wish nothing so much,” a man will say, “ as to be reconciled; I am perfectly disposed to it; and, whenever my adversary pleases, I will receive him in such a manner, as to show that no resentment remains with me.” Now, this is plausible language; it seems to show generosity, and greatness of mind. But, would you know whence these fine words proceed? From great self-love and little Christianity. You wish to have the credit of a reconciliation without the fancied mortification of it. II. THE OF . “ If the affront were not so very galling,” you may say, “ if the injury were not so personal, I could make this sacrifice to God and religion; but I cannot forget what is due to myself, and be void of all feeling.” I understand you well; this is the language commonly spoken in the world. And I reply, If you were insensible, or if the injury done to you were not deeply felt, I should mot labour to persuade you to forgive; I should consider this precept of the gospel as scarcely directed to you. You renounce both the spirit and the example of the cross. III. THE OF IS URGED for omitting this great Christian duty of forgiveness. “ I cannot be heartily reconciled to my adversary; he is a bad man, and has been treacherous and base to me; prudence requires me to avoid such a one; and, as to religion, it cannot enjoin dissimulation, nor oblige me to do anything imprudent and dangerous!” IV. LET ME CARRY FORWARD YOUR BEYOND DEATH AND THE GRAVE. (S. Partridge, M. A.) Forgiveness I. IS . TO deem it impossible to forgive your offender is-- 1. A fatal self-delusion. There have always been men who considered revenge a base passion, and have readily forgiven the greatest offences. Such men have been (1) amongst the Gentiles. Phocion, a prominent citizen in Greece, had been sentenced by his fellow-citizens to drink the cup of poison. Before tasting it, he said to his son, “ This is my last will, O son, that thou mayest soon forget this cup of poison, and never take revenge for it.” (2) Amongst the Jews: Joseph, David. (3) Amongst the Christians: Stephen. “ Verily, I forgive thee, and thou shalt be my brother in place of him whom thou hast killed,” said the Christian knight, John Gualbert, to the murderer of his brother, who, unarmed as he was, begged for his life in the name of the Crucified. If to them it was possible to forgive, why should it not be possible to you? 2. A blasphemy. God requires you to forgive your offender, and has a right to do so. (1) As our Lord. (2) As our Father and Benefactor. The best proof of our gratitude. (3) As our Model. (4) As our Judge. II. IS . 1. Reason teaches it. (1) Noble and generous is the conduct of him who is ready for reconciliation. He manifests strength of mind and magnanimity of soul by forgiving the offence inflicted. He overcomes evil by good. (2) Dreadful are the consequences of implacability. Man is easily offended. If men were not ready to forgive, where would you find peace and happiness? Would not our life upon earth and the society of our fellowmen be a continual source of unhappiness and misery? 2. Revelation requires it (Leviticus 19:18; Matthew 5:38-48; Matthew 6:12; Romans 12:19-21; Ephesians 4:26; Colossians 3:13). III. IS AND . 1. By forgiving the offences committed against you, you gain (1) the favour of men (Romans 12:20). (2) The complacency of God (Matthew 6:14). 2. He who is not willing to forgive those who have offended him, sins (1) against God the Father by trespassing one of His commandments James 2:13). (2) Against God the Son. He denies Him because he denies the characteristic feature and virtue of Christianity (John 13:35). (3) Against God the Holy Ghost, who is the Spirit of love. (4) Against his fellow-man. (5) Against himself. He pronounces the sentence of condemnation upon his own head whenever he uses the Lord’ s Prayer (Luke 19:22). Grant us then, O Lord, a heart always ready for reconciliation, that in us Thy Word may be fulfilled (Matthew 5:9). (Bourduloue.) The evil of an unforgiving spirit Go home to your own breast, and ask your heart these questions: “ Hast thou, my heart, no other passions but pride and anger? What is become of the humanity and benevolence whereof, on some occasions, thou hast given such pleasing proofs? Wilt thou suffer thy pride to tyrannise over thy love? What an heart art thou, if rage, revenge, and mischief, can afford thee more pleasure than forgiveness and acts of kindness and generosity!” If an enemy is thus able to transform and degrade a man to the most odious class of beings, that man not only is now, but was before the injury done him, a very despicable being, and liable, it seems, to an infinitely worse sort of injury, than can possibly be done in regard to fortune, liberty, character, or even life itself; an injury, I mean, in regard to virtue. The enemy who can turn a good man into a bad one is the worst of all enemies. No man, however, can do this to us without our own concurrence. (Philip Skelton, M. A.) God will measure to you in your own bushel Forgive, saith a master to one of his servants, in your hearing, forgive your fellow-servant the guinea he owes you, and you shall be forgiven the hundred you owe me. Forgive that other fellow-servant the reproaches he hath flung at you, and you shall be forgiven the theft you lately committed, when you were discovered stealing my goods. Forgive that third fellow-servant the blow you just now received from him, and you shall be forgiven the assault you committed on me, your master, for which you are now under prosecution. If you do not comply with me in this, you shall be paid your guinea; but then I will exact my hundred guineas of you to the very last farthing. You shall have satisfaction, too, for the affront offered you; but shall be publicly exposed to the infamy your theft has deserved. I will punish the man who struck you, as justice requires; but will also execute on you the rigour of that justice for your act of rebellion and violence against myself. As you measure from you, I will measure to you; mercy for mercy, justice for justice, vengeance for vengeance. You demand an exact account, and shall have it; but you shall also give it. You think this servant a perfect madman when you hear him crying out, “ I insist on an account; I will be paid; I will have satisfaction.” Do you indeed? Well, then, Christ is the Master, and thou art the man. What! will you not forgive a trifle, to be forgiven that which is infinite? Will you plunge to the bottom of the lake for the pleasure of seeing your enemy swim on the surface? How is it that you judge so clearly in things of little moment, which relate to others, while in a case of the same nature, but of the last consequence to yourself, you are wholly stupid? Is it self that shuts your eyes? Self! which of all things ought to open them, when your salvation is brought in question? Amazing! Whom will you see for, if you cannot see for yourself? Whom will be wise for, if you will not be wise for yourself? Luke 6:38 Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down On Christian giving I. GET, GATHER. Are there not many persona of a very careless and prodigal disposition? II. GIVE. Begin to give as soon as you begin to get. That will prevent the danger of a growing covetousness. III. THE GIVING SHOULD BE IN SOME TO THE INCOME. I do not presume to fix the proportion. But I the more insist on the principle of a fair and just proportion, and on the duty o! the individual to turn the principle into practice. This proportion, however, will never be reached, or at any rate, will hardly for any long time be continued, except in connection with another principle of far deeper hold and wider sway, the principle that-- IV. WHAT IS LEFT IS GIVEN TOO. It is also true that we shall never understand really what Christian giving is until-- V. WE GET BEYOND WHAT IS CALLED THE DUTY OF IT TO THE HIGHER GROUND OF THE OF IT. “ It is more blessed to give than to receive,” is a universal truth applicable not to money alone, but to the whole of life’ s experiences. 1. Thought. 2. Sympathy. 3. Life itself. The possibility of giving life, self, to God for ever. The certainty of having at length to yield the gift of life into the hand of God. (A. Raleigh, D. D.) The duty of giving I. WHY SHOULD WE GIVE? It is our duty. It is for God’ s glory. It is more blessed to give than to receive. II. WHAT SHOULD WE GIVE? 1. Ourselves. St. Paul says of the Macedonians that they “ first gave their own selves unto the Lord.” This will make all else well-pleasing unto the Lord. 2. Our time. 3. Our influence. 4. Our money. We are but stewards of all that we possess. III. HOW ARE WE TO GIVE? 1. Willingly. 2. Unostentatiously. “ Let not thy right hand,” &c. 3. Lovingly--from a principle of love to God and man in the heart. IV. HOW MUCH ARE WE TO GIVE? The Bible does not give us exact and particular rules, but lays down general principles by which we are to govern our conduct. We must not offer to the Lord that which doth cost us nothing. V. WHEN ARE WE TO GIVE? When cases of need, objects of compassion, or means of advancing the honour of God or the good of our fellow-men come before us. The injunction of the apostle was, “ On the first day of the week,” &c. (1 Corinthians 16:2). VI. WHERE ARE WE TO GIVE? That question may be best answered by asking another, Where are we not to give? VII. WHO IS TO GIVE? The answer is “ every man” --the rich of their abundance, the poor something even of their poverty. Widow and two mites. “ Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven.” (H. Whitehead, M.A.) The reward of the giver There are, doubtless, those who think that this statement is not borne out by the facts of their own experience. Too often they have obtained not even gratitude. And others there are who listen doubtfully to such words, not on account of any personal disappointments of their own, for they have not put themselves in the way of suffering such disappointments, but rather from observation of other people’ s experience, as well as from their own theory of life. What, then, are we to make of our Lord’ s statement that men shall give this good measure? 1. Our Lord did not say that men would do anything of the kind. We are to hope for nothing again (Luke 6:35). 2. Yet our Lord proposes a reward. Yes. “ Ye shall be the children of the Highest.” The reward, then, consists in being like God. Whatever else is mentioned in the nature of reward is not an object to be sought after, but a consequence which must needs ensue. 3. Among these consequences will be found a measure even of human gratitude. For if our Lord did not say that men shall give the good measure, it may also be observed that He did not say they will not. The good measure will be given, and even men will have their share in giving it. (H. Whitehead, M. A.) Penalty of not giving to God There are hundreds of business men, Christian men, in New York city, who have gone down, for the simple reason, as I believe, that they did not give to God that which belonged to Him. They did not give Him any percentage at all, or such a very small percentage that the Lord God collected His own bills, by fire, by storm, or by death. Two men I knew very well, some years ago, on the streets of New York. They were talking about the matter of benevolence. One said to the other, “ You give too much. I will wait until I get a large pile of money, and then I will give.” “ No,” said the other, “ I will give as God prospers me.” Hear the sequel. The former lives in New York city to-day, dollarless. The latter gathered two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. I believe that the reason why many people are kept poor is because they do not give enough. If a man gives in the right spirit to the Lord Jesus Christ and to the Church, he is insured for time and for eternity. The Bank of England is a weak institution compared with the bank that any Christian man can draw upon. (Dr. Talmage.) Righteous retribution One remembers, of course, the Regent Morton hugged to death by the “ maiden” he had been the means of introducing into Scotland. The French doctor, Guillotin, is even now not uncommonly believed to have perished in the Reign of Terror by the instrument invented by and named after him; whereas he quietly died in his bed, many many years later than that. But the Revolution history is well stored with instances like that of Chalier, condemned to death by the criminal tribunal at Lyons--the guillotine which he had sent for from Paris to destroy his enemies being first destined to sever his own head from his body. A bungling executioner prolonged the last agonies of this man, who, in fact, was hacked to death, not decapitated. He tasted slowly, as Lamartine says, of the death, a thirst for which he had so often sought to excite in the people; “ he was glutted with blood, but it was his own.” Alison recognizes in the death of Murat a memorable instance of the moral retribution which often attends on “ great deeds of iniquity, and by the instrumentality of the very acts which appeared to place them beyond its reach,” He underwent in 1815 the very fate to which, seven years before, he had consigned a hundred Spaniards at Madrid, guilty of no other crime than that of defending their country; and this, as Sir Archibald adds, “ by the application of a law to his own case which he himself had introduced to check the attempt of the Bourbons to regain a throne which he had usurped.” (Francis Jacox.) God a good paymaster A boy, hearing the Rev. J. Wesley preach, cheerfully put a shilling on the plate. Twenty years afterwards the boy told Mr. Wesley that God was a good paymaster; for he was then worth £20,000, and had the grace of God in his heart. (Sunday School Treasury.) Happiness in doing good Alexander, the Emperor, was one day out hunting; and hating gone ahead of his suite, he fancied he heard a groan; the groan pierced his heart; he alighted on the spot, looked around him, and found a poor man at the point of death. He bent over him, chafed his temples; excited the poor man, or tried to do so; he went by a public road, and called the attention of a surgeon to the case of the poor man. “ Oh!” said the surgeon, “ he is dead; he is dead.” “ Try what you can do,” said Alexander. The surgeon adopted a set of experimental processes at the command of the emperor; and at last a drop of blood appeared. At the mouth of the opened vein there was suction; respiration was forming in the chest of the man. Alexander’ s eyes flashed fire, and he said” Oh! this is the happiest day of my life; I have saved another man’ s life!” What said another great man among ourselves--Lord Eldon? In a letter to his sister, which he wrote in his old age, he says--“ It was my duty, as Lord Chancellor, to listen to the record of the sentences passed by the Recorder of the City of London. It used to be a formal thing, when the sentences of death were read over, that the chancellor should give his assent; but I determined after the first time that I would go into each case, and have each case clearly and distinctly stated. It used to give me a great deal of trouble in addition to all my other duties; but the consequence of this was, that I saved the lives of several persons.” I say, do good in the cause of truth and righteousness, and you will promote your own honour and happiness; and when the eye sees you it will bless you, and when the ear hears you it will bear witness to you. (J. Beaumont.) The naturalness of giving If we view this microcosm, the human body, we shall find that the heart does not receive the blood to store it up, but while it pumps it in at one valve, it sends it forth at another. The blood is always circulating everywhere, and is stagnant nowhere; the same is true of all the fluids in a healthy body; they are in a constant state of expenditure. If one cell stores up for a few moments its peculiar secretion, it only retains it till it is perfectly fitted for its appointed use in the body; for if any cell in the body should begin to store up its secretion, its store would soon become the cause of inveterate disease; nay, the organ would soon lose the power to secrete at all, if it did not give forth its products. The whole of the human system lives by giving. The eye cannot say to the foot, I have no need of thee, and will not guide thee; for if it does not perform its watchful office, the whole man will be in the ditch, and the eye will be covered with mire. If the members refuse to contribute to the general stock, the whole body will become poverty-stricken, and be given up to the bankruptcy of death. Let us learn, then, from the analogy of nature, the great lesson, that to get, we must give; that to accumulate, we must scatter; that to make ourselves happy, we must make others happy; and that to get good and become spiritually vigorous, we must do good, and seek the spiritual good of others. (C. H. Spurgeon.) Reward of effort for others A traveller, ready to perish amid the snows of the Alps, meets a fellow-traveller in worse condition than himself. He puts forth every effort to save him, and is rewarded by the life of his fellow, and by new warmth and life in his own freezing limbs. Benefits of liberality I never prospered more in my small estate than when I gave most and needed least. My own rule hath been, first, to contrive to need myself as little as may be, and lay out none on need-nots, but to bye frugally on a little; second, to serve God in my place, upon that competency which He allowed me to myself, that what I had myself might be as good a work for common good as that which I gave to others; and, third, to do all the good I could with the rest, preferring the most public and the most durable object, and the nearest. And the more I have practised this, the more I have had to do it with; and, when I gave almost all, more came in (without any’ s gift), I scarce knew how, at least unexpected: but when by improvidence I have cast myself into necessities of using more upon myself, or upon things in themselves of less importance, I have prospered much less than when I did otherwise. And when I had contented myself to devote that stock which I had gotten to charitable uses after my death, instead of laying out at present, that so I might secure somewhat for myself while I lived, in probability all that is like to be lost; whereas, when I took that present opportunity, and trusted God for the time to come, I wanted nothing, and lost nothing. (Richard Baxter.) The liberal man is always rich In defiance of all the torture, of all the might, of all the malice of the world, the liberal man will ever be rich; for God’ s providence is his estate, God’ s wisdom and power are his defence, God’ s love and favour are his reward, and God’ s Word is his security. (Isaac Barrow, D. D.) The reward of giving I. AS TO THINGS. 1. A good conscience. Sometimes the requital of a man’ s openheartedness, and the readiness with which he has bestowed of what he has upon others, is furnished to him in the feelings of his own heart; and he herein gains a rich, abundant, and blessed recompense. Labour may have been sweet to him; he may have been willing to toil on, as he was gradually making progress to his object; success has been full of delight, as he gradually mastered difficulties, and looking back upon the way which he had passed, found how he had climbed to heights, to which his youthful ambition hardly dared to aspire. But neither is labour so sweet, nor its most successful results so delightful, as when a man whom God has prospered in his getting, has the heart readily and liberally to bestow. When he has gone to the habitations of the poor, when he has stood by the bedside of the sick, when he has ministered to those human necessities which fell within the compass of his ability to remove, then there has been in his own soul a far better requital for his expenditure, than if he had bestowed his money in any other possible way, 2. Gratitude of those benefited. The most prosperous man, the man to whom in God’ s providence there seems to be a larger than usual amount of success appointed, has no security; he cannot tell what a year, or even a day, may bring forth. His fortune may be laid in the dust; his riches may make themselves wings; he may be reduced lower even than he was at his starting-place. Be it so; God has not forgotten him. Then will come the very especial occasion on which he will prove, by his own individual instance, that the promise of the text is true. When he possessed much, he gave liberally; he was the friend of all who were in necessity; he turned no deaf ear to the supplications of the desolate; he was not inaccessible to the sons and daughters of sorrow; and in his own day of disaster, many a heart and many a hand are open to him. For whom is it, that a whole neighbourhood are anxious? For whose affliction is it that all are concerned? For whose renovated fortunes are all deeply anxious? Is it not the man who, when he was in other circumstances, held himself the steward of God, and because he possessed all things in charge, used them as one who had to give account. Perhaps it may be that even his temporal condition is restored; but, whether that be so or not, does he not gain a most blessed return for all his charges and all his labour, in that there are hearts which feel for him, and friends who sympathise deeply with him, and those in whose prayers he knows that he has a place? II. IN THINGS. Application to devoted preachers of the gospel, missionaries, &c. Also to parents who have brought up their children conscientiously. Our own portion in heaven will be all the more blessed, because of its being shared with those to whom on earth we were helpers. (S. Robins, M. A.) The gift and its return The New Testament is full of the idea of a natural and necessary reciprocity between man and the things by which he is surrounded (Galatians 6:7; 2 Corinthians 9:6). The world seems to be a great field in which every man drops his seed, and which gives back to every man, not just the same thing which he dropped there, any more than the brown earth holds up to you in the autumn the same black berry which you hid under its bosom in the spring, but something which has its true correspondence and proportion to the seed to which it is the legitimate and natural reply. Every gift has its return, every act has its consequence, every call has its answer in this great live, alert world, where man stands central, and all things have their eyes on him and their ears open to his voice. (Phillips Brooks, D. D.) The law of reciprocity It is a law of vast extent and wonderful exactness. The world is far more orderly than we believe; a deeper and a truer justice runs through it than we imagine. We all go about calling ourselves victims, discoursing on the cruel world, and wondering that it should treat us so, when really we are only meeting the rebound of our own lives. What we have been to things about us has made it necessary that they should be this to us. As we have given ourselves to them, so they have given themselves to us. 1. Even with man’ s relations to the material earth the law is true. What different things she is to all of us, this earth we live in I Why is it that one man laughs at another’ s view about the earth, and thinks him mad because of some strange value that he places on it? Three men stand in the same field and look around them: and then they all cry out together. One of them exclaims, How rich! another cries, How strange! another cries, How beautiful! and then the three divide the field between them, and they build their houses there; and in a year you come back and see what answer the same earth has made to each of her three questioners. They have all talked with the ground on which they lived, and heard its answers. They have all held out their several hands, and the same ground has put its own gift into each of them. What have they got to show you? One cries, “ Come here and see my barn” ; another cries, “ Come here and see my museum” ; the other says, “ Let me read you my poem.” That is a picture of the way in which a generation or the race takes the great earth and makes it different things to all its children. With what measure we mete to it, it measures to us again. 2. The same law holds good with regard to our relations to the world of men. What does it mean, that one man cannot go among any kind of men, however base and low, without getting happiness and good; while another man cannot go into the midst of the noblest and sweetest company without bringing out misery and despair and sin? Here are Jesus and Judas: both go and give themselves to the Pharisees; both stand in the Pharisees’ presence and hear what they have to say. To Jesus these Pharisees give back in return every day a deeper consciousness of His own wondrous nature, a devouter consecration to His Father, and a more earnest pity for them. To Judas they give only blacker dreams of treason, a falser disregard of friendship and loyalty and honour. Take two boys in a class at college; two clerks in a shop in town. It is not good when either of them is made cynical, and sneers at the possibility of virtue because of the vice which he has felt in its contamination at his side. The true soul, with a character of its own, will learn the possibility of being good from his own consciousness, all the more strongly because of the vice that touches him. No soul, bad in itself, can really learn the possibility of goodness by mere sight and touch even of a world of saints, and no soul really good can lose the noble consciousness that man was made for goodness, even though all the world but him is steeped in wickedness, nay, in subtle ways he will feed that consciousness there. 3. The same law applies to the truths which men believe, or the causes for which they labour. Generous or stingy, large-idead or small-idead, appreciative or unappreciative of other occupations than your own; these things you will be, not invariably according to the kind of trade you are engaged in, but distinctively according to the kind of manhood which you put into your trade. And so with creeds. A creed must fill a man’ s character before it really takes possession of his mind, as the ocean has to fill a vessel with its water before it can swallow it up into its depth. You cannot finally judge men by their creeds. A man may hold the most spiritual doctrine, and be carnal and mercenary; a man may hold the broadest truth, and be a bigot; and, on the other hand, all our religious history bears witness that a man may hold hard crude, narrow doctrine, and yet gather out of his belief in it rich, warm, sweet holiness which men and God must love. 4. I turn to one more illustration of the working of our law--the highest, the completest of them all. It is the gift of oneself to Jesus. There are different measures in which men give themselves to Christ, and Christ despises none of them; but in different measures He again is compelled to give Himself back to them. See how they come! One man approaches the Divine Redeemer asking no Divine redemption, but touched and fascinated by the beauty of that perfect life. He would feed his wonder, he would cultivate his taste, upon it. To him Jesus gives what he asks, and with delighted wonder and with cultivated taste the satisfied asker goes away. It is as if a man painted a mountain for its picturesqueness, and carried off his picture in delight, never dreaming that he left behind him in the mountain’ s bosom treasures of gold which only waited for his hand to gather them. Another man comes to Jesus with a self that is all alive with curiosity. He takes Christ’ s revelations--for Christ does not refuse him either--and goes away content to know much of God and man, and what there is beyond this world. Another man comes to Jesus with a self all trembling with fear, all eager for safety, and Jesus satisfies him; He lets him know that even the humblest, and most ignorant, and least aspiring soul, which repents of and forsakes its sin, and seeks forgiveness, shall not be lost. Each gets from Jesus that which the nature which he brings can take. With what measure each gives himself to the Saviour, the Saviour gives Himself in His salvation back to each. Only when at last there comes a man with his self all open, with door behind door, back into the most secret chambers, all unclosed, ready to give himself entirely, wanting everything, ready to take everything that Jesus has to give, wanting and ready to take the whole of Jesus into the whole of himself, only then are the last gates withdrawn; and as when the ocean gathers itself up and enters with its tide the open mouth of the river, like a conqueror riding into a surrendered town, so does the Lord in all His richness, with His perfect standards, His mighty motives, His infinite hopes, give Himself to the soul which has been utterly given to Him. It is not enough that Christ should stand ready to give us His blessings. He must give us the nature to which those blessings can be given. What we want of Him is not merely His gifts; it is ourselves; He must give us them first. To them only can He give Himself, which is His perfect gift. Not merely with outstretched hands but with open hearts we must stand before Him. We must pray not merely that the kingdom of heaven may come, but that we may be born again, so that we may see it. Luke 6:39 Can the blind lead the blind?Shall they not both fall into the ditch? The suggestive supposition is made by Dr. Reid that it had been as uncommon to be born with the power of sight as it is now to be born incapable of it, in which case “ the few who had this rare gift would appear as prophets or inspired teachers to the many.” Blind-led blind Many a paraphrase of the proverb, and of a perishing people where there is no vision, might be cited from the histories and miscellanies of Mr. Carlyle. It is a trite theme with him--the need of what he calls men with an eye, to lead those who need guidance. We might apply what Shakespere’ s Gloster, in King Lear, says, after his eyes have been barbarously put out, and he seeks a guide in Mad Tom, and is warned, “ Alack, sir, he’ s mad!” “‘ Tis the time’ s plague, when madmen lead the blind.” Ill fare the people that take up with blind guides. Like Elymas, when there fell upon him a mist and a darkness, they go about seeking some one to lead them by the hand. Some one, any one. Who will show us any good--who will deliver us from this hour and power of darkness? And sometimes he that is struck blind takes for guide him that is born blind. And straightway they make for the ditch. St. Gregory the Great, in his treatise on the pastoral care, vigorously censures those who, without proper qualifications, undertake the care of souls, which he calls the art of all arts. Who does not know, he says, that the wounds of the mind are more difficult to be understood than those of the body! And yet men unacquainted with the spiritual precepts will profess themselves physicians of the heart, while those who are ignorant of the effects of drugs would blush to set up for physicians of the body. And anon he quotes the proverb of the blind-led blind. In no such connection, and in no such spirit, Shelley quotes it, when describing priests and princes pale with terror, whose faith “ fell, like a shaft loosed by the bowman’ s error, on their own hearts.” “ They sought and they could find O refuge--’ twas the blind who led the blind.” But, after all, there may be something worse than even a blind guide; for, as South observes in his sermon on the fatal imposture of words, “ A blind guide is certainly a great mischief: but a guide that blinds those whom he should lead, is certainly a greater.” The proverb was full in South’ s eye when, in another sermon, discussing the case of a man who exerts all the faculties of his soul, and plies all means and opportunities in the search of truth which God has vouchsafed him, the preacher concludes that such a man may rest upon the judgment of his conscience so informed, as a warrantable guide of those actions which he must account to God for: “ and if by following such a guide he fall into the ditch, the ditch shall never drown him.” But the same vigorous divine elsewhere deprecates a blind watchman as “ equally a nuisance and an impertinence” --and such a paradox, both in reason and in practice, he contends, is a deluded conscience, namely a counsellor who cannot advise, and a guide not able to direct. The will and the affections are made to follow and obey, not to lead and direct; and therefore, he goes on to say, if error has perverted the order, and disturbed the original economy of our faculties, and a blind will thereupon comes to be led by a blind understanding, “ there is no remedy, but it must trip and stumble, and sometimes fall into the noisome ditch of the foulest enormities and immoralities. (F. Jacox.) Blind leaders I. THE CASE --“ Can the blind lead the blind?” Upon this we found the following remarks: 1. All men by nature are in a state of spiritual blindness. The proofs of this moral and spiritual blindness press upon our attention on every hand. (1) Consider, in the first place, the erroneous and mistaken apprehensions which men generally entertain of the character of God. (2) The unconsciousness of men to the moral and spiritual dangers by which they are threatened is another proof that darkness hath covered the human mind. (3) The intense love and ardent pursuit of the things of the present world form another striking manifestation of the blindness of the human heart with regard to spiritual things. 2. I remark that to the blind some sort of guidance is absolutely necessary. We all feel this with respect to the calamity of natural blindness. 3. It is obvious to remark that those who proffer themselves to be the guides of the blind should themselves possess the visual faculty. What supplemental aid can the blind derive from those who are themselves in the same unhappy condition? II. THE . “ If the blind lead the blind, shall they not both fall into the ditch?” Upon this I would remark: 1. That ignorant and unfaithful teachers are to be considered as the heaviest imaginable curse wherever they exist. 2. The text reminds us that the consequence of this state o! things is that both shall fall into the ditch. The blind who are led, and the blind leaders by whom they are led, it is much to be feared will share one common doom. They will fall into sentimental errors--they will fall into practical immoralities-they will fall into final perdition--unless the grace and mercy of the Most High prevent. (1) The ruin into which they lead others, and which they prepare for themselves, is, first, inexcusable. (2) As this ruin will be found to be inexcusable, so will it be found to be inevitable. There is nothing that can hinder; but from the erroneous system which I have described as certain, inevitable ruin must follow. (3) And the ruin will be found to be irretrievable. (4) This ruin which is inexcusable, inevitable, and irretrievable, will be found to be eternal. III. Let me apply the principles which have been thus briefly developed in favour of the institution for which I am about to plead. You are aware I am to ask your benevolent aid on behalf of the Home Missionary Society. 1. Let me remind you of the necessity which there exists for the interposition of such efforts as those which this society exerts. 2. Consider the erroneous guidance under which a vast proportion of this population is actually placed. (G. Clayton, M. A.) The choice o/ a leader Two extremes exist in reference to the pilgrimage and scholarship of life. Some assert that man needs no guide whatever. “ Is he not a noble creature, gifted with high intelligence? Can he not reason and judge, and understand and discern? He can surely find his own way, without direction from without. As a learner, why needs he a teacher? He can instruct himself. Such self-sufficient boasters will not, therefore, condescend to sit at the feet of a master, or follow the track of a guide, and consequently they frequently become erratic, singular, lawless, and unreasonable in their modes of thought, and even of act. Into the mazes of infidelity and atheism such pilgrims wander; into foolishness and strong delusion such teachers of themselves conduct their own minds. This scheme is dangerous, but its opposite pole is not less so. Deliver a man from rationalism, and he often swings into superstition, and says, “ I see that I need a guide, I will take the one nearest to hand.” Between these two extremes there is a narrow path of right, and happy is he who finds it, viz., the honestly and sincerely judging who the leader and teacher should be, the discovery that a leader has been appointed in the person of the Lord Jesus, and a teacher in the Divine Spirit, and then a complete, willing, and believing submission of the whole man to this infallible guidance. I. The text announces to us A GREAT, GENERAL AS A WARNING, viz., that a disciple does not get above his master, but becomes like him. 1. It is evident that the disciple is generally drawn to the master who is most like himself. There is about us all a natural tendency to admire our own image, and to be willing to submit to any who are superior to us, and yet are of our type. If the blind man only could see he would not choose a blind man to be his guide; but as he cannot see he meets with one who talks as blind men talk; who judges things as they are in the dark, and who does not know what sighted men know, and therefore never reminds the blind man of his infirmity; and at once he says, “ This is my ideal of a man, he is exactly the leader I require, and I will commit myself to him.” So the blind man takes the blind man to be his guide, and this is the reason why error has been so popular. No error would live if it did not chime in with some evil propensity of human nature, if it did not gratify some error in man to which it is congruous. Mind, then, whom you choose for a guide. 2. Having chosen his tutor, the student gradually becomes more and more like his master; or, having taken his guide, the tendency is to tread more closely in his footsteps, and obey his rules more fully every day. We imitate those whom we admire. 3. The pupil does not go beyond the tutor, nor does the man who submits to be led go beyond his guide. Such a case is very rarely found--indeed, I may say, never; for when the one who is led goes beyond his leader, he is not in truth led any longer; rarely enough does it ever come to that. Men, if they outstrip their leaders, generally do so in a wrong direction. They seldom exaggerate their virtues, those they frequently omit, but they usually exaggerate peculiarities, follies, failings, and faults. It is said that in the court of Richard III., because the king was round-shouldered, the courtiers gradually became hump-backed; and we have seen a whole country idiotic enough, not in the last century, but in this century, to have almost all its women limping, because a popular princess was afflicted with a temporary lameness. 4. When a man chooses a bad leader for his soul, at the end of all bad leadership there is a ditch. A small turn of the switch on the railway is the means of taking the train to the far east or to the far west: the first turn is very little indeed, but the points arrived at are remote. Let us not take any man whatever as our leader, for if we trust to any mere man, though he may be right in ninety-nine of the hundred, be is wrong somewhere, and our tendency will be to be more influenced by his one wrong point, than by any one of his righteous. There is One whom you may follow implicitly, and one only--the Man Christ Jesus, the Son of God. II. SPECIAL OF THIS GREAT GENERAL TO JESUS CHRIST FOR OUR . If we have Him for our leader we certainly cannot go beyond our leader, but we shall be privileged to grow more and more like Him, and we shall be perfected according to our text, as our leader is. 1. This is what we might have expected. He is the Creator; can He not create in us His image! From such an one as He is, we confidently expect it. (1) For, observe, the teaching itself is such that it must have power over hearts that yield to it. Almighty love. Divine teaching brought down to human capacity. (2) But it is not in His teaching alone that His influence lies; the most potent charm is Himself. “ Never man spake like this Man;” because never man lived like this Man. His character gives Him a right to speak. (3) We feel quite sure that the disciples will grow like their Master in the case of Jesus, because He inspires them with an intense love to Himself, which flames forth in enthusiasm for Him. Get a teacher whom all the scholars love and admire, and they will soon learn. Make them enthusiastic for him, and no lesson will be too hard. (4) Best of all, our Great Teacher has a spirit with Him, a mighty Spirit, God Himself, the Holy Ghost, and when He teaches, He teaches not with words alone, but with a power which goes beyond the ear into the heart itself, 2. This was virtually promised. (1) It is promised in the great doctrine of predestination (Romans 8:29-30). (2) It is promised in the very name of Jesus--“ He shall save His people from their sins,” i.e., bring them back into a condition of purity and holiness. 3. What we might have expected, and what God has virtually promised, has been actually seen; for the disciples have been like their Lord. (1) In character. Some reflect this feature, others that. (2) In life-story. Melchizedec. Isaac. Joseph. Stephen. Paul. (3) In struggles and temptations. (4) In their victories. Christ’ s disciples overcome sin; by their Master’ s help they rise above doubt, they vanquish the world, and they stand in purity and faith. (5) By and by they shall be like Him in their reward (Revelation 3:21). III. WE MAY PUT ALL THIS TO THE TEST IF WE WILL. If you are not already Christ’ s disciple, you may be. He will receive you though you have been to other masters, and learned a great deal under them, all of which you will have to unlearn. (C. H. Spurgeon.) The blind and the ditch An awful warning to all teachers, especially preachers, followed as it is by the warning of the “ beam” that is before “ one’ s own eye,” when one sees a small thing before another’ s. We know of whom it was first intended--men who were not doubted; men who did not doubt themselves; men who led confidently into the ditch; men who killed the Lord of Glory, to saw their place and nation, and then destroyed them both. They stand before us as a warning, how awful it is to undertake to lead, only to lead astray or into ruin. Blindness (say some) is no sin, “ are we blind also? If ye had been blind, ye had not had sin, but now ye say, We see; therefore your sin remaineth.” There is none so bad as that which is blind to itself. There are many blindnesses--as defect of thought, or learning--which drive the hearers into what the speakers never dreamt of; defect of practical knowledge of life and circumstances, making advice untenable or pernicious; such as on the clashing of submission to parents and zeal for God; want of spirituality--how can any teach what he has never learnt, and therefore never understood? A dwelling upon some parts of truth to the exclusion of all the rest, as the Pharisees did on the letter of purification, or as some on self-denial, till all religion is swallowed up in it, or some on spirituality and faith, till plain moral laws are broken. It is possible to dwell on sacraments till conversion is ignored; or to make conversion a sole object, till Christian life and edification are despised, and only strong excitement satisfies. It is far easier to preach a party, or a church, or a sect, than to preach Christ. All these are blindnesses, and, so far as they go, injure both guide and followers. But how hard it is to see: to trace out all our thoughts to their consequences, to know how to speak to or of all men, to be thoughtful and not cold, to know the life of the Spirit without pride. In fact, there are none who see all things, no one perfect guide, none to whom we can blindly trust. It is a case of those who see but little, and have more need to advise together than to lead and follow confidently. The work of preaching and advice is not to supersede thought, but to make men think; it is not what you hear, but what you make of what you hear. The best part of a sermon is the application, and that is made by the heart at home. But remember that blind leaders are made by blind followers. People crowd to a preacher as others to a theatre for a new excitement; and when they are moved, they long for a guide. Thinking is a labour, following is easy, a confident leader never lacks followers. This is the attraction in our days of the Church of Rome, and blind followers push her to greater extremes, while blind horror sends some into infidelity, for horror and foolhardiness go hand in hand. But it is not only in religion that these principles hold; in politics, in local business, in fashions and customs, there are the same blind leaders and blind followers. There is the same love of being first, the same desire to stick to one’ s party, and be saved the trouble of thinking. Let it warn us in all these things to try to know where we are going, not to take other men’ s fall on our own shoulders and help a whole crowd to destruction. Pause to think. Is it wise to follow? Am I sure I know my own way, when I long so to lead, and am so vexed when others do not follow? For in truth, though all are blind in something, in something all can see. Our first anxiety must be to see our own way, and then not to make others follow us, but to make them see. There are ditches enough. We see men every day falling into them, and there are enough before ourselves. If we think, and speak, and hear thus--as one family--for mutual help--we shall find that though the blind cannot lead the blind, they can help one another very much. (Bishop E. Steere.) Luke 6:40 The disciple is not above his Master: but every one that is perfect shall be as his Master The disciple not above his master This saying was already a proverb in the time of our Lord, or He made it a proverb by His frequent use of it Matthew 10:24-25; John 13:12-16; John 15:20). On the occasion referred to by St. Luke, He uses it in its widest, its most general scope; for here He is speaking of any and every master, of any and every disciple. “ No disciple,” He says, “ while he remains a disciple, can reasonably expect to be wiser than his master, whoever his master may be.” On every other occasion our Lord limits the scope of the proverb by applying it to Himself and to the disciples who followed Him. Here it follows a parable with which it seems to many to have little connection, to some no connection at all although it is not easy to see how any attentive reader should have missed it. Surely the meaning of the entire passage, and its sequence of thought, are obvious enough. If a teacher be blind, if, that is, he lack intellectual or spiritual discernments, if he therefore frame partial and erroneous conclusions, what can be expected but that his disciples should fall into the very same errors, and fall into them all the more surely in proportion as they are faithful disciples? The disciple is not above his master; the learner is not wiser than the teacher. It is a question whether the disciple will ever rise to the level of his master. He will have done much if he do so much as that. From our Lord’ s use of this proverb here we may infer some lessons of no small practical importance, and, in learning them, still further develop its meaning. I. THE IMMENSE OF BOTH HAVING AND A TRUE AIM, A TRUE IDEAL, OF LIFE. What is our aim then? What should it be? The old catechism answer, rightly understood, is surely as good as any: “ Man’ s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy Him for ever.” But it is of the last importance that we should set a single aim before us, and that the highest of which we are capable. II. How HAPPY ARE WE, AND HOW GREATLY IN OUR PURSUIT OF IT, SHOULD THIS AIM, THIS IDEAL, CLOTHE ITSELF IN FLESH AND BLOOD, AND STAND BEFORE US IN THE PERSON OF A MAN OF LIKE WITH ! An embodied ideal, a realized and incarnate ideal, is worth a thousand pale abstractions. It is much to have a noble aim before us; but, oh, how much more to have it clothed in the loveliness of a perfect life. The lofty but abstract ideals of character which men have framed incarnate themselves, clothe themselves, with life and power and loveliness, in Christ, the Son of Man. III. If it be important that we should have it for ourselves, it is also important that WE SHOULD PRESENT A TRUE IDEAL OF LIFE TO OTHERS. We may seek even the highest good selfishly; but, in proportion as we find it, we shall cease to be selfish: we shall seek to be good for the sake of others as well as for our own sake. Let us remember that if in any respect--national, commercial, intellectual, social, spiritual--we are above any of our neighbours, to them, without our permission being asked, we have become masters, i.e., teachers and examples. And therefore we should seek and strive for grace to set them a good example, that our influence may be stimulating and helpful to them. Above all, we should try so to follow Christ as that we may lead them to the Perfect Example, and make them disciples of the only Master who can never mislead them. (S. Cox, D. D.) The force of example This is true as an observation: men do grow up into the likeness of what they admire. It is seldom that any come quite up to it. Great philosophers, men of science, divines, soldiers, statesmen--these are taken as models, and each one has shaped the lives of many others. It is not always a conscious imitation. But we do grow like those we admire or love: even mere association shapes us. A man may be known by his associates. If he is not like them he soon will be. They are his masters in some degree, and he will be like them. We should take care, then, whom we imitate. In very many eases men forget to notice what was the end of those they admire. Statesmen have thought of Alexander, Caesar, Napoleon, without considering their deaths, and the ruin they left behind them. Fame and power draw great men to seek them, and lead them into the ditch into which their masters fell before them. Our leaders are not generally people who have made a name in history, but some one not far off our own station in life, who has made himself a name, and “ got on in the world.” It is a very good thing to have examples; we all want lifting, and want fresh thoughts to be given us. But before we give ourselves up to follow, we had better consider our masters as a whole. We may never come up to them, but we cannot hope to fare better than they. Are they exactly what we should like to be; did they end as we should like to end? Now, we find mostly some drawback, something we hope to avoid. We must remember that it began far back in their career. There is many a man of business who buys success at the cost of health and life, or of truth and honesty, Or of family and duty, or of eternity. If that is what he paid, he is no master for us to follow. There is nothing in the world that cannot be bought too dear. And of our masters in social life, pleasant companions, friends, clever fellows: look at them well--do we want to be like them? One and another of our old acquaintances are gone; what has become of them? Take the man who has gone farthest, and then you will see what the road leads to. If it leads to peace, and honour, and health--follow it. If it leads at last only to some filthy ditch--stop while you can. You say, “ I can stop short” ; do it then. It will not grow easier, it will cost you more every day. Many a man says, “ I was a great fool to begin, but now I cannot help it.” It is always easiest to go downwards. It is not very difficult, if we deal honestly with ourselves, to see to what our mode of life has led, and we may feel sure we shall be no exception to the general law. But then there is another sense in which these same words were used; they are a comfort and support. We must not expect to be free from the losses, trials, difficulties, which have harassed those who went before us. No man ever grew without patient years of work. Our Lord told His disciples to look at Him, and not expect to be better treated. There has never been a time when there has been no undeserved ill-will. God does not make us perfect by always giving us what we wish for. Others have been tried, and where are they? Those who sought rest and pleasure, those who faced difficulty and kept right and truth--where are they? (John 16:33.) A good Christian is not known in the world by his good fortune, but by a hope that does not make ashamed. If we choose the highest model, even Christ, what must we expect? Troubles and difficulties enough, and after them-to be as our Master. Here, indeed, is a glorious future worth all the effort it costs. To be like God Himself in heaven! What other service can give such a reward as this? (Bishop E. Steere.) The use of a great leader During one of the campaigns in the American Civil War, when the winter weather was very severe, some of Stonewall Jackson’ s men having crawled out in the morning from their snowladen blankets, half-frozen, began to curse him as the cause of their sufferings. He lay close by under a tree, also snowed under, and heard all this: but without noticing it, presently crawled out too, and, shaking off the snow, made some jocular remark to the nearest men, who had no idea he had ridden up in the night and lain down amongst them I The incident ran through the army in a few hours, and reconciled his followers to all the hardships of the expedition, and fully re-established his popularity. (Mackay.) Perfect as the Master The explanation of this verse seems to turn upon the word translated “ perfect,” a word entirely different from that which is so translated in other passages, e.g., Matthew 5:48. The meaning is this: complete in discipline, finished or perfect in the sense in which we should speak of a piece of workmanship as perfect, when it has received the last touch of the workman’ s hand. [R. V., “ every one when he is perfected.” ] So that when our Lord speaks of a man who is “ perfect” being like his master, He means to describe the condition of a person who has received from his master, whoever that master may be, all the teaching and discipline which the master can give him, and He asserts that all that can be expected from such a finished disciple is that he shall be equal to his master; his master cannot raise him above himself; his master’ s acquirements are (as it were), the limit towards which the growth of the disciple tends. If this be the meaning of our Lord’ s words, we find in them an important warning not to His apostles only but to all teachers. The words show the necessity of those who would teach others growing in grace themselves; they must not expect that they can be worldly-minded and their disciples spiritual, that they can serve Mammon and their disciples serve God; and conversely, they may expect that as they grow more in the knowledge of their God and Saviour, their own growth in knowledge will reflect itself in their disciples, and tend to raise them to that point of spiritual life to which they themselves have already attained. (Bishop H. Goodwin.) Luke 6:41-42 And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’ s eye, but perceivest not the beam that is in thine own eye?--The true and the false reformer contrasted Now, as no age has been without its abominations, so none has been without its reformers. We read of them alike in sacred and in secular history. We hear of them alike in Heathendom and in Christendom, in lands of barbarous darkness and in lands of religious enlightenment. Abel, Enoch, and Noah were reformers. So were Abraham, Moses, Samuel, David, Elijah--in fact, all the Israelitish prophets, and many of the Israelitish kings. Confucius in China, Zoroaster in Persia, Socrates in Greece, Cato in Rome, were all of the same order. In truth, all genuine Christians, rightly viewed, are reformers. “ Ye are the salt.of the earth,” to rectify its putrescencies. “ Ye are the light of the world,” to disperse its shades of darkness. But every genuine good thing amongst men has also its counterfeit. The grand forger and fabricator of all such hollow, delusive imitations of the exterior of excellence, is the devil. God prepares a purifying salt, Satan also manufactures an article, resembling it in appearance, but without its pungent savour and antiseptic properties. Our Lord, in His Sermon on the Mount, warns us against being deceived by these pseudo-reformers: and also against the still more fatal position of actually belonging to their ranks. We may gather from this passage of stern rebuke the character of a false or pretended reformer; and, by considering its contrast, that of a true and effective one likewise. Both may be zealous; both may be bold; both may be firm. Earnestness, intrepidity, immobility, may belong to each alike. No! the distinction between the true and the false reformer consists not in any difference of ardour, perseverance, or resoluteness. It is not a variation of degrees, but a variety of kind. It stands not in diversities of intensity, but in contradictions of essential quality. We shall find, by an analysis of our text, that the false reformer is at the antipodes of the true in all that goes to constitute fundamental, or radical, distinctions in moral character. 1. They start from opposite points of the compass. The one begins by reforming his neighbours; the other, by reforming himself. The one begins by looking around; the other, by looking within: the one, by sweeping the streets of the city; the other, by cleaning the rooms of his own house: the one, by attempting to remodel society; the other, by seeking a change in his own character. The one sees first what is amiss abroad; the other, what is amiss at home. “ First cast out the beam out of thine own eye, and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’ s eye.” 2. When both are engaged in the work of the world’ s reformation, they differ in the selection of the objects on which their corrective measures are brought to bear. They not only start from contrary points, but they also proceed in contrary directions. The false reformer is presumptuous, the true reformer is condescending. The one looks above himself, the other looks below. All this, too, appears plainly from the text, “ Cast out the beam from thine own eye, then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’ s eye.” 3. A distinction between the real and the apparent reformer is to be found in the state of their own minds respectively. The former is clear in his perceptions and correct in his judgments. He knows how to discriminate cautiously and accurately, between good and evil. But the latter is ever confused in his views and erring in his decisions. Through precipitancy and prejudice, he mistakes the sweet for the bitter, and tim bitter for the sweet. We do not indeed claim infallibility for the true saint, but we do claim for him as correct a discernment of character and knowledge of truth as may be attainable by man in this world. The Scriptures doubtless guarantee this to every simple-hearted, docile, prayerful man, who studies their pages. Hence we read of the anointing of the Holy One, which leads those who receive it into all truth: and we are told, that if any man will do His will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God. Again, if thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light: and, if any man lack wisdom, let him ask of God, who giveth to all men freely, and without up braiding. Such as are the sons of God are represented as being led by His Spirit You find him opposing only what ought to be opposed, and promoting only what deserves encouragement. He does not magnify the mole-hill into a mountain, nor minify the mountain into a mole-hill. He does not treat trifles as matters of essential moment, nor momentous matters as trifles. He is not deceived by mere, or by first appearances.. The sham reformer hides the real nature of objects, or deceitfully exaggerates their dimensions. He beholds all persons and things through a discolouring and perverting medium. Through the magical spectacles of prejudice he ever looks, and therefore sees not what really is, but what his own fancy conjures up, or his excited passions prompt him to desire. Whilst gazing upon others, their noblest virtues become transformed into foulest vices, their little infirmities swell into hideous sins. And how should it be otherwise? The man has a beam in his eye. He is dismally blinded. His whole soul is in darkness. His mind is bewitched by the sorceries of sin and Satan a dreadful spell has bound his spirit: a moral madness has distracted his heart. He can see neither perspicuously nor correctly: not afar off at all, and nigh at hand only imperfectly. Such is the delusion and blindness of the pseudo-reformer, hinted at so intelligibly in the expression of the text, “ Then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’ s eye.” 4. There is a contrast between the real and the pretended reformer, not only in the head, but in the heart; not only in the perceptions, but in the intentions; not only in the understanding, but in the motives and affections. Indeed, here lies the root of the whole matter. The one is sound, the other “ rotten at the core.” The one is sincere, the other deceitful. The one rejoices inwardly in the truth, the other in iniquity. The one means to amend, the other to cavil and find fault. The one is actuated by an honest desire to see improvement in others, the other by a malignant censoriousness, which rather revels in prevalent corruption than bewails it. The true reformer loves those whom he strives to benefit: the false reformer really despises or hates those in whom he professes to be interested. He is spiteful and envious, a carping meddler, a dangerous busybody. He is a disguised foe to society. He has no love of peace, no relish for trustful concord. 1. We allude to that company of captious borderers just beyond the limits of Church communion, who refuse to step across those limits, because of the alleged inconsistencies or sins of some who are already there. Such persons can see nothing in the gospel but its difficulties, nothing in ecclesiastical organizations but their defects, nothing in Church members but their inconsistencies, real or attributed. 2. There is a class of the hypocrites, rebuked in the text, to be found inside the pale of Church communion. The needed remedy must be applied to thine own heart. It is at home where reform, as well as charity, must begin. Get all set right between thine own conscience and God. Let His love again expand and cheer thy heart: and then thy fellow-believer will appear more amiable in thy sight. If any little inconsistencies attach to him, thou shalt clearly see them, and mayest be able, with all the nice discrimination of a sound mind, and all the delicate dexterity of a charitable hand, to take the mote out of thy neighbour’ s eye: and both of you shall be benefited by the operation. “ Brethren, if any of you do err from the truth, and one convert him; let him know, that he which converteth the sinner from the error of his way shall save a soul from death, and shall hide a multitude of sins.” (Sermons by Wesleyan Ministers.) The mete and the beam 1. This parable implies that there are different degrees of sin. Not that any sin is trifling; but some are more heinous than others, either in themselves, or by reason Of aggravating circumstances. 2. Our sins often are really very great in themselves; and they would appear so to us, did we properly consider everything with which we are acquainted in our own case, 3. Men are generally most ready to mark the sins of others, when they are insensible of their own. 4. To be severe on the sins of others, and indulgent to one’ s own, is very hypocritical. 5. In order to be prepared for the office of a reformer, a man must be reformed himself. 6. It is the duty of those who are reformed, to try to reform others. (James Foote, M. A.) On censuring others Nothing is so easy as to censure, or to contradict a truth; for truth is but one, and seeming truths are many; and few works are performed without errors. No man can write six lines, but there may be something one may carp at, if he be disposed to cavil. Men think by censuring to be accounted wise; but, in my conceit, there is nothing shows more of the fool. For this, you may ever observe, that they who know the least, are most given to censure; and this I believe to be a reason, why men of secluded lives are often rash in this particular. Their retiredness keeps them ignorant of the world; if they weighed the imperfections of humanity, they would be less prone to condemn others. Ignorance gives disparagement a louder tongue than knowledge. Wise men had rather know than tell. Frequent dispraises, at best, show an uncharitable mind. Any clown may see when a furrow is crooked; but where is the man who can plough me a straight one? The best works are not without defects. The cleanest corn is not without some dirt among it; no, not after frequent winnowing. I would wish men, in the works of others, to examine two things before they judge: whether there be more of what is good, than of what is ill, in what they examine? and whether they themselves could at first have done it better? If there be most of good, we do amiss, for some errors, to condemn the whole. As man is not judged good or bad for one action, or for the fewest number, but as he is most in general: so in works, we should weigh the generality, and our censure should be accordingly. If there be more of good than ill in him, I think he deserves some praise for raising nature above her ordinary flight. Nothing in this world can be framed so entirely perfect, but it will have in it some imperfections; if it were not so, it were not from human nature, but the immediate Deity. And next, whether we could do better than that which we condemn? To espy the inconveniences of a house when built, is easy; but to lay the plan well at first, is matter of more pate, and speaks the praise of a good contriver. Judgment is easier in things done, than in knowing what is best to be done. If we decry a copy, and are not able to produce an original, we show more criticism than ability. We ought rather to magnify him who has gone beyond us, than condemn him for a few faults. Self-examination will make our judgments charitable. It is from where there is no judgment, that the heaviest judgment comes. If we must needs censure, it is good to do it as Suetonius writes of the twelve Caesars, to tell both their virtues and their vices impartially, and leave others to determine for themselves. So shall men learn, by hearing of the faults of others, to avoid them, and by knowing their virtues, endeavour to practise the like. We ought rather to commend a man for the best part of his character, than brand him for the worst part of it. We are full of faults by nature; we are good, not without our care and industry. (Owen Felltham.) Hypocrisy and self-ignorance The words which thus meet us are not only proverbial in form but have become proverbial in their application. They have passed into the common speech of men. They furnish the readiest answer to the man who condemns another for sins of which he himself is guilty. The hypocrite is confronted by them at every turn. 1. First, then, we have the law, that the habit of judging others--of looking at their evil deeds--is a hindrance to self-knowledge. The man forgets the beam that is in his own eye, because his whole mind is bent on observing the motes that are in his brother’ s eye. And this is, as the words of Christ imply, the act of one who is a hypocrite. The hypocrisy is all the more deadly and evil in its nature because it is in part unconscious. The man who strives to know what God is--who lets the light shine in on him--who is taught to see himself by that light in the mirror of God’ s Word,will find it impossible to go on acting a part which is not his own. If he knows truth and goodness to be the great blessings of earth and Heaven, he will find the misery of seeming to be true and good when he is not so, altogether insupportable. The warning which this law involves is necessary for all men. It is absolutely essential for those who have been called, by an outward or inward vocation, by the circumstances of their lives or the solemn purposes which God has put into their hearts, to do battle in His service against the world and the flesh, to feel that in fighting against them they are fighting also against the devil. Consider what the work of those disciples must have been, as they preached the glad tidings of the kingdom in the cities and villages of Galileo, as they afterwards had to proclaim the same message in the great cities of Asia or Europe. How often they must have been tempted to think with scorn of those who were living in brutalizing sins, or bowing before dumb idols, or warring and fighting with each other! Was it not easy to think that their warfare against these monstrous forms of wickedness was so urgent as to leave them no leisure for self-scrutiny or self-discipline? easy to forget the law that the battle could not be fought successfully without it? And was there not an almost equal risk, when they protested, as their Lord had taught them to protest, against proud, self-righteous formalists, of their falling unconsciously into the sin which they rebuked? 2. But, secondly, we are taught that this self-discipline is not to end in itself. It is the means to something beyond it, the preparation for a work which could not be done successfully without it? One who rested in the first half of the precept might satisfy himself by a simple indifference to the acts, whether good or evil, which he witnessed. Silence would seem an adequate fulfilment of it. To check the expression of any judgment with the lips, to endeavour to suppress even the half-formed judgment of the mind, to pass through the world without coming into collision with its selfishness and godlessness--this would be to such a man the ideal of a blameless life. He might easily come to persuade himself that this was the temper of the true Christian charity which “ hopeth all things, endureth all things, and believeth all things.” But the charity which Christ requires--it would be truer to say, the charity which Christ gives, of which His life on earth was the manifestation--is the very opposite of all this. It cannot remain neutral in the great battle between good and evil, between the armies of the living God and the lust and hatred that war against His order. It burns, as with a consuming fire, against the tyranny and wrong-doing wherewith one man works misery and destruction for his brothers, against the worship of sensuous lusts, or the idolatry of wealth, which lead men to forget the honour which is due to God. Words and acts which are to all appearance simply indifferent, light things, which may be passed over--idle words, for which men think that they shall not have to render an account in the day of judgment--will be seen by those whose eyes are opened, to be the outgrowths of some root of bitterness, stifling and strangling the growth of the good seed, hindering it from bringing forth any fruit to perfection. They therefore will, of all men, be least disposed to sit still, in the comfort of an easy-going Epicurean neutrality, when there are giant evils in the world still unchecked, and monstrous wrongs still unredressed. They will least allow those, the souls for whom Christ died and who are fellow-heirs with them of His eternal kingdom, to perish for lack of knowledge or continue in their blindness till they sleep the sleep of death. But then they will have learnt to contend against evil and falsehood, without judging the doer of evil or him who is the slave of falsehood. They will find it possible to make that distinction which the man who has not perceived and cast out the mote that was in his own eye never makes, between the offence which must be condemned, and, if need be, punished, and the offender who stands at God’ s judgment-seat and not at ours. They can say, “ The thing that has been done is evil; the man who has done it has thereby made himself the slave of evil, and brought himself into darkness and misery, and God is calling us to help him.” Conclusion: We must not look, either in ourselves or in others, for a perfect union of these two forms of charity. This is not reached at once. Even he who is earnestly striving after it will make mistakes. But he will not forget that these very mistakes form a part of the education by which God is training him to do His work on earth more effectually. They teach him to retrace his steps, to go through the process of preparation mice again, once again to cast out the beam that is in his own eye that he may “ see clearly” to pull out the mote that is in his brother’ s eye. They tend to make his sympathy with the hearts of his fellow-men wider and deeper than it was. (J. S. Hoare, M. A.) The mote and the beam Morality is not religion, but morality and religion have an organic unity. False religions sever religion and morality. Christ, in the Sermon on the Mount, makes morality grow out of religion. We are to be kind because God is kind; ready to forgive because God is merciful; slow to judge because we have a Judge whose dealings with us will be regulated by our dealings with others. Let us now say something of the caution in the text, reading it in the light of the great truths which we find in the context. I. If a Christian man be thoroughly penetrated with the truth respecting his own relations, and those of other men, to God it is quite certain that JUDGING AND OTHERS WILL BE A WORE WHICH, SO FAR AS MAY BE, HE WILL DECLINE. And this for two reasons: 1. Because he doubts his own knowledge of other men; and-- 2. Because he doubts the strength of his own sympathy. II. But now, besides these thoughts, there is the most conclusive thought of all--OUR OWN DEMERIT: OUR LYING OPEN TO GOD’ S AND TO MAN’ S. The case which the Saviour here points to is not simply that of one judging another, who is himself an evil-doer, but the case of one judging another whose sin is to that of the person he censures as the beam to the mote. When we are wrong-doers ourselves, and when we see our own acts under the colouring lights of self-love; when we review them with the help of all the apologies and extenuations which we are able to devise, and then turn to other persons’ acts, all these lights being withdrawn, and criticise them in a clear, cold, and speculative way, or, even worse, under the influence of anger, or jealousy, or prejudice, is it not quite certain that we shall think less of the beam in our own eye than of the mote in our brother’ s eye? (J. A. Jacob, M. A.) The splinter and the beam This metaphor in frequent use among the Jews. Thus, for instance, Rabbi Tarphon, when lamenting the impatience of correction which marked his time, complains that if any one said to his neighbour, “ Cast out this or that straw from thine eye,” the response was sure to be, “ Cast out the beam from thine own eye.” The good man, being one of those just persons who need no repentance, never dreamt that there was a beam in his eye, and that therefore the retort was perfectly fair. The Lord Jesus adopted the Hebrew metaphor, but not in the Hebrew spirit. On His lips it does not justify, but censures, those who assumed to judge and rebuke their brethren. 1. If we are so quick to see straws in the eyes of our neighbours that we can hardly look into any face without detecting one, the probability is that we carry a beam in our own eye of which we greatly need to be rid. 2. The Lord Jesus says that we are hypocrites, if, with a beam jutting from our own eye, we say to our brother, “ Let me pull out the splinter from thine eye.” Is it hypocritical, then, to do a kindness, and to offer help, when we ourselves stand in need of help? By no means. But while our words mean, “ O it is very wrong to suffer the smallest speck to remain in the eye” ; our conduct means, “ There is no great harm in letting even a beam remain in it.” That is to say, we are hypocrites; we talk one thing and act another. If the sinner rebuke sin, who will listen? If the sinner, while rebuking sin, affect a righteous austerity and assume to be innocent of transgression, who will not scorn both him and his rebuke? 3. But here we touch on a question of grave practical moment: “ Are only the holy to open their mouth against sin P “ When Miss Nightingale went about among the sick soldiers of the Crimean hospitals, there was no need to rebuke them for profane language or obscene jests, although these were familiar to many of their lips. They felt they could not utter them in a presence so kind and pure. Many of them, we are told, folded their hands as if in prayer while she passed by. Do you imagine that.when she spoke to a man, if she ever did, of his faults and sins, he felt that she had no right to speak, that she was a hypocrite for her pains? But why not? Simply because, as they looked up into that pure, single eye, they could see the splinters in their own, and grew ashamed of them. See what force a holy character gives to rebuke! 4. From this man with a beam in his eye we may learn at least what to avoid. What are his faults? (1) lie does not know that the beam is there. (2) Because he is not conscious of the beam in his own eye, he assumes airs of moral superiority, and carries himself like a judge instead of a brother. Put these two pictures side by side, and you will not doubt from which of them we should draw our inspiration. There goes a judge, immaculate in his own conceit; he stares with cold rebuke at the splinters which deform all eyes but his, and condemns in others faults not comparable to the crimes with which he pollutes the judgment-seat. And here come two brothers; and as they fall on each other’ s neck, they cry, “ Ah, brother, I see you are troubled with the very straws and splinters which afflict reel help me, and let me help you, that we may both be quit of them.” 5. Is not this parable true to our experience of life? It is against the unconscious self-assumption so prevalent among us that our Lord warns us in this parable. (S. Cox, D. D.) An eye with a beam, and an eye for a mete It takes a long time to learn by heart so as to take to heart Archbishop Whately’ s maxim, that ten thou sand of the greatest faults in our neighbours are of less consequence to us than one of the smallest in ourselves. Elsewhere he says, “ Never is the mind less fitted for self-examination than when most occupied in detecting the faults of others.” Have you never, asks Ellesmere, found the critic disclose four errors on his own part for one he delights to point out in the sayings or doings of the persons he criticizes? Shakespeare’ s Birch claims the right to ask his companions, noble and royal alike, Dumain, Longueville, and the King of Navarre, addressing them singly and collectively:-- “ But are you not ashamed? nay, are you not, All three of you, to be thus much o’ ershot? You found his mote; the king your mote did see, But! a beam do find in each of three.” Who, exclaims Juvenal, can stand hearing the Gracchi complaining of sedition? “ O wad some pow’ r the giftie gie us To see oursels as ithers see us!” For that, presumably, would from many a blunder free us, and foolish notion-- “ We, who surround a common table, And imitate the fashionable, Wear each two eye-glasses: this lens Shows us our faults, that other men’ s. We do not care how dim may be This by whose aid our own we see; But, ever anxiously alert That all may have their whole desert, We would melt down the stars and sun In our heart’ s furnace, to make one Through which th’ enlightened world might spy A mote upon a brother’ s eye.” (F. Jacob.) Among sins, which are motes and which are beams? We are apt to answer such a question according to our taste, and our habits; the motes being the sins we “ are inclined to,” the beams those “ we have no mind to.” To one the mote is covetousness, and the beam the drinking of a glass of wine or the smoking of a cigar. To another the mote is sharp practice in business and the beam taking a walk on a Sunday. To a third the mote is spending the evening in scandalising one’ s neighbours all round, and the beam spending it at whist. To a fourth the mote is behaving like a bear or any other brute in his own house, and the beam any offence against good manners in his neighbour’ s house. To a fifth the mote is swindling to the extent of £100,000, and the beam the neglect of family prayer. To a sixth the mote is theft, and the beam the being found out and exposed. To a seventh the mote is fraudulent bankruptcy, and the beam unsound views about original sin. And so we might go on, and show that, in our judgment, the mote and the beam often take each other’ s places, the less sin being accounted the greater, and the greater the less. Now when we try to learn what Jesus meant by the mote and what by the beam, we arrive at this result--that the sins of the publicans and sinners, who knew no better, their drunkenness, their lewdness, their Sabbath-breaking, their profaneness, their disregard for all religion and all morality, were, in His estimation, as motes compared with the sins of the scribes and Pharisees who laid claim to much goodness, and yet were covetous, unjust, and extortionate under the cover of a religious profession. Their sins were beams, and the beam of beams was hypocrisy. There was no open and avowed sin that our Lord seems to have detested so much as a false profession of religion. And it were well for us to bear this in mind, so that we may have a just idea of the greater and lesser sins, and so neither deceive ourselves, nor too severely judge our neighbour, whose sin may be to our own no more than the smallest splinter of a lucifer-match in comparison with a tree fit to make the mast of a ship. (H. S. Brown.) Correcting others’ faults If it was out of place to set up as the censurer of your brother’ s mote when your own faults were to his as a plank to a splinter, it is surely still more out of place to set yourself up for his correcter. The comparison sounds extravagant; since, though minute fragments from a twig may get into the eye and need to be taken out, to speak of a great beam of timber in the same connection is absurd. The extravagance of the phrase, however, did not hinder its being a usual and accepted one in oriental speech; and as such our Lord borrowed it to point His moral. What that moral is, is plain enough. In the first place, it is in a preposterous degree unbecoming to be so quick to see, much more to propose to mend, small faults in another when one’ s own are so very great. It is, as we say, like “ Satan reproving sin.” Besides, it is not only a grotesque betrayal of self-ignorance, but a presumptuous over-estimate of one’ s own ability. To mend a brother’ s fault, one has need of a most clear and undistorted spiritual vision, an eye of the soul quite single and limpid, No task asks cleaner motives, a truer insight, or more of that perfect fairness which can only spring from love, than this task of a reformer of manners. But there is more to be said than this. The interference of such blind guides and ignorant teachers is worse than a blunder. It is an hypocrisy. You profess to be so deeply concerned for the faults of your neigh-hour, that you would fain do him a service by ridding him of them: you are ardent in the interest of his reformation, a self-constituted preacher of righteousness. That looks well. But if it were really concern for the correction of evil and the cure of souls which inspired this officious zeal of yours, would it not show itself first of all in the reformation of yourself? A very little honest desire to have God’ s kingdom come and His will done would suffice to reveal to yourself how much more shameful and painful your own moral disorders are than any you propose to remedy; and in the hard task of casting out your own huge sins of heart, you would find work enough to keep your hands full. The tu quoque rejoinder, “ Physician, heal thyself,” is in its place here. “ First cast out the beam.” This very officiousness in well-doing, this arrogant setting up as a correcter of morals, this immodest and loveless meddling with your neighbours--what is it but a sign how pride has made you stone-blind, and a proof that it is not the sympathy of a penitent which inspires you, but the conceit of a fault-finder? (J. O. Dykes, D. D.) Fault-finding reproved Why will you search another man’ s wound while your own is bleeding? Take heed that your own vesture be not full of duet, when you are brushing your neighbour’ s. Complain not of dirty streets, when heaps lie at your own doors, Many people are no longer well than while they arc holding their fingers upon another person’ s sores: such are no better in their conduct than crows, which prey only upon carrion. (Archbishop Secker.) Beholding others’ faults A wise heathen said, “ Every man carries two wallets with him, hanging the one before and the other behind him. Into that before, he puts the faults of others; into that behind, he puts his own. By this means he never sees his own failings, while he has those of others always before him.” Ignoring the “ Beam” I recollect firing a shot once with much greater success than I knew of h certain person had frequently said to me that I had been the subject of her earnest prayers lest I should be exalted above measure, for she could see my danger; and after having heard this so many times that I really knew it by heart, I just made the remark, that I thought it would be my duty to pray for her too, lest she should be exalted above measure. I was greatly amused when this answer came, “ I have no temptation to be proud; my experience is such that I am in no danger whatever of being puffed up” ; not knowing that her little speech was about the proudest statement that could have been made, and that everybody else thought her to be the most officious and haughty person within ten miles. Why, do not you believe there may be as much pride in rags as in an alderman’ s gown? Is it not just as possible for a man to be proud in a dust cart, as if he rode in her Majesty’ s chariot? A man may be just as proud with half a yard of ground as Alexander with all his kingdoms, and may be just as lifted up with a few pence as Croesus with all his treasure. (C. H.Spurgeon.) Self-reformation the most effective That earnest-minded man, Legh Richmond, was passing once through Stockport, at a time when political strifes disturbed the country. In consequence of his lameness, he was never able to walk far without resting. He was leaning on his stick and looking about him, when a poor fellow ran up to him, and offering his hand, inquired with considerable earnestness, “ Sir, are you a radical?” “ Yes, my friend,” answered Mr. Richmond, “ I am a radical; a thorough radical.” “ Then give me your hand,” said the man. “ Stop, sir, stop,” replied Legh Richmond, “ I must explain myself: we all need a radical reformation; our hearts are full of disorders--the root and principle within is altogether corrupt. Let you and me mend matters there, and then all will be well, and we shall cease to complain of the times and government.” “ Right, sir,” answered the radical, “ you are right,” and bowing, retired. (Sword and Trowel.) Goodness essential to the true reformer How bitter is the wail of the mighty Mirabeau, “ If I had but character, if I had but been a good man, if I had not degraded my life by sensuality, and my youth by evil passions, I could have saved France.” Many a man has felt the same; he has clipped his own wings, he has suffered to be shorn away the sunny locks of the Nazarite who once lay weeping upon his shoulders, and wherein would have lain his strength. He has wounded himself, and even when the wound is healed, the fearful scar remains. But if, while he is himself still in the gall of bitterness and bond of iniquity, he essays to amend the morals of the world, he will either disgrace and weaken his own cause, or the good he does in one direction will be more than undone by the evil he is doing in another. To such a one, shaming him, warning him that they who bear the vessels of the sanctuary must themselves be clean, come the stern words of Christ--“ First cast the beam out of thine own eye, and then shalt thou see clearly to take out the mute which is in thy brother’ s eye.” (Archdeacon Farrar.) Luke 6:43-44 For a good tree bringeth not forth corrupt fruit; neither a corrupt tree bringeth forth good fruit Good works the evidence of new creation We cannot perform any good works, unless we are created unto them in Christ Jesus; and hence that creation in Christ Jesus cannot be anywise the effect or consequence of our good works: we were saved, as the apostle tells us, by grace, when we were dead in trespasses and sins. But if we are indeed created anew in Christ Jesus, our good works must follow, as a necessary, certain, irrepressible result. They are the only evidence of that creation to others: and they are no less indispensable to ourselves, to certify us of its reality. If we do not bring forth good works, we ought to be convinced that we cannot have been created anew in Christ Jesus, that in one way or other the process of our regeneration has been marred. Good works are the mark, the proof, the evidence of Christian life; they are the badge of a Christian community; and they are the means through which the members of that community are bound together, and the Christian life is brought to pervade them all. When they are scanty, the Christian life must be feeble; when they are totally wanting, whether in an individual or a community, the Christian life must be all but extinct. They are the evidences of the Christian life, and they are also the means of growing in it; for it is by exercise, by action, that every living principle is strengthened. This is no way at variance with the assertion that the Christian life is not the effect of our good works. The primary creative cause is, in all instances except the highest, distinct from the highest nutritive causes. The bread which feeds will not beget a man. By study we do not acquire the power of knowing; but we improve and increase that power, End may do so almost indefinitely. By practising any art--be it music, or painting, or statuary--we do not acquire that particular faculty of the mind which fits a man for becoming a musician, or a painter, or a sculptor, any more than we acquire our eyes by seeing: indeed, if a man has not that faculty already within him, no teaching or practising will draw it out of him; but when he has it, practice will greatly sharpen and better it. Such, too, is the case with the Christian life. It is not created by our good works, but is to be fostered and nourished by them, and may be so to a wonderful extent, if we always bear in mind how it originated, and are careful to have it replenished from its only source; while, on the other hand, without them it will pine and die. Indeed, in this instance we have the special assurance: “ To him who hath shall be given,” &c. (J. C,. Hare.) A new nature needed to produce good fruit Without a change of nature, men’ s practice will not be thoroughly changed. Until the tree be made good, the fruit will not be good. Men do not gather grapes of thorns, nor figs of thistles. The swine may be washed, and appear clean for a little while, but yet, without a change of nature, he will still wallow in the mire. Nature is a more powerful principle of action than anything that opposes it: though it may be violently restrained for a while, it will finally overcome that which restrains it. It is like the stream of a river, it may be stopped for a while with a dam, but if nothing be done to dry the fountain, it will not be stopped always; it will have a course, either in its old channel, or a new one. Nature is a thing more constant and permanent than any of those things that are the foundation of carnal men’ s reformation and righteousness. When a natural man denies his lust, lives a strict, religious life, and seems humble, painful, and earnest in religion, it is not natural, it is all a force ‘ against nature; as when a stone is violently thrown upwards. But that force will be gradually spent; nature will remain in its full strength, and so prevails again, and the stone returns to the earth. As long as corrupt nature is not mortified, but the principle left whole in a man, it is a vain thing to expect that it should not govern. But if the old nature be indeed mortified, and a new heavenly nature infused, then may it well be expected that men will walk in newness of life, and continue to do so to the end of their days. (Jonathan Edwards.) Reformation must begin at the heart If we desire a true reformation, let us begin on reforming our hearts and lives, in keeping Christ’ s commandments. All outward forms and models of reformation, though they be never so good in their kind, yet they are of little worth to us without this inward reformation of the heart. Tin, or lead, or any baser metal, if it be cast into never so good a mould and made up into never so elegant a figure, yet it is but tin or lead still; it is the same metal that it was before. If adulterate silver, that has much alloy or dross in it, have never so current a stamp put upon it, yet it will not pass when the touchstone tries it. We must be reformed within, with a spirit of fire and a spirit of burning, to purge us from the dross and corruption of our hearts, and refine us as gold and silver, and then we shall be reformed truly, and not before. (R. Cudworth, D. D.) Underlying element of moral character Moral character is-- 1. Man’ s only real property. 2. The only measure of man’ s real worth. 3. The only earthly product man will bear to another world. 4. The source whence springs lasting weal or woe. I. It is a vital source of action. II. It is either radically corrupt or good. III. When corrupt, generally disguised. IV. When disguised, may, and should be detected. (Dr. Thomas.) Religion seen in principle before it appears in conduct When the Sidonians were once going to choose a king, they determined that their election should fall upon the man who should first see the sun on the following morning. All the candidates, towards the hour of sunrise, eagerly looked towards the east, but one, to the astonishment of his countrymen, fixed his eyes pertinaciously on the opposite side of the horizon, where he saw the reflection of the sun’ s rays before the orb itself was seen by those looking towards the east. The choice instantly fell on him who had seen the reflection of the sun; and by the same reasoning, the influence of religion on the heart is frequently perceptible in the conduct, even before a person has made direct profession of the principle by which he is actuated. False reputation of trees:--The upas tree once had a bad name, as its leaves were supposed to exhale a poison, which, spreading over a wide region, was fatal to man and beast.. But scientific investigation has shown that the tree is harmless, and that its reputation is due to its growing in a bad neighbourhood. The tree grows in volcanic valleys in Java, which are noted for their desolation. It is the only green thing in a region where death seems to reign. But the fatal poison comes not from the tree, but from the gases of the volcano, amid which the upas thrives though all other vegetable forms perish. Another tree, the Eucalyptus, has enjoyed undue credit, as the upas has suffered undue odium. This tree was said to exhale from its leaves healthful influences, which made it an antidote to many forms of malaria. It belongs to Australia, and it was noticed that in its neighbourhood malarial fevers were unknown. This fact caused it to be planted in some of the worst malarial districts of Italy, and there, too, fevers gradually disappeared. The inference seemed inevitable that its foliage exerted some occult influence which prevented malaria. But science, by careful examinations, explains the mystery in a new way. The tree is such a great absorbent of water that its roots easily drain marshy land. It destroys malaria, not by giving out healthful influences, but by absorbing the moisture which creates the disease. It is believed that the terrible Campagna of Rome can be made healthy by the draining power of the Eucalyptus. Judging by the fruits A young man of considerable gifts was introduced to a knowledge of the truth in the revival of 1859, and became an occasional preacher or exhorter at the meetings. When he went to study in Edinburgh he parted with all his old beliefs one by one, and ultimately embraced Pantheism. For several years he lived a blameless life morally, but an utterly blank life spiritually, having no hope and without God in the world. He went out to India, where the unnameable horrors of heathenism had the extraordinary effect of convincing him that Christianity must be true, and could be the only hope of the world. Meekly and humbly he began to seek a true knowledge of God, and in due course entered into the family circle of the children of God. (A. Craig.) Christianity’ s fruits Divine fruits The subject of my lecture this evening is, The truth of Christianity proved by its fruits. I. I begin, then, by showing WHAT EFFECT HAS HAD ON LIBERTY. What was the state of matters in regard to liberty in the Roman Empire in the days of the apostles? When we look at Roman society, we see that there was no recognition of individual liberty as a natural right, and that a most debasing slavery had obtained gigantic proportions. In the city of Rome there was a population of 1,610,000, and of that number 900,000 were slaves: that is to say, that of every five persons in the capital three were slaves. And if we take the whole of the empire, then Gibbon’ s deliberate opinion is that “ the slaves were at least equal in number to the free inhabitants of the Roman world” ; and the entire population he estimates at 120,000,000; so that there were, as stated in a previous lecture, 60,000,000 slaves. Their numbers were recruited, not wholly, indeed, but largely from war. The Romans made slaves of those whom they captured. And how were they treated? In its mildest form, slavery is a galling burden; but Roman slavery was noted for its cruelty. The slaves were the absolute property of their master. He could treat them as he chose, so that, as it has been said, “ a dog with us has more rights than a Roman slave had.” Tholuck, in his work on the “ Nature and Moral Influence of Heathenism,” gives the following description of their treatment: “ A scanty and disgusting dress, and dog-skin cap, distinguished them from all the rest of the inhabitants. Those who were too strong had to be weakened by various kinds of ill-treatment; and if the masters did not do this, they became themselves liable to a penalty. Every slave received annually a certain number of stripes to remind him that he was a slave. Hymns of a nobler kind they were not allowed to sing, but only gay and sensual songs. TO complete their degradation, they were sometimes compelled to sing songs in disgrace and ridicule of themselves; and to the same purpose they were also compelled to perform indecent dances. In order to make the sons of the Spartans loathe the vice of drunkenness, the slaves were compelled to intoxicate themselves in public assemblies. When they became too numerous, they were murdered clandestinely; every year at a certain period the young Spartans, clad in armour, used to hunt them, and to prevent their increase they were killed with daggers.” Christianity is thus in its very essence hostile to slavery; and this was one reason why the educated heathen opposed it so bitterly. But this was what it did; and hence the social change it accomplished. It undermined and threw down this monster evil of Roman slavery. As early as the time of Trajan, A.D. 98117, one Hermes, who had embraced Christianity, liberated 1250 of his slaves; and even under Domitian, who reigned before him, A.D. 81-96, a prefect of Rome, called Cromacius, “ liberated 1400 slaves, who had been baptized, and said unto them: ‘ Those who begin to be the children of God ought no longer to be the slaves of men.’” That was the way in which it began to work, and as the gospel leaven widened its area, slavery disappeared. Through their contact with the Mahommedans in the fifteenth century, the Portuguese began to traffic in negro slaves; and you know to what the traffic grew, how it spread over the colonies, and continued to hold its ground in spite of Christian influence. But the gospel has also proved itself victorious here. It was through the power of Christian principle that Great Britain, at a vast pecuniary sacrifice, washed her hands of all complicity with the evil in her colonies. II. I next proceed to show WHAT EFFECT HAS HAD ON LABOUR But let us see what change Christianity has wrought on the industrial life. It gave no countenance to the old Roman idea that labour was unbecoming a free man. To labour was in a sense to pray; work was worship. And its civilizing power is especially striking when we look at what it has wrought in our own time in heathen lands. When Christianity has been fairly rooted in heathen soil, its inhabitants are lifted up to the plane of a new and civilized life. They begin to clothe themselves, to build proper houses, to cultivate the land, and to develop all its resources. This is the effect of their new belief; this is one practical shape which Christianity takes in them, when it has been received in the love of it. And so commerce has followed in the wake of the missionary enterprise. Some have spoken contemptuously of the expenditure on Christian missions, as if it were a waste of money. But I hold that, even on the low ground of purely worldly profit, they pay themselves many times over in commercial gain, and I adduce the following facts in proof:--The Basutos in South Africa are now beginning to dress decently, to cultivate the land, and to build proper villages, and they have created a traffic of £150,000 a year. And every year English goods find their way to Kuruman to the value of £75,000, where, according to Dr. Moffat, scarcely a pocket handkerchief, or string of beads, or other trifle was bought. In Samoa, in the Pacific, where the people have nearly all become Christians, the imports reach the value of £50,000 and the exports £100,000, and all this within fifty years. Before that time there was almost no trade with the island. An American clergyman has calculated, on the ground of statistical data, that the traffic originated by means of the mission repays tenfold the capital expended. But can we not give the heathen our civilization without our Christianity? I most emphatically answer, No; for, as it has been well said, “ no nation can appropriate the fruits of Christian civilization apart from its roots.” III. The next point with which I propose to deal is THE OF ON FAMILY AND SOCIAL LIFE. But let us now turn to the marvellous and beneficent change effected by Christianity. It has lifted up woman, and made her, as a moral and spiritual being, man’ s equal in privilege. Home life under the influence of Christianity became a new thing, nobler than what had ever existed under heathenism. Moreover, Christianity defined and hallowed the relations of parents and children. And in confirmation of this, I would adduce one or two facts from the records of modern missions in savage lands. “ In the Polynesian Islands,” says Dr. War-neck, “ Christianity has the undeniable merit--that it has suppressed cannibalism, human sacrifice, and child murder, ameliorated the family life, restrained drunkenness, and wherever it has got a footing has led to the orderly establishment of rights … The weapons of war and instruments of death may be seen hanging from the rafters of their humble cottages, covered with dust and become unusable, or they are converted into tools of industry, or they are given to visitors as useless curiosities.” That is how Christianity has affected those who were living in a savage state. I give another quotation, containing the confession of a Christian who had been a cannibal, and from it you will see what has been in his case the gospel’ s power. It was a sacramental day at the mission church. “ When I approached the table,” he says, “ I did net know beside whom I should have to kneel. Then I suddenly saw I was beside the man who, some years ago, slew my father, and drank his blood, and whom I then swore I would kill the first time that I should see him. Now think what I felt when I suddenly knelt beside him. It came upon me with terrible power, and I could not prevent it, and so I went back to my seat. Arrived there, I saw in the spirit the upper sanctuary, and seemed to hear a voice, ‘ Thereby shall all men know that ye are My disciples, if ye have love one to another.’ That made a deep impression on me, and at the same time I thought I saw another sight--a Cross and a Man nailed thereon, and I heard Him say, ‘ Father, forgivethem, for they know not what they do.’ Then I went back to the altar.” All this will show you what great and beneficent changes Christianity has wrought in family and social life, and what evidence is thus furnished of its being a stream from the fountain of Divine love. IV. I proceed now to show HOW HAS THE AND MORAL LIFE. There has been high intellectual culture without Christianity. In pagan Greece and Rome, as we have seen, it reached a lofty eminence. But neither the ancient religions, nor any philosophic teaching, nor any literary culture, could so transform the heart as to ennoble the moral life of society. The ancient religions did not even attempt this. When morality was taught, it was the philosophers who stepped forward and not the priest. The old mythologies were demoralizing. The gods were represented as fighting with one another, and goddesses as engaging in intrigues; and thus the conscience of the people who believed in this was debauched. But what have been the intellectual and moral fruits of the gospel? Christ came not only to free men from guilt, but from corruption. It is the religious teaching of Christianity which gives power to its moral teaching. As the natural sun not only gives us light but heat to quicken life, so from Christ, the Sun of Righteousness, come those Divine rays which vitalize while they enlighten. And if we turn to the New Hebrides, we find the evidence to the regenerating power of Christianity equally striking. Take Aneityum, one of the group. In 1848 this was its condition, according to the Rev. J. G. Paten, the devoted missionary who has long laboured, and is still labouring, there: “ Every widow was strangled to death the moment her husband died; infanticide was common; and children destroyed their parents when long sick or aged. Neighbouring tribes were often at war with each other; and all the killed were feasted on by the conquerors.” But now the whole population of this island, then 3,500, has been led to embrace Christianity. “ Heathen practices have been abolished; churches built; family worship established; and the Sabbath has become a day of rest.” And they have sent 150 of their best and ablest men and women as teachers to the other islands. They have paid £1,400 for printing the Bible, and will contribute £200 this year (1885) for the support of the gospel. I should like to have been able to deal more fully with the influence of Christianity on the believer in all his varied circumstances; but I have drawn so long on your attention that I must close. (A. Oliver, B. A.) A fair test When I was in Rome a priest came to one of my meetings and asked me what authority I had to preach. I said, “ Two horses ran a race on your Corso. One had a grand pedigree, but he was lame in three legs and could not stand on the other. The second horse had no pedigree, but quickly ran over the course. Which should have the prize? Can you show thieves made honest, drunkards sober? Come to my tabernacle and I can show you hundreds. These are my certificates.” The people cheered vociferously, and the priest, a notorious profligate, beat a retreat. (C. H.Spurgeon.) Personal effects of Christianity and Atheism contrasted A youth who had been carefully brought up in the fear of God, and had been a Sunday-school teacher, and a frequent speaker in small meetings, went to college to study for the ministry. There he was led to become a Freethinker. It took a good while to do, but in course of time he did not even believe in a God. In this way he lived about a year, hiding the truth from friends as well as he could. One day, in the class-room, there came a thought into his mind which he could not get rid of. “ What kind of man are you now as compared with what you were when a Christian?” Reason and conscience combined m answering: “ A worse man every way. As a Christian you were a better man to your parents and to others; you lived a worthier, nobler, and more unselfish life; your unbelief has lowered you in every respect: what produces the best life must be the right creed.” The Father, whose loving heart had thus spoken to him, was not far away, speedily received him back as a wanderer made welcome, and in due time sent him out to preach the faith he had once denied. (A. Craig.) Fruits of Godliness Faith in Jesus is the invisible root of religion concealed within the soul; but deeds of holy duty are the glorious outgrowth of stalwart trunk, and branches broad, and luxurious masses of foliage lifted into the airs of heaven. And amid these goodly boughs are found the fruits of godliness, shining--as quaint Andrew Marvell said of the Bermuda oranges-- “ Like golden lamps in a deep green night.” Aim immediately at fruits. (Dr. Cuyler.) The constant and legitimate result is the test of every doctrine The general principle laid down here is, that the truth of a doctrine, a system of doctrine, is to be tested by the life and conduct of its professors. Stated thus broadly, the rule commends itself at once to the common sense of men, partly in consequence of the truth contained in it, and partly from its being mistaken for a statement that the effect of a practical doctrine upon the life of its professor is the true test of the hold which that doctrine has upon his mind. This is something quite different from the truth or falsehood of the doctrine in itself. A life which would be conclusive as to a man’ s sincerity might be no proof at all of his doctrinal soundness. I. THESE TWO , THEN, MUST BE KEPT from one another in the inquiry suggested by the text, viz., how the rule that good conduct is evidence of sound doctrine must be understood when we come to apply it to the different cases in which, as we shall see presently, we need great caution in its application. 1. All the difficulties that meet us are contained in this one, viz., that men who hold sound doctrines lead bad lives, and men who hold unsound doctrines lead good lives. This is a useless weapon in controversies between conflicting creeds, because there never has been a religious party without discreditable adherents. Its tendency is, not to establish any doctrine as superior to any other, but to produce an indifference to doctrine altogether. It tends also to engender the belief that it is no matter what any one believes if iris life be such as to call for no unfavourable comment. 2. Time enough to refute this view when people apply it to other matters as well as to religion. Conventionalisms in society, &c. 3. The question is not as to the value of the fruit or its desirableness; but as to its use in enabling us to judge of the doctrine from which it springs. For this we must take into consideration something more than the mere fact of its being good when presented to us for examination. 4. Our Lord assumes, in those who were to apply the test, a knowledge of the natural productions of trees, i.e., a knowledge of the tendency of particular doctrines, as a necessary qualification for judging how far practice, presented in connection with them, may be regarded as attesting their truth. 5. The fruit by which we may judge of a tree must be its legitimate fruit and its habitual, or average, fruit. II. Bearing this in mind, let us APPLY THE RULE OF THE TEXT TO SOME OF THOSE CASES IN WHICH WE MIGHT BE LED ASTRAY BY A WANT OF CAUTION. 1. There are trees artificially covered, for an occasion, with fruits by which, obviously, the tree could not be “ known.” A fir-tree, adorned for an occasion with oranges, could assuredly not be known by them. Its power of producing oranges could not be known. So, impulsive and exceptional acts of kindness and benevolence on the part of persons without any definite belief at all furnish so tests as to the practical creed of those by whom they are performed, from the circumstance that they are impulsive and exceptional. 2. When conduct, undeniably good, is found constantly to attend upon the holding of doctrines which legitimately should issue in what was positively bad, or in nothing practical whatever, we are in danger of accepting the doctrines on beholding the fruit. This is as though a mountain-ash had been engrafted with a cutting of a pear-tree, and a person, from seeing the fruit, and knowing that it grew upon a particular stock in the present instance, should thence conclude that in all cases the same stock might be expected to bear the same fruit, and that the surest way to produce an abundance of pears would be to secure the multiplication of mountain-ash trees! In such cases, though the fruit is habitual, it is not legitimate. 3. A third kind of conduct which is constantly appealed to as attesting the truth of doctrine is that which may be likened to fruit produced by means of unusually stimulating culture, and in very high temperature. Extraordinary means have been used, and an extraordinary produce is the result; and its worthlessness as a test is the fact that it is extraordinary. III. The rule remains thus: That WHEN CONDUCT, FROM HELD, IS GOOD-- GOOD--THAT IS TRUTH; that where there is genuine piety, self-denial, humility, where what the New Testament calls the “ fruits of the Spirit” are found in place, in proportion, in constancy, the doctrines of which they are the lawful consequences are true. 1. To this it will at once be said that the spirit of the New Testament teaching has manifested itself in the lives of men whose creeds were widely different, and even avowedly antagonistic. True; but between a man’ s “ creed” in the sense of the document of his Church or sect and his “ creed” in the sense of his working belief there is often a wide difference. If the lives of many men are worse than their pure creed, the lives of others may be better than their corrupt one. In the creed which produces a life like that sketched out in the New Testament there is undoubtedly some of the essential truth of the New Testament doctrine; and it is from this that the practice springs. 2. There are many whose hearts are better than their heads; who will do what is right, while they maintain what is wrong; or who will hold at the same time two doctrines subversive of one another, without being aware of it. They live by truth while they profess with it a great deal of falsehood. 3. It is true, then, that men of different religious professions will produce the genuine fruits of righteousness by which the trees may be “ known.” But these are not the produce of the different creeds; but of such parts of each of them as agreed in being essential truth. They are the fruits of gardens stocked very differently--some of them full of tempting and poisonous shrubs, through which few could pass without harm--but still the fruits of the same tree in each garden. In a garden bad on the whole, good fruit may be found, and it may be spoken of as the fruit of that garden. In a garden good on the whole, evil fruit may be pointed out; but “ a good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them; of thorns men do not gather figs, nor of a bramble-bush gather they grapes.” Conclusion: For the most part men will apply the test of the text inconsiderately, and decide for or against doctrines on insufficient grounds. They will be won to a creed, or turned away from it, by the exceptional conduct of its professors. Much is it to be wished that men had sufficient grounds for their belief, and had them capable of ready production; but a very little experience will dispel any large expectations we may have formed in this direction. And, therefore, so long as men will judge of doctrines by individual instances among their professors, and the more men do this, the more important is the conduct of each individual Christian. (J. C.Coglilan, D. D.) Christians known by their fruits The religion of Jesus Christ is one of deeds, not words; a life of action, not of dreaming. If we would know whether we are being led by the Holy Spirit, we must see if we are bringing forth fruits of the Spirit. If we would discover if the works of a clock are right, we look at the hands. So, by our words and deeds, we shall show whether our hearts are right with God. A religion of the lips is worth nothing. It is easy enough to assume the character and manner of a Christian, but to live the Christian life is not so easy. A man can make a sham diamond in a very short time, but the real gem must lie for ages in the earth before it can sparkle with perfect purity. We have far too many of these quickly-made Christians amongst us, who have never brought forth fruits meet for repentance, nor gone through the fire of trial, and sorrow, and self-sacrifice. Do not trust to feelings or words in yourselves or others, but look at your life; a real and a false diamond are very much alike, and yet there is all the difference in the world in their value. Let us look into our lives very closely, and see whether we are mistaking outward form for true religion, words and professions for holiness, leaves for fruit. What are some of the fruits which God looks for in the life of a Christian? 1. At the head of all we must place love. Really trying to do God’ s will; showing kindness to brethren; trying to lead others to God. A Christian cannot be selfish. 2. Another fruit for which God looks in a Christian’ s life is humility. Every act and word of Christ’ s earthly life teaches this. The longer we go to His school, and the more we know of the way of godliness, the humbler we become. 3. Another fruit God expects to find in the lives of His people is forgetfulness of self. (H. J. Wilmot-Buxton, M. A.) The true test The most important thing to know is one’ s self. No one, however, can know his own character aright without first making himself acquainted with that of God. It is in His light that we see light clearly. What a miserable thing for a man to know how to make money, and make it too--to know science so well that he is familiar with the secrets of nature, can measure the distance of a star, and follow a wandering comet on its fiery track--to know statesmanship so well that his country, in a crisis of her affairs, might call him to the helm, as before all others the pilot that could weather the storm--and yet not to know whether he is at peace with God; whether, should he die to-night, he is saved or lost, is going to heaven or to hell! I. IT IS TO OUR REAL STATE AND . Who has any difficulty in settling whether it is day or night? whether he enjoys sound health or pines on a bed of sickness? whether he is a free man or a slave? No man could mistake a Briton sitting under the tree of liberty which was planted by the hands of our fathers and watered with their blood for the negro who stands up weeping in the auction-mart, to be sold with his master’ s cattle, or crouches in the rice-swamp, bleeding under his master’ s lash. Degraded by a system that curses both man and master, the black man may be content to eat the bread and wear the brand of bondage. Still he, as much as we do, knows the difference between fetters and freedom; he feels that he is a slave, and I feel that I am free. Even so may we know whether we belong to the class of saints or to that of sinners; for sin is darkness, sickness, bondage. II. OUR IS NOT ALWAYS A TEST OF OUR STATE. 1. It may be a test in certain circumstances. Look, e.g., at two men on parade. They wear the same dress and arms; and both, the result of drill and discipline, have acquired such a martial air that you cannot tell which is the hero and which the coward. But change the scene. Leave the parade-ground for the field of battle; and when, as bugles sound the charge, I see, through clouds of smoke and amid the clash of arms, the sword of one flashing, and his plume dancing in the very front of the fight, while his comrade, pale and paralyzed with fear, is only borne forward in the tumult like a seaweed on the rushing billow--how easy now to tell beneath whose martial dress there beats a soldier’ s heart! So, though the profession does net prove the possession of religion in a time of peace, show me a man, like the soldier following his colours into the thick of battle, who holds fast the profession of his faith in the face of obloquy, of persecution, of death itself, and there is little room to doubt that his piety is genuine--that he has the root of the matter in him. 2. The profession of religion is not a test of the reality of religion in our times. Like flowers which close their leaves whenever it rains, or birds that seek shelter and their nests when storms rise, there are Christians so timid by natural constitution, that they shrink from scorn, and could as soon face a battery of cannon as the jeers and laughter of the ungodly. Granting this, still it is true that, where there is no profession of serious religion, we have little reason to expect its reality. Perhaps there never was a time when the mere profession of religion was a less satisfactory test of its reality than at present. There have been dark and evil days, and these not long gone, when religion was, if I may so express myself, at a discount: piety was not fashionable: profane swearing and deep drinking were the accomplishments of a gentleman; the man who assembled his household for prayer was accounted a hypocrite, the woman who did so a fool: missionary societies were repudiated by the courts of the Church, and eyed with suspicion by the officers of the Crown; Robert Haldane was denied an opportunity of consecrating his fortune to the cause of Christ in India; Carey and Marshman, while seeking to convert the Hindoos, were driven from the British territories, and had to seek protection from a foreign Power; and such as formed missionary associations launched them on society with the anxieties and prayers of her who, cradling her infant in an ark of bulrushes, committed him to the waters of the Nile and the providence of her God. Power, rank, fashion, science, literature, and mammon were all arrayed in arms against everything that appeared in the form and breathed the spirit of a devoted piety. Thank God, it is not so now I He has touched the heart of the Egyptian, and she has adopted the outcast as her son. From holes and caves of the earth, religion has found her way into palaces and the mansions of the great and noble. Science has become a priestess at her altar. Literature has courted her alliance. Infidelity assumes even a Christian-like disguise. Iniquity, as ashamed, is made to hide her face. The tide has turned; and those who now make a profession of zealous and active piety find themselves no longer opposed to the stream and spirit of the age. This is a subject of gratitude. Yet it suggests caution in judging of ourselves; and warns us to take care, since a profession of religion is rather fashionable than otherwise, that in making it we are not the creatures of fashion, but new creatures in Jesus Christ. Hence the necessity for trying ourselves by such a test as ray text suggests. The tree is known, not by its leaves, nor we by our professions; not by its blossoms, nor we by the promises of which they are lovely images; but by its fruit, and we by those things which the fruit represents--our hearts and habits, our true life and character. “ The tree is known by its fruits; moreover, every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down and cast into the fire.” III. THE TRUE OF OUR STATE IS TO BE FOUND IN OUR HEART AND HABITS. We have often sat in judgment on others; it is of more consequence that we form a right estimate of ourselves. In attempting to form a correct estimate of our own state and character--in the words of the Greek sage, to know ourselves--let us bring to this solemn task all the care and the conscientiousness with which a jury weigh the evidence in a case of life and death. They return from their room to the court to give in a verdict, amid breathless silence, which sends him whom they left pale and trembling at the bar to liberty or to the gallows; yet, sacred as human life is, on our judgment here hangs a more momentous issue. A mistake there may send a man to the scaffold, but one here to perdition; that involves the life of the body, this of the immortal soul. Judges sometimes find it difficult to know how to shape their charge, and juries how to shape their verdicts--the evidence is conflicting--not clear either way. The case is obscure,perplexing; perhaps a bloody mystery, from which no hand but God’ s can raise the veil. But light and darkness, life and death, are not more unlike than the heart and habits of believers, on the one hand, and those of unbelievers, on the other; and with such a catalogue of the works of the flesh and the fruits of the Spirit as Paul has given us, how can it be difficult for a man to settle under which of these two classes his are to be ranked--with which they most closely correspond? A man may fancy himself possessed of talents which he has not, and a woman of beauty which she has not. But with all our strong bias to form a favourable and flattering opinion of ourselves, each “ to think more highly of himself than he ought to think,” it seems as impossible for a man who is an adulterer, a fornicator, unclean, a drunkard, whose bosom burns with unholy and hateful passions, to imagine himself virtuous, as to mistake night for day, a bloated, fetid corpse for one in the bloom and rosy beauty of her youth. It is often only by a careful application of delicate tests that the chemist discovers a deadly poison or a precious metal; but how easy is it by a few simple questions to bring out our real character! Have you suffered a heavy wrong, for example, at the hands of another? You remember it. But where? Is it at the throne of grace, and to pray with Him whose blood fell alike on the head of foe and friend, “ Father, forgive them, they know not what they do” ? Again, when you think of perishing souls, is yours the spirit of Cain or of Christ? Can you no more stand by with folded hands to see sinners perishing than men drowning? Are you moved by such generous impulse as draws the hurrying crowd to the pool where one is sinking, and moves some brave man, at the jeopardy of life, to leap in and pluck him from the jaws of death? There is no better evidence that we have received the nature as well as the name of Christ than an anxious wish to save lost souls, and a sympathy with the joy of angels over every sinner that is converted. (T. Guthrie, D. D.) The testing time “ The tree is known by his fruit.” That is a fact with which we are all familiar. To stock the garden with fruit-trees, I repair to the nursery, but not in spring, when all are robed alike in green, nor in summer, when the bad equally with the best are covered with a flush of blossoms: it is when the corn turns yellow, and sheaves stand in the stubble-fields, and fair blossoms are gone, and withered leaves sail through the air and strew the ground--it is in autumn I go to select the trees, judging them by their fruit. And as certainly--may I not say as easily?--as the tree is known by his fruit, may we know our spiritual state and character, if we will only be honest, nor act like the merchant who, suspecting his affairs to be verging on bankruptcy, shuts his eyes to the danger, takes no stock, and strikes no balance. Or take, for another example, two houses that stand on the banks of the same stream. Under a cloudless sky, amid the calm of the glen in a summer day, with no sound falling on the ear but the bleatings of the flock, the baying of a sheep-dog, the muffled sound of a distant waterfall, the gentle murmur of the shallow waters over their pebbly bed, each house in its smiling garden offers, to one weary of the din and dust of cities, an equally pleasant and, to appearance, an equally secure retreat. But let the weather change; and after brewing for hours, from out the darkness that has deepened into an ominous and frightful gloom let the storm burst! Suddenly, followed by a crash like that of falling skies, a stream of lightning, dazzling the eye, glares out; and now the war of elements begins. Peal rolls on peal; flash follows flash; and to the roar of incessant thunders is added the rush of a deluge, and the hoarse voices of a hundred streams that leap foaming from hill and rock down into the bed of the river. Red, rolling, swelling, it bursts its dykes, overflows all its banks, and, attacking the foundations of both houses, breaches the walls of one, and at length tumbles the whole fabric, all of a heap, into the roaring flood; and while the houseless family that had fled from its rocking walls gather, shivering on a neighbouring height to see, where once stood their pleasant home, only the rush and hear only the roar of waters--how easy, as we look on the other, erect and defiant in this widespread sea, to know that the one had been built on sand, but the other founded on a rock. (T. Guthrie, D. D.) The fruits of heathenism and of Christianity The intellect of Greece was keen, her poetry splendid, her art unrivalled, her eloquence overwhelming; and yet when the poor worn Jew of Tarsus trod the streets of Athens, a hunted, persecuted man--when his bent frame and feeble steps passed along her avenues of noble sculpture; when his strange words were jeered at by philosophers under the shadow of the Acropolis; when the stoic mocked at the message of Jesus and the resurrection--who could have believed that the might and glory of the future was with the poor Jew, not with these philosophic and gifted Athenians? Who would have guessed that, in spite of her aegis, and flaming helm, and threatening spear, the awful Pallas of the Acropolis should be forced to resign her Parthenon to the humble Virgin of Nazareth? Not many years afterwards, that same suffering missionary who had been ridiculed in Athens was dragged a prisoner to Rome. At that time her Caesar seemed omnipotent, her iron arms unconquerable. And Rome did not yield without a desperate struggle. She strove to crush and extirpate this “ execrable superstition” (as her great writers called Christianity)with sword and flame; she made Christianity a treason; she made her Coliseum swim with the massacre of its martyrs. Yet it was all in vain! The worshippers of the Capitol succumbed before the worshippers in the Catacombs. The thirty legions, the white-robed senators, the ivory sceptre, the curule chair, were all defeated by the Cross, which was the vilest emblem of a slave’ s torture; and the greatest of earthly empires, with her dominion yet unimpaired, embraced the gospel preached by the unlettered peasants of the race which she most despised. Why was it? It was because a tree is known by its fruits, and every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down and cast into the fire. The fruits of heathendom had been selfishness, and cruelty, and corruption; the fruits of Christianity were love, joy, peace, longsuffering, temperance, goodness, faith, meekness, charity, and the leaves of that tree were for the healing of the nations. (Archdeacon Farrar.) Reasons for watching our actions The whole value of our deeds depends upon the state of heart out of which they come. As our hearts are, so are our deeds. 1. One reason, then, why we ought to be careful to notice our actions is, because they help us to read ourselves. We may have succeeded in persuading ourselves that we are very kindly and charitably disposed towards others; many a man goes on fancying this to be the case, year after year, simply trusting to his own feeling that he is so. But now, let him just try himself by this simple practical test: let him ask himself, What kind and charitable actions have I performed within the last day, or week, or month? and if, in putting this question to himself, he finds that, with all his warmth and kindness of heart, he has done nothing in the way of helping his poor and distressed neighbours, he must confess that he is very much mistaken in the estimate which he has hitherto formed of himself. 2. Not only do our actions show us exactly what we are, but they also materially contribute to make us what we are; over and above the impression which they receive from the heart which originates them, they themselves in turn react upon the heart. Take, e.g., the case of a boy who feels very much tempted to take something that does not belong to him. No doubt the very indulgence in such a thought is highly dishonest in itself; still, there is something in the very act of stealing, when he at last comes to it, that puts him in a worse state than he was in before. He has now actually committed himself to what he might still have drawn back from only a few minutes since; he has set his seal to what was before only melted wax, already softened indeed, and quite fitted to receive the impression, still not moulded as yet into any defined and permanent shape. 3. A third and last reason why we must attend carefully to the deeds which proceed from our hearts, as well as to our hearts themselves, is, that our deeds will form the standard by which we shall all be judged at the last day Revelation 20:11-12; 2 Corinthians 5:10). What the body is to the soul, so are our deeds to the heart out of which they spring; our deeds are the bodies in which our hearts and desires show themselves and clothe themselves. And as our bodies form a real part of ourselves, so do our actions; as our bodies obey the direction of our souls, so do our actions; as our bodies will rise again at the last day, so our actions, too, will rise again along with them, and will be judged along with them. (Henry Harris, B. D.) “ Every tree is known by his own fruit” I. We observe of a tree, THAT WHAT IT IS BY NATURE IT WILL, IF LEFT TO ITSELF, EVER REMAIN. The thorn will continue a thorn, the bramble-bush will ever be a bramble-bush. If you go and seek for fruit on either, you will be disappointed, and the prickly branches may wound your hands. No mere pruning of the tree or fertilizing of the soil around its roots will alter its nature. II. Having thus seen that the natural man, when left to himself, must ever continue unproductive in good works pleasing and acceptable to God, LET US NOW OBSERVE THE WORK OF GRACE IN THE HEART UPON , AND CAUSING OF LIFE. “ Every tree is known by his own fruit.” The wild vine, the wild olive, the wild apple, bear each a semblance of fruit. So in the natural man there may be a semblance of good works. Moral virtues, amiable qualities, a noble disposition, adorn the character of many an unrenewed nature, spring from many an unconverted heart. Moral excellencies and Christian graces often so nearly resemble each other, that they are confounded together in the estimation of man, but never in the judgment of God. Our Saviour said of the Pharisees, who rested upon an outward appearance of holiness,” Every plant which My heavenly Father hath not planted shall be rooted up.” When a bud or graft has been made upon a wild tree, all which springs from that scion resembles the parent stem from which it was taken. The rose will have the same colour, fragrance, and shape; the apple will have the same taste and form. The beauty of the flower and the sweetness of the fruit are owing, not to the nature of the stock, but to the character of the graft made upon it. And yet the roots and stem of the wild tree are in a measure necessary and conducive to the fruitfulness of the graft. The sap, in being conveyed through a new branch, undergoes such a change, that it is made to produce fragrant and beautiful flowers or fine and luscious fruit. So with the converted man who has been united by living faith to Jesus: by union to his Saviour his moral virtues become Christian graces. There is the same brain, the same heart, in their material properties, but all the thoughts, feelings, and desires which they originate flow through a renewed nature, and become changed in principle and action. Even the very passions which expended themselves in vice and lust, now flowing through the pure channel of a sanctified mind and will, breathe the fragrance and assume the loveliness of heaven-born virtues. In gardening, we can perceive and understand how the process of grafting is carried on. The bud or shoot is made so to adhere to the stock on which it is placed, that it unites to the stem, and grows into it and with it; the flow of the sap passes on unchecked, and produces growth and fertility to the scion. It is by the closeness of the union, and the assimilation of the parts, that life is maintained, and vegetation proceeds. In spiritual things, we know that it is by our union to Christ that the life of faith and the fruits of righteousness are produced, through the agency of the Holy Spirit. The practical application of our subject leads to the personal inquiry, “ What fruit do I bear?” The vitality of our spiritual life depends upon our union with Christ. (S. Charlesworth, M. A.) The fruits of Christianity Let us not be guilty of the rashness that ascribes all the good of earth to the Christian philosophy. There are those who, in a zeal without knowledge, will declare all our arts and sciences, our compass, telegraph, and steam-engine, to have come to the world through the evangelical religion. But all such generalities damage the cause they are designed to support. The youth drilled in this kind of declamation subsequently find that the Greek and Roman worlds were wonderful in science, art, literature, law, and inventions before our era began; that they had grand things which we boastful ones of the nineteenth century cannot equal. Four thousand years before Christ came, God the Father declared the world to be “ very good,” and, having such a Creator, the goodness poured into man at his creation burst forth from the soul all along, from Adam to Socrates. We need not take the garlands from the Father to bestow them upon the Son. The world of God was good, the world of Christ only better. The first great fruit of the Christian tree is certainly the better path of salvation it brought. It brought no wholly new method; but it perfected the ideas that lay only in outline. The idea of sacrifice can never go beyond the death of Christ. After God came with His Lamb there was no more need of the flocks and herds of a thousand hills. And after Christ taught His ethics there was room for nothing more; His hopes, His penitence, His virtue, His love, were all the zenith of those moral heights. Let us pass by these fruits and go to fields less familiar to all our thoughts. It is a great injustice to Christianity if one views it only as being an escape from hell hereafter to a heaven also beyond. The real truth is, Christ has blended Himself with all the annals of Christian lands, and He has given new colour to all the days of the great era that wears His name. As the setting sun shining through a watery air makes all things--fence, hut, log, forest, and field--to be gold like himself, so Christ blends with the rich and the humble details of society, and sheds His heavenly blush upon the great pageant of humanity marching beneath. If we dare not say Christianity invented the steamboat and the railroad, we may say that it reshaped literature and all the arts, and has deeply affected law and the whole moral aspect of civilization. There is an art which Christianity created almost wholly, asking little of outside aid. Music is that peculiar child. The long-continued vision of heaven, the struggle of the tones of voice and of instrument to find something worthy of the deep feelings of religion, resulted at last in those mighty chants that formed the mountain-springs of our musical Nile. There could have been no music had not depths of feeling come to man. The men who went up to the pagan temples went with no such love, with no sorrow of repentance, with no exultant joy. It was necessary for Jesus Christ to come along and transfer religion from the form to the spirit, and from an “ airy nothingness” to a love stronger than life, before hymns like those of Luther, and Wesley, and Watts could break from the heart. The doctrine of repentance must live in the world awhile before we can have a “ Miserere,” and the exultant hope of the Christian must come before the mind can invent a “ Gloria.” There could be no music until the soul had become full. Therefore, when John drew his picture of heaven, when Magdalen shed her tears, when Christ died on the cross, when the Christian martyrs began to die for their faith, when Paul astonished the world with his self-denial and heroism, when the religion of Jesus began to picture the immortality of man, then the foundation of music began to be laid, wide, and massive, and deep. Thus you may glance over all the arts, and find that the great ideas and emotions of the new religion affected them all--the paintings of Raphael and Angelo, and the architecture of all the great middle centuries, great in the construction of temples. Christianity helped to make Angelo and Raphael by furnishing them with grand themes. As no lips can be eloquent unless they are speaking in the name of a great truth, so no painter can paint unless some one brings him a great subject. Heaven and hell made the poet Dante; Christianity made Beatrice; paradise made John Milton; the mother of our Lord and the last judgment made Angelo. It is the great theme that makes the orator, the painter, the poet. (David Swing.) Luke 6:45A good man out of the good treasure of his heart Religion seated in the heart 1. Christ referred true religion to the heart as the seat of its vitality. 2. Nor is it in essence alone that religion is thus intensely spiritual and inward; religious acts, to have reality and value, must proceed from the heart, and fairly represent its spiritual frames. 3. What, then, is this good treasure of the heart? True religion is an inward principle of holy living, through consecration to a holy God. (J. P.Thompson.) Prepared heart treasures Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh; and our best abundance of the heart must be slowly and in quietness prepared. The cattle, when they rest, are yet working to prepare from the grass that sweetest and most wholesome of beverages--milk. So must we prepare the abundance of the heart. If the milk of our word is to flow from us nourishingly, we must turn the common things of daily life--the grass--by slow and quiet processes, into sweet wisdom. In retired, meditative hours the digesting and secreting powers of the spirit act; and thus ourselves are nourished, and we store nourishment for others. (T. T. Lynch.) Words reveal hearts Our words are the commentaries on our wills; for when we speak we make, as it were, a dissection of our own hearts, and read an anatomy-lecture upon ourselves. Our wanton talk discovers a stew in our heart; when our words are swords, our hearts are a slaughter-house; when we bear false witness, that is the mint; when we worship Mammon, that is the temple. The heart is the shop and workhouse of all evil Proverbs 4:23-24; Matthew 15:19). (A. Farindon.) The rising of the sun is known by the shining beams; the fire is known by its burning; the life of the body is known by its moving: even so certainly is the presence of God’ s Spirit known by the shining light of a holy conversation; even so the purging fire of grace is known by the burning zeal against sin, and a fervent desire to keep God’ s commandments; even so, certainly, the life and liveliness of faith is known by the good motives of the heart, by the bestirring of all the powers, both of the soul and body, to de whatsoever God wills us to be doing, as soon as we once know He would have us do it. He that hath this evidence hath a bulwark against despair, and may dare the devil to his face; he that bath this hath the broad seal of eternal life, and such a man shall live for ever (Acts 9:6; 1 John 2:3). (J. Mede.) Luke 6:46 And why call ye Me Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say?--Religion, the doing of God’ s will I. In the first place, LET US BE WARNED AGAINST MAKING OUR A MATTER MERELY OF OPINION. Said William Law to John Wesley, “ The bead can as easily amuse itself with a living and justifying faith in the blood of Jesus, as with any other notion.” It is even so. A truer word, pointed in warning against a greater peril, was never uttered. The mistake in question is a very subtle one, but very serious, and more common than, perhaps, we think. As thus of the doctrines, so also of the duties of our religion. These duties may be objects merely of belief, arranged in well-ordered systems, and acknowledged to be the proper code of life, without being actually reduced to practice. II. In the second place, LET US BE WARNED AGAINST MAKING OUR A MATTER MERELY OF FEELING. This piety of moods and feelings, which goes by spasms, and not by the even pulses of a robust life, is not the sort of piety we need, my hearers. It dishonours our Master, who has something larger to do for us than simply to make us happy in our religion. It wrongs our own souls, which ought to be looking higher than their own enjoyment. III. Finally, LET US BE MOVED TO MAKE OUR A MATTER OF THE LIFE; FINDING THE TEST AND MEASURE OF OUR , NEITHER IN WHAT WE BELIEVE, NOR IN WHAT WE FEEL, BUT IN WHAT WE ARE, AS ITSELF IN WHAT WE DO. Not that we counsel the disparagement of Christian doctrine. There must be religious opinions, more or less clearly defined, conditioning the religious life; and the more clearly defined, the better. And the nearer we come to the teachings of Scripture, as interpreted by the Christian consciousness of the successive generations of believers; the nearer we come to those grand settlements of doctrine effected by the great expounders of doctrine, as Athanasius, Augustine, Luther, Calvin, and Edwards, the nearer we shall come to the hidings of Christian power. Neither would we disparage religious feeling. The new life has its beginning in feeling; while to be past feeling is the surest mark of reprobation. It is impossible for a man to be convinced of sin by the Spirit of God without being profoundly agitated. (R. D.Hitchcock, D. D.) Obedience--not profession I. WHY IS DOING THE WILL OF GOD LIKE UPON A ROCK? 1. Doing is the way to being. God’ s doing flows from His being; His work is the outflow of His nature. He radiates outwards into all the departments of the universe from a settled centre; and because He is so gloriously good, all His works are gloriously good. The work derives its character from the being--the unchangeable being or nature of God. But there is a vast immeasurable distance between us and God; and the grand question is, How a nature so disordered, so miserably poor in knowledge, so shallow in thought and conviction, so low in aspiration, so uncertain in the use of its freedom, prostituting it so often to low ends, and so seldom using it for our emancipation from evil; how is such a nature as ours to find its way up to God till it shall have attained to His settled goodness and unchangeable excellence? The answer is, By exercising ourselves in those rules of goodness which Christ has given us as Divine. We must do in order to be. You must learn how to love your enemy, how to pray for them that despitefully use you. For there can be no true and perfect love in a nature that harbours hatred even towards an enemy. Self-denial and self-sacrifice, constraint and cross-bearing, are painful mow, because we are only learning; but when we have left school, and our nature has reached the standard for the attainment of which it has been under discipline, to love God and all creatures will involve no effort or constraint or painful cross-bearing; for love in us will be as spontaneous as it is in God: we shall have become a law unto ourselves, and we shall instinctively, and of our own free impulse, choose the good, the right, and the pure. 2. Doing is the way to knowing. To know physical facts is the way to gain material power; to know the hidden laws that govern nature is to become its lord and master, able, as with a magician’ s wand, to call forth her inexhaustible resources for the service and advantage of man. To know human nature in its prejudices and passions is necessary to the statesmen who would make laws that are to be beneficial to our empire. And Christ says, if you will do the will of God, you shall know what doctrine is Divine and what is not. Such knowledge--growing out of a hallowed experience--plants our feet immovably upon the Rock of certainty, and not all thestorms of opinion and doubt will be able to dislodge us. 3. Doing is the way to bless others. Even when a man is not making his fellow-man the object of his thought or deed--when he is not directly fulfilling some social duty, but while he is more specially engaged in nourishing his own interior manhood, strengthening his own attachment to what is true, and pure, and brave--he is nevertheless blessing others. For such a man creates unconsciously a moral atmosphere around him which his neighbours breathe he loads the air with a sacred perfume; an influence goes forth from him, like heat from fire, which insensibly leavens the minds of others. But when such a man comes into contact with his fellows in the relations of life--in business, in friendship, and in religion--he strengthens and perpetuates his unconscious influence. He does the will of God; he does to others as he would they should do unto him. He upholds the laws of justice and generosity against injustice and meanness. II. HEARING BUT NOT DOING IS LIKE ON THE SAND. 1. It issues in a false self-deceptive life. “ Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Thy name? and in Thy name have cast out devils? and in Thy name done many wonderful works?” “ Then will I profess unto them, I never knew you.” One of the most portentous facts in the constitution of our nature is--the power we have of self-deception. And yet when we come to consider, there is nothing capricious or malignant in it. It begins in conscious unfaithfulness. We hear the Word of God, but knowingly neglect to do it. We do not obey, but we must come to terms with the conscience. 2. Hearers and not doers will be convicted of egregious folly. “ I will liken him unto the foolish man.” Disobedience to known duty is not only a violation of the conscience, which is guilt; it is also a violation of the reason, which is folly. Reason says it is folly to choose the evil and reject the good. No man would prefer the delusions of madness to the realities of a healthy mind. Reason says it is folly to purchase the present at the cost of the future. But this is what men are doing who are only hearers. For if our life-house should fall, great will be the fall of it. A mighty catastrophe is the fall of a soul! (C. Short, M. A.) The sin, folly, and danger of men’ s calling Christ their Lord, and not yielding obedience to His laws; or the sinfulness and hazard of a profession of religion, without a correspondent practice Wherein we have-- 1. A concession. He grants they made a fair profession; they called Him Lord, their Lord. 2. A charge. He charges them with nothing like this in their practice. Though they called Him their Lord, they carried not themselves at all as His subjects and servants. 3. An expostulation. He puts them to consider the inconsistency of these things, and the unaccountableness of yoking together a profession and a practice that destroyed one another. Why will ye plead the relation and yet throw off the duty of the relation? “ If ye call Me your Lord, why do ye not what I say or bid you? If you will not do what I say or bid you, why do ye call Me your Lord?” Two doctrines are deducible from the text thus explained. I. There are who call Christ their Lord, owning His authority over them, and looking for benefit by Him, who yet make not conscience of doing the things which He as a Lord says to them, and requires of them. In discoursing this doctrine I shall-- I. Consider men’ s calling Christ their Lord. II. Consider their not doing the things which He says, notwithstanding of their calling Him their Lord. III. Show how it comes to pass that people call Christ Lord, and their Lord, and yet make not conscience of doing what He says. IV. Apply the doctrine. I. I will consider MEN’ S CALLING CHRIST THEIR LORD. Under this head, I will show-- 1. How men call Christ their Lord. 2. What they do call Christ, that call Him their Lord. 3. What is the import of their calling Him Lord. 1. I will show how men call Christ their Lord. Men call Him their Lord-- (1) Professing Christianity. Christians is the name of Christ’ s disciples who owned Him for their Lord and Master--“ The disciples were called Christians first at Antioch” (Acts 11:26). “ One is your Master, even Christ” (Matthew 23:10). Nay, at that rate ye take the name, and throw off the thing. (2) Being baptized in His name (Matthew 28:19). They are thereby externally marked for His subjects and servants, and renounce the devil, the world, and the flesh. (3) Praying unto Him, or to God in His name (Acts 7:59; Daniel 9:17). (4) Attending the assemblies of His people to hear His word (Ezekiel 23:31). (5) Consenting personally to the covenant (Isaiah 44:5). Thereby theysay, He is, and shall be for ever their Lord, and that they shall be His only, wholly, and for ever. (6) Lastly, Partaking of the sacrament of the Lord’ s supper. The very name of that ordinance bears the partakers to call Him so (1 Corinthians 11:23; 1 Corinthians 11:26). 2. I will show what they do call Christ, that call Him their Lord. (1) They call Him their Lord God; as Thomas did--“ My Lord, and my John 20:28). (2) Their Lord Proprietor, Master, and Owner, however little regard they show to the will of His providence and precepts (Romans 14:9). (3) Their Lord Redeemer (Exodus 20:2), however unsuitably they walk to the redemption purchased by Him. (4) Their Lord Husband, however refractory and disobedient they prove to Jeremiah 3:14). (5) Their Lord King, however rebellious they be--“ The Lord is our Judge, the Lord is our Lawgiver, the Lord is our King, He will save us” Isaiah 33:22). 3. What is the import of their calling Him Lord? Men calling Him so, do in effect own, acknowledge, and profess-- (1) His undoubted authority to command and prescribe duty to them: owning Him as their Lord Husband, King, and God, they cannot deny but He has authority to bind them with laws. (2) The justice and equity of His commands--“ The law is holy; and the commandment holy, and just, and good” (Romans 7:12). (3) Our absolute obligation to obey Him. As the clay is in the hand of the potter, so are we in His. The potsherds of the earth may strive with one another, but shall they strive with their Maker? (4) The strongest ties upon us to be for Him. If He is our Proprietor and Redeemer, are we not bound by all the ties of honour and gratitude to be wholly His? (5) The expectation of happiness from Him. Calling Him our Lord, we expect from Him and by Him the pardon of our sin, the favour of God, and a part in the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 7:21). II. I will consider MEN’ S NOT DOING THE THINGS WHICH HE SAYS, ALL THIS. We may take it up in three things. 1. Christ as a Lord prescribes duty to His subjects. He has not an empty title of lordship and dominion, but is a Lawgiver--“ He is our Lawgiver” Isaiah 33:22). And the law of the ten commands, in their spirituality and extent, is His law, binding by His authority on all that call Him Lord Exodus 20:2-3, &c.). 2. He intimates His will to them as to their duty. He says what He would have them to do. We have His written laws in the Bible, which is God’ s Word to every one into whose hand it comes. 3. Yet men neglect it, and regard it not in their practice. They plead the relation to Him, but make no conscience of the duty of it. (1) They have no due sense of their being absolutely bound up to His will, but fancy themselves to be at some liberty to walk according to their own, as if the government were divided betwixt Christ and themselves Psalms 12:4). They do not feel the tie of the yoke of Christ always upon them, but are like bullocks unaccustomed to the yoke, skipping at ease according to their own pleasure. (2) They frame not their life according to His will. (3) They never set themselves to do all that He says; contrary to what the Psalmist did (Psalms 119:6), who “ had respect unto all God’ s commandments.” (4) They habitually do against what He says, making their own lusts and inclinations their law; like those who said, “ I have loved strangers, and after them will I go” (Jeremiah 2:25) They call him their Lord; but Satan and their lusts are really their lords, to whom they yield their obedience, being captives at their pleasure. (5) They do nothing purely because He says it, else they would endeavour to do all. In what they do, they have other ends than to please Him: they do it to please themselves, for their own profit, pleasure, or safety. III. The third general head is, to SHOW HOW IT COMES TO PASS, TEXT PEOPLE CALL CHRIST LORD, AND THEIR LORD, AND YET MAKE NOT OF DOING WHAT HE SAYS. The springs of this ruining practice, that so prevails, are many: as-- 1. The want of a thorough change in their nature: “ A good tree bringeth not forth corrupt fruit: neither doth a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit “ Luke 6:43-44). (1) Good education and religious company embalms some dead souls; but still they want the principle of the Spirit of life; like those of whom the apostle says (Jude 1:19). (2) The gospel being new to some, makes a reel among their affections; as it did among the stony-ground hearers (Matthew 13:20-21). (3) They get some new light into their heads, but no new life into their hearts. (4) Many get awakening grace, that never get converting grace. 2. Entertaining wrong notions of religion. They form to themselves such notions of religion, as leave them at liberty in the course of their walk. (1) They think that is religion to call Christ Lord in performing duties of worship, praying, &c., and consider not that the substance of religion lies in holy, tender walking (Titus 2:11-12). (2) They think that faith will save them, though it be dead, idle, and inactive; contrary to what the apostle saith: “ What doth it profit, my brethren, though a man say he hath faith, and have not works? can faith save him?” (James 2:14.) “ As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also (Luke 6:26). They do not consider that that faith is not saving faith which is so. 3. Reigning unbelief. Of this our Lord complained: “ Ye will not come to Me, that ye might have life” (John 5:40). 4. Want of consideration (Luke 15:17). 5. The natural enmity of the heart prevailing against conviction Romans 8:7). 6. Unmortified lusts still keeping the rule and dominion over the soul, though Christ has the name of their Lord. Doctrine II. It lies on men’ s consciences before the Lord, to take it home to themselves, to consider and answer it, how they come to call Christ their Lord, and yet not make conscience of doing the things which He as a Lord says to them, and requires of them. In discoursing this doctrine, I shall only show the import of the expostulation in the text, and then conclude with a word of application. I will show the import of this expostulation. It imports-- 1. That Christ is in earnest for our obedience. He is not indifferent what regard we show to what He says as our Lord (Psalms 119:4). (1) The evidence of our belonging to Christ, in a saving relation, lies upon it. “ Ye are My friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you” (John 15:14). (2) The evidence of your right to heaven lies on it. “ Blessed are they that do His commandments, that they might have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city” (Revelation 22:14). 2. It is possible for us in this life to get the things that Christ says, done acceptably, in all the parts thereof. If it were not so, then, by the text, nobody at all would be allowed to call Him Lord; which is certainly false Matthew 7:21). So there are two sorts that call Him Lord; some that do, some that do not what He says; the former allowed, the other rejected. The doctrine of the imperfection of the saint’ s obedience is a stone of stumbling to many a blind soul. To prevent your stumbling-- (1) Distinguish between doing the will of Christ in all its parts, and in all its degrees. A whole family hears so many particular pieces of work prescribed to them all by the father and master of the family. His grown children do them all exactly to his mind; the younger children, who are but learning to work, put hand to every one of them, and baulk none of the pieces; but they do none of them exactly. Refractory servants do some of them, but others of them they never notice. Just so it is with the saints in heaven, true believers on earth, and hypocrites. (2) Distinguish between doing the will of Christ perfectly, and acceptably. No man in this life can do the former (Philip. 3:12). But every true believer does the later (Acts 10:25). (3) Distinguish between ability in ourselves to do the will of Christ acceptably, and ability for it in Christ, offered to us in the gospel, and to be brought in by faith. No man, saint nor sinner, has the former. “ We are not sufficient of ourselves to think anything as of ourselves” (2 Corinthians 3:5). But all true believers do get the latter (Philippians 4:13). 3. Notwithstanding the things that Christ says may be got done acceptably, yet many that call Him Lord will not do them. “ They profess that they know God; but in works they deny Him,” &c. (Titus 1:16). (1) Obedience to sin, and disobedience to Christ, is their choice. (2) They have neither heart nor use for the grace and strength that is in Christ Jesus (John 5:40; Psalms 81:11). 4. Christ is highly displeased with the disobedience of those that call Him Lord, who will not do what He says (Psalms 50:16-22). But to persuade you of it, consider-- (1) His infinite purity and holiness (Isaiah 6:3). He is the Holy One of Israel. (2) The dreadful strokes He has brought on such as called Him Lord, for not doing the things that He says. (3) Does he not refuse communion with such persons in holy ordinances, and thereby testify his displeasure against them? “ I will go and return to My place, till they acknowledge their offence, and seek My face” Hosea 5:15). Lastly, Consider how He will treat them at the last day Luke 19:27). 5. There is a great evil in calling Christ Lord, and not doing what He says; an evil that highly provokes Him, as casting dishonour on Him in a very special manner. (1) Their sins and looseness of life reflect a peculiar dishonour on Him, as pretending a relation to Him (Romans 2:24). (2) They do Satan a peculiar pleasure. (3) They wound the heart of the real children of God, and make the whole family sigh more heavily than the sins of others would do (Psalm Iv. 12). But there are three things they do not consider. (1) What inconsistency is in this course: “ What fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness? and what concord hath Christ with Belial?” (2 Corinthians 6:14-15). (2) How heinously the Lord Christ takes it, that men should yoke Satan’ s service with His (2 Coritnthains 6:15, forecited). (8) What the end of such a course will be, what it will issue in at length. “ O that they were wise, that they understood this, that they would consider their latter end!” (Deuteronomy 32:29). 6. People ought to consider it, see what account they can make of it, and how they will answer it. And-- (1) How they will answer it to their own consciences. (2) How they will answer it to the Lord Christ in the judgment. (T. Boston, D. D.) Practical obedience I. In the first place, OUTWARD IS THE FRUIT, AND THE TEST OF INWARD LIFE. He alone will enter into the kingdom of heaven “ that doeth the will of My Father which is in heaven.” Let us pause over the words. They cannot refer to the man who accidentally does the will of God because it so happens that his pleasure coincides with God’ s pleasure, just as a person may walk in the same path as another without intending to be his companion. In such an act there would be no inward element. But they must refer to the man who intentionally does God’ s will; does it, that is, because it is God’ s will; independently of any further consideration of whether it be pleasant or not in itself. Observe, therefore, there is no picking and choosing in such an obedience. The word “ doeth” does not mean intention, profession, or promise, but action in those practical details of actual life, which make up the real sum total of human existence. A saving religion is not that which is up in the air, but that which plants its sacred feet on the solid earth of daily life. Such a religion is exceedingly difficult, and there is one power alone which can accomplish it in us. It is the power of God. To use an respired illustration, “ we are God’ s workmanship.” Not only does an artist’ s work show the genius of the artist, but every artist has his own touch and style. We look at an exquisite picture, and we recognize the hand of the painter: we exclaim, with undoubting confidence, “ Raphael,” “ Guido,” “ Rembrandt.” Thus when we look at a true Christian who bears and reflects Christ all over him, we say, “ God.” That is God’ s work; God’ s Spirit alone can have done that. God is “ admired in His saints, and glorified in all them that believe.” And how can it be otherwise if we reverse the order, and, instead of looking from the act to the principle, trace the principle down into the act? For what is salvation, but deliverance from sin; and what is sin, but opposition to the will of God? To be saved, therefore, is to be brought into conformity with God’ s will. A good man is full of the Holy Ghost. Bat the Holy Ghost can no more abide in a heart without making it holy, without compelling it by the most sweet inward necessity to do God’ s will, than there can be a sun without light, a stream without water, a summer without flowers, a life without activity. II. But there is another point of view from which the lesson may be regarded. OUTWARD MY BE, IN THE HANDS OF THE SPIRIT OF GOD, THE OF INWARD LIFE, AND , WHERE INWARD LIFE ALREADY EXISTS, THE MEANS AND OF A HIGHER GROWTH IN GRACE. A man is truly in earnest, and sets himself without reserve to do God’ s will as he finds it in His Word. What is the first experience that such a man will gain? what his earliest lesson, his first upward step Godward, although it be apparently a step downward into the dark? I say that it is a knowledge of failure and of sin. He cannot keep God’ s will in its inward spirit and power through the weakness of his flesh. Must he not ask himself why he fails? Ah, why, indeed, but from indwelling sin I Thus there flashes upon the soul a sense of sin and a consciousness of guilt before God. And when the soul once stands face to face with this truth, the impossibility of self-righteousness and of doing God’ s will as he fondly thought in his own strength must become clear as the flash of the sunshine. “ Then I am a helpless sinner,” he exclaims, “ vile and worthless, and where shall I find help and hope? If I cannot save myself, who can save me?” He flings the arms of his faith around the feet of the dying Jesus, and cries out, “ My Lord and my God, my Saviour, Wisdom, Righteousness, Sanctification.” (E. Garbett, M. A.) The necessity of doing the will of God Some of you, perhaps, suppose that you do enough to show that you are Christians if you come here on Sundays. One purpose for which you come here is to learn how to live elsewhere. It can be no excuse for breaking God’ s commandments on Monday that you made a great effort on Sunday--came a mile and a half through the wind and rain--to learn what God’ s commandments are. Suppose a man were caught trespassing in a gentleman’ s private grounds, and when asked for a defence of his conduct answered that though no doubt he was trespassing, he hoped that it would be a palliation of his offence that once a week for twenty years he had taken care to read the notice on the board--“ Private road. Trespassing forbidden.” Would that be a rational excuse? Or suppose you had a man in your works who was constantly breaking some of the printed regulations which are put up in the shops, what would you say if he asked you to look over his bad conduct because he always read through the regulations every Monday morning? We see the folly of a plea of that kind when alleged to cover a violation of any of our own rules and regulations; and yet so easily do we deceive ourselves, that we are all in danger of supposing that because we read the Bible and come to public worship in order to learn God’ s laws we have something to set off against breaking them. Christ’ s words are clear. We are none the better for knowing the will of God; we must obey it. We must do the will of God. Some men have such a keen admiration for moral goodness that they take it forgranted that they are really good. You admire industry--good; but if you are to enter into the kingdom of heaven you must be industrious. Emotion of other kinds--good in its place--is also mistaken for actual well-doing. When we begin to hold political meetings in the winter there will be hundreds of men, belonging to both political parties, who will think that they are animated by a generous patriotism and a noble zeal for the public good, because they give enthusiastic cheers to the eloquence of their favourite orators; but ask them to do some canvassing, or to give a subscription towards the expenses of a contested election, and you will find that their patriotism and their zeal have all vanished. Doing God’ s will is one thing, being sorry for not doing it is a different thing altogether. But suppose we resolve to do better--is not this satisfactory? Satisfactory? No; not unless we actually do better as the result of our good resolutions. Christ does not say that the man who resolves to do the will of God will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the man who does it; and between good resolutions and good deeds there is apt to be a very precarious connection. Some people appear to use up all their strength in making good resolutions, and they have no strength left to carry them out. We must do the will of God if we are to enter into heaven. However perfect our excuses may seem for not doing it, I cannot see that these excuses are admissible. One man pleads his natural temperament as a justification of the violence or irritability of his temper. Another pleads the sharp necessities of business as an excuse for resorting to accommodation bills and other illegitimate methods of raising money. Another pleads the bad treatment he has received from a relative or a friend in defence of rough and hard and uncharitable words about him. God who made us, knows our frame and He re members that we are dust; Christ can be touched with a feeling of our infirmities, having been tempted in all points as we are. We may rely on the Divine tenderness and mercy. God will not deal hardly with us; He treats us more generously than we treat each other; sometimes He treats us more mercifully than we treat ourselves. But to allege temptation as an apology for sin is clearly to defy the authority of the Divine law and to dissolve all moral obligations. (R. W. Dale, LL. D.) The folly of a fruitless profession I. SHOW WHO THEY ARE WHO DESERVE THE CENSURE IN THE TEXT. 1. Mere nominal Christians. 2. Formal, self-righteous persons. 3. False professors. II. WITH THEM ON THE FOLLY OF THEIR CONDUCT. 1. IS not a conformity to Christ’ s precepts practicable? 2. Is not obedience to Him necessary? 3. Will not a feigned allegiance be discovered by Him? 4. Shall we not wish at last that we had been sincere and upright. . (1) Let us all seek to become Christians indeed. (2) Let us not be afraid to confess our Lord before men. (3) Let our lives be consistent with our professions. (4) Let us trust in the Lord as simply as if obedience were not required. (5) Let us obey the Lord as zealously as if obedience only were required. (Theological Sketch Book.) Luke 6:47-49 Whosoever cometh to Me, and heareth My sayings, and doeth them, I will show you to whom he is like The similitude of hearing Christ’ s sayings I. WHAT IS MEANT BY THE SAYINGS OF CHRIST. 1. The doctrine of faith and repentance. 2. The doctrine of regeneration. 3. The doctrine of self-denial. 4. But, more particularly, that doctrine and those sayings which He had just concluded, urging a holy life, and explaining the nature and spirituality of the moral law. II. WHAT IS MEANT BY HEARING CHRIST’ S SAYINGS. 1. TO hear His word and sayings with attention: to hear in hearing. 2. To hear His sayings and holy doctrine, as it is His word, not as the word of man, but as it is indeed the Word of God. Thus those in Thessalonica heard it, and received it, which becomes effectual in all that believe. 3. They hear Christ’ s sayings with holy trembling. Thus the good king Josiah heard the book of the law. 4. To hear Christ’ s sayings and heavenly doctrine believingly; “ Who hath believed our report?” Isaiah 53:1. 5. To hear with understanding; may hear but remain ignorant of their state, do not understand the purport of the word, which is to convince them of the evil of sin, and of their woful and undone condition thereby, and of the necessity of a Mediator, or of a Saviour; as also of the excellency of that blessed Saviour, together with that mighty power and ability that He is clothed with to save. 6. The wise hearer hears Christ’ s sayings and retains them, he is not a forgetful hearer; he sees the excellency of the word; likes and approves of the sayings and doctrine of Jesus Christ; he is like to Mary who pondered, “ And kept all these sayings in her heart.” These persons, with holy David, love God’ s Word above gold, yea, above fine gold; “ therefore I esteem,, all thy precepts concerning all things to be right, and hate every false way Psalms 119:127-128). 7. It is a hearing of Christ’ s word and sayings subjectively; such hear and come to Christ. “ Whosoever cometh to Me, and heareth My sayings,” &c., Luke 6:47). In coming to Christ they hear, and in hearing, come, that is, then believe, and receive Jesus Christ. III. WHAT MEANT BY DOING CHRIST’ S SAYINGS. 1. It is to believe whatsoever is matter of faith; and to do and practise whatsoever is matter of practice and duty. 2. He may be said to do what Christ saith that hath his whole trust and dependence upon Him, or that resteth wholly upon Christ’ s merits and righteousness for justification and eternal life. 3. To do Christ’ s sayings is to yield ready and hearty obedience to the precepts He hath given forth in the gospel: some will not hear what Christ says; others will hear, but they hear carelessly; others hear but do not. “ If I am your Lord and Master, why do ye not what I say? Not every one that saith unto Me, Lord, Lord, but he that doeth the will of My Father which is in heaven” (Matthew 7:21). 4. They that uprightly do Christ’ s sayings, do them sincerely, in truth, not out of by-ends and alms; neither for loaves, not for self and carnal profit, nor for self-applause. 5. They do Christ’ s sayings from right principles, from a principle of life, from faith in, and love to Christ: if ye love Me, keep My commandments; that obedience which proceeds not from faith and love, is not regarded, nor accepted of by Jesus Christ. 6. They are such that do all Christ’ s sayings; “ Ye are My friends if ye do whatsoever I say” (John 15:14). 7. Such continue in doing Christ’ s sayings; they abide in their obedience, they obey always, or continue in well doing. IV. WHAT IS MEANT BY HIS HOUSE. 1. By this house is, doubtless, meant his hope of salvation; “ Whose hope shall be cut off, and whose trust shall be as the spider’ s web” (Job 8:14). 1. A house is that which we rest in, and where we take our repose; a true believer resteth on Christ, he builds his house, i.e., his hope, his soul, and all he doth, on Christ; he that hath a right hope, a true faith, he hath a firm and well-built house, where he reposeth himself, or resteth continually. 2. A house is a place of shelter to us, in a tempestuous or stormy season, when rain, hail, snow, thunder, &c., are like to annoy us; so this man that builds his hope in Christ is secured and safe, when Satan raises storms of temptations upon him; he is safe also from the thunderings of mount Sinai, or the thunderbolts of the law and of the wrath of God, which all unbelievers lie open to. 3. A house is often assaulted by thieves, and if not firm and strong, may be broke up, and all that dwell in it may be robbed, nay murdered; so is the hope of a Christian often attacked by Satan, and if his faith and hope was not built upon Christ, he was certainly in danger of losing all he hath; nay, his precious soul for ever. V. WHAT IS MEANT BY THE ROCK. By the rock is no doubt meant Jesus Christ; He is often called a rock; “ The Lord is my rock and my fortress” Psalms 18:2). “ Who is a rock save our God?” (Psalms 18:13.) “ O Lord, my rock, be not silent” (Psalms 28:1). “ Upon this rock will I build My Church” (Matthew 16:18; 1 Corinthians 10:4). Jesus Christ may be fitly compared to a rock. 1. A rock is a firm and immovable thing, therefore good for a foundation; that which is built on a rock, stands sure; so Christ is a firm and sure foundation--“ Upon this rock I will build My Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Matthew 16:18). 2. Christ may be compared to a rock, in regard that in ancient times people built their houses in rocks, as well as built upon them; “ they hewed out houses, or habitations in rocks” (Isaiah 22:16) Christ is a believer’ s spiritual habitation; “ they, like the dove, make their dwelling in the clefts of the rock.” “ He that dwelleth in love, dwelleth in God.” 3. Rocks are strong, and were made use of for places of defence; no fortifications like some rocks, they are impregnable: David for security fled into a rock; in this respect Christ may also be compared to a rock, because He is our refuge from the wrath and vengeance of God, the curse of the law, and rage of wicked men, sin, and devils; a believer in Christ is safe, his dwelling place is impregnable. 4. Rocks are durable, permanent, and lasting; Jesus Christ hath the stability of a rock, He is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever; hence He is called the Rock of Ages. VI. WHY A GODLY MAN IS CALLED A WISE MAN. 1. A godly man ponders well all future dangers. 2. All future safety and security; how he may avoid and escape the one, and enjoy the other. If he builds not with wisdom, he foresees the danger that will follow, for his soul will fall into hell. 3. A godly man may be looked upon to be wise, because he so consults matters, that he may not suffer the loss of all his labour and cost; such who hear Christ’ s sayings and do them not, that do not believe in Him, nor obey His precepts; though they may make a visible profession, and do many things, and give to the poor, and suffer much external loss, yet all their labour, pains, and costs, and future hopes, will be utterly lost; but a true Christian is so wise as to close savingly with Christ, and obey His precepts, by which he knows his labour will not be in vain in the Lord. 4. A godly man is a wise man, because he complies with, and approves of that great and glorious design and purpose of God in Jesus Christ; it being the contrivance of His infinite wisdom, this way only to restore and save lost man: Now seeing a true Christian accepteth of Christ alone, and builds upon Him as the only foundation, it shows he is a wise man. 5. Because he seeks the honour of his blessed Lord and Master, and thereby keeps in His love and favour; it is not his own good only, but Christ’ s glory which he seeks, and this is a great point of wisdom. Because nothing but God, and an interest in Him, and the eternal enjoyment of this God, will satisfy his soul; if God be the chief good, then to place all our hope and happiness in Him, and to enjoy Him, must needs be a part of highest wisdom. “ He that keepeth his commandments, dwelleth in God, and God in him” (1 John 3:24). This man hath God to be his God; O what man is wise, save this man only? Others have the shell, but this man hath the kernel: others have the cabinet, and that contents them, but this man hath also the jewel. 7. Because these men are the declared friends of Jesus Christ, and only favourites of heaven: “ Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command John 15:14). 8. He is a wise man, because he is resolved to keep a good conscience: brethren, conscience is a tender thing, and to offend it is a piece of greatest folly; it is for a man to arm himself to murder his own soul, or kill himself; better to have all men in the world against us, and to reproach us, than to have our own conscience to accuse and reproach us. VII. WHEREIN HIS WISDOM . 1. In his thoughtfulness of soul. 2. In his care to provide a house for his soul. 3. In building his house upon a good and safe foundation. 4. In digging deep. If it be a great and famous building, some magnificent fabric which a man designs to build, he will dig deep to lay a firm and sure foundation, he digs until he comes to a rock, or sound bottom: now it is a great and glorious fabric that a Christian is to build, a building that is to stand for ever, and endure all storms and assaults of Satan, and all other enemies of the soul. Besides, pardon of sin, justification, and eternal life, are great things; and the soul being so excellent, so precious, the house that is to be built for it, ought to bear some proportion unto it; also Jesus Christ the prince of kings of the earth, designs to dwell with the soul, so that it may be truly said to be a house for the great king; therefore, on all these respects, it beloveth us to dig deep, and to lay a safe and sure foundation. 5. In building his house of proper and fit materials. 6. In building by rule. 7. In building in the proper time. 8. In sitting down to count the cost. (1) What the digging up the old foundation will cost him. (2) What old habits must be changed, and what right-eye sins must be pulled out, and what right-hand sins must be cut off. (3) What old companions must be forsaken, and what enticements must be withstood and resisted. (4) What reproaches for Christ’ s sake must be borne, and what external losses and persecutions must be endured. (5) He counts his own weakness and inability to do any of these things, and so consults the power, faithful ness, and promises of Christ, on which he solely and wholly depends, and thereby knows and is sure he cannot fail; he doth not begin nor go on in his own strength, but sees his riches and strength is in Jesus Christ, and therefore strengtheneth himself in that grace that is in him, which is sufficient for him, as Paul was told after he had begun to build, when assaulted by the messenger of Satan. (6) He accounts what temptations must be withstood, from Satan, from his carnal relations, and from the corruptions of his own heart. (7) And what reproaches and persecutions must be endured. VIII. TO FOOLISH . 1. Tremble, all ye foolish builders, who hear Christ’ s sayings, but do them not, that hear His word, but do not believe; who are reformed perhaps in your lives, but not changed in your hearts. 2. Be exhorted to try yourselves, examine your hearts, see with what materials you have built your house, I mean your hope for heaven; if it be not upon Jesus Christ, if it be on the sands of your own works, or inherent righteousness, or on your duties, or upon your external privileges, or on gifts, parts, or knowledge, or traditions; pull down your house and new build it, build it on the only and sure foundation. 3. Let all professors prepare for a storm; the winds will blow, the rain will fall, and the floods will come; you shall all be tried; God will try every man’ s work. If temptations of Satan, if tribulation and persecution from men, do not beat down your house and hope, yet death will. 4. We infer from hence, that the state of false professors, or all such who are no more than bare hearers of the word, is very sad and deplorable, their hope will be as the spider’ s web. 5. Sinners, doubtless you have got some house, or hope, or another; but any hope will not serve your turn. O how near may you be to a storm, death may be at the door, and then your hope will perish, and your souls be lost. 6. What comfort is hero for believers, they are safe! (Benjamin Keach) The wise and the foolish hearers The contrast intended is not that between two men deliberately selecting different foundations on which to build, but that between two men, one of whom makes the foundation a matter of deliberate consideration, while the other never takes a moment’ s thought about a foundation, but proceeds to build at haphazard, on the surface, anywhere, just where he happens to be--on the loose sands on the banks, or even in the bed of a river dried up by severe drought and scorching heat of summer, as rivers are so apt to be in the East. 1. In the light of the true distinction between the two builders, as above stated, we can see the special appropriateness of the emblem employed by our Lord to represent two different types of men in reference to religion. The characteristics of the one builder are considerateness and thoroughness, as those of the other are inconsiderateness and superficiality. 2. But the difference between the two classes of men is too important to be disposed of in a sentence. Our Lord Himself distinguishes the two classes by representing a man of the one class as one who heareth His sayings and doeth them, and a man of the other class as one who heareth His sayings and doeth them not. No man who is thoroughly in sympathy with the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount is in danger of making any serious mistake as to the footing on which he stands before God. Thoroughgoing moral earnestness is the sure road to faith in Divine grace as the source of salvation, as the history of Paul and of Luther shows. A little earnestness may make a man a Pharisee, but a great consuming earnestness will make him a Christian, after the Pauline type. Two points of difference in character are clearly hinted at. (1) The wise builder has a prudent regard to the future. (2) The wise builder does not look merely to appearance. 3. We have thus ascertained the distinctive characteristics of the two classes of hearers. But it is one thing to discriminate between these two classes on paper, another thing to discern and judge between them as existing in real life. Who, then, is to decide as to the merits of the two builders? The Divine preacher, with true insight into the state of the case, replies, “ The elements.” The rain, the winds, and the floods, are the infallible judges of the builders and their work. The elements in the metaphor represent generally times of severe trial, the judgment-days which overtake men even in this world occasionally, and in which many fair edifices of religious profession go down. The forms in which the trial may come are very diverse. (1) The great thing to be laid to heart is that trial, in one form or another, is to be expected. (2) And another thing should be remembered: the crisis that is to try us may come suddenly, leaving no time for preparation, no time for saving one’ s household furniture, barely time to save one’ s own life. (A. B. Bruce, D. D.) Foundations 1. All men are building. 2. All builders have a choice of foundations. 3. All foundations will be tried. 4. Only one foundation will stand. (W. W. Wythe.) My sayings We may claim for Christ’ s sayings an originality, a compass, and loving energy, such as have not been rivalled by any speaker. “ Never man spake like this man,” was the testimony of His enemies. After reading the doctrines of Plato, Socrates, or Aristotle, we feel that the specific difference between their words and Christ’ s is the difference between an inquiry and a revelation. 1. The sayings of Christ may be said to be Divine because they are so human. 2. The sayings of Christ determined the destiny of all who heard them. To have heard these sayings is to have incurred the gravest responsibility. (J. Parker, D. D.) Hearers and doers I. First then, THE OF . II. NOW, OBSERVE NEXT, THE IN THE HOPES OF THESE TWO . The man who builds his house on the rock is said to dig deep before he begins to build; but the man who is likened to the foolish man takes no trouble about digging deep. He is “ like a man that without a foundation builds his house upon the earth.” 1. Here, then, is the first contrast between a real believer in Christ, and a mere professor of religion. The believer’ s safety is preceded by anxiety. The mere professor’ s hope of heaven it has cost him no trouble to attain; he has formed it without any previous anxiety. Now, it is just so with a real believer in Jesus Christ--one who has any anxiety about his soul’ s salvation. He dares not take it for granted that he is all right. A man who does take for granted that he is right for heaven, is like a man who builds on the surface. One who is really anxious about his soul digs to see whether his foundation is good before he begins to build. 2. Observe, next, that the Christian’ s hope rests thus upon a solid foundation. Until the sinner finds that salvation which God has laid, of course he cannot rest upon a solid foundation. 3. The real believer finds that his house stands in the time of trial. There may be affliction, there may be persecution, there may be peculiar temptations; or if he escape these, there is the great trial of death and the prospect of judgment; but he who finds that he is resting on Christ--that he has been trying to know what Christ would have him do, and then to do it--finds himself secure. The promise of his Saviour, the oath of his covenant God, omnipotence itself secures his safety. He may be shaken in his mind in consequence of trouble and adversity, but he cannot be moved off from the rock on which he rests. Storms come very suddenly sometimes and very unexpectedly. Men may be in the enjoyment of health and strength and vigour, and may be lawfully pursuing their worldly duties, when some unexpected sickness reaches them, and after a few days, it may be, of pain and anguish, their medical attendants signify that there is no hope of their recovery; and now comes a time to test whether we have been building on a foundation or not. (W. Cadman, M. A.) The two builders Much as all men resemble one another, there is yet between us a most affecting difference. Our form and nature are the same; our conditions, and wants, and troubles are alike; but beneath this outward resemblance there lies unseen, and perhaps unthought of, a dissimilarity of the very utmost importance. Some of us are the friends of the living God, while others are His enemies. I. AS TO THE of the two men mentioned in the text. 1. They were both builders. Both are described as actually at work. Not the openly profane or careless, but professing Christians. 2. They were building a house, A dwelling-place, refuge, home. A shelter for support under the cares of life, for consolation in its troubles, and a protection from the wrath of God throughout eternity. 3. The house of each of these builders has its strength severely tried. We must expect our religion to be brought to the test, and its real character to be disclosed. Till this trial comes, we can know but little of ourselves. Almost any religion will stand in a calm. It is temptation--trifling, worldly, and sensual companions; it is affliction--disappointment, poverty, sickness, mental oppression; it is a change of scene, or circumstances, or society; these are the things which show us what manner of men we are, and often surprise and confound us by the discovery which we make. II. THEIR . 1. One of these men built his house with foresight; the other heedlessly. A Christian must look forward, and labour for something that will stand a storm; a faith that will support him when everything else gives way: a hope that will bear him up when conscience stings, and Satan accuses, and death strikes; a refuge for his soul amidst all the convulsions and terrors of a departing world. 2. One of these men is a painstaking builder; the other is comparatively indolent. True religion is a laborious work, and the most important parts of it are those which require the most labour and make the least appearance. The foundations must be dug deep, and built on the solid rock. 3. One of these builders looks well to the foundation of his house; the other is indifferent about it. 4. Mark the difference in the end of these men. Conclusion: This parable may teach us-- 1. The object of true religion. Salvation. 2. The nature of true religion. A building, a work, a progressive labour. An earnest and unceasing effort for the working out of salvation. 3. The wisdom of true religion. The pursuing of a good end by the best means. Simple obedience to the commands of Christ; earnest labouring after salvation in God’ s way and manner. 4. The folly of that religion which trusts for salvation in itself. (C. Bradley, M. A.) He only is a Christian who does what Christ bids him This closing lesson is rendered impressive and memorable, not only by the vivid double simile under which it is conveyed, but still more even by the full round roll of the style; the intentional repetition of the same phrases in both halves of the parable; the continuous solemn sweep of the long, redoubled sentence which seems to dwell upon the ear, and afterwards to haunt the memory. The materials of the picture were familiar to His audience. Syrian houses of the poorer class were then probably (as they still are) very slight--built of mud or a few unhewn stones, roughly daubed with “ untempered mortar,” and roofed in by no stouter materials than brushwood, with a layer of grass-grown earth over it. Two such houses have been erected in one of the precipitous wadys which everywhere seam the limestone ranges of Palestine, and swiftly drain off its superfluous rainfall. So long as summer lasts and the bed of the watercourse is dry, both of them stand equally well, and appear to be equally secure. But a day of testing comes. One of those terrific storms of rain and hail which the treacherous winds of the Levant bring up suddenly from the sea, swells the brook in a few hours into a torrent; and when the flood sweeps down its narrow channel like a tide, turbid and white with foam from one rocky bank to the other, while the fierce rain-storm drives up the ravine before the western gale, and lashes on roof and sides; then is put to proof the stability of both dwellings; then everything depends on the character of their foundation. The one has been built, with careless want of foresight, upon nothing better than the layer of loose sand or gravel brought down by former floods. Of course, the waters which eddy now about its base fret away from beneath it the very soil on which it stands, till the force of the storm, beating down upon its undermined and unsupported walls, crushes it into ruin. It was a “ refuge of lies,” for it pretended to a foundation which it had not; and “ the overflowing scourge” rolls it indignantly to the sea. The other builder, on the contrary, when he began to build, took the precaution to clear away that drift sand, deep though it was, and, digging down to the rock beneath, laid his foundation there. Now he finds the reward of his prudent pains and thoroughness. The flood may wash away, no doubt, whatever is movable from about the base of his house, even as from his neighbour’ s; but when its walls are laid bare to the very rock, the secret strength of his “ hidingplace” is only discovered to view; and though roof and sides may suffer here and there in their weaker portions (see 1 Corinthians 3:14-15,) from the searching of wind or rain, yet his house at least, as a place to shelter him, is secure from demolition: it falls not, for it is founded on the rock. So Jesus leaves His parable to interpret itself. The contrast betwixt a superficial profession of discipleship, in which self-deceived Christians confide as sufficient, and that thoroughgoing, profound moral earnestness which is concerned to make sure work of it, and to be all that it seems to be: this lies on the surface on the parable. But it seems not unreasonable to find in our Lord’ s words something more than this. That moral thoroughness in the Christian life which aims at consistent obedience to Christ, succeeds in doing His word only by coming into close and trustful contact with Himself. He who would be practically a Christian, must have nothing betwixt his naked soul and the eternal Rock, Christ; for it is only as based on Him, fastened to Him, that any disciple learns to love His word, or gets strength to do it. Let us look each one to his foundation. There are so many who seem to be taking their stand for eternity on Jesus Christ; there are possibly so few whose lives are built into the Rock. So many of us hear, so few are manifestly doing, His words (James 1:22). (J. Oswald Dykes, D. D.) A solid foundation Yon lighthouse tower, that stands among the tumbling waves, seems to have nothing but them to rest on; yet there stately and stable it stands, beautiful in the calm, and calm in the wintry tempest, guiding the sailor on to his desired haven, past the rolling reef, through the gloom of the darkest night, and the waters of the stormiest sea. Blessed tower that with its light, piercing the gloom, shines and rises on many an eye as a star of hope. Why is it stable? You see nothing but the waves, but beneath the waves, down below the rolling, foaming, tumbling billows, its foundation is the solid rock. And what that tower is to the house on yon sand.bank, which the last storm threw up, and the next shall sweep back into the sea, Christ’ s righteousness is to mine--Christ’ s works to my best ones. (T. Guthrie, D. D.) Safe on the rock Mr. Moody, in his Christian Convention at Northfield, said, “ We want more Christians like the Irishman who, when asked if he didn’ t tremble during a certain storm when he was standing out upon a rocky eminence, said, ‘ Yes, my legs trembled, but the rock didn’ t, and because my feet were on the rock I felt safe.’” Laying hold on the rock The wind had been blowing--it was a dreadful hurricane, and Gotthold walked into a forest and saw many trees torn up by the roots; he marvelled much at one tree which stood alone and yet had been unmoved in the tempest. He said, “ How is this? The trees that were together have fallen, and this alone stands fast i “ He observed that when the trees grow too closely they cannot send their roots into the earth; they lean too much upon each other; but this tree, standing alone, had space to thrust its roots into the earth, and lay hold on the rock and stones, and so when the wind came, it fell not. (C. H. Spurgeon.) The only firm foundation Men who stand on any other foundation than the rock Christ Jesus, are like birds that build in trees by the side of rivers. The bird sings in the branches, and the river sings below, but all the while the waters are undermining the soil about the roots, till, in some unsuspected hour, the tree falls with a crash into the stream; and then its nest is sunk, its home is gone, and the bird is a wanderer. But birds that hide their young in the clefts of the rock are undisturbed, and, after every winter, coming again, they find their nest awaiting them, and all their life long brood the summer in the same places, impregnable to time or storm. (H. W.Beecher.) Sandy foundations Recollect that all religion which is not the work of the Holy Spirit in the heart will have to be unravelled, let it be woven ever so cunningly. We may build, as our little children do on the sea-shore, our sand houses, and we may pile them up very quickly too, and be very pleased with them, but they will all come down as the tide of time advances; only that which God the Holy Ghost builds upon the foundation of Christ’ s finished work will stand the test of time and eternity. (C. H.Spurgeon.) On laying foundations All hearers are builders of houses for their souls: they are each one doing something to set up a spiritual habitation. Some of these go a considerable distance in this house-building, and even crown the structure by publicly confessing Christ. They say unto Him, “ Lord, Lord” : they meet with His followers, and join with them in reverence to the Master’ s name; but they do not obey the Lord; they hear Him, but they fail to do the things which He says. I. Our first subject will be A COMMON WITH . A common temptation with hearers of the Word is to neglect foundation work, to get hurriedly over the first part of the business, and run up the building quickly. 1. This temptation is all the more dangerous, first, because these young beginners have no experience. Even the most experienced child of God is often deceived; how much more the pilgrim who has but just entered the wicket-gate! The tried saint sometimes mistakes that for a virtue which is only a gilded fault, and he fancies that to be genuine which is mere counterfeit; how, then, without any experience whatever, can the new babe in grace escape deception unless he be graciously preserved? Newly awakened, and rendered serious, earnest hearts get to work in the Divine life with much hurry, seizing upon that which first comes to hand, building in heedless haste, without due care and examination. Something must be done, and they do it without asking whether it is according to the teaching of the Lord. They call Jesus “ Lord” ; but they do what others say rather than what Jesus says. 2. There is this to help the temptation, too, that this plan for the present saves a great deal of trouble. Your mind is distressed, and you want comfort; well, it will comfort you to say, “ Lord, Lord,” though you do not the things that Christ says. 3. This kind of building without foundation has this advantage to back up the temptation--it enables a man to run up a religion very quickly. He makes splendid progress. He takes every good thing for granted, and votes that all is gold which glitters. See how fast he goes! The fog is dense, but he steams through it, heedless of danger? He has joined the Church; he has commenced work for God; he is boasting of his own attainments; he hints that he is perfect. But is this mushroom building safe? Will it pass muster in the last great survey? When a man travels upon a wrong road, the faster he runs the further he will go astray. If you build quickly because you build without a foundation, your time and toll are thrown away. 4. How common, how deceptive, is this temptation I For the young beginner, the man who is just aroused to seek the Lord, will find a great many to help him in his mistake, should he neglect the foundation. Kind, good, Christian friends often, without a thought of doing so, help to mislead seeking souls. Let us beware lest we cry “ Peace, peace,” where there is no peace. 5. No doubt many are encouraged in slight building by the fact that so many professors are making a fair show, and yet their building is without foundation. We cannot shut our eyes to the fact that in all Churches there are persons who have no depth of spiritual root, and we are afraid no real spiritual life. Beware of loose professors, who are as wreckers! lights that lure men upon the rocks. Make sure work for eternity, and bid triflers begone. 6. Again, there is always at the back of all this an inducement to build without a foundation because it will not be known, and possibly may not be found out for years. Foundation-work is quite out of sight, and the house can be got up and be very useful in a great many ways, and it may stand a good while without the underground work; for houses without foundations do not tumble down at once; they will stand for years; nobody knows how long they may keep up; perhaps they may even be inhabited with comfort till the last great flood. Death alone will discover some impostures. II. So I advance to the second step, and there we will consider A WISE WHICH SAFE NEVER FORGET, They dig deep, and never rest till they get a good substantial foundation; they are glad to get to the bottom of all the loose earth and to build on the rock. Let me commend this wise precaution to all of you. 1. Follow the text, and learn to see to your sincerity. The Lord Jesus says, “ Why call ye Me, Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say?” May the Holy Ghost make you true to the core. Be afraid to say a word more than you feel. 2. The next thing is thoroughness. For observe, according to our Lord, the wise builder digged deep. You cannot do a right thing too well. Dig deep if you do dig a foundation. 3. Next to that add self-renunciation; for that is in the parable. When a man digs a deep foundation he has much earth to throw out. So he that builds for eternity has a great deal to get rid of. Self-trust must go at the beginning; love of sin must follow; worldliness, pride, self-seeking, all sorts of iniquity--these must be cast aside. There is very much rubbish, and the rubbish must go. 4. Then must come solid principle. The man who is determined that if he does build he will build securely, digs down to the rock. What God has said is a rock; what man teaches is mere shifting sand. 5. These truthful principles must be firmly adhered to. Remember the huge shaft at Bradford, and how many were slain by its fall, and let it teach you to hold hard to foundation truths, and never depart from them. III. Gather from the text A SET OF , URGING US TO TAKE CARE OF THE . 1. We ought to build with a good foundation at the beginning, because otherwise we shall not build well in any other part of the house. Bad work in the foundation influences all the rest of the courses. In the Revised Version, at the end of the forty-eighth verse, instead of “ For it was founded upon a rock,” we read, “ Because it had been well builded.” The house was built well at the bottom, and that led the workman to put in good work all the way up, so that all through “ it had been well builded.” The other man built badly underground, and did the same up to the roof. When you get into the habit of slovenly work in secret, the tendency is to be slovenly in public too. If the underground part of our religion is not firmly laid upon Christ, then in the upper part there will be rotten work, half-baked bricks, mud instead of mortar, and a general scamping of everything. When a great Grecian artist was fashioning an image for the temple, he was diligently carving the back part of the goddess, and one said to him, “ You need not finish that part of the statue, because it is to be built into the wall.” He replied, “ The gods can see in the wall.” He had a right idea of what is due to God. That part of my religion which no man can see should be as perfect as if it were to be observed by all. The day shall declare it. When Christ shall come everything shall be made known, and published before the universe. Therefore see to it that it be fit to be thus made known. 2. See, again, that we ought to have good foundations when we look at the situation whereon the house is to be built. It is clear from this parable that both these houses were built in places not far from a river, or where streams might be expected to come. Certain parts of the South of France are marvellously like Palestine, and perhaps at the present moment they are more like what the Holy Land was in Christ’ s day than the Holy Land now is. When I reached Cannes last year I found that there had been a flood in the town. This flood did not come by reason of a river being swollen, but through a deluge of rain. A waterspout seems to have burst upon the hill side, tearing up earth, and rocks, and stones, and then hurrying down to the sea. It rushed across the railway station, and poured down the street which led to it, drowning several per sons in its progress. When I was there a large hotel--I should think five stories high--was shored up with timber, and was evidently doomed; for when this stream rushed down the narrow street it undermined the lower courses of the building and as there were no foundations at all able to bear such a test, the whole erection was rendered unsafe. The Saviour had some such case in His mind’ s eye. A torrent of water would come tearing down the side of the mountain, and if a house was built on the mere earth, it would be carried away directly, but if it were fastened into the rock so that it became part and parcel of it, then the flood might rush all around it, but it would not shake the walls. Beloved builder of a house for your soul, your house is so situated that one of these days there must come great pressure upon it. “ How do you know?” Well, I know that the house wherein my soul lives is pitched just where winds blow, and waves rise, and storms beat. Where is yours? Do you live in a snug corner? Yes, but one of these times you will find that the snug corner will be no more shielded than the open riverside; for God so orders providence that every man has his test sooner or later. 3. The next argument is, build deep, because of the ruin which will result from a bad foundation. What happened to this house without a foundation? The stream beat vehemently on it. The river’ s bed had long been dry, but suddenly it was flooded, and the torrent rolled with tremendous power. Perhaps it was persecution, perhaps prosperity, perhaps trouble, perhaps temptation, perhaps prevalent scepticism, perhaps death; but, anyhow, the flood beat vehemently upon that house--“ and immediately it fell” ! It did not stand a prolonged assault, it was captured at once. Then it is added, “ And the ruin of that house was great.” The house came down with a crash, and it was the man’ s all. The man was an eminent professor, and hence his ruin was all the more notable. For, lastly, and perhaps this will be the best argument, observe the effect of this good, sure building, this deep building. We read that when the flood beat upon the wise man’ s house “ it could not shake it.” That is very beautiful. Not only could it not carry it away, but “ it could not shake it.” I see the man; he lost his money and became poor, but he did not give up his faith--“ It could not shake it.” He was ridiculed and slandered, and many of his former friends gave him the cold shoulder, but “ It could not shake it.” He went to Jesus under his great trial, and he was sustained--“ It could not shake it.” He was very sick, and his spirit was depressed within him, but still he held his confidence in Christ--“ It could not shake it.” He was near to die; he knew that he must soon depart out of this world, but all the pains of death and the certainty of dissolution could not shake him. He died as he lived, firm as a rock, rejoicing as much as ever, nay, rejoicing more, because he was nearer to the kingdom and to the fruition of all his hopes. “ It could not shake it.” It is a grand thing to have a faith which cannot be shaken. I saw one day a number of beech trees which had formed a wood; they had all fallen to the ground through a storm. The fact was they leaned upon one another to a great extent, and the thickness of the wood prevented each tree from getting a firm hold of the soil. They kept each other up, and also constrained each other to grow up tall and thin, to the neglect of root-growth. When the tempest forced down the first few trees the others readily followed one after the other. Close to that same spot I saw another tree in the open, bravely defying the blast, in solitary strength. The hurricane had beaten upon it, but it had endured all its force unsheltered. That lone, brave tree seemed to be better rooted than before the storm. I thought, “ Is it not so with professors?” They often hold together, and help each other to grow up, but if they have not firm personal foothold, when a storm arises they fall in rows. (C. H. Spurgeon.) The two builders 1. We are here admonished of the duty, and vast importance, of what has been called “ building for eternity” ; that is, attending to the salvation of our souls. Every one is building, labouring corporeally and materially, or speculating mentally, in one way or another. Some are engaged with great schemes; and some, who have neither substance nor strength to expend on great works, are nevertheless as deeply engaged as those who have. How many, however, are building, as we may say, only for this world! Their schemes terminate here. But “ he builds too tow, who builds beneath the skies.” To have a hope for heaven ought to be the great object with us all. This is the one thing needful. 2. Every wise man will be careful to found well--“ on the rock.” Some even proceed on religion so much at random that they have never thought of any determinate principles; they cannot tell what their foundation is; in fact, they have no foundation at all--they are, spiritually, building castles in the air. It is not so, however, with the wise builder; he is not so easily satisfied. And, as in the literal case of a building, so in the spiritual case under consideration, two things are necessary to be attended to in laying the foundation--the one is, that the builder know what is a sufficient foundation; and the other is, that he do actually cause his building to rest upon it. An error with respect to either of these things is fatal. God has laid the foundation, and we must build upon it. A Saviour is offered, and we must accept Him. 3. The wise do not neglect the superstructure because they have a good foundation. Rather, the knowledge that he has begun well is an encouragement for him to go on well--with confidence and with care. 4. In the time of trial, the hope of the true Christian, like the house of the wise builder, will stand; while the hope of the hypocrite and the formalist, like the house of the foolish builder, will be overthrown. When the great day of wrath is come, then it will be seen who shall be able to stand. God will set His own people’ s feet on a rock, and will establish their goings. (James Foote, M. A.) The rock and the sand Last April, on the same morning I set my eyes on the island of Corsica where Napoleon I. was born, and on the island of Elba on which he was confined as a discomfited prisoner--the coming shadows of Waterloo hung over his bleak exile. The next day I saw the spot where another famous prisoner landed on his way to Rome, and where he “ thanked God and took courage.” Napoleon’ s boasted “ rock” of imperial power proved to be but a fog-bank. What a contrast between the defeated and disappointed exile of Elba, and the glorious old prisoner of Caesar who sang triumphantly in his cell: “ I have fought a good fight! Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness which the Lord, the righteous Judge, shall give me at that day!” The French Emperor’ s crown was a lost bauble; the apostle’ s diadem will blaze with stars through all eternity. There is no sharper contrast in all history between the wisdom of building on the rock and the fatal folly of building on the quicksand. Yet, on a smaller scale, tens of thousands among us are constantly repeating this folly. One man rears his expectations upon wealth. This is his foundation on which he will build up solid happiness for himself and his family. He means to be happy in making money, happy in holding it, and happy in all the social eclat and luxuries which it will purchase for him. “ Other men don’ t know how to keep money or to enjoy it; but 1 mean to enjoy mine.” He calls it mine--not the Lord’ s; and he does not mean that the Lord shall have it. Ere long the coveted riches take wing, like a swallow, and fly away. Even if he holds on to them, they do not give the happiness he dreamed of; they do not fill up the gnawing emptiness of his soul. They do not bring quiet sleep or a contented conscience; his Government bonds cannot stop the heartache. Gold, unless used for God, makes a hard dying pillow. When the richest American of his day was in his last fatal sickness, a Christian friend proposed to sing for him; and the hymn he named was “ Come, ye sinners, poor and needy.” “ Yes, yes,” replied the dying millionaire, “ sing that for me, I feel poor and needy.” Yet at that moment the stock-markets of the globe were watching and waiting for the demise of the man who could shake them with a nod of his head. “ Poor and needy!” How the sand sweeps from under a man’ s soul in much an hour as that! Literary fame is no solider a footing for an immortal being’ s happiness than wealth. There is hardly a sadder verse in the English language than that which the brilliant Byron addressed to his own weary and wretched soul-- “ Count o’ er the joys thine hours have seen; Count o’ er thy days from anguish free; And know--whatever thou hast been, ’ Tis something better--not to be!” What a fearful thought that a human soul, in the very height of its coveted intellectual renown, should seek a refuge for its misery in utter annihilation! Last year a poverty-stricken invalid in Brooklyn, who sustained her helpless husband and only child by her needle, made her little dingy home bright as sunshine by her brave, cheerful trust in God. Her daily song was, “ The Lord liveth, and blessed be my Rock.” In many a hut of poverty, where faith eats its scanty loaf and gives thanks for it; from many a room of sickness, where Jesus has cheered the long wakeful nights; over many a casket in which a darling child was sleeping in its last slumber, has the believer’ s testimony come forth clear and strong: “ I know whom I have believed; He is able to keep that which I have committed to Him until that day.” God never intended that we should have more than one rock. All else is quicksand. When we take His inspired Word for our guide, embrace Christ as our Saviour, rest on His atonement for pardon and His grace for support, then are we “ founded on a rock.” A solid character for this life and a solid hope for eternity can be built on this sure foundation. Christ really underlies a genuine Christian as the everlasting mass of Moriah’ s rook-bed underlay the ancient temple of Jerusalem. Those only are the solid, reliable, and enduring members in our various Churches, who have Christ embedded in the very depths of their hearts. Such never fall away under the stress of strong temptations. (T. L. Cuyler, D. D.) Deep life I. THE LIFE WHICH IS SIMPLY A SURFACE LIFE. Not exactly what we call a wicked life, but a vain, thoughtless, shallow life. An animal life, finding pleasure only in the senses; a childish life, occupied only with trifles; a life in which there is no deep thought, feeling, conviction, purpose. One would think it almost impossible to lead such a life. The Spirit of God within us is ever seeking to awaken solemn and holy thoughts. And this is truly a thought-provoking world. Many will scarcely suffer a large thought, a serious thought. They dwell on the most exterior surfaces, and their little-mindedness is seen in everything, felt in everything. Mark their pleasures. Consider their reading--the emptiest, silliest trash. Listen to their conversation--chaff which the wind driveth away. And all their aims in life are unspeakably contemptible. Better be the desolate tree on the naked heath bowed by the storm, stripped by the storm, if it only give us depth of life, than the green bay-tree rooted only in the sod. We may be thankful for anything that knocks the toys out of our hands, that stops our idiot joy, and drives us inward, downward, to the reality of things and the grand purpose of existence. Notice again-- II. THE LIFE WHICH DIES BELOW THE SURFACE AND YET DOES NOT REACH THE DEPTHS. Many men consider themselves as serious, deep-sealed men who are not really so. There is an iron pillar at Delhi, a very ancient column, and the Hindus believed that its roots were in the centre of the earth, but the profane European took to digging and found its foundation only twenty inches below the surface. And so many among us fancy their life rooted in the centre of things when a little examination would show them they have only dipped below the surface. There is an intellectual life which goes beneath the surface, but not to the depths. Thinking men, full of intellectual power and penetration, but who concern themselves only with the universe that passes away, are of this order. One would think the scientific men who sound the depths of the ocean or the star-depths of the heaven, had gone deep, but in truth, with all their parade of dredges, telescopes, spectroscopes, they have gone but twenty inches below the surface who miss the Almighty Spirit, of whom are all things, by whom are all things, to whom are all things. There is a moral life which goes below the surface, and yet fails to grasp the depths. A morality which finds its origin, its reasons, its sanctions, its inspirations, its compensations altogether within human society and temporal interests, is but rooted in the sand. There is a religious life which sinks below the surface without sounding the depths. The Pharisees failed here--they thought the pillar on which they leaned had its roots in the centre of the world, but Christ made them understand that proud ancient pillar of theirs was only twenty inches in the sand. III. THE LIFE WHICH DIGS DEEP AND RESTS ON A ROCK. The Word of God assures us that there is rock. The universe is not a theatre of dissolving views, itself a dissolving view. There is an Eternal Being. There is an Eternal World. “ A city that hath foundations” --a realm of infinite endless perfection and blessedness. There is an Eternal Righteousness. There is an Eternal Life. He only digs deep who gets down to these central realities. 1. Only in this deeper life do we find true satisfaction. Men think sometimes, I know, that a deeper life means much of strife, of sorrow, of sadness; and so it does. But, you must remember, out of those depths breaks forth the sunshine, out of those depths breaks forth the music. You will never find true light, harmony, joy, until you reach the depths of self-despair, until you live the life of thought, contrition, prayer, humility, reverence. 2. Only as we live this deeper life does our character acquire strength and fulness. The superficial Pharisee was ever working at the outside of character; Christ showed them more radical work was wanted; they must go to the depths of life. And this is the teaching of the Epistles. Our modern gardeners think far less of pruning the branches of trees than the old husbandmen used to think; the gardeners of to-day are persuaded that the tree must be treated in its roots. 3. Only as we live this deeper life is our joy assured for ever. The teaching of our Lord in this parable is that, whatever in character, joy, hope, is not based on the deepest life, life in Himself, must be overthrown. As most of you know, in connection with the principal palace at Babylon was the remarkable construction known to the Greeks as “ the Hanging Garden.” Several tiers of arches formed an artificial imitation of a mountain, and on the top of this structure was a mass of earth on which grew flowers, and shrubs, and trees. Where are these artificial elevations now? Gone, gone long ago, shaken to the earth, buried in the ditch. Now all around us you see the glory, the joy, the hope of men resting like the “ Hanging Gardens” of Babylon on quite an artificial basis, and any slight accident brings the whole fabric to the ground. A sickness, a death, any one of a thousand changes wrecks the treasure and pride of life. But the natural gardens of Babylon which rested on the granite pillars of the earth bloom to-day as they ever did--the grass as green, the blossoms as sweet, the trees as magnificent. So it is when we build on Christ, and find our strength and felicity and hope in Him. “ What can our foundations shock? Though the shattered earth remove, Stands our city on a rock, On the rock of heavenly Love.” Live below the senses, live above society, live beyond time, get to the root truths that are in Christ, nay, get to Christ Himself, the root-truth, and your life shall be full of energy, freedom, brightness, fruitfulness, blessing, and you shall bloom for ever in the paradise of God. (W. L. Watkinson.) The two principles of life It is here indicated by our Lord that every one must live his life on some principle or plan; and He plainly states the utter ruin of any life which hears the Word of God, and does not act accordingly. I. Apply it first to THE ACTION OF MEN UNDER THE OF THE SPIRIT. To build without foundation is to put off, make only some slight resolution for good, go on the old way, only with a little more earnestness, or choosing the easiest way of religion as a salve to the conscience. II. THE THAT COME LATER IN LIFE. III. THE WAY OF DEALING WITH SORROW FOR SIN. Two kinds. 1. The sorrow of the world--mere regret: hopes to do better; time will bring relief. 2. Godly sorrow, real repentance--going to the very root of the matter; content with nothing but laying bare the whole heart to God; probing to the very centre the wounds of nature, in spite of pain and discomfort; determined at any cost to get rid of all corruption and its cause. The result of this is true healing and benefit. Conclusion: The great lesson is one of thoroughness and heartiness in all our life; no more trifling; no resting satisfied with partial relief--the pleasant weather for the present, without any thought of the storms that may be coming. (George Low, M. A.) Doing and dreaming Now, in the course of my travels, I have met with three distinct dreamers. I. There is the rationalistic dreamer. He beholds his face in a glass, and stands before it, admiring it. To him religion is a system of ideas, and no idea represents reality. His religion is “ a face in the glass” or an unsubstantial “ house on the sand.” II. There is the sentimental dreamer. He will talk to you for hours of the presence of God in nature, A house of sentiment is the last place I should fly to, to shelter me from the storm. III. There is the pietistic dreamer. There is a form of church-going piety which does not influence daily conduct; people whose religion is an impersonated sigh. 1. The religion of the dreamer is a religion of theory. The religion of the doer is one of experience. 2. The religion of the dreamer will always be one of doubt. The religion of the doer will always be a religion of evidence. This follows the last remark, because doing leads to knowing. 3. Hence, let me say, the dreamer confines his religion to solitude; the doer finds a vent for his in society. Religion comforts solitude, and consoles it; it does not encourage the spirit of it. If we are to enter the solitude, it is that we may collect the moral forces of our nature, and come forth, inspired by the Divine Spirit, to cry aloud, “ O earth, earth, earth, hear the word of the Lord.” 4. The religion of the dreamer is a religion without love. But the life of the doer is love. Our love, in fact, is proportioned to our labours--our labour proportions our love. Love is the fountain of all true knowledge. Every man understands more by his affections than by his reason. 5. And there is, finally, no salvation for the dreamer. Come, let us walk along the sands, and see the houses they build there; these are tile buildings of which the apostle spoke, “ wood, hay, and stubble” ; these are the buildings which will not stand either the flood or the fire; these are the buildings reared by the religious dreamers, whose houses are unsubstantial as the palaces in the clouds. Here is the house of wood--the building reared out of notions of natural amiability and goodness, a religion of politeness and native grace: in this house the inhabitants will talk to you of God, and of worshipping God, but you will hear nothing of God in Christ, nothing of the love of the Father for a lost world. The Unitarian builds his edifice from such material, and thus all those buildings rise which leave out of view the supernatural in the ruin and recovery of man. How unsubstantial i there is not one brick of all the building made from “ these sayings of Mine,” and here “ the flood will come and sweep them all away.” Let us walk further along the sands. Here is a house, strangely built of hay; of rhetoric, and philosophy, and superstitious notions; and sometimes, when the ice hangs its pendulets on the absurd, grotesque building, and the sun shines in its cold wintry ray, it seems an uncouth but glittering cave upon the sand: within, the inhabitants have so many pretty sentiments about religion, and so many brilliant sayings, and so many deep and philosophical views, and strange pretences glide to and fro through the heavy chambers, and even the neighbourhood to the awful sea makes the building sometimes seem so safe for shelter; but in the incongruous building nothing is reared from “ these sayings of Mine,” and the “ flood will come and sweep them all away.” Now, come, I will carry you to two death-beds; for they die in the castle on the rock and in the palace on the sand. Ah! how fine it looks! By the two death-beds you may hear the two confessions. I draw the curtain in the palace: let us hear. “ How are you; are you happy?” “ Well, I am easy.” “ What are your foundations?” “ Well, Lord, Thou knowest I have had some very pretty notions in religion. I have usually gone to church once a day. I was certainly away frequently on account of our dinner-parties; but I am sure God won’ t be strict. On the whole, I am happy I I have ever tried to pay everybody their own, twenty shillings in the pound--and God is love.” Now step into the poor room on the Rock. “ How do you feel?” “ I feel happy, but only by taking hold on Christ. Lord, I feel I am a poor creature, but I come to Thee through Christ; and I can only cry, Mercy, Mercy, Mercy, Mercy.” Hark! the rain is on the roof; what a tempest. Oh that cry--The Flood! the Flood! the Flood! Yes; the rain descends, and the flood comes, and the winds blow and beat; behold yonder the advancing floods; and see yonder the drifting soul on the broken spar. What is the hope of the hypocrite, when God shall take away his soul? Yonder they drift away. Hark! it is a voice of singing from the eternal Rock, a strain from the heights of the strong foundations. (E. P. Hood.) Designing the house not enough It is not enough to have gotten an abstracted mathematical scheme, or diagram, of this spiritual building in our brain; it is the mechanical labouring part of religion, that must make up the edifice, the work, and toil, and sweat of the soul, the business not of the designer, but the carpenter; that, which takes the rough unpolished, though excellent, materials, and trims and fits them for use; which cuts and polishes the rich but, as yet, deformed jewels of the soul, and makes them shine indeed, and sparkle, like stars in the firmament The divinity and learning of these times floats and hovers too much in the brain, hath not either weight or sobriety enough in it, to sink down and settle in the heart. (Dr. Hammond.) Digging deep Inasmuch as it is said that the wise builder “ digged deep,” let us remember that God is not to be found on the surface. (Gregory.) Insecure foundations There is a twice-told tale about Julian the apostate: how in youth he essayed to raise a memorial shrine to the holy Mamas; but as he built, the earth at the foundations crumbled; for God and His holy martyr deigned not to accept the labour and offering of his hands. It is an allegory of men who toil and build on rotten and insecure foundations. Neglecting the foundation On the comer of one of the busiest streets of a certain town, there is a large brick building with stone finishings and no little display of fancy work, both on cornice and corners. It looks well at a distance. Closer inspection, however, shows that this building is sadly disfigured with ugly cracks and misshapen walls, and the whole structure is in danger of tumbling down. On investigation it was discovered that the cause of all this was the bad foundation put under the building by an inefficient and dishonest contractor. He had employed cheap workmen and put in cheap material, because the foundation being out of sight, he thought no one would ever see it, and it would make no difference. Two kinds of foundations Two young fishermen came to the water-side to live, and to try their luck in a new home. Now, here they were very successful, and soon had a ready sale for all they caught in the village beyond the hill. “ Now, we will each build a hut for ourselves, for this is a good place, and here we will each bring a wife, and have a home.” “ That is a good thought,” replied Simplex; “ here is a fine stretch of beach, and we shall have no trouble in drawing stones and timber, and making comfortable dwellings at small cost and labour.” “ Oh, no,” answered Prudens; the storms and winds and waves will come and sweep away our houses. Look yonder among that grass there; up beyond are some rocks. They will make a fine foundation, and we need fear nothing.” “ Oh, you foolish Prudens, to give yourself so much trouble I The season of storms is past; the beautiful days are coming; and how will you climb up among those rocks when you are worn out and tired? See how easy it will be to run up a house here, and then to sit, after our day’ s work is over, and gaze out upon the water, and see that no one molests our boats or nets.” “ Well, brother, storms may come even during the beautiful days, and I shall build up yonder on the rocks.” So each man built during the next few weeks each a neat little hut, and I must confess that Prudens’ was not nearly so pretty as Simplex’ s, because it was much harder for Prudens to draw his materials away up the rocks, and to plan so that the foundations should be firm, and the windows protected. But in time both houses were complete, and in each a pretty little wife kept the home in good order, and the men were well content with their plans. But one night there were signs of a change of weather. The waters sighed and moaned and groaned and muttered as if they were angry, and the men hastened to make all secure, for, said they, “ the waves are coming and the tide is rising.” Prudens went to Simplex to beg that he and his wife would come up to his house, lest haply the waters should come over the beach. Simplex laughed at the fears of his friend; but the wife was timid, and she persuaded her husband just for one night to accept the invitation. “ You will smile at your fears in the morning, Gretchen dear, but for your sake I will go--what can harm our home except a few dashes of salt water? You are not much of a sailor’ s wife.” Then they went, and the fearful storm came, and the wind rose and beat away the nets and the boats. The women could not sleep, and, when the morning broke, they hastened to see what had happened in the night. They looked first towards the cottage of Simplex. This entry is longer than a Bible module can hold. The rest is at https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/bi/ Luke 7:1-10 And a certain centurion’ s servant, who was dear unto him, was sick, and ready to die The centurion and his servant A Roman soldier, a stern, unbending man, accustomed to be obeyed absolutely; accustomed to oppress a downtrodden, conquered race, no one daring to raise a murmur; a heathen, too, a man whose religion was odious and contemptible, a man, therefore, without real power over his actions, the creature of caprice: such, at least by instinct and education, must the good centurion have been. Yet the grace of God is well-nigh irresistible, it triumphs against desperate odds. At first he has nothing but contempt for a religion which, good in itself, was made almost insufferable by its priests and professors. As he looks deeper down; as he begins to think; takes the trouble to examine this old creed, at first it may be with a sort of antiquarian interest, then with growing curiosity, then with an honest desire to learn; God teaches him, the Holy Spirit enlightens his heart, and he begins to love the nation whom he had been sent to trample upon rather than to rule. So between this rough soldier and his neighbour there sprang up mutual confidence, even love; at last, so drawn was he towards the people of God, that with boundless generosity he built the men of Capernaum a synagogue. Nor was this soldier’ s love only to the inhabitants of Capernaum; his servant, a poor slave, a youth stolen from home and friends, expecting only cruelty and stripes, “ was dear unto him,” and he lay at home sick and ready to die. 1. The wisdom of accepting God’ s plan of life as the one by which we can most glorify Him. Who does not often wish that his place in life had been quite differently cast? If we only had had more money, leisure, scope for talents, friends, what could we not have done for God, what might not God have accomplished in us? See the correction of this foolishness in the saintly centurion’ s history. A heathen soldier mixing with men whose actions, however brave they might be, were always cruel and hard, living amongst companions coarse and low, where passion was unbridled, pity unknown; a man sent to serve m despised Galilee, amongst a nation utterly degraded, hopelessly vile; his headquarters one of the most corrupt cities of that land of darkness; how could circumstances be apparently more against him? Yet what seemed hindrances, he turned into helps. If he had not been in the Roman army he had never seen Capernaum; if he had not been quartered near Capernaum, he had never built a synagogue; but for his sorrow he would never have had personal intercourse with the Lord of Life; but for his great need he would never have won so gracious a benediction from God’ s Son. So is it with every one born of woman. Where our lot is cast, what our circumstances may be--all this is God’ s plan. Therefore it follows, they are the best circumstances conceivable, by which we may mount to Him. Shun discontent. Ourselves, not our circumstances, are our hindrances. 2. There is another line of thought suggested by the relationship which existed between this master and those whom God had placed in his home--“ his servant was dear unto him.” It is difficult for us to realize thestrangeness of the situation. Christianity has taught men pity, tenderness, sympathy for weakness and suffering, yet this centurion was not even a Jew. Somehow the tender heart of this valiant soldier, illuminated by the light of conscience, taught him that his slave lad was brought into his home, in order that he might lift him out of the lower depths of degradation, succour and help him in his need. How clear the lesson to a Christian, to a soldier of the cross. Are we not taught the strange responsibility which is placed on each as, in turn, he becomes a master or a messenger, as parents or teachers--immediately, that is, God gives us any authority? Home, the centre of Christian influence, home, the place where servants, children, guests, are all brought together for this end alone, that by love those in authority may win those over whom they are set, and so God may win them too; this, indeed, is the lesson of the good centurion’ s action. (T. B. Dover, M. A.) The centurion’ s faith Notice some of the lessons, naturally lessons touching faith, which this passage is designed to teach. I. We learn that GREAT ARE NOT ALWAYS TO GREAT FAITH. Let us never despair of truth-sowing, in waste and unlikely places. The so-called rose of Jericho drops its dried-up germ on the parched desert sand. But God’ s mind does not leave it to perish. Swept hither and thither, it finds at last its oasis, some hidden spot of moisture, and there it abides and sprouts, and becomes again a thing of life and beauty. A drifting cocoa-nut, cast by the surf ashore upon some barren limestone reef, seems in itself the very image of failure and utter loss. But see I this apparent waif, under the watchful eye of Providence, becomes the beginning of an earthly paradise. It is faith in sowing that brings the harvest of faith (Ecclesiastes 11:6). II. It is more than hinted, further, that GREAT FAITH IS MOST LIKELY TO BE FOUND IN WITH A NOBLE NATURE. Equity, generosity, sympathy, humility, such traits were prominent here, and they made room for tile working of great faith in Christ. Faith is something that has to do with ideas, and hence holds mere things cheap. It is not so much what they achieve as what they believe in and strive for that makes men noble and great. “ What I admire,” said Turgot, “ in Christopher Columbus, is not that he discovered the New World, but that he went to look for it on the faith of an idea.” III. Again, GREAT FAITH HERE, AS ALWAYS, IS BY A SENSE OF GREAT NEED. IV. Further, it follows also from what has just been said, that GREAT FAITH IS ALSO BY GREAT . Its sublimest flights, like those of the birds, are always preceded by a settling low down. There are some beautiful plants whose leaves grow even smaller as the plant grows higher. V. Still again, THE GREAT FAITH OF THE WAS NO FAITH. A great deal is said about believing blindly. And there are times when a simple trust is all that is left us; but generally speaking, we may reason from the seen to the unseen, front ourselves and our finite circumstances to God and His unlimited might. Faith is not blind, except to trifles. It sees! It sees more, not less. It sees with new light and new powers. This earth of ours is but a simple birthplace, a nest of sticks and mud on the swinging bough. It is the point of departure, not the place of rest, and the man of faith has realized this in some degree. He has looked over its borders into the unsounded depths. He has gazed on the immeasurable vault. He has the evidence of things unseen. He knows that though “ the steps of faith fall on a seeming void, they find the Rock beneath.” VI. It is interesting to notice, in the next place, THE KIND OF MORAL THAT SEEMS TO FIT ONE FOR THE OF GREAT FAITH. 1. Obedience. Our centurion, as a soldier, had learned to submit his will, to obey. But it is still better to learn obedience in the family than in the army. A loving, filial obedience towards Christian parents is of all earthly things the nearest to that service which our heavenly Father claims from us. 2. Liberality. Our centurion was a generous giver, too. There is a really potent moral discipline in giving. Just as the largest ships only venture into the deepest harbours, so it is safe to expect that the Divine blessing--especially an all-conquering faith, one of the greatest--will only there come richest and fullest where the sluices are held widest open, through a noble, perpetual outgush of kindly feeling and generous doing towards one’ s fellow-men. VII. GREAT FAITH DOES NOT LIFT ONE OUT OF THE BEACH OF PRAYER ON THE PART OF THOSE HAVING LESS. VIII. GREAT FAITH IS ABLE TO BEAR WITHOUT PERIL GREAT . Ships that are well ballasted you may load high, and they will not careen or refuse to mind the rudder. IX. WHETHER FAITH BE GREAT OR SMALL, IT IS THE SAME THING IN ESSENCE, AND WELL- TO OUR LORD. The principal thing is to have some faith, though it be little. It is that which brings us into the blessed circle of the beneficiaries of Jesus, while the want of it shuts us wholly out. Men have had it who had little else that was good, who had, in fact, much else that was bad, and yet, because they had it, were enrolled among the heroes of God’ s shining host. (Edwin C. Bissell.) Kindness to inferiors Xenocrates, though a heathen, was pitiful to a poor sparrow, which, being pursued by a hawk, fled to him for succour. He sheltered her until the enemy had flown off, and then, letting her go, said that he had not betrayed his poor suppliant. A Christian should have more pity for a distressed Christian than a heathen has for a bird. A master should be a physician to his servants; as careful to preserve their health and prevent their death, as to provide them work. Another heathen told his wife that it was part of her office, and the most grateful part of it, in case a servant fell sick, to tend him and promote his recovery. This centurion, though a soldier (and their hearts usually are more obdurate and less compassionate than others), was earnest and diligent for the help of his sick servant. (G. Swinnock.) The increase of faith I. FAITH IS THE OF THE OF GOD’ S POWER UPON US--a condition, let it ever be borne in mind, of God’ s own making, and springing wholly out of God’ s own wisdom and love to us. For, I ask, What is faith? and I reply that, speaking generally, faith is sympathy with God--it is the receptive attitude of the soul--it is the laying open of the whole being to the influence of God. If I would keep the tender flower from the frost, I must cover it up and wrap it round to shut out the icy touch that would freeze up its life. But would I quicken it with the sun I must take away all barriers and let its blessed rays stream in. Unbelief covers up and closes the soul: faith opens it to the sunshine. II. FAITH IS THE MEASURE OF GOD’ S GIFTS TO US. The gifts are proportioned to our fitness and our power to receive them. There are partial gifts for partial faith; fuller gifts for fuller faith. To recur to my former illustration, the measure in which the sun streams into a chamber depends on the degree in which all impediments are removed from its entrance. The limit is not in the glorious orb, but in that which receives it. It will enter wherever it can, though it be but through a broken link. Throw wide open the broad shutters, and how it will stream in, till every object becomes beautiful in its rays! If we would have more faith, we must cultivate it; and I will tell you how. 1. There must be conscious desire in your minds for more faith--not a general wish for more grace in a vague and unmeaning way, but a deep sense of your need of a fuller trust in God and an earnest desire for it. 2. Try to exercise faith. The gift, indeed, is all of God; but He works through the human effort. Not the listless idle soul, that folds its hands and takes its ease in Zion, will ever get close to God, but the soul that presses on and up, and, in our Lord’ s vivid language, “ takes heaven by violence.” 3. To assist you in this effort, endeavour to watch and study the dealings of God with you, like one who expects to see God everywhere. Be not like the man who saunters along the road, not caring or thinking whom he shall meet; but like one who is looking out for a friend, and watches on every side to see him. Think of God as a real being, and both in the answers to your prayers and in the details of your life, try to trace His providence. 4. Let us dwell much upon the promises; let us live in them and on them, making them the habitual atmosphere of our religious life. (E. Garbett, M. A.) The centurion of Capernaum I. There are three aspects in which this “ centurion of Capernaum” commands our attention; as a MAN, as an , and as a . His attraction is thus , , and . 1. The personal interest that attaches to him. 2. His political interest, or official significance. As an officer of Rome, the representative of Roman power at a Jewish Court, he draws our notice to himself. The Jew is the world’ s representative Religionist; the Greek its representative Thinker; but the Roman its representative Ruler. He is the typical warrior and administrator. Her own greatest poet put into the prophetic mouth of Anchises in the nether world this description of her mission:--“ Others, I grant, shall with more delicacy mould the breathing brass; from marble draw the features to the life; describe with the rod the courses of the rising stars. To rule the nations with imperial sway, be your care, O Romans; these shall be thine arts--to impose terms of peace, to spare the humble, and to crush the proud.” When the Word of God became Incarnate He entered into a world politically prepared for His Advent after a fashion not less perfect for the purpose designed than strange because of the means by which it had been wrought. Of this preparation Rome was the instrument; and of Rome her officer at Capernaum is a representative. Is there not, then, about him, as an official, a deep political significance and interest? 3. His interest as a Proselyte, This term, “ Proselyte,” leads me to call attention to a function of the Jewish Prophets in Messianic preparation, not always adequately measured by us in our estimate of them as divinely ordained to “ make ready a people prepared for the Lord.” Joel thrills him; Jeremiah melts him; Ezekiel elevates him; Isaiah entrances him. The Greek Philosophy, which formed the polite study of every educated Roman, had taught him to look beneath the surface and to gather the truths unseen by the vulgar eye, to see substance under shadow, reality under form, and the truth typified under the typifying symbol. He is thus prepared to pierce beneath the rites and sacrifices to that to which they pointed and which they forecasted. II. His action, in circumstances which to many men in his station would have been trivial, reveals a new beauty in his character, and demands from us a new admiration. His servant--“ dear to him” in a personal way, as one bound to him by personal links, and not merely, as were his soldiers, by official relations--“ was sick and ready to die.” The manifestation of a noble nature was grateful to the Son of Man. His Divine Humanity rejoiced as the flower of faith blossomed in the hearts of those He loved. (G. M. Grout, B. D.) The centurion; or, an exhortation to the virtuous This centurion certainly had a high reputation. Two features of character blend in him which do not often meet in such graceful harmony. He won the high opinion of others, and yet he held a low estimation of himself. I. To begin, then, here is a HIGH ; let us thoroughly appreciate it, and give it a full measure of commendation. This centurion must have been a man of sterling worth. He was not merely quiet and inoffensive like some men who are as insipid as they are harmless. It would appear, too, that his private temperament, as well as his public spirit, contributed to the estimation in which he was held. Next to this, you will observe his generosity. It is not by occasional deeds of showy lustre, but by the habitual practice of comely virtues, that a worthy character is built up. A thousand kindnesses may be nestling beneath the soil, like the many-fibred root of a gigantic tree, when it is said, “ He loveth our nation” ; and then the conspicuous fruit appears in its season--“ He hath built us a synagogue.” But, remember, and here I close this point, however good your character, or however excellent your repute, not one word of this is ever to be mentioned before the throne of the Most High. II. Secondly, in the centurion we see coupled with this high and noble repute, DEEP OF SOUL--“ I am not worthy that Thou shouldest come under my root.” Humility, then, it appears, may exist in any condition. There are some men who are too mean to be humble. They are too crouching, crawling, sneakish, and abject to be humble. It certainly is not for the least vermin that creep the earth to talk about humility. But a man to be humble, needs to have a soul; to stoop, you must have some elevation to stoop from; you must have some real excellence within you before you can really understand what it is to renounce merit. We have heard of a certain monk, who, professing to be humble, said “ he had broken all God’ s commandments; he was the greatest sinner in the world; he was as bad as Judas.” Somebody said, “ Why tell us that? we have all of us thought that a long time!” Straightway the holy man grew red in the face, and smote the accuser, and asked him what he had ever done to deserve such a speech. III. The main thing I am aiming at, because, after all, the most practical, lies in my third point. However deep our humility, however conscious we may be of our own undeservingness, WE SHOULD NEVER OUR FAITH IN GOD. Observe the confession--“ I am not worthy that Thou shouldest come under my roof.” What then will be the inference?--“ I fear, therefore, my servant will not be healed” ? No, no; but--“ Say in a word, and my servant shall be healed.” It is all a mistake that great faith implies pride. Beloved, the greater faith, the deeper humility. The more the glories of God strike your eyes, the humbler you will lie in conscious abasement, but yet the higher you will rise in importunate prayer. But now just imagine what your own case is, and the case of others, and let us apply this principle to it: we are utterly unworthy to obtain the temporal or spiritual mercy which, it may be, we are now seeking: we may feel this, but in asking anything for ourselves, we must still ask in faith in God, in His promise, and in His grace; and we shall prevail. Whatever thy desire may be, only believe, and it shall be granted unto thee if it be a desire in accordance with His will, and in accordance with the promises of His Word; or else God’ s Word is not true. Be humble about it, but do not be doubtful about it. (C. H. Spurgeon.) The centurion’ s faith and humility The greatest light may enter into the darkest places. We may find the choicest flowers blooming where we least expected them. Here was a Gentile, a Roman, a soldier--a soldier clothed with absolute power--and yet a tender master, a considerate citizen, a lover of God! The best of pearls have been found in the darkest caves of ocean. Let no man think that because of his position in society he cannot excel in virtue. It is not the place which is to blame, but the man. I. THE OF THE WAS NOT AT ALL TO THE OF HIS FAITH. You may have noticed in the biography of some eminent men how badly they speak of themselves. Southey, in his “ Life of Bunyan,” seems at a difficulty to understand how Bunyan could have used such depreciating language concerning his own character. For it is true, according to all we know of his biography, that he was not, except in the case of profane swearing, at all so bad as the most of the villagers. Indeed, there were some virtues in the man which were worthy of all commendation. Southey attributes it to a morbid state of mind, but we rather ascribe it to a return of spiritual health. Had the excellent poet seen himself in the same heavenly light as that in which Bunyan saw himself, he would have discovered that Bunyan did not exaggerate, but was simply stating as far as he could a truth which utterly surpassed his powers of utterance. The great light which shone around Saul of Tarsus was the outward type of that inner light above the brightness of the sun which flashes into a regenerate soul, and reveals the horrible character of the sin which dwells within. Believe me, when you hear Christians making abject confessions, it is not that they are worse than others, but that they see themselves in clearer light than others; and this centurion’ s unworthiness was not because he had been more vicious than other men--on the contrary, he had evidently been much more virtuous than the common run of mankind--but because he saw what others did not see, and felt what others had not felt. Deep as was this man’ s contrition, overwhelming as was his sense of utter worthlessness, he did not doubt for a moment either the power or the willingness of Christ. II. I shall want you for s moment to attend while we shift the text to the other quarter. THE ’ S GREAT FAITH WAS NOT AT ALL HOSTILE TO HIS . His faith was extraordinary. It ought not to be extraordinary. We ought all of us to believe as well in Christ as this soldier did. In his heart he enthroned the Lord Jesus as a Captain over all the forces of the world, as the generalissimo of heaven and earth; as, in fact, the Caesar, the imperial Governor of all the forces of the universe. ‘ Twas graciously thought, ‘ twas poetically embodied, ‘ twas nobly spoken, ‘ twas gloriously believed; but it was the truth and nothing more than the truth, for universal dominion is really in the power of Jesus to-day. Here is one point to which I recall you; this man’ s faith did not for a moment interfere with his thorough personal humiliation. Because Christ was so great, he felt himself to be unworthy either to meet Him or entertain Him. The application shall be to three sorts of people. 1. First, we speak to distressed minds deeply conscious of their unworthiness. You feel that you cannot repent, but cannot Jesus make thee repent by His Spirit? Do you hesitate about that question? See the world a few months ago hard bound with frost, but how daffodil, and crocus, and snowdrop, have come up above that once frozen soil, how snow and ice have gone, and the genial sun shines out? God does it readily, with the soft breath of the south wind and the kind sunbeams, and he can do the same in the spiritual world for thee. But, perhaps, it is some bad habit which gives you trouble. You cannot get rid of it. Ah! I know your dreads and despairs; but, man, I ask thee, cannot Jesus deliver? He whose every act is wonderful, can surely do what He will within this little world of thy soul, since in the great world outside He rules as He pleases. Believe in His power, and ask Him to prove it. He has but to say in a word, and this matter of present distress shall be taken away. 2. A second application of our subject shall be made to the patient workers who are ready to faint. The last application I shall make is the same as the second, only on a wider scale. 3. There are many who are like watchers who have grown weary. When He saith, “ Do” it shall be done, and His name shall be praised. O for more faith and more self-abasement. (C. H. Spurgeon.) Motives of humility I. THE FRUITS OF . 1. Humility keeps us from many sins. 2. Humility preserves the other virtues. 3. Humility attracts Divine grace (James 4:6). 4. Humility inflames the heart with Divine charity. 5. Humility exalts us to the height of heaven (Luke 1:52; Luke 18:14; 1 Peter 5:6). II. THE AND EXAMPLE OF JESUS CHRIST. Jesus has enjoined on us this duty-- 1. By words (Matthew 11:29). 2. By example. (1) In His birth. (2) In His circumcision. (3) In washing the disciples’ feet. (4) In His death on the cross. III. OUR OWN MISERY. 1. We find motives in the outer world. (1) If you look at the earth, you behold your grave. (2) Beneath the earth, you find hell. (3) In heaven is God, and the gate of heaven is low. 2. Motives within ourselves. (1) Concerning our body. (2) Concerning our soul. (Laselve.) Of humility He that would build lastingly must lay his foundation low. The proud man, like the early shoots of a new-felled coppice, thrusts out full of sap, green in leaves, and fresh in colour; but bruises and breaks with every wind, is nipped with every little cold, and being top-heavy, is wholly unfit for use. Whereas the humble man retains it in the root, can abide the winter’ s killing blast, the ruffling concussions of the wind, and can endure far more than that which appears so flourishing. Like the pyramid, he has a large foundation, whereby his height may be more eminent; and the higher he is, the less does he draw at the top; as if the nearer heaven, the smaller he must appear. And indeed, the higher man approaches to celestials, and the more he considers God, the more he sees to make himself vile in his own esteem. He who values himself least shall by others be prized most. Nature swells when she meets a check; but submission in us to others begets submission in others to us. Give me the man that is humble out of judgment, and I shall find him full of parts. Charles V. appears as great in holding the candle to his departing visitors, as when he was surrounded by his victorious officers. Moses, who was the first and greatest divine, statesman, historian, philosopher, and poet; who as a valiant general led Israel out of Egypt; who was renowned for his miracles, and could roll up the waves to pass his men, and tumble them down again upon his enemies; who was a type of Christ, and styled a friend of God; was nevertheless meek above all that were upon the face of the earth and lest our proud dust should think it a disparagement to be humble, we are assured by our Saviour Himself, that to be so will be rest to our souls. No man ever lost the esteem of a wise man by stooping to an honest lowness when there was occasion for it. I have known a great duke to fetch in wood to his inferior’ s fire; and a general of nations descend to a footman’ s office in lifting up the boot of a coach; yet neither thought it a degradation to their dignity. (Owen Felltham.) A full sail The full sail oversets the vessel, which drawn in, may make the voyage prosperous. (Owen Felltham.) To children If I had seen this centurion only when he was dressed for battle I should not have thought of him as gentle. I should have seen him carrying a sword to kill men with, and a shield to defend himself from being killed by others. And as he had other soldiers under him, I might have heard him speaking to them in a loud commanding way, and telling them to do hard and cruel things. But, as we see him in the Gospels, his sword and shield are hanging on the wall, and he is sitting beside a little bed in his room in the soldiers’ barracks. After one of his dreadful battles he had got for his share of the spoil a little boy who had been taken captive--a poor little boy, torn away from father and mother, and forced to be aslave. He was the slave of this soldier; he cooked his food, he tidied his room, he polished his armour, he went his errands. Then the rough soldier was as tender as a mother could be. He sat by his bed; he watched over him day and night. One day, as the big soldier was sitting by the little bed, somebody came in and said, “ A great prophet has come to the town. Jesus of Nazareth has come.” “ Jesus of Nazareth?” the soldier said; “ the Healer of sickness? Oh that He would heal my boy!” But then this thought came into his mind, “ I am a soldier of the nation that is ill-treating the Jews. I am not worthy that a Jew so good as He should do anything for me.” Then other thoughts came, and in his great love for the boy, and knowing that Jesus could heal him, he at last ventured to send this humble message: “ Oh, my Lord, my servant is near to die, and Thou art able to save from dying. I am not worthy that Thou shouldest visit my house. But only speak the word, and he shall live.” Now when Jesus received that message, a great joy came into His heart; and He said to health, “ Go to that soldier’ s little servant, and make him well, for I have not found a heart so gentle as his master’ s--no, not in all Israel.” And He had no sooner spoken, out on the street, than the thing He commanded was done. Health came back to the sick boy in the soldier’ s house. And the gentle heart of the master swelled up in thankful joy, as he stooped down and kissed the child whom Jesus had made well again. (A. Macleod, D. D.) Cues to character There are three separate spectators of every man’ s life--himself, his neighbours, and his God. Let us consider concerning this man-- I. WHAT HIS THOUGHT OF HIM--that he was worthy. 1. They formed their opinion of his character from his conduct--“ He loveth,” &c. They judged of his worth, not by his words but by his works. 2. Their estimate of his character was singularly just. II. WHAT HE THOUGHT OF HIMSELF--“ I am not worthy.” Doubtless this feeling of unworthiness which prompted him to procure the services of the Jewish elders, instead of going direct to Christ himself. 1. A truly good man has a higher standard of moral excellence than other men. 2. A truly good man is conscious of numerous imperfections which other men do not perceive. III. WHAT THE SAVIOUR THOUGHT OF HIM--“ I have not found so great faith,” &c. 1. Christ estimates a man’ s character according to the amount of his faith. 2. All true faith prompts to corresponding activity in doing good. Morality without faith is heathenism, and faith without morality is antinomianism. (W. Kirkman.) The threefold influence of faith I. THE OF FAITH UPON SOCIETY--“ He is worthy.” 1. Faith influencing society through the lowest natural means. Stones and mortar. “ He hath built us a synagogue.” 2. Faith influencing society through the highest human means. Philanthropy. “ He loveth our nation.” 3. Faith continuing to influence society independently of the means by which it manifested itself. Every heart says till this day, “ He is worthy.” II. THE OF FAITH UPON THE MAN HIMSELF. 1. It gives man a right estimate of himself--“ I am not worthy.” 2. It gives him the right estimate of what he has--“ Under my roof.” 3. It gives man right ideas of God--“ Speak the word only.” He believed (a) that Christ has authority to speak; (b) in His willingness to speak; (c) in His power to accomplish--“ And my servant shall be healed.” 4. It gives to the soul the right idea of duty. Loving the nation and caring for the welfare of his domestics. 5. It gives to the soul the right religious impulse--“ He hath built us a synagogue.” 6. It converts the soul into a most Christ-like aspect. Disinterestedness pervades all the centurion’ s acts. All for others. III. THE OF FAITH UPON THE SAVIOUR--“ I have not found so great faith,” &c. 1. The uniqueness of the faith. It took the Saviour by surprise. 2. The clear conception which his faith had of the person of the Saviour. 3. The estimate which his faith had formed of the Saviour’ s feelings. Believed there were sympathy and tenderness in the Saviour’ s heart. 4. The estimate which he had formed of the resources at the Saviour’ s command. 5. His implicit confidence in the Saviour in His absence. 6. The Saviour’ s unreserved compliance with the centurion’ s request, and the desired blessing bestowed. (W. A. Edwards.) The lessons of the narrative 1. The true Church in the world in all ages is wider than the visible Church. 2. There are in all ages lost characters within the pale of the visible Church. “ They are not all Israel which are of Israel.” 3. True piety always insures membership of the invisible Church. 4. We are led into circumstances at times in which our religious sympathies ought to transcend all the narrow sectional lines of our creeds. 5. True faith presents itself to Christ and the world in very different aspects. 6. True faith never fails to enlist Christ’ s sympathy and help. 7. Devotion to the welfare of others is a safe path to personal happiness and heaven’ s approval. (W. A. Edwards.) Another treatment 1. Truth may prosper when the Church is not aware of it. 2. Truth prospers at times beyond the expectation of the Church. 3. Truth prospers often where we least expect it. 4. Contact with Christ reveals the true condition of the soul: (a) Faith in the heart of the centurion; (b) Unbelief in that of the Jews. 5. The noble influence of religion, conquering the bigotry of the Jew, and inspiring the heart of a Gentile to build synagogues to the service of the living God. 6. Privileges enhance responsibility, and neglect of them involves the saddest consequences. 7. Man’ s work is ever in proportion to his faith. 8. Man’ s influence upon society is ever in proportion to the amount of his faith. 9. Man’ s influence with Heaven is ever in proportion to the strength of his faith. (W. A. Edwards.) A soldier’ s training This centurion was a Roman, a captain in the army, who had risen from the ranks by good conduct. Before he got his vine-stock, which was the mark of his authority over a hundred men, he had, no doubt, marched many a weary mile under a heavy load, and fought, probably, many a bloody battle in foreign parts. That had been his education--discipline and hard work. And because he had learned to obey, he was fit to rule. He was helping now to keep in order those treacherous, unruly Jews, and their worthless puppet-kings like Herod; much as our soldiers in India are keeping in order the Hindoos, and their worthless puppet-kings. This was the great and true thought which had filled this good man’ s mind--duty, order, and obedience. The message which he sent to Jesus means this: “ There is a word of command among us soldiers. Has God no word of command likewise? The word of my superiors is enough for me. I say to those under me, ‘ Go,’ and they go. And if I can work by a word, cannot this Jesus work by a word likewise? “ By some such thoughts as these, I suppose, had this good soldier gained his great faith; his faith that all God’ s creatures were in a divine and wonderful order obedient to the wilt of God who made them; and that Jesus Christ was God’ s viceroy and lieutenant (I speak so, because I suppose that is what he, as a soldier, would have thought), to carry out God’ s commands on earth. This is the character which makes a good soldier, and a good Christian likewise. (Charles Kingsley.) Paradoxes in the character of the centurion He was-- 1. A soldier accustomed to scenes of bloodshed, yet preserving, amid all the hardening tendencies of his profession, a tender heart. 2. A slave-owner, yet solicitous for the welfare of his slave. 3. A representative of the usurping power, yet one who had secured the respect and affection of the leaders of the subjugated people among whom he lived. 4. A proselyte to the religion of Israel, yet more truly religious than the people whose religion he had adopted. 5. A Pagan by birth, a Jew by conversion, a Christian by faith. “ The first heathen man of whom we read, that he acknowledged Christ.” Learn that a true religious faith is able to overcome in the man who possesses it the untoward influences of (a) birth; (b) training: (c) calling; (d) circumstances. (J. R. Bailey.) Faith of the centurion I. THE FAITH WHICH WAS . 1. First evidence of its existence--His tenderness to his servants. Of course this good act might have existed separate from religion. But we arc forbidden to view it so, when we remember that he was a proselyte. 2. Second proof: His humility. 3. Third: His belief in an invisible living will. II. THE CAUSES OF CHRIST’ S . 1. The centurion was a Gentile, and therefore unlikely to know revealed truth. 2. A soldier, and therefore exposed to a recklessness, and idleness, and sensuality, which are the temptations of that profession. But he turned his loss to glorious gain. III. THE SAVIOUR’ S COMMENT THE OF , AND THE OF . The former, “ Many shall come from the east and the west,” &c. The latter, “ The children of the kingdom shall be cast into outer darkness” (Matthew 8:11-12). IV. THIS TO THE PERFECT OF CHRIST. The Saviour marvelled. It was a real genuine wonder. (F. W. Robertson.) I. THIS FAITH IN ITS IN THE MAN’ S LIFE. II. THIS FAITH IN ITS IN THE MAN’ S LIFE. (J. Ogmore Davies.) Marvellous faith The faith of the centurion reveals itself. I. As A POWER OF GREAT . His idea is, that just as the hundred men under his command are at his beck to come and go, and do as he pleases, so all the powers of nature arc ready to do the bidding of Christ. Was it not a great original idea? Observe, it was an idea, the credit of which belonged to the centurion’ s faith. To conceive it required more than a clever brain, even the daring spirit of which faith alone is capable. Unbelief cannot entertain such grand ideas of Divine power. II. AS A POWER OF INTO OF . Weak faith makes difficulties, but strong faith annihilates them. (A. B. Bruce, D. D.) Masters and servants The centurion was (1) a man of faith. (2) He was also a man of liberality. (3) His charity began at home. There are many faults noticeable in rulers of families. 1. Injustice in the assignment of duties. 2. Unreasonableness in the expectation of perfection. 3. Negligence in the consideration of religious interests. (Dean Vaughan.) He loveth our nation I. THE ON WHICH THE ACTED. II. THE ACTION ITSELF. “ He hath built us,” &c. We estimate love by the service that it renders, and the cost that service occasions. (J. C.Galloway.) The candour and liberality of the centurion recommended I. THE TO WHICH HIS LOVE FOR THE JEWISH NATION IMPLIES. II. THE SOLID GROUNDS ON WHICH HIS TO THE JEWISH NATION RESTED. It was such an attachment as it was next to impossible for a good man not to feel. To love the Jewish nation is still a natural dictate of piety. III. THE MANNER IN WHICH HIS TO THE PEOPLE OF GOD WAS EVINCED. It was not an empty profession, productive of no fruit. IV. THE HIGHLY AND OF HIS CONDUCT. To assist in the erection of places of worship, providing it proceeds from right motives, is unquestionably an acceptable service to the Most High. (R. Hall, M. A.) Christ marvelling I do not know that we ever feel the immense interval between ourselves and the Son of Man more keenly than when we compare that which astonishes us with that which astonishes Him. To us, as a rule, the word “ miracles” denotes mere physical wonders; and these are so wonderful to us as to be well-nigh incredible. But in Him they awake no astonishment. He never speaks of them with the faintest accent of surprise. He set so little store by them that He often seemed reluctant to work them, and openly expressed His wish that those on or for whom they had been wrought would tell no man of them. What does astonish Him is not these outward wonders so surprising to us, but that inward wonder, the mystery of man’ s soul, the miraculous power which we often exercise without a thought of surprise, the power of opening and shutting that door or window of the soul which looks heavenward, and through which alone the glories of the spiritual world can stream in upon us. Only twice are we told that He marvelled to whom all the secrets of Nature and Life lay open; once at the unbelief of men, and once at their faith. When He came to His own, and they received Him not, He was driven from His wonted calm by an immeasurable surprise: He marvelled at their unbelief (Mark 6:6); and, again, when He came to those to whom He was a Stranger, and they took Him in, He was beyond all measure astonished; He marvelled at their prompt and vigorous faith. (S. Cox, D. D.) Faith and reason We are told that this man’ s faith excited the wonder of the Son of God, and, therefore, everything that belongs to that faith must be interesting to us. 1. Already, then, this man was recognized for his devotedness of character. 2. Since our Lord knew that the character of this centurion was that of a devout, unselfish believer in God, we can easily understand that His expectations must have been large. 3. And yet we are told that His expectations were exceeded. Expecting much, He found more. 4. Some people have thought that the humility of this centurion was so extreme as to be exaggerated, and even unnatural. Yet remember (1) that he had been taught that the position of a Gentile was that of a profane and unclean person; (2) that his humility was founded, doubtless, upon moral as well as ceremonial reasons. He realized the greatness of the Lord Jesus. 5. How did he reason with himself? In a way which shows that the basis of true faith is always humility. (Bishop Moorhouse.) The centurion’ s faith Faith and humility, my brethren, may be described as two sister virtues, so closely are they connected together, that the one cannot flourish without the other. We are taught that we may possibly have something like a vague hope that, through God’ s mercy, our sin may, ultimately, be forgiven, and our souls rescued from ruin: but for a man to say that he knows that salvation is his, that he is in a state of acceptance, that the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ has been applied to his soul, and that now he is the child of God, is presumption, and that no real, humble-minded Christian will speak in this way. Thus we find, that while, on the one hand, faith is, by one class of persons represented as presumption, on the other hand, it is exaggerated into presumption just because people fail to exercise the virtue of humility. There is no humility in my doubting the Word of God. “ He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life.” Let us take the narrative as it stands, and learn a few practical lessons from it. I. The first thing I notice about this centurion is, that although he was a man in a considerable social position, HE WAS FREE FROM THAT PETTY FORM OF PRIDE, WHICH IS IN TOO MANY THE CURSE OF MODERN SOCIETY. Here is a very practical lesson with respect to humility. My friends, I do not believe much in the humility of man towards his God where his conduct is characterized by pride towards his fellow men. Yet, again, the centurion was free from that miserable form of pride which exhibits itself in national prejudice. The man that really wants to get a blessing from the Lord Jesus Christ must be content to take the lowest place, to think everybody better than himself, to see himself as God sees him, and to be willing to accept from any man whatever reasonable help that man seems likely to offer to him. II. Well, listen to THE WORDS OF OF THE MASTER. “ When Jesus heard it, He marvelled, and said to them that followed, Verily, I say unto you, I have not found so great faith: no, not in Israel.” I want to ask you, before concluding my sermon this morning, Are you prepared to receive a blessing, dear friends, on those terms? If the Lord Jesus Christ were to stand in this pulpit, looking every one of you in the face, and were to say, “ Go thy way; as thou hast believed, so be it unto thee,” would you reply by a fervent exclamation of grateful joy? Should we be able to say so? or should we not, in common honesty, have to look up, and say. “ Not so, Lord; I have net believed, or trusted my case into Thy hand; on the contrary, I feel in my own heart, that I have been constantly taking it out of Thy hand, and transferring it from Thee to myself? I have had my own feelings and thoughts; I have been reasoning about possibilities; and, so far as I have been taking it out of Thy hand, I cannot claim Thy blessing.” Oh, dear friends, remember that God cannot alter His conditions. They are fixed in the very nature of things. (W. H. Aitken, M. A.) The centurion at Capernaum I. HIS PIETY WAS MARKED BY ZEAL AND . The true secret of this soldier’ s “ love “ for the Jewish “ nation” is thus explained. It was a “ love” founded upon religion, and it expressed itself in religious acts. The conversion of this Roman soldier gives an interesting and instructive view of the power of Divine truth. In scarcely any period of its history was there a more sad declension of genuine piety in the Jewish Church, than in the age to which the text refers. Scepticism, formality, hypocrisy, and sin, seemed to pervade all ranks. Yet, amidst all this degeneracy, the truth remained embodied in the sacred Scriptures, the purity of which was most sedulously guarded; and by means of that truth, however it might be dishonoured by its professors, this heathen soldier was effectually “ turned from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God.” How wonderful are the dispensations of Providence! The Roman army conquered the Jews in battle, and rendered their nation tributary; but the Jews, in their turn, armed with the power of revealed truth, effected a greater victory. They overcame the understandings and the hearts of many of their conquerors, and laid the hardy soldiers of heathen Rome prostrate in prayer before the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob. In connection with this part of our subject I wish particularly to invite your attention to the liberal and generous character of true religion. A good man cannot live to himself. His property, his influence, his person, are freely placed upon God’ s altar, and offered in sacrifice to the Lord of all. But the piety of the centurion mentioned in our text was not only characterized by zeal and liberality; it was equally marked-- II. BY AND . He had a “ servant that was dear to him” ; and when that servant “ was sick, and ready to die,” the tenderest sympathies of the master were awakened. We are here reminded of that diversity of rank which has prevailed in the world from the earliest ages. While poverty remains, servitude must also continue. This diversity of rank, in consequence of the depravity of human nature, has often given birth to feelings and acts alike dishonourable to God and man. True religion effectually corrects all these evils. It produces a spirit of justice, equity, and love; and it inspires the mind with the fear of God, and a supreme regard for His authority. It renders the rich man the guardian and benefactor of the poor; and it makes the poor cheerful, contented, and honest. And let no one suppose that this spiritual equality and affection is subversive of order and of just authority. The most perfect of all government is the government of holy love. This remark will apply both to families and the Church. His piety and kindness, so far from impairing his authority, seem to have even increased it; and the probability is, that a master more respected, or an officer more efficient, did not then exist. The obedience which he received was remarkable for its promptitude and cheerfulness; so far was his pious kindness from rendering his domestic servants insolent, or his soldiers careless and remiss. III. THE ’ S DEEP AND , Humility consists in lowliness of mind. It is a disposition which becomes creatures of even the highest order. Angels never affect independence. Humility especially becomes fallen man. Humility so profound as this is rarely met with, and argues an extraordinary degree of self-knowledge. The centurion was now converted from the error of his way; bat his conversion was effected by the grace of God, and therefore conferred upon him no proper merit, or worthiness, before the Lord. It was not self-righteous pride, but the want of better knowledge, that led him, under the mingled influence of shame and fear, to shun the presence of his Saviour. Increasing light would discover to him that his own unworthiness constituted the grand reason why he should come to Christ, and entrust all his concerns with Him. Tim simplicity and ingenuousness with which the centurion had already received the truth would prepare him for those further discoveries of the Divine mind and plan which the doctrine of Christ and His apostles was about to present to the world. The spiritual benefits resulting from humility are numerous and great. This temper is especially pleasing in the sight of the Lord. The piety of the centurion was particularly marked-- IV. BY STRONG FAITH. The faith of the centurion was not a blind and presumptuous confidence. 1. The subjects which I have brought before you on this occasion, I fear suggest to many of us matter of shame and humiliation before God. What an example of practical godliness have we in this centurion! and yet how great were the disadvantages under which he laboured! 2. But there is another view to be taken of this subject; and it is one which is full of encouragement. The argument which we have just urged may be changed, and proposed thus: If this heathen soldier, in whose mind there was so much error and prejudice to be overcome, and whose means of instruction and spiritual improvement were so vastly inferior to those which we enjoy, attained to all this religious eminence; what may not we attain to, with all our helps and advantages? (T. Jackson.) The centurion’ s faith Now, that we may profit by this example, let us consider these three things-- 1. What was his faith, and wherein the greatness of it lay. 2. How this faith was bred and begotten in him. 3. The effects and fruits of it, or how it discovered itself. I. THE NATURE OF HIS FAITH. It was a firm persuasion that all power and authority was eminently in Christ, and that He could do what He pleased. 1. You must distinguish of the times. In that age there was no human reason to believe this truth. Antiquity was against it, and therefore, when Paul preached Jesus, they said, “ He seemeth to be a setter forth of strange Acts 17:18). Authority was against it: “ Which none of the princes of this world knew, for had they known it they would not have crucified the Lord of glory” (1 Corinthians 2:8). The universal consent of the habitable world was against it; Only a small handful of contemptible people owned Him: “ Fear not, little flock “ (Luke 12:32). At that time it was the critical point, the hated truth, that the carpenter’ s Son should be owned as the Son of God. Those bleak winds that blow in our backs, and thrust us onward to believe, blew in their faces, and drove them from it; those very reasons which move us to own Christ moved them to reject Him. For many ages the name of Christ bath been in request and honour, but then it was a despised way. At His first appearance a certain persuasion, impressed upon the soul by the Spirit of God, of the Divine power and all-sufficiency of Christ, so as to repair to I-lira for help, was faith and great faith; when the veil of His human nature and infirmities did not keep the eye of faith from seeing Him to have a Divine power, though they could not unriddle all the mysteries about His Person and office, this was accepted for saving faith. 2. The speculative belief of this truth was not sufficient then, no more than it is now, but the practical improvement. Grant that truth, that Jesus is the Son of God, and other things will follow, as that we must obey His laws, and depend upon His promises, and make use of His power, and trust ourselves in His hands; otherwise the bare acknowledgment was not sufficient. II. How was THIS FAITH WROUGHT AND BRED IN HIM? I answer--The groundwork was laid in his knowledge of the omnipotency and power of God, and his acquaintance with the Scriptures of the Old Testament, though he were not a professed Jew. This prepared for his faith in Christ; the report or hearing was the ground of faith: “ Who hath believed our report?” (Isaiah 53:1.) He had heard by fame of His excellent doctrine: “ That He taught as one having authority, and not as the scribes” Matthew 7:29). And he had heard the rumour of His miracles, more particularly the late instance of curing the leper, which was notorious and public; for Christ biddeth him “ show himself to the priests” (Matthew 8:4); and also the miracle in recovering the ruler’ s son, an instance near, which was done in time before this: “ And there was a certain nobleman, whose son was sick at Capernaum; end he heard that Jesus was come out of Judaea into Galilee, and he went unto Him, and besought Him that He would come down and heal his son, for he was at the point of death” John 4:46-47). By all which he was moved to ascribe the omnipotency of God, which he knew before, to Jesus Christ. Thus the Spirit of God blessed the knowledge of this centurion, and the rumours that were brought to him of Christ’ s doctrine and miracles. III. THE EFFECTS OR FRUITS OF IT, OR NOW IT ITSELF. 1. In that he applieth himself to Christ. They that believe in Christ will come to Him, and put Him upon work, whilst others prize His name but neglect His office. A gracious heart will find occasions and opportunities of acquaintance with Christ, if not for themselves yet for others; for when they have heard of Him, they cannot keep from Him. 2. That He accounteth misery an object proper enough for mercy to work upon. The centurion came to Him, saying, “ Lord, my servant lieth at home sick of the palsy, grievously tormented “ (verse 6), that is, grievously affected with the disease. Alas! what can we bring to Christ but sins and sicknesses? 3. When Christ offereth to come and heal him, “ I will come and heal him” (verse 7), (which was the great condescension of the Son of God to a poor servant), see how the centurion taketh it, “ He answered, and said, Lord, I am not worthy that Thou shouldest come under my roof” (verse 8). Humility is a fruit of faith. Why are true and sound believers so ready to profess their unworthiness? They have a deeper sense of God’ s majesty and greatness than others have, and also a more broken-hearted sense of their own vileness by reason of sin. They have a more affective light and sight of things; God is another thing to them than before, so is sin and self. 4. He is content with Christ’ s word without His bodily presence: “ Speak but the word, and my servant shall be healed.” God’ s word is enough to a believer. 5. Here is Christ’ s power and dominion over all events, and events that concern us and ours, fully acknowledged, and that is a great point gained: “ He is Lord both of the dead and living” (Romans 14:9). Health and sickness are at His command. “ I form the light, and create darkness; I make peace, and create evil; I, the Lord, do all these things” (Isaiah 45:7). 6. He reasoneth from the strict discipline observed in the Roman armies, where there was no disputing of commands or questioning why and wherefore: “ I am a man under authority, having soldiers under me; and I say to this man, Go, and he goeth.” Reasoning for God and His promises is a great advantage. We are naturally acute in reasoning against faith, but when the understanding is quick and ready to invent arguments to encourage faith, it is a good sign. Use. Go you and do likewise. From the example of the centurion let me encourage you-- (1) To readiness of believing (James 3:17). (2) To represent our necessity to Christ, and refer the event to Him, to commit and submit all to Him. (3) To be humble. In all our commerce with Christ, faith must produce a real humility. Faith is most high when the heart is most low (Luke 18:11-14). (4) To meditate often on the sovereign dominion of Christ, and His power over all things that fall out in the world. (T. Manton.) Sickness the servant of the Saviour I. LET US LOOK AT THE PROOFS OF THE . 1. In Christ’ s world-wide love we have the proof of it. Christ’ s love to men is the assurance that He reserves to Himself the entire control of whatever makes them suffer. 2. Then the fact that suffering is the servant of the Saviour is shown in Christ’ s universal sovereignty. He is “ Lord of all” ; “ all authority is given unto Me in heaven and earth.” He is therefore Lord of Providence. 3. And we may add that in His miraculous works we have a token of this. When He stood before sickness on earth He could do with it what He liked, it recognized His voice and bowed submissive to His Word. II. If then, this suggestion of the centurion is an established Scripture truth, let us pass on to see WHAT IT WITH REGARD TO . Our Lord is to sickness what the Roman captain was to the soldiers under him. 1. Then we may say that sickness only comes at His building. Compact, motionless in their ranks, stand all possible pains and sicknesses before Him, until He singles one out and bids it hasten here or there. 2. And this truth implies also that sickness is restrained by His will. Like the centurion to his servant, so says Christ to sickness, “ Do this,” and it doeth it. It can only do what Christ permits. 3. And if sickness is Christ’ s servant, then sickness is sent to do His work. His servant! Then it has some message to bring, some gift to leave behind, some mission to fulfil for its Master; there is a distinct purpose in it. And the sooner that purpose is fulfilled by our discovery and acceptance of it the sooner will the sickness be withdrawn. That invests sickness with great solemnity. III. These are THREE CLOSING LESSONS. 1. This should teach us the sacred blessedness of sickness. 2. And this should call us to reverential service for the sick. 3. And this should show us the possibility of redemption, to those who are sick. (C. New.) An endeared servant “ She was a special Providence to me, “ wrote the late Earl of Shaftesbury concerning his father’ s housekeeper, Maria Millas. He explains his meaning by stating that this good woman had almost the entire care of him until he was seven years old, when she died. Yet such was the impression she made upon him in those few years, that towards the close of his truly noble life this good man said: “ I must trace, under God, very much, perhaps all, of the duties of my later life to her precepts and her prayers.” What a striking testimony is this confession to the fidelity of an obscure Christian woman! And what a grand result it wrought! Lord Shaftesbury’ s nobility of birth, represented by his earl’ s coronet, when placed beside the moral grandeur of his character, was but as a glowworm to a star. Through his long life his supreme devotion to works of benevolence gave him an undisputed right to say-- “ Write me as one that loves his fellow-men.” His deeds gave light, hope, comfort, and elevation to many thousands who were born heirs to an inheritance of poverty and woe. And those deeds were the precious fruit of the influence of a servant in his father’ s household. Importance of servants in a household A worldly man began to taunt a celebrated preacher, and, among other things, told him it was true his congregation was large, but it was chiefly made up of servants and low people. “ I know it is,” said the sagacious divine. “ My Church is composed of such converts as Jesus Christ and His apostles gained; and as for servants, I had rather be instrumental in converting them than their employers.” “ Why so?” inquired the man. “ Because,” observed the minister, “ they have the care of all the children.” (Baxendale.) Humility always seasonable I think it was Bernard, or one of the preachers of the Middle Ages, who said, “ There is one thing to be said for humility, that it never can by any possibility do one harm.” For if a man goes through a door, and he has the habit of stooping his head, it may be the door is so high there is no need for stooping, but the stooping is no injury to him; whereas if the door should happen to be a low one, and he has the habit of holding up his head, he may come into sharp contact with the top of the door. True humility is a flower which will adorn any garden. This is a sauce with which you may season every dish of life, and you will find an improvement in every case. Whether it be prayer or praise, whether it be work or suffering, the salt of humility cannot be used in excess. (C. H.Spurgeon.) Humility does not lessen dignity A person of great sanctity once paid a visit to the Caliph Haroun. The Caliph rose to receive him, and with every mark of reverence conducted him to his own seat; and when he took his leave the Caliph rose again, and accompanied him a little way. Some of the nobles afterwards observed that such condescension would lessen his dignity, and diminish the awe that belongs to a prince. The Caliph replied, “ The dignity that is lessened by humility is not worth maintaining; and the awe that is diminished by paying reverence to piety should be got rid of as soon as possible.” Military obedience The story is told of a young general in the ninth century who, with five hundred men, came against a king with twenty thousand. The king sent word that it was the height of folly in so small an army to resist his legions. In reply the general called one of his men and said, “ Take that sword and drive it to your heart.” The man did so, and fell dead. To another he said, “ Leap into yon chasm,” and the man instantly obeyed. “ Go,” he said to the messenger, “ and tell your king we have five hundred such men. We will die, but never surrender.” The messenger returned with his message--a message that struck terror into the heart of the whole army of the king. (Baxendale.) Ready to obey The Duke of Wellington was an eminently magnanimous man, bribes could not buy him, threats could not annoy him. When a lower place was offered him, he said, “ Give me your orders, and you shall be obeyed.” Great faith The discovery of the New World, as the continent of America and its islands are called, was not, like many discoveries, an accident; it was the reward of faith--the reward of Christopher Columbus’ s faith. He found fruits on the shores of Western Europe, cast up by the Atlantic waves, and brought there, as we now know, by the Gulf Stream, perfectly diverse from any that the temperate, fiery, or frozen zones of the Old World produced. So one day, let me say, strolling by the sea-shore, he saw a nut. He takes it in his hand, and looks at it; he takes it into his capacious mind, and out of that little seed springs his faith in another world beyond that watery horizon, where, as he believed, and events proved, the sea had pearls, and the veins of the earth were filled with silver, and the rivers that flowed through spicy groves ran over sands of gold. They thought him mad to leave his sweet bays, and his land, and his pleasant home, to launch on a sea which keel had never ploughed, in search of a land man had never seen. I tell that infidel that I know in whom I have believed; I can give a reason for the faith that is in me; and so he could. This entry is longer than a Bible module can hold. The rest is at https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/bi/ Luke 7:11-17 And it came to pass the day after that He went into a city called Nain The funeral of a youth The miracle requires a few REMARKS and a few . I. The first thing we behold is a FUNERAL . But let us draw near, and contemplate this funeral solemnity. It was the funeral of a young man. We are not informed whether he died by disease or accident, slowly or suddenly; but he was carried off in the prime of life. He was the “ only son of his mother.” There is an ocean of love in the hearts of parents towards their children. But what closes the melancholy tale of this woman is--that she was a widow! A widow is always an affecting character, and she is liable to injustice and oppression from those fiends who take advantage of weakness and distress; as she is deprived of the companion of her journey, and compelled to travel alone; as her anxieties are doubled: and there is none to share them with her. II. OBSERVE OUR LORD AND SAVIOUR. First, He knew all the particulars of the case. Those who were with Him could only see, as they were passing by, a funeral--but He knew the corpse stretched upon the bier; He knew that it was a young man; that it was the only son of his mother; and that she was a widow! Secondly, He did not wait to be implored. “ I am found of them that sought Me not.” Sometimes, before we call He answers: such a very present help is He in trouble. Thirdly, When He saw her, He had “ compassion on her.” By nothing was our Saviour more distinguished than by pity and tenderness. Fourthly, He “ said unto her, Weep not.” How unavailing, not to say impertinent, would this have been from any other lips! Fifthly, Jesus, without any ostentatious ceremony, “ went and touched the bier--and they that bare it stood still” ; all amazement and expectation! Every eye is fixed upon Him. Finally, observe the application, the delicacy--what shall I call it?--of the miracle; and “ He delivered him to his mother!” III. Let us conclude by three GENERAL . I. WHAT A VALE OF TEARS IS THIS WORLD! HOW various and numerous are the evils to which human life is exposed! “ Man that is born of a woman is of few days and full of trouble!” II. LET THE THAT THEY ARE NOT LEFT WITHOUT . Let them learn where to flee in the day of trouble. It is to the Friend of sinners. III. WHAT THINK YOU OF CHRIST? Does not His character combine every excellency and attraction? (W. Jay.) Young man, arise I. I notice first THAT THIS YOUNG MAN IS BY A MOTHER, A POOR . He was her only son, and she was a widow. Do you know I cannot help thinking that one often sees the same sort of thing now. How many a young man there is who is being borne along towards that fearful interment to which I have already referred, who is followed, as it were, by the tears and expostulations--I may say the anguish, the heart-breaking anguish--of one who loves him as her own soul, and who would readily offer a thousand times over her own life, if only his soul might be saved. Young man, there are a good many fellows who think it a manly thing to slight a mother’ s love, to go far to break a mother’ s heart. Believe me, there is scarcely a more unmanly sin possible for anybody to commit. Amongst the saddest incidents in my experience as a mission preacher are cases of this character, where I am addressed by mournful-looking women, who come to me with a terrible burden on their hearts. I ask what it is. It is not about themselves. No! no! so far as they themselves are concerned, they have a good hope through grace. “ Well, what is the matter?” “ Oh, it is my boy,” says the poor stricken creature, “ my boy.” How many are ready to say, as David said about Absalom, “ Would God I had died for thee.” Some little time ago, I had a conversation after one of my services with a minister of the gospel, in the North of England, who said to me, “ I want to tell you about my son, who is just going to offer himself for the Christian ministry. He had a remarkable conversion, and I should like to tell you about it. Two years ago my dear wife died, and as she was dying, she called her children around her. As they approached her bed one by one, she stretched out her hand and took theirs in hers, and very solemnly, for she was on the brink of eternity, she said to them, ‘ I charge ye before God, meet me at God’ s right hand.’ When it came to the turn of my eldest son, I saw that she was greatly moved, for up to that time he had shown no disposition to give his heart to God. She grasped his hand in hers and said, with tears in her eyes, ‘ My boy, ere I die, I want you to make me a promise; I want you solemnly to promise me that you will seek for the salvation of your soul.’ He hesitated, and stood silent for a few moments, hanging down his head. When he lifted up his eyes he met his mother’ s gaze. That deep, tender, earnest gaze seemed to plead with his inmost heart. ‘ I charge you,’ she said, ‘ meet me at God’ s right hand.’ ‘ Mother,’ he said, ‘ I will; I will.’ Her face brightened up; a heavenly smile stole over her features; she lifted up her hands and said, ‘ Thank God, I am ready to go now.’ Well, she died. My son remembered his promise. He began to read his Bible and to pray, and the Lord was pleased to send him a very deep conviction of sin. He became intensely wretched. Weeks passed away. Still he could get no comfort. Weeks became months. He could not shake the subject from his mind. The weight of his sin was continually resting upon his soul, and seemed almost to drive him wild, till on one occasion he found himself in such a state of frenzied agony, that he felt ‘ I really can stand this no longer,” and suddenly grasping his hat, he dashed out with a determination to drown his sorrows in drink at the nearest gin-house. Down the street he went, and up to the door of the public-house. Just as he stood at the door and was stretching out his hand to open it, it seemed to him as though his mother stood before him. There was the same look upon her countenance that it wore when she took leave of him on her dying bed, and he seemed to see those tears glistening in her eyes. It was no vision, but the thing was so powerfully brought before his imagination, that it was like a vision, and he seemed to hear her saying, ‘ My son, your promise!’ ‘ I turned,’ he said, ‘ and fled from the public-house as though I were pursued: I dashed into my own room. ‘ Great God! I cried, ‘ Thou hast saved me by my mother’ s prayer; Thou hast saved me from the depths of hell! There and then I cast myself in utter weariness and helplessness and self-despair at Jesus’ feet, and there and then the pardoning love of Christ reached my heart.’” II. Well, there was something more that the eye of Christ rested upon besides this poor broken-hearted woman to whom He said, “ Weep not.” THERE WERE THE BEARERS. NOW this also, as it seems to me, is wonderfully true to life. Wherever I go I find that young men are mostly under the influence of bearers. I know what your strong points are, young men, yes, and I know your weak points too. You are wonderfully gregarious animals. One man goes in one particular direction, and the rest must follow if he happens to be a leader. There is a strange fatuous influence which man exercises over his fellow-man. Ah, my brother, how many a man is as it were held spell-bound by the influence of false friendship. Get him away from his friends and you can do something with him; but so long as he is in their society he is a helpless slave to adverse influences. Yes, I may be speaking to some to-night who, although only young, are already saying, “ I have gone too far; the chains are bound too tightly round me.” I tell you no, in God’ s name, No! One touch of almighty power from the finger of Christ, and those chains shall break; one glance from those eyes so full of beneficence, and the shadows of death shall flee away. I remember, some time ago, hearing a remarkable circumstance related by a public speaker to whom I was listening. It happened that a ship was being towed across the Niagara River, in America, some little distance above the well-known falls. Just as she got into the middle of the stream the hawser parted, and the unfortunate ship began to drift down the river stern foremost. Efforts were made to save her from impending ruin, but every effort failed, and the unfortunate ship kept drifting farther and farther down the stream towards the terrible abyss below. The news of the disaster spread along the banks of the river, and in a very short time there were hundreds of people, and they soon swelled to thousands, looking on in breathless anxiety to see what was to become of this unfortunate ship and crew. There is a point that stretches into the river which bears the name of Past Redemption Point, and it is believed in the neighbourhood that nothing that passes that point can escape destruction. The current there becomes so strong, the influence so fatal, that whatever goes by Past Redemption Point is inevitably lost. The excited multitude upon the banks of the river watched the helpless ship drifting down farther and farther till she was within a few hundred yards of the fatal point. One effort after another was made, one effort after another failed; still she drifted. Only a few moments, and she passed the point. There was a kind of sigh of horror from the vast multitude as they saw her swing round, for they knew she was lost. But just as she rounded the point the captain felt a strong breeze smite upon his cheek. Quick as thought he shouted at the top of his voice, “ All sails set!” and in almost less time than it takes me to tell it every stitch of canvas on board the ship was stretched to catch the favouring gale. A cheer broke from the multitude on the shore as they witnessed this last effort for salvation. But would it succeed? The ship was still drifting, though the wind was blowing against it, and she was still moving downwards, stern fore most, though the wind was bellying out all her sails. It was a battle between the wind and the current. With breathless anxiety they watched the result. She slacks! Another moment--they scarcely dare whisper it--she stands! Yes, that terrible downward course was actually stopped. There she was, still as a log upon the water. Another moment, and inch by inch she began to forge her way up the stream until the motion was perceptible to those on shore, and one great shout of victory burst forth from a thousand voices: “ Thank God, she is saved! Thank God, she is saved!” In a few moments more, with considerable headway upon her, she swept right up the stream, by Past Redemption Point, right into the still water, saved from what appeared to he inevitable destruction, just because, in the very moment of moments, she caught the favouring breeze. Young man, in that ship behold a picture of yourself. There is many a young man who, like that ship, has been drifting. You know it; ah! and your friends know it; your mother, praying for you tonight, knows it; your Christian friend that brought you here knows it. You are drifting, drifting, and you know what the end must be. It may lie far on in your life’ s voyage, or it may be very near at hand, but before you lies the terrible fall, and the abyss and depth of doom. If you say, “ How shall I arise?” I reply, there is only one way of arising. Fix your gaze to-night upon Him who is the Resurrection and the Life. When I was a young man of eighteen, I was preaching in the open air in the streets of Inverness, when there happened to pass by a young medical student--I think, from Glasgow University. He was like many of you, and had been living an aimless, self-pleasing sort of life. As he passed by in the crowd he heard a young man’ s voice, and caught the words of Christ, “ Young man, I say unto thee, Arise.” The message went home like an arrow to the man’ s heart; he got away into his own chamber, and there he cast himself by his bedside and exclaimed, “ O God, that is what I want. Up to this moment my life has been a wasted life; I have nothing to show for it; I have lived for myself; I have lived in vain. I see it all now. There is one power, and only one, that can raise me up and make me really what I ought to be.” There and then he gave himself to Christ, and he went forth from that room a new man. He had just received a commission as a surgeon in the army, and soon afterwards he went to India, where, for five or six years, he was a burning and a shining light. Many a poor heathen native heard the truth of the gospel first from his lips; many a godless English soldier was led to the Cross of Christ by that young man’ s influence; many a brother officer first heard from him the glad tidings of great joy, or, at any rate, first had them pressed home upon his mind. After five or six years’ service, the Lord called him home. I never met him, never shook his hand. I hope to meet him up yonder, some day. (W. Hay Aitken.) Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity I. WHAT ARE WE HERE JESUS CHRIST? 1. This miracle attests that He was an authorized messenger of God. This was the direct and immediate conviction that it wrought upon those who witnessed it. “ There came great fear upon all; and they glorified God, saying, That a great prophet is risen up among us, and, That God hath visited His people.” Nor were they mistaken in their conclusion from the premises. No one can recall the dead but by the great power of God. Only He who originally gave life can restore it after it is gone. 2. The same forcibly attests the compassionate sympathy of Jesus for human sorrow. 3. And He is as mighty as He is good--as able to help as He is ready to pity. It is no easy thing to console and heal a broken heart. But Jesus not only relieved it, but entirely removed it. In a mere moment of time He dislodged it, and set a light in that darkened mother’ s soul, brighter than had ever shone there before. This miracle accordingly shows Him possessed of redeeming power, as well as sympathy. II. WHAT IS TO US IN THIS MIRACLE OF THE OF GRACE? 1. Jesus found this young man dead, and being borne to burial. And herein is shown the sad and hopeless condition of everyone apart from Christ’ s gracious interposition for our rescue. The help of man in such a case is utterly powerless. If it were a case of mere physical disorder, the great storehouses of nature might perhaps furnish a remedy. If it were a case of mere functional lethargy or error, some stimulant or alternative might chance to be found out by the physician to correct the ailment. Or if it were a case of mere mental aberration, science and a better philosophy might serve to set the matter right. But the case is one of death; and no power of man has ever been able to bring the dead to life again. 2. “ He came.” There was no going or bearing of the dead man to Christ; but a coming of Jesus to him. The first approaches of grace and salvation are all from the side of a Divine movement toward us. From first to last, He is ever the coming One, who comes to us, approaches us, and brings to us whatever of salvation is ever experienced. “ Lo! I come!” 3. “ And touched the bier.” Not without veritable contact with the polluted things of earth could spiritual quickening be imparted to its fallen inhabitants. 4. Yet it was by the Word that the resuscitation was imparted. “ He said, Young man, I say unto thee, Arise.” All the potency of creatorship and resurrection resides in it, and goes forth through it. People often have a very poor appreciation of the Word. They care not to hear it. Many only despise it. Christ’ s words are spirit, and they are life. 5. When Christ’ s word of command reached the consciousness of this dead man, it then devolved upon him to obey it. Human agency and volition must, after all, cooperate with Divine grace. III. WHAT, NOW, AS TO THE AND IN THIS MIRACLE? 1. It was a raising of a dead man to life, and so an exhibition of resurrection power. To raise one requires the power of God; to raise all requires no more. He has raised the dead, and He can raise all. 2. It was the making glad of a very sorrowing heart and a very desolate home. (J. A. Seiss, D. D.) Jesus and the widow of Nain I. SORROW. II. . III. SUCCOUR. (R. V. Pryce, M. A. , LL. B.) Weep not What, then, is the comfort which even now the gospel of our Saviour mingles with the mourning of His people? What advantage has the Christian under bereavement, and wherein does he sorrow not as others? I. In the first place, THE GOSPEL HAS CHANGED THE OF DEATH TO THE . Thank God, the Christian’ s is a stingless death. Since the guilt of those we mourn was cleansed in the blood of Christ, and their pardon sealed by the Holy Ghost, death did not come to them as an officer of justice, but as an angel of peace. He came to loose the prison-bands of clay and set them free to go home to their Father’ s house. O selfish heart, bear silently thy burden and rejoice in secret at the lost one’ s joy. Why should I not? Love is more gladdened by another’ s gladness than grieved for its own trouble. God did two kindnesses at one stroke when He bereft you of your beloved: one kindness to him; another kindness to you. To him, the perfecting of character and bestowal of bliss; to you, ripening of character and preparation for bliss. II. As Christ teaches us to expect a “ better resurrection” for our dead, so also for ourselves to look for better reunion. Not by their coming back to be for a little while longer with us, is the craving heart to be appeased, but by our going to be for ever with them. This is best. (J. O. Dykes, D. D.) The miracle at the gate of Nain I. I learn two or three things from this subject; and first, that Christ was A MAN. You see how that sorrow played upon all the chords of His heart. II. But I must also draw from this subject that HE was GOD. If Christ had been a mere mortal, would He have had a Tight to come in upon such a procession? Would He have succeeded in His interruption? III. Again, I learn from this subject that Christ was A . IV. I learn again from all this that Christ is THE MASTER OF THE GRAVE. Just outside the gate of the city Death and Christ measured lances, and when the young man rose, Death dropped. (Dr. Talmage.) Young man, is this for you? I. I shall ask you first, dear friends, to reflect that THE DEAD CAUSE GREAT GRIEF TO THEIR FRIENDS. If an ungodly man is favoured to have Christian relatives, he causes them much anxiety. Many young persons who are in some respects amiable and hopeful, nevertheless, being spiritually dead, are causing great sorrow to these who love them best. 1. The cause of grief lies here: we mourn that they should be in such a case. In the story before us the mother wept because her son was dead; and we sorrow because our young friends are spiritually dead. 2. We also mourn because we lose the help and comfort which they ought to bring us. She must have regarded him as the staff of her age, and the comfort of her loneliness. With regard to you that are dead in sin, we feel that we miss the aid and comfort which we ought to receive from you in our service of the living God. 3. A further grief is that we can have no fellowship with them. The mother at Nain could have no communion with her dear son now that he was dead, for the dead know not anything. Alas! in many a household the mother cannot have communion with her own son or daughter on that point which is most vital and enduring, because they are spiritually dead, while she has been quickened into newness of life by the Holy Spirit. 4. Moreover, spiritual death soon produces manifest causes for sorrow. 5. We also mourn because of the future of men dead in sin. II. Now let me cheer you while I introduce the second head of my discourse, which is this: FOR SUCH GRIEF THERE IS ONLY ONE HELPER: BUT THERE IS A HELPER. This young man is taken out to be buried; but our Lord Jesus Christ met the funeral procession. Carefully note the “ coincidences,” as sceptics call them, but as we call them “ providences” of Scripture. He meets the dead man before the place of sepulture is reached. A little later and he would have been buried; a little earlier and he would have been at home lying in the darkened room, and no one might have called the Lord’ s attention to him, The Lord knows how to arrange all things; his forecasts are true to the tick of the clock. III. That hush was not long, for speedily the Great Quickener entered upon his gracious work. This is our third point: JESUS IS ABLE TO WORK THE MIRACLE OF LIFE-GIVING. JESUS Christ has life in Himself, and He quickeneth whom lie will (John 5:21). He could derive no aid from that lifeless form. The spectators were sure that he was dead, for they were carrying him out to bury him. Even so, you, O sinner, cannot save yourself, neither can any of us, or all of us, save you. Your help must come from above. 2. While the bier stood still, Jesus spoke to the dead young man, spoke to him personally: “ Young man, I say unto thee, Arise.” Lord Jesus, art Thou not here? What is wanted is Thy personal call. Speak, Lord, we beseech Thee! 3. “ Young man,” said He, “ arise” ; and He spake as if the man had been alive. This is the gospel way. Our faith enables us in God’ s name to command dead men to live, and they do live. 4. But the Saviour, you observe, spoke with His own authority--“ Young man, I say unto thee, Arise.” Neither Elijah nor Elisha could thus have spoken; but He who spoke thus was very God of very God. 5. The miracle was wrought straightway: for this young man, to the astonishment of all about him, sat up. It did not take a month, nor a week, nor an hour, nay, not even five minutes. IV. Our time has gone, and although we have a wide subject we may not linger. I must close by noticing that THIS WILL PRODUCE VERY GREAT RESULTS. To give life to the dead is no little matter. 1. The great result was manifest, first, in the young man. 2. A new life also had begun in reference to his mother. What a great result for her was the raising of her dead son! 3. What was the next result? Well, all the neighbours feared and glorified God. These prodigies of power in the moral world are quite as remarkable as prodigies in the material world. We want conversion, so practical, so real, so Divine, that those who doubt will not be able to doubt, because they see in them the hand of God. 4. Finally, note that it not only surprised the neighbours and impressed them, but the rumour of it went everywhere. Who can tell? If a convert is made this morning, the result of that conversion may be felt for thousands of years, if the world stands so long; aye, it shall be felt when a thousand thousand years have passed away, even throughout eternity. (C. H.Spurgeon.) The widow and her dead son 1. The mystery of God’ s providence is encircling our daily lives. God had planned that meeting from eternity. Nothing happens by chance. Every event in the dullest day has a purpose. 2. And a further consideration must of course be our dear Lord’ s tender sympathy with mourners, and His hatred of our last enemy, death. (T. B. Dover, M. A.) The widow of Nain Such were the works of our Saviour’ s earthly ministry; and it is of no little moment that we enter fully into their significance. By them, then (1), He manifested forth His glory; they were the countersigns and credentials of His mission. By them (2), again, He showed the infinite compassion wherewith His heart was full. By them (3) He lightened the burden of human suffering. Further (4), they are the abiding witness to the Church of the truth of His Divinity. These mighty works bring before us the true glory of our redeemed state. They show us, in the person of our Lord, for what each one of us is training who of His mercy have been baptized into Him, and are daily seeking to grow up into Him in all things. They show us why and how we should strive after a closer union with Him; that we, too, may triumph with Him over these rebellious powers, under which our race has so long groaned. For He is the healer of our spirits as He is of our bodies. Here, too, His words are “ spirit and are life” ; for with them goeth forth the mighty Spirit of life. He meets us bearing forth our dead hopes through the city’ s gate; He meets us when our hearts are faint and weary; when we feel the emptiness of all with which this world has sought to cheat our earnest longings for the great, the real, and the true. He stands beside the bier, He bids us weep no more, He stops our mourning steps; the dead hear Him; hopes of youth, aspirations of heart, dreams of purity, of reality, of high service, with which once our spirits kept glad company, but which had withered, and sunk, and died, as the hot and scorching sun of common life arose upon us--these revive; they sit up; they begin to speak; they find a voice; they turn to Him; and He gives them back to us, and bids us cherish them for Him. On Him, then, may our affections fix. On Him, the Healer, the Restorer of humanity, may our hearts learn to lean the secret burden of their being. 1. If earthly trouble is upon us, let us fly to Him; let us beware of all those who would cheer us without Him; let us be always sure that the poison of the asp is hidden under their softest and most enticing words. 2. Or, is it the heavier burden of spiritual trouble under which we groan? Let us see here that His purpose is the same. For why does God suffer this to harass oftentimes His faithful servants, but to teach them to lean more simply upon Him? (Bishop Samuel Wilberforce.) Young man, Arise! There is something specially touching and impressive in a village funeral. In a small population every family is known; and death, when it enters, throws a general sadness and gloom around. There were several things that combined to make this funeral peculiarly affecting. 1. Raise up for a moment the sheet that is spread over the corpse (for the coffin is borne on an open bier), and look on that pale countenance--it is the face of a young man. Perhaps it was consumption that laid its withering hand upon him, or fever may have snapped the thread of life; but there he is, cold, motionless, and still. I think death never seems so utterly cruel, as whoa it cuts one off in the bloom of opening manhood. And yet, mysterious as is the event, and deeply affecting, it is no uncommon one. It occurs every week in London. Even in this church I have seen some of the most bright and promising lives suddenly brought to a close. Your youthful strength gives you no guarantee that death is far away. Nobody steps out of the world when he expects to do so. Though for twenty years you have never had an ache or a pain, you can make no safe calculation about the future. A fine, amiable, robust fellow of twenty, who used to worship here, was sitting in his office one day, when a fellow-clerk came up merrily, and slapping him upon the back, said, “ Well, how are you this morning?” That good-humoured blow injured the spine, and after some weeks of almost total paralysis, the young man was borne to his last resting-place. 2. There is another thing that adds much to the impressiveness of this funeral: the young man is an only son. Well, I imagine that, let a family circle be ever so large, the parents feel there is not one of them that can be spared. Every one is dear, every one is precious. A rich and benevolent gentleman, who had no children of his own, was entering a steamboat one day, when he noticed a poor man with a group of little ones around him, all in a state of pitiful destitution. Stepping up to him, he proposed to take one of the children, and adopt it as his own. “ I think,” said he, “ it will be a great relief to you.” “ A what!” exclaimed the other. “ A relief to you, I said.” “ Such a relief to me, sir,” rejoined the poor man, “ as to have my right arm cut off; it may be necessary, but only a parent can know the trial.” But, an only son, in whom all the hopes and the joys of the parents centre: ah! it is long since the extreme bitterness of such a bereavement passed into a proverb (Zechariah 12:10). 3. I have not yet finished the picture. You will not wonder that this funeral created exceptional sympathy, and that “ much people” of Nain joined the procession, when I remind you that this young man’ s mother was a widow. The light of her dwelling was now put out; the comfort and support of her advancing years taken away. No doubt he had been a good son, or his death would not have created so profound a feeling in the place. 4. With Dr. Trench, I believe that this majestic voice was something more than a summons back to this mortal life--that it included also an awakening of the young man to a higher and a spiritual life; with nothing short of which would the Saviour have “ delivered him to his mother.” He gave him back to her who bare him, not merely to be for a few years longer her earthly companion, but, as now a saved and regenerate man, to be to her a joy both for time and for eternity. (1) Arise from the death of unbelief. Conversion is a passing from death unto life. When you become a saved man, it is as though a corpse were quickened into life. (2) Arise from the bondage of sin. You cannot afford to be lost. The interests at stake are too tremendous to be imperilled by delay. Won’ t you yield, and say, “ Yes, Lord, at Thy bidding I arise, to live from this day for Thee” ? But some young man will say, “ I feel the force of all you say; I know I ought to be a Christian, and shall never be happy till I am one; but it is no use trying; sin has got the upper hand of me, and when certain temptations meet me, I fall, and must fall, and will fall.” I remember of a young man talking to me in that style, and saying, “ I believe the gospel to be true: that Christ is an omnipotent Saviour, I have not a doubt. I can fully trust Him, so far as that is concerned; and yet I dare not profess Him, because I know that a particular sin has complete mastery over me, and I am not going to be a hypocrite.” But I took him by the buttonhole, and said, “ Let me read a verse to you,” and then I turned to John 1:12 --“ As many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God” ; and I showed him that, when one accepts Christ, he accepts Him, not merely as a Saviour from guilt and from hell, but as a Saviour from lust, and from vile passions, and from evil thoughts; and that He must be trusted for this just as for the other. (3) Arise from the apathy of indolence. The great mass of nominal Christians are asleep. The only thing they want religion for is its comfort; it gives them a pillow to lay their heads on. Is that the purpose for which you have enlisted? When the stern Scottish chief was walking round his encampment one night, he saw his own son lying on a pillow of snow which he had carefully gathered and packed together before he lay down; the father kicked the pillow from under his son’ s head and said,” Come, I will have no effeminacy here. I want robust men in my army.” Oh, how many in Christ’ s army are fast asleep, not on a bolster of snow, but on a pillow of down. “ Young man, I say unto thee, Arise.” Arise from the slumber of lethargy and come and grapple with the foe. (J. Thain Davidson. D. D.) The raising of the widow’ s son Some places have been made famous by a single incident. Nain is the village of the widow’ s son whom Jesus raised from the dead. By no other event is Nain known. For a moment the light of heaven fell upon it, and haloed it with a glory which has attracted the eyes of all the Christian ages, and then it disappeared into its former obscurity. The site of the ancient village is well authenticated; it is occupied by the modern Nein, a squalid, miserable collection of huts, situated on the northwestern edge of Jebel el Duhy, or the “ Little Hermon,” where the hill slopes down into the plain of Esdraelon. Our Lord came to Nain on His way south to keep the Passover. The day before He had healed the centurion’ s servant at Capernaum; and now, after having walked eighteen miles since the cool hours of early morning, He toiled slowly in the afternoon up the steep slope leading to the village. He was tired and footsore. But there was work for the Father awaiting Him, in the doing of which He would find His meat and drink. They were carrying a dead man to his burial on the east side of the village, where the rough rock was full of sepulchral caves. 1. It would be difficult to make the picture of desolation more complete than the evangelist has done by a few simple words. Notice that the three recorded miracles of restoration from the dead were performed upon young persons. 2. We are apt to look upon the fact of Jesus meeting the funeral procession at the precise moment when it was issuing out of the gate of the city as a mere chance or fortunate coincidence. But nothing really occurs by chance; there is no such divinity in the universe. 3. “ And when the Lord saw her He had compassion on her.” It is not said that the bereaved mother addressed Jesus. But He knew all the circumstances of the case. Never was there a human heart so feeling as His. The very word employed in our version to express His sympathy denotes His exquisite tenderness. It signifies the unutterable pity which a mother has for her offspring. Jesus Himself was, strictly speaking, the only son of His mother; and, as Joseph was in all probability dead by this time, she, too, was a widow, worn down by the duties and cares of a humble home. We cannot wonder, then, that the woman who came before Him in agonizing circumstances, similar to those in which He would soon have to leave His own mother, drew from His heart a peculiar compassion, and induced Him, unsolicited, to perform for her one of His rarest and supremest acts of mercy. 4. “ And said unto her, Weep not.” This “ weep not” different from that addressed to the hired mourners of Jairus’ s household. There it was uttered in indignation, for the purpose of restoring quiet; here it is said in deepest sympathy, for the purpose of cheering and soothing. How often do these words proceed from the lips of earthly comforters! No argument here for stoicism under sorrow. No one need be ashamed of tears, since our Saviour’ s eyes were filled with them. The very existence of tears shows that God has designed them and has a use for them. When Christ then, says, “ Weep not,” He does not mean to forbid tears, or to make us ashamed of them; but to give us a reason, a sufficient cause for drying our tears. 5. “ He came and touched the bier.” Not necessary for Him to do this, so far as the exercise of His Divine power was concerned. But there was deep significance in what He did. He violated the letter of the law that He might keep its spirit. 6. “ And they that bare him stood still.” They were struck by a sudden consciousness that they were in the presence of One who had a right to stop them even in their progress to the tomb; and they waited silently and reverently for what He might say or do. What a scene for the genius of a great painter does the imagination picture at this sublime expectant moment, when the power of God is about to be visibly displayed. The mother bowed down with grief, and yet lifting up to the face of Jesus eager eyes, in which a new-born hope struggles with the tears of despair; the bearers of the bier standing still with looks of awe and astonishment; the motley groups of the funeral procession, and the multitude who followed Jesus in their picturesque Oriental dresses, turning to one another as if asking the meaning of this strange proceeding; the calm, holy form of Jesus touching the bier, and the last red level rays of the sun setting behind the green hills on the western horizon, haloing with a sacred glow the head of the Redeemer, and the shrouded figure that lies motionless and unconscious on the bier, speaking touchingly of that sun that shall no more go down! 7. The stillness is broken by words such as human ears had never heard before--“ Young man, I say unto thee, Arise.” How suggestive of omnipotence is that “ I.” 8. And he that was dead sat up and began to speak.” What did he speak about? His lips were sealed upon those things which it is not lawful for a man to utter. Our Lord Himself, after His resurrection, said not a single word regarding what He had seen and heard during the three days when His body was in Joseph’ s tomb and His soul in Hades. How opposed is all this to the so-called revelations of spirits, given to those who call themselves spiritualists. 9. “ And He delivered him to his mother.” Who can describe the unutterable gladness of that restoration? The revulsion of feeling must have been painful in its very intensity. But the evangelist has left a veil over it, for there are feelings with which a stranger may not intermeddle. Truly the promise was literally fulfilled to her, “ Weeping may endure for the night, but joy cometh in the morning.” 10. Upon the spectators the effect of the wonderful miracle was overwhelming. A great fear fell upon them, that strange instinctive fear produced by sudden contact with the invisible world, which we feel even in the presence of our beloved dead, on account of the awful mystery in which they are shrouded. They glorified God that the long period during which there had been no prophet, no supernatural sign, no communication between heaven and earth, nothing but the continuous motion of the wheels of providence along the same beaten track, and the uniform action of the dull unchanging signals of nature that carried the general despatches of the universe, had come to an end at last. They had open vision once more, and a sense of the nearness of heaven. But far short were their impressions and conceptions, however vivid at the moment, of the glorious truth. (H. Macmillan, LL. D.) The story of Nain I. THE WORDS OF CHRIST’ S WERE SIMPLE, AS ALL OUGHT TO BE. Too much talking spoils comfort. Give few words, but let them be crowded with the infinite of feeling. II. CHRIST PUT THIS OF HIS AT ONCE INTO ACTION. NO sooner had the feelings of pity arisen within Him than He came forward and touched the bier, did what He could to help the woman. That is a deep lesson to us, though a commonplace one. What an absurd self-deception it is to call ourselves Christians if we never, like Christ, come forward and touch the bier. III. THE OF DIVINE POWER IN THE MIND OF CHRIST. Contrast His consciousness of Divine power with His lovely, sad, and hidden life. IV. IT WAS ALWAYS FOR MORAL AND ENDS THAT CHRIST USED THE POWER HE WAS OF . V. THE LESSONS TO BE DRAWN FROM THE MIRACLE. 1. Often in the midst of death that we meet the true life. 2. Every miracle has a two-fold object, to meet some physical want or distress, and to point to Christ Himself as the one alone who could relieve the higher wants of the spirit of man. It is with us spiritually as it was with the widow’ s son. Upon the path of life comes Christ, and touches the bier, and that which was dead arises. (Stopford Brooke, M. A.) The widow’ s son of Nain This miracle has much in common with Christ’ s other two miracles of raising from the dead. The same calm authority, the same Divine self-confidence is evident in them all. I. CHRIST’ S IMPULSE OF . We are not satisfied with our knowledge of any man until we have seen something of his impulses. 1. See how this illustrates the greatness of Christ. His air was not distraught. His sympathies were as prompt, His considerateness as full and tender, as though not a care was on His spirit. 2. Remember, too, how Christ subordinated family affection to the call of the gospel. How hard and irresponsive, how cold and unsympathetic, are men who have sacrificed affection to obedience. 3. This gives us a view of God which we sorely need. Nature reveals one whom the strong may adore; a God for the happy. Christ reveals God as coming down to us in compassion and tender personal sympathy. II. THE OF CHRIST’ S . For simple unmingled grief, simple unmingled comfort is the only balm. He could afford often to dispense with speech, because His life was unmistakably a witness for God. Simplicity is the great want of modern Christian life. If it were deeper it would be less fussy. (A. Mackennal, D. D.) The widow of Nain I. THE MOTHER. Painter, as well as physician, we can believe St. Luke to have been. Desolation was never more graphically and pathetically summed up than in the words, “ The only son,” &c. Then, too, it is hard for the young and strong to leave the world. Cut off prematurely, sayest thou? What if it be that the corn of wheat must fall into the ground and die, and thus bear much fruit. Bereaved mother, a word to thee! If thy son is dear to thee, think him as much so to thy Saviour. II. OUR LORD’ S ON THIS . 1. In the associations of the miracle there is much of deepest interest: (a) Our Lord’ s power to grapple with sudden emergencies. (b) His sensitive compassion. (c) The paucity of His words. 2. The miracle itself: All its details are commonplace, entirely divested of any clothing of the would-be wonderful. (a) In the mercy there were the elements of fresh trials. Again there were all the anxieties to undergo, all the battle again to fight, the prospect again of severance. (b) Why are miracles of resurrection no longer possible? Because there is no longer the same end to be nerved. (c) Such miracle typical. Death a type of sin. Renewal of human nature a resurrection with Christ. III. THE PEOPLE WHO THE MOURNER. 1. Gratifying as their sympathy would be, the very crowds would cause her to feel more solitary. 2. In the feelings excited by the performance of the miracle, we trace no thought for those of the mother. We find only superstitious fear, which, in its turn, gives place to wild enthusiasm. The words of the people seem to denote that the miracle recalled those of Elijah and Elisha, and the prophet’ s vision (Ezekiel 37:1-28). They indulged in sentimental Messianic dreams; they built themselves up afresh in national pride; they gave themselves over to self-important babbling. We have only here a fresh illustration of that false spirit to which it was our Lord’ s sad destiny to minister. With all their enthusiasm He knew that there was no real life, no deep apprehension of the character of the truths He had come to teach. (W. J. Gordon.) Gospel for the Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity I. SOME OF THIS KIND WERE NEEDED, IN ORDER TO GIVE A FULL VIEW OF THE WORK AND POWER OF CHRIST. II. Of this most striking class of miracles ONLY THREE ARE , AND WE MUST SUPPOSE ONLY THREE WERE WROUGHT. For this infrequency there may have been many reasons. 1. A desire to make the miracle mote striking by its isolation. 2. The unbelief of the people. Christ is never asked to raise the dead. Even Martha just hints and no more, that God will grant whatever He asks. III. THERE IS A IN THE , LEADING UP, AS IT WERE, TO A CLIMAX. Just dead; twenty-four hours dead; four days dead. In all cases, the fact of the death well-ascertained, and abundance of witnesses secured. What must be the feelings of a man between one death and another? IV. A MIRACLE ITS EFFECT TO THE STATE OF MIND OF THOSE WHO WITNESS IT. It does not necessarily carry conviction. Here a fear comes on all, and they glorify God. In the second miracle they are astonished with a great astonishment. At the crowning miracle, the hatred against Jesus having become more intense, some went their way to the Pharisees and reported what Jesus had done. (G. Calthrop, M. A.) The miracle of Nain How splendid the career of Jesus! Observe here-- I. WHAT THE BEHELD. II. WHAT CHRIST FELT--“ Compassion.” His eye affected His heart. 1. Agreeable to His nature. 2. Agreeable to all His works. III. WHAT CHRIST SAID--“ Weep not.” Was it not a very harsh and unreasonable demand? 1. Might she not have reminded Him that to weep was in accordance with the feelings of our nature? 2. Have not the best of men wept? 3. This was an extremely afflictive case. Still He insists that she must weep not. We shall soon perceive the reason: He was about to remove the cause of sorrow. IV. WHAT THE DID. 1. He touched the bier. Arrested it in its course; bearers felt it impossible to advance; finger of God was upon it. Hence they stood still-astonished, amazed. 2. He commanded the corpse to arise. Although dead, he heard the voice of the Son of God, and lived. His spirit heard it in Hades--the invisible state, and came back. 3. He delivered him to his mother. Christ might have insisted on the consecration of himself to His service, as a disciple, evangelist, or apostle. Compassion commenced, and compassion gave the finishing stroke to this splendid and Divine scene. 4. The people glorified God. The glory of God was the grand object and end of Christ’ s undertakings. Application: See in this young man-- 1. A striking picture of the natural state of man. 2. Learn the only means of restoration. 3. God is greatly glorified in the salvation of sinners. (J. Burns, D. D.) Christian attendance at a funeral What are the sentiments with which we attend a funeral? I. OUR CONDUCT IN TO THE AND HIS FAMILY. 1. Let us attend the funeral not merely for the sake of politeness, but out of Christian charity. (1) Such attendance is in conformity with human nature. (2) It is beneficial to ourselves, reminding us that we are brethren, children of the same heavenly Father. 2. Let us succour the deceased, by remembering him in our prayers, &c. 3. Let us console the family of the deceased. (1) Let us weep with them that weep. Compassion is like balsam. (2) Let us speak comfort to the grief-stricken family. Remind them of the dispositions of Divine Providence, of immortality, and future reunion. (3) Let us perform consoling works. II. OUR CONDUCT WITH REGARD TO . A funeral is a warning to us. 1. Look at the corpse. (1) What has it been? What we are: full of life and health, full of hopes, prospects, and plans for the future. Was this person young or old, rich or poor, beautiful or deformed, learned or illiterate? It does not matter. No one is secured against death. The only important question is this: Was the dead person virtuous or wicked? (2) What is it now? What we all shall be: a hideous corpse, deprived of life and “ beauty, deprived of all advantages of mind, form, and earthly conditions. Only one thing has been spared by death: the good and evil deeds done in life. (3) How has it come to this state? In the same way as that by which we must pass--death. Has death come unexpected, or after an early warning? When and where? (4) What will it be? Like every one of us, a prey to vermin, an inhabitant of the grave. So passes the glory of the world. But, at the same time, it is the seed of a future body--either glorious or ignominious. 2. Let us turn our eyes to Jesus, the Life-giver. (Tschupik.) A bereaved mother The mother of poor Touda, who heard that I wished to see him once more, led me to the house where the body was laid. The narrow space of the room was crowded; about two hundred women were sitting and standing around, singing mourning songs to doleful and monotonous airs. As I stood looking, filled with solemn thoughts, in spite of, or rather because of, perhaps, the somewhat ludicrous contrasts about me, the mother of Touda approached. She threw herself at the foot of her dead son, and begged him to speak to her once more. And then, when the corpse did not answer, she uttered a shriek, so long, so piercing, such a wail of love and grief, that tears came into my eyes. Poor African mother! she was literally as one sorrowing without hope; for these poor people count on nothing beyond the present life. For them there is no hope beyond the grave. “ All is done,” they say, with an inexpressible sadness of conviction that sometimes gave me a heartache. As I left the hut, thinking these things, the wailing recommenced. It would be kept up by the women, who are the official mourners on these occasions, till the corpse was buried. (Du Chaillu.) The voice of a funeral Every funeral is God’ s repetition of His anathema against sin. When our friends are carried to the silent sepulchre the Lord of all does in fact say to us, “ See what a bitter thing sin is; it takes the light from the eye and the music from the ear; it silences the voice of song, and palsies the hand of skill; it quenches the fire of love upon the heart’ s altar, and removes the light of understanding from the brain’ s judgment seat, and gives over the creature once so lovely and beloved to become a putrid mass, a horror and a loathing, so that affection itself cries out, ‘ Bury my dead out of my sight.’” Thus every gravestone and every green hillock in the cemetery may be regarded as the still small voice of God solemnly condemning sin. (C. H. Spurgeon.) A risible sermon Archbisbop Leighton, returning home one morning, was asked by his sister, “ Have you been bearing a sermon?” “ I’ ve met a sermon,” was the answer. The sermon he had met was a corpse on its way to the grave. The preacher was Death. Greatest of street-preachers!--nor laws nor penalties can silence. No tramp of horses, nor rattling of carriages, nor rush and din of crowded streets can drown his voice. In heathen, pagan, and Protestant countries, in monarchies and free states, in town and country, the solemn pomp of discourse is going on. In some countries a man is imprisoned for even dropping a tract. But what prison will hold this awful preacher? What chains will bind him? He lifts up his voice in the very presence of tyrants, and laughs at their threats. He walks unobstructed through the midst of their guards, and delivers the messages which trouble their security and embitter their pleasures. If we do not meet his sermons, still we cannot escape them. He comes to our abode, and, taking the dearest object of our love as his text, what sermons does he deliver to us! His oft-repeated sermons still enforce the same doctrine, still press upon us the same exhortation, “ Surely, every man walketh in a vain show. Surely they are disquieted in vain.” “ Here we have no continuing city.” Power of sympathy Happy is the man who has that in his soul which acts upon the dejected as April airs upon violet roots. Gifts from the hand are silver and gold; but the heart gives that which neither silver nor gold can buy. To be full of goodness, full of cheerfulness, full of sympathy, full of helpful hope, causes a man to carry blessings of which he is himself as unconscious as a lamp of its own shining. Such a one moves on human life as stars move on dark seas to bewildered mariners; as the sun wheels, bringing all the seasons with him from the south. (H. W. Beecher.) Silent sympathy Bishop Myrel had the art of sitting down, and holding his tongue for hours, by the side of a man who had lost the wife he loved, or of a mother bereaved of her child. (Victor Hugo.) The compassion of mankind a sign of the compassion of mankind’ s Head and Lord Contrast between the two compassions of which the bereaved mother was the object. Helpless compassion of multitude; mighty compassion of Christ. I. The Father sent His Son into the world to adopt and justify these common and daily human compassions, and to reveal what had all along been implied though hidden in them. II. Jesus Christ shared in the compassion of the Jewish mourners, and shares now in such compassion everywhere because He is the Son of Man. III. The text, however, reminds us that He who comes to meet the funerals of our kind and unites His compassion with our compassion, is more even than the Son of Man, the Head of our race. “ And when the Lord saw her.” The Son of Man, who is the Lord, has compassion with humanity in its troubles. (T. Hancock.) The power of Christ’ s voice Only three such reprieves recorded in the Gospels. Not fewer, that there might be no doubt as to the fact; not more, that the fact might not be too common. 1. All whom our Lord called back to life were comparatively young. It was death as a blight that He checked and restrained. 2. In all three cases it was kindness to the living which chiefly moved Christ to raise the dead. In each act we see Jesus in a higher character than a worker of miracles; it showed Him as the binder of broken hearts. 3. The resurrection of the dead is the result of the Divine power of Christ, In the most stupendous of all His works of power He put away secondary means; the creative command went direct from the creative voice to the matter and the spirit which were bound to obey that voice. The mode of working is majestic, Divine. 4. The three risings which took place at the command of Christ were preludes and foreshadowings of His own. But they did but imperfectly resemble that one complete resurrection. Christ rose at no word of command, but because He had life in Himself. 5. Taking our stand upon the truth that Christ is risen from the dead, we may see in these revivals the foreshadowings of that universal revival, when all the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God and live. If you do not hear and obey the gentle, persuasive, loving voice of Christ now, it will be ill with you when that great voice sounds which will call all of us from our graves, and which we shall then be compelled to hear and obey. (The late Dean of Ely.) Visit to Nain We crossed Hermon, and found ourselves in a small decayed village on the edge of another bay of Esdraelon, which runs between the hills of Galilee and Hermon to the north. It was Nain. It is poor, confused and filthy, like every village in Palestine, but its situation is very fine, as commanding a good view of the plain, with the opposite hills, and especially of Tabor, that rises like a noble wooded island at the head of the green bay. And Nain, in the light of the Gospel-history, is another of those fountains of living water opened up by the Divine Saviour, which have flowed through all lands to refresh the thirsty. How many widows, for eighteen centuries, have been comforted; how many broken hearts soothed and healed; by the story of Nain--by the unsought and unexpected sympathy of Jesus, and by His power and majesty! What has Nineveh or Babylon been to the world in comparison with Nain? And this is the wonder constantly suggested by the insignificant villages of Palestine, that their names have become parts, as it were, of the deepest experiences of the noblest persons of every land and every age. (Norman Macleod, D. D.) THE WIDOW OF NAIN. Forth from the city gate the pitying crowd Followed the stricken mourner. They came near The place of burial, and, with straining hands, Closer upon her breast she clasped the pall, And with a gasping sob, quick as a child’ s, And an inquiring wildness flashing through The thin grey lashes of her fevered eyes, She came where Jesus stood beside the way. He looked upon her, and His heart was moved. “ Weep not!” He said; and as they stayed the bier, And at His bidding laid it at His feet, He gently drew the pall from out her grasp, And laid it back in silence from the dead. With troubled wonder the mute throng drew near, And gazed on His calm looks. A minute’ s space He stood and pray’ d. Then taking the cold hand, He said, “ Arise!” And instantly the breast Heaved in its cerements, and a sudden flush Ran through the lines of the divided lips, And with a murmur of his mother’ s name, He trembled and sat upright in his shroud. And while the mourner hung upon his neck, Jesus went calmly on His way to Nain. (N. P. Willis.) Luke 7:19-22 Art Thou He that should come, or look we for another?-- John’ s doubting message to Jesus 1. Much discussion has taken place concerning John’ s doubt, whether it was real or affected; and if real, what was its cause? We believe there was doubt in the mind of the Baptist--serious doubt--arising out of no personal or petty source, but caused by the way in which the Messianic career of Jesus was developing itself. 2. This doubt was not in regard to the identity of the worker of the works reported to John with Jesus, but in regard to the nature of the works viewed as Messianic. But why should John stumble at those works, so full of the spirit of love and mercy? Just because they were works of mercy. These were not the sort of works he had expected Messiah to busy Himself with; at all events, so exclusively. Cf. Jonah’ s zeal for righteousness. 3. The reply sent back by Jesus to John amounted to this, that the sure marks that He was the coming One, the Christ, were just the very works which had awakened John’ s surprise. 4. Having recounted rapidly His mighty works, Jesus appended the reflection, “ And blessed is he whosoever shall not be offended in Me.” We are not to find in the words traces either of harshness towards John or of wounded feeling in the speaker. The tone of compassion rather than of severity is audible in the utterance. Jesus felt keenly how much John missed by being in such a state of mind that that in His own work which was most godlike was a stumbling-block to him. Translated into positive form the reflection means, “ Blessed are they to whom the mercy and the grace of which I am full, and whereof My ministry is the manifestation and outflow, are no stumbling-block, but rather worthy of all acceptation.” (A. B. Bruce, D. D.) The test of Christianity 1. Jesus deliberately declined to rest His claims upon any other grounds than the testimony of His Father, a testimony which shone in the truth of His words, and in the heavenly character of His mission. 2. If the Master Himself is willing, nay demands, to be judged by results, manifestly organizations and churches that claim to be called by His name must not shrink from the same test. 3. The only proof of your being in contact with the living Saviour, the only proof that you rightly apprehend and sincerely embrace Him, is the result in your own hearts and conduct. No religion is worth anything that is not a power. (E. W. Shalders, BA.) Looking for another Christ There are times when, through the disappointments and failures of our personal religious lives, it may be necessary to look for another Christ than the Christ we have already known. 1. There are some who have been restless for months, perhaps for years, about their sin. They have appealed to Christ again and again, and the peace of Christ has not come to them. They are tempted to put this question. Christ may reply by pointing them to the great triumphs of His mercy by which they are surrounded. Go to Christ with all your trouble, and with a clear and vivid remembrance of His death, and you cannot put this question. 2. There are some who feel that their Christian life has not had the power and brightness they hoped for. This, also, often arises from a defective knowledge of Christ. Perhaps you have forgotten that He is not only a Saviour, but a Prince, and that you must accept His law as the rule of your life, and strive to get His will done on earth as the will of God is done in heaven. 3. This question may be suggested by the general condition and history of the world, a large part of the world is still unsaved: the misery Jesus came to console still largely unconsoled. Do you look for another Christ? Can the contents of His revelation be anyhow enriched? Can there be more careful warnings, more glorious promises, more compassion, more gentleness and beauty, than there are in Him and His gospel? 4. We do not look for the coming of another Christ, but the Christ whom we know will come in another form, to complete in power and majesty the work which He began in weakness and in shame. (R. W. Dale, D. D.) The answer of Jesus to John It seems to me that here the Lord prescribes to His Church the answer she should give in all days when men rise up and question whether He comes from God, when men rise up to say to His Church, “ Are you the kingdom of God? are you the Divine society established upon earth to be the home of the new life, and the source of a wide-spreading influence? Are you the city set upon a hill that cannot be hid?” When such questions are asked, the Church must be ready, not merely to give proofs of her ancient origin, her orthodox title-deeds drawn from the dusty safes of her theology, but she must be able to say, “ Look at my life, my work. See what I am doing for the poor, the destitute, the oppressed, and judge me as you find me.” Can the Church of God, in these days, bear such an appeal as that? Can she say, “ Look at the asylums I nave founded and support for the poor, the lame, the halt, and the blind! Look at my children giving devoted labour in the lowest dens of your cities; at my sons faithfully striving for the truth in the halls of your legislature; and see in juster laws and a purer life, and a more brotherly relation between man and man, proofs of the power of my spirit, and of the truth of my labours” ? She must answer so, and so must you and I, when challenged to prove that we are of God. We hear a great deal in these days about answers to the infidel, about arguments philosophical, historical, and scientific, which shall have the power, in the hands of skilful men, of silencing the antagonist. But a better argument and a mightier that any of these, an argument that never fails, is that derived from the fruits and results of religion in the life. The man who reads your history with criticism, and meets your argument with argument, will bare his head and bow his neck before the spectacle of a holy and devoted life. That he sees is true, whatever else be false; that is of God, whatever becomes of books and institutions. (Bishop Moorhouse.) The message of John the Baptist I. THE MESSAGE. What did it mean? 1. To convince his disciples? Not suited to do it; suggesting doubtfulness in their master; impairing previous witness. 2. To reassure himself? At variance with (1) his character, testimony, Divine assurance. (2) Words of the Lord (Luke 7:24), aimed to prevent the supposition. (3) The occasion. “ When he had heard the works of Christ” --the last work being the raising of the dead. 3. Message not of uncertainty, but of impatience. Things do not go as the Baptist expected. The world left in doubt. Opinion taking wrong turn for want of distinct assertion. Works of Christ, but no proclamation of Christ. It ought to be made. The time is come. He the proper person to obtain it. He will demand it in the interests of all. II. THE REPLY. 1. Answer. (1) To what was said. The facts are sufficient answer. (2) To what was meant. The method will not be changed. The Lord must choose His own course. Men must see and judge. Facts first, then assertions. 2. Warning. There is danger in this disposition--danger of questioning God’ s methods; restlessness, dissatisfaction, diminution of attachment, failure of faith. (Canon T. D. Bernard.) Moral evidence of Christianity superior to miracles 1. It is evident John did not clearly apprehend the spirituality of the kingdom Christ was to introduce. Like the apostles, he expected the kingdom of God would come with observation, instead of its being of a slow, quiet, spiritual growth. He looked for something more visible. There were the remains of the old dispensation mixed up with his ideas of its nature; too much of the Old Testament theocracy. 2. The remarkable manner in which the idea of the coming of Christ had taken possession of the minds of men at the time John sent his disciples to inquire respecting it. The familiar designation of the Messiah was “ the Comer.” “ Him that is to come” is but the common version of the world’ s designation of the Messiah. The Comer, as if with Him came everything else desirable. The coming of all future good depended upon His coming. 3. I might notice the world’ s slowness in recognizing Christ as the Messiah, and the circumstances which occasioned that slowness to admit His claim. 4. He proceeded to enforce His claim by evidence corresponding with His character, and their necessities, and by evidence alone, the result of which He is prepared to wait (Luke 7:21-23). As if He had said, “ Go and tell John My kingdom is a spiritual kingdom, and the employment of other than spiritual means would be uncongenial and obstructive.” 5. That our Lord not only employed evidence in contradistinction from worldly display and physical force, but that He presented to these inquirers and the multitude moral evidence as superior to miraculous. I. CHRIST’ S , IN A DEGREE, OF DEEDS. 1. Thus on this occasion, the God-like reply to the inquiry, “ Art Thou He that should come?” His deeds spoke. He entered into no argumentative defence of His claims--“ Actions speak louder than words.” “ In the same hour He cured many of their infirmities and plagues, and of evil spirits; and unto many that were blind He gave sight.” He left the stupendous miracles He had performed to speak for themselves (Psalms 19:1-14.l-3). The heavens had done much, and now He is in the world to develop what the heavens could not declare. It was not to be expected that His more full manifestation would be verbal merely, or chiefly, for how can speech, which is but the symbol of thought, convey ideas of what thought cannot grasp respecting “ God, who is a spirit,” immaterial, infinite, invisible, incomprehensible. Speech fails to do justice to the finite, the visible, the material, and comprehensible; to convey the greatest and best conceptions of our own minds. 2. Christ’ s verbal teaching related especially to Himself. Each portion of it was either the vindication of acts He had performed, or an intimation of some purpose he was about to accomplish, or a development of the kingdom He was then establishing--relating to its nature, origin, character, or growth. 3. This distinctive and important fact supplies a reply to the following objections. (1) The first objection we refer to, more frequently felt than expressed, relates to the greater fulness of evangelical doctrines in the Epistles than in the Gospels. Although the latter comprise the discourses and teaching of Christ Himself, we reply to this by saying, “ Christ came not so much to preach the gospel as to procure it, to establish and confirm it, to perform the deeds, the record of which constitutes the gospel.” (2) The second objection urged from the time of Celsus downwards is, that parallels to some of our Lord’ s sayings are to be found in the writings of Plato, Isocrates, and others. Hence it has been inferred, absurdly enough, that the gospel had been anticipated--that Christianity was not original. To which we reply, admitting the supposed resemblances, the wonder is that they are so extremely few--two or three mere maxims of morality, and these but the distant reverberations of Sinai’ s echoes of the ancient and moral law. What is Christianity? Nothing but a few maxims of morality? We triumphantly point inquirers for Christianity to her spirit and her works--her resemblance to her Lord. II. His WORKS WERE . It is a frequent description given of God in the Old Testament, “ He only doeth wonderful things.” To achieve wonders is the prerogative of God. “ He alone doeth wonders” ; and this called forth the grateful praises of His people. Not only is God the wonderworker, but strictly speaking, all that God does are wonders, only wonders. The atom is as an atom not less wonderful than a world. Both owe their origin to His creative power, and are impressed with the Divine signature. Was it strange then that when “God was manifested in the flesh,” that when He appeared amongst us, who was predicted as “ the wonderful,” His works and deeds should be “ mighty signs and wonders.” There was a sense in which He could do nothing which was not wonderful; His constitution made it impossible that anything ordinary could emanate from Him. III. HIS WONDERS WERE MERCIES. 1. All His miracles were miracles of mercy. Nor was it necessary to alter His laws, imposed at the first on nature, they suffered no violence from His mercy; on the contrary, they harmonized with it. In giving sight to the blind, He was but restoring the eye to the use and exercise of its proper function. His power He used as a trust to be administered for man’ s good alone. 2. Besides the present happiness, His mercies conveyed in the physical and mental benefits, miraculously bestowed, they had a higher value, a symbolical meaning, pointing to spiritual necessities and supplies, to the things relating to our redemption. 3. His miracles demonstrated His power, and our interest in turning the elements of earth to account of spiritual uses, relating them to heaven. In opening the blind eye He denoted that He came to be the Light of the world, and that we need that the eye of the understanding should be open to receive that light. The greatest wonder was that of His incarnation. In comparison with this wonder, all mere acts of His power were less splendid. This was the long desired and promised wonder. The ancient tabernacle foreshadowed His tabernacling among men. The temple with its indwelling Shekinah symbolically predicted this. Every instance of union between God and man, and the union of soul and body, prefigured this infinitely more mysterious union of the Divine and human natures in His person. IV. HIS MERCIES, like His acts, by which He replied to John’ s disciples, WERE ANSWERS TO MAN’ S . This is only another mode of saying that the blessings of His redemption are fully adapted to man’ s exigencies. It might have been otherwise. His words might have been works; His works might have been wonders; His wonders might have been mercies; and yet, after all, there might have been a want of strict suitableness between our necessities and the mode of meeting them, but the text reminds us that His mercies and deeds are exactly suitable and fully answerable to the exigencies. 1. This correspondence admits of universal application. He comprehended the entire scheme of nature and Providence. No legitimate question on any natural subject can ever arise in the mind of man, which his Creator and Redeemer has not foreseen; to which He has not inserted an answer in the things which He has made. Ten thousand answers are silently awaiting the future questions which shall call them forth. At this moment, while we are assembled here, the Creator may be elsewhere exhibiting similar demonstrations of His perfections in reply to inquirers. In the amplitude of space, hosts of intelligent beings may be collected around the chaos of a world, wondering whether it will ever be restored to harmony and order; whether all creative acts are at an end, and while they are inquiring the fiat may go forth from the Creator again, as “ in the beginning,” “ Let there be light,” and the light of Divine power may kindle around them. 2. The lessons of the Old Testament are represented as replies. God was graciously pleased to allow Himself to be inquired of. His replies were called responses or oracles. 3. But now Christ had come as the living oracle; from Him the questions which human guilt and misery had never ceased to agitate, were to receive a full practical satisfactory reply. V. A ALONE, A IN DEEDS OF MERCY, THE WORKS OF BY CHRIST. “ Blessed is he, whosoever shall not be offended in Me.” Our Lord meant not that His wondrous works should end with Himself. All power was given to Him as Mediator and Head of the Church, as a centre of an ever-enlarging circle. From Him as the Head of all things to the Church all emanates. (J. Harris, D. D.) The soul dependent on physical conditions However good and great you may be in the Christian life, your soul will never be independent of physical conditions. I feel I am uttering a most practical, useful truth here, one that may give relief to a great many Christians who are worried and despondent at times. Doctor Rush, a monarch in medicine, after curing hundreds of cases of mental depression, himself fell sick and lost his religious hope, and he would not believe his pastor when the pastor told him that his spiritual depression was only a consequence of physical depression. Andrew Fuller, Themes Scott, William Cowper, Thomas Boston, David Brainard, Philip Melancthon, were mighty men for God, but all of them illustrations of the fact that a man’ s soul is not independent of his physical health. An eminent physician gave as his opinion that no man ever died a greatly triumphant death whose disease was below the diaphragm. Stackhouse, the learned Christian writer, says he does not think Saul was insane when David played the harp before him, but it was a hypochondria coming from inflammation of the liver. The Dean of Carlisle, one of the best men that ever lived, and one of the most useful, sat down and wrote: “ Though I have endeavoured to discharge my duty as well as I could, yet sadness and melancholy of heart stick close by and increase upon me. I tell nobody, but I am very much sunk indeed, and I wish I could have the relief of weeping as I used to. My days are exceedingly dark and distressing. In a word, Almighty God seems to hide His face, and I intrust the secret to hardly any earthly being. I know not what will become of me. There is, doubtless, a good deal of bodily affliction mingled with this, but it is not all so. I bless God, however, that I never lose sight of the Cross, and, though I should die without seeing any personal interest in the Redeemer’ s merits, I hope that I shall be found at His feet. I will thank you for a word at your leisure. My door is bolted at the time I am writing this, for I am full of tears.” (Dr. Talmage.) Inactivity a cause of doubt Doubt often comes from inactivity. We cannot give the philosophy of it, but this is the fact, that Christians who have nothing to do but to sit thinking of themselves, meditating, sentimentalising, are almost sure to become the prey to dark, blank misgivings. John the Baptist, struggling in the desert, needs no proof that Jesus is the Christ. John shut up became morbid and doubtful immediately. We are mysteries, but here is the practical lesson of it all: for sadness, for suffering, for misgivings, there is no remedy but stirring and doing. (F. W. Robertson, M. A.) Christ is the dispeller of doubt During his earlier life Dr. Merle D’ Aubigne, the Swiss historian of the Reformation, was grievously vexed with depressing doubts. He went to his old teacher for help. The shrewd old man refused to answer the young man’ s perplexities, saying, “ Were I to get you rid of these doubts, others would come. There is a shorter way of destroying them. Let Christ be really to you the Son of God the Saviour. Do His will. His light will dispel the clouds, and His Spirit will lead you into all truth.” The old man was right, and the young D’ Aubigne was wise enough to adopt his counsel. He hoisted anchor, and moved out of the region of fogs, and quietly anchored himself under the sunshine of Christ’ s countenance. (Dr. Cuyler.) Devotion to Christ a cure for despondency Active devotion to Christ’ s service is another cure for spiritual despondency. The faith-faculty gets numb by long inaction, just as a limb becomes numb and useless if it is not exercised. The love-power grows cold if it is not kept fired up. When faith and love both run low, the soul easily falls into an ague-fit. What you need is to get out of yourself into a sympathy with, and downright efforts for, the good of others. When a desponding Christian came to old Dr. Alexander for relief, the Doctor urged him to prayer. “ I do pray continually.” “ What do you pray for?” The young student said, “ I pray that the Lord would lift upon me the light of His countenance.” “ Then,” replied the sagacious veteran, “ go now and pray that He will use you for the conversion of souls.” (Dr. Cuyler.) To the poor the gospel is preached The gospel preached to the poor I. THE OF THIS LAW. A new development of a heaven-laid plan to enlighten the poor; to raise them in the scale of being; to sweeten and adorn their lot by the honours of intellectual culture, the comforts of social life, and the hopes of immortality. The wisdom of our text, as a poor’ s law, excels all the contrivances of men. It does not so much provide for the poor as it prevents men from being poor. It cuts off the causes of poverty. II. THE IT LAYS UPON US. The way to the most effective sense of duty is by discovering the need and the worth of the thing that is enjoined; and is this a thing to be countermanded or opposed?: But if the argument from the goodness of precept seem too weak, let us view its peremptory demand. It is the will of our Saviour that none live in a Christian land without hearing the glad sound, that so all may walk in the light of His countenance. III. How is THIS GOOD LAW OF OUR LAND TO BE .? (N. Paterson.) Christ’ s works 1. Our Saviour’ s works were words. 2. His works were wonders. 3. His wonders were wonders of mercy. 4. His wonders of mercy were suited to the necessities of man. 5. The suitableness of His wonders of mercy to the necessities of man is a satisfactory proof of His Messiahship. (G. Brooks.) The suitability of the gospel to the poor The gospel is especially adapted to the poor, in respect of-- 1. Their education. 2. Their resources. 3. Their opportunities. 4. Their prospects. (G. Brooks.) A preacher to the poor John Wesley always preferred the middling and lower classes to the wealthy. He said “ If I might choose I should still, as I have done hitherto, preach the gospel to the poor.” Trophies of the work of Christ Before many a Popish shrine on the Continent one sees exhibited a great variety of crutches, together with wax models of arms, legs, and other limbs. These are supposed to represent the cures wrought by devotion at that altar--the memorials of the healing power of the saint. Poor, miserable superstition, all of it, and yet what a reminder to the believer in Jesus as to his duty and his privilege? Having pleaded at the feet of Jesus, we have found salvation; have we remembered to record this wonder of His hand? If we hung up memorials of all His matchless grace, what crutches and bandages and trophies of every sort should we pile together! Temper subdued, pride humbled, unbelief slain, sin cast down, sloth ashamed, carelessness rebuked. The cross has healed all manner of diseases, and its honours should be proclaimed with every rising and setting sun. (C. H. Spurgeon.) Christianity and the poor A celebrated doctor of divinity in London, who is now in heaven I have no doubt--a very excellent and godly man--gave notice one Sunday that he intended to visit all his people, and said,that in order to be able to get round and visit them and their families once in the year, he should take all the seatholders in order, A person well known to me, who was then a poor man, was delighted with the idea that the minister was coming to his house to see him, and about a week or two before he conceived it would be his turn his wife was very careful to sweep the hearth and keep the house tidy, and the man ran home early from work, hoping each night to find the Doctor there. This went on for a considerable time. He either forgot his promise, or grew weary in performing it, or for some other reason never went to this poor man’ s house; and the result was this, the man lost confidence in all preachers, and said, “ They care for the rich, but they do not care for us who are poor.” That man never settled down to any one place of worship for many years, till at last he dropped into Exeter Hall and remained my hearer for years till Providence removed him. It was no small task to make him believe that any minister could be an honest man, and could impartially love both rich and poor. (C. H.Spurgeon.) Luke 7:23 And blessed is he, whosoever shall not be offended in Me Taking offence at Christ 1. Some are offended and stumble at Christ, on the pretence that there is not sufficient evidence of His Divine mission. 2. Some are offended in Christ because of circumstances connected with the Person and history of Christ Himself. (1) His dignity and Godhead. (2) His humiliation. 3. Some are offended in Christ because of His peculiar doctrines. They dislike mysteries, they say. But what is there which is not mysterious, when searched into very closely? 4. Some are offended at Christ because of His precepts, or the holy life which He requires them to lead. 5. Some are offended in Christ on account of the conduct of those who profess to be His followers. But, however lamentable such misconduct may be, it is unjust to impute it to Christ, or His gospel. We ought always to distinguish between the system and the inconsistencies of those who profess to hold it. 6. Many are offended in Christ because of the trials to which fidelity to Him would expose them. (James Foote, M. A.) The blessedness of not being offended in Christ 1. A fatal stumble in the way to happiness, which many of the hearers of the gospel make. They are offended in Christ. They stumble at Him. Observe here, the object of their offence, Jesus Christ. It is at Him the world is offended. The God that made and guides the world, the Saviour that redeemed them, does not please the world. What wonder then that others cannot do it. There is something in the mystery of Christ, with which the unbeliever will always be finding fault. The world is unholy, and takes offence at Him. He is the brightness of His Father’ s glory: and they, like owls and bats, are blinded at the shining Sun, and therefore carefully keep at a distance from Him. They are offended. In the Greek, scandalized. Now the blind world, by reason of their own corruption, are thus offended or scandalized in Christ. “ And He shall be for a sanctuary; but for a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offence, to both the houses of Israel: for a gin and for a snare to the inhabitants of Jerusalem. And many among them shall stumble, and fall, and be broken, and be snared, and be taken.” 2. In the text there is the happiness of those who escape this fatal stumble. I shall show-- I. What it is to stumble at Christ and be offended in Him. II. That stumbling at Christ abounds very much in the world. III. That they are happy indeed who are kept from being offended in Him. And then add some improvement. I. To SHOW WHAT IT IS TO STUMBLE AT CHRIST, AND BE IN HIM. This is a very awful matter. For a man to die of his disease, when he might have been cured, is sad; but it is a double death for one to destroy himself by the abuse of a remedy prescribed that would have cured him infallibly. It has reference to four things in the general. 1. To the grand device of salvation through Jesus Christ, laid in the infinite wisdom of God, and fixed by the Divine counsel. And at this the unbelieving world ever stumbles, and their hearts can never fall in with it. 2. To the offer of Christ made in the gospel. To be the sinner’ s Head, Lord, and Husband. To be their Prophet, Priest, and King, their all and instead of all. But sinners love not the offer, they stumble at His offices. 3. To the making use of Christ for all the purposes for which the Father has given Him. 4. To the practical understanding of sinners. They ever form a wrong judgment of Christ, and nothing less than overpowering grace will rectify their apprehensions of Him. This stumbling at Christ lies in these four things. (1) The blind soul ever finds some fault in the mystery of Christ. There is always something in or about Christ that disgusts the sinner, is quite disagreeable and shocking to him. The Son of God is not a match suitable to those whose minds are not savingly enlightened. (2) That which disgusts them, is what they cannot get over. There is something not to be found in Him, which they cannot want, and something in Him which they cannot endure. And by no art can they reconcile their hearts to it. (3) Because they cannot get over that one thing, it keeps Christ and the soul asunder effectually. Could the Jews have got over the offence of the mean appearance of Christ, and reconciled it to their own notion of the Messiah, they would have been fond of Him, as they were while He was not come. (4) This keeping Christ and the soul asunder, the soul is at length thereby ruined, and brought into a worse case than if Christ had never come in the way. “ If I had not come,” says He, “ and spoken unto them, they had not had sin; but now they have no cloak for their sin.” II. TO SHOW THAT AT CHRIST ABOUNDS VERY MUCH IN THE WORLD. Let us view the heaps upon heaps that are lying broken, snared, and taken. 1. Let us take a view of those that are lying rotting above the ground in open profanity; they are kept away from Christ, even by the very far-off sight of Him and His way. There are many at this day who cry, “ Let us break their bands asunder, and cast their cords from us. We will not have this Man to reign over us.” 2. Let us take a view of those who are lying dead upon their murdered convictions. 3. Those that are lying broken and pining away, having stumbled aver the Cross of Christ. 4. Those that are fallen away from the lusts of Christ’ s consolation, to the fulsome breasts of the world and their own lusts. In every age there are many like the mixed multitude that came out of Egypt, who for a time kept up in the ,wilderness, but afterwards lost hopes of Canaan, and fell a “ lusting, and even the children of Israel also wept again, and said, Who shall give us flesh to eat?” Finally, Look at those whose soul exercises have issued in putting their case in the hands of a physician of no value. III. TO SHOW THAT THEY ARE HAPPY INDEED WHO ARE KEPT FROM BEING IN HIM. 1. Their eyes are opened to see that superlative glory in Christ that all the unbelieving world cannot discover. 2. Their hearts are new formed, cast into a new mould, otherwise they could never be pleased with Him. “ But as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to them who believe on His name.” 3. That soul cannot fail to embrace Christ, to receive Him by faith and unite with Him. For to be well pleased with Christ, is in effect to say amen to the great bargain. Uses for improvement: 1. Be convinced then of this bias of the heart, this disposition of the soul to stumble at Jesus Christ. 2. I exhort one and all of you, that have a mind for any share of eternal happiness, and particularly communicants, that you would try yourselves this night, whether you be well pleased with Christ or not. (T. Boston.) Luke 7:24-27 What went ye out into the wilderness for to see?--Three questions Why did our Lord select these figures rather than others? I. Our Lord’ s three questions RECALL THE WRY SCENE, THE FORM, AND THE SPIRIT OF THE BAPTIST’ S . 1. The first would recall, to the listening crowd, Jordan, with its reedy, wind-swept banks--the strong rapid stream, by which they had listened to the prophet’ s call, and in which they had been plunged for the remission of their sins. 2. The second would recall the asceticism of the Baptist, the rude simplicity of his garb, the rustic fare with which he was content. 3. The third would recall the fervour and inspiration with which he spoke, whom “ all men confessed to be a prophet indeed,” and the profound impression he had made upon their light, fluctuating hearts. II. We may take these questions as SETTING FORTH THE BAPTIST’ S TO MAN, TO SELF, TO GOD. 1. John was no reed to be shaken by the breath of popular applause. He delivered his rebukes with fearlessness. 2. Severe to others, he was also severe to himself. He might have dwelt in king’ s houses, yet he made the desert his home. A preacher of temperance, he carried his own temperance to asceticism. 3. Severe in the demands he made on men, still more severe in his demands on himself; he devoted himself wholly to the will and service of God. In his relation to God he proved himself a true prophet, yea, and very much more than a prophet, a man of God who was not disobedient to the word of the Lord. III. We may take these questions as TO THE AND INTENTS, THE WISHES AND HOPES, OF THE CROWD WHO TO THEM. What did you want and expect to find? Did you not covertly hope that, as John became popular, he would bend before the popular currents of thought and aim? And yet, could this have been your expectation and your hope? Had you wanted a courtier who would speak smooth things to you, would you not have gone to the palace for him? But, whatever drew you into the wilderness, whatever you thought or hoped, did not you find a prophet? As you listened to him, did not you find that life grew large and solemn? (S. Cox, D. D.) Sight-seers Thrice, in as many minutes, our Lord demands of the multitude, “ What went ye out to see?” Here was their error: professing concern to know the will of God, to prepare themselves for His service and kingdom, they were bent on sights, on spectacles, on indulging their curiosity and love of the marvellous. They went out not to hear a prophet, but to see a prophet; not to imitate the temperance and abstinence of the Baptist, but to gaze on a man who could prefer camel’ s hair to soft clothing; not to feel the Divine regenerating mind of the Spirit, but to gape at the reed which shook and trembled in it. And this is the error against which we must guard. We are not to be over-much concerned with the spectacular, the external, the marvellous in religion, but to fix our thoughts and affections on its interior and eternal realities. (S. Cox, D. D.) The unshaken prophet The form into which Christ in this passage throws His view of the character of John the Baptist illustrates more than the symbolic method of His teaching. One sees in the choice of a natural object like the reed shaking in the wind in order to form a contrast to the unshaken temper of the Baptist, the same love of symbolism which led Him in His parables to make the ordinary things of Nature and of human nature images of the relations and laws of the spiritual kingdom. In the case of the parables, symbolism is deliberately used for the purpose of instruction. In the case before us it is used, as it were, unconsciously, and it reveals the natural way in which His mind united the world of Nature to the world of Man. When the image of the Baptist rose before Him--stern, uncompromising, fixed in moral strength, and with it the Jordan bank where first He met him, and the baptismal hour when He stood in the flowing river--He remembered the reeds as they shook in impotent vacillation in the wind, clasped the two images together in vivid contrast, and said, “ What went ye out into the wilderness to see? A reed shaken by the wind in the stream of the Jordan? nay, a rock, deep-rooted, firm, removable.” I. WE KNOW OF THE BAPTIST THIS VIEW He learnt concentration of will in the solitary life of the desert. With the unshaken firmness which Christ saw as a root in his character, he accepted his position at once and for ever. Not one step did be take beyond his mission, though he must have seen to some distance beyond it. Never for a moment did he cease to point to Another away from himself. Iris as noble a piece of self-renunciation as history affords, and it was unshaken. Though a hundred temptations beset him to do so, he never allowed his teaching to step beyond the limits of its special work. He met his death because he was no reed to be shaken by the promises of a wicked king. II. AND NOW TO MAKE THIS REAL TO . 1. Fidelity to our vocation in life. 2. The sinking of self in religious work. 3. The being unshaken in our truth and right, both in act and speech, against worldly influences when they are evil; and even When they are not evil in themselves, when they make us weak and vacillating. (Stopford A. Brooke, M. A.) The Christian ministry I. IT IS NOT A LINE OF PRIESTS. The principle of the priesthood rests upon a truth, the mediatorial power which man exercises over man. The apostles were in a sense mediators, and so far priests. But the prophecy of old was taken up joyfully by the apostles as the richest tune in the mediatorial kingdom, when the last offices of the priesthood should be taken away, when they should no longer teach every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord, for all should know Him, from the least even unto the greatest. This, then, is the spiritual priesthood. But the priestly system-1. Removes God from the soul, whereas God is ever near. 2. Degrades humanity, for its language tells us not of the affinity of man to God, but of the immense distance between the two. 3. Produces a slavish worship. Pass on to consider what the ministry is. II. IT IS , not priestly. We greatly mistake if we think that the office of the prophet was simply to predict future events. 1. It was the office of the prophet to teach eternal truths. John’ s only prediction was, “ The kingdom of heaven is at hand.” 2. All the most sublime passages in the Bible are from the writings of the prophets. The priestly writings were but temporary. 3. The difference between the prophet and the priest was that it was the office of the prophet to counteract the priestly office. “ Bring no more vain oblations,” &c. “ Wash you, make you clean.” III. THE OF OUR BLESSED LORD HIMSELF, HERE ON EARTH, WAS AND NOT . I lay a stress on that expression “ here on earth,” because unquestionably He is a priest in heaven above. The high priesthood of the Son of Man is spoken of in the Hebrews. There it is denied on earth, but asserted to be in heaven. “ For if He were on earth, He should not be a priest” ; in other words, there is a priesthood now, but no earthly priesthood. In conclusion, I notice two points which seem to favour the notion of a priesthood:-- 1. Absolution. Unquestionably, there is a power of absolution in the ministry of the Church of Christ, but it is the power of the prophet and not of the priest. 2. Apostolical succession. There is such a thing; but it is a succession of prophets and not of priests, a succession never extinct or broken. (F. W. Robertson, M. A.) Good and bad ends in attending ministrations I. WE OUGHT ALWAYS TO HAVE AN END IN VIEW IN THE OF THE . 1. It is due to ourselves. 2. It is due to God. 3. It is due to the occasion. II. THERE ARE SOME ENDS WE OUGHT NOT TO PROPOSE TO . 1. The gratification of curiosity. 2. The exercise of a critical and censorious spirit. 3. The improvement of our social position. 4. The pacifying of our conscience. III. THERE ARE SOME ENDS THAT SHOULD ALWAYS BE PRESENT TO OUR . 1. Conversion. 2. Instruction. 3. Impression. 4. The diffusion of the gospel. (G. Brooks.) A reed shaken by the wind The ordinary interpretation of this expression has been this: “ Did you suppose that John was one of the weaklings of this world, a mere courtier with delicate words and flowing robes, who would be tremulously seeking popular approval, who would turn and trim in order to secure favour, now one thing and now another, like a rush shivering in the breeze? “ But lately, a new suggestion has been made by one who was born in Palestine, and who has been educated in the Greek language. He says that shepherd-boys often shelter them selves among the tall grass, and while away the hours of hot sunshine by playing on their native flutes; hence one frequently almost stumbles upon such a musician by the rivers or along the hillsides. So soft is the tone of the feeble instrument that it appears effeminate, and might well be the symbol of a gentle sweetness of entertainment without vigour or force. So here the exposition may be somewhat like this--“ Did ye come down here beside the Jordan to hear a timid little flute-player, a reed blown with one’ s breath?” (C. S. Robinson, D. D.) Luke 7:27 Behold I send My messenger before My face John first, then Jesus I. WHAT DID JOHN THE BAPTIST PREACH? 1. He delivered the whole law against sin, arousing the consciences of people. 2. He made a demand for immediate repentance (Matthew 3:11). 3. He heralded Jesus as the Messiah predicted of old. 4. He announced the special office of Jesus as a Redeemer of men John 1:29-36). II. Now WHAT DID JESUS TEACH WHEN IT CAME TO HIS TURN? 1. Christ testified to the entire accuracy of John’ s doctrine (Matthew 11:11). 2. He proclaimed the full necessity of an atonement. 3. He declared that the necessary sacrifice was now to be accomplished by Himself (John 3:16-17). It shocked and stumbled His disciples, but He persisted in declaring that He came into the world to die. 4. He thus raised no new issue between men and God, but the rather narrowed down all the old into one; He made it clear that faith was to be the instrument of salvation (John 6:28-29), III. Thus, then, we reach the conclusion that, so far as Jesus’ teaching and John’ s teaching had value in the New Testament, THE POINT OF IS THE ORDER BETWEEN THEM. John’ s came earliest in fact, and earliest in logical necessity. 1. The historic position of the two men is enough to show all that is here claimed. There is an order in doctrine under the gospel arrangement as strict as the order of demonstration in problems in Euclid’ s geometry. John’ s work was a necessity and a solemn pre-requisite to the work of Jesus. 2. The similar form of procedure which in all their teaching these two preachers preserved, adds confirmation to the proof. John presented the law first, then the gospel; but his office was plainly to press the law into prominence. Jesus presented the law first, then the gospel; but His office was to bring the gospel into prominence. In both eases the law came earliest. 3. Our conclusion, therefore, is inevitable and clear. There remains no reason now why a single proposition should not be framed for permanent recollection and use: law-work preceded gospel-work in all God’ s dealings with souls. Practical inferences in conclusion: 1. We see why religious instruction in our day sometimes appears so tame, and proves so inefficacious. It is because Christian people preach Jesus without John. 2. We see why inquirers are so slow in finding peace at the cross. Peace? Why, there has been no disturbance! (see Ezekiel 33:32). 3. We see why there is so much of unrest and misgiving among Christian people. They have no intelligent sense of Christ’ s legal work in bearing the curse of the law in their behalf. Hence they labour to keep up a mere fire of fervour in their souls. They have studied regeneration more than justification; and it is by justification that one finds peace. So, not united consciously to Christ as a Surety, they are not sure. 4. We see why backsliding is so frequent as the sin of converts. Some have never been taught what leaving first love implies. 5. Finally, we see how the new life begins and continues, according to the revealed plan (Romans 5:1-2). (C. S. Robinson, D. D.) Luke 7:28 For I say unto you, Among those that are born of women there is not a greater prophet than John the Baptist Much more than a prophet, but less than a Christian worker John’ s greatness not that of function or office only, but of character. But his greatness bows before the excelling and incomparable greatness of the Lord. Further, our Lord here declares that every lowliest stoner who accepted Him as his very own Saviour, thereby passed into the kingdom of heaven, and by this one act and fact took a stamp of greatness besides which even that of John the Baptist was dwarfed. As our tidal rivers enlarge into bays and reaches of the sea by the sea’ s simple flowing into them, or communicating its own mass and strength and riches to them; so these relatively narrow beings of ours become spacious and Christlike by the indwelling and sway of the Spirit with all the new and august power of the new kingdom. Three practical remarks. 1. Be it ours who are privileged to work for Christ to emulate John the Baptist’ s type of work. No thought of self. 2. Be it ours in the full day of the gospel to realize our greater responsibility. 3. Be it ours to beware of assumption (or presumption) of this excelling greatness. Mere function, mere human recognition, will count for nothing beneath the eye of Him with whom we have to do. (Dr. Grosart.) Nature and circumstances Jesus told men that the true greatness of human life must come by following Him. It was inevitable, then, that men should ask, “ How is it about those great men who are not His followers; those great men who have gone before Him--are they not truly great? And if they are, what has become of His saying that true greatness lies only in Him, and in the Kingdom of God to which He is so earnestly summoning us? “ To this question Jesus gave answer in the words of the text. Let us study the answer. I. It is a question which belongs not to the things of Christ nor to religious things alone. All life suggests it; for in all life there are two ways of estimating the probable value of men--one by the direct perception of their characters the other by the institutions to which they belong, and the privileges which they enjoy. Sense in which the school-boy of to-day is greater than Socrates. The two elements of greatness--greatness of nature, and greatness of circumstance. They are distinct from one another; they do not make each other. II. Christ recognizes the two elements of personal greatness and lofty condition, and He seems almost to suggest another truth, which is at any rate familiar to our experience of life--that personal power which has been manifest in some lower region of life seems sometimes to be temporarily lost cud dimmed with the advance of the person who possesses it into a higher condition. What really is a progress seems, for a time at least, to involve a loss. III. In ordinary life the power of the temptation to be satisfied with greatness in some lower sphere and not to aspire to the highest sort of existence, is constantly appearing. IV. See how the truth of the text applies to the explanation and understanding of a true and noble life lived in a false faith. I believe that this is the simple truth which a good many puzzled people among us need to know. The Christian, with his unbelieving friend whose daily life, so pure, upright, and honest, shames the poor half-discouraged believer every day--what can you say to him? 1. Bid him rejoice that his Christ can and does do for that friend of his so much even when that friend denies Him. 2. Bid him see that if that friend of his could conscientiously know and cordially acknowledge the Christ who is doing so much for him already, he would give that Christ a chance to do still more which now He cannot do. 3. Let him, for himself, be filled with an inspiring shame which shall make him determined to be worthier of his higher faith. This is the true ministry which ought to come to any Christian from the presence of a man who believes far less than he does, and is a far better man than he is. V. See how all of this must tell upon the whole idea of Christian missions. There may have been a time when, in order to make it seem right for the Christian world to send missionaries to the heathen, it required to be made out that all heathen virtue was a falsehood and delusion. That day is past, if it ever existed. May not the Christian glory in every outbreak of the heathen’ s goodness as a sign of the power with which his Christ, even unknown, may fill a human life which in the very darkness of its ignorance is obedient to whatever best spiritual force it feels? May not that very sight reveal to him what that aspiring heathenism might become if it could be made aware of the Christ whom it is in its unconsciousness obeying? May he not, even while he goes out to tell the heathen his completer gospel, be filled with an inspiring shame at his own poor use and exhibition of that gospel which he offers to the heathen world? This is the true attitude of Christendom to paganism. It is not arrogant; it brings no insult; it comes like brother to brother, full of honour for the nature to which it offers the larger knowledge of the Father’ s life. To such brave missionary impulse as that let us be sure that the increase of rational and spiritual Christianity will only add ever new and stronger impulse and inspiration. (Phillips Brooks, D. D.) The judgment of Jesus on John One thing clear at the outset, viz., that the comparison is not absolute, but relative to certain aspects under which the parties compared are viewed; such as the happiness they respectively enjoy, the spirit by which they are respectively animated, or the nature of the spiritual movements with which they are respectively identified. Christ’ s purpose in making the statement was not to assist the people to take full and accurate measure of John’ s genius and character. He did not discuss the question of the Baptist’ s comparative greatness in the spirit in which, in a debating society, youths might discuss the question, Who was the greater man and general--Caesar or Napoleon? He was concerned about far higher matters. His anxiety was to get people to understand the spiritual phenomenon of their time, and in particular to form true, just, and wholesome opinions concerning the religious movements with which John and Himself were identified respectively. For the opinions we form of men very seriously affect our opinions concerning principles and movements. Those who thought too much of John would remain with him, and never join the society of the Christ whose harbinger tie was. On the other hand, those who thought too little of John would think just as little of Christ. It is manifest, then, that the judgment pronounced is not so much on a man as on an era. It is a judgment on the law given by Moses; and the comparison made between the last prophet of law and any little one in the kingdom signifies the immense inferiority of the legal economy to the era of grace which came by Jesus Christ. Paraphrased, the verse means: John, the last prophet of the old time, was a great prophet--none greater. No one who went before ever did better justice to the law than he; preached it with more power and boldness, embodied it in a more upright, blameless life, or gained for its claims more widespread and respectful attention. Still, with all that, nay, just because he is a hero of law, John is a weak, one-sided man. What he has is good, but he wants something of far more value, something which puts its possessors on a different platform altogether from that which he occupies, insomuch that it may be said without extravagance that those who possess it, though immeasurably inferior to John in other respects, are greater than he. He wants the spirit of the new time, of the era of the better hope. Strong in zeal, he is defective in love; strong in denunciation, he is weak in patience towards the sinful; strong in ascetic abstinence, he is weak in the social and sympathetic affections; strong as the whirlwind, the earthquake, and the fire, he is weak in the moral influence that comes through the still small voice of a meek and merciful mind. In these respects, any one in the kingdom of heaven animated by the characteristic spirit of love is greater than he. The programme of Jesus as in contrast to that of John might be summed up in these two principles:-- 1. Salvation by Divine mercy, not by penance. 2. New life by regeneration, not by reform. (A. B. Bruce, D. D.) Was John the Baptist not in the Kingdom? He was outside it in the same sense in which many excellent men are outside the visible Church, though not, thank God, on that account outside the invisible Church. In former times he had proclaimed the near approach of the kingdom, but at this moment he was in doubt whether either the King or kingdom had come, the actual characteristics of both being so different from what he had expected. In this sense John was outside the kingdom: he was not connected with it as a visible historical movement called by this name. The Kingdom of God was in him, in his heart: in his thoughts continually. His very message of doubting inquiry showed this; for his was a case in which there was more faith in honest earnest doubt than there is in the belief of many men. And in what he said Jesus had no thought of calling in question, or of so much as hinting a suspicion, as to John’ s spiritual state. And we must strive in this respect to imitate our Lord, and to bear in mind that because a man is outside the visible Church he is not therefore unsaved; that there may be many who, from one cause or another, are alienated from the visible Church, who nevertheless are children of God and citizens of His kingdom, though in many respects too probably erring, one-sided, defective men. If Christ judged John leniently and charitably, how much more should we abstain from judging those who are without, and full of prejudices against Christianity, when too probably the blame of their prejudice and alienation lies at our own door! Surely this is a very legitimate lesson to draw from the striking saying we have been studying. (A. B. Bruce, D. D.) Grace is better than power To insist, in the presence of a successful millionaire, or a triumphant prince, or a victorious soldier, or a medalled artist, that the veriest infant in the class of a Sunday-school, who has intelligently learned the articulate language of love to the Saviour, is better than he, is a brave thing to do, of course. But whether the courage will be rewarded with any prosperity in making him believe it, is quite another consideration. It is power that most men are seeking, and not grace. And it is a pity that they do not all get either, even after the seeking. Think of the unfortunate architecture of Cologne Cathedral. The pile of stone has stood through the ages incomplete; just now it has at last been finished. But--most singular fate of genius--nobody on all this earth knows at the dedication who drew the early plans for the building, or whose is the fame of its beauty. John Keats left for his tombstone in Rome the somewhat violent epitaph: “ Here lies one whose name was writ in water!” Alas1 cannot we hope that it was written in the Lamb’ s Book of Life? It is exceedingly interesting to find the jealous Turner’ s beautiful landscapes between the two Claudes in the British Gallery; for we are glad to know neither of the great canvasses suffered from the comparison. But then who can help putting the tranquil inquiry, What difference does it make to those painters now which of them is considered the better artist? And where is Turner to-day, and where is Claude Lorraine also? For grace settles the long mysterious future; and gift is not grace. Socrates was a great man; but some say he sold his wife at a price. Alexander was a great monarch; but he died in a drunken debauch. Lord Byron was a great man; but his statue at Trinity College has on its front look the divinity of a genius, and on its profile one side is the leer of a lecher. It would be useless to deny that these famous people had power; but grace is better than power. (C. S.Robinson, D. D.) The smallest diamond is made of more precious substance than the largest flint. (Archdeacon Farrar.) The greatness of the Baptist In John 10:41 it is stated that “ John did no miracle,” and to some this may seem inconsistent with what our Lord here declared concerning him. Mightiness indeed is reckoned, and very justly reckoned, a considerable element of a prophet’ s greatness. Let us, then, consider how John the Baptist deserves the title of the greatest of the prophets, in spite of his having never wrought a miracle. 1. It is a greater thing to exercise a wide moral and spiritual influence upon our generation, than to work a miracle before their eyes. To work a miracle is to exhibit power over matter; to exercise a wide moral and spiritual influence is to exhibit a power over mind. To be made the means, in God’ s hand, of swaying the human will, curbing the unruly human passions, arousing the human conscience to wholesome alarms and sincere inquiries after the way of salvation, is a higher distinction than to be made the means of reversing nature’ s laws, or restraining the fury of the elements, or calling forth the tenants of the sepulchre from their dreamt abode. 2. It is partly, I conceive, in his very lack of miraculous power, that the grandeur of John the Baptist as a prophet consists. Without the aid of miracles to give effect to his words he wrought a national reformation. Without supernatural resources he accomplished what other prophets were only able to effect with their aid. 3. John Baptist’ s magnanimity is another feature which enhances his greatness as a prophet. He sinks self, that he may exalt Christ. 4. Another element in his greatness is the relation in which he stood to Christ as His forerunner, and the opportunity which it afforded him of bearing testimony to the person of our Lord. Concluding lessons: 1. Learn to estimate aright, and not by the world’ s standard, the true greatness of man. 2. The testimony of Christ is the spirit of prophecy. (Dean Goulburn.) Luke 7:30 Rejected the counsel of God against themselves The rejection of the counsel of God by the Pharisees There they stood on the banks of Jordan, self-complacency written on their countenances, the calm peace of death upon their hearts; whispering to one another as they heard the fervid words of the preacher, “ Never mind; you and I know better than that; we are not to allow ourselves to be carried away by this hot-headed enthusiast; we are too intelligent people for that; we are educated people; we have a certain refinement which, of itself, precludes our being so influenced. That is not the man for us; we will go back to our synagogue. I like to hear the calm, quiet exposition which Rabbi So-and-so gives of the Book of the Law; it is very interesting to listen to him, but this enthusiastic fanatic does us no good: come away, come away; we have had enough. He calls us ‘ a generation of vipers.’ You cannot listen to a man that insults you.” “ But the Pharisees and the lawyers rejected,” &c. Yes, and that very moment “ the axe was laid at the root of the tree.” Yet another moment, and that axe should be lifted up by the hand of Divine judgment; a few short moments more, and that stroke should fall; only a few years were to pass over their heads, and the city they gloried in, and the temple they prided themselves about, were to lie strewn along the dust. Their name was to be obliterated from the roll of the nations of the earth; their national existence was to be trampled upon; their streets were to be drenched with blood; they themselves, as a den of robbers or a gang of murderers, were to be crucified round the wall of their own city, or dragged into captivity to adorn the triumphs of a foreign conqueror. All this was already in store; the edge of the axe was already sharp, and the hand of justice was already grasping it; and, all the while, these poor self-complacent men were flattering themselves that the message was not for them. “ We have Abraham to our father; we are the children of privilege; what have we to fear?” And so they slept their sleep; and so they “ rejected the counsel of God against their own souls.” There are plenty of Pharisees in our own day, and they are just as true to the instincts of their own life as were the Pharisees of eighteen hundred years ago. What was the characteristic of these Pharisees? Self-complacency. They were satisfied with themselves. They had not yet found out “ the plague of their own hearts.” (W. H. M. H. Aitken, M. A.) Luke 7:31-34 Whereunto then shall I liken the men of this generation The Baptist and Christ In the metaphor of the reed shaking in the wind, we traced that close observation of nature which enabled Christ to interpret so much of human life to man. In the similitude He uses here we trace His close observation of the ordinary aspects of human life, and the use which He made of them to interpret to men His own thoughts, and the times in which He lived. Every one knows from pictures, from descriptions, the general appearance of the market-place of an Eastern town. One may image the quiet figure of Christ moving through the throng, enjoying its humours, with now a gentle smile, and now an inexplicable sadness on His face, as if all things spoke to Him of far-off analogies. One sight He often saw--the children at play in the unoccupied spaces and corners of the markets. They had their games in and out among the serious doing of the place, and one of these games is often spoken of in Eastern tales. It is the acting of childish dramas which the children themselves invent. Often three or four exhibit their little talents for the rest, while now and then a bearded man or a veiled woman loiter by to watch the sport. Sometimes the invented story is sportive, sometimes sorrowful, and the acting of them is good or bad, according to the sympathy given to the children. One such scene, at least, remained vividly in His mind (and He uses it with astonishing force), when the little band of actors, having tried to win the favour of their comrades with tiny tragedy, and then with tiny comedy, failed in their hopes, and said, “ We have piped unto you, and ye have not danced; we have mourned to you, and ye have not wept.” In this slight scene Christ saw a picture of the religious state of Palestine. There was no moral depth in that society, no vital strength to carry out in a life the wavering feelings of repentance. At first they tried the Baptist, but they soon had enough of that resolute teaching. They turned away with indignation, and said, “ He hath a devil.” They were mourned unto, and they had not lamented. All the same, they could not get rid of the religious impulse in their hearts. It seemed that Christ required no ascetic life, that He did not wish them to separate themselves from the world. “ This is the teacher for us,” they said, and they sought Him out and followed Him. “ We will dance to His piping,” was their thought, “ and possess a religion.” But the result was a still more complete failure. 1. The religion of the Baptist had been too hard for them because of its stern morality. It demanded outward purity. “ We shall be better off with Christ,” they thought. And they found themselves worse off than before. It was bad enough to hear that the whole of the outward life had to be reformed; it was ten times worse to hear that the inward life had to be reformed. 2. The religion of the Baptist had been too hard for them because of its demand for self-sacrifice. And lo! Christ was ten times more severe on this point than John. They turned away in wrath, but the little grain of conscience that still remained made them bitter. To relieve their conscience, they turned to abuse and vilify Him who had shown them a vision they could not bear. If they could put Him in the wrong, they might put themselves in the right. “ Behold, then, a gluttonous man,” &c. They were piped unto, and they had not danced. There is much the same sort of thing among men now. 3. Another class of men turned from the Baptist to look at the religion of Christ--the religious leaders of the day, the Pharisees. These drifted out to John in the wilderness; the wave of religious excitement had sent its tide even into their land-locked harbours; one wonders what took these models of piety to John. He could not understand it; his astonishment was frank enough. “ Who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come?” When they found that John did not pay them snore attention than the rest, when they saw that he talked with the publican as he did with them, they turned back, saying, “ He hath a devil.” So the hypocrites among them thought they would hear what Christ had to say. He might do them more honour. He might recognize their proud position as leaders of religion. But alas! they were disappointed. I suppose no sharper or more indignant language was ever used by man against other men than the words with which Christ denounced them. As to the other class of Pharisees who were pious bigots, they found in Christ all that they had disliked in John multiplied tenfold. He would have nothing to do with them unless they came to Him and humbly confessed themselves sinners. Not among their ranks, but among unlearned fishermen and villagers He chose His special followers. He dined with the publicans; even at one of their houses He admitted the sinful woman to salvation. It was snore than could be borne. This was music no man could dance to. There are men of this sort at this time among us. (Stowford A. Brooke, M. A.) Children at play (To children.) The children of two thousand years ago were very like the children of to-day, even in their sports. Then, as now, when a number of children came together, and especially when they came together out of doors, they found it impossible to sit still or stand still. Whatever the game at which they played, there was pretty sure to be some mimicry in it, some quaint imitation or comic burlesque of what they had seen their elders do. Now it happened one day that the Lord Jesus, as He passed through the streets and bazaars of a Galilean town, came on a number of children who were thus employed. They played first at a wedding, and then at a funeral. And we cannot wonder that they chose these two ceremonies for imitation. For a Jewish wedding was then, as to this day an Eastern wedding is, a very gay spectacle, sure to seize the fancy of children. The bridegroom and the young men who accompanied him were tricked out in their best and brightest robes; and they went in public procession, with music and with perfumes floating in the air, to fetch the bride to her new home. For many days after the wedding open house was kept. There was much mirth and feasting. The friends of the wedded pair went, with trains of their kinsfolk and servants, to carry them their presents, or to pay calls of ceremony and congratulation. The whole town was alive with music and dancing and feasting; and in the streets gay companies were continually passing to and fro. That was thought a very poor marriage, the festivities of which were not kept up for at least a week. So, again, a Jewish funeral must have been a very striking and dramatic spectacle to children. The body was carried by on an open bier, so that all could see it. And not only did the kinsfolk and friends of the dead man follow him to the grave with the most extravagant expressions of grief; but they were foolish enough to hire professional mourners, who tore their hair, and beat their breasts, and raised a keen cry or wail. Now children who saw these sad processions constantly going about the streets could not fail to be impressed by the dramatic features of the scene, and were likely enough to imitate and burlesque it in their play. That was what the children whom Jesus watched had been doing. First they had said, “ Let’ s play at marrying!” And then the more forward and lively children of the company began to march, and to move their fingers up and down as if they were stopping and unstopping the holes of a flute. One of them, no doubt, was chosen to personate the bridegroom, and others to stand for the “ sons of the bridechamber,” i.e., the young men who accompanied him; and off they started, as though to fetch the bride home, expecting that the rest of the children would follow, dancing and shouting, and pretending to carry torches. But those who should have filled this part declined to fill it. They were sulky, and would not play at this game. And so the cheerful children had to say to the sulky ones, “ Why, what’ s the matter? We fluted to you, and you did not dance.” Then they thought they would try another game. Perhaps the first was too lively. And so they say, “ Let’ s play at burying I “ And off they go like bearers of the bier, or like the hired mourners, walking with folded hands and downcast heads, but every now and then flinging up their heads, and howling, Oh, so dreadfully. But their companions won’ t play. This game does not suit them either. For, again, the first place is not assigned to them. And so, the livelier, the merry, good-tempered children have to turn upon them again, and say, “ Whatever is the matter with you to-day? We wailed, and ye did not beat your breasts.” Now if these children had known that Jesus was watching them; if, moreover, they had known how kind and good He was, do you think that any of them would have turned sulky and refused to play? It will do much to make you and those about you happy if you will learn to play in the right spirit. But this is not the only or the best lesson which Christ has made these children teach us. He told the men who were listening to Him that they were like those children in their treatment of John the Baptist and Himself. “ The fault,” He said, “ is in you, not in the Baptist or the Son of Man.” We are to show the very opposite spirit. Instead of hating the truth, and refusing to listen to it, wherever or however God speaks to us, we are to love the truth, and to welcome it, whatever the form or the tone it takes. Put yourselves to this test: “ Am I really trying to do God’ s will and to love it, as Jesus did? Whether I work or play, do I try to show the kindly, unselfish, cheerful temper which He approves?” (S. Cox, D. D.) On the impossibility of pleasing everybody Explain the phrases, “ children” ; “ market -place” ; “ piped unto you” ; “ mourned unto you.” Learn-- I. THE GOSPEL IS SENT ONLY TO SINNERS. II. IT IS RIGHT TO USE VARIOUS MEANS TO BRING MEN UNDER THE POWER OF THE GOSPEL. Look at the difference between the ministry of Jesus and that of John. III. IN THE USE OF THESE MEANS IT WILL BE TO PLEASE , John was a recluse, and they said he had a devil. Jesus came eating and drinking, and they said, “ Behold a gluttonous man,” &c. IV. ALL TRUE OF THE GOSPEL MAY EXPECT . V. , WE MUST NOT CEASE THE TRUTH. (A. F,Barfield.) Transition periods This little picture of children’ s plays, which Jesus gives us, is an illustration of the illogical objections made against the truth, and shows us many things. 1. It shows us how uniform are the tendencies of human nature in all ages and times. Jesus, passing through the market of Nazareth, or Cana, saw the children playing their games, just as children play them now. The little Syrian boys and girls belonging to the great Semitic race, living eighteen hundred years ago, amid Asiatic customs and scenery, were just such little children as you and I saw playing on the common yesterday. They played games, imitating the customs of grown people; just as little children now play soldiers, play horse and driver, so they then played weddings and funerals. 2. It shows us Christ’ s habit of taking illustrations from everyday life. In His teachings there is nothing conventional, nothing formal. No fact in God’ s world is to Him common or unclean. 3. It also shows how much easier it is for good men, though differing in ideas, tastes, and methods, to agree in a mutual respect and sympathy, than for self-willed men to form any permanent union. No two were more unlike than Jesus and John; but they had a common aim. It was to do God’ s will; to make the world better. So they had a mutual respect for each other. There was a real union between them. John made the turning-point from the law to the gospel; his was the transition period, within sight of the gospel, yet with the terror of the law behind it. Such a transition period has continued in the Church down to our time. Perhaps the majority of Christians are now living, not under the dominion of law, nor yet in the kingdom of heaven, but in the dispensation of John the Baptist. But halfway convictions are not very satisfactory, and the remedy for this evil is to put both the law and the gospel in their right place. We cannot dispense with either, but we wish to distinguish between their sphere and their work. (James Freeman Clarke.) Fickleness and folly in dealing with religion and its professors and teachers I. THE BETWEEN THE CONDUCT OF CHRIST AND THAT OF JOHN, AS IN THE TEXT, WAS BY THE AND OF EACH. These descriptions--“ neither eating bread nor drinking wine,” and “ eating and drinking” --are particular features, put for general character and conduct. John’ s abstemiousness and austerity befitted him as the last prophet of the Old Dispensation. Christ had come to establish a new order of things, to substitute for the bondage of the law the liberty of the gospel, to insist on inward purity as of in finitely greater importance than outward observance. Specifically his eating and drinking meant-- 1. His oneness with humanity. 2. The sacredness of common life and occupations. 3. That the natural appetites are to be reasonably and legitimately satisfied, not trampled upon. 4. That religion has its social side. 5. That it is possible to be in the world while not of it. II. THE PEOPLE, WITH THEIR LEADERS, NOT THAT THIS WAS FITTING AND , BOTH CHRIST AND JOHN. The really austere life of John was a reproach to the pretended austerity of the Pharisees, whilst the immaculate purity of Him who could yet suffer His feet to be washed by the tears of the woman who was a sinner rebuked alike their uncharitableness and their hypocrisy. Hence, not being willing to repent at the call of John, or to humble themselves at the command of Christ, they must, to be consistent in their hypocrisy, condemn alike Christ and John-pronounce them to be either immoral in life, or endued with power from below. But the point in which they most pointedly warn us not to copy their example is here--that they formed their judgments upon grounds so insufficient. Learn the danger of hasty judgments-- 1. As regards the person judged. 2. Others, who might be benefited by him. 3. Ourselves. Prejudices hide the truth. III. THE TEXT SHOWS HOW EASY IT WAS FOR THE MEN OF CHRIST’ S DAY, AS IT IS FOR US, TO FIND AN EXCUSE WHEN ONE IS WANTED. HOW did the Pharisees, feeling conscious that they were wrong, excuse themselves the trouble of putting themselves right? They adopted the plan which is said sometimes to be resorted to by legal pleaders: “ If you have a weak case, blacken your opponent’ s counsel.” How true a picture of the way in which men generally treat unpalatable truth! Note some of the flimsy grounds on which many reject Christianity, or refuse to make a Christian profession, e.g., difficulties in the Bible; inconsistency in professing Christians. (J. R. Bailey.) The sanctity of the common life 1. Poverty the common lot. 2. The happy endurance of poverty rare. The secret of its trust. 3. Besides these sweet virtues of resignation, trust and contentment, there is another which seems to me to become rarer and rarer--cheerfulness. Our age is not only perplexed but sad. There is not enough of enthusiasm and unselfishness left among us for hearty and wholesome laughter. (Archdeacon Farrar.) The use of the world Christian self-sacrifice is not asceticism. The idea of the essential badness of pleasure has been very commonly held and advocated by the propounders of ethical and religious systems. Even Plato says that every pleasure enjoyed is as a nail fastening the soul more securely in its dungeon; every pleasure given up a nail withdrawn, and hastens on the period of its release. Like many other views which find no warranty in the Christianity of Christ, it has had a considerable influence upon the Christianity of Christendom. The pillar saints, e.g. If pleasure were essentially sinful, Stylites was the wisest of men. This not the kind of self-denial which Christ requires from us. Serious and earnest as He was, no one can say that He was a harsh or gloomy ascetic. Think of Him at the marriage-festival. Think of His friendly visits to the family at Bethany. Think of Him at the great feast in Levi’ s house. Think of His final interview with the disciples on the shore of Tiberias, when He accosted them with the words, “ Children, have ye any meat? “ and then, leading the way to a fire, “ with fish laid thereon and bread,” said to them, “ come and dine.” Christ never bids us give up anything that is good, unless it would keep us from something that is better. “ The Son of man came eating and drinking.” Ay, the very Man of Sorrows refused to join in the irrational worship of pain. (A. W. Momerie, M. A. , D. D.) The Son of man This title is in the New Testament significantly enough used, with one exception [Stephen], by Christ alone. It emphasizes the humanity of Him who bears it, but a humanity that accomplishes a Divine work, creates and controls a society which is so finely human because so entirely a realization of the thought or mind of God as to man. Schleiermacher rightly said: “ Christ would not have adopted this title had He not been conscious of a complete participation in human nature. But His use of it would have been meaningless had He not had a right to it which other men could not possess.” The Son of man is the bond between earth and heaven, belongs in an equal degree to both; He is the medium through which God reaches man and man reaches God. The title, so often and so emphatically used, enables us to see what Christ conceived Himself to be, and where He believed Himself to stand; He affirmed that He possessed our common human nature. But He also affirmed His pre-eminence-- “ The Son of man.” Other persons had been, or were, sons of individual men, members of particular nations or families; but Jesus, as “ the Son of man,” was no man’ s son, but the child of humanity; belonged to no age, but to all ages; to no family or people, but to mankind. He is, as the Divine idea realized, universal and everlasting, an individual who is, in a sense, humanity. (A. M. Fairbairn, D. D.) Divine friendship In the Bible Christ is presented to us in many aspects--as a Judge, a Saviour, a Counsellor; as Brother, Prophet, Priest, and King. In this passage He stands forth in the light and garb of a Friend. I do not intend to analyse friendship, and enumerate its elements. I will only suggest one or two of the more prominent. I. . II. . Not a friend only to the good. III. . IV. THE SPIRIT OF . Christ was the friend of those who were morally all wrong. It is to those whose lives have been a failure, whose natures, spiritually considered, are all in ruins, that Jesus comes in the spirit of friendly assistance. (W. H. H. Murray.) Sinners wilful and perverse I. THE OF THESE VARIOUS MEANS TO CONQUER THEIR AND THEM TO JOIN IN THEIR . SO God has employed a great variety of means to persuade sinners to embrace the gospel. He has sent judgments to subdue, and mercies to melt them; arguments to convince, and motives to persuade them; threatenings to terrify, and invitations to allure them. In different parts of His Word He has exhibited Divine truth in every possible variety of form. In one place it is presented plainly to the mind in the form of doctrines; in another, it is couched under the veil of some instructive and striking parable; in a third, it is presented to us in a garb of types and shadows; in a fourth, it is illustrated by the most beautiful figures; and, in a fifth, exemplified in some well-drawn character, or interesting portion of history. Corresponding to these various means, and to the different modes of instruction adopted in His Word, are the various gifts and qualifications, with which He furnishes those who are sent as His ambassadors to men. As He knows the different tastes and dispositions of men, and the modes of address best adapted to convince and persuade them, He endues His messengers with a great diversity of gifts, so that by one or another of them, every class of hearers may be gratified. II. Notwithstanding the different means employed with these perverse children, THEY WOULD NOT BE UPON TO COMPLY WITH THE WISHES OF THEIR . We have piped unto you, say they, but ye have not danced; we have mourned unto you, but ye have not lamented. Precisely similar is the conduct of impenitent sinners. III. THE REASON WHY THESE COULD NOT BE TO COMPLY WITH THE WISHES OF “ THEIR ” WAS, THAT THEY WERE OUT OF HUMOUR, OR FOR SOME OTHER REASON FELT TO GRATIFY THEM. Similar is the reason, why sinners will not be persuaded to embrace the Gospel, by all the means which God employs for this purpose. They do not come to Christ for life, because they will not. (E. Payson, D. D.) The success of the gospel I. OBSERVE GOD’ S DEALING WITH MAN. He useth all kind of means, sendeth men of several natures, austere John, and meek Christ. He turns Himself into all shapes to gain wretched man unto Him. II. OBSERVE THE ORDER GOD USETH; FIRST JOHN, THEN CHRIST. John prepares the way, throwing down hills: “ O ye generation of vipers” Matthew 3:7). Oh, say they, this man is too harsh, I think he hath a devil. Then Christ comes with blessed: “ Blessed are the poor, blessed are you that weep,” &e. (Matthew 5:3, seq.). So He sent the law first, then the gospel; first He threatens, then promises. III. OBSERVE THAT THE MANNER OF THEIR IS DOUBLE, BY AND LIFE, AND THESE AGREE, wherein observe it is good that life and doctrine should suit; for John’ s life was austere and retired, his doctrine was also tending to beat down the proud conceits of man. Christ came to all, conversed with all meekly and lovingly; and the reason of God’ s making use of men of severe dispositions is because of the different natures of men, whereof some can better relish one nature than another. Some love the hot and fiery nature, others delight in the meek spirit; and though there be diversity of gifts, yet they come from the same Spirit. Even as the diverse smells of flowers comes from the same influence, and the diverse sounds in the organs comes from the same breath, so doth the Spirit diffuse itself diversely, as it meets with diverse natures. Yet all tendeth to the perfecting of one work. And the papists shall never be able to prove their foolish austere vows of a solitary life, &c., to be preferred before communication and society, unless they will prove John better than Christ. And again, this should teach us to moderate our censures of the diverse natures and carriage of men, as knowing that God in wisdom hath appointed it for excellent use, and that all agree in the building up of the spiritual temple of the Church. IV. OBSERVE THAT WHERE GRACE DOTH NOT NATURE, NO MEANS WILL PREVAIL OVER THE NATURE OF MAN. Neither John nor Christ could work anything upon these Pharisees. V. In the next place, observe, from the calumniation of the scribes, THAT AND AGAINST IS NEVER WITHOUT SHOW OF REASON; and men they will never go to hell, but they have reason for it. Austere John “ hath a devil” ; sociable Christ “ is a wine-bibber.” And the reason is, the pride of man, that will not be thought so foolish as to speak, or do anything without reason, and therefore when it is wanting they will feign one. VI. For use therefore of this doctrine, LET US ACCOUNT IT NO STRANGE MATTER IF WE BE , , AND , for it was Christ’ s and John’ s lot. Great slanders must be maintained from great men, such as them that sit in Moses’ s chair, the Pharisees and Scribes. VII. LET US TAKE HEED WE TAKE NOT A THING IN THE WRONG SENSE AND OF VAIN . Men are witty to lay stumbling-blocks in their own way to heaven. This preacher is too strict, that too mild; this too plain, that too poor. “ But wisdom is justified of all her children” (verse 35). I. From the connection of these words with the former, by this word “ but,” we may observe, THAT IT IS THE LOT OF GOD’ S TRUTH TO HAVE DIVERSE IN THIS WORLD. Some will be children of wisdom, and justify it; others, as the Pharisees, will scandalise it. This is wisdom; and called so here by way of emphasis, showing it is the only excellent wisdom, which will further appear in these respects. 1. It doth arise from a higher beginning than all other wisdom whatever; for it comes from God’ s goodness and mercy. 2. The matter. It is a deep mystery. Christ, God-man; His nature, offices, and benefits. 3. It is more powerful than all other wisdom; for it transforms us. It makes us wise, and changes us from wicked, and makes us good. 4. It is better than the law, which was a killing letter. This gives life. 5. Furthermore, this wisdom is everlasting, and it is ancientest: intended before the world was. It is also inviolable. God will change the course of nature for His Church’ s sake; and sooner will He break covenant with the day and night than this covenant, which shall be for ever (Psalms 19:9). 6. The end of it is “ to bring us home to God” (1 John 1:3). 1. From the doctrine we may observe, therefore, that those that follow the best rule, which is God’ s Word, and intend the best end, which is their own salvation, these are the most wise. 2. And, in the second place, let this persuade us to attend upon wisdom, be we who we will be, a publican, an extortioner, a persecuting Saul. 3. In the next place, observe the children of wisdom do justify it; that is, they receive it, approve it, defend it, maintain it. (R. Sibbes, D. D.) On profaneness to disparage religious characters I. I design, in the first place, TO EXPLAIN THIS PASSAGE. II. HOW SHALL WE APPLY TO OUR THE LESSONS WHICH THIS PORTION OF HOLY CONVEYS? 1. Let us consider it as a very unfavourable symptom of the state of our hearts, if we discover in ourselves a propensity to cavil at religion; and to impute blame to those persons, whether ministers of the gospel or individuals among the laity, who, by holiness of life and conversation, conspicuously demonstrate the power of faith. 2. If, through the influence of Divine grace, you have been brought to the love of religion, wonder not, nor be discouraged, when you hear the truths of the gospel slandered, or yourself made the theme of evil-speaking for their sake. Thus it always has been; and thus, until Christianity shall have established a more general dominion over the hearts of those who avow themselves her subjects, it always will be. 3. Justify wisdom, justify true religion, by manifesting yourselves to be her children. 4. If you thus justify wisdom, behold the hour approaches when before the assembled world wisdom shall justify you. (T. Gisborne.) Children sitting in the market-place I. THAT THE THE GOSPEL OF PEACE AND TO SINNERS MAY FITLY BE TO SWEET AND SOUL- MUSIC. 1. Music hath its distinct notes, and that makes it melodious; so ministers should preach distinctly, not confusedly, for that makes no music. “ If the trumpet gives an uncertain sound, who shall prepare to the battle?” (1 Corinthians 14:8.) 2. He that would make sweet music, must not harp too much upon one string, or have only one distinct note. So a preacher that would, make right gospel-music, must not always preach upon one particular gospel truth. 3. It is a curious art to attain to the clear knowledge of music, and to be very skilful, or play well upon an instrument. So it is a most blessed spiritual art to know how to preach the gospel with all true spiritual wisdom; for as music is a mystery, so is the gospel a great mystery. 4. Some musicians make sweeter music than others, though all may have some skill in it; so some ministers make more sweet gospel music than others. 5. Music elevates the hearts of some people wonderfully; so the doctrine of the gospel tends to raise, nay, to ravish, the hearts of gracious persons. 6. But though music is sweet to some, others love it not, but cry, “ Away with it, it makes our hearts sad.” II. THAT THOUGH THE OF CHRIST DO WHAT THEY CAN, OR STUDY WHAT WAYS AND METHODS THEY CAN, AND LIVE NEVER SO , YET THEIR PERSONS NOR THEIR SHALL BE OF SOME PEEVISH AND FROWARD PEOPLE. (B. Keach.) Criticism easy Nearly everybody has heard the story of the painter of olden time who exposed his picture to the public criticism, and put a paintbrush handy, that anybody might paint out any particular feature he did not approve. Of course, the stupid man soon found that everybody had some fault to find, and his picture was totally obliterated. Just as it was with that artist’ s picture, so it is with the life-work of the majority. Somebody will be pretty sure to take a crooked and distorted view of our characters and doings, however meritorious they may be. Some will do this wilfully and maliciously, others through misunderstanding. Unfair objections are often prompted by selfishness Many an objector to Christianity in our day, if he said out what he really thinks, would say, “ I disbelieve Christianity, because it does not prophesy good concerning me, but evil; it makes such serious demands, it sets up so high a standard, it implies that so much I say and do is a great mistake that I must away with it. I cannot do and be what it enjoins without doing violence to my inclinations, to my fixed habits of life and thought.” This, before his conversion, was the ease with the great Augustine. Augustine tells us in his “ Confessions” how completely he was enchained by his passions, and how, after he had become intellectually satisfied of the truth of the creed of the Christian Church, he was held back from conversion by the fear that he would have to give up so much to which he was attached. (Dr. Talmage.) Luke 7:35 But wisdom is Justified of all her children Wisdom’ s justification We trace the truth and the applicability of this saying-- I. IN THE FIELDS OF PURELY HUMAN AND STUDY. Each subject that engages the attention of man has a wisdom, that is to say, governing principles, methods, modes of thought and inquiry--in short, a philosophy peculiar to its own. Those who have mastered this wisdom even in part are prepared for results which are startling or absurd in the eyes of others who are strangers to it. II. IN THE REGION OF HUMAN . That which enables us to do justice to character is sympathy with it. III. IN REGARD TO THE CREED. Here, too, it is clear, upon reflection, that “ wisdom is justified of her children.” The word “ wisdom” in our Lord’ s mouth had a special significance. His more instructed hearers would recognize in it an ancient and consecrated word (see Proverbs 8:1-36.). This Eternal Wisdom, born of a virgin in the fulness of time, crucified, bruised, risen, ascended, is at once the Teacher, and in the main the substance, of the Christian creed. Two practical lessons: 1. Nothing is so fatal to the recognition of moral and religious truth as a scornful temper. 2. Wisdom may and must be won by prayer. (Canon Liddon.) Wisdom justified of her children “ Justified” means acquitted, recognized, or acknowledged. “ Of” means “ by.” And Christ says, “ Wisdom is recognized by her children.” The wisdom of a Divine life had appeared in two forms--ascetic in John the Baptist, social in Christ. The world recognized it in neither. In John they said it was insanity; in Christ worldliness and irreligion. To the world Christ replies that they were incompetent judges. None could recognize the Divine life but those who lived it; none justify wisdom except her children. The Divine life was always the same, but it expressed itself outwardly in no special single form of life. Wisdom, under whatever form she might appear--the life of asceticism or the life social--would be justified or recognized by her children. I. THE TONE OF MIND WHICH FOR JUDGING HUMAN . By sympathy alone can you judge of character. This is the doctrine of the metaphor. A mother, changing her garb, may be mistaken by strangers, but under every metamorphosis she is recognized by her children, who know her voice by the secret tact of sympathy. Would you judge of Christ? Feel Christ. “ Learn to love one living man.” II. THE TONE OF MIND WHICH , AND THE TO RIGHT OF HUMAN . 1. The habit of insincere praise incapacitates for forming a right judgment of character. During the life of Jesus the Pharisees and Sadducees alike flattered Him. To their unreal flatteries He returned indignant replies: “ Why tempt ye Me, ye hypocrites?” 2. A light, satirical, and irreverent spirit also incapacitates. See how ribaldry unfitted them for judging, and how even a Divine character could be made to seem ridiculous! That such cannot judge of character is intelligible. One reason is-- (1) Because excellence of character is not shown them; and another, (2) because this spirit withers all it touches. 3. Jealousy incapacitates for forming a right judgment. The scribes were jealous of Christ, because His teaching was on a principle different from theirs; the Pharisees, because His righteousness was of a different stamp. Joseph’ s brethren, Haman--examples of jealousy. (F. W. Robertson, M. A.) Life’ s gladness, its joy, its humour, and its mirth, are sometimes stumbling-blocks to “ serious” people. Wisdom’ s children, in the main, we charitably and devoutly hope they are, but none the less we see in them a touch and trick of the children in the market-place. There is a foolish seriousness, and there is a wise mirth. How often do we see pathos and humour, tears and laughter, rapidly following each other, even joining and blending in the person of some strong, wise man, whom we can both respect and love; while the stolid people, who pride themselves upon their “ seriousness,” too dull for mirth, are amongst the most unlovable. Robert Hall was conspicuous for the blending in his fine nature of the pathos and humour that we speak of. On one occasion, when he had preached a most solemn and pathetic discourse, and was followed in the evening by a “ serious” brother, when the day’ s work was done, he was as witty as he was wise, mirthful and jocund, and the cause of wit in others. The “ serious” brother at length remonstrated. “ Mr. Hall, I am surprised at you, sir, after the solemn discourse you preached this morning, that you should trifle as you are doing now.” “ Are you, sir,” replied Mr. Hall; ,’ shall I tell you the difference between you and me, sir? You talk your nonsense in the pulpit, I talk mine out of it.” A bit of sound philosophy l for the bent spring when released will recoil, and where the mind of a man has been wrought up to the highest tension, the reaction, by God’ s great mercy, comes as one of the conservators of the forces of life. And herein, also, is wisdom justified of her children. (J W. Lance.) If wisdom was justified in the cases both of John and Jesus, it follows I. THAT WISDOM IS WITH VARIOUS WAYS OF LIFE. II. THAT WISDOM IS NOT A TIME-SERVER, SEEKING TO PLEASE THE WORLD BY ITS FASHION. Many men, many minds. It is hard to please all, and best not to try. Following fashion is wearisome, for fashion changes fast. (A. B. Bruce, D. D.) Waywardness and wisdom I. WE HAVE HERE A . On the one side the perverseness and waywardness of man; on the other side the sympathy of wisdom with wisdom; the kindred and affinity which exists between the voice of God in His Word and the voice of God in the heart and conscience of His creatures. II. THE OF WHICH OUR LORD HERE SPEAKS IS MORE OR LESS IN ALL OF US. III. THE MOST OF IT IS THAT IN WHICH IT RUNS ON INTO THE AFFAIRS OF THE SOUL. (Dean Vaughan.) “ Seeing wisdom.” They whose hearts are softened by a true self-knowledge, and enlightened by a real communion with God; they who are wise in that wisdom of which the condition is humility, and the beginning the fear of the Lord, will see wisdom in that which to the caviller is folly, will recognize a Divine harmony where all is discord to the self-confident, and own an abundance of resource worthy of the All-wise and the Allmerciful, in that variety of evidence which affords to different minds and, perhaps, to different ages of the world, their appropriate, as well as conclusive, reason for believing. The very things which others calumniate are to them indications of wisdom. They see how the message of the Baptist and the habits of the Baptist--the office of the Saviour and the life of the Saviour--are severally harmonious and of a piece. (Dean Vaughan.) Wisdom’ s justification The union of good men is internal, though there may be outward differences. The union of selfish men may be external, but there are always inward differences. The children of folly may unite for a common purpose, may be allied together as Herod and Pilate were allied against Christ. Pirates may join for plunder; the children of this world, for power, pleasure, and earthly gain, But there is no inward union, and, as soon as the outward advantage of the alliance ceases, the partnership is dissolved. But good men, though separated outward-y, are inwardly at one. They belong to one invisible and indivisible Church. By and by they shall come together outwardly, and see eye to eye. The inevitable logic of faith and reason shall at last unite them, and then “ wisdom shall be justified of all her children.” John the Baptist will understand Christ; Barnabas will comprehend Paul: Fenelon and Martin Luther, Athanasius and Arius, Dr. Channing and Dr. Beecher, will recognize each other’ s worth, and bless God together for what each has accomplished for the kingdom of heaven. So shall wisdom be at last justified of all her children. So shall all good men, sincerely desiring to do right, be found at last to be walking together on the same road towards the best things. Wisdom is not sectarian nor bigoted; she has a large Church, and many children, and is justified of them all. (James Freeman Clarke.) Luke 7:36-50 And, behold, a woman in the city which was a sinner Jesus anointed by a weeping penitent in the house of Simon the Pharisee Much love shown where much sin has been forgiven I. IT IS TO THIS THAT OUR IS, IN THE FIRST PLACE, TO BE . Her name is not given, but only her character. This poor sinner had very different reasons from those of the Pharisee for wishing to see Jesus. The recent miracle of restoring to life the widow of Nain’ s son, had produced, in regard to its author, a deep and general impression. “ There came,” we are told, “ a fear on all: and they glorified God, saying, that a great prophet is risen up among us, and that God hath visited His people. And this rumour of Him went forth throughout all Judaea.” Simon, among others, wished to know something more perfectly concerning Him. The motives of the poor sinner were of a far higher and more interesting nature. She also had heard the fame of Him who had raised the dead, and, instead of merely musing whether He was a prophet, she seems to have been fully persuaded that this was the case; nay, that He was the Great Prophet--the promised Messiah--the Saviour of sinners. Yet all that she had heard of Him only made her wish to hear more. She had already tasted of the fountain of living waters; and the language of her soul was, “ Let me drink again--let me drink abundantly.” 1. She evinced her humility and her godly sorrow. Nor did her humility proceed only from the profound sense which she had of His surpassing excellence and dignity. It proceeded partly from the feeling of her own past guilt and exceeding unworthiness. Her humility, in other words, was closely associated with her deep and godly sorrow. 2. But, by her conduct in the guest-chamber, the penitent also evinced her gratitude and affection. Great as were her modesty and humility, she did not permit these feelings to keep her back, even in the presence of uncharitable observers, from expressing her unspeakable obligations and ardent attachment to Jesus. They were tears of affection not less than of sorrow. They were what she could neither repress nor conceal. 3. The penitent here evinced her profound sense of the veneration and homage that were due to Christ. She came for the express purpose of anointing Him--not only of acknowledging her personal obligations and attachment to Him, but of owning and honouring Him as the Messiah or Anointed One lie was the object of her faith not less than of her love. II. The next subject, then, which now solicits our attention, IS THE WAY IN WHICH OUR LORD MET THE INWARD AND OF THE “ , AND IN WHICH HE NOT ONLY THE CONDUCT OF THE WEEPING , BUT SET IT FORTH AS AN TO THE CONDUCT OF THE HIMSELF. (J. Grierson.) The penitent In the conduct of this penitent we may observe the following particulars: 1. Her deep humility--“ She stood at the feet of Jesus.” Mary, the sister of Martha, sat at His feet, which might signify the calm, settled, and composed state of her mind. But this woman stood; a posture which denotes humility, reverence, and fear. She stood like a servant in waiting, ready to put in practice what she had designed for His honour. 2. Observe the holy shame of this penitent--“ She stood at Jesus’ feet behind Him.” Such was the beauty of His holiness that she was ashamed, and such the glory of His majesty that she was afraid to look Him in the face. 3. Her unfeigned sorrow “ She stood behind Him weeping.” Those eyes, which had been the inlets of temptation and sin, now become the outlets of godly sorrow. 4. Her sorrow was not only sincere, but abundant--“ She stood weeping, and washed His feet with tears.” It was not a sudden gust, but a continual flow. 5. Witness the ardour of her love to Christ--“ She kissed His feet, and anointed them with the ointment.” A pardoned sinner will think no expense too great whereby he may honour Christ or testify his love to Him. 6. Her contempt of the world. She did not mind the things of the world any more than the men of the world. The box of precious ointment was of little value to one who had found the pearl of great price. 7. Her gratitude and joy. All her grief was mingled with love and thankfulness; her tears were tears of joy for sin pardoned, as well as of sorrow for sin committed. Her ointment became a thank-offering to her Saviour. From this instructive history we may learn that the displays of Divine mercy have always a practical tendency. (B. Beddome, M. A.) A great sinner and a great Saviour 1. First, THE OF THE WOMAN. Everything in Scripture is addressed to character. Oh, how true is that statement of the Apostle Paul, when he declared that “ Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief.” Witness the record given in the Word of God of a variety of prominent characters who have been the recipients of the grace of God. Go back to old father Abraham; an idolator amongst the Chaldeans, yet the grace of God found him, add brought him out, and distinguished him. Mark the character of Jacob. I cannot admire it, except in that which grace did for him. He was a deceitful, supplanting young man; and who would not censure him for the conduct he pursued in obtaining the blessing? Beloved, I wish you to be brought to a deep consciousness that sinnership belongs to us, as well as to the woman of the city, and that our sinnership is such that nothing but the blood of Christ can meet our condition before God. Mark yet further. This poor woman was evidently overwhelmed with the consciousness of her sinnership. It is not simply a cold admission of the fact, but compunction is felt, distress of soul realized, a broken and a contrite heart bestowed, an overwhelming consciousness that you deserve nothing but eternal wrath. II. Now let us glance at THE WHICH THE POOR WOMAN HAD OF COMING TO JESUS. There is something interesting in the fact that it should have been in a Pharisee’ s house. Think for a moment, here, of the display of discriminating grace. Simon might look upon her to hate, but Jesus looked upon her to manifest that the distinguishing grace which He is accustomed to exercise in the most sovereign manner had reached her heart; and thus, in Simon’ s own house, the discriminating grace of God was exhibited to take the sinner and to leave the Pharisee. Moreover, this poor woman must have been informed where Jesus was, and what He was as the sinner’ s Friend; and this is the very pith of the message of the gospel of Christ. Our great business, from Sabbath to Sabbath, and from week to week, is to publish the name and the fame of the sinner’ s Friend. There must have been after all, an influence put forth upon this poor woman s soul to bring her to the feet of Jesus, or she would never have come there. III. WE NOW COME TO THE OF FEELING IN THIS POOR WOMAN. What are the feelings that she must have been the subject of? The first I shall mention is the feeling of necessity, and the second is that of a new nature’ s affection for what she had discovered. She loved much. This feeling of necessity not only brings the sinner to Jesus under Divine power and might, but constrains the sinner to put forth the emotion which is described of this woman--weeping. I do act so much regard the literal effusion of water from the bodily eyes as I do the weeping of the soul--the compunction of the spirit; though, with persons who are naturally sensitive, this very compunction will flow forth in external tears, but in other constitutions not so visibly. I am very much afraid that many who pass for Christians have glided into their Christianity in a very smooth and easy manner; and I as strongly fear that they will glide out of it as easily, and perish for ever. The best repentance which is known on earth is that which flows from Calvary, from atoning blood, from pardoning love in the contrite soul. What knowest thou, my hearers, of these feelings? Many persons are greatly frightened about going to hell, and sometimes, perhaps, grieve lest they should do so. IV. Let us now pass on to say A FEW WORDS THIS POOR WOMAN’ S . No doubt they were great. They are not recorded, but I should think we might sum them up in two particulars. She expected to eye the glories of His person, and gaze upon Him with delight; and she expected, also, to receive absolution from Him, and she got both. Now, if you are brought to the feet of Jesus, I would have you encourage this two-fold expectation. The first is, to eye the personal and official glories of Christ. Think, for a moment, of the privilege of gazing by faith upon Him, who is declared to be “ the brightness of the Father’ s glory, and the express image of His person.” “ Behold Me,” is His cry. Look off from everything else to gaze upon the precious Christ of God, and know more and more of Him; yea, till ye “ know even as ye are known.” This poor woman expected, also, to receive absolution from the Saviour, and she obtained it. A word relative to the difference between the declaration of the doctrine of absolution, and the reception of it from Christ by the poor sinner. They are two different things. Unto Simon the Lord Jesus Christ said, “ Her sins, which are many, are forgiven.” But that would not have satisfied her if she had stopped there. (J. Irons.) A bruised reed Probably when Simon invited our Saviour to dine there were a great many that wondered why. Simon was, I suppose, a very good-natured fellow, evidently shallow, but easily excited and easily forgetting it. He was a slate, on which you could write that which you could easily rub out. Everybody was running after the Saviour, and Simon was one of those men that liked to catch lions and parade them in his house. He was, therefore, patronizing Christ. Still he did it cautiously. He professed simply to be His gracious entertainer. Christ went. It is of more importance perhaps to ask, “ Why did He go there? “ Well, He went, because He was neither an ascetic nor a rigorous moralist, after the modern sense of the term. He never was afraid of soiling Himself. He carried in Him the light that dispels darkness. Nor do I suppose He ever once thought, “ What will folks say? Is it best for Me to go?” While they were reclining there was an uninvited guest that came in, “ And behold!” --an exclamation, to arrest attention--“ a woman which was a sinner.” Her outward life had been bad. But there was a woman within the woman, a soul hidden within the body. How knew she of Christ? She had heard Him doubtless. She had beheld His face and His eye of mercy, and the gentleness with which He treated children and the poor, and she had said within herself, “ If there is a good man living, that man is good.” So, hearing that He was gone to dine with the Pharisee, she determined to go and see Him. What kind of a teacher must that man have been who could inspire in a harlot’ s bosom those conceptions of human and Divine greatness as manifested in Christ, and who could also draw towards Him from out all the lines of wickedness a creature like unto this woman? Christ was a prophet, and more than a prophet. He saw not only the woman, but also the man; her depth and power, his shallowness and feebleness. He then preaches a short sermon to Simon. No words had passed, but He answers Simon’ s thought. Let us believe, with all true charity, that from the hour of her resurrection she followed the footsteps of her new-found Master, and that she dwells with Him in the purity and the bliss of immortality. Now translate from the wonderful scene some lessons. 1. Your own duty. Separate not yourselves from those that have gone wrong. 2. Have faith to believe that under bad appearances there yet lurks and there yet sighs a soul, a moral conscience. 3. Never forget that when a man has gone wrong he can go right. God is on the side of every man that, having stumbled and fallen, gathers himself together and gets up; and, though his garments may for a long time be soiled, he is on his feet again, and prepared to resist again. Do not forget the all-loving heart of God. (H. W. Beecher.) Jesus in Simon’ s house I. THE AND OF CHRIST. II. LOVE IS IN TO THE OF THE FELT TO BE . III. From Simon’ s mistake learn THE DANGER OF PRIDE. 1. Spiritual pride blinded his eyes as to himself. 2. It misled him in estimating the character of this woman. 3. It prevented him understanding Christ. (D. Longwill.) Much forgiveness, much love The woman had a definite purpose in coming to the house of Simon. She came, not to be a mere spectator, but to anoint her benefactor with a box of precious ointment. Her benefactor we must assume Jesus to have been, though we know nothing of the previous relations. Conduct so unusual could not fail to create a general sensation in the guest-chamber, and especially to arrest the astonished attention of the host. Happily for the object of his harsh judgment, there was One present who could divine the real situation. One brief, simple parable serves at once to apologize for the accused, and to bring a countercharge against the accuser. The parable was spoken with a threefold aim. I. TO DEPEND THE CONDUCT OF THE WOMAN BY THE POINTS OF VIEW UNDER WHICH IT OUGHT TO BE . II. TO IMPUGN THE CONDUCT OF THE . III. To DEFEND THE CONDUCT OF JESUS HIMSELF IN THE HOMAGE . (A. Bruce, D. D.) Lessons 1. Let sinners of every name and degree be encouraged by this narrative to go at once to Christ. 2. If we would be successful in raising the fallen, and reclaiming the abandoned, we must be willing to touch them, and to be touched by them. 3. If we wish to love God much, we must think much of what we owe to Him. (W. M. Taylor, D. D.) Faith and forgiveness 1. Does it not seem as if the Pharisee, if he had had a larger heart, would have gained something of the experience of the woman’ s sin without entrance into the sin in the midst of which she had lived, and so would have known the richness of love with which she came to the Saviour? 2. The Pharisee has precisely the same reason for thanking God for having been saved from falling into sin that any vilest sinner has for thanking God when he has been dragged out of sin after falling into it. 3. Remember (1) that you have the right and the power to rescue your brother-man, and share in the enthusiastic and ecstatic gratitude of the rescued soul; (2) that every soul has sin enough in it to warrant a consecration of the whole life to the God who has rescued the soul, even from that degree of sin in which it has lived; (3) that the sense of preservation may lay as deep a hold upon our affections as the sense of rescue. (Phillips Brooks, D. D.) The weeping penitent I. Love for the Saviour brought her into His . II. for her sin brought her to His FEET. III. Sorrow for her sin made her WEEP AT HIS FEET. IV. for sin forgiven led her to WASH AND ANOINT HIS FEET. (J. Dobie, D. D.) Oriental feasts The guests are in their places, not sitting cross-legged on the floor, like modern Orientals, nor seated on chairs, as with ourselves; but reclining, after the old Roman fashion, on couches, the head being towards the table, and the feet, unsandalled, stretched out behind, while the body rested on the left side and elbow. Around the walls of the room sit some of the inhabitants of the place who have heard of the feast, and who have come in to see the banquet, and to listen to the conversation. In one of the earliest, and still one of the best, of the books of Eastern travel, being the report of the party of which Andrew Bonar and Robert McCheyne were members, we find the following statement:--“ At dinner, at the Consul’ s house at Damietta, we were much interested in observing a custom of the country. In the room where we were received, besides the divan on which we sat, there were seats all round the walls. Many came in and took their places on these side seats uninvited and yet unchallenged. They spoke to those at table on business or the news of the day, and our host spoke freely to them.” (W. M. Taylor, D. D.) Jesus and the woman There was an unrecorded history behind this manifestation. The two must have met before. This was not the first time she had seen the Lord. On some previous occasion virtue had gone out of Him to her, and had awakened new hope within her. She saw the possibility of being forgiven, even for her life of sin. She felt uprising within her the determination to become a pure and noble woman. Nay, she had the persuasion that she was already pardoned and accepted by God; and so, unmoved by all surrounding discouragements, conscious of nothing but that He was there to whom she owed her new-born blessedness, she eagerly threw herself upon His feet, and took this method of telling Him “ all that was in her heart.” She came to Him, not as a penitent seeking pardon, but as a sinner already forgiven; and so that which looked like extravagance to others was perfectly natural in her, and thoroughly acceptable to Him. It was but the “ return and repercussion” of that love which He had already shown to her. Her tears were, as Luther calls them, ‘ , heart-water” ; they were the distillation of her gratitude. She had not come indeed to weep; she had come designing to use the ointment only. But her tears had, as it were, stolen a march upon her; they had come unbidden and unexpected, and had rather interfered with the fulfilment of her purpose. But, in order that her original intention might be thoroughly carried out, she wiped them from His feet with her flowing tresses, and then poured over Him the precious ointment, whose odour filled the house. (W. M. Taylor, D. D.) At His feet I. IT IS A POSTURE. 1. As He is Divine, let us pay Him lowliest reverence. 2. As we are sinful, let us make humble confession. 3. As He is Lord, let us make full submission: 4. As He is All in All, let us manifest immovable dependence. 5. As He is infinitely wise, let us wait His appointed time. The best are at His feet, joyfully bowing before Him. The worst must come there whether they will or no. II. IT IS A HELPFUL POSTURE-- 1. For a weeping penitent (Luke 7:38). 2. For a resting convert (Luke 8:35). 3. For a pleading intercessor (Luke 8:41). 4. For a willing learner (Luke 10:39). 5. For a grateful worshipper (Luke 17:16). 6. For a saint beholding his Lord’ s glory (Revelation 1:17). III. IT IS A SAFE POSTURE. 1. Jesus will not refuse us that position, for it is one which we ought to occupy. 2. Jesus will not spurn the humbly submissive, who in self-despair cast themselves before Him. 3. Jesus will not suffer any to harm those who seek refuge at His feet. 4. Jesus will not deny us the eternal privilege of abiding there. Let this be our continual posture--sorrowing or rejoicing, hoping or fearing, suffering or working, teaching or learning, in secret or in public, in life and in death. (C. H. Spurgeon.) The Pharisee’ s mistake I. AS IT CHRIST. 1. He could not read Christ’ s nature, and undervalued it. 2. In regard to Christ, he mistook also His way of rescuing from sin. II. AS IT THE WOMAN. 1. The Pharisee thought that as a sinner she was to be despised. 2. He did not see that into her heart a new life had entered. III. As IT HIMSELF. 1. The Pharisee showed that he did not know his own heart. 2. He did not see that in condemning this woman he was rejecting the salvation of Christ. IV. SOME TRUTHS WHICH WE MAY LEARN FROM THE ’ S MISTAKE. 1. Those who profess religion should be careful how they give a false view of it by uncharitable judgments and assumptions of superiority. 2. On the other side, we must remind those who profess to be seeking religion that they are bound to form their judgment of it from its Author. (J. Ker, D. D.) She is a sinner This is the Pharisee’ s compendious trial and verdict and sentence of one in whose soul, it seems, the sore but wholesome struggle of repentance was actively going on. “ She is a sinner” ; accursed from God she is, and must continue. There is abomination in her touch, and falsehood in her tears. All that a prophet can do for her is to pass her by on the other side. Thus reasoned a sincere, respectable man among the Jews; not a monster of intolerance; Dot a brutal scorner of the suffering; but a respectable Jew of the most exact sect among the Jews, speaking in the interests of society, and echoing an acknowledged social principle. And thus reason many sincere and worthy men amongst ourselves almost two thousand years after the Lord has taught lessons of another spirit and a more loving wisdom. “ She is a sinner.” One word suffices to classify all that have gone astray; the Pharisee makes no inquiries, draws no distinctions, indulges no hopes. It is all one to him whether a depraved will or a giddy vanity made her a willing victim, or the sheer presence of starvation drove her to ruin. It is all one whether, every day when she rises and every night when she lies down she hates herself, and in bitter anguish compares the thing she is with what she was; or acquiesces in her own destruction, and does all she can to hasten the darkness that is settling down upon her moral nature, and to welcome the perfect night. We pass our hasty sentence upon thousands and tens of thousands of erring beings, not considering for a moment how many among them are devoured by an unspeakable remorse; how many are capable of sorrow, though they stave it off; hew few, comparatively, are the hopeless children of perdition, lost in this world and the world to come. Now there are two facts which may well make us pause ere we adopt the hard and thoughtless rule of society in dealing with guilt; and they are facts, not surmises. 1. Society is, in a large measure, responsible for the very sins which it so readily condemns and casts out. 2. That there is hardly any escape for those who have once entered the path of sin. “ She is a sinner” ; no one will take her into a blameless home to employ her; no one will visit her and give her counsel. Thus does one step in sin utterly destroy one whom God created to serve and praise Him. God bids the sinner turn from evil ways, and we will give her no chance of turning. (Archbishop Thomson.) Representative characters The woman represents humanity, or the soul of human nature; Simon, the world, or worldly wisdom; Christ, Divinity, or the Divine purposes of good to usward. Simon is an incarnation of what St. Paul calls the beggarly elements; Christ of spirituality; the woman of sin. (Preacher’ s Lantern.) The secret of devotion I. We find here an illustration of THE VALUE OF ALL ACTS OF SIMPLE-HEARTED TO CHRIST. In the act of justification God is entirely sovereign, and man is entirely passive; but in the work of sanctification which succeeds it we are permitted to co-operate with the Holy Spirit. And all along in our career, as the forgiven children of the Highest, we are welcomed in the ministries of affection which evidence our appreciation of Divine grace. The early reformers had no confusion in regard to this point. Their notion as to the proper blending of faith and works may be seen in the two seals which Martin Luther used indiscriminately in his correspondence. On one was cut his family coat-of-arms--two hammers laid crosswise, with a blunt head and a sharp head, his father’ s tools at the time when he was a miner; and Martin used often, in connection with this, to quote the saying of Achilles: “ Let others have wealth who will; my portion is work.” Upon the second seal was cut the device of a heart, with wings on each side of it spread out as if soaring, and underneath this was the Latin motto: “ Petimus astra.” II. Our second lesson is concerning THE ACTIVE ON WHICH ZEAL , AND FROM WHICH COMES ITS VALUE. 1. Many men feel the superior power and dignity of a Christian life, and so seek something like conformity to its maxims. They move on in a correct living of outward morality, because it brings a reputation with others and satisfaction in their own minds: they are wont to speak pleasantly of themselves as “ outsiders, with a great respect for religion, you know I “ No value whatever in this. The instincts of an honest heart make us claim, as the very first characteristic of friendship, its disinterestedness. We “ will not suffer ourselves to be used or patronized; can we suppose God will endure it? 2. Another motive, which gives to many a life a sort of religious cast, is found in conscientiousness. We are all by nature devout; something draws us, and keeps drawing, to God; we grow uneasy under its tension. We seek a kind of temporary relief by yielding a little, without at all intending to yield the whole; just as the foolish fish is said to run up towards the fisherman for a moment, to ease off the stress of the hook, and yet without purposing ever to leave the water. Such a service of God we call “ duty.” Now there is no value either in the surrender we make, or in the acceptance we profess. When we give up sin from mere pressure of pain, we are apt to choose those which will be missed the least, and have grown the weariest in indulgence. Nor is our obedience any better; we go on with a round of duty-doing as senseless as the whirling of a Japanese praying-machine in the market-place. Our motive is the refinement of selfishness, for we work like a galley-slave who is afraid of the lash. Because we mean to cheat on the “ principal” by and by, we scrupulously keep paying the regular “ interest” now. And all this is mere hypocrisy. 3. The true motive for all Christian zeal is found in love--simple, honest affection for Christ as the Lord of grace and glory. A good deed is measured by the temper and feeling which underlies it. III. THE BY WHICH TRUE ZEAL IS . “ To whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little.” The one great matter of notice here is that alabaster box. It becomes the symbol of a heart full of experience, which no possible language could describe. It would have been more properly named a phial or a jar. It was one of those small vessels, wont to be cherished in that day by vain and silly women, containing rare and curiously-perfumed cosmetics, used by the fastidious Orientals for a meretricious and luxurious toilet. Two things, therefore, were exhibited in the act of this woman--penitence and faith. 1. Her penitence appears in the surrender of the unguent; it was one of the tools of her trade. By this act she avowed her definite and final relinquishment of that old, gay life she had been living. 2. Observe, also, the faith in this action. She ventured much when she came to that feast unbidden. If Jesus should rebuke her, she would be excluded with contumely and contempt. But she trusted Him with all her heart; she believed in her forgiveness in the very moment of asking for it. So she offered her Saviour the highest of all she had. She gave Jesus her last glory; He gave her His full pardon of her sins as His reward and benediction in return. (C. S. Robinson, D. D.) Jesus in the house of the Pharisee Then one of the Pharisees desired that Jesus would eat bread with them; and as the crowd falls back they go on their way together to this Pharisee’ s house. And now He lies reclining on the couch. LET US TURN TO LOOK AT THE HOST. He has given Christ a very heartless welcome, and a very scanty entertainment. The commonest courtesies of life were wanting. There was no hint of enthusiasm, no whisper of affection; no token of any loving regard. Not even was it a stately formality--all was as empty as it was cold. Yet do not put down this man as a hypocrite or a knave. Not at all. We overdo the character of the Pharisee, and so we destroy it altogether. This man is just a fair type of a great many religious people to-day--people who are quite willing to extend a kind of patronage to the claims of Jesus Christ, but who never put themselves much out of the way for Him. They give their heart and energy to their business--for that no care, no toil, nothing is grudged. They give their enthusiasm to politics, if they live in the city; if they live in the country they share it with their horses and guns. They keep their money for themselves. For religion they are willing to expend an occasional hour on Sunday, and a vet more occasional subscription. Alas! that our Blessed Redeemer, the King of Heaven, should find still so cold a welcome and so scanty an entertainment in many a house to-day! With such people there may be a degree of orthodoxy on which they pride them selves, but what is much more rigid and essential is a certain refinement of taste, which is really the only religion of many; there is, too, a certain standard of morality, less important, however, than the standard of taste; and for everybody who does not come up to their standard either of manners or morals, there is a stoning to death with hard judgments--and an equal condemnation for those who venture to go beyond their standard. Look at it. It is religion without any love to God and without any love to man. It is religion without any deep sense of indebtedness, and without any glad devotion. There it is: religion without any deep sense of sin, and so without any glad sense of forgiveness; religion without any need, and so without riches; religion without a Saviour, and so without any love. This man knew of a law which demanded a certain degree of goodness: that was exactly the goodness which he himself lived up to. And good people like himself, of course, should go to heaven for ever and ever. And bad people like this woman should go--elsewhere; and he went on his way quite comfortable and contented with an arrangement altogether so advantageous to himself. Look at this man carefully; and see in him a peril that besets all of us who are brought up in religious forms and observances. It is religion without the Holy Spirit of God, who is come to convince of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment to come; to make these the great and awful realities, by which the world is tested and all things are esteemed, for without that Holy Spirit who is come to shed the love of God abroad in the heart, God is but a name; religion is but a form; sin is but a notion. Now LET US TURN TO THE VISITOR, The Eastern custom of hospitality meant very literally “ open house.” The curiosity with which the people followed Jesus everywhere would be sure to follow Him here, and though He has entered into the house He cannot be hid. And yet of all heresies the most persistent and most deadly is that of which the Church makes but little ado. It is this--that Jesus Christ is come into the world to save good people who don’ tthink they need any saving; and if real sinners come to Him--dreadful sinners: black sinners--it is a presumption and an intrusion which good people cannot tolerate. SEE HERE THE RIGHT , IN THE RIGHT PLACE, SEEKING THE RIGHT THING, IN THE RIGHT WAY. A sinner at the feet of Jesus--here is a sight that all heaven shall come forth to rejoice over; and they shall go back to celebrate it in the sweetest music that even angels ever sang. “ She is a sinner” --it is the only certificate of character that Jesus wanted. The only thing for which He came, the only work for which He had qualified Himself, had to do with sinners. “ She is ignorant,” said Simon, within himself. “ The people that knoweth not the law is accursed. What does this wretched woman understand of the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven? What appreciation can she have of its lofty promises and high glory?” She knew that she was a sinner and in that she knew more than Simon knew; and knew all that she needed to know. A sinner at His feet. Oh, blessed hiding-place! A refuge sure and safe, in His shadow, within reach of that Hand, there, where all the heart may pour forth its sorrow and the story of its sin, where all His love may look its benediction, and may touch with healing power. Coming in the right way. She just cast herself upon His love and help. Having no hope but in Him, feeling that the torrents swept and surged about her, but that Hand held her and was lifting her up, and should set her feet upon the rock. She came unto Him and found the rest that she sought. The hold of the past was loosed and broken; its record was blotted out and forgotten. The touch of that gracious Hand healed the broken heart. His words fell like the very music of heaven upon her soul. “ Thy sins are forgiven thee.” And there came a new life, fresh, sweet, pure, beautiful, like the life of a little child. This is Jesus, our Saviour, who speaks to us this day. “ Come unto Me, and I will give you rest.’” But the story is not finished yet. There with the sobbing woman down at His feet, with that gracious Hand laid on the bent head--that Hand whose touch healed the broken heart--Jesus became her Advocate and Defender. The silence was broken as Jesus looked up and said, “ Simon, I have somewhat to say unto thee.” With what rich blessing must every word have fallen upon her--what gentle courtesy and tender grace was His! (M. G. Pearse.) The woman that was a sinner Here are two silver bells, let us ring them; their notes are heavenly--O for ears to hear their rich, clear melody! The first note is “ grace,” and the second tone is “ love.” I. GRACE, the most costly of spikenard: this story literally drips with it, like those Oriental trees which bleed perfume. 1. First, grace is here glorified in its object. She was “ a sinner” --a sinner not in the flippant, unmeaning, every-day sense of the term, but a sinner in the blacker, filthier, and more obnoxious sense. Grace has pitched upon the most unlikely cases in order to show itself to be grace; it has found a dwelling-place for itself in the most unworthy heart, that its freeness might be the better seen. 2. Grace is greatly magnified in its fruits. Who would have thought that a woman who had yielded her members to be servants of unrighteousness, to her shame and confusion, should have now become, what if I call her a maid of honour to the King of kings?--one of Christ’ s most favoured servitors? This woman, apart from grace, had remained black and defiled still to her dying day, but the grace of God wrought a wondrous transformation, removing the impudence of her face, the flattery from her lips, the finery from her dress, and the lust from her heart. Eyes which were full of adultery, were now founts of repentance; lips which were doors of lascivious speech, now yield holy kisses--the profligate was a penitent, the castaway a new creature. All the actions which are attributed to this woman illustrate the transforming power of Divine grace. Note the woman’ s humility. She had once possessed a brazen face, and knew no bashfulness, but now she stands behind the Saviour. 3. I would have you remark, in the third place, that grace is seen by attentive eyes in our Lord’ s acceptance of what this chosen vessel had to bring. Jesus knew her sin. Oh, that Jesus should ever accept anything of me, that He should be willing to accept my tears, willing to receive my prayers and my praises! 4. Further, grace is displayed in this narrative when you see our Lord Jesus Christ become the defender of the penitent. Everywhere grace is the object of human cavil: men snap at it like evening wolves. Some object to grace in its perpetuity, they struggle against persevering grace; but others, like this Simon, struggle against the bounty of grace. 5. Once more, my brethren, the grace of God is seen in this narrative in the bestowal of yet richer favours. Great grace saved her, rich grace encouraged her, unbounded grace gave her a Divine assurance of forgiveness. “ Go in peace.” II. Love. 1. Its source. There is no such thing as mere natural love to God. The only true love which can burn in the human breast towards the Lord, is that which the Holy Ghost Himself kindles. 2. Its secondary cause is faith. The fiftieth verse tells us, “ Thy faith hath saved thee.” Our souls do not begin with loving Christ, but the first lesson is to trust. Many penitents attempt this difficult task; they aspire to reach the stair-head without treading the steps; they would needs be at the pinnacle of the temple before they have crossed the threshold. Grace is the source of love, but faith is the agent by which love is brought to us. 3. The food of love is a sense of sin, and a grateful sense of forgiveness. The service this woman rendered to our Lord was perfectly voluntary. No one suggested it, much less pressed it upon her. Her service to Jesus was personal. She did it all herself, and all to Him. Do you notice how many times the pronoun occurs in our text? “ She stood at His feet behind Him weeping, and began to wash His feet with tears, and did wipe them with the hairs of her head, and kissed His feet, and anointed them with the ointment.” She served Christ Himself. Forgetfulness of the personality of Christ takes away the very vitality of our religion. How much better will you teach, this afternoon, in your Sabbath-school class, if you teach your children for Christ! The woman’ s service showed her love in that it was fervent. There was so much affection in it--nothing conventional; no following chilly propriety, no hesitating inquiry for precedents. Why did she kiss His feet? Was it not a superfluity? O for more of this guileless piety, which hurls decorum and regulation to the winds. This woman’ s love is a lesson to us in the opportunity which she seized. (C. H. Spurgeon.) The woman that was a sinner I. THE PERSON . 1. She was a sinner. This applies to all. 2. A notorious sinner. 3. A mourning and deeply penitent sinner. II. THE COURSE WHICH SHE ADOPTED. 1. Strong desires after the Saviour. 2. Deep humility and lowliness of mind. 3. Deep contrition. 4. True and hearty affection to Christ. 5. Liberality and devotedness to Christ. 6. An after-life worthy of the profession she now made. She attended Christ in many of His journeys, &c. III. THE PUBLIC SHE . She had honoured Jesus; and He now honours her, by testifying of her. 1. He testified to her forgiveness. 2. He testified to her faith as the instrumental cause. 3. He testified to the greatness of her love. 4. He testified to His approval and acceptance of her. Application. Learn: 1. The condescension of Christ. 2. The riches of His grace. 3. His power and willingness to save the chief of sinners. 4. The true way of coming to Christ. 5. The effects of true love to Him. (J. Burns D. D.) The penitent citizen 1. Her humility. She takes her stand at the feet of Christ, esteeming the lowest place too good for her, so vile an abject, 2. Bashfulness and shame. She cloth not boldly face Christ, but gets behind Him; being conscious of her sins, which thus placed her deservedly. 3. Sorrow. The rock is now turned into a water-pool, and the flint into a river of waters: she weeps, and in such abundance, as that she washeth Christ’ s feet with those streams of penitence. 4. Revenge. That hair which she had so often gently combed, and cunningly broidered against the glass, and then spread forth as a net to catch her amorous companions withal, she now employs in the wiping those feet, which she had with her tears washed. 5. Love; manifested in kissing Christ’ s feet, acknowledging thereby that she tasted of the comfort that was in Him. O how gladly will one who hath escaped drowning kiss the shore! 6. Bounty. She pours a precious and costly ointment upon those feet she had thus washed and kissed. Every way she approved herself a perfect penitent. And therefore no marvel (the great prize coming) if the trumpets sound; the news of this rare convert is proclaimed with an “ Ecce, Behold a woman.” (N. Rogers.) Jesus attracting sinners Travelling along a country road in a hot summer’ s day, you may have noticed the people before you turn aside at a certain point, and gather around something that was yet hidden from you. You knew at once that it was a clear, cold spring that drew them all together there. Each of them wanted something which that spring could supply. Or you have seen iron filings leap up and cling to the poles of a magnet when it was brought near to them. The attraction of the magnet drew them to itself. So sinners were drawn to Jesus; they felt that in Him was all fulness, and that He could supply their need. (American Sunday School Times.) Love produces repentance From this incident we see what it is that produces true repentance. If you were going out into the open air on a frosty day, and were taking a lump of ice, you might pound it with a pestle, but it would still continue ice. You might break it into ten thousand atoms, but so long as you continue in that wintry atmosphere, every fragment, however small, will still be frozen. But come within. Bring in the ice beside your own bright and blazing fire, and soon in that genial glow “ the waters flow.” A man may try to make himself contrite; he may search out his sins and set them before him, and dwell on all their enormity, and still feel no true repentance. Though pounded with penances in the mortar of fasts and macerations, his heart continues hard and icy still. And as long as you keep in that legal atmosphere it cannot thaw. There may be elaborate confession, a got-up sort of penitence, a voluntary humility, but there is no godly sorrow. But come to Jesus with His words of grace and truth. From the cold winter night of the ascetic, come into the summer of the Great Evangelist. Let that flinty frozen spirit bask a little in the beams of the Sun of Righteousness. Listen for a little to those words which melted this sinner into a penitent--which broke her alabaster box and brimmed over in tears of ecstatic sorrow and self-condemning devotion: for, finding that you too have much forgiven, you also will love much. (J. Hamilton, D. D.) Self-righteous murmuring When the prodigal son returned home, that respectable elder brother of his was the only one who begrudged his welcome. So this punctilious Pharisee murmured at the woman who anointed Jesus’ feet. It is told of a noted geologist that once, when travelling over a new district, he hired an ignorant countryman to carry the specimens of the different rocks which he had collected, to his inn. The countrymen afterwards, conscious of his own superior knowledge, used to tell of “ the poor mad gentleman who went around gathering stones.” The Pharisee, clad in his own self-righteousness, has the same difficulty regarding the mission of Jesus; he cannot see how Jesus stoops to even the outcast. He does not see the hidden jewel of the soul; he forgets that the physician must lay his hand upon the loath some sore, if he would heal it. (American Sunday School Times.) An unfeeling religionist There is a story in the Bustan of the famous Persian poet Saadi, which seems an echo of this evangelical history. Jesus, while on earth, was once entertained in the cell of a dervish, or monk, of eminent reputation for sanctity. In the same city dwelt a youth, sunk in every sin, “ whose heart was so black that Satan himself shrank back from it in horror.” This last presently appeared before the cell of the monk, and, as if smitten by the very presence of the Divine prophet, began to lament deeply the sin and misery of his life past, and, shedding abundant tears, to implore pardon and grace. The monk indignantly interrupted him, demanding how he dared to appear in his presence, and in that of God’ s holy prophet; assured him that for him it was in vain to seek forgiveness; and to prove how inexorably he considered his lot was fixed for hell, exclaimed: “ My God, grant me but one thing--that I may stand far from this man in the judgment day!” On this Jesus spoke: “ It shall be even so; the prayer of both is granted. This sinner has sought mercy and grace, and has not sought them in vain. His sins are forgiven: his place shall be in Paradise at the last day. But this monk has prayed that he may never stand near this sinner. His prayer, too, is granted: hell shall be his place; for there this sinner shall never come.” (Trench.) The nun and the penitent One of the legends of Ballycastle preserves a touching story. It is of a holy nun whose frail sister had repented her evil ways and sought sanctuary at the convent. It was winter; the shelter she claimed was granted, but the sinless sister refused to remain under the same roof with the repentant sinner. She left the threshold, and proceeded to pray in the open air; but looking towards the convent, she was startled by perceiving a brilliant light issue from one of the cells, where she knew that neither taper nor fire could have been burning. She proceeded to her sister’ s bed--for it was in that room the light was shining--just in time to receive her last sigh of repentance. The light had vanished, but the recluse received it as a sign from heaven that the offender had been pardoned, and learned thenceforward to be more merciful m judging, and more Christlike in forgiving. (S. C. Hall.) Influence of Christ’ s love A pious man relates the following incident: One day I passed a shed where I saw several men at work loosening a waggon whose wheels had frozen into the ice. One of the men went to work with axe and hammer, and with much labour loosened one of the wheels, not, however, without doing considerable injury to it. Suddenly, the woman of the house came near, with a pailful of hot water, and poured it on the spokes. The wheels were now quickly loosened, and the loud praises of those standing near were bestowed on the woman. I thought: I will note this! The warming influence of Christ’ s love loosens the icy bands around a sinful heart sooner than the axe of carnal power or dogmatic opposition. Luke 7:40 Simon, I have somewhat to say unto thee On administering reproof 1. To say somewhat to our brother when we see him run into an error. In such a case we may not be silent. “ Thou shalt in any wise rebuke thy neighbour, and not suffer sin upon him” (Leviticus 19:17). Observe-- 2. Courteous usage should not keep us from telling men of their faults, and discovering their failings to them. (N. Rogers.) Rebuke in parable It is none of the worst observations we meet withal in Oleaster; that the holy prophets in dealing with great ones have spoken most an end in parables, as our Saviour did here to Simon. Let reproof be as good and wholesome diet as a partridge, yet it would not be served in to a great man’ s table raw, or with the feathers on, but cooked and seasoned. Reproof of them must be well wrapped up (as we do a pill in sugar), that it may the more easily be swallowed, and work before they think on it. But it may not be wholly withheld from any man whatever, be he our dearest friend. In so doing we should deal unkindly with them who deal friendly with us. Unhappy is that friendship, saith Carthusianus, which favouring our brother’ s cares doth break his neck. Such friendship David putteth in his Litany, and desireth God to keep him from. (N. Rogers.) On receiving reproof The word Christ speaks ought to be received with all readiness of spirit. Thus Simon received it, so ought we. Eli desired Samuel to tell him all (1 Samuel 3:17). Such should be the desire of all God’ s people, that God’ s ministers would deal faithfully with them in delivering the whole counsel of God unto them--as well one part as another. Wantons, you know, come into a garden to pick only flowers; here they pick a gay, and there another; but the good housewife comes to gather herbs: so should we come into God’ s house to hear His Word. (N. Rogers.) The ear the door to the soul The devil s study is to keep this door shut, that Christ may not enter. Like a gaoler, he will sometimes be content to let his prisoner have hands and feet free, provided the prison doors and gates be fast locked and barred. His captives shall sometimes give an alms, or do some other outward work of mercy, come to church to satisfy the law, &c. But he cannot endure the doors should stand open, for fear of an escape. Acts 7:57; Psalms 58:45.) Search the Scriptures, and you shall find that none was cured with greater difficulty than he that had a deaf and dumb spirit. (N. Rogers.) Luke 7:41 There was a certain creditor which had two debtors God is our Creditor God is this Creditor; He trusts us with His goods; what we have we have from Him to use. 1. How many daily spend of God’ s stock and store. Neither man nor beast (for the use of man), but daily receive from His hand, and seek to be further trusted (Psalms 104:27). It would undo the richest man that ever was to have so many in his debt at once. 2. Think how prodigal and expensive men are in spending on God’ s stock; how prodigal of His mercy, patience, goodness, &c. (Romans 2:4-5). How lavish are men of the time lent, of health, wealth, &c. (Luke 15:1-32.). Look but on the life of some one sinner, and judge of the rest (Ho Jeremiah 20:7). 3. Consider we with ourselves how long God hath forborne and been out of purse. 4. Add to all God’ s bounty and liberality--which is renewed to us daily--He is as willing still to lend us, as if we had paid Him in all, and owedHim not a groat. 5. In all our wants and needs, from hence we have direction to whom to go a-borrowing. (1) He is a bountiful Creditor, and no needy one; better provided than any other. He hath for our need, and always is at home. (2) He stands not upon any great security; He is willing to take our words, our promises, for the payment (Genesis 28:20; 1 Samuel 1:11; Matthew 18:26-27). Only He expects that we should be just of our words, that we may be again trusted (Ecclesiastes 5:4), (3) Though we borrow of him to-day, yet if we stand in need of Him tomorrow, as questionless we shall, and desire to be further trusted, He will be willing to pleasure us, especially when He sees we employ those talents well wherewith He hath betrusted us. (N. Rogers.) Other debts 1. A day is set for the payment of other debts. Till the day be come we fear no arrest, they cannot be exacted. But the sinner goes in danger every hour; God may arrest him whensoever it pleaseth Him, as He often doth and hath done, when men think themselves most safe (1 Samuel 15:32; Daniel 5:4-30; Job 21:13). 2. Other debts make us liable but to a bodily arrest only. The conscience may be free; but the debt of sin doth endanger both body and soul too. 3. Other debts may be forgotten, and so not required; but the debt of sin cannot be forgotten of the Lord (Amos 8:7). He keepeth a debt-book, wherein all is written, with the day and place, &c. (Isaiah 65:6). Cain’ sdebt is as fresh in God’ s mind as if it were but yesterday. 4. From ether debtors there may be some protection, either place or person may keep us from arrest; but there is no protection against the Lord’ s attachments. Angels nor men cannot save us (Job 10:7). The horns of the altar cannot protect us (1 Kings 2:28-31). Nor can mountains and rocks conceal us (Revelation 6:16). 5. There may be a flying away from other debtors, and a hiding ourselves from man’ s attachments; but flying here will not save us (Psalms 139:7). 6. In man’ s prison some favour may be showed, good usage obtained; but in the prison wherein sin doth cast us, there is no ease. 7. If thou art not freed out of the hands of other creditors, by friends or other means, yet death will free thee. But it is not so here, the debt which sin cast thee into is most called for, and most terrible after death. (N. Rogers.) Condition of these two debtors All are not alike indebted to the Lord. Some are more indebted to Him than others. This appeals by that parable Luke 16:5); and by other express scripture (Matthew 11:21; Matthew 12:31; Matthew 23:14-15; Matthew 23:24). 1. All have not received from the Lord a like number of pounds nor talents. He hath not given to all a like stock to trade with (Luke 19:14; Matthew 25:14). 2. Again, all are not alike deep in respect of actual transgressions. For albeit original sin be equally and alike extended unto all, it hath no degree nor parts in any child of Adam more than other: yet actual sins committed by us are of a thousand kinds, and every vice hath its latitude and degree. Some are bound up in folio, other some in quarto, others in octavo, and the sins of some other in a decimo sexto. 3. We have learned better, and accordingly we should examine of what kind our sins are, and how much our debt is; and as we find, let us put down in our account. To help us a little in this our search, take this for a general rule, the more directly any sin is done against God, the greater the sin is to be accounted of, and the more the debt. Thus the sin against the Holy Ghost is the greatest sin, because he who committeth that sin, sinneth of malice, purposely to despite the Spirit of grace. Hence it follows-- (1) The sins of the highest degree against the first table are greater than the sins of the highest degree against the second table. (2) Those sins that are committed against the means which should keep us from sin are greater than other (Matthew 11:24). So sins against knowledge are greater than those that are committed out of simple ignorance (Luke 12:47; James 4:17). And as it is thus in the sins ofomission, so also in the sins of commission (Acts 3:17; 1 Timothy 1:13). Paul found mercy, because he did it ignorantly. So sins against the gospel are greater than those against the law, for that they are committed against more light. “ This is the condemnation,” saith Christ, “ that light is come into the world” (John 3:19). To commit sin in the clear light of the gospel is a reproach not much unlike that of Absolom. “ He committed wickedness in the sight of the sun “ (3) Sins often committed are greater than those but once committed by us, for that here is an abusing of God s patience and forbearance (Romans 2:4-5; Jeremiah 5:6; 2 Peter 2:22). In arithmetic a figure, in the first place, stands for itself; in the second place, it stands for ten; and, in the third place, for a hundred, and so higher. (N. Rogers.) No peace to the debtor Augustus hearing that the goods of a merchant who died much in debt were set forth to sale, he sent to buy his pillow, saying that he thought it had some rare virtue in it to get one asleep, seeing he that owed so much could sleep on it so quietly. As for these who are so deep in arrearages with God, and in such danger by reason of their debt, and yet sleep securely, God keep me from their bed and pillow. That sleep of theirs is but Porkepose playing before a tempest. (N. Rogers.) Small debts 1. That the nature of sin stands not in the material part, but in the form, which is the transgression of the law. 2. Small sins, with their multitude and number, hurt the soul as much as great sins do with their weight. 3. Small sins serve to make way for greater. Huntsmen first ply the deer with their little beagles, till it be heated and blown, and then they put on their great buckhounds. Such use the devil makes of little sins. A long thread of iniquity he hath let in with a small needle, as we find in David’ s case, and in Peter’ s, &c. A great fire hath been kindled by a little spark; and a great blot made with a little hair hanging in the pen. 4. Small sins are cured with more difficulty than greater. A wound made with a stiletto is more dangerous than a wound made with Goliath’ s sword; here the wound presently closeth up, and so bleeds inwardly in greater abundance. 5. Forget not what Christ suffered for small sins, even His precious blood Hebrews 9:7). Our great sins were as the spear in His side, and as the nails in His blessed hands and feet; and our small sins were as the thorns upon His head, they, though small, yet put Him to pain and grief. How dare we crown the Son of God (again) with thorns, and put Him by our small sins to an after suffering? (N. Rogers.) Free forgiveness I. IT IS AN MERCY TO HAVE OUR SINS . This is the first desire and prayer of an awakened sinner, and a principal blessing in the covenant of grace. II. IT IS THE SOLE OF GOD TO FORGIVE SIN. None can pass by an offence but the party offended, and none can discharge a debt but the person with whom it was contracted. III. THOSE TO WHOM GOD SIN HAVE NOTHING TO PAY. The whole creation is become insolvent. IV. THOSE WHOSE SINS ARE ARE FIRST BROUGHT TO SEE THAT THEY HAVE NOTHING TO PAY. V. THE OF SINS IS ALL OF GRACE. VI. THE OF SIN TENDS TO GLORIFY GOD. Hence we may learn-- 1. How much those wrong God who entertain hard thoughts of Him. 2. What gratitude and love is due to Him from those whose sins are pardoned! (B. Beddome, M. A.) From the whole, we may observe these six things. 1. That sinners are in debt to God, as having violated His law, and so laid themselves open to the punishment threatened: “ The wages of sin is death.” 2. Some have contracted greater guilt, and so are more in debt to God than others, as having laid themselves open to greater punishment; from the greater advantages they have enjoyed and abused, they have more to answer for and more to fear. 3. It is the common condition of sinners indebted to God that they have nothing to pay, nothing to satisfy Divine justice, or redeem themselves from deserved wrath. 4. God is able and ready to forgive the greatest debt and debtors, as well as the least; those that owe five hundred pence, as well as those that owe fifty. 5. Whom God forgives, He forgives freely; not excluding the satisfaction of Christ, but upon the account of it, which is so far from lessening the freeness of that grace that forgives us, that it greatly exalts it. I. SOME WHO HAVE RUN FAR IN DEBT TO GOD HAVE BEEN . Manasseh in the Old Testament, and Paul and Mary Magdalene. 1. Thus He magnifies His patience, and proves it Divine, the patience of God, and not of a creature, much less of a man. (1 Timothy 1:16.) 2. Some whose iniquities have abounded have been forgiven, for the greater exaltation of grace. Grace is thus exalted and glorified-- (1) In its fulness; that so where sin hath abounded grace may much more abound. (2) Herein grace shines in its freeness: which, that it may be regarded, it is God’ s method, before He makes the offer of pardon, to sum up what sinners have been and done (Isaiah 43:22-24). II. WHAT THERE IS IN GRACE TO BE AN FOR LOVE IN THOSE THAT RECEIVE IT. If blessedness be an argument for love, forgiveness has this belonging to it, and connected with it (Psalms 32:1-2). This is a comprehensive blessing, and the foundation of many others. They who have their sins forgiven, are freed from the greatest evil, the wrath of God, and eternal condemnation. Pardon of sin is a covenant-mercy, always connected with the favour of God, and a special relation to to Him. The pardon of sin will sweeten every other mercy, and render any outward burden or affliction tolerable. Sin imbitters, and adds a weight to any affliction; but pardon doth lighten and sweeten it. In a word, the sinner, pardoned in this world, shall have eternal life in the future. III. How GOD’ S GRACE, AS FREELY GREATER DEBTS, SHOULD LEAD THE SOUL TO LOVE HIM THE MORE. And here God’ s rich grace, freely forgiving greater debts-- 1. Tends to this, as it frees the soul from greater torment, to which its multiplied sins laid it open, especially those committed against light and grace. 2. God’ s mercy, as forgiving greater debts, may free the soul from the more tormentful apprehensions it is under, even here, of the wrath to come, and so engage Him to love the more. 3. The greater and more astonishing grace abounding towards great sinners, and singling them out for mercy when others are left, is another ground of greater love. Application: 1. Have such as have run deeply in debt to God been freely forgiven by Him? What reason have we, then, to believe Him when He declares Himself thus, “ As I live, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live” ! 2. How unreasonable are the hard and horrid thoughts whereby sinners, awakened to a sense of their vileness and guilt, are kept off from a forgiving God? 3. How disingenuous would it be for any to go on with the greater security and boldness in sin, because God is ready so freely to forgive the greatest debt? 4. For the greatest sinners to say, There is no hope in their case, is to say what they have no warrant for, from God or His Word. 5. Let such as have any good hope that their debts, how large soever, are forgiven, love much, yea, love the more, the larger their debts have been. If we are pardoned at all, it is a very great debt from which we are discharged. O let us labour after suitable affection, and show it. (1) By reflecting upon sin with the greater shame and sorrow, hatred and abhorrence, as committed against so good a God. (2) Having much forgiven, love God the more, and give Him the glory due unto His name. “ Who is a God like unto Thee, who pardoneth iniquity, and passeth by transgression,” &c. (3) Having much forgiven, let your love show itself greater by your growing esteem of Jesus Christ, whose blood was the price of your pardon, and though it is given you freely, cost Him His life. (D. Wilcox.) Luke 7:42-43 He frankly forgave them both Free forgiveness There is one thing that is needful in all true religion--there is no religion without it--and that is love towards God. It is quite true that some Christians love God more than others. Cannot you fancy what those two men went through? They would not each go through the same experience. There was a great difference between their cases. Take the first man. You can fancy his saying to himself: “ Well, it is a nasty thing, this little debt of mine; I wish I had not got so much behindhand; I do not quite know how I am going to clear it off, but I must try: perhaps my creditor will be content with a few instalments; if I pay him half a crown a week for such a time I shall begin to make a hole in the debt, and, ultimately, he may get it all: I must cast myself on his forbearance.” The other can indulge in no such hope. Let one of you--a poor, labouring man, earning fifteen or eighteen shillings a week--put himself in that man’ s position. Just imagine yourself encumbered with a debt of a hundred pounds. How hopeless a thing it would seem to you; all your efforts to clear it off must fail; you might work almost to death, and yet the debt would be there still. We can fancy what took place in that man’ s house as the reckoning day drew near. The debt laws in those countries, you know, were terribly severe. His feeling is one of hopelessness. The prison looms up in view; he will be sold, and all that he hath, his children will be torn from him; his little home will be broken up. How desolate the man feels! Try to make him happy if you can. Go and talk cheerfully to him. Tell him to have good hope, to keep up his courage, and that sort of thing. You cannot bring a smile to the man’ s face; he looks as miserable as he can be. On his way he meets the other man, and he asks him what his business is. “ Well,” says he, “ I have got an awkward affair--not very serious, but still awkward; I have a nasty little debt that I cannot settle; I am sure I don’ t know how the creditor will treat me; there are those fifty pence that I owe him; I know he has a right to exact them to the very last farthing, and I have ‘ nothing to pay’ ; I do not know how he will deal with me.” “ Well, what are you going to do?” “ Oh, I am going to make a few proposals to him, and see if I cannot get him to take a few instalments, so that I may pay him off by degrees. What is your case, my poor fellow? You look very sad.” “ Oh, mine is a far more serious case than yours.” At last the great man stands before them. “ Well,” he says, “ have you got your money?” They both hang down their heads. Turning to one he says, “ Have you got your fifty pence?” “ No, sir, I have not got it.” “ Why have you not got it?” “ Well, sir, the truth is, I have got no money--I am a bankrupt--I have nothing to pay.” Then, turning to the other, he says, “ What have you got to say for yourself? Have you got your five hundred pence?” His head hangs down; tears come into the strong man’ s eyes; his body quivers with emotion; he can hardly control himself. The next moment the mystery is solved. “ He frankly forgave them both.” The one man rises to his feet, and says, “ Sir, I thank you.” “ The other drops on his knees, and buries his head in his hands. He cannot thank his benefactor, he is too much overpowered. The one man feels, “ Well, he is very kind in his dealing with me.” The other feels,” He has saved me from ruin; I should have been utterly lost if this man had not acted such a generous part towards me.” The one man goes out of the house with a kind of respectful feeling towards his benefactor. The other goes away with the feeling that he has been bought over, so to speak, by the benefactor’ s goodness: that all that he has, and all that he is, belongs to that man who has stretched out his hand of forgiveness, and done him so unexpected a favour. Now, my dear friends, among the many figures which bring before us some idea of our sin, there are very few more suggestive than this figure of debt. Now, is there any difference between us in this respect? Yes, doubtless, there are shades of difference. Some owe more than others. Some have been more prodigal in wasting the Master’ s substance than others; but there are none of us who can say that they owe an inconsiderable debt. Friends, have you come to the point which these debtors reached? Have you discovered, that all your life, you have been heaping up debt, and that you have “ nothing to pay?” What! will you tell me that these debtors did not know that they were forgiven? There are plenty of nominal Christians in our day who say, “ Ah! but then we cannot know that we are forgiven; we may have a faint idea about it, but we cannot know it.” Did not these debtors know it? (W. HayAitken.) The parable of the two debtors This parable suggests a grave question, a question the answer to which branches out into many forms of practical truth. In the parable, the debtor who owes five hundred pence seems to have the advantage over the debtor who owes fifty. More is forgiven him, and he loves more; he is quit of the larger debt, and proves the better man. In the narrative, the Roman who is a sinner seems, in like manner, to have the advantage over the man who is a Pharisee--the harlot over the devotee. She is more open to the words of Christ, and, once forgiven, shows incomparably the warmer love. Now, if this parable and narrative stood alone, we might not care to raise the question, whether or not it is well to have sinned much--whether the greatest love springs from the most heinous transgressions, just as the fairest flowers and most fruitful trees spring from a plentifully manured soil? But they do not stand alone. The impression they make is deepened as we listen to other parables, as we turn to other narratives. (The two sons; the prodigal; the Pharisee and publican.) Is it, then, an advantage to have offended much, to have gone far and deep into sin? To suppose that to be the case is to utter a monstrous libel against God and man. Nevertheless the parables which seem to support this view subserve a most useful purpose; they contain truths which we are very apt to neglect, and suggest warnings of which we stand in constant need. 1. Observe that flagrant sinners are much more likely to discover that they are sinners than moralists and ritualists. 2. The much and the little of sin are for the most part measures of conscience, not of iniquity. 3. Christ does not teach us to run into sin, but to hate hypocrisy--the worst of sins. 4. Christ specially warns us against forming those hard judgments of our brethren, which of all men the “ unco’ guid” are apt to form. (S. Cox, D. D.) Love’ s foremost I. WE MUST FIRST BE SAVED IN THE SAME MANNER AS OTHERS. 1. All are in debt; we must heartily own this to be our case. 2. None have anything to pay; we must confess this, without reserve, as being our own personal condition. 3. The loving Lord forgives in each case; personally we have exceeding great need of such remission. We must feel this. 4. In each case He forgives frankly, or without any consideration or recompense; it must be so with us. We must accept free grace and undeserved favour. 5. Out of this arises love. By a sense of free grace we begin to love our Lord; and in the same way we go on to love Him more. II. WE MUST AIM AT A DEEP SENSE OF SIN. 1. It was the consciousness of great indebtedness which created the great love in the penitent woman. Not her sin, but the consciousness of it, was the basis of her loving character. 2. Where sin has been open and loud, there ought to be this specially humbling consciousness; for it would be an evidence of untruthfulness if it were not manifest (1 Corinthians 15:9). 3. Yet is it frequently found in the most moral, and it abounds in saints of high degree (1 John 1:8). 4. It is to be cultivated. III. THIS WILL LEAD TO A HIGHLY LOVING TOWARDS OUR LORD. 1. We shall desire to be near Him, even at His feet. 2. We shall make bold confession, and shall do this at all risks. 3. We shall show deep humility, delighting even to wash His feet. 4. We shall exhibit thorough contrition, beholding Him with tears. 5. We shall render earnest service; doing all in our power for Jesus, as this woman did. 6. We shall make total consecration of all that we have; our tears, our choicest gifts, our hearts, ourselves. (C. H. Spurgeon.) The parable of the two debtors I. THE WHICH THE PARABLE. 1. The anointing. 2. The woman. 3. The manner in which the Jews sat at meat. 4. The woman’ s conduct. (1) Her deep humility. (2) Her ardent affection. (3) Her grateful sacrifice. 5. The presumption which led Simon to his surmisings respecting Christ. II. THE PARABLE ITSELF. 1. That sins against God are justly denominated debts. (1) Because they imply the withholding from God what is due to Him. (2) Because they render us liable to be cast into the prison of hell. 2. That all mankind are debtors to God, but in different degrees. 3. That no debtor to God is capable of paying the debt he owes. 4. That the forgiveness of our sins, or debts, is of the utmost importance to us. 5. That a consciousness of our own insolvency must precede our pardon. 6. That forgiveness may be confidently expected, when sought in the way of God’ s appointment. III. OUR LORD’ S OF THE PARABLE. 1. Just reproof wisely given. The evils reproved in the Pharisee were various and marked; including (1) His unbelief in the Saviour’ s mission. (2) His self-esteem. (3) His censoriousness. (4) His want of respect for Christ. 2. Seasonable consolation graciously administered. 3. Divine instruction kindly suggested. (1) That Christ is truly God. This is evident from His knowledge of Simon’ s thoughts, and from the blessings He conferred. (2) That forgiveness is certain to all true believers. (T. Gibson, M. A.) The two debtors I. MAN IS HERE AS A DEBTOR. God as our Creator has an undoubted right to the universal obedience of His creatures. To Him we owe the consecration of every power and faculty, whether of mind or body. As moral Governor of the world, it is for Him to propound the rule of our duty; and accordingly He has given us a law, the transcript of His own Divine perfections, immutable in its demands, universal and perpetual in its obligations. But where is the individual who has kept it? There is none who has. Consider, each one, the vast number of your debts. They are too many to be told. God’ s Book is full of them. II. AMPLE HAS BEEN MADE FOR THE FREE OF THE UNTOLD DEBT. AS man is entirely ruined by sin, so he is entirely saved by the free grace of God. The debt is paid, justice is satisfied, God is glorified, and the sinner is saved. But by what mighty process has this been effected? God in the person of His Son appears as the Substitute for offenders. And it is a complete forgiveness, extending to the five hundred as well as to the fifty pence. III. NOTICE ALSO THE LOVE WHICH FOLLOWS A SENSE OF MERCY. DO not, however, imagine that the penitent women was forgiven because “ she loved much.” Her love was not the procuring cause, but the effect, fruit, and evidence of the pardon she had received. Much had been forgiven her, therefore she loved her Saviour much in return. (James William, M. A.) The two debtors Our Lord’ s immediate object in this parable was to defend the woman and justify His own allowance of her presence and expressions of affections. This defence and justification are accomplished when it is shown that the very familiarities which the Pharisee thought Jesus should have rebuked are the proof that the woman is forgiven, cleansed, and pure. 1. Christ points to the woman’ s demonstrations of love to Him as proof that her sins are forgiven. His argument is, that she has been forgiven a debt, and therefore loves her creditor. It is Christ Himself she loves, and He therefore is the creditor who has forgiven her; but her debt was sin, transgression against God, and it is therefore God who is her true creditor. Christ thus identifies Himself with God, and in the simplest manner accepts love to Himself as if it were love to God, and as decisive evidence regarding the woman’ s relation to the Highest. Love to Christ, therefore, is the measure and the pledge of purity. 2. Love to Christ is the result of forgiveness, and varies with the amount of debt forgiven. It is not, however, simply the amount of sin, but the sense of it, which is the measure of gratitude to Him who forgives it. (M. Dods, D. D.) The two debtors There are aggravated sinners who have no deep sense of sin, and there are great saints who regard themselves as the chief of sinners. The measure of one’ s gratitude for forgiveness is the conception which he has of his sin. He who makes light of his sin will make light also of salvation. But he who has a profound conviction of the evil of sin as the abominable thing which God hates, will have an overwhelming sense of God’ s love in granting him forgiveness. The deeper an apprehension of the exceeding sinfulness of sin, the greater will be our love to Him who gives us deliverance from it. And where there is that sense of the hatefulness of sin, there will be no disposition to go deeper into it. 1. Let sinners of every name and degree be encouraged by this narrative to go at once to Christ. He will in no wise cast them out. “ A bruised reed” was not deemed worthy of the shepherd’ s trouble when he was piping in the field; and so he flung it away, and got another. “ Smoking flax” gives an offensive odour; and rather than be annoyed with it, the housewife will take it out of the lamp, and tread upon it. But it was otherwise with Jesus. That which others would cast away, He sought to retain, and turn to good account. That which others would give up as hopeless, Be would not abandon. 2. If we would be successful in raising the fallen, and reclaiming the abandoned, we must be willing to “ touch” them, and to be “ touched” by them. In other words, we must come into warm, loving, personal contact with them. What an uplift Christ gave to the soul of this poor woman, when He, the pure and holy, let her thus approach Him! And this was His way all through His ministry. Contact is needed, if virtue is to go out. When the Lord wished to save the human race, He touched it by taking on Him our nature, without our nature’ s pollution. So we must take the nature of the degraded, without its impurity, if we would help him. We must stoop to take him by the hand, or to let him grasp our hand, if we would lift him up. 3. If we wish to love God much, we must think much of what we owe to Him. Low views of sin lead to a light estimate of the blessing of pardon, and a light estimate of the blessing of pardon will lead to but a little love of God. This cuts deep, my brethren. Your love to God will be but the other side of your hatred of sin; and there, as it seems to me, is the radical defect in much of the religious experience of the day. Men make light of their obligation to Christ because they have first made light of sin. Low views of the evil of sin are at the root of all heresies in doctrine and all unholiness in life. Get rid of all such minimizing ideas of sin, I beseech you; and to that end come near the cross, for nowhere does sin seem so vile as it does there. (W. M. Taylor, D. D.) Bankrupt debtors discharged I. First, let us think of THEIR . This was their condition. They were unquestionably in debt. If they could have disputed the creditor’ s claim, no doubt they would bare done so. If they could have pleaded that they were never indebted, or that they had already paid, no doubt they would have been glad to have done so; but they could not raise a question; their debt could not be denied. Another fact was also clear to them, namely, that they had nothing to pay with. No doubt they had made diligent search; they had turned out their pockets, their cash-boxes, and their lockers, and they had found nothing: they had looked for their household goods, but these had vanished piece by piece. Now there are certain temptations to which all bankrupt sinners are much subject. One of these is to try and forget their spiritual estate altogether. Another temptation to a man in this condition is to make as good a show as he can. A man who is very near bankruptcy is often noticed for the dash he cuts. There are some men of like manners; they have nothing that they can offer unto God, but yet they exhibit a glittering self-righteousness. Another temptation which lurks in the way of a bankrupt sinner is that of making promises of what he will do. And thus do sinners too. Another temptation is, always to ask for more time--as if this was all that was needed. Settle this business before you attend to anything else. Take care that you face it, like an honest man, and not as one who makes the best of a bad story. One thing more: it will be your wisdom give up all attempts to pay, because you have nothing to pay with. II. Our second head is, THEIR FREE . “ He frankly forgave them both.” 1. In this free discharge I admire, first of all, the goodness of the great Creditor. What a gracious heart He had! What kindness He showed! He said, “ Poor souls, you can never pay Me, but you need not be cast down because of it, for I freely cancel your debts.” Oh, the goodness of it; Oh, the largeness of the heart of God! I was reading of Caesar the other day. He had been at fierce war with Pompey, and at last he conquered him, and when he conquered him he found among the spoil Pompey’ s private cabinet, in which were contained letters from the various noblemen and senators of Rome who had sided with him. In many a letter there was fatal evidence against the most eminent Romans, but what did Caesar do? He destroyed every document. He would have no knowledge of his enemies, for he freely forgave them and wished to know no more. In this Caesar proved that he was fit to govern the nation. But look at the splendour of God when He puts all our sins into one cabinet, and then destroys the whole. 2. Then, observe the freeness of it. They did not stand there and say, “ Oh, good sir, we cannot pay,” and plead and beg as for their lives; but He freely said to them, “ You cannot pay, but I can forgive.” 3. Furthermore, this debt was fully discharged. 4. A very effectual forgiveness too. 5. An eternal discharge. III. I now beg your very special attention to the last point, and that is THE BETWEEN THIS AND THIS FREE . It is said, “ When they had nothing to pay, he frankly forgave them both.” There is a time when pardon comes, and that time is when self-sufficiency goes. A sense of spiritual bankruptcy shows that a man has become thoughtful; and this is essential to salvation. Next, when we come to feel our bankruptcy, we then make an honest confession, and to that confession a promise is given--“ he that confesseth his sin shall find mercy.” The two debtors had owned to their debts, and they had also openly confessed, though it must have gone against the grain a bit, that they could not pay. Under conviction a poor soul sees the reality of sin and of pardon. My dear hearer, you will never believe in the reality of forgiveness till you have felt the reality of sin. I do believe that the Lord will give us our quittance when we have got to our last farthing, and not till then, because only then do we look to the Lord Jesus Christ. Ah, my dear friends, as long as we have anything else to look to, we never will look to Christ. That blessed port into which no ship did ever run in a storm without finding a sure haven is shunned by all your gallant vessels: they will rather put into any port along the coast of self-deceit than make for the harbour which is marked out by the two lighthouses of free grace and dying love. We are emptied to be filled. When we cannot give, God can forgive. (C. H. Spurgeon.) Two ways of discharging a debt A debt may be paid, or it may be pardoned. If it is paid, the debtor owes no thanks to his creditor. If it is pardoned, gratitude for the grace is a duty. A man under a burden of debt ought to know whether he can pay what he owes, or whether his only hope is of being forgiven. If he has anything to offer, he ought to proffer it. If he has nothing to offer, he ought to say so, and implore forgiveness as an unmerited favour. These two ways of wiping out a debt ought never to be confounded. In the one case, a man looks for a receipt; in the other for a pardon. It is the same in the moral world as in the material. A man can either meet and discharge his moral obligations, or he cannot. It is the one thing or the other. Apologies or excuses are not a payment. Yet how common it is for one who has nothing to pay with to thrust forward an excuse or an apology in place of a request for forgiveness. This is always evasive and unmanly. Instead of saying, “ I forgot,” or “ I didn’ t mean to,” or “ It was a mistake,” or “ It was an accident,” we ought to come out frankly and unequivocally with the admission, “ I was wrong. Forgive me” ; or “ I failed to do as I agreed to do. Forgive me” ; or “ I did not do as I was directed to. Forgive me.” Don’ t let us shirk our duty of asking forgiveness when we have nothing to pay with. (H. Clay Trumbull.) A generous creditor One Reuben Rouzy, of Virginia, owed the general about one thousand pounds. While President of the United States, one of his agents brought an action for the money; judgment was obtained, and execution issued against the body of the defendant, who was taken to gaol. He had a considerable landed estate, but this kind of property cannot be sold in Virginia for debts, unless at the discretion of the person. He had a large family, and for the sake of his children preferred lying in gaol to selling his land. A friend hinted to him that probably General Washington did not know anything of the proceeding, and that it might be well to send him a petition, with a statement of the circumstance. He did so, and the very next post from Philadelphia after the arrival of his petition in that city brought him an order for his immediate release, together with a full discharge, and a severe reprimand to the agent for having acted in such a manner. Poor Rouzy was, in consequence, restored to his family, who never laid down their heads at night without presenting prayers to Heaven for their “ beloved Washington.” Providence smiled upon the labours of the grateful family, and in a few years Rouzy enjoyed the exquisite pleasure of being able to lay the one thousand pounds, with the interest, at the feet of this truly great man. Washington reminded him that the debt was discharged; Rouzy replied, the debt of his family to the father of their country and preserver of their parent could never be discharged; and the general, to avoid the pressing importunity of the grateful Virginian, who would not be denied, accepted the money; only, however, to divide it among Rouzy’ s children, which he immediately did. (Arvine.) Released from debt There is a story of a rich Eastern master whose most skilful artizan began to fall off in his work. The master spoke to his steward about it. The steward replied: “ It is no wonder that the poor fellow cannot turn out good work. His hands tremble so that he cannot manage his tools; his eyes are so full of tears often that he cannot see what he is about. A heavy debt is pressing him, so that he even drinks to drown his sorrow. While that debt remains, you need not expect him to produce any more good work.” “ Then,” replied the generous master “ go and tell him that his debt is paid.” From that hour the artizan was a changed man. His tears were dried and he plied his tools with a happy heart; his work was done better than ever before. When they had nothing, to pay 1. Had man any ability left, and were able to do something towards the payment of the debt due; yet if he cannot do all, how is the debt paid? Let but twelve pence be wanting in the payment of a £100, the bond, you know, is not discharged; let light gold be tendered, will it be accepted? Our best works are full of imperfections (Isaiah 64:6). 2. All the good a man can do, though he do more then ever any man did, is itself a due debt, and how shall that go for a discharge of former debts? One debt will not discharge another, nor the payment of this year’ s rent discharge the last year’ s forfeiture. (N. Rogers.) We are not only debtors but bankrupts 1. A bankrupt makes great show of what he hath not; so doth a sinner Proverbs 13:7). 2. A bankrupt will be borrowing of every, one, but pay none to whom he is indebted; thus the sinner borrows of all. Of God, of man, of the creatures; but that love, duty, service, that is expected, he performs not. Promises, vows, bonds, all are broken (Romans 1:1-32.). 3. A bankrupt will take up at high rates, and put off at low; buy dear, but sell cheap; so doth the sinner. Ahab takes up land, Naboth’ s vineyard; Achan, a wedge of gold; Gehazi, a bribe; Esau, Jacob’ s pottage; Judas, thirty pence. All these took up their wares at dear rates, as do the sinners of these days. But one day will be forced to cry out with Lysimachus, “ How great a kingdom for how small a pleasure have I lost l” 4. A bankrupt will be offering composition to his creditors; but it shall be very little, three or four shillings in the pound--it may be not so much. Thus deals the sinner; he will be offering a composition as Pharaoh did Exodus 8:25). 5. A bankrupt cannot be trusted of any one that knows him, no more a sinner; God will not trust him (Job 4:18-19); Christ will not trust him (John if. 24); nor will the godly, if they be wise (Jeremiah 9:14; Micah 7:2; Job 19:14-15). We may expect love and duty from them, but how can they pay who have nothing? (N. Rogers.) Remission and forgiveness of sins is attainable There is a possibility for a stoner to have his debts pardoned and remitted (Acts 3:19; Acts 10:43; Acts 26:18). 1. The sacrifices under the law prefigured as much (Hebrews 5:1-14.). 2. The grounds are two: (1) Mercy in God, who “ desireth not the death of a sinner” (Ezekiel 33:11). It is His name to be merciful; an attribute as infinite as Himself, it suits with His nature. (2) Merit in Christ. By His sacrifice He satisfied God’ s justice, and paid the debt of sin (1 Corinthians 15:9; Galatians 1:4; Ephesians 1:7; Colossians 1:14; 1 John 3:5; Hebrews 9:26). But whence is it that men are so careless in seeking after this one thing necessary? Divers reasons may be rendered of this great neglect. 1. An erroneous judgment about the thing itself. Some think it is that which cannot be had, or if it be feasable, yet it is not so necessary as other blessings, which lies them more in hand to seek after. The error of which opinions what hath been said before, discovers. 2. This great neglect ariseth from want of due consideration of men’ s present states, they spend no thoughts this way; like bankrupts, they love not to cast up their accounts. 3. This ariseth in some through a bold presumption of God’ s mercy, conceiting that God will forgive us our sins, though we take no pains about it. 4. God in forgiving sin, fully forgives it, no part of the debt is reserved to be exacted of us. (N. Rogers.) Pardon requires increased care for the future And, to conclude, be careful that we lay up safe our discharge and pardon, having once obtained it. How careful men are to lock up a general discharge from some pecuniary debts, we know well enough; but no discharge to this, so lay it up, that you may not have it to seek in the hour of temptations and trial. Such times you must expect, and then your acquittance, sealed with Christ’ s blood, will stand you in much stead. Our carelessness this way often causeth God to hide from us the comfort of it, to the end that we may seek it up and keep it better. Thus we lay some piece of plate aside for a while to teach a careless child or servant to be more careful of it after it is returned. And thus much of the fulness of God’ s pardoning. Come we now to the freeness of it. He frankly forgave them both. Whence observe we--Remission is of free grace and mercy; whom God forgives He forgives gratis. The pope indeed sells pardons; God sells none--what God doth this way He doth freely. (N. Rogers.) Them both 1. Forgiveness and pardon is general to all that cast themselves on God’ s free mercy for it. 2. God forgiveth great debts as well as small, hundreds as well as tens. 3. He who owes least stands (as well) in need of mercy and forgiveness as he who owes most. Which of them will love Him most God is truly loved of all those whose sins are pardoned. This is a truth granted and unquestioned. If need were, it might be further strengthened from sundry other texts (Psalms 116:1; Psalms 18:1; Son 3:2; Son 3:5; Philippians 3:8-9; Psalms 119:132). How can it otherwise be? For every act of God’ s special favour begets another in the heart of the godly like it. He choosing them, they choose Him again; He calls them, they call on Him; He loving them, they must needs again love Him. “ We love Him,” saith St. John, “ because He loved us first.” The cold stone cannot cast forth heat, as you know, till it be warmed by the sunbeams: being warmed by them, then it reflecteth back some of the heat which it received; thus is it with our cold hearts. (N. Rogers.) I might use many arguments to put you on upon this pursuit. There is no duty hath more reasons to speak for it than this hath. I will name only two, which St. Bernard hath; the one is in respect of God, the other in regard of ourselves. I. IN RESPECT OF GOD, and so nothing is more just and equal than that He should be loved of us. 1. This is that He doth require both in law and gospel (De Matthew 22:38). It is the first and great commandment, and that on which all other acceptable services are grounded. 2. This is that He doth deserve, for hath not He placed in us that affection of love? Is it not a stream of that living fountain who is love itself (1 John 4:8)? Now “ he that plants a vineyard should drink of the wine thereof,” saith the apostle (1 Corinthians 9:7). And God who hath planted this affection in us, should chiefly taste of it Himself. 3. God hath manifested His love to us in giving His only beloved son for us John 3:16). He hath begun to us in the cup of love (1 John 4:10). Is it not fit that we should pledge Him? It is an elegant observation of St. Bernard upon the Canticles; of all the motions and affections of the soul, none is so reciprocal as love. 4. Besides, there is nothing in God but deserves love; “ I will call upon God,” saith David, “ who is worthy to be praised” (Psalms 18:3). So may we say truly, “ I will call upon the Lord, who is worthy to be loved.” But if in case we set our love on any other object than the Lord, we become losers and not savers. By loving Him we are made better both in grace and glory. You know love assimilates the heart to the thing loved; so love of honour makes the heart proud; love of pleasure makes the heart vicious and loose, &c. And the love of God makes us to conform unto His image, and be like Him in holiness; thus we become better through our loving God in grace. II. ALL THAT LOVE GOD DO NOT LOVE HIM WITH THE LIKE DEGREE OF LOVE. (N. Rogers.) God seen in little love They do not well to forget that Caesar’ s image is not only seen in his coin of gold, but in his silver penny; and that this degree of love, though weak, is also the gift of God, and not to be despised Zechariah 4:10; 1 Corinthians 1:11; 1 Corinthians 3:1). He that made the elephant made the ant; the fly as well as the eagle; the poorest worm which creeps on the earth, as well as the most glorious angel, is the work of God’ s hands, and He looks to be glorified in His least works as well as greatest. (N. Rogers.) Small love not to be despised if it be growing Give the humble daisy leave to grow, though it sprout not up to that height as doth the marigold. And let not him that joineth the frame despise him that heweth the timber or makes the pins; who so hath greatest degree of grace, let him use it to God’ s glory, but no way despise his weak brother, who comes far short of his scantling. Let it serve for an encouragement to those whose hearts are newly warmed with the beams of love, though they find it not kindled to that height that others of God’ s children have attained unto, It is not every one’ s portion to attain to that height of passion, so as to be sick of love. God takes in good part a growing and increasing love which maybe attained. 1. By enlarging our communion with God both in public and private duties. Strangeness, you know, breeds an overliness with men; so with God. The nearer the fire, the greater the heat; speak often to God by prayer, hear Him again speaking unto you by His Word and Spirit. 2. By weaning our hearts more and more from this world. You know superfluous branches draw the sap from the top boughs, and the love of the world draws the love of God out of our hearts, as we find in Demas (2 Timothy 4:9). 3. Carefully observe and call to mind the many and sweet experiences you have of God’ s love and favour. The more plentiful our apprehension is of God’ s love to us, the more will our hearts be enlarged to love Him again. (N. Rogers.) Love 1. Inflamed or burning love will not be easily quenched; much water, many floods cannot do it (Son 8:7). It is firm and invincible, so that neither force nor fraud, promises nor persecutions, height nor depth, things present nor things to come, shall be able to prevail against 2:2. Love inflamed is still ascending. It hath earnest and affectionate longings after God, and to enjoy Him. 3. Inflamed love gives great light. It is like a fired beacon on a hill, all the country take notice of it. Such cannot forbear but they must be speaking in God’ s praise, and admiring everything that is in Him. “ The tongue is the pen of a ready writer” (Son 5:9). (N. Rogers.) Luke 7:44 Simon, seest thou this woman?--Penitence worth seeing Not only with the bodily eye, for with that he saw and mistook, but with consideration and observation. The deportment of a true penitent is worth our seeing; their carriage and conversation is worthy observation. (N. Rogers.) Thou gavest Me no water for My feet: Ceremonies of courtesy And, to reason from the less to the greater, if ritual observances are requisite for the full welcome of friends, think it not enough in entertaining your Saviour that you give Him the substance of good usage, neglecting the compliments. Simon, you see, here gave Him both meat and welcome, yet the neglect of washing, kissing, and anointing is not well taken. When we come to His house, and to His ordinances, as to the word, sacraments, prayer, we make Him good cheer, He esteems Himself then feasted; but if we perform not these things with the decency of outward carriage, we give Him neither water, kiss, nor oil. Believe it, our-best actions receive either life or bane from their circumstances; the substance or matter of a work may be good, and yet the work cannot be so called, unless it be done mode et forma. Velvet is good matter to make a garment, timber goad matter to build a house; and yet the one may be so marred in the cutting and the other in the framing, as that neither the one nor the other shall attain the name of good. What is good in the substance may be sin in the circumstance, and for want of care about the manner, the best work may be done thanklessly. (N. Rogers.) She hath washed My feet with tears There are two sorts of tears, as shows St. Austin. Some are commendable, others are discommendable. 1. Commendable tears are natural or spiritual. Natural tears, as Jeremiah 31:15. These discover natural affection, and being well bounded are not to be blamed (Luke 23:28). 2. Spiritual tears are either tears of passion and contrition, as Matthew 26:75, or of compassion and devotion, as Jeremiah 9:1-2; Luke 19:1-48. Tears culpable or discommendable are likewise of two sorts, temporal or infernal. 1. Temporal, are those shed in this life by wicked ones. And they are of two sorts, worldly or hypocritical. (1) Worldly tears are those which are occasioned merely for worldly losses. Of these we read in Ezekiel 8:14; Hosea 7:14; Hebrews 12:1-29. (2) Hypocritical tears are those which are produced from dissimulation and deceit. Of these we read in Jeremiah 41:5-6. 2. Infernal tears are those shed by the damned in hell (Luke 13:28; Matthew 24:51; Matthew 25:30). (N. Rogers.) The smart of sin a good sign And as it is in a diseased body or with some old sore, if in the dressing of the wound no pain be felt, we conclude the flesh is dead, but when the patient begins to complain of the pain and is sensible of the smart, then it is taken for a good sign that the cure is in a good forwardness. (N. Rogers.) Is shedding of tears absolutely necessary in godly sorrow? May not the heart be drowned, and yet the eyes dry? Tears are additions and necessary appendences of true repentance, but not always necessary and true tokens of it. Some have repented truly who have not wept, and some have wept bitterly who have not repented truly. All who shed tears are not straightway penitents; the hardest marble against some weather may weep. And how often do we see the dew to stand on the blasted corn or grass. There are eyeing waters spoken of by Jeremiah, as well as clouds without water, spoken of by St. Jude. It is an easy matter to give you instances Genesis 17:3-4; 1 Samuel 24:17; Malachi 2:13). Tears are deceitful things; nothing sooner dried up than a tear, and, therefore, not to be trusted too far. For a man may as well go to his grave’ s end by water as by land. (N. Rogers.) Tears few at first In a deep or fresh wound in the body, there is not first that pain felt, nor so much blood seen, as is in a little cut of the finger, because the part is astonied for the time. So is it sometimes with the soul. The wine vessel, you know, without vent runs not though it be ready to burst. (N. Rogers.) Tears vocal Tears have a voice with them, nay, they are not only vocal, but importunate. “ What do you weeping, and breaking my heart?” saith St. Acts 21:13). You may remember how the tears of Moses, whilst he was floating in an ark of bulrushes on the water, prevailed with Pharaoh’ s daughter. “ The babe wept,” saith the text, “ and she had compassion on him” (Exodus 2:6). (N. Rogers.) To answer the greatness of our sin with the greatness of our sorrow According to the proportion of the one, should the other be proportioned. Look how grievously we have sinned, so greatly should our sins be bewailed and lamented. A deep wound must have a large plaster, and our repentance, as showeth St. Cyprian, must not be less than our fault. (N. Rogers.) Sorrow for sin must not be slight Where sins are great, think it not enough that your sorrow be slight. If thy sins be small and little, thy sorrow may be the less, but if great, thy grief must be suitable. A garment that is deeply soiled cannot, without much rubbing and many layers, become clean. Where there is a deep pollution, and of a scarlet tincture, there must be not only ablutio, but balneatio, a soaking and bathing in the tears of contrition, as is required in Isaiah 1:16. But may not a man exceed in sorrow, may he not grieve over much? A man cannot exceed in the displeasure of his will against sin, yet he may in the testification of his displeasure by weeping and macerating of his body. Too much moistening chokes a plant, when moderate moistening quickens it. Too much rain gulls the earth, and standing waters on low grounds breed nothing but flags and rushes. So it is with our hearts when they prove standing pools. (N. Rogers.) Sorrow for sin measured by duration A torrent may run faster for the present than a continual current, but the current is to be preferred, and hath more water in it than the torrent. One keeps open house at Christmas, but all the year after the gates are shut; he hath taken up a city’ s refuge. Another keeps a constant and full table all the year, though at that time he may not be compared with the other for abundance. Which of these two now would you count the best housekeeper? I suppose you will grant the latter. So is it here. (N. Rogers.) Grace quickened by tears By tears, likewise, grace is quickened. They are not like well water, springing out of the bowels of the earth, nor like rain, distilling from the clouds which clear the air, but they are as the dew of Hermon, which makes all herbs to flourish. Such as mourn for sin grow up as the lily, and fasten themselves in grace like the trees of Lebanon. They are like the former and the latter rain, they make the heart fruitful in all good works, as you see here in Mary. It is a sovereign water, and will fetch the sinner again to the life of grace though never so far gone. As for glory hereafter (Psalms 126:5). Thus as the sun draws up vapours from the earth, not for itself, but to restore them back again; so cloth God our tears. But the bottle spoken of (Psalms 56:8), and the vial Revelation 5:8), are for the saints both. In them He preserves both their tears and prayers. Not a drop of their eye-water will He suffer to run in waste, He catcheth every tear before it comes to the ground; and till death close up those two fountains, Jor and Dan, flowing from Mount Lebanon, they shall never fail running, but then shall our souls be wafted in them from grace to glory, as they were first transported by them here from sin to grace. (N. Rogers.) The city of waters taken by Satan If, in case what hath been said of the good which our tears procure for us prevail not, then give me leave to add a word of the great danger which follows upon the neglect of them, and it shall be only by way of allusion to that we read (2 Samuel 12:27). Joab having taken the city of waters, he sent to David and willed him to come quickly to take the city itself, well knowing that it could not hold out, the city of waters being cut off before. Thus when Satan hath taken the eyes and cut off the pipes, can you think your soul can long hold out against his temptations? (N. Rogers.) Wiped them with the hairs of her head 1. In true repentance there is a converting of those things which have been abused to the service of sin to the service of God. 2. That the best ornament of the body, in the judgment of a penitent, is not too good to be employed about the meanest piece of service which concerns Christ. (N. Rogers.) Truth impressed by living examples After all, there is no so forcible way of impressing truth as by a living example. The parable of the two debtors could but faintly show the power of forgiveness to win gratitude, in comparison with that vivid picture of the penitent, trusting, grateful woman, washing the feet of her Saviour with her tears, and wiping them with her dishevelled hair. And so it has been from the beginning. Would you realize the power of one person in tempting others to ruin? Seest thou this woman Eve, or this woman Jezebel? Would you realize the beauty of fidelity in friendship? Seest thou this woman Ruth? Would you realize the grandeur of moral heroism? Seest thou this woman Esther? ‘ Would you realize the holy influence of a mother’ s love and faithfulness? Seest thou this woman Jochebed, or this woman Hannah, or this woman Eunice? Would you realize the power of unwavering faith? Seest thou this woman of Syro-Phoenicia? Would you realize the force and beauty of any trait of human character, or the preciousness of any truth which God would have his children to bear in mind? Seest thou this woman before you, who illustrates it as it could not be taught in any other way? That woman is your mother, your wife, your sister, your friend, your neighbour. Look at her glorious example, and thank God for the blessedness of His grace in a willing and trustful human heart. (H. Clay Trumbull.) Seest thou this woman? Simon had not seen the woman yet He had only seen the sinner. Look, then, on the woman at last, O Pharisee. Look upon her in the light of the parable you have just heard. Look on thyself, too, for as yet thou hast not seen thyself--the Pharisee hiding the man from thy incurious eyes. Thou poor blind Pharisee I if love be the proof of forgiveness, how much hast thou, loving so little, been forgiven? (S. Cox, D. D.) Luke 7:46 My head with off thou didst not anoint The use of hospitality For such is our frailty that if we were not strengthened and refreshed with baits in the way our minds would grow dull and sluggish, and our bodies be tired out. The heathen of old could say that the life of a man without some delight was like a long way without an inn, in which all is travel and toil, but no comfort or refreshing. The soul of such an one would be like a flower that grows always in the shade, which is nothing so sweet nor lovely as that which grows in the sight of the sun. (N. Rogers.) Perfumes “ My head with oil thou didst not anoint.” Perfumes were associated with almost every action and event in the life of the ancients. The free use of them was peculiarly delightful and refreshing to the Orientals. A bouquet of fragrant flowers was carried in the hand; or rooms were fumigated with the odorous vapours of burning resins; or the body was anointed with oil mixed with the aromatic qualities of some plants extracted by boiling; or scents were worn about the person in gold or silver boxes, or in alabaster vials. When entertainments were given, the rooms were fumigated: and it was customary for a servant to attend every guest as he seated himself, to anoint his head, sprinkle his person with rosewater, or apply incense to his face and beard; and so entirely was the use of perfumes on such occasions in accordance with the customs of the people that the Saviour reproached Simon for the omission of this mark of attention, leaving it to be performed by a woman. (H. Macmillan, LL. D.) Luke 7:47 Her sins, which are many, are forgiven Her sins Incontinency of life is enough to give the denomination, and is a sin that is accompanied with many other sins besides itself. A brood of sins are hatched out of this one egg. Instance we but in David’ s case (we need go no further). The devil having prevailed with him in the sin of adultery, draws him on to other sins, whereby he might hide his wickedness from the world, so that they might not espy it. (H. Macmillan, LL. D.) The greatest sin I have read a story of a hermit that led a devout and solitary life. One day talking with the devil, he demanded of him which were the greatest sins; he answered him, Covetousness and lust. The other demanded again whether blasphemy and perjury were not greater. The reply of Satan was that in the schools of divinity they were the greater sins, but for the increase of his revenues, the other were far the greater. And therefore Bede styles lust, filiam diaboli, “ the daughter of the devil,” which bringeth forth many children to him daily. Nor doth any one such special service to the devil as an harlot. (H. Macmillan, LL. D.) That grievous sinners upon repentance shall find mercy And for further proof, read 2 Chronicles 33:12; 1 Corinthians 6:11; 1 Timothy 1:12-13; Acts 2:38-39; Luke 15:20. Though then thou hast been an egregious sinner and led a vicious life, defiling thy soul with many sins, yet suffer not thyself through Satan’ s malice to be plunged into the pit of despair; thou hast provoked God’ s justice grievously heretofore by thy presumption, wrong not His mercy through desperation. (H. Macmillan, LL. D.) For she loved much A note of inference But are they ignorant of this; the “ for” is often times a note of inference or consequence, and as well an argument of the effect from the cause, as of the cause from the effect. We say it is springtime. Why so? “ For,” or “ because” the fig-tree puts forth and buds. The putting forth of the fig-tree argues the spring-time, but the budding and putting forth of the fig-tree is not the cause of spring-time. I say this child is alive, because it cries; or this man lives, because he moves; will any so understand me as if I meant the crying of the one and the moving of the other is the cause of life and motion in the one or in the other? Our Saviour Himself useth this kind of arguing, as we find: “ I have called you friends, for all things I have heard of My Father, I have made known unto you” John 15:15), where declaring of those things to them is the effect not cause of His love. And that our Saviour here reasoneth from the effect to the cause is evident enough from the whole discourse. (H. Macmillan, LL. D.) Love as a cause A proof (a posteriori) from the effect is a strong proof, and very demonstrative. Thus the truth of our faith is to be proved James 2:18). And of repentance (2 Corinthians 7:11). And of charity (1 John 3:14). And so St. James proves wisdom from above by the effects (James 3:17). Still Scripture puts us upon the trial of our graces, by these kind of proofs. Grace is invisible in its nature, it cannot be seen in habitu. Therefore, as God was seen to Moses, so is grace to men, by its back parts; and as the wind, which no man can see in its proper essence, by the full sails of the ship is perceived which way it stands. Let this be a direction to us in our examination and trial of ourselves. Would I know if the sun shines? there is no climbing up to the sky to be resolved, nor examining what matter it is made of; I look upon the beams shining on the earth, I perceive it is up and shines by the light and heat it gives. Would I know if God hath elected me to life and to salvation? There is no climbing up into heaven to know His decrees and hidden counsel (as too many would most audaciously) but study well the marks of it from the effects. The head of Nilus cannot be found, but the sweet springs issuing from thence arc well known. No surer way to the sea, than by taking a river by the hand. Our vocation and sanctification will carry us to election Romans 8:30; 2 Peter 1:5-10). These are the means whereby our election and salvation is made certain, not the efficient causes whereby it comes to be decreed. The sun, not the shadow, makes the day, yet we know not how the day goes by the sun, but by the shadow. In a word, as the planets are known by their influence, the diamond by his lustre, and the soul by her vital operations, so grace is more sensibly known to us by the effects thereof. Secondly, we observe from hence, that a true and unfeigned love of Christ is a sure sign that our sins are remitted. (H. Macmillan, LL. D.) Love hard to simulate This grace can the hardiest be counterfeited of any other grace. There is scarce anything else that we can instance in, saith one, but a hypocrite may go cheek by jowl with a good Christian. He may do all outward services, he may abstain from sin, a great change may be wrought in him; we know how far the third ground went (Matthew 13:1-58.) And those (Hebrews 6:1-20.) But this they cannot counterfeit to love the Lord. A hypocrite may hear the Word, pray, give alms, but to do these out of love, that is a thing which no hypocrite is able to reach unto. Secondly, though saving graces have their counterfeits, yet a man may be assured by the Word that he hath this and other graces in him in sincerity, so as that he cannot be deceived in them. For as God gave Moses in the Mount a pattern, according to which He would have all things made in the Tabernacle (Hebrews 8:5), so that when he viewed the work and saw all was done according to that pattern, He was sure He had done right, and blessed them, as we read (Exodus 39:43). So hath God given us a pattern in His Word, according to which He would have everything in His spiritual tabernacle (as faith, repentance, love, obedience, &c.) to be wrought. And if a man can find that the grace he hath be according to the pattern, as (if he take pains with himself to view the work, as Moses did) he may, then he may be sure it is right, and shall have cause of rejoicing, as the apostle saith (Galatians 6:4). Thirdly, Learn hence a notable way to establish our hearts in the assurance of the pardon of sin. Thou needest not climb up into heaven to search God’ s books, whether they be crossed or no, there to behold the face of God whether He smile or frown; but dive into thine own soul, and there find out what love thou bearest to thy Maker and blessed Saviour; if thou findest that thou lovest Him unfeignedly, that is, that thou lovest Him more than these, lovest Him for Himself, for those beauties and excellencies that are in Him. It is the greatest comfort that thou canst have in this life, for that thou mayest rest assured hereupon that God is reconciled to thee, and that thy sins (be they never so great or many) are forgiven thee. Finding this in thee, thou mayest be sure, and never till then canst thou be assured of it. For, we may easier carry coals in our bosom without burning, than by faith apprehend truly this love of God in the pardoning of sin without finding our hearts burn in love to Him answerably. Only see that our love be rightly qualified, that it hath these requisites which God’ s Word speaks of, that it be with all our hearts, with all our souls, with all our might (Deuteronomy 6:5; Mark 10:30.) In the fourth place we do observe, That loving much argues much mercy received from the beloved party. (H. Macmillan, LL. D.) Love and forgiveness This story contains three figures, who may stand for us as the types of the Divine love and of all its operation in the world, of the way in which it is received or rejected, and of the consequences of its reception or rejection. There is the unloving, cleanly, respectable, self-complacent Pharisee, with all his contempt for “ this woman.” There is the woman, with gross sin and mighty penitence, the great burst of love that is flowing out of her heart sweeping before it, as it were, all the guilt of her transgressions. And, high over all, brooding over all, loving each, knowing each, pitying each; willing to save and be the Friend and Brother of each, is the embodied and manifested Divine love, the knowledge of whom is love in our hearts, and “ life eternal.” I. CHRIST HERE STANDS AS A OF THE DIVINE LOVE COMING FORTH AMONGST SINNERS. 1. He, as bringing to us the love of God, shows it to us, as not at all dependent upon our merits or deserts. “ He frankly forgave them both.” 2. He tells us, too, that whilst that love is not caused by us, but comes from the nature of God, it is not turned away by our sins. Christ’ s knowledge of the woman as a sinner; what did it do to His love for her? It made that love gentle and tender, as knowing that she could not bear the revelation of the blaze of His purity. “ Daughter, I know all about it--all thy wanderings and thy vile transgressions: I know them all, and My love is mightier than all these. They may be as the great sea, but My love is like the everlasting mountains whose roots go down beneath the ocean; and My love is like the everlasting heaven, whose brightness covers it all over.” 3. Christ teaches us here that this Divine love, when it comes forth among sinners, necessarily manifests itself first in the form of forgiveness. There was nothing to be done with the debtors until the debt was wiped out. 4. We see here the love of God, last of all, demanding service. II. THIS WOMAN--THE THE DIVINE LOVE. Great blunders have been built on the words of our text. I daresay you have often seen epitaphs written on gravestones, with this misplaced idea on them, “ Very sinful; but there was a great deal of love in the person; and for the sake of the love, God passed by the sin!” Now, when Christ says, “ she loved much,” He does not mean to say that her love was the cause of her forgiveness--not at all. He means to say that her love was the proof of her forgiveness. As for instance, we might say, “ The woman is in great distress, for she weeps;” but we do not mean thereby that the weeping is the reason of the distress, but the means of our knowing the sorrow. The love does not go before the forgiveness, but the forgiveness before the love. That this is the true interpretation you will see, if you look back for a moment at the narrative which precedes: “ He frankly forgave them both: tell me, therefore, which of them will love Him most?” 1. Then all true love to God is preceded in the heart by these two things--a sense of sin, and an assurance of pardon. 2. Love precedes all acceptable and faithful service. If you want to do, love. If you want to know, love. III. A third character stands here--THE AND SELF- MAN, ALL OF THE LOVE OF CHRIST. Simon is the antithesis of the woman and her character. What was it that made this man’ s morality a piece of dead nothingness. What was it that made his orthodoxy just so many dry words, from out of which all the life had gone? This one thing: there was no love in it. And, love is the foundation of all obedience. (A. Maclaren, D. D.) The text teaches-- I. THAT SIN IS . A very elementary truth, yet a very important one. The obstacle to forgiveness. 1. Not in God. 2. Not in nature. 3. Not in the sinner, if he repents. II. MUCH SIN CAN BE OF AND . “ Her sins, which are many.” III. A GREAT SINNER CAN BE A GREAT SAINT. Bunyan, in his sermon on “ The Jerusalem sinner saved,” explaining the reasons why Jesus would have mercy offered in the first place to the biggest sinners, remarks, “ If Christ loves to be loved a little, He loves to be loved much; but there is not any that are capable of loving much, save those that have much forgiven them.” Having cited Paul as an instance, he adds the quaint reflection, “ I wonder how far a man might go among the converted sinners of the smaller size before he could find one that so much as looked anything this wayward.” Then coming to the scene in Simon’ s house, the moral lesson it suggests is thus put: “ Alas! Christ has but little thanks for the saving of little sinners, he gets not water for His feet by the saving of such sinners. There are abundance of dry-eyed Christians in the world, and abundance of dry-eyed duties too--duties that were never wetted with the tears of contrition and repentance, nor even sweetened with the great sinner’ s box of ointment.” (A. B. Bruce, D. D.) THE WOMAN THAT WAS A SINNER. Simon, her kisses will not soil; Her tears are pure as rain; Eye not her hair’ s untwisted coil, Baptized in pardoning pain. For God hath pardoned all her much, Her iron bands have burst; Her love could never have been such Had not His love been first. But oh! rejoice ye sisters pure, Who hardly know her case; There is no sin but has its cure, Its all-consuming grace. He did not leave her soul in hell, ‘ Mong shards the silver dove, But raised her pure that she might tell Her sisters how to love. She gave Him all your best love can. Was He despised and sad? Yes; and yet never mighty man Such perfect homage had. Jesus, by whose forgiveness sweet Her love grew so intense, We, sinners all, come round Thy feet-- Lord, make no difference. (George Maxdonald.) The value of deep feelings You will observe the very striking instance here of the difference between natural feeling and conventional feeling. There are many persons who would not desecrate, by wearing the hat, any cathedral or church, but who are not troubled by sin in their own souls--by pride, malice, envy or uncharitableness. This woman was heart broken in the presence of the Saviour, the contrast of whose purity and truth threw such a light of revelation upon her own past life; but in all her feelings, so strikingly manifested, the Pharisee saw nothing. 1. In the beginning it must not be supposed that love is to be derived only from a sense of benefit conferred, and that the conscious benefit of forgiven sin is the true fountain of the highest love. For love will be in proportion to the strength of the love-principle in the subject of it. We do not love God merely on account of what He has done for us. We begin to love God by a perception of His great mercy to us. It then goes higher, and widens and purifies itself. 2. Nor must we reason falsely upon the implications of this passage. For we might say, “ If love is to be in proportion to the forgiveness of sins, then men should sin freely in order that they may love greatly.” Paul had precisely the same ease presented to his mind by an objector. He had been urging that God’ s grace was in proportion to a man’ s sin; and the objector said, “ Must we, then, go on and sin that grace may abound?” “ No, God forbid!” said the apostle. “ That would be contrary to the very nature of love. It is impossible for a man who loves to go on sinning for the sake of loving more, or for the sake of winning more grace. The two ideas are practically incompatible with each other.” Nor are we to say, “ As I have not been a great sinner, I am not bound to love much.” 3. But not to speak longer upon these possible perversions of this truth here, I proceed further to say that it is a truth which opens for consideration the question of the value of great feelings, deep feelings--especially a profound experience of personal sinfulness incident to a Christian life. There is a powerful effect wrought upon a man’ s moral nature by the mental experience through which he goes. If a man has had such a struggle with himself that he is profoundly impressed with the might of evil in him; if there has been in his experience a revelation of the destructive tendencies of sin; all this experience would tend to produce, most vividly and most powerfully, a sense of God’ s grace. His sense of the gift is to be measured by this experience. No man that has a low conception of sin will ever have a very high conception of grace. God’ s rescue will seem great in proportion to your conscious peril. How much has been forgiven you will be determined by how much you consciously have been in debt. As a practical matter, almost all men know that eminent experiences have grown out of profound convictions of sin, and come up to this point of conviction of sin, and stopped there. It may be that you have not enough conviction of sin; you have enough to begin a life of reformation with. Then what will happen? In proportion as a man goes toward that which is right, his conscience becomes firm, his moral sense becomes stronger, and conviction of sin, like every other Christian experience, will develop and grow. Let the sense of sin grow as you grow. A profound experience of unworth will open more and more upon you as you go on in the Divine life. The magnitude of the debt that has been forgiven you, will constitute a growing practical Christian experience. You are like a child that wants to read a book, but will not learn his letters because he does not want to touch a book till he can go off all at once. You must learn your letters before you can read. The experience of every trait, of every element of Christian life, is an experience that begins small and waxes larger, and by and by becomes like a branch of a tree in full top. And that which is true of every other feeling is true of this one--namely, conviction of sin. If, then, you have enough feeling to condemn you, you have enough for yeast. 4. Very wicked men ought to become very eminent and active Christians. Usually, men who have been very wicked, are men who have very strong natures. Men who have been dissipated, arc men who have had very strong passions and appetites. Usually a wicked man is a man of power and audacity, if he is very wicked; but where there is great power to do wrong, there is great power to react from wrong; and if a man has been going away from God with vigour, that same vigour should supply him with the elements by which to return. It is pitiful to see a man fruitful, energetic, from day to day, and constantly diversifying his experience in wickedness, but sterile, and close, and formal, and proper when he becomes a Christian. Bad men also are usually acquainted with human life. They know the dispositions of their fellow-men; and whatever knowledge there is of bad men they have. And such men are bound to consecrate their knowledge, and to bring it into the service of the Lord Jesus Christ, who has forgiven them, and renewed their life, if they are born again. If a man has been a gambler, and is converted from his wicked way, that ought to be a sphere in which he feels peculiarly called to labour. There is also a sense of Divine goodness that ought to go with eases of conversions of bad men, and that ought to be specially affecting and influential. I see a great many persons who try to serve God softly. The devil puts excuses into their mouths like these: “ I ought not to meddle with sacred things. I ought not to put on airs in religion, or give people reason to suppose that I do.” And under these guises they do but little, and very soon wither and go back to their old state. If, therefore, within the hearing of my voice, there are those who are thinking about a Christian life, I open the door of the church to you--but on this condition; come in with all your might! If you have been a swearing man, your lips must not be dumb now in the praise of that God whom you have been blaspheming all your life. If you were sick, and your case had been given over by all the physicians, and a stranger should come to your town, and should examine into your difficulty, and should say, “ It is a struggle with death itself, but I am in possession of knowledge by which I think I can heal you;” and he should never leave you day nor night, but should cling to you through weeks and weeks, and at last raise you to health, would it not be contemptibly mean if you should be ashamed to acknowledge him to be your physician, and testify to what he had done for you? If I was that physician, would I not have a right to have my name and my skill made known by you? 5. Men who have sinned, not by their passions but by their higher faculties, if they would be true Christians, must have just the same spiritual momentum--though for different reasons--as those that have sinned by their lower faculties. 6. Let every man who is going to begin a Christian life pursue the same course that she pursued whose name has been made memorable, and whose soul this day chants before her Beloved in heaven--or she is one of those of whom Christ says, “ The publicans and the harlots go into the kingdom of God before you,” Pharisees. (H. W. Beecher.) Much love the fruit of abundant pardon Learn from the mistake of the Pharisee to be very careful in the formation of your opinions of others, and especially in the expression of your judgment. Great changes may take place in persons, which changes do not come to your ears. I. THE FIRST OF THESE LESSONS IS, THAT IN A LIVING HEART RISES WITH THE . YOU know that gratitude is a joyous sense of obligation. I lay great stress upon that word “ joyous.” There may be a sense of obligation without thankfulness-there may be a sense of obligation associated with hatred, and malice, and revenge. There are men who are excited to indignation by obligations which they cannot cast off. Gratitude is a joyous sense of obligation to another, accompanied by a desire to confess that obligation. If this sense be absent, and if the consciousness be painful, and if a man shrink from the utterance of acknowledgment of the obligation, gratitude is not in his heart. Now, as the mercury in the barometer rises with the lightness of the atmosphere, and in the thermometer with the heat of the atmosphere, so gratitude in a true heart swells with the extent of the obligation. Christ says of this woman, “ Her sins, which are many, are forgiven, for she loved much; but to whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little.” Thankfulness in this poor woman’ s soul had reached a very high point; that is, it responded to the demand made upon it. Gratitude in a living heart will not be stationary. As the clouds of guilt and sorrow are blotted out from the firmament of the man’ s heart, and from the firmament of the man’ s prospects, thankfulness will rise. Gratitude cannot be the same in two individuals of equal spiritual sensitiveness, but of different conditions. “ She loved much: but to whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little.” The difference in the condition, the heart being alive, produces the difference in the thankfulness. As a trunk-line receives traffic from its branch-lines, or as the principal stream through a valley receives accession by tributary streams, so thankfulness is deep or shallow, wide or narrow, in proportion to the circumstances which call it forth. The highest occasion of thankfulness is large pardon from God--pardon dispensed by God abundantly. Sin admits of degree. Transgressions may be many or few, and they are marked by degrees of aggravation. Observe, too, the manner in which God dispenses forgiveness. He pardons freely, without money, and without price; readily, without the vain repetition of continued entreaty--abundantly, making the scarlet, snow, and the crimson, wool. Now, until a guilty man is forgiven by his God, none of the gifts of the Father of Mercies partake thoroughly of the nature of blessing. He has health, and strength, and life; but these are only adding distance to his wanderings from God. Strong gratitude, brethren, is very free in its utterance. It is not restricted to place. The man who is really thankful cannot expend his emotions in the sacredness of retirement only. Yet the thankful heart is not dependent upon the excitement of the multitude. Still, gratitude is not restricted to time, or to mode. It finds regular seasons for utterance--in the morning and evening, and at noonday. It will lisp like an infant; it can chant like a seraph. It will utter itself in a sigh or in a song, in a tear or in an alabaster, in a look or in a course of service. Look at a third fact. Gratitude breaks the laws of propriety which a formalist would recognize. It puts its hand on the best and it offers the best. Now, how ought the gratitude of a forgiven man to be expressed? Honour the Saviour’ s person in the persons of His disciples. (S. Martin.) She loved much: she had much forgiven In treating this subject more fully I shall try to analyze-- I. The secret springs of the poor sinner’ s conduct. II. The nature of the action, which was viewed so diversely by the Pharisees and the Lord. I. THE STRINGS OF THE WOMAN’ S CONDUCT. The woman was “ a sinner.” Into the precise form or extent of her transgression there is no need to pry. The word was very significant; a “ lost woman” would be its equivalent now. The sin was one which filled her whole consciousness. The springs of her action, perhaps, lie here. 1. In her desperate self-abandonment the Lord had lit one ray of hope within her spirit. “ Come unto Me, all ye that are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest” What sin-crushed spirit would not leap to hear such words from such Divine lips? Despair is the devil’ s own instrument. The first step in the reformation of the most abandoned profligates is to get them to care for themselves--to think themselves worth the care. Doubtless, this poor sinner had long loathed her vocation. Doubtless, the burning blush of shame had often stained her cheek, and tears, tears that had a tinge of blood in them, had often dimmed her eye, when she remembered that she had lost her womanhood, lost her soul, lost her life, for ever. Surely, too, the thought of reformation had often visited her. But the “ Where shall I go, what shall I do?” as often checked her. “ Who in this universe cares for a woman that is a sinner?” 2. The Lord had quickened within her numbed and withered heart the pulses of a blessed and purifying love. Love is the strong redeemer of pollution. How hard and how long will even a human love struggle against the pollution of a sensual life. The devil has not fairly secured his victim until the very embers of love are extinguished in the hearth-fire of the heart. Jesus made her a woman again. The tendrils of love, torn from their pristine hold, all tangled and rotting on the damp earth whereon she grovelled, began to tingle and thrill again. Heaven seemed to open above her and beam its benediction. II. And now LET US TURN OUR TO THE NATURE OF THE ACTION, AND ANALYZE THE WHICH WERE PASSED ON IT BY THE AND THE LORD, Worldly wisdom would probably find a double objection to this transaction. 1. It was shameful that a woman, who was a sinner, should approach a prophet; and-- 2. The gift was lavish and wasteful, and might, have been put to better use. And Jesus seems to me to say by His answers-- 1. That love--such love- must be left to its native affinities. Its elections are absolute, its decisions are supreme. 2. The Lord said that there are gifts which a love like hers alone can justify. “ She loved much,” He pleaded, in answer to the glances which condemned the occasion as a scandal, and the gift as a waste. There are gifts which are simply the utterance of the heart of the giver, outlets of surcharged feeling, expressions of thoughts too deep for words, for tears. Let the cold and cautious stand aside while such are passing, nor stay the flight of these angels on the wing. The heart’ s first duty is to find itself expression. She loved much; she spent her living in telling how much she loved. Simon, there is malignant devil in that cautious calculation. Moreover, love like hers is not so uncalculating, though it disdains Pharisaic measures. The woman gave her living, but she won her soul. The ointment was lost, and the money which bought it, but her soul was for ever rid of its burden, and was braced for conflict and heavenly work. Love, though profuse in gifts, clears the intellect, kindles the spirit, stirs the courage, and nerves the hands. 3. The Saviour says that love like hers may well seek strange and profuse expressions, for it is the parent of a glory and blessedness which transcends all utterance and thought. Love is life. The woman who was a sinner, loving much, grew more swiftly and strongly to saintly perfectness, than Simon the just Pharisee measuring and obeying. Love, like electric fire, leaps swiftly to its object. Justness, the quiet sense of duty, the careful measuring of obligations, travels slowly, though wisely and surely, along the road. (Read Luke 7:47-50.) (J. B. Brown, B. A.) Luke 7:48 Thy sins are forgiven Assurance of forgiveness It is not enough that our sins are pardoned in heaven, but we are to endeavour and seek after the particular assurance of the pardon of them to our own consciences for our further comfort. Unknown things are not desired. How, then, can they be rejoiced in? Say a man be in prison for treason fast bound, and that a pardon is granted to him, yet, till he knows thereof, he can rejoice no more in that his happiness than if he were to be executed the next day. (N. Rogers.) Personal assurance This serves to stir us up earnestly to seek after particular assurance of the remission of sins, as we desire true comfort to our souls. Let a man know never so much of God and of Christ His Son, yet the general apprehension of these things will but add a kind of vexation to his spirit, till he have assurance of some special interest he hath in God’ s mercies. What a torment is it for a hunger-starved beggar to pass by a wedding-house, and smell good cheer, yet (Tantalus like) never taste of it? What a vexation to a poor man to see a great dole given, and multitudes relieved by it, yet he get nothing? So is it certainly in this case; the more any man knoweth of Christ, and of the plenteous redemption that is by Him purchased through His blood, the greater must the horror of his soul be when he findeth that he hath no part therein. (N. Rogers.) The blessing of forgiveness The text may suggest to us four subjects or heads of consideration. 1. The forgiveness of sin. 2. The forgiver of sin. 3. The means of forgiveness. 4. The blessed effect in the heart of man--“ Go in peace.” (J. Slade, M. A.) Pardon available for the greatest sinner When the last war had passed, the Government of the United States made proclamation of pardon to the common soldiery in the Confederate army, but not to the chief soldiers. The gospel of Christ does not act in that way. It says pardon for all, but especially for the chief of sinners. I do not now think of a single passage that says a small sinner may be saved; but I do think of passages that say a great sinner may be saved. If there be sins only faintly hued, just a little tinged, so faintly coloured you can hardly see them, there is no special pardon promised in the Bible for those sins; but if they be glaring--red like crimson--then they shall be as snow. Now, my brethren, I do not state this to put a premium on great iniquity. I merely say this to encourage that man in this house who feels he is so far gone from God that there is no mercy for him. I want to tell him there is a good chance. (Dr. Talmage.) Luke 7:49 Began to say within themselves Care to be exercised in our judgment of others This should teach us to take heed how we pass sentence upon the inward intentions and purposes of men. This power is God’ s, and belongs to Him; what have we to do to usurp it? It is a well too deep for us to draw in. And yet, such is the presumption of some, that they will take upon them infallibly to know what is in the bottom of that well, whence ariseth jealousies and contentions, many times as causeless as pernicious. Indeed, by some discoveries there may be some conjectures; but let not a small conjecture make thee a great offender. Every key a man meets with is not the right one for this lock; every likelihood thou apprehendest is not a sure sign of what is within the breast. Not to let a man be private in his house is a great injury; not to let a man be private in his heart is a greater. Lastly, let us be persuaded hence to be as upright before the Lord in thought as we are just in dealing before men. It is not the white fleece God especially eyes, but the sound liver. He hath windows into the soul, and there sees that hypocrisy which lies lurking there. He is very list of hearing, and well understandeth what the heart thinketh, and (as before was showed) will answer us accordingly, (N. Rogers.) Luke 7:50 Thy faith hath saved thee Saving faith It is not every faith that saves the soul. There may be faith in a falsehood which leads only to delusion, and ends in destruction. There is a faith that saves; it puts us into immediate and vital and permanent union with the Son of God. What was the nature of this woman’ s faith? Was it merely an intellectual opinion, a clear conviction that this wonderful man of Nazareth was a strong and sympathetic character whom she could trust? Yes, it was that, and a great deal more. It was a transaction by which she approached Christ humbly, embraced His very feet, acknowledged her sinfulness, and relied on Him to do for her some great spiritual good. The woman was really saved through her faith. Jesus Christ Himself did the saving work. When I turn the faucet in my house, it is not the faucet or the water-pipe that fills my empty pitcher. I simply put my pitcher in actual connection with the inexhaustible reservoir which is at the other end of the pipe. When I exercise faith in a crucified Saviour, I put my guilty self into connection with His Divine self, my utter emptiness into connection with His infinite fulness. This is the faith which the apostles preached, and which you and I must practise. “ Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved. Not in Christianity, but on Christ. Not enough to believe in the Christ described in the New Testament. Millions of unconverted people do this, just as they believe in Wilberforce as a noble philanthropist, or in Lincoln as an unselfish patriot. When the miner looks at the rope which is to lower him into the deep mine, he may coolly say to himself, “ I have faith in that rope. It looks well made and strong.” That is his opinion; but when he grasps it, and swings down by it into the dark yawning chasm, then he is believing on the rope, This is more than opinion, it is a voluntary transaction. Faith is the cling to the rope, but it is the rope itself that supports the miner. I. FAITH IS A VERY SIMPLE PROCESS. The most vital of all acts is as easily comprehended as a baby comprehends the idea of drawing nourishment from a mother’ s breast, and falling asleep in a mother’ s arms. II. FAITH IS A ACT. The highest exercise of reason is to trust what the Almighty has said, and to rely on what He has promised. III. FAITH IS A GRACE. Self must go down before we can be lifted up into Christ’ s favour and likeness. IV. FAITH IS THE GRACE. Through this channel flows in the power from on high. V. Finally, IT IS THE GRACE WHICH . When a hungry soul has found this food, the aching void is filled. (T. L. Cuyler, D. D.) The prominence of faith in the thoughts of Christ This was only to be expected in one who preached a gospel of grace. Grace and faith are correlatives. A gospel of grace is a gospel which proclaims a God whose nature it is to give. The proper attitude of those who worship such a God to the object of their worship is that of recipiency. (A. B. Bruce, D. D.) To hold a correct dogmatic definition of “ saving faith” has been considered the most important criterion of a standing or falling Church. Yet I defy anybody to put into dogmatic shape this woman’ s “ saving faith.” It put itself into shape, but it was the shape of feeling and of action; of love which braved all to express itself in outward acts of reverence and affection; of sorrow which found more joy in bitter weeping than ever in laughter and in song; of personal devotion which recked nothing of any one else’ s opinion, if only it might gain one kind word from Him. Whoever they they need not fear but that theirs is “ saving faith.” (R. Winterbotham, M. A.) The work of faith and love in salvation It is surprising to think that the conclusion of this affecting incident should have been made the battle-field on which controversialists should have contended, whether this woman was saved by faith alone, “ Thy faith hath saved thee” ; or by love, “ Her sins, which are many, are forgiven; for she loved much’ ; and as love is assumed to be a work, some on one side would deny that love had anything to do with saving her, whilst others, on the other side, would assert that her faith, unless it was mixed with love or issued in love, would be simply the faith of devils. Now, let us try and reconstruct, as it were, the spiritual history of this woman. In its leading features I think we cannot be far wrong. Our knowledge of human society would teach us that she could scarcely have been the only sinner of her class. Very likely great numbers who sinned either openly or secretly after the same sort of sin had heard, along with her, the Lord’ s call to repentance. But there was that within her which attracted her to Him, and made her listen to Him, whilst other similar sinners did not. What was that? It was an alteration in her will, a sense of sin as foul and polluting, which made her not only be willing, but “ will” (i.e., strongly desire) to be rid of it. This was the root of all. What was it? Being a change of heart, or mind, a turning from sin and turning to God, we may call it repentance; but it was not repentance alone, if so, it would have turned to despair--it was inextricably mixed with faith, faith in God and goodness, a belief in the present excellence and future triumph of purity, as distinguished from the present degradation and future condemnation of impurity. So it was faith as the evidence of things not seen. This gave her the ear to listen to the words of Christ, because in them she heard the words of One who was Himself divinely pure, and yet showed Himself able and willing to relieve the hearts of all who came to Him under the burden of impurity. This was a further act of faith on her part. She not only believed in a God of purity, but in Christ as the representative of that God of purity. She consequently came to Him in spirit as she listened to His words, because His words first opened before her the door of hope. So then we have here a confirmation of the truth o! the remarkable words of the apostle, “ We are saved by hope.” If the words of Christ had not been full of hope for a person in her sad condition, she would not have listened to Him so as to be attracted to Him. But we have used the word “ attract” ; what is the attraction of soul to soul? Most people would unquestionably call it love, and they would be right; for how could there be the attraction of a penitent soul to a pure, yet loving, Saviour, for such benefits as forgiveness and cleansing, without love? What was it, then, which “ saved” her? It was her will, the opposite of the will of those to whom the Lord said, “ Ye will not come unto Me that ye may have life.” Being the change of her will, it was repentance (metanoia), “ repentance unto life” ; but repentance which differed from despair or worldly sorrow, because it was inspired by hope. It was a change of mind God ward, and so was faith in God; and Christward, because it recognized in the Lord the Saviour from sin; and yet from first to last it was faith, whose very life was holy love. She was attracted to the former guilty partners of her sin by unholy love; she was attracted to Christ by penitent, believing, hopeful, holy love. It seems to me the height of folly and presumption to try to separate the will, the repentance, the faith, the hope, the love, and assign to each their respective parts in the matter of salvation. God hath joined all together; let us not try, even in thought, to put them asunder. But what is the significance of the Lord’ s words, “ Her sins, which are many, are forgiven; for she loved much” ? The real drift seems to be in the many sins (αἱπολλαί) and the loving much (πολύ), the same Greek adjective. A sinful life such as hers, in which she had laid herself out to seduce others to sin, required a deep sense of guilt, a deep repentance: a superficial, lighthearted sorrow in her case would have been, humanly speaking, of no avail, no repentance at all; but God, in His mercy, gave her true and godly sorrow. This appeared in her whole action, particularly in her washing the Lord’ s feet with her tears, and wiping them with the hairs of her head. Now, Mary of Bethany similarly poured precious ointment on the Lord’ s feet, and similarly wiped them with her hair; but in all the three accounts there is not a word said of her shedding a single tear; and if she had, her tears would not have been those of penitence, but of gratitude for the restoration of her brother. What, then, was the washing of the Lord’ s feet with her tears? of what, I mean, was it the sign?--of repentance? of faith? of love? Of all three, I answer, all inseparable, all permeating one another, all sustaining and nourishing one another. The whole action, if a sincere one, could not have existed without all three. The Lord’ s words, then, cannot have the slightest bearing on any post-reformation disputes respecting faith and works, faith and love, love as preceding forgiveness, or love as following it. They are emphatically natural words, describing the natural effect of the grace of God in the soul; for though grace be above nature, it yet works not unnaturally, but naturally, according to its own nature, and according to the nature of the human being who receives it. (M. F.Sadler, M. A.) The true and believing penitent even in this life is saved For-- 1. We have salvation in the promises of it (2 Corinthians 7:1). 2. We have it in those graces which begin it (John 17:3; Titus 3:5; Titus 2:12; John 3:8). 3. We have it in the assurance of it. Doth the Lord say and shall He not do? His foundation standeth sure and hath His seal. And if this counsel be, of God as Gamaliel said in another case, ye cannot destroy it. (N. Rogers.) The weeping penitent and the disdainful Pharisee I. THE TO WHICH OUR LORD HER WAS HER FAITH. This was the medium through which the blessing was conveyed, and this was indeed the secret spring of all her proceeding. And in what way, we ask, could this individual have been saved except by faith? As for salvation by works, that was out of the question in her case. She was a sinner, as the Evangelist testifies; and therefore, instead of being justified by the law, was convicted by it as a transgressor. What was there then that could save her? Her relation to Abraham? That she had virtually renounced, and by advancing any plea on that ground would only have convicted herself of apostasy. The comparative innocence of her early years? The sacrifices of the law? These had no power to purify the conscience; nor could “ thousands of rams, or ten thousand rivers of oil” have washed away a single stain. Might her repentance, then, have saved her, and her diligent efforts after reformation? Alas, the convictions and terrors of a guilty conscience furnish no propitiation for sin, and have in them more of fretfulness and irritation than of submission and loyal obedience. And as for the feelings of broken-hearted contrition, of genuine love, of all true devotion, these are the fruits and evidences of mercy already experienced; and therefore, instead of saving the soul, they show it to be already saved. Her faith saved her as accepting the blessing freely given her of God. And this view of faith refutes the notion of those who, from a mistaken zeal for morality, ascribe the saving efficacy of faith to the moral excellence of this principle as implying submission and obedience; for this is to make faith itself a work, and to ascribe salvation to ourselves in performing it. But in Scripture, salvation by faith is constantly opposed to all idea of desert on our part; for “ to him that worketh is the reward not reckoned of grace, but of debt; but to him that worketh not, but believeth on Him who justifieth the ungodly” --that is, one in himself ungodly--“ his faith is counted for righteousness.” We appropriate a gift, we have said, by accepting it; but does this acceptance merit the gift? II. Having said this much of the nature of faith, it is fit we proceed to consider ITS AND BLESSED EFFECTS AND . For while faith saves us simply as receiving the Saviour, it is not to be forgotten that it is an intelligent, holy, and powerful principle: intelligent, as implying a just apprehension of man’ s state and of God’ s character; holy, as being the “ gift of God,” and the first fruit of His regenerating grace: powerful, as bringing us under the influence and authority of those great truths which it is its essential character to embrace. For let it not be thought that in matters of religion, those laws that regulate intelligent natures are reversed, or that any such strange anomaly can exist in the spiritual world as a soul that believes, yet neither feels nor acts. But instead of general language, behold the genuine effects of faith exemplified in her to whom our Lord addressed the words before us. My brethren, the graces observable in this woman are the natural fruits and proper evidences of faith, wherever it is found. The peculiarities of her situation could affect only the mode of expressing them. Is not penitence a natural and necessary effect of faith? In order of time, they are coincident and inseparable; for as there can be no impenitent believer, so neither can there be any unbelieving penitent; but in order of nature, since the discoveries of Divine truth are the means of awakening repentance, it is manifest faith must precede it, to give these discoveries effect. And faith, ushered in by contrition, has love for an inseparable associate. “ Thy sins are forgiven thee” ; and, in spite of the cavils of unbelief, to add, “ Thy faith hath saved thee, go in peace.” My brethren, it is the glory of the grace of the gospel, that it enfolds the chief of sinners; and blessed are those who are enabled, as chief of sinners, to embrace this gospel grace. (H. Grey, D. D.) In peace. Peace Peace is twofold. 1. There is a bad and appearing peace. 2. A true and sincere peace. Bad peace is threefold. 1. A defiled and polluted peace, as is that we find mentioned (Psalms 2:1-2; Psalms 9:21; Psalms 83:4-6), so Ephraim against Manassah, Manassah against Ephraim; and both against Judah: Herod against Pilate, Pilate against Herod; and both against Christ. Est daemonum legio concors, there is such a peace as this amongst the devils; seven could agree well together in Mary’ s heart, yea a legion we read of were in another. “ If a house be divided against itself it cannot stand.” 2. A dissembled and counterfeited peace, when a man pretends peace, but intends mischief. So Joab spake peaceably to Abner when he stabbed him; Absolom invited Ammon to a feast when he intended to murder him. 3. An inordinate peace, which is when the greater and better obeys the less and inferior. So Adam obeyed Eve; Abraham yielded unto Lot, &c. None of these kinds of peace are here meant. That peace which our Saviour speaks of is true and sincere peace, which St. Bernard thus tripleth. 1. External This is that peace we have with men for the time we live in this Romans 12:18). (1) In the commonwealth, as when we are free from civil wars within, and foreign enemies without (Jeremiah 29:7). (2) In the family, or special places where we live, of which peace St. Peter (1 Peter 3:12), and our Saviour (Mark 9:50). 2. Internal, which is the peace of conscience, proceeding from the assurance we have of God’ s favour through Christ. 3. Eternal, which is that perfect rest and happiness, which the saints shall enjoy in heaven with God hereafter (Isaiah 57:2). The peace that our Saviour here speaks of to this woman is, that internal or pectoral peace, that stable and comfortable tranquility of conscience. Peace of conscience is the fruit of justification by faith. (Colossians 1:20; Eph Romans 5:1.) These texts of Scripture make strongly for the truth delivered. Alas for sinners! the misery of such as are not reconciled unto God, “ there is no peace to the wicked, saith my God” (Isaiah 57:21). No peace, none with God, none with angels, none with men, none with the creatures. They are like unto Ishmael, whose hand was against every man, and every man’ s hand against him. They may well fear with Cain, “ Every one that findeth me will slay me.” All creatures being God’ s executioners, and ready pressed to do His will. In no place peace: what Solomon speaks of an ill wife may aptly be applied to an ill conscience. At no time peace. But how doth this seeming or false peace of sinners differ from that peace which ariseth from assurance of God’ s favour through faith in Christ? 1. The conscience of a sinner is quiet, for that it hath no sight nor sense of sin. 2. A benumbed conscience, though it be quiet yet it comforteth not. 3. A dead or benumbed conscience feareth not sin, nor God’ s wrath for sin. But a good conscience is very fearful of giving God the least offence. As it was said of Hezekiah, that “ he feared God greatly,” so is it with the godly. 4. From the unspeakable benefits that true peace brings along with it. What is it that can make a man happy, but attends on peace? It comprehends in the very name of it all happiness, both of estate and disposition. That mountain whereon Christ ascended though it abounded with palms, pines, and myrtles, yet it carried only the name of Olives, an ancient emblem of peace. So though many mercies belong unto a Christian, yet all are comprised under this one little word which is spelt with a few letters, peace. (N. Rogers.) . Luke 8:1 He went throughout every city and village, preaching Village preaching I. WE HAVE HERE THE SUBJECT OF OUR LORD’ S --“ the glad tidings of the kingdom of God.” In these words there is a manifest allusion to the predictions in which the prophets foretold the dispensation of grace and truth by Jesus Christ. The Greek word translated “ kingdom” is of a more extensive meaning than the English one by which it is rendered, being equally adapted to express both the terms “ reign” and “ kingdom.” The first relates to the time or duration of the sovereignty, the second to the place or country over which it extends. Yet although it is much oftener the time than the place that is alluded to in the Gospels, it is never in our common version translated “ reign,” but always “ kingdom.” The expression is thereby often rendered obscure and awkward, as for instance, when motion is applied to a kingdom; when it is spoken of as coming, approaching, being near at hand, and the like. The word is rightly translated “ kingdom” when it refers to the state of perfect felicity to be enjoyed in the world to come; but it is not always thus rendered with the same propriety when it relates to the reign of Christ, by His truth and Spirit upon earth. If, therefore, it be asked, when did the reign of heaven properly begin? we answer, When that prediction in the Psalms was fulfilled--“ Thou hast ascended up on high, Thou hast led captivity captive; Thou hast received gifts for men; yea, for the rebellious also, that the Lord God (the Holy Spirit) might dwell amongst them.” To a limited extent Jesus reigned before His ascension. He pardoned sins, promulgated laws, and brought very many under the dominion of His truth and grace. But the plenitude of the Holy Spirit’ s miraculous gifts and sanctifying influences was reserved till Christ was glorified, to grace His inauguration as King of Zion; as monarchs when they are crowned, although they may have reigned some time before, on that great occasion bestow favours on their subjects, and elevate sonic to distinctions and honours. II. WE NOW PROCEED TO THE SCENE OF OUR LORD’ S . He preached in Judaea, and Samaria; in Jerusalem, in Sychar; but His time was chiefly spent in the towns and villages of Galilee--a distant and despised province, which the inhabitants of Jerusalem and Judaea regarded with such contempt that it was asked, “ Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?” One would think that had our Saviour intended that secular princes should rule in His Church, that the head of the State should by virtue of His office be also the head of the Church within His dominions, instead of spending so much of His time in Galilee, He would have converted Herod, and given him authority to settle all matters of doctrine and discipline for His subjects. 1. We have fully revealed to us and in our possession that truth by which Christ reigns, and accomplishes His gracious purposes. No new, additional revelation will be granted to the end of time. 2. We have Christ, enthroned in universal dominion, full of grace and power, present by His Spirit, with all His faithful servants, to make His truth effectual in the accomplishment of the purposes of eternal mercy. (Essex Congregational Remembrancer.) Preaching everywhere Three “ commercials” entered the railway carriage at C, and it was not long before all in the compartment were in conversation, Being one of the number, I took my part in the discussions which were held upon various topics. As per usual, the weather was commented upon, the state of Ireland, and the dulness of trade. This last subject seemed to be the most fruitful, for each traveller had his own tale to tell. As the different towns were mentioned which were the markets for the goods “ travelled in” by the three gentlemen, I mentioned various incidents in connection with most of them, and through constantly visiting these places displayed some acquaintance with nearly every one spoken of by the “ commercials” ; until one of them said, “ Are you on the road?” “ Yes,” said I, “ I have been on the road ever since I was nine years old.” All looked surprised, and then another made the remark, “ That was rather early to begin such a rough life!” This produced the following reply upon my part: “ Oh, there is nothing like starting young--a good beginning is half the race.” “ May I ask what you travel for?” inquired a third. “ I am on the road to heaven, and I travel for my Master; preaching everywhere for the salvation of souls.” (T. Spurgeon.) Luke 8:2-3 And certain women Mary of Magdala This woman has “ suffered much at the hand of many” commentators; preachers, painters, and poets, ancient and modern. It is high time to do something to remove the foul stain which has so long rested on her fair fame. In the various notices of her history in the Gospels she exhibits” a character as pure and as devoted from the very first as any in the Gospel pages--a character not displaying merely the reflex action of a repentant spirit, but the faith which worketh by love.” She was-- I. A GREAT HEALED BY CHRIST (Luke 8:2). II. A GREAT TO CHRIST (Luke 8:2-3; Mark 15:41). III. A TO CHRIST. She follows Him to the last, and is one of the women who played such a prominent part in connection with the death, burial, and resurrection of the Saviour (Mark 15:40; John 19:25). IV. A SINCERE MOURNER FOR CHRIST (cf. Matthew 27:61; Mark John 20:1-2; John 20:11-18). V. AN OF CHRIST (John 20:17-18; Mark 16:10). (T. S. Dickson, M. A.) The ministry of women We know very little about the women of this little group. Mary of Magdala has had a very hard fate. The Scripture record of her is very sweet and beautiful. Demoniacal possession was neither physical infirmity nor moral evil, however much it may have simulated sometimes the one or the other. Then as to Joanna, the wife of Chuza, Herod’ s steward, old Church tradition tells us that she was the consort of the nobleman whose son Christ healed at Capernaum. It does not seem very likely that Herod’ s steward would have been living in Capernaum, and the narrative before us rather seems to show that she herself was the recipient of healing from His hands. However that may be, Herod’ s court was not exactly the place to look for Christian disciples. But, you know, they of Caesar’ s household surrounded with their love the apostle whom Nero murdered, and it is by no means an uncommon experience that the servants’ hall knows and loves Christ, whom the lord in the saloon does not care about. And then as for Susanna, is it not a sweet fate to be known to all the world for evermore by one line only, which tells of her service to her Master. I. LOOK AT THE CENTRE FIGURE--THE PAUPER CHRIST--AS THE GREAT PATTERN AND MOTIVE FOR US OF THE LOVE THAT BECOMES POOR. 1. The noblest life that was ever lived on earth was the life of a poor man, of one who emptied Himself for our sakes. 2. Think of the love that stoops to be served. It is much to say, “ The Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister” ; but I do not know that it is not more to say that the Son of Man let this record be written, which tells us that “ certain women ministered to Him of their substance.” II. Look at the complement of this love--the love that stoops to be served, and that is THE LOVE THAT TO SERVE. 1. There is the foundation. “ Certain women which had been healed of their infirmities.” Ah! there you come to it. The consciousness of redemption is the one master-touch that evokes the gratitude that aches to breathe itself in service. 2. Do we not minister to Him best when we do the thing that is nearest His heart, and help Him most in the purpose of His life and death? III. THE AND RECORD OF THIS SERVICE. Just as a beam of light enables us to see all the motes dancing up and down that lay in its path, so the beam from Christ’ s life shoots athwart the society of His age, and all those little insignificant people come for a moment into the full lustre of the light. The eternity of work done for Christ. How many deeds of faithful love and noble devotion are all compressed into these words: “ Which ministered unto Him.” It is the old story of how life shrinks, and shrinks, and shrinks in the record. How many acres of green forest ferns in the long ago time went to make up a seam of coal as thick as a sixpence? Still there is the record, compressed, indeed, but existent. And how many names may drop out? Do you not think that these anonymous “ many others which ministered” were just as dear to Jesus Christ as Mary and Joanna and Susanna? How strange it must be to those women now I So it will be to you all when you get up yonder. We shall have to say, “ Lord, when saw I Thee?” &c. He will put a meaning and a majesty into it that we know nothing about at present. When we in our poor love have poorly ministered unto Him, who in His great love greatly died for us, then at the last the wonderful word will be fulfilled: “ Verily I say unto you, He shall gird Himself and make them to sit down to meat, and will come forth and serve them.” (A. Maclaren, D. D.) Self-devotion of women The reckless rapture of self-forgetfulness, that which dominates and inspires persons and nations, that which is sovereign over obstacle and difficulty, and peril and resistance, it has belonged to woman’ s heart from the beginning. In the early Pagan time, in the Christian development, in missions and in martyrdoms, it has been shown; in the mediaeval age as well as in our own time; in Harriet Newel and Florence Nightingale; in Ann Haseltine as truly and as vividly as in any Hebrew Hadassah or in any French Joan of Arc. You remember the Prussian women after the battle of Jena, when Prussia seemed trampled into the bloody mire under the cannon of Napoleon and the feet of the horses and men in his victorious armies. Prussian women, never losing their courage, flung their ornaments of gold and jewellery into the treasury of the State, taking back the simple cross of Berlin iron, which is now the precious heirloom in so many Prussian families, bearing the inscription, “ I have gold for iron.” That is the glory of womanhood; that passion and self-forgetfulness, that supreme self-devotion with which she flings herself into the championship of a cause that is dear and sacred and trampled under foot. It is her crown of renown, it is her staff of power. (Dr. Storrs.) Luke 8:4-15A Sower went out to sow his seed Parable of the Sower I. BY THE WAYSIDE. 1. The design intended in God’ s ordinance of preaching--what is it? We answer, your salvation. 2. The means of becoming interested in this salvation are also here declared. “ Lest they should believe,” says the parable, “ and be saved.” 3. A hindrance, with many, occurs at the very outset. No sooner is the Word of life spoken to them than--“ then cometh the devil, and taketh away the word out of their hearts, lest they should believe and be saved.” 4. The success or failure of this hindrance will be owing, not to Satan--though his power is fearfully great--but to yourselves. II. UPON A ROCK. A class of hearers in whom there is some appearance of believing the gospel. Further, their assent is not a cold and involuntary, but a warm and lively, approbation--“ They receive the Word with joy.” III. AMONG THORNS. A class of persons whose consciences appear to be touched, and, in a certain sense, permanently touched, by the solemn verities of the gospel. And a change has been wrought upon them, by what they have felt. IV. ON GOOD GROUND. The superiority of this class consists in-- 1. A difference of the soil. Here is “ an honest and good heart.” 2. difference in the reception given to the seed sown; that is, to the Word of salvation. The honest and good heart, “ having heard the Word, keeps it.” 3. There is a difference in the growth also, where the seed falls upon an honest and good heart. It germinates, not hastily, as where neither root nor moisture are found; not irregularly, and amidst perpetual resistance, as where thorny cares, deceitful riches, and ensnaring pleasures choke it; but “ with patience” --progressively, uniformly. 4. A difference in the fruit produced. (J. Jowett, M. A.) The parable of the Sower 1. Are you a careless hearer? 2. Are you an unsteadfast bearer? 3. Are you a worldly-minded hearer? 4. Are you a faithful hearer? (1) Faithful hearers present to the sower an honest and good heart. (2) They hear and understand: they go along with the love of the Lord as He instructs them, even if they cannot comprehend all mysteries, or gain all knowledge. (3) They keep the Word: they think of it, meditate upon it. (4) Whoever has been the human sower, they regard the seed as what it is in truth, the Word of God which effectually worketh in him that believeth--they are very jealous for the Lord God of Hosts--watchful that no onespeak lightly or jestingly of it--most watchful, in being very reverent towards it themselves. (5) And they are patient also, in the possession of the Word--patient in trials, because they have such a pledge of God’ s goodwill towards them--patient with others, as taught here in God’ s exceeding great patience towards them--patient in darkness, knowing and feeling that that Word is still, and will always be, a lantern unto their feet and a light unto their paths. (6) And finally, in this patience they bring forth fruit--each man according to his several ability--“ some thirty-fold,” etc. They are assured that God asks them, not merely for attention, but for fruit: not only for a deep root, but for much fruit: not for an unworldly heart, alone, but for that glorious fruit of the Spirit which proves that the inner life of their souls has been begun, continued, and ended in God. (Canon G. E. Jelft) Parable of the Sower This parable displays profound knowledge of human nature, of human character, and of human history. I. THOSE BY THE SEED THAT FELL BY THE WAYSIDE ARE . Having the means and opportunities of knowing and practising Christianity, yet rejecting it wilfully and obstinately. II. THOSE BY SEED ON ROCKY SOIL ARE THE AND TIMID. III. THOSE BY SEED SPILLED AMONG THORNS ARE THOSE WHO ARE BY THE STRONG AND ACTIVE . IV. THOSE BY SEED SOWN ON GOOD SOIL ARE GOOD WHOSE OF BECOME DEEPER AND IN DEGREES. This class includes all sincere persevering Christians. 1. There must be a good and honest heart. 2. A disposition to hear the Word, to receive it without prejudice, and with a sincere resolution to profit by it. 3. Constancy. Retaining the knowledge acquired, and constantly making additions to it. 4. Bringing forth fruit with patience. Our motives may be good, so also may be our intentions and aims; but to give these their full value they must be carried into action. Actions, followed by habits, complete the character. 5. Fruit in different proportions. Yet the lowest degree--thirtyfold--is not small. (J. Thomson, D. D.) The Word of God as seed God does not establish full-formed things. He plants seeds which grow. This is the uniform method of His procedure in every department, natural and spiritual. A seed is the most wonderful thing in the world. There is nothing else that contains so much in so little bulk. There is nothing else that concentrates within it such capacities and possibilities. It is the origin and end of organic life. It forms the bridge of transition from the grain of sand to the living cell. By means of it the naked rock is covered with verdure, and the desolate wilderness transformed into a garden. The analogy between the Word of God and a seed is remarkably close and striking. There are innumerable points of resemblance between them; but in this exposition I can only point out a few of the more obvious and impressive. 1. The first point of comparison is found in the life which they both possess. A seed is a living thing. And in this respect is it not a striking emblem of the Word of God? That Word is a living Word. “ The words that I speak unto you,” says Jesus, “ they are spirit and they are life.” It is not truth merely in a spoken or a written form. It is more than knowledge. It is a living power; it does not work mechanically, but vitally. The words of Christ were the concentration and embodiment of His own life, just as truly as the seed is the concentration and embodiment of the life of the plant. It is the highest of all life. And just as in nature it has been proved that dead matter cannot originate life under any circumstances whatever, except by the introduction into it of a living seed, so without the instrumentality of the Word of God there can be no spiritual life. The Spirit takes of the recorded things of Christ, and shows them to us. Without the Word there would be nothing to know, or obey, or love; without the Spirit there would be no saving knowledge, no obedience, no love. The Spirit operating upon the heart apart from the Word would be only to give a vague inclination without an object as its end and purpose. And therefore all religion that does not spring from the seed of God’ s Word is a dim abstraction of an unreal sentimentality. It is aimless and powerless, the continual ploughing and harrowing of a field without putting any seed into it. 2. Another point of resemblance between the seed and the Word is the twofold nature of both. A seed consists of two parts: the embryo, or germ, which is the essential principle of life, and the materials of nourishment by which, when the seed germinates, the young life may grow. The seed is not all a living principle; its inner essential life reposes in a shrine so small that it can barely be seen. You take away fold after fold of the minute seed, part after part of its structure, and, after all, you have removed only food and clothing. The vital germ has eluded you; and even when you have come to the last microscopic cell, you know not how much of this cell itself is living principle, and how much mere provision for its wants. There is the same dual combination in every spoken and written word of thought and form, of sound and sense. As it was necessary that the Divine should appear in human nature in Christ, so it is necessary that we should have the Divine thought, the Divine life, in the literary form in which it is embodied in Scripture. We could not apprehend it otherwise. The living principle in the seed would not grow without its wrapping of nourishment and clothing; and the mind of God could not affect us unless it were revealed to us in our own human language, in the flowing images of time and sense with which we are familiar. When it is said that we are born again of incorruptible seed, of the Word of God that liveth and endureth for ever, it is not meant to be implied that the Word of God is itself the begetting principle. It is only the mode in which the principle works, the vehicle by which the mysterious power embodied in it operates. It is not the human language or thought, but the Divine life within it, that creates us -new. And when it is further said that this living Word endureth for ever, we are taught thereby that while it is only the vehicle of God’ s begetting principle, it is no mere transient chaff, or husk, or nourishing material, like the perisperm of the natural seed, which has only a temporary purpose to serve, and then decays and passes away when it has served that purpose. It is “ no mere sacramental symbol lost in the using,” but it lives by and with the Divine principle which it reveals and employs, and endures for ever. And just as we see in the natural seed, owing to its twofold nature, an unbroken continuity of life, pausing here and unfolding itself there, casting off the chaff and the husks that have served their purpose that it may expand freely, the perisperm dying that the embryo may grow; so we see in the Word of God the same principle of identity running through the successive stages of its development--the same vital truth of redemption passing through various dispensations that have become old and are ready to perish, growing to more and more, casting off effete forms, and unfolding itself more clearly and fully in new forms better suited to the new needs. We see the germ that was planted in the first promise of the seed of the woman growing successively into the patriarchal and legal dispensations, and, when the leafage and fruitage of these dispensations waxed old and perished, taking a grander form in the gospel dispensation, and blossoming and fruiting with a new and Divine life in a new and regenerated world. 3. A third point of resemblance between the Word of God and a seed may be found in the small compass within which the living principle is enshrined in both. Nothing, as I have said, holds so much in so little bulk as a seed. It is the little ark that swims above a drowned world, with all the life of the world hidden within it. It is a miniature orb, embracing the whole mystery of animated nature. An atom, often not so large as a grain of sand, contains within it all the concentrated vitality of the largest forest trees. It is a most remarkable example of nature’ s packing; for a seed consists- of a single or a double leaf, folded in such a way as to take up the smallest possible room. And in this respect the Word of God may be compared to a seed. It is truth in its seed-form. We have in the Scriptures the most concentrated form of heavenly teaching. Nothing is omitted; nothing is superfluous. It contains all that is necessary for the salvation of man. Nothing can be added to it or taken away from it. It is rounded and finished off--full-orbed and complete, as every seed must be. All is contained within the smallest compass, so as to be easiest of comprehension, easiest of being carried in the memory, and easiest of being reduced to practice. And the Word of God is so compacted in the seed-form, because it needs to be unfolded in the teaching and life of man. The soil was made for the revelation of the seed; and the seed was made to be revealed by the soil. As the seed cannot disclose what is in it unless it fall into appropriate soil, and be stimulated to growth by suitable conditions, so the Word of God cannot disclose all that it contains unless it grow in an understanding mind and in a loving heart; unless by meditation and prayer it can expand from the seed-form to the blade, and the ear, and the full corn in the ear. As wonderful as the unfolding of a beautiful flower from an almost invisible seed is the unfolding of the depth and fulness of meaning that is in the smallest precept of Scripture. For every new generation, the Word of God has new revelations and adaptations. The seed in the new soil and circumstances reveals new aspects of truth. The Word of God, like the great word of nature which is the illustration of it, holds in reserve for every succeeding age some new perception, some new disclosure of the Divine order and economy, revealing to no man, however studious and zealous, more than a part, and ever opening new vistas to reverent love and intelligence. 4. A fourth point of resemblance between the Word of God and a seed is the variety and beauty that may be recognized in both. Have you ever examined a seed under a magnifying glass? It is often seen to be very curiously formed, even by the naked eye; but the microscope reveals new beauties and marvels of construction in it. The other day, in my garden, I took up the withered head of a poppy, and poured out into the palm of my hand the contents of its curious seed-vessel. There was a little heap of very small round seeds that would take a long time to count. I looked at the handful with the aid of my pocket lens, and I saw, to my delight, that each was beautifully chased and embossed on the outside.. For the shapes of beauty often displayed by seeds language has no terms. A whole volume might be filled with an account of them. Some have curious wing-like appendages, on which they float away in the air in search of a suitable growing-place; some are covered with silky down, and some with lace-like tunics, while many kinds have hard enamelled or embroidered surfaces; and their colouring is as varied and beautiful as their forms. In this, the minutest of God’ s works, this smallest and inmost shrine of life, His attention is acuminated, and His skill, as it were, concentrated; so that, above all others, these little things assure us that we are not living in a world left to itself, but in one that reveals at every step the “ besetting God.” And in this respect of beauty and variety, does not the Word of God compare with the seed? How wonderfully is the Bible constructed! It is fashioned in human imagery. Every kind of literary style is found in it. The same truth is conveyed in many forms, and always in the most appropriate dress. Proverb and allegory and parable, history, psalm and prophecy, song and incident, everything that can charm the imagination and quicken the intellect and satisfy the heart, is employed to make its doctrines and precepts interesting and impressive. 5. A fifth point of resemblance between the Word of God and a seed may be seen in the wonderful effects which they both produce. There is something almost creative in a seed. You take a seed to a desert, sow it there, and you change the barren sand, by its growth, into a fruitful field. That seed alters the whole character of a place, makes the climate more genial and the soil more fertile, and the very heavens more accommodating. The flow of streams, the nature of the winds, the sunshine, the dew, and the rainfall, the verdure of forest and field, all depend upon the effects which a little seed produces. Man himself has his well-being affected by the growth of a seed. The sowing of seed must ever be the first process towards a higher state of things. Man’ s natural life hangs upon the sowing of corn. His whole civilization springs from it. His capacity of improvement and capability of receiving spiritual instruction, and consequently all the revelations and experiences of the kingdom of heaven, are connected with the sowing of the seed of the meat that perisheth. And in all these respects, do not the effects produced by the Word of God resemble those of the natural seed? The Word of God is quick and powerful. It awakens an instinctive reverence which no other word inspires. When it enters the soul, it stirs up feelings that are peculiar to itself. It does not lie dormant in the intellect, but quickens the conscience. It does not affect our opinions or speculations merely, it affects our heart and life. We regulate our conduct and thought by scientific or literary truth, but such truth does not lord it supreme over our being: it is subordinate to us--it is our servant, and we use it for our own purposes. But the Word of God dominates our whole nature, and we must submit to it for its own sake. We cannot use or subordinate it to ourselves; we feel that it must use us, and that we must obey it. It has the power of transmutation in it. It has a spiritual quickening energy. It is the source of saving life to souls dead in trespasses and sins. It has taken its place in the heart of human culture. Nothing else has wrought such a mighty revolution in human ideas. It is a Divine seed which came from heaven, and has brought the kingdom of heaven down to men--made the desert to rejoice and blossom as the rose. The harvest which has sprung from it is everywhere visible in the Church and the world. It is increasing in beauty and fruitfulness every day. We are sent into the world to sow, and not to destroy--to sow the seed of heaven, and thus raise in it a heavenly produce foreign to it, impart to it a principle of spiritual life which, by its growth, will choke out old evils, and make all things new. And let us remember that we must give our own life in the sowing, as the plant gives its life in the seed. (H. Macmillan, D. D.) The Sower; or, the origin and authority of the gospel The man who sows has an end in view. On that his heart is set. The sower wisely selects, in reference to established laws, the means which are adapted to this end. In other words, this parable presents to our view, as its groundwork--The nature of the gospel as a revelation; the contents of the gospel as an instrument of redemption. I. CHRIST CAME TO REVEAL GOD. I understand revelation to be contrasted with-- 1. Speculation. The human mind is limited in its range of knowledge, and yet has an unlimited sphere opened to it. 2. Argument or reasoning. Here we need to discriminate. The Word of God is to be believed, because He affirms it; and He will hold His children responsible to recognize His voice. It only remains now to state, in regard to the nature of the gospel as a revelation, that it is a-- 3. Direct unveiling of truth--it is called a mystery hidden from ages. II. THE SON OF GOD CAME TO REVEAL GOD IN CHRIST. It is a revelation of God; but of God in Christ. It contains, then, as the instrument of redemption, or as the word of the kingdom-- 1. The ground, extent, and consequences of man’ s controversy with God. The Scriptures contain, also-- 2. The ground and terms of reconciliation. 3. The motives to reconciliation. (E. N. Kirk, D. D.) The four fields 1. On the hard field the seed can take no root. There are hearts like that hard field here to-day. They have been trampled hard by sin. The seed cannot grow there. I have heard of a man who had attended the Church for years, and who, when he was dying, told the clergyman that he had never heard one of his sermons. As soon as the sermon began, this man was accustomed to begin thinking of the result of his last week’ s trade, and planning for the week to come. So the good seed fell unheeded on the hard, trampled field, and the birds of the air carried it away. 2. The seed which fell on the shallow field took root, and grew up very fast. But there was no depth of soil, the seed was not well rooted, and so it quickly withered away, and brought no fruit. How many of these shallow fields we have amongst us I The people represented by them are ready enough to come to church, and to take an interest in religious matters. But their religion is like an ague, a hot fit succeeded by a cold one. There is a special danger for such people in the wild, excitable forms of so-called religion, so common in these days. They forsake the old paths and the sober truths of the gospel for some scene of hysterical excitement, where men would force the seed to grow rapidly in a hot atmosphere of passion; and they mistake feelings for religion, and noisy display for real conviction. 3. Some seed fell on the thorny field, where the weeds grew thickly and choked it. Ah! my brothers and sisters, how many Epistles and Gospels, how many lessons and sermons have been lost to you because your life is choked with weeds! 4. And last of all, there is the good field, where the seed grows and bears abundant fruit. We cannot all bring forth the same fruit, or an equal amount. As one star differeth from another star in glory, so it is with God’ s people. There is the saint of high and holy life, whose word and teaching sway the multitude. And there is the simple old cottager, who spells out her Bible with dim eyes and painful labour, and finds her treasure there. But both alike are God’ s good fields, where the seed brings forth fruits. (H. J.Wilmot-Buxton, M. A.) Parable of the Sower I. THE SEED ITSELF. The seed is the Word of God--the word of prophecy; the word of promise; the word of sound doctrine; the word of strong exhortation, and solemn warning, and high encouragement, which is given by inspiration of God. 1. A quickening seed. It brings the dead in sin to spiritual life. It is also productive of much consolation to those who are quickened thereby. 2. A holy seed. 3. An incorruptible seed. 4. A seed of fruitfulness in every good word and work to do God’ s will. 5. An abiding seed. II. THE OF THIS SEED, AND THE RESULTS. III. . 1. An important caution to all hearers to take heed how they hear, and to remember their awful responsibility. 2. Much matter of humiliation to the whole Church. There never has been, and never can or will be, any profitable hearing of the Word, unless the Holy Spirit change the heart and prepare the soil for the reception of the Divine seed. 3. Much matter of encouragement to every weak believer. If the work of the Holy Spirit is begun on the heart, the Word of truth may be heard with profit; and it has been heard with profit by all who are separated from the world, and transformed by the renewing of their mind. 4. Finally, the parable sets forth matter of important instruction to the individuals on the way to Zion, relative to the subject-matter of preaching that shall be profitable for them to hear. (W. Borrows, M. A.) Christ’ s classification of human hearts According to the Bible, nothing determines the true worth of a man more clearly than the way in which he acts with regard to the Divine Word; and the different manner of his treatment of it. The Lord places this before us most clearly, intelligibly, in this parable. 1. The indifferent. A very numerous class. Word sown upon, not in, heart; and therefore is given up to any one who will take it away. To such persons life is a walk, not a journey. Unimportant to them whether they arrive at a definite goal; they only ask for the invigorating air on the way, to delight themselves with the sight of the beauties around them, and in cheerful conversation with those about them. The enjoyment of life is their watchword; they do not desire to live, that is to say, to work, but to enjoy. 2. The frivolous. , The Divine Word does not take root in these. It takes root only in the heart softened and moistened with the tears of daffy humiliation. 3. The impure. These have gone the way of humiliation; but have not quite given place to the Saviour. They have reserved this and that sinful joy and pleasure, this and that so-called favourite sin and weakness. Their spiritual life is gradually choked in them, and at last is entirely quenched. 4. The pure. These have had their hearts purified and made beautiful and good, by faithfully laying hold of the beauty and goodness of the Saviour. In this state of preparation they hear and receive the Word, and bring forth fruit. They do not release themselves from this obligation, but follow it earnestly and strictly, yet without self-righteousness. They bring forth the fruit of love, the only ripe fruit. They bring forth patience in humble and constant endurance, amid inward and outward afflictions; also in patience with the often scanty fruit, and especially in a mind which quietly and joyfully submits itself to God in all things. They bring forth fruit in different ways, partly because their soil is of different degrees of goodness, partly because their industry and faithfulness in preparing their soil are different. But none among them assumes superiority over the others; they all love each other like brethren. These alone are the hearts which really belong to Christ. (R. Rothe, D. D.) Parable of the Sower I. THE . Bearing without attending. All a matter of form. II. THE . Interest easily enlisted; feelings quickly touched. Feelings so soon stirred are not likely to be deep, and principles quickly influenced are no safe guides. “ Ruined by adversity” is the epitaph of the heartless. They may be good for a time, but they cannot be good long. III. THE . This is the prevailing phase of modern worldliness. It is an age of hurry. Many persons would be excellent Christians if only they were not so many other things besides; if they were not so engrossed in business, or absorbed in pleasures, or preoccupied by cares. This will not do. If religion is to thrive at all, it must carry on simultaneously two processes; it must strike root downward and bear fruit upward. These are precisely the two things which the worldly man’ s religion can never do. IV. THE . Of these, if we may say it with reverence, it must have been a real pleasure to our Lord to speak. Not, indeed, that the good are all perfect, or all alike good. No sameness in grace, any more than in nature. We expect differences, even among guileless hearts. It is characteristic of the guileless that they make no show for a long time; they develop surely, but very slowly. “ Saved by patience” shall be written over them. (T. E. Marshall, M. A.) The first parable The first snowdrop, the first green leaf on naked hedges, the first few notes that sounding from bush or tree break the long, dreary silence--still more, the first smile that lights up an infant’ s face, its first gleam of intelligence, its first broken word, possess an interest and yield a pleasure peculiar to themselves. With more interest still--did the world hold such treasures--would we look on the first stanzas of Homer’ s muse; the first attempt of Archimedes’ skill; the first oration of Demosthenes; the first sermon of Chrysostom; the first sketch of Rubens; though we could hope to see nothing in these but the dawn of talents, which, at maturity, produced their splendid works, and won them immortal fame. What gives the interest to these things, gives a peculiar interest to this parable. Others may be as instructive and as beautiful, but of all those parables that He strung like pearls on the thread of His discourses, this is the first Jesus ever spake. As peculiarly befitting Him who came to sow saving truths broadcast on the world, no subject could form a more suitable introduction; and with the Divine skill with which He chooses, Jesus handles the topic. I. THE SOWER II. THE SEED. 1. There is life in seed. Gospel truth is the incorruptible and immortal seed; and though ornaments, polish, illustrations, eloquence in sermons, may help the end in view, as feathers do the arrow’ s flight, or their wings the thistle-downs, as they float, sailing through the air, to distant fields, it is to the truth of God’ s Word, blessed by God’ s Spirit, that sinners owe their conversion, and saints their quickening and comfort in the house of God. 2. There is force in seed. What so worthy to be called the power as well as the wisdom of God as that Word which, lodged in the mind, and accompanied by the Divine blessing, fed by showers from heaven, rends hearts, harder than the rocks, in pieces? (Jeremiah 23:29). 3. There is a power of propagation in seed. There is not a shore which shall not be sown with this seed; not a land but shall yield harvests of glory to God and of souls for heaven. III. THE SOIL. 1. Hearers represented by the wayside. Some who carefully cultivate their fields, or their gardens, or their business, or their minds, take no pains whatever to cultivate their hearts. 2. Hearers represented by the stony ground. What have we here? the Word listened to with attention; with more, much more than attention; with such feelings as a man under sentence of death hears the news of his pardon, or men on a wreck, lashed to the mast, hanging on the shrouds, hear the cry, the joyful cry, “ A boat! a lifeboat!” Let us remember that convictions may be mistaken for conversion; admiration of the servant for attachment to his Master; an appreciation of the moral beauties of the gospel for an appreciation of its holiness; the pleasures of emotion, or such gratification as taste enjoys in a beautiful discourse, for the pleasures of piety. 3. Those represented by the ground with thorns. Dr. Johnson put the point well, when, on Garrick showing him his beautiful mansion and grounds, the great moralist and good man laid his hand kindly on the player’ s shoulder, and said, “ All! David, David, these are the things which make a death-bed terrible!” The equally dangerous and deadly influence of great poverty I may illustrate by a scene which I have not forgotten, nor can forget. Alone, in the garret of a dilapidated house, within a wretched room, stretched on a pallet of straw, covered only by some scanty, filthy rags, with no fire in the empty chimney, and the winter wind blowing in cold and fitful gusts through the broken, battered window, an old woman lay, feeble, wasted, grey. She had passed the eleventh hour; the hand was creeping on to the twelfth. Had she been called? It was important to turn to the best account the few remaining sands of life; so I spoke to her of her soul, told her of a Saviour--urging her to prepare for that other world on whose awful border her spirit was hovering. She looked; she stared; and raising herself on her elbow, with chattering teeth, and ravenous look, muttered “ I am cold and hungry.” Promising help, I at the same time warned her that there was something worse than cold and hunger. Whereupon, stretching out a naked and skinny arm, with an answer which if it did not satisfy the reason touched the feelings, she said, “ If you were as cold and as hungry as I am, you could think of nothing else.” The cares of the world were choking the Word. 4. Those represented by the good ground. (1) They receive the Word. In their case it does not, so to speak, go in at the one ear and come out at the other. It does not fall on their minds to run off like water from a stone; it falls, but it is as seed into a furrow, to lodge itself in their hearts. They do not reject, but receive it. (2) They understand it--appreciate its value; feel its power; and “ comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height of the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge.” (3) They keep the Word: as--in contradistinction to soils that, puffed up by winter frosts, throw out, or others that starve their plants--good ground keeps the corn. With hearts where the tenderness of flesh is associated with the tenaciousness of stone, as granite keeps the letters of its inscription, so they “ keep the Word.” (4) They bring forth fruit. In the form of good works, of unselfish, gentle, and heavenly dispositions, of useful, noble, holy, and Christian lives, they bring forth fruit--some much; some little; but all some. (Thomas Guthrie, D. D.) Preachers and hearers I. AN . 1. The work of the husbandman too often regarded with contempt. 2. The husbandman a type of Christ. 3. Christ the type of many true teachers, inasmuch as their life’ s morning is promising, and their evening dispiriting. II. AN MAY HAVE RESULTS. l. Unsuccessful results do not lessen the value of the seed. 2. Unsuccessful efforts should not be taken as the measure of the sower’ s capacity and faithfulness. 3. Unsuccessful efforts must then be studied in relation to the sphere of operations. 4. The best seed will do no good on some lands. 5. The most skilful workman cannot turn a rock into a fruitful garden. III. AN MUST HAVE BLESSED RESULTS, There will be patches of good ground in every farm. There are honest and good hearts in every community. No true teacher will have entire failure. (W. Burrows, B. A.) The Divine Sower and His seed Two things are clear at starting. 1. The seed is all of one kind--not a mixture, but the same throughout; many grains, but one, and only one quality. 2. It is absolutely and perfectly good; not only the same quality throughout, but that quality perfect, and so each and every grain complete in itself in all that constitutes the perfection of seed. I. THE SEED. Seed is a living reality; seed is the germ or origin from which the plant in its strength and beauty springs. Yet withal seed, living as it is, quick with life which should propagate itself to a thousand generations, is dependent for its germination and its fruitfulness on the soil which receives it when sowed. Now our Lord teaches us that seed, possessing, as we know it does, these qualities, is an apt emblem of the Word of God. II. THE SOWER. Jesus Christ Himself. As men do not always scatter their seed literally with their own hands, but use machinery, and yet it is in truth not the machine, but the man who sows it, by whom the seed is sowed, so, whenever His seed is sowed, He is the Sower, using the hands and mouths of men as His instruments, not giving up His office and work to them to discharge for Him, but Himself discharging His office and work by and through them. It is only a partial account of the ministry of His Church to say that He works upon men’ s souls by means of it; it is He in it who thus works, and works effectually. He it is, then, who went out as the Sower; He went out, and He has never turned back; He has never ceased of His sowing. But when did He go out? It has been well written “ He is said to go out by the act of taking flesh, clothed wherewith He went forth as a husbandman, putting on a garment suitable for rain, sun, and cold, albeit He was a King.” And yet we cannot limit His going out to sow to the actual period of the world’ s history at which it pleased Him to put on that garment visibly before the eyes of men; for as it was His purpose from eternity to become Incarnate, so the power and virtue of His Incarnation reaches back as well as forward. III. SEED AND SOWER ARE ONE. Christ is the Sower, Christ is also the Seed; for He is the Word of God. He sows Himself. And He is the Life; He hath life in Himself; He quickeneth whom He will. (C. S. Turner, M. A.) The seed In order to obtain the leading thought of the parable, and so get the key to all that follows, we must reverse the explanatory proposition, “ The seed is the Word of God,” and take it thus--“ The Word of God is seed.” The principle of germination is essentially Divine, and the germ idea is the distinctive characteristic of God’ s work. Man’ s sole method of increase is collection; God ever multiplies by scattering. We fill our garners with the harvested grain, and call it wealth; but its only end is destruction. God sends His sunshine to dry the ripening ear, and His wind to shake out the bursting seeds, and lo! for every fallen grain an hundred like to itself, all instinct with the same reproductive energy. Man constructs his wondrous mechanisms and quickens them into life with the subtle forces which he wrests from nature and compels to his will. But they wear out or rust out in time, and never reproduce themselves after their kind. If he plant them, they will not grow; if he break them and scatter their parts, they are utterly destroyed. Or he builds his mighty monuments and leaves them for time to crumble; and long centuries after we dig from the earth their imperishable remnants which have lain as they fell. Under God’ s law a tree shoots heavenward, more complex and marvellous than the grandest result of human ingenuity. Its fruit falls, and from its decay another tree springs into being; a branch is out and thrust into the ground, and that, too, becomes a tree; a bud is slipped off and inserted in a growth of diverse character, but it becomes a limb, and bears fruit, and reproduces after its own kind. And even if God’ s monuments, the everlasting mountains, crumble away, they make soil which enters into living organisms, which die and are resolved into dust, which is upheaved by some terrible throe of nature, and lo! a mountain again. Nothing ever produced by man can germinate. Nothing produced by God ever failed to do so, if placed in the proper conditions. Therefore, if the Bible be seed, it is God’ s Word. But if the Bible be God’ s Word, it must be seed; its distinctive character must be the germinative principle. It is the revelation to man of God’ s truth. But it cannot possibly be all that truth, nor even any part of that truth in its fullest development, because God’ s truth must be infinite, and this finite world could, therefore, never contain it. Being seed, however, it contains the germ of truth which, if subjected to the requisite conditions, will inevitably multiply itself in infinite series and ratio after its own kind. He who receives this seed as in good ground will, with absolute certainty, in due season bring forth as bounteous a harvest as his capacities may admit. He who receives God’ s revelation under standingly, becomes possessed of all its potential results of Divine knowledge, which, under proper intellectual and spiritual culture, will be developed to the full capacity of his intellectual and moral constitution in this life and in the life hereafter. (Robert Wilson, M. D.) The Sower sowing His seed I. THE SOWER IS CHRIST HIMSELF. He that sows the good seed is the Son of man. Are not ministers sowers? 1. Christ sows His own field, which He hath dearly purchased with His precious blood: they sow not their own fields, but His, not being “ lords of the heritage of God” (1 Peter 5:3). 2. He sows His own seed: so in the text. The sower sowed His seed. They have no seed of their own, but fetched out of His garner. 3. They differ in the manner of sowing. He was the most skilful Sower that ever was. He knew exactly what grain every ground was fitted for. With Him were treasures of wisdom. We that have but drops from His fulness, are unskilful in comparison. He could speak to men’ s private and personal sins, as the woman at the well. He could answer to men’ s thoughts and reasonings; we not so. 4. We differ in efficacy. We may sow and plant, and this is all. Suppose it be Paul, or Apollos himself, we can give no increase, nor make anything to grow. But He can sow, and give increase at His pleasure. He can warm it with the beams of grace, streaming from His own brightness (Malachi 4:2). He is the Sun of Righteousness. He can blow upon His field with the prosperous winds of His gracious and quickening spirit (Isaiah 3:8;Son 4:16). II. THE ACTION. This Sower goeth forth. Christ goeth forth to sow three ways. 1. In spirit, by inward inspirations and heavenly motions. And thus He sowed in the hearts of Adam, Noah, Abraham, and the prophets; who were, with other holy men, immediately inspired and acted by the Holy 1 Peter 1:21). So with the penmen of Scripture, and the apostles. 2. In person, according to His humanity He cometh out from the bosom of His Father, and comes into the field of the world by His happy Incarnation. 3. In the ministry of His servants He goeth forth, both the prophets and teachers before Him. III. THE IS, TO SOW HIS SEED. 1. As seed is a small and contemptible thing, altogether unlikely to bring such a return and increase; so the Word preached seems a weak and contemptible thing (1 Corinthians 1:23). 2. As the seed in the barn or garner fructifies not, unless it be cast into the earth; so the Word, unless cast into the ears and hearts of men, is fruitless, regenerateth not, produceth no fruits of faith. 3. As the sower pricks not in his seed, nor sets it, but casts it all abroad, and knows not which of his seed will come up to increase, and which will rot and die under the clods; so the minister (God’ s seedsman) speaks not to one or two, but casts his seed abroad to all in general; neither knows he which and where the Word shall thrive to increase, and where not, but, where it doth increase, it riseth with great beauty and glory, as the grain of mustard seed becomes a tree in which the birds of heaven may build their nests. 4. As seed hath a natural heat, life, and virtue in it, by which it increaseth and begetteth more seeds like unto itself; so the Word cast into the good ground hath a supernatural heat in it, being as fire (Jeremiah 5:14), and a lively power to frame men like itself, to make them, of fleshly, spiritual; of blind, quick-sighted; of dead in sin, alive in grace. And as one grain quickened, brings sundry tillows, and many grains in each; so one Christian converted, and receiving this power in himself, gaineth many unto God, desiring that every one were as he is, except his bonds and sins. 5. As seed cast into the ground lives not, unless it die first; so the Word preached brings no fruit or life, unless it kill first and work mortification; yea, and by continual sense of frailty and acquaintance with the cross, it keeps under such natural pride and corrupt as resist the work of 2:6. As seed cast never so skilfully into the earth is not fruitful, unless God give it a 1 Corinthians 15:38); so neither is the Word, unless God add His blessing (1 Corinthians 3:6). (Thomas Taylor, D. D.) Plentiful sowing Men do not perish, brethren, because there are not sufficient truths to save them. The seed-basket is ever full, and willing hands are ready to scatter the seed in all directions. What thousands of precious truths are uttered in men’ s hearing every sabbath day. It is estimated that eighty thousand sermons are preached in this country every week; and what hundreds of thousands mere are circulated in the homes of the people by the press; and what constant utterance of saving truths by earnest men in Sabbath schools, in conversation, and by the couch of the afflicted l And yet does the upspringing of this holy seed appear in general righteousness, fidelity, and purity? Is the condition of society a manifestation of the truth supposed to be cherished in its inner life? Alas I no. The truth is but rarely sown in the heart, (W. O. Lilley.) Luke 8:5 Some fell by the wayside The field-path This first kind of soil is the only one of the four mentioned in which nothing came of the sowing. In this alone there is a combination of causes which renders any good result impossible. Three causes are shown: 1. Before the sowing the soil was incapable of receiving the seed, for it was beaten hard by constant traffic. 2. After the seed had fallen upon it men trod it under foot and crushed out its life. 3. That which remained upon the surface the birds devoured. The connection between the three is obvious. Had the soil not been trodden hard beforehand, neither would the after-treading have destroyed the seed, nor would the birds have found it lying ready. Hid in the bosom of the earth, it would have been safe from both. It is the picture of a thoroughly worldly man--not what would commonly be called a wicked man, not a man whose life is a scandal to the society in which he moves, by reason of the grossness of his vices, or the profane or ribald licence of his conversation, but simply one who may be in all outward and social respects without a speck or flaw in his character--nay, who may even be scrupulous in performing all such external acts of religion as the world is pleased to account marks of respectability and good taste, but who is withal simply incapable of receiving any wholesome impression from the ministry of the Word of God, because he has given up his whole heart and mind to worldly things, and heart and mind under their unopposed influence have become completely hardened. Such a man hears the Word. It is beautiful to him, it is pleasant to him, just as, and in no other way, than some history, or poem, or fiction, written by the hand, inspired by the genius of a fellow-man, is pleasant or beautiful. As the work of God’ s hand, the revelation of God’ s mind, he never for a moment recognizes it; as the voice of God’ s Spirit speaking to and bearing witness with His own spirit he never for a moment thinks of it or feels it. And this because there is drawn over his heart and mind and spirit--over all that part of his being in which exists most fully the image of God and the counterpart of the Divine mind--that hard, callous covering of worldliness which is the common road of all that is unprofitable and vain, but is like armour of proof against the entrance of aught that is good and holy into the soil beneath. (C. S. Turner, M. A.) How to reclaim the indifferent If the farmer wish to throw into one his separated fields, and make the old roadway part of his productive soil, he knows that the very causes of its hardness have added some fertilizing elements, and that only deep and thorough tillage is needed to accomplish his purpose. But he carefully chooses the time to put in the plough. He does not begin his work when the frost has bound the land in its icy fetters, nor when the drought and heat have reduced it to stony hardness. But meantime he is diligently removing the fences and clearing away, as opportunity may offer, the obstructions which have accumulated. And then some day, when he sees it softened by gentle showers, which the shading clouds have allowed to soak into its bosom, he ploughs deep and harrows thoroughly, and lo, the work is done I In the same way must we deal with this indifference to religion. If we attack such a man when his heart is cold and careless, or when some angry spirit of controversy warms him into resistance, we shall meet only disappointment. In fact, we are sure to be disappointed if we attack him at all. We must wait patiently and watch closely. We must gently and quietly remove as we may the barriers which most frequently we have ourselves erected about him. So long as we keep him fenced out from the companionship and familiar intercourse of pious people, we can make no impression upon him. It was not John the Baptist, but Jesus the Christ who was the friend of publicans and sinners. If we seek the society of such people, and show interest and pleasure in their company, at first they may be shy, but we shall soon see that pass. If we are careful not to obtrude our religion upon them they will always be careful not to make their irreligion offensive to us. And then some time, when the clouds of sorrow have overshadowed them, and the gentle rain of kindly sympathy has softened the hard crust of reserve, God gives us our opportunity, and we may drop the rich seed of His saving truth into the deep furrows which lie open in the mellowed soil. Who knows but that when the harvest season comes, we may trace the old roadway all through the burdened field by the line of heavier sheaves which it has ripened! (R. Wilson, M. D.) The highway ground I. THE KIND OF SOIL. 1. As a highway lieth careless, neglected, unbounded, common, not several, but is trodden and beaten with the feet of all sorts of passengers, so these hearers’ hearts are not closed and made several for the seed of God’ s Word, and for heavenly things, but lie common and open to all temptations and suggestions of Satan, to the covetous and carnal desires of earthly things, which eat up heavenly; to vain wandering, idle cogitations and thoughts, all which make a thoroughfare and beaten path in the heart. 2. As in an highway if any seed fall, no man looks to cover it, no man respects it, as looking for no good at all of it, but leaves it to be trodden of beasts, and eaten up of birds: so with these hearers, when the Word is preached, they hear it carelessly, without all attention, or affection, they care not to understand it, never cover it by meditation, nor receive it further than by giving it the hearing; they expect no good from it; let errors and lusts come and tread it down, let the devil by suggestions and tentations devour it up; they care neither to understand, nor receive, nor remember it. 3. As highway ground can neither receive nor cover the seed, or if it should, it is so hard and padded, that it cannot afford it the least rooting, at least to come unto fruit, the crop will never fill a man’ s hand: even so these hearers, like hard and paved earth, continually trodden and trampled with wandering thoughts, and fruitless cogitations, and tentations of the devil, hear the Word sometimes, but without heart, mind, affection. A little seed may lie on the superficies or top of their brain, or tongue, or may make a little show on the outside, but nothing of it gets within them, nor takes any root, and consequently yields no fruit of faith, of God’ s fear, of piety or Christian conversation. II. CAUSES OF . 1. Inward. Their own disposition: they tread the seed under foot; that is, despise and undervalue it. It is the careless hearer who understands not, nor attains. The careless hearer is the worst hearer of all, as this first ground is the worst ground of all. The other two are bad both, yet they gave the seed some cover, and receive it in; but these hold it out, and leave it where they found it. 2. Outward. The malice of the devil (see Luke 8:12). Where are three things to be considered: (1) The description of this malicious person, both by his name and by a similitude. (2) The exercise of his malice: “ he cometh.” 3. The end of his coming; threefold: (1) To steal the Word. (2) To hinder faith. (3) To bereave men of salvation. (Thomas Taylor, D. D.) Seed on the wayside; or, the heedless hearer This part of the parable is founded on the principle that attention is the first claim of the gospel. The gospel claims attention from us-- I. AS TRUTH By a mental law, truth and the mind can have no connection but through the medium of attention. 1. The attention is voluntary. 2. Attention is under the law of habit. 3. An obligation rests on man to exercise and improve this power. For we know that some of the highest obligations of life involve a right exercise of attention. II. AS A SYSTEM OF TRUTH HAVING TO THE HUMAN MIND. For it includes-- 1. Spiritual facts as its basis and its end. The difficulties of life have been the occasion of making all the greatness the world has ever witnessed in men. 2. Painful truths; being a direct, unqualified attack upon cherished desires and confirmed habits. 3. The doctrines of the gospel are contested truths. And the contest, our Lord informs us, is first begun by another party before man takes it up. Some find insuperable difficulties in particular doctrines. Others are prejudiced against the principles for being so much better than those who profess to believe them. And he has taught another class in his school to look within themselves for illumination. III. As TRUTH or SUPREME . 1. It is God’ s special revelation in human language. It is God’ s Word, addressed to all men, and to every man. Then, by everything sacred and decent, by every consideration of propriety and of duty, every human being should listen to the Word of God. And again we are bound to give such attention, because the Scriptures-- 2. Fully and strongly exhibit our duties; the chief of which are those we owe to God. They also fully exhibit our duty to man. 3. God here treats of life and death eternal. This is the sum. (E. N. Kirk, D. D.) World-hardened They hear the Word as a man hears in a dream. They do not attend to it. It is a mere sound that has no meaning in it to them. If you ask them, “ What think ye of Christ? “ they reply by saying that they have not thought at all. He is not personal to them at all. It is a common thing to meet men and women who have been church-goers all their lives, and who tell you with the blandest manner, when you speak to them about their souls, that they have never really given the matter any serious thought. No impression of truth has been made upon their hearts. They are indifferent to it all, though keenly alive to and intelligent concerning a score or a hundred earthly interests. They are sometimes called “ gospelhardened,” but this is a great mistake. They are world-hardened. They are like the mill-owner who had given half the money required to build a stately church upon the services of which he attended, and who, when asked what he thought of the sermon of dedication, to which he had been outwardly listening, said: “ The fact is, I did not hear what the pastor was saying. I could not help thinking all through the service, as I looked at the spacious proportions of this edifice, if it was a cotton mill how many spindles I could set up in it.” The man was mill-hardened. A lady confessed to me once that, during the sermon, though she heard the words of it and understood the theme as I discussed it, she had been planning for a dinner party that she was to give during the week. Here was a heart society-hardened. I knew another man who acknowledged that during the sermon he had been mentally making a note of the men whom he noticed in the congregation, and arranged in his own mind how and when he would see them in order to induce them to take out policies in a great life insurance company, of which he had recently been made the local agent. Thus do men harden their hearts and become wayside hearers. (G. F. Pentecost.) Luke 8:6 And some fell upon a rock-- The shallow soil It is evident that there is a very considerable difference between the persons whose state is signified by the shallow soil and those who are represented by the hard field-path. By those the Word of God is not received at all--merely heard with the outward ears, and in no true sense understood; by these the Word is not only received, but received with joy. The persons now in question do not simply listen to the Word of God with pleasure and admiration, as the worldly man does, because of the outward graces in which its expression is clothed. No I their joy is a joy of the heart--they understand that which they hear, in a sense in which the worldly man understandeth it not. Its inner meaning--its spiritual beauty--is not hidden from them, as from him. They are able to discern and to appreciate it as a revelation of God, and the excellence, the purity, the righteousness, the loveliness of that which is revealed find in their hearts a powerful attraction. They listen to the gospel story and, far from only enjoying it as a beautiful story, they feel themselves drawn “ with cords of a man, with bands of love,” by Him of whose love and labour for them the story tells. Nor does the effect of the Word end there. They not only understand, they not only feel, but they act. The love of Christ constrains them--constrains them to break away from evil habits, to exercise self-denial, to follow in many ways that which they see to be good. What more, you may ask, could be expected or desired? Is not this the very result which the Divine Sower looks and longs for? Is not this proof which cannot be gainsaid that the Divine seed has taken good root, and is fulfilling the purpose of its sowing? How can this soil be classed as unfruitful when it is actually bearing so goodly a crop? Alas 1 the Sower Himself answers our questions. It is all good while it lasts; but it endures but for a time, and all trace of it is gone long before the reapers go forth to gather in the harvest. Then they find no more fruit here than on the path, and they carry no sheaves hence, for all its past promise, to add to the store in the Master’ s barn. (C. S. Turner, M. A.) On stony ground The wayside had suggested incapacity for fruitage, resulting from a misapplication of the moral and intellectual faculties, the consequence of which was indifference to sacred things. The stony ground illustrates another and equally disastrous condition of irreligion, produced by an entirely different cause. Here the soil is good. In fact, in such places it is often of superior quality, produced by the rotting of leaves and other refuse matter in the moisture which cannot soak into the ground, But it has no depth. The seed which falls on this rich warm mould is rapidly quickened and soon germinates, shooting up with a green luxuriance that gives promise of speedy and abundant returns. The roots are thrown out all along the surface, but they can take no firm hold on the soft and yielding material, and the tap-root, which ought to penetrate deep into the subsoil to give support to the plant and find a never-drying source of moisture, is bruised and turned aside by the underlying stones against which it strikes, while the very rapidity and luxuriance of growth soon exhausts the scanty materials which nourish it. The warm sunshine which ought to give life and vigour becomes a source of injury instead, and the wilted plant droops, dies, and is forgotten long before the harvest season comes. Now we know perfectly well that such ground is far from useless; that if the proper treatment be applied it is often the most profitable, for these are just the conditions which we select or produce artificially for forcing. We want rich and rapid growth, and we know how to obtain it. Every gardener knows what special care must be bestowed upon the hot-bed to prevent the loss of all his labour. The hot, damp, shallow soil receives greedily the proffered seed, and with a marvellous quickness develops the germ. But the most assiduous attention is demanded, for these hotbed plants are far more delicate than those beside them from the same seed. They must he mulched and watered, the sunshine must be courted, but shaded off as it grows too warm, the cold air must be carefully excluded, but often discreetly admitted, and the least relaxation of all this diligence means destruction. A. sash left open, a mat removed, a single watering forgotten, and the plants wither and droop. The very same soil, if deeply dug, thoroughly drained, and well fertilized, will become permanently strong and productive. Surely we are only too familiar with the application in all its various degrees. We see all about us people in every stage and character of irreligion who were once, to some extent at least, professedly pious. It is fearful to contemplate how many such there are, and how very difficult it is to reawaken them to any interest in religion. The facility with which great numbers of persons may be made to acknowledge the influence of religious emotion is familiar to us all, and a little observation will also make us familiar with the startling disproportion of those numbers to the comparatively few who persevere. Nothing could be further from the truth than to accuse such persons of hypocrisy, for emotional characters are almost always sincere. It is precisely because their minds are so receptive, their feelings so readily impressed by eloquent and earnest appeals, that we find them yielding so readily and accepting the assurance of God’ s love with a gladness as real as it is demonstrative. But they have no depth of character, and their very shallowness causes a rapid and laxuriant development of practical religion. The drunkard is suddenly reformed; the profane swearer becomes frequent in prayer; the brawler grows peaceable and patient under insult. But one after another the old evil habits of life get the better of them, and their last state is worse than the first, because religion has become to them an experimental failure; the glowing faith which believed conversion an accomplished fact has given way to disappointment, and the man has lost all confidence in the reformatory influence and efficacy of religious belief and effort. Now if we bear in mind this warning lesson of the Master, we shall always become watchful and careful when we see any unexpectedly prompt and promising yielding to religious influence or exhortation. Beware of the quick fertility of the stony ground. (Robert Wilson, M. D.) Stony ground I. THE KIND OF SOIL. A kind of bad hearers, compared to stones, or stony ground. 1. For the natural hardness, which cannot be broken nor softened. 2. For their coldness: not warmed with the heat of the sun of righteousness, nor the Spirit of God, but abide cold as stones. 3. For their heaviness: a stone will not easily be removed out of his place, his proper centre is the earth. 4. For their unprofitableness, and resistance of the fruits of the earth: for as stoniness of ground by the curse upon man’ s sin became very noisome to the fruits of the earth, so the stoniness of heart, a part of the curse, more hinders fruits of grace than any stony ground can hinder seed cast into it. 5. As stony ground and common stones are little esteemed, but rejected of men; so this stony ground is as little respected of God. Yet herein our hard hearts are worse than stones: they increase not their hardness; but ours is daily increased by wilfulness and perverseness. II. Now to the success OF THE SEED in this stony ground: and first, the hopeful and commendable, in the beginning--“ it sprung up.” Which implies that of Mat 13:20, “ He which heareth the Word, and incontinently with joy receiveth it.” Where we have four things considerable. 1. This bad ground receiveth the Word: wherein they go beyond the former hearers, who only heard the Word, but left it as soon as they heard it; let the devil, or any devouring bird eat it and take it from them, they care not. 2. This bad ground receives it “ incontinently” (saith Matthew), when God speaks they will hear, and without delays or excuses willingly receive when God proffers. 3. These bad hearers, and stony ground receive it with joy. 4. This stony ground brings up the seed sown. (1) Is rises to external obedience and reformation of many, perhaps most things. (2) The seed springeth up to an outward profession, as those that hope to be saved by it, and so to an outward fellowship and communion with the saints in the Word, sacraments, and many other godly exercises, both public and private. (3) It springeth up in the stony ground to a kind of faith, which hath in it not an enlightening only, but a taste of the heavenly gift and the powers of the world to come, by which they are partakers of the Holy Ghost; that is, something they have so like true sanctification that both themselves and others may think them truly sanctified. Some of the Israelites tasted of the fruits of the land of Canaan, and did thereby perceive what a good land it was and desired part in it, and conceived good hope of enjoying and possessing it, yet never enjoyed it, but perished in the wilderness. Learn hence how far a bad hearer may go in Christianity. A man may hear the Word with diligence, receive it with joy, believe with some assurance, grow up to high place in the profession of religion, bring forth fruits of commendable obedience, and all this while be bad ground and in damnable estate. Having spoken of the success of this seed cast into the stony ground, in the commendable hopes it gave in the beginning; now we proceed to the lamentable and doleful success in the conclusion with the reason of it, both in the words now read unto you. 1. “ It withered away.” 2. “ Because it lacked moisture.” First, of the withering of these glorious professors, then of the causes. This withering is a falling away, but not all at once, but by little and little, as a leaf loseth his greenness and flourish, and withers by degrees. For the word implieth the manner of their falling. Neither is it a falling away in part, or for a time, as the disciples and Peter in the time of Christ’ s passion; but a final falling away from all their graces, from which falls is no return or rising. Here consider four things: 1. How men wither away in grace. 2. The danger of withering. 3. Notes of a man withering. 4. The use and application of all. For answer to the first: Men, even great professors in the Church, wither four ways. 1. In judgment. 2. In affection. 3. In practice. 4. In the use of the means. The second is the danger of such withering: Which we shall clearly see in four particulars. 1. In respect of God they are most hateful, seeing they can find nothing more worthy forsaking than the good way, and esteem everything better worth keeping than God’ s image and graces. 2. In respect of the Church: They bring scandal to the weak, and the scorn of the wicked upon themselves and all professors. 3. In respect of the sin itself: None more dangerous. For first, relapses, we say, are far more dangerous than first diseases. Secondly, Satan returning, comes with seven more wicked spirits than himself, and so he is for ever held under the power of Satan. Thirdly, this sin is commonly punished with other sins, which is God’ s most fearful stroke, to which He seldom gives up His own. Fourthly, it is in the degrees of the sin against the Holy Ghost, and easily brings a man into that estate that there may be left no sacrifice for his sin. 4. In respect of the judgment that awaits and overtakes this sin. The judgment is certain. The third general thing proposed is: Notes of a man withering in grace. And these are six. 1. A resting in a common and general hope of a good estate, without desire or endeavour to seek marks of certainty or special assurance in himself, As a foolish tradesman hopes his estate is good enough, and bears his creditors in hand it is so; but he is loath to cast up his books or come to a particular view of it. No surer argument of a man decaying. 2. An opinion of sufficiency, that he hath grace enough, he will seek no more because he pleaseth himself in his present measure; and he that careth not to increase his stock wastes of the principal. And not to go forward is to go backward. 3. A comparing of a man’ s self with those that are of lower and inferior graces or means. 4. A shunning or slighting of God’ s ordinances; a willing excommunicating himself from the assemblies when he list. That man’ s strength is abating who falls from his meals. He must eat that must live. And the plant that would not wither must draw moisture daily. Or, if using public means diligently he neglect private, he is on the withering hand. 5. Secret sins ordinarily committed, not bewailed, not reformed. 6. Hatred of God’ s children, and the way of just men, whether open or secret. What be the means to keep us from withering? 1. Get sound judgment, to discern the truth from error. If we would not fall we must be grounded on the foundation of the prophets and apostles; by private reading, meditating and conferring of the Scriptures, which notably begets and confirms soundness of judgment; and by prayer, which obtains the spirit who is called the spirit of judgment. The lamp fails without oil. 2. Sound persuasion of the truth thou professest; that thou mayest not please thyself that thou hearest the truth from the mouth of the preacher; or hast it in thy Bible at home; no, nor content thyself that thou hast it in thy mouth or discourse, but that thou hast the experience of it in thine heart. 3. Sound affection and love to the truth upholds from withering in it, when the wise Christian esteems the pearl worth selling all to buy it. Love anything better than grace, thou art gone. Demas loves the world better, and easily forsakes the truth. How many lights in the beginning of their profession have been extinct by the world coming upon them. 4. Sound conscience; to which is required-- (1) sincerity; (2) tenderness. 1. When God’ s Word makes no impression or gets not within the heart to renew or reform the man, though sometimes it may scratch the outside and restrain him. 2. Neglect, or light over-passing the works of God’ s mercy or justice, upon himself or others. 3. Unfeelingness of hardness, and unwillingness to feel it; no mislike of it, no desire to understand the danger of it. 4. For the maintaining their estate, credit, and favour in the world, or their lusts and pleasures, to oppose and dislike such doctrines, courses, and persons as have the word on their sides. 5. Out of resolution of following a man’ s own present course, whatsoever persuasion or doctrines he hears to the contrary, to fly occasions and companies which might touch or work upon his conscience. 6. Habits and customable sins, which make the heart as a pathway. A soft heart smites itself for once sinning and for small sinning. (Thomas Taylor, D. D.) Now the marks to know a hard heart are these: Seeds on stony places; or, the cowardly hearer Here is a case of great promise in the commencement. We should here take a distinct view of the nature of courage. The common notion of it is, indifference to danger. But that does not distinguish this noble principle from rashness. It properly refers to that quality of mind by which the higher sentiments overrule the dread of suffering. These sentiments are such as patriotism, philanthropy, integrity, sense of duty, and sense of right. The opposite state of mind is that which places the escaping from suffering above every consideration. And it is a person governed by that principle that is pointed out by this part of the parable. This habit of placing comfort before goodness equally facilitates the beginning and the ending of his religious life; for-- I. IT HIM FROM EVEN THE THEORY OF THE GOSPEL, AND MUCH MORE FROM TRULY ITS . Imagine a person awakened by the law of God to an apprehension of danger; of guilt in his sight, and consequent exposure to the Divine wrath. If he would regard the testimony of God, he would find more in his case than the exposure to suffering. But such is the operation of selfishness in the human heart, that often where this sense of danger is irresistibly urged home, there is still such a magnifying of suffering as the great evil, that the attention shall be fully absorbed by that. The first consequence is-- 1. He neither sees that Christ comes to save him from sin; nor that he is a sinner. 2. He misapprehends the atonement, or the ground of Christ’ s death. This must make a superficial Christian. 3. He fails also to see the work of the Holy Spirit, and his own obsolute dependence on that Spirit for renewal and sanctification. There lies in that heart the deep, dead, broad rock of impenitence and pride. Into its compact substance no root of conviction, of repentance, of faith, of love, ever penetrated. The very thing he has bargained for is an easy service. Christ gives peace; and it is peace he wants, and not trouble. He can accordingly sail in smooth seas, and live well in fair weather with his religion. But-- II. HE CAN DO NO BETTER WITH THE OF THE GOSPEL THAN WITH ITS THEORY; for-- 1. It requires him to struggle with sin in his own heart. The work to which Christ calls us is a progressive conquest over spiritual evils in ourselves. 2. His conflict with the world. Men of superficial religion are generally very much perplexed to know what the Scriptures mean by “ the world,” against which they speak so severely. (E. Kirk, D. D.) Luke 8:7 And some fell among thorns The thorn roots These are not thoroughly worldly persons, who pay no heed at all to the Word of God; nor yet are they persons who trust to their own feelings and impulses, and what are called religious impressions, for strength to stand in the evil day, and to endure tribulation for the sake of Christ; but they are those who set themselves to accomplish the task which our Lord says is impossible, of serving God and Mammon, of making, as it has been said, the best of both worlds. They cannot seek God with their whole heart, because their heart is always occupied, in part at least, with some other object. God and the things of God are acknowledged by them as having a claim on their time and thoughts, but it is only the spare time, only the thoughts of (so to say) idle moments, that they can afford to give up in response to this claim. Whatever home the Word of God can find for itself in vacant spaces of mind and heart it is welcome to occupy; whatever influence it can exercise within the narrow limits which other things do not fill, they do not grudge it; but it can by no means be permitted to interfere with more pressing interests, or to assert anything like a free right of entry into all the concerns of life. It is not at all, I think, that, like those represented by the shallow soil, they grasp eagerly at the sweet and comforting portions of the Word’ s teaching, set aside all that is more stern and terrible, and so live really under the influence of that part of the Word which they have gladly received until they wake to the conviction that what they have received is only a part, and that the time has come when the choice lies between giving up the part received and receiving in addition the part set aside, and then have not sufficient earnestness to take the harder and better course, and so fall away altogether. Rather it would seem they do from the first recognize both sides of the teaching--the sweetness of the promises, and the awfulness of the threatenings; but at the same time there is something which prevents them from fully appreciating either the one or the other; something which hinders them from really using all their energies that they may avoid the threatened woe and attain the promised blessedness. And this something is the hold upon their hearts which is already established by cares, riches, pleasures, delights of the world. Thus they feel some desire to escape the future punishment of sin, but the desire of being free from present cares lies deeper, and if it comes to a question between voluntary endurance of cares here for the sake of happiness hereafter, and self indulgence now with the risk of misery in the future, they choose the latter, because they see the things temporal more clearly than the things eternal,, and what they see most clearly they rank most highly. Thus also they wish to enjoy the glories of heaven, but they wish also to have all they can of the enjoyments of earth, and if they -must forego one for the sake of ensuring the other, they will most readily forego that which they wish for most feebly, because its excellence and desirableness is least real to them, and this again will be the distant glory which is discerned by faith only, not the present enjoyment which forces itself upon the notice of their senses. (C. S. Turner, M. A.) Among thorns Here a new and startling thought is brought out, which leads our minds into a different and most suggestive channel. The Master’ s mind recurs to the great germ-principle, and teaches us that God’ s Word is not the only seed that is sown broadcast over the world; that the controlling application of God’ s fundamental laws covers evil as well as good, and that all through this vast globe of nature there are seeds which never fell from the hand of the Divine Husbandman, quick with the same mysterious germ of life, subject to the same law of germination and development under like conditions, and bound by the same inexorable necessity to reproduce themselves after their kind, but noxious in character, waging ceaseless and destructive warfare against the good, and promising an inevitable harvest of sorrow and death. Remembering, now, that all life is governed by this same law of the germ, we may go for our first illustration to what we call “ animate nature,” where the seed is found under the form of the egg. Walking by the waterside we find two eggs on the shore, so nearly similar in size, and shape, and colour, that an unpractised eye would scarcely distinguish one from the other. The same white, brittle shell, every section of which is some modification of the arch, equally the strongest form to resist external violence and the weakest against pressure from within. Break this shell and we find in each a similar living membrane, an air-chamber for the support of the young animal, a yolk for its nourishment suspended by twisted ligaments and protected by an envelope of glairy albumen, with the germ-vesicle containing potentially the future young as yet indistinguishable by any human power. We submit these almost exactly similar eggs to the requisite conditions of time and heat until the breaking shell reveals the developed young, and lo! the marvellous difference! From the one, a bird of pure and beautiful plumage, serviceable to man in its every part, an ornament to nature and fitted to walk the land, to float on the crested wave, or to cleave the light air with its sweeping pinions as it soars toward heaven. From the other a scaly monster of loathsome form and frightful aspect, fitted to live only in slime and mire, and destined only to destroy its fellow-creatures. These results, we know, will be invariable, nor can any power reverse or modify them. Thus we learn how exact are the analogies between moral and physical nature. Experience teaches us, further, how full is all soil of the seeds of noxious weeds, and the parable shows us how equally full is our moral nature of the germs of deadly sins and cares which choke out every growth of good. So true is this in the physical world, and so absolutely impossible is it to detect the germs of life prevailing everywhere, that science has even dreamed of spontaneous life as the only solution of the mystery. Prepare your ground, however carefully, for the seeding, it will be green with unwelcome growths long before your grain has sprouted. Let a drop of purest water remain exposed for a few hours, it will swarm with animalculae and microscopic vegetables. Make anywhere an artificial pond, and in process of time it will contain fish and water-plants, but rarely of useful kinds. The air we breathe is full of the infinitesimal spores of deadly maladies, ready to germinate and produce their lethal fruit; but who ever heard of an atmosphere quick with the seeds of health? Under the same great law, then, the soul of man, his moral nature, the moral atmosphere in which he lives, must be full of those evil germs which bring forth the “ thorns” of the parable. So evident has been this truth to all human experience, that men have believed in a dual source of life--the Ormuzd and Ahriman of the Persian mythology, the God and Demiurge of the Gnostic philosophy, the one the creator of evil, the other of the good. But whence come these seeds of evil? How is it that these germs of destruction so pervade all nature? Science has but recently demonstrated that they are not, in the physical world, of spontaneous origin. The water which so rapidly devolopes life becomes utterly lifeless when heated to boiling and absolutely excluded from the air. There is one series of processes familiar to us which gives the clue to all the rest, because it shows how God works in creation by the instrumentality of the law of germination. In the barren depths of ocean one of the lowest forms of animal life, the coral polyp, multiplies itself into unnumbered millions, exuding from its body the stony substance which slowly reaches to the surface and forms a reef. This catches the floating seaweed and the drifting pieces of wreck, which decay in the sunshine and form a soil. Some nut or fruit, protected by its hard covering, is borne by the waves from a far-off shore and cast upon the new-formed island, and sprouting there, in process of time produces a tree, which in turn produces others like itself. The falling leaves and rotting stems increase the depth of the soil. The wearied sea-birds seek shelter from the storm, and soon form a colony. Then other birds are driven there, and drop the seeds of their food, and man comes in his vessels and leaves behind him other germs of animal and vegetable life. Thus, in the course of centuries, a great and populous island comes into being. Were our opportunities and our faculties sufficient to the task, we could doubtless in the same way trace out the most mysterious of these phenomena, and learn how in thousands of simple, but unsuspected ways the seeds are carried and planted. The squirrel buries his winter store of nuts and acorns, only a small part of which are consumed; and in a few seasons the growth is entirely changed, and the grassy plain becomes a forest; the swift-winged pigeon is slain by the hawk miles away from his feeding ground, and the undigested seeds in his crop are scattered, and shoot into plants hitherto unknown there. But in the moral world there is another and a darker agency at work to disseminate the germs of evil, as it snatches away the seed which falls by the wayside; for we learn from the parable of the tares among the wheat that “ an enemy hath done this.” There is an evil being of great power and malignant purpose who fills man’ s heart with the deadly seeds of worldly cares and sorrows, and who well knows that the richest and mellowest soil is the best for his objects. (Robert Wilson, M. D.) Among thorns I. WHY LUSTS ARE TO THORNS. Carnal lusts are fitly compared to thorns in five respects. 1. There are some flowers, and some show on thorns, small fruits, and many pricks; so whatever appearance these lusts make, no good fruit riseth of them, but many pricks and sorrows by them in the end. Thorns pierce the body, lusts the mind. 2. Thorns are everywhere armed, and ready to wound and tear him that, meddling with them, doth not carefully fence himself; so they that nourish the cares of the world, or addict themselves to pleasure or profits, pierce themselves through with many sorrows. 3. As a thorn held softly pricks not nor hurteth, but when it is held hard and crushed, it easily draweth blood; so a man may use this world, as not using it, without danger, and hold softly the profits and pleasures of this life; but grip them, and fasten on them, there is certain hurt. 4. Thorns and briars are the dens and receptacles of serpents and poisonful worms and creatures; so are these unmortified desires the harbours of infinite noisome sins, which shall creep as thick into the soul as the frogs into Pharaoh’ s lodgings. As Israel, not content with God’ s daily allowance, but out of a covetous and distrustful desire, against God’ s commandments, saved some of the manna till morning, but it was all full of worms, and stunk; so do fleshly minds, by nourishing unlawful lusts, turn manna into worms. 5. As thorns and briars are at last good for nothing but fuel for fire; so these thickets of lusts, and pursuit after the profits and pleasures of this life, are the proper fuel of the fire of the great day, and prepare the ground itself (which all worldlings are), without timely repentance, as fuel for the fire of hell, which is unquenchable. II. THESE BAD HEARERS ARE APTLY TO THORNY GROUND. For as a thorny and weedy soil chokes and kills at length such seeds as come up hopefully; so a heart, stuffed with unmortified affections, at length resists and chokes the seed of God’ s Word, that it shall not prosper to the salvation of that hearer in the harvest; for-- 1. These thorns supplant the Word, and unroof it again, as thorns, to root themselves, undermine the seed below. 2. These thorny corruptions hinder the comfortable heat and shine of the sun from the heart, namely, the sweet beams and influence of the spirit of grace, which cannot come so sweetly and freely to the heart to cherish the growth and work begun, as thorns hinder the sun from plants. 3. Thorns draw away the moisture which should preserve the plants in their growth and greenness; even so these inward lusts draw the heart from means of moisture and grace; they sometimes give a man leave to hear, but as they prevail and take up the heart, there shall be little time allowed to remember, meditate, or apply that which is heard, and as small leave to bring things into practice. III. THORNS AND LUSTS OF ANY SORT, TO GROW IN THE HEART, DO SOON THE WORD OF GOD, AND SUFFER IT NOT TO PROSPER. For as the husbandman, who suffers thorns and weeds to choke his seed coming up, loseth his harvest; even so that man loseth his part in the gospel that cherisheth lusts and disordered desires in his heart, together with the gospel. Hence the Apostle James (James 1:21) telleth us that if we would hear the Word so as it may be ingrafted in us, we must first east away, or put off as an old rag, “ the superfluity of maliciousness and filthiness,” that is, the abundance of carnal affections, looseness of life, pride, disdain, wrath, contention, earthly pleasures, vanity, evil speaking of Divine doctrine, &c.; and in the next verse shows that with these lusts men may be hearers of the Word, but never doers till they be weeded out; they will at length overgrow it. Reasons: 1. Ill weeds, we say, spring apace; good seeds or herbs not half so fast. We shall see a bramble grow more in seven months than an oak in seven years. So our text--the thorns grow up with the seed, but choke it by overgrowing. 2. Our grounds are fit and prepared to produce thorns rather than bring up the good seed. Our hearts are the natural mother to lusts, but a step mother to seeds of grace. For there lies in our nature a sea of evil lusts lurking; our own original lust is a fountain, and an inordinate disposition to all evil. From which fountain issue innumerable streams of actual lusts, which are the innumerable motions of the soul, contrary to every commandment of God; all which, in their several armies and bands, issue out against God and His Word, as the Philistines still warred against Israel. Now, our ground being so apt to weeds, they will soon overgrow the Word, if but a little neglected. 3. A part of the curse on man’ s sin is that the earth should bring forth thorns and thistles. The earth should have brought them forth, if man had not sinned; but they should not have been so noisome and hurtful to man and the fruits of the earth. Even so it is a part of the curse of our sin that there should grow up such noisome lusts (as thorns) in the ground of our hearts, as do far more hinder the growth of grace in our hearts, and choke the seed of the Word sown ill our souls, than all the weeds and thorns in the world can choke the seeds and fruits of the earth. Lusts are still remaining in the best, but not now as a curse, but only, as the Canaanites, to keep them humble. 4. The reign of lust cannot but thrust down the reign of the Word; for, first, that the Word may reign, it must be understood, but thorns hinder the light of the sun from the seed. One thorn is enough to darken the eye of the understanding. Secondly, that the Word may reign, it must first renew. But there can be no new creature, till the old man be put off, with his lusts Ephesians 4:22-23). Thirdly, that the Word may reign, it must be obeyed when it commands, and be expressed in the fruits of holiness. But lusts unsubdued oppose themselves, and hinder the motions when they should come into practice, and the Lord’ s plant becomes fruitful only on that condition, that the Father purge it (John 15:1-27.).. Again, how can a man walk on cheerfully in his way that hath a thorn sticking m his foot? No less do these thorns cast men back in their way of obedience. These superfluities of lusts and inordinate desires are as dead branches, that must be lopped off before fruit can be expected. (Thomas Taylor, D. D.) The seed among thorns; or, the fatal compromise We are now introduced to another character, which we may denominate--the compromising. They strike hands with the gospel, but with the world at the same time. Some are willing to suffer for their soul’ s good, who are still unwilling to relinquish each rival to Christ. The case has these prominent features--there is, under the hearing of the gospel, a partial suppression of worldliness. But the worldly desires gain an ultimate victory over the gospel. I. THE PARTIAL OF IN HEARING THE WORD. 1. The attention of the mind is, for the time, diverted from the world. Human consciousness follows the will and sensibilities. It takes no cognisance of deep, underlying principles in the heart. They may be master-principles, giving to the character its every distinctive feature, and shaping the whole current of action; and yet, under particular circumstances, they shall be to the soul’ s consciousness, annihilated. This law of the mind is of the first magnitude; and yet human history is filled with the delusions which men practise on themselves by overlooking it. Now, men may have no consciousness that they are governed by a love of the world, and may readily embrace the hopes of the gospel, under an impression of their entire sincerity and earnestness in doing it, while at the same time their hearts cling to the created sources of enjoyment, with a tenacity strong as the desire of happiness and dread of misery can make it. The first reason of this temporary ascendancy of the gospel, and of their delusion in regard to its completeness, is the strong impression which is, for the time, made on the sensibilities. It may come in various forms. One is--a temporary disgust with the world. This has deceived thousands; for this very disgust derives its acuteness from the strength of that affection which is disappointed. The man who has calmly looked behind every mask the world wears, long recognized the hollowness of its pretensions, and the falseness of its promises, is the very farthest from any paroxysm of disgust. He has been accustomed to consider a thorn a thorn, and if by any inattention he leaned his hand upon it, and it pierced him, he only reproaches himself for his heedlessness, and walks thereafter more guardedly. But here are your romancers, whose gravest occupation in youth was the day-dream. They studied the world through their fancies and their favourite writers. And on some dark day a storm arises, and lightnings strike the cherished tree on which grew their heart’ s fondest hopes. In an instant its blossoms wither; its leaves are scattered; its shattered trunk alone remains. And to the heart’ s moanings there is no response but sullen thunder, howling wind, and roaring floods. Such has the world become in one day to some that most fondly cherished, most devoutly worshipped it. Now the love of the world, as a principle, may remain entirely unshaken by all this violence. 2. The gospel is taken up without reference to its opposition to the world. Men do regard themselves as religious who never formed one definite idea as to the peculiar spirit of the gospel and its unworldly features. There are thorns in the ground which will yet effectually choke every religious sentiment and purpose. II. THE TRIUMPH OF THE WORLD OVER THE GOSPEL. “ He also that received seed among the thorns is he that heareth the word; and the care of the world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word; and he becometh unfruitful. 1. The feebleness of the religious principle. It sprung from transient causes. If these causes had been made merely occasions it would have been well. But it remained a thing of impulse, and did not become a matter of principle. He should have struck the blow that would have emancipated him from the world. 2. The strength of the worldly principle. There is a care which becomes us, as endowed with forethought. The poor feel it, the rich feel from it. Itself a sin, it begets sin. It fills the mind with so many vain desires, perplexing thoughts, and wicked purposes, that God’ s Holy Word can find no permanent entertainment there. Then an innumerable host of interests, objects, and passions are included under the phrase--the lust of other things. But we have gone far enough to see this principle established--that the mastery of one worldly desire over the human heart will effectually neutralize all the power of the gospel. The evidence of it is in the fact that the prevalence of that desire proves the complete delusion of the soul on a vital point. And every indulgence of the desire strengthens the soul’ s aversion to God. (E. N. Kirk, D. D.) Thorns like flowers Our thorns sometimes appear like flowers. Our worldly cares seem quite legitimate, our sins appear pleasant, our earthly graspings necessary; but there is not a single thing that hinders the reception and supremacy of the truth within us that will not become a thorn to pierce us. The rose of our sinful delights will wither, and we shall find that our hearts have nourished thorns. All these evil growths must be destroyed, brethren; the high towering thorns of pride that cast their shadow upon all tender springings of violet-like virtues; the creeping, entangling thorns of lusts; the glossy-leaved thorns of deceit, so smooth to the eye and yet so stinging to the touch; the long, bare spiney thorns of malice; the short stubbed thorns of worldly worry, and the sharp-hooking thorns of covetousness--all must be rooted out of us if the truth is to spring up into the pleasant foliage of moral beauty and the sweet fruit of gracious deeds. (W. O. Lilley.) Luke 8:8 And other fell on good ground The good ground Here consider, as in the former-- 1. The soil, good ground: where first, how it comes to be good: secondly, how it is known to be good, namely, by hearing with honest and good hearts. 2. The success of the seed in it--fruitfulness. 1. For the measure, or plenty--an hundredfold. 2. For the continuance, or constancy--with patience. Of these in their order. And first, how the ground doth come to be good. Answer: It is called good, non a priori, because the Word finds it so; but a posteriori, because by the Word it is made so. Every man’ s heart by nature is a stiff ground, a barren and cursed earth (Ephesians 2:1-22.). 2. But as stiff and bad ground becomes good by good husbandry and manuring, so do our hearts by the husbandry of the Good Husbandman. He alone changeth the heart. I. It is called a good heart in two respects. 1. As emptied of bad qualities. 2. As well qualified by grace. (1) It is emptied of bad qualities, being clean contrary to all the bad disposition of the three former kinds of ground. So as being contrary to all the other, it receives willingly, retains constantly, and perseveres fruitfully unto the end. (2) It is well qualified by grace, as in our text. (a) God hath made it of a cursed and barren earth, good ground. (b) It hears the Word beyond the other. The former heard it, but without desire, this hears with study to learn, and industry to understand. (c) It keepeth the Word in memory, mind, and practice; the other heard, but kept nothing, because there was no fit place to keep it in. (d) It brings fruit. In the other was some care to hear, but here is a care of fruitfulness. (e) It is careful to proceed in grace, to double and increase the measure of fruits, from thirty to sixty, and so to a hundredfold: but the other soon fall from their measure. (f) It hath obtained by grace an invincible fortitude against temptations and trials, so as no fears or forces shall remove them from the study of piety and fruits of grace; for they bring forth fruits with patience, as the other did not. II. So it is called an honest heart. As good is a general word, excluding evil qualities, and including good; so honest also is a general word, and put for the whole approved disposition of the soul, containing both civil and religious honesty. Here for our further direction in so weighty a business we will consider three things. 1. Means, whereby to attain a good and honest heart. 2. Marks, to know when it is so. 3. Motives to the attaining of such a heart. The means are generally two. 1. Let us see our defect in nature, that our hearts are not good by nature, but stiff and stubborn as the stiffest ground. 2. Let us therefore seek a supply by grace. This grace is twofold-- 1. Of action. 2. Of acceptation. The grace of action is threefold-- 1. Preparation. 2. Of new creation. 3. Of irrigation. But because all this grace of action is imperfect in this life, therefore that our hearts may become truly good and honest, there needs also the grace of acceptation. The best ground is good but in part, and no man can say his heart is clean, but much evil and guile will cleave unto it. Yet, where God hath begun a good work, and beholds a constant purpose of good, resolving against all sin, and to please Him in all things, He is pleased to behold only the work of His own finger, and to see us only in our Head, in whom He beholds us all fair and good, imputing His goodness to us, and covering our remainders of evil in Him. He esteems us according to that we are coming to, not by that we have attained. These are the means whereby our hearts become good. Now of the marks whereby they may be known so to be. These marks, because they are many, we will in general reduce them to seven heads, and consider this good heart. 1. In respect of God. 2. Christ. 3. The Spirit of God. 4. The ordinances of God. 5. Itself. 6. Good duties. 7. Sin and evil. In respect of God, it hath five excellent properties. First, It desires nearer union with God daily, and all things shall set it nearer unto God. For it knows that everything is so much the more good as it approacheth unto the chief good. Secondly, If it seek God it will “ seek Him with the whole heart” (Psalms 119:10), which is a sound conformity of the inward and outward man, directed in the service of God according to the truth of the word. Thirdly, A good heart will only and wholly stand to God’ s approbation in that it doth or doth not. Fourthly, A good heart resteth and rejoiceth in God as in the best and only portion (Psalms 73:25). Fifthly, A good heart aims at the glory of God in all things. “ In all his parts” (1 Corinthians 6:20)--in his body, because it is His, and in his spirit, because He is a Spirit. In respect of Christ it hath five other excellent qualities. First, It preferreth Christ before a thousand worlds (Philippians 3:8). Secondly, A good heart rejoiceth more in Christ and His love than in worldly joys. Thirdly, A good heart, seeing that Christ hath given Himself wholly unto us, gives itself wholly to Him. Fourthly, A good heart prepares a room in it for Christ to dwell in (Ephesians 3:17). Fifthly, A good heart conforms itself to Christ, and will walk as He gave example. For it knows the Scripture hath set Him out, not as a Redeemer only, but as a pattern of good life and imitation. It looks unto the Spirit of God; in four kinds of notes. 1. In respect of spiritual assurance. 2. Spiritual worship. 3. Spiritual graces. 4. Spiritual growth. A good and honest heart looks to the ordinances of God, and so hath many excellent qualities. In two general respects-- 1. In respect of Christian religion itself. 2. In respect of the means by which it is upheld, and these are three-- 1. The Word and sacrament. 2. The Sabbaths and assemblies. 3. The pastors and ministers. A good and honest heart hath many marks in respect of itself--as the Scriptures ascribe many properties unto it without which it cannot be good. 1. Newness. 2. Softness. 3. Cleanness. 4. Singleness. 5. Fruitfulness. 6. Watchfulness. Marks of a good heart in respect of good duties. It considereth, first, that it is God’ s new workmanship created to good works (Ephesians 2:10). Marks of a good heart in respect of sin. It knoweth, first, that nothing is properly hated of God but sin, as being directly against His law and His image, who is a God hating iniquity; and as God Himself is the chief and absolute good, so only sin is the chief and absolute evil. Hence-- 1. It sees the misery of sin, and groans under the burden. 2. It truly repents for sin. 3. It seeks pardon. 4. It feareth and watcheth all sin to come, as it hateth and shameth for all sin past. As nature shuns and fears all serpents, even little ones as well as great, so grace shuns all sins, and hates them, being the spawn of the Serpent. First, it knows all are hateful to God, all prejudicial to the soul, as one hole in a ship, or one swine in a garden, or one fly in the apothecary’ s box is enough to spoil all; therefore it watcheth all. Secondly, Seeing small sins are commonly harbingers to greater, it dares not venture on the smallest. Thirdly, It knows that the way to avoid final defection, or backsliding, is to fear staying a little. Fourthly, It fears the show, the taste, the occasions, the first appearances of sin, lest from the broth, it easily fall to the flesh. Fifthly, It fears and hates his own sins more than all other men’ s, and not as it is said of Anthony, “ He hated the tyrant, not tyranny.” “ I hate that I do” Romans 7:15). Sixthly, It hates and fears his own inward sins as much as the outward; wisely damming the fountain and well-head, and stocking up the root. Seventhly, It hates and fears the repetition of sin, and much more shakes off the habit of it, lest he should suddenly grow to expertness in the trade. Lastly, It hates and mourns for other men’ s sins, and stops them when he can (Psalms 119:136). “ And now tell you weeping” Philippians 3:18). Yea, the sins of others against God more smite a good heart with sorrow than their own sins can an evil. 5. It retains and still renews a full purpose of not sinning, so as though it sin, the conscience can testify that it is carried against the settled purpose of it. (Thomas Taylor, D. D.) The seed in good ground; or, right reception of the gospel I. WHAT IS THE RIGHT OF THE GOSPEL? The answer may be given in a word. It is the reception of it into the mind and heart as the remedy for sin. This involves-- 1. The recognition of sin. An honest heart is one that ackowledges its wrong. There is no honesty in any of us denying that we are sinful before God and sinners against Him. 2. The acceptance of the remedy offered. II. WHAT, THEN, ARE THE RESULTS? 1. The whole character is changed. 2. A change in the whole life. If a brackish fountain has suddenly lost its bad qualities, the change will be discovered in the sweetness of the stream that flows from it. III. There is, then, A GREAT in preaching, hearing, and possessing the Word of God. Our responsibility is to God. That a field has soils of various kinds, may be a matter of no interest to any one else; but to the frugal farmer it is a matter of great interest. To the passing traveller it would occasion no anxiety to know whether all was hard as the wayside; or all a light soil on a broad undivided rock; whether thorns and thistles had intertwined their noxious roots over all its surface; or whether it would give bread to the sower, and return thirty, sixty, and a hundredfold to the reaper. But to the industrious labourer this was a matter of the first moment. (E. N. Kirk, D. D.) Luke 8:10 Unto you it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of GOD-- The mysteries of the kingdom A mystery, as the word is used in Scripture, is nothing more than an unknown thing. It has no reference to anything obscure, or awful, or difficult to understand. The most simple truth may be called a mystery so long as it is concealed. That a Gentile could be converted to Christ was a mystery to the Jews--an unknown thing, not a thing difficult to be understood. Read the text, “ Because it is given unto you to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given,” and the meaning is plain and complete. I. Let us endeavour TO THE TWO CLASSES,--on the one hand, those to whom it was given to know the mysteries of the kingdom; on the other, those to whom it was not so given. Some have interpreted this passage as a judicial sentence of perpetual ignorance and unbelief. I am more disposed to interpret it as a description of a hardened and obdurate state of mind--a wilful ignorance connected with gross stupidity. Because their hearts had waxed gross, and their ears were dull, and their eyes were closed--wilfully closed--the Lord left them to the mystery of the parables, but expounded the interpretation to His disciples in their more private intercourse. Jesus had spoken His parables from a ship on the Sea of Galilee to vast multitudes who collected to hear Him from the neighbouring towns and country. We have, then, abundant illustration of the character of this multitude. They came from the places in which He had done most of His mighty works--Capernaum, Chorazin, Bethsaida, and the neighbourhood. In their synagogues Jesus had expounded the Holy Scriptures and showed their fulfilment in Himself. But these people had seen His wonderful works as though they saw them not, and heard His words of wisdom and love as though they heard not. The application is to you, and an affecting application it is. Take heed how ye hear. See that ye refuse not Him that speaketh from heaven. The dreadful shadow of the second death had fallen upon the multitude, and no beams from the Light and Life of the world could dispel its gloom. And oh, consider that the men of the neighbourhood where Jesus chiefly taught were those denied the interpretation of the parable. Exalted to heaven by their privileges, they were debased and brought near to hell by the abuse of them. Now let us look to those to whom Jesus gave the interpretation. The inquiry is, What had they which the others had not? If the disciples had not knowledge, they had the desire to obtain it, and the spirit to make it productive. 1. They had the desire to obtain it. In learning the mysteries of the kingdom (as in everything else) the docile disposition and the acquisition of knowledge are inseparably connected. What cared the multitude for the hard sayings of Jesus? Gratify their vain curiosity, amuse them with signs and wonders, feed them with loaves and fishes, and they are content. But the disciples--that is, the learners--longed to know the whole meaning of the Saviour’ s lessons. They heard the parables, and they sought the interpretation. They felt that they lacked wisdom; they hungered and thirsted after the knowledge of righteousness, and with the docility of children they desired to learn the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven. To them it was given to know--to them, having the teachable disposition, the instruction was readily and freely afforded. Multitudes are still ignorant of the truths of the Gospel, even in the midst of this bright day of clear, evangelical, heavenly light; but the ignorance of every one of them amidst so many means of instruction is to be attributed to their own wilful indisposition to learn. To how many among us is the Bible enveloped in thick darkness! its great truths are still to them mysteries of the kingdom--secrets hidden from their view, as with a Pharisaic contempt, or a sinfuldislike, they pass their wandering eyes over the words of the sacred page. They read, but understand not what they read. They have no interpreter. The Holy Spirit they have resisted and repelled. The avenues by which pure, Divine, holy truth might reach their hearts they have closed by the corruptions of the flesh and the cares of the world. But some of you have otherwise learned Christ. You were impelled by an ardent desire, and you went with humility, like children, to sit at the feet of Jesus to learn of Him. His words, read in the letter of Scripture, became much more than letter as you read them; they became spirit and life. You felt their spiritual quickening power. Imploring by earnest prayer the light of heaven, that light shone upon the Book of God, and you saw as you had never seen before, wonderful things out of His law. Thus to you much has been given. But-- 2. The disciples had a spirit to make their knowledge productive. They did not neglect or abuse the knowledge they had. The good seed in their hearts brought forth its own fruit in its season. How often have the elements of scriptural knowledge been abused, and how often have they been suffered to lie neglected in the heart! And abuse or neglect will always prevent a clear and believing perception of the mysteries of the kingdom. If this be so, no one ought to utter a word of complaint respecting his ignorance of the mysteries of the Gospel. Why do they remain hidden from him? The answer is at hand: because he is not faithful to the little light he already has obtained. Men often see not the doctrine, because the present duty, always plain, it disregarded by them. You may think you know little of the mysteries. But do you not know that you ought to seek more earnestly than you have sought? to practise more self-denial than you have yet practised? to do many things you have not done, and to refrain from doing much that you continue to do? It is no wonder that you should remain still in ignorance of many things, seeing you have already more light than you follow in the practical part of religion. II. LET US THE MEANS BY WHICH THESE WERE TO THOSE TO WHOM IT WAS GIVEN TO KNOW HIM. 1. A plain and easy way of giving the true knowledge is made apparent. We have the admonitions of Christ as well as His teaching. Our duty is not mysterious. We can seek wisdom, and seek it in the path of obedience. 2. The mysteries are revealed in their appropriateness to ourselves and their application to our wants: revealed to our hearts, according to our need. Show the man himself, a sinner ready to perish--the suitable Saviour for him is revealed by His paying the penalty of sin. 3. The mysteries are revealed in succession, as they prove useful, not to gratify curiosity. (R. Halley, D. D.) The mysteries of the kingdom of heaven God is always undoing mystery. He keeps no mystery for the sake of the mystery. He is never withholding, but always giving. His work in relation to us has been from the first an unfolding. He is the God that giveth truth. I say again, He does not put forth His will to hide, but ever and always to reveal. The mysteries of God are the things that the wise and prudent so often turn aside from--they take them as matters of course; and many besides the wise and prudent, many fools likewise, many who are wise in their own eyes--let me say all who are wise in their own conceits. “ Of course, of course,” they say; “ we know all about that; but we want to understand this, and we want to know what that means; and we want to see how you can account for this, and whether or not you can put this and that and the next thing in your scheme,” when all the time things are crying out in them and around them which they think are too common, too simple, puerile perhaps; “ they do not interest us,” they say. That which God requires of men is lust to attend to the thing, whatever it is, that He requires of them, as revealed in their heart, in their feeling, in their sense, that they are not doing altogether right, that they are not being altogether right. And while they are speculating, perhaps, upon what they call the mysteries, what the theologian calls the mysteries, the thing that is a mystery to them is the thing that every simple child-heart can understand. When God calls His children it is that they respond as children in obedience--in obedience. The Lord in His parable is telling us something that perhaps has ceased to be looked upon as at all a mystery with us. Do you know what St. Paul so often calls the mystery that he has to reveal? It looks to us a simple thing enough. It was a very hard thing for many at that time to receive it, and now m other forms it is hard still for certain kinds of minds to receive it. It was just that God loved the Gentile as much as the Jew, that God was no respecter of persons, that He cares for the poor man as much as for the rich. That was the mystery. We think not very mysterious after the common use of the word, but the mystery is the simple truth, the fact of relationship that lies deepest and uppermost and everywhere throughout nature, making life worth living, and men worth being. That kind of mystery is a thing that it is so difficult somehow to wake up the minds of men to see. Try to show any man his duty and he will immediately begin to ask you questions about theories. To get man or woman to acknowledge--I do not mean by word of mouth, but by act of soul, by powerfulemotion of the spirit, of themselves, of their will--to acknowledge, I say, that there is between their hearts and the infinite, all-pervading, unseen force of life, that there is a heart thinking about their hearts, and wanting to have them, that there is a father-love at the heart of things that is looking down and brooding over the hearts of His children, and drawing them to lift up the heart to God, and be in His presence a live thing opening door and window to the reception of that which He is continually trying to give--this is the mystery, the absolute simplicity of life to which it seemsscarcely possible sometimes--I mean it sometimes seems scarcely possible--to wake up one’ s own flesh and blood to understand and feel, for we are all one family in Him in whom the whole family in heaven and earth are named. Some would think it a grand thing to be told they could increase their life twofold, tenfold, and live for hundreds of years. God knows if I would turn that leaf to gain that. I should simply scorn it. Whatever is true in any of these things, whatever is true is mine; but I do not want it except by growing to it in the natural progress of the law of Him who is the root of my being, and who has told me that I inherit with Jesus Christ that which my Father has to give. I would put my hand forth, I say, to take no glory of existence save what the natural process of His developing of an obedient child comes to me in its own free, simple form. If you want to attain anything in the shape of true moral, physical, spiritual progress, I say, be the simple disciple of Jesus Christ. That is what you are born men and women for, not to make money, but to know God; and to know Christ is the only way to know God. You may learn of the power of God, but the power of God is not God. God is love, and until we love with our whole souls we do not know God. We may know Him a little, less or more, in proportion as we are capable of loving; or rather, not as we are capable of it, but as we do it--we know God. And in this spirit let us look at the parable that our Lord had just spoken about as containing mystery. Well, God knows it is to me the deepest of all mysteries, even in the common sense of mystery, a thing that utterly perplexes me, and I just stop there and cannot understand it, and that is, the point when the heart of man, the child of God, stops turning its back upon Him, and begins to wheel round the other way; the point when the prodigal, who is the type of every one who goes away from God, and loves anything better than God. God, it seems to me, alone can see and know that, but that this turning takes place we know, and plenty of testimony could you have to the fact. And so in this parable about the seed sown. And looking at all the parables of Christ, what I find in them is this, that He is doing what He can just so to wake up the soul of man, and to cause this change to be begun in the soul of man. He does not speak the parables for the purpose of concealment. Neither does He speak them for the purpose of instructing the intellect and the understanding about things. That is not His work, though all that follows is. Ah, you would know something, friends--let me speak to my young friends present--you would know something of the glory of a life that was independent of outside things. If you just set yourselves to be the thing God meant you to be, set yourselves to obey Him whom the Father sent just to make you shine in the very light, the supernal light, that is all about at the root of everything, wisdom and knowledge, everything that the heart of man falsely worships, precious as it is, freely worships at your command, and if you would but be Divine as you are meant to be, if you will be earthy, if you will be poor creatures, if you will be what Dante calls “ insects in whom the formative power is lacking, defective insects that cannot pass into the glorious butterfly” ; he says--and I am speaking now of what one of the greatest of men said six hundred years ago--“ Do you not know,” he says, “ that you are worms that are meant to go forth as the angelic butterfly?” “ O foolish man,” he says, “ why do you seek low things? Why are you content to be unborn in the cocoon, or in the chrysalis of the worm?” The Lord speaks, I say, in all His parables to wake up that power of life in us that makes a man put everything aside and look up and feel that he has but to be, and he must be, he must be the thing that the Eternal Father made His child to be, else we are but the defective insect we may be born. So what do I find? Here is the story of sowing seed. It falls on different soils, and at last it comes on good soil, and the Lord does not say a word about anything that the soil can do. But He seeks to make us think it and feel it and weigh it in our minds, and speaks of something that we have got to do with it--the hard-trodden ground by the wayside and the poor soil on the rock, with the corn hanging its head, drying up with the drought, and the corn that would look over the tops of the thistles--that would say, “ I am bad soil, but I cannot help it; the seed has fallen, but what have I got to do with it?” But there is good soil, and that soil knows that it has got to do with it, and that is just the difference. When the truth of God comes to a true heart--and God claims that the heart should be true, and if the heart is not true there is its condemnation already--when the word drops into the true heart, the true heart says, “ I must keep that: I must mind what I am about, I must see to this thing or that,” and so it grows and grows. There was one man I heard sometimes when I was a youth, and I cared more to hear him than all the rest put together. When I came out from hearing him perhaps I could not tell you a word he had said, but I knew I had something to mind; and you may make that a test whether you have been the true ground or not, when anything true has come to your consciousness as truth. The great trouble is, first, with those who never know that anything has anything to do with them. The time has not come, somehow. There may be good soil underneath, but the top is hard-trodden. There is something that seems to prevent any form of the truth getting down to the growing part of them. But when there is a sense of any call that you have not obeyed, made haste to obey it, that you may the sooner come forth into the light. Then there are some, you know, that are the picture of the different kinds of people. Well, I will not say it is wonderful, because it comes from the wonderful. Look how simple it is. There are those when they get moved with feeling begin to grow. They start very fast, you think, as though they would take heaven by storm, but the storm takes them; they are beaten down. They do not like to suffer. Well, we do not any of us like to suffer; but the question is, whether we will make the effort and even if foiled, make an effort again, to meet the future, or whether we shall let adverse powers, whatever they may be, beat us down to the dust, and we lie in the mud instead of soaring in the free air. What is it you want more than anything else? A good many of you think more about the cares of the world, the deceitfulness of riches; and the desires of other things enter in and choke the word--the word, the truth of God that you have got in you. There is something that you know is your duty. You may not love it very much. You have not seen the glory of it. It is to you like a rough diamond that does not shine. It is very dirty, perhaps. But you have got something in you that you know you ought to use. That is the thing the Lord speaks of; that is the thing that is come out of the heart of God into your heart, and the question is, are you caring about that more than anything else, or are you thinking, “ Well, I mind it just enough not to be cast out. You know it is absurd to ask me to he perfect. I am not perfect. I cannot be perfect,” and the person that says that has not tried enough to know the difficulty of it, but only takes it for granted. Mother, do you think as often about your Father as you think about your child? Oh, I do not want you to love your child less. God forbid. There are very mistakenly wicked things said of that kind. Mothers say, “ I love my child too much.” Foolish woman! you never loved your child enough. If you had loved your child aright he would have forced you to lift up your hears to your Father in heaven. You are loving yourself, not your child. No, we cannot love each other too much. Oh, friends, the absurdity of it, that we will give three-fourths to man, and give God a fourth. Are we seeking Him as the business of life, or are we making money the business of life, and thinking of God now and then, sometimes? I do not understand half ways of things. But the people that are in the condition of this corn growing amongst thorns, they are perhaps the last that will understand “ it to mean themselves; the strangeness of which is this, that a few more years and all the possibility of my having anything whatever to call my own--I shall have no hand to hold it, not to say no pocket to put it into. Then there is the ground that bears, some fifty, some sixty, and some a hundredfold. You get nothing except you look at that part. It is for yourself. But then perhaps you will say, “ May some bring forth thirty, some sixty, and some a hundredfold?” Yes. “ Does not that imply that the Lord is content to accept an inferior quantity? That some He will take though they only bring Him thirtyfold, and others when they bring Him sixty. But the hundredfold seems to be a maximum, and therefore it seems to imply that, well, perhaps we may bring thirtyfold and we shall be accepted. How low would it go, do you suppose? Twentyfold? Tenfold? How far down would it go? “ Well, I think that the disposition that would be content to bring the thirtyfold would prefer to bring one seed or none at all. And I am certain of this, that if it be possible for you to bring forth forty, fifty, or sixtyfold, the Lord will not be content with your thirtyfold. And you will have something to go through yet. For observe this--“ Every branch in Me that beareth fruit, He purgeth it.” Why? Because it is bringing forth fruit, why should He be hard upon it? He wants more fruit, and the man who is content with himself anywhere, is just the man that the Lord is not content with. I will tell you your thirtyfold would do very well provided you are not content with it, and you want to make it more. Oh, what a hopeless thing, do you say; we can never get at that? That He will see to, if you see that you want it, and that you are acting as far as you can upon it lie will see to that. Do you think that your Father in heaven will be content to have you, His child, deformed, ugly, lame, worn as with famine, with dirty face and hands, clothed in rags? What kind of a father or mother would it be who would be content to have a child such? Ah, he or she might be exulting unspeaking to have that poor miserable child in his or her arms, but would he be content to see it like that? Friends, do you want it? (G. Macdonald, LL. D.) A right attitude essential to perceiving God’ s truths An Eastern legend relates that somewhere in the deserts of Arabia there stood a mass of jagged rock, the surface of which was seamed and scarred by the elements; but whenever any one came to the rock in the right way he saw a door shape itself in the sides of the barren stone, through which he could enter in, and find a store of rich and precious treasures, which he could carry away with him. There are some things in God’ s universe that seem as barren and unattractive as bare and fissured rocks, but which contain an inwardness of warmth and sweetness inconceivable. The inner holies of God are fast concealed from those who will not come aright, with a heart of love and trust, but open to all who are willing to see and to hear. (Christian Age.) Luke 8:11 The seed is the Word of God The seed I. THE TRUTH TAUGHT, THE SEED SOWN BY JESUS CHRIST, THE GREAT SOWER. 1. The necessity of repentance. 2. The forgiving love and power of God. 3. The necessity of holiness; of obedience, submission, trust, unselfishness, and brotherly love. 4. Christ enjoined fidelity, and warned of judgment to come. 5. Christ taught the necessity of His death for our redemption; proclaimed Himself the one Mediator between God and man; declared our dependence upon Him for all spiritual life and strength; promised His Spirit to lead us into all truth, and His grace to enable us to endure to the end. II. THE OF THE ANALOGY BETWEEN THE SEED AND THE TRUTH. 1. Both contain the principle of life. 2. The development of the life in each depends upon conditions. The seed must be sown in congenial soil, and duly watered and nurtured; the truth must be received into an honest and good heart. (A. F. Joscelyne, B. A.) Missionary sermon I. WHAT IS THE SEED TO BE SOWN? The Word of God. II. THE SOIL UPON WHICH THIS SEEN IS TO BE CAST. The field is the world. III. THE MANNER OR SPIRIT IN WHICH THE SEED IS TO BE SOWN. 1. With much prayer. 2. In simple faith upon God’ s promises. 3. In entire dependence upon the influences of the Holy Ghost. 4. In a spirit of love to Christ and the souls of men. 5. Not sparingly, but bountifully. (J. Hatchard, A. M.) Use the Bible Never were there so many Bibles in the world. The seed of eternal life is in our days plenteously sown. Why, then, has the crop failed so shamefully? The failure of a crop must be owing to one or more of these four causes. Either (1) the seed must be bad; or (2) the season must be bad; or (3) the land must be bad; or (4) the tillage must be bad. Now the failure of a crop of holiness cannot be owing to the first of these causes, for the seed is as good as ever. Nor is the failure owing to any peculiarly bad season. The influence of the Holy Ghost still falls, like mild showers, gently and plentifully on men’ s hearts, to soften and fit them for receiving the Word of God. The Sun of Righteousness still shines in the heavens, and from His golden throne, when the good wheat has sprung up and come to ear, He pours down warmth enough to ripen it and bring it to perfection. Nor again is the failure of the seed due to the badness of the soil. Bad enough it is, to be sure, naturally; but we know how much the very worst soil may be bettered by care and labour. Man’ s heart is not worse than it was formerly. The scantiness of the crop, then, is owing to nothing but badness of tillage. (A. W. Hare.) The seed gives life by means of death Just so is it with all truth, and superlatively so is it with the Truth. How often does the discoverer reap his first harvest in derision and loss! How often does the pioneer of some beneficent enterprise lay its foundation in his own wealth, health, and peace I How often does the patriot pay the penalty of living a purer and nobler life than his self-seeking contemporaries! Above all, what a countless army of men, “ valiant for the faith and truth upon the earth,” have had to water the seed of Christ’ s gospel by their blood and tears! How often in this and that land, and in none more than in our own, have those gospel institutions, which are God’ s Tree of Life for the world, had to grow up like a weeping willow and suck their first nutriment from the graves of their martyr-slain! The blood of Scotland’ s proto-martyr, the noble Patrick Hamilton, and the memory of his dying prayer, “ How long, O Lord, shall darkness cover this realm?” fomented the young Reformation life over a comparatively silent germinating period of more than twenty years. Knox, and with him Scotland, kindled at the pile of George Wishart. Andrew Melville caught the falling mantle of Knox. And as with the martyrs under Popery in that century, so with those under the “ black prelacy” of the next. When Richard Cameron fell on Aird’ s Moss--as if in answer to his own prayer as the action began, “ Lord, spare the green and take the ripe!” --all the more strenuously strove Cargill, till he, too, in the year following, sealed the truth with his blood. And more followed, and yet more, through that last and worst decade of the pitiless storm known, as by emphasis, “ the killing time.” Through those terrible years Peden dragged out a living death, and, as he thought of Cameron now at rest, often exclaimed, “ O to be with Richie!” Young Renwick, too, caught up the torn flag, nobly saying, “ They are but standard-bearers that have fallen; the Master lives.” Thus one after another, on blood-drenched scaffold or on blood-soaked field, fell the precious seed-grain to rise in harvests manifold, till just at the darkest hour before the dawn, Renwick’ s martyrdom closed the red roll in 1688, the very year of the Revolution, and the seed so long “ sown in tears” was” “ reaped in joy.” Marvel not at this. He who is at once the sower and the seed had Himself to die that we might live. (T. Guthrie, D. D.) Vitality of latent seeds Much interesting information has been furnished lately upon the vitality of buried seeds. It is astonishing how long many of them retain their germinating powers although lying so deep in the earth as to be beyond the reach of atmospheric influences. This is so--e.g., with the seeds of gorse. A piece of land in Northamptonshire was converted from a furze fox-cover to pasture, a state in which it remained for thirty years or more; it was then deeply cultivated, and the following season a crop of gorse sprung up over the whole field. A gardener, in order to plant some rhododendrons last spring, turned over a quantity of peat soil, the bottom portion being brought to the surface. That bed is now covered with a thick crop of seedling foxgloves, the seed of which must have been lying there in a state of complete dormancy for probably half a century. In the same manner do seeds of truth often lie in the hearts of men. The sower forgets that he has scattered them, or mourns that they have not sprung up. The harvest may come, however, after many years have rolled away, for the seed contains the germ of a God-given life. Those who scatter the “ Word of God” ought never to despair of results. (Christian Journal.) Sowing the seed of the Word Billy Dawson, that great natural orator, had a wonderful sermon on the “ Sower and the Seed.” With every stroke of the hand in imitation of the act of sowing, the speaker would drop some blessed passage of Scripture. The Methodist chapel in one of the midland counties not being big enough, the use of the Particular Baptist Chapel was secured. The minister of the chapel was upon the platform. Dawson gave this “ sowing speech,” and went along the platform scattering the seed and giving one passage of Scripture after another: “ God so loved the world;” “ Come unto Me, all ye that labour;” then there came another handful; “ If any man sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous, and He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.” “ There, it’ s out,” he said, “ and you can do what you like.” When remonstrated with for this breach of ministerial propriety he said, “ I did not think about the chapel, nor the parson! I thought about the seed.” (Handbook to Scripture Doctrines.) Luke 8:12 Then cometh the devil The devil’ s punctuality, power, and purpose I. First observe the evil one’ s . NO sooner does the seed fall than the fowls devour it. Our text says “ then,” that is, there and then, “ cometh the devil.” Mark renders it, “ Satan cometh immediately.” Whoever else may loiter, Satan never does. No sooner does a camel fall dead in the wilderness than the vultures appear. Not a bird was visible, nor did it seem possible that there could be one within a radius of many miles, yet speedily there are specks in the sky, and soon the devourers are gorging themselves with flesh: even thus do the spirits of evil scent their prey from afar, end hasten to their destroying work h little delay might put the case beyond Satanic power, hence the prompitude of diabolic activity. II. Notice his POWER. It is not said that he tries to do it, but that he actually does so. He sees, he comes, and he conquers. His power is partly derived from his natural sagacity. He is more than a match for preacher and hearer united if the Holy Spirit be not there to baffle him. He has also acquired fresh cunning by long practice in his accursed business. Moreover, he derives his chief power from the man’ s condition of soul: it is easy for birds to pick up seed which lies exposed on a trodden path. III. His PURPOSE. “ Lest they should believe and be saved” Satan takes away the Word out of their hearts. Here also is wisdom--wisdom hidden within the enemy’ s cunning. If the gospel remains in contact with the heart its tendency is to produce faith. (C. H. Spurgeon.) Inattentive hearers I. WHAT IS FAITH? I answer, it is a firm persuasion of the truth of the gospel, accompanied with a deep sense of its importance, and a cordial acceptance of its gracious proposals; and so producing the genuine fruits of love and obedience. We have heard the gospel. Have we believed it? Have we received it in the love of it? and are our hearts and lives influenced and governed by it? II. To speak of THE TO THEM THAT BELIEVE. 1. A salvation from moral evil. 2. A salvation from natural evil. Not that good men are exempted from the common afflictions of life. But they are converted into blessings for them, and they are provided with all needful supports under their afflictions. 3. A deliverance also from penal evil III. THE BETWEEN FAITH AND . It is necessary, in order to our being saved, that we believe. Now this necessity arises out of the Divine appointment, and the reason and nature of the thing. 1. It is the will of God, that those who are saved should believe. 2. There is a fitness or suitableness in faith to the end of its appointment, so that the necessity of it arises out of the nature of the thing itself. No sober man who contemplates faith, accompanied with those dispositions and affections necessary to constitute a real Christian, can pronounce it an unreasonable and useless thing. And how is that good to be possessed without a temper of heart suited to the enjoyment of it? And how is this temper to be acquired but by believing? Thus have we considered the nature of faith, described the salvation promised to it, and shown the connection between the one and the other. Let us now return to the argument in the text. Satan clearly perceiving the influence of faith in the great business of salvation, and well knowing, too that faith comes by hearing, uses all his artifices to divert men’ s attention from the Word, and to prevent its salutary effect upon their hearts. It now remains that we make two or three reflections on the general subject of this discourse. 1. If Satan takes the measures you have heard to prevent the success of the gospel, and to confirm men in impenitence and unbelief, how truly is he denominated by our Saviour “ the wicked one,” and how righteous is that sentence which will shortly be executed upon him! 2. How much is it to be lamented that men will suffer themselves to be deceived and ruined by the devices of this great adversary! 3. And lastly, Let us admire and adore the grace of God which defeats the designs of Satan, and makes the Word effectual upon the hearts of multitudes, notwithstanding all the opposition it meets with. (S. Stennett, D. D.) The fowls of the air Satan’ s power would be far less formidable if it extended to our circumstances only, and did not reach to our mind. We have, however, the express testimony of the Word of God that it does reach thus far; and it is this district of Satanic power which I purpose now to investigate. 1. With those faculties of mind, if there be any, which are purely intellectual, which do not in any way determine or affect moral character and conduct, it cannot be supposed that the great enemy of mankind busies himself at all. 2. Perhaps, however, there are fewer powers which are purely intellectual than we are accustomed to imagine. The mind and heart of man are very closely and subtly kneaded up together. Certain it is that there are certain faculties which, more or less, belong to both elements, of which it is hard to say whether they are more intellectual or moral. 3. One of these is memory. The agency of the fowls in the parable is external; it is not in the soil itself, nor is it connected with the soil; and in like manner, the foe who removes the seed from the heart, that is, from the memory of man, is external. In this parable you have the hosts or tribes of the air doing the work of the prince of the power of the air. 4. Thus, for all who recognize the words of Christ as being the very truth of God, it seems to be a settled point, resting upon the authority of the Master, that Satan exercises a certain power over the memory. 5. I turn with a sense of relief from this dark part of the subject to notice the immense power for good which the memory has under a guidance much greater than that of Satan--the guidance of the grace of God. 6. In conclusion, let the memories of the young be thoroughly charged with the Word of God. (Dean Goulburn.) Transient piety Beloved, how many professors fail in this respect. They follow the Lord by fits and starts; they go out from us because they are not of us; for if they had been of us, doubtless they would have continued with us. They leap into religion as the flying-fish leaps into the air; they fall back again into their sins, as the same fish returns to its element. They make a great flame for a time like the crackling of thorns, but lo! the flame has soon expired, for they are not like the miraculous bush which burned, God dwells not in them. (C. H. Spurgeon.) Lack of continuance The great trial of our Christian life is at this point. Will we continue? Thousands of girls begin to practise at the piano; thousands make no small attainment; but only the scores continue, and become eminent. Half a college class, at some time or other, begin to collect a cabinet or herbarium, but only here and there one perseveres. After years have elapsed that one has become, perhaps, possessed of a wonderful treasury, and is, perhaps, also in the way of renown. All, or nearly all, of this is due to his gift of continuance. One day I was looking at a fruit-bearing passion-vine, covering half the side of a friend’ s house, vigorous, graceful. That friend showed me two or three little, tiny, frail-looking specimens of the same in a box. “ Why,” said she, “ I keep the box full of seeds, but only a few of them germinate. They are so slow in germinating, too. It takes two or three months for one to make its appearance.” How many persons there are who would never have any noble passion-vine climbing in beauty about their dwelling, simply because they have no grace of continuing to care for the plant in the slow months of its early life. (A. L. Stone.) Luke 8:14 And that which fell among thorns Signs of excessive worldliness I. TO APPLY TESTS OF IS VERY . It is difficult to convince ourselves that we are too much engrossed in our worldly cares. If a man is intemperate, or profane, or fraudulent, it is easy for him to know his own sin; but worldliness comes to us so much under the guise of duty, that it is difficult to detect its real character. There is, also, the further difficulty, that it is so hard to fix the boundary between a necessary attention to business and a sinful absorption in it. II. One sign of excessive worldliness is, GREAT ANXIETY OF MIND IN OUR WORLDLY . A Christian should be diligent in business, and improve every lawful means of acquisition, but not as if his whole happiness were at stake. His real treasure is untouched, however the world may go with him. III. But the great test by which the Christian should judge, is THE EFFECT OF HIS WORLDLY UPON HIS DUTIES. Even when the duties of devotion are regularly performed, it may be with the world uppermost in our hearts. When the Bible is read, the eye may see its words, but the thoughts may be upon some plan for the day, so that we may read as we would with one at our side calling us away to something we love better. (W. H. Lewis, D. D.) Why cares and pleasures are associated together No two persons are more unlike at first sight than the man of care and the man of pleasure. The man of care does not know what pleasure is; he is always fretting and chafing at something or other; everything goes wrong, or seems to go wrong, with him; he is always making the worst of things, looking at their dark side rather than their bright side. The man of pleasure, on the other hand, passes his whole existence in the sunshine. If, by chance, trouble comes in his way, he puts it from him, or closes his eyes against it; he is too much bent on enjoying himself to allow anything to annoy and disturb him. How comes it, then, that unlike, nay, opposite as such characters are, they are here set down side by side, and are represented as occupying precisely the same ground? How comes it that he who saunters leisurely through life, gathering freely as he goes of every pleasure, and he who drags himself heavily along, under the weight of many burdens, find themselves standing side by side at last, and coming to the same end? It is not difficult to find the reason. The cares of life and its pleasures are both of the nature of weeds--weeds of very different kind indeed, but each of them equally the natural product of the human heart; each requires only to be left to itself, and it will soon overrun the whole heart, and choke the good seed. And it will not make much difference, at the great harvestday, whether the failure of the crop in us was owing to an undue growth of cares or of pleasures. (H. Harris, B. D.) Good ground spoilt by neglect The very same piece of ground stands for both the man of care and the man of pleasure. And what kind of ground is it? Strange to say, the ground itself seems to be very good ground; it is not the hard wayside, where the seed never once gets beneath the surface, but is trodden under foot by every passer-by, and picked up by the birds; it is not even like the rocky ground, where there is no depth of soil to support the root when the seed has sprung up and begun to grow. No, the ground of which we are now speaking stands the very next to the good ground, and seems to be of very much the same kind with it; and yet, whilst the one is bringing forth its thirty-folds, and sixtyfold, and hundredfold, ripe for the harvest, the other has not a single full ear; it yields no more than the rocky ground, no more, even, than the wayside. And yet, how is this? How comes it to be so near to the good ground, and yet so far removed from it? how comes it to promise so much, and to break its promise so entirely? We shall, perhaps, best answer this question by means of an example. We sometimes, then, see two pieces of allotment, or garden-ground, lying alongside each other, the one with a very plentiful crop, the other growing nothing but weeds. And how comes this? It cannot be owing to any natural difference in the two pieces of ground, for they lie within a few feet of one another, and are exposed to just the same amount of air, and rain, and sunshine. How comes it, then, that the produce of the two pieces of land is so very different? We shall have no difficulty in finding the answer. We shall say at once, it is quite plain that these two pieces of ground have been treated quite differently; one of them has been kept properly looked to, and the other has not. And this, too, is the very difference of which we are in search between the good ground and the ground choked with thorns in the parable; the soil itself is the same, or much the same, in each, only in the one case it has been properly attended to, and in the other it has been left to itself. And so, whilst on the good ground the seed has had nothing to hinder it from steadily growing and ripening for the harvest, the seed on the other ground, after making a vigorous effort, has stopped short, and never got any further; the depth of earth which supports it has lent the same amount of nourishment to the weeds which have been allowed to grow up with it. As it has grown, so they have grown; and long before the time of the harvest has come, they have all run together, the good seed and the weeds, and have choked each other. Worldly amusements I. On those amusements which are absolutely sinful, it is not necessary that we spend many words. II. There are innocent amusements in which a Christian may indulge, but with moderation. Still there must be a wise moderation. The love of pleasure, even where it confines itself to innocent modes of gratification, is an insinuating and mischievous passion. It may sow the seeds of indolence, create a distaste for the serious business of life, and so make a man’ s course profitless both to himself and to others. We may see this in the history of nations. A pleasure-loving has never been a noble and manly people. When the Athenians yielded to the fascinations of the theatre, and appropriated to its purposes the funds that had been designed for the defence of the State, they speedily forgot their ancient love of freedom; the glories of Marathon and Salamis were shadowed by the disaster of Choeroneia, and the invincible antagonists of Xerxes became the fawning slaves of Philip. Even the Romans, who had conquered the world, and had for ages boasted of their independence, were content to wear their chains, when their tyrants had learned the art of lulling them to sleep by the Siren-like strains of pleasure, and the voices that had once been raised to rebuke their oppressors, were heard only to clamour for the bloody games of the circus. These are lessons to us both as individuals and as a nation. Changes in the moral character of both are for the most part accomplished noiselessly. III. There are doubtful pleasures, as to which it becomes the Christian to exercise careful discrimination. To point out some considerations which may serve to guide the exercise of this high Christian expediency, is what we propose here. 1. Regard must be paid to the actual rather than to the possible character of any amusement, and each one must be judged by what it is not by what it might be. 2. Regard must be had to the tendencies of an amusement. We admit freely that this is a test to be applied with great caution. It is not a fair objection to any recreation to point to isolated cases, in which indulgence has been followed by serious moral and spiritual evil. It cannot be questioned that a pleasure, though not sinful in its character, may, in its general influence, be unfriendly to spiritual earnestness. 3. Each man must have regard to his own individual temperament. So varied are our mental habits and tendencies, that we may pass unscathed through scenes which would inflict on others permanent and wide-spread injury. 4. Still more must every man respect his own conscience, and not exercise a liberty wider than it approves. 5. We must, in deference to the opinions, feelings, and spiritual interests of others, sometimes exercise a self-denial which our own consciences do not feel to be requisite for our own safety. (J. G. Rogers, B. A.) Luke 8:15 But that on the good ground are they, which in an honest and good heart, having heard the Word, keep it The necessity of patience The necessity of patience in the Christian course appeareth by these reasons: 1. The scope of the gospel is to make men fruitful Christians. But this can never be, without the persecution of the world (2 Timothy 3:12). The shadow doth not more undividedly follow the body, than persecutions and trials follow the profession of the gospel. This necessity of suffering afflictions implies and infers a necessity of patience. 2. It is necessary in respect of the manuring and preparing to fruit. The best ground brings no fruit unless it endure the plough, the harrow, the cold, the frost: even so the Lord prepareth His children to fruits of grace, by patient enduring many trials. The walnut tree is made fruitful by beating, camomile by treading upon, the palm by pressing, and the Christian by suffering. 3. In respect of the producing of fruits, there is great need of patience: seeing there is no fruit of grace which Satan seeks not to kill in the very sprouting and first appearance; as the child in his birth (Revelation 12:4). And the wicked world seeks to blast them with the east wind of reproaches, yea to nip and pinch them, out-face and destroy them, with strong and violent persecutions: so as without patience “ enduring the cross, and despising the shame,” this thirtyfold cannot be expected, much less an hundredfold. Thus Christ Himself brings forth to us all His blessed fruits, not without the greatest patience, proportioned to His greatest sufferings: and after the same manner must we also bring forth our fruits to Him. 4. It is necessary, in respect of the growth and ripening of fruits. The seed sown comes not up all at once, but by degrees; “ first the blade, then the ear, then ripe fruit” (Mark 4:28). So all our graces and fruits are small at first, and receive increase by little and little. 5. It is necessary in respect of things that might hinder the growth, if patience prevented not: as first, the smart of present afflictions; for every affliction is “ grievous for the present” (Hebrews 12:11), the mention thereof oftentimes makes us shrink, and startle, and grow out of heart, because of the roughness of our way. But now “ by patience we possess our souls,” the present remedy of the disciple’ s greatest persecutions (Luke 21:17-19), whereas by impatience we lose ourselves, and lessen our fruits. Secondly, the common crosses which accompany our mortal life will make us weary enough, unless patience supply some strength, and under-shore us. Thirdly, inward temptations, and disquietness of conscience, the wounds of spirit, are so intolerable, that the violence of them often shakes off many fruits, and makes the Christian walk weakly many days. Now patience alone keeps the soul at peace and quietness, waiting for God unto succour or issue. It holds the heart in expectation of the accomplishment of God’ s promises, and our happiness in Christ. Fourthly, there are enemies without, which hazard our fruits. Fifthly, infirmities of brethren with whom we converse, were a great means to shake off our fruits (as Barnabas lost his sincerity for a time by Peter’ s dissimulation), if patience did not uphold to discern and “ bear the infirmities of the weak” (Romans 15:1-2). 6. Patience is necessary in respect of the harvest of fruits, the gathering and full reaping of all the seed sown. And thus the good ground brings forth “ with patience,” i.e., with patient expectation of the full fruits; the first-fruits whereof are already attained (Romans 8:25). (Thomas Taylor, D. D) Effectual hearing If you would hear the Word aright, be not only attentive, but retentive. Lay the Word up in your memories and hearts. “ The seed on the good ground are they who, having heard the Word, keep it.” The Greek word for “ keep” signifies “ to hold the Word fast, that it do not run from us.” If the seed be not kept in the ground, but is presently washed away, it is sown to little purpose: so, if the Word preached be not kept in your memories and hearts, it is preached in vain. Many people have memories like leaky vessels--the Word goes out as fast as it comes in: how, then, can it profit? If a treasure be put into a chest and the chest not locked, it may easily be taken out: a bad memory is like a chest without a look, the devil can easily take out all the treasure. Labour to keep in memory the truths you hear: the things we esteem we are not so apt to forget. (T Watson.) Meditation renders good impressions lasting Gotthold had for some purpose taken from a cupboard a vial of rosewater, and, after using it, inconsiderately left it unstopped. Observing it some time after, he found that all the strength and sweetness of the perfume had evaporated. Here, thought he with himself, is a striking emblem of a heart fond of the world and open to the impression of outward objects. What good does it do to take such a heart to the house of God, and there fill it with the precious essence of the roses of paradise which are the truths of Scripture? What good to kindle in it a glow of devotion, if we afterwards neglect to close the outlet--by which I mean, to keep the Word in an honest and good heart. How vain to hear much, but to retain little, and to practise less. How vain to experience within us sacred and holy emotions, unless we are afterwards careful to close the heart by diligent reflection and prayer, and so keep it unspotted from the world. Neglect this, and the strength and spirit of devotion evaporates, and leaves only a lifeless form behind. (Scriver.) Remarkable fertility Paul Joanne ascribes amazing fertility to the soil of Mentone, and backs his assertions by a story which reads like a legend. He says that a stranger coming to pay a visit to his Mentonese friends stuck his walking-stick into the ground and forgot it. Coming back some days afterwards to seek his cane, he was surprised to find it putting forth leaves and young branches. He declares that the little tree has grown vastly, and is still to be seen in the Rue Saint Michel. We have not seen it, and are afraid that to inquire for it in the aforesaid Rue would raise a laugh at our expense. We may believe the story or not as we please; but it may serve as an emblem of the way in which those grow who are by grace planted in Christ. All dry and withered like a rod we are thrust into the sacred soil, and life comes to us at once, with bud and branch and speedy fruit. Aaron’ s rod that budded was not only a fair type of our Lord, but a cheering prophecy of ourselves. Whenever we feel dead and barren let us ask to be buried in Christ afresh, and straightway we shall glorify His name by bearing much fruit. (C. H. Spurgeon.) The mystery of growth In the growth of a grain of wheat are three miracles of wonders, viz., the power of absorbing fresh materials, the power of changing them into living vegetable substance, and the power of arranging the new materials according to a fixed pattern. Could we see this process through a powerful magnifying glass, so that the particles which are to be absorbed should seem as large as marbles, we should see millions of such marbles building themselves up into a green tree; some marching to one part, some to another; then changing themselves into tree sub stance, and, finally, all arranged into an exact pattern, so that no one can mistake the nature of the tree. Growth is a mystery. (E. White.) With patience Of all the characteristics of the good hearer, this, as it is the most valuable, is also the hardest to attain. To wait is even harder than to labour and to obey. Unless we are to have our harvest very soon, we have hardly the heart to sow. The husbandman has long patience--must have it--till he receives the early and the latter rain. So with us. To become a good hearer, i.e., a good doer of the Word, is a task which requires long patience. We must suffer many a killing frost, many a darkening shower, many a burning sun, before the good seed cast into our hearts by that great Sower, who daily goes forth to sow, will gladden us with its increase. But the longer we wait the more precious will be the harvest--it is only ill weeds that spring up apace--and the sweeter the taste of the bread which has been so hardly earned, and so long in coming. (S. Cox, D. D.) Luke 8:16 No man, when he hath lighted a candle The lighted lamp The truth symbolized by this imagery is the self-revealing character of the real disciple of Christ. His teaching is reproductive as the seed corn, it is diffusive as the light. The lamp is lighted to fill the room with light, and for no other purpose. Similarly all Christian truth which comes to the individual is intended to be diffused in a manner calculated to strike the attention of all who come from darkness into this marvellous light. If we compare the analogous expressions in Matthew, we see how naturally our Lord’ s teaching glided off from this point into exhortations to transparent sincerity. For as the best lamp is one which gives most light, and casts the smallest shade, the best Christian is he who reflects most of Christ and least of self. (F. E. Toyne.) The place and function of the lamp We see at a glance that this parable throws some light on the social customs of the age and land in which it was spoken. It reminds us, for instance, that in Palestine, as indeed in ancient Greece and Rome, when the darkness fell, little lamps, containing oil and a wick, were brought into the rooms of all classes of the people and placed on slender stands, commonly some two or three feet high, to give light to all who were in the house. Our Lord uttered this parable to teach us that no man is illuminated for his own sake, just as no lamp is lit for its own sake. Just as the lamp is lit that it may shine, so we are taught that we may teach. No truth is a private possession, just as no truth is of any private interpretation. “ Heaven doth with us as we with torches do, Not light them for themselves; for if our virtues Did not go forth of us, ‘ twere all alike, As if we had them not.” No truth is, or can be, dangerous. All that we can learn, we may learn. All that we have learned we are bound to teach; all that we have received we are bound to give. To conceal from others any truth which we ourselves have been taught of God is to hide the lamp that has come to us under a bushel or under a couch, instead of setting it under a lampstand. (S. Cox, D. D.) Difference between this and other versions of the parable Whereas St. Mark, who wrote mainly for the Romans, speaks of a Roman measure, the modius, St. Luke, who wrote for the whole Gentile world, speaks simply of a “ vessel,” any vessel or measure used throughout the habitable globe. And whereas St. Matthew, writing mainly for Jews, speaks of the lamp as kindled that it may give light “ unto all that are in the house,” St. Luke speaks of it as kindled in order “ that they who enter into the house” may see the light. For St. Matthew was himself a Jew, and wrote for those who, like himself, were already in the household of God; but St. Luke was a Gentile, and wrote for those who, like himself, had a great desire to enter into God’ s house and find themselves at home in it. He and they had, so to speak, long stood outside the Father’ s house, seeing and desiring the light that shone through its windows; but now Christ had called them into the house, had bidden them enter, had assured them that the house was built and the lamp lit for them as for the Jews, for all who would come into it, as well as for all who are already in it. The good done by being good It is somewhat remarkable, and worthy of being remembered, of the late Dr. Charles Hodge, that the closing sentence of an unfinished autobiography--perhaps the last words which he wrote--speaking of a purpose which he formed to hold up a godly companion whom he greatly loved to his students as an example, he wrote “ I wanted to show them how much good could be done by simply being good.” Hiding the light A young lady in a fashionable home had been brought to Christ, and had been enabled for some years, amid much opposition, to faithfully witness for Him. The attention she attracted was often painful to her; and once, when repulsed and wounded in an effort of this kind, she for a time lost heart, and felt she should have to give up being a consecrated Christian. Just at this time she was invited to visit friends whelm she had never seen, and who knew but little of her; and she resolved, that while there she would not openly speak of her Saviour, or put herself in a position to be noticed as peculiarly religious. Her visit passed away; and not happily to herself, she was enabled to keep her resolution. Upon the day of her leaving for home, a most attractive and accomplished lady, a fashionable woman of society, while walking alone with her, suddenly asked her, “ Where is your sister, and why did she not come here? I mean your religious sister, the one who is known as the ‘ religious Miss J.’ It was because I heard that she was to be here that I, too, accepted an invitation to come and spend the holiday. I am tired of the empty, unsatisfying life I am leading, and have longed to talk with a real Christian.” With shame and confusion the faithless witness was obliged to confess that she had no sister; that she was the one who had been sometimes called the “ religious Miss J.,” and that shame of the badge, that should have been borne gladly for her Saviour, had kept her silent. A precious opportunity to lead a weary soul to the Master had been lost. (D. W.Whittle’ s Life, Warfare, and Victory.) Luke 8:17 Far nothing is secret that shall not be made manifest The paradox Nothing is secret that shall not be made manifest, etc. , that is to say, “ There is now absolutely no light or truth veiled from men which it is not the intention and purpose of God to uncover and reveal to them as soon as they are able to receive it; nor was there ever, at any time, anything hidden from them which it was not for their good to hide from them for the time, and which was not disclosed to them so soon as it was for their good that the disclosure should be made. We have in this axiom and paradox-- 1. The very charter of science. 2. A warrant for all honest inquiry. 3. A solid ground for hope. (S. Cox, D. D.) Secret things made visible in due time Dr. Draper, in his “ History of the Conflict between Religion and Science,” says: “ A shadow never falls upon a wall without leaving thereupon a permanent trace, a trace which might be made visible by resorting to proper processes. The portraits of our friends or landscape views may be hidden on the sensitive surface from the eye, but they are ready to make their appearance as soon as proper developers are resorted to. Upon the wails of our apartments there exist the vestiges of all our acts, silhouettes of whatever we have done. I have seen landscapes and architectural views, taken in Mexico, developed, as artists say, months subsequently in New York, the images coming out after the long voyage in all their proper forms and in all their contrast of light and shade. The photo had forgotten nothing. It had signally preserved the contour of the everlasting mountains and the passing smoke of a bandit fire.” (Christian Journal.) Luke 8:18 Take heed, therefore, how ye hear How to hear the Word Several classes of persons, to be met with in every congregation, should attend to this caution. I. In the first rank of these may be placed THE HEARER. II. Another class of persons who should give heed to the warning of the text are represented by THE HEARER. III. A third class of church-goers who derive little benefit from preaching, may be described as HEARERS. 1. Endeavour always to listen to the preaching of the gospel with a mind free from prejudice. Blind prepossessions and one-sided prejudices are like the trade winds, which, holding out in one course, render compass and rudder alike useless. When prejudice puts its hands before the eyes, that hand, small as it is, will be large enough to hide the sun. 2. Again. Sermons should be heard with a desire to profit by them. 3. Lastly. Sermons should be heard with humble dependence on God’ s Holy Spirit, to open the understanding and to touch the heart. Plead His own promise (Isaiah 55:10-11). (J. N. Norton, D. D.) The teaching of the Church The Church teaches and is taught in turn; every Christian contributes to this mutual teaching, and has a share in it. Preaching can only have a strictly moral effect; it communicates to us thoughts and feelings, and therefore appeals to the thought and to the feeling. It provokes decisions, and therefore stimulates the will. It is accordingly the most moral means of grace, that which necessitates most the effective participation of our freedom. “ Take heed, therefore, how ye hear.” To give more weight to that exhortation, let us consider who He is who speaks to us; what He tells us; the kind of attention which the truth revealed by Him requires; and, lastly, what it costs to despise it. I. WHO SPEAKS TO YOU IN THE WHICH YOU SEEK AT THE FOOT OF THE PULPIT OF TRUTH? DO you not know that it is God Himself? He speaks to you first by the Holy Book, which is the basis of all faithful preaching. Revelation must become real and present, passing through the impressions, the aspirations, the experiences, the secret sorrows of the human heart at every period. Certainly, our word must not be blindly received--it must be brought to the test of the infallible Word of God: for the pure gold of truth which we bring you by preaching is too often alloyed through human frailty. God condescends to speak through our unworthy mouths and to take us for His instruments also. Why, my brethren, do you so seldom perceive this? It is, in the first place, the fault of your preachers, who, too often being infatuated with themselves, interposing their personalities between you and the truth, care more for the fame of their name than for the triumph of Jesus Christ. Are you not constantly spreading under their feet that fatal net of vainglory? II. It is God who speaks to you; BUT WHAT DOES HE TELL YOU? That which is of the utmost consequence to you--that which is necessary for time and for eternity. God does not speak to amuse our intellect, or to send to our hearts a sweet and figurative emotion. He wants to restore us to the truth in every respect. He reveals us to ourselves by rooting out every illusion of our mind. He shows us, in the narrow path which proceeds from the cross, the way of returning to God and to be restored to our own. III. THE KIND OF . Shut up, as we are commonly, in the circle of visible things, it is difficult for us to lift our minds to the contemplation of invisible things. Our thoughts have been too much accustomed to creep; their heavy wings do no longer carry them, by a sudden flight, towards the celestial heights. Our preoccupations are for the world; this is the real disposition of our spirit--it has a great inclination for it. If we do not energetically react against that natural tendency, we shall be hurried by the stream of vanity far from truth. Attention is the prize of continued exertion--it supposes a firm resolution to remove every frivolous distraction. We must be watchful every moment to drive away those flocks of birds always ready to pick up the seed of eternal life as it falls on the soil. Yet attention is not sufficient, Christian truth claims a particular attention. It is not enough to bring great sagacity, a penetrating spirit, trained to study and fully determined to learn the truths which are presented. If it were only the question of a purely human knowledge, we should not require more. Religious truth has organs of its own, and by which it reveals itself to man. It addresses itself above all things to his heart and his conscience. There, in our moral being, is the inward eye, able to perceive the heavenly light; there is the sense of the Divine. Neither the understanding, nor the imagination, nor the reason, abandoned to itself, will ever receive a ray of it, because it may happen that we deny God and the invisible world, while we possess these faculties in a superior degree. Take heed, therefore, how ye hear. He only remembers it who tries to accomplish the Divine will, and who, from the always vague and movable impression, passes to positive acts. Besides, nothing is more sad, nothing, I should say, is more demoralizing, than to understand our duties and not perform them. To know the best and to do the worst is the perversion of perversions. Let us not take Christianity as Pharisees or as artists; let us take it seriously, as the rule of our life, a rule not only for the great days, but for the most ordinary course of existence. (E. de Pressense, D. D.) The art of hearing For be ye well assured that this is an infallible sign that some excellent and notable good is toward you, when the devil is so busy to hinder your hearing of the Word, which of all other things he doth most envy unto you. Therefore as he pointed Adam to another tree, lest he should go to the tree of life (Genesis 3:1-24.), so, knowing the Word to be like unto the tree of life, he appointeth you to other business, to other exercises, to other works, and to other studies, lest you should hear it and be converted to God, whereby the tribute and revenue of his kingdom should be impaired; therefore mark how many forces he hath bent against one little Scripture, to frustrate this counsel of Christ, “ Take heed how you hear.” First, he labours all that he can to stay us from hearing; to effect this, he keeps us at taverns, at plays, in our shops, and appoints us some other business at the same time, that when the bell calls to the sermon, we say, like the churlish guests, We cannot come (Matthew 22:1-46.). If he cannot stay us away with any business or exercise, then he casts fancies into our minds, and drowsiness into our heads, and sounds into our ears, and sets temptations before our eyes; that though we hear, yet we should not mark, like the birds which fly about the church. If he cannot stay our ears, nor slack our attention as he would, then he tickleth us to mislike something which was said, and by that make us reject all the rest. If we cannot mislike anything which is said, then he infecteth us with some prejudice of the preacher; he doth not as he teacheth, and therefore we less regard what he saith. If there be no fault in the man, nor in the doctrine, then, lest it would convert us, and reclaim us, he courseth all means to keep us from the consideration of it, until we have forgot it. To compass this, so soon as we have heard, he takes us to dinner, or to company, or to pastime, to remove our minds, that we should think no more of it. If it stay in our thoughts, and like us well, then he hath this trick; instead of applying the doctrine, which we should follow, he turns us to praise and extol the preacher. He made an excellent sermon! he hath a notable gift! I never heard any like him! He which can say so, hath heard enough; this is the repetition which you make of our sermons when you come home, and so to your business again till the next sermon come; a breath goeth from us, and a sound cometh to you, and so the matter is ended. The Jews did hear more than all the world beside, yet because they took no heed to that which they heard, therefore they crucified Him which came to save them, and became the cursedest people upon the earth, which were the blessedest nation before; therefore the A B C of a Christian is to learn the art of hearing. There is no seed which groweth so fast as God’ s seed, if it be sown well; therefore, that I may show you that method of hearing, which Christ commendeth here to His disciples, it is necessary to observe five things: first, the necessity of hearing; secondly, the fruit which cometh by hearing; thirdly, the kinds of hearers; fourthly, the danger of hearing amiss; fifthly, that manner of hearing, which will make you remember that which is said, and teach you more in a year than you have learned all your life. Is not this the cause why God doth not hear us, because we will not hear Him? Is not this the cause why ye are such doctors in the world, and such infants in the Church? Ye learned your trade in seven years, but you have not learned religion in all your years. Can you give any reason for it but this? You marked when your master taught you your trade, because you should live by it; but you marked not the preacher when he taught you religion, because you do not live by it. Come now to the danger by hearing amiss. Christ saith, “ Take heed how you hear.” An evil eye engendereth lust, and an evil tongue engendereth strife; but an evil ear maketh an heretic, and a schismatic, and an idolater. This careless hearing made God take away His Word from the Jews; therefore, you may hear the Word so as it may be taken from you, as the talent was from him that hid it (Matthew 25:1-46.); for God will not leave His pearls with swine; but as He saith, “ What hadst thou to do to take My words in thy mouth, seeing thou hatest to be reformed?” so He will say, “ What hadst thou to do to take My Word in thy ear, seeing thou hatest to be reformed?” The greatest treasure in the world is most despised, the star which should lead us to Christ, the ladder which should mount us to heaven, the water that should cleanse our leprosy, the manna that should refresh our hunger, and the Book that we should meditate on day and night (Psalms 1:2), lieth in our windows, no man readeth it, no man regardeth it; the love of God, and the love of knowledge, and the love of salvation is so cold, that we will not read over one Book for it, for all we spend so many idle times while we live. If Samuel had thought that God had spoken to him, he would not have slept; but because he thought it was not God, but Eli, therefore he slept; so, because you remember not that it is God which speaks, therefore you mark not. But if you remember Christ’ s saying, “ He which heareth you, heareth Me, and he which despiseth you, despiseth Me,” you would hear the voice of the preacher, as you would hear the voice of God. Now, to show you how you should hear; when Peter and John would make the cripple attentive, they said unto him, “ Look upon us” (Acts 3:1-26.); so many, to sharpen their attention, desire to stand before the preacher, that they may look him in the face. By this little help Peter showeth that we had need to use many helps to make us hear well. Christ in the beginning of this chapter sends us to the husbandman to learn to hear. As he prepareth the ground before he soweth his seed, lest his seed should be lost, so we should prepare our hearts before we hear, lest God’ s seed be lost. What a shame is this, to remember every clause in your lease, and every point in your father’ s will; nay, to remember an old tale so long as you live, though it be long since you heard it; and the lessons which ye hear now will be gone within this hour, that you may ask, What hath stolen my sermon from me? Therefore that you may not hear us in vain, as you have heard others, my exhortation to you is, to record when you are gone that which you have heard. (H. Smith.) The heavenly thrift First, he giveth us a stock, to prove our husbandry, and then if we thrive with that, he doth add more unto it, now a little, and then a little, until at last the inheritance come too. As they which try a vessel, first put water into it, to see whether it will hold water, then they commit wine into it; so, first, God giveth us one grace; if we use that well, then he giveth another, and another, and another; according to that, “ He which is found faithful in a little, shall be made lord over much.” Thou shalt have a love to hear, read, and meditate: after thou shalt have a little knowledge to judge and speak of God’ s Word, of the Spirit, and of doctrines; then thou shalt ascend to faith, which will bring thee unto peace of conscience; then thou shalt meet with good books, and God will send thee teachers to instruct thee, and encourage thee, like the angels which came to Christ when He hungered. Thus a traveller passeth from town unto town, until he come to his inn; so a Christian passeth from virtue to virtue, until he come to heaven, which is the journey that every man must endeavour to go till death. Christ saith not, It shall be taken from them which have, but from them which “ seem to have.” (H. Smith.) Hearing the Word Those to whom the gospel is preached must take heed how they hear; take heed as to the act, matter, manner. 1. As to the act: Take heed that ye hear. This is implied, and necessarily supposed. 2. As to the objector matter: So take heed what ye hear. How with Luke is what with Mark. 3. As to the manner: How. This is principally intended, though the other be necessary. It is in vain to hear, in vain to hear that which is good, except we hear it well. The manner being principally intended, I shall principally insist on it. I need not go far for reasons; this chapter affords abundance. 1. Few hear well. There are not many good hearers; the most miscarry; therefore there is need to take heed. Of four sorts of hearers in the parable, three are naught but one good. 2. There are many enemies to oppose, and many impediments to hinder you in hearing. 3. The advantage or disadvantage (Mark 4:24-25). According as you measure to God in hearing, so will He measure to you in blessing or cursing. 4. The gospel, according as it is heard, is a great mercy or a great judgment, a blessing or a curse, therefore great reason to take heed. The abuse of the greatest mercy may curse it. 5. It is that by which you must be judged at the last day--Judge, &c., according to this gospel (Romans 2:16; John 12:48). If we neglect, we shall never taste of Christ. The children of the kingdom shall be cast out. It will be with you in this nation, and this place, as with the Jews--He turned from them to the Gentiles. He will take Christ and the gospel from you and give it to others; and when the gospel is gone, then look for destruction and desolation. The Lord convince you of the sinfulness of this sin! 1. It is a high contempt of God, of Christ. Contempt is the highest degree of dishonour; God is jealous of this. 2. If you will not hear God now, God will not hear you in the time of distress, though you may make many prayers (Isaiah 1:15). He willsend you to the gods whom ye have served. 3. Consider the state of the damned, those who, for neglecting the light, are cast into outer darkness. Use II. Exhortation to this duty. It is a duty of Christ’ s enjoining, and to His disciples. To further the practice of it, I shall (1) remove impediments that hinder; (2) prescribe means to facilitate and direct. 1. The impediments are ignorance, contempt, distractions, prejudice, obduration, bad ends or principles. Distractions: Wanderings, rovings of mind, will, affections, senses, caused by the cares of the world and lusts of the flesh; carefulness of other things makes careless of the Word. It is hard to hit a moving object, a bird in flight; as well, to as much purpose, sow the waves in a tempest, or cast seed upon branches tossed with the wind, as preach to a distracted, wandering hearer; nothing fixes, sinks, abides; his soul is like a highway, every man or beast has free passage. The remedy is to fix your whole soul on God. Prejudice: An ill conceit of the gospel; the matter, or the manner of delivery, plainness, simplicity; or ministers, their persons, conversation, office, or execution of it. To remove it, consider there is no reason, no room for prejudice against the gospel; those that despise it never saw its glory, nor tasted its sweetness--“ If our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost” (2 Corinthians 4:3). Shall we think worse of the sun because a blind man speaks against it, because an owl cannot behold it? and for ministers, there is glory enough in the gospel to gild them, how mean soever. 2. Directions how to hear. (1) Get a punctual knowledge of the state of your souls in reference to God. The reason is this, we must take heed how we hear, that we may hear fruitfully, that the Word may be profitable. It is most profitable when it is seasonable. It cannot be seasonable to you (whatever it be in itself), except you be acquainted with your soul’ s condition. (2) Before you hear, endeavour to get your souls into a capacity of hearing fruitfully, to get spiritual advantage by hearing. Take pains with your hearts in private before ye come, make them tender, fit to receive impressions. Set them open, that Christ may come in. Make room, empty them of sin and vanity, that the Spirit may work freely, with liberty, without interruption. Get them melted in prayer, sublimated, raised by meditation. (3) Receive the Word, and every part of it, as concerning thee in particular. Get knowledge of your greatest wants, weakest graces, strongest lusts, worst distempers, coldest affections, difficultest encumbrances, that so you may know how to apply the Word. (4) Be not satisfied with anything in hearing, but the presence of God. That special presence, when operative, makes the Word effectual to the ends appointed. The presence of the Lord His glory filled the tabernacle under the law; and His presence is as abundant and glorious under the gospel. (5) Take heed of suppressing any good motions raised by the Word. Constant hearers have experience of some convictions of sin, and resolve to leave it and mind the soul. Nourish these, take heed of smothering them. They are the blessed issues of heaven; will you stifle, murder them in the conception, make them like an untimely birth? They are buds springing from the immortal seed; will you nip them? They are sprigs planted by the hand of Christ, which would grow into a tree of life; will ye pluck them up by the roots, expose them to the frosts, break them while young and tender? They are sparks kindled by the breath of God, heavenly fire; will you quench it? (6) Come with resolution to do whatever ye shall hear, to comply with the whole will of God without reserves. There must be no more respect of truths than respect of persons. Obedience is the sweetest harmony the Lord can hear on earth, the perfection of it is a consonancy to the Divine will; if every string, every act be not screwed up thereto, there can be no concert, nothing but discord, harsh and unpleasing in His ear. It is not enough to promise God to the half of the kingdom; halting obedience will never come to heaven: all, or none. (7) Mix it with faith--“ The word preached did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in them that heard it” (Hebrews 4:2). Faith is a necessary ingredient to all spiritual services. (8) Receive the truth in the love of it--“ Because they received not the love of the truth,” i.e., truth in love, “ that they might be saved “ (2 Thessalonians 2:10). He that would hear savingly, must hear it with love; not out of fear, custom, not for by-ends, for credit, profit, preferment; but out of love to the naked truth, for its own native loveliness, without extrinsical consideration; as the truth is in Jesus, of Him, from Him. (D. Clarkson, B. D.) On reading and hearing the Word of God I. The dignity and excellence of the truths contained in the gospel appears in the fullest evidence when we reflect that they are the words of God, the dictates of that eternal wisdom from whence all light, all science is derived. II. Still, my brethren, you will neither read nor hear the Word of God with any fruit, unless you bring with you suitable dispositions. (J. Archer.) On hearing the Word Your mode of hearing, therefore, should correspond, on the one hand, to the character you sustain as rational and accountable creatures; and, on the other, to the unspeakable importance of Divine realities. Hence we remark-- I. That it becomes you to hear , and WITH AND . II. That it becomes you to hear, on all occasions, WITH AN EARNEST DESIRE TO BE . 1. Among those who appear in our sanctuaries, there are multitudes of merely formal attendants. 2. Among those who hear us, there are also frequently not a few actuated solely by motives of idle curiosity. 3. There are others who make it their entire business to sit in judgment upon the merits and defects of our addresses, both as to their style and as to their matter. 4. But, probably, the most numerous class of our hearers who stand in need of rectified habits, or, at least, that class which comprehends the greatest number of truly pious individuals, consists of those who hear for any but themselves. III. Always hear with the impression upon your minds, that THE YOU ARE MAY BE THE LAST YOU WILL EVER BE WITH. IV. See to it that you always hear IN A FRAME OF MIND. (J. P.Dobson.) Directions for hearing sermons I. FOR HEARING. 1. Hear the Word from right motives and for right ends. Multitudes go to church because their fathers went, their neighbours go, and they do not love to be singular. Many go, not to hear, but to see or to be seen. Some hear sermons to furnish their heads with knowledge, not to enrich their hearts with grace. 2. Our hearing should be preceded, accompanied, and followed by earnest prayers for the Divine blessing. 3. Hear the Word of God with pleasure and gratitude. Compare your circumstances with those of your forefathers, who had no other instructor than nature’ s light; and with those of the many dark places of the earth, full of the habitations of cruelty. 4. Cultivate an honest, impartial love to truth, and a meek, humble, candid, and teachable spirit. Nothing ought to be admitted as an article of faith, or a rule of life, which is not either expressly contained in, or, by just consequence, inferred from the sacred oracles. Meekness is the fruit of the Spirit. Apply, therefore, to Him to form in you, by His grace, that humble, teachable disposition, which is so necessary to render outward instruction truly profitable. 5. Hear the Word with understanding and judgment. 6. Hear with attention, seriousness, and solemnity of spirit. Men are renewed and sanctified by the truth. But truth, not heard with serious attention, has no such salutary energy. 7. Let such a lively faith mix itself with your hearing as will produce affections suited to the truths you hear. A report, however interesting in its own nature, if not credited, can neither engage our affections nor influence our practice. 8. Wisely apply what you hear to your own case; and for that end, endeavour to be well acquainted with the true state of your souls. II. AFTER HEARING. 1. Endeavour to remember what you have heard. A transient glance discovered some blemish on his face; but the faint impression it made on his imagination quickly vanishes, and, not observing it distinctly, he is at no pains to wipe it off. 2. Meditate, and expostulate with your hearts, upon what you have heard. Think not, when the minister has done preaching, that your work is over. 3. Converse with your fellow-Christians about what you have heard. 4. Reduce what you have heard to practice. 5. Often examine how you have heard and improved the Word. 6. If you have received any benefit by the Word, ascribe to God all the glory. (J. Erskine, D. D.) How the Word is to be read and heard I. SOME THINGS ARE TO GO BEFORE HEARING. 1. Preparation. (1) Getting the heart impressed with an awful sense of the majesty and holiness of that God into whose presence we are going, and whose word we are to hear (Psalms 89:6). (2) Banishing out of the heart worldly cares that are lawful at other Matthew 13:7). (3) Application of the blood of Christ to the soul for removing guilt, and doing away any controversy betwixt God and the soul Amos 3:3). (4) Purging the heart of carnal and corrupt lusts and affections 1 Peter 2:1-2). (5) Stirring up in the heart spiritual desires (1 Peter 2:2). 2. Prayer. Pray (1) For assistance to the minister (2 Thessalonians 3:1). (2) For a meal to ourselves (Psalms 119:18). (3) For an outpouring of the Spirit in His own ordinances. II. SOME THINGS ARE TO GO ALONG WITH HEARING. 1. Attending unto the Word diligently. This implies-- (1) Waiting diligently upon the ordinances, so as people make it their business to catch opportunities of the Word, and let none slip which Providence will allow them to overtake. They that are only chance customers to ordinances, whose attendance is ruled by their own conveniences, without conscience of duty, causing them to take them only now and then as their fancy takes them, cannot expect good of them. (2) A fixing and bending of the ear and mind to what is spoken. Hence is that counsel of the wise man (Proverbs 2:1-2). (3) A discerning of what they hear, so as to distinguish betwixt truth and error, the corn and the chaff (Mark 4:24; Acts 17:11). (4) An endeavouring to know the mind of God in His Word, to hear with understanding. 2. Receiving the Word rightly. (1) With faith. A faith of assent. And a faith of application. (2) With love. A love of esteem, highly prizing it. A love of desire after it. A love of complacency in it. 3. Laying it up in our hearts. III. SOME THINGS ARE TO FOLLOW AFTER HEARING THE WORD. 1. Meditation on it in your hearts (Psalms 1:2). 2. Conferring of it on your discourse. 3. The main thing is practising it in your lives. (T. Boston, D. D.) Hearers Jedediah Buxton, the famous peasant, who could multiply nine figures by nine in his head, was once taken to see Garrick act. When he went back to his own village, he was asked what he thought of the great actor and his doings. “ Oh!” he said, “ he did not know; he had only seen a little man strut about the stage, and repeat 7,956 words.” Here was a want of the ability to appreciate what he saw, and the exercise of the reigning faculty to the exclusion of every other. Similarly our hearers, if destitute of the spiritual powers by which the gospel is discerned, fix their thoughts on our words, tones, gestures, or countenance and make remarks upon us which from a spiritual point of view are utterly absurd. How futile are our endeavours without the Holy Spirit! (C. H. Spurgeon.) Hearing “I have an ear for other preachers,” Sir John Cheke used to say, “ but I have a heart for Latimer.” Here is a very clear and main distinction. Too often men hear the word sounding its drums and trumpets outside their walls, and they are filled with admiration of the martial music, but their city gates are fast closed and vigilantly guarded, so that the truth has no admittance, but only the sound of it. Would to God we knew how to reach men’ s affections, for the heart is the target we aim at, and unless we hit it we miss altogether. (C. H. Spurgeon.) Hearing carelessly We crossed and recrossed the river several times by the ferry-boat at Basle. We had no object in the world but merely amusement and curiosity, to watch the simple machinery by which the same current is made to drift the boat in opposite directions from side to side. To other passengers it was a business, to us a sport. Our hearers use our ministry in much the same manner when they come to it out of the idlest curiosity, and listen to us as a means of spending a pleasant hour. That which should ferry them across to a better state of soul, they use as a mere pleasure-boat, to sail up and down in, making no progress after years of hearing. Alas! it may be sport to them, but it is death to us, because we know it will ere long be death to them. (C. H. Spurgeon.) Uselessness of mere hearing What a mistake to imagine that, by hearing first one preacher and then another, we can derive benefit to our souls i More is wanted than such hearing. A raven may fly from cage to cage, but it is not thereby changed into a dove. Go from room to room of the royal feast, and the sight of the tables will never stay thy hunger. Reader, the main thing is to have and hold the truth personally and inwardly; if this be not seen to, thou wilt die in thy sins, though ten thousand voices should direct thee to the way of salvation. Pity indeed is it that the bulk of hearers are hearers only, and are no more likely to go to heaven than the seats they sit on in the assembly of the saints. (C. H.Spurgeon.) The ear’ s music room Picture to yourselves the contrast between a great orchestra containing some hundred performers and instruments, and that small music-room built of ivory, no bigger than a cherry-stone, which we call an ear, where there is ample accommodation for all of them to play together. The players, indeed, and their instruments, are not admitted. But what of that if their music be? Nay, if you only think of it, what we call s musical performance is, after all, but the last rehearsal. The true performance is within the ear’ s music-room, and each one of us has the whole orchestra to himself. When we thus realize the wondrous capabilities of the organ of hearing, I think we shall not fail to find an intellectual and aesthetical as well as a great moral admonition in the Divine words, “ He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.” (Dr. Wilson.) Right hearing “ I reckon that’ s very much o’ what the Lord Jesus meant when He said, ‘ Take heed how ye hear.’ Whatever it means, an’ whatever it don’ t mean, it means this plain enough--Don’ t hear anyhow. You see that was the way with the ground that didn’ t prosper--it took the seed all anyhow. There was the wayside; it let the seed come just as it could, and o’ course it all got trodden under foot, or was eaten up by the fowls, an’ not a grain was left. An’ then I daresay Brother Wayside went complainin’ that he couldn’ t get any good under that preacher. There was the weedy ground, too, let it fall in anyhow among the thorns an’ thistles, an’ they grew up an’ choked it. An’ I shouldn’ t wonder but Sister Weedy-ground whispered to Brother Wayside very piously, that for her part she did wish they had a preacher that would stir them up. Then there was Mister Stoney-ground, who liked it very much, an’ nodded to everybody over the nice sermon, but when the sun was up, that is, when dinner-time came, he could hardly remember the text. They all heard: but they were anyhow hearers. But there was dear old Father Good-ground, whenever he heard the Word it got in an’ went down, an’ took root, an’ sprang up, an’ bare fruit, an’ brought forth a hundred-fold; such wonderful crops o’ love, an’ joy, an’ peace, that set all the folks a scratchin’ their heads however he could manage it! Yet it was no such great secret; he got ready beforehand, that was all. He prepared for the seed. He’ d have been weedy-ground, too, only he had been down on his knees, an’ pulled up the chokin’ cares an’ Saturday’ s worries; he had picked out the stones, an’ had ploughed up the field, an’ had given the seed a chance, that was all, an’ so he got a harvest. You see there was the same sower, an’ the same seed, an’ yet it was only the ground that was got ready beforehand that got any good.” --(From “ Daniel Quorra.”) On hearing the Word of God That we may so hear, as to profit by hearing, it is required-- 1. That we hear with attention. 2. That we hear with impartiality. 3. That we hear with meekness. 4. That we hear the Word with an actual intention of practising what we hear. (Bp. Smalridge.) The pulpit and the pen 1. A critical spirit is a great hindrance to profitable hearing. 2. A formal spirit is a great hindrance to profitable hearing. 3. The preparation of the heart is necessary to profitable hearing. 4. A teachable spirit is needful for profitable hearing. 5. Attention is necessary to profitable hearing. (J. Kelly.) Eloquent listening There is such a thing. The really eloquent listener is the devout listener--one who has come up to church as to the house of God, to meet God there, to sit at His feet, to learn of Him, with a heart anxious to know His will that he may do it. When people rush from their late beds, or their studied toilets, or their newspapers, to the house of God, without a moment’ s preparation of serious thought, or reading of the Word, or prayer, what wonder that they find the services tedious and the sermon dull? The deaf might as well go to hear Beethoven’ s symphonies, or the blind to witness the glories of a sunset, as for such to go and hear a sermon with a reasonable expectation of finding it eloquent profitable, or interesting. (Anon.) Prepared hearing; There is a common consent among mankind that there should be some preparedness for worship. I see the visible signs of it here to-day. Before the Sabbath dawned you began to prepare clean linen and brighter garments than those of common days. It is but an outward and common matter; still, within the shell there lieth a kernel. My counsel to you is--cleanse your hearts rather than your garments. (C. H. Spurgeon.) A weighty exhortation To give more weight to this exhortation, let us consider-- I. WHO IS HE WHO SPEAKS TO US? God Himself. 1. By the Holy Book. 2. By our preaching, in the measure in which it is approved of Him. 3. By the Holy Spirit. II. WHAT DOES HE TELL US? That which is of the utmost consequence to us, for time and for eternity--the central truth which sways all others. III. WHAT KIND OF DOES THE TRUTH BY HIM REQUIRE? Mere attention is not sufficient. Christian truth claims a particular attention. It is not enough to bring great sagacity, a penetrating spirit, trained to study and fully determined to learn the truths which are presented. Religious truth has organs of its own, by which it reveals itself to man. Take heed, therefore, how ye hear. If your heart is not well prepared, if your conscience is not upright, you will certainly have sounds ringing in your ears: but those sounds, which bring to others an unspeakable joy, will for you be lost in the air where they vibrated. IV. WHAT IS THE COST OF THE TRUTH? The Word of God does not return to Him without effect, it comes back to Him after having saved us or ruined us. (E. de Pressense, D. D.) The prepared hearer The words of the text are necessary not only to give point to the parable of the sower, and to send it home to the hearts of the hearers, but also to prevent them from putting a disastrous misinterpretation upon the parable, from supposing that “ the state of mind described as existing in different men, originated in some inherent necessity.” I. THE HEARER SHOULD BE AS WELL AS THE . 1. He should have his body, so far as possible, in such a condition that it will not interfere with the free action of the mind. Some people break the Sabbath on a Saturday. 2. The mind should be prepared. Worldly cares and preoccupations should be bidden to stand aside. 3. Above all, the spirit should be prepared, be devout, humble, receptive. II. THE HEARER WILL HEAR , in the spirit of the words uttered by Cornelius to Peter (Acts 10:33). 1. There cannot have been proper attention when a man goes away crediting the preacher with something which he never dreamt of saying. 2. There cannot have been proper attention when a sermon, which cost its preacher considerable pains in the production, is forgotten in less than a week. 3. There cannot have been proper attention when the sermon leaves no lasting result in the hearts and lives of the hearers. “ Faith cometh by hearing,” as well as “ hearing by the Word of God.” III. THE HEARER WILL NOT HEAR . I do not say that you should not hear critically in the true sense of that much-abused word. For true criticism is nothing more or less than judgment. But to bring a sound and healthy judgment to bear upon what we hear is one thing, to listen in a spirit of fault-finding is another. The man of censorious spirit; the man who thinks less of the sun than of his spots, can never hear to profit. Listen charitably and patiently. IV. THE HEARER WILL CARRY AWAY FROM THE POOREST AND THE SERMON. AS good George Herbert has it: “ God calleth preaching folly. Grudge thou not To pick out treasures from an earthen pot. The worst speak something good. If all lack sense, God takes a text, and preacheth patience. He that gets patience, and the blessing which Preachers conclude with, hath not lost his pains.” (J. R. Bailey.) To him shall be given The law of use Hearing and doing should go together. Knowledge that is practical, blossoming out into character, shall keep on growing from knowledge to knowledge, more and more. But knowledge that never blossoms into character, shall by and by cease even to be knowledge. The tree that bears no fruit shall not be fruitless only; it shall rot and die. The idea is, that having is something quite other than mere passive possession--the upturned, nerveless palm of beggary. Having, real having, is eager,instant, active possession, the sinewy grip. Having is using. Anything not used is already the same as lost. It will be lost by and by. I. This law of use is law. Exercise, to be sure, may be overdone, as in training for athletic contests. But, on the other hand, muscular force gains nothing by being husbanded. Having is using. And to him that hath, shall be given. He shall grow stronger and stronger. What is difficult, perhaps impossible to-day, shall be easy to-morrow. He that keeps on day by day lifting the calf, shall lift the bullock by and by. So, even in this lowest sphere, the law is inexorable. Having is using. Not using is losing. Idleness is paralysis. II. This law of use is law. Whoever indolently inherits an estate, never really comes into possession of it. Most of our famous merchants of to-day, of yesterday, are, or were, the architects of their own fortunes. Wealth goes down easily enough into the second generation, but not so easily into the third, and still less easily into the fourth. We take a tremendous risk in bequeathing fortunes to our children. Unless the children have been very carefully trained in the art of getting, they probably have not learned the art of keeping. III. This law of use is MENTAL law Even knowledge, like the manna of old, must needs be fresh. It will not keep. The successful teacher is always the diligent and eager learner. It is related of Thorwaldsen that when at last he finished a statue that satisfied him, he told his friends that his genius was leaving him. Having reached a point beyond which he could push no further, his instinct told him that he had already begun to fail. So it proved. The summit of his fame was no broad plateau, but a sharp Alpine ridge. The last step up had to be quickly followed by the first step down. It is so in every thing. New triumphs must only dictate new struggles. If it be Alexander of Macedon, the Orontes must suggest the Euphrates, and the Euphrates the Indus. Always it must be on and on. Genius is essentially athletic, resolute, aggressive, persistent. Possession is grip, that tightens more and more. Ceasing to gain, we begin to lose. IV. This law of use is also MORAL law. Here lies the secret of character. There is no such thing as standing still. And character, at last, is not inheritance, nor happy accident, but hardest battle and victory. From country to city is like some great change in latitude, and soil, and climate. As in going to the tropics, so here also the senses are stormed and captured. Luxuries, once only imagined, as a Greenlander might imagine an orange-grove, are now always in sight. Gains, that once seemed fabulous, are now the common talk of the street, the office, and the club. Something is in the air that poisons the blood like malaria. The muscles relax. The will relaxes. And, before we think of it, there is the old story, the old sad story, of mere passive and pliant goodness brought to bitter grief and shame. Or else the danger is overcome, and the manhood of man escapes unhurt; like the three young Hebrews out of the furnace in Babylon, like Daniel out of the lions’ den. If prayer be, what Tertullian has pictured it, the watch-cry of a soldier under arms, guarding the tent and standard of his General, then the habit of it ought to be growing on us. For the night is round about us, and, though the stars are out, our enemies are not asleep. If the Bible be what we say it is, then we should know it better and better. The longer we live, and the more we look beneath the surface of things, the more there is of mystery. So of all the virtues and graces. They will not take care of themselves. Self-denial and self-control, as against self-seeking and selfindulgence; absolute, chivalric integrity, as against the sharpness of the market; unshaken faith in God and man, in spite of all the mystery and meanness of life; the one simple purpose of loyal, steadfast stewardship and service in our day and generation; these neither come unasked, nor stay unurged. Easy things are of little worth. The spontaneities are mostly bad; mere weeds and briers. For the whole Church, in its organic life, the law is just the same. King David conquers out in every possible direction, north, east, and south. Solomon, settling down to the enjoyment of inherited dominion, loses the paternal conquests, bequeathing to his son a kingdom doomed already to dismemberment. So must the Church be always militant just so long as any body, or any thing, in this world remains unchristian. Such is the law: always the law, everywhere the law. Its law is not simple growth, as of the palm-tree, but conflict, as of armies. He that hath, to him shall be given; and he that hath not, from him shall be taken even that which he hath. Be it remembered, however, that every gain is a vital factor. Interest changes constantly to capital, and changes rapidly. The progression is swiftly geometrical. It is the beginning always that costs. The poor invalid, after long confinement, is borne out to the carriage for a morning drive. If it agrees with him, the half-hour to-day may be doubled to-morrow. In toil or trade no dollar comes so hard as the first one. The next two or ten come easier; and more and more easy all along. A solitary virtue in some human life, if such a thins were possible, would be a forlorn and dreary sight: like a shaft of granite in a sandy waste, or a single bird in a silent sky. Thank God, the virtues go together: like trees in a forest; like birds in white-winged flocks, filling the whole sky with song. First, the chief end of discipline is high personal character. Second, character is triumph over temptation. Third, the surest conservative of character is service. Finally, let me emphasize, by repeating the two great lessons of our text. The first is, that beginnings are difficult: all beginnings, but especially in character; difficult by reason of bad appetites and passions. The best habits are not the ones most easily formed. “ He that hath!” It is a great thing to have. The second lesson is, that gains and losses grow always more rapid and easy. Character grows always steadily less and less conscious of its own determinations. Moses knew not that his face shone. Samson knew not that his strength was gone. Bad habit begins easily enough. Good habit begins with effort, as one would climb a steep mountain, or lift a heavy gate from its hinges. But it ends in second nature. And the dividing line is crossed as silently as the tide swings, coming in this instant, going out the next; as silently as the sun crosses the Equator, northward and southward, carrying summer with it, leaving winter behind it. (R. D. Hitchcock, D. D.) The possession of appreciation That which Shakespeare and Wordsworth had of the seeing eye and the understanding heart is shared by you and me if we can read their writings with any appreciation. Have so much of that, of what they had, and in that measure there is given to you what was given to them. To him that hath it shall be given. Only bring to nature and life something of mind as free as mind should be, and you shall find them not sparing of their gift. Not only in regard to literature, art, science, the end of which is thought, but in regard to thought and feeling, in which the practical interests of men and nations are involved, to have in one’ s self something which is real at all, or worth anything, is to be in the way of having much. (J. Service, D. D.) An incentive to culture More or less in every sphere of thought and activity, the inducement which a man has to cultivate what nature has given him in the shape of power and faculty, is that the reward is great. Much is given to him that has. That inducement is strong here as it is nowhere else. Augustine, it is said, when he failed as a lawyer, took the infinite for his career. As far as the infinite is synonymous with religion it is a term for a career which is open to every man, and in which success is no question of chance but one of effort and endeavour. In regard to religion, as in regard to every other department of human life, there is, of course, a difference between man and man, between class and class, people and people, generation and generation. By nature one man has much of what you call religious feeling, another man little. That is a fact not to be ignored. But whatever a man has in this kind, be it little or much, there is this inducement to cultivate it, that as far as, by putting it into exercise and so really possessing himself of it, he can be said to have it, much is given to him in it and with it, much in proportion to what he already has. Every step forward and upward in the career of Augustine’ s--the infinite--the wider and greater is the prospect which for the soul is not prospect but property. (J. Service, D. D.) From him shall be taken even that which he seemeth to have True and false possession Apparent arbitrariness in this utterance. Not so, however. It is the expression of a law which underlies all things. Similar words occur frequently in the Gospels, in connection not only with parable of sower, but also with those of talents, pounds, &c. Thus the universality of its application is indicated. I. WHAT IS THE NATURE OF TRUE ? 1. It is something which is part of a man’ s very self. 2. It is something which he turns to account, and does not allow to fust in him unused. II. THERE IS A SEEMING WHICH IS FALSE. Does not conform to these two conditions. It is either external to the man, or unemployed by him. III. TRUE TRULY USED EVER , WHILE UNTRUE VANISH. “ Seemeth” because it was offered him; “ hath not” because he did not accept it. Apply to the highest possessions. Gospel privileges. Take heed how ye use them--how ye hear. (Anon.) The grand test of a religious life The principle enunciated is one which applies to many other things besides religious lessons and spiritual gifts. We all of us know for instance that there is a learning which is no learning; that there is a wisdom which is no wisdom; that there is a strength which is no strength; and a skill which is no skill. We know very well what is meant for instance by learning which is got up for a special occasion and is not part of a man’ s real knowledge, which has not, as it were, mixed itself up with his faculties, and of which he does not understand the fundamental principles, and cannot tell what are the relations of it to other kinds of knowledge, or what is the right application of it to ourselves. Such knowledge as that prepared for any particular purpose may be entirely possessed and enjoyed at the moment after it has been so prepared, and yet everybody knows how entirely it passes away and is forgotten. For although the man had it in one sense, in another he had it not. So again, for instance, those who know anything of the writings of Aristotle will remember how he describes the spurious kinds of courage. There is, he says, a courage which is merely born of ignorance, which a man feels when he is in great danger; because he does not know what the danger is, he does not perceive its extent or how serious is his risk. That same man, when this danger was hidden from him, was perfectly calm and collected, yet if he knew what really was around him would very probably prove a mere coward, altogether unable to keep the balance of his mind. Just as we are told that sometimes men who have walked past precipices in the dark without the least sensation of fear, have turned sick and faint at heart when they have seen the danger they had incurred. So he says there is a courage which is born of knowledge, that courage which a man exercises when in danger because he knows precisely what are the limits and what the extent of that danger, knows exactly how he can deal with it, and consequently is able to keep himself perfectly calm and collected where others would be seriously afraid. Such courage is indeed real and genuine as far as it goes, and yet that very same man if he were put in circumstances where his knowledge would no longer apply, if he found himself in the greatest danger of which he knew nothing and the limits of which he could not estimate, might possibly be filled with an unreasonable panic, and lose his presence of mind when most he needed it. But true courage is that which rests upon real principle. It does not depend upon circumstances, but on a sense of duty which makes a man brave because he ought to be brave, and his master who put him there requires that no want of presence of mind, no disturbance of the balance of his intellect should interfere with the service which he has to do. The difference between them is that one man has courage really, and the other man while he has courage, yes, and as far as it goes, genuine courage, yet after all has it not. But our Lord is here of course applying this principle to the lessons which He Himself was teaching. “ Take heed how ye hear!” He is applying it to religious instruction and spiritual gifts, and to the service of God. And it is not difficult if we turn to the Old Testament to find instances which will illustrate most clearly for us the application of this principle to human character. Thus when we read how Saul put away the wizards in Israel, plainly because he desired seriously to fulfill the will of God, we have no reason to doubt the sincerity of his desire. We have no reason to suppose it was hypocrisy, as we commonly use the word: that he desired to wear a religious character in the eyes of his fellows, and to obtain the approval of Samuel the prophet by doing the will of God. Yet we find afterwards this same Saul in his darkest need, when he cannot obtain counsel any longer from God, turns to the witch of Endor for advice, and thus falsifies all his previous services. Or to come down later still. Look at Ahab the king of Israel. He, we are told, after the slaughter of Naboth the Jezreelite, was reproved by Elijah the prophet in such stern language that he was struck, it may be with alarm, or it may be remorse, and showed every token of genuine repentance. He humbled himself and wept, and we are told that his repentance was accepted by God, and God Himself made an immediate acknowledgment of it, and therefore we know it could not have been merely a false exhibition of regret. But was Ahab really penitent? Are we able to say afterwards that his life was changed? In the very next chapter we find that he imprisons Micaiah the prophet because he will not speak smooth things to him, and then comes down the final judgment of God on the wicked king. But once more to turn to the instances which would naturally strike every reader of the Old Testament as the most striking instance of all, let us look at the familiar history of the prophet Balaam, and when we read it what do we see? Do we see a man who had no desire to obey God’ s will: a man who was simply a rebel against the truth that was revealed to him? On the contrary, we know that he was a prophet to whom God’ s will was plainly shown, and we see that be was a wicked man, and that he died a wicked man’ s death. But have we any reason to say that his obedience to the Lord was entirely hypocritical? So far from that we see plainly that he is resolute to de exactly that which he is bidden. He does not flinch for a moment from the path of strict obedience. Not even in the presence of the king who could advance him to honour, not even there does he fail to pronounce the blessing which God requires him to pronounce, yet was his obedience all genuine? We can plainly see that his heart was set upon finding some way or other of reconciling Obedience in the letter with disobedience in the spirit, and going to the very verge of what is forbidden. He is resolute to do what he is told, but he will go as near as he possibly can to what he is told not to do. All through he is hoping that some way may be found by which the service of God and the service of man may be reconciled, and though he does what he is told his wish is for self-indulgence. He has obedience and genuine obedience, and yet he has it not. It is worthless although it is there. And if we turn to the New Testament we may find similar illustrations which I need not describe at so much length. Such, for instance, was the character of the man who buried his lord’ s money in the earth. He had the talent which his lord had given him, and yet he had it not. Now, brethren, it is not difficult to see that all this applies also to ourselves, and to our own lives. We, too, if we choose to look can easily find many respects in which perhaps we really have and yet have not, and assuredly many in which we are in danger o” coming under the censure of our Lord. Let us, for instance, speak of some of the doctrines which we all hold. Let us take the doctrine of the omnipresence of God, one of the fundamental truths of the Christian faith, and which no Christian doubts for a single moment, and one which, if we did not believe, we should never venture to call ourselves Christians at all. We believe that God is present everywhere, and that He sees everything we do, and that He knows everything we think. We believe that His is the last, the supreme, the decisive judgment upon all our lives. And now let me ask you, if we have this doctrine, may it not sometimes nevertheless be said that we have it not? Let me ask you how often it may be the case that things that you would do when other people are not by, you would be unwilling, ashamed, afraid to do in the presence of others. Can it be said we are real believers in the omnipresence of God if it has no effect whatever upon our lives? Let me turn now, brethren, not to other doctrines, but rather to characters and circumstances of life. Let me, for instance, compare for a moment two different men under different circumstances who yet, under many respects, shall seem to be precisely alike. I will suppose two men who come here to church and who take a part in the service and worship of God, who listen to His Word when read and hear the message which God’ s minister has to deliver. I will suppose these two men are both of them touched and moved, that they have heard words which in some way or other happen to suit their own particular ease, and I will suppose their hearts are stirred within them, and they feel somehow as if they had learnt a fresh lesson and caught a new sight of God’ s truth, as if something was cleared up before them which had not before been plain to them; and they go away and feel, “ I have been the better for coming here to church; that service has done me good,” and with that with one man there it ends. It is a genuine feeling; there is no hypocrisy in it at all, but there it ends and there is no more of it. But the other man, once his conscience is awaked, inasmuch as he is always on the watch to do what his conscience bids him, finds that there is a difference to be made in his own personal life, he sees something that he ought to change, he perceives something that he ought to elevate and purify and make more heavenly; he perceives something that he ought to give up, and some characteristic which is not quite consistent with the true service of God, he says he must cleanse himself from everything of that sort, and accordingly it has made a real difference--slight perhaps-.very slight, it is but the service of one afternoon, but it makes a real difference. Now here the two men have received both the same spiritual gifts, the same spiritual teaching, but the one man hath it and the other hath it not. To have the truths of God is to live in them and for them; to rise towards them, to grow in them, to learn somewhat more of God by them; it is to make them part of our lives constantly by day and by night, and unless we can make the doctrine of God outs in that sense, then we shall have to learn that they are not ours at all. (Bp. Temple.) Luke 8:19-21 Then came to Him His mother and His brethren Spiritual relationship to Christ It is the higher kinship of the soul. Christ did not set aside time relationships, but He opened up a far higher view, with which these were in analogy. Men know each other in various relationships; but very few men know themselves. Very few men know one another; but in the degree in which they do, they know each other at different points of the wide extension of man and his relations. A man may know his parentage and his home. That is primary knowledge, and very noble it is. He may know men by their co-operations and partnerships in the affairs of life--that, and only that. He may know men by some similar tastes and pursuits. Artists know artists; musicians know musicians; working men know working men; inventors know inventors. There is a line of sympathy that goes out from all these different points by which men interpret in other people something that they have in themselves. It is a knowledge which consists simply in the attempt to interpret in others something that we have felt in our own selves--to liken ourselves to those around about us. So a man may know his fellow-men in times of great excitement by partizan feeling, by party feeling, or by patriotism. The real relationship, the truest, the highest, while it does not disdain these lower relationships, regards them as external and transient. You may know men as parents, and not know them at all. You may know men as business factors and be utterly outside of them and ignorant of them. You may know men by tastes, by professions, by pursuits, and yet not know them interiorly. You may know men as your countrymen, and as faithful to law and order in times of great confusion; and yet that is exterior knowledge. It is juxtaposition, for the most part. Interiorly, how little does a man know his fellow-men until he has in himself the higher qualities, spiritual and intellectual, and until he interprets the like qualities that are in those around about him! Apply this to the relationship of men with Christ and with God. In the truest and highest sense, not until men rise into those qualities which constitute God can they be said to understand Him. We can understand Him when He thunders, because we can thunder in a small way; we can understand Him when He speaks of Himself as the Creator, because we are mechanicians in a certain way; when He sets His palace in order in the heavens above, when He fills the earth with His glory, when the firmament declares His glory and the earth His handiwork, we can understand all that well enough, because we ourselves are creators, re-arrangers of physical qualities and matter; and so we feel that we have an understanding of God; and we have. But our great wish is that we could understand Him according to our senses all the way through: “ Why does He not speak to me? That is the way my children understand me. I wish God would bring Himself down within the scope of my eyes. Why does He not hear me? Why does He not come within the realm of my ear? Why does He not come where I can lay my hand upon Him--thrust it into His side, indeed?” We are always trying to come to a knowledge of God by bringing Him down to a level with our condition; then we think that we should understand Him; but the disciples did not. His brethren and His mother did not, and He was upon the line and level of their physical condition. They were just as far from Him, and just as far from satisfaction in regard to Him, as if they had never seen Him, or as if He had gone early from the cradle to the grave. And to-day men are seeking to know God by ratiocination. They are searching the origin of things, the germs of life, its unfoldings and its philosophy; and all of them are playing round about this great problem of the universe: “ Is there a God? Where is He? Who is He? What is He?” The royal road to knowledge is goodness. He that loves, we are told in explicit language, knows God, though He cannot imagine the amplitude of such love. He that only knows the candle knows what the sun is a little bit; but the candle does not give him any conception of the magnitude and majesty and glory of the sun. He that loves here has one letter of the alphabet, as it were, but not the whole literature and philosophy of the Divine nature. This is the highway through which, and only through which, John declares that any man can come to an understanding of God. God is love; love is His constituent element, and no man can understand God that does not understand love. As no man can understand heroism except through the recipiency of, or sensibility to, heroism in himself; as no man can understand good taste except through the foregoing feeling of what is harmonious and beautiful; so it is in regard to the great discernments that reveal God to us. (H. W. Beecher.) The affinity of the faithful As this voice came to Christ while He was labouring, so many such voices come to us while we are labouring. One saith, Pleasure would speak with you; another saith, Profit would speak with you; another saith, Ease would speak with you; another saith, A deanery would speak with you; another saith, A bishopric would speak with you; another saith, The court would speak with you. Here is the rule now; if you live by it, then you are kin to Christ. As other kindreds go by birth and marriage, so this kindred goeth by faith and obedience. Hearers are but half kin, as it were m a far degree; but they which hear and do are called His mother, which is the nearest kindred of all. Therefore if you have the deed, then are you kin indeed; there is no promise made to hearers, nor to speakers, nor to readers; but all promises are made to believers or to doers. Again, by this you may learn how to choose your friends. As Christ counted none His kinsmen, but such as “ hear the Word of God, and do it” ; so we should make none our familiars, but such as Christ counteth His kinsmen. Again, you may see the difference between Christ and the world; Christ calleth the godly His kinsmen, be they never so poor, and we scorn to call the poor our kinsmen, be they never so honest; so proud is the servant above his Master. Again, by this you see how Christ is to be loved; for when He calleth us His mother, He shows us the way to love Him as a mother; for indeed He is the mother of His mother and His brethren too. Again, by this, all vaunting and boasting of kindred is cut off. Glory not in that thou hast a gentleman to thy father, glory not that thou hast a knight to thy brother, but glory that thou hast a Lord to thy brother. Again, by this you may know whether you be kin to Christ; as those priests were shut out of the temple which could not count their genealogy from Aaron, so they shall be shut out of heaven that cannot reckon their pedigree from Christ. Here are the arms now whereby you may show of what house you came. Lastly, by this you may know the devil’ s kinsmen, and therefore Christ saith, “ You are of your father the devil” (John 8:44), showingthat the devil and the wicked are as near kin as Christ and the faithful. (H. Smith.) The two families--the natural and the spiritual From these words of the Lord Jesus I learn that, without repudiating the family relations of earth, He institutes and proclaims the family relations of heaven. As a faithful minister of the gospel said once to a despotic sovereign, “ There are two kings and two kingdoms in Scotland,” explaining how Church and State may live and thrive on the same spot at the same time, giving and receiving help reciprocally, if each will consent to confine itself to its own sphere and exercise only its own functions; so the Scriptures intimate that two families pervade society, both having to a great extent the same persons as members, yet without jealousy or collision, getting and giving reciprocal support. Both families are of God. He has planned and constituted them. To Him they owe their origin, and from Him they receive their laws. A place has been assigned to the one in creation; to the other in redemption. The one is the grand Institute of Nature; the other the grand Institute of Grace. Both are good, each as far as it goes; but the second is deeper, longer, broader, higher than the first. The first is the family for time; the second is the family for eternity. I. CHRIST IS THE GOSPEL PERMITS THE NATURAL FAMILY, IN ALL ITS , TO REMAIN . Jesus was Himself the member of a family. He received the benefits of that position, and fulfilled its duties. Honour all the pure affections of human nature, for they thrill in the Saviour’ s breast; loathe all the sins that stain it, for they crucified the Son of God. If you examine the natural affections and instincts of living creatures, you will find that one principle lies like s measuring rod along the whole--utility. These affections are inserted, and inserted such as they are, in the constitution of the creature, because of their usefulness. They are the instruments whereby the Maker works out His own design. Some living creatures, as fishes and certain species of birds, have no perceptible filial or parental affections at all. In their case the instinct is not needed, and therefore is not found. In others, including all the higher grades of the brute creation, the parental affection is developed in great intensity for a short period, and then altogether ceases. A mother that would have shed her blood for her offspring a month ago, when it was feeble, does not know it to-day, at least does not acknowledge it in the herd. The instinct, having served its purpose, is not left dangling after its work is done. Relative affections in human kind expatiate on a wider field, and are more enduring. Here we enter a region in which these affections find room to range; they become, accordingly, manifold and strong. The roots go deeper down in the deeper, richer soil. A short-lived maternal love would not serve the purpose here; and therefore a mother’ s love in this region is not short-lived. Christ was a perfect man. He was not only perfectly holy, but completely human. He took all our nature without its defects and defilements. He experienced filial and fraternal love. He loved His mother and His brethren with the true affection of a son and a brother. No disciple of Christ is permitted to break the bonds of kindred, and abjure the affections of consanguinity, on the plea of his Master’ s example or command. Superstition has always shown a tendency to exalt the spiritual relations by crushing the natural; it would build up, according to its own false conception, the family of God on the ruins of the family of man. God did not built up the family in order to pull it down again. As the ordinances of the earlier dispensation were a shadow, and so a prediction, of better things to come in Christ, the natural family is a type, and so a promise, of the spiritual and heavenly. II. CHRIST IN THE GOSPEL , ON THE SAME SPHERE, A NEW FAMILY. If any man be in Christ he is a new creature; in the new creature a multitude of new affections spring and flow, but being on a higher level, they never run foul of the affections that expatiate on the lower sphere of temporal things. Mind, conscience, immortality, have been imparted to man, and these faculties have free scope for action; but those operations of the higher nature do not in any measure impede the inhalation of air, the circulation of the blood, or any of the other processes which belong to us in common with inferior creatures. Now, as mind, acting in another sphere, comes not into collision with the functions of the body, so the new spiritual affections, which belong to us as Christians, do not interfere with the original affections which belong to us as men. There is a process in agriculture which presents an interesting parallel to the simultaneous and commingling growth of relations for time and relations for eternity in human hearts. A field is closely occupied all over with a growing crop which will soon reach maturity, and will be reaped in this season’ s harvest. The owner intends that another crop, totally different in kind, shall possess the ground in the following year; but he does not wait till the grain now growing has been reaped--he goes into the field and sows the seed of the new while the old is still growing and green. In some cases a method is adopted which is, from our present point of view, still more suggestive: the seed which shall complete its functions within the present season, and the seed which, springing this year, shall bear its fruit upwards, are mixed together in the same vessel and scattered together on the same ground. Nor does the one lie dormant for a season while the other monopolizes the soil; both spring up at the same, or nearly the same time. The plant for the future germinates at once, but it does not reach maturity till the following year; the plant intended for the present season--the wheat or the barley--grows rapidly and ripens ere the winter come. Lowly, meekly at the roots of the waving grain springs the plant of the future; it passes through its earlier stages while the tall stalks of the wheat are towering over its head. It springs although, the grain is growing on the same spot, and springs better because the grain is growing there. The vigorous growth of another species all around it shelters its feeble infancy; and after the winter has passed, in another season, it starts afresh and comes forth in its own matured strength. Thus the affections and relations that belong to the future spring and grow under the shadow of the affections and relations that belong to the present. Those stars that studded the dark blue canopy of the sky were lovely; often through the weary night did the lone watcher lift his eyes and look upon them. They seemed to him a sort of company, and while he gazed on the bright glancing throng he felt himself for the moment somewhat less lonely. Yet you hear no complaint from that watcher’ s lips when those stars disappear; for the cause of their disappearance is the break of day. Either the many fond individual companionships which cheer disciples in the night of their pilgrimage will remain with them, as bright particular stars in the day of eternity, or they will fade away before its dawning; if they remain, their company in holiness will be a thousand fold more sweet; if they disappear, it will not be that those joys have grown more dim, but that we do not observe them in the light of a more glorious day. Two practical lessons, one in the form of a warning, and the other in the form of an encouragement, depend from the subject visibly, and claim a notice at the close. 1. Reverting again, for a moment, to the analogy of seed for the future sown and springing under the shade of a crop that is growing for the present season, we may gather from nature a caution which is needful and profitable in the department of grace. When this season’ s crop, amidst which next season’ s seed was sown in spring, has been cut in harvest and carried home, I have seen the field in whole or in part destitute of the young plants which ought at that time to have covered its surface, the hope of future years. Sometimes after this season’ s harvest is reaped, no living plant remains in the ground. As you walk over it at the approach of winter, you see rotting stubble, the decaying remnants of one harvest, but no young plants, the promise of another year. Why? Because the first crop has grown too rank in its robust maturity, and overlaid the second in its tender youth. The principle of this lesson applies to the business of life as well as the reciprocal affections of kindred. Beware! Open your hearts and take the warning in. Have you hope for pardon and eternal life in the son of God, the Saviour? Then bear in mind that, under the shade of your city-traffic and your home-joys, a tender plant is growing, native of a softer clime--a plant whose growth is your life, whose decay your ruin, in the great day; a plant that needs indeed the shelter of honest industry and pure family affections, but dies outright under the choking weight of their overgrowth; and see to it that the profits and pleasures of time do not, by their excess, kill the hope for eternity. What is a man profited although he gain the whole world, if he lose his own soul? 2. It is ever true, according to the symbolic prophecy of the Apocalypse, that the earth helps the woman--that the occupations and affinities and friendships of this life may and do cherish the growth of grace in the soul. (W. Arnot.) On rightly seeking the Saviour I. THEY DESIRED TO SEE CHRIST. This their desire might proceed-- 1. From a proud and vainglorious principle, from which the best of men are not entirely free. They might want to make it known that they were related to Christ, a person followed and talked of, who preached such heavenly doctrines, and performed such astonishing miracles. 2. From an undue, and, indeed, mercenary regard to the health of Christ’ s body and safety of His person. 3. From natural love, without any other design but to please themselves with the company and conversation of one with whom they were so nearly connected, and for whom they had so great regard. Religion is no enemy to natural affection. 4. There might also be a mixture of spiritual affection. Yet, though the principle might be good, their conduct was reprovable, the application being unseasonable; and the check that Christ gave them should teach us, that no intrusion or solicitation should draw us from the work of the Lord. II. THOSE WHO DESIRE TO SEE CHRIST DO NOT ALWAYS TAKE RIGHT METHODS TO OBTAIN THEIR END. 1. Some, through an improper humility or servile dread, keep at a distance from Christ, even when they have earnest desires to see Him, which desires will never be answered without nearer approaches to Him. 2. Others seek Christ in duties and ordinances, in the streets and broadways, when they ought to see Him in their own closets. They seek Him abroad, but not at home, whereas the kingdom of Christ is within us, and where should the King be but in His kingdom? 3. Others, again, seek Christ out of the Church, who ought to seek Him in it. They “ stand without.” Let them come in, and seek Christ where He is to be found. (B. Beddome, M. A.) The Lord’ s answer respecting His mother and brethren On these words of our Lord we may remark-- 1. That they are not intended to cast a slur on His mother and brethren, or to undervalue the duties men owe to their relations. 2. That we must not allow our regard to our relations to interfere with our duty to God. 3. The sinfulness and folly of all superstitions regard to the Virgin Mary. 4. Nothing but personal obedience and faith can avail for safety. 5. The great love Jesus bears to His true disciples, and the high honour He bestows on them. (James Foote, M. A.) Divine and human relationship A little sad, wasn’ t it? that His mother and brethren were not sitting about Him. For, as another evangelist says, “ He looked round on those that were about Him.” His disciples, who were learning of Him, were nearest to Him naturally, and His mother and His brethren were outside. It is a sad thing for any of us to be called by His name, and not know Him. It is the business of our human being to know Christ, and nothing else is our business. You observe Christ is always talking about His Father in heaven. You would think He knew nothing else. Did He, then, repudiate the earthly mother, and the earthly brother and sister? No verily. But it is a profound, absolute fact that our relation to God is infinitely nearer than any relation by nature. (George Macdonald.) The true relatives of Christ Kinship with Christ is not a matter of genealogy or of Church position, or the men around Him would have had it; not of birth, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man. Kindred with Christ is a matter of nature, and nature can never be tested but by action. If a man is a partaker of the Divine nature that will show itself, and the will that will rule him will no longer be his own, but the will of his Father who is in heaven. (W. Arthur, M. A.) Divine relationships We have here two things, a character and a blessing, I. THE . “ These which hear the Word of God and do it.” II. THE . “ The same are my brother and sister and mother.” (Dean Vaughan.) Spiritual relationship (An Epiphany Sermon):--Successive steps in Christ’ s revelation of Himself. 1. At twelve years’ old, though He must be about His Father’ s business, yet He remained subject for the present. 2. At marriage-festival--“ Woman, what have I to do with thee?” a clearer Epiphany, and yet “ Mine hour is not yet come.” 3. His friends, His mother, seek Him. He utters words which show that in the higher spiritual relationship claimed for His disciples there is no room for sex; the tie of brotherhood and motherhood a faint type only of the close communion between the redeemed and the Redeemer. 4. At last, dying, He commends His mother to the disciple, “ Behold thy mother,” as if to show that the human relationship had ceased for Himself and her. Natural relationships are swallowed up, the spiritual eclipsing them. Results of acknowledging this fact. I. . II. . III. EFFECT ON OUR LIVES, viz., our future relationship will be decided not by our present earthly ones, but by our birth of God. (O. Warren, M. A.) Christ and kinship with Him I. THE OF CHRIST’ S MISSION AND HIS IN IT. Affections, even the purest, must be sacrificed when they intrenched upon His liberty to do what He had come into the world to do. “ To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth.” Think of the loneliness of Christ. While holding intercourse with His friends at Bethany, or surrounded by His disciples, or pressed upon by the crowd, He was yet alone, always alone--alone in His knowledge of the full meaning of His life’ s work, alone in the endurance of His bitterest pain, alone in the constancy and grandeur of His unfailing purpose. II. THE LARGE- OF CHRIST. He had two great lessons to teach men--The Fatherhood of God, and the common brotherhood of man How much larger our hearts would be, how much more generous our sympathies, if we shared more largely His Spirit of universal love. III. THE NATURE OF KINSHIP WITH HIM. We all hear, and we all may do the Word of God. We have, then, set before us in the text a privilege in which we all may share--a sacred relationship with Christ into which we all may enter. Application: 1. Is there anywhere any poor man sorely tried, buffeted by circumstances, self-despising and despised of others, but who desires with all his heart to do the will of God. Rise up, and be of good courage, for thou art Christ’ s brother. 2. Thou art perhaps a widow left alone and poor to struggle with the world; or a mother with the anxious care of a family upon thy shoulders; or a daughter whose life is passing away in some joyless home, and in devotion to an invalid parent whose petulance is thy daily cross. Be patient, and struggle on. Bear the cross, and do the duty, because it is God’ s will. And remember for thine encouragement in every hour of trial that thou art Christ’ s sister. 3. And O, aged mother’ s heart, bereft of thy children, and refusing to be comforted because they are not, think that the Lord of life and glory condescends to call Himself thy son. He will be the comfort and stay of thy declining days, the prop of thy feebleness, the companion of thy loneliness. (J. R. Bailey.) The household of faith I. THE WHICH IS HERE . 1. In regard to the connection, the first point is as to the parties between whom it subsists. On the one side, we have a personage of inconceivable greatness and power. Is it some glorious angel whom God made as a specimen of what the Creator can do? No. It is one who is above the angels, and concerning whom it is written, “ Let all the angels of God worship Him.” This is one to whom it can be said, “ Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever.” It is the eternal Son, the heir and Lord of all. It is Jehovah Himself, God manifest in the flesh! On the other hand, we have a portion of the human family. We have a company of dependent and powerless beings, whose breath is in their nostrils, and who have nothing of their own. Between Him, so great, and them, so mean, there is now the affinity mentioned in the text. He, the blessed and only Potentate, discovers and recognizes in them His brother, His sister, His mother! 2. The next point we shall inquire into is the nature of the connection. (1) It is a close connection. There are many relations which belong to the constitution of human society. There are, for example, the relations of magistrate and subjects, master and servants, teacher and pupils, and so on. But the closest relation of all is the family relation. The family relation is fraught with intimacies which are known to no other. This is the relation which is declared in the text between Christ and His people. Christ and His people are embraced in the same family circle, the word being taken in its most limited acceptation. They are not remotely allied to Him. They are His nearest kindred. They are His brother, His sister, His mother. No tie of blood can be closer than that by which He and they are connected. (2) It is an endearing connection. Love wells out of it--reciprocal love. We see, then, that between Jesus and His followers there is a connection which is fitted to give rise to love--which is fitted, we may say, to give rise to it in no ordinary degree, and to produce a most peculiar and devoted attachment. (3) It is a connection that cannot be transferred. We are familiar with connections whose transference is easy, and is constantly taking place. There is the connection between master and servant. The master may be changed; and so may be the servant. There is the connection between bosom friends. He who is my friend now may become my foe in a little while, and I may get another friend in his room. Although I may change my friend, I cannot change my mother. Although I may change my servant, I cannot change my son. The connection between Christ and His people, then, is fixed. He cannot be supplanted in His relation to them, nor they in their relation to Him. (4) It is a connection that cannot be destroyed. Recent occurrences in the history of the world have strikingly shown that the connection between a sovereign and his subjects is perishable, and may be suddenly dissolved. But, happen what may, brother and sister will continue to be brother and sister, and a man’ s mother is his mother as long as she lives. Neither accidents nor efforts can sever the family tie. Death, indeed, may come, and, in one sense, put an end to it. But even death cannot prevail against the bond by which Christ and His disciples are united. He liveth for evermore, and so do they. 3. Our third point is the advantage with which the connection is fraught to Christ’ s people. The Lord is laid under obligations by it, which will redound to their benefit. A brother, a sister, a mother, have peculiar claims, which no relative, with a conscience and a heart, will disregard. (1) Is the disciple a brother? He has a claim upon the Saviour as such. One of the most emphatic declarations of Scripture tells of “ a Friend that sticketh closer than a brother.” When a man is in straits of any kind, who so likely as his brother to relieve him, if that brother be able? Now, then, let the Christian rejoice that he is the brother of the Lord. Let him remember it in trouble, and let him not be cast down. The Lord Himself remembers it, and says to him, “ Call upon Me in the day of trouble, and I will deliver thee.” (2) Does Christ declare that the disciple is His sister? A sister has claims even stronger than a brother. A sister is weak, and needs a guardian, and an arm to lean upon. A sister is timid, and needs a companion who has boldness and decision, that he may lead her forth, take her through the crowd, and encourage her by the way. A sister needs a prompt and powerful champion, that she may be defended from insult, and that her purity and honour may be cared for. And a sister turns to her kind and manly brother as the guardian, the bold companion, and the prompt and powerful champion that she needs. When Christ says that His disciple is His sister, He gives His people to understand that He is all this to them. And O how He cherishes and tends them! (3) Christ says that His disciple is His mother. This also has great significance. It speaks to us of a son who devotes the vigorous labour of his prime to win a subsistence for his mother, and to make for her a comfortable and happy home. 4. A fourth point is the formation of the tie between Christ and His people. How is it constituted? How, then, is the rank of His mother and His brethren acquired? The question is answered in the following verse--“ Whosoever shall do the will of My Father which is in heaven, the same is My brother, and sister, and mother.” It is as much as to say to us all, “ Do the will of My father in heaven, and ye shall become very dear to Me; ye shall acquire the strong claims of the closest relationship.” But what must we understand by the will of His Father? We have His own definition of the will of His Father, when He says, “ This is the work of God, that ye believe on Him whom He hath sent.” After Christ’ s ascension, the Apostle John announced the will of the Father, saying, “ This is His commandment, that we should believe on the name of His Son Jesus Christ.” And is this the way to become members of the family of Jesus? Is this the way to do, if we wish to be the brother, and sister, and mother of the Lord? This is the way. He comes to us in the Father’ s name, with gracious proposals, as the sinner’ s Friend. Let us bid Him welcome; let us accept His offers; let us yield to His love. So shall we be His: and He shall be ours. “ To as many as receive Him, to them gives He power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe in His name.” It is by faith that we enter the family of Jesus. 5. Our last point is the evidence of the tie. For this we go again to the same verse:--“ Whosoever shall do the will of My Father which is in heaven, the same is My brother, and sister, and mother.” That which creates the tie, also manifests it. Take notice, says our Lord, take notice of the person that does My Father’ s will, and believes in Me; take notice of My follower, My disciple! The same is My brother, and sister, and mother. There is a family likeness between Christ and His people. The doing of the Father’ s will is a family characteristic. It is a feature by which a member of the Church of the first-born may be infallibly discovered. Christ, the chief, the great Brother of the household, is the image of the Father. And of all the members of the blessed household it can be said that, “ beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, they are changed into the same image, from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.” One remark we must add here, lest the mother and the brethren of Jesus be discouraged. It is not our doctrine, it is not the doctrine of Scripture, or of the text, that those only who attain to a perfect fulfilment of the Will of the Father can claim to be the kindred of the Lord. His meaning was, and the true doctrine is, that his brother, and sister, and mother, are they who have entered the school, who are learning the lesson, and have begun to practise the duty, of obedience to the will of the Father. II. The second branch of our subject relates to THE DELIGHT WHICH JESUS HAS IN THIS . The text is expressive of feelings of complacency and satisfaction. It was a burst of affection, the utterance of a loving and joyful heart, when He exclaimed, “ Behold My mother and My brethren.” To illustrate the delight which Jesus has in the affinity between Him and His people, it may be well to show what is His behavour towards them. 1. He visits them. It happens sometimes in a family of humble rank, that one of the members rises far above the rest in point of circumstances and position. And it happens also, sometimes, in such cases, that the great and wealthy member of the family forgets his poor kinsmen, and seldom or never goes to see them. But Christ does not forget His people. He came and saw them often during the old dispensation. He has never been long away from them. One visit, most notable for the wonders of love it exhibited, was His advent in the flesh. It had been described beforehand, but the half was not told. “ The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory.” When He was departing, He said, “ I will see you again.” The family of Jesus, like other families, has its meetings; the members often assemble; and now and then, at stated periods, they hold high festival together. On such occasions He, the exalted Brother to whom all look up, is never away. Absentees there may be, but He is not one of them; His place is never empty. Are they in darkness? He visits them and gives them light. 2. He sends gifts to them. He, the Brother of great possessions, sends gifts to His lowly kindred. All power is His, both in heaven and in earth. Do they need gold? He sends them gold, tried in the fire. Do they need raiment? He furnishes them with white raiment, that they may be clothed--robes of righteousness, garments of salvation. Do they need meat anddrink? He gives them bread of life, wine and milk, honey out of the rock. We have spoken of their family feasts, but these would be feasts of emptiness, were it not for His bounty. What shall we say more? To express everything in a word, He sends them the Holy Spirit. That heavenly gift is completely subject to His administration. 3. He dwells among them. It is customary for the members of a family to dwell together. They group with each other in the same abode. It may seem strange to say that Christ dwells with His friends, after we have said that He visits them. But both are true. In this case there is no real inconsistency. Just before His ascension He declared to His disciples, “ Lo, I am with you alway, even to the end of the world.” I am going away, yet will I never be absent. “ In Salem is His tabernacle, and His dwelling-place in Zion.” 4. He acknowledges them. “ Behold My mother and My brethren.” Behold these fishermen, these peasants, these obscure Galileans, who receive My doctrine. These are My relatives; see, this is the family to which I belong. And was not that a signal acknowledgment of kinsmanship that He gave in the case of the three children, when, before Nebuchadnezzar, and his princes and captains, and the vast Babylonian concourse, He walked in the midst of the furnace along with them? He promised that He would confess His brethren before His Father and before His holy angels. He is confessing them now in His continual intercession at God’ s right hand. (A. Gray.) Luke 8:22-25 He went into a ship with His disciples The Saviour in the ship 1. We do not need to be literally at sea, or to feel waves literally breaking over our heads, to find out what absolute helplessness is. The greater number of us, at some time in our lives, have known what it was to touch the last limit of our strength. One of the commonest forms of this exhaustion of human strength is in the struggle with disease or death, approaching yourself or some one you love like a part of yourself. The powers that overmatch us, tire us out, and run us down, are various--time, hereditary maladies, sudden sickness, the superior strength of other people serving their own interests against us, that formless enemy, never so seen as to be struck, but often “ preventing” us--that we call “ bad luck” ; everything that edges about our inclinations, thwarts our plans, baffles the brain and the will, and brings us up where we wish not to be. Most plainly it is a part of God’ s scheme of mercy to lead us, in our self-confidence and self-will, every one of us, to just that point, so that when we are obliged to stop trusting or calculating for ourselves we shall come willingly to Him. The heart, with all its external, traditional, or formal knowledge of the Saviour, may hold Him as if He were asleep in its own dark chamber. He wakes, to us, whenever we go to Him and call upon Him. And they are the reckless mariners on a deeper sea who put the waking off, on one pretence or another, till the ship is covered with the waves. 2. Observe that when, at last, the voyager comes sincerely and anxiously to that, and utters the prayer, Christ does not refuse him because he did not call sooner, or because when he prayed his prayer was not the purest and loftiest of prayers. Hardly any heart’ s prayer is that, when it is first agitated under the flashing conviction that it is all wrong. While its deep disorder is first discovered it can think only of being delivered. The life of God in the soul of man is always a growing thing, and so by necessity must be imperfect at the beginning. Every one that asketh receiveth more than he asketh. None of us know what to pray for as we ought. To him that crieth only in fear, and because the weather of this troublesome world is too much for him, the sea is smoothed. And whosoever so cometh, provided only it is to the Lord that he directs his supplication, shall in no wise be cast out. 3. But we should miss the fall breadth of gospel teaching in this miracle of the quieted tempest if we saw nothing more in it than a mere figure or likeness of what goes on in an individual heart. The whole strain of the New Testament teaches us a profounder doctrine than this of the connection between the visible world of nature and the invisible world of God’ s spiritual kingdom. We needed to know what the Pagan, the Jew even, and many a student of science born and bred in Christendom has never really comprehended, that the Person of Jesus, Son of God and Son of Man, is the actual bone of a living unity between both these two great realms of God’ s creation; that He mediates between them and reconciles them. Scholars will never explore nature thoroughly, or right wisely, till they see this religious signification of every law, every force, and every particle of matter, and explore it by the light of faith. God is in everything or in nothing--in lumps of common clay, as Ruskin says, and in drops of water, as in the kindling of the day star, and in the lifting of the pillars of heaven. 4. Incomplete still would this enlarging view of the miracle be, if it did not further disclose to us the true practical use both of the gospel miracles themselves, and of every other gift and blessing of heaven, in leading us up in affectionate gratitude to Him who stands as the central figure among all these visible wonders, the impersonation of all spiritual beauty, the heart of all holy love, and the originator of all the peace-making powers which tranquilize and reconcile the turbulences of the world. “ The men marvelled, saying, What manner of man is this!” It was not the mercy to men’ s imperilled or sick bodies that Christ had first in view when He loosened the bodily ordinances and let the streams of Divine energy flow in on mortal sufferers. “ That ye might believe in Me” this is the continual explanation--we might almost say the excuse, He offered for deeds that must necessarily be exceptional and temporary. (Bp. F. D. Huntington.) The miraculous stilling of the storm When we use the words “ Lord, save us, we perish,” we are really rehearsing two articles of our belief. 1. We are declaring that we believe there is a Lord--that in the visible world there is an invisible God with His over-ruling, and controlling, and appointing will. 2. We are also declaring that we believe this God is our Lord Jesus Christ. This it is which distinguishes Christian prayer from all other prayer. The story before us divides itself naturally into three parts: the voyage before the storm; the storm; the miraculous stilling of the storm. In each of these three parts we have one thing in common. We have man, in some way or other, encountering, or encountered by the outward and visible world. I. MAN NATURE. It was by the knowledge of the elements and the laws of nature that man learned thus to sail upon the deep; and in this fact you have represented for you the whole of the material progress of humanity--all the triumphs of science, all the glory and beauty of art, all that marvellous mastery that man obtains by his inventive and creative will over the secret powers of nature, as he unlocks them one by one, and compels her to tell him her deepest mysteries--all that man has done as he has advanced from horizon to horizon of discovery, finding still new worlds to conquer, until we stand amazed at our own progress and the infinity of it. II. NATURE MAN. Here we have the storm, in which the elements are man’ s masters and not his servants; and he that one minute before was the boasting lord of nature is its toy and sport. The very foam upon the crest of those billows is not more helpless in the grasp of the elements than the lord and the king of them; they toss him to and fro, as the wind drives the stubble in the autumn. This is the terrible aspect of nature. This is nature in her might, and in her majesty, and in her pitilessness, and in her capriciousness--when nature seems everything, and man, in her awful presence, dwindles and dwarfs into very nothingness. This is nature as she masters man. Is it, then, any wonder that, in the early struggles of mankind with this terrible visible power of the creature, men came to worship the creature--that they ascribed to every one of these powers a divinity; that in the voice of the wind, and in the roar of the sea, and in the raging of the fire, they saw the signs of a Divine presence, and they said to these elements: “ Spare us,” or “ Save us, or else we perish” ? And so all creation became peopled with gods-cruel gods, capricious gods, vengeful gods, gods whom men bribed with blood, gods whom, even while they bribed them, they could not love, and did not believe that they loved them. This is the first and most terrible form of creature worship; this was the idolatry of the heathen. But then, brethren, mark this; that such a worship as this could not continue long, because it is the worship of ignorance; it is the belief in the supernatural, only because it confuses the unknown with the supernatural. Even as science advanced must this faith melt away. Ever must the domain of the known push itself forward into the domain of the unknown. Ever does the man of science take one by one the gods of the man of superstition and break them upon their pedestals, and tell him this: “ What you worship is no god. What you worship is no lord. It is not your lord; it is a servant of yours; and I class it in this or that rank of your servants.” It is that last and most terrible aspect of nature, when she appears, not as many gods, or many wills, but as a great soulless piece of mechanism, of which we are only part--a terrible machinery in which we are, somehow or other, involved, and in the presence of which the sense of our freewill leaves us. III. THE AND THE . We hear a prayer, and we see a miracle. In the face of the might of nature and the terror of her elements there rises up a Man in answer to man’ s cry--there is heard a Man’ s voice, which is yet the voice of God; and it rebukes the winds and the sea, and the elements of nature own their real Lord; and immediately there is a great calm. What is it, then, that we see? We see a miracle, and a miracle that answers to prayer; we see the living spirits of living men, in the hour of their agony and their distress, appealing from nature to the God of nature; and we have recorded the answer of God to man’ s prayer. The answer is, that God is Lord both of man and of nature; and we say, therefore, that the miracle, and the miracle alone, sufficiently justifies the prayer. We say that the reason why men may pray is, and can only be, that they know and believe, that there is a will which rules the visible. If you have not this belief, then all prayer is an unreality and a miserable mockery. (Bp. W. C. Magee.) God’ s answers to man’ s prayers for help If prayer were always followed by a miraculous answer, then prayer would be easy enough; or, on the other hand, if there were no thought of an answer, then it might be possible, though not easy, to submit ourselves to the inevitable. But to pray, and not to receive an answer, and yet to believe that the very not receiving is an answer; to cry, “ Save, or we perish,” and to seem about to perish; to believe that in what seems perishing is really salvation; to look for the living and watchful Christ, and to see what seems only the sleeping and regardless Christ, and yet to believe that the time will come when, at His word, there shall be a great calm--this is the patience, this is the faith of those who worship an incarnate Lord. And so we trace the history of Christ’ s Church, and so we strive to trace the history of our own lives. Comparatively easy it is to trace the Church’ s history along her voyage. The Church gives time for comparing events and testing faith; and so, believing still in the presence of her living Lord, the litanies of His Church ring oat, as they have ever rung, clearly and loudly, and high above the roar of the tempest and the rushing of the waters, still the prayer is heard, “ Good Lord, deliver us” ; and still again and again, as the storm sweeps by, and the Church passes out into calmer waters, still comes the voice of thanksgiving, “ He hath delivered us.” Even in our shorter voyage are there none of us who can remember times when we have knelt in agony and wrestled in prayer with the Saviour, who seemed to have forgotten us, when the mighty storm of temptation and the billows of calamity seemed about to destroy us, and when we have cried to Him to save us, and He has seemed to sleep and to refuse to save? But at the last we can remember how He did reveal Himself, not stilling the raging storm when we would have had Him still the terrible tempest, not sparing, it may be, the precious bark that we had rigged, and manned, and launched ourselves with trembling hopes and loving prayers, and watched with eyes tearless with agony, as we saw it about to sink before us; and we have been led to see and believe that the living and loving Lord was answering even then our prayer, for the bark has at length entered that haven where we would be, and where the vexed waters of our voyage never awake a ripple on the calm depths of its eternal peace. (Bp. W. C. Magee.) The miracle on the lake 1. This miracle proved Jesus to be both God and man, and therefore able to save us from our sins. 2. This miracle proves that the Redeemer never forgets His people, though He sometimes appears to do so. 3. This miracle proves that the Redeemer will certainly deliver His people at last. What should hinder Him?--not want of power, for He is “ the mighty God,” as this history abundantly shows; not want o! knowledge, for He is infinitely wise to know how to save; not want of will, for He loves them and delights to help them. 4. This miracle proves that Jesus is a Being whom it is impiety and ruin to resist, but duty and happiness to obey. (James Foote, M. A.) The storm on the lake “ They took Him even as He was” ! It was well. We need preparations. The Son of God needed none. Preparations are ours, not His! He is always ready, and for every emergency--for a storm as well as a calm. We are all of us always crossing over. We have some plan, some pleasure, some expectation, something we are looking forward to to-morrow, or next week, or next year, or at the close of our toils. Something we have, all of us, always before us, and towards which we are crossing--something on “ the other side” of the present, whatever that may be, but which, before we reach, we may have to pass through a storm. But if it is necessary to our safety that we have Jesus with us in crossing over, it is equally necessary to our calmness, our peace, our joy, that Jesus be awake in us. It is in the storms of life that the all-sufficiency of Jesus comes out. We have never half known Him till now. We heard so before; we have proved it now. (F. Whitfield.) Christ rebuking the elements Why did Christ “ rebuke” the elements? The word appears to me the language of one who either sees moral guilt; or who, in His affection, is indignant at something which is hurting those He loves. The elements, in themselves, cannot, of course, do a moral thing. But is it possible that the prince of the power of the air had anything to do with that storm? Was there some latent fiendish malice in that sudden outbreak of nature upon Christ and His Church? But however this may be, there is another aspect in which we ought to see it. We know that to the second Adam there was given just what the first Adam forfeited--perfect dominion over all creation. Accordingly, Christ was careful, one after another, to assert and show His supremacy over the whole natural creation--over the fishes, as when He made them crowd at His word to a given spot; over the swine; over the fig tree; over the earth, opening at His will; over the seas, unlearning their usual law, and making a pavement for His feet. In this light the present hurricane was like a rebellion, or Christ treated it as such, that He might show His mastership. Hence that royal word, “ He rebuked them,” and hence the instant submission. But it might be, in His affection for His followers, as of one angry at what was disturbing their peace, He rebuked those troubled winds. For God is very jealous for His children’ s happiness; and whatever touches it, He is displeased at. You may be assured of this--if you are a child of God, and any person, or anything, ever comes near to injure or to distress you, God is grieved with that person or that thing--He will rebuke it. (J. Vaughan, M. A.) And they launched forth Setting sail I take these words simply as a motto, that I may speak to you of the duty of setting sail on the Christian voyage. 1. “ The other side” --the heavenly shore--that is the true destination for every one of us. 2. Your whole nature, with its varied powers and capacities, is the vessel with its furniture, freight, and crew. 3. Christ the Captain. You have no right to sail in any direction you please. 4. It is to be feared that there are many, even in our religious assemblies, who have never yet taken Christ as their appointed Captain, and decisively set sail on the Christian voyage. Repentance and faith necessary. 5. And here, in passing, I would say a word to any who may have set out years ago on this voyage, and yet are now back again at their old moorings. The sky was bright, and you set sail “ with flying colours.” But by-and-by came the storm. You were not prepared for such gusts of temptation. You had not anticipated such hurricanes of trial. And so yon allowed yourself to be driven back, by stress of weather, to the shore you had left. If you had only obeyed the commands of Christ, you might have weathered the storm, and been making progress even now towards the heavenly kingdom. 6. If you have not yet set sail, let me exhort you to do so at once. 7. If you have set sail under Christ, why should you not hoist His flag? (T. C.Finlayson.) The soothing voice of Jesus During a heavy storm in the Mediterranean Sea, which lasted two whole days and nights, I was unable to get any sleep, the rolling of the vessel was so terrific. Two men were washed from the wheel and the lifeboat broken. Whilst lying awake hour after hour I heard at intervals a voice calling out some words which I could not clearly distinguish amidst the roaring of the wind and waves, but which I took to be intended to cheer on the sailors in their perilous work. I afterwards found the voice was that of the night-watch, who on completing his round each half-hour shouted “ All is well!” I thought of the voice of Jesus as it rises above the storm, encouraging the despondent, tempest-tossed mariner in his voyage to the better land. (Richilde.) Christ for our Captain Now, I want you to come and see Jesus lying there upon the deck of the ship. Ah, how tired He is! Look at that face, so white, with the lines so deeply graven, the hands stretched out in utter helplessness. He had spent the whole day in preaching; then He had gone away and spent the night in prayer; the next morning He ordained the twelve, and before there was any time for breakfast the multitude came back again. When His friends heard of this they said, “ He is out of His mind.” They always say that; whenever a man begins to be enthusiastic about the welfare of his neighbour they are sure to think he is mad. But all the great and noble deeds done in this world have been wrought by those who have been branded as madmen, and until we go mad too I do not think we are likely to do much good among our fellows. The very word “ enthusiasm” means God in the man. When Livingstone was in Central Africa he tells us that he met some Englishmen who had gone there to shoot big game, and that these fellows talked about their self-sacrifice in exposing themselves to the same perils with himself. Self-sacrifice! Oh! in some cases the word becomes damnable. We never hear of self-sacrifice except for Jesus Christ. When a man goes to the ends of the earth to collect beetles, or catch fish, or shoot big beasts, who ever hears of self-sacrifice? But the moment he sets out on this long journey in order to help his neighbour, he is at once said to be demented. It is only for Jesus Christ that people invent these excuses. People are always needed elsewhere when Christ wants them. A man often takes one day a week from business to look after his garden or to enjoy himself with his children; but if when you knocked at his office door and were told he was absent on that occasion--as he always devoted one day a week to the care of the poorest of the poor--you would say, “ Dear me, how very extraordinary! There must be some little softening of the brain.” No, no, sir! softening of the heart; and would to God you would catch the complaint and die of it. They said, “ He is beside Himself.” And then His mother came. I never rightly understood before why she came, but I see it now. Poor mother! She saw the pale face, she knew how tired He must be; and He has had nothing to eat, and so she desired to speak with Him; but He was not to be hindered in His work, and so the day is passed in unremitting toil, until at last His condition became such as to suggest that strong arms support Him down to the ship, and the moment He is laid upon the deck, and His head touches the hard coil of ropes which is His pillow, He is fast asleep. Perhaps you have never thought of Christ being worn out with hard work. There is a kind of notion that He renewed His bodily strength from the springs of His Divinity. No, no; that is one of the temptations of the devil that Jesus Christ had always to withstand. If the devil could only have persuaded the Master to have met him as the Son of God there would have been no shame in his defeat; but to meet and conquer him as Man, as bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh, that was the triumph of Christ. And so Jesus knew what it was to be utterly worn out. You sometimes have spent the day in work, so hard that you have hardly been able to drag one foot after another. Well, to-night you think to yourself, “ Blessed Lord, I never thought before I had so much of Thy sympathy. I never knew before that Thou couldst say to me, ‘ I know all about it; I too have been worn out.’” There may be some mother here whose rest is often broken at night, whose day is filled with dreary toil until the brain throbs and the blood is as fire. Ah! Jesus can come to thee and say, “ Dear heart, I know what it is. I, too, have been utterly spent.” He is asleep on the deck of the ship. Come and gaze upon Him yet again. Are you troubled with sleeplessness, sir? I do not mean under a sermon, but at night when you go to rest? I am told it is an increasing complaint, and I know there are a great many remedies, some of them worse than the disease; but here is one which the Master Himself used. Why does He sleep so soundly? I pray you try His remedy--get thoroughly worn out in doing good. The next time, sir, that you cannot sleep, just you try the remedy. Call on that poor old man whom you know, who seemed ill when you saw him last, and whose rent you think is not paid; sit and talk and pray with him, and when you leave, give him five shillings, for advice gratis is not worth much, and if at night you do not sleep you shall have sweeter dreams, perchance, than those who do. The Master sleeps. We talk about the sleep of the just. There were only two men who ever slept the sleep of the just--Adam and Jesus Christ. We hear in poetry of infant slumbers, pure and light; but some of you mothers know that the little ones sometimes awake with shrieks and cries from fevered dreams. No, no; there were only two sleeps which were the sleep of the just, and what a contrast between them I See where God has cast the deep sleep upon Adam. Was there ever such a resting place? The mossy bank whereon he lies; trees that bend lovingly over him as if to screen him; winds that are hushed lest they disturb his rest; the birds trilling forth their sweetest songs, as if to mingle with his dreams; the flowers that pour their fragrance round about him--these were the surroundings of Adam; but look, I pray you, at the rude discomforts of my Lord. We have heard of the plank bed, and our heart has gone out in indignation as well as in pity on that matter, but here is the plank bed of our Master, How little Thou didst know of luxury and comfort! You poor folks, take this to your heart: you can say this, “ Well, I know that Jesus Christ knows more about my lot than the rich folks.” Oh, if I had had the ordering of that night, how different it would have been I Instead of the thin dress of the Galilean peasant, how I would have wrapped Him in robes so warm, how soft would have been His couch! I would have had the heavens hung with gold and crimson to curtain the couch of my Lord, and I would have charged the winds to sink down behind the purple hills lest they should ruffle with a breath the glassy surface of the lake that bore upon its bosom my sleeping Master. But it may not be. The wind is veering to the south-west, and there is going to be a dirty night. How the waves leap up and how the wind whistles and howls! Exactly. Think you that Christ is a fair-weather sailor? Think you that my Lord comes to see us only when we are in port, or to say “ goodbye” when we weigh anchor and set out upon the voyage? Oh, no I that is not my Christ. My Christ never says “ goodbye.” He says, “ Soul, I am going with thee.” “ But, Master, it is going to be a very dirty night.” “ Very well; if it is to be rough for thee, it will be rough for Me.” I want a Christ to go to sea with me, to take life just as i find it. My Master! Thou art just the very Christ we want. Come, look once more. He is asleep in the hinder part of the ship. Then have I got more than His disciples. I have often said, “ How glad would I have been to have looked into Thy face, to have drunk in the sweet music of Thy voice, to have felt the touch of Thine hand, to have had Thy shadow fall upon me, and to have told how I loved Thee.” Yes, that would have been much, but I have done more than that. Do you not see how that bodily presence shut Him in and shut them out, made a great gulf between them as black and deep and dark as bell? He sleeps! Oh, how dreadful is the storm! how the waves toss and tumble and roll, and yet He sleeps! Oh, I should not like to have a sleeping Christ! Nay. “ He that keepeth Israel doth neither slumber nor sleep.” They watch that He may sleep, but my Master watches that I may rest. Now have I more than they. Look again. He is in the hinder part of the ship asleep. Why did He sleep? This was one reason--because He had nothing else to do. Well, I cannot but think that if you wanted to see John at his best it would be when he is running before a gale of wind, and Peter when taking in a reef, and Philip handling an oar. Jesus Christ was a carpenter. He was wonderfully clever at teaching people how to get to heaven, but what could He do on board ship? He could not help them at all, so He went to sleep. Oh, how the wind whistled I how the sea was tossed and tumbled! I seem to hear the hurlyburly of the storm. Here comes a wave leaping higher and higher, as if impatient for its prey, and His disciples would fain call upon Him to awake. Ah, how instinctively the heart turns to Jesus when trouble comes I I think nothing grieves Jesus Christ more than that we should keep Him out of the management of things. As soon as ever they get ashore I think I know what Peter said to his fellows. He would take them aside and say: “ I have been thinking about last night, and I will tell you what I should like to do.” “ What is that?” says John. “ Let us make Him Captain. You see we can take in a reef, He can quiet the waves; we can put the helm up, He can hush the winds. Master, come, be Captain; just tell us how to put the craft about; take the helm.” Oh, blessed be His name! He does so love us when He can take the management. Dear friends, it hurts Jesus Christ when we shut Him out. Mother, there are those boys of thine. You have often asked the Lord to bless and save their souls, but thou art worrying thyself about what they are going to do in life. The Lord Jesus Christ knows how to help them a great deal better than thou dost. Ask Him to come in and guide thee and them. Sir, thy Master understands your business better than thou dost. Make Him the head of the firm, and say “ Come in.” I remember I had, some years ago, to preach a sermon, and two or three venerable doctors of Divinity were going to be present. Through thinking about them, perhaps, more than the sermon I began to get rather nervous. While I was sitting in my study working at the text, “ Cast all thy care upon Him,” and getting down very deep--I used to be lather an eloquent preacher, but, thank God! that has gone--all of a sudden, in the midst of my profound philosophical discourse, the door was burst open, and, looking up, I was about to say, “ Now run away,” but the father was a great deal stronger than the philosopher, and the words died away on my lips, for there stood a little three-year-old, with chubby cheeks, holding in her hand a broken toy, the face a picture of great sorrow, the lip quivering, the tears running down her cheeks, and the hands holding out the broken doll. And what think you I did? Why, thrust aside my philosophical discourse, and said, “ Come here, little one; what is the matter?” The child’ s grief was too deep for words; she could only hold up the broken toy and give a great sob, which told its own story. I said, “ I think we can manage this,” and the philosophical discourse was forgotten, and I got the gum bottle, and when I had restored the plaything, and put it in her arms again, I felt that I had my reward. The tears were dried up, and the sunshine came back to the little face, and, lifting herself on tiptoe, she paid me with a kiss, and then another, and then she trotted away, and at the door she turned to look back and nod her head and let me see her thanks again. I tore up my philosophical discourse, and I said I will go down and tell the people that we are just poor little children, and that our griefs are broken toys, and that our Lord hath joy in stooping down and taking into His hand our poor little sorrows, and healing them and wiping our tears away, and watching the sunshine come back again. Oh, how sorry Jesus is when you shut Him out, when you do not open the door to Him! Oh, I beseech you take Him as your Captain, let Him take the helm, and say to Him, “ Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?” He sleeps. I can fancy John saying, “ I wonder He can sleep on such a night as this.” “ Yes,” says Peter; “ we can hardly hear each other speak for the noise.” Oh, how the wind howls, how the poor craft staggers and strains--now climbing the crest of a wave, now deep down in the trough of the seal “ I wonder the Master can sleep--how tired He must be! Master, awake!” Ah! He was wide awake then. His was a mother’ s love, not a father’ s love. Your Father can sleep in a thunderstorm, you can sleep whether south-west wind moans and howls about the house, and when the waggons go rumbling along on their way to the market, but let the little one at mother’ s side just make the feeblest beginning of a cry, and she is awakened in an instant. You, sir, sleep for ten minutes afterwards by the clock, you know you do. My Lord’ s love--oh, it is the daintiest and most delicate thing upon the face of the earth! The love that Jesus Christ hath for us is a mother’ s love; we have never to speak twice before He hears. The first time He is awake and listening, and there is a great calm. (M. G. Pearse.) Luke 8:25 Where Is your faith?Where is your faith? It is as much as if He had said, “ You thought that I was sleeping. But was it indeed only Me, or chiefly My eye, that slept? Was it not your faith.? You say, ‘ Where is the Lord?’ but I say, ‘ Where is your faith?’” It is a mistake, brethren, we are all making every day. We say,--“ The Lord sleeps--the Lord sleeps.” But what is it,--“ Your faith” sleeps. I begin by asking every one I am now addressing, “ Where is your faith?” “ Where is your faith?” Now tell me, is it in the First Great Source? or, is it in second causes? 1. It is astonishing how many men are putting their faith upon second causes! I can imagine the fisherman in the storm, looking at the wind and the gathering clouds, partly because they come with less trouble; partly from long habit; partly from the aversion which there is in the mind of men to every thing spiritual; but chiefly because men imagine they have no right to go up straight to God. Hence almost all men are found trying means as if they were ends; and God’ s instruments as if they were gods. For instance, one man has a friend, and he hangs upon that friend, and you may see him behaving to that friend as if he considered that friend the arbiter of his life. Another is a man in business, and his study is about nothing every day but “ his connection,” and it is plain that he looks to nothing but “ his connection” to determine his rise or his ruin in the enterprise in which he is embarked. A third man is a farmer, and you will hear him talking about “ the weather,” as if the crops had no other father but the sun and the rain. A fourth is a politician, and he makes the world turn--as upon a pivot--on the consideration whether this administration shall be in, or that. All are making their system of cause and effect; and they do not calculate upon the shadow of a doubt that if there is a prescribed cause, there must be the predicted event. Their whole hearts--their whole faith is in second cause. Now, brethren, we do not hesitate to arraign this trusting in second cause as sheer idolatry. It is the essential of God that He is final, and what is final is made God. 2. But I will turn to another class of life’ s voyagers, and say, again, “ Where is your faith?” Is it not in yourselves? Perhaps the fishermen on the Galilean lake thought it very little for them to cross those oft-traversed waters, and would have laughed at the idea of there being any danger in their barque landing in safety on the other side. Yet how little booted their skill and their confidence! There are two distinct ways in which persons put faith in themselves. One is, in trusting there is a sufficient measure of goodness in their own hearts: the other, is by admitting their hearts are very bad, but still, taking a compensation in something that they are doing. 3. But I turn to the third class, and I ask again, “ Where is your faith?” and a thousand voices will answer me almost in this church, “ Why, in God” ; but I reply, “ In what God?” But you say, “ Oh, Him that is all mercy and all goodness.” All! and “ all just!” Is not God all just? would He be just if He forfeited His own word? And has not He said it, “ The soul that sinneth it shall die” ? Has not He said, “ Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish” ? Has He not said, “ He that believeth not shall be damned” ? Has not he made a particular requirement of you, that you must keep His whole law; and has He not made it as sure, as necessary a thing, that every sin shall lead on to misery, as every seed leads on to its own harvest? O, tell me, is it possible--in any view you may take of good government--that any breach of itslaws should pass unpunished? Is not the suffering of the offender part of the mercy--the centre of the mercy--of a grand administrator? Else, would not license, aye, and premium, too, be given to crime? and must not the whole empire pass into recklessness and misery? (J. Vaughan, M. A.) Where is your faith? 1. “ I believe in God.” How lightly, how carelessly, we repeat those solemn words, and yet what a universe of meaning lies in them! 2. Do we believe? Do we at all know what belief means? Do we suppose it to mean, “ I am familiar with these formulae, I see no special reason for rejecting them.” Thou believest that there is one God. Thou doest well. The devils also believe; nay more, they tremble. 3. “ I believe,” but, while with orthodox self-satisfaction we repeat our creeds, on which soul has dawned the tremendous responsibility of our belief, the transcendent obligation of all that it entails? 4. What, then, is wanting? Faith is wanting--that faith which is a possessing principle, an irresistible enthusiasm. Real faith--not the ineffectual pretence; not the faith which makes idols of formulae; not the faith which delights in rigid systems and fantastic self-delusions, groping in mediaeval traditions for a dead and material and exclusive Christ. Had we but faith as a grain of mustard-seed we should remove the mountains which overshadow and threaten to fall on us. (Archdeacon Farrar.) Fear rebuked One day when Stonewall Jackson, with his sister-in-law, was crossing the boiling torrent, just below the American falls at Niagara, in a slight boat manned by two oarsmen, the current so swirled the boat that the lady became terrified, believing they were going to the bottom. Jackson seized her by the arms, and turned to one of the men and said, “ How often have you crossed here?” “ I have been rowing people across, sir, for twelve years.” “ Did you ever meet with an accident?” “ Never, sir.” “ Never were capsized? never lost a life?” “ Nothing of the kind, sir!” Then turning in a somewhat peremptory tone, he said to the lady, “ You hear what the boatman says, and unless you think you can take the oars and row better than he does, sit still and trust him as I do.” (Mackay.) Luke 8:27-40A certain man who had devils long timeThe demoniac in the tombs as he resembles the unconverted sinner Observe the parallel that exists between this poor demoniac and the unconverted sinner. I. TO . 1. Possessed by an unclean spirit. 2. Living among the dead. 3. Disordered in intellect. 4. His own tormentor. 5. In a state of utter destitution and wretchedness. 6. Beyond the power of human assistance or restraint. II. AT . 1. The means employed: the Word of Christ. 2. The influence exerted: the almighty power of Christ. 3. The effect produced: (1) The unclean spirit expelled. (2) The naked one clothed. (3) The wanderer sitting at the feet of Jesus. (4) The maniac in his right mind. III. AFTER . 1. Desiring to remain with Jesus. How natural--wishing to forsake all, in order to be near the Great Physician. 2. Christ’ s command, whatever it may be, is immediately obeyed. (J. J.Rew, M. A.) Plain words with the careless 1. A man may know a great deal about true religion, and yet be a total stranger to it. There are no sounder theoretical believers than devils, and yet their conduct is not affected by what they believe, and consequently they still remain at enmity to the Most High God. 2. There are a great many bad prayers prayed in the world. The man said, “ I beseech Thee, torment me not.” A sinner’ s prayer for his own misery is often a grim and awful thing to look upon, from its horrible earnestness. I. A VERY . It is currently thought among mankind, that to receive the gospel of Christ would be to cease to be happy, to give up all joyfulness and cheerfulness, and to doom one’ s self to a life of melancholy. 1. Now, I will admit that if men will go on in their sins, the gospel will, if it gets at their consciences, make them miserable. It will act as salt to raw wounds, or as a whip to rebellious backs. 2. Again, I must make another admission, namely, that a great many people, at the time when they become serious for the first, and give themselves to Christ, are rendered, for a time, very miserable. The terrors of the Lord are upon them, and they are feeling the burden of sin--it is no wonder that a cloud hangs over their brows. 3. But, now that I have admitted this, I want to ask those who say that Jesus Christ would make them miserable, a question or two. I have admitted a great deal--now, be fair and open with me in return. You are afraid of being made miserable. Are you so mightily happy, then, at the present moment? Excuse me if I say that I rather question whether those Elysian fields of yours are so very delightful. A man cannot sin without bringing upon himself some sorrow even in this life. 4. There is another question I would like to ask you, and that is: If you reply that you are happy now, I should be glad to know whether the present, happiness which you enjoy, or say you enjoy, will last you very long? The leaves are now falling very rapidly from the trees, and they remind us that we, too, must die. Will your mirth and your jollity support you in the dying hour? 5. But now, we will go farther in dealing with this mischievous misapprehension. You have a notion that if Jesus Christ should come into your heart, you would have to give up your pleasures. Now, what pleasures? The pleasures of the hearth and family fireside? The pleasures of seeing your children growing up around you to call you blessed? The pleasures of doing good? The pleasures of discharging your duties as in the sight of God? The pleasures of a quiet conscience? None of these pleasures will Christ take away from you. Still you say, “ If I were a Christian it would make me melancholy!” Make you melancholy to believe that you are on the way to heaven, and that when the trials of this poor life are over, you shall be with Jesus for ever? I cannot imagine it. Let not Satan’ s lie deceive you. 6. One thing I will also say, and then have done with this point. You believe that religion is a happy thing, though you pretend you do not. You must confess, and you do confess, that you desire to die like a Christian. II. A . “ What have I to do with Thee?” This is a question which we have heard many times. Poor people often ask it. I heard a workman say, “ Well, I have nothing to do with religion; I know it is all very well for my master, for parsons, and fine ladies, and aristocrats, and old womb, but it is of no use to me; I have to work hard, and I have a family to bring up, and it has nothing to do with me.” Now, give me your hand, my good fellow, and, believe me, you are quite mistaken. Why, there is nobody in the world whom it has more to do with than it has with you, for “ the poor have the gospel preached to them.” But very often the wealthy say, “ What have we to do with Thee?” Lavender kid gloves and the gospel are not always well agreed: the upper circles are none the nearer heaven because of their imaginary elevation. There are also certain learned gentlemen who are instructed in metaphysics and philosophy who patronizingly inform us that the restraint of religion is a very proper thing to keep the working classes in some kind of order, but really they themselves are several degrees above it. Thus they say, as plainly as they can, “ What have I to do with Thee?” Oh, my brethren, educated, refined, wealthy, as you may be, the gospel of Jesus has everything to do with you. The giant minds of Milton and of Newton found ample room in the gospel; they delighted to bathe, like leviathan, in the ocean of Divine truth. There are two or three matters in which all of you have to do with Christ, whether you will or not. 1. It is because of His intercession that you are alive tonight. 2. It is entirely owing to Him that you are now in a place where the gospel can be proclaimed to you. 3. At the last great day, if you have nothing to do with Him as a Saviour, you will have to appear before Him as a Judge. We must have to do with Christ. (C. H. Spurgeon.) A Chinese demoniac A short time ago our Christian servant had a great trial; but it resulted, as trials have done to some of the rest of us, in the strengthening of his faith in God. His brother became insane, was very outrageous, and getting worse every day. Our servant always said he was sure his case was similar to that of the man who lived among the tombs in Gadara. At length his mother grew quite tired of him, and, thinking his case hopeless, sent him to the Yamen to be killed. He was to be beheaded in two days. We joined in asking God to heal him. Next morning he was much better, and in a few days he was quite well. The underlings then refused to let him out, except they received a good deal of silver. We thought this unfair, as he had had no food from them, and we declined to assist. Again we unitedly brought him before God asking Him to bring him out. Next morning we sent his brother to ask the mandarin to let him out, which he did. He stayed four days with us, heard the gospel, and went home quite happy to his wife and family, 120 li from the city. (J. Smith.) The Gadarene demoniac On landing, after a night of storm, our Lord was met by one who was scarcely human. The contrast between the rugged shore and the calm sea was not so striking as that between the wild demoniac and the calm and peaceful Son of God. This was a meeting of the representatives of two different kingdoms, the kingdom of darkness and that of light--of hate and of love; of misery and of peace. The Gadarene knew who Jesus was, yet, full of terror, he cried, “ What have I to do with Thee?” and implored Him to depart. But the Lord had to do with him, and would not therefore depart, but commanded the demons to depart, and they did so; and then the wild man came to his right mind, and sat clothed at the feet of his Deliverer, meek and calm as a wearied child. 1. We have in this man’ s history a most instructive evidence of the capacity of an immortal being to sink into the depths of sin and misery. What was essentially wrong in this man? It was his wrong mind. He was delivered from that by being brought to his right mind. 2. Look at the meeting of the demoniac with the Saviour. It was verily a crisis in the sad life of this miserable man. The inner conflict in this man’ s spirit on meeting Jesus represents the struggle in many a heart, during a similar crisis in its history. 3. Observe the effects of this great act of love on the hitherto miserable demoniac. What outward force failed to accomplish, inward principle effected. His outward physical condition was the effect and sign of his inward reformation. Such will be the results, more or less, in every case where a soul is truly brought to the knowledge and love of God in Jesus Christ. Terror will give place to love. 4. Notice, further, that when Jesus cast out the demon, the Gadarene prayed that he might be allowed to follow Him. This prayer offered up by a true disciple was the only one, connected with the incident, which Jesus did not answer in the way requested. The demons prayed that they might be permitted to enter the herd of swine, and their prayer was granted. The Gadarenes prayed that Jesus would depart out of their coasts, and their prayer was also granted. Some prayers may be answered in judgment, and some refused in mercy. 5. But why did this man ask to be allowed to follow Jesus? (1) It may have been personal love; or (2) it may have arisen from a trembling fear lest the dreadful demons of the olden time should return with the departure of Jesus; or (3) his prayer may have been offered from shame for his countrymen, who had asked the Lord of life and of peace to leave their coasts. But the worse the people were, the more they needed a missionary. And what a missionary this man would be! (Norman Macleod, D. D.) Destructive power On one occasion Christ’ s power operated in a direction that was merely destructive. A legion of devils besought Him to let them enter a herd of swine (a terrible illustration of the intolerableness” of life in hell), and on obtaining permission the whole herd, to the number of 2000, ran into the sea, and was destroyed. Much has been said against the people who besought Christ to leave their coasts on finding their swine destroyed; they have been charged with sordidness, selfishness, and low ideas of the value of human amelioration. Though we may steal a cheap reputation for magnanimity at the expense of these unfortunate people, yet they were right after all in desiring such a man as they took Christ to be to depart from their midst. Their request was the expression of a great principle in the human constitution, implanted there by the Creator. Men cannot be benefited by mere power, but they are necessarily reduced to a meaner manhood by the presence of a power that is destructive. The history of despotism proves this. People never beg thunder and lightning to continue amongst them, but they often wish that summer would never go away. (J. Parker, D. D.) Insanity is much nearer the kingdom of God than worldly-mindedness Men with shattered reason felt the spell, while the wise and strong-minded too often used their intellect, under the bias of passion or prejudice, to resist the force of truth. In this way we may account for the recognition of Jesus by the Gadarene demoniac. (A. B. Bruce, D. D.) A Saviour and not a tormentor We may be sure of this, that just as the Saviour did not land on the coast of the Gadarenes to torment them, but to save them from the demons and sins that were their real tormentors; so He did not come into the world to torment us, but to save us from evil passions and desires, than which there are no worse tormentors. This, however, is what some people do not believe. They think that the religion of Christ is a tormenting religion, and that it torments in two ways: (1) By putting restraint upon our conduct; and (2) by taking up all our time. As to the first--in comparison with slavery to self the service of Christ is perfect freedom. As to the second--it takes no more time to do everything to the glory of God, than to do everything to God’ s dishonour. (E. J. Hardy.) Hell on earth 1. We may learn from this account that evil spirits are real persons. There is a notion got abroad that it is only a figure of speech to talk of evil spirits, that all the Bible means by them is certain bad habits, or bad qualities or diseases. When I hear such language--and it is very common--I cannot help thinking how pleased the devil must be to hear people talk in such a way. How can people help him better than by saying that there is no devil? 2. We have no right to believe--we have every right not to believe--that these evil spirits can make us sin in the smallest matter against our own wills. (Charles Kingsley.) Legion If we yield to temptations whenever they come in our way, we shall find ourselves less and less able to resist them, for we shall learn to hate the evil spirits less and less. We shall give place to the devil, as the Scripture tells us we shall; for instance, by indulging in habitual passionate tempers, or rooted spite and malice. And so a man may become more and more the slave of his own nature, of his own lusts and passions, and therefore of the devils who are continually pampering and maddening those lusts and passions, till a man may end in complete possession. Few men in England, of course, would be fools enough to indulge the gross and fierce part of their nature till they became mere savages, like the demoniac whom Christ cured; so it is to respectable vices that the devil mostly tempts us--to covetousness, to party spirit, to a hard heart, and a narrow mind; to cruelty, that shall clothe itself under the name of law; to filthiness, which excuses itself by saying, “ It is a man’ s nature, he cannot help it” ; to idleness, which excuses itself on the score of wealth; to meanness and unfairness in trade, and in political and religious disputes--these are the devils which haunt us Englishmen--sleek, prim, respectable fiends enough, and truly, their name is Legion. (Charles Kingsley.) Spirits in possession of a man I. THE OF THE DEMONIC. 1. The extent to which he was possessed. 2. The effects of the possession. II. THE CURED AND CLOTHED. 1. He is brought to his right mind. 2. He appears in his right place. 3. He displays a right demeanour. (A. A. Ramsey.) A genuine case; The area which an unclean spirit is permitted, in taking possession of a man, is probably, in the present day, more limited than it was during our Lord’ s personal ministry on earth. But the effects are not less disastrous, if less extraordinary, than they were then. Let me supply an example from within the range of my own observation. He was a choice young man, son of a wealthy citizen in the metropolis. Favoured by birth, distinguished by amiability of disposition and superior natural talents, clever in business, skilled in the sciences, he was the acknowledged centre of a wide and admiring circle of relatives and friends. One day an evil spirit, which for weeks previously had been hovering about his path, whispering in his ear, and injecting thoughts of envy, evil, and unbelief into his mind, took possession of him. It was while, at an evening party, he sat before the piano, discoursing exquisite music to an eager, enthusiastic group of friends. Suddenly there came upon him what he afterwards described to me as an irresistible impulse. It instantly detached him from the most agreeable associations. He glided out of the glittering room, rushed from beneath his father’ s roof into the dark street, and almost before his absence from home was noticed, he was “ among the tombs,” gnashing his teeth in a frenzy of lustful passion, rending those beautiful garments of virtue which cannot easily be repaired, and wounding himself with weapons which inflict a deeper scar in the conscience than “ stones” do in the flesh. There, in the sepulchral regions of vice, in the charnel-house of the morally dead, he “ dwelt night and day for years.” Neither could any man tame him. Again and again the task was tried and failed. Faithful reproofs, cogent reasonings, urgent entreaties, tender persuasions oft-repeated, were utterly fruitless in regard to his reformation. “ Fetters” most strong and sacred were used to bind him. Fetters forged in the white heat of a mother’ s burning devotion. Fetters skilfully woven out of the deep treasures of a pious sister’ s heart. But they proved as ineffectual as did the seven green withes on the limbs of Samson. It was in an hour of direful wretchedness, when, in a paroxysm of mingled rage and remorse, he was rushing to the riverside, defiant of all that is holy and true, and seeking self-forgetfulness in the suicide’ s grave, that Jesus met him, arrested his steps, cast out the demon that so long had led him captive, and constrained him to turn his face homeward, penitently and tearfully saying, “ I will arise and go to my father.” (A. A. Ramsey.) Luke 8:35 Sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed, and in his right mind Sitting at the feet of Jesus Sitting at the feet of one is an expression which seems fitted not merely to describe local position, but to image forth the state of the mind of him who occupies it. And among these we may notice-- 1. Reverential affection for his Deliverer. Thus he sought to be near Him; yet would take the lowest place in His presence, from which he might look up to Him with admiring and loving regards. 2. Confidence in His power to save. “ Sitting at the feet of Jesus:” the man out of whom the devils were departed, may have considered this as the place of safety. 3. Docility under His instructions. This was the position of an avowed disciple, according to the custom of the times, which assigned to the teacher a more elevated seat, while the scholars placed themselves at his feet. His place showed that he had been made willing to submit his own understanding to the wisdom of God, speaking by Him whom He had sent. And may we not conclude that there was not only acquiescence in the truth of what Jesus taught, but a deep and engrossing interest in the subjects of His discourse? 4. Submission to His authority, and devotedness to His service. By sitting at the feet of Jesus, would not the man whom He had delivered from the power of the demons express his sense of the obligations under which he was laid now to obey and serve Him who had done so great things for him, and had had compassion on him? What might he say by the place he occupied and his mien there? “ O Lord, I am Thy servant, truly I am Thy servant, Thou hast loosed my bonds.” I would only add two observations farther. 1. That, in cherishing such sentiments and affections toward Jesus, we will show that we have come to ourselves, that we are now in our right minds. 2. By cherishing such sentiments and affections towards Jesus we consult our true happiness. (J. Henderson, D. D.) A three-fold blessing Three ideas are suggested by the brief but expressive description in the text: I. REST--“ Sitting.” Repose one of our prime needs. Is there rest anywhere? Yes, at the feet of Jesus. II. RAIMENT--“ Clothed.” Character the soul’ s raiment. III. REASON--“ In his right mind.” There is such a thing as moral insanity, spiritual lunacy. Remember what is said of prodigal son--“ And when he came to himself.” How suggestive! Sin deranges our being. To live without God is to be out of our true, proper, right mind. (T. R.Stevenson.) Casting out devils I. THE PICTURE AS A FACT. The man sitting, sane, clothed, restful, decent, master of his own being, and all because of his closeness to the Lord. Explanation of all is ill the clause--“ At the feet of Jesus.” II. THE , AS A OF THE POWER OF ON A WIDE SCALE IN THE WORLD’ S HISTORY. 1. It conduces to the material well-being. It is well to note that the man was “ clothed.” 2. Its influence upon the mind. 3. Its power to deal with the sores and sins of single souls. The individual first, and the mass afterwards. Lessons: 1. There are no outcasts beyond the sweep of Christ’ s large mercy, beyond the leverage of Christ’ s great love. 2. Here is what God sends me to offer to every man and woman here-rest, for distraction; peace, tranquility; quiet of heart, of conscience, of memory, of soul, of hope. Self-command. Emancipation from the madness of sin. (Expository Sermons on New Testament.) The demoniac recovered I. In the first place, you observe, THAT IN THIS CASE A HAD BEEN ENDURED. 1. As to the nature of the disorder, the person before us is described as “ a certain man which had devils long time.” Foul spirits, or demons, had mysteriously, though really, been permitted to enter into his frame, and to render his corporeal and mental existence subservient to the will and power of Satan. That so long as you remain untouched by another, by a higher, and by a far more commanding agency, so long you are “ led captive by the devil at his will.” 2. Thus is illustrated the nature of the disorder; and we find the statement also presented as to its effects. The recorded effects of the disorder upon the victim here alluded to, are most pitiable and touching. My brethren, the subjection of man to the moral dominion of Satan exposes him to effects, of which those we have now described furnish a solemn and a striking analogy. There is the perversion of reason. Again: there is the exclusion of the soul from all associations which can constitute its comfort and its dignity. Then, again, there is the endurance of positive pain and agony. Indulgences are fraught with pangs; and the passions which prompt them only infuriate and convulse. II. We have thus considered, that a malignant disorder had been endured; and you will now observe, secondly, THAT A SIGNAL WAS . 1. AS to the Being by whom the recovering agency was exerted, it was, we need scarcely remind you, the Lord Jesus Christ. The Lord Jesus Christ is the one Deliverer appointed for men, from their subjugation to the slavery of Satan. Further: it will be observed, that the Saviour accomplishes the deliverance of man by the manifestation of Himself to them, in His person and in His work. The demoniac, you observe, saw the Redeemer; and it was in connection with His personal appearance that the cure was effected and achieved; and in this manner the Saviour also spiritually manifests Himself to the understandings of men. He presents Himself to man by His Word. He also presents Himself to men by His Spirit. 2. This, my brethren, is the Being by whom the recovering agency is exerted; and you are now to observe the extent to which that agency operated. We are informed in this beautiful narrative, that by some mystic charm the sufferer was attracted to the Saviour. What a change!--from the frenzied maniac, in his wild convulsions and his angry mien, to one quiet and clothed, rejoicing in privilege, and exulting in the hope of happiness! It was, indeed, the accomplishment of a new creation. III. Then, brethren, from this signal recovery effected, we are also to observe, THAT RESULTS WERE SECURED. 1. Observe the effects as they were produced upon the minds of others. It is recorded, that the men who had been guilty of the unholy traffic, and who by the loss of their foul property had been abundantly reproved and judged, “ were afraid.” My brethren, what we desire to impress upon you here, is a fact which no genuine Christian will for a moment dream of disputing, that any real and well-ascertained conversion, by the energy of the Divine Spirit, through the work of the great Redeemer, must produce powerful influences upon the minds of those who can personally and truly observe it. Although, perhaps, you but imperfectly calculated and estimated them, it was an event which vibrated to the most distant regions of the universe. Anger was excited. Satan was angry, and his ministers of darkness were angry, when they saw you snatched from the burning, and taken from their thraldom and from their doom, into “ the glorious liberty” and the glorious prospects “ of the children of God.” Ungodly men, perhaps, were angry. But not only anger: astonishment was produced. You were a wonder unto others; they saw that which amazed them. There was the drunkard sober. And then, not merely was there anger and astonishment--there was joy. Your parents, your partners, your children, your friends, they rejoiced over you, when you told them of what God had done for your souls. 2. Again, brethren, we have also to observe the effect on the mind of the individual himself. And love to his deliverer was produced. And love, brethren, to Him by whom we have been emancipated from the thraldom of sin and Satan is the inevitable, and ought to be legitimately the master-impulse of our existence. Then again: zeal for his deliverer was produced; for we are informed, in a subsequent part of the narrative, that “ Jesus sent him away, saying, Return to thine own house, and show how great things God hath done unto thee.” Christ, brethren, will have no indolent enjoyers of privilege with Him. We must look onward, brethren, to the grand and glorious consummation, when liberty shall reign over our apostate globe. (J. Parsons.) Conversion of a sorceress A remarkable case is reported by Mr. Owen Watkins, one of the most devoted and honoured missionaries in the Transvaal. He describes the baptism of a woman who had for years been famous among her people as a witch doctor, and was supposed to have the power of discovering secrets of every kind. Two years ago Mr. Watkins saw her at a great festival, engaged in her fantastic rites, leading a wild dance of women, with weapons in her hands and strange charms hung round her. She jumped and leaped, and shouted, he says, “ like one possessed of devils.” All this has passed away now; she has broken with her old life, burnt her charms, renounced her fame and her power. The very difficulty of her conversion goes far to prove its reality. “ Often when trying to pray she would rush away to the solitudes of the mountain, and there wander about like an unquiet spirit.” This is not the experience of one to whom the spiritual life is not a reality; and the fact that one who had so strong a hold upon their fears and superstitions should have thus accepted the gospel of Christ’ s love is certain to impress the hearts Of those who used to dread and worship her. God’ s power in changing the heart If God should speak to Niagara, and bid its floods in their tremendous leap suddenly stand still, that were a trifling demonstration of power compared with the staying of a desperate human will. If He should suddenly speak to the broad Atlantic, and bid it be wrapped in flames, we should not even then see such a manifestation of His greatness as when He commands the human heart, and makes it submissive to His love. (C. H. Spurgeon.) Changed by the power of God A believer was giving in a prayer-meeting his testimony as to God’ s grace and goodness, and said:--“ On my way here to-night I met a man who asked me where I was going. I said, ‘ I am going to prayer-meeting.’ He said, ‘ There are a good many religions, and I think the most of them are delusions; as to the Christian religion, that is only a notion--that is a mere notion, the Christian religion.’ I said to him, ‘ Stranger, you see that tavern over there?’ ‘ Yes,’ said he, ‘ I see it.’ ‘ Do you see me?’ ‘ Yes; of course I see you.’ ‘ Now the time was, as everybody in this town knows, that if I had a quarter of a dollar in my pocket I could not pass that tavern without going in and getting a drink; all the people of Jefferson could not keep me out of that place. But God has changed my heart, and the Lord Jesus Christ has destroyed my thirst for strong drink; and there is my whole week’ s wages, and I have no temptation to go there. And, stranger, if this is a notion, I want to tell you it is a mighty powerful notion; it is a notion that has put clothes on my children’ s backs, and it is a notion that has put good food on our table, and it is a notion that has filled my mouth with thanksgiving to God. And, stranger, you had better go along with me--you might get religion too; lots of people are getting religion now.’” (Dr. Talmage.) The demoniac at the feet of Jesus In the first instance he was demon-possessed, and in the next he was Christ-possessed. I. We shall direct our attention TO CERTAIN VIEWS BY HIS INSANE , AS OF MEN WHO HAVE NOT BEEN REDUCED TO A STATE OF BY THE HEALING POWER OF CHRIST. Among the various wrecks of humanity our eyes can scarcely rest on a spectacle more melancholy and humiliating than that of a poor helpless object, dragging out a seemingly profitless existence in a state of soulless idiocy. Deprived of that reason by which our race is mainly distinguished from the inferior animals, he appears but as the shadow or mockery of a man, because seemingly in possession of no more than his external form. Easily then can we conceive how much more friends would have preferred death for him to all this; and all the more earnestly they might long for it from concluding that his living could serve no good end, or be anything more than an oppression to himself and others. But, withal, how mistaken in their calculations! He had, notwithstanding all their misgivings, been created for the glory of God. Miserable, feared, and pitied, as he was, fleeing from human habitations and tearing his own flesh; yet the wretched man, wretched whilst in this state, was living for the glory of God, for, as proved in the event, he was destined to become the subject of a miraculous cure by the great Physician; and in this way was to help in attesting the Divine commission of that Physician. Thus in the first instance, although the devil was allowed to show what power he had gained over him by his state of lunacy: he was next to be an instrument in Christ’ s hands, whereby the great Deliverer was to show in turn what supreme power He had over the devil himself, and what He was able to do in the reduction of moral as well as mental insanity; and thus clothe the spiritually naked, and put them in their right mind. In directing our attention to these views, we are able at once to perceive that this poor lunatic was of far more use in the scheme of God’ s grace than multitudes who have thought themselves far wiser men. Assuredly they who sit down contented anywhere else than at the feet of Jesus, are still in a state of infatuation, so that in application to those who live and die in such a condition, we may employ the language of Solomon and say, “ Madness is in their heart while they live, and after that they go to the dead.” Nothing save madness, and that which in the end proves the worst kind of it, could lead men to embrace the world as a portion, when they might have instead the kingdom of heaven for an inheritance. What but madness could lead them to encounter at any moment, the risk of hastening into everlasting companionship with the devil and his angels, when otherwise they might be in the blissful condition of securing for eternity the society of the ministering hosts of heaven, and the spirits of just men made perfect. One of the tokens of insanity affecting the helpless maniac mentioned in the text, consisted, as stated by Mark, in “ cutting himself with stones.” But would he have been any wiser if, like multitudes of our race, he had cut himself instead with gold or silver, or with some of the other glittering things for which worldly minded and ambitious men spend their lives? Would he have been less a madman if his cutting instrument of torture had been the drunkard’ s glass, wherewith to have administered deadly poison till he perished in ruin? Would he have been less a madman to have climbed the ladder of ambition, till losing self-command in the giddy height, he had fallen to perish in misery, as hath happened, in the judgments of God, to many of the proud and insatiable tyrants of the earth. Would he have been less a madman to have frequented scenes of licentious and degrading sensuality, till wasting, loathsome disease, more cutting than all the stones of torture he employed, had severed the slender thread of life, and sent him an early victim to the all-devouring tomb? They may not, like the maniac before us, have their habitation among the tombs, but they live and breathe in as death-like places, inhaling the noxious vapours of mammon’ s treasure-house, or the noxious fumes of the temple of Bacchus, or the pestilential atmosphere of the slaughter-houses of licentious indulgence. They may not appear actually behind in fetters and chains like the demoniac of the text; but they are more than iron-bound to their own lusts, and seemingly without such power as the demoniac had to snap them asunder. There are no chains so galling as those which are forged by enslaving passions or degrading appetites. “ O that they were wise, that they understood this, that they would consider their latter end.” II. We shall show WHAT WE HOLD TO BE IN THE OF MEN, WHEN IT MAY BE SAID OF THEM THAT THEY ARE IN THEIR “ RIGHT MIND,” AND HAVE THUS BECOME TRULY WISE, The main thing to which we have to attend in the management of this is to weigh Scripturally what is implied in the situation here spoken of, as “ sitting at the feet of Jesus.” It was there that the demoniac was found after he was brought to his right mind, and it is there that any one will be who is truly wise. No one can be said to have “ come to himself” till in that situation. Wherefore consider that to sit in the church is not to sit at the feet of Jesus. To sit in the reading even of His own Holy Book is not to sit at the feet of Jesus. To sit as ministers, elders, or deacons, in discharging any of the offices which belong to His house, is not to sit at His feet. To sit at His own holy table on sacramental occasions, to eat and drink in His name, and, as called for, in remembrance of Him, is not that which constitutes sitting at His feet. Men may do all these things in their season, and with much regularity during the currency of a long life, and yet be found in the end to have been nearer the feet of Satan than the feet of the Saviour. All these are important duties in their place; but if done in mere formality, or hypocrisy, tend not to salvation, but to ruin. 1. It implies laying down at His feet the whole burden of one’ s sin that He may pardon and purify--that He may forgive and cleanse from all pollution. It is only when men are in this state of consciousness as to the burden of sin, they will take any active part in placing themselves at the feet of Jesus; and when they come to this, it is because of the conviction there is no other place of safety for them. He is then seen as affording the only propitiation for sin, so that verily there is no other name under heaven whereby men can be saved. 2. Sitting at the feet of Jesus may be regarded as implying the willing reception for directions in faith and life of the heavenly lessons taught in His Word. No one, therefore, can be said to sit at His feet, and clothed in his right mind, who does not venerate the Scriptures, and apply to them for spiritual instruction. And it is just because there is so little ambition of this sort, if we may so speak, to be taught the legislation of heaven, by sitting at the feet of Jesus in learning, or becoming “ mighty in the Scriptures,” that there are so many blunders in civil legislation--so many blunders in education--and, we may say, so many blunders in preaching. They who have never been at the feet of Jesus learning His will, have not, like the demoniac, come to their right mind, and what are we to expect from the still infatuated, or from madmen, whether they be princes, or statesmen, or parents, or teachers? Mere science, worshipped as it may be, is of no use to man at the brink of the grave. He needs no geometry to enable him to measure its length and depth. He needs no chemistry to enable him to analyze the soil into which he is about to be laid. These and other branches of learning are of use in their proper place to living men, but are of no use to the dying. They are fit subjects for discussion in the halls of science, but serve no purpose in the chambers of sickness and dissolution. When the end is thus drawing nigh, nothing is of any value to the immortal spirit, except what is learnt by “ sitting at the feet of Jesus.” The Bible, which contains the learning thus to be acquired, may have been despised before, but it can scarcely be despised now. (J. Allan.) Testifying to the power of God’ s grace I have told you of African cruelty. Here is a story of what Jesus does when He gets into the hearts of such dreadful men. Some years ago there was a man called Africaner, a Kaffir, who was the terror of the whole neighbourhood. The mere mention of his name made the people tremble. Sweeping down upon towns and villages with his wild followers, he would murder all the men and even the children, would take the women as slaves, and having burnt the place, would drive the cattle back to his own territory. The bold missionary thought that the gospel of Jesus was able to save even this man, and he set out to preach to him. When the people found where he was going, they begged him to remain. His friends implored him not to go. Nobody expected to see him again. On he went, and speedily came tidings that he had been murdered, one man declaring that he himself had seen his bones bleaching in the wilderness. But some years after, two men came back amongst the white people. They knocked at the door of the farmer’ s house; the farmer started and turned pale, “ Why, this is the missionary’ s ghost,” he cried. “ No, no,” laughed Mr. Moffat, “ it is the missionary himself, in the flesh still.” “ Why, but you were murdered long ago,” gasped the farmer. But Mr. Moffat soon let him know that he was no ghost, and joy came in place of fright as the wife and children gathered around him with glad welcome. “ But however did you escape from that dreadful Africaner?” asked the farmer, as if he could not quite believe it yet. “ Africaner is now a truly good man” ; and Mr. Moffat told of his conversion. The farmer listened in amazement. “ If that is really so,” he said, I have only one wish before I die, I should like to see this eighth wonder of the world, cud I will go with you to see him.” The missionary coolly turned to the man at his side. “ See,” he said, taking his hand, “ here is Africaner.” The farmer started in terror; looking at him he saw the face, but with such a new spirit shining in it that he cried, “ O God, what a miracle of Thy power; what cannot Thy grace accomplish!” (M. G. Pearse.) Friends of the devil Whole villages (of the Kohls in India) were found in ruins; for “ an evil spirit has settled in them.” “ Get up I be off!” shouted the excited people to the missionaries as they camped on a little green knoll near the hamlet. “ Why?” “ That is our devil’ s place; you must not inconvenience our devil.” (Dr. Stephenson.) Luke 8:38-39 Return to thine own house The blessedness of active service The words of this refusal seem to suggest to us its cause; for instead of staying with Him, our Lord bade the lately possessed man go home to his friends, and tell them the great things which God had done for him. And in giving him this charge He did two things. 1. He thus in mercy provided that they who in their blindness had besought Him to leave them, and who would not, like the dwellers in Judea, have other opportunities of hearing Him, should still be reached by His blessed gospel: and so this instance stands alone. For whereas in other cases He ordered those He healed to tell no man, here, on the contrary, He sent away the healed man, charged by Himself to deliver this message of mercy. 2. He hereby calmed the fears of the restored demoniac. He bade him believe that in labouring thus for Him, in declaring His name, in blessing others, he should find that presence, and so that safeguard from evil, for which his soul craved. He answered the fears of his heart, and told him that whilst he laboured for his brethren, he should himself be safe from the assault of those mysterious powers he dreaded. The very charge was a promise. He was a monument of mercy--he should be kept as one: he longed to be in his Deliverer’ s presence--he should be so: after another manner, indeed, from that for which he asked, but yet most truly, most closely, yea, perpetually; wherever there was another to whom he could testify, wherever there was a tormented body, or a vexed spirit, there he might find anew his own Deliverer in bearing witness to His power. And these are our lessons. With every heart which the Saviour hath set free He has left this charge: “ Go home to thy friends, and tell them how great things the Lord hath done for thee.” Into all social life this light penetrates. Every man is to be to those around him a living preacher of the power of the Redeemer; he is to walk amongst his fellows as a witness for Christ. From him, too, the powers of evil have been banished; for him life wears another countenance; he is no longer, if he lives, as he may, under the renewing influences of the Holy Ghost, the slave of dark, or sensual, or furious, or earthly spirits. Silently it may be--meekly and unobtrusively it must be, but yet most truly--he is to bear witness to that mighty Deliverer, who found him out in his extremity, and broke the fetters which had bound his spirit. True Christian men in their own station do raise the tone of life round them: in a thousand little instances which are occurring daily, they are bearing a witness for truth, for sincerity, for reality, for purity, for meekness, for self-denial, for a spiritual life--which is not lost. For so it is that, most secretly, society is leavened for good or for evil. II. And if this is our first lesson, our second lies close beside it. It is, that our own safety must consist in thus working for Christ. Even as from the recovered demoniac, so from us also, the powers of evil are to be kept off in our active fulfilment of our own charge. If these, then, are our lessons from our Saviour’ s charge to this delivered man, let us gather them up into two strictly practical conclusions. And, first, let us see what a serious thing life is, even in its smallest parts. But it is a serious thing to live; serious both to ourselves and to others. To others, because all our life has its influence on them; because if we live unchristian lives, we throw away a ministry of mercy which might have saved some of them; because the very lowest of us cannot waste his own life and not injure other men; because we cannot be untrue to ourselves without being untrue to them. Let this, then, be our first conclusion, that it is a serious thing to live; and then we shall find encouragement as well as true instruction in this, as our second, that the sense of our redemption is to be the great foundation truth of all our life. We must have faith in this if we would know our charge, or in the least fulfil it. We must believe that we have been redeemed: we must have felt that He has indeed redeemed us from sin and its powers, from guilt and misery, or we cannot love Him as our Deliverer; cannot thankfully receive His easy yoke; and cannot witness of this truth to others. This is the great foundation of a true and earnest life: our hearts must yearn after Him; must pray that we may be with Him; must fear to be parted from Him; must long to live in His presence, finding it shelter, and safety, and peace; and then He will manifest Himself unto us. (Bp. Samuel Wilberforce.) Exemplifying religion in domestic relations I design to use the text to set forth the duty of exemplifying religion in the family and immediate domestic relations. I. THIS IS THE PROPER PLACE TO ALL OUR EFFORTS TO DO GOOD. 1. The dearest relations of the world are there. 2. The family is the place of our most powerful and constant influence. II. PEOPLE ARE TO PERFORM THIS DUTY. IS not this the very point of defect in the family training of many professing Christians? Do we not here come at the main reason, so far as human agency is concerned, why, in the domestic circles of some eminent Christians, there occur instances of sad indifference to Divine things, and of open profanity and irreligion? III. The direction of the text demands our special attention, because it contemplates a sphere where SOME EXIST, which are apt to interfere with the exemplification of high religious consistency. The very intimacy of the domestic intercourse is often a snare and a hindrance to one who does not religiously govern himself and watch against temptation. The freedom of family intercourse, also, is apt to take off restraints to the indulgence of our passions, and to the display of our real dispositions, which are felt in more public scenes. Let us be mindful, that the greater the impunity with which we may transgress, the greater the danger. (T. E. Vermilye, D. D.) Vital principles of the kingdom What are the principles that are to guide and rule our life when we become His subjects? This is our theme. I. The first principle that our text gives us is this, that CHRIST’ S WILL AND NOT OUR WISH IS TO OUR CONDUCT. We are to use our reason; but we are not to set ourselves up in judgment against Christ. Get a good start, by laying hold of this principle in the first instance--that Christ’ s will and not your wish is to regulate and rule your conduct. Remember that we have a right, whatever our wishes may be, to bring them before Christ. If you have strong desires concerning any matters in your hearts, you will find, if you lay them before Christ, He will not reproach you for doing so. He did not reproach this man for his prayer. The tender and wise Saviour knew what He was about. Instead of lacking in love to the man, He was overflowing with it, and He gave the best answer possible to his prayer, “ Go home to thy friends, My good man; thou needest care, thou needest nursing. Do not think of becoming one of My followers; why thou wouldest soon have to give up that; go home to thy friends, and say what great things God has done unto thee.” My dear friends, believe me, God will hear and answer you! prayer if it be sincere, and if He does not answer it in your way, He wilt do so in a better way. Never swerve from this principle for an instant, that prayer is a reality. The little eaglet as it sees its mother spread her pinions to the breeze, cries, “ Oh that I could fly!” and the mother answers the prayer by overturning the nest: her offspring thinks it cruel, but it is the only way its prayer can be answered. II. The second principle is, that AND NOT IS TO BE OUR SUPREME CONCERN. NOW a man that lives merely for his own personal enjoyment, although that enjoyment be of a spiritual kind, will find that he will very soon frustrate his own purposes and intentions, and instead of securing that for which he has so earnestly, but selfishly sought, it will evade his grasp and leave him altogether a stranger to it. Christianity is not the last spar of a wreck on which a man may float himself into the still waters of an eternal calm; but it is a life-boat, and every man must “ man the life-boat,” and try to rescue others from the wreck which sin and Satan had made. Dear friends, you shall have enjoyment, but your enjoyment must come by way of usefulness. This principle of the kingdom of Christ is the principle of all kingdoms over which Christ rules and governs. All life is constituted according to this principle--that it shall only exist in a healthy condition as it gives out of that which it receives. The Dead Sea is a dead sea because it receives all and gives nothing. The brook is beautiful and lovely because it is constantly flowing, and all in nature that is healthy, is healthy because it observes this rule. The clouds take the water from the sea, only that they may give it back again in fertilizing showers to gladden and refresh the earth. In return the earth gives us fruit, flowers and herbs, indeed, everything good for man and beast. III. Another principle closely associated with the foregoing is this, that OUR POWER FOR DEPENDS UPON WHAT CHRIST HAS DONE FOR US. Christ said to this man, “ Go and show what great things God hath done unto thee.” Your power for usefulness will not depend upon what you say, so much as upon what you are; and your great concern, if you want to be useful, is to live lives which are not inconsistent with your profession. Seek first of all to have an experimental acquaintance with Christ’ s power upon your own heart. IV. The fourth principle according to the text is that--OUR FIRST PLACE OF IS TO BE THE HOME. “ Return to thine own house, and show what great things God hath done unto thee.” We are to begin in the family circle first of all. (W. Williams.) The religious use of excited feelings Natural in this man to wish to continue with our Lord. Doubtless his mind transported with joy and gratitude. Christ impressed this very attendance upon others. In the case before us He suffered not what at other times He had bidden. A lesson may be drawn from this for the use of those who, having neglected religion in early youth, at length begin to have serious thoughts, try to repent, and wish to serve God better than hitherto, though they do not know how to set about it. Even for those who have neglected Him He has found (if they will avail themselves of it) some sort of remedy of the difficulties in the way of obedience which they have brought upon themselves by sinning. I. WHAT IS THIS REMEDY? It is the excited feeling with which repentance is at first attended. II. HOW IS IT TO BE USED? The restored sufferer in the text wished to be with Christ. Eagerness and zeal may lead to a false devotion which makes men desirous of keeping themselves in Christ’ s immediate sight, rather than of returning to their own home, as He would have them, that is, to the common duties of life. Learn to live by faith which sees Christ and rejoices in Him, though sent away from His presence to labour in the world. (J. H.Newman, D. D.) An unanswered prayer I. WHAT INDUCED THE MAN TO OFFER THIS PRAYER? 1. Possibly fear. 2. Doubtless also gratitude. Not now possessed but possessing. II. WHAT INDUCED OUR LORD TO REFUSE THIS PRAYER? 1. It was better for the man. Lest he should infer that the power of Christ was merely local, and not universal. 2. It was better for the man’ s friends. The home-circle should be the great missionary-field. There are occasions when it is right for a man to narrate his personal experience. Showing is usually safer than telling. 3. It was better for the land in which he lived. If Christ had permitted him to follow Him, the whole land of Decapolis would have remained in darkness. (H. A. Nash.) The home-mission work of Christians 1. Every man who is entitled to the name of Christian, knows in some degree what great things the Lord has done for him. 2. To every man, therefore, who knows this, however imperfectly or inadequately the blessing may be realized, the Lord says, “ Go to thine own house,” &c. 3. Look at their sphere of missionary labour, in which every Christian is to be the missionary agent. The circle made up of our relations, friends, companions, and those with whom we come most into contact. (1) Our own house has the first claim upon us. (2) To show to our own house what great things the Lord hath done for us, is the very duty which every kind of religious fervour demands, in order to prevent it from dying out like a fire that leaves nothing but ashes behind, or from being spent like a fresh flowing stream in mere noise and foam, without doing any practical good. (3) Our religion as seen in our own house is the best test of the reality of our Christian character. (4) Our home is the field which we can cultivate better than any other. 4. We are further taught, by the history of this Gadarene, the way in which this home mission work is to be carried on. It is chiefly by our life: by what we are. This influence of a good life, however, does not exclude a more direct showing by spoken word, of what the Lord has done for ourselves, and what He is willing and able to do for all. (Norman Macleod, D. D.) Christian influence And regarding Christ’ s treatment of this restored man, as in entire analogy with His treatment of true Christians, let us learn-- I. A LESSON IN REGARD TO GOD’ S OF PRAYER. If our prayers are proper and right, both in their spirit and their objects, may we not come to the throne of grace assured that they will be answered? To which I answer-- 1. That according to the principle just insisted on, that God’ s thoughts are not our thoughts, no man is competent to decide positively whether the prayer he offers is in the right spirit. The petition of this Gadarene may have originated in a selfish desire to be happy in Christ’ s presence, rather than useful in His service. And if so, it was self-considered, an improper prayer, and not to be answered. And so of other prayers. 2. But we remark that, even were we certain that the prayer is such as God promises to answer, there remains still a more important point to be considered--viz., the best way of answering it. If the Gadarene prayed properly, desiring only his own greatest good and God’ s greatest glory, then Christ may have seen that he would grow more rapidly in grace, and bring more honour to his Saviour, by remaining among his own countrymen; and thus really answered his petition by sending him away. And so it is always. God will assuredly answer all prayers that are proper and good; but then He answers them in His own way, and according to His own higher wisdom. The Christian prays to be sanctified; and this is a good prayer, and if offered in a right spirit is sure to be answered. But how! Ah, not according to the man’ s thoughts I God lays His strong hand upon the man’ s idols. He takes away his property; He takes away his health; He takes away his comforts; He lays the beloved of his home and heart into the unpitying grave--thus weakening his affections for the earthly and the carnal. “ Ah,” but says the Christian, “ this is not what I meant!” Be it so; yet if you prayed sincerely to be sanctified, this is precisely what you asked for--for this is sanctification! But passing now from this great lesson of prayer, and considering the text as containing important parabolic instruction, we learn here several lessons as to practical Christian influence. I. We learn THE OF SUCH . The text most impressively teaches us that the law of Christian life is not spiritual enjoyment, but usefulness. And so it is with the Christian. If the end of his conversion were his own spiritual enjoyment, then, as soon as he is converted, he would be translated to Christ’ s presence in glory. There is nothing falser and fouler than that low, narrow, selfish idea of conversion, which regards it only as the condition whereby the man escapes from hell and gets into heaven. If such conversion makes a man good, it is a goodness out of harmony with all other good things. God’ s great law of goodness is not absorption, but diffusion. All God’ s glorious things, from a flower of the field to a star in the firmament, are not receptacles, but fountains. No man ever thought of one of God’ s angels as sitting selfishly on a heavenly throne, contemplating in indolent rapture the sceptre he is wielding and the diadem he wears. And if one of those professing Christians, who think that all God requires of them is just to get themselves to glory, is a true child of God, then he lacks at least one evidence of sonship--he does not resemble his great Father. Of one thing we are certain, that every converted soul is designed by Jehovah to be “ the light of the world.” And if Jesus Christ should descend again to the earth, dwelling as of old time with mortals, and one of these very happy and indolent Christians should come to Him, saying, “ O Lord Jesus, precious Saviour, let me ever sit at Thy feet in love, and rapture, and worship!” then, sure I am Christ would frown on him as a slumbering and selfish disciple, and, like the restored man of Gadara, “ would send him away.” II. Passing this, we learn from the text, THE SECRET, OR ELEMENT, OF ALL TRUE , Our Lord sent this restored man away, that he might bear witness for God unto his kinsfolk and countrymen. But how was he to bear witness? Why, simply by making it manifest that the devil had gone out of him. But the power of his witness was not in his lips, but his life. They saw that he was a changed man. A hundred men might have come from Galilee, telling these Gadarenes of Christ, the worker of miracles, and yet all their arguments and eloquence would have been as nothing to one hour’ s converse with this restored man--yesterday known to all as a raging demoniac, to-day a gentle and loving companion, in his right mind. His power of testimony for Jesus was the power of his life. And in this lies the secret of all true Christian influence. It is the easiest thing in the world to talk about religion. But mere talk about religion is the poorest thing in the world. Every true Christian will indeed talk about his Saviour. Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh. Nevertheless, here as elsewhere, the utterance of the lips is as nothing to the influence of the life. In the Divine economy, all grand forces are comparatively gentle and silent. The shallow rill, that is dry on the mountain-side half the year, brawls more noisily at times than yon mighty river. The boy’ s sparkling rocket makes a louder demonstration in the night air than all God’ s starry constellations. And yet, in the silence of their sublime manifestations, how eloquently do these great forces of the universe bear witness for God! And so it is of moral forces. The gentle movement of this restored man, amid his wondering countrymen, did more to convince them of Christ’ s saving power than a thousand noisy utterances. And so is it with the convincing power of a Christian life. The converted man is left in this world a witness for Jesus--allying illustration of the power and blessedness of a religious life. He is to the theologic truth of the Bible what practical experiments are to scientific truths in nature. As the chemist talks technically of elements in analysis and synthesis, and exhibits, in illustration, free gases and ponderous compounds; and as the botanist discourses scientifically of the structure of plants, and the functions of their parts, and shows you his meaning by producing the petals of a lily, or a spike of lavender--so is it with spiritual science, in the hands of the Great Teacher. The Bible explains, and Christian life illustrates; e.g., Faith, by definition, is “ the substance of things hoped for.” But, in order to make men understand it, I must be able to point to some man who, under its power, lives, as did Abraham, ever looking for a city whose maker is God. Trust in God is, by definition, an unswerving resting of the mind on Divine veracity and benevolence. But, to make a man comprehend it, it must be in my power to point to men who, under its influence, sit calmly, like Daniel in the lion’ s den; or go resolutely, like the young Hebrews, into a fiery furnace. And so of all graces. In the Bible they are described, as in a written epistle--in Christian life they are illustrated, as in a “ living epistle.” And in this sense are we, mainly, witnesses for Christ. As the Gadarenes saw that the demoniac was restored, so must the world see that the sinner is converted. He must speak for Christ, as the flower and the star speak for God, in the beauty and glory of their physical manifestations. Without this abiding savour of a holy life, all else will prove but a mockery. III. Meanwhile, the text teaches us THE TRUE SPHERE OF THIS . “ Return to thine own house, and show how great things God hath done unto thee.” We may not be able to understand all the reasons of this command. It is, however, quite evident, first, that his home would be the field of his most powerful influence--since those who had best known him in his demoniacal state would be the most thoroughly convinced of Christ’ s power of miraculous restoration. And, secondly, that his home would be the most appropriate field of his influence, since his kinsfolk had the first claim upon his sympathy and labours. And, were there no reasons but these, this direction of Christ teaches us this important lesson in regard of Christian influence--that its truest field, and its mightiest power, are alike always at home. Its mightiest power is at home, because the members of a man’ s own household, and the familiar friends of his own social circle, are the best judges of the genuineness of his conversion. It is very easy to put on seemings of godliness that shall deceive strangers; but that must be a true piety, which, amid the daily vexations of life, and the unrestrained intercourse of the home circle, bears the image of Jesus. Meanwhile, a man’ s home is the fittest field for the exercise of his Christian influence. Religion, like charity, should begin at home. See that your own field is well tilled, ere you go abroad to other fields. Your own heart first; then your own family; then your own Church; then your own country; and then the whole world. This is God’ s great law of influence. The heart must be in strong health, if the circulation be vigorous and healthful in the extremities. The roots and trunk of a tree must thrive, if it would fling forth new branches. No matter, indeed, how largely a man expands--the larger his benevolence the better--if he expand harmoniously, from a healthy and permanent centre. Let him not mistake diffusion for expansion, nor a change of scene for an enlargement of influence. Would that all Christians, and all Christian Churches, would learn this simple lesson, which Christ taught to the, restored man of Gadara. One fixed and steadfast sun, standing earnestly in its appointed place, and diffusing constant light and life over the small circle of worlds God has committed to its keeping, is worth more than a hundred erratic comets, flaming out in the heavens, and casting a fiery and locomotive glare on a thousand constellations. “ Let me walk through broad Galilee, and stand up as a living witness for God before Greek and Jew; before ruler and Pharisee.” And though this request falls in with the dictate of human reason, yet, oh, deeper wisdom of the blessed Saviour; Christ sent him unto his own kinsfolk, saying, “ Go home! Go home!” IV. Moreover, the text Leaches us THE MOTIVES OF THIS . “ Return to thine own house,” said the Saviour. The text tells us he had “ a home” ; and faithful hearts, long agonized in his behalf, were to be comforted and blessed by his presence. And though, for his own sake, he preferred to be with Jesus, yet, for the sake of beloved kindred, he was willing to depart. Here was one motive, and a strong one. But the text gives us a stronger. 1. The Divine commandment--“ Christ sent him away.” He may not have had the intellect to understand why Christ thus ordered it; but he surely had the heart that, in its supreme love to his great Deliverer, rejoiced above all things to do His bidding. And here are the types of Christian motives, in labour for the Saviour. Here is, first, philanthropy, the love of our human kindred; a desire to save the sons and daughters of our one great Father. But yet, strong as this motive is, it is as nothing to that second and mightier one--the command of his Master. Christ, his great and gracious Saviour, hath commanded him, as the grand end of his earthly being, to labour to bring impenitent men under the power of the gospel. And this motive is omnipotent. “ The love of Christ constraineth him.” The love of my kindred might fail--but “ the love of Christ constraineth me!” (C. Wadsworth.) Luke 8:40 The people gladly received Him: for they were an waiting for Him A welcome for Jesus When Jesus is waited for and welcomed, He delights to come. He is not waited for by all in our congregations; so that we may ask the question of our present hearers--Do you welcome Christ? Let it be answered by each one this day. I. A SIGHT. “ They were all waiting for Him.” This waiting may be seen in several different forms. 1. A gathered congregation, waiting in the place where prayer is wont to be made. Want of punctuality, and irregular attendance, often show that Jesus is not waited for. 2. A praying company, an earnest Church, looking for revival, and prepared to co-operate in labour for it. Some Churches do not wait for the Lord’ s presence, and would not be ready for Him if He were to come. 3. A seeking sinner, sighing for mercy, searching the Scriptures, hearing the Word, inquiring of Christians, constantly praying, and thus “ waiting for Him.” 4. A departing saint, longing for home: saying, like Jacob, “ I have waited for Thy salvation, O Lord” (Genesis 49:18). 5. An instructed Church, looking for the Second Advent (Revelation 22:17). It is good for the eyes to behold such sights. II. A SURE ARRIVAL. “ Jesus was returned.” We are quite sure that our Lord will graciously appear to those who are “ all waiting for Him,” since-- 1. His Spirit is there already, making them wait (Romans 8:23). 2. His heart is there, in sympathy with them, longing to bless them. 3. His work is there. He has brought them into that waiting condition, and now He has found a sphere wherein to display his grace to saints and sinners. 4. His promise is there, “ Lo, I am with you alway” (Matthew 28:20). 5. His custom is to be there. His delights are still with the sons of men Proverbs 8:31). What countless blessings His coming will bring! III. A HEARTY WELCOME. “ The people gladly received Him.” 1. Their fears made Him welcome. They feared lest He might have gone for ever from them (Psalms 77:7). 2. Their hopes made Him welcome. They trusted that now their sick would be cured, and their dead would be raised. 3. Their prayers made Him welcome. Those who pray that Jesus may come are glad when He comes. 4. Their faith made Him welcome. Jairus now looked to have his child healed (see verse 41). 5. Their love made Him welcome. When our heart is with Him, we rejoice in His appearing. 6. Their care for others made Him welcome. Jesus never disappoints those who wait for Him. Jesus never refuses those who welcome Him. Jesus is near us now: will you not open the doors of your hearts to receive Him? Revelation 3:20.) (C. H. Spurgeon.) Hearty welcome A congregation cannot be said to welcome the Lord Jesus unless they are all there, which requires punctuality; unless they have come with design to meet Him, which implies prayerful expectancy; unless they are ready to hear from Him, which involves attention; and unless they are resolved to accept His teaching, which demands obedience.” (C. H.Spurgeon.) Waiting for Jesus But do we, like the people of Capernaum, gladly receive Him, and are we all waiting for Him? The true child of God regards Christ as the “ chiefest among ten thousand,” and the “ one altogether lovely.” Rich are the promises made to those who thus faithfully wait upon Him. “ They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength.” “ The Lord is good to them that wait for Him.” “ Wait on the Lord, be of good courage, and He shall strengthen thy heart.” “ Those that wait upon the Lord, shall inherit the earth.” “ Keep mercy, and wait upon thy God continually.” “ And mind this other thing, prescribe nothing to God. If thou hast begun to wait, faint not, give not up, wait on still. It were good reason, were it but upon little hope at length to find Him; but since it is upon the unfailing assurance that in the end thou shalt obtain, what folly were it to lose all for want of waiting a little longer?” Thus it is that God waits for us, and we wait for Him. He waits for the fit times and seasons of His own appointment, that He may be gracious; and we wait patiently upon Him in the means and ordinances of grace, tarrying the Lord’ s leisure, until He bring it to pass. We must wait for Jesus at such times as He may appoint, and one of these special times is the Lord’ s Day. But we must wait for Jesus in the spirit which He requires. In order to a full enjoyment of Christ, there must be not only a waiting for Him, but also a glad receiving of Him. The coming in of Christ into the heart always begets gladness in that heart. This spiritual gladness is an important element of Christian character because, like sunshine, it brightens all within and reflects its glow on all without. But there are those who are conscious to themselves that they are not waiting for Christ, and have not gladly received Him. It is a blessed state to be in, to be waiting for Jesus--to have the soul in that position of expectancy that looks and longs for His appearing. (Bp. Stevens.) Luke 8:41-42 And, behold, there came a man named Jairus-- Christ and the ruler “ And behold there came one of the rulers unto Him. ” This shows us the helplessness of the greatest men. The Word ruler indicates position, influence, power, personal supremacy of one kind or another. And yet here is a ruler coming to Jesus Christ for help. There is a point at which all human might becomes utter weakness. We should have said if any man can do without Christ it will be the man who bears the position and sustains the name of ruler. What is our rulership but a mockery in all the great crises and trying passions and terrible combinations of life? A very pretty thing for convenience sake, useful in a social point of view; but when life is driven to extremity, our rulership is nothing better to us than a nominal honour, and sometimes nothing more than a taunting mockery. Know this, then, that there is no title, no position, no supremacy that can cut you off from the fountain of life and make you independent of Emanuel, Son of God. And said unto Him, My daughter lieth at the point of death--showing us the helplessness of the kindest men. The man before us was not only a ruler, but a father; yet ruler and father were found at the feet of Christ. Kindness will do more than mere power. A father will always do more than a ruler. The ruler will work by law, by stipulations, by technical covenants, he will consult the letter of the regulations, and he will abide by the bond. But the father will interpret by his heart; he will avail himself of all the suggestions of love; he cannot be bound by the narrowness and limitations of the letter; he does not work by the clock, he works by his heart. Yet the father, the kindest man, came, as well as the ruler, the greatest man. Office and nature, position and life, status and love, will one day have to come to Jesus Christ to make out their petitions and to urge their cases--for even the deepest, grandest, royalest heart feels that it wants something beyond itself, and that something it can only find in Emanuel, Son of God. And it is often not until the ruler and the father have exhausted themselves that they will come to Christ. This ruler was never so truly a ruler as when he fell on his knees and besought Christ to help him. There is an abasement that is exaltation. There is a humility that is the guarantee of the surest independence: (J. Parker, D. D.) The faith of Jairus If Jairus had not been quite sure that Jesus could save her, could he have left his daughter in the very article of death to seek Him out? We may be sure that nothing short of an absolute conviction of Christ’ s power to heal and save would have drawn Jairus from his daughter’ s room. His faith had its reward. No sooner had he uttered his prayer than Jesus set out with him. But as they went, Jesus paused. Favoured by the darkness and by the throng which opened and closed about Him, “ a woman having an issue of blood,” &c. (Luke 8:43), came behind Him, and laid her wasted hand on the hem of His garment with a touch that drew healing virtue out of Him. To Jairus, at least at first, this pause must have seemed an almost intolerable vexation. Every moment was precious. Even the apostles, long after this, thought there was hope for Lazarus so long as he was only sick, but none when once he was gone. We cannot suppose that the faith of Jairus was keener than that of Peter and James and John. To him, therefore, this check must have appeared well-nigh fatal to his hopes. The calmness of Jesus, His determination to probe the case to the bottom, to discover who it was that had touched Him, to compel the abashed culprit to tell the whole story of her disease and cure, to teach and comfort and assure her--all this must have been a sore trial to the father’ s faith. Yet he is too generous, or too self-restrained, to utter a reproach, to urge haste. The delay had teaching for him and benediction. However he may have fretted at it, it brought him the very lesson and help he most needed. The healing of Veronica taught him that, though many throng and press on Jesus, the only touch that reaches Him is the touch of faith. When, too, he saw a woman healed who had been sick “ twelve years,” that is, just as many years as his daughter had lived, must not that have enlarged his conception of the healing virtue of Jesus? must it not, by teaching him how great things faith can do, have strengthened and confirmed his faith. But as faith is the measure of the gift, as we receive just as much as we can take, this delay, by confirming and enlarging the ruler’ s faith, made him capable of a larger blessing. As he passed on with Christ, after witnessing so great a miracle, he must, we think, have walked with a firmer step, and have lifted up his head with a more cheerful hope. It was necessary that he should be prepared for a great trial as well as for a great benediction. For his fears were verified. His daughter had died while they stopped to talk with the woman who bad laid a furtive hand on the Healer’ s robe. And if by this time Jairus had not had a stronger faith than when he left home, he must have altogether lest faith. One other trial had still to be encountered. To hear of a death affects and awes the mind; but to stand in the presence of death, encompassed by all the signs of mourning and woe, bites more deeply, and rouses the emotions to greater vehemence. “ The child is not dead,” said Jesus, “ but sleepeth.” How could He say that the maiden was not dead? Simply because it was true. We are no more without life when we die than when we sleep. Whether Jairus understood our Lord’ s saying or not, it is obvious that the mourners did not understand it. “ They laughed Him to scorn.” Their scepticism assures us of the reality of the miracle. If they knew the maiden to be dead, we know that Jesus must be able to quicken the dead to life. (S. Cox, D. D.) We are apt to look upon the healing of the woman with the issue of blood as an interruption of the history of the raising of the daughter of Jairus; as a separate and distinct incident altogether. But there is in reality the closest connection between the two events. They are brought together by all the evangelists, not only because they occurred at the same time and in the same association, but because they help to explain one another. The two miracles fit in a striking way into each other. 1. The beginning of the woman’ s plague was coeval with the maiden’ s birth. 2. Is not the character of Jairus brought out clearly into contrast with that of the woman? We see the stronger faith of the woman, content with the minimum of means, and the weaker and more irresolute faith of Jairus which needed personal recognition and the support of sympathizing words, which demanded that Jesus should visit his daughter, and could not compass the thought that He could heal at a distance, and restore when the vital spark had fled. 3. Jairus needed the discipline of the woman’ s cure. It prepared him for the miracle that was to be wrought for himself. (H. Macmillan, D. D.) Luke 8:43-48 Came behind Him, and touched the border of His garment Life behind and life before Christ We believe in the progressive character of the Christian life. It is like the increasing light, which comes to us first as the dim dawn, then as the grey morning, and afterwards as the noon-day brightness. This progress is connected with, indeed is essential to, our highest well-being. It is a progress from good to better, and from better to best. Let us devoutly think of our life in its relation to Christ. I. THE FIRST STAGE IS LIFE BEHIND CHRIST. And what a picture this woman presents, as she quietly presses her way through the thronging crowd, as if by stealth, to take away the needed boon. She had tried life away from Christ; and that had proved a failure. Now she tries life in contact with Christ; this proves an immediate success. When it is asked, What brought her to Christ at all? we can only answer, She was driven by her sense of need, and drawn by her faith in Christ. Driven and drawn. This, more or less, is the experience of all who come to Christ. A sense of their need drives them; a knowledge of His character draws them. II. THE SECOND STAGE IS LIFE BEFORE CHRIST. Had this woman gone away as stealthily as she came, she would have gone away but half-blessed; she would have touched His garment and been healed; she would not have tasted His love and been made happy. 1. Life before Christ is life revealing itself to Him. And what a wonderful saying that is: “ She told Him all the truth!” “ All the truth” about what she had suffered; and that was a mournful tale. And we have not risen to the glory of life before Christ if we are not accustomed to go and tell Him every phase of our experience, all the truth about our sins and our sorrows, our hopes and our fears. There may be phases of experience which we have never breathed into any human ear; but we can whisper all in His ear, confident that He will neither betray our trust nor withhold His sympathy. It takes a great many keys to unlock all the rooms of a great house; but the owner carries a master-key that unlocks them every one. There are rooms in the house of the heart into which few, if any, of our friends are admitted; but the master-key is in the hands of Christ, and He can come and bring all heaven in His train. 2. Life before Christ is life working beneath His eye. The saintly Payson speaks of three classes of Christian workers, and represents them as occupying three circles around Christ. In the outer circle there are those who take rare side-glances at Christ; in the inner circle there are those who occasionally look up to catch His smile; and in the innermost circle there are those who bring all their work and do it beneath His eye. These last, in the truest, fullest, gladdest sense, stand in the presence of Christ, and have life before Christ. 3. Life before Christ is life blessed with His friendship. He is my physician, and I am grateful to Him; but He is my friend, and I am happy in Him. Oh 1 what a glory comes into the experience of him whose life is blessed with the friendship of Christ! Others may doubt; he has the witness in himself. Tell him that Christ is only a mythical character. You might as well tell him that the flowers that are breathing their sweetness in his presence are only painted flowers, that the sun which is pouring brightness into his chamber is only an imaginary sun. He perceives the sweetness, he enjoys the brightness that come from Christ into his very soul; and with a confidence that no sophistry can shake, with a love that no power can quench, he tells every assailant, You may as soon reason me out of the consciousness that I am alive, as out of the better and more blessed consciousness that I have the very life of God in my soul. (R. P. Macmaster.) Christ’ s particular sympathy and friendship When a lone woman came up in a crowd to steal something, as it were, some healing power out of His person, or out of the hem of His garment, He would not let her off in that impersonal way. He compelled her to show herself, and to confess her name, and sent her away with His personal blessing. He pours out everywhere a particular sympathy on every particular child of sorrow. We have seen that He can love as a man loves another, and that such is the way of His love. He has tasted death, we say, not for all men only, but for every man. We even dare to say for me; who “ loved me, and gave Himself for me.” Nay, He goes even further than this Himself, calling us friends, and claiming that dear relationship with us. “ The servant knoweth not what his lord doeth; but I have called you friends.” He even goes beyond this, promising a friendship so particular and personal that it shall be a kind of secret or cipher of mutual understanding open to no other--a new white stone given by his King, “ and in the stone a new name written, which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it.” (H. Bushnell, D. D.) The earnest touch How many feel the reality of a personal relation to Jesus? How many consciously recognize that their lives are implicated with His life? 1. Of some, of many, it may be said that they touch Jesus with their respect. No doubt the religion of Christ is respected. Christianity is at least a respectable institution, Nevertheless, all this respect is not like that touch which was given in the earnest purpose of faith and need. II. There are those who touch Jesus with their opinions. But, held as mere opinions, their intellectual validity gives us no real contact with the Saviour. We may actually be what we claim to be, exclusive possessors and vigilant guardians of orthodoxy, and yet be far from Him. The essential thing is not what we think about Him, but what He Himself, in His personal relations, in His healing, life-giving power, is to us. III. Again, there are those who seek to touch Jesus through sacraments and ceremonies. The idea of the woman appears to have been of this kind. She thought, “ If I may but touch His garment, I shall be whole” ; whereas we know that the virtue went out of Him. IV. There are those who touch Jesus timidly and fitfully. Their communion with Him is felt only in impulses of intermittent enthusiasm or seasons of excitement, or it is held as a secret of which they are ashamed. We must, indeed, respect the modesty of sincere faith, the sacred reticence that guards the deepest and truest feelings of the heart. We know that religious emotion may evaporate in words, and that sterling principle may be less demonstrative than the noisy ring of cant. But, notwithstanding all imperfections, he who has really touched Jesus will in memo way make the secret manifest, not in the mere profession of the lips, but in the confession of the life. (E. H. Chapin, D. D.) Who touched Me? I. THERE IS GREAT BETWEEN AND CHRIST, AND HIM, WITH FAITH. II. SIMPLE FAITH IN CHRIST IS ALL WHICH IS TO . III. THERE ARE FOR FAITH. It may be said, “ If believing in Christ be such a simple and easy thing, why can I not believe at once, and be saved? I have tried to believe in Christ, but hitherto without success.” There are preparatives for faith. Yes, as there are preparatives for cure, and healing, and rescue, so there are preparatives for faith. Preparatives for cure and healing are being sick, or wounded, and feeling the need of remedies. So the woman in the text had preparatives for faith in Christ by twelve years’ experience of fruitless help from physicians, Hope deferred had made her heart sick; she saw her property melt away; one new physician had encouraged her to expect from Him a cure; and she was sinking into the grave. These were the preparatives with her for saving faith. So that we may say, in general, that the preparatives for faith are, a deep conviction that Christ alone can help us, and a persuasion that He must save us or we perish. IV. THIS WOMAN AFFORDS US A OF OUR DUTY TO COME TO CHRIST, WITHOUT WAITING FOR HIM TO COME TO US. V. FOLLOWS UPON IN CHRIST. VI. THERE IS NOTHING WHICH CHRIST SEEMS TO LOVE SO MUCH AS FAITH IN HIM. (N. Adams, D. D.) The throng and the touch The woman reached out her hand and touched the Saviour’ s garment. What was it that moved her hand? She believed. But in what did she believe? Not in herself, not in the motion of her arm, not that she was doing anything that was an equivalent for the cure, or would purchase it; nor yet did she believe that by standing aloof and waiting awhile till she was partly restored, made stronger or more presentable, by some skill of her own, she should be more likely to get the benefit desired; nor had she any theory whatever about the method in which the curative power was to take effect. You do not find in her clear and urgent sense of need that strange inverting of all reason that we so often see in men when they hesitate about coming to seek heavenly grace in Christ’ s Church, pleading that they are “ not good enough,” not strong enough, healthful enough, to be blessed by it. The soldier, after the battle, wounded and sick, bloodstained and feverish, creeps along the hot and dusty road, longing only to die under the old home-tree, and under the breath of a mother’ s lips. He comes to a hospital, and sees it written over the door, “ Whosoever will, let him come.” Does he creep back, pleading that he is not well enough to go in and be healed? What, then, did the woman believe? She believed that she was to receive something, a real blessing, from Christ. This was what distinguished her, in her humility and obscurity, from the sentimental crowd around her. This was that in her which was not in them. Most graphic history of how many hearts l She believed that she could have that new life by a touch. The reaching oat of her hand was an expression of that faith. Another signal might probably have done just as well. In other cases a prayer was as effectual. But there must have been two things: the faith that she should receive the benefit, and some act to embody that faith and bring the benefit home. With faith, action. (Bp. F. D. Huntington.) Various touches 1. There is the unbeliever s touch, like the impious touch of the unhallowed hands of the soldiers who nailed the Saviour to the cross of Calvary. How many there are that rudely and profanely handle the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ: they cannot leave Him alone: yet even while they “ touch” Him, they only so “ touch” Him as to bring judgment and condemnation upon their own souls, because the “ touch” is the sacrilegious touch of unbelief. The Philistines were bold enough to touch the ark, but they found there was death in the touch. 2. Then again, there is the cold “ touch” of the critic. He is not profane: he is not irreverent: he is simply critical. The character of Christ is the object in which they are performing their experiments. 3. Then again, there is the fashionable “ touch,” which is much more common. Those who give this “ touch” to our Lord are to be found in all our churches and places of worship, not unfrequently, probably once in a week; they have got their tribute to pay, and they pay it. Society expects it of them. 4. Then there is the formalists’ “ touch,” where the “ touch” is everything, but the Touched nothing! What is the most proper way of saluting Him whom you recognize as your Saviour? How are you best to arrest His attention? Form, form, form, from beginning to end. 5. There is one way in which s larger number of persons seem to “ touch” Him Without receiving any help than in any other. It is the “ touch” of indifference. There are many people who are no critics: they won’ t give themselves the trouble for that. They will not be unbelievers: they will not be at the pains to be infidels. These, then, my dear friends, are some of the different ways in which we may “ touch” Christ, and yet get no healing benefit. We should ask ourselves, How are we to “ touch” with good effect? Again, there may be difficulties in our way: but few of us have such difficulties as that poor woman. The very nature of her disease was one which made her shrink back from anything like publicity. She might have waited until He was not surrounded by a crowd--waited for a more favourable opportunity. She says to herself, “ I am going to be healed;” she does not say, “ I am going to try.” How often do we hear that word “ try.” There are two little words beginning with “ TR” the one is “ TRUST,” and the other is “ TRY.” I wish we were a little tender of the first, and less of the second. So, through the crowd she makes her way, draws near, stretches out her hand, and “ she touched Him.” And now we have a blessed opening up of the inner life of Christ, which seems to bring Him wondrously near to us. It is this: amidst all the subjects that occupied His mind, there cannot proceed from Him the very slenderest favour to any of the creatures whom He has made, but He is sensible of it. The reception of grace shall be a mutual thing--a thing involving reciprocal consciousness, consciousness on our part of our approach; consciousness on His part that we are approaching: consciousness on our part of our stretching out the hand of faith; consciousness on His part of the flowing of the current of His own Divine healing. There shall be no blessing stolen from an unconscious God. We shall not get it from Him when He is asleep. We will not get it from Him when His attention is fixed upon anything else. It is when His own blessed God-consciousness comes into contact with our human sense of need that she miracle of grace shall be performed. Is it not a wonderful thing He can think of us!--that, while He is giving us blessings every moment, He nevertheless gives every blessing consciously? How near this brings God to us! (W. H. Aitken, M. A.) The touch I. Look at THE PATIENT. 1. Her courage. She was a woman who had suffered from a very grievous malady, which had drained away her life. Her constitution had been sapped and undermined, and her very existence had become one of constant suffering and weakness; and yet what courage and spirit she displayed. She was ready to go through fire and through water to obtain health. 2. Note also her resolute determination. She would die hard, if die she must. She would not resign herself to the inevitable till she had used every effort to preserve life and to regain health. It is a hopeful sign, a gracious token, when there is a determination wrought in men that, if saved they can be, saved they will be. 3. I admire also this woman’ s marvellous hopefulness. She still believes that she can be cured. She ought to bare given up the idea long ago according to the ordinary processes of reasoning; for generally we put several instances together, and from these several instances we deduce a certain inference. Now, she might have put the many physicians together, and their many failures, and have rationally inferred that her case was past hope. II. THE OF THIS WOMAN’ S FAITH They must be weighed in order to show its strength. The difficulties of her faith must have been as follows: 1. She could hardly forget that the disease was in itself incurable, and that she had long suffered from it. 2. And then again she had endured frequent disappointments; and all these must have supplied her with terrible reasons for doubting. Yet she was not dismayed: her faith rose superior to her bitter experience, and she believed in the Lord. 3. There was also another difficulty in her way, and that was, her vivid sense of her own unworthiness. 4. I do not know whether the other difficulty did occur to her at all, but it would to me, namely, that She had now no money. 5. Perhaps the worst difficulty of all was her extreme sickness at that time. We read that she was nothing better, but rather grew the worse. III. THE POINT OF ALL HER . We read of her first that she had heard of Jesus. It is Mark who tells us that, “ When she had heard of Jesus.” “ Faith cometh by hearing.” The point to notice most distinctly is this. The poor woman believed that the faintest contact with Christ would heal her. Notice the words of my text: “ If I may touch but His clothes.” It is not, “ If I may but touch His clothes” --no, the point does not lie in the touch; it lies in what was touched. Splendid faith I It was not more than Christ deserved, but yet it was remarkable. It was a kind of faith which I desire to possess abundantly. The slenderest contact with Christ healed the body, and will heal the soul; ay, the faintest communication. Do but become united to Jesus, and the blessed work is done. IV. HER GRAND SUCCESS. Let me remind you again, however, of how she gained her end. She gave to the Lord Jesus an intentional and voluntary touch. Yet note that she was not healed by a contact with the Lord or with His garment against her will: she was not pushed against Him accidentally, but the touch was active and not merely passive. And now see her grand success; she no sooner touched than she was healed; in a moment, swift as electricity, the touch was given, the contact was made, the fountain of her blood was dried up, and health beamed in her face immediately. Immediate salvation! I heard a person say the other day that he had heard of immediate conversion, but he did not know what to make of it. Now, herein is a marvellous thing, for such cases are common enough among us. In every case spiritual quickening must be instantaneous. However long the preparatory process may be, there must be a time in which the dead soul begins to live. There may be cases in which a blessing comes to a man and he is scarcely aware of it, but this woman knew that she was saved; she felt in herself that she was whole of her plague. She had next the assurance from Christ Himself that it was so, but she did not obtain that assurance till she had made an open confession. (C. H. Spurgeon.) Faith rewarded I. WHAT THIS SAID WITHIN HERSELF (Matthew 9:21). 1. As displaying ignorance of the true nature of Christ. Impossible then to have the clear and distinct ideas that we may now. 2. As displaying not only ignorance, but error, along with truth. 3. Was her faith, then, a foolish credulity? Not at all. She knew the wonders He had wrought on others, and responded to the goodness and truth His language and demeanour expressed; and on this convincing evidence she trusted Jesus, and was healed. II. THIS FEELING TOWARDS CHRIST AS FINDING WIDER THAN THE CHURCH. The world finds healing in the slightest contact with Christ. How vast the number, outside avowed followers of Christ, who crowd Christian sanctuaries Sunday after Sunday, with a more or less explicit conviction that it is good to be there. III. THAT CHRIST CALLS US, BEYOND SLIGHT CONTACT, TO THE CLOSEST UNION WITH HIMSELF. This turning of humanity to Christ is like the turning of flowers towards the sun, their life-giver. It exhibits a true and healthy impulse; but how many forget that it is but the first step of what should be a close and continual approach to Him! There is healing in His slightest touch, but what in a living union with Him who died that we might live for ever! (T. M. Herbert, M. A.) The woman healed by a touch 1. A disorder which was endured. (1) The disorder was unavoidably marked by much and painful privation. (2) The disorder was long-continued and inveterate. (3) The disorder had been aggravated by bitter disappointment. 2. The remedy which was resorted to. (1) Observe the Being to whom the application was made. (2) The spirit by which the application was distinguished. (a) There was a display of confidence. (b) There was the spirit of humility. 3. The blessing which was obtained. (1) The communication of the blessing of healing was immediate. (2) The communication of the blessing was free. (3) The communication of the blessing was kind. (Preachers’ Treasury.) Cured at last I. Consider, therefore, concerning this woman, WHAT SHE HAD DONE. She had been literally dying for twelve years. 1. She had resolved not to die if a cure could be had. She was evidently a woman of great determination and hopefulness. Insensibility has seized upon many, and a proud conceit: they are full of sin, and yet they talk of self-righteousness. No doubt some are held back from such action by the freezing power of despair. They have reached the conclusion that there is no hope for them. Alas l many have never come to this gracious resolution, because they cherish a vain hope, and are misled by an idle dream. They fancy that salvation will come to them without their seeking it. 2. Let us next note, that this woman, having made her resolve, adopted the likeliest means she could think of. Physicians are men set apart on purpose to deal with human maladies; therefore she went to the physicians. No doubt she met with some who boasted that they could heal her complaint at once. They began by saying, “ You have tried So-and-so, but he is a mere quack; mine is a scientific remedy.” Many pretenders to new revelations are abroad, but they are physicians of no value. 3. This woman, in the next place, having resolved not to die if cure could be had, and having adopted the likeliest means, persevered in the use of those means. Have you been to Doctor Ceremony? He is, at this time, the fashionable doctor. 4. But this woman not only thus tried the most likely means, and persevered in the use of them, but she also spent all her substance over it. Thus do men waste their thought, their care, their prayer, their agony, over that which is as nothing: they spend their money for that which is not bread. The price of wisdom is above rubies. If we had mines of gold, we might profitably barter them for the salvation of our souls. II. We have seen what the woman had done; now let us think of WHAT HAD COME OF IT. We are told that she had suffered many things of many physicians. 1. That was her sole reward for trusting and spending: she had not been relieved, much less healed; but she had suffered. She had endured much additional suffering through seeking a cure. Efforts after salvation made in your own strength act like the struggles of a drowning man, which sink the more surely. 2. There has been this peculiarly poignant pang about it all, that you are nothing bettered. 3. We read of this woman, that though she suffered much, she was nothing better, but rather grew worse. You are becoming more careless, more dubious than you once were. You have lost much of your former sensitiveness. You are doing certain things now that would have startled you years ago, and you are leaving certain matters undone which once you would have thought essential. 4. This is a sad, sad case l As a climax of it all, the heroine of our story had now spent all that she had. Welcome, brother! Now you are ready for Jesus. When all your own virtue has gone out of you, then shall you seek and find that virtue which goeth out of Him. III. This brings to our notice, in the third place, WHAT THIS WOMAN DID AT LAST. 1. Note well she resolved to trust in Jesus in sheer despair of doing anything else. 2. After all, this was the simplest and easiest thing that she could do. Touch Jesus. 3. Not only was this the simplest and easiest thing for the poor afflicted one, but certainly it was the freest and most gracious. There was not a penny to pay. 4. This was the quietest thing for her to do. She said nothing. She did not cry aloud like the blind men. 5. This is the only effectual thing. Touch Jesus, and salvation is yours at once. Simple as faith is, it is never-failing. IV. And now, poor convicted sinner I here comes the driving home of the nail. DO THOU AS THIS WOMAN DID. (C. H. Spurgeon.) The woman who touched I. MEN’ S . Human physicians could not heal. Sin incurable by self. II. A FAITH. Faith may grow in strange places. III. AN ACTUAL TOUCH. We want the same living connection with Christ, and it is possible still. IV. HELP. No need to wait long; prayer answered often sooner than we expect. V. A IN HIDING. Glad to have blessing from Christ, but fearing to reveal how obtained. VI. PUBLIC . Christ requires this. We must bear witness, &c. Free men. VII. . Christ will not pass us in a crowd. VIII. . He might have called her “ rude” or “ foolish.” Not so. He calls her “ daughter.” IX. . It was not any power lying in the touching of My garment; it was thy faith that saved thee. Conclusion: The only one in the crowd blessed. Why? Lack of faith, not lack of need. How near we may be to Christ, and yet not find true spiritual healing or renewal. (T. Sherlock, B. A.) The healing of Veronica Who is this wan, feeble woman that struggles through the swaying crowd, and watches her opportunity to stoop and lay her hand on the Healer’ s garment? This, say the Evangelists, is a poor woman afflicted for twelve years with a disorder, a haemorrhage, which was then held to warrant divorce--a disorder which rendered her” unclean “ in the eyes of the law, so that she could neither enter temple nor synagogue. This, says Eusebius, was Veronica, a woman of wealth and repute, who dwelt in Casarea Philippi, at the northernmost extremity of the Holy Land, hard by the main source of the river Jordan, in a lonely valley at the foot of Hermon. “ I, Eusebius, have seen her house in that city. And to this day [some three centuries after the miracle], before the gate of her house, on a lofty block of stone, there stands a brazen sculpture; on the one side, a woman drops on her bended knees, with hands outstretched as in supplication; and, opposite to her, stands a man, erect and tall, becomingly clad in a mantle, who extends His hand to the suppliant. At her feet there springs a certain strange plant, which rises as high as the hem of her garment; it is held to be an antidote to all forms of disease. This they say, is a statue of Jesus Christ.” Eusebius goes on to argue the probability that Veronica caused it to be erected, since it was a custom of the Gentiles to erect statues to those who had healed them; and Caesarea Philippi being, not a Jewish, but a Phoenician city, mainly inhabited by Greeks, we have every reason to believe that Veronica herself was a Gentile. But whoever she was, and whencesoever she came, she had heard of Jesus, and conceived a hope that He would heal her. A woman who had spent all that she had, only to suffer more from her doctors than from her disease, in her despair would be very apt to betake herself to One who at least demanded no fee, and who was reported to have wrought many marvellous cures … But why does she select the hem, or border, of His garment? Perhaps because in her diffidence she thought herself unworthy to do more. Perhaps because in her faith she thought even this would be enough. Perhaps simply because she thought the border of His garment might be most easily touched without attracting attention Beyond a doubt, her faith, though genuine, was darkened by superstition. In His grace the Lord Jesus corrects and enlarges her conception; He disentangles the truth in it from the error. But mark how He does it, how patiently, how gradually. At first it is her superstition, rather than her faith, which is confirmed But why did He not let the poor woman creep quietly away with her boon? Why compel her to tell her sad story of womanly pain and suffering in so many ears? Simply because He loves her too well to let her go away with half a blessing. Simply that He may teach her that it is her faith, and not, as she thought, her mere touch, which has saved her. It is a pathetic story, a story-- 1. Full of hope and gracious incentive for all who believe, however weak their faith may be. 2. Conveying also a lesson of warning. Many thronged and pressed upon Christ; many touched His clothes; yet only one touched Him. 3. Teaching also a lesson of invitation. According to the Hebrew law she was impure, and made all she touched impure; but she ventured to touch Jesus, and, instead of making Him unclean, He makes her clean and whole. Now, whatever our sins may have been, we can hardly be farther from hope than she. And however faintly we may turn to Christ, however ignorantly, we can hardly do less than she who hid herself in the darkness and the crowd, and laid trembling fingers on the edge of His garment, to see what would come of that. Jesus did not know her or her story--did not know even that it was she who had touched Him. Yet she was healed. Why? Because His will is always for the health and salvation of men. Virtue is stored up in Him, and flows forth from Him at every touch of faith. (S. Cox, D. D.) THE WOMAN WHO CAME BEHIND HIM IN THE CROWD. Near Him she stole, rank after rank; She feared approach too loud; She touched His garments’ hem, and shrank Back in the sheltering crowd. A shame-faced gladness thrills her frame: Her twelve years’ fainting prayer Is heard at last; she is the same As other women there. She hears His voice; He looks about; Ah! is it kind or good To drag her secret sorrow out Before that multitude? The eyes of men she dares not meet-- On her they straight must fall: Forward she sped, and at His feet Fell down, and told Him all. His presence makes a holy place; No alien eyes are there; Her shrinking shame finds god-like grace, The covert of its care. “ Daughter,” He said, “ be of good cheer; Thy faith hath made thee whole” ; With plenteous love, not healing mere, He would content her soul. (G. MacDonald.) Glimpses of Jesus I. THE OF CHRIST. “ Who touched Me?” Ruskin has said truly, “ We are only human in so far as we are sensitive.” II. THE OF CHRIST FOR NEARER WITH MEN. The question must be interpreted by the result. Evidently what He desired was to bring the woman nearer, and to establish more direct and abiding relationship between her and Himself. III. THE JOY OF CHRIST IN UPON HUMAN SOULS. Mark-- 1. The loving address--“ daughter.” 2. The comfortable words--“ Thy faith hath made thee whole.” 3. The gracious dismissal--“ Go in peace.” Learn-- 1. That we should come to Christ in our need. 2. That we should commune with Him with the greatest freedom and openness. 3. That we should confess gladly and gratefully before men all the good we have received at His hands. 4. That we should comply with all His solicitings, and ever seek nearer and dearer fellowship with Him as our Saviour and our God. (W. Forsyth, M. A.) The Healer We have to trace the history of a touch. Let us inquire-- I. WHY THIS TOUCH THE OF THE SAVIOUR? 1. It was the touch of a sufferer whose case before that touch had been desperate. 2. It was the touch of faith. 3. It was a touch that wrought an instant and perfect cure. II. WHY DID THE SAVIOUR ASK THE , “ Who touched Me?” This excited the wonder of the disciples. 1. Not from ignorance. 2. Not from exhaustion. 3. Not from displeasure. But (1) To show that He marks the difference between thronging and touching Him. (“ Many,” says Ambrose, “ press upon Christ, in outward ordinances, but believers touch Him; it is by faith that He is touched, so as to have virtue from Him.”) (2) To enlighten and invigorate the faith of her who touched Him. (3) To assert His right to be glorified for what He has done. 4. That the interview might issue in the bestowment of His benediction. (C. Stanford, D. D.) Oh, dost Thou ask who touched Thy garment? Oh, Sweet Master, hast Thou not turned back and viewed How round Thee throng and press the multitude? “ Not all who throng and press for Mine I know; But trembling, falling, one now Mine draws near,? To tell of garment touched and ended woe, The things she sought not, nor has heard, to hear; Things present, things to come, her deeds revealing, The fount of sin whose flowing none may stay, Till breaks on Calvary the Fount of Healing, All wounds to staunch, all tears to wipe away. This Flesh, My garment, feels but faith’ s right hand; All: many near Its hem, unhealed will stand!” (A. M. Morgan.) Virtue is gone out of Me Virtue at one time meant strength, Now it is used to denote purity. Jesus meant that power had gone out from Him. It is worth while to note that virtue cannot leave one and pass to another without a loss to the giver. There can be little doubt that the sacred body of Jesus had to suffer for being the medium of healing, and that very costly was the honour of being the shrine of Divinity. I. Virtue is gone out of Me to ONE WHO FAILED TO GET HELP . As a last resource, she came and tried Jesus. Is she not a picture of many among us, who try everything but the right thing, and also go anywhere rather than to the Saviour? There is Dr. Merryman. He has a very large practice. He is the most popular of all the soul doctors, and has an amazingly large connection among young people. If some one goes to him complaining of a sad heart, he will prescribe a change, lively society, the theatre, dancing, &c. There is another of these impudent quacks. I mean Dr. Devotee, who, like the famous Dr. Merryman, has a large number of patients, but they are generally rather older; indeed, many of them have been under Merryman till they were tired out; then they have gone over to the other side of the way to try if Devotee could help them. If you go into his waiting room, you will see some who have had disappointments, blighted affections, &c. When you are shown into his room, you notice how very grave he is--none of the flippancy of the other. He does not approve of Merryman’ s prescriptions. Fasting and prayer and seclusion are his remedies. There is yet another of these medical gentlemen you must look in upon. This is where Dr. Apathy lives. He is the favourite doctor among men of business and commerce. They will tell you, “ Merry-man is all very well for the youngsters, and Devotee suits the women, but for a sensible practical man, commend me to Apathy. Bless you, what I suffered before I went to him! I could not sleep at nights for thinking I might lose my soul. Really business began to suffer; so I went to him, and he seen put me to rights. When I told him my symptoms, he said, ‘ I understand you, my dear fellow, you need a sedative. Stick to your newspaper, and give up all that nonsense about family prayer.’” II. Virtue has gone out of Me to ONE WHO HAS GREAT . This poor woman must have found it very difficult to come to Christ, for at least two reasons. 1. She was ceremoniously unclean. And so are we. Yet we should not let this deter us. 2. There was the difficulty of the crowd. The people thronged Him; and no wonder, for He was on His way to heal the ruler’ s daughter. The crowd was between her and the Lord. III. Virtue has gone out of Me to ONE WHO HAS FAITH. DO not wait till you have altered this, or improved that; all that can be done afterwards. IV. Virtue is gone out of Me to one WHO MUST CONFESS THE TRUTH. (J. Champness.) The cost of service I. IN NATURE, WE HAVE WHAT HAS LATELY BEEN TERMED THE , OR OF FORCE. II. THIS LAW OF COST IS ALSO LAW. In agriculture, what we call the bounty of nature, the gift outright, comes a long way short of what is needed even for merest comfort. The spontaneous products of nature are scanty. So of all industry and useful art. To begin with, there is the cost of raw material, come whence it may, from earth, or sea, or air. Houses, and their furnishing, tax the quarries, the clay-yards and the forests. Our wardrobes suggest cotton-fields, flax-fields, silkworms, flocks of sheep, herds of cattle, birds of the air, wild animals of sea and land, from pole to pole. Even wigwams and bearskins are no gratuities. Every coarsest want supplied, every adornment, every luxury, means work. Good things, fine things, cost. III. THIS LAW OF COST IS ALSO MENTAL LAW. Mind is very much more than mere passive capacity; it is vital, organizing force. Learning, rightly apprehended, is not mere passive reception, as of water into a cistern, bringing with it all the accidents and impurities of roof or aqueduct. It is water in oak, or elm, making its way up through living tissue, filtered as it ascends, shaking out its leafy banner, hardening into toughest fibre. IV. BUT THIS LAW OF COST IS PRE- LAW. The so-called passive virtues either are not virtues, or are not passive. Humility, patience, self-denial, and the forgiveness of injuries, are battles and victories. So it has been, and so it shall be, in essence, to the end. Redemption cost infinitely in eternity, and must cost in time. Human history almost began with martyrdom. The blood of righteous Abel inaugurated the stern economy. Scarcely a people have ever been evangelized without the baptism of blood. Scarcely a man has ever been signally useful without the baptism of some great sorrow. We learn in suffering what we teach in song. (R. D. Hitchcock, D. D.) Real contact with Jesus: a sacramental meditation I. First, then, IN THE USE OF ALL MEANS AND LET IT BE OUR CHIEF AIM AND OBJECT TO COME INTO CONTACT WITH THE LORD JESUS CHRIST. 1. Note, first, she felt that it was of no use being in the crowd, of no use to be in the same street with Christ, or near to the place where Christ was, but she must get at Him; she must touch Him. She touched Him, you will notice, under many difficulties. There was a great crowd. It is very easy to kneel down to pray, but not so easy to reach Christ in prayer. 2. Observe, again, that this woman touched Jesus very secretly. Beloved, that is not always the nearest fellowship with Christ of which we talk the most. Deep waters are still. Nathaniel retired to the shade that no one might see him, but Jesus saw him and marked his prayer, and He will see thee in the crowd and in the dark, and not withhold His blessing. 3. This woman also came into contact with Christ under a very deep sense of unworthiness. 4. Notice, once again, that this woman touched the Master very tremblingly, and it was only a hurried touch, but still it was the touch of faith. II. THE WOMAN IN THE CROWD DID TOUCH JESUS, AND, HAVING DONE SO, SHE VIRTUE FROM HIM. In Christ there is healing for all spiritual diseases. There is a speedy healing. There is in Christ a sufficient healing, though your diseases should be multiplied beyond all bounds. III. And now the last point is--and I will not detain you longer upon it--IF SHALL TOUCH JESUS, THE LORD WILL KNOW IT. NOW, as Jesus knows of your salvation, He wishes other people to know it. (C. H.Spurgeon.) She was not hid I. First, then, we say concerning this woman, that HER HIDING SEEMED VERY . I have already said that if, in any instance, a cure might have been concealed, this was one; and it was so for many reasons. 1. Because of this woman’ s natural timidity, and because of the nature of her malady. 2. In addition to this, remember that the Saviour did not court publicity. He laid no injunction upon those whom He healed that they should tell every one of the marvel. 3. There was another reason why she might have thought she need not make a public confession, and that was, that the Saviour was at that time exceedingly occupied. 4. Excuse might also have been found for the healed woman in the fact, that her cure would make itself known by its results. When she reached home everybody would see that she was quite another person; and when they asked how it came to pass, she could tell them all about 2:5. Another pretext might have served this woman, if she desired an excuse. She might truthfully have said, “ It is evident that an open confession is not essential to my cure, for I am cured.” II. Secondly, HER HIDING WAS NOT BY THE SAVIOUR. Her being brought out had the best of consequences. 1. For, first, an open confession on her part was needful in reference to the Lord’ s glory. Beloved, the miracles of Christ were the seals which God gave to His mission. If the wonders which He wrought were not made known, the seals of His mission would have been concealed, and so would have lost much of their effect. If this woman concealed her cure others might do the same; and if they all did it, then Christ’ s commission would have no visible endorsement from the Lord God. 2. Further, remember that our Lord’ s miracles were illustrative of His teaching. 3. But the confession had to be made for the sake of others. Do any of you wish to live unto yourselves? If you do, you need saving from selfishness. 4. Do you not think that her public declaration was required for the good of our Lord’ s disciples? When they heard her story, did they not treasure it up, and speak of it to one another in after days, and thereby strengthen each other’ s faith? 5. But especially she had to do this for her own good. The Saviour had designs of love in bringing this poor trembler forward before all the people. By this He saved her from a host of fears which would have haunted her. She had been a very timid and trembling woman, but now she would shake off all improper timidity. I have known many persons cured of timidity by coming forward to confess Christ. Our Lord also gave her an increased blessing after her confession. He gave her clearly to know her relationship to Him. He said, “ Daughter!” Next notice that He gave a commendation to her faith--“ Thy faith hath made thee whole.” Then the Lord gave her a word of precious quieting. He said, “ Go in peace.” As much as to say: Do not stop in this crowd, to be pushed about or stared at, but go home in quiet. III. Thus I have already reached my last point: YOUR HIDING OUGHT TO BE ENDED. 1. Do you not think you owe something to the Church of God, which kept the gospel alive in the world for you to hear? 2. May I be permitted also to say, I think you owe something to the minister who led you to Jesus? 3. Besides, you owe it to yourselves. Are you going to be mere pats, fluttering out when none will observe you, and hiding from the light? Are you going to be like mice, which only come out at night to nibble in the pantry? Quit yourselves like men! 4. You owe it to your family. You should tell your household what grace has done for you. 5. Do you not think you owe it to your neighbours to show your colours? 6. Now let me hear some of your objections, and answer them. I hope I have been answering them all through my sermon. Here is one. “ Well, you know, I am such an insignificant person. It cannot make any difference what I do.” Yes, and this woman was a very insignificant person--only a woman! God thinks much of the lowly: you must not talk so. Do not excuse yourselves through pretended humility. “ But coming out and joining a Church, and all that, is such an ordeal.” So it may be. In this woman’ s case, it was a far greater ordeal than it can be to you. Jesus does not excuse one of his healed ones from owning the work of His grace. A dear lady, who has long since gone to glory, was once an honoured member of this Church: it was Lady Burgoyne, and when she wished to unite with us she said to me, “ Dear sir, I cannot go before the Church. It is more than I can manage to make a confession of Christ before the members.” I told her that we could make no exception for anybody, and especially not for her, who was so well established in the faith that she could surely answer a few questions before those who were brethren and sisters in the Lord. She came bravely, and spoke most sweetly for her Lord. Some of you may remember her, with her sweet countenance, and venerable bearing. When she had owned her Lord, she put both her hands on mine, and said emphatically, “ With all my heart I thank you for this; I shall never be ashamed of Christ now. When aristocratic friends call upon me I will speak to them of my Lord.” She did so constantly. You never found her slow to introduce the gospel, whoever might be with her. She frequently said to me, “ Oh, what a training that was for me! I might have been a timid one all my days if I had not made that confession before the Church.” Now I say to you, if it be an ordeal, undergo it for Christ’ s sake. “ Alas!” says one, “ I could not tell of what the Lord has done for me, because mine is such a sorrowful story.” Was it not so with this woman? “ I have so little to tell,” says one. That is a good reason why you should tell it, for it will be all the easier for you to do so. He that has little to tell should tell it straight away. “ But perhaps people may not believe me.” Did I tell you that you were to make them believe you? Is that your business? “ Ah!” says one, “ but suppose after I had confessed Christ I should become as bad as ever.” Suppose that this woman had supposed such a sad thing, and had said, “ O Lord, I cannot confess that Thou hast healed me, for I do not know how I may be in six months’ time.” She was not so mistrustful. (C. H.Spurgeon.) Grasping the “ hem” Dr. Simpson on his death-bed told a friend that he awaited his great change with the contented confidence of a little child. As another friend said to him that he might as John at the last supper, lean his head on the breast of Christ, the doctor made answer, “ I fear I cannot do that, but I think I have grasped hold of the hem of His garment.” (Dr. Koenig’ s Life of Dr. Simpson.) The touch of faith A lady was being shown through a corn mill, worked by a river which ran close by the walls. But all the wheels were in silent inaction. “ Where is the power?” she asked. She was shown a handle, and told to press upon it. She did, and the mighty force was instantly turned on, the wheels moved, and the place was alive with activity. The power of God moves in upon us at the touch of faith. (Methodist Times.) Luke 8:49-56 Thy daughter is dead--Christian consolation under bereavement by death Now the great grounds of Christian comfort in times of bereavement are two. One relates to those you have lost; the other relates to yourselves. The first is, that those who have died in Christ have made a blessed and happy change in leaving this world for that where they are now. And the second is, that if you and they be both united to Christ, you have the confident assurance that you shall meet again. And, indeed, brethren, when we think of the first of these, we are constrained to feel and lament our want of faith. No truth can be plainer than that heaven is better than earth--a hundred things go to prove that; but it is only now and then that we are lifted up to a height of spiritual insight and fervour in which we truly feel that it is so. Strong convictions, large but vague, are often indicated by little things; just as floating straws show the direction of a great wind. And there is one little peculiarity in our common way of speaking which shows our natural unbelief in the grand Christian doctrine, that to the believer “ to die is gain.” Speaking even of friends who, we most firmly believe, have fallen asleep in Jesus, you know we habitually speak of them as though they were objects of pity; we speak of our poor friend, our poor sister, our poor little child, that died. This is, doubtless, a manifestation of that curious in consistency with which, I have already said, we think of the departed. Surely we should rather say “ blessed” , “ happy” ; for have they not gone from this world of sin and sorrow and anxiety into the land of holiness, peace, and rest? But there is another reason why we should not mourn unduly for the dead who die in the Lord, one that touches us who remain more nearly. It is this, that we hope to meet them again; we know that if our own death be that of the righteous, we shall certainly meet them again: They have left you in this world, and you will miss their kind advice, and their warm affection, and their earnest prayers; but death can neither drown remembrance nor quench love; and they are remembering you and waiting for you, and theirs will be the first voices to welcome you entering the golden city. Now, let me remind you, in concluding, that all this strong consolation belongs only to such as have believed in Christ, and as mourn the loss of Christian friends. And the two practical lessons from this thought are, that if we would not have death part us eternally from those dear to us, we ought first to make our own calling sure by God’ s grace, that we may not on the judgment day see them on the right hand of the throne, and ourselves cast out to perdition; and next, that we should care for the souls of those dear to us as well as for our own, lest upon that great day any such should accuse us of that neglect which ended in everlasting separation, saying that if we had warned them as we ought, they had not come to this end of woe! Do you sometimes think, as you sit by the warm winter-evening fireside, and hear the keen blast shake the windows, and howl mournfully through the leafless boughs, and as you look round on the cheerful scene within, with its warm light and its blazing fire, do you some times think then how, out in the dark of the winter night, the snow lies white or the rain plashes heavy above some dear one’ s grave; how the sharp blasts roar round the headstone that marks where such a one sleeps--sleeps cold, and motionless, and alone; and does it seem to you a hardthing and a sad thing that in that dreary melancholy of the grave the departed one of the family must lie and slumber, while the fire is blazing bright on the hearth of the old home, till it seems to you a natural thing to weep for the dead, condemned to that cold negation of all that is bright and cheering? And do you sometimes think, in the long beautiful twilights of summer--summer, with its green grass and its bright flowers--that surely it is a loss to those that are gone that they cannot see the softened evening light, nor breath the gentle air? but that in their cold and narrow bed they still must rest and moulder, knowing nothing of the sweet scenes that surround them; not seeing the daisies in the sunshine over them, nor feeling the soft breeze sighing through the grass that lies upon their breast? If you do these things, then remember that it is not the dead you loved that moulder in that grave; it is but the cast-off robe, the shattered cottage of clay, that is turning there to the dust; it is the weak fancy of erring humanity to dream that what in our friends we loved has part or portion there. Remember that dwelling above, in light and glory, they never miss the warmth of the winter evening fireside, or the calm of the evening in June. (A. H. K. Boyd) Death and life I. DEATH AND LIFE ARE TERMS WHICH HAVE A AS WELL AS A MEANING. A dead man physically is not always truly dead, and a live man physically is not always truly alive. The first occasion on which the ominous words--life and death--were used ought to teach us the mystery hidden in these terms. In the Garden of Eden there was the tree of life, which could not be merely physical life, since Adam was alive before and after he had access to that tree. And there again was another tree, with which the sentence was coupled, “ The day thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die.” Of that tree Adam ate, and so died--although physically he continued to live for nine hundred and thirty years. No one can have failed to notice how decidedly our Lord corrects the earthly, carnal, and limited ideas of the Jews in reference to the great mysteries of life and death. How often He used words which were beyond, aside from, and even against the common mode of speaking; not, surely, for the sake of singularity, but in order that he might recall and affirm the whole truth. When, e.g., people were indulging in loud and formal lamentation over the death of the ruler’ s daughter--as if she were literally lost for ever--as if her death were death in the fullest sense--as if the separation of her soul and body were the saddest event which could befall her or her family; when our Master saw through, not only the obtrusive formality of this loud grief, but penetrated the false notions on which rested the deep grief of her parents and those who sincerely lamented with them, He bade them know that their lamentations were out of place, for that she was not dead, but asleep. And when they who were wailing for her laughed Him to scorn; and when they, too, who wept for real sorrow, were incredulous--He demonstrated the truth of His assertion, for “ He took her by the hand, and the maid arose.” II. DEATH, IN ITS POPULAR MEANING, IS BEST BY THE TERM SLEEP. in giving to the separation of soul and body the title “ sleep,” Christ has disclosed to us the true doctrine of the resurrection of the body, together with a warning, and comfort, which must not pass without distinct notice. 1. The doctrine. The exact phraseology of the Creed teaches us with authority the evangelical truth that we shall rise again; but the lesson can be also learned in the fact that the body of the Jewish maiden--when deprived of the soul--slept. They who sleep, awake again; if the dead body be not dead, but asleep, that is to say, if the term “ sleep” be the most accurate one which He who gave us speech could single out, to describe the fact of physical death, then no dogmatic statement, no decree of council, could more clearly affirm the fact of the resurrection of the body. 2. The warning. There is no power in sleep to change one’ s moral character; as we lie down, we rise up again when awake. Again, in sleep, though the body be motionless, the spirit is active. There are dreams that trouble, as well as those that please. 3. The comfort. Is it no comfort to be told that the friend you thought to be dead only sleeps? Is it not a perfect protection against over-much sorrow to receive the great mystery set forth here? There was a time when Christians took great consolation from this very truth, when it made them ready to die, and resigned to see those near them die at the call of God. Go look at the catacombs of Rome, and see in the records which those faithful caverns have preserved of the creed and life of our Christian fore-fathers--how the early Christians thought of death. The inscriptions are full offaith. Hero a mother “ sleeps in Jesus” --there a child “ sleeps in Jesus” husband, wife, and friend--they all “ sleep” --there is no sign of death in the catacombs. Our martyred forefathers of the early Church may teach us how to live, to die, to bury, and to mourn for our dead. Our Master teaches us in the text that we are not to sorrow for the sainted dead as those who have no hope. They “ sleep.” They shall rise. (Bishop W. H. Odenheimer.) The ruler’ s daughter raised to life I. That sometimes while dealing with the Saviour the storm becomes darker than before. We cry for pardon, and feel a growing sense of guilt. We pray for sanctification, and the power of corruption seems to revive. We hope for deliverance, and our difficulties multiply. II. Let us never deem importunity in prayer troublesome. III. It is never too late to apply to the Lord. IV. The way to obtain present ease, and certain relief, is to exercise faith under every discouragement. How well are “ Fear not” and “ Believe only” coupled together! Our Saviour could have healed the child at a distance, and with a word; but He chooses to go “ to the house of mourning” --to teach us to go there. A family in such a condition is a very affecting and improving object. We melt into pity as we see the emblems of death. The world loses its hold of our minds. “ Weep not: she is not dead, but sleepeth.” 1. He spake modestly. Another would have said, “ Come; examine this patient; see, there are no remains of life in her--you will witness, before I begin, that there is nothing to aid my operations.” But He would not magnify the action He was going to perform. He sought not His own glory. 2. He spake figuratively. Sleep is the term commonly, in the Scripture, applied to the death of all believers; and it is peculiarly just. Sleep is the pause of care--the parenthesis of human woe. 3. He spake in reference to His present intention. Instead of a burial she was going to be raised to life. 4. He said this also to try His hearers. Accordingly, it showed their disposition. Here we are led to note two things. First: How much more are men governed by their natural views and feelings than by the word of truth; and how easily are they befooled in Divine things by their sense and reason! Secondly: We observe that a serious state of mind is the best preparation for Divine truth. “ A scorner,” says Solomon, “ seeketh knowledge, and findeth it not.” After they had made a declaration, which they could not retract, concerning the certainty of her death, “ He put them all out” ; and, as the Resurrection and the Life, lie “ took her by the hand, and called, saying, Maid, arise,” when, lo! the fountain of life is warmed, the blood begins to liquefy and flow, the pulse beats again; she breathes; she looks--“ her spirit came again, and she arose straightway: and He commanded to give her meat.” This order was to show-- 1. The reality of the miracle, by the use of her faculties. 2. It evinced the perfection of the miracle: she was not restored to the state in which she died--that was a state of sickness, in which food was rejected; but to the state she was in before her disease--a state of health and appetite. 3. It was also to mark the limitation of the miracle: nothing further was to be done preternaturally; but her life, which had been restored by extraordinary agency, was to be preserved, as before, by ordinary means. It also distinguished this miracle from that of the final resurrection. The resurrection will produce a spiritual body, requiring neither sleep nor food; but this damsel was raised only to a natural life, subject to the same infirmities as that of other people, and liable to die again. Let us conclude. 1. If our Saviour so amazed the spectators, and honoured Himself, by the revival of one body newly dead, what will it be when He shall come to be glorified in His saints, and to be admired in all them that believe; when He shall speak, and “ all that are in the graves shall hear His voice, and shall come forth--they that have done good unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil unto the resurrection of damnation” ! Again: It is worthy of remark that of the three persons whom our Lord raised from the dead, Lazarus was the loved and only brother of Martha and Mary; the young man was the only son of his mother; and the damsel the only daughter of Jairus: so touched is He with the feeling of our infirmities; so much regard does He show to relative affection. (W. Jay.) Consolation for mourners I. In the text we perceive A DEEP SORROW “ They all wept and bewailed her.” But, as we have said, where a bereaving providence is felt, the genuine expressions of sorrow will not be wanting, nor are they out of place. 1. This is natural. 2. To weep and bewail the loss of beloved relatives and friends is also consistent and affectionate. II. To THE IDEA OUR TEXT --“ Weep not; she is not dead, but sleepeth.” Many believers, through fear of death, are all their lives subject to bondage; but the consoling representation of our text strips it of all its terrors, for, surely, if we sleep, we do well. 1. Now the spirit is unconfined. 2. This is a consoling idea, because in sleep bodily labour is suspended. 3. The idea in the text is consoling, because our sleeping friends will awake again. III. We now consider, thirdly, THE WHICH THIS SUBJECT . 1. We may learn the necessity of faith in the Redeemer. Every spiritual blessing is promised alone to those who believe in the Saviour. 2. Our subject to-day teaches us the folly of an inordinate fear of death. 3. Once more, our subject reminds us of the duty of daily preparation for our approaching change. (T. Gibson, M. A.) The Christian’ s death a sleep First, character; secondly, comparison; and, thirdly, conclusion. I. We shall speak upon . It is entirely through the death and the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ that the death of the believer receives and presents so mild, so peaceful, so softened a character as sleep. II. We shall now consider the comparison in the text, or the several striking resemblances between death and sleep, and how they beautifully describe the condition of departed saints; and-- 1. Sleep is exclusively applicable to the body, it does not appertain to the spirit; often while the body sleeps, the soul is conscious, and busily active in dreams of the most astonishing character. 2. Death and sleep have a marked resemblance. Sleep is certainly a type of death. Ovid, the Roman poet, said, “ O fool, what is sleep but the image of cold death?” 3. Death, under the figure of sleep, represents a state of rest, a state of sweet repose. 4. Sleep is useful, is most profitable to the body. By sleep the powers of the body are strengthened, and refreshed, and fitted for the labours of the future day. 5. Sleep is absolutely essential. Who could live for any protracted period without sleep? 6. Sleep delightfully illustrates the prospect of restoration. We expect at lying down to rest to-night, to awake and to arise to-morrow morning. III. We proceed to the , or the inferences which the living should draw from the state of the dead, and especially the happy dead. 1. Are you yet unrenewed, unchanged by the Spirit of God? 2. Are you the children of a spiritual resurrection, passed from death to life, translated out of darkness into amazing light?--while we live here, let us live. 3. Let us act as believers in parting with believing friends. (T. Sharp, M. A.) The daughter of Jairus Subject: the delay of Christ in going to the house of Jairus, and allowing the child to die before He reached there. I. CHRIST’ S . II. HOW IT CAME TO PASS. III. WHAT GOOD IT DID. IV. . 1. If we really feel our need of Christ we shall not mind how, when, or where, we seek Him. 2. Christ could not take a walk without doing good and being sympathetically ready to do it. 3. Christ never felt any call amiss to Him. 4. This miracle teaches that Christ can love the youngest. 5. We cannot do better than closely imitate the manner, spirit, and method of Christ’ s working. (R. H. Lovell.) The Master of Life When the title which is here translated “ Master” was in common use, it meant the master of a school. Using the word in its English sense, every man is more or less, in relation to one thing or another, a master; but in Christ alone does the term find its full and perfect realization. I. VIEW THESE WORDS AS BY THE TO WHICH THEY BELONG. Was it of no use to trouble the Master? II. VIEW THESE WORDS AS IN THE HISTORY OF OUR OWN . “ Trouble not the Master,” cries the specious philosopher, the mocking secularist, the trivial worldling. Unbelief, Pride, Despondency, Indolence, all say, “ Trouble not the Master.” Test some of these objections. 1. “ Trouble not the Master,” for there is no real power in prayer. 2. For the help you ask is too great for Him to render. 3. For the help you ask for relates to matters too insignificant for His dignity to notice. 4. For you have no assurance of His love. 5. For this is not the right time for your supplication. Be deaf to every voice that bids you “ trouble not the Master,” and listen to the voice from heaven that is for ever saying, “ Ye that make mention of the Lord, keep not silence, give Him no rest, till He establish, and till He make Jerusalem a praise in all the earth.” (C. Stanford, D. D.) Fear not, only believe Manly faith This encouraging direction was spoken by Christ to a man in the very crisis of his acutest agony, and was so efficacious in its influence that it lifted its recipient at once to the highest rank among the heroes of a victorious and manly faith, the faith that (1) is persistent and triumphant in its contest with difficulties in the gravest perils of human experience; (2) Opens, and keeps open, the nature for evermore to the highest, holiest, and helpfullest; and (3) Eagerly avails itself of all contemporary life-interpreting facts. I. “ Only believe.” Yes, “ only,” but what an only! Put yourself in this man’ s position. “ Only believe,” meant for Jairus attempting the hardest task mortal man ever engaged in. II. Short as this sentence is, it is an ellipsis, and on the way in which it is completed depend the chances of our gaining a true conception of what a manly faith is, not less than a clear notion of this ruler’ s act. Only believe--what? whom? Oh! if “ only” some of our teachers would take thetrouble to think this clause out to its fullest significance, the passage would cease to be a miserable fetish, and become a spiritual power. What was this ruler’ s faith? A correct idea? Yea, verily, for faith without knowledge is superstition. A feeling? Most surely. A tender regard for the Saviour glows in the scene, and faith works by love, and inspires courage never to submit or yield. Obedience? Yes I every step he took alongside of Christ revealed it. But was this all? Knowledge, love, obedience? No! The act is complex. Go to its roots, and you cannot set it out in a short phrase, or dispatch it in a definition. It is vital, like life; and like life, indefinable. It is an opening of the entire nature, in all its powers and faculties, to Christ, to receive of His energies, so that Christ is flowing into him, healing and strengthening him, and sustaining him as he journeys along, and finally giving him a complete victory over himself and his painful and distressing lot. III. But it must not be forgotten that this quickening and stimulating counsel was enforced by an actual and positive fact, illustrative of that very heroism--of faith to which this perplexed and agitated man was encouraged. The direction is set in a background that brilliantly illumines and enforces it; for I cannot avoid thinking that the dangerous delay in reaching the poor man’ s home, and the obvious determination of Christ to bring the tired and trembling woman to the front, and to compel the confession of her sad and lengthened illness, and of her speedy cure, was meant to encourage this believer in his difficult task. There is always close to us the human fact interpreting and enforcing the Divine direction, if only we have eyes to see and ears to hear the message of our Lord. God never gives us words alone. IV. Let me ask you to take this direction and apply it to yourselves as this man took it. Cling to Christ, the truth, hold fast the gentle and healing hand of Christ. (J. Clifford, D. D.) On the death of little children Let me speak of the spirit and work of Christ in the home of a sick child. 1. By the death of little children the unity of home life is broken up. 2. There is something which we call unnatural in this manner of death. 3. The bereavement of children is a bereavement that so often never seems to be fully repaired till the bereavement shall be over, and the separated have met again face to face. 4. There is for us, however, over their tiny graves, a glorious “ nevertheless.” We can enter into the joy of the word of the Lord that assures us that our loved children, numbered among the dead, are yet not dead, but only sleeping. (1) It is a great blessing which God confers on a home when its inmates can say: “ Part of our family is in heaven.” (2) Those who form this part so perfectly blessed are for ever safe from all moral dangers and ills. (3) And this because they are ever pure, without fault before the throne of God. (T. Gasquoine, B. A.) Our lost children “ She is not dead.” This He said of all our children we have seen lying thus. Christ here reveals to us, as truth, what the poets of all ages have been telling the world. Our children are not lost. They sleep. The burden has been too much, the road too broken, the light too dim for their eyes. (E. Aston) Not death but sleep I. The words of the messenger (Luke 8:49) may serve to REMIND US OF THE LIMITS WHICH OUR SETS TO OUR FAITH. “ While there’ s life there is hope,” we are accustomed to say. But “ if in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable.” Christ has the same power over death now as He had when on earth. The difference between His treatment of death now, and His treatment of it then, is not in kind--it is only in circumstance and scene. Cling to the belief that Christ has abolished death, and brought life and immortality to light, and that one day your loved ones shall be restored to you and you to them, and, when set over against the consolation which that belief has power to yield, the question of the time when will come to matter less and less to you. II. Looking at the text itself we find in it-- 1. That when Christ reached the house of Jairus the relatives and neighbours who had assembled in the deathchamber, were, according to Eastern custom, bitterly weeping and loudly bewailing the loss which had just befallen the family; and-- 2. That He bade them cease their mourning. WHY, THEN, DID CHRIST SAY TO THEM “ WEEP NOT” ? Surely their grief was pardonable and even fitting. Surely it would have argued the possession of a callous heart and an unsympathetic nature if they had been unmoved in that house of mourning that day. It seems to me that we must invest these words in the mouth of Christ with the tenderest look and the most sympathetic tone, and that we must regard them not as condemnatory of a grief that was natural, but as gentle chiding of sorrow that was hopeless, and therefore unbelieving, “ Weep not for them! it is no cause of sorrow That theirs was no long pathway to the tomb; They had one bright to-day, no sad to-morrow Rising in hope, and darkening into gloom. Weep not for them! give tears unto the living; O waste no vain regret on lot like theirs! But rather make it reason for thanksgiving That ye have cherished angels unawares.” III. THE REASON WHICH CHRIST GAVE WHY THEY WERE NOT TO WEEP. “ She is not dead.” And yet the very next verse tells us that they all knew very well that she was dead. How came Christ then to deny a fact so patent to all? It was because He set His face and “ the whole weight of His thought and speech “ against the merely natural and temporal views of men as to what death is--“ The illuminating significance of the fact of Christ’ s indisposition to use the word death.” IV. We have seen that Jesus said, and why He said, that the daughter of Jairus was not dead. How, then, does He explain the wondrous and awful change which has come ever her visible form? HE SAYS THAT SHE IS . Perhaps never was a time, since men began to seek out the analogies in things, when they did not see and speak of the striking similarity between Death and his twin-brother Sleep. But is this fact enough to account for Christ’ s use of the similitude? I think not. “ If Christ had done nothing more for humanity,” says Munger, than give to it this word “ sleep” in place of “ death,” He Would have been the greatest of benefactors. To that which seems the worst thing, He has given the best name, and the name is true. It is a great thing that we are able to take that almost sweetest and most soothing word in our tongue--sleep--and give it unto death: sleep that ends our cares and relieves us of our toils, that begins in weariness and ends in strength.’ , Out of sleep there is awakening, and the light of the eternal morning gladdens the vision of all who fall asleep in Christ. (J. R. Bailey.) Talitha cumi Very tender is the word in which Jesus addresses the dead child, as if she were still living. St. Mark alone records the original Aramaic expression, “ Talitha cumi,” which had doubtless been indelibly impressed upon the memory of St. Peter, from whom St. Mark, who was his special friend and companion, must have obtained it. And the original expression is recorded, because it cannot be translated without losing much of its charm and significance. It contains a term of endearment derived from a Syrian word signifying “ lamb,” often applied by fond parents to their children. It is as if the Good Shepherd had said, in bringing back in His bosom to the fold of the living this lost lamb that had wandered into the land of forgetfulness, “ My little lamb, I say unto thee, arise.” By the word of love and the touch of power, the spirit is re-called from the everlasting spring, and the hills of myrrh, to the forsaken tabernacle. The wave of life rushes back to the quiet heart, the pulse is set beating anew; a warm glow diffuses itself through the frame and mantles on the cheeks and lips. She rises from the couch as from a profound dreamless sleep, in mute astonishment at the strange scene around her, all the feebleness of her illness gone. The sun of her life- as happens in the natural world on the borders of the Arctic regions in summer--just dipped below the horizon for a little, and then rose again; and dawn and sunset shone in the same sky. (H. Macmillan, LL. D.) The Saviour raised Her hand from off her bosom, and spread out The snowy fingers in His palm, and said, “ Maiden! Arise!” --and suddenly a flush Shot o’ er her forehead, and along her lips And through her cheek the rallied colour ran; And the still outline of her graceful form Stirr’ d in the linen vesture; and she clasp’ d The Saviour’ s hand, and fixing her dark eyes Full on His beaming countenance--arose. (N. P. Willis.) He commanded to give her meat The command of Jesus to give the restored child meat was intended, we may suppose, to serve several purposes: to supply (1) a physical want, and in so doing to give clear, unmistakable proof of the reality of fine life restored to perfect health; (2) to calm the apprehensions and the great astonishment of the parents; and (3) to show that the course of nature, though violently interrupted for once, must be resumed according to the usual order. Jesus descended from the region of the supernatural to the region of ordinary life, from the working of a miracle to the satisfying of a commonplace want. And by that circumstance He teaches us the important lesson, that the spiritual life which He has imparted by Divine power must be sustained by human means. (H. Macmillan, LL. D.) Death pleasingly described It would seem that the Romans had even an aversion to mention death in express terms, for they disguised its very name by some periphrasis such as, Discessit e vita--“He has departed from life” ; and they did not say their friend had died, but that he had lived--vixit! Even among a people less refined the obtrusive idea of death has been studiously avoided. We are told that when the Emperor of Morocco inquires after any one who has recently died, it is against etiquette to mention the word “ death” ; the answer is, “ His destiny is closed.” (I. D’ Israeli.) What withers on earth blooms in heaven A delicate child, pale and prematurely wise, was complaining on a hot morning that the poor dewdrops had been too hastily snatched away, and had not been allowed to glitter on the flowers like other happier dew-drops, that live the whole night through and sparkle through the moonlight, and through the morning onwards to noon-day. “ The sun,” said the child, “ has chased them away with his heat, or has swallowed them up in his wrath.” Soon after came rain, and a rainbow; whereupon his father pointed upwards. “ See,” said he, “ there stand the dew-drops gloriously re-set--a glittering jewelry--in the heavens; and the clownish foot tramples on them no more. By this, my child, thou art taught that what withers on earth blooms again in heaven.” Thus the father spoke, and knew not that he spake prophetic words; for soon after the delicate child, with the morning brightness of his early wisdom, was exhaled, like a dew-drop, into heaven. (Jean Paul Richter.) A glorified memory Christian parents have a rich inheritance in the memories of their sainted children, and in the living treasures laid up in heaven. “ Years ago,” says Dr. W. M. Taylor, “ when I was leaving my Liverpool home to fulfil an engagement in the city of Glasgow, the last sight on which my eyes rested was that of my little daughter at the window in her grandmother’ s arms. As the carriage drove me away, she waved her hand in fond and laughing glee, and many a time during my railway ride the pleasant vision came up before my memory, and filled my heart with joy. I never saw her again l The next morning a telegram stunned me with the tidings of her death; and now that earthly glimpse of her has been idealized and glorified, and it seems to me as if God had set her in the window of heaven to beckon me upward to my eternal home. I would not give that memory for all the gold on earth. I would not part with the inspiration that it stirs within me for all that the world could bestow.” Luke 9:1-2 Then He called His twelve disciples together The apostolic authority 1. Its extent. 2. Its grounds. 3. Its propose. 4. Its limits. (Van Oosterzee.) Charge of our Saviour to the twelve I. TO WHOM THEY WERE TO GO. 1. Not to the heathen. It was more favourable to the progress of Christianity, even among the Gentiles, that the Jews should be first instructed, because, as they already believed in the unity and attributes of God, and possessed the prophecies, they were much better fitted than any other nation, at the commencement of Christianity, to be the instructors of the world. 2. Nor to the Samaritans, although, in travelling from Judaea to Galilee, it was necessary to pass through their country. Our Saviour foresaw that when the Jews should adopt the Christian religion the new benevolent spirit which that religion would diffuse among them would banish all national animosities, and dispose them to contribute with delight to spread the knowledge of Christianity among the Samaritans, and henceforth to acknowledge them as brethren. II. THE THEY WERE TO MAKE. It is, rather, the preparation they were not to make (Luke 9:3). What could be the reason of this singular prohibition? We answer, that it was evidently the intention of Jesus, in their first mission, to teach them to rely with confidence on the providence of God, who would show them that they were special objects of His care, would cause all their wants to be supplied, and thus to convince them that they were engaged in the business of heaven. III. WHAT THEY WERE TO DO. 1. Proclaim (1) the coming of the kingdom; (2) the need of reformation. 2. While uttering this proclamation, they proved that they had received Divine authority to make it; for they were empowered, during this journey, to perform miracles by curing all sorts of diseases. At the same time, to distinguish them from those impostors who pretended to cure all distempers, the apostles were prohibited from receiving money in the form of rewards or presents: “ Freely ye have received, freely give” ; acting in this disinterested manner like servants of the God of benevolence, they were not to be confounded with selfish and designing men. 3. As they had been prohibited from carrying with them the usual accommodations for a journey, they were to depend on the hospitality of those whom they visited. 4. They were enjoined to behave with courtesy to every person they visited. They had come to communicate most important information, and it was necessary to secure the most favourable attention. Besides, civility is an essential part of that benevolence which we owe to our neighbours; and he that is destitute of it neglects to use the means of cultivating the kindly feelings in himself, and in those with whom he associates. 5. When repulsed, they were to shake off the dust from their feet--a significant action which was evidently intended to leave a salutary impression. (J. Thomson, D. D.) A host of heralds When we are told that Jesus Christ sent His disciples forth to “ preach the kingdom of God,” the word Luke uses means to herald. All Christians are heralds when they speak of the coming of their King. And the characteristics of heralds, before any other persons, are just these: they cannot be inconspicuous, and they must not be timid. Hence, ancient sovereigns used to dress their heralds in unusual and showy garments, so as to attract attention wherever they went; and they furnished them with horns and trumpets, so as to enable them to make a noise which should compel people to hear them. 1. The chief reproach levelled at the Church by the wild race of wicked men around us is that we are not sincere in our professions of longing for the coming of Christ’ s kingdom. They laugh at a host of heralds so tame and bashful. Why do Christian people never speak up honestly, and do their avowed errands like men? 2. Of course, the proper reply to all this violence is not found in any waste of furious declamation or any massing of forcible logic. Our remedy under such hateful attacks is found in undertaking at once the work which is urged. We shall never hear any more about our derelictions in duty if we are patiently doing duty. 3. Now, it ought to be remembered that this plan of promulgation of the gospel was the choice of an infinitely wise God. There can be no doubt that it would have been an easy thing for Him just to convert the world at a stroke by an irresistible impulse of the Holy Spirit’ s influence; no doubt He could have turned men’ s hearts into obedient holiness by some suddenness of Divine disclosure ministered possibly through a song of hosts of angels. But He chose to take time for it, and he chose to put the ultimate accomplishing of such a work into the hands of Christian men and women. 4. It might be well to dwell a moment upon the great grace of God towards us in granting such a favour. Next to being rich and imperial ourselves, it certainly would be very fine to be the almoner of an emperor distributing his wealth to the poor. There was wonderful benediction to us in that God fashioned a form of practical evangelization, which would allow play for all kinds of characteristic human endowments. By putting these into rapid and repetitious service, all of those who love Him would share in the grand result. 5. Moreover, the wisdom of such an arrangement can never be questioned. Making men heralds to other men would economize force in exercise, for it would build up intelligence and grace as it exhausted it. Personal activity in doing good promotes growth in all Christian excellence. Love increases by just loving. Hope enlivens itself by just hoping. Zeal gets on fire, and keeps on fire, by just arousing the heat. Knowledge is augmented in all cases more by the effort of teaching others than by simply studying for one’ s self alone. To the man who rightly uses the five or ten talents extra talents are given from the Lord’ s money. 6. Right here, therefore, let us find an explanation of that low state of hypochondriac feeling which oppresses some Christians. They need spiritual exercise. Wilberforce was asked, once when he was labouring hardest, if he had in these times no anxiety, as he used to have, concerning his soul’ s interests; and he replied, “ I do not think about my soul; I have no time for solicitude concerning self; I have really forgotten all about my personal salvation, and so I have no distress.” 7. It is possible, therefore, that sometimes it may become actually necessary for the Church itself to be taught by alarm. The heralds may have grown listless. A real sense of peril is of value. “ Oh, do that on our souls,” prayed Richard Baxter once, “ which Thou wouldst have us do on the souls of others!” Once when Napoleon was crossing the Alps, his army grew laggard, and held back. He ordered the music to play, as if on parade. This was enough for most veterans in the ranks; but he observed that the trumpeters were tame, and their feeble strains of ordinary encouragement were not sufficiently seductive to draw away the minds of the rank and file from the awful weariness of the ascent of the mountain. One regiment especially just toiled along in a spiritless and forlorn array; these he gathered together, and then he ordered the bands to play the home-songs of the peasant people in order that thoughts of sunny scenes behind them might kindle the men’ s enthusiasm. Even that failed among some of the sad platoons; and there were some conscripts who only wept beneath an inveterate gloom. Finally, that shrewd commander marshalled the worst of all into one battalion, and put them in the lead. Then suddenly he ordered the trumpets to sound the charge of battle. That was a solitary challenge that no soldier of a French army ever refused. No one could know how they came to be attacked by a foe in the icicles of the high Alps; but is mattered nothing. Wild indeed was the excitement which ran through that hitherto dispirited host, for they supposed the enemy was upon them, and the quick instinct of war instantly flashed along the lines. The very bands played with splendid clangour of brass and shrill screaming of reeds on the frosty air. What that call meant pealing among the ravines was victory! Most men need some sort of inspiration in religious life just to keep them up to duty. Woe to the heralds with trumpets in their hands if they lapse away into a feeble silence! (C. S. Robinson, D. D.) Preaching the kingdom We have here the commission of the twelve apostles. I. THEIR . This they received from the great Head of the Church. II. THEIR . 1. Notice the two words used. (1) Power; the ability to do a thing. (2) Authority; the lawful right to do it. 2. Two realms referred to. (1) The spiritual realm of darkness; (2) the physical realm of human nature. III. THEIR GREAT MISSION. 1. To give spiritual light and comfort. 2. To relieve those who were physically disabled and tortured. (1) Christ is Physician for both soul and body. (2) All His ministers should do what they can for the bodies as well as for the souls of men. IV. THEIR ORDERS. They were to be encumbered with nothing superfluous. V. THEIR . Instructive to us-- (1) in its promptness; (2) in its exactness; (3) in its thoroughness. Lessons: 1. Every disciple should be a witnesser for Christ. 2. Though some of the particular things laid down here are not obligatory on us, the prominent features in their equipment are still needed. (1) The power and authority; (2) the willingness to give up everything superfluous; (3) prompt, exact, and thorough obedience. 3. Every one whom Christ sends forth may confidently expect every needed equipment if he ask. 4. Surely the fields are now ripe for the harvest. 5. Let us not only pray that God will send labourers, but be willing to be labourers ourselves. (D. C. Hughes, M. A.) Missionary work is God’ s work Who would not be a missionary? His noble enterprise is in exact accordance with the spirit of the age, and what is called the spirit of the age is simply the movement of multitudes of minds in the same direction. They move according to the eternal and all-embracing decrees of God. The spirit of the age is one of benevolence, and it manifests itself in numberless ways--ragged-schools, baths and washhouses, sanitary reform, &c. Hence missionaries do not live before their time. Their great idea of converting the world to Christ is no chimera; it is Divine. Christianity will triumph. It is equal to all it has to perform. It is not mere enthusiasm to imagine a handful of missionaries capable of converting the millions of India. How often they are cut off just after they have acquired the language! How often they retire with broken-down constitutions before effecting anything! How often they drop burning tears over their own feebleness amid the defections of those they believed to be converts! Yes! but the small band has the decree of God on its side. Who has not admired the band of Leonidas at the pass of Thermopylae? Three hundred against three million. Japhet, with the decree of God on his side, only three hundred strong, contending with Shem and his three millions. Consider what has been effected during the last fifty years. There is no vaunting of scouts now, no Indian gentlemen making themselves merry about the folly of thinking to convert the natives of India, magnifying the difficulties of caste, and setting our ministers into brown studies and speech-making in defence of missions. No mission has yet been an entire failure. The old world was a failure under Noah’ s preaching. Elijah thought it was all up with Israel. Isaiah said, “ Who hath believed our report, and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed?” And Jeremiah wished his head were waters, his eyes a fountain of tears, to weep over one of God’ s plans for diffusing knowledge among the heathen. If we could see a larger arc of the great providential cycle, we might sometimes rejoice when we weep. But God giveth not account of any one of His matters. We must just trust to His wisdom. Let us do our duty. He will work out a glorious consummation. Fifty years ago missions could not lift up their heads. But missions now are admitted by all to be one of the great facts of the age, and the sneers about “ Exeter Hall” are seen by every one to embody a risus sardonious. The present posture of affairs is, that benevolence is popular. God is working out in the human heart His great idea, and all nations shall see His glory … Let us think highly of the weapons we have received for the accomplishment of our work. “ The weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but spiritual, and mighty through God to the casting down of strongholds.” They are--Faith in our Leader, and in the presence of His Holy Spirit; a full, free, unfettered gospel; the doctrine of the Cross of Christ--an old story, but containing the mightiest truths ever uttered--mighty for pulling down the strongholds of sin, and giving liberty to the captives. This work requires zeal for God and love for souls. It needs prayer from the senders and the sent, and firm reliance on Him who alone is the author of conversion. Souls cannot be converted or manufactured to order. Great deeds are wrought in unconsciousness, from constraining love to Christ; in humbly asking, “ Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?” in the simple feeling we have done that which it was our duty to do. The effect works, the greatness of which it will remain for posterity to discern. The greatest works of God in the kingdom of grace, like His majestic works in nature, are marked by stillness in the doing of them, and reveal themselves by their effects. They come up like the sun, and show themselves by their own light. The kingdom of God cometh not with observation. Luther simply followed the leadings of the Holy Spirit in the struggles of His own soul. He wrought out what the inward impulses of his own breast prompted him to work, and behold, before He was aware, he was in the midst of the Reformation. So, too, it was with the Plymouth pilgrims, with their sermons three times a day on board the Mayflower. Without thinking of founding an empire, they obeyed the sublime teachings of the Spirit, the prompt-ings of duty and the spiritual life. God working mightily in the human heart is the spring of all abiding spiritual power; and it is only as men follow out the sublime promptings of the inward spiritual life that they do great things for God. The movement of not one mind only, but the consentaneous movement of a multitude of minds in the same direction, constitutes what is called the spirit of the age. This spirit is neither the law of progress nor blind development, but God’ s all-eternal, all-embracing purpose, the doctrine which recognizes the hand of God in all events, yet leaves all human action free. When God has prepared an age for a new thought, the thought is thrust into the age as an instrument into a chemical solution--the crystals cluster around it immediately. If God prepares not, the man has lived before his time. Huss and Wiclif were like voices crying in the wilderness, preparing the way for a brighter future; the time had not yet come. Who would not be a missionary? “ They that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament, and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever.” Is God not preparing the world for missions which will embrace the whole of Adam’ s family? The gallant steamships circumnavigate the globe. Emigration is going on at a rate to which the most renowned crusades of antiquity bear no proportion. Many men go to and fro, and knowledge is increased. No great emigration ever took place in the world without accomplishing one of God’ s great designs. The tide of modern emigration flows towards the West. The wonderful amalgamation of races will result in something grand. We believe this, because the world is becoming better, and because God is working mightily in the human mind. We believe it, because God has been preparing the world for something glorious. And that something will be a fuller development of the missionary idea and work. There will yet be a glorious consummation of Christianity. The last fifty years have accomplished wonders. On the American continent, what a wonderful amalgamation of races we have witnessed, how wonderfully they have been fused into that one American people--type and earnest of s larger fusion which Christianity will yet accomplish, when, by its blessed power, all tribes and tongues and races shall become one holy family. The present popularity of beneficence promises well for the missionary cause in the future. Men’ s hearts are undergoing a process of enlargement. Their sympathies are taking a wider scope. The world is getting closer, smaller--quite a compact affair. “ The world for Christ” will yet be realized.(David Livingstone, LL. D.) Authority for missions When a Roman magistrate was appointed to conduct a campaign he could not even assume the command of an army until he had been invested with the special powers comprehended in the imperium or right of military command. And to this day when governments are called upon to undertake extraordinary enterprises they are in the habit of endowing their officers with extraordinary powers. So Jesus, when sending His disciples to combat with the powers of evil, gave them special authority and miraculous power. (Sunday School Times.) Insignificant beginnings Not many years ago the Queen of Great Britain was proclaimed Empress of India. That event was announced throughout India with all the pomp of empire. Contrast with this earthly splendour the manner in which the new kingdom of Christ was proclaimed on earth. Twelve poor disciples preached it in an insignificant province of the Roman Empire. (Sunday School Times.) A missionary’ s healing work In the first verse of this lesson is a strong reminder of the most efficient style of missionaries to-day. Saying nothing about the power and authority over all devils, to cure diseases is no small part of the modem missionary’ s task. It is plain enough to most Christian people who keep up with the general run of accounts from the mission field, that medical training greatly adds to a missionary’ s influence. Indeed, it seems almost superfluous to say a word more on the subject. But when one thinks how much physicians are needed among a people where regularly trained physicians do not otherwise exist than through the efforts of the missionaries; how many diseases have been scourges which are quite within the power of medical science; to how many people a physician can gain the access denied to every one else; what opportunities a physician has for making many his grateful friends for life; it will not be wondered that medical training and a physician’ s work are wonderful aids in advancing the kingdom. It is no wonder either that Luke, the physician, was particular to notice this branch of the apostolic commission; or that it was actually given by our Lord. Even a quack, or a skilful physician who insists on extortionate fees, is a man of power; though such a one may do the missionary work great harm. He would be feared. Unless he both preaches the kingdom of God--preaches in the old sense, not sermonizes by the hour-glass-and heals the sick, he is worse than useless. (Sunday School Times.) The call to Christian work I. THE CALL TO WORK. These twelve apostles were men specially called by Christ, some from their fishing, one from the receipt of custom. We must not think that they were elected to the exceeding privilege of personal relations with Christ. It would be true to say that, through all the ages, God does not elect to privilege, He selects for duty. II. THE FORM OF WORK. 1. Every one who is “ sent” has a message to deliver. It is a message of sovereign grace. It is a message that has to be set in precise adaptation to men’ s needs. It is a message that makes practical demands on all to whom it is addressed. 2. Every one sent is expected to scatter temporal blessings as he goes about doing his higher spiritual work. “ Heal the sick” only represents the work of the unusually endowed. III. THE SPHERE OF WORK. These apostles were bidden go to “ the lost sheep of the House of Israel.” Lost sheep! They can be found by us all close at hand. IV. THE SPIRIT OF WORK. “ Freely ye have received, freely give.” True workers for Christ must be heedless of “ self” ; they must gain full hold and mastery of “ self.” (The. Weekly Pulpit.) A love of preaching The late Rev. Rowland Hill remarks--“ Old as I am, I am just returned from a long missionary ramble; but I feel I am getting old. Oh that I may work well to the last!” In all his journeys, even when he had reached a period beyond that usually allotted to man, he was disconcerted if he did not find a pulpit ready for him every evening. In one of his letters, fixing his days for preaching on his road to some place, he says, “ Ever since my Master has put me into office I have ever esteemed it my duty to remember His admonition, ‘ As ye go, preach.’” His general answer to invitations to houses on his route was, “ I shall be happy to come to you, if you can find me a place to preach in.” Simplicity in preaching Arthur Helps tells a story of an illiterate soldier at the chapel of Lord Morpeth’ s castle in Ireland. Whenever Archbishop Whately came to preach it was observed that this rough private was always in his place, mouth open, as if in sympathy with his ears. Some of the gentlemen playfully took him to task for it, supposing it was due to the usual vulgar admiration of a celebrity. But the man had a better reason, and was able to give it. He said, “ That isn’ t it at all. The Archbishop is easy to understand. There are no fine words in him. A fellow like me, now, can follow along and take every bit of it in.” The mission of the twelve 1. It was one which had for its especial object the welfare of men, both as to soul and body. 2. In His instructions to these first ministers of the gospel, the Master seemed especially to warn them against any needless regard to their own appearance, or any undue considerations for their own comfort or ease. Simplicity, frugality, and paramount regard to their work, were the principles which they were to illustrate, and these have always been considered becoming to true ministers of the gospel in the purest days of the Church. These first apostles were to cultivate warm fraternal fellowship with the people among whom they were to labour, mixing with them and their families in the ordinary intercourse of life, and kindly receiving that hospitality which was freely offered, though never demanded. 3. We are not to consider that these directions of our Lord establish any fixed rules in respect to the support or costume or social relations of His ministers. They were rather adapted to a special and peculiar service; they were conformable to the customs and usages of the times and the country. 4. The injunction to shake off the dust from their feet in leaving a place where they were not welcomed and their teaching was not received, does not inculcate anything like a spirit of denunciation and bitterness, but simply a protest against the unbelief which manifested itself in this manner, and was like the custom, well known to the Jews, of shaking their garments when they came from a heathen city into their own country. The scribes taught that the dust of heathenism defiled those on whom it rested. (E. P. Rogers, D. D.) Practical suggestions 1. An apostle is a sent one, but not self-sent. 2. A true shepherd must not mistake the love of the fleece for the love for the flock. 3. The Church is to remember that her “ angels” are still in the flesh, and require at least an average provision for the needs of the flesh. It is a poor way to advance the spirituality of a minister, to begrudge him his bread. 4. Spirituality is not a thing belonging necessarily to riches or to poverty. All the worldliness is not with the rich. All the spirituality is not with the poor. 5. All true and faithful ministers may justly claim to be in the best sense in an apostolic succession. 6. Ostentation and luxury are a reproach to the ministers of Christ. 7. The Christian missionary emulates his Master, who came as the “ sent One” from heaven, “ to seek and to save that which was lost.” 8. That is a true and practical Christianity which is not forgetful of the wants of the body while ministering to the necessities of the soul. 9. Every Christian is bound to be a missionary, even though he be not ordained as a preacher. The spirit of missions is the spirit of Christ, and when the whole Church is imbued with that the Lord’ s prayer will be answered, “ Thy kingdom come.” (E. P. Rogers, D. D.) The kingdom of God The whole circle of doctrines taught by Christ revolves about this central point--that He represented to men the kingdom of God. What is this kingdom of God which Jesus preached in His gospel? and how does the knowledge of this kingdom bring us under obligation to repent, and give us encouragement to believe? The answer to these questions must be sought in the meaning of this phrase, as it required to be understood by the Jews of Christ’ s own time. To the men whom Christ addressed, the kingdom of God was no new idea; or rather it was no new phrase--but it can hardly be said to have represented any definite idea to a generation that had so far lost the meaning of their own law and history. If we study closely the religion of the Old Testament, we shall find that all its doctrines, laws, and institutions grow out of this fundamental thought, that God, who Himself is pure and spiritual, is the true and only Redeemer of all those who desire to be no more estranged from Him. This truth was formally embodied in the doctrine of a kingdom of God in this world, the nucleus of which was His redeemed people of Israel. The political constitution of Israel as a nation was but a frame for this spiritual kingdom. The true conception of the kingdom stands out m the predictions of Jeremiah concerning the days of the Messiah. When this prophet wrote, the political kingdom had run itself down into disgrace and bankruptcy, through the vices of the kings and the general wickedness of the people; but although the monarchy should be overthrown, and king and people be carried away captive, the kingdom of God in the true Israel--as represented by the prophet and by all believing souls--could not be destroyed. This view of the kingdom of God may be interpreted to us by our familiar conceptions of the national and historical spirit in a people, as distinguished from the form of government and the practical administration of affairs. If, for instance, one loses confidence in a ministry, he does not abandon constitutional government as a failure. It was the spiritual conception of a kingdom within Israel itself--that did not embrace all Israel, and yet was greater than Israel, because it did possess, and should hereafter more and more possess, souls outside the pale of the Jewish commonwealth--that Jeremiah seized so vividly at the very moment when the national monarchy was sinking into nothingness. With this spiritual conception of the kingdom--the presence of God as a Saviour realized to the soul--it is easy to understand how Jesus preached the gospel of the kingdom of God. Coming at a time when the Jews were vassals of the Roman power; when deprived of every symbol of their nationality save their temple and its worship, they were yearning for a deliverer; to the nominal people of God thus subjugated by military rule, yet clinging to the ancient promise of a Messiah who should restore the glory of the theocracy, He said, “ I bring to you the good news of the kingdom of God; in Me Jehovah once more comes to you as a Deliverer; the time predicted by Daniel is fulfilled; the new covenant promised by Jeremiah is brought to you in My gospel; repent of the sins that have humiliated and well-nigh destroyed you; renounce your vain hopes of deliverance and trust in Me as your Saviour; repent and believe the gospel, for the kingdom of God is at hand.” (J. P. Thomson.) The kingdom 1. Is within. One becomes a subject of it in his own consciousness. 2. Has laws for the regulation of the life, though purifying and ennobling the heart. 3. Has its privileges. Every subject is treated as a son. 4. Has its rewards, both present and prospective. (J. P. Thomson.) The twofold mission: preaching and healing It is in obedience to this mandate that our missionaries, before they go abroad, not only spend a number of years at some theological college where they may prepare themselves for the work of proclaiming the gospel, but generally spend a year or so in the hospitals, gaining some knowledge of medicine that they may alleviate the physical woes of the people among whom their lives are to be spent, and so, it may be, reach the soul through the body. At home the two functions are discharged by different persons, and yet it seems to me that minister and doctor should be in completest sympathy, and recognize each other as severally working towards the same end. Some doctors have I known, who while attending to the physical wants of their patients could find time not only to speak the kindly and reassuring words which come so well from the lips of men who belong to the healing profession, but also to say some word which might point the afflicted one to that great Healer and most beneficent Physician, who is the Redeemer of our whole nature. It is a proof of the close alliance which ought to subsist between preaching and healing, that hospitals are a direct fruit of Christianity. “ Neither the religion nor the philosophy of Greece and Rome tended to comfort the poor. The divinities were cruel; the Stoic affected to despise the sufferings of the indigent; the Epicurean took no thought of them. Throughout the vast regions of Mogol, India, and China, the use of hospitals is unknown to this day. In no country did Christianity find such institutions existing. The history of their rise and progress can be traced in few words. In the year 380 the first hospital in the West was founded by Fabiola, a devout Roman lady, without the walls of Rome. St. Jerome says, expressly, that this was the first of all. And he adds that it was a country-house, destined to receive the sick and infirm, who before used to lie stretched on the public ways. The pilgrim’ s hospital at Rome, built by Pammachius, became also celebrated. In 330, the priest Zotichus, who had followed Constantine to Byzantium, established in that city, under his protection, a hospital for strangers and pilgrims. St. Basil, who founded the first hospitals of Asia, mentions a house for the reception of the sick and of travellers, near the city of Caesarea, which became afterwards the ornament of the country, and like a second city. St. Chrysostom built several hospitals at Constantinople.” Coming down to modern days, it is significant that the three oldest London hospitals, St. Thomas’ s, St. Bartholomew’ s, and Bethlehem, were founded about the middle of the sixteenth century, immediately after the Reformation, and that the reign of George II., in which Wesley and Whitefield preached from end to end of the land, was the period at which “ a considerable accession was made to the number of English hospitals, and at which society became alive to the value of such institutions.” (J. R. Bailey.) There is certainly no other feature of the old civilization so repulsive as the indifference to suffering that it displayed. The constant association of human suffering with popular entertainments rendered the popular mind continually more callous. Very different was the aspect presented by the early Church. Charity was one of the earliest, as it was one of the noblest creations of Christianity; and independently of the incalculable mass of suffering it has assuaged, the influence it has exercised in softening and purifying the character, in restraining the passions, and enlarging the sympathies of mankind, has made it one of the most important elements of our civilization. (W. E. H. Lecky, M. A.) Bodily healing a preparation for spiritual instruction Although China has reached what some are pleased to call the highest degree of civilization of which a nation is capable without the gospel, it presents, I believe, more physical suffering, for want of medical knowledge, than any other nation on the face of the the earth. The multitudes of sick, and lame, and blind which crowd the streets of this and other cities, are ample evidence of her deplorable condition in this respect. In an institution like this, a good surgeon may almost every day of his life make the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the deaf hear, and the paralytic whole; besides bringing hundreds together under the most favourable circumstances, to have the gospel preached to them. I might be allowed to give one example of the influence which even one successful case exerts, not only upon an individual or a family, but upon a locality or neighbourhood. Last spring I operated on a man’ s eyes for artificial pupil. For several years previously he had only just been able to distinguish day from night, light from darkness. Three days after the operation he was able to read the ordinary character, and on the fifth day he left the hospital. He was a boatman, and lives about half-way to Nankin, on the Northern bank of Yang-tsze river. Two months afterwards he arrived again in Shanghai with his boat, and brought six blind people to the hospital, five men and one woman, from his own neighbourhood, and they not only wanted to have their sight restored, but made enquiries about the Christian religion, which they said their friend who brought them had told them about One man,” continues the doctor in another report, “ a shopkeeper, who had been blind for three years, readily submitted to the operation for cataract. I need not say that he was much delighted when, on the twelfth day after it, he was able to read the New Testament character with facility. This man left the hospital in very high spirits, declaring that he would make known the gospel doctrine to all his friends and neighbours.” (Dr. Henderson.) Delight in preaching What cross do you suppose I take up in preaching? Just the same kind of a cross a mountain rill takes up that gushes forth all summer long. Why does it gush forth? Because it is its duty? No; because it cannot help it. It is its nature; and it goes ringing down the dell to please itself, not to please the heavens, or the clouds, or anything else--though it may please them all. And it is because it is to me pleasanter than anything else that I preach. I might preach if it was not so pleasant; but I am entitled to no thanks because I preach. The whole professional life of a minister who has health, and a healthy theology, ought to be pleasant. (H. W. Beecher.) Luke 9:3 Take nothing for your Journey Travelling without any burden It is easy travelling if you have no burden. They were on His business, sent by Him, and He assumed their care, and forbade them to trust themselves, or any other but Him. What a load of care goes off with this, what a burden of responsibility is removed; but what faith and humility is needed! Some of them had been called away from full nets (Luke 5:11), and it takes faith to follow under such circumstances. Many would start if they were permitted to carry the fish, but they are afraid. Afraid--of what, or whom? How strange to their eyes would some of us appear, as we go forth to our work, clothed in rags of self-righteousness and wrappers of pride, loaded with burdens of care and sin? Too much like the Israelites, leaving Egypt with flocks and herds, clothes and kettles, bread and kneading troughs; delivered from bondage, but knowing nothing of the manna, or the water from the rock. Others are afraid to go, fearing to swing off from their earthly base of supplies, and trust the promises of God. But it is all explained in the word, “ Lo, I am with you alway.” And what for? 1. Surely to provide. Is He not the Creator? And what would come of all their care if He did not provide? How long would it take them to create a barley-corn, or make a fish? 2. Surely to direct. What would their ignorance have accomplished without Him? And, with such a captain, what need of vexatious study over plans and methods? 3. Surely to lead. In the march through an unknown wilderness, or through a trackless desert, or over an unknown sea, to an unknown port, what progress without a guide and a pilot? 4. Surely to carry all their burdens (Psalms 55:22; 1 Peter 5:7). And, if he wishes to carry them all, why need we refuse or complain? Is it not because He knows our weakness, and because of His strength? And is this all? Oh no! Surely it is because He will be our companion. What are the power and wisdom and riches without the love? “ If Thy presence go not with me, carry us not up hence “ (Exodus 33:15). (Sunday School Times.) Apostolic simplicity The Rev. H. Davies, sometimes called “ the Welsh Apostle,” was walking early one Sabbath morning to a place where he was to preach. He was overtaken by a clergyman on horseback, who complained that he could not get above half a guinea for a discourse. “ Oh sir,” said Mr. Davies, “ I preach for a crown” ; “ Do you?” replied the stranger; “ then you are a disgrace to the cloth.” To this rude observation he returned this meek answer, “ Perhaps I shall be held in still greater disgrace, in your estimation, when I inform you that I am now going nine miles to preach, and have but sevenpence in my pocket to bear my expenses out and in; but I look forward to that crown of glory which my Lord and Saviour will freely bestow upon me when He makes His appearance before an assembled world.” Luke 9:4 And whatsoever house ye enter into Fireside preaching They went from town to town, receiving hospitality, or rather taking it for themselves, according to custom. The guest in the East has many privileges; he is superior to the master of the house, who has the greatest confidence in him. This fireside preaching is admirably adapted to the propagation of new doctrines. The hidden treasure is communicated, and payment is thus made for what is received; politeness and good feeling lend their aid; the household is touched and converted. Remove Oriental hospitality, and it would be impossible to explain the propagation of Christianity. Jesus, who adhered strongly to good old customs, encouraged His disciples to make no scruple of profiting by this ancient public right, probably already abolished in the great towns where there were hostelries. Once installed in any house, they were to remain there, eating and drinking what was offered them, as long as their mission lasted. (Renan.) Willing hospitality When travelling in the East no one need ever scruple to go into the best house of any Arab village to which he comes, and he will always be received with profuse and gratuitous hospitality. From the moment we entered any house it was regarded as our own. There is not an Arab you meet who will not empty for you the last drop in his water-skin, or share with you his last piece of black bread. The Rabbis said that paradise was the reward of willing hospitality. (Schottgen.) Luke 9:5-6 Shake off the very dust No connivance with those who reject the gospel The Jews were accustomed, on their return from heathen countries to the Holy Land, to shake off the dust from their feet at the frontier. This act signified a breaking away from all joint participation in the life of the idolatrous world. The Apostles were to act in the same way with reference to any Jewish cities which might reject in their person the Kingdom of God. The rejection of the gospel is not the rejection of a mere theory on which men may innocently entertain different opinions. It is the rejection of a message which, if faithfully received, reveals God, and subdues us to Him, and transforms us into His likeness. It is the refusal of the only remedy for moral evil which God has given to man. And notice that this remedy, being offered to us by men sent by God, may be rejected in rejecting their message or their preaching. The faults or idiosyncrasies of the preached are taken no account of by the Lord. It is one with what He says elsewhere, “ He that heareth you, heareth Me, and he that despiseth you, despiseth Me, and he that dispiseth Me, despiseth Him that sent Me.” (M. F.Sadler, M. A.) Dust What can seem of less consequence, or more worthless, than a pinch of dust? You have but to open your fingers and the wind blows it away in a moment and you see it no more. Yet if but one small grain of dust is blown into your eye it will give you a great deal of trouble. One of the terrible plagues of Egypt sprang from a handful of dust, which God commanded Moses to fling into the air. Every little grain scattered into millions and millions of invisible poison-atoms floating through the air; and wherever they settled, on man or beast, dreadful boils and ulcers broke out. In the great deserts of Arabia and Africa the stormy wind sometimes brings such clouds of sand-dust, hot and stifling, that they hide the sun, and make the day as dark as night. The travellers have to lie flat on their faces, and the horses and camels to bend their noses down close to the ground, or they would be suffocated. Sometimes whole caravans have thus perished; and even a great army was once destroyed and buried in these terrible clouds of hot dust. In Egypt, temples and cities have been buried under hills of sand, made up of tiny grains, which the wind has kept sweeping up from the desert for hundreds of years. Very great things, you see, may come from very small things--even from dust. (E. R. Conder, D. D.) Dust witnessing to the actions of people Once, in a certain part of Germany, a box of treasure that was being sent by railway was found at the end of the journey to have been opened and emptied of the treasure, and filled with stones and rubbish. The question was who was the robber? Some sand was found sticking to the box, and a clever mineralogist having looked at the grains of sand through his microscope, said that there was only one station on the railway where there was that kind of sand. Then they knew that the box must have been taken out at that station; and so they found out who was the robber. The dust under his feet, where he had set down the box to open it, was a witness against him. Suppose when people take off their shoes or boots when they come home, every grain of dust could have a tiny tongue and tell where it came from! What different stories they would have to tell! “ We,” say one little pair of shoes, “ are all covered with sand from the sea-shore, where we have been running about all day,” “ We,” say a strong, clumsy pair of boots, “ have been all day following the plough.” “ And we have brought sand from the floor of country cottages” ; “ and we, dust from the unswept floors of poor garrets” ; “ and we, mud from many a lane and court and alley.” Well-used shoes these; that are busy day after day, carrying comfort to the poor, and the sick, and the sorrowful. And here are a pair of elegant high-heeled boots with hardly a speck on them, for they have done nothing but step from the carpet to the carriage, and from the carriage to the carpet: I am afraid they have no story worth telling. And here are the village postman’ s shoes, stained with mud of all colours, and thick with dust from twenty miles of road and footpath, park sward and farmyard, as he trudged his daily round. Here is a solitary shoe, for its poor old owner has but one leg, and a wooden stump for the other; and it is laden with the dust of the crossing he has been sweeping, for a few pence, all day long. Some people, I am afraid, would rub and wipe their shoes for a long time, as hard as they could, if they thought the dust under their feet would tell tales of where they have been. At every step you take, you bring something away with you and leave something behind. (E. R. Conder, D. D.) Heralds of Joy If a herald were sent to a besieged city with the tidings that no terms of capitulation would be offered, but that every rebel without exception should be put to death, methinks he would go with lingering footsteps, halting by the way to let out his heavy heart in sobs and groans; but if instead thereof, he were commissioned to go to the gates with the white flag to proclaim a free pardon, a general act of amnesty and oblivion, surely he would run as though he had wings to his heels, with a joyful alacrity, to tell to his fellow-citizens the good pleasure of their merciful king. Heralds of salvation, ye carry the most joyful of all messages to the sons of men l When the angels were commissioned for once to become preachers of the gospel, and it was but for once, they made the welkin ring at midnight with their choral songs, “ Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good-will toward men.” They did not moan out a dolorous dirge as of those proclaiming death, but the glad tidings of great joy were set to music, and announced with holy mirth and celestial song. “ Peace on earth; glory to God in the highest” is the joy-note of the gospel--and in such a key should it ever be proclaimed. We find the most eminent of God’ s servants frequently magnifying their office as preachers of the gospel. Whitfield was wont to call his pulpit his throne; and when he stood upon some rising knoll to preach to the thousands gathered in the open air, he was more happy than if he had assumed the imperial purple, for he ruled the hearts of men more gloriously than cloth a king. (C. H. Spurgeon.) Luke 9:7 Herod the tetrarch heard Herod in perplexity “ Perplexed. ” This is a singular word. When we have a pictorial dictionary we shall see a very graphic illustration of the meaning of this term. This word διηπόρει imports that the man who was in this condition was perplexed, really stuck in the mud. That is the literal import of the word. He could not move easily, and in all his movement he was trying to escape--now he was moving to the right, then he was moving to the left; now forward, now backward, now sideward; he was making all kinds of motion with a view to self-extrication, and he could not deliver himself from this mood of hesitancy and incertitude. Herod was perplexed about Christ, and curiously perplexed; for his instinct put down his dogma, his conscience blew away as with a scornful wind his theological view of life and destiny. Why was Herod perplexed?--“ Because that it was said of some, that John was risen from the dead; and of some, that Elias had appeared; and of others, that one of the old prophets was risen again” (verses 7, 8). Why did Herod trouble himself about these dead men? As a Sadducee he did not believe in spirit or in resurrection. If he had been quite faithful and stedfast to his creed, he would have said in answer to all these rumours--Whoever this man may be, he has nothing whatever to do with another world, for other world there is none; as to resurrection, dismiss the superstition and forget it. But Herod had never been in this situation before. Circumstances play havoc with some creeds. They are admirable creeds whilst the wind is in the south-west, and the way lies up a green slope, and birds are singing around us, and all heaven seems inclined to reveal its glories in one blaze: then we can have our theories and inventions and conjectures, and can play the little tricky controversialist with many words: but when the wolf bites us, how is it then? When all the money is lost, when the little child lies at the last gasp, when the doctor himself has gone away, saying it will be needless for him to return--how then? Men should have a creed that will abide with them every day in the week without consulting thermometer or barometer; a creed that will sing the most sweetly when the heart most needs heaven’ s music; a great faith, an intelligent, noble, free-minded faith, that says to the heart in its moods of dejection, All will come well; hold on, never despair, never give up; one more prayer, one more day, in a little while. A faith of this kind saves men from perplexity; it gives the life of man solidity, centralization, outlook, hope. It is an awkward thing to have a creed that will not bear this stress. Herod’ s Sadduceeism went down when a tap came to the door by invisible fingers. We can do what we will with matter; if the fingers are of bone and flesh they can be smitten and broken; but who can touch invisible fingers? Then what have we to take down by way of comfort? We have declared that we know nothing, and have taken quite lofty pride in our boundless ignorance, but here is a hand at the door, and the door must be answered, and you must answer it. Herod was perplexed, hesitant, now on this side, now on that side; he could not tell what to do. So are men perplexed about Christ to-day who do not believe in Him. It is one of two things in regard to this Son of Man: cordial, loving, positive trust, the whole heart-love poured out like wine into a living flagon; or it is now belief, now unbelief, now uncertainty, now a prayer breathed to the very devil that he would come and take possession of the mind so as to drive out all perplexity and bewilderment. The latter course ends in deepening confusion and darkness. The only thing that will bear the stress of every weight, the collision of every conflict, is faith--simple, loving, grateful faith: Lord, increase our faith. (J. Parker, D. D.) The might and impotence of the conscience I. ITS MIGHT. 1. It faithfully reminds of the evil committed. 2. Judges it rightly. 3. Chastises it rigorously. II. ITS . It is not able-- 1. To undo the past. 2. To make the present endurable. 3. To make the future hopeful. (Van Oosterzee.) Insincere unbelief That practical unbelief distrusts itself, disavows itself, and punishes itself. I. ALL SUCH , LIKE HEROD’ S, ITSELF. Scepticism is never wholly satisfied with its own creed; never rests confidently on its own reasonings. So it was with Herod. As a Sadducee, he rejected the doctrine of the Resurrection, whether of angel or spirit. And yet, suddenly startled from his self-possession by an alarm of conscience, he is seen in the text to affirm strongly the truth whose denial was fundamental to his system l Sincere faith is serene, self-possessed, reliant. The traveller on the king’ s highway walks calmly and confidently, because he feels that his feet are on adamant; while he, in a marsh or a quicksand, is all restless and excited, through his distrust of the road. This very vapouring of unbelief in behalf of its tenets is significant of insincerity. II. That all unbelief, like Herod’ s, not only distrusts itself, BUT OFTEN, AND IN THE END, ALMOST ALWAYS ITSELF! It may clamour against the hard things of revelation, as opposed to its instincts and its reason; yet will ever and anon make practical confession that they seem not unreasonable. This is strikingly exhibited in this history of Herod. Yea, and the text’ s illustration on this point goes much further. It shows, not only that the Resurrection is a reasonable doctrine, but that all the Bible teaches as to the effects of that Resurrection upon its subjects is as well reasonable and philosophic. These teachings may be embraced in two particulars--the positive identity, and the greatly enlarged powers and faculties of the Risen Immortal. 1. The Bible affirms this identity. The creature raised from the grave is to be the same creature who goes down into it. Death has no power to destroy or alter human nature. He says, “ It is John. It is John the Baptist. He is risen from the dead!” 2. The Bible teaches that, along with this identity, the raised body shall possess powers and faculties very greatly enlarged. Indeed, there is in human nature something instantly responding to the voices of revelation. And it is by reason of this that unlearned and weak-minded Christians do maintain their faith so grandly against all the assaults of philosophic infidelity. They cannot argue for the truth, but they can apprehend it. And this natural moral sense exists originally in all men. The Bible never came to a human spirit that did not at some time respond to its felt truthfulness. III. Passing this, observe, That all such unbelief, like Herod’ s, ITSELF. Conscience! Conscience! It was itself a resurrection-power within him! And look at the Tetrarch now! His cheek pale, his lip quivering, his wild eye glaring upon vacancy! He starts from his couch! The wine-cup drops from his hand as he whispers with white lips, “ It is John the Baptist--he is risen from the dead!” Ah me! What aileth the Tetrarch there amid princes and nobles? John the Baptist sleeps still in his distant grave. But a simple thought long buried within his murderer’ s soul hath been unsepulchred! He thought to silence the living voice of God’ s prophet, but that voice in the dark chambers of his soul will wake echoes for ever! Here then we say is a striking illustration of the power of a roused conscience as God’ s avenger of sin. I have no room nor necessity here for an argument for retribution. I have only to do with this natural illustration. I am not prophesying what God will do, but only showing what man himself does! It is a favourite postulate, even of the infidel philosophy, that no impression once made on the thinking principle is ever obliterated. And it has doubtless happened unto you all to observe, how some trifling thing--a remark in conversation, the view of a familiar landscape, a strain ofsome longforgotten harmony, yea, a thing so slight as the rustle of a falling leaf, or the breath of a flower’ s perfume--has awakened in the mind a long train of recollections. Thoughts long forgotten move again powerfully within us; we are borne away suddenly to other scenes; we live virtually in other times and other conditions. The magic of memory has summoned from the past shadowy forms, faces, voices, it may be of the dead. They rise upon us, they move before us, as life’ s great realities, and for the time we are under their mysterious power as our angels or avengers l Now, whether or not conscience be but a modification of memory, certain we are it follows the same great law. Conscience, too, may be beguiled for a season of its avenging power. But this you cannot do--you cannot destroy it. Sin, sin it is, as an operative principle within you, that, by arming conscience with an eye of fire and whip of scorpions, gives to the “ worm” its fang, and to the “ fires” their fierceness. Believe, if you will, that God is too merciful to make a hell. Yet you know, for you have seen, that every sinful man is making it. This is the law of man’ s moral nature, and under it you are all working out your own retribution. You are doing it always, each one for himself. (C. Wadsworth.) Herod desiring to see Jesus; It is a striking sentence with which Luke concludes his narrative--“ He desired to see Jesus.” We are indeed told that many prophets and kings desired to see the things which the disciples of Jesus saw. Was this Prince of Galilee among those prophets and righteous men, earnestly longing for one glimpse of that mystery, which even angels desire to look into? Was his the desire of a longing holy heart? The evangelist leaves us in no doubt, for his desire was fulfilled; he did see Jesus. And I cannot but think that there is much significancy in the fact that the same writer who records the desire, is the only one who gives us the account of its accomplishment. The aged Simeon, too, desired to see Jesus, and when he saw Him, he said, “ Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen Thy salvation.” Certain Greeks, too, came to Philip and said, “ Sir, we desire to see Jesus, and when Jesus heard it, He said, The hour is come that the Son of Man should be glorified.” Thomas desired to see his risen Lord, and when he saw Him, he exclaimed, “ My Lord and my God.” Herod desired to see Jesus, and when he saw Him, “ he and his men of war set Him at nought and mocked Him!” Herod will once more see Jesus, and it will not be then Herod “ mocking Jesus,” but, saith the Lord, “ Because I have called, and ye refused; I have stretched out My hand, and no man regarded; but ye have set at naught all My counsel, I also will laugh at your calamity, I will mock when your fear cometh.” (B. Bouchier, M. A.) An accusing conscience When Professor Webster was waiting his trial for murder, he is said to have complained of his fellow prisoners for insulting him through the walls of his cell, and screaming to him, “ You are a bloody man.” On examination, the charge was found wholly groundless. The accusing voices were imaginary--merely the echoes of a guilty conscience. Conscience awakened The long-forgotten sin is now remembered. Like the ground-swell after a storm, which, mariners tell us, appears long after the tempest has ceased, and far off from its locus, they come up in awful vividness before us … As when a flash of lightning reveals but for a moment the dangers of the shipwrecked crew, so now there is an awful recollection of all our past transgressions. They have long been covered up, but only covered like the beautiful carvings of some old minister, or the frescoes on its walls were covered, before the hand of the restorer was brought to bear upon them. They were always clear and open before the eyes of Him with whom we have to do. Now we see them for a little with something of the insight that pertains to Him. (J. G. Pilkington.) Emblem of a troubled conscience There is a species of poplar whose leaves are often rustled by a breeze too faint to stir the foliage of other trees. Noticing the fact one day when there was scarcely a breath of air, Gotthold thought with himself, “ This tree is the emblem of a man with a wounded and uneasy conscience, which takes alarm at the most trifling cause, and agitates him to such a pitch, that he knows not whither to fly.” A guilty conscience It gives a terrible form and a horrible voice to everything beautiful and musical without. It is said of Bessus, a native of Pelonia, in Greece:--Being one day seen by his neighbours pulling down some birds’ nests, and passionately destroying the young, they severely reproved him for his illnature and cruelty to those little innocent creatures that seemed to court his protection. He replied that their notes were to him insufferable, as they never ceased twitting of the murder of his father. The music of the sweet songsters of the grove are as the shrieks of hell to a guilty conscience startled from its grave. Let Byron describe its anguish, for who felt it more than he?-- “ The mind that broods o’ er guilty woes, Is like the scorpion girt by fire; In circle narrowing as it glows. The flames around their captive close, Till inly searched by thousand throes, And maddening in her ire, One sad and sole relief she knows, The sting she nourished for her foes Whose venom never yet was vain, Gives but one pang and cures all pain, And darts into her desperate brain: So do the dark in soul expire, Or live like scorpion girt by fire. So writhes the mind remorse has riven, Unfit for earth, undoomed for heaven, Darkness above, despair beneath, Around it flame, within it death.” (D. Thomas, D. D.) Torments of conscience:--It is said of Charles IX., that he could never bear to lie awake at night unless his thoughts were diverted by the strains of music in an adjoining apartment; and of Tiberius, it is asserted that he declared to his senators that he suffered death daily. Bad actions personified Not in the sky, not in the midst of the sea, not if we enter into the clefts of the mountain, is there known a spot in the whole world where a man might be freed from an evil deed. Each action brings with it its inevitable consequences, which even God cannot change. “ In a region of black cold,” says an Eastern sage, “ wandered a soul which had departed from the earth, and there stood before him a hideous woman, profligate and deformed. ‘ Who art thou?’ he cried. To him she answered, ‘ I am thine own actions.’” Luke 9:10 Aside privately The profit of restful retirement I had a friend once (he is now in heaven) who was one of those men that give their whole heart to business, and believe in nothing else on week days, while even on Sundays their worship is, never to be still if they are religious men, but to be doing something from daylight to bed-time. One summer day the feeling came over him that he would wander away, just for once, into the silence, and take one whole day of perfect rest. It was toward an upland he took his way, wandering by some small lakes of an exquisite beauty, and enjoying every moment of his holiday; until away on in the afternoon, when he had drunk deep of the quietness, and was lying on his face in the grass, happening lazily to lift his head all at once, as by a flash, he saw that one of these lakes could be tapped for his mill-dam, and so give him water enough to tide him over the summer dryness and prevent his wheel from stopping, when it ought to go right on. He went home at sunset, blessing himself for his good fortune as well as for the leisure, which was likely to turn out a better day’ s work than he had done for a long time, took a survey of the land next day, and when he told me the story he had made his connection with the new reservoir, and it answered entirely his expectation. I have often thought of my friend’ s adventure since then as an illustration of a lesson we are rather loth to learn in this busy land of ours--how springs and reservoirs of blessing may sometimes be opened to us through a perfect quietness we can never find through incessant toil. We do not believe in rest as devoutly as we believe in work. It does not seem possible we can ever do as good service either for God or man to be still as to be stirring. In this intense life we easily believe that to do nothing one whole day is for that day to be nothing. It is as if we should do nothing in a boat alone among the rapids of the St. Lawrence. The majestic motion and contention of the life about us overcomes us so that the gracious word contemplation in the old, sweet sense, is about as strange to the most of us as Sanscrit. We contemplate the very heavens to remember how many millions of miles the sun travels in an hour. Work while it is day is the watchword of our age, and it is always day. Time means the time to do things. “ Let us then be up and doing” is indeed our psalm of life. We fight the idea of the philosopher that God cannot have rested on the seventh day and hallowed it, and then often illustrate our own belief by filling the seventh day as full of care as the rest. (R. Collyer.) Luke 9:11 He received them Christ welcoming seekers In the Revised Version we read, “ He welcomed them,” in place of, “ He received them. ” An instructive improvement, of which we may make evangelical use. I. First, may the Holy Spirit help us while we dwell upon THE FACT that Jesus welcomed those who sought Him. 1. We observe, first, that our Lord received all comers at all times. The time mentioned in our text was the most inconvenient possible. He was seeking rest for His disciples, who were weary after their labours. A great sorrow was on them also, for John had been beheaded, and it was meet that they should solace their grief by a short retirement. At this time, too, our blessed Lord desired obscurity; for Herod was inquiring for Him. It was most inconvenient, therefore, to be followed by so great a crowd. Is it not wonderful that under such circumstances our blessed Lord should welcome the insatiable throng? I think, too, that the Master desired just then to hold a conference with His apostles as to the work they had done, and the future which was opening up before them. 2. Our Lord received all sort of comers. They were a motley throng, and I fear that few, if any, of them were actuated by any high or exalted motive. He never rejected any because they were (1) poor; (2) diseased; (3) too young; (4) too old. 3. Once more: our Lord receives all with a hearty welcome. He did not merely allow the people to come near, tolerating their presence; but “ He welcomed them.” II. Now I come to use this as AN . If Jesus Christ when He was here on earth welcomed all that came at all hours, then He will welcome you, my friend, if you come to Him now; for the circumstances are just the same. 1. You are the same sort of person as those whom Jesus used to welcome. They were good-for-nothing bodies; they were persons that were full of need, and could not possibly bring a price with which to purchase His favour. Are you not just like them? 2. And then there is the same Saviour. Jesus Christ is the same gracious Pardoner as He was in the days of His flesh. III. Thirdly, we use our text as A LESSON. If Jesus Christ welcomes all that come to Him, let all of us who are His followers imitate His example, and give a warm welcome to those who seek the Lord. Men are brought to Jesus by cheerfulness far sooner than by gloom. Jesus welcomed men. His looks said, “ I am glad to see you.” In winning souls use an abundance of smiles. Have you not seen in one of our magazines an account of seven people saved by a smile? It is a pretty story. A clergyman passes by a window on his way to church. A baby was being dandled there, and he smiled at the baby, and the baby at him. Another time he passed; the baby was there again, and once more he smiled. Soon baby was taken to the window at the hour when he usually passed. They did not know who the gentleman was; but one day two of the older children followed to see where he went on a Sunday. They followed him to church, and as he preached in a winning way, they told their father and mother, who felt interest enough in their baby’ s friend to wish to go. Thus in a short time a godless family that had previously neglected the worship of God was brought to the Saviour because the minister smiled at the baby. I never heard of anybody getting to heaven through frowning at the baby, or at any one else. Certain wonderfully good persons go through the world as if they were commissioned to impress everybody with the awful solemnity of religion: they resemble a winter’ s night without a moon; nobody seems attracted, nor even impressed, by them except in the direction of dislike. I saw a life-buoy the other day covered with luminous paint. How bright it seemed, how suitable to be cast upon the dark sea to help a drowning man! An ordinary life-buoy he would never see, but this is so bright and luminous that a man must see it. Give me a soul-winner bright with holy joy, for he will be seen by the sorrowing soul, and his help will be accepted. (C. H. Spurgeon.) Healed them that had need--Real grace for real need I. THOSE WHOM CHRIST HAS SAVED WILL ALL CONFESS THAT THEY HAD NEED OF SAVING. 1. All the saved saints confess that they had need of healing through their natural depravity. 2. Many have been led to feel that in addition to ordinary original sin, evil tendencies had in the case of some of us assumed peculiar shapes and dreadful forms of besetting and constitutional sin--quick temper; pride; animal passions, &c. Apart from grace, we had been sinners before the Lord exceedingly. A Scotch gentleman was observed to look very intently upon the face of Rowland Hill: the good old man asked him, “ And what are you looking in my face at?” The observer replied, “ I have been studying the lines of your face.” “ And what do you make out of them?” said Rowland. “ Why, I make out,” said he, “ that if the grace of God had not changed your heart you would have been a great rascal.” “ Ah!” said Rowland, “ you have made out the truth indeed.” Many of us have to confess humbly that in us there was pressing need of healing, for if healing had not come, we should not only have been sinful as others, but should probably have taken the lead in iniquity, and been carried away by the wild sweep of inward passion to the utmost excess of riot. 3. Brethren, this need of healing will be confessed by the saints in this further respect, that there was not only in us a tendency to sin, but we had grievously sinned in act and deed before conversion. 4. There was need of healing because, in addition to having sinned, we wilfully continued in it. II. UNSAVED HEARERS HAVE NEED OF SAVING. 1. Because you are inclined to evil. 2. Because of your actual sins. 3. You do not feel this as you ought. 4. You are unable to pray. 5. Your feelings, your desires after good things, are very often damped. Perhaps this morning you are sincerely in earnest, but to-morrow you may be just as careless as ever. III. Our third point is to thee, O needy sinner. JESUS CAN SAVE THEE. Christ can save you, for there is not a record in the world, nor has there ever been handed down to us by tradition a single case in which Jesus has failed. (C. H. Spurgeon.) Power to heal A great writer of fiction has remarked that “ a man might be a great healer, if he would, without being a great doctor.” We may add, without being a worker of miracles. “ A man may be a great healer without being a great doctor.” The doctor, so far as his profession is concerned, has to do chiefly, if not entirely, with diseases of the body. He is as an agent and instrument, the saviour and the healer of the body. As a friend to the patient, he often ministers to the mind and heart; but these services are distinct from his profession Without being a doctor a man may be a great healer. “ Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased, Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow?” Around us all there are sick minds, wounded spirits, broken hearts and diseased souls, to be cured, and healed, and relieved by means which God has given us. Around us all there are wounds in families, wounds in friendships, and wounds in communities, to which we may apply a healing power. “ Whole,” “ sound,” “ healthy,” are words descriptive of but few persons, and of but few households, and of but few communities. In this world of ours there is evidently a great work of healing to be wrought. There is a great need of healing, and there are great healing powers. There is a spiritual disease very like that malady of body known as atrophy. It is a condition of weakness in the direction of evil. The Apostle Paul refers to it when he observes, “ When we were yet without strength, in due time, Christ died for the ungodly.” For this disease there is but one physician, and there is but one remedy. The woman of Samaria was a great healer, when she brought the men of her city to the Messiah. All are “ healers” who guide men to Jesus. I desire to awaken your ambition to be in this world of sorrow and sin--great healers. 1. You may heal by the tongue. “ How forcible are right words.” “ A wholesome tongue is a tree of life.” “ The tongue of the just is as choice silver.” “ Pleasant words are as a honeycomb.” 2. You may heal by the light of the countenance. Honest laughter has a stirring power. Genuine and kindly smiles have a healing power. A countenance alive with sympathy and bright with love heals. 3. You may heal by the hand, by what the hand may find to do in the sphere of ministration and of service. All help has healing power, if delicately and wisely and kindly administered. 4. You may heal by your purse. Solomon saith, “ Money is a defence.” “ Money answereth all things.” In the broad work of healing, money is a mighty agent. Without doubt, in some cases almsgiving spreads and confirms moral disease and spiritual sickness. But as buying bread for the hungry and clothes for the naked and medicine for the sick, as procuring dwellings for the homeless, and as relieving the fatherless and the widow, as redeeming from debt those who are under pecuniary obligations to others, money does much in the service of healing. 5. You may heal by your presence. Presence, even though the tongue be silent; presence, even though the hands be tied and bound by inability; presence, even though there be no silver nor gold, has oftentimes a healing power. Presence speaks, for it tells of sympathy; presence cheers, it diverts the thoughts and lessens the burden; presence will sometimes have in it a wealth of consolation. 6. You may heal by your social influence. The respect and esteem which men cherish toward you may be used to serve and to comfort others. Thus did Esther use her influence with the King Ahasuerus, to heal the wound inflicted on the safety and honour of the Jews (Esther 4:13-14). Influence with those who can serve others is as truly a talent as our individual ability. 7. you may heal by making intercession for others. This is a power which all possess. Its effectiveness is not as manifest as that of other agencies, but without doubt it is as real. There is more of mystery adhering to this agency than to other means, but our faith in it is not less strong. The achievements of prayer, as recorded in holy Scripture, are wonderful, as redeeming life from destruction, as securing the forgiveness of iniquities, and as healing diseases alike of body and of spirit. 8. You may heal by teaching Jesus Christ. To the truth of this saying multitudes in heaven and upon earth bear constant and willing witness. (S. Martin, D. D.) Luke 9:13-17 Five loaves and two fishes Feeding the five thousand I. All the people of God are stewards of the household of faith, and to God must they render an account. II. We are to adopt all lawful means by which to escape impending danger. When our Lord was exposed to danger from Herod, though possessed of all power, he adopted human means to escape that danger. We must not allow any fear of encountering perils to deter us from duty. III. We ought to esteem no sacrifice too great to be made for Christ and His gospel. The people referred to in the text did not think it too much to leave their comfortable homes; but, forsaking all, went into the desert to listen to Him who spake as never man spake. If called to hazard all, and even our life, for the gospel, let us commit ourselves to God. IV. Our Lord welcomes all who come to Him by faith. When the people came to Him from the villages round about, He refused none, but healed all who had need. V. Wherever true Christianity exists in the heart, it will manifest its presence by a spirit of benevolence. The disciples saw the night coming on, and wished the multitude to be dismissed, that they might retire to the comforts they needed. Christianity rejoices not only in our own salvation, but also in that of others. VI. When human aid fails, Divine power is made manifest. VII. We should so receive and enjoy the blessings of heaven as to glorify God. When our Lord received the food, He returned thanks for it, and pronounced a blessing upon it. VIII. When the mind reposes by faith on the Saviour, there will be ample supplies of grace and favour. Christ never said to the seed of Jacob, “ Seek ye My face in vain.” Conclusion: In all situations of danger let the people put their trust in Jehovah, remembering that He who is for them is much greater than all who can be against them. (J. Henderson.) Lessons from the miracle of multiplying the loaves 1. We learn from this miracle that it is our duty to do what we can to supply the bodily wants of others. 2. We here learn that those who follow Christ may trust to Him for the necessaries of life. 3. We are here reminded of the duty of what is commonly called “ saying grace” at meals This was our Lord’ s practice, and it is a duty often enjoined in Scripture. 4. From the particular direction our Lord here gave as to the fragments, we draw the general rule that nothing should be lost, or wasted. To waste our substance is a sinful abuse of God’ s gifts. It is one thing to be generous and hospitable; it is quite another to be thoughtless, extravagant, and wasteful. Such wasting is not only offensive to God, but unjust and unkind to our fellow creatures. (J. Foote, M. A.) Ability developed by responsibility The vast hunger of the world is a vast responsibility upon the Church and a vast blessing. Christians must supply bread, or the people will perish. The necessity drives them to Christ, compels the bringing forth of their talents and resources, and works enlargement in volume and value. I. Christ deals with us on principles of a wise economy, builds his supernatural work on our natural resources, and makes a little do the work of abundance. II. Christ always makes that which we have and bring to Him for His blessing adequate for the needs of the hour. He takes us into partnership with Himself both in His work and its rewards. III. Weakness made strong in effort for Him. (Anon.) Food for hungry souls The Lord helps our souls as He helps our bodies, through the aid of ordained means and sometimes He may cause these means to fall short, and then may supply them as suddenly and abundantly as He multiplied these loaves and fishes. A person may have but little learning--he may be quite unable to read, and may seem to himself as if he did not well understand what he hears--and yet, if he have the fear of God in his heart, and try to live accordingly, he shall eat and be filled with spiritual meat and drink. One good lesson, one verse, one prayer may be a treasure to him which he shall never lose. He may be a good way from Church, he may have few helps at home; but if he really try to make the most of what little he has, God can and will make a good deal of it--to him. Half a prayer remembered as having been learnt in childhood; an old loose Bible or Testament on a shelf; the remembrance of some good Christian formerly known, his sayings, his tone of voice, his manner of coming in and going out--all these and other such things are as the scanty fare of that multitude, which became abundant under His creative hand. (John Keble, M. A.) Enough for all when Christ distributes I. THE PEOPLE’ S BODY NEED, AND SOUL NEED. II. GOD’ S FOR BODY AND FOR SOUL. III. GOD’ S METHOD OF SUPPLY TO BODY AND TO SOUL. Ordinary. Miraculous. Moral. (The Weekly Pulpit.) Christ in a fourfold aspect I. Christ in . Omnipotence is ever instinct with love. II. Christ in SOCIAL ORDER. Not a God of confusion. III. Christ in FRUGAL . Nothing in nature runs to waste. IV. Christ in the OF . “ Give ye them to eat.” Help each other. Conclusion: Follow Christ in all this. (D. Thomas, D. D.) The miraculous feeding of five thousand The disciples had just returned from the mission in which they had been engaged, and “ told Him all that they had done.” The considerate Master saw that they were exhausted by the fatigue and excitement of their labours. He accordingly seeks to secure them quiet. This they could not have in Capernaum (see Mark 6:31). They take passage privately in a vessel to a desert place near to Bethsaida. In vain did they look here for solitude. They had been observed by the eager multitude, who followed on foot, and were at the landing-place before them. The Lord has compassion on them, and is solicitous for their physical as well as their spiritual well-being. On finding that there are five loaves and two small fishes, He gives the disciples directions for the orderly arrangement of the multitude into companies; and when all were in perfect order He took the loaves and the fishes, and blessed and brake and gave the disciples to set before the multitude. As they passed from hand to hand, the loaves and fishes multiplied so as to become more than sufficient for the great multitude. Every year in the harvest we see this miracle repeated. 1. Learn that order is Christlike, is Divine. 2. That economy is Divine. All the evangelists are careful to record that they gathered up the fragments left. Liberal profusion and true economy always go hand in hand. 3. Learn to relieve the wants of others even when we have but little. It is ours also to feed the hungry. Especially with the bread of life. (D. Longwill.) Jesus and His bounty I. THE PROBLEM OF THE . The desert place, the night, the multitude without food, presented a problem that might well constitute a reason for anxiety to any who were of a sympathetic nature. The circumstances were new and surprising, and were such as to test the weakness, or bring out the strength, of their confidence in the Master’ s wisdom and power. We all need to be surprised in life. It is the unexpected that shows us what we are. The disciples were perplexed, and very human they were in their perplexity. For the time they seem to have forgotten several things. 1. That the people had followed their Master and not them, and that they were connected with the people through Him. Had the people followed them there would be nothing to do but to send them away. If the case today were between the disciples and the multitude, it would be hopeless. 2. That the Master knew as much, and more, of the multitude than they did. 3. That the Master was moved with compassion towards the people. They had forgotten the most important elements of the problem. They had been looking at the multitude and the night; had been realizing the difficulties very vividly. We, too, look at our multitude, and see the darkness in which they are involved, and tremble as we think of the possible, if not the inevitable issue of what we see. But we do not see the whole when we tremble. God is above the night, and pities all who are in it. God knows, and God pities, and that ought to be enough for our faith, if not for our reason. At length the disciples made their petition, saying, “ Send the multitude away.” The very fact that He was there to receive their requests ought to have reminded them of some of the many things which they had forgotten. For if they had thought, had not He much more than they? II. THE OF THE MASTER “ Give ye them to eat.” 1. The command seemed extravagant, but they knew that it had not been His habit to gather in where He had not scattered abroad. It made them feel how inadequate they were, with the little they had, to obey it. They had only five loaves and two fishes, do as they would, with a multitude to feed. The loaves were, however, just what the people needed. We have all some little which, if wisely used, may be of benefit to our fellows. We have mind, heart, and opportunity. 2. The Master took the five loaves and the two fishes from the disciples, and manifested His great power through that which they gave Him. He brought them into the fellowship of His mystery. He blessed the loaves which they brought. Our first condition of usefulness is to take the little we have to Christ, if we have only the little. That which is blessed by Him is equal to all that life’ s occasion demands. 3. After the blessing came the breaking, but it does not seem that the loaves appeared to be more than five after they were blessed. 4. Although there is enough and to spare, there is nothing to be wasted. (J. O. Darien.) Give ye them to eats--Duty not measured by our own ability The narrative suggests and illustrates the following important principle:--THAT MEN ARE OFTEN, AND , PUT UNDER TO DO THAT FOR WHICH THEY HAVE, IN , NO PRESENT ABILITY. God requires no man to do, without ability to do; but He does not limit His requirements by the measures of previous or inherently contained ability. He has made provision in many ways for the enlargement of our means and powers so as to meet our emergencies. And He does this on a large scale, and by system--does it in the natural life, and also in the works and experiences of the life of faith. 1. To begin at the very lowest point, it is the nature of human strength and fortitude bodily to have an elastic measure, and to be so let forth or extended as to meet the exigencies that arise. Muscular strength and endurance are often suddenly created or supplied by some great emergency for which they are wanted. 2. So, also, it is in the nature of courage to increase in the midst of perils and because of them, and courage is the strength of the heart. 3. Intellectual force, too, has the same elastic quality, and measures itself, in the same way, by the exigencies we are called to meet. Task it, and for that very reason it grows efficient. It discovers its own force by the exertion of force. All great commanders, statesmen, lawgivers, scholars, preachers, have found the powers unfolded in their calling, and by their calling, which were necessary for it. 4. The same thing is true, and quite as remarkably, of what we call moral power. Not seldom is it a fact that the very difficulty and grandeur of a design, which some heroic soul has undertaken to execute, exalts him at once to such a pre-eminence of moral power that mankind are exalted with him, and inspired with energy and confidence by the contemplation of his magnificent spirit. The great and successful men of history are commonly made by the great occasions they fill. As with David, so with Nehemiah, Paul, Luther. A Socrates, a Tully, a Cromwell, a Washington, all the great master-spirits, the founders and law-givers of empires and defenders of the rights of man, are made by the same law. 5. How childish, then, is it in religion, to imagine that we are called to do nothing save what we have ability to do beforehand; ability in ourselves to do. We have, in fact, no such ability at all, no ability that is inherent, as respects anything laid upon us to do. Our ability is what we can have, and then our duty is graduated by what we can have. This is the Christian doctrine everywhere. 6. This doctrine opposed to two opposite errors: (1) That of those who think the demand of the religious life so limited and trivial as to require but little care and small sacrifice; and (2) that of those who look upon them as being so many and so great, that they are discouraged under them. (H. Bushnell, D. D.) Between the Lord of life and the famishing multitudes 1. The multitude in a desert place was representative to the Saviour’ s mind of vaster multitudes all over the earth. 2. The bread He supplied for men’ s bodies was suggestive of the bread He was to supply for their souls. 3. The position of the disciples, then, is the position of the disciples still--we stand between the Lord of life and the famishing multitudes. We may still hear the words ringing in our ears, “ Give ye them to eat.” I. IT IS A COMMAND ON BEHALF OF THE . 1. They have not the knowledge of God. 2. They have not the knowledge of the meaning of life. 3. They have not the knowledge of the gospel. II. IT IS A COMMAND FROM THE LORD OF LIFE. 1. He has compassion on the multitudes. 2. He has provided bread for the multitudes. 3. It is His prerogative to command to give to the multitudes, III. IT IS A COMMAND TO AS BETWEEN THE LORD OF LIFE AND THE . 1. We are to sympathize with the multitudes. 2. We are to be the medium of communication between Christ and the multitudes in the distribution of bread. 3. We are to distribute to the multitudes in hope. The day is coming when the Church, turning to its Lord, shall say, “ All the famishing multitudes are now fed.” And after its task has been accomplished it will feel so strong in the means of extension, that there will be, as it were, twelve baskets over, out of which many more might have been fed. (R. Finlayson, B. A.) Confidence in Christ’ s power to supply necessity During the retreat of Alfred the Great, at Athelney, in Somersetshire, after the defeat of his forces by the Danes, the following circumstance happened, which, while it convinces us of the extremities to which that great man was reduced, will give us a striking proof of his pious, benevolent disposition. A beggar came to his little castle there and requested alms, when his queen informed him “ that they had only one small loaf remaining, which was insufficient for themselves and their friends, who were gone in quest of food, though with little hopes of success.” The king replied, “ Give the poor Christian one halt of the loaf. He that could feed five thousand men with five loaves and two fishes can certainly make that half loaf suffice for more than our necessity.” Accordingly, the poor man was relieved, and this noble act of charity was soon recompensed by a providential store of fresh provisions, with which his people returned. (W. Buck.) Valuable fragments A carpet from the San Francisco Mint was burned the other day, and yielded £505 worth of gold dust, which had fallen in imperceptible particles during five years’ use. In life take care of the minute things. These particles of gold seemed little indeed as they floated away, but they made a grand total. So it will be in life if we improve every moment of time, every scrap of knowledge, every, degree of influence, every opportunity of being good, getting good, doing good. A wise economy of the grains of gold brings out massive talents some day. Take care and value apparently mean things. The carpet on which men walked in the Mint was sown with gold, although they knew it not. All our common things, tasks, duties, are full of the dust of gold. That on which men trample would yield crowns for their head if they only knew it and walked wisely. Make the best of a life of trifles, and we shall one day be astonished at the splendid result. God will not let our good doings perish, Small as they may be. He will gather up the fragments to our eternal enrichment. The body will dissolve in the crucible of the grave, the earth be burned up as the carpet was, but the fine gold of true human life shall be gathered up in an eternal weight of glory. (Christian Journal.) Saying grace at meals Without meaning to say that any precise form, or length, or numeration of particulars, is necessary, the following hints may be given as of general application. A grace is a prayer before, or after meat, which circumstances require to be short, but which ought always to be solemn and earnest, never formal and careless. It most expressly requires an acknowledgment of God as the Author of our mercies, and a petition for His blessing along with them: and, as presented by Christians, it ought, in some way, to refer to the gospel, and spiritual things, and be concluded in the name of Christ. At a solitary meal, the duty must by no means be neglected; and then one’ s own private feelings may be more particularly consulted as to the matter. At a social meal, time and circumstances, in what is indifferent, may be, and ought to be, considered; but all present ought to hear what is said, and join heartily in it, else it is no grace, no act of blessing and thanksgiving of theirs. Children ought to be early instructed in the nature of this duty, and taught and accustomed reverentially to discharge it. Nor ought it ever afterwards to be discontinued. The due observance of this pious custom adorns the best furnished table, and ennobles and sweetens the plainest fare. Let no man, who should be expected to discharge this honourable service before others, whether he be minister, or landlord, or other person residing, or taking a lead for the time, be afraid or ashamed so to do. (J. Foote, M. A.) Ancient graces before meals From the earliest time our Lord’ s act has been taken as a model, and the Jewish custom, being reconfirmed by our Lord’ s example, has passed into the practice of Christian people. Examples remain of the early graces, as used both in the Eastern and Western Churches. The “ postolical Constitutions” furnish the following as a prayer at a mid-day meal: “ Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who feedest me from my youth up, who givest food to all flesh. Fill our hearts with joy and gladness; that, always having a sufficiency, we may abound unto every good work, in Christ Jesus our Lord, through whom be glory and honour and power unto Thee, world without end, Amen.” This prayer, slightly varied, is also given to be said after meals in a treatise improbably ascribed to St. Athanasius. (Biblical things not generally known.) Divine provision, human distribution 1. Rationalizing tendency to explain away miracles on natural grounds wrong, but like many wrong things, a perversion of that which is right. It is a right and a reverent thing not to suppose a miracle where natural explanation sufficient. Peculiarity of New Testament miracles, which distinguishes them from absurd stories of apocryphal Gospels, that they all have a worthy purpose, and a purpose which could only be attained by the putting forth a supernatural power. But not everything, even in a miracle, is miraculous, for-- 2. Christ multiplied the loaves miraculously, but He distributed the provision thus made by natural means, human instrumentality. Necessity for miracle ceased with rendering supply sufficient. 3. We have in this an illustration of the method of God’ s working. God does not need human co-operation to enable Him to carry out His purposes. But He chooses that, while the power which makes the provision is of necessity Divine, the instruments of its distribution shall be human. Reason to be found in constitution of human nature and in blessedness of results. Good for recipient that he shall receive from brother-man. More blessed still for distributor. 4. Each disciple would feel it an unspeakable privilege to be made a dispenser of Christ’ s beneficence. Can you imagine one holding back? How is it now, with us? 5. The personal responsibility involved in this law of human instrumentality. Suppose one of the disciples had begun to argue with himself that it was folly to give away what they might need for themselves, and had hidden away a loaf in the folds of his robe, may we not imagine that in that case the reverse of the miracle would have been enacted? “ What I gave I kept,” etc. (J. R. Bailey.) Gave “ kept giving” ; the tense shows the manner in which the increase of bread took place. (A. Cart, M. A.) Luke 9:18-20 Whom say the people that I am?-- One of Christ’ s conferences with His disciples I. OUR LORD’ S PRAYER. Brethren, “ He ever liveth to make intercession for us,” and if “ the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much,” what are we to think of that Intercessor whom the Father heareth always? It was the privilege of Jacob’ s family to have a friend at court, and that friend was their own brother. It was the privilege of David to have a friend at court, and that friend was the king’ s own son. Ah, Christians, both these are combined in your privilege; you have both in Him who now appears in the presence of God for us. II. OUR LORD’ S INQUIRY. “ He asked them, Whom say the people that I am?” This is a frequent question, arising not only from curiosity, but vanity. It would be indeed well if we were anxious to know what God says of us, for “ it is a light thing to be judged of men: He that judges us is the Lord,” and upon His decision depends our happiness or misery. But how frequent is the inquiry, “ What do people say of me?” As to some, the answer would be, “ Why, nothing at all; they do not even think of you; they do not know enough of you to make you the theme of their discourse.” “ But what do people say of me?” asks another. Why, they say, “ Your tongue walketh through the earth; some call you ‘ the Morning Herald,’ and others, ‘ the Daily Advertiser.’” “ But what do people say of me?” asks another. They say that you are very hard-hearted and closefisted; that you are a “ busy-body in other men’ s matters” ; they say that you are such a Nabal that a man cannot speak to you; they say that you are wiser in your own conceit than seven men that can render a reason. It would be well in certain respects if we knew what people say of us--what friends say of us; yes, and what enemies say of us, too. I remember Archbishop Usher says in an address to God, “ Lord, bless me with a faithful friend; or, if not, with a faithful enemy, that I may know my faults, for I desire to know them.” But Jesus was meek and lowly of heart; He, therefore, did not ask this question from pride or vanity. Nor did He ask it from ignorance. He knew all the numerous opinions afloat concerning Him. But this question seems designed to affect them, to bind them to Himself, and to furnish them with further instruction upon it. III. Observe THE CHARGE here given. “ And He straitly charged them, and commanded them to tell no man that thing.” We should rather have supposed that He would have ordered His disciples to go and publish it, but His thoughts are not as ours; “ There is a time for every purpose under the heaven.” It seems to be a general law of heaven, that knowledge of every kind should gradually spread. There are some things which must precede others, and make way for them. It is thus you deal with your children, keeping back for a time things from their knowledge. Thus a wise instructor will do with his pupils, he will teach them as they are able to bear it. And this was the method of our Saviour Himself in dealing with His disciples. Had our Lord then immediately proclaimed Himself as the Messiah, it is easy to suppose what insurrections might have taken place by those who would have endeavoured to make Him a king, and to keep Him from suffering. Besides this, the prohibition was only for a limited period. After His resurrection from the dead He appeared to His disciples, and said, “ Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel, beginning at Jerusalem” ; and Peter, to whom He here spake, filled Jerusalem with His doctrine, and said to the murderers of the Savour, “ God hath made this same Jesus whom ye crucified both Lord and Christ.” IV. Observe HIS . “ The Son of Man must suffer many things, and be rejected of the elders and the chief priests and the scribes, and be slain.” You see, first, that He foreknew them. Secondly, He foretold them, to prepare His disciples for their approach. Thirdly, He describes them. V. Observe His GLORY. “ And be raised the third day.” We have demonstrations in proof of this. See the witnesses as they come before their adversaries. Believers have other kinds of evidences. They have the witness in themselves; they know the power of His resurrection; they have felt it raising them from a death of sin to a life of righteousness; that “ like as He was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so should they also walk in newness of life.” (W. Jay.) The Lord’ s question Who say ye that I am? 1. A question of conscience. 2. A question of controversy. 3. A question of life. 4. A question of the times. (Van Oosterzee.) Jesus will have His disciples 1. Independently recognize Him as the Christ; 2. Voluntarily confess Him as the Christ. (Van Oosterzee.) Jesus the Christ I. THE WORLD’ S “ Whom do men say that I, the Son of Man, am?” So, too, in our own time is there infinite divergence among the builders who reject the chief stone of the corner. To some He is the object of a hatred which, in its malignity, would construe His good as evil--others simply pass Him by as though His claims were unworthy of serious thought--others regard Him with respect and veneration, exhaust the resources of language in their attempts to picture His moral beauty, will do anything but trust in Him as a Saviour. To some He is a man full of imperfections, “ in consistency of goodness far below vast numbers of His unhonoured disciples,” to others He is the perfect man, the noblest of all creatures, everything but God. These diversities may be considered under two aspects. 1. The disbelief of the intellect, including all those phases of opinion held by men who distinctly reject the claim of the Lord Jesus to the honours of the Godhead, who do not regard His life and death as the ground of the sinner’ s acceptance with God, and who deny that faith in Him is the condition of salvation. There is a certain amount of respect which this theorist is willing to pay to our Lord. He tells us that Jesus has done for religion what Socrates did for philosophy, and Aristotle for science, that He fixed the idea of pure worship, and that He has thus exerted a wondrous power over the heart of humanity. Yet he would have us believe that He was Himself a self-deluded enthusiast, who yielded His mind up to the idea of His own Messiahship, until He was driven, though almost unconsciously, to act a part in order to sustain His own pretensions, and whose miracles, where they are not the pure inventions of His evangelists, were deceptions practised either by Himself or by some too-zealous followers to impose on popular credulity. The power which Christianity exerts cannot be ignored, and it is necessary to give some explanation of the way in which it has arisen. It is simply impossible to persuade the world that it owes some of its mightiest impulses, and has consecrated some of its noblest affections, to a being who, after all, was nothing more than the creation of the too luxuriant fancy and the too fond affection of a few Jewish disciples, who had contrived to throw around the humble life of an unlettered peasant of Galilee the unreal glory of legends and traditions. Rationalists, therefore, set before us a Jesus from whom they would have us believe this marvellous power has proceeded. Jesus of Nazareth would thus be removed from the page of history, but this other Jesus would not take His place. 2. We note a more frequent and formidable antagonism in the unbelief of the heart. Disbelief involves a certain exercise of mind as to the claims of Christianity. Unbelief may be nothing more than simple passive indifference. Disbelief says there is no Christ, no atonement, no redemption. Unbelief says if there be a Christ I will not worship Him; though there be an atonement I care not to seek its blessings; though there be a Redeemer, of His salvation I care not to partake. Disbelief take up an attitude of positive opposition, and would fain disprove the claims of the gospel. Unbelief may often use friendly words, and do some kindly deeds on behalf of the truth--may treat it with seeming reverence, and even make generous contributions for its support--will, in truth, do everything but receive its message and submit to its power. The practical issue is the same. How many different causes serve to create this secret distaste of the heart to the religion of Christ. In some it is the all-absorbing passion of worldliness which holds the spirit back from faith. In others the pride of self-reliance revolts against a scheme of salvation which ascribes nothing to human merit, and therefore leaves no place for human boasting. II. THE ’ S . “ And Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.” And in relation to it we observe-- 1. That it is entirely independent of the world’ s judgment. The unanimity of the entire world in an adverse opinion ought not to shake, could not shake the un-doubting confidence of a Christian heart in Jesus. What to Peter were the sneers of Sadducees, the scorn of priests and Pharisees, the various opinions that divided the multitude? Even were the intellect confounded, and the arguments of its logic all silenced, and did the reasoning against the authority of the gospel appear unanswerable, the heart, out of the depths of its own consciousness, would cry out, “ Still there is a gospel, still there is a Christ, and He is my Saviour, my Lord and my God.” 2. It is the expression of a personal faith. The trust which Christ acknowledges, and over which He rejoices, is that which the soul itself reposes in Him, and which is infinitely more than the acceptance of any creed or the association with any Christian Church. It is nothing less than the man’ s own sense of dependence on Christ as a Redeemer. What can be the value of any so-called belief which stops short of this? Orthodoxy, as fair as the marble statue and as cold, as symmetrical in its proportions and as lifeless in its nature, is a wretched substitute for the living trust of a true soul, which may fall into some errors, but has, at least, this one cardinal excellence, that it cleaves to the Lord with full purpose of heart. Such was the spirit that prompted the words of Peter. He was far from being a perfect man. 3. This faith is the fruit of Divine teaching. “ Flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but My Father which is in heaven.” Peter had not reached the conviction thus boldly uttered by means of greater intellectual vigour, or in virtue of any special opportunities of observation, but solely through the grace of God. There were others who knew the great facts in connection with the life and ministry of Christ, on whom they had made no such impression as they had produced on him. It was God alone who made him, as He makes all believers, to differ. The prejudices and passions of the heart, which opposed the acceptance of the gospel, will never yield except to a power Divine. 4. The confession is the necessary outward expression of the heart’ s inward trust. “ With the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.” There are various modes by which a man may confess Christ. But there is one act for which no other can be a substitute--unmeaning, nay, rather, self-condemning if it stand alone--but itself the proper supplement to every other deed of holy service. To confess Christ, we must seek to be like Him, but we must also obey Him by bearing His name, and uniting with His people to show forth His death until He come. My brother, are you one of those who shrink from this special confession of Christ? (J. G. Rogers, B. A.) Alone praying The bloom of the hawthorn or White May looks like snow in Richmond Park, but nearer London, or by the road side, its virgin whiteness is sadly stained. Too often contact with the world has just such an effect upon our piety; we must away to the far-off garden of paradise to see holiness in its unsullied purity, and meanwhile we must be much alone with God if we would maintain a gracious life below. (C. H. Spurgeon.) Alone with God One Sabbath night (says a Scotch clergyman), after discoursing on a very solemn subject which had stirred my own soul, I took a walk before going home. It was clear starlight, without any moon, and the heavens looked down upon me with all their sublime impressiveness. I found myself unconsciously walking in the direction of the mill. I had not gone far when I met a friend pacing slowly up and down by the side of a stream near his house. As soon as I came up, he said: “ Men, I couldna gang hame direct frae the chapel the nicht. After hearing your sermon, I wanted to be alane wi’ God; and I never feel His presence so much as when I am, too, in a nicht like this.” Praying alone:--A minister, visiting the cottages of the poor, met a little boy who had been taught at school the duty, as well as the privilege of prayer. He said, “ Do you love to pray, my little fellow?” “ Oh yes, sir!” “ But in so small a house, with so large a family, when and where do you pray?” The boy answered, “ I go to bed with the others; and when they are asleep, I rise.” “ But then you, yourself, must be sleepy; how do you keep awake?” asked the minister. “ I wash my hands and face in the pitcher where the cold water is kept; then I do not feel sleepy.” What men say of Christ 1. Christ did not ask this question for information. 2. He did not ask it because He desired the applause of men. 3. He did not ask it because He intended to form His course according to the reply. 4. But what He did ask it for was that He might ground His disciples in the deepest faith. The answer to His question suggests-- I. THAT PEOPLE HAVE CHRIST, II. THE HELD OF HIM WERE HIGH AND . III. FOR ALL THAT THEY FELL FAR SHORT OF THE REALITY, IV. IT IS THAT WE SHOULD HAVE THE TRUE OF HIM: that of Peter--“ The Christ of God.” There is a great difference between believing Him to be the Son of God, and believing Him to be Jesus of Nazareth only. 1. You can never trust Him for your spiritual safety if you believe in Him merely as a man. 2. If you believe in Him only as a man, He can never satisfy the yearnings of your spirit. Who is He then? He is not only the greatest of men, but the Son of the Living God, the Saviour of the world. (Thomas Jones.) Jesus--the Christ Peter’ s confession remains the central article of the creed of Christendom. I. IT IS A FACT THAT JESUS OF LIVED. II. IT IS A FACT THAT JESUS OF LIVED AS IN THE FIRST THREE . I specify these three Evangelists because their testimony is sufficient for the traditional picture of Jesus, and because their testimony is admitted by those who regard the fourth Gospel as a book of later date, and of less strictly historic character. Any one who is suspicious of the substantial accuracy of our Gospels cannot better treat his haunting fear of legend and myth than by a study of the apocryphal Gospels. (R. H. Newton) The Christ of God: Tokens of the true Saviour I. WHAT DID PETER MEAN BY THIS ? Undoubtedly he intended to express his belief that Jesus was the true Messiah. II. HOW DID PETER AND THE OTHER DISCERN IN SO A MANNER THAT JESUS WAS NO , AS SOME , BUT WAS INDEED THE CHRIST OF GOD? 1. It may be answered that their common sense was sufficient to discover this. 2. Though common sense might convince them of the excellence of the Saviour’ s character, they had more--there was a Divine impression on their minds giving clearer sight and more satisfactory conviction (See Matthew 16:17). 3. To this may be added, the discernment arising from their own faith, giving them experience of His faithfulness and goodness. 4. We may add, having more to judge upon than Peter had, we know this is the Christ of God by the effects of His death, the wondrous influence it has had, and still has. III. LET US, THEN, TRY OUR HOPES BY THIS OF THE ONLY SAVIOUR ABLE TO REALIZE THEM. It is only the real Christ of God that saves with a real pardon, a real sanctification, a real crown of glory. 1. Is the Christ of the Socinians the Christ of God? 2. Let us look at the Christ of the Antinomians. 3. There is another sort of Christ spoken of by the self-righteous, who regard the Saviour only as a help, in case they cannot sufficiently help themselves. 4. Are not even believers apt to form notions such as injure the character of the Christ of God? (Isaac Taylor of Ongar.) Making known the obscured Christ Not long ago there was a researcher of art in Italy, who, reading in some book that there was a per trait of Dante painted by Giotto, was led to suspect that he had found where it had been placed. There was an apartment used as an outhouse for the storage of wood, hay, and the like. He sought and obtained permission to examine it. Clearing out the rubbish, and experimenting upon the whitewashed wall, he soon detected the signs of the long-hidden portrait. Little by little, with loving skill, he opened up the sad, thoughtful, stern face of the old Tuscan poet. Sometimes it seems to me that thus the very sanctuary of God has been filled with wood, hay, and stubble, and the Divine lineaments of Christ have been swept over and covered by human plastering, and I am seized with an invincible desire to draw forth from its hiding-place, and reveal to men the glory of God as it shines in the face of Christ Jesus! It matters little to me what school of theology rises or what falls, so only that Christ may rise and appear in all His Father’ s glory, full-orbed, upon the darkness of this world! (H. W. Beecher.) Christ the true Messiah At a solemn disputation which was held at Venice, in the last century, between a Jew and a Christian, the Christian strongly argued from Daniel’ s prophecy of the seventy weeks, that Jesus was the Messiah whom the Jews had long expected, from the predictions of their prophets. The learned rabbi who presided at this disputation was so forcibly struck by the argument that he put an end to the business by saying, “ Let us shut up our Bibles, for if we proceed in the examination of this prophecy it will make us all become Christians.” (Bishop Watson.) Luke 9:22 The Son of Man must suffer many things Christ foreseeing the Cross I. We have here set forth in the first place our LORD’ S OF THE CROSS. Mark the tone of the language, the minuteness of the detail, the absolute certainty of the prevision. That is not the language of a man who simply is calculating that the course which he is pursuing is likely to end in his martyrdom; but the thing lies there before Him, a definite, fixed certainty; every detail known, the scene, the instruments, the non-participation of these in the final act of His death, His resurrection, and its date--all manifested and mapped out in His sight, and all absolutely certain. II. OUR LORD’ S OF THE OF HIS . He does not say “ shall,” but “ must.” His suffering was necessary on the ground of filial obedience. The Father’ s will is the Son’ s law. But yet that necessity grounded on filial obedience, was no mere external necessity determined solely by the Divine will. God so willed it, because it must be so, and not it must be because God so willed it. That is to say, the work to which Christ had set His hand was a work that demanded the Cross, nor could it be accomplished without it. For it was the work of redeeming the world, and required more than a beautiful life, more than a Divine gentleness of heart, more than the homely and yet deep wisdom of His teachings, it required the sacrifice that He offered on the Cross. III. Now, note further, HOW WE HAVE HERE ALSO, OUR LORD’ S WILLING OF THE . It is one thing to recognize, and another thing to accept, a needs-be. This “ must” was no unwelcome obligation laid upon Him against His will, but one to which His whole nature responded, and which He accepted. No doubt there was in Him the innocent instinctive physical shrinking from death. No doubt the Cross, in so far, was pain and suffering. But that shrinking might be a shrinking of nature, but it was not a recoil of will. The ship may toss in dreadful billows, but the needle points to the pole. The train may rock upon the line, but it never leaves the rails. Christ felt that the Cross was an evil, but that never made Him falter in His determination to hear it, His willing acceptance of the necessity was owing to His full resolve to save the world. He must die because He would redeem, and He would redeem because He could not but love. So the “ must” was not an iron chain that fastened Him to His Cross. Like some of the heroic martyrs of old, who refused to be bound to the funeral pile, He stood there chained to it by nothing but His own will and loving purpose to save the world. And oh I brethren; in that loving purpose, each of us may be sure that we had an individual and a personal share. He must die, because “ He loved me, and gave Himself for me.” IV. Lastly, notice here our LORD’ S THE OF HIS DEATH. This announcement was preceded by that conversation which led to the crystalizing of the half-formed convictions of the apostles in a definite creed--“ Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.” But that was not all that they needed to know, and believe and trust to. That was the first volume of their lesson-book. The second volume was this, that “ Christ must suffer.” And so let us learn the central place which the Cross holds in Christ’ s teaching. (A. Maclaren, D. D.) On the humiliation and sufferings of Christ Why does the Saviour say He “ must suffer” ? I. It was at that time, and in the sense our Saviour then spake it, necessary for this reason, because otherwise the prophecies that went before concerning Him could not have been fulfilled. This reason our Saviour Himself gives (Matthew 26:53; Mark 14:48; Luke 24:26; Luke 24:44). The same reason is alleged also by the apostles in their preaching (Acts 1 Peter 1:10). II. The death of Christ was necessary to make the pardon of sin. But the death of Christ was necessary, at least in this respect, to make the pardon of sin consistent with the wisdom of God in His good government of the world, and to be a proper attestation of His irreconcilable hatred against all unrighteousness. III. The practical inferences from what has been said are as follows. 1. This doctrine concerning Christ’ s dying for our sins is a strong argument for the indispensable necessity of our own repentance and reformation of life. 2. The consideration of Christ’ s giving Himself a sacrifice for our sins is, to them who truly repent, an encouragement to approach with confidence to the throne of grace in our prayers to God through Him (Romans 8:32). 3. The death of Christ is a great example to us of patient suffering at any time in well-doing, when the providence of God shall call us to bear testimony in that manner to His truth (1 Peter 3:17). (S. Clarke, D. D.) Luke 9:23 If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself Self-denial What is self-denial? A very interesting and very important inquiry to us who are already the subjects of Divine grace. Perhaps we have not got too much of it in modern Christianity. I cannot help thinking that our Christianity in these days would be considerably improved if we had a little more of it infused into our daily lives. What is it? It is just when we begin to yearn for the likeness of Christ, and long to be conformed to His image--when we begin to see clearly that the path which the Master trod was one of humiliation and reproach, and that there are plenty of sorrows to be borne, and plenty of difficulties to be battled with--it is just then that Satan will, if he can, prevent even this new-born light arising within our soul, and endeavour to turn that very light into darkness. And he has succeeded only too well in former ages in diverting these religious instincts into a wrong and a mischievous channel. There are two false theories about self-denial which I want to guard you against. First, there have been some who have fallen into the error of thinking that, in some way or another, self-denial has to do with the expiation of our guilt; that the offering of a life of self-denial is a kind of satisfaction to be made to God for all the sins and all the imperfections of human nature. You cannot accept a theory of this kind without its producing at once its natural effect upon your own experience, which will become then and there intensely legal. For your very self-denial will be submitted to in the spirit of bondage; it will be the sufferings of a slave, and of a felon, and not the willing undergoing of hardship on the part of a reconciled and rejoicing child. Yet again; there is another false form of self-denial which is based upon a misconception of our relation to the pleasurable. It is assumed that we are not intended to enjoy pleasure here. Now observe, this is simply a new edition of the ancient lie which was suggested by the great tempter to our first parents in Paradise. “ Hath God indeed said that ye shall not eat of the trees of the garden? He has placed you in Eden, surrounded you with delights, amid all these varied trees, and all these delicious and charming fruits: and does that God whom you call “ your Father” exhibit any fatherly tenderness towards you in precluding you from the natural gratification of an appetite He has Himself created. How hard must that Father be! How little sympathy there can he in His nature! Can you serve, love, confide in such a God?” This was the venom which was first of all infused into the soul of our first parents. And when such a conception is received, even though it may seem to produce the effect of an austere or self-denying life, it will necessarily have the effect of interfering with our relationships with God. When our views of the character of God are in any way interfered with, and we begin to entertain a false ideal of Him, our whole religious life must suffer from it, because the knowledge of God is the great source both of power and of enjoyment throughout the whole course of our spiritual experience. There is nothing wrong in pleasure in itself; on the contrary. God has “ given us all things richly to enjoy” ; and yet there may be a great deal of harm in the indulgence of pleasure; and unquestionably a large proportion--perhaps far the largest proportion--of the sins that are committed in human history are committed because men deliberately make up their minds to pursue the pleasurable. Having indicated to you these two false forms of self-denial, let us endeavour to consider, if we really can, what it is that our blessed Lord does teach. First of all, let us take hold of the word, and see if we can learn a lesson from it. The meaning would be more accurately conveyed to our minds, as English people, if we use the word “ ignore” instead of “ deny.” The word used in the original indicates such a process all would take place where a man would refuse to admit his own identity. Supposing one of us had a property left to us, and we were brought before the magistrate in order that our personal identity might be ascertained; and supposing that we swore before competent authority that we were not the persons we were supposed to be, and that we actually were; such a process would be a denying of ourselves, and in the act of denial we should be ignoring our own natural right, and thus precluding ourselves from the enjoyment of it. The first step, then, in a really Christian life, or rather, shall I say, in the life of a disciple--for I am not speaking now of first principles--of what takes place, for the most part, at conversion: I am speaking of what takes places in point of time subsequently to conversion: at any rate it comes second in order--if we are really willing to be disciples, Jesus says to every one of us, “ If any man will come after Me.” Before we go any further, let us ask ourselves, “ Is that what we wish to do?” How many a believer, if he were just to speak the honest truth, would say, “ Well, my wish is to go to heaven.” Well, that is a right wish; but it is not the highest wish. “ My wish is to escape condemnation.” Well, it is a right wish; but it is not the highest wish. Is your heart set upon going after Christ? If our minds are really made up to follow Him, then He points out to us the condition of such a relation: and the first is, “ Let him deny himself.” You cannot follow Jesus unless you deny yourself. Why? Because He took the way of self-denial. How did He do it? Was He an ascetic? No. “ John the Baptist came neither eating nor drinking: the Son of Man came eating and drinking.” Did He ever fast? Yes. And when, and why? When He had a very definite object in doing so: when He did so in pursuance of the Divine direction. Did He ever exclude Himself from society. Yes: but why? Sometimes to spend a short season in prayer: sometimes a whole night, so that He might prepare for some serious conflict with the forces of hell, or that He might fit Himself for doing some special work, as when He named His twelve disciples. There was an object in these outward acts of self-denial. He presented to the view of all a body that was under the control of the mind, and a mind that was under the control of God. Had He no sufferings? A great many. Had He no pain? Greater than ever was borne. How was this? He bore pain with an object. He suffered because He had a purpose in view. How was it inflicted? Did He bring it upon Himself? Nay, verily: as I have already said, He never courted pain. How did it come? It came in the fulfilment of the Father’ s will. It came because He would cleave to the path which the Father had laid down for Him. The cross lay in His way, and He took it up: He didn’ t go to look for one: He did not manufacture one for Himself: but there it lay in His way, and He raised it. It was a heavier cross than ever you or I will be called upon to bear--a cross so heavy, that His frail, human nature sank beneath its load: even the tender-hearted women who saw Him toiling up to Golgotha with that terrible burden, burst into tears as they saw the Man of Sorrows pass by, as they watched His tottering steps, and beheld Him sinking under the fearful burden. But although the load may not be so heavy, there is a cross for every one of us. We shall not escape it if we follow Him. Have you made up your minds to escape the cross, dear friends? If that is the determination with which you set out on your spiritual pilgrimage, then you must also make up your mind to lose the society of Jesus. He does not say, “ If any man will go to heaven, let him take up his cross” : but He says, “ If any man will come after Me. I am going forth on My journey: before Me lie the shadows of Gethsemane, and My vision finds its horizon crowned with the Cross of Calvary. There it stands before Me in all its grim horror. I am going on step by step towards it. Every pulsation of My blood brings Me nearer to it; and I have made up My mind; My will is fixed, My face is set like a flint; the will which reigns within My bosom is the will of the Everlasting God Himself. I am content, My God, to do Thy will. And now this is the course I take: and if any of you want to follow Me, you must go the same road. You can only maintain fellowship with Me by placing your steps where Mine have fallen. ‘ If any man,’ --whether he be the highest saint, or whether he be only a newborn babe in Christ--‘ if any man will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.’” (W. H. Hay Aitken, M. A.) The Christian law of self-sacrifice I. THE GROUND OF THIS . Why is it necessary? 1. The Christian law of self-sacrifice is involved in the supreme and universal moral law. Love is, in its essential character, sacrificial. The law of self-sacrifice is only the law of love seen on the reverse. So holy love ascends, from sin and weakness, to Christ the Deliverer, complete in perfection and mighty to save. Thus manifested, it is faith receiving redeeming grace from His willing hand. But this ascending love is in its very nature, an act of self-abandonment and self-devotement. In it the soul accepts its Master, yielding its whole being to the plastic hand of the Perfect One, to receive the impress of His thought and will. It is trust in Him as Saviour: it is complacency in His character, adoration of His perfections, aspiration to be with Him and like Him, submission to His authority, loyalty to His person; but, in every manifestation, it is an act of self-surrender to the mighty and gracious One who is drawing the heart to Himself. The same is the characteristic of love descending and imparting love active in works of beneficence and justice. This needs no argument. I proceed to consider the condition of man under this law. 2. The second ground of the requirement of self-renunciation is the fact that sin is essentially egoism or self-ism. As love is essentially self-abnegation, sin is essentially self-assertion: a practical affirmation of the absurdity that a created being is sufficient for himself; therefore a repudiation, by the sinner, of his condition as a creature, and an arrogating to self of the Creator’ s place. It has four principal manifestations, in each of which this essential character appears. It is self-sufficiency, the opposite of Christian faith. It is self-will, the opposite of Christian submission. It is self-seeking, the opposite of Christian benevolence. It is self-righteousness, the opposite of Christian humility and reverence, the reflex act of sin; putting self in God’ s place as the object of praise and homage. 3. The third ground of the law of self-sacrifice is the fact that redemption--the Divine method of delivering man from sin and realizing the law oflove--is sacrificial. The substance of Christianity is redemption. Its central fact is the historical sacrifice of the Incarnation and the Cross. Christianity, therefore, as a fact, as a doctrine, and as a life, is a sacrificial religion. Thus the law of self-renunciation is grounded in the essential character of Christianity. 4. We may find a fourth ground of the law of self-renunciation in the constitution of the created universe; for this is an expression of the same eternal love which manifests its sacrificial character in Christ. Here our ignorance does not permit us to construct a complete argument; but glimpses of the law we can trace. It appears in the natural laws of society: a child is brought into the world by its mother’ s anguish, and nurtured by parents’ toil and suffering. In turn the child grown up, wears out life, perhaps, in nursing a parent through a long sickness, or in the infirmities of age. It is shadowed even in physical arrange-merits: the dew-drop, which sparkles on a summer’ s morning, exhales its whole being while refreshing the leaf on which it hangs. When, in the early spring, the crocus lifts its pure whiteness from beneath the reeking mould, when the iris puts on its sapphire crown, when the rose unfolds its queenly splendour, it is as if each graceful form said: “ This is all I have, and all I am; this fragile grace and sweetness--I unfold it all for you.” The wild berries nestle in the grass, or droop, inviting, from the vine, as if saying: “ This lusciousness is all my wealth; it is for you.” The apples, golden and red, glowing amid the green leaves, seem to be thoughtfully whispering God’ s own words: “ A good tree bringeth forth good fruit.” The field submits, without complaint, to be sheared of its yearly harvest mutely waiting the return of blessing at the good pleasure of Him that dresseth it; symbolizing the patient faith of him who does good, hoping for nothing again, except from the good pleasure of God, who is not forgetful to reward the patience of faith and the labour of love; on the contrary, the land which bears thorns and thistles, though it is allowed to keep its own harvest to enrich itself, yet (emblem of all covetousness) is rejected and nigh unto cursing. The sun walks regally through the heavens, pouring abroad day; and the stars shining all night, seemingly say: “ We are suns; yet even our opulence of glory we give to others; our very nature is to shine.” Do not say that this is all fanciful. The creation was cast in the mould of God’ s love; and each thing bears some impress of the same. II. THE OR SPRING OF SELF- IN THE LIFE. This is love itself; a new affection, controlling the life and making the acts of self-denial easy. Happiness is not bottled up in outward objects--the same definite quantity to be secured by every man who obtains the object. A man’ s affections determine the sources of his happiness: he finds his joy in what he loves; and is incapable of enjoying its opposite. Whether, then, any course of action is to be a source of happiness or the contrary, depends on what the man loves. The upspringing of a new affection, as the love of a first-born child, opens on the soul a new world of joy. But religion is an affection. It is not a sense of duty, under whose lash the soul creeps through its daily stint of service. While sinful affection rules the heart, religion comes to the sinner an outward law, bristling all over with prohibitions, and every touch draws blood; it goes against the grain of every desire and purpose; every object which it presents, and every duty which it requires, is repulsive; it is self-denial from beginning to end. Then the sinner is incapable of finding enjoyment in religion; and to bid him enjoy it, is, to use an illustration from South, as if Moses had bidden the Israelites to quench their thirst at the dry rock, before he had brought any water out of it. But when the new affection wells up in the heart, all this is changed. A new world of action and joy opens to the man. Religion is no longer an outward law, commanding him against his will; but an inward affection, drawing him in the way of his own inclination. This new affection, which is the principle of Christian self-renunciation, is specifically love to Christ, whether existing as faith in Him or devotedness to Him. It is evident, therefore, that Christian self-denial is primarily that first great act of renouncing self in self-devoting love to Christ. It is the surrender of self to Christ in the act of faith. You are liable to think Christian self-denial less than it is: for you think it is giving some of your property, relinquishing some pleasures, drudging through some duties; whereas, it is immeasurably more than this; it is giving your heart; it is giving yourself. It also appears, as to the method of self-denial, that sin is not torn off by force, but drops off through the growth of the new affection; as a man drops his childish plays, not by a self-denying struggle, but because he has outgrown his interest in them. So always self-denial is accomplished, not by a dead lift, but by the spontaneous energy of love. It further appears that self-denial, in the very act of exercising it, is strangely transfigured into self-indulgence; the Cross, in the very act of taking it up, is transfigured into a crown. It is a false charge that Christianity, by the severity of its self-denial, crushes human joy. Had you emancipated a slave, who had touched the deepest abasement incident to that system of iniquity, and had become contented with his slavery; had you educated him and opened to him opportunity of remunerative industry, so that he is now incapable of being happy in slavery, and shudders at his former contentment, would you feel guilty of crushing his happiness, or pity him for the sacrifice which he has made? But he did sacrifice the joys of slavery; yes, and gained the joys of freedom. An emblem this of the sacrifice which Christianity requires. The joys of sin are sacrificed, the joys of holiness are gained: the snow-birds are gone, but the summer songsters are tuneful on every spray within the soul as it bursts into leaf and blossom beneath the returning sun. All religious services once repulsive, prayer and praise formerly frozen words rattling like hail around the wintry heart, all works of beneficence once chafing to the selfish soul, all are now transfigured into joy. Under the power of the new affection, what was once self-denial accords with the inclination; the soul has become incapable of enjoying its former sins, and regards it as self-denial to return to them, shuddering at them as an emancipated slave at his contentment in slavery, as a reformed drunkard, in the enjoyment of virtue, of home, and plenty, at his former hilarious carousals. Only so far as sin yet “ dwelleth in us” is the service of Christ felt to be a self-denial or recognized as a conflict. But it will be objected that the innocent, natural desires must be denied in Christ’ s service. Here, in justice, it should be said, that self-denial of this kind is incidental to all worldly business, not less than to the service of Christ. Can you attain any great object without sacrifices? Is the enterprising merchant, the successful lawyer, or physician, a man of luxurious ease? It follows, from the foregoing views, that they who enter deepest into the spirit of Christian self-renunciation, are least aware of sacrificing anything for Christ. The more intense the love, the less account of service rendered to the beloved; as Jacob heeded not the years of toil for Rachel through his love for her. Be so full of love that you will take no note of the sacrifices to which love inspires you. Love to Christ, then, is the spring of all acts of self-denial. Love much, serve much. When the tide is out, no human power can lift the great ships that lie bedded in the mud. But when you see the leathery bladders of the sea-weed swinging round, and bubbles and chips float past you upwards, then you know that the tide is turned, and the great ocean is coming to pour its floods into the harbour, to make the ships rise ,, like a thing of life,” to fill every bay and creek and rocky fissure with its inexhaustible fulness. So you may see toils and sacrifices of Christian service seeming too great for your strength; yet if your affections are beginning to flow to Christ, and your thoughts and aspirations are turning to Him, these are indications that love is rising in your hearts, with the fulness of God’ s grace behind it, to fill every susceptibility of your being within its Divine fulness, and lift every burden buoyant on its breast. Here we see the fundamental difference between asceticism and Christian self-renunciation. Asceticism is a suppression and denial of the soul’ s affections; Christian self-renunciation is the introduction of a new affection displacing the old. The former is a negation of the soul’ s life; the latter a development of a new and higher life. The former produces a constrained performance of duty, a restraint of desires which do not cease to burn, a sad resignation to necessary evils; the latter produces a new affection which makes duty coincide with inclination, quenches contrary desires, and quickens to positive joy in the accomplishment of God’ s will. III. THE OF THE LAW OF IN AND SOCIAL . I affirm that individual development and social progress depend on the Christian law of self-renunciation. Recurring again to the two phases of a right character, the receptive and the imparting, or faith and works, compare, as to their practical efficacy in developing each of these, the Christian scheme of self-abnegation and redemption, and the infidel scheme of self-assertion and self-sufficiency. 1. As to the receptive phase of character, or faith. Here the aim must be to realize a character marked by reverence for superior power, wisdom, and goodness, and trust in the same; humility, in the consciousness of sin and need; aspirations for the true, the beautiful, and the good; loyalty to superior authority; and that peculiar courage in the vindication of truth and right which springs from loyal confidence in a leader powerful in their defence. This side of a holy character necessarily receives immediate and large development in the Christian scheme of redemption by Christ’ s sacrifice and salvation by faith in Him. It presents the objects of trust, reverence, aspiration, and loyalty, not as abstractions, but concrete in the personal Christ; and thus introduces the peculiar and overpowering motive of Christianity, affectionate trust in Christ as a personal Saviour. The philosophy of self-assertion has no legitimate place for this class of virtues. Consequently, carried out it cannot recognize them as virtues, but must leave them to be despised as weaknesses or defects; like those ancient languages which give no name to humility and its family of virtues, and name virtue itself not godliness but manliness. It has given us the pregnant maxim that work is worship, in which it expresses its inherent destitution of the element of faith, and declares that the only availing prayer is our own endeavour. But the impossibility of realizing a perfect character, without this class of virtues, is too apparent to admit of their total exclusion. 2. I proceed to consider the practical efficacy of these contrasted schemes in the sphere of works; in the development of active and imparting love, of the energies of a wise philanthropy. Here it is unnecessary to add to what has already been adduced to show that Christianity is effective in this direction. But leaving these considerations I confine myself to this single suggestion: the self-abnegation involved in the sacrificial character of Christianity is the only effectual preservative of the personal rights of the individual in his devotement to the service of the race. How grandly, in contrast, Christianity develops universal love, in its Divine activity, and yet upholds the individual in his Divine dignity. The Christian surrenders himself, without reserve, to God his Creator and Redeemer; and, in love to Him, freely devotes himself to the service of his fellow-men, a worker, together with God, in the sublime work of renovating the world; a worker, with God, in designs so vast, that the very conception of them ennobles; in enterprises so godlike that labouring in them lifts to a participation in the Divine. He is no longer the tool of society, but its Christ-like benefactor. The very fact that he kneels in entire self-surrender to God, forbids abjectness to man. He will not kneel to man, but he will die for him. 3. Besides the efficiency of these schemes in developing the different phases of character, I must consider their efficacy in developing the natural powers of thought, action, and enjoyment. Here we meet the objection that man cannot be developed by negation and suppression; and that self-denial, being a suppression of the soul’ s life, cannot develop it. But this objection is already sufficiently answered; for it has been shown that self-denial is not a negation, but the reverse side of a positive affection. Its power to develop is continually exemplified. The Church and the world are, as the Scriptures represent, antagonistic, not co-ordinate. Each develops the natural powers; but the development which Christianity effects in self-abnegation, is the normal, harmonious, and complete development of man. Here, then, I must contrast the two types, of progress and of civilization, which the two are fitted, respectively, to produce. 1. In the sphere of intellect, the one gives us rationalism and scepticism; the other, faith and stability. 2. In the sphere of social life, the one develops the outward activity, the other the inward resources. The one stimulates grasping and self aggrandizement; the other, the spiritual life. The one is concerned with what a man gets; the other, with what he is. The one is adequate to make man develop a continent; the other, to develop himself and the continent. 3. In the sphere of political life, the one insists on freedom, the other on justice, mercy, and reverence for God. (S. Harris, D. D.) Of self-denial I. First, I am to show you the NATURE of this duty. Soul and body make up ourselves, and consequently, the powers, inclinations, and appetites, of both are to be restrained; and because the mind and outward man are influenced upon by external objects, these also must in their due measure be denied and renounced. The operations of the soul are to be looked after in the first place; and amongst them the understanding is the leading and principal faculty; and, therefore, if this be taken care of, the rest will be more easily governed. But what is it to deny or renounce our understandings? 1. Such things as are unprofitable and useless to us. Those nice and fond speculations, trifling and impertinent, wanton and curious disquisitions, in ranging after which, the mind is diverted from the more solemn employment of religion, are no ways worthy of a Christian. 2. Much more doth it become us to check ourselves in our inquiring after things that are unlawful for us to pry into; and those are either diabolical arts or Divine secrets. But sanctified minds decline the studying of these impious and diabolical mysteries, following the example of the Ephesian converts, who condemned the volumes of their black art to the flames. No excuse can legitimate our inquisitive search into these hellish intrigues, and our familiar conversing with them. And the latter (I mean Divine secrets) are to be admired and adored, not wantonly pried into. These abstruse and profound intricacies are not arrogantly to be ransacked, lest they confound us with their mighty depth, and quite overwhelm us with their glory. We must not think to bring down these lofty things to the level of our shallow capacities; we must not criticize here, but believe. It is true, reason is the first-born, the eldest and noblest of the faculties; and yet you must not refuse to offer up this darling, to sacrifice this Isaac. Let not reason persuade you to search with boldness into those mysteries which are inscrutable, and which ought to be entertained with silence and veneration. We renounce all modesty and humility when we attempt to fathom this abyss. This being rectified, the will (which is the next considerable operation of the mind) will follow its conduct, and become regular and orderly. This self-denial, as it respects the will, is comprehended in these two things, namely, our submitting to what God doth, and to what He commands. In the next place then, the affections are to be denied, for these are part of a man’ s self. But indeed, all of them ought to be tutored and kept in order; their extravagancies must be allayed and charmed, for it is not fit the superior faculties should truckle to these inferior ones; it is absurd and ridiculous that the beast should ride the man, and the slave domineer over the master, and the brutish part have dominion over the rational and Divine. Which leads me to the second main ingredient of the duty of self-denial, viz., the restraining and moderating the bodily and sensual desires. And this discipline consists in setting a strict guard and watch over the bodily senses; for these are so many doors that open to life or death, as the Jewish masters say well. The sight is generally the inlet to all vice. If the motions of intemperance be urgent and solicitous with us, the wise man hath furnished us with an antidote, “ Look not upon the wine,” &c. (Proverbs 23:31). The sense of hearing also must be mortified and restrained, for this is another door at which sin and death do enter. We read that Polycarp used to stop his ears at the wicked speeches of heretics. Stop up all the passages and avenues of vice, especially block up these cinque ports by which the adversary uses to make his entrance. Third thing I proposed, in order to the explaining of the nature of selfdenial, viz., that we must give a repulse to all external invitations whatsoever, whereby we are wont to be drawn off from our duty. And of this sort are. 1. Those which our Saviour takes particular notice of and warns us against Luke 14:26). The bonds of nature oblige us to love our relations, but the injunctions of the gospel engage us to love our souls, and Christ much Matthew 10:37). Who sees not that persons are apt to be perverted by their near relatives? The first and early deceit was by this means. Adam, through the enticement of his wife, violated the Divine command. Solomon was corrupted by his wives (1 Kings 11:4), and Jehoram was misled by his (2 Kings 8:18). So it is particularly recorded of Ahab, who sold himself to work wickedness, that “ his wife stirred him 1 Kings 21:25). Constantine the Great, in his latter days, by the instigation of his sister Constantia, who favoured the Arians, banished good Athanasius, anal sent for Arius out of exile, and favoured his party. The Emperor Valentinian, by the impulse and artifice of his mother, Justinia, was harsh to the orthodox Christians, and countenanced the Arians. Valens was corrupted by his lady, who was an Arian, and made him such a one as herself. Justinian the emperor was wrought upon by his Queen Theodora, who had a kindness for the Eutychian heresy. Irene, who was empress with her son, another Constantine, caused him to favour the worship of images, she being for it herself; and then the second Nicene council was held, which decreed the adoration of images. And there are almost innumerable other instances to prove that persons are apt to be biassed and led away from their duty by the powerful enchantments of their beloved relations. But he that hath attained to that part of self-denial which I am now treating of will not listen to these charmers, though they charm never so cunningly. 2. Self-denial must show itself in renouncing of vainglory, and all inordinate desires of honours and preferments. Ambrose was preparing for flying, when he was like to be chosen Bishop of Milan. Basil the Great hid himself; Chrysostom declined it as much as he could. Gregory Nazianzen, when he was preferred to the bishopric of Constantinople, soon resigned it and retired to a solitary life at Nazianzum. Ensebius refused to be Bishop of Antioch. Ammonius Perota (mentioned by Socrates) cut off one of his ears, that by that means he might avoid the being preferred to a bishopric; for voluntary maiming themselves in those days made them incapable of that office. Nay, we are told, that a good father died with fear as they were bearing him to his episcopal throne. He died for dread of that which others so long for, and are like to die because they miss of it. 3. The sinful pleasures and delights of the flesh are to be abstained from by all the true practisers of self-denial. An eminent instance of this was Joseph, the modest, the chaste Joseph, who repulsed the solicitations of his mistress. 4. Wealth and riches: when you begin to desire and covet them inordinately; when your hearts are set upon them, when by plain experience you perceive that they damp your zeal for religion, and when the ways you make use of for acquiring them are prejudicial unto, and inconsistent with the keeping of a good conscience, you have no more to do in this case than to quit them with a resolved mind, to part with the unrighteous Mammon for durable and heavenly riches. 5. and lastly, To mention several things together, your self-denial ought to discover itself, in renouncing whatever it is that administers to pride, or lust, or revenge. Thus you see your task in all the several parts and divisions of it. Every Christian for Christ’ s sake is to deny his personal self (i.e., his soul, the undue exertments of the understanding, will, and affections; his body, i.e., all its carnal and sensual appetites, so far as they are hindrances to virtue) ; his relative self, his father, mother, wife, friends, and acquaintance, when they tempt him to vice; his worldly self (if I may so call it), houses, lands, goods, possessions, honours, pleasures, and whatever we are wont to set a high value upon; about all these this grace is commendably exercised. II. Secondly, it remains now that I convince you of the of this doctrine, which will appear from these ensuing particulars. 1. It might be said that there is restraint and hardship in all religions that ever were on foot in the world, and so it ought not to be thought strange in the Christian religion. Concerning the Jews it is notoriously known that their lives commenced with an uneasy and bloody circumcision; and by their Mosaic Law they were tied up to an unspeakable strictness all their lives long. They were forbid some meats which were wholesome enough, and very palatable. And afterwards they stinted themselves as to some drinks, and would by no means taste of the wine of idolatrous nations. They were religiously confined as to their garb and apparel, and to their converse and behaviour, their rites and ceremonies, which rendered their condition very uneasy, and almost insupportable. Should we look into the religion of the Gentiles, that will be found to be clogged with very great severities; and though one would think they should have made it as pleasant and enticing as possibly they could, yet he that takes a survey of some of its rites and laws shall discover inhumane and bloody usages, austere and cruel practices prescribed by them. And even among their wisest and soberest philosophers, restraint and self-denial were ever reputed laudable and virtuous. Some of them refused the richest offers of princes, and others of them voluntarily quitted their estates and revenues, and embraced poverty, and reckoned their greatest wealth to be the contempt of it (of which I shall give you some instances afterwards). At this day the people of Africa, on the coasts of Guinea, do all of them abstain from one thing or other, in honour of their fetishes, their little portable gods. Need ] take notice of the deluded sect of Mahomet, to whom is granted a shameful indulgence in most things, yet their prophet would not give them their freedom as to all things, but peremptorily denied them the pleasure of the grapes and of swine’ s flesh. I will not insist here on the superstitious austerities and unreasonable restraints which another sort of men enjoin in their Church, and which are so readily submitted to by great numbers among them. 2. I offer this to your consideration, that there is not any man, sui juris, at his own disposal. If we acknowledge God for our Creator we have upon that very score all the reason in the world to own His right of commanding us. If we received our being from Him, it is but just that all our actions should be governed by Him. Seneca excellently speaks: God is our King and Governor, and it is our freedom to obey Him. On this account it is reasonable that we should not follow our own fancies and humours, and do what we will. But if we consider likewise that we are bought with s price, we may infer thence that we are not our own, but are for ever at the pleasure of Him that ransomed us. A Christian must not do what he would, that is, what his sinful inclinations prompt him to. He must be confined within bounds; he is a person pre-engaged, and must not, cannot be at the beck of every foolish lust. Third consideration, which will evince both the necessity and equity of this Christian duty. To be kept in and confined, to be limited and curbed by holy and just laws, to be commanded to walk by rules, and not to be suffered to be licentious, and to do what we please; this is the most safe, and therefore the most happy condition that can be imagined. It is undoubtedly the greatest kindness that God could confer upon us, to fence us in with laws, and to deny us many things which we eagerly desire; for He sees that what we so exorbitantly crave would be our ruin. How dangerous and mischievous to the world would an unrestrained liberty prove? For as ‘ tis a true aphorism of Hippocrates: The more you nourish morbid bodies, the more hurt you do them; so the more you fasten this inordinate desire in your souls, the more you harm and mischief yourselves. You think it may be to stint and satisfy your desires by giving them what they crave; but that is the way rather to increase them. One pleasure doth but make way for another. And besides, the pleasures which some luxurious persons entertain themselves with now will not be pleasures afterwards. The present delights will in time grow out of date, and some others must be sought for. 4. Still by way of reason consider, that to deny ourselves is the fairest and most convincing evidence of the sincerity of our hearts. By this we give an undeniable experiment of the free and plenary consent of our wills. We give a demonstration of the uprightness of our souls by refraining from whatever is forbidden us by the Divine laws. But Abraham was an instance of the contrary temper; very hard things were commanded him, and he obeyed them without disputing; whence there was a full trial made of his sincerity, and that he loved and feared God in the truth of his heart. 5. Natural reason, common prudence, and every day’ s practice commend unto us this Divine grace of self-denial Wise men in a tempest are persuaded to throw their richest lading overboard, and commit it to the devouring element; that is, they are willing to part with their goods to save their lives. It is reckoned by us as wisdom, to deprive ourselves of some good and ease for a while; to make sure of a greater and more lasting one afterwards. We expose ourselves to danger that we may be safe. To recover health we submit to unpleasant potions; though the physic proves as hateful as the disease, yet we are reconciled to it, by considering that it will be profitable to our bodies afterwards; by the loss of a limb we are content to secure the whole. Prudence and reason justify all this, and shall they not much more reconcile us to the painful remedies which our great and good Physician prescribes? 6. Let me set before you some great and eminent examples to justify the reasonableness of this duty of self-denial First, let me propound to you the example of Christ Jesus, our blessed Lord and Master. “ He pleased not Himself,” saith the apostle (Romans 15:3). And then, what a signal demonstration of self-denial was His Passion and Death. But, besides this, there are other examples, viz., of patriarchs, prophets, apostles, and divers holy men, who have been noted for their self-denial. Let me now provoke you to a godly emulation by some instances even of heathen men. If some pagans could arrive to some measure of self-denial by their natural light and reason, surely you, who profess higher principles, will be ashamed to come short of them. Plato tells us of his master, Socrates, that when his friends and relatives, and those who bore a great affection to him, came to him in prison, and wished him by all means to submit to the Senate of Athens, and thereby to save his life; his answer was: “ Oh, my Athenians, I must needs profess to you, that I greatly respect and love you; but I tell you plainly, I am resolved to obey God rather than you.” Most divinely spoken, and like a true denier of himself. That was a gallant action which is recorded of Care the younger, a notable Roman captain, who, marching through the hot sands of Lybia, grew extremely thirsty; and when one of his soldiers brought him some water in his helmet, which he had got with great difficulty and pains, he poured it out upon the ground, as a testimony that he could boar thirst as well as his soldiers. Xenophon relates of Cyrus, the King of Persia, that he would not so much as see the fair Panthea, the wife of King Abradaras, who was taken in battle, and reserved on purpose for him by one of his captains. And when one told Cyrus that her beauty was worth the beholding, he answered, that therefore it was much more necessary to abstain from seeing it. And truly this Cyrus is propounded by Xenophon as one of the greatest instances of self-denial and moderation in all particulars, many of which you’ ll find distinctly set down by that excellent historian, who also acquaints us that his soldiers and followers were trained up to severity and abstinence, and the exactest self-denial. 7. and lastly: If we would seriously consider that heaven shall be the reward of self-denial, this would make the performance of this duty easy. III. Now, in the third and last place, I will offer those MEANS AND HELPS whereby we may attain to this grace and duty which I have been treating of. If, then, thou wouldest effectually practise this evangelical duty of self-denial which is so excellent and yet so difficult, thou mayest be assisted by such proper helps as these: 1. By daily flying unto God for succour, by praying to be rescued and delivered from thyself, according to that good Father’ s devout Litany, “ O Lord, deliver me from myself; shield me from my own depraved nature; defend me from my own wild desires and affections; teach me to moderate my passions.” 2. Prayer must be backed with endeavours, and your endeavours must begin within. You must strike at the root, the original cause of all the disorders in your life, viz., your inward lusts and desires. Democritus, who, it is said, put out his eyes as a remedy against lust, did, perhaps, doubly enhance their inveiglement by imagination. Your first business therefore is to correct it within, to regulate your desires and inclinations, and then you may safely look abroad, and not fear any actual or outward exorbitances in your lives. 3. Consider seriously the high calling whereunto God hath called you, and wherein you ought so to behave yourselves, that you do nothing which may disgrace and dishonour your profession. 4. Let us weigh our condition well, and often urge it upon our thoughts, that we are but strangers and pilgrims, and being upon our journey, it would be unreasonable to expect that we should have everything according to our mind. 5. It is requisite that you entertain right notions concerning the things of this world. Lastly, act by a principle of evangelical faith, and you will find that that doth wonderfully facilitate the exercise of self-denial. With a steadfast eye look beyond this present life; pierce through this horizon to another world, and you will easily restrain your sinful appetites and desires, you will overcome all the blandishments, suavities, and allurements of this life. Besides, this is that which promotes and facilitates all our duties, and reconciles us to all difficulties, and renders all estates and conditions welcome, and makes Christians yoke easy and pleasant. It is the most excellent, and it is the most useful grace, and that which renders us masters of ourselves. (J. Edwards, D. D.) Christians must expect afflictions Be prepared for afflictions. To this end would Christ have us reckon upon the cross, that we may be forewarned. He that builds a house does not take care that the rain should not descend upon it, or the storm should not beat upon it, or the wind blow upon it; there is no fencing against these things, they cannot be prevented by any care of ours; but that the house may be able to endure all this without prejudice. And he that builds a ship, does not make this his work, that it should never meet with waves and billows, that is impossible; but that it may be light and staunch, and able to endure all weathers. A man that takes care for his body does not care for this, that he meet with no change of weather, hot and cold, but how his body may bear all this. Thus should Christians do; not so much to take care how to shift and avoid afflictions, but how to bear them with an even quiet mind. As we cannot hinder the rain from falling upon the house, nor the waves from beating upon the ship, nor change of weather and seasons from affecting the body, so it is not in our power to hinder the falling out of afflictions and tribulations; all that lies upon us, is to make provision for such an hour, that we be not overwhelmed by it. (T. Manton, D. D.) Self-denial It is not what a man takes up, but what he gives up, that makes him “ rich towards God.” Now what ought a follower of Jesus to give up for his Master’ s sake? 1. Of course every man who would become a Christ’ s man must renounce everything that God’ s Word and a healthy conscience set down as wrong. All sins are “ contraband” at the gateway of entrance to the Christian life. The sentinel at the gate challenges us with the command--“ Lay down that sin!” 2. We must give up whatever, by its direct influence, tends to injure ourselves or others. Here comes in the law of brotherly love. The safe side of all questionable amusements is the outside. 3. Give up whatever tends to pamper the passions, or to kindle unholy desires. Paul’ s noble determination to “ keep his body under,” implies that there was something or other in Paul’ s fleshly nature which ought to be kept under. It is also true of almost every Christian that somewhere in his nature lies a weak point, a besetting tendency to sin; and just there must be applied the check-rein of self-denial Even eminent Christians have had to wage constant battle with fleshly lusts. Others have had sore conflict with irritable, violent tempers. When a servant of Christ is willing to take a back seat, or to yield the pre-eminence to others, he is making a surrender which is well-pleasing to his meek and lowly Master. One of the hardest things to many a Christian is to serve his Saviour as a “ private,” when his pride tells him that he ought to wear a “ shoulder-strap” in Christ’ s army. 4. Another very hard thing for most persons to give up, is to give up having their own way. But the very essence of true spiritual obedience lies just here. It is just here that self-sufficiency, and vanity, and waywardness, and obstinacy are to be met. Here they must be sacrificed to that demand of the Master’ s, that He shall rule, and not we. 5. The last rule of giving up which we have room for in this brief article is, that time, ease, and money must all be held tributary to Christ. In these days of stylish equipage and social extravagance, how few Christians are willing to give up to Jesus the key to their purses and bank-safes I Too many go through the solemn farce of writing “ Holiness to the Lord” on their property, and then using it for their own gratification. (T. L.Cuyler, D. D.) The necessity of self-denial I. ONE’ S COMING AFTER CHRIST. This is the thing which some do aim at, and all should. 1. Christ in the world was in the way to His kingdom, the kingdom of heaven (Luke 19:12). 2. Accordingly He was in the world, not as a native thereof, but as a stranger travelling through it, with His face always away-ward from it, home to His Father’ s house. 3. Our Lord Jesus made His way to His kingdom through many bitter storms blowing on His face in the world, and is now entered into it Hebrews 12:2). 4. There is no coming into that kingdom, for a sinner, but at His back, in fellowship with Him (John 14:6). 5. There is no coming in at His back into the kingdom, without following Him in the way (Psalms 125:5; John 15:6). II. ONE’ S DENYING HIMSELF TO COME AFTER CHRIST. 1. Implies two things. (1) That Christ and self are contraries, leading contrary ways. (2) That the self to be denied is our corrupt self, the old man, the unrenewed part. 2. Wherein it consists. In a holy refusal to please ourselves, that we may please God in Christ. Hence, in self-denial there is (1) Faith and hope, as the necessary springs thereof. (2) A practical setting up of God as our chief end, and a bringing down ourselves to lie at His feet. (3) An unlimited resignation of ourselves unto God in Christ--“ first gave their ownselves to the Lord” (2 Corinthians 8:5). Faith taking hold of God as our God, according to the measure of faith, the whole man is swallowed up in Him; God is all, and we become nothing in our own eyes: the whole soul, the whole man, the whole lot, is resigned to Him. (4) A refusing to please ourselves in anything in competition with God; but denying the cravings of self, as they are contrary to what God craves of us Titus 2:12). III. ONE’ S TAKING UP HIS CROSS, AND THAT DAILY, AND CHRIST. 1. God will lay down the cross for every one who seeks heaven, that they shall have nothing ado but to take it up. “ In the world ye shall have tribulation” (John 16:33). They shall not need to make crosses tothemselves, nor to go out of their way to seek a cross: God will lay it down at every one’ s door. He had one Son without sin, but no son without the Hebrews 12:8). 2. He will lay it down daily to the followers of Christ, that they may have a daily exercise in taking it up, and hearing the cross of the day. “ Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof” (Matthew 6:34). A change of crosses may be got, but there will be no end of them as long as we are here. 3. We must not be choosers of crosses. Every one must take up his own, allotted to him by sovereign wisdom. 4. We must not trample on the cross, and step over it, but take it up Hebrews 12:5). The sullen manliness and Roman courage wherewith some bear their crosses is the produce of self-will, not of self-denial, and speaks contempt of God, not submission to Him. When heaven is our party, it becomes us to stoop, and not to make our faces like flint, lest God be provoked to dash us in pieces, 5. Yet neither must we faint at the sight of the cross; for at that rate we will not be able to take it up (Hebrews 12:5). 6. As we must not go off the road of duty to shift the cross, so we must not stand still till it be rolled out of our way, but take it up, and go forward. It is easy going off the way, but not easy coming on again. There are quagmires of sin and sorrow on every side of the cross, where the shifters of it may come to stick (1 Timothy 6:9). 7. We must take up no more for our cross than what God lays down; not what Satan and our own corruptions lay to it: it will be our wisdom to shovel that off in the first place, and we will take up the cross the easier. 8. But however heavy the cross be, we are not to refuse it. Our very life, which of all worldly things is dearest to us, must be laid at the Lord’ s feet, and we ready to part with it for Christ. 9. We must yoke with the cross willingly and submissively: God can lay it on us, whether we will or not; but He will have us to stoop, and take it up James 1:2). 10. We must bear it, going evenly under it, till the Lord take it down. It is what belongs to the Lord to take it off; it is our part to take it up. There must be an exercise of patience in our coming after Christ (Luke 21:19). 11. We must follow Christ with the cross on our back. (T. Boston, D. D.) Erroneous ideas respecting self-denial There is a current idea that it is a fine thing to go through self-imposed trials--to do what is disagreeable just because it is disagreeable: it is noble to climb Alpine heights--not because the slightest good is to come of your doing so--not because you have the faintest idea of what you are to do when you reach their summit;--but just because it is difficult and dangerous to climb them, and mostmen would rather not. Some people now-a-days appear to think that when our blessed Lord uttered the sublime words which form the text, He meant that we are to be always seeking out a tribe of petty disagreeables--constantly finding out something we don’ t like to do, and then doing it: some people, I do believe, have a vague impression in their minds which they have never put into shape, but which really comes to this, that God would be angry if He saw His creatures cheerful and happy. Oh, the wicked delusion! God is love! When will men believe that grand foundation-truth I You may see something like God’ s feeling in the kindly smile with which the kind parent looks on at the merry sports of his children, delighted to see them innocently happy. But believe it, brethren, there is nothing the least like God, in the sour, morose look of the gloomy fanatic, as he turns with sulky indignation from the sight of people who venture to be harmlessly cheerful. (A. H. K. Boyd D. D.) Various particulars in which self-denial must be practised Let us consider, then, for a little, what is implied in the self-denial to which we are here called. It does not imply a disregard to our own true interest and happiness, for these are always found, at last, to be inseparably connected with the path of duty. But it implies that we are to be denied to ourselves, as depraved and sinful creatures--that we are to be denied to that spirit which would set up ourselves, our own wills, as the rivals of God--that we are to be denied to everything which would, in any way, interfere with our submission and fidelity to Jesus Christ. 1. More particularly, if we are to be the disciples of Christ, we must be denied to our own wisdom. While we are to use the natural wisdom, the reason, which God hath given us, we are not to trust in it as sufficient to show us the way of life. There is more hope of a fool, than of those who are wise in their own conceit. The wisest must not glory in their wisdom. 2. We must be denied to our own righteousness. We must renounce all trust in ourselves, plead guilty before God, and cast ourselves on His free mercy, by faith in His Son’ s righteousness. 3. We must be denied to all obviously sinful propensities and habits. Christ is willing to save us from our sins, but He will not save us in our sins. 4. We must be denied, not only to what is obviously sinful, but also to every earthly enjoyment, when it comes into competition with our regard to Christ. We must, for example, be denied to those bodily indulgences which, though in themselves innocent, when under due restraint, become incompatible with spirituality of mind, when felt to be essential, or very important, to our happiness. We must “ keep under our bodies, and bring them into subjection.” 5. We must be denied to our reputation. Though we are to value a good name in the world, if it can be had consistently with faithfulness to our Lord; we are cheerfully to forego it, if it cannot be retained but at the expense of our conscience. 6. we must be denied to our friends. Should they attempt so to influence us, we must be denied to their solicitations, allurements, and upbraidings. It sometimes happens that the greatest foes to a man’ s salvation, are those of his own household. 7. We must be denied to our property, so as to be ready to undergo any sacrifice of our substance--to our ease, so as to be ready to undergo any torture--to our liberty, so as to be ready to go to prison--and to our very life, so as to be ready cheerfully to lay it down, rather than prove unfaithful to our Redeemer. (J. Foote, M. A.) Increasing need of self-denial They who climb lofty mountains find it safest, the higher they ascend, the more to bow and stoop with their bodies; and so does the Spirit of Christ teach the saints, as they get higher in their victories over self-corruption, to bow lowest in self-denial. (W. Gurnall.) Self-repression It is reported of Agrippina, “ the mother of Nero, who” being told “ that if ever her son came to be an emperor he would be her murderer,” she made this reply: “ I am content to perish, if he may be emperor.” What she expressed vaingloriously, we should do religiously. “ Let us perish, so our neighbours, our relations, and our country, be bettered.” (Archbishop Seeker.) Joy from self-denial A man takes a musical instrument, and undertakes to bring up one part of it so that it shall sound louder than any other part. The moment he brings it up so that it sounds a little louder than the others, people say, “ Yes, I think I do hear that upper note,” but it is so faint that a person has to put his hand to his ear to hear it. But by and by the man works the instrument so that out rolls this upper note so clearly that, although the under notes are there, everybody says, “ Ah, now it has come out, now I hear it; it is all right now.” And a man that denies himself in the truest Christian way does it so that the joy of the upper feelings rolls clear over the pain and suffering of the lower feelings. Where this does not take place, the self-denial is very imperfect. (H. W. Beecher.) Various forms of self-discipline Now, it is evident that the selfishness of one man is not the same as the selfishness of another. There is a man whose self lies in his intellect. He makes much of his own intellect. He is always leaning upon it. Now, that man has much to do, to become a very little child--to become a fool--to submit his own intellect absolutely to the teaching of the Holy Spirit and the Word of God--to receive the deept mind-confounding mysteries of the gospel with a perfect simplicity, and to let Christ be all his wisdom. Another man’ s self is pleasure. That pleasure may take different forms. It may be in the form of the mere indulgence of his bodily appetites; or it may be in worldly amusements; or it may be in the pride of life; or it may be in money; or it may be in business; or it may be in ambition. Now, if that man think that he can take those things, and the spirit of those things along with him; if he think he can enjoy them and religion, he will find the gate too strait for him to pass, and the road too narrow for him to go. That is the man who must be continually learning to say “ No” to himself. He must put the strongest rein upon the neck of his own desires. And even supposing that the pleasures which make that man’ s selfishness are of a very quiet, and, you may say, innocent, character, still that man must remember that self-renunciation in this life must not be confined to those things which are sinful, but much more he must practise it in innocent things--for it is a true thing, that most men perish through the unlawful use of lawful things. Therefore that man must deny himself, even, for instance, in his legitimate business--or in his best domestic affection--or in his holiest or purest of all engagements. But there is another form of self, and the more dangerous, because it takes the aspect of religion. When a man has laid down for himself a certain way of salvation, and begins in his own strength, goes on in his own wisdom, and ends in his own glory, turning his self-complacent virtues into saviours. Oh! how that self must be unloved! He denies self at the foundation, because he will have no other foundation but grace: he denies self in the work, because he will know no other but the finished work of his Saviour: he denies self in the end, because he will have no other end but the glory of God. (J. Vaughan, M. A.) Shirking the cross Rev. E. Paxton Hood in a sermon, “ Crucifixion and Coronation,” said, life means discipline to all of us in some way or other, and if we attempt to shirk our cross, we shall find that God fits one presently somehow or other to our shoulders, the meaning of which we shall find by and by. I am tempted sometimes to throw down the cross; I have said, “ No, I won’ t have it;” but lo! I have found that although I have thrown it behind me and thought I had eluded and escaped it, there was one which still had to be fitted to the shoulders further on, whether I would or would not. (E. Paxton Hood.) Self-denial is the first law of grace -A number of ministers were once dining together after an ordination, and when one of them seemed unduly attentive to the good things before him, he met with the approval of the host, who said, “ That’ s right! To take care of Self is the first law of nature.” “ Yes, sir,” said an old minister sitting near, in reply; “ but to deny self is the first law of grace!” Self-denial is the sign of a Christian The devil once met a Christian man, and said, “ Thou sayest, ‘ I am a servant of God.’ What doest thou more than I do? You say that you fast; so do I. I neither eat nor drink.” He went through a whole list of sins, of which he said he was clear; but at last the Christian said, “ I do one thing thou never didst, I deny myself.” There was the point in which the Christian came out. (C. H. Spurgeon.) Self-sacrifice The mortar with which the swallow builds is the mud from cart-wheels, sides of wells, and such-like places. This it makes more adhesive by moistening it with its own saliva. As the bird parts with a portion of its own substance to cement its nest, so should we be prepared to give up, not that which costs us nothing, but which may involve much self-denial and self-sacrifice on our part, that which we love and cherish most, as Abraham was prepared to offer up Isaac at the bidding of God. (H. Macmillan, D. D.) Cross-bearing That the faith of Christ does in sober truth involve a daily cross-bearing; and that it is agreeable to reason and the Divine nature that thus it should be--this is the proposition which we have to establish. I. The words of Christ are of a nature which, it is probable, the disciples by no means appreciated to the full at the time when they were uttered. Since the crucifixion of the Son of God, the Cross has to us associations of the most affecting kind. We cannot hear of taking up a cross without having our thoughts drawn back to the scenes of the last Passover--the street of grief--the fainting Redeemer--Simon the Cyrenian--the hill of Calvary. To take up a cross is to fulfil the spirit of His sacred life in the lowest depth of His humiliation. Let us consider how it fares with man’ s intellect when he adopts the religion of the Crucified. It is sometimes the custom to assert that everything is easy and plain in the gospel system; that the heart and the conscience respond at once to its revelations and commandments; that the words of Christ do so awake an echo in the human soul that he who has heard can no more doubt than he can doubt his own existence. We believe all this to be quite wrong. Rather do we believe that there are vast difficulties in the way of a thorough and complete adoption of the truth in Jesus. The Bible represents that such would be the case. This is the meaning of all those passages which speak of the Cross of Christ as “ being to the Jews a stumbling-block, and to the Greeks foolishness.” This is the explanation of the fact, again and again dwelt on by St. Paul, that “ not many wise men after the flesh are called.” This is the ground of that mysterious confession of the Saviour himself--“ I thank Thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and revealed them unto babes.” The fact is, the deeper we reflect upon the revelation of God, the more shall we find to baffle and confound. This entry is longer than a Bible module can hold. The rest is at https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/bi/ Luke 9:24 For whosoever will save his life shall lose it The gain of loss I. WHAT IT IS TO LOSE THE LIFE, The term “ lose,” as here employed, is to be understood in the sense of parting with, giving up, surrendering; and when the act is done it is to be treated as something entirely gone, completely lost. You observe another thing here, also, that this is not loss in the ordinary way. Usually when anything is lost, it is either by carelessness, indifference, or bad management, but always against the will of the loser. And even in cases where none of these conditions apply--where the utmost care, attention, and good management are exercised, and losses occur, they would be prevented if possible. But this is not so in the case before us. Jesus says, “ Whosoever will lose his life,” or “ Whosoever will save his life,” showing that in either case the act is deliberate and willingly done. No man is forced into a sinful life, nor is any man compelled to become a Christian; in both cases the will of the actor is left free and unfettered, hence his responsibility. And it is just here where the test becomes so keen and crucial--the life--the entire life. Men would more readily accept discipleship if the conditions were easier, if they could be met half-way with some compromise. But we are met by men who raise objections to this doctrine of complete and unconditional surrender to Christ. They say it is too hard a thing for human nature to do, that men must be more than human to comply with such conditions. That it is more than human nature in itself can accomplish we freely admit. II. WHEN AND IN WHAT DOES A MAN WHO LOSES HIS LIFE FIND IT? 1. The gain is present. Self-love, love of the world, or the things of the world, as a primary and all-absorbing principle of the soul, is ruinous to the entire life--the soul. But the man who sets his affections on Christ and things above--such a man saves his soul and secures his interests for eternity. This consecration to Christ brings present gain. A man gives himself up to the service o! God, and what follows? He keeps his life. A Christian man only can be said to be a living man. He has Divine life in the soul, born of God, re-created after the similitude of the heavenly. Has he not gained then richly, abundantly, yea, transcendently, in giving up his life for Christ’ s sake? 2. The gain is eternal. The advantages and pleasures of a Christian life, as they relate to the present only, more than compensate for any sacrifice which that life involves. But see I how rich to repletion is the Divine method of repayments” he shall keep it to eternal life.” “ Ye are dead,” --referring to the old nature where death unto sin has been produced--“ and your life” --the new creation, or life Divine in the soul--“ is hid with Christ in God” --safe, inviolable, doubly secure, kept by Divine power and grace unto the time of eternal redemption. This is the now--the present, the here, of probation and pilgrimage. And are not these honours and immunities the loss of which worlds could not compensate? Oh then t who would not lose the life for Christ’ s sake? Loss by Christian service is a misapplied term; there is no real loss, for even in those times when we are apt to think the loss or sacrifice the greatest and most severe--when we have to suffer for conscience’ sake, then the compensating principle is working most vigorously in our lives, giving back to us an increase of riches that gold cannot purchase; advancing, refining, and fitting us for nobler company, and writing for us some fresh record that shall give increased emphasis and sweetness to the Master’ s “ Well done” at the last. This subject suggests three thoughts. 1. The present makes the future. The NOW is everything to us. 2. This is the time of preparation. That of retribution. 3. For what, then, are you living--Self or Christ? “ Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” (J. T. Higgins.) Gaining life by losing it The highest life, by thinking of something else than your life at all, of something else than yourself, than either of your own body or your own soul. Quit thinking about yourself and your own life; that is how man shall attain the true life, by losing himself in something else I Now, this is apt to seem a contradiction and a paradox. Is not the first principle in doing anything this--to keep the thing steadily before you and aim right at it? It seems a sort of getting at the true life round a corner; going in one direction in order to get into another. And yet it is not so. See! It is true that with respect to the work man has to do outside himself, “ the way to do it is to keep it directly in view, aim consciously at it. But what I want you to notice is, that the moment you come to the operations of mind or life in man himself, not merely in this higher life Christ speaks of, but in almost any part of his nature, in man himself, the opposite principle comes in--this very principle which seems so paradoxical, the principle that losing the life, letting it go, not thinking of it, is the surest way of saving it. This is not only true with regard to coming to the best for one’ s soul, it is true of coming to the best even in the commonest faculties and qualities of life. Why, you see the truth of it every day even in such a common thing as the operations of mind and memory. You want the name of a person or of a place. It is something you know perfectly well--you know it, you say, as well as your own name. Yet you cannot recall it; no l and the serious thing is that the harder you try to recall it, the more it won’ t come. Dr. W. B. Carpenter tells how some years ago an English bank cashier lost the key of the vault. In the morning it was not on hand. The whole business was at a stand. What must be done? He certainly had it the night before and put it some-where--but where he could not remember. A sharp detective was sent for, and when he had inquired into every circumstance connected with the affair, he said, “ The only way is for you to go home and think of something else.” And the man did go home; probably found it very hard work to get interested in anything else but at last something attracted his attention, set him thinking in quite a different direction, and then, almost directly, it flashed into his mind where he had put it--and all was right. Take a higher operation of mind than mere memory. Did you ever try to cross a stream by some rather awkward stepping-stones, or by a rather narrow plank? Or have you tried to walk at some dangerous height? or, in fact, anything requiring a particularly clear, steady head? If you have, you know that it is to be done exactly by not thinking about it. If you begin looking down at the stepping-stones, or at the water, or at the depth beneath you, and thinking about it, and about how you shall go through with it, you are lost. Whereas, if you are so occupied, thinking about something else, that you hardly notice the stepping-stones; if you are on some errand in which you are so eager that you are not thinking of yourself--that losing yourself is your safety--you may go perfectly safely over places and heights that afterwards, when you do come to think about them, will make you dizzy to look at. There, too, life is safest by not thinking about saving it. Take another matter--the preservation of health. One condition of keeping in good health is not to think about your health, but to be wholesomely occupied with quite other thoughts. Think about your health, begin feeling your pulse, watching your symptoms, considering all the things which might possibly be the matter with you, and you may think yourself into an illness. Why do physicians so often order “ change of scene” and “ something to distract the mind,” but that the patient may be led to lose himself, and so find the health which he could not gain while anxiously thinking of himself? And so, when there is some epidemic about, how true you constantly see it that “ he that will save his life shall lose it.” The most dangerous thing of all is to be constantly thinking and scheming how to escape infection. And so it is even in life’ s most tremendous crisis and trials and perils. In those terrible days of persecution, when the Christian might any hour be taken before some magistrate, and have it put to him to say a word or two cursing and denying Christ, or else to be thrown to the wild beasts in the amphitheatre, or put to any cruel torture that happened to have come in fashion-they believed their Master’ s words. They didn’ t worry themselves about saving life, and they did “ find it.” They found it even here--here, as Christ had said, a hundred-fold, even with their persecutions. The life they had was a nobler, happier life, because it was not occupied in thinking of its own safety, and when they lost it, why, they found it elsewhere. Yes; for these are the things which make us feel man’ s immortality. It is not when I see men in a mad rush for safety; it is not when I see men setting such store on the mere life that they will sacrifice everything for it, that I am most impressed with life’ s deathless quality, but just the opposite. When I road--and every week there is some instance of the kind--of those who inthe wrecked ship or the burning building are content to let life go in order to help others; when I read of such brave men as that lifeboat crew who, a while ago, pushed off into the raging sea out to the stranded ship, and the storm was so awful that their own boat swamped, and eight of them were drowned; or when I hear such a story as that of the colliers in a mine only five miles from my old Lancashire home, where there was one of those awful explosions, and the men from some lower levels came rushing up right into the danger of the deathly afterblast, when the only chance of escape was by another shaft; and one man knew this, and stood his ground there in that dangerous passage warning the men, as they came rushing along, that their only safety was the other way, and when they urged him to go that other way, saying, “ No; some one must stay there to guide the others” --ah! these are the things which make you feel that immortality is real. For the moment you touch this--not self-preservation, but self-renunciation--you feel that there is something in such life of quite other sort than that gross matter by which it can be crushed or burned or drowned; something against which those brute substances and forces are as powerless as a sledge-hammer against steam. I know it seems a hard doctrine. The whole spirit of the common world rises up against it. “ We must look to ourselves,” men say. Yes, I know how natural this is, and I know that it has its place. I do not want to speak intolerantly or condemnatorily about self-interest. Self-interest, if it is not the highest thing, is one of the useful forces of the world. Self-interest has set man grappling with nature, has taught him the arts of self-protection, has trained him to dig and plant, and spin and weave, has sent him sailing and discovering over the world, has raised the human race from savagism to civilization. Yes, and it has all this, and this kind of thing, to do perpetually. Self-interest is one of the great, strong, permanent forces at the base of life! It is part of nature; but it is not the whole of nature, and it is not the highest nature. Through these self-motives, more and more disciplined and restrained, man should be ever rising higher. The world’ s best life and work are always leading on to this higher quality in life and work, of losing self, forgetting self. The very things which begin with self do not come to their best till self is lost, forgotten. If you only want to be a public speaker, well, you may begin your practising for it--perhaps you have to do--by thinking about yourself; but you will never come to any real eloquence till you have got away past that, till in some hour of passionate feeling you have forgotten yourself in your subject. The physician may study medicine in order to earn his own living; “ but he will be a poor doctor who does not by and by become so interested in his work, and in trying to do good to his sick patients, that he constantly forgets himself. So with all the real excelling power in life. The real power to do any worthy thing in the world depends upon our loving that thing more than ourselves. The moment you rise to that--forget yourself, think of something else, some one else--that moment your work takes on a higher quality. The merest hand-worker goes to work for his own need, but he will find his work happier, and do it better, whenever he forgets his own interest in thinking of his employer’ s interest. And just so the employer carries on his business primarily for his own self-interest. (B. Herferd, D. D.) Life through death Men are saved only as they get the better of themselves; the higher self treading down and treading out the lower self. What is virtue but sharp conflict all the way along, and in death alone the victory? If ever we enter heaven, we go in on our shields. To escape with our lives is to lose our lives. To be slain is to live for evermore. I. IT IS OF US TO A LOWER GOOD IN ORDER TO GAIN A HIGHER. Not always, but almost always. The rule is, with regard to the good things of this world, that every man shall take his choice, and then abide by it; selecting some one thing that he wants, and consenting to forego all the rest. The world is thus turned into a vast bazaar, where everything is ticketed and has its price, but where no man makes more than one purchase at a time. Especially true is it that a lower sort of good has to be given up for a higher. If we may not have God and Mammon for our friends, still less may we reverse the order, and have Mammon and God. All that a man may win of earthly good he must be ready to sacrifice, if need be, in order to save his soul. You may call the demand a hard one; but all the analogies of our ordinary life endorse and favour it. As pleasures are trampled on in the chase after gain, and gold has no glitter for a proudly aspiring eye, so is it no more than just and fair that he who would shine as a star in heaven, should be willing to have his light eclipsed and quenched on earth. Pleasure, money, fame--each has its price; and nobody complains of it. The soul, too, has its price. Its redemption is precious. It may cost us all we are worth, and all we covet, to save it. The life temporal may have to be flung utterly away in order to make sure of the life eternal. The men who burnt Polycarp thought they were taking his life. They would have taken it, had they persuaded him to deny his Lord. II. BY FIRST THE HIGHER GOOD, WE ARE TO ENJOY THE LOWER, AND ARE MORE LIKELY TO SECURE IT. The principle I wish to emphasize is, that no worldly good of any sort can be well secured, or properly enjoyed, if pursued by itself and for its own sake. This may be seen in our most ordinary life. The man whose aim is pleasure may, indeed, secure it for a while; but only for a while. It soon palls upon his senses, disgusts and wearies him. So of gold. So also of fame. The best way to win renown is not to work for it, not to think of it, but to work for something higher; to work for God and work for man, forgetting self, and, by and by, it will be found that both God and man are helping us. He that most utterly forgets himself is the one most surely and most warmly remembered by the world. General Zachary Taylor, the twelfth President of the United States, spent forty years of his life in comparatively obscure, but very faithful, service at our Western outposts; receiving no applause from the country at large, and asking for none; intent only upon doing promptly and efficiently the duties laid upon him. By and by events, over which he had exercised no control, called him into notice upon a broader theatre. And then it was discovered how faithful and how true a man he was. The Republic, grateful for such a series of self-denying and important services, snatched him from the camp, and bore him, with loud acclaim, to her proudest place of honour. And this was done at the cost of bitterest disappointment to more than one, whose high claims to this distinction were not denied, but who had been known to be aspiring to the exalted seat. And so through our whole earthly life--in all its spheres and in all its struggles. To lose is to find; to die is to live. It is so also in our religion. We begin by abjuring all; we end by enjoying all. He that loves God with all his heart, and serves Him with all his powers, working here, with a self-forgetting devotion, in the world where God has planted him; willing to forego pleasure, gain, renown, and everything for Christ, shall find that everything comes back to him--if not in its material fulness, yet in its essential strength and spirit. Am I charged with preaching that “ gain is godliness” ? Not so, my friend. But godliness is gain. It begins by denouncing and denying all; it ends by restoring all. First it desolates, and then it rebuilds. In conclusion-- 1. We may learn the great mistake committed by men of the world in their chase after worldly good. They make it an end. They must reverse the present order of their lives. They must learn to seek first the kingdom of God. They must abandon themselves to the service of Christ. 2. We may learn why it is the happiness of Christians is so imperfect. They have only partially denied themselves; are only partially resigned to the love and service of their Maker. Hence they are still in part devoted to the world and fettered by it blot till the last link is sundered, and their souls entirely absorbed in Christ, can they attain to a perfect joy. Not till they are wholly dead can they wholly live. (R. D. Hitchcock, D. D.) Self-seeking involves a cross equally with self-abnegation Does the cross terrify you by its dark shadow? Do those nails seem so sharp--that thorny crown so terrible--that spear so pointed--that darkness so heavy? Stay for a moment, while you listen to these solemn words: “ What is a man profited if he should gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” You are running away from the cross; but there is a cross being prepared for you. Remember that the cross was the instrument of a felon’ s execution; and while you are flying away from the unfriendly shadow, behind the veil there is a ghastlier cross being erected for you. You are asserting your own will, you are loving your own life. You shall “ lose it” ; and lose it by your own irrational self-love. You have elected to live for yourself; you are running after what you conceive, in your own blindness and deception, to be your own self-interest. Do you not find, even now, O child of the world I that your self-interest is deluding you? The bubbles you grasp burst in your hand; the flowers you gather fade at your touch; as you go along life’ s journey you are conscious of the approach--ever becoming more and more terrible--of a cloud of darker sorrow, while the present sense of blank disappointment becomes more and more appalling! Years creep on upon you; the effect of age is felt: the body is shattered as you near the end of your journey; the human strength decays; the joys of life are withered, and, one by one, as your earthly possessions slip from your grasp--then, what then? “ Say ye to the wicked, It shall be ill with him, for the rewards of his hands shall be given unto him.” You have fled from suffering into the arms of suffering; you have endeavoured to escape from the cross, you find your portion in the cross for a!l eternity. Thus it is that the man prepares his own doom, and is himself the creator of his own misery. (W. H. H. Aitken, M. A.) Individuality This is one of those sayings of Christ which have aroused in men opinions of the most opposite character. It has been received on one side with scorn, on the other by reverence. It has been considered as a piece of unpractical sentiment; it has been hailed as the very inmost law of all life. Any spiritual theory of life which tends to destroy, and not to assert, the individuality of man is an inhuman theory, and, as such, false. Any explanation of this text must account for the fact of the desire of individuality. We must keep our individuality, but we ought to take care that it is true and not false individuality. The key to distinguish them from each other is given in the text. It speaks of a double nature in man; one which asserts itself, the other which denies it. The first has a seeming life which is actual death; the second has a seeming death which is actual life; and, therefore, if life is inseparably connected with individuality, the development of the selfish nature is false individuality; the development of the unselfish nature is true individuality. Individuality is not isolation. (Stopford A. Brooke, M. A.) Losing the life to find it It was my fortune last year, in going from Torcello to Venice, to be overtaken by one of the whirlwinds which sometimes visit the south. It was a dead calm, but the whole sky high overhead was covered with a pall of purple, sombre and smooth, but full of scarlet threads. Across this, from side to side, as if directed by two invisible armies, flew at every instant flashes of forked lightning; but so lofty was the storm--and this gave a hushed terror to the scene--that no thunder was heard. Beneath this sky the lagoon water was dead purple, and the weedy shoals left naked by the tide dead scarlet. The only motion in the sky was far away to the south, where a palm-tree of pale mist seemed to rise from the water, and to join itself above to a self-enfolding mass of seething cloud. We reached a small island and landed. An instant after, as I stood on the parapet of the fortification, amid the breathless silence, this pillar of cloud, ghastly white, and relieved against the violet darkness of the sky, its edge as clear as if cut out with a knife, came rushing forward over the lagoon, driven by the spirit of the wind, which, hidden within it, whirled and coiled its column into an endless spiral. The wind was only there, at its very edge there was not a ripple; but, as it drew near our island, it seemed to be pressed down upon the sea, and, unable to resist the pressure, opened out like a fan in a foam of vapour. Then, with a shriek which made every nerve thrill with excitement, the imprisoned wind leapt forth; the water of the lagoon, beaten flat, was torn away to the depth of half an inch; and, as the cloud of spray and wind smote the island, it trembled over it like a ship struck by a great wave. We seemed to be in the very heart of the universe at a moment when the thought of the universe was most sublime. The long preparation, and then the close, so unexpected and magnificent, swept every one completely out of self-consciousness; the Italian soldiers at my side danced upon the parapet and shouted with excitement. For an instant we were living in Nature’ s being, not in our own isolation. It taught me a lesson; it made me feel the meaning of this text, “ Whosoever will lose his life shall find it” ; for it is in such scanty minutes that a man becomes possessor of that rare intensity of life which is, when it is pure, so wonderful a thing that it is like a new birth into a new world, in which, though self is lost, the highest individuality is found. (Stopford A. Brooke, M. A.) Saved by willing to lose Two men were sinking a shaft. It was a dangerous business, for it was necessary to blast the rock. It was their custom to cut the fuse with a sharp knife. One man then entered the bucket, and made a signal to be hauled up. When the bucket again descended, the other man entered it, and, with one hand on the signal-rope and the other holding the fire, he touched the fuse, made the signal, and was rapidly drawn up before the explosion took place. One day they left the knife above, and, rather than ascend to procure it, they cut the fuse with a sharp stone. It took fire. “ The fuse is on fire!” Both men leaped into the bucket, and made the signal, but the windlass would haul up but one man at a time; only one could escape. One of the men instantly leaped out, and said to the other, “ Up wi’ ye; I’ ll be in heaven in a minute.” With lightning speed the bucket was drawn up, and the one man was saved. The explosion took place. Men descended, expecting to find the mangled body of the other miner; but the blast had loosed a mass of rock, and it lay diagonally across him; and, with the exception of a few bruises and a little scorching, he was unhurt. When asked why he urged his comrade to escape, he gave an answer that sceptics would laugh at. Well, they may call it superstition or fanaticism, or whatever they choose. But what did this hero say when asked, “ Why did you insist on this other man’ s ascending?” In his quaint dialect he replied, “ Because I knowed my soul was safe: for I’ ve gie it in the hands of Him of whom it is said that ‘ faithfulness is the girdle of his reins,’ and I knowed that what I gied Him He’ d never gie up. But t’ other chap was an awful wicked lad, and I wanted to gie him another chance.” All the infidelity in the world cannot produce such a signal act of heroism as that. Carlyle refers to this story in one of the chapters of his “ Life of Sterling.” Luke 9:25 What is a man advantaged A wreck Did you ever see a wreck? I remember being one winter’ s night in a little town on the coast of Wales. We were sitting by the fire, cheerful, and we heard, while there, a sudden noise: we looked out into the night; there was a deep fog over the sea; we could scarcely see the cliffs; the wind was very high; there was a drizzling rain; and suddenly we heard the scream of voices; then the boom of the guns over the water; then stillness; then the clatter of feet along the street; the life boat and the life buoy. Human life in danger. We thought we discried the dark mass heaving over the black billows, lit up by the ray of the guns and the blue lights; but the sound of the surf and the roar of the breakers carried all away; they carried her away. That night she struck on the rocks. I walked down in the morning to look at her lying on the beach. I could not help saying, “ How human this is; how life-like!” There she lay--the pride and hope of her owners--stripped; masts, sails, shrouds, broken, ragged, torn, gone; and yet much had depended on her. She had been launched with many hopes and expectations. All gone--a melancholy wreck! The winds howled through as they lifted her ragged shrouds. She could not, as once she might have done, repel them and make them her ministers. The sun shone on her, through her cabin windows and port-hole, but awakened no answering glory oil her deck. She was a lost ship--melancholy type of a lost soul. (E. Paxton Hood.) The loss of the soul I. MAN HAS A SOUL.. The soul touches the highest part of the universe. Nature ministers to nature; but nature cannot feed the soul. The fruits, and grapes, and animals cannot contribute to the being of the soul. God, who is its Parent, can alone minister to it. This is that difference between the spirit of the beast which goeth downward, and the spirit of man which goeth upward. “ We are dust and Deity,” says a great poet: most true. This is our original Turn into reality the great fact that you have a soul. Did you ever hear how Fichte awoke the consciousness of his hearers? He pointed to the wall, the white wall. “ Gentlemen,” said he, “ I want you to think the wall. Have you thought the wall? Now, think the man that thought the wall.” Ah! to do that is to realize to ourselves our soul. II. IT IS OF VALUE. 1. Think of its power. (1) It can sin. It is capable of moral wrong. The soul has had power to disturb the universe. (2) It can suffer. Oh, how it can suffer, remorse, conscience, despair! Nay, we estimate the greatness of the soul by its power to suffer. (3) It can think. How it can think! Can be even wild with thought, and rend the poor body as the strong wind rends oaks and rocks! 2. Its duration. For ever: no cessation. III. A SOUL MAY BE LOST. Nay, every soul in the world is, in fact, lost. Do you know it? do you feel it? Lost! For there are but two ways in the universe--God’ s and man’ s. To be lost, is to wander into the far country, and to attempt to feed an angel nature with the husks that the swine eat. Picture to yourselves the man on the dark moor at night among the mountains--amidst the mists--lost. I may mention four causes of the loss of the soul. 1. Ignorance. 2. Error. 3. Passion. 4. A perverted will: underlying the whole. These are the marks of human nature in its present state. And to be lost, is to love our natural state, and to persist in it. You may remember an incident in the united lives of two men, with whose labours and lives, it may be, you have on the whole little sympathy. When Francis Xavier, the youthful, the eloquent, the noble, was engaged in the pursuits of his varied and wonderful mind, in Paris, in the university, and its more romantic neighbourhood, as he yielded himself to the fascinations mingling around him, there stepped forth and spoke to him a plainly dressed and powerful preacher of lofty bearing and stern deportment, mighty in the assumption of a voluntary poverty--Ignatius Loyola. “ Francis,” said he, “‘ What shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?’” He would not let the youth go. He attended the hall where Xavier delivered his eloquent prelections; he stood and listened before the orator’ s chair; but when the applause had subsided, and the crowd had retired, then he was by the side of the eloquent scholar. He touched him on the shoulder; “ Francis,” said he, “‘ What shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?’” Noble as he was, Xavier was not rich; his affairs became embarrassed; he needed help. The stern apostle of voluntary poverty did not forsake; he came to him with assistance; he produced mysterious aid; but, as he put the bag into the hands of his friend, he was ready with his old question, “ Francis, ‘ What shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?’” They wandered together by the banks of the Seine; they trod together through its groves of trees, and wound their way into its lovely recesses; but even as the enthusiastic and imaginative Xavier paused, enraptured before the spectacle of some astonishing beauty, some enchanting or spell-compelling spot, the voice thrilled through him: “ Francis, ‘ What shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?’” And the reader knows that earnestness subdued the eloquent scholar, and he became the comrade and the disciple of Ignatius Loyola. You have heard of the Mammoth Cave in America--a world under the ground--how many miles no one can tell, rivers, lakes, chambers, immense territories all in darkness, where the light of the sun never penetrated. But nineteen miles within the cave, 450 feet beneath the soil, there was yet a descent called the Bottomless Pit. Down into that no man would go; they had sounded 150 feet, and yet had not reached the depth; no man would go; the guide refused 500 dollars offered him to go. At length a poor man came, a young man, and he determined he would descend. Ropes were procured, and he descended 150 feet. He walked among those galleries of darkness, alone, through those depths and corridors of gloom; he began to ascend, but as he ascended he stayed to throw himself into an interminable cave on the side of the pit; there as he roamed through its fissures, his light went out--no light--and alone in that gloom--lost! And the light was kindled again; but he found, as he began to ascend, the rope was on fire. Ah! what shall he do now? What think you, ascending--looking up to that faint ray, and the fire burning--burning. But it was extinguished, he was saved. But is it not the very picture of a poor soul? In the deep night, the light extinguished. And sometimes those very powers by which he might ascend,--his passions, his intellect, his will, only kindling to ruin him--affections which might unite to God, turning to fire to separate him for ever. IV. And why? FOR THE SOUL MAY BE SAVED. Surely no person will say, “ What shall I do to be saved?” But if so, I have only to say, “ Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.” And if you say, I cannot believe, in a word, I have only to say--say thou to God, “ I will not let Thee go except Thou bless me.” Pray, and you shall not fail to obtain the knowledge of Christ and Him crucified. (E. Paxton Hood.) Save your soul If temporal affairs impose upon a man a large measure of labour and solicitude, how much more should he exercise the utmost diligence in behalf of his eternal welfare? I. NOTHING IS MORE THAN TO SAVE OUR SOULS. 1. The chief solicitude of God is for our salvation. 2. The question is of everlasting weal or woe. 3. Therefore Jesus warns us with the most tender anxiety-- (1) To work our salvation before all things. (2) To work our salvation in all things. (3) To take care of our salvation at all times, and give it our own personal attention. II. NOTHING IS MORE RARE THAN THIS . 1. Everywhere we may observe an all-absorbing care for temporal affairs and earthly possessions. (1) The heart of man is attached to them; restless his desire to acquire them; great his sorrow at their loss. (2) All activity of man is centred upon them. Men are grovelling in the dust. 2. Negligence in regard to heavenly things. (1) No earnest examination of the condition of the soul. (2) Carelessness in regard to the means of salvation. 3. Men appear to be without conscience in regard to the salvation of others. (1) Careless parents, educating their children for everything except the one thing necessary. (2) Cruel seducers, showing heartless indifference to their own and others’ salvation. 4. Let us look back at our past life. (1) How many opportunities has God granted us to save our souls! Time, the Word of God, misfortunes, &c. (2) How little is it that we have given to God! What use have we made of our time? For whom have we laboured? Have we laid up treasures for the world to come? (3) What folly! All our trouble for nothing! We run after the mists and clouds, and neglect that which is everlasting. We frustrate the merciful designs and endeavours of God. (Tourbe.) Money given as the punishment of avarice We read of a Spanish general who was so fond of money that the enemies into whose hands he had fallen, tortured and killed him by pouring melted gold down his throat in mockery of his covetousness. So Satan now often makes money unlawfully acquired, the very means of tormenting the miserable beings who have sold their consciences to obtain it. (Family Treasury.) Bad bargains A Sunday-school teacher, when speaking about the passage, “ Buy the truth, and sell it not,” said that the man who buys the truth, at whatever cost, makes a good bargain. He then asked his boys if any of them remembered an instance in the Scriptures of a bad bargain. These answers were given-- 1. “ Esau made a bad bargain when he sold his birthright for a mess of pottage.” 2. “ Judas made a bad bargain when he sold Jesus for thirty pieces of silver.” 3. “ He makes a bad bargain, who, to gain the whole world, loses his own soul.” The world cannot give peace There was one living who, scarcely in a figure, might be said to have the whole world. The Roman Emperor Tiberius was at that moment infinitely the most powerful of living men, the absolute, undisputed, deified ruler of all that was fairest and richest in the kingdoms of the earth. There was no control to his power, no limit to his wealth, no restraint upon his pleasures. And, to yield himself still more unreservedly to the boundless self-gratification of a voluptuous luxury, not long after this time he chose for himself a home on one of the loveliest spots on the earth’ s surface, under the shadow of the slumbering volcano, upon an enchanting islet in one of the most softly delicious climates of the world. What came of it all? He was, as Pliny calls him, “Tristissimus ut constat hominum,” confessedly the most gloomy of mankind. And there, from this home of his hidden infamies, from this island where, on a scale so splendid, he had tried the experiment of what happiness can be achieved by pressing the world’ s most absolute authority and the world’ s guiltiest indulgencies into the service of an exclusively selfish life, he wrote to his servile and corrupted senate, “ What to write to you, conscript fathers, or how to write, or what not to write, may all the gods and goddesses destroy me, worse than I feel that they are daily destroying me, if I know.” Rarely has there been vouchsafed to the world a more overwhelming proof that its richest gifts are but “ fairy gold that turns to dust and dross.” (Archdeacon Earrar.) A crime against the life of the soul When, a half-century ago, the famous Kaspar Hauser appeared in the streets of Nuremberg, having been released from a dungeon in which he had been confined from infancy, having never seen the face or heard the voice of man, nor gone without the walls of his prison, nor seen the full light of day, a distinguished lawyer in Germany wrote a legal history of the case, which he entitled, “ A Crime against the Life of the Soul.” It was well named But it is no worse than the treatment some men bestow upon their own souls As the poor German youth was at length thrust out into the world for which he was unfitted, with untrained senses in a world of sense, without speech in a world of language, with a dormant mind in a world of thought, so many go out of this world with no preparation in that part of their nature that will most be called into use. (Theodore T. Munger.) Secure the soul What wise man would fetch gold out of a fiery crucible, hazard himself to endless woes, for a few waterish pleasures, and give his soul to the devil, as some Popes did for the short enjoyment of the Papal dignity. What was this but to win Venice, and then to be hanged at the gates thereof, as the proverb is. In great fires men look first to their jewels, then to their lumber; so should these see first to their souls to secure them, and then take care of the outward man. The soldier cares not how his buckler speeds, so his body be kept thereby from deadly thrusts. (J. Trapp.) Luke 9:26 Whosoever shall be ashamed of Me Shame of Christ, and its consequences I. A COURSE OF CONDUCT . “ Ashamed “ of Christ-- 1. In a sceptical rejection of Him as the true Messiah. Jews. Infidels. 2. In an unbelieving disregard to His demands and authority. 3. In a compromising spirit of conformity to the world. 4. In a neglect of His ordinances, and in avoiding a public profession of Him before men. 5. In an unwillingness to consecrate all we are and have to His service. II. THE RESULTS . “ Of Him shall the Son of man be ashamed,” &c. The result shall be-- 1. That such shall receive a similar return. 2. Christ shall be ashamed of them. 3. He will be ashamed of them in the day of His glory. 4. He will be ashamed of them when the dispensation of grace will have ceased for ever. (J. Burns, D. D.) False shame I. WHAT THERE IS IN CHRIST AND HIS WORDS OF WHICH MEN ARE ASHAMED. 1. Their reason is perplexed by the mystery of His person. Indeed, it may be said that Christ was a mystery in His day both to His disciples and to His enemies. If He had not been a mystery, He would not have been a Saviour. No man who is merely on the level of man both in his intellectual and moral nature can be the Saviour of man. It was because the men of His age did not see this truth that they so stumbled at His words. And men may be offended at Him, and ashamed of Him, still, because of the mystery which attaches to His person. They cannot comprehend it. It combines in one the earthly and the heavenly, the finite and the infinite, the human and the Divine; and reason cannot compass and explain a union of such contrasted properties and attributes. It cannot understand even man himself. Still less can it understand God. And yet it would fain understand the God manifest in the flesh. 2. But this is not all. Some men are ashamed because their pride is humbled by the nature of His work. For what is that work? It is a work which assumes, at the very beginning, the helplessness of man. Christ would never have been known by man as a Saviour but for this helplessness. He did not come to vilify our nature, and make it seem worse than it really is. But He did come to convince the world of sin; and this could not be done without humbling the pride of man. II. But let us now consider IN WHAT MANNER MEN MAY SHOW THAT THEY ARE ASHAMED OF CHRIST. There are several ways. The shame of some is seen in their shrinking from the profession of His name. Everywhere you see men shrinking from responsibility, fearing responsibility, declining responsibility. They like to be unattached. They want to feel free. Do not be ensnared in the too common mistake that it is only the becoming a Christian that creates the obligation to live a holy life. That is a duty whether you are or profess to be a Christian or not. Then as to the other aspect of shame, namely, that of shrinking from the responsibility of giving yourself openly to the Church of Christ; you may shrink from it, but the duty remains. We can show our shame of Christ by silence and by compliance. We can show it by silence; by the cowardice with which we hear religion ridiculed, and not rebuke the mocker; by the cowardice which will hear the oath, or the impure and immoral sentiment, and not remind the swearer or the unclean person that neither profanity nor uncleanness will ever enter into the Kingdom of Heaven. There is too much silence among Christian men when the honour of Christ is at stake. And this is all the sadder when you see how courageous men will be in defence of their friends. But men may show their shame of Christ by compliance, as well as by silence. By compliance I mean doing as the world does, not because it is right, but because the world does it. (E. Mellor, D. D.) The monstrous shame 1. In the first place, there are people ashamed of Christ’ s name. They recoil at the idea of being called Christians. If you should call them worldlings, they would stand that. If you should call them half a dozen other names, they would stand that. But the idea of their being Christians! They are embarrassed. They say: “ You are mistaken. Have! ever given any signs of being pious? Did you ever see me weak? Did you ever see me pray? No, sir! I want you to understand that I am not a Christian.” Ashamed of the sweetest name that ever thrilled the lips of men, or woke up the harps of heaven! Ashamed of that name which now costs so little to avow! Ashamed of that name which was the last word on the dying lip of your father, and in the song with which your mother sang you to sleep in those times before the evil days came, when you forgot her counsel and broke her dear old heart! 2. Again: I find that there are people ashamed of Christ in the person of His friends. “ John, who was that you were seen going through the street with yesterday?” He, a worldly young man, flushes up and says; “ I wasn’ t with that Christian man, I just happened to meet him. I wasn’ t walking with him.” Ashamed of being associated with those who are living for eternity, but not ashamed of being with those who live for time! 3. Still, further, there are people ashamed of Christ in His book. If you found them reading a novel, or a poem, or an essay, or any worldly book, they would not be embarrassed; but if you come suddenly upon them and find them reading the Bible, how flustered they would be I how excited I how they would try to have you think they were not reading at all. My text intimates that the tide is going to turn after awhile. The same feeling which some men now have toward God, God will have toward them. “ Whosoever is ashamed of Me and of My Word, of him will the Son of Man be ashamed when He cometh in His own glory, and of the Father, and of the holy angels.” He comes! He will cry through all the earth and the sea: “ Gather together those people who are ashamed of Me. Fetch up their bodies from the graves. Fetch up their souls from the dungeons. Gather them together.” And, as He looks at the long array of blanched faces, He will be ashamed of them. He will remember their cowardice. He will say: “ These are the people who were ashamed of Me. These are the people who, by their comrades and friends, were kept away from heaven, and these are the people who lost their souls. I am ashamed of them, of their sin and cowardice. They cannot sit with My people. They cannot share My royalty. Out with them! Executioners, bind them hand and foot, and cast them into outer darkness. They despised Me. Now, I despise them. Away with them for ever!” (Dr. Talmage.) On dishonouring Christ I. THE CONDUCT WHICH IS HERE . 1. An evasion or rejection of those truths which are peculiar to the gospel, because they are hostile to carnal reason. 2. The refusal to make those sacrifices which an attachment to the gospel of Christ must induce, on account of their apparent harshness and severity. 3. An abandonment of the public profession of religion, because of the hatred or hostility which it would excite. II. THE WHICH THIS CONDUCT . Those who have treated the Saviour with evil, shall, at His glorious coming, receive evil in return. As they have rendered to Him, it shall be rendered to them again. 1. As to the grounds on which this doom proceeds, they are such as will fully justify the sentence given. (1) It is an opposition to the essential principles on which the Divine Governor proceeds in the management of His intelligent creatures. A rejection of the rewards of eternity for those of time. (2) It is base ingratitude against the arrangements of infinite love. It is taking the sceptre of God’ s benevolence and dashing it in pieces against His justice. 2. The results which the view of condemnation thus stated should produce. (1) Engage at once in the service of Christ. (2) Be not ashamed of the testimony of the Lord. (J. Parsons.) Am I ashamed of Christ? I. WHAT IT IS TO BE ASHAMED OF CHRIST AND OR HIS WORDS; AND WHAT IS . TO THAT WE ARE NOT IN SUCH A CASE. Every one who is unwilling to sacrifice his temporal ease and pleasures, or to lay down his life for the sake of Christ, and who neglects to persevere in a steady and uniform course of obedience to His commands, in spite of all opposition and of every indignity that may be cast upon him, is considered--Jesus being His own interpreter--as ashamed of Christ. But somemeek and lowly person, with much humility of mind, and great fear and trembling, may perhaps anxiously and eagerly inquire--not being without hope that he is ready to own his Lord--How must I act in order to prove the sincerity of my desires, and to evidence that such is the language and feeling of my heart? To this it is replied, It is undoubtedly requisite that there should be-- 1. A confession of the Lord Jesus. 2. A readiness to defend the Saviour’ s cause. II. WHENCE DANGER ARISES OF BEING ASHAMED OF CHRIST, 1. The simplicity of the gospel itself. Against this point the men of the world have frequently directed the weapons of their wit and jesting. Thus of old, by the polite and learned Greeks, the doctrines of the gospel were considered as foolishness. And in modern times, the wise of this world affect to sneer at the doctrines of the Cross, and mock at those who espouse truths so humiliating. 2. The character of the age in which the profession of Christ is to be maintained. In the days of our Lord it laboured under this peculiar disadvantage--it was to be professed in an adulterous and sinful generation. Awful as this language may appear, yet it conveys but too striking and faithful a picture of the manners and character of the present age. 3. The sense of fear, under apprehended danger. The cry, as directed against Jesus, that oft falls upon the ear, is, “ Away with this fellow from the earth” ; and the question that follows upon it is, “ Art not thou one of this man’ s disciples?” Immediately we begin to fear, and perhaps reply, “ We know not the man.” Alas! this shameful fear too often gains the victory, and leads the disciples of Christ to base desertion in the hour of danger. III. WHAT WILL BE THE FINAL AND AWFUL OF TO THE DANGER. “ Of him also shall the Son of man be ashamed, when He cometh in the glory of His Father, with the holy angels.” It is justly remarked that the day is coming when the cause of Christ will appear as bright and illustrious as it now seems mean and contemptible; for, as Christ had, so His cause shall have a state of humiliation and exaltation. (Essex Remembrancer.) The folly and guilt of being ashamed of Christ I. WHAT IS IMPLIED IN BEING ASHAMED OF CHRIST. 1. The sentiment of shame. Fear of the world’ s laughter and companions’ sneers. 2. The principal causes. (1) The pain of singularity. (2) The power of ridicule. (3) The want of sincerity. 3. The consideration of the effects, as well as the causes of this principle, will assist in explaining its nature. One of the most certain consequences of being ashamed of duty, is to lead to boldness and audacity in vice. Shame is, perhaps, the evidence of a middle character, neither virtuous nor abandoned. It is always accompanied with some remaining reverence for God. But, judging from the licentious face of the world, that other sinners are not subject to the same constraints, it blushes for this sentiment as for a weakness. Endeavouring to cover its belief, or its fears, it assumes a greater show of infidelity and license than perhaps is real. It soon affects to talk in the style of the world, to divert itself with serious persons, and at length with serious things. But conscious insincerity urges them to extremes to cover its own deceptions. And men being prone to form their opinions, no less than to derive their feelings from sympathy, these mutual appearances contribute to create at length, that vice and infidelity to which all, in the beginning, only pretend. It is, besides, a principle of human nature, that pretence itself will ultimately form those dispositions and habits which it continues to affect. II. THE FOLLY AND GUILT OF BEING ASHAMED OF CHRIST. 1. Its folly. (1) In being ashamed of our true glory. (2) In hoping to avoid, by renouncing religion, an evil which cannot be shunned among men, I mean detraction and ridicule. (3) In fearing an imaginary evil, that is, reproach for real virtue and piety. (4) And finally, in exposing ourselves to infinite danger, for the sake of covering a fruitless deception. 2. Its guilt. (1) In exalting the authority of man above the glory of God. (2) In ingratitude to Him who was not ashamed of us. (3) In promoting vice by the pernicious influence of our example. (S. S. Smith, D. D.) Confessing Christ St. Augustine relates, in his “ Confessions,” that one Victorinus, a great man at Rome, who had many rich heathen friends and relations, was converted to the Christian religion. He repaired to a friend of his, also a convert, and told him secretly that he too was a Christian. “ I will not believe thee to be a Christian,” said the other, “ until I see thee openly profess it in the church.” “ What,” said Victorinus, “ do the church walls make a Christian?” But directly the answer came to his own heart--“ Whosoever shall be ashamed of Me and of My words, of him, also, shall the Son of man be ashamed when He cometh in the glory of His Father, with the holy angels.” He was ready to bear the scorn and persecution of his heathen friends, that he might honour his Master in a public confession of His name. It cost something to acknowledge Christ in those early days of His church. When Symphorianus, a young Roman, acknowledged himself a believer in Jesus, he was seized and scourged nearly to death, and then dragged away to a place of execution. His heroic Christian mother walked by his side, not shrieking and bewailing his terrible fate, as her mother’ s heart prompted, but encouraging and cheering him with such words as these--“ Son, my son, remember life eternal! Look up to heaven! Lift up thine eye to Him that reigneth there! Life is not taken from thee, but exchanged for a better.” At these words, the young man’ s heart was wondrously cheered, as if God had sent an angel to strengthen him. He went to the block with a face all glowing with holy joy. What power but that of a “ living God” could sustain a mother and son in such an hour? What a glorious exchange was such a belief for the dead system of heathen worship in which they had been born! (Biblical Treasury.) Necessity of confessing Christ before men Lieutenant Watson, once a gay young aristocrat, was awakened and converted by means of a few earnest words spoken by a brother officer (Captain Hawtry), when he was actually preparing for a ball. Growing rapidly in grace, and confessing Christ from the first and constantly, he was soon led, while serving in the Peninsula, under Wellington, to hold meetings in his own quarters for the soldiers, who were spiritually in a very destitute condition. Many of these were converted, but the officers generally mocked, calling Lieut. Watson “ Coachie,” saying he drove the mail.coach to heaven, and cry Lug after him, “ Any room for passengers inside or outside to-night?” One officer, however, Lieut. Whitley, a man of refined and scientific mind, behaved differently, and although he reasoned with Watson, he always behaved as a gentleman. The result of quiet conversations was that he became seriously interested in the gospel. “ One day,” says Mr. Watson, “ on his repeating the question, ‘ How am I to get the Spirit?’ I replied, ‘ The Lord said, “ Ask and ye shall receive.”’ He said, ‘ I hope I have asked, though feebly.’ I remarked, ‘ Jesus said again, “ If a man will be My disciple, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me.”’ ‘ What did He mean by that?’ he said. I told him, ‘ You can now have a practical proof. You know we have a public meeting, will you take up your cross and come tonight?’ ‘ Anything but that,’ he said. ‘ But you must remember the words of Jesus,’ I told him: ‘“ Whosoever shall be ashamed of Me and of My doctrine in this sinful generation, of him will I be ashamed when I come in My glory.” ‘ Oh,’ he exclaimed, ‘ I will go.’ And he went under great exercise of mind.” Of course, the going was greatly blessed to him, and soon after “ the Lord filled him with joy and peace in believing. He now became most valiant for the truth, and ceased not, wherever he was, to speak of Jesus.” Tom Baird, the carter Dr. Norman Macleod says: “ Tom Baird, the carter, the beadle of my working man’ s church, was as noble a fellow as ever lived--God-fearing, true, unselfish. I shall never forget what he said when I asked him to stand at the door of the working man’ s congregation, and when I thought he was unwilling to do so in his working clothes. ‘ If,’ said I, ‘ you don’ t like to do it, if you are ashamed’ ‘ Ashamed!’ he exclaimed, as he turned round upon me. ‘ I’ m mair ashamed o’ yoursel’ , sir. Div ye think that I believe, as ye ken I do, that Jesus Christ, who died for me, was stripped o’ his raiment on the cross, and that I--Na, na, I’ m proud to stand at the door.’ Dear, good fellow I There he stood for seven winters, without a sixpence of pay; all from love, though at my request the working congregation gave him a silver watch. When he was dying from small-pox, the same unselfish nature appeared. When asked if they should let me know, he replied, ‘ There’ s nae man leevin’ I like as I do him. I know he would come. But he shouldna’ come on account of his wife and bairns, and so ye munna tell him!’ I never saw him in his illness, never hearing of his danger till it was too late.” Christ’ s threefold glory Not without a purpose, we may reasonably believe, did our Lord take this opportunity of asserting the threefold glory in which He should appear as the anointed Judge of human kind. It becomes us to pause for a few moments, that we may, if possible, distinguish the separate rays of His final manifestation, and then turn them, in their united effulgence, on the cowardly who have been ashamed of their Redeemer. Christ shall come, this is the first assertion, “ in His own glory” ; and this is especially His glory as Mediator, that glory which accrued to Him as the recompense of His sufferings, when He was “ exalted on the right hand of God” ; when He “ received a name which is above every name,” and was appointed to administer the affairs of this creation, as “ head over all things to His Church.” Though the mediatorial kingdom be subordinate to the Divine, and though there is yet to come a day, when all rule, and all authority, and all power having been put down, this kingdom shall be delivered up to the Father--very glorious is it through its appointed duration. There is a glory in it which should especially commend itself to creatures like ourselves; not the glory of the fact, that on a throne of ineffable majesty sitteth one, who, though “ found in fashion as a man,” guides every spring and regulates every movement throughout a crowded universe--but the glory of another fact, that this Man won to Himself this unlimited sovereignty, through humbling Himself for our sakes to the death upon the cross; that He exercises it upon our behalf, that He may shield us from the second death which is due to our sins. Christ “ shall come in His own glory,” forasmuch as it will be in virtue of His office as Mediator, that He shall ascend the great white throne. And wondrously resplendent may we believe that glory shall be, forasmuch as it is to be proportioned to the depth of His humiliation, and to the intenseness of His agony in the garden and on the cross. But nevertheless, this is only the glory which appertains to Him as man; and stupendously brilliant as a creature may be when God puts upon him as much honour as a finite nature can admit, we still imagine something immeasurably more dazzling when we think of the glory of a being who is uncreated and infinite. Oh! Christ shall not come in His own glory alone--the glory appertaining to Him as Mediator and as man; He shall come also in “ the glory of His Father” --the glory of essential Deity, which appertains to Himself as well as to the Father, seeing that He and the Father are one. I know not--tongue cannot express, thought cannot reach--what this glory shall be. It is utterly beyond us even to imagine amanifestation of Divine glory, as distinct from that glory which has been put upon the Son in His creative capacity; but we are distinctly taught the fact, and we know, therefore, that when “ the sign of the Son of man” shall be seen in the heavens, and every eye of the earth’ s mighty population shall be fastened on the descending Judge, there shall be more discernible than a mere human form, however “ clothed with light as with a garment.” It shall be made evident, through some, at present, incomprehensible means, that there is actual Divinity, as well as actual humanity, in the person of Christ; and they who have here striven to prove Him nothing more than a creature, degrading Him to a man, and denying Him to be God, shall read at once their falsehood and their condemnation in that “ glory of the Father” which shall be super added to His own glory as Mediator. Neither is this all. There is yet a third glory in which Jesus Christ shall appear--“ the glory of the holy angels.” What does this mean? Is it only that the Mediator shall be attended with ten thousand times ten thousand ministering spirits? that the firmament shall be lined with the heavenly host, who shall swell His triumphs, and assist at His coronation as universal Lord? More than this is probably intended, seeing that Christ is to be actually invested with the glory of the holy angels; and this He could hardly be if merely accompanied by their processions. But you are to remember that “ all things were made by Christ, and that without Him was not anything made that was made” ; and the angels are the loftiest beings in creation, and may justly be taken as its representatives. So that, to come in “ the glory of the holy angels” may be to come in the glory of the Creator; there may be some immediate and incontrovertible demonstration of the fact that Christ reared the universe, and replenished with animation the infinite void. Or, again, let it be remembered, that “ holy angels “ owe it to Christ that they were confirmed in their allegiance, and are still preserved from apostasy. Then are holy angels a crown upon the brow of the Redeemer, just as the saints who have been ransomed by His blood. Or, once more, the law was given by the ministration of angels. To come, therefore, in the “ glory of the holy angels,” may be to come in the glory of the legal administration; Christ’ s “ own glory” being the glory of the gospel, and His Father’ s the glory of creation. So that to come in the triple glory is to come to judge men according to those several degrees of light under which they lived--that of nature, that of the law, and, the most glorious, that of the gospel. But, whichever be the more correct interpretation, enough is revealed to set in overwhelming contrast the base presence before which men are ashamed of Christ, and the inconceivable magnificence before which Christ shall be ashamed of men. (H. Melvill, B. D.) Witnessing for Christ There are three main failures, so to call them, for which Christians will be condemned at the day of account. I. -- AND WILFUL TO THE GOSPEL LAW. II. FALSE AND MERELY OUTWARD . III. THE FAILURE TO PROFESS THE TRUTH OF WHICH THEY ARE . (Cannon Liddon.) Ashamed for being ashamed of Christ A soldier in hospital three times picked up the hymn, “ Will you go?” which was scattered as a tract, and twice threw it down again. The last time he read it, he thought of it, and, taking his pencil, wrote deliberately on the margin these words: “ By the grace of God, I will try to go. John Waugh, Company G, Tenth Regiment, P.R.V.C.” That night he went to a prayer-meeting, read his resolution, requested prayers for his salvation, and said: “ I am not ashamed of Christ now; but I am ashamed of myself for having been so long ashamed of Him.” He was killed a few months after. How timely was his resolution! Not ashamed of Christ I remember hearing of a young convert who got up to say something for Christ in the open air. Not being accustomed to speak, he stammered a good deal at first, when an infidel came right along and shouted out, “ Young man, you ought to be ashamed of yourself, standing and talking like that.” “ Well,” the young man replied, “ I’ m ashamed of myself, but I’ m not ashamed of Christ.” That was a good answer. (D. L. Moody.) Luke 9:28-36 He took Peter, and John, and James The Transfiguration I. THE SCENE OF THE . II. THE PURPOSE OF THE . 1. Its intent touching Jesus. To strengthen and brace His spirit for the solemn and awful work before Him. 2. Its interest touching Moses and Elias. For them it must have been s new revelation of the wisdom and glory of God in the consummation of His eternal purpose to redeem a ruined world. 3. Its intent touching the three apostles. To rectify their conceptions of the Messiah. III. THE OF THE . 1. It marks the topmost step in the progressive glorification of the manhood of Jesus Christ. His incarnation and His whole life upon earth was a humiliation; but side by side with that humiliation there was going on a process of glorification. From infancy His person had been the centre of a widening circle of epiphanies, manifesting forth the glory which was progressively unfolded within the Tabernacle of His humanity. 2. It may be looked upon as the inauguration of the New Covenant. The law and the prophets, having prepared the way for the new dispensation of grace, mercy, and peace, in Christ Jesus our Lord, now appear as His attendant ministers, at once to bear witness to Him, and to learn from Him the mystery of redemption. Then, having borne their testimony, they give way to Him, and the voice of God proclaims Him the Head and Lord of all. 3. It represents to us the investiture of Jesus Christ as High Priest. The Father was now robing His Son in the sacred garments of His holy priesthood in which he was to offer the great sacrifice for the sins of the whole world, and, bearing upon His heart the names of His people, to pass through the veil--that is to say, His flesh--into the Holy of holies in the heavens, now to appear in the presence of God for us. 4. It is, above all, designed to exhibit to us the transcendent value of the sufferings and death of Christ. In the Basilica at Ravenna there is a mosaic of the sixth century, representing in emblematical form the Transfiguration of Christ--a jewelled cross set in a circle of blue studded with golden stars, in the midst of which appears the face of Christ, the Saviour of the world; while from the cloud close by is thrust forth a Divine hand that points to the cross. Those early artists were right in their reading of this sublime event. The Transfiguration sets the cross of Christ in the centre, surrounds it with a radiant firmament of God’ s promises and of the prophecies of the Old Testament, and shows us the hand of God Himself, emerging from the cloud of glory, and pointing to the cross, as though God the Father would say to man what John the Baptist said, “ Behold the Lamb of God,” &c. 5. It has a prophetic significance. Standing on Hermon with these three apostles, a long vista stretches out before us into the distant future, including in its scope that great day when the Son of God shall take to Himself His power, His mighty power, in order to reign, His kingdom has come at last; and what is the manner of it? It is a kingdom of redeemed men--of men who stand, like Moses and Elias, with Christ in glory, not only redeemed, not only delivered from sin and suffering and sorrow and trial and pain, but transformed and transfigured with that same glory by which the person of Jesus is inwrapped. 6. It has a symbolic import. It symbolizes the transformation and transfiguration of our spirits, our whole reasonable, moral, and spiritual nature into the image of Jesus Christ our Lord. LESSONS: 1. If we desire to behold the glory of the transfigured Redeemer, we must climb with Him the mount of prayer. 2. Learn from this great scene the metamorphic power of prayer. There are holy men and women, even in this our practical age, and amid the practical duties of life, whose spirits are manifestly transformed, who, already in this mortal life, are seen walking with Christ in the white robes of self-renouncing, self-forgetting love. If we ask the secret of this new transfiguration, the answer can only be, “ They are men and women who breathe the atmosphere of fervent prayer. 3. Consecration to the path of suffering is the preparation for transfiguration. Oh, the mystery of suffering, the mystery of sorrow, the mystery of bereavement! Oh, the mystery of loneliness and of affliction in this world! But see, it vanishes like the morning mist, as we discover that they who tread the path of suffering are preparing for the Mount of Transfiguration. 4. Learn from this scene the true relation of the contemplative to the active life. We cannot spend our lives on the mountain-top of vision, or of ecstasy, or of contemplation. “ It is good to be here,” says the mystic, “ beholding the vision of the glory of God.” “ It is good to be here,” says the ascetic, “ apart from the world, disciplining the soul, striving to obtain purity of heart.” “ It is good to be here,” says the student, “ revelling in the contemplation of the Divine, beholding the glory of God in history, in philosophy, in revelation.” But we may not thus spend our lives. The voice of God calls us down to grapple with the problems and the duties which wait on every side. Sin is here! sorrow is here; darkness is here; unbelief is here. If God has revealed to us the glory of His Son, it is not that we should give our lives up to its contemplation, but that we should gain thereby inspiration and strength to tread the path of duty or of suffering, that we should consecrate our selves to the work of lightening the darkness, and lessening the suffering, and cleansing the defilement, of the world in which we live. (R. H. McKim, D. D.) Our Lord’ s Transfiguration I. DOES NOT SEEM TO HAVE BEEN AN UNUSUAL WITH OUR LORD. He was accustomed to go apart to pray--to ascend mountains and spend whole nights in devotion. He was accustomed to meet heavenly beings there. He was accustomed to shine among them as the light. All this we know. But once He took three earthly witnesses, and permitted them to see those angels, who “ strengthened Him,” “ comforted Him,” “ ministered to Him.” Some, at least, of these celestial visitors were seen to be pious men who had lived and tried to do God’ s will on earth. One of them certainly had died, and been buried as we must be. Look upon this lantern. Its sides are unflecked crystal. No stain dims their transparency. Each ray of the Drummond light that blazes within them is perfectly transmitted. Such a light in such a body was Jesus Christ when His soul had been kindled by converse with Moses and Elias upon the theme which at His birth made heaven sing. II. WHAT LESSONS DID CHRIST MEAN TO TEACH HIS BY GOING THUS ONCE INTO HIS CLOSET WITHOUT HAVING SHUT TO THE DOOR? 1. He showed them the source of His strength. Such seasons of communion with heaven are needed by His disciples. We need experiences which remind us that we are citizens of eternity--experiences which will make the events of the markets, of the graveyard, and even wars and rumours of wars, seem insignificant, except so far as they move us to consider the “ sign of the Son of Man.” 2. Christ strengthened His disciples to meet the trouble that was coming, by showing them what that trouble meant. The thing of which blind mortals had been ashamed is the thing in which heaven glories! Is it not plain that the three who most needed this lesson were Peter, who had protested most vehemently against the cross, and James and John the throne-seekers? Peter, who will take the sword to assault the High Priest’ s servant, and the sons of Zebedee, who would call down fire from heaven after the manner of Elijah before he learned to under stand the power of Christ revealed in the still, small voice? Did not these most need to be taught that the throne of God was the cross? 3. But why did the Master forbid the three to mention the heavenly interview until after He should arise from the dead? Plainly a prominent purpose of the peculiar experience granted them was, to impress their minds with a consciousness of the sympathy of the two worlds. The scene must have made them feel that heaven and earth were adjacent mansions in their Father’ s house; that the door was always swinging. As their Master retired at will into celestial companionships, so might they. But this was a lesson they did not need to use while He, their Guide, their Friend, their Saviour, was with them in the world. “ Hear ye Him!” was the sole direction they required then. But the time was drawing near when they would need to use the lesson learned upon the mount. That time was not when Jesus hung upon the cross, not even when His body lay in the sepulchre, but when He had risen, and they would be tempted to believe that their continued communion with Him was an illusion, an “ idle tale.” And most of all after the ascension would they need to realize the meanness of heaven and earth. (W. B. Wright.) The redeeming majesty of the Son of God I. Look AT THE WHICH THE RECORD. 1. The scene was a mountain. It is not fanciful to say that mountains seem to have a power of attracting to themselves the great things of men. Natural advantages may account for it in part; symbolism may account for it still more. Physical qualities present a strong claim, spiritual significance a stronger. However some may disesteem the more ethical relations of the material to the mental, we believe that men have been wise in seeking for types as well as space in the outward world, and that their religions, whether of human origin or of Divine origin, as among the Jews, have embodied a deep truth in connecting their sacred scenes and sacred services with “ the ancient mountains” and everlasting “ hills.” When the Son of God appeared in glory, the earth assisted in his temporary enthronement, and the local accident harmonized with the spiritual import of that august event. 2. The company who witnessed it. These witnesses were enough to attest the reality of the occurrence. But why select them? Why not permit all the apostles to be thus privileged? The answer to this may not be within our knowledge. It is, however, probable that they were more intimately related to the Saviour than the rest. They had a closer fellowship; they could follow Him further; they required a higher preparation. They perhaps loved more, could bear more, and needed more. And thus, as He showed Himself to all of them more than to the world, so He showed Himself to some of them more than to the rest, admitted them to the deeper things of His spirit, and the stranger facts of His history, now permitting them to behold His “ sorrowfulness unto death,” and now permitting them to be “ eyewitnesses of His Majesty.” 3. The time it took place. A week after the conversation which Christ had with His apostles at Caesarea Philippi, when Peter declared his belief in His Messiahship, and Christ predicted His sufferings. The immediate season was night, for what took place on their descent from the mount, Luke says, was “ on the next day.” Hence the disciples fell asleep. The darkness of the night would add to the solemnity of the scene. And may we not say that the seasons of our greatest glory are commonly connected with gloom, and that the evil of sorrow and shame help the display of the moral lustre of the soul? But the circumstance to which I would especially call attention is that Christ was “ praying.” The obvious lesson to be drawn from our Lord’ s conduct on this and other occasions is, that not only should we always indulge the spirit of prayer, but that we should enter into the greatest events and experiences with peculiar devotion; that special temptations, special duties, special sufferings, and special good, all call for special wrestling with God; that instruction and strength, fortitude and honour, are to be sought from heaven; that only in prayer can we meet our enemy, only in prayer can we fulfil our vocation, only in prayer can we drink the cup of love, and only in prayer can we gain “ the Spirit of glory and of God.” II. THE MEANING AND DESIGN OF THIS SCENE. 1. It had immediate reference to the circumstances of Christ and His disciples. Jesus was now entering upon the last and most sorrowful portion of His career. He was probably within a fortnight of His death. It was not the dying, but the attendant circumstances that made the future so distressing to the mind of Jesus. In another sense than that of the disciples, “ He feared as He entered the cloud.” He was chastened and oppressed by the anticipation of His peculiar woe. And, doubtless, “ He received from God the Father honour and glory,” on the occasion before us to strengthen Him for the coming conflict. But if the Transfiguration was meant for Christ, it was also meant for the disciples. It was intended to reward and establish the conviction of His Messiahship, which they had lately expressed. It was intended to extend and exalt their conceptions of His character and work. 2. The Transfiguration has a meaning to ourselves, as a type of the redeeming majesty of the Lord Jesus Christ. (1) Christ is glorified. He is personally transfigured in heaven. He is “ changed,” and His body is a “ glorious “ one, the beauteous type of the restored bodies of all who “ die in” Him. This body exists in light. Ineffable brightness invests it. Far different is it from what is below--the seat of infirmities, and pains, and death. Far different is its state from its state below--one of want, exposure, injury, and shame. (2) The glory of Christ is the glory of One who is appointed the Lord and Lawgiver of man. He is to be “ heard.” (3) It is the glory of One who passed to honour through suffering and death. Most notable is it that the theme of conversation with the glorified messengers was His decease. (4) It is the glory of One whom both worlds obey and honour. (5) It is the glory of One in whom all history finds its meaning and its honour. (A: J. Morris.) Christ’ s Transfiguration I. . 1. The time. Luke says, “ about an eight days,” Matthew and Mark, “ after six days.” The reconciliation is easy. Matthew and Mark spoke of the space of time between the day of prediction and the day of Transfiguration exclusively; Luke includes them both. 2. The persons chosen to attend Him in this action. (1) Why three? (Deuteronomy 17:6.) And as John speaks (1 John 5:7-8) of three witnesses in heaven and three on earth, so here are three and three, three from heaven--God the Father, Moses, “ and Elias; and three from earth--Peter, James, and John. (2) Why those three? Many give divers reasons. Peter had led the way to the rest in that notable confession of Christ (Matthew 16:16), and is conceived to have some primacy for the orderly beginning of actions in the college of the apostles. James was the first apostle who shed his blood for Christ (Acts 12:2), and John was the most long-lived of them all, and so could the longer give testimony of those things which he heard and saw, till the Church was well gathered and settled. 3. The place. A high mountain. (1) For elevation. (2) For secrecy. 4. The preparative action. Prayer. II. THE ITSELF. 1. Its nature. It was a glorious alteration in the appearance and qualities of His body; not a substantial alteration in the substance of it. It was not a change wrought in the essential form and substance of Christ’ s body, but only the outward form was changed, being more full of glory and majesty than it used to be or appeared to be. (1) How His body, now transfigured, differed from His body at other times during His conversing with men. Though the fulness of the Godhead dwelt in Him always, yet the state of His body was disposed so as might best serve for the decency of human conversation; as the sun in a rainy, cloudy day iS not seen, but now as it might cover His Divine nature, it would break out in vigour and strength. (a) It was not a change or alteration of the substance of the body, as if it were turned into a spiritual substance; no, it remained still a true human mortal body with the same nature and properties it had before, only it became bright and glorious. (b) As the substance of the body was not changed, so the natural shape and features were not changed, otherwise how could it be known to be Christ, the shape and features were the same, only a new and wonderful splendour put upon them. (c) This new and wonderful splendour was not in imagination and appearance only, but real and sensible. (2) How His body transfigured differed from His glorified body. (a) Partly in the degree and measure, the clarity and majesty of Christ’ s glorified body is greater and more perfect. Here is a representation, some delineation, but not a full exhibition of His heavenly glory. (b) Partly in continuance and permanency this change was not perpetual, but to endure for a short time only, for it ceased before they came down from the Mount. (c) The subject or seat of this glory differed, the body of Christ being then corruptible and mortal, but now incorruptible and immortal. If Christ’ s body had been immortal and impassible, then Christ could not die. (d) Here are garments, and a glorified body shall have no other garments than the robes of immortality and glory in heaven. Christ shall be clothed with light as with a garment. 2. Its objects. (1) To show what Christ was. The dignity of His Person and office. (2) To show what Christ should be; for this was a pledge with what glory He should come in His Kingdom (Matthew 16:27); it prefigured the glory of His second coming. (3) To show what we shall be; for Christ is the pattern. Uses: 1. Be transformed, that you may be transfigured (Romans 12:2). The change must begin in the soul. 2. Be contented to be like Christ in reproaches, disgraces, and neglect in the world, that you may be like Him in glory. Your Lord is a glorious Lord, and He can put glory upon you. 3. To wean our hearts from all human and earthly glory; what is a glorious house to the palace of heaven; glorious garments to the robes of immortality? The glory of Christ should put out the glory of these petty stars that shine in the world, as the sun puts out the fire. We have higher things to mind; it is not for eagles to catch flies, or princes to embrace the dunghill. 4. Since this glory is for the body, do not debase the body, to make it an instrument of sin (1 Thessalonians 4:4). “ Possess your vessels in sanctification and honour,” do not offend God to gratify the body, as they Romans 14:13) who make provision for the flesh to fulfil the lusts thereof. Do not spare the body to do God service (Acts 26:7). (T. Manton, D. D.) And it would be good for us also to be on the mount, for we, too, need to see Jesus transfigured. Some would say, if they were honest, that while they have a certain admiration for Christ, they see nothing transcendent in Him. To them, He is only one among the great--one among great peaks, not the greatest peak of all. They are not on the height where He is to be seen. They must ascend the mount of knowledge and faith, where alone His glory is to be seen. Have we seen this glory of Christ? Some say, “ These ‘ visions’ are a questionable good; they lead people into saying foolish things.” But notice, it was only Peter who spoke, John and James were silent; Peter would not have spoken so if he had taken time to think, but Peter was always impetuous. What, then, was the good to the disciples? It struck down their prejudices. It silenced all objections to the death of Christ. The Church has come during the last fifty years to enjoy a vision of the Transfiguration of Christ--that is, to see more than in previous centuries the glory of His character and of His death. Christ is more prominent, more precious to the Church than ever before. It has consequently been delivered from many prejudices, and has been prepared for the great trial of anti-christian criticism. It is good for us to be here in this generation. But if this be true of the Church at large, let it be true also of our Own individual lives; you have difficulties about His death. Could you but see His glory these difficulties would vanish away. Or you have trials of various kinds--they will seem insignificant on the Mount of Transfiguration. But how shall we get on to the mount? how obtain these glorious views of Christ? Be guided by the circumstances before us. It comes (1) by abiding with Christ; (2) by free communion with Christ; (3) by increasing devotion to Christ. The excellence of a great picture or book or character does not always appear at first. So we must have some good knowledge of Christ, some acquaintance with Him. Let there be an earnest study of these Gospels. Be not impatient. See how freely these three talked with Christ, There must not only be thought about Christ, but free talk with Him. (T. Goodrich.) Christ’ s Transfiguration I. THE FINAL CAUSE: why Christ was transfigured. 1. The Redeemer of souls lived in great humility upon earth, nay, like an abject worm, to attract the love of the Church; now He changed Himself into this admired excellency, to increase their faith. 2. By this apparition the three disciples saw in what form He would come to judgment. 3. He did represent Himself as the argument and idea of that beautiful reward which the bodies of the just shall have in the general resurrection. 4. For this once Christ looked like a person of Divine authority, that the minds of His disciples might not be cast down with despair at the cross. 5. The fifth and last reason hath a moral use. There is an old man with his corruptions to be metamorphosed in us all, sieur Pelias recoctus, as the fable goes, that Medusa bathed the body of Pelias with certain magical drugs, and from a decrepit old man transmuted him into a vigorous youth. This is a figment; for no man spent his young years so well, to deserve at God’ s hands in this world to be young again: but there is a renovation in the spirit of our mind. God will not know us in our own form and filthiness, unless we put on the image of Christ. As Jacob obtained his father’ s blessing, not in his own shape, but in the garments of Esau; so we must sue our blessing, having put on the righteousness of Christ; then the Lord will receive His servant, and say unto thee, as Jacob did unto Esau, “ I have seen thy face, as though I had seen the face of God.” II. THE CAUSE: from whence this splendour was derived. Many obscure points will come to light by asking this question: Whether this lightsome beauty like the sun did appear in our Saviour’ s face from the beatification of His human soul, or from the union of His Divine nature? First, you must understand, that the great school-man, Aquinas, took the best end of the cause into his hand, when he answered to neither of those two members, but rather to the purpose of the question in this wise, fuit haze qualitas gloria, sed non corporis gloriosi, quia nondum erat immortalis. “ This Transfiguration was a quality of glory, but not of a glorified body, because He was not yet passed death, and raised up to be immortal and impassible.” In this distinction is covertly included, that it was not such a brightness as the soul shall communicate to the body, when it is reunited in a joyful resurrection, hut was created at this time by the Divine power, to foretell and shadow what would come to pass with much increase in the kingdom of God. Praelibatio regni Dei fuit haec transfiguratio, says Cajetan: this was but the landskip or pattern of the true happiness which shall be in the kingdom of heaven. III. THE EFFECT ITSELF. Alteration in His countenance: whiteness and glistering in His raiment. It is a good thing to be safe under His mercy, the cheerful aspect of His face doth promise that at the least. And doth not this glistering transmutation assure us likewise, that His grace shall shine in our hearts to produce the fruits of life: “ The life is the light of men,” says St. John; and by inversion it is true to say, that this light is the life of the soul. Though this which I have said already be much, yet this prospective of admirable light leads us further; for in this transformation the Master did show what liveries of glory the servants should wear when they should dwell with Him in His kingdom for ever. All the light which is in this world is but like a glowworm to the day, in respect of that mirror of marvellous light m the heavenly Jerusalem, where millions of millions of saints shall be gathered together, and every saint shall shine more sweetly and majestically than the whole globe of the sun; what a ravishing object will this be? What an unutterable concurrence of illumination, especially when the sense of the eye shall be perfecter than the eagle’ s a thousandfold, and no whir dazzled to behold it? “ O Lord, what good things hast Thou laid up for them that fear Thee?” And thus you see what the Transfiguration in our Saviour’ s countenance did portend--light of grace in this world; light of glory in the next; and light of mercy and comfort in respect unto them both. I conceive that in the resurrection of the just every countenance which had disfigurement in it, or any monstrous disproportion, shall be new shaped and fashioned. Because that great workmanship of God which abideth for ever shall be conspicuous to all eyes with most exact decency and comeliness. One thing more may yet be expected from me to be spoken of for the finishing of this point. St. Luke says, that “ His countenance was altered, and His raiment glistered.” Was that all? Was His face only glorified with light, and not the rest of His body? There are some that hold how His whole body was transfigured and bedecked with light, and that the radiancy of the body did shine through the garments and make them brightsome; and they think that St. Matthew’ s text doth favour this opinion, for he speaks of a total transfiguration first, and then of the shining of the face--“ He was transfigured before them, and His face did shine as the sun.” The matter is not great which way the truth stands. But I assent to that which is the more probable tenent, that the rays of splendour did issue out from no part of His body, but from His face only. As the face of Christ did bear the greatest share of ignominy at His passion-being buffeted, being spit on, being pricked with thorns--so the honour of His Transfiguration did light upon his face rather than upon any other part of the body, because God’ s reward shall make amends in every kind for the despite of Satan. The Jews did strip Him of His garment, and arrayed Him with a robe of scorn, and then led Him to be crucified: so God, to show that His Son deserved no such ignominy, made His garments to shine with unspeakable purity. As lapidaries say of a true diamond, that whereas other precious stones have some colour in their superficies well known by name, as the ruby and sapphire, but the colour of the diamond cannot be well called by any name, there is a white gloss and a sparkling flame mixed together, which shine fairly, but render no constant colour, so we cannot say what manner of show the raiment of our Saviour did make. These two did concur to the composition of the beauty, candour, and lux; a whiteness mixed with no shadow, a light bedimmed with no darkness. (Bishop Hacker.) Thoughts on the Transfiguration 1. An illustration of the personal character of Jesus, and the connection which exists between eminent devotion and Divine manifestation. 2. The Divine dignity of the Son of God. 3. The susceptibility and the need of Jesus as Son of Man. 4. The importance of Christ’ s redemptive work. Of all subjects that they might have chosen, the heavenly visitants talk with Him about His coming death. 5. Christ’ s supremacy and authority. “ Hear Him.” 6. From the whole incident we may learn-- (1) The weakness and poverty of humanity. (2) What a grand and glorious thing it may become. (T. Binney.) Lessons 1. This event gives us an insight into the unseen world. 2. An assurance of Christ’ s Divine personality. 3. The subject of converse was the Atonement. 4. It is quite in accordance with man’ s imperfect condition at present, that Peter’ s rapture so soon came to a close. 5. The Transfiguration suggests to us the nature of our own condition hereafter. (F. Jacox.) The mountain where the Transfiguration took place Where did the Transfiguration take place? An old tradition tells us on Mount Tabor; but though I am always reluctant to refuse assent to these traditions if I can find reason to believe them, yet no traditions are of apostolic authority, and I cannot believe that which assigns the Transfiguration to Mount Tabor. We know that the preceding conversation took place at Csesarea Philippi. Now this is far off from Mount Tabor, but near to that city is a mount which may be called the mount of the Holy Land, the snow-clad mount of Hermon. And what place so fitting for a retreat as that? We have no hint in the Bible of any long journey taken from Caesarea Philippi to Mount Tabor of the tradition, while the solitude which our Lord would naturally seek would not be found there, for Mount Tabor was fortified by stations and garrisons of Roman soldiery. Then, again, the whole setting of the story, according to the imagery of St. Luke, seems to imply that the incident took place on some snow-clad height. Tabor is not snow-clad, but all the year through the heights of Hermon are clad with snow. There is no doubt, then, to me, that one of the lower slopes of Hermon was the scene of the Transfiguration of our Lord. (Canon Body.) Arguments in favour of Hermon as the scene of the Transfiguration There can be little doubt that Mount Hermon (Jebel es Sheikh) is intended, in spite of the persistent, but perfectly baseless tradition which points to Tabor. For (1) Mount Hermon is easily within six days’ reach of Ceesarea Philippi, and (2) could alone be called a “ lofty mountain” (being 10,000 feet high), or “ the mountain,” when the last scene had been at Caesarea. Further (3), Tabor, at that time, in all probability was (Jos. B. J. 1.8, § 7, Vit. 37), as from time immemorial it had been (Joshua 19:12), an inhabited and fortified place, wholly unsuited for a scene so solemn; and (4) was moreover in Galilee, which is excluded by Mark 9:30. “ The mountain’ is indeed the meaning of the name “ Hermon,” which being already consecrated by Hebrew poetry (Psalms 133:3), and under its old names of Sion and Sirion, or “ breastplate” (Deuteronomy 4:48; Deuteronomy 3:9; Son 4:8), was well suited for the Transfiguration by its height, seclusion, and snowy splendour. (Archdeacon Farrar.) Arguments in favour of Tabor as the scene of the Transfiguration The tradition which has pointed to Tabor has been often contradicted, yet the objections raised against this are, according to our opinion, not well founded. That this tradition existed even in the time of Jerome, and that the Empress Helena for this reason erected a church on Tabor, proves of itself not much, it is true. Yet it may still be called remark able, that tradition designates a place so far distant from Caesarea Philippi, where our Saviour had just before been found (Matthew 16:13). Without sufficient ground in the apostolic tradition, it appears probable that they would not have assumed the theatre of the one event to be so far removed from that of the other. For the other mountains which have been thought of instead of Tabor, viz., Hermon, or Paneas, there is almost less yet to be said. Yet it must not be forgotten that about a week intervened between the Transfiguration and the first prediction of the Passion, in which time the Saviour may very well have traversed the distance from Caesarea to Tabor, which, it is true, is considerable. If the Saviour, moreover, after He left the mountain, returned to Capernaum (Matthew 17:24-27), this town was scarcely a day’ s journey from Tabor. The single important difficulty is that raised by De Wette, following Robinson, that at this time there was a fortification on the summit of Tabor. But although Antiochus the Great fortified the mountain, 219 B.C., it is not by any means proved that in the time of Jesus this fortification was yet standing, and though, according to Josephus, this mountain, in the Jewish war, was fortified against the Romans, this, at all events, took place forty years later. Traces of these fortifications are found apparently in the ruins which have since been discovered, especially on the south-western declivity; but in no case is it proved that the whole mountain was built over in the time of Jesus. (Van Oosterzee.) Why a mountain was chosen for the Transfiguration A valley is as capable of God’ s glory as a mountain, for “ God is God of the valleys as well as of the hills,” whatsoever Benhadad, the king of Syria, said to the contrary; but Christ chose this high hill as well for the exercise of prayer, as for the mystery of His Transformation. There may seem to be two intentions that He desired such a place for prayer, quia coeli conspectus liberior, quia solitude major: First, upon the higher ground there is the more free contemplation of heaven, the place to which we lift up our eyes and our hearts in prayer; for though our Lord is everywhere, both in heaven and earth, and under the earth, yet thither we advance our devotions as to the chief throne of His Majesty. Next, our Saviour left a concourse of people beneath, and went to the mountain to pour out His devotions there as in a solitary sequestration, where he should not be troubled. Into such unfrequented hills He did often retire alone, as if He would teach us to bid all the world adieu, and all earthly thoughts, when we utter our supplications before our Heavenly Father: neither doth it seem expedient to act the miracle of the Transfiguration upon a meaner theatre than an exceeding high mountain, to show what ascensions must be in their soul who have a desire to be exalted to God’ s glory. (Bishop Hacket.) We must climb if we would see Christ Our heart, according to its own evil inclination, cleaves unto the dust like a serpent, our thoughts are of low stature, like Zachaeus; if they will climb up, let it be for no other end, or errand, but, as he did, to see Christ. There are two mountains, says Bernard, which we must ascend, but not both at once. First, there is the mountain where the Son of God did preach (Matthew 5:1-48.), and after that go up to the mountain where He was Transfigured (Matthew 17:1-27.). Non solum meditemur inpraemiis, sed etiam in mandatis Domini: I beseech you first meditate upon the sayings and commandments of God, and afterward upon His Transfiguration, upon the reward of glory: and not, as it is the vain custom of the world, run on presumptuously upon assurance of glorification, and to forget the true order, first to ascend upon the mountain of obedience. (Bishop Hacket.) The transfiguring look As Jesus prayed there on the mount, “ the fashion of his countenance was altered.” And so we may say that, as man prays--or, in other words, as in any posture man comes in contact with the great realities of religion and of the soul, and expresses his relation to these--the fashion of his countenance alters, the look of humanity is transfigured. I affirm that there is no mode of action, no posture of being, so grand, so hopeful, so pregnant with suggestion, as that of man praying--one in whom culminates the fullest expression of Christian belief and service. It is a transfiguring look, which lifts him above all sin and frailty and dust and shadow, and exhibits him as a child of God and an heir of immortality. Higher than any mere intellectual achievement is this uplifting and surrender of the soul. Newton grasping the firmament in his thought is not so sublime a spectacle as Newton when he kneels and adores. And as with individual instances, so with the collective humanity. Its supreme expression is in the act of faith and worship. Wherever to-day humanity heaves with the great ground-swell of religion, and all outward distinctions dissolve in the light of spiritual relations--I say that there this humanity is transfigured; it is lifted above its sins and miseries and frailty, and all that gives occasion for sceptical distrust. For as man prays--as his nature assumes its highest expression--the shadows of his mortality disappear, and the fashion of his countenance is altered. Even at the risk of some repetition, let me specify that which has now been generally suggested. I. I observe, then, in the first place, that the very attitude of religious faith contradicts sceptical theories of human nature. In trying to estimate the worth and the purpose of any being, it seems reasonable that we should adopt for our standard the highest manifestations of that being. As an illustration of my meaning, I remark that we estimate any individual man, not by what he may be doing at any specified time, not by the weakness or failure of some particular occasion, but by what he has done in his highest moods, what he is capable of doing at his best. We do not expect that Demosthenes will always give us an “ Oration for the Crown,” that Shakespeare will always write a “ Hamlet,” or Tennyson an “ In Memoriam. ” But surely it is by these productions, and not their poorest, that we rate such men. We measure their calibre by their broadest circle of achievement, and stamp the recognition of genius upon that which they have done, and can do, in the full swell of their powers. Now apply this illustration to classes of being. There are fools and knaves and tyrants and sensualists; there are such as Caligula and Benedict Arnold and George IV.: but here, also, are Pauls and Fenelons and Florence Nightingales; here are men and women writing a Christian martyrology in letters of blood and fire on the walls of amphitheatres; here are Latimers and Ridleys holding unblenching hands in the flame; here are Pilgrims clasping Bibles to their breasts as they sail over stormy seas. Nay, let us get away from these scenic instances of history, here, right around you, are poor widows in bare garrets, kneel ing, with God-seeing eyes; here are oppressed and suffering men clinging to their simple belief in an infinite Helper, and feeling the consolation of Jesus breathing upon their sorrow; here are poor brethren of ours, pressed by grievous temptations, lifting up their souls to Him who can make them strong in their moral conflict, and with swift strokes of supplication cleaving down help from the Almighty. Here is a man called to lie down and die, leaving a sick wife, leaving little helpless children; feeling the mortal terror creeping inward to his heart, as the mortal agony creeps over his flesh; but still looking up to the Father, laying hold of immortality, and in that one touch of faith making the coarse sheet that soon is to be his shroud more glorious with heaven’ s light than the hearse of Napoleon, rumbling through the streets of Paris and blossoming with a hundred victories. In such, in a thousand ways, here is the spectacle of man praying--man summoning faith and devotion, and taking hold of unconquerablestrength, lifted into unfading light; and, I ask, what do you make of this? I maintain that thus estimating humanity by its highest, not by its lowest attitudes, this weak, sinning, dying creature refutes all sceptical conclusions, and the fashion of its countenance is altered. II. I proceed to observe, in the next place, that in this expression of our nature we find a refutation of any extreme claim of action as opposed to worship, and also of science as setting itself in the place of religion. Action cannot occupy the place of prayer. As the very motive power of our action, we need the inspiration and the vision which are revealed to faith. Nor can science be substituted for religion. The soul of man requires a light that we cannot find through the telescope, or at the end of the galvanic wire. It cannot rest or be satisfied with the mere discernment of natural laws. It cannot steer through the mystery of life with no other chart than the physical constitution of man. It needs a heavenly Father and a redeeming Christ. Christ the revealer, Christ the glorified, Christ the transfigured, represents something without ourselves and above ourselves. He presents a point of reconciliation between the human and the Divine, that no one else--no Plato, no Socrates, no oracle of scientific truth, no modern type ofphilanthropy--can give. In the light which streams upon us from the personality of Jesus the fashion of man’ s countenance is altered. III. In closing, let me say that the fact which we have been considering, not only refutes false theoretical, but unworthy practical conclusions. Construct, in theory, a universe that will justify profaneness or licentiousness, meanness and fraud, lack of principle and lack of love. How awful the system of things in which such lives would be logical conclusions! A universe in which there are no foundations of “ eternal and immutable morality,” no source for Divine light like that which shone upon Jesus and from Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration! But if we are children of God and heirs of immortality, what then should be the scope and standard of our lives? Oh, my brethren! if there is a world from which a supernatural splendour fell upon the face of the praying Jesus--if there was such a Jesus, revealing such things to men--if these things are real--it is not merely, the fashion of man’ s countenance that alters, but the entire fashion of human life! Then, not those things concerning which men think and act as though they really made up the substance of our being, but those we seek for and cling to in solemn moments, in our best hours and in our last--these are the supreme, the eternal fashion, all else being uncertain and perishable. (E. H. Chapin, D. D.) Lessons from the Transfiguration 1. One use of this scene was to give to the favoured disciples a clearer idea of the nature of Christ’ s kingdom. 2. Another use of this scene was to disclose more than had yet been seen of Christ’ s personal majesty and true glory. 3. We may note a third use of the Transfiguration in the confirmation it afforded to the harmony of Christ’ s teaching with that of Moses and the prophets. 4. The Transfiguration scene was of use in helping to show the place, in heavenly as well as earthly interest, of the death of Christ. 5. A fifth and very important use of the Transfiguration was in the glimpse it afforded of the heavenly world. 6. The one other use of this wonderful scene to be noticed, is the lesson of patience it teaches, with respect to our earthly temptations, conflicts, and work. (H. M. Grout, D. D.) Transfiguration during prayer O the wise God, that would have the glory of transfiguration fall upon Himself at no other time but in the fervour of prayer. Miserable men are those that desire not to be transfigured and to cast off the old man; but more miserable that think to be transfigured without continual prayer. An hypocrite would seem to be a transformed man; Satan would appear to have transformed himself into an angel of light; hypocrites and devils all love to make a show of transfiguration, but they did never pray to God to change their inside, which is nothing but filthiness, and to be renewed in the spirit of their mind; hold on, and cease not to pray, till you be changed into new men. As a distiller keeps his extractions at the furnace till he see them flower and colour as he could wish; so, as long as we feel the relics of the old Adam remaining, especially while we feel them reign and get the dominion over us, we must ply our Saviour day and night with a restless devotion and a flagrant importunity; and I am sure while we pray, not the fashion of our countenance, but the fashion of our heart shall be altered. Well, I pray you remember, that when our Saviour went up into the mountain, as well to be transfigured as to pray, yet the text names this only, that “ He went up into the mountain to pray” ; that name stands in chief, and drowns the mention of the other business, as if prayer were a greater work than that resplendent Transfiguration. And what needed He to pray, but to bring us upon our knees humbly and frequently before His Father, and our Father. (Bishop Hacker.) The beauty of Jesus Christ And what was that glory? What made His face shine? What was the light which enveloped His form? We know that it was the glory of God, a glory not from without but from within, a light shining from the essential beauty of the Godhead within, not flashed from without. The Transfiguration, then, was not a miracle, but a witness of the abiding presence of Christ’ s Divinity: His whole Being shone, and like Moses, when gazing day and night upon the image of God till it became, in a measure, stamped upon him, and the “ skin of his face shone,” what did He do? Moses, we are told, put a veil over his face to hide it from the people of Israel, and so it was with Christ: He veiled His glory. If He had been outwardly true to what He bore within Him He would have been seen always with His glory unveiled; it would have been about Him in the manger at Bethlehem--transfigured Babe! in His home at Nazareth--transfigured Boy! it would have shone about Him during His ministry in Galilee--transfigured Man! and, at the last, on Calvary’ s Cross--transfigured Sufferer! But under the very conditions of coming as man among men, the Godhead within was veiled, and the outcoming of those rays held back which would have made for ever beautiful the Sun of Righteousness. For a moment there is no restraint, for a moment He knows the beauty of repose as in His solitude He holds communion with His Father, and all the beauty from within shines forth, and He is transfigured. The beauty of Jesus Christ! not an outward beauty, such as appeals to the physical part of man. “ When we see Him there is no beauty that we should desire Him.” He does not stand out as an Apollo of the Greeks or as a Samson of the Bible stories. “ As the apple-tree among the trees of the wood, so is my Beloved.” As the apple-tree, you notice, not as the cedar; yet if there is no physical beauty, there is a beauty of His own in every feature, every action, every part, for the transfiguration beauty was the beauty of God. God had communicated His beauty to His Son, for “ in Him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily” --the perfect beauty of an intellect which is permeated with light, of a heart which is filled with love, of a will lifted up wholly to the will of God, of conscience at perfect peace, of an imagination sanctified by the most perfect imagery. For the fact remains, which is so true of Him, and, in a great measure, of our fellow-creatures, that the spirit moulds the countenance. There is such a thing as a saint-like countenance, wherefore where there is the indwelling of the Divine there is a beauty of face and figure, movement, speech, and tone, which nothing else can give. (Canon Body.) The irradiation of our Lord’ s raiment The evangelists, in their record of the Transfiguration scene, seem to concentrate the attention of Christian people on the irradiated garments in which our Lord’ s sacred form was enveloped. Indeed, the description of the irradiation of the garments of Christ is certainly fuller than the description of His transfigured humanity. St. Matthew tells us that “ His raiment was white as light” ; St. Mark, that “ His raiment became shining, exceeding white as snow, so as no fuller on earth can white them” ; and St. Luke, as our text reminds us, that “ His raiment was white and glistering.” Therefore, in studying the history of the mystery of the Transfiguration our duty is carefully to notice this feature, and to seek to learn the lesson that the glorified beauty of the raiment of Christ teaches us. The scene of the Transfiguration is one which each of us can easily paint for ourselves by an effort of the imagination. Jesus Christ was, no doubt, poorly clad, probably in the garb that a mechanic” was wont to wear in those days. His clothing was not the clothing of “ soft raiment,” for “ they that wear soft raiment are in kings’ houses” ; not in the palace of a king among a favoured few dwelt the Incarnate Son of God, but in a cottage where His lot was cast among the toiling many; and there He dwelt for thirty years, clothed surely in raiment of the most homely nature, probably made by His mother’ s own hands, and woven from the wool of the flocks. And if the raiment of our Lord had no beauty of form or material to make it lovely, so, too, it must have borne signs of wear, the stains and marks of daily toil. Thus clothed, then, our Lord passed to the Mount of Transfiguration; and, whilst He prayed” He was transfigured before them.” The light of the essential Godhead within broke forth, and, lo! as its rays shone through the veil of His humanity, it pierced the poor garments in which He was clothed, which, though worn and stained, now became white with a supernatural whiteness, and, though lacking beauty, now became beautiful with a supernatural beauty. Sweet vision of irradiated garments! what an abiding spiritual meaning it shows forth! St. Augustine, in a notice which occurs in his “ Commentary on the Psalms,” says “ The raiment wherewith Christ was clad is His Church.” Sweet, sacred vision of a transfigured Lord associated with an irradiated Church; showing forth the abiding relationship of Christ with His Church through endless ages of glorified eternity, and His closest union with this Church, which He has put on as a mystic garment shining with the glory of His own mystic beauty. In this glorified raiment of Christ we see shadowed forth His Church under all conditions of time and of eternity. The Church exists, and is eternally predestinated in the fulness of time to be the glorified vesture of her Lord; the Church, which is God’ s elect, admitted by baptism and by the cleansing waters of the holy font brought into this election, this ecclesia of God. Is not the Church in her making like the garments of our Lord? Mary takes of the wool of the flock, and therewith weaves the raiment which He puts on in all its meanness and poorness, and then glorifies. Just so with the Church. In what is she poor, do you say? Surely her poverty is in the men and women within her who are lacking in purity and in beauty; but our Lord stretches out His hand and brings them into union with Himself; not a hypostatical union, such as the union of the Divine and human natures in Himself, but a sacramental union, which can be severed, like the putting on of the garments with which He was clad. Then, having as it were put them on to lie on His Sacred Heart, He works in them the work of justification, taking from them the soil of guilt, and by the work of renewal ever removing from them all spots and wrinkles, till passing from glory to glory, and going from beauty to beauty, the just become more and more pure in the sight of God. He gives them not only purity but beauty; Christ acts on the pure and makes them lovely; He communicates to them His own Divine beauty, till in time the Church on earth becomes “ white and glistering” with the glory He imparts. And what is the glorification of the Church? What is the consummation of sanctification? What is the end of justification? Is not the goal to be absolutely beautiful? is it not that when we awake we may find that we are beautiful even in the sight of God? Yes, in the glorified raiment of Christ we see a pledge of His work in His Church, a pledge which in her perfect day shall be accomplished, yet for its accomplishment it is necessary that her members co-operate with Him in a three-fold way. The members of Christ’ s Church must be channels of Divine grace. Men and women touching the garments of Christ were made whole; as, for instance, that poor woman who had suffered for many years from a sad disease, and who stretched forth her hand in the crowd, saying within herself, “ If I may but touch His garment I shall be whole” ; but Christ said not, “ Who touched my raiment?” but “ Who touched Me?” (as St. Luke tells us), for His raiment had been but the means of conveying His own healing power: and in the same way Christ has made His Church the instrument through which He distributes truth, and grace, and peace; and if her members would reach forth to her essential glory in eternity they must reach forward to her Divine mission in time, and become, like His garments, channels of His grace to those around. Is it not so? Have you thought that those same garments were probably on the hill of Calvary? But where do we see them then? No longer clothing that sacred form, but thrown at the foot of the cross, given over to the Roman soldiery, His very vesture the prize of a gambling game which they were playing just beneath Him. As with the raiment of Christ so must it be with His Church. The Church can only pass to her Divine glory under the same conditions by which Christ passed to His; the Church must not only imitate Him in His active ministry, but share His sufferings: she, too, must go to her Gethsemane, and pass along her way of sorrow, and hang down upon her cross of shame, and pain, and humiliation; and only as she patiently perseveres in walking on the road of the Cross can she hope to reach to the glory awaiting her above. There is only one ladder from earth to heaven, that is the ladder of our Saviour’ s Cross. And it is necessary for us always to keep this vision of the transfigured raiment of Christ before our minds; for this reason, that we never look at any creation of God aright unless we keep in sight the ideal of that creation as it is in the mind of God, otherwise we form a wrong conception of it. God’ s ideal cannot be realized here and now. If we look at the world in its present conditions only, should we not find it hard to justify the dealings of God with men? But these conditions are only accidental; sin came into the world, and with it poverty, crime, pain, death. God has mysteriously permitted a temporary marring of His creation, but that which mars it does not come from God, therefore it cannot last. We Christians are saved from being pessimists because we know that the present conditions are not final. There is a time, at the coming of our Lord, when error will be banished by truth, iniquity by righteousness; when universal knowledge mill cover the face of society; when peace shall be the only condition of mind among God’ s people. Look with eyes brightened by faith, then, even though we see antichrist developed, yet our hope shall be bright, aye, brighter than before, for the development of antichrist is the very pledge of the coming of Christ. And so, too, with the Ideal of man; none have ever realized, even if they have grasped, their own ideal; and certainly no one can ever have grasped their ideal as it is in the mind of the Creator, far less have carried that out. What is this ideal? is it not conformity to the perfection of God Himself? “ Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.” Yet we know by experience that, here and now, we cannot conform to this perfection; and so the Church, here and now, fails to realize her ideal: to-day she is of the earth earthy, as poor, and stained, and marred as the garments of Jesus before they were transfigured by His imparted glory. Often perplexities meet us when we try to reconcile the actual condition of the Church with the ideal. But on the Mount of Transfiguration we see this--that in His own time and way Christ will realize the ideal of His Church. Till then let us live in faith and hope, refusing to let our faith be staggered by the Church’ s troubles in time, but giving ourselves up to His service, lying, as His sacred garments did, at the foot of His cross, in sure and confident expectation that He will realize His own ideal, and that in eternity we shall see Jerusalem the Golden, shining with the glory of God and of the Lamb, and the Church, as His vesture, lying on His bosom in closest union with her Lord! (Canon Body.) Luminous hours To every one of us, first or last, come these luminous hours. But they are transient. As the Transfiguration on the Mount was designed to teach the disciples how to conduct themselves when the exigencies which were to come upon them should be developed, so these luminous hours which come to all men ought to be used by them to determine their duties and courses. It is when you are on the mountain-top that you should take your land-marks and steer toward them, and when you go down and lose sight of them, keep straight across the valley until you rise so that they greet your vision again. Not when you are in the valley can you tell which way to travel, unless you have learned it on the top of the hill. Another thing. This entry is longer than a Bible module can hold. The rest is at https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/bi/ Luke 9:30; Luke 9:32 Moses and Elias: who appeared in glory, and spake of His decease The decease at Jerusalem I. IN THE DECEASE AT , THERE IS THE DEATH OF THE SINLESS CHRIST. II. THIS DECEASE AT WAS A DEATH PURELY AND . III. IN THE DECEASE AT WE HAVE A DEATH WHICH APPEARS TO BE MORE AND THAN EVEN LIFE. IV. IN THIS DECEASE AT , WE HAVE THE ONLY OF A MAN BEING A FOR SIN. V. IN THIS DECEASE AT , WE HAVE A DEATH THAT IS TO BE AND FOR EVER. (H. J. Bevis.) The conference on the Mount 1. What they spake of none could Divine, unless it had been told us, and the Evangelist Luke telleth us, that it was of His death. This argument was chosen-- (1) Because it was at hand. The next solemn mediatory action after this was His death and bloody sufferings; after He was transfigured in the Mount, He went down to suffer at Jerusalem. (2) This was an offence to the apostles that their Master should die Matthew 16:22-23). (3) This was the Jews’ stumbling-block (1 Corinthians 1:23). (4) This was prefigured in the rites of the Law, foretold in the writings of the Prophets. (5) It was necessary that by death He should come to His glory, of which now some glimpse and foretaste was given to Him. (6) The redemption of the Church by Christ is the talk and discourse we shall have in heaven. The angels and glorified saints are blessing and praising Him for this (Revelation 5:9; Revelation 5:12). (7) It is an instructive pattern to us, that Christ in the midst of His Transfiguration, and the glory which was then put upon Him, forgat not His death. In the greatest advancement we should think of our dissolution. If Christ, in all His glory, discoursed of His death, surely it more becometh us, as necessary for us to prevent the surfeit of worldly pleasures; we should think of the change that is coming, for “ Surely every man at his best estate is vanity” (Psalms 39:5). In some places they were wont to present a death’ s head at their solemn feasts; merry days will not always last, death will soon put an end to the vain pleasures we enjoy here, and the most shining glory will be burnt out to a snuff. 2. The notion by which His death is expressed, His decease ἔξοδον, which signifies the going out of this life into another, which is to be noted. (1) In respect unto Christ His death was an “ exodus,” for He went out of this mortal life into glory, and so it implieth both His suffering death, and also His resurrection (Acts 2:24). (2) With respect to us; Peter (2 Peter 1:15) calls His death an “ exodus.” The death of the godly is a “ going out,” but from sin and sorrow, to glory and immortality. The soul dwelleth in the body as a man in a house, and death is but a departure out of one house into another; not an extinction, but a going from house to house. 3. The necessity of undergoing it. “ Accomplishing.” (1) His mediatorial duty, with a respect to God’ s ordination and decree declared in the prophecies of the Old Testament, which, when they are fulfilled, are said to be accomplished. Whatsoever Christ did in the work of redemption was with respect to God’ s will and eternal decree (Acts 4:28). (2) His voluntary submission which He should accomplish, noteth His active and voluntary concurrence; it is an active word Dot passive, not to be fulfilled upon Him, but by Him. (3) That it was the eminent act of His humiliation; for this cause He assumed human nature. His humiliation began at His birth, continued in His life, and was accomplished in dying; all was nothing without this, therefore there is a consummation or perfection attributed to the death of Christ Hebrews 10:14). (T. Manton, D. D.) A revelation of the heavenly life Moses and Elias are standing humbly in the presence of Jesus Christ (as He had once sat at the feet of the Rabbi in the Temple), holding converse with Him, acknowledging all their ignorance, telling Him all their perplexities, responding to Him with the response of perfect assent to His every utterance. Of what did they speak! They spoke of “ His decease, which He should accomplish at Jerusalem.” This word “ decease” should, in my opinion, have a larger application; it is the same word as St. Peter used when he spoke of the death which he was about to die, which is also translated as “ decease” ; it should be rather “ exodus.” We may be certain of this; it was not merely of the historic fact of Christ’ s death of which they spoke, they wanted to know the deep meaning underlying that fact, and this could only be understood when His death was studied in connection with the many mysteries before and after. Of this, of all those mysteries which found their centre in the Cross of Calvary, did they speak on the Mount of Transfiguration, and thus revealed to the apostles and to us what is the heavenly life of which our life here is the prelude, what is that eternal state to which we are all rapidly journeying. First, then, it is of primary importance to consider that heaven is a state rather than a locality. Don’ t misunderstand me. I do not say there is no space which we call heaven to-day, no space where that sacred humanity still exists which the Incarnate Saviour took upon Himself, and which has since been in some sense subject to laws of creaturely existence, and therefore subject to space. Wherever Jesus Christ is there is heaven, and yet if you ask where this heavenly life will be lived, in what locality the heavenly life will be lived, then I shall answer that probably, though of this no one can be certain, probably the sphere of that life will be mainly this earth. The last vision in the Apocalypse is not the vision of the Church ascending, but her advent on the “ new earth.” “ I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.” Insignificant as this planet is in the wonderful cosmos, yet it has been chosen among God’ s creations as the scene in which the great mystery of love should be carried out, in which the incarnate life of the Son of God should be lived; out of the dust of this earth His sacred body was formed, on this earth He lived His life, on this earth He died His death, and from this earth He ascended into heaven, and carried into the presence of the Father, to be for ever there, the body formed of the dust of this earth. This earth is the scene of the humiliation of Jesus Christ, of the humiliation of His Church, of the whole family of mankind; is it not likely to be the centre of that plan in which the glory of Jesus Christ, the glory of His Church and of mankind, shall be consummated? I state, then, as a pious opinion, that this earth will be the centre of that life of bliss which the glorified Church will live. And where more fitting? We have no reason to believe that the great work of Redemption has been carried out in any of the other worlds in God’ s great plan of creation, nor do we even know that those worlds are inhabited by living souls. And yet the great question is, not where shall that heavenly life be spent, but what is that life? And the answer is plainly and distinctly given in the Revelation which we are studying, that the heavenly life is a state of conformity to God. Church life is revealed to us as lived under three conditions, of which two are present conditions and one future: the first is the militant life on earth; the second is the waiting life in paradise--the life of souls waiting in that dear place of rest for the coming of their Lord in glory--and the third is the life of perfect conformity to Jesus Christ. Here we are ever reaching forward to that conformity, and yet none of us can ever be perfect; in paradise I venture to believe that there will be growth for those waiting souls, an ever-increasing conformity with Jesus; for “ the path of the just is as the shining light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day.” That “ perfect day” is the coming of our Lord, when we shall see Him as He is, when we shall be wholly conformed to God, when, waking up after His likeness, “ we shall be satisfied.” By the heavenly life we understand that state of glory which is entered on by the resurrection--for as baptism is our birth into the Church militant, so death is our birth into the Church expectant, and the resurrection our birth into the Church glorified. The state of expectation is only over when He, whom we look for, shall appear, and we shall enter into the state of conformity. What is this conformity? I answer, that my perfect conformity is my attainment of my perfect individuality; no one can be perfectly conformed to God in the sense that they can express in themselves every beauty that is in Him; for is it not true that He is the Sun and we are only the stars, and we know that “ one star differeth from another star in glory” ? Conformity to Christ is this, my perfect realization of the Divine thought for me; God is not mirrored in each member of the Church, but in the whole Church; one ray of His beauty is mirrored in one, and one in another; I was created to reflect one ray; He who created me “ telleth the number of the stars, and calleth them all by their names,” and, as “ one star differeth from another,” so one man from another man. If I may say it, the great Creator never uses the same mould twice; having used it once He throws it away, and so the characteristics of one are not the same as another. God has placed me in this world with an individual purpose of life to develop, and any system which takes God’ s creations, on whom is stamped individuality, and forces them into the same pattern, is immoral, is a marring of God’ s plan. There must be space in His Church: “ Thou has set my feet in a large room.” So, when I am truly myself when I can fulfil my highest aspirations, when I can live out my fullest resolves when I can perfectly express the idea of my individual being which God has revealed to me, then at last I have gained conformity to Christ, then I know what it is to rest in the heaven of God. Oh! joy to be my ideal self! joy when conduct shall square with conviction, when conviction shall square with aspiration, and aspiration shall square with resolve! Oh! the utter rest to lie at the feet of Jesus, true to Him because utterly true to myself! Moses will be Moses there, Elias will be Elias there, each before Jesus Christ in His own individuality and personality. But what is the life which awaits me there? The answer comes clearly and distinctly--a life lived in the power of Jesus Christ. The first great hunger of each human creature is heart-hunger, the first great thirst is heart-thirst; if love, then, is our greatest need, be sure of this, God created us to beloved, “ and, therefore, He created us to possess and to be possessed by Himself, who is absolute Beauty and perfect Love; and so, whether our love flows out first to those dear ones whom He has given us to love, whether our first love is given to Him or only indirectly to Him, of this be sure, we cannot know heart-rest until we rest wholly in His love. The time will come when we shall have not only an intellectual but an actual apprehension of His love, when we shall live by sight and not by faith, and as we gaze on the Word Incarnate, the sight of God’ s beauty mirrored there will draw up to us His embrace, and the joy of God’ s love will attract us to Him eternally. This, then, is heaven, to rest in the love of God. Then if our first great longing is for love, our second is for knowledge. The heart longs for love, the mind for knowledge: and here, in time, we cannot satisfy this longing. The more we know, the more we become conscious of our ignorance; the more we feed the mind, the more it hungers for that which it has not. Here we know “ in part.” But there, in the heavenly life, the partial knowledge shall be made complete; and I shall study the truth, not only as it has been revealed, but with the aid of the great First Cause, of God Himself; and as I see God I shall know the rest that comes with the perfect knowledge of the truth as it is in Him. And how shall we study to know God? As we can see the Father only as He is mirrored in the Son, so we can only hear His voice as revealed to us through the Incarnate Word. And our study will surely be the study of those mysteries which gather round His sacred form--the mystery of His Incarnation, the mystery of His Death, the infinite mystery of His Resurrection and of His Ascension (for in each is a manifestation of the Infinite). And so, through all the ages of eternity, there will be an eternal festival--an eternal Christmas, an eternal Lady Day, an eternal Easter, and an eternal Ascension--that I may receive into my mind the meaning of these mysteries, and give back to God my mental satisfaction by uttering heaven’ s eternal creed and offering heaven’ s ceaseless worship. Then, thirdly, if in heaven the cravings of our heart for love and of our intellects for knowledge will be satisfied, so, too, will our desire for unity. To some the thought of individuality is not attractive; it is not personal isolation they long for, but corporate union. The two ideas are not antagonistic. True, “ the King’ s daughter is all glorious within, her clothing is of wrought gold.” But why? Because each separate thread is of wrought gold. We see in the Revelation how every precious stone was used in the completion of the heavenly city, which could not be perfect without the perfection of each stone; and so here a life of perfected individuality may be the same as a life of perfected unity. Moses and Elias stood side by side, they knew one another, they shared a common study, they asked common questions, they received the common truth, though Peter and James and John, with their own individual characteristics of zeal and love and patience, as they stood there with them, and heard the Voice out of the cloud, “ This is My beloved Son,” knew Moses to be Moses, and Elias Elias; so in heaven ours will be no mere life of individual isolation, in which the enjoyment of personal love, the tasting of personal truth, the offering of personal worship, will be our one thought. No; the perfection of the lives of the saints blends in one perfect communion: there saint with saint holds converse, lives a common life, offers a common worship. (Canon Body.) Christ crucified Such words never were, never could with truth and fitness, be applied to any but the one death. I. The first point to be noted here is, THE OF THIS DEATH. There was no power, no law of nature that made death a necessity to the Lord Jesus. That pilgrimage into the regions of the tomb He could undertake or decline, according to His own pleasure. He died simply because He willed to die. He might have left the world in a very different way. Like His own servant Elias, with whom He conversed of this decease, He might have returned to heaven in a chariot of fire; or, if He must taste death in order that He might be perfectly like unto His brethren, His departure might have been calm and tranquil, in the stillness of home, amid the sympathies and tears of loving friends. Such a death would surely have been sufficient, if the end of His ministry had been simply the manifestation of God in the flesh. Instead of a close so fitting to a life of purity, He chose to accomplish a decease, in which He should be “ numbered with the transgressors.” Surely for this there must have been wise and sufficient reason. The fact that He died thus, is the proof that the great design of His advent could be fulfilled only by such a death. With Him it was the centre-fact of His whole history. II. THE TO THIS DEATH. He had work to do in the world beside, a bright example to give; the true ideal of a human life to set before man; a perfect righteousness to win; a thousand blessings to scatter; His own deep love and sympathy with human sorrows to discover: but His great work was this--to die. III. THE TRUE MEANING OF THIS DEATH. The New Testament speaks in various ways--sometimes it employs the language of type and symbol--sometimes it gives us distinct and explicit statements but all its representations of this death converge to one point, and enforce one grand idea. “ Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us.” Here is an expressive metaphor--one whose signification it cannot be hard to discover. What is the meaning of the apostle? The Paschal Lamb died for the deliverance of the nation--through his death the nation escaped the sword of the destroying angel--the animal was slain, the blood was sprinkled, and the people were saved. So was Christ our Passover sacrificed, that we might be delivered--His death is our life--in virtue of His blood of sprinkling we are purified and accepted. “ The decease which He should accomplish at Jerusalem.” Thus, then, did the man Christ Jesus ever keep before Him that goal of suffering and humiliation to which His steps were tending. Not ignorantly did He rush on perils and death, entering on a path whose end He did not discern until retreat had become impossible. Knowing what the work was, He had deliberately undertaken it, and throughout all its stages, the issue was ever present to His eye. Very early in His ministry did He indicate that He was set apart to this service--was anointed unto sacrifice. (J. G. Rogers, B. A.) Two divisions in the glorified Church Why were these two men with Jesus in the vision? Is it not because when at length the Church shall reach her state of glory there will be within her two distinct classes? We are told, that when our Lord comes, the “ dead in Christ shall rise first,” and at the sound of the trump, and at the call of His voice, the “ fields of Paradise” shall be deserted, and they shall all be caught up to meet their Lord in the air, henceforth to seek Him in His beauty and to be His daily delight. But what of those who are not in the “ fields of Paradise” at the time of the coming of our Lord? Shall they die? Shall they know that mysterious experience which we call death, the separation of the soul from the body? No, for then it would be a purposeless experience. “ They shall not die, but shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, and shall be ever with the Lord.” Therefore the glorified Church shall be the assembly of those who, some from life and some from Paradise, are gathered into the presence of Christ. And do we not see these two classes represented in the ancient saints who talked with our Lord on the Mount of Transfiguration? Moses, we know, died; and we remember the cause of his death there in the wilderness, and the mysterious conflict over his body between Michael the archangel and Satan. Elijah died not; he never experienced this crisis of existence, but, we are told, “ went up by a whirlwind into heaven.” So the two great divisions of the glorified Church are fittingly represented by these two Old Testament characters, one of whom died the most arresting death there recorded, and the other died not. (Canon Body.) Death an Exodus 1. “ It is strange how much we can find in that great scene on the Holy Mount, to illustrate this conception, and to impress it on our minds. Look at the speakers--Moses, Elijah, Christ. Was not the death of Moses an exodus? A sacred mystery hangs over the decease of the “ Man of God.” “ He who died by the kiss of the Eternal” is a not infrequent synonym for Moses in the Rabbinical schools. Elijah, again, was rapt, we are told, and carried up into heaven, as by a whirling cloud of fiery chariots. If, therefore, any of the sons of men should be permitted to pass from the spiritual world to hold converse with Christ in the moment of His glory, these were the two men. They had already and fully achieved the exodus or journey of death, and had passed into the large fair land beyond. “ They talked with Him of the exodus He should accomplish at Jerusalem.” If we love and follow Him, we need not doubt that we shall be made partakers of His death in this high sense--that for us, as for Him, death will be an exodus, a journey home. 2. The more we study this conception of death the more instructive and suggestive we shall find it to be. The illustration which the figure suggests, and was intended to suggest, is the exodus of Israel from Egypt. If we consider what that exodus was and implies, if we then proceed to infer that death will be to us very much what their exodus was to the captive Hebrew race, we shall reach some thoughts of death, and of the life that follows death, which can hardly fail to be new and helpful to us. The exodus was a transition from bondage to freedom, from grinding and unrequited toil to comparative rest, from ignorance to knowledge, from shame to honour, from a life distracted by care and pain and fear to a life in which men were fed by the immediate bounty of God, guided by His wisdom, guarded by His omnipotence, consecrated to His service. And if death be an exodus, we may say that, by the gate and avenue of death, we shall pass from bondage to freedom, &c. (S. Cox, D. D.) The central truth of the Transfiguration I. CHRIST IN WITH HIS DEATH. There are two transfigurations--that of the Mount and that of the Cross; and it is impossible to understand either, save in the light of the other. He who was on the Mount was still the Man of Sorrows, and He who was on the Cross was still the Divine Son. The death on the Cross gave its glory to the mountain-scene; the declaration on the Mount makes the death all-radiant with triumph. II. CHRIST THROUGH HIS DEATH, BACK A ON MOSES AND ELIJAH. III. AS MOSES AND ELIJAH ARE THUS BY CHRIST, THEY RETIRE FROM VIEW AND GIVE PLACE TO HIM. (W. M. Taylor, D. D.) Celestial visitors When we read of the reappearance of Moses and Elias after their long absence, our first feeling is that of wonder; it is to us a miracle, a strange thing, for the dead do not return. But why view it thus? The wonder is, not that Moses and Elias were seen in the holy Mount, but that the separation between us and the blessed dead should be so complete. Their long unbroken silence is the strange thing when you think of it. We long to know more of them and of the world in which they dwell. We know from this narrative-- 1. That human spirits are not annihilated when they disappear from this world. 2. That human spirits have a personal existence after death. 3. We see in Moses and Elias what all faithful souls shall be, when the great redemption is completed--as like unto God as possible. (Thomas Jones.) The thought of death amid the raptures of the Transfiguration Jesus was lifted by His rapture above the fear of death. He spoke calmly of His decease with the messengers from the unseen world, whose very presence testified of death conquered and the grave despoiled. His acutest pain was transformed into His highest joy, as the body of His humiliation was transfigured by the glory of heaven; and at that supreme moment, when His life was at the brightest, He could have willingly lain it down, and passed into the dark shadow feared of man. This true to human experience. Jacob on seeing Joseph again--“ Now let me die” ; Simeon, with the infant Saviour in his aged arms--“ Now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace.” And outside the domain of Scripture we find numerous examples of the same strange intermingling of the highest glory of life with the thought of sorrow and death. It is indeed on mounts of transfiguration, when our nature is irradiated by some great joy, that we love to speak of our decease. We fear not to enter into the cloud of death when we are transfigured by the passionate intensity of our feelings. Our joy transforms the pain of dying into its own splendour, as the sun changes the very cloud into sunshine. All thoughtful writers have described this remarkable human experience, AEschylus, in his “ Agamemnon “ , pictures the herald returning from the Trojan War as so overjoyed at revisiting his native land that he was willing to die. Goethe represents one of his most beautiful creations--the loved and loving Clara--as wishing to die in the hour of her purest joy; for earth had nothing beyond the rapture of that experience. Shakespeare puts into the lips of Othello, at his joyful meeting with Desdemona, after the perils of his voyage to Cyprus were over, the passionate exclamation:-- “ If it were now to die “ Twere now to be most happy: for I fear My soul hath her content so absolute, That not another comfort like to this Succeeds in unknown fate.” It is said of Benjamin Franklin that his exultation was so great when he succeeded in attracting the lightning from the clouds by means of his kite, and thus proving its identity with the electricity of the earth, that he could willingly have died that very moment. Miss Martineau, in her “ Retrospect of Western Travel,” describes the grandeur of a storm which she encountered on the Atlantic, as producing a similar triumph over the fear of death. “ In the excitement of such an hour,” she says, “ one feels as if one would as soon go down in those magnificent waters as die any other death.” I remember, on one occasion, having something of the same feeling. I was travelling at night in a mountain region, when a terrible storm came on. The rain poured in torrents; the thunder pealed among the rocks; flash after flash of lightning linked the hills together, as with chains of fire. A pall of blackness covered the sky from end to end. Hundreds of torrents poured down the heights into a lake, as if direct from the clouds; the sheen of their foam looked weird and ghastly in the illumination of the lightning, and their roar drowning the crash of the thunder; the sound of many waters, here, there, and everywhere, filling earth and sky. Amid all this appalling elemental war, I felt a strange excitement and uplifting of soul, which made me indifferent to danger, careless what became of me. Such moments reveal to us the greatness of our nature, and fill us with the intoxication of immortality. Death in such glorious circumstances seems an apotheosis. He comes to us as it were with the whirlwind and the chariot of fire, to lift us above the slow pain of dying, in the rapture of translation. (H. Macmillan, LL. D.) The conference during the transfiguration In this discourse I shall first direct your attention to the account given of the persons who conversed with our Lord, and then to the subject of their conference. I. THE PERSONS WHO WITH OUR LORD WERE TWO MEN. 1. It may be thought that two angels would have rendered the scene more splendid, but there was a peculiar propriety in employing men. 2. They were men of high eminence under the former dispensation. 3. We are told that these visitants appeared in glory. They came from heaven, and though their honour and felicity there were very high, they felt no reluctance to descend to this mountain. They were not called to relinquish their splendour or to cover it with a veil, as our Lord is said to have “ emptied Himself,” when he appeared in our world. The glory which invested them must have been very great, since it was visible amidst the brightness spread around our Lord. 4. They talked with Jesus. It is not said that they talked with one another. They descended, not to hold intercourse with the disciples, but with their Master. II. Let us now attend to THE SUBJECT OF THEIR . It was the decease which He should accomplish at Jerusalem. 1. They spake of the moral glory which Jesus should exhibit in His departure. Great was the glory of Moses in the going forth from Egypt. 2. They spoke of the important ends to be gained by His death. It reconciles the mind to labours and sufferings, when we are assured that valuable ends will be gained by them. Let me specify some of these ends. They talked of the glory which would result from His death to all the Divine perfections. The expiation to be made for sin was another end. I must mention further, the salvation to be gained by His death for millions of human beings. 3. We may consider them as speaking of the influence of His death. 4. They spoke of the rewards which would be conferred on Him for His obedience to the death. Let me now state shortly, some of the reasons why this theme was chosen for conference on the Mount. 1. It was done to animate and invigorate the Son of Man for the scene before Him. 2. We may find another reason for the choice of the topic in its peculiar importance. 3. They talked of this subject for the sake of the disciples. 4. They did it for the benefit of the Church in all ages. 1. Let Christians live more under the influence of this death than ever. 2. Let good men prepare for their departure. 3. Let me call on the disciples of Jesus, with kindred feelings to those of Moses and Elias, to commemorate their Saviour’ s decease. And let those who never approach the Lord’ s table consider that, were their conduct general, the death of Christ might sink into oblivion on earth. (H. Belfrage.) Luke 9:30; Luke 9:32 Moses and Elias: who appeared in glory, and spake of His decease The decease at Jerusalem I. IN THE DECEASE AT , THERE IS THE DEATH OF THE SINLESS CHRIST. II. THIS DECEASE AT WAS A DEATH PURELY AND . III. IN THE DECEASE AT WE HAVE A DEATH WHICH APPEARS TO BE MORE AND THAN EVEN LIFE. IV. IN THIS DECEASE AT , WE HAVE THE ONLY OF A MAN BEING A FOR SIN. V. IN THIS DECEASE AT , WE HAVE A DEATH THAT IS TO BE AND FOR EVER. (H. J. Bevis.) The conference on the Mount 1. What they spake of none could Divine, unless it had been told us, and the Evangelist Luke telleth us, that it was of His death. This argument was chosen-- (1) Because it was at hand. The next solemn mediatory action after this was His death and bloody sufferings; after He was transfigured in the Mount, He went down to suffer at Jerusalem. (2) This was an offence to the apostles that their Master should die Matthew 16:22-23). (3) This was the Jews’ stumbling-block (1 Corinthians 1:23). (4) This was prefigured in the rites of the Law, foretold in the writings of the Prophets. (5) It was necessary that by death He should come to His glory, of which now some glimpse and foretaste was given to Him. (6) The redemption of the Church by Christ is the talk and discourse we shall have in heaven. The angels and glorified saints are blessing and praising Him for this (Revelation 5:9; Revelation 5:12). (7) It is an instructive pattern to us, that Christ in the midst of His Transfiguration, and the glory which was then put upon Him, forgat not His death. In the greatest advancement we should think of our dissolution. If Christ, in all His glory, discoursed of His death, surely it more becometh us, as necessary for us to prevent the surfeit of worldly pleasures; we should think of the change that is coming, for “ Surely every man at his best estate is vanity” (Psalms 39:5). In some places they were wont to present a death’ s head at their solemn feasts; merry days will not always last, death will soon put an end to the vain pleasures we enjoy here, and the most shining glory will be burnt out to a snuff. 2. The notion by which His death is expressed, His decease ἔξοδον, which signifies the going out of this life into another, which is to be noted. (1) In respect unto Christ His death was an “ exodus,” for He went out of this mortal life into glory, and so it implieth both His suffering death, and also His resurrection (Acts 2:24). (2) With respect to us; Peter (2 Peter 1:15) calls His death an “ exodus.” The death of the godly is a “ going out,” but from sin and sorrow, to glory and immortality. The soul dwelleth in the body as a man in a house, and death is but a departure out of one house into another; not an extinction, but a going from house to house. 3. The necessity of undergoing it. “ Accomplishing.” (1) His mediatorial duty, with a respect to God’ s ordination and decree declared in the prophecies of the Old Testament, which, when they are fulfilled, are said to be accomplished. Whatsoever Christ did in the work of redemption was with respect to God’ s will and eternal decree (Acts 4:28). (2) His voluntary submission which He should accomplish, noteth His active and voluntary concurrence; it is an active word Dot passive, not to be fulfilled upon Him, but by Him. (3) That it was the eminent act of His humiliation; for this cause He assumed human nature. His humiliation began at His birth, continued in His life, and was accomplished in dying; all was nothing without this, therefore there is a consummation or perfection attributed to the death of Christ Hebrews 10:14). (T. Manton, D. D.) A revelation of the heavenly life Moses and Elias are standing humbly in the presence of Jesus Christ (as He had once sat at the feet of the Rabbi in the Temple), holding converse with Him, acknowledging all their ignorance, telling Him all their perplexities, responding to Him with the response of perfect assent to His every utterance. Of what did they speak! They spoke of “ His decease, which He should accomplish at Jerusalem.” This word “ decease” should, in my opinion, have a larger application; it is the same word as St. Peter used when he spoke of the death which he was about to die, which is also translated as “ decease” ; it should be rather “ exodus.” We may be certain of this; it was not merely of the historic fact of Christ’ s death of which they spoke, they wanted to know the deep meaning underlying that fact, and this could only be understood when His death was studied in connection with the many mysteries before and after. Of this, of all those mysteries which found their centre in the Cross of Calvary, did they speak on the Mount of Transfiguration, and thus revealed to the apostles and to us what is the heavenly life of which our life here is the prelude, what is that eternal state to which we are all rapidly journeying. First, then, it is of primary importance to consider that heaven is a state rather than a locality. Don’ t misunderstand me. I do not say there is no space which we call heaven to-day, no space where that sacred humanity still exists which the Incarnate Saviour took upon Himself, and which has since been in some sense subject to laws of creaturely existence, and therefore subject to space. Wherever Jesus Christ is there is heaven, and yet if you ask where this heavenly life will be lived, in what locality the heavenly life will be lived, then I shall answer that probably, though of this no one can be certain, probably the sphere of that life will be mainly this earth. The last vision in the Apocalypse is not the vision of the Church ascending, but her advent on the “ new earth.” “ I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.” Insignificant as this planet is in the wonderful cosmos, yet it has been chosen among God’ s creations as the scene in which the great mystery of love should be carried out, in which the incarnate life of the Son of God should be lived; out of the dust of this earth His sacred body was formed, on this earth He lived His life, on this earth He died His death, and from this earth He ascended into heaven, and carried into the presence of the Father, to be for ever there, the body formed of the dust of this earth. This earth is the scene of the humiliation of Jesus Christ, of the humiliation of His Church, of the whole family of mankind; is it not likely to be the centre of that plan in which the glory of Jesus Christ, the glory of His Church and of mankind, shall be consummated? I state, then, as a pious opinion, that this earth will be the centre of that life of bliss which the glorified Church will live. And where more fitting? We have no reason to believe that the great work of Redemption has been carried out in any of the other worlds in God’ s great plan of creation, nor do we even know that those worlds are inhabited by living souls. And yet the great question is, not where shall that heavenly life be spent, but what is that life? And the answer is plainly and distinctly given in the Revelation which we are studying, that the heavenly life is a state of conformity to God. Church life is revealed to us as lived under three conditions, of which two are present conditions and one future: the first is the militant life on earth; the second is the waiting life in paradise--the life of souls waiting in that dear place of rest for the coming of their Lord in glory--and the third is the life of perfect conformity to Jesus Christ. Here we are ever reaching forward to that conformity, and yet none of us can ever be perfect; in paradise I venture to believe that there will be growth for those waiting souls, an ever-increasing conformity with Jesus; for “ the path of the just is as the shining light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day.” That “ perfect day” is the coming of our Lord, when we shall see Him as He is, when we shall be wholly conformed to God, when, waking up after His likeness, “ we shall be satisfied.” By the heavenly life we understand that state of glory which is entered on by the resurrection--for as baptism is our birth into the Church militant, so death is our birth into the Church expectant, and the resurrection our birth into the Church glorified. The state of expectation is only over when He, whom we look for, shall appear, and we shall enter into the state of conformity. What is this conformity? I answer, that my perfect conformity is my attainment of my perfect individuality; no one can be perfectly conformed to God in the sense that they can express in themselves every beauty that is in Him; for is it not true that He is the Sun and we are only the stars, and we know that “ one star differeth from another star in glory” ? Conformity to Christ is this, my perfect realization of the Divine thought for me; God is not mirrored in each member of the Church, but in the whole Church; one ray of His beauty is mirrored in one, and one in another; I was created to reflect one ray; He who created me “ telleth the number of the stars, and calleth them all by their names,” and, as “ one star differeth from another,” so one man from another man. If I may say it, the great Creator never uses the same mould twice; having used it once He throws it away, and so the characteristics of one are not the same as another. God has placed me in this world with an individual purpose of life to develop, and any system which takes God’ s creations, on whom is stamped individuality, and forces them into the same pattern, is immoral, is a marring of God’ s plan. There must be space in His Church: “ Thou has set my feet in a large room.” So, when I am truly myself when I can fulfil my highest aspirations, when I can live out my fullest resolves when I can perfectly express the idea of my individual being which God has revealed to me, then at last I have gained conformity to Christ, then I know what it is to rest in the heaven of God. Oh! joy to be my ideal self! joy when conduct shall square with conviction, when conviction shall square with aspiration, and aspiration shall square with resolve! Oh! the utter rest to lie at the feet of Jesus, true to Him because utterly true to myself! Moses will be Moses there, Elias will be Elias there, each before Jesus Christ in His own individuality and personality. But what is the life which awaits me there? The answer comes clearly and distinctly--a life lived in the power of Jesus Christ. The first great hunger of each human creature is heart-hunger, the first great thirst is heart-thirst; if love, then, is our greatest need, be sure of this, God created us to beloved, “ and, therefore, He created us to possess and to be possessed by Himself, who is absolute Beauty and perfect Love; and so, whether our love flows out first to those dear ones whom He has given us to love, whether our first love is given to Him or only indirectly to Him, of this be sure, we cannot know heart-rest until we rest wholly in His love. The time will come when we shall have not only an intellectual but an actual apprehension of His love, when we shall live by sight and not by faith, and as we gaze on the Word Incarnate, the sight of God’ s beauty mirrored there will draw up to us His embrace, and the joy of God’ s love will attract us to Him eternally. This, then, is heaven, to rest in the love of God. Then if our first great longing is for love, our second is for knowledge. The heart longs for love, the mind for knowledge: and here, in time, we cannot satisfy this longing. The more we know, the more we become conscious of our ignorance; the more we feed the mind, the more it hungers for that which it has not. Here we know “ in part.” But there, in the heavenly life, the partial knowledge shall be made complete; and I shall study the truth, not only as it has been revealed, but with the aid of the great First Cause, of God Himself; and as I see God I shall know the rest that comes with the perfect knowledge of the truth as it is in Him. And how shall we study to know God? As we can see the Father only as He is mirrored in the Son, so we can only hear His voice as revealed to us through the Incarnate Word. And our study will surely be the study of those mysteries which gather round His sacred form--the mystery of His Incarnation, the mystery of His Death, the infinite mystery of His Resurrection and of His Ascension (for in each is a manifestation of the Infinite). And so, through all the ages of eternity, there will be an eternal festival--an eternal Christmas, an eternal Lady Day, an eternal Easter, and an eternal Ascension--that I may receive into my mind the meaning of these mysteries, and give back to God my mental satisfaction by uttering heaven’ s eternal creed and offering heaven’ s ceaseless worship. Then, thirdly, if in heaven the cravings of our heart for love and of our intellects for knowledge will be satisfied, so, too, will our desire for unity. To some the thought of individuality is not attractive; it is not personal isolation they long for, but corporate union. The two ideas are not antagonistic. True, “ the King’ s daughter is all glorious within, her clothing is of wrought gold.” But why? Because each separate thread is of wrought gold. We see in the Revelation how every precious stone was used in the completion of the heavenly city, which could not be perfect without the perfection of each stone; and so here a life of perfected individuality may be the same as a life of perfected unity. Moses and Elias stood side by side, they knew one another, they shared a common study, they asked common questions, they received the common truth, though Peter and James and John, with their own individual characteristics of zeal and love and patience, as they stood there with them, and heard the Voice out of the cloud, “ This is My beloved Son,” knew Moses to be Moses, and Elias Elias; so in heaven ours will be no mere life of individual isolation, in which the enjoyment of personal love, the tasting of personal truth, the offering of personal worship, will be our one thought. No; the perfection of the lives of the saints blends in one perfect communion: there saint with saint holds converse, lives a common life, offers a common worship. (Canon Body.) Christ crucified Such words never were, never could with truth and fitness, be applied to any but the one death. I. The first point to be noted here is, THE OF THIS DEATH. There was no power, no law of nature that made death a necessity to the Lord Jesus. That pilgrimage into the regions of the tomb He could undertake or decline, according to His own pleasure. He died simply because He willed to die. He might have left the world in a very different way. Like His own servant Elias, with whom He conversed of this decease, He might have returned to heaven in a chariot of fire; or, if He must taste death in order that He might be perfectly like unto His brethren, His departure might have been calm and tranquil, in the stillness of home, amid the sympathies and tears of loving friends. Such a death would surely have been sufficient, if the end of His ministry had been simply the manifestation of God in the flesh. Instead of a close so fitting to a life of purity, He chose to accomplish a decease, in which He should be “ numbered with the transgressors.” Surely for this there must have been wise and sufficient reason. The fact that He died thus, is the proof that the great design of His advent could be fulfilled only by such a death. With Him it was the centre-fact of His whole history. II. THE TO THIS DEATH. He had work to do in the world beside, a bright example to give; the true ideal of a human life to set before man; a perfect righteousness to win; a thousand blessings to scatter; His own deep love and sympathy with human sorrows to discover: but His great work was this--to die. III. THE TRUE MEANING OF THIS DEATH. The New Testament speaks in various ways--sometimes it employs the language of type and symbol--sometimes it gives us distinct and explicit statements but all its representations of this death converge to one point, and enforce one grand idea. “ Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us.” Here is an expressive metaphor--one whose signification it cannot be hard to discover. What is the meaning of the apostle? The Paschal Lamb died for the deliverance of the nation--through his death the nation escaped the sword of the destroying angel--the animal was slain, the blood was sprinkled, and the people were saved. So was Christ our Passover sacrificed, that we might be delivered--His death is our life--in virtue of His blood of sprinkling we are purified and accepted. “ The decease which He should accomplish at Jerusalem.” Thus, then, did the man Christ Jesus ever keep before Him that goal of suffering and humiliation to which His steps were tending. Not ignorantly did He rush on perils and death, entering on a path whose end He did not discern until retreat had become impossible. Knowing what the work was, He had deliberately undertaken it, and throughout all its stages, the issue was ever present to His eye. Very early in His ministry did He indicate that He was set apart to this service--was anointed unto sacrifice. (J. G. Rogers, B. A.) Two divisions in the glorified Church Why were these two men with Jesus in the vision? Is it not because when at length the Church shall reach her state of glory there will be within her two distinct classes? We are told, that when our Lord comes, the “ dead in Christ shall rise first,” and at the sound of the trump, and at the call of His voice, the “ fields of Paradise” shall be deserted, and they shall all be caught up to meet their Lord in the air, henceforth to seek Him in His beauty and to be His daily delight. But what of those who are not in the “ fields of Paradise” at the time of the coming of our Lord? Shall they die? Shall they know that mysterious experience which we call death, the separation of the soul from the body? No, for then it would be a purposeless experience. “ They shall not die, but shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, and shall be ever with the Lord.” Therefore the glorified Church shall be the assembly of those who, some from life and some from Paradise, are gathered into the presence of Christ. And do we not see these two classes represented in the ancient saints who talked with our Lord on the Mount of Transfiguration? Moses, we know, died; and we remember the cause of his death there in the wilderness, and the mysterious conflict over his body between Michael the archangel and Satan. Elijah died not; he never experienced this crisis of existence, but, we are told, “ went up by a whirlwind into heaven.” So the two great divisions of the glorified Church are fittingly represented by these two Old Testament characters, one of whom died the most arresting death there recorded, and the other died not. (Canon Body.) Death an Exodus 1. “ It is strange how much we can find in that great scene on the Holy Mount, to illustrate this conception, and to impress it on our minds. Look at the speakers--Moses, Elijah, Christ. Was not the death of Moses an exodus? A sacred mystery hangs over the decease of the “ Man of God.” “ He who died by the kiss of the Eternal” is a not infrequent synonym for Moses in the Rabbinical schools. Elijah, again, was rapt, we are told, and carried up into heaven, as by a whirling cloud of fiery chariots. If, therefore, any of the sons of men should be permitted to pass from the spiritual world to hold converse with Christ in the moment of His glory, these were the two men. They had already and fully achieved the exodus or journey of death, and had passed into the large fair land beyond. “ They talked with Him of the exodus He should accomplish at Jerusalem.” If we love and follow Him, we need not doubt that we shall be made partakers of His death in this high sense--that for us, as for Him, death will be an exodus, a journey home. 2. The more we study this conception of death the more instructive and suggestive we shall find it to be. The illustration which the figure suggests, and was intended to suggest, is the exodus of Israel from Egypt. If we consider what that exodus was and implies, if we then proceed to infer that death will be to us very much what their exodus was to the captive Hebrew race, we shall reach some thoughts of death, and of the life that follows death, which can hardly fail to be new and helpful to us. The exodus was a transition from bondage to freedom, from grinding and unrequited toil to comparative rest, from ignorance to knowledge, from shame to honour, from a life distracted by care and pain and fear to a life in which men were fed by the immediate bounty of God, guided by His wisdom, guarded by His omnipotence, consecrated to His service. And if death be an exodus, we may say that, by the gate and avenue of death, we shall pass from bondage to freedom, &c. (S. Cox, D. D.) The central truth of the Transfiguration I. CHRIST IN WITH HIS DEATH. There are two transfigurations--that of the Mount and that of the Cross; and it is impossible to understand either, save in the light of the other. He who was on the Mount was still the Man of Sorrows, and He who was on the Cross was still the Divine Son. The death on the Cross gave its glory to the mountain-scene; the declaration on the Mount makes the death all-radiant with triumph. II. CHRIST THROUGH HIS DEATH, BACK A ON MOSES AND ELIJAH. III. AS MOSES AND ELIJAH ARE THUS BY CHRIST, THEY RETIRE FROM VIEW AND GIVE PLACE TO HIM. (W. M. Taylor, D. D.) Celestial visitors When we read of the reappearance of Moses and Elias after their long absence, our first feeling is that of wonder; it is to us a miracle, a strange thing, for the dead do not return. But why view it thus? The wonder is, not that Moses and Elias were seen in the holy Mount, but that the separation between us and the blessed dead should be so complete. Their long unbroken silence is the strange thing when you think of it. We long to know more of them and of the world in which they dwell. We know from this narrative-- 1. That human spirits are not annihilated when they disappear from this world. 2. That human spirits have a personal existence after death. 3. We see in Moses and Elias what all faithful souls shall be, when the great redemption is completed--as like unto God as possible. (Thomas Jones.) The thought of death amid the raptures of the Transfiguration Jesus was lifted by His rapture above the fear of death. He spoke calmly of His decease with the messengers from the unseen world, whose very presence testified of death conquered and the grave despoiled. His acutest pain was transformed into His highest joy, as the body of His humiliation was transfigured by the glory of heaven; and at that supreme moment, when His life was at the brightest, He could have willingly lain it down, and passed into the dark shadow feared of man. This true to human experience. Jacob on seeing Joseph again--“ Now let me die” ; Simeon, with the infant Saviour in his aged arms--“ Now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace.” And outside the domain of Scripture we find numerous examples of the same strange intermingling of the highest glory of life with the thought of sorrow and death. It is indeed on mounts of transfiguration, when our nature is irradiated by some great joy, that we love to speak of our decease. We fear not to enter into the cloud of death when we are transfigured by the passionate intensity of our feelings. Our joy transforms the pain of dying into its own splendour, as the sun changes the very cloud into sunshine. All thoughtful writers have described this remarkable human experience, AEschylus, in his “ Agamemnon “ , pictures the herald returning from the Trojan War as so overjoyed at revisiting his native land that he was willing to die. Goethe represents one of his most beautiful creations--the loved and loving Clara--as wishing to die in the hour of her purest joy; for earth had nothing beyond the rapture of that experience. Shakespeare puts into the lips of Othello, at his joyful meeting with Desdemona, after the perils of his voyage to Cyprus were over, the passionate exclamation:-- “ If it were now to die “ Twere now to be most happy: for I fear My soul hath her content so absolute, That not another comfort like to this Succeeds in unknown fate.” It is said of Benjamin Franklin that his exultation was so great when he succeeded in attracting the lightning from the clouds by means of his kite, and thus proving its identity with the electricity of the earth, that he could willingly have died that very moment. Miss Martineau, in her “ Retrospect of Western Travel,” describes the grandeur of a storm which she encountered on the Atlantic, as producing a similar triumph over the fear of death. “ In the excitement of such an hour,” she says, “ one feels as if one would as soon go down in those magnificent waters as die any other death.” I remember, on one occasion, having something of the same feeling. I was travelling at night in a mountain region, when a terrible storm came on. The rain poured in torrents; the thunder pealed among the rocks; flash after flash of lightning linked the hills together, as with chains of fire. A pall of blackness covered the sky from end to end. Hundreds of torrents poured down the heights into a lake, as if direct from the clouds; the sheen of their foam looked weird and ghastly in the illumination of the lightning, and their roar drowning the crash of the thunder; the sound of many waters, here, there, and everywhere, filling earth and sky. Amid all this appalling elemental war, I felt a strange excitement and uplifting of soul, which made me indifferent to danger, careless what became of me. Such moments reveal to us the greatness of our nature, and fill us with the intoxication of immortality. Death in such glorious circumstances seems an apotheosis. He comes to us as it were with the whirlwind and the chariot of fire, to lift us above the slow pain of dying, in the rapture of translation. (H. Macmillan, LL. D.) The conference during the transfiguration In this discourse I shall first direct your attention to the account given of the persons who conversed with our Lord, and then to the subject of their conference. I. THE PERSONS WHO WITH OUR LORD WERE TWO MEN. 1. It may be thought that two angels would have rendered the scene more splendid, but there was a peculiar propriety in employing men. 2. They were men of high eminence under the former dispensation. 3. We are told that these visitants appeared in glory. They came from heaven, and though their honour and felicity there were very high, they felt no reluctance to descend to this mountain. They were not called to relinquish their splendour or to cover it with a veil, as our Lord is said to have “ emptied Himself,” when he appeared in our world. The glory which invested them must have been very great, since it was visible amidst the brightness spread around our Lord. 4. They talked with Jesus. It is not said that they talked with one another. They descended, not to hold intercourse with the disciples, but with their Master. II. Let us now attend to THE SUBJECT OF THEIR . It was the decease which He should accomplish at Jerusalem. 1. They spake of the moral glory which Jesus should exhibit in His departure. Great was the glory of Moses in the going forth from Egypt. 2. They spoke of the important ends to be gained by His death. It reconciles the mind to labours and sufferings, when we are assured that valuable ends will be gained by them. Let me specify some of these ends. They talked of the glory which would result from His death to all the Divine perfections. The expiation to be made for sin was another end. I must mention further, the salvation to be gained by His death for millions of human beings. 3. We may consider them as speaking of the influence of His death. 4. They spoke of the rewards which would be conferred on Him for His obedience to the death. Let me now state shortly, some of the reasons why this theme was chosen for conference on the Mount. 1. It was done to animate and invigorate the Son of Man for the scene before Him. 2. We may find another reason for the choice of the topic in its peculiar importance. 3. They talked of this subject for the sake of the disciples. 4. They did it for the benefit of the Church in all ages. 1. Let Christians live more under the influence of this death than ever. 2. Let good men prepare for their departure. 3. Let me call on the disciples of Jesus, with kindred feelings to those of Moses and Elias, to commemorate their Saviour’ s decease. And let those who never approach the Lord’ s table consider that, were their conduct general, the death of Christ might sink into oblivion on earth. (H. Belfrage.) Luke 9:33 It is good for us to be here Raise up your eyes heavenward I. If you frequently remember heaven, it will be A GREAT IN YOUR MANY HERE. 1. Affliction shall be no more. (1) No separation. (2) No grief. (3) No pains. 2. In heaven we shall find an everlasting reward for our tribulations. II. If you frequently remember heaven, you will be IS THE VARIOUS OF LIFE. 1. Heaven is your peaceful home. (1) No enemy. (2) No struggle. 2. Heaven is the abode of infinite glory. (Joseph Schuen.) On the top of Tabor I. THEY HAD A VISION OF CHRIST’ S . Not His distinct, unveiled Godhead--that would have been an insufferable blaze that Jehovah Himself hath told us can no man look upon and live. On the form of a servant He wears His coronation robes, and is at one and the same time a mystery and a revelation--God manifest in the flesh! What an honour and a privilege was this! II. THEY HAD A VISION OF SAINTS. Thou too, my friend, for good or ill, will live on through all the ages. Not only men, but retaining their individuality, in form and feature as in the days of their flesh. III. THEY HAD A VISION OF THE FATHER’ S . There came a cloud and overshadowed them; not an ordinary cloud, but the bright Shekinahcloud, in which Jehovah did ever manifest His presence--the medium through which He ever made His communications to a favoured few. IV. THEY SAW A VISION OF JESUS ONLY. This, I think, was the chief end and aim of this great event. (J. J. Wray.) Our wishes are not always wise Peter’ s instance showeth us two things. 1. That we are apt to consult with our own profit, rather than public good. It is our nature, if it be well with ourselves, to forget others. 2. How much we are out when we judge by present sense, and the judgment of flesh. Well then, let us learn by what measure to determine good or evil. 1. Good is not to be determined by our fancies and conceits, but by the wisdom of God: for He knoweth what is better for us than we do for ourselves. 2. That good is to be determined with respect to the chief good, and true happiness. 3. That good is not always the good of the flesh, or the good of outward prosperity; and therefore certainly the good of our condition is not to be determined by the interest of the flesh, but the welfare of our souls. 4. A particular good must give way to a general good, and our personal benefit to the advancement of Christ’ s kingdom, and the glory of God. 5. This good is not to be determined by the judgment of sense, but by the judgment of faith; not by present feeling, but future profit. That which is not good may be a means to good. If we come to a person under the Cross, and ask him, What! Is it good to feel the lashes of God’ s correcting hand? to be kept poor, sickly, exercised with losses and reproaches, to part with friends and relations, to lose a beloved child? he would be apt to answer, No. But this poor creature after he hath been exercised, and mortified, and gotten some renewed evidences of God’ s favour; ask Him then, Is it good to be afflicted? Oh yes, I had been vain, neglectful of God, wanted such an experience of the Lord’ s grace. Faith should determine the case when we feel it not. Well then, let us learn to distinguish between what is really best for us, and what we judge to be best. Other diet is more wholesome for our souls than that which our sickly appetite craveth. It is best many times when we are weakest, worst when strongest, all things are good as they help on a blessed eternity, so sharp afflictions are good. (T. Manton, D. D.) Peter’ s rash judgment I propound six questions on this. 1. Could it be good for them that Christ should entrench Himself in Mount Tabor, and never go to Jerusalem to be crucified? Lord, grant us not our own wishes when we desire evil unto ourselves; for this apostle unwittingly desired as much mischief to fall upon his own head as the devil could wish. 2. And might not Peter counsel Him without offence against this ignominious death? No, my beloved; for it is not to be excused how he knew not the Scriptures, that this was the course appointed for the redemption of the world. The hungry could not eat their bread until it was broken; we could not quench our thirst with the water of life till it was poured out of His wounds. 3. I ask, if that condition of life be well chosen in this world which appears, as this did to Peter, to be exempted from all affliction? Danger is the best sentinel in the world to make us watch our enemies. Fear is the best warning bell to call us often to prayer. Tribulation is the best orator to persuade us to humility. 4. Where shall the dove rest his foot? If we would be contented with the present state we enjoy, yet all things will change, and though all things should remain as they are, and never change, yet we would never be contented. The sea is a new sea every tide, the earth is a new earth every month, or every quarter at the longest distance, the same mutability whirls us about, and the things that we possess. What content then could Peter take in one hill, though it were furnished with a most desirable vision? How quickly would it have cloyed him to have been long there, like a lark, hopping upon one turf of grass? Though God prepare for us a new heaven, and a new earth, yet He must give us a new heart likewise to delight in them for ever. For it is not the object alone, but the disposition of the soul which receives it, that must make us say, “ When I awake up after Thy likeness I shall be satisfied with it.” 5. Should we call that good which is appropriated to ourselves, and not communicated to many? When every man is his own end, all things will corns to a bad end. Blessed were those days, when every man thought himself rich and fortunate by the good success of the public wealth and glory. Every man thinks that he is a whole commonwealth in his private family. Can the public be neglected and any man’ s private be secure? It is all one whether the mischief light upon him or his posterity. There are some, says Tully, that think their own gardens and fishponds shall be safe when the Commonwealth is lost. 6. To the last question briefly in a word: Could it be the supreme good of man to behold the human nature of Christ only beatified? Surely, the human nature shining as light as the sun was a rare object, that Peter could have been contented with that, and no more, for his part for ever, yet the resolution of the school holds certain, that blessedness consists essentially in beholding the Divine nature which is the fountain of all goodness, and power; and in the fruition thereof, accidentally it consists in beholding Christ’ s human nature glorified, and in the consequent delectation. These things must not be enlarged now, because I am prevented by the time. (Bishop Hacker.) Balloon religion Peter is in ecstasy amid these surroundings. He desires to remain on the Mount. He says in rapture, “ It is good for us to be here.” He would rather remain there for ever, than go down from the mountain and engage in the practical duties of life. But his request is denied him. Sometimes, in revival meetings, you have felt in the same way. There are duties outside of the revival. Longfellow, in one of his poems, pictures a youth, who, in winter, seizes a banner and begins the ascent of a mountain. He gradually leaves behind him the fields, the stores, the workshops, the dwellings, and the neighbours. As he rises higher and higher he shouts, “ Excelsior.” His voice grows fainter and fainter, until heard no more. He has gone so high, that the atmosphere in which he moves has become too thin to sustain life, and he dies. So it is no uncommon thing to see professed Christians taking the banner of the Cross and crying, “ Hallelujah,” “ Amen,” rise higher and higher, emotionally, until they leave behind them this practical world. They lose sight of the duties of every-day life. They are too high up to give much attention to such matters as speaking the truth, keeping their temper, restraining their tongue from slander, and paying their debts. They have become too religious to give much concern to these things. But these persons soon reach an altitude where the atmosphere is too thin for them to live, and they die. It is one thing to be religious on the Mount of Transfiguration, and another thing not to deny our Lord in the world below. Instead of this gushing religion, let us have one that touches the ground. (Irving A. Searles.) A three-tent heaven Peter forgot the other disciples, the great world beneath, and the generations yet to come. How narrow and insignificant this proposed heaven, compared with the one seen by the Patmos exile, who beheld “ a great multitude which no man could number.” But Peter is not the only follower of Christ who would be satisfied with a little three-tent heaven. This spirit is the death-warrant of missionary enterprise. What shall be said of a Christian who is satisfied if he can only gain heaven for himself, even if the rest of the world is lost? Away with the idea of a three-tent heaven! (Irving A. Searles.) Holiness in religious assemblies and in every-day life; 1. The wish Peter here expresses is exceedingly natural. 2. It is seemingly pious. 3. It expresses a desire not altogether free from selfishness. 4. Like other selfish wishes, Peter’ s was mistaken. “ Not knowing what he said” indicates the blind manner in which it was cherished and expressed. 5. We have said enough already to indicate why Peter’ s wish was not gratified. But why, if in form it had to be denied, might it not have been granted in substance? Supposing that Peter’ s main object in wishing to remain there was the better and holier mood which he would have been able to maintain, why might not the spiritual condition have been granted to him, even though the surrounding circumstances could not be perpetuated? The same questions in effect are sometimes asked now. Say some, “ The Lord is able at once to sanctify you wholly.” But to ask why, if God is able to sanctify us, we are not sanctified instantaneously by His power, is very much the same as to ask, why does not God make us other than men? Why does He not change us into things into which He can put whatsoever He pleases, while, for the possession of it, as we have no will in the matter, we shall be entitled to no praise, as for the lack of it we are subject to no blame? The answer is, because He has destined us for something nobler; that, while free to choose the wrong, ours might be the merit of making the right the object of our desires and aspirations, and prayers and strivings, until having, through diligent and untiring effort, gained the victory over evil, and attained to the possession of all that is well-pleasing in His sight, we hear from His lips the eulogy which can never be pronounced on those who are made, only on those who do, and labour, and fight, “ Well done, good and faithful servant,” &c. (W. Landels, D,D.) The overshadowing cloud Like the clouds that overhang and surround us, so the sorrows of life come and go, and alternate our days with changeful light and shade. Let us gaze at this cloud overshadowing these apostles, that we may learn something of the clouds that may now and hereafter overshadow our hearts. I. THE CLOUD THE . 1. When did it overshadow them? At the moment at which they were witnessing a new and unexpected revelation of the majesty and glory of Jesus. How unlikely that a cloud should then arise! 2. What cloud was it that overshadowed them? It was a cloud of salvation. It came in mercy. II. THE FEAR OF THE AS THEY ENTERED THE CLOUD. Why did they fear? 1. Perhaps because it was a cloud. 2. Because there was mystery in the cloud. Their fear implied their deficiency of love. III. THE VOICE IN THE CLOUD. The voice of God, testifying to them of Jesus. It was the very testimony they needed, and it was vouchsafed to them in answer to the prayer of Jesus. In all the clouds that overshadow us, in all the sorrows that assail us, there is a Divine voice addressing us; and the design of the testimony is to exalt Jesus in our hearts. (W. T. Bull, B. A.) The cloud Our whole happiness and power of energetic action depend upon our being able to breathe and live in the cloud; content to see it opening here and closing there; rejoicing to catch through the thinnest films of it, glimpses of stable and substantial things; but yet perceiving a nobleness even in the concealment, and rejoicing that the kindly veil is spread where the untempered light might have scorched us, or the infinite clearness wearied. (J. Ruskin.) The fear of the disciples What is meant by the expression “ as they entered the cloud,” will be understood by all of you who have ever climbed to the summit of some high mountain, and may be imagined by those who have seen the lofty peak of some towering hill enveloped in a robe of mist. When, as you stand in the cool air of the mountain-top, the cloud descends upon you, you seem rather to be rising up into it, and as it hides from your view the way you have come, and the wide reach of the surrounding country, you are seized and oppressed with a sense of loneliness and mystery which may well explain what is said of the disciples in the text. And the kind of fear which is here spoken of is just that which is most trying and hardest to bear, that namely of some unknown evil that may befall you in the gloom. We create for ourselves more evils than we are called to endure. We climb the shadows before we reach the hills. To be the slave of presentiments is to deprive life of the pleasure which it was intended to have in store for us, and so to weaken ourselves that when the expected trouble befalls us it crushes and overwhelms us. (J. R. Bailey.) The voice from the cloud Is there not rich and consoling meaning to be got out of the fact that the voice spake to the disciples out of the fearful cloud? Does it not show that the cloud itself was the token of the Divine presence? Does it not teach us that the very events and experiences we fear the most may be those which shall most surely bring God nigh to us? The cloud and the voice are inseparably connected in the narrative--the cloud which conceals, and the voice which reveals. It is not that there was a cloud here, and a voice there. It was from the midst of the cloud that the voice came. And, did we but know it, there is a Divine presence in, and a Divine voice issuing from every cloud. Let us learn to be thankful for the cloud, instead of fearful of it, if, without it, we should not hear the reassuring voice. (J. R. Bailey.) The overshadowing cloud Think of the cloud as a symbol-- I. OF THE OF AND OF HUMAN LIFE. II. OF THE SORROW THAT OFTEN VEILS THE OF GOD’ S LOVE, AND YET IS THE KEY TO THE SECRET RICHES OF THAT LOVE. III.. OF DEATH--THE VEIL THAT HANGS BETWEEN US AND THE GREAT . (J. Waite, B. A.) Luke 9:34-36 They feared as they entered into the cloud Entering the cloud I. THE GLOOM OF THE CLOUD OFTEN THE OF THE LIGHT. Delight even in our divines, experiences is not to be all. These disciples had a hard work to do yet. God has reasons for the darkness as well as for the light. II. THE INTO THE CLOUD WAS A MATTER OF FEAR. Fear on entering! It is often the first experience that we dread. The awful solitude of Glencoe strikes you most on entering; by degrees, you see colour among the rocks, beauty in the vale. Overcome first fear, and then, as you merge into some dread experience, the mind will become accustomed to the change. No sorrow is so great as it seems. III. THERE IS A VOICE IN THE CLOUD, AND IT IS THE VOICE OF GOD. A cloud and a voice! Yes, the conjunction is beautiful even in a human sense. It is under the cloud of misconception that a friend’ s voice is all-sustaining; it is under the cloud of some dark trial that the tender tones of love make sweetest music. This was the voice of God. That in itself is deepest solace and truest inspiration. Speak, Lord! Enoch heard that voice when he walked with God. It is a Father’ s voice. In the cloud, if we are the children of the world, there will be heard only our own voice--the voice of repining--the voice of distrust--the voice of mourning--or, worst of all, the voice of despair! IV. THERE IS A VISION AFTER THE CLOUD. They saw “ Jesus only.” Beautiful in one sense, though they were disappointed that other visions were gone. V. THERE IS A LAND, WHERE THERE ARE NO CLOUDS. Then the voice will come from the throne, not from the cloud. There are no clouds there; faith needs no more trial; character no more test. Christian transfiguration is not completed here; we are renewed, but not glorified yet. But in ourselves we have a prophecy of perfected life, even the earnest of the inheritance. (W. M. Statham, B. A.) The overshadowing cloud, and the voice that comes from it The first thing that claims attention is-- I. THE CLOUD. It is not necessary for us to go on far in life before we find clouds coming to cast their shadows over us. We know that the elements are there out of which overshadowing clouds are in constant process of formation. And we know too that there are active agents all the time in operation on those elements. There are the rivers and lakes and seas about us, spreading out their broad water surfaces. And there is the sun with his genial beams, turning that water into vapour, and sending it off on its floating voyage through the air, to form into clouds which shall cast their shadows over our pathway. And just so it is in our experience of life in its moral or spiritual aspect. We carry in us, and find around us, the elements and agents that are occupied continually in forming the clouds that come and overshadow us. In the sickness and death of those we love, or in the visitation of personal sickness, in the loss of property, in the disappointment of our reasonable expectations, what clouds arise continually from all these varied sources! How darkly their shadows fall upon us! The apostles were on the Mount of Transfiguration. Jesus in all the glory of His coming kingdom stood in the midst of them. They stood at the very vestibule of heaven, with all the radiance of its glory beaming around them; and yet, even on that towering summit--a point of elevation in brightness and bliss, such as dwellers on this globe had never reached before--“ there came a cloud and overshadowed them.” And so it must be with us. We must expect the clouds to come and cast their shadows over us. This side of heaven we cannot get beyond their reach. “ There came a cloud and overshadowed them,” has been descriptive of the experience of God’ s people from the beginning. If we look at the lives of Abraham, Job, Jacob, David, or any of God’ s servants, as written in the Bible, we see how broad and deep these shadows have lain upon their pathway. II. THE FEELING WITH WHICH THIS . IS MET. “ And they feared as they entered into the cloud.” Nothing is more natural to fallen men than fear in reference to God and eternity. And it is not difficult to point out the causes of it. 1. One of these is our consciousness of sin. Fear cannot find room where sin has not gone before it. 2. There may be a failure to understand the views which the Scriptures give us of God’ s providence; or an unwillingness to believe those views. Either of these things will give rise to the fear of which we are speaking. This is the Bible view of God’ s providences towards His people. Could anything be brighter, or more cheerful? Then why should Christians fear when the cloud comes? There would be no room for fear if we only had simple faith in these Bible views of providence. Fear springs from the want of faith. In the darkest hour of Luther’ s trying life the Elector of Saxony was the only earthly defender who stood by him. For a time it was doubtful whether the Emperor Charles V. might not send an army against the elector and crush him. “ Where will you be,” said some one to Luther, “ if the emperor should send his forces against the elector?” It was under the sustaining influence of the principle we are now considering that that heroic man sublimely said, “ I shall be either in heaven or under heaven.” He could enter the darkest cloud without fear. III. THE VOICE FROM THE CLOUD. “ There came a voice out of the cloud, saying, This is My beloved Son; hear Him.” And this is the design of all God’ s afflictive dealings with His people. The cloud comes upon us, with its overshadowing gloom, to check us in the too eager pursuit of other things, and to enable us to see Jesus, and understand His character and work. A soldier had lost his right arm from the shoulder during the last war. To an agent of the Christian Commission, who visited him, he said, “ It seems to me I cannot be grateful enough for losing my arm. It was dreadful to me at first.” Thus he “ feared as he entered into the cloud.” “ But,” he continued, it has ended in bringing me to Jesus. And now, I can say with truth, “ It is better to enter into life halt or maimed, rather than having two hands or two feet to be cast into outer darkness.” Thus God lets the clouds of trial come and overshadow us, that we may be prepared to see the light, and glory, and infinite sufficiency, and preciousness, that are to be found in Christ. “ Sorrow touch’ d by love grows bright, With more than rapture’ s ray; And darkness shows us worlds of light We never saw by day.” And then this voice from the cloud quickens to duty, as well as points to Jesus. “ This is My beloved Son; hear Him.” Such was David’ s experience when he said, “ Before I was afflicted I went astray; but now have I kept Thy word.” The voice from the overshadowing cloud had quickened him in duty. There are two trees. One is growing on a fertile plain, the other is perched high up on the mountain-side. The lowland tree will lean to this side or that, though it be but a summer breeze that bends it, or a bank of cowslips from which its trunk leans aslope. But let the storm and the avalanche do their worst to the hardy pine-tree of the Alps, it will cling to its little ledge on the side of the precipice and grow straight. Its roots point down to the centre of the earth; and the more the storms rock it, the hardier, and the stronger, and the straighter it will grow. And the same law holds in spiritual growth as in that which is natural. The voice from the overshadowing cloud quickens to duty and strengthens for service. And there is no nobler sight to contemplate than that of a child of God, whose confidence in Him cannot be shaken--not fearing when the clouds gather, nor faltering when the tempests burst. And thus we have attempted to speak of the overshadowing cloud; of the fear with which it is entered; and of the voice that comes from it. The cloud, the fear, the voice. There is just one lesson we may carry away with us from the consideration of this subject. It is this: If we are true Christians we never need fear the developments of God’ s providences. However darkly the clouds may gather, or however fiercely the storms may burst, they cannot harm us. We need not fear. (R. Newton.) The cloud and the voice With a natural cloud the facts we associate are obscurity, dimness, a degree of mystery, a hiding of the light--sometimes very mercifully softening and tempering what would be more dazzling than the delicate organ of sight could bear--yet a body so attenuated, transparent, and movable, that we feel the darkness is transient. It may pass away from the face of the sun; it may be touched by his beams, transfigured to the eye, and made almost like another sun in splendour. Such, under the laws of light and air and water and attraction, are the properties of the cloud in nature. Now, in that succession of special disclosures of the Divine Presence and care for man, of which the Bible is the completest record and Christ the perfect incarnation, it is striking to see how each principal act of revelation is covered with a cloud--a palpable veil of mystery. From the beginning to the end you see the persistent and remarkable reappearance of this symbol. Considering how these different books of the Bible were produced, and what a variety of authors, periods, countries, stages of literary culture, they proceed from, this is more than a coincidence--it is design. It discloses a general truth. As men are brought near to the very sight and feeling of their Lord, an obscurity overshadows them; there is a shrinking; reverence hides the face; the angels even, admitted to the brightest day, veil their eyes with their wings; no sight is clear enough, no faith is bold enough, not to need the screen. “ They feared as they entered into the cloud.” 1. Most of our deepest acquaintance with religious truth comes by a discipline of some severity. To pass out of a life of indifference and self-indulgence into one of purity and prayer requires a painful effort. If you can look back to any time when your life took a new starting-point, or rose to a higher aim, you will remember there was some hard conflict connected with it. Suffering is not only the consequence of sin, but the instrument of recovery. It is a means of penitence, and so a minister to the only real peace. 2. The second point on this practical side of the doctrine is that it is when we are entering into this cloud--having only the dark side of it before us, and its damp and chilly folds closing around us--that we are afraid. The purpose of the cloud is to shut out all that we are not meant to see. It is also a kind of background for the heavenly vision. This is only one way of expressing the exact and eternal contradiction of right and wrong. The true life is born by a painful travail. 3. For, thirdly, there comes, as the Evangelist writes, “ a voice out of the cloud,” which is sufficient, if we will hearken to it, to guide us through the dark, into the light, where the sun is never dim. 4. “ Hear Him.” Hear Him, and He will scatter the cloud from about you with the breath of His mouth. (Bishop Huntington.) The cloud I. The Lord did show that He could frame a better piece of architecture of a sudden than Peter could imagine to build: he spake of three tabernacles, which would be long in piecing together; God in a moment creates one cloud to receive them all better than a hundred tabernacles. Such a one as Moses and the Israelites had in the wilderness to shadow them against all offence. Such things the heathen did drive at in their poetical fictions: but I am sure the Lord is able to pitch a cloud between His chosen and their enemies, that the hand of violence shall not touch them, neither shall any evil come nigh their dwelling. II. A cloud did interpose itself to qualify the object of the Transfiguration, and to make it fit for the disciples to behold it: the cloud indeed was very bright, yet it was dark and opacous in respect of Christ’ s body, which did exceed the very light of the sun. In this life we must look through a cloud, we must expect to see Him as in a glass darkly, hereafter we shall see Him face to face. Mark the infirmity of man’ s nature in this sinful corruptible condition, and let us learn humility; it was not enough that Peter, John, and James were not transformed in the Mount, as Christ was--no, nor as Moses and Elias were, our vile flesh is not receptive of such celestial excellency--but to abase them and us further, a shady cloud opposed itself before their eyes, because we are not fit nor worthy to behold such pure happiness in these days of vanity. “ Such knowledge is too excellent for me,” says David, “ I cannot attain unto it.” III. This cloud was set up for a land-mark to limit curiosity, and to drive men off from approaching too near to pry into the Divine secrets. Where God sets up a cloud it is a manifest sign that those are our bounds, and we must not break them. IV. And I am sure this reason searcheth the true cause of the cloud as near as any. God the Father in the Old Testament was wont to utter His voice out of the thick clouds of the air, and so He continues His holy will in the gospel, and therefore prepared this cloud to preach from thence the words which follow, “ This is My beloved Son,” &c. (Bishop Hacker.) A cloud of protection Where God covers anything with a miraculous shadow, it promiseth that the Divine protection is round about it. Leonidas the Grecian was told that his enemies came marching in such full troops against him, that their darts when they threw them up would cover the light of the sun: Leonidas puts it off with this stout Courage, Turn in umbra pugnabimus; “ Then we will fight in the shade.” A courageous word, and made very fit for a Christian’ s mouth. Believe in the Lord, and we are all under His custody and defence; beseech Him to stretch His wings upon us, and the Holy Ghost will overshadow us, In umbra pugnabimus, to that shadow we betake ourselves to shun the fire of anger, and the heat of con cupiscence; under that shadow will we fight against our ghostly enemies. Why did not the disciples know their own strength and assurance when this cloud did overshadow them? Did not the Lord declare that He took them into His protection? (Bishop Hacker.) Man and mystery I. MAN IN CONTACT WITH MYSTERY. The disciples now stood face to face with “ The Cloud.” 1. Every science is an attempt to solve Nature’ s mysteries, to discover Nature’ s secrets. 2. Nor in the realm of Religion does man have less frequently to do with mystery. In the fact that man has thus to do with mystery, we have a sign of the finiteness of our nature. II. MAN ALARMED AT MYSTERY. There are many mysteries, such for instance as some in the physical world, contact with which does not awaken fear. Some in the natural world. As when stupendous nature seems to be the enemy of man, so that it arrays itself in plague, storm, earthquake, against the feeble, the unoffending, the good. Some in intellectual speculation. Those who climb the mountain of inquiry often “ fear as they enter the cloud.” Some in personal experience. And there will be death. In the fact that man is thus alarmed at mystery, we have one proof of the sinfulness of our nature. To a pure being mystery would have no dread. III. MAN IN MYSTERY. But the cloud became a sanctuary; the mystery a revelation. For out of it there came a voice, saying, “ This is My beloved Son: hear Him.” So hearing the Divine teaching about the ever-living, ever-present Christ, we connect Him and mystery together thus: Christ is the moral of all mysteries. The cloud settled on the mountain, and enwrapped the three disciples, solely to perfect the revelation of Christ to them. Thus every mystery in human life is meant, and adapted, to train us for Christ. Does mystery discover to us our ignorance, so that we feel as those that grope in darkness, and stretch forth imploring hands, and strain eager eyes for light? That yearning, thus intensified under the pressure of mystery, is a yearning for Christ, “ the Light of the World.” Does mystery make us realize our feebleness, so that we feel as a leaf driven before the winds of circumstances, a waif tossed on the waves of the unresting ocean of the material universe, and cry for strength? That cry is for Christ, the arm of the Lord revealed.” Christ is the interpreter of mystery. There are mysteries that He solves for us now by the record of His wonderful words. Christ is the controller of all mystery. Not alone hath He “ the keys of death and hell,” though verily these two are among the deepest of all mysteries; but He is the Sovereign of the future, for to Him “ is subject the world to come.” (U. R. Thomas) The Lord Jesus as Mediator 1. From the occasions upon which this voice came from heaven; at His Baptism, which was Christ’ s dedication of Himself to the work of a Redeemer and Saviour, and now at His Transfiguration, to distinguish Him from Moses and the other prophets, and publicly to instal Him in the mediatory office. 2. The matter of the words show His fitness for this office, for here you have-- (1) His dignity; not a servant, but a Son (Hebrews 3:5-6). (2) The dearness between God and Him. 3. His acceptableness to God, who is well-pleased with the design, the terms, the management of it. II. This work of Mediator Christ executeth by three offices of King, Priest, Prophet. III. That though all the three offices be employed, yet the prophetical office is more explicitly mentioned, partly as suiting with the present occasion, which is to demonstrate that Christ hath sufficient authority to repeal the Law of Moses which the prophets were to explain, confirm, and maintain till His coming. (T. Manton, D. D.) Christ, the great Prophet, must be Head I. That Christ is the great Prophet and Teacher of the Church appeareth 1. By the titles given to Him. (1) He is compared with Moses, the great Lawgiver among the Jews Deuteronomy 18:15). (2) He is called the Angel or Messenger of the Covenant (Malachi 3:1). 2. By the properties of His office. He has three things to qualify Him for this high office. (1) Absolute supreme authority; and therefore we must hear Him and hearken to Him. (2) All manner of sufficiency and power of God to execute this office John 3:34). (3) There is in Him a powerful efficacy. As He hath absolute authority to teach in His own name, and fulness of sufficiency to make known the mind of God to us; so He hath power to make His doctrine effectual. And when He dealt with His disciples, after He had opened the Scriptures, He opened their understandings (Luke 24:25). So He opened the heart of Lydia Acts 16:14). He can teach so as to draw (John 6:44-45). He can excite the drowsy mind, change and turn the rebellious will, cure the distempered affections, make us to be what He persuadeth us to be. There is no such teacher as Christ, who doth not only give us our lesson, but a heart to learn; therefore to Him must we submit, hear nothing against Him, but all from Him. II. About hearing Him; that must be explained also. First, What it is to hear. It being our great duty, and the respect bespoken for Him. In the hearing of words there are three things considerable; the sound that cometh to the ear, the understanding of the sense and meaning, and the assent or consent of the mind. Of the first, the beasts are capable, for they have ears to hear the sound of words uttered. The second is common to all men, for they can sense such intelligible words as they hear. The third belongeth to disciples, who are swayed by their Master’ s authority. Secondly, How can we now hear Christ, since He is removed into the heaven of heavens, and doth not speak to us in person. The revelation is settled, and not delivered by parcels, as it was to the ordinary prophets. Now we hear Christ in the Scriptures (Hebrews 2:3-4). Thirdly, The properties of this hearing or submission to our Great Prophet. 1. There must be a resolute consent or resignation of ourselves to His teaching and instruction. All particular duties are included in the general. 2. This resignation of our souls to Christ as a Teacher, as it must be resolute, so it must be unbounded and without reserves. We must submit absolutely to all that He propoundeth, though some mysteries be above our reason, some precepts against the interest and inclination of the flesh, some promises seem to be against hope, or contrary to natural probabilities. 3. It must be speedy. No delay (Hebrews 3:7). 4. Your consent to hear Him must be real, practical, obediential, verified in the whole tenor and course of your lives and actions; for Christ will not be flattered with empty titles: “ Why call ye Me Lord, and Master, and do not the things which I say?” (Luke 6:46). Many study Christianity to form their opinions, rather than reform their hearts and practice. The great use of knowledge and faith is to behold the love of God in the face of Jesus Christ, that our own love may be quickened and increased to Him again. If it serve only to regulate opinions, it is but dead speculation, not a living faith. III. The reasons why this Prophet must be heard. 1. Because He is the only beloved Son of God. 2. Because the doctrine of the gospel which He speaks is the most sweet, excellent, and comfortable doctrine that can be heard or understood by the heart of man. Uses: I. Of conviction, to the carnal Christian for not submitting to Christ’ s authority. 1. Do you seriously come to Him that you may have pardon and life? 2. Do you respect the word of the gospel, entertain it with reverence and delight, as the voice of the great Prophet? Do you meditate on it, digest it as the seed of the new life, as the rule of your actions, as the charter of your hopes? 3. Do you mingle it with faith in the hearing, that it may profit you? 4. Do you receive it as the Word of God? 5. Doth it come to you as the Mediator’ s word, not in word only, but in power? 6. Do you hear Him universally? 7. Do you hear Him so as to prefer God, and Christ, and the life to come, above all the sensual pleasures and vain delights, and worldly happiness, which you enjoy here? II. ADVICE TO WEAK . 1. TO excite themselves to obedience by this “ hear Him” when dead and lifeless. 2. When you do renounce some beloved lust, or pleasing sin, urge your hearts with Christ’ s authority. Remember who telleth you of cutting off your right hand, and plucking out your right eye. How can I look the Mediator in the face, if I should wilfully break any of His laws, prefer the satisfaction of a base lust, before the mercies and hopes offered me by Jesus Christ. 3. In deep distresses, when you are apt to question the comfort of the promises, it is hard to keep the rejoicing of hope, without regarding whose word and promise is it (Hebrews 3:6). The cloud a blessing Man is harrassed by groundless fears. Who has ever looked for blessings in a cloud? Were we appointed to collect the riches of the universe, how many would pass by the clouds, as though in their dark and troubled breasts no treasure could be found I How often have we trembled as we have entered into the cloud of bereavement, or sorrowful apprehension; and yet in such a cloud have we heard a voice, as did the trembling disciples l In the cloud which they dreaded they heard the Divine voice; henceforward, then, let us gratefully remember that even a cloud can contain a blessing, and that sometimes fear is but the quaking harbinger of joy. (J. Parker, D. D.) Keeping a secret It is a privilege to be trusted. Sometimes the trust is a burden. Few can keep secrets. The disciples were able to do so. We are told concerning one thing that they had seen that they kept it close. I. THE SECRET HELD. A vision of Christ’ s glory among beings of another world. That vision had been-- 1. Instructive. 2. Assuring. 3. Elevating. II. THE REASONS FOR THE SECRECY. 1. The spiritual attainments of the disciples were not sufficiently advanced for them to speak freely of what they had seen without some damage to themselves. A sneer of some doubter might have weakened their belief at that time. 2. Christ had enjoined silence. He was in no haste to astonish the world. 3. The outside world was not in a fit state to receive the knowledge of that vision. A time was sure to come when the disciples could speak openly and effectively. Peter doubtless made frequent references to it (2 Peter 1:16). We may remember that-- (1) We have no need to refrain from speaking of what Christ has done in giving us peace. (2) Whatever witness we bear should be the outcome of a real experience. Anyhow, we should endeavour to let the praise of Christ be on our lips and reflected in our lives. (Homiletic Magazine.) Luke 9:37-43 Master, I beseech Thee, look upon my son The devil’ s last throw I. OUR HOPES ARE ALL . Here is a poor youth, but bad as he is, terribly possessed as he is, he is coming to Christ. Prayer has been offered for him by his father, and Jesus is near. All looks well! For a hungry man to be coming to a dinner is not enough: he must actually reach the table and eat. For a sick man to be coming to an eminent physician is hopeful, but it is not enough; he must get to that physician, take his medicine, and be restored. That is the point. To be coming to Christ is not enough: you must actually come to Him, and really receive Him; for to such only does He give power to become the sons of God. II. OUR FEARS ARE AROUSED. “ As he was a-coming, the devil threw him down, and tare him.” How does the devil do this? Well, we have seen it done in this way: When the man had almost believed in Christ, but not quite, Satan seemed to multiply his temptations around him, and to bring his whole force to bear upon him. I have known in addition to all this that Satan has stirred up the anxious one’ s bad passions. Passions that lay asleep have suddenly been aroused. Moreover, the man has become thoughtful, and from that very fact doubts which he never knew before have come upon him. III. OUR WONDER IS EXCITED. This cure was perfected at once, and it remained with the youth. The Saviour’ s cures endure the test of years. “ Enter no more into him” preserved the young man by a life-long word of power. I never dare to preach to anybody a temporary salvation. (C. H.Spurgeon.) The corner’ s conflict with Satan I. THE DEVIL’ S DOINGS. When this child came to Christ to be healed, the devil threw him down and tare him. 1. First of all he does this by perverting the truth of God for the destruction of the soul’ s hope and comfort. 2. But Satan is not very scrupulous, and he sometimes throws the coming sinner down and tears him by telling horrible falsehoods. Many a time when the soul is coming to Christ, Satan violently injects infidel thoughts. 3. Then if the devil cannot overcome you there, he tries another method; he takes all the threatening passages out of God’ s Word, and says they all apply to you. II. THE DEVIL’ S DESIGN. Why does he throw the coming soul down, and tear it? 1. Because he does not like to lose it. 2. Sometimes, I believe, he has the vile design of inducing poor souls to make away with themselves, before they have faith in Christ. 3. When the soul is coming to Christ he tries, out of spite, to worry that soul. III. THE DEVIL’ S . I will give the poor sinner a means of detecting Satan, so that he may know whether his convictions are from the Holy Spirit, or merely the bellowing of hell in his ears. 1. In the first place, you may be always sure that that which comes from the devil will make you look at yourselves and not at Christ. 2. You may discern the devil’ s insinuations in another way; they generally reflect upon some attribute of God. IV. Now, in the last place, we have to consider THE DEVIL’ S DEFEAT. How was he defeated? Jesus rebuked him. Beloved, there is no other way for us to be saved from the castings down of Satan but the rebuke of Jesus. (C. H.Spurgeon.) Spiritual power, impaired and restored I. POWER IS NEEDED FOR THE CASTING OUT OF DEVILS. We, weak men, in our own strength cannot successfully grapple with evil in ourselves or others. You may charm the serpent for a little time. You may tame the wild beast. You may put him into a cage and restrain him in many ways. The sweet music of David did charm to rest the evil spirit of Saul. But the grim fact remains that the foul fiend is not cast out. Every generation has witnessed the failure of man in this unequal struggle with evil. All the forces of civilization are called into eager requisition in the conflict--art, and education, and refinement, and philanthropy, and social reform, and the administration of law. The failure is confessed by the deepest and purest spirits of the Grecian culture. In Rome an iron will entered into conflict with evil, but the failure was more conspicuous still than in Athens. In the East the religious instinct, often under the guidance of gloriously gifted men, has laboured to cast out the spirit of evil. But all the centuries and all the generations have sunk in hopeless failure. We are forced to return to the plain, simple teaching of God’ s Book, that we need a power not our own, the power of God to overcome. 1. We need this spiritual power to cast evil out of ourselves. You have often tried self-denial. You have tried occupation and work. You have tried religious duties. You have tried the practice of moral precept. 2. But in like manner we need spiritual power to cast the spirit of evil out of others. The early disciples found it so. II. THERE IS NO TRUE POWER WITHOUT FAITH. Let us observe, that in order to lose spiritual power it is not necessary to commit a flagrant sin. Samson committed a flagrant sin and lost his strength. The disciples were guilty only of this, that their faith was not vigorous and growing, yet they stand before the world shorn of their strength as completely as Samson when he shook himself as at other times. Observe, again, that the disciples themselves do not appear to have been conscious beforehand of this departure of power. They come down to the scene of work, and like Samson they wist not that their strength had departed from them. Doubtless in their failure it did not occur to them to suspect themselves. What, then, is the first condition of true spiritual power? It is the possession of a living and growing faith. Who are the men who have wielded great spiritual power in all ages? They are the men of faith. The men of unbelief die and are forgotten, even their gifts and accomplishments only serve to build their tomb or write their cold epitaph. But the men of faith are the heroes of the race and the kings of the Church of God. It is given to them like Israel to be princes, having power with God and with men. It is the men of faith who subdue kingdoms, and work righteousness, and stop the mouths of lions. Faith imparts power because it lays hold of the truth, and it is the truth which purifies. It imparts power because it quickens and inspires all the faculties of the soul. It imparts power because it establishes an alliance between God and man, by which Divine help is given in moments of need. It imparts power by means of its innate courage and invincibility. III. THERE IS NO LIVING FAITH WITHOUT EARNEST PRAYER. The sequence of spiritual ideas is simple and beautiful. The evil spirit could not be cast out without special spiritual power. Power could not co-exist with unbelief. And now unbelief can be extinguished only by prayer. This kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting. In these practical and bustling days there is abundant recognition of the value of what is called a working Christianity. Why could not we cast him out? The weeping mother feels the bitterness of this question as she witnesses her wayward boy disregarding her counsels and rejecting her reproof. Why could not I tame the evil passion and guide the wandering feet? Or the sabbath-school teacher wails out the despairing confession of failure at the end of years of busy work with his class. O think, what conquests lie before us if in Christ’ s name we be endued with new power from on high. (S. Prenter, M. A.) Fasting Here was a demon of extraordinary strength, and he could be vanquished only by extraordinary prayer and fasting. Fasting is connected with extraordinary spiritual attainments and achievements. These disciples lacked the higher form of prayer, and its profounder spirit. There is a faith which removes mountains; a prayer that unlocks heaven, and vanquishes the powers of hell. But Christ here shows that they are connected with fasting. I would, then, observe that-- I. WE FIND THIS BY THE WHOLE HISTORY OF FASTING, IN THE , AND IN THE CHURCH, FROM THE ERA . 1. We turn, first, to the Jewish Church. It is not affirmed whether the patriarchs knew anything of fasting as a religious service; but Moses, in entering into the Mount, to commune with God concerning the foundation of the Old Testament Church, for forty days abstained from food--of course by Divine direction, and by miraculous aid. It is quite remarkable that the three persons who appeared on the Mount of Transfiguration had all performed this extraordinary fast of forty days--Moses, Elijah, and Christ. If, now, we look at the several occasions on which it was employed by the devout members and eminent leaders of the Jewish Church, we shall receive a strong impression that it has some connection with the higher exercises, attainments, and achievements, of piety, or with cases of especial appeal to the Most High. When Saul was buried, having been the first King of Israel, and having been slain ingloriously, the people assembled to recover his insulted corpse, and decently inter it. Then they fasted seven days. When David’ s child was dangerously ill, he lay on his face, and mourned, with fasting and prayer. The psalmist, speaking of the afflictions brought on him by his enemies, says, “ I humbled my soul with fasting.” The great day of atonement, when the people brought their sins particularly to mind, was a day of fasting. Another use of it was to prepare the mind for specially intimate communion with God, or for very important service to the Church. Ezra’ s fasts had reference, too, to great reformations; and, in 1 Samuel 7:6, we find a fast to have been the first stage in one of those glorious revivals which refreshed and preserved the ancient Chinch. Another occasion was the looking to God for especial help. When the eleven tribes were driven to the necessity of punishing Benjamin, almost to extermination, they “ went up, and came unto the house of God, and wept, and sat there before the Lord, and fasted that day until even.” So, when Haman had procured the terrible decree that was to annihilate the Jewish people, Esther, with her maids of honour, gave themselves to fasting and prayer for the deliverance of their people; and with what success, you remember. 2. If we now follow the history of fasting into the times of Christ, the apostles, and the early Christian Church, we see it having the same solemn import and connections. We begin with the Great Exemplar. Jesus did many things as a Jew, or a worshipper under the old theocracy, because that system was not yet abolished. In such matters He is not an example, only so far as the spirit of obedience and order is concerned. But this fasting was not Jewish. It obeyed no law of Moses. It was human. It was spiritual in the highest degree, and a most fitting opening to His glorious ministry, and His wondrous life as the Saviour of men. After the apostolic times, the Church preserved fasting; and, at length, when aiming to fix a uniform observance of sacred seasons, she set apart the time supposed to be the same as that of our Saviour’ s fast and temptation in the wilderness, to be solemnized with the anniversary exercise of abstinence. And I believe all her eminent men, of every communion, have been distinguished for this exercise. I do not remember any of any age who considered it as obsolete or useless. Down to the time of the Reformation, no true Christian any more thought of neglecting fasting than prayer. After the Reformation we find two classes: those who chose to confound the Romish abuse with the institution itself, and so despised it; and those who practised it in primitive simplicity. And I repeat my impression that the men most eminent for piety, in every blanch of the Protestant Church, used this means of grace. What, then, is-- II. THE NATURE OF FASTING AS A ? 1. It is a spiritual service. “ Is this the fasting or day for soul-humbling that I have chosen; the mere bowing down of the head like a bulrush, and spreading sackcloth and ashes under him?” No. He says: I require you to fast in spirit; to cease from your injustice and cruelty. So that the abstinence from food, more or less rigid, is but a means to a spiritual end. It may often, indeed, be bodily beneficial to omit a meal, even in good health; but that is not a religious service, it is a medical regimen. 2. Fasting is in no way a meritorious service, nor a magical instrument. 3. It is the expression of an earnest religious purpose. The heart of him who fasts aright is, at the time, peculiarly concentrated. The heart is fixed on one great object, with peculiar earnestness of desire. Moses did not fast for the sake of laying up a store of merit for himself, or for some other person. The founding of God’ s Church; the promulgation of Jehovah’ s law; the opening of a new stage in the work of redemption; these were the mighty charges lying on his soul. And he fasted, as a natural means of aiding his self-abasement and his spirituality of mind. This earnestness of purpose is seen not only in being fixed on a definite object; but also in the consecration of time and person to that specific object. That is an eminent advantage. Our life is wasted with vague intentions and scattered labours; OUT consciences are cheated with good resolutions that we never find time to execute. By making the object definite, the mind is concentrated, clear, calm, and strong. By fixing the purpose, the character is rendered firm. By executing it, the conscience assumes its proper ascendency, and something definite is attained and accomplished. There is gain in another direction by this setting apart time to accomplish a definite object. Hindrances are removed. 4. It is consonant with peculiar degrees of repentance. Repentance includes a distinct contemplation of our personal sins. To that, such a season is very favourable. It includes sorrow for sin. Indeed, the natural effect of sorrow is to diminish the appetite for food. There is also in repentance a congeniality with fasting, because both express a kind of holy revenge against sin. 5. Fasting accords with a season set apart for peculiar efforts to attain to personal holiness. 6. Fasting agrees, too, with the peculiar exercise of love to Christ. He peculiarly desires that we remember His sufferings. “ Do this in remembrance of Me.” His fasting was a part of His suffering, and a part in which we can imitate and share with Him. 7. A peculiar fitness in making a fast to accompany our peculiar onsets on Satan’ s kingdom. The first thing we need, in waging the battles of the Lord, is to believe that there are any battles to fight; that Satan and his demons are realities. Then we need to know that they are too formidable for us; and yet that they are not invincible. This kind can be driven forth, but it must be “ by fasting and prayer.” We can become the organs of the Spirit of God by fasting and prayer. We must look to God in our attacks on Satan. And religious fasting is an acceptable service. He accepted it of Moses and Nehemiah, of Jesus and of the apostles. We see how the Church is to become efficient. (E. N. Kirk.) The devil throwing down 1. Satan endeavours thus to throw down by suggesting perplexing considerations regarding the supposed magnitude of the worldly sacrifices that must be made by the returning sinner. 2. The devil endeavours to throw down the Sinner that is awakened and a-coming to Christ, by false representations of the life of godliness, as if, through imaginary moroseness and austerity, it were adverse to happiness. 3. The devil also endeavours at times to throw down the awakening sinner, by raising doubts in his mind, whether his sins are not too many and aggravated to leave him in hope of their being forgiven. (J. Allan.) Satan’ s rage Satan hates the slightest approach to Jesus. An old writer says, that Satan, whenever he knows his time is short, exercises his power all the more fiercely; “ like an outgoing tenant that cares not what mischief he does” before leaving the house. So with Satan here. Rather than give up the soul, he will tear it, throw it down, make it wallow and foam, insomuch that it is “ rent sore,” and “ he was as one dead; insomuch that many said, He is dead.” (F. Whitfield, M. A.) Inability through not believing It is said that Admiral Dupont was explaining to Admiral Farragut the reasons why he failed to enter Charleston harbour with his fleet of ironclads. He gave this and that and the other reason. Farragut remained silent till he had ended, and then said, “ Ah, Dupont! there is one reason more.” “ What is that?” “ You did not believe you could do it.” A Church not believing the world’ s conversion possible will fail to accomplish it. To win victories for Christ the heart must be hopeful. That which kept Livingstone undaunted, and bore him on through numberless perils, until he died kneeling, with his hands clasped in prayer, was the thought “ Africa for Christ!” Bring thy son hither I. JESUS INVITES MEN TO BRING ALL THEIR AND BURDENS TO HIM. II. HE US TO BRING TO HIM NOT ONLY OUR OWN , BUT THOSE ALSO OF OUR DEAR ONES. III. HE WITH US IN, AND IS ABLE TO SAVE US FROM, NOT ONLY, BUT THOSE ALSO WHICH ARE AND . (Anon.) Luke 9:44 The Son of Man shall be delivered Repeated predictions As the time of our Saviour’ s death was approaching, He thought proper to repeat the prophecy of it again and again. For this various reasons may be assigned. 1. It was necessary to show that the death of Christ was an appointed as well as an important event in the plan of Divine providence. 2. It tended to prove that it was voluntary on the part of Jesus, and not the debt of nature, as it is on the part of those who are merely human. 3. It was necessary for the fulfilment of ancient prophecy, and consequently to prove that Jesus was the predicted Messiah. 4. It was requisite to show that He was a prophet in the highest sense of the word, and that not a part, but the whole future dispensation was thoroughly known to Him. 5. The frequent repetition of the prophecy of His death tended also to prepare the minds of the disciples for what might otherwise have overwhelmed them. (J. Thomson, D. D.) Luke 9:46-48 Which of them should be greatest The greatest in the kingdom of heaven I. Who ARE NOT the greatest in the kingdom of heaven? 1. The lofty in birth and the rich in possession have no claim, on such grounds, for this distinction. 2. Nor the loftiest in intellect. 3. Nor yet the man who-- (1) works the most; (2) suffers the most; (3) gives the most--in the service of God. II. Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven? 1. The humble man. 2. He who is the most docile. 3. He who is most unworldly. 4. He who is most loving in spirit. 5. He who cherishes a forgiving spirit. (T. W. Aveling.) Unhappiness of striving to be great “ Some time since,” says Dr. Payson, in a letter to a young clergyman, “ I took up a little work purporting to be the lives of sundry characters as related by themselves. Two of those characters agreed in remarking that they were never happy until they ceased striving to be great men.” A child How children are emblematic of conversion Let us consider how little children furnish an apt emblem of conversion, or rather, of those who are being converted. 1. More particularly, and in reference to those qualifications in which the disciples now showed that they were very deficient, and yet of which we must all be possessed, if we are to be saved--little children are comparatively humble. Whatever seeds of evil may lurk in their minds, it is almost impossible that they should imagine themselves equal to those who are grown up. They are almost unavoidably sensible of their inferiority and dependence. And this is the state of mind towards God, to which we, as sinners, must be brought. Let us not think more highly of ourselves than we ought to think; but let us think soberly. Let us not imagine that we are rich and increased in goods, and have need of nothing; but let us feel and confess that we are wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked. 2. Intimately connected with this disposition of humility is a disposition of teachableness; and of this, too, children are, in a considerable degree, possessed. Aware that their parents and teachers surpass them in knowledge, they look to them that they may learn of them; and they are at first very much disposed to believe and receive, without gainsaying and without doubt, whatever they tell them. In this, too, we mark an essential feature in the character of true converts in relation to God. 3. Once more, here, children are comparatively free from worldliness and ambition. This world does not yet obviously appear to be their idol. They do not form plans or labour for the riches and the honours of public life. They readily associate with their inferiors, and do not aim at surpassing competitors for exalted stations. (J. Foote.) True greatness Apparently this was the first occasion on which the spirit of rivalry manifested itself among the disciples of our Lord. Followed close upon a scene which might well raise their hopes of personal distinction. Three of their number had just been witnesses of the Transfiguration; they had seen their Divine Master in that dazzling vesture of glory which betokened His coming accession. And it is conceivable that the special favour conferred upon the three who were admitted to that wonderful vision set all thinking. Then, too, it has been suggested that our Lord’ s own promises to His disciples may have served to stir ambitious longings in their hearts. 1. Our Lord rebuked the first exhibition of the competitive spirit among His followers by taking a child and pointing to him as the true pattern of the essential grace of the gospel. The greatest is the humblest. 2. This ideal appeals to the best instincts of the human heart. (Canon Duckworth.) Children and childhood It is very good to me, in reading the Bible, to notice how much of the interest and hope of the world is made to depend upon the children that are unborn when the hope springs up. The hope of humanity rests in the children. When the Spartans replied to the king who demanded fifty of their children as hostages, “ We would prefer to give you a hundred of our most distinguished men,” it was only an expression of the everlasting value of the child to any commonwealth and to every age. The great hope is always in the new birth. This the deepest reason for the unspeakable loyalty and reverence for children that so constantly filled the heart and life of Christ. 1. If it be true, then, that the hope of the world lies in the cradle, in what relation do we, who are now responsible for this new life, stand to it? 2. If we are wise and faithful to our trust there is in each child the making of a man or a woman who shall be a blessing and be blessed. 3. What is it, then, to receive a child in the name of Christ? This question would need no answer had there not been so many mistakes made about this simple, natural, and beautiful truth. (1) Have faith in the Son of Man in the child. Guide and govern with best wisdom and love the life that is of the earth, earthy. (2) Guard and reverence the Son of God in the child--the life that is from above. (R. Collyer.) Christianity and childhood Greek art gives us no children. Nay, it is equally true, though perhaps not so surprising, that up to the thirteenth century there were no Gothic children either. It was only when art was touched by Christianity, and when the Madonna and Child became the light of every honest heart and the joy of every pure soul, that pictures of children were possible. The tradition of the Beautiful Child lasted long. Then came a dark period in which children were ground to death by our millwheels, and the wealthy patrons of art could not conceive of the children of the poor except in vice and misery; and it is only now that you are beginning to restore the quiet earth to the steps of children. (Ruskin.) Unobtrusiveness of the truly great Travellers tell us that the forests of South America are full of the gem-like humming-bird, yet you may sometimes ride for hours without seeing one. They are most difficult to see when perched among the branches, and almost indistinguishable flying among the flowering trees; it is only every now and then that some accidental circumstance reveals the swarm of bejewelled creatures, and they flash upon the vision in white, red, green, blue, and purple. It is somewhat thus with society--the noblest, the most beautiful characters are not the obtrusive ones. Going through life carelessly, one might think all the people common enough; reading the newspapers, one might suppose the world to contain only bad men; but it may comfort us to remember the truly great and good shun observation and walk humbly with God. (W. L. Watkinson.) Luke 9:49-50 Forbid him not Casting out devils This, one of the shortest of the recorded conversations of Jesus, contains but a single remark made in response to a single statement of the disciples. I. JESUS WAS HERE DEALING WITH THAT HARDEST IN WHICH WRONG AND RIGHT ARE MIXED . There was good in the jealousy of the disciples for Jesus, even though it misled them. There was evil in the narrowness into which it led them. There were four people involved: 1. The man out of whom the devil was being cast. To him the interference of the disciples must have seemed a cruel thing. 2. The man who was casting out the evil spirit. We can understand his bewilderment. Shall I refrain from doing this thing which it is so evident that I have power to do? 3. The disciples. No doubt they were men who rejoiced to see any good work done in the world, and yet they bade this man to cease the work he was doing. 4. Behind all, Jesus Himself, looking upon the whole transaction, and declaring at once, without any hesitation, “ forbid him not.” II. IS THIS A STORY OF THE AGO, OR IS IT NOT THE STORY OF WHAT IS ALWAYS TAKING PLACE? Wherever Christian men, in very virtue of their loyalty to Christ, incline to limit the operations of His power in the world, there are these four. III. THAT IS GOING ON IN THE WORLD MUST BE PLACED EITHER UPON ONE SIDE OR THE OTHER SIDE. Everything that is making the world better is on the side of Christ. Everything that is degrading humanity is against Christ. How clear this principle is! How Jesus is always pointing us to the great test of results. IV. THIS TEST APPLIED-- 1. To our personal lives. 2. To our fellowship with Churches around us. There is only one way in which we shall enter into such sympathy with Jesus that we can have His large spirit, and that is by catching that which was in His mind, His soul, the intense value He set upon the end. He rejoices so in the driving out of the devil that any one who would drive out the devil should have His commendation and His praise, His permission to do it, and His thanksgiving that it had been done. (Phillips Brooks, D. D.) Need for toleration “ Seeing a tree grow somewhat irregular in a very neat orchard,” says Mr. Flavel, “ I told the owner it was a pity that that tree should stand there, and that if it were mine I would root it up, and thereby reduce the orchard to an exact uniformity. He replied, that he rather regarded the fruit than the form, and that this slight inconvenience was abundantly preponderated by a more considerable advantage. ‘ This tree, which you would root up, hath yielded me more fruit than many of those trees which have nothing else to recommend them but their regular situation.’ I could not,” adds Mr. Flavel, “ but yield to the reason of this answer, and could wish it had been spoken so loud that all our conformity men had heard it, who would not stick to root up many hundreds of the best learners in the Lord’ s orchard because they stand not in exact order with other more conformable but less beneficial trees, who destroy the fruit to preserve the form.” Such, alas, is the prejudice of our minds, that we are too prone to condemn those who do not view things exactly as we do. We lay down plans and rules for ourselves, and then blame others if they do not follow them. Too often also are we mistaken in our opinions of others, and imagine that they are only cumberers of the ground, when probably they bring forth the fruits of righteousness in greater abundance than ourselves. (W. Buck.) Luke 9:51-56 He steadfastly set His face to go to Jerusalem--Christ hastening to the cross I. THE PERFECT WITH WHICH ALL THROUGH CHRIST’ S LIFE HE SAW THE END. II. OUR LORD’ S PERFECT FOR THE WHICH HE SAW BEFORE HIM. III. THERE WAS IN CHRIST A NATURAL HUMAN FROM. THE CROSS. That steadfast and resolved will held its own, overcoming the natural human reluctance. “ He set His face.” All along that consecrated road He walked, and each step represents a separate act of will, and each separate act of will represents a triumph over the reluctance of flesh and blood. We are far too much accustomed to think of our Saviour as presenting only the gentler graces of human nature. He presents those that belong to the stony side just as much. In Him is all power, manly energy, resolved consecration; everything that men call heroism. (A. Maclaren, D. D.) Why did Christ go up to Jerusalem? He went there to precipitate the collision and to make His crucifixion certain. He was under the ban of the Sanhedrim, but perfectly safe as long as He stopped down among the hills of Galilee. He was as unsafe when He went up to Jerusalem as John Huss when he went to the Council of Constance with the Emperor’ s safe-conduct in his belt; or as a condemned heretic would have been in the old days if he had gone and stood in that little dingy square outside the palace of the Inquisition at Rome, and there, below the obelisk, preached his heresies. Christ had been condemned in the council of the nation; but there were plenty of hiding-places among the Galilean hills, and the frontier was close at hand, and it needed a long arm to reach from Jerusalem all the way across Samaria to the far north. Knowing that, He steadfastly set His face to go to Jerusalem, and, if I might use the expression, went straight into the lion’ s mouth. Why? Because He chose to die. (A. Maclaren, D. D.) The face toward Jerusalem Every step of the Lord Jesus Christ left a footprint for His followers to study. This incident, too often overlooked as unimportant, has some suggestive lessons for the Christian. 1. It teaches that we should never shrink from a path of duty, however many may be the obstacles we encounter. 2. Such an uncompromising religion must not expect any help or hospitality from the world. Jesus found Himself on hostile soil as soon as He set foot in Samaria. 3. It was probably about the time of His repulse by the Samaritans that Jesus delivered those solemn injunctions to His followers about taking up their cross daily if they would be His disciples. He drew a sharp line, and made a clean issue. It is a religion of this fibre that the times demand. Such living brings happy dying. Dean Alford asked that it might be inscribed on his tombstone: “ This is the inn of a traveller on his way to Jerusalem.” Let us determine so to live that, when Death calls our names on his roll, we may be found with our faces steadfastly set toward “ Jerusalem the Golden.” (T. L. Cuyler, D. D.) Steadfastnes in the path of duty The Master’ s example teaches us to march unflinchingly forward in the path of duty, with our faces steadfastly set toward God. This is not an age of heroic Christianity. There is more pulp than pluck in the average Christian professor when self-denial is required. The men and women who not only rejoice in doing their duty for Christ, but even rejoice in overcoming uncomfortable obstacles in doing it, are quite too scarce. The piety that is most needed is a piety that will stand a pinch; a piety that would rather eat an honest crust than fare sumptuously on fraud; a piety that can work up stream against currents; a piety that sets its face like a flint in the straight, narrow road of righteousness. (T. L.Cuyler, D. D.) Boldness of the decided man The decisive man walks by the light of his own judgment: he has made up his mind; and, having done so, henceforth action is before him. He cannot bear to sit amidst unrealized speculations: to him speculation is only valuable that it may be resolved into living and doing. There is no indifference, no delay. The spirit is in arms: all is in earnest. Thus Pompey, when hazarding his life on a tempestuous sea in order to be at Rome on an important occasion, said, “ It is necessary for me to go: it is not necessary for me to live.” Thus Caesar, when he crossed the Rubicon, burned the ships upon the shore which brought his soldiers to land, that there might be no return. (Paxton Hood.) The battle-face Oliver Cromwell’ s men just before the battle used to look at their general, and whisper to each other, “ See, he has on his battle-face.” When they saw that set, iron face they felt that defeat was impossible. Determined striving towards one point is the best way of gaining that point. Try to walk in a straight line over a field of snow, keeping your eyes fixed on the ground as you walk. When you look back on the track, you find it far from straight. Walk over the field again, this time keeping your eye fixed on some definite point ahead. That will keep you in the straight line, and will save you from fruitless wandering on this side or that. Jesus, keeping the end of His work in view, set His face towards it. So should we do with our work. (Sunday School Times.) Wilt Thou that we command fire?--Our Lord and the Samaritans The conduct of these Samaritans in refusing to receive Christ and His disciples, was, indeed, very sinful; but the transport of rage into which that conduct threw His disciples, or at least some of His disciples, and the proposal which it provoked them to make, were most lamentable and most unchristian. That John, especially, whose usual temper was so gentle and so affectionate, should have been so forward in this affair, is very strange, and ought to be considered as an instructive warning of the necessity for the most charitable and meek to be constantly on their guard against the first risings of prejudice, passion, and false zeal, lest the fierce spirit obtain the mastery over them. They imagined that they were influenced by a purely religious spirit--by a hatred of sin, and a regard to the honour of Christ: whereas, they were really led to make such a proposal by the original prejudice which, as Jews, they indulged against the Samaritans, and, still more, by their now irritated pride, party feeling, blind zeal, personal resentment, violence, and passion. I. LET US ADMIRE, AND IN OUR SPHERE AND MEASURE IMITATE, THE NOBLE BY OUR LORD AND MASTER ON THIS . II. LET US BEWARE OF THESE IN NOT THE LORD JESUS CHRIST. Though they were not immediately destroyed, yet their sin was great; nay, the very circumstance of the merciful forbearance shown towards them, manifests, with peculiar clearness, the heaviness of the guilt they incurred by rejecting such goodness. III. Let us observe how plainly EVERY KIND AND EVERY DEGREE OF ARE HERE . Fire from heaven might prove a doctrine to be true; but fire kindled under any such pretence, by men, or any other species of persecution, could prove nothing but their own bigotry and cruelty. Indeed, such is the constitution of the human mind, that it is ready to call in question, or to suspect, even the truth itself, when any attempt is made to support it by such means. IV. In all we do, and especially in what we do under the name of religion, LET US WHAT MANNER OF SPIRIT WE ARE OF. “ The servant of the Lord must not strive, but be gentle unto all men.” V. LET US BE VERY WHEN WE THINK OF THE PURPOSE FOR WHICH THE SON OF GOD IS HERE SAID TO HAVE COME INTO THE WORLD. (J. Foote, M. A.) A visit from Christ We are not told the name of the village, and it is well the Scriptures are silent on the matter, for the name deserves to be buried in oblivion; and all those who perpetrate such inhumanity should have an opportunity of blotting out such disgrace. Nor do we know who were the messengers whom Christ sent to make ready for Him. Perhaps they were disciples, or followers, or adherents--anyhow, they were doubtless in sympathy with Him. The Saviour, then, desires to become the Guest of men in this world. He is ever sending messengers before His face to prepare His way. Here, then, we have-- I. --“ He sent messengers before His face.” Pioneers in every sphere are those who go in advance and prepare the way, or act as heralds and announce the coming of those who are to follow. His coming is anticipated by the many and varied mercies and blessings of life, even as the glory of day is heralded by the early dawn. The loving Saviour we may be sure is close to the bounties of Providence and the privileges of the gospel. Education, too, is always in advance of Him. He sends it forth on its beneficent mission to give men right ideas, and to awaken in them a sense of need and longing. Education, too, like the sappers and miners, goes forward to remove obstructions, to cut down wild, luxuriant growth, to make a way through the wilderness, and to bridge over the ugly, dangerous chasms. The mercy of grace, religious instruction, the service of the sanctuary, the preaching of the Word--these are like the predictions which went before the Saviour, like the stars of the morning, true harbingers of the coming day. Yes, Jesus Christ is near the Temple and the teaching there--near the institutions and ordinances of worship. He is not far from pain and sorrow, from affliction, bereavement, and death. Now all these pioneers have come to you, my friends; have come to you with a mission in the interests of Christ, and for your eternal good. The question, therefore, arises: How have they been received? What has been the result of their visits? II. --“ TO make ready for Him.” The pioneers in all time have gone before Christ to prepare His way, and the things of which I have spoken, and which come into our every life, are sent not only to herald the approach of the Saviour, but to help men to realize His nearness with their deep and present need of Him. When the light of the morning comes peeping in at the window, it tells the world that the sun has arisen and will soon flood the earth with brightness and glory. The dawn ever predicts the day, and prepares for it, and it ever seems to say to men, “ Give it welcome; up with the blinds; open the windows, and let the light of the day come in.” When the blade, the leaf, the blossom appear, they speak of the coming summer and harvest, and suggest that every barn and granary be got ready. And so when Christ sends His messengers in advance of Him, He desires that they should prepare for Him. There are three things which the pioneers of Christ seek to do--inform, awaken, and command, and all are intended to prepare for a full and hearty reception of Christ. They inform--tell men that Christ, that infinite goodness and love are in the events, in the experiences of life, and that Christ is coming near through them--is thus visiting to bless. They say, “ He is coming,” and the soul asks, “ Who is He?” Zaccheus, hearing that Christ was to pass that way, had his curiosity aroused, and was thus moved towards the sycamore tree, that He might see Jesus, who He was. They command--coming from Christ and for Him, they declare His will, His requirements; they tell men to make ready for Him, and to give Him welcome and entertainment, to put away prejudice and indifference, to turn out all intruders, and to let the rightful owner of their spirits in; and that they would rightly regard these visitations, and the voices which speak--for they are in truth the voice of Christ--and their message may be summed up in one verse, “ Behold! stand at the door and knock.” III. --“ They did not receive Him.” The Samaritans did not because of their antipathy to the Jews; they allowed prejudice to overcome discretion, and even reason itself; but they did not know Christ, or they would not have acted thus, nor were they conscious of what they lost by rejecting Him. IV. PASSING--“ They went to another village.” Jesus went from those who were unwilling, to others who were disposed to entertain Him, and this He is doing to-day. Anxious to enter every heart, He passes by the indifferent and obstinate. He does not force Himself upon man. (John James.) Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of Intolerance rebuked 1. We may notice here, in the first place, the power and evil of prejudice. The Samaritans seem in general to have been very favourably disposed towards our Lord, as was seen on various occasions. Why, then, did they now refuse to receive Him? It was because He was going up to Jerusalem to the Passover. They claimed that Mount Gerizim was the place where men ought to worship; but our Lord was on His way to worship at the Temple, on Mount Zion, and thus showed that He favoured their old enemies the Jews, and declared His preference far their religion. When Christ came from Judaea to Jacob’ s well they kindly received Him. If He would renounce the Jews, become a Samaritan prophet, and teach in their synagogues, they would have welcomed Him most cordially; but forasmuch as “ He steadfastly set His face to go to Jerusalem,” they would have nothing to do with Him. Thus they lost their last opportunity of hearing Jesus, for He was now on His way to be crucified. Nor were the disciples much better in the spirit they displayed than the Samaritans. 2. We may notice, secondly, the mischiefs of a wrong interpretation of Scripture. “ Wilt Thou that we command fire to come down from heaven and consume them, as Elias did?” Now Elias’ conduct was very different from theirs, and his example gave no sanction to their proposed vengeance. Upon a perversion of Scripture, the supreme divinity of Jesus has been denied, the atonement rejected, good works pronounced unnecessary, a future punishment discarded; yea, all the thousand forms of error, and all the monstrous sects of Christendom have been based upon just such a mistake as these disciples made, in pleading the seeming sanction of Elijah’ s example, for that which it did not warrant. 3. We have, in the third place, in our Lord’ s conduct on this occasion, a beautiful lesson of tolerance towards those who are in error. 4. We may also learn from our Lord’ s treatment of these Samaritans, how to estimate the comparative evil of error. 5. We have in the conclusion of this history, the glorious end of the Saviour’ s mission. “ He came not to destroy men’ s lives, but to save them.” His whole work was one of salvation. His miracles were those of healing. His teaching was for the saving of the soul. (W. H. Lewis, D. D.) Our Lord’ s treatment of erroneous zeal I. NOTICE WHAT IS IMPLIED IN THE OF THE TWO . 1. This proposal discovers at least some acquaintance with the writings of the Old Testament, for it refers to an event which happened many centuries before, and which is remarkable in the history of Elijah. 2. It appears that the disciples had some distrust of their own judgment, and were willing to submit to Christ’ s direction. Their language is, Lord, wilt Thou that we should do this? They would do nothing rashly, nothing but what He approved; and in this they furnish an example worthy of imitation. 3. The language implies strong faith: “ Wilt Thou that we command fire from heaven?” The disciples felt persuaded that if the Lord gave authority, the miracle would be performed. They had commanded unclean spirits out of persons, and were obeyed; and why might they not expect the same, if they called for fire from heaven? 4. They had a zeal for God, though not according to knowledge; it was sufficiently fervid, but not well directed. It was promised to the disciples that they should be baptized with the Holy Ghost and with fire; that they should be endowed with extraordinary gifts and extraordinary zeal, yet not for the purpose of destroying men’ s lives, but to save them. 5. Their zeal expressed great indignation against sin, and in this it was commendable. 6. It was a zeal which expressed great affection for their Lord and Master. To see Him slighted and insulted, shut out of doors, and denied the common necessities and civilities of life, was more than they could bear; they therefore wished to resent such churlish behaviour. 7. There was, however, too much asperity in their zeal, and a want of Christian meekness and charity. II. OBSERVE THE THEY MET WITH FROM THEIR LORD: “ He turned and rebuked them, and said, Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of.” There is a mixture of mildness and severity in this reproof. He upbraids them with ignorance, and especially ignorance of themselves, and of the motives by which they were influenced. 1. They were unacquainted with the infirmities of their own spirit, the temper they derived from constitutional causes, and which had been insensibly confirmed by habit. 2. They were not aware of the principles and motives by which their present conduct was influenced. The springs of action ought at all times to be severely inspected, because if an action be materially good, it is not morally and intrinsically so, unless it, principle be good also. A corrupt motive depraves and renders unacceptable to God the most laudable actions. Conclusion: 1. From the instance before us we see what a mixture of good and evil there may be in the same persons. 2. If Christ’ s immediate disciples, who had the advantage of such instructions and such an example, did not know what manner of spirit they were of, no wonder that so many misapprehensions and mistakes are found amongst us. Who can understand his errors? 3. We see that particular actings of the mind may be wrong, even where the general frame and temper of it is right. 4. Though the disciples did not well know the motives by which they were influenced, yet Christ did, for He searcheth the reins and the heart. He knoweth what is in man, and needeth not that any one should testify. All the Churches shall know this, and He will give to every man according to his works (Matthew 9:4; Mark 2:8; Revelation 2:23). (B. Beddome, M. A.) The vindictive spirit rebuked You can’ t make Eliases. You may do just the very thing Elias did, and so make the greater fools of yourselves. Elias is sent when the world needs him--son of thunder, son of consolation, each will be sent from heaven at the right time, and be furnished with the right credentials. But how delightful it is to set fire to somebody else! The dynamitard is a character in ancient history. Would it not be convenient for the Church always to have in its pocket just one little torpedo that it could throw in the way of somebody who differed in not what manner of spirit ye are of.” The spirit of Christianity is a spirit of love, a spirit of sympathy, a spirit of felicity, a spirit that can weep over cities that have rejected the Son of Man. Then said He, or said the historian--the words might be His, for they are part of His very soul--“ For the opinion from somebody else! The Lord Jesus will not have this; He said, “ Ye know Son of Man is not come to destroy men’ s lives, but to save them” (Luke 9:56). Tell this everywhere. Go ye into all the world and say to every creature, “The Son of Man is not come to destroy men’ s lives, but to save them.” The strongest man amongst us might devote his life to that sweet, high task. The brightest genius that ever revelled in poem or picture might devote all its energies to the revelation of that sacred truth. There are destroyers enough. Nature itself is often a vehement and unsparing destroyer. We are our own destroyers. There needs to be somewhere a saviour, a loving heart, a redeeming spirit, a yearning soul, a mother-father that will not let us die. (J. Parker, D. D.) Ungodly nature of revenge A young man who had great cause of complaint against another, told an old hermit that he was resolved to be avenged. The good old hermit did all that he could to dissuade him; but, seeing that it was impossible, and the young man persisted in seeking vengeance, he said to him, “ At least, my young friend, let us pray together before you execute your design.” Then he began to pray in this way: “ It is no longer necessary, O God! that Thou shouldst defend this young man, and declare Thyself his protector, since he has taken upon himself the right of seeking his own revenge.” The young man fell on his knees before the old hermit, and prayed for pardon for his wicked thought, and declared that he would no longer seek revenge of those who had injured him. False zeal “ Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of” ; that is, ye own yourselves to be My disciples, but do you consider what spirit now acts and governs you? I. THE OF THIS SPIRIT TO THE TRUE SPIRIT AND DESIGN OF THE . 1. This spirit which our Saviour here reproves in His disciples, is directly opposite to the main and fundamental precepts of the gospel, which command us to “ love one another,” and “ to love all men,” even our very enemies; and are so far from permitting us to persecute those who hate us, that they forbid us to hate those who persecute us. They require us to be “ merciful, as our Father which is in heaven is merciful” ; and to “ follow peace with all men,” and to “ show all meekness to all men.” 2. This spirit is likewise directly opposite to the great patterns and examples of our religion, our blessed Saviour and the primitive Christians. II. THE OF THIS SPIRIT UPON ANY OF ZEAL FOR GOD AND . (Archbishop Tillotson.) Religious repulsions This little exquisite bit of human nature and Divine nature stands recorded in the Bible among a hundred other dramas, brief but significant. The Samaritans and the Jews were two very religious, very conscientious peoples. That they were religious was evident from the fact that they hated each other so thoroughly that they would have no dealings one with another. Of all hatred there is none like religious hatred. The Samaritan was a bastard Jew. When you come to look at the conduct of the Samaritans you naturally feel a good deal of surprise; for it is other people’ s inhospitality that surprises us, not our own. But when you turn round and look at the disciples what do you think of them? You have genuine Jewish orthodoxy against the orthodoxy of the Samaritans, and both of them were hatred. I do not wonder that the old Oriental nations sacrificed men to their gods, and that human offerings were burned on their altars. The whole religious world has been burning victims to their gods, their creeds, and their consciences ever since. Of the two here the Jews show to the least advantage. The Samaritans only wanted not to have anything to do with Jesus. The disciples on the other hand, wanted to burn up the Samaritans, to pulverise them to ashes. On the whole, I think the Samaritans were a little more religious than the Jews. What did the Saviour do? He quietly went to another village, but not until He had rebuked these disciples. And see how the rebuke was administered. Not as most of us would have done it. “ Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of,” &c. (H. W.Beecher.) Misdirected enthusiasm The next worst thing to being destitute of enthusiasm altogether is to expend it on the wrong objects. As the poet says-- What is enthusiasm? What can it be But thought enkindled to a high degree, That may, whatever be its ruling turn, Right or not right, with equal ardour burn That which concerns us, therefore, is to see What species of enthusiasts we be.” Here was enthusiasm, and enthusiasm for Christ; but it was expending itself in unchristian, and even anti-Christian channels. We are constantly meeting, in our every-day experience, with instances of misdirected enthusiasm. The important thing to do is to discover Christ’ s idea of Christianity, and to let our enthusiasm go forth into the same channels in which His was wont to flow. If this be our earnest and constant endeavour, then, although we may sometimes make mistakes, although we may, like the Boanerges, incur the rebuke, “ Ye know not what spirit ye are of,” it will be a gentle rebuke--one of pity rather than of condemnation. (Prof. Momerie, M. A. , D. Sc.) The story of the Sons of Thunder The Samaritans believed that their copy of the Law was the only authentic one; that God had forsaken Zion and chosen Gerizim, and placed His Name there; that it was in their country that the Messiah was destined to appear, and not in Judaea. It was in connection with this latter article of their belief that the conversation arose which is related in the text. It is the common assumption that what the Samaritan villagers were guilty of was merely a breach of hospitality. I believe there was something far worse. Jesus had been there before, and they had treated Him hospitably then. It is said that before setting out on this journey Jesus sent messengers before His face. It cannot be that these were only couriers, to provide food and shelter. They were heralds, specially sent to tell the Samaritans that the Messiah was coming. It was this that urged them to refuse Him food and shelter. John and James, fresh from the Transfiguration scene, and knowing that He was certainly the Son of God, were indignant at the rejection of His claims, and wanted to call down fire upon the Samaritans. They recalled a passage from Elijah’ s history, which seemed to them to furnish a precedent for their conduct. Christ in effect says to them: “ Elijah acted according to his lights; you must act up to yours.” Christ did not censure the conduct of Elijah, but He told them that they were forgetting the influence of the spirit of Christianity: “ I came not to destroy men’ s lives, but to save them.” (Canon Luckock.) The Spirit of Christ and of Elijah Renan tells us that in the pictures of the Greek Church Elijah is usually represented as surrounded by the decapitated heads of the Church’ s enemies. And Prescott tells us that in the sixteenth century the brutal inquisitors of Spain tried to justify their fiendish deeds by appealing to Elijah’ s act of calling down fire from heaven. They did not understand, or would not, that that act of Elijah’ s was for ever condemned by One who was at once Elijah’ s Master and Elijah’ s God. Elijah, and the old heroes, doubtless, had not learnt to distinguish between the sinner and the sin. It was reserved for after times--it required the teaching of the Son of God Himself to teach men that.The spirit of Elijah was a spirit of justice, of righteous retribution, of terrible vengeance; the spirit of Christ was a spirit of tenderness, of compassion, of love. But, because the religion of Christ is a religion of love, do not fancy that it is therefore a religion of sentimentalism, fit only for weak women and effeminate men. The spirit of Elijah is passed away, replaced by the spirit of Christ, which is a spirit of meekness, but of justice too, and a spirit of hatred against intolerable wrong. (J. Vaughan, B. A.) Peace and war--from a Christian standpoint I. THE SPIRIT OF WAR IS BY THE GENIUS OF , 1. It very often springs from vainglory. 2. Or revenge. 3. Or sordid ambition. II. THE SPIRIT OF PEACE IS BY OUR , AND IN AS WILL THAT SPIRIT OF PEACE RE AMONG MANKIND. 1. It tends to the preservation of human life, and happiness, and property, and social order. 2. It allows of the development of all good and great principles, and the progress of mankind in virtue, morality, and piety. 3. Christianity must be on the side of peace, because of its Divine Author and Exemplar. III. . 1. Let us cherish the spirit of peace. The great thing is to have the right temper. 2. Let us pray that our national councils may at all times be controlled and permeated by the spirit of peace. 3. We should labour for Christianity for this amongst other reasons, that it is only through Christianity, and the spread of it, that we shall ever attain to an era of universal peace. (Dawson Burns, M. A.) On persecution I. Persecution for conscience’ sake--that is, inflicting penalties on men merely for their religious principles or worship--is plainly founded on an absurd supposition, that one man has a right to judge for another, in matters of religion. II. Persecution is also evidently inconsistent with that obvious and fundamental principle of morality, that we should do to others as we might reasonably desire they should do to us. III. Persecution is likewise in its own nature absurd, as it is by no means calculated to answer the ends which its patrons profess to intend by it. IV. Persecution evidently tends to produce a great deal of mischief and confusion in the world. V. The Christian religion, which we here suppose to be the cause of truth, must, humanly speaking, be not only obstructed but destroyed, should persecuting principles universally prevail. VI. Persecution is so far from being required or encouraged by the gospel, that it is directly contrary to many of its precepts and indeed to the whole genius of it. (P. Doddridge, D. D.) To save Christ, the Saviour of human life We may regard the text in the light of a prophecy. Whatever Christ announced as the purpose of His coming, was to be accomplished upon earth throughout successive ages. The Saviour of human life--this is the character which Christ here assumes to Himself, or of which He predicts, that it will be proved to belong to Him, as the religion He was about to establish makes way among men. Now there is nothing more interesting than the tracing the temporal effects which have followed the introduction of Christianity. We shall not now enter upon this wide field of inquiry; but our text requires us to consider Christianity as beneficial under one special point of view--as making provision for the saving of human life. 1. It has done this by overthrowing the tenets and destructive rites of heathenism. 2. By contributing to the civilization of society, it has, in many ways, spread a shield over human life. 3. Add to this the mighty advances which have been made under the fostering sway of Christianity, in every department of science. 4. There is, however, a far higher sense, in which our Lord might affirm that He had come to save human life. You are to bear in mind that death, bodily death, had entered the world, as the direct and immediate consequence of Adam’ s transgression, and that the counteracting this consequence, was one chief object of the mission of our Redeemer. 5. Now we have treated our text as though the word “ life” were to be Literally taken, or interpreted with reference exclusively to the body; but it is often very difficult to say whether the original word denotes what we mean by the immortal principle and spiritual part of man, which never dies, or merely the vital principle--that, through the suspension of which the body becomes lifeless. And if the words before us may be applied to the destruction and the salvation of the soul, as well as of life in the more ordinary sense, it is indispensable that we say something of them in this their less obvious meaning. “ I live,” said the great apostle, “ yet not I, but Christ liveth in me” ; and life indeed it is, when a man is made “ wise unto salvation” --when, having been brought to a consciousness of his state, as a rebel against God, he has committed his cause unto Christ, who “ was delivered for our offences, and raised again for our justification.” It is not “ life” --it deserves not the name, merely to have power of moving to and fro on this earth, beholding the light and drinking in the air. It may be life to the brute, but not to man--man who is deathless, man who belongs to two worlds--the citizen of immensity, the heir of eternity. But it is “ life,” to spend the few years of earthly pilgrimage in the full hope and certain expectation of everlasting blessedness--to be able to regard sin as a forgiven thing, and death as an abolished--to anticipate the future with its glories, and the judgment with its terrors, and to know assuredly, that He who shall sit upon the throne, and “ gather all nations before Him,” reserves for us a place in those “ many mansions “ which He reared and opened through His great work of mediation. It is life to live for eternity; it is life to live for God; it is life to have fellowship with what the eye hath not seen, and the ear hath not heard. And this life Christ came to impart; He came to give life to the soul. (H. Melvill, B. D.) Christ’ s mission I. THE NATURE OF CHRIST’ S MISSION. 1. TO open up a new era under a dispensation of unbounded mercy. 2. This mission of our Lord’ s did not interfere with the course of nature, or natural law. It refers to our spiritual life. II. THE DUTIES WHICH THESE WORDS LEAD US TO INFER. 1. The first is that of not being satisfied with any other life than that which Christ came to give or to save. 2. Another duty is that of encouraging feelings of charity towards others. 3. That the object of our Saviour’ s mission has been fulfilled, is being fulfilled, and will be so hereafter, is indisputable. (W. D. Horwood.) The Son of Man the Saviour of life Christ came into the world both as Destroyer and Saviour. He came to “ destroy the works of the devil.” He came not to destroy the law, but to fulfil it. He came not to destroy men’ s lives, but to save them. The preservation of human life was characteristic of our Lord’ s public ministry. And Christianity in its very nature is a lifesaving religion. Consider three or four of the great destructive agencies at work in the world, and the way in which Christianity opposes itself to them in principle, and practically proves itself victorious over them. I. WAR. The late Dr. Dick calculated, in 1847, that from the earliest period down to that year 14,000,000,000 of human beings had fallen in battle. Christianity condemns war and inculcates peace. II. SLAVERY. Here we have another great scourge of human life. Christianity sets its face against this monstrous iniquity. True that Christ and His apostles did not in a direct manner attempt to abolish it. Nevertheless, I affirm that Christianity is opposed to slavery, and will prove its death. Jesus Christ came to liberate the captive. III. HEATHEN and its human sacrifices. IV. . Sixty thousand deaths annually result from the use of intoxicating liquors. Christianity condemns intemperance. Sobriety is enjoined as a Christian virtue. (W. Walters.) Christ a Saviour The design of Christ’ s coming into our world is here expressed-- I. . Life is exposed to destruction. By sin it was forfeited. By law it is condemned. By justice it is demanded. By death it is claimed. II. . The Son of Man is a Saviour. He came to reveal salvation. He came to procure salvation. He came to bestow salvation. He is coming to perfect salvation. III. THE THE SINNER HAS OF CHRIST’ S IN HIS . Of God’ s readiness to give salvation. Of the Spirit’ s power to apply salvation. Of the joy a personal salvation secures. “ Now is the accepted time; now is the day of salvation.” (A. Macfarlane.) Luke 9:57-62 Lord, I will follow Thee Faring wholly with Christ We have here, in connection, the story of three inquirers who came in turn to Christ. I. THE OF THE NEW LIFE ARE (Luke 9:57-58). The bold proffers of this scribe were met by the pathetic announcement of what their acceptance involved afterwards. 1. Our Lord’ s earthly career was hard and lonely. 2. Christ’ s followers were forewarned that they must fare entirely with Him Matthew 10:24; John 5:18-19). 3. Henceforth, therefore, believers were to consider themselves shut up to the lot they had accepted. We have a right to expect all solaces, defences, and sustenances in Christ; but we must rely upon Him for them. Honours and human praises, emoluments and ease, are excluded. II. THE OF THE NEW LIFE ARE (verses 59, 60). We are told in Matthew’ s Gospel that this man was already instructed to some extent; he was one of Jesus’ “ disciples.” The duty was accepted; only a mere human wish was interposed. 1. The Bible employs the tenderest names for its illustrations of relationship between believers and God. “ Thy Maker is thy husband.” 2. The purpose of this use of terms seems to be to show that all lower relationships are overridden by the higher. 3. Our Saviour Himself set the fine example of this surrender. More affectionate or devoted child there never lived; but He began to draw aside from all home entanglements as He reached the conscious nearness of His public work. III. THE OF THE NEW LIFE ARE (verses 61, 62). We cannot help imagining there must have been some deft allusion here to Elisha’ s history in this reply of our Lord (1 Kings 19:20). Elisha desired the same privilege, not as an excuse for delay, but only as a tender duty of respect to those who loved him at home. He was actually at the plough when he was called by the casting of Elijah’ s mantle upon his shoulders. 1. Gospel experience is generous. It supplies room for all; but those who reject the offer must be left behind. 2. Gospel experience is indivisible. Philosophically speaking, it is impossible for any man to love two things supremely: “ No man can serve two masters; ye cannot serve God and Mammon.” That old familiar call, “ My son, give Me thine heart,” means the whole heart. “ A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways” (1 Chronicles 12:33; Psalms 12:2). 3. Gospel experience is uncompromising. All attempts to combine religion with worldliness are injurious (2 Kings 5:18). Naaman asks the privilege of going into the house of Rimmon with a show of devotion so as to keep his place at court. 4. Gospel experience is immortal. “ The world passeth away, and the lust thereof; but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.” This part of our nature is what projects itself forward beyond the confines of time. (C. S.Robinson, D. D.) Following Jesus I. JESUS AS SEEN IN HIS FOR . 1. His obedience was prompt. 2. His obedience was characterized by inflexibility of purpose. 3. His obedience was characterized by perfect self-abnegation. II. JESUS AS IN THE SPIRIT HE (Luke 9:52-56). III. JESUS AS IN WHAT HE OF HIS . 1. He requires that spirit of holy heroism which will cheerfully endure all hardship and opposition for His sake. 2. He requires implicit and prompt obedience. 3. He insists upon the absolute supremacy of His will. (D. C. Hughes, M. A.) He who looks back is unfit Self-examination is wise and well when we try ourselves by tests divinely appointed, and not by ideals of moods and feelings which we conjure up ourselves. Scripture is fertile in tests for self-examination of the right sort. Three kinds of spurious disciples. See whether you are like either of them. I. THE UNREADY FOR SELF-DENIAL. The merely impulsive follower must learn that to be ranged in the company of real disciples means glad share in the Lord’ s woe as well as weal. Do we follow our Lord out of such definite and principled yielding of ourselves to Him that we will go where He leads? II. THE . Christ can accept no second place. He must reign. His kingdom involves our entire and self-consecrating submission. Have we made obedience to Jesus the structural principle of our lives? III. THE . Not ready definitely and at once to set out on the Christian march: there are other things, farewells, &c., which must be first attended to. The emphasis is on that word “ first.” Perhaps, when these things which ought to be second have been first done, the man may follow. Plainly, he is doubtfully balancing. He is at cross-purposes, has not organized his life under one masterful principle. (W. Hoyt, D. D.) Three applicants We may dismiss the old conceit that sought to identify these three persons with three apostles, Judas, Thomas, Matthew. It is hardly credible that these apostles, already named as apostles in this Gospel, would be now introduced here as “ a certain man,” “ another,” “ another.” They would have been mentioned by name, surely, if they had been meant in person. “ A certain scribe,” “ another of His disciples,” “ another” ; this is all recorded of them in the Gospels--not enough to identify the individuals, but sufficient to accentuate the cases. One of them, the last of the three, seems to have been shaping for discipleship for some time, and was now making full prefer of it. These men differed apparently in their dispositions. The first seems bold and impulsive, as his loud avowal would show--“ I will follow Thee whithersoever Thou goest.” The second looks modest and thoughtful, as the piety he expresses toward his father would indicate--“ Lord, I will follow Thee, but suffer me first to go and bury my father.” The third appears cautious and calculating; so we infer from his desire to smooth things first with his relations--“ Lord, I will follow Thee; but suffer me first to go bid them farewell that are at home at my house.” Again: These persons differed very evidently, in their gospel ideas. They all recognized the Messianic mission of Jesus, but diverged in their thought of its character and aim. The first regarded Him as the Christ certainly, but, like many more, imagined that it was a temporal kingdom, with temporal attendings, that he was aiming at, and that it would be well to be with Him in this aim of His, the direct way to the things of this life; hence his gushing proffer, “ I will follow Thee whithersoever Thou goest.” The second also regarded Him as the Christ, but perceived His aim to be rather a reign of “ spirit and truth” than of might, and, spiritualized as he was, and waiting with the few for “ the consolation of Israel,” he would assuredly follow this Son of David when his dying father should be buried and the way all clear; hence also his sincere but delaying request, “ Lord, I will follow Thee; but suffer me first to go and bury my father.” The third, like the others, regarded Jesus as the Messiah, and with the second perceived the spirituality of His aim, and felt drawn into sympathy with Him in His spiritual gospel, a follower in heart of His blessed Person. But the flesh shrank where the spirit was willing in him; he would rather not break with his family if he could but go and settle matters with them so as to stand well in their eyes while yet he followed Jesus; hence also his true but somewhat trimming proffer, “ Lord, I will follow Thee; but let me first go bid them farewell that are at home at my house.” Farther: These men differed, as may be gathered from their sentiments, in the risks they ran of coming short in discipleship--the chief point in the narrative. The first was, without doubt, on his way to serious disappointment; the second was, without perceiving it, asking for a dangerous delay; and the third was, though not very conscious of it, attempting a compromise that would surely prove disastrous. (J. Chalmers, M. A.) A would be disciple repulsed We are further informed by Matthew 8:19, that this man was a scribe, consequently a man of education, and of considerable respectability and social importance. 1. His avowal of attachment was unsolicited. To most men this would probably have increased the value of his decision. This spontaneous offer must be the dictate of a sincere and honest heart. But lie who knows what is in man penetrated all the disguises and subtle reserves within, and discerned the real bias, the ulterior motives, and mean and mercenary views of this adventurer. There was no conscious need of the Saviour in him; no previous work of the word of Christ upon his heart. The true disciples of Christ are attached to Him by obligations of everlasting gratitude: they have been recipients from Him of the greatest blessings God can bestow and man receive. But this man makes no profession of love. 2. Yet his profession was extensive--“ Lord, I will follow Thee whithersoever Thou goest.” He seems to anticipate some inconvenience, to be prepared for some self-denial, to look at the probability of danger, and to form some estimate of the cost involved. But then it was his own estimate, and altogether erroneous. It was well for him that he was not exposed to the fury of that boisterous night. That very first lesson would have shown that the scribe was ignorant of the principles of the doctrine of Christ. 3. Yet his plans were all laid; he did not solicit any delay. He was ready to step into the boat, to go anywhere--as he thought, and to do anything, when the Saviour put before him the picture of His own abject condition--“ Foxes have holes,” &c. Disappointed and vexed that his overtures ofservice should not be immediately and respectfully accepted, chagrined that he should have stooped to one whose circumstances were so indigent, all the bright prospects that he had cherished in the mind’ s eye are dispelled, and he retires, teaching us that those who indulge carnal views of a Christian life have “ neither part nor lot in the matter.” What an opportunity he for ever lost of entertaining the King of kings! “ Not where to lay Thy head! My house is Thine; eat at my table; sleep on my bed.” And if the gracious Saviour had declined the invitation, He would have accepted the heart from which it came. In some direction or other this miserable scribe was related to the large family of By-ends, who think “ to make a gain of godliness” ; for it is certain that the Friend of Sinners never did, and never will, reject the approaches of one humble, genuine candidate for His favour. (W. G. Lewis.) The faithful followers of Christ must expect troubles in this world 1. The time. In Matthew 8:19, it is when Christ had a mind to retire, and had declared His purpose to go into the desert; in Luke, when He steadfastly set His face to go to Jerusalem. Both may agree; the one more immediately, the other more remotely; first to the desert, then to Jerusalem. 2. Here is a resolution professed: “ Lord, I will follow Thee whithersoever Thou goest.” Where take notice-- (1) Of the ready forwardness of the scribe. He was not called by Christ, but offered himself of his own accord. (2) Observe the largeness of the offer, and unboundedness of it, “ whithersoever” ; as indeed it is our duty to follow Christ through thick and thin. 3. Christ’ s answer and reply: “ And Jesus said unto him, Foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man hath not where to lay His head.” By the tenor of Christ’ s answer, you may know what ails him, and on what foot he limped; for this is spoken either by way of preparation to enable him to keep his resolution, or rather by way of probation, to try the truth and strength of it; whether it were sincere and sound; yea or nay: us the young man was tried (Mark 10:21). So here, we hear no more of this scribe; our Lord knew how to discover hypocrites. Two things were defective in this resolution. (1) It was sudden and rash, not weighing the difficulties. They that rashly leap into a profession, usually fall back at the first trial. Therefore we must sit down and count the charges (Luke 14:28). (2) There was a carnal aim in it. He minded his own profit and honour; therefore Christ in effect telleth him, “ You had best consider what you do, for following of Me will be far from advancing any temporal interest of yours.” “ He did not discourage a willing follower, but discover a worldly hypocrite,” saith Chrysologus. The doctrine we learn from hence is this:-- They that will sincerely follow Christ, must not look for any great matters in the world, but rather prepare themselves to run all hazards with Him. This is evident-- 1. From Christ’ s own example; and the same mind should be in all His followers: “ They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world” John 17:16). Our estranging of our hearts from the world is an evidence of our conformity to Christ. Christ passed through the world to sanctify it as a place of service; but His constant residence was not here, to fix it as a place of rest; and all that are Christ’ s are alike affected. We pass through as strangers, but are not at home as inhabitants or dwellers; and if we have little of the world’ s favour, it is enough if any degree of service for God. 2. From the nature of His kingdom. His kingdom is not of this world John 18:3; John 18:6). It is not a kingdom of pomp, but a kingdom of patience. Here we suffer with Christ, hereafter we reign with Him. The comforts are not earthly, or the good things of this world, but heavenly--the good things of the world to come. This was the scribe’ s mistake. 3. From the spirit of Christ. His spirit is given us to draw us off from this world to that which is to come (1 Corinthians 2:12). Use 1. Is information. (1) With what thoughts we should take up the stricter profession of Christianity--namely, with expectations of the cross. Christ will try us, and the world will hate us; therefore let us not flatter ourselves with an easy passage to heaven. (2) It informeth us what fools they are that take up religion upon a carnal design of ease and plenty, and will follow Christ to grow rich in the world. (3) It informs us what an unlikely design they have in hand who would bring the world and Christ fairly to agree, or reconcile their worldly advantages and the profession of the gospel. And when they cannot frame the world and their conveniences to the gospel, do fashion the gospel to the world, and the carnal courses of it. Use 2. Is instruction. When you come to enter into covenant with Christ, consider-- (1) Christ knoweth what motives do induce you: “ He needeth not that any should testify of man, for He knoweth what is in man” (John 2:25). (2) If the heart be false in making the covenant, it will never hold good. An error in the first concoction will never be mended in the second Deuteronomy 5:29). (3) That Christ cannot but take it ill that we are so delicate and tender Of our interests, and so impatient under the cross, when He endured so willingly such great things for our sakes. (4) If you be not dead to the things of the world, you are not acquainted with the virtue and power of Christ’ s cross, and have not a true sense of Christianity, cannot glory in it as the most excellent profession in the world Galatians 6:14). (5) We are gainers by Christ if we part with all the world for His sake Mark 10:29-30); therefore no loss should seem too great in obeying His will. Certainly a man cannot be a loser by God. (6) All worldly things were confiscated by the Fall, and we can have no spiritual right to them till we receive a new grant by Jesus Christ, who is the heir of all things (1 Corinthians 3:23). (T. Manton, D. D.) The warning to an ill-calculating professor This man was in his proffer animated by the hope of temporal good with Jesus. Far back in his mind was the thought of the restored kingdom of David under this his Messianic Son, and of a name and a place and no small honour therein by His side; and the glowing thought produces the loud but ill-calculating profession, “ I will follow Thee whithersoever Thou goest.” Could the Lord Jesus receive such mistaken profession as this? Would He allow this man to become His disciple from so spurious a motive, and under so erroneous an expectation? Did not the man need a word of warning to save him from the disappointment he was positively courting, and to set him right as to what he might reckon on in the kingdom he was seeking to enter? Yes, the man needed such a word, and gets it, plain and direct and strong: “ Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man hath not where to lay His head.” As if He would say, “ You would follow because you expect worldly good with Me. You are mistaken; for worldly good I reject for Myself, and promise not to My followers. Poor and despised and rejected I am among men; and so will My followers be for long time to come. If you receive My Word and abide in it, then shall you be My disciple indeed; and you shall know the Truth and the Truth shall make you free. But, as to other things, count the cost; reproach will be your lot with Me rather than honour; poverty will be your burden with Me instead of wealth; you must suffer with Me if you would reign with Me.” In this way did the Lord Jesus strip this man of his worldly notion in seeking to follow Him and throw him back from all worldly consideration on to spiritual conviction if he would be His disciple. And in similar way does He ever seek to check in seekers all worldly motive for following Him--and many there are in every age who need such checking as to their profession of the name of Christ. One man thinks it will advance his worldly prospect if he become a Christian; another thinks it will gain him reputation and a character in life; another thinks it will open to him a wider sphere of acquaintances and friends; and so, without any particular conviction as to their need of Christ as their Saviour, they join themselves to Him people and call themselves by His name. But it is unworthy motive this in every form of it. It is the desire of the multitude of whom He said, “ Ye seek Me because ye did eat of the loaves,” and He declines now as He declined then to be followed on any such terms. He will have you follow Him for Himself, because of His grace, and not for any worldly advantage, if you are to be with Him in the gospel; and He sends you back into your hearts with the summary check, “ The Son of Man hath not where to lay His head,” to see if you will take your lot with Him without reserve. He leaves you no choice, friend, but unreserved surrender if you would be His. (J. Chalmers, M. A.) The election of Christ There are words here that seem harsh. Stern they may be; harsh they cannot be. I. THEY ARE , which harsh words never are. No one was more regardful of individual differences than Christ. II. THEY ARE , SO FAR AS WE CAN SEE, IN THIS WAY: The second case stands on a different footing from the first and third. In two respects. 1. The reply in the second case is more stern and uncompromising; because-- 2. There was in this case a distinct call, The first and third were volunteers. III. IT IS NOT TO BE , THAT THOSE THUS, IF , WERE . All are not chosen for such lonely work. He only gave some to be apostles. There are diversities of gifts. The many are called; the few are chosen. Man is called; men are chosen. Thank God, we all find our level sooner or later. (P. T. Forsyth, M.A.) The true interpretation of religion I. From this passage we may naturally consider THE GREAT NUMBER WHO REGARD AS SIMPLY A POETIC , AN SPECIES OF ETHICS, AN . The New Testament idea of religion is no such thing as this. That idea is that religion is life itself. No man ever got religion; if he ever had any, he lived it. To follow Christ is not a mere polish of things that are substantial, valuable, and needful in this life: it is the reconstruction of the whole man upon a higher pattern. II. THE IDEA IS CURRENT THAT IS A AND INSTEAD OF AN AND AN , that it is, therefore, to be put off as long as it is safe to put it off. You can begin to be a Christian instantly. But you cannot accomplish it instantly. The work is progressive; it is life-long; but when once entered upon heartily it is the sweetest, the noblest, and the best work with which life can concern itself. III. From the passages read we may LEARN THE WAY IN WHICH MEN ARE , WHEN FROM VARIOUS THEY ARE MOVED TO A OF HIGHER THINGS, TO TREAT THEIR AND THEIR HOURS. The two or three instances which are grouped together here, represent men that either are moved to follow, or are called to follow, the Christ-life; and the invitation is, in the second case, the same as if it had been an impulse proceeding from the party himself. You will observe, then, from the whole attitude of Christ, and from what we know of His nature, that He saw through the hollow pretences of these men. One wanted to follow Him with the expectation of loaves and fishes, and honours, and prerogatives. Another wanted to follow Him; but he wanted first to go home and bury his father. The inspiration was not strong enough to constitute a spring of action and of life. The guise of filial piety. Christ’ s reply--spiritualizing it was, “ Let men that do not care for the kingdom of God perform the rites of sepulture; as for you, follow Me.” And then, in the other case in which the man was willing to follow Christ, he wanted to go back and say “ good-bye” to his father and mother, and brothers and sisters, before he went. This was almost frivolous; for the following of Christ could not be a separation from all that was dearest to him in this life. As it was then, so it is now. Mostly these alleged reasons of doubt, of occupation, of pleasure, and of bias are simple excuses. Men do not wish to enlarge their lives. They are content with smallness. Sin has beggared them. They not only are living upon penurious doles on the lower plane of life, but they are content to live so. I say to every one that has been wandering, and is wandering, and yet at times is haunted with longings, “ Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all other things shall be added unto you” : but seek that first; seek it in earnest; seek it at once; seek it with all your heart; make it your life; and then life will be a thousandfold greater, fuller, and richer to you. (H. W. Beecher.) Testing sincerity After the siege of Rome, in 1849, Garibaldi issued to his followers this appeal: “ Soldiers, your efforts against overwhelming odds have been unavailing; I have nothing to offer you but hunger, thirst, hardship, and death; let all who love their country follow me.” And hundreds of Italian youths did follow him, because they loved him and because they loved their country; and, therefore, they could endure trial with greater joy than any selfish pleasures could bestow. (Archdeacon Farrar.) The poverty of Christ Richard Fitzralph, Archbishop of Armagh, became celebrated as an opponent of the shameless mendicant orders in the fourteenth century. During one of his visits to London he found the ecclesiastics warmly discussing the subject of the poverty of Jesus; and being asked to preach on the subject, he taught as follows:--“ Jesus Christ, during His sojourn upon earth, was always a poor man; but He never practised begging as His own spontaneous choice. He never taught any one to beg. On the contrary, Jesus taught that no man should practise voluntary begging.” (Reformation Anecdotes.) Enduring hardship When Felix Neff undertook the pastorate of the High Alps, a neat cottage was built for him at La Chalpe, one of the few pleasant spots in his vast parish. But his anxiety to reach all his scattered people was such, that two or three days in each month was all that he spent there. With a staff in his hand and a wallet on his back, he travelled from this starting-point twelve miles westward, sixty eastward, twenty southward, and thirty northward. While strength lasted, he did not allow himself a single day of repose, and never slept three successive nights in the same bed. Luke 9:59-60 Let the dead bury their dead Christ’ s invitation put off We have now before us one of those who excuse themselves from immediate compliance with the Saviour’ s demands--“ Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my father. ” Perhaps you have beensometimes disposed to pity this man, and to think it rather a hard case that such an act of charity and necessity should be denied. Never fear, my brethren, for the character of Christ. It was an Eastern proverb, “ When I have buried my father I will do so-and-so.” Mark that the man does not say his father was already dead. Had that been the case, he must, at this very time, have been engaged in the funeral preparations instead of joining the crowd in the Saviour’ s presence. The interment of the dead was required to take place before the sunset of the day on which they expired. He had an aged sire who could not live long, and when he was gone, and the property divided--in other words, at his own leisure--he would be a Christian. He is a type of the large class who want heaven in their own time and on their own terms. (W. G. Lewis.) Following Christ the great business of life I. THAT THE AND OF TRUE IS THE MOST IN WHICH WE CAN BE ENGAGED. It is so, because it is the necessary preparation for a happy immortality. We have commenced a course of being that shall never end. Our faculties, now in their infancy, and but just budding, shall exist and expand for ever and ever. If so, then man’ s great concern should be to secure a blissful immortality. II. THAT TO THIS GREAT OF ALL OTHER SHOULD BE MADE TO GIVE WAY. This second proposition is the necessary sequence of the first. If religion is the most important business, then everything else should yield to it. You conduct your temporal business on this principle. You endeavour to ascertain the relative importance of each department, and you make the lesser bend to the greater. (J. H. Beech.) No excuse against a speedy obeying Christ’ s call The reasons of Christ’ s refusal. Christ would show hereby-- 1. That all human offices and duties must give place to the duty we owe to God. Duty to parents must be observed, but duty to God must be preferred before that or anything whatsoever. 2. He would teach us hereby that the ministry requires the whole man, even sometimes the omission of necessary works, much more superfluous: “ Give thyself wholly to these things” (1 Timothy 4:15). The words are now explained; the practical notes are these two--First, that nothing in the world is a matter of such great weight as to be a sufficient excuse for not following of Christ. Secondly, that those who are called to follow Christ should follow Him speedily, without interposing any delays. For the first point, that nothing in the world is a matter of such great weight as to be a Sufficient excuse for not following of Christ, I will illustrate it by these considerations. 1. There are two sorts of men. Some understand not their Lord’ s will, others have no mind to do it (Luke 12:47-48). Some understand not the terms of the gospel; they think to have Christ and the pleasures of the flesh and the world too. 2. They that have no mind to follow Christ put off the matter with dilatory shifts and excuses. To refuse altogether is more heinous, and therefore they shift it off for a time. Non vacat is the pretence--I am not at leisure. Non placer, I like it not, is the real interpretation, disposition, and inclination of their hearts, for excuses are always a sign of an unwilling and backward heart. When they should serve God there is still something in the way, some danger, or some difficulty which they are loth to encounter with. Secondly, that those who are called to follow Christ should follow Him speedily, without interposing any delays. Consider-- 1. Ready obedience is a good evidence of a sound impression of grace left upon our hearts. When our call is clear, there needeth no debate or demurring upon the matter. 2. The work goeth on the more kindly when we speedily obey the sanctifying motions of the Spirit, and the present influence and impulsion of His grace. To adjourn and put it off, as Felix did (Acts 24:25), doth damp and cool the work--you quench this holy fire; or to stand hucking with God, as Pharaoh did, the work dieth on your hand. 3. There is hazard in delaying and putting off such a business of concernment as conversion to God. We know not the day of our death, therefore we should get God to bless us ere we die. A new call is uncertain 2 Corinthians 6:1-2). It may be He will treat with us no more in such a warm and affectionate manner. It is a hazard or uncertain if the Spirit of God will put another thought of turning into your hearts, when former grace is despised (Isaiah 55:6). 4. Consider the mischiefs of delaying. Every day we contract a greater indisposition of embracing God’ s call. We complain now it is hard; if it be hard to-day, it will be harder to-morrow, when God is more provoked, and sin more strengthened (Jeremiah 13:23). (T. Manton, D. D.) Christ stimulating sluggish discipleship This man is one of the people that always see something else to be done first when any plain duty comes before them. Sluggish, hesitating, keenly conscious of other possibilities and demands, he needs precisely the opposite treatment from his lighthearted and light-purposed brother. Some plants want putting into a cold house to be checked; some into a greenhouse to be forwarded. The diversity of treatment, even when it amounts to opposition of treatment, comes from the same single purpose. And so here the spur is applied, whilst in the former incident it was the rein that was needed. I. Note, then, first of all, THIS MOST AND REQUEST. “ Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my father.” Nature says “ Yes,” and religion enjoins it, and everything seems to say that it is the right thing for a man to do. The man was perfectly sincere in his petition, and perfectly sincere in the implied promise that, as soon as the funeral was over, he would come back. He meant it, out and out. If he had not, he would have got different treatment, and if he had not, he would have ceased to be the valuable example and lesson that he is to us. So we have here a disciple quite sincere, who believes himself to have already obeyed in spirit, and only to be hindered from obeying in outward act by an imperative duty that even a barbarian would know to be imperative. And yet Jesus Christ read him better than he read himself; and by His answer lets us see that that tone of mind into which we are all tempted to drop, and which is the characteristic natural tendency of some of us, of being hindered from doing the plain thing that lies before us, because something else crops up, which we also think is imperative upon us, is full of danger, and may be the cover of a great deal of self-deception; and, at any rate, is not in consonance with Christ’ s supreme and pressing and immediate claims. The tempter which says “ Suffer me first to go and bury my father” is full of danger, never knows but that, after he has got his father buried, there will be something else turning up equally important. There was the will to be read afterwards, you know, and if he was, as probably he was, the eldest son, he would be executor most likely, and there would be all sorts of things to settle up before he might feel that it was his duty to leave everything and follow the Master. And so it always is: “ Suffer me first,” and when we get to the top of that hill, there is another one beyond. And so we go on from step to step, getting ready to do the duties that we know are most imperative upon us, and sweeping preliminaries out of the way; and so we go on until our dying day, when somebody else buries us. Like some backwoodsman in the American forests who should say to himself, “ Now I will not sow a grain of wheat until I have cleared all the land that belongs to me. I will do that first, and then begin to reap.” He would be a great deal wiser if he cleared and sowed a little bit first and lived upon it, and then cleared a little bit more. Mark the plain lesson that comes out of this incident, that the habit, for it is a habit with some of us, of putting other pressing duties forward, before we attend to the highest claims of Christ, is full of danger, because there will be no end to them if we once admit the principle. And this is true not only in regard of Christianity, but in regard of everything that is worth doing in this world. II. Now LOOK AT THE HARSH AND REFUSAL OF THIS REQUEST. It is extremely unlike Jesus Christ in substance and in tone. It is unlike Him to put any barrier in the way of a son’ s yielding to the impulses of his heart and attending to the last duties to his father. It is extremely unlike Him to couch His refusal in words that sound, at first hearing, so harsh and contemptuous, and that seem to say, “ Let the dead world go as it will; never you mind it, do you not go after it at all or care about it.” But if we remember that it is Jesus Christ who came to bring life into the dead world that says this, then, I think, we shall understand better what He means. I do not need to explain, I suppose, that the one “ dead” here is the physical and natural “ dead,” and that the other is the morally and religiously “ dead” ; and that what Christ says, in the picturesque way that He so often affected in order to bring great truths home in concrete form to sluggish under standings, is in effect: “ Ay! For the men in the world that are separated from God, and so are dead, in their self-hoed and their sin, burying other dead people is appropriate work for them. But your business, as living by Me, is to carry life, and let the burying alone, to be done by the dead people that can do nothing else.” Now, the spirit of our Lord’ s answer may be put thus: It must always be Christ first, and everybody else second; and it must therefore sometimes be Christ only, and nobody else. “ Let me bury my father, and then I will come.” “ No,” says Christ, “ first your duty to Me” ; first in order of time, because first in order of importance. And this is His habitual tone, “ He that loveth father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me.” Did you ever think of what a strange claim that is for a man to make upon others? This Jesus Christ comes to you and me, and to the whole race, and says, “ I demand, and I have a right to demand, thy supreme affection and thy first obedience. All other relations are subordinate to thy relation to Me. All other persons ought to be less dear to thee than I am. No other duty can be so imperative as the duty of following Me.” What business has He to say that to us? On what does such a tremendous claim rest? Who is it that fronts humanity, and says: “ He that loveth father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me?” He has a right to say it, because He is more than they, and has done more than they all, because He is the Son of God manifest in the flesh, and because on the cross He has died for all men. Therefore all other claims dwindle and sink into nothingness before Him. Therefore, His will is supreme, and my relation to Him is the dominant fact in my whole moral and religious character. And He must be first, whoever comes second, and between the first and the second there is a great gulf fixed. Remember that this postponing of all other duties, relationships, and claims to Christ’ s claims and relationships, and to our duties to Him, lifts them up, and does not lower them, ennobles and does not degrade, the earthly affections. (A. Maclaren, D. D.) Let the dead bury their dead The meaning of this passage may perhaps be this: “ If necessary, leave the dead unburied, but at all events obey My call to go and proclaim the kingdom of God.” The Christian should be willing and prepared to leave his dearest dead unburied, or to slight any other tender natural affection, the indulgence of which would be in conflict with a plain command or call of God; not that such a conflict commonly exists, or may be brought about at pleasure, which, so far from being pleasing in the sight of God, is really the sin committed by the hypocrites who said “ Corban,” when they ought to have supplied the wants of their dependent parents. 1. There is still a special call of Christ to individuals, not only to believe in Him, but to preach His kingdom. Without attempting to define this call at present, I may observe that it is neither miraculous on one hand, nor a matter of business calculation on the other, but a complete judgment or conclusion to which various elements contribute, such as intellectual and physical capacity, without which a call is inconceivable--providential facilities and opportunities, opening the way to this employment more than to all others--the judgment and desire of others, and especially of those best qualified by character and situation to sit in judgment on the case. I might add a desire for the work, which, in a certain sense, is certainly included in a call, but which is apt to be confounded with a mere liking for the outward part of the profession--for example, with that mania for preaching which is sometimes found in grossly wicked men, and has been known to follow them, not only to their haunts of vice, but to the prison and the madhouse. There is also a desire which results from early habit and association, the known wish of parents, pastors, and other friends, or the fixed inveterate habit of regarding this as a man’ s chosen calling, even when every evidence of piety is wanting. The desire which can be referred to any of these causes is entirely distinct from that which God produces in the heart of His true servants, as a part of their vocation to the ministry. 2. This vocation, where it really exists, is paramount to every personal and selfish plan, to every natural affection, even the most tender, which conflicts with it. 3. This conflict is not usually unavoidable, though often so regarded by fanatics. The first duty of the Christian is not to desire or create, but to avoid it; but if unavoidable, his next is to obey God rather than man. 4. Our Saviour did not deal indiscriminately with all cases of desire to enter His immediate service. The remark is at least as old as Calvin, that in this case He repelled the man who wanted to go with Him everywhere, and urged the man to follow Him at once who wanted to go home for what appeared to be most necessary purposes. So far as His example is a guide to us in these things, we are bound, not only to persuade, but to discourage, as the case may be. 5. There is no more danger of excluding those whom God has called by faithful presentation of the whole truth, than there is of preventing the conversion of His chosen ones by showing them the true tests of faith and repentance. The man who can be finally driven back in this way ought to be so driven. He whom God has called will only be confirmed in his desire and resolution by such warnings against self-deception, though he may pass through the discipline of painful doubt and hesitation for a season. (J. A. Alexander, D. D.) Religious impressions not to be checked I. The importance of a prompt and resolute devotedness of mind to the great concern of religion. This is, in other words, to follow Christ; and it includes three things. 1. The candid reception of His revelation. 2. To follow Christ involves a surrender of ourselves to Him as our Saviour and Governor. There must be transactions of a personal nature between every such individual and Christ. First, he must seek to Him, and to God by Him, for reconciliation. Next, he must pay attention to the institutions of Christ. They must have his punctual and cordial regard. Moreover, every such person must be careful to comply with the moral precepts of the New Testament, as well as its more spiritual injunctions. 3. To follow Christ imports also ardent solicitude for the prevalence of His religion. II. The egregrious folly of stifling impressions in favour of such devotedness, by worldly considerations. Our Lord’ s language implies this: “ Follow Me; and let the dead bury their dead.” Leave the cares of the world to those who have no such call of God upon their hearts, but by no means postpone compliance with it for their sake. It is peculiarly sinful, then, to stifle religious impressions by the influence of worldly considerations. Yet-- 1. Some are prevented from an immediate compliance with their convictions by the notion that there is a happiness to be found in the world, which they, in that case, would be required to abandon. An entire mistake. Religion imposes no gloomy austerities, no unnecessary self-inflictions. 2. Some are prevented from going the full length of their religious convictions by the remonstrances of worldly relatives and friends. 3. The prompt devotedness of other minds is prevented by some particular worldly object of pursuit upon which they are at that moment intent, and which promises, by its attainment, soon to leave them at liberty. But this is the artifice of Satan. It quiets the present alarm; it hinders the heart, at this time, from closing with the call of God. (J. Leifchild.) Action and grief: a meditation for a churchyard And are not these strange words for one so loving as our Lord? How mighty was the attractive force of our Lord’ s character! When He spake, they were compelled to leave all, and to follow Him. I. “ Lord, suffer me first.” Ah; that is the cry of nature. “ I will come to Thee, but suffer me first.” “ First suffer me to be disappointed, and then I will follow Thee; first, build my house upon the sand, and then I will come, O Rock, to Thee. First, worship and waste my affections on the day, and then I will come to Thee.” “ Suffer me first” ; but Jesus answered, “ Follow thou Me.” 1. Follow Me. I am Life, and you seek life, but then you have only death; as long as you linger there, you do but seek the living among the dead. 2. Follow Me. You seek love, and here nothing loves you; that which loved you has gone, and, if you would regain what loved you, you must follow Me. 3. Follow Me. I am not only Life--I am the only Master of the kingdom of life. I am the Way to the life. In following Me, you do not leave behind you merely dead affections; you rise to the true kingdom of the affections. Action, action, action. Life is in action, in following more than in musing. The music of the harp is beautiful, but that has not served the world so well as the music of the hammer; and even all poetry is action--all true poetry is. (E. Paxton Hood.) Meaning of the prohibition We are not to suppose, by this prohibition, that Christ disallows or disapproves of any civil office from one person to another, much less of a child to a parent, either living or dying i but He lets us know-- 1. That no office of love and service to man must be preferred before our duty to God, to whom we owe our first and chief obedience. 2. That lawful and decent offices become sinful when they hinder greater duties. 3. That such as are called by Christ to preach the gospel, must mind that alone, and leave inferior duties to inferior persons. (W. Burkitt.) Preach thou the kingdom There are many of you who are busily engaged in legitimate occupations, and devoting yourselves in various degrees to various forms of good, touching the secular condition of the people around us. May I hint to you, “ Let the dead bury their dead; preach thou the gospel” ? A Christian man’ s first business is to witness for Jesus Christ. And no amount of diligence in legitimate occupations or for the good of others will absolve him from the charge of having turned duties upside down if he says, “ I cannot witness for Jesus Christ. I am so busy about these other things.” This command has a special application to us ministers. There are hosts of admirable things that we are tempted to engage in now-a-days, with the enlarged opportunities that we have of influencing men socially, politically, intellectually, and it wants rigid cocentration for us to keep out of the paths which might hinder our usefulness, or, at all events, dissipate our strength. Let us hear that voice ringing always in our ears: “ preach thou the gospel of the kingdom.” (A. Maclaren, D. D.) Our just obligation These words seem at first harsh and severe. Our Lord’ s teaching gives no sanction, however, to the monstrous error that the new life releases men from obligations which they may have found irksome. The common relations of life are a discipline whereby we are trained to spiritual perfection. What did our Lord say, and under what circumstances? 1. The man probably heard of his father’ s death when he was with Christ, and wanted to return to the funeral. But the father was dead, and the son could do nothing for him now. If he had neglected him in life, he could not now repair the neglect. 2. Still you say natural affection impels a man to discharge the last offices of love. Yes; but there are reasons which justify a man in being absent from his father’ s funeral. This was a very solemn and critical time. The man appears to have been selected as one of the seventy; and if he had gone home, he would have been detained some days by the ceremonial law; his purpose might have been weakened; so even in the hour of his grief he is commanded to do this great service, 3. “ Let the dead bury their dead.” Does this show contempt for the unspiritual? No; our Lord never spoke with contemptuous indifference of such; it was his very eagerness that they should rise to a new and better life that led Him to call this man away. 4. The whole narrative suggests that critical moments in a man’ s life bring critical duties. If God is near us now in a very special and solemn manner, then that principle enters our life and regulates our duty. (R. W. Dale, LL. D.) Following Christ I. WHAT IS IN CHRIST? 1. By following Christ the disciple is brought into a new relation. 2. At all times the religious relation is more important than the natural one. (1) It is formed by the will and choice of the individual himself. (2) It is wider in its sympathies. (3) It is a relation which will never fail. II. THE OF CHRIST HAS NEW . 1. He has to learn of Him. 2. He has to suffer with Him. 3. He has to move on towards Him. III. THE IS BROUGHT TO POSSESS NEW . 1. He has the most powerful incentive to work in this world. He has the most glorious hope with regard to the world to come. (H. C. Williams.) Living preaching When the Master gave the command, “ Go thou and preach,” He meant “ Go thou and shine; go thou and bear much fruit; go thou and do good; go thou and teach the poor; go thou and save the drunkard; go thou and heal the sick; go thou and witness for Me; go thou and live out this beautiful and sublime religion of the Cross.” 1. A life of obedience to Christ is the most effective way of glorifying our Saviour. It has been well styled “ the strongest manifestation of God to the world.” 2. There is no other preaching of the Word that makes so many converts to the truth. 3. Every man is a preacher, and every life a sermon. What sort of a discourse are you making, you, and you, and you? (T. L. Cuyler, D. D.) Ways of preaching Jesus There are a great many ways of preaching Jesus without standing in a pulpit. Wilberforce proclaimed the gospel of love on the floor of the British Parliament, though he never wore a surplice, and never had the ordained hand of a bishop on his honoured head. George Stewart was an apostle of the Cross when he organized a Christian mission for our soldiers’ camps during the civil war in America. John Macgregor was another when he gathered the shoeblack brigade in the streets of London. Hannah More preached Jesus in English drawing-rooms, and Elizabeth Fry in Newgate prison walls, and Sarah Filey amongst the negro freedmen of our Southern plantations. Sometimes God gives a single precept to a man to carry out, as when the Roman Catholic Father Matthew wrought grandly and gloriously for the reformation of Irish drunkards, and William Lothian for the recovery of poor lost women from the streets of Glasgow. Our Lord scatters His commissions with a munificent liberality. The “ Dairyman’ s Daughter” murmuring the voice of Jesus, till we heard it across the Atlantic; Hannah Burton testifying to the power of Christ to sustain her--all these were most effective preachers of the unsearchable riches of Christ. (T. L. Cuyler, D. D.) Supremacy of duty An officer who served under Stonewall Jackson, having gone to visit some relatives without applying for leave, was detained late at night by a severe rain-storm. About two o’ clock in the morning, hearing a loud shouting at the gate of the house, he rose, and found his brother there with a message that he must report himself at daybreak. He returned immediately, through the drenching rain and mud, to find all quiet at the camp, and the captain not yet risen. Inquiring of the adjutant the meaning of the message, he received for reply: “ That is to teach you that a soldier in the face of an enemy has no business away from his post.” (Mackay.) Luke 9:61-62 Looking back-- Danger of religious indecision 1. This man wished to follow Christ, but there was something of more urgent necessity that must first be attended to. What folly, to put off attention to concerns of soul. Life is uncertain. Every delay is a step towards final impenitence. 2. The person who made this resolution, evidently made it in his own strength. Vain promise. Without grace we cannot follow Christ. 3. The resolution, when formed, seems to depend on the consent of his friends; for, though he speaks only of taking his leave, he probably wished to know whether they approved of the step he was about to take. Had he been influenced by proper motives, instead of leaving them behind, he would rather have endeavoured to bring them with him, to follow Jesus in the way. 4. Instead of following Christ cheerfully and with all his heart, he appeared somewhat dejected at the thought, and must go and take leave of his friends, as if he were about to die, and should see them no more. Such are the melancholy apprehensions which some persons entertain of true religion; they imagine it would be injurious to their worldly interest, and unfit them for the common duties and enjoyments of life, and that therefore they must take a final leave of the concerns of the present world. 5. By going home to his friends, he would expose himself to great temptation, and be in danger of breaking the resolution already formed. (1) This subject may serve as a warning to those who trifle with the calls of the gospel. Here was a looking back, a lingering after the world, and Christ pronounces such to be unfit for the kingdom of God (Luke 9:62). (2) Nothing but a decided attachment to Christ, and a determination to sacrifice all for His sake, can constitute us His disciples. (3) Let us beware of the ensnaring influence of worldly connections, and of every inordinate affection; for these, rather than grosser evils, are the ordinary impediments to our salvation (Matthew 16:26). (Theological Sketch-book.) “ Lord, I will follow Thee: but” “Lord, I will follow Thee: but.” I. First, here comes a man who says, “ Lord, I will follow Thee; but I WANT A LITTLE MORE OUT OF LIFE BEFORE I BECOME A .” His notion is that religion is decidedly a melancholy affair, and that from the moment that he becomes a follower of Christ, he must bid adieu to all merriment and pleasure. Secretary Walsingham, an eminent statesman in the time of Queen Elizabeth, in the latter period of his life, retired to a quiet spot in the country. Some of his former gay associates came to him, and made the remark that he was now growing melancholy. “ Not melancholy,” replied he, “ but serious.” The mistake of those frivolous courtiers is precisely the mistake made by thousands, that of confounding seriousness with melancholy. The deepest joy is serious, and being serious is stable. Away with the notion that the pleasures of the world are denied to a believer! II. The next objector comes forward and says, “ Lord, I would follow Thee; but THE NATURE OF MY ME.” When Adam Clarke was a young man, his employer once bid him stretch short measure to make it enough; but his reply was, “ Sir, I can’ t do it; my conscience won’ t allow me.” He lost his situation, but God found him another. It never pays in the long run to have God against you. It all depends on how your money comes to you, Whether it is better to have it or to want it. Be sure of this, that character and a good conscience are the best capital. III. Number three starts up, and, in loud and self-asserting tones, proclaims that he has a mind to be religious, but DOES NOT FIND THAT ARE ANY BETTER TITAN OTHER PEOPLE. This is a polite way of hinting that they are possibly a little worse. I met with a case in point only the other day. I was visiting in the same house with a man who had been under deep religious impressions, and was “ almost persuaded,” but he had been repelled by the conduct of certain persons who bore the Christian name. “ They were the most unprincipled fellows I ever knew, and their religion disgraced everything they touched.” Stop, my friend; say, their hypocrisy disgraced everything they touched.” To speak the truth, it was not their religion, but their want of religion, that made them the rogues and scamps they were. IV. “ I would be a Christian,” says another, “ but YOU KNOW ALL THESE THINGS ARE MATTERS OF MERE . WE CANNOT ARRIVE AT ON THE SUBJECT OF .” The objection is plausible, but it is shallow and insufficient. 1. The evidence in favour of Christianity is far stronger than that demanded in respect to other matters which you daily accept, and in which great interests are involved. 2. That evidence furnishes the fullest demonstration of which the nature of the subject admits. V. I am only to name another objection, and it is perhaps the most insidious and fatal” of all. “ Lord, I will follow Thee; but--THERE IS NO HURRY; THERE IS TIME ENOUGH.” Remember, a resolution like that, though it quiets conscience, is worth nothing. (J. T. Davidson, D. D.) The broken column When you have walked through a cemetery, you have frequently seen over a grave a broken column intended to memorialize the death of some one who was taken away in the prime of manhood, before as yet his life had come to its climax. I shall take that picture of the broken column to represent my text. It is a broken text. You expected me to go on and to conclude the sentence: I have broken it off abruptly. That broken column shall also represent the broken resolutions of full many who were once in a hopeful state. As if prepared to witness a good profession, they said, “ Lord, I will follow Thee,” when there came a heavy blow from the withering hand of sin; and the column was broken short with a “ but.” So let my text stand. I will not finish it. But so let not your determination stand. The Lord grant by His effectual grace that while you mourn with sincere grief the grave of many a fair resolve which never attained the maturity of true discipleship--cut off with the fatal “but” of indecision; you may now be quickened to newness of life. Thus you shall come to the fulness of the stature of a man in Christ. Thus, as a building fitly framed together and growing to completeness, you shall be made meet for a habitation of God through the Spirit. “ Lord, I will follow Thee: but--.” How remarkably does Scripture prove to us that the mentalcharacteristics of mankind are the same now as in the Saviour’ s day! We occasionally hear stories of old skeletons being dug up which are greater in stature than men of these times. Some credit the story, some do not, for there be many who maintain that the physical conformation of man is at this day just what it always was. Certainly, however, there can be no dispute whatever among observant men as to the identity of the inner nature of man. The gospel of Christ may well be an unchanging gospel, for it is a remedy which has to deal with an unaltering disease. The very same objections which were made to Christ in the days of His flesh are made to His gospel now. The same effects are produced under the ministry of Christ’ s servants in these modern times as were produced by His own ministry. Still are the promised hopes which make glad the preacher’ s heart, blasted and withered by the same blights and the same mildews which of old withered and blasted the prospects of the ministry during our Lord’ s own personal sojourn in the world. I. First, then TO EXPOSE YOUR . I cannot tell man by man, what may be the precise let that causes you to draw back, but perhaps, by giving a list, I may be directed to describe full many a case exactly, and with precision. Some there be who say, and seem very sincere in the utterance, “ Lord, I would be a Christian, I would believe in Thee, and take up the cross and follow Thee, but my calling prevents it. Such is my state of life that piety would be to me an impossibility. I must live, and I cannot live by godliness, therefore I am to be excused for the present from following Christ.” “ Yes, but,” saith another, “ if it be not in our calling, yet in my case it is my peculiar position in providence. It is all very well for the minister, who has not to mingle with daily life, but can come up into his pulpit and pray and preach, to make little excuse for men; but I tell you, sir, if you knew how I was situated, you would say that I am quite excusable in postponing the thoughts of God and of eternity. You do not know what it is to have an ungodly husband, or to live in a family where you cannot carry out your convictions without meeting with persecution so ferocious and so incessant, that flesh and blood cannot endure it.” “ Besides,” says another, “ I am just now in such a peculiar crisis; it may be I have got into it by my sin, but I feel I cannot get out of it without sin. If I were once out of it, and could start again, and stand upon a new footing, then I might follow Christ.” “ Yes,” says another, “ I would follow Christ; I have often felt inclinations to do so; and I have had some longings after better things: but the way of Christ is too rough for me. It demands that I should give up pleasures which I really love.” “ But,” saith another, “ that is not my case. I can say I will follow Christ, but I am of such a volatile, changeable disposition, that I do not think I ever shall fulfil my purpose.” II. Soul, thou who sayest, “ I will follow Christ, but--,” I now come to EXPOSE THINE AND THE ILL STATE OF THY HEART. Soul! thou hast as yet no true idea of what sin is. God the Holy Spirit has never opened thine eyes to see what an evil and bitter thing it is to sin against God, or else there would be no “ buts.” Picture a man who has lost his way, who has sunk into a slough; the waters and the mire are come up to his very throat. He is about to sink in it, when some bright spirit comes, stepping over the treacherous bog, and puts forth to him his hand. That man, if he knows where he is, if he knows his uncomfortable and desperate state, will put out his hand at once. Again: soul, it seems plain to me that thou hast never yet been taught by the Holy Spirit what is thy state of condemnation. Thou hast never yet learnt that the wrath of God abideth on thee. What shall I say more? Yet this once again I will admonish thee. O thou procrastinating, objecting sinner, thou bast never known what heaven is, or else thou wouldst never have a “ but.” III. LET ME SHOW THEE THY SIN. When thou saidst, “ But,” thou didst contradict thyself. The meaning of that rightly read is this, “ Lord, I will not follow Thee.” That “ but” of thine puts the negative on all the profession that went before it. I wish, my hearers, that this morning you would either be led by grace to say, “ I will believe,” or else were permitted honestly to see the depravity and desperate hardness of your own hearts so as to say, “ I will not believe in Christ.” It is because so many of you are neither this nor that, but halting between two opinions, that you are the hardest characters to deal with. I know a gentleman of considerable position in the world, who, after having been with me some little time, said, “ Now that man is going away, and I shall be just what I was before” ; for he had wept under the Word. He compared himself, he said, to a gutta-percha doll; he had got out of his old shape for a little while, but he would go back to what he was before. And how many there are of you of this kind. You will not say, “ I will not have Christ” ; you will not say, “ I will not think of these things.” You dare not say, “ I disbelieve the Bible,” or, “ I think there is no God, and no hereafter” ; but you say, “ No doubt it is true, I’ ll think of it by and by.” You never will, sinner, you never will, you will go on from day to day, harping that till your last day shall come, and you will be found then where you are now, unless sovereign grace prevent. (C. H. Spurgeon.) Conditional discipleship This third character, like the first, volunteers his declaration of attachment to the Saviour, appending to it a condition--“ Lord, I will follow Thee, BUT let me first go bid them farewell, which are at my house.” But--ominous word, treacherous poison, undermining the best resolves, and spoiling the fairest speeches. It is said of Augustine that he used to say, “ Lord, convert me, but not yet.” “ Lord, I will follow Thee, But I am not yet good enough.” If this be the utterance of real humility, know thou that it is not unworthiness, but unwillingness that alone disqualifies us from following Jesus. It is unconditional determination that He demands. D’ Aubigne, the great church historian, says that when he was a student at college, he was much beset by doubts and difficulties in relation to questions connected with Divine truth; and it was his wont to repair to an old Christian, in very humble life, whose rich experience had often served to help the young student. But at length, upon preferring some grave difficulty, D’ Aubigne received an unexpected rebuff, for his aged friend replied, “ Young man, I shall not answer anymore of these questions of yours. If I settle them one day, new perplexities arise the next day. The great question for you is--‘ Do you mean to belong altogether to Christ?’” That is the shortest way of setting at rest these misgivings. Give yourselves to the Saviour, and He will smooth your path, and show the way. (W. G. Lewis.) The danger of backward looks This man was in the spirit of true discipleship, resolved to follow Jesus, and actually beginning it. But he felt a desire first to return to his relatives and give his last commission to them, and bid them farewell: “ Lord, I will follow Thee; but suffer me first go bid them farewell that are at home at my house.” This request had something of a backward look in it; it indicated somewhat of a desire to trim between Christ and His kindred; at least there was a positive danger in it to the discipleship he had just avowed; for, once away from the Master’ s side and among his own unbelieving kindred, he would be beset by them as to the step he was taking; he would be expostulated with and warned against it, and threateningly dissuaded from it; tears, entreaties, influences of all sorts would be brought to bear on him to turn him from his intent and keep him at home as he was wont to be. And then, perchance, his mind would waver, and his resolution become shaken, and his faith fail, or be much unfitted for the high calling of the gospel. This danger the Lord Jesus keenly perceived, and clearly points out: and, while not forbidding him from doing as he desired, yet warns him to beware: “ No man,” etc., as if He said, “ No man who follows Me can at the same time turn towards the world; if he do so he will fail in his following, perhaps in the way of it, certainly in the work of it. Such trimming is treason to Me, and shows those pursuing it unfit for My kingdom and work.” (J. Chalmers, M. A.) Fatal delay Some time since, in a little watering-place in the west of Scotland, I was pointed to a spot where, a few years ago, a sad and strange incident had occurred. Several workmen were engaged in calking the bottom of a vessel that had been drawn up on the sandy beach. On a sudden the cry was raised that the ship was listing over, and all the men started to their feet, and hastened to escape--all but one poor fellow, who was late in stirring, and the huge hulk fell upon him, imprisoning his lower extremities and loins, but leaving head and chest uninjured. At first it was thought there was little danger, for the ship rested gently on him, and the sand was soft. So they tried to shore up the vessel, and willing hands brought ropes, and blocks, and wedges, and earnest strength. But they soon discovered that the thing was impossible, from the nature of the bottom. The man was jammed there, and they could not extricate him. There was just one awful hour before the advancing tide would cover him. Oh! with what agonizing entreaty did he appeal to them to rescue him. It was too late. He saw the tide of death approaching, but he had not the power to rise and escape; and none could deliver him. Another hour; and as the vessel calmly rose and glided on the waters, the pale corpse floating in to shore seemed to preach the solemn lesson, that even a few moments’ delay may be fatal. And so has it happened with many a soul, that, trifling with his season of grace, has resolved to get up and follow Christ at some future day; but that day came, and he could not stir; all capacity for resolve had passed away; his heart was dead and motionless as a stone. If you have but half a desire then to follow Christ, let no “ buts” block the way, those flimsy objections which drown so many in perdition, and make you the butt of Satan’ s ridicule; but instantly arise, and say with Peter (though in a Divine strength that will not fail you), “ Lord, why cannot I follow Thee now? I will lay down my life for Thy sake.” (J. T. Davidson, D. D.) Danger of procrastination A recent discovery at Pompeii has brought to light the fact of a priest fleeing from the temple when the warning came of the city’ s approaching doom. But the treasures of the temple--why should he leave them? He is supposed to have returned to obtain them. Again he sets out, but had not proceeded far before the destruction came and he was lost. Had it not been for the treasures, his life had been spared. Danger in delay Caesar had a letter given him by Artimedorus the morning he went to the senate, wherein notice was given him of all the conspiracy of his murderers; so that with ease he might have prevented his death: but neglecting the reading of it, he was slain. What can be done today, therefore, delay not till to-morrow. (W. Buck.) The virtue of perseverance I. MOTIVES. 1. The unchangeableness of God. 2. The unchangeableness of Divine charity. 3. The nature of virtue. II. MEANS. 1. Prayer. 2. Energy. 3. Frequent reception of the Holy Communion. 4. The remembrance of heaven. (Bishop Ehrler.) The evil of looking back This man offered himself, but his heart was not sufficiently loosened from the world. 1. His request. He offers himself to be a disciple of Christ, but with an exception--that he might take his farewell at home, and dispose of his estate there, and so secure his worldly interests. You will say, what harm in this request? Elijah granted it to Elisha (1 Kings 19:21). I answer-- (1) The evangelical ministry exceedeth the prophetical, both as to excellency and necessity, and must be gone about speedily without any delay. The harvest was great, and such an extraordinary work was not to be delayed nor interrupted. (2) If two men do the same thing, it followeth not that they do it with the same mind. Things may be the same as to the substance or matter of the action, yet circumstances may be different. Christ knew this man’ s heart, and could interpret the meaning of his desire to go home first. (3) Those that followed Christ on these extraordinary calls were to leave all things they had, without any further care about them (Matthew 19:21; Matthew 4:19-20; Matthew 9:9). Therefore it was preposterous for this man to desire to go home to order and dispose of his estate and family, before he complied with his call. (4) In resolution, estimation, and vow, the same is required of all Christians, when Christ’ s work calleth for it--“ So likewise, whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple” Luke 14:33). 2. Christ’ s answer, which consists of a similitude, and its interpretation joined together. (1) The metaphor or similitude. Taken from ploughmen, who cannot make straight furrows if they look back. So, to look back, after we have undertaken Christ’ s yoke and service, rendereth us unfit for the kingdom of God. Putting our hands to the plough is to undertake Christ’ s work, or to resolve to be His disciples. Looking back denotes a hankering of mind after the world, and also a return to the worldly life. For, first we look back, and then we go back. 1. Upon what occasions we may be said to look back. A double pair I shall mention. The first sort of those: (1) That pretend to follow Christ, and yet their hearts hanker after the world, the cares, pleasures, and vain pomp thereof. (2) When men are discouraged in His service by troubles and difficulties, and so, after a forward profession, all cometh to nothing--“ If any man draw back, My soul shall have no pleasure in him” (Hebrews 10:38). The former is looking back, and this is drawing back. The one arises out of the other; all their former zeal and courage is lost, they are affrighted and driven out of their profession, and relapse into the errors they have escaped. There is a looking back with respect to mortification, and a looking back with respect to vivification. (a) With respect to mortification, which is the first part of conversion. So we must not look back, or mind anything behind us, which may turn us back, and stop us in our course. (b) With respect to vivification, or progress in the duties of the holy and heavenly life. So the apostle telleth us--“ But this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before” (Philippians 3:13), etc. Farther progress in holiness is the one thing that we should mind, and that above all other things. 2. How ill it becometh those that have put their hands to the spiritual plough. (1) In respect of the covenant into which they enter, or the manner of entrance into it, which is by a fixed unbounded resignation of themselves unto God. Till this be done, we are but half Christians. (2) With respect to the duties of Christianity, or that part of the kingdom of God which concerneth your obedience to Him, you are never fit for these while the heart cleaveth to earthly things, and you are still hankering after the world. A threefold defect there will be in our duties. (a) They will be unpleasant. (b) They will he inconstant. (c) Imperfect in such a degree as to want sincerity. (3) In respect of the hurt that cometh from their looking back, both to themselves and to religion. (4) With respect to the disproportion that is between the things that tempt us to look back, and those things that are set before us. (a) The things that tempt us to look back are the pleasures of sin and the profits of the world. Both are but a temporary enjoyment Hebrews 11:25). (b) The things that are before you are God and heaven; reconciliation with God, and the everlasting fruition of Him in glory. (T. Manton, D. D.) The danger of looking back I. Many seem disposed to follow Christ, and yet are kept back by their domestic and worldly affairs. II. The concerns of religion are so very important, that they admit no excuse nor delay. 1. Religion is the most important concern, infinitely more so than any domestic and worldly concern. 2. Worldly business is no excuse for neglecting religion, because both may go on together, if a man will “ guide his affairs with discretion.” 3. To this I add--that business and domestic affairs will flourish the better, if religion be minded as the principal thing. III. Those who have engaged in the service of Christ, must be resolute and persevere to the end. Application: 1. How lamentable is the con duct of mankind in general; so widely different from the maxims of our Lord and Master. 2. What great need have we to watch over ourselves, lest domestic affairs hinder us in religion. 3. Let us be solicitous to persevere to the end. (J. Orion.) Christ demands decision in religion I. THERE, IS A GREAT WORK, WHICH IT US ALL TO LABOUR IN. 1. All are interested in reaping the advantages of it. 2. All must alike feel the sad consequences of neglecting it. 3. It is a work that requires immediate attention. II. WHEN WE TAKE UP WE MUST GO ON WITH IT, and never allow ourselves to be diverted from our object by any worldly considerations. We must be determined to serve Christ faithfully, to serve Him above all, and to serve Him for ever. No reservation; no division of affection or interest between Christ and other things. III. IF, AFTER GOD’ S WORK, WE LOOK AWAY FROM IT, AND TURN OUR AND HEARTS AGAIN UPON THE WORLD, WE UNFIT FOR THE KINGDOM OF GOD. (W. Curling, M. A.) Fatal significance of a hind look The professed Christian, to demonstrate his sincerity, to do his work effectually, and to prove his adaptedness for a higher sphere, must keep his face Zionward. Because, if he looks back, he shows-- 1. That he is not deeply interested and fully occupied by the employment in which he is professedly engaged. 2. That the ties of his earthly relationships are stronger than those which bind him to heavenly things. 3. That he has surrendered himself to temptation. Conclusion: As the first look to Christ and the first step towards the Cross are encouraging and hopeful, so the first look away from the Saviour and the first step aside from the path of duty are discouraging, dangerous, appalling. Apostasy is thus reached by an accelerating motion. (Anon.) Spiritual ploughing Life is here figured as a field which God has set us to plough. I. Upon it THREE CLASSES OF MEN appear. 1. There are those who move without regard to their orders or their duty. Their purpose is to live as easily and pleasantly as possible. They mean to enjoy the present; to enjoy virtuously, if that may be, but to enjoy. What questions may be asked them by and by, they refuse to consider. Of such the text says nothing. 2. There are others trying to plough with their eyes behind them. They have seized the plough in order to be drawn by it to heaven. But they have found life no summer sea over which they can be carried smoothly gliding. They have found it an unbroken prairie that must be ploughed as it is passed. They are continually tripped and thrown by unexpected obstacles. They do not find the joy they crave. When demands upon their energies increase, they are disturbed. When tribulation or persecution ariseth because of the Word, “ by and by they are offended.” Thus they learn by sad experience that religion which is not wings is always chains. 3. But there are men who begin and continue the Christian life as the instructed ploughman runs his furrow. II. Let us mark THREE POINTS IN THE MASTER’ S which give reply to certain questions often asked of Christians by the world, by their own hearts, by the Holy Spirit. 1. Why does God’ s kingdom come so slowly? Why is the Church not stronger? One could scarcely glance upon the ploughman at his work, remembering Christ’ s words the while, and ask these questions twice. The marvel would rather seem to be that the kingdom does increase. Survey the field of Christian ploughmen. Some are absorbed in watching and in criticising other people’ s furrows. Some are gazing back upon their own, recalling past experiences, at times anxiously, which is bad; at times proudly, which is worse. How few are eagerly alert to the work they themselves are set to do I How few are even sure that they have furrows to plough! 2. The Lord’ s words bring an answer to another question of serious practical import. It is said the Church is losing, if she has not already lost, her hold upon young men. Yet in our Lord’ s lifetime it was the young and the strong whom He attracted to Him and gathered round Him. Why is it not so now? Is not an answer found in this, that we no longer preach Him with the old heroic ring? All are not mourners. All are not heavy-laden. There are many who carry life as a hunter bears his gun through an unflushed preserve. Has Christ no words for them? Ay, verily! But how rarely are those words repeated? In the New Testament the Christian is painted, not as one flying from a doomed city, but as a stalwart farmer ploughing the old growths of the old world, until visions of a new earth no less than of a new heaven fill his horizon. 3. One other question presses upon many who read the text. “ Let me first go bid them farewell which are at home, at my house.” Was the Master’ s reply intended to rebuke the disciple for loving his family--to teach him not to care for wife and child? Altogether the reverse, I think. The man assumed that to follow Christ was to forsake his family. It was the fatal blunder made by most Christians some centuries later, when they conceived that to run away from their duties, and try to save their souls by hiding in caverns or monasteries, without a thought of the world their Master came to deliver, was the proper way to obey Him. To grant the man’ s request would have confirmed him in his error. It was needful to teach him that he could effectually care for wife and child only by following with unswerving gaze and unfaltering foot the Lord who gave them to him. No man ever obeyed Christ in singleness of heart without discovering that fact. This disciple, if he obeyed, learned it in due time, and learned it effectually, though when or how he learned it we are not told. (W. B.Wright.) No looking back The Saviour’ s reply to this man embodies a great principle which regulates the Christian life. As though He said, The meanest occupation in life demands of men fixedness of attention and devotedness of purpose. The ploughman, the oarsman, the helmsman, the engineman, must each have the fixed eye, and so must the Christian man, Without perseverance there is no success in worldly undertakings, and without this not the most resplendent grace can bring a man to heaven. Some turn back at the very commencement of the pilgrimage. The figure of the plough points out the fact to us that labour for Christ is the law of the kingdom. (W. G, Lewis.) Danger of trifling with religious impressions While the Holy Spirit pleads with us, when conscience wakes and talks with us, let none of us trifle with the impressions that are made. There is no process so perilous as that by which men come into familiarity with Gospel truth, and go away partially enlightened and imperfectly convinced. How many there are who, like the three men we have been considering, come near to Christ, but are only almost saved. The northern steel is hardened by alternate exposure to heat and cold, and thus often are men’ s hearts indurated. They come into the warm atmosphere of the public means of grace, and go out into the world to become less and less approachable by Divine truth. There are not a few who have outlived all power of susceptibility to God’ s Word. They could not shed a tear over sin if they would. (W. G, Lewis.) Putting the hand to the plough To put the hand to the plough, is to enter ostensibly upon some undertaking, to embark in some pursuit with an apparent purpose of securing its object; and to look back, implies that divided state of mind, and that irresoluteness of purpose which are a virtual abandonment of the end proposed, and are, therefore, fatal to success. We are thus taught that a wavering and undetermined state of mind in religion is as fatal as it is in any other pursuit, that it can never form that character which qualifies for the kingdom of God. I. Among those who, in the language of the text, put the hand to the plough and look back may be mentioned the following classes. 1. Those who would become religious were it not that they wish first to secure some worldly good. 2. The same thing is true of those who are prevented from coming to a decided purpose in religion by certain embarrassments and difficulties. 3. The same thing is true of those who, in times of deep affliction, sudden danger, or alarming sickness, have formed resolutions to become religious, and who abandon them on a change of circumstances. 4. The same charge lies against those who have been the subjects of special religious awakening, and who afterward return to stupidity in sin. II. Its utter insufficiency to form the Christian character. 1. An undecided purpose in religion is sure, sooner or later, to abandon its object. 2. An undecided, fluctuating purpose in religion greatly impairs the energies of the mind, and thus defeats its object. 3. That an undecided purpose in religion cannot form the Christian character, is evident from the fact that it still leaves the soul as completely under the dominion of sin as if it had no existence. 4. An undecided purpose in religion grieves the Holy Ghost and fearfully exposes to judicial abandonment of God. (N. W. Taylor, D. D.) Crooked ploughing It seems a very easy process to a man who has never tried, as he stands looking over the fence and sees the plough glide smoothly through the field. One would think all you have to do, would be to take hold of the handles and put the point of the coulter in the sod, and then tell the horses to start; but to send the plough through at equal depth of earth, and, without being stopped by stone or stump, make a clear, straight furrow from one end to the other, requires a good deal of care. Many a one has lost his patience in the process, and when he first began to plough, has been knocked flat by the plough handles. Here is a boy that attempts to plough, but instead of keeping his eye on the beam of the plough or on the horses that are dragging the plough, he is looking this way and that, sometimes looking back to the end of the field from which he started. The husbandman comes down in the field and says: “ My boy, you will never make a ploughman in that way. You must keep your eye on your work, or I shall discharge you, and put some one else in your place. See here, what a crooked furrow you have been making.” Now it is this illustration that Christ presents in order to show up the folly of that man who, once having started toward heaven, is averted this way and that, often looking back to the place from which he started. (Dr. Talmage.) Concentration If you can dismiss from your minds the figure of the modern farmer, with his polished ploughshare leaving the deep, clean furrow in its wake, and put in its place the figure out of which Jesus made this little picture--the Eastern ploughman doubled over the pointed stick which serves as a plough--you will see at once how vividly the absurdity of a man’ s ploughing and looking behind him at the same time would have impressed Christ’ s hearers. Even a modern ploughman, with the best modern plough, will make sad work if he do not keep his eyes straight before him. Anyway, that is true of ploughing which is true of any other kind of work. One whose interest is half in front and half behind him will be only a half-way man in anything to which he may set his hand. All good work requires concentration. No good work is done into which a man does not throw himself wholly. A man cannot plough, and be looking behind him half the time. Such a man is not fit for a ploughman. You say, Of course not. That is a law of all good work, that a man cannot do it well with half his attention; but why not, then, a law of work and life in the kingdom of God? We have a great deal yet to learn about the words of Christ; and one of the most important things is, that these apparently commonplace truths and familiar laws which He so often cites are merely sides, or ends if you please, of truths and laws which hold in the whole spiritual world. It is not, that, in this little picture of an incompetent farmhand Christ gives us something like a law of the kingdom of God. He states the law itself. Good work requires the entire committal of the worker. It is the law of Christian service and of ploughing alike. It is this fact which lifts utterances like our text out of the region of commonplace. They seem commonplace where they touch us, but their line runs out to truths which are not commonplace. The law of the plough followed up appears as the law of the kingdom of God. (M. R. Vincent, D. D.) Reasons why men look back from the plough 1. I remark, that many surrender their religious impressions because, like this man in the text, they do not want to give up their friends and connections. The probability is that the majority of your friends are not true Christians. 2. Again, I remark, that sometimes people surrender their religious impressions because they want to take one more look at sin. They resolved that they would give up sinful indulgences, but they have been hankering for them ever since, thirsty for them, and finally they conclude to go into them. So there is a man who, under the influence of the Spirit, resolved he would become a Christian, and as a preliminary step he ceases profanity. That was the temptation and the sin of his life. After awhile be says: “ I don’ t know as it’ s worth while for me to be curbing my temper at all times--to be so particular about my speech. Some of the most distinguishedmen in the world have been profane. Benjamin Wade swears, Stephen A. Douglass used to swear, General Jackson swore at the battle of New Orleans, and if men like that swear, I can; and I am not responsible anyhow for what I do when I get provoked.” And so the man who, resolving on heaven, quits his profanity, goes back to it. In other words, as the Bible describes it, “ the dog returns to its vomit again, and the sow that is washed to her wallowing in the mire.” Oh, my friends, there are ten thousand witcheries which, after a man has started for heaven, compel him to look back. 3. I remark, again, there are many who surrender their religious impressions because they want ease from spiritual anxiety. They have been talking about their immortal soul, they have been wondering about the day of judgment, they have been troubling themselves abort a great many questions in regard to religion, and they do not find peace immediately, and they Say, “ Here, I’ ll give it all up. I will not be bothered any more” ; and so they get rest; but it is the rest of the drowning man who, after half an hour battling with the waves, says, “ There’ s no use; I can’ t swim ashore; I’ ll drown” ; and he goes down. Oh, we do not hide the fact that to become a Christian demands the gathering up of all the energies of the soul. (Dr. Talmage.) No retreat When Garibaldi sailed from Genoa in 1860, to deliver Sicily from its oppressors, he took with him a thousand volunteers. They landed at Marsala almost in the face of the Neapolitan fleet. When the commander of Marsala, returning to the port, saw two steamers, he gave immediate orders to destroy them. Garibaldi, having landed his men, looked with indifference, almost with pleasure, upon their destruction. “ Our retreat is cut off,” he said exultingly to his soldiers; “ we have no hope but in going forward; it is to death or victory.” Which it proved to be we know full well, the brave hero soon returning as complete conqueror. No retreat possible to the Christian soldier Among the prisoners taken captive at Waterloo there was a Highland piper. Napoleon, struck with his mountain dress and sinewy limbs, asked him to play on his instrument, which is said to sound so delightfully in the mountains and glens in Scotland. “ Play a pibroch,” said Napoleon; and the Highlander played. “ Play a march” ; it was done. “ Play a retreat.” “ Na, na,” said the Highlander, “ I never learned to play a retreat.” Never look back In the East, when men or women leave their house, they never look back, as “ it would be very unfortunate.” Should a husband have left anything which his wife knows he will require, she will not call on him to turn or look back; but will either take the article herself or send it by another. Should a man have to look back on some great emergency, he will not then proceed on the business he was about to transact. When a person goes along the road (especially in the evening) he will take care not to look back, “ because the evil spirits will assuredly seize him.” When they go on a journey, they will not look behind, though the palan-keen, or bandy, should be close upon them; they step a little on one side, and then look at you. Should a person have to leave the house of a friend after sunset, he will be advised in going home not to look back: “ as much as possible keep your eyes closed; fear not.” Has a person made an offering to the evil spirits? he must take particular care when he leaves the place not to look back. A female known to me is believed to have got her crooked neck by looking back. Such observations as the following may be heard in private conversation:--“ Have you heard that the Camaran is very ill?” “ No; what is the matter with him?” “ Matter I why, he has looked back, and the evil spirit has caught him.” Sermon to young men A noble resolution frustrated by a “ but” ! A life full of promise and of hope broken off by a “ but” ! A crown lost, a kingdom forfeited, an eternity marred by a “ but” ! A “ but” was this man’ s ruin, and it may be also yours. I take it in this way, that each one present who is not following Christ may write in his or her own objection. 1. It is possible that with some of you the worldly life seems preferable on the score of pleasure. 2. Or you perhaps say: “ At present I am so absorbed in business that I have no time to follow Christ.” 3. Or perhaps that which has kept you back is fear of the reproach or the scorn of others. 4. Or you have formed an intention to follow Christ, but not now. “ Let me first go,” dec. Any excuse that will save you from immediate decision! What, think you, is peopling the regions of the lost? Is it crime? No. It is simple neglect of the gospel. Satan asks no more than that you should neglect it. He seeks not that you shall blaspheme it, or that you shall disbelieve it, or that you shall neglect and despise it. He only asks that you will neglect it. If you will only say, “ Lord, I will follow Thee, but “ that is all he wants. (H. Wonnacott.) Irresolution I will follow Thee, but-- 1. Not yet. 2. I will let no one know it (Mark 8:38). 3. I will see how others go (Psalms 42:4). 4. There are so many ways (John 14:6). 5. I have not sufficient conviction (Acts 24:25). 6. I must make myself better (Matthew 9:13). 7. I do not know how (Acts 16:31). 8. It will affect my worldly position (Matthew 16:26). 9. I shall lose my situation (Matthew 6:24). 10. The doctrine of election stands in my way (Hebrews 7:25). 11. I am not certain that Thou wilt forgive and receive me Jeremiah 31:34). 12. I cannot do certain things which a profession of religion requires of me (Mark 10:21-22). 13. I will wait God’ s time (2 Corinthians 6:2). 14. I have not the heart to do it (Psalms 34:18). Application: 1. The propensity of an awakened sinner is to put off conviction day after day. 2. The excuses and promises of the sinner are to ease his conscience. 3. Excuses are enough to prevent submission. 4. Are you ready to cast yourselves into the arms of Jesus Christ? (E. Schnadhorst.) The power of a “ but” I. MANY ARE SAYING, “ LORD, I WILL FOLLOW THEE,” WHO YET DO NOT FOLLOW CHRIST. They have a reverence for sacred things; their head-belief is scriptural and unhesitating; they know both that their lives are wrong and their hearts sinful, and the remedy for the evil; but there is always something in the way of their present decision. II. Inquire into SOME OF THE CAUSES WHICH OPERATE TO KEEP BACK SUCH AS I HAVE BEEN FROM FOR CHRIST. 1. With some, as with the man of the text, natural ties. “ Let me first go and bid them farewell which are at home at my house.” “ A very natural wish!” you say. And so in some circumstances it would be. When Elijah summoned Elisha to follow him, the son of Shaphat said: “ Let me, I pray thee, kiss my father and my mother, and then I will follow thee.” And the prophet, stern man though he was, assented (1 Kings 19:19-20). Why then does Christ act so differently on a similar occasion? We may conjecture that Elisha’ s parents would be rather gratified than otherwise that their son should become the servant of the great prophet. The parents of this man who came to Christ, on the other hand, would not, it may be, feel that it was any advance or promotion for their son to give up his occupation and follow the fortunes of the poor carpenter’ s son. Christ may then have apprehended that if the man returned home he would never come back, deterred from doing so by the persuasions of his relatives. Elisha was called from the plough to follow the prophets; this man was called from his occupation to put his hand to the plough. “ Oh, but it was the gospel-plough,” you say. Yes, but gospel-ploughing was not popular in those days. But whatever it was that rendered this man’ s temporary return home a probably permanent one, whatever it was that made it perilous to his spiritual interests to go and bid farewell to his parents, I gather from Christ’ s rebuke that it was something which the man knew and knowing, did not consider as he ought. We may be sure that for him to do as he proposed would have been actually to prefer his relatives to Christ, the lesser duty to the larger, his affection to Christ’ s claim. Do natural ties ever keep us from following Christ? I am afraid that, in some cases, they do. Unbelieving wife or husband; worldly parent, scoffing brother or sister. 2. Plea of being too young yet. 3. Worldly preoccupations. Must “ get on” in business, provide for family and old age. As if it was not possible to be both diligent in business and fervent in spirit. No man has a right to barter his soul for worldly gain. III. “ CHOOSE YOU THIS DAY WHOM YOU WILL SERVE.” Let there be no hindering “ but.” Christ suffered no “ but” to come between Him and the fulfilment of His loving purposes for our redemption. Shall we hesitate to follow Him when He bids us? (J. R. Bailey.) Perseverance A man’ s work is what his will is. If he throws his will into his work, it will be done. If his heart and will are not in his work, it will be but half done. “ He that endureth to the end, the same shall be saved.” I. WHAT IS ? It is holding out steadily to the end. The question is of two kinds: 1. Active perseverance. The availing ourselves of the lights of truth when we see them. 2. Passive perseverance. When there is perseverance on our part there is also perseverance on God’ s part. Perseverance on God’ s part a sovereign gift which we cannot merit. 3. This gift of perseverance consists of three things: (a) The special guidance of God to guard us from running into temptation; (b) God will guard those whom He guides; (c) the continual renewal of God’ s grace. II. How IS LOST? One mortal sin will destroy it. There are sins which are not considered deadly which are in reality more deadly because they contain more subtle poison, e.g., pride, jealousy, anger, sloth. III. HOW IS TO BE ? By fidelity to the voice of conscience; by maintaining a delicacy of conscience. 1. Dwell much upon God’ s love to you. 2. Meditate upon those who have fallen. 3. Learn that there must be a strong, fervent will throwing itself into perseverance. (Cardinal Manning.) The plough and the kingdom The picture of a slouching plough man is the form into which our Lord throws the lesson of the closing section of this chapter. 1. The first man, an enthusiastic volunteer, had conceived of no difficulty in the case. Nevertheless, our Lord will not let a man enter His service without a full knowledge of its conditions. The man shall never have it to say that he was entrapped into sacrifices and labours upon which he did not count. 2. The next man is a ready man, like the first, but a more cautious man. No one would be more ready than Christ to acknowledge such a claim as he urged. But this case was peculiar. When a community, in the old colonial days, was suddenly attacked by the Indians, every man must drop everything else, and go out to repel the savages. He must leave his team unyoked in the field, his plough in the furrow, his sick wife in the house, his dead child or father unburied, and seize his gun, and take his place in the ranks. You are to remember further that this was the man’ s only chance to attach himself to Jesus. The Lord was going forth from Galilee to return no more. According to the Jewish law, the pollution from the presence of a dead body lasted seven days. By that time the man’ s first enthusiasm would have become chilled, and Jesus would be out of reach. The man evidently thought that it was only a question of a little delay in following Christ; Jesus knew that it was a question of following Him now or never. 3. Then comes a third. He offers himself also; but he, too, is not ready to go at once. He wants to go home and take leave of his family and friends. And in this case, as in the last, Christ assumes that there is a moral crisis. He must decide promptly; and if he decides to follow Christ, he must promptly forsake all, once for all, and follow Him. Christ says to Him, in effect, “ If you go after me, the course is straightforward. If part of your heart is left behind with friends and home and old associations, it is of no use for you to go. You are not fit for the kingdom of God, any more than a man is fit to plough a field who is constantly turning from his plough and his team to look backward.” 1. The lesson of the text is that of committal--the truth, that to follow Christ is to commit one’ s self wholly and irrevocably to Christ. This law of entire committal is familiar enough to us in its worldly applications. When you choose a calling in life, it is said of you, “ He is going to devote his life to business, or to law, or to medicine.” 2. As a consequence, when you enter your plough in this spirit of entire committal, you agree to take whatever comes in the line of your ploughing, and to plough through it, or round it, and in no case to turn back because of it. The kingdom of God is full of surprises, and you will come upon a good many unexpected things, and hard as they are unexpected. There are curved as well as straight lines in God’ s plans, ends reached by indirection as well as directly. A farmer likes to cut straight furrows, but God is more concerned about our making a fruitful field than a handsome one. Any way, straight or crooked, you commit yourself to what comes. God selects the field for us with its conditions; rocks in one man’ s field, stumps in another’ s. Last week there came into my study a pastor of many years’ standing--a faithful, able, useful servant of God. He told me of sickness and prostration, of burdens lifted in struggling churches, of divisions and dissensions among his people, of final success; and he brought down his hand with emphasis as he said, “ I have learned this one thing through it all, that God’ s work is bound to go on any way; and that the only thing for us to do is to stand in our place and do our work whatever comes.” My brethren, you all know something about this in your own lives. You have all felt the jar when the plough struck a stone. Not one of you has been able to make straight furrows always. But there is no such thing as failure of faithful work in God’ s kingdom. And the simple reason of that is because it is in God’ s kingdom, and not man’ s. 3. The text presents us with a question of the present, a present responsibility. It is not a question whether you will be fit for heaven by and by, but whether, by absolute and entire committal to Christ, you are fit for the service of the kingdom here and now. (M. R. Vincent, D. D.) Christ required implicit consecration, with no mental reservation, no hankering after the old manner of life. (J. P. Thompson.) Prompt decision Father Taylor, the sailor preacher, was brought up in a place near the city of Richmond (United States) by a lady to whom he had been given in charge. One day, when he was about seven years old, he was picking up chips for his foster-mother, when a sea captain passed by and asked him if he did not wish to be a sailor. He jumped at the offer, never finished picking up his chips nor returned into the house to bid his friends good-bye, but gave himself to the stranger without fear or thought. As a sailor he underwent many hardships, being at one time a prisoner of war in England; and he finally became, and was for over forty years, pastor of the Seamen’ s Bethel, Boston, and an eminent and useful preacher. (Biblical Treasury.) Duty permits no deliberation Nero once tried to disgrace some of the great Roman nobles to as low a level as his own by making them appear as actors in the arena or on the stage. To the Roman noble such an appearance was regarded as the extremest shame and disgrace. Yet to disobey the order was death. The noble Florus was bidden thus to appear in the arena; and doubtful whether to obey or not, consulted the virtuous and religious Agrippinus. “ Go, by all means,” replied Agrippinus. “ Well, but,” replied Florus, “ you yourself faced death rather than obey.” “ Yes,” answered Agrippinus; “ because I did not deliberate about it.” The categorical, imperative “ you must,” the negative prohibition of duty, must be implicitly, unquestioningly, and deliberately obeyed. To deliberate about it is to be a secret traitor, and the line which separates the secret traitor from the open rebel is thin as the spider’ s web. (Archdeacon Farrar.) Making a way to return About the time of the reformation a certain bishop who had embraced the new doctrines, and to whom it was therefore of no use, presented a relic (a dead man’ s toe) to the Church at St. Nicholas, Switzerland. He made the present conditionally with the power of resuming it if he should return to his old ways. (Sir John Forbes.) Looking back The son of Carey, the Indian missionary, went to Burmah-as a missionary, but there he became an ambassador for the Burmese king. He then lived in great worldly pomp and state, but his father mourned that he had so demeaned himself as to stoop from being God’ s ambassador to be the ambassador of an Eastern king. All worldly things are only like the shadows of a dream; there is nothing substantial about them. But the honour and blessings which come from God are satisfying and abiding. (H. R. Burton.) . Luke 10:1 The Lord appointed other seventy Our Lord’ s instructions to the severity I. CHRIST SENT OUT THE SEVENTY BY PAIRS. II. OUR BLESSED LORD FAIRLY AND WARNED THE SEVENTY OF THE AND DANGER OF THE CHARGE WHICH THEY WERE . III. OUR LORD HIS AGAINST AN OVER CURIOUS AND MINUTE REGARD TO TO THEIR ON THEIR MISSION, AND WHILE IN THE OF IT. IV. OUR LORD TO THE , TO WHAT WAS TO THEM. V. OUR LORD’ S TO THE SEVENTY THEIR WORK AND THE MANNER IN WHICH THEY WERE TO PERFORM IT. VI. CHRIST HIS WITH THE THAT HE SHOULD THE WHICH THEY MET WITH, AS GIVEN TO HIMSELF. (H. Hunter, D. D.) Two and twoTwo and two before His face Yet questions of high interest immediately arise. Why should there be any forerunners? What were they sent to do? In order to the full, personal influence and reign of Christ anywhere, there is a law of necessary preparation. Very impressive it is to see that God, when He has any great gift to communicate, proceeds by pre-arrangement. He never bursts into His family with thunders of revelation too sudden or loud for them to bear. Take the one signal event which stands in the centre of all history,--the personal coming of the Son of God on the earth. The prophetic spirit of His nation had been looking out for Him, as nightly watchers on Mount Moriah looked out for the dawn toward Hebron, two thousand years. In fact, to eyes that see the divinity in the Saviour’ s face at all, it is not difficult to discern, all along those earlier ages, heralds like “ the other seventy also,” going before that Face into the places whither He Himself was afterward to come. Now on that great scale of time and space we have a picture, in colossal proportions, of what goes on in every one of our own breasts. Conscious of it or not, agencies are at work in us to make ready, if we only will for the entrance of the Lord of the heart into His home and dwelling-place there. Having created us for Christian service, as the true end and real glory of our being, our Father takes pains to fit and to fashion us for that destiny, with all its honour and all its joy. By secret influences, untraceable as the wind that bloweth where it listeth, silently pressing on the springs of feeling and principle within us; by strange sorrows and misgivings there. That we may become wise and strong and pure in our grief, this process of personal preparation is in continual operation. The heralds are out, sent by Him who is coming after them. The “ other seventy” are proceeding on their errand. We ourselves are the cities and places whither He would come. Again, it appears from the Lord’ s sending of the seventy that all personal efforts and public movements for extending truth and increasing righteousness in the world are really parts of His work, and are dependent on His spiritual power. Christendom everywhere is full of beneficent activities. The benefactions of this late age, half-blind though they may be, or forgetful of their Author, were born at Bethlehem, and grew in stature at Nazareth, and conquered their enemies--selfishness and pride and wrath--at Calvary, and went out among thenations with the apostles, if we had seen one of the seventy walking in some by-way of Jericho or Bethany, we might have seen no badge of Christ upon him, and wondered at his eager gait or absorbed expression. But he was going where the Master sent him, and the Master’ s mantle was on him, and the Master’ s secret in his soul. Thither, after him, the Master Himself would come, to reaffirm and fulfil his words, to deepen, sanction, complete his work. (Bishop F. D. Huntington.) Luke 10:2 The harvest truly is great The gospel harvest I. THE STATE OF THINGS WHICH OUR LORD . 1. A plenteous harvest. (1) A great number of souls. (2) Great diversity in souls. 2. This vast and varied crop is ready for the sickle. This is proved-- (1) By the moral and spiritual necessities of the world. A genuine philanthropist wants no other demand upon his efforts than the misery of His fellow men; and a genuine Christian requires no other proof that men are ready for the gospel than the fact that they need it. Here lay one of the great mistakes of the Church of a former age. She did not think of sending the gospel, because men did not clamour for it. (2) But if our duty be plain in the presence of silent and uncomplaining woe, how much more when misery is suppliant and clamorous at our feet I The world is now conscious of its maladies; and knows full well what can heal them. 3. The labourers are few. They toil on, willing rather to die than to abandon their work. One and another drops and dies, exclaiming, as did the immortal Waterhouse, “ more missionaries! more missionaries!” and the very heathen repeat and prolong the cry! II. THE FOUNDED ON THE ABOVE . 1. To whom are our prayers to be addressed? To “ the Lord of the harvest.” (1) He is the owner and proprietor of the harvest. They are bought with a price. The enemy had usurped possession of the great Creator’ s claim. (2) And must He not, therefore, take a deep, an unspeakable interest in them? Think you that He can be indifferent whether this harvest is reaped or not? (3) And it is God’ s absolute and inalienable right to choose and employ His labourers. 2. We are called, then, to pray that God would graciously exert His prerogative in the appointment of His own labourers to reap His own fields. What does this prayer imply? (1) He exerts this prerogative, in part, by the inward operation of His Holy Spirit. (2) We are to pray, not only that God would call and qualify, but also send out labourers into His harvest. And here we must bare regard to His mode of administration. He does for man what man cannot do for himself, but requires him to do all that is in his power. We cannot give the piety; and the intellectual and spiritual gifts; but it is our duty and privilege to furnish the means for sending the men whom God has raised up. 3. Does any one ask, Why, if God is the Lord of the harvest, having such exclusive prerogatives, and so deeply interested in the matter, He should be entreated to do that which it so nearly concerns His honour not to leave undone? We answer, Such sceptical inquiries become not the position of finite and mortal creatures. The objection would apply to all prayer for any blessing; and call in question the whole administration of heaven. (J. H. James.) The abundance of the harvest, and the scarcity of the labourers I. Let us first look at THE HARVEST. It is too vast to be taken within the verge of one short sermon. China, India, Burmah, and Japan, Africa, the West Indies, South America, Russian Tartary, Persia, and the islands of the South Sea--all this is too vast for our consideration at the present opportunity. II. THE . “ The labourers are few.” Let us consider-- III. THE SAVIOUR’ S PLAN FOR THE NUMBER OF THE . 1. We observe in the first place, that where persons offer this prayer in sincerity, they make a solemn acknowledgment that God must do all the work. 2. In the second place, when a minister and a congregation offer up this prayer and solemnly enter into its spirit, they mean that, when God raises up such men, they will furnish the means to convey them to the heathen, and support them when they get there. 3. In the third place, when young men utter this prayer, they mean that, if it is the will of God, they are ready to become labourers. 4. Observe, in the last place, that when Christian parents offer up this prayer, they express their willingness that their children should go. (R. Knill.) Harvest ripeness It is just to go and gather in Christ’ s sheep that are scattered abroad all over the world. In the notion of a harvest we cannot rid ourselves of the idea of ripeness--and I shall take a twofold view of this. There are some of the Lord’ s family, and it falls to my lot not unfrequently to meet with such in whom we cannot fail to discern the presence of life; their knowledge of themselves as sinners is manifest, their view of Christ as a Saviour is encouraging, and even their reliance upon Him--but there is a want of ripeness, there is a rawness, a greenness, a defectiveness, a youthfulness. The harvest is craning on, beloved; let us look to our ripeness, the ripeness of all our faculties, as exercised in the things of God, the ripeness of all the graces called into full exercise, so that faith shall no longer be like a grain of mustard seed, but like the ripe ear, waving and bending with its weight--so that love shall no longer be faint and glimmering, as if it were but a spark, but fanned to a flame, rising high, and soaring to its native source; so that humility shall no longer be a piece of mockery, something openly expressed but never felt, but that which debases the soul in its own esteem, and keeps it in the dust at the feet of Jesus; so that hope shall not be merely the hope of the hypocrite, but a sure and steadfast thing as the ripeness we speak of--“ Entering into that within the veil.” Moreover, there is a ripeness in grace, and there is a ripeness in sin. The sickle is coming, beloved, and therefore examine which state of ripeness you are in. When God was about to destroy the seven nations of Canaan, and told Moses of His deferring it for a time, while the children of Israel travelled forty years in the wilderness, He gave this as the reason, that the iniquity of the Amorites was not quite full--their sin was not yet completely ripe. Moreover, I saw in some fields some fine heavy corn, which was sadly “ laid,” as they call it, bent down to the ground, and not exposed to the sun, so that it will be a long time before it gets ripe. What a picture of a great number of real Christians! They are so earthbound, so fond of this world, so laid low in their grovelling desires after it, that they cannot be expected to get ripe very fast. That corn gets ripe the fastest that lifts its head the highest, and gets away from the ground and the weeds. Beloved, if you would be ripe Christians, I tell you that you must get it by being lifted above the world and its vanities, enjoying intimacy with God, fellowship with the Most High, aspiring to heaven, and enjoying communications from above. (J. Irons.) The labourers and the field Note here-- 1. That God’ s Church is a harvest field. 2. That the ministers of God are labourers in His harvest, under God, the Lord of the harvest. 3. That to God alone doth it belong to send forth labourers into His harvest, and none must thrust themselves in till God sends them forth. 4. That the number of faithful labourers is comparatively small and few. 5. That it is the Church’ s duty to pray, and that earnestly and incessantly, to God the Lord of the harvest, to increase the number of faithful labourers, and to send forth more labourers into His harvest. (W. Burkitt.) The husbandry of God 1. Great is the harvest. 2. Few are the labourers. 3. God alone can restore the just relation between harvest and labourers. (Van Oosterzee.) God the Lord of the harvest 1. God determines the time of the harvest. 2. God appoints the labourers for the harvest. 3. God guards the success of the harvest. 4. God deserves the thank-offering of the harvest. (Van Oosterzee.) The need of immediate workers Captain Allen Gardiner, on the inhospitable coast of South America, where he slowly perished with hunger, in the hope of attracting the notice of some passing vessel, wrote on the cliff in large letters “ DELAY NOT, WE ARE .” Years after, the words were seen; but it was too late, the bleached bones of the brave hero of the cross strewed the beach. Help had been delayed, and he had perished. The like cry of a dying world for the Bread of Life, ringing in the ears of the people of God who have enough and to spare, will surely not be much longer unheeded. A few have responded already, but what are these among so many? Oh that we would each one arise and do our utmost daily, expecting to see mighty results now! (J. C. Fullerton.) A prayer for more labourers Leonard Keyser, a friend and disciple of Luther, having been condemned by the bishop, had his head shaved, and being dressed in a smock-frock, was placed on horseback. As the executioners were cursing and swearing because they could not disentangle the ropes with which his limbs were to be tied, he said to them mildly, “ Dear friends, your bonds are not necessary; my Lord Christ has already bound me.” When he drew near the stake, Keyser looked at the crowd and exclaimed, “ Behold the harvest! O Master, send forth Thy labourers!” And then ascending the scaffold, he cried, “ O Jesus, save me!” These were his last words. “ What am I, a wordy preacher,” said Luther, when he received the news of his death, “ in comparison with this great doer of the Word?” (J. H. M. D’ Aubigne.) Christ’ s harvest and Christ’ s reapers I. CHRIST MEANT HIS SEVENTY TO GO FORTH AND GATHER THAT WHICH HAD ALREADY GROWN AND RIPENED. 1. He saw a harvest of piety, for instance, waiting for Himself, and the proofs of His Messiahship. 2. I think He saw also another sort of harvest, or another element in that harvest--the moral element. There were many highly moral people living in the world who had become disgusted with religion and its priests. II. THE OF THE HARVEST-MEN HE . It is at once painful and disheartening to perceive that He did not select, either as individuals or as a class, the professed teachers of religion, He employed no class of men as such. He dealt only with persons and their individual consciences, and so acting, it is easy to discover the sort of people He could call and use as His harvest-men. III. AS THESE WERE PEOPLE MORALLY AND LIKE HIMSELF (TO SOME REAL EXTENT AT LEAST), HE WAS GREATLY IN THE NUMBER OF , AS HE WAS IN THE METHOD OF TO BE . IV. I REMARK UPON THE MODE IN WHICH THE HARVEST WAS TO BE . HOW were the pious and the moral to be brought in? I might properly answer, on a principle of natural selection. They were to preach the gospel of Christ, and illustrate, enforce, and commend that gospel by the beauty and perfectness of their own holy lives. They would thus become witnesses for God, as He was a witness for God. V. TAKE NOW THE LESSON. Piety in you and me, who profess to be Christ’ s real friends, is to attract whatever piety we come in contact with. There is plenty of unattached piety waiting to be attracted by you and me. The Lord sent out twelve, then seventy. That great world-clasping system we call Christianity had once so few supporters and missionaries. Do you ask how many it wants now? I will tell you. It wants every man, woman, and child, into whose soul the grace of God has come, that every other life found in the vast field of human activity may be brought with a throb of love and a song of joy, s gathered ear all ripe and golden to the great Lord of the harvest of souls. (J. McDougall.) Luke 10:3 As lambs among wolves Counsels of prudence I. THE NATURE OF . In general, it is a discerning and employing the most proper means of obtaining those ends, which we propose to ourselves. It is an important branch of prudence to avoid faults. One false step sometimes ruins, or, however, greatly embarrasses and retards a good design. Prudence likewise supposeth the main-raining of innocence and integrity. We may not neglect our duty to avoid danger. II. THE , GROUNDS, AND REASONS OF . These are chiefly the wickedness and the weakness of men. Good men, therefore, are obliged to be upon their guard, and make use of some methods of defence and security. Nay, if there were no bad men, yet there would be need of prudent behaviour, because some who have not much reflection or experience are apt to put wrong constructions upon harmless actions. A great part of prudence lies in denying ourselves, so as to keep some way within the limits of virtue. III. SOME RULES AND concerning a prudent conduct, with regard to our words and actions. 1. The first rule of prudence I lay down is this, that we should endeavour to know ourselves. He that knows not himself may undertake designs he is not fit for, and can never accomplish, in which he must, therefore, necessarily meet with disappointment. 2. Endeavour to know other men. It is a point of charity to hope the best of every man, and of prudence to fear the worst. 3. Watch, and embrace opportunities. 4. Advise with those who are able to give you good counsel. 5. Restrain and govern your affections. (T. Lardner.) A lamb among wolves One of the most conspicuous instances of moral courage which history affords is the following: The veteran Stilicho had conquered Alaric and his Goths. The Romans invite the hero and his ward--a stupid, cowardly boy, the Emperor Honorius--to gladiatorial games in honour of the victory. The empire has been Christian for a hundred years, yet these infamous and brutalizing shows still continue. They are defended with all sorts of devil’ s sophistry. The games begin; the tall, strong men enter the arena; the tragic cry echoes through the amphitheatre, “ Ave Caesar, moritari te salutamus!” the swords are drawn, and in an instant’ s signal will be bathed in blood. At that very moment down leaps into the arena a rude, ignorant monk. “ The gladiators shall not fight,” he exclaims. “ Are you going to thank God by shedding innocent blood?” A yell of execration rises from these 80,000 spectators. “ Who is this wretch that dares to set himself up as knowing better than we do? Pelt him! Cut him down!” Stones are hurled at him; the gladiators run him through with their swords; he falls dead, and his body is kicked aside, and the games go on, and the people--Christians and all--shout applause. Aye, they go on, and the people shout, for the last time. Their eyes are opened; their sophistry is at an end; the blood of a martyr is on their souls. Shame stops for ever the massacre of gladiators; and because one poor, ignorant hermit has moral courage, “ one more habitual crime was wiped away from the annals of the world.” (Arch deacon Farrar.) Luke 10:4 Salute no man by the way No time to be lost “ Salute no man by the way. ” It is remarkable that such an injunction should be given by our Divine Master, so distinguished as He was for amiable feelings and condescension, while at the same time He immediately added an exhortation to pay the usual courtesy, by desiring them, when they entered a house, to “ salute the family.” The reason of this apparent inconsistency is easily discovered. In eastern countries, we are told, that salutations between travellers meeting on a journey are attended by so many questions, by so many expressions of welcome often repeated, and so many tedious forms, as seriously to retard their journey. Now, if such interruptions often occurred, as might be the case on a much-frequented road, the object of their journey might be in a great measure frustrated. When such despatch was required as our Saviour deemed necessary on this occasion, those tedious forms of customary civilities were to be omitted. It is true, that in the charge which our Saviour gave to the twelve, He uttered no prohibition to salute the travellers which they might meet with on the way. But it was properly given to the seventy disciples, because haste, which was not required at the mission of the twelve, was then become necessary. (J. Thomson, D. D.) Salutation They were to waste no time on such ceremonies which were clearly excessive. We, however, are in no great danger of carrying the ceremony of salutation to excess. It befits us, therefore, to take heed how we minify even the few salutations which we have. “ Good-bye” is all we have left of “ God be with you” ; for men are ashamed any longer to use that. Instead of the grand salutation, “ God be with you,” you shall hear men who are parting say, “ Well, old fellow, take care of yourself!” Men are substituting a course way of greeting and saluting each other, instead of giving those reverent, dignified, pleasure-giving, respect-inspiring salutations which belong to antiquity, and which should belong to every refined society--and to none so much as that which calls itself Christian. (H. W.Beecher.) Luke 10:5-7 Peace be to this house The work and success of the ministry I. THE WORK AND OFFICE OF . They are appointed by the Prince of Peace to be the messengers of peace. 1. The ministers whom Christ here sends forth are supposed to enter into private houses; and that under the character of Christ’ s ambassadors, and in the execution of their office. (1) Sometimes they were forced into such corners. Though the message they brought had everything in it to recommend them to an universal acceptance, yet it is probable in many places they were not permitted to preach in the synagogues; the rulers there who had a jealous eye upon them would take care to keep them thence; and they then retired into private houses, and preached to as many as would come to hear them there. Those who cannot do what they would for God and the souls of men, must do what they can, and God will accept of them. (2) They always embraced such opportunities of spreading the gospel, and doing good to the souls of men, as visiting people at their houses gave them. Our Lord Jesus preached wherever He visited. 2. They are instructed to say, “ Peace be to this house;” that is, to the inhabitants of it; to all under this roof; to the master of the family, for be he ever so great he needs this blessing; and to all the members of the family, for be they ever so mean they are not excluded from this blessing. Ignatius’ s bishop was to take cognizance even of the servants of the families that belonged to his charge. (1) We are to preach peace to all. (a) Reconciliation, and no war. (b) Riches and no want. (2) We are to pray for peace to all. (a) We must earnestly desire the welfare and salvation of precious souls; and not be cold and indifferent about it. (b) These desires of the salvation of souls must be offered up to God in prayer. (c) It is good to let those we preach to know that we pray for them. We must not only say to God, “ Peace be to this house,” but we must say it in the hearing of those that dwell in it. II. THE SUCCESS OF . As to those to whom we minister--the success is varied; not the same with all. On some, the peace comes which we preach and pray for; on others, it does not. 1. The text gives us encouragement to hope that some shall be the better for our praying and preaching; we shall meet with those who are sons of peace, who are disposed to submit to the commands, and qualified to partake of the privileges, of the gospel peace. Who are the sons of peace, on whose heads, and hearts, and houses, the blessings of peace shall come? I answer-- (1) Those who are so by the designation of the Divine counsel; the chosen of God, whom He hath set apart for Himself to be vessels of mercy. (2) Those who are so by the operations of the Divine grace. 2. Wherein shall those who are thus the sons of peace be the better for our ministry We are here told that our peace shall rest upon them, that is-- (1) Our “ prayers” for them shall be heard. (2) Our “ preaching” to them shall answer the end, and be effectual. (3) The fruit of both shall remain. 3. The text also shows us that we ought not to be overmuch discouraged in our work, though there be many who are never the better for our praying and preaching. Let us now make some application of all briefly. 1. Let this awaken us who are ministers to be faithful, and serious, and diligent in delivering our message; as those who are in some measure sensible of the vast importance of the work we are employed in, and the dispensation that is committed to us. 2. Let us, when we have done what we can, look up to God for the success. 3. Let us be very careful that we do not, by any irregularity in our conversation, hinder the success of our praying and preaching, and defeat the ends of them. 4. What success of our labours we Lave the comfort of, let God have all the glory of. (Matthew Henry.) Christian courtesy! I. THE BREADTH OF . The kindly greeting, “ Peace be to this house,” was to be addressed to every family into which the seventy might enter. II. THE DEPTH OF , the reality and meaning of their greeting, are brought before us in Luke 10:6. Christ is telling them that their words are not to be a mere formal salutation; He suggests that an influence of peace shall actually go out from them, to “ rest upon” the house that receives them; returning to them if rejected. The soul of Christian courtesy is faith; our greetings are prayers. Trust in God is the animating principle of social kindness; graciousness of disposition rests Upon the grace of God. III. THESE ARE THE TWO OF GENUINE : 1. The sense of our Christian mission. 2. The certainty that we shall find many prepared for the Lord. 1. Christ sent His disciples to “ heal the sick,” to “ cast out devils,” and to say to all, “ the kingdom of God is come nigh unto you.” Could they doubt whether they would be received? Would not the sick man hail them from his couch? and the demoniac come trusting them to heal him? Their confidence that they were come on a blessed errand, that it was given to them to comfort the sorrowful, to sustain the sinking, to still the restless, and to proclaim the blessed name of Christ, would fill them with a confidence, a frankness, and a tenderness, that would secure them a welcome. With what words could they enter any house but those which Christ bade them first to speak? they were full of peace, they were charged and laden with peace; peace was the light of their eye, it was the spring of their footstep, it must breathe in their every tone. It would come forth from them because it was so fully in them; the messengers of peace could say no other words, no words before these, in whatsoever house they entered, “ Peace be to this house.” It is just this sense of a mission which Christ has entrusted to us, a holy, blessed message He has given us to utter, which is needed to make us frank and courteous to all men. Selfishness is the root of all moroseness and ungeniality. 2. The assurance that we shall find a people prepared for the Lord. Some households would reject the disciples, but not all; the son of peace would be beforehand with them in many a house, their prayer should be answered, and their peace should rest upon it. IV. I have already anticipated somewhat I had designed to say under our fourth head--THE OF . “ If the son of peace be there, your peace shall rest upon it” ; rest upon the household, and on you too while you are in it. The unforeseen welcome given you by many who return your cordial greeting; the humility, the heartiness, the joy with which they listen to your words; God’ s answer to the prayer of your greeting; in all this, you and they will share together. But look for a moment at the last clause of the verse, “ If not, your peace shall turn to you again.” Christ tells His disciples that some will reject them; not all our hope will be fulfilled. “ If,” you ask, “ if my frank intercourse with the ungodly does not bless them, will it not injure me? But I fear lest I shall be depraved by too great frankness with worldly men, some of whom will continue worldly. Shall I not be charged with inconsistency?” To all these questions we have Christ’ s answer, “ your peace shall turn to you again.” No man is ever degraded by his love for the ungodly. Christ’ s name is not disonoured by the tender, gracious association of His people with the lost souls to whom He sends them. You know of whom it was said, “ this Man receiveth sinners, and eateth with them.” You may be misjudged by your fellow-Christians, but you will not be misjudged by your Lord. (A. Mackennal, D. D.) Christ’ s first message is peace Here we may observe the method of our Saviour. He, coming to fight against the pomp, the covetousness, the luxury of the world, first offers terms of peace, and instructs His disciples as God did Moses: “ When thou comest nigh unto a city to fight against it, then proclaim peace unto it” (Deuteronomy 20:10). As we read of Tamerlane, He first hangs out His white flag of peace, not His black nor His bloody colours. He fights not against us to destroy us, till we have wearied His mercy, and stood out too long. First He tenders peace: but it is the wickedness of the wicked, the obstinacy of the enemy, that draws His sword. For God doth not, as Nimrod, destroy men for pleasure: He doth not set them up as a mark, and then shoot deadly arrows at them. He seems rather to carry peace and war in sinu, “ in His bosom,” as Fabius did in the skirt of his gown; and leaves it to our choice, which we will have. First peace shows itself, in His love, in His precepts; nay, in His threatenings and fearful menaces. He opened the mouth of His servant Noah, a “ preacher of righteousness,” before He “ opened the windows of heaven, and broke up the fountains of the great deep” (Genesis 7:11). He opened the mouth of His servant Moses, before the earth opened her mouth to swallow up Dathan and Abiram and their complices (Numbers 16:1-50.). He doth not undermine us with double voices and double counsels and a holy dissimulation, as some call it, crying, “ Peace,” when He girds Himself with strength, and prepares Himself to battle; saying, “ Peace,” to that house which He meaneth to level with the ground. But He sends His ambassadors, and “ Peace” is the first clause in their commission: “ first” they must salute us, before He will strike us; “ first” wish “ peace,” before He will furbish His sword. (A. Farindon, D. D.) Proclaim peace A writer in a Scottish magazine told of an earnest minister, who, thinking all his labours among his people fruitless, was so disheartened that he made up his mind to leave them. When meditating about a farewell sermon, he was struck with the words of this verse, and felt as if Christ were saying to him, “ Ungrateful servant, are you not satisfied with this promise of Mine? Hold on, then, proclaiming peace.” This accordingly he did, with renewed vigour. Fireside ministry These missioners were pioneers going in advance to waken thought, create expectation, inspire confidence, and announce the nearness of the revealing Christ. They took their orders from His lips and their methods from His life. The Master’ s charge to them is still vital; it has sterling and perennial value for us men in the midst of our accumulated social evils, our hoary and deep-seated social vices. Stripped of Oriental accident and incident, and expressed in the English of the hour, it supplies an invaluable recipe for the healing of our sick and diseased human life, and for the guidance of our Churches in their home missionary activities. Go to the people, get close to them, enter their houses and their hearts, make your mission domestic, be social and sociable, friendly and human, go not from house to house in a hurry, as though figures were redeemed souls, but stay long enough to win love; invite trust, and do nothing to thwart expectation; make men feel your tenderness is instinctive, and your desires real; prove that you work and speak on the common ground of manhood, and then you will have a right to say, “ The kingdom of God is come nigh unto you,” and the heart will feel the presence of that unseen rule, and the conscience confess its august authority. 1. According to the mind of our Teacher all really helpful human work must be rooted and grounded in loving friendship, and energized by an unhesitating trust in the men it seeks to cleanse and ennoble. Renan has said that the fireside preaching of the seventy missioners was one of the capital causes of the success of early Christianity. And surely, not even in our Lord’ s day, was this policy of making friends first, converts afterwards, more needed than in our own time. 2. The next stags in the work of the seventy, beyond the ministry of friendship, is that of compassionate healing. Christianity, like its Author, is essentially healing. 3. But the crowning service of man to man is the interpretation of life in the light of Divine ministration. The priests of friendship and healing have free course and are glorified only when they acknowledge God’ s sovereignty over the heart and soul. The supreme good is not a perfectly healthy body. The missioners did not reach the climax of their work until they said, “ The kingdom of God is come nigh unto you.” This is fireside preaching at its best. (1) This saying is a pertinent and necessary sermon on a physical text. “ Do not stop at the healing of the body. Trace out the Divine handwriting on the renovated body, and say, ‘ See here, the kingdom of God is come nigh unto you.’” That is a blessed if difficult task. But (2) this unique declaration has this additional significance, that Christ Himself was on His way to these healed folks, and that their physical salvation was only an earnest bestowed by His advanced couriers of what He was also to give if only they would welcome Him. (J. Clifford, D. D.) Only souls can save souls Carry no purse, no wallet, no shoes. Go to your work with such perceptible signs of trust in men as shall at once disarm suspicion and inspire confidence. (J. Clifford, D. D.) Deferred remuneration Christmas Evans’ parishioners seem to have been marked by an insatiable appetite for sermons, and by a singular disregard for the temporal comfort of the preacher. Once, when he had preached away from home, and had received less than his expenses, an old woman remarked to the great pulpit orator, “ Well, Christmas, you have given us a wonderful sermon, and I hope you will be paid at the resurrection.” “ Yes, yes, no doubt of that,” answered the preacher humorously, “ but what am I to do till I get there? And there’ s the old white mare that carries me, what will she do? There will be no resurrection for her.” Ministers badly paid I wonder whether some of the people who come to bear Christ’ s servants ever ask themselves the question, “ How do these ministers live and pay their way?” “ I thought they preached for souls,” said one of these spiritual mendicants to Mr. Spurgeon, who required an able and intelligent preacher for the munificent sum of £60 a year. “ So they do,” replied the famous preacher; “ but they would need some thousands of souls of your size to keep them from starving.” (Henry Varley.) Luke 10:9 The kingdom of God is come nigh unto you Nearness to the kingdom This is a part of the discourse which Christ gave to His disciples when they were going forth to preach under His ministration. Their message was, “ The kingdom of God is come nigh unto you.” They were Jews in Jewry. They were preaching to their own countrymen--especially in Galilee; and this was a part of their message: the approach of the kingdom of God to all those that heard. Nothing more striking than the spiritual insight of our Lord. What is spiritual insight? As it existed in our Master, it was a perception of developed and perfect forms of morality and religion as constituent elements of human life in the broadest statement. It included-- 1. A far more exalted idea of right and wrong than has been developed by human society. 2. A perception of character and conduct far more exalted than any that ordinary life develops. 3. A perception of the whole sphere of man. To Him life was a unit, and the life beyond was a part of it. Beyond all darkness He saw life and man in their higher relations, and in their possibilities. This higher spiritual condition, this perfectness of human nature in its aggregate emotions, now and hereafter, He called “ The kingdom” ; “ The new kingdom” ; “ The kingdom of heaven” ; “ The kingdom of God” ; and it was this that He told His disciples to preach when they went abroad. Whenever outward circumstances brought men to a place where the influences that acted upon them tended to develop their higher nature, and carry them forward along the path of perfectibility, or where their state of mind tended to make them perceptive of truths which at other times had little power with them, or where they were by outward things made sensible to things insensible, lifting them to the relation of the heavenly life, then He spoke of them as being near the kingdom of God. They were in a condition out of which should easily and naturally come spiritual development. What were some of those times? What may we gather in regard to them from a general inspection of Christ’ s ministry, and of His teachings to the people, and from our own experiences? 1. Times of general religious interest in communities bring the kingdom of God very near to men. 2. Any revelation to a man’ s consciousness of his exceeding need of change, of development, of exaltation; any influence which shall strike through a man, giving him a discriminating power by which he can separate between right and wrong, between better and worse, between good and better--any such revelation or influence brings him near to the kingdom of heaven. 3. Anything that brings to the personal consciousness and experience of a man a sense of his degraded condition may be said to bring the kingdom of God near to him. 4. Anything that reveals to a man the reality of his whole estate, and shows him a higher and supernal life, and gives him a consciousness of the stern, terrific danger that threatens him, is bringing him to the border of God’ s kingdom. 5. All the perceptions of concrete goodness which men gain, and which strike into their mind, bring them near to the kingdom of heaven. 6. All experiences of the unsatisfying condition of earthly life, are, or may be, instruments of bringing men to the very border of the kingdom of God. 7. Any cause of thought in ourselves, or any cause of thought in others brought to bear upon us, which opens clearly the nature of manhood, or the possibilities of the future endless development of human life, brings men not far from the kingdom of God. (H. W. Beecher.) Luke 10:10-12 They receive you not Opportunity wasted I. THE OBJECT TO WHICH THIS RELATES--“ The kingdom of God.” 1. The gospel is designated “ the kingdom of God,” because it is constituted by God. There is claimed on its behalf, strictly and truly, a Divine origin. 2. The gospel is designated “ the kingdom of God,” because it is the ordained instrument of God to restore His authority over the minds of men. II. THE FACT WHICH THE AFFIRMS. “ The kingdom of God is come nigh unto you” -- 1. In the sacred and inspired writings. 2. In the proclamations and appeals of the ministry. 3. In the conversion of other men. 4. In the partial impressions of your own mind. III. THE WHICH THE . 1. Continued carelessness of the truth. 2. Continued rejection of the truth. (J. Parsons.) The grace of salvation coming near us I. WHEN MAY THE KINGDOM OF GOD (OR THE GOSPEL) BE SAID TO COME NIGH TO AN OR A PEOPLE? 1. When it comes within the hearing of the ear. 2. When it reaches the understanding. 3. When it gains access to the conscience. II. WHY THE GOSPEL IS BROUGHT NIGH TO SOME WHO ARE FINALLY LOST. (D. A. Clark.) Symbolical action To “ shake off the dust of their feet” as a witness against any city which had wholly rejected their message, signified that they had no more part or lot with the inhabitants--that they would retain nothing of theirs, no, not so much as what accidentally cleaved to their sandals. This was one of the many outward significant symbolical acts of which the special messengers of God made constant use. Thus Jeremiah put on a yoke, and hid a girdle by the side of the Euphrates; thus Agabus bound St. Paul’ s girdle round his own hands and feet; and Paul himself and Barnabas on one occasion used this very sign of shaking off the dust of their feet against the Jews of Antioch in Pisidia, who had rejected God’ s word spoken by their mouth. We have given up altogether the use of such signs, and I believe have lost much by our rejection of them. (M. F.Sadler.) No room for excuse The Rev. William Grimshaw, an early Methodist of eccentric manner, frequently would preach before the doors of such as neglected the parish worship. “ If you will not come to hear me at the church,” he would say on these occasions, “ you shall hear me at home; if you perish, you shall perish with the sound of the gospel in your ears.” (G. Stevens.) Luke 10:13-15 Woe unto thee The sentence of Chorazin We may conceive some inhabitant of these Jewish towns demanding with astonishment, How can these things be? Shall we who are the children of Abraham be rejected, and the heathen be preferred in our stead? The Almighty Judge, we may hence collect, in the apportioning of rewards and punishments, regards not the actual amount of profligacy or virtue, but takes into consideration also the means of improvement enjoyed, the kind of information and light vouchsafed. He could estimate, in Tyre and Sidon, debased as they were by ignorance and idolatry, a disposition not indifferent to those proofs of Divine revelation, which to Bethsaida and Chorazin were exhibited in vain. He judges according to that hidden temper, according to that inward disposition; not by the acts committed, but by the circumstances also under which they are done. Nay, He judges of a degree of faith never actually called into existence. I. The first conclusion to be drawn from the text thus explained relates to the future condition of those millions of mankind who depart this life in ignorance of a Saviour’ s name. The sacrifice of Christ made atonement for the whole race of mankind. And though so many millions are ignorant of His name, yet in some of them is discerned a spirit which would enable them to have repented at His preaching. By that spirit it may be hereafter determined whether or no the merits of Jesus Christ are imparted for the salvation of their souls. II. Secondly, we may learn, from this view of the text, the probability of our being greatly mistaken in our views of the future judgment. III. And here, thirdly, it may be observed, that mankind are too ready to draw hasty conclusions, from anything which they can interpret as a manifest interference of Divine Providence for the punishment of sin. IV. Such, too, let us in the last place remember, is the sentence recorded against every one of us ourselves, if we know these things and do them not; if we acknowledge these mighty works and yet repent not. Let us not then be deceived by the blessings of outward prosperity. They form part of our trial. (C. Girdlestone, M. A.) The danger of impenitence where the gospel is preached I. I observe from this discourse of our Saviour that miracles are of great force and efficacy to bring men to repentance. II. I observe, likewise, from our Saviour’ s discourse, that God is not always obliged to work miracles for the conversion of sinners. III. I observe farther, from our Saviour’ s discourse, that the external means of repentance which God affords to men, do suppose an inward grace of God accompanying them, sufficiently enabling me, to repent, if it be not their own fault; I say, a sufficient grace of God accompanying the outward means of repentance, till, by our wilful and obstinate neglect and resistance, and opposition of this grace, we provoke God to withdraw it from the means, or else to withdraw both the grace and the means from us: otherwise impenitence, after such external means afforded, would be no new and special fault. IV. I observe from this discourse of our Saviour’ s, that an irresistible degree of grace is not necessary to repentance, nor commonly afforded to those who do repent. V. I observe from the main scope of our Saviour’ s discourse, that the sins and impenitence of men receive their aggravation, and consequently shall have their punishment proportionable, to the opportunities and means of repentance which those persons have enjoyed and neglected. For what is here said of miracles, is by equality of reason likewise true of all other advantages and means of repentance and salvation. VI. Sixth and last observation, and which naturally follows from the former, is this: that the case of those who are impenitent under the gospel is of all others the most dangerous, and their damnation shall be heaviest and most severe. (Archbishop Tillotson.) Chorazin It stands in the midst of such desolation as must be seen to be believed. Millions of boulders cover the ground everywhere as far as the eye can reach. The terrible volcanic energy in this district ceased long before the historic period--how long no one can tell--and hence the aspect of the landscape must have been the same in Christ’ s day as at present. One very interesting feature of the ruins is that many of the dwelling-houses are still tolerably perfect, though in the days of St. Jerome (A.D. 331-420), Chorazin had long been deserted. They have stood tenantless for at least 1,500 years, and may well have been standing in the days when our Lord from time to time wandered among them, doing those mighty works which were yet, as at Bethsaida and Capernaum, ineffectual to bring the population to thoughtfulness and repentance. It helps one to realize better the daily life of our Saviour, to see in what poor barren spots He laboured; following the lost sheep of the house of Israel to such a forbidding wilderness. (C. Geikie, D. D.) The guilt of a privileged people Max Muller in the preface to his essays tells us of a Hindu who, having been converted in Benares, greatly wished to visit England. He had heard that it was a land of Bibles, a land of preaching, a land of churches and chapels, and he longed to see it. He expected to find the Christian land Christ-like. At length he arrived there. Max Muller adds that never shall he forget the deep dejection of the man when he discovered the Christianity of Europe to be so unlike that of the New Testament. In fact, nothing but keeping to the teachings of the Bible kept him from an utter relapse into idolatry. Luke 10:16 He that heareth you heareth Me A Christian minister the voice of Christ We send an ambassador to England; there is a difference of opinion between our Government and that of England. The ambassador is in a circle in society, but he does not take his opinions from the English people; he cares nothing what they think on national subjects; the crowd around him may be indignant against this country, but the ambassador listens not to the voice of the populace around him. He bends a listening ear for the telegraphic communication from Washington, and whatever words he hears those he utters, no matter how they may be received, no matter what the people or the crown may think. He stands an American in the midst of English society; he thinks the thoughts and has the feelings of the Government at Washington; he dares to say words however unpleasant to the English crown because the power that sustains him, though it is invisible, he knows to be real. Well, now, so is it with a man, principally the true minister of Christ. For instance, he goes into a community where all are infidel or all are heathen. What the sentiment of the populace is he asks not; what the people will think of him for uttering his words he cares not, but he bends his ear and listens for words from the throne, and when God says: “ Speak in the hearing of the people,” he speaks the words that are given to him and stands unmoved. He may behold the rack, the stake, the torch, and the fagots kindling about it, and the wild beasts, but his thoughts and conversation are in heaven; he stands unmoved, and he is looking at the unseen. (M. Simpson, D. D.) Luke 10:17-20 The seventy returned The seventy I. OF THE SEVENTY. 1. They were commissioned of Christ. 2. They were commissioned of Christ to prepare the way before Him. 3. They received special directions when commissioned. (1) Every one deeming himself commissioned of Christ should carefully study his Lord’ s “ marching orders.” (2) To ignore these instructions is to prove unfitness for the Lord’ s service. II. OF THE SEVENTY. Miraculous and spiritual power. III. OF THE SEVENTY WITH CHRIST. 1. His gospel they were to preach. 2. Himself they were to represent. (1) Such identification is true of every minister of Christ. (2) Such identification devolves on hearers of the gospel a responsibility simply unspeakable. IV. RETURN OF THE SEVENTY. 1. The spirit in which they returned. Rejoicing. 2. The ground of their rejoicing. (1) The power with which they were invested. (2) This ground not sufficient. (3) Why? (a) Because of its temporariness. (b) Because of its dangerous tendency. 3. The true ground for Christian joy. Names written in heaven. (1) More permanent. (2) More glorious. (3) More satisfactory. V. CHRIST’ S JOY IN THE SEVENTY. Because of the honour the Father conferred on them. Lessons: 1. Whom Christ commissions He sufficiently endows. 2. Not great power, position, or genius the true ground of the minister’ s joy, but a “ name written in heaven.” (D. C. Hughes, M. A.) Reporting to Christ This mission and re-assembly representative for all time. This is the order of all real Christian movements and missions--from Christ to Christ. I. THE ’ REPORT. We see them-- 1. Acting under a sense of responsibility. 2. Conscious of Christ’ s continued presence and power with them. The only universal guarantee of success. 3. Taking note only of secondary and superficial circumstances of success. A false guage. How careful we should be in our estimates of Christian work! II. THE MASTER’ S OF IT. He awaits them with-- 1. An interpretation: “ I was beholding.” Whilst they laboured He was watching and praying. He saw Satan’ s downthrow. He encouraged them, and all who should follow them, to take deeper and higher views of their work. 2. A promise. 3. A caution. The true source of satisfaction is acceptance with God, and conscious communion with Him. (St. John A. Frere, M. A.) Return of the seventy I. GOSPEL WORKERS IN LARGE NUMBERS MAY BE AND . Let the Church multiply “ seventies” who shall go forth two by two, and will not the Lord be sure to follow? II. SERVICE FOR CHRIST BRINGS GLAD . Often these victories are over self. Plans for life, before worldly and selfishly ambitious, are revolutionized. Paine’ s siren song is without power to charm, its spell broken. Wealth for its own sake ceases its fascinations. Sad memories, disappointments, defeats, that once brought shadows and heart-ache, though not forgotten, lose their power to hurt. Habits, appetites, once dominant with more than despot’ s thrall and merciless cruelty, are exorcised; and the utter hopelessness of despair gives away to the buoyancy of glad faith. In Christian work, faculties take a wider range and greater efficiency than would otherwise have been possible. Slow lips become eloquent, intellects sluggish and unfruitful are cleared and competent, hands idle and inapt are active and dexterous. III. A TRIUMPH OF HIS GOSPEL IS A VISION EVER PRESENT WITH OUR LORD. IV. IN THE LORD’ S ARMY ARE A SAFETY FROM THE POWER OF THE ENEMY. We know that the promised power over serpents and scorpions was literally bestowed. Paul, at Melita, unharmed shook the deadly viper from his hand; but the twentieth verse means more than immunity from natural evil. To-day, the words of Paul to Timothy are true: “ Yea, and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution.” How explain the apparent contradiction? 1. We may understand that physical protection and preservation will be given to all who are about the Lord’ s business. Paul might be shipwrecked, but his life was safe until he had preached the gospel “ at Rome also.” 2. The Christian has fewer points of attack open to the enemy. The pure in heart are repelled by that which allures the impure. The lowly mind does not see the high things which dazzle and intoxicate. 3. The enemy is permitted power over the children of God, only thereby to bring to himself more utter defeat. 4. To all who suffer for Christ, pain is not hurt nor loss. It brings a divine ministry, the forerunner of promotion and sure joy. Christ in the soul brings a kingdom invulnerable to the enemy. Poverty, stripes, and imprisonment, all earthly ill, are powerless to invade that domain. V. THE OF CHRIST SHOULD REJOICE MOST, NOT IN VIEW OF HERE, BUT BECAUSE OF COMING REWARDS IN HEAVEN. (S. L. B. Speare.) Mission of the seventy disciples I. THE MISSION OF THE SEVENTY IS HERE IMPLIED. 1. The purpose for which they were sent. 2. The way in which they were sent. (1) They were sent out in pairs. (2) They were to prosecute their work without loss of time. (3) The manner in which they were to conduct themselves in their visits, and that in reference to those who received and those who rejected them. II. THE SUCCESS THEY MET WITH IS HERE . 1. Exceedingly novel. 2. Preeminently strange. 3. Not by any skill or energy of their own. “ Through Thy name.” III. THIS FEELING WITH WHICH THEY THEIR SUCCESS IS HERE SHOWS. 1. They rejoiced in the fact that success had attended their efforts. 2. That beings so hateful and dangerous were overcome. 3. The happiness which they had been instrumental in diffusing. 4, In the success of the great cause with which they were identified. IV. A IS URGED WITH THE VIEW OF THEIR JOY, AND IT INTO ANOTHER AND HIGHER CHANNEL. We see here the comparative estimate in which miraculous gifts and saving grace should be held. What is the former without the latter? It is possible to possess the one without the other (Matthew 7:21-23). To have cast out devils, and to be ourselves at last cast out among devils, will be horrible indeed! 1. What is meant by having our names written in heaven. It signifies that we are citizens of the celestial city, that we are freemen of the New Jerusalem, and that all its honours and privileges are ours by a rightful title. 2. How the fact may be ascertained. If we are citizens of heaven our conversation is there; we are strangers and pilgrims on earth; like the patriarchs of old, we are looking for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God. 3. Those may well rejoice who have satisfactory grounds for concluding that this privilege is theirs. (Expository Outlines.) I beheld Satan as lightning-fall from heaven Looking back upon our earthly life These words refer to a definite moment in Jesus’ life. That same hour in which He sent forth the seventy, He beheld Satan fall from Heaven. Yet that was a prophetic vision of the Lord. When He saw Satan falling, Jesus was in spirit above time, beholding as one finished whole, from the beginning to the end, the history of God’ s conquest of evil. While the seventy were going forth to win their first unexpected success in His name, the Lord in prophetic anticipation was looking back upon His work and theirs as a work already accomplished; as even the devils, to their surprise, began to be subject unto them, His Spirit went forward to the final triumph of redemption, and, as one looking back from its completion, Jesus beheld Satan fallen. Throwing ourselves forward in the pure imaginations of faith into the world to come, let us seek to look back and down upon this world as though we already were beyond it. Surrendering ourselves to our faith, and with our powers of spiritual imagination lent to the aid of our faith, let us seek’ humbly to imitate our Master, and look upon our world as He looked upon this earth, when, as from a position in eternity, He saw Satan fall from heaven. I. In the first place, if we look upon our own lives as one looks back upon a way already trodden, and a work already accomplished, we shall gain a truer sense of the proportions of things. If we can succeed in transporting ourselves beyond the present, and regarding its occupations as already past; if we can draw back, as it were, in our own souls from the events of new and here, and regard our whole life, past, present, and future, as one undivided and completed whole; then we cannot fail to gain a more just estimate of the real proportions of events in our lives, and to correct, as in a large view from beyond, our present sense of the relative importance of things. And just this true sense of proportion in life is hard for us to keep in the nearness of present things; yet it is essential to large, happy living that we should gain and keep it. II. In the second place, in so far as we can put ourselves in the exercise of our own faiths beyond this life, we shall gain in many respects a different, and in all a more just estimate of our own real attainments. We shall see more clearly what we may expect to win for ourselves from life. Look down now upon what you have made, or are making, for yourselves in this world from this higher position after your own death. Measure what you are seeking to attain by its worth as judged by that estimate from beyond. From this point of view let us seek to determine what are the real attainments which a human being may reach in this world. That artizan, for example, has stood up faithfully for years to his work. He dies. The arm loses its strength, and the hand its cunning. What can he have gained by years of faithful work in making square-joints, honest insides, or lines true to an infinitesimal? What can the workman be conceived as keeping hereafter as the reward of all his labour under the sun? Not the eye, not the arm of flesh; yet the doctrine of the resurrection stands in the Scriptures as the pledge that our life here and hereafter is to be in all its powers one continuous life; and though this body shall return to dust, the discipline and capacity of the man, which is to be gained through the right exercise even of these bodily powers, is something which may count in the life of man for ever. Even in the honest and best exercise of his bodily senses a man may be training himself for the quick and skilled use of those powers of spiritual embodiment which shall succeed these mortal powers. That artist, for instance, who one evening as we gained the crest of a hill, with an exclamation of delight, counted instantly five different hues upon the horizon where my duller eye had only seen at first glance one resplendence of the setting sun, may have gained in that quick sense of colour a power which shall be carried on as a possession of the soul into the spiritual body, enabling that trained artist’ s spirit hereafter to see with instantaneous and enhanced delight the hues and harmonies of colour of the new heavens and the new earth. Hence I venture to say that the training and discipline of any power in the honest work of a lifetime may be so much real attainment for immortality--so much gain carried in the man himself through death into the world of larger opportunity. A man, therefore, should perform all his labour on this earth not as though what he does now is all of it, but as an heir of immortality. Jesus lived for two worlds at one and the same time. He was the Son of Man who was in heaven, as the Scripture says. All true, deep life must have something of the sense of heaven in it as a present fact. III. We are led, thus, to the third remark that only as we strive to throw ourselves forward into the life beyond, and to consider our whole existence here as it is in its relation to the man and his life then and there, can we form a safe estimate of the worths of things. Such and such opportunities are brought now within reach of a young man or woman. What are they worth? Success is a safe happiness to the Christian man who can look down upon it as from out the kingdom of heaven. Success is a danger and snare of soul to that man who is not himself already in his heart above it. This position, finally, as of one looking back upon this world, which we all need sometimes to take in the Christian imaginations of faith, is the position from which in a little while we must be judging all things both in life and death. Our whole life erelong shall be one finished picture in the retrospect. And may it lie then behind us in the softening, hallowing light of God’ s grace! By the grace of God, the penitent, converted man, even now judging himself from out the hereafter, as Christ did the world, may say: From my life I saw sin falling; from the heaven of my desires I beheld Satan fallen;--Behold God alone is reigning. (Newman Smyth, D. D.) Satan lamed by his fall from heaven There is a strangely widespread belief that Satan is lame, and that this was caused by his fall. In classical mythology we find limping Vulcan; and Hephaistes was lamed by his fall when hurled by Zeus from Olympus. Our idea of the devil always includes the clubbed or cloven foot. (Biblical Things not Generally Known.) Power to tread on serpents and scorpions Scorpions Of these Tristram says: “ They swarm in every part of Palestine, and are found in houses, in chinks of walls, among ruins, and under stones, whether in dry or moist situations. It is always necessary before pitching tents to turn up every stone, however small, lest a scorpion should be secreted; as, when disturbed or roused by the warmth of the camp, these troublesome pests will strike at and sting any person or object within reach. So numerous are they that in the warmer parts of the country every third stone is sure to conceal one I have known an instance of a man dying from the effects of a scorpion’ s sting, which he had received in the throat when leaning against a wall in which the creature was secreted.” The scorpion is described as having much the appearance of a small lobster; it has two claws, extending from near the head, eight feet, and a long, jointed tail, terminating in the sting, which inflicts a painful and sometimes fatal wound. The largest and most dangerous species is black, and about six inches long. Suicide of the scorpion Mr. Allen Thomson, in a letter published in Nature, says: “ While residing many years ago during the summer months at the baths of Lucca, in Italy, in a somewhat damp locality, my informant, together with the rest of the family, was much annoyed by the intrusion of small black scorpions into the house, and their being secreted among the bedclothes, in shoes, and in other articles of dress. It thus became necessary to be constantly on the watch for these troublesome creatures, and to take means for their removal and destruction. Having been informed by the natives of the place that the scorpion would destroy itself if exposed to a sudden light, my informant and her friends soon became adepts in catching the scorpions and disposing of them in the manner suggested. This consisted in confining the animal under an inverted drinking-glass or tumbler, below which a card was inserted when the capture was made, and then, waiting till dark, suddenly bringing the light of a candle near to the glass in which the animal was confined. No sooner was this done than the scorpion invariably showed signs of great excitement, running round and round the interior of the troubler with reckless velocity for a number of times. This state having lasted for a minute or more, the animal suddenly became quiet, and turning its tail or the hinder part of its body over its back, brought its recurred sting down upon the middle of the head, and, piercing it forcibly, in a few seconds became quite motionless, and, in fact, quite dead. This observation was repeated very frequently; in truth it was adopted as the best plan of getting rid of the animals, and the young people were in the habit of handling the scorpions with impunity immediately after they were so killed, and of preserving many of them as curiosities.” Power of spiritual life Brainerd, in his narrative of his work among the American Indians, confesses his great embarrassment. “ When I have instructed them respecting the miracles wrought by Christ, they have quickly referred to the wonders of that kind performed by their diviner;… a fatal obstruction to some of them in the way of receiving the gospel.” Yet, though Brainerd could do none of these mighty works, he was the means of the conversion of that very diviner by the influence of his own life and the spiritual truths which he taught. (J. M. Buckley.) Divine protection Mr. Gobat, the late Bishop of Jerusalem, when engaged as a missionary in Abyssinia, retired on one occasion, in a season of deep spiritual depression and gloom, into a cavern, and there poured out his heart in earnest supplication, beseeching that God would not desert him, but encourage him in his trials. He remained in the cavern for some time. When he rose from his knees, his eyes had become accustomed to the darkness, and he saw that he had been there with a hyena and her cubs, which yet had, marvellously, not been permitted to attack him. At the very time when he deemed himself forgotten, he received this striking manifestation that the God of providence was nigh to shield and protect him. (Memoirs of Bishop Gobat.) Immunity from snakebites The Psylli, according to Pliny, were so characteristically endowed with this immunity (from snake-bites), that they made it a test of the legitimacy of their children; for they were accustomed to expose their new-born babes to the most venomous serpents they could find, assured chat if their paternity was pure Psyllic they would be quite unharmed. Of this tribe was the ambassador Hexagon, who, boasting of his powers before the Roman consuls, submitted to the crucial test which they suggested, of being enclosed in a vessel swarming with poisonous reptiles, which, says the legendary story, hurt him not. (Philip H. Gosse, F. R. S.) Rejoice, because your names are written in heaven The supreme joy I. IS MAN’ S HIGHEST . This is the first thing I have to endeavour to illustrate and impress. 1. And in the forefront of all I set this consideration, namely, that the having the name written in heaven implies the Divine acceptance of us, as attested to our consciousness. Indeed, brethren, this is a blessed thing; blessed in itself, and blessed, moreover, in all its bearings and influences upon all our life. For, to know that we are at peace with God and are now the objects of the Divine complacency, O how it bathes everything with its own sunshine l Look out upon the world with eyes purged by the euphrasy of God’ s acceptance of you through Christ, and you will see it flushed with a thousand beauties never seen till now, and brightened with glancing lights and splendours where before it was all darkness and gloominess to you. 2. Emancipation from the thraldom of sin, and introduction into the glorious liberty of the children of God. “ Free.” “ Free indeed.” Yes, it is a glorious freedom that is conferred upon the heavenly citizen. “ He is the freedman whom the truth makes free; and all are slaves besides.” It is not liberty merely to have no gyves upon your wrist and no clanking fetters about your feet. That is a poor thing in comparison of that inward deliverance from the tyranny of evil which enables a man to stand up in the blessed consciousness that he is now master even of himself. Besides, the freedom of the children of God has another side. It is not only a freedom from sin, it is also a freedom unto God and unto holiness. 3. Then, further, in this citizenship there is also an immunity from care. Now, I say, when a man becomes a citizen of heaven he is set free from this care, as well as from sin. The charter of the New Jerusalem assures him that having secured the highest good all lesser good shall be added unto him. 4. Then, too, in illustrating the blessedness of the Christian citizen I ought to speak of the “ strong consolation” which is ministered to him in all times of his adversity and sorrow. An immunity from trial is not indeed among his privileges. That would not be for his real good. No; as steel acquires its fine temper in the fire, as the sweetest music issues from the darkened cage, as spices must be bruised if we would breathe their odours, so “ blessed are they that mourn” ; “ blessed are they that weep now.” A blessedness is theirs which the always prosperous and the ever merry cannot know. 5. Last of all, and best of all, beyond all this wealth of earthly advantage and benefit there is laid up for the Christian citizen the blessedness of the life to come. To have the name written in heaven is to be able “ to read our titles clear to mansions in the skies.” II. And now it will not need, I think, that I should argue the point of the text, viz., that IN HEAVEN SHOULD OUR . For all rational beings their chief good should and must form their chief joy. III. And so, in conclusion, and as the practical outcome of the subject for ourselves, let me say-- 1. First, to those of you who can rejoice in the assurance that your names are written in heaven. Take care that this icy maintain its supremacy within you. Be sure that you allow no other joy to displace it or to overtop it. Observe it--I do not say--even as our Lord does not say in the text, rightly understood--that you are not to rejoice at all in anything save and besides your Christian felicity. That were ingratitude to God. That were an irrational asceticism. Nay, but if you have health of body and soundness of mind, rejoice in this physical blessedness, as being of priceless advantage to you. 2. And, to those of you whose names are not yet written in heaven, let me say that this supreme joy of religion, so far from extinguishing such of your earthly pleasures as are innocent and legitimate would inconceivably brighten and increase them. (T. Akroyd.) Why may I rejoice? I. THE JOY WHICH NEEDS . The joy of triumph over evil spirits, the joy of having preached the gospel and wrought wonders--in a word, the joy of gifts, power, and success. This needs moderating-- 1. Because it is so apt to degenerate into pride. 2. Again, this joy which needs to be moderated should be restrained by the reflection that it is no evidence of grace in the heart that we possess gifts, or that we are successful. Talents are possessed even by wicked and slothful servants. Grace without talent will save, but talent without grace will only increase our condemnation. 3. Moreover, it is very unsafe to rejoice unduly in the work which we have done, because the work after all may not turn out to be all that it appears. It is too early to begin to rejoice until the fire has passed over our lifework. 4. This joy, again, however good our work” may be, is to be moderated, because it does not prove that we are any more gracious than others of far less gift and usefulness. 5. Again, this joy in success needs to be kept under tight rein because it is not an abiding joy. If thou, O man, rejoice to-day because of subject devils, what wilt thou do to-morrow, when the devils break loose again? What if He should send thee among Samaritans, who will not even hear thee, and thou shalt have to go from city to city and wipe off the dust of thy feet against them? 6. Once again, this joy, if we were to be filled with it to overflowing, would be found unable to bear the strain of trial, trouble, temptation, and especially of death. II. THE JOY WHICH NEEDS . “ Because your names are written in heaven.” 1. The joy which our Lord commends is one which springs from faith, while the other joy arises alone from sight. 2. This joy consists in knowing our election--“ knowing, dearly beloved, your election of God,” knowing that your names were written in heaven. To be God’ s choice is the choicest of delights. 3. Brethren, this is a joy which can be cultivated. How are we to cultivate it? If we desire to have much of this joy we must make the fact sure. We must be certain that our names are written in heaven, or else we cannot rejoice in it. III. Now, lastly, into this joy the Saviour enters, and we have to look, in the third place, to THE JOY OF THE LORD IN with it, and so we add to our text the first sentence of the 21st verse--“ In that hour Jesus rejoiced in spirit.” Why did He rejoice? 1. Because grace was given. 2. Jesus was also glad at the Father’ s choice. He said, “ I thank Thee, O Father.” He looks at these seventy babes out of whose mouth He has ordained strength, and He says, “ I thank thee, O Father, for having chosen these.” 3. Notice the spirit in which Jesus puts His thanksgiving--He is satisfied with the choice because it is God’ s choice. “ Even so, Father,” said He, “ for so it seemed good in Thy sight.” 4. Then our Saviour went on to rejoice because the grace of God given to us has revealed to us Christ, and revealed to us the Father, for He says, “ no man knoweth who the Son is, but the Father; and who the Father is, but the Son, and he to whom the Son will reveal Him.” 5. Jesus exulted because there was a fellowship about all this, for He speaks of His knowing the Father and the Father knowing Him, and then of our knowing the Father because the Son has revealed Him unto us--all of which implies a wondrous communication and communion with the Father and with the Son. Now, this, I take it, is the cream of joy, a joy in which Christ partakes as He has fellowship with the Father and with us, and of which we partake as we have fellowship with Him and with the Father. (C. H.Spurgeon.) The successful minister’ s safeguard I. THE OF THE SPIRIT WHICH THE SEVENTY NOW EXHIBIT. 1. It was in spiritual matter. 2. It was with a self-renouncing disposition that they expressed it. 3. Their report is brought direct to the feet of their Master. 4. There is evidently no mistake in their report, no delusion on their part. II. THE OF THE CAUTION OR WHICH CHRIST HERE UTTERS. 1. To rejoice genuinely, in even the very highest work done for the soul of another, must have its dangerous side. It does not guide a humbling look into oneself. 2. It may have a directly disastrous effect, feeding spiritual pride, contributing to self-confidence, and absolutely., calling off the attention of the soul from itself. 4. On the other hand, rejoicing in the conviction or in the certainty that one’ s own “ name is written in heaven,” leads one to review all that is most desirable to review. (Philip C. Barker, M. A.) The highest eulogy “ Your names are written in heaven.” 1. How it is to be understood. 2. How desirable it is. 3. How alone it is to be obtained. (Van Oosterzee.) The certainty of salvation 1. Its only ground. 2. Its all-surpassing worth. (Van Oosterzee.) The noblest source of joy Heaven is here compared to a city or corporation, in which a list or record is kept of all the citizens or freemen who are entitled to its privileges and immunities. “ How may I know whether my unworthy name be written in heaven? who can open and read the records of heaven, and show me whether my name is registered there?” I answer, This is a secret that may be discovered; for all that have their names written in heaven, may be distinguished by their characters, their temper, and practice, while upon earth. And their characters are such as these: 1. They are deeply sensible of the vanity of all earthly things, and that heaven alone is a sufficient portion and happiness. All that are registered as citizens of the heavenly Jerusalem, have a superlative esteem of that privilege, and count all things but loss in comparison of it (Matthew 12:24-26; Matthew 13:45-46). 2. All that have their names written in heaven have a heavenly nature; a nature very different from that of the men of this world, and like that of the citizens of heaven. And is this your temper? or is it earthly and sensual? 3. All that have their names written in heaven have a peculiar love for all their fellow-citizens, who are heirs of heaven. They love them as members of the same corporation with themselves (1 John 3:14). 4. If your names are written in heaven it is the chief business and concern of your life to obtain an interest in heaven. And do you thus seek the kingdom of heaven? (Matthew 10:12; Luke 16:16). I. If your names are written in heaven, this is the greatest cause of joy you can possibly have; a joy that may swallow up every other joy. II. If your names are not written in heaven, you can have no cause of solid, rational, and lasting joy in any thing. (President Davies.) The true doctrine of election This opinion is not believed by thee, but is only pretended, as a cloak for thy wickedness and idleness; for if thou dost believe that, if God hath elected, He will save thee however thou livest, why are not thy practices answerable to such principles? Why dost thou net leave thy ground unsowed, and thy calling unfollowed, and say, If God hath decreed me a crop of corn, I shall have it, whether I sow my ground or no; and if God hath decreed me an estate, I shall have it, though I never mind my calling? Why dost thou not neglect and refuse eating, and drinking, and sleeping, and say, If God hath decreed that I shall live longer, I shall do it, though I never eat, or drink, or sleep? For God hath decreed these things concerning thy ground, estate, and natural life, as well as concerning thine eternal condition in the other world. (G. Swinnock.) Insured election A senator related to his son the account of the book containing the names of illustrious members of the commonwealth. The son desired to see the outside. It was glorious to look upon. “ Oh, let me open it,” said the son. “ Nay,” said the father: “ it’ s known only to the council.” Then said the son, “ Tell me if my name is there?” And that, said the father, “ is a secret known only to the council, and it cannot be divulged.” Then he desired to know for what achievements the names were inscribed in that book. So the father told him; and related to him the achievements and noble deeds by which they had eternized their names. “ Such,” said he, “ are written, and none but such are written in the book.” “ And will my name be there?” said the son.” “ I cannot tell thee,” said the father; “ if thy deeds are like theirs, thou shalt be written in the book; if not, thou shalt not be written.” And then the son consulted with himself; and he found that his whole deeds were playing, and singing, and drinking, and amusing himself, and he found this was not noble nor temperate nor valiant. And as he could not read, as yet, his name, he determined to “ make his calling and election sure.” And thus, by patient continuance in well-doing, the end is crowned with glory, honour, immortality, and eternal life. Luke 10:21-22 Jesus rejoiced in Spirit Christ glorifies His Father and magnifies Himself Learn hence-- 1. That till God reveals Himself, His nature and will, no man can know either what He is, or what He requires--“ Thou hast revealed.” 2. That the wise and knowing men in the world have in all ages despised the mysteries of the gospel, and have therefore been judicially blinded by God--“ Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent.” When men shut their eyes against the clearest light, and say they will not see, God closes their eyes and says they shall not see. 3. That the most ignorant, if humble, and desirous of spiritual illumination, are in the readiest disposition to embrace the gospel revelation--“ Thou hast revealed them unto babes.” 4. That this is not more pleasing to Christ than it is the pleasure of His Father--“ Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in Thy sight.” Observe--Our Saviour magnifies Himself: 1. His authority and commission--“ All things are delivered unto Me” ; that is, all power is committed unto Me, as Mediator, from God the Father. 2. His office to reveal His Father’ s will to a lost world--“ No man knoweth the Father but the Son, or the Son but the Father” ; that is, no man knoweth their essence and nature, their will and pleasure, their counsel and consent, their mutual compact and agreement betwixt themselves, for saving a lost world, but only themselves, “ and those to whom they have revealed it.” Learn thence, That all saving knowledge of God is in, by, and through Christ; He, as the Great Prophet of His Church, reveals unto us the mind and will of God for our salvation. (W. Burkitt.) Lessons 1. Let me ask you if you resemble Christ in rejoicing at the success of true religion? He greatly rejoiced in spirit, and gave thanks to His Father, that Satan was dethroned, and that, though some were obstinate, others were blessed with a saving discovery of Divine things. 2. Beware of being proud of your own wisdom and prudence, and cherish the humility and teachableness of babes. 3. We should learn, from the twenty-second verse, never to separate the truths of what is called natural religion from the gospel. The idea that there is, or can be, any true and acceptable religion whatever, apart from the revelation of Christ, is here shown to be quite preposterous. The true Witness declares that no man can know the Father except he to whom He shall reveal Him. 4. Let us be thankful for the precious religious privileges which we enjoy, and careful to improve them. “ Blessed are the eyes which see the things that ye see.” 5. Lastly: Are we blessed, because our eyes see, and our ears hear these things?--then, Christian benevolence should lead us to feel for those who enjoy no such privileges, and to do everything we can to extend them to the utmost corners of the earth. (James Foote, M. A.) The Saviour’ s joy The sublimity of this joy we feel the more, when we compare with it that of the seventy. They rejoice in the great things, He in the good brought to pass; they have their joy directed to the outer, Jesus His to the moral world; they rejoice alone in the present, Jesus also in the past and the future; they are disposed to self-praise, Jesus to thankful adoration. (Van Oosterzee.) Christ’ s joy 1. An example of the joy which the Lord sometimes experienced upon earth. 2. An image of the joy which He now experiences in heaven. 3. A presage of the blessedness which He shall hereafter taste when the kingdom of God shall be fully perfected. (Van Oosterzee.) The joy of Jesus It is remarkable that this is the only instance on record in the Gospels in which our Lord is said to have rejoiced. Yet I do not think it would be fair to infer from the fact of a solitary mention of His rejoicing that He did not rejoice at other times; on the contrary, our Lord must, despite His sorrow, have possessed a peaceful, happy spirit. He was infinitely benevolent, and went about doing good; and benevolence always finds a quiet delight in blessing others. Moreover, our Lord was so pure that He had a well of joy within which could not fail Him. Besides, Christ Jesus was a man of faith; faith’ s highest exposition and example. He it was, who “ for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame.” His faith must, therefore, have anticipated the reward of His passion, and have brought the joy thereof home to Him even while He sorrowed here. It is clear that joy was not a distinguishing feature in our Lord’ s life, so as to strike the beholder. Peace may have sat serenely on His brow, but nothing of the exuberant spirits which are seen in some men, for His countenance was marred with lines of care and grief. The words here used are very emphatic. “ He rejoiced.” The Greek word is much stronger than the English rendering; it signifies “ to leap for joy.” It is the word of the blessed Virgin’ s song, “ My spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour.” Strong emotions of delight were visible upon our Lord’ s face, and were expressed by the tones of His voice as well as by His words. It is clear that He was greatly glad. The text also says, He “ rejoiced in spirit” : that is, deep down in the very centre of His nature, in that largest and moat capacious part of His human being, the Redeemer rejoiced. I. Our Lord’ s joy was JOY IS THE FATHER’ S OF THE GOSPEL. 1. I call your attention to the fact that He ascribed all that was done to the Father, and joyed that the Father was working with Him. 2. The Saviour’ s joy was that through the Father’ s grace men were being enlightened. 3. Further, our Saviour’ s joy lay very much in this, that this revelation to men was being made through such humble instruments. 4. And yet, further, His great joy was that the converts were of such a character as they were. 5. Our Lord’ s joy sprang from one other source, namely, His view of the manner in which God was pleased to save His people. It was by revealing these things to them. There is, then, to every man who is saved a revelation, not of anything over and above what is given us in the Word of God; but of that same truth to Himself personally and with power. In the word is the light; but what is needed is that each man’ s eye should be opened by the finger of God to see it. II. OUR LORD’ S MODE OF HIS JOY. 1. His joy finds tongue in thanksgiving. 2. He found expression for His joy in declaring the Father’ s sovereignty. 3. He delighted in the special act of sovereignty which was before Him, that the Lord had “ hid these things from the wise and prudent, and had revealed them unto babes.” His voice, as it were, went with the Father’ s voice; He agreed with the Father’ s choice, He rejoiced in it, He triumphed in it. III. Thirdly, and briefly, I want you to see OUR LORD’ S OF THE FATHER’ S ACT. 1. The Father had been pleased to hide these things from the wise and prudent and to reveal them unto babes, and Jesus Christ is perfectly satisfied with that order of things, quite content with the kind of converts He has and the kind of preachers that God has given Him. The Lord Jesus does not need prestige. 2. See how the Lord explains it yet further, by showing that human wisdom cannot find out God. Next, learn that the sovereignty of God is always exercised in such a way that the pure in heart may always rejoice in it. God never did a sovereign act yet that the loving Christ Himself could not rejoice in. The ultimate honour of the gospel is secured unto God alone, let that be our last lesson. (C. H. Spurgeon.) Revealed them unto babes. Why God reveals to babes The babe is the representative of the receptive spirit. Its characteristic is trust, openness to impression, and freedom from prejudice. The disciples were babes who lay open to the Divine message, and did not interpose theories and traditions. They were poor and knew it, and were willing to become rich. To them God revealed. But the revealing to a certain disposition is of necessity the hiding from its opposite. I. TO REVEAL TO BABES WITH GOD’ S AS A FATHER AND IT. “ Babe” is the counterpart to “ Father” --“ wise and understanding” has no such relation. The wise and understanding might have a special relation to an almighty Taskmaster, an infinite Schoolmaster and Prizegiver; but certainly not to an infinite Father. A father’ s heart is not attracted to the brilliance or power in his family, but to the want. The gospel is salvation by the free gift of God. Any true conception of the evil of sin, and its effects on the soul, renders other ideas of salvation incredible. We call God Father, and ask His forgiveness. Salvation by grace is bound up with the Divine arrangement, which reveals to babes. The distinction of the babe is just here--he is adapted to salvation by grace. II. IT GOD AS LORD OF HEAVEN AND EARTH TO REVEAL TO BABES. That God is Lord of heaven and earth makes His lowliness not less, but more needful and credible. The more you extend the empire of God, the more necessary it is for the heart to feel that God is lowly, and to have abundant proof of it. The higher and mightier you conceive God to be, the less it will appear credible to you that He should show preference to force of any kind. III. BY TO BABES THE FATHER AND LORD OF HEAVEN AND EARTH THE OF THE MORAL ELEMENT. What a calamity it would have been if the highest blessing had been in any way specially associated with intellectual qualities. This would have been to confirm and glorify the false estimate already so prevalent and so disastrous. But when God passes by the soaring imagination, the lofty intellect, the keen understanding, and puts His main blessing into the lowly heart and open spirit, when He comes down to the very lowest form of the moral and spiritual, the mere sense of want, the mere hunger for better things, and gives infinite eternal wealth to that--what a rebuke He conveys to pride of intellect; what honour He confers upon plain heart and conscience. Now is the false judgment of the world reversed. Now substance is put in place of show. Now spirit is exalted over form. Now right is put on the royal seat. IV. IT GOD AS FATHER AND LORD OF HEAVEN AND EARTH TO REVEAL TO BABES; FOR IT SHOWS HIS DESIRE TO REVEAL AS MUCH AS , AND TO AS MANY AS . Had God then revealed to the wise and understanding, He would have hidden from the world as a whole. By revealing to babes He gives hope to universal humanity. The babe slumbers in every soul however artificial or proud, and may be wakened up by some simple touch of pathos, or glimpse of memory, as well as by disaster. God who reveals to babes shows that it is man himself that He wants, not man’ s accomplishments, not man’ s energies, and distinctions and elevations, but man. V. THE OF A SAVIOUR GOD AS FATHER AND LORD OF HEAVEN AND EARTH, AND IS ADAPTED TO BABES. Jesus is the typical original Babe, the perfect, infinite example of the receptive spirit; therefore He reveals the Father, and is the refuge of men and the rest for the weary. On account of the very vastness of the lordship of heaven and earth a person is needed to bring God near, to show that it is a lordship, and not a mere system; and that there is a heart at the centre. The gospel is salvation by a person. Trust in Christ saves us. This suits the babes, and, therefore, at bottom, all men. (J. Leckie, D. D.) The child-heart I. THE . The world, Christ would tell us, is divisible into the simple and the wise. Our Lord rejoices that the larger section is not excluded from participation in the things of the kingdom of God; that men do not need worldly wisdom and the prudence of experience in order to knowing the truths of salvation. No exclusive sentence is written over the portals of Christianity. It is adjusted to the lowest and meanest capacity. Christ’ s mission was to all humanity, and He rejoiced in that fact. II. THE MORAL . He wishes to tell us what is essential--that it is only to the child-heart that revelation will be made. We know the contrast between the childheart and a heart sophisticated by life. Worldly and hardened hearts cannot receive the revelation of the things of heaven. 1. It is even so in regard to the world of beauty around us. We fill our hearts with cares, and immerse ourselves in business, so that we cannot see the beauty of a landscape which entrances the child-heart. 2. It is true also of noble actions or ideas: only the care-free childheart feels their beauty and sublimity. 3. When a great evil is to be dealt with, we notice how slowly the consciences of worldly-wise, practical men rise to a great public duty, and how swiftly the child-heart perceives the line between right and wrong. III. THE RESULT. Christ rejoices that none are excluded from His kingdom. But no gigantic effort of intellect will enable us to climb over the battlements of heaven. Wisdom is nearer to us when we stoop. (Bishop Boyd Carpenter) Revelation to the lowly I. THE FACT. 1. A childlike mind is required in those who would receive Christ and His kingdom. 2. The first disciples were children and men of childlike mind. 3. In the present day, the gospel is for the childlike. II. THE SECRET. 1. The nature of the truth revealed requires a childlike mind for the reception of it. (1) Its novelty. It is not contrary to true reason; but it is aside from and different from the old results of human reason. (2) Its unwordliness. The eyes that are wearied with poring over earthly lore are often too worn to bear the light of heavenly truth. This requires a healthy, fresh vision. (3) Its lowliness. A gospel for the simple is not necessarily a simple gospel. 2. The method of the revelation requires a childlike mind for the reception of it. It is not given by logical demonstration, but through act and life. We must see it with the soul’ s eyes. For the clearness of this spiritual vision we need (1) simplicity and self-forgetfulness, (2) trustfulness, (3) purity--children’ s graces. III. THE . Why? 1. It is according to God’ s will. 2. It redounds to the glory of God. (1) As an evidence that the revelation comes from heaven and is not got by man’ s wisdom. It is not stolen Promethean fire. (2) As a proof of the power of God. He can teach highest truth to lowliest scholars. (3) As a sign of the goodness and condescension of God. 3. It proves the breadth of revelation. 4. It brings to us the best discipline in revelation. (W. F. Adeney, M. A.) The kingdom of God, now as ever, hidden from the wise and prudent, and revealed unto babes 1. This is not different: (1) In the days of the Saviour; (2) In later ages; (3) In our time. 2. This cannot be different. (1) Objective cause in the nature of the gospel. (2) Subjective cause in the human heart. (3) Supernatural cause in the counselor God. 3. This may not be different; for, even in this way-- (1) The divinity of the gospel is confirmed; (2) The requirements of the gospel are satisfied; (3) The trial of the gospel is assured. (Van Oosterzee.) Divine truths hidden and revealed Whilst Jesus deemed it needful to warn His disciples against self-exaltation because of what they had been the means of doing, He Himself found in the successes which had accompanied their labours a ground for grateful rejoicing. In these successes He saw the firstfruits of a rich and glorious harvest; and He broke out into the exclamation--“ I thank Thee, O Father!” &c. By the expression, “ these things,” our Saviour meant the great Divine truths which He had come into the world expressly to reveal, which He had commissioned these seventy disciples to announce in the towns they visited, and for the rejection of which He had a little while before upbraided the cities of Galilee. With respect to these Divine truths, Christ here makes a two-fold statement. I. HE SPEAKS OF THEM AS HAVING BEEN HIDDEN FROM SOME. 1. Divine truths were not hidden from these people through any want of outward revelation. 2. Nor through any lack of intellectual ability to understand them. They were “ the wise and prudent.” 3. Nor through any influence exerted by God for the purpose. “ Thou hast hid,” &c., must be interpreted in the broad light of our Saviour’ s teaching as a whole. 4. In what sense, then, are we to understand that Divine truths were hidden from these people? To answer this question we must first answer another, namely, Who were the wise and prudent from whom these truths were concealed? (1) They were not really the wise and prudent. (2) They supposed themselves to be so, and gloried in the supposition. There is in such a case an element of retribution of which we must not lose sight. The retribution consists in this--that these people, having wilfully shut their minds against the revelations of God’ s truth, are left by God to the consequences of their self-inflicted blindness. II. HE SPEAKS OF THEM AS HAVING BEEN TO OTHERS. The word “ babes” is clearly intended to be antithetic to the words “ wise and prudent.” As by the wise and prudent, the Saviour meant those who were proud, ostentatious, self-sufficient, thinking of themselves more highly than they ought to think, and looking down on others with a cold indifference or a supercilious contempt; so by babes He meant those who were humble, teachable, self-distrustful, feeling themselves to be destitute of all real good, and being willing to receive help and blessing from whatever quarter or in whatsoever way it might come. To such as these Divine truths were revealed, and only to such. 1. It was not because they had been favoured with a greater amount of light respecting these truths. 2. It was not because they had been supplied with better means of preparation for the reception of these truths. 3. It was not because they had been made the exclusive objects of a selecting love. 4. It was because they were in a fit and proper mood for the reception of spiritual truths. With respect to this revelation of Divine truths to the humble we have to notice two things, each of which suggests a practical lesson well worth learning: (1) It was a source of grateful joy to the Saviour’ s heart. (2) It had His cordial and unqualified acquiescence. In conclusion, let us remember that if we would be as babes to whom Divine truths are revealed, we must not only bow before God in self-abasement and contrition, but we must look for the revelation of those truths through Jesus Christ. This point comes out in Luke 10:22, “ All things are delivered,” etc. (B. Wilkinson, F. G. S.) The simplicity of mystery In that hour Jesus rejoiced in Spirit. How few such occasions occurred in His life! What hour was it? When He saw, humanly speaking, a glimpse of God’ s method of unfolding His governmental purposes, and His beneficent plans and designs. “ I thank Thee that Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent,” from intellectual giants, from merely clever people, from so-called genius, and sagacity and intellectual power. “ Who is greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” Jesus did not summon the proudest king, or the mightiest thinker, but He set a child in the midst of them, and said, “ The child is always the greatest.” So you will find it all throughout life, that when you have been most happy, when you have been most childlike, you have seen things most clearly; not when you have put on the cap of your genius, and have taken the sceptre of your power, and robed yourself in the official dignity of a passing moment or a transient situation; but when you have stripped yourself of your own greatness, and have sat down, and said, “ Lord, teach me.” Religion, as propounded to us by Jesus Christ, is not a riddle to be solved by the intellectually great. It is a revelation to the heart; it is a word spoken to sin; it is a gospel breathed upon sorrow; it is a word of liberty delivered to those that are bound; a subtle sympathy--something not to be named in high-sounding phrases, or to be wrought out in pomp of words. If you have been in the habit of going to church for the purpose of settling some critical argument, for the purpose of hearing the minister through the medium of your scholastic accumulations and of your native power of intellect, I do not wonder you are numbered with the lean kine who, having devoured much, are none the better for their gluttony; but if you go hungering and thirsting after righteousness, if you have left your big self outside, and have come in, just enough of you to breathe and confess sin, just enough to be a mere spot on the floor of the sanctuary--a mere cripple, with only breath enough to say, “ God be merciful to me a sinner,” you were never disappointed. If in hymn, or psalm, or high anthem, or exposition, or reading of the Word Divine, you have received satisfaction, great answers, infinite gospels, you have secretly blessed God for His revelations. The disciples were compared to babes, and the babes received the great revelation. It will be found that simplicity itself is the chief mystery of God. Some things are so simple that we won’ t believe them. I know sceptical minds who, if they were asking me which is the way to the Thames, and I were to say “ This,” would doubt the answer because of its brevity and simplicity. If I could have conveyed the indication of the route by a roundabout process, they might, perhaps, have been led to believe that I meant what I said, though they did not know what I meant. Do not look so far from home for your blessings; do not make mysteries where God intends you to find simplicity. (J. Parker, D. D.) The babe-spirit Observe, I am speaking about the beginning, in developing this doctrine of the babe-spirit, and not about the end. And even at the end thou shalt find out the great mystery of the unity between the man and the child that He, the child Jesus, and the man Christ Jesus are one and the same. The greater his modesty; the more wonderful his power and influence, the greater his readiness to consider, and oblige, and do good. From the greatest expect the best; from the master more than from the servant; from the disciple rudeness and rejection, from the Master, “ Forbid them not, let them come.” (J. Parker, D. D.) God revealed unto babes That the sage should miss what the infant can see seems at first but little possible, and still less a subject for thankfulness. It would appear to discourage the highest attributes of our nature, to throw contempt on the patience of thought, and cruelly to visit the prayer for light with the deeper darkness. Can it be that the more pains we take to know, the less will the truth be found; that the rich and practised mind is at a disadvantage compared with the inexperienced and empty? And if so, why exult in the frustration of the noblest of human aims, and the confiscation of the prize to those who have no aim at all? Tertullian dwells with a savage satisfaction on the supposed exclusion from the kingdom of God of whatever we hold fair and great in the old heathen world, and richest for the adornment of all time; and exults in peopling it with hordes of triumphant barbarians like himself. Is this the spirit of Christ’ s thanksgiving? Are we required, out of sympathy with it, to believe Socrates an outcast and clap our hands as he vanishes from hope? to stifle our reverence for AEschylus and Plato, for the Scipios and Antonines--and declare God’ s preference for mendicant monks and illiterate missionaries? Must we condemn as secular and carnal our own natural admiration for the gifts of wisdom--the disciplined powers, the large and supple thought, the accurate expression, of a wellcultured nature--and force ourselves into harmony of taste with the raw religion of unmellowed sectaries, their loud voice, their rude speech, their narrow zeal, their tumultuous aspirations? Far from it. It is not intellect from which God hides Himself, but selfishness and pride; which may belong alike to taught and untaught, and darken the soul of sophist or of clown. There is light both in the “ base” and in the “ wise” : but in the former it is wholly spontaneous; in the latter it is chiefly derivative. In its infancy the soul simply apprehends what is given it to perceive, lies confidingly in the bosom of nature, and lets the morning beams come into the full and wondering eyes. It is the loss of the habit of natural trust, the tendency to anxious quest of something distant instead of pure repose on what is here, that according to Christ’ s prayer, hides God from the wise and prudent. And, conversely, it is the surrender to spontaneous light and love, the simple passing out upon it into life, without doubt of its guidance or scrutiny of its claims, that reveals Him unto “ babes.” How profoundly true this is--that in Divine things the little child may know what the great philosopher may miss--will appear if you only think what God is, and whether He is likely to be discovered on any explorer’ s track or by any artifice of calculation. Two things science enables us to do, from which all its triumphs spring. It shows us how to put the parts and products of nature into true classes; and it qualifies us to foresee phenomena else unsuspected. But God is neither a being to be classified, nor a phenomenon to be foreseen, (Dr. Martineau.) It is the great marvel of the Christian character that the completest self-sacrifice gives the completest self-possession; that only the captive soul, which has flung her rights away, has all her powers free; and that simply to serve under the instant orders of the living God, is the highest qualification for command. This is the meaning of that great saying of Cromwell’ s: “ One never mounts so high as when one knows not whither one is going” : a saying which the wise and prudent scorned as a confession of blindness, but which reveals to simpler minds the deepest truth. (Dr. Martineau.) Two types of human greatness are there The Pagan and the Christian--the moral and the religious--the secular and the Divine. The former has its root and essence in trying hard; the latter, in trusting gently: the one depends on voluntary energy; the other on relinquishment of personal will to cast every burden upon God. (Dr. Martineau.) To commune with God There is need of no subtle thought, no foreign tongue, no newest philosophy: “ the pure in heart shall see” Him; and Fox and Bunyan can more truly make Him known, than “ Masters of Sentences” and “ Angelic Doctors.” (Dr. Martineau.) Learning the alphabet of religion A man came to his pastor one night to learn the way of salvation. He was a very learned man, but he said: “ I know nothing of Divine truth. I come to you to learn--as a child. I come to learn the very alphabet of religion.” His pastor replied: “ My friend, when you return home, open your Bible and read prayerfully the third chapter of John. Think of it. Study it. That will be A. Then turn to Isaiah, fifty-fifth chapter. Study it. Believe it. That is B. A B, ab, almost Abba Father.” (Handbook to Scripture Doctrines.) Humility of Pascal The curate who attended Pascal on his dying bed, struck with the triumph of religion over the pride of an intellect which continued to burn after it had ceased to blaze, would frequently exclaim, “ He is an infant--humble and submissive as an infant!” (Life of Pascal.) The receptive spirit The Rev. John Foster, whose sceptical tendencies were the source of much distress of mind, was finally led to say: “ I have felt the necessity of dismissing subtle speculations, and of yielding a humble, cordial assent to mysterious truth, just as and because the Scriptures declare it, without asking ‘ How can these things be?’ The gospel is to me a matter of urgent necessity. I come to Jesus because I need pardon.” The Son will reveal Him Deity revealed I. THE MYSTERY OF DEITY IN SELF-. He is an unknown God where there is no supernatural revelation of Him. Reason is baffled, because it is under the fall. Eternal self-existence. How wonderful! It exceeds all power of calculation. II. THE SON OF GOD . NOW mark, I beseech you, that all this glory of the Father, made to shine in the face of Jesus Christ, is unknown to the sinner as long as he is blinded. III. THE SECURED THEREBY. Contrived and bestowed by God the Father. Carried out by God the Son. It is, therefore, infallible, and it secures the glory of Jehovah. (J. Irons.) The power bestowed on Christ by the Father 1. Unlimited. 2. Legitimate. 3. Beneficent. 4. Ever-enduring. (Van Oosterzee.) The unique relation between the Son and the Father 1. How far it is the object of our faith. 2. How far it can be the object of our knowledge. (Van Oosterzee.) The relation between Father and Son 1. The highest mystery. 2. A revealed mystery. 3. Even after the revelation yet continually a partially concealed mystery. (Van Oosterzee.) Christ the Revealer of God Christ, as you see here, speaks of Himself. What does He say of Himself? 1. Does He not claim to be Divinely constituted as a Revealer of God? “ All things are delivered to Me of My Father.” 2. Our Lord speaks here also of the glorious mystery of His own person and character. No man, nor angel, nor archangel, nor any intelligence in this or in the heavenly world, knoweth who the Son is but the Father. It takes an Infinite Being to comprehend an Infinite Being. 3. Christ alone knows God in perfection--“ No man knoweth who the Father is but the Son.” What an awful sense of loneliness--a loneliness which is unutterable--would be involved in our idea of God, unless we had some light given to us by Jesus Christ, concerning His relation to the Father. 4. Jesus Christ is and can alone be the Revealer of God to us--“ And he to whom the Son will reveal Him.” (1) He can be known to whom the Son will reveal Him. (2) The way to the knowledge of God is by meekness, humility, submission, trustfulness, love. (W. Dorling.) Luke 10:23-24 Blessed are the eyes which see the things that ye see The gospel privileges I. THE THINGS HERE SPOKEN OF. The blessings of Christ’ s revelation. II. TO WHOM THEY WERE DEVISED. Not only to the great, but to the good. Not merely to the mighty kings of Nineveh, Assyria, Babylon, Egypt, Greece, and Rome, but to the holy and righteous--to Moses, to David, to Elijah. III. To WHOM THEY WERE . To the poor, despised, illiterate; to fishermen on the Galilean sea; to the sisters at Bethany; and, following in their train, to us at the present, whatever our character or position. IV. THE WE ENJOY. More favoured than kings; more honoured than prophets; higher in the scale than all who have gone before. V. THE HEIGHT OF OUR . If the prophets scarcely were saved, how shall it be with the present generation, if they neglect the privileges they enjoy? (The Preacher’ s Analyst.) Difference between the patriarchal, Jewish, and Christian dispensations It is a common, but very just observation, that we are seldom dulysensible of the value of our blessings till we are deprived of them. This remark is applicable to our case, under the Christian dispensation. How few persons bless God that they dwell in the “ days of the Son of Man” ! The way to know how much we are distinguished, is, carefully to compare our situation with that of our fellow-creatures. I. Let us survey the state of the HEATHEN WORLD. Place yourself, for a moment, amongst them, and consider what would then be your situation with respect to knowledge and virtue. 1. As to knowledge--everything among the heathens was obscure and uncertain. 2. In the heathen world also vice dreadfully prevailed. And what authority was there to check its prevalence? What principles strong enough to enable men to resist it? Their worship was base and degrading, offered in general to idols representing beings who were described as the patrons of corruption. II. But let us turn our eyes from the state of the heathens, to the fairer view of those who were in some measure enlightened by Divine knowledge. To speak first of the --One great instance of its inferiority was its want of clear and sufficient authority. Probably the laws and observances enjoined by it were first communicated by God to Adam, and transmitted by him to his children. Now it is easy to see that such a religion would become more and more obscure, imperfect, and corrupt in every succeeding generation. Many things would be forgotten, many misunderstood, many improperly added. On the Mosaic we now proceed to offer a few remarks. It may be considered as having been inferior to the Christian in the following particulars. 1. It was chiefly composed of types and shadows, of forms and ceremonies. 2. The Jewish dispensation abounded with severe and burdensome impositions. 3. The Mosaic dispensation is inferior to the Christian, inasmuch as the latter is founded upon better promises--better, as being of a more sublime and excellent nature, as being promises of spiritual and eternal things; such as grace, pardon, peace, and eternal life. 4. Another remarkable circumstance, in which the superiority of our dispensation consists, is, the larger and more abundant communication of the Holy Spirit. 5. Further: The Christian dispensation excels the Mosaic in the manner of its establishment. 6. The Christian dispensation is superior to the Jewish, in respect to the spirit of its institution. The spirit of the gospel is a spirit of liberty. (John Venn, M. A.) National privileges This is a noble text, and yet an awful one, for if it does not increase our godliness, it will certainly increase our condemnation. It tells us that we, even the meanest amongst us, are more favoured by God than the kings, and judges, and conquerors of the old world; that we have more light and knowledge of God than even the prophets David, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, to whom God’ s glory appeared in visible shape. It tells us that we see things which they longed to see and could not; that words are spoken to us for which their ears longed in vain; that they, though they died in hope, yet received not the promises, God having provided some better things for us, that they without us should not be made perfect. 1. Now, what was this which they longed for, and had not, and yet we have? It is this--a Saviour and a Saviour’ s kingdom. All wise and holy hearts for ages--as well heathen as Jews--had has this longing. They wanted a Saviour--one who should free them from sin and conquer evil. They longed for a heavenly kingdom also. They saw that men got worse and worse as time rolled on, and that all the laws in the world could never make them good. They longed for a kingdom of God, a golden age, a regeneration of the world, as they called it, and rightly. 2. And now this kingdom is come, and the King of it, the Saviour of men, is Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Long men prayed, and long men waited, and at last, in the fulness of God’ s good time, just when the night seemed darkest, and, under the abominations of the Roman Empire, religion, honesty, and common decency seemed to have died out, the Sun of Righteousness rose on the dead and rotten world, to bring life and immortality to light. 3. And that we might not doubt that we too belonged to this kingdom, God has placed in this land His ministers and teachers, Christ’ s Sacraments, Christ’ s Churches, Christ’ s Bible; that from our cradle to our grave we might see that we belonged, as sworn servants and faithful children, to the great Father in heaven and Jesus Christ, the King of the earth. 4. Thus, all that all men have longed for we possess; we want no more, and we shall have no more. If, under the present state of things, we cannot be holy, we shall never be holy. Blessed indeed are the eyes which see what you see, and hear what you bear; prophets and kings have desired to see and hear them, and have not seen or heard 1 But if you, cradled among all these despised honours and means of grace, bring forth no fruit in your lives--shut out from yourselves the thought of your high calling in Christ Jesus, what shall be your end but ruin? He that despises Christ, Christ will despise him. And say not to yourselves as many do, “ We are church-goers--we are all safe.” I say to you, God is able, from among the negro and the savage--aye, God is able of these stones to raise up children, while those of you, the children of the kingdom, who lived in the Church of your fathers, and never used or loved her or Christ her King, shall be cast into outer darkness, where shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. (Charles Kingsley.) Vainly they tried the deeps to sound Even of their own prophetic thought, When of Christ crucified and crowned His Spirit in them taught: But He their aching gaze repressed Which sought behind the veil to see, For not without us fully blessed Or perfect might they be. The rays of the Almighty’ s face No sinner’ s eye might then receive; Only the meekest man found grace To see His skirts and live. But we as in a glass espy The glory of His countenance, Not in a whirlwind hurrying by The two presumptuous glance. But with mild radiance every hour From our dear Saviour’ s face benign Bent on us with transforming power, Till we, too, faintly shine. Sprinkled with His atoning blood Safely before our God we stand, As on the rock the prophet stood, Beneath His shadowing hand. Blessed eyes which see the things we see! And yet this tree of life hath proved To many a soul a poison-tree, Beheld, and not beloved. (John Keble.) Our privileges The privileges here referred to. What are the things we see and hear? Many answers might be given. We might tell of the progress of science, commerce, civilization--progress that is stupendous, amazing; and there is nothing of all this but has its value. But these are not the things that make us “ blessed.” What are they? An Infant, cradled in a manger, shepherds and wise men bowing near--a meek and lowly Man, standing in the midst of a crowd, teaching and healing, while mockery and hatred look on--a Sufferer stretched upon a cross, “ His visage marred more than any man, and His form more than the sons of men” --an opening sepulchre, and a figure rising, ascending, received up into glory--these are the things we see. Meanwhile, we hear the song of angels, proclaiming the birth of Messiah, and foretelling His glory--we hear the sweeter voice of Messiah’ s self, when “ gracious words proceed out of His mouth.” Such are the things we see and hear: all of them, you perceive, referring to Christ--His Incarnation, Teaching, Life, Death, and Resurrection. And this isthe gospel! In this God reveals His purposes of mercy. Such is the gospel as we receive it--more complete than when our Lord spake the words of the text to His disciples. The position of ancient saints with regard to these privileges. “ Many prophets and righteous men have desired,” etc. The fact here stated is two-fold: they had the desire--but it remained ungratified. Take some passages by way of illustration. Christ says of Abraham: “ He rejoiced to see My day: and he saw it” --that is, he exulted with the desire to see, and, by lively faith, clearly pictured it forth. Hero then is a specimen of the position of the patriarchs--Just as Moses climbed Mount Pisgah, and looked on Canaan, though he never crossed the Jordan: so Abraham climbed the mount of faith, and descried the distant scenes of our Lord’ s life. How natural was the desire! The man who has taken an earnest part in some great undertaking naturally longs to see it accomplished. “ They desired to see the things that we see, and to hear the things that we hear.” And yet--their desire remained ungratified. In this there is much that is instructive. 1. See the calm steady procession of the purposes of God! He has appointed a time for everything and nothing can derange His plan. 2. See the trial He gives His people’ s faith! It is so still, is it not? How many of our heart’ s desires He denies us now. The faith of the ancient saints was tried--and strengthened by trial; and thus they became “ strong in faith, giving glory to God.” 3. Brethren, let us prize our privileges. Here they are, in rich abundance; yet how often are we dull and cold in the midst of them all! 4. Impenitent man--beware! You, too, are surrounded by privileges. Isaiah, David, Daniel never saw what you see. 5. Some are coming after us, who will know more than we do. When we pass away, others will arise; and in regard to position, we are to them as the prophets were to us. 6. But those who have gone before--have not they, too, outstripped us? Think--what do they see and hear? We cannot tell! 7. O happy time when the whole Church shall be complete in glory! (F. Tucker.) Luke 10:25 Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?--The lawyer’ s question The question of the lawyer is the question of the human heart everywhere. You will find it asked and answered in all the world’ s religions. The answers fall into two classes. 1. One set of replies thinks of the better life as a thing external to a man’ s own being, procurable by something that a man can do, by bodily self-denial or suffering, or by religious rites or ceremonies. 2. The other class of answers amounts to this--that nothing that is merely outside a man or comes to him from without can ever meet his wants. The true ideal life of humanity is in its very essence a life; it is not doing, it is being. The orthodox doctrine in Christ’ s time taught very definitely what was the pathway to eternal life. The religious teachers laid it down that the life God wants men to live was a life of obedience to the law of Moses. The preaching of Jesus Christ did not quite tally with the orthodox teaching of the time. The Pharisee and the penitent, the harlots and publicans, were distinctly conscious that Christ was preaching a new gospel. The gospel of the Pharisees was orthodox; therefore the gospel of Christ was heresy. They were bent upon getting a case against Him, and yet it was not easy. Be Himself fulfilled the law, conformed to all its requirements and statutes, and never spoke disrespectfully of it. How were they to catch Him? One day a crafty lawyer had a very happy thought. He determined to cross-question Christ, to force Him to declare His inner hostility to the creed of the Pharisees, His inner antagonism to the law of God: “ What shall I do to inherit eternal life?” A fair, honest question, and yet in the very wording of it the note of discord comes out. Jesus is confronted with a man whose notion of eternal life is utterly different from His. It is impossible to answer that man. Instead of answering, Jesus turns questioner. He must bring out the man’ s own notions, and then, when He has got them, it may be possible to show him how threadbare, how poverty-stricken, how wrong they are. “ What do you find in the law? How readest thou?” The lawyer, taken aback, gives the regulation reply. He could not repeat the whole law, but there was a summary of it, a standing condensed statement of it, and this he repeats to Jesus: “ Thou shalt love … ’” Now, what have we to say to that answer? Is this the pathway to eternal life? What more could a man do to make the music of his life majestic, heavenly, splendid? Loving God utterly, and loving all men as you love yourself--no doubt that is life eternal. The scribe’ s answer is the true answer; yet in the scribe’ s mouth it was an utter lie, and a damning heresy, that was sending men’ s souls to ruin. Christ could accept the definition of the lawyer. “ Thou hast answered right.” But then the meaning that He felt in those words was a meaning utterly different from that of the Pharisee; and there you have the explanation of His preaching. He took the very same text that the scribes took, but what a different sermon He preached from it, and what a different application against theirs! He did not say “ Obey” ; He said the word that must come before obey: He said “ Love.” The least bit of love will do more to make you keep the commandments than any amount of studying them, or any amount of selfish resolve to make a good thing out of the commandments for yourself. The essence of the Pharisee’ s gospel was selfishness. Save yourself by keeping on the right side, and not giving God a chance against you. What a God, and what a soul! I think that Jesus, as soon as the scribe had given his reply, looked him straight in the face. The look meant, “ Dare you pretend that you do that?” and the man felt it, and therefore, we read, was eager-to justify himself. The man’ s conscience was uneasy. He instantly said, “ Yes, but who is my neighbour?” It is where the heart is cold that definitions come in. “ Who is my neighbour? How many men can claim love from me?” said the scribe. Christ did not answer that, but He made a picture in order to ask the scribe this question, “ Who is the man who plays the neighbour’ s part?” He told of a man who started from Jerusalem to go to Jericho, and was attacked on the way by thieves, who certainly did not play the part of neighbour by him. There came on the road a priest and a Levite. Christ had not that foolish idea that the clergy should never be held up to rebuke or scorn when they deserve it. Do not misjudge the priest and the Levite. You say they did a heartless thing. They did not; they had not heart to do it. Their sin was not in not doing something, but in being heartless. That is the very point of the story. And if you had met these men after hearing of it, and had asked them how they could do such a thing, they would have assured you that they did not see any man like that. They would have told you that they saw a man who had been fighting, or who had got drunk, or who was an impostor. Or they would have told you they were going to a religious service at Jericho, and had not the time for it. All we can say of them is that they had not heart. And Christ paints the other side of it. There came along a Samaritan, a man of a different religion, a man who had been taught of the Jews that he owed them no kindness. He appeared to be a business man, and probably it would be more to him to lose his market than to the clergy to be late for the religious service. He saw the man, and he saw the first passer-by that had seen him; he saw the wretchedness of it--and he had a heart, and that is all. He did not say,” Is there anything in the Decalogue bearing on this?” And he certainly did not say, “ Is that man a neighbour? He is a Jew. Where does he come from?” If he had begun going to the law, he would never have done it. And now, mark how the story has answered the question. As soon as it is finished Christ turns to the scribe, and asks, “ Who played the neighbour’ s part?” Not the priest, not the scribe, not his own fellow-countrymen. It was that Samaritan. Nobody could deny it. Even the lawyer acknowledges it. That was a beautiful thing to do, and Christ drove it home with the rejoinder, “ Go thou and do likswise” ; and He sent that man away saying to himself, “ No amount of reading the law would ever make me able to do that; more than that, my reading of the law must be all wrong.” Christ had made that man understand that what he wanted was the real love of the real, living, loving God, and the real, common human love to his fellow-men. Where have you and I to learn that love for God and love for man? I will tell you. At the feet of Christ, and by His side, in fellowship with Him, we shall learn to love God with all our heart, and soul, and mind, and strength, and our neigh-bout as ourself; and that is eternal life. (Professor Elmslie, M. A.) Inheriting eternal life 1. You will observe that the man who asked this question was a lawyer, a man of education and of good standing; a man, therefore, from whom good behaviour and reverence of spirit might reasonably have been expected. You would think that when such a man spoke he would speak soberly, he would mean, under such circumstances, exactly what he said. You find, however, that the inquiry--the very greatest that can possibly engage human attention--was put in a spirit of temptation. The lawyer was not an earnest man. He asked a right question, but he asked it in a wrong spirit. See, then, the possibility of asking religious questions irreligiously. Learn the possibility of asking great questions in a merely controversial spirit, without any profoundly anxious desire to know the answer that God will return to such inquiries. God understands the irony of our attitude. The Living One knows whether we are hungering and thirsting for Him; He can see through our hypocrisies and concealments, and only into the broken heart and the contrite spirit will He come with redemption and life and helpfulness and grace. So that at the very beginning there is to be no mistake about this. We know the conditions upon which alone we receive the revelations of God--that we be quiet, self.renouncing, reverent, sober, anxious about the business; and wherever these conditions are forthcoming, some light will be flashed upon the life, and some healing word will be dropped into the sorrow of the heart. 2. Jesus Himself answered one question by asking another; and so He not unfrequently disappointed men who had undertaken to ensnare Him in His speech. They thought that if they did but put a case to Him He would instantly commit Himself, and they would entrap Him and take Him captive, and make a fool of Him. Here is a man probably accustomed to put questions, and to put questions again upon the answers that are given, and so to cross-examine those with whom he came in contact. Jesus undertakes to deal with him according to the spirit which he presents; and before He lets him go He will show what the man’ s meaning is and his nature, and He will expose him as he never was exposed before. Thus quietly He begins: “ What is written in the law? Thou art a lawyer, a man of reading, a man of many letters, and of much understanding probably--how readest thou?” God has never left the greatest questions of the human heart unanswered. The great answer to this question about eternal life was not given first of all by Jesus Christ as He appeared in the flesh. Jesus Himself referred to the oldest record; inferentially He said--That question has been answered from the beginning; go back to the very first revelation and testimony of God, and you Will find the answer there. Yet the question is put very significantly: “ How readest thou?” There are two ways of reading. There is a way of reading the letter which never gets at the meaning of the spirit. There is a way of reading which merely looks at the letter for a partial purpose, or that a prejudice may be sustained or defended. And there is a way of reading which means, I want to know the truth; I want to see really how this case stands; I am determined to see it. He who reads so will find no end to his lesson, for truth expands and brightens as we study her revelations and her purposes. He who comes merely to the letter will get but a superficial answer in all probability. It was, therefore, of the highest importance that the lawyer should tell how he had been reading the law. 3. The lawyer, please to remember, knew the answer when he asked the question. He said, “ What shall I do to inherit eternal life?” and all the time the answer was in his own recollection had he but known it. Alas I we do not always turn our knowledge into wisdom. We know the fact, and we hardly ever sublimate the fact into truth. We know the law, and we fail to see that under the law there is the beauty and there is the grace of the gospel. 4. “ This do,” said Jesus, “ and thou shalt live.” What had the lawyer to do? To love the Lord his God with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his strength and with all his mind. Love is life. Only he who loves lives. Only love can get out of a man the deepest secrets of his being and develop the latent energies of his nature and call him up to the highest possibility of his manhood. Criticism never can do it; theology never can do it; power of controversy never can do it. We are ourselves, in all the volume of our capacity, and in all the relations of our original creation, only when life becomes love and our whole nature burns with affection towards the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Let us look less at our knowledge and our intellectual capability and our training and our circumstances, and more at the degree of our religious love. The end of the commandment is charity; the summing up of all true law is love. Do we, then, know this mystery of religious love? or is ours a religion that hangs itself upon the outward letter and the ceremonial form? Then observe that the law goes still further than love to God, it includes love to one’ s neighbour. Hear the exact expression of the text--“ And thy neighbour as thyself.” Love of God means love of man. Religion is the Divine side of philanthropy; philanthropy is the practical side of religion. We must first be right with God or we never can be right with man. 5. Was the lawyer satisfied? Read: “ But he, willing to justify himself, said unto Jesus, And who is my neigbbour?” It was the question of a sharp man, but not the inquiry of an honest one. Such a question as this does not need to be answered in words. Every man knows in his own heart who his neighbour is; and only he who wishes to play a trick in words, to show how clever he is in verbal legerdemain, will stoop to ask such a question as this. Why did he ask the question? Because he was willing to justify himself. It is precisely there that every man has a great battle to fight, namely--at the point of self-justification. So long as there is any disposition in us to justify ourselves are we unprepared to receive the gospel. One of the first conditions required of us at the Cross is self-renunciation. Am I to suppose that any one is asking now, What shall I do to inherit eternal life? Do not misunderstand that word do. It may be so employed as to convey a wrong sense. The obtaining of eternal life does not come through any action or merit of our own. There is not a certain journey that is to taken, a labour which is to be performed, a specific duty that is to be discharged. What, then, is there to be? Consciousness of sin, conviction of guilt in the sight of God, self-despair, self-torment, such a knowledge of the nature and reality of sin as will pain the heart to agony; and then a turning of the eyes of faith to the bleeding Lamb of God, the one sacrifice, the complete atonement; a casting of the heart, the life, the hope, upon the broken body of Jesus, Son of God! Dost thou so believe? Thou hast eternal life! This eternal life is not a possession into which we come by and by. We have hold of it now; for to love the Son of God is to begin eternity, is to enter upon immortality I How is this life to be exhibited? In other words, how is it to prove its own existence and defend its own claim? By love. God is love. And if we be in God we shall be filled with love. Let us then retire, knowing that there is in our hearts and minds information enough upon these great questions, if so be we are minded to turn that information to account. Let no man say he will begin a better life when he knows more. Begin with the amount of your present knowledge. Let no man delude himself by saying that if he had a good opportunity of showing charity to a stranger he would show it. Show charity, show piety at home. Let no man say that if he was going down a thief-haunted road, and saw a poor man bleeding and dying there, he would certainly bind up his wounds. Do the thing that is next thee; bear the Cross that is lying at thy feet; start even upon the very smallest scale to love, and thou shalt grow in grace. (J. Parker, D. D.) Luke 10:26 How readest thou?--Profitable reading of the Bible As there are always among violets some that are very much sweeter to us than others, so among texts there are some that are more precious to us than others. When I go to the Bible, it is not once in a hundred times that I react a whole chapter for my own devotions. As one that goes out into the field to rest does not take the first spot that presents itself, but waits till he finds a nook where the mosses and the flowers and the shrubs are right, and then sits down and feasts his eyes on the beauties around, so I wander along till I come to a passage which, though I cannot tell why, I read over and over and over again. One or two verses or sentences, perhaps, will linger in my head all day, like some sweet passage in a letter, or like some felicitous word spoken by a friend, coming and going all the time. I find often that one single text, taking possession of the mind in the morning, and ringing through it during the whole day, does one more good than the reading of a whole chapter. Frequently some one thing that Christ said fixes itself in my mind, and remains there from morning till night. (H. W. Beecher.) The law of God, the guide of youth I. In following out this question to a satisfactory reply, we may, in the first place, inquire, WHAT IS WRITTEN IN THE LAW, AND HOW WE SHOULD READ, ON THE SUBJECT OF FAITH, IN THE GOSPEL? Does not the law of God tell you what the faith of the gospel is, especially all that God has revealed respecting His Son II. But, in the second place, we must not only TAKE WHAT IS WRITTEN IN THE LAW, IN ORDER TO OUR BELIEF, BUT IN ORDER TO OUR . The “ law” holds out, not only testimony to be believed, but precepts to be obeyed. III. But, in the third place, let us inquire, WHAT IS WRITTEN IN THE LAW THOSE WHICH WE OUGHT TO ? IV. But again, there is another important subject, on which it is our duty to be informed. WHAT IS WRITTEN OF THOSE HELD OUT IN THE GOSPEL? V. Then, WHAT IS WRITTEN IN THE LAW ON THE SUBJECT OF TRUST IN THE LORD? VI. For again, WHAT IS WRITTEN IN THE WORD OF GOD DANGER? It states, the only danger to be apprehended is, the danger arising from sin. VII. Let us inquire, however, further, WHAT IS WRITTEN IN THE LAW HOPE? VIII. But next, WHAT IS WRITTEN IN THE LAW THE TIME WHEN THE MIND SHOULD THUS GIVE ITSELF WHOLLY TO GOD? (J. Burner.) Luke 10:27 Thou shalt love Love to God and our neighbours I. THE LAWYER’ S . No evidence of his having put it in a malicious spirit. Quite a fair question. Also a most intelligent question. He wished to try Christ’ s pretensions and knowledge--a perfectly blameless, indeed praiseworthy wish. Yet, although the lawyer’ s intellect was not at fault, his heart, in some measure at least, was. He did not feel, as he ought, the seriousness of the question he proposed, and his own personal interest in it. He put it too much to try Christ, too little to get instruction for himself. II. CHRIST’ S MANNER OF DEALING WITH HIM. He did not answer him, but made him answer himself-obviously, in order to turn his attention in upon himself. III. THE LAWYER’ S ANSWER A marvellously good answer. He joins to a precept in Deuteronomy another in Leviticus, and so replies to Christ’ s question in words altogether appropriate and divine. Our Lord Himself had used the same words in the same way. He had found none better in which to sum all duty and the whole consequence of religion. IV. CHRIST’ S . Have we here Christ Himself teaching salvation through works, not through faith; through doing, not by belief? Yes, there is no doubt about it; His words are perfectly plain and decided--“ Do, and thou shalt live.” But, do what? “ Love,” etc. A safe kind ofteaching salvation through works I If by doing this, but only by doing this, man is to be saved through doing, then that only makes it clear as the sun that not by doing will any man be saved. Such a law condemns us all utterly. It is one thing to be a hearer of the law, even an intelligent and studious hearer of it, and quite another to be a doer of it. What it demands is obedience--strict, perfect, absolute obedience. V. THE LAWYER’ S . He secretly feels that salvation on such terms is not to be had, but he does not like to acknowledge this even to himself, and still less to Him whose words have found him out. He fights against the conviction. He wishes to justify himself, for he cannot bear the thought that Moses and his law--all that he had hitherto been accustomed to depend upon for eternal life--will fail him, and even turn against him. To justify himself, he puts to our Lord the question, “ Who is my neighbour?” No question about God, or love to God. Why? Feeling that with respect to that his case was hopeless, he tries to get off on the second commandment, flattering himself there was at least some chance of acquittal on that count. The mere fact of his putting such a question showed him at fault. How could he have fulfilled the law of neighbourly love if he didn’ t even know who his neighbour was? VI. CHRIST’ S OF A . Again our Lord seeks to get the lawyer to answer himself, so as to condemn himself; He seeks to help him not only to the right answer to his question, but to convince him that the very question itself showed that he had not the love he spoke of, and not the love which he rightly said was demanded by the law. He seeks to do so by vividly setting before him, in a singularly beautiful parable, the nature of genuine and practical love, as exhibited by the Samaritan, in contrast with a merely formal respect for the law, as illustrated by the priest and the Levite. Then, when He has thus got his conscience to bear witness to the depth and breadth and exceeding comprehensiveness of the law, He again tells him to go and do it, to go and obey it as the Samaritan had done. This our Lord again tells him to do, not supposing that he really could do it, but indirectly to convince him that he has not done it, and to lead him to find out that it is not in his power to do it. Christ wishes through the law to draw him to Himself. (Professor R. Flint.) The two great commandments I. THE MANNER AND OF THEIR (see Matthew 22:36, where our Lord Himself gave them). In the text He draws them from the lips of His questioner. Notice, also, that even these two great commandments were not on these occasions invented for the first time by our Divine Lawgiver (Deuteronomy 6:5; Leviticus 19:18). Words that had been lying dormant He brought to life. II. THEIR . 1. One supreme affection is to rule over our whole being--the love of God. The intellect must seek truth with undistracted, fearless zeal; else we do not serve God with our whole mind and understanding. The bodily powers must be guarded and saved for the healthy discharge of all that Providence requires of us in our passage through life; else we do not serve Him with our whole strength. The affections must be kept fresh and pure; else we do not serve Him with our whole heart. The conscience must not have stained itself with secret sills, unworthy transactions, and false pretences; else we do not serve Him with our whole soul. There was an old barbarian chief who, when he was baptized, kept his right arm out of the water that he might still work his deeds of blood. That is the likeness of the imperfect religion of so many Christians. This is what they did who of old, in their zeal for religion, broke their plighted faith, did despite to their natural affections, disregarded the laws of kinship and country, of honour and of mercy. 2. The second of these commandments is like the first. It is the chief mode of fulfilling the first. (1) The measure of the love we owe to others is just what we think owing to ourselves. Observe the equity of this Divine rule. It makes us the judge of what we ought to do. It imposes upon us no duty that we have not already acknowledged for ourselves. Every one of us knows how painful it is to be called by malicious names, to have his character undermined by false insinuations, to be overreached in a bargain, to be neglected by those who rise in life, to be thrust on one side by those who have stronger wills and stouter hearts. Every one knows also the pleasure of receiving a kind look, a warm greeting, a hand held out to help in distress, a difficulty solved, a higher hope revealed for this world or the next. By that pain and by that pleasure judge what you should do to others. (2) The object towards which this love is to extend--“ Thy neighhour.” Every one with whom we are brought into contact. First of all, he is literally our neighbour who is next to us in our own family and household--husband to wife, wife to husband, parent to child, brother to sister,master to servant, servant to master; and then in our own town, in our own parish, in our own street. With these all true charity begins. But, besides these, our neighbour is every one who is thrown across our path by the changes and chances of life--he or she, whomsoever it be, whom we have any means of helping--the unfortunate sufferers whom we may perhaps meet in travelling--the deserted friend whom no one else cares to look after. III. THEIR TO THE OTHER PARTS OF THE , These two commandments are the greatest of all. On them the rest of God’ s revelation depends. By keeping them we inherit the greatest of all gifts. “ This do, and thou shalt live.” (Dean Staney.) The sufficiency of these two commandments It has been observed that sometimes when a man is told that religion and morality are summed up in the two great commandments, he is ready to say, like one who first beholds the sea, “ Is this the mighty ocean? Is this all?” Yes, it is all; but what an all! We know well here what is the view of the ocean. We look out from these shores on that vacant expanse, with its boundless horizon, with its everlasting succession of ebb and tide, and we might perhaps ask, What is this barren sea to us? How vague, how indefinite, how broad, how monotonous; yet, when we look closer at it, it is the scene on which sunlight and moonlight, shade and shadow, are for ever playing. It has been the chosen field for the enterprise, for the faith, for the charity of mankind. It is the highway for the union of nations and the enlargement of churches. It is the bulwark of freedom, and the home of mighty fleets, and the nurse of swarming cities. And so these two commandments. They seem at first sight vacant, vague, and indefinite; but let us trust ourselves to them, let us launch out upon them, let us explore their innermost recesses, let us sound their depths, and we shall find that we shall call forth all the arts and appliances of Christian love. We shall find that they will carry us round the world and beyond it. To love the Lord our God with all our heart, with all our mind, with all our soul, with all our strength--what new fields of thought and activity ought this to open to us when thoroughly studied! It is in proportion as the Bible teaches us the true perfections of God that it becomes to us the Book of God; it is in proportion as the gospel discloses to us those perfections in the most endearing and the most intelligible forms that it becomes to us the revelation of God in Christ; it is in proportion as our hearts and consciences are filled from the fountain of all goodness, that we are able to enter into the true spirit of God, who is worshipped in spirit and in truth. It is, or it ought to be, for the sake of these great commandments that we value and strive to improve the sanctifying and elevating influences of Christian worship, Christian civilization, Christian friendship, Christian homes, and Christian education. It is for the sake of better understanding what God is, and how He wishes us to serve Him, that we value these indications of His will which He has left us in the sure footsteps of science, in the manifold workings of history, of art, of poetry, and of all the various gifts and graces which He has bestowed on earth and on man. “ Let no man,” says Lord Bacon, “ let no man out of weak conceit of sobriety or ill-applied moderation think or maintain that a man can search too far, or be too well supplied, in the Book of God’ s Word or the Book of God’ s works.” That is at least one result of the endeavour to love God with all our understanding and with all our soul. And again, “ to love our neighbour as ourselves” --what a world of Christian duty is here disclosed! How eagerly, for the sake of better serving our neighbours, should we welcome any one who will tell us what is the best and safest mode of administering charity, what is the best mode of education, what is the best means of suppressing intemperance and vice. How eagerly should we all cultivate the opportunities which God has given us, not for keeping men apart, but for bringing them together; how anxiously we should desire to understand the character of neighbouring nations, neighbouring Churches, neighbouring friends, so as to avoid giving them needless offence--so as to bring out their best points and repress their worst, making our own knowledge of our own imperfections and faults the measure of the forbearance which we should exercise to them. How eagerly should we rejoice in everything which increases the countless means that Christianity and civilization employ for the advancement and progress of mankind. These are some of the means of loving our neighbour as ourselves. (Dean Staney.) The two great commandments 1. Let us now consider the first great commandment, “ Thou shalt love the Lord thy God.” The great principle which animated the Jews was not love but fear; “ Fear God and keep His commandments” with them comprehended the whole duty of man. Accustomed to see their enemies punished by the immediate interference of the Deity; and sensible of the sufferings inflicted on themselves for their idolatry and their incessant hankering after the imaginary gods of the heathens, they contemplated the true God rather as an object of fear than of love. Accordingly, in the Old Testament it is the power, the greatness, the holiness, the terrible justice of the Almighty, that is chiefly exhibited, because the Jews were not fitted for the guidance of higher motives. But, in the New Testament, the good-seas, the mercy, the loving-kindness of God are displayed in the most affectionate and attractive form. Every page beams with the benevolence of the Deity. What a beautiful picture of the goodness and mercy of God is exhibited in the parable of the prodigal son! As fear arises from contemplating the power and justice of God, so love is produced by meditating on His wisdom and goodness. But as it is a matter of the highest importance that we should be enabled to determine with certainty whether we really love God, it may be justly asked, What is the plainest and most undoubted proof of love to God? We answer, That which the Scripture declares it to be. He who hath ears to hear, let him hear. “ This,” says the Apostle John, “ is the love of God, that ye keep His commandments.” There is another question still which requires our serious consideration, What are we to understand by loving God with all our heart, with all our soul, and with all our mind? The meaning is, that our desire to please God should be the highest and most vigorous principle, disposing us at all times to prefer our duty to God to every other consideration, and especially to the gratification of all our selfish passions. II. We come now to the second great commandment, “ Thou shalt love thy neigh-bout as thyself.” It is scarcely necessary to observe that there is no inconsistency between loving God and loving our neighbour. It is perhaps of more importance to remark that we cannot sincerely and correctly observe the one without attending to the other, for they are parts of one whole. Accordingly, the Apostle John says, “ If a man love not his brother, whom he hath seen, how can he love God, whom he hath not seen?” 1. To love our neighbour is never to do him any injury; for, says the Apostle Paul, “ love worketh no ill to our neighbour.” Consequently, we ought not to cherish any evil passion against him. 2. We ought also to be always anxious to do our neighbour all the good in our power. 3. But we are required to love our neighbour as ourselves. Then self-love must be a principle which God has implanted, and which He approves, otherwise He would never have recommended it as the standard of our benevolence. Self-love is a desire of happiness; and, if we have just views of happiness, it will never lead us astray. Self-love, too, is to be distinguished from selfishness. The selfish man is wrapped up in himself, and is terrified to do any good to his neighbour, lest he should diminish his own happiness. But the man who is guided by rational self-love knows that the more he goes beyond himself, the more good actions he does to others, the more he will increase and extend his own happiness. III. Consider the observation which our Saviour made on the value of these two grand divisions of the moral law: “ On these two commandments hang all the law and prophets.” By the law and the prophets we are sure are meant the books which contain the law of Moses and the books written by the prophets. These books are here represented by our Saviour as being fixed and suspended to the two commandments and supported by them, so that if the two commandments were withdrawn, the law and the prophets being thus deprived of their necessary support, would fall to the ground, and lose their value and intended effect. (J. Thomson, D. D.) Love to God and our neighbour I. LOVE TO GOD. 1. A principle Divinely implanted in the renewed hearts of believers. 2. It implies a high esteem of God. 3. It implies an earnest desire for communion with God and the enjoyment of Him. 4. Love to God is a judicious principle. 5. An active principle. 6. A supreme love. He must have our whole heart. II. LOVE TO . 1. This grace, too, like the former, is a divinely implanted principle. 2. Loving our neighbour implies that we entertain benevolent dispositions towards him. 3. It implies that we speak well of him. Love tries to conceal reports prejudicial to our neighbour. It imputes his faults, if it can, rather to inadvertence than to habitual premeditated wickedness. In a word, true love deals faithfully and closely with a man’ s faults when it gets him by himself; but as tenderly as possible with them in the presence of others. To this let it be added, that love to our neighbour implies that we do him all the good offices in our power. What avail professions without performance, when it is in our power to perform kind actions? (James Foote, M. A.) Condensed commandments When the late Rev. Dr. Staughton, of America, resided at Bordentown, he was one day sitting at his door, when the infidel Thomas Paine, who also resided there, addressing him, said, “ Mr. Staughton, what a pity it is that a man has not some comprehensive and perfect rule for the government of his life.” Mr. Staughton replied, “ There is such a rule.” “ What is that?” asked Paine. Mr. Staughton repeated the passage, “ Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy mind, with all thy soul, and with all thy strength; and thy neighbour as thyself.” “ Oh,” said Paine, “ that’ s in your Bible,” and immediately walked away. The law of love I. The law of love is not inferior to that of the ten commandments; in other words, love of God and man includes all which these teach at greater length. What saith the first commandment? “ Thou shalt have no other gods before Me.” Is not there even more than this contained in our text? Let love, to any object whatever, reign in a man’ s heart, and his whole being revolts from the idea of doing any injury to the object of his affection. The law of love binds us to keep the first commandment. So with the second. It is obvious that they who have true love to the Lord God as the one spiritual King, eternal, immortal, and invisible, will loathe the attempt of the heathen idolaters to represent the attributes of Deity in the lineaments of a creeping thing, or of a beast, or of a bird, or of the physical nature of man. Or take the third. Does this tell any more than the simple direction, Love God? Could yonder wild blasphemer dare to call for God’ s damnation on his own soul or on that of his fellow-man, to swear by the name of the Holy One, to thread his sentences with oaths, if he had ever learnt to love the great Jehovah whose name he thus dishonours? Take the fourth. If any Jew had spoken of this as a burdensome enactment, it would only have shown that he had not learned to love his God. Then, mark the fifth commandment--“ Honour thy father and thy mother.” We need not say that this is love. What makes a happy home, with kindly trusting parents, and fond, clambering children, with a gleam of heaven shooting across the scene, and a warm glow resting on it all?--what but love? And is not the fifth commandment fulfilled in this? Then take the sixth, and say if it is possible that love can kill. See the skulking figure, with the deadly knife in his hand, with the restless glance of his suspicious eyes, as though he felt that he is watched: see him draw near the victim, who slumbers, all unconscious of danger and death, and say what would stop that murderous hand but love for his fellowman? So with the seventh. Lust breaks through this rule, which love would keep; for lust is selfishness, while love forgets all self. So, briefly, with the eighth. Love would prevent a man from “ whatsoever cloth, or may, unjustly hinder his own or his neighbour’ s wealth or outward estate.” Again, take the ninth. What would stop the voice of slander, and hush the tale of shame, and seal the lips of the liar whose malignant tongue knows no restraint, and stop the story of slander, which circulates so easily over a parish or a nation--what, but this selfsame love? And, once more, look at the tenth commandment. What would check the growth of coveting, and withdraw one man’ s eye from another’ s scant possessions--what but love? Ahab could not have done the deed of Jezreel if his soul had contained the slightest love for Naboth. Thus we see that all the commandments are embraced in love; and, in the same way, it would be easy to show that on its twofold rule hang all the law and the prophets. II. But, further, the law of love is superior, because-- 1. It is positive. 2. It is exhaustive. 3. It begins at the heart. 4. It leads us directly and at once to feel our need of the Spirit of God. (A. H.Charteris, D. D.) The love of God I. THE LOVE OF GOD ITSELF BY ITS NATURE. 1. It is the most sublime virtue. (1) The most sublime of the Divine and moral virtues (1 Corinthians 13:13). (2) The fertile mother of all other virtues and their brightest ornaments. (3) All-powerful in its effects, keeping the heart, so prone to sin, from the depths of spiritual ruin; moving and exciting to, and furnishing the necessary strength for, apparently impossible undertakings. (4) The virtue of the inhabitants of heaven, its exercise being the constant work of angels and saints. 2. It confers on us the highest dignity. (1) By this virtue we are elevated above all creatures of this visible world. They serve God by absolute necessity, but they cannot love Him. (2) By this virtue we are elevated above ourselves. All other virtues remind man of his misery and lowness--faith reminds him of his spiritual blindness; humility, of his foolish pride; chastity, of the disgrace of sensuality. Charity alone elevates without reminding you of your weakness, rendering the soul, as it were, infinite. (3) This virtue confers on us a true nobility. (a) We obtain the freedom of the children of God. (b) We reach by it our perfection, it being the bond of perfectness Colossians 3:14). (c) We enter into the most intimate relation with God, being in a manner deified. 3. The greatest beauty of our holy religion. 4. In the love of God we find true happiness. (1) In this world. Divine love-- (a) renders man infinitely rich by the possession of God; (b) fills the heart with the sweetest delights; (c) causes heavenly peace, which cannot be disturbed either by tribulations or by the sting of the passions; (d) sweetens what is most bitter--all sufferings, and especially death. (2) For eternity. Divine charity is the pledge of life everlasting (1 John 1 Corinthians 2:9). II. How MUCH GOD OUR LOVE. 1. He is the most perfect Being. 2. He is our greatest benefactor. 3. He is infinitely merciful. (Eberhard.) I. DO YOU LOVE GOD AS YOU OUGHT TO LOVE HIM? How we may be convinced that we love God 1. He requires a love of faithfulness and obedience. (1) Do you obey all that He commands? (2) Do you obey in such a manner as He requires of you? (3) Do you obey because God commands? 2. He requires a love of subjection and dependence. Do you possess this love? God is your sovereign Lord, you are His servant, and, as such, you should submit to His dispositions. (1) God deals with-you and your possessions as He wills, that you may lift up your eyes heavenward. Do you say with Job, “ The Lord gave,” &c. (Job 1:21). (2) God humbles you that you may honour Him by your humility. Do you complain, as though God was unjust? (3) God sends you diseases and afflictions. Do you embrace the cross? (4) God scourges with the rod of His wrath the degenerated human race. Do you honour and love Him in this also? 3. A love of preference. Do you love God more than all else? 4. A love of equality. Do you love whatever God loves, and hate whatever He hates? 5. A love of attention and complacency. Does it afford you delight to reflect on God, to converse with Him by prayer, &c.? 6. A love of zeal. 7. A love of desire. Do you long for the possession of God? II. WHAT WE HAVE TO DO IN ORDER TO INFLAME OUR HEARTS WITH THE LOVE OF GOD. 1. We should often call to mind certain eternal truths, and ponder over them. Such truths are the following. (1) All visible things say to us that God is infinitely lovable. (2) God has infinitely loved us. (3) God wills that we should love Him. 2. We should banish from our heart all impure flames of sensual passion. 3. We should endeavour to have a great devotion. (Segaud.) Of the love of God I. THE NATURE OF THIS LOVE. We may describe love in general to be an affection or inclination of the soul toward an object, proceeding from an apprehension and esteem of some excellency or some conveniency therein (its beauty, worth, or usefulness), producing thereon, if the object be absent or wanting, a proportionable desire, and consequently an endeavour to obtain such a propriety therein, such a possession thereof, such an approximation or union thereto, as the thing is capable of; also a regret and displeasure in the failing so to obtain it, or in the want, absence, and loss thereof; likewise begetting a complacence, satisfaction, and delight in its presence, possession, or enjoyment; which is moreover attended with a good-will thereto, suitable to its nature; that is, with a desire that it should arrive unto and continue in its best state; with a delight to perceive it so to thrive and flourish; with a displeasure to see it suffer or decay in any wise; with a consequent endeavour to advance it in all good, and preserve it from all evil. The chief properties of the love, we owe to God are these: 1, A right apprehension and firm persuasion concerning God, and consequently a high esteem of Him as most excellent in Himself and most beneficial to us. 2. Another property of this love is an earnest desire of obtaining a propriety in God; of possessing Him, in a manner, and enjoying Him; of approaching Him, and being, so far as may be, united to Him. 3. Coherent with this is a third property of this love, that is, a great complacence, satisfaction, and delight in the enjoyment of God in the sense of having such a propriety in Him; in the partaking those emanations of favour and beneficence from Him; and, consequently, in the instruments conveying, in the means conducing to such enjoyment, for joy and content are the natural fruits of obtaining what we love, what we much value, what we earnestly desire. 4. The feeling much displeasure and regret in being deprived of such enjoyment in the absence or distance, as it were, of God from us; the loss or lessening of His favour; the subtraction of His gracious influences from us: for surely answerable to the love we bear unto anything will be our grief for the want or loss thereof. 5. Another property of this love is, to bear the highest goodwill toward God; so as to wish heartily and effectually, according to our power, to procure all good to Him, and to delight in it; so as to endeavour to prevent and to remove all evil, if I may so speak, that may befal Him, and to be heartily displeased therewith. II. To the effecting of which purposes I shall next propound some MEANS conducible; some in way of removing obstacles, others by immediately promoting the duty. Of the first kind are these ensuing: 1. The destroying of all loves opposite to the love of God; extinguishing all affection to things odious and offensive to God; mortifying all corrupt and perverse, all unrighteous and unholy desires. 2. If we would obtain this excellent grace, we must restrain our affections toward all other things, however in their nature innocent and indifferent. B. The freeing of our hearts also from immoderate affection to ourselves; for this is a very strong bar against the entrance, as of all other charity, so especially of this; for as the love of an external object doth thrust, as it were, our soul outwards towards it; so the love of ourselves detains it within, or draws it inwards; and consequently these inclinations crossing each other cannot both have effect, but one will subdue and destroy the other. These are the chief obstacles, the removing of which conduces to the begetting and increasing the love of God in us. A soul so cleansed from love to bad and filthy things, so emptied of affection to vain and unprofitable things, so opened and dilated by excluding all conceit of, all confidence in itself, is a vessel proper for the Divine love to be infused into: into so large and pure a vacuity (as finer substances are apt to flow of themselves into spaces void of grosser matter) that free and moveable spirit of Divine grace will be ready to succeed, and therein to disperse itself. As all other things in nature, the clogs being removed which binder them, do presently tend with all their force to the place of their rest and well-being; so would, it seems, our souls, being loosed from baser affections obstructing them, willingly incline toward God, the natural centre, as it were, and bosom of their affection; would resume, as Origen speaks, that natural filter (that intrinsic spring, or incentive of love) which all creatures have toward their Creator; especially, if to these we add those positive instruments, which are more immediately and directly subservient to the production of this love. They are these: 1. Attentive consideration of the Divine perfections, with endeavour to obtain a right and clear apprehension of them. 2. The consideration of God’ s works and actions; His works and actions of nature, of Providence, of grace. 3. Serious regard and reflection on the peculiar benefits by the Divine goodness vouchsafed to ourselves. 4. An earnest resolution and endeavour to perform God’ s commandments, although on inferior considerations of reason; on hope, fear, desire to obtain the benefits of obedience, to shun the mischiefs from sin. 5. Assiduous prayer to Almighty God that He in mercy would please to bestow His love on us, and by His grace to work it in us. These are the means which my meditation did suggest as conducing to the production and growth of this most excellent grace in our souls. III. I should lastly propound some inducements apt to stir us up to the endeavour of procuring it, and to the exercise thereof, by representing to your consideration the blessed fruits and benefits (both by way of natural causality and of reward) accruing from it; as also the woful consequences and mischiefs springing from the want thereof. (I. Barrow, D. D.) Love renders all our services acceptable It is not so much the thing done, as the spirit in which it is done, which is of such great moment. For love is an affection of the heart and will, and we know that very small tokens, the merest trifles, will evince it; and that, when it is evinced, it has a peculiar power of winning its way both with God and man. Suppose a great fortune laid out in building churches, or relieving the poor, under the pressure of servile fear, and with the design of expiating sin, or a great philanthropic enterprise inaugurated and maintained from ambitious motives; can it be supposed that such acts, however it may please Him to bless the effects of them, go for anything with God as regards the doer of them. And, on the other hand, suppose some very simple, commonplace action, something not going at all beyond the circle of routine and daily duty, done with a grateful, affectionate feeling towards God, and from a simple desire to please Him, and to win His approval--can it be supposed that such an action, however trifling in itself, does not go for something, nay, for much, with God? The love of Him with all the heart, and mind, and soul, and strength, is “ the first and great commandment.” One movement of that love gives to the commonest action the fragrance of a sacrifice; while, without one movement of it, the costliest offering must of necessity be rejected. “ If a man should give all the substance of his house for love, it would utterly be contemned.” (Dean Goulburn.) Love may be cultivated How shall we cultivate this charity? Now I observe, first, love cannot be produced by a direct action of the soul upon itself. You cannot love by a resolve to love. That is as impossible as it is to move a boat by pressing it from within. The force with which you press on is exactly equal to that with which you press back. The reaction is exactly equal to the action. You force backwards exactly as much as you force on. There are religious persons who, when they feel their affections cooled, strive to warm them by self-reproach, or by unnatural efforts, or by the excitement of what they call revivals--trying to work themselves into a state of warm affection. There are others who hope to make feeble love strong by using strong words. Now, for all this they pay a price. Effort of heart is followed by collapse. Excitement is followed by exhaustion. They will find that they have cooled exactly in that proportion in which they warmed, and at least as fast. It is as impossible for a man to work himself into a state of genuine fervent love as it is for a man to inspire himself. Inspiration is a breath and a life coming from without. Love is a feeling roused not from ourselves, but from something outside ourselves. There are, however, two methods by which we may cultivate this charity. 1. By doing acts which love demands. It is God’ s merciful law that feelings are increased by acts done on principle. If a man has not the feeling in its warmth, let him not wait till the feeling comes. Let him act with such feelings as he has; with a cold heart if he has not got a warm one; it will grow warmer while he acts. You may love a man merely because you have done him benefits, and so become interested in him, till interest passes into anxiety, and anxiety into affection. You may acquire courtesy of feeling at last, by cultivating courteous manner. The dignified politeness of the last century forced man into a kind of unselfishness in small things, which the abrupter manners of to-day will never teach. And say what men will of rude sincerity, these old men of urbane manners were kinder at heart with real good-will, than we are with that rude bluffness which counts it a loss of independence to be courteous to any one. Gentleness of manner had some influence on gentleness of heart. So in the same way, it is in things spiritual. If our hearts are cold, and we find it hard to love God and be affectionate to man, we must begin with duty. Duty is not Christian liberty, but it is the first step towards liberty. We are free only when we love what we are to do, and those to whom we do it. Let a man begin in earnest with--I ought; he will end, by God’ s grace, if he persevere, with the freeblessedness of--I will. Let him force himself to abound in small offices of kindliness, attention, affectionateness, and all those for God’ s sake. By and by he will feel them become the habit of his soul. By and by, walking in the conscientiousness of refusing to retaliate when he feels tempted, he will cease to wish it; doing good and heaping kindness on those who injure him, he will learn to love them. For he has spent a treasure there, “ And where the treasure is, there will be the heart also.” 2. The second way of cultivating Christian love is by contemplating the love of God. You cannot move the boat from within; but you may obtain a purchase from without. You cannot create love in the soul by force from within itself, but you may move it from a point outside itself. God’ s love is the point from which to move the soul. Love begets love. Love believed in, produces a return of love; we cannot love because we must. “ Must” kills love; but the law of our nature is that we love in reply to love. No one ever yet hated one whom he believed to love him truly. We may be provoked by the pertinacity of an affection which asks what we cannot give; but we cannot hate the true love which does not ask but gives. Now, this is the eternal truth of Christ’ s gospel, “ We love Him because He first loved us.” “ Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another.” “ God is love.” (F. W. Robertson, M. A.) Is it necessary to understand God in order to love Him? It is said that it is impossible to love God; and the reason alleged is, He is beyond our understanding. The very description of His being Omnipotent, Omniscient, Omnipresent, are terms that daunt us. “ I cannot form any conception of such vastness as this. I can measure the mountains, but these even make me falter as I give out the lengths and heights of their measurement. How much more so, when the measurement is simply immeasurable? When it is vast, infinite, is it not also vague? I cannot understand, and therefore I will not love.” But is that true? Men and women, is it true that I cannot love where I cannot understand? Go into the midst of your own homes, and watch the face that looks up from her work to glance at you. The toil of your business, the anxiety of your duties, or, if you are scientific, the vastness of those lucubrations which are occupying your time, the splendid calculations, the measureless periods and vast issues which you are considering, occupy your mind; but is the very smallest tittle of these in any degree comprehensible by her who sits beside you? Is it not rather true, in the words of our own laureate, that “ Though she cannot understand, yet she loves.” She loves, and though she knows that your mind is expatiating in vaster fields than her intellect can follow, yet still that very vastness of your knowledge and comprehension, in comparison with hers, gives her no uneasy sense of a vague might which she cannot love, but rather gives her a sweet sense of confidence in might which she cannot fathom. Or, the child that leaps to greet you on the threshold of your home--are you going to discredit the reality of its little love, because it cannot penetrate the mysteries of the Stock Exchange, or understand the fluctuations of shares and of bills? You know perfectly well that it is very possible, nay, daily life proves it certain, that there are hundreds among us who give out a full unalloyed love, even where their comprehension is staggered by the vastness of that which they cannot understand. So is it surely with God. This great world, this limitless heaven above us, those stars, whose distances we have not calculated, these worlds hung in dizzy space, do they give us such an overwhelming sense of His vastness as to make it impossible for us to love Him? Do they not rather, if we understand that not a little flower blows, nor little stream trickles to its valley below, but does so under His guidance, and is directed by His hand, give us the vastest confidence in Him, whose boundless nature is so great, that, fall where we will, we cannot fall out of the embrace of His love? No, it is false to say you cannot love where you cannot comprehend. (Bishop Boyd Carpenter.) Love the law of life What a strange and startling command, to be ordered to love! If self-dictation over the heart is impossible, as we suppose, who is the master that can pretend to command us to love him? What tyrant, in his most imperious moment ever dreamed of such a demand? Yet God assumes the entry even of this last refuge. It is a rule of His dominion that He shall be loved. Love of God--love of our neighbour: these constitute the sole titles of admission to the kingdom, the sole claims on life. We may plead a hundred other obediences, but no other is of any avail whatever. One command, and one only, has been given, “ Theft shalt love.” One thing then certainly Christ, our King, presumes to do; He presumes to have the entire command of our affections. What can justify such a claim? I. WHO IS IT WHO DEMANDS LOVE OF US? It is our Maker, who made us not by any binding necessity, nor yet for any play or pastime of His own, but solely because the very core of His innermost Being is Fatherhood: He is God because He is the Eternal Father; the Fatherhood is His Godhead. Fatherhood is the love which passionately delights in seeing its own life’ s joy reproduced in another. Sonship is that love which passionately delights in recognizing that its life is owing to another, belongs to another, is dedicated to another. Love, then, is a natural necessity between human parent and child; and love, therefore, belongs by the same necessity to our Divine relationships. God has undeniable right to this demand; but--II. WHO ARE WE THAT WE SHOULD LOVE GOD? We go our own way; we follow our own tastes; we have joys and sorrows, friends and foes of our own. All this fills up our days and occupies our minds; and where is there any room for the love of a far-away invisible God? We are here on earth to find out what love means: and all true love begins in the love of God who loved us. At whatever risk, at whatever cost, we must attain to this love. How, then, to put some meaning into it? We must secure and foster the condition of our sonship; and what does this signify? It signifies this: that the entire movements of our lives must set outward, away from ourselves. (Canon Scott Holland, M. A.) Love to God These words never came from men. Earth never could have heard them if they had not come down from heaven. I. HERE WE SEE THE VERY HEART OF GOD. He is Love who speaketh thus. II. This is the first and great commandment; BECAUSE ALL ELSE FLOWS FROM IT. III. AS LOVE ONLY SEEKS, SO ONLY LOVE WINS LOVE. IV. LOVE LOVE, V. AS GOD’ S LOVE IS THE SOURCE OF OUR LOVE, SO IT IS THE PATTERN OF OUR LOVE. (Mark Guy Pearse.) Loving God with the heart I. TO LOVE GOD WITH THE HEART IS TO DELIGHT IN HIM. II. TO LOVE GOD WITH THE HEART IS TO DELIGHT MOST OF ALL IN HIS . III. TO LOVE GOD WITH THE HEART IS TO HOLD AND ALL WE ARE AS TO GOD. (Mark Guy Pearse.) Morality and religion You will observe there are several “ ands” in the passage, and that all the earlier ones, though very useful, are merely additions; but here [“ AND thy neighbour” ] is an equalising copulative, a word which brings two sentences together as the two sides of an equation, and which will not permit you to take the first part of the sentence as the declaration of the Saviour, but which requires you to take it in its wholeness. It is not enough to “ love the Lord thy God,” nor is it enough to “ love thy neighbour as thyself,” you must do both; and therefore that “ and” stands as none of the others do, and as almost no other such single common word does in the great realm of literature. The love of God is put first in order, probably from the dignity of the personage spoken of; it is in the order of importance, but not of time. We do not first love the Lord our God with all our heart, and then learn to love our neighbour as ourselves. We learn to love our neighbour, and from that point, through practice, we come to a condition in which we love our God. So then, these two members or sides of this wonderful sentence, this charter of human life, may be said to represent religion and morality. “ Thou shalt love the Lord thy God” --that is, thou shalt worship Him, reverence Him, acknowledge Him and look up to Him, in every inflection of experience-this stands appropriately for religion; and the other--“ Thou shelf love thy neighbour as thyself” --stands appropriately and properly for morality. I. WHAT, THEN, IS THE SPHERE AND OF ; its educating force; its final intent? Morality includes-- 1. Duties to oneself, personal duties, sustenance, defence. 2. Social duties--the duties of the family and the neighbourhood. 3. The relations in which we stand to the larger community represented by the Government in all its forms. Here, then, I pause in the discussion, having shown in the first place what moralities are--namely, that they are in their highest and best sense, these duties which men owe to themselves, to their households, to civil society, to their social relations in this world and in time; and also, that morality, in one form and at each stage, prepares for the next higher development of it and the next advance in growth; and likewise, interiorly, that every true morality tends to develope itself in a higher class of faculties. So that, finally-- II. EVERY THAT DOES NOT GO ON TO A FORM IS STOPPED AND DWARFED. Men say, “ I am not a religious man, but still I do about as well as I know how.” Is that rational? What would you say of men who should voyage to a distant country, and make only those provisions which were necessary for them while they stayed at home? Death cuts men in two, and leaves the bottom here, and there is no top to go there. Do not understand me as saying that morality is of no use. It is very useful; it is the seed-ground of immortality; and I go further and say, it is better that you should have that, even if you have no religion, than that you should have no religion and not that either. Therefore when I preach that you must be born again, when I preach that the new life in Christ Jesus, wrought by the power of God, must be in you, do not think that I undervalue the lower forms by which you come to the possibility of these things, They are of transcendant importance, but do not believe that they are enough. Straw that never ripens its grain is straw, plants that throw out leaves and do not blossom are mere grass and herbs and not flowers. Trees and vines that bring forth no fruit are not fruit vines, nor fruit trees. (H. W. Beecher.) Loving God with the mind Christ claims that God is to be loved with all our nature. They who love God, then, with the heart only, do sin. You are to love God with all your mind, with your brain, and thought, and power; with reason and with argument; with learning and knowledge. No pretence that you love God with your heart absolves you from loving Him with your mind. Did it ever strike you that being ignorant is disservice to God; so much withdrawn from the Almighty? To the degree that you refuse to study the sublime in nature: to that degree I have no pity for your ignorance. It is a failure in your service; a coldness in your love to God. If you love God with all your mind you will do what you do when you love a great author. You may say, “ Of all authors I think Shakespeare the greatest; but I have never read one of his plays, never studied one of his sonnets.” Indeed I what do you do, then, to show your love to Shakespeare? “ Oh, I talk about him.” He who loves an author well, turns his pages again and again; weighs his words and marks their construction. If he reads the “ Merchant of Venice,” he studies it attentively, and proposes to himself to go back to his labour of love again and again. I don’ t know who is your darling; but I know it is the anther with whom you are most familiar. And that is what loving God with all your mind is. The three great volumes of God which you should study are before every one of you: Nature, History, and the Bible. (George Dawson.) The second great commandment Practically a new chapter was opened in the history of morals when Jesus announced that within this solitary principle of duty, “ Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself,” room could be found for every commandment in the Second Table of the Decalogue. 1. The affection which fulfils the whole law is an ethical principle, and not simply an instinctive or generous affection. 2. The neighbour-love which fulfils God’ s law possesses a compass as wide as the species, and is thereby raised above every rule of moral obligation which obtained popular currency before Christ. 3. This neighbour-love which fulfils the law forms an express counteractive and equivalent to selfishness as a motive of conduct. 4. This golden rule will carry us a great deal further than the merely negative virtue of working no harm, which, in its terms, is all that the Decalogue calls for. (J. O. Dykes, D. D.) The Saviour’ s great rule There are fundamental truths which lie at the bottom, the basis upon which a great many others rest, and in which they have their consistency. There are teeming truths, rich in store, with which they furnish the mind; and like the lights of heaven, are not only beautiful and entertaining in themselves, but give light and evidence to other things, that without them could not be seen or known. Our Saviour’ s great rule, that we should love our neighbours as ourselves, is such a fundamental truth for the regulating human society, that I think that by that alone one might without difficulty determine all the cases and doubts in social morality. Truths such as this we should endeavour to find out and store our minds with. (W. Locke.) The sum of duty like the ocean When a man is told that the whole of religion and morality is summed up in the two commandments, to love God and to love our neighbor, he is ready to cry, like Charoba in Gebir at the first sight of the sea, “ Is this the mighty ocean? is this all?” Yes! all; but how small a part of it do your eyes survey! Only trust yourself to it; launch out upon it: sail abroad over it; you will find it has no end; it will carry you round the world. (British Weekly.) Loving God with the mind I have known people love God with the heart, and yet talk as if the works of God were not worth studying. What is the use, they say, of studying God in his works? Ah! he who loves a woman well, loves the very trinkets she wears. Whoso loves a man well, loves every hair of his head. All, everything, even the smallest thing, is glowing with preciousness, and is made glorious by the deep love of the heart. For a man, therefore, on the plea of loving God with his heart, not to love Him with his mind, is to offer but a part. Who are you, that you should look upon Nature in her beauty, and behold the green fields and the trees, every leaf of which is full of the life of God, every blade of grass a passing mystery, a consummate divineness--who are you that you should turn from that volume and say, “ I love God with my heart and not with my mind.” There is no excuse for you if you know nothing about Nature. Do you say you have no time for these things? One flower from your table, if you will study it, will be more than a garden; one rose is worth more attention than all your furniture. No time? You can find plenty of time to study your own foolish garments; and have you no time to study the garments of God? Whoso shall watch the sun, and ask a few questions about his rising, shall find that one hour of study shall make him more instructed than before in regard to the great works of God. Therefore, a part of loving God with the mind is to study God’ s works. It is not “ necessary to salvation,” as it is called, but it is necessary to large love, for God is not loved with the mind by stupid people. (George Dawson.) Thy neighbour as thyself Fraternal charity I. WORKS OF CHARITY ARE TO GOD. We infer this-- 1. From the urgency with which this commandment is enjoined upon us by Jesus Christ. (1) He places it on a par with the love of God (Matthew 22:37-39). (2) He urges it as being emphatically His own (John 15:12). (3) He states most anxiously the true meaning of this commandment--a precaution usually observed with matters of the greatest importance (John 13:34). 2. From man’ s relation to God: he being his Maker’ s image and likeness. The essence of Christian brotherly love consists in loving our neighbour for God’ s sake; not only from reverence for the Divine commandment, but from sacred reverence and love for God’ s own nature which is reflected in man. 3. From God’ s view of charitable works. He considers them as done to Himself. II. THE VALUE OF WORKS FOR OUR OWN AND ETERNAL WELFARE. The rewards or effects of fraternal charity are as follows-- 1. An abundance of Divine blessings, by which God restores a hundredfold what, from love towards Him, we give to His poor children. 2. Divine mercy, which opens its treasures principally to the merciful. 3. An exceedingly great reward in eternity. (P. Beckx.) Of the love of our neighbour I. THE OBJECT OF THIS DUTY. Our neighbour, i.e., every man with whom we have to do, especially every Christian. II. THE . 1. Loving our neighbour “ as ourselves” doth import a rule directing what kind of love we should bear and exercise toward him; or informing us that our charity doth consist in having the same affections of soul, and in performing the same acts of beneficence toward him as we are ready by inclination, as we are wont in practice to have or to perform toward ourselves, with full approbation of our judgment and conscience, apprehending it just and reasonable so to do. 2. Loving our neighbour as ourselves imports also the measure of our love towards him; that it should be commensurate with, and equal in degree to that love which we bear and exercise towards ourselves. This is that perfection of charity to which our Lord bids us aspire, in the injunction, “ Be ye perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect.” That this sense of the words is included, yea, chiefly intended, divers reasons will evince; feral. The most natural signification and common use of the phrase doth import thus much; and any one at first hearing would so understand the words. 2. It appeareth by comparing this precept with that to which it is annexed, “ of loving God with all our heart and all our soul” ; which manifestly designeth the quantity and degree of that love; consequently the like determination is intended in this precept, which is expressed to resemble that, or designed in like manner to qualify and bound our duty toward our neighbour. 3. If the law doth not signify thus much, it cloth hardly signify anything; not at least anything of direction or use to us; for no man is ignorant that he is obliged to love his neighbour, but how far that love must extend is the point wherein most of us do need to be resolved, and without satisfaction in which we shall hardly do anything; for as he that oweth money will not pay except he can tell how much it is; so to know the duty will not avail toward effectual observance of it, if its measure be not fixed. 4. Indeed, the law otherwise understood will rather be apt to misguide than to direct us; inducing us to apprehend that we shall satisfy its intent, and sufficiently discharge our duty, by practising charity in any low degree or mean instance. Also-- 5. The former sense, which is unquestionable, doth infer and establish this: because similitude of love, morally speaking, cannot consist with inequality thereof; for if in considerable degrees we love ourselves more than others, assuredly we shall fail both in exerting such internal acts of affection, and in performing such external offices of kindness toward them, as we do exert and perform in regard to ourselves; whence this law, taken merely as a rule, demanding a confused and imperfect similitude of practice, will have no clear obligation or certain efficacy. But, farther, the duty thus interpreted is agreeable to reason, and may be justly required of us. 1. It is reasonable that we should love our neighbour as ourselves because he is as ourselves, or really in all considerable respects the same with us. This explained. 2. It is just that we should do so, because he really no less deserves our love. Justice is impartial, and regards things as they are in themselves; whence, if our neighbour seem worthy of affection no less than we, it demands accordingly that we love him no less. 3. It is fit that we should be obliged to this love, because all charity beneath self-love is defective, and all self-love above charity is excessive. 4. Equity requires it, because we are apt to claim the same measure of love from others. 5. It is needful that so great charity be prescribed, because none inferior to it will reach divers weighty ends designed in this law; viz., the general convenience and comfort of our lives in mutual intercourse and society. 6. That entire love which we owe to God our Creator, and to Christ our Redeemer, exacts from us no less a measure of charity than this. 7. Indeed the whole tenour and genius of our religion imply an obligation to this pitch of love on various accounts. 8. Lastly, many conspicuous examples, proposed for our direction in this kind of practice, do imply this degree of charity to be required of us. III. AN . If, it may be said, the precept be thus understood, as to oblige us to love our neighbours equally with ourselves, it will prove unpracticable, such a charity being merely romantic and imaginary; for who doth, who can, love his neighbour in this degree? Nature powerfully doth resist, common sense plainly doth forbid that we should do so: a natural instinct cloth prompt us to love ourselves, and we are forcibly driven thereto by an unavoidable sense of pleasure and pain, resulting from the constitution of our body and soul, so that our own least good or evil are very sensible to us: whereas we have no such potent inclination to love others; we have no sense, or a very faint one, of what another doth enjoy or endure; doth not, therefore, nature plainly suggest that our neighbour’ s good cannot be so considerable to us as our own? especially when charity doth clash with self-love, or when there is a competition between our neighbour’ s interest and our own, is it possible that we should not be partial to our own side? Is not, therefore, this precept such as if we should be commanded to fly, or to do that which natural propension will certainly hinder? In answer to this exception I say, Be it so, that we can never attain to love our neighbour altogether so much as ourselves, yet may it be reasonable that we should be enjoined to do so; for laws must not be depressed to our imperfection, nor rules bent to our obliquity; but we must ascend toward the perfection of them, and strive to conform our practice to their exactness. But neither is the performance of this task so impossible, or so desperately hard (if we take the right course, and use proper means toward it) as is supposed; as may somewhat appear if we will weigh the following considerations. 1. Be it considered that we may be mistaken in our account, when we do look on the impossibility or difficulty of such a practice, as it appeareth at present, before we have seriously attempted, and in a good method, by due means, earnestly laboured to achieve it; for many things cannot be done at first, or with a small practice, which by degrees and a continued endeavour may be effected; divers things are placed at a distance, so that without passing through the interjacent way we cannot arrive at them; divers things seem hard before trial, which afterward prove very easy. It is impossible to fly up to the top of a steeple, but we may ascend thither by steps; we cannot get to Rome without crossing the seas, and travelling through France or Germany; it is hard to comprehend a subtle theorem in geometry, if we pitch on it first; but if we begin at the simple principles, and go forward through the intermediate propositions, we may easily obtain a demonstration of it. If we would set ourselves to exercise charity in those instances whereof we are at first capable without much reluctancy, and thence proceed toward others of a higher nature, we may find such improvement, and taste such content therein that we may soon arise to incredible degrees thereof; and at length, perhaps, we may attain to such a pitch, that it will seem to us base and vain to consider our own good before that of others in any sensible measure; and that nature which now so mightily doth contest in favour of ourselves, may in time give way to a better nature, born of custom, affecting the good of others. 2. Let us consider that in some respects and in divers instances it is very feasible to love our neighbour no less than ourselves. 3. We see men inclined by other principles to act as much or more for the sake of others, than they would for themselves--instances of patriots and friends. 4. Those dispositions of soul which usually with so much violence thwart the observance of this precept, are not ingredients of true self-love, by the which we are directed to regulate our charity, but a spurious brood of our folly and pravity, which imply not a sober love of ourselves. 5. Indeed, we may farther consider that our nature is not so absolutely averse to the practice of such charity, as those may think who view it slightly, either in some particular instances, or in ordinary practice. Man having received his soul from the breath of God, and being framed after His image, there do yet abide in him some features resembling the Divine original. This shown by our natural sympathy with distress and misery, by our admiration of pure benevolence, and contempt of sordid selfishness, &c. 6. But supposing the inclinations of a depraved nature do so mightily obstruct the performance of this duty in the degree specified, yet we must remember that a subsidiary power is by the Divine mercy dispensed to us, able to control and subdue nature, and raise our faculties far above their natural force. 7. There are divers means conducive to the abatement of this difficulty, the issue of which may be safely referred to the due trial of them. 1. Let us carefully weigh the value of those things which immoderate self-love affects in prejudice to charity, together with the worth of those which charity sets in balance to them. 2. Let us also consider our real state in the world, in dependence on the pleasure and providence of Almighty God; the thought that we are members of one commonwealth, and of the Church, under the government and patronage of God, may disengage us from immoderate respect of private good, and incline us to promote the common welfare. 3. There is one plain way of rendering this duty possible, or of perfectly reconciling charity to self-love; which is, a making the welfare of our neighbour to be our own; which if we can do, then easily may we desire it more seriously, then may we promote it with the greatest zeal and vigour; for then it will be an instance of self-love to exercise charity; then both these inclinations conspiring will march evenly together, one will not extrude nor depress the other. 4. It will greatly conduce to the perfect observance of this rule if we studiously contemplate ourselves, strictly examining our conscience, and seriously reflecting on our unworthiness and vileness. If we do so, what place can there be for that vanity, arrogance, partiality, and injustice, which are the sources of immoderate self-love? 5. Lastly, we may from conspicuous examples and experiments be assured that such a practice of this duty is not impossible. (L Barrow, D. D.) Love to man the offspring of love to God I hold that the power to love man always grows in proportion to the love that you have to give. That is the New Testament thought upon the subject. That is what our Lord meant when He added--and remember He added it scrupulously, because He wished, as it were, to link it with the former--“ The second is like unto it--Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” Not like it in being arepetition of words cast in the same form, but like it in this, that, as child is like parent, so the duty of loving the neighbour resembles the duty of loving God, and springs from it, is caused by it, is necessitated by it. Look at it, and say, is it not true? Whenever a great man dies, there is immediately an anxiety possessing the public mind to be possessed of little tokens of his life. What do those anxieties mean? This entry is longer than a Bible module can hold. The rest is at https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/bi/ Luke 10:28 This do, and thou shalt live Eternal life promised the obedient I. WHAT IS IMPLIED IN OBEYING GOD’ S . It is easy to see in what obedience to the Divine commands consists. It must consist in doing what the commands of God require. The two great commands of the law require love to God and love to man. And to exercise this love is to obey these commands. II. GOD ETERNAL LIFE TO ALL WHO OBEY HIS , or exercise those holy and benevolent affections which His commands require, III. WHY GOD ETERNAL LIFE TO ALL WHO AND OBEY HIS . 1. God does not promise eternal life to all who obey His commands, because their sincere and cordial obedience atones for their sin, and lays a foundation for pardon, for forgiveness, or justification in His sight. After men have once sinned, their future obedience can make no atonement for past transgression. Perfect obedience is their constant and indispensable duty. 2. Nor does God promise eternal life to those who obey Him, because their obedience merits eternal life. Though obedience to the Divine commands is really virtuous and intrinsically excellent, yet it is not meritorious. The obedience of a creature can lay no obligation upon his Creator. 3. He does promise eternal life to them because their obedience is a proper ground, reason, or condition, for bestowing upon them such a gracious and unmerited reward. (N. Emmons, D. D.) The necessity of moral obedience I. THE OF MORAL AS A TO . Why was the gospel given? What did Christ come into the world for? Doubtless to relieve wretchedness, to dissipate error, to revive hope, to take away condemnation, to make death and the grave unfeared, to light up with brightness the whole face of the world. But was this all? Was it not also to destroy sin, to promote holiness, to cast out Satan from His dominion, to repair the broken and effaced image of paradise, to magnify the victories of the cross, to illustrate the agency of a new principle in man’ s heart, to form a character which angels might consort with, and God might look upon? We must insist upon such moral obedience as man has power to render, as being vital to his salvation; must close the doors of the kingdom of heaven against everything that defiles; must propound as an eternal axiom of the heavenly moralities, that in every nation he that feareth God, and worketh righteousness, and he only, is accepted of Him. “ This do, and thou shalt live.” II. THE PERFECT OF SUCH A WITH OUR VIEWS OF THE OF BY FAITH. If I am asked to show a man the way of salvation, I am as little at liberty to omit saying to him, “ Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ,” as I am, in reference to the unchanging demands of the moral law, to omit saying, “ This do and thou shalt live.” But it will be said, if you thus insist upon moral obedience, or works of godliness as vital to salvation, do you not in effect make these works an element of justification? I answer, We do; but not a meritorious element, any more than we make faith a meritorious element. Faith itself is a work; is put down in Scripture among our commanded endeavours after obedience. “ Then said they unto Him, What shall we do that we may work the works of God? Jesus answered and said unto them, This is the work of God, that ye believe on Him whom He hath sent.” Let us not put asunder what God hath joined together; let us not weaken the everlasting bond which unites the faith of justification with the sanctities of life. (D. Moore, M. A.) Luke 10:29-37 And who is my neighbour?--Self-justification The lawyer said--“ Then comes his own particular plea or excuse, to which I intend to pay little or no attention now, it was so completely and triumphantly answered by Jesus Christ. Read His parable in reply. Next to the parable of the prodigal son, it is the sweetest word ever spoken even by the lips of Jesus Christ. I. I intend each man to fill up the sentence for himself, only having from the lawyer the preface: “ He, willing to justify himself, said--“ What words do you insert after the word “ said” ? How is it with your self-justifying and self-excusing heart? Do I hear correctly when I say you are now reasoning thus--“ If I am sincere in my spirit and convictions, no matter whether I believe what is in the Bible or not, all will be well with me here and hereafter” ? Is that a correct statement of what you are now thinking? It sounds well. I admit, with all candour, that it seems to sound conclusively and to admit of no refutation. Yet it surely will admit of a question or two being put, in order that we may fully understand the position. You speak of sincerity. I ask, What are you sincere in? Does anything turn upon the object of your sincerity? If you are sincerely giving to a customer over your counter what you believe to be the thing he has asked for, will you be fully justified in the day that you find you have poisoned the man? You sincerely believed that you were giving him precisely the very ingredient that he asked for, and that he had paid for, but you do not give him that ingredient, but something else, and ere the sun go down the man will be dead. What does sincerity go for there? If you indicate to a traveller, sincerely, to the best of your knowledge, the road along which he ought to go to reach a certain destination; if it be the wrong road, and if in some sudden darkness the man should fall over a precipice, will your sincerity obliterate everything like self-reproach? Were you sure it was the road? “ No, but I was sincere in thinking it was.” Did you explain to the man that you were speaking upon an assumption? “ No, I thought there was no occasion to do so, I felt so sure.” But you see that the mere element of sincerity goes a very short way in cases of that kind. We love sincerity. Without sincerity life is but a mockery, the worst of irony! But what are we sincere in? Have we ascertained that the object of our sincerity is real, true, and deserving of our confidence? We are responsible not only for the light we have, but for the light we may have. There is a sincerity of fanaticism, as well as a sincerity of philosophy. There is a sincerity of ignorance, as well as a sincerity of knowledge. Merely, therefore, to say, “ I am sincere,” is to say nothing. We must inquire, what is the object upon which your sincerity fixes itself’ ? what is the degree of its intelligence, and what is the degree of its conscience? When any man has returned clear earnest answers to these inquiries, my belief is that he will find himself short of something, and that that something which is absent will be found to be the truth as it is in Jesus--the Cross, the one Cross, out of which every other cross that is true anduseful must be made! II. But he, willing to justify himself, said, “ I have been looking round, and it strikes me that I am every whir as good as other people that are about me.” Would it be rude to contradict you? Will it be polite to admit the truthfulness, generally, of what you say? Either on the one hand or the other it does not touch the point at all. If the question lay between you and me, it would be right for each to compare himself with the other, and to exalt his superiority at the expense of his brother’ s infirmities. The case is not as between one man and another. We err in circumscribing the question so. The question is between the soul and God; between the heart and the absolutely right; between man and Jesus Christ; between right and wrong. When you compare yourself with another man, especially to your own advantage, you are not in the spirit which is likely to elicit the truth and lead you to sound and useful conclusions. Your disposition is wrong; your temper is wrong. You must cease such a method of comparing advantages and honours, and must go to the absolute and final standard of righteousness. III. But he, willing to justify himself, said, “ Though I do not believe and act as they do who call themselves Christians, yet I trust to the mercy of God.” The man who makes this plea talks in some such fashion as this: “ I do not care for doctrines; I do not care for churches; theologies trouble me very little indeed; if I live as wisely as I can, and do what is tolerably fair between one man and another, I shall trust to the mercy of God, and I believe all will be right at last.” Do you know what you are talking about in talking so? Do you understand the value and the force of your own words? Are you aware that the word mercy is one of the words in our language which it is very difficult to understand? What is mercy? In your estimation, perhaps, it is mere physical sensibility, simple emotion--a gush of feeling. Is that mercy? No. What is mercy? The highest point of justice--justice returning and completing itself by the return. Mercy is justice in tears! Mercy is righteousness with a sword just transforming itself into a sceptre! Is mercy a mere freak of sentimentality? Do you think God will say at last, “ Well, well, come in, come in, and say nothing more about it” ? I would not go into His heaven if the conditions were such l It would be no heaven. Where there is not righteousness at the centre, there is no security at the circumference. Where the throne is not founded upon justice, mercy is but a momentary impulse, to be followed by a terrible recoil. What do you mean, then, when you talk about trusting to His mercy at last? Trust to His mercy at first. Where is His mercy? It is in the life, the ministry, the death, the resurrection, and the whole mediation of Jesus Christ! IV. But he, willing to justify himself, said, “ There is so much mystery about religion that I cannot really attempt to understand it.” I answer, There is mystery about religion, but there is ten thousand times more mystery without it. There is mystery with the Bible, but there is nothing but mystery without it. There is a mystery of grace; yes, and there is a mystery of sin. Life is a mystery. All that is great touches the mysterious. Would I part with the mystery! Nay, verily. Are not the clouds God’ s as well as the blue sky? Are not the mists around the mountain tops His, as well as the bases of the mountains and the foundations of the earth? Is He Himself the living God, not the culmination of all mysteries, the sum of all wonder--the Alpha and the Omega--not to be understood, but loved and served? There is a point in my religious inquiries where I must close my eyes, look no more, but rest myself in the grand transaction which is known as faith in the Son of God. V. But he, willing to justify himself, came at last to this: “ There are so many denominations of Christians, that it is impossible to tell which is right and which is wrong.” Think of a man going off on that line! Think of a man saying that he has been looking round and sees that there are so many denominations, that really he has made up his mind to give up the whole thing! Does he know what he is talking about? Is he really serious when he speaks so? Shall I follow his example? If I do it will be to show how great is his folly. “ I have been looking round, and see so many different regiments in the country that really it is impossible to tell which is right and which is wrong, and I do not think I shall have anything to do with the country.” Yes, there are many regiments, but one army; many denominations, but one Church; many creeds, but one faith; many aspects, but one life; many ways up the hill, but one cross on the top of it. Don’ t lose yourself among the diversities, when you might save yourself by looking at the unities. “ There are so many mountains about, that I really do not know that there can be any truth in geography.” Many mountains--one globe! Conclusion: If, then, there is not to be self-justification, what is there to be? Self-renunciation. A man must empty himself of himself before he is in the right condition to understand lovingly and gratefully the offer which Jesus Christ makes men. God guests with the contrite and companies with the self-renouncing soul. I will go to my Father, then, and will say unto Him, not, “ Father, I was tempted; somebody lured me away; I did not intend to leave Thee, but I was beguiled” ; but I will say unto Him, “ Father, I have sinned!” This, then, is the ground of coming to God; the ground of self-denial, self-renunciation, self-distrust, self-hatred, on account of sin. “ Oh! Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself, but in Me is thy help.” “ Come unto Me all ye that labour and are heavy laden and I will give you rest.” “ Jesus cried and said, If any man thirst let him come unto Me and drink.” “ I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.” Who accepts the invitation to-night? Some have accepted it. Pray that this word may not be spoken in vain! Some require just one more appeal, and they will decide. Take this, my friend, as the appeal you want. “ Now is the accepted time; now is the day of salvation.” (J. Parker, D. D.) Parable of the man who fell among thieves 1. By the man that went from Jerusalem to Jericho, I understand is meant fallen man, who originally in the first Adam went from God. 2. By “ falling among thieves,” may be meant that mischief and misery which hath befallen man by sin, Satan, and other enemies of the soul. 3. By “ stripping him of his raiment,” may be meant all our first or original righteousness. Righteousness being often compared to raiment, or to a garment. 4. By “ wounding him,” may be intended that sad and fearful privation of the soul in every faculty thereof by sin. 5. By “ leaving him half dead,” may be meant the spiritual death of the soul, which is half, nay the better half of the man. 6. By “ the priest passing that way and going on one side,” may be meant, the law or priesthood of Aaron; by the Levite may be meant legal sacrifices, and by their both passing by, and not pitying or helping this poor distressed man, may signify that there is no help, no cure, no salvation by the law, nor sacrifices of the law, for undone sinners. 7. By “ the Samaritan,” I understand is meant our Lord Jesus Christ, who is said to pass by and see us in our blood--“ Now as I passed by, I looked upon thee, and saw thee polluted in thy own blood” (Ezekiel 16:6; Ezekiel 16:8). This was a blessed lock indeed, a look of pity and compassion--“ When he saw him, he had compassion on him.” “ And he went to him,” which may refer to two things. (1) To Christ’ s coming into the world to assume our nature. (2) It may refer also to His gracious coining to a wounded sinner by His Word and Spirit, in helping him to apply the virtue of His own precious blood to his wounded soul. 8. Binding up his wounds, and pouring in oil and wine, may be meant, Christ infusing of His Spirit and precious grace into his soul; grace, as well as the Holy Spirit, being compared to oil. (B. Keach.) Mankind wounded and robbed by sin and Satan I. In what respects sin and Satan may be compared to thieves. 1. Thieves are enemies to honest men, and of which they are in danger continually. 2. Thieves often in a secret and felonious manner have taken away all that men had in their possession, leaving them in a very poor and distressed condition who were very rich before. 3. Thieves many times lead poor travellers out of the king’ s highway, into some blind or secret place, and there bind them hand and foot, as well as take away all they have. So sin and Satan-- (I) With the bond of ignorance. (2) Hard heart. (3) Unbelief. 4. Thieves are a great terror to honest men, and they strive to avoid them as much as they can, and also to defend themselves against them with their utmost power and skill. So the Lord Jesus arms us with spiritual armour, wisdom, and courage, to resist the flesh, world, and devil. 5. Thieves wait a fit opportunity to come upon a person or family, even when they are most secure, or asleep in their beds. So Satan and other spiritual enemies watch a fit time when a child of God is most secure, or in a sleepy or slothful condition. II. Sin and the evil are the worst of thieves. 1. Because they are soul-thieves, and seek to rob us of our choice and chiefest treasure. 2. Because they are cruel and bloody thieves, murdering thieves. 3. Because none have escaped them. 4. Nay, and they have not only murdered the whole world of ungodly sinners, but they have also wickedly slain and murdered the Lord Jesus Christ. 5. Sin and the devil, &c., are the worst of thieves, because they are old thieves and murderers. “ The devil was a murderer from the beginning” John 8:44). 6. They are the worst of thieves, considering their great subtilty, policy, and craftiness. 7. Because of their great power and strength. Who is a match for them? (B. Keach.) Parable of the Good Samaritan I. The Saviour here reminds us that IN THE WORLD THERE IS SORE . Upon this man a band of ruffians rushed out: and, seizing, they stripped him of his raiment, beat him, and left him half dead; and all, so far as appears, with no fault of his own. There is poverty and pain and sorrow, for which the sufferer is not, at least directly, responsible. It must, however, be owned that the chief woes of the world come of sin. There are no thieves and robbers so cruel as worldliness and wrong doing, irreligion and vice. II. THERE ARE THOSE WHO TO ALL THIS PAY LITTLE HEED. “ The priest and the Levite were both in a hurry. They had been a month at Jerusalem, and were expected and wanted at home. Their wives and children were anxiously waiting for them. The sun would soon be down, and this was a lonely road even by daylight. Neither of them understood surgery, they could not bind up a wound to save their lives. Moreover, the poor man, already half dead, would be quite dead in an hour or two, and it was a pity to waste time on a hopeless case. The robbers, too, might be back again. Then, the man might die, and the person found near the body be charged with murder.” Good excuses, every one! And so it comes to pass that the world’ s miseries go unrelieved; the world’ s sins unrebuked; the world’ s perishing ones unsaved. III. But, now, in contrast with all this, our Saviour shows us that, IN THE OF , TRUE LOVE, SELF, HASTENS TO ITS RELIEF. (H. M. Grout, D. D.) Parable of the good Samaritan I. THE OF A FELLOW-. Of what vileness men are capable--in some respects more to be dreaded than the savage beast of prey that roams abroad in the forest. II. THE OF IN TWO WHO ARE PASSING BY. III. AN OF LOVE AND MERCY WHERE WE SHOULD NOT HAVE TO FIND IT. 1. The Samaritan’ s eye affected his heart. 2. His feet hastened to the sufferer. 3. His hands ministered to him. IV. THE to which the querulous lawyer was forced. 1. Think of the Samaritan, and admire his spirit. 2. Have equally generous feelings toward all thy suffering fellow-creatures. 3. Imitate him when such circumstances shall be presented before thine eyes. Learn-- 1. The fallacy of that religion which is devoid of mercy and compassion. 2. See under what an awful delusion professors of religion may live. As in the case of the priest and Levite. 3. Cherish the spirit, and imitate the conduct of the Lord Jesus--“ Who went about doing good.” (J. Burns, D. D.) The good Samaritan 1. It is not always convenient to be good. A free-and-easy manner of life is not goodness, and no more is good-nature. There is no goodness without a self-denial which runs right against self-convenience. 2. Again, it is not always agreeable to be good. Thorns lacerate the hand which gathers roses. In the Divine service the quester is not what we would prefer. No one can enjoy the scene of suffering or be gladdened by its moans--this is not natural; yet we must always relieve such wants. 3. Once again, goodness implies a heavy cost. One who is truly good never locks up his pocket-book so that he cannot be benevolent. The Samaritan was good long before he bound up the bruises of the sufferer and provided for him. The event simply evoked what he already was. We do not become good by doing such acts as these, but such acts as these declare our nature. We observe yet further, this goodness wins the respect of the world. (David O. Meats.) Lessons from this parable I. THAT MAN IN ALL HIS AND IS TO BE AS OUR AND BROTHER. II. THAT AND SHOULD ALL GIVE PLACE TO THE OF CHARITY. III. THAT IT IS OUR DUTY TO EVIL WITH GOOD. In conclusion; consider some motives which call for the exercise of charity. 1. The relation in which we stand to God and to one another in the present world. 2. The genius of our holy religion demands it. (J. Pulling.) The good Samaritan Two things must strike every attentive reader. The first is, that the parable was not so much an answer to the question formally” put by the lawyer, as an exposure of the state of heart which the putting of that question revealed. The inquirer wanted a definition of the word “ neighbour.” The Lord answers by showing him true neighbourliness in contrast with selfish indifference. Thus the parable does not tell us in form who our neighbour is, but it shows us how true love works. But the second peculiarity of this parable is, that it is not an allegory, each figure in which represents a spiritual analogue; but simply an illustrative example of the working of benevolence, as contrasted with that of selfishness. It is designed to show us what we must avoid, as well as what we must cultivate, if we would truly and fully love our neighbour as ourselves. I. THE OF THE WAS OF THE SPIRIT, AND NOT MERELY OF THE LETTER. With him love meant the doing of everything within his power, for all who required his help; and, therefore, without asking any questions or making any excuses, he gave the poor man all the assistance he could. If we do that only which is formally prescribed, and if, where the law leaves a blank to be filled up by circumstances, we act as if there was no law at all, then we have yet to learn what true benevolence is; nay, more, we have yet to learn what kind of a book the New Testament is: for it is not a list of distinct precepts, each of which is applicable to only one case; but it is a book of living principles of universal application, and he who really understands them, and has a heart to feel their obligation, will be at no loss to find occasion for their manifestation. II. THE ’ S WAS NOT BY ANY OF OR . III. THE ’ S WAS NOT BY ANY OF . What genuine neighbour-love does, it will do thoroughly. Love is ready to sacrifice up to the extent of the necessity which it seeks to meet. IV. THIS MAN’ S -TOOK ITS FORM FROM THE NATURE OF THE MISERY WHICH HE SOUGHT TO RELIEVE. He did the very things which the sufferer needed to have done for him, and he did these at once. He might, indeed, have put himself about in many other ways, under the idea that he was helping the unfortunate traveller; but nothing could have met the case save the method which he adopted. He had no stereotyped mode of showing mercy, which he sought invariably to follow; but he did in each case just what each required. Now, this is very important, because, for lack of attention to it, many people’ s benevolence, though it may be very well meant, is a total failure. V. IF OUR WOULD BE OF THE HIGHEST ORDER, WE MUST IT OUT OF REGARD TO HIM WHO DIED TO SHOW MERCY TO . Thus our humanity will rise into Christianity, and our benevolence will be baptized into the name of the Lord Jesus. I conclude with the story of an incident in the life of my grandfather, which I have often heard from my father’ s lips. It was more than a hundred years ago, when wheeled conveyances were rarely used in the rural districts of Scotland, and the custom was to convey grain to the mill in a sack laid over a horse’ s back. The good man was making such a journey once, over a rough bridle-path; and the horse stumbled, so that the sack fell off. As he was perplexed, and wondering what to do, he saw a man on horseback in the distance, and had lust made up his mind to ask him for assistance, when he recognized in him the nobleman who lived in an adjoining castle; and then his heart sank again within him, for how could he request him to help him? But he did not need to ask him, for he was noble by a higher patent than any monarch could confer; and, when he came up, he dismounted of his own accord, saying, “ Let me help you, John.” So between them they put the load again upon the horse; and then John, who was a gentleman too, though he did wear “ hodden grey,” taking off his broad Kilmarnock bonnet, made obeisance, and said, “ Please your worship, how shall I ever thank you for your kindness?” “ Very easily, John,” was the reply. “ Whenever you see another man as sorely needing assistance as you were just now, help him; and that will be thanking me.” So, as we contemplate the sacrifice of Christ on our behalf, we cry, “ What shall I render unto Thee, O Lord, for all Thy benefits toward me?” --and there comes this answer: “ Whensoever thou seest a fellow-man needing thy succour as much as thou wast needing Mine when I gave My life for thee, help him, and that will be thanking Me.” “ Inasmuch as ye do it,” etc.(W. M. Taylor, D. D.) The good Samaritan Take the scene of this parable as the wayside of life. The road through this world is a dangerous way, leading through the wilderness, stained by many crimes, haunted by many robbers. Travelling along this highway of life, I see crowds of persons, of all sorts and conditions of men. And I see, moreover, that all of them bear scars upon them, as though they had been wounded, and many I see are lying by the wayside in sore distress. All have at some time or other fallen among thieves. There is a famous picture by the great French painter which illustrates this. It represents a number of different people journeying through the valley of this world. The way is rough and gloomy, and all bear signs of having known weariness and sorrow. The king is there in his royal robes, and wearing his crown; but his brow is furrowed with care, and he seems to ask, like our own King Henry-- “ Gives not the hawthorn bush a sweeter shade To shepherds, looking on their silly sheep, Than doth a rich embroider’ d canopy To kings, that fear their subjects’ treachery?” The poet is there crowned with laurel, but his eyes are sad, as though he felt how poor a thing is fame; how valueless the garland which to-day is, and to-morrow is cast into the oven. He looks with a yearning glance, as though searching for something not yet found. There, too, is the minister of state, who directed the fortunes of empires. “ Whom he would he slew, and whom he would he kept alive.” But his head is bowed with trouble, and he seems to look wistfully to the time when “ the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest.” Among the crowd there are women; the widow with veiled head, and tearful eyes; the mother clasping her dead child; the poor slave, cowering beneath the lash of the taskmaster, and stretching out her chained hands for pity. There, too, are many sick folk. Blind men sit in darkness by the wayside; cripples drag their maimed bodies wearily along; beggars grovel in their sores and raggedness. And all these different people seem to turn their faces longingly to one place, where a bright light breaks over the dark valley, and where there stands One with outstretched arms, and loving smile. It is Jesus, the Good Samaritan, who is ready to help these travellers on the road of life; it is the Good Physician, who has medicine to heal their sickness; and who says to every suffering heart, king and beggar, desolate widow, weary warrior, childless mother, “ Come unto Me, all ye that are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” (H. J.Wilmot-Buxton, M. A.) The lawyer and the Samaritan I. THE LAWYER 1. He had thus much to recommend him, that he was an orthodox Israelite. 2. He seems to have been a sincere inquirer after truth. 3. Another thing we notice in this lawyer is the accuracy and truthfulness of his knowledge and views of the law. 4. But there was one great deficiency in his case. Theoretical orthodoxy is not always accompanied with practical righteousness. A man may confess a good creed, and yet lead a very unworthy and sinful life. People may know and approve the law, and yet not keep it. He had “ answered right.” But he was not righteous. II. THE . 1. A heretic as to his faith. He was an errorist, and in this respect compares very unfavourably with the Jewish lawyer. It was not his Samaritanism that the Saviour wishes to recommend to us. His churchliness was thoroughly defective and reprehensible. 2. But there is one thing in him that is good, and this it is that the Saviour wishes to recommend to us. He had human sympathy. His mercy was not restrained by sectional antipathy and religious animosities. Conclusion: It was the Samaritan’ s mercy that needed to be added to the lawyer’ s orthodoxy, in order to a full and acceptable piety. Orthodoxy without humanity is worthless; humanity with heterodoxy is better as regards the comfort of this world; but orthodoxy with humanity--a pure worship with universal charity--fills out the complete picture of what the law requires, and what practical Christianity really is. (J. A. Seiss, D. D.) Christian compassion I. ITS SPHERE OF ACTION. 1. On whom it is exercised. On those who stand in need of it. 2. How far it reaches. To all. II. ITS NATURE. It is-- 1. A feeling. 2. Manifests itself in deeds. III. ITS WORKING. 1. It gives help instantly and without delay. 2. Voluntarily. 3. Does what is required, and as well as it can. 4. Is full of self-denial, for (1) It fears no dangers; (2) no troubles; (3) no cost; (4) no labour. 5. It is indefatigable, and completes the work. (F. G. Lisco.) Service of love 1. Willingly begun. 2. Unweariedly continued. 3. Never completed. (Van Oostarzee.) Debt of love 1. Measureless. 2. Undeniable. 3. Blessed. (Van Oostarzee) Good Samaritan love 1. Whom it profits. 2. How it manifests itself. 3. Whence it come. (Harless.) The glory of true love 1. It inquires not. 2. It hesitates not. 3. It is not afraid. 4. It tarries not. 5. It willingly sacrifices, and leaves nothing unfinished. (Florey.) Love makes neighbours It is love that makes man neighbour to man. The true neighbour is the man who has a compassionate heart and a friendly spirit. Where this is wanting, it avails not that a man lives next door, or belongs to the same congregation, or is a member of the same club or union or profession; it ought to be so, that these external associations quicken our friendliness, and so they often do, and where love exists they find expression for it in many suitable ways; but these external bends can never supply the place of love. No doubt the people who saw how careful the Samaritan was of his protege would say, He must be his brother, or his neighbour, or an old friend; for the truth is that genuine compassion and affection make a man brother, neighbour, a friend, of all. It is not, then, by any marks in others that you can test who is your neighbour; but only by what is in yourself, viz., humanity of disposition, friendliness, compassion, or whatever name you choose to give it. Love alone can determine who is your neighbour. (Marcus Dods, D. D.) Humanitarianism I. Earliest of all, there is indicated here that THE AIM OF THE ENTIRE GOSPEL IS SIMPLY TO SAVE HUMAN SOULS (see Luke 10:25). II. From the reply our Lord gave to him we learn, next, that THE GRAND SOURCE OF ALL ON THIS SUBJECT IS GOD’ S WORD, IN THE (see Luke 10:26-28). III. Hence, we reach another lesson: THE MAIN OFFICE OF THE LAW OF GOD THUS IS TO MEN OF SIN (see Luke 10:29). Evidently this man was not at all satisfied. There was just one subtle implication in this courteous commendation of Jesus that stung his conscience. He knew he had never obeyed the command he had quoted. IV. Our Lord follows his extraordinary lead, and so we have another lesson: THE LAW OF GOD ACCEPTS EVEN AS ONE OF THE TESTS OF A REAL . 1. In the beginning of the parable, Jesus shows what constitutes a neighbour, meeting the lawyer’ s interrogatory in its exact terms: “ And who is my neighbour?” (see Luke 10:30). 2. A neighbour, so the story went calmly on to say, is one who is close to us in circumstances of common exposure. All these people were in the perilous and infested road between Jerusalem and Jericho. 3. A neighbour is one who has received misfortune which might happen to any one of us in the same circumstances. Robbers are never specially particular concerning what respectable people they plunder. 4. A neighbour is one who is left near us helpless, and must suffer more unless succoured at once. The force of the figure turns on that. Thus, having explained what it was to be a neighbour, Jesus proceeded to show further by the parable what it must mean to love one’ s neighbour as one’ s self (see Luke 10:31-35). (1) A priest (see Luke 10:31). Perhaps he was one of these refined, fastidious men, full of soft sensibility, and could not force his delicate feelings to bear the sight of abject suffering, especially when no one was near to sustain and praise him. Possibly he could pity the wounded neighbour, but could not afford just then either the time or the twopence. It may be, housed in his comfortable quarters that night in Jericho, he took it out in blaming the Government for the tolerance. (2) A Levite (see Luke 10:32). No better than the other: no reason to suppose he would be: a Levite was just a little priest: “ like master, like man.” Still it is fair to say he went across to see what was the matter. Perhaps he found there was too much the matter. Perhaps prudence suggested the robbers might return. Now please remember these were the friends this lawyer would have stood up for; a sacred calling certainly involves sacred duties. (3) A Samaritan (see Luke 10:33-35). He had love in his heart and succour in his hands. V. So ends the parable; and now, as we return to the story for our final lesson, we learn that MERE FORMAL CANNOT EVEN ABIDE ITS OWN TEST, WHEN FORCED TO IT (see Luke 10:36-37). (C. S.Robinson, D. D.) The good Samaritan I. THE WORLD IS VERY FULL OF , 1. Frequently the greater afflictions are not occasioned by the fault of the sufferer. 2. Very much distress is caused by the wickedness of others. 3. Certain paths in life are peculiarly subject to affliction. Our mines, railways, and seas show a terrible roll of suffering and death. Many a needlewoman’ s life is truly a path of blood. II. THERE ARE MANY WHO NEVER RELIEVE . 1. The two men here mentioned were brought to the spot by God’ s providence on purpose to render aid to the sufferer. 2. They were both of them persons who ought to have relieved him, because they were very familiar with things which should have softened their hearts. 3. They were, moreover, bound by their profession to have helped this man. 4. They were very well aware of the man’ s condition. 5. Yet they had capital excuses. III. THE IS A MODEL FOR THOSE WHO DO HELP THE . 1. He is a model if we notice who the person was that he helped. (1) One who could not repay him. (2) A total stranger. (3) One rejected by his own people. (4) One of a different faith from himself. 2. He is a model to us in the spirit in which he did his work. (1) Without asking questions. (2) Without attempting to shift the labour from himself on to others. (3) Without any selfish fear. (4) With self-denial. (5) With great tenderness and care. IV. WE HAVE A HIGHER MODEL than even the Samaritan--our Lord Jesus Christ. 1. Our Lord Jesus Christ has done better than the good Samaritan, because our case was worse. We were not only half but altogether dead in trespasses and sins. 2. What the Samaritan gave to the poor man was generous, but it is not comparable to what the Lord Jesus has given to us. He gave him wine and oil; but Jesus has given His heart’ s-blood to heal our wounds: he lent himself with all his care and thoughtfulness; but Christ gave Himself even to the death for us. (C. H. Spurgeon.) The good Samaritan I. THE OF THE PARABLE. 1. The general circumstances (Luke 10:25-28) 2. The specific question (Luke 10:29). II. THE APTNESS OF THE PARABLE. 1. This parable shows the Divine idea of true neighbourliness. 2. This parable shows the grand principle and obligation of Christian endeavour at home and abroad. 3. This parable shows the secret of true happiness. (1) The robbers who stripped and wounded their victim did not become happy in their deed. (2) Neither priest nor Levite was happy in his cowardly selfishness. (3) It was the good, benevolent, tender-hearted Samaritan whose soul was filled with a happifying satisfaction. Practical lessons: 1. Selfishness is not “ the Divine ideal of a true and noble life. 2. Happiness is not an emotion, but the fruit of love. 3. The true good Samaritan is Jesus Christ Himself. (D. C. Hughes, M. A.) The good Samaritan I. THE WHICH LED TO THE OF THIS PARABLE. 1. A sinister question put to our Lord by a lawyer. 2. Our Lord’ s method of meeting cavillers (see Luke 10:26). 3. The lawyer’ s remarkable answer to our Lord’ s question. 4. Our Lord’ s candour. 5. The caviller unimpressed by his own profound answer, and still under the dominant power of self. II. THE PARABLE. 1. The topography of the scene is noticeable. 2. The touching story of the parable. (1) The pitiable victim of the thieves. (2) The pitiless passers-by. (3) The pitiful Samaritan. III. THE . 1. Jesus enabled the lawyer to answer his own perplexing question. This is a great gift. 2. Jesus brought home the truth to the lawyer’ s conscience, so that he could not shake it off. Lessons: 1. Let us learn not to despise the questionings of men, but seek to turn them to practical account. 2. Let us learn that the crown of all human excellencies, the unquestionable evidence of true piety, and the golden girdle which is yet to bind in one holy Christly brotherhood the human race, is to love God with all our heart, mind, and strength, and our neighbours as ourselves. 3. Let us learn the utter hollowness of formal religion. 4. Let us learn that an immortality of honour is only for those whose heart throbs with Christly sympathy. 5. Let us learn that our Lord has hers drawn for us His own portrait in the delineation He has given us of the “ good Samaritan.” (D. C. Hughes, M. A.) The good Samaritan I. A GRAPHIC PICTURE OF HUMAN NEED AND MISERY. 1. Much of man’ s suffering is inflicted by his fellow-man. 2. His condition, apart from aid, human and Divine, appears helpless and hopeless. II. A SAD OF MAN’ S TOO COMMON TO HIS FELLOW-MAN. III. AN EXAMPLE OF TRUE CHARITY. Note the several movements of benevolence, as exemplified in the story. 1. An observant eye. 2. A sensitive heart, that will not steel itself against a neighbour’ s misfortunes, saying, “ All is owing to the operation of general laws, and it is unreasonable to allow one’ s self to be affected by the inevitable afflictions of mankind.” 3. An absence of bigotry. 4. A ready hand, to carry out the benevolent desires of the heart. 5. Self-forget-fulness and self-denial, leading to a disregard of personal comfort and even of personal safety. 6. A combination of tenderness and wisdom. 7. An endeavour to interest others in the work in which we are engaged ourselves. As this Samaritan procured the services of the host, so many good people multiply their own beneficence by calling forth that of others. 8. Liberality. There are occasions for gifts as well as for services; it is well to be found responsive to such claims. 9. Foresight. A wise man will look forward, and consider how that which is begun may best be carried on. IV. A OF THE DIVINE MOTIVE TO . It is vain to disconnect morality from religion. Our relation to God governs out relation to our fellow-creatures. V. AN OF . (J. R. Thomson, M. A.) The bloody way The road connecting Jerusalem with Jericho ran through a wild, dreary, and mountainous solitude, suited by the gloomy and inaccessible fastnesses on either side of it, to harbour thieves, robbers, and other outlaws from society, and so particularly infamous in the time of our Lord for the horrid depredations and murders perpetrated by the ruffians that infested it, that it went under the name of “ The Bloody Way.” Herod the Great had dismissed about 40,000 men who had been engaged in building the Temple, many of whom, through want of employment, as Josephus informs us, became robbers and haunted the road to which this parable refers. Fallen among thieves “ Among thieves!” Come with me to the dead-house. There lies a lifeless form just brought in by rough yet kind-hearted men from the river. It is the body of a woman. Push back the masses of dishevelled hair, and you look into a young and beautiful face, and wonder whose child she is. Last night when the city was quiet, and those who had homes had sought them, and the poor street Arab had coiled himself into an empty cask, this child of sorrow noiselessly stole on to the bridge, climbed the parapet, gave one long, low wail of despair, then madly leaped into the river. There was a splash, a struggle, and then the dark waters rolled on as before, and as they have done over hundreds of such frail children of men as this one who lies before us in the dead-house. What does it mean? It means that she has fallen among thieves, who have robbed her and left her to die. “ Among thieves!” Yonder stands a gloomy building, with high walls and gates, as heavy and massive as those of the old castles of the Middle Ages. Get inside. See that youth. Who is he? Where does he come from? His father is a godly man, his mother is a holy woman. Once he was the joy of the home. Now see his convict’ s dress, look at his sad, worn face, and you shudder as the lock clicks upon the door of his cell. What does it mean? It means that he “ fell among thieves.” (C. Leach.) The good Samaritan This parable reveals in the brightest light-- I. THE ’ S HEART. It is like the Samaritan’ s as he stands over yon panting, bleeding man: it is full of compassion. This word “ compassion,” as used by Christ, has the greatest force and feeling in it. It means that His whole body tingled, and thrilled, and was warmed with loving pity, as your body was when you stood over against your dying brother or sister, and felt as you had never felt before. Very great must have been the Samaritan’ s compassion when, without a moment’ s delay, he stooped to the bleeding man. We are weak and slow in Christ’ s work because we are weak in compassion. A boy was showing me his model steam-engine, in which the steam was made by a spirit-lamp. He lighted his lamp, but the engine moved not till a certain temperature was reached. Compassion is the moving force in us, but it does not move us till it grows hot within the heart. The Samaritan also reveals-- II. THE ’ S HAND. It is the ready agent of a compassionate heart. First the heart, then the hand; that is the order in the kingdom. Watch the Samaritan’ s hand. It is not the hand of a sluggard. How quickly it moves! The story gives us the idea of hearty haste. He did not linger till compassion was chilled by worldly prudence. He knew that his first thoughts were best. I dare say he did not think about it at all: he just did it at once. A new book tells that a Glasgow merchant died lately without a will, leaving a widow, one son, and two daughters. The son in London received a telegram, came down the same evening, and settled his father’ s fortune on his mother and sisters. He was asked why he had been in such a hurry. “ I dared not wait,” was his noble reply. “ Had I waited, my resolution might have cooled, and I might have claimed all the law allowed me. I felt that it was right to do what I have done, and I wished to commit myself before selfishness could come in.” Many a noble purpose dies of cold and delay in its infancy. 2. It is not the hand of a weakling. See it binding up wounds, pouring m oil and wine, setting the traveller on his beast, bringing him to the inn, tending him all through the night, taking out the purse and giving to the host. The hand moved by love is not easily tired, is not flighty but steady, and carries through what it begins. 3. It is not the hand of a hireling, who works only for pay. The Samaritan was not rich: he travelled with one ass and without a servant. Besides the wine, and oil, and bandages, and two pence to the host, he lost a whole day’ s work, and probably a whole night’ s rest. He had reward enough in an approving conscience reflecting the smile of God, in the home-bred sweets of a benevolent mind, and in the thought that he was imitating his Father in heaven. 4. It is not the hand of earthly ambition. The Pharisees gave alms to be seen of men. Had the Samaritan been like them, he also would have passed by on the other side. III. THE ’ S SPHERE. The lawyer made it very narrow. He loved his friends and hated his enemies, and was sure that these Samaritans were no neighbours of his. But Christ teaches that there are no limits or exceptions to the love of man. (J. Wells, M. A.) The parable of the good Samaritan I. THAT God has established a principle of universal dependence through every part of His intelligent creation. As creatures we have a twofold dependence--a dependence upon God, and upon our fellows. II. THAT among men, and especially among fallen and guilty men, the principle of benevolence, which expresses itself in a readiness to administer to the necessities of others, is not only a mere arrangement of wisdom and goodness, but has in it the force of duty and obligation. III. The benevolence enjoined in the parable before us derives great force from the terms in which it is expressed. “ Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself” is the language of the law. “ Who is my neighbour?” asks the lawyer. The answer is, “ Every man in distress is thy neighbour.” IV. THAT they are unhappily often counteracted in practice. The introduction of sin has subjected us to misery, and rendered us more dependent open each other; but it has also introduced principles into the heart which are subversive of those charities to which our very necessities and common dangers ought to give birth. Like mariners in a storm, like soldiers in a battle, we ought to be at hand to each other; but there are principles which too frequently separate man from man, and harden the heart against every emotion of pity. We might specify many of these, but we will confine our attention to one, suggested by the parable; I mean religious bigotry. V. LASTLY, let me observe, that the universal and undistinguishing philanthrophy, so affectingly urged in the parable of our Lord before us, must be fostered and matured by every consideration we can pay to the nature of our religion. (R. Watson.) Chance There are some who utterly proscribe the name of chance as a word of impious and profane signification; and indeed, if it be taken by us in that sense in which it was used by the heathen, so as to make anything casual, in respect of God Himself, their exception ought justly to be admitted. But to say a thing is a chance, or casualty, as it relates to second causes, is not profaneness, but a great truth, as signifying no more than that there are some events, besides the knowledge, purpose, expectation, and power of second agents. And for this very reason, because they are so, it is the royal prerogative of God Himself, to have all these loose, uneven, fickle uncertainties under His disposal. (Dr. South.) Unrelieved misery Which of us has not been guilty of passing by on the other side, of leaving misery unrelieved because it was not clamorous? This unfortunate, lying half dead by the roadside, could make no importunate supplications for relief, could not sit up and prove to the priest that it was his duty to help him, could not even ask help, so as to lay on the priest the responsibility of positive refusal; and so he got past with less discomfort, but not with less guilt. The need is often greatest where least is asked. And how many forms of misery are there lying within our knowledge as we journey along the bloodstained road of life, but which we pass by because they do not bar our progress till we give our help, or because it is possible for us to put them out of our mind and live as though these things were not. A lost child is crying on the streets, but it is awkward to be seen leading a dirty, crying child home, so we refuse to notice that the child is lost; a man is lying as if he were ill, but he may only be intoxicated, and it looks foolish to meddle, and may be troublesome, so we leave him to others, though another minute in that position may, for all we know, make the difference between life and death. You read a paragraph of a paper giving a thrilling account of a famine in China, or some other great calamity; but when you come to a clause intimating that subscriptions will be received at such and such a place, you pass to another column, and refuse to allow that to make the impression on your mind which you feel it is beginning to make. In short, you will, in these and many like circumstances, wait till you are asked to help; you know you could not in decency refuse if you were asked, if the matter were fully laid before you and all the circumstances detailed, but you will put yourself out of reach before this can be done, you will not expose yourself to the risk of having your charitable feelings stirred, or at any rate of having your help drawn upon; you will, if possible, wipe the thing from your mind, you will carefully avoid following up any clues or considering steadily any hint or suggestion of suffering. (Marcus Dods, D. D.) Backwardness to good works I. The first and chief plea, under which men generally take shelter, is that of inability, because of straitened circumstances, heavy taxes, &c. Before this plea can be accepted, we must ask ourselves whether there be no unnecessary expenses that we support, such as are unsuitable to our circumstances. II. There are those that plead unsettled times, and an ill prospect of affairs (whether wrongly or rightly, is not the case; but there are those that plead these things) as impediments to the exercise of charity. For in such an uncertain world, who knows but that he may want to-morrow what he gives to-day? III. There are men sensible enough of their obligations to charity, and resolved, some time or other, to discharge them; but they desire to be excused from that duty for the present, and put it off, perhaps, to a will and a deathbed, and think it sufficient if they begin to do good in the world any time before they leave it. Seldom do either of these proceed from a principle of goodness; nor are they owing to a love of virtue, but to a fear of punishment. IV. It is alleged that the increase of charity tends often to the increasing and multiplying the poor; and by that means proves a mischief to the commonwealth, instead of a support and benefit. V. And last thing (I shall mention) by which we are apt to excuse our backwardness to good works, is, the ill success that hath been observed to attend well-designed charities; with relation both to the objects on which they are placed, and the hands through which they are conveyed. Our part is, to choose out the most deserving objects, and the most likely to answer the ends of our charity; and when that is done, all is done that lies in our power; the rest must be left to Providence. (Bishop Horne.) A certain Samaritan Good news for you The good Samaritan is a masterly picture of true benevolence. I. The sinner is WITHOUT MORAL FOR , but Christ comes where he is. 1. Remember first, that when the gospel was first sent into the world, those to whom it was sent were manifestly without any moral qualification. 2. Recollect again, the Biblical descriptions of those whom Christ came into the world to save, which prove to a demonstration that He comes to the sinner where he is. 3. But, thirdly, it is quite certain from the work of grace itself, that the Lord does not expect the sinner to do anything or to be anything in order to meet Him, but that He comes to him where he is. 4. The godlike character of the grace of God proves that He meets the sinner where he is. If God forgive little sinners only, then He is little in His mercy. 5. The spirit and genius of the gospel utterly forbid the supposition that God requires anything in any man in order to save him. II. In the second place, there are very many of the lost race of Adam, who say that they are WITHOUT ANY MENTAL . III. But yet again, I think I hear another say, “ I am in despair, for I CANNOT FIND ANY REASON IN MYSELF, OR OUT OF MYSELF, WHY GOD SHOULD FORGIVE SUCH A PERSON AS I AM.” SO then, you are in a hopeless state, at least you see no hope. The Lord meets you where you are by putting the reason of your salvation altogether in Himself. IV. We proceed to our fourth point. “ Oh,” says one, “ but I am WITHOUT COURAGE; I dare not believe on Christ, I am such a timid, trembling soul, that when I hear that others trust to Christ I think it must be presumption; I wish I could do the same, but I cannot; I am kept under by such a sense of sin, that I dare not.” V. I hear one more complaint. “ I am WITHOUT ,” saith one; “ will Jesus come just where I am?” Yes, sinner, just where you are. You say you cannot believe; that is your difficulty. God meets you, then, in your inability. First, He meets you with His promises. “ Him that cometh to Me I will in no wise Cast out.” Cannot you believe now? (C. H. Spurgeon.) The good Samaritan The first object that arrests our attention is a man lying by the wayside robbed, stripped, wounded, half dead. Now, all that we know about this man was that he had been taking a journey from Jerusalem to Jericho; and even this is full of suggestion. He had his back turned upon the “ city of the vision of peace” and his face turned towards the city of the curse. Cursed was Jericho--cursed in the moment of its first destruction, and cursed in the moment of its restoration. He was turning his back upon the place which had been built for God’ s glory, for the especial abode, so to speak, of the Divine presence, and his face towards the place which had been built in distinct defiance of the Divine will, the very existence of which was a monument of human rebellion. Such is the ill-omened character of the journey which the traveller has undertaken. Is it not just such a journey that man has undertaken? If we look at human history, what is it but a continuous going down from Jerusalem to Jericho? Dear friends, as it has been with human history in the abstract, so has it been with each of us individually. As we look upon our own history, what has it been? One continual going away farther and farther from God, wandering from “ the city of peace,” and voluntarily exiling ourselves into the region which is blighted with God’ s curse. First, there is “ the robbing.” Satan is the great master robber. How much has he robbed us of? First, he has robbed us of all the blessedness of Paradise. Further, this man was not only robbed, he was also “ stripped.” They were not content with taking his money, they must needs take his garments. That is just what Satan has done with us. He has stripped us of all with which we cover our shame. There are some of us who have endeavoured to put on a garb of respectability, and to cover ourselves with that, just as our first parents sewed fig-leaves together to cover themselves. And that is not all. He is not content with robbing and stripping you; he goes even further; with ruthless hands he “ wounds” those whom he has already robbed. How many of us are there here who do not know what it is to be wounded, inwardly wounded? Ah! he knows how to wound. Wounded! How are you “ wounded?” not only by the malice of Satan, but by the accusations of conscience. How are you “ wounded?” Not only wounded by Satan, not only wounded by conscience, but also wounded by your truest and best Friend. For there is One who wounds that He may heal. “ Faithful are the wounds of a friend!” But that was not all. The man was not only wounded, but he was “ left half dead.” In what sense is the sinner half dead? So far as his spiritual condition is concerned he is quite dead, but so far as his moral nature is concerned he is half dead; that is to say, he is rapidly losing all his moral powers, but he is not altogether lost. The man is not only half dead; he is fast dying; his life is ebbing out in that flowing blood. Every moment that he lies there he grows weaker. Now let us look at it again. The first that passes that way is the priest. The priest cannot do anything for him, or does not do anything for him. And, dear friends, all the ordinances in the world, however precious and however valuable they are in themselves, will not restore lost vitality. The Levite passes by--he can do nothing. “ If there had been a law given which could have given life, verily righteousness should have been by the law.” This is just where the law fails. But the next to come along that road is one of a different race. He was the very last man that this poor dying Jew had a claim upon. “ He was a Samaritan.” And Jesus passes by, not on the wings of His sovereign power, not in the majesty of His eternal sway, but He passes by in human form, a traveller amongst the sons of men. He passes by along life’ s dreary, dusty journey; He threads the mazes of life’ s wilderness, and on His way He “ hears the groanings of such as are in captivity, and the sorrowful sighing of those who are appointed to die.” (W. H. M. H. Aitken, M. A.) Compassion “ He had compassion on him.” Premising that, we can rest assured there is more to follow. He began with pity, and all the rest is a mere matter of detail. In the light of this one luminous word “ compassion,” the poor man is seen already right away home, the idol of his happy family, surrounded with bright-eyed, curly-headed, pretty little prattlers, bounding with joy, and his fond wife heaping blessings on the nameless benefactor. “ He had compassion on him” --an expression this, big with salvation. He drew out his sympathetic soul first of all, and wrapped that warm around him, and made him understand that smaller gifts and minor mercies would soon be forthcoming. The oil, the wine, the bandages, the beast, the inn, the pence, the care, are all only so many forms of the large-hearted “ compassion” with which he started. And the unfortunate individual, who had been callously “ passed by” with indifference by cold and formal ecclesiasticism, is now at length happily rescued by the religion of humanity. (D. Thomas.) Sympathy more than pity “He set him on his own beast” --the one act in which the Samaritan’ s Samaritanism was most deeply lodged, and most gently and suggestively evinced. The Samaritan had nothing left him but to walk. So we conclude. The weariness of it denoted less to him than his co-traveller’ s comfort denoted. His own comfort was in having his companion comfortable. His consciousness was of the other man. He became practically the other man for the time; felt his bruises as his own bruises; forgot that he was not working for himself in working for him. He felt not for him, which is nothing but pity; but he felt with him, he felt in him, which is sympathy and gospel. Becoming the other man--that is Samaritanism: seeing with his eyes, feeling with his sensibilities, subject to his limitations, obnoxious to his exposures. Sympathy is two hearts tugging at one load, bent beneath one sorrow. (C. H. Parkhurst, D. D.) True help We can help a man only by identifying ourselves with him, getting into his circumstances, getting into him, becoming he If you have a temptation that you want to get the mastery over, the man for you to go to for counsel and relief is the man who has been in your place and gained the victory that you want to gain. The heat man to convert a drunkard is a converted drunkard. The power to appreciate temptation is the prime condition to being able to help others out of temptation. In a certain way it holds that the more bad and awkward situations a good man has been in, the richer may prove his ministry and the more various his apostleship. Almost all the men in the Scripture story that ever proved a great advantage to anybody had at some time been themselves in sad need of succour. The first step God took towards making us become like Him was for Him to become as far as He could like us. If you have any doctrinal perplexity, your resort for assistance will always be to some one whose doctrinal experience has been complicated in the same way. And it is not by any means enough to be able to understand another man’ s difficulty, burden, temptation; we need to go a little farther and feel it as our own difficulty, burden, temptation, just as the Samaritan not only appreciated his fellow-traveller’ s distresses, but felt them as his own distresses, and therefore set him on his own beast; and as Christ not only understood our sins, but Himself put Himself behind our sins, underneath them, carried them, and in such a whole-hearted way, as really to suffer the pain and penalty of them. There is always more or less of the vicarious when there is any good done, any release wrought, any redemption effected. (C. H.Parkhurst, D. D.) A good Samaritan among the Maoris In our journeyings, says the Waikato Times, a newspaper published in New Zealand, we have to record the various traits of man be he European or Maori--all have to be faithfully noticed by our pen. Whether his characteristics are of the animal or intellectual kind, whether his sympathies are with the refined or debased. In this instance it is our great pleasure to have to record one of the most Christian and good Samaritanlike acts that we remember to have read or published. A few nights ago--a bitter cold night it was--Amopui, a native, was returning to Cambridge, and when some distance from the township saw the prostrate form of a man--a European--on the road. It appears that the poor fellow, with one leg only, had travelled overland all the way from Napier, had crossed creeks, surmounted hills, and threaded his way through the bush. But nature gave way at last, and he fell, when Amopui found him, utterly worn out, helpless and exhausted. But for this timely assistance, Charles Parmeters (for this was the European’ s name)would in all probability never have seen the light of another day. The Maori lifted him up, and carried him into Cambridge, and those who know the heavy, sandy road on the other side of the bridge can judge what the labour must have been. Amopui took him to his tent, and attended to him the night through; but the noble fellow’ s good deeds did not end here. In the morning he got a subscription list, and by dint of perseverence collected nearly £9, which he handed over to the police authorities to be expended in sending the poor cripple on to Auckland. Amopui is well known in Cambridge as being a straightforward and honest native, and will now more than ever be universally respected. If there be no other recognition in this sphere of this good action, the story should find a corner in every paper and magazine in the world, and should be printed in gold. Humane assistance The day after the action near Alexandria, where the brave Abercrombie fell, the General was riding over the field of battle, attended by two orderly dragoons, to see if there were any wounded, French or English, who had escaped notice the evening before, when, on turning round a wall by the seaside, he was struck with the appalling sight of more than a hundred French soldiers, who, with their officers, huddled together, desperately wounded by grape and cannon shot from an English brig of war. From being collected in the recess of the wall they had escaped notice on the previous day of search, and were exposed to the night air, and with undressed wounds. Here the General saw a man, evidently English, in the garb of a Quaker, actively employed in the heavenly task of giving his humane assistance to those poor, brave sufferers; giving water to some, dressing the wounds of others, and affording consolation to all. Upon inquiry, he found the benevolent individual to be Dr. John Walker, who was himself almost exhausted, having been thus nobly employed from daybreak without any assistance. Rescue the perishing A venerable servant of Christ said to me just at the time that I was accepting my first living, “ If you would really wish to be useful to those with whom you are brought into contact, remember there is only one way of doing it: like the blessed Master of old, you must yourself be moved with compassion, or else you never can help them.” The man who has been himself much in the society of the good Samaritan will partake of his feelings, and, like his Master, will be “ moved with compassion.” “ But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was: and when be saw him, he had compassion on him.” He might naturally have turned aside and said, “ Oh, it is only one of those miserable Jews; the fewer we have of them the better; let him be.” The first thing he had to overcome was natural prejudice, and it is rather a strong one with some people. But he did not stop to inquire whether he was a Jew or a Samaritan; he was a man--a brother; and the Samaritan acted accordingly. I remember hearing the story of a little incident that occurred in the streets of Edinburgh some years ago. A coach was driving rapidly down the narrow streets of the town. A poor little child of some two years of age crept into the middle of the road, and there it was in utter helplessness standing by itself, while the galloping horses were drawing nearer and nearer every moment. Just as they approached the spot where the poor little helpless infant was standing, a woman, who had just happened to come to the door of her house, darted forth like a flash of lightning, grasped the child in her arms, and, at the peril of her own life, saved it from imminent destruction. This entry is longer than a Bible module can hold. The rest is at https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/bi/ Luke 10:38-42 Martha received Him into her house Christ’ s visit to Martha and Mary I. THE CONDUCT OF CHRIST IS TO BE . 1. It is observable that as soon as He entered the house, He attended to the great work for which He came into the world. 2. It is further observable that Christ noticed the manner in which the two sisters were employed, and that the rule of his judgment was the claim of His doctrine upon their attention. II. THE MOST OF THE CONDUCT OF THE TWO SISTERS, BY WAY OF THE GROUNDS OF OUR LORD’ S REMARKS. 1. In Martha there was an error of judgment: not of that kind which proves the entire want of real piety, but which implies great oversight, and a disregard to existing circumstances. 2. She neglected a religious opportunity. Christ was travelling with His disciples, and hence His stay would be short. It was a privilege of rare occurrence to have Him as a guest. But by Martha it was neglected, and the reason was not one of necessity but of choice. It was not because affliction, or acts of mercy to others prevented her, but because she deprived herself by gratifying a useless inclination. 3. There was evil passion in her conduct. It was the warmth of her temper which prompted her to make the appeal, “ Lord, dost Thou not care that my sister hath left me to serve alone?” She felt irritated because her sister did not think and act like herself. She measured her sister’ s conduct by her own line, and hence her rash reflection on Mary’ s composure. III. MAKE A FEW IN ORDER TO IMPROVE THE SUBJECT. 1. The narrative evidently gives the highest importance to the concerns of the soul. 2. Let the examples set before us in the text be regarded as very instructive in this respect. One is an example by which we are warned against the evil of earthly-mindedness. Influenced in such a way the heart is in danger of being entangled so as not only to be kept from attending to what is better, but to think it strange that others should differ from ourselves. We sustain a serious loss without being sensible of it. The other is an example which we ought to imitate. In Mary we witness that readiness to hear Divine instruction, that improvement of a present opportunity, that subordination of temporal things to spiritual, which show the seriousness and correct preference of the mind--the purity and fervour of the affections. Hers was thinking and acting for eternity. 3. The narrative teaches us in what way we are to expect the notice and approbation of our Divine Redeemer. Not when pursuing our own plans, not when devoting ourselves to worldly concerns; but when honouring His word, when learning His will and seeking His grace. (Essex Congregational Remembrancer.) Lessons from the incident at Bethany I. THE OF THE SAVIOUR IN THE OF TIME. He goes about doing good. He always pays for His entertainment. In the parlour as well as the temple, He furnishes admonition and counsel. No sooner does He enter this house than we find Him teaching. II. OBSERVE, HOW IT IS FOR A OF THE LORD JESUS TO BE SENSUAL AND SELFISH. Mary who hears His word pleases Him better than Martha who prepares His meal: yea, Martha even grieves Him by her assiduity to entertain Him. He would rather feed than be fed. III. SEE WHAT THERE ARE IN THE OF OUR LORD. Many things diversify the degree and the exercises of religion. Thus the stations in which Providence places good men differ; one shall be favourable to devotion, another shall afford less leisure and create more distraction. Constitutional complexion also has its influence. Thus some Christians are more inclined to contemplation and the shades; ether are formed for the active virtues. The difficulties which chill the timid serve only to rouse and animate the bold and courageous, Religion, like water, partakes a little of the nature of the soil over which it runs. IV. WE MAY MEET WITH IN FROM THOSE WHO SHOULD BE OUR . Such are friends and relations. Michal ridicules the holy joy of David. A brother may discourage a brother. A sister may reproach and repel a sister. Our foes may be those of our own household. Yea, even by religious friends and relations we may sometimes be injured. They may be wanting in sympathy. They may censure and condemn our actions from ignorance of our circumstances and motives. V. How ANXIOUS SOEVER WE MAY BE ABOUT MANY THINGS, ONE THING ALONE REALLY OUR : “ one thing is needful.” It is, hearing the Saviour’ s words; it is, an attention to the soul; it is--religion. What? is nothing else necessary? Yes; many things. But, compared with this, they are less than nothing and vanity. Other things are accidentally needful--this is essentially so. Other things are occasionally needful-this is invariably so. Other things are partially needful--this is universally so-needful for prosperity and adversity; needful for the body and the soul; needful for time and eternity. Some things are needful fur some individuals, but not for others; but this is needful for all. (W. Jay.) Lessons 1. This passage suggests important cautions as to domestic, and all worldly affairs. The difficulty here is to pursue the proper medium--to pay sufficient attention to these matters, and yet not to carry that attention to an excessive and hurtful length. On the one hand, let all needful attention be paid by the pious mistresses of families to have everything in their house in a judicious, orderly, and comfortable state, according to the station of life in which they are placed; and let them conscientiously avoid all indolent, careless, and slovenly habits, as they would avoid bringing a scandal on their profession, and prejudicing the worldly against it. In describing the virtuous woman, Solomon says, “ She looketh well to the ways of her household, and eateth not the bread of idleness.” On the other hand, this care must not be carried to excess; it must not be the chief business; it ought to be managed so as not to interfere with, but to promote, the one thing needful. One breach of duty, in consequence of excessive domestic care, occurs when it is the means of preventing secret and family worship altogether, or of impeding their regular and calm exercise; and this is very similar to the situation to which Martha now reduced herself. Another sinful error, in this respect, is that of giving or requiring from servants more time and attention to the preparation of food, and to other family concerns, on the Lord’ s-day, than is necessary. 2. Improve this passage as a test of your state and character. Ask yourselves, What has had the chief place in your thoughts--the world and its cares, or Christ and His salvation? 3. Consider the folly, guilt, and danger of neglecting the one thing needful, and the good portion. 4. Let me earnestly urge you all to make Mary’ s choice. (James Foote, M. A.) Mary and Martha I. Let us clear the way, by a brief statement as to WHAT THESE SISTERS WERE NOT. It is clearly wrong to take them as representatives severally, of the worldly and heavenly sides of life. It was not for diligence in housewife’ s tasks that our Lord took Martha to task, if He did take her to task; and it was not contemplative piety that He commended in Mary, if He really did commend her. Nothing is more striking, in the life we are called to follow, than the way in which we are taught to serve God. We are called to serve God, actively if possible, passively at any rate, but in any case to serve Him. Mere gazing, mere reading, mere listening, mere dreaming, have never prospered as forms of Christian life; and we can be certain that it was not for anything that could be so named that Mary was commended by the Lord. The Jaw for our spiritual life is, “ Diligent in business, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord.” Martha served; Mary sat at His feet; and the Lord, by what tie said, did not put any mark of disapproval on Martha’ s serving. II. Let us try to gather up THE TRUE LESSONS OF THE . 1. Observe the word “ also” in Luke 10:39. It refers to something that had gone before. She was Martha’ s sister. It can hardly refer to that. Must not this be the meaning--she had joined with Martha in receiving their Guest, had taken part with Martha in the household tasks; and also, in addition to that, when all she considered needful was done, she sat at the Master’ s feet. 2. Observe next, that what brought Martha with her complaint to Jesus, was not her sister’ s freedom from service and neglect to fulfil her household duties, but just this--she was “ cumbered with much service.” A temporary entanglement with many things; a confession that she was unable to undertake her tasks. What we have to deal with is not her whole life, but a special and exceptional moment of it--that moment when Patience was not allowed to have its perfect work in her, when Care sat on the hearth. Caught in this moment of weakness, and weighed down by the very burden which her love had taken up, she stumbled at what seemed, but was not, the indifference of her sister, and came to the Lord and said, “ Dost Thou not care that I am left to do all the work alone?” 3. Now let us turn to the words and meaning of the Lord. They are not to be taken as words in a sermon, but as words spoken in the quiet atmosphere of the house, with holy emphasis attached to them. “ Dear Martha! Art thou troubled so? My coming has proved indeed a burden to thee. Do not suffer My coming to be a burden; do not trouble about many things for the table; one thing is enough for Me.” Then consider the words about Mary. Martha wanted our Lord to tell Mary to rise from sitting at His feet, and come and help in the preparation of the meal; she was grudging her the place she had taken. The Lord replies: “ Oh Martha! only look. It is not the seat of honour; it is the lowliest place. It is at My feet. She has not taken thy place as head of the house, but simply the retired place, the place of a disciple, at My feet--the humblest place there was at the table. She has chosen that good place which shall not be taken from her.” III. WHAT DO WE GAIN BY THE OLD ? 1. We gain, first of all, an escape from the mere conventional reading of the story. We gain what painting does when taken from the monastic attitudes and golden halos which surround the heads of mediaeval martyrs, and get back to natural forms, to nature and to humanity. 2. And next, we gain an immense freshness in the reading and application of this story, instead of having to descend to lower levels of Christian truth. Mary and Martha are brought nearer and more akin to us, seem to be more certainly our own flesh and blood. (Alex. Macleod, D. D.) “ Now it came to pass, as they went, that they entered,” etc In this we have two things observable-- 1. The nature of the place, which Christ at this time turned into--“ He entered into a certain village.” 2. The party that entertained Him, and took Him in upon His entering into the town--“ A certain woman named Martha, received Him into her house.” To speak a word of the first, THE NATURE OF THE PLACE--“ He entered into a certain village.” We see here that Christ did not only take care of cities and great towns. This was the temper and disposition of Christ, to condescend so far to such places as these are, for the scattering of His heavenly Word and doctrine amongst them. And thus there is a very good reason for other ministers likewise to do, upon occasion, in divers regards. 1. Because here’ s an opportunity of doing good, as well as elsewhere. There are souls to be saved in the villages, as well as in the great cities. 2. There’ s encouragement of a man’ s ministry in these, as well as in other places, and sometimes more. All religion is not compassed and comprehended within the walls of a city. 3. For a difference of gifts, and various improvements of those abilities which God pleases to dispense. The second is THE PARTY THAT HIM. “ And a certain woman named Martha received Him into her house.” 1. The protection and blessing which she was likely to receive from His person and presence with her. The presence of holy men casts a blessing upon the places where they are; which are in so much the greater safety and security for their sakes. As Jacob tells Laban, “ God has blest thee since my coming to thee” ; te-ragli, alms-foot; “ since I set my foot within thy doors.” Such a Guest was Christ to Martha, a blessing and protection to her. 2. The benefit she should have from His instruction, and doctrine, and conversation, and communion with Him. “ This day is salvation come to this house,” i.e., in the means (Luke 19:9). 3. The special love and affection which she bare unto Him by way of thankfulness, and requital to Him. It is said, “ Jesus loved her” (John 11:5). And now she shows her love to Him again. She had taken Christ at first into her affections, and now she takes Him into her house. It follows in the text: “ And she had a sister called Mary, which also sat at Jesus’ feet, and heard his words.” 1. I say, Christ was here to good purpose, as indeed He was everywhere else. From whence we learn the like duty, and disposition, and practice, both ministers and others; where we see any coming forward in religion, to promote them, and bring them on further all we can. Thus did Christ here to these two sisters, Martha and Mary; He took occasion, from his presence with them, to establish them further in religion. Here there are divers rules which, by the way, are to be observed by us; as, namely these: 1. That we always carry about us a full heart. We should be full of heavenly meditations, that so we may the better be fitted for heavenly discourse. 2. We must also have respect to the company we converse withal. There’ s a casting of pearls before swine; which our Saviour has given us warning of. 3. To time and season: “ Everything is beautiful in its season,” and a word spoken then, “ is like apples of gold in pictures of silver.” The second is that which is expressed. The different entertainment of Him by these two sisters: Mary, she sat at His feet, and heard His word; but Martha, “ she was cumbered about much serving.” We’ ll speak to the carriage of them both, etc. 1. Of the carriage of Mary: “ She sat at His feet, and heard His word.” Wherein we have divers things observable of us. 1. Here was her wise improvement of the opportunity for the good of her soul. She was not sure to have Christ always, therefore she would make use of Him while she had Him. 2. “ She sat at His feet.” Here’ s another expression of her carriage; which has also its several intimations contained in it; as especially these two: 1. Her reverence and composedness of carriage and quietness of mind. A roving and unsettled hearer can never be a good hearer Psalms 46:10). For this purpose we should come with preparation and premeditation aforehand; labouring to disburden our minds of those cumbrances which are apt to molest us. 2. Here was her humility: “ She sat at His feet.” We have many hearers sometimes which do not sit at the feet, but rather at the head of their teachers; which will be teaching those which should teach them (Colossians 2:18). 3. She heard His word. She attended to the things which were spoken; as is said of Lydia. 2. Delight. She had a sweet savour and relish of them, and complacency in them. 3. Reposition. She retained them, and laid them up in her heart. And thus much for the carriage of Mary. The second is, Martha’ s carriage herself, which was very different from it. 1. I say, Here is her own behaviour for for her own particular: “ She was cumbered about much serving:” that is, in the friendly entertainment of Christ’ s person. But, accordingly as it is here qualified in her; so it had somewhat which was vicious in it. 1. Luxury and excess. She was too large in her entertainments. It may be she provided more than was fitting for such a time. 2. Curiosity for the manner. “ She was cumbered” about it. She was too punctual, and curious, and exact in her preparations, that she thought nothing good enough. 3. There was a turbulency and unquietness of spirit. Sometimes it proceeds from unskilfulness; as those things which people have no skill in, they are troublesome to them to go about them. Sometimes it proceeds from unaccustomedness; as those things which they are not used to, they are disquieting when they undertake them. But more especially, it does arise from a weakness and impotency of mind. And so much for her own behaviour. The second thing here considerable, is the censure of her sister’ s carriage; yea, upon the point of Christ Himself: wherein also there were many weaknesses and infirmities involved at once. As-- 1. There was a spice of pride and vain-gloriousness in her obsequiousness: “ Lord, dost Thou not care that my sister hath left me to serve alone?” As who should say, Dost Thou not take notice of how much pains I take to entertain Thee? While she finds fault with her sister, she does implicitly commend herself; which is oftentimes the end of such speeches. She saw she outstripped her sister in this service, and now she would needs be commended for it. The remedies of this distemper are these: (1) A reflection upon our weaknesses and failings other ways. (2) A consideration that all we do, is a due debt. (3) That others may be better in other respects, &c. That’ s the first. 2. Here was a spice of envy and censoriousness of her sister’ s forwardness in religion: “ Lord, dost Thou not take care that my sister,” &c. Here was a quarrelling and contending with her sister; as one weakness brings in another. From pride comes contention (Proverbs 13:10). And this is joined with envy, and censure, and emulation. She would needs be thought the best of the two, and she pleased herself in her own good performances; and hence falls upon her sister. And where there’ s one neglects the world for the looking after their souls, there are hundreds which lose their souls for attending too much upon the world. And that’ s a second infirmity here observable. 3. Here was a spice also of impiety, in interrupting the good discourse of Christ. Those which have no mind to listen themselves, when they come at any time to the hearing of the Word; they are the forwardest to distract others: and those which care not themselves to discourse, will not suffer others to do it neither. 4. Here was a great deal of incivility in her carriage to her Guest Himself; a great deal of fondness, and trespassing upon the rules of hospitality; and that in sundry particulars, that we may see the unseasonableness of this passion in this pious woman. 1. She does here commend her own diligence and care of entertainment--“ I am left alone to serve.” What a sad thing is this! As she desired to be commended by Christ, which we spake of before; so, for want of it, she commends herself for her own attendance: this was absolutely contrary to the rules of hospitality and entertainment. 2. Which was as bad on the other side; she finds fault with her Guest, and picks a quarrel with Him, which now was a stranger to her. This was another trespass upon entertainment. 3. She puts Christ, which was a stranger, upon finding fault with His own entertainment, which was another ridiculous business. For though Christ, as He was in His proper person, might justly find fault with anything; yet, take him now under the notion of a Guest, here it was not so proper for Him. 4. There was this incivility and disrespect to Christ her Guest, and so a trespass upon hospitality; that she wrangles with her sister in His presence, which was very unseemly. (J. Horton.) 1. Here is the reprehension itself; He checks and reproves Martha: and thus it may be amplified to us according to a various and different apprehension and notion, in which we may here look upon her: and that especially threefold. (1) As she was a good and godly woman. (2) As she was a kind and friendly woman. (3) As a woman beloved. 1. She was good, and yet Christ reproves her, and checks her, where she was now amiss. Whence we note; that even those which are good, are to be reproved when they do that which is evil. And good reason for it: For-- (1) The goodness of the person does not change the nature of the action. Sin is no better than sin, whosoever they be that commit it. 2. The goodness of the person sometimes makes the action worse. 3. Those which are good may be better; and this is a means so to make them; therefore the rather to be reproved in this regard. Indeed, in the reproof of good persons, there are some cautions which are fit to be observed. (1) That we be sure to reprove them for that which is evil, and no 1 Samuel 1:14). (2) We must do it with another kind of spirit, than those which are commonly profane persons; looking upon them as brethren and sisters in Christ. (3) So order the business as near as we can, that our reproof of good persons may not reflect upon goodness itself. 2. We may look upon her as a friendly woman. She was one that entertained Christ; took Him into her house. Whence we note, that the receiving of courtesies from any persons, does not discharge us from our duty towards them; where, by our place and occasions, we are called to the reproving of them. This, then, it serves, for the use of it, to meet briefly with two sorts of persons. 1. With people, who think by their courtesies sometimes to stop the ministers mouths where they show any testimony of respect and kindness. 2. It meets also with some ministers: their pusillanimity and lowness of spirit in this regard, which are silent, and meal-mouthed, where at any time they receive courtesies, and will not reprove where things are amiss. The second is the matter of reproof, or the thing which He reproves her for: “ Thou art careful, and troubled about many things.” In which passage of Christ’ s to her, there are divers particulars couched, as reprovable in this good woman. 1. Here was a mistake in her, and misapprehension of Christ Himself. She did not judge aright of Him in this particular. That we are all apt, by nature, to think we please Christ most, when we abound in outward services and performances to Him. Martha, because she stirred herself in the entertainment of Christ in her house, therefore she thinks she has now quitted herself, though she neglect, and let pass His doctrine. 2. Another thing reprovable here in Martha, was, as a misapprehension of Christ, so a misplacing of her own affections. She looked after that which was but trivial, and nothing to speak of, the providing of her feast, etc., and neglected the main chance of all, which was the word of Christ. “ Thou art careful, and troubled about many things” ; where that which expresses “ many things” is in the Greek τὰπολλὰ; that is, ordinary, and common, and vulgar things, τὰτυχόνζα. And here we learn thus much; that it is a great fault in Christians, and those who are professors of religion, to have their minds and thoughts taken up about slight and trivial matters Colossians 3:2). This minding of such things is very unfitting in these respects. 1. In regard of the unsuitableness of these things to their minds; they are things below a Christian spirit. Take an heart which is sanctified by grace, sprinkled with the blood of Jesus Christ, has the Spirit of God dwelling in it; and how far are these outward things inferior to it? as much, and a great deal more, than the sports and pastimes of children are to the thoughts of grown and grave men. 2. Because they have better, and other things to take their minds up. 3. Because they little conduce to that end to which themselves are appointed. Our main end is a better life, and to be fitted and prepared for that. The third and last thing which Christ seems here to tax in Martha, is her solicitude and distraction of spirit and excess in this business. 1. Here was her excess and superfluity, in the word “ many things,” as a note of variety. Christ did not find fault with her hospitality, but she was too curious, and superfluous in it. We are very ready and subject to over-shoot ourselves in things lawful and necessary, and to go beyond our bounds in them. And this now leads us to the second thing, which is the last observable in this verse; and that is, Martha’ s solicitude and distraction. First, she was cumbered. Secondly, she was careful. Thirdly, she was troubled. 1. Distraction, it does noway further or promote “ Which of you, by taking” care, can add one cubit to his stature? (Matthew 6:27). 2. Distraction, it does very much hinder, and put back; both formally, and demeritoriously; forasmuch as it weakens the mind, and makes it unfit for service. 3. Distraction, it does contract a great deal of guilt with it. It is a very vicious and inordinate affection, as that which casts a disparagement upon His promises and care over His people. For this purpose, it may be very pertinent to consider both the causes and remedies of this distemper; and the one will very fitly and pertinently follow upon the other. The causes of it are partly these: 1. Sometimes a dependence too much upon outward means. He which trusts to outward means, will be distracted; because these, they oftentimes fail, and give a man the slip. 2. A limiting of God’ s providence to such a particular way. This is another thing which causes distraction. 3. An over-prizing and over-valuing such a project and design. Our distractions are oftentimes according to our estimations; where we make too much of anything, it will be sure to trouble us, when it falls contrary to us. Lastly. A special cause of distraction is a special sickness which is upon the soul in this regard: weak things are apt to be unquiet; and frowardness, it causes trouble. Now, the remedies against distraction are likewise these: 1. A commending of ourselves and our ways to God by prayer Philippians 4:6). 2. A consideration of our call to such and such businesses and ways which we fall into. 3. A meditation on the promises which God has made in such and such conditions. (J. Horton.) But one thing is necessary, or needful This is the one thing which is necessary. And here there are two things further to be explained. First, how this is said to be “ one thing.” And, secondly, how this, alone, is said to be necessary, as if none were so but this. 1. How it is said to be but one. For if we speak of spiritual matters, we know that there are divers and sundry things of this nature, and they have their varieties in them. There is the Spirit of God, and there is the Kingdom of God. These, they are not one, blot many, in the kinds and in the operations of them. To this we answer: That these all, they come to one, and tend to one purpose in conclusion. 1. This is that which is most noble and excellent in its own nature, that is mainly and principally to be regarded, and looked after by us; which, of all other things, is most noble and excellent, considered in itself. It is that which does indeed excel all the comforts and contentments of this world; they are nothing in comparison with it. There is an emptiness and a defectiveness in them, and such as will be unable to satisfy at another day: whereas this, it makes a man fully and completely happy. Now, this is this “ one thing” in the text. It can be least spared of all other things besides. 2. It is of the greatest influence, and extent, and usefulness to us; it is that which we have occasion for in the whole course and compass of our lives, and we cannot properly do anything without it. It manages all callings, and all providences, and all affairs whatsoever they be. And a man cannot carry himself in them so decently, and as becomes him, that wants it. That man that neglects his soul, there is nothing else which can be well minded by him. 3. It is of the greatest continuance and duration. 4. This is also the main purpose for which every man was sent into the world; therefore it is mainly to be regarded and looked after by him. For this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should live according to the truth. The consideration of this point may be thus far useful to us. 1. To teach us where especially to spend our chiefest thoughts and endeavours. And that is, upon this one thing, which is so needful and necessary for us, as we have heard it is. We see hero where to begin, and fasten our studies: 1. To take care of necessaries, before we take care of superfluities. We count him to be a madman, in reference to the world, who looks after flowers, and pictures, and music, and such things as these; and, in the meantime, suffers himself to starve, and want bread. Well, there is a time coming when things will appear in another kind of view than now they do; when this “ one thing needful” will appear to be needful indeed. Now, therefore, this is that which in the first place we should work ourselves into; an apprehension of the necessity of religion. The way hereunto is first of all to get a spiritual favour and relish and appetite in us; what makes men to think meat to be needful, but because their stomachs call for it from them, and their mouths crave it at their hands? And so, what is that which makes men to think grace to be necessary? It is because they have gracious dispositions in them, which accordingly we must labour for. This will make us, with the prophet David, to think the word of God to be to us as our necessary and appointed food. 2. Labour to be convinced of the vanity and insufficiency of the creature. This will make us to think one thing necessary; that is religion, and nothing else. For, it may be, we think it necessary; but other things as necessary as that; and this divides our cares about it. 3. Get our hearts freed from those lusts and corruptions which are in them, and are apt to prevail over them; that’ s another way to make us to mind this one thing necessary. A covetous heart wilt never prize this “ one thing,” nor care for attaining unto it. Secondly. Seeing “ one thing is need-rid,” we should therefore not only mind this “ one thing” itself, but also mind everything else in reference to that one. We should make all our projects, and actions, and undertakings, subordinate and subservient hereunto; whatever we do, we should examine what connection it hath with this; how it furthers our salvation? how it advances the glory of God? 1. In matters of doctrine, and opinion, look at the” one thing needful” here. There are many frivolous and unnecessary disputes which the world sometimes is troubled withal; which take up men’ s heads, and minds, and divert them from better things. They never consider the influence or extent of those things which they hold, as to the making of a man better or worse; but indifferently rush upon them without any heed or regard at all. 2. In the duties and exercises of religion, look still at the one thing which is needful; and that according to the particular nature and quality of them. There are many religious performances, which have that which is merely accessory to them. In prayer, to pray in the Holy Ghost; in hearing, to receive the word with meekness; in fasting, to afflict the soul; in communicating, to feed upon Christ; and so of the rest. 3. In our employments and the works of our ordinary callings let us have an eye also still to this; consider what that is which is principally required of us. Lastly. In all the several passages and contrivances and occasions in the whole course of our lives, let us still have a regard to that which is of greatest concernment. Again, further, take it in men’ s dwellings, and the contrivances of their habitations; they should still look at that which is most needful, not only as to corporal or secular accommodations, but as to spiritual. Men commonly look at the goodness of the air, at the convenience of the soil, at the pleasantness of the situation; what it is for trade, what it is for health, what it is for pleasure; and it may not be amiss in them to do so. But is there nothing else to be regarded by them, but only these? or, are these the chief, and the principal? What are the means for Heaven? and salvation? and spiritual improvements? So again likewise for marriage, and the altering of men’ s conditions in the world, what is the one thing needful? The third is this: that feeling but one thing is needful, we should therefore take heed of all needless and frivolous distractions in ourselves. 4. We learn from hence how to judge both of others, and likewise of ourselves. If there be but “ one thing” which is needful, let us see what we are, according to the abiding, and the abounding of this “ one thing” in us. We commonly reckon of ourselves from other qualifications and endowments. No, but let us do it rather by this. No, but we count him a rich man, that has a great deal of gold, and silver, and jewels, and plate, and the like. And so it is here in this particular, as to the whole compass of happiness; he is not so happy a man that does abound with outward accommodations as he that doth abound with the excellencies of grace, and the adorning of the inward man. All perfections besides, without these, am very imperfect; and such as being truly considered, are of no account at all. Lastly. Seeing “ one thing is needful,” we have here also a very good account of God’ s dealings and proceedings with His people here in the world, as a special ground and argument of satisfaction, and contentation unto them. Seeing He provides this one thing for them, they have no cause to murmur against Him, as to some outward and worldly deprecations. Again, further, this may also satisfy us in all the hard and severe courses which God seems sometimes to take with His children, when He lays His corrections upon them here in this life, as a means to work out their corruptions, and to prepare them for an heavenly condition: all this is needful and necessary, and such as can not be well omitted. Physic, it is as needful as health, which is procured by it. That the way to be freed from superfluous cares, is to divert, and so turn to necessary. The looking after salvation will take men off from distraction about the world and the things that belong thereunto. This we gather from the course which was taken by our Saviour with Martha in her present condition, who suggests this unto her as that which was most seasonable for her. This it does upon a twofold account. 1. As it is another thing; and so it does it by way of interruption. 2. As it is a greater thing; and so it does it by way of absorption. 1. I say, as it is another thing; and so it does it by way of interruption. Diversions, they break the force of anything, and cheek it in its full pursuit. As inordinate bleeding in one part is cured by opening of a vein in another, and the violence of it is stopped by revulsion; even so it is here. 2. As it is a greater thing, and so it does it by way of absorption, and swallowing up; the greater devours the less. As when a man is in care about his life, he forgets some small and petty matter that troubled him; even so it is here. When men are made sensible of the concernments of their souls and their future salvation, other matters do not so closely stick by them as otherwise they would. This, it serves to give us account of so much inordinacy as there is in the world. Therefore we are commonly troubled about many things because this one thing is so neglected by us. We should still have this sentence in our remembrance--that “ one thing is needful” and we should accordingly be affected with it. 1. By way of specification: Seeing there is “ one thing needful,” therefore be sure to mind that; and, at the least, not to neglect it. 2. By way of order: Seeing it is the “ one thing needful “ therefore take care of that first; mind religion afore anything else. 3. By way of measure and degree: Seeing it is the “ one thing needful,’ therefore give it the greatest care and endeavour. And to make it full and complete, let us take it also in its fall latitude and extent. Religion, it is the “ one thing needful,” and it is needful for all persons, and all ages, and all conditions. It is needful for people in their youth to look after their souls then, and to begin with God. And it is needful for people in their old age, that so they may end their days in peace, and exchange this life for a better. (J. Horton.) And Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her 1. Here is His judgment itself, which is in a way of praise and commendation; “ Mary hath chosen that good part.” Christ commends Mary for her choice. Where there are divers things observable of us. We will take them as they offer themselves to us to be handled by us. 1. We learn from hence thus much: That it is the commendation of a Christian to make choice of such ways as are best and most approvable to Christ. If there be any way better than other in the course and tenour of his life, to be sure to pitch and fasten upon that. This is also commendable in every one else besides, and that upon these following grounds. 1. It is an argument of a good and sound judgment; it is an argument of persons well grounded and principled in religion, and that know what belongs unto it. 2. It is an argument also of a gracious and savoury spirit. Men choose commonly according to their affections, and there is much of their spirit in those things which they fasten upon. We may see what is within them, and what principles they are acted by, according to that which they make choice of. A spiritual heart is most affected with spiritual objects, and places its greatest delight and contentment in such things as these. 3. It is an argument of some courage and self-denial and resolution of mind. For the better part, it is not commonly without opposition and resistance in the world. Lastly. It is also an argument of an elect and chosen vessel. It is a sign that God has chosen us, when we choose Him, and such ways as these, which are good and pleasing to Him. We see in other matters for the world, how careful men are (what they are able) to make the best choice that may be, and there is nothing good enough for them, so exact and curious are they. And how much rather should they then choose the best in spiritual matters. The way hereunto is first of all to beg direction of God Himself for the guiding of us. Alas! we are but fools of ourselves without His Spirit to teach us, and therefore we must have recourse to Him. 2. We must also seriously weigh and compare one thing with another. Good election, it proceeds from good deliberation. 3. Take in the advice and experience of wellgrounded and experienced Christians to help us. Lastly. To labour to be acquainted with the power of religion ourselves. Religion, it is a matter of election; it is not a business of chance, but a business of choice. We are not to be carried only by others principles, but by principles of our own, not only to take the better part, but to choose the better part; that is, to take it out of a liking of it, and out of an affection to it; at least, to do so at last, and before we have done. And, further, they have also more delight and contentment in it. That which is forced, it is commonly burdensome, and men undertake it with a great deal of reluctancy, and are not themselves in it. But that which comes from them upon their own choosing, it is so much a great deal more pleasing and acceptable to them. We do not hereby advance the power of nature, as if we could do it of ourselves, without the grace of God assisting us; for that we cannot do. In the last place, we may here take notice of the object itself here propounded--“ that good part.” For the better opening of this point unto you I shall briefly do two things. 1. Show you what, in religion, may be lost and taken away from us. And-- 2. What may net. For somewhat is considerable in both. 1. For what may be lost. And we may take it in these particulars. (1) The outward means of salvation, that may be sometimes lost, and taken away. (2) Liberty of outward profession, and expression of the several graces of the Spirit, that may be restrained also. (3) The sense and feeling of grace in us, that may also be taken away, and removed from us--we may lose that. Now, further-- 2. (which is more proper to the text) We may here consider what it is which cannot. Now, sure it holds good of religion that it cannot be taken away, as is here expressed in this particular case of Mary. (1) In regard of its root and principle--This “ shall not be taken away.” Thus Job intimates of himself, when he was deprived almost of everything else; yet, that the “ root of the matter was found in Job 19:28). And (Isaiah 6:10) a godly man is compared to an oak, “ whole substance is in him, when he casts his leaves.” The second is in regard of its operations and effects which it works in the heart. The better part shall not be taken away thus; it still leaves somewhat behind it, which is sure to stick fast. (3) In regard of its reward and recompense both here in this life, and in another world; it shall not be taken away so neither. (J. Horton.) Martha and Mary Some are full of fever and excitement; some live in the shade. 1. The essence of the Christian religion is, that it is a religion of receiving. Martha was studious of giving; Mary, of receiving. Both had reference to Christ; nevertheless, Martha was reproved, while Mary was praised. Now, brethren, be persuaded of this--those please God most who take in most, and dwell in the calm contemplation of His glory till we reflect something of His likeness. 2. But the difference between Martha and Mary did not, after all, lie so much in what they did, as in the spirit in which they did it. Martha worked anxiously. Mary’ s mind rested. Had Martha gone about all her business with a heart quiet and at ease, I do not suppose that she would ever have been reproved. Now what is the great end for which Jesus lived and died--the end of ends, next to the glory of God? That you may have peace--that the soul of the sinner may be quiet, and rested, and happy. Christ had more pleasure in Mary’ s peace than He had in Martha’ s work. 3. But once more. Mary had learnt to do what Martha could not do-to concentrate her mind. She could gather all to one single point, and that point was Christ. It is impossible to suppose that Martha had not several motives as she bustled about that day in the house. Was not she thinking about who was looking at her? Had not she some desire for admiration? Were not there some grovelling feelings, and some unnecessary cares? “ Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things.” (J. Vaughan, M. A.) Martha and Mary I. THE MARTHA SPIRIT IS VERY IN THE CHURCH at this period--prevalent in some quarters to a mischievous degree, and among us all toa perilous extent. 1. There is a considerable tendency among Christian people, in serving Christ, to aim at making a fair show in the flesh. Jesus would be better pleased with a grain of love than a heap of ostentatious service. 2. The Martha spirit shows itself in the censuring of those persons who are careful about Christ’ s word, who stand up for the doctrines of the gospel, who desire to maintain the ordinances as they were delivered unto them and who are scrupulous and thoughtful, and careful concerning the truth as it is in Jesus. Mary, treasuring Up every word of Christ, Mary, counting each syllable a pearl, is reckoned to be unpractical, if not altogether idle. Contemplation, worship, and growth in grace are not unimportant. I trust we shall not give way to the spirit which despises our Lord’ s teaching, for if we do, in prizing the fruit and despising the root we shall lose the fruit and the root too. In forgetting the great well-spring of holy activity, namely, personal piety, we shall miss the streams also. 3. The Martha spirit crops up in our reckoning so many things necessary. To bring us back to first principles, “ one thing is needful,” and if by sitting at Jesus’ feet we can find that one thing, it will stand us in better stead than all the thousand things which custom now demands. To catch the Spirit of Christ, to be filled with Himself, this will equip us for godly labour as nothing else ever can. 4. The censurable quality in the Martha spirit appears in the satisfaction which many feel with mere activity. To have done so much preaching, or so much Sunday-school teaching, to have distributed so many tracts, to have made so many calls by our missionaries, all this seems to be looked at as end rather than means. If there be so much effort put forth, so much work done, is it not enough? Our reply is, It is not enough, it is nothing without the Divine blessing. 5. Once more, Martha’ s spirit is predominant in the Church of God to a considerable extent now, in the evident respect which is paid to the manifest, and the small regard which is given to the secret. II. THE MARTHA SPIRIT INJURES TRUE SERVICE. 1. It brings the least welcome offering to Christ. 2. It brings self too much to remembrance. III. THE MARY SPIRIT. I have to show you that it is capable of producing the noblest form of consecration to Christ. Its noblest results will not come just yet. Martha’ s fruits ripen very quickly, Mary’ s take time. While she was sitting at Christ’ s feet, she was forming and filling the springs of action. You are not losing time while you are feeding the soul. While by contemplation you are getting purpose strengthened and motive purified, you are rightly using time. When the man becomes intense, when he gets within him principles vital, fervent, energetic, then when the season for work comes he will work with a power and a result which empty people can never attain, however busy they may be. If the stream flows at once, as soon as ever there is a shower, it must be little better than a trickling rivulet; but if the current stream is dammed up, so that for awhile nothing pours down the river bed, you will in due time, when the waters have gathered strength, witness a torrent before which nothing can stand. Mary was filling up the fountain head, she was listening and learning, feeding, edifying, loving, and growing strong. The engine of her soul was getting its steam ready, and when all was right her action was prompt and forcible. 1. The manner of her action was being refined. Her estimate of Christ was truer than Martha’ s. Those who think not, who meditate not, who commune not with Christ, will do commonplace things very well, but they will never rise to the majesty of a spiritual conception, or carry out a heart-suggested work for Christ. 2. That sitting of Mary was also creating originality of act. Martha is in a hurry to be doing something--she does what any other admirer of Jesus would do, she prepares meat and a festival; but Mary does what but one or two besides herself would think of--she anoints Him, and is honoured in the deed. She struck out a spark of light from herself as her own thought, and she cherished that spark till it became a flaming act. (C. H. Spurgeon.) Martha; or, thoughts on the active life The name of Martha suggests to the minds of most of us, I fancy, the thought of an anxious, troubled, and perhaps a somewhat fussy woman, with a short temper and a hasty tongue. That I think is the picture that many of us have drawn of Martha in our own minds. But you must remember that there is something to be said on the other side, something to be said on Martha’ s behalf; and while we do not shut our eyes to Martha’ s faults, we may learn something from that which is recorded to her credit. Martha, herself, the managing spirit of the household, is the person who invites the Lord Jesus Christ to come and take His abode for a season in her house. And here let me say that it is a happy thing when a strong mind and a vigorous will are turned in the right direction, and employed for the right purpose. It is something to be thankful for if we have such qualities as a strong mind and a vigorous will to present to the Lord for His service; and although these are not unfrequently coupled with an ungentleness and hastiness which are net altogether lovely, nay, may sometimes be repulsive and painful, yet let us acknowledge the fact that God can utilize that element in our temperament which Satan seeks to abuse, and that where a strong will and a vigorous determination may be employed by the devil with the worst possible results, such natural characteristics, dedicated to the service and glory of God, may prove of priceless value. Now we must remember that Martha had to face a good deal in inviting Jesus Christ into her household. The test was a severe one to her, because it was to try her in her weakest point. There were thirteen hungry men to be provided for, and then no doubt some of the neighbours would also be expecting an invitation to meet this Jesus, who had come among them, and about whom there was so much talk. Perhaps, too, there may have been other unpleasant consequences that she may have had to think about. Jesus Christ not unfrequently may have seemed a troublesome guest, in other ways besides those that I have referred to. His presence may sometimes have exposed people to an amount of hostile criticism and censure which they would fain have avoided. One thing is clear, she was a brave woman, whatever faults she may have had. It required a good deal of moral courage to invite this much-maligned and much-abased Man into her house, and to treat Him as a loved and honoured guest. But Martha’ s courage was equal to the occasion. And, my dear friends, we too shall find it no light matter to receive Jesus into our hearts and into our homes. And it is as well that we should clearly understand what the consequences may be if we take so important a step. The question will have to be asked over and over again, “ Is this and that in accordance with the mind of Him whom we have received and welcomed as our guest?” for we must bear in mind that wherever Christ goes He declines to occupy a subordinate position. It is possible for some of you to do what Martha did. You may be the means of introducing Jesus Christ into your household; and although His presence may cause a disturbance, just think what an honour it is to be the means of introducing the King of kings and Lord of lords into the household which belongs to Him, but which has not previously recognized His claims. Think of the beneficent results that may flow from your action--how the purifying and elevating influences of the Divine Presence may reach one person after another, until at last you can look around with holy joy, and exclaim, “ As for me and my house we now serve the Lord.” Not long since, at the close of a mission that I had conducted in the North of England, a gentleman, a man of property, returned to his country house, from the large l own where I was working, a changed man. On his arrival he summoned into his dining-room all his household, servants and all; and standing up before them all, he addressed them to this effect: “ My dear friends, I have to confess with shame and sorrow that this has not been hitherto a Christian household it has not been regulated upon Christian principles. I, as your master, have not been setting you a Christian example; but, on the contrary, all my influence has been thrown into the wrong scale. I cannot express the amount of sorrow I feel as I look back over the past. But I have called you all together to tell you that, through God’ s mercy, a great change has taken place in me, and now my supreme desire is that this household should be a Christian household, and that all that is done in it should be done just as the Lord would have it done.” Turning to the butler, he said, “ We have never hitherto had family prayers; but now understand that at such an hour in the morning, and such an hour in the evening, you ring the bell, and we will all gather together and acknowledge God in our family.” And he added, “ Be sure you make no difference; whoever may be in the house, whether they be worldly or whether they be religious people, make no distinction. From this time forth Jesus Christ must be Master in this household; we have ignored and dishonoured Him too long.” It must have needed some courage, no doubt, to make such a declaration as that. But oh! do you not think he had his reward in the joy and satisfaction he must have felt as he knelt for the first time, surrounded by his family,” at the feet of a reconciled God, and thus publicly received Jesus into his house? And remember you may be the means of introducing Christ into your household, even if you be not at its head. The humblest member of the family, or even one of the servants, may be the means of bringing Christ in, and by and by the influence and effect of His presence may be recognized and felt by all. Dear friends, do you think Martha ever regretted receiving Jesus Christ into her house? Martha received Jesus, but little did she know, when she did so, how soon she was to stand in terrible need of His sympathy and comfort and help! Ah, dear friends, sweet are such uses of such adversity as this I blessed are the sorrows that bring out such new and fresh revelations of our wealth in Christi It is only this that can make our sorrows fruitful of good. But it is time that we should look at the other side. So far we have been saying all we could in Martha’ s favour, but we must not shut our eyes upon her faults; for there is much to be learned from considering the faults and failings even of those whose hearts are in the right place, if we approach the consideration of these in the spirit of charity and humility. It is evident that Martha got some harm as well as some good out of Jesus’ visit; for she seems here to be sadly flustered and flurried, and even somewhat peevish and irritable. She seems indeed to have been out of temper with the Master as well as with her sister, and to have implied some little reproach on Him as well as on Mary. But why all this disturbance and irritation? Surely it all came of this, that she was thinking more of serving Christ than of pleasing Him. If she had paused to reflect, she must have seen that a sharp, half-reproachful word, and the obvious loss of composure and temper, would cause the Master a good deal more pain than the best-served meal in the world could give Him pleasure. She was busy about Christ, but she failed to enter into sympathy with Christ. Here we have a very important lesson taught us, and one that we need to have impressed upon our minds as Christians and as Christian workers. Our object in life should not he so much to get through a great deal of work, as to give perfect satisfaction to Him for whom we are doing the work. If Martha had looked at things from His point of view she would have felt differently about Mary, differently about those household cares that were troubling her. But Martha in her attempts to serve Christ, though scarcely conscious of it, was really serving herself. Her great desire was, that everything should pass off well. Everything was to be clean and tidy, and well served and well managed, so that nobody should make any unfavourable criticism upon the whole entertainment. We are bound to offer Christ our very best, and nothing done for Him should be done in a slovenly, slip-shod, negligent way, as if anything were good enough for God. She was right in her principle, and yet she failed in carrying it out, and in that failure denied her Guest the very thing that pleased Him best. Martha is quite indignant, and doesn’ t care to conceal it. And you know people of her class, while they are very useful in a Church, and do a great deal of work, are very frequently indeed, like Martha, somewhat short-tempered. They have a great deal of energy, and a great deal of enthusiasm; but when things do not go exactly as they wish, the hasty word soon slips out, and the unpleasant thought is harboured, and that soon takes all the joy and all the blessing out of Christian work. How often is the work of the Church marred by this hasty spirit, and the Master is grieved in our very attempts to honour Him! And the same spirit, still, I fear, not unfrequently mars a useful life, and desecrates our sanctities. Yes, there is something better than service; there is something grander than doing. It is well to serve; but better still to offer acceptable service. It is well to do; but it is better still to do things in the right way. Martha had her own idea of what the right way was, and it was a worldly idea. What Martha needed was sympathy with Jesus Christ’ s spirit, to come within the charmed circle of His inner life--to understand His object and aims, to appreciate His longing desire, not to feed Himself with outward food, but to feed a famishing world with the revelation of God in His human form; to reciprocate His spiritual desires for those He sought to lift to a high and heavenly level of experience. This was where Martha went wrong, and this where Mary went right. As it was, Mary chose the good part which could not be taken from her, and Martha missed it, and by her very conduct showed that the Master was right in describing that good part as the one thing needful. Christian workers, let us learn our lesson. It is not enough to receive Jesus into our homes and into our lives--this we must do before anything else--but we need to sit at His feet, to gaze on His spiritual beauty, to hear His words, to yield ourselves wholly to His spiritual influence. Thus, and only thus, shall we find ourselves possessed of the one thing needful; and while hands or feet or brain are busy--or while all are busy together--there shall be a great calm within; there will be speed without feverish haste, and activity without bustle, and our work shall become sabbatic, and our lives an unbroken sanctity. Whatever happens let us not be too busy to sit at Jesus’ feet. (W. H.Aitken, M. A.) Mary; or, the contemplative life These two sisters have been regarded, and rightly regarded, it seems to me, as illustrating to us, in their character, two contrasted elements of spiritual experience. Martha represents the active life, and Mary represents the contemplative life. For we know, and do let us bear in mind, that Christian work in itself is intensely interesting; indeed, there is nothing morn likely to become engrossing. We all know how absorbed men may become in their own special pursuits. For instance, we have read about Sir Isaac Newton, and how absorbed he used to be in his mathematical and astronomical researches until he was scarcely able to give a thought to the common duties and circumstances of life, but used frequently to make the most ridiculous blunders about commonplace things, because he took so profound an interest in, and was so fully occupied with, his own great discoveries. And so it is with other branches of knowledge. When men devote their attention to a particular branch of knowledge or science, it becomes a sort of passion, and they no longer find it necessary to stimulate themselves to exertion in that particular; rather they have to check or curb themselves, in order to prevent their minds from becoming too deeply absorbed in their favourite studies. And it sometimes happens that when the mind is given over to some special pursuit, interest in their work becomes so keen that men seem to lose all power of checking themselves, and their brains go on working, as it were, automatically, when they don’ t intend them to be working at all. I well remember some years ago hearing a touching story of a late Cambridge professor, who was one of the greatest Greek scholars of our time. For some few months before he died he was advised by his friends to shut up his books, give up his studies, and go as much as possible into social life, in order that he might be drawn away from those subjects in which his mind had become so absorbed that his constitution was impaired; indeed, he was threatened with softening of the brain. On one occasion he was in a drawing-room, surrounded by cheerful company, when a half-sad smile passed over his countenance as he observed to a friend, “ What is the use of you shutting up my books and not allowing me to work? While I have been here I have traced the derivations of three distinct Greek words, and detected their connection with certain Sanscrit roots.” Such was the force of his ruling passion. Now if we can become so absorbed in intellectual researches, is it a wonder that we should become even more absorbed in those higher pursuits in which it is the privilege of Christian people to engage? To be doing God’ s work; to be endeavouring to make people happy; to be the means of regenerating human hearts and lives, and of reforming the homes of the vicious and degraded; to be restoring those that are fallen, and rescuing those that are tempted--is not this necessarily a most engrossing work, and one that should employ all our energies? It is well, my friends, indeed it is necessary, that we should be interested; for no man ever yet did anything well until he threw his whole heart into it and felt an interest in it. Yet in this very interest lies the danger; for may not the work become everything to us, and He for whom we work be allowed to fall into the background, and eventually be almost forgotten? Nor is it only our work that suffers. We suffer ourselves; for our very work has practically clipped in between us and the Lord for whom we are working, and thus becomes to us, instead of a means of grace, drawing us nearer to God, on the contrary, rather a barrier between ourselves and God. How shall we guard against this error? Yon medieval monastic would reply, “ Give up your work, tear yourself away from the activity of life, seclude yourself in the desert; and then you will be able to enjoy the fellowship of Christ and to enter upon the life of vision, the mystical blessedness of apprehension of the Divine.” That is one answer; but it is not such as is given here, and we know what it has brought about in bygone ages. Let us look for an answer to all such misapprehensions to the scene that lies before us. On the one side, there is busy Martha; on the other, quiet, contemplative Mary. We are not told to be imitators of either Martha or Mary, but we are told to be imitators of the Lord Jesus Christ. Was there ever such a busy life as Christ’ s? Was there ever such a contemplative life as Christ’ s? He moved forward in the quietness of assured power. He was a true Quietist; for His life was very still, and yet its very stillness told. We may learn a good deal in this respect from observing outward objects. The mightiest things are not always the noisiest things. You go down to one of your own quays, and there you will see the little donkey-engine, on the deck of one of your ships, that is being employed in loading or unloading its freight. This entry is longer than a Bible module can hold. The rest is at https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/bi/ Luke 11:1 Lord, teach us to pray The Christian taught to pray I. WHAT THE REQUEST IMPLIES. 1. A conviction of the importance of prayer. This, in this ease, seems to have had its origin in the habits and example of Christ. He prayed often and much; in sorrow, and in joy; alone, and with His disciples. 2. This request implies also some knowledge of the real nature of prayer. The disciples had heard their Master pray. They had witnessed His fervour, the seriousness, the abasement, and perhaps something of the elevation, of His spirit in His supplications, and their understandings were opened. Prayer appeared to them in a new light. Before, it was a ceremony; it was now an inward, spiritual service. They regarded it for the first time as the work of the heart, and conscious that their own hearts had hitherto been but little engaged in it, their request was, “ Lord, teach us to pray.” They wished their prayers to be in future of a higher and more spiritual character, and, beyond this, they scarcely knew, perhaps, their own meaning or object. 3. An impression, too of the difficulty of prayer is plainly to be traced in the disciples’ words. And this undoubtedly sprung out of their conviction of its importance, and their newly-acquired knowledge of its real nature. That which is so important must, they concluded, be done aright; and that which is so spiritual, they were conscious they could not do at all; and thus they were constrained to seek help and instruction. 4. Besides intimating a conviction of the importance, the real nature, and the difficulty of prayer, it plainly indicates also a desire for an increased ability to pray. II. How MAY WE EXPECT SUCH A AS THIS TO BE ? In the instance before us, it was answered at once. We owe to it the well-known prayer we call the Lord’ s prayer--a model of supplication, which claims at once our admiration and gratitude. But with all its excellencies it is in itself powerless. It could not teach these disciples to pray. It showed them indeed what their prayers ought to be, but it did not communicate to them the power of making their prayers like it. Our Lord well knew this. Accordingly, as soon as He had given His disciples a pattern for their supplications, we find Him immediately directing them where to go for the ability to follow it. He sends them to the Holy Spirit for the inward principle of prayer, urging them to importunity in their petitions for His grace, and assuring them at the same time that their importunity shall not be lost. How then does this Holy Spirit teach us to pray? In many ways. Among others, in these four: 1. By discovering to us our spiritual poverty; showing us our wants and helplessness, or giving us a more lively sense of them. 2. Affliction, too, is often made to answer the same gracious end. 3. At other times Christ stirs up the soul to prayer, by glving it an enlarged view of the Divine promises and goodness. 4. Sometimes the Holy Spirit carries us yet farther. He teaches us to pray by giving us clearer views of Christ as a Mediator and Intercessor. You are aware, brethren, that I might still go on. I might say, Christ teaches us to pray by much that is passing around us, by what we call accidents--events that make, perhaps, a whole parish or nation start; crushing, and crushing in an hour, the hopes and prospects and happiness that seemed almost out of the reach of decay or change. And He teaches us by deliverances, by bringing us to the edge of some precipice, and then, as our foot goes over it, snatching us away from it; showing us in the same moment our danger and our deliverance. (G. Bradley, M. A.) Christ the Teacher of prayer I. THE ’ REQUEST:-- 1. This was a pertinent request, considering them as dependent, needy, sinful, and dying creatures. 2. A seasonable request, as Christ had been just now praying before them, and was shortly to be taken from them. 3. A short and comprehensive request, much being contained in a few words. 4. It would also appear to have been an acceptable request, for it was immediately answered, and that in a very gracious manner. II. WHAT WAS IMPLIED IN THE REQUEST. 1. A consciousness of the importance and necessity of prayer. The breath of the newborn soul. Prayer softens our affections, sweetens our enjoyments, and is the principal means of keeping up an intercourse with heaven. God approves of it, and the soul is every way benefited by 2:2. A sense of weakness and inability, and that this duty cannot be performed aright without Divine assistance. 3. It also implies that those who are appointed of God to instruct others, will, among other things, teach them to pray. III. THE OF THIS , AS MADE TO CHRIST:-- 1. None ever prayed like Christ--so pertinently, fervently, and effectually. 2. As none ever prayed, so none ever taught like Christ. 3. It was Christ who taught John to pray, else He could not have taught His disciples. He teaches those who are teachers of others. (B. Beddome, M. A.) The disciples’ request I. WHAT IS IMPLIED IN THIS REQUEST? Clearly it implies-- 1. A conviction of the propriety of prayer. 2. It implies a sense of their need of being taught. 3. It implies a sincere desire to learn. 4. It implies something of the true spirit or disposition of prayer already possessed. 5. The request implies a high opinion of the ability and grace of Christ. II. THE MANNER IN WHICH THE REQUEST WAS . We may observe, in the general, it was answered. The disciples said, “ Lord, teach us to pray.” The Lord Jesus did teach them. 1. By convincing us more clearly of the necessity of prayer, 2. By giving us more impressive views of our wants. 3. By strengthening our faith in Divine promises. 4. By instructing us in the great utility of His own mediation. 5. By increasing our pleasure and delight in the duty. (T. Kidd.) Lord, teach us to pray After listening to a fervent prayer we sometimes say, “ We wish we could pray like the person who has offered it” ; how much more should we have thus wished, if we had heard Jesus Christ pray! No doubt His manner was very impressive, sincere, fervent, reverent. 1. “ Lord, teach us to pray,” because we are ignorant in asking. St. Paul says, “ We know not what we should pray for as we ought.” A consciousness of inability to pray aright grows with a Christian’ s growth. 2. Again, a sense of our sinfulness, as well as of our ignorance, should cause us to offer the petition in our text. Who does not feel at times as if it was a wonder of mercy that God does not cut us down in anger, even while in the act of praying, so miserable and defective are our purest offerings! What a gift of prayer would it be if our God would enable us always to delight in the duty, restrain every wandering thought, and fix our whole soul in sweet and full communion with Him! Can you think of many things more desirable in this world, Christians, than the perfect spirit of prayer? If we could enjoy always as much as we do in our happiest devotional seasons, that would be a blessed privilege; but, alas! our happy seasons are few and far between, and even in them “ there was much imperfection. “ Lord, teach us to pray.” 3. To make us prevalent in prayer, we have need also to offer the petition in our text. We might have unnumbered mercies more than we do enjoy if we prayed for them aright. There are favours in God’ s right hand for ourselves, our children, our friends, and fellow-creatures, the bestowal of which is suspended on our faithfulness in asking. Here is more than life, here is eternal welfare resting on our prayers to God. 4. And who can so well teach us how to pray as that blessed Saviour to whom the request of our text was addressed! Prayer was His frequent work on earth, intercession is His employ in heaven. He knows what pleas will prevail with God, and He can put them into our hearts and order them aright upon our tongues. (W. H. Lewis, D. D.) Teach us to pray 1. It would be difficult, I think impossible, to prove that our Lord ever commanded His disciples to pray. He always assumes that they pray; teaches them plainly that unless they pray they cannot do what they must do. He moved His disciples to pray, not by telling them to do so, but by exciting in them desires which compelled them to supplication. You cannot pray by direct force of resolution. You must put yourself under conditions which will inspire desire for communion with God. (1) Because for most men it is hard to pray, and easy to pretend, we are warned against that easily besetting sin. The hypocrites wanted of the king only to be seen in his company. They stood at his door that they might be mistaken for his friends. The same temptation assails us at all times, and is acutely dangerous now. It is insidious as malaria. (2) Most of us say grace before our meals. If we realize who feeds us, we cannot help doing so, unless we are brutes. Most of us have family worship. If we are alert to spiritual facts, it will be more natural to omit our meals than our devotions. But what are the motives we often hear unblushingly advanced for continuing these spiritual exercises? The children will be surprised if they do not hear grace at table I For the sake of the example upon them, daily prayers must be inexorably maintained! But is it permitted to pray that we may be seen of children, and forbidden to pray that we may be seen of men? The “ closet” is the cure for hypocrisy in prayer. 2. When we pray, we are forbidden to use vain repetitions as the heathen do. There are men, good men, men meaning to be honest, who think their prayers must be right if couched in Scriptural phrases. Many say prayers every night and morning, who never pray except when they are scared. Repeating David’ s or Isaiah’ s petitions, or even our Lord’ s Prayer, is not necessarily praying because we do it on our knees. Saying over even the Lord’ s Prayer is for us a vain repetition until we so understand its meaning and so sympathize with its spirit that the words express our real desires. For “ vain repetitions” are simply “ empty phrases,” sayings which do not express what we really mean. The cure for this habit of making vain repetition lies in creating right desires. We must learn to know what we need, and to desire that. Therefore we are told-- 3. When we pray, to pray after this manner. The prayer tells us what we need, but rarely crave. If we were sure that one wish, and one only, would be granted us this day for the asking, would that wish be the petition which stands first in the Lord’ s Prayer? (1) We shall not pray effectively until we pray according to the mind of God. (2) Few of us do greatly desire the things God desires for us. (3) We need such a change of heart as shall make us crave what God declares we need. And this is only another way of saying-- (a) That we cannot pray effectually until we can sincerely pray in the manner of our Lord’ s Prayer, (b) That few of us can yet do that. (c) That we need to learn to do so. (W B. Wright.) Barrenness in prayer There are, no doubt, many who have experienced at times an intense dissatisfaction with their prayers. They seem so lame, so cold, so profitless, till you are inclined to exclaim, “ What a weariness, what a mockery it is!” You are constantly disappointed with yourselves. The heart that seemed so full has run empty ere you reached your knees. You have nothing to say; all your thoughts have fled from you; and the intense longing comes across your heart that some one would teach you how to pray. I do not pretend to supply the want here indicated; but I wish to touch upon some of the causes of this trying sense of barrenness in prayer. I. SELF-CONCEIT. We are very slow to learn the lesson of our own inability. We feel at some time, perhaps, that our hearts are prompted by an earnest desire to pray. We grow keenly alive for the moment to our own wants; but when we attempt to pray, we find the edge of that sense of need is gone. The heart appeared full, but when we knelt we found it empty. Vexed and disappointed, we murmur at our privation, but are too blind to see its cause. We cannot see that our own self-conceit lies at the root of our failure. We thought we could do it of ourselves--we anticipated rich heart communion; but we were miserably mistaken, because we did not realize that we are not sufficient of ourselves to think anything as of ourselves, but that our whole sufficiency is of God. We need, then, to pray for the gift of the Holy Spirit. This is the very dawn of spiritual light, the very threshold of prayer. II. SELF-. They tell God that they have sinned, that they have grievously broken His commandments; they ask God to give them true repentance, and to forgive them for Jesus Christ’ s sake. Such a prayer might be from a certain heart a true and noble expression of spiritual longing; but with the persons alluded to this prayer is the stereotyped plate from which all their prayers for themselves, morning and evening, are struck off. With very little variation, and in the most conventional way--though, perhaps, with very real desire--they confess that they are sinners, unworthy and polluted, but there is not the confession of a single definite sin, or if there is, it is perhaps the result of some very rare circumstance which has impressed some special transgression more vividly upon their minds. To realize our sinfulness, we must adopt a more particular mode of dealing with our own hearts, taking them to task; recalling each special sin, and confessing it before God. III. IN PRAYER. By this I mean that spirit in prayer which confines all our supplications to our own individual needs. Often God visits us with barrenness because we fail to grow in heart-sympathy and Christian longing for the welfare of others. It is the very law of Christ that His love should spread, as it is the law of hydrostatics that pressure should circulate in all directions through a volume of water; and when we in a niggardly forgetfulness of others violate that law, we are met with the punishment of a straitening in ourselves. (Bishop Boyd Carpenter.) Acceptable prayer, the gift of Christ I. I shall begin by mentioning TWO THAT ARE , AS TO PRAYER. 1. The first of them is a due sense of our wants. Christ alone by His Spirit, teacheth this first preparatory lesson. “ Lord, teach us to pray,” by revealing to us our guilt and misery, our vileness and our helplessness. 2. The second qualification which is indispensable, as preparatory to acceptable prayer, is an acquaintance with the true way of access to God. Alas! the tendency of our corrupt hearts is, to resist this Divine appointment. O, then, what need is there to ask of the Lord a right understanding, a cordial approbation, of that way which He hath appointed. II. Supposing you, then, to have made some proficiency in these two preparatory lessons, I proceed, in the second place, to mention SOME , WITH RESPECT TO WHICH EVEN THE WELL- WILL HAVE TO USE THE OF MY TEXT, “ Lord, teach me to pray” 1. The power of devout attention while praying is one of those gifts which we must obtain by prayer. 2. Spirituality in our devotional exercises is another gift, for which we must often pray. 3. Furthermore, the Christian has need to pray for simplicity and godly sincerity in his prayers. 4. We must request of the Saviour that a patient confidence in God may accompany all our prayers. (J. Jowett, M. A.) The rule of direction in prayer I. WE NEED IN PRAYER. This is evident from-- 1. God’ s greatness. 2. Our own guiltiness. 3. The importance of the subject. 4. Our weakness and aptness to go wrong. 5. The danger of mistaking and miscarrying in prayer. II. WHAT RULE GOD HAS GIVEN for our direction in prayer. 1. A general rule in the whole of the Bible, where His will is revealed. (1) It furnishes us abundantly with matter of prayer, in all the parts of it--petition, confession, &c. (Psalms 51:4-5; Philippians 4:6). And whoso has the Word of God dwelling richly in him, will not want matter for prayer, for himself or for others. There is a storehouse of it there, of great variety; and we are welcome to the use of it, agreeable to our own case. (2) It fully directs us as to the manner of prayer: as, for instance, that we must pray with sincerity (Hebrews 10:22); with humility (Psalms 10:17); in faith (James 1:6); and with fervency (James 5:16). And there is no qualification necessary in prayer, but what we may learn from the Holy Word. (3) It furnishes us with the most fit words to be used in prayer. Do ye want words to express your desires before the Lord? He has given us His own words in the Bible, that we may use them according to our needs Hosea 14:2). 2. There is a special rule given us by Jesus Christ for that end, namely, that form of words which Christ taught His disciples, commonly called “ the Lord’ s Prayer.” (1) The Lord’ s Prayer is given us as a directory for prayer, a pattern and an example, by which we are to regulate our petitions, and make other prayers. (2) It may also be used as a prayer, so that it be done with understanding, faith, reverence, and other praying graces. Inferences: 1. How gracious and ready to hear prayer is our God, who has been pleased Himself to direct us how to pray to Him! 2. Let us acquaint ourselves with the blessed Word, that contains such a full rule of practice as well as faith; and study the Holy Scriptures, that we may be the better instructed to pray. 3. See the absolute necessity for prayer in a Christian life. (T. Boston, D. D.) Prayer What is prayer? I. IT IS AN UP OF OUR DESIRES TO GOD. These are, as it were, the soul of prayer, without which the most elegant and warm expressions that can possibly be invented and used would not be acceptable to God. II. Our request must be FOR SUCH THINGS AS ARE TO THE WILL OF GOD. Things which are not so it is not fit we should receive; and for that reason we should not be rash and hasty to utter anything before God. III. Our prayers are to be offered up to God IN THE NAME OF CHRIST; for His sake; in dependence upon the merit and intercession of the beloved Son of God, in whom the Father is well pleased. IV. OF SIN IS A BRANCH OF THAT WORSHIP WE CALL PRAYER. V. A OF GOD’ S MERCIES justly claims a place in this part of Divine worship. (John Whitty.) Prayer I. WHAT IS PRAYER? The presenting of our requests to God, and breathing out our desires before Him. In prayer-- 1. The heart must be the agent. 2. God is the object. 3. Jesus Christ the medium. 4. Prayer must be our constant exercise. II. WHY SHOULD WE DESIRE TO BE TAUGHT HOW TO PRAY? 1. Because of the importance of prayer. 2. Because of our natural ignorance of this duty. 3. Because God desires us to be proficient in this duty. III. WHY SHOULD WE DESIRE THE LORD TO TEACH US HOW TO PRAY? 1. Because He was distinguished for this holy exercise. 2. Because He is our Master, and in all things we are to hear Him. 3. Because with Him is the spirit of prayer. 4. Because He is our great High Priest. Application: 1. Let us cultivate the gift of prayer. 2. Covet the true spirit of prayer (1 Corinthians 7:5). 3. Commence and conduct all our affairs in connection with prayer Philippians 4:6.) 4. Continue instant in prayer (Luke 18:1). 5. In the exercise of faith look for the returns of prayer. (J. Burns, D. D.) Forms of private prayer In the case of public prayer the need of forms is evident; but it is not at first sight so obvious that in private prayer also we need use written forms, instead of praying extempore (as it is called); so I proceed to show the use of them. 1. Let us bear in mind the precept of the wise man, “ Be not rash with thy mouth, and let not thine heart be hasty to utter anything before God; for God is in heaven, and thou upon earth; therefore let thy words be few.” Prayers framed at the moment are likely to become irreverent. What need have we of humble, sober, and subdued thoughts I as becomes creatures, sustained hourly by His bounty; as becomes lost sinners who have no right to speak at all; and still more, as grateful servants of Him who bought us from ruin at the price of His own blood. Therefore, to avoid the irreverence of many or unfit words and rude half-religious thoughts, it is necessary to pray from book or memory, and not at random. 2. In the next place, forms of prayer are necessary to guard us against the irreverence of wandering thoughts. A chief use of them is that of fixing the attention. 3. Next, they are useful in securing us from the irreverence of excited thoughts. They are accused of impeding the current of devotion, when, in fact, that (so called) current is in itself faulty, and ought to be checked. To be excited is not the ordinary state of the mind, but the extraordinary, the now-and then state. Nay, more than this, it ought not to be the common state of the mind; and if we are encouraging within us this excitement, this unceasing rush and alternation of feelings, and think that this, and this only, is being in earnest in religion, we are harming our minds, and (in one sense) I may even say grieving the peaceful Spirit of God, who would silently and tranquilly work His Divine work in our hearts. 4. Further, forms are useful to help our memory, and to set before us at once, completely, and in order, what we have to pray for. It does not follow that when the heart is really full of the thought of God, and alive to the reality of things unseen, then it is easiest to pray. Rather the deeper insight we have into His majesty and our innumerable wants, the less we shall be able to draw out our thoughts into words. 5. And further, the use of a form as a help to the memory is still more obvious, when we take into account the engagements of this world with which most men are surrounded. The cares and businesses of life press upon us with a reality which we cannot overlook. Shall we trust the matters of the next world to the chance thoughts of our Own minds, which come this moment, and go the next, and may not be at hand when the time of employing them arrives, like unreal visions, having no substance and no permanence? 6. And this use of forms in prayer becomes great, beyond power of estimating, in the case of those multitudes of men, who, after going on well for a while, fall into sin. Chance words and phrases of the Church’ s services adhere to their memories, rising up in moments of temptation or of trouble, to check or to recover them. And hence it happens, that in the most irreligious companies a distinction is said to be observable between those who have had the opportunity of using our public forms in their youth, and those whose religious impressions have not been thus happily fortified; so that, amid their most reckless mirth, and most daring pretence of profligacy, a sort of secret reverence has attended the wanderers, restraining them from that impiety and profaneness in which the others have tried to conceal from themselves the guilt and peril of their doings. 7. Such is the force of association in undoing the evil of past years, and recalling us to the innocence of children. Nor is this all we may gain from the prayers we use, nor are penitent sinners the only persons who can profit by it. Let us recollect for how long a period our prayers have been the standard forms of devotion in the Church of Christ, and we shall gain a fresh reason for loving them, and a fresh source of comfort in using them. I know different persons will feel differently here, according to their different turn of mind; yet surely there are few of us, if we dwelt on the thought, but would feel it a privilege to use, as we do (for instance, in the Lord’ s Prayer), the very petitions which Christ spoke. He gave the prayer and used it. His apostles used it; all the saints ever since have used it. When we use it we seem to join company with them. Who does not think himself brought nearer to any celebrated man in history, by seeing his house, or his furniture, or his handwriting, or the very books that were his? Thus does the Lord’ s Prayer bring us near to Christ, and to His disciples in every age. No wonder, then, that in past times good men thought this form of prayer so sacred, that it seemed to them impossible to say it too often, as if some especial grace went with the use of it. Nor can we use it too often; it con-rains in itself a sort of plea for Christ’ s listening to us; we cannot, so that we keep our thoughts fixed on its petitions, and use our minds as well as our lips when we repeat it. And what is true of the Lord’ s Prayer, is in its measure true of most of those prayers which our Church teaches us to use. It is true of the Psalms also, and of the Creeds; all of which have become sacred, from the memory of saints departed who have used them, and whom we hope one day to meet in heaven. (J. H. Newman, D. D.) Forms of prayer Common sense tells us, that when people unite together in public worship, if their thoughts are to run in the same channel, they must agree beforehand what is to be the subject of their petitions, and the very words in which they are to be offered, if there is to be any certainty, satisfaction, and regularity in devotion. To sing out of a book is the same in principle as praying out of a book, and if the one is spiritual and right, so is the other also. Public worship should embrace confession, penitence, implorations, ascription, and thanksgiving. The prayer offered to God in His holy place should be sober, solemn, reverential, filial, scriptural, offered in faith, through the merits of the Divine Redeemer. Such, most emphatically, are the devotions of the Prayer Book. A Presbyterian minister, no less distinguished for his abilities than for his Christian charity, has lately given this little sketch from his pastoral experience. In looking up scholars for a mission-school, he was led to visit a poor woman, on her sick-bed, in the upper room of a crowded, comfortless tenement-house. The room was entirely dark, the only inlet of illumination being the swinging, twopaned ventilator overhead. Waiting until his eyes became accustomed to the dimness, he discovered that the apartment was merely a small closet, about six feet square. A shapeless mass of humanity was buried under a heap of coarse, tumbled coverlets, the victim of rheumatism; having occupied the same comfortless room for fourteen years. Although a member of the Church, no minister of the city knew of her existence, she having come from another place, and bringing no certificate of membership to commend her to pastoral care and oversight. When asked by the visitor whether she had ever given up her faith and hope, her pale, shrivelled face lighted up, as she answered, very decidedly, “ Never!” She declined his kind offers of pecuniary aid, but thankfully accepted his proposal to pray with her. He was struck with the fact that, in his repeated visits, she avoided speaking much of herself, and seemed to prefer to spend all the time in talking of God’ s love, and the Saviour’ s abundant grace. Remembering the strong attachment of Churchmen for the Prayer Book, the Presbyterian minister learned several of the beautiful collects by heart, and one day, while praying, suffered his voice quietly to run into the form. The sick woman recognized the first sentence of the dear old words with a start of surprise; then she began to repeat the petitions aloud with him; and when he finished she sobbed aloud, with humble, grateful tears. It was a repetition of good George Herbert’ s dying expression of childlike affection for his spiritual mother: “ Give me the prayers of my mother the Church, no other prayers are equal to them!” (J. N. Norton, D. D.) How to pray Would you pray to God in a proper way-- 1. React a few verses of the Bible before you pray. Much of the language of Scripture is in the form of prayer, and by using it we find help in our approches to God. 2. Always go to God with faith in Jesus Christ. In His name you may ask for every blessing; and through His merits, and for His sake, you may find all that can make you happy in this world, with a pardon of your sins, and a good hope of heaven. 3. Seek for the aid of the Holy Spirit, for He will show us what we need, help our weakness, put right desires into our hearts, and teach us how to pray aright. 4. Have something to say to God. Do not say words in an unmeaning way. Spend a few minutes in thought before you begin to pray, that you may not “ mock God with a solemn sound.” 5. Leave the answer to the love and wisdom of God. He will give to us those things which it is best for us to receive. The praying Christ We owe our knowledge of the prayers of Jesus principally to the Evangelist Luke. This fact tallies with the many other characteristics of the third Gospel which mark it as eminently the story of the Son of Man. Consider, then-- I. How THE PRAYERS OF JESUS ARE, AS HIM VERY NEAR TO US IN HIS TRUE MANHOOD. II. THE HIGHEST, HOLIEST LIFE NEEDS ACTS AND TIMES OF PRAYER. III. CHRIST’ S OWN PRAYERS DO, IN A VERY REAL SENSE, TEACH US TO PRAY. 1. The praying Christ teaches us to pray as a rest after service. 2. The praying Christ teaches us to pray as a preparation for important Luke 6:12, &c.). 3. The praying Christ teaches us to pray as the condition of receiving the Spirit and the brightness of God. There were two occasions in the life of Christ when visible signs showed His full possession of the Divine Spirit and the lustre of His glorious nature--Baptism, and Transfiguration. Now on both these occasions, our Gospel, and our Gospel alone, tells us that it was whilst Christ was in the act of prayer that the sign was given (see Luke 3:21-22; Luke 9:29). 4. The praying Christ teaches us to pray as the preparation for sorrow. Gethsemane. (A. Maclaren, D. D.) Desire and prayer Prayer is an attestance of desire, and desire is so natural to man that no man who lives is quite without it. Our human life is created in great part by desire. When men, who have been created to desire, turn themselves towards a Being who is supposed to have power over their destinies, desire naturally renders itself into prayer. The Son of God imparting to His disciples the true knowledge of the Father, did not fail to teach them concerning prayer. In His own practice He sets an example of earnest and sustained prayer. He deliberately taught His disciples to pray; He bade them pray out of the fulness of their hearts, and not only so, but He gave His sanction to the use of forms by prescribing to them a form of words which would show them the desires they ought to entertain, and be a perpetual encouragement to such desires. We may derive a double benefit from our Lord’ s lofty teaching; we may be delivered from the covetous, self-regarding prayers which dishonour Him to whom they are offered, and have no healing or exalting influence on the worshipper who offers them; and at the same time the true spirit of prayer, which is effectual with God, and on the wings of which we may rise upwards towards Him, may through His teaching be breathed into our hearts. The most Christian kind of prayer will be the utterance of a desire in our souls which is in harmony with God’ s purposes, and which we may believe to be breathed into us by God’ s Spirit. And though the essence of prayer is inward and spiritual, we rightly put it into words, and even use fixed words of prayer, because it belongs to our nature to translate our thoughts into words, and because forms are necessary modes of our life, and especially indispensable for whatever we are to do jointly or in common. (D. Davies, D. D.) Jesus the Teacher of prayer I. WHY JESUS IS TO BE AS THE TEACHER OF PRAYER. It should be taken for granted that knowing how to pray is the first of all essentials. If we want information we may have it. There was once a man in Palestine who said that He was the Son of God, and what He did proved that what He said was true. When we would know how to pray, we, like the first disciples, think that if any one can tell us He can. He is the Teacher of prayer. That is His business. Now He is ascended, His disciples are always learning to pray, and He is always teaching. In all our approaches to the Infinite Unseen, we have first to do with Jesus; every prayer must reach His ear before we have the answer to it. II. How HE TEACHES. 1. Sometimes by means of an overheard prayer. It was so in the chapter of events to which the text belongs. 2. Jesus teaches us to pray by our troubles. “ Nature in an agony is no atheist.” 3. Jesus teaches prayer by revealing Himself as the one medium of prayer. 4. Jesus teaches us to pray by making His own Spirit the spirit of our lives. 5. Jesus teaches to pray by quickening the sense of difficulty. (1) One difficulty is realizing God. (2) Another is the frequent coldness of desire Godward. (3) Another, the effect on our souls of the atmosphere in which we have to live. (4) Another, vain thoughts. If, said Philip Henry, “ our prayers were written down and our vain thoughts interlined, what nonsense there would be!” (5) A kindred difficulty is the restlessness we often feel in the act of prayer. Every one of us can understand the entry made by homely William Smith of Coalville, in the diary of his soul: “ While at prayer my mind was rather shifting. I had to bring it back and ask it to sit down.” We are baffled and weighted by ignorance, by infirmity, and by countless things, which together make such a total that we feel inclined to think with Coleridge that “ the act of praying, in its most perfect form, is the very highest energy of which the human mind is capable.” The difficulty does not begin when we begin to pray under the teaching of Christ, but the sense of it does; and this He uses for carrying on His purpose. When you have made acquaintance with a thing through difficulties you are more sure of your ground. By quickening the sense of difficulty the Angel wrestles us into strength, and teaches the suppliant to say, “ I will not let Thee go except Thou bless me.” (Dr. Stanford.) It is remarkable that Jesus only teaches prayer, never the philosophy of prayer. The sentiment of not a few appears to be, that this philosophy is the very thing that we have first to learn. The first questions, even of Christians, are too often simply speculative; and in almost every one of the many treatises on prayer they have given to the world in recent years, a large space is taken up with the discussion of such questions. More than they are aware, they are influenced in this direction by the spirit of the times. Each young believer is now likely to be brought more or less in contact with some theorist who owns no higher teacher of religion than science, who smiles down upon him, assures him that the discoveries of science prove the alleged power of prayer to be impossible; and says, “ It is useless for you to expect that the laws of nature will be set aside because you pray!” “ Who wants the laws of nature to be set aside?” might be the reply. “ Assuredly I do not. I know very little about the laws of nature, and even you know very little more. For aught your science can show, it may be quite possible for God to answer prayers, without in the least degree touching the settled constitution of the universe.” Our conviction is that we find wrought into our very nature, as one of its primary principles, the instinct that prompts to prayer. (Dr. Stanford.) A prayer about prayer In this verse there are certain arguments for and encouragements to prayer, worthy of careful attention. I. PRAYER IS . Four classes of persons here mentioned. In some respects very different from each other. One thing, however, they had in common, namely, prayer. Christ prayed. His disciples prayed. John prayed. His followers were like him. The world here in miniature. Man a praying being. II. PRAYER IS . Prayer was His habit. “ I give myself unto prayer,” was the experience of both David and David’ s greater Son. To some this is perplexing. They cannot understand why our Lord should pray. There would, however, have been far more mystery had He never prayed at all. The holier we become, the more frequent and fervent is our communion with our Heavenly Father. III. PRAYER IS . The word is used for want of a better. What led His disciples to say, “ Teach us to pray” ? Had the Master been speaking of prayer? Not a word. It was on quite another occasion that He said, “ Men ought always to pray.” How was it, then, that the desire for increased power in devotion was awakened? It was through hearing and seeing our Lord pray. Prayer begets prayer. One live coal kindles another. There is an Eastern proverb, as true as it is poetic, “ I am not the rose; but I have been with the rose, and therefore I am sweet.” IV. PRAYER IS . “ Teach us to pray.” That petition was granted. And real prayer is always answered. It cannot fail. As Bishop Hall says: “ I am sure that I shall receive either what I ask, or what I should ask.” V. THE , “ AS JOHN ALSO TAUGHT HIS ,” HAS MORE IN IT THAN AT FIRST SIGHT APPEARS. It is not the cry of false conservatism. We shall err if we suppose that he who uttered it simply wanted our Lord to follow in the track of another. Surely there was an argument, and a fine one, in the words. What did it mean? Something like this: “ John was Thy servant, and he helped the devotion of his followers; wilt Thou, great Master, do less? John was only a herald and a forerunner, but he watched over his disciples; wilt not Thou, the promised and predicted One, do the same to us?” It was good reasoning. Better logic cannot be imagined. Let us take the benefit of it. Inspired by the faith which it teaches, be our prayers both frequent and fervent. (T. R. Stevenson.) Influence We have here a simple illustration of the silent involuntary influence of our Lord. One of His disciples had observed Him praying, and struck with the grandeur and sweetness of the act, he asks to be taught how to pray. Without a commandment but by the power of His example, He influenced His disciple. I. IT IS A REAL THAT OF EXAMPLE. He who is most a child of God in faith, hope, and love, is most of a king for God over himself and over others, wielding an irresistible power, and gaining widest triumphs. II. EXAMPLE OF THE OF EXAMPLE. You see it in Christ in this incident. Teach me to pray, said the disciple; but he had more than half learned the lesson when he had looked on Christ praying. The evangelists never pause to extol the life of the Master. To tell the life was best to praise it. On the way to the cross, Jesus does not recommend patience--He is patience. On the cross, He does not speak of love--He is love as He never was before. III. THE OF THIS TRUTH. 1. TO those who need encouragement. Some feel much the uselessness of their lives--no money, little knowledge, or eloquence. But you are not useless if you are true to what is pure and gentle and brave--true to Christ. Influence is not the less powerful because it is silent. 2. This truth speaks to those who need warning. Remember that no one lives to himself. The influence of selfish aims, unregulated tempers, illiberal gifts, goes forth where you little think, and does evil you would dread to acknowledge. What a minister for evil the very presence of an unrevered man is wherever he goes. But if you come to Jesus, though with souls most feeble and most sinful, you may become through Him most magnetic and mighty for the highest issues and the widest influences. (Dr. W. Graham.) Prayer necessary to maintain the spiritual life The first true sign of spiritual life, prayer, is also the means of maintaining it. Man can as well live physically without breathing, as spiritually without praying. There is a class of animals--the cetaceous, neither fish nor sea-fowl, that inhabit the deep. It is their home; they never leave it for the shore; yet, though swimming beneath its waves, and sounding its darkest depths, they have ever and anon to rise to the surface that they may breathe the air. Without that these monarchs of the deep could not exist in the dense element in which they live, and move, and have their being. And something like what is imposed on them by physical necessity, the Christian has to do by a spiritual one. It is by ever and anon ascending up to God, by rising through prayer into a loftier, purer region for supplies of Divine grace, that he maintains his spiritual life. Prevent these animals from rising to the surface, and they die for want of breath; prevent him from rising to God, and he dies for want of prayer. “ Give me children,” cried Rachel, “ or else I die.” “ Let me breathe,” says a man, gasping, “ or else I die.” “ Let me pray,” says the Christian,” or else I die.” (T. Guthrie, D. D.) The difficulty of true prayer “I have no difficulty,” said he (Coleridge), “ in forgiveness; indeed, I know not how to say with sincerity the clause in the Lord’ s Prayer which asks forgiveness as we forgive. I feel nothing answering to it in my heart. Neither do I find, or reckon, the most solemn faith in God as a real object, the most arduous act of the reason and will. Oh no, my dear, it is to pray, to pray as God would have us; this is what at times makes me turn cold to my soul. Believe me, to pray with all your heart and strength, with the reason and the will, to believe vividly that God will listen to your voice through Christ, and verily do the thing He pleaseth thereupon--this is the last, the greatest achievement of the Christian’ s warfare upon earth. Teach us to pray, O Lord!” And then he burst into a flood of tears, and begged me to pray for him. (Ed. Coleridge’ s Table Talk.) Thought in prayer A prayer must have thought in it. The thought may overburden it so that its wings of devotion are fastened down to its sides, and cannot ascend. Then it is no prayer, only a meditation or a contemplation. But to take the thought out of a prayer does not insure its going up to God. It may be too light as well as too heavy to ascend. I saw once, in a shop window in London, a placard which simply announced, “ Limp Prayers.” It described, I believe, a kind of a prayer-book in a certain sort of binding, which was for sale within; but it brought to mind many a prayer to which one had listened, in which he could not join, out of which had been left the whole backbone of thought, and to which he could attach none of his own heart’ s desire. (P. Brookes.) Forms of prayer I. And, first, on the use of prepared forms of prayer for public worship, or liturgies as we call them. That these were of Divine appointment under the Jewish dispensation there can be no question. The songs of Moses and Miriam, and the titles prefixed to a large number in the Book of Psalms, bear evidence of being composed for congregational use. Besides, through the writings of Josephus and other Hebrew historians, no inconsiderable part of the ancient Jewish liturgies have been preserved to us, and a remarkable coincidence has been discovered between the order and method of these early compositions with our own Book of Common Prayer. The forms of which we know the most are two--one for the service of the Temple, and the other for that of the Synagogue. In the synagogue form the order of public worship was prayer, reading of the Scriptures, and preaching. Their prayers, though not always the same, were always pre-composed, the most commonly used being eighteen, said to have been composed by Ezra at the time of the Captivity, all containing many sentences out of his Book. These forms were in use among the Jews in our Lord’ s time, and both Jesus and His apostles joined in them. Unsafe, therefore, as it might be, as a rule, to base an argument on the silence of Scripture, yet we can hardly suppose, that if our Lord had intended that in such an important particular the Christian worship was to differ from the Jewish, He would not have told His disciples so plainly, rather than first join in such pre-composed devotions Himself, and then institute a form, which from being expressed throughout in the plural number, must have been supposed to have been intended for public and social use. Here, then, is good reason to believe that the only recited congregational prayer preserved in the New Testament--I mean that contained in the 4th chapter of the Acts--was a form commonly used by the early Christians as suited to a time of persecution, for the whole assembly recited it together--“ Then lifted up they their voice to God with one accord.” The scriptural evidence, therefore, as far as it goes, is clearly in favour of set and prepared forms of public prayer. If we join to this the testimony of ecclesiastical history, there is no more doubt about the apostolic usage as a question of fact, than there is as a question of fact about the persecution of Domitian or the siege of Jerusalem. Even Pliny’ s letter to Trajan, at the beginning of the second century, alludes (contemptuously, of course) to these Christians meeting for daily worship, and reciting, as he says, a composed form; whilst the liturgies attributed to St. Mark, St. Peter, and St. James, respectively, from which a good deal of our own liturgy is taken, whether really composed by those apostles or not, can be traced to a period sufficiently early to make the alleged authorship by no means impossible. Other testimonies might be cited, more convincing, because merely incidental, all assuming the usage itself to be one of common notoriety. II. Let me advert to a point which we shall all feel to be of great importance, namely, the use of prepared forms in our private devotions. Let me proceed, then, to point out some objections to prepared forms of private prayer, however spiritual and excellent they may be, if they be used exclusively. Thus it is obvious we are thereby confined in regard to the matter of our prayers, we restrict our conversation with heaven to a fixed routine of subjects, and preclude the mention of those hourly spiritual experiences, which though unseen, and unknown to the world, make up the great incidents of the soul’ s life, and may give, day by day, a new complexion to its prayers. We live in a world of change, and in the countless vicissitudes to which mind, body, and estate are alike exposed; the soul is subject to infinite varieties of emotion, for which no prepared form can provide corresponding expression. Again, there is a danger lest the exclusive use of forms should have a tendency to deaden the spirit of prayer. Let me conclude with a few practical directions which, whether with or without forms, cannot be neglected by those who would be taught how to pray. 1. As first, when you enter your closet, be composed, and reverent, and thoughtful. 2. Again, be honest and faithful with yourselves; let there be a great searching both of heart and life. 3. I say, aim to be comprehensive and yet specific. 4. Lastly, we must be earnest and persevering. The confession is humiliating, but it must be made. (D. Moore, M. A.) The instructions of the Bible as to the matter and manner of prayer The best of men need direction in prayer. Who may not adopt the language, “ Teach us what we shall say unto Him: for we cannot order our speech by reason of darkness” ? The Bible is a sufficient rule of conduct in all things pertaining to life and godliness. The subject-matter for prayer is to be found in the Word of God. There is not one of its doctrines, in all their richness and variety, that does not contain truths which the lips of prayer may make use of, and turn to good account at the throne of grace. The point is too plain to require either illustration or proof, that the mind must be furnished with the truth of God in order to be furnished with matter for prayer. The precepts of the Bible also teach us how to pray. They describe the spirit of prayer; while they teach us what graces to ask for, and for what duties we need strength. The promises of the Bible are revealed for our instruction and encouragement in prayer. They teach us what blessings God is willing to bestow, and how willing He is to bestow them. The threatenings of the Bible teach us what we have reason to fear and deprecate; while the very sins that are there recorded teach what we should pray against and deplore. God has also recorded a multitude of facts in His Word, that are comments upon its truths, its promises, and its threatenings, of which He condescends to permit His people to remind Him, and which furnish them with powerful considerations in pleading at His mercy-seat. There are instances of prayer, too, there recorded, which show us its spirit, its comprehensiveness, its appropriateness to times, and places, and circumstances, and men, as well as its fruit and power; and which show us for what it is to be offered, and God’ s readiness to hear and answer. More than this; the Bible teaches us where to go for assistance in prayer. “ For through Him we have access by one Spirit unto the Father.” In every act of true devotion, there is a concurrence of the Spirit’ s influence. Let your mind be richly furnished with all God’ s truth, and let your bosom be filled with devotional emotions, and then freely utter your requests before God. There is thought in prayer; strong thought, and often close, compact, and connected thought. There is emotion, too, heavenly emotion. There is memory, too, in prayer; and there is conscience and even imagination. This formula, commonly called the Lord’ s Prayer, contains the substance of prayer for His disciples. A question arises here, if we may not use this form in our supplications at the throne of grace? The Christian ought not to be so much the enemy of forms, as to depreciate this most beautiful form of prayer; nor so much of a formalist, as not to pray without it. Jesus Christ has nowhere authorized a restriction to any set form of prayer. The prayers of Abraham were not written prayers. Nor was the prayer of Eleazar at Haran; nor the prayer of Jacob at Peniel; nor the prayers of Moses and Aaron for Egypt and Israel. The prayer of Joshua at the defeat of Ai, the prayer of Manoah, of Samson, of Hannah, of Samuel at Mizpeh, of Elijah at Mount Carmel, of Hezekiah against Sennacherib, of Jabez, of Ezra, of Nehemiah, of Job, of Daniel, of Jonah, and of Habakkuk, were none of them dictated by the pen. Nor was the prayer of Zacharias, nor that of the publican, nor that of the disciples in any one exigence of their history. In the next place, forms of prayer invert the order of prayer; they make the words lead the heart, and not the heart the words. True prayer flows from the heart; the heart is the seat of supplication. Another objection to forms is, that they check the teachings of the Holy Spirit. Still another objection to forms of prayer is, that no set of prayers is, or ever can be, adequate to the necessities of the Church. It has been said that the example of the Primitive Christians is in favour of forms. Much has been written to prove the antiquity of liturgies, and Bishop Bull has strongly urged the probability of their being of Apostolic origin. The posture of the primitive Christians in prayer was such as to render it impossible to read prayers. They stood with their arms crossed on their breasts, their heads back, and their eyes often closed. It is confidently asserted by those who have made close search, that there is not such an expression as “ reading prayers,” to be found in the history of the first four centuries. In favour of forms, it is also said, that it is important to have matter to ponder upon, to pray with intelligence. We have only to reply, most certainly it is so; but then there is more matter in the Bible than in a Book of Common Prayer. It is further urged, and we confess the objection has some weight that in extempore prayers, too much latitude is given to the speaker, that, on the one hand, his prayers may often be barren and dry; and on the other, they may be redundant, and sometimes filled even with wild and extravagant notions. This is true; it is an evil to be guarded against: and we have only to say, that we expect too much, when we expect perfect prayers from imperfect men. Once more, it is objected to prayers that are not thus formed, that the people cannot join in them. (G. Spring, D. D.) The abridgment of the whole Gospel Such plentiful rivers stream from this seven-headed fountain. So that as the seven arms of Nilus watered and made fertile all Egypt; so doth this prayer, springing from seven petitions, which are deprecative or optative, water the whole Christian world, preventing and deprecating all mishaps, and supplying our wants. So that in this short prayer, as in a little orb, the Sun of Righteousness moves; from hence doth every star, every faithful servant and counsellor of Christ (for they are incarnate stars) borrow a ray of light to illuminate and sanctify the body of his meditations. The Church in her liturgy and the preacher both enjoined to use it. A small quantity of this leaven seasons a great lump of devotion, and a few spirits give taste and quickness to much liquor. This prayer is a quintessence extracted by the greatest chemist that ever was, from Him that brought nature out of chaos, separated light from darkness, and extracted the four elements out of nothing. All parts of it are spirits. Quae enim spiritualior oratio? And the mixture of a few grains thereof with our prayers proves the strongest and best Christian antidote. (Archdeacon King.) Giving God His own in prayer It is a familiar and friendly tribute to present God with His own; a petition clothed in Christ’ s words, will find the ready way to heaven, and a speedy access into the ears of God. (Archdeacon King.) The parts of the Lord’ s Prayer So consider this prayer as it now lies all together, the plates and joints and several matters make but one Christian buckler to ward and avert all necessities that may befall us; yet resolved into parcels, every limb and member, and gradation, is a perfect buckler to bear off our particular wants. It is like that famous target of Ajax that was Clypeus Septemplex, consisted of seven folds; this is Oratio Septemplex, a prayer consisting of seven requests. That buckler was dart-proof, impenetrable, and this prayer an impenetrable shield to resist the fiery darts of Satan. If I would insist upon the allusion to the number of these petitions, I might compare this whole prayer to the constellation of the Pleiades, or seven stars in heaven; or to the seven stars in the right hand of the Son of Man, being fit lights and tapers for the seven golden candlesticks there mentioned, to be set up in those seven Churches, and not in them alone, but in all the Churches of the world, where Christ’ s name is known and adored. Or I may liken the parts of this prayer to the seven planets, eminent above all other stars of the firmament. For as some of those planets move nearer to the earth, others higher and farther off, so is the motion of these seven petitions; some of them move and solicit God for earthly things, as the four last of them; others for heavenly and eternal, as the three first, “ Hallowed be Thy name, and Thy kingdom come,” &c. Saint Augustine hath taken their just height and motion, Tres petitiones superiores aternac sunt, quatuor sequentes ad hanc vitam pertinent. (Archdeacon King.) Praying from a copy I do not deny him a good artizan that works by the strength of his own phantasy: yet all will grant he works truest that works from a copy. And though a voluntary expressed upon an instrument show the sufficiency of the musician, yet I should think that musician who undervalues all set lessons in comparison of his voluntaries hath more of arrogance than skill. Just so is it in prayer. I prejudice no man’ s gift, and let me advise no man so much to prejudice this excellent gift of Christ’ s Prayer as to exalt his own meditations above it. (Archdeacon King.) The Lord’ s Prayer perfect The matter is every way found complete and perfect. Every word in it hath its weight. There is not a superfluous word in it that could be spared. Nor is it any way defective. Whatsoever is lawful, needful, and meet to be asked in prayer is therein contained: yea, whatsoever is to be believed or practised by a Christian is therein implied. (William Gouge.) The Lord’ s Prayer little, yes great The sense of it is as large as the body is little. (Archdeacon King.) Luke 11:2 When ye pray, say Sermonic hints on the Lord’ s Prayer 1. Not a prescription of words. A great merit in prayer is that it most naturally expresses the feeling of him who offers it. A child’ s prattle is more acceptable to a parent than stately utterances put into his mouth. In Raphael’ s cartoon the adoring disciples surround the risen Lord in various attitudes, one kneeling, one with clasped hands, one with open palms, one with bowed head, and one shows excited reverence by the fact that he is allowing his robe to trail in the dirt; the great artist having seen that the highest expression of religious emotion must be the natural outcome of the soul, and bear the mark of the worshipper’ s individuality. Horace Bushnell used to go to sleep, as he said, talking with God. Liturgies are useful to stimulate spirituality; but should be used to suggest, never to limit, religious thought. 2. The manner of the prayer is in general-- (1) Of utmost simplicity. No elaboration. (2) Calmness. No oh’ s! only quiet confidence and consecration. 3. Analyzing more particularly the sentiments of the prayer, we observe that the model prayer gives a portraiture of a model man. (1) Filial faith. “ Our Father.” (2) Reverence. “ Hallowed,” &c. (3) Loyalty. “ Thy kingdom come.” (4) A conformed spirit. “ Thy will be done.” (5) Recognition of Providence. “ Give us … daily bread.” (6) Dependence upon grace. “ Forgive us our debts.” (7) Sincere charity. “ For we forgive.” (8) Dependence upon the Holy Spirit. “ Lead us not,” etc. (J. M. Ludlow, D. D.) The Lord’ s Prayer like the Decalogue The Lord’ s Prayer, like the Decalogue, falls in two: two tables of law, two leaves of petition. The first table of the law concerns our duties to God; the first leaf of the prayer concerns the glory of God. The second table respects our duties to man; the second leaf respects the needs of man. The first table contains the laws that are the hardest to obey sincerely; the first leaf, the petitions that are the hardest to pray sincerely. Obeying the laws of the first table is what qualifies us to obey those of the second. Praying the petitions of the first leaf is what qualifies us to pray those of the second. Yet we never suppose that the prayer was composed with any reference to the Decalogue. All resemblance ceases to be interesting as soon as it is felt to be imitation. Resemblance by imitation betrays the mechanic; resemblance without imitation argues the artist, the creator. The earth did not become spherical to imitate the sun, nor do the leaves on one branch become serrate to imitate each other. Those leaves unfold up into an outward likeness because they unfolded out of an inward likeness. The Decalogue was not made, it unfolded. The prayer was not made, it unfolded; it was not built, it grew. And because Decalogue and prayer both are unfolded from out the one mind of God, leaves upon one branch, blossoms upon one stem, they show the same hues and take the same orderly arrangement. (C. H.Parkhurst, D. D.) The Lord’ s Prayer indicates the right way of looking at things There is a fearful tendency in us all, which has infused itself most mischievously into our theology, to look first at our necessity or misery, only afterwards at our relation to God, and at His nature. The last are made dependent upon the former. We are conscious of a derangement in our condition; simply in reference to this derangement do we contemplate Him who we hope may reform it. We have just been tracing this process in heathenism. A mischief is felt; if there is a mischief there must be a deliverer. Undoubtedly the conscience bears this witness, and it is a right one. But the qualities of the deliverer are determined by the character or locality of that which is to be redressed, or by the habits of those who are suffering from it. From this heathenish habit of mind the Lord’ s Prayer is the great preserver. Say first, “ Our Father.” This relation is fixed, established, certain. It existed in Christ before all worlds, it was manifested when He came in the flesh. He is ascended on high, that we may claim it. Let us be certain that we ground all our thoughts upon these opening words; till we know them well by heart, do not let us listen to the rest. Let us go on carefully, step by step, to the Name, the Kingdom, the Will, assuring ourselves of our footing, confident that we are in a region of clear unmixed goodness; of goodness which is to be hallowed by us; which has come and shall come to us, and in us; which Is to be done on earth, not merely in heaven. Then we are in a condition to make these petitions, which we are ordinarily in such haste to utter, and which He, in whom all wisdom dwells, commands us to defer. Last of all comes this “ Deliver us from evil.” When we are able to look upon evil, not as the regular normal state of the universe, but as absolutely at variance with the character of its Author, with His constitution of it, with the Spirit which He has given to us, then we can pray, attaching some real significance to the language, deliver us from it. Then we shall understand why men looked with faith to the aid of their fellow-men; to princes, and chieftains, and lawgivers, and sages. They were sent into the world for this end, upon this mission. They were meant to act as deliverers. They were to be witnesses of a real righteous order, and to resist all transgressors of it. We can understand why strong men felt that they had better act for themselves, than depend upon foreign help. For the Father of all put their strength into them, that they might wield it as His servants in His work; it was His Spirit who made them conscious of their strength, and of that purpose for which they were to use it. We can see why these hopes were so continually disappointed though they had so right a foundation; why they were driven to think of higher aid, of invisible champions, because those upon the earth proved feeble, or deserted the cause, and served themselves. It is true that the hosts of heaven are obeying that power which the hosts of earth are commanded to obey; that they are doing His service by succouring those who are toiling below; it is true, because He who rules all is not a destiny, but a loving will; not an abstraction, but a person; not a mere sovereign, but a Father. All creation is ordered upon this law of mutual dependence and charity; but it is only in the knowledge and worship of the Highest, that we can apprehend the places and tasks of the lower; when He is hidden, these are forgotten; society becomes incoherent; nothing understands itself; everything is inverted; the deliverer is one with the tyrant; evil and good run into each other; we invoke Satan to cast out Satan. See, then, what a restorative, regenerative power lies in this prayer! (F. D. Maurice, M. A.) Introductory remarks 1. The first thing to be noted is the brevity of this prayer. In most religions the efficacy of prayer has been supposed to depend on its length. The notion is that the gods will do nothing for men unless they are teased. This prayer rebukes and corrects that idea. 2. How was this prayer to be used? (1) Was it to be used exclusively? Clearly not, since in the Acts we have the record of several prayers which did not follow this form, and yet were answered abundantly. (2) Ought we always, when we pray, to use these words--to include this prayer in all our supplications? No; I do not think our Lord means to require that. We shall often wish to pray in these words; but He means that our desires shall be free to utter themselves in their own way. The prayer is a model, in its simplicity, brevity, directness, but not a prescribed form; a staff, not a fetter, for the praying soul. (Washington, Gladden, D. D.) The peculiar worth of the Lord’ s Prayer Not so much in particular expressions, as rather in the tenor and spirit, in the arrangement and climax of the whole, lies its peculiar worth, and those who can assert of the “ Pater Noster” that it is only a joining together of Rabbinic expressions, might assure us with the same right that from a suitable number of single arms, legs, and members, one could compose an animated human body. We honour much more the wisdom of the Saviour in this, that He would teach His disciples no chords which would have been entirely strange to their unpractised lips, and in vain do we seek here for the traces of a limited Judaistic spirit. So brief is it, that it does not even weary the simplest spirit, and yet so perfect that nothing is therein wholly forgotten: so simple in words that even a child comprehends it, and yet so rich in matter that the principal truths and promises and duties are here presupposed, confirmed, or impressed, so that Tertullian rightly named it “ breviarium totius evangelii.” How often soever it may have been misused, especially where it has been turned into a spiritless formula of prayer, while men have forgotten that it only expresses the lofty fundamental ideas which must prevail in the exercise of prayer, it remains yet continually a gold-mine for Christian faith, a standard for Christian prayer, a prop for Christian hope. (Van Oosterzee.) The Lord’ s Prayer Edwin Booth, the celebrated tragedian, was a man who threw into his impersonations an amount of heart and soul which his originals could scarcely have equalled. He did Richard III. to the life, and more. He had made human passions, emotions, and experiences his life’ s study. He could not only act, but feel rage, love, despair, hate, ambition, fury, hope, and revenge with a depth and force that amazed his auditors. He transmuted himself into the hero of his impersonation, and he could breathe a power into other men’ s words which perhaps never was surpassed. And what is rather remarkable, when he was inclined to give illustrations of this faculty to private circles of friends, he nearly always selected some passages from Job, David, or Isaiah, or other holy men of old. When an inquiring young professor of Harvard University went to him by night to ask a little advice or instruction in qualifying himself for an orator, the veteran tragedian opened the Bible and read a few verses from Isaiah in a way that made the Cambridge scholar tremble with awe, as if the prophet had risen from the dead and was uttering his sublime visions in his ears. He was then residing in Baltimore, and a pious, urbane old gentleman of the city, hearing of his wonderful power of elocution, one day invited him to dinner, although strongly deprecating the stage. A large company sat down to the table, and on returning to the drawing-room, they requested Booth, as a special favour to them all, to repeat the Lord’ s Prayer. He signified his willingness to gratify them, and all eyes were fixed upon him. He slowly and reverentially arose from his chair, trembling with the burden of two great conceptions. He had to realize the character, attributes, and presence of the Almighty Being he was to address. He was to transform himself into a poor, sinning, stumbling, benighted, needy suppliant, offering homage, asking bread, pardon, light and guidance. Says one of the company present: It was wonderful to watch the play of emotions that convulsed his countenance. He became deathly pale, and his eyes, turned tremblingly upwards, were wet with tears. As yet he had not spoken. The silence could be felt; it had become absolutely painful, until at last the spell was broken as if by an electric shock, as his rich-toned voice, from white lips, syllabled forth, “ Our Father, which art in heaven,” etc., with a pathos and fervid solemnity that thrilled all hearts. He finished; the silence continued; not a voice was heard, nor a muscle moved, in his rapt audience, until, from a remote corner of the room, a subdued sob was heard, and the old gentleman (the host) stepped forward, with streaming eyes and tottering frame, and seized Booth by the hand. “ Sir,” said he, in broken accents, “ you have afforded me a pleasure for which my whole future life will feel grateful. I am an old man, and every day, from boyhood to the present time, I thought I had repeated the Lord’ s Prayer; but I never heard it before--never!” “ You are right,” replied Boeth; “ to read that prayer as it should be read caused me the severest study and labour for thirty years, and I am far from being satisfied with my success.” The fulness of the Lord’ s Prayer I used to think the Lord’ s Prayer was a short prayer; but as I live longer, and see more of life, I begin to believe there is no such thing as getting through it. If a man, in praying that prayer, were to be stopped by every word until he had thoroughly prayed it, it would take him a lifetime. “ Our Father” --there would be a wall a hundred feet high in just those two words to most men. If they might say “ Our Tyrant,” or “ Our Monarch,” or even “ Our Creator,” they could get along with it; but Our Father”--why, a man is almost a saint who can pray that. You read, “ Thy will be done” ; and say to yourself, “ Oh! I can pray that;” and all the time your mind goes round and round in immense circuits and far-off distances: but God is continually bringing the circuits nearer to you, till He says, “ How is it about your temper and your pride? how is it about your business and your daily life?” This is a revolutionary petition. It would make many a man’ s shop and store tumble to the ground to utter it. Who can stand at the end of the avenue along which all his pleasant thoughts and wishes are blossoming like flowers, and send these terrible words, “ Thy will be done,” crashing down through it? I think it is the most fearful prayer to pray in the world. (H. W. Beecher.) The Lord’ s Prayer contains the essence of the Old Testament When at Jerusalem I read this prayer to one of the rabbis, he said, “ There is not one single prayer, not one single demand, which is not already contained in the Old Testament.” I said, “ Very well, let us see.” “ Now,” I said, “ can you give me a parallel passage to ‘ Hallowed be Thy name?’” He quoted in an instant the forty-third verse of the eighth chapter of First Kings. “ Hear Thou in heaven Thy dwelling place … that all people of the earth may know Thy name to fear Thee.” And farther, he said, “‘ Blessed be the name of the Lord’ ; what means this but ‘ Hallowed be Thy name’ ?” “ Let us go on--‘ Thy kingdom come!’” He immediately gave me the passage from the seventy-second Psalm. “ He shall come down like rain upon the mown grass: as showers that water the earth. In His days shall the righteous flourish; and abundance of peace so long as the moon endureth. He shall have dominion also from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the earth.” “ Let us go on--‘ Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven!’” “ Does not the psalmist tell us--‘ Teach us to do Thy will, O Lord?’” “ Let us proceed--‘ Give us this day our daily bread?’” “ You find this prayer in the Proverbs--‘ Give me neither poverty nor riches, feed me with food convenient for me.’” “ Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors!” “ This you find in the one hundred and thirty-second Psalm--‘ Lord, remember David, and all his afflictions,’ and in the seventh Psalm, and the fourth verse--‘ If I have rewarded evil unto him that was at peace with me.’” “ Lead us not into temptation.” He said at once--“ O Lord, correct me with judgment; not in Thine anger, lest Thou bring me to nothing.” And then he quoted the Apocrypha, with which he was well acquainted. “ Take away the desire of sensuality; to the spirit of licentiousness do not deliver me.” “ What is this but ‘ Lead us not into temptation’ ?” “ Deliver us from evil.” He quoted--“ Deliver me from the workers of iniquity.” I said, “ Have you done?” He said, “ Yes.” “ Then,” I said, “ you have just shown that our blessed Lord was in the right, when He told the Jews, that He ‘ came not to abolish the Law, but to fulfil it.’ And have you in the whole of the Old Testament a prayer which is not contained in the Lord’ s Prayer?” He admitted that there was not one. So you see how this prayer, the Lord’ s Prayer, according to the testimony of a Jew opposed to Christianity, is an abridgment, a wonderful abridgment, of the whole of the gospel, and of the whole of what Moses and the prophets have told us. So that the great and holy Stolberg says--“ the child prays in it in simplicity, and the learned in vain tries to fathom its depths.” (J. Wolff, D. D.) The Lord’ s prayer In the prayer our Lord taught His disciples, all the relationships in which we stand to God are taken up. The believer prays as-- I. A CHILD FROM HOME. “ Our Father,” &c. II. A . “ Hallowed,” &c. III. A SUBJECT. “ Thy kingdom come.” IV. A SERVANT. “ Thy will be done.” V. A BEGGAR. “ Give us,” &c. VI. A DEBTOR. “ And forgive us,” etc. VII. A SINNER AMID AND EVIL. “ And lead us not,” &c. (Classified Gems of Thought.) The Lord’ s prayer given as a pattern We have here a ground-plan to fill in, and on whose lines we may build the structure of our petitions every time we pray. I. Observe, IT IS NOT ONE OF OUR LORD’ S OWN PRAYERS THAT IS GIVEN FOR A PATTERN. It is out of the question that we should offer for our daily prayer the very words once used to express the prayers of Christ for Himself. When, therefore, the disciples asked for a pattern of prayer that they might pray just like Christ, the spirit of this the opening sentence in His reply was--“ No, your prayers are not to be just like Mine. I pray after that manner. After this manner, pray ye. I pray as the Lord; but when ye pray, say” --and then He gave them these words. II. You will take notice that this pattern was granted after the petition--Teach us to pray AS JOHN ALSO TAUGHT HIS . The speaker, and those for whom he was the spokesman, had no doubt, been in the school of John before they had come into that of Jesus. Yet you are ready to wonder how they could have thought of Him just then. They had just overheard that sacred secret, a secret prayer of Jesus. You say each one ought to have felt his whole being tenfold alive and awake in that moment of glory and exaltation, and you think there ought then to have been no room for the memory of anything mortal. Yet that prayer at once reminded them of their old Master, and their first wish was that Jesus would use John’ s method of teaching them to pray. He must have been a tremendous man to leave an impression on the minds of his scholars that was keen even in the sharpness of such an excitement. There was much imperfection in this petition. The disciples had no right to speak to their Lord in anything like the tone of dictation. While they asked Him to teach them, they told Him how to do it, and indicated the kind of teaching they preferred. But Jesus passed by the fault, recognized the necessity, and was pleased to formulate a prayer for the help of their weakness, and also of our own; for on us also His eye rested as He gave it, and all who are trying after closer fellowship with God, may now feel their way, think their way, and pray their way, through these great words. III. Take note of the fact that THIS PATTERN WAS GIVEN TWICE. Christ had already given it in the Sermon on the Mount. These suppliants, as if they had never heard of it, asked Him to give what He had already given. How was this? We suppose that besides the disciples who came from John to Jesus at the commencement of his ministry, and the story of whose call is told in the opening of the Fourth Gospel, there were others whose enrolment came later, and that some of these having been with John during the first delivery of the Lord’ s prayer, made the appeal which led to this, the second delivery. Strange that they should have been content to miss so much! Why did they stay with John after he had pointed out Jesus to be the Saviour? and how could they stop looking at the finger-posts instead of travelling in the road? Perhaps they con sidereal themselves, so to speak, to be all the time, scholars in Christ’ s school, though in John’ s class, and as spiritual infants still needing his elementary lessons. They had come late to school. They had more to learn than their classmates. They had missed the Sermon on the Mount. Their new companions, spiritually dull and slow, had not told them that the Lord had already given a pattern of prayer; they therefore asked for one, and the compassionate Saviour gave them the substance of His former words. This was only like Himself, the Teacher who has infinite patience with our dulness, stoops to us, repeats His lesson, and is for ever saying, “ Learn of Me, for I am meek and lowly in heart.” IV. THIS PATTERN OF PRAYER MUST ALWAYS BE TAKEN IN WITH, AND BE BY, THE WHOLE OF THE . It is a mistake to take this, or any other sectional part of revelation, as if it were the whole--a mistake to treat this as Christ’ s final disclosure of grace. V. THE PATTERN IS MEANT FOR THE USE OF ALL THE OF GOD, THEIR IN AGE, , OR . It fits the child, it fits the man, it fits the father and mother, it fits the youngest saint, and the saint with reverend head. VI. THIS PATTERN IS TO FURNISH CERTAIN RULES AND METHODS OF PRAYER. 1. Petitioners are here taught brevity. 2. They are taught to shun vain repetition. (See Matthew 6:7.) 3. They are taught to pray using these very words. The second announcement of the pattern was prefaced by the phrase, “ When ye pray, say,” etc. But mark the proviso. The point is that we may only say it when we do pray. Prayer is a distinct thing from the vehicle of prayer. Beautiful as this frame is, it is only a vehicle of praying life, not a substitute for it. 4. It is a social prayer. 5. They are taught to pray after this manner. VII. IT IS RIGHT TO CALL THIS PATTERN PRAYER THE LORD’ S PRAYER. Some would prefer to call it the Rabbi’ s prayer. Others the Disciples’ prayer. We might as well say of the Remembrance Feast, that it is not the Lord’ s Supper but the Disciples’ Supper, for only the disciples are to keep it. As the Lord’ s Supper is a remembrance feast, this is a remembrance prayer, always to be in our ears, always before our eyes, to show what we should pray for, and how we should pray; until, “ at our Father’ s loved abode our souls arrive in peace.” (Dr. Stanford.) Our Father, which art in heaven The preface of the Lord’ s Prayer I. WHAT OUR BEING TO CALL GOD “ FATHER” IN PRAYER TEACHES US. 1. That the children of God alone can pray acceptably. 2. That it is through Jesus Christ we have access to God in prayer Ephesians 2:18), because it is through Him alone that God becomes our Father; by Him, for His sake, we are adopted into the family of heaven John 1:12). 3. That coming to God in prayer, we must come in the name of His Son, as the alone foundation of all our confidence in and expectation from God John 14:13). 4. That the Spirit of adoption, the Spirit of Christ in His people, is the principle of all acceptable praying to God; for by Him it is that we are enabled to call God Father (Galatians 4:6), and therefore it is called” inwrought prayer” (James 5:16). 5. That we should draw near to God in prayer with child-like dispositions and affections towards Him. (1) Though He be very kind and admit us into familiarity with Him, yet we must come with a holy reverence (Malachi 1:6). (2) Though we have offended God, and be under the marks of His displeasure, we must come with confidence, whatever we want, whatever we need (Ephesians 3:12). (3) That God is ready and willing to help us, and we should come to Him in that confidence (Matthew 7:11). II. WHAT OUR BEING TO CALL GOD “ OUR FATHER” TEACHES US. Negatively: not that we may not pray, saying “ My Father,” or that we are always to speak plurally, saying, “ We pray.” For we have Scripture examples for praying in the singular number (Ezra 9:6; Luke 15:18-19). But-- 1. That we are not only to pray secretly by ourselves alone, but with others, joining with them in public and private. 2. That we are to pray, not only for ourselves, but for others also, according to Scripture example and precept (Acts 12:5; 1 Timothy 2:1-2). Praying with and for others is a piece of the communion of saints. And it is one of the privileges of God’ s family on earth, that they have the prayers of all the family there. III. WHAT WE ARE TAUGHT BY OUR BEING TO ADDRESS TO GOD AS “ OUR FATHER IN HEAVEN.” 1. That we are to eye His sovereign power and dominion over all, in our addresses to Him, believing that He is able to help us in our greatest straits, that nothing is too hard for Him, but He can do whatsoever He will Psalms 115:3). This is a noble ground for faith. 2. That we should be filled with heavenly affections in prayer (Psalms 123:1). And that God’ s glorious greatness above us should strike an awe upon us in our approaches to Him (Ecclesiastes 5:2). 3. God’ s glorious and wonderful condescension, who vouchsafes to look from His throne in heaven unto us poor worms on earth (Isaiah 66:1-2). 4. That we go to God as those who are strangers on this earth, and to whom heaven is home, because it is our Father’ s house (1 Peter 1:17), looking on this world as the place of our pilgrimage, and the men and manners of it as those we desire to leave, that we may be admitted into the society of angels, and consort with the spirits of just men made perfect. Inferences: 1. Let us see here the miserable condition of those who have no ground to call God Father. 2. There is no right praying without faith. (T. Boston, D. D.) The preface of the Lord’ s prayer I. TO WHOM WE ARE TO DIRECT OUR PRAYERS; to God, the omnipresent God, who fills heaven and earth. He can hear a thousand, or ten thousand million petitioners at the same time, if there were so many, and know distinctly what every one asks. And further, we pray to an infinitely wise God, who knows what is fit should be granted us, and what not. II. UNDER WHAT OR God (according to our Saviour’ s direction here) is to be addressed; as our Father in heaven. 1. God sustains the character of a Father in the Scripture style in a threefold respect; that is, with reference. (1) To creation. (2) To external separation. (3) To adoption and regeneration. 2. We are to call upon Him as our Father in heaven. Lord, art not Thou God in heaven? O Lord God of heaven. But Christ would direct us to make our supplications to God with the deepest humility, in consideration of the infinite distance between God and us, and with admiration of His amazing condescension in permitting us to speak to the great possessor of heaven, and to implore His presence and blessing who is exalted infinitely above us. III. THE MATTER, AND THE MANNER, of prayer. The Lord’ s Prayer may be considered-- 1. As a directory. 2. We may take the Lord’ s Prayer as a method. 3. We may consider the Lord’ s Prayer as a form. (John Whitty.) Pater, Father I can conceive of two ways or methods of reaching the notion of a fatherhood in the Deity, or of arriving at the use of this form of address to the Supreme Being, and calling Him Father. The first may be characterized as an ascending, the second as a descending, process; the first having its rise in an earthly and human relation, the second in a relation that is heavenly, and Divine. I. The earthly and human relation of a child to a parent-a son to a father--is very close and tender. II. Here we touch the other and higher view which, as I think, Scripture suggests and warrants of the relation now in question; the relation in respect of which we call God Father, and invoke Him as Our Father. It is essential to the very being of the Supreme that He should be a Father, and that of Him there should be a Son. From all eternity, accordingly--in the terms of the Creed of the Council of Nice--the Son is of the Father, “ be gotten of His Father before all worlds; God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God.” He is “ the everlasting Son of the Father,” “ begotten, not made.” The relation therefore of paternity or fatherhood in God precedes creation, as well as redemption; and is indeed from everlasting. For before all worlds the Son is in the bosom of the Father. And the infinite, ineffable complacency subsisting between the Father and the Son, realized in the unity of the Holy Spirit with them both, is the true prototype and original model or pattern of the fatherly relation and the fatherly affection of which all who are in the Son are partakers, and in virtue of which they call God Father, and invoke Him as their Father. (R. S.Candlish, D. D.) Pater noster, Our Father The use of the plural form in this invocation is surely significant. We are taught, not only to call upon God as Father, but to call upon Him as our Father. We are to say, Our Father; and that too even in secret prayer. Plainly, therefore, thou dost not apprehend thyself, even in such secrecy, to be quite alone with thy God as thy Father. Others are associated by thee with thyself in this filial utterance, and in the fellowship of filial relationship which it expresses. One at least, or more than one, must be felt by thee to be embraced along with thyself in the invocation. Otherwise thou couldst not well say, with a full and deep sense of reality and truth, Our Father. I. One at all events there surely is--the Master Himself who gives thee this gracious form of address. The Lord Jesus joins Himself to thee, and invites thee to join thyself to Him, so that the invocation may be common to both;--a joint invocation; jointly His and thine--“ Our Father.” 1. Let us consider here, in the first place, the gracious condescension of the blessed Son of God in His joining Himself to us at the first. Let us behold Him drawing near to us as a brother, in order that we and He together may say, Our Father. For it is as a brother that He draws near to us and stands by us; it is in the character of a brother, “ a brother born for adversity.” He takes our nature. He takes our place. He takes as His own the very relation in which we stand to God as apostate rebels, disobedient subjects, guilty and condemned, outcast and estranged. He sounds the lowest depths of its degradation, and tastes the bitterest agony of its curse. He makes common cause with us. 2. And now--thou art at home. The gracious interview is over. The reconciliation is complete. The Father hath met thee, and embraced thee, and welcomed thee as His child. Thou canst scarcely believe for very joy. But thou shalt see greater things than this. For now, secondly, in that Father’ s dwelling thou hast constant fellowship with Him as a Father. And in that fellowship thou art permitted and enabled to join thyself still always to Him who in thy distress joins Himself to thee. II. But when we say, Our Father, we associate with ourselves others in this fellowship of prayer besides the blessed Lord. He indeed is preeminently our fellow, in this act of filial devotion; and others are so, and can be so, only in Him. But there is room in this fellowship for a wide enough brotherhood. 1. All who are within the reach of saving mercy and redeeming love may be comprehended in its embrace. Men--all men--become dear and precious to me now. To every man--to any man--I can now go, and with all tenderness of fraternal pity and brotherly affection, plead--Brother, Brother--weary and wasted in that far country! To thee, as to me, Christ Jesus, the elder brother, cries, Come! Let us go, thou and I together--let us go home with Him, the elder Brother, saying--all three of us together-Our Father. 2. But a narrower line, at least as regards this earth, must hero be drawn. I am called to sympathize with the blessed Jesus, not merely in His going forth among the lost and guilty children of men, that He may win them back to His Father’ s dwelling, and get them to unite with Himself in saying to Him, Our Father. But I am to sympathize with the blessed Jesus also in His going in and out among those whom He has actually brought again to that dwelling, and whom He is ever presenting there as His brethren to His Father and theirs. Let them all have a place in our heart when we say with Christ, Our Father. And that we may make room in our hearts for them all, let us see that by the help of that very Spirit of adoption--that Spirit of His Son--which the Father sends forth into our hearts--the Spirit “ not of bondage and of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind” --we banish whatever tends to harden, or deaden, or straiten our affections. 3. Is this all the family? Is this the whole brotherhood? Is it merely the comparatively small company of believers among men that we have to associate with us, when in Christ, and with Christ, we say, Our Father? Nay; if there be a narrow limit to the household of faith on earth, there is ample room and verge enough elsewhere. For, not to speak of the multitude of the redeemed already around the throne, have we not the holy angels for our fellows in this filial address to God? For they also, as well as we, have an interest in the Son; “ the first-begotten,” whom the Father bringeth into the world, saying, “ Let all the angels of God worship Him.” Reverently--believingly--they worship Him--though, alas! too many of the bright host, through pride and unbelief, refuse. The chosen ones kiss the Son, and in the Son receive themselves the adoption of sons. (R. S.Candlish, D. D.) What sacred associations cluster round the word Father! The very mention of it carries us back to the dawning of our consciousness, when we learned our earliest lessons at a parent’ s lips. But to the thoughtful and religious soul the earthly significance does not exhaust the meaning of this holy name; for God at first designed that the human fatherhood should be the miniature of that relationship in which He stood to men, and He wished them to understand that the love of parents to their children on earth is but as a drop to the ocean of fatherly love which is in Himself. I. When we can truly and intelligently call God “ our Father,” NEW LIFE IS GIVEN TO OUR . I am persuaded that much of our lack of enjoyment in prayer, and much of the lifelessness and artificialness in our devotions generally, must be traced to the fact that we have not thoroughly received the spirit of adoption, and have lost the idea of God’ s Fatherhood. Why should we be in terror of a father? What liberty is that which our own son enjoys! See how he comes bounding into our room, calculating that we will be thoroughly interested in all he has to say, and knowing that when he lays hold of our heart he has taken hold of our strength! But is it different with God? II. When we can truly and intelligently call God our Father, NEW JOY IS GIVEN TO THE OF DUTY. Heaven’ s own sunshine would illuminate our pathway, if every morning we went forth to do our Father’ s business; and the driest and most uninteresting things of daily life would acquire a new importance in our eyes, and would be done by us with gladsomeness, if we but felt we were doing them for a Father. Let us try this heavenly specific and we shall soon find that the glory of love will halo for us all common things with its own celestial radiance, and duty will merge into delight. III. When we can truly and intelligently call God Father, a NEW IS GIVEN TO OUR EARTHLY TRIALS. The Lord Himself hath said by the month of Solomon, “ He that spareth the rod hateth the child,” and He is too wise a Father to think of training His children without discipline. By trials He keeps them from falling away; He leads them to bethink themselves and return when they have been backsliding, and He prepares them for the discharge of arduous and important duties. Some time ago, while sojourning in the Housatonic valley, I was greatly interested in passing through a paper manufactory and observing how the filthy rags were put through process after process, until at length the pulp pressed between heavy rollers came out upon the other side a seamless web of fairest white, having the mark of the maker woven into it. Let this illustrate God’ s purpose with His children. When He subjects them to one species of trial after another, it is only that at the last they may come forth purified and refined, having enstamped upon them His name and character, to be “ known and read of all men.” IV. When we can truly and intelligently call God our Father, a NEW GLORY IS GIVEN TO OUR OF THE WORLD. Jesus teaches us to say, “ Our Father which art in heaven,” and so leads us to look upon that laud as our home. Home is the centre of the heart, and so, by enabling us to call God our Father and heaven our home, Jesus centres our hearts there, and gives us such an idea of its blessedness that we scarcely think of the outward accessories of its splendour, because of the delightful anticipation that we cherish of being there “ at home with the Lord.” O that God, through faith in Jesus Christ, would give to each of us this noble conception of heaven! Then, on true and rational principles we shall desire the better country, and at length have fulfilled to us the beautiful German beatitude, “ Blessed are the home-sick, for they shall reach home.” (W. M. Taylor, D. D.) Christ’ s revelation of the Fatherhood of God I believe that the word “ Father” is applied to God seven times in the Old Testament; among the innumerable references to the Supreme Being which crowd almost every chapter of all the books of the Old Testament but one, He is mentioned just seven times as a Father--five times as the Father of the Hebrew people, twice as sustaining that relation to individuals. Of these two intimations that God is the Father of individual men, one is a promise to David that God will be a Father to his son Solomon; the other is a prediction that by and by men will pray to God calling Him Father--a prediction fulfilled in this prayer. For there is not any record of any prayer in the Old Testament in which God is addressed as Father. “ In the vocative case, as an address to God in prayer,” says Dean Mansel, the name of Father “ does not occur in the Old Testament.” It was, then, practically a new thought about God which our Saviour gave His disciples when He taught them about God. They had always known Him as the Eternal, the Creator, the Self-Existent One, the Supreme Ruler, the Judge, the Lord of Hosts and of Battles, the Captain of the armies of heaven; but this thought of Him as the Father in heaven was one that was very far from all their common thoughts of Him. This word took them into a new world. It was to them as if they had been standing for a long time before the grim outer wall of some old castle which they had been summoned to enter--standing there and looking doubtfully at the forbidding granite battlements, with cannon and sentries on the ramparts with suggestions of gloomy passages and dungeons and chains within--when all at once a little door opened, and they saw within the wall a pleasant garden, with flowers and fountains and cool retreats, and caught a breath of the sweetest odours, and heard a burst of melody from singing birds and happy children playing in the sun. Such an opening into the very heart of God did this word “ Father” make for all who had stood for long in the cold shadow of the old monarchical conception of His character. (Washington Gladden, D. D.) Inferences 1. The truth contained in this new name of God is the true constructive idea in all theological science. Build all your theologies on this foundation. Hold fast to the idea of uniform law, of a nature of things which God has established, under which sin is punished; but when you speak of the personal character and government of God, of His direct interference in the affairs of men, of what He does supernaturally, in the order of history, remember that He is our Father. 2. The word suggests to us also the dignity of human nature. Man is made in the image and likeness of God. He who was before all worlds, He whose will is the source of all laws, He who is the life of all that live, the Omnipotent, the All-Wise, the Eternal God, is our Father. 3. The word not only lifts up and glorifies every humblest human creature, it binds together in one brotherhood, in one family, all that dwell upon the face of the earth. It is the grand leveller of ranks and hierarchies; the charter of fraternity; the prophecy of peace and goodwill among men. 4. Again, what help and inspiration there is for us in the thought of the relationship here pointed out. Take it home to yourself. Try to make out something of what it means when you say that God is your Father. 5. Our Father in heaven! Where it is I know not; what it is no man fully knows. But it is where our Father is. And whoever is with Him is not far from heaven. Something of the melody of its music, something of the fragrance and the beauty of its sweet fields, steal into his heart even while he walks along the dusty ways of this lower world. (Washington Gladden, D. D.) Our Father I. The expression implies that God has communicated to us His own QUALITY OF LIFE (see Genesis 1:27; Colossians 3:10). Traces of the Divine in man, though marred by the fall. 1. Our intellectual faculties. 2. Our aesthetic nature. 3. Our power of loving. 4. Our moral Sense. 5. Our native impulses to goodness. 6. Our disposition for Divine communion. 7. Our hopefulness. 8. Our free agency. II. The expression implies also that God holds us In TO HIMSELF. 1. He holds us in the intimacy of affection (John 17:23). 2. He holds us in the intimacy of communion. A parent desires the society of his children. (1) Therefore God gives us the command and the spirit of prayer. (2) He communicates to us His thoughts in the Bible, and His own impressions of truth and virtue through the influence of His Holy Spirit. (3) He dwells within us, making even our bodies His temples. 3. He visits us with an intimacy of service. (1) His Providence secures our temporal well-being. (2) His Grace provides our atonement. (3) His Spirit serves our spirits in sanctifying them. (J. M. Ludlow, D. D.) Our Father, in heaven I. THE OF GOD TO US AS A FATHER. 1. God is a Father three ways. (1) God is a Father by eternal generation; having, by an inconceivable and ineffable way, begotten His Son, God co-equal, co-eternal with Himself; and therefore called the “ only begotten Son of God” (John 3:16). (2) God is a Father by temporal creation; as He gives a being and existence to His creatures. (3) God is said to be a Father by spiritual regeneration and adoption. And so all true believers are said to be the sons of God, and to be born of God John 1:12-13). Now that God should be pleased to take this into His glorious style, even to be called Our Father, it may teach us--First. To admire His infinite condescension, and our own unspeakable privilege and dignity (1 John 3:1). Secondly. It should teach us to walk worthy of this high and honourable relation into which we are taken; and to demean ourselves as children ought to do, in all holy obedience to His commands; with fear and reverence to His authority, and an humble submission to His will. Thirdly. Is God thy Father? This, then, may give us abundance of assurance, that we shall receive at His hands what we ask, if it be good for us; and, if it be not, we have no reason to complain that we are not heard, unless He should turn our prayers into curses. Fourthly. Is God thy Father? This, then, may encourage us against despair, under the sense of our manifold sins against God, and departures from Him; for He will certainly receive us upon our repentance and returning to Him. 2. The next thing observable, is the particle Our, Our Father: which notes to us, that God is not only the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, but He is the Father of all men, by creation and providence, and especially the Father of the faithful, by regeneration and adoption. (1) Let us esteem one another as brethren. (2) If thou art mean and low in the world, this should teach thee to be well content with thy present state and condition; for God is thy Father, and a Father to thee equally with the greatest. (3) Since when we pray we must say, Our Father, this teacheth us, to interest one another in our prayers. II. The next expression SETS FORTH HIS GLORY AND --“ which art in heaven.” “ But is not God everywhere present? Doth He not fill heaven and earth, and all things?” True. But this expression is used-- 1. Because heaven is the most glorious place of God’ s residence, where He hath more especially established His throne of grace, and there sits upon it. 2. Our prayers are directed to our Father in heaven, because, though He hears them wheresoever they are uttered, yet He nowhere hears them with acceptance but only in heaven. And the reason is, because our prayers are acceptable only as they are presented before God through the intercession of Christ. Now Christ performs His mediatory office only in heaven; for He performs it in both natures, as He is God and Man; and so He is only in heaven. And, therefore, we are still concerned to pray to our Father in heaven. (1) Since we are directed to pray to our Father in heaven, we may be sure that there is no circumstance of time or place, than can hinder us from praying. For heaven is over thee, and open to thee, wherever thou art. (2) Is thy Father in heaven? Thy prayers then should be made so as to pierce the heavens where God is. (Bishop Hopkins.) The opening Invocation This Invocation lifts upwards the child’ s brow, and claims in heaven and in the King of that country a filial interest. I. The FILIAL; he sees in the Most High a Father. II. The ; he comes not with his private needs and vows alone, but with those of his race and brotherhood, “ Our Father.” And-- III. The ; though we are now of the earth, and attached to it by these mortal and terrene bodies, we are not originally from it, nor were we made to be eternally upon it. We are of heaven, and for heaven; for there and not here our Father is, and where He is our true home is. Conclusion. Let the Churches ponder these great truths. In the filial principle of our text they will find life and earth made glorious, by the thought that a Father made and rules them; and, above all worldly distinctions, they will prize and exult in their bonds through Christ to Him--rejoicing, mainly as Christ commanded His apostles to rejoice, in thisthat their names are written in heaven. In the fraternal principle we shall aright learn to love the Church and to compassionate the world; and in the principle celestial, we shall be taught to cultivate that heavenly-mindedness which shall make the Christian, though feeble, suffering, and forlorn in his worldly relations, already lustrous and blest, as Burke described in her worldly pomp, and in the bloom of her youth, the hapless Queen of France: “ A brilliant orb, that seemed scarce to touch the horizon.” More justly might the saint of God be thus described; having already, as the apostle enjoins, his conversation in heaven, and shedding around the earth the splendours of that world with which he holds close and blest communion, and towards which he seems habitually ready to mount, longing to depart that be may be with Christ, which is far better. (W. R. Williams, D. D.) The Divine Father Rev. Dr. Jonas King once went to visit the children in an orphan asylum. The children were seated in a schoolroom and Dr. King stood on a platform before them. “ So this is an orphan asylum,” said he. “ I suppose that many of you children would tell me that you have no father or mother, were I to ask you.” “ Yes, sir; yes, sir,” said some little voices. “ How many of you say you have no father? Hold up your hands.” A forest of hands were put up. “ So you say, you have no father?” “ Yes, sir; yes, sir.” “ Now,” said Dr. King, “ do you ever say the Lord’ s prayer? Let me hear you.” The children began: “ Our Father who art in heaven Stop, children,” said Dr. King; “ did you begin right?” The children began again: “ Our Father who art in heaven” “ Stop again, children,” said Dr. King. “ What did you say? Our Father? Then you have a Father; a good, rich Father. I want to tell you about Him. He owns all the gold in California; He owns all the world; He can give you as much of anything as He sees is best for you. Now, children, never forget that you have a Father. Go to Him for all you want, as if you could see Him. He is able and willing to do all that is for your good.” God’ s headquarters “ Why do we say in the Lord’ s prayer, ‘ Who art in heaven,’ since God is everywhere?” asked a clergyman of some children. For a while no one answered; at last, seeing a little drummer-boy who looked as if he could give an answer, the clergyman said: “ Well, little soldier, what say you?” “ Because it’ s head-quarters,” replied the drummer. The address The first part of the Lord’ s prayer I have called the address, or the invocation because in it we invoke or call upon God by name, and tell Him, as it were, that we are going to speak to Him, and beg Him to listen to what we are about to say. 1. The name of “ Father,” by which we are commanded to call upon God, is one of the most remarkable things in the whole prayer. To us, indeed, who have been accustomed to it from infancy, it may seem almost a matter of course to call God, Father. But to do it, and that too with a certainty that He approves of it, is so far from being a matter of course that, if God had not expressly authorized and commanded us, we should never have dared to address Him by that name; we should have felt it too great a presumption to claim relation with the Lord of the universe. Any one may see what a step Christ gave us toward heaven by com-rounding us to address our Maker, not as our God and King, but as our Father. Any one may see and feel what a pledge the name contains that God will listen to our prayers. 2. Every privilege has its corresponding duty. Let us consider what duties the privilege, which Christ has bought for us, of calling God our Father, brings with it. (1) The first and chief duty is the behaving to Him as children should behave to their father. (2) The knowledge that God is our Father, and can do whatsoever He pleases, should fill us with faith and a courageous trust in Him. (A. W. Hare.) Our Father We are commanded to say “ Our Father,” and not my Father, to teach us not to pray for ourselves alone, but for the whole family of God and Christ on earth. When we say “ Our Father,” we ought to bear in mind that God has other children beside us, children who have equal claims on His mercy and love, children whom He loves as well as us. We should remember, too, that, if we are all the sons of one common Father, we must all be brothers and sisters. Here is a fruitful subject for self-examination. Do we love as brothers? Do we live together as brothers ought to live, in peace and concord? Do we help each other to the utmost of our power? Do we rejoice in our brother’ s prosperity, though the like may not befall ourselves? Do we feel that concern for their welfare, not in body only, but in soul, which ought to live in the hearts of all such as declare themselves before God to be members of one great family, but in the same breath for our brethren also? (A. W. Hare.) Which art in heaven Remember where that Father dwells. It is a Father which is in heaven that you are to pray to. Therefore He must be-- 1. Most gracious; or He would never have allowed you to call Him by such a name. 2. He must be most powerful; for He is high above all things. 3. He must be most wise; for He made the world. 4. He is everlasting, and will endure without a change, when the heavens and the earth have passed away. Having then a Father, who is so powerful and so wise, and who is also unchangeable and everlasting, what an anchor of hope must this thought be to us! (A. W. Hare.) Our Father Does this familiar conception of the Fatherhood of God impair our reverence for Him? Let the children of the most loving parents answer the question. 1. This view of the Divine nature has its momentous bearings on the type of piety which we should cherish in ourselves and promote in others. The child of kind human parents shows his piety to them, not by despising their gifts and spurning the tokens of their love, but by enjoying all of them to the full, with his loving parents constantly in his thoughts, using their gifts as they would have them used, and deeming himself most happy when he can pursue his pleasure in their presence, and with their participation. By parity of reason, the true child of God manifests his piety, not by dashing from him the cup of joy put full to his lips, but by making his joy gratitude, his gladness thanksgiving, by using the world as not abusing it, by close adherence to the laws which always accompany the gifts and make them immeasurably the more precious, and by never losing thought of the benignant presence of Him who has all a Father’ s gladness in seeing His children happy. 2. Were these views made prominent in religious teaching, and especially in the religious culture of the young, religion would not be the unwelcome theme it now is to so many, nor would the offices of Christian worship be regarded with the indifference now so sadly prevalent. 3. Fatherhood implies distinctive love for the individual child, and thus, of necessity, a personal interest in the child’ s well or ill-doing, right or wrong conduct, good or bad character. 4. Whether the child finds privilege and happiness, or restraint and irksomeness, in the human father’ s well-ordered household, depends on his own choice, his own character. God’ s child, too, can be happy in His universal house, only through love of the father, and conformity to the ways of the house. The child of God who has not a child’ s heart must go to his own place, and that cannot be a place of privilege or joy. But he is self banished, self-punished. He has forsaken his own mercies. It is not God’ s love that is withdrawn from him; but he has taken himself from the shelter and joy of that love. (Prof. Peabody, D. D. , LL. D.) Carlyle and the Lord’ s prayer “‘Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name, Thy will be done’ --what else can we say? The other night, in my sleepless tossings about, which were growing more and more miserable, these words, that brief and grand prayer, came strangely into my mind, with an altogether new emphasis, as if written and shining for me in mild pure splendour on the black bosom of the night there; then I, as it were, read them word by word, with a sudden check to my imperfect wanderings, with a sudden softness of composure which was much unexpected. Not for perhaps thirty or forty years had I once formally repeated that prayer; nay, I never felt before how intensely the voice of man’ s soul it is--the inmost aspiration of all that is high and pious in poor human nature, right worthy to be recommended with an ‘ After this manner pray ye.’” (Thomas Carlyle.) God realized as a Father I have been told of a good man, among whose experiences, which he kept a record of, this, among other things, was found after his death, that at such a time in secret prayer, his heart at the beginning of the duty was much enlarged, in giving to God those titles which are awful and tremendous, in calling Him the great, the mighty, and the terrible God; but going on thus, he checked himself with this thought, “ And why not my Father?” (Matthew Henry.) The Fatherhood of God A Jew entered a Persian temple, and saw there the sacred fire. He said to the priest, “ How do you worship fire?” “ Not the fire: it is to us an emblem of the sun and of his animating light,” said the priest. Then asked the Jew, “ Do you adore the sun as a deity? Do you know that he also is a creature of the Almighty?” The priest answered that the sun was to them only an emblem of the invisible light which preserves all things. The Israelite continued, “ Does your nation distinguish the image from the original? They call the sun their god, and kneel before the earthly flame. You dazzle the eye of the body, but darken that of the mind; in presenting to them the terrestrial light, you take from them the celestial.” The Persian asked, “ How do you name the Supreme Being?” “ We call Him Jehovah Adonai; that is, the Lord who was, who is, and shall be.” “ Your word is great and glorious, but it is terrible,” said the Persian. A Christian approaching said, “ We call Him Abba, Father.” Then the Gentile and the Jew regarded each other with surprise. Said one, “ Your word is the nearest and the highest; but who gives you courage to call the Eternal thus?” “ The Father Himself,” said the Christian, who then expounded to them the plan of redemption. Then they believed and lifted up their eyes to heaven, saying, “ Father, dear Father,” and joined hands and called each other brethren. (Krummacher.) Of the preface to the Lord’ s prayer I. The to the Lord’ s prayer--“ After this manner, therefore, pray ye.” Our Lord Jesus, in these words prescribed to His disciples and us a directory for prayer. The ten commandments are the rule of our life; the creed is the sum of our faith; and the Lord’ s prayer is the pattern of our prayer. As God did prescribe Moses a pattern of the tabernacle, so Christ hath here prescribed us a pattern of prayer--“ After this manner, therefore pray ye,” &c. Not that we are tied to the words of the Lord’ s prayer; Christ saith not, “ after these words, pray ye” ; but “ after this manner” ; that is, let all your petitions agree and symbolize with the things contained in the Lord’ s prayer; and indeed, well may we make all our prayers consonant and agreeable to this prayer, it being a most exact prayer. Tertullian calls it, a breviary and compendium of the gospel; it is like a heap of massy gold. The exactness of this prayer appears-- 1. In the dignity of the Author; a piece of work hath commendation from the artificer, and this prayer hath commendation from the Author; it is the Lord’ s prayer. As the moral law was written with the finger of God, so this prayer was dropt from the lips of the Son of God. 2. The exactness of this prayer appears in the excellency of the matter. I may say of this prayer, it “ is as silver tried in the furnace, purified seven times.” Never was there prayer so admirably and curiously composed as this. As Solomon’ s Song, for its excellency, is called “ the song of songs,” so may this well be called “ the prayer of prayers.” The matter of it is admirable. 1. For its succinctness; it is short and pithy, multum in parvo, a great deal said in a few words. It requires most art to draw the two globes curiously in a little map. This short prayer is a system or body of divinity. 2. Its clearness. This prayer is plain and intelligible to every capacity. Clearness is the grace of speech. 3. Its completeness. This prayer contains in it the chief things that we have to ask, or God hath to bestow. There is a double benefit ariseth from framing our petitions suitably to the Lord’ s prayer. 1. Hereby error in prayer is prevented. It is not easy to write wrong after this copy; we cannot easily err, having our pattern before us. 2. Hereby mercies requested are obtained, for the apostle assures us God will hear us when we pray “ according to His will.” And sure we pray according to His will, when we pray according to the pattern He hath set us. II. THE PRAYER ITSELF, which consists of three parts: (1) A preface; (2) petitions; (3) the conclusion. First. The preface to the prayer. 1. “ Our Father.” 2. “ Which art in heaven.” To begin with the first words of the preface. “ Our Father.” Father is sometimes taken personally--“ My Father is greater than!” : but Father in the text is taken essentially for the whole Deity. This title, Father, teacheth us to whom we must address ourselves in prayer; to God alone. Here is no such thing in the Lord’ s prayer as, “ O ye saints or angels that are in heaven, hear us!” but “ Our Father which art in heaven.” In what order must we direct our prayers to God? Here is only the Father named; may not we direct our prayers to the Son, and Holy Ghost? Though the Father only be named in the Lord’ s prayer, yet the ether two Persons are not hereby excluded; the Father is mentioned because He is first in order; but the Son and Holy Ghost are included, because they are the same in essence. Princes on earth give themselves titles expressing their greatness, as “ high and mighty” ; God might have done so, and expressed Himself thus, “ Our King of glory, our Judge” ; but He gives Himself another title, “ our Father,” an expression of Jove and condescension. This entry is longer than a Bible module can hold. The rest is at https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/bi/ Luke 11:3 Give us day by day our daily bread The petition for daily bread Human nature is made up of two parts, soul and body, and the Lord’ s prayer is so framed as to have direct reference to the wants of both. The petition for “ daily bread,” while, apparently, it is one of the smallest, is really one of the greatest of them all. It seems small, because-- 1. We ask for what so many already possess; 2. We ask it only for the small circle around our table; and 3. We ask it only for today. It is, nevertheless, a great petition, because-- 1. We ask that earthly bread may be changed into heavenly. 2. We ask God to feed all those who are in want. 3. We ask Him to supply the daily necessities of a waiting world. 4. We ask it to-day, and ever again to-day. All the blessings of this life, as well as those of the life to come, were forfeited by man’ s transgression in Eden, and the Almighty has a right to withhold, or to give, just as He sees fit. I. The fact that we thus apply to our Heavenly Father, teaches us our UPON HIM. II. A wholesome lesson of . III. AND PATIENT LABOUR IV. . V. . From whence do all good things come? Is not God the Author and Giver of them? Ought not those whom He has blessed with abundance be glad to share it with the children of want and suffering? Aye, can we, with a quiet conscience, offer the prayer, “ Give us this day our daily bread,” while our ears are deaf to the piteous appeals of the needy? VI. FAITH. The wants of the body are certainly important, but those of the soul are much more so. The petition which we are considering has reference to both. Not only do we implore our Heavenly Father to give us needful supplies of food for our bodily health, but nourishment for the soul. (J. N. Norton, D. D.) Prayer for daily bread I. The order. And that is remarkable upon two accounts. 1. Whereas this petition is placed in the midst, and encompassed about with others that relate unto spiritual blessings; so that, after we have prayed for the glory of God, our Saviour teacheth us to make mention of our temporal wants, and so to pass on again to beg spiritual mercies for our souls: this may instruct us, in the government of our lives, to use worldly comforts as here we pray for them. Spiritual and heavenly things are our greatest concernments, and should be our greatest care. With these we should begin, and with these we should end. 2. It is observable that though we are commanded to seek first the kingdom of God and its righteousness, with a promise that all other earthly things shall be added to us; yet here our Saviour places the petition for temporal blessings before the two petitions we present to God for spiritual blessings. (1) Our Saviour useth this method in His prayer in conformity to the method of Divine Providence towards us, which first gives us life and the necessities of it, and then orders us spiritual and heavenly blessings, as an accession and happy addition to those natural good things He bestows upon us. (2) Because we are usually more sensible of our temporal than of our spiritual wants, our Saviour therefore doth by degrees raise up our desires by the one to the other: for, seeing we are commanded to pray for the supply even of our temporal necessities, which are but trivial in regard to the necessities of our souls; we cannot but be convinced that we ought to be much more earnest and importunate with God for spiritual mercies than for temporal, by how much our spiritual wants are more important and of vaster consequence than our temporal. II. The petition itself. 1. The matter of this petition, or that which we pray for, and that is bread: Give us our bread. By bread here is meant all temporal and earthly blessings, that contribute either to our being or to our well-being in this life. (1) Temporal mercies and blessings may lawfully be prayed for. (a) They are needful for us as the means that God hath appointed for the preservation of our temporal life and being; in which we have so many opportunities to serve and glorify Him, and so many advantages to secure heaven and glory to our souls. (b) As temporal good things are needful for us, so God hath promised to give them to us. (2) They must be prayed for only conditionally; for they are only conditionally promised. And these conditions are twofold: if they be consistent with God’ s pleasure, and if they be conducible to our good. Now God is said to give us our daily bread, and all the necessaries of life, especially two ways. (a) By producing them and bringing them to us. (b) God gives them by blessing them to us. 2. Let us consider the specification of this blessing, or the kind and quality of it, our daily bread. (1) We may pray for the supply of all our natural necessities. (2) Besides things that are naturally necessary, there are things that are civilly necessary; which are not so absolutely imperious as the other, yet these also oblige us to pray for supplies and relief. 3. In the words of this petition are designed our right and propriety to this daily bread: Give us our daily bread. (1) Now right to a temporal enjoyment is threefold, either natural, or spiritual, or civil. Natural by creation, spiritual by regeneration, and civil by human and legal constitution. (2) Now when we pray for our daily bread, we pray-- (a) That God would give us the good things of this life, to be obtained by us in a lawful regular manner. (b) That He would bless and increase those good things that are rightfully our own. (c) That He would bestow upon us a spiritual right in whatsoever we enjoy, through Jesus Christ, who is the Heir and Possessor of all things. (d) We pray that we may not desire nor covet that which is another’ s: for we are taught to pray only for that which we may justly call ours, to which we have as well a civil as a spiritual right and title. 4. We have in the words the limitation of the petition in respect of time. “ Give us this day our daily bread.” And, indeed, there is great reason why we should pray for it this day; for we every day stand in need of relief and supplies from God. Our wants and our troubles grow up thick about us, and unless God make daily provisions for us we shall be overrun by them. Food nourishes but a day, and that which we receive this day will not suffice us to-morrow. There is a continual spring and fountain of necessities within us; and, therefore, we must have continual recourse unto God by prayer, that He would daily satisfy and supply our wants as they daily rise up about us. Again, by teaching us to pray for our temporal comforts this day, our Saviour tacitly intimates to us that we should be content with our daily allowance. It is enough, if we have our dimensum, our appointed food for the day. (Bishop Hopkins.) Our daily bread “ Bread.” Life’ s commonest necessity, our physical care and craving; and this most practical of gifts lies in the very middle of Christ’ s own model prayer for daily use! And yet there are people who regard the Christian religion as visionary, contemplative, a matter that lies outside the circle of the actual; a something above, beyond, and apart from the ordinary acts and experiences of life! Yet here it is! a thing of the pantry and the pocket, mingled and wrapped up with pardon and paradise. It is a golden ladder, this religion of Jesus, bright with the vision of angels, and with its top among the stars, and resting hard by the throne of God. And yet it is set up on earth amid tools and toil, business and bread. “ Give us this day our daily bread.” That cannot be the bread of idleness. It cannot properly be applied to the food which is received in charity, when there is no earthly reason why we should not go forth in manly independence, and earn our own loaf. The prayer is net--“ Give me this day somebody else’ s bread--give us this day bread anyhow, and from any quarter” ; but, give us our bread: that which has fairly and honestly become ours, by the sweat of our own brow, by the honest toil of our own hands. I remember reading the memoir of some good and successful man, who says, in reference to his first start in the world: “ That was a sweet loaf, both crust and crumb, that I bought and paid for out of my first wages.” You see, it was his daily bread. Now, whatever our station, our lot in life may be, let us seek, in this respect, to exhibit true self-respect and self-reliance; and while we ask our God to give us daily bread, let us ask and strive, too, that it may be ours, not other people’ s; ours, not our creditors’ ; ours, not by fraud or wrong, but our own genuine property, which God hath enabled us to win. But I must point your attention to one word more in this petition: “ Give us our daily bread.” The model prayer has no exclusiveness. It is a stranger to selfishness. It is not, “ Give me my daily bread.” “ Our Father” owns our brotherhood, and our brotherhood cares for the wants of others as well as our own; and we cannot use this prayer aright, cannot hope to win the Father’ s gracious answer to it, unless we are open-hearted and open handed to our brother’ s honest need. Jesus would that we remember the poor. The Jews have a capital proverb, “ He that prays for another is heard for himself.” Let us break our bread to the hungry, so shall our daily bread be sweeter to the palate and come more surely to the hand. It is said of a certain lad who had listened long to his well-to do father’ s prayers for the poor and needy, that after they rose from their knees, the boy appeared moody and silent. “ What are you thinking about, my son?” said the father, who probably thought his prayers were bearing fruit in the boy. “ I was thinking, father, that if I had your corn-bags, I would soon answer your prayers.” I am afraid there is a good deal of similar devotion. Brothers I when ye pray, say, Give us this day our daily bread! And do your best among God’ s poor ones to help to answer your own petitions. “ The bag is full,” said a kindly farmer, “ though enough has missed the mouth to give the birds a dinner.” “ Give us this day our daily bread.” It breathes absolute dependence. You can’ t buy. God must give. Strength to gain it, skill to earn it, power to eat it--all are from Him. From Him the soil, the seed, the sun, the harvest. What hast thou that thou hast not received? How long the gifts have come to you! How bountiful they have been and still are I And, once again, before stern winter comes with shivering blast across the bare and empty fields--He hath sent bread enough and to spare. Our Father! May our hearts be filled with gratitude and our lives with praise. (J. J.Wray.) The prayer for our daily bread We are to regard this petition as a request for the supply of bodily needs, but we are not to stop there. It includes a prayer for the instruction of God’ s Word, which is often compared to food (Job 23:12; Amos 8:11; 1 Timothy 4:6); and for the assistance and support of His grace, for strength to do His will, for that Bread which endureth unto everlasting life, which is contrasted by our Lord with the perishing support of the perishing life of earth. I. IT IS A PRAYER OF FAITH. 1. A cry of nature (Psalms 104:21; Psalms 104:28). 2. By it man acknowledges his Benefactor. (1) While we recognize God as the Giver of all good things, and seek to Him for their supply, we must not ignore the means and channels which He has appointed for their conveyance to us. (2) Nor, again, while we ask God, our heavenly Father, to give us those things that He sees to be needful for us, must we dare to snatch in unlawful or forbidden ways what He does not offer, however imperious may seem to us the need (Deuteronomy 8:3; Matthew 4:4). II. THE LESSON OF TRUST AND follows naturally in thought from the spirit of faith which this prayer inculcates. First, “ Thy will be done” ; then, if it be in accordance with Thy will, “ give us” what to us seems needful. III. WITH OUR LOT will naturally flow from this believing regard of God as the Giver of all good, and from resignation to His wise and loving will. 1. We ask for “ bread,” necessaries, not luxuries. 2. We ask not that our storehouses may be replenished and goods laid up for many years, but for the supply of the need of the coming day Proverbs 30:8-9; 1 Timothy 6:8; Matthew 6:34). IV. OUR MUTUAL ONE UPON ANOTHER, as well as our COMMON UPON GOD. Meum and tuum do not belong to the Christian vocabulary; -Pater noster is the Christian prayer and rule. We are stewards of God’ s bounty, which we must use for the common good (1 Corinthians 12:7; Galatians 6:2; 1 Timothy 6:17-18; 1 Peter 4:10). This rule applies not only to gifts of money, but also to the expenditure of time, of ability, and talent of any kind. (A. C. A. Hall, M. A.) Enjoyment of God’ s daily mercies I will say here, that if you would enjoy the blessing of daily bread which God gives you, you will do so best by receiving it and recognizing it as a gift from God. Two men go out to their labour until the evening; one reckless of God his Maker, and labouring because he knows he must work or starve; the other goes out, after raising the prayer, “ Give us this day our daily bread,” to obtain an answer to his prayers in the sweat of his brow, and he toils because that is the way in which it pleases God to give him his daily bread, and he bears in mind who is the giver of it, and he takes it as bread sent to him from heaven, and eats it with thankfulness. Which man will have most enjoyment of God’ s blessings? I think this last; for indeed, Christian brethren, we miss much of the happiness which may still be had in this world, because we are self-sufficient, and think we are indebted to ourselves for the supply of our wants, and not to God. Daily labour is hallowed, by being the means of supplying that for which we pray; and it is a great thing for us thus to connect our daily work with our prayers; the prayers which a man has offered up before commencing his task of toil in the morning, will shoot a ray of light through the occupations of the day, and tinge them with a glory which nothing else can give. And I would wish you thus to connect your daily life with your prayers; your prayers should be the life of your life, and your actions should be a comment upon your prayers. A man who would enjoy this life, in the way in which it was intended to be enjoyed, ought to look upon it in the spirit of the prayer, “ Give us day by day our daily bread” ; as a pensioner on God’ s mercy from day to day and from hour to hour, he will eat his bread with thankfulness, and will recognize in all mercies vouchsafed to him the hand of Him who gives him daily bread, and he will not live as a man separate from God, but as one bound to Him by very near ties. (Bishop Havey Goodwin.) Lessons on this petition 1. Reliance on God’ s Providence. You must not trust in your strength; you say you earn your bread for yourself, but who gives you strength to labour for it? in this, as in much higher things, “ it is God that worketh in you” ; a breath from Him and your strength may be laid low, and who will give you your bread then? 2. Christian simplicity. We pray for bread, and bread only according to our wants; what a protest is here against the spirit of the world, the spirit of ever getting and never being contented; the spirit which does not belong to Christ and ought not to belong to His people. 3. The gratitude due to God for all His manifold favours to us. For if we pray for daily bread for the time to come, doubtless we must in our hearts give thanks for what we have already received. 4. When you use the words, “ Give us this day our daily bread,” think how incapable the mere bread of this world is of feeding your souls to immortality, and how lamentably poor, how poor beyond any beggary which words can describe, you must be, if having bread to eat and raiment to put on, you have no food for your souls and no covering to hide you from the wrath of God. (Bishop Havey Goodwin.) The prayer for bread As we repeat this formula with its bread and private interests deferred to the second leaf, I think it will occur to us sometimes how much has still to be wrought within us before the order of desires in our heart will conform to the order of desires in this prayer, and before we can sincerely comply with the requirement of our Lord, “ After this manner, therefore, pray ye.” So much for the place which the petition of our text occupies in the prayer. Another of its features of interest is that it authorizes us to carry our religion into the details and every-day affairs of life--Give us bread. It singles out a common matter and puts us in religious relation to it. It lets religion into the interior of life, instead of putting it upon the margin as an appendix or after-thought. There is no danger of giving to religion an exaggerated greatness, but there is of giving to it an isolated greatness--holding it apart, pushing it into the firmament, and making an inaccessible sun of it, instead of making of it the familiar sunshine, enswathing every little thing with light, lying down among all the valleys, putting a finer life into every blade of grass, and a beautiful tint on every bead of dew. There is truth in what an Englishman has said: “ We are not to look at religion itself, but at surrounding things with the help of religion.” Our text reminds us that we may look at so common a thing as bread with the help of religion. Another fact of which our text reminds us is, that God is the Author and Dispenser of our common benefits; that God is personally near us, and that His thought and interest run out into all our little concerns. “ O God, do Thou give to us bread!” This petition is composed in the spirit with which the whole of Scripture is animated, that God is personally immanent in all which transpires, and personally sympathetic with all which needs and suffers. “ He watereth the hills from His chambers; the earth is satisfied with the fruit of Thy works. He causeth the grass to grow for the cattle, and herb for the service of man.” “ Consider the grass, God arrayeth it; the lilies, God clotheth them; the ravens, He feedeth them.” Give us this day our daily bread. All this is full of childlikeness and simple-mindedness. It makes God’ s relation to us very immediate, and His goodness to us very direct and personal. It almost lifts us over on to the inner-side of God’ s mercy-seat, and sets us almost at the exact spot where God keeps His bounties. It is, I say, a very childlike way of putting the case, “ Give us bread to-day.” It sounds a little foreign and strange when uttered by persons of thoughtful and mature years. It sounds like an echo from out different times and distant generations. Children pray in that way to-day, but adults do not unless they are praying an inherited prayer brought in from another age. And it is remarkable that although our Lord’ s prayer is so short, room was made in it for the doctrine that in every event of nature God is the personal agent. That is all involved in the petition of our text. The last thing we shall notice about this petition is that it teaches us to ask God for one day’ s benefits at a time: Give us this day (give us to-day) our daily bread. It looks as though the petition contemplated quite another condition of things and state of society from what now exists. Christ and His disciples could appreciate the exact form of this request. We cannot. It is not easy to pray devoutly for sustenance that we already have in store. We are not concerned for to-day. Our desires outrun the clock. We pray about to-day, but think about to-morrow and the day after. We have all we need now, but are afraid we shall not have by and by. No man is contented with enough; and yet a man’ s life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth. To be discontented is to desire to find a week’ s manna fallen on the morning of each day. “ Give us this day our daily bread,” then, means that the Christian policy of life is to receive life’ s necessities, bear its burdens, meet its temptations, encounter its uncertainties, and endure its griefs one day at a time, and to depend upon God to make us sufficient for each day’ s crosses and emergencies. It is better to go to sleep to-night thanking God for what He has helped us to do to-day than asking Him to help us do as much, and more, tomorrow. “ Give us to-day our daily bread,” --there is nothing in the Lord’ s prayer about to-morrow. It is Christian to feel as the night-traveller does, who knows that the road before his feet will become light just as fast as it is illuminated by the candle which he carries and which moves as he moves. (C. H. Parkhurst, D. D.) Lessons from the fourth petition 1. Let us, as our Lord advises, “ seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness.” This, if we will hearken to the Son of God, is our wisdom. Let us hear His counsel and obey His voice; they that sin against Him wrong their own souls. We may be happy without abundance of the world, nay, without more than enough, more than a sufficiency for ourselves and our families; and even without so much as that, as all those poor are, who are rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom which God has promised to them that love Him. But we can never be happy without an interest in that kingdom; we should not if we were possessors of all the world, all the treasures and glory of it. Let us make our spiritual and eternal interest our first care, because it is, without doubt, the most important. Let us apply ourselves to our worldly business, only in subordination to our spiritual concerns. 2. Let none indulge themselves in idleness, and expect to be provided for by the labours or the charity of others, when they are able to take care of themselves. 3. On the other hand, let not our hearts be overcharged with the cares of thin life. 4. Let us not indulge distrustful thoughts of God’ s providence; no, not even when our affairs seem to be in the most discouraging situation. 5. Let such as have but little in the world be satisfied, if they have enough; nay, if they have not enough of their own which is the case of many who have a greater interest in God’ s fatherly love than those who have a larger share of the outward blessings of His providence. 6. Let not such as are in low circumstances envy such as are in possession of a larger share of the good things of the world. As the flower of the grass they pass away. A man that lives by his labour may be as happy as the wealthiest man in the nation. 7. Let such as have plenty of the world willingly contribute towards the support of such as are in want. God has given them a right to daily bread; let us not withhold from them what God has given them. 8. Let us all labour after an interest in the true riches, a treasure in heaven that faileth not. The world, and all the enjoyments of it are passing away; but there is an inheritance incorruptible, undefiled, and that never fades; a world in which all will be rich, sit down with Christ in His throne, in glory, honour, and immortality. What great matter is it, if those who, (through God’ s peculiar grace) are heirs of that kingdom, if for the little while they are here they have no more than their daily bread? (John Whitty.) The prayer for daily bread I. WE HERE CONFESS OUR . A man may be proud of his industry, and economy, and skill; a nation may exult over their enterprise and energy; but are not these, or the qualities that win bread, and win it abundantly, themselves gifts of Heaven? “ Is it not He that giveth thee power to get wealth?” The statesman or political economist who overlooks this palpable truth has little reason to boast of his discernment. All the praise of a man or of a measure--of a political leader, or of a party and its policy--that stops short of God, is like the stolidity of the heathen fisherman represented in Scripture as burning incense to his net and drag. Is it not He, that bestowed all the material constituents of wealth, the ores and gems hid in the recesses of the earth, as well as the harvests reaped from its fields; and is it not His Providence that discovers to man, in the fitting age and hour, the treasures of Nature, and suggests all the inventions of Art? He who of old guided the flight of the quails over the tents of the chosen tribes in the wilderness, is not He, the same in skill, yet guiding the crowds of the fishermen’ s finny spoil, beneath or far aside from their barks? Can the trapper of the Rocky Mountains, or the harpooner of the Pacific Ocean succeed, but as God maintains and guides their chosen prey? The Puritan fathers when they eked out the scanty supplies of their first years with the shell-fish of our coasts, and blessed God for showing them the “ treasures,” as they beautifully quoted the Scripture, “ hid in the sand,” were setting a lesson of pious acknowledgment, which their children in our days would do well to remember, when sifting other, and perhaps far more baleful treasures out of the golden sands of California. II. WE HERE PLEDGE OUR . And how many need this! Wherever population has become dense, and labour difficult to be obtained, pauperism has grown into a formidable evil. It is in many lands the great question of the times. The gaunt and hollow-eyed clan of the “ Wants” are confronting the more sleek, but the less numerous, and the feebler house of the “ Haves.” Shall the sinewy grasp of Famine’ s bony hand be laid on the pampered throat of Luxury, and a violent social revolution assay to right for a time the dread inequality? We believe that to the lands which know not or scorn the gospel there are few enemies which they have more cause to fear than this famishing multitude--fierce, unrestrained, and illiterate--a Lazarus without a gospel and without a God, turning wolf-like in theblindness of its misery and its brute strength on a Dives without conscience and without mercy. The poor must be relieved, but not in indolence. The gospel must come in, and by its influence on personal conscience and on individual character, teach the poor self-respect, diligence, and economy and content; and require of the rich sympathy, and compassion, and bounty, for their more necessitous brethren. III. WE HERE PROMISE BY , , AND . We ask not from our God luxuries, but necessaries. One of the sins that called down from heaven the terrific bolt of the first French Revolution was that prodigal luxury of the nobility and court, which dared to run to all excesses of riot amid a famishing people, and with a bankrupt exchequer, with the selfish cry: “ After us let there come the Deluge.” It came for them. Fashion and pride rob charity. When the Egyptian queen, to make a draught of unparalleled costliness, melted a most precious pearl in her goblet; and when in the days of Charles V., a merchant-prince of Germany kindled a fire of cinnamon for his kingly guest; the gem and the wood might well perhaps be spared as far as referred to any immediate use which the poor could have made of them; but if the price of them were so much deducted from what might have fed needy thousands, this destruction of value, for purposes of mere ostentation, cannot certainly be regarded as being just. “ Our superfluities,” said Howard, “ must give place to our brother’ s necessities.” That maxim would replenish every poor fund and mission treasury under the cope of heaven. (W. R. Williams, D. D.) The convenient food This is the first petition that expresses a personal want of the petitioner. We have not thought as yet of our own necessities. Our minds have been led away over the universe of God; we have been made to take in the great purposes of the Divine love and the great attributes of the Divine character; and now with this preparation we come to think of our own personal needs. Plainly, we shall not be quite so selfish, quite so insistent, quite so querulous in our petitioning as we should have been if we had not been lifted up and led forth along these higher paths. 1. Our dependence on Him to whom we pray. For health to earn our daily bread, for wisdom to keep it and use it, we depend upon His Goodness. The habit of connecting our commonest gifts with the great Giver sanctifies and ennobles life. 2. For daily bread we are bidden to ask. Plain and simple food. A prayer the epicure would hardly think of offering. 3. Daily bread. Sufficient or necessary. Lesson of moderation in wants. We are not to pray for banks; or bins--or barns--or cellars-full, but only for our daily bread. 4. Our daily bread. Given to us; yet ours--ours when we have earned it, when by our own labour we have provided it for ourselves. Bread that we beg is not ours; bread that we take as lazy pensioners on some one else’ s bounty is not ours; bread that we steal is not ours; bread that we get from other people by fraud and extortion and overreaching is not ours; only the bread that we have earned by honest work and fair traffic is ours. 5. There are some who may seem to be absorbed by their circumstances from the duty of offering this prayer. Here is a man whose larders are full, whose cellars are crowded, whose barns are bursting with gathered grain, whose bank account shows a daily balance of many thousands. Is it not a little superfluous for him to say this prayer? No; for the prayer is not, “ Give me my daily bread” ; nor is it, “ Give me and my household our daily bread” ; it is “ Give us this day our daily bread.” It includes all mankind. He who thoughtfully takes these words upon his lips takes at the same time all human wants by sympathy upon his own soul, and craves the outpouring of the infinite bounty upon every needy human brother. (Washington Gladden, D. D.) Prayer for daily bread 1. This is the first petition of the prayer in which we ask anything for ourselves, and we have reached the middle of it. The chief anxiety of the Christian should not be for his own good, not even for his spiritual good, but to exalt God. One will make most spiritual progress as he keeps self in the background. The essence of godliness is in becoming God’ s man. 2. Of the various petitions for our own good, this one alone relates to our secular interests; the others are moral or spiritual aspirations. Evidently our Lord thought it of comparatively little concern how these bodies brought us through the world, if they brought us through with moral safety. They are the rafts on which we cross the narrow time-river; and when the oldest man bends over the map of his eternity that time-river seems less than one of his own silvered hairs fallen upon it. 3. This petition for secular good is a very moderate one. Bread enough--that is all. Why did our Lord never teach us to ask for luxury, landed estates, bank stock, annuities, life insurance, &c. Perhaps He thought how little happiness depends upon these things; that they are more hurtful than helpful to average character; that they load a man with accountability which he cannot meet unless he keeps growing nobler, more unselfish and spiritual as worldly goods increase--which is quite apt not to be the case. He saw that most people would have enough to do to discharge the ordinary duties of common life; to conquer temptations that spring out of every man’ s flesh, without adding to the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life. 4. Jesus here teaches us that we should have the habit of recognizing God in the commonest blessings of life. 5. Though Jesus chose a commonplace thing to remind us of our dependence upon God, it was not a commonplace thing in the sense of being little or trivial. Bread-Providence is one of the most astounding exercises of God’ s goodness and power. What marvels in the growth of grain and the chemistry of nutrition--that standing miracle of the connection of food and life! What wonders of local productiveness to meet the emergencies of crowded settlements. Observe the providence of God also in the trade-system of the globe, by which the products of one portion of the earth are enjoyed by the inhabitants of other portions. (J. M. Ludlow, D. D.) Our bread not merely bodily sustenance The prayer of Christian men must differ from the lion’ s roaring and the raven’ s crying. The end of their praying is that their bellies may be filled, but we must have as great a care for the food of our souls, wherefore we call it “ panem nostrum,” our bread. We do not call it “ panem communem,” such bread as is common to us with other creatures, but that special bread which is proper to man, who consists not only of body, but of soul and body, which must both be fed. (Bishop Andrewes.) God’ s gift of bread Does God give us our bread? Is it not a thing that we ought to work for, and not to pray for, unless we really desire to see manna come down out of the heavens again? Bread and earthly blessings generally represent to us human energy, wisdom, and prudence; and it will be a great loss to the world when they cease to do so. But so much the more reason is there that we should pray for bread, for then our prayer really approaches God as He is--a God working through secondary causes in His management of the earthly interests of men. Those first petitions of the Lord’ s prayer are prayers that a man’ s soul can appreciate, and to that soul God can and does speak directly. But leave those to stand alone, and we see God as of necessity one who does work at first hand; and that He is not and cannot be. It does not add to God’ s glory to think of Him as such a one. That throne of His, toward which we look up and pray with all our hearts, “ Thy kingdom come,” would not be more powerful or more kindly if it were where every commonest hand could touch it. That name of His, which lies close to our secret thoughts, would not be more hallowed if He walked among us, giving us our bread with His own hand. It is more wonderful to think of Him as bringing food to generation after generation through so many various and appropriate channels. It is kinder to think of Him as one who stimulates His children respecting their powers; showing Himself in a thousand different ways, rather than by bringing supplies in one evident open way. Bread-fruit growing on the trees does not tend to the development of devotional or religious men. The countries in which you find the one do not show you the best specimens of the other. The inhabitants of those tropical lands look up just high enough to see the tree, and are satisfied. But bread brought from the earth by hard labour, eaten in the sweat of the brow, makes the man rise and praise God with all his developed faculties, and say, “ Verily Thou art a God that hidest Thyself,” and all the more wonderful because of that. (Arthur Brooks.) The best answer to this prayer A man comes and says to you, “ Give me bread.” It is the easiest way to give him the price of a loaf: it is harder, it is wiser, it is kinder, to find him work, to stimulate his energy, to encourage his flagging spirits, to procure friends for him. Sometimes he is passing through an intermediate wilderness, where he needs a little manna rained down for a time; and you are to imitate your God in doing it. Bat that is not the rule of working; nor is it God’ s. And yet, when you had thus set a man upon his feet, you would not for a moment think that you had not answered his cry for bread, or did not deserve his thanks. You would expect them all the more, and they would be more valuable as they came from the lips of an independent man, instead of from the parrot-like phrases of a pauperized human being. So we pray, and the best answer God can give is to make us men. We see its answer in every friend, in every strong thought, virtuous resolution, and energetic impulse. We learn to acknowledge Him everywhere. We trace Him from our table to the sunbeam that on some distant prairies ripened the wheat. He is diffused in all places. He is a God of wonderful resources. He is our God, meeting us at every point, speaking to us of the greatness and happiness of life. The prayer makes us respect ourselves, as we see God thus ready to mingle His power with ours, and to work with us everywhere. (Arthur Brooks.) Our bread, not Thine Give us our bread, not Thine. Let it be ours. It comes from God; our prayer shows that; and, therefore, when prayer has established that relation strongly, we need not be afraid to give that possessive pronoun all its force. Human possessorship is dangerous only when no such prayer is offered. Let the gifts come marked with your own name, speaking of personal responsibility, of personal duty, and God will become glorified more than ever. (Arthur Brooks.) Our bread, not mine You do not, you must not, want your neighbour’ s bread; you must want him to have that. Where is there a chance for dishonesty, where for oppression, when we pray such a prayer as that? No grinding the face of the poor, no withholding their wages, no reliance on their helplessness, when we have prayed that God would give them their bread. It is theirs, God gave it them; and we are to see that our hand never keeps back the blessing. “ for which” we pray (Arthur Brooks) Prayer or each day’ s proper bread There is another expression the prayer which we must not overlook. In Matthew it reads, “ Give us this day our daily bread” ; in Luke, “ Give us day by day our daily bread.” In both, therefore, is that distributive idea of allotting to each day the proper character and quantity of its bread. For how the days do differ! At one time it is the diminution of supply that is wanted, to abate our pride, to increase our sense of dependence, to chasten and soften us; at another only a full table and prosperity can give us strength and encouragement. We labour on the same, day after day, trying to get all we can, the best and the most. We know not how to regulate our own lives; we are beyond ourselves. Our lives are too delicate for our hands to manage, and so we leave it to God. We can do nothing else, for we cannot see either the poverty or the fever of our blood. Unrequited labour is no contradiction, therefore; unexpected and apparently cruel disappointment is not to seem unaccountable. Neither of them is to make us say, “ I will not labour, or I will not enjoy to be happy again.” It is right for us to keep the stream of human life full of activity and work. Only He who presides over us, “ our Father,” knows when and where that flood shall be brought to bear on the machinery of life, so that it shall either produce the greatest results, or just let us have enough, perhaps scarcely enough to live on. In our earliest, simplest prayer, we embody this trust, which it is the work of all life to learn perfectly. We would not leave it out, as we see on every side men making shipwreck of themselves because they think that they know and understand all the wants of their own life. We can only determine to say and use it more constantly, to remember it under disappointment, to rejoice in it in prosperity, to feel sure that the Father alone can feed us with food convenient for us. (Arthur Brooks.) Christ and daily bread You cannot separate the external and the internal in life, and therefore you cannot separate Christ and our daily bread. The catechism phrase is, “ I desire that God will send us all things that are needful both for our souls and bodies.” God’ s gift to a world calling for bread is not a stone, no dead gift, but the presence of His Son. By that He strengthens us; we take up the old work stronger and better, and our prayer for daily bread is answered every day. (Arthur Brooks.) The pilgrim fathers and the drought It is well known that many of the good men who were driven from England to America by persecution, in the seventeenth century, had to endure great privations. A numerous party, who came out about 1620, were for a time supplied with food from England, and from the natives of the western wilderness. Bat as these resources were uncertain, they began to cultivate the ground. In the spring of 1623 they planted more corn than ever before, but by the time they had done planting their food was spent. They daily prayed, “ Give us this day our daily bread” ; and, in some way or other, the prayer was always answered. With a single boat and fishing-net they caught bass, and when these failed they dug for clams. In the month of June their hopes of a harvest were nearly blasted by a drought, which withered up the corn, and made the grass look like hay. All expected to perish with hunger. In their distress the pilgrims set apart a day for humiliation and prayer, and continued their worship for eight or nine hours. God heard their prayers, and answered them in a way which excited universal admiration. Although the morning of that day was clear, and the weather very hot and dry during the whole forenoon, yet before night it began to rain, and gentle showers continued to fall for many days, so that the ground became thoroughly soaked, and the drooping corn revived. Daily bread “ God always hears when we serape she bottom of the flour-barrel.” So said the child of a poor widow to his mother, one morning, after she had prayed as only the needy can, “ Give us this day our daily bread.” Beautiful faith of childhood! Why may it not be ours? God always hears the prayers of His children, and He knows when to answer. Our spiritual as well as temporal wants are known to Him, and every sincere cry for help enters His compassionate ear. When we feel entirely our dependence on Him; when our stock of pride and self-confidence is exhausted; when earthly friends and earthly comforts fail us, the humble cry of “ O my Father,” the oftenest bring the speedy answer, “ Here, My child.” God always hears when we have reached the depths of need, and cry to Him for help. Routine observance indispensable This is a prayer for each morning--a daily prayer for daily bread, even for this day’ s bread. To offer this prayer, therefore, as many do, after the day or every repast of the day is finished, is to make it a thing of form, when it is nothing in the fact; which is about the worst dishonour that could any way be done it. Whether Jesus means this prayer to be used every morning or not, He does, at least, give honour and sanction to the daily observance of morning prayer. And it is under His sanction thus given, that I draw out now, for your consideration, this great law of practical Christian living: THAT WE NEED TO KEEP FIXED TIMES, OF ROUNDS OF , AS TRULY AS TO BE IN HOLY IMPULSE; TO HAVE PERIODS IN DUTY AS TRULY AS TO HAVE A SPIRIT OF DUTY; TO BE IN THE DRILL OF AS WELL AS IN THE LIBERTY OF FAITH. 1. The argument, commonly slated, as against the obligation of fixed times and ways of observance in religion, contains a fatal oversight. It is very true that mere rounds of observance, however faithfully kept, have in themselves no value; nothing of the substance of piety; but they have an immense value when kept, and meant to be, as the means of piety. This, in fact, is the very particular blessing of prayer, that when we are averted from it, and slacked in all our inclination toward it, we may still get our fire kindled by it. When we go to it, therefore, by fixed times of observance, we do just what is necessary to beget fixed inclinations, and train the soul into a habit of abiding impulse. 2. Let me ask your attention now to the grand analogies of time and routine movement in the world you live in. What could we do in a world where there are no appointed times, no calculable recurrences, no grand punctualities? Such a world would be really valueless; we could do nothing with it, and simply because it has no fixed times. And for just this reason God has consented to inaugurate the sublime routine necessary to its uses, determining the times before appointed, and the bounds of our habitation. And so very close does God come to us in this matter of times or of natural routine;-that our hearts beat punctually in it, our breath heaves in it like the panting tides of the ocean, and the body itself, and with it also the mind, is a creature of waking and sleeping, of alternating consciousness and unconsciousness, like the solar day and night of the world. And yet some cannot think it a matter sufficiently dignified to have any prescribed times in religion. Though God Himself is a Being of routine, though the everlasting worlds are bedded in routine, though their very bodies and minds are timed in it, like a watch, or the earth’ s revolution, still they are jealous of any such thing in religion, and refuse it, as an infringement on their liberty. 3. I refer you again to the analogy of your own courses in other things, and also to the general analogies of business. Which do we suppose to be in the best conditions of comfort, dignity, and good keeping, the savage tribes that have no set times for their meals, or we that feed in the exact routine of the civilized table? What figure of success will any man make in business who has no fixed hours? If, then, there is nothing men do with effect in the world of business, despising the law of times, how does it happen that they can expect, with any better reason, to succeed in the matter of their religion--their graces, charities, and prayers? Wherein does it appear to be absurd, to assume that the soul wants times of feeding as regular, and frequent, and punctual, as the body. 4. Consider the reason of the Sabbath, where it is assumed that men are creatures, religiously speaking, of routine, wanting it as much as they do principles, fixed times as much as liberty. A very considerable part of the value of the Sabbath consists in the drill of its times; that it comes when we do not ask for it, commands us to stop when we desire to go on, calls us off to worship by a summons astronomically timed, and measured by the revolutions of the world. 5. The Scriptures recognize the value of prescribed times and a fixed routine of duty in other ways more numerous than can be well recounted. Thus in the old religion, the sacrifices, great feasts, &c. The holy men had all their times. If we have no times in religion but such as we take by mere impulse or inclination, we shall fall away at last from all times and all duties. Let anyone take the ground, for example, that he will never pray except when he is drawn to it, and he will less and less frequently be drawn. (H. Bushnell, D. D.) Our daily bread The prayer for daily bread need not he a selfish one. It may be the expression of a pure and lofty desire. Our meat and drink and other most common necessities have a noble as well as a mean side. In this selfish world there may be found some men who do not live for self and by whom the supports and comforts of life are sought and valued only as a means to the better doing of God’ s will. In their prayers the petition for bread follows naturally, “ Thy will be done.” The prayer for daily bread is a confession of our dependence upon God. All the prayer in the world, however, will not provide food for the man who is too lazy to work. We are creatures of manifold needs. The phrase, “ necessaries of life,” includes many other things than those which are required for our physical wellbeing. The higher part of our nature requires its daily bread. 1. To starve our finer faculties is no mote allowable than to starve our bodies. The majority of men and women do not realize what it is to starve the mind. 2. But man is a social as well as an intellectual being. The social nature requires its appropriate food. We cannot be satisfied from ourselves. We require help and sympathy from others, and we require to give help and sympathy to others, as we require our daily bread. 3. But we have deeper wants still, which cannot be satisfied by the hardest work, the largest knowledge, or the dearest love. We have an inward spiritual life which can only be fed in communion with the Divine. We need God. Jesus spoke of Himself as “ the Bread of Life.” His mission was to feed the Divine life of the world. When we pray “ Give us,” etc., we pray for the love of God, the grace of Christ, and the fellowship of the Spirit, for faith in an eternal righteousness, for a sense of the unseen things, for earnest aims and holy affections, and immortal hopes, for everything that ministers to the growth and perfection of the spiritual life. (J. Hunter.) Day by day Not bread for to-morrow, but bread for today. We need not be anxious about the future. In this world and in all the worlds we are the children of a Father’ s tenderness and care. (J. Hunter.) Us, not me The Lord’ s prayer is the prayer of a family, world-wide, bound together by all the sympathies of a common Fatherhood. We are not separate beings with separate interests, but children at a common table, with common needs. The want of one is the want of all. If we pray the Lord’ s prayer in the Lord’ s spirit, we pray that the hungry may be fed, that the ignorant may be taught, that the idle may find work, that the lives of the lonely may be blessed with love, that men everywhere may be in communion with God, and partakers of the spirit of Jesus Christ, and we rise from our knees to live and work as we pray, to help God to give to His children and our brethren their daily bread. (J. Hunter.) Bread Observe what it is we are to pray for. Not for delicate food, or fine clothes, or a large house; no, we are to ask for bread. Now what are we to understand by this word bread? Surely not a crust of bread alone. For this plain reason, that there are other things as needful for our bodies as bread itself. What should we do without clothes to cover us, or a roof to put our heads under at night? We may be sure that our Saviour did not mean us to disregard such things as these. Therefore, when He tells us to pray for bread, we may reasonably understand that petition as including all things which are really needful for our bodies. (A. W. Hare.) Daily bread A little girl in a wretched attic, whose sick mother had no bread, knelt down by the bedside, and said slowly, “ Give us this day our daily bread.” Then she went into the street and began to wonder where God kept His bread. She turned around the corner and saw a large well-filled baker’ s shop. So she entered confidently and said to the baker, “ I’ ve come for it.” “ Come for what?” “ My daily bread,” she answered, pointing to the tempting loaves. “ I’ ll take two, if you please--one for mother and one for me.” “ All right,” said the baker, putting them into a bag and giving them to his little customer, who started at ones into the street. “ Stop, you little rogue!” he said roughly; “ where’ s your money?” “ I haven’ t any,” she said, simply. “ Haven’ t any!” he repeated. “ You little thief, what brought you here, then?” The hard words frightened the little girl, who, bursting into tears said,” Mother is sick, and I am so hungry. In my prayers I said, ‘ Give us this day our daily bread,’ and then I thought God meant me to fetch it, and so I came.” The rough but kind-hearted baker was softened by the child’ s simple tale, and instead of chiding her, said, “ You poor dear child.” Here, take this to your mother,” and filled a large basket full for her. (Henry T. Williams.) Bread the gift of God I by chance let fall a piece of bread; the burgomaster and two peasants rushed forward, and, raising the fragment, placed it on the window-sill: “ You have let fall the gift of God,” said they. (One Year in Sweden.) Of the fourth petition in the Lord’ s prayer In this petition there are two things observable. I. The order. II. The matter. I. The order. First we pray “ Hallowed be Thy name,” before “ Give us this day our daily bread.” Hence we learn that the glory of God ought to be preferred before our personal concerns. 1. Do we prefer God’ s glory before our own credit? 2. Do we prefer God’ s glory before our relations? 3. We must prefer God’ s glory before estate; gold is but shining dust, God’ s glory must weigh heavier. 4. We must prefer God’ s glory before our life--“ they loved not their own lives to the death.” Who but a soul inflamed in love to God can set God highest on the throne, and prefer Him above all private concerns? II. The second thing in the petition is the matter of it--“ Give us this day our daily bread.” 1. See our own poverty and indigence; we live all upon alms, and upon free gifts--“ Give us this day.” 2. Is all a gift? then we are to seek every mercy from God by prayer--“ Give us this day.” The tree of mercy will not drop its fruit, unless shaken by the hand of prayer. Better starve, than go to the devil for provender. 3. If all be a gift, then it is not a debt. We cannot say to God, as that creditor said, “ Pay me that thou owest.” 4. If all be a gift, “ Give us this day” ; then take notice of God’ s goodness. There is nothing in us can deserve or requite God’ s kindness; yet such is the sweetness of His nature, He gives us rich provision, and feeds us with the finest of the wheat. Observe three things in God’ s giving. (1) He is not weary of giving; the springs of mercy are ever running. The honeycomb of God’ s bounty is still dropping. (2) God delights in giving--“ He delighteth in mercy.” (3) God gives to His very, enemies. Who will send in his provisions to his enemy? The dew drops on the thistle as well as the rose; the dew of God’ s bounty drops upon the worst. 5. If all be a gift, see then the odious ingratitude of men, who sin against their Giver. How many make a dart of God’ s mercies, and shoot at Him? He gives them wit, and they serve the devil with it. 6. If God gives us all, let God’ s giving excite us to thanksgiving; He is the Founder and Donor of all our blessings, let Him have all our acknowledgments. “ All the rivers come from the sea, and thither they return again” ; all our gifts come from God, and to Him must all our praises return. We are apt to burn incense to our own drag; to attribute all we have to our own second causes. (1) Our own skill and industry. Or-- (2) We oft ascribe the praise to second causes, and forget God. First, give. Hence I note-- 1. That the good things of this life are the gifts of God; He is the Founder and Donor. 2. From this word “ give,” I note, that it is not unlawful to pray for temporal things; we may pray for daily bread. (1) There is a great difference between our praying for temporal things and spiritual. In praying for spiritual things we must be absolute; but when we pray for temporal things, here our prayers must be limited, we must pray conditionally so far as God sees them good for us. (2) When we pray for things pertaining to this life, we must desire temporal things for spiritual ends; we must desire these things to be as helps in our journey to heaven. If we pray for health, it must be that we may improve this talent of health for God’ s glory, and may be fitter for His service. If we are to pray for temporal good things, then how much more for spiritual? Some may say, We have an estate already, and what need we pray, “ Give us daily bread.” Supposing we have a plentiful estate, yet we need make this petition, “ Give us daily bread,” and that upon a double account. (1) That we may have a blessing upon our food, and all that we enjoy--“ I will abundantly bless her provision.” “ Man shall not live by bread alone.” If God should withhold a blessing, what we eat would turn to bad humours, and hasten death. (2) Though we have estates, yet we had need pray, “ give,” that we may hereby engage God to continue these comforts to us. How many casualties may fall out! Secondly, “ us” --“ Give us.” Why do we pray here in the plural? Why “ Give us” ? Why is it not said, “ Give me” ? Spiders work only for themselves but bees work for the good of others; the more excellent anything is, the more it operates for the good of others. This entry is longer than a Bible module can hold. The rest is at https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/bi/ Luke 11:4 And forgive us our sins On the forgiveness of sin I. THAT OUR SINS ARE OUR DEBTS. 1. HOW we come to be in debt to God, how this debt is contracted, and what is the ground of the action. That I may keep to the comparison, not forcing it, but fairly following it, you shall see that we fairly run in debt to God, as the children of men run in delft to one another. (1) We are in debt to God, as a servant is indebted to his master, when he has neglected his business, and wasted or embezzled his goods. (2).We are indebted to God, as a tenant is indebted to his landlord, when he is behind of his rent, or has committed waste upon the premises. (3) We are indebted to God, as a borrower is indebted to the lender. (4) Our debt to God is, as the debt of a trespasser to him upon whom he has trespassed. (5) Our debt to God is, as the debt of a covenant breaker, who entered into articles, and gave bond for performance, but has not made good his agreement, and so has forfeited the penalty of the bond, which is recoverable as far as the damage goes, by the non-performance of the articles. (6) Our debt to God is, as the debt of a malefactor, to the law and to the government, when he is found guilty of treason or felony, and consequently the law is to have its course against him. As the corruption of our nature makes us odious to God’ s holiness, so our many actual transgressions make us obnoxious to His justice; and thus we are debtors to Him. (7) To make the matter yet worse, there is a debt we owe to God, which is as a debt of an heir-at-law upon his ancestor’ s account, of a son who is liable for his father’ s debts, as far as what he has by descent will go, and as far as he has any assets in his hand. (8) There are debts of ours, likewise, which are as the debt of a surety upon account of the principal. I mean the guilt we have contracted by our partaking of other men’ s sins. 2. Having opened to you the several ways how we come into this debt to God, let us next inquire what kind of debt sin is. (1) It is an old debt, it is an early, nay, it is an hereditary, encumbrance upon our nature. The foundation of this debt was laid in Adam’ s sin, we are in debt for the forbidden fruit he ate, so high does the account begin, and so far back does it look. (2) It is a just debt, and the demand of it highly equitable. (3) It is a great debt, more than we imagine. (4) It is a growing debt; a debt we are still adding to, as a tenant who is behind of his rent, every rent-stage makes the debt more; till we return by repentance, we are still running further upon the score; still taking up upon trust, and treasuring up unto ourselves guilt and wrath against the day of wrath. 3. Having seen what kind of debt sin is, let us next see what kind of debtors sinners commonly are; and we shall find them like other unfortunate debtors, that are going down in the world, and have no way to help themselves. (1) Bad debtors are oftentimes very careless and unconcerned about their debts; when they are so embarrassed and plunged that they cannot bear the thought of it, they contrive how to banish the thought of it, and live merry and secure; to laugh away, and drink away, and revel away the care and sorrow of it. Thus sinners deal with their convictions, they divert them with the business of the world, or drown them in the pleasures of sense. (2) Bad debtors are commonly very wasteful, and when they find they are in debt more than they can pay, care not how much further they run into debt. How extravagant are sinners in spending upon their lusts! (3) Bad debtors are commonly very shy of their creditors, and very loth to come to an account. Thus sinners care not how little they come into the presence of God, but rather say to the Almighty, “ Depart from us.” (4) Bad debtors are sometimes timorous; and though they strive to cast off all care about their debts, yet, when they are threatened, their hearts fail them, they are subject to frights, and are ready to think every one they meet is a bailiff. Thus sinners carry about with them a misgiving conscience, which often reproaches them, and fills them with secret terrors, and a bitterness which their own heart only knows. (5) Bad debtors are apt to be dilatory and deceitful, to promise payment this time and the other, but still to break their word, and beg a further delay. It is so with sinners; they do not say they will never repent, and return to God, but not yet. 4. To affect you the more with the misery of an impenitent, unpardoned state, having showed you what your debt is, I shall next lay before you the danger we are in by reason of this debt. Many who owe a great deal of money, yet are furnished with considerations sufficient to make them easy, but they are such as our case will not admit. (1) An exact account is kept of all our debts. (2) We are utterly insolvent, and have not wherewithal to pay our debts. (3) We have no friend on earth who can or will pass his word for us, or be our bail. (4) We are often put in mind of our debts by the providence of God, and by our own consciences. (5) Death will shortly arrest us for these debts, to bring us to an account. (6) A day of reckoning will come, and the day is fixed. (7) Hell is the prison into which those debtors will at length be cast, who took no care to make their peace, and there are the tormentors to which they will be delivered. II. The sins we are to repent of, being our debts to God, THE MERCY WE ARE TO PRAY FOR IS THE OF THESE DEBTS. 1. Let us inquire what is included in this mercy of the forgiveness of sin as a debt, and what steps God graciously takes therein toward us, when we repent, and return, and believe the gospel. He acts as a merciful and compassionate creditor toward a poor debtor who lies at his mercy. (1) He stays process, and suffers not the law to have its course. Judgment is given against us; but execution is not taken out upon the judgment. (2) He cancels the bond, vacates the judgment, and disannuls the handwriting that was against us. (3) He gives an acquittance, and delivers it by His Spirit into the believer’ s hand, speaking peace to him, filling him with comfort, arising from a sense of His justification, and the blessed tokens and pledges of it. (4). He condescends to deal with us again, and to admit us into covenant and communion with Himself. 2. Having seen how much is included in God’ s forgiving us our debts, because it is so great a favour, that we may be tempted to think it too much for such worthless unworthy creatures as we are to expect, let us next inquire what ground we have to hope for it? How is it that a God infinitely just and holy should be thus readily reconciled to a guilty and polluted sinner upon his repenting? (1) We may ground our expectations upon the goodness of His nature. (2) We are to ground our expectations upon the mediation of our Lord Jesus. 3. What is expected and required from you, that you may obtain this favour, and that your debts may be forgiven? Christ, as a surety for us, has made satisfaction; but what must we do that we may have an interest in that satisfaction? (1) We must confess the debt, with a humble, lowly, penitent, and obedient heart. (2) We must acknowledge a judgment of all we have to our Lord Jesus, who has been thus kind to satisfy for our debt. This is one proper act of faith. (3) We must give to Christ the honour of our pardon, by relying entirely on His righteousness as our plea for it; acknowledging that other foundation of hope can no man lay, and other fountain of joy can no man open. (4) We must study what we shall render to Him who has loved us, who has so loved us. (5) We must engage ourselves for the future, that we will render to God the things that are His, and be careful not to run in debt again. (6) Our forgiving others is made the indispensable condition of our being forgiven of God. Concluding exhortations: 1. Do not delay to come to an account with your own consciences, but search diligently and impartially, that you may see how matters stand between you and God. 2. Be thoroughly convinced of your misery and danger by reason of sin; see process ready to be taken out against you, and consider what is to be done. 3. Agree with your adversary quickly, while you are in the way with him; make your peace with God, and do it with all speed. You need not send to desire conditions of peace; they are offered to you, if you will but accept of them; and they are not only easy but very advantageous. 4. In order to the making of your peace with God, make sure your interest in Jesus Christ, and make use of Him daily for that purpose: retain Him of counsel for you in this great cause on which your all depends, and let Him be not only your plea but your pleader, for that is His office. 5. Renew your repentance every day for your sins of daily infirmity, and be earnest with God in prayer for the pardon of them. Lastly, let those to whom much is forgiven, love much. (Matthew Henry.) The forgiveness of sins I. Notice the connection and dependence. Having prayed for our daily bread, we are next taught to pray for pardon. And this method is, indeed, most wise and most rational. For-- 1. The guilt of sin many times withholds from us those earthly comforts we stand in need of. 2. Without pardon of sin, all our temporal enjoyments are but snares and curses unto us. II. The words themselves. 1. The petition. (1) What our evangelist calls sins, St. Matthew calls debts. We stand indebted to God, both as we are His creatures, and as we are offenders. By the one, we owe Him the debt of obedience; and, by the other, the debt of punishment. (2) Now here to excite thee to a fervency in praying for the forgiveness of thy debts, consider-- (a) The infinite multitudes of thy debts. (b) That God, who is thy creditor, is strict and impartial. (c) That the least of all those thy debts makes thee liable to be cast into the prison of hell, and to be adjudged to eternal death and punishments. (d) Consider, thou canst never pay God, nor discharge the least of thy debts for ever. (3) And, now that I have showed you our misery by reason of our debts, and you have seen the black side of the cloud which interposeth between God and us, so give me leave to represent to you our hopes and consolation, in God’ s free grace and the Divine mercy in dissolving this black cloud, that it may never more appear. And here let us-- (a) Consider what the pardon of sin is. (b) The pardoning grace of God, in respect of us, is altogether free and undeserved. (c) The pardoning grace of God is not free, in respect of Christ; but it cost Him the price of blood. Let us consider unto whom this petition for pardon is directed. And that is, as all the rest are, to our Father, whose laws we have violated, whose justice we have offended, whose displeasure we have incurred, and to whose vengeance we have made ourselves liable and obnoxious, to Him we sue for pardon and remission. Hence we may collect this note: That it is the high prerogative of God alone to forgive sins. If, then, it be the prerogative of God alone to pardon sin, hence we may, for our abundant comfort, be informed-- (a) That our pardon is free and gratuitous. (b) It is God that pardons, therefore our pardon is full and complete. (c) Is it God that pardons? Then, for thy comfort, know that He can as easily forgive great and many sins, as few and small. (4) NOW, in this petition we pray not only for the pardon of sin, but likewise for all things that are antecedently necessary to obtain it. As-- (a) We pray that God would discover to us the horrid odious nature of sin. (b) We pray that God would humble us under the sight and sense of our manifold transgressions; that, as our sins have made us vile in God’ s eyes, so they may make us vile in Our own, to loath ourselves in dust and ashes for them. (c) We pray that God would give us His Spirit, to enable us to confess our sins cordially, and sincerely to pour forth our hearts before Him, and to acknowledge our manifold provocations with shame and godly sorrow, upon which God promised to grant us pardon and forgiveness. (d) We beg a more clear understanding of the sacrifice and atonement made by Jesus Christ, through which alone all pardon is purchased and procured; to know both what it is and why ordained; and, likewise, the knowledge of God’ s rich and free mercy; and the conjunction of this sacrifice and mercy together, in the great mystery of the freeness of Divine grace, and the satisfaction of Jesus concurring to the remission of our sins and the salvation of our souls. (e) We pray that we may have a high esteem of Christ, and may hunger and thirst more after Him and His righteousness, through whom alone pardon of our sins is to be obtained. (f) We pray that we may be brought over to close with the Lord Jesus Christ by a lively faith; that His righteousness thereby may be made ours, and we, by that righteousness, may obtain pardon of our sins, and an inheritance among them that are sanctified. 2. The condition or plea annexed to this petition. (1) The act: forgive. (2) The object: debtors. (3) The limitation of this object: our debtors. (4) The proportion or resemblance, in particle “ as.” Our forgiving of others must have these qualifications-- (a) It must be unfeigned and cordial from thy very heart and soul; for so thou wouldst have God forgive thee. (b) Thou art obliged likewise to forgive freely, without any recompense or satisfaction from others. (c) We must forgive others fully and completely; for God doth so. (Bp. Hopkins.) The forgiveness of sins I. SINS ARE AGAINST GOD. 1. Against the perfections of God. 2. Against the authority of God. 3. Against the express commandments of God. 4. Against the counsels and exhortations of God. 5. Against His warnings and threatenings. 6. Against His grace revealed to us in the gospel. 7. Against His patience. II. GOD IS WILLING TO FORGIVE US THOSE , though very great, and daily repeated. This we may conclude-- 1. From God’ s natural goodness and love to mankind. 2. From the declarations He has made of Himself, His mercifulness, and unwillingness that any should perish. 3. From His express promises. 4. From examples of His wonderful mercy recorded in the Scripture, for the encouragement of all truly humble penitents, though their guilt may be exceeding great, and they may have been sinners above others. 5. from the covenant made with Christ the Redeemer, that He should see the fruit of the travail of His soul, and justify many by bearing their iniquities. And as Christ the Redeemer was faithful to Him that appointed Him, and bare our sins, according to the counsel and command of the Father; so the Father will be Truthful to Him: and whosoever believeth on Him shall be justified from all things, and shall never come into condemnation, never perish, but have everlasting life. III. OR which must be found in all such as receive the forgiveness of sin. 1. In order to the forgiveness of sin, there must be repentance towards God, a confession of sin, and forsaking it; otherwise we have no ground (from anything that is written in the Scripture) to hope for mercy. 2. God requires, in order to a reconciliation, that we must believe in His Son whom He hath sent. 3. Our Saviour here mentions our forgiving those that trespass against us, as a qualification or disposition necessary to be found in us who hope to receive the forgiving grace of God to ourselves for our trespasses against Him: “ Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.” Practical reflections: 1. Let us seriously consider and admire the condescension and goodness of God, in proposing to be reconciled to us, when He can gain nothing by such a reconciliation, but all the advantage is ours. 2. Let us pray for the forgiveness of our daily trespasses. 3. If we would receive the remission of sin, let us pray, and labour, that we may have those dispositions which are found in all such as receive a pardon from God. (1) Let us labour to obtain, and pray earnestly to God for true repentance, a deep humiliation and godly sorrow for sin. (2) Let us pray for that great and absolutely necessary qualification for pardoning grace, faith in Christ Jesus; true, sincere, evangelical, justifying faith, by which we may be united to Christ, and made partakers of Him and His righteousness. (3) Let us forgive those that trespass against us; not seeking revenge; entertaining in our hearts no malice against them; doing them no harm, nor wishing them any; praying for them, and willing to serve them, and to do them good. Now, to close all-- (4) Let us bless God for Jesus Christ, through whose blood we receive the forgiveness of sins; convinced and assured, that without an interest in Him, the wrath of God abideth on us, and will to eternity. (John Whitty.) Unwillingness to acknowledge guilt If left to our own proud blindness, how loth are we to acknowledge our guiltiness before God, and to sue in His courts for the boon of pardon, in the deep sense of our spiritual poverty and moral unworthiness. There was, in the early ages of the Christian era, a lying magician and philosopher, Apollonius of Tyanea, whom some of the ancients tried to set up as a rival, in wisdom and might and miracles, with our blessed Saviour. One of the speeches attributed to this Apollonius by his biographer is, “ O ye gods, give me my dues.” Instead of holding himself indebted to heaven, he regarded heaven as debtor to him, for what he supposed his blamelessness and eminent virtue. There bleated out the proud and impious folly of the unrenewed heart. But, as Coleridge beautifully said, in the later and more Christian years of his life, the men who talk of earning heaven by their own merits, might better begin by earning earth. Who of us really has deserved what he in daily enjoying of good, even chequered as that good may be, in this sublunary state, with mingling sorrow and joy? But, surely, in our more sober and meditative hours, even the unregenerate feel, more or less distinctly, their own guiltiness. This it is that makes solitude dreadful, and diversion so necessary, in order to kill time and drown thought. This it is that clothes death with terrors, and renders the image of a God--holy and the hater of sin--so irksome and formidable an idea to us. But how do men strive to lessen this irksome, yet inevitable, consciousness, by vain pleas and extenuations and criminations of their fellows, as these last have been their tempters, abettors, and accomplices. How do they seek to obliterate the record against them by flattering, and at times by bribing heaven. But can our richest gifts buy the All-rich, and our most lavish flatteries cheat the All-wise God? How can such a God be appeased, so that He shall efface the record of our moral indebtedness? We must recognize and confess our sin. And the devout mind, after every preceding petition in the Lord’ s prayer, prepares to drop in the utterance of the petition now before us, as into the dust of lowliest self-abasement. Is He our Father? this fatherhood has been spurned by His ingrate children. Is He in heaven, our native home and our proper end? We have lived as if we had sprung from earth and were ripening only for hell. His name, dread and pure, is it worthy, always stud by all, to be hallowed? How have our daring levity and defiance profaned it; and trailed its sacred honours, as in the mire of our scorn and our filth; and hung what is the dread blazonry of heaven over deeds and tempers sprung of the pit. Is His kingdom to be hailed and extended? How have we played, toward its glories and authority, the part of the rebel and the traitor. Is His will deserving of all obedience and study and conformity? How have we preferred to it our own will, and the will of the murderer and deceiver, Satan. Gives He still, kind and long-suffering, our daily bread? How have we “ crammed and blasphemed our Feeder” I To subdue this sin, will it be sufficient to secure forgiveness for the past? Not--unless we staunch the fountain of evil, and provide against its out-gushings for the future. To this later work the succeeding petitions of the prayer refer. When Jesus came down to meet our debt, and to justify us by His righteousness and death, He also made provision and purchase of the Holy Spirit to renew and to sanctify. (W. R. Williams, D. D.) The test of our spiritual state God calls us to a daily and domestic scrutiny. We do not show a forgiving and generous spirit, in order that thus we may earn heaven; but we are warned that the indulgence of a contrary spirit necessarily forfeits heaven. We test our spiritual condition, not by asking how our feelings are towards the dead--to our best friends--or towards angels. The Pharisees could praise dead saints, and canonise prophets, when once safe and mute in their graves. But we ask, What are my feelings towards the living prophets and witnesses of heaven--to my living neighbour, and rival, and enemy? When our Saviour healed the sick man of his long and sore infirmity, and bade him take up his bed and walk; the poor man’ s lifting of his couch and flinging its light weight on his rejoicing shoulders, was not the means of his cure, or the condition of his healing. It was the evidence, tangible and visible to himself and others, in the streets along which he passed, and in the home he re-entered, that he had encountered a great Prophet, and had received a miraculous healing. And so, when the leper, purged of his leprosy, was bidden to go and show himself to the priest, as he bared the skin now clear and white to the glance of the Levite, he was not fulfilling a condition of the cure, but receiving an authentication, a public and unimpeachable and official endorsement of it. And even thus is it, in this prayer. It is not our placability that purchases for us remission. Had the imperturbable countenance which Talleyrand was accustomed to wear, even when insulted, been the index of as imperturbable a soul, free from all malicious remembrances, it would not in itself have merited eternal blessedness. But God would furnish, as it were, in the forgiving spirit of His people, a portable crucible, so to speak, in which to try and purge daily the fine gold of our own heavenly hopes. To arm us against the selfishness which Be clings to us, this petition, like all those preceding it, is not for the solitary suppliant. He asks not for himself, though like the prophet’ s penitents he “ mourns apart” ; but he implores in unison and sympathy with the absent. He says not, Forgive me, but forgive us. And then going beyond all the other petitions, he makes reference not to the absent only, but to the alienated--the injurious--the hostile. (W. R.Williams, D. D.) The forgiving grace We want from God a full and free forgiveness, that has mingled with it no grudges and no coolnesses; a forgiveness that blots out our transgressions, that takes away all our iniquity, and receives us graciously and loves us freely; and that mercy which we want from Him we must be ready to show to others. We stultify ourselves by asking our Heavenly Father to extend to us a measure of forgiveness that we are not willing to extend to our brother. Such a prayer is mockery, and we know that it is when we offer it. What is more, we cannot receive the fulness of the Divine forgiveness until we are ready ourselves freely to forgive--even to give ourselves for--those who have wronged us. The trouble is not with the phraseology of the prayer, but with the facts of the case. You say that the desert is a desert because no rain falls upon it; but that is only half the truth. No rain falls upon it because it is a desert. The heated air rushing up from its arid surface disperses the vapours that would descend in rain. Some moisture there must be on the earth, else there cannot be rain from heaven. So in your heart this forgiving disposition must be, else you cannot rejoice in the fulness of God’ s forgiving grace. The pardon may wait in the sky above you, but it cannot descend to you until that mind is in you which was also in Christ Jesus. (Washington Gladden, D. D.) Enmity is incompatible with profitable prayer You have seen enmities and jealousies and grudges growing up between neighbours and brethren in the Church; and in every such case you have noticed that the spiritual life of these quarrelling Christians grew feeble and fruitless; that there was no fervour in their prayers, no joy in their praises, no sign of heavenly influence in all their holy convocations. And then you have seen a better mind take possession of them; mutual confessions and reconciliations followed; those who had been long estranged came together and forgave each other, and renewed the old bonds of charity and brotherhood. And then, how quickly, to the assemblies so long frigid and forlorn, the warmth of holy love and the consciousness of the Divine presence returned; how the pulse of the Church was quickened; and the new life from above issued in abundant fruits I Every great religious awakening is preceded by such works of reconciliation; and no wise servant of Christ expects any real spiritual growth or progress among those who are divided by petty feuds and contentions. It is not till we are ready to forgive that we find any profit in our prayers. (Washington Gladden, D. D.) An unforgiving spirit What would you think of one who prayed, “ O Lord, forgive me the many sins which I have committed against Thee; but I will not forgive my fellow-creature who has offended me” ? An unforgiving spirit will stand in the way of any one being pardoned who indulges it. While the good remember kindnesses, and forget injuries, the bad practise the opposite. There are too many who, even when they claim to have forgiven others with their lips, cherish in their hearts the spirit of the old Highland chief, in the days when clan met clan in deadly feud. A man of God, who visited him on his death bed, and urged him to make peace with his enemies, in order that he might receive the forgiveness of God, at last so far prevailed, that the word passed his reluctant lips. Then, as if the death-chamber had been a stage, and the old chieftain an actor, who, having played his part, throws off the mask which he has for the time assumed, he turned his cold gray eye on one of his stalwart sons, and said, “ I leave you a father’ s bitterest curse if you ever forgive them!” (J. N. Norton, D. D.) Judgment without mercy Between a mother and her daughter there had sprung up a serious quarrel. One house could not hold them. At length filial affection triumphed over pride, and the daughter repaired to her early home. No welcome met her at the door. She humbled herself to her mother--on bended knees imploring her forgiveness. She appealed to the bosom that had nursed her; but might as well have knocked on a coffin; there was no response. Nor--though imploring her by the mercies of God, and entreating her to forgive as she desired to be forgiven--could I, called in as a peacemaker, bend that stubborn will. By and by to this lonely house came another visitor. Death, who would not be denied admittance, arrived, summoning her to a bar where they shall have judgment without mercy who have shown no mercy. (J. N. Norton, D. D.) Forgetting and forgiving Prince Bismarck was once asked by Count Enzenberg to write something in his album. The page on which he had to write contained the autographs of Guizot and Thiers. The former had written, “ I have learnt in my long life two rules of prudence. The first is, to forgive much; the second is, never to forget.” Under this Thiers had said, “ A little forgetting would not detract from the sincerity of the forgiveness.” Prince Bismarck added, “ As for me, I have learnt to forget much, and to ask to be forgiven much.” We must forgive, if we would be forgiven During the Middle Ages, when the great lords were always at war with each other, one of them resolved to take signal vengeance upon a neighbour who had offended him. On the very evening when he had formed this bloody purpose, he heard that his enemy would pass near his castle, with only a few attendants, and this seemed an excellent opportunity for gratifying his revenge. He mentioned the plan in the presence of his chaplain, who tried in vain to persuade him to give it up. The clergyman said much about the sinfulness of revenge; but it was like talking to the wind. Seeing that his words had no effect, he added, “ Well, my lord, since I cannot persuade you to give up this plan of yours, will you at least consent to come with me to the chapel, that we may pray together before you set off?” The duke agreed; and the two kneeled down before the altar. “ And now,” said the chaplain, “ please repeat with me the prayer which our Lord Jesus Christ taught to His disciples.” “ I will do it,” answered the duke. The prayer was said without hesitation until they reached the petition, “ Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.” Here the duke was silent. “ Will you be so good as to continue to repeat the words after me?” asked the chaplain. “ I cannot,” replied the duke. “ Well, God cannot forgive you, for He has said so. You must, therefore, give up your revenge, or give up the use of this prayer. To ask God to pardon you as you pardon others, is to ask Him to take vengeance on you for all your sins.” The iron will of the duke was broken, and he hastily exclaimed, “ I will finish my prayer. My God, my Father, pardon me!” For the first time in his life he understood the Lord’ s prayer. And forgive us At this point of the Lord’ s prayer we get the first use of the conjunction, and there is a great deal of beauty in that word, “and forgive us.” What was the former petition, and what is the use of the conjunction? “ Give us our daily bread.” This verbal link is itself a beautiful representation of the mysterious bond that actually unites body and soul. A man who simply had bread would be a poor creature indeed, who simply had the comforts of this life. It is quite right that you should pray to have bread; but the prayer must be conjoined to a prayer for some spiritual blessing. (S. Coley.) There are two things which this text cannot mean. 1. It cannot mean that sinful man is to set an example by which the Divine administration is to be conducted. 2. It cannot mean that God’ s forgiveness of man is a mere equivalent for something that man himself has done. In suggesting an interpretation of this prayer, let it be observed that this is not the first petition in the prayer. Who are the men who can say, “ Forgive us,” etc.? They are the men who have said-- 1. “ Our Father.” 2. “ Thy kingdom come.” 3. “ Thy will be done on earth. (Dr. Parker.) Of the fifth petition in the Lord’ s prayer “ And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors” (Matthew 6:12). Before I speak strictly to the words I shall take notice-- 1. That in this prayer there is but one petition for the body--“ Give us our daily bread” ; but two petitions for the soul--“ Forgive us our trespasses,” “ Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” Hence observe, that we are to be more careful for our souls than for our bodies; more careful for grace than for daily bread; more desirous to have our souls saved than our bodies fed. In the law, the weight of the sanctuary was twice as big as the common weight, to typify that spiritual things must be of far greater weight with us than earthly. The excellency of the soul may challenge our chief care about it. It it be well with the soul, it shall be well with the body; if the soul be gracious, the body shall be glorious, for it shall shine like Christ’ s body. Therefore it is wisdom to look chiefly to the soul, because in saving the soul, we secure the happiness of the body. 2. From the connection in the text, as soon as Christ had said, give us “ daily bread,” He adds, “ And forgive us.” Christ joins this petition of forgiveness of sin immediately to the other of daily bread, to show us, that though we have daily bread, yet all is nothing without forgiveness. If our sins he not pardoned we can take but little comfort in our food. As it is with a man that is condemned, though you bring him meat in prison, yet he takes little comfort in it without a pardon; so, though we have daily bread, yet it will do us no good unless sin be forgiven. Daily bread may satisfy the appetite, but forgiveness of sin satisfies the conscience. Use 1. It condemns the folly of most people. If they have daily bread, the delicious things of this life, they look no further, they are not solicitous for the pardon of sin; if they have that which feeds them, they look not after that which should crown them. Use 2. Let us pray that God would not give us our portion in this life, that He would not put us off with daily bread, but that He would give forgiveness. This is the sauce that would make our bread relish the sweeter. Daily bread may make us live comfortably, but forgiveness of sin will make us die comfortably. In what sense is sin the worst debt? 1. Because we have nothing to pay; if we could pay the debt, what need we pray, “ Forgive us” ? 2. Sin is the worst debt, because it is against an infinite majesty. Sin wrongs God, and so it it an infinite offence. 3. Sin is the worst debt, because it is not a single, but a multiplied debt--forgive us “ our debts;” we have debt upon debt. We may as well reckon all the drops in the sea, as reckon all our spiritual debts; we cannot tell how much we owe. A man may know his other debts, but we cannot number our spiritual debts. 4. Sin is the worst debt; because it is an inexcusable debt in two respects. (1) There is no denying the debt; other debts men may deny. God writes down our debts in His book of remembrance, and God’ s book and the book of conscience do exactly agree, so that this debt cannot be denied. (2) There is no shifting of the debt; other debts may be shifted off. We may get friends to pay them, but neither man nor angel can pay this debt for us; if all the angels in heaven should go to make a purse, they cannot pay one of our debts. In other debts men may get a protection, so that none can touch their persons, or sue them for the debt; but who shall give us protection from God’ s justice? (a) Other debts, if the debtor dies in prison, cannot be recovered, death frees them from debt; but if we die in debt to God, He knows how to recover it; as long as we have souls to strain, God will not lose His debt. Not the death of the debtor, but the death of the surety, pays a sinner’ s debt. (b) In other debts men may flee from their creditor, leave their country, and go into foreign parts, and the creditor cannot find them; but we cannot flee from God. 5. Sin is the worst debt, because it carries men, in ease of non-payment, to a worse prison than any upon earth. Wherein have we the properties of bad debtors? 1. A bad debtor doth not love to be called to an account. There is a day coming when God will call His debtors to account. 2. A bad debtor is unwilling to confess his debt, he will put it off, or make less of it; so we are more willing to excuse sin than confess it. 3. A bad debtor is apt to hate his creditor; debtors wish their creditors dead; so wicked men naturally hate God, because they think He is a just judge, and will call them to account. The debtor cloth not love to see his creditor. We would think it strange if writs or warrants were out against a man, or a judgment granted to seize his body and estate, yet he is secure and regardless, as if he were unconcerned. God hath a writ out against a sinner, nay, many writs, for swearing, drunkenness, Sabbath-breaking, yet the sinner eats and drinks, and is quiet, as if he were not in debt; what opium hath Satan given men? If sin be a debt-- 1. Let us be humbled. The name of debt, saith St. Ambrose, is grievous. 2. Let us confess our debt. 3. Labour to get your spiritual debts paid, that is, by our surety Christ. “ And forgive us our sins, for we also forgive every one that is indebted to Luke 11:4). What forgiveness of sin is? 1. By opening some scripture.phrases-- (1) To forgive sin, is to take away iniquity--“ Why dost Thou not take away my iniquity?” (Job 7:21.) (2) To forgive sin, is to cover sin “ Thou hast covered all their sin.” This was typified by the mercy-seat covering the ark, to show God’ s devoting of sin through Christ. (3) To forgive sin, is to blot it out--“ I am He that blotteth out thy transgressions.” (4) To forgive sin, is for God to scatter our sins as a cloud--“ I have blotted out as a thick cloud thy transgressions.” (5) To forgive sin, is for God to cast our sins into the depths of the sea; which implies God’ s burying them out of sight, that they shall not rise up in judgment against us. God will throw them in, not as cork that riseth again, but as lead that sinks to the bottom. 2. The nature of forgiveness will appear by laying down some Divine aphorisms or positions. Every sin is mortal, and needs forgiveness; I say, mortal, that is, deserves death. It is God only that forgives sin. To pardon sin is one of the royal prerogatives. That God only can forgive sin, I prove thus:--No man can take away sin unless he is able to infuse grace; for, as Aquinas saith, with forgiveness is always infusion of grace; but no man can infuse grace, therefore no man can forgive sin. He only can forgive sin who can remit the penalty, but it is only God’ s prerogative royal to forgive sin. But the Scripture speaks of the power committed to ministers to forgive sin “ Whosesoever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them.” Ministers cannot remit sin authoritatively and effectually, but only declaratively. They have a special office and authority to apply the promises of pardon to broken hearts. As it was with the priest in the law, God did cleanse the leper, the priest only did pronounce him clean, so it is God who, by His prerogative, doth forgive sin; the minister only pronounceth forgiveness to the sinner, being penitent. Power to forgive sin authoritatively in one’ s own name was never granted to mortal man. Forgiveness of sin is purely an act of God’ s free grace. Forgiveness is through the blood of Christ. Free grace is the inward cause moving. Christ’ s blood is the outward cause meriting pardon--“ In whom we have redemption through His blood.” But if Christ laid down His blood as the price of our pardon, then how can we say, God freely forgives sin? If it be by purchase, how is it by grace? 1. It was God’ s free grace that found out a way of redemption through a mediator. 2. It was free grace moved God to accept of the price paid for our sins; that God should accept a surety; that one should sin, and another suffer; this was free grace. In forgiveness of sin, God remits the guilt and penalty. What is that remorse and sorrow which goes before forgiveness of sin? It is a holy sorrow, it is a grieving for sin, as it is sin, and as it is a dishonoring of God, and a defiling of the soul. The greatest sins come within the compass of forgiveness. Zaccheus, an extortioner; Mary Magdalene, an unchaste woman, out of whom seven devils were east; Manasseh, who made the streets run with blood; yet these had pardon. Some of the Jews who had a hand in crucifying Christ were forgiven. God blots out not only the cloud, but “ the thick cloud” ; enormities as well as infirmities. When God pardons a sinner, He forgives all sins--“ I will pardon all their iniquities” : “ having forgiven you all trespasses.” The mercy-seat covered the whole ark; the mercy-seat was a type of forgiveness, to show that God covers all our transgressions. They whose sins are forgiven must not omit praying for forgiveness--“ Forgive us our trespasses.” Believers who are pardoned must be continual suitors for pardon. Sin, like Samson’ s hair, though it be cut, will grow again. We sin daily, and must as well ask for daily pardon as for daily bread. 1. From this word, “ forgive,” we learn that if the debt of sin be no other way discharged but by being forgiven, then we cannot satisfy for it. Sin being forgiven, clearly implies we cannot satisfy for it. 2. From this word “ us,” “ Forgive us,” we learn that pardon is chiefly to be sought for ourselves. What I will another’ s pardon do us good? Every one is to endeavour to have his own name in the pardon. In this sense, selfishness is lawful, every one must be for himself, and get a pardon for his own sins--“ Forgive us.” 3. From this word “ our,” “ Our sins,” we learn how just God is in punishing us. The text says, “ Our sins” ; we are not punished for other men’ s sins, but our own. Sin is our own act, a web of our own spinning; how righteous therefore is God in punishing us? When we are punished, we but taste the fruit of our own grafting. 4. From this word “ sins,” see from hence the multitude of sins we stand guilt), of. We pray not forgive us our sin, as if it were only a single debt, but sins, in the plural. So vast is the catalogue of our sins, that David cries out, “ Who can understand his errors?” Our sins are like the drops of the sea, like the atoms in the sun, they exceed all arithmetic. If pardon of sin be so absolutely necessary, without it no salvation, what is the reason that so few in the world seek after it? If they want health, they repair to the physician; if they want riches, they take a voyage to the Indies; but if they want forgiveness of sin, they seem to be unconcerned, and do not seek after it; whence is this? 1. Inadvertency, or want of consideration; they do not look into their spiritual estate, or cast up their accounts to see how matters stand between God and their souls--“ My people do not consider.” 2. Men do not seek after forgiveness of sin, for want of conviction. 3. Men do not seek earnestly after forgiveness, because they are seeking other things; they seek the world immoderately. When Saul was seeking after the asses, he did not think of a kingdom. The world is a golden snare. You would judge that prisoner very unwise, that should spend all his time with the cook to get his dinner ready, and should never mind getting a pardon. 4. Men seek not after the forgiveness of sin, through a bold presumption of mercy; they conceit God to be made up all of mercy, and that He will indulge them, though they take little or no pains to sue out their pardon. 5. Men seek not earnestly after forgiveness, out of hope of impunity. 6. Men do not seek earnestly after forgiveness through mistake; they think getting a pardon is easy, it is but repeating at the last hour a sigh, or a “ Lord have mercy,” and a pardon will drop into their mouths. But, is it so easy to repent, and have a pardon? Tell me, O sinner, is regeneration easy? Are there no pangs in the new birth? Is mortification easy? 7. Men do not look after forgiveness through despair. My sins are huge mountains, and, can they ever be cast into the sea? Despair cuts the sinews of endeavour; who will use means that despairs of success? Having answered this question, I shall now come to press the exhortation upon every one of us, to seek earnestly after the forgiveness of our sins. 1. Our very life lies upon the getting of a pardon; it is called “ the justification of life.” 2. There is that in sin may make us desire forgiveness. Sill is the only thing that disquiets the soul. (1) Sin is a burden, it burdens the creation; it burdens the conscience. And should not we labour to have this burden removed by pardoning mercy? (2) Sin is a debt--“ Forgive us our debts” ; and every debt we owe God hath written down in His book--“ Behold it is written before Me,” and one day God’ s debt-book will be opened--“ The books were opened.” There is no way to look God in the face with comfort but by having our debt either paid or pardoned. 3. There is nothing but forgiveness can give ease to a troubled conscience. There is a great difference between the having the fancy pleased, and having the conscience eased. Worldly things may please the fancy, but not ease the conscience; nothing but pardon can relieve a troubled soul. Suppose a man hath a thorn in his foot which puts him to pain; let him anoint it, or wrap it up, and keep it warm; yet, till the thorn be plucked out, it aches and swells, and he hath no ease; so when the thorn of sin is gotten into a man’ s conscience, there is no ease till the thorn be pulled out; when God removes iniquity, now the thorn is plucked out. 4. Forgiveness of sin is feasible; it may be obtained. Impossibility destroys endeavour; but, “ There is hope in Israel concerning this.” The devils are past hope; a sentence of death is upon them, which is irrevocable; but there is hope for us of obtaining a pardon--“ There is forgiveness with Thee.” 5. Consideration, to persuade to it: Forgiveness of sin is a choice eminent blessing; to have the book cancelled, and God appeased, is worth obtaining; which may whet our endeavour after it. That it is a rare transcendent blessing, appears by three demonstrations. (1) If we consider how this blessing is purchased, namely, by the Lord Jesus. There are three things in reference to Christ, which set forth the choiceness and preciousness of forgiveness. (a) No mere created power in heaven or earth could expiate one sin, or procure a pardon; only Jesus Christ--“ He is the propitiation for our sins.” No merit can buy out a pardon. (b) Christ Himself could not procure a pardon, but by dying; every pardon is the price of blood. (c) Christ, by dying, had not purchased forgiveness for us if He had not died an execrable death; He endured the curse. (2) Forgiveness of sin is a choice blessing, if we consider what glorious attributes God puts forth in the pardoning of sin. (a) God puts forth infinite power; when Moses was pleading with God for the pardon of Israel’ s sin, He speaks thus, “ Let the power of my Lord be great.” God’ s forgiving of sin is a work of as great power as to make heaven and earth, nay, a greater; for, when God made the world, He met with no opposition; but when He comes to pardon, Satan opposeth, and the heart opposeth. (b) God, in forgiving sins, puts forth infinite mercy--Pardon, I beseech Thee, the iniquity of this people, according to the greatness of Thy mercy.” (3) Forgiveness of sin is a choice blessing, as it lays a foundation for other mercies. It is a leading, mercy. (a) It makes, way for temporal good things. It bring, s health. When Christ said to the palsied man, “ Thy sins are forgiven,” this made way for a bodily cure--“ Arise, take up thy bed and go into thine house.” The pardon of his sin made way for the healing of his palsy. (b) It makes way for spiritual good things. Forgiveness of sin never comes alone, but hath other spiritual blessings attending it. Whom God pardons, He sanctifies, adopts, crowns. It is a voluminous mercy; it draws the silver link of grace, and the golden link of glory after it. 6. Consideration: That which may make us seek after forgiveness of sin is, God’ s inclinableness to pardon--“ Thou art a God ready to pardon.” We are apt to entertain wrong conceits of God, that He is inexorable, and will not forgive--“ I knew that Thou art an hard man.” But God is a sin-pardoning God. 7. Consideration: Not to seek earnestly for pardon is the unspeakable misery of such as want forgiveness; it must needs be ill with that malefactor that wants his pardon. (1) The unpardoned sinner that lives and dies so, is under the greatest loss and privation. (2) The unpardoned sinner hath nothing to do with any promise. (3) An unpardoned sinner is continually in danger of the outcry of an accusing conscience. An accusing conscience is a little hell. (4) All the curses of God stand in full force against an unpardoned sinner. His very blessings are cursed--“ I will curse your blessings.” (5) The unpardoned sinner is in an ill case at death. Luther professed there were three things which he durst not think of without Christ; of his sins, of death, of the day of judgment. Death to a Christless soul is the “ King of terrors.” But I am discouraged from going to God for pardon, for I am unworthy of forgiveness; what am I, that God should do such a favour for me? God forgives, not because we are worthy, but because He is gracious--“ The Lord, the Lord merciful and gracious.” “ Free grace doth not findus worthy, but makes us worthy.” Therefore, notwithstanding unworthiness, seek to God, that your sins may be pardoned. But I have been a great sinner, and sure God will not pardon me. David brings it as an argument for pardon; “ Pardon mine iniquity, for it is great.” When God forgives great sins, now He doth a work like Himself. The desperateness of the wound doth the more set forth the virtue of Christ’ s blood in curing it. The vast ocean hath bounds set to it, but God’ s pardoning mercy is boundless. God can as well forgive great sins as less; as the sea can as well cover great rocks as little sands. God counts it His glory to display free grace in its orient colours--“ Where sin aboundeth grace did much more abound.” When sin becomes exceeding sinful, free grace becomes exceeding glorious. God’ s pardoning love can conquer the sinner, and triumph over the sin. Let us labour to have the evidence of pardon, to know that our sins are forgiven. A man may have his sins forgiven, and not know it; he may have a pardon in the court of heaven, when he hath it not in the court of conscience. The evidence of pardon may not appear for a time, and this may be-- 1. From the imbecility and weakness of faith. 2. A man may be pardoned and not know it, from the strength of temptation. But why doth God sometimes conceal the evidence of pardon? Though God doth pardon, yet He may withhold the sense of it a while-- 1. Because hereby He would lay us lower in contrition. 2. Though God hath forgiven sin, yet He may deny the manifestation of it for a time, to make us prize pardon, and make it sweeter to us when it comes. How then shall we know by the word whether our guilt is done away, and our sins pardoned? 1. The pardoned sinner is a great weeper. Have we been dissolved into tears for sin? God seals His pardons upon melting hearts. 2. We may know our sins are forgiven by having the grace of faith infused--“ To Him give all the prophets witness, that whosoever believeth in Him shall receive remission of sins.” In saving faith there are two things, renunciation, and recumbency. 3. The pardoned soul is a God-admirer--“ Who is a God like Thee, that pardoneth iniquity?” 4. Wherever God pardons sin, He subdues it--“ He will have compassion on us, He will subdue our iniquities.” Where men’ s persons are justified, their lusts are mortified. 5. He whose sins are forgiven is full of love to God. He whose heart is like marble, locked up in impenitency, that doth not melt in love, gives evidence his pardon is yet to seal. 6. Where the sin is pardoned, the nature is purified. Many tell us, they hope they are pardoned, but were never sanctified; yea, but they believe in Christ; but what faith is it? A swearing faith, a whoring faith; the faith of devils is as good. 7. Such as are in the number of God’ s people, forgiveness of sin belongs to them--“ Comfort ye My people, tell them their iniquity is pardoned.” He whose sins are forgiven, is willing to forgive others who have offended him--“ Forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’ s sake hath forgivenyou.” A king may pardon a traitor, but will not make him one of his privy council; but whom God pardons, He receives into favour. Forgiveness of sin makes our services acceptable; God takes all we do in good part. A guilty person, nothing he doth pleaseth God. Forgiveness of sin is the sauce which sweetens all the comforts of this life. As guilt embitters our comforts, it puts wormwood into our cup; so pardon of sin sweetens all; it is like sugar to wine. Health and pardon, estate and pardon, relish well. Pardon of sin gives a sanctified title! and a delicious taste to every comfort. If sin be forgiven, God will never upbraid us with our former sins. Where God pardons sins, He bestows righteousness. With remission of sin goes imputation of righteousness--“ I will greatly rejoice in the Lord, He hath covered me with the robe of righteousness.” A pardoned soul needs not fear death. He may look on death with joy who can look on forgiveness with faith. To a pardoned soul death hath lost his sting. Death, to a pardoned sinner, is like the arresting a man after the debt is paid; death may arrest, but Christ will show the debt-book crossed in His blood. Now follow the duties of such as have their sins forgiven. Mercy calls for duty. Be much in praise and doxology. 1. “ Bless the Lord, O my soul, who forgiveth all thine iniquities.” Hath God crowned you with pardoning mercy? set the crown of your praise upon the head of free grace. 2. Let God’ s pardoning love inflame your hearts with love to God. 3. Let the sense of God’ s love in forgiving make you more cautious and fearful of sin for the future. O Christians, do you not remember what it cost you before to get your pardon I 4. If God hath given you good hope that you are pardoned, walk cheerfully--“ We joy in God, through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we havereceived the atonement.” Who should rejoice, if not he that hath his pardon? 5. Hath God pardoned you? Do all the service you can for God--“ Always abounding in the work of the Lord.” Let your head study for God, let your hands work for Him, let your tongue be the organ of His praise. The pardoned soul thinks he can never love God enough or serve Him enough. The last thing is to lay down some rules or directions, how we may obtain forgiveness of sin. We must take heed of mistakes about pardon of sin. 1. That our sins are pardoned, when they are not. Whence is this mistake? From two grounds. (1) Because God is merciful. (2) Because Christ died for their sins, therefore they are forgiven. 2. That pardon is easy to be had; it is but a sigh, or, “ Lord have mercy.” “ As we forgive our debtors;” or, “ As we forgive them that trespass against Matthew 6:12). I proceed to the second part of the petition, “ As we forgive them that trespass against us.” “ As we forgive.” This word, “ as,” is not a note of equality, but similitude; not that we equal God in forgiving, but imitate Him. How can I forgive others, when it is only God forgives sin? In every breach of the second table there are two things; an offence against God, and a trespass against man. So far as it is an offence against God, He only can forgive; but so far as it is a trespass against man, so we may forgive. Let it persuade us all, as ever we hope for salvation, to pass by petty injuries and discourtesies, and labour to be of forgiving spirits, “ forbearing one another, and forgiving one another.” 1. Herein we resemble God. He is “ ready to forgive,” He befriends His enemies, He opens His hands to relieve them who open their mouths against Him. 2. To forgive is one of the highest evidences of grace. When grace comes into the heart, it makes a man, as Caleb, of another spirit. It makes a great metamorphosis; it sweetens the heart, and fills it with love and candour. When a scion is grafted into a stock it partakes of the mature and sap of the tree, and brings forth the same fruit; take a crab, graft it into a pepin, it brings forth the same fruit as the pepin; so he who was once of a sour crabby disposition, given to revenge, when he is once ingrafted into Christ, he partakes of the sap of this heavenly olive, and bears sweet and generous fruit; he is full of love to His enemies, and requites good for evil. As the sun draws up many thick noxious vapours from the earth, and returns them in sweet showers; so a gracious heart returns the unkindnesses of others with the sweet influences of love and mercifulness--“ They rewarded me evil for good; but as for me, when they were sick, my clothing was sackcloth, I humbled my soul with fasting.” This is a good certificate to show for heaven. 3. The blessed example of our Lord Jesus; He was of a forgiving spirit. 4. The danger of an implacable, unforgiving spirit; it hinders the efficacy of ordinances; it is like an obstruction in the body, which keeps it from thriving. A revengeful spirit poisons our sacrifice, our prayers are turned, into sin; will God receive prayer mingled with this strange fire? 5. God hath tied His mercy to this condition; if we do not forgive, neither will He forgive us--“ If ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Heavenly Father forgive your trespasses.” A man may as well go to hell for not forgiving, as for not believing. 6. The examples of the saints who have been of forgiving spirits. 7. Forgiving and requiting good for evil is the best way to conquer and melt the heart of an enemy. Our sins are innumerable and heinous; is God willing to forgive us so many offences, and cannot we forgive a few? No man can do so much wrong to us all our life, as we do to God in one day. But how must we forgive? As God forgives us. 1. Cordially. God doth not only make a show of forgiveness, and keep our sins by Him, but doth really forgive; He passeth an act of oblivion. 2. God forgives fully; He forgives all our sins. Hypocrites pass by some offences, but retain others. Would we have God deal so with us to remit only some trespasses, and call us to account for the rest. 3. God forgives often; we run afresh upon the score, but God multiplies pardon. (T. Watson.) Our Father’ s forgiveness “ And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors” Matthew 6:12). “ And forgive us our sins; for we also forgive every one that is indebted to us” (Luke 11:4). Ponder, first, the prayer for forgiveness--Forgive us our debts. This word” debts” first claims our attention. There are two senses in which man may be said to be a debtor to the Heavenly Father. First: Man is a debtor in the sense of dutifulness: a dutifulness unconditional, complete, unbroken, ceaseless, absolute; and this because God is Father, and he God’ s son. Of course, from a debt like this no son, so long as he remains loyal, can ever expect or even wish to be released. To owe the Father in heaven immortal obedience, thanks, trust, love, is man’ s blessedness and glory. But there is a second and terrible sense in which man may be said to be a debtor to his Heavenly Father: he owes Him arrears, or the debt of default in dutifulship. And this second debt is beyond the possibility of payment. And now, if Gabriel with all his spotless innocence and celestial strength is unable to outrun his duty or do work of supererogation, what shall be said of poor, fallen, miserable man? A child of dust, conceived in sin and brought forth in iniquity, by nature, in the very fact of birth, a child of wrath, talking of making amends to God for past failure! “ O Judgment! thou art fled to brutish beasts, And men have lost their reason!” As well might the thief claim the watch he has stolen as the reward due to his knavery, or the assassin the love and esteem of the dead man’ s friends as the reward due to his deed of blood. But will God answer the prayer? Can He, will He, forgive our debts? Most certainly He can and He will; and this precisely for the reason that He is what He is, our Heavenly Father. Were He something else, were He simply a Creator, or a Monarch, or a Judge, He might coldly say, “ No! My Government must be maintained. Justice must be satisfied. The law must take its course. Or, if I forgive, it can only be in view of a consideration, the payment of an equivalent.” But precisely because God is something more than this, precisely because He is Father as well as Creator and Monarch and Judge, He says nothing of the kind. Overcoming us by a love so infinite that it must vent itself in a cross, He recreates our characters by subduing us into penitence, amendment, loyalty, sonship; and so He transfigures us from bankruptcy into sonhood. This is the way in which our Heavenly Father forgives us for His Son’ s sake our debts. And now let us ponder, secondly, the standard of forgiveness: “ As we forgive” (or, as it probably should read, as we have forgiven) “ our debtors.” And, first, what does it mean to forgive our debtors? Precisely what forgiveness means when our Heavenly Father forgives us our debts. And you know how He forgives us, at least those of us who have accepted His forgiveness; for His pardon, as we have seen, does not really go into operation till we have actually accepted it. Recall, then, how the Heavenly Father has forgiven us. He has forgiven us freely, without stipulation or compensation. He has forgiven us fully, every one of our debts, and they are as countless as earth’ s sands: He has forgiven us infinitely more than we can ever be called upon to forgive others. He has forgiven us sincerely, from the depths of His own infinite Heart. He has forgiven us everlastingly, world without end. Most wonderful of all, He Himself has taken the initiative, offering us His forgiveness in advance of our even asking for it. And as He has forgiven us, so we are to forgive one another. Take, then, the initiative in forgiving thy brother. But while it is true that our Father’ s forgiveness of us is the model for our forgiveness of our brothers, yet this is not the point which the Lord sets before us in the pattern prayer. Elsewhere in Holy Scripture forgiveness begins in heaven and descends to earth; here forgiveness begins on earth and ascends to heaven--“ Forgive us our debts, as we have forgiven our debtors.” Not that there is any merit in our forgiving one another. No, our Father does not forgive us our debts because we have forgiven our debtors; but our having forgiven our debtors is a condition of our Father’ s forgiving us our Matthew 6:14-15; Luke 11:4; Mark 11:25; James 1 John 4:20). For he shall have judgment without mercy that hath showed no mercy. Again: our forgiving our brother is not only a condition of our Father’ s forgiving us; our forgiving our brother is also, so to speak, the standard or measure of our Father’ s forgiving us: Forgive us our debts, as, in the same spirit that, we have forgiven our debtors. It would be difficult to find in history, or in philosophy, or in Holy Writ, a more pregnant or more affecting sign of man’ s greatness than this little phrase, “ As we forgive our debtors.” Elsewhere in the Word we are taught to regard God as the standard of man’ s action; but here we are taught to regard man as the standard of God’ s action. Here is a man who has been bitterly wronged by another; he says to him, “ I forgive you this, but I cannot forget it.” He enters his closet and prays: “ Father, forgive me, as I have forgiven him! Say to me in words that Thou forgivest me, but do not forget my offences! Blot them not out of the book of Thy remembrance! Do to me as I do to him!” Oh, how often does this prayer, if offered sincerely, mean a curse! This entry is longer than a Bible module can hold. The rest is at https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/bi/ Luke 11:5-8 Which of you shall have a friend Importunity in prayer I. A CASE . If reluctant and hard-hearted men thus yield to the influence of importunity, how much more will the blessed God, who delights in bestowing benefits upon the needy, grant the requests of those who call upon Him! II. AN . 1. The true nature of prayer. It is simply a matter of asking and receiving. There are some who view prayer altogether in reference to its influence upon the minds of those who engage in it. That it has such an influence is undoubted; but over and above its soothing, elevating, purifying effects, there are direct and positive blessings to be looked for in answer to our requests. The labour of the husbandman is beneficial to him; in itself it is so; being conducive to his health and strength--to the invigoration of his powers both of body and mind. But it is not on that account that he labours. He expects an actual crop; and he goes forth and sees, first the blade, then the ear, and then the full corn in the ear. And so with prayer. 2. The proper spirit of prayer. Earnestness and importunity. “ If the arrow of prayer is to enter heaven, we must draw it from a soul full bent.” 3. The certain success of prayer. III. A . “ HOW much more?” As much more as God is higher than man; as much more as God is holier than man; as much more as God is better than man--so much more will He give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him. (Expository Outlines.) Importunity in prayer WANTS . We have literally nothing in the house. Our only resource is to ask our friend to supply us, and, through us, our needy guest. God is our friend. Asking is prayer. II. GOES TO GOD. Pray when you feel want. Do not put off. It would not answer for the host to wait until morning. It was midnight, true. But the traveller had come at midnight, at this unseasonable hour stood famished in the hall, might die before morning. He must go to-night. He must make haste. III. CANNOT BE PUT OFF. At first it may seem to fail to get God’ s ear. But it calls still, until He answers. And having done this, it may seem to be rebuffed, as by a voice from within, “ Trouble me not … I cannot rise and give thee,” so that it will be tempted to retire without its answer. But if it has an earnest, pressing case, it will not retire. The subject of delay in answers to prayer may not be fully understood by the wisest. By some it is most imperfectly apprehended. We have misconceptions of God. These may lead Him to delay. Such a misconception is seen in the form of the prayer in our parable, “ Lend me three loaves.” God does not lend, He gives. His is not a niggardly heart, grudging its bounty; He gives freely. As it would wound a mother to have a child say, “ Mother, lend me some bread,” and she would, if she truly and wisely loved the child, devise some way to teach him that a mother’ s is not a lending but a giving love; so it must be with God. Again, though there is true want in our hearts, it may not be as heartily expressed and as confiding as God wishes. Ask heartily. IV. IS . How specific this man is in stating his case! He wastes no words. “ A friend of mine, out of his way, is come to me, and I have nothing to set before him.” It is well to pray for all mankind, for all the Church, for large and comprehensive objects, but pray specifically for “ a friend of mine.” He stands at your door. The petition here was as definite as the statement of the case. “ Friend, lend me three loaves.” It was a large supply. “ One for the friend,” says a quaint writer, “ one for himself, and one to spare.’ He meant to ask for enough. Fix the request at a large amount, but make it definite. If bread is what you want, ask for bread; if you want three loaves, pray for three; if you mean them for your friend out of the way, put in his name, tell who he is, and God will be pleased, if it is not lightly done, an irreverent smartness in prayer, but the fervent simplicity of an agonizing desire. V. IS . “ Believe that ye receive, and ye shall have.” This simple-hearted man knocking at his friend’ s door, has not admitted the idea into his mind of going home without the bread. Foster the high trust, which ever lives in expectation from God. Such faith He honours. A very worldly man was an object of prayer With his wife. Their little daughter became a Christian; at once she entered into her mother’ s desires, and joined her in the prayer that her father might be con verted. Her faith was remarkably simple. She read the direction to us to believe that when we ask for the Holy Spirit we shall receive. She believed; she said to her mother, “ Father will be converted.” One evening he did not return home at his usual hour. An hour passed, two hours. His wife became anxious, then alarmed. The little girl said, “ Why, mother, he’ s going to come home a Christian to-night. I prayed that he might.” The mother smiled sadly at what she looked upon as the child’ s ignorant simplicity. The hour grew late, still he came not. The mother said, “ I must sit up for him.” The child replied, “ Why, he’ s all safe, mother; we ought to trust God and go to bed.” She went to bed. When the father, at midnight, came, and told his wife how he had found Christ, and, later, they stood in tearful joy looking upon the sleeping face of their little daughter, the child waked and seeing them, before either could speak, with a glad cry exclaimed, “ There, mamma, didn’ t he come home a Christian?” Oh, for the spirit in us all of that praying child! VI. FINALLY, . All true prayer is answered. The Bible has but one teaching on this subject, experience but one trustworthy lesson. Thirty-four special prayers are given in the Scriptures; every one was answered. It is not promised that the answer will come at once; the tenor of Scripture is to the contrary conclusion. The answer is speedy from God’ s point of view; with Him one day is as a thousand years. But we are taught to wait upon God, to wait patiently for Him, to be importunate. (G. R.Leavitt.) Importunity in prayer I. THE AND OF . 1. The reasonableness and incumbency of importunity in prayer appear from the majesty and holiness of that Being whom we address, contrasted with our own weakness and sinfulness. The depth of feeling and anxiety for success with which we approach to ask a favour of a fellow creature, bear a proportion to his dignity and worth: what reverence, then, what fervour, what earnestness and perseverence of supplication, become us in drawing near to the King of kings, and Lord of lords! 2. The reasonableness and incumbency of such importunity will further appear, if we consider the great value of the deliverances and positive blessings we implore. I speak here, of course, chiefly of spiritual deliverances and blessings. What more reasonable than that our anxiety and perseverance of pursuit should be regulated by the value of the objects we have in view? We should, unquestionably, grudge that earnestness and continuance of application to avert a trifling evil, or to obtain a trifling advantage, which we should yet think well spent to save our life, or to gain a kingdom. But, let us only think of the importance of the spiritual deliverances for which we pray to God--deliverance from destructive ignorance, error, unbelief, guilt, and pollution--deliverance from the curse of God now, and from the wrath to come--deliverance from everlasting misery--and then let us ask ourselves with what importunity we ought to pray for such deliverances. How will the man cry for help who perceives the surrounding tide approaching to overwhelm him! but how much more should we cry to God to save us from being drowned in eternal destruction and perdition? II. TO IN PRAYER. 1. It tends to prepare the mind for the blessings asked, and even is often the actual enjoyment of them. The Lord “ prevents,” that is, anticipates, “ us with the blessings of goodness” ; and while we are praying, as well as when we are musing, the fire of devotion burns. 2. Again, such prayer has the promise of being answered. The general command to pray implies a general promise of a favourable answer. But there are many particular and express promises of this kind, especially to those who pray with earnestness and perseverance (see Luke 11:9). 3. Consider, too, for your further encouragement, some of the many scriptural examples of the success of importunate prayer. Suffer me now, in conclusion, solemnly to ask, Are you given to such importunity in prayer? (James Foote, M. A.) Importunity in prayer I. THE CASE STATED. 1. The appeal. (1) To whom made. To a “ friend.” (2) When made. “ At midnight.” (3) How made. Definitely. “ Lend me three loaves.” 2. The argument. (1) The fact of need. (2) The relationship implied. You are my “ friend.” 3. The response. (1) Most discouraging. (a) The attitude of the respondent discouraging. “ He from within.” (b) The spirit of the respondent discouraging. “ Trouble me not.” (c) The argument of the respondent discouraging. “ The door is now shut,” &c. 4. The appellant’ s success. (1) Negatively. (a) Not on the ground of friendly relationship. (b) Not on the ground of his need. (2) Positively. On the ground of his importunity. II. THE CASE APPLIED. 1. To every disciple. “ And I say unto you.” 2. To the essential conditions of success in prayer. (1) Prayer itself essential. (2) To pray for what we need is essential. (a) Bread or fish are among the necessaries of life. (b) To ask these when needed is implied. (3) Importunity in prayer. 3. To the perfect assurance of success to those who thus pray. (1) “ Every one” that thus “ asketh.” (2) This success is guaranteed on two grounds to the importunate pleader. (a) Our relationship. “ Your heavenly Father.” (b) God’ s infinite graciousness. “ How much more?” Lessons: 1. The contrast in the parable heightens the believer’ s encouragement. (1) Our heavenly Father never answers “ from within.” (2) Our heavenly Father never says “ Trouble Me not.” (3) To the heavenly Father it is never “ midnight.” 2. Prayer as a Divine condition of blessing one of the most gracious evidences of the Divine love. 3. Importunity the only true evidence of the sincerity of our prayer, and the reality of our felt need, and actuality of our faith. (D. O. Hughes, M. A.) Why we must be importunate in prayer I think the meaning is, that Jesus would teach us in this way what we are learning in many other ways--that the best things in the Divine life, as in the natural, will not come tous merely for the asking; that true prayer is the whole strength of the whole man going out after his needs, and the real secret of getting what you want in heaven, as on earth, lies in the fact that you give your whole heart for it, or you cannot adequately value it when you get it. So, “ Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you,” means--“ Put out all your energies, as if you had to waken heaven out of a midnight slumber, or an indifference like that of the unjust judge.” (R. Collyer.) The midnight intruder Why does the Lord fix upon “ midnight” as the time when this transaction took place? 1. Because He would assure us that God is ready to hear us at any and every time of life, even the most unseasonable. 2. Because He would warn us of the obstacles in the way of a late application. The midnight intruder represents the sinner who only turns to God when overtaken by old ago or severe sickness, Repentance long delayed is not easy work. (J. Henry Burn, B. D.) Lessons 1. Our petitions never unseasonable. 2. No time unsuitable. 3. No spiritual mercy too great to ask. 4. No needed blessing exceeds God’ s power. 5. God never disinclined to hear. 6. God never unwilling to bless. 7. God is ready to answer. 8. God is able to grant. 9. God is willing to bestow. 10. God is waiting to be gracious. (Van Doren.) Perseverance in prayer God for a time withholds the answer to prayer. But the blessing is sweeter, when obtained. It is the Christian’ s duty to ask in faith, and to wait in hope. Perseverance in prayer effects no change in God, but effects a change in the petitioner. Miracles have ceased, wonders have not; perseverance in faith and prayer will accomplish wonders. Diligence, perseverance, and importunity are honourable terms applied to prayer. They offend not God, but are enjoined by command, and taught by example. God is urgent with us, to make us urgent with Him. (Van Doren.) God giving His praying people bread for others Because the word “ importunity” occurs here, the parable is sometimes read as enforcing persevering prayer. Its lesson, however, seems not so much to be perseverance as intercession. So the subject is, God giving His people bread for others in answer to prayer. I. Here, first of all, we have, GOD’ S FRIEND CALLED TO GIVE BREAD TO THE HUNGRY. Indeed it is more than the hungry. The traveller in the parable has lost his way (“ out of the way,” it is in the margin). That represents the call which, except he be sunk in deep spiritual indifference, the Christian hears, More urgent than any plea for the bread that perisheth is that for the bread that endureth unto everlasting life. Whilst he rests in the mercies which the gospel brings, outside are some who in darkness and sadness have lost their way, and pine for bread in the strength of which they shall press on to the light and home. The man of God hears their knock at his door, and their cry beneath his window, and in these a summons from a higher source to rise and give. 2. We hear it in the Divine pity wrought within us. For the desire to save a soul from death is “ from above” ; it is the spirit that led the Son of God to become incarnate and die. If He has made us pity the hungry wanderers in the dark, that pity is a Divine summons (it were criminal to refuse) to give. 3. And we hear it in the Divine direction of the hungry soul to us. For how often we can say “ A friend of mine, out of the way, is come to me!” God makes some our special care: the children He has given us, the ungodly, the unconcerned, and the uncared-for. And they do ask; their look asks if not their speech. But why do they come to us? For the reason that Cornelius in his need sent to Simon in Joppa--because heaven told them to God who creates the hunger, does not leave them to satisfy it as they can, but tells them where to go for bread, and points to us, and that is why they come. 4. And we hear this summons in the method of the Divine working. Be sure it is of no use simply praying for our neighbours, nor for our friends and children; God is ready to answer prayer, but it is His plan to answer it through us; “ Give ye them to eat,” He says. If we lie self-indulgent in our spiritual repose, afraid to rise because of the cold and the tiredness, and only idly pray for the perishing without, the prayer will be of no use. God’ s very method is the solemn call to us to rise and give. II. But we have here next, GOD’ S FRIEND WITH NO POWER TO FULFIL THIS CALL. We hear the call and desire to obey it, we rise and look into our storeroom, but--there is nothing! “ A friend of mine in his journey is come to me,” we say, and alas, “ I have nothing to set before him.” Now that tends to the idea that God does not mean the supply to come through us; He cannot, we think, expect us, who manifestly have nothing, to dispense something; it must be a mistake for the hungry to come to our door; at least, as we have no bread we may as well lie still, and leave others to do what we cannot. That reasoning makes idle, miserable Christians. Whilst their brethren work their life away in feeding the perishing, many Christians are useless, not always because they have no heart, but because they persuade themselves that they have no gift, and therefore no responsibility. Friends, have we not learnt that our responsibility is not measured by what we have, but by what we can get! We are sure to come to that if we try to obey God’ s call, for this conscious impotence is Divine preparation for the work. It is God preparing him who has nothing to receive something. One of the best signs when we know we are called to Christian service is the conviction of personal inability. But then we have here, GOD’ S FRIEND TURNING TO GOD IN HIS . From the thought that he has no bread he turns to remember a friend who has bread, and he goes to him: “ Friend, a friend of mine in his journey is come to me, and I have nothing to set before him, lend me three loaves.” Let this be the first thought of the helpless helper of others: God can give me what I need the right truth, the right words, the right manner, and (far more than these) through them, unseen by me, He can impart Christ. God can do this. But the next thought is, God will; with confidence we can turn to Him for “ loaves” when we call Him, as in the parable, “ Friend.” And we prove that He and we are friends when, self-forgetting, we make another’ s wants our own. Never can we be more sure that God will show Himself our friend than when we are anxious about the necessities of our fellows, for He can look on nothing with greater friendliness. To plead for others is to please Him more than to plead for self. Oh, we cannot doubt, when we think thus, that God, who can give the bread we need for the traveller, will. Then the needy worker goes and asks Him. III. For we have here, GOD’ S FRIEND WITH HE WANTS. 1. This, then, is a call to prayer. God awakes to give when we awake to ask. 2. And our prayer is answered as we obey. 3. Then see what the praying friend of God may do! The limit to God’ s giving is “ as many as He needeth.” (C. New.) The setting of the parable Like all such utterances of Christ, this draws its material from the ordinary life and incidents of the time. The deep stillness which settles upon an Eastern city soon after nightfall, is broken by the urgent call of a man under a neighbour’ s window. “ Friend! friend!! lend me three loaves! a guest has arrived at my house.” Not a strange occurrence in the East, where so many travel in the night to avoid the burning heat of the day. “ Friend, lend me three loaves. My guest has taken me unawares. He is a hungry traveller. My larder is empty. I have nothing to set before him.” And the answer is that of a man who cares chiefly for his own comfort; a churlish answer enough: “ Trouble me not. My door is shut and bolted. The household have gone to rest. I cannot rise and give thee.” But the applicant is not so easily disposed of. The ungracious neighbour is not to be left so comfortably to his rest. Hardly has he settled himself on his couch when the knock at the door comes again, and the call is repeated; and again and again; until, for very peace’ s sake, he is constrained to rise and give his persistent neighbour what he wants. (Marvin R. Vincent, D. D.) The naturalness of the illustration The curiosa felicitas of the parable will best be made apparent by entering into a little detail, first in reference to the situation, and next in reference to the means by which importunity makes itself master of the situation. And in order to show how discouraging the situation is, it will not be necessary to lay stress on the hour of the night at which the petitioner for bread finds himself called on to provide for his unseasonable visitor. Travelling in the night is common in the East, and it may be said to belong simply to the natural realism of the parable that the incident related is represented as happening at midnight. One cannot but remark, however, in passing, that it belongs to the felicity of the parable to suggest what it does not expressly teach, viz., that the comfort it is designed to convey to tried faith is available to those who find themselves in the very darkest hour of their spiritual perplexities. But passing from this, we note the discouraging circumstances in which the man in need finds himself on arriving at his neighbour’ s door. The difficulty which confronts him is not a physical one; that, viz., of finding his neighbour so profoundly asleep that it is impossible by any amount of knocking, however loud, to awaken him. His discouragement is, as the nature of the argument required it to be, a moral one; that, viz., of finding his neighbour, after he has succeeded in arousing him to consciousness, in a state of mind the reverse of obliging, utterly unwilling to take the trouble necessary to comply with his request. The mood of the man in bed is most graphically depicted. It is the mood of a man made heartless and selfish by comfort. Comfortable people, we know, are apt to be hard-hearted, and comfortable circumstances make even kind people selfish for the moment. Jesus holds up to our view an illustrative example. And the picture is so sketched to the life that we cannot repress a smile at the humour of the scene, while fully alive to the deep pity and pathos out of which the whole representation springs. The man is made to describe himself, and to show out of his own mouth, what an utterly selfish creature he is. First, an ominous omission is observable in his reply. There is no response to the appeal to his generous feelings contained in the appellation “ Friend” addressed to him by his neighbour. How true is this touch to human nature as it shows itself in every age! The rich, who need nothing, have many friends, but the poor is hated even of his own neighbour. The first words uttered by the man in bed are a rude, abrupt, surly, “ Don’ t bother me.” For, so undoubtedly, ought they to be rendered. It would be out of keeping with the whole situation to put a dignified speech into the mouth of a man irritated by unseasonable disturbance of his nightly repose. Next comes a comically serious detailed description of the difficulties which stand in the way of complying with the needy neighbour’ s request: “ The door is already barred, and my children are with me in bed!” Poor man, he is to be pitied! If it were only the mere matter of getting out of bed, it would be no great affair, now that he is awake. But the unbarring of the door is a troublesome business, not so easily performed as the turning of a key-handle, which is all we Europeans and moderns have to do in similar circumstances. And then the dear children are in bed asleep; what if one were to waken them; what a trouble to get them all hushed to rest again. Really the thing is out of the question. And so he ends with a peevish, drawling “ I can’ t rise to give thee.” His “ I can’ t” means “ I won’ t.” The circumstances which hinder, after the most has been made of them, are utterly frivolous excuses, and it is simply contemptible to refer to them seriously as reasons for not helping a friend in need. But the very fact that he does this only shows how utterly unwilling he is, how completely comfort and sleep have deadened every generous feeling in his heart. But comfortable selfishness for once finds itself over-matched by importunate want. The situation is desperate indeed when the person solicited for aid finds it in his heart to refuse it on such paltry grounds. But the petitioner has the matter in his own hands; he can make the unwilling one fain to give him whatever he wishes, be it three loaves or thirty; not for friendship’ s sake certainly, for of that there can be little hope after that contemptible “ I can’ t rise and give thee” ; but for very selfishness’ sake, to get rid of the annoyance and be free to relapse into slumber. How then? What are the means by which need is able to make itself master of the situation? One word answers the question. It is shamelessness. Shamelessness, not in knocking at the door of a neighbour at such an hour, for that may be excused by necessity, and at all events it has failed. The shamelessness meant is that which consists in continuing to knock on after receiving a decided and apparently final refusal. (A. B. Bruce, D. D.) The struggle for attainment of spiritual good In the interpretation and application of this parable, too much stress seems generally to have been laid upon one of the two persons presented to notice, and too little upon the other. To picture God as unwilling to hear and answer prayer, is wholly foreign to the spirit of our Lord’ s teaching and life; but to emphasize the necessity of our acting as if the answer to prayer were not a thing to be easily obtained, is thoroughly in keeping therewith. The Master had just supplied His disciples with a most lofty and comprehensive form of prayer--a form embracing petitions which from their very nature could only begranted on condition of the petitioners themselves heartily co-operating with God; and now He utters this parable to enforce the truth that there are many obstacles in the way, and that we shall not succeed unless we prove ourselves to be very much in earnest, seeking as well as merely asking, and knocking in addition to both. Who that knows his own heart ever so little, can doubt that between prayer and its answer there are indeed many and serious obstacles? First of all, there is the old man within--the traitor in the very heart of the citadel--urging us to give up the struggle and to swim with the stream. Then, there is all around us a cold and hostile world, ever tempting us to court its smile by the sacrifice of principle and (what so dear to us?) the indulgence of self. And, finally, the Evil One is always on the watch for an opportunity of blinding us to our own true interests, and keeping from us any suspicion of our danger until it is too late to turn back. Such are a few of the obstacles that confront the Christian when, rising from his knees, be day by day goes forth to contribute his share to the hallowing of God’ s name, the doing of God’ s will, and the advancement of God’ s kingdom. Nothing, surely, can be more certain than this; that, so far as he himself is concerned, his petitions for those three primary blessings will go unanswered, unless he strive with might and main, with all the energy of which he is possessed, to bring about, first in his own heart, and then in the hearts of others, that complete surrender to God which is the absolute condition of all acceptable prayer. Then he may look for an answer, but not before. The parable of the importunate friend This parable is meant to afford us effectual encouragement in prayer. Those who first faint in prayer, and then cease to pray, commonly do so from some kind of latent feeling that God does not regard them. Well, says our Lord, even supposing He does not regard you, do not give up asking, for even in the most unpromising circumstances persevering” and importunate entreaty gets what it seeks. Take the most sluggish and selfish nature, the man who won’ t so much as get out of bed to do a friend a good turn, you can make him do what you want by the very simple device of going on knocking till you cause it to dawn on his slumbering brain that the only way to get the sleep he so much desires is first of all to satisfy you. (Marcus Dods, D. D.) The friend at midnight This story is merely an illustration on which an argument is founded; and it is of immense importance that we have a correct idea of what that argument really is. I. LET US HAVE THE CASE CLEARLY BEFORE US. The story. Our Lord’ s comment upon it: “ I say unto you, though he will not rise and give him because he is his friend, yet because of his importunity” --or rather, as it ought to be rendered, “ shamelessness,” or more strongly still, “ impudence” --“ he will rise and give him as many as he needeth.” Then the Lord proceeds to give the Magna Charta of prayer, in the familiar words, “ Ask and it shall be given you,” etc. To this He appends a comparison between an earthly father’ s dealings with his children and those of our heavenly Father with His. These last verses, as I believe, furnish the key to the argument in the parable. Like them, it reasons from the less to the greater, or rather, from the worse to the better. It does not mean to represent God as gruff and disobliging, like the neighbour newly roused out of his earliest sleep; neither does it recommend the suppliant to use with God such shamelessness or impudence as his friend employed with him. But the suggested inference is this: If the impudence of that midnight knocker prevailed even with an angry and annoyed man so much that he arose and gave what was requested, how much more will the humble, reverent, believing, and persevering prayer of a true child of God prevail with the infinitely kind and loving Father to whom he makes petition? Over against the irritated and reluctant man, only half awake, He places the calm, loving, heavenly Father, “ who slumbers not, neither sleepeth” ; while, in contrast with the impudence of his troublesome neighbour, He suggests such earnest pleading with a Father as that which they had just seen in Himself, or as He had recommended in the form which He had given them. And the conclusion which He draws is: If the appeal in the former case was ultimately successful, how much more is it likely to be so in the latter! He is far from encouraging us to trust in boldness or irreverence or impudence in prayer, as so many misunderstand His words. We shall not be heard for our frequent speaking, any more than for our much speaking. He would not have us trust in prayer at all, but in the loving, Fatherly heart of Him to whom we pray. “ Wait on the Lord” --that is the lesson. But some may say, “ We have tried thus to wait on Him, and though we have waited long our prayers are still unanswered.” What answer can we give to these troubled spirits? The answer will take us-- II. Into the consideration of THE OF PRAYER. 1. The success of prayer is conditioned by the character of the suppliant. (a) That which men desire for the gratification of malice, or the pampering of appetite, or the satisfying of ambition, or the aggrandizing of selfishness, God has nowhere promised to bestow. (b) The wish that simply flits across the soul, as the shadow of the cloud glides over the summer-grass, is no true prayer. It must take hold of the spirit, and gather into itself all the energy and earnestness of the man. (c) No one can long persist in such prayer without faith; and so at this point the Saviour’ s qualifying word, “ believing ye shall receive,” is appropriate. (d) But more important than any of these conditions in the character of the suppliant is that laid down by Jesus, when He says, “ If ye abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.” We must not take the first part of that declaration and divorce it from the second. 2. A second class of conditions connect themselves with the nature of the thing requested. That which we ask must be in accordance with God’ s will. Beneath every genuine supplication there is the spirit of resignation. 3. This condition, connecting itself with the nature of the thing asked, is nearly akin to the third class of conditions which spring out of the purpose and prerogative of God Himself. This is a view of the case which has not been sufficiently attended to by Christians. “ The hearer of prayer” is not the only relation in which God stands to His people. He is their Father as well; and He is, besides, the moral Governor of the intelligent universe. Therefore He uses His prerogative in answering prayer, for moral purposes; and the action which He takes on the petitions of His children is a portion of that discipline to which He subjects them. Or, it may be that the kind of answers which He gives is determined by the influence which the suppliant’ s example may have on others. III. If these views are sound and scriptural THERE MAY BE DEDUCED FROM. THEM. THREE OF GREAT VALUE. 1. How impossible it is for us to discover the results of prayer by any merely human test. 2. To be successful suppliants we must be holy men. 3. How necessary it is that prayer should be characterized by entire submission to the will of God. (W. M. Taylor, D. D.) Because of his importunity Importunity Why does our Lord connect the importunity needful to arouse the feeble affections of sleepy man with prayer to our Father in heaven, who sleepeth not, and who is love itself? The disciples said, “ Lord, teach us to pray,” and He taught them. He gave them a simple but sevenfold prayer. Each petition was as clear as the light of heaven. Together the petitions were like seven burning lamps of the spirit of prayer which remain ever before God’ s throne. But if they would pray well, they must be fervent--not faint. God goes, indeed, give bread of heaven more willingly to His children than earthly parents give to theirs the bread of this world. But earthly parents do not get bread without husbandry, nor fish without tempestuous encounters with the weather, nor eggs without patient care for the fowls. And though God’ s Spirit is like the liberal air, the affluent sunshine, the multitudinous raindrops, yet as there must be seed in the ground for the rain to take effect, and lapse of days for the sunshine to mature the growth, and air, constant but changeful in its operation, that the living corn may abide and gain its sweetness, so only by patient working can God’ s spiritual gifts effect man’ s spiritual good. In our work God can only answer our effort through our patience prolonged; and after, in our prayers, He can only answer us by giving us work. You do not know the importunate effort your prayer implies. God is willing to give, and give at once; but He cannot give all things at once. (T. T. Lynch.) Importunity The effects here ascribed to importunity are remarkable. Nothing is attributed to friendship or good neighbourhood, to the reasonableness of the request, the ease with which it could be granted, the benefit to be conferred, or what the necessity of the case required. The success is represented as owing to the nature and strength, and frequency of the importunity, or to troublesome, teazing, vexatious efforts long continued, and to the impatience and irritation which such conduct never ceases to produce. But is it possible to believe, that by such behaviour we can influence our Maker, that His patience can be exhausted, and that He can be induced to yield to clamour or unceasing repetition? No, certainly. But we are to consider what is common between the nature of the importunity described in the text, and that which is incumbent in a true Christian, when addressing his heavenly Father. Now, two things are requisite: 1. We ought to know what is declared in the Scriptures to be agreeable to the will of God; and, consequently, what is proper for us to ask of God in prayer. 2. We ought to be as earnest in our petitions, and as incessant in making them, as the person here proposed for our example. (J. Thomson, D. D.) Need of importunity Easiness of desire is a great enemy to the success of a good man’ s prayers. It must be an intent, busy, operative prayer. For consider what a huge indecency it is that a man should speak to God for a thing that he values not! Our prayers upbraid our spirits when we beg tamely for those things for which we ought to die, which are more precious than imperial sceptres, richer than the spoils of the sea, or the treasures of Indian hills. (Bishop Jeremy Taylor.) There are three things in importunity 1. Fervency. This consists not in the loudness of the voice, albeit it be many times expressed by loud crying; the peacock hath a louder voice than the nightingale. Nor in long praying, for God doth not measure prayer by the length, albeit long prayers may be fervent prayers, but in the crying of the heart. 2. There must be frequency in it. We give not over at the first denial, no, nor at the second, if we be importunate. “ One thing I have desired of the Lord, and I will seek after it” (Psalms 27:4); that is, I have sought it, and will seek again and again. So Psalms 69:3 and Isaiah 62:1. 3. As our suit is to be renewed, so we must persevere in it. So Jacob did not only wrestle, but continued all night and morning too. He gave not over till he had what he sought for. This is enjoined (Colossians 4:2; 1 Thessalonians 5:27). And that parable propounded for that very end that we should pray, and not faint (Luke 18:1). If importunate prayer be prevailing prayer, never marvel that so many of us pray and yet prevail not. The prayers of most are but lip labour, and lip labour is lost labour. Never think to be heard of God in mercy, or to obtain any blessing at the hands of God, by thy cold, careless, and customary prayer. David compares his prayers to incense, and no incense was offered without fire: it was that that made the smoke of it to ascend. But doth not this pass good manners to importune the God of heaven? Will it not be imputed impudence in the creature to press the great Creator to condescend to our requests. Princes love it not, mean men affect it not, and will God suffer it? But God’ s ways are not as man’ s. With Him he is magis importunus qui importunat minus--most troublesome, that is least troublesome, saith Gregory. But Austin speaks of some who pray, nimis ardenter, too earnestly. So that it seems to be a fault to be too importunate. There is a double importunity, one arising from an inordinate desire of that we crave, having no respect to the will and promise of God. This was in Israel desiring of a king. And there is another kind of importunity, joined with a subjection to the will of God, and this was in Christ (Matthew 26:39; Matthew 26:42). But say we desire what is lawful, may we pray alike earnestly and importunately for one thing as for another, for small things as well as great, for earthly things as for heavenly? Our prayers are to be earnest as well for small things as for great, for things temporal as well as for things eternal, but yet not with the like degree of earnestness. The incense must smoke, and the pot boil; this cannot be without fire, yet we make not the like fire to roast an egg as to roast an ox. Other things are more common and transitory, being but mean and worthless in comparison of the other, scarce worth the naming, concerning which God is not well pleased that we should spend the heat of our zeal. It is worthy of your notice that our blessed Saviour, in that platform of prayer which He hath given us, puts daily bread before forgiveness of sins; not for that it is to be preferred, but for that it may sooner be despatched and more time spent about the other which concerns the salvation of our souls (there being two petitions of this nature for one of the other). For as it is in pouring out of some liquors that which is thinnest will first come forth and the thickest last, so is it oftentimes in pouring forth the soul to God. And thence it is that the faithful are usually more earnest and importunate with the Lord towards the end of their prayers (as it was with Daniel and David). This we often find. Albeit our earnestness is not to be alike in degree for small things as for great, yet our faith must be the same, let the thing be what it will be that we pray for, if lawful, small or great, temporal or eternal. It may yet be demanded, If it be not a fault to hasten God in the performance of His promises, are we not to wait His leisure? How then are we to importune Him, and be earnest with Him about them? Patiently to attend God’ s time, and yet earnestly to solicit the hastening of them, may well enough consist. Drexelius tells us of a vision that a religious man had at his prayers in the congregation. He saw a several angel at the elbow of every one present, ready to write down his petitions. Those who prayed heartily their angels wrote down their suits in gold; those that prayed but coldly and carelessly, their angels wrote too, but it was with water; those that prayed customarily, only from the teeth outward, had their angels by them, who seemed to write, but it was with a dry pen, no ink in it; such as slept had their angels by them, but they laid their pens by; such as had worldly thoughts, their angels wrote in the dust; and such as had envious and malicious spirits, their angels wrote with gall. If this be so, I fear few angels have wrote this day in golden letters; but the pens of the others have gone very fast. Have a care how thou prayest if thou wouldest have them written with the golden pen. (N. Rogers.) Prayer made fervent by expression Words add more force to our inward devotion; they stir up and increase the affection of the heart. As the beams of the sun wax hotter by reflection, so do the desires of the heart (saith one) by expression. (N. Rogers.) Delay in answering prayer If you desire to know the reasons of this delaying and putting off before He answers, they may be these. 1. God hath an eye herein to His own glory, which is exceedingly advanced hereby. 2. God doth thus delay us to quicken our appetites, inflame our desires, and make us the more earnest and fervent in prayer, dealing herein as the fisher doth in drawing back his bait to make the fish more eager of it. 3. God doth this for the trial and discovery of those graces that are in us, and to inure us to patience and obedience and submission of our wills to His. 4. Hereby the mercy is better prepared for us, for it becomes the greater and the sweeter; by delaying and putting off our suit we are brought to value the thing sued for the more, when things easily had are lightly esteemed: lightly come, lightly go. (N. Rogers.) Prayer is the best means of provision It is the surest coursethat can be taken to supply our wants. The best remedy in the day of our calamity. It must needs be so. 1. Because it is sanctified by God, and established by Divine wisdom for obtaining of all things needful that concern this life and the life to come Psalms 50:15; Isaiah 19:20-21; Philippians 4:6; Hebrews 4:6). Now God having prescribed this (who is the Fountain of all blessing and Author of all help), it must needs follow that it is the best means that can be used. 2. This hath to do above. It comes to the throne of grace, lays hold on God’ s name (from whom alone all our help cometh), when as all other means and helps have to do below on earth, and with earthly things, and can go no further than men’ s counsels persons, or purses can reach. 3. This is a true catholicon, a general remedy for every malady (it is like the Indian stone that remedieth all diseases), as appears, 1 Kings 8:1-66. Whatsoever plague, whatsoever sickness or other misery doth befall us, prayer will remedy it. No such universal and general help in all extremities as this is. Physicians for divers diseases have divers remedies, but the Christian hath this one which is better than all--prayer. 4. It is the readiest remedy, evermore at hand; in what place soever you are you may help yourselves and others by it (1 Timothy 2:8). Jeremiah prays in the dungeon, Jonah in the whale’ s belly, Peter in the prison, Paul in the stocks. In the fields, on the leads, in the chamber, in the closet, in caves and dens of the earth, it may be taken and used. 5. It is the speediest remedy. No sooner are our prayers out of our mouths--nay, in our hearts, but they are in heaven, and no sooner are they inheaven but we shall find the benefit of them (Daniel 9:21-23; Genesis 24:15; Acts 4:31). 6. It is an approved remedy. It hath its probatum est upon constant experience of God’ s saints, who have ever found it to be the best lever at a dead-lift (2 Samuel 22:4; 2 Samuel 22:7; Psalms 118:5). (N. Rogers) Interceding for others They who love Christ love every member of Christ, to the lowest. Oh the happiness of a Christian who hath a stock going in every part of the Christian world. He is like some rich merchant, who hath his factors in all countries. Some in Spain, others in France, and where not where God hath a Church? The prayers of the saints are for the common good of the whole body, and the poorest member of that body is a sharer in all the prayers that are put up to heaven in the behalf of the Church. As when several ships go to sea, some traffic in one thing and some in another; some bring gold, others spices, and others other commodities; but all that is brought is for the common good of the country. So the prayers of the godly are like these ships that go to sea. Some request this of God, others that, but all that they bring home is for the good of the whole Church, whereof thou, being a member, shalt certainly be a sharer. If one Elijah can procure plenty, and prevail for a whole country, if one Isaac by prayer can make Rebekah fruitful, if the prayer of one righteous man can so prevail with God, what will so many eyes and hands reared up to heaven do. Single prayers are like Sampson’ s single hairs, every one hath the strength of a man; but the prayers of many are like his whole bush, or head of hair, able to overcome the whole host of heaven, and to bind the hands of God Himself, as appears by the passage betwixt God and Moses. And if men should fail me, yet Christ still loves me, and loving me, He will not be wanting in making intercession to His Father on my behalf. (N. Rogers.) Storming heaven We can see this principle at work, if we will, first in nature. It fills the whole distance between the paradise of the first pair and this common earth as we find it to-day. In that old Eden there was no barrier between the longing and its answer, and no effort needed to bring the answer, except the longing. The kindly, easy, effortless life went on, we suppose, as life might have gone on in the Sandwich Islands before Cook discovered them, had their inhabitants possessed the secret of how to live, in addition to their perfect climate, and the daily bread that came almost without the asking. In this life of ours, however, there is no such answer to our natural cry for what we need. The need may be, in its way, Divine, and the longing as Divine as the need; but before they can come to their full fruition, barriers have to be broken down that seem to have been put there by Heaven itself. We touch this principle again in a more personal way when we observe this striving in the experiences of men. Not to mention at this moment what is most purely spiritual in these conflicts, there is deep instruction in watching how some man is moved to do some thing that is to bless the world in a new and wonderful way when it is done; but between the conception and the conclusion there are mighty barriers, that only the uttermost might of what is indeed a Divine persistence can finally overcome. It flashes on the soul with something of the nature of a revelation when it is done. Men say he must have been inspired to do it. Its blessing is so clear that we can almost see the shining track on which it has come from God to man. It would be natural to think then the way must be clear between the conception and execution of such a thing, not only because of the nobility of the thing itself, but of the urgent need of it among men. They knocked more than two hundred years for the locomotive before the door was opened, and if you have read this history of Mr. Goodyear, you will remember how at last the full revelation of the secret came in a flash, as when the diamond seeker watches for the sudden sheen of his treasure between the sand and the sun. Bat it was the eye that had been seeking patiently, persistently, and steadily through these long years that found the treasure, as when the apple fell; if we had been there, we should have seen an apple fall where Newton saw the whole order of the sun and stars, because he had been wearying heaven night and day for years to open her doors to his beseeching about that matter. A true prayer must be the deepest and most painful thing a man can possibly do; may be so costly that he will give up, without a murmur, his very life, before he will give up that which his prayer has wrested, as it were, out of the heart of the heavens; and it may be so protracted, that twenty years shall not suffice to see it. For prayer, in its purest reality, is first the cry of the soul to God for His gift, and then it is the effort of the soul to make as sure of what it longs for, as if it were to come by its own winding. It is something in which the words we say are often of the smallest possible consequence, and only our unconquerable persistence under God is omnipotent. I went once to see the cathedral at Cologne. It is the most wonderful blossoming of Gothic art on the planet. Hundreds of years ago some man, now forgotten, found it all in his heart, and longed to make it visible in stone. But because it was so great and good, when the man died his work was still unfinished; it was still unfinished when his name was forgotten; at last, even the design of it was lost, and it seemed as if there was no hope that the cathedral would ever be done. But when Napoleon went storming through Europe, his marshals lighted on the old design, hidden in some dusty corner of s monastery; so it got back again to Cologne, and when I was there, all Germany was interested in finishing the noble idea. Now, since that church was begun, thousands of churches have risen and fallen in Germany, and no trace of them is left; but because the Dome Kirche is the grandest thing in its way that was ever done in stone, or ever conceived in a soul, two things follow: there must be a mighty span between the conception and the consummation, a striving through dark days and fearful hindrances to build it, and, at the same time, an indestructible vitality in the idea, like that which has attended it. It is but a shadow of this great fact concerning our spiritual life. The very worth of what we ask for from the heavens, because it is so worthy, is the deepest reason there is why the blessing cannot come until the full time--until it has had its own time. (R. Collyer, D. D.) Earnestness in prayer I have heard it said, and I fear it is true, that the worst performed work that we do in the day is our prayers: I fear that many of us, perhaps most of us, must confess this to be true. We are earnest in other things, our merchandise, our work, our studies; but how few of us are diligent in prayer, how few of us look upon this as our daily bread, how few of us live a life in any distant degree resembling that of our Saviour Christ. I fear the same thing is spoiling our communion with God which spoilt Adam’ s, a feeling of enmity to God, a consciousness of our wills not being wholly like His, of our having tastes which He does not approve, of our hearts being set upon the world. (Bishop Harvey Goodwin.) Successful importunity How often have I seen a little child throw its arms around its father’ s neck, and win, by kisses, and importunities, and tears, what had been refused? Who has not yielded to importunity, even when a dumb animal looked up with suppliant eyes in our face for food? Is God less pitiful than we? (T. Guthrie, D. D.) Bounty after delay When the householder is once roused by the importunity of his neighbour, he not only gives him the three loaves, for which perhaps he asked out of delicacy as the very least that would suffice, but “ as many as he needeth” ; enough to spread a bounteous repast. And when God delays giving, it is not only to encourage faith to press for that particular gift, but to introduce it to a larger range of gifts: to bring it to a better acquaintance with Himself, in whom are all gifts. A praying soul, in such circumstances, is like a thirsty man following up the windings of a clear, cold stream, but unable to get down to the water’ s edge because the banks are so steep. He walks mile after mile along the precipitous shores, and the sun is hot, and he is faint, and his thirst is aggravated by the sparkling water below; but by and by he finds himself among the springs, at the source of the stream, high up where the fountains are sheltered, and clear and exhaustless, and he bows down and drinks his fill. God is better than all His gifts, and the object of prayer is to make us acquainted with Himself. Your boy comes to you and asks you to buy him a fishing-rod; and he says, “ I saw one to-day in a window, on such a street, which was just what I want. Can’ t I go down now and buy it?” And you say, “ No, not to-day. Wait a little. You shall have your rod.” And doubtless the lad is disappointed, perhaps a little sullen for the time, and a week passes and he hears nothing about his rod, and he begins to say to himself: “ I wonder if father has not forgotten all about it.” Then, just at the end of the week, you put into his hands a better rod than he has ever seen before, and with it a complete outfit for his sport, and the boy is overwhelmed with surprise and pleasure. And yet the main thing in all this is not that your son has received what he wanted. You meant he should have that; but the gift won, through delay, has given him a new view of his father’ s wisdom, and a new confidence in his affection, which makes him say, “ Hereafter, when I want anything of this kind, I will leave it all to father.” That is the main point gained. And so the main thing which a man gains when God at last answers his prayer with the gift which he asked, is not the gift, but the clearer consciousness that God is better than His gifts, that he has all things ill God. (Marvin R. Vincent, D. D.) Power of earnestness When a person told a story in a heartless way, Demosthenes said,’“ I don’ t believe you.” But when the person then repeated the assertion with great fervour, Demosthenes replied, “ Now I do believe you.” Sincerity and earnestness are ever urgent. The prophetess at Delphos would not go into the temple once when Alexander wished to consult the oracle. He then forced her to go, when she said, “ My son, thou art invincible” ; a remark which led him to believe he should always conquer in war. Luther was so earnest in his prayers that it used to be said, “ He will not be denied.” When Scotland was in danger of becoming Popish, John Knox prayed most mightily for its preservation in the true faith. “ Give me Scotland,” he pleaded, “ or I die” ; and his prayers have been answered. Epaphras “ laboured fervently in prayer.” Christ “ being in an agony, prayed the more fervently” ; and now, “ the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force.” God has pleasure in holy importunity. “ Ye shall seek Me, and find Me when ye seek Me with all your heart.” We get fervour as we “ continue instant in prayer,” and our earnestness sends up our petitions to God through Christ, and brings down the blessings which God gives in His own time and way. Fervent and persevering prayer fits us to receive the blessings which God gives. Importunate prayer has divided seas, stopped the mouths of lions, raised the dead to life, and has secured all kinds of blessings. Cecil says of those who pray as they ought, “ God denies them nothing, but with the design to give them a greater good.” If our spirit “ break with much longing,” then “ before they call, I will answer, and while they are yet speaking I will hear.” (H. R. Burton.) Luke 11:9-10 Ask, and it shall be given you The law of prayer This familiar text is usually quoted, and rightly so, as being one of the most precious promises and encouragements to prayer which the Bible contains; but if you look at the text, it is far more than a promise encouraging prayer. It is a declaration of the condition of our receiving any good gift from God. For reasons which may not be fully intelligible to us, God has limited His mercy. There is the treasure-house full of grace. You go up to it; the doors are locked. You must knock, or they will not be opened. There is the river of life open to all, but you may die from thirst on its banks unless you kneel. Ask, says Christ, then you will receive; seek, and you will find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you. This is really the final mystery of prayer. Why do we need to pray at all? Can love that waits to be asked be perfect love? And the mystery is deepened when you remember the very people that need God’ s grace most are those that never ask for it--wicked people, indifferent people, immoral people, unbelieving people, Godless people. They are the people that need the grace, and they will not ask for it. And yet God says, “ No grace unless it be sought.” Ye have not--why? Not because you do not need it. Ye have not, because ye ask not. That, I repeat, is the great mystery of prayer. I. I do not pretend to be able to offer you any full explanation of the mystery, but there are three WHICH HELP TO THE A LITTLE. 1. First of all, it is clear that prayer recognizes the sovereign freedom of the human will. Oh! it is an awful thing, that human freedom of ours! Why, my brethren, God lifts His little finger, and the stoutest heart would open its door. But if God entered a heart against its will, He would not enter a heart. He would enter a ruin. And to make prayer a condition of God’ s gift recognizes even in man’ s deepest sin the noble freedom of the human will. 2. Then, again, prayer at least implies some sympathy of the will of him who prays with God. You know that there are cables beneath the Atlantic which connect this country with America. Now and then you read in the papers that interruption has taken place in the cable. No messages pass, and the cause of the interruption is some defect in the conveying power in the wire; some fault, as the electricians call it, in the cable itself. Well, now, just so there may be moral faults in the will which may make it impossible for God to give unless we are in sympathy with Him; and to make prayer, therefore, the condition of God’ s gift is to imply inward sympathy of will with God. 3. And then, last of all, you cannot doubt--and I shall speak of that in a moment more fully--that whether we can understand the mystery of prayer or not, there is something in prayer, altogether apart from the answers which God gives to it, which justifies prayer. A great thinker once said: “ I have conquered all my doubts, not with my books, but on my knees.” “ On my knees” : ah, yes! And I have sometimes thought that if those golden gates of heaven were never opened for any answer to prayer to pass through, prayer would be enough by itself. There is something in the reflex attitude and influence and effect of prayer which makes prayer in itself a blessing. Ask, and the very asking is a grace. Seek, and before the answer comes you have found something worth finding. Knock, and that very knock is a blessing. But whether we can understand it or not, this is the law: I could almost put the law of prayer into a single sentence to which there is no exception--much prayer, much blessing; little prayer, little blessing; no prayer, no blessing. II. Now, let me turn to the brighter side of this text, and ask you to consider for a few moments some of the WHICH COME TO THOSE WHO OBEY THIS GREAT LAW OF THE KINGDOM. Let me encourage you to pray by these blessings. 1. First of all, I cannot find a word, though I have tried hard, to exactly express what I mean when I say that the first blessing of prayer is this: the unconscious cheek it imposes on the life. Any of you who spend half an hour every morning with God will know what I mean. You weave about your life a network of self-restraint never seen, most potent, most real, most felt when most needed. St. Paul had a word, a favourite word; and St. Paul was a very passionate man, a fiery man; but there was a very favourite word with him; it is translated most inadequately in our version, “ moderation.” The Greek word menus “ high mastery of self” ; and that is what prayer gives a man. 2. The other day I was reading an article by one of our scientific men who has given up all belief in the supernatural in any answers to prayer, and yet he said these words: “ If any one abandons prayer, he abandons one of the highest forces which mould and benefit human character.” I do not wonder at it. You could not go into the presence of God, if God never answered prayer, without receiving a blessing. When Moses was on the Mount, we read that he came down from it, and his face shone, though he wist it not. There are shining faces in the streets of London to-day, if you have eyes to see them--men, women, not beautiful by nature, but beautiful by what is more than nature, beautiful with God’ s own beauty. You look at them, and you think of the words in Tennyson’ s “ In Memoriam” : “ Her eyes were hymns of silent prayer.” You look at them, and you think of those better words, “ They saw His face as it had been the face of an angel.” 3. And yet the reflex blessing of prayer is as nothing, absolutely nothing, compared with its chief blessing--and with that I wish to close--that prayer has power with God. I do not shrink from the words. The prophet Hosea, describing that night of wrestling of Jacob with God, uses these words--you will find them in the Revised Version--“ In his manhood he had power with God.” Do you know what that power was? It was the power of a lame man wrestling in prayer--“ I will not let Thee go until Thou bless me.” It was the power that every soul in prayer has with God to-day. (G. S. Barrett, B. A.) Prayer certified of success Our Saviour knew right well that many difficulties would arise in connection with prayer which might tend to stagger His disciples, and therefore He has balanced every opposition by an overwhelming assurance. I. OUR SAVIOUR GIVES TO US THE WEIGHT OF HIS OWN . “ I say unto you.” 1. No laws of nature can prevent the fulfilment of the Lord’ s own word. 2. No Divine decrees can prevent the efficacy of prayer. 3. Notwithstanding God’ s majesty and thy weakness and sinfulness, thy prayer shall move the arm that moves the world. II. OUR LORD US WITH A PROMISE. 1. Note that the promise is given to several varieties of prayer. 2. Observe that these varieties of prayer are put on an ascending scale. “ Ask” --the statement of our wants. “ Seek” signifies that we marshall our arguments. “ Knock” --importunity. 3. These three methods of prayer exercise a variety of our graces. Faith asks, hope seeks, love knocks. 4. These three modes of prayer suit us in different stages of distress. There am I, a poor mendicant at mercy’ s door, I ask, and I shall receive. I lose my way, so that I cannot find Him of whom I once asked so successfully; well, then, I may seek with the certainty that I shall find. And if I am in the last stage of all, not merely poor and bewildered, but so defiled as to feel shut out from God like a leper shut out of the camp, then I may knock and the door will open to me. 5. Each one of these different descriptions of prayer is exceedingly simple. III. JESUS TO THE FACT THAT PRAYER IS HEARD. (C. H.Spurgeon.) It is sense of want that makes us to seek out It was want that caused Abraham to go down into Egypt (Genesis 12:10), Isaac into Gerar Genesis 26:1), Jacob to send his sons into Egypt (Genesis 42:2). For first, nature is proud, and loath to be beholding to any till needs must: every man naturally loves in the first place to be beholding to himself in any extremity; and if his own wit, or his own purse, or his own projects, or endeavours will help him, he will seek no further; he had rather pay than pray. Then again; life is dear, and nature is forcible to seek out for the preservation of itself, when it is necessitated and put to it, it will seek out before it suffer too much, and break through stone walls rather then famish. From hence we may conclude that there is some good comes unto us by want, some profit we may have by it. It teacheth us the worth of things most truly, and maketh us value the mercy as we should (at least far better than otherwise we would). It is the sharp winter that makes the spring to be sweet and pleasant; and the night s darkness that makes the light of the sun to be desirable: so sickness makes health more grateful; pain, pleasure more delightful; want, plenty more comfortable; and it makes exceedingly for the preservation of love and unity amongst neighbours, and towards the maintenance of civil society and commerce amongst Christians. And this is one reason why it hath pleased the manifold wisdom of God to enrich several countries with several commodities; divers gifts to several persons, not all to any one, that our wants may be supplied by their fulness, and one be beholding to another for a supply of his necessity, which otherwise would not be. Laish was a secure and careless people, and the reason is rendered to be this, “ they had no want” Judges 18:10). A fulness causeth us to contemn and scorn those whom in our wants we are glad to make use of. So we read (Judges 11:6). (N. Rogers.) True prayer must be accompanied with a sense of the want of those things we crave When we come to God by prayer, a sense of those things we ask must be brought with us. This is required (James 1:5). “ If any man lack wisdom,” i.e., if any be sensible of the lack of it and desire it. In the sense of want have God’ s servants come before Him continually. So Jehosophat, “ We know not what to do” (2 Chronicles 20:12). So Hannah (1 Samuel 1:6-15). So David (Psalms 60:11). So the Prodigal (Luke 15:17). So all the godly from time to time. This is that that puts us in a praying condition; for first, no man will ask that which he supposeth he hath no need of (Matthew 9:12); the proud Pharisee begged nothing, though he pretended thankfulness. Secondly, this is that that humbles us, and causeth us to be lowly in our own eyes; it is the having of some good that puffeth up, not the want of it. Thirdly, without a sense of the want of what we ask, we shall never earnestly desire it, nor use the means for the obtaining of it. It is want that makes us to seek out, as it did that man we heard of before, who went to his friend at midnight. Fourthly, should we have what we crave, yet without sense of want of the mercy, we should never prize it. Now there is a three-fold want that must be taken special notice of when we come to God by prayer. First of the blessing itself which we desire to have, be it outward or inward, corporal or spiritual, temporal or eternal; of what kind soever it be, we must be sensible, and have a feeling of it, and value it accordingly. A second want that we must take notice of is our own disability to help ourselves, and the disability of any other creature in heaven or earth to supply our wants. Thirdly, of our own unworthiness to obtain that we crave, we must be sensible. (N. Rogers.) The efficacy of importunate prayer I. WHAT IS PRAYER? 1. It is restless. 2. Will not take either the privative “ nay” of silence, or the positive “ nay” of denial. 3. Nor will it take a contumelious repulse. 4. Impudent in a holy manner. I remember a story of a poor woman in Essex condemned to die: she falls to crying and screeching, as if she meant to pierce the heavens; the judge and those on the bench bid her hold her peace. “ O my Lord,” said she, “ it is for my life I beg, I beseech you; it is for my life.” So when a soul comes before God, and begs for mercy, he must consider that it is for his life. II. WHY WE MUST SEEK . 1. God loves to be sought unto. 2. We should not be lukewarm in seeking mercy. It was a custom among the Romans, when any was condemned to die, if he looked for mercy, he was to bring father and mother, and all his kinsmen and acquaintance, and they should all come with tears in their faces, and with tattered garments, and kneel down and beg before the judge, and cry mightily; and then they thought justice was honoured. Thus they honoured justice in man, for a man condemned to die; and so the Lord loves His mercy should be honoured, &c., and therefore He will have prayer to be importunate, that it may appear by groans how highly we esteem of grace; our souls must pant and gasp after grace, the breath of the Lord being the soul of our souls, our hearts will die without it. This is to the honour of mercy, therefore the Lord will have us importunate. 3. As importunity must be in regard of God’ s mercy, so it must he in regard of ourselves, else we cannot tell how to esteem it. Soon come, soon gone; lightly gotten, suddenly forgotten; I have it, come let us be jovial and spend it, when this is gone, I know where to have more; but if he had wrought for it, and also must work for more, if he mean to have more, he would better esteem it. What then is the reason, may some man say, why so few are importunate in prayer? I answer-- 1. Because men count prayer a penance. 2. Men content themselves with formality. 3. Because they are gentlemen-beggars. Their hearts are full of pride. 4. Because they have wrong conceits of prayer. (1) They have high conceits of their own prayers; they cannot pray in a morning, between the pillow and the blankets, half asleep and half awake, but they think that they have done God good service; so that He cannot afford to damn them. Lord, how do I abuse the throne of grace? how do I abuse Thy sabbaths, Thy house, Thy name, and all the holy ordinances which I go about? A man that is importunate in prayer is ashamed; but when they think highly of their prayers, they are insolent, their prayers are damned, and they too. (2) As men have high conceits of their prayers, so they have mean conceits of their sins, they think not their sins so bad as they are. (3) As men have mean thoughts of their sins, so they have base thoughts of God. I cannot think God will be so strict. They think God will pardon them, and therefore because of this, men are not importunate with God. (4) Because they have wrong conceits of importunity. If a man knock once or twice, or thrice, and none answer, presently he will be gone; this is for want of manners; thou wilt knock seven times, if thou be importunate with them: they within may say, hold thy peace, begone, etc., but thou wilt not so be answered. Beloved, men are close-handed, they are loath to give; and they are close-hearted too, they are loath to take the pains to ask of God; they are loath others should be importunate with them, and therefore they are loath to be importunate with God. (W. Fenner, B. D.) Importunate prayer I. SIGNS OF PRAYER. 1. The prayer of a godly heart. 2. The prayer of a pure conscience. 3. A prayer full of strong arguments. 4. A stout prayer. 5. A wakeful prayer. 6. A prayer that will not be quiet till it get assurance that God has heard it. II. PRAYERS THAT ARE NOT . 1. A lazy prayer. That man that ploughs his field, and digs his vineyard, that man prays for a good harvest; if a man pray to God never so much, yet if he do not use the means, he cannot obtain the thing he prays for. Even so it is with grace; a man may pray for all the graces of God’ s Spirit, and yet never get any, unless he labour for them in the use of the means. God cannot abide lazy beggars, that cannot abide to follow their calling, but if they can get anything by begging they will never set themselves to work. So, many there be, that if they can get pardon of sin for begging, then they will have it; but let such know that the Lord will not give it for such lazy kind of praying. God gives not men repentance, faith, &c by miracles, but by means. Thou must then use the means, and keep watch and ward over thine own soul, that so thou mayest get the grace thou prayest for. 2. A prayer that is not a full prayer, never speeds with God; but an importunate prayer is a full prayer, it is a pouring out of the heart, yea of the whole heart (Psalms 62:8). 3. Snatch-prayer is no importunate prayer; when men pray by snatches, because of sluggishness, or because their hearts are eager about other business. 4. Silent prayers are never importunate. Many go to God, and tell God they must needs have mercy, and fain they would have mercy, and yet they are silent in confessing the sin they should. Hast thou been a drunkard, and dost thou think that the Lord will for give thee for crying, “ Lord, forgive me,” etc. No, no, thou must insist on it, and say, “ Against Thy word I have been a drunkard, my conscience told me so, but I would not hear; I have felt the motions of Thy Holy Spirit stirring against me, and I regarded not; now if Thou shouldst turn me into hell, I were well requited; so many sermons have I neglected; I have wronged others in this kind, and I have been the cause why many are now in hell if they repented not. I have prayed for mercy, yet with the dog to his vomit have I returned, and therefore for all my prayers Thou mayest cast me into hell for ever; and now I have prayed, yet it is a hundred to one but I shall run into my old sin again; yet as I expect forgiveness, so I desire to make a covenant to give over all my sinful courses, and I am justly damned if I go to them again.” Such a kind of prayer the Lord loves. 5. Seldom prayer is no importunate prayer; when the soul contents itself with seldom coming before the throne of grace; an importunate soul is ever frequenting the way of mercy, and the gate of Christ; he is often at the threshold before God, in all prayer and humiliation. 6. Lukewarm-prayer is not an importunate prayer; when a man prays, but is not fervent, when a man labours not to wind up his soul to God in prayer. 7. Bye-thoughts in prayer keep prayer from being importunate; as when a man prays and lets his heart go a wool-gathering. I remember a story of an unworthy orator, who being to make an acclamation, O earth! O heaven! when he said O heaven, he looked down to the earth; and when he said O earth, he looked up to heaven. So, many when they pray to God in heaven, their thoughts are on the earth: these prayers can never be importunate. When a man prays, the Lord looks that his heart should be fixed on his prayer; for our hearts will leak, and the best child of God, do what he can, shall have bye-thoughts in prayer. Consider O Lord (saith David) how I mourn (Psalms 55:1-23.). There was something in the prophet’ s prayer that did vex him, and that made him so much the more to mourn before God. But as for you that can have bye-thoughts in prayer, and let them abide with you, your prayers are not importunate; the heathen shall rise up against you and condemn you. I remember a story of a certain youth, who being in the temple with Alexander, when he was to offer incense to his god, and the youth holding the golden censer with the fire in it, a coal fell on the youth’ s hand and burnt his wrist; but the youth considering what a sacred thing he was about, for all he felt his wrist to be burnt, yet he would not stir, but continued still to the end. This I speak to shame those that can let anything, though never so small, to disturb them, yea (if it were possible) lesser things than nothing; for if nothing come to draw their hearts away, they themselves will employ their hearts. III. How TO GET IN PRAYER. 1. Labour to know thy own misery. 2. You must be sensible of your misery. 3. Observe the prayers of God’ s people. 4. Get a stock of prayer. 5. Labour to be full of good works. 6. Labour to reform thy household. (W. Fenner, B. D.) The prayer of faith The prayer of faith includes the following attributes: 1. Earnest desire. 2. Submission. 3. Dependence. 4. An earnest and diligent use of means. 5. Deep humility. 6. Faith. 7. Perseverance. 8. An absorbing regard for the glory of God. (The Preacher’ s Treasury.) The value of prayer Undoubtedly, God’ s rule of action in nature we have every reason to regard as unalterable; established as an inflexible and faithful basis of expectation, and so far embodying the essential conditions of intellectual and moral life, and, for that reason, not open to perpetual variation on the suggestion of occasional moral contingencies. Petitions, therefore, for purely physical events other than those which are already on their way--e, g., for the arrest of a heavenly body, the diverting of a storm, the omission of a tide--must be condemned, as at variance with the known method of providential rule. But a large proportion of temporal events are not like these, dealt out to us from the mere physical elements; they come to us with a mixed origin, from the natural world indeed, yet through the lines of human life, and as affected by the human will. The diseases from which we suffer visit us in conformity with the order of nature, yet are often self-incurred. The shipwreck that makes desolate five hundred homes is due to forces which may be named and reckoned, yet also, it may be, to the negligence which failed to take account of them in time. Wherever these elements of character enter into the result, so that it will differ according to the moral agent’ s attitude of mind, it is plainly not beyond the reach of a purely spiritual influence to modify a temporal event. The cry of entreaty from the bedside of fever will not reduce the patient’ s temperature, or banish his delirium; but if there be human treatment on which the crisis hangs, may so illuminate the mind, and temper the heart, and sweeten the whole scene around, as to alight upon the healing change, and turn the shadow of death aside. The prayer of Cromwell’ s troopers, kneeling on the field, could not lessen the numbers or blunt the weapons of the cavaliers, but might give such fire of zeal and coolness of thought as to turn each man into an organ of Almighty justice, and carry the victory which he implored. Wherever the living contact between the human spirit and the Divine can set in operation our very considerable control over the combinations and processes of the natural world, there is still left a scope, practically indefinite, for prayer, that the bitter cup of outward suffering may pass away--only never without the trustful relapse, “ Not my will, but Thine, be done.” (James Martineau, LL. D.) Is the prayer of faith always answered? I haven’ t time to answer that question as I should like to do; but faith must have a warrant. A good many people think they have faith enough when they ask for certain things; yet their prayers are not answered, and they wonder why. The trouble is, their faith had no warrant. For instance, if I should go out to meet the army of Midian at the head of three hundred men with empty pitchers I should probably be routed. Gideon had a warrant. God told him to go, and he went, and Midian couldn’ t stand. We have got to have some foundation for our faith, some promise of God to base our faith upon. Then again, if we don’ t get our prayers answered just as we want them it is no sign that God doesn’ t answer prayer. For instance, my little boy when he was eight years old wanted a pony. He got his answer; it was “ No.” Was his prayer answered? Of course it was. I got him a goat. A pony might have kicked his head off. A goat was a good deal better for a boy eight years old than a pony. It is a foolish idea to think that God has got to do everything you ask. You will notice that the people whose prayers are recorded in the Bible didn’ t always have their prayers answered just as they wanted them to be, but often in some other way. In all true prayer you will say, “ Not my will, but Thine, be done” ; and all true prayer will be answered if you have made it in that spirit. God likes to have His children ask for just what they want, even though the answer He will give may be Very different from what they expect. I want my children to ask me for what they want, but I don’ t give them all they ask for by a good deal. So make your requests known unto God, and the peace of God shall keep you. Look at those three men of Scripture that take up more room than any other three men in the whole Bible--Moses, Elijah, and Paul. Look at Moses and Elijah in the Old Testament. They didn’ t get their prayers answered in the way they wanted them, and yet God answered their prayers. You remember Moses wanted to go with the children of Israel into the goodly land, the promised land. You can imagine how strong that desire was after he had been with them for forty years wandering in the desert. He wanted to go into the promised land, and see his children settled in their home. But it wasn’ t the will of God that Moses should go. And that wasn’ t because God did not love Moses, for He took him up into Pisgah and showed him the whole country. A great many years later Moses did stand in the promised land, on the Mount of Transfiguration. His prayer wasn’ t answered in his way. God had better things in store for Moses; and certainly I would rather be on the Mount of Transfiguration with Jesus Christ, and Peter, James, and John, than to have had to go over and fight as Joshua did. So we are not to think that God doesn’ t answer our prayers because He doesn’ t answer them just in the way and the time we want them answered. Take Elijah. If there ever was a man that knew how to pray it was Elijah. In the power of prayer he stood before Ahab and wrought wonders. After all that he prayed that he might die under the juniper tree. Was his prayer answered in his way? Why, he was the only man under that dispensation who was to go to heaven without dying. I heard of a little boy, four years old, who asked his father to let him take a razor in his hand. His father said, “ Oh, no, my boy; you will cut yourself.” Then that little fellow just sat down and cried as if his heart would break. A great many grown-up people are just like that--they are praying for razors. Elijah prayed for a razor--he wanted his throat cut. But his prayer wasn’ t answered that way. God wasn’ t going to take his life, or let him take it. He had something better for him. And now look at Paul. No one takes up so much space in the New Testament as Paul, and if there ever was a man that had power with God he had it; and yet he prayed three times that the Lord would take the thorn out of his flesh. The Lord said, “ I won’ t take it out, but I will give you more grace” ; and Paul said, “ Thank God! I wouldn’ t have it taken out now if I could. I have got more grace by it.” If you have got a thorn in the flesh remember that God has sent it for some wise purpose. God sends us tribulations for our good. Paul said he gloried in persecutions, because they lifted him nearer to God and made him more like Jesus Christ. (D. L. Moody.) Revival always possible A plain, shrewd man, in one of the daily,, prayer meetings, said that praying for a revival is “ just like digging for water. Suppose a community as ignorant of the terms of obtaining water as we are of the conditions of revival. They apply to a scientific man, to know whether there is any way to obtain a constant supply of living water. They rather infer, from the fact that it rains tremendously sometimes without their help, that the supply of water is one for which they are ordained to wait passively, and that when it does not rain in their vessels, they must wait as patiently as they may. But if there is water to be had otherwise in a dry time, they would make any exertion to get at it. “ Certainly there is,” their teacher responds, “ water everywhere, water without limit, under your very feet.” “ How shall we get it.” “ By digging for it.” “ How far must we dig?” “ Five, ten, twenty, or even a hundred feet; in some places a thousand feet will not reach it. But no matter; if it is five thousand feet down, digging will invariably bring it. All you have to do is to dig till you find it.” Seeking and finding A young lady was seated in a cottage in the North-West of Spain, trying, in very imperfect and recently-acquired Spanish, to make plain the way of salvation to a group of poor villagers who had assembled to hear her. She had just said: “ Jesus is able to save you to-day; is there any one here really wanting salvation?” Immediately a curious-looking little man rose from his seat, and throwing himself on his knees in the centre of the room, the tears streaming down his weather-beaten cheeks, cried out: “ Oh, I do want to be saved! I would rather have the salvation of my soul than all the good things in this world.” Unable to express herself as she would, she said: “ Only Jesus can save. Seek Jesus.” In his ignorance and superstition, the poor peasant took her words literally, and started off after the meeting to seek Jesus, climbing the mountains, hunting the pine forests and the sea-shore, lie did this for three days and nights. At length, weary and disheartened, he threw himself on the ground, in a field, and, with his face on the earth, groaned out his agony of soul to the God of heaven. In His tender compassion lie heard this poor man’ s cry, and filled his soul with joy and gladness, enabling him to trust in the unseen Lord. He had sought the bodily presence of Christ--a mistake very natural to a man always seeing images of the saints, while the living Saviour, by His Holy Spirit, lifted the veil from his understanding, and revealed Himself, the Light of life, more present and real than any earthly object. When he next appeared at the meeting, his face shone with the joy of heaven, as he told of the wonderful change God had wrought in his soul. Adam’ s sons are a generation of seekers but all are not happy in finding what they seek: but you must know that there is a two-fold seeking; one right and true, when all due circumstances are observed therein; that fails not. And there is another kind of seeking, which is unsound and hypocritical; no marvel if that be unsuccessful. 1. Some there are that seek what they should not seek, but rather shun. 2. Others seek recta, but not recte: right things, but they seek not rightly. 3. Some fail in the quando; they seek, but out of season. 4. Some again seek, but not in the place right. 5. Others fail in the sicut; it may be they seek in due time, and in the right place too, but they fail in the manner of seeking, they seek not as they should. Some seek without eyes; they have the eyes of sense and reason, but that of faith is wanting; they seek ignorantly, and unbelievingly, their eyes are not opened, they know not what belongs to their peace. Some seek, but without a light. Some seek, but without humility, proudly and boastingly; not upon their knees, but tiptoes. Some seek, but without sincerity; fictitiously and hypocritically. Some seek, but not purely and chastely; they seek nor grace for grace’ s sake, nor Christ, for Christ’ s sake Hosea 7:14; Isaiah 6:26). Some seek but not fervently and earnestly: “ They seek not as for silver” (Proverbs 2:4). Lastly, some seek not constantly and perseveringly: “ Seek the Lord and His strength, seek His face evermore,” saith David (Psalms 105:4). Wherefore, be we encouraged to “ set our hearts to seek the Lord aright” (1 Chronicles 22:19). Seek what you should seek, seek where you should seek, seek when you should seek, seek as you ought to seek, and rest assured that your labour shall not be in vain; you shall find. In seeking for earthly things at man’ s hands we often fail; but if we seek the best at God’ s hands we always speed. We may go to the physician and seek health, but meet with death; we may go to the lawyer and seek for law and justice, and meet with injustice and oppression; we may seek to friends for kindness and favour, and find enmity and hatred from them! All that seek to men speed not, though their requests be never so just and honest (as we find Luke 18:1). But whom did God ever send away with a sad heart that sought Him sincerely. Suetonius reports of Titus that he was wont to say that none should go away from speaking with a prince with a sad heart. God likes it not that we should go from Him with a dejected spirit: it is our own fault if we do. (N. Rogers.) The subjective theory of prayer [That, namely, which restricts the value of prayer to the influence it exerts on the man who prays.] On this thing, Dr. Bushnell says, “ Prayer becomes a kind of dumb-boll exercise--good as exercise, but not to be answered.” Let the Saviour’ s words be carried out in the various figures used, on this theory, and its absurdity becomes at once apparent. 1. He bids us “ ask.” Imagine a child asking for some favour, or for the relief of some want, and standing, hour after hour, repeating his requests, and being told by the father: “ Go on asking, my child; it does you much good to ask. The longer you ask, the more good it will do you. Do not expect to receive anything, however, as the principal benefit of asking is that, by and by, you will not want anything, and will cease to make any request.” 2. Jesus bids us “ seek.” Imagine a mother seeking a lost child. She looks through the house and along the streets, then searches the fields and woods, and examines the river-banks. A wise neighbour meets her and says: “ Seek on; look everywhere; search every accessible place. You will not find, indeed; but then seeking is a good thing. It puts the mind on the stretch; it fixes the attention; it aids observation; it makes the idea of the child very real. And then after a while, you will cease to want your child. 3. The word of Christ is “ Knock.” Imagine a man knocking at the door of a house, long and loud. After he has done this for an hour, a window opens and the occupant of the house puts out his head, and says: “ That is right, my friend; I shall not open the door, but then keep on knocking. It is excellent exercise and you will be the healthier for it. Knock away till sundown, and then come again, and knock all to-morrow. After some days thus spent, you will attain to a state of mind in which you will no longer care to come in.” Is this what Jesus intended us to understand? No doubt one would thus soon cease to ask, to seek, and to knock, but would it not be from disgust? (W. W. Patton, D. D.) Urgency in prayer The emphatic reduplication of the injunction marks what stress the Speaker laid upon it. So does the rising scale of intensity in the words employed: ask--seek--knock. To seek is a more industrious, and solicitous, and animated kind of asking. We ask for what we want; we seek for that which we have lost: and this sense of loss sharpens at once our need and our desire. Again: to knock is a description of seeking at once most helpless and most importunate; since he who seeks admission at his friends’ door has nothing else to do but go on knocking till he be answered. The asker will study best how to state his plea when once he gains a hearing, but may never care to seek another opportunity. The seeker will make, or watch for, opportunities of access to the patron whose favourable ear he hopes to gain, but, often baffled, may grow weary in his efforts. The knocker must simply trust to the force of patience and of repetition, sure that if he knock long enough he shall be heard, and that, if he continue to knock long enough, he must be attended to. It would be impossible to teach with greater emphasis the idea that prayer is a laborious and enduring exercise of the human spirit, to which we need to be moved by a vivid, unresting, never-ending experience of our own need, and in which we ought to be sustained by a fixed certainty that God will hear us in the end. (J. O. Dykes, D. D.) The reasonableness of prayer The principal objection which the thought of our time makes to the efficacy of prayer is based upon the scientific idea of law. Law, it is said, reigns throughout the universe, and is unchangeable and deaf to all entreaty. The truth of all this must be ungrudgingly conceded. If it were not true, if the order of nature were not invariable, there could be no science. No stronger proof that there is an intelligent and benevolent Power, upholding and directing the course of nature, can possibly be given to a thoughtful mind, than its unbroken order and the invariable methods of the Divine will. Such, then, is the Reign of Law, and no man, it is said, can grasp the conception and enter into intelligent sympathy with it, without abandoning the fond conceit that God will grant a favour to one of His creatures on being asked to do so. It may have been pardonable to pray for rain, for health, for freedom from pestilence and famine, when these things were supposed to depend upon the caprice of an omnipotent will, but the scientific idea of law renders these prayers absurd. Well, now, I do not pretend to give a complete answer to this objection; but I have a sufficient answer. It is the commonest fact of human life that man makes the forces and unchanging methods of nature the servants of his will. In this way he makes natural forces perform achievements which, when compared with any merely natural occurrences, might strictly be called supernatural. Now, if man, with his limited knowledge of the laws of the material world, can make them serve his turn in so many ingenious and surprising ways, while their order goes on unbroken, surely an Almighty and all-wise God, by skilful combinations of existing forces, and without departing from a single method to which His wisdom is pledged, can execute the behests of His own will. Surely He has not given man a greater liberty than He has left Himself. But this answer I have given is met by two objections. 1. It is said man’ s interference with the order of nature is obvious, it is a visible interposition, but who has ever marked the point where God interposes? If he counteracted one law of nature by another to meet the pleadings of His petitioners, would not science have detected His supernatural agency? Certainly not. No scientific man can explain what Force is, upon what its variations of intensity depend, or how its changes of form are brought about. 2. But then, there is another objection--that it is inconsistent with the wisdom of an omniscient God to suppose that He would ever alter His plan at the request of His creatures. Without pressing the answer that, as a God intent upon moral ends, it is part of His plan to leave room for answers to prayer, there is the obvious fact that God actually allows human beings to alter His plan, for His plan means here the original order of nature. The free will, the caprice, if you like, of human beings is constantly originating changes in nature which would not have been if they had not been, or would have been different if they had been other than they are. Now surely what man, for the purpose of his education and progress, has been permitted to do, God, having an eye to the same purpose, must be free to do Himself. The objections against the reasonableness of prayer from the point of view of the scientific conception of law, if valid at all, are valid for a great deal too much. They all imply that man is not free, that every thought of his mind and act of his will are as much determined for him by fixed laws as the course of the wind or the advance of the tide. And if this were true responsibility would be at an end; benevolence and murder would be simply different aspects of nature, like sunshine and storm. Religion would be a mere dream, resembling the fantastic forms of the mist as it catches the changing currents of the passing breeze. But there are very few who would not passionately reject a conclusion that contradicts our consciousness, and writes “ vanity” over all the noblest and most pathetic passages of human history. (E. W. Shalders, B. A.) Ask and it shall be given you This is a very defective world. Everybody says so. We have here only the rudiments of things. There is beauty and there is blessing; but only in fragments. The consequence is that we hear endless murmuring and complaining. 1. “ Ask and it shall be given you,” is the reply of God. I have given you half; the other half is in My hand. You build a house, and one stone is wanting to complete it; you search everywhere, and are angry because you find it not. It is with Me; I have kept it purposely, that your house may not be built without Me. You build a ship; but the rudder is not forthcoming. I have kept it, that you may ask and receive, and discover that the whole is My gift.” 2. Ask in the right quarter and it shall be given you. 3. Ask in the right way. Let God prescribe how we shall ask Him. 4. Ask for the most essential gifts first. Men on a wreck would ask for a sail, not for an embroidered garment. 5. Ask for regulated tastes and desires. This one gift will cut off at once a thousand occasions of murmuring. 6. Ask with importunity. 7. Ask in faith. (G. Bowen.) Ask and it shall be given you Perhaps you shrink from the very thought of mentioning your desires to God. You know enough of the character of God to be aware that the desires which occupy so large a place in your mind, are such as could not be communicated to Him without shame. After all, the best thing, in fact the only good thing you can do with these desires, is to take them to God and expose them to Him, and ask Him in infinite mercy to deliver you from them. Those wrong desires are your worst enemies, and until you be delivered from them there cannot be the dawn of salvation for you. Death came into the heart of Eve in the form of a desire for the forbidden fruit; and blessed would it have been for her if she had hastened to the tree of life seeking deliverance from that internal foe. Ask, then, for the Spirit of power-and of truth to come into your heart, and subdue the vain desires that war against the soul. To have been brought to desire that which is good, is itself an infinite gain--far more to be esteemed than mines of gold and silver. Yes, a man with right desires and nothing else, is at the foot of a ladder leading up to a throne of life, light, and immortality; and bending angels hold out to him their friendly hands. Whereas a man with wrong desires, though a thousand camels fail to convey his riches, is wending a way that descends more and more precipitously to night and everlasting confusion. (G. Bowen.) The principle of the text illustrated “ We want a railroad into Italy,” cries the world, “ and can go no farther for this mountain. What shall we do to find a way?” “ There is no way,” Heaven answers, “ except to your persistency; but if you seek, you shall find; if you knock, it shall be opened unto you.” And so the seeking of the answer to that prayer of the nations is entrusted to the keen sight of men whose searching will never tire until the way is found. The knocking is with hard steel at the hard rock, and it is only a question of persistence and endurance; then at last it has come to pass that even the heart of the unwilling mountain is won, and its midnight sleep driven away; and where for countless ages there has been only an utter and unutterable silence, there is now the mighty response of an answered prayer in the thunder of the locomotive. (R. Collyer.) Every one that asketh receiveth We have here no mere surmise on our part as to what becomes of the prayers which we present; it is a distinct affirmation concerning them on the part of God Himself to whom we present them. There is something very definite and precise about these words; there is no explaining them away, or attaching to them any other meaning than the clearly obvious one, every one that asks does receive, and every one that seeks does find. Prayer, however, is necessarily a matter in which two are concerned; and, as such, we have only heard what God has to say on it. What have we ourselves to say on it? Can we, from our hearts, echo God’ s words, and testify from our own experience to their truth? Or, rather, is not the sad and perplexing experience of every praying man this: “ How often have I asked and not received, sought without finding, and knocked without any door being opened to me!” How, then, shall we reconcile these two utterances--that of God, to whom we address our prayers, and that of our own experience, as we vainly wait for an answer to our prayers? We must remember that the words in Luke 11:10 are God’ s utterance as to prayer, and not man’ s; and we must admit the likelihood that God from the position from which He views prayer, may have laws relating to it which perhaps must be hidden from us. We must remember that in Luke 11:10 we are not told that they that ask shall see that they receive; that they that seek shall at once have evidence that they find; but simply that they do receive, they do find. Christ reveals this to us in order that, whatever our experience may be, we may know if we cannot see, that every one that seeks does find. He does not tell us that henceforth our experience shall no longer seem to be at variance with the great statement of the passage; it must often seem to be at variance with it, so long as we live on this earth. What Christ does is mercifully to explain to us how this seeming variance may in reality cover an actual and bountiful answer to our prayers. (W. F. Herbert.) If a son shall ask bread The illustration of the egg and the scorpion is not to be found in the parallel passage of St. Matthew. It introduces no new thought, but only strengthens the emphasis of what has been said already. It may be observed that the stone represents to us useless gifts, the serpent and the scorpion, things which are actually pernicious. If human fathers would not give either the one or the Other to their children, it is inconceivable that our Father in heaven will mock the prayers of His children who call upon Him. And if He does not mock them, what will He give in answer to His children’ s prayers? In the Sermon on the Mount our Lord says that He will give “ good things” ; here the language is more definite, “ the Holy Spirit.” The comparison of the two suggests that the best things which we can ask of God are spiritual blessings; we may ask many things which seem good to us, and they may not really be good; but the Holy Spirit is a perfect gift; it must always be well for us to ask for it; it can never be to our detriment to receive it; therefore, while we are cautious how we ask for other gifts, we may always be instant in prayer for greater and still greater influences of the Holy Spirit upon our hearts. (Bishop H. Goodwin.) You foolish, ignorant children of the great Father in heaven doubt and mourn because the things you pray for are often denied you; but put yourselves, for a moment, in God’ s place, so far as to consider the prayers of your little children to you--children whose folly, as compared with your wisdom, is as nothing to your folly when compared with God’ s wisdom. 1. Your child comes to you one day hungry, and begging for bread, and, seeing a round, flat stone by your side which bears some resemblance to a loaf, he asks you for it, not for food, but for stone, supposing it to be bread. You do not give it him, but you take him by the hand and lead him home, where there is bread in plenty. The child is hungry, and as you lead him on he is not only hungry, but grieved and sad. “ My father,” he says, “ whom I have been taught to love and trust, will not even grant me such a simple necessary as a loaf of bread to appease my hunger.” You do not give him the thing he prayed for, but are you not fully answering the child’ s prayer? What he prayed for really was bread, and it is bread that you are about to give him; the cause of the child’ s grief lies simply in his own childish mistake about the stone. 2. But Christ takes a further case, and not quite a parallel one. Your child, hungry again, comes to you as you wander through the meadow by the river, and asks you for a fish; and seeing a shining thing by yon which he takes to be a fish, he asks you for that, that he may get his hunger satisfied. Again you refuse him, and again he is grieved and perplexed at your refusal as you lead him to the well-spread table at home; but this time you have led your child not merely, as before, from a stone, which would simply have failed to satisfy him, but you have refused him a serpent, which would have poisoned him. 3. And now, Christ would say, these are just the kind of prayers which are constantly rising up from us to our Father in heaven, and the seeming want of answer to which awakens in us such constant doubt and murmuring and complaint. (1) A stone may look very much like a loaf to a little child, and health or wealth may look very like peace of mind to us; but what if God knows better than we do? (2) A serpent may look very like a fish to a child, and worldly prosperity in any form may look very much like well-being to us; but what if God knows that prosperity would be to us, net only like a hard stone to a hungry child, utterly unsatisfying and quite harmless, but like a venomous serpent that has a deadly sting? That is just what prosperity has been to many a man--it has poisoned his soul. And that, we may be very sure, is what prosperity would be to us, if God denied it to us. 4. We have been considering hitherto the denims of God to our prayers, for it is they assuredly which perplex us most. But does God merely answer our prayers by denying them? Is it His care merely to shield us from harm, without bestowing upon us any actual, positive good? Not so. “ Every one that asketh receiveth.” Not only is the foolish request denied, but some real and bountiful blessing is actually bestowed. If you refuse the stone or the serpent to your child, still you do not leave him to starve. “ If ye then … Holy Spirit to them that ask Him?” “ Yes,” you say, “ the Holy Spirit; but look at our manifold daily needs as they throng together in our morning prayers; will this one gift of the Holy Spirit supply and satisfy all these?” Not all your desires, for you desire stones and serpents, which would break your teeth and poison your life; but all your needs the Holy Spirit can supply; and, more than that, in no other way, except through the Holy Spirit, can your needs be supplied in that bountiful way in which God delights to supply them--in the way, that is, which enriches your spiritual life at the same time, and by the same means as your natural life is enriched. (W. F. Herbert.) The common articles of food on the shores of the Lake of Tiberius were fish, bread, and eggs. The poor look for nothing else to-day. (E. Stapler, D. D.) A scorpion This crab-like member of the articulata is very common in Palestine, where more than eight species are known. The most dangerous variety is the black rock-scorpion, as thick as a finger, and five or six inches long; others are yellow, brown, white, red, or striped and banded. During cold weather they lie dormant, but at the return of heat they crawl forth from beneath the stones under which they have lain hidden, or out of the crevices of walls and chinks of other kinds, and make their way, not only to the paths where men pass, but into houses, where they get below sleeping-mats, carpets, or clothes, or creep into shoes or slippers. They are carnivorous by nature, living on beetles, insects, and the like; but they sting whatever frightens or irritates them. Occasionally the sting causes death. (C. Geikie, D. D.) The commanding object of prayer I have been thankful a thousand times that God does not absolutely and unconditionally promise in His Holy Word, any temporal, worldly, sensible blessing in answer to prayer, but only the gift of the Holy Ghost. The order of His kingdom would have been subverted if He had. I know not if there would have been in that case any true prayer for the Holy Ghost at all. The one great, unconditioned, unqualified promise of the gift of the Holy Spirit is purely personal, individual. No absolute promise anywhere that a saint shall receive the Holy Ghost for others by asking, or that on his praying acceptably, it shall be given to other than the one that prays. “ To them that ask Him.” (G. F.Magorm, D. D.) God’ s character viewed through man’ s higher nature Consider the use which is here made of human nature by our Saviour in the interpretation of God. By direct analogy our Master taught us to infer the nature of God. If ye, then, being evil, being selfish, imperfect, give good gifts to your children; if parental love, poor as it is, is not so poor but that it will give to the child what the child wants and asks for, within the limits of his own benefit; if ye, being low down in giving power, do these things; if it is simply impossible for a child to appeal to a father or a mother for necessary things without a response, and without the benefit, how much more shall your heavenly Father, &c. Jesus stands and says, “ Your Father is ineffably more a Father than you.” Here, then, is our Master taking the great facts of human experience, and laying them as a part of the argument over against the Divine nature, and saying, “ This which in you exists in miniature, in the imperfect condition, exists in God in transcendent measure, magnified, augmented, deepened, enriched, more fruitful and more powerful. If we have the products of the temperate zone out of our half developed affections, God is tropical, eternal summer. (H. W. Beecher.) The Holy Spirit In the Greek of the New Testament the word rendered “ Spirit” is the word constantly employed to denote “ wind” ; and the idea which it suggests is that of an influence in the realm of souls corresponding to the wind in the material world--subtle, untraceable, yet everywhere felt, all-penetrating, all-powerful--with a diversity of operations, too; now a whispering breeze, then an air-torrent; now breathing in calm contemplation, then inspiring a might before which the powers of evil are scattered and broken. Do you ask in what this Spirit is? Ask rather in what it is not. I. THERE IS A HOLY SPIRIT IN NATURE. Far be from us the theology which relegates creation to the mythical past. God as truly creates, as He created, the heavens and the earth. II. GOD’ S SPIRIT IS ALSO IN HIS , and in our whole experience of life. III. THE HOLY SPIRIT OF GOD IS IN ALL THE PURE LIVES, GOOD , AND HUMAN THAT ARE AROUND US. IV. THE HOLY SPIRIT IS IN JESUS CHRIST. The old liturgical formula, “ The Holy Ghost proceeding from the Father and the Son,” is not the “ mere dogma of a creed, but the fundamental truth of the Christian life. V. But this is not all. Between human beings presence is . Without word or act, influence, clearly felt and recognized, goes forth from one to the other, especially from the more powerful spirit of the two, if the weaker be confiding and loving, so that a revered and cherished presence is always felt to be a power. Thus must it be of necessity with the Divine presence, and so have all felt it who desire so to feel it. VI. If this Divine influence, this Holy Spirit, be not a mere dogma, but a vital and present reality, IT BELONGS TO US TO SEEK IT, TO PREPARE FOR IT, TO WELCOME IT. (A. P. Peabody, D. D. , LL. D.) The gift of the Holy Spirit I. THE GIFT. The Holy Spirit is the essence of all good things; He is the highest good. This is the first promise of the gift to the disciples. II. THE GIVER. The heavenly Father is the Giver, and the one thing which I notice about Him is the great willingness with which our Lord says He gives this blessing. III. THE OF THE SPIRIT. 1. Who may receive into his soul the Holy Spirit? A man may be imperfect and in some respects “ evil,” and yet receive the Spirit. The disciples were “ evil.” The Saviour says so here. Yet He encourages them to ask for and expect the Spirit. Put away the thought from your minds that you must wait until you are holy before you can get the Spirit. You never will be holy until you receive the Spirit. 2. How is He to be received! By simple asking. Let us say, “ Lord, teach us how to pray,” and, having learned how to pray, we shall only need to ask for the Spirit, and He will be given us. (A. Scott.) The Holy Spirit in relation to missionary work Let us try to realize our dependence upon the Holy Spirit for every spiritual power essential to the accomplishment of our missionary work. Consider our dependence upon the Holy Ghost. I. As THE SOURCE OF ALL . II. AS THE SOURCE OF ALL . III. AS THE SOURCE OF OUR UNITY. IV. AS THE SOURCE OF JOY. And now there are three questions which I wish to put. 1. Are we filled with the Holy Ghost? 2. Is a new Pentecost possible to us? 3. How is the fulness of the Spirit to be obtained? (Griffith John.) Simply to ask I was told lately by a young man who had been in Scotland, that he came one day to a gate, when the gate-keeper’ s little girl ran down and shut it, saying, “ You have not to pay anything to pass; you have only to say, ‘ Please allow me to go through.’” The young man did as he was directed, and simply repeated, “ Please allow me to go through,” and the gate was immediately opened. The owner just wished to preserve the right of entrance; that was all. So, simply “ ask, and it shall he given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.” (C. H.Spurgeon.) Answered prayers If in a whole generation tens of thousands of men are praying to God for the things which they need, and if the result of their prayers, in long periods, is to give them larger judgment, better balance, more of those qualities which go to make manhood, then these results are an answer to their prayers. It may not be an answer to individual prayer; it may not be a specific answer to prayer; but it is larger and better than that--it is an answer to prayer such as God sees to be best adapted to thewants of those who pray. I hold that his prayer is answered who rises into the presence of God in such a way that for the time being he feels that he is in the Divine presence. In other words, I think that the whole tone of a man’ s moral sense and of his intellectual life will be altered by having stood consciously in the presence of Supreme Wisdom, Purity, Goodness, and Power. One day when I was with Mr. Hicks, the painter, I saw on his table some high-coloured stones, and I asked him what they were for. He said they were to keep his eye up to tone. He explained that when he was working in pigments, insensibly his sense of colour was lowered or weakened, and that by having a pure colour near him he brought it up again, just as the musician, by his test-fork, brings himself up to the right pitch. (H. W. Beecher.) Our privilege to ask largely There is not the slightest intimation that we can trespass by a too frequent application. It is a challenge to our faith. “ Ask” ; and it looks out upon the infinite. It is for our faith to extend it, and to apply it to what treasures of grace and goodness we please. Can we not see that large asking and large expectation on our part honour God? Suppose some friend of ours, whose wealth is known to be practically unlimited, should declare his readiness and willingness to supply all our wants; suppose he should put into our hand a book of “ cheques,” all signed by his own hand, and the amounts left blank for us to fill up in need with such sums as will meet every possible exigency; and then suppose we go about half-starved, groaning with leanness and faintness, or only halfclothed, shivering in thin rags, and the shame of our nakedness bowing us down to the ground. How such a demonstration on our part would shame the truth and generosity of our friend! To ask largely of God (as Elisha asked of Elijah) will prepare us to receive a large blessing. It will control our working; it will shape our plans; it will honour God. (A. L. Stone.) Prayer an unfailing refuge When I am out of heart, I follow David’ s example, and fly for refuge to prayer, and He furnishes me with a store of prayer. I am bound to acknowledge that I have always found that my prayers have been heard and answered. In almost every instance I have received what I asked for. Hence, I feel permitted to offer up my prayers for everything that concerns me. I am inclined to imagine that there are no little things with God. His hand is as manifest in the feathers of a butterfly’ s wing, in the eye of an insect, in the folding and packing of a blossom, in the curious aqueducts by which a leaf is nourished, as in the creation of the world, and in the laws by which planets move. I understand literally the injunction--“ In everything make your requests known unto God,” and I cannot but notice how amply these prayers have been met. (Fowell Buxton.) Luke 11:13 How much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit The gift of the Holy Spirit I. WHAT IS MEANT BY THE HOLY SPIRIT. 1. He is a person, and may be grieved. 2. He intercedes for believers. 3. He guides, hears, speaks, and shows things to come. 4. He is a Divine person, and truly God. (1) Sin against Him is unpardonable. (2) Lying to Him is lying to God. (3) Temples of the Holy Ghost are temples of God. 5. The Holy Ghost is enjoyed by all believers. (1) Proved from the apostle’ s declaration (Romans 8:9). (2) Evident from our Lord’ s promise (John 7:37-39). (3) And from the method of communicating salvation (Titus 3:5-6). II. FOR WHAT PURPOSE THE HOLY GHOST IS GIVEN. 1. As a Spirit of penitence and prayer. 2. As a Spirit of power. 3. As a Spirit of consolation. 4. As a Spirit of purity. 5. As a Spirit of wisdom. 6. As a Spirit of fruitfulness. III. THE MANNER OF ASKING FOR THE HOLY SPIRIT. 1. They must ask in sincerity. 2. They must ask evangelically. 3. Ask importunately. 4. Ask in faith. IV. THE WORDS OF OUR TEXT ARE TO HOPE. “ If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him.” 1. Here we notice that mankind are evil. Yet, “ they know how to give good gifts unto their children.” 2. God is His people’ s Father. (1) He is their heavenly Father. (2) Covenant Father. (3) Good. (4) Wise. (5) Gracious. (T. B. Baker.) The efficacy of prayer for obtaining the Holy Spirit The force of which argument depends upon a double comparison, of the quality of the persons giving, and of the nature of the gift. I. I shall show what is comprehended in this gift of the Holy Spirit, and how great a blessing and benefit it is. St. Matthew expresseth this somewhat differently: “ How much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask Him?” (Matthew 7:11). Which, compared with the expression here in St. Luke, doth intimate to us, that the Spirit of God is the chief of blessings, or rather the sum of all good things. II. We shall in the next place consider what kind of asking, in order to the obtaining of this great blessing, is here required by our Saviour, when He says, “ God will give His Holy Spirit to them that ask Him.” It must have these three qualifications: 1. It must be hearty and sincere, in opposition to formal and hypocritical asking. 2. It must be earnest and fervent, and importunate, in opposition to cold, and faint, and careless asking. 3. It must be in faith, and a confident assurance that God will hear us, in opposition to doubting and distrust. III. To confirm and illustrate the truth of this proposition, that God is very ready to give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him. 1. From God’ s free promise and declaration. And besides that here in the text, I might produce several others, but I shall mention only one, which is very plain and express, and conceived in terms as large and universal as can well be devised (James 1:5). 2. From the comparison here used. It is a plain and undeniable argument, fitted to all capacities, because it proceeds upon two suppositions which every man must acknowledge to be true. 1. That earthly parents have generally such a natural affection for their children, as does strongly incline them to give them such good things as are necessary and convenient for them, and which will not suffer them, instead of good things, to give them such things as either are no wise useful, or any wise hurtful to them. This is a matter of common, and certain, and sensible experience, which no man can deny. 2. The other supposition, which is as evident in reason as the former is in experience, is this: that God is better than men, and that there is infinitely more goodness in Him than in the best man in the world; because goodness in its most exalted degree and highest perfection is essential to that notion which all men have of God; and this being a common principle, in which men are universally agreed, no man can gainsay it. But, for the farther illustration of this argument, we will consider a little more particularly the terms of the comparison which our Saviour here useth; our earthly and our heavenly Father; temporal and spiritual good things. 1. Our earthly and our heavenly Father; in which terms the givers are compared together. Now there are three considerations in a giver, which makes him capable of being bountiful, and dispose him to it. (1) That he have where withal to be liberal, and can part with it without damage and prejudice to himself. (2) That he be good-natured, and have a mind to give. (3) That he be related to those to whom he gives, and be concerned in their welfare. Now all these considerations are more eminently in God, and with far greater advantage, than in any father upon earth. 2. Let us compare likewise temporal and spiritual good things; in which terms you have the gifts compared together. So that the whole force of the argument comes to this: that if we believe that earthly parents have any good inclinations towards their children, and are willing to bestow upon them the necessaries of life, we have much more reason to believe that God our heavenly Father is much more ready “ to give His Holy Spirit to them that ask Him” ; whether we consider the quality of the giver, or the nature of the gift. Application: 1. This is a matter of great encouragement to us under the sense of our own weakness and impotency. 2. Let us earnestly beg of God His Holy Spirit, seeing it is so necessary to us, and God is so ready to bestow this best of gifts upon us. 3. Let us take heed of “ grieving the Spirit of God,” and provoking Him to withdraw Himself from us. 4. God’ s readiness to afford the grace and assistance of His Holy Spirit to us, to enable us to the performance of our duty, and the obedience of His laws, makes all wilful sin and disobedience inexcusable. (Archbishop Tillotson.) Right replies to right requests In this chapter there is an evident progress. It opens by the disciples asking the Lord to teach them to pray. To that He gave a full and sufficient reply; He prepared them an outline of what complete prayer should be. Then the chapter proceeds a little further to answer a question: we are shown how to pray, but will God really answer us? Is prayer only meant to do good to the suppliant? Does it end with the benefit which it works in us, or does it really affect the heart of God? The answer is given by our Lord with great clearness. We have a parable to show that as importunity does evidently affect men, so importunity will also gain an answer from God, that He will be pleased to give us what we need if we do but know how, with incessant earnestness, to come again and again to Him in prayer. We are assured that asking is attended with receiving, that seeking is attended with finding, that knocking will lead to opening, that it is not a vain thing to pray. The truth here taught is not that God will refuse us evil things if in our mistake we ask for them; that is a truth, but it is not alluded to here; the one statement of this verse is, that prayers for good things will be answered, and that they will not be answered with gifts wearing the mere appearance of good, but with the actual good things desired. That simple thought I shall endeavour to enlarge upon in this morning’ s discourse. I. RIGHT PRAYERS, RIGHT ANSWERS. The child asks bread, his father does not give him a stone. We shall have when we pray for needful things, the really needful things themselves, not the imitation of them, but the actual blessings. And if our faith grows a little stronger, and having obtained bread we ask for fish, not absolutely a necessary, but a comfort and a relish; if we make bold to ask for spiritual comforts, consoling gifts and ennobling graces, something over and above what is absolutely needful to save us, our heavenly Father will not mock us by giving us superficial comforts which might be injurious as a serpent; He will give us so much of comfort as we can bear; and it shall be pure, holy, healthy comfort. And if, gathering more confidence still, we ask for an egg, which I take it was in Christ’ s day a rarer luxury, we shall not be deluded by its counterfeit. That is our first point--prayer for good things meets a good answer. II. Then the question will arise in every heart: “ It seems then that I have only to ascertain that my prayer is for a really good thing, and I shall have it?” Just so, and hence, secondly, THE PRAYER FOR THE BEST THING IS SUREST OF AN ANSWER, for, saith the text, “ How much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him?” 1. There is no doubt about the Holy Spirit being a good thing; when we therefore ask for Him, for His Divine presence and influence, we may rest assured that God will give it. Make that our first point under this head--God will give the Holy Spirit to them that ask for Him. 2. From the connection in which the text stands, I gather the following remark, namely, that it will truly be the Holy Spirit. Go back again to that first thought. The child asks bread, and does not get a stone; you ask the Holy Spirit, and you shall receive the Holy Spirit. 3. But it appears plainly enough from the text that this Holy Spirit is to be given in answer to prayer. He will give you the real Spirit: no enthusiasm that might mislead you, no fanaticism that might injure you, no self-conceit that might become like a deadly scorpion to you, but His own gentle, truthful, infallible, Holy Spirit He will give to them that ask Him. III. Now for our last point. THE BEST OF PRAYERS, WHICH IS SURE TO BE HEARD, IS ALSO A MOST ONE. Turn to the parallel passage in the gospel of Matthew (Matthew 7:11). Now what does our text say, “ How much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him?” Is it not clear then that the Holy Spirit is the equivalent for “ good things,” and that, in fact, when the Lord gives us the Holy Spirit He gives us all “ good things” ? What a comprehensive prayer then is the prayer for the Spirit of God. (C. H. Spurgeon.) The good gift I. THE FACT HERE TAKEN FOR GRANTED--that earthly parents, though evil, know how to give good gifts unto their children. It is not said that parents know how to choose always what is best for their children. Neither would our Lord assert that parental affection is never overpowered by other principles. Long misbehaviour has sometimes induced a father to disinherit his son. Such, and so strong, is natural affection: a principle, necessary indeed for the preservation of the species; and so deeply implanted by our all-wise Creator, that it still survives the wreck of everything else that once was good in man. II. THE , FOR THE OF WHICH THIS FACT IS ALLUDED TO. The doctrine is, that your heavenly Father is much more likely to give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him. Now, by following up the comparison which our Lord makes in the text, we shall see abundant reason for concluding, that God is not only as affectionate, but infinitely more so, than any human benefactor. For I may ask, in the first place, with Moses-- 1. “ Is not He thy Father, that hath bought thee? hath He not made thee and established thee?” Has not Creation made you His children? and did He make you to destroy you? “ But you think of your sins!” You do well; but think also of the unfathomable mines of love, which those sins have brought to light. 2. What can this heavenly Father bestow on His children more worthy the name of a “ good gift” than His Holy Spirit? He has given His Son; yet even that gift avails us not, till the Spirit be added. 3. Is the spiritual bounty of our heavenly Father limited, like the affection of earthly parents, to those who can prove that they are His children? No--it is far more wide and expansive. It is offered to all that are Hischildren by Creation; without stopping to consider whether they are such by regeneration or no. For here again our Lord makes a change in His language. It is not--“ How much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to His children” ; but--“ to them that ask Him.” (J. Jowett, M. D.) The best gift I. The Holy Spirit is spoken of, in the text, as the best gift which God in His rich bounty can bestow on man. And, if we consider who the Holy Spirit is, and what He does for those who truly believe in Christ, we need not wonder that our Lord should thus speak of this unspeakable gift. He is our Guide, our Comforter, our Sanctifier. II. It is a plain and easy way which God has appointed for us, to obtain this precious gift: He will “ give His Holy Spirit to them that ask Him.” We are told “ in everything by prayer” to “ let” our “ requests be made known mite God.” (E. Blencowe, M. A.) The gift of the Holy Spirit I. OUR as the followers of Christ. 1. What is meant by the Holy Spirit. 2. The Holy Ghost is enjoyed by all real Christians. 3. For what purposes He is received by them. (1) As a Spirit of penitence and prayer. (2) As a Spirit of power. (3) As a Spirit of comfort. (4) As a Spirit of purity. (5) As a Spirit of wisdom. (6) As a Spirit of fruitfulness. II. OUR DUTY. To ask as God requires. 1. Sincerely. 2. Evangelically. 3. Importunately. 4. Believingly. III. These words also OUR HOPE. Application: 1. Recollect your privilege with suitable acts of piety. Such as--self-examination. Do you enjoy this gift as a Spirit of penitence, &c. (2 Corinthians 12:5). Humiliation: on account of your enjoying no more of it James 4:2; James 4:8-10). Holy care: to cherish and improve what Divine influence you enjoy. By obeying Christ (Revelation 3:2); and imitating St. Paul (Philippians 3:13-14). 2. Recollect your duty with perseverance in it (Colossians 4:2). 3. Recollect your encouragement with steadfast hope--of receiving the Holy Spirit in all His influences; as a Spirit of prayer, penitence, power, &c. (Theological Sketch-book.) The availability of the Holy Spirit For every moral virtue, for the first germ of spiritual life, for growth, development, usefulness and increase we are dependent on the Holy Spirit. The great want of the times. I. Is THE HOLY SPIRIT ? Can His presence be secured? Surely. 1. If we consider the character of God, His universal beneficence, His desire to make His sentient and intelligent creatures happy, we need have no doubt. 2. This argument gains force in the light of God’ s great love in giving His Son for the reclamation of His lost race. If willing to make the greater sacrifice, will He not be willing to make the less? 3. Our argument as to the availability of the Holy Spirit becomes absolutely conclusive when we consider that He is the promised and special gift both of the Father and of the Son. II. HOW SHALL WE REALIZE THE OF THE HOLY SPIRIT? 1. Common interest and sympathy, and united prayer. 2. Avoidance of all known sins. 3. A sense of need, of dependence, of meekness, of unworthiness, of penitence, and an earnest heart-cry for help. (S. D. Burchard, D. D.) The gift of the Spirit Four central principles underlie this passage--in fact, underlie the Bible and all religion in the world. 1. Man has a capacity for God as truly as the stomach for food. God is as imperative a necessity to our spiritual nature as is bread for the body. 2. Man has a distinct need of God impressed upon him. The body is disquiet, if food be withheld. The soul is restless without God. 3. The Fatherhood of God is a pledge and guarantee that these deepest yearnings of man’ s nature will be gratified. A judicious parent prefers for his son character rather than fame, genius, or wealth. God also desires, above all things, our sanctification. 4. God gives the Holy Spirit to the eager, ardent, persistent, importunate soul. Do you really want it? Honestly and earnestly asking, you shall receive. You must long for the Holy Spirit more than the hungry and thirsty long for food and water; more anxiously than the storm-tossed sailor longs for the port. With this spirit you may be sure of an answer, and as much more sure as God is better than the best human parent. (H. L.Thompson.) How God feels towards mankind Here is what the Redeemer says to you, and me; and all: If you want to know how God feels towards you, and how ready God is to give you everything that is really good: here is something to go by. You know how much you would do for your children: you know how anxious you are to care for them in every way. You know how a father will work, and how a mother will watch, all for the good of their little ones. You know how much of the work that is done by men in this world, and how much of the care that is felt, is not for themselves at all, but for their children: all for them. After the dream of fame is past--after ambition is outgrown--the man toils on as steadfastly and earnestly as in his most hopeful and most aspiring days, that he may provide for his little ones; that he may see them in comfort and happiness; that he may push them on (as he trusts and prays) to be far better and happier than ever he was himself. The human heart is always the same: you do that now, my friends; and so you may be sure that people did that long ago, in the days when Christ was here. Well, says Christ you know all that. You know all that, says His blessed voice: and now hear Me and believe Me when I tell you, that the great Father above is just like that; only a thousand-fold better. If even you, sinful and evil, would wear your fingers to the bone, would lose your rest, would cut off every selfish indulgence, that you might see your children’ s wants supplied, that you might see the little things happy and good--then take this blessed truth to your heart, that in all you feel toward your children, you have a faint and far reflection of how the great God above feels toward you. He feels for us just like that: cares for us, loves us, wishes us well, works for us. (A. K. H. Boyd, D. D.) Prayer for the Spirit answered 1. Our privilege here exhibited. 2. Our duty prescribed. 3. our hope encouraged. (Anon.) God’ s care for His children far greater than man’ s Let us now consider the truth that God differs from an earthly father by being far kinder, wiser, and better. O brethren, there is an immense deal suggested by that “ how much more!” It would be an unspeakable comfort to us--it would be a glorious and comfortable truth--that God was just as willing to give us all we need as you kind-hearted people are to give what is needful to your little child. I think I know men and women who have hearts so good and kind; who are so ready to do what they can to make their own children happy, or to add to the happiness of any little child; that I should feel safe enough and sure enough in going, sinful, weary, to Almighty God, to ask for His mercy and His Blessed Spirit, even if I knew no more than this, that I should find such a welcome at His throne of grace as these good men and women would give to any suffering, helpless child, even if it were not their own. But “ how much more!” What a silent reference to an inconceivable depth of love and pity in the heart of God! It is as if Christ had said to those whom He addressed, You cannot understand the difference--words cannot explain the difference--here is the kind of thing, in yourselves; but in God “ how much more!” Yet not a different kind of thing--the same kind of feeling you bear towards your children--only heightened up to a pitch you can never know. 1. God knows what is good for us, as no human parent can know what is good for his child. With the kindest intentions, we all know how injudicious parents often are; how often they err on the side of over-severity or of over-tenderness; how completely they sometimes mistake what is to conduce to the true good or happiness of their children; indeed it is not too much to say that a very great proportion of all the sorrow that is in this world arises from the mismanagement of parents in youth, or from the consequences of that mismanagement in after years. Now God knows us; knows what we are, and what we can do; knows what we are fit for, and how things affect us; knows all our peculiarities of temperament and disposition. He knows what we really need; He knows when to give us what we wish, and when to deny it; He knows how to make “ all things work together for good” to such as love Him. 2. Another point in which appears the superiority of the great Father to whom Christ points us above all earthly parents, is His power. He is able to do all He wishes. He has all power to give us all good things; to help and save. You know how different it is with us; how well we often know what we should like to do for our children, to make them wise and good and happy; yet how very little we can do. 3. Then God is always kind. There are unnatural parents--let us hope, very few. There are people who repel their children’ s confidence; who from mistaken principle or from a bad heart do all they can to make their children miserable; who point out with pride in the misery of a child, that things have come just as they said they would; who so act as to make us wonder that a trace of natural affection should be left in their children’ s heart. I shall not dwell on a subject so miserable, save to remind you that our heavenly Father has anticipated such a case--“ Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? Yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee!” 4. And now the last matter I shall name, as to which our heavenly Father excels the best earthly one, is that He is always near. Always within hearing; always within reach; never leaving, never forsaking; Father of the fatherless, Friend of the friendless; yea, “ When father and mother forsake me, then the Lord will take me up!” O Father of mercies, remember this word unto Thy servants, upon which Thou hast caused us to hope! (A. K. H. Boyd, D. D.) The gift of the Spirit Cotton Mather, whose endeavours as a parent were highly blessed, says: “ Let my prayers for my children be daily, with constancy. Yea, by name let me mention each one of them every day before the Lord. I would importunately beg for all suitable blessings to be bestowed on them; that God would give them grace and give them glory, and withhold no good thing from them; that God would smile on their education and give His good angels charge over them and keep them from evil, that it may not grieve them; that when their father and mother forsake them, the Lord may take them up. With importunity I would plead that promise on their behalf: ‘ The heavenly Father will give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him,’ Oh, happy children, if by asking I may obtain the Holy Spirit for them!” which every natural man, every man who lets himself alone and lives practically without God, apart from Christ, in the world, has in him a dumb spirit, and can only lose that spirit under the healing touch of Christ. 1. I might speak--but it would not affect or be true of all who hear me--of that calamity, that curse, which we designate as a bad temper. Has any one here present a bad temper? Have you not been reminded sometimes, in that experience, of the dumb spirit spoken of in the text? That sullen silence; that overcast brow; that gloomy, morose, most irritating reserve; that gathering, threatening, overhanging cloud of dull, dark, speechless displeasure, by which a long evening has been rendered miserable, and upon which night and sleep have come without mitigation and without relief; that obstinate nursing and cherishing of an untold grudge, which wakens again in the morning to its last night’ s sullenness, and seems almost to pride itself upon its tenacity and its perseverence; was not this indeed an example of possession by a dumb spirit? 2. Mark that man--his name indeed is Legion--who lives what is called an entirely preoccupied and self-engrossed life; who has his business and follows it, has his interests and pursues them, has even his pleasures and enjoys them, but in all these has in reality no partner and no associate; looks to himself as to all that most intimately touches him, and himself only; excludes from his true confidence alike friend and brother, alike child and wife; gives out in social converse the merest superficialities of his thoughts, and in domestic intercourse the veriest dregs and refuse of his being; locks up in his own bosom the affections which God gave him for blessing, pro-supposes selfishness in others because he feels it in himself, and will trust no other soul with that confidence which he knows could have no reception and no reciprocity in his own. 3. It is made in Scripture both the duty and also the test of a Christian, that his speech be not only innocent, but beneficial; not only kind and frank, but consistent also and edifying. Now, if this be so, by what name can we designate that use of speech which altogether overlooks or refuses this high object? Let us all look back, my brethren, this morning upon our past employment of the gift of language. What shall we say of it? Is not the review most disheartening? To whom can we point as having been benefited by our possession of this marvellous thing? Nay--for effects are God’ s, not ours--when did we ever set ourselves seriously to do good by our conversation. Is it not true, alas! that as to any value, any worth, contained in the gift of speech, we might as well have been bereft of it. In the judgment of Him who heareth as well as seeth in secret, the spirit which has possessed us has been no better than a dumb spirit. 4. It has been so towards man. We have done no good with our speech. And how has it been towards God? The text stands in immediate connection with a passage of Holy Scripture about prayer. Strong encouragement has been given to our halting, failing faith, in reference to the duty of seeking God in prayer. A form of prayer has been given, in answer to the request of the disciples, Lord, teach us to pray; and words have been added, which show beyond all question that it is not in God but in ourselves that the work of prayer is straitened. Then follows immediately the brief narrative of the text: “ Jesus was casting out a devil, and it was dumb.” If the possession of the evil one makes us dumb (as to all that is valuable) towards man, so also does it towards God. (Dean Vaughan.) Dumb Look at the Greek word here translated “ dumb” ; for, if it be considered that the mind of God is in any way breathed forth to us through the words of Scripture,’ those words will bear a careful investigation into their meaning. That Greek word means, in its first use, blunt, obtuse; and so a blunted or lamed man in tongue. Mark here, then, the first lesson enshrined in the little word. The power of speech was in that tongue, but that power was not presently available. The machinery of articulation was perfect, had once been used, but an intruding hand had grasped the driving-wheel, and the machinery was still. The power was there, I say, yet it was held in suspense; it needed some third stronger power to drive out the intruder and set moving the smoothly-going wheel again. Yet mark, what direction would the power take when the unloosed tongue told forth the thoughts within? Would the tongue burst forth into the direct ravings of impotent blasphemy, or speak praise from out of a convinced heart? It depended upon this, whether the intruding spirit within initiated the movement, or whether God again evoked the dormant power. Which should it be? (Canon Wilberforce.) The downward course I can never forget a picture I once saw of Satan tempting Judas to betray his Master, a picture in which the painter had pourtrayed the face of the tempter as a hideous caricature of the tempted; as if the man, if only he could suddenly turn round and look over his shoulder, would be able to see in the face and the form of Satan what he himself would one day become if he gave way to temptation, and threw in his lot with devils. The painter had caught the lesson, I believe, that this miracle teaches. Are we alive to it? It is well sometimes to view one’ s self from the outside as well as from the inside--to climb a hill, as it were, and thence look down at yourself; just as we look at some great cathedral from a neighbouring hill, and from that elevation see a wholly different aspect from that which we gain by merely looking at it from the inside. Look, then, my brethren, very briefly at some of the causes which induce this terrible change, and at the remedies which God provides. The change is threefold: a blunted tongue, a defective hearing, a dulled mind--all these are implied in that one Greek word. A tongue that cannot speak to God, an ear that cannot hear His word, a mind too dull to receive Him--how do these come to you? How is it that the dumb spirit broods so heavily over many now? Brethren, it is because there is a great deception still kept up by the father of lies, because he finds an ally in our breasts “ in that infection of nature which doth remain; yea, in them that are regenerate.” There is much outside business in religion in the present day; there is much need for those who are thus busy to ask themselves, “ Is my heart silencing or silent towards God?” There is nowadays much outside conformity to the Cross of Christ; there is surely much need for the conformers to ascertain whether their hearts and their lives are telling the story that their lips so often repeat. I speak to those who are struggling, however feebly; who are praying, however dumbly; who are turning to God, however uncertainly. Mark then, first, the silencing process employed by Satan, whereby he quenches the answering power of the spirit to the drawings of God. First, it is a gradual process--a slight impeding of the freedom of action--a little poison of sin which gently impedes the circulation of the spiritual life. So surely as the unused muscle or the long-bandaged limb loses strength, so does the impeded soul lose its power of communing with God. A neglected faculty becomes a withering faculty. A religion that becomes mechanical stops of itself. The power of faith towards God unused, unexercised, dwindles, decays, perishes, till at last one sometimes hears on a death-bed that awful self-pronounced sentence:--“ I cannot pray--I have forgotten how: I cannot believe--it is so long since I thought of God.” Again, all indulgence of tastes that lead us from God weakens the spiritual apprehension and warps the understanding, or there comes the loss of the power of all sound judgment which we see so remarkably in sinners. The old words of Solomon are fulfilled. “ They err who devise evil.” They look upon all questions of morality from their own standpoints which is an ever-lowering point. They now see no harm in that which would have once shocked them--no sin in that which once would have appalled them. They are satisfied; and satisfaction with a low moral standard is one of the surest signs of a dumb spirit. They have no gratitude to God, and inability to thank our God is an unfailing symptom of a silenced tongue. And if so, brethren, in conclusion, what is the cure? The old heathen philosophy honestly confessed that it could find no cure. “ Plato,” said Socrates (we read), “ perhaps the gods can forgive deliberate sin, but I do not see how.” In the life and death of Christ the Saviour the mystery is solved, and the cure is made plain. The difficulty in this case is that the deaf cannot hear the words of Christ, the dumb cannot pray to Him, the blunted spirit cannot lift itself up towards Him. And yet, O my brethren, there is one sense that can be used even in the most extreme cases. Look once more at Christ as He is about to work the miracle of which I have spoken this evening. Mark how He has caught the mute appealing look in the eye of the voiceless man, as he turns instinctively to Christ for protection from the fearsome dweller within, from the tenant over whom he has long lost the power of control or the possibility of ejection. We, my brethren, can look up to Christ even when our spirits are most dull, even when our prayers are most heavy, even when the whole soul seems weighed down, oppressed, silenced by the sin in our nature. We can look up to Him when He began to struggle for the mastery with the bad habit of a lifetime, with the coldness of years, with the carelessness of a long duration. We can bring ourselves before Him (Oh, be His name ever blessed for it!), relying on His pregnant words of faithful promise. “ Him that cometh to Me I will in no wise cast out.” If there be the will to be set free Christ will know it. He knows all the Buffering, for the pangs that affect the member reach ever to the Head. By virtue of the mysterious sympathy which binds us to the incarnate God He knows it; but, my brethren, as you are wrestling with your sin Christ your God knows it. He only wants you to place yourself completely under His charge; He only asks you to obey His every direction, and He will complete the cure in His own good time. He can do it, He can make this dumb spirit eloquent with praise; He can make this deaf ear thrill with the sweetest sound; He can make this obtuse spirit quick and attentive to the Word of God; He can set us once more free, so that we may understand by how much things Divine transcend things earthly; He can set us free, so that with St. Augustine we may understand that it is because God has created the human soul for Himself that that soul cannot rest until it finds its boundless rest in the bosom of God; set us free, so that with St. Bernard we may understand that men remain unconverted simply because they remain ignorant of the character of God, picturing Him to themselves as being like themselves. He can bid the untied tongue now confess the sin, and as the full confession wells up from out of the depths of a penitent heart, he does obliterate the guilt. (Canon Wilberforce.) A dumb devil east out A friend in London, who speaks now with a voice as clear as a bell, and preaches a full salvation, spoke to me in great trouble some years after his conversion. “ You know i am such a fool; I am afraid to speak. The other day you called on some one to pray, and I shivered down to my shoes, I was so afraid you would ask me. I could not have prayed if you had paid me for it.” This dumb devil was in full possession of him. He understood everything; you could not teach him much. I said, “ You have a dumb devil. Do you believe the Lord Jesus can cast him out?” “ Yes, I believe He can.” “ Yes, the devil himself believes that, but do you believe He will?” “ I am afraid.” “ I am very glad of it; now let us kneel down and see whether the Lord will cast out the dumb devil.” We were in a railway carriage together alone. We knelt down in the carriage and prayed. He could scarcely hear my voice for the noise; I think that Wag an encouragement to him. I went on praying to the Lord to loose the string of his tongue that he might speak plainly for the glory of God. He said, “ Amen.” “ Thank God,” I said, “ the dumb devil is going.” I began to pray again. He said, “ Lord, answer prayer.” “ Amen,” I said. “ Hallelujah! the devil is going,” and sure enough he began to pray for himself. I began to praise, and he was praising too. The train stopped, but we did not know anything about it; we went on praying and praising. The collector came to the door and said “ Tickets,” but we never stopped: we continued to praise God. Oh, we were happy! The guard shut the door and went away; he thought we were two madmen, I suppose! Oh, I wish there were more of such mad people. This man had got his liberty, and, glory be to God, he has used it since then. (W. Haslam.) How devils may be expelled In Charles Kingsley’ s Life there is a story of a madman who declared that the devil had got hold of him, and would not let him sleep. “ The surgeon,” says Kingsley, “ came to me and said, ‘ As I cannot cure the man’ s mind by making his liver act, you must make his liver act by curing his mind.’ So I went to the patient and agreed with him fully that the devil was in him. ‘ And I will tell you,’ I said, ‘ why he is. It is because you have been a scoundrel. But if you will lead a new and honest life you may snap your finger at the devil.’” The “ devil” left him presently, and the man was cured. So resolution may expel the devil of worry, even after the nerves are more or less broken. (T. M. Coan, M. D.) Third Sunday in Lent And as this miracle indicated the true nature of Christ’ s mission and appointments, it was at the same time a complete demonstration of His capacity and fitness for the work. And yet, it very differently affected different classes of witnesses. 1. There were some whom it greatly amazed. “ It came to pass, when the devil was gone out, the dumb spake, and the people wondered.” These were the commoner class of persons who saw what was accomplished. Common people with common sense are the world’ s best jury in nearly every case submitted to human arbitrament. God’ s truth is never fruitless. 2. A second class of persons who witnessed this miracle consisted of certain rebellious spirits, who were ready to grasp at any absurdity, and to commit themselves to any sort of inconsistency and self-contradiction, rather than admit that Jesus was the Christ. 3. There was a third class, however, who assumed an attitude of feigned modesty in the case, who were scarcely less reprehensible. They would not say whether the miracle was of God or of the devil, but assumed to be earnest inquirers, quite ready to believe if only the Saviour would show them some “ sign from heaven.” And very good and commendable did they evidently consider themselves in the attitude which they thus assumed. To them it was quite extreme and harsh to ascribe Christ’ s miracles to the devil. They would not be guilty of such daring opposition, or commit themselves to such ultraism. No, no; they would be moderate and reasonable in their course. True, they could not yet regard the question as sufficiently cleared up for decided action. Things were a little too inchoate and indistinct as yet. They wished to have them freer from embarrassment and objection before they moved. A great deal of bitter feeling and controversy existed, and they did not wish to be prematurely mixed up with it. They would therefore hold their decision in suspense, and wait for further developments, meanwhile siding a little with both parties, consenting with the worst, yet keeping up a fair show in favour of Christ and the truth. But the Lord knew their thoughts, tore off the painted mask, and gave them to understand exactly where their pretended neutrality placed them. “ He that is not with Me is against Me: and he that gathereth not with Me scattereth abroad.” The justice of this sentence is manifest. The evidence before these people was ample. 4. But there was yet another class represented among the witnesses of this miracle. “ As He spake these things, a certain woman of the company lifted up her voice, and said unto Him, Blessed is the womb that bare Thee, and the paps which Thou hast sucked.” She spake as a mother, and she spake well and truly. Her feeling toward Christ was of a very different sort from that which so basely aspersed Him, or so hypocritically put Him aside under cover of pious friendship. She had seen the miracle, and was moved with reverence and admiration by it. Quite too fleshly and sentimental were this woman’ s thoughts and emotions. Though well enough as far as they went, they did not penetrate to the true blessedness in Jesus, or to the right conditions on which its enjoyment rests. She did not rise to that evangelism which makes His truth in our hearts a far sublimer thing than to have our blood in His veins. And it is just here that the religion of many falls short. They have great admiration for Christ, the excellence of His spirit, the beauty of His teachings, and the beneficence of His works. And it is well as far as it goes; but it is not religion. It is a mere earthly sentimentalism which fails of any saving effect. From this subject, then, let us learn the true glory and office of Jesus. He comes to us as verily the messenger and Christ of God. He comes to us with the great power of the heavens. In Him the potencies of the eternal kingdom are brought near to us. And it is all for our liberation from the thraldom and disabilities which Satan has inflicted upon us. He comes to us to open our blind eyes; to unstop our deaf ears; to loose our tied tongues; and to set us free. He comes to cast out of us the unclean and disabling spirit. From this subject let us also be admonished of the dangers that beset us of making our high privileges of none effect. The sublimest demonstrations of Christ’ s power and grace were the occasion of the deeper damnation to the Scribes and Pharisees; and we have in us the same sort of depraved hearts which they had. And, above all, let us learn from this subject what our great duty under the gospel is. It is not given by mere inference, but in plain and positive words, by the Saviour Himself. It is, to “ hear the Word of God, and keep it.” (J. A.Seiss, D. D.) Luke 11:16A sign from heaven Wishing a sign from heaven I. “ The Pharisees and Sadducees came, and tempting desired Him that He would show them a sign from heaven.” They did not take what we would account a miracle on the human body as a sufficient sign, but in the presence of many great and marvellous works they still said to Jesus, “ Show us a sign from heaven.” Here we find the spirit which cannot see in Christ, or in Christ’ s religion, its own value, and which is always going outside of it for some token or evidence of its worth. There are people to whom all religion is a thing outside of them; and they receive it, not because it meets any want in their hearts, or because they need it, but because it comes with an outside authority and show. What was there so far wrong in seeking a sign from heaven, that the people should be found fault with for demanding it? Now there are many things which people might be justified in not believing until they had seen some sign from heaven. But the great truths which Christ taught were truths which Came home to the hearts and consciences of men. These need no sign from heaven or earth; they are their own witnesses to every man who hears them. When Christ taught the people, as He had just been doing, that the things which truly defiled a man were not the things he touched and ate, but the things which were in his heart, his thoughts and wishes, and the things he spoke and did, that teaching needed no sign, could have no sign, from heaven greater than itself. If you were to convince a man that be had done something wrong, and if you were to ask him to repent of the wrong, what would you say suppose he were to reply, “ Show me a sign from heaven that I ought to repent” ? Suppose, again, a man were taken out of darkness and allowed to gaze round on hill and sky and sea, how would you receive his demand, “ Show me a sign from heaven that these things are what they are” ? The light in which he is living is the standing sign from heaven, the only one, and the best. And in the same way, the only and the best sign from heaven in the things of the spirit, is the truth acting on the conscience and the heart. If a man can see nothing there, who can enlighten him? If a man is always asking you for an outward sign to prove that a moral or religious fact is true, if he has no touchstone in his own inner life to which he can bring it, how is he possibly to find such a touchstone outside of him? This was the condition of those persons who came to Christ demanding of Him sign from heaven. And His reply to them proceeds upon the fact that they had signs all around them for their guidance in religion, as truly as they had signs for their guidance in the common affairs of life. Jesus Christ turns what is too often considered a secular object of inquiry into one of the most religious kind. It is too often taken for granted that the study of the signs of the times is not so “ much a religious as a political work. Christ’ s teaching was in itself a sign from heaven. It was a sign which no man who looked on human society could afford to despise. It came home to men’ s hearts; it brought new life, new comfort, new sources of hope and strength to mankind. II. On the part of disciples and friends, as well as enemies, there is often a misunderstanding of Christ’ s words. And thin fact is illustrated hero in a striking way. Jesus said to the disciples, “ Take heed and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees.” What words could be simpler or more intelligible? They did not at the moment connect His warning with any previous incident. “ It is,” said they, “ because we have taken no bread.” Their minds were on a very different level; they were engrossed with things of a very different kind from any which were troubling Christ, and naturally they regarded His words from their own point of view, and interpreted His teaching through their own state of mind and feeling. “ Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, and of the leaven of the Sadducees.” Both Pharisee and Sadducee had lost the earnestness and sincerity which are essential to a true life; and our Lord warns His disciples against their hypocrisy, their insincerity, their shallow and outside religion, their inward contempt of all that was really good and worthy in religion and in human life. What is chiefly wanted to render religious teaching intelligible and valuable, is this spirit of sympathy between those who speak and those who hear. For want of this, much that would otherwise be plain is misunderstood altogether. Indeed you find often that it is not words, but thoughts and things, which are strange to men who do not enter into the spirit of them. There are numerous hindrances, perhaps, in our own life and in its general spirit to the reception of Christian teaching and the power of it. The impression which I wish to convey by all I have said is principally this-- 1. That we are to look for the great evidence of all religion in the religion itself. Believe that the light is its own best evidence, and that truth by its power on the human soul is enough. 2. And that sympathy with the Divine Teacher is required, in order to understand His teaching; and that this sympathy is best produced and kept strong by making the whole tone and spirit of His life the familiar tone and spirit of our own lives, and by taking to heart more than ever the great facts which are so prominent in the life and spirit of Jesus Christ. (A. Watson.) The gospel sign addressed to faith Now what makes this a subject of interest to us is, that our Lord does expressly promise all Christians a certain gracious manifestation of Himself, which it is natural, at first sight, to suppose a sensible one: and many persons understand it to be such, as if it were not more blessed to believe than to see. Now, that this great gift, whatever it be, is of a nature to impart illumination, sanctity, and peace, to the soul to which it comes, far from disputing, I would earnestly maintain. And, in this indirect way, doubtless, it is in a certain sense apprehended and perceived; perceived in its effects, with a consciousness that those effects cannot come of themselves, but imply a gift from which they come, and a presence of which they are, as it were, the shadow, a voice of which they are the echo. But there are persons who desire the inward manifestation of Christ to be much more sensible than this. They will not be contented without some sensible sign and direct evidence that God loves them; some assurance, in which faith has no part, that God has chosen them; and which may answer to their anticipations of what Scripture calls “ the secret of the Lord,” and “ that hidden manna” which Christ invites us to partake. Some men, for instance, hold that their conscience would have no peace, unless they recollected the time when they were converted from darkness to light, from a state of wrath to the kingdom of God. Others go further, and think that without a distinct inward assurance of his salvation, a man is not in a saving state. This is what men often conceive; not considering that whatever be the manifestation promised to Christians by our Lord, it is not likely to be more sensible and more intelligible than the great sign of His own resurrection. Yet even that, like the miracle wrought upon Jonah, was in secret, and they who believed without seeing it were more blessed than those who saw. All this accords with what is told us about particular Divine manifestations in other parts of Scripture. The saints reflected on them afterwards, and mastered them, but can hardly be considered as sensible of them at the very time. Thus Jacob after the vision, says, “ Surely the Lord is in this place, and I knew it not.” Manoah said to his wife, after the angel had departed, “ We shall surely die, because we have seen God” Genesis 28:16; Judges 13:22; Judges 6:22; Acts 12:9-11). Let no one think it strange to say that God may be holding communion with us without our knowing it. Do not all good thoughts come from Him? Yet are we sensible that they so come? Can we tell how they come? We commonly speak of being influenced by God’ s grace, and resisting His grace; this implies a certain awful intercourse between the soul and God; yet who will say that he himself can tell in particular instances when God moves him, and when he is responding this way or that 7 It is one thing, then, to receive impressions, another to reflect upon them and to be conscious of them. I have been speaking of the signs which He Himself promised; but others were announced concerning Him by His servants, and these, let it be observed, are secret also, and addressed to faith. The prophet Isaiah was commissioned to promise Ahaz a sign, “ Ask thee a sign of the Lord thy God,” he says, “ ask it either in the depth or in the height above.” When Ahaz would not speak, the prophet proceeded: “ The Lord Himself shall give you a sign; behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a Son, and shall call His name Immanuel.” Yet could there be a sign more secret, less exposed to the senses, less addressed to the reason, than the conception of Christ? It was a miracle, yet not an evidence. And so again, when our Lord was born, the angel gave the shepherds a sign; but which was the greater evidence, the angel himself, and the multitude of the heavenly host, or the sign itself which he sent them to see? “ This shall be a sign unto you,” he said; “ ye shall see the Babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.” Was this an evidence of greatness or of meanness? Did it prove Him to be God, or was it a trial of faith? And so again, though it is not called a sign, yet it had been published in the manner of a sign, that the Lord should suddenly come to His temple, even the “ Messenger of the Covenant,” that “ the glory of the latter house should be greater than that of the former,” and that God would “ glorify the house of His glory.” But how did He come to fulfil these prophecies? As an infant in arms, recognized by one or two holy persons, and that by means of faith, without pomp, or display of greatness. Yet still Simeon said undoubtingly, Mine eyes have seen Thy salvation; a light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of Thy people Israel.” What is true in these instances is true of all the parts of our Lord’ s gracious economy. He was “ manifested in the flesh, justified in the spirit, seen of angels preached unto the Gentile, believed on in the world, received up into glory,” yet what was the nature of the manifestation? The annunciation was secret; the nativity was secret; the miraculous fasting in the wilderness was secret; the resurrection secret; the ascension not far from secret; the abiding presence secret. One thing alone was public, and in the eyes of the world--His death; the only event which did not speak of His divinity, the only event in which He seemed a sign, not of power, but of weakness. Let us not seek then for signs and wonders, or ask for sensible inward tokens of God’ s favour; let us not indulge enthusiasm, or become the slaves of superstition, who are children of God by faith. Faith only can introduce us to the unseen presence of God; let us venture to believe, let us make trial before we see, and the evidence which others demand before believing, we shall gain more abundantly by believing. Almighty God is hidden from us; the world does not discover Him to us; we may go to the right hand and the left, but we find Him not. Opposed to this generous and vigorous faith are carnal blindness and grossness of heart, of which Scripture speaks so often. Whatever there is of spiritual light within us is quenched by indulging our natural tastes and appetites. Our Lord says, “ Ye cannot serve God and mammon.” He bids us watch and pray, and beware of eating and drinking, buying and selling, marrying and being given in marriage. We cannot have our eyes at once on this world and on the other, Those who live in the sun’ s glare, can see nothing in twilight: but those when eyes are used to the shade, see many things which the others will not believe they can see. So is it with our souls; the minding of the flesh aiming at this world’ s goods, seeking to rise or succeed in life, gazing on greatness, rank, distinction, abundance, pomp and show, coveting wealth, measuring things by wealth, eating and drinking without restraint, placing no curb upon the passions, exercising no self-command, living without rule, indolently and weakly following the first idea which presents itself, the first impulse, the first temptation, all this makes the heart irreligious. Then it is that men ask for clearer evidence, and reject the truth; then they say, “ How can these things be?” (J. H.Newman.) Luke 11:17-20 Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation The power of the King over the arch-enemy I. THE OF THE SINNER. What a condition it is! It is summed up in that twenty-first verse, “ When the strong man armed keepeth his palace his goods are in peace.” I will ask you to notice the five particulars here specified in that proud usurper’ s dominion--First, his personality; second, his power; third, his panoply; fourth, his palace; fifth, his peace. II. THE POWER OF THE SAVIOUR. Satan is strong, but the Divine Master is stronger. Upon that citadel the Lord Christ does not hesitate to advance. Man-soul is summoned. He effects an entrance, and more than that, He achieves the victory. He shall not only come upon him, but overcome him. And then a mighty transformation takes place in the soul of the believer. He divides the spoil. The faculties of the man are not to be destroyed; they are to be altered. What shall we say to it? Whatever it is, it teaches us that the whole powers of the restored man are to be laid at the feet of this Saviour. Mark what is said concerning Satan: that he keeps his gates in peace. Blessed be God, when the transformation is effected, a greater, stronger one than he is also able to keep His gates in peace. III. I close with one word of WARNING. You know that warning word. He goes on immediately to say, “ He that is not with Me is against Me, and he that gathereth not with Me scattereth abroad.” He is saying to us, Beware of compromise; beware of half-and-half work in this matter of full surrender of your being to Him. What does He mean? I will endeavour by a story to illustrate what He says. Some years ago there was a rich man who possessed the whole of the town in which he lived, with the exception of one poor, small, and dirty hovel. He was greatly minded to possess the whole. He asked the price. The poor man, miserly and cunning, probably asked an exorbitant sum. “ It is too much,” said the would-be purchaser; “ but I will tell you what I will do--I will cover this table with sovereigns.” “ No,” said the other; “ no, I must have them on end!” “ It is too much,” said the purchaser. “ No,” said the other, “ I must have them on end” ; and so the bargaining went on, until the would-be purchaser gave up the business. As he left the room, the miser, looking at him with a leer on his face, said, “ Remember I the town belongs to thee and me.” My dear brethren, Satan, if I may so express it, made a harder bargain with the Captain of our salvation than did that miser. We are redeemed, not with corruptible things as silver and gold, but with the blood of Christ. Shall it ever be that that cruel enemy shall come up to our Lord, and, pointing to the citadel of your or my heart, shall say, “ Remember, the town belongs to me and Thee.” But is there no lesson in that passage which follows? “ When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man he walketh through dry places, seeking rest, but findeth none,” and if he can find in you and me a foothold he will use it. It is my house, he says, and he comes back again; he comes seeking admission, and if he finds a place in our citadel he occupies it. He may be cast out as an unclean spirit, but he may return transformed as an angel of light, but an unclean spirit still. Is there no danger of this? I believe there is. Take heed that ye be not deceived. What is the remedy? I only know of one. It is to be God-possessed. It is to let that flag of Calvary float from roof to turret. It is to let God be in possession. Light expels darkness, health expels disease, God turns out Satan. (E. W. Moore.) The personality and power of the devil I. SATAN IS A PERSON. See how he is described. He is a man, active, intelligent, resolute, understanding his position, prepared to hold his own against all comers, to maintain his place at all hazards. Could there be anything more exactly in harmony with the purposes and designs of the arch-adversary than that he should circulate a report that he does not exist? I remember years ago the late Rev-Canon Conway saying that, if a gang of housebreakers came into a neighbourhood, could there be any possible report more suited to their purposes than an announcement, which was generally believed, that there were no such persons as burglars, that if robberies occurred, or lives were lost, it was due exclusively to the folly and misguided character of the inmates of the houses, but that no blame could be attributed to housebreakers, for no such persons existed? II. But we will pass on to notice from his personality, his POWER. He is not only a man, but he is a strong man. My brethren, no good soldier despises his enemy. Satan is not a hobgoblin of the nursery, as some one has said--an easy name that we can utter in jest. Satan is a terrible being. Have you not experienced his power? I doubt not that I speak to hundreds who have. If you let him alone, it is most probable he will let you alone too. If you be in the attitude of hostility to him you will soon find out his power. In the fifth chapter of Mark’ s Gospel you will see the power of the demoniac, and the power which held that man. His power is backed by his panoply. You have it here; he is not only strong, but he is a strong man armed. He is not content with his own strength, so to speak, for the defence of his citadel, but he arms the poor citadel with defensive armour--the helmet of presumption, and the breastplate of pride, and the net-work shield of unbelief, and the coated mail of secret sin, and the fiery darts of venom and spite, and envy, and lust, and greed, which he hurls against all intruders. A palace is a dwelling-place for kings. Whose is this palace? What is this dwelling? My brethren, have we fully realized that you and I were intended to be nothing else than residences of Deity? Have we fully grasped the great thought that this is the culmination of God’ s dealing with us? Does God now till His people’ s hearts with joy and the Holy Ghost? Satan can fill the heart of Ananias to lie to the Holy Ghost. The parallel is complete. Do you believe in haunted houses, ghost stories, and spectres with clanking chains? They may be fables, but there is terrible and solemn truth behind them. Has it ever occurred to you and me that unless thin night we are possessed of God, as we sit in this room we are haunted houses--h-uses in which the devils live. It is one of the most startling descriptions that Scripture gives of the condition of the sinner, that Satan is not merely near him; Satan is in him. What an awful word is that in Luke 22:3, where we read that Satan entered into Judas surnamed Iscariot, being of the number of the twelve. What is this, a human being the house of an evil one? Every man can do what he will in his own house. An Englishman’ s house is his castle. What is this description that is given? Why, that Satan reigns and rules in the human heart of his slaves; that he goes in and out; that he opens and no man shuts, and shuts and no man opens. What an awful description! and the most remarkable thing about it all is the particulars with which it closes. While the strong man armed keepeth his palace, his goods are in peace. What peace? Peace, yes there is peace. It is the peace of death! Is that the peace that you and I desire? Only some half-hour ago, I heard a lady who had been travelling in the Riviera, the scene of the late earthquakes, say that before the rumble which brought the terrible disaster she felt that there was a stillness, a solemn stillness. It seemed as if nature held its breath; it seemed unnatural; it was unnatural; it was a presage of the coming storm. And this deadly slumber in which souls are left by the prince of darkness--slumber indeed, and peace-like it is--is a presage of the terrible awakening of the storm that shall burst some day upon a guilty world. (E. W. Moore.) Jesus refutes the Pharisees How concisely and forcibly does He express His argument! It is impossible to exhibit it in a rare striking manner. But, though it cannot be improved, it may, however, be otherwise stated. Thus, it presupposes absolute impossibilities in the character of Satan: 1. In the motives which influence him. For he is supposed, first, to wish to extend his power, and then to undermine it. 2. In the means which he employs, which are thereby calculated for accomplishing opposite purposes. 3. In the objects which he has in view, which presuppose a desire to do good and to do evil at the same time. These contradictions are happily expressed by our Saviour when He represents Satan casting out Satan, and divided against himself: in other words, as possessing two opposite characters, or forming two persons with contrary qualities. (J. Thomson, D. D.) “ Divided against itself” If two ships at sea, being of one and the same squadron, shall be scattered by storm from each other, how shall they come to the relief of each other? If, again, they clash together and fall foul, how shall the one endanger the other and herself too? It was, of old, the Dutch device of two earthen pots swimming upon the water, with this motto, “ If we knock together, we sink together.” And most true it is, that if spleen or discontent set us too far one from another, or choler or anger bring us too near, it cannot but that intendment or design, whatsoever it be, like Jonah’ s gourd, shall perish in a moment, especially if the viperous and hateful worm of dissension do but smite it. (Spencer.) Luke 11:21-22A strong man armed The strong one driven out by a stronger one I. A PICTURE OF MAN IN HIS SINFUL STATE. Observe, that although man’ s hear, was intended to be the throne of God, it is now become the palace of Satan. It is said of this strong man, moreover, that he is armed. Truly the prince of the power of the air is never without weapons. His principal weapon is the lie. Then we are told that he wears armour--for we read that the stronger warrior “ taketh from him all his armour wherein he trusted.” Certain it is, the evil spirit is well accoutred in that which is proof against all terrestrial steel. Prejudice, ignorance, evil education--all these are chain-armour with which Satan girds himself. A hard heart is the impenetrable breast-plate which this evil spirit wears; a seared conscience becomes to him like greaves of brass; habitude in sin is a helmet of iron. Notice, again, this strong man: besides being armed and plated with armour, he is very watchful; for it is said “ he keepeth his palace” --keeps it like the faithful warder who with ceaseless tramp and sleepless eye holds watch upon the castle wall. He does not put on the armour to sleep in it. You may find sleeping saints, but never sleeping devils. We have in the text a good reason given why Satan thus watches over the man whose heart he inhabits, because he considers the man to be his property--“ he keepeth his goods.” They are not his in justice; whatever goods there are in the house of manhood must belong to God who built the house, and who intended to tenant it. But Satan sets up a claim and calls everything in the man his goods. The man’ s memory he makes a storehouse for ill words and bad songs; the man’ s judgment he perverts so that the scales and weights are false; the man’ s love he sets on fire with coals of hell, and his imagination be dazzles with foul delusions. He claims the whole man to be his own; and it is wonderful how readily his claim is allowed. Men fancy music in the chains with which Satan binds them, and hug the fetters which he hangs upon them. Nor is this all; Satan not only claims possession, but he claims sovereignty. You perceive it is said, “ his palace.” A palace is usually the abode of a king, so Satan considers himself a great king when he dwells in the human heart. I must not leave this picture until you have observed that it is said, “ while he keepeth his palace, his goods are in peace.” This is the most fearful sign in the whole affair. The man is quite undisturbed--conscience does not prick him: why should it? God does not alarm him: who is God, that he should obey His voice? Thoughts of hell never disturb him. Men who are stupefied with laudanum may be naked, but they are not cold; they may have empty stomachs, but they are not hungry; they may be diseased in body, but they do not feel the torment: they are drunken, and know not their misery: and so it is with the most of carnal men--nothing awakens them. II. A OF MAN FOR A TIME . Observe, then, that in the case before us the unclean spirit goes out of his own free will. Why does the evil spirit leave a man for a time? Has he not some hellish purpose in view? Certainly he has. I think it often is because he feels if he does not go out he will be driven out, but he thinks that by giving way for a time he will satisfy the conscience till he gets it lulled to sleep faster than ever. Thus he will stoop to conquer, retreat to draw his opponent into an ill position; allow his throne to shake, that he may re-establish his dominion permanently. Moreover, he thinks that by letting the man indulge in a little religion for a time, and then turn aside from it, he will make him permanently sceptical so that he will hold him fast by the iron chain of infidelity, and drag him down to hell with that book in his jaws. Now, after a time it appears that the evil spirit returned; he could find no rest for himself except in the hearts of the wicked, and therefore he came back again. There is no opposition to his entrance, the door is not locked, or if it be he has the latch-key. He comes in, there is no tenant, no man in possession, no other proprietor. He looks round and cries, “ Here is my house. I left it when I took my walks abroad, and I have come back, and here it is ready for me.” The devil shouts his “ Halloa!” and there is an echo through every room, but no intruder starts up. “ Is Christ here?” No answer. He goes outside and he looks at the lintel, for Christ’ s mark is sure to be there if Jesus is within. “ No mark of blood on the post, Christ is not here,” says he, “ it is empty, I will make myself at home” ; for if Jesus had been there, though He had been hidden in a closet, yet when He came out He would claim possession, and drive out the traitor, and say, “ Get thee gone! this is no place for thee; I have bought it with My blood, and I mean to possess it for ever.” But it is empty, and so Satan fills it with stores of evil. The next thing the fiend notices is that it is swept; as one says, “ Swept, but never washed.” Sweeping takes away the loose dirt, washing takes away all the filth. O to be washed in Jesus’ blood I Here is a man whose house is swept--the loose sins are gone. He is not a drunkard; there is a pledge over the mantelpiece. He is no longer lustful; he hates that sin or says he does, which is as much as the devil wants him to do. The place is swept so tidy, so neat, you would not know him to be the same man as he used to be; and he himself is so proud to think he has got his house so clean, and he stands up at the threshold as he meets the devil with a “ Good morning,” and he says, “ I am not as other men are--I am neither an extortioner, nor a drunkard; nor even as that Christian over yonder, who is not half what he ought to be--nor a tithe so consistent as I am.” And as the devil looks round and finds the place swept, he finds it garnished too. The man has bought some pictures--he has not real faith, but he has a fine picture of it over the fireplace; he has no love to the cross of Christ, but he hag a very handsome crucifix hanging on the wall. He has no graces of the Spirit, but he has a fine vase of flowers on the table, of other people’ s experiences and other people’ s graces, and they smell tolerably sweet. There is a fireplace without fire, but there is one of the handsomest ornaments for the fireplace that was ever bought for money. It is swept and garnished. III. A GRAPHIC OF MAN BY THE POWER OF THE GREAT . NOW, observe here is a “ stronger than he.” This is not the man himself, the man is the house, the man is not so strong as the devil--who is this? This is Jesus Christ, who comes by His Spirit into the heart of man, and the Spirit of God is vastly superior to Satanic power, as much as the infinite Creator Himself must ever be superior to the finite creature. “ He comes upon him,” that is to say, He attacks him; and ah, how vehemently does Christ lay to at the great enemy of souls. One sword-cut cuts away the plume of pride; another blow takes away the comfort of sin; and another destroys the reigning power of sin. As soon as ever the stronger man has conquered the enemy, what does he do? He takes his sword of rebellion, snaps it across his knee, and pulls the armour from the back of the unclean spirit. Prejudice, ignorance, hardheartedness, all these are pulled off the old enemy. Christ Jesus then proceeds to divide the spoil. “ There is the man’ s heart, I will take that,” says He, “ that shall be a jewel in My crown. The man’ s love I will set as a jewel upon My arm for ever. His memory, his judgment, his power of thought, utterance, and working--these are all Mine,” says Christ. He begins to divide the spoil, He putsthe broad arrow of the King upon every room in the house, upon every piece of furniture. The garnishing He pulls out; “ I will adorn it far better than this,” saith He. “ There shall be no pictures of faith, but faith; there shall be no ornament in yonder gate except the ornament of the glowing fire of fervid zeal; there shall be no borrowed flowers, but I will train round this window the sweet roses and jessamine of love and peace of mind; I will wash what was only swept, with My blood I will make it white, and sweet, and clean; and I will strike the lintel and the two side posts with the hyssop, and with the blood mark, and then the destroying angel when he sweeps by shall sheathe his sword, and the black fiend when he would enter shall see the mark there, and go back trembling to his accursed den.” This is conversion, the other was only conviction; this is change of heart, the other was only change of life. (C. H. Spurgeon.) The strong man armed I. Look AT THE DEVIL’ S FOR EVIL. 1. His possession may be more or less apparent. 2. His possession may be more or less oppressive. II. LOOK AT THE LORD’ S FOR GOOD. 1. The Lord Jesus comes upon Satan. Deliverance is from without, from above. 2. The Lord Jesus stands against Satan. 3. The Lord Jesus rises above Satan. (1) Strips him of his power. (2) Deprives him of his prey. (3) Expels him from his usurped authority in the soul. Lessons: 1. Whether men mean it or not, they do, and they must take sides. 2. Unless the expulsion of evil be by Christ, it will be a temporary relief followed by increased mischief. 3. When sceptical standers-by comment upon the seeming difficulties, the dispossessed soul knows and proves that the dumb spirit is gone. 4. When the unprejudiced observers witness what the Lord is doing, they know by whom it has been done. (John Richardson, M. A.) Christ overthrowing Satan I. CHRIST AFFIRMS THE ANCIENT OF THE EVIL ONE IN ITS AND . 1. Satan’ s kingdom was held by dint of great strength. 2. By means of many and various agencies. 3. With all the security of antiquity and custom. 4. And in consequence of the ignorance of the subjects over whom he reigned. 5. Yet this dominion was iniquitous. II. CHRIST HIMSELF TO BE THE MIGHTY ONE, AND MAN’ S TYRANT. The figure is picturesque and vigorous. When you see a warrior in the palace of his foeman, capturing his arms and appropriating his goods, you know that the battle has been lost and won, that the strong man has yielded to the stronger, and is now either bound in the dungeon or dead upon the field. So, when you see such a victory as Christ’ s over the demon possessing this miserable sufferer, you know that the fight upon our behalf has been fought, that He who came to release the prisoners has already grappled with the grim foe who has made them captive, has demolished his power and humbled his pride. 1. Christ is stronger by reason of His own Divine nature. 2. Christ is proved to be stronger, as appears by the evidence of historical fact. The events of His ministry are witness; even then He saw Satan as lightning fall from heaven. 3. His victories upon earth were an earnest of His complete triumph over His foe and man’ s. Every foe must he put beneath His feet. Application: Each human heart is a battlefield between the two powers. Has Christ obtained the victory in our spiritual nature? (Family Churchman.) Satan vanquished by Christ I. THE STATE HERE . 1. The description,” strong man armed,” applies to Satan-- (1) Because he was created a being of a higher order than man, and therefore superior to him in strength. (2) Because he has the strength of a numerous host available to the execution of his designs. (3) Because the skill he must have acquired by the long practice he has had, enables him to apply that strength, as it shall best serve to the accomplishment of his own designs. 2. The hearts of unregenerate men are the “ palace” of Satan. (1) He keeps them in a state of dire captivity, aliens from the God who made them, and enemies of the Saviour who redeemed them. (2) He keeps them under the most powerful delusion. II. THE CONTEST. III. THE TRIUMPH. 1. Satan is rendered defenceless, with reference to all those who are made free from his dominion; so that the victory achieved for them may be maintained even by the weakest amongst them. 2. When Christ recovers His interest in man and His dominion over him, He disposes him, all that he has and is, for the destruction of sin, the good of the Church, and the glory of God. (J. Fowler.) The conflict between Christ and Satan for the soul of man I. THE NATURAL OF THE HUMAN SOUL. Under the dominion of Satan; a dominion which is-- 1. Absolute. 2. Degrading. 3. Destructive. II. THE CHANGE WROUGHT IN THE OF THE HUMAN SOUL BY-- 1. The character of the agent. 2. The method of the attack. 3. The victory of the Saviour involves the ransom of man from the guilt of sin; “ there is no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus.” III. THE DUTIES WHICH THE OF THE CHARGE WROUGHT IN THE OF THE HUMAN SOUL BY GRACE SHOULD DEEPLY AND IMPRESS. 1. There ought to be an humble acknowledgment of the supreme majesty of Christ. 2. Another duty must be regarded as being the formation of an impressive estimate as to the value of the human soul. 3. It is a duty earnestly to aspire after the application of delivering power to ourselves. 4. There is that of entire, absolute devotedness to Him by whom you are delivered. (J. Parsons.) Resources of the adversary, and means of their destruction I. THE DEFENCE AND OF THE ENEMY. 1. Idolatry. 2. Imposture. 3. Superstition. 4. Despotism. 5. Crime in its various forms. 6. False liberality in religion. 7. Corruption of religious revivals. II. How SHALL THE ENEMY BE ? 1. By the judgments of heaven, in which the Son of Man will come upon the strong man armed, and take away his armour. 2. By the universal propagation of the gospel; before the light of which, idolatry, imposture, and superstition, will retreat abashed. And-- 3. By frequent, and, at last, general revivals of religion; giving resistless power to the gospel, as it is preached to every creature. Conclusion: 1. There must be more faith in the Church of God. 2. There must be a more intense love for Christ in His Church. 3. There must be an era of more decided action, before the earth can be subdued to Christ. 4. For this glorious achievement, there is demanded more courage than has, in modern days, been manifested by the Church of God. 5. There must be new and more vigorous efforts to increase the number and power of evangelical churches in our land. 6. Special effort is required, to secure to the rising generation an education free from the influence of bad example, and more decidedly evangelical. 7. The vigour of charitable effort must be greatly increased. 8. The jealousies of Christians who are united substantially in their views of evangelical doctrine and religion, and who are divided only by localities, and rites, and forms, must yield, and give place to the glorious exigencies of the present day. 9. Let me add, that we must guard against the dangers peculiar to a state of religious prosperity. (The Preacher’ s Treasury.) Lesson Note here-- 1. That Satan is an unclean spirit, he hath lost his original purity, his holy nature in which he was created, and is by sin become universally sinful and impure; no means being allowed him by God for the purging of his filthy and impure nature; yea, he is a perfect enemy to purity and holiness; maligning all that love it and would promote it. 2. That Satan is a restless and unquiet spirit, being cast out of heaven he can rest nowhere; when he is either gone out of a man by policy, or cast out by power, he has no content or satisfaction, till he returns into a filthy heart, where he delights to be, as the swine in miry places. 3. That wicked and profane sinners have this unclean spirit dwelling in them; their hearts are Satan’ s house and habitation, and the lusts of pride and unbelief, malice and revenge, envy and hypocrisy, these are the garnishings and furniture of Satan’ s house: man’ s heart was God’ s house by creation, it is now Satan’ s by usurpation and judiciary tradition. 4. That Satan, by the preaching of the gospel, may seem to go out of persons, and they become sober and civilized; yet may he return again to his old habitation, and the latter end of that man may be worse than the beginning. (W. Burkitt.) The division of spoil The Divine conqueror is here represented as not destroying, but “ dividing the spoil” --i.e., employing for His own cause and glory everything that, before the conquest, Satan had been using for his own evil purposes. Now, this is the overlooked and apparently unimportant point in the parable we wish practically to consider as setting forth this simple proposition--That Christ Jesus, in the victories of His grace, whether individual or universal, turns to His own advantage, and employs for His own glory, all those physical powers and intellectual endowments--that whole array of influence and engine which previously the greatadversary had perverted and made powerful for evil. I. We begin with the , as certainly the most obvious reference of the lesson--the case of a sinful soul conquered by Christ in the process of regeneration. And thus it serves to rectify some wrong conceptions often entertained of the nature of regeneration. Here the representation of the great change wrought in the regenerated soul, is only a change in the sovereignty that overrules it h change, not in the house’ s furniture and appointments, but in their uses and ownership. The stronger man has not come to destroy what was in the fortress, but to rescue it all from the hands of the strong man, and turn it to his own purposes. Those very endowments of reason, imagination, wit, wealth, power--acquirements which before were exercised sinfully, because without godliness--Christ would now employ for man’ s good and God’ s glory; not destroying but only “ dividing the spoil.” To be a Christian, is simply and truly to be the highest style of man--to have all the faculties and impulses of your nature lifted from the perishing things of earth. Oh, no; He would enter only to conquer and bind the despot that enslaves you--to unshutter the darkened windows, and let in heavenly aims, and odours, and sunshine; and, reviving in all their original beauty, and replacing in all their original glory, its magnificent adornments, transform it from the haunt of a demon to the home of a God! But now let us pass from the individual to consider-- II. THE TEXT’ S WIDER AND . This satanic despotism over the human heart is in exact analogy with his despotism over the earth as man’ s dwelling-place. The Bible everywhere represents this fallen spirit as practically “ the god of this world.” But there is a day coming when “ the strong man” shall be mastered by “ one stronger than he.” The kingdoms and dominions under the whole heavens are to become Immanuel’ s, and this world become manifestly again the abode of a universally acknowledged Jehovah. All this we are assured of. But then, we do not believe that, as a result of this, earth is suddenly to be transfigured, as into another planet. Here, in the universal as in the individual, we look for this great law of conquest--that, having bound the strong man and taken away his armour, our glorious Redeemer will not destroy the spoil, but will only “ divide the spoil.” We judge that the world, under Messiah’ s reign, will be the world as it is, only redeemed from sin and reestablished in, and filled with, all righteousness. Physically it will be the same world, but instead of working disobedience to the precepts of the Divine law, all natural agents and processes shall be consecrated to Christ; and holiness to the Lord “ shall be written on the bells of the horses.” Intellectually it will be the same world, and all sciences and arts flourish, and poetry see visions, and eloquence utter prophecies; but literature shall embalm with sweet spices the name of the Crucified, and science shall go forth along all its broad journeyings, only searching for God. Socially and politically, it will be the same; and though all despotisms shall cease, and every oppressor’ s rod be broken, yet, as under the old Hebrew theocracy different civil polities successively obtained, so then there may be all present forms of government. But high above finite magistracy shall rise one Omnipotent enthronement, and monarchs, and princes, and presidents, and mighty men shall be mighty men, and presidents, and kings unto God. (C. Wadsworth, D. D.) The strong man armed What is it then? Why, the sinner’ s heart is Satan’ s house; the place wherein he dwells--not near it or round about it, but within it. Now, to make this clear, you all know what your own house is to you, You go to and fro in it at your own will and pleasure--you order everything in it, exactly after your own taste--you give commands to your servants or to your children, and they are compelled to obey you--you walk up and down its several chambers, and furnish them as suitsyour convenience--you take your ease and pleasure there, and none interrupts you--you knock at the door and it instantly opens to you--you close it, and none can have an entrance there, without your consent. In one word, which is better than the longest description that can be given, it belongs to you, it is your own; you do what you like with it, it is a part of yourselves; and you feel at once how much is contained in that! Even so is the heart of the sinner to Satan; just as much his property. Sinner! Satan is within thee! The ungodly heart is the very home of the evil spirit! But, it is well worth your remarking that our Lord describes the place wherein the strong man dwells, not as a mere ordinary house, but as a palace, a king’ s mansion. And yet certainly in one point of view, it is difficult to imagine anything less like a royal dwelling-place than the soul of the unconverted sinner. For who is it that lives in it? Take it, on his own showing--it is himself; he is master of it. Be it so: but what a vile thing this self is! Though men dress it up, as savages do their ugly idols, in order to give it some show of comeliness, and some appearance of beauty, it is truly a mean thing and a contemptible at the best. And as is the supposed master, so is everything about him. All the furniture of the dwelling is of the same description. Low thoughts--wretched passions--miserable ends and aims; gild them and turn them as you will, they are all of the earth, earthy! No noble faith who elevated hopes. It was intended to be a palace; because, when Almighty God first framed it, He meant it for Himself to dwell in, and to put His glory there, and His purity, and His righteousness, and all the graces which attend upon His presence, and, like so many beams from the sun, are always issuing forth, and shining round about Him. And even the smallest dwelling that ever was, if a great king should make it his house, and live in it, would be fitly styled a palace. Nobody would think of the smallness of the place, but only the grandeur of its inhabitant. At any rate, the goods which are within this dwelling, and which furnish it, are the possession of him who resides there as lord and master, be it God or be it Satan. And magnificently did He who made you furnish you forth in this respect. There is a man’ s mind; a man’ s thoughts, which he can turn as he pleases; directing them to things good or things evil. Again, there is what we call our affections, the power of loving, or feeling a strong attachment for this or that object. Then there is the power which all men possess, in a greater or less degree, of influencing the minds of other men, and persuading them by their words, or by their deeds and example, to serve God, or to serve themselves and the world! And, in very many cases, there is, all this time, a state of peace. Everything is quiet in the soul of the sinner; Satan’ s reign is not disputed. How many solemn dispensations are sent to waken him, frequently in the shape of visitations on his friends and neighbours, sudden deaths, and so on! How is it he is neither moved nor changed, but is still the same? The man is not his own master! Satan has possession of him; and treats him as he will! The strong man keepeth his palace, and his goods are in peace, his own without difficulty or dispute. And, if you consider against how many workings and appeals of all kinds this possession is maintained, you will not and cannot doubt that a great deal of power is necessary to the strong man, to Satan with whom we have to deal. And he is strong in two ways. He is in himself powerful; not able indeed, as yet, absolutely to destroy either body or soul, as he constantly desires to do, limited round about, in many ways, by the obstacles which God throws in his way, and by which he continually overrules him, but still very mighty to tempt and destroy. He is of no mean rank. He is the prince of this world, seducing men with riches and pleasures. 2. He is mighty too, not only in himself, but in the weaknesses and corruptions of those Whom he sets himself to destroy, He winds himself into them. “ Peace,” he says to another; “ you are not open sinners--you do not pick, nor steal, nor slay. You are not drunkards, or swearers, or adulterers! Why should you trouble yourselves about loving God with all your heart, and making Him reign in all your thoughts?” Or again he says to others, “ Peace! it is all true that God does require truth and holiness in the inward parts. It is true, as your alarmed heart testifies, that Almighty God is a consuming fire, and does exact obedience to His laws. But then, He is not so awfully strict and severe, as, in your first terror, you are inclined to suppose. I do not say cherish all sins, but one is not much to keep.” If, I say, a man is clearly convinced that it is indeed the plain and unquestionable sense of Scripture, and the real counsel of God towards sinners, as any candid and reason able man must be, why then, there would be danger of such a person’ s escaping his authority, if Satan directly denied what is undeniable to an awakened conscience. He therefore, wisely, does not attempt it. He says, “ Peace--all this is true. But then there is abundance of time still left for it. You need not be in a hurry!” So there is peace again; the tempter is believed, and all becomes quiet in his house. Dear brethren, the first sign that the power of the strong man is about to give way, is this inward struggle. It is the Spirit from above, descending to the battle, and waking you out of your sleep, to put on your armour and to fight for your life. (J. Garbett, M. A.) The strong man’ s armour I. And, if you reflect for a moment upon that blessed being, in whom is our life; the sinless man; the God in the flesh; you will at once discern what peculiar fitness there is in Him for our deliverance from this spiritual battle! a fitness nowhere else to be found, or to be imagined. As the very and eternal God, He hath all power, equal to the Father, all brightness, and glory, and all unutterable perfections dwelling within Him, as in a fountain inexhaustible, and ever flowing over on the objects of His love. As man, again, one with us, He is our brother, united by ties unspeakable in any words which human nature can supply, with those for whose sake He came down from the bosom of the eternal glory. Christ for Himself has fought it all over before us, with the very same enemy, and against the very same arms and weapons which are directed against us. And right and well it is that so it should have been ordered. As Satan’ s first victory was gained over flesh and blood, in the same flesh and blood it seemed good to Almighty God that he should be conquered. Christ, then, is the stronger man who conquereth the strong for us and frees the soul from its captivity, which is the first point which the text suggests to our consideration. II. The next is the use which He makes of His victory. III. TAKETH FROM HIM, that is, from Satan, THE ARMOUR IN WHICH HE TRUSTED. The meaning evidently is, that He deprives him of those weapons of spiritual strength and spiritual delusion, by making use of which he was enabled to keep an uninterrupted dominion for so long a time. What is Satan’ s armour? to what, in fact, in the soul of the sinner, does he mainly trust, in order to prevent his escape into the liberty of the children of God? Evidently this is a most important point, necessary for us clearly to understand if we would enter into the secret wisdom of this mystery of iniquity, and put ourselves on an effectual guard against it. Now, I think, that those arms of Satan are mainly three. 1. Our self-love. 2. Our unbelief. And-- 3. Our indulgence in some one favourite sin. So long as we allow Satan possession of these weapons, it is impossible to expel him; he keeps a fast and sure hold, in spite of any occasional struggle, of his house and all the goods that are therein. And I am sure you must confess that, wherever this is present, whichever essential doctrine of the truth as it is in Jesus it chooses not to credit, there Satan’ s possession is quite secure! And it is, indeed, a powerful instrument of war in his hand, with which to repel the assaults of the gospel upon the heart, and to prevent Christ, the rightful owner, from entering in, and taking possession. (J. Garbett, M. A.) The division of the spoils And if it seems strange to any among you, that such things should give such delight, and if you ask the reason, it is precisely what I have been speaking about. The reason is, that the heart is in it, just as it might have been in the world, and in the service of Satan before. There is all the difference. Only imagine just as powerful a liking for the things of God, as some of you probably feel for the things of the world; and just as strong a desire for God’ s favour and growth in all heavenly graces, and the full enjoyment of His presence, whether in heaven or earth, as sinners have for earthly vanities; and the marvel is explained. Satan is spoiled, and what was once his, the heart, is now Christ’ s--that is all. And the consequence is, that the affections being engaged, the very same things, such as worshipping God in His holy house, which are practised alike by nominal and real Christians, are very different indeed in the feeling they produce, and the fruits they leave behind! 1. Only look, then, at the practical difference which this produces. Is there an opportunity given us of promoting God’ s glory, and the spread of the gospel, say by giving somewhat out of our substance? We used to try to give as little as it was possible, and no more; to invent all kinds of doubts, and difficulties, and scruples, and hesitations, full of worldly caution and worldly wisdom. Now we thank Him for such a privilege. We are filled with gratitude at being thought worthy to feed or to clothe the members of Christ, or to aid in the extension of the glorious gospel. It is only giving from what is not ours, but His. If we must give up anything, it must not be these deeds of love. Satan is spoiled, and we now do for God, what we once did for him. 2. Again--Is there laid before us, solemnly and affectionately, out of God’ s holy Word, some grace to be obtained, of which we never thought before; some holy temper which we have never cultivated, or some duty to ourselves, our families, or our neighbours, which has never been pressed upon us in former times. Is this the ease, as it must be, with us all? Look at the result of our choice being on heavenly things. We no longer say, “ No, the old ways were good enough for me; I take trouble enough in going to church and leading an upright life, and I shall do no more.” No. We say, “ It is well; this never struck me; but it is in scripture, it is in the practice of holy men, the saints of God. It is, I cannot deny it, a good and Christian thing to do, and such as the blessing of God will fall upon, if there is any truth in plain gospel words, and any reality in Divine grace. I am willing then to follow him wheresoever He may lead me, and still to do more and more as increasing light shall guide me. By His aid I will do this good thing, and trust to Him to bless it.” Here, again, the Christian is only doing in Divine things what he has done all his life in worldly ones; taking advantage of every new light, and every fresh instruction, and permitting no opportunity to pass, by which he could advance his interest or improve his chances of ultimate success. Satan is spoiled, and we now do for God what we used to do for him. 3. Again--It may be that, in the performance of this or that duty to God, and of obedience to one or other of the commandments which He has laid upon us, there may be inconveniences to encounter, difficulties in family arrangement, perhaps some labour to be undergone, some pleasure or relaxation to be abandoned, some worldly gain, or supposed worldly gain and advantage, to be sacrificed. We used not to scruple in such a case to sacrifice God instantly to the world or to ourselves. “ I have pressing accounts upon my hands,” a man says; “ I cannot, therefore, come to church, or read the Bible, or meditate on my soul; business must be done whether or no, that is the main thing in the world, and God could not intend that I should so trouble myself to my own disadvantage.” “ I shall have so much less at the end of the year if I give this or that, and what good will Christ’ s love do me in such a matter?” It is now; “ God forbid that I should break His holy law, be it the Sabbath--be it prayer--be it almsgiving--be it what it may; how shall I do this wickedness, and sin against God? My soul is athirst for God, yea, even for the living God, and I am content if I can please and obey Him; where or what shall I be if I lose His love who is my all?” Here, again, you see, the Christian only does in the concerns of his soul, and in the service of God, what men of the world are always practising for earthly ends and objects. Satan is spoiled of his old weapons, that is all; we now do for God what we used to do for him. 3. Again--we encounter some grievous trial. We find, perhaps, when we least expected it, that something very dear to us must be given up, some grievous sacrifice be made, of something not in itself bad, perhaps; but not to be reconciled with a devotion of the soul to God in Christ. Formerly, it never would have entered into our heads to surrender it. But now it is, “ Take it all, O Lord, lay this and everything else upon us, if it be Thy good will; Thy will, O Lord, and not ours be done.” We give up the less for the greater, and trust where we know trust should be reposed, exactly as men do in the world. Satan is spoiled, and we now do for God what we used to do for him. (J. Garbett, M. A.) Luke 11:23 He that Is not with Me is against Me Neutrality in religion impossible There is no device by which the god of this world more fatally deceives the souls of unwary men, than by leading them to suppose that they can take neutral ground in regard to the character and cause of Christ. Now, in proof of the assertion that neutrality in regard to the character and cause of Christ is impossible, let me-- 1. Adduce the testimony of the Word of God. The text is explicit. “ He that is not for Me is against Me, and He that gathereth not with Me scattereth abroad.” The same thing is taught in language not less explicit in our Saviour’ s sermon on the mount. “ No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one and love the other; or else he will hold to the one and despise the other; ye cannot serve God and Mammon.” Take another passage equally decisive. “ The friendship of the world is enmity with God.” Whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is an enemy of God. 2. The same is evident from the nature of the human mind, and the laws under which it acts. Every man has some commanding principle of action, some supreme object of affection and pursuit; and he can have but one such object. 3. The truth of our doctrine is proved from the nature of the Divine requirements. These requirements are positive in their character, and cannot be satisfied with mere negative obedience. 4. The character and cause of Christ are in their nature such as render it impossible for any to feel indifferent or take neutral ground in respect to them. 5. The disclosures and decisions of the judgment day prove that neutrality in regard to Christ and religion is impossible. In conclusion, I am led to remark-- 1. It may be expected that those who assume neutral ground will take it unkindly when their deception and danger are exposed. 2. If all who are not for Christ are against him, then it is immensely important that this truth should be clearly set forth and fully known. (J. Hawes, D. D.) Opposition to Christ I. The of being against Christ. In order to make this appear a little, you will observe-- 1. Nothing shows men more than their attractions and aversions. Mark the objects of their choice and of their preference; see with whom they most readily and pleasingly associate; and then call to remembrance the adage, “ Tell me a man’ s company, and I will tell you his character.” Congeniality is the inducement and the bond of union. To be against some individuals would expose you to general indignation. Which of you would like to be opposed to a Thornton, a Reynolds, a Howard, a Leighton, a Fenelon: But here we have the brightness of God’ s glory, and the express image of His person. 2. Again: nothing is more unreasonable, vile, and shameful than to oppose a Benefactor and Friend, who has laid you under peculiar obligations, upon whom you had no claim, and who has yet spared no expense, no pains, in order to serve you. II. The DANGER of befog against Christ. 1. Can you overcome Him? 2. Can you endure Him? 3. Can you escape from Him? III. The of being against Him. 1. He has a people, and they that persecute them persecute Him. 2. He has a cause in this world: the gospel of our salvation. And how it has been opposed! It offends because it is the enemy of self and sin, and because of its sanctifying influence. 3. He has also a providential agency on earth; and the dispensations of His providence are designed to promote the purposes of His grace. Yet with some this is all in vain. They will have none of Him. IV. The evidence of being against Him. The question is, Are you with Him? Are you with Him in sentiment, in disposition, in action, in pursuit: Are you with Him as scholars are with their teacher, as servants are with their master, as soldiers are with their commander, as subjects are with their sovereign: Does He occupy the highest place in your regard? Does He dwell in your hearts by faith: Do you say, “ Other lords besides Thee have had dominion over me, but henceforth will I make mention of Thy name” ? And do you feel what is done against Him as done against yourselves: (W. Jay.) Christian neutrality impossible I. THE DESIGN CHRIST IS ON. Redemption. II. THAT NO MAN CAN BE TOWARDS IT. 1. The design which Christ is pursuing is the greatest of all possible designs in every point of view. (1) It is great in its origin. (2) Great in extent. (3) Great in duration. 2. The great design which Christ is pursuing is totally opposed to all the selfish designs of mankind. 3. Christ, in carrying on His great, comprehensive, and benevolent design, employs all mankind as instruments in promoting it. 4. None of the inhabitants of the invisible world are indifferent towards the great and interesting design which Christ has undertaken, and is determined to accomplish. 1. If none can be indifferent towards the design which Christ is carrying on, then none have any ground to imagine that they are neuters in religion. 2. If none can be indifferent towards the design which Christ is carrying on, then all who do not act for Him, act against Him. As all must be for Him or against Him in their hearts, so all must be for Him or against Him in their conduct. 3. If all who are with Christ are united to Him in His great and glorious design, then all who are united to Him are more firmly united to one another than any other persons in the world. 4. If all who are not for Christ are against Him then the most regular and amiable sinners may be as much against Him as any other sinners. 5. We learn from what has been said the great criminality of sinners. They are all against Christ in their hearts and in their conduct, without a single exception. And by opposing this great and glorious purpose they oppose the glory of God, and all the holiness and happiness in the universe. Is this a small error, or a mere venial fault: Is it not a sin of the first magnitude? Can they be guilty of a greater? 6. This subject shows the imminent danger of all who are against Christ and opposing His great and glorious design. (N. Emmons, D. D.) No neutrality in religion We are all either “ gatherers” or “ scatterers” ; either workmen in the erection of a vast spiritual fabric, or destroyers who lay its honour in the dust. 1. We remind you, then, in the first place, that you are “ scattering” Christ’ s seed in the world, if you are not “ gathering” it. The absence of the Christian temper in your daily conduct, the absence of Christian charitableness in your judgment of your fellow-men--nay, the mere absence of all concern for the glory and spread of the Redeemer’ s triumphs, will all be, in effect, an absolute accession to the strength of His adversary; and that for this simple reason--that the war which Christ is carrying on is essentially aggressive. To stand still, therefore, in spiritual things is to help Satan. If you are “ not with Christ,” you are “ against Him” ; if you “ gather not with Him,” you are “ scattering abroad.” 2. Again: you are “ scattering” Christ’ s flock in your families, if you do not “ gather” them. 3. Again: you are “ scattering” Christ’ s precious gifts in your own hearts, if you are not “ gathering” them. Consider, then, what use you are making of the gifts which Christ hath given you. 4. But this text must have a more awful illustration still. Christ’ s scatterers and Christ’ s gatherers must have one more meeting yet; and only one. The gathered seed shall expand and ripen, till it becomes fit for the garners and the stores of heaven. The gathered flock shall rise from earth and sea, and pass under the portals of the everlasting dome. The gathered graces of the Redeemer shall be purged from their earthly dross, forming by their clustered brightness the “ new name” upon His brow. But the scattered seed which you did not prize, the scattered flock which you would not feed, the scattered graces that you would neither seek nor keep nor bind up, shall all rise up in judgment against you, and in their turn shall scatter you. Christ Himself will be the only gatherer then. (D. Moore, M. A.) What it is to be “ with” Christ What can the words mean for us? Not actual, personal, visible fellowship with Him. That is impossible now, or so long as we are in the flesh. Yet do we say, at times, to any teacher or leader who may have won our confidence, “ I am with you in that,” meaning that we accept the same doctrine, cherish the same convictions, have the same practical aims as he holds and is trying to reach. And that is substantially what is meant, I take it, by being “ with” Christ: we are with Him, that is, if at all, in sympathy, in affection, and in active endeavour. Faith, love, obedience, in other words, constitute the triple cord which binds men to Christ. (J. H. Rylance, D. D.) A half-Christian “ He that is not with Me.” Such is our Lord’ s description of a half-Christian. Let us think what we are. And then let us consider why such a person not being with should be said to be against Him. Who then is not with Christ? Of course, and most obviously, he who never visits Christ, he who never seeks Christ, is not with Him. We may do both, and yet not live with Him. We may pray to Him and communicate with Him now and then, and yet not be with Him. That is quite possible. But it is too plain that, if we do not ever seriously pray to Him, or seek His presence, in our hearts by faith, we cannot be with Him. Those of us are not with Him who do not pray heartily and earnestly as well as regularly. Those of us are not with Him who, having been confirmed, do not habitually come to His holy table to have their faith strengthened and refreshed by His Holy Spirit. But this is not enough to explain the words. To be with Christ is to be on His side. It implies that there is a daily strife going on where we are, and that Christ is one of two parties in it. It implies that life, our own life, is a struggle, and that Christ is concerned in that struggle; interested in its progress, and interested in its end. And if this be the meaning of the words, “ He that is with Me,” we can all understand the meaning of their opposite, “ He that is not with Me.” You see that it does not necessarily imply active opposition to Christ. You need not have ever thwarted or ridiculed one of Christ’ s servants in order to expose you to the charge of not being with Him. It is a negative expression. It implies only that you have felt no deep interest in being yourself, or in inducing others to be, such as Christ would have you and them. It implies only that you have not taken pains to cherish the thought of God with reverence and love, to claim your position as His son, and to live up to it. It implies only that it has not been a great and constant object with you to get to heaven at last, and while upon earth to live as an expectant, as an heir, of heaven. But we were to inquire why those who are thus not with Christ are said to be against Him. The two ideas seem to be different. Surely there is a difference between a want of decision and an adverse decision; between being a faint-hearted or even a cowardly soldier on the one side, and being positively enrolled and enlisted on the other? Yes, there is a difference; we do not deny it. But what the text impresses upon us is this, that, for many practical purposes, and so far as the final personal issue is concerned, the faint-hearted, cowardly, treacherous soldier of Christ is rather an enemy to Him than a friend. (Dean Vaughan.) Spiritual waste and wealth In spiritual affairs we find we are subject to this condition in respect to one Supreme Spirit--that if we are not serving Him we are wronging Him; if we are not gathering with Him--gathering wisdom and strength and purity and greater capacity for good and other “ fruit unto everlasting life” --then we are wasting what belongs to Him. We are in a necessary stewardship, and this is one of its laws. The law may look exacting in the statement, but it is glorious in its operation. Neutrality, not only in the posture of our affections, but in the use of our active powers, is impossible. Not far from each of the great scenes of our Saviour’ s ministry there was a third party, taking no apparent share in the transaction. Those that sided openly with Him and publicly confessed their loyalty, on the one hand, and those that expressly opposed Him, on the other, became, of course, conspicuous in the conflicts that sprang up about Him. By their direct opposition to each other, Apostles and Pharisees, the family at Bethany and the Council at Jerusalem, John and Judas, Zaccheus and Herod, Joseph of Arimathea and Pilate, immediately suggest to us two distinct classes of people--the friends and the enemies of the Son of God. Decided convictions always throw men into definite positions. Near by, however, you might always find another class, more numerous, probably, than either of them. They are not brought forward into notice, because no real interest or choice brought them visibly into the struggle that was going on. Other things absorbed their attention. He speaks to that large third class among you to-day. If there is any question about that position--as to its rightfulness, or its safety, or where those that are trying to hold it really belong--does He not settle that question by the text? “ He that gathereth not with Me scattereth.” It is remarkable, in all the gospel, how invariable and how clear Christ makes this doctrine of absolute and necessary separation. There is no third party after all. There is no place for one. Non-profession does not make non-allegiance or neutrality. It makes allegiance to the enemy. It makes disloyalty. “ He that is not with Me is against Me.” The next truth to be remembered is our dangerous liability to be deceived just at that point--i.e., to reckon as harmless or safe courses of life that are really anti-Christian. If there are any, here or elsewhere, who think they do enough because they are not positive opponents, mockers, or infidels; who think that, because they never persecute, or revile, or take a traitor’ s silver, or meet to plot with scribes and Pharisees for Herod, therefore they are not secretly fighting against their eternal King, Christ here assigns them their place with terrible distinctness. Unlike the politic leaders of earthly kingdoms, He fearlessly casts this middle party from Him--that it may thereby become truly His. All are scatterers that are not gatherers with Him. There is a striking record, in the Book of Numbers, of-a prophet who tried, in perilous days, to be on neither side, and paltered with a double tongue between the true God and His enemies; but at last the issue between the two armies could be no longer evaded, and, after the battle, the body of this compromising neutral, Balaam, was found on the enemy’ s side, where it fell fighting against the Lord. It is in this sense that Christ comes to put men and families of men “ at variance” --with one another--a strange thing to be written of Him. It is not for division’ s sake, but only that truth may not be confounded with a lie, darkness be called light, and the very foundations of all honour guilt. There can be no lasting harmony, no healthy peace, but in Him in whom all things in their unity consist. All is wasted then that is not done with a heart of love and that toward God; all time that is not spent for Him--these days of busy labour in trades and professions; these unsatisfying contortions of effort to be a little richer, or a little more noticed, or to climb one round more on the ladder that you will slip from the instant death touches your fingers; these plans, schemes, travels, bargains, buildings--they look like gathering, but they are only scattering, unless in the midst of them all your character is daily built up, a spiritual house, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief corner-stone. Gather with Him and all the parts of your life which are yet alien or infirm He will steadily draw into the unity of His own body, making it strong and pure and immortal, knit together and making increase by the edifying of His love. (Bishop F. D. Huntington.) Neutrality impossible in religion “ You don’ t mean to call me an enemy of religion, do you?” said a farmer to a gentleman who was urging him to become a friend of Christ. “‘ He that is not for Me is against Me,’ are Christ’ s words. Are they not decisive of your question?” replied the gentleman. “ But I am friendly to religion,” rejoined the farmer. “ Friendly! How? You do not revile Christ, I know; but do you serve Him? Do you avow yourself His disciple? Are you His disciple? Do you by your life and speech declare that faith in Christ is necessary to salvation?” “ I do not profess faith in Christ, sir,” said the farmer; “ and, of course, I cannot consistently urge that faith on others.” “ Then, you see,” replied the gentleman, “ that your influence is against the acceptance of Christ by others. Its voice is: ‘ Personal faith in Christ is not a very important matter; if it were, I should seek it.’” The farmer was silenced. He felt that his friend was right. He saw that not to be on Christ’ s side was to be against Him; not to be marching with His pilgrims to heaven was to be marching with His enemies to hell. He was right. There was no middle course. Impossible neutrality Pythagoras, being asked what he was, answered that if Hiero were ever at the Olympian games, he knew the manner--that some came to try their fortune for the prizes, and some came as merchants to utter their commodities, and some came to make good cheer and meet their friends, and some came to look on; and that he was one of them that came to look on. But men must know that, in this theatre of man’ s life, it is reserved only for God and the angels to be lookers-on. (Lord Bacon.) Luke 11:24-26 When the unclean spirit is gone out The danger of losing convictions of conscience I. THE OF AN SINNER, BEFORE HE LIE TO A SERIOUS OF HIS GUILT. II. OF SIN , IN THE EYE OF GOD, AN CHANGE IN THE STATE OF MAN. III. WE ARE HERE TAUGHT, THAT BEINGS SINFUL FIND NEITHER REST NOR BUT IN DOING EVIL. Wickedness is a spirit absolutely solitary. All its social character all its sympathy, is nothing but the disposition which unites banditti in the fell purpose of plundering, pollution, and murder. With others it joins, solely because it cannot accomplish its foul ends alone. Even with these it has no union of heart, no fellow-feeling, no real sociality. It attracts nothing and nobody. Every thing it repels. Hell with all its millions is a perfect solitude to each of its inhabitants. IV. PERSONS UNDER ARE ALWAYS IN DANGER OF FALLING ANEW INTO OF HEART. V. THE SOUL, FROM WHICH OF SIN HAVE BEEN FINALLY , IS MORE TO BECOME THE SEAT OF THAN BEFORE THESE BEGAN. VI. THE SOUL, FROM WHICH ARE FINALLY , BECOMES FAR MORE SINFUL THAN BEFORE ITS BEGAN. Seven is here put for an indefinite number, and may be considered as standing for many. At the least, it denotes a greater number than one, and, in proportion, a greater series of temptations and dangers. These seven are also universally more wicked than the original tenant of this impure habitation, more absolutely possessed of the fiendlike character than himself. From each, his danger is of course greater; from all, how great, how dreadful! Lessons: I. The immeasurable importance of cherishing in the heart convictions of sin. II. We learn from these observations the high interest which persons in this situation have in being directed in their duty by sound wisdom. III. We also learn from this parable the miserable situation of unawakened sinners. (T. Dwight, D. D.) Description and danger of conviction when not followed by conversion I. The first is the state of a man when the unclean spirit is gone out of him. All unconverted men are spiritually the slaves of Satan. II. “ When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through dry places, seeking rest: and finding none, he saith, I will return unto my house whence I came out: and when he cometh, he findeth it swept and garnished.” 1. Amidst all his convictions he has had no sense of the evil of sin. He has never seen it in its true colours, nor hated it for its evil nature. He has felt his misery; but he has never heartily confessed his guilt. 2. He has given a farther proof that this is still the state of his heart, by the reliance which he has placed on his own strength and goodness. He has resolved, indeed, to forsake all sin; but he has made this resolution, trusting entirely to his own strength. He has had no fear of his own heart, nor any notion of its utter depravity. It is plain that his heart remains unchanged; the same impure habitation which it has always been. III. “ Then taketh he unto him seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter in and dwell there.” These words describe the sinner’ s awful relapse under the power of Satan. Long-indulged habits call loudly for their usual gratifications. Unmortified lusts revive and renew their strength. Old companions in sin allure. IV. “ The last state of that man is worse than the first.” It is worse in three respects. 1. His guilt is greater. He has now more to answer for than he before had. He does not now sin in ignorance, as perhaps, he once did. 2. His misery will be greater. This consequence must naturally follow. They whose guilt is greater will justly receive a greater damnation. 3. His danger is greater. He may still be converted and find mercy. By turning to God in true faith and repentance, he may even yet be delivered from guilt and misery. But conversion is now less likely to take place than it formerly was. While you resist not conviction, beware of resting in it. You will not be saved by a conviction of your sins, but by a conversion from them. Mistake not one of these things for the other. (E. Cooper.) The last state of that man is worse than the first On relapsing into sin I. INTO SIN IS THE . 1. It is the work of grace only, if our Lord, after we have committed a sin, receives us back into His house. 2. What should you say of the prodigal son if, shortly after the banquet, he had left his father’ s house again, thrown away the ring and shoes, and trodden under foot the best robe: if he had abused the presents of his father by new offences? 3. As the physician is filled with scorn of a sick person, whom he had healed with great care, and who by disobedience had plunged himself into peril of death again: so the Heavenly Physician will depart from a soul which repeatedly commits the same sins again. II. INTO SIN IS THE FOLLY. 1. Sin is like a disease which becomes more perilous by repeated attacks. 2. In proportion as the power of sin increases, the strength of man’ s will decreases. 3. The time for conversion is getting shorter and shorter. III. RELAPSE IS THE OF ETERNAL . Conversion depends partly on the good-will of the sinner, and partly on the grace of God. We have seen that the strength of will relaxes with every fresh sin, and therefore the relapsed cannot rely on it. And the greatest energy alone cannot perform the work of conversion. Without a full measure of grace the conversion of the relapsed is impossible. 1. It is to be feared that the ordinary graces will produce no effect upon him. God by His grace shows to the sinner the deformity of sin, terrifies him by its consequences and punishment, and endeavours to gain his affections by pointing out to him the infiniteness of the Divine charity. But if the man continually relapses into his old sins, are these motives likely to make a lasting impression on him? 2. Or, are we entitled to expect from God extraordinary graces for the relapsing sinner? Should God show greater mercy towards us, because we have been so ungrateful to Him? When we continually tear open old wounds, think you the Heavenly Physician of our souls will prepare us a stronger remedy? (Bishop Ehrler.) The return of the evil spirit A young man enters upon life in all the confidence of youth, and passion, and strength. He is borne along by the currents of the world, and he soon drinks deep into its polluted joy. First a spirit of gaiety, and then a spirit of uncleanness takes possession of his heart--and his soul, for awhile, is spell-bound by the fascination of the world, and he wraps himself in his forbidden pleasures. Presently it pleases God to arrest that young man. He is laid on a bed of sickness, and he eats of his own bitter sowing. He is brought very low in shame, and wretchedness, and remorse--he loathes his former courses--he turns from them with disgust--and he makes his resolutions, and he records his vows--the spirit that is in him is cast out, and the young man rises from his trouble a reformed character. Meanwhile, where is the evil spirit? Is he gone? For a little time he appears to let him alone; but all the while he is but preparing himself for another temptation and a fiercer assault. He comes and he sees that young man abhorring the sins of his youth; but uninfluenced by grace--untouched by the love of God; he sees his heart silent in prayer, and his mind is still pointing to the world. And the evil spirit brings to bear upon that man a new and more powerful seduction. He is no longer to him the tempter to some sinful gratification; but he enters into him a spirit of mercenary calculation--he becomes a man cold, secular, aspiring. Money, politics, greatness, argument, scepticism, occupy his mind--he is now for establishment and reputation--he grasps and he holds the world--he is not immoral, he is a formalist--he is not a profligate, he is covetous, Christless--his heart is further off from God than ever it was--he has not commenced anew--he feels no sins--he is a bitter censor of other men--he grows prejudiced--he is a practical infidel--he is sealed in his self-confidences--“ and the last state of that man is worse than the first.” (J. Vaughan, M. A.) The seven-fold re-inforcement It is not as the invaders of a country or besiegers of a city, that the evil spirit, with his sevenfold re-inforcement, rises up before the mind’ s eye in terrific grandeur. It is when we see him knocking at the solitary door from which he was once driven in disgrace and anguish. The scene, though an impressive one, is easily called up. A lonely dwelling on the margin of a wilderness, cheerfully lighted as the night approaches, carefully swept and garnished, and apparently the home of plenty, peace, and comfort. The winds that sweep across the desert pass it by unheeded. But, as the darkness thickens, something more than wind approaches from that quarter. What are the shadowy forms that seem to come forth from the dry places of the wilderness, and stealthily draw near the dwelling? One of the number guides the rest, and now they reach the threshold. Hark! he knocks; but only to assure himself that there is no resistance. Through the open door we catch a glimpse of the interior, swept and garnished--swept and garnished; but for whose use?--its rightful owner? Alas! no; for he is absent; and already has that happy home begun to ring with fiendish laughter, and to glare with hellish flames; and if the weal or woe of any man be centred in it, the last state of that man is worse than the first. Do you look upon this as a mere fancy scene? Alas! my hearers, just such fancy scenes are passing every day within you or around you, rendered only more terrific by the absence of all sensible indications, just as we shrink with a peculiar dread from unseen dangers if considered real, and are less affected by the destruction that wastes at noon-day, than by the pestilence that walks in darkness. Come with me and let me show you one or two examples of familiar spiritual changes which, if not the work of evil spirits, may at least be aptly represented by the images presented in the text and context. To the eye of memory or imagination there rises up the form of one who was the slave of a particular iniquity, which gave complexion to his character and life. It was perhaps an open and notorious vice, which directly lowered him in public estimation. Or it may have been a secret and insidious habit long successfully concealed or never generally known. But its effects were seen. Even those who were strangers to his habits could perceive that there was something wrong, and they suspected and distrusted him. He felt it, and in desperation waxed worse and worse. But in the course of providence a change takes place. Without any real change of principle or heart, he finds that his besetting sin is mining his health, his reputation, or his fortune. “ Strong” as the power of temptation, appetite, and habit is, some form of selfishness is “ stronger” still. The man reforms. The change is recognized at once. He is another man. After the first painful acts of self-denial, the change appears delightful to himself. He seems once more to walk erect. A new direction has been given to his hopes and his desires, and, like Saul, he rejoices that the evil spirit has departed from him. At first he is afraid of its return, and keeps strict watch against the inroads of the enemy. By degrees he grows secure, and his vigils are relaxed. The temptation presents itself in some form, so contemptible and little to be feared, that he would blush not to encounter it. He does encounter it. He fights it. He appears to triumph for a moment, but is ultimately overcome. The next victory is easier. The next is easier still. He tries to recall the feelings which preceded and produced his reformation; but the spell is over. He knows that they have once proved ineffectual to save him, and he trusts in them no longer. Even the cheeks which once controlled him in his former course of sin are now relaxed; he is tired of opposition, and seeks refuge from his self-contempt in desperate indulgence. If you ask the evil spirit which at first has possession, what is thy name? you may receive for answer, drunkenness, or avarice, or lust. But ask the same after the relapse, and the response must be, My name is legion. Have you not seen in real life this terrible exchange of one besetting sin for several? Have you not known men, who once seemed vulnerable only at a single point, begin to appear vulnerable, as it were, at all points, perhaps with the exception of the one first mentioned? Now, when this is the case, besides the power exerted by each appetite and passion on the soul distinctly, there is a debasing and debilitating influence arising from the conflict which exists between them. Let the reformed libertine become at once ambitious, avaricious, and revengeful, and let these hungry serpents gnaw his soul, and it will soon be seen by others, if not felt by the miserable victim, that the evil spirit which had left him for a season has returned with seven others worse than himself; and as we see them in imagination enter the dwelling swept and garnished for their use, we may read, inscribed above the portal that shuts after them, “ The last state of that man is worse than the first.” (J. A. Alexander, D. D.) The tendency of sin to increase if once admitted These little sins, if they be so, will make way for greater. Little wedges open the way in the most knotty wood for bigger. As thieves, when they go to rob a house, if they cannot force open the doors, or break through the walls, let in a little boy at the window, who unbolts and unlocks the door, and so lets in the whole rabble; thus the devil, when men startle at greater sins, and by them he hath no hopes to get possession of their souls, he puts them upon those sins which they think little, and by these insensibly enters; for they, once admitted, open the doors of the eyes, of the ears, and of the heart too, whereby the whole legion enter, and rule and domineer in their souls to their ruin. Men do not, indeed they cannot, imagine the woeful consequences of neglecting their watch against the least sin. How many who have been so modest and maidenly at first, that they would not so much as give a lascivious person the hearing when he hath spoken wantonly; yet by giving way to their own foolish thoughts, have at last prostituted themselves to their pleasure without any shame. Sinners” increase to more ungodliness; when they once venture down hill, they know not where nor when to stop. Workmen bore holes with little wimbles, which make way for the driving of great nails. When Pompey, saith Plutarch, could not prevail with a city to billet his army, he yet persuaded them to take in a few weak, maimed soldiers; but those soon recovered strength, and let in the whole army, to command and govern the city, Thus Satan, by sins of infirmity, prevails at length for sins of presumption. Great storms arise out of little gusts; and clouds no bigger than the palm of a man’ s hand come in time to cover the whole heavens. The greatest river is fed with drops, and the biggest mountain made up of atoms. As Sylla said, when in his proscription time, that he slew so many, one pleaded for the life of Caesar, In uno Caesare multi Marii: “ In one little youth, many old subtle men,” so in one little sin, there may be many great ones. When one evil spirit hath got lodging in the heart, he prepares it, and makes room for seven more wicked and worse than himself. (G. Swinnock.) Luke 11:27-28 Blessed are they that hear the Word of God, and keep it Blessedness from the Divine point of view I. THE WOMAN’ S . 1. Implying, in an indirect yet very strong manner, the blessedness of our Lord Himself; the idea being that from Him a blessedness was reflected on His mother. In this there is nothing but what is altogether commendable and deserving of imitation. 2. The exclamation was directly and chiefly intended to proclaim the blessedness of our Lord’ s mother. Neither is it, in this sense, to be condemned. Jesus Himself does net deny, and we ought not to question its truth. The happiness of parents is very much involved in the conduct and history of their children. The relation is most intimate and most tender. Their offspring are so closely entwined round their heart, as to occasion them, either most acute anguish, or most exquisite pleasure. But, if it is thus a general truth that parents are happy in the happiness of their children, how great must have been the happiness of such a woman as the Virgin Mary, in having such a son as Jesus Christ! Vast indeed were the blessing and honour which were hers! And, as Mary was blessed in bringing forth such a son at first, so she was blessed in His future character and exploits. She was blessed in His dutiful conduct as a son: for “ He went down to Nazareth, and was subject” unto His parents. She was blessed in the progressive improvement of His human nature, for, “ Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man.” She was blessed in the whole tenor of His holy life, as He was perfectly free from all taint of sin, and exhibited a pattern of every grace. She was blessed in hearing many of His delightful discourses, as she frequently attended His ministrations, and formed one of the many hearers who “ bore Him witness, and wondered at the gracious words which proceeded out of His mouth.” She was blessed in seeing many of the wonderful works which He performed: for on many other occasions of this kind it might have been said, as it was said on that at Cana in Galilee, that “ the mother of Jesus was them.” She was blessed in His glorious resurrection and ascension, when He rose a conqueror over death and hell, and when He was taken up into heaven, and sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high, to wait till all His enemies be made His footstool. There she still continues to be blessed in contemplating His blessedness, and in hearing the blessings which are multiplied on His name. II. OUR LORD’ S ON THE WOMAN’ S , He does not contradict what the pious woman had said. He only modifies and explains it, and makes an addition to it. Now, His amendment on the woman’ s words teaches us-- 1. That the happiness of Mary herself consisted rather in her being a believer in Christ, than in her being the mother of Christ. 2. That all true believers, as such, are more blessed than Christ’ s mother, as such. Was she honoured in her maternal relation to Him?--they are all connected with Him by a still closer relation, even by that union in consequence of which He and they are said to be one. They are blessed with light, pardon, sanctification, comfort, and every present privilege; and all these are sure pledges of the everlasting blessedness of heaven. There is still another idea included in this amendment of our Lord’ s; for, in its most extended meaning, it states a comparison, not only between the advantage of true religion, and that of having been the mother of Jesus, but also between the advantage of true religion and all other advantages whatever. We are here taught, then-- 3. That those who are believers, are more blessed on that account than on any other. Are you rich? or, at least, in easy circumstances?--then it is true that you may be, in some degree, happy in freedom from anxiety about your temporal wants, and in the moderate enjoyment of earthly good: but what are such possessions in comparison of your spiritual treasures, the unsearchable riches of Christ? “ All things are yours.” Other possessions are uncertain and temporary: but yours are the better, the “ durable riches” ; yours is the “ inheritance incorruptible, undefiled, that fadeth not away.” Are you learned in human knowledge?--so far well, for therein you may find much rational enjoyment. But rather blessed are you because you are taught of God in the wisdom which is from above, and instructed to know the Holy Scriptures, which have proved sufficient to make you wise unto salvation, through faith which is in Christ Jesus. (James Foote, M. A.) Believers as blessed as the Blessed Virgin I. A WHICH IS NOT TO BE DENIED. The Virgin Mother was blessed among women. To God alone we must render worship; but the memory of this saintly woman is to be revered. The angel made no mistake when he said, “ Hail, thou that art highly favoured: blessed art thou among women.” Nor was she in error when she said, “ From henceforth all generations shall call me blessed.” We call her blessed most heartily, for so she was. 1. The blessing which she received had been the desire of ages. 2. When at last the boon was bestowed upon the humble virgin of Nazareth, who was of the house of David, it came as a great favour. We must not, then, treat it as a light thing. The Saviour’ s “ yea” was emphatic when the woman spake of His mother as highly blessed. 3. She herself received this honour as a great blessing. It was no vain thing to her to have charge of the infancy of our Lord. She felt it to be great blessedness to be placed in such a relation to the holy child Jesus. 4. She was, she must have been, Messed among women, and this woman who spake of her as such made no mistake; for think what blessings have come to all the world through the Virgin’ s wondrous child. “ In Him shall all the nations of the earth be blessed.” If all generations call Mary blessed, it is only because she brought into the world one who is a blessing to us all. And it was, it must have been, a great blessedness to Mary’ s heart to think that “ that holy thing” which was born of her was the channel of such blessedness to all mankind. 5. I must, however, remind you that whatever the blessedness which this holy woman derived from being the mother of our Saviour’ s humanity, she needed it all, for she was called to a great fight of affliction because of it. II. That brings us to our second head: To hear the Word of God and keep it is A to having been the mother of our Lord. 1. We are sure of this, because in the weighing of the blessings the blessed Master of Beatitudes holds the balances. Jesus Himself adjusts the scales of blessedness. He who began His ministry with the word “ Blessed,” so often repeated, knows best which blessing is the best. 2. Happily this preference so truly given by the Master puts the highest blessedness within the reach of all of us who are here this morning. We are at this moment in a position to “ hear the Word of God, and keep it.” If grace be given, there are only these two steps to blessedness. 3. I now ask you to notice that this preferable blessing is found in a very simple manner. “ Blessed are they that hear the Word of God, and keep it.” The process is stripped of all ambiguity or mystery; there is nothing about it that is hard or difficult: “ Hear the word, and keep it--that is all.” III. So now we close by considering this as A TO BE AT ONCE ENJOYED. I breathe to heaven this earnest prayer, that we may now enter into this blessedness. Let us see if we cannot sit still in our seats for a while, and drink in this wine on the lees well refined. 1. This blessedness belongs to the present. Blessed are they that are hearing the Word of God, and keeping it. It is not a remote, but an immediate blessedness. While you are hearing and keeping God’ s Word you are then blessed. The blessedness is for this world, and for you. “ But I am so cast down.” Yes, but you are blessedl! “ Alas! I bear such a burden of afflictions.” Yes, but you are blessed. “ Alas! I have not known a good time of late.” No, but you are blessed! Your blessedness does not depend upon your fancies and feelings. If you hear the Word of God, and keep it, you are at this moment blessed. Faith finds a present blessedness in the Word of God, which she hears and keeps. 2. This blessedness lies, in a great measure, in the very act of hearing and keeping God’ s Word. 3. This blessing is not dependent upon outward circumstances. If you hear God’ s Wind, and keep it, you may be very ill, and yet in spirit you will be well; you may be very feeble, and yet in spirit you will be strong; you may be dying, and yet you shall not die, for he that heareth the Word of God shall never see death. In hearkening to the Lord you have reached a region from which you look down upon the dust and smoke of time and sense. (C. H.Spurgeon.) Blessedness I. THE WOMAN’ S . We may notice the cause of her exclamation, the speaking of Jesus. His word, though powerful, is not a hurricane, but harmony. II. ON WHAT HER TURNED--“ Jesus.” The cold-hearted Pharisee might have felt disposed to exclaim, “ What irregularity! What a breach of order!” Jesus, however, was in no danger of being disconcerted in His discourse from any casual interruption, but was at all times fully at liberty to take advantage of every passing event. III. OUR LORD’ S REPLY. “ Rather blessed are they that hear the Word,” etc. This reply naturally includes these particulars-- 1. His admission of the truth she declared. 2. His assertion--“ Blessed are they that hear the Word, and keep it.” 3. The description--They that keep it. Unfortunately, many content themselves with hearing (Ezekiel 30:30; Ezekiel 30:32). I conclude-- 1. To hear the Word of God is not to keep it. Many seem to believe religion consists in hearing. 2. Hearing is only instrumental to salvation. 3. The promise is not made to hearing, but to doing. Hear, and your souls live. Be not a hearer, but a doer, otherwise-- 4. The blessing will prove a curse. (W. Jay.) The blessing of those who hear and keep the Word of God I. THE OF KNOWING THE WORD OF GOD. One great cause to which our falling so frequently into sin may be ascribed is, a want of attention to the duties incumbent upon us. Now it is evident that if we were to make it our daily practice to meditate upon the Word of God, we should have our duty continually before us. We should have the promises and the threatenings of the Almighty ever before our eyes: this would necessarily produce such an impression upon our hearts, as to make us fear and dread all iniquity, and to turn from the sins to which we are naturally inclined, and most strongly addicted. II. How THE OF THE WORD OF GOD, so necessary to our salvation, IS TO BE . The two chief means for the attainment of Divine knowledge are the reading of God’ s holy Word, and the hearing of it preached. The sacred Scriptures are the great means of converting sinners, and of building up saints in their holy faith. History is full of conversions which the reading and hearing of God’ s Word have occasioned. That eminent father of the Church, Augustine, tells us that he owed his conversion to the reading of St. Paul’ s Epistle to the Romans 13:11. Others have been converted from the hearing and the reading ofthese words: “ Repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” “ In the beginning was the word.” Another in reading the Acts of the Apostles; and another from these words of St. Paul to Timothy: “ This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.” If such be their mighty and magnificent effects, how necessary to be known, and studied, and understood of men! Every part of Scripture, as being of Divine inspiration, ought to be thoroughly studied, and inwardly digested; though, doubtless, there are some books and chapters which claim our meditations, and require our studious perusal, more than others. And then, in order that we may reap real benefit and advantage from the perusal of the sacred Oracles, it is necessary that, like the Ethiopian eunuch, we should read them with care and application, as containing the true knowledge of salvation. III. THAT THE READING AND HEARING OF THE WORD OF GOD ARE NOT FOR , UNLESS IT BE REDUCED TO , is evident from these words of our Lord Jesus Christ Himself (Matthew 7:24). IV. THE AND WHICH ATTEND THOSE WHO HEAR THE WORD OF GOD AND KEEP IT. The blessedness of a true believer--of a faithful servant of Christ, is even greater than that of the mother of the Saviour. How noble--how glorious a privilege is this! In hearing and meditating upon the Word of God, believers experience a pleasure and a satisfaction of which the men of the world can form no estimate, and entertain no idea whatsoever. (J. Rudge, D. D.) The blessedness of obedience I. GOD INTENDS HIS WORD TO BLESS MAN. It is sent for this purpose. Truth is God’ s greatest boon to man. II. IF THIS BE SO, THEN THE COMES ENOUGH BY HEARING. The most natural way of conveying the truth is by speech. It is the earliest, the readiest, perhaps it shall be the latest. In many senses it will ever be the best. In simple, earnest speech you get all the requisites, truth itself in its appositeness, punctuation, emphasis, and, above all, the living soul transmitted by the living voice. III. EVEN WHEN THE WORD IS PURE, AND THE A TRUE MAN, AND TRUTH ARE NOT ENOUGH. TO HAVE THE THERE MUST BE THE INWARD HEARING AS WELL AS THE OUTWARD. Nothing will serve but the actual contact of truth with the spiritual intelligence, the cordial reception of the quickening Word, and its verification in the stillness of the soul’ s depths. The Spirit quickeneth the Word by quickening the man, and, again, the man by the Word. Christ’ s words let in the Spirit to listening hearts, for they were spirit and life. IV. THE TRUTH MUST BE KEPT IN ORDER TO THE . It must be kept, first, by spiritual means--by prayer, meditation, and constant endeavour of the soul to blend and assimilate the truth with itself, till they become, as it were, one. But nothing gives the truth a greater fixity in our nature and makes it ours so truly as embodying it in act and deed. It is at hand, it must be grasped; floating as sentiment and feeling, it must be secured, organized, converted into facts, and so into history. Truth is intended to be practised--it cannot otherwise pass into life. 1. When the heart has learned to endorse the truth, the outward doing is most natural and easy. 2. The nature that keeps the Word is blessed by being itself ennobled. As we learn to live by truth and for truth, we have sympathy with God. 3. And the blessing power of the truth thus heard and thus cherished is continuous. V. BUT WHAT ABOUT HEARING AND NOT KEEPING? One cannot conceive of anything sadder. For hearing prepares a man for a higher test. We go to be examined in our own class, and thence depart to our own place. And the most tragic of all earth’ s other tragedies appear to me necessarily to fall far short of this spiritual one. To have looked into the highest, and sunk to the lowest, to have had the noblest issues in our grasp, and to have preferred these miserable husks of self-indulgence and self-contentment! (T. Islip.) A certain woman’ s commendation of Christ These be the parts of my text; and of these in order. I. “ Blessed is the womb that bare thee,” &c., saith the woman. 1. And that which occasioned and moved her thus to lift up her voice was the power of Christ’ s works and words. Be not deceived--every good lesson should be unto you as a miracle to move you to give sentence for Christ against the Pharisees and all the enemies He hath; against the pride that despiseth Him, the luxury that defileth Him, the disobedience that trampleth Him under foot. Every good motion (for therein Christ speaketh to us) should beget a resolution; every resolution, a good work; every good work, a love of goodness; and the love of goodness should root and stablish and build us in the faith. 2. And so I pass from the motive and occasion to the person, who from what she saw and heard gave this free attestation. Truth doth not fail, though a Pharisee oppose it, but is of strength sufficient to make the weakest of its champions conqueror. For “ the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men” (1 Corinthians 1:25). Neither number nor sex hath so much power upon truth as to alter its complexion. And as it was no prejudice to the truth that she was but one, no more was it that she was a woman. For why might not a woman, whose eye was clear and single, see more in Christ than the proudest Pharisee who wore his phylactery the broadest? All is, not in the miracle, but in the eye, in the mind, which, being goggle or mis-set, or dimmed with malice or prejudice, be-holdeth not things as they are, but, through false mediums, putteth upon them what shape it pleaseth, receiveth not the true and natural species they present, but vieweth them at home in itself as in a false glass, which returneth back by a deceitful reflection. And this is the reason why not only miracles, but doctrinal precepts also, find so different entertainment. Every man layeth hold on them and wresteth them to his own purpose, worketh them on his own anvil, and shapeth them to his own fancy and affections; as out of the same mass Phidias could make a goddess, and Lysippus a satyr. Prejudice will make a man persuade himself that is false which he cannot but know is most true. That which to a clear eye is a gross sin, and appeareth horror, to a corrupted mind may be as the beauty of holiness. The Pharisees saw it and the woman saw it: the one saw nothing but that which could not be seen, one devil casting out another; the other saw the finger and mighty power of God, and when she saw it, “ she lifted up her voice, and said unto Him, “ Blessed is the womb that bare Thee, and the paps that Thou hast sucked.” 3. And so we descend to that which we proposed in the third place, the vehemency and heat of her affection, which could not contain itself in her heart, but brake forth at her mouth. And hereto” we shall consider-- (1) That she spake. (2) What she spake. “ She lifted up her voice, and said unto Him, Blessed is the womb that bare Thee, and the paps which Thou has sucked.” (a) “ Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh,” saith our Saviour (Matthew 12:34). “ It evaporateth itself into the outward habit, breaks forth into voice, opens her shop and wares, that she may behold her own provision and riches abroad.” The love of the truth tuneth the heart, and the heart the tongue. And this is the advantage that love hath of knowledge. Knowledge may be idle and unactive, but love is a restless thing, and will call up and employ every part of the body and every faculty of the soul to compass its end. Love is active, and will pace it on where knowledge doth but stand and gaze. Knowledge doth not always command our tongue; nay, many times we speak and act against our knowledge; but who speaks against that which he doth love? (b) Now, in the next place, what was it that begat her love but the admiration of Christ’ s person, His power, and His wisdom? She had heard of Moses and his miracles; but beholds a greater than Moses here. Application-- 1. And, first, let us learn from this woman here to have Christ’ s wonderful works in remembrance, to look upon them with a steadfast and a fixed eye, that they may appear unto us in their full glory, and fill us with admiration. For admiration is a kind of voice of the soul. Behold, these are the wonderful things of Christ--to unite God and man, to tie them together by a new covenant, to raise dust and ashes to heaven: this is a great miracle indeed! 2. By her lifting up her voice, and blessing the womb that bare Christ, which was a kind of adoration (for admiration had not so shut up her devotion and love but that it was vocal and reverent), we are taught to magnify our Saviour with the tongue, and hand, and knee, and every member we have, as David speaketh. But I do but beat the air, and labour in vain. For now it is religion not to express it; and he is most devout who doth least show it. O when will this dumb devil be cast out? A strange thing it is that everything else, even our vices, should be loud and vocal, and religion should be the only thing that should want a tongue I that devotion should lie hid, and lurk and withdraw itself into the inward man! 3. Last of all: This woman’ s voice is yet lifted up, and calls upon us to lift up ours, even before the Pharisees. If our fear were not greater than our love, amongst these we should “ lift up our voice like a trumpet,” and put these monsters to shame, strike off their visor with noise, and bring in truth to tear off the veil of their hypocrisy. For, what I shall we not lift up our voice for truth but when she hath most voices on her side? Must truth be never published but in the times of peace? or must a song of praise be never chanted out but in a choir of angels? A Pharisee before us is a temptation, difficulty and danger are nothing else but a temptation, which is therefore laid in our way, to try if anything can sever us from the love of Christ and His truth. If we start back in silence, we have betrayed the truth to our fears, and left it to be trodden under foot by a Pharisee. He that can trifle with his God will at last blaspheme Him to His face. We have already handled the circumstantial parts of the text; we are now to treat of the substantial--the woman’ s speech and our Saviour’ s. 4. We begin with the woman’ s, “ Blessed is the womb that bare Thee,” etc. And that the mother of Christ was blessed we need not doubt. For we have not only the voice of this woman to prove it, but the voice of an angel, “ Blessed art thou among women.” “ All generations shall call her blessed” Luke 1:48). (1) Blessed, as the occasion of so much good. For when we see a clear and silver stream, we bless the fountain; and, for the glory and quickening power of the beams, some have made a god of the sun. Whatsoever presents itself unto us in beauty or excellency, doth not only take and delight us, but, in the midst of wonder, forceth our thoughts to look back to the coasts from whence it came. (2) Again: if it be a kind of curse to beget a wicked son, or, as Solomon did, “ the foolishness of the people” (Sir 47:23). The historian observes that many famous men amongst the Romans either died childless, or left such children behind them that it had been better their name had quite been blotted out, and they had left no posterity. And speaking of Tully, who had a drunken and a sottish son, he adds, “ It had been better for him to have had no child at all, than such an one.” II. We come, next, to our Saviour’ s gentle corrective, “ Yea rather.” And this “ Yea rather” comes in seasonably. For the eye is ready to be dazzled with a lesser good, if it be not diverted to a greater; as he will wonder at a star that never saw the sun. We stay many times and dwell with delight upon those truths which are of lesser alloy, and make not any approach towards that which is saving and necessary. 1. The philosopher will tell us that he that will compare two things together, must know them both. What a brightness hath honour to blind him that hath not tasted of the favour of God! What a paradise is carnal pleasure to him that a good conscience never feasted! What a substance is a ceremony to him that makes the precepts of the law but shadows! Therefore it is the method of wisdom itself to present them both unto us in their just and proper weight; not to deny what is true, but to take off our thoughts, and direct them to something better; that we may not dote so long on the one as to neglect and cast off the other. In my text the woman had discovered Christ’ s excellency; and Christ discovers to her His will, His Father’ s will, the doing of which will will unite her unto Him whom she thus admired, and make her one with Him, as He and His Father is one. “ Blessed parents! yea, rather, Blessed thou, if thou hear My word and keep it.” This is a timely grace, to lead her yet nearer to the kingdom of heaven; the lifting up of her voice was too weak to lift up those everlasting gates. This was a seasonable--“ reprehension” shall I call it, or “ direction” ? 2. And now if we look into the Church, we shall find that most men stand in need of a “ Yea rather” ; who will magnify Christ and His mother too, but not do His will; will do what they ought to do, but leave that undone for which that which they do was ordained. “ Blessed sacrament of the Lord’ s supper!” It is true; but, “ Yea rather, Blessed are they that dwell in Christ.” “ Blessed profession of Christianity!” “ Yea rather, Blessed are they that are Christ’ s.” “ Blessed cross!” The fathers call it so. “ Yea rather, Blessed are they that have ‘ crucified their flesh with the affections and lusts.’” “ Blessed church!” “ Yea rather, Blessed are they who are members of Christ.” “ Blessed Reformation!” “ Yea rather, Blessed are they that reform themselves.” 3. This resolve of wisdom itself, as it doth cool and moderate our affections towards the outward and temporal favours and blessings of God, towards those of his light hand, and those of His left, so it doth intend and quicken them towards that which is blessedness indeed. It sets us up a glass, that “ royal law” (James 2:8), “ that perfect law of liberty,” which if we “ look into, and continue in it, being not forgetful hearers, but doers of the work, we shall be blessed in it” (James 1:25). “ Blessed are they that hear the Word of God,” reacheth not home; and therefore there is a conjunction copulative to draw it closer, and link it with obedience, “ Blessed are they that hear the Word of God, and keep it.” For, first, God hath fitted us hereunto. For, can we imagine that He should thus build us up, and stamp His own image upon us, that we should be an habitation for owls and satyrs, for wild and brutish imaginations? that He did give us understandings to find out an art of pleasure, a method and craft of enjoying that which is but for a season? Was the soul made immortal for that which passeth away as a shadow, and is no more? Indeed, faith, in respect of the remoteness of the object, and its elevation above the ken of nature, may seem a hard lesson, yet in the soul there is a capacity to receive it; and if the other condition, of obedience and doing God’ s will, did not lie heavy upon the flesh, the more brutish part, we should be readier scholars in our creed than we are. Secondly. As the precepts of Christ are proportioned to the soul, so being embraced they fill it with light and joy, and give it a taste of the world to come. For as Christ’ s “ yoke is easy,” but not till it is put on; so His precepts are not delightful till they are kept. Aristotle’ s happiness in his books is but an idea, and heaven itself is no more to us till we enjoy it. The precepts of Christ in the letter may please the understanding part, which is always well-affected and inclinable to that which is apparently true; but till the will have set the feet and hands at liberty, even that which we approve we distaste, and that which we call “ honey” is to us as bitter as gall. Contemplation may delight us for a time and bring some content, but the perverseness of our will breeds that worm which will soon eat it up. It is but a poor happiness to think and speak well of happiness, as from a mount to behold that Canaan which we cannot enjoy. A thought hath not strength and wing enough to carry us to bliss. But when the will is subdued and made obedient to the truth, then God’ s precepts, which are “ from heaven, heavenly,” fill the soul with a joy of the same nature, not gross and earthy, but refined and spiritual; a joy that is the pledge and the earnest, as the apostle calls it, of that which is to come. (A. Farindon, D. D.) The incarnation For, first, she knew at large that it was a blessed thing to be an instrument or conveyance of any great good unto others. “ Blessed above women shall Jail the wife of Heber be, blessed shall she be above women in the tent” (Judges 5:24). She had done her part to work deliverance for Israel. A cistern that contains the waters poured into it is much inferior to a fountain that sends them forth. It is nothing so laudable to be wrought upon, as to work that which is honourable. Even the parents that have enriched the world with such as are ornaments unto it, benediction reflects upon them for it, because they are conduit pipes of public felicity. Yet all those that have made others happy by their gifts and qualities had been for ever unhappy themselves if the child that was born this day had not sucked the breasts of a virgin. O happy parent I whose womb contained all the treasure that maintains the whole earth. Somewhat she collineated at this meaning that said unto our Saviour, “ Blessed,” &c. And each parent partakes in this reason, that it is joy and honour to them to have a renowned Son. All fruitfulness is to be congratulated, but hers especially--“ Blessed is the womb,” &c. I make no scruple to affirm it, that this was the very thought and fancy of the woman that uttered these words, that the mother was most honoured, full of fame and glory, who had a Son that spake so divinely, and wrought such heavenly miracles. It is a great recompense which God gives to careful parents upon earth when their offspring live soberly and temperately to be their comfort and honour. The fear of the Lord which is instilled into children from their infancy is not only the children’ s, but even the parents’ happiness. The rare endowments that appeared in Christ made a certain woman hero cast the praise of it upon the mother, “ Blessed,” &c. And thus far in the literal sense, as far as flesh and blood could reveal unto her; but if she could have seen into the Scriptures, as the Holy Spirit hath enabled us to see into them, there are other grounds of more evangelical observation. And first let it be noted, that the blessedness which is attributed to the womb that bore our Saviour redounds to all the members of His mystical body. Even as upon that saying of our Saviour to St. Peter, “ Blessed art thou,” &c. (Matthew 16:1-28.). The eternal Father did more for us when He made Him flesh than when He made the heaven and the earth beside; without His incarnation the earth had been our curse, all the elements our plague, the heaven above our envy, and the hell beneath our portion for ever. One man in a family having a fortunate advancement makes his whole blood and kindred fortunate with him; how much more shall Christ make all mankind happy being made one of us. He is come near unto us all by that nature which He assumed of ours; and He hath redeemed us all by that glorious Deity which was ever His own. Finally, there was a concurrency of all sorts of blessedness in this most mysterious incarnation. II. I have done with the first general part of the text, the acclamation, both as a certain woman apprehended the words in her natural understanding, and in that prophetical sense which was above her understanding. Now it will be most material to observe how the Master of all wisdom corrected and refined it, “ Yea rather, blessed,” &c. O sacred Virgin, much more happy in entertaining the faith of Christ than in conceiving the flesh of Christ. I must not (and if I would I have no time) set forth before you what a fecundity of error there is in man’ s heart about the notion of blessedness. Our Saviour confines our straggling imaginations to this rule, that no good thing of a subordinate condition can style a man happy; it is a title to be given to that immense communication of good, when the soul shall enjoy the fulness of Him that filleth all in all. And this is tried by two particulars--First, if we treasure up the precious things of God in our ear, then if wetransmit them to a more inward and a safer place, and treasure them up in our heart. So that the understanding of the law of God consists not in knowledge and speculation, but in practice and execution. We must be servants as well as disciples. (Bishop Hacket.) Keeping the Word of God The Rev. Mr. Erskine mentions a fact which may afford a very useful hint to every hearer of the gospel. A person who had been to public worship, having returned home perhaps somewhat sooner than usual, was asked by another member of the family who had not been there, “ Is all done?” “ No,” replied he, “ all is said, but all is not done!” How little is commonly done of all that is heard! “ Blessed are they that hear the Word of God and keep it.” Luke 11:29-30 The sign, of Jonas the prophet-- The sign of the prophet Jonas There is a peculiarity here which you ought carefully to consider. A sign was asked by an evil generation, that if Jesus were truly the Christ, they might receive Him as their King, and give Him their allegiance; but the sign which is proffered, even the sign of the Resurrection, presupposed the perpetration of that crime, the prevention of which was the great object for which the sign was solicited. A sign, in short, is asked, which would prevent the rejection of Christ; a sign is proposed which would be no sign at all until He bad been rejected. The Jews must crucify the Christ in order to their obtaining the sign; whereas, they wanted the sign in order that they might be withheld from the crucifixion. Let us look into this matter. If, after all, an additional sign were to be given, why was such a sign selected as could have no existence until the crime had been perpetrated which it was the object of a sign to prevent? To this we reply, that it was not our Lord’ s object to prevent the Jews from crucifying Him; but it was His object to leave them inexcusable in so doing; and therefore did He ply them with miracles which were fitted to convince all who had understanding, and with discourses which were adapted to move all who had hearts. He gave proof enough of the justice of His pretensions, for it was proof which prevailed to the bringing many to His side; but when asked to carry proof to that extreme point where it becomes absolutely irresistible, to crowd the landscape or the firmament with signs which should leave the beholders no option, but compel them to receive Him as Messiah, why, He was then solicited to a course not only inconsistent with the free agency of man, but counter to the work which had brought Him down as a sojourner to earth. And why marvel that Christ should have withheld that additional evidence which was not necessary to make His countrymen inexcusable, and which would directly have interfered with the completion of the scheme of redemption? “ Yes,” you may say, “ but the question is not why Christ should have refused all additional signs; the answer to this is comparatively easy; but why, in consenting to give another sign, He should have selected just that one, the sign of a resurrection, which must necessarily have been ineffectual in withholding the Jews from the greatest of crimes, and which could not exist unless and until they had committed that crime?” Does it not almost seem a mockery of the Pharisees, that when they asked a sign which might enable them to receive Jesus as the Christ, they were denied all but one, which they could only obtain by rejecting Him as the Christ. Remember, however, that sufficient evidence had been already vouchsafed; so that the Pharisees would have had no ground of complaint had the demand for further signs been met by unqualified refusal. And you are, moreover, probably quite wrong in speaking of the sign of the Resurrection as though it must necessarily have been too late to have been of service to the Jews, because undoubtedly too late to prevent His crucifixion. The crucifying Jesus did not fill up the measure of the guilt of the Jews; they did not touch the unpardonable sin, for they did not withstand the whole amount of evidence until they had refused to be convinced by the resurrection of Jesus and the miracles which evidenced the diffusion of the Spirit. It was indeed such a crime as had never been committed on the darkened stage of this fallen creation, that of putting to death as a malefactor the Being who went about doing good, and in whose actions there was the power as well as the loving-kindness of God. Yet--and there is no fact more glorious in the whole range of theology--yet the blood of the crucified made atonement for the crucifiers. Men had not sinned beyond the reach of mercy when they uttered the cry, “ Away with Him, away with Him” ; they had not blocked up against themselves the escape-path for eternity, when they buffeted the Mediator, and circled His forehead with thorns, and nailed Him to the cross, and reviled Him in His agonies. We will not indeed say that the Jews occupied so advantageous a moral position after as before they had crucified their King. They had resisted a vast body of evidence, and had therefore grown stronger in infidelity; they had perpetrated a most atrocious crime, and their consciences must have been scared in the perpetration; but if they had rendered themselves less accessible to the demonstrations of evidence, less susceptible of the remonstrances of righteousness, they had not rendered themselves one jot less the objects of the Mediator’ s regards, nor thrown themselves beyond the reach of His extraordinary sacrifice. The blood upon their hands, whilst it cried for vengeance on them as murderers, cried also--and oh I the voice which spake of pardon was far louder and deeper than that which spake of wrath--cried for mercy on them as the objects of redemption. And if that eviland adulterous generation, moved by the sign of the Resurrection, overcome by that most stupendous of all miracles, the breaking forth in His own might of the Crucified One from the sepulchre--if they had discerned and acknowledged and bewailed their iniquity, and flocking round the despised Nazarene had offered Him with tears their allegiance, and besought of Him pardon, and bowed before Him as a prince and a Saviour, who questions that this generation, eminent in guilt, foremost in all that can make human nature infamous, would have gathered to itself the smiles and the succours of God, and that Jesus would have stood, the upholder of those who had scorned Him, and a life-giver to those who had slain Him? Call ye the sign of Jonas a sign which came too late, when the blood had just been shed which blotted out the sin of the world? Call ye it too late, when apostles were proclaiming to their unbelieving countrymen, “ Unto you first, God, having raised up His Son Jesus, sent Him to bless you!” Too late, when the publication of the gospel and the resurrection is to “ begin at Jerusalem,” and the very men who with wicked hands had crucified and slain the Prince of Life are to be entreated to look in faith to a Saviour waiting to embrace them, ere the tidings of deliverance may be carried to the cities and the islands of the heathen? Oh 1 no: all the aspect of strangeness disappears from our text; in place of manifesting harshness, in place of giving a compliance of less worth than a refusal, Christ displayed wondrously the graciousness of His character, and showed a still mighty desire to win the Jews from infidelity, when in answer to a demand to show more signs to an evil generation He said, “ There shall no sign be given it, but the sign of Jonas.” You ask us to show that the sign of the Resurrection was in itself sufficient to work conviction in all fair inquirers, and we give you our reply by going back over the waste of long ages, and leading you to Nineveh, that exceeding great city, with its vast but impious population. We bid you mark how on a sudden the sounds of revelry are hushed, how all the business and all the pleasures of the stirring and luxurious metropolis come as in a moment to a stand, and how the great and the mean, the king in his palace and the nobles in their halls, and the poor in their hovels, as though shrinking from a wrath which rushed visibly on, bow themselves to the earth, and cry mightily for deliverance. And why is this? Hath God indeed come forth from the solitudes of eternity, and, riding the firmament in the chariot of His vengeance, hath He made bare His arm in the view of the Ninevites? Have angelic beings, withering the eyesight of those who dared gaze on their forms of fire, come down with the proclamation, that yet forty days and the proud city shall be a ruin? Nay, a foreigner with no attendants, a poor and unprotected stranger, a wanderer without a home and without a friend in the magnificent capital, this is the being at whose bidding the tide of a nation’ s wickedness has been stayed in its flowings. This is the being whose voice, syllabling calamity, has put an arrest on the occupations and the joyousness of hundreds of thousands. Then this foreigner, this stranger, this wanderer, must have given striking evidence that he spake in God’ s name: and you will allow, that if in any other case the like evidence be afforded, the effect wrought on the Ninevites clearly shows that it ought to prove convincing. But this evidence was the evidence of a resurrection. This prophet of disaster had been sepulchred three days and three nights in the depths of the waters, and then rose up uninjured from that strangest of tombs. This fact it is that the Ninevites knew; on this fact it was that they received Jonas as a prophet. The evidence, then, of the resurrection was sufficient, under the most unpromising circumstances, when it stood absolutely alone, and the parties to be convinced were the idolatrous and the profligate. It follows, therefore, that enough evidence is afforded, whenever the evidence of a resurrection is afforded. When assured that a particular evidence has overcome the infidelity of one people, I can be morally certain that it is not owing to deficiency of proof that the like evidence failed to overcome the infidelity of another people. There is a voice, then, in the history of Nineveh, which proclaims the Jews inexcusable in their unbelief. The voice of weeping and of wailing which issues from every house in that terrified capital is witness against the wickedness of the haughty Jerusalem. A nation clothed in sackcloth, and prostrating itself in spirit, and all because moved by the sign of a resurrection, this is our proof that the sign of a resurrection is powerful enough to test the pretensions of a prophet; and when, therefore, another nation resists the sign which has thus shown its strength, continuing in unbelief, though the messenger who declares himself authorized by God hath burst the bands of death and mastered the grave, we can be persuaded of this nation that its infidelity is not to be overcome by any evidence which consists with human accountability, and we are convinced that Christ did all that could be done for “ an evil and adulterous generation,” when He promised them as the last in the long series of proofs “ the sign of Jonas the prophet; for as Jonas was a sign unto the Ninevites, so shall also the Son of Man be to this generation.” Well, then, might the Redeemer, when He had referred the scribes and the Pharisees to the sign of His resurrection--well might He conjure up the scenery of the last judgment, and represent the Ninevites as convicting the Jews and justifying their condemnation. “ The men of Nineveh shall rise up in the judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it; for they repented at the preaching of Jonas! and, behold, more than Jonas” for this is the true rendering, not “ a greater than Jonas” --“ behold, more than Jonas is here.” The evidence granted to the Jews in the resurrection of Christ, in the preaching of the apostles and the gift of the Spirit, exceeded any that may be supposed to have been granted to the Ninevites in the preservation of Jonah. (H. Melvill, B. D.) A word with those who wait for signs and wonders Reading the Old Testament, we observe that the Lord in the olden time condescendingly gave signs to His servants, when He saw that it would be for their good. Doubtless if again there should come a necessity for signs to any of God’ s servants, such tokens would be given them. If there should ever be a time when it was not possible for Christians to walk by faith alone, or when it would be more to the honour of God that their confidence should be somewhat assisted by marvels and tokens, then would God go out of the ordinary way once again and His people should receive miraculous seals. In no case is such a thing at all necessary under the gospel dispensation, which is so enriched with plainest evidence, that to add more would be to hold a candle to the sun, or pour water into the ocean. In addition to this first remark, let us add that signs have been given, and yet have not wrought faith in those who have seen them; and there is no necessary connection between seeing signs and believing that which the signs attest. I. I shall ask your attention while I THE PERSONS who are an evil generation that seek after a sign. We have among us many individuals who are aware that they are sinners, and are conscious of their guiltiness to such an extent as to be very uneasy as to their condition. They clearly perceive that sin will be punished by the Great Judge, and they are much afraid of the wrath to come. They anxiously desire, moreover, to find salvation; and, having long listened to the gospel, they are not ignorant of the way in which salvation is obtained; they understand the gospel in the letter of it to the highest degree. They are not unbelievers in any of the doctrines of the gospel; but illogical as their state is, they still remain unbelievers, with all this belief about them, and justify their remaining in unbelief by telling you that if they felt this, or if they saw that, or if this happened, or if the other thing occurred, then they would believe in Jesus, but not until then. They make different demands. There are some, and these are generally the most uneducated, who expect to experience remarkable dreams or to behold singular visions. Others we have met with, who suppose that in order to being saved they must feel some very peculiar physical sensation. Now you must not look for this. You must not put physical contortions or sensations as a test before the Lord, and say you will not believe in Him otherwise. These I hope are rare cases, but in very frequent instances I have met with people who will not believe in Jesus Christ to the salvation of their souls because they have not felt wretched enough. They have read in certain books of holy men who, when they were seeking a Saviour, were broken in pieces under the ponderous hammer of the law. They turn to such biographies, and they find the subjects of them uttering language similar to the book of Job, or to the words of Jeremy in the Lamentations. Ah! poor demented one, to desire misery, and to make your own wretchedness, and even your own unbelieving and wicked thoughts of God to be a kind of preparation for faith in Jesus Christ! It is a most insanely wicked thing, and yet many, many, many persist in unbelief because they think they are not wretched enough. Running to the other extreme, I have met with others who would not simply trust Christ because they were not happy enough. They have heard of the Christian’ s joys, and the peace, like a river, that evermore abideth, and they have said, “ If I could get this peace, if this deep calm ruled in my spirit, then I could believe.” As much as to say, “ If I saw the wheat full grown in the fields of my soul, then I would begin to sow” , whereas the sowing must precede the reaping. I have met with some who would not believe in Christ because they could not pray eloquently. “ Oh,” they have said, “ if I could pray like So-and-So, to whom we have listened with the greatest pleasure at the prayer-meeting, then I could put my trust in Christ, and there would be some hope for me!” I have known others who must feel precisely like certain eminent saints have felt many years after their conversion, or else they cannot believe that they are saved. They will reach down the life of some holy man who had mastered his passions by long years of mortification, who had come to live near to God, and whose life was the heavenly life on earth, and they will mentally vow, “ I must be just like this man,” say they, “ or else I cannot believe in Jesus.” They say, in fact, to the Heavenly Physician, “ I am sick and ready to die, but, Good Physician, Thou must make me as strong as Samson at once and on the spot, or else I will not receive Thy medicine,” just as if the perfect spiritual cure of the soul were not a lifelong work of grace. II. I shall now, secondly, SHOW THE FOLLY OF SUCH CONDUCT. YOU are seeking a sign, one of these which I have described, or some other. 1. You seek what is quite unnecessary. What do you want a sign for? You want, you say, a token of God’ s love. What token of God’ s love to you can ever be wanted, now that He has given His only-begotten Son, first to live on earth, and then to die in pains extreme, the just for the unjust, “ that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life” ! I blush for you, that you should ask any token of God’ s love while Jesus Christ is before you, for herein is such love as nothing else can ever equal. What do you want a sign for? Why, to show, you say, that there is mercy for you. How do you need that? The very fact that you are alive shows how merciful God is! 2. You are also asking for useless signs. What evidence could there be now,, for instance, in mere dejection of spirit? You want to feel miserable you say: what evidence would that be of your salvation? It seems to me that you are like a man who would say that he would catch hold of a rope if he could sink so many fathoms deeper in the ocean, or that he would avail himself of a dispensary if his disease were so much worse. How strange that a rational man should talk thus! Despair is no help to faith. Sinful doubts cannot assist you to Christ; they may most effectually keep you from Him are you not also seeking most unreasonable things? To ask a sign from God when He pledges His word seems to me to be out of all reason. You are a beggar, remember, and we have an old proverb that beggars must not be choosers; above all, how dare a beggar demand a sign before he receive an alms? III. I shall now want a few minutes more, and your very serious attention, while I now LAY BARE YOUR SINS, your grievous sins. 1. My dear hearers, in the first place, you make God a liar. Is not this the testimony of the Holy Ghost, “ He that believeth not hath made God a liar” ? 2. In the next place, you insult God’ s sovereignty. He has a right to give signs or not, as He wills; but you do, as it were, say, “ Thou shalt give me a sign or else I will be damned. I will not have Thy mercy if I cannot have it in my own way: great God, I will not be saved unless I can feel as I want to feel.” O fling away this accursed pride of yours, and kiss His silver sceptre, and say, “ Lord, save me as Thou wilt. I believe, help Thou my unbelief.” 3. I must tell you what is more, you are acting the part of an idolater. What does an idolater do? He says, “ I cannot believe in an unseen God; I must have a golden calf or an image, that I can see with my eyes and touch with my hand.” You say just the same. You cannot believe God’ s naked word, you demand something you can feel, something you can see. Sheer idolatry. 4. Do you not see, moreover, that you crucify the Saviour? Those who nailed His hands to the tree were not greater sinners, even if they were so great, as you are who say to Him, “ Bleeding Saviour, I believe that Thou hast died on the cross; I believe that Thy blood could cleanse sin, but I cannot trust Thee to do it; I have no confidence in Thee; I cannot, will not trust Thee. I trust my husband, but I cannot trust my Saviour; I trust my child, but I cannot trust my God; I trust my minister, but I cannot trust the Son of God exalted in the highest heavens.” Why, this is crucifying Him--this is treating Him as a dog only should be treated. IV. YOUR DANGER In danger of death: you admit that, and now suppose you die in the state you are in. Why, you are almost saved; you are awakened, you are aroused, you have many good desires, but a man who is only almost saved will be altogether damned. There was a householder who almost bolted his door at night, but the thief came in; a prisoner was condemned to be hanged, and was almost pardoned, but he hung on the gallows; a ship was almost saved from shipwreck, but she went to the bottom with all hands on board; a fire was almost extinguished, but it consumed a city; a man almost decided remains to perish in the flames of hell. So is it with you; except you believe, all these things which you possess of good desire and emotion, shall be of no service to you at all, for “ he that believeth not shall be damned.” (C. H. Spurgeon.) The demand for a sign When Christ was on earth He was again and again assailed by this cry, “ Show us a sign.” “ What sign showest Thou?” And there was an offer accompanying it. Show us this, and we will see and believe. If a man says to the holy and merciful Saviour, There is one proof which would satisfy me--which of us would not say, Surely Christ will grant it? Even if the thing asked he unreasonable, yet surely Christ will not be extreme to mark it--He will do what even prejudice asks--the end is good, and the means to it at least not evil. It is a natural question--we must not leave it without a word in answer--Why was Christ displeased, why is God silent, when this is the prayer? And I think we shall say-- 1. Because there is a radical fault in the prayer itself. It originates, where it ought to follow; it prescribes, where it ought to accept. There is a thorough upsetting and subverting, in such prayer, of the relationship of man to his God. In such prayer man goes first, and God is to go after. Man says, I will give the law to my God--I will tell Him what He ought to do--and then, if He does that, I will have Him; not else. The very prayer ispresumption. 2. But again, Because the result thus reached is not the rest and the inheritance which God designs for us. A man who believes because he sees has not got at last the salvation which he came for. It is a poor inferior mechanical process altogether, this conviction by the help of signs. 3. We might add yet one other reason, and say, Because such proofs would hopelessly perplex and alienate the mind which expects the dealing of God to be uniform and consistent in all its provinces of operation. (Dean Vaughan.) Luke 11:31-32A greater than Solomon is here Christ’ s superiority to Solomon The superiority of Christ to Solomon may be traced in the following particulars. 1. In His origin. Solomon was indeed of honourable descent, being of the princely tribe of Judah, and of the family of David, who was one of the most illustrious monarchs that ever filled the throne of Israel. No one could claim a higher pedigree than Solomon, or receive a crown from the hands of a more honourable ancestor. Yet Jesus was David’ s greater Son, and to Him the pre-eminence belonged. With respect to His human nature, He was a rod from the stem of Jesse, and a branch growing out of his roots. With respect to His Divine nature, He is the eternal, co-existent, and coequal Son of God, in a way mysterious and unknown. 2. In personal qualifications Christ obtains the pre-eminence, especially in that for which Solomon was so highly celebrated. Solomon with all his wisdom was weak and fallible, and liable to the greatest folly; but the Lord Jesus is wisdom itself, wisdom in the very abstract. He was liable to no mistake, to no error, either in judgment or in practice. He was the pattern of all excellence, and of all perfection. Even His enemies were astonished at His doctrine, and testified that never man spake like this Man. In two things especially He excelled all other teachers; He had the most perfect comprehension of His subject, and the power of making it effectually understood, not merely by outward instruction, but by internal illumination. 3. Christ exceeded Solomon in the purity of His life and the general excellence of His character. 4. Solomon sustained the two-fold office of prophet and king, and in both these Christ has the pre-eminence. 5. Christ exceeded Solomon in the mighty works which He performed as well as in His general character and dignity. 6. In the present glory which these illustrious personages possess, there can be no doubt which of them obtains the pre-eminence. Though Solomon was a partaker of Divine grace, and is now an inheritor of the invisible glory, it can bespeak no want of charity to suppose that his inconstancy and backslidings in religion have in some degree tarnished the lustre of his celestial diadem; but be it ever so bright and splendid, it falls infinitely short of that which is placed on the Redeemer’ s head, as the reward of His obedience unto death. (1) Let us contemplate the character of our Lord and Saviour with astonishment and delight, for a greater than Solomon is here. Let us consider the apostle and high priest of our profession, withdrawing our thoughts from every other object, and fixing them intensely upon Him. (2) As no object is so amiable and attractive, let us view the Saviour till our hearts are inflamed with love. (3) Let us view the Saviour by faith, saying with the prophet, “ I will look unto the Lord, I will wait for the God of my salvation.” (4) View His condescension with astonishment and love, that one so much greater than Solomon should have humbled Himself unto death, even the death of the cross, that He might raise us to dignity and honour. (B. Beddome, M. A.) A greater than Solomon Our first thought is that no mere man would have said this concerning himself unless he had been altogether eaten up with vanity; for Solomon was among the Jews the very ideal of greatness and wisdom. The second thought that comes to one’ s mind is this: Notice the self-consciousness of the Lord Jesus Christ. He knows who He is, and what He is, and He is not lowly in spirit because He is ignorant of His own greatness. He was meek and lowly in heart--“Servus servorum,” as the Latins were wont to call Him, “ Servant of servants,” but all the while He knew that He was Rex regum, or King of kings. I. BETWEEN CHRIST AND SOLOMON THERE ARE SOME POINTS OF . 1. And, first, in wisdom. He intermeddled with all knowledge, and was a master in all sciences. He was a naturalist; an engineer and architect; a politician, &c. He was everything, in fact. God gave Him wisdom and largeness of heart, says the Scripture, like the sand of the sea: “ and Solomon’ s wisdom excelled the wisdom of all the children of the east country, and all the wisdom of Egypt. For he was wiser than all men; and his fame was in all nations round about.” Yes; but our Saviour knows infinitely more than Solomon. I want you to-night to come to Him just as the Queen of Sheba came to Solomon, only for weightier reasons. You do not want to learn anything concerning architecture or navigation, agriculture or anatomy. You want to know only how you shall be built up a spiritual house, and how you shall cross those dangerous seas which lie between this land and the celestial city. Well, you may come to Jesus, and He will teach you all that you need to know, for all wisdom is in Christ. 2. Observe, next, that our Lord Jesus Christ is greater than Solomon in wealth. This was one of the things for which Solomon was noted. He had great treasures: he “ made gold to be as stones, and as for silver it was little accounted of,” so rich did he become. But, oh, when you consider all the wealth of Solomon, what poor stuff it is compared with the riches that are treasured up in Christ Jesus. 3. There was one point about Solomon in which every Israelite rejoiced, namely, that he was the prince of peace. His name signifies peace. His father, David, was a great warrior, but Solomon had not to carry on war. Those were halcyon days for Israel when Solomon reigned. Ah, but in that matter a greater than Solomon is here; for Solomon could not give his subjects peace of mind, he could not bestow upon them rest of heart, he could not ease them of their burden of guilt, or draw the arrow of conviction from their breast and heal its smart. 4. A fourth thing for which Solomon was noted was his great works. Solomon built the temple, which was one of the seven wonders of the world in its time. A very marvellous building it must have been. In addition to this he erected for himself palaces, constructed fortfications, and made aqueducts and great pools to bring streams from the mountains to the various towns. He also founded Palmyra and Baalbec--those cities of the desert--to facilitate his commerce with India, Arabia, and other remote regions. He was a marvellous man. And yet a greater than Solomon is here, for Christ has brought the living water from the throne of God right down to thirsty men, being Himself the eternal aqueduct through which the heavenly current streams. Christ has built fortresses and munitions of defence, behind which His children stand secure against the wrath of hell; and He has founded and is daily finishing a wondrous temple, His Church, of which His people are the living stones, and which God Himself shall inhabit. 5. Solomon was great as to dominion. He managed to bring various kings into subjection to him, and he was the greatest monarch that ever swayed the sceptre of Judah. It has all gone now. Poor, feeble Rehoboam dropped from his foolish hands the reins his father held. The kingdom was rent in pieces, the tributary princes found their liberty, and the palmy days of Israel were over. On the contrary, our Lord Jesus Christ at this moment has dominion over all things. God has set Him over all the works of His hands. II. BETWEEN CHRIST AND SOLOMON THERE IS MUCH MORE THAN --much more difference than likeness. 1. In His nature the Lord Jesus is greater than Solomon. 2. In His character. 3. In His influence. 4. In His power to bless. (C. H. Spurgeon.) A privileged nation judged by the heathen Mr. Johnstone observes that “ When Japan was recently revolutionised, the inhabitants adopted Occidental customs, and many of them--chiefly their style of dress, social manners, and form of government--were taken from England. It was thought by those in authority in Japan that it would be well to look into the English religion, and see if it were better, and tended to the moral advancement of those professing it. A deputation was sent for that purpose, and beginning at London, set itself to study the Christian religion. I know not where they went to, nor from what standpoint they viewed it; but their report was unfavourable. They said that never in Japan had they seen such sin, such open licentiousness, drunkenness, selfishness, unkindness, and lack of sympathy as they had witnessed among the professed Christians of England, and they would advise that they adhere to their own religion, which was as good, if not better, than the Christian. Such was their report, after witnessing the life of the people of nominally Christian England. Luke 11:33-36 The light of the body is the eye The single eye The eye is evil when the vision is incorrect, double; is single when it lays hold of one object with clearness and firmness. Shut the eye, or if the eye is diseased so as not to be able to see any one object distinctly, and we have the body full of darkness. This is true in the moral universe. 1. Intellectually. He whose judgment is uncertain, &c. He who has clear plans, &c. 2. Morally. He who has clear conceptions of right and wrong; with what freedom and strength he walks forward. There is light in him; there is light before him. 3. Spiritually. What does it mean to have a single eye in the religious world? It means more than supreme love to God. It means that the whole mental and moral nature of the man must be right in its conceptions of religious truths. This may be summed up in five points. (1) Man must live for ever. The eternal, vital principle is in him. Suicide is not possible. (2) Man, as a sinner, needs transformation into God’ s character. (3) Christ has come from heaven to work the transformation--the atonement. (4) The necessity for a personal, affectionate faith. (5) The only way of safety is the exercise of this faith at once. (R. S.Storrs, D. D.) Singleness of heart Whatever a man regards as his chief good, on that, his heart--his supreme affections--will be fixed; and by that will all his specific opinions, affections, desires, purposes, and actions be regulated and controlled. What, then, the eye is to the body, the practical estimate and regard which a man forms of his chief good is to the whole moral character. If the eye be incapable of vision, the whole body is doomed to all the evils of utter darkness. So, if the practical estimate which men form of their good be not according to the truth and reality of things, the whole moral man is doomed to error, to sin, and to ruin. To illustrate and confirm this truth I re-mark-- I. THE WHICH EVERY MAN FORMS OF HIS CHIEF GOOD EITHER GOD OR THE WORLD AS ITS OBJECT. These are the only sources of good, of any kind or degree, which are opened to man. II. THIS ON WHICH OF THE TWO OBJECTS THE HEART IS FIXED. Here, it is necessary to distinguish carefully between a speculative estimate or judgment, and that which is practical. Let us consider the influence of this state of mind: 1. On a man’ s knowledge and belief of the truth. No one can have attentively considered human nature, without seeing how much the opinions of men are affected by the state of the heart; and how much more perfectly they understand those subjects which it is for their interest to understand, than any others. If a man’ s heart, then, be right with God, the great truths which God has revealed to influence man to act up to this end of his being will be truths which he will especially wish to understand. It is on this principle that our Saviour has declared that if any man will do His will he shall know of the doctrine. 2. This state of mend, described in the text, decides the nature of all specific and subordinate affections. Light and darkness cannot be in the same place at the same instant. God and mammon cannot reign in the same heart. And when the glory of God is the light of the soul, like the splendours of the sun, it extinguishes the lesser lights which glitter before a worldly mind. The Lord and Creator of the heart there fixes His throne, and all the affections of the inner man bow to Him as their supreme Lord. 3. This state of heart will have the same influence on the external conduct. The man who has not the love of God in him may indeed be faultless in many points, but his conduct will be greatly deficient and erroneous in externals. He will do and he will neglect to do many things which it were impossible should be done or neglected, did he carry with him a continual sense of God’ s presence. But where the heart--the governing aim--is right, there is a principle which tends to bring everything right. There may indeed be some occasional deviation; but deviation will be an interruption in the general course of conduct. There will be a principle of correction within, which will discover, regret, and reform what is amiss. For the principle is a universal principle; a supreme regard to God will lead to one duty as well as to another--to acts of kindness as well as to acts of devotion. It will resist and correct little sins as well as great sins; for the same authority reaches to one as to the other, and that authority is God’ s. It is also a uniform principle. It allows of no intermission of duty--sanctions no neglect of duty--admits of no indulgence of a beloved sin. For the authority which controls the man is God’ s authority, and it is ceaseless and eternal like Himself. It is a pure and holy principle. It tolerates no iniquity--no moral imperfections. It points to the highest purity; it aims at God’ s perfect likeness. Concluding remarks: 1. Those whose hearts are supremely devoted to the world have reason to suspect that they embrace some serious practical error. 2. Our subject shows us the substantial difference between the saint and the sinner, and how great that difference. 3. Our subject shows the necessity of maintaining a right state of heart. 4. Our subject shows those who are destitute of true religion what they must do to obtain it. They must settle it with themselves that their false views of the world must be corrected, and their hearts taken from it and be fixed on God. Cost what it may, this must be done. (N. W. Taylor, D. D.) Self-deceit As the bodily eye is of great use and importance to the animal life, to the direction of its powers, and to the enjoyment of it; so there is an interior eye of the mind of equal importance and usefulness to the direction of our highest capacity, and to the chief ends of our beings, which is the sense of good and evil, both natural and moral; or, the judgment of the soul concerning their difference, and the methods of pursuing the one, and avoiding the other. Now we must remember, to begin with, that there is a great disparity between the case of the external sight and the distempers to which it is liable, and the judgment of the mind with which it is compared. External vision does not depend upon our own choice; nor are we either to be praised or blamed for it; an obstruction in the eye-sight may be a man’ s infelicity, it is not his fault; but in the other case we are strictly and properly agents, charged with the care of ourselves, and with the improvement of our own powers and faculties, so that be may attain their true ends. Here, by the single eye, is meant the virtue of simplicity, without reserve or hesitation hearkening to, and following the pure voice of conscience, not using any artifice, colouring, or false disguise, nor suffering any bias or prejudice to rest on the mind whereby it may be imposed upon or misled. The evil eye is disease of the mind, very malignant, and extremely dangerous; what less can be meant by total and most deplorable darkness? but it is a voluntary contracted distemper. I. THE DANGER OF SELF-DECEIT. 1. This is plainly taught in Scripture (see Proverbs 16:2; Isaiah 5:20). 2. We can see instances of it within the range of our own observation. How common is it for men to make solemn professions of religion, and declare their confident hopes of acceptance with God, while yet it is notorious that they continue in a vicious course of life? And how shall this be accounted for, without supposing the grossest self-deceit? II. THE CAUSE OF SELF-DECEIT. In general, it is some prevailing corrupt affection or passion. The immediate result of vicious affections and unruly passions thoroughly possessing the hearts of men, is an unfairness in all their inquiries concerning their duty. III. THE MEANS whereby this fatal disease of the mind and error of the judgment is contracted and confirmed. 1. A false imagination. 2. Wrong notions respecting sin. 3. Feeble ineffectual purposes of future amendment and obedience. IV. THE EXTENT of this self-deceit. In some it affects the whole character and life. Such is the case described in the text, where the eye is supposed to be evil, the judgment totally perverted, the light turned into darkness which has got entire possession of the mind, and misled it in its chief concerns, its moral integrity and its future happiness. But, in some lower degree it is common to mankind; and scarcely is there any one altogether free from it, that is, who is not in some particular instances misled in judging of himself and his own conduct, through remaining self-partiality and self-ignorance. (Bishop Abernethy.) I. SHOW THE WHICH MEN’ S HAVE UPON THEIR . The judgment of the mind is the guide of life and for the most part, men’ s outward actions are governed by their inward sentiments and opinions. They form to themselves some design, and lay down some principle or other; and this, whatever it be, gets the ascendant of everything else, is most of all in their minds, and has the prevailing sway in their actions. And thus it must needs be, as long as men do not act by any natural necessity, by any blind instinct or impulse, nor are under the power of giddy chance, or overruling fate and destiny, but are rational and free agents, and left to their own liberty and choice: they cannot but be determined by their judgment and opinion of things, and square their actions according to the notions and principles they have imbibed. The effects of good and bad principles II. THE EFFECTS OF GOOD AND BAD . 1. Of the good effect and influence of good principles. If our eye be single; if we are free from all false notions and corrupt opinions; if we have a true judgment of what is our chief happiness, and wherein it consists; what is the great end of life, and what are the ways which lead to that end; our whole body will be full of light. Discretion will then guide us, and understanding will keep us; and our whole life and all our actions will be ordered right and have an uniform tendency to promote our true interest. We shall then be steady and constant in the pursuit of the “ one thing needful,” without ever standing still, or diverting to any other end. This will prove our best security both against the enticements of our own lusts, and the allurements of the world. 2. The ill influence and effect which bad principles have upon us. It is necessary for us to have some principles or other, if we would have our life answer any purpose. Without this, we are like the double-minded man, whom St. James describes, who “ is unstable in all his ways” (James 1:8), who has no particular interest to serve, but is divided between several; between the interest of this world, and of the other. Such a man is always weak and wavering, unstable and inconstant in all his actions. He has several ends to serve, which many times cross one another; and so he pursues none of them vigorously; but while he is moving towards one, inclines to another; and like a needle between two loadstones, is ever in a trembling posture, and doubtful state of mind. This is the condition of a man that has no principles at all. Next to this, it is as bad to have no good principles, no true principles of religion and virtue; for without these we shall be exposed to every temptation, and liable to change with every wind. Having no fixed principle within us, we shall adhere to nothing upon any firm grounds; but shall be ever varying, as the complexion of our body, or the temper of our mind, or the circumstances of external affairs happen to alter. We shall be superstitious at one time, careless or profane at another; now a sceptic, and then a dogmatist; of one religion to-day, and of another to-morrow, and the next day of neither; and at last, perhaps, of no religion at all. As long as the world goes well with such a man as this, and he finds his interest in his duty, he will be loyal to his prince, true to his country, and faithful to his friend; but whenever the times alter, and these virtues are out of fashion, and become the object of scorn and reproach, and cannot be practised without apparent hazard to his own private interest, he will basely desert them, and will be sure to save himself, whatever becomes of everybody else. And this will put him upon any acts of treachery and injustice, of force or fraud, which are necessary to compass his self ends. III. HOW MUCH IT US TO FURNISH OUR MINDS WITH GOOD , and to take care that no ill principle whatever prevails over us. Application: 1. Hence appears the great usefulness and necessity of knowledge and understanding, especially in religion and matters of a moral nature. 2. From what has been said, it appears how cautious we should be in the choice of our principles; as much as we should be in the choice of a guide to conduct us through an unknown and difficult way. 3. Hence appears the great evil and mischief, both the sin and the guilt, of imposing upon men’ s understandings, misinforming their judgments, and instilling false notions and principles into their minds, since this is to betray them to a guide that will assuredly mislead them, and instead of conducting them to heaven, will bring them into the pit of destruction. 4. And lastly, what has been said, should excite us to endeavour after this single eye, not only as it means in general a sound and impartial judgment, but in that literal sense which has already been hinted, as it imports singlemindedness, the having but one grand purpose and design, one ruling principle and affection, and that is serving God, and saving our own souls. (Dr. Ibbot.) The universal influence of Christian principles Consider the extensive influence of the state of heart described by the expression--“ If thine eye be single.” 1. As it respects a man’ s religious opinions. I do not assert, that if the state of a man’ s heart be right with God, his belief will be always right; but this I maintain, that the state of his heart will very much influence his faith: so that if his heart be not upright with God he will be greatly disposed to error; and, on the other hand, if the state of his heart be right it will tend gradually to correct what was erroneous in his creed, and to give him just views of religious doctrines. 2. The state of the heart will greatly influence the state of the affections. I mean, that if a man’ s real aim is to serve God, this will tend to bring all his affections and dispositions into a right state. For let a man be truly desirous of pleasing God, the tendency of this desire will be first to lead him to a better acquaintance with the character and perfections of that Being whom he now honours as his Supreme Master. And where the heart is thus turned to the frequent contemplation of Him whose attributes are infinitely glorious, what must be the result but an increasing conviction that He alone ought to be feared, and loved, and trusted? 3. The general conduct will be under a right influence wherever the heart is sincere towards God; that is, if a man’ s grand aim is to please and serve God, it will produce a course of moral conduct worthy of a religious profession. 4. And lastly, the right state of the heart will influence, in a very remarkable degree, the future progress in religion. (J. Venn, M. A.) The eye, the light of the body What is the world, says one, without the sun, but a dark melancholy dungeon? What is a man without eyes, but monstrous and deformed? The two eyes are two luminaries, that God hath set up in the microcosm, man’ s little world. When God would express His tender love unto His people, He calls them the apple of His eye. “ He that toucheth you, toucheth the apple of His eye.” And the like phrase St. Paul makes use of, when he speaks of the love of the Galatians unto himself: “ I bear you record, that if it had been possible, ye would have plucked out your eyes, and have given them to me.” The Emperor Adrian, with an arrow, by accident, put out one of his servant’ s eyes; he commanded him to be brought to him, and bade him ask what he would that he might make him amends. The poor man was silent; he pressed him again, when he said he would ask nothing, but he wished he had the eye which he had lost, intimating that an emperor was not able to make satisfaction for the loss of an eye. So the light of Divine truth is infinitely more valuable than all other blessings. If we come short of this, there can be no substitute found. If the soul should be lost, the whole world can afford us no relief. The Latin verses Adrian addressed to his soul, and translated by Pope (“ Vital Spark,” &c.) are well known. (C. Buck.) Intensified light Fresnel, by forming one vast reflector from many small ones, produced a glare eight times as intense as had previously been known. Shining out from a lighthouse, it could be seen as far as the earth’ s curvature would permit. Buffon, by collocating several hundred small mirrors, and causing the flame of a galvanic battery to play upon their focal centre, melted, in two minutes, the hardest metals, and set wood on fire at a distance of two hundred feet. The hostile ships of Rome, lying in the harbour of Syracuse, were wrapped in flames, we are told, by the fierce power of a compound sun-glass which Archimedes made. These facts are suggestive. If we unite in reflecting the rays of Him who is the Sun of Righteousness, stirring scenes will follow. It can but cause a sweeping revival; and the more flames there are, thus joined, the intenser will be the effect. Candles long hidden under bushels should, therefore, be uncovered. Their proper place is on a candlestick. “ Ye are the light of the world,” and should help illumine it. Candles should also be trimmed. Many smoke. They need snuffing. The wick of formality is too long. The flame is feeble, and flickers. It looks like a rushlight, and ought to flash like a star. It is dimly lighting a single home, and might brighten a whole street. With every blaze clear, and every candle in its place, uniting their light, “ as flame plays with flame,” a tremendous religious disturbance would speedily be heard of in all directions. Light never fails to make a stir. As sunrise rouses a sleepy world, so would a burst of “ spiritual brilliancy” awaken the unconverted. (J. S.Breckenridge.) Uncovering the light Mrs. Godolphin testified to the truth at the corrupt Court of Charles II., and thus proved herself to be the worthy successor of the three Hebrew children and the saints in the household of Caesar. Lady Huntingdon was a brave witness-bearer in the aristocratic circles of the eighteenth century. William Wilberforce carried his convictions with him whithersoever he went--whether to the drawing-room, to Parliament, or to the hustings. To Thomas Carlyle, in our own generation, a drawing-room meant only so many square feet of infinite space, and he was just as ready to speak forth the truth that was in him, and to protest against shams and make-believes, in the gilded saloons of nobles and princes as when he was seated in his own arm-chair. (R. Abererombie, M. A.) Seeing double Be not like the foolish drunkard, who, staggering home one night, saw his candle lit for him. “ Two candles!” said he, for his drunkenness made him see double, “ I will blow out one” ; and as he blew it out, in a moment he was in the dark. Many a man sees double through the drunkenness of sin. He thinks that he has one life to sow his wild oats in, and then the last part of life in which to turn to God; so, like a fool, he blows out the only candle that be has, and in the dark he will have to lie down for ever. Peacefulness resulting from having a single eye A South Sea Island preacher said: “ In the olden time I had two wives; and what was the result? There was no peace for me, day or night, on account of the jealousy and scolding of these women. Christianity came, and I put away one of my wives. Now peace reigned in my home. It is even thus with a heart divided between Christ and the world. Choose one or the other. Don’ t strive to keep both. Be Christ’ s wholly; and then, as a spouse united to one Lord, you will dwell in perfect peace.” (“ Jottings from the Pacific,” by W. Wyatt Gill, B. A.) Take heed of unillumined darkness In France, every carriage, or cart, or waggon, must, after sundown, carry a light; and quite right too. On our mountain-roads, where should we be if our carriage encountered a hay-cart just at the turn of a road or at the edge of a precipice? It is very curious to see a little lantern gleaming out from a moving hill of hay, but it is in every way the correct thing. How we wish that all our acquaintances carried a light! Be they good or bad, we are glad to know where they are, and where they are going, for then we know how to deal with them. Your dark men are dreadful men. They seem to be afraid of discovering their own whereabouts, and we know not whether they are friends or foes. We are bound to drive warily when these people are about; and we should in their neighbourhood be doubly careful to keep our own lamp burning brightly. (C. H.Spurgeon.) Light in every part We went one cold, windy day to see a poor young girl, kept at home by a lame hip. Her room was on the north side of a bleak house. It did not look pleasant without or cheerful within. “ Poor girl,” I thought, “ what a cheerless life is yours, and what a pity your room is on the north side of the house.” “ You never have any sun,” I said; “ not a ray comes in at these windows. It’ s too bad. Sunshine is everything. I love the sun.” “ Oh!” she answered, with the sweetest of smiles, “ my Sun pours in at every window and through every crack.” I looked surprised. “ The Sun of Righteousness,” she said, softly. “ Jesus--He shines in here, and makes everything bright to me.” Yes! Jesus shining in can make any spot beautiful, and make even one bare room a happy home. A fountain of light Men’ s experiences are too often like illuminated houses when a great victory or a great peace is celebrated. On such occasions men buy candies two or three inches long, and put them into little bits of tin sockets, and stick them up at every pane of glass, and light them, so that they may be seen by everybody that goes by in the street. And was there ever anything more beautiful? That is just like folks under preaching, and often in revivals of religion. They have little bits of enthusiasm, little bits of candles, that will not burn an hour. And after they have gone out how much tallow there is on the window, and on the carpet, and all about! Now, if men, instead of having these petty illuminations, would establish in themselves a fountain of light, how much better it would be! (H. W. Beecher.) Take heed. Cautions 1. Take heed of the great leading error of the worldly, who, in their practical judgment, prefer earthly to heavenly things, and thus are involved in spiritual darkness. Take eternity into account, if you would estimate things according to their real value, and would think and act as well-informed persons. 2. Take heed of shutting your eyes altogether against the light, of averting your thoughts altogether from the truth, and of resolving to persist wilfully in ignorance. There are none so blind as those who will not see. 3. Take heed of leaning to your own understanding. There are some persons who, being naturally uncommonly sagacious, or who, fancying themselves so, are so wrapped up in self-conceit as to undervalue the true light. Take heed of trusting in human learning, if you have had an opportunity of becoming learned. It is very melancholy that there are so many who rest in this to the neglect of the wisdom which is from above. Take heed of infidel and irreligious philosophy, falsely called philosophy. Reason is a noble endowment, and its right exercise is incumbent, but there are false reasonings of which you should be aware. 4. Take heed of the pride of self-righteousness; for it will blind you to your own demerit, and to the glory of Christ’ s finished work, and to the way of pardon and acceptance by faith alone. 5. “ Take heed and beware of coveteousness” ; for it perverts the judgment and the affections. The love of money causes many “ to err from the faith.” 6. Take heed of the love of sin in general, and the indulgence of any particular sin. There can be no doubt that the love of sin exerts a fatal influence in perverting the understanding, and keeping men in darkness. There are many who “ love darkness rather than light, because their deeds are evil.” 7. Take heed of a spirit of envy, malice, and uncharitableness. This is called in Scripture an evil eye: “ Is thine eye evil, because I am good?” said our Lord. The indulgence of this spirit shows that the true light has not entered the soul, and tends still to keep it out. 8. Take heed of unfounded prejudice and partiality; such a bias will lead you astray, and render your understanding as incapable of judging of truth as a jaundiced eye is of colours. Take heed of every sinister end, every improper design. This is, perhaps, peculiarly intended by an “ evil eye.” See that you have an honest, sincere, upright, single design. (James Foote, M. A.) The light which is in thee Of the light within us I. THE EVIL WE ARE WARNED AGAINST. Turning the light within us into darkness. To help our understanding of this, let us consider with ourselves those intolerable evils which bodily blindness, deafness, stupefaction, and an utter deprivation of all sense, must unavoidably subject the outward man to. For what is one in such a condition able to do? And what it he not liable to suffer? And yet doing and suffering, upon the matter, comprehend all that concerns a man in this world. If such a one’ s enemy seeks his life (as he may be sure that some or other will, and possibly such a one as he takes for his truest friend) in this forlorn ease, he can neither see, nor hear, nor perceive his approach, till he finds himself actually in his murdering hands. He can neither encounter nor escape him, neither in his own defence give nor ward off a blow; for whatsoever blinds a man, ipso facto disarms him; so that being thus bereft both of his sight and of all his senses besides, what such a one can be fit for, unless it be to set up for prophecy, or believe transubstantiation, I cannot imagine. These; I say, are some of those fatal mischiefs which corporal blindness and insensibility expose the body to; and are not those of a spiritual blindness inexpressibly greater? II. THE DANGER OF FALLING INTO THIS EVIL. It is as in a common plague, in which the infection is as bard to be escaped as the distemper to be cured; for that which brings this darkness upon the soul is sin. And as the state of nature now is, the soul is not so close united to the body as sin is to the soul; indeed, so close is the union between them, that one would even think the soul itself (as much a spirit as it is) were the matter, and sin the form, in our present constitution. In a word, there is a set combination of all without a man and all within him, of all above ground and all under it (if hell be so), first to put out his eyes, and then to draw or drive him headlong into perdition. III. How AND BY WHAT COURSES THIS DIVINE LIGHT COMES TO BURN FAINT AND DIM. 1. Whatever defiles the conscience, in the same degree also darkens it. 2. Whatever puts a bias upon the judging faculty of conscience, weakens, and, by consequence, darkens the light of it. 3. We now pass from these general observations to particulars. (1) Every single gross act of sin is much the same thing to the conscience, that a great blow or fall is to the head: it stuns and bereaves it of its senses for a time. (2) The frequent and repeated practice of sin has also a mighty power in it to obscure and darken the natural light of conscience, nothing being more certainly true, nor more universally acknowledged, than that custom of sinning takes away the sense of sin; and, we may add, the sight of it too. For though the darkness consequent upon any one gross act of sin be, as we have shown, very great, yet that which is caused by custom of sinning is much greater and more hardly curable. (3) Every corrupt passion or affection of the mind will certainly pervert the judging, and obscure and darken the discerning power of conscience. (R. South, D. D.) The nature of human actions I. Consider the nature of human actions, and what dependence they have upon the directing principle, upon the light or understanding that is in the mind of man. II. Show what power men have over their own actions with regard to the influence of that light or understanding by which they are to be directed. III. Consider of what consequence it is in matters of religion that men fail not in this first and grand Foundation of all, in the Root, the Spring, the universal Guide and Director of their actions. “ Take heed that the light which is in thee be not darkness.” (S. Clarke, D. D.) Light turned into darkness If, in those days, which were not characteristically “ days of light,” Christ saw it necessary to urge this caution so strongly, we can conceive with how much greater force He would have pressed it now, when Daniel’ s prophecy is having such literal fulfilment on every side “ Many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased.” Through the avenues of conscience, which is to the soul what the eye is to the body, communications from God are always pouring in. In nature, in providence, but still more by His Word, and by His own inward grace, tie acts upon the man. The understanding is formed, the reason is directed, the affections are moved, the will is urged, holy influences stream in upon the inner being. And this process, up to a certain point at least, in every man’ s life, is continually going on. I believe that it is going on in every one of you at this moment. Hence your familiar acquaintance with Divine truth! Hence your sense of sin! Hence your frequent compunctions! Hence your better desires and good resolves! Hence your gleams of heaven! Hence your appreciation and admiration of the real and the true! To what a height that inner “ light” is capable of being raised by culture it is impossible for us to estimate, seeing no man has ever cherished it as much as he might. But did we pray, and study, and listen, and obey the “ still, small voices” as we ought, there would be no limit to the degree in which the judgment would be directed, the heart softened, the will conformed, the thoughts made sunny, the future assured, the love of God dominant, and heaven foretasted. For “ if the eye be single, the whole body is full of light.” If the openings heavenward and Godward be all clear, and unchoked, and free, the whole man is capable, and wise, and happy, and safe; and that is fulfilled which we read so familiarly, and therefore so unintelligibly--“ The path of the just is as the shining light, which shineth more and more unto the perfect day.” But it is a truth too certain, that all this “ light,” with which God beams upon us, is capable not only of being hindered, and resisted, and destroyed, but, worse than that, of actually being converted into a deeper “ darkness” --becoming a medium of spiritual blindness, or casting the soul into a more utter night. For there is no death so locked as that which once lived the most; there is no blackness so black as the shrouded day; there is no soul so dark as the soul that was once illumined! (J. Vaughan, M. A.) Luke 11:37-39A certain Pharisee besought Him to dine with him.--The Pharisees reproved I. THE . 1. The prominence with which the Pharisees figure in our Lord’ s life is noticeable. (1) In view of their profession of preeminent piety. (2) In view of their scrupulous conformity to all the outward forms of religion. (3) In view of their bitter emnity against Jesus, and their craft and various forms of cunning used to ensnare Him. (4) What a commentary on the powerlessness as well as hollowness of attention on the mere formalities of religion. II. OUR LORD’ S OF THE . 1. Our Lord accepted the invitation with full knowledge of the insincerity with which it was offered. (1) But He knew it would give Him the opportunity of giving utterance to truths which the occasion would naturally call forth. (2) May we appreciate the value of opportunity. 2. Our Lord accepted the invitation with full knowledge of the painful consequence that would follow His honest utterances on the occasion. We must not shrink on account of consequences to speak the truth which God gives. III. THE OF THE . 1. This surprise was natural from the Pharisee’ s standpoint. 2. And this ceremonial washing had a high moral design. (1) To remind constantly of the need of inward purity. (2) But its spiritual significance was lost sight of in the mere rite itself. 3. Our Lord’ s omission to wash before the meal was premeditated. (1) That He did nothing that was not premeditated, shows this. (2) The moral lessons He drew which the occasion furnished Him, prove this. (3) In our Lord’ s life the lower was ever sacrificed for the higher. IV. THE LESSONS WHICH OUR LORD DREW. 1. From the folly and wickedness of having a form of godliness while denying its power. 2. A lesson on true cleanliness. V. THE FEARFUL ON . 1. Upon the formalists who made great pretensions to piety--the Pharisees. 2. Upon the formalists who made great pretensions to Scriptural knowledge--scribes. 3. Upon the formalists who made great pretensions to exact analysis of the law--lawyers. Lessons: 1. In social life our Lord gives an example of impartiality in His attention and interest: publicans, sinners, Pharisees--invitations from all alike He accepted. 2. In social life our Lord gives us an example of turning every incident to practical and spiritual account. 3. In social life our Lord gives us an example of inflexible righteousness, conjoined with loving sympathy. (D. C. Hughes, M. A.) Pharisaical religion I. THE SEVERAL SIGNS OR OF . 1. The substitution of external for spiritual purity. 2. Attention to trifles may be compatible with neglect of great duties. 3. Honour is sought from men; the honour which comes from God only is despised. 4. Doctrines and practices may be taught by those who neither believe-their own doctrines nor observe their own precepts. II. THE EVIL AND OF . 1. It is misleading to observers. 2. It is repugnant to God. 3. It is disastrous to the spiritual life of those who trust to it. Men begin by deceiving others, and end by deceiving themselves. (J. R.Thomson, M. A.) Outward show and inward lack It is unfortunately not difficult to find illustrations of outward show and inward lack. The beautiful ivy-covered wall which crumbles at a touch; the rosy apple worm-eaten at the core; the leafy fig-tree which yet bears no figs; the luxuriant growth which covers the morass; the poison-ivy, fair to look at but dangerous to the touch; the rustic seat, inviting to rest, from which the serpent springs up,--may serve as examples. In mediaeval writings, mention is often made of poisonous rings. Outwardly they looked like other rings, a narrow band of gold with a clear diamond set in it. But when the ring was placed on the hand a slight puncture was made from behind the gem, and a little poison injected into the finger, and so the death of the wearer was caused, What an emblem of the Pharisee! Every child knows what a sham is. Perhaps there is not one of them but has sometime received from a “ funny” playfellow a pleasant-looking sweetmeat, which when taken into the mouth, nipped and burned the tongue. Or they may have taken up, in a friend’ s house, what they thought was a book, and found it to be only a box imitation of one. It will be easy then to show them how the same thing appears in human things. The merchant who sells oleomargarine under the name of butter is, like his goods, a sham. The church-member who stands up staunchly for Sabbath observance and regular attendance at church, and yet during the week tells business lies and makes dishonest profits, is a sham. And the boy or girl who is known at Sunday-school as one of the best scholars, but at home is ill-natured and selfish and revengeful, is also a sham. Teach the children to be sincere. An inconsistent person is like a sum in addition, with the wrong answer at the bottom. Everybody can run up the column of figures and see how wrong the summing up is. Show how the scholars may make the sum of their life-arithmetic correct. Or the insincere person may be compared to the baskets of peaches sometimes sold at the doors--a few large, ripe peaches at the top, but, when these are lifted away, nothing but unripe or decaying fruit beneath. Who would wish his life to be like that? (Sunday School Times.) Hypocrisy branded Hypocrites resemble looking-glasses, which present the faces which are not in them. Oh, how desirous are men to put the fairest gloves upon the foulest hands; and the finest paint upon the rottenest posts! To counterfeit the coin of heaven, is to commit treason against the King of heaven. Who would spread a curious cloth upon a dusty table? If a mariner set sail in an unsound bottom, he may reasonably expect to lose his voyage. No wise virgin would carry a lamp without light. O professor, either get the latter or part with the former. None are so black in the eyes of the Deity as those who paint spiritual beauty for spirit … A false friend is worse than an open enemy. A painted harlot is less dangerous than a painted hypocrite. A treacherous Judas is more abhorred of God than a bloody Pilate. Christians! remember the sheep’ s clothing will soon be stripped from the wolf’ s back. The velvet plaster of profession shall not always conceal the offensive ulcer of corruption. Neither the ship of formality nor hypocrisy will carry one person to the harbour of felicity. The blazing lamps of foolish virgins may light them to the bridegroom’ s gate, but not into his chamber … Oh, what vanity it is to lop off the boughs, and leave the roots which can send forth more; or to empty the cistern, and leave the fountain running which can soon fill it again I Such may swim in the water as the visible church; but when the net is drawn to shore, they must be thrown away as bad fishes. Though the tares and the wheat may grow in the field together, yet they will not be housed in the granary together. (Archbishop Secker.) Hypocrisy sometimes difficult to discover Formality frequently takes its dwelling near the chambers of integrity, and so assumes its name; the soul not suspecting that hell should make so near an approach to heaven. A rotten post, though covered with gold, is more fit to be burned in the fire, than for the building of a fabric. Where there is a pure conscience, there will be a pure conversation. The dial of our faces does not infallibly show the time of day in our hearts; the humblest looks may enamel the former, while unbounded pride covers the latter. Unclean spirits may inhabit the chamber when they look not out at the window. A hypocrite may be both the fairest and the foulest creature in the world; he may be fairest outwardly in the eyes of man, and foulest inwardly in the sight of God. How commonly do such unclean swans cover their black flesh with their white feathers! Though such wear the mantle of Samuel, that should bear the name of Satan. (Archbishop Secker.) Conventional notions of sin If you ask the Pharisee of old what sin was--“ Well,” he said, “ it is eating without washing your hands; it is drinkingwine without baying first of all strained out the gnats, for those insects are unclean, and if you should swallow any of them they will render you defiled.” His repentance dealt with his having touched a Gentile, or having come on the windside of a Publican. Many in these days have the same notion, with a variation. We have read of a Spanish bandit, who, when he confessed before his father-confessor, complained that one sin hung with peculiar weight upon his soul that was of peculiar atrocity. He had stabbed a man on a Friday, and a few drops of the blood of the wound had fallen on his lips, by which he had broken the precepts of holy church, in having tasted animal food on a fast day. The murder did not seem to arouse in his conscience any feeling of remorse at all--not one atom--he would have done the same to-morrow; but an accidental violation of the canons of mother church excited all his fears. (C. H. Spurgeon.) Neglecting the inside In Queen Elizabeth’ s time, the way in which they cleaned out the halt of a castle, the floor of which might be covered with remnants of food and all manner of abominations, was to strew another layer of rushes over the top of the filth, and then they thought themselves quite neat and respectable. And that is what a great many of you do, cover the filth well up with a sweet smelling layer of conventional proprieties and think yourselves clean, and the pinks of perfection. (A. Maclaren, D. D.) Heathen notions of sin A missionary in India writes about what the people there call sin. He says: “ Travelling across the country one day, I took shelter from the sun in a native hut. The man kindly spread a mat for me, and the shade of the thatched roof was very acceptable. Soon a large number of poor men, who had been working in the muddy road, came there to eat their mid-day meal of rice. A young man of a better class came a little afterwards. While the rice was cooking at the foot of a tree outside, I began to tell them about Jesus. But soon the young man interrupted me, saying, ‘ Sahib, I have not so much need of salvation as these men have,’ and he pointed to their mud-covered legs, and thought of his own white clothes so free from mire. But I said again that all are sinners. ‘ There is none that doeth good, no not one.’ At last he said, ‘ Ha! I made a mistake. We are all sinners.’ Another day a man said to me, ‘ Sahib, you are a great sinner;’ as he said so he looked at my dusty boots and trousers, and then at my forehead streaming with perspiration. He had noticed how I had spoken to the people as though they were my brothers, and he concluded that if I were not a great sinner I should never be so poor, or have to work so hard, or mix so freely with the natives. Hindus, you see, think that God gives riches to the good and poverty to the bad. Once a man among the crowd said to me when I was preaching, ‘ Yes, that’ s true; we may do anything to get salvation, even sin.’ This was a strange mixture of ideas, was it not? But it shows that they do not think of salvation as freedom from sin. We have to teach them this. They do not even know what sin is. How can they, if they know not the law of God? If you ask a large crowd of Hindus the question, ‘ What is sin?’ they will answer in a moment, ‘ Eating beef.’ They say there are two unpardonable sins--killing a Brahmin and killing a cow. Sometimes we are asked, most seriously, ‘ Did Jesus Christ eat meat?’ They think that if He did, He too was a sinner. From this it will appear how difficult it is to get natives to understand what sin is not.” (The Gospel in all Lands.) Luke 11:41 Give alms of such things as ye have Christian charity In the Revised Version the translation is--“ Give for alms those things that are within,” and this preserves the point of the saying, which is obscured in the rendering of the Authorized Version. Our Lord had been invited to dinner by a certain Pharisee, and had sat down to meat without the customary ritual ablutions. In the eyes of His host He sat there defiled by His refusal of the outward cleansing; and it was to teach the lesson that purity must be born within the soul and cannot come to it from without, that He spoke these words. I. In ONE SENSE THIS PRECEPT MAKES CHARITY EASIER RATHER THAN MORE . We do not all possess the things which are without--money, influence, rank, and the patronage they bring with them; and if Christ had made charity to consist in the bestowal of such things He would have made charity an impossible virtue to a large number of His disciples. But when Christ enlarges His definition of charity, when He says almsgiving does not only consist in giving money or giving anything that is external, but in giving the “ things that are within,” He certainly seems to open this royal road to all who choose to enter it, for lives there the man so poor as to be unable to give a tear, a look, a kindly word, a touch of brotherly sympathy to his fellow-man? II. Yet it needs hut a moment’ s thought to discover that INSTEAD OF THIS COMMAND MAKING EASIER, IT REALLY MAKES IT MORE . For which is the easier, to give what you may have in your purse to the poor, or to give yourself; to bestow the coin that is hardly missed, or to bestow your thought, sympathy, personal interest on some sad case of misfortune and suffering? 1. Among the “ things that are within” , we may certainly count the manner in which charity is bestowed. As John Morley remarks, “ It is not enough to do good; one must do it in a good way.” There is more real value, both to God and man, in a little gift given in a good way, given with willingness, with cheerfulness, with gratitude for the privilege of giving, than in a great gift flung out from a stony heart, like honey out of the rock. 2. But manner is not everything. Sympathy is more than manner; and of all the inner sources of wealth which confer value on our alms, sympathy is the chief. It is one thing to give a sovereign to a a poor widow overwhelmed with trouble; it is another thing to give ourselves, our time, our sympathy, to help to lift her to a happier life, and to make her feel there is one heart that cares for her. A little while ago a poor lost girl lay dying on some filthy straw in a London slum. I know not whether any relief had been sent from the great houses near by, but if it had been given it had not touched her heart or brought hope to that darkened life. One day a Christian lady heard of the dying girl, heard the sad story of her life, and mounting the rickety stairs that led to her miserable room, found her out. She went to her side. Her first act was to stoop down and kiss her. That womanly act--that Christlike act, rather let me say, the pure touching and loving the impure--brought a flood of cleansing tears to that girl’ s face; that act saved a lost soul. It was giving for alms of the “ things that were within.” 3. Once again, in illustration of the inner wealth which we are to bestow on others, there is our personal service in the relief of suffering, or the increase of human joy, or the saving of the lost. Neither the manner of almsgiving nor the sympathy of the heart is enough. We must do good as well as be good. From the service of God, as expressed in the service of man, there is no exemption. You may pay a substitute to take your place in the conscriptions of earth; in the war of God against sin and suffering and ignorance, there is no vicarious service. Christ gave Himself for us; and He asks us to give ourselves to Him and to His service on earth. The Church of Christ will never save the world until, following its Divine Lord, it goes out into the dark places of the earth to seek and to save that which is lost. There is no Christian charity worth the name without sacrifice. Its lowest form is the sacrifice of money; its highest is the sacrifice of ourselves--the giving without murmuring or grudging our best for the service of God in the service of man. 4. I cannot omit from the “ things that are within,” the inner life of Christ which He has imparted to the soul, the gospel of His redeeming love, which has made us what we are. Christ expects you to speak for Him, to be a gospel to those who know Him not. There is a preaching more eloquent than any sermon from the pulpit, and that is the message spoken, not by the minister, but by each individual Christian in his own life in the fitting season. (G. S. Barrett, B. A.) The value of alms-giving Instead of “ such things as ye have,” the words ought rather to be rendered, “ give alms of that which is within the cup and platter,” i.e., of their contents: give food and refreshment to those who need it, and behold all things are clean unto you. This is one of those very many places which assign to alms-giving (of course if practised for the approval of God, and not for vainglory) an almost expiatory value (see Luke 16:9; Acts 10:4; Matthew 25:34-35; 1 Timothy 6:17-18). Godet paraphrases it well: “ Do you wish, then, that these meats and these wines should not be defiled, and should not defile you? Do not think that it is enough for you carefully to wash your hands before eating; there is a surer means: let some poor man partake of them.” (M. F. Sadler.) Offertorial gifts When we read this verse in connection with those that immediately precede it, the meaning of it appears to become clear and unquestionable. The Pharisees, in whose company our blessed Lord was sitting at meat, had remarked upon His not first washing before the dinner; for they themselves, and all the Jews, by their example, except they washed their hands often (or to the elbow) ate not, “ holding the tradition of the elders” (Mark 7:3). Ye fools, do ye then hope to deceive God by cleansing the outside, while your reward hearts are thus full of all extortion and greediness? Nay, rather purify the inside; change ravening into mercy, and stinginess and grudging into almsgiving; and, behold, every part, both the inside and the outside, will become clean unto you. The praise of almsgiving, then, which is contained in this passage, seems to be that when it is duly done, it is better in the sight of God than all whole burnt-offerings and sacrifices; that it has a more cleansing efficacy than any ceremonial worship; that it is an inward cleanness, and as such is acceptable to God beyond any outward punctiliousness or exactness of service. I am led to select this topic of Christian instruction, my brethren, in addressing you today, in order to make a few observations on the benefits of the sacred offertory of the Holy Communion. 1. Let it be observed then, first, that the holy offertorial gift is a gift of peace. “ If thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath aught against thee, leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy Matthew 5:23-24). How shall any one, then, who is unkind, or quarrelsome, or unforgiving, be able to offer the sacramental gift? Be it ever so small, it is the token and symbol of peace. Think, then, my brethren, whether, even in this respect only, the offertorial gift have not a very strong and important reference to your own lives and habits. Think whether there be not many ways in which you are tempted to infringe the law of Christian charity and courtesy towards one another; whether mutual kindness and considerateness, in great and small things, in matters of all sorts, in deeds, in words, in nicknames, in insults, in injury of feelings or property; whether such minute considerateness and kindly courtesy, be not a duty of which you greatly need to be sometimes reminded. And think again whether you are not apt sometimes, in treating those whom God has placed in a lower rank than yourselves in life, to offend against the same law. 2. Secondly, the offertorial gift is to be regarded as the first-fruit of alms. Whatever a man may give in alms between communion and communion is to be considered as all offered to God in the offering of this the first-fruits. Thus the little gift of the communion is, in fact, greater, even in amount, than it seems; for it represents all that a man Christianly gives for similar pious and charitable uses till his next communion. It is as the libation, sanctifying all the feast. As Christian alms then, the offertorial gift may be of most various and unconceived effects. Who knows what sorrows it may alleviate, what pains it may soothe, what wants it may supply? Who knows again how many thanksgivings it may awaken, how many prayers for blessings on the giver, what hearts it may touch to repentance? Who knows what consequences, never to be known on earth, but surely to be declared in the Judgment, a little gift with God’ s good blessing on it may produce beyond our power to trace or think? how it may bring glory to God from men on earth and from rejoicing angels in the highest heavens? Thus then, in the second place, I would urge you to prize the offertorial gift as opening to you the privilege of sacred alms-giving. But I have hitherto spoken only of the outward aspects of the offertorial gift. It is to the inward ones, if I may so express myself, that the text of St. Luke particularly refers, and to which I rather desire to direct your attention. Consider, then, how many ways there are in which men need that money, in its various uses, should be sanctified to them. You know in what remarkable terms the Holy Scriptures constantly speak of money: how they seem to identify it in a very particular way with evil and the powers of evil; how our Lord calls it by the name of the unrighteous mammon, and telling His disciples that they cannot serve God and mammon, seems to put the false god of money for the evil spirit; and to say that he and his dominion are so separate and distinct from God and His kingdom, that whosoever is subject to the one cannot possibly be subject to the other also. What, then, I desire to set before you is this: that you, too, in your present state of life are beginning to be tried in respect of money; that the false god of money, the unholy mammon, solicits you in various ways, as well as those whose pecuniary trials are larger and more notorious; that you have many such dangers even now, which you must learn to escape in these early days of springing Christian strength, and that the secret of your strength and safety is to be found in your communion offerings. There, while you dedicate the little first-fruits, you must intend to sanctify the whole. There, while you directly consecrate a little, you must resolve that there shall be none unconsecrated; that Christian devotion and duty shall accompany you even in the most distant and secular uses to which the rest may be applied; that the manner of spending the rest shall be appropriate to this beginning. 3. Consider, then, how entirely inconsistent with the offering of communion gifts is all incurring of debt. How can any person venture to approach the altar of God with what he pretends to be a gift, while, in fact, the very piece of money which he offers belongs of right to another, and is not his own? Let no one, then, think that he shall honour God by making an offering at the altar of that which he owes. It is, according to the expressive idiom of the Latin, “ another man’ s money” ; and little indeed can we think that God will be glorified, or that blessing will follow on the gift, which is rather an additional sin than a manner of sanctifying our other actions. And let all remember that to offer at the Holy Communion is, in fact, to forswear and abandon the practice of incurring debts. 2. Think, again, of wastefulness and luxury, and consider whether you are not commonly tempted to spend money, often very hardly spared by those who supply it to you, in self-indulgence of the most wanton and needless kinds. 3. Again, how impossible it should be for one who offers a gift at God’ s holy altar to be dishonest, whether that dishonesty be shown in the coarser and more unquestionable ways of theft or cheating, or in the less obvious, but not less guilty devices, whereby advantage is often unfairly taken, and some enriched to their neighbour’ s loss! 4. And again, as connected with the last topic, consider whether it be possible for those who desire to make their offertorial gift in true earnestness and devotion, to endeavour to gain money in gambling or betting of any kind. And who that ever saw the gambling passion strongly exhibited in any person can doubt of what manner of spirit such a man is while the passion is on him--the Spirit of God, or the spirit of mammon? 5. And, lastly, let me ask you whether it be possible for one who brings his offering to the altar, and desires thereby to make all his other pecuniary dealings clean unto him, to purchase any things that are themselves unlawful, whether they be unlawful by the universal law of God, or unlawful by the laws to which they are now subject, and which they must obey, as they hope to please God in the state of life to which He has called them? Plainly, it is not possible. It would be an attempt to give God a little and Satan much. These, then, are some of the ways in which the Holy Communion offering ought to be of benefit to you in these years: so true is it that if we would act up to all the precepts and directions of the Church we should find that they bear in many unexpected ways upon our lives, and cannot be neglected without much and heavy loss. The offertory gives the sacred Church rule of spending money; and there is no part of the subject, however remote or secular, to which the rule thence derived will not apply. (Bishop Moberly.) Luke 11:42 These ought ye to have done Spurious holiness Rabbi Shammai, the narrow-minded rival of Hillel, was so scrupulous that he nearly starved his little son on the Day of Atonement, and made a sort of booth of his daughter-in-law’ s bed that his little grandson, just born, might keep the Feast of Tabernacles. Yet we are told that he was a luxurious and selfish man. It is easier to tithe mint than to live a holy life. (Canon Farrar.) Neglecting the most important thing A great French doctor was taking an English one round the wards of his hospital, all sorts of miseries going on before them, some dying, others longing for death-all ill. The Frenchman was wonderfully eloquent about all their diseases; you would have thought he saw through them, and knew all their secret wheels, like looking into a watch or into a glass bee-hive. He told his English friend what would be seen in such a case when the body was opened! He spent some time in this sort of work, and was coming out, full of glee, when the other doctor said, “ But, Dr you haven’ t prescribed for these cases.” “ Oh, neither I have!” said he, with a grumph and a shrug; “ I quite forgot that” ; that being the one thing why these poor people were there, and why he was there too. (John Brown, M. D.) Pardon desired for duties left undone Dr. Samuel Johnson, in writing to his mother, says:--“ You have been the best mother, and I believe the best woman, in the world. I thank you for your indulgence to me, and I beg forgiveness for all I have done ill, and all that I have omitted to do well.” So in the prayer he composed at the same time: “ Forgive me whatever I have done unkindly to my mother, and whatever I have omitted to do kindly.” Luke 11:45 Thou reproachest us also Disputes reviewed I. WE MUST ALL EXPECT TO BE CALLED TO AN ACCOUNT BY THE LORD JESUS. 1. We are all now in “ the way” --travellers--following Christ in consort. 2. There will be a review of what passes in “ the way.” 3. The accounts in the great day must be given up to our Lord Jesus. God made the world, by His Son; and by Him, as the fittest person, He will judge the world. Now this is a good reason-- (1) Why we should judge ourselves, and prove our own work, and see that our matters be right and good against that day. Let us examine ourselves concerning our spiritual state, that we may make sure work for our own souls. (2) Why we should not judge one another, or be severe in our censures one of another. We thereby invade Christ’ s throne. II. WE MUST IN A MANNER BE CALLED TO AN ACCOUNT ABOUT OUR AMONG . 1. If we talk anything which is good among ourselves, and which is to the use of edifying; which manifests grace in the speaker, and ministers grace to the hearers; Christ takes notice of that, and we shall hear of it again to our comfort, in that day when those who thus confess Christ before men shall be owned by Him before His father and the holy angels. 2. If we talk anything that is ill among ourselves; if any corrupt communication proceeds out of our mouths, dictated by the corruption of our minds, and which has a tendency to corrupt the minds and manners of others; Christ observes that too, is displeased with it--and we shall hear of it again, either by the checks of our own consciences, in order to our repentance, or in the day of the revelation of the righteous judgment of God, when, according to Enoch s prophecy, the Lord shall come to reckon with sinners, not only for all their ungodly deeds, but for all their hard speeches, spoken against Him. III. As our other discourses among ourselves by the way, so OUR , WILL ALL BE CALLED OVER AGAIN, and we shall be called to an account about them. 1. Disputes commonly arise from difference of opinion, either in religion and Divine things (about which oftentimes the disputes and contests are most violent); or in philosophy, politics, or other parts of learning; or in the conduct of human life. These disputes (though not necessarily sinful in themselves, for men cannot be expected to agree on all points) are often such as we may justly be ashamed of, when we come to look back upon them. (1) Upon account of the matter of them. This may have been-- (a) Something above us, with which we had no concern; or (b) something below us, not worth disputing about. (2) Upon account of our management of them. Our Master will be displeased with us if it be found that we have been hot and fierce in our disputes, and have mingled our passions and peevish resentments with them; if a point of honour has governed us more than a point of conscience, and we have contended more for victory and reputation, than for truth and duty; if we have contended about things of small moment for, or against, them, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law and gospel; if we have spent more of our zeal on matters in difference than they deserve; and have lost the vitals of religion in our heat about circumstantials, and have disputed away our seriousness and devotion--“ What then shall we do when God riseth up? and when He visiteth, what shall we answer Him?” 2. Many disputes arise from separate and interfering interests in this world. Neighbours and relations quarrel about their rights and properties, their estates and trades, their honours and powers and pleasures; Meum and Tuum--“my rent” and “ thy bond,” are the great subjects of dispute, and engage people in endless strifes. These disputes, as they are most common, so they are most scandalous, among relations, and those who are under particular obligations to love one another. And whatever keeps brethren from dwelling together in unity, is very provoking to Christ, who has made brotherly love the livery of His family: and it is very hardly removed. 3. Some disputes, and hot ones too, arise merely from passion and clashing humours, where really there is nothing of judgment or interest in the case. (1) As far as we are able to make a judgment, let us see to it that we have truth and right on our side, in all our disputes, and not be confident any further than we see just cause to be so. We must not only never contend for that which we know to be false and wrong, but also never for that which is doubtful, or which we do not know to be true and right. (2) In matters of doubtful disputation. While we are contending for that which we take to be right, let us at the same time think it possible that we may be in the wrong. (3) Let us keep the full possession and government of our own spirits, in all our disputes. Let us carefully suppress all inward tumults, whatever provocation may be given us; and let our minds be calm and sedate, whatever argument we are engaged in. (4) Let us never lose the charity we ought to have for our brethren in our disputes of any kind, nor violate the sacred laws of it. (5) Let us often think of the account we must shortly give to our great Master of all our disputes with our fellow-servants by the way. Let us consider how our disputes will look in that day, and what our own reflections will be then upon them. IV. Of all disputes, Christ will be sure to reckon with His disciples for their ABOUT AND . The prevalency of such a temper as this, as far as it appears, is very threatening. But when the Spirit shall be poured out upon us from on high, there shall be no more such disputes as these; and then the wilderness shall become a fruitful field. Upon the whole matter, therefore, let our strife be, Who shall be best, not Who shall be greatest. 1. Let us never strive who shall be greatest in this world; who shall have the best preferment; who shall be master of the best estate, or make the best figure; but acquiesce in the lot Providence carves out to us, not aiming at great things, or striving for them. Consider what worldly greatness is. (1) What a despicable thing it is to those who have their eyes upon another world. (2) What a dangerous thing this worldly greatness is to those who have not their eyes upon another world; how apt it is to keep their hearts at a distance from God, and from the consideration and pursuit of a future blessedness; and to fix them to this world, and make them willing to take up with a portion in it; and, especially, what a strong temptation it is to break through all the sacred fences of the Divine law to compass it. 2. Let all our strife be who shall be best, not disputing who has been best, that is a vain-glorious strife, but humbly contending who shall be so; who shall be most humble, and stoop lowest, for the good of others; and who shall labour most for the common welfare. This is a gracious strife; a strife that will pass well in our account, when all our disputes will be reviewed, (Matthew Henry.) Luke 11:47-48 Ye build the sepulchres of the prophets Building the tombs of the prophets The Jews, whilst honouring the prophets and reproaching their fathers, were flattering themselves that they could never have done the like. Would they not indeed? were they not at the very moment thirsting for the blood of Christ and contriving His destruction? Alas for the fatal facility with which those who are quick in discerning the faults of others can blind themselves to their own I Here was the fault of the Jews. They were the descendants of men who had persecuted and slain the prophets of God. But they themselves were ready to do the very same: they were plotting the death of the greatest Prophet, the greatest in all the signs or evidences of a prophet that had ever arisen in their land. And, nevertheless they could see well enough how wrong their fathers had been, and could join in showing honour to the righteous persons whom they had treated so ill; but it does not seem to have struck them that they were closely treading in their steps, and were about to imitate, or rather far surpass, what they so loudly condemned. But is there no lesson here for ourselves? Let us first fix attention on the singular fact, that what is admired in the dead may be execrated in the living. There was no essential difference between the preaching of Christ, which excited the fierce anger of the Jews, and that of the prophets, which had similarly displeased and irritated their fathers. In both cases the preaching was that of the necessity of repentance, and of the certainty of vengeance, if not averted through the forsaking of sin. And the Jews, in the time of our Lord, could profess a high admiration of the preachers who had pressed these truths on their fathers, though, all the while, they were full of indignation against those who laboured to press them on them selves. The same takes place in our own day and generation. Call to mind the names of martyrs, and confessors, and preachers, who, whilst they lived, drew on themselves almost universal detestation by their zeal in the publication of truth and the exposure of error. Gather opinions as to these martyrs, confessors, and preachers, and you will obtain well nigh an unqualified verdict, pronouncing them amongst the worthiest of men, ornaments to their own age, and examples to every succeeding. Open a subscription for some testimonial in their honour; and money will flow in for the building their tombs and garnishing their sepulchres, just as though there were a general anxiety to evince a sense of their worth, and of the injustice of their contemporaries. But now go on to examine what the principles were which these dead worthies upheld, what the doctrines which they published, what the practices which they denounced. And do you think you will find that these principles are in general repute, these doctrines generally esteemed, these practices generally shunned? Oh, not so. The principles are still those which excite opposition, the doctrines are disliked, the practices are cherished. And it is by the feelings entertained towards the things taught, and not by those expressed towards the dead who were their teachers, that we are to judge whether men would have joined in persecuting the prophets. I care nothing for the stately mausoleum. I have no faith in the laboured panegyric. I am not to be persuaded, because sculpture and painting may devote themselves to the representing the magnanimous dead, or poetry consecrate its richest melodies to the story of their deeds and their wrongs. If the truth for which the dead died be not beloved by the living, there is no evidence that the living would not have aided in their destruction. But we may identify our own case yet more closely with that of the Jews. There is perhaps no more common feeling than that of amazement and indignation at the treatment which our Lord received from His countrymen. If ever there moved upon the earth the Being who seemed likely to disarm all enmity, and attract towards Himself universal affection, that Being undoubtedly was Jesus of Nazareth. He had so evidently no object but that of benefiting ethers, and He gave such evidences of ability to compass this object, that we might have supposed that all classes would have eagerly welcomed Him as a Prophet and Deliverer. And the apparent improbability of the rejection of Christ may easily induce a persuasion that, had we been in the days of the Jews, we could never have shared in their crime. But how ought such passages as our text to stagger us, showing us, as they do, that the Jews equally flattered themselves that they were incapable of the sin of putting a great Prophet to death! We make no doubt that, had we been contemporary with Christ, had we beheld His miracles and listened to His preaching, we should never have been of the number of those who sought His destruction. But what is this persuasion but the very persuasion of the Jews, who sat in judgment on their fathers as slayers of the prophets, and determined that they could never have joined them in their crime, and this too at the moment when they thirsted for Christ’ s blood, and bent themselves to compass His death? It may seem to me almost impossible that I should have conspired against Christ, that I should have helped to weave the crown of thorns and to drive the nails into His hands and His feet. But am I so unlike the Jew, is there any such radical difference between myself and the Jew, that I am warranted in believing that his wickedness could never have been mine? Ah, there is at least one point of similarity between us; and this ought to make me fearful of hastily concluding that there cannot be more. And what is this point? why, that the Jew and myself are equally ready to plead too much goodness to allow of joining in killing a prophet, My way of judging and deciding was precisely his, the reference to a crime which others committed, and determining against the possibility of any participation. And where there is the same assurance of inability to perpetrate a sin there is probably the same ability. Let us trust to no verdict of acquittal which we may be disposed to pass on ourselves after listening to that which the murderers of Christ so complacently uttered. So far, therefore, we may safely take the text, and give it as descriptive of what occurs amongst ourselves. But may we also denounce the woe which it contains? That woe is evidently denounced on account of the hypocrisy of those whose actions are described, on account of their conspiring against the living Christ, whilst joining to do honour to the murdered prophets. And is there anything parallel to this amongst ourselves? Indeed there is; for it is very easy to be indignant against those who put Jesus to death and all the while to overlook our own share in the guilty transaction. It is very easy to give up to universal execration the Roman and the Jew, and to be unmindful of the causes which brought round the Crucifixion. It is very easy to take the narrative of Christ’ s sufferings, just as you would the narrative of some doleful occurrence that happened in a remote age, and which has little more than its sadness to give it interest with your feelings. But who slew the Lamb of God? who drove the nails? who reared the cross? Not the Roman and the Jew. These were but agents and instruments. Christ died for the sins of the world: the sins of the world were really His murderers, though they used the Roman and the Jew as His executioners. And no man regards the death of Christ under a just point of view who does not charge himself with a share in the perpetration. He who does not make himself one of the murderers can scarcely have faith in the propitiation. And who will dare to assert that he is innocent of the blood of Jesus Christ? The Son of God is now virtually crucified afresh, whenever men turn away from the Redeemer, refusing to accept the mercy which He proffers, because they will not quit the sins which He abhors. It is virtually done by every wilful act of rebellion, by unbelief, by pride, by hardness of heart, by resistance to the strivings of the Spirit, by disobedience to the precepts of the gospel. The wilful transgressor does all which he can do towards rendering necessary a second crucifixion: he commits more and more of that which crucified Christ, and therefore, so far as his own guiltiness is concerned, may literally be charged with crucifying Him again. And, over and above this, you are to consider that Christ is continually coining to the impenitent and obdurate in and through the ordinances of religion, presenting Himself to them as their Redeemer, and beseeching them to receive Him, as they would hope to escape eternal destruction. But they treat Him with contempt. He calls, but they refuse: He stretches out His hand, but they will not regard. And what is all this if not the repetition of the Jewish denial and rejection of Christ. (H. Melvill, B. D.) Ignorance of our own depravity The Jews may have believed and boasted themselves incapable of taking part in the killing a prophet, little suspecting that they needed only the being placed in the same circumstances as their fathers in order to their imitating their crimes. And this is but the illustration of a general truth that, whilst men are not tempted to a sin, they cannot judge whether or act they would commit it if they were. With singular propriety are we instructed to pray, “ Lead us not into temptation” ; for only temptation may be needed to our perpetrating the worst crimes that disgrace human nature. They say that the earth contains varieties of seed, and that according to concurrent circumstances is there one production at one time and another at another. And this I am sure is the case with the heart, “ out of which,” according to Christ, “ proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies.” The seeds of all these iniquities are deposited in the heart; and a certain state, so to speak, of the moral atmosphere, or a certain combination of exciting causes, is all that is required to develop them in the practice. It does, therefore, but argue great ignorance of ourselves to suppose that this or that sin is too bad for us to commit. And the persuasion that we could not commit it is but an evidence of the likelihood of our being betrayed into the commission; for it shows a measure of self-confidence, as well as of ignorance, which God may be expected to punish by withdrawing His grace--and if that be withdrawn, where is human virtue? We are bound, as believers in Revelation, to believe that nothing of evil is beyond our power, and nothing of good within it, if we be left to ourselves, and are not acted on by an influence from above. And our only security against becoming perpetrators of crimes at whose very mention we perhaps shudder, lies in such a consciousness of our own depravity as leads to a prayerful, continual dependence on the preventing and restraining grace of God. (H. Melvill, B. D.) The tombs of the prophets I. THESE DID CHEAP AND HOMAGE TO DEAD AND DISTANT VIRTUE. They “ built the tombs of the prophets, and garnished the sepulchres of the righteous.” Monuments of the illustrious and pious dead were common in Jerusalem. These memorials the Pharisees held in most officious veneration, repairing, ornamenting, or building them anew. Pious acts, one might deem. Could such grave-visaged votaries be other than God-fearing men? Alas for poor human nature! A certain homage to virtue it doubtless was, this rearing of monumental honours to prophets long dead. Even in the worst of men, such acts are not without their value in testifying to a conscience within them, and a God above them. We blame not the instinct for monuments, nor need we, for it is as deep as human nature, as old as history: witness the pyramids, Assyria, Egypt, Greece, Rome. We see it in the rude stone or cairn that marks some hard-fought field, or the spot where some old mailed king grimly bit the ground. It continues to fill our squares with statues, our graveyards with sculptures, our cathedrals with “ storied urn and animated bust.” Yea, it fills our houses with portraits and other relics of the dear departed, over whom memory contests it stoutly with the very grave, and makes it “ give us back the dead, even in the loveliest looks they wore.” Need I add that Christianity, too, which has a true and kindly side for everything natural, has its monumental institutions? But, with all this, monumental zeal is but a cheap, and often vulgar homage. Stone memorials may be projected and erected by very stony hearts. The tomb-building rage is often symptomatic of a degenerate time, in which the nation has passed its zenith, has stopped producing heroes, and now produces only their statues, or it may be, like Jerusalem, their persecutors and killers. Illustrations of this tendency are not far to seek, though we are very far from calling ours a degenerate age. In one of our minor capitals, any visitor may find in a certain spacious street, standing in a row, the express image of royal sensuality, supported on the one side by that of political tyranny, and on the other by that of political corruption. Some years ago, twenty-five thousand pounds were subscribed to erect a statue to a public person whose only known accomplishment was railway gambling, and whose only public virtue was success. The old prophets, persecuted through life, and at last stoned out of it, did come, in a future age, to get recognition. “ The memory of the just is blessed,” while “ the memory of the wicked shall rot” ; and thus, even from foes, the good may get posthumous instalments of the honours that await them in full measure before assembled worlds. But this homage they never get till they are fairly out of the way. A dead prophet’ s tomb called only for the cheap surrender of a little pelf. The living prophet himself would have demanded the right hand or the right eye, the immolation of the darling lust, the consecration of the whole man. To deny due honour to the prophet, and pay mock honours to his tomb, was truly a lie in livery. So is it still. Wesley is lauded by many in our day who, were he alive, would brand him, as did even his pious contemporary Toplady, as “ an inveterate troubler of Israel.” Why? Because Wesley is out of their way--he has” ceased from troubling” ; and thus be whom, living, men classed among troublers, may, now that he is dead, be enrolled among the saints. Thus death or distance lends enchantment to the view. The noblest monument we can rear to a prophet, is to gather up his teachings into our experience, and reproduce his character in our life. For the real monument of the heroes and martyrs that founded England’ s greatness--circumspice!--if you ask where it is, we answer, Where is it not? The true Wallace monument is not the rock-dwarfed thing which, under that name, disfigures a picturesque and memorable spot, but is seen in a nation of patriots who had the good sense to be indifferent to that structural anachronism, and who have often contributed many times its cost, in one of their cities alone, for modern patriotic objects common and dear to the United Kingdom. No tribute to such men as Watt and the Stephensons could equal that which thunders in every factory and steams on every sea. II. THOSE BORE CHEAP AND AGAINST DEAD AND DISTANT SIN. They said, “ If we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets.” Pious men! Blushing crimson for being sons of prophet-murdering sires! Such was their profession in regard to the dead. What now was their actual practice in regard to the living? You may read it here (Luke 11:33) in the words “ serpents,” “ vipers.” Our Lord thereby describes them as men whose hearts were venom-bags, whose mouths were open sepulchres, whose tongues were rooted, and floated, in the poison of asps. There had already come among them a prophet, yea, and more than a prophet, even the Son of the Highest. And how did those saintly tomb-builders receive Him? “ It is certain that a Herod and a Herodias to John the Baptist, would have been an Ahab and a Jezebel to Elijah.” Let this bring home to us the humiliating lesson of our fatal proneness to glide into the delusive persuasion that this or that sin is what we, for our parts, are wholly incapable of committing--that, though all men should fall into it, yet will not we. Where is the Bible reading youth who has not in his inexperience marvelled at Israel’ s murmurings in the desert, and at the sad falls of some of the most eminent of the Old Testament saints? But riper views, and deeper spiritual experiences, not only correct this mistake, but let us see in the very facts we once deemed so stumbling, striking evidence of the truth and divinity of the book that records them. The holiest man will be the least disposed to declare himself incapable of this or that sin. III. BY ALL THIS THESE EXPOSED AND (see Luke 11:30-31). In conclusion, note one thing they ought to have done, but left undone; nay, did the opposite; that of humbly owning their oneness with the prophet-killing fathers. Paradoxical as it may sound, this was the first step to standing out from their fathers’ crime. (T. Guthrie, D. D.) The vanity and wickedness of honouring dead saints, and persecuting the living I. WHAT IS HERE MEANT BY “ THE WISDOM OF GOD.” “ Therefore also said the wisdom of God, I will send them prophets and apostles,” &c. In St. Matthew, our Saviour speaks this in His own name--“ Wherefore, behold I send unto you prophets “ : for which reason, some think that by “ the wisdom of God” our Saviour here designed Himself; as if He had said, Therefore I, who am the “ wisdom of God,” declare unto you. But this is not very probable, our Saviour nowhere else in the Gospel speaking of Himself in any such style; though St. Paul calls Him “ the power of God,” and “ the wisdom of God.” Others think that our Saviour here refers to some prophecy of the Old Testament to this purpose: “ Therefore, the Wisdom of God hath said” ; that is, the Holy Spirit of wisdom, which inspired the prophets in the Old Testament. But this conceit is utterly without ground, for we find no such passage. But the most plain and simple interpretation is this: “ Therefore hath the wisdom of God said” ; that is, the most wise God hath determined to send among you such messengers and holy men, and I foresee that ye will thus abuse them, and thereby bring wrath and destruction upon yourselves. And whereas our Saviour says, in St. Matthew, “ behold I send unto yon prophets” ; it is very probable He speaks in God’ s name, and that it is to be understood, Behold, says God, I send unto you. By apostles is here meant all sorts of Divine messengers; for so St. Matthew expresseth it, “ I send unto you prophets, and wise men, and scribes” ; that is, several holy and excellent men, endowed with all sorts of Divine gifts. II. WHO THIS WAS HERE BY OUR SAVIOUR. III. IN WHAT SENSE, AND WITH WHAT REASON AND JUSTICE IT IS HERE , THAT “ THE BLOOD OF ALL THE AND MEN, SHED FROM THE OF THE WORLD,” SHOULD BE OF THAT . 1. That it hath been the lot of holy and righteous men, in most ages of the world, to meet with very bad usage, to be “ persecuted and slain.” The devil began this work early. 2. We may observe likewise, hence, how great a sin they are guilty of who persecute the righteous, and how terrible a vengeance from God waits on them. 3. From this whole passage of our Saviour, which I have been explaining to you, we may learn how vain it is for men to pretend to honour the dead saints, when they persecute the living. (Archbishop Tillotson.) The world’ s treatment of its guides Hannibal, the Carthaginian conqueror, when sailing from Italy to Carthage, suspected his pilot of treachery, and when the latter told him that a high mountain which appeared in the distance was a promontory of Sicily, believing himself imposed upon, he killed him on the spot, but afterwards buried him splendidly, and called the promontory by his name. Thus he illustrated the way of the world with its true prophets. Unique tombs The tombs of Egypt are among the grandest and most striking of its monuments. The pyramids were tombs, and they are still wonders of the world. The rock-hewn sepulchres, however, which surround the pyramids, and which dot the mountain gorges of Thebes and Bene-Hassan, are now probably the most instructive. Their chambers are so many museums, containing not merely the embalmed remains, but, on the inscribed and sculptured walls, the whole history of the mighty dead. Nothing is overlooked or forgotten that would throw light on their lives and labours. In this way we have a most vivid picture of ancient Egypt; the victories of kings; processes in law courts; the building of cities; the hewing and transport of colossal statues and obelisks; the embalming of the dead; funeral rites and processions; marriage ceremonies; every department of household work and family life, such as cooking, washing, dressing, shaving the head and beard, eating; trades of all kinds--goldsmiths, painters, potters, glass-blowers, bakers, weavers; games and amusements--jugglers, music, dancing; tilling the soil; irrigating the fields; feeding andmilking cows; watering flax, reaping, threshing, grinding--all these and many other things are delineated with singular, and not unfrequently amusing, minuteness of detail. In examining those unique tombs one can study the manners and customs, the private life and public acts, the religious rites and ceremonies, the features and dress of those who lived in cottage and palace in that country from three to four thousand years ago, with almost as much advantage as if he had lived among them. The perfect preservation of the paintings and papyri is astonishing. In this Western land of rain and frost half a century of neglect would destroy them; hut in Upper Egypt rain and frost are unknown. The dry and equable climate is the grand curator; and this has been materially assisted by the desert sand, which has partially covered some of the monuments, and for long ages hermetically sealed many of the finest tombs. The figures and brilliant colouring on the walls, and written characters upon the papyrus have been thus preserved as fresh as if only finished yesterday. Looking at them one can scarcely believe that their age has to be reckoned by thousands of years. (Cassell’ s Family Magazine.) Costly posthumous offerings At the entrance are two sentry-box looking constructions with glass windows. These are lamps kept perpetually lighted, the flame not having been allowed to die out for many years. The sanctum is very splendid, the roofs and walls being lined with gold brocade, and the frames of the door inlaid with carved ivory. The air is oppressive with the perfume of flowers and spices. Flowers especially are a favourite offering at Buddha’ s shrine, and are always present in great profusion. On one occasion no less than 6,480,320 flowers were counted at the shrine, and it is recorded that in the fifteenth century a royal devotee sent 100,000 flowers a day for a considerable time, and each day the flowers were of a different kind. The karundua, or vessel containing the tooth, stands covered on a table of massive silver, richly chased, in the midst of a profusion of valuable articles of jeweilery, which are either relies or offerings. The most beautiful in the collection is a bird with wings spread. It is formed entirely of diamonds, rubies, blue sapphires, &c., set in gold, which is hid by a profusion of gems. While we were all admiring this magnificent offering, the priests or monks removed several folds of muslin from the karundua, and discovered a sort of dome of gilded silver, about five feet high, studded with a few gems. When this was removed, another was found underneath, made of beautifully carved gold. This was festooned with jewelled chains, and literally incrusted with all the glittering gems for which Ceylon is so celebrated--sapphires and emeralds of extraordinary size, cat’ s eyes (much prized), rubies, amethysts, and pearls. Another similar covering, and still another, were taken off, when at last was reached a small case of gold, covered externally with rubies, emeralds, and diamonds, in which, resting on the leaves of a gold lotus, was the tooth itself. (Cassell’ s Family Magazine.) The hypocrisy of posthumous honours I never saw the honours of this world in their hollowness and hypocrisy so much as I have seen them within the last few days, as I have been looking over the life and death of that wonderful man just departed, Charles Sumner. Now that he is dead the whole nation takes off the hat. The flags are at half-mast and the minute-guns on Boston Common throb, now that his heart has ceased to beat. Was it always so? While he lived, how censured of legislative resolutions, how caricatured of the pictorials, how charged with every motive mean and ridiculous; how, when struck down in Senate-chamber, there were hundreds of thousands of people who said, “ Good for him, served him right!” O Commonwealth of Massachusetts I who is that man that sleeps to-night in your public hall, covered with garlands and wrapped in the stars and stripes? Is that the man whom, only a few months ago, you denounced as the foe of Republican and Democratic institutions? Is that the same man? You were either wrong then or you are wrong now--a thing most certain, O Commonwealth of Massachusetts! When I see a man like that pursued by all the hounds of the political kennel so long as he lives, and then buried under garlands almost mountain high, and amid the lamentations of a whole nation, I say to myself, “ What an unutterably hypocritical thing is all human applause and all human favour!” You took twenty-five years in trying to pull down his fame, and now you will take twenty-five years in trying to build his monument. You were either wrong then, or you are wrong now. My friends, was there ever a better commentary on the hollowness of all earthly favour? (Dr. Talmage.) Luke 11:52 Ye have taken away the key of knowledge The sin of perverting Scripture The last woe pronounced by our Saviour against the Scribes and Pharisees, is for perverting the Holy Scriptures, and keeping the true sense and knowledge of them from the people: this St. Luke here calls, “ the taking away the key of knowledge from men” ; alluding to a custom among the Jews, in admission of their doctors. Those that had authority given them to interpret the law and the prophets, were solemnly admitted into that office, by delivering to them a key and a table-book; so that by the key of knowledge is meant the interpretation and understanding of the Scriptures, and by taking away that key is signified-- 1. That they arrogated to themselves the sole power of understanding and interpreting the Holy Scriptures. 2. That they kept the true knowledge of the Scriptures from the people, especially the prophecies which concern the kingdom and coming of the Messias; and so they hindered men from embracing our Saviour’ s doctrine, who were otherwise well enough disposed for it. Learn-- 1. That the written Word is the key whereby an entrance into heaven is opened unto men. 2. That the use of this key, or the knowledge of the Word of God, is absolutely and indispensibly necessary in order to salvation. 3. That great is the guilt, and inexcusable the fault of those who deny the people the use of this key, and deprive them of the knowledge of the Holy Scriptures, which alone can make them wise unto salvation. 4. That such as do so, shut the kingdom of heaven against men, endeavouring what in them lies to hinder their salvation. Men may miscarry with their knowledge, but they are sure to perish for lack of knowledge. (W. Burkitt.) Hinderers Some unpublished thoughts on “ Hinderers and Hindrances,” written by Frances Ridley Havergal, were forwarded by her sister Maria V. G. Havergal to the editor of The Sunday Magazine. We glean the following from the second paper, which appeared in the September, 1885, issue:--“ A letter from Ernest at last! And the sister eagerly gives her father the morning budget at the breakfast table. Her mother watches, for gloom gathers on the father’ s face as he reads it. Silently the letter is given to the mother, and he passes through the open window to the pleasant terrace-walk beneath. The sister guesses in vain, ‘ What can Ernest have written?’ The father paced up and down, thinking of the position he himself had won, and which he had hoped would be a stepping-stone for his son to one far higher, in which his many gifts of mind and heart would shine with no common effulgence. He had hoped his son would carry out and develop many schemes of benevolence he had set on foot. But that morning’ s letter was as a mighty crucible, wherein the man’ s devotedness to Him who had given him that darling son was to be tested and analyzed. What was that letter?’ --College, Cambridge. DEAR FATHER,--Will you listen to your son’ s request for your consent, your blessing, your prayers? Father, there is a burning impulse within me, a new life-pulse seems beating in my soul, a still deep voice ever sounding in my ears, “ Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.” Years ago that same voice called me, when I first heard stories about the heathen and their idols, and when standing by my mother I looked at the Church Missionary Society’ s green picture-book , of white men preaching to the heathen. Silently, but surely, has that call followed me. I have cried earnestly, “ Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?” and again the heavenly whisper comes, “ Go ye.” Therefore, though never before breathed to any but God, this is no sudden thought, no unconsidered plan. Father, let me go, let me take the cup of living water to him that is ready to perish. I should like to tread the very footsteps of Him who came to seek and to save that which was lost, to search in His name for the “ other sheep, which are not of this fold.” I know the hopes and the intentions which you have cherished for my future; but is not a missionary’ s joy a nobler gain, the missionary’ s crown a nobler ambition than any ether? And what if the time came when, among the multitude out of all nations and kindreds and tongues, I might be permitted to recognize some who first heard a Saviour’ s name from my unworthy lips! My own dear mother! her heart will be with me in this; I know she lent me to the Lord. Dearest father, I believe Christ has called me; will you let me obey His voice? Your loving son, ERNEST.’” Reader, what would your answer have been? Would you have hindered? The father could not brook that the talents of his son, the pride of his ancestral hall, should go forth into the gloom and obscurity of distant shores. But who can tell how bitterly that question, “ Father, will you hinder me?” returned to his mind when the bell tolled for the early death of that loved and devoted son! Hindering A young Savoyard, a poor little chimney-sweep, one day purchased a Testament, for which he paid ten sons (rather less than fivepence of English money), and set himself immediately to read it. Delighted to possess the Word of God, he, in his simplicity, ran to the priest to show him the good bargain he had made with his savings. The priest looked at the book, and told the young Savoyard that it came from the hands of heretics, and that it was a book forbidden to be read. The poor boy replied that everything he had read in the book told him about Christ; “ and beside,” said he, “ it is so beautiful!” “ You shall see how beautiful it is,” said the priest, seizing it and casting it into the fire. The young Savoyard went away weeping. (W. Denton.) Lamentable effect of hindering Hume, the historian, received a religious education from his mother, but as he approached manhood confirmed infidelity succeeded. Maternal partlality, however, alarmed at first, came at length to look with less and less pain upon his declension, and filial love and reverence seemed to have been absorbed in the pride of philosophical scepticism; for Hume applied himself with unwearied, and, unhappily, with successful, efforts to sap the foundation of his mother’ s faith. Having succeeded, he went abroad, and as he was returning an express met him in London, with a letter from his mother informing him that she was in a deep decline. She said she found herself without any support in her distress; that he had taken away that only source of comfort upon which, in all eases of affliction, she used to rely; and that she now found her mind sinking into despair. She conjured him to hasten to her, or at least to send her a letter containing such consolations as philosophy could afford to a dying mortal. Hume was overwhelmed with anguish on receiving this letter, and hastened to Scotland, travelling day and night; but before he arrived his mother expired. Luke 12:1 The leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy Hypocrisy I. THE ’ S . 1. A hypocrite may be known by the fact that his speech and his actions are contrary to one another. As Jesus says, “ They say and they do not.” Talk is easy, but walk is hard; speech any man may attain unto, but act is difficult. We must have grace within to make our life holy; but lip-piety needs no grace. 2. The next mark of a hypocrite is, that whenever he does right it is that he may be seen of men. To him virtue in the dark is almost a vice; he can never detect any beauty in virtue, unless she has a thousand eyes to look upon her, and then she is something indeed. The true Christian, like the nightingale, sings in the night; but the hypocrite has all his songs in the day, when he can be seen and heard of men. 3. Hypocrite, love titles, and honours, and respect from men. There was another evidence of an hypocrite which was equally good, namely, that he strained at a gnat and swallowed a camel. Always suspect yourself when you are more careful about little than about great things. 4. These people neglected all the inward part of religion, and only observed the outward. As our Saviour said, they “ made clean the outside of the cup and platter, but within they were full of extortion and excess.” There are many books which are excellently bound, but there is nothing within them; and there are many persona that have a very fine spiritual exterior, but there is nothing whatever in the heart. 5. You may know a hypocrite by another sign. His religion depends upon the place, or upon the time of day. He rises at seven o’ clock perhaps, and you will find him religious for a quarter of an hour; for he is, as the boy said, “ saying his prayers to himself” in the first part of the morning. Well, then you find him pretty pious for another half-hour, for there is family prayer; but when the business begins, and he is talking to his men, I won’ t guarantee that you will be able to admire him. If one of his servants has been doing something a little amiss, you will find him perhaps using angry and unworthy language. You will find him, too, if he gets a customer whom he thinks to be rather green, not quite pious, for he will be taking him in. 6. There is another sign of the hypocrite, and now the lash will fall on my own back, and on most of us too. Hypocrites, and other people besides hypocrites, are generally severe with others, and very lenient with themselves. Have you ever heard a hypocrite describe himself? I describe him thus--“ You are a mean, beggarly fellow.” “ No,” says he, “ I am not; I am economical.” I say to him, “ You are dishonest, you are a thief.” “ No,” says he, “ I am only cute and sharp for the times.” “ Well, but,” I say to him, “ you are proud and conceited.” “ Oh!” says he, “ I have only a proper and manly respect.” “ Ay, but you are a fawning, cringing fellow.” “ No,” says he, “ I am all things to all men.” Somehow or other he will make vice look like a virtue in himself, but he will deal by the reverse rule with others. Show him a Christian who is really humble, and he says, “ I hate his fawning ways.” Tell him there is one who is very courageous for Christ; “ Oh! he is impudent,” says he. Show him one who is liberal, doing what he can for his Master’ s service, spending, and being spent for Him; “ Rash and imprudent,” says he, “ extravagant; the man does not know what he is about.” You may point out a virtue, and the hypocrite shall at once say it is a vice. II. And now we are going to CAST UP THE ’ S ACCOUNT FOR HIM. Now, sir, bring us your ledger, and let us have a look at it. You are a hypocrite. Well, what is on the profit side? A good deal, I must confess. Here is, first of all, credit and honour. The next advantage is the ease which you enjoy. And, besides that, there are the honours you have received. That is the profit side of your account. Now turn to the other, and take note of what there is against you. In the first place, I see a black item down here. Home of the people of the world do not think quite as much of you as you imagine. The poor widow does not give you much of a character. You will have to be very careful, sir, or your base deeds will come out. The very first item I see down here is a fear that your hypocrisy will be discovered. It would take you only half as much trouble to be an honest man as it does to be a deceiver. A man who is in the habit of speaking truth need not mind how he opens his mouth, nor where; but a man who lies should be very careful, and have a very good memory, and recollect all he has ever said before, lest he should trip himself. But I see something worse than this; here is constant disquietude of conscience; hypocrites may seem as if they were at ease, but they cannot really be. The Christian who is true to God, and is really His child, can sometimes say, “ I know that Jesus has taken away my sin.” Assurance, vouchsafed to him by the Spirit, calms his fears, and he can rest in Christ. But the highest presumption to which the hypocrite can attain brings no such calm as that which is breathed upon the Christian by the lips of assurance. He can go to his bed, nay, he can go to his tomb in peace, but the hypocrite is afraid of a shadow, and fleeth when no man pursueth. And last of all, Mr. Hypocrite, I see an item here which you usually forget; it is this--that, despite of your profession, God abhors you, and if there is one man more than another who stinks in the nostrils of Jehovah, it is such as thou art--thou miserable pretender. Death shall find thee out, and hell shall be thy doom, for the hope of the hypocrite is as the spider’ s web, soon swept away; and where is he when God taketh away his hope? This, then, is the casting up of the hypocrite’ s account, and there is a deficit of an infinite amount. III. Now for the matter of the CURE OF THE . The thought of a present Deity, if it were fully realized, would preserve us from sin; always looking on me, ever regarding me. We think we are doing many things in secret, but there is nothing concealed from Him with whom we have to do. And the day is coming when all the sins that we have committed shall be read and published. (C. H. Spurgeon.) How is hypocrisy discoverable and curable? The words naturally yield you this doctrine: Hypocrisy is a dangerous leaven, which ministers and people are chiefly and especially to beware of, and acquit themselves from. Hence you have a chapter of woes against it (Matthew 23:1-39.). And it is represented as that which renders odious to the Lord, and defiles, His choicest ordinances, and our best duties, if it cleave to them (Isaiah 1:11-12; Isaiah 66:3); and puts God to sad complaints and exprobations of such a people (Hosea 6:4). I. WHAT IS. Much of the nature of a thing is many times discovered in its name; the name is a brief description. The word “ hypocrite” properly signifies an actor or stage-player, a personator of other men in their speech, habit, and action. The Hebrew word signifieth both “ a wicked man” and a “ deceiver.” And it is observed that those whom David, the devoutest man, called “ wicked,” Solomon, the wisest man, calls “ fools,” and Job, the most upright man, calls “ hypocrites” : all is but one and the same thing under divers names. Hypocrisy, then, is but a feigning of virtue and piety, which it seems to put on, and vice and impiety, which it conceals and would seem to put off. It is indeed vice in a vizor; the face is vice, but virtue is the vizor. The form and nature of it is imitation: the ends are vainglory, to be seen of men, or some gain or carnal respects. II. How IS BY LEAVEN? Briefly thus: 1. Leaven is hardly discerned from good dough by the sight. And as hardly is hypocrisy distinguished from piety. 2. Leaven is very spreading. And so hypocrisy does a great deal of mischief; it spreads over all the man, and all his duties, parts, performances: and leavens all. 3. Leaven is of a sour taste and ungrateful smell. So is hypocrisy to God’ s man. 4. Leaven is of a swelling nature: it extends and puffs up the dough. So hypocrisy is all for the praise of men. III. WHY IS IT CALLED “ THE LEAVEN OF THE ” ? Because they were leavened with it to purpose; they were exact and super-eminent in this devilish art of personating and counterfeiting to the life. IV. WHEREIN IS THIS LEAVEN OF SO THAT AND PEOPLE OUGHT FIRSTLY, CHIEFLY, TO BEWARE OF IT? There is great danger of it, and great danger by it. 1. There is great danger of it. (1) For we have the ground of the matter in ourselves. “ Hearts deceitful above all things and desperately wicked; who can know thy wickedness? I the Lord search the heart, I try the reins,” &c. (Jeremiah 17:9-10). As if none beside the Lord knew the bottomless depths and deceits of the heart! (2) The devil watcheth night and day to set fire to this tow. (3) And that we may not be secure, there are before our eyes and in our view dreadful examples. Balaam, a great prophet; Judas, an apostle familiar with Christ; Saul, Jehu, Herod, and Agrippa, famous kings. 2. And there is great danger by it.” (1) The loss of all that,, is done. Christ will say, as to that young man, “ Yet lackest thou one thing (Luke 18:22), sincerity: wouldest thou have heaven too? Why then didst thou all things for the “ praise of men? Thou hast thy reward,” and art overpaid. “ Depart from Me, ye that work iniquity” (Matthew 7:23). (2) Frustrating of hopes, great hopes, hopes of glory and heaven, and escaping eternal misery. All these hopes must “ perish “ to the “ hypocrite” Job 8:13); perish like a ship at the very mouth of the haven; perish while they are crying, “ Lord, Lord” ; perish into everlasting horror and eternal despair. (3) Full detection and manifesting of them in the sight and face of all the world. (4) And in hell the hypocrite shall be beaten with many stripes. For he knew his Master’ s will, and pretended he was doing it, and yet did it not. (A. Bromhall.) The leaven of hypocrisy I. SOME WAYS IN WHICH THIS WORKS AND IS SHOWN. 1. Hypocrisy works in the bias of the mind. There is a secret end and aim with those in whom it works, apart from the glory of God. Self is always uppermost, even in religious acts and outward worship. 2. Hypocrisy shows itself in a resting in duties. Those in whom it thus works are satisfied to please self and others in them; they do not seek Christ in them; they go on in duties, but it is a bondage to them; their duties leave no savour on them; they are strict to a fault whilst engaged in them, and shame some gracious souls, who have not the self-command they show; but out of their duties they are light and frothy; there is nothing resting upon their spirits. View them at home, you see little or no difference between them and those who make no profession. 3. Hypocrisy shows itself in Weariness of religion. Many, with all their outward zeal, are secretly weary of religious duties; they get nothing in them; they go away as they came, unwatered and unrefreshed; their inward spring seems dried up; Christ’ s yoke is often grievous to them. This is a far gone stage of the disease; it is the heart departing from the Lord. They slave and drudge on at duties, but are nothing bettered by them; they rather grow worse; their spiritual appetite seems departing. But for shame, many would give in at this stage, and walk no more as the open followers of Jesus. 4. Once more: hypocrisy works much in prayer, open and private. It regards choice of expression and fitting words mere than the workings of desires in the heart, though the utterances are unconnected and broken. It depends on mental help more than spiritual assistance, II. THE KINDS OF WHO ARE MOST PRONE TO THIS SIN, AND WHO OUGHT, , TO BE MOST ON THEIR GUARD AGAINST IT. 1. Christians whose avocations bring them much into the world should guard against this sin. 2. Persons that are naturally crafty and subtle have great reason to watch against hypocrisy in their religious acts. 3. Those have great reason to guard against this sin who have been brought comfortably and calmly into peace with God, who have not been under great terrors of conscience, nor laid long, if at all, under a broken law--those who have come to Christ on the first motions of godly sorrow, and found peace with God. It too often happens that those who have been so gently dealt with do not value the blessing aright; they do not see what it cost the Son of God to procure. 4. Those who are naturally superstitious have need to be on the watch. It is a great advantage to Satan to meet with a superstitious person under the power of religion; he will improve his advantage, and try to work upon their superstition, to bring them into bondage, and to make them hypocrites in numberless ways. He will try to give them too high an esteem for externals, to deaden, if possible, the power of religion in their souls. He will give them needless torment about little matters which in themselves are of no consequence or value, but he will try and magnify them in their eyes, and seek to persuade them to believe that much depends on them. They will be often led to believe that a scrupulous conscience is a tender one, whereas the two things are totally different; and a man may have a very scrupulous conscience in religious matters that yet never hated sin or loved God. III. THE DANGER OF GIVING WAY TO THIS SIN, AND LETTING IT GAIN GROUND. This will also lead me to say a few words by way of caution how to prevent this. 1. It is a hateful sin in the sight of God. All hypocrisy is deception; and God is a God of truth, and loves truth, and will have those who worship Him “ worship Him in spirit and in truth.” 2. Hypocrisy is a very deceiving sin. Hypocrites go on in duties, because the most of their religion lies in duties. Thus their duties deceive them. They judge well of themselves, because of their duties: but God judges of them by the state of their hearts. 3. Hypocrisy is a very dangerous sin. It works, as the Saviour says, like leaven; it spreads over and taints, if unresisted and unchecked, all the healthy actings of the soul. It will, in the end, wear out all the sincere principles from which a professor once acted, and make him a confirmed hypocrite. There is danger of God giving up any who go on in this sin to a “ reprobate mind” ; not all at once, but little by little, their spiritual strength will wax less and less, till it dries up altogether. They may be given up secretly to some corruption which will eat as a canker. Their souls will wither, because by their sin they cut themselves off from Christ. 4. But now, not to discourage any, it is good to have hypocrisy discovered; the honest soul will be glad to know the worst, and never rest till he does. It is a bad sign to rest satisfied under uneasy feelings, hoping for a change, but without being stirred up to seek it. It is good to be severe with oneself, to sound our own hearts to the bottom, to beg of God and men to search and try us. It is only in this way--and that not now and then, or when pressed in conscience, but habitually--that hypocrisy will be kept under. (H. M. Baker.) Different kinds of hypocrites 1. The worldly hypocrite, who professes godliness from worldly motives. 2. The legal hypocrite, who resigns his vicious practices to win heaven, but has no love to God. 3. The evangelical hypocrite, whose religion is an acknowledgment of sin, but with no desire to lead a godly life. 4. The enthusiastic hypocrite, who has an imaginary notion of the Saviour, and relies on impulses and feelings, and yet clings to vicious deeds. (Van Doren.) Hypocrites in all ages Cain in the first age; Canaan in the second; Ishmael in the third; Esau in the fourth; Saul among the prophets; Judas among the apostles; Nicholas among the deacons; Ananias among the early Christians. (Van Doren.) Profession without possession To profess a faith which you have net is to make yourself a deceptive trader, who pretends to be carrying on a very large business, while he has no stock, no capital, and is only obtaining credit on false pretences, and so is a thief. To make a profession, without having a possession, is to be a cloud without rain--a river-bed choked up with dry stones, but utterly without water; it is to be a mere play-actor, strutting about for an hour with the name and garments of a king, to be exchanged, behind the scenes, for the garb of poverty, and the character of shame; it is to be a rotten tree, green on the outside, but inwardly, as John Bunyan pithily puts it, “ only fit to be tinder for the devil’ s tinder box.” Be ye warned against fair pretensions where there is nothing to back them up. Above all things, eschew hypocrisy; stand aside from all mere pretence. Profess not to be what you are not, lest in that day when God comes to search the secrets of all hearts, you shall be condemned as reprobate silver, and consumed like dross. (C. H. Spurgeon.) Hypocrisy a common danger An old English writer says:--“ The Emperor Frederick III., when one said unto him he would go and find some place where no hypocrite inhabited, told him he must travel, then, far enough beyond the Sauromatae or the frozen ocean; for yet, when he came there, he should find a hypocrite if he found himself there. And it is true that every man is a hypocrite. Hypocrisy is lesson that every man readily takes in. All are not fit for the wars; learning must have the picked and choicest wits; arts must have leisure and pains; but all sorts are apt enough, and thrive in the mystery of dissimulation. Pharisaic hypocrisy That which was the disease of the Pharisee was the disease of the time. Our Lord calls that disease “ hypocrisy.” We have a reasonable horror of the name. We consider that it is applicable only to the worst men in the worst times. There is good excuse for that opinion; yet it may rob us of the force of our Lord’ s warning--we may put it at a dangerous distance from ourselves. The hypocrite is the man who acts a part; there is no more evil significance in the word than that. And oh! how easy it is to be a hypocrite if that is his characteristic; how difficult it is not to be one! Do you not know with what terrible quickness a child becomes an actor or actress? Do you not know what we do to cultivate the acting talent, the acting habit in them? Do you not know what a number of social influences and contrivances are at work to convince men and women that it is their business to be masquers, that their skill is to be shown in the devising of masks? To strike at the root of this hypocrisy, to point out the remedy, this is the work which we ask from the King of men, from Him who knows what is in man. Jesus struck at the root of all social hypocrisy, of all personal hypocrisy, in Palestine, when He traced it to the religion which prevailed there. Then He pointed out the remedy in this sentence of everlasting might: “ For there is nothing covered that shall not be revealed, neither Lid that shall not be known.” The religion of the Pharisees consisted in a series of attempts to please, flatter, and bribe the Ruler of the earth. If He could be persuaded not to look too curiously into the acts of His servants, not to probe the secrets of their hearts; if He could be induced to accept a compensation for this evil, on certain conditions to tolerate that; if His commandments could be shown to bear different constructions for different persons; if cases might be imagined to which they did not apply, or applied with various qualifications and mitigations; if the creature could succeed in keeping the Creator at a distance from him, so that his secrets should not be brought to the light; their religion had realized its highest objects. Such a religion was leavening the chosen people, as it was under other aspects, with the most dissimilar professions under heathen forms of worship, leavening the old Roman Empire. The priests and lawyers in Jerusalem, the Pontifiex and the Augur in Rome, were alike acting a part. They rehearsed their parts in private; they performed them in public. The Pharisees were at once the consummate practisers of the art and the most systematic instructors in it. But what if the Ruler of the earth could not be flattered or bribed? What if everything that is covered must be revealed, if everything that is hidden must be known? What if the very act of the Creator is to reveal, if He is bringing all things to light, if He hates darkness? There is the whole question. Is it a God of light you serve, or a God of darkness? Acting hypocrisy is an impossible kind of service with the first, the only suitable one with the second. (F. D. Maurice, M. A.) Hypocrisy Grace is the Christian’ s new nature, and hypocrisy is the art that counterfeits it. The hypocrite affects the innocence of the dove to hide the cunning of the serpent. By the hypocrite good men are oft deceived, for “ Goodness thinks no ill where no ill seems.” The hypocrite, like Judas, may salute Christ, but it is to betray Him. The hypocrite’ s life is a falsehood to heaven and to earth. The hypocrite gives his tongue to virtue, but his heart to vice. If there be “ the head of gold,” there are also “ the feet of miry clay.” Hypocrisy is the homage which vice pays to virtue. The more plausible hypocrisy is before men, the more detestable it is to God. The hypocrite serves Satan, and from Satan receives his reward. The religious hypocrite is at best a man of dark deeds, though clad in garments of light. He may approach the portals of heaven, but he does not enter. A hypocrite was discovered at a royal supper, but the king rejected him from the banquet. Man esteems him hateful, because he seems not what he is; and God hates him, because he is not what he seems. The Christian’ s heart oft speaks without the tongue, but the hypocrite’ s tongue always speaks without the heart. The hypocrite, like a bird of prey, although his course be towards heaven, yet is always looking and longing for something upon earth. The Christian gives to God the fruit of his labours; the hypocrite gives to God the fruit of his lips. The hypocrite is led by ostentation, and not by a sanctified conscience. Hypocrites may be “ Christians in the skin, but they are demons in the core” ; “ their rhetoric may be pretty, their logic witty, but their practice is naughty.” Hypocrisy is insulting to the virtuous, and cruel to the poor and afflicted. For he who hides his vices by hypocrisy, suspects the virtues of others to be hypocrisy. And the poor and afflicted remain poor and afflicted, because the sin of the hypocrite closed the hand of charity, and in consequence thereof genuine sorrow is oft suspected in place of being relieved. An impostor who asks for alms is a hypocrite in the lower grade. Hypocrisy may prevail in morals as well as in creed. Some men are hypocritical in both. Hypocrisy shall be detected, as in the case of Saul (1 Samuel 15:14), Gehazi (2 Kings 5:26), Judas Matthew 26:50), Ananias (Acts 5:3), Simon Magus (Acts 8:20-21). Hypocrisy may be seen in the history of Jacob (Genesis 27:20), Pharaoh (Exodus 8:28-29), Balaam (Numbers 23:10), Absalom 2 Samuel 15:7), Hazael (2 Kings 8:12-13). Samaritans (Ezra 4:2), Herod (Matthew 2:8), High Priest (Matthew 26:65), Pilate Matthew 27:24). Let the hypocrite tremble lest he perish by his own hypocrisy, for God is the God of Truth, Christ is the Word of Truth, and the Holy Ghost is the Spirit of Truth. “ The hope of the hypocrite shall be as the spider’ s web” (Job 8:13-14). He is unwise who decries religion because some professing to be religious are hypocrites. None would take the pains to counterfeit pearls, if true ones were not of value. Men would not personate piety were it not of itself a noble quality. We best show our abhorrence of hypocrisy by holding the truth free from hypocrisy. (Van Doren.) Luke 12:2-3 Nothing covered, that shall not be revealed The revealing process There is a tendency in things everywhere to manifest their natures, and make themselves known. Seeds that are buried, seek the light; shells deep in the sea grope their way to the shore; the processes of nature are to bring things to the surface. What is true in matter has certainly its counterpart in mind. Human character, notwithstanding all efforts to keep itself back, also tends to development; what is not seen at once is found out in a lifetime. The strong passions of the soul, like smothered fires or hidden springs, at last burst their way through, and become known. There is certainly going on around us in the operations of nature, and in the unfolding of events, a revealing process, as if creation and Providence had determined to let light into all dark places, and at last uncover human hearts. This, we suppose, is the general idea taught in the text. I. THERE ARE GOING ON IN THE WORLD AROUND US, AND UNDER WHICH MAKE IT THAT, IN THE WORLD TO COME, THEY WILL TO GO ON WITH AND POWER. One fact often discloses a great deal, when brought into connection with another fact, which, when it stood by itself, told nothing. The ancient kings of the East were aware of this, when they sent messages from one to another on business which they wished to be kept secret from all but themselves. The message was written upon a piece of parchment, but so written that it could not be deciphered unless first bound upon a staff, which contained a counterpart and key to that which was sent, and each king kept one of these staffs; hence, if the messenger should lose the scrip, the secret would not be divulged, because not intelligible, unless wrapped round the wood: the one was read by the help of the other, though each spoke nothing by itself. So with events in human life; they throw light on each other when brought together. II. ALL THE WHICH A PERFECT OF THE IN THIS WORLD, WILL, IN THE NEXT, BE REMOVED. If even in such a world as this, where the body, and old associations, and friends, and forgetfulness, and ignorance of the consequences, contribute to quiet the goadings of conscience, men are still driven by remorse to give a detailed and minute account of the evil they have done, what may not be expected when, with conscience all alive, and memory quickened, the soul dismantled of its clay, stung by its sins, bereft of friends, and hindered by nothing, meets the eye of its Maker without a veil? Surely there is a provision in our nature, by reason of which every one shall give an account of himself unto God. III. MUCH OF THE BIBLE IS WRITTEN, AND ALL , WITH TO A IN THE MIDST OF MINUTE AND AMAZING . There is a foretokening all along our earthly way. If the wicked hear a “ dreadful sound,” what does he hear? If he sees a hand others do not see, what is it that he sees? The fear of God is not before his eyes, and yet he is afraid. There was a sound, a rustle of a leaf, yet to him a sound that spoke of discovery--a whisper of betrayal and development; he sees things around him working to the surface. Even a stain upon his robe, a paler hue upon his cheek, may have a voice to some one; many things have come out in ways most unexpected and who shall say, after all, he may not have been observed! Perhaps the words of the aged preacher peal again upon his soul--“ Every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good or whether it be evil.” “ For every idle word which men shall speak, shall they give account” ; “ Whatsoever ye have spoken in darkness shall be heard in the light” ; and “ The sea gave up the dead which were in it, and death and the grave the dead which were in them, and they were judged, every man according to his works,” out of the things that were written in the books. IV. IF THERE WERE NO BOOKS WITH MAN’ S NEEDS IN THEM, NO IN THE SOUL TO URGE THEM FORTH, NO TO TESTIFY, AND NO FORMAL TO BE AND , STILL THE FUTURE OF THE SOUL WILL ITSELF POINT BACK TO ACTS OF SIN OR ON EARTH, AS THE GROUND OF ITS DESTINY. (W. Neill.) The inner world I. Now, we believe that God has dealt with man according to his temperament. He knows us far better than we know ourselves; and He would therefore work upon us in a manner most likely to produce a good effect. It may be, indeed, that the abstract idea of the Lord’ s coming to judgment, would have been in itself too lofty for a man fully to appreciate; so that in order to make man realize it, and thus to let it have a practical bearing upon our conduct, it has been necessary to enter into the detail, and describe one of the scenes connected with it. Or, to regard the subject in another light, it is noticeable that man feels no shame of God’ s knowledge of sin. This may be proved from the fact that we are guilty, all of us, of many secret sins, which we should blush to own to our dearest friend, but which we are ready enough to acknowledge to God. On the other hand, we are not often content that our good deeds should be known to God alone, but the majority of persons would seem to wish that men should regard them also. These considerations may lead us to understand, that it was from a complete knowledge of human nature that Christ warned His disciples by the announcement of the truth--that all secrets would eventually be brought to light. “ Beware,” He says, “ of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy.” For there is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed; neither hid, that shall not be known. II. By laying as de a 1 further reference to God’ s perfect knowledge of human nature implied in the text, we would lead your minds to the doctrine which the text conveys--and, indeed, it is a most important one. Christ here speaks of the revealing at the last day, of all that we now hide in the closest secrecy. He tells us that there is nothing, hide it as we now may from the knowledge of others, which He will not reveal before the masses of the universe. The actions of a single day, who can number them? Go, examine your own hearts. Each man for himself must go down to the region of his own soul, and find out what is there going on. Thoughts and passions, motives and wishes, hopes and fears, hatred, lusts and affections, intentions of good, and designs of evil; these are the shadowy dwellers of that weed within, whose name is legion, for indeed they are many. At one time they prompt us to external deeds; at another time, our external deeds are only the cloak beneath which they disguise themselves, so that men perceive them not. Oh, who can turn the mental eye inwards, and not marvel at, and fear the secret world which toils and burns in the heart? Yet we see it not all. He knows all things now, and there shall come a day when they shall be known no longer to God alone, but they shall be all declared to the gathered masses of the universe; for Christ has told us, that “ there is nothing covered that shall not be revealed.” III. And if this be true, does it not especially behove us constantly to regard the state of that heart which God so closely inspects? IV. And here we may notice a remarkable distinction between the judgment passed on our conduct by man on the one side, and by God on the other. Man takes into account our wicked actions only, while God often discerns matter of condemnation, long before the wicked action is committed. As viewed by an earthly tribunal, it is of little account what designs we may have had, if those designs have never been put into execution. If we are placed in positions where unavoidable circumstances really debar us often from those privileges which the gospel of Christ affords to man, we may safely commit ourselves to the hands of God; He knows our hearts; and the day will come when it will be proved that, although debarred from many privileges, it was not really our own fault; our inclinations were good, and these inclinations shall be openly declared; for “ there is nothing covered,” no secret wish, no concealed desire, “ that shall not be revealed; there is nothing hid that shall not be known.” (H. Palmer.) Christians weighed in the balance If we had eyes adapted to the sight, we should see, on looking into the smallest seed, the future flower or tree enclosed in it. God will look into our feelings and motives as into seeds; by those embryos of action He will infallibly determine what we are, and will show what we should have been, had there been scope and stage for their development and maturity. Nothing will be made light of. The very dust of the balances shall be taken into account. It is in the moral world as it is in the natural, where every substance weighs something; though we speak of imponderable bodies, yet nature knows nothing of positive levity: and were men possessed of the necessary scales, the requisite instrument, we should find the same holds true in the moral world. Nothing is insignificant on which sin has breathed the breath of hell: everything is important in which holiness has impressed itself in the painted characters. And accordingly “ There is nothing covered that shall not be revealed; and hid that shall not be known.” However unimportant now, in the estimation of man, yet, when placed in the light of the Divine countenance, like the atom in the sun’ s rays, it shall be deserving attention; and as the minutest molecule of matter contains all the primordial elements of a world, so the least atom of that mind shall be found to include in it the essential elements of heaven. (W. Harris.) No secrecy for sin A man broke into a small church in Scotland, with the sacrilegious intention of stealing the communion plate. Hearing steps outside the building, and expecting that he should be discovered, he hurried to the end of the church, where, seeing a long rope depending to the ground, he laid hold of it for the purpose of climbing out of sight. But it proved to be the bell rope, and his weight rang the bell, which attracted his pursuers immediately to the spot. The man, of course, was caught; and thus wittily addressed the unconscious cause of his detection:--“ If it had not been for thy long tongue and empty head I should not have been in my present predicament.” This is the story as we get it from Mr. Gatty’ s book “ upon the Bell” ; but it has its lesson. Those who sin are pretty sure, sooner or later, to turn king’ s-evidence against themselves. There is a voice in wrong-doing; its long tongue will not always be quiet. All unaware, the offender puts out his hand and pulls the bell which tells against himself and summons vengeance to overtake him. Let no man dream that he can secure secrecy for his wickedness. Every timber in floor or roof is really to cry out against him, and before he is aware of it, he will himself be ringing out his own infamy. What will be his dismay when he stands self-convicted before the assembled universe! (C. H. Spurgeon.) Guilt strangely revealed Once, in a certain part of Germany, a box of treasure that was being sent by railway was found to have been opened and emptied of its contents, and filled with stones and rubbish. The question was, Who was the robber? Some sand was found sticking to the box, and a clever mineralogist, having looked at the grains of sand through his microscope, said that there was only one station on the railway where there was that kind of sand. Then they knew that the box must have been taken out at that station, and so they found out who was the robber. The dust under his feet, where he had set down the box to open it, was a witness against him. (Clerical Library.) The quickening of conscience Just as the manipulations of the photographer in his dark chamber bring forth a picture which has been burnt into the plate by rays of light before, that when completed it may be brought to light again, and set before men that they may see what manner of persons they were; so, in the dark chambers of the dead, in the hidden spirit-world, there shall be a quickening of conscience. Many a dull picture, burnt into the mind amid the brightness of life shall be made terribly clear, the whole to be exposed as a finished view in the light of the judgment throne, and of Him who sits thereon. We are taught that we had better cultivate this photography of life ourselves. God has given to us the dark chambers of the night, no chambers of horror, but chambers in which, away from busy life, we may still be workers for Him, bringing forth the pictures of the day that are imprinted on conscience, and that may all be lost, unless we thus draw them forth. Everything is recorded It is related that, some time since, a gentleman visiting England called upon a gentleman there living in princely grandeur. After being passed from one liveried servant to another, with almost as much ceremony as if he were about to be brought into the presence of the Queen, he was shown into a large and elegantly furnished drawing-room, where he was received by the gentleman whom he sought. He saw that there were two other persons seated at a table in the room, but not being introduced to them, proceeded with his business. At the close of the interview, as he was about to leave, the gentleman remarked, “ I am accustomed to have conversations with me recorded, and, that there may be no misunderstanding, these my amanuenses will read to you what you have said.” The visitor was thunderstruck. He little thought, while sitting there, that two pairs of ears were catching up every word he uttered, and two pairs of hands were putting it into a permanent record. So with many in this world. They seem not to know that there is a Being about their path who hears every syllable they utter, and who, “ when the books are opened,” will bring everything to view. In a late work of fiction the Recording Angel is represented as dropping a tear, just as he enters the celestial gates, upon an oath uttered in haste by a favourite character, and blotting it out for ever. But that is fiction, and not truth. A greater than man declares that “ whatsoever is spoken in darkness shall be heard in the light,” and that “ every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment.” (W. H. Baxendale.) Eastern proclamations Our Lord spent most of His life in villages; and, accordingly, the reference here is to a custom observed only in such places, never in cities. At the present day, writes Thompson, local governors in country districts cause their commands thus to be published. Their proclamations are generally made in the evening, after the people have returned from their labours in the field. The public crier ascends the highest roof at hand, and lifts up his voice in a long-drawn call upon all faithful subjects to give ear and obey. He then proceeds to announce, in a set form, the will of their master, and demands obedience thereto. Luke 12:4-5 Be not afraid of them that kill the body The fear of God I. WHAT IS THAT FEAR OF GOD WHICH THE FRIENDS AND OF CHRIST ARE TO CHERISH? 1. We are sure that this fear is not, as some would have us believe, inconsistent with the enjoyment of the hopes and consolations of the gospel. 2. This fear blends itself with the other emotions of our mind, and gives a chastened character to them all. (1) Solemnity to our prayers. (2) Sobriety to our hopes. (3) Consistency to our conduct, (4) Intensity to our love. II. WHAT TEND TO PROMOTE THIS FEAR. 1. The greatness of His power. 2. The immaculateness of His purity and justice. 3. The constancy and greatness, of His love. (Anon.) Religious fear I. ON WHAT THE FEAR OF GOD. AS IT IS A DUTY AND A GOOD , IS FOUNDED. 1. On a due sense of out own imperfections. (1) In practice. (2) In belief. 2. On a due sense of the perfections of God. God is most holy, and abhors iniquity as entirely opposite to His pure and undefiled nature. He is everywhere present, and from Him nothing can be hid. He is all-wise, and cannot be deceived. He is the just governor of the world, and as such He cannot but observe the actions of men, and will certainly render to every one according to his works. He is almighty, and can punish the rebellious many ways, by turning them out of being, or by making that being a pain to them for as long a time as He sees proper. He is also supremely good; and though this of all His perfections may seem the least suited to make us dread Him, yet whosoever judgeth so is much mistaken; for indeed there is not any one quality of the Divine nature so adapted to strike us with an ingenuous fear, with the fear of a child towards a parent, as this, and of such efficacy to deter us from sin, and to make us avoid incurring His just displeasure. Sin against God, as He is almighty, is the excess of madness and folly; but, as He is most kind and merciful, it is the basest ingratitude. II. THE SEVERAL DEGREES OF THIS FEAR. A person is sensible that his practice is not at all suitable to his knowledge and judgment; that he deliberately and continually offends God; that he is not in His favour; that, according to the doctrine of the gospel, he shall be condemned at the last day, unless he amend; and yet he goes on in his evil ways. One who is in this situation and disposition, and who seriously reflects upon it, cannot help fearing God. He fears Him as his worst enemy; he fears Him as a righteous and inflexible judge who will not spare the guilty. This fear is indeed well-grounded and rational and natural; yet, producing no good effects, it hath no virtue in it, it is no act of religion. But, if it deter him from sin, it is then to him the beginning of wisdom, and it becomes another kind of fear, and truly religious, as will appear from a second instance. A wicked person becomes sensible of his dangerous state, resolves to deliver himself from it without delay, and begins a new course. He knows that this repentance, these good resolutions, and this change for the better, are things which God requires, which He approves, and which He hath promised to accept when they bring forth the fruits of a regular obedience. He hath, therefore, hopes of pardon, without which it is not possible for any one to amend: but these hopes are mixed with many and great fears lest he should relapse into his former vices, lest he should not accomplish all that is necessary for his salvation, lest he should be called out of this world before he has finished his important and difficult task. This is a religious fear, because it is mixed with hope, and honourable notions of God, and because it produces good actions. There is, further, a religious fear, which, bringing forth a regular obedience, and not being accompanied with so much dread and terror as that last mentioned, shows that the mind in which it is lodged is advanced to a higher degree of goodness. The fear of God, therefore, is a disposition of mind, different in degree, according as our state is with relation to God and to religion. There is a fear that God is offended at us, and will punish us; which is the fear of a wicked person. There is a fear arising from a sense of our guilt, mixed and allayed with hopes that God will accept our amendment. This is the fear of a penitent sinner. There is a fear lest we ever should forfeit the favour of God, and fall short of that future reward which at present we may reasonably expect. This is the fear of a good man, and it is capable of increase or of diminution according to his behaviour. There is an awe and reverence which a due sense of God’ s perfections, and of the infinite distance between Him and His creatures, would excite in our minds, though we were secure of His favour, and had no fear of losing it. This is the happy state of those who have arrived as near to perfection as a good person can whilst he is on this side of heaven, and who are sensible that their course is nearly ended, and the time of their departure is at hand. (J. Jortin, D. D.) The reasonableness of fearing God mare than man I. THE POWER OF MAN, AND WHAT IS HE CAN DO. 1. He can kill the body, and take away our lives, which includes a power of doing whatever is less. 2. He can do not even this, however, without the Divine permission. 3. If permitted to do his worst, he can do but this. “ After that they have no more that they can do.” (1) “ They can but kill the body,” that is, they can only injure the worst and least considerable part of us. (2) When they have killed the body, by doing this, they do but prevent nature a little, they do but antedate an evil a few moments, and bring our fears upon us a little sooner; the:; kill that which must die within a few days, though they should let it alone; they do but cut asunder that thread which would shortly break of itself by its own weakness and rottenness. (3) “ They can but kill the body” ; and what argument of power is this, to be able to kill that which is mortal? as if you should say, “ They can break a glass; they can throw down that which is falling.” (4) The killing of the body does not necessarily signify any great mischief or harm in the issue and event. “ They can kill the body,” that is, they can knock off our fetters, and open the prison doors, and set us at liberty; they can put us out of pain, thrust us out of an uneasy world, put an end to our sins and sorrows, to our misery and fears; they can “ give the weary rest,” and send us thither where we would be, but are loath to venture to go. (5) “ They can but kill the body” ; when they have done that, they may give over, here their proud waves must stop; here their cruelty and malice, their power and wit, must terminate, for they can reach no farther. (6) “ They can but kill the body,” they cannot do the least harm to the soul, much less can they annihilate it, and make it cease to be. (7) And lastly, “ They can but kill the body,” that is, they can but inflict temporal misery upon us; their power, as it is but small, so it is of a short continuance, it reacheth no farther than this life, it is confined to this world. II. HOW MUCH THE POWER OF GOD EXCEEDS THE POWER OF MAN; which our Saviour declares in these words, “ Who, after He hath killed, hath power to cast into hell.” Which in general signifies, that His power is infinite and unlimited. 1. God’ s power is absolute, and independent upon any other. 2. His power reaches to the soul as well as the body. 3. In the other world He can raise our bodies again, and reunite them to our souls, and cast them into hell, and torment them there. 4. God can punish for ever. I proceed now to apply this serious and weighty argument, and to draw some useful inferences from it. I. That religion doth not design to annihilate and to root out our passions, but regulate and govern them; it does not wholly forbid and condemn them, but determines them to their proper objects, and appoints them their measures and proportions; it does not intend to extirpate our affections, but to exercise and employ them aright, and to keep them within bounds. II. We may infer likewise from hence, that it is not against the genius of true religion, to urge men with arguments of fear. No man can imagine there would have been so many fearful threatenings in Scripture, and especially in the gospel, if it had not been intended they should have some effect and influence upon us. Fear is deeply rooted in our nature, and immediately flows from that principle of self-preservation which is planted in every man; it is the most wakeful passion in the soul of man, and so soon as anything that is dreadful and terrible is presented to us, it alarms us to flee from it; and this passion doth naturally spring up in our minds from the apprehension of a Deity, because the notion of a God doth include in it power and justice, both which are terrible to guilty creatures; so that fear is intimate to our being, and God hath hid in every man’ s conscience a secret awe and dread of His presence, of His infinite power and eternal justice. Now fear being one of the first things that is imprinted upon us from the apprehension of a Deity, it is that passion, which, above all other, gives the greatest advantage to religion, and is the easiest to be wrought upon. III. THE FEAR OF GOD IS THE BEST AGAINST THE FEAR OF MEN. IV. IF GOD BE MORE TO BE DREADED THAN MEN, THEN, “ WHO IS TO BE OBEYED, GOD OR MEN? JUDGE YE.” I speak not this to diminish our reverence to magistrates and their authority; for by persuading men to fear God, who commands obedience to magistrates, we secure their reverence and authority; but when the commands of men are contrary to God’ s, and come in competition with them, shall we not hearken to Him who is supreme, the greatest and most powerful? Shall we not obey Him who hath the most unquestionable authority over us, and right to command us? Shall we not dread Him most who is to be feared above all, who can be the best friend and the sorest enemy, is able to give the greatest rewards to our obedience, and to revenge Himself upon us for our disobedience by the most dreadful and severe punishments? V. IF GOD BE THE GREAT OBJECT OF OUR FEAR, LET ALL SINNERS TO THE TERRORS OF THE LORD AND THE POWER OF HIS ANGER. This consideration, if anything in the world will do it, will awaken them to a sense of the danger of their condition, and of the fatal issue of a wicked life, (Archbishop Tillotson.) The use of fear in religion 1. In the first place, the emotion of fear ought to enter into the consciousness of the young, because youth is naturally light-hearted. The ordinary cares of this life, which do so much towards moderating our desires and aspirations, have not yet pressed upon the ardent and expectant soul, and therefore it needs, more than others, to fear and to “ stand in awe.” 2. Secondly, youth is elastic, and readily recovers from undue depression. There is an elasticity in the earlier periods of human life that prevents long-continued depression. How rare it is to see a young person smitten with insanity! It is not until the pressure of anxiety has been long continued, and the impulsive spring of the soul has been destroyed, that reason is dethroned. The morning of our life may, therefore, be subjected to a subduing and repressing influence, with very great safety. It is well to bear the yoke in youth. The awe produced by a vivid impression from the eternal world may enter into the exuberant and gladsome experience of the young with very little danger of actually extinguishing it and rendering life permanently gloomy and unhappy. 3. Thirdly, youth is exposed to sudden temptations and suprisals into sin. The general traits that have been mentioned as belonging to the early period in human life render it peculiarly liable to solicitations. The whole being of a healthful hilarious youth, who feels life in every limb, thrills to temptation like the lyre to the plectrum. There are moments in the experience of the young when all power of resistance seems to be taken away by the very witchery and blandishment of the object. He has no heart, and no nerve, to resist the beautiful siren. And it is precisely in these emergencies in his experience--in these moments when this world comes up before him clothed in pomp and gold, and the other world is so entirely lost sight of, that it throws in upon him none of its solemn shadows and warnings--it is precisely now, when he is just upon the point of yielding to the mighty yet fascinating pressure, that he needs to feel an impression, bold and startling, from the wrath of God. Nothing but the most active remedies will have any effect in this tumult and uproar of the soul. 4. In the fourth place, the feeling and principle of fear ought to enter into the experience of both youth and manhood, because it relieves from all other fear. He who stands in awe of God can look down from a very great height upon all other perturbation. When we have seen Him from whose sight the heavens and the earth flee away, there is nothing in either the heavens or the earth that can produce a single ripple upon the surface of our souls. 5. The fifth and last reason which we assign for cherishing the feeling and principle of fear applies to youth, to manhood, and to old age, alike; the fear of God conducts to the love of God. Our Lord does not command us to fear “ Him who, after He hath killed, hath power to cast into hell” because such a feeling as this is intrinsically desirable, and is an ultimate end in itself; it is in itself undesirable, and it is only a means to an end. By it our torpid souls are to be awakened from their torpor; our numbness and hardness of mind in respect to spiritual objects is to be removed. We are never for a moment to suppose that the fear of perdition is set before us as a model and permanent form of experience to be toiled after-a positive virtue and grace intended to be perpetuated through the whole future history of the soul. It is employed only as an antecedent to a higher and a happier emotion; and when the purpose for which it has been elicited has been answered, it then disappears. “ Perfect love casteth out fear; for fear hath torment” (1 John 4:18). But, at the same time, we desire to direct attention to the fact that he who has been exercised with this emotion, thoroughly and deeply, is conducted by it into the higher and happier form of religious experience. Religious fear and anxiety are the prelude to religious peace and joy. These are the discords that prepare for the concords. (W. T. G. Shedd, D. D.) Lessons 1. An unwarrantable fear condemned, and that is, the sinful, servile, slavish fear of man--“ Fear not them that kill the body.” 2. An holy, awful, and prudential fear of the omnipotent God commended--“ Fear Him that is able to kill both body and soul.” 3. The persons whom this duty of fear is recommended to, and bound upon; disciples, ministers, and ambassadors, all the friends of Christ; they not only may, but ought to fear Him, not only for His greatness and goodness, but upon the account of His punitive justice, as being able to cast both soul and body into hell. Such a fear is not only awful, but laudable; not only commendable, but commanded, and not misbecoming the friends of Christ. The ministers of God may use arguments from fear of judgments, both to dissuade from sin, and to persuade to duty. It is not unsuitable to the best of saints to keep in heaven’ s way for fear of hell; it is good to bid a friend fear when that fear tendeth to his good. (W. Burkitt.) Warning words In Luke 12:5 our Lord guards against the error of the soul’ s annihilation. Also against the notion that the body will escape the ruin of the soul. Perdition is not the destruction of the being of either, but of the well-being of both. Learn, that to play false with convictions to save life will fail of its end. God can inflict a violent death in some other and more awful way. 1. There is a hell for the body as well as for the soul; consequently sufferings adapted to the one as well as the other. 2. Fear of hell is a divinely authorized and needed motive of action even to Christ’ s “ friends.” 3. As Christ’ s meekness and tenderness were not compromised by this language, those ministers want their Master’ s spirit who soften it to please “ ears polite.” (Van Doren.) How far is it to hell? A young man met the deacon of a church one Sunday morning, and asked him the terrible question, “ How far is it to hell?” “ Young man,” was the reply, “ don’ t mock such a serious reality; you may be nearer to hell than you think.” They had only just turned the corner of the road, and ridden a few yards, when his horse threw him, and he was picked up dead. Sweetness of life One of the martyrs, when being led to the stake, was urged to recant; and as a motive to induce him to do so it was said, “ Life is sweet, and death is bitter.” “ True,” said the good man; “ life is sweet, and death is bitter; but eternal life is sweeter, and eternal death is more bitter.” Death cannot destroy the soul Methinks I hear an accursed spirit in the nether world crying after death, and saying, “ O death, pause, turn back and quench my wretched existence; in yonder world I dreaded thee, I struggled hard against thee--I now invoke thy stroke, a stroke that shall annihilate me for ever!” And methinks I hear death, heartless as ever, saying, “ I cannot destroy thee; I never had any power over thine existence; I could wither landscapes, breathe destruction into the face of every green field and forest; I could quench animal life, and have reduced all past generations of men to dust; but I could never touch the soul. The soul, secured in her existence, ‘ smiled at my dagger and defied the point.’ I cannot paralyze memory, I cannot extinguish the fires of conscience, I cannot destroy a soul.” (The Homilist.) Luke 12:6-7 Not one of them is forgotten before God God’ s universal oversight You see the Bible will not be limited in the choice of symbols, and there is hardly beast, or bird, or insect which has not been called to illustrate some Divine truth--the ox’ s patience, the ant’ s industry, the spider’ s skill, the hind’ s surefootedness, the eagle’ s speed, the dove’ s gentleness, and even the sparrow’ s meanness and insignificance. In Oriental countries, none but the poorest people buy the sparrow and eat it, so very little meat is there on the bones, and so very poor is it what there is of it. The comfortable population would not think of touching it any more than you would think of eating a bat or a lamprey eel. Now, says Jesus, if God takes care of such a poor bird that is not worth a cent, won’ t He care for you, an immortal? We associate God with revolutions. We can see a Divine purpose in the discovery of America, in the invention of the art of printing, in the exposure of the Gunpowder Plot, in the contrivance of the needle-gun, in the ruin of an Austrian or Napoleonic despotism; but how hard it is to see God in the minute personal affairs of our lives. We think of God as making a record of the starry host, but cannot realize the Bible truth that He knows how many hairs there are on your head. It seems a grand thing that God provided food for hundreds of thousands of Israelites in the desert, but we cannot appreciate the truth that when a sparrow is hungry God stoops down and opens its mouth, and puts the seed in. We are struck with the idea that God fills the universe with His presence; but cannot understand how He encamps in the crystal palace of a dewdrop, or finds room to stand, without being crowded, between the alabaster pillars of a pond lily. We can see God in the clouds. Can we see God in these flowers on this platform? We are apt to place God upon some great platform, or try to do it, expecting Him there to act out His stupendous projects; but we forget that the life of a Cromwell, an Alexander, a Washington, or an archangel is no more under Divine inspiration than your life or mine. Pompey thought there must have been a mist over the eyes of God because He so much favoured Caesar; but there is no such mist. He sees everything. We say God’ s path is in the great waters. True enough; but no more, certainly, than He is in the water in the glass on this table. We say God guides the stars in their courses--magnificent truth!--but no more certain truth than he decides which ferry-boat you shall take to-morrow morning to New York. God does not sit upon an indifferent and unsympathetic throne, but He sits down beside you to-day, and stands beside me to-day, and no affair of our lives is so insignificant but that it is of importance to God. 1. In the first place, God chooses for us our occupation. I am amazed to see how many people there are dissatisfied with the work they have to do. I think three-fourths wish they were in some other occupation; and they spend a great deal of time in regretting that they got in the wrong trade or profession. I want to tell you that God put into operation all the influences which led you to that particular choice. You know a man having a large estate. He gathers his working hands in the morning, and says to one, “ You go and trim that vine” ; to another, “ You go and weed those flowers” ; and to another, “ You plough that tough globe” ; and each one goes to his particular work. The owner of the estate points the man to what he knows he can do best; and so it is with the Lord. He calls us up, and points to that field for which we are best fitted. So that the first lesson coming from this subject is: Stay cheerfully where God puts you. 2. I remark, farther, that God has arranged the place of our dwelling. What particular city, or town, or street, or house you shall live in seems to be a mere matter of accident. You go out to hunt for a house, and you happen to pass up a certain street, and happen to see a sign, and you select that house. Was it all happening so? Oh, no. God guided you in every step. He foresaw the future. He knew all your circumstances, and He selected just that one house as better for you than any one of the ten thousand habitations in the city. 3. I remark, further, that God arranges all our friendships. You were driven to the wall. You found a man just at that crisis who sympathized with you and helped you. You say: “ How lucky I was.” There was no luck about it. God sent that friend just as certain as He sent the ravens to feed Elijah, or the angel to strengthen Christ. Your domestic friends, your business friends: your Christian friends, God sent them to bless you; and if any of them have proved traitorous, it is only to bring out the value of those who remain. If some die, it is only that they may stand on the outpost of heaven to greet you at your coming. You always will have friends--warmhearted friends--magnanimous friends; and, when sickness comes to your dwelling, there will be watchers; when trouble comes to your heart, there will be sympathisers; when death comes, there will be gentle fingers to close the eyes and fold the hands, and consoling lips to tell of a resurrection. Oh! we are compassed by a bodyguard of friends. Every man, if he has behaved himself well, is surrounded by three circles of friends; those on the outer circle wishing him well; those in the next circle willing to help him; while close up to his heart are a few who would die for him. God pity the wretch who has not any friends; he has not behaved well. 4. I remark, again, that God puts down the limit to our temporal prosperity. The world of finance seems to have no God in it. You cannot tell where men will land. The affluent fall; the poor rise. The ingenious fail; the ignorant succeed. An enterprise opening grandly shuts in bankruptcy; while out of the peat dug up from some New England marsh, the millionaire builds his fortune. The poor man thinks it is chance that keeps him down. The rich man thinks it is chance which hoists him, and they are both wrong. It is so hard to realize that God rules the money market, and has a hook in the nose of the stock gambler; and that all the commercial revolutions of the world shall result in the very best for God’ s dear children. My brother, don’ t kick against, the Divine allotments. God knows just how much money it is best for you to have. You never lose unless it is best for you to lose, and you never gain unless it is best for you to gain. You go up when it is best for you to go up, and go down when it is best for you to go down. Prove it, you say. I will. “ All things work together for good to them that love God.” You go into a factory, and you see twenty or thirty wheels, and they are going in different directions. This band is rolling off this way, and another band another way; one down and the other up. You say “ What confusion in a factory.” Oh, no, all these different bands are only different parts of the machinery. So I go into your life, and see strange things. Here is one providence pulling one way, and another in another way; but they are different parts of one machinery by which He will advance your present and everlasting well-being. (Dr. Talmage.) Of the providence of God I. THERE IS A . This appears-- 1. From plain Scripture testimonies (see Psalms 103:19; Ephesians 1:11). 2. From the nature of God, who being independent, and the first cause of all things, the creatures must needs depend upon Him in their being and working. He is the end of all things, wise, knowing how to manage all for the best; powerful to effectuate whatever He has purposed, and faithful to accomplish all He has decreed, promised, or threatened. 3. From the harmony and order of the most confused things in the world. Everything appears to a discerning eye to be wisely ordered, notwithstanding the confusions that seem to take place. 4. From the fulfilment of prophecies, which could not possibly be without a providence to bring them to pass. II. Let us, in the next place, consider THE OBJECT OF , or that which it reacheth and extendeth to. And this is all the creatures, and all their actions--“ Upholding all things by the word of His power” Hebrews 1:3). “ His kingdom ruleth over all” (Psalms 103:19). III. I proceed to consider THE ACTS OF . They are two, preserving and governing the creatures and their actions. 1. God by His providence preserves all the creatures. 2. God does not only preserve the creatures, but governs and manages them, which is the second act of providence; whereby He disposes of all things, persons, and actions, according to His will; “ The king’ s heart is in the hand of the Lord, as the rivers of water: He turneth it whithersoever He Proverbs 21:1). “ The lot is cast into the lap: but the whole disposing thereof is of the Lord” (Proverbs 16:33). “ A man’ s heart deviseth his way; but the Lord directeth his steps” (Proverbs 16:9). And this act of providence is also necessary: for as the creature cannot be or exist without God, so neither can it act without Him (Acts 17:21). God does not make man as the carpenter doth the ship, which afterwards sails without him; but He rules and guides him, sitting at the helm, to direct and order all his motions: so that whatever men do, they do nothing without Him; not only in their good actions, where He gives grace, and excites it, working in them both to will and to do of His good pleasure; but also in their evil actions, wherein they are under the hand of providence, but in a very different manner. (1) God permits sin, when He does not hinder it, which He is not obliged to do. (2) God leaves the sinner so far as He sees meet to the swing of his own lusts, and denies him restraining grace. (3) God bounds sin, and restrains men in their sins, as He does the raging sea, allowing it to go so far, but no further. (4) God overrules all to a good end. God has one end in wicked actions, and the sinner another. The sinner minds and intends evil, but God means and designs good by them all. IV. Our next business is to consider THE OF DIVINE . 1. God’ s providence is most holy (Psalms 145:17). 2. It is most wise (Isaiah 28:29). 3. Providence is most powerful. I shall conclude with an use of exhortation. 1. Beware of drawing an excuse for your sin from the providence of God, for it is most holy, and has not the least efficiency in any sin you commit. 2. Beware of murmuring and fretting under any dispensations of providence that ye meet with; remembering that nothing falls out without a wise and holy providence, which knows best what is fit and proper for you. And in all eases, even amidst the most afflicting incidents that befall you, learn submission to the will of God. 3. Beware of anxious cares and diffidence about your through-bearing in the world. (T. Boston, D. D.) Providence in our occupations Hugh Miller says, “ I will be a stonemason” ; God says, “ You will be a geologist.” David goes out to tend his father’ s sheep; God calls him to govern a nation. Saul goes out to hunt his father’ s asses, and before he gets back finds the crown of mighty dominion. (Dr. Talmage.) Not forgotten by God We talk about God’ s remembering us, as if it were a special effort, a laying hold by His great mind of something outside of Himself, which He determined to remember. But if we could only know how truly we belong to God it would be different. God’ s remembrance of us is the natural claiming of our life by Him as a true part of His own. When the spring comes, the oak-tree, with its thousands upon thousands of leaves, is alive all over. The great heart of the oak-tree remembers every remotest tip of every farthest branch, and sends to each the message and the power of new life. It is no harder work for the oak to feed and sustain and remember a million leaves than to feed and remember only one. The thrill of the common life is passed on, without effort, to each. Somewhat in this way we may think of God’ s remembrance of His millions of children. We may be no more than far-off leaves upon the great tree of His life. Bat we are remembered just as the heart remembers the finger-tips to which it sends the crimson blood. (Victor Hugo.) Minuteness of God’ s care It has been said, “ God is great in great things, but He is very great in little things.” This was illustrated by an incident which occurred in a room during a Scripture reading. There was a beautiful engraving on the wall of the Matterhorn mountain. It was remarked that the wondrous works of God were not only shown in those lofty, snow-clad mountains, but also the tiny mosses found in their crevices. A friend present said, “ Yes, I was with a party at the Matterhorn, and, while we were admiring the sublimity of the scene, a gentleman of the company produced a pocket microscope and, having caught a tiny fly, placed it under the glass. He reminded us that the legs of the household fly in England are naked; then called our attention to the legs of this little fly, which were thickly covered with hair” ; thus showing that the same God who made these lofty mountains rise, attended to the comfort of the tiniest of His creatures, even providing socks and mittens for the little flies whose homes these mountains were. (Christian Age.) God’ s care for all creatures It is interesting to look round the world, and note the various tokens to be seen everywhere of God’ s liberal hand in supplying the wants of His creature man. Dr. Livingstone, writing of some plants that grew in Kalahari Desert, mentions a plant called Leroshua, which he says “ is a blessing to the inhabitants of the desert. We see a small plant with linear leaves, and a stalk not thicker than a crow’ s quill; on digging down a foot or eighteen inches beneath, we come to a tuber, often as large as the head of a young child; when the rind is removed we find it to be a mass of cellular tissue, filled with fluid much like that in a young turnip. Owing to the depth beneath the soil at which it is found, it is generally deliciously cool and refreshing.” Caring for a little bird We are at a loss to conceive the infinite range of mind, thought, and heart that embraces alike the inconceivable magnitudes and the microscopic minutiae of the universe. And yet this same phenomenon is witnessed in ourselves--minute images of God. While the great Gustavus Adolphus was in the midst of the dust, smoke, clangour, and excitement of a momentous battle, a little bird, dizzy and bewildered with the noise and wild atmospheric confusion, sank and lighted upon his shoulder. The battle, vast in its proportions, momentous in the interests it involved, still left room in his mind and heart for the distress and peril of that little bird, and he hid it in safety beneath the folds of his dress, and plunged again into the fight. The same trait appears--on a very small scale, it may be--in our own experience, and appearing there, pictures in miniature the all-embracing range of the Divine thought and providential care. God may be safely trusted An aged Christian who had long been an invalid, and was dependent on Christian charity for her support, on sending for a new physician who had just come into the place, and united with the same Church of which she was a member, said to him, “ Doctor, I wish to put myself under your care, but I cannot do it unless you will trust my Father.” “ Well, Ma’ am,” replied the physician, “ I believe your Father is rich; I may safely trust Him.” (New Cyclolpoedia of Anecdote.) An ever watchful previdence A little error of the eye, a misguidance of the hand, a slip of the foot, a starting of a horse, a sudden mist, or a great shower, or a word uncle signedly cast forth in an army, has turned the stream of victory from one side to another, and thereby disposed of empires and whole nations. No prince ever returned safe out of a battle but may well remember how many blows and bullets have gone by him that might easily have gone through him; and by what little odd, unforeseen chances, death has been turned aside which seemed in a full, ready, direct career to have been posting to him. All which passages, if we do not acknowledge to have been guided to their respective ends and effects by the conduct of a superior and a Divine hand, we do, by the same assertion, cashier all providence, strip the Almighty of His noblest prerogative, and make God, not the Governor, but the mere Spectator of the world. (R. South, D. D.) Providence and individuals Men talk in a general way about the goodness of God, His benevolence, compassion, and long-suffering; but they think of it as a flood pouring itself out through all the world--as the light of the sun, not as the continually repeated action of an intelligent and living mind contemplating whom it visits and intending what it effects. Accordingly when they come into trouble, they can but say--“ It is all for the best--God is good!” and the like, and it all falls as cold comfort upon them, and does not lessen their sorrow, because they have not accustomed their minds to feel that He is a merciful God, regarding them individually, and not a mere Universal Providence, working general laws. And then, perhaps, all of a sudden the new notion breaks upon them, “ Thou God seest me!” Some especial providence, amid their infliction, runs right into their hearts; brings it close home to them, in a way they never experienced before, that God sees them. (J. H. Newman) Man’ s fear and the Divine dissuasive Our Lord, while instructing and preparing His disciples for future work as heralds of the kingdom, warns them that they will meet with many dangers and enemies; “ but fear not,” says the Master, “ you are watched at every step, and come life, come death, you are safe.” I. MAN’ S FEARS. They are of two kinds-- 1. Those which respect this world. Some people go through life much more anxiously than others, though in outward circumstances there seems little difference in their respective lots. A good deal depends upon a man’ s temperament as to the way in which he will take things. Those on the lower ground have the least care. As we rise higher in the social scale, then it brings increasing solicitude. Provision has to be made not only for the wants of the day, but for appearances. It is right enough that men should look to appearances. God looks to appearances. He has made this world-house beautiful, and we are but following the Divine example when we try to make our life a thing of variety, largeness, and grace. But in doing so, the gates of anxiety are opened to us, and we are careful and troubled. 2. Fears respecting the world to come and our spiritual state and relation to that. The fullest victory over the cares and fears of this life is to be gained only by living for a higher world. Let us try to see Jesus standing as Lord of both worlds, and saying, “ Fear not.” II. THE DIVINE . “ Fear not.” This is supported and recommended by several arguments, as the limited power of man and of circumstances. Men may say and do a great deal which may be injurious to you, but you always come to the limit: “ After that, there is nothing more they can do. Again, there is unlimited power with God, and if we are true trusting disciples of Christ this is a great dissuasive from fear. God will use all that infinite power to protect and save His trusting children. “ He telleth the number of the stars,” and has regard to every sparrow that flies. Why should we fear? Then our Lord teaches us that we are of more value to God than the inferior creatures. He has a higher care about us. (A. Raleigh, D. D.) Divine providence I. I SHALL , IN THE FIRST PLACE, TO THE SUBJECT OF A DIVINE . 1. Divine providence implies the preservation of all things. 2. Providence also implies the government of the world by its great and almighty Ruler. (1) Divine providence is particular in its government. A general providence must, in the nature of things, include a particular one. God cannot superintend the larger parts of the universe without taking care of the most minute parts. The all-wise and all-gracious Being who created all things, sustains all things. He is the Preserver as well as the Creator of everything that exists. As no part of His universe can be neglected or overlooked by Him, so no circumstance, however trivial, in the history of any individual is beneath His notice. No created thing can continue either to exist or to act independently of Him. He governs each individual with the same care and attention that He pays to the whole. (2) Divine providence is special in its regards. We know that God Almighty is the Father, the kind and gracious Father of all mankind; His providence is, consequently, exercised on behalf of all living things. He careth for the animal creation, every part of which is under His government; for “ He giveth food unto the cattle, and feedeth the young ravens that call upon Him. The lions roaring after their prey do seek their meat from God; He openeth His hand, and filleth all things living with plenteousness.” His providence is exercised also on behalf of the unholy and unthankful: to them He is kind and merciful, and for them He makes rich and constant provision. His love is not confined--“ The Lord is loving unto every man, and His mercy is over all His works.” We must, however, distinguish betwixt that general regard which the Almighty exercises towards the whole race of mankind, and that tender and special regard which He feels towards those who love Him, and constantly worship Him in spirit and in truth. (3) The administration of Divine providence, though often mysterious, is uniformly conducted by infinite wisdom, and with the most benign intentions. II. LESSONS WHICH FLOW FROM THIS OF DIVINE . 1. We are reminded of the supreme worth and importance of the friendship of God. 2. By this subject we are taught the duty of devout attention to the dispensations of Divine providence. 3. Reverential submission is another lesson that we derive from this important subject. 4. Finally, we derive from this representation of Divine providence a reason for cheerful and implicit confidence in God. This is the practical and consolatory use to which our blessed Lord applies the great truth now before us: “ Fear not, therefore.” If you truly fear God, you need fear none beside. (T. Lessey.) God’ s never-failing providence The little creature mentioned is one of the most insignificant that could be thought of; and the Lord selected it, just for that utter insignificance, to bring out thereby a truth which overwhelms the reason. He took out of His immense universe, an object so poor, so small, that nothing could be less important, to illustrate the doctrine on which the system of Christian morals is built; and the truth is this: that God is in intelligent relation with everything that exists; that there are, practically, no limits to His providence; that in the universe nothing is so minute as to be overlooked or forgotten. “ Not one of them is forgotten.” It is a striking phrase. It implies a knowledge which lasts, though the thing known may no longer exist; care, consideration, particulars retained in the faithful memory. And in the ephemeral history of the poor little bird, of which the great God and Saviour deigned to speak, Not one item is forgotten; each tiny creature’ s life, in all its extent, is seen, and known, and borne in mind by Him to whom it owes that life. Now here is a truth, which may be called the beginning of the moral law, the foundation of Christian ethics, the Alpha and Omega of Christian practice. The doctrine of the never-failing providence of Almighty God is the sheet-anchor of man’ s safety. 1. The doctrine of God’ s providence is, at first, as terrible to contemplate as it is hard to realize; no one can bear to think of it, no one willingly admits it, who is leading an evil life. It means that there is nothing about you, or in you, or of you, but God knows and sees it all; the thoughts of your heart, the springs and motives of your acts, the vices of your blood. Then, also, those eyes sweep the entire circumference of the sphere in which you move; they see your friends and your foes, the tempting spirits which allure you, the guardians set for your defence; they mark the rise of the storms, as yet no bigger than a man’ s hand, which are coming up against you, and see, beyond, the sunshine which, after many days, may break out once more. You, just as you are, stand now before God, and simply for what you are, since there is no deceiving Him. 2. The truth of God’ s never-failing providence is awful indeed to those who know Him not, nor have Him in their thoughts; but to those who are near Him, and love to set Him ever before them as the Father and the Saviour, it is more precious than words can tell. To such it serves three purposes: it gives them guidance; it gives them strength; it gives the sense of safety. It shows them what they ought to do; it assures them of success; it blesses with the blessing of peace. That is the other side of the picture; and it shines in lovely light. If our sins are before Him, so also are our humble attempts to do right, our desires to win His approval, and regrets when we fear that we have failed. He follows us with merciful and tender consideration. When we go forth, the strong Hand is there to sustain us as we walk, and lead us through peril in safety. When we come in, the faithful guardian opens to us, and bids us rest in the quietness of perfect love and trust. We see Him in each event of life, and in the smallest particulars of each day, as the Friend who is near us all the time; we find Him in our rising up and in our lying down, in the home and its pure joys, in the loving faces them; we bless Him as the Author of every innocent pleasure; when the heart is glad We know that what filled it so full is the habitual sense that God is in our happiness, as the Author and Giver: all is of Him, and to Him do we give thanks. When we take up our daily work, it is with a song in the heart, because He worketh with us and will show us how our work should be done; and when we lay it down, it is with quiet satisfaction, because He has seen all, and remembers, and knows that though we may not have been perfect, we did what we could. His Holy Spirit, called the “ Paraclete,” the “ Comforter,” and the “ Loving Spirit,” is ever near us, and even within, since these mortal bodies are His consecrated temples; and the musical sounds often heard in the soul, like songs without words, are the voice of that Spirit, telling our spirit of the love of God for us and the reward of love for Him. 3. Its own reward follows on just and righteous doing; its reward follows surely on faith. It shall come to you along the three lines of warning, help, and comfort: the assurance of the Providence that never faileth, and never forgetteth, shall bring to you as its fruit, these precious results: A sober and awful sense of responsibility; a check and salutary restraint on action; a courage and energy above natural force; a constant sense of the Divine companionship; a transfiguration of your entire life; and, for the future, a settled restfulness and peace, the harbingers of eternal satisfaction in the likeness of Him whom now His children see by faith, but whom they shall know hereafter even as they are known. (Morgan Dix, D. D.) God’ s wonderful care When we think of the labour required to rear the few that are in our households-the weariness, the anxiety, the burden of life--how wonderful seems God’ s work! for He carries heaven and earth, andall realms, in His bosom. Many think that God takes no thought for anything less than a star or a mountain, and is unmindful of the little things of life; but when I go abroad, the first thing which I see is the grass beneath my feet; and, nestling in that, flowers smaller yet; and lower still, the mosses with their inconspicuous blooms, which beneath the microscope glow with beauty:. And if God so cares for “ the grass of the field, which to-day is, and to-morrow is cast into the oven,” shall He not much more care for the minutest things of your life, “ O ye of little faith” ? (H. W.Beecher.) The worth of sparrows It is significant that Christ marked with so much interest the more lowly and homely of the creatures around us. He does not say, “ Consider the eagle” --the monarch of the air, the symbol of empire and of victory; or, “ Consider the nightingale,” the sweet Eastern bulbul, that floods the Jordan banks and the shores of Gennesaret with its passionate music; but, “ Consider the raven” --a fowl of ill-omen and unattractive to the eye, or draws attention to the sparrow, a very Pariah among the feathered tribes. It is like His preference for publicans and sinners over the lordly Pharisee and learned scribe. Who but Jesus would have dreamed of getting poetry and theology out of ravens and sparrows! Who but He would have compared Himself, as He did in the most pathetic utterance of His life, to a hen vainly calling her heedless brood to the shelter of her wings! But this fashion of speech became Him who was “ meek and lowly in heart” ; and who, moreover, being one with the Author of Nature, interprets best her deepest and simplest lessons. And what a revelation Christ’ s saying respecting the sparrows gives us of the working of God’ s providence! What an omniscience and omnipresence it implies! He declares that God actually notices and cares for every little feathered thing that flits twittering through the air, or hops from bough to bough in innocent and happy freedom, or pipes its solitary note “ alone upon the housetop.” And when the tiny creature falls, struck by stick or shot or stone, “ it does not fall on the ground,” He says, “ without your Father.” Nay, even as it hangs in the poulterer’ s stall, strung up with fifty others, waiting for the purchaser, poor almost as itself, who can find the farthing needed to buy two of them, still it is not “ forgotten before God.” The pitiful little tragedy, from beginning to end, is watched and recorded by the Supreme Mind! If He observes all that, what is there which He overlooks? If He “ caters providently for the sparrow,” and interests Himself in its fate, how solicitous His care for all His living creatures I How minute and delicate and sympathetic, as well as far-reaching and omnipotent, the oversight of His providence, which is not less special than general, not less particular than it is universal. Even a large-minded and noble-hearted man is distinguished above others by his freedom from contempt, by his insight into the meaning of little things, and his sense of the sacredness and the value of common life. His mind is superior to the mere bulk and splendour of outward things. And with God this must be so in the most absolute sense, to the most perfect degree. “ He hath respect unto the lowly.” And this “ respect” extends in due measure to all His creatures. It is only when we believe that His care is thus universal that we can absolutely rely upon it for ourselves. (G. G. Findlay, B. A.) Confidence in God’ s providence After the battle of Manassas, Captain Imboden called upon General Stonewall Jackson, who was severely wounded, and found him bathing his swollen hand in spring water, and bearing his pain very patiently. In the course of their conversation Imboden said: “ How is it, General, you can keep so cool, and appear so utterly insensible to danger, in such a storm of shell and bullets as rained about you when your hand was hit?” He instantly became grave and reverential in his manner, and answered in a low tone of great earnestness: “ Captain, my religious belief teaches me to feel as safe in battle as in bed. God has fixed the time of my death. I do not concern myself about that, but to be always ready, no matter when it may overtake me.” He added after a pause: “ Captain, that is the way all men should live, and then all would be equally brave.” Remarkable deliverance The celebrated author of the “ Pilgrim’ s Progress” experienced several remarkable providential deliverances. Once he fell into the river Ouse, and at another time into the sea, and narrowly escaped being drowned. When seventeen years of age he became a soldier, and at the siege of Leicester in 1645, being drawn out to stand sentinel, another soldier in the same company desired to take his place. He consented, and his companion was shot in the head by a musket ball, and killed. The doctrine of providence practically improved I. To prove that the providence of God extends to all human affairs; and-- II. To point out the practical uses we should make of this doctrine. I. Let us establish, by reference to the Scriptures, this great and important truth, THAT THE OF GOD IS ; that it extends to all creatures and things throughout the whole world; but, as that concerns us most, especially to all human affairs. By the providence of God, we mean His preserving and governing all His creatures, and all their actions. 1. This appears even from the light of nature. It seems necessarily to follow from His being the Creator of the world; for it is reasonable to believe, that He who made all things, governs all things (Romans 1:18-21; Acts 14:17). The existence of God, a Being of infinite power and wisdom and goodness, obliges us to believe that He will take care of His creatures. 2. But we have clearer light and fuller proof of this from the Bible, God’ s own revelation of Himself. There we read that God is the great Preserver. What shall I do unto Thee,” said holy Job, “ O thou Preserver of men!” Job 7:20). And the psalmist exclaims, “ How excellent is Thy loving kindness, O God I therefore the children of men put their trust under the shadow of Thy wings. O Lord, thou preservest man and beast” (Psalms 36:6-7). And in the book of Nehemiah, the good providence of God is celebrated in these exalted strains: “ Thou, even Thou, art Lord alone; Thou hast made heaven, the heaven of heavens, with all their host, the earth, and all things that are therein, the seas, and all that is therein, and Thou preservest them all!” (Nehemiah 9:6). The predictions of future events, and their fulfilment, of both which the Scriptures afford very numerous instances, furnish us with another proof of the reality of a Divine Providence; for if God did not govern the world, He could not foretell what would come to pass. God forewarned Noah of the flood 120 years before it came. He foretold the bondage of Israel in Egypt; how long it should last, and how they should be delivered. The captivity of Judah was foretold long before it happened; how many years it should continue; by whom, and by what means the people should be restored, and the temple rebuilt. All the circumstances relating to the birth, life, sufferings, death, and resurrection of Christ were exactly predicted. God, who preserves all creatures, governs them also. He does not commit the management of the world to deputies, as many of the heathen supposed. “ The Lord reigneth.” “ He increaseth the nations, and destroyeth them: He enlargeth the nations, and straiteneth them again. He looseth the bond of kings, and girdeth their loins with a girdle. He leadeth princes away spoiled, and over-throweth the mighty” (Job 12:18-19; Job 12:23). The providence of God is to be owned in the affairs of families (Psalms 68:6; Psalms 107:41). Nor are individuals beneath His notice, as the text plainly imports; not even the least of their concerns, “ for the very hairs of their head are all numbered” .; consequently all their more important concerns. Even as to those events which we call contingent, or accidental, even they are under the direction and control of the Almighty (Proverbs 16:33). This providence of God, the existence of which we have clearly proved. (1) It is sovereign and uncontrollable. Who hath resisted, who can resist, His will? (2) It is wise. “ His work is perfect, all His ways are judgment.” He cannot err: He cannot be deceived or mistaken. (3) It is mysterious. “ Clouds and darkness are round about Him.” (4) Always good. “ Truly, God is good to Israel.” “ His eyes,” directing all human affairs, “ run to and fro throughout the earth” ; and for what purpose? “ To show Himself strong” in behalf of all that fear and love His name. Yes, assuredly; for all “ things work together for the good” of His people. II. We now proceed to the second part of the subject; namely, TO POINT OUT THE USES WE OUGHT TO MAKE OF THE OF . This doctrine is, in truth, connected with the whole of practical religion. Take away providence, and you destroy the whole system of godliness, and leave no room for prayer or praise. 1. Let us stand in awe of the great Ruler of the world. Do His eyes behold, His eyelids try the children of men? Is He in every place, beholding the evil and the good? In His hand is our breath and all our ways? Who, then, shall not fear Him? who shall not tremble at His presence? 2. Let us rejoice that the reins of universal government are in the hands of Jesus Christ, our Saviour and our Lord--of Him who is our Mediator, our Redeemer, our Brother, and our Friend. 3. The doctrine of providence shows the propriety and utility of prayer; it affords the strongest motive, and the best encouragement to that duty. 4. The doctrine of providence shows the propriety of offering to God the sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving. 5. It shows the propriety of submission to the will of God. Does the Lord rule? Submit to His government. 6. Improve the doctrine of Divine Providence, as a remedy against anxiety. 7. Finally: let this subject lead our minds forward towards the future and eternal world. (G. Burder.) The Father’ s love for persons He is the God of all, and yet He is my God. This view of God we all have a deep interest in impressing on our minds. We must strive to combine, in our conception of Him, the thoughts of a particular and a universal providence. On the one hand, we must not narrow His loving care, as if it were mindful of ourselves alone, nor think of Him only as doing us good. For this would be to rob Him of His infinitude, and darken the splendour of His boundless beneficence. Such a view would make religion the nurse of selfishness, and convert our connection with the Supreme Being into one of self-interest. Never let us try to monopolize God. Never let us imagine that God exists only as administering to our individual wants. Never let us for an instant forget His relation to the universe. But on the other hand, beware lest in thus enlarging your views of the Infinite One, you lose your hold of the correlative truth--that though all beings of all worlds are His care, though His mind thus embraces the universe, He is yet as mindful of you, as if that universe were blotted out, and you alone survived to receive the plenitude of His care. God’ s relation to you is not an exclusive one, but it is as close as if it were. Never conceive that your actions are overlooked and forgotten, because of the multiplicity of agents and beings who are to be guided and governed. Never fear that your wants are forgotten, because the boundless Creation sends up a cry to its common Father, and He has an infinite family for whom to provide. Never think that your characters are objects of little interest, because innumerable orders of beings of higher attainments and virtues attract the regards of this munificent King. Were you His only creature alive, He could not think of you more constantly and tenderly, or be more displeased with your resistance to duty, or feel more joy in your fidelity to right, than He does now. The human mind, apt to measure God by itself, has always found a difficulty in reconciling the two views which have just been stated. Through this propensity it fell into Polytheism, or the worship of many gods. Wanting a Deity, who would watch over their particular interests, and fearing that they would be overlooked by the Father of all, men invented inferior divinities--gods for each particular country and nation--and still more household gods, divinities for each particular dwelling, that they might have some superior power beneath which to shelter their weakness. I. BUT THERE IS NO IN AT ONCE IN GOD’ S AND IN HIS . He may watch over all, and yet watch over each, as if each were all. There is a simple truth, which may help us to understand, that God does not intermit His attention to individuals in consequence of His inspection of the infinite whole. It is this. The individual is a living part of this living whole--vitally connected with it--acting upon it and reacted upon by it--receiving good, and communicating good in return, in proportion to his growth and power. From this constitution of the universe it follows, that the whole is preserved and perfected by the care of its parts. The general good is bound up m the individual good. So that to superintend the one is to superintend the other; and the neglect of either would be the neglect of both. What reason have I for considering myself as overlooked, because God has such an immense family to provide for? I belong to this family. I am bound to it by vital bonds. I am always exerting an influence upon it. I can hardly perform an act that is confined in its consequences to myself. Every new truth that I gain makes me a brighter light to humanity. I ought not then to imagine that God’ s interest in me is diminished, because His interest is extended to endless hosts of spirits. On the contrary, God must be more interested in me on this very account, because I influence others as well as myself. I am a living member of the great family of all souls; and I cannot improve or suffer myself, without diffusing good or evil around me through an ever-enlarging sphere. In these remarks we have seen, that from the intimate and vital connection between the individual and the community of spirits, God in taking care of each person is taking care of the whole, and that there is a perfect harmony between the general and the particular superintendence of God. From the same vital connection of beings, I derive another encouraging view, leading to the same result. I learn from it that God’ s attention to His whole creation, far from withdrawing His regard from me, is the very method whereby He is advancing my especial good. I am organically connected with the great family of the universal parent. Plainly then it is for my happiness, that this family should be watched over and should prosper. Suppose the Creator to abandon all around me, that He might bless me alone, should I be a gainer by such a monopoly of God’ s care? My happiness is manifestly bound up with and flows from the happiness of those around; and thus the Divine kindness to others is essentially kindness to myself. This is no theory; it is the fact confirmed by all experience. Every day we receive perpetual blessings from the progress of our race. We are enlightened, refined, elevated, through the studies, discoveries, and arts of countless persons, whom we have never seen and of whom we have never even heard. Daily we enjoy conveniences, pleasures, and means of health and culture, through advancements in science and art, made in the most distant regions. And in so far as we possess elevated, disinterested, and holy characters, or enlarged intelligence, have not these been cherished and encouraged by the examples, writings, deeds, and lives of far-spread fellow-beings, through all ages and nations? How much would each of us assuredly be advanced in happiness, wisdom, virtue, were the community around us--were all the persons with whom we hold intercourse--more humane and more heavenly! Is God, then, neglecting us in His care of others? How could He bless us more effectually than by carrying forward the great spiritual system to which we belong, and of which we are living parts? II. Thus having seen how consistent is the doctrine of God’ s care for the whole with the doctrine that He watches minutely over every individual, let ME NOW ASK YOU TO LOOK AT THIS MORE CLOSELY, IN ITS . Consider what affecting ideas it involves! According to this truth, we are, each one of us, present to the mind of God. We are penetrated, each one of us, instant by instant, by His all-seeing eye; we are known, every single person of us, more interiorly by Him than we are known to ourselves. Moment by moment the living God sustains us; and His own life continually flows into us through His omnipotent good-will. In fine, and above all, the Holy One never loses sight of our character and conduct. He witnesses and delights in our virtues. And He too witnesses and condemns every sin. Intimate and tender, beyond our highest conception, is our Heavenly Father’ s relationship to us! He is incessantly our creator and renewer, our upholder and benefactor, our witness and judge. The connection of all other beings with us, when compared with this, is foreign and remote. The nearest friend, the most loving parent, is but a stranger to us, when contrasted with God. No words can adequately express this living alliance of the Creator with His creatures. And knowing thus the intensity and the extent of this relationship, how is it possible that I can forget Him? My hearers, I have thus turned your attention to this sublimely affecting subject of our vital connection with God, not for the purpose of awakening temporary fervour, but that we may feel the urgent duty of cherishing these convictions. Were a person, who had lived in ignorance of all beyond mere sensitive existence, suddenly to receive a clear impression of God’ s all-embracing presence, he would undergo a greater change of condition, than if he were to awake some morning in a wholly new world, peopled by new beings, clothed in new beauty, and governed by laws such as he had never known by experience. He would be uplifted with the assurance, that at length he had found for his soul an all-sufficing object of veneration, gratitude, trust and love, an unfailing source of strength for every mortal weakness, an exhaustless refreshment of his highest hope, an ever-springing fount of holy emotion, virtuous energy, and heavenly joy, infinitely transcending all modes of good to which he had been wont to look. In a word, he would be utterly transformed. On the other hand, in degree as by faithlessness I lose sight of my intimate relationship with God, I am bereft of inward peace, of the desire for progress, of power to escape from myself. The future grows dim, and hope dies. A change comes over me like that which befals the traveller when clouds overspread the sky, when gathering mists obscure his path, and gloom settles down upon his uncertain way, till he is lost. The light of life is a constant consciousness of Divine fellowship. III. How THEN CAN WE ATTAIN TO AN ABIDING OF LIVING WITH THE LIVING GOD? How can we reach the constant feeling that He is always with us, offering every aid consistent with our freedom, guiding us on to heavenly happiness, welcoming us into the immediate knowledge of His perfection, into a loving fellowship with Himself? I shall confine myself to what seems to be essential, as the first step, in this approach to true communion with the ]Father of spirits. My belief is, that one chief means of acquiring a vivid sense of God’ s presence is to resist, instantly and resolutely, whatever we feel to be evil in our hearts and lives, and at once to begin in earnest to obey the Divine will as it speaks in conscience. You say that you desire a new and nearer knowledge of your Creator. Let this thirst for a higher consciousness of the Infinite Being lead you to oppose whatever you feel to be at war with God’ s purity, God’ s truth, and God’ s righteousness. Just in proportion as you gain a victory over the evil of which you have become aware in yourself, will your spiritual eye be purged for a brighter perception of the Holy One. (W. E.Channing.) Luke 12:8 Whosoever shall confess Me before me The judgment-seat of Christ I. For FINGER-POSTS that may guide our endeavour to come at the spiritual reality here symbolized, such thoughts as these may serve. 1. Evidently Christ here contrasts the seen and the unseen world as respectively small and great; here a petty vicinage, there a grand environment; here ignorant men, there high intelligences--the angels of God; here ourselves as affected by the examples and opinions of sinners, there ourselves as feeling the presence and the criticism of the pure; in dim light here, in dazzling light there. 2. Christ evidently contrasts the seen and the unseen world in their respective objects of honour and dishonour. 3. The next truth of which Christ here makes us certain is, that the future is simply the continuance of present relations to Him under changed conditions. Thus we approach a true and clear conception of what our Lord meant by confessing Him and being confessed by Him, &c. Not by what we say, but by what we are, is our present confession or denial of Christ most tellingly uttered before men. Likewise, by what He is, as compared with what we are, will His future confession or denial of us be most conclusively made known, to our glory or our shame before the heavenly witnesses “ the angels of God.” II. From this look into the spiritual reality of our subject we draw some obvious and practical . 1. Confessing or denying Christ is certainly no mere affair of words. Yet words, though weak, are not worthless. They can make their mark on character--our own and others’ character. 2. Confessing Christ and being confessed by Christ are not to be separated in our thought, like work-day and pay-day, as if the confessing were all here, and the being confessed all there. What comes out there is simply the flash of an awakened consciousness of a judgment of Christ which has been going on here every day under the eyes of the invisible witnesses of many a negligent life. 3. Confessing or denying Christ here is not a question solely as to the totality or average of character, but quite as much a question as to the particulars of character. Point by point, the world compares the professed copy with its model, and recognizes agreements or contradictions in detail. No otherwise can it be in the presence of the angels of God. (J. M. Whiten, Ph. D.) Confession of Christ The confession of Christ by the apostles was before the heads of their religion, the chief priests who had crucified Him. It was before rulers and kings, before the philosophers of Athens, the libertines of Corinth. It was the bold, unflinching avowal that the world was saved by the cruel and disgraceful death of a Jew, one of a nation regarded with pretty much the same contempt as they are now. They who made this confession always made it at the risk of their lives. This confession of Christ is yet dangerous to life even in this nineteenth century. No man in a Mahometan country, brought up in the national faith, can embrace the Christian religion except at the risk of his life--at least it was so a very few years ago. In Christian England the confession of Christ has assumed a different form, but it equally requires sincerity and courage to make it; a Christian has now to profess the creating power of God amongst evolutionists, and the all-ruling providence of God in the company of unbelieving scientists. In some companies he has to brave the ridicule attaching to the belief in miracles. In the society of filthy-minded men he has to uphold the purity of Christ, and in the society of worldlings he may be called upon to uphold the rooted antagonism between the world and Christ. These may seem very poor and mild ways of confessing Christ compared to what our forefathers in the faith had to endure; but they all try the metal of the Christian. If he is faithful in confessing Christ in these comparatively little matters, he may have a good hope that God would, if called upon, give him grace to make a bolder and more public and dangerous confession if it was laid upon him so to do. Such is the confession of Christ; and the reward answers to it. “ Before the angels of God,” i.e., before the court of God--before His special ministers. Notice the extraordinary reality with which the Lord here invests the unseen world of angels. To be honoured before them and receive their applause, infinitely outweighs the contempt and persecution of a condemned world. (M. F.Sadler.) Christian courage I. Consider some of the WHICH CALL FOR THE OF THIS GRACE. 1. It requires courage to be able to withstand persecution for conscience sake. 2. You will need courage to bear reproach for Christ’ s sake. 3. You will need courage to act up to your convictions of duty in your own family and in the world at large. 4. You will need courage to resist temptation. 5. Courage is necessary to confess Christ in the presence of the rich and powerful, and of all who are exalted above you in station and influence. “ I will speak of Thy testimonies also before kings,” said David, “ and will not be ashamed.” And what noble courage was displayed by Daniel, and by Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego! 6. It may be that some of you will need courage to venture your life at the call of duty. You may need it for the right discharge of your business. You may need it to act vigorously in endeavouring to save the lives of others. 7. You will need courage to resist the mere apprehension of evil. 8. You will need courage to bear the evils of life while they are actually pressing on you. 9. You will need courage to meet the last enemy. II. In order, then, to the attainment of this necessary grace of courage, or, which is the same thing, in order to your preservation from sinful fear, let the following BRIEF be considered and followed: 1. Begin with a well-founded hope in God’ s mercy, through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Without this, though you may be free from fear, you must be exposed to the most awful danger; and, therefore, though you may be foolhardy, you cannot be rationally and scripturally courageous. But, if God be “ on your side,” as the Psalmist expresses it, then you need “ not fear what man can do unto you.” 2. Endeavour, next, after a very firm trust in God’ s providence. Remember that the slightest evil cannot befall you without your heavenly Father, and believe that He causes all things to work together for your good. 3. Reflect on the noble examples of courage which are recorded in Scripture. 4. Vex not yourselves with fears as to the future, but give yourselves to the duties of the present. 5. Consider the exhortations and promises of the Word of God, and have the substance of all, and the very words of many of them, in your memory. They abound to this effect throughout Scripture, especially in Isaiah, and the Psalms. 6. Think of the confession that awaits you from the Lord, and the crown of glory which will be yours, at last, if you be faithful. He assures you that He will confess you before His Father and the holy angels: and He says to each of you, “ Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life.” Think often of this; and the thought will far more than counterbalance any reproach, or opposition, you may meet with here. And, finally, mindful of your own weakness, and how certainly both your strength and courage would fail if you were left to yourselves, be much in prayer to God for this grace of holy courage. (James Foote, M. A.) Showing his colours One day, as I sat in the barrack-room, I was thinking over in my mind the many difficulties with which I had to contend as a professing Christian, and how to overcome them. One thing, I said, I must do; I must confess Christ, and not be ashamed of my colours. I had only recently been led to trust in the Lord Jesus as my Saviour, and had begun to pray and read all the books that were likely to help me to a better knowledge of the Lord Jesus. I had not the Bible to read; that I had given away a few weeks previously to one of my comrades as a thing that I should never require in the future. There was but one thing that I bad, up to the present, shrunk from doing, and that was kneeling down as my bedside, and praying openly before my comrades, before going to bed. I felt dissatisfied with myself for being so cowardly, and had also made up my mind to do so that night. “ You want to be seen of men,” whispered Satan in my ear. “ It is not for Christ’ s sake; you want the praise of man.” I was fairly puzzled for a time, and was afraid of doing wrong. “ If I were alone in this room to-night, what would I do before going to bed?” I asked myself. “ Certainly, I should kneel down,” I thought. “ Then, if I do not do so tonight, it will be because I am ashamed to confess my Master before my fellow-men. Lord help me to do it tonight,” I said, “ for Christ’ s sake.” The barrack-room in which I sat was a large one, capable of holding about one hundred men, and at night was lighted by four large oil lamps, which hung from the roof by chains. My bed stood right opposite one of these lamps, and there I sat waiting for nine o’ clock, the time for all to go to bed. The scene around me was not a pleasant one, the men had but recently come from the canteen, where they had been liberally supplied with arrack (a native drink resembling rum, and which destroys more lives in India than the ravages of war or disease put together). Some of the men sat on their beds smoking, some stood in little groups discussing the topics of the day, others were singing popular comic songs, while a considerable number were quarrelling about something which had occurred at the canteen, and which ended in blows and blasphemy. Confusion and disorder reigned supreme. With the exception of a few who were so drunk that they were being put to bed by their comrades, all were contributing more or less to the general disorder. In a short time the bugles sounded the last post; it was nine o’ clock at last. “ Lord, help me,” I said, and in the midst of all the confusion around me, I dropped upon my knees. For a few seconds the horrid din around me continued; it then ceased, and I knew that every eye was turned to where I knelt, right under the glare of that large oil lamp. Something strange had happened! Most of these men had been familiar with bloodshed in the Crimea, and in the still more recent and more deadly conflict of the mutiny. Of such things, the men were careless, but for things sacred they had a reverence. Many of them had praying mothers in old Scotland, who still prayed for them, and as I knelt before them now, not a hand was lifted against me, nor did a tongue speak a word! I say this to their credit, and for five years I continued to pray openly before them, without being molested in any way by them. I have had to reprove them for sin, but for this they honoured me, because I was not ashamed to show my colours. More than this, the Lord blessed my testimony, for He brought eight or nine of those men around me to bear witness for His name. Some are now in heaven, while others are preaching the everlasting gospel to their fellow men. (A Soldier’ s Diary.) The reward of confessing Christ There was a prince of right royal blood, who once upon a time left his father’ s palace and journeyed into a distant part of the king’ s dominions, where he was little known and cared for. He was a true prince, and he had about his face those princely marks--that strange divinity which doth hedge a king--that might have madethe onlooker know that he was right royal. But when he came into the place, the people said, “ This is the heir to the throne; let us insult him, let us hoot him!” Others said, he was no heir at all. And they agreed to set him in the pillory. As he stood there, every man did pelt him with all kinds of filth, and used all manner of hard words towards him; and they said, “ Who dare acknowledge him for a prince? who dare stand by him?” There stood up one from the crowd, and said, “ I dare!” They set him up in the pillory side ,by side with the prince; and when they threw their filth on the prince it fell on him, and when they spoke hard words of the prince they spoke hard words of him. He stood there, smiling, and received it all. Now and then a tear stole down his cheek; but that was for them, that they should thus ill-treat their sovereign. Years went by, the king came into those dominions and subdued them; and there came a day of triumph over the conquered city: streamers hung from every windows and the streets were strewn with roses. There came the king’ s troops dressed in burnished armour of gold, with plumes upon their glittering helmets. The music rang right sweetly, for all the trumpets of glory sounded. It was from heaven they had come. The prince rode through the streets in His glorious chariot; and when He came to the gates of the city, there were the traitors all bound in chains. They stood before Him trembling. He singled out from among the crowd one man only who stood free and unfettered, and He said to the traitors, “ Know ye this man? He stood with Me in that day when ye treated Me with scorn and indignation. He shall stand with Me in the day of My glory. Come up hither!” said He. And amidst the sounding of trumpets and the voice of acclamation, the poor, despised, and rejected citizen of that rebellious city rode through the streets in triumph, side by side with his King, who clothed him in purple, and set a crown of pure gold upon his head. (C. H. Spurgeon.) Power of confession In relating his experience during the Peninsular war, Captain Watson says: “ I was nominated to sit on a garrison court-martial. A number of officers of different ranks and regiments were present on the occasion, and before the proceedings commenced, some of them indulged in loose and sceptical observations. ‘ Alas,’ thought I, ‘ here are many not ashamed to speak openly for their master, and shall I hold my peace and refrain when the honour and cause of Him who has had mercy on me are called in question?’ I looked for wisdom and assistance from on high, and I was enabled to speak for a quarter of an hour in a way that astonished my hearers and myself. The Lord was pleased to give what I said a favourable reception, and not another improper word was uttered by them during my stay in that room.” Prompt confession Dilawar Khan, formerly an Afghan robber, being convinced of the truth of the gospel, and having taken service in an English regiment at Peshawar, was, on the outbreak of the mutiny, ordered to Delhi. Separated from the missionaries before he had received baptism, and thrown among Mohammedans whose co-religionist he had been, he was determined to make his change of faith unmistakably known, and so, calling for a loaf of bread, he ate it with a European in presence of all. It was the only symbol of separation which the circumstances allowed. When baptized, he received the name Dilawar Messih--“ Bold for Christ.” Confession of Christ unknown to nominal Christians A Hindoo of rank was troubled in his conscience on the subject of a future state. He had heard of Christians, and longed to converse with them about their religion, and to know who Christ was. So he visited England, the Christian’ s land, supplied with introductions to some leading people. Being asked to a great dinner, he turned to his neighbour in the course of conversation, and said: “ Can you tell me something about Christ, the founder of your religion?” “ Hush,” replied his new acquaintance, “ we do not speak of such things at dinner parties.” Subsequently he was invited to a large ball. Dancing with a young and fashionable lady, he took an opportunity of asking her who the founder of her religion, Jesus Christ, was. And again he was warned that a ball was no place to introduce such subjects. Strange, thought the Hindoo, are these Christians in England. They will not speak of their religion, nor inform me about Christ, its founder. Confessing Christ A great many years ago a Roman emperor said to a Greek architect: “ Build me a Coliseum, and when it is done I will crown you; and I will make your name famous through all the world, if you will only build me a grand Coliseum.” The work was done. The emperor said: “ Now we will crown that architect. We will have a grand celebration.” The Coliseum was crowded with a great host. The emperor was there and the Greek architect, who was to be crowned for putting up this building. And then they brought out some Christians, who were ready to die for the truth, and from the doors underneath were let out the lions, hungry, three-fourths starved. The emperor arose amid the shouting assemblage, and said: “ The Coliseum is done, and we have come to celebrate it to-day by the putting to death of Christians at the mouth of these lions, and we have come here to honour the architect who has constructed this wonderful building. The time has come for me to honour him, and we further celebrate his triumph by the slaying of these Christians.” Whereupon, the Greek architect sprang to his feet, and shouted: “ I also am a Christian.” And they flung him to the wild beasts, and his body, bleeding and dead, was tumbled into the dust of the amphitheatre. Could you have done that for Christ? Could you have stood up there in the presence of that great audience, who hated Christ, and hated everything about Him, and have said: “ I, too, am a Christian” ? (Dr. Talmage.) Be not ashamed of the religion of Christ If you go into a Mohammedan country, when the hour for prayer comes at three o’ clock, you will see the Mohammedan kneeling down on his knees. He is not ashamed of his false religion. The only religion that gives a man victory over sin and the flesh, the only religion that gives a man spiritual power, is the religion of Jesus Christ, and yet it is the only religion that men are ashamed of. When Mr. Moody was at Salt Lake City he did not meet even one that was not proud of being a Mormon. Everywhere the fact was announced over their shops and places of business. If you meet a man who is possessed of an error he will publish it. Why should we, who have the truth, not publish it also? Confession of Christ before men If people are loud in the praise of the physician who has cured them of some deadly malady--recommending others to trust and seek his skill, why should not Christ’ s people crown Him with equal honours, commend Him to a dying world, and proclaim what He has done for them? Let them say with David, “ Come, all ye that fear the Lord, and I will declare what He hath done for my soul” ; and tread in the steps of the Samaritan who threw away her pitcher, and running to the city, brought them all out--crying, “ Come, see a man who hath told me all things that I have ever done.” It is a bad thing ostentatiously to parade religion; but it is a base thing for a Christian man to be ashamed of it: not to stand by his colours; by his silence, if not his speech, to deny his Master; to sneak away, like a coward, out of the fight. (T. Guthrie, D. D.) Boldness in confessing Christ I have no notion of a timid, disingenuous profession of Christ. Such preachers and professors are like a rat playing at hide-and-seek behind a wainscot, who puts his head through a hole to see if the coast is clear, and ventures out if nobody is in the way; but slinks back again when danger appears. We cannot be honest to Christ except we are bold for Him. He is either worth all we can lose for Him, or He is worth nothing. (H. G. Salter.) The right kind of Christian Not long ago an officer was accosted by a brother officer thus: “ You’ re the right kind of Christian, not bothering people about their souls this way.” The speaker himself made no pretensions to serious godliness; and the allusion was to certain officers who had a way of speaking out very intelligibly for Christ. Our friend had himself been converted; but, up to that time, he had been too timid to utter any articulate testimony. As his visitor left him that day, he began to reason with himself: “ Well, if that man thinks I am the right kind of Christian, it is time I was looking about me and considering my ways.” It was a somewhat novel point of departure; but from that hour, our friend has been another man, boldly confessing Christ and labouring to win souls. (P. B. Power, M. A.) Speak for Christ Brother--was considered a consistent and by no means inefficient member of the Church. His seat was seldom vacant during divine service; and his place in the business meeting of the congregation, in Sunday-School and the prayer-meeting was seldom unoccupied. In short, his duties, public and private, as a member of the Church, were promptly, well, and faithfully performed. Yet on his deathbed he had his regrets. “ I have,” said he, “ been a man of few words, and of a still tongue. Oh, if I had my life to live over again, I would speak for Jesus as I have never been accustomed to do.” Speaking for Christ In a prayer-meeting at Boston I once attended, most of those who took part were old men, but a little tow-headed Norwegian boy, who could only speak broken English, got up and said: “ If I tell the world about Christ, He will tell the Father about me.” That wrote itself upon my heart, and I have never forgotten what that little boy said. (D. L. Moody.) Confessing Christ Jesus Christ expects that those who believe on Him should confess Him. I. WHAT IS MEANT BY THE WORDS “ CONFESS CHRIST” ? There is no great obscurity about them; still, a few words of explanation may bring out their meaning more clearly. Confessing Christ is an avowal of what He is in our esteem, of what He is to us. It assumes, of course, that there is an inward conviction that He is the Son of God, and the Saviour of the world. To confess Him is to let that conviction be outwardly expressed in some form or other, i.e., it is a taking care that we do not stifle our convictions by keeping them to ourselves; but that we utter them, by letting it be known that we believe Christ, that we receive Him, that we worship Him, that we follow Him, as Teacher, &c. In a word, it is to say, “ I am a Christian. I am Christ’ s man; ‘ for me to live is Christ!’” II. WHAT IS IN THE ACT OF MAKING THIS ? It denies. It affirms. It opposes. Let us note each of these points. This confession denies that man is his own master. It is a practical declaration that we are under the authority of another, and it denies every other authority for man than that of the Lord Jesus Christ. Hence this confession affirms as well as denies. It avows the infinite right of Christ to rule over men because of His work for them! It is an avowal of His glory. Thus, this confession must needs oppose very much loose and wrong thinking of the present day. It is in opposition to the worldliness which would treat all religion and worship with supreme indifference. It opposes formalism, &c. And, by the terms of the expression, confessing Christ is as really exclusive as inclusive. It refuses to be cumbered with a host of commandments, and doctrines of men. It declines to own any priestly intrusion between a man’ s conscience and the Lord Jesus, and hence is as much a confession of Christ only, as of Christ. III. IN WHAT WAY SHOULD THE BE MADE? 1. By letting it be seen that we are Christ’ s, by our light shining before men. The sun has no need to have the words, “ I am a light,” blazoned above or beneath him. Nor have even dim, artificial lights any need for this. They give light by shining. Now, though the parallel does not hold in every respect, yet in one point it indicates what we mean. Are you Christ’ s men, heart and soul? Then show it by being Christ-like. Not indeed that this is enough, but without it, nothing else can be enough. The importance of our unconscious influence can scarcely be overrated. So ought we to live that men can see that we are Christians by what we are, whether our conversation for the time being be on religious matters or no. 2. But the apostle Paul says: “ With the mouth confession is made unto salvation.” There is a saying, I am the Lord’ s, and this is a part of the confession--“ speaking for Christ” --in the society in which you move. 3. Then, by acting for Christ we may confess Him. We may seek to spread His name among those who know Him not, and may make it a business of our lives to teach and train men for Him. 4. But let us not only passively endure, let us also take up the positive attitude of attack. We must not be content simply to receive rebuffs, we must give them, going forth without the camp, exposing error and rebuking sin. We can do this better in company than we can singly. I may go forth to work and witness alone, and succeed, but if a brother comes and stands by my side, and says, I am one with you, he makes me twice the man I was before. And out of this law of reciprocal influence, out of this power of combination--as being so much greater than that of isolation--there comes another means of making this confession, viz., joining the militant host of the people of God, or, to use a common phrase, joining the Church. IV. WHY SHOULD CHRIST BE THUS ? For many reasons, each of which has some weight: but it is rather to the cumulative force of all of them that we desire to point attention. 1. Jesus Christ has definitely and expressly commanded it (Luke 12:8-9). 2. It is manifestly reasonable that we should avow our relation to such a Saviour, and His relation to us. For what are we, but sinful, dying men, owing our immortal life and eternal hopes to Jesus and His saving love? When the names of men whom a country loves to honour are often on our lips, as if we felt honoured by knowing something about them, shall it be that we keep silence only concerning the Man of Sorrows, as if it were aught but an honour to speak His name? God forbid. 3. It is assumed in the New Testament that Christ’ s men act as a corporate body. The institution that Christ intended to build up, He called “ a Church” ; and after He went to heaven, a group of one hundred and twenty were found meeting in an upper room, &c. 4. To avow your convictions, will help to give them definiteness and precision. So long as a conviction remains snugly lodged within, unexpressed, it need not be very sharply defined; but bring it out, put it into shape, set it in words, draw it forth to living action, and lo! it is at once a fuller and clearer conviction, owing to the very effort required to avow it! Yea, more, conviction unavowed becomes feebler. 5. Christ and the world are such opposites, that if a man has any adequate conception of the difference between them, he cannot help seeing the incongruity of a believer in Christ refusing to confess Him. When so many are opposed, or indifferent, does it not behove the friends of Christ to stand up for Him? 6. Jesus Christ confessed us. 7. Christ lives on earth in those who confess Him. By His Church He manifests Himself in living form to the world. His confessing ones are His mouthpiece by which He speaks to a dying world I And we want your voice and tongue, and hands and feet, and brain and heart, to be employed for Him in ringing out the grand testimony that the Father sent the Son, the Saviour of the world! 8. In confessing Christ we join such a blessed line of confessors. 9. The confession itself is such a glorious one. 10. The true confessors will be so blessedly confessed (Matthew 10:32-33). “ But,” says one, “ is there no medium between confessing and denying?” We reply, Christ puts none, therefore we cannot. Nor would we if we could. We would bid you turn away your eyes from all goals but the very highest of all! And suffer me to ask, Has not the promise of being confessed by Christ any charm for you? V. MANY DO NOT THUS CONFESS CHRIST. WHY IS THIS? 1. There is reason to fear that there are some who do not confess Christ because they know that if they were to do so, as things are now, they could but profess a regard for His name, which goes no further than outside reverence. They are not living in obedience to Christ; so that, even if they were to call Him “ Lord, Lord,” though there might be there a form of godliness, there would not be its power! 2. “ That is not my reason,” says one; “ but it seems to me that in the Church you hedge round the open confession of Christ, which is involved in ‘ joining the Church,’ with such difficulties, that many are thereby kept back.” As might be expected, we find that the “ difficulties,” which Churches are supposed to put in the way, vanish in the course of friendly conversation with those who are kind enough and frank enough to state them. 3. Some do not confess Christ, on account of not seeing the importance of making such confession. But if Christ has commanded it, ought we not to obey orders without debating the question of its importance? 4. Some do not confess Christ owing to the feebleness of their personal conviction. When the heart beats feebly the whole frame languishes, and when brain nerve-power is lacking the heart beats feebly. Herein is one of the many parables of physiology. A lack of strength in the convictions of the soul is often a cause of holding back from avowing Christ. And this feebleness of conviction is often owing to confusion of thought, or to a lack of clear understanding with regard to the contents and mutual relation of religious truth. 5. Some are kept back from avowing their convictions through the fear of Joh 12:42-43, and others). 6. Others are kept back from confessing Christ, by a cause which is far less objectionable, because more reasonable, viz., a fear of themselves. Confession of Christ seems to them to involve so much, that they fear they can never come up to the high standard which is before their eye. They see, too, that there are some who, having confessed Christ, settle down at their ease, and they fear lest it should be so with them. 7. Some are deterred from confessing Christ by the warning of the apostle, “ Whosoever shall eat this bread,” &c. Whosoever is kept back by these words, should read the whole of the section of the chapter in which they stand; he will then find that the persons there addressed were turning the Lord’ s Supper into a common meal, mistaking its nature and design. Hence they tarried not for one another; some came hungry and feasted, and others were drunken. 8. “ But look at the inconsistency of professors!” Yes, we do look at it, and grieve over it, but how that should be a reason for not confessing Christ, it is not easy to see. 9. “ Well, but I can be saved without making this confession.” Do not be so sure of that. If you see it to be a duty which you owe to Christ, and then can leave a known duty unfulfilled, you are not a saved man! None who continue in known disobedience to Christ are saved. Besides, look at the selfishness of the plea. It is as if all that a man had to think about was--being saved! This may, indeed, be the first thing, but most assuredly it is not everything! We would put another question: Suppose you refuse to confess Christ, can you do as much to save others as if you avowed Him as your Lord? And to this we most decidedly answer, No! VI. KEEPING BACK FROM THE OF CHRIST IS IN MANY A GREAT EVIL. Whether the reasons for keeping back be those which we have named or not, the non-confession of Christ is evil, though the kind and degree thereof may be varied according to the motives which lead to a secret rather than an open discipleship. 1. It is unworthy. Such a Saviour as we have ought to be confessed willingly, yea, joyfully. To keep silent on our tongues the name that angels love to sound forth through the realms of heaven, and for the one who thus keeps the name so still to be the one who owes to it all his hopes of eternal life, that is no worthy return for the suffering of the cross. Much reason had He to be ashamed of us, but why, oh! why, should we be ashamed of Him? 2. If any refuse to confess Christ they voluntarily lessen their own possibilities of usefulness. 3. For we have only to suppose this isolated working to be universally carried out, and then it is clear we should never hear of a visible Church at all! The Church might remain, but her visibility would be gone. 4. Inactive convictions will be injurious. To have them and not act on them would be to our condemnation. 5. Another evil is, that not to confess Christ is to be disobedient to His direct command. 6. And still another evil in the non confession of Christ on the part of those who are His, is that it may throw the balance of their personal influence on the wrong side. VII. WHAT AND SHOULD MOVE US TO THE OF CHRIST? 1. Gratitude. 2. Love. When once it is clear that He has commanded it, and that He is infinitely worthy of being so confessed, then love to Him for His infinite worthiness should leave us without hesitation as to the course to pursue. And there is this distinction between being moved by gratitude and being inspired by love. Love is the higher affection of the two, Gratitude is the desire to recompense, or at least to acknowledge, a favour received. Love is the passion which cleaves to One who is in Himself surpassingly glorious. 3. Loyalty. Gratitude has respect to what Christ has done for us; love to what He is in Himself; loyalty, to His relation to us as Leader and Commander. 4. The feeling of brotherhood should impel to the confession of Christ. 5. Compassion for men who are out of Christ should lead us to confess Christ. VIII. IN WHAT SPIRIT SHOULD THE BE MADE? This we may gather from the notice already given of the feelings which move us to make it. Evidently it should not be made without much thought, care, and prayer. The essential qualifications for such a confession are--sincerity and truth; without these there must be an unreality about the confession, which would not only render it null and void, but would bring greater guilt on the individual making a merely hollow confession. This, of course, must be the prime matter. When any one says, I am Christ’ s man, he should say it because it is true, for to say it cannot make it true, if it is not so otherwise. But this being the case, any one contemplating a step so important will be anxious to put into it all the meaning that he can do. To help such in so doing, let us observe-- 1. The step should be taken humbly; not in a spirit of boastfulness or self-sufficiency, nor yet with the notion uppermost of “ becoming a professor.” 2. The confession should be made with fear and trembling. 3. At the same time that fear should not be so disproportionate, as to prevent a hallowed joy in confessing Christ. 4. We should always bring with us to the confession, a sense of the great and undeserved honour put on us in having such a Christ to avow. If a king should have pity on a pauper, and should translate him from a workhouse to a palace, and clothe him with royal robes, and make him partner of his throne, and should then educate him up to his dignity, and all out of pure regard to that pauper, without his having done aught to deserve it, might he not in his elevated position glory in the honour put upon him, and with a sense of the honour might he not well proclaim his deliverer and friend? 5. Making the confession of Christ should be attended with a spirit of entire devotion to the interests of the kingdom. 6. There should be the desire to gain such an amount of Christian intelligence as shall give him the right kind of influence in the Church of God. 7. But, if possible, even more eagerly intent should the individual confessing Christ be on “ adorning the doctrine of God” his “ Saviour in all things,” by pureness, lowliness, meekness, and long-suffering. 8. To all this, let us add--There should be a reliance on Divine aid and on the indwelling of the Holy Ghost. These, the Saviour whom we confess has received for us, and will impart them to us. And no one who has an approximately adequate sense of the grand destiny of the Christian life will ever dream of attaining it by his own unaided power. IX. THERE ARE SPECIAL REASONS JUST NOW FOR SUCH A OF CHRIST AMONG THE OUR . Certain features in the several epochs of time may furnish reasons which would make a specially urgent duty of what would be a duty at any time. Such features show themselves now in the ecclesiastical movements and theological conflicts of the day, This may appear more clearly as we proceed. 1. A special reason for this confession is found in the fact, that only by banding together as Christian people can we give practical effect to Christ’ s own law, that those who love Him should uphold His cause. 2. It is important to hold up to the view of men another principle: viz., that Christian men, when associated together in their corporate capacity, are empowered by Christ with authority to carry on His work. 3. It is important, at a time when so many are denying and disobeying Christ, that hearts which are loyal to Him should cheer on each other in their witness-bearing for Him. 4. It is important that each Christian man should bear a testimony for the doctrine and polity which he believes to be most in accordance with Christ’ s will, and most effective for Christ’ s service. 5. Whatever we can do to leaven public sentiments with the truth of Christian doctrine, and to show the relation of that doctrine to the wellbeing of a nation, it is our bounden duty to do, and towards this, it is no unimportant contribution for us to band together with those who uphold the cause of our Lord. (C. Clemance, D. D.) Luke 12:9 He that denieth Me before men On denying Christ I. HOW MANY WAYS CHRIST AND HIS TRUTHS MAY BE DENIED; AND WHAT IS THE DENIAL HERE CHIEFLY . Here, first, in general I assert that we may deny Him in all those acts that are capable of being morally good or evil; those are the proper scene in which we act our confessions or denials of Him. Accordingly, therefore, all ways of denying Christ I shall comprise under these three. 1. We may deny Him and His truths by an erroneous, heretical judgment. 2. We may deny Christ verbally and by oral expressions. Now our words are the interpreters of our hearts, the transcripts of the judgment, with some farther addition of good or evil. He that interprets, usually enlarges. 3. We may deny Christ in our actions and practice; and these speak much louder than our tongues. To have an orthodox belief and a true profession, concurring with a bad life, is only to deny Christ with a greater solemnity. Belief and profession will speak thee a Christian but very faintly, when thy conversation proclaims thee an infidel. Many, while they have preached Christ in their sermons, have read a lecture of atheism in their practice. As for the manner of our denying the deity of Christ here prohibited, I conceive it was by words and oral expressions verbally to deny and disacknowledge it. This I ground upon these reasons-- 1. Because it was such a denial as was “ before men,” and therefore consisted in open profession; for a denial in judgment and practice, as such, is not always before men. 2. Because it was such a denial or confession of Him as would appear in preaching; but this is managed in words and verbal profession. But now, if we take the words as they are, a general precept equally relating to all times and to all persons, though delivered only upon a particular occasion to the apostles (as I suppose they are to be understood), so I think they comprehend all the three ways mentioned of confessing or denying Christ, but principally in respect of practice, and that-- (1) Because by this He is most honoured or dishonoured. (2) Because without this the other two cannot save. (3) Because those who are ready enough to confess Him both in judgment and profession are for the most part very prone to deny Him shamefully in their doings. Pass we now to a second thing, viz., to show-- II. WHAT ARE THE CAUSES MEN TO DENY CHRIST IN HIS TRUTHS. I shall propose three. 1. The seeming supposed absurdity of many truths. Upon this heresy always builds. The seeming paradoxes attending gospel truths cause men of weak, prejudiced intellectuals to deny them, and in them, Christ; being ashamed to own faith so much, as they think, to the disparagement of their reason. 2. The second thing causing men to deny the truths of Christ is their unprofitableness. And no wonder if here men forsake the truth and assert interest. To be pious is the way to be poor. Truth still gives its followers its own badge and livery, a despised nakedness. 3. Their apparent danger. To be resolute in a good cause is to bring upon ourselves the punishments due to a bad. III. We proceed now to the third thing, which is to show HOW FAR A MAN MAY CONSULT HIS SAFETY IN TIME OF WITHOUT DENYING CHRIST. This he may do two ways. 1. By withdrawing his person. Martyrdom is an heroic act of faith; an achievement beyond an ordinary pitch of it; “ to you,” says the Spirit, “ it is given to suffer” (Philippians 1:29). It is a peculiar additional “ gift;” it is a distinguishing excellency of degree, not an essential consequent of its nature. “ Be ye harmless as doves, says Christ; and it is as natural to them to take flight upon danger, as to be innocent. Let every man thoroughly consult the temper of his faith, and weigh his courage with his fears, his weakness, and his resolutions together, and take the measure of both, and see which preponderates; and, if his spirit faints, if his heart misgives and melts at the very thoughts of the fire, let him fly, and secure his own soul, and Christ’ s honour. 2. By concealing his judgment. A man sometimes is no more bound to speak than to destroy himself; and as nature abhors this, so religion does not command that. In the times of the primitive Church, when the Christians dwelt amongst heathens, it is reported of a certain maid, how she came from her father’ s house to one of the tribunals of the Gentiles, and declared herself a Christian, spit in the judge’ s face, and so provoked him to cause her to be executed. But will any say that this was to confess Christ or die a martyr? He that, uncalled for, uncompelled, comes and proclaims a persecuted truth for which he is surely to die, only dies a confessor to his own folly, and a sacrifice to his own rashness. Martyrdom is stamped such only by God’ s command; and he that ventures upon it without a call must endure it without a reward. Christ will say, “ Who required this at your hands?” His gospel does not dictate imprudence; no evangelical precept justles out that of a lawful self-preservation. He, therefore, that thus throws himself upon the sword, runs to heaven before he is sent for; where, though perhaps Christ may in mercy receive the man, yet He will be sure to disown the martyr. IV. Having thus despatched the third thing, I proceed to show WHAT IT IS FOR CHRIST TO DENY US BEFORE HIS FATHER IN HEAVEN. Hitherto we have treated of men’ s carriage to Christ in this world; now we will describe His carriage to them in the other. These words clearly relate to the last judgment: and they are a summary description of His proceeding with men at that day. And here we will consider-- 1. The action itself--“ He will deny them.” 2. The circumstance of the action--“ He will deny them before His Father and the holy angels.” (R. South, D. D.) Some ways of denying Christ 1. We deny Christ when we advocate opinions which tend to lessen the authority of His religious teachings. 2. It is denying Christ to represent Him as a mere man. He Himself said, “ I and My Father are one. He that hath seen Me, hath seen the Father.” And He commended Thomas for addressing Him as “ my Lord and my God.” How can any one affirm that He was only a man without the guilt of denying Him? 3. We may often deny Christ by silence. No doubt some well-meaning people at times do harm by introducing religion into conversation under unsuitable circumstances, or by harsh polemical replies to what some unbeliever has said. But most of us are in far greater danger of a culpable silence when Christ’ s truth ought to be vindicated, and Christ’ s own claim to reverence and trust ought to be earnestly and lovingly declared. 4. We may deny Christ by appearing at places and engaging in pursuits which irreligious people themselves recognize as unsuitable for an earnest Christian. 5. We deny Christ by neglecting efforts to spread the saving knowledge of Him at home and abroad. The Confederate general, Albert Sidney Johnston, in the last letter he wrote before he fell at Shiloh, said, “ The popular test of a military man’ s merit is success. It is a hard test, but it is the true one.” We do not believe that success is always the true test of merit, but beyond question it is the popular test. Now, many irreligious people consider that Christianity is upon the whole a comparative failure. Large portions of the world it has never even nominally conquered. Some countries in which it once existed, including the Holy Land, have long been Mohammedan. And in the countries called Christian, a large proportion of the people are not really the subjects of Christ’ s spiritual reign, The hasty observer is wrong in concluding that Christ’ s work in the world is a failure; but must we not feel grief and shame at the thought that he has right plausible ground for such a conclusion? Just in proportion as we fail of any effort to spread Christ’ s spiritual reign, we give men an excuse for rejecting His authority and neglecting His salvation. And thus to act is in a distressing manner to deny Christ. 6. In fact, a Christian is always and everywhere either confessing Christ or denying Him. Every wrong act performed, every duty disregarded or imperfectly discharged, every indication of a character not conformed to His will and likened to His image, is, by the very necessity of the case, a denial of our Lord and Saviour. (J. A. Broadus, D. D.) Denial of Christ Note here-- 1. That not to confess Christ is, in His account, to deny Him and to be ashamed of Him. 2. That whosoever shall deny or be ashamed of Christ, either in His person, in His gospel, or in His members, for any fear or favour of man, shall with shame be disowned and eternally rejected by Him at the dreadful judgment of the great day. Christ may be denied three ways--doctrinally, by an erroneous and heretical judgment; verbally, by oral expressions; vitally, by a wicked and unholy life--but woe to the soul that denies Christ any of these ways. (W. Burkitt.) David Straiton, the Scottish martyr In the seventeenth century, David Straiton, a Scotchman, was one day in a solitary place Where the New Testament was being read. When the words of this verse sounded in his ears, he threw himself on his knees and said, “ For Thy mercy’ s sake, Lord, let me never deny Thee or Thy truth for fear of death or corporeal pains.” At his trial he firmly defended the truth, and not only died for it himself, but greatly cheered his fellow-martyr, Norman Gourlay. Ashamed of Christ What would the Queen think of her soldiers, if they should swear they were loyal and true, and were to say, “ Your Majesty, we prefer not to wear these regimentals, let us wear the dress of civilians! We are right honest men and upright, but do not care to stand in your ranks, acknowledged as your soldiers; we had rather slink into the enemy’ s camp, and into your camps too, and not wear anything that would mark us as being your soldiers.” Ah! some of you do the same with Christ. You are going to be secret Christians, are you, and slink into the devil’ s camp and into Christ’ s camp, but acknowledged by none? (C. H. Spurgeon.) Luke 12:10 Blasphemeth against the Holy Ghost--Blasphemy against the Holy Ghost I. First, the on which this declaration was made requires our particular attention; for it does not appear that it was ever repeated or applied to any other subject. II. Let us, then, inquire into THE NAME AND NATURE OF THE CRIME TO WHICH OUR SAVIOUR SO REFERS. 1. It is necessary to attend to the name, for it is often applied erroneously. Thus we often hear of the sin against the Holy Ghost; whereas it is called in Scripture by no name except blasphemy against the Holy Ghost. This distinction, however, is highly important; for there may be other sins against the Holy Ghost, though less criminal than blasphemy, and therefore not liable to the same terrible punishment. Thus the Apostle Paul said to the Thessalonians, “ Quench not the Spirit,” and to the Ephesians, “ Grieve not the Holy Spirit.” 2. We must, therefore, next consider the application of the word blasphemy here. In the original language of the New Testament it signifies detraction, or calumny, or slander, and is frequently mentioned as a crime committed against man. Thus, in the Acts of the Apostles, the Jews accused Stephen, saying, “ We have heard him speak blasphemous words against Moses and against God.” But, in our language, blasphemy is never used in a general sense, or is said to be committed against man; it always denotes a crime committed against God. 3. Another observation deserves particular attention. The word blasphemy is never applied by our Saviour or His apostles to opinions formed in the mind, or to mere errors of judgment. 4. To prevent mistake it is necessary that we should define the nature of this crime with the utmost correctness and precision. (1) Now as it is to be remembered that it is called blasphemy against God, or against the Holy Ghost, so it is necessary to remember that though the crime may be conceived and planned in the mind, yet it cannot be completed till it be uttered in words; for speech is essential to it, as the word blasphemy strictly and properly signifies hurtful speech. (2) There was, however, a part of the crime of the Pharisees which was committed in their minds. It consisted in the malignant desire and intention of using words for the purpose of producing on the minds of others feelings of contempt or aversion, and disbelief, in relation to the miracles of Jesus. Still the crime was not completed till it was committed in words. III. We come now to a very important question, WHY IS AGAINST THE HOLY GHOST TO BE ? 1. It was not a crime to which the Pharisees were led by unforeseen accident, by sudden surprise, by laudable or even excusable feelings. On the contrary, it was deliberate, it was the result of reflection, it was a plan cautiously formed; for it was the consequence of a consultation among the scribes and Pharisees; and it formed the ground of a conspiracy against Jesus. 2. It showed, in this particular case, a total disregard of truth, It indicated a high degree of depravity, a complete want of principle, no fear of God, and a contempt for supernatural evidence, though of the strongest kind. In fine, it proved that their minds were closed against conviction; and that no proof, however powerful, nor means of improvement, however perfect, would be effectual. 3. But the strongest reason which can be given for declaring blasphemy against the Holy Ghost to be unpardonable, is, that it seems to be a crime for which there is no repentance. There are cases in which repentance becomes impossible. For repentance presupposes the existence of some good principles; it presupposes a disposition to discover truth, to examine evidence, to see our faults, and to be ready to acknowledge them, to feel shame, regret, and remorse for offending God. But there is nothing that we know which could produce repentance in men who have, for a long life, wilfully, stubbornly, and habitually rejected the most powerful means of conviction. Repentance supposes a sense of guilt capable of being roused on account of faults which we have discovered. But this cannot be when the understanding is perverted, and the conscience seared, and when the evil passions have expelled the pious and benevolent affections. It is true that the dread of future misery may still remain; but when the mind is reduced to so deplorable a state, the fear of future misery plunges men into despair. Now, where there is no repentance, we are not taught to expect pardon. Hence we may see why blasphemy is unpardonable. (J. Thomson, D. D.) Of the sin against the Holy Ghost First: What this sin against the Holy Ghost is, for people are very ignorant of it. Secondly: How and in what respect this sin against the Holy Ghost is above all other sins the unpardonable sin. I. IF YOU ASK, WHAT THIS SIN IS? I answer both negatively and affirmatively. Negatively. 1. It is not that sin, whereby men do barely deny the personality, or the deity of the Holy Ghost. Possibly a man may deny the personality or the deity of the Holy Ghost, and yet not sin the sin against the Holy Ghost. For as Chrysostom observes, in his time there were divers heretics that did deny the personality and the deity of the Holy Ghost, and yet afterwards repented, and were received into the bosom of the Church. As it doth not consist therein, so neither cloth it consist in every opposition, or in a bare opposition unto the work of the Holy Ghost, as distinct from the Father and the Son. Unto God the Father belongs power; unto the Son, wisdom; unto the Spirit, holiness. The work of the Father is to create; the work of the Son, to redeem; the work of the Spirit, or the Holy Ghost, to sanctify. And hereupon some have thought that opposition unto holiness is the sin against the Holy Ghost. But you find here it is a blasphemy, therefore not every opposition. As it doth not consist therein, so it is not necessary that every man that sins the sin against the Holy Ghost, should be an universal apostate, backsliding from the profession of the gospel, and the power thereof. I know it is ordinarily thought so; but I say, it is not necessary that whosoever doth sin the sin against the Holy Ghost, should be a gospel apostate, backsliding from the gospel, and the power thereof, once professed: for these Pharisees, who sinned against the Holy Ghost, never professed the gospel, neither do we read of any backsliding in them, from the power of the gospel once professed; and yet they sinned against the Holy Ghost. Surely, therefore, such a gospel apostasy is not of the essence of the sin against the Holy Ghost. Some think that this sin doth consist in final unbelief and impenitency; but final impenitency and unbelief is not the sin against the Holy Ghost, for by final unbelief and impenitency, they either understand that impenitency and unbelief which a man lives and dies in, or that which he purposeth to continue in to the last. The latter cannot be the sin against the Holy Ghost, for many have purposed to continue in their unbelief to their death, and yet have been converted and pardoned. And the first cannot be the sin against the Holy Ghost, for-- 1. The Jews whom Christ spake unto did then commit this sin, and yet they had not continued in it to their death. 2. Final unbelief is rather a sin against the Son; but the sin against the Holy Ghost is distinguished from that. 3. Our Saviour saith, “ Those that commit this sin shall not be forgiven in this world, nor in the world to come.” Not in this world. If, therefore, final unbelief or impenitency be this sin, then Christ should threaten that he that dies in his sin shall not be forgiven whilst he lives. 4. If a man sin against the Father or Son, and die impenitently in that sin, he shall not be forgiven either in this life or in the life to come: but herein the sin against the Holy Ghost is worse than the sins against the Father or the Son, and therefore it cannot consist therein. 5. The apostle saith, “ There is a sin unto death, I say not that you pray for 1 John 5:16). Doth he say that we must not pray for a man, and for the forgiveness of his sin when he is dead? 6. It is that sin for which there lies no remission, but a man may sin such a sin whilst he lives: for if any man sin wilfully, there remaineth no sacrifice for sin, and wilfully a man may sin before his death. 7. It is such a sin as a man may know another man is guilty of whilst he lives, for saith the apostle, “ There is a sin unto death, I say not that you pray for it” : but final unbelief and impeniteney is not known till death. 8. Our Saviour saith, “ He that speaketh a word against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven.” But a word may be spoken against the Spirit long before a man dies, and therefore surely this sin against the Holy Ghost doth not consist in final impenitency and unbelief; final unbelief and impenitency is not this sin against the Holy Ghost. 9. For then all wicked men living under the gospel, and dying impenitently, should sin the sin against the Holy Ghost, which is false. You will say, then, What is this sin against the Holy Ghost, and wherein doth it consist? Affirmatively. It is that wilful sinning against God, whereby a man doth maliciously oppose and blaspheme the proper and peculiar work of the Holy Ghost, and that after he hath been convinced thereof by the Holy Ghost. I say, It is a wilful sinning against God; and so the apostle speaks, saying, “ If any man sin wilfully, after he hath received the knowledge of the truth, there remains no more sacrifice for sin” (Hebrews 10:26). So that the sin for which there is no sacrifice, and of which there is no remission, is a wilful sin. Now a man is said to sin wittingly, willingly, and wilfully:wittingly, in opposition to ignorance; willingly, in opposition to force and constraint; wilfully, in opposition to light, knowledge, and reason; and so he that sins against the Holy Ghost doth sin; for says the apostle, “ If any man sin wilfully, after he hath received the knowledge of the truth,” &c. He that commits this sin doth also oppose and blaspheme the proper and peculiar work of the Holy Ghost; for it is called here, a blasphemy, and a blaspheming of the Spirit, as distinct from the Father and the Son. Suppose that some ignorance in the understanding be the remote cause of the sin, yet malice may be the next and chief cause. As for example: suppose that a man hath taken up some prejudice against another, through a mistake and error; yet now he hates him, and out of hatred kills him; shall not this murderer be said to kill him out of malice, because the malice was founded upon a mistake or error? Yes, surely. But why is he said to kill him out of malice? Because malice was the next cause of this murder. So that though ignorance be the remote cause of a sin, yet malice may be the next cause thereof; and being so, he shall be said truly to sin ex malitia, though with some precedent ignorance, as the remote cause thereof. Yet if you ask, how it can be that the will should be always carried out upon what is good, and yet a man sin maliciously? Plainly thus: from what hath been said, the will of man is an universal appetite, willing that which is naturally good, as well as that which is honestly good. If it be carried out upon that which is naturally good, it will hate all that spiritual good which is contrary to the obtainment of it, and the man will oppose and blaspheme what the will hates. Now because the hatred and malice of the will is the cause of that blasphemy and opposition, the man is truly said to oppose and blaspheme out of malice, though the will be carried on upon that which is naturally good at the same time; which was the case of these Pharisees: for they sought their own honour and greatness; Christ and the truth opposing, they did hate Him and the truth; and because they hated Him, the truth, and that light which reproved their sins, they did oppose and blaspheme, and that out of malice, and so the sin against the Holy Ghost is a malicious sin, or that sin whereby a man doth oppose and blaspheme the proper and peculiar work of the Spirit out of malice. Yet this is not all. But, it is that sin against God, whereby a man cloth maliciously oppose and blaspheme the peculiar work of the Holy Ghost, after he hath been convinced thereof by the Holy Ghost; for possibly a man may oppose and blaspheme, even maliciously, the work of the Holy Ghost, and yet not be convinced of it by the Holy Ghost, but otherwise; but these that sin this sin, are such as are enlightened, and made partakers of the Holy Ghost in the gifts and common graces of it (Hebrews 6:1-20.). And so these Pharisees were convinced by the Spirit which did work that great work before them; and yet after such a convincement wrought by the Spirit, they did maliciously oppose and blaspheme this work of the Spirit. So that I say, the sin against the Holy Ghost is that wilful sinning against God, whereby a man doth maliciously oppose and blaspheme the proper and peculiar work of the Holy Ghost, and that after he hath been convinced thereof by the Holy Ghost. II. BUT WHY IS THIS SIN, ABOVE ALL OTHER SINS, ? Not in regard of difficulty only, or because it is hardly pardoned, as some would; for many sins are hardly pardoned, and yet are not the sins against the Holy Ghost; for, as Zanchy doth well observe, if this sin were only unpardonable, because it is hardly pardoned, then a man might pray for those that sin this sin: but the apostle saith, “ There is a sin unto death, I do not say that ye shall pray for it” (1 John 5:16). Therefore, the unpardonableness of it doth not lie here. Neither is it unpardonable only in regard of event, because in event it shall never be pardoned, for there are many sins which in event shall never be pardoned, which yet are not the sins against the Holy Ghost. There is many a wicked man that goes to hell, whose sins in event are not pardoned, and yet he did never sin against the Holy Ghost. Neither is it unpardonable because it is so great as doth exceed the power and mercy of God; for God’ s mercy and power, in forgiving sins, is like Himself, infinite. Neither is it unpardonable because it is against the means of pardon; for then the sin against the free love of the Father, and the sin against the Son, should be unpardonable. Neither is it unpardonable because a man doth not repent thereof; for then all sins unrepented of should be sins against the Holy Ghost. It is true, that those who commit this sin cannot repent, as the apostle speaks--It is impossible that they should be renewed to repentance (Hebrews 6:1-20.), because God doth give them up to impenitency: but we do not find in Scripture that their not repenting is made the reason of the unpardonableness of this sin. But the sin is unpardonable because there is no sacrifice laid out by God’ s appointment for it “ If any man sin wilfully, there remaineth no more sacrifice” (Hebrews 10:1-39.), and without blood and sacrifice there is no remission. And thus now ye have seen what the sin against the Holy Ghost is; in what respects it is not, and in what respects it is unpardonable; and so the doctrine cleared and proved, That the sin against the Holy Ghost is the unpardonable sin, which shall never be forgiven, neither in this world, nor in the world to come. The application follows: If the sin against the Holy Ghost be the unpardonable sin, then surely the Holy Ghost is God, very God, true God, as the Father is: for can it be a greater evil, or more dangerous, to sin against a creature, than against God the Father? It is God that is sinned against, now the Holy Ghost is sinned against; yea, the unpardonable sin is against the Holy Ghost. But I am afraid I have sinned this sin, and the truth is I have often feared it: and my reason was and is, because my sins are so great, so exceeding great. Great, say ye; how great, man? I have sinned against my light, I have sinned against my knowledge, I have sinned against my conviction; and therefore I fear I have sinned the unpardonable sin. But I pray, for answer, did not Adam sin against light, when he ate the forbidden fruit? Did he not sin against his knowledge, and against conscience? Yet he sinned not against the Holy Ghost, though he brought all the world under condemnation by his sin; for the Lord Himself came and preached mercy to him, “ The seed of the woman shall break the serpent’ s head.” And I pray did not Jonah, when he run away from God, sin against his light; and did he not sin against his conviction, and against his knowledge? yet he did not sin against the Holy Ghost, for the Lord pardoned him and wonderfully delivered him. Possibly this therefore may be, and yet not a sin against the Holy Ghost. It is true indeed, that those who sin against the Holy Ghost do sin against their light, knowledge, and conscience; but whoever sins against light and knowledge, though he sins greatly, doth not sin against the Holy Ghost. Oh, but I fear that I have sinned this sin, for I have fallen foully into gross sins. That is ill. But I pray did not David sin so; were they not great and gross and foul sins that David fell into, such as one of your civil, moral men would abhor, yet he did not sin against the Holy Ghost, for the Lord pardoned him, and Nathan said from the Lord, “ The Lord hath forgiven thee.” Oh, but yet I fear that I have sinned this great sin, for I am much declined, I have lost my former acquaintance and communion with God; I have lost my former heat and affections to good, and in duty; and I fear upon this account that I have sinned this great sin. Be it so: yet did not the Church of Ephesus lose her first love? yet this Church of Ephesus did not sin the sin against the Holy Ghost: why? for the Lord saith unto her, “ Repent and do thy first works.” She could not have repented thus if she had sinned this sin. Oh, but yet I fear that I have sinned this great sin, because that I have sinned directly against the Spirit; I have quenched, I have grieved, I have resisted the Spirit: the Spirit of the Lord hath come and fallen upon my heart in preaching, and I resisted and grieved it; the Spirit of the Lord hath fallen upon my heart in prayer, and I have grieved that; therefore I fear I have sinned this great sin that shall never be pardoned. This is ill too; but those that you read of in Acts 7:1-60., resisted the Holy Ghost, yet they did not sin the sin against the Holy Ghost, for then Stephen would not have prayed for them. But I am afraid that I have sinned this great sin, the sin against the Holy Ghost, because I have not owned, but denied the truth. The work of the Spirit is to enlighten and to lead into truth, and I have not owned, but denied the truth rather, therefore I fear that I have sinned this great sin against the Holy Ghost. This is evil, very evil. I remember a speech of Godteschalehus, worthy to be written in letters of gold: I am afraid, said he, to deny the truth, lest I should be for ever denied by the truth, that is, Christ. But I pray, did not Peter deny the truth when he denied Christ; and did he not do it again and again, and did he not do it openly, with scandal; and did he not do it after admonition; and did he not do it with cursing and swearing? and yet he did not sin against the Holy Ghost, for the Lord pardoned, and took him into His bosom, and made him a blessed instrument in the Church. Thus far yet a man may go possibly, and yet not sin this sin. Oh, but I am afraid yet that I have sinned it, for I have been an opposer of goodness, I have been an opposer of the people of God, and I have been a blasphemer; therefore I fear I have sinned this sin. This is ill indeed. But, I pray, tell me, was not Paul an opposer and blasphemer of the saints and ways of God; and yet he did not sin against the Holy Ghost; for I did it ignorantly, saith he: “ I was a blasphemer and a persecutor, but I obtained mercy, for I did it ignorantly.” Oh, but yet I fear I have sinned this great sin, for I have forsaken God, and God hath forsaken me; God is gone, Christ is gone, and mercy is gone. Oh, what freedom once I had, but now God is departed from me, God hath forsaken me: and I fear it is upon this account, because I have sinned this great sin. But doth not David say, “ How long, O Lord, wilt Thou forget me, forsake me? “ and our Saviour Himself saith, “ My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” There is a gradual forsaking, and there is a total. As with a man that goes from his house; possibly he goes a voyage, or is from home a quarter, half year, or a year; but he doth not leave his house; for his wife, his children, and goods are there still: but another man goes from his house, the house is let, and he carries away all his goods: this is a total departure, the other gradual. So now it is with the Lord: He doth sometimes forsake His own children for a time; but He doth not pull down His hangings, or carry away His goods; He doth not go away, but returns again; this is gradual. But there is a total forsaking of a man, and then He gives him up to his sin. Now this is not the burden that you lie under; for if God had thus forsaken you, you would be given up to your sins, and you would give up yourselves unto all uncleanness. Oh, but I am afraid, yet, that I am under the worst forsaking, and that therefore I have sinned this great sin; for I do lie despairing, saying, God is gone, and mercy gone; I am in the dark. Oh, I despair, I despair, and upon this account I fear I have sinned this great sin, the sin against the Holy Ghost. But, now, whosoever you are that have laboured under this fear, as indeed this fear I know hath oppressed many, give me leave to ask you four or five short questions. The first is, Whether canst thou not find in thy heart to forgive men that do trespass against thee? Do not you find a disposition in your own heart to forgive others? Yes, I praise the Lord that I do. Now if you can find in your heart to forgive others, I am sure God can find in His heart to forgive you, and therefore you have not sinned this great sin, which is unpardonable. Secondly, Whether, aye or no, have you ever opposed the ways of God, the people of God, and that out of malice? No: I confess I have opposed them, but the Lord knows I did it ignorantly, it was not out of malice; then remember the description of this sin. Thirdly, Whether, aye or no, do not you desire to be humbled for every sin, though it be never so small? Yes, for though I know that my greatest humiliation cannot make an atonement for my sin; yet I know that the least humiliation in truth doth please God, and it is my duty to be humbled for every sin; for the least sin is a great evil; and He that commands humiliation for the one, commands it for the other also; and through grace I desire to be humbled for every sin. Why, then, you cannot have sinned against the Holy Ghost, for it is impossible that they that sin this sin should be renewed to repentance. Fourthly, Whether, aye or no, do not you desire above all things the breathings of the Spirit of God upon your heart? Yes: oh that God would come and breathe upon my poor soul in duty. But those that sin against the Holy Ghost do despite to the Spirit of grace (Hebrews 10:1-39.). Fifthly, Where do you find in all the Bible that those that sin this sin against the Holy Ghost are afraid that they have sinned it? Those that sin against the Holy Ghost are never afraid that they have sinned against the Holy Ghost. But again, If the sin against the Holy Ghost be indeed the unpardonable sin, what cause have we all to look to our steps, to our words, to our actions? Beloved, this sin against the Holy Ghost is the professor’ s sin; a man less than a professor cannot sin this sin against the Holy Ghost; this sin against the Holy Ghost is the knowing man’ s sin, a man less than a knowing man cannot sin the sin against the Holy Ghost: and, as I said before, a man may possibly go very far in sin, and yet not commit this great unpardonable sin: so now, on the other side, I say, possibly a man may go very far in religion, and yet he may sin this sin. These Pharisees that committed it had the key of knowledge: knowing they were, and very knowing in the Scriptures; as for zeal, they travelled sea and land to make a proselyte; for their practice, they fasted twice a week, exceeding strict in observing the Sabbath day; the lights of the Church, and the eyes of all the people were upon them for their guides; and yet these men sinned this sin against the Holy Ghost. Oh, what care should there be in all our souls; how had we all need to look to our ways! The more truth revealed, the more danger of sinning this sin, the more great works of God are done by the very Spirit and finger of God; if men do oppose and blaspheme, the more danger of sinning this great sin. But you will say, We grant indeed that this sin against the Holy Ghost is the unpardonable sin, and woe be to them that do fall into it, and it cannot be committed but by a knowing man; but what shall we do that we may be kept from this great transgression; that whatsoever sin we do fall into, yet we may be kept from this great evil, and this unpardonable sin? I would that you would mind and consider the description which you have heard, and think of it. But I will tell you what David did. Saith David, “ 0 Lord, keep back Thy servant from presumptuous sins, so shall I be free from the great transgression.” It seems then that presumptuous sinning makes way to this great transgression. Again: Be always humbled for lesser sins. He shall never fall into the greatest, that is always humbled for the least; he shall never fall into the worst that is always humbled for the smallest. Besides, fear is the keeper of innocency; fear is the guard of innocency. If you always fear to commit it, you shall never commit the same. In case that you do at any time fall into sin, say, Well, but through the grace of God, though I commit what is evil, I will never oppose what is good; by the grace of God I will carry this rule along with me: Though I commit what is evil, I will never oppose what is good. In case any great work be done before you that lies beyond your reach and beyond your fathom, say, Though I do not understand this work, I will admire; and though I cannot reach it, yet I will not blaspheme and speak against it. And if heretofore, Christian, thou hast found God breathing upon thy heart in any ordinance, public or private, or in any way of God, take heed, as for thy life, that thou dost never speak evil or blaspheme that way of God wherein thou hast found the Spirit of God breathing. And if, indeed, you would be kept from this great transgression, then take heed of all declinings, and the steps thereof. (W. Bridge, M. A.) Blasphemy against the Holy Ghost I. First, then, let us see what the text does not mean. We may, I think, feel quite sure that it does not mean that there is some particular form of words of the kind generally known as “ blasphemous,” which, once uttered, leave him who has spoken without hope. “ By thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned.” But the intervening context shows us that He is speaking of words as the expressions of the heart, and as indications of its fixed habit and its settled attitude. They were the symptoms of disease, not the disease itself. They marked, not merely local affection, but constitutional derangement. The same principle applies to our good words, which I am apt to think may in the end prove more condemning than our bad ones. That we shall go to heaven for pious ejaculations which are unreal, or go to hell for impious ejaculations equally unreal, is altogether contrary to the tenour of Scripture and to its revelations, and our own ideas or the character and attributes of Him whose judgment is according to truth. 2. Again, the sin spoken of in the text cannot be a sin of which men have ever repented. Because wherever there is repentance there is pardon through the Saviour. This, if I understand anything about the gospel, is its great message. Let us go on to Manasseh, king of Judah (2 Kings 21:1-26.). It is not easy to imagine anything worse than we are told about him. “ He undid the work of Hezekiah, his father. And now, as I get near to saying what seems to me the meaning of the text, I am sorry that I must set aside the opinion of some great and good men; of Wesley amongst them. He thought, and others thought also, that this sin is neither more nor less than “ the ascribing those miracles to the power of the devil which Christ did by the power of the Holy Ghost” --in short, that it was only possible during the Saviour’ s ministry. I cannot think a warning so solemn anal striking, recorded in three of the four Gospels, should relate wholly to a past kind of sin. No: the outward part of sin perpetually shifts and changes: its principle and essence remain the same. Nor should we escape the terror of the text by adopting what I may call the “ obsolete” interpretation as regards the sin. There are other passages, not quite so well known perhaps, but as awful when we think of them. “ There is,” says St. John, “ a sin unto death: I do not say that he shall pray for it.” St. Jude writes of some who “ were before of old ordained to this condemnation” --“ twice dead” --“ plucked up by the roots” --“ to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness for ever.” In the Epistle to the Hebrews we are told of some for whom “ remained no more sacrifice for sin,” and of some whom “ it was impossible to renew unto repentance.” St. Paul, writing to Timothy, mentions some who “ should proceed no further,” who “ resisted the truth as Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses.” All these passages remain, even though we succeed in removing the text to the region of the past. All these, as well as the text, must, I think, be read in the same light; and all must be thought of in connection with what I said at the outset--that what can never be forgiven must be something of which men have never repented. What can this be? It can scarcely be anything less than deliberate, conscious resistance to acknowledged truth; persistent choosing of darkness rather than light. You will say, perhaps, that there cannot be such a thing. Are you so sure? Think for one moment. Do you not see something like it--apart from religion altogether--every day? Does not the drunkard, or the spendthrift, or the gambler know his end--I mean in this world--as well as you do? And still he goes on. What can you do for him? Nothing. At least nothing except in the way of “ hoping against hope.” You do your very best: and you are right; but while you cannot prove it, you feel that there is failure before you. Come to the Bible. Take that wonderful case of Ahab and Micaiah. Ahab did not believe that there was no God. Nor did he doubt the mission of Micaiah. Nor did he once hint that he thought him untruthful. He had one objection, and only one: “ I hate him because he doth not prophesy good concerning me, but evil.” Micaiah exposes to him the deceitfulness of the other prophets: and he still has nothing to say but to repeat his old objection. After which he goes on deliberately to death. Take two instances from the New Testament. What effect was produced by the raising of Lazarus? Some of the Jews “ sought to put Lazarus also to death.” When Peter and John performed what the Jewish rulers admitted to be a “ notable miracle, which they could not deny,” they did what? Threatened them, and tried to hinder the further spread of the gospel thus attested. All these, surely, are cases which--if we merely reflected, without reading the Bible at all--we should be obliged to own were verging on and tending to something unforgivable. This view will be confirmed if a well-supported reading of St. Mark’ s account be the true one. It makes him say--not is in danger of eternal damnation or judgment; but is in danger of eternal sin. The depth of condemnation is only for the depth of sin; and by resisting grace, shutting the eyes to light, we are surely sinking into that depth. It is not that God arbitrarily marks out a sin or even a course of sin, which He will not pardon. But He warns us that we may bring ourselves to a state in which we will not have pardon, and reach the Satanic condition of consummated sin, and seem to say, as he alone can say, “ Evil, be thou my good.” (J. C. Coghlan, D. D.) The sin that shall not be forgiven Taking this sentence with the rest of the passage, I cannot doubt that it tells us what the sin of the Pharisees and of the nation was; why they were cast out of their stewardship in that age; why the sentence upon them remains still. We say, “ They rejected Jesus; they would not believe all the evidence which He brought from prophecies and miracles to attest His divine mission.” He says, “ All words spoken against the Son of Man will be forgiven; but there is a blasphemy against the Spirit of God--there is a confusion of good with evil, of light with darkness--which goes down far deeper than this. When a nation has lost the faculty of distinguishing hatred from love, the spirit of hypocrisy and falsehood from the spirit of truth, God from the devil, then its doom is pronounced--then the decree must go forth against it. I believe that is the natural sense of these awful words here and elsewhere; if we give them that sense we are delivered from imaginations which have darkened the gospel to a number of souls, and the warning to ourselves becomes much more tremendous. (F. D. Maurice, M. A.) The unpardonable sin Aretius, a godly and eminent author, speaking of the sin of the Holy Ghost, “ I saw,” saith he, “ and knew the man myself, and it is no feigned story. There was a merchant in Strasburg whose whole life was abominable for whoredom, usury, drunkenness, contempt of God’ s Word; he spent his life in gaming and whoring to his old age. At last he came to reflect on himself, and be sensible of the dreadful judgments of God hanging over his head. Then did his conscience so affright, and the devil accuse and terrify him, that he fell into open and downright desperation. He confessed and yielded himself to the devil as being his. He said the mercy and grace of God could not be so great as to pardon sins so great as his. Then what horror was upon him, gnashing of teeth, weeping, wailing; yea, he would challenge Satan, and wish the devil would fetch him away to his destined torments. He threw himself all along upon the ground: refused both meat and drink. Had you seen him, you would never have forgot him while you had lived; you had seen the fullest pattern of a despairing person. Yet, after the many pains of godly and learned men who came to him, watched with him, reasoned with him, laid open the word and will of God, and after many prayers, public and private, put up for him, at length he recovered and became truly penitent; and having lived piously for certain years after, he died peaceably.” Wherefore, he concluded, it is not an easy matter to determine of any man sinning against the Holy Ghost, and incapable of mercy so long as he live. Delivered from despair The Puritans were wont to quote the remarkable experience of Mrs. Honeywood as an instance of the singular way in which the Lord delivers His chosen. She for year after year was in bondage to melancholy and despair, but she was set at liberty by the gracious providence of God in an almost miraculous way. She took up a slender Venice glass, and saying, “ I am as surely damned as that glass is dashed to pieces,” she hurled it down upon the floor, when, to her surprise, and the surprise of all, I know not by what means, the glass was not so much as chipped or cracked. That circumstance first gave her a ray of light, and she afterwards cast herself upon the Lord Jesus. (C. H. Spurgeon.) Luke 12:11-12 The Holy Ghost shall teach you Divine help for ministers in discharging their duties The advice and promise contained in these verses were very suitable to the disciples, many of whom were soon to be called before Jewish and Roman courts of various kinds for the sake of Christ. Plain and illiterate as the disciples generally were, they would be ready to be much alarmed at the thought of appearing before civil and ecclesiastical rulers and judges, not only from the apprehension that they might be condemned if they did not plead their cause aright, but still more from the apprehension that from some failure in judgment, or memory, or eloquence, on their part, the cause of the gospel might suffer--which was dearer to them than their life. Their Lord, therefore, wisely and graciously counselled and encouraged them in that prospect. “ Take ye no thought,” said He; not that prudent thought was unbecoming, or that they were to be rash, and speak unadvisedly with their lips: but they were forbidden to take anxious, perplexing, and disquieting thought, as the word might be rendered, and as He said on another occasion, “ Take no thought for the morrow.” Such thought as that, at the time they were speaking, would have argued distrust in God, and would have thrown them into such confusion as would have incapacitated them from speaking as they ought. They were not to be studious of making a fine appearance; nor were they to be apprehensive that the Lord would allow either them to be put to shame, or His own cause to suffer. Nay, as spoken to those who were under the influence of plenary inspiration, these words forbade them to spend time in premeditation on their defence of themselves, or on their declaration of the gospel, for it is thus expressed in Mark, “ Take no thought beforehand what ye shall speak, neither do ye premeditate.” “ Take ye no thought,” as it is in Luke, “ how, or what thing,” that is, either as to the manner or matter of what “ ye shall answer,” or say in defence of yourselves; “ or what ye shall say,” that is, what ye shall say in declaring the truth before your accusers and audience, be they what they may. And to encourage them to this, He assures them that the Holy Spirit would suggest to them at the time whatever was proper to be said, and would direct and strengthen them to say it in the best manner. Now, all this is often exemplified very strikingly in the Acts of the Apostles, in which we read of several of the disciples being carried before different courts, where they trusted in God, and had this promise so fulfilled to them as to enable them to speak, and in every way to conduct themselves, in the most becoming and noble manner. As to the application of these words to the succeeding ages of the Church; it becomes all Christians, and especially Christian ministers, neither presumptuously to abuse them, nor unbelievingly to neglect the legitimate encouragement which they contain. It would certainly be a gross perversion of this passage, if any preachers were now to imagine that it would countenance them in ordinary eases in coming forward to preach without previous study. Now that miraculous inspiration has ceased, they have to seek their knowledge from the Word of God, and in the way of diligent, persevering, and prayerful application of mind; that they may bring forward abundance of suitable matter, in the best way of which, all their other duties being considered, they are capable. Whatever might be the rule in cases of emergency, even the inspired teachers themselves were required thus to “ stir up the gift of God that was in them” ; and therefore much more is such diligence necessary in those who have no such inspiration. It is no difficult matter, indeed, for a man who abounds in self-confidence and readiness of expression to speak often and long, in a certain way, of the things of God with little or no preparation, but it is a poor boast to boast of such a habit; it is a poor compliment to the intelligence of his audience to indulge it; there will be no need for him or his admirers to proclaim that his effusions are extemporary, for that will be but too evident. In many cases this is, doubtless, under the guise of zeal, the refuge of indolence; and it would be well for him to consider whether he be not labouring under an error in imagining that there is anything peculiarly spiritual or praiseworthy in offering to God that which costs him nothing. The words which were addressed to inspired Timothy are surely at least as suitable in this view to ordinary teachers: “ Give attendance to reading, to exhortation, to doctrine. Neglect not the gift that is in thee, which was given thee by prophecy, with the laying on of the hands of the presbytery. Meditate upon these things, give thyself wholly to them, that thy profiting may appear to all. Take heed unto thyself, and unto the doctrine; continue in them; for in doing this thou shalt both save thyself and them that hear thee.” In a different sense, David “ prepared with all his might for the house of his God.” “ Because the preacher, too, was wise, he still taught the people knowledge, yea, he gave good heed, and sought out, and set in order many proverbs.” If due diligence be not used, to expect the help of the Spirit is not faith, but presumption. At the same time there is much direction and encouragement here to ministers when they are in the way of duty. The spirit of this passage teaches them not to fail to declare the will of God when they are suddenly called on to do so in the course of providence. They are not to hang back or to hesitate then, but are to discharge the duty in the best way they can under God. On extraordinary occasions they may expect, though not miraculous, yet extraordinary, assistance. They may expect that their strength will be as their day; that their Master’ s grace will be sufficient for them, and that His strength will be made perfect in their weakness. Nor need they be afraid to speak, in any circumstances, however trying or dangerous, into which their Lord brings them. (James Foote, M. A.) Martyrs inspired by the Spirit You will be struck in reading “ Foxe’ s Acts and Monuments” to find how many of the humblest men and women acted as if they were of noblest blood. In every age the line of martyrs has been a line of true nobility. When the King of France told Bernard Palissy that, if he did not change his sentiments, he should be compelled to surrender him to the Inquisition, the brave potter said to the king, “ You say I shall be compelled, and yet you are a king; but I, though only a poor potter, cannot be compelled to do other than I think to be right,” Surely the potter was more royal than the king. The cases are numberless, and should be as household words among you, in which humble men, feeble women, and little children have shown a heroism which chivalry could not equal. The Spirit of God has taken the wise in their own craftiness, and answered the learned out of the mouths of babes. The answers of uneducated persons among the martyrs were frequently so put to the point, and hit the nail so well on the head, that you might almost suppose they had been composed by an assembly of divines; they came from a better source, for they were given by the Holy Spirit. The bearing of the bleeding witnesses for our Lord has been worthy of their office, and right well have they earned the title of “ The noble army of martyrs.” (C. H. Spurgeon.) Providential prompting Some time ago a town missionary had in his district a man who never would suffer any Christian man to come into his house. The missionary was warned by many that he would get a broken head if he ventured on a visit. He therefore kept from the house, though it troubled him to pass it by. He made a matter of prayer of it, as was his wont, and one morning ventured into the lion’ s den; when the man said, “ What have you come here for? … Well, sir,” he said, “ I have been conversing with people in all the houses along here, and I have passed you by because I heard you objected to it; but somehow I thought it looked cowardly to avoid you, and therefore I have called.” “ Come in, then,” the man said; “ sit down. Now you are going to talk to me about the Bible. Perhaps you do not know much about it yourself. I am going to ask you a question, and if you can answer it, you shall come again; if you do not answer it, I will bundle you downstairs. Now,” he said, “ do you take me?” “ Yes,” said the other, “ I do take you.” “ Well, then, this is the question: Where do you find the word ‘ girl’ in the Bible, and how many times do you find it?” The city missionary said, The word girl occurs only once in the Bible, and that is in the Book of Joel, the third chapter and the third verse: ‘ They sold a girl for wine.’” “ You are right; but I would not have believed you knew it, or else I would have asked you some other question. You may come again.” “ But,” said the missionary, “ I should like you to know how I came to know it. This very morning I was praying for direction from God; and when I was reading my morning chapter, I came upon this passage: ‘ There shall be boys and girls playing in the streets of Jerusalem’ ; and I found that the word ‘ girl’ did not occur anywhere else but in Joel.” The result of that story, however odd it seems, was that the missionary was permitted to call; and the man took an interest in his visits, and the whole family were the better, the man and his wife and one of his children becoming members of a Church some time afterwards. Is not God the answerer of prayer? Luke 12:13-14 Who made Me a Judge era divider over you?--Christ not a civil judge, but a Redeemer; At first sight, Christ’ s refusal to interfere between these brothers seems astonishing. Is there not a question of justice to be decided? And who is so competent to deal with it as the Holy and Just One? I. THE REASON OF THIS STRANGE REFUSAL. It is sometimes said that Jesus Christ only seeks the eternal salvation of the soul, and does not concern Himself about other human interests. This explanation is specious, and is eagerly accepted by infidelity. But we cannot leave such a weapon in the hands of unbelief. Our Lord assigns the highest importance to the soul’ s redemption from sin, and yet sympathizes with human nature in its entirety. Why, then, does Christ refuse to interfere in this dispute? There are two ways of reforming men--an external one and an internal one. The first method pronounces decisions, formulates laws, changes governments, and thus settles all moral and political questions. The second seeks, before every thing else, to renovate the heart and the will. Jesus Christ chose the latter plan. He remained steadfast to it, and this alone evinces the divinity of His mission and the permanent value of His work. Observe here one or two results. Christ’ s refusal determines the relation of Christianity-- 1. To political questions. I believe in the profound influence of Christianity on the political destiny of nations--it can help them to become free, great, and prosperous. But on what condition can it elevate them? Like Jesus Christ, it must act in a purely spiritual manner; it must free souls; it must preach justice, holiness, love. 2. To social problems. Christ’ s work consists in uniting in common respect and affection those who are divided by their interests. This mission should be ours. Let us oppose selfish pride and levelling envy; let us summon all men to prayer, to humiliation and to mutual pardon and love--to that sanctuary of spiritual equality where rich and poor meet together, remembering that God has made them both. II. THE WHICH CHRIST , (E. Bersier, D. D.) Christian socialism There is no doubt that the greatest question of the day in Europe and even in America is Socialism. Socialism ought to be carefully distinguished from Communism; but the two words are often indiscriminately used, and this confusion renders Socialism odious to many, for-- “ What is a Communist? One who hath yearnings, For equal divisions of unequal earnings. Idler or bungler, or both, he is willing To fork out his penny and pocket your shilling.” “ The magic of property,” says Arthur Young,” turns sand into gold.” It has done more in this country to produce a spirit of self-help than State aid for the whole planet ever could do. In thus teaching the duty and necessity of self-help, the Church proves herself to be the chief friend of the poor. Not so Communism. By destroying the right of personal ownership in the means of production, and by fostering dependence on State-help, it undermines the energy and self-help of all classes, and is the enemy of the poor quite as much as of the rich. But was there not, many ask, a community of goods, and were not all things in common, in the primitive Church at Jerusalem. Certainly, but this community of goods was not compulsory, but purely voluntary. It did not come about by any sort of confiscation. “ While it remained, was it not thine own?” were the words addressed to Ananias; “ and after it was sold, was it not in thine own power?” It was a voluntary act of love rather than a duty. Still less was it a right which the majority might assert against individuals. The estimate of comparative needs recognized when these Jerusalem Christians parted their possessions to all men, as every man had need, shows clearly that property was not alienated beyond control. This, then, was very different from the Communism taught at the present day, which demands an equality enforced by a central authority, and which, so far from inculcating a spirit of self-denial, looks for the self-indulgence of all. Modern Communists affirm that Communism was the natural outcome of the Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity implied in Christ’ s teaching. That the principle did not hold its ground is ascribed by them to the ambition and worldliness of the Church as she increased in power, especially after her official recognition as the State religion of the Roman Empire. On the other hand the defenders of the principle of individual property as opposed to Communism deny that the Church ever sanctioned officially, or that her Founder ever recommended, such a custom as that of “ having all things in common.” As a matter of fact, we may say with an able Church historian, that the community in Jerusalem growing out of the society of the apostles, who were accustomed already to the common purse system, hit upon the daring plan of establishing a community of goods. And this was fostered by the first outburst of enthusiastic brotherly love, being all the more readily accepted in consequence of the prevailing expectation among the disciples of the approaching subversion of all things. Nowhere out of Jerusalem do we find any other early Christian community of goods. The arrangement at Jerusalem was not intended to be permanent, and perhaps those political economists are not far wrong who assert that it did more harm than good, and produced the chronic state of poverty that existed among “ the poor saints at Jerusalem.” The Master Himself had left no definite instructions as to the future social organization of His “ little flock.” It had been His plan all along to lay down general principles, leaving them to be worked out in the course of time, rather than to prescribe definite lines of conduct under given circumstances. The ideal of a perfect society was ever held up by Him to His most intimate disciples, he formed no plan, however, for realizing this ideal in a political polity. The working out of His principles was left to the “ new leaven” which was to reform character, and thus indirectly society. The “ patrimony of the poor” is not to be restored by means of violent social changes, but by moral influences working upon rich and poor alike. Christ’ s sympathy was with all classes, and He applied remedies to individuals in preference to propounding revolutionary theories for the construction of society. Happily the rich are beginning to recognize this truth. There is obviously an immense outgrowth in the generous distribution of wealth. But the rich have difficulties as well as the poor, and one of these lies in determining how to expend their money in a way that will prove beneficial to society. The question, “ To whom or to what cause shall I contribute money?” must be a very anxious one to conscientious men of wealth. “ How are we to measure,” we may suppose rich men to ask, “ the relative utility of charities? “ The fact is, riches must now be considered by all good men as a distinct profession, with responsibilities no less onerous than those of other professions. And this very difficult profession of wealth ought to be learned by studying social science and otherwise with as much care as the professions of divinity, law, and medicine are learned. When in this way the rich accept and prepare themselves for the duties of their high calling, it will cease to be a cause of complaint that in the nature of things money tends continually to fall into the hands of a few large capitalists. The spirit of brotherly love which underlies Christian Socialism is being more and more understood in the present day.” The great communistic principle, “ All for each and each for all,” is practically gaining ground. (E. J. Hardy, M. A.) Worldliness vitiating spiritual teaching A camp-meeting incident taught us what manner of spirit was in this man. An honoured preacher was closing a moving sermon; his appeals to sinners were full of spiritual power; his voice was husky with deep feeling; the tears were streaming down his face as he urged sinners to repent and penitents to believe. A slight movement near by attracted our attention. Just outside the railing around the communion-place were two men deeply engaged. A life insurance agent, on one knee, ciphering out his arguments to his victim, who leaned toward him. The scene brought up the man who interrupted the sermon of Jesus. What would people think of a man who should, from his pew, cry out to the preacher in the midst of a mighty discourse, “ What is the price of cotton to-day?” “ What is gold worth?” He would perhaps be put out. Certainly he would deserve it. Such a man was he who broke in upon the sermon of Jesus with his request for the Master’ s intervention in the matter of a contested inheritance. How humiliating a thing it is that a man’ s mind could be so filled and saturated with business that the most solemn and awful words of even Jesus were heard as an idle, meaningless voice--heard and not feared. Mark our Lord’ s answer. He dismissed the man with one sharp word: “ Man, who made Me a judge or a divider over you?” But the lesson must not be lost. This wickedness of utter worldliness is instructive. Turning to His disciples, Jesus “ said unto them, Take heed and beware of covetousness.” See what covetousness can do to the heart of man; see what it does in this man! It has consumed him! (Christian Age.) Missionaries and litigants Mr. Richards, missionary in India, on his journey to Meerut, halted under the shade of a tree, in the outskirts of a large village, by the roadside. As he sat there two of the Zemindars of the neighbourhood came up, and respectfully saluting him, entreated him to act as an umpire between them, and settle a dispute in which they had been long involved about the boundaries of their respective lands. Mr. Richards declined interfering in the matter, but intimated his readiness to give them information respecting the important concerns of salvation. Having read and explained the Scriptures, they listened with attention and delight. The disputants embraced each other with apparent cordiality, and avowed that they would dispute no more about their lands, but love each other, and strive to seek and serve God. (W. H. Baxendale.) Christ’ s refusal to interfere It may seem strange that to so natural a request Christ should return so discouraging an answer, and, withal, apply it with such a parable. But there are two things to be considered. 1. That it was not Christ’ s mission to reorganize society immediately, nor by a demonstrative act, but that He undertook to reorganize society by implanting those principles which should work in us reorganific wisdom. Certain great influences were to be infused into the heart, which gradually but surely would work out all needed changes, and work them out in the order of their proper succession and growth. It was for Christ to prepare the great influences and principles that the world needed, but for us to carry them out into practical execution. It is for God to bring forth the spring, and all its genial influences, upon the earth; but men must avail themselves of these influences, and by the plough, and by the seed, and by the ready hand of tillage, prepare the harvests that they are to reap. And so, in the New Testament, there are authoritatively established principles of love and justice, which, if practised, would evolve the world’ s harmony. And it is our business, each in his own place, and with reference to the age in which he lives, to apply these principles, and to change the face of society, and the administration of affairs in the world. This was the reason why our Saviour did not undertake that which He was asked to do. 2. But, in the case in hand, although there might be a matter of great injustice in the partition of the estate, the elder and stronger and shrewder, perhaps, getting advantage of the younger, and defrauding him; yet it was quite possible that both of these brothers might be alike under the influence of corroding and hateful avarice. A man may demand his dues with a spirit just as selfish as that which withholds them. A man may be just as selfish in seeking his rights as another man is in withholding them from him. Both the despot and his victim--the evil-doer and the evil-sufferer--may be in a like selfishness, in a common bitterness, and in a common guilt. Human life is full of such eases and scenes. Every day, men that are hard, coarse, selfish, avaricious, envious, contentious, are striving together, and in full conflict, each sometimes wronged and sometimes wronging; but either way, and always, actor or recipient, of a worldly spirit, of a corrupt nature, of an intense selfishness, of a despotic pride, unjust and unlovely. While Christ refused, then, to assume the office of civil justice, or to interfere even by advice, He gave to both of these men, and to all upon that occasion, the instruction which the motive of the petitioner seemed to suggest. (H. W. Beecher.) Christ’ s judgment respecting inheritance I. THE SAVIOUR’ S REFUSAL TO . 1. He implied that it was not His part to interfere. “ Who made Me a Judge or a Divider?” He stands aloof, sublime and dignified. It was no part of His to take from the oppressor and give to the oppressed, much less to encourage the oppressed to take from the oppresser himself. It was His part to forbid oppression. It was a Judge’ s part to decide what oppression was. It was not His office to determine the boundaries of civil right, nor to lay down the rules of the descent of property. Of course there was a spiritual and moral principle involved in this question. But He would not suffer His sublime mission to degenerate into the mere task of deciding casuistry. He asserted principles of love, unselfishness, order, which would decide all questions; but the questions themselves He would not decide. He would lay down the great political principle, “ Render unto Caesar the things that be Caesar’ s, and unto God the things which are God’ s.” But He would not determine whether this particular tax was due to Caesar or not. So, too, He would say, justice, like mercy and truth, is one of the weightier matters of the law; but He would not decide whether in this definite case this or that brother had justice on his side. It was for themselves to determine that, and in that determination lay their responsibility. And thus religion deals with men, not cases; with human hearts, not casuistry. 2. In this refusal, again, it was implied that His kingdom was one founded on spiritual disposition, not one of outward law and jurisprudence. That this lawsuit should have been decided by the brothers themselves, in love, with mutual fairness, would have been much; that it should be determined by authoritative arbitration was, spiritually speaking, nothing. The right disposition of their hearts, and the right division of their property thence resulting, was Christ’ s kingdom. The apportionment of their property by another’ s division had nothing to do with His kingdom. Suppose that both were wrong--one oppressive, the other covetous. Then, that the oppressor should become generous, and the covetous liberal, were a great gain. But to take from one selfish brother in order to give to another selfish brother, what spiritual gain would there have been in this? Suppose again, that the retainer of the inheritance was in the wrong, and that the petitioner had justice on his side--that he was a humble, meek man, and his petition only one of right. Well, to take the property from the unjust and give it to Christ’ s servant, might be, and was, the duty of a judge. But it was not Christ’ s part, nor any gain to the cause of Christ. He does not reward His servants with inheritances, with lands, houses, gold. The kingdom of God is not meat and drink, but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost. Christ triumphs by wrongs meekly borne, even more than by wrongs legally righted. 3. He refused to be the friend of one, because He was the friend of both. He never was the champion of a class, because He was the champion of humanity. We may take for granted that the petitioner was an injured man--one at all events who thought himself injured; and Christ had often taught the spirit which would have made his brother right him; but He refused to take his part against his brother, just because he was his brother--Christ’ s servant, and one of God’ s family, as well as he. And this wasHis spirit always. The Pharisees thought to commit Him to a side when they asked whether it was lawful to give tribute to Caesar or not. But He would take no side as the Christ--neither the part of the government against the taxpayers, nor the part of the taxpayers against the government, II. THE SOURCE TO WHICH HE TRACED THIS APPEAL FOR A . He went to the very root of the matter. “ Take heed and beware of covetousness.” It was covetousness which caused the unjust brother to withhold; it was covetousness which made the defrauded brother indignantly complain to a stranger. It is covetousness which is at the bottom of all lawsuits, all social grievances, all political factions. The true remedy for this covetousness He then proceeds to give. “ A man’ s life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesses.” Now observe the distinction between His view and the world’ s view of humanity. To the question, What is a man worth? the world replies by enumerating what he has. In reply to the same question, the Son of Man replies by estimating what he is. Not what he has, but what he is, that, through time and through eternity, is his real and proper life. He declared the presence of the soul; He announced the dignity of the spiritual man; He revealed the being that we are. Not that which is supported by meat and drink, but that whose very life is in truth, integrity, honour, purity. (F. W. Robertson, M. A.) The bearing of the gospel on every-day life The Word of God, my friends, affords men direction in all the circumstances of life, inasmuch, at least, as it contains general rules which may be applied to particular cases. I. AND BETWEEN NEAR THE OF ARE VERY AND . It sometimes happens that the head of a family, or a very near relation, is no sooner laid in the grave, than the survivors, who expect to benefit in their substance by his decease, begin to strive about what he leaves behind him. How unbecoming, in the very face of such a memento of the vanity of earthly things, to be carried away by the desire of having, and that in such a way as to overlook the ordinary proprieties of life! Common feeling, not to speak of any higher principle, should at least teach them to keep such disputes to themselves (if they do at all arise), and not to outrage decency by making them public. II. We may remark, from this passage, that those WHO HAVE ANY TO LEAVE BEHIND THEM SHOULD BE CAREFUL TO SETTLE THEIR AFFAIRS BY A LATTER WILL, SO THAT JUSTICE MAY BE DONE AND AFTER THEY ARE GONE. In some cases the law of the land may be sufficient to divide an inheritance as justice and a man’ s own reasonable inclination might desire. In most cases, however, there would be room for litigation; and in many cases, especially where there is much property, something that equity or mercy requires will be neglected if there be no distinct testament. How far a man is at liberty to consult his own particular wishes on such an occasion, independently on the general principles of nearness of kindred, which are usually observed, is a very difficult question. No particular rules can be laid down to meet every case. The Christian should consult conscience, the Word of God, and, perhaps, also a judicious friend or two. III. THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST DOES NOT WITH CIVIL RIGHTS OR HUMAN LAWS. NO doubt it is intended and fitted to influence them indirectly, for everything ought to be managed in a way consistent with its holy precepts; but it gives no countenance to its adherents to disregard existing institutions or to usurp the places assigned to others. Dominion is not founded on grace. The provinces of civil and ecclesiastical government are quite distinct. Not but that they may, and should, be so managed as mutually to assist each other; but still, their office is distinct, and relates to quite different things. IV. Once more here, THIS PASSAGE IS TO IN SECULAR , ANN IN PUBLIC CIVIL OFFICES. (Jas. Foote, M.A.) A warning against worldliness and covetousness I. A RUDE . 1. This suggests a sad but common occurrence. Worldly thoughts obtruding themselves at unseasonable times. 2. This suggests a constantly-needed but oft-neglected duty. To take heed how we hear. II. A FITTING REBUKE. 1. It rebuked the man for his gross view of our Lord’ s mission. 2. It rebuked the man for the worldliness of his spirit. III. A MORAL LESSON. 1. The subject--covetousness. (1) Covetousness is “ an inordinate desire for gain” ; “ an avaricious disposition” ; “ a disposition to have more than others.” (2) Covetousness is foolishness. (a) For after it has attained its object there is no satisfaction. (b) It unfits the soul to enjoy spiritual things. 2. The elucidation of the subject. (1) A parable. (2) A very instructive parable. (a) It shows God’ s goodness to the wicked (Luke 12:16). (b) It shows the inadequacy of worldly prosperity to inspire gratitude (Luke 12:18). (c) It shows the degrading influence of worldly thoughts: (d) It shows the shortsightedness of worldliness. (e) It shows that God’ s eye is on all. (f) It shows the uncertainty of life. (g) It shows the relation of time to eternity. 3. The Divine application. (1) Selfishness and godliness incompatible (Luke 12:21). (2) Anxiety a sin (Luke 12:22). (3) The great duty. To be “ rich toward God.” (D. C. Hughes, M. A.) Covetousness I. IN ITS BEARING UPON THE OF TRUTH. 1. Consider for a moment the truths which Jesus had just been uttering. (1) The sin of hypocrisy. (2) The sin of the man-fearing spirit. (3) The comprehensiveness of God’ s care. (4) The blessed consequences of confessing Christ, and the dreadful consequences of denying Christ. (5) The appalling sin--the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. (6) The Divine help promised in times of persecution. 2. In the midst of utterances such as these, this man, filled with worldly thoughts, interrupted our Lord in His address. (1) Of how many in our day is this man a representative! (2) The most solemn truths uttered in the sanctuary, or spoken by friends, often fall as seed upon a hard-beaten road. II. IN ITS BEARING UPON THE SOUL’ S TRUE JOY. Two things are here stated. 1. That our Lord’ s mission was not to interfere in secular affairs. 2. That “ a man’ s life,” in the sense of true joy, does not arise from wealth or position or fame. III. IN ITS BEARING ON OUR FINAL DESTINY. 1. The parable shows that the most selfish of men may be prospered in worldly affairs. 2. The parable shows that the most abundant prosperity of the worldly-minded only intensifies their selfishness and blinds their spiritual vision. 3. This parable shows that, however farsighted and shrewd worldly-minded men may be in their business affairs, it is by their spiritual condition that God judges them. 4. This parable shows that the uncertainty of the time of death should have its legitimate weight with them. Lessons: 1. The sin to which our attention is here called is the crying sin of our age. 2. This is one of the most subtle and unconscious of all classes of sins to which we may be exposed. 3. It is a sin the most difficult to be reached by truth. 4. It is no less heinous and damning, because it is so subtle and unconscious. (D. C. Hughes, M. A.) Luke 12:15 Take heed and beware of covetousness Business life I shall try to keep in view the chief risk to the moral and religious nature which are incident to a business life, and my aim will be to show you where the best safeguard against it is to be sought. I. THE CHIEF DANGERS, WHAT ARE THEY? It is a misfortune in the path of a commercial trader to be kept in perpetual contact with the purely material value of all possible substances. The public sentiment of great business centres is apt to reckon a man’ s worth by his business profits. It is always tempted to erect an ignoble or defective ideal of success in life. I do not speak of the vulgar dangers to honesty and truthfulness which indeed beset men in all professions and classes. II. WHAT ARE THE ? 1. Cultivate to the utmost a youthful thirst for truth, and a youthful sympathy with what is ideal, unselfish, grand in conduct. 2. Cultivate a sympathizing contact with men and women in other than mere business relationships. These are safeguards of the secondary order. 3. The only primary and sufficient safeguard for any of us is the religion of Jesus Christ. See how the Christian man is guarded against settling down into a selfish worldling. (1) Religion opens the widest, freest outlook for the mind into the eternal truth, enlarging a man’ s range of spiritual sight, and enabling him to judge of all things in both worlds in their true proportion. (2) It supplies us for that reason with the only true and perfect standard by which to test the value of things, and so corrects the one-sided materialistic standard of business. (3) It transforms business itself from an ignoble to a noble calling, because it substitutes for the principle of mere profit the ideal of service. (J. O.Dykes, D. D.) On covetousness 1. It is not wrong to amass wealth. It is not wrong to increase it if you have the beginnings of it. Neither is it wrong to make provision for its safety. There is no moral wrong in the ownership and administration, or in the increase of wealth. It is not wealth that ever is a mischief. It is what it does to you that makes it injurious or beneficial. It is what you do with it that makes it injurious or beneficial. 2. It is not wrong, either, to be richer than other men. The essential difference of power in different individuals settles the question as to the Divine economy in this regard. Men are made of different executive forces, of different acquiring powers. And in the fact that men are made relatively weak or strong, that they are in ranks and gradations of inferiority or superiority with respect to natural endowments, there is the most unequivocal evidence that human society was not meant to be one long, fiat prairie-level, but that it was meant to be full of hills and valleys and gradations of every kind. And there is no harm in that. I am not injured by a man that is superior to me, unless he employs his superiority to tread me down. I am benefited by him if he employs it to lift me up. Superiority is as powerful to draw the inferior up as to pull them down, and it is comprised in the Divine plan of beneficence. And the same is true of wealth. 3. All the roads which lead to wealth that are right to anybody are right to Christians. What a Christian has not a right to do nobody has a right to do. Moral obligations rest on grounds which are common to me and to you. If there is any distinction here, the Christian has rights which the infidel has not. As a son of God, and as one who is attempting to carry himself according to the commands of God, the Christian may be supposed to have rights of premium. Therefore, if it is right for you to sail a ship, it is right for me to sail a ship; if it is right for you to traffic, it is right for me to traffic; if it is right for you to loan money on interest, it is right for me to loan money on interest. The circumstance of a man’ s being a Christian does not change his relations in any whir, except this, that if possible it gives him higher authority than others have to do whatever it is right for any man to do. All things are yours because you are a son of God. 4. Nay, the gift of acquiring wealth, commercial sagacity, creative industry, financial ability--these are only so many ways by which one may bring his gifts to bear upon the great ends of life and serve God. Some men, who are capable mechanics, capable artists, capable business men, wish to do good, and they say, “ Do you not think I had better preach?” I think you had. I think every man ought to preach. If you are a banker, behind the counter is your pulpit, and you can preach sermons there which no man in any other situation can. By practising Christian integrity in a business where others take permissions of selfishness, you can preach more effectually than in any other way. Every man must take his life, and serve God by it. If God has given a man literary capacity, genius for poetry, or the power of eloquence, it is to be consecrated and employed for the glory of God and the good of his fellow-men. He is to serve, not himself alone, but the cause of beneficence with it. If you have the skill of an artist, it is not given to you for your own selfish gratification and delight. These men that are made seers of truth through eyes of beauty are under the most fearful responsibilities and the most sacred obligations. If a man has given to him the skill of achieving results, the skill of conducting business, or pecuniary skill, he can serve God by that, if not as well, yet as really, as by any other consecrated power. Therefore a man is not forbidden either to have riches or to increase riches, or to employ any of the ordinary ways by which it is right to increase riches. If he have a gift in that direction, he is bound as a Christian man to develop it; and it is a talent for which God will hold him accountable. 5. It is the godlessness of selfishness, then, that is so wicked in wealth, in the methods of getting it, in the methods of keeping it, and in the methods of using it. It is selfishness that leads a man to undertake to procure wealth by means that disregard duty; it is selfishness that leads a man to set up wealth as the end of his life, for which he is willing to sacrifice all the sweet affections, all the finer tastes, all the sensibilities of conscience. The curse of wealth consists in the getting of it in a way which emasculates a man, and degrades his moral nature. The curse of wealth-getting is seen where a man amasses wealth only that it may shut him in from life, building himself round and round with his money, until at last he is encaverned with it, and dwells inside of it. Geologists sometimes find toads sealed up in rocks. They crept in during the for nation periods, and deposits closed the orifice through which they entered. There they remain, in long darkness and toad stupidity, till some chance blast or stroke sets them free. And there are many rich men sealed up in mountains of gold in the same way. If, in the midst of some convulsion in the community, one of these mountains is overturned, something crawls out into life which is called a man! This amassing of wealth as only a means of imprisonment in selfishness, is itself the thing that is wicked. The using of wealth only to make our own personal delights more rare, without regard to the welfare of others--this it is that is sinful. The Divine command is, “ Beware lest ye be rich and lay up treasure to yourself, and are not rich toward God.” If you have a surplus of one thousand dollars, this command is to you; if you have a surplus of ten thousand, it is to you; if you have a surplus of ten hundred thousand, it is not a what more to you. Now, my Christian brethren, are you rich toward God in the proportion in which you have been increasing your worldly wealth? I can tell you, unless your sympathies increase, unless your charities increase, unless your disposition to benefit your fellow-men increases, in the proportion in which your riches increase, you cannot walk the life you are walking without falling under the condemnation of this teaching of Christ. Your life is one of getting, getting, getting! and there is but one safety-valve to such a life; it is giving, giving, giving! If you are becoming less and less disposed to do good; if you are becoming less and less benevolent; if you are less and less compassionate toward the poor; if you say, “ I have worked myself almost to death to get my property, and why can I not be allowed to enjoy it?” if you hug your gold, and say, “ This is my money, and my business is to extract as much pleasure from it as I can” --then, my friend, you are in the jaws of destruction; you are sold to the devil; he has bought you! But if, with the increase of your wealth, you have a growing feeling of responsibility; if you have a real, practical consciousness of your stewardship in holding and using the abundance which God is bestowing upon you; if you feel that at the bar of God, and in the day of judgment, you must needs give an account of your wealth--then your money will not hurt you. Riches will not hurt a man that is benevolent, that loves to do good, and that uses his bounties for the glory of God and the welfare of men. But your temptations are in the other direction. I beseech of you, beware. (H. W. Beecher.) The nature and evil of covetousness I. THE MANNER OF THE CAUTION. 1. The great danger of this sin. (1) How apt we are to fall into it. (2) Of how pernicious a consequence it is to those in whom it reigns. 2. The great care men ought to use to preserve themselves from it. II. THE MATTER OF THE CAUTION. The vice our Saviour warns His hearers against is covetousness. 1. The nature of this vice. The shortest description that I can give of it is this: that it is an inordinate desire and love of riches; but when this desire and love are inordinate, is not so easy to be determined. And, therefore, that we may the better understand what the sin of covetousness is, which our Saviour doth so earnestly caution against, it will be requisite to consider more particularly wherein the vice and fault of it doth consist; that, whilst we are speaking against covetousness, we may not under that general word condemn anything that is commendable or lawful. To the end, then, that we may the more clearly and distinctly understand wherein the nature of this vice doth consist, I shall--First, Endeavour to show what is not condemned under this name of covetousness, either in Scripture or according to right reason; and--Secondly, What is condemned by either of these, as a plain instance or branch of this sin. I. WHAT THINGS ARE NOT UNDER THE NAME OF , either in Scripture or according to right reason, which yet have some appearance of it; namely, these three things: 1. Not a provident care about the things of this present life. 2. Not a regular industry and diligence for the obtaining of them; nor-- 3. Every degree of love and affection to them. I mention these three, because they may all seem to be condemned by Scripture, as parts or degrees of this vice, but really are not. II. I COME NOW TO SHOW WHAT IS IN UNDER THE NAME OF ; and by this we shall best understand wherein the nature of this sin doth consist. Now covetousness is a word of a large signification, and comprehends in it most of the irregularities of men’ s minds, either in desiring, or getting, or in possessing, and using an estate. 2. The evil and unreasonableness of this sin. (1) Because it takes men off from religion and the care of their souls. (2) Because it tempts men to do many things which are inconsistent with religion and directly contrary to it. (3) Because it is an endless and insatiable desire. (4) Because the happiness of human life doth not consist in riches. (5) Because fiches do very often contribute very much to the misery and infelicity of men. III. I come now, in the last place, to make some application of this discourse to ourselves. 1. Let our Saviour’ s caution take place with us, let these words of His sink into our minds: “ Take heed and beware of covetousness.” Our Saviour doubles the caution, that we may double our care. It is a sin very apt to steal upon us, and slily to insinuate itself into us under the specious pretence of industry in our callings, and a provident care of our families: but however it may be coloured over, it is a great evil dangerous to ourselves, and mischievous to the world. Now to kill this vice in us, besides the considerations before mentioned taken from the evil and unreasonableness of it, I will urge these three more: (1) That the things of this world are uncertain. (2) That our lives are as uncertain as these things; and-- (3) That there is another life after this. 2. By way of remedy against this vice of covetousness, it is good for men to be contented with their condition. 3. By way of direction, I would persuade those who are rich to be charitable with what they have. (Archbishop Tillotson.) The evil and folly of covetousness I. To EXPLAIN THE BEFORE US, AND TO JUSTIFY IT, that is, to show the meaning of the assertion, “ that a man’ s life doth not consist in the abundance of his possessions,” and to show that it is strictly true. 1. That the being and preservation of life doth not consist in nor hath any dependence on these things, every one must be sensible. No man imagineth that riches contributed to his existence, or that they are essential to the human constitution; not one power of nature is either the more or the less perfect for our having or wanting them. 2. As the being and the preservation of a man’ s life do not consist in nor depend on the abundance of the things that he possesseth, so neither do the highest and best ends of it. 3. The enjoyment of life doth not consist in riches; and as this is the only end which they have any pretence or appearance of answering, if upon a fair inquiry it shall be found that they come short of it, then it must be owned they are what our Saviour calleth them, deceitful; and His assertion in the text is true, that life doth not in any sense consist in them, which therefore is a strong argument to the purpose He applieth it to, namely, against covetousness. It is necessary to observe here, what every man must be convinced of upon the least reflection, that riches are not the immediate object of any original desire in the human nature. If we examine our whole constitution, with all the primary affections which belong to it, we shall find that this hath no place among them. And yet it is certain that the love of riches is become a very powerful lust in the human nature, at least in some minds, and they are thought of great importance to the comfortable enjoyment of life. Whence doth this arise? How doth happiness consist in them? It is plain that the total amount of their usefulness to the purposes of enjoyment is only this, that when other circumstances concur to render a man capable, they afford the larger means of it in various kinds. 1. Of sensual gratifications. 2. The pleasures of the fancy or imagination. 3. Of doing good to his fellow-creatures, either his own near relations or others, as his disposition inclineth him. This is, I think, stating the case fairly, and allowing all to riches which can be demanded for them. Let us now consider each of these particulars, that we may see of what importance they are to happiness, so far, I mean, as they are supplied, and the opportunities of them enlarged by riches. And, first, the pleasures of sense are of the very lowest kind, which a man considering as common with us to the brutal species cannot but think far from the chief happiness of a reasonable nature, and that the advantage of furnishing us with great plenty and variety of them is not extremely to be valued or gloried in. Besides, there are certain bounds fixed by nature itself to the appetites, beyond which we cannot pass in the gratification of them without destroying enjoyment and turning it into uneasiness. Another sort of pleasures are those of the imagination, arising from the beauties of nature or art, of which we have an internal sense, yielding delight, as we have the sensations of colours, sounds, and tastes, from external material objects, by our bodily organs which convey them. These, it is certain, afford great entertainment to the human life, though in various degrees, according to the different measure of exquisiteness or perfection in the sense itself, which is improved in some beyond others by instruction, observation, and experience; and according to the knowledge men have of the objects. Yet we must remember that these pleasures are not appropriated to the rich, nor do depend on riches, which are only the means of acquiring the property of them, in which the true enjoyment doth not consist. The beauties of nature are unconfined, and every man who hath a true sense of them may find objects enough to entertain it. The last, and indeed the truest and highest, enjoyment of life, is in doing good, or being useful to mankind. And of this riches affords the largest means, which enjoyeth life in the best manner, maketh the best provision for his own comfort in this world. But as this is not the case of the covetous man, it is perfectly agreeable to the text, which declareth that life, that is, enjoyment, doth not consist in abundant possessions; not that it doth not consist in parting with those possessions for the uses of charity. To set this matter in a just light, let it be observed, that the moderate desire and pursuit of riches is not at all inconsistent with virtue; so far from it, industry is a virtue itself, as being really beneficial to society, as well as to the person who useth it, furnishing him with the conveniences of life, and especially with the means of being useful to his fellow-creatures. But when a man hath used honest industry, so far he hath discharged his duty, and laid a foundation for all the true enjoyment which can arise from riches; for that doth not depend on success, or the actual obtaining of large possessions, but principally on the inward dispositions of the mind. III. Having thus explained our Saviour’ s assertion in the text, and showed the truth of it, let us next consider THE PURPOSE TO WHICH HE IT, NAMELY, AS A FROM . All that covetousness aimeth at is, the obtaining of large worldly possessions. Now supposing them to be obtained, which yet is very uncertain, but supposing it, and it is the most favourable supposition for the covetous man, what is he the better? If neither the being and preservation of life, nor the ends, nor the enjoyment of it, dependeth on this.(Bishop Abernethy.) Christ’ s warning against covetousness I. Covetousness is an INNATE sin. It was a principal part of the first transgression. In this first preference of temporal good to spiritual obedience and the favour of God may be seen, as in a glass, all after covetousness. From that fatal hour to the present, mankind universally have, “ by nature,” “ worshipped the creature more than the Creator,” proving themselves to be influenced by an innate propensity to grasp at earthly things, and to follow them in the place of God. II. Covetousness is a sin. The same may be said indeed of all sins; but of this more especially, because it is a decent sin. Other sins alarm, because of their interference with the passions and interests of our neighbours; and have, on that account, discredit and shame attached to them. Lying interrupts confidence, and weakens the bonds of society; murder lays its hand on the persons, and theft on the property of men; adultery invades the most sacred rights and breaks the dearest ties; even drunkenness, by its brutality and offensiveness to peace and order, is regarded with general disgust and odium. But where is the disgrace of covetousness? How regular a man may be, how sober, how industrious, how moral, and yet be the slave of this vice! III. Covetousness is a sin. This also may be said of most other sins, but eminently so of covetousness. It leads to prevarication and falsehood. Then comes hardness of heart. He that sets his affections on money, will love it more than he will love his fellow-man. He will have little pity for the sufferings of the poor, or if he have a little he will stifle it, lest his pity should cost him something. Still less will he compassionate the spiritually wretched. IV. Covetousness is an sin. It is not merely an omission of duty, or a transgression of law; but it is an abuse of much mercy. For who gives a man power to get wealth? whence come health, ability, and labour, skill, opportunity, success;--come they not from God?--could any man earn one shilling if God did not enable him?--and if any man have property, not of his own earning, could he have been possessed of it but for the kind providence of God? And we know that He bestows it that it may be employed in His service and for His glory. But covetousness refuses so to employ it. V. Covetousness is a GREAT sin. It originates in mistrust of God, and unbelief in His word. VI. Covetousness is a sin. Other sins slay their thousands, but this slays its ten thousands. Many other sins are confined to the openly ungodly, and have their victims exclusively from among those that are without; but this sin enters into the visible Church, and is the chief instrument in the hands of Satan of destroying the souls of professors. (Essex Remembrancer.) Warning against covetousness I. BREEDS , ANXIETY, ENVY, . And hence it comes about that covetousness takes all the sweetness and peace out of our life. It makes us dissatisfied with our homes and surroundings. It keeps us for ever anxious as to our relative position. It sets us continually on comparison. It underestimates the pleasures and joys of life, and overvalues and magnifies its troubles. It makes the poor man wretched in his poverty, and hardens his heart against the rich. It energizes the man of competence with new vigour to compass overflowing abundance, and pushes forward the wealthy in the struggle for pre-eminence and power. In the prosperous it naturally develops into greed or reckless extravagance; in the disappointed, into hawking envy or green-eyed jealousy. It invades and spoils our religious life. It embitters us during the week by thoughts of our inferiority. It frets continually at the ordering of Providence. It destroys sweet confidence in God’ s wise and loving care. It sees evidences of the Divine partiality in the inequalities of the human lot. The good graciously granted turns to ashes on the lips because another has it in greater abundance. It keeps many a one from the house of God. It follows many another to the sanctuary to spoil the worship, and, through the sight of the eyes, to gangrene the soul more perfectly, and send it home burning with a deeper envy. II. AND THE . Covetousness is to the mind what a distorting or coloured medium is to the eye. Just as everything in a landscape seen through such a medium is out of proportion or falsely coloured, so everything in life seen through the medium of covetousness appears under fearful distortion or most deceptive colouring. It breaks up the white light of truth into prismatic hues of falsehood and deceit. III. IT HARDENS THE HEART AND THE . A cherished covetousness gradually crystallizes into habit and principle. It narrows and pinches the entire being. It grows strong by indulgence. The more it has the mere it wants. The more it gets the tighter it grasps it. An avaricious millionaire will haggle for a halfpenny as quickly as a day labourer. No meaner or more metallic being can be found than he in whom covetousness has done its legitimate work. And hence comes much of the heart-ache of individuals, the misery of families, and the trouble of society. It leads men to deprive themselves of the comforts of life. It is deaf to the voice of natural affection. IV. IT TENDS TO AND ENDS IN CRIME. A strong desire to get confuses the judgment as to the proper means of getting, and gradually becomes unscrupulous in the use of means; ultimately all hesitation is overcome, all restraints broken through, all dangers braved. Get, it will at all hazards. Not that every covetous man becomes a criminal; but this is the tendency in every case. And when we remember that all overreaching, all petty deception and cheating, is in reality crime, it will go hard with the covetous man to clear his skirts. There is a vast amount of crime unseen by the law, but perfectly open to the view of heaven. “ There’ s no shuffling there.” But much of the known crime of the world--some of it the most atrocious and unnatural--springs directly from covetousness. Whence comes the reckless speculation, the stock-jobbing and gambling, which agitate the markets and unsettle trade? Whence the defalcations, breaches of trust, the forgeries which startle us by their frequency and enormity? Whence the highway robberies, burglaries, murders, which have affrighted every age, and still fill our sleeping hours with danger? The answer is plain: From a desire to get, cherished until it would not be denied. Such a desire in time becomes overmastering; it balks at nothing. Out of it spring crimes of every name and form, from the littlest to the most colossal, from the murder of a reputation to the murder of a nation, from the betrayal of a trust to the betrayal of the Son of God. V. IT RUINS THE SOUL. In aiming to get the world, man loses himself. Every consideration heretofore urged tends to this. The real life is neglected; God and His claims are forgotten. In sensual enjoyment the soul is drowned, and suddenly the end comes. (Henry S. Kelsey.) Wealth not necessary to an ideal life “ He became poor.” My brethren, what a thought is this! The Lord of heaven, God the Almighty, the All-rich, the All-possessing, chose, when He came among His creatures, to come as a poor man. He who is in the form of God, “ took upon Him the form of a servant.” Earthly poverty, in the fullest sense of the word, He accepted as His own. Born more hardly than the very poorest peasant among us, even in a stable, cradled in a manger, brought up in a poor mechanic’ s cottage, His food rough barley loaves, His sleeping-place ever uncertain, His disciples poor men like Himself, hard-working fishermen--finally, stripped of His very garments, and left absolutely naked, to die! Surely, if riches and possessions were indeed the highest end of man’ s being, He who came to restore man to dignity and happiness would have come among us rich and great. So far as our human minds can fathom, the work of our salvation might have been accomplished by one who was rich in earthly things, as well as by One who was poor. The sacrifice might still have atoned. It is even possible to imagine an aspect under which the contrast of the sacrifice itself would have been heightened, had a rich man rather than a poor man died for his fellow-men. Yet, at a time when riches and the good things which riches procure abounded in the world, He chose, deliberately and willingly chose, the lot of the poor, and is among His own creatures “ as He that serveth.” All “ the kingdoms of the earth, and the glory of them,” He deliberately cast aside. And since, indeed, He, the typical Man, the Head of the new Creation, the “ Firstborn of every creature,” chose thus to be stripped, and bare, and poor, does He not, I pray you, teach this lesson, that the highest condition, the very perfection of man’ s nature is even such as this? Nay, more. I hesitate not to say that from the moment Christ came thus among us, poverty--yea, poverty--has its own special blessing. (W. J. Butler, M. A.) Covetousness I. THE NATURE AND GENERAL CAUSES OF . 1. It does apt consist in a lawful care about the things of this life, or in a proper regard to the principles of prudence and frugality. But it consists in too eager a desire after the things of this life. Setting our hearts upon them. 2. It may be known by the tenacity with which we hold the things of this life. Treating them as our chief good. 3. The general causes of covetousness are principally these: (1)A corrupt and perverted state of mind. (2) Discontent with, and distrust of, the providence of God. (3) Forgetfulness of the soul, and those things which are eternal. II. ITS EVIL AND EFFECTS. Consider-- 1. Its effects personally. It is the source of many vices. “ They who will be rich,” &c. (1 Timothy 6:9). It tempts men to base and unjust means to get money. It hardens the heart, blunts the feedings, and renders the soul callous and sordid. It fills the mind with distraction, and prevents all true and solid enjoyment. It keeps out Christ and salvation. 2. Its effects on society. A covetous man is a misanthrope to his species. 3. Its effects in reference to God. 4. Its effects as exhibited in the examples revelation furnishes. Let us then notice the means necessary. III. FOR ITS AND CURE. 1. Serious consideration of the shortness and uncertainty of life. How madlike, inordinately to love what must so shortly be taken from us! 2. A reflection on our responsibility to God for all we possess. Stewards. Day of reckoning will arrive, God will judge us. All give an account, and receive according as our works shall be. 3. A renewal of our hearts by the grace and Spirit of God. 4. Imitation of Christ’ s blessed example. 5. Repeated and prayerful examination of our hearts before God. (J. Burns, D. D.) The warning against covetousness Covetousness is like a dangerous rock in the sea of life, over which we have to sail. Multitudes of wrecks are scattered all around it. The warning of our text is like a light-house, which G d has caused to be built upon this rock, to give us notice of the danger to be found here, in order that we may avoid it. I. WILL DESTROY OUR . II. WILL INJURE OUR . III. WILL LESSEN, OR LOSE, OUR REWARD. Two Christian friends called on a wealthy farmer one day, to get some money for a charitable work in which they were engaged. He took them up to the cupola, on the top of his house, and showed them farm after farm, stretching far away, on the right hand, and on the left, and told them that all that land belonged to him. Then he took them to another cupola, and showed them great herds of horses, and sheep, and cattle, saying, as he did so--“ Those are all mine too. I came out here a poor boy, and have earned all this property myself.” One of his friends pointed up to heaven, and said--“ And how much treasure have you laid up yonder?” After a pause, hesaid, as he heaved a sigh, “ I’ m afraid I haven’ t got anything there.” “ And isn’ t it a great mistake,” said his friend, “ that a man of your ability and judgment should spend all your days in laying up so much treasure on earth, and not laying up any in heaven?” The tears trickled down the farmer’ s cheeks as he said--“ It does look foolish, don’ t it?” Soon after this, that farmer died. He left all his property for others to use, and went into the presence of God only to find that his love of money, and the wrong use he had made of it, had caused him to lose all the reward which he might have had in heaven. Some years ago, near Atlanta, in Georgia, there lived a man who was a member of the Church. He was a person of some influence in that neighbourhood. But he was a covetous man, very fond of money, and always unwilling to pay his debts. He had a little granddaughter, about nine years old, who was living with him. She was a bright, intelligent young Christian. She had heard of her grandpa’ s love of money, and his unwillingness to pay his debts, spoken of, and it grieved her very much. One morning, as they were sitting at breakfast, she said--“ Grandpa, I had a dream about you, last night.” “ Did you? Well, tell me what it was.” “ I dreamed that you died last night. I saw the angels come to take you to heaven. They took you in their arms, and began to go up till they were almost out of sight. Then they stopped, and flew round awhile, but without going any higher. Presently they came down with you, and laid you on the ground, when their leader said--‘ My friend, you are too heavy for us. We can’ t carry you up to heaven. It’ s your debts that weigh you down. If you settle with those you owe, we will come for you again before long.’” The old gentleman was very much touched by this. He saw the danger he was in from his covetousness. He resolved to struggle against it. The first thing after breakfast, he went to his room, and in earnest prayer asked God to forgive his sin and to help him to overcome it. Then he went out and paid all his debts; and after that was always prompt and punctual in paying what he owed. So he minded the warning of the text, and was kept from losing his reward. (R. Newton, D. D.) Covetousness I. THE NATURE OF . It is the love of money. A passion that grows upon men. We begin by loving it for the advantages it procures, and then we learn insensibly to love it for its own sake, or perhaps for some imaginary uses to which we flatter ourselves we shall apply it at some future time. We avoid certain extremes, and thus escape the imputation of covetousness, but we are not on that account the less influenced by the greediness of filthy lucre--we have given our hearts none the less to it on that account. And this passion grows in a most remarkable manner. Men encourage it in one another, and many a look seems, even without a word, to say, “ Taste, and see how good money is.” Thus, by degrees, the love of money manifests and extends itself, making of him who cherishes it, in the words of our Lord, “ a servant of mammon.” Verily He was wise who said, “ Take head, and beware of covetousness.” Further, this love of money takes different forms and changes its name among men, without however being in any respect changed in the sight of Him who kneweth the heart. 1. One man loves money to keep--this is the covetous man properly so called--the covetous man according to the true meaning of the word. He may possibly succeed in avoiding the odium of the title, but to separate him from his treasure would be to separate him from a part of his existence, and he could willingly say of money what God has said of blood, “ Money, it is the life.” 2. Another man loves money to spend it. This is the prodigal. A man may be at the same time covetous and prodigal. These two dispositions, instead of excluding one another, mutually encourage each other. Thus a Roman historian who knew human nature well, mentions this trait among others in the character of the notorious Cataline: “ He was covetous of the wealth of ethers, lavish of his own.” 3. A third man loves money for the sake of power. This is the ambitious man. It is not the desire of hoarding that rules him--it is not the love of spending which possesses him, but the delight of his eyes and the pride of his heart is to witness the influence which money gives him. Of these three forms of covetousness, miserly covetousness is especially the vice of old age; prodigal covetousness that of youth; and ambitious covetousness that of manhood. But covetousness belongs to all ages and conditions. II. THE SIN OF . I imagine we too generally underrate the judgment which God passes upon covetousness. We think that we are at full liberty to enrich ourselves as much as we can, and then to do what we please with the wealth that we have acquired. Thus we give ourselves up to covetousness. We should not act thus with respect to intemperance, to theft, but it seems that covetousness is quite another sort of sin. Whilst these vices disgrace those who are guilty of them--whilst they entail consequences injurious to the peace and tranquility of society, covetousness has something more plausible, more prudent, more respectable about it. It generally lays claim to honest worthy motives, and the world will dignify it by the name of natural ambition, useful industry, praiseworthy economy. I may even go a step further. A covetous man may be in a certain sense a religious man. He may be quite an example in his respectful attention to the worship and ordinances of God. In fact(the love of money is almost the only vice a man can entertain while he preserves the appearance of piety. And there is great reason to fear that of all sins, this one will ruin the greatest number of those who profess to serve God. Instances: Balaam, Achan, Gehazi, Judas, etc. In fact, a man cannot turn to the Lord but covetousness must perpetually oppose him, from the earliest preception of religious impressions, to the most advanced period of his faith. Has he only just been called by the Lord and bidden to the feast? Covetousness persuades two out of three to excuse themselves on the plea: “ I have bought a piece of ground, and I must needs go and till it” --or, “ I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I must needs go and prove them.” Has he begun to listen with interest to the truth and received the good seed in his heart? Covetousness plants thorns there also: “ soon the cares of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, choke the Word, and it becomes unfruitful.” Has he advanced still further in the way, and gone some time in the paths of piety? Covetousness still despairs not of turning him out of them, and of including him amongst the number of those who, “ having coveted money, have erred from the faith.” Happy indeed is he, if, “ taking the whole armour of God,” he knows how to “ withstand in the evil day, and having done all to stand.” Happy if he does not imitate those imprudent travellers, whom Bunyan describes as leaving, on the invitation of Demas, the way to the holy city to visit a silver mine in the hill Lucre. “ Whether,” says this truly spiritual writer, “ they fell into the pit by looking over the brink thereof; or whether they went down to dig; or whether they were smothered in the bottom by the damps that commonly arise--of these things I am not certain; but this I observed, that they were never seen again in the way.” Ah! dear brethren, “ take heed, and beware of covetousness!” III. We have now, however, to consider THE GOD FOR . And this condemnation and punishment begins in this life. There is no passion which renders its victims more truly miserable. Solomon tells us that the lover of money cannot satisfy himself with money. His cares increase with his wealth. Every one enjoys it except himself. (J. Jessop, M. A.) A warning against covetousness The great point of instruction in this chapter is, dependence on God; that He is all-sufficient for the happiness of the soul, and that He will give what is needful for the body. The particular point of the text is, a warning against covetousness; and never was there a day in which the warning was more needed, when a most inordinate thirst of money-getting is abroad, when speculations of the most extensive kind are afloat, and when money-crimes of the most extravagant kind have shocked the public mind. I. THE WARNING. Covetousness is like a fire, one of the four things which are never satisfied (Proverbs 30:15). You may heap fresh fuel upon it, but it only burns the higher, and its demands are greater. Let me ask, does your present prosperity lead you to regard the warning of the text more? to believe that there is danger in your present position? If your soul be in a healthy condition you will pay more attention to the text. But you may say, “ Oh! my gains as yet are very slight, I have made but little money, I scarcely feel the warning can be applicable to me; when I have made a fortune, then I will consider.” “ Take heed, and beware of covetousness,” saith the Lord. But suppose your success in business should continue, that you reach the very point at which you aim, would you then be more likely to accept our Lord’ s warning than now? Nay, less likely; for you would then be more confirmed in disregard of what He says than you are now; you would be less a believer in His Word than now. Take heed now. II. THE REASON FOR THIS WARNING. 1. Because money cannot save the soul, and therefore cannot secure happiness in the next life. 2. Because riches make to themselves wings and fly away, and a man may thus be deprived of what he builds on for happiness. 3. Because of the uncertainty of life. The parable which succeeds the text illustrates this. Although this rich man had ample provision for the body so long as it lasted, yet his goods could not ward off death; still less could they provide for the happiness of the soul when God required it in another state of existence. These considerations are enough to show us that “ a man’ s life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth.” You may ask, then, What does a man’ s life consist in? 1. In a heart at peace with God through Jesus Christ our Lord; in pardon of sin; in acceptance with God; in the knowledge that this poor dying life is not all, but that there is a life beyond the grave, blessed and everlasting, purchased by the blood of Christ, and to which believers shall be kept by the power of God through faith. 2. In a well-founded hope of eternal life; in the knowledge of what Jesus Christ has done for sinners; in a spiritual understanding of the value of Christ’ s obedience unto death, His resurrection and ascension; in the assurance that all the promises of Scripture are “ Yea and Amen in Christ,” and will be fulfilled to all who trust Him. 3. In being contented with the station in which God has placed us, and the means which God has given us, feeling assured that if we could have served God better in another station there He would have placed us, and if we could have used more means rightly and for His glory, He would have given them to us; in a heart which recognizes God’ s hand in all dispensations, and which is able to say “ Amen “ to all He does in the way of submission, and “ Alleuia” in the way of praise (Philippians 4:11, and Revelation 19:4). 4. In an earnest desire to serve God and our neighbour. There is no real happiness without a desire and endeavour to do good and to obey God’ s Word; and, as I have already said, our usefulness will ever be in proportion to our conformity to the image of the Son of God. This is true happiness: not exemption from trial and discipline, but the assurance of the sympathy of Christ under it, and the belief that “ all things shall work together for good to them that love God” --the confidence that my Father, the Father who loves me, rules all. This will be the greatest safeguard against the love of money, and the crimes which spring out of it; this will keep a man humble, moderate, prayerful, holy, and happy, and enable him better to resist temptation in whatever shape it may present itself. (W. Reeve, M. A.) On covetousness I. CAUSES OF . 1. A corrupt and perverted judgment. We form a false opinion of the world, and think more highly of it than it merits. 2. Distrust of the providence of God. 3. Involving ourselves too much in the world. 4. Neglecting to look at things unseen and eternal. II. BAD EFFECTS AND OF , 1. It tempts men to unlawful ways of getting riches. 2. It tempts men to base and sinful ways of keeping what they have thus procured. 3. It fills the soul with disquietude and distraction. 4. It prevents all good, and is an inlet and encouragement to evil. Nothing so soon and so effectually stops the ear and shuts the heart against religious impressions. 5. It excludes from the kingdom of God. III. FOR THE AND CURE OF . 1. Endeavour to be convinced of the vanity of all worldly possessions. They are insufficient and uncertain. 2. Seek Divine grace to enable you to set bounds to your desires. 3. Learn to order your affairs with discretion. 4. Cast all your cares upon God. (S. Lavington.) Our Lord’ s warning against covetousness Here observe-- 1. THE MANNER of our Lord’ s caution; He doubles it; not saying, “ Take heed” alone, or “ beware” only; but, “ Take heed,” and “ beware” both. This argues, that there is a strong inclination in our natures to this sin; the great danger we are in of falling into it, and of what fatal consequence it is to them in whom this sin reigns. 2. THE MATTER of the caution, of the sin of which our Saviour warns his hearers against, and that is covetousness: “ Take heed, and beware of covetousness” ; where, under the name and notion of covetousness, our Saviour doth not condemn a provident care for the things of this life, nor a regular industry and diligence for obtaining of them, nor every degree of love and affection to them; but by covetousness is to be understood an eager and insatiable desire after the things of this life, or using unjust ways and means to get or increase an estate; seeking the things of this life, with the neglect of things infinitely better, and placing their chief happiness in riches. 3. THE REASON of this caution; “ because a man’ s life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth.” Human life is sustained by a little; therefore abundance is not necessary, either to the support or comfort of it. It is not a great estate and vast possession that makes a man happy in this world; but a mind suited to our condition, whatever it be. (W. Burkitt.) Sin masked by wealth What could be more natural, they would ask, than that he should make arrangements for the accommodation of the vast increase of his wealth? Why should he not make the most of what he had? Why should he not spend time and thought on a matter of so great importance? Alas! this is exactly what our Lord calls “ the deceitfulness of riches.” “ Some sins are open beforehand, going before to judgment.” Every one admits their sinfulness. It is not so with riches. Neither the possessors of riches nor those about them perceive in them danger, or the possibility of sinning in their use. Often rich men actually know not that they are rich. There is a respectability in being rich which masks a hundred forms of evil. Most of the sins which are admitted to be sins are such as are injurious to society. But the habits which wealth brings are exactly those in which society most delights, and therefore no warning voice, no hand of chastisement, are lifted against the selfishness, unthankfulness, self-satisfaction, vanity, pride, which follow too often in the train of riches. Against drunkenness, dishonesty, falsehood, and the like, we all hold up our bands and eyes, but these may pass. (W. J. Butler, M. A.) A man’ s life consisteth not in the abundance A man’ s life I. WHAT A MAN’ S LIFE IS NOT. “ A man’ s life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth.” It is a very common mistake to suppose that a true life is a successful life, a prosperous and wealthy man is said to have succeeded in life. But that is not the sort of life to which Jesus refers in the text. He shows us in one place the picture of a man who had been prosperous, one who wore purple and fine linen, and fared sumptuously every day; one whom many had envied. Yet his life was not a success, and there are none of us who would care to change places with him. The gospel also shows us another example of a mistaken life. It shows us a young ruler who had great possessions, and many good qualities, yet his life was not a success: he went away from the true Life, he went away from Jesus. No, a man’ s life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth. II. WHAT A MAN’ S LIFE IS. It matters not whether we are rich or poor, successful or unfortunate, clever or dull; the secret of a true life consists in trying to do our duty towards God and our neighbour in that station of life to which it has pleased God to call us. This is the only true life, the only life worth living, the only life which brings comfort here, and happiness hereafter, since “ the path of duty is the way to glory.” Some one has said very truly, “ The word duty seems to me the biggest word in the world, and is uppermost in all my serious doings.” When Lord Nelson lay dying, in the hour of his last great victory, at Trafalgar, his last words were, “ Thank God, I have done my duty.” Believe me, brethren, his is the only true life who can say at the last, feeling all his failures and mistakes, and humbly conscious of his weakness, “ Thank God, I have tried to do my duty.” There is only one path for us to tread in as Christian people, and that is the path of duty marked out for us by God. 1. This life, if truly carried out, will be an earnest life. To do work well, we must be in earnest. If a labourer is set to clear a field of weeds, and if he is in earnest, he takes two hands to his work. So if we are to get rid of the weeds of evil habits and besetting sins, if we are to sweep the house, and search diligently till we find the precious treasure which we have lost, we must put two hands to the work. Every man who wants to live a true life must have a definite object, and be in earnest in reaching it. Those who succeed are those who aim high. The schoolboy who is contented with the second place in his class will never be first. The man who is content to sleep in the valley will never reach the mountain-top of success. A true life is one of duty towards God and our neighbour, done earnestly and with our might; a life which aims at heaven, a life whose ruling principle is the will of God. 2. And again, the true life is not only an earnest life, but also an unselfish life. God will not only have us good ourselves, but will have us make others good. We all influence our fellow-men for good or evil, lust as we ourselves are good or evil. A bad man in a parish or community is like a plague-spot, he is not only bad himself, but he makes others bad. A good man in a similar place is like a sweet flower in a garden, beautiful in himself, and by shedding sweetness around him making the lives of others beautiful. Believe me, the best sermon is the example of a good life. (H. J.Wilmot Buxton, M. A.) Covetousness I. WHAT IS. Mainly an inordinate respect and desire for earthly property. Its worst form is the desire for earthly goods at the expense of others. II. WHERE HAS ITS ROOTS. Love of creature more than Creator. A vice which degrades human nature; and a sin which dishonours God, and violates His law. III. How SHOWS ITSELF. A grasping habit. Dissatisfaction with present possessions. The covetous man’ s sole interest in life lies in his accumulations. IV. WHITHER IS PRONE TO LEAD. Hardened heart. V. THE END TO WHICH BRINGS THE VICTIM AT THE LAST. (J. R. Thomson, M. A.) Money valued at more than money’ s worth I. THE AILMENT;--THE OF MEN, WHICH DRAWS DOWN THIS REPROOF FROM THE LORD. The precise point with which we are at present concerned is this: An erroneous estimate of wealth pervades this community. Money is valued at more than money’ s worth. This lies at the root of the evil. The high esteem in which money is held, gives impetus to the hard race with which it is chased. The aim follows the estimate. Whatever is in a community by common consent accounted most valuable, will be practically followed with the greatest eagerness. A false reckoning has been cast up as to where the chief good of a country lies, and the mass is moving on in a direction many points aside from the course of safety. They give away for it that which is far more precious than it. One of the oldest memories of my mind relates to a case entirely analogous. The event lies far back in childhood--I might even say infancy. The French prisoners in a Government depot (now the general prison at Perth), were allowed to hold a kind of fair, where they sold from within their railings a variety of curious articles of their own manufacture, to visitors whom curiosity had attracted to see the strangers. Thither I was taken one day, with all my money in my pocket, to see the Frenchmen. During a momentary absence of the person in charge, I set my heart upon a rude bit of wood daubed with gaudy colours, and called Napoleon. The man who possessed it, seeing me alone, accosted me, told me in broken English that nothing could be more suitable for me, and offered to sell it: at once I gave him all the money I possessed, and carried off my prize. Search was made for the man who had cheated me, but he had disappeared behind his comrades, and we never saw him more. I was obliged to return home with a sad heart, and an empty hand, destitute of sundry useful articles which I had been led to expect, and which my pence would have purchased, if they had rightly been laid out. I distinctly remember yet the deep melancholy that came over my spirit, as the reality came home to me that the money was gone, and that there was no remedy. It is lawful to obtain a lesson by comparing great things with small Men are like silly children in the marketplace of life. They are taken by the glitter of a worthless toy. They buy it. They give their all for it. If you give your time, your hands, your skill, your heart for wealth, you are taken in. Even the wealth you have obtained cannot be kept. This habit of accounting money the principal thing, a habit caught up in childhood from the prevailing tone of society, and strengthened by the example of those whom the world honours--it is this that lays bare our defences, and makes us an easy prey to the destroyer. Those who have money usually plume themselves upon the possession of it, without reference to any other claim on the respect of mankind. Simply in virtue of their gold, they take a high place, assume an important air, and expect the homage of the multitude. A rich man will despise a poor man, though the poor man inherits a nobler genius and leads a better life. The claim made might expose the folly of a few; but the claim conceded fastens folly down as a general characteristic of the community. How few there are who will measure the man by his soul--who will neither fawn upon wealth, nor envy it--who on account of it will neither set its possessor up nor down--who, in judging of his character, will ignore altogether the accident of his wealth, and award the honour which is due to the man, according as he fears God and does good to his brethren I In the practical estimation of this community, riches cover a multitude of sins. Oh, if men would learn to weigh it in the balance of the sanctuary, to see it in the light of eternity; if we could get now impressed on our minds the estimate of money which we will all have soon, it would not be allowed to exercise so much effect in our lives. II. THE WARNING WHICH SUCH A MORAL DREW FORTH FROM THE LORD, AND THE REASON BY WHICH IT IS : “ Take heed and beware of covetousness, for a man’ s life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth.” The best method of applying the caution will be to expound the specific ground on which it is here made to rest. There are three different senses in which “ a man’ s life” may be understood, all of them obvious, and each charged with a distinct practical lesson. 1. Life in its literal and natural sense--the life of the body--does not consist in the “ abundance” of the things which one may possess. The life is in no degree dependent on the “ surplus “ over and above the supply of nature’ s wants. A very small portion of the fruit of the earth suffices to supply a man’ s necessities. The main elements are, a little food to appease hunger, and some clothing to ward off the cold. In this matter, God has brought the rich and the poor very near to each other in life, and at death the slight difference that did exist will be altogether done away. As a general rule, it may be safely affirmed that the life of the rich is as much endangered by the luxuries of their abundance, as that of the poor by the meanness of their food. The air and exercise connected with his labour go as far to preserve his health as the shelter and ease which the rich man enjoys. Looking simply to life--mere animal being and wellbeing--we are justified in affirming that abundance, or overplus of goods, is no advantage to it. This is a wise arrangement of our Father in heaven. He is kind to the poor. He has protected them by laws that men cannot touch--laws imbedded in the very constitution of the universe. In this view of the case, it is not consonant with right reason to make the acquisition of wealth the main object of desire and effort. 2. “ A man’ s life” may be considered as the proper exercise and enjoyment of a rational, spiritual, immortal being--that use of life which the all-wise Creator manifestly contemplated when He arranged the complex constitution of man. Hitherto we have been speaking of animal life merely, common to us with the lower orders of creatures; now we speak of such a life as becomes a creature made in the image of God, and capable of enjoying Him for ever. To this life, how very little is contributed by the surplus of possessions over and above what nature needs! Indeed, that surplus more frequently hinders than helps the highest enjoyment of man’ s life. The parable which immediately follows the text bears, and was intended to bear, directly on this subject. Besides the folly of the rich man, in view of death and eternity, he made a capital mistake even in regard to his life in this world, when he said to his soul, “ Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years, take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry.” The increase of riches does not increase a soul’ s enjoyment. In proportion as a rich man is indifferent to his wealth, his enjoyment of life does not spring from it, but from other sources. In proportion as his heart is given to his wealth, his enjoyment of life decreases. It is a law--a law of God which misers feel--that, if a man loves money, then the more money he gets, the less he enjoys it. 3. Life in the highest sense, the life of the soul, obviously does not depend in any degree on the abundance of earthly possessions. The whole world gained cannot prevent the loss of the soul. Consider the first object, a man’ s life. It is the life of the dead in sin, the life by regeneration, the life quickened by the Spirit and sustained in Christ, the life which, being hid with Christ in God, shall never die. This is a great thing for a man. Hear the word of the Lord--that abundance is not your life. It is not so needful as your life. If you take it too near your heart, it will quench your life. Ye cannot serve two masters. Expressly, ye cannot serve these two, God and Mammon. Money, like fire, is a good servant, but a bad master. It is this surplus, this superabundance, that is the dangerous thing. When it is sought as if it were life to a soul, it becomes to that soul death. When a man falls into deep water, he could easily preserve his life if he would permit his whole body to lie beneath the surface, except so much of his mouth and nostrils as is necessary for the admission of air. It is the instinctive, but unwise, effort to raise portions of the body above the water, that sinks the whole beneath it. It is the weight of that portion which has been, by a convulsive effort, unnecessarily raised, that presses down the body, and drowns the man. It is by a similar law in the province of morals that avarice destroys the life of the soul. The whole amount of money that a man obtains for the purpose of using, and actually does legitimately use, does no harm to the interests of his soul. It may be great, or it may be small, while it is kept beneath the surface, so to speak--kept as a servant, and used as an instrument for legitimate objects--it is as to spiritual matters indifferent. So far as money is concerned, the man is in equilibrium, and his spiritual character will depend on other influences. But when some portion is raised above the line--when it is taken from a servant’ s place, and raised to that of a master--when a surplus is sought, not for use but for its own sake--when the love of money begins--when it is set up by the man above himself, as an object of his affection--then that surplus, whether great or small, presses down the soul, and the man sinks in spiritual death. It is this lust that “ drowns men in perdition” (1 Timothy 6:11). (W. Arnot.) The miser’ s misery; There was once a nobleman living in Scotland who was very rich. But his covetousness, or love of money, was very great. Whenever he received any money, he turned it into gold and silver, and stowed it away in a great chest which he kept in a strong vault, that had been built for this purpose down in the cellar. One day a farmer, who was one of his tenants, came to pay his rent. But when he had counted out the money, he found that it was just one farthing short; yet this rich lord was such a miser that he refused the farmer a receipt for the money, until the other farthing was paid. His home was five miles distant, lie went there, and came back with the farthing. He settled his bill, and got his receipt. Then he said, “ My lord, I’ ll give you a shilling if you’ ll let me go down into your vault and look at your money.” His lordship consented, thinking that was an easy way to make a shilling. So he led the farmer down into the cellar and opened his big chest, and showed him the great piles of gold and silver that were there. The farmer gazed at them for awhile, and then said: “ Now, my lord, I am as well off as you are.” “ How can that be?” asked his lordship. “ Why, sir,” said the farmer, “ you never use any of this money. All that you do with it, is to look at it. I have looked at it too, and so I’ m just as rich as you are.” That was true. The love of that selfish lord for his money, made him think of it day and night, and the fear lest some robber should steal it, took away all his comfort and happiness, and made him perfectly miserable. The terrible evil of covetousness Three men, who were once travelling together, found a large sum of money on the road. To avoid being seen, they went into the woods near by, to count out the money, and divide it among themselves. They were not far from a village, and as they had eaten up all their food, they concluded to send one of their number, the youngest in the company, into the village to buy some more food, while they would wait there till he came back. He started on his journey. While walking to the village, he talked to himself in this way: “ How rich my share of this money has made me! But how much richer I should be if I only had it all! And why can’ t I have it? It is easy enough to get rid of those other two men. I can get some poison in the village, and put it into their food. On my return I can say that I had my dinner in the village, and don’ t want to eat any more. Then they will eat the food, and die, and so I shall have all this money instead of only having one-third of it.” But while he was talking to himself in this way, his two companions were making a different arrangement. They said to each other: “ It is not necessary that this young man should be connected with us. This entry is longer than a Bible module can hold. The rest is at https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/bi/ Luke 12:16-21 The ground of a certain rich man brought forth plentifully A successful worldly policy I. THE PICTURE OF A WORLDLY POLICY. 1. No sin in worldly success. 2. No sin in wise and thoughtful provision for worldly goods. 3. The sin consisted in his regarding the possessions as his own absolute property. II. THE PICTURE OF A WORLDLY POLICY. 1. A foolish life because of the narrowness of its aims and purposes. You have seen some little ant-hill with its teeming life, a miniature world of employment and duty; its busy inhabitants absorbed and careless of any world beyond their own. So this man spent his life, and spent it, perhaps, happily enough, getting and spending, and gathering and consuming, and pulling down and building up again; until that other life and that other world thundered in upon him and would not be forgotten. For mark what is the great lesson after all. It is the fatal want in the man’ s character and life to which Christ would call our attention. Not what he had, but what he lacked was his undoing. He was rich toward man, but he was not rich toward God, and so while men called him “ a success,” God called him “ a fool.” 2. Again, this policy is a disastrous one, and this life is called a foolish life, because of its hopes and expectations. The man evidently calculated upon finding happiness some time or other in the future. Like most of us, he had never been exactly at ease, but now that he is to retire from active life--what promises men do make themselves when they have given up business!--when his new barns are built, then he will eat and drink and be merry.How human this is, for “ man never is but always to be blessed.” 3. A foolish life because of its false security. The one flaw was there. He calculated on a long life. The door was fastened against poverty, and the time of undue labour and anxiety was past, and the house of feasting was ready; but there was one visitor against whom he could not bar the door. “ All men think all men mortal but themselves,” and the danger which haunts us through life is of all things most unreal to us. Years ago among the Swiss mountains there was a village over which an avalanche had hung threateningly for nearly half a century. It was only a question of time, sooner or later it must come down and bury all beneath. Travellers warned the inhabitants of that village, but apathy only grew stronger with familiarity. Grey-headed men who had played as boys underneath the awful crags, now gathered in their harvest contentedly with scarcely a glance at the threatening danger. So all went on until one calm summer day, when, with scarcely a warning sound, down came the overwhelming mass, bringing destruction and death upon all beneath. III. Lastly, we have here THE PICTURE OF THE END OF A MERELY WORLDLY POLICY. Suddenly, unexpectedly, with no other warning than this of the text, the last hours of life have come. Like that avenging angel who passed over the households of Egypt, so with this man, the death angel is coming amid the shadows and with the darkness. How the hours of that terrible night must have worn on slow as centuries! He began it with pleasant promises, in health, and strength, and hopefulness, a reaper and a gatherer in the harvest fields; and lo! he, too, feels the sharp thrust of the sickle, and that amid the unripe grain which yields no promise of fruitfulness. He ends it, and with this one short, thrilling, awful night, the tragedy of life is over. I have read of one hanging over a fearful precipice who, looking up, saw the rope by which he hung jagged and worn against the sharp rock to a single thread which could hold out but a moment longer. So this man’ s spirit must have hung over eternity that night. Consider it! God’ s salvation, the teachings of wisdom, were with him as with all. Yet thus it was, that a life of privileges, and great worldly prosperity, and multiplied blessings, ended thus disastrously amid overwhelming confusion. With God so near, and infinite mercy never afar off, life darkened and darkened until the last glimmer of hope was gone, and the man was left to grope his way amid the shadows of an everlasting night. (W. Baxendale.) Of the deceitfulness of riches Riches deceive the worldly-minded-- 1. In regard to their earthly felicity--for-- (1) They fill the heart with cares. (2) They occasion much trouble and solicitude. (3) They prove but a short-lived possession. (4) They delude with the hope of along life. 2. In regard to true felicity; for-- (1) They can provide no true satisfaction to the soul. (2) They sink it into utter sensuality. (3) They foreclose the heart against any solemn care for salvation. (4) They prevent the inheritance of better goods. (F. G. Lisco.) The rich fool I. A GOOD 1. He was rich. So is God. So were Abraham, Job, David. “ The love of money” (not money itself) “ is the root of all evil.” 2. His investment was wise. Land cannot be consumed by fire, or removed by foe. 3. His farm was prosperous. He understood his business. II. A BAD . He undertakes to solve the problem of life, and proves a wretched bungler in the use of figures. 1. He omits the greatest factor in the problem. God forgotten, the problem works out wrong. 2. He makes a wrong estimate of the soul. 3. A wrong distribution of his goods. 4. Wrong calculation of time. (Anon.) The rich man--where right and where wrong I. WHERE RIGHT. 1. It was right that his ground should bring forth plentifully. Industry, &c. 2. It was right that he reflect, “ What shall I do?” Common sense. II. WHERE WRONG. 1. He was wrong when he said, “ I have no room.” Not barn-room, but soul-room, life-room. He measured his room by measuring his barn. 2. He was wrong when he said, “My fruits and my goods; my soul.” That was all wrong. He was not his own. 3. He was wrong when he said, “ And I will say to my soul, Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years.” He had the goods, but not the years. 4. He was wrong when he said, “ I will say to my soul … Take thine case.” Here the man was all animal. The mistake was, that he had left God out of account in his calculations. (Homiletic Review.) A business man’ s mistake I. Let us in the outset look at some of the which this man exhibited. 1. For one thing, he was wealthy. Observe the Bible never is found joining in with any wild tirade against riches. Inspiration has not even said, as some quote it, that money is the root of evil. On the whole, it is a good thing to be rich; great usefulness can be attained by silver and gold. 2. This man in the parable was successful in business. That shows well as an evidence of his shrewdness and industry. He is considered a benefactor to the world at large, who makes two spears of grass grow where only one grew before, for he thus augments the general wealth. 3. Furthermore, this was a prudent man. He shows himself in the recorded soliloquy here as being thoughtful concerning the future. II. But now let us consider some which this wealthy man made. 1. To begin with, he made a mistake in thinking there was no place for produce except in barns. It is a fool’ s question to ask where one can stow away money; it is the part of a wiser man to ask how he can do God service with the use of it. Just that is what this man did not think of doing. 2. So we see another mistake he made: he supposed his riches would be a comfort to him when they were hoarded. Whereas they became then only a care and a burden. Money is our instrument, not our end. When it goes beyond that, it owns us, instead of our owning it. The nearest approach to the old disease of the possession of devils that we have in modern times is exhibited when a man is possessed of the money he think he possesses. 3. The third mistake this man made was worse than any one of the others: he left out of his thoughts all consideration of the infinite God who made and owned him. He says “ my” barns, “ my” goods, “ my” fruits, and even “ my” soul. It would seem that he imagined he was the absolute proprietor of all he touched in two worlds. He fell into the radical error of forgetting he was at the best only the steward of God who had sent him his unusual harvests. 4. But this mistake inevitably led to another: he seems to admit that his soul has no higher needs than his body (see Luke 12:19). The word here is “ dialogued” ; he is pictured as holding a sort of complacent conversation with himself. To us there is an intense impression of sadness in his use of such expressions as are recorded. He talks to his immortal soul in terms of the grossest familiarity, as if that soul ought to be grateful to him for his generous foresight in having made quite sufficient provision for all its future. Do souls need luxurious ease? Are they to be for evermore content with having enough to eat and to drink? Are souls to be congratulated by rich people in this unctuous way just because there is much fodder stored now in the new barns? Is being merry what the image of God in man has been hankering after all these years? Most of us have read the story of the shipwrecked mariner on an inhospitable island perishing with famine. One day a box was suddenly swept ashore, and he rushed eagerly to loosen its fastenings; but he fell back in fainting disappointment and consternation, saying, “ Alas, it is only some passenger’ s pearls!” When this soul of ours is at last off upon the eternal shore, unready and unfurnished, will its undying hunger be appeased with indigestible jewels of earthly opulence alone? And will it be merry then? III. We must come back to the parable now once more, in order to consider THE SEVERE REBUKES WHICH THIS RICH MAN . 1. In the first place, God summoned his soul away from him. Opulent men grow old just like other people. Some of them also die young and in middle life just like other people. As life is running on in our great American wear and tear of money-getting, it is coming to be more and more observable that they are apt to die suddenly. The stripe of the street saps the vitalities of many human constitutions. There are vast solicitudes bred by unusual increase of property, and the work often does much, while the worry does more, to shorten life. Death sometimes comes in the night. 2. In the second place, this man’ s property was ignominiously scattered. Those new barns were never builded, after all. There is a striking rhetorical power here in the use of the question rather than of the assertion. The vagueness of the certain distribution of hoarded fortunes is what constitutes its worst unwelcomeness to the owner. Oh, what stores of enforced wisdom this reluctant old world has been obliged to acquire on this its most sensitive point! It actually sounds like irony to raise such a question in times like ours. How have we seen wills broken, legacies diverted, fortunes squandered, and all the favourite plans of the year thwarted on the instant, by some unwise and an anticipated heir! (see Ecclesiastes 2:18-19). It was the wisest man in the world that laid that; and his son was a fool--or a knave, which was undoubtedly worse. Mark, then, the conclusion of the whole matter (see verse 21). Will the thousand daily histories never teach men wisdom? Think over Hugh Miller’ s words: “ The climax is a favourite figure in the book of Providence. God speaks to us in His dispensations; and in the most eloquent terms of His discourse, piles up instance upon instance with sublime and impressive profusion.” (C. S.Robinson, D. D.) The foolish rich man I. The folly of this man appears m the fact that HE IGNORED HIS TO GOD IN THE MATTER OF HIS . 1. He speaks throughout as if he had all the merit of his prosperity, and gives God no praise; while the idea that any portion of the increase of his fields belonged to God seems never to have entered into his mind. But does this man stand alone in this particular? Are we not all too prone to take to ourselves the sole credit for any prosperity we have acquired, or for any eminence we have reached? 2. The destriction to himself of the honour of his success led directly to the complete appropriation by this man of its fruits. He never thought of consulting God about the disposal of his property. And there are multitudes among us, who never pray to God about their business at all. Some may pray that He would send them prosperity; but when the prosperity comes, how few there are, comparatively speaking, who lay their wealth at His feet, and ask Him to direct them in disposing of it! II. The folly of this man appears in the fact that HE IGNORES THE CLAIMS OF OTHER MEN UPON HIM FOR HIS HELP. He had no idea, apparently, that there was any other possible way of bestowing his goods than by storing them in his barns. As Augustine has replied to his soliloquy: “ Thou hast barns, the bosoms of the needy, the houses of widows, the mouths of orphans and of infants” ; these are the true storehouses for surplus wealth. It is right to provide for those who are dependent upon us; it is prudent to lay up something in store against a possible evil day; but after that, the storehouse of wealth should be benevolence. I have somewhere read that a lady once went to call upon a friend near the close of autumn, and found her emptying her closets, and exclaiming, “ Oh, these moths! these moths! that have consumed almost everything that I laid away in the beginning of the summer.” The visitor expressed her sorrow, but said she did not know what it was to have a garment moth-eaten. Whereupon her friend asked for the specific which she used, and to her surprise received for answer, “ I gave away to the poor, months ago, all the garments for which I had no longer use; and there was no difficulty in preserving the remainder from the moths.” III. The folly of this man is seen in the fact that HE THAT THINGS WERE PROPER FOOD FOR HIS SOUL. True riches--or, in other words, the true food of the soul, by which alone it can be nourished and satisfied--are to be found in God alone. Reconciliation to God, peace with God, likeness to God, and fellowship with God, that alone can fill the heart of man. God for us in the work of His Son, God with us in the orderings of His providence, God in us in the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, and God before us in the hope of heaven, that is the true food of the spirit of man; and to think of sustaining it with material fruits and goods and possessions, is as absurd as it would be to try to satisfy the hunger of the body with a diamond, or to quench the thirst of the body with a pearl. IV. The folly of this rich man is apparent from the fact that HE HAD IGNORED THE TRUTH THAT HIS WERE NOT TO BE HIS FOR EVER. “ There are no pockets in a shroud.” “ How much did he leave?” asked one man of another, in the street-car, as they were talking of a millionaire whose death had been announced in the morning paper. “ All he had,” was the solemn and suggestive reply. (W. M. Taylor, D. D.) Unsanctified riches I. THE OF THIS PARABLE. II. THE IT . 1. The circumstances in which this person was placed. 2. The anxieties of which he was the subject. 3. The projects upon which he resolved. 4. The spirit by which he was actuated. (1) Ungodliness. (2) Earthliness. (3) Selfishness. (4) Presumption. 5. The fearful doom which awaited him. A person once said on his deathbed, “ I have gained thirty thousand pounds.” A very decent sum, many may be disposed to remark; it is not the lot of every adventurer to be so successful. But there was something he lost as well as gained; and, in general, the losses and the gains are placed one against the other. “ I have gained,” was his language, “ thirty thousand pounds, but I have lost my soul.” These were the two sides of the balance sheet which he was now, at the close of life, making up: thirty thousand pounds on the one side, the soul lost on the other. The separate items on both sides of the sheet might have been numerous. He did not gain the sum specified all at once, nor was the soul lost at once. But the winding up of the whole affair, after adding to this and deducting from that, presented the conclusion which has been given. But was it a good speculation? We should like to put the question to men of judgment, of practical wisdom, of cool and calculating habits, who can turn a matter over, looking first at one side, and then at the other, and ask them, whether it really was? But whatever their opinion might be, we have the verdict of One, whose competency to judge in such a case cannot be questioned. His language is, “ What shall it profit a man if he gain” --not thirty thousand pounds, but--“ the whole world, and, lose his own soul; or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?” III. THE LESSONS IT . The attainment of heavenly riches should be our great concern. 1. They are durable. 2. Their possession is unattended with any danger. 3. They are accessible to all. 4. They should be sought earnestly, and without delay. (Expository Outlines.) Christ’ s picture of a worldly life I. THE OF A WORLDLY LIFE. 1. This man prospered by means of a legitimate calling. 2. His prosperity was largely the outcome of his industry and good management. 3. To his own industry had been added the blessing of God, without which a man must toil in vain. II. THE OF A WORLDLY LIFE. When the heart is set on material wealth, it will become burdened with care. There is a state of mind in which it is possible to be happy and rich with little. III. THE SELFISH of a worldly life. “ This will I do,” &c. His ruling spirit is selfishness; he lives and moves in the little world of self. “ Get all you can and keep all you get,” seems to be the motto of his life. He was a close-fisted man of the world, whose earthly soul had been hardened by the sun of prosperity. 1. He forgets his relation to his fellow-men. He acts as if he had no connection with the race. He has no thought of brotherhood. 2. He does not recognize his obligation to the Divine. No thankoffering for the Giver of all good. He sacrifices only at the shrine of self. IV. THE MISTAKE OF A WORLDLY LIFE. 1. Forgetfulness of God. 2. The underrating of his spiritual nature, and the overrating of his material possessions. 3. Forgetfulness of death, and presuming on “ many years.” V. THE DIVINE ON A WORLDLY LIFE. 1. A revelation of character. 2. Startlingly sudden. 3. Upsets all plans. 4. Seals worldling’ s doom. (W. Smith.) A wise fool I. Let us look at him simply in the light of this world, and try to HIS TO THOSE BY WHICH WE GAUGE THE WISDOM AND WORTH OF OUR FELLOW-MEN. 1. It is evident that he was an industrious man. 2. It is pretty clear, too, that this was a careful, frugal man. He not only made money, but knew how to save what he made. 3. Then this man was a thoughtful, judicious man. 4. This man was a rich man. 5. It may be taken for granted that this man was highly respected in the neighbourhood in which he lived. 6. It is pretty evident that this man was influential, as well as respected. II. Let us shift our point of observation, and LOOK AT THIS MAN IN THE LIGHT OF . 1. His folly appears in his total misapprehension of the true end of life. 2. His folly is seen in his total misapprehension of the nature and the necessities of the soul. 3. His folly is seen in the mistaken notion which he has respecting the right use of wealth. 4. His folly is seen in the proposals which he makes to himself in respect to time, without any reference whatever to Him to whom alone time belongs. (W. S.Blackstoek.) Unsanctified riches I. THE IN WHICH THIS MAN WAS PLACED. He was prosperous, and increasingly so. Just in such circumstances as most people long for. There are several interesting inquiries connected with the acquisition of riches; such as, how far the desire of acquisition may be indulged--where is the point at which it becomes criminal--and what are the consequences of its excess and abuse. It would much assist, did such maxims as the following meet with due acknowledgment. 1. That riches, with their attendant comforts and influence, are to be regarded as the bestowments of Providence. 2. That riches, with their attendant comforts and influence, furnish means for extended usefulness. 3. That riches with their attendant comforts and influence, involve the pressure of a solemn responsibility. II. THE IN WHICH HE . Observe the different aspects of imperfection and sin which the recorded meditations comprehend. 1. In the state of his mind as to the source of his possessions. There is no allusion to God, as the giver of the good in which he delighted (Ho Proverbs 30:8-9). 2. In the intended application of property, Ought there not to have been some act of charity to man, or some gift to the temple of God? 3. In the mode of calculating on futurity. “ This will I do: I will pull down my barns.” And then--“ I will say unto my soul, Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years” (Proverbs 27:1; James 4:13; James 4:15). 4. In the nature of desired and anticipated enjoyment. “ Take thine ease; eat, drink, and be merry.” (a) There is indicated a fondness for indulgences, in themselves utterly unworthy of the intellectual nature with which man is endowed. (b) There is a careful and an entire exclusion of all that belongs to the interests and redemption of the soul. III. THE REPROOF BY WHICH HE WAS . 1. AS to the event announced in the message of God--how momentous? “ Thy soul shall be required of thee.” Besides the separation of the individual from worldly riches, the event announced comprehends his appearance before God for judgment (Luke 16:19-26). 2. As to the time when this event was to be fulfilled--how soon it was to come!--“ This night!” Ere another sun arose, his destiny would be sealed. (The Preachers’ Treasury.) The rich fool A rich man. Look at him. He is what almost all would like to be, and are striving to be. Or, if not striving to be, it is because they despair of success, and not because they would not be rich if they might. A rich man! who would not be glad to stand in his lot? Take heed, and beware. Mark the effect of this man’ s wealth upon him. 1. It increased his covetousness. 2. It made him anxious. 3. Selfish. 4. Atheistical. 5. Sensual. (The Preachers’ Treasury.) The rich fool I. THE RICH MAN’ S . II. HIS . Riches and cares are inseparably wedded together. III. His . 1. He resolves on the means of accumulation. 2. He forms his arrangements without any reference to the providence of God. 3. He reckons on his riches as the joy and portion of his soul. 4. He confidently calculates on an extended existence. IV. His SUDDEN AND FATAL . 1. Observe how he is disturbed by the voice of Deity. “ God said” --either by some deep, unmistakable impression on his heart and conscience, or by some sudden infliction of disease. 2. Mark the sudden termination of his career. 3. The eternal ruin of his soul. (J. Burns, D. D.) The rich worldling I. HIS . Rich, prosperous. A state of imminent danger. It is difficult to be prosperous and rich-- 1. Without loving riches. The love of money, &c. Whoso loveth the world, etc. 2. Without thinking ourselves the better and greater for these. How they puff up the mind. How men glory in their professions. 3. Without trusting in them, and not in God. There is danger when full, of denying Him. II. His . God gives it, therefore must be correct. “ Thou fool.” Now, his folly is seen in the following particulars: 1. In being anxious amidst profusion. 2. Because he expected his soul to be happy with temporal things. He tried to make an earthworm of his soul. He wished to grovel in the dust. 3. Because he presumptuously calculated on years to come. III. His END. 1. Sudden and unexpected. 2. Unprepared. 3. Dreadfully momentous. Application: 1. Do not idolize, and trust in riches. 2. Be anxious for your soul’ s welfare. 3. Come to Jesus. He will make you wise to eternal life. 4. Do not presume. Do not calculate upon the future. (J. Burns, D. D.) The character and end of a sensualist I. THE FOLLY OF THE PERSON . The man’ s folly consisted in-- 1. His making the things of this life his chief good. 2. His supposing that worldly goods would satisfy his soul. The folly of such conduct will appear, if we consider (1) The nature of the soul. It is a spiritual and a rational principle Genesis 1:27; Genesis 2:7; Job 32:8). Can the gross materials that feed the body satisfy the soul? (2) The capacities of the soul. They, on account of its very nature, are so wast, that no measure of created good can possibly satisfy them. (3)The duration of the soul. It is immortal, everlasting (Ec Matthew 10:28). Can perishable things--such as earth affords--earth that will itself be destroyed, satisfy the immortal soul of man?Such foolish conduct, as that already described, naturally leads to another species of folly, that of-- 3. Presuming on continued, on long life. He said, “ Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years.” How infatuated must that man have been, who could thus calculate! (see Psalms 49:11-13). Do we not see mortals arrested, and borne to their graves, at every stage of life! II. THE MANNER IN WHICH GOD TREATED THE SUBJECT OF THIS FOLLY. 1. He was called away suddenly. 2. Unexpectedly. 3. Amidst a profusion of worldly goods. 4. By language that strongly expressed the Divine displeasure. Reflections: 1. Worldly prosperity is so far from being a proof of personal goodness, or of the Divine favour, that the subjects of it may be so wicked as to incur sudden and severe destruction. 2. The proper enjoyment of life does not depend on large possessions (verse 15). 3. Rich men are, on account of their riches, in peculiar danger--of living without God--of indulging in sensual gratifications--of presuming on long life--and of neglecting their souls. 4. Life is uncertain. It is therefore our highest wisdom to be living for eternity. (Theological Sketch-book.) God and the sensualist I. THE ’ S ADDRESS TO HIS SOUL. 1. Converse with the soul is proper and necessary. 2. Converse with the soul should be adapted to its nature as immortal, and should regard its eternal felicity. 3. Converse with the soul should have a tendency to excite its instant and ardent attention to everlasting happiness. But the rich sensualist in the text converses in a way altogether different. 1. He discovers erroneous ideas of true enjoyment, and represents the uncertain things of this world as capable of conferring happiness on an immortal mind, endeavouring to satisfy that which is spiritual with that which is material, and that which is undying with that which is perishable. 2. He over rates worldly substance by giving it a durable and satisfying quality. 3. He degrades his soul, and endeavours to persuade it to compromise its eternal interests, and to seek that in gluttony, drunkenness, and the allurements of pleasure, which can be found in God only. II. THE VOICE OF GOD TO THE . 1. God takes notice of the conduct of sinners in regard to their souls. 2. The Almighty interrupts his schemes, and annihilates his ideas of enjoyment. “ But God said unto him.” I will darken thy perspective, and suspend thy enjoyments--thy building, founded in delusion, shall suddenly vanish--thy soul shall depart, and thy goods be the portion of another. And, when thou art spoiled, what wilt thou do? 3. The rich man is charged with folly. 4. He is summoned to surrender his soul. (R. Cope, LL. D.) On worldly-mindedness I. The EVIL of this rich man’ s conduct. Nothing whatever of a criminal nature is laid to his charge, as to the manner in which his abundant wealth had been acquired. No oppression, no avaricious extortion, no “ grinding of the faces of the poor,” nothing unfair or dishonest, nothing even ungenerous, is alleged against him; and what is not so much as insinuated in the narrative, we are not entitled to suppose. Nothing appears in the simple statement, but the blessing of Providence upon lawful industry--the luxuriant productiveness of his fields: “ The grounds of a certain rich man brought forth plentifully.” For this, surely, the proprietor was not to blame. What, then, is the grand error, what the leading and predominant sin, of this poor rich man? I answer, in one word, worldliness; or in another, which, though negative in its form, will be found of much the same positive amount, ungodliness. There is a total absence of God. In receiving, calculating, resolving, anticipating, “ God is not in all his thoughts.” Let us trace out a little this general observation in a few particulars. 1. There is, then, in the first place, the deliberate choice of the world, and the things of the world, as his portion, not only in preference to God, and the things of God, but without even a thought of the Divine favour and blessing as any essential ingredient in the cup of felicity, or as at all necessary to the legitimate and full enjoyment of his “ good things.” This did not enter into his estimate. 2. In the second place, he forgot God as the giver of all that he enjoyed, and the object of his gratitude. He received the gift, and forgot the Giver. He rioted in the unrestrained enjoyment of a profusion of good, and overlooked the hand from which it came. He “ gave not God the glory.” 3. In connection with the absence of gratitude for the past and the present, there was, in the third place, no proper sense of dependence on God for the future. This appears, both in regard to his wealth, and in regard to his life. The continuance of both depended every moment on the Divine will. But this is entirely out of mind: “ I will say unto my soul, Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry.” While he forgot that God had given, he forgot also that God could take away. 4. In the fourth place, he overlooks the authority of God as his rule, and the glory of God as his end, in the use of his riches. He lives but for himself. Selfishness is his law, selfishness is his aim. 5. He forgets, too, in the last place, the account which he had to render to God of the manner in which he used His bounties. II. The FOLLY of this rich man’ s conduct. 1. His folly consisted, in the first place, in seeking his happiness from unworthy and inadequate sources. 2. The folly consisted, secondly, in depending upon the greatest uncertainties; yes, on known, acknowledged, proverbial uncertainties. We have formerly seen how he reckons on the continuance both of property and of life. This was impious. It was ungodly presumption--practical atheism in one of its various forms. But the folly of it was not less egregious than its impiety. It is the very extreme of infatuation, to calculate and to proceed upon what we know to be in the highest degree precarious. “ Be wise to-day.” To-morrow you may never see. Even of to-day, the present moment alone can be called your own; and every moment you delay the preparation for a coming eternity is a moment of folly--folly, of which the unutterable amount will felt, when it is too late to redeem your guilty error, at the judgment-seat of God. 3. This leads me to notice more particularly a third ingredient in the folly--that, namely, of minding time, and forgetting eternity; occupying himselfwith the enjoyment (according to his unworthy conceptions of it) of the life that now is, and making no provision for the life that is to come. How striking, how awakening, how mortifying the question, “ Then, whose shall those things be which thou hast provided? “ He had provided them for himself, but in a few hours they were to cease to be his. He had provided them for many years, storing them up with anxious and self-applauding care, as a portion for a long life; but the years on which he counted he was never to see. (R. Wardlaw, D. D.) Covetousness I. A SOLEMN WARNING AGAINST AS OUR VIEW OF, AND LEADING US TO , THE TRUE OF LIVING. II. THE PROCESS BY WHICH A MAN MAY BECOME . The instance given by our Saviour is not an extreme one. It is one adapted rather for a standard example of a process subtle and gradual, from whose operation no man is exempt. The successive steps of the process, as here delineated, are: 1. Prosperity (Luke 12:16). His prosperity was not culpable. It was a blessing of God. It may have been creditable to the rich man. His good husbandry may have been thus rewarded. No gain could be more legitimate. He was rich in the crop, not through speculation in it, or in an exorbitant price put upon it, as it stood in the field. 2. Calculation (Luke 12:17). To plan, again, is not sinful. It is a duty rather. But, natural and right though the question is, it is dangerous. One needs to guard vigilantly, lest he make so much of the question, “ What shall I do to save?” that he shall make too little of the question infinitely more pressing, “ What shall I do to be saved?” 3. The decision to increase his investments (Luke 12:18). In this decision, again, there is no necessary guilt. The purpose formed by the rich man was not of necessity a covetous one. True, he might, as one of the Fathers suggests, have made barns of the houses of the poor, the mouths of orphans and widows. But these are not the only lawful storehouses. Men may accumulate, may increase accumulations. We do right to broaden our plans, to tear down and build greater. All social and material progress would cease if this spirit of enterprise should be quenched. All improvements in our modes of travel, of business, of living, are results of this spirit, which grasps the significance of prosperity, wisely forecasts the future, and at critical junctures says, “ I will tear down and build greater.” It is a grand trait in man or nation, this of making large, bold plans for the future. Through it God is subduing the world. Nevertheless, be on your guard against this spirit. It can only be safely exercised under the most vigilant observation, lest we become selfish in our plans, making them centre in ourselves. This was the grand mistake which the rich man actually made, viz.: 4. The appropriation of his goods (Luke 12:19). Before, he had pressed the limit of innoceney; now he passed it. This was more than a dangerous choice; it was a guilty one. It became manifest now that he had long been suffering his sense of accountability to decline; it had died out; and, with atheistic hardihood, he erased the name of God in the deeds and bonds, and substituted his own. Such a process may have with us a similar result. III. THE FOLLY OF THE MAN AS SEEN IN HIS FATE. He made at least three fatal mistakes: 1. He assumed that what we have is ours. This is not the reasonable or the natural view of property. The parable of the pounds is intelligible to children. The conception it presents, viz., that we hold our property in trust, is agreeable to our natural conviction. 2. That the soul is richer the more goods one has (Luke 12:19). “ Soul, thou hast much goods.” We shrink from the coarse suggestion that a man’ s life consists in his goods. But may it not consist in the abundance of his goods? No. Possessions are not life; cannot give it, cannot sustain it. It is true for every human being. Young man, or woman, seeking possessions and not life--you who have gained a little of earth’ s treasure, and are setting your heart upon it unawares--remember, oh, remember! that possessions are not life. This house, this stock, this land are not your life. Remember that you may make these things your life. They may become you by an unconscious process of transfer. Are your goods you? Consider. Subtract from your thoughts, your imagination, your affections, your purposes, your property, what will be left? Will your very life be gone? Will it make no substantial difference? Will you be rich toward God? 3. The rich man assumed that he could reckon on the future. This was a terrible mistake: God waked him from it. He stands transfixed. He listens to the terrible voice: “ Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee.” “ This night.” Can it be? In the very midst of his hopes and plans, with the barns unbuilt, the fields unreaped,the figs untasted? May he die tonight? Is it fixed? Must he die to-night? Can it be possible that with his fortune secured his life is insecure; not merely that, is doomed? Whether he lies down upon his bed, or sits and watches, with all the house alight, or flees from God, will death come to-night? And to-morrow morning will they be whispering, “ He is dead” ? Will another master stand here in the dewy field and see the skimming swallow, and hear the droning bee? Will all his wealth be another’ s to-morrow? Will another build the barns, another store and spend the harvest? Who was this fool? May it be you? Among the human remains exhumed at Pompeii are those of a woman laden with treasure, hastily seized and still hugged tightly in her arms. She was evidently caught on the very threshold of her own dwelling by the avalanche of ashes. Her sudden fright remains upon her face, indelibly printed there, an awful suggestion of the horrors of the unexampled tragedy. What figure could more fitly illustrate our Saviour’ s warning! Well might it be placed in every square of the city, with mutely eloquent dissuasion, to admonish us of the danger of a covetous love of this world. Look upon this ill-fated woman. Look upon the rich fool. Listen to the Saviour’ s words. Take heed, and beware of covetousness. (G. R. Leavitt.) The rich fool Of this man nothing ill is actually said, nothing bad really appears. If we look at him as he is described, it is hard to say how he was worse than most of us. It is true that he spoke overmuch of my this and my that: “ I have no room,” he said, “ to bestow my fruits; I will pull down my barns, and build greater, and there will I bestow all my fruits and my goods.” But do we not all do the same? The crops which have rewarded long toil, the profits yielded to patient enterprize, the little hoard painfully earned and saved, do we not call them ours, and think them ours too? Do we not talk of our corn, of our earnings, of our balance in the bank--and this not merely for convenience of speech, but because we regard ourselves as the actual independent owners of them? Do we not very generally forget that, in truth, all that we have is not ours, but God’ s--lent to us by Him, that part may be given back directly for His service, that the rest may be profitably spent to His glory, and that all may be given account of at the last day? It is true, also, that he spoke too rashly of the future, as if that also were his own: “ I will pull down my barns, and build greater” ; and yet more, “ Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years.” But do not we for the most part do the same? When things have prospered with us, when our returns come in, do not we too make pleasant plans, and promise ourselves so much ease, so much enjoyment for the future? Do we not make promise to ourselves of building this new house or setting up that new carriage, of taking a pleasant journey here, or making a happy home there, and have no thought of God in it all? Yea; and though we should add a D.V. or a “ God willing” to it, is it not generally a mere pretence of submission--as much as to say, we are aware that He can prevent it, if He chooses, but we do not at all suppose He will? Again, it is true that the man was profane in addressing such words as he did to his soul: “ Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years; eat, drink, and be merry.” Souls do not eat or drink, neither can they rest and enjoy themselves on the strength of so many hundreds a year, and when he used the word it should have reminded him that the higher part of his nature required other and better provision for the many years to come. But no doubt he spoke ignorantly, meaning only to address himself, and regarding himself on the whole as a being whose chief end was to eat and drink and amuse himself--as an organization mainly capable of enjoying meats and drinks, ofwelcoming cessation from toil, and of delighting in the good things of this world. Have we, as a rule, attained any higher view? Do not we, with far less excuse than he, commonly speak and think of ourselves as if we lived and moved and had our being in the things of this life--as if eating and drinking, ease and merriment, were sufficient to satisfy us? Or, if we rise above these things, do we not seek others equally inappropriate to the true life of the soul--intellectual delights, social pleasures, high positions--gifts of civilization to our modern days, good and noble in their way, but transitory, earthly, and therefore incapable of sustaining those immortal souls, which can only be filled with the love of God, which can be satisfied with nothing less than Him. “ Soul,” we say to ourselves, “ thou art very well off; the world hath gone well with thee; thou hast enough and to spare; thou hast no cause to envy anybody, while many have reason to envy thee; thou hast done well, and art decidedly to be congratulated.” This is no untrue fancy, as your heart and mind know well: thus does the soul whisper to itself, as it surveys its position; thus does it speak, and thus does God answer it--“ Fool, fool that thou art, with all thy silly self-complacency and self-satisfaction; fool, with all thy worldly wisdom and temporal success; fool, with thy well-dressed person and well-filled purse, with thy well-furnished house and well-stored mind; fool, that congratulatest thyself on the possession of these things, and rememberest not that they must perish in an hour, and that thou hast nothing else.” “ Fool” --it is God that says it, not I; it is His verdict on me, just as much as on you, when I begin to glory in earthly things. He is a fool that takes comfort in a well-fed body while his soul is starving, that regards with satisfaction his veil-dressed person while his soul is still unclad in righteousness, that gazes with complacency upon the length and richness of his rent-roll while his tale of good works remains short and poor, that prides himself on the beauty of his earthly habitation while he is preparing for himself no goodly mansion in the world to come,--a fool, in short, wire suns himself in the momentary warmth and sunshine of to-day, and reeks not of the eternal darkness which must begin for him to-morrow. It may be that we are all fools together, minding earthly things out of all reasonable proportion to the heavenly things. If so, let us endure to be convicted of folly now, that we be not branded as fools before the universe; let us accept the rebuke now, while our souls are our own, lest we meet with it then, when they shall be demanded of us. (R. Winterbotham, M. A.) The rich fool 1. He was a fool, because he gave not God the glory. 2. He was a fool in God’ s account, for the use he intended to make of his possessions. 3. He was a fool, because he confounded body and soul together. 4. He was a fool chiefly in this-that he so confidently and surely reckoned on many years to come. (E. Blencowe, M. A.) The folly of worldly men I. Consider THE THINGS WHICH THEY REFUSE. 1. The things which they refuse are of inconceivable value, the very best things of heaven and earth; things did I say? consider what is comprehended in them, viz., God the chief good to be their God, and Jesus Christ; they refuse Him, an interest in Him; they see nothing in Him to desire Him; and now doth not this show them fools? They know not what is good, know not how to choose, they discern not a precious pearl from a worthless pebble. 2. They refuse incorruptible things, such riches that are durable treasure that neither moth nor rust can corrupt. 3. They refuse (though they are ready to perish with hunger) that which is bread, nay, Bread of Life, most rare, sweet, delicious, and soul-nourishing, fattening and satisfying Bread, and all else that is good and proper food for their souls; which except they eat of they must die and perish for ever; and doth not this show they are fools? 4. They count those things not worth one serious thought or regard, which all that were truly wise esteemed above all the treasures, riches, and glory of the whole world; nay, more worth than ten thousand worlds. Secondly, Let us consider what things they are which worldly men choose, and the nature of them, instead of those things, or before those things which they refuse. 1. They choose things unlawful, or such things that are forbidden, and in their choice inner the wrath and displeasure of God, and are thereby proclaimed enemies and rebels, and such that God’ s soul abhors, for by an inordinate love of riches they are idolators: and the covetous God abhorreth. 2. They choose such things that are the portion of reprobates. My brethren, God gives the riches of this world to his enemies, and to such who have their portion in this life, to whom He denies His choicest and chiefest blessings and favours. 3. They are corruptible things, things which perish in the using, things also that are uncertain. 4. They choose the riches, pleasures, and grandeur of this world, which ruin the souls of all trust in them, or set their hearts upon them. The world, in its riches, is a cruel enemy to poor mortals, and such who over-prize them do but hug a viper or serpent in their bosoms, and is not this one article of our faith that the world has well as the flesh and the devil is a mortal enemy to the soul? What, harbour a thief, a treacherous and cruel murderer, in our house, who will soon, if not overcome, lay all the family in their blood, and dead at his foot! what folly greater than this! Ah! how many thousands are now in hell, that the love of this world sent thither, or brought eternal ruin upon. 5. The things wicked rich men choose are but mere vanity or a shadow. “ Vanity of vanity, all things are vanity” (Ecclesiastes 1:2); not vain, but vanity in the abstract, the worst of vanities, and therefore no folly greater than to esteem the riches of this world as a man’ s best and chiefest happiness; they weary themselves for very vanity; should you see a man pursue, or run after, and strive to catch or take hold of a shadow, would you not say he was a lunatic, or a natural, or mere fool? Such fools are the rich men of this world. Moreover, empty things that cannot satisfy, gold and silver can satisfy no man: “ He that coveteth silver shall not be satisfied with silver, nor he that loveth abundance with increase, this is also vanity” Ecclesiastes 5:10). This shows his folly; he hath abundance, and yet desires more as if he had nothing, and is never content and satisfied with what he hath, and yet counts these things the best of all good; which shows he is a fool. 6. The love of riches is the root of all evil; and such “ that will be rich fall into temptations and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition” (1 Timothy 6:9). Now if such are the nature and dreadful effects that attend riches, what fools are they that set their hearts upon them! They do but “ heap up treasure against the last day” (James 5:3), or treasure up wrath and Divine vengeance. (B. Keach.) Unsanctified riches I. THE IN WHICH HE WAS PLACED, 1. That riches, with their attendant comforts and influence, are to be regarded as the bestowments of Providence; not to be considered as the recompence of independent human effort, but ever subject to the superintendence and arrangement of Him who is the author of every good and perfect gift. 2. That riches, with their attendant comforts and influence, furnish means for extended usefulness, and place in the hands of the possessor a power which he should employ in promoting the temporal and the spiritual welfare of his fellowmen. 3. That riches, with their attendant comforts and influence, involve the pressure of a solemn responsibility. They are granted, on a principle of stewardship, and with an obligation to account. II. THE IN WHICH HE . 1. Imperfection and sin existed in the state of him mind as to the source of his possessions. There is no allusion to God, as the giver of the good in which he delighted; there is no acknowledgment of dependence, there is no aspiration of gratitude. He looks with complacency on the amount of his possessions; and then, in the inflation of vanity, and in the calculating spirit of worldly wisdom, he proceeds to arrange his plans, as if perfectly independent of all obligations and of all responsibility to a superior Being. 2. Imperfection and sin existed in the intended application of property. A portion of his wealth was to be expended in enlarging his accommodations, and then his possessions were to be accumulated in one vast hoard, to remain in the treasure-house untouched, except for the purpose of securing some additional advantage. Ought there not to have been some act of charity to man, or some gift to the temple of God? 3. Imperfection and sin existed in the mode of calculating on futurity. The rich man, you will perceive, assumed, with a strong and an undoubting confidence, that no event would happen, to interfere with the accomplishment of his plans, and that he should possess a long period of existence, and of happiness. 4. Imperfection and sin existed in the nature of desired and anticipated enjoyment. “ Take thine ease; eat, drink, and be merry.” The guilt connected with the intention thus expressed as to the pleasure of future life, is twofold. First there is indicated a fondness for indulgences, in themselves utterly unworthy of the intellectual nature with which man is endowed; and secondly, there is a careful and an entire exclusion of all that belongs to the interests and redemption of the soul. III. THE REPROOF BY WHICH HE WAS . 1. AS to the event announced in the message of God--how momentous! “ Thy soul shall be required of thee.” It comprehends his removal from the substance on which he had doated. His toil, his scheming, his rising early, his sitting up late, his eating the bread of carefulness, were now to end, and to be discovered as having been rendered in vain. 2. As to the time when this event was to be fulfilled--how soon it was to come!--“ This night!” Almost as soon as he had uttered his grovelling dreamings, was his last change to be undergone. It was a brief space indeed! The poison of death was circulating rapidly within him: the shadows of the evening portended the deeper darkness of the grave; and ere another sun arose, his destiny would be sealed. (J. Parsons.) The folly of the worldly man I. THE OF A WORLDLY MAN. 1. He makes the pursuit of the world his chief business. (1) Sacrificing to it the duties of religion. (2) Pursuing it merely for his own gratification, and not for the glory of God. 2. He finds in this world his chief happiness. 3. He sets upon the world his chief affections. II. EVERY SUCH MAN, CHRIST SAYS, IS A FOOL. 1. He gives up certainty for uncertainty. The world is most uncertain in its (1) attainment; (2) retainment. 2. He prefers his body to his soul. The body is the casket which encloses the precious immortal jewel--the soul which God has given us. Now, suppose any man, having an exceedingly precious jewel enclosed in a casket, bestowed all his care on the casket, watched over it day and night, regularly went to see that it was secure, but allowed the jewel to be a plaything to his children, would he not be a fool indeed? 3. He prefers time to eternity. (John M’ Lean.) The sinner summoned I. THE FIRST THING TO BE IN THE TEXT IS THE “ THOU FOOL” This pattern of a worldly-minded man is called a fool on many accounts. 1. He abused the leisure given him for studying the nature of heavenly wealth. 2. Again, whereas the plentifulness of his stores should have set his heart entirely at rest about all such worldly matters, he was perplexed concerning the manner of bestowing his goods; he vexed his mind about room for his fruits; when he had doubtless many poor neighbours whom he might have fed out of his abundance. He determined to pull down his barns, and build greater, when he should rather have been employed in pulling down the worldly vanity of his heart, in rooting out his sins, and building up the hope of his salvation on the foundation of Jesus Christ. And still more on these accounts he is justly called a fool. 3. But above all other reasons, he is called a fool, because he reckoned, with such unfounded security, on the continuance of a long life. II. Observe, in the second place, HOW SUDDEN IS THE SUMMONS! HOW : THE FOOLISH LOVER OF THIS WORLD IS TO LEAVE HIS GOODS AND , AND TO YIELD UP HIS SOUL TO . “ This night.” The summons does not say to-morrow. That word, with which he had doubtless put off many a good resolution, is not now spoken to himself. What would he give now for one of those many hundreds of days which he once wasted in thoughtless indolence! III. THE SEASON OF THE SUMMONS IS NO LESS THAN ITS . “ This night.” He is called away, not in the light of day, but in the darkness and gloom of night. IV. WHAT WAS OF THIS UNHAPPY MAN. Not his goods and fruits, he had better never have hoarded them. Not his spacious barns, he had better never have built them. Not his worldly accomplishments, they are now of no value. All these things in which he once took such delight and pride, all these if he used them not to God’ s glory, how glad would he be now, had he never had them. The memorial of their possession must accompany him to judgment; and they are not what willbe there required. No, it is his soul. (C. Girdlestone, M. A.) The last night 1. This man’ s exit from the world was in strong contrast with his life. When visitors came to that house, the master, no doubt, would take them out, and say, “ There are twenty acres of grain; ten acres of corn; fifteen acres of grove. See those sheep down in that valley. See those cattle on that hill. All mine! Come and look at those fig-trees. There are some figs ripe. Help yourself. Plenty of them. See how those grape-vines thrive--and these pomegranates!” Abundance of everything. Plenty to eat, plenty to wear, and plenty to congratulate. Yet, amid all that, he dies! How impudent death is! 2. The man of the text made sudden exit. So removal from this world is always sudden. I have heard of rare cases where persons said, “ Such a day of such a month will be my last,” and it was so. But the man of the text was not more amazed than most people. Even the most confirmed invalids expect to get well. They expect some new effect of medicines, or a new style of doctor, or a change of climate will help them. It is while men are calculating on long days that that decisive hour comes--while they are expecting an enlargement of business accommodations, or are getting in their crops, or are trying to draught a new barn--suddenly! And why not? Hold that glass of exquisite ware, and let it drop on the pavement. How long does it take to shiver it? Wonder not that the delicate bowl of life was broken at the fountain. Our life is of such delicate mechanism, so finely poised, so hair-strung, that the least collision is fatal. The wonder is that, with such exquisite machinery, the pivots do not oftener slip, and the spring break, and all the works instantly crash. The vast majority of the race go out of this life without a physical pang. They flash away. You cannot calculate the brevity of the time between when the arrow leaves the bow and when it strikes the target. A minister of Scotland, at breakfast, asked for something more to eat, and a child started to get it, but he cried out, “ Hold! hold! my Master calleth me. I have breakfasted with you, and shall sup with my Lord Jesus to-night.” And as quick as that he was gone. The rail train rushes along towards Norwalk bridge. The draw is off. Down the train plunges. In Wales, a miner, not aware of the foul air of the mine, strikes a match. Instantly two hundred souls are in eternity. 3. It was night when the man of the text went. So it is night when most of the race depart. A vast majority of the race die between eleven and three o’ clock at night. There seems something in the atmosphere at that time to loosen the grasp of body and soul. Nearly all my friends have gone away in the night. The most of those who die by accident die in the night, because then the impediment on the track is not seen. Then it is that the flame gets headway before it is discovered. Then the burglar and the assassin are assisted by the darkness. The first-born of Egypt perished in the night. Sennacherib’ s host fell in the night. 4. But the most remarkable thing about the exit was that he was unprepared for it. It was not a lack of brain that kept him in unpreparedness. A man who could make money as fast as he could was not lacking in sharpness. He knew what to plant, and how to culture what he had planted. He was not one of the dead-and-alive men who make no progress. His barns were large enough before, but they are too small now, with crops all the time growing. He was what Americans would call “ smart,” and what the English would call “ clever.” Now a man who knows enough to do business, knows enough to save his soul. All of the idiots will be saved at last. He was not an idiot. But alas! how many men are wise for time, and foolish for eternity! They know enough, when they sell a thing, to get the worth of it, but they barter away an immortal soul for nothing. They have everything insured but their souls. They are careful to have all their titles good except that for heaven. (Dr. Talmage.) The rich fool I. The parable first invites to some remarks upon WORLDLY , AND SOME OF THE BY WHICH IT IS NOT . “ The ground of a certain rich man brought forth plentifully,” the parable begins. “ The ground” ; the man did not owe his wealth to any success in commercial adventures, to a judicious plying of his business in the great waters, or to any of those forms of rising in the world which too often lead men to give their own skill all the praise. Not that in regard of our obligation to the Giver of all good it makes any difference whether our wealth come to us in one way or in another--by the blessing of God upon our industry, or in the gift of God in the sunshine and in the shower--for every way it is true that “ the Lord thy God, He it is that giveth thee power to get wealth.” Still, I think, it does lay an added weight upon our gratitude, and should make the sense of debt and dependence to be felt more keenly, when God prospers almost without making use of our own exertions at all. As when we come into possession of a fruitful land, or succeed to a business already made to our hands; in such cases we feel the blessing comes to us so straight and direct from heaven, that the temptation to say, “ my power and the might of my hand hath gotten me this wealth,” is utterly taken away. Even the world allows us nothing to be proud of in such instances; we thrive upon the labours of those who have gone before, or perhaps upon a mere accident of the soil. “ The ground of a certain rich man brought forth plentifully.” But “ a man’ s life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesses” : the ground that brings forth plentifully is seldom free from some roots of bitterness. In the parable of the sower and the seed, our Lord makes cares and riches go together. And they do very often; for with more wealth, we take more servants, and that is a care. The more treasure we have, the more fear of losing it; and that is a care. The larger the produce of our fields, the more room we want to put it away; and that is a care. II. Let us proceed to the second view of this parable, or that which sets before us AND ITS . The man’ s debatings were soon over, for he called to his counsels neither God nor man, seeing that for the glory of the one he had no concern, and with the wants of the other had no sympathy. He was a law unto himself, he had none to think of, and none to obey; his goods were his own, his length of days was his own, his very soul was his own; so at least he reasons, for this is the plan of life to which he tells us his mind is made up--“ And he said, ‘ This will I do,’” &c. Many things press for notice here. First, his language, “ my barns, my fruit, my goods,” although agreeable to the common usage of men, yet taken in connection with what follows, is a plain ignoring of God’ s hand in his prosperity, or God’ s right in regard to its proper use. One would think he had been beholden to God for nothing; neither for seed nor soil, nor clouds, nor genial suns; so completely is the idea of stewardship lost sight of, and the Creator’ s loan viewed as the creature’ s right. Then, there is a strange and presumptuous covenant with the future--future harvests, that they shall not fail; future years, that he shall live to enjoy their fruits. They are the most obvious truths which men are most slow to learn--how feeble is our hold on prosperity--a blight, a shipwreck, a credulous trust in some new and fraudulent speculation, a dishonest servant, or a perfidious friend, let any of these befal us, and what becomes of our many goods? And many years--he has made sure of this also; he has entered into a covenant with sickness, and accident, and the marching pestilence, with the waters that they shall not overflow him, and with the flames that they shall not kindle upon him; he had only not made a covenant with God. But, besides all this sinful bargaining for a long series of morrows, we should not fail to observe with what resolute intenseness and determination of purpose his heart is set upon the enjoyment of the world. “ Soul, take thine ease. While my wealth was accumulating, and my diligence was needed, and there was a possibility that the tide of success might turn against me, I had my unavoidable anxieties; but I am past all this now, I am beyond the reach of reverses, henceforth I will fling myself upon the soft lap of prosperity, and without an apprehension or a care sleep the rest of life’ s hours away.” “ Soul, take thine ease” ; eat, drink, and be merry too, steep the senses in a blithe forgetfulness, forbid the entrance of every intruding monitor who comes to tell you that you have an eternity to live for, or an offended God to meet. This entry is longer than a Bible module can hold. The rest is at https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/bi/ Luke 12:22-28 Take no thought for your life Reasons for banishing vexatious care 1. It is needless; “ your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of these things” ; and will certainly provide for you; and what need you take care, and God too? Cast your care upon Him. 2. It is fruitless; “ which of you, by taking care, can add one cubit to his stature?” We may sooner, by our carping care, add a furlong to our grief, than a cubit to our comfort. All our care, without God’ s help, will neither feed us when we are hungry, nor nourish us when we are fed. 3. It is heathenish; “ after all these things do the Gentiles seek” Matthew 6:32). The ends and objects of a Christian’ s thoughts ought to be higher and more sublime than that of heathens. 4. Lastly, it is brutish, nay, worse than brutish. The birds of the air, the beasts of the field, the ravens of the valley, all are fed and sustained by God, without any care of their own, much more His children. Has God a breakfast ready for every little bird that comes chirping out of its nest, and for every beast of the field that comes leaping out of its den, and will He not much more provide for you? Surely, that God that feeds the ravens when they cry will not starve His children when they pray. (W. Burkitt.) The body of less importance than the soul The body is but the husk or shell, the soul is the kernel; the body is but the cask, the soul the precious liquor contained in it; the body is but the cabinet, the soul the jewel; the body is but the ship or vessel, the soul the pilot; the body is but the tabernacle, and a poor clay tabernacle or cottage toe, the soul the inhabitant; the body is but the machine or engine, the soul that ἐνδόντι, that actuates and quickens it; the body is but the dark lanthorn, the soul or spirit is the candle of the Lord, that burns in it. And seeing that there is such difference between the soul and body, in respect of excellency, surely our better part challenges our greatest care and diligence to make provision for it … Some philosophers will not allow the body to be an essential part of man, but only the vessel or vehicle of the soul; Anima cujusque est quisque. The soul is the man. Though I would not be so unequal to it, yet I must needs acknowledge it to be but an inferior part: it is therefore so to be treated, so dieted, and provided, as to render it most calm and compliant with the soul, most tractable and obsequious to the dictates of reason; not so pampered and indulged, as to encourage it to cast its rider, and to take the reins into its own hand, and usurp dominion over the better part, the τὸἠγεμονικὸν, to sink and depress it into a sordid compliance with its own lusts, atque a affigere humi Divinae particulara aurae (Luke 15:17; Ecclesiastes 12:7; Galatians 6:7-8; Romans 13:14; 1 Corinthians 9:27). (Ray.) Vanity in dress It is enough to make one weep to think of the multitudes who are only living for the frivolities of this life. I read lately that the Emperor of Brazil had given the Queen a dress made of spiders’ webs; it took 17,000 webs to make it. What a curiosity! No doubt the Queen would keep it all her life. Oh, what an amount of time and labour to make this dress! It reminded me of the way we cover oursolves with vanities, wasting a life over it. Oh I give it up, and take the beautiful robe of Christ’ s righteousness. The spirit of content I once engaged in discourse with a Rosicrucian about the great secret. He talked of it as a spirit that lived in an emerald, and converted everything that was near it to the highest perfection it was capable of. “ It gives a lustre,” said he, “ o the sun, and water to the diamond. It irradiates every metal, and enriches lead with all the properties of gold. It heightens smoke into flame, flame into light, and light into glory. He further added that a single ray dissipates pain and care and melancholy from the person on whom it falls. In short,” said he, “ its presence naturally changes every place into a kind of heaven.” At length I found that his great secret was nothing else but content. (Addison.) Do not borrow trouble There is no one who acts more unwisely than he that “ borrows trouble.” He that borrows money may invest it to great advantage. The borrower of a good book may be a great gainer by its study and perusal. But who gains by “ borrowing trouble “ ? Is trouble so joyous and enriching that we shall be happier if we can only enjoy it a few days before it comes? Does it not withdraw the light of joy from our countenance? Does it not withdraw our thoughts from the present, and unfit us for its joys and pleasures? Where, then, is the wisdom of prophesying evil that we may “ borrow trouble” from it? (Alliance News.) The folly of caring more for the body than the soul The body is to the soul as a barren turf to a mine of gold, as a mud wall about a delicate garden, as a wooden box wherein the jeweller carries his precious gems, as a coarse case to a fair and rich instrument, as a rotten hedge to a paradise, as Pharaoh’ s prison to a Joseph, or as a mask to a beautiful face. (T. Adams.) The soul foremost I do not approve the sullenness of that soul which wrongs the body; but I worse like to have the body wrong the soul, to have Hagar tricked up in Sarah’ s garments and set at upper end of the table. If the painted popinjay that so dotes on her own beauty, had an eye to see how her soul used, she would think her practice more ill-favoured and unhandsome than perfuming a putrefied coffin, or putting mud into a glass of crystal. For shame, let us put the soul foremost again, and not set heaven lowest and earth uppermost. (T. Adams.) Both body and soul lost There is a parable of a woman, who, having twin children, and both being presented to her, she falls deeply and fondly in love with the one, but is careless and disrespectful of the other: this she will nurse herself, but that is put forth. Her love grows up with the child she kept herself she decks it fine, she feeds it choicely; but at last, by overmuch pampering of it, the child surfeits, becomes mortally sick, and when it was dying she remembers herself, and sends to look after the other child that was at nurse, so the end she might now cherish it; but when the messenger came she finds it dying and gasping likewise, and examining the truth, she understands that through the mother’ s carelessness and neglect to look after it, the poor child was starved; thus was the fond, partial mother, to her great grief, sorrow, and shame, deprived of both her hopeful babes at once. Thus, every Christian is this mother, the children are our body and soul: the former of these it is that men and women fall deeply and fondly in love with, whilst indeed they are careless and neglect the other; this they dress and feed, nothing is too good or too dear for it; but at the last the body surfeits, comes by some means or other to its deathbed, when there is very little or no hope of life; then men begin to remember the soul, and would think of some course to save it: the minister he is sent for in all haste to look after it; but, alas! he finds it in part dead, in part dying; and the very truth is, the owner, through neglect and carelessness, hath starved the soul, and it is ready to go to hell before the body is fit for the grave. And so the foolish fond Christian, to his eternal shame and sorrow, loseth both his body and soul for ever. (Spencer.) God is the universal Provider There is no such thing recognized in Scripture as “ laws of nature,” by which the various creatures are sustained. God is here and elsewhere represented to us as feeding them Himself: “ He giveth food to all flesh.” He may employ secondary means, but He must Himself be present with these secondary means, or they would not continue in action for a single day. And in this respect the Bible is infinitely more philosophical than modern books of science: for these books represent the present state of things as carried on by laws themselves, whereas a law, being an unconscious rule or limitation, can do nothing of itself. It must be kept in action by a will, i.e., an Intelligence, which, considering the boundless field it has to occupy, we can hold to be nothing less than the Supreme Will. (M. F. Sadler.) A lesson from the birds Luther had a quick eye to detect and read the lessons of nature. Thus, on a certain calm summer evening he happened to be standing at a window, when he observed a small bird quietly settle down for the night. “ Look how that little fellow preaches faith to us all!” he exclaimed. “ He takes hold of his twig, tucks his head under his wing, and goes to sleep, leaving God to think for him.” Add to his stature one cubit Limitations It is well for men to think that there are some things which, with all their power, they cannot do. Some of these things are apparently very simple, yet even though simple and easy as in some cases they appear to be, cannot be done, even when men give the whole stress and pith of their minds to the attempt. This is implied in the phraseology of the text: Which of you by taking thought, by anxiously considering, by most perseveringly endcavouring, by straining his wit and strength to the very utmost, by spending his days and nights in the effort, can add one cubit unto his stature? There are some difficult things which we can do by putting out all our strength. There are others which mock the fulness of our power, and the tenacity of our patience. We resolve to do them, and we are beaten back, and taught a lesson of self-impotence which otherwise we never could have learned. Can you add one cubit unto your stature? You may wear high-heeled boots, you may order the tallest hats, but the height of your stature you are utterly unable to increase. God Himself sovereignly draws certain boundary lines. In some instances God allows us to a large extent to draw our own boundaries; in others He presently gives the final and decisive word, “ Hitherto--no further.” It is important to know the difference between quantities which are variable and quantities which are fixed. This knowledge may save us a great deal of trouble, and prevent very much pain. Can your teeth bite the rock? However hungry you are, is there strength in your jaw to bite the granite? Can your feet stand upon the flowing river? Can you lay your finger upon the lowest of all the stars that shine in heaven? A thousand such questions show that we are hemmed in by the impassable; we walk upon the edge of a gulf; and our mightiest endeavours show us that after all we are only beating ourselves against the bars of a great cage! A painted cage, but a cage still--a cage lamplit, but a cage still. Now this limitation of our power must have some meaning. Jesus Christ makes use of it in illustrating not only the sovereignty, but the goodness of God. He teaches us to trust the Father, who has determined the height of our stature. He shows that if we cannot do such apparently little things as He has specified in His sermon, it is absurd to suppose we can do things which are infinitely greater; checks our anxiety by showing that our keenest solicitude about earthly concerns boots nothing when it gets beyond trust, and becomes practical atheism. This argument is as beautiful in its simplicity as it is universal in its application. Wherever there is a man, whatever his colour, language, age, he can understand this challenge, “ Can you add one cubit unto your stature?” Why are you not taller? There seems to be room enough above you to admit of growth. Why don’ t you grow? You would not shut out the light of the sun even if you were half an inch taller! You would not imperil the stars if you did stand half a hair’ s breadth higher! Why do you not add to your stature? You can scheme, and arrange, and plot, and suggest. Sir! why not add to your stature? You cannot. Then consider--ask yourself a few plain searching questions. See how God rules in all the things--in your height, in the bounds of your habitation, in all the limits which He has set to your life. This great fact of the Divine limitation of human power is to rule us in the deepest of our studies, and in the profoundest of our worship. If we lay hold of this truth, and have a clear, deep, tender conviction of it, and of all the truths which it represents, three great effects ought to be produced upon our life. I. IT SHOULD FOSTER THE MOST LOVING AND TRUST IN THE OF GOD. There is a point where we cannot go one iota further, where we are compelled to one of two things--reverent and intelligent trust, or the ostrich blindness which seems to proceed upon the principle that to shut the eyes is to escape all observation and all control. The course of reasoning in our minds ought to be this: “ I cannot add one cubit unto my stature; God has determined my height.” If He has been mindful of such a little thing as that, will he be unmindful of great things? II. In the next place, this truth should OUR TONE WHICH ARE NOT SETTLED BY . If a man can’ t increase his stature, how can he increase the volume of God’ s truth? If a man can’ t increase his stature, who gives him authority to speak where God has been silent? III. In the last place, THIS TRUTH SHOULD US TO WITH FULLER AND ZEAL THE POWERS WHICH WE KNOW TO BE CAPABLE OF . We see some things most sharply by contrast. Here we have a point which challenges contrast of the most practical and instructive kind. For example: You cannot add one cubit unto your stature, yet you can increase the volume and force of your mind. See the truthfulness of the doctrine we have laid down, that in some things God sharply gives the final line, in others He leaves great liberty, and calls men to growth that seems to have no end. See how apparently arbitrary is Divine sovereignty in some of its workings A man can’ t increase his height one inch, and yet I find nowhere a limit to intellectual supremacy and to the expansion of intellectual power. Your body has done growing, but your mind may just have began to look at the alphabet of truth. When the animal has reached the utmost limit of its capability, the intellectual, the Divine may go on increasing, expanding, refining, for God constantly says to the faithful servant, “ Thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things.” Whatsoever a man’ s mind legitimately attains, God still says, “ Come up higher.” IV. Again, though you cannot add one cubit unto your stature, You MAY RELIEVE THE PAIN OF A HEARTS. V. Again, though you cannot add one cubit unto your stature, You MAY AN EVER- WITH THE WILL OF GOD; you may know God more perfectly, read His Word with a clearer eye, receive the suggestions and instructions of His Holy Spirit more lovingly, more loyally and trustfully, so that you may be men in understanding. Let us go to them, then, knowing that we are limited in our little sphere; that there are marked and positive limitations in some cases; and that everywhere--excepting when we are growing up into the likeness of God--there is limitation. Let that rebuke human reason--let that curb humanselfishness let that stand by us when we read the Holy Word and try to solve its mysteries. And when we become weary of looking at our littleness, our experiments, and our impotence, and turn round in other directions, we find that we may take wings--strong, great, unwearying pinions--and fly away right up to the very heart and heaven of God! Though we be little we are great. Though we are shut in and confined and mocked in some directions, in other directions we are citizens of the universe, freemen of the whole creation. Blessed are they who know alike the limit and the liberty of human life! (J. Parker, D. D.) Luke 12:27 Consider the lilies Lessons from the flowers: to children There are three virtues which Jesus was endeavouring to teach when He told His disciples to consider the lilies. They are, contentment, obedience, humility. I. FLOWERS ARE NOT ONLY , BUT THEY ALWAYS SEEM AND GLAD, Did you ever think how little they have to make them so? They live on other people’ s leavings. The air gives them only what finer folks reject and call poison. When the birds and the beasts have taken from the atmosphere all they want, the flowers, like poor Lazarus, desire what is left, the crumbs that fall from the rich man’ s table. Then, too, if there is any dreadful filth from the sewers or the barnyard, of which men do not know how else to be rid, they give it to the flowers; just as I have seen certain children send ragged clothes and broken toys to the Christmas poor-box. But the flowers are grateful, and though they cannot talk they blush with gratitude, pink or blue or yellow or white, according to the colour of their blood. Then the poor flower-folk, out of these odds and ends which nobody else will have, make for themselves such splendid clothes as King Solomon could not get, though he had first choice of everything, and all the weavers and tailors and jewellers in the world to dress him. So our first lesson from the flowers is to get all the good out of the things you have, before you wish for more things. II. FLOWERS HAVE NO WINGS AND NO FEET. They must stay in one place. Therefore they never do anything which they cannot do at home. If a boy will stick to that, he will grow up like a flower into a noble and beautiful man. When the Lord Jesus was asked to do wrong, He said: “ I and My Father are one.” It was His way of saying, “ That is not as they do at home; therefore I cannot do so here.” If boys use their feet to get away from home, they are worse off than the flowers, which have no feet. But if they use them to carry their homes wherever they go, they are far more blessed then the fairest flowers. III. THE FLOWERS HAVE NO TONGUES. I do not mean that you must not talk. God has given us tongues, and means us to use them. But let the silent beauty of the flowers teach us to do all the good we can and make no fuss about it. Never be in a hurry to tell people you are Christians, but act so that they cannot help finding it out. Did you ever watch beans grow? They come out of the ground as if they had been planted upside down. Each appears carrying the seed on top of his stalk, as if they were afraid folks would not know they were beans unless they immediately told them. But most flowers wait patiently and humbly to be known by their fruits. Sometimes boys get laughed at because they think they must tell everybody that they are Christians. They talk about their piety, and never show it in any other way. But no boy gets laughed at for being a Christian; for being true and brave and kind and humble and pure, like the Lord Jesus. (W. B.Wright.) God’ s care for the lilies The Lord’ s argument requires that these should be the wild lilies, the lilies of the field, as we read in the parallel place in St. Matthew. As they spring up spontaneously, man, by his cultivation, has added nothing to their perfection. They are creations of God on which He has lavished such splendour of form and colour that Solomon’ s jewelled robes were not to be compared to them, and yet God has thus gorgeously clothed them for no apparent purpose except to exhibit profuseness of beauty; they last but a day, and the next day their withered stalks are gathered for fuel for the oven. Not one in one million delights the eye even of a child; and yet each particular one serves its purpose in creation. Each one is observed and its beauty noted by God--by Him who numbers the grains of sand and the drops of dew-each particular one, though never to be seen by man, is as perfect of its kind as if it had been destined to adorn the temple of God. (M. F. Sadler.) Nature set against manufactures “ Consider the lilies how they grow Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.” There is nature set against manufactures, and set so as to throw them into pitiable contrast. Solomon was all as to his decorations, manufacture--the decorations were hand made; and the lily is lifted up, and declared to be his superior in tender delicacy of beauty to all the colour that flamed on the shoulders of the king. How are they made? Look at them and you will know. Compare anything which you have made with anything which you find in nature; and you will see that you have either been copying nature or travestying by mean and impotent imitation what nature has done so infinitely well. Can you show me anything so delicate as the bloom upon the cheek of the peach? Touch it. Now put the bloom back again! Look at the meadow in the morning when brightened with dew, and tell me if the hand of man ever made such a scene as that dewy field presents when the sun shines upon it? What gleaming diamonds--what glowing rubles--what glittering emeralds--what a blazing of living and all but speaking colour! How made? “ Not made with hands!” Touch one of the jewels. It is goner Restore it t No angel could! (J. Parker, D. D.) Considering the flowers Dr. Chalmers luxuriated among the plants and flowers of the season, and delighted to examine minutely the structure and the beauties of some humble production that would have escaped the notice of a less practised eye. He said to a friend one day--after he had been rapt in admiration of nature and nature’ s God--“ I love to dwell on the properties of one flower at a time; to fix my mind on it exclusively until I feel that it has taken complete hold of my mind. This is a peculiarity of my constitution. I must have concentration of thought on any given thing, and not be diverted from it.” The friend’ s attention was arrested in the garden by a sunflower of large dimensions and exquisite culouring. He (Dr. Chalmers) said, with deep emotion., “ Oh, that we could so open our hearts to the beams of the Sun of Righteousness!” It was in such scenes that one not only saw but felt that the train of thought was heavenward--that his heart and his treasure were in heaven. Christ and the lilies Our Lord reminds us by such words as my text of the profound teaching that lies in the simplest objects strewn before us in the world. As the flowers expand their whole being to the light; as every wave upon the sea reflects the arched heavens above it; as the mountain peaks point ever upward to the skies; as the world of nature leads up to God; so should we be flower, sea, mountain, unfolding our whole nature to the light of God, mirroring back in happy response the glory of heaven encircling everywhere our lives, pointing by our steadfastness and rectitude directly up to Him. Let us listen to nature’ s teaching, and from it learn what God would have us learn about our life. I. LILY-LIFE AND GROWTH TEACH US FREEDOM FROM CARE. The lily builds itself up from within. Like the primrose and crocus, the flower springs directly from the root. The sweet lily of the valley, which is, perhaps, the best known plant that bears the name of lily, pushes its way up step by step from the creeping root-stock. The leaves open out, and from their sheath the slender stalk rises. Tiny knots of pale green fibre form round its head; they droop; the stem arches itself, and the little knots open into white and regularly formed bells, brimming with richest fragrance. The wonder is how so much fragrance can be compressed within so small a thing. Watch how it grew. It made no fuss. It never paused as if in uncertainty. It was never divided in its plant-mind whether it should go on trying to be a lily, or whether it should try to be something else. It just went on as it had started from the root, growing, being itself, without hurry, and presently the bells formed, the sweetness and beauty came. It was that which God intended it to be--a lily. Consider it. Ours is to be the pure lily life. The one thing we have to do is to persevere in being what we are--Christians. 1. We suffer from temptation. It harasses and baffles us, Is not the simple solution for all temptations, great or small, to go back to the very root of our life? “ I am Christ’ s. I cannot do this thing. My Master gave up ease, comfort, and life also, on the Cross. I can give up my desires and likings for Him. He would not do this thing. He would not argue or parley. ‘ Get thee behind me, Satan,’ would be His word. It must be my word also.” Temptations lodge themselves in our fancy. They haunt our imagination. Well, though they do, go on with life’ s true work just the same. The lily pauses for no fancy. It goes on growing. So, in spite of fancies and imaginings, go on being, and living, and doing as Christ would were He in your place. Go back to the root. Be Christ’ s, in spite of your state of mind, your inclinations and fancies. 2. Disappointments and sorrows hinder us. They lodge in our fancy. They people our brain with vague fears. I think if we went to a lily and plucked off one of its tiny bells, or tore away the leaf that sheathes the stem, the lily would still struggle bravely, and rear its head as proudly as it could. It would strive still to fulfil its life, because it grows from the root, and the root is not gone. Shall we be stripped of something we hold dear--wealth, bodily vigour, the friends we love tenderly--and therefore cease to grow? Christians cannot give up. II. THE LILY GROWS . And so do Christians. God has planted some of us in bare desolate places. We are not happy and contented. We believe we should lead a more useful and a nobler life if our environment were changed. It is impossible to say what any of us might do or become if we were in different positions from those we occupy. Let me remind you, however, of one great fact. For the present you are in one particular spot, and no other; working at this particular calling and no other; possessed of just this particular amount of education and knowledge, and no more. And this being the case, God requires of you to reverence and reveal Him, to witness for Him, in the particular place in which He has at present established you; and to use there the talents, the opportunities and grace He has given you. Try and brighten life where you are. In the norrowest sphere, as a subordinate or a servant, be true to your Christian nature. Perform the lily’ s part. Let one little corner of the world, at any rate, be more pleasant and heavenly because you are in it. III. THE SPECIAL UTILITY OF THE LILY. Many of the larger varieties of the lily can exist where herbage at first cannot. The soil is very dry, and grass would be scanty were it not for the function discharged by the lily. There is no continuous greensward in Palestine, such as is seen in the parks and around the homesteads of our native land. The lily, however, can exist in the dry soil, for it carries in its bulbous root its own store of nourishment. Fixed in the ground, but sustaining itself in large measure from the bulb, it grows into the perfect flower. As vegetation always attracts moisture, the lilies draw from even that dry atmosphere the humid particles it contains. Their broad opaque leaves screen from the sun plants that come to nestle under their shade. The lilies create the conditions under which herbage can exist and thrive. The flocks of the shepherd always wend their way to the spot abounding with lilies. The gazelle and other wild deer are found grazing there, not cropping the slender flowers, but luxuriating in the succulent grass which grows beside them--a scene of which the inspired poet in the Canticles has availed himself: the bride comparing her spouse to a roe or young hart feeding among the lilies. “ I am my beloved’ s, and my beloved is mine; he feedeth among the lilies.” Consider the lilies!” How useful they are! We are to be like them in this. We are to make it more possible for others, by our influence and example, to live a holy and a spiritual life. IV. THE LILY IS . Its adornment is most rich and sumptuous. Its colours--white, scarlet, and gold, glow in splendour over the whole landscape. And yet it simply grows; it attends to its life, not to its raiment. Why take thought for raiment? Yet many people are vain enough and unwise enough to perplex and trouble their whole lives simply and mainly about dress and furniture--about the adornment of their persons, the garniture of their houses. The law the Saviour gives us is most plain. Live first. Think most about life. And He means soul-life, the life in God, the life of a child of God, which is the only real and worthy human life. Be earnest about purity, holiness, spirituality of character. (A. J. Griffith.) The lessons derived from the plant “ Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to-day is, and to-morrow is cast into the oven, shall He not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?” (Matthew 6:30). The inspired writers are in the way of employing all the objects in nature with which we are familiar, in order to illustrate spiritual truths. Solomon sends the slothful man to the ant: “ Go to the ant, thou sluggard.” Isaiah makes the ox arid ass rebuke the ingratitude of the professing people of God: “ The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master’ s crib, but Israel doth not know, my people doth not consider.” All this exercised a most beneficent influence on pious men in ancient Israel. Living as they did,” much in the open air, and in perpetual view of the wondrous works of God in earth and sky, nature was seen by them to be full of God. The grass sprang, the flowers bloomed, the wheat and barley yielded their increase, and the vine and the fig and the olive-trees their rich fruit, all in obedience to God’ s command; and as they did so they showed forth the glory of God as well as furnished nourishment to His creatures. Would that the example set by Hebrew shepherds and husbandmen as they tended their flocks or pruned their vineyards would induce those who live much among the works of nature to take like elevated views. The plant in particular has been much employed by the inspired writers to convey spiritual lessons. The life of the plant seemed to them like the spiritual life in the soul; the rain and dew that nourished it reminded them of the grace which comes down from heaven; the flowers which adorned it taught them that the soul should be adorned with heavenly graces; and the fruit which it yielded admonished them that they too must bring forth fruit unto God. I. WE ARE TO THE WORKS OF GOD, AND IN THE PLANTS, THE LILIES, AND THE GRASS OF THE FIELD. “ Consider,” says he, “ the lilies of the field.” There are many who do not consider them. Some of these persons are fond of seeing or possessing fine specimens of human workmanship in dress or furniture or houses or paintings, but they “ regard not the works of the Lord, nor the operations of His hands.” “ And yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.” We are to mark them; we are to mark how they grow. We need no scientific knowledge, no learned terms, to enable us to do this. All persons who have eyes to see may see it with or without book learning, whether they have or have not been at schools or colleges. They may in particular observe two things. 1. Every part of the plant is made to serve an end. “ They toil not, neither do they spin” ; yet every organ of the plant has its use. Look at the swelling tree that overshadows us, or at this graceful lily at our feet. Consider it, It has roots which serve a purpose. These roots penetrate into the soil and draw nourishment from it. These spread out downwards as the trunk and branches mount upwards, and enable the tree, the oak for example, to stand the storms of a hundred winters. The form of the bole of a tree, and the manner in which it fixes itself in the ground, is said to have yielded some suggestions to a celebrated engineer in the construction of a famous light-house (Eddystone). You may remark how the tree springs up from the ground as a stem or trunk, on which hang all the branches and flowers and seed and fruit. This trunk, as it mounts upwards, spreads out all around into the air as branches and branchlets. These are covered with leaves rejoicing in the sunshine, and the moisture of dew and rain, and drawing in nourishment from the atmosphere. Upon these, at the proper season, you may look for and find flowers to delight the eye, and seed wherewith to propagate other plants after their kind, and fruit for the sustenance of God’ s creatures. It is obvious to every reflecting mind that in this Divine workmanship every part has its use and its end. The architect of a famous palace (Sydenham) confesses that he derived some of the ideas embodied in that structure from observing the wonderful provision made for bearing up the very bread leaf of one of the most beautiful of lilies. But there is another principle to be observed in the plant. 2. There is visible in the plant an order, an ornament, a beauty. Special reference is made to this by Him who made them, and who now uses them to teach us lessons. God is said not only to have made, but to have clothed the grass of the field. While every part of the plant has its use, it has also a clothing; it is clothed with beauty to minister to our delight and manifest the Divine glory. It can be shown that every plant and every organ of the plant is, as it were, constructed upon a model or pattern in the Divine mind. Look at the full-formed tree growing apart from all other trees, and you see at once that it is made to grow up into a particular form, and this form is beautiful to look upon. It can be shown that every tree takes its own peculiar form--a form after its kind; and if not interfered with, that form is lovely. Look, too, at the flower of the lily, or any other plant, and in every part of it--its stalk, its petals, and inner organs, in their forms, and in the way in which they are placed--there are obvious order and ornament to call forth our admiration and our praise. Then, what richness of colouring in the flower. First of all, every colour is beautiful in itself; and then, colours which are accordant are placed alongside of one another in pleasing melody or exciting harmony. It needs science to explain all this, to show how it arises, and point out the causes of it; but it needs no science to enable us to observe it or enjoy it; the eye perceives it spontaneously, and drinks in the beauty, and it needs only piety to enable us to turn all this into an anthem of praise. This clothing of the plant meets us everywhere. Take the commonest plant--the furze that grows on the common, the seaweed that cleaves to the rocks washed by the ocean, or the fern that springs up in the mountain glen--and you may observe in its structure, in its leaves, and all its pendicles, a wonderful correspondence of side to side, and a counterbalancing of one part by another. Let the eye travel over nature, as we walk among the cultivated fields, or on the grassy slopes and valleys of our upland districts, or among the thick woods where the winds have sown the seeds, and bush and tree of every kind spring up, each eager to maintain its place and show its separate form and beauty, and we discover an order and a grace in every branch and blade and leaf and colour. Pluck the leaf and flower and consider it, and observe how one edge has the same number of notches in it as the other edge, and what nice balancings and counterpoises there are, and how nicely the lines and dots and shadings suit one another, and recur each at its proper place, as if all had been done by the most exact measurement and under the most skilful and tasteful eye. Enter the rich arbour or the cultivated garden, and observe how the flowers have been enlarged or improved by the care which has been taken of them; and in this gayer colour and in that fuller expanse and more flowing drapery and richer fragrance mark how God, who rewards us for opening our eyes and looking abroad upon His works, holds out a still greater reward to those who in love to Him, or in love to them, take pains with them and bestow labour upon them. Now, all this fitness and all this order and beauty testify of the wisdom and goodness of God. All these objects point upward to their God and to our God. But these works of God can also serve other religious ends. They may be used as lesson-books; they are thus used by Christ to instruct us in great spiritual truths. Nature may thus be sanctified, and be made to teach us the very same lessons as the inspired Word. II. , WE ARE TO THE GROUNDS WHICH WE HAVE FOR IN GOD THAT HE WILL PROVIDE FOR OUR WANTS. “ Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to-day is, and tomorrow is cast into the oven, much more shall He clothe you.” This is a specimen of Bible reasoning. The Bible speaks as “ unto wise men,” and calls on us to “ judge” what “ it says.” Its reasonings are all brief, all very conclusive, but at the same time easily followed. Take, as an example, “ If God spared not His own Son, but gave Him freely to the death for us,” --here is the premise, and the inference follows--“ how will He not with Him also freely give us all things?” The argument is irresistible. The lesson comes home at once to us. Every bird we hear carolling its song, for the very pleasure of it, on the tree or in the air; every flower that we see expanding its petals in the fields or garden, is rebuking our want of faith and confidence in God, and, as it were, saying, “ If God take such care of me, will He not much more take care of you?” “ Ye are of more value than many sparrows,” of more value than all the grass of the field. Ye have a body that is fearfully and wonderfully made, made with even a more amazing skill than the lilies of the field. The lilies are arrayed in greater splendour than Solomon ever was; and Solomon’ s body and every man’ s frame is more wondrously made than ,the loveliest plant that ever adorned meadow or mountain. Surely the God who made that goodly frame will also feed and clothe it. We are warned against a spirit of unbelief; we are exhorted to cherish a spirit of confidence. Christ would deliver us from a spirit of anxiety. The fowls of the air gather their food, but they have no feeling of anxiety while they do so. III. THIRDLY, WE ARE TO THAT IF GOD SO CLOTHE THE GRASS OF THE FIELD, THAT IF HE SO CLOTHE THE BODIES OF HIS PEOPLE, MUCH MORE WILL HE CLOTHE THEIR SOULS. This is not the direct lesson taught in the text, but it arises very directly out of it. If God does thus clothe the bodies of His people, much more will He clothe their souls with heavenly graces. And ah, these souls of ours need to be clothed! The plant once of a graceful form and clothed with the richest hues, but now bent, broken by the wind, bemired in the dust--this is the emblem of the soul, once in the very image of God, and arrayed with a brighter glory than the lily, but now fallen from its first estate, broken and torn and polluted by sin! Ah, how like is that soul to the grass which has been cut down, and which is about to be cast into the oven! That soul has been cut off from its God, the source of all spiritual life; already has the life ceased to circulate in it, and it is ready to be cast into the fire that is not quenched. Can it indeed be that this soul is to grow and to flourish once more upon its stalk? Christ’ s work when on earth was a work of salvation. They brought to Him the sick, the maimed, and the blind, and He healed them all. Not only is the soul once dead made alive in this work--it is beautified and adorned. Yes, if you have faith but as a grain of mustard-seed, you will, by the vital power which is imparted, be clothed with graces of many a hue, each lovely in itself, and lovely in the place which it has to occupy: there will be the brighter colours, the blue, the pink, and the orange of faith and confidence and hope, mingling with the darker but not less lovely colours--with the red, the purple, and the olive of penitence, humility, and patience; and the whole lightened and brightened by what is, after all, the pure beam of heaven, by the pure white light of love, coming direct and unbroken from Him who is light and love. Yes, brethren, our souls need to be beautified. They need not only to be renewed, they need to be adorned. There are some Christian men and women who are under the influence of true faith and steady principle, but they are not amiable. They are cross or peevish or violent or stubborn. Such persons need to be clothed, that they become not only good, but lovely--as the lily is lovely. My friends, this world of ours is but a nursery, a place of nurture, where we are to be reared and then transplanted--transplanted into the paradise above. These flowers around us have their beauty but for a day; but it is different with the souls which are being adorned by the spirit of God. They are to bloom for ever in a better land, where are no winds to blight, no storms to destroy. (J. McCosh, D. D.) Lessons from the lilies 1. The great characteristic of spring plants is the production of their blossoms direct from the root, and not, as in the plants of summer and autumn, from the sides and extremities of leaf-covered shoots. And is not what is thus true in the physical world true also in the world of human nature? All the spring-growths of human life come direct from the root of our being. The blossoms of faith, hope, and love that are fairest and freshest are impulses and intuitions of the heart, and not slow growths elaborated by the foliage of experience. First thoughts, that seem to come like inspirations directly from the Source of all good, are better than second thoughts that result from careful calculations and long processes of balancing of reasons. The summer and the autumn of life teach us caution and reserve, and we produce our blossoms half concealed among the cloud of leaves that have nourished them. But the spring gives confidence and openness, and loves to display its beauties with a charming candour and simplicity. Happy are we if--when the snows of those dreary winter trials that have blighted our life have passed away--our souls have been so restored--made so fresh and young in the new spring life that has come upon us from on high, as that we shall put forth the beauties of holiness and the fruits of righteousness directly from hearts that are rooted and grounded in the love that passeth knowledge. 2. While sitting one day in a musing mood on the summit of a lofty mountain, I noticed growing in the crevices of the rock beside me a few plants, which are usually found only in the thick grassy sward of cultivated fields. In that bare, bleak spot they were removed from the competition and pressure of their fellows, and had to struggle only with the elements for existence. But instead of becoming more luxuriant in consequence, they were dwarfed and stunted, and miserable looking in comparison with their lowland brethren. So is it, I thought, with human beings. We all long at times to escape from the cares and fierce competition of our complicated social life, and to find our happiness in the primitive simplicity of nature. But the evils of the wilderness are in reality worse than those of the crowd. Better far the struggle for existence among our fellows, which helps to make us patient and self-denying, and fruitful in every good word and work, than the struggle with the loneliness and monotony of the hermitage, which makes the mind morbid, and leaves so much of our nature undeveloped. 3. To the plant growing in the dry, parched land, the cloudless sun is a foe that blasts and destroys. But let its thirsty root have access to water in the irrigating channel, and immediately the withering sun is converted into the best of friends. The scorching rays that formerly caused the leaves to droop and languish now fill them with strong and vigorous life. So the fierce rays of the world blight and wither the soul that has no counteracting and restorative principle of faith. But let the root of our being reach the river that maketh glad the city of our God--let it drink from the heavenly wellsprings--and immediately the blighting power of the world is overcome; the afflictions which are not joyous but grievous, help us to bring forth the peaceable fruits of righteousness; and all things minister to our faith and growth in grace. 4. In the midst of the everlasting snows of Mont Blanc--surrounded on every side by glaciers, and elevated many thousands of feet above the valley--there is a solitary projecting rock, where the scanty soil is covered in July with rare Alpine plants. The rays of the sun, reflected by the snow and ice around, shine with double power upon this favoured spot, and create a warm, genial climate, in which the flowers bloom with unexampled beauty and luxuriance; while the frozen peaks shelter them from all the storms as in a kind of natural conservatory. Thus the very inhospitable forces of nature minister to the welfare of these flowers. When first I saw this summer garden in the midst of eternal winter, my heart was touched with the peculiar pathos of the sight. It was an emblem to me of the blessedness to be found even in the midst of a sorrow that blights and chills the whole life. The things that seem to be against us are in reality working together for our good. 5. After the creamy blossoms of the mountain-ash or rowan have passed away, a time succeeds in which the tree has no special beauty or brightness. It lingers during the summer months in dull, cold, uniform greenness. But all through this dormant season it is silently and unmarkedly preparing for the rich crop of scarlet berries with which it is crowned in autumn. So the mind has periods of dullness, which usually occur after periods of much fertility and creative power. It sheds its intellectual blossoms, and sinks into a state of langour and inaction. But this dreary time is the herald of renewed activity and increased brightness to come. 6. Leaves work for the whole tree; no part of it is independent of them, or could exist without them. Blossoms, on the other hand, have a higher and more special function to perform. They elaborate honey, and perfume, and sweet juices not derivable from the leaves, and having special relation to the fruit. So is it with the human tree. Our existence and welfare depend upon those who till the soil and reap the fields. Our whole social economy is based upon the labour of their hands. They produce the food and work for the maintenance of the whole community. But poets and artists have higher functions assigned to them. They are the blossoms of humanity, whose creations impart colour and fragrance, light and sweetness to our life. To them we owe the most precious and enduring fruits of our civilization. 7. The seeds of a begonia taken from the same pod will germinate, some in a few days, some at the end of a year, and some at various intermediate times, even when they are all placed in the same external circumstances and exposed to the same conditions of growth. Similar differences of mental development and moral character are often exhibited by members of the same family, brought up around one mother’ s knee, and trained and educated in the same loving school of home. 8. Every one knows the beautiful downy head that succeeds the gaudy yellow of the common dandelion. It is composed of the delicate feather-winged seeds which the wind carries from place to place, so as to spread the plant as widely as possible in situations suitable for its growth. To country children it often serves as a rustic clock. They blow away the little feathery seeds in order to find out the time of day from the number of the ones that remain behind on the cushioned summit of the stem. Let us take heed, lest while we are only amusing ourselves, we should be scattering ignorantly the seed of evil influences, which may take root in other hearts, and lead to their undoing. The idle breath that blows away some airy trifle, merely to mark and pass the time, may have results as wide as the world, and as lasting as eternity. 9. Wet places generally produce fragrant plants. The sweet-gale, or Dutch-myrtle, grows in myriads among the moorland bogs; and the Eucalyptus, or gum-tree of Australia, thrives best in marshy soil. These, and such-like plants, exhale an agreeable balsamic odour, which has a most salubrious effect upon the moist atmosphere, and neutralizes the miasma of the swamps by its antiseptic qualities. When such aromatic plants predominate, the climate becomes healthy, and intermittent fever is unknown. There are similar compensations and counteractives in the moral world. There are Christians whose lives exhale the flagrance of holiness, and neutralize the noxious influence of the ungodly around them. 10. The favourite flower of the late French emperor, the third Napoleon, was the violet. Bouquets of it were always in his private chambers, and wreaths of it decked his bier and tomb. We should have fancied that a man so full of ambition, whose whole public life was one of much pomp and display, would have selected some prouder and gaudier flower. Perhaps it was the sense of contrast that led him to set his affections on a lowly plant, which has always been regarded as the emblem of humility; that made it refreshing for him to turn his eye, wearied with the glare and the loud-asserting grandeur of life, on this meek dweller in the shade, creeping over the mossy ground, and hiding its modest purple head among its own green leaves. Or was it because there was something of the violet-nature in the man’ s own character--because something in the heart of the great man corresponded to something in the nature of the lowly flower? Did he find a sympathy in this-mute creature of God for a part of his being which was unknown to his fellow-creatures? The witness of the heart is not always written in the living epistle of the life, known and read of all men. A man is known as a hard, dry, logical writer, in whose works not a trace of sentiment or of feeling is seen; and yet this man in his secret heart has a passion for poetry, and in his private moments it forms his favourite reading. The great metaphysician, Sir William Hamilton, had a special delight in the fairy literature of little children, and returned to it with relief after the loftiest flights into the rare regions of abstruse philosophy, as the lark returns to its nest in the meadow from the blue fields of heaven. Probably more of the real man is told us by Napoleon’ s unexpected love of a little lowly flower, than we learn from all the grand successes and mournful reverses of his wonderfully chequered life. 11. In tropical countries the aspect of the vegetation is drooping, hanging down; in temperate countries it is upright, self-supporting. How characteristic of the difference between the inhabitants of the tropics, and those of the northern zones--the langour of the one and the energy of the other! 12. A beautiful little daisy grows by the side of a path in the outskirts of a large city. It follows with its golden eye all day the march of the sun through the heavens. Like a miniature sun it expands its white luminous petals--and revolves in its little orbit on earth--as its great prototype revolves in its magnificent orbit on high. When the sun sets, the daisy closes its little eye and sinks into sleep. That daisy read me a lesson, which it would be my highest happiness to learn and practise. What it does willlessly and unconsciously, I should do willingly and consciously, “ Whom have I in the heavens but Thee, O God, and there is none upon the earth whom I desire beside Thee.” God alone is co-natural with my spirit; all influences that own Him not are foreign and uncongenial; they have no true relation to my higher being. The True Light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world, is alone the element of life.(H. Macmillan, D. D.) The lessons of the lilies The works of God are words of God; they speak to us. The works of God are mirrors, reflectors of God; they show God to us. 1. The lilies of the field, as God’ s workmanship, reveal the fountain of life and being. Flowers taken alone cannot make manliest to us the depth and breadth of that fountain, but they may show us its quality. A cup of bright and sparkling water brought to us from a well tells us nothing of the quantity of water in that well, and nothing concerning the force of the spring or springs constituting the well; but even a cup of cold and pure water may demonstrate that the well is pure. In like manner, flowers show nothing of boundless might and of high wisdom, but they do reveal the calm beauteousness of the source whence all living things flow. It is often said that there cannot be gross vice in a man who, delighting in flowers, cultivates them. May we not, in harmony with this remark, observe that there can be nothing harsh or hard or repulsive in the God who has made the lilies of the field? 2. The lilies of the field embody and express Divine conceptions--thoughts and ideas of God. The image of every flower was in the mind of the Creator before creation. He designed the lilies of the field and the glorious company of their kindred. If this be accident, and if so-called accident can produce this, then verily accident is God. Not more certainly have paintings and sculpture been preconceived by the artists, and buildings of renown designed by architects, than flowers have been in the first instance mental creations by God. 3. The lilies of the field are God’ s workmanship. In the fine arts the conceiver is the worker. In other departments one designs and plans, and others execute. Flowers are the work of God’ s fingers. The first of every kind is a distinct creation, with seed in itself, and the rest the offspring of this seed. The seed is the second cause. God is the first cause. The laws of life and growth are God’ s mode of working, but in these laws there is a strong, skilful, living hand. There are rules of working in every handicraft, but no man denies the existence of the craftsman, because his productions are made by the established and recognized laws of his craft, and by tools adapted to the materials upon which he works, and to the object which he has before him. 4. The lilies of the field are God’ s care. This is not manifest to the eye of the body. And sometimes things happen which tend to exclude the idea and sense of God’ s care. The scythe of the mower cuts down the flowers. The wind passes over the flower and it is gone, and the place thereof knoweth it no more. The flower is consumed by some animal. A careless foot treads it down. Some hand--perhaps a wanton hand--plucks it. The flower has not grown without human culture. And thus, that which has reared the flower, and that which has cut short its day, alike hide the care of God. But care does not involve perpetual existence, or freedom even from that kind of injury which terminates being. In the providential sense there are no wild flowers. There are children without father and mother, or with evil fathers and mothers, who are destitute of human care; but there are no flowers without Divine care. And the proof of Divine care is in their perfection. 5. The lilies of the field exhibit God’ s bountifulness. All flowers alike of the field and of the garden render some ordinary service--are of some use. They furnish food, medicine, clothing, shelter, to innumerable living things. And they render in part this service to man. God does not provide for us according to the rigid rule of that which is necessary. He adds to that which is necessary that which is pleasant to the senses and agreeable to the soul. The cup of supply is not only filled, it runs over. 6. The lilies of the field are propagated and developed by the working of various natural laws. There is a tendency in some minds to look only on the hard and rigorous side of law. But law is good. It secures many and great advantages. And we may transfer our remark to moral law. The law is holy, and the commandment holy and just and good. The morning dawns, the sun shines, spring takes the place of winter, the earth is fruitful, flowers bloom, and the lilies of the field grow, according to law. Some men magnify natural laws into a god, and others degrade moral laws into an irksome and unrighteous yoke. The moral law of God obeyed will bring forth nothing but love. To speak evil of any laws which God has made is to speak evil of God. 7. The lilies of the field are parts of a perfect whole. They sustain a relation with the whole earth, and with all that therein is, and they are in harmony with the entire creation. Their life, their growth, their form, their colour, are all in concord. There is nothing which they contradict, nothing with which they clash. The key-note of creation is in the flowers, a note neither too high nor too low for us men, but adapted to allure into singing the heart of every human child of God who has been reconciled unto his Father. 8. The lilies of the field show us a sense of beauty in the nature of God, and a satisfaction in its expression. To God, objects which are capable of being beautiful would not be “ very good” unless they were clad in beauty. This is one reason of sin being so hateful to God. It is moral deformity, spiritual hideousness and ugliness. There is a beauty in holiness which is one of the Divine attractions to it. 9. The lilies of the field are what they are through various affinities and relationships. They are the children of the sun. His beams travel more than ninety millions of miles to cherish and to colour them. They are the children of the earth, and are brought up on her lap, and are nourished at her bosom. They are the children of the rain and of the dew and of the air. The flowers have several subordinate parents, each of which hath its service, and performs its part. In this condition of floral life we see one of the conditions of our own existence. We have a Divine Father, and we have human parents--mother and father. We have intercourse with heaven, and are resident on earth. We have to do with things spiritual and material, temporal and eternal. We are moved from within, and we are influenced from without. Various agencies and influences work together to array the lilies of the field, and several forces are ever working upon our human nature. A true Christian is a pilgrim on earth with citizenship in heaven, a child of God while a son of man, the workmanship of God, though instructed and comforted and helped by his fellows. As sun and earth and rain and dew work together to produce the lilies of the field, so all things work together for good to them that love God. 10. The lilies of the field are supposed to find in the nature of man that which will respond to their attractiveness. They are made, in part at least, for man’ s eye and for man’ s soul. If we were that which we ought to be, we should need no voice to bid us “ consider the lilies.” Discipleship to Jesus Christ does not shut our eyes to the earth, or close our hearts to the material works of God. 11. The lilies of the field may teach us freedom from care, and from morbid self-consciousness. That which God has to do for us He does perfectly, without our thought and care. Let us not direct our mind to that which belongs to God’ s thought. Let us not try to touch with our hands that which is the exclusive work of God’ s fingers. Anxiety can do nothing that is good, but it may effect much mischief. It cannot produce anything that is good. “ Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature?” It cannot beneficially alter anything. “ Thou canst not make one hair white or black.” It is not in itself a power of good. It is not power to pray. It is not power to work. It is not power to think. It is not power to judge. It is not power to discriminate and determine. But it is power for much mischief. It blinds the eye, so that there is no seeing of God, nor is there any vision of heaven. It makes the ear deaf, so that the voice of God’ s promises, and the voice of the Holy Ghost the Comforter, cannot be heard. It palsies the tongue in the direction of praise. It destroys all taste and relish for the abundant provisions of God’ s mercy. It spoils all present blessings. It wastes the passing moment. It encumbers to-day with that which belongs to the morrow. It forms unwise projects, and begets scaring dreams. It is as foolish as though the lilies were to begin to spin. O, ye anxious ones, consider the lilies. (S. Martin.) The preaching of the lilies I. Consider, HOW they grow. How wonderful, is it not? to meditate upon it a little; that wonderful process by which the hard, inorganic soil and rock are absorbed and assimilated, so that they become converted into organic forms; yet the germ was there, otherwise no organization could have been developed. Surely nowhere is God more visible, I say, than in the flower. If the spirit of adoration does not descend upon a man by a bed of flowers, or by a single flower, it will descend nowhere; Why, “ Consider the lilies--how they grow.” Is not this a miracle? Is not this a mystery? Consider who originated the beautiful type, and who perpetuates the beautiful race, and who adjusted the root to the soft and to the stem, and who broke open the seed, and bade the imprisoned spirit spring forth. II. Consider, WITH WHAT BEAUTY AND they grow. Children of fashion and vanity, “ consider how they grow!” They do not seek to deck themselves with gay and gaudy attire from without all their adornment and ornament are from within; this is beauty, not of the silken robe, nor the cataract of the diamond; nor the sparkling jewel; this is beauty, and it resembles that “ whose adornment is not of the plaiting of hair, nor the putting on of apparel; but even the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit.” That is how they grow; they show the obviousness of inner beauty; they have no fawning fashions; it is all very calm, and sweet, and quiet, and all from within; indeed, we know that all flowers are alike in this; the gaudy tulip and the flaunting hollyhock; their life, too, is from within; they all attract to themselves essences and helps from the whole earth; but they must be in harmony with the proper spirit of the plant. Pride assimilates to itself pride; and chastity, chastity. “ Consider how they grow.” “ Yes, look to us,” they seem to say, “ we are as God clothed us; we are but grass of the field; but God clothed us; He gave us these white bridal vestments, and placed us in this conservatory of vivid green. You, children of men, run to and fro in search of the draperies you call your own; you heap adornment on adornment; until adornment becomes deformity; you are not clothed like the lily, and you never will be until your soul and your clothing shall have the same visible unity; a pure mind is seen even in the pattern and the fashion of its attire, and how can the lily-vestments suit you, whose souls are so soiled? But when you shall be pure within, then shall you be even as the angels, and then shall be given to you the garments pure and white, “ which are the righteousness of the saints” ; and then the Church, the “ King’ s daughter, all glorious within,” shall be like unto us; and the graces of the inner nature shall exhibit themselves in a life holy, harmless, and renewed. III. Consider, BY WHAT they grow; by what a hidden life they grow. Is it not strange that such purity should spring from the black earth?--strange that such whiteness should shoot up from the soiled ground? It is a mighty miracle, and it is ever going on. Thus God is constantly transforming mineral darkness into floral light; thus He is constantly taking up the very miry clay itself, and moulding it and perfecting it into forms of beauty; and that which He is able to do in nature, shall I dare to think He cannot do in grace? IV. Consider, HOW AND they grow. “ Blossoms,” says Pliny, the Latin naturalist, “ are the joy of trees” ; and wherever these beautiful vegetative creatures are found, they seem to say to us poor care-worn creatures: “ Yes, be joyful too. The darkness of thy lot is only the avenue through which thou art passing. God, who is good to the flower and to the blossom of the tree, will not forget thee.” V. Consider, TO WHAT DIVINE USES they grow. Legible lessons of Almighty wisdom, love, and power. (E. Paxton Hood.) Consolation from flowers There is, without a doubt, a profound human truth involved in this direction of our Lord. Biography furnishes us with some lessons, sublime in their simplicity, and consolations won by human suffering, only from the consideration of plants inferior in their beauty to lilies. Who is not acquainted with that memorable passage in the life of the great African traveller, Mungo Park, where, in the wilderness--robbed, stripped naked, five hundred miles from the nearest European settlement--surrounded by savage animals and savage men--in the depths of thehorrible rainy season of Africa--in the very last and lowest extremity of human destitution and misery--he says: “ I reflected that I was indeed a stranger in a strange land, yet I was still under the protecting eye of that Providence who has condescended to call Himself ‘ the stranger’ s friend.’ At this moment, painful as my reflections were, the extraordinary beauty of a small moss irresistibly caught my eye. I mention this,” he says, “ to show from what trifling circumstances the mind will sometimes derive consolation; for, though the whole plant was not larger than the top of my finger, I could not contemplate the delicate conformation of its root, leaves, and capsule, without admiration. Can that Being, thought I, who planted, watered, and brought to perfection, in this obscure part of the world, a thing which appears of so small importance, look with unconcern upon the situation and sufferings of creatures formed after His own image? Surely not. Reflections like these would not allow me to despair. I started up, and, disregarding both hunger and fatigue, travelled forwards, assured that relief was at hand; and I was not disappointed. In a short time I came to a small village, where I overtook the two shepherds who had come with me from Kruman.” Thus the little flower was the salvation of the great traveller, and the poor moss became to him what our Lord intended the lily should be to us. The stories of the consolations of the flowers are very numerous. The venerable and the holy Henry Martyn in a wellknown passage, describes the feelings existing in his mind by the discovery of a little flower, growing on the rocky summit of the Table Mountain at the Cape. “ The road was steep, but the hope of soon being at the top encouraged me to ascend very lightly. As the Kloop opened, a beautiful flame-coloured flower appeared, in a little green hollow, waving in the breeze. It seemed to me an emblem of the beauty and peacefulness of Heaven, as it shall open upon the weary soul, when the journey of life is finished.” And James Montgomery, in some very sweet verses, has commemorated the joy of Dr. Carey in India, at Serampore. In one of his letters, he says, “ I don’ t know that I ever enjoyed, since leaving Europe, a pleasure so simple and exquisite as the sight of this English daisy afforded me; not having seen one for upwards of thirty years, and never expecting to see one again.” And I should think there are few of you with whom Picciola, is not a wellknown and household story; you remember the Italian Patriot--confined in an Austrian dungeon in the horrors of Spielberg; when the last torments of the most petty, and disgusting, and loathsome tyranny were harassing the heart--when the cold stone walls, and the cruel bars, and the iron guards shut out all hope from the poor exile--a flower became an angel, and its delicate beauty, creeping through the chinks of the court-yard stones, awoke all grateful considerations, and became a missionary and messenger of peace and rest to the breaking heart. Yes, this is a guide to what our Lord meant, when He directed His disciples to the flowers. (E. Paxton Hood.) Trust in God taught by the lilies This is the lesson of the lilies; this is what they are saying to the doubting man. They keep hope, and trust, and faith alive in the world of the human heart. We need to stoop to the things which are beneath us, rather than to soar to things which are above us, to learn confidence in God; and we gain that confidence more by glancing at the infinite expenditure of Divine purpose in the small and evanescent flower, rather than in the majestic and the transcendent mountain or star. Hence it is that they keep the heart fresh and cool from the fever of passion. You carry a flower to a sick room; what a sweet power it sheds over the heavy airs of the chamber; it will keep the heart of the poor invalid meditating the whole day, the primrose or the early spring violet. And I passed the other day by a poor widow, in a close London street, putting out of her window her bough-pot, and tenderly watching and watering it; and methought her poor bereaved heart was drinking blessings beyond all her power to know, from those sweet flower-children bending their heads so meekly to her tending. Thus they are watched, these children of God. “ And why art thou east down, oh thou of little faith?” (E. Paxton Hood.) “ Consider the lilies!” In the English graveyard at Florence stands a broken column entwined by a lily carved in marble. It is erected to “ Lily Nye, aged 21,” and bears this inscription: “ There was a lily once, most purely white, We watched it daily, ‘ twas so fair a sight, For she was purer than a driven flake Of snow; and in her grace most excellent, The loveliest flower that death did ever take, The tale--for tale there is--of this white stone, Are these fair letters. While she lived she shone.” May it be ours, like the lily, while we live, to shine and brighten the world with heavenly beauty and heavenly blessing. (A. J. Griffith.) Grass No natural object gathers around it so many scriptural associations, and suggests so many spiritual analogies, as the grass of the field. The wailing sibylline voice, borne on every breeze, has never ceased to echo over the earth, “ All flesh is grass.” This burden of Nature’ s prophecy is true literally as well as metaphorically. It is one example among innumerable others of what has been often observed, that the poet is the real philosopher, and the truest language necessarily what we call figurative. The lesson which the perishable form of the grass teaches, is rendered more impressive still by the enduring part which its structure performs in the economy of nature. It is the first organized agency that extracts, by its living energies, nutritious particles from the hard inorganic soil. In its tissues the dust of the earth first becomes vital. Day and night, season after season, it is unceasingly purveying for the wants of the animal kingdom, gathering the materials of nourishment and strength from the air and earth, reducing the impalpable and evanescent forces of light, heat, and moisture, into solid and enduring forms, which can be eaten and transformed into complicated organisms and vital powers. Man cannot live upon grass, properly so called. He cannot derive a direct subsistence from it. The experiment was once made in notable circumstances, but it turned out a deplorable failure. During the disastrous campaign of Napoleon’ s army in Russia, the soldiers, in the absence of all other food, were obliged to boll and eat the common grass of the field, which they dug out from beneath its covering of snow and ice; and in every case where this wretched food was partaken of in sufficient quantity to allay the intolerable cravings of hunger, delirium and racking pains were the results. But, though grass eaten directly would prove injurious to man, inasmuch as his digestive organs are not adapted for its assimilation, it forms the support of domesticated animals, which he rears exclusively for their use as human food. The materials of his structure are first derived from the air, earth, and water, by means of grass; they are still further organized and prepared by the agency of graminivorous animals; and they reach him at last in a proper condition for his nourishment in the shape of animal food. The grass of the field is thus indirectly, but most truly, man’ s stay and support. But there is a way in which even directly grass forms human food. The stem and blades, and other inferior parts of the vegetation, are intended for the support of the inferior animals; but the fruitful ear, the more highly-organized seed, the crown and consummation of the plant, the “ flower of grass.” into which its vital powers and nourishing qualities are drawn up and concentrated, is reserved for food to man. How strange to think that the most highly-organized of the inhabitants of the earth, created in the image of God, should thus depend for his subsistence directly and indirectly upon the lowest and simplest of all herbs! “ He maketh the grass to grow upon the mountains.” The wild grasses are taken, as it were, under the special providence of God. In their perennial verdure in regions above the zone of man’ s cultivation, we have a perpetual proof of God’ s care of the lower animals that neither sow nor reap. The mountain grasses grow spontaneously; they require no culture but such as the rain and the sunshine of heaven supply. They obtain their nourishment directly from the inorganic soil, and are independent of organic materials. Nowhere is the grass so green and vigorous as on the beautiful slopes of lawn-like pasture high up on the Alps, radiant with the glory of wild flowers, and ever musical with the hum of grasshoppers and the tinkling of cattle-bells. Innumerable cows and goats browse upon them; the peasants spend the summer months in making cheese and hay from them for winter consumption in the valleys. This exhausting system of husbandry has been carried on during untold centuries; no one thinks of manuring the Alpine pastures; and yet no deficiency has been observed in their fertility, though the soil is but a thin covering spread over the naked rocks. It may be regarded as a part of the same wise and gracious arrangement of Providence, that the insects which devour the grasses on the Kuh, and Schaf Alpen, the pasturages of the cows and sheep, are kept in check by a predominance of carnivorous insects. Were the herbivorous insects allowed to multiply to their full extent, in such favourable circumstances as the warmth of the air and the verdure of the earth in Switzerland produce, the rich pastures which now yield abundant food for upwards of a million and a hall of cattle would speedily become bare and leafless deserts. Not only in their power of growing without cultivation, but also in the peculiarities of their structure, the mountain grasses proclaim the band of God. Many of them are viviparous. Instead of producing flowers and seeds, as the grasses in the tranquil valleys do, the young plants spring from them perfectly formed. They cling round the stem and form a kind of blossom. In this state they remain until the patens stalk wishers and falls prostrate on the ground, when they immediately strike root and form independent grasses. This is a remarkable adaptation to circumstances; for it is manifest that, were seeds instead of living plants developed in the ears of the mountain grasses, they would be useless in the stormy regions where they grow. They would be blown away far from the places they were intended to clothe, to spots foreign to their nature and habits, and thus the species would speedily perish. The more we think of it, the more we are struck with the wise foresight which suggested the creative Fiat, “ Let the earth bring forth grass.” It is the most abundant and the most generally diffused of all vegetation. It suits almost every soil and climate. It forms pastoral landscapes under the weeping skies of Europe; it forms bamboo forests and cane-brakes under the glowing skies of the tropics. It ministers to the food of man in mild climates; it ministers to the luxuries of man in hot climates. It may, however, be said to cover with a uniform green mantle the whole surface of the globe. And this mantle is not only ornamental, but eminently useful. It protects the roots of trees and flowers from the scorching effects of the summer’ s sun and the blight of the winter’ s frost. I began this paper with the assertion that man lives, both directly and indirectly, upon grass; I close it with the inevitable antithesis, that grass lives upon man. The melancholy words of Scripture, “ All flesh is grass,” are equally true whether we read them backwards or forwards. Strange mysterious circle of relations within which all organized nature is contained, and in which man himself, in common with the beast and herb of the field, has to perform his part and exchange offices and duties l The particles which circulate through his system must be again reduced to the inorganic state, out of which they were first formed, and restored to the tissues of the grass from which he derived them. This entry is longer than a Bible module can hold. The rest is at https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/bi/ Luke 12:29 Neither be ye of doubtful mind A new parable Our Lord here crushes a whole world of meaning into a single word, which, as we study it, resolves itself into a bright, impressive picture or parable. The phrase really comes to this: “ Do not toss about in the windy offing, when you may ride safely in the sheltered haven.” And if we take it in connection with what goes before and what comes after, we find that the complete parable runs thus: “ Do not toss about on the wide dangerous sea of Care, on which so many make shipwreck, but rather take shelter in the safe and tranquil harbour of Trust in God.” Had our Lord paused to expand the parable, and had He thrown it into the form which most of His parables assume, He might have used some such words as these: “ The Kingdom of God is like unto a large and tranquil harbour, into which all who sail across the stormy sea of life may enter and be at rest.” Now the calm and simple ideal of life which Christ here holds up before us is one that has a special claim on us, and a special charm, in days such as these when most men are seeking outward good--seeking wealth and worldly advancement--with a passionate and feverish eagerness. Who does not long, at least at times, to escape The heavy trouble, the bewildering care That weighs us down who live and earn our bread? Who is not weary of the strain, the waste, the ungenerous rivalry, the intense and protracted drudgery which what men call “ success in life” demands? Who does not see that the pursuit of what we call “ comfort” is well-nigh taking all comfort out of our days? Who does not admit, in any moment of cool reflection, that the general homage to wealth is becoming a degrading and unmanly idolatry, inducing false estimates of character, and leading men to value the means of living above the true ends of life? What we should admire in our neighbours, what we should chiefly aim at for ourselves, is not a gay and wealthy outside of circumstance, but noble character--virtue, wisdom, piety, inward worth. And this is the aim, the ideal, which the Lord Jesus sets before us. He bids us seek first the Kingdom of God; and the Kingdom of God is within us, not without. He would have us cultivate those graces of spiritual character which fit us both to meet any circumstances and changes of circumstances in this life, and to enter with the joy of a foreseen triumph on the dark and narrow avenue which leads to the life to come. If we take His counsel, He promises us an absolute freedom from care. He assures us that we shall ride safely in a sheltered port instead of tossing on the heaving storm-swept’ sea. Not that He prohibits care and thought. A man must take thought, must study and plan and contrive, if he is to be a wise man. We may make the voyages which the necessities of life demand, and bring home much store of merchandise; but then, we are to have a home, “ a city of the soul” to which we may repair; and when we reach it, we are not to cast anchor in the windy offing, but to take refuge in the tranquil haven. That is to say, we are to attend to the duties and labours of life, attend to them with diligence, give our best thought and care to them; but, when these duties and labours are discharged, we are not to vex our souls with an incessant anxiety as to the issue of our toils; we are to leave that with God, and not to be careful because He cares for us. So, again, forethought is no more forbidden than thought. A wise man, a man with “ discourse of reason,” i.e., a man in whom reason is not dumb and inert, must “ look before and after.” There would be no unity in his life, no continuous development and activity, no linking on of month to month and year to year, if he did not look forward and scheme for the future as well as for the present. What Christ forbids is so looking onward to to-morrow as to cloud to-day, so anticipating the future as to darken the present. And this is the very point at which we commonly fail. To-day may be well enough, we admit; or, at the worst, we could get through its tasks and endure its trials. But what of to-morrow? What of the future? How shall we meet the toils and losses and troubles we foresee? Now it is from this pernicious habit of “ borrowing trouble from the future,” as though we had not enough of it in the present, that Christ would save us. “ Trust in God for the future,” He says; “ Do your duty today, and leave to-morrow with Him. And let this trust be your tranquil haven, your harbour of refuge, whenever the waves of Care run high.” Rest and refit in the harbour to-night; and if, when the morning breaks, you have to sail out into a stormy sea, you will at least be in a better condition to meet it. (S. Cox, D. D.) Possessions and prospects Perhaps I am speaking to some child of poverty. I remember a beautiful story applicable to you. The late Lady Huntingdon, passing by a low, mean-looking cottage one day, heard a faint, soft sound inside, and drew up to the door, when she heard a voice uttering these words, “ O my God, I thank Thee that I have all this--the Lord Jesus now and heaven at last.” Thought the listener, what can this mean? Curiosity is strong; and giving the door a little touch, she saw an aged one--a poor woman, eighty years of age--with a pitcher of water and a crust, and her hands raised in the attitude of thanksgiving, and her words were, “ O Lord, I thank Thee that I have all this, and the Lord Jesus Christ, and heaven at last.” Rest in His word. “ My God shall supply all your need.” Oh, sweet the scant supply where there is a confiding, joyous heart! Birds of song sing as merrily just before their breakfast, though they don’ t know where it is to come from, as they do when they have got it. And the God who watches over the bird will not neglect you. “ Lacked ye anything?” said the Lord to the seventy, who had been sent out without any worldly emoluments; and they answered, “ No, Lord.” Many a saint at the close of his pilgrimage can say the same; can say, “ Notwithstanding all the vicissitudes and changes and losses that I have endured, God has given me food and raiment, and I have, not wanting much, wanted for nothing.” (J. Denham Smith.) Confidence in God “ Never did man die of hunger who served God faithfully,” Cuthbert would say, when nightfall found them supperless in the waste. “ Look at that eagle overhead! God can feed us through him if He will” --and once, at least, he owed his meal to a fish that the scared bird let fall. A snowstorm drove his boat on the coast of Fife. “ The snow closes the road along the shore,” moaned his comrades; “ the storm bars our way over sea.” “ There is still the way of heaven that lies open,” said Cuthbert. (J. R. Green, “ Short History. ”) Luke 12:31 Seek ye the Kingdom of God Manner of sanctifying our exertions for daily bread The Lord gives us continually our daily bread, multiplying for this the grain in the field; yet are we contented with it? The reason of our discontentedness is, because we are inclined to make our daily pursuits for a livelihood the main point, and the Kingdom of God a secondary one. Perhaps we go so far even as to separate one from the other, although religion, like the leaven, should penetrate all our works and bring God’ s blessing upon all we do. This blessing will be given to us if we endeavour to sanctify our solicitude for our daily bread, by performing our employments-- I. IN . TO GOD. 1. It is God’ s will that I work. By this truth we should be induced-- (1) To consider and esteem labour as a sacred duty. (2) To avoid idleness, which is not only sinful in itself, but also the source of sin and poverty. 2. I work for God’ s honour. This truth renders labour-- (1) Consoling, though hard. (2) Meritorious. II. IN THE SPIRIT OF . I must work, because I am a sinner. 1. This reflection will reconcile you to your work. As the heart is wounded by undeserved punishment, so a generous mind finds satisfaction in a consciousness of justice being done. 2. It ennobles man: imparting to him-- (1) Deep humility. (2) True wisdom. III. IN ORDER TO FULFIL, A DUTY TOWARDS OTHERS. Only he that has lost all sense of duty can refuse to work. For-- 1. Labour is a duty of justice. God’ s wrath is challenged by-- (1) Idlers. (2) Squanderers. 2. Labour is a duty of charity. (1) You are bound to provide for your family. (2) And for the poor. (Bishop Galura.) The wisdom of attending to God’ s business Your business--you cannot neglect that. Call to mind the story of the rich English merchant to whom Elizabeth gave some commission of importance, and he demurred to undertake it, saying, “ Please your Majesty, if I obey your behest, what will become of these affairs of mine? “ And his monarch answered, “ Leave those things to me, when you are employed in my service, I will take charge of your business.” So will it be with you. Do but surrender yourself to Christ, and He, of His own free will, takes in hand all your affairs. (C. H.Spurgeon.) God’ s promise to be relied on I was once crossing the Atlantic, and had come within three days’ sail of the Irish coast. Fog and darkness shut out the sun by day and the stars at night. We had to trust to dead reckoning--that is, to the log, the compass, the chart, and other nice nauticalcomputations. Standing by the captain, I heard him say on the last of these days, “ We ought to see Fastnet Light in twelve minutes! “ I took out my watch and waited. We saw the welcome light in just eleven!” There, thought I, is a triumph of nautical skill and calculation, to push on so steadily and surely through the darkness day after day to the point aimed at. We justly confide in one who has proved himself trustworthy in human affairs, but the witness of God is greater. Why ever distrust Him? He has not only fixed the movements of the stars and the tides, but His promises of grace are unchangeable. (R. S. Storrs, D. D.) Seeking God’ s Kingdom for children also “ Few things are looked back on by me with less satisfaction than my own conduct in respect to my children, except in one particular, which appears to have been the grand secret; and that is, that I have always sought for them, as well as for myself, in the first place, the Kingdom of God and His righteousness.” (T. Scott.) Admonition addressed to the young Let us press the seeking God’ s kingdom first on those who are yet in the springtime of their days. And we will just tell you what we believe would constitute a thorough submission to the precept of our text, and what, therefore, entitles a man to depend on the fulfilment of the promise. We will suppose that, from his youth upwards, an individual has proposed to himself the salvation of his soul as the prime object to engage his solicitudes and occupy his strivings. We may suppose that, so soon as he could discern the evil and the good, so soon as the will had the power of making an election, he decided in favour of the paths of righteousness, and set out on the heavenward course; and, ever afterward, we may regard him as holding on in one uniform course of faith and obedience; so that, whatever the other objects which may demand and obtain some share of his attention, he keeps ever uppermost, as the great end of his being, that attainment of God’ s favour to which he had devoted himself at the outset of life. Of such an individual it may be asserted, in all the extent of which the expression admits--he has “ sought first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness.” He has sought it first, as having begun with this seeking; he has sought it first, as having never permitted another object to take precedence: and to the doing this is what we would earnestly exhort the younger of our hearers. “ Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness” : seek ye first this kingdom--first, before ye seek the wealth of the world, which cannot satisfy you, or the honours of the world, which will only mock you, or the pleasures of the world, which like the Dead Sea fruits, wear a bloom to the eye, but are ashes to the taste--first, before the strength has been impaired, and the spirit has beenbroken, and the eye has lost its fire, and the hope is sick with disappointment. “ First! “ Will ye give the bounding pulse, and the soaring thought, and the eager glance, and the rushing purpose, to the slavery of time and created things, and think of bringing the jaded energies, the thin grey hairs, the emaciated limbs, and consecrating them to the service of God? We know that even in old age the kingdom may be sought, the kingdom may be founds; we dare not, therefore, and we thank God that we dare not, regard any individual, be he ever so old, be he ever so hardened, as having outlived the opportunity of being saved. We preach to the man of four-score years; and though, in the expressive language of Solomon--“ the daughters of music are brought low, and the grasshopper is a burden, and the silver cord is almost loosed, and the golden bowl broken,” we still say to him, “ Now is the accepted time; now is the day of salvation.” And yet it is impossible not to feel, that where there has been, for forty, or sixty, or seventy years, a determined resistance to all the proffers of the gospel, the case is growing comparatively hopeless. We may go on with our work; but it is impossible to go on with a very light heart. And never does the minister of Christ seem charged with a commission in which success is so doubtful, as when sent to the infirm and worn-out sinner, who, having given the strength of life to Satan and the world, has at last only the dregs with which to make an offering to his God. We say, indeed, it is our duty, ay, and it is our privilege, to say, even to the old person who has been hardening for half a century under faithful sermons--It is not too late to “ seek” ; “ seek,” therefore; “ the Pearl of great price” may even yet be found--even yet, though the last streak of light is fading from the sky, thoughthe film is gathering on the eye, and the cold and rough wind threatens to put out the lamp; we say to him, “ Seek!” But now tell me, my brethren, can we do otherwise than feel, that even if he seeks he seeks last. And where is the promise to those who seek last?--last, inasmuch as heaven is not sought until earth is sliding from the grasp? Where is the premise to those that “ seek” last “ the kingdom of God and his righteousness?” We remember the words which, in the Book of Proverbs, are placed in the mouth of Eternal Wisdom--“ I love them that love Me; and those that seek Me early shall find Me.” “ Those that seek Me early!” Here is an express promise. It is a promise that does not exclude those who seek late, but certainly it does not include them. We have, however, better hopes of the young. We know, indeed, that you feel tempted to delay and put off the giving heed to the solemn things of eternity. And why so? Because you regard religion as a melancholy thing--as circumscribing your pleasures and curtailing your enjoyments; and you feel that it will interfere with many things in which you delight--the gewgawry of fashion, and the revelry of life. There are certain things which you wish to keep a little longer, and which you perceive that true religion will require you to surrender. So you make the calculation--you shall run but little risk in giving a year or two more to the world; you shall have time enough left for the care of the soul. Ah! thus, to speak the unvarnished truth, you are balancing the chances of destruction against another draught of the intoxicating cup; you loiter round the edge of the pit, to pluck flowers which fade in the gathering. And yet all the while the true pleasure is in religion. Yes, that it is--the elevation of soul--the companionship with beings of the invisible world--the filling up with God the immeasured voids of a human spirit--the beatings of a large philanthropy--the sense that, “ all things are ours, for we are Christ’ s, and Christ is God’ s” --life curtained by lovingkindness--death abolished by the Mediator--eternity studded with the rich and the radiant,--these are ours; we know them, we feel them to be ours. What! then, has religion no pleasures? Nay! “ seek ye first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness.” It is seeking peace; it is seeking comfort; it is seeking happiness. Seek ye this “ first,” assured that--oh! for the testimony that might be given from above I oh I for the testimony that might be given from beneath!--assured that, though thousands have wept bitter, scalding tears because they sought late, none have ever found that they began too soon. (H. Melvill, B. D.) God’ s people not forgotten by Him Many years ago, when in my country charge, I returned one afternoon from a funeral, fatigued with the day’ s work. After a long ride, I had accompanied the mourners to the churchyard. As I neared my stable door, I felt a strange prompting to visit a poor widow who, with her invalid daughter, lived in a lonely cottage in an outlying part of the parish. My natural reluctance to make another visit was overcome by a feeling which I could not resist, and I turned my horse’ s head towards the cottage. I was thinking only of the poor widow’ s spiritual needs; but when I reached her little house, I was struck with its look of unwonted bare: hess and poverty. After putting a little money into her hand, I began to inquire into their circumstances, and found that their supplies had been utterly exhausted since the night before. I asked them what they had done. “ I just spread it out before the Lord!” Did you not tell your case to any friend?” “ Oh no, sir; naebody kens but Himsel’ and me! I kent He wadna forget, but I didna ken hoe he wad help me till I saw you come riding ower the brae, and then I said, There’ s the Lord’ s answer!” Many a time has the recollection of this incident encouraged me to trust in the loving care of my heavenly Father. (J. H. Norton.) Luke 12:32 Fear not, little flock.--Christians forbidden to fear I. AN . A flock (Psalms 79:13; John 10:27). The flock of Christ is-- 1. A purchased flock (1 Corinthians 6:20; 2 Peter 2:1; Acts 20:28). 2. A flock washed in the blood of Jesus (1 John 1:7; Revelation 1:5). 3. A chosen flock (Matthew 20:16; Mark 13:20). 4. A marked flock (2 Timothy 2:19; John 13:35). 5. A patient flock--under provocations, and amidst sufferings and delays Job 1:22; Romans 12:12; Luke 21:19; Hebrews 10:36; Hebrews 12:1-2; Hebrews 6:12; Romans 2:7). Christ an example (1 Peter 2:21-25). 6. A harmless flock (Matthew 10:16; Philemon 1:2; Philemon 1:15). 7. A flock exposed to troubles and enemies (Ephesians 6:11-13). 8. A useful flock. II. A TRUTH. A little flock. 1. Small at its commencement. 2. Small at the present day, when compared with the great bulk of mankind. III. A . “ It is your Father’ s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” 1. The kingdom of His power (Psalms 105:12-13; Daniel 4:3). 2. The kingdom of His grace (2 Corinthians 3:18). 3. The kingdom of glory (1 Corinthians 6:9). This is heaven, and in this view of it conveys-- (1) The idea of power. A kingdom implies a sceptre, authority, and dominion. (2) The idea of glory. It is the abode of glorified spirits. It is the abode of the celestial hierarchy. It is the abode of Jesus. It is the abode of God the Father. (3) The idea of felicity (Revelation 7:9-17). It is our Father’ s good pleasure (Isaiah 63:16). He is our Father-- 1. By right of creation (Malachi 2:10). 2. By right of preservation. 3. By right of redemption (Galatians 3:13; Job 19:25). 4. By right of adoption (Romans 8:15-16). It is His good pleasure to give us the kingdom. It is not a debt but a gift--a free gift. IV. A . “ Fear not.” What is it that true believers are not to fear? 1. They are not to fear God with a slavish fear (Romans 8:15; 1 John 4:18). A filial fear they must have (Psalms 89:7; Psalms 34:9). 2. They are not to fear man (Isaiah 57:11; Matthew 10:28). (1) The wrath of man (Psalms 124:1-3; Psalms 82:29). (2) The power of man (Hebrews 13:6; Isaiah 36:22). (3) The policy of man (Job 5:12-13; 1 Corinthians 1:25). 3. They are not to fear the instruments of human cruelty (Isaiah 54:17). 4. They are not to fear suffering under affliction (John 14:33; Job 5:19-22; 2 Corinthians 4:17; Romans 8:10). 5. They are not to fear Satan (Romans 6:20). 6. They are not to fear death (Romans 8:38-39; 2 Corinthians 5:5). 7. They are not to fear hell (John 3:18; John 5:36; Isaiah 54:9).The reason why they ought not to fear-- 1. It dishonours God. 2. It slanders His power (1 Chronicles 16:24). 3. It slanders His faithfulness (2 Timothy 2:13; 1 Thessalonians 5:24). 4. It slanders His wisdom (1 Timothy 1:17). 5. It slanders His care (1 Peter 5:7; Matthew 7:11; Isaiah 27:3). 6. It slanders their calling--they are called to be saints (Isaiah 51:2). 7. It slanders their cause, viz., religion, the cause of God Deuteronomy 23:22). 8. It is hurtful to them--it distracts their minds (Luke 8:22-25). 9. It produces hypocrisy and dissimulation (Isaiah 57:11; Genesis 20:2-11; Genesis 26:19). 10. It enfeebles the soul (Isaiah 7:2). 11. It strengthens the enemy (Judges 3:2). 12. It discourages the saint (Deuteronomy 20:8). . 1. Are you comprised in this little flock? 2. Go on with undaunted courage, knowing that God will help you, and afterwards give you the kingdom. (J. Blackmore) Fear not, little flock I. THE PERSONS . “ Little flock.” 1. Separated by eternal election. 2. Bought by particular redemption. 3. Effectually called. The word “ flock” denotes-- 1. Their patience. 2. Meekness. 3. Humility. 4. Harmlessness. 5. Comparatively few in number. 6. And little in the estimation of the world. II. THE . “ Fear not.” 1. Fear not the body of sin. “ Thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin purged” (Isaiah 6:7). 2. The oppositions of Satan. “ Through death He might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil” (Hebrews 2:14). 3. The besetments of the world. “ We are chastened of the Lord, that we should not be condemned with the world” (1 Corinthians 11:32). “ Fear not,” for-- 1. Temporal mercies. 2. The efficacy of grace. 3. The faithfulness of God. 4. For Christ is all love. 5. The Spirit constant. 6. And heaven sure. III. THE REASON . “ It is your Father’ s good pleasure to give you” -- 1. The kingdom of grace here. 2. The kingdom of glory hereafter. It implies that it is-- 1. Their Father’ s gift. 2. By His sovereign pleasure. 3. Delighting in them. 4. Rejoicing over them. 5. And supplying all things to them. (T. B. Baker.) The privileges of Christ’ s flock I. WHY THE LORD’ S PEOPLE ARE CALLED A LITTLE FLOCK. 1. They are called a “ flock,” principally from the peculiar regard shown them by the Lord. 2. They are called a “ little flock,” because they are but few in number. II. WHAT THEY HAVE TO FEAR. They are not exempt from the common calamities of life. In some respects they are more exposed to them than other people. They have reason therefore to fear-- 1. Wants. Though man may provide for to-morrow, he cannot secure what he has provided. Hence all are so desirous of placing themselves as far as possible out of the reach of any disastrous contingencies. In making such provision the true Christian labours under many disadvantages. He cannot use those means of acquiring wealth which the generality of the world employ without any scruple. He cannot devote all his time and all his attention to secular engagements. On these accounts he may at times be tempted to indulge excessive care, and to harbour tears of want and embarrassment. 2. Sufferings. The flock of Christ are not only subject to the trials incident to our present state, but are liable to many sufferings peculiar to themselves. They are “ as sheep in the midst of wolves.” III. WhY, THEIR DANGERS, THEY SHOULD NOT FEAR. God has “ provided for them a kingdom.” God condescends call to Himself their “ Father.” And deals with them as His children. He has “ prepared for them a kingdom” that is infinitely superior to all the kingdoms of this world. The glory of it cannot be expressed or conceived; nor will the duration of it ever end (Hebrews 12:28). This He has given to them for their inheritance. It is His determination to invest them with it, and His delight to preserve them for it. His almighty power is ever exercised for this purpose (1 Peter 1:4-5). Yea, His whole heart and soul are engaged in accomplishing His gracious intentions (Jeremiah 32:41). This is a very sufficient antidote to all their fears. (Theological Sketchbook.) The antidote of fear Each word of the text is full of encouragement and strength for weak and timid hearts. I. THE CHURCH OF CHRIST, BE ITS MEMBERS MANY OR FEW, IS VERY DEAR TO HIM. II. THE FUTURE OF THE CHURCH IS NOT TO BE JUDGED BY ITS PRESENT AND : THE IS THAT OF AN HEIR IN OF HIS . III. THE OF FEAR FROM A HEART THAT HAS SUCH KINGLY . (J. Kay.) Encouragement to Christ’ s flock I. INQUIRE INTO THE REASONS WHY THE OF CHRIST ARE CALLED “ A FLOCK,” AND WHY “ A LITTLE FLOCK.” They are called a flock to show the peculiar regard which the Saviour has to them. They are a “ little” flock, as compared with the multitude of the ungodly. Three reasons why it remains “ little.” 1. Because the method of admission into this flock is contrary to the enmity of the human heart. 2. The laws of this flock are too holy and self-denying for the generality of mankind. This therefore tends to keep it small. 3. Another reason why the flock of Christ is small, is the opposition and persecution it meets with from a sinful world. II. POINT OUT THE VARIOUS SOURCES OF FEAR TO THIS, AT PRESENT, LITTLE FLOCK. They are not exempt from the common calamities of life; yea, in many respects, and for wise reasons, they are more exposed to them than other people: “ Many are the afflictions of the righteous.” III. , UNDER THE OF THE SPIRIT, TO REMOVE ALL FEARS FROM THE FLOCK OF CHRIST, BY THEM OF THE OF THAT KINGDOM WHICH CHRIST HAS . 1. A peaceful kingdom. 2. A holy kingdom. 3. An eternal kingdom. (Essex Remembrancer.) The little flock comforted by their Shepherd I. WE REMARK THE OF CHRIST ARE TO A FLOCK OF SHEEP. The property of the ancients consisted for the most part in the number of their cattle, especially in their flocks of sheep. And the Lord’ s portion is His people; Jacob is the lot of His inheritance. His people are the purchase of a Saviour’ s blood, and the called of His grace. He is the great Shepherd, who gave His life for the sheep. Like sheep, moreover, they are meek, and inoffensive, and harmless; they imbibe the Spirit of the Shepherd, which is a Spirit of peace and love; imitative of Him, “ who when He was reviled, reviled not again; when He suffered, threatened not, but committed Himself to Him that judgeth righteously.” These are they which follow the Lamb whithersoever He goeth. In their collective capacity, as a flock, they do not bite and devour one another, like wolves among sheep; but feed and lie down together in green pastures, as the property of the same master, the partakers of the same privileges, and the expectants of the same immortal happiness. II. THIS FLOCK OF CHRIST IS FOR THE PRESENT SMALL. III. THE FLOCK OF CHRIST ARE AT TIMES THE OF . They sometimes fear lest their temporal wants should not be supplied. At other times they fear they should not hold out to the end, but make shipwreck of faith and of a good conscience; and that having begun in the spirit they should end in the flesh. They are at times anxious lest they should bring a reproach upon their profession, and cause the good ways of the Lord to be evil spoken of. And never do their fears rise higher than when they witness some professors, who seemed to be pillars, depart from Zion’ s ways, and either embrace pernicious errors, or fall into many foolish and hurtful lusts which drown men in destruction and perdition. IV. A KINGDOM AWAITS THE FLOCK OF THE AFTER DEATH. V. THEIR FATHER GREATLY IN HIS FLOCK, AND WILL TAKE A HOLY IN PUTTING THEM INTO OF HIS ETERNAL KINGDOM AND GLORY. VI. IT HIGHLY BECOMES THE FLOCK OF CHRIST TO DISMISS THEIR FEARS, AND TO BELIEVE THAT GOD WILL NOT PERMIT THEM TO WANT ANY GOOD THING IN THEIR WAY TO THE KINGDOM. (Essex Remembrancer) The little flock I. AN . II. A CAUTION. 1. Fear not suffering. 2. Fear not affliction. 3. Fear not the temptations of Satan. 4. Fear not death. III. A . (W. J. Brock, B. A.) Fear not, little flock I. Consider HOW CHRIST’ S PEOPLE CAME TO BE HIS FLOCK. 1. By the express commandment of God. 2. By the purchase of His atoning death. 3. By actually bringing His people into His fold. II. Consider THE HERE GIVEN OF CHRIST’ S PEOPLE. “ Little flock.” Let it be considered, not as a point of dry arithmetic, or of dogmatical and uncharitable condemnation of others, but as a melancholy fact, that should awaken yourselves. Is it so that Christ’ s flock is a little flock? then the way of the multitude of mankind is not the way for you to follow if you would be saved, but you must follow the way of the peculiar people. III. THE here addressed by Christ to His little flock. “ Fear not.” 1. Believers have no reason to fear want. It is one of the offices of the Good Shepherd to feed His flock. They shall, in general, have whatever degree of worldly prosperity may be conducive to God’ s glory and their own good. 2. But want is not the only thing which they may be ready to fear: they may fear the various other afflictions and calamities of life; and yet they have no reason to fear them. He will keep them from all troubles that would be injurious to them, and He will assist them, and bear them safe through those through which He has determined that they shall pass. 3. Nor need Christ’ s people fear that they shall be overcome by their spiritual enemies, or be left to fall finally from grace. They are, indeed, beset with many spiritual dangers, but they have a mighty and faithful helper. 4. Nor need they fear death. 5. Nor need they fear coming short of heaven. (James Foote, M. A.) The little flock encouraged If you were asked, my dear children, what commandment in the Bible comes the most often, do you think you should know? Shall I tell you which commandment God gives most frequently? “ Fear not.” He says this more than eighty times--I believe eighty-four times; this is much oftener than any other commandment. “ Fear not.” You know if we are afraid, it looks as if we did not trust God. If anybody is afraid in the dark, if anybody is afraid of thunder, if anybody is afraid of going to bed alone, if anybody is afraid of robbers, if anybody is afraid of wild beasts, if anybody is afraid that God will not forgive him (when he asks Him), if anybody is afraid that God will not guide him all along till he gets to heaven--then he does not trust God. Now we must look to see to whom it is that God says, “ Fear not.” It is called, what? “ Little flock.” Now, why is it called “ little” ? 1. Perhaps it is because there are so few in it, there are very few. A young man told me the other day that he was seven years at Eton, and he did not believe all the time that there was one real Christian there. Now, he could not tell. Very often religious boys are to be found where you do not think they are, and he might have made a great mistake. Very often God’ s people are hidden people. We cannot tell; but I am sure there are very few,--and I never knew a school yet, where there were a great many. There are but few, and so it is a “ little flock.” If you turn to Jeremiah, you will see how God makes a “ little flock,” --you will not wonder it is “ little “ when you read that. “ I will take you one of a city, and two of a family, and I will bring you to Zion” (Jeremiah 3:14). So you see there are only to be “ two” or “ three.” Nobody naturally tries to love God; and if nobody seeks to love God, or to care about his soul, he must not wonder at “ the flock” being so “ little.” 2. Do you not think the reason is, not only because so few love God, but because there are so many “ little “ lambs in it? there are so many children in Isaiah 40:11). Do you not think they are called “ a little flock” because everybody in that “ flock” thinks so “ little” of himself? Everybody who is a Christian thinks “ little” of himself, or ought to do so. If anybody thinks much of himself he is by no means a Christian. “ It is your Father’ s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” What a good God must that great God be in heaven, who made the sky and stars, and who sits upon that beautiful throne in glory, and gives to such poor creatures as we are “ the kingdom” ! There was once a great Roman emperor going through Rome in grand triumph, surrounded by all his attendants,--his courtiers and his soldiers; he himself was riding in a chariot, accompanied by sound of trumpets,--oh! so grand! The emperor was in the midst of that great procession, when a little child came out of the crowd, ran up to this great man, and of course he was put back,--they cried out, “ Go back, little child--go back--go back! He is your emperor!” And the little child said, “ Yes, he is your emperor, but he is my father.” Oh! how beautiful it is to say of the Lord, “ He is my Father!” “ Your Father!” How did He become your Father? (See Jeremiah 3:19.) God has one child; that is, Jesus. Nobody can be God’ s child who is not joined to Jesus--a member of Jesus--united to Jesus. Then you become indeed God’ s child. When we are joined to Jesus, then He is our Father in a sweeter sense. So that if you wish to be able to say, “ Our Father, which art in heaven,” you must love Jesus, follow Jesus, be like Jesus, and be united to Jesus. And oh! what a pleasant thing to have God’ s eye upon you. Now we must look at the last thing. What is He going to “ give us” ? Do you know? He will “ give us the kingdom.” Then I suppose He gives us everything--the greater and the less. In Romans 14:17, it is said, “ For the kingdom of God is not meat and drink; but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.” Thus we have “ the kingdom of heaven” in our hearts when we have “ righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.” If we have that, then we have good hope, and when we die we shall go to heaven. And, my dear children, do you know you are all trained to be “ kings” ? I wonder how the Prince of Wales is trained. I should think he must be always thinking, “ Oh, I am going to be a king.” And that is what you ought to be thinking. “ You should say, “ I am going to be a king.” Yes, every child, who is a Christian, is going to be a “ king.” “ Fear not, little flock, it is your Father’ s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” You have heard of Charlemagne,--he ordered that when he died, there should be a chapel built just like the chapel of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem; and that he should not be buried like other men, but like a king, and so he said, “ Do not lay my body down, but set me upon a throne, and bury me like a king.” He was to have a room set apart for him at the side of the chapel, and there was to be a Bible opened and laid by his side when he was dead, and the sword of Charlemagne was to be laid on the other side--and upon his head a crown of gold, and a robe over his shoulders. So he was buried. Years afterwards, the Emperor Otho went to see how Charlemagne looked; the chapel was opened, and he went in to see him,--and what did he see? He was crumbled up into dust. There was the cowl; the crown was not destroyed, but was saved. There was Charlemagne, one of the greatest kings that ever lived--there he was, all dust. Now I will tell you of another man. There was a poor miserable-looking old man, who lived in an almshouse--I will not say where--and the poor old creature had the palsy, and if you bad seen him you would have heard his shoes knocking together with the palsy; and he was sitting in his chair when a gentleman went to see him, and said, “ Well, my friend, how do you do?” “ Oh! I am waiting-waiting.” “ Are you waiting for me?” “ No, I am waiting for my Master; for Him to bring me my crown.” “ Bring you your crown?” “ Yes, I am going to be a king.” “ How do you know that?” “ Because Christ has said it--‘ Fear not, little flock; for it is your Father’ s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.’” (J. Vaughan, M. A.) The people of Christ exhorted to lay aside their fears I. THE : “ Fear not, little flock.” If it had not been expressly said by St. Luke, that Jesus spake these words to “ His disciples,” we should have had no doubt to whom they were addressed, from the title which He gives them, “ little flock.” Let us then represent to ourselves a little flock of sheep travelling through a wide and barren wilderness; and let us suppose that, thus circumstanced, they could be sensible of their situation, and of the wants and perils to which they were exposed. Would they not have many causes of alarm? Would there not be many things which would excite their fears? 1. In the first place, they would be terrified at the thought of the cruel and ravenous enemies with which they were surrounded. Every moment they might be surprised by the roaring lion, or the prowling fox, or the hidden serpent, without any means on their part of escape or defence. Beset by such adversaries, they might reasonably fear that every day would be their last. 2. Again, ignorant of the road by which they must travel through this wilderness, and arrive at those rich and fertile pastures, after which they were seeking, they could not but fear being entangled and lost by the way. Here would be a continual source of anxiety and apprehension. 3. Once more, the apprehension of want and famine would be another fruitful source of uneasiness. Such we may reasonably conclude would be the fears and anxieties of the “ little flock,” in the circumstances supposed: and now let us apply these things to the spiritual flock, to the people of Christ, the sheep of His pasture, and the lambs of His fold. And let us see whether they have not like grounds and causes for fear. The world is to them a wilderness; a wilderness through which they are travelling towards a better country, that is, a heavenly; a land of heat and drought, beset with dangers, and filled with their enemies. Another ground of fear to the people of Christ is their ignorance and unaquaintedness with the way in which they should go; their readiness to be discouraged at the difficulties in their road; and their propensity to turn aside, and to wander into other paths. How often do they find themselves in such situations, that they can scarcely discern the path of duty, and see the course which they ought to follow I The failure of provision by the way, of those means and accommodations which are necessary for the support and comfort of the present life, is still another fruitful cause of anxiety and alarm. II. THE BY WHICH IT IS : “ For it is your Father’ s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” Surely there is enough in this passage to allay the fears and to comfort the hearts of the most timorous and desponding. 1. In the first place, let the people of Christ call to mind, that God is their Father, Our Lord, speaking to them in the text, says,” your Father.” Being members of Christ, they are children of God. 2. In the second place, let them recollect that this their Heavenly Father has prepared an inheritance for them; and what kind of an inheritance is it? Such an inheritance as the children of such a Father might well expect to receive; a royal inheritance; a “ crown,” a “ kingdom.” Suffice it in one word to say, that the inheritance is such as their Heavenly Father, the God of all power and love, has prepared for His dearly-purchased and His dearly beloved children. 3. In the third place, let them reflect, that with respect to this kingdom, great and glorious as it is, beyond all our thoughts and conceptions, yet it is their Father’ s “ good pleasure to give it them.” He has prepared and provided it for them. He has promised it to them: and it will be His delight and His joy to put them into possession of it. It is His good pleasure that they should have it; and that, not because they have deserved it, not because they have done anything to purchase it, or can ever do anything to make Him an adequate return for it--no; but because He delighteth in mercy, and hath pleasure in the felicity of His chosen. “ It is His good pleasure to give them the kingdom.” It is a royal gift. Now, then, my brethren, let us see how the argument, thus opened, applies to the case before us, and enforces the exhortation in the text. “ Fear not, little flock” ; fear not that you shall be left to wander in the wilderness without protection, guidance, and provision by the way. Have you not in heaven a Father--an Almighty Father, who loves you with the tenderest love; watches over you with the most anxious care; and desires your happiness with even more than a Father’ s heart? And will He ever leave you or forsake you? Besides, hath He not provided an inheritance for you? Hath He not designed, hath He not promised, to make you inconceivably blessed with Himself for ever; and is it possible that He will not bring you safely into the possession of this inheritance? Oh! be ashamed of your unbelief. Be ashamed of your fears. (E. Cooper.) God’ s flock The true followers of Jesus Christ have always been a little flock, compared with the rest of mankind. I. Then the majority may be on the wrong side. II. Then weakness does not of necessity involve danger or defeat. III. Then heaven is God’ s gift, and not the reward of works. IV. Then God does not judge by appearances. V. Then God, who promises the kingdom, will surely keep His word. VI. Then the Christian should be hopeful and happy. In life’ s fiercest tribulations, we should never forget that God’ s promises are worthy of our strongest confidence, and our constant trust. (T. Kelly.) The Christian’ s sense of security A sense of security seems indispensable to happiness. A habit of foreboding, of thinking something evil is ever about to happen cannot but seriously mar our comfort and satisfaction. This constant dread of impending ill is by no means an uncommon, but a very common thing. We cannot well avoid a natural looking ahead for danger when travelling, but perhaps the less we have of that the more perfect our enjoyment. To be in the presence of one who is continually imagining something ill is near, is very trying to our own peace of mind. For a mind once habituated to foreboding becomes very fertile in its imaginings and will create a great danger from some very trifling occurrence. For such a mind there would seem to be no rest night or day. Constant anxiety is eating up its vitality, which soon becomes exhausted, involving, too, the body in its terrible progress towards dissolution and death. A cure for this harassing temper of mind is the cultivation of a sense of security by a constant looking unto God for guidance and strength. A reliance on Him and a willing obedience to Nature’ s laws will do far more for our happiness than ought beside. Even the dearest friends will fail us at times, yea often, and the truest source of joy must be ourselves purified and lifted by a constant looking unto our Heavenly Father. (Christian Age.) Going to the kingdom Mrs. G was one day visiting an aged man, a friend of her father, and one who was associated with him in early life. Though differing widely in sentiment, the two old men still felt a deep interest in each other. Mr. S--had been one of those who ran after the world to overtake it. All that it can give, he had obtained. Now he inquired after the state of his friend, whom he knew to be in circumstances of far less external comfort than himself. As he listened to the story of his patience and suffering, and of his cheerfulness with which he could look forward, either to a longer pilgrimage in this world, or to the hour of death, his conscience applied the unexpressed reproach, and he exclaimed, “ Yes, yes, you wonder I cannot be as quiet and happy too: but think of the difference; he is going to his treasure, and I--I must leave mine!” Luke 12:33 Sell that ye have, and give alms Sell all Do not hoard it for yourself; do not, like the rich fool, call them your fruits. Do not consider yourselves proprietors of your goods. Regard them not as yours, but as God’ s. Sell them to God, and dispose of them in mercy for the wants of others. This is not a command that no money be kept for our own use, but that righteousness should not be neglected through fear of poverty. They make the best of bargains, who secure eternal life. They obtain the best of treasures who carry them through the grave. Self-righteous, lazy, mendicant friars, a burlesque on the text. Men may part with all, only to be more covetous than before. The command was given in good earnest to the young man. It demands the soul to be unfettered of earth-born weights. It requires a consecration of all our means to God. Mariners save the vessel by throwing the cargo into the sea. Possessions cease to be harmless the moment they acquire the mastery. Esteem it no loss if your all is destroyed for Christ’ s sake. No sacrifice of treasure meritorious in purchasing heaven. Some give their all to the poor, and still lose heaven (1 Corinthians 13:3). (Van Doren.) Noble self-sacrifice The present Queen of Sweden, in a spirit of the noblest self-sacrifice, sold her jewels to provide for her people hospitals, orphanages, and convalescent homes, such as we possess in this country. Visiting on one occasion in person a convalescent home of her own founding, a poor bed-ridden woman thanked her for her kindness and her care. As she spoke one or more tears of gratitude fell on the queen’ s hand, who was sitting by her side. The queen sweetly said, as she saw the glittering tokens of a thankful heart, “ God is sending me my jewels back again.” Luke 12:35-40 Men that wait for their Lord Of the believer’ s readiness for the coming of Christ This readiness stands in watchfulness and fidelity. I. . 1. Its nature. 2. Its ground. The servant’ s relation of dependence toward his Lord. 3. The motive to it. The glorious reward. 4. The difficulty of it. The long delay. 5. Its necessity. The uncertainty of the time. II. . 1. Motives to it. (1) The confidence reposed in him by the Lord; (2) who intrusts to him a large sphere of operation; (3) in which much good may be done. 2. Its nature. (1) That is, deals justly. (2) And in proper season. 3. Its consequences. (1) The internal joy of a good conscience. (2) The Lord’ s approval and recompense. 4. Exhortation to fidelity from the mournful consequences of the opposite. 1. Source of faithlessness. Security and unbelief. 2. Nature of faithlessness. (1) Abuse of power. (2) Ill use of means entrusted to it. 3. Mournful consequences of faithlessness. (1) He finds himself surprised in his security. (2) He is severely punished. (3) And the punishment, whether more lenient or more severe, is perfectly just. (F. G. Lisco.) Watching for the Master I. OUR . 1. We expect Christ’ s second advent as King and Judge. Or-- 2. We expect our own decease, which will take us into His presence, to give an account of ourselves. II. OUR PRESENT . 1. We are His servants. We belong to Him, and are subject to Him; He has given us work to do in His absence--work which should occupy all our time, and engage all our powers. Specifically, there is the work of our own sanctification; and there is the work of Christian beneficence and labour in the world. 2. We are left to ourselves for a season. We have it in our power to refuse doing His work. We may use His property and gifts for our own pleasure or profit. We may be indolent, selfish, and sensual, and lull ourselves to sleep and carelessness. 3. But He will return, and call us to account. We expect a day of reckoning. III. ITS ISSUES. 1. If found faithful, what joy and honour will be ours! (See Luke 12:37.) 2. If found unfaithful, what discomfiture and ruin! (See Luke 12:45, &c.) IV. OUR TRUE AND DUTY. 1. it is, to live wholly for eternity--for Christ. 2. It is, to be prepared for death and judgment every moment. (See Luke 12:35; Luke 12:40.) 3. It is, to stir up others to the same wakefulness and zeal! (The Congregational Pulpit.) The nature of Christian watchfulness 1. Alertness. 2. Activity. 3. Circumspection. (Van Oosterzee.) The motive of Christian watchfulness 1. Certainty. 2. Suddenness. 3. Decisiveness of the coming of the Lord. (Van Oosterzee.) What does the Lord demand of His faithful servants? 1. An eye that is open for His light. 2. A hand that carries on His work. 3. A foot that is every instant ready to go to meet Him and to open to Him. (Van Oosterzee.) What does the Lord promise to His faithful servants? 1. Honourable distinction. 2. Perfect contentment. 3. Beseeming elevation. (Van Oosterzee.) Watchfulness in its true character 1. Its inner essence. 2. Its blessed consequences. 3. Its indispensable universality. (Arndt.) Irresistible grace I. THE WHICH IS HERE GIVEN OF GOD’ S MODE OF DEALING WITH MEN. “ He cometh and knocketh.” Where? At the “ door” of our hearts. Then the door is by nature closed against God. And this applies equally to all. We allow all that can be asked of us, in regard to a vast difference between man and man; but only with reference to their characters and their conduct as members of society. When we try them by their love to God, by their willingness to submit to Him, by their desire to please Him, we contend that there is no difference whatever, but that all must be equally included under one emphatic description--“ Enemies in your minds by wicked works.” This truth it is which we derive from the words of our text--the truth that the heart of every one amongst us is naturally barred against God, so that though it will be readily opened at the touch of friendship, or the call of distress, yet does it obstinately exclude that Creator and that Benefactor, who alone can fill its mighty capacities. And, if the text thus pourtray to you the natural condition of the human heart, it shows you, with equal accuracy, by what kind of manner Christ tries to gain the entrance which is wickedly denied. We speak not yet of the mode, in which it may be said, that Christ “ knocks” at the door of the heart. We confine ourselves simply to the representation that no kind of violence is employed; there is nothing like forcing the door; but when Christ has “ knocked,” it still rests with man to determine whether he will obey the summons, and let in the guest. You will all admit that there is nothing in the text which looks like what is called ONCE; nothing to favour the opinion that there is any inteference with the free will of man, in order that he may be compelled or induced to renounce what is evil, and embrace what is good. The representation is purely that of such an appeal to man as man is quite at liberty to withstand. There is a “ knocking” at the door; perhaps a loud knocking, and a continued knocking, but still it is left with man to decide whether he will hear the voice and throw open the door. It is very clear from this, whatever we may hold as to human corruption and disability, that none of us can be excusable in being still unconverted and at enmity with God. If Christ have only “ knocked” (and this can hardly be denied by any who have ever heard the sound of the gospel), the whole blame is chargeable on themselves, if He have not also entered, and taken possession of the heart. And how does Christ knock? We might almost say that He knocks by every object in creation, and by every provision in redemption. Every feature of the landscape, every tree of the forest; every flower of the garden, every joint and every muscle of my frame--all are gifted with the same energy, an energy in proclaiming that there is a Supreme Being, infinite in wisdom and goodness, as well as in might. And through each, therefore, this Being may be justly affirmed to “ knock” at the door of the heart, demanding its love and its allegiance. And there are modes yet more personal than these, in which God may be said to “ come and knock” at the human heart. Does He not often inflict fatherly chastisements--removing objects of deep love, and startling those who were sunk in lethargy, and living as though they had here an “ abiding city” by sudden and distressing dispensations? And if God may be said to knock at the heart by the visitations of His providence, will you not allow the same in regard of all those actings on men, which are especially to be referred to the Second and Third Persons of the Trinity? We are bold to declare of every sermon that you hear, and every chapter which you read, that it knocks at the heart. The written word and the preached word are the exhibitions of what has been done for you by the Lord your Redeemer; and in resisting these, you resist the strongest possible appeal to every charity of the heart, to every susceptibility, to every hope, and to every fear. When Christ is evidently set forth “ crucified amongst you,” the throes of His agony and passion; the instruments of shame and torture, the crown, the nail, the cross, the spear, the indignities endured without resentment, the griefs sustained without a murmur; the contumely poured on the Lord of Glory, the death submitted to by the Lord of Life, and all “ for us men and for our salvation” ;--each of these may emphatically be said to rush against the heart, pleading against its indifference, and worldliness, and pride, and soliciting admission for a Saviour who longs to enter it, only that He may purify and bless and fill it with lasting happiness. And to this must be added what must occur to every one of you, that the suggestions of conscience, and the strivings of the Spirit, are means through which Christ often “ knocks” at the heart, and that too, with a violence which will scarcely permit inattention. Who is there of you who will presume to say that he never heard this knocking? II. THE PROMISE MADE TO THOSE WHO YIELD TO HIS , We will not insist upon that point of the representation which sets before us Christ as actually ministering--ministering as a servant to such as open when He knocks. We must not give too literal an interpretation to such sayings, though we may certainly understand our blessed Lord as affirming that He will graciously condescend to employ all His power and authority in advancing the honour and happiness of those who hearken to His call. Whilst waiving this, let us consider only the representation of “ sitting down to meat” in association and company with the Lord our Redeemer. It has often been said, and we suppose with much truth, that heaven would be no scene of enjoyment to the wicked if they could be admitted within its gates without having the heart first changed by Divine grace. There cannot be happiness unless our faculties and desires have their counterpart objects. This is only saying that we must have our faculties rectified and receive a new set of desires ere we can possibly find happiness in the occupation and pleasures of the invisible world. And such a remark is specially in place with regard to the promise made by Christ in our text. It is not a promise which can wear much attractiveness to men who are wholly strangers to vital religion. There is not much in it to excite them, because it addresses itself to feelings which they do not yet possess and presupposes desires of which they are not conscious. They may see that the promise refers to close intimacy and rich communion between Christ and the soul, but they are disposed to resolve all such things into idealism and enthusiasm: they cannot profess to understand how they can be, nor if they be real, how they can also be valuable. But let us all add, that if unconverted men find no relish for the blessing to which the promise refers, this alone is sufficient to make them earnest in obeying Christ’ s summons and opening the door. Certainly we do not know a more startling truth if we be impenitent and indifferent, than that heaven would be no heaven to us, even if we could gain entrance within its precincts; and it is going far beyond all ordinary descriptions, whether of mental or corporeal tyranny, to say that there is such a thorough unfitness for every pleasure which has God for its author, such a thorough incapacity for enjoying the blessings which God delighteth to secure to those whom He loves, that they would carry, as it were, hell into heaven, and be unspeakably miserable, even where there is to be “ no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain.” That man indeed, must have wretchedness woven up with all the elements of his being, so that he must be his own tormentor, his own accuser, his own executioner, who could be translated from hell to heaven, and find the purities of the heavens a burden with the infirmities of earth. We will not, therefore, hear that there is no stirring motive to the unconverted amongst you in these words of the Saviour--“ he shall gird himself, and make them to sit down to meat, and will come forth and serve them.” That you do not feel their force; that you do not see their beauty; this alone is argument enough why you should labour to fulfil the conditions and “ open immediately,” upon hearing the knocking of Christ. To have no relish for what Christ has to bestow, proves such incapacity for happiness as is more formidable than the mere accumulation of misery. Therefore should the unconverted be as much roused by a promise whose worth they do not feel as by one which should actually address itself to their hopes and their wishes. If the “ door were to be opened” that wealth might pour in, and that carnal pleasure might abound, what alacrity would there be in obeying the summons and withdrawing the bolt I But if the door is to be opened, that the Mediator may enter, and if this seem in no degree an inducement; why, this very fact ought to furnish the strongest possible inducement! for, unless I can learn to be happy in God’ s way, how unspeakably wretched must I ever be in my own! But we may well believe that there are others in this assembly who have appreciated the worth of the promise in our text. To such we need not say that there is a communion and intercourse between Christ and the soul, which if not capable of being described to a stranger, is unspeakably precious to those by whom it is experienced. It is no dream of rye enthusiast; it is the statement of soberness and truth. The Redeemer so manifests Himself to those who believe in His name that He communicates to them such a sense of His presence, and brings them into such intimate companionship, that He may be said to enter in and “ make them sit down to meat.” There is what I may venture to call a social and family intercourse; not indeed an intercourse in which the majesty and the dignity of the Mediator are ever forgotten, but nevertheless one which is as cordial and unreserved as it is actual, the soul opening all her capacities that she may be filled with all the fulness of the Saviour, and the Saviour deigning to impart himself in His various offices. (H. Melvill, B. D.) The kind Master First let us glance at the form of the parable. A certain Oriental gentleman, or “ lord,” has gone to the wedding of a friend. The festivities connected with an Eastern marriage were spread over many days, a week at least, sometimes a month. All the friends of the family were expected to put in an appearance, but only a select few remained to the end. The rest might come and go at any hour, on any day, that suited their convenience or pleasure. So that when this Hebrew gentleman went to his friend’ s wedding, his servants could not tell to an hour, or to a watch, or even to a day, when he would return. But, however long he delayed his coming, they kept a keen look-out for him. When night fell, instead of barring up the house and retiring to rest, they girt up their long outer robes, that they might be ready to run out at any instant to greet him; they kindled their lamps, that they might run safely, as well as swiftly, on his errands. They even prepared a table for him; for, though he was coming from a feast, he may have had to ride far and long, and, in any case, a little fruit and a cup of pure water or of generous wine might be very acceptable to him. In this posture, with these preparations, they await his coming. And when he comes, he is so pleased with their fidelity and thoughtfulness that, instead of sitting down to meat or hastening to his couch, he girds up his loins, bids his servants sit down to the very banquet they had prepared for him, and comes forth from his chamber to wait upon them. I. THE OF THE . As they waited for the coming of their master, so are we to wait for the coming of ours. If we take the great promise of the New Testament--the second advent of Christ--if we divest it of all mere accidents of form and date, and reduce it to its most simple and general terms, what does it come to? It comes at least to this: that, somewhere in the future, there is to be a better world than this--a world more wisely and happily ordered, a world in which all that is now wrong will be righted, a world of perfect beauty and growing righteousness; in a word, a world in which He who once suffered for and with all men will really reign in and over all men, His spirit dwelling in them, and raising them towards the true ideal of manhood. And is not that a reasonable hope? Does it not make a vital difference to us whether or not we entertain it? If in this world only we have hope, we are of all creatures most miserable. If the tragedy of human life be pregnant with no Divine purpose, if there be no better time coming, no golden age of righteousness and peace--if, in short, we can no longer believe in the advent and reign of Christ, then surely every thoughtful spectator of this vast tragedy must say, “ It were better for men that they had never been born!” But if we believe in this great promise, if we cherish this great hope, then can we with patience wait for it. And this is the very posture which our Lord here enjoins. II. THE AND OF THE MASTER. Whatever we have done for God, He will do for us; when He reckons with us, we shall receive our own again, and receive it with usury. It is but a metaphorical expression of that great law of retribution which pervades the whole Bible, but the happier face of which we are too apt to overlook--that whatever a man sows, that shall he also reap, that, and all that has come of it. The Divine reward will be at once equitable and bountiful. If in this present life we have shown some capacity for serving God in serving our fellows, we may be sure that in the life to come we shall receive the harvest of our service; we may be sure that God will do for us all that we have done for Him, and a great deal more. But what, after all, is the best part of a man’ s reward for a faithful and diligent use of any faculty here? It is that his faculty, whatever it may be, is invigorated, developed, refined by use. If, then, I have here used my faculty and opportunity for serving God in serving my fellows, I may hope and believe that hereafter my best reward will be an enlarged faculty of service and ampler opportunities for exercising it. If I love righteousness here, and pursue it, I find all righteous men and influences on my side, and so get my reward; but my best reward is that I myself am ever growing in righteousness, in the power of teaching and serving it. (S. Cox, D. D.) Preparation for death I. THE OF DEATH WHICH CHRIST HERE GIVES. 1. Death, you perceive, is here represented as the coming of Jesus Christ. In His capacity of Mediator, He comes at death, to terminate that “ space for repentance” which He has allotted to each individual; He comes to demand an account of our stewardship. 2. But out text refers, with peculiar emphasis, to the uncertainty in which we are left, as to the time when our Lord will come. That He will come, we are distinctly and impressively assured: and the time, the place, and the manner of His coming, are all foreknown to Him, and appointed by Him. But they are all unknown to us; the year, the day, the hour are unknown; whether it shall be “ in the second watch, or in the third watch” ; whether it shall be in the morning, or in the evening, or at noonday; “ for in such an hour as ye think not, the Son of Man cometh.” II. THE FOR NEATH WHICH CHRIST ENJOINS. 1. Preparation for death is founded on a belief of the gospel of Christ. 2. It includes a devout anticipation of death, and a reference to it amidst the concerns and engagements of life. 3. Preparation for death includes also a holy and habitual perseverance in the service of Jesus Christ. III. THE WHICH CHRIST HERE ENSURES TO THOSE WHO DIE IN THIS STATE OF . 1. They are blessed with peace and hops in the prospect and in the act of dying. 2. They are blessed with an entrance into heaven immediately after death. (J. Alexander.) Waiting for the Lord Our dear friend, Mr. James Smith, whom some of you remember as preaching the Word at Park Street, and afterwards at Cheltenham, when I saw him, some little while before his departure, described himself thus: “ You have seen a passenger that has gone to the station, taken his ticket, all his luggage brought in, all packed up, strapped, directed; and you have seen him sitting with his ticket in his hand, waiting till the train comes up. That,” said he, “ is exactly my condition. I am ready to go as soon as my Heavenly Father pleases to come for me.” And is not that how we should always live--waiting for the Lord’ s appearing? Mr. Whitefield used to say, of his well-known order and regularity, “ I like to go to bed feeling that if I were to die to-night, there is not so much as a pair of my gloves out of their proper place.” (C. H. Spurgeon.) Always ready When war was declared between France and Germany, Count yon Moltke, the strategist, was fully prepared for it. The news was brought to him late one night at Kreisau: he had already gone to bed. “ Very well,” he said to the messenger, “ the third portfolio on the left,” and went to sleep again until morning. (H. O. Mackay.) Watching is essential A general, after gaining a great victory, was encamping with his army for the night. He ordered watch to be kept all around the camp as usual. One of the sentinels, as he went to his station, grumbled to himself, and said, “ Why could not the general let us have a quiet night’ s rest for once, after beating the enemy? I’ m sure there’ s nothing to be afraid of.” The man then went to his station and stood for some time looking about him. It was a bright night, with a harvest moon, but, as he could see no sign of danger anywhere, he said to himself, “ I am terribly tired, I shall sleep for just five minutes, out of the moonlight, under the shadow of this tree. So he lay down. Presently he started up, dreaming that some one had pushed a lantern before his eyes, and he found that the moon was shining brightly down on him through the branches of the tree above him. The next minute an arrow whizzed past his ear, and the whole field before him seemed alive with soldiers in dark green coats, who sprang up from the ground, where they had been silently creeping onward, and rushed toward him. Fortunately the arrow had missed him! so he shouted aloud to give the alarm, and ran back to some other sentinels. The army to which he belonged was thus saved, and the soldier said, “ I shall never forget, as long as I live, that when one is at war, one must watch.” (Christian Age.) Preparation for death The Rev. Dr. Kidd was a Scotch minister of some prominence, and very eccentric, and one who had his own way of doing things. One of his parishioners says: “ I was busy in my shop, when, in the midst of my work, in stepped the doctor. ‘ Did you expect me?’” was his abrupt inquiry, without even waiting for a salutation. ‘ No,’ was my reply. ‘ What if I had been Death?’ he asked, when at once he stepped out as abruptly as he came, and was gone almost before I knew it.” What a question! What a thought for every one of us! Does not Death come to most, if not to all, as unexpectedly as this? And does not the inquiry impress the lesson from our Saviour’ s lips, “ Be ye also ready; for in such an hour as ye think not, the Son of Man cometh.” “ Be ready!” In the early part of 1875, a young minister, desirous to see the working of the railway signals, points, and telegraph, entered a signal box on a branch line (where the road crossed the metals) for that purpose. The man in charge was most affable, and willing to supplement his limited knowledge of it, by showing him the working of the various branches of trust committed to his charge, as the respective trains came through. Only a few moments elapsed when the sharp ring of the gong attracted both signalman and his visitor to the telegraphic instrument, and the signal “ Be ready” was given for a fast through train. The answer returned, the signal lowered, the points righted, and, like the rushing of a mighty wind, on came the ponderous engine and its train of human life. Fast went that train, but the “ Be ready “ flew before it from station to station, preparing for it clear metals and a safe journey. A few days elapsed, and the same train was again due; the “ Be ready” had been received and forwarded; the signals lowered, the points righted; but one of the gates had somehow got unlocked, and hung across the road. The signalman rushed to the gate hoping to fling it back, but was too late. The train dashed on, and the mangled corpse of the poor man told of his sudden exit from this world to the next. Have you not received the “ Be ready” again and again? Look well to your signals, look well to your points, and see that you are ready. The Apostle Paul once got the signal “ Be ready,” and his reply was this: “ I am now ready to be offered up, for the time of my departure is at hand.” (Christian Age.) Waiting and watching Faith without works has no testifying and authenticating fruit. They are the two extremes of the one tree, viz., the root and the fruit; they are the two halves of the one whole--together they make up the complete Christian. In the text, this completeness is brought out and illustrated in a forcible manner, in the three aspects in which our Lord presents the Christian, viz., a servant, a light-bearer, and a watchman. I. In the first direction which our Lord gives, “ Let your loins be girded about,” we have before us the picture of A SERVANT GIRDED FOR DUTY. I need not tell you what the position and duties of a servant are; how it is expected of him that he should know his place, and humbly and faithfully discharge the duties of his station. He should, if possible, identify himself with his master’ s interest, and conduct himself in a manner which will sustain his master’ s honour. The servant of Christ has the noblest of all masters--the holiest of all services--the most honourable of all positions. The servant of a king ever bears about him the reflected honour of the king, and the amount of this honour is in proportion to his nearness or remoteness to the throne. So the servant of the King of kings borrows dignity from the Being whom he serves. He wears no outward insignia of that dignity, as earthly courtiers do in stars or ribbons; but it is a glory which reflects itself in his daily life, and evidences his relation to Jesus by the fidelity and zeal which he shows in His service. The fact that what he does, he does for Christ, lifts it out of the plane of menial duty, and places it in the higher region of holy privilege. Such a service ought to call out prompt obedience, loving devotion, unwearied effort, and thorough sympathy with the aim and purpose of God in the work of man’ s salvation. II. But, secondly, the text tells us that the Christian is to BE A as well as a servant. Not only must his loins be girded, but his lights must be burning, The Christian lives in the midst of moral darkness. Sin is darkness, and he lives in a world of sin; a world in which men love darkness rather than light, because their deeds are evil. Error also is darkness. If Christ is in you His light will shine out through you; and if none shines out through you, it will be because there is none in you. Where the light is, there will be the shining. The absence of light proves the absence of Christ; for you cannot cover up His light or smother His beams. The necessity for these lights being ever burning arises from the personal need of the believer himself; and from the necessity of showing forth to others the light and truth which he has found in Jesus. The personal security of the disciple, then, requires that he should let his lights be burning. His spiritual comfort also depends on this. St. John, after declaring that “ God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all,” immediately adds, “ If we say that we have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth; but if we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship one with another.” The holier the life, the brighter the light. The more the light shines for others, the greater is the inner glow of our own hearts, and the greater the outer glory given to God. The absence of light where we expect to find it, often produces most disastrous results. III. Lastly, the text tells us that the Christian is to be a : “ and ye yourselves like unto men that wait for their Lord,” The watchman-like character of the Christian is to show itself in two ways. First, by watching over himself; and secondly, by waiting for his returning Lord. Over himself he must watch, lest he become careless in duty, remiss in keeping his light burning, and be overtaken with drowsiness and indifference. Self-watchfulness is the necessary pre-requisite to spiritual peace and growth. Only the self-confident and the self-ignorant are unwatchful; and the unwatchful always become an easy prey to the spoiler. All that the great deceiver asks of us is; not that we should openly abandon our religion, but simply ungird our loins--let our light go out and cease to watch. He will finish the work which we thus by carelessness and unwatchfulness begin. In addition to this self-watchfulness there is the other position to be taken, viz., waiting for our returning Lord. This may imply that outlook which all true Christians like to take in reference to the Second Advent of Christ, when He shall come again to judge the world. (Bishop Stevens.) The lamp of the soul ever burning I. THE EMPTY, LAMP AS THE EMBLEM OF THE NOMINAL . A lamp is a very serviceable thing, serviceable for lighting our stormy coast, and guarding against shipwrecks; serviceable for lighting our homes; but it is of little service unless it is trimmed, and unless it has oil in it. Now a hollow professor is like a lamp of this kind, a lamp with no oil in it, that cannot be lighted when you want it; as useless, though more dangerous. He lets not the lamp of his profession shine before men with the light of practice, with the light of good works, because the lamp of his profession is destitute of the oil of Divine grace. The oil is the emblem of Divine grace in the Christian profession. And as it is impossible to light a lamp without first putting oil into it; so is it impossible for a hollow professor to shed around on this dark world the beautiful and refreshing light of good works, unless, first, the oil of Divine grace is poured into the empty receptacle of his unconverted heart, by the unseen hand of the Holy Spirit. II. THE LAMP, WITH OIL IN IT, RUT NOT LIGHTED, AS AN EMBLEM OF THE TRUE , BUT NOT EXACTLY SO WELL FOR THE SECOND COMING OF THE SON OF MAN AT AN HOUR . It is an easy thing for the lamp of the Christian to grow dim, or to go out. If the Christian is not watchful, the slightest blast from the insidious temptations of the world, the flesh, and the devil, will blow his lamp out. Want of prayer, irregularity in prayer, coldness in prayer, will put the Christian’ s lamp out, or make it burn very dull. Neglect of the Scriptures, neglect either in not searching them, or in searching them in a self-righteous and careless spirit, will extinguish the bright light of the lamp. Or irregularity, or formality, in attending the Sacrament, and the other Divinely appointed means of grace, will cause the lamp to emit a dim and unhealthy light. Yielding to the besetting sin will put the lamp out; yielding to any wilful sin will put the lamp out. Remissness in self-examination will put the lamp out. Want of zeal for Christ will put the lamp out. Want of faith in Christ will put the lamp out. Want of hope in Christ will put the lamp out. Want of love for Christ will put the lamp out. Want of an abounding stedfastness in the work of the Lord, will put the lamp out. III. THE LAMP BURNING, AS AN EMBLEM OF DUE FOR CHRIST’ S SUDDEN COMING. Brethren, it is a hard thing in a world like this, and with an old evil nature that clings to the new man, for the Christian to keep his lamp burning. There are few Christians, indeed, whom sudden death has found, or the second advent will find, not only with lamps, and the oil in the lamps, but the lamps themselves burning. “ Sudden death, sudden glory,” has been the noble motto of a very distinguished minority, and death has not had power to make them retract. Absent from the body, present with the Lord; so said St. Paul in life, and so he felt in death. Come, Lord Jesus, come quickly, are among the last glorious words on record of St. John. They shed a burning and shining light upon this dark world of sin and woe to the very last. Their whole eventful lives were spent in being good, or doing good. “ To them to live is Christ, to die is gain.” When their lamps grow dull, and seem threatening to go out, they immediately brighten them up, and make them burn again, by betaking themselves to the throne of grace. IV. To each of these three classes of Christians, denoted by the lamp, WE WOULD OFFER A WORD OF BY WAY OF WARNING OR . 1. To the first we would say, yours is a sad case, indeed. You trust in the lamp of a hollow profession to save you in the great, and awful, and searching day of your Lord’ s second coming. You trust to a lamp without oil to light it. If you put confidence in any refuge of lies of this description, what a miserable end yours will be when Christ cometh. The God that seeth not as man seeth, the God that searcheth the hearts and trieth the reins, is to be your Judge, and pronounce your final doom. 2. To the second class of Christians we would say, guard against all those things that tend to put the lamp out. Every Christian knows what has the influence of deadening the light of the Spirit in his soul, and such a course ought to be strenuously avoided. 3. To the third class of Christians here designated, let us offer the word of encouragement. Often seated amid nights of terrible darkness, on the rock that is higher than we, on the rock of ages, have you been looking patiently, and in faith, over Time’ s troublous sea, for the glad day of Christ’ s coming to arrive, watching for the day-star to rise. Let your lamps be thus burning, till He comes. It will not be long before He does come. Yet a little while, and He that shall come, will come, and will not tarry. Then your soul’ s vigils will come to an end. (R. Jones, M. 4.) What do you keep a lantern for? A blind beggar sat by the side-walk on a dark night with a bright lantern by his side. Whereat a passer-by was so puzzled that he had to turn back with--“ What in the world do you keep a lantern burning for? You can’ t see!” “ So’ t folks won’ t stumble over me,” was the reply. We should keep our lights brightly burning for others’ sakes, as well as for the good of being “ in the light” ourselves. Christian preparedness A Christian must stand in a posture to receive every message which God shall send. He must be so prepared as to be like one who is called to set off on a sudden journey, and has nothing to do but to set out at a moment’ s notice; or like a merchant who has goods to send abroad, and has them all packed up and in readiness for the first vessel that is to sail. (R. Cecil.) Ready We should always stand “ with our lamps burning, and our loins girt.” A Christian should always be as a ship that has taken in its lading, and is prepared and furnished with all manner of tackling, ready to sail, only expecting the good winds to carry him out of the haven. So should we be ready to set sail for the ocean of eternity, and stand at heaven’ s gate, be in a perpetual exercise of faith and love, and be fittingly prepared to meet our Saviour. (H. G. Salter.) The expectant servant I. WHY IS THERE SUCH A IN THE PRESENT STATE OF THE CHURCH AS WITH THE CHURCH IN TIMES? 1. Christ predicted this apathy. 2. The narrow views prevalent as to the idea of “ judgment” have much to do with this indifference. Christ is to establish a rule of equity, to establish righteousness in the earth, let us remember. 3. In saying “ It is expedient for you that I go away,” the Lord did not say that it was expedient to stay away. We seem to act as if He said so. But He said, “ I will come again.” II. THE OF WAITING FOR CHRIST. 1. It shows our real affection for Him. 2. It shows that we entertain right views of the work of Christ, and are in sympathy with that work. 3. This expectant attitude testifies to our supreme desire for spiritual blessings: those gifts of His grace which prepare us for His work here, and for the glorious vision of His face at the Marriage Supper of the Lamb. (H. G.Weston, D. D.) Christian watchfulness Let the duty of watchfulness engage your most careful attention. How vigilant is he who is appointed to keep watch at seal “ The watchful mariner,” says one, “ is ever on the look out. His eyes and ears are both open. Be the prevailing fear an enemy’ s force, or a sunk rock, or concealed bank, or shelving coast, he discerns the smallest symptoms, observes the motion of the waves sounds with the line, and gives the alarm on the most minute alteration. Without such watchfulness, the most precious merchandise, and the lives of men, would be each hour in jeopardy. Much the same is the case in warfare by land. The sentinel on the outpost is heedful of the most inconsiderable object within his station; and in the darkness of the night, his ear listens to every noise, Nothing can divert his attention from fidelity to his charge. Such also is the case with the watchman in the besieged city. From the walls, as far as he has light, he marks each change and alteration in the posture of the enemy, draws a judgment from the nicest circumstances; and, in the night, discerns even the rustling of the leaf moved by the breath of heaven; and at every suspicious noise he gives the alarm to the guards of the city. Without this the cry of havoc would oft be heard in the town, when drowned in heaviness and slumber.” Thus it is that you should watch for your own souls. Be watchful lest ye make shipwreck of faith and a good conscience. Be watchful against your spiritual enemies. “ Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about seeking whom he may devour.” Watch over your words and actions, and your very thoughts. “ Keep your hearts with all dilligence, for out of them are the issues of life.” Beware of those things which are contrary to watchfulness, such as sloth, inconsideration, worldliness, and sensuality. And see that you join prayer to watchfulness. (James Foote, M. A.) Found well employed Philip Henry, the father of the commentator, called upon a tanner, who was so briskly employed in tanning a hide that he did not notice the minister’ s approach, and on looking round he apologized for being found thus employed. Philip Henry replied, “ Let Christ, when He comes, find me equally well employed in the duties of my calling.” “ Many other ministers have made the same reply to similar excuses. All watched “ A story that I read when a boy,” says one, “ made a great impression on me. At a lonely country house a pedlar asked permission to leave a large pack of goods. Some one looking at it in an out-of-the-way room, thought they saw it move. A man in the house fired at it: a groan was heard, and blood issued. Inside the pack was the accomplice of coming robbers, with food, and a wind-call. Neighbours were got in, guns were loaded, and all watched. In the night they sounded the call; the robbers came, were welcomed with a volley, and fled, taking their dead and wounded with them.” Waiting for the Lord Two centuries ago, Andrew Gray, the M’ Cheyne of his time, and who, like him, was early called home, once said at a communion season, “ Oh, when shall these blue heavens be rent, and we be admitted to the marriage supper of the Lamb? I long for the day when all the language of heaven and earth shall be, ‘ Come, come, Lord Jesus.’” But, in a more marked degree still, this was the theme in which Samuel Rutherford ever specially delighted. “ All is night that is here,” he said; “ therefore sigh and long for the dawning of the morning, and the breaking of that day of the coming of the Son of Man! Persuade yourself the King is coming: read his letter sent before him, ‘ Behold, I come quickly.’ Wait with the wearied night watch for the breaking of the eastern sky, and think that ye have not a morrow.” (J. H. Norton.) The coming of Christ I. THE PERSONS TO WHOM THE COMMAND WAS WERE THE TO WHICH OUR SAVIOUR WAS . These, as St. Luke informs us, were an innumerable multitude of people, gathered, as it would seem, to hear him preach the gospel. A part of them were His disciples, a part of them were His enemies, and a part, probably including the greatest number, could scarcely have known anything of Him, unless by report. To all these classes of men the command is addressed in the written gospel. To him who reads it, and to him who hears it, it is addressed alike; and that whether he be a Christian, or a sinner, acquainted with Christ, or unacquainted. II. IN THE COMMAND ITSELF, I SHALL BRIEFLY MENTION--First, What that is for which we are to be ready; and--Secondly, What is included in being ready. First, We are required to be ready for the coming of Christ. There are several senses in which this phrase may be fairly understood, as used in the Scriptures. (1) When it is applied to individuals it particularly denotes the day of death. Death to every man is the time in which Christ will come, which will terminate every man’ s probation, and put an end to the necessity and duty of watching, so solemnly enjoined in the text. (2) We are also required to be ready for the judgment; (3) and for eternity. Secondly, I will now proceed to inquire what is included in being ready. 1. Profaners of the Lord’ s Day are not ready for the coming of Christ. 2. Prayerless persons are not ready for the coming of Christ. 3. Those who do not profess the religion of Christ, and enter into His covenant, are not not ready for His coming. 4. Those persons also are unprepared for the coming of Christ who prefer the world to Him. 5. All persons are unprepared for the coming of Christ who have hitherto put off their repentance to a future season. 6. All those persons also are unready for the coming of Christ who in their schemes of reformation reserve to themselves the indulgence of some sinful disposition, or the perpetration of some particular sin. 7. Those also are unready for the coming of Christ who do not continually and solemnly converse with death, judgment, and eternity. 8. Careless Christians are also unprepared for the coming of Christ. III. I WILL NOW PROCEED TO THE OF THE REASON BY WHICH THE DUTY OF FOR THE COMING OF CHRIST IS IN THE TEXT--“ For the Son of Man cometh in an hour when ye think not.” How solemnly ought we to remember that death will not wait for our wishes, that the judgment is now hastening, that eternity is at the door? Disease, unperceived, may now be making progress in our veins, and may be preparing, without a suspicion on our part, to hurry us to the grave. How absurd, how deceitful, how fatal is our procrastination! (T. Dwight, D. D.) Proper preparation for death I. THE SOLEMN EVENT FOR WHICH WE ARE TO PREPARE, Death. II. WHAT A PROPER FOR DEATH? 1. The justification of our persons by a true and lively faith in Christ. 2. The sanctification of our souls by the effectual operation of the Holy Spirit. III. WHY SUCH A BECOMES . 1. Because the time of his coming, or (what is substantially the same thing to us) the time of our death is awfully uncertain. 2. Because delay may be fatal and irretrievable. (D. Ruell, M. A.) Signs and preparations of the last judgment I. REMOTE SIGNS. 1. The coming of Antichrist (2 Thessalonians 2:3-4). 2. The coming of Enoch and Elias, and the spread of faith Revelation 11:3-12). II. SIGNS. 1. Tribulations on earth (Luke 21:9, &c.). 2. Signs in heaven (Matthew 24:29). 3. The standard of the cross of Christ (Matthew 24:30). It shall appear-- (1) As token of Christ’ s victory. (2) As the key of heaven. It is the cross that re-opened heaven, and it is our cross carried after Jesus that will open heaven to us. (3) As a measure of our works. (4) As a reproach to all the enemies of Christ (John 19:37). III. . 1. The bodies of the dead will rise. 2. All men must appear before the tribunal of Christ. 3. The wicked shall be separated from among the just. (J. Marchant.) Ready, or not ready? I. JESUS CHRIST WILL COME AGAIN. 1. Not in humble guise, but in His glorious majesty. 2. Not to procure salvation, but to inquire who among men have sought His salvation and accepted His offers, and to pronounce sentence accordingly. II. CHRIST WILL COME WHEN WE DO NOT EXPECT HIM. 1. The world generally will be unprepared. 2. For each of us, death is the coming of the Son of Man. III. THE OF BEING TO MEET OUR GOD WHEN HE COMES. 1. Are you forgiven? 2. Are you growing in holiness? (A. Bibby.) Ready! Anxious thought misdirected only secures misery. Supreme efforts of thought, involving the greatest tension of heart-strings, should be spent on objects worthy of themselves. We were once shown a crossing-sweeper who had received a university training. What a waste! Men who spend their lives in seeking the daintiest food to eat, and the costliest dress to wear, waste time and talent, energy and substance, on the inferior parts of their being. Where, then, should anxious thought be exercised? “ But rather seek ye the kingdom of God.” “ Let your loins be girded about, and your lights burning.” “ Be ye therefore ready also.” These are the objects worthy of our anxiety and prayer. I. BE READY--BE TO GOD THROUGH JESUS CHRIST. IT IS HERE THE BEGINS. No one is ready to die who is not justified by faith and has peace with God. We do not wish to limit the power of God to save, even at the last moment, but we must say that it is a hazardous practice. Life at the longest is but brief to prepare for a world which has no end. For a long journey, and for a long stay from home, more elaborate preparations are made than for a short stay. When one intends to quit his native land for ever to reside in some distant colony, every preparation possible is made for that event. Observe also that the preparation is made with a view to the future. We who are hastening towards the judgment-seat need remember the exhortation--“ Prepare, O Israel, to meet thy God.” Our sins must be pardoned, and our hearts cleansed by the blood of Jesus. Without this we shall encounter the frown which will strike an eternal shudder through the soul. “ Now, then, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us: we pray you in Christ’ s stead, be ye reconciled to God.” II. BE READY--BE ON YOUR GUARD AGAINST THE OF THE WORLD. Let neither prosperity nor adversity steal our opportunities, but let our heart be fixed on heavenly things. The stag is swift of foot, but it is often caught by its own horns in the thicket of the forest. Men who pride themselves on their business capacities are drowned in the pleasures of wealth-getting. This world is full of enticements, and as Calypso would have detained the hero in her beautiful grotto, so these exert an influence prejudicial to the growth of heavenly desires. Let us cultivate the spirit of prayer, and commune often with the opposite shore. Every prayer reminds us that there is a happy land yonder where the saints stand in bright glory. III. BE READY--BE IN OF HIS COMING. Of all thoughts this is the sweetest. The Apostolic Church was fired daily with the hope that the Master was at hand. A lieutenant who had been mortally wounded was asked if he had a word he wished to be conveyed to his wife, replied, “ Tell my wife that there is not a cloud between me and Jesus.” It was a triumphant death. Be ready to welcome the Saviour when He comes, that no earthly entanglements may detain you one moment. (The Weekly Pulpit.) Preparation for death and judgment To die! This is the sure end of earthly life. However long our life may be, it must terminate in death. We may struggle as we will, but the stream of time is carrying us onwards, and we must be swept away; strong swimmers though we be, we cannot contend against the flood, but onward we must go, each day bearing us upon its bosom to the boundless Sea of Eternity. Since then, death is so certain to each of us, what is it to die? To die is to stand in the presence of the King of kings. Is no preparation required to appear before the Majesty of Heaven? And to die is not only to appear before the King, but to stand before a Judge. Moreover, to die is to stamp our lot with eternity. Now if we look at death in this light, as appearing before a King, as standing before a Judge, and as the settling and consolidation of our future existence, what arguments might we draw from these facts that we should be “ ready also.” Many men say, “ Oh! when I come to die I shall say, ‘ Lord, have mercy upon me’ ; and will then get ready to go to heaven.” Dressing for heaven, my friends, is not done quite so rapidly as that. Besides, how do you know that even five minutes will ever be given to you? I have heard of such a man, who often made it his boast that he would so prepare for heaven; but, alas I coming home one night, drunk, his horse leaped the parapet of a bridge, and he was heard cursing as he descended to his doom. Such may be your lot; sudden death may smite you, and there will be no time for preparation--there will be no time for you to prepare to meet your God. And now what is the preparation that we require to make? If death be what I have said it is, it is needful that we should be prepared for it; but what is- the preparation? My hearers, there are two things necessary before a man can face his God without fear. The first is, that his sins should be pardoned. When an unpardoned sinner shall come into the presence of God, he shall not stand in the Judgment, for the burning wrath of God shall consume him like stubble. “ Depart” --says God--“ depart, ye cursed; ye have lived in sin against Me; go and reap the harvest ye have sowed; inherit the reward of your own works.” Sin unpardoned clothes a man with rags; and shall a man stand in rags before the King of Heaven? Sin unpardoned defiles a man with filth and loathsomeness; and shall filth and loathsomeness appear before perfection, or blackness stand in the presence of light and purity? Sin unpardoned makes man an enemy of God, and God an enemy of man. Sinners, lay hold of Christ. Ye doves, ye who are timid, and fear the tempest of God, hide yourselves in the cleft of the Rock of Ages, so shall ye be sheltered in the day of the fierce anger of the Lord. Now, as I have said, the first thing necessary for salvation is pardon of sin, and that is to be had through faith in Christ. But, secondly, even if a man’ s sins are pardoned, he would not be prepared to die if his nature were not renewed. If you could blot out all your sins in a moment, and if it could be possible for you to go to heaven just as you are, you could not be happy there; because heaven is a prepared place for a prepared people. An unconverted man in heaven would be like a fish out of water--he would be wholly out of his element. Holy Mr. Whitfield used to say, that if an ungodly man could go to heaven as he is, he would be so miserable there that he would ask to be allowed to run to hell for shelter! Ye who find our places of worship dreary prisons, and Sundays dull days, how could you bear everlasting worship? How could you bear to have eternal Sabbaths, and continual songs of praises morning, noon, and night? Why, you would say, “ Let me out; Gabriel, let me out; this is not the place for me; let me be gone; I am not happy here.” Verily, verily I say unto you, ye must be born again. Well, cries one, “ I will change my nature.” My dear friends, you cannot do it; you may alter your habits, but your nature you cannot; there is only One that can alter nature, and that is the Holy Spirit. Christ blots out sin, and the Holy Spirit renews the heart. You may reform, but that will not take you to heaven. It is not being reformed; it is being reborn; made new creatures in Christ Jesus. (C. H. Spurgeon.) Prepare at once I was preaching in Essex but a few months ago, and the sermon was scarcely finished, when a Christian woman, who was hearing it, dropped dead in her pew. It was but a little while ago, in Kent, that during a sermon, a poor man who had bent forward, and listened with all his ears, fell forward on his face, and then and there appeared before his God. Sudden deaths are not such common things as perpetually to keep us in alarm, yet they are common enough, I hope, to make both young and old arise and hear the voice of God--“ Prepare, prepare, to meet your God.” Oh! my hearers, it is but a short time with the very longest lived amongst us. I see here and there a hoary head. Is that grey hair yonder a crown of glory or a fool’ s cap? It is either the one or the other. There are young persons here too, O let them look forward to the longest time that we may live, and how brief the period! Time--how short! Eternity--how long! Well, since die we must, I do beseech and intreat you to think of death. Why should all your time be spent in thinking of the things of this world, when there is another world beyond the present? Why, why, is this short life to have all your thoughts, and the life to come to have none of them? I have heard of a monarch who, having a fool in his court, gave him a walking-stick, with an injunction never to part with it, until he should meet with a bigger fool than himself. He kept it for many a day, until at last, the monarch dying, the fool (who was a wise man, after all) came, and said, “ Master, where are you going?” “ Well,” said he, “ I am going to die.” Said the fool, “ How long are you going to be there? Oh!” said the monarch, “ for ever and ever.” “ And have you not made any preparation for the journey; have you no house to live in when you get there; have you nothing ready?” said the fool. “ No,” said the monarch, “ I never thought of it.” “ There,” said the fool, “ take the walkingstick; I play the fool in this world, but you have fooled away the next: you have entirely neglected the world to come, and are a fool in very deed.” And is not that the English after all of what those men are who are so careless of the world to come? (C. H. Spurgeon.) Death a surprise 1. Death is a surprise in the time of its coming. 2. It is a surprise in the way of its coming. 3. It is a surprise, as it finds the sinner unprepared. He meant to be ready, but death was too quick for him. : 1. God has wisely hidden from us the day of death, that we may be always ready and watching for His coming. 2. There is never but a step, a breath, a heart-throb, between any man and death! While the citadel is guarded, and the walls and gates are watched day and night with sleepless vigilance, an unseen foe lurks within, and with noiseless tread, at the midnight hour, enters the chamber of the sleeper, and life is extinct. Be ready, O man! The Son of Man may come at any hour, in any place, by any agency, along any one of a thousand unseen avenues. (Homiletic Review.) Danger of unwatchfulness A great commander was engaged in besieging a strongly fortified city. After a while he concentrated his forces at a point where the fortifications were stronger than at any other, and at 2 p.m., under a bright sun and a clear sky, ordered an assault. When expostulated with by an under officer, the commander replied, “ At this point such a general is in command. At this hour of the day he is invariably accustomed to retire for a long sleep. When informed of our approach he will deny the fact, and send a messenger for information. Before the messenger returns we shall gain possession of the fortress.” The facts turned out exactly as predicted. “ Yonder weak point,” said the commander, “ is held by General--There is no use in attempting to surprise him; he is never for a moment off his guard.” A sudden call The following story is by an Indian officer:--It was the height of summer, and a tropical sun had just set, and a cool, refreshing sea-breeze was blowing, which we were inhaling with delight. A fever peculiar to the climate had prostrated many of all ranks, and proved fatal in some instances; and among the convalescents was a young officer in whom I had taken a great personal interest. His strength, however, not recruiting as rapidly as could be wished, the medical authorities advised his return to England for a short furlough; and just as the mess bugle had sounded, and I was preparing to dress, he came in in high spirits, but with tottering steps, to tell me that, as that very evening a steamer was expected, he had obtained leave to embark, and he heartily wished me good-bye. His last words were: “ I am going home to-night, and perhaps the steamer will come in before you leave the mess; if not, see me off.” It was midnight before we left the mess-room; and on walking to my quarters I found a lamp burning in my friend’ s room. I looked in and found him sleeping soundly, but breathing very loudly. I went up to him, and found all my efforts to waken him unavailing. I immediately summoned the doctor, and to my horror he pronounced him to be dying. In three hours, and just as the signal-gun was fired to announce the arrival of the steamer in which he had engaged his passage, his spirit passed away. He was gone home. He had lived to Christ on earth, and by his bedside lay the Bible which he had just read before he slept that fatal sleep. “ Watch ye, therefore, for ye know not when the Master of the house cometh.” Luke 12:42-44 That faithful and wise steward Our stewardship I. HERE IS A OF WEIGHTY . A stewardship. All responsibility on the part of man is owing to God. 1. And first, my brethren, let it be remarked that God, on this principle and in this relationship of responsibility, or of stewardship, has endowed us with natural faculties: faculties which impart to us a dominion and empire over the various orders of that material creation by which we are surrounded; faculties which enable us to distinguish between right and wrong, between good and evil; faculties which therefore entitle us to comprehend the purposes for which moral government is formed; and faculties which permit our assimilation to the attributes and image of our Maker, that assimilation by which, most of all, He is dignified and honoured. There are, my brethren, you observe in these cases, entrustments which are committed to all, and the improvement of which is required from all, excepting, indeed, in cases of sad and mysterious affliction, or where it is usurped by madness. And those who, from time to time, have conceived, whether truly or falsely, that they have received an amount of natural faculties greater than the ordinary measure, must always remember, with deep and with prayerful solemnity, that what remains for them is nothing but humility, and seriousness, and diligence, and prayer. 2. Secondly, let it be observed that upon this principle and assimilation of stewardship God has also endowed us with many advantages and blessings. The comforts that men derive from their measure of worldly substance and competency, whatever it may be, and the comforts which they derive from the intimacies of friendship and the sweet and tender endearments of private and domestic life, ought not to escape enumeration, and ought not to be meanly esteemed. 3. God, on this principle of stewardship, has also endowed us with many religious privileges. He has endowed us with many religious privileges: that is to say, those means that are eminently adapted to instruct His creatures in the knowledge of His will, and to prepare them and guide their feet into the ways of quietness and peace. II. Here is presented AN BY WHICH THIS IS . “ The Redeemer, you observe, speaks of the faithful and wise steward’ s love to the cause of his master. What we intend now to remark on this is, that these are the attributes which it is desirable that every human being should sustain with respect to that stewardship under which he is placed. 1. To be faithful and wise stewards, men must ascertain the nature of the duty which is imposed. 2. To be faithful and wise stewards, men must love the duty which is imposed. 3. To be faithful and wise stewards, men must practically perform the duty which is imposed. 4. To be faithful and wise stewards, men must habitually contemplate the account to be rendered of the duty which is imposed. III. THE RESULTS IN WHICH THE OF THAT IN THAT IS TO . 1. The public approbation of the Divine Master. 2. The introduction to substantial honour, and perfect and eternal happiness. (J. Parsons.) A faithful steward The other day! [Rev. F. S. Cook, D.D., in “ Altering the Gospel” ] received a communication from a lawyer, who says that a very large owner has discovered that a very small piece of property belongs to him, and not to the small proprietor in whose possession it has for a very long time remained. The matter seemed a trifling one. We had a conference, and there came the steward with the lawyers, and he was furnished with maps, and, putting on his spectacles, examined them with great care. Why? It was a small matter to him, but because he was a steward he was expected to be faithful. And when he found that this small piece of ground belonged to his lord he was determined to have it. So let me say--as stewards of the gospel of God-never give up one verse, one doctrine, one word of the truth of God. Let us be faithful to that committed to us, it is not ours to alter. We have but to declare that which we have received. Christian devotedness Did you never read Henry Martyn’ s life, a polished scholar, a man of learning and repute, giving up all for Christ to go to Persia and there to die without having seen a convert, perhaps, and yet content to live, content to die, in far-off lands for his Master’ s sake? Did you never read of Brainerd far away among the Indians, toiling on, and in his old age teaching a poor black child its letters, and thanking God that when he could not preach, he could yet teach the child its letters, and so do something for his dear Lord who had done so much for him? Ay, did you never read and think of even St. Francis Xavier, papist as he was? Yet what a man, how consecrated, how zealous! with all his errors, and all his mistakes, and all his faults, yet passing over sea and land, penetrating forests, and daring death a thousand times, that he might spread abroad the poor misguided doctrines which he believed. As much as I hate his teaching, I admire his all but miraculous zeal. When I think of some such men; when I would fain censure their mistakes, I can only censure myself that I cannot even so much as think, or cannot do more than think of living such a life as they lived. (C. H. Spurgeon.) Blessed is that servant The blessedness of the well-employed servant I. WE ARE ARE OF US AND , AND ARE TO BE IN . We must be “ doing.” Religion is no idle and lazy thing, it is not sluggish and sleepy, it is not drowsy and lethargic, but it is lively and active, vigorous and operative, and always puts us upon holy endeavours and enterprizes. A Christian is not made to stand still and dig nothing. His soul and all its faculties were given him for some great design, and fitted for some excellent use and work. II. IT IS NOT ENOUGH TO BE AND TO BE DOING ; WE MUST BE “ SO DOING” --doing our Master’ s work. We had better be doing nothing than not be so doing--“ so run, that ye may attain,” saith the apostle. The racer may run, and with full speed, and yet never reach the goal, never obtain the prize, for he may run out of the way, and make haste from the mark. And though he keeps the way, he may not be swift enough. The manner as well as the matter o! religion is to be minded, and the latter of these chiefly. I shall endeavour, then, to explain this duty of a Christian in my text; I will show you what it is to be so doing, and I pray God the several particulars, which are all plain and intelligible, may have influence on our lives and practices, that when our Lord shall come, we may be found employed about these following things. 1. Meditating and examining ourselves, serious consideration and reflection on our ways. The Christian is to be busied within doors; he is to be rifling his own breast, and taking account of the inward frame and disposition of his heart. 2. Watching is another exercise meant here by the “ so doing,” as you may see in Luke 12:37-38 of this chapter. You are, then, to watch over your hearts, and to keep them with all diligence. And moreover, you are to watch over your actions and lives; you must avoid the occasions of every vice, and keep a strict guard over your senses, which are the common inlets to sin, and betray you to the commission of the greatest follies. “ Behold! I come as a thief” (saith Christ), “ blessed is he that wateheth” Revelation 16:15). 3. Praying is another good and laudable posture to be found in when our Lord cometh. “ Watch and pray” go hand in hand together, and they are never more seasonable than when we are expecting the coming of our Lord. 4. Lamenting and sorrowing for our sins is to be “ so doing” ; and is another good work to be found in when we are to depart hence, and appear before the impartial tribunal of heaven. Our sins and failings are very numerous, our slips and offences are many and frequent, and we cannot sufficiently lament and bewail our folly, and implore the Divine pardon, and invoke the assistance of the Holy Spirit, but let us resolve to do it with all our might, and with sincere and upright hearts, that our present sorrows and lamentations may give us an entrance into undisturbed joy and felicity. 5. Whilst we have opportunity, let us reckon it our duty and interest to be constantly attending on God’ s holy ordinances, not only that of prayer (before mentioned), but that of reading and hearing God’ s Word; also the Holy Communion. 6. Doing of works of charity to the souls and bodies of our brethren is an acceptable employment, and will render our last accounts easy to us. 7. Serving God in the several particular callings and places wherein He hath set you is a work which you should endeavour to be found doing. Let me tell you, you serve God by your secular vocations; you may bring glory to Him even by your worldly employment, though it be never so mean and contemptible. The poorest labourer, by a conscientious discharge of his proper trust, by diligence and honesty, is in a capacity to honour his Maker and the religion which he professes. Every one in the sphere and orb wherein Providence hath fixed him must act, move, and influence. Serve God with constancy both in your general and particular calling. This is Christianity, and this will bring a blessing upon you and yours. III. OUR LORD WILL COME AND TAKE AN ACCOUNT OF WHAT WE HAVE DONE. The Master will come and visit His servants whom He hath set on work. My brethren, our Lord observes and minds what we do; He takes notice whether we be idle or watchful, whether we busy ourselves about His work or Satan’ s. And it will not be long before He comes and reckons with us for all our past demeanour. The days of accounting are these two, death and the last judgment. These are the set times of our Lord’ s coming, and none can reverse and escape them. The voluptuous and debauched person must appear before that great tribunal, and give an account of his wild and brutish deportment; the unclean person who shunned the light, and thought to conceal his folly by darkness and retirements, must then appear and stand out in the open view of the world, and be accountable for his lewd and lascivious practices. The profane swearer, who blasphemed the holy name of God and His Son Jesus, must then bow and prostrate himself to Him whom he before profaned. The mighty oppressor, who escaped here the earthly judge, and by his wealth and power made himself too great for human judicature, must stand at that great bar and submit to the fatal sentence. The hypocrite, who thought to deceive God as well as his neighbours, shall appear then in his true shape, which he never did before. The uncharitable man, the fomenter of strife and discord, the man that haled others before the judge, must himself appear before the Judge of heaven and earth, and answer for all his unchristian and unbrotherly behaviour. IV. THOSE WHOM CHRIST AT HIS COMING SHALL FIND ABOUT HIS WORK AND ARE IN A BLESSED AND HAPPY . 1. How comfortable must it needs be to a holy person that he hath not only all his lifetime endeavoured sincerely to serve his God, and to do all the good he could in the world, but that, by God’ s grace assisting him, he hath persevered in the same course until death; and now that he is to depart this life he is not employed in the works of darkness, he is not displeasing God, and offending good men, but he is about his Master’ s business, and he expires his last breath in the discharge of his duty. Blessedness is entailed on the servant who thus behaves himself. If you consider the nature of the thing itself it cannot be otherwise, for he being made by God to serve Him, and to be wholly at His beck and disposal, it must needs be that his satisfaction and happiness should consist in conforming himself to God’ s will, and in acting according to His laws and commands. I may add likewise that God will protect His servants in the discharge of His own work. They are safe whilst they are doing what He sets them about. Come what will, they cannot be miserable. The summary application of all may be that of 2 Peter 3:11. “ Seeing, then, that all these things shall be dissolved” (seeing that the day of the Lord approaches, and Christ will come to judge thee speedily, either at death or at the last judgment), “ what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness?” how exemplary should your lives and conversations be? how zealous should you show yourselves in all the exercises of religion. Give me leave to direct you (as to this great matter) in these few words: 1. Pray more fervently. Unite all your forces now and wrestle with God, and cry mightily unto Him for yourselves, for this place where you inhabit, and for the whole land of your nativity. 2. Disengage your affections more resolvedly from the world. You are convinced by this time, surely, that the world is vain and uncertain. Dote not on its enjoyments, sink not your souls into earth, plunge them not into the mire, be indifferent as to all things here below, and be ready to part with any of this world’ s goods. 3. Oppose vice more vigorously than ever, and the rather because of those many strong temptations you meet with in this degenerate and corrupted age. 4. Breathe after heaven more passionately. Let the ill things which you behold here below be the occasion of raising your thoughts and desires toward those mansions above where nothing inhabits but what is pure and holy. 5. Let your lives and actions acquaint the world how mindful you are of that great account which you are to give at the coming of the Lord. Desire to be found doing your Master’ s work, and then be not solicitous about the wages, but assure yourselves that that will be a recompense far beyond your thoughts and wishes. Wherefore comfort one another with these words. (John Edwards, D. D.) The faithful servant I. THE OF THE TRUE SERVANT OF GOD. 1. He views God as an ever-present Master. 2. He acknowledges God as the Giver of life and salvation to his perishing soul. II. THE OF THE TRUE SERVANT OF GOD. He considers himself to be entrusted with various gifts; not for his own pleasure, but for God’ s glory; not for selfish ends, but for the highest good of his fellow-creatures. All that he possesses he considers as being his Lord’ s goods; and he does not dare to waste any part of them. He takes an inventory of what is committed to him, and “ occupies” or trades therewith. He turns everything to good account; he squanders nothing. To this end, moreover, he often reviews his own proceedings; and these self-examinations are preparatory to that last solemn hour when it shall be said, “ Give an account of thy stewardship; for thou mayest be no longer steward.” See how he dedicates his talents to the Most High, and employs all his mind for God! What poor, ignorant sinners, whether at home, or heathen abroad, can I bring to the knowledge of Christ? What afflicted person can I comfort? What tempted servant of Christ can I succour? What neighbour, or friend, or relative, that is unconverted, can I win to Christ? Thus, moreover, he lays out his time; his years, his days, his very hours are engaged for God. III. THE OF THE TRUE SERVANT OF GOD. In one word--love. Therefore, nothing is irksome, nothing burdensome. IV. THE REWARD WHICH SHALL BE GIVEN TO THE TRUE SERVANT OF GOD. 1. He is commended. 2. He is promoted. 3. He is admitted to joys inconceivable. (Dr. Jowett, M. A.) The blessedness of the faithful servant I. THE IS THAT OF A SERVANT IN HIS MASTER’ S WORK. 1. Labour is not necessarily and essentially a curse. Adam in Eden. Labour in itself is invigorating, promoting the welfare of the body and the cheerfulness of the mind, while it tends to keep the heart from the power of those temptations which find in the idle and unoccupied an easy prey. It is idleness in all its forms against which the displeasure of our God is expressed with repeated emphasis in the sacred Scriptures. And labour is honourable, whether in the lowly engagements of those who tread the humbler walks of life, or in the more imposing pursuits of those who occupy the prominent stations of society; whether the miner who labours in the bowels of the earth, or the author who with his pen records the processes and results of laborious thought for the guidance of his fellowmen. God has prescribed labour as one of the lasting arrangements of the social world. Everything is full of labour, from the glowing seraph, who flies through boundless space, the willing agent of Almighty will, down to those mysterious laws which keep the universe in being and secure its destined aims; and man is to be no exception, his varied powers of body and of mind were bestowed, net to evaporate in listless, dreamy idleness, to be prostituted for the needs of selfishness and pleasure, but to be employed in active, healthful toil; hence we say labour is honourable. And if prescribed and honourable in the social world, much more so is its relation to the religion of Jesus. He would have no idlers in His kingdom. The idea of our text is that of a servant diligently engaged with his work. Now this, you know, is not the case with all; by some it is done partially, sluggishly, grudgingly, fitfully; but the character here described is supposed to recognize his obligation, without which no one will prove a faithful servant; to carry out his obligations with perseverance, feeling that every day has its claim, and every hour its demand; and further, seeking his Master’ s approbation, and thus making his labour his delight, as will always be the case when the smile of approbation is felt to be a coveted reward and a gratifying recompense. This we have described as an honourable position, and contrast justifies the representation. How unlike the trifler and the profligate is the course of the faithful servant! 2. Such a character is honourable in the unprejudiced estimate of the world. To whom do we look back with reverence and esteem? To the men who lived solely for selfish ends, either that they might amass a fortune or obtain a name? or to those who spent their all in riotous living? Oh no, they have passed into a silence as complete as the destruction they have secured, or are remembered only as warnings to others to avoid their folly and escape their doom. It is the patriot toiling or suffering for his country’ s good. A Howard or a Fry risking the infection of disease in their efforts to alleviate the sufferings or restrain the progress of guilt--the humble, devoted instructor of youthful ignorance--the faithful pastor--the sanctified intellect--the self-denying philanthropist--these are they whom the world, with all its evils, yet delights to honour--whose names are embalmed in fragrant recollection, who are looked upon as men who are held up for the admiring imitation of succeeding generations--these, the servants diligently and faithfully engaged in their work, are the lights of the world and the salt of the earth. 3. Such characters are honourable in the approving representations of God’ s own Word. II. THE WITH WHICH SUCH COURSE SHALL BE CROWNED. “ Blessed is that servant, whom his Lord when He cometh shall find so doing.” 1. Here we are referred to a solemn event, the coming of the Master. 2. And yet further, the form of our text suggests to us the uncertainty of the mode and the moment of the Master’ s arrival. Uncertainty--not with Him, for known unto God are all things from the foundation of the world, but uncertainty as respects ourselves; the moment is hastening on, but we know it not--the mode is arranged and fixed, but it is not revealed. Nor can any careful induction of facts lead us to any reliable conclusion as to what awaits us--under what circumstances, or at what time, the Master will come to us. Sometimes we see the servant left to toil on through the whole extent of the wilderness, like Joshua and Caleb, while others enter the promised land in the springtide of their youth or in the full yet undecayed maturity of advanced years: wearisome sickness sometimes makes the exhausted traveller cry, “ Come, Lord Jesus, come quickly,” while others, spared the struggle and the dying strife, drop the coil of mortality and soar away on more than eagle’ s wings, and find themselves at rest. None, none can tell the hour or foresee the mode by which he shall be summoned to the final interview, yet the event with all its details is determined and known to Him in whom we live and move and have our being. The time is settled when, by the slow process of decay, or suddenly without previous notice, amid scenes of pleasure, the occupations of business, or in the solitude of retirement, we shall hear the Master’ s voice, and be called to appear before Him. (Henry Madgin.) Luke 12:45-46 My lord delayeth his coming Emboldened by delay History says that long ago it had been announced that the world was coming to an end, and there was great excitement in London. It was said that the world would perish on a certain Friday. On Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday the people were in the cathedral, praying and weeping. It seemed as if the whole English nation was being converted to God, for it was announced as certain by philosophers that on the coming Friday the world would perish. Friday came, and there were no portents, no fires in the air, no earthquakes. The day passed along just like every other day, and when it was past and the night came, it is said that in London there was a scene of riot, and wassail, and drunkenness, and debauchery such as had never been witnessed. They forgot their vow, they forgot their repentance, they forgot their good resolutions. Oh, how much human nature in that! While trials and misfortunes come to us, and we are down deep in darkness and trouble, we make vows. We say: “ Oh Lord, do so, and I will do so.” The darkness passes, the peril goes away. We are as we were before, or worse; for oh, how often I have Been men start for the kingdom of God, come up to within arm’ s reach of it, and then go back farther from God than they ever were before, dropping from the very moment of their privilege into darkness for ever. (Dr. Tulmage.) Luke 12:47 Beaten with many stripes Many stripes Our Lord in the context urges His disciples to diligence, watchfulness, and fidelity. This is important, for we are stewards, servants, and are responsible to Him who will one day say unto us, “ Give an account of thy stewardship.” I. THE --“ That servant.” In many passages of Scripture true believers are called the servants of God. Called so by God--by Christ--by believers themselves (see John 12:26). “ Paul a servant of God” ; “ James, a servant of God,” etc. 1. The servant’ s Master. This is Christ. He is the Head of the Church--the Divine Sovereign--Lord of all. He issues His commandments--appoints His ordinances--gives His rewards (John 13:13; Matthew 23:28). 2. The servant’ s origin. Once servants of sin, of Satan--the world--pleasure--self. Now enlightened to perceive the superiority of Christ--translated from the kingdom of darkness (Romans 6:16-22). 3. The servant’ s character. (1) Must be faithful, give up all for his master. (2) Patient. His work will require self-denial. (3) Enduring, day after day he must toil on in an evil and difficult world. (4) Anxious to please, out of love and affection, not from fear or dread. II. THE SERVICE --“ The will of the Master.” What is the will of our Master? 1. Faith and repentance. These duties are desired in order that they may accomplish the servant’ s salvation (John 3:16; Mark 16:15-16). 2. The advancement of His Kingdom. This is to be brought about by the servant’ s labour. It is an unspeakable honour to be so employed. 3. Internal sanctification. Humility for failings. The acquisition of holiness. Piety of life. Sanctification of spirit. 4. Zeal in duty. Love is not to wax cold--the voices of prayer and praise are not to be silent--the hands are not to hang down--the voice is not to be silent. III. THE . On doing this duty depends reward or punishment. If it is faithfully performed, the servant shall have the approval of his Master; if neglected, His blame. 1. This is natural. It is the way of the world. A bad servant is soon discharged. A dishonest one is disgraced. 2. It is also just Wages would not be given unless they were earned. Slaves were obliged to obey. 3. It is for the good of the just. If careless, ignorant, evil men were admitted to heaven, it would be a place of misery. IV. THE . An ignorant servant may be awkward without intentionally transgressing. But for those who know what is right, and deliberately sin, there will be many stripes. It is those who transgress against light and privilege and mercy, who will have to bear the full brunt of the law. Therefore-- 1. How great was the guilt of the Jews. They had God’ s oracles. Special revelation. Continuance of guidance. 2. How much greater our guilt if we offend. We have not only the light of the Jews, but the full blaze of Christ’ s revelation, and light, and work. All things made plain. All prophecies fulfilled. All directions given. If we neglect our duty, how many will be the stripes we shall receive! (The Preachers’ Analyst.) Practice in religion necessary in proportion to our knowledge I. THAT IS A GREAT EXCUSE OF MEN’ S FAULTS, AND WILL LESSEN THEIR ; “ but he that knew not, but did commit things worthy of stripes, shall be beaten with few stripes.” 1. There is an ignorance which doth wholly excuse and clear from all manner of guilt, and that is an absolute and invincible ignorance, when a person is wholly ignorant of the thing, which, if he knew, he should be bound to do, but neither can nor could have helped it, that he is ignorant of it; that is, he either had not the capacity, or wanted the means and opportunity, of knowing it. In this case a person is in no fault, if he did not do what he never knew, nor could know to be his duty. For God measures the faults of men by their wills, and if there be no defect there, there can be no guilt; for no man is guilty, but he that is conscious to himself that he would not do what he knew he ought to do, or would do what he knew he ought not to do. 2. There is likewise another sort of ignorance, which either does not at all, or very little, extenuate the faults of men; when men are not only ignorant, but choose to be so that is, when they wilfully neglect those means and opportunities of knowledge which are afforded to them; such as Job speaks of--“ Who say unto God, depart from us, for we desire not the knowledge of Thy ways” (Job 21:14). But out Saviour here speaks of such an ignorance as does in a good degree extenuate the fault, and yet not wholly excuse it; for he says of them, that they knew not their Lord’ s will; add yet that this ignorance did not wholly excuse them from blame, nor exempt them from punishment, but they should “ be beaten with few stripes.” 3. There is an ignorance which is ,n some degree faulty, and yet does in a great measure excuse the faults which proceed from it; and this is when men are not absolutely ignorant of their duty, but only in comparison of others, who have a far more clear and distinct knowledge of it; and though they do not grossly and wilfully neglect the means of further knowledge, yet, perhaps, they do not make the best use they might of the opportunities they have of knowing their duty better; and therefore, in comparison of others, who have far better means and advantages of knowing their Lord’ s will, they may be said not to know it, though they are not simply ignorant of it, but only have a more obscure and uncertain knowledge of it. Now this ignorance does in a great measure excuse such persons, and extenuate their crimes, in comparison of those who had a clearer and more perfect knowledge of their Master s will; and yet it does not free them from all guilt, because they did not live up to that degree of knowledge which they had; and perhaps if they had used more care and industry, they might have known their Lord’ s will better. II. THAT THE GREATER AND ANY MAN HATH OF KNOWING THE WILL OF GOD, AND HIS DUTY, THE GREATER WILL BE HIS IF HE DO NOT DO IT. “ The servant which knew his Lord’ s will, and prepared not himself, neither did according to it, shall be beaten with many stripes.” “ Which knew his Lord’ s will, and prepared not himself” ; the preparation of our mind to do the will of God, whenever there is occasion and opportunity for it, is accepted with Him; a will rightly disposed to obey God, though it be not brought into act for want of opportunity, does not lose its reward: but when, notwithstanding we know not our Lord’ s will, there are neither of these, neither the act nor the preparation and resolution of doing it, what punishment may we not expect? For, after all the aggravations of sin, there is none that doth more intrinsically heighten the malignity of it, than when it is committed against the clear knowledge of our duty, and that upon these three accounts: 1. Because the knowledge of God’ s will is so great an advantage to the doing of it. 2. Because it is a great obligation upon us to the doing of it. 3. Because the neglect of our duty in this case cannot be without a great deal of wilfulness and contempt. (Archbishop Tillotson.) The enlightened, yet disobedient servant, beaten with many stripes I. THE LORD JEHOVAH IS OUR JUST AND LAWFUL MASTER, AND CLAIMS OUR SUPREME FOR HIS , AND OUR ENTIRE TO HIS LAWS. He makes His claims, and He has a right to them. 1. Has He not a right to our supreme affection, and our entire devotedness to His will, as our Creator? 2. The claim will increase when we consider that He is not merely our Father in giving us existence, so that we derive our being from Him, but that we receive our wellbeing from Him. 3. His claims are still higher, and we may say, resistless, on the ground of redemption. II. THE LORD JEHOVAH HAS YOU AND ME, AS HIS , THE OF HIMSELF, AND OF HIS RIGHT OVER US, AND OF HIS WILL TOWARDS US, AND OF HIS FROM US. 1. By a letter--a book. 2. By His servants--the persons who bear the letter. 3. By the unction of His Holy Spirit imparted to us. III. IT IS EVIDENT, FROM THE CHOICE AND CONDUCT OF MANY, THAT, THOUGH THEY MUST AND DO KNOW THEIR MASTER’ S WILL, YET THEY DO NOT “ PREPARE NOR DO TO IT.” IV. THE SIN OF SUCH MEN, , IS STAMPED WITH , AND, WITHOUT PARDON, WILL BE BY THE . You that know your Master’ s will, and do it not--remember, your sin is stamped with peculiar malignity. The malignity of a crime always bears proportion to the known dignity of the character insulted. To insult a constable, in the exercise of his official capacity, is a crime; to insult a magistrate on the bench is a greater; to insult a monarch on his throne is rebellion. Therefore, the gradation of crime always rises in proportion to the known dignity of the character offended. Then what must be--what must be the black aggravation of your crime, who know your Master’ s will, and know who that Master is, and yet do not “ prepare yourselves nor do according to it” ? You sin against God the Father in His laws--and you know Him to be so; you “ trample under foot the blood of the Son of God” --and you know Him to be so; you “ do despite unto the Spirit of Grace” --and you know who it is that you are doing despite unto. Remember, also, there is an aggravation in the case. It is not one sin committed once; it is the same sin committed again and again, under growing aggravations. Human laws say--for the first offence the penalty shall be light, for the second it shall be doubled, for the third it shall be trebled, and so on, so that punishment always bears proportion to the multitude of the offences. Very well; then, pray what sort of a sinner must you be? You know your Master’ s will, and do it not; and that is not in one instance--one sin once committed, or one duty once omitted, or one blessing once neglected--it is the same sin committed again, and again, and again, a thousand times repeated with increasing aggravations. Judge, then, “ wicked and slothful servant,” of such a Master! what must be the malignity of your sin. And then, again, it is not one sin committed a thousand times even, but a multitude of sins committed again and again with those magnifying aggravations. (W. Dawson.) God’ s penal law I. ALL MEN EXIST IN A STATE OF TO GOD. They are His servants; He, their Master. II. THE OF MEN, WITH THEIR STATE OF , VARY IN TO THEIR OF AND OF . 1. There exist in the world very different degrees of opportunity for knowledge and improvement. 2. We are placed in circumstances which afford to us the highest degrees of opportunity for knowledge and for improvement. 3. Possessing as we do such opportunities, we are under a special call to eminent devotedness to the service of God. III. THE OF MEN FOR THE OF THEIR , IS TO THE VALUE OF THE WHICH THEY HAVE , AND HAVE ABUSED. There are two remarks under this part of the subject to which your attention will be called. 1. You will observe, first, that punishment is to be inflicted upon all by whom their original obligations have been forgotten and violated. The desert of punishment is presented under the phrase of “ committing things worthy of stripes.” A certain period is stated to be appointed by the master, or lord of the household, for the purpose of returning, in order to inflict punishment, or grant rewards, according to the characters of those by whom he has been professedly served. 2. But, what we principally intend to insist on, on this part of the subject, is, that the punishment to be inflicted on those whose opportunities have been many, will be far more grievous than the punishment to be inflicted on those whose opportunities have been few. “ Many stripes,” or larger and heavier inflictions, are to be the portion of him who knew his lord’ s will and did it not; but “ few stripes,” or minor inflictions, are to be the portion of him who knew not his lord’ s will, and did it not. In this infliction of stripes there seems an allusion to the law, which you observe to be contained in Deuteronomy 25:1-3. The deduction of the Saviour, in connection with this law, appears to be this: that those whose opportunities have been few shall receive a certain amount of punishment, limited in some mode analogous to that which is contained in the announcement of the law; but that those whose opportunities have been many, and who yet have abused and slighted them, are to be subjected to a punishment to which no limit and no measure are to be assigned: they are to endure the keenest inflictions which the wrath of an Almighty and Infinite Being can pour upon them. (J. Parsons.) The penalty of disregarded duty I had an aged friend who knew Robert Pollock, the celebrated Scotch poet, and he told me that Pollock lost his life through too vivid views of the great future. It seemed as if he walked amid the realities of the eternal world. It was too great for his physical strength, and he died in early life. Robert Pollock one day caught a glimpse of the destiny of those who miss heaven. I can recollect here and there a sentence: “ And as I listened I heard these beings curse Almighty God, and curse the Lamb, and curse the earth, the resurrection morn, and seek, and ever vainly seek for utter death. And to the everlasting anguish still the thunders from above, responding, spoke these words which, forlornly echoing through the caverns of perdition, fall on every ear: ‘ Ye knew your duty, but ye did it not.’ Then back again recoiled a deeper groan--a deeper groan! O what a groan was that!” (Dr. Talmage.) Result of sinning against the light A few weeks ago, a poor woman came to my surgery, and said, “ A young woman is lodging in the same house with me, who is wretchedly poor, in great suffering, and, I fear, near her end.” I accompanied the woman home. She led me to the bedside of the dying girl, and left us together. It was a dreadful scene. A girl of three or four and twenty lay on a wretched pallet, with scarcely any covering. A single chair and a broken table was all the furniture the room contained. Near the bed was hanging, on a few pegs, the girl’ s finery. Yes, alas l finery. Dresses of gaudy material, and showily made up, were flaunting their gay colours in this chamber of death, looking in that girl’ s eyes as she lay dying, as witnesses of her sin and folly, and reminding her that, as soon as she was dead, these things, which had cost her so dear, mould become the property of the landlady, as payment of the debt she had not money to discharge. I leaned over the bedside, and took her hand in mine. I told her that Jesus had sent me to her with an offer of peace and pardon. “ No,” she said, hoarsely--“ no, I was brought up in a Sunday-school; I knew the right, but I did it not. There is no pardon for me now.” I knelt down, I prayed for her--prayed, as she had not confidence to pray for herself--her sinful self. I besought Him that she might repent and find peace. But, even as I talked with her, she died, uttering the fearful cry, “ Too late! too late!” (Dr. Raynor.) Disregarding the light It is said that off the coast of New Zealand a sea-captain steered his vessel directly toward the light, and, thinking himself safe, fell asleep. His vessel dashed upon the rocks at the very foot of the lighthouse. The beacon-light shining out upon the deep for protection and guidance furnished no help to the slumbering mariner. Indeed, his culpability was greater because of the abuse of the friendly gift. Degrees of punishment The legend of St. Macarius of Alexandria runs thus: “ One day as Macarius wandered among those ancient Egyptian tombs, wherein he had made himself a dwelling-place, he found the skull of a mummy, and turning it over with his crutch, he inquired to whom it belonged; and it replied, ‘ To a pagan.’ And Macarius, looking into the empty eyes, said, ‘ Where, then, is thy soul?’ And the head replied, ‘ In hell.’ Macarius asked, ‘ Itchy deep?’ And the head replied, ‘ The depth is greater than the distance from heaven to earth.’ Then Macarius asked, ‘ Are there any deeper than thou art?’ The skull replied, ‘ Yes: the Jews are deeper still.’ And Macarius asked, ‘ Are there any deeper than the Jews?’ To which the head replied, ‘ Yes, in sooth! for the Christians whom Jesus Christ hath redeemed, and who show in their actions that they despise His doctrine, are deeper still.’” Luke 12:48 For unto whomsoever much is given The law of accountability -These words are rendered as a reason why those servants that know their master’ s will are beaten with more stripes than those that knew it not, because they did not improve their advantages. And Christ pleadeth the equity of it from the custom of men, expressed in their common proverbs or sentences, that go from hand to hand among the people. A beneficiary that hath received much from his benefactor is obliged to a greater gratitude. A factor that hath his master’ s estate in his hands must make a return according to the degree of the trust. These things being evident by the light of nature, and granted among all men, our Lord accommodateth them to His purpose, which is to show God’ s proceedings with men are according to the degree of their advantages--“ For unto whomsoever,” etc. In the words observe four things: 1. A double conveyance of benefits to us. Whatever a man receiveth, it is either given as a gift or committed as a talent. For, first, He saith, “ To whomsoever much is given” ; and presently, “ To whomsoever men have committed much.” 2. These things are not given to all in the same measure; there is a difference in the distribution; some have “ much,” others have “ little.” 3. Whether men have received much or little, it is all in reference to an account; this is signified in the words, “ required,” “ asked.” 4. Answerable to their mercies shall their account be; much for much, and little for little. To whom anything is given, of him something shall be required and asked; but to whom “ much is given” and “ committed,” of him shall they “ ask the more” ; not more than is committed, but more than is required and asked of another; as where the soil is better and more tilled, we look for the better crop, and we expect that he should come sooner that rideth on horseback than he that goeth on foot. (T. Manton, D. D.) Privilege the measure of responsibility The husbandman, the more he improves his ground the greater crop he looks for; the more completely the soldier is armed, the better service is required of him; the scholar that is well instructed must show great fruits of his proficiency. Thus the earthly part of man drinks in the sweet showers of grace that fall upon it. The blessed Spirit of God puts upon us that panoply, the whole armour of God. And the same Spirit teacheth us all things, leads us into all truth, and brings all things to our remembrance which Christ hath spoken for our good. Shall we then, being thus cultivated, thus armed, thus instructed, not bring forth fruits in some measure answerable to so great indulgence? Shall such blessings of God be received in vain? (T. Stapleton.) Gifts entail responsibility The husbandman looks for more fruit from some of his fruit-trees than from others; those upon which he bestows most time, cost, and labour, from these he expects most fruit; and is displeased if his expectation be not answered accordingly. This shadows out unto us that God expects greater returns of duty from some persons than from some others, and neglect thereof provokes God against them. In the ceremonial law God required more sacrifices from the rich than from the poor: such as had great store of oxen, sheep, and other things to be offered in sacrifice, should not have been accepted had they offered “ a pair of turtle doves, or two young pigeons,” which yet were accepted from the poorer sort of persons. So also under the gospel, “ to whom much is given, of them doth He require the more.” God had done great things for Eli and David, and expected (accordingly) greater returns of duty and obedience all their lives after; but they failing in some great particulars, God is sore displeased with them, and reckons up the great benefits and particular engagements they had received, and tells them He expected other returns from them. So also Hezekiah received much, and God looked for answerable returns; but he rendered not according to the benefits received, and God was displeased with him upon that account. God planted a vineyard, and bestowed much care and pains about it, and looked for an answerable return of good fruits, but because it brought forth wild grapes instead of good and pleasant grapes, He laid it waste. Some have received more, and lie under greater engagements from God than others, therefore God looks to receive more. This shows us the great danger such persons lie under who have received much from God, and return but little; having received many talents, and not making an answerable return by improving of them to the honour of God and advantage of His people; nay, who perhaps use all against God and His people. God gives to some many gifts of nature and common graces, much knowledge, learning, wisdom, great riches, honours, offices, places, much time, liberty, great and choice means of grace, special providences and dispensations, and many other talents which others have not: of these God requires more than of those who have fewer and less of these things, and the not making suitable returns provokes God against them. If God spared not His choice servants, Eli, David, Hezekiah, &c., if judgment begin at the house of God, how shall the ungodly and sinner escape? Let every one of us consider what we have received, that so we may make unto God some answerable returns: God looked for more (and received more) from him that had the five talents, than from him that had received but two. No one (not the lowest, or meanest) is freed from making returns of duty to God: though God requires much from those who have received much, yet the mean person, who has but a little, must return of that little. “ Let him work with his hands, that he may have something to give to him that needeth” ; and it will be “ accepted according to that a man hath, and not according to that he hath not.” So, also, of the use and improvements of all other talents, gifts, graces, liberty, power, and the rest. (Austen.) Duty measured by ability In Xenophon’ s “ Memorabilia” it is recorded of Socrates that, “ when he offered small sacrifices from his small means, he thought that he was not at all inferior in merit to those who offered numerous and great sacrifices from ample and abundant means; for he said that it would not become the gods to delight in large rather than in small sacrifices; since, if such were the case, the offerings of the bad would oftentimes be more acceptable to them than those of the good; nor would life be of any account in the eyes of men, if oblations from the bad were better received by the gods than oblations from the good; but he thought that the gods had most pleasure in the offerings of the most pious. He used also to quote with approbation the verse, ‘ Perform sacrifices to the gods according to your ability,’ and used to say that it was a good exhortation to men with regard to friends, and guests, and all other relations of life, to perform according to their ability.” (Biblical Things Not Generally Known.) Responsibility according to knowledge Richard Knill was one day talking to some military officers in Madras, when one of them asked: “ What do you missionaries mean? Do you think that poor black fellow will be damned? I hope not,” replied Knill, “ but if he is, I think his punishment will be very light compared with yours if you neglect God.” The words so struck home that the officer lifted up his hands and said: “ I believe it; I have long thought so.” Luke 12:49I am come to send fire on the earth The fire of contention; or, the trouble that follows the gospel 1. There may be dissension betwixt the good and the good; and hereof is the devil the author. It is the enemy that sows those tares. Christ came not to send this fire, yet He wisely tempers it to our good. 2. There may be dissension betwixt the wicked and the wicked; and hereof also is Satan author. He sets his own together by the ears, like cocks of the game, to make him sport. Hereupon he raised these great heathen wars, that in them millions of souls might go down to people his lower kingdom, Hereupon he draws ruffian into the field against ruffian, and then laughs at their vainly spilt blood. All the contentions, quarrels, whereby one evil neighbour vexeth another, all slanders, scoldings, reproaches, calumnies, are his own damned fires. 3. There is a dissension between the wicked and godly; nor yet is Christ the proper and immediate cause of this. For “ if it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men” (Romans 12:18). 4. There is an enmity betwixt grace and wickedness, a continual combat between sanctity and sin; and this is the fire Christ came to send. He is to some a living stone, whereupon they are built to life; to others a stone of offence, whereat they stumble to death. I. The FIRE is discord, debate, contention, anger, and hatred against the godly. (1) Debate is like fire; for as that of all elements, so this of all passions, is most violent. (2) Contention is like fire, for both burn as long as there is any exhaustible matter to contend with. Only herein it transcends fire--for fire begets not matter, but consumes it; debate begets matter, hut not consumes it. (3) As a little spark grows to a great flame, so a small debate often proves a great rent. (4) As fire is proverbially said to be an ill master but a good servant, so anger, where it is a lord of rule, is a lord of misrule; but where it is subdued to reason, or rather sanctified by grace, it is a good servant. That anger is holy that is zealous for the glory of God. II. The FUEL whereon this fire works is the good profession of the godly. LESSON 1. That we have need of patience, seeing we know that the law of our profession binds us to a warfare; and it is decreed upon that “ all that will live godly in Christ shall suffer persecution.” When fire, which was the god of the Chaldeans, had devoured all the other wooden deities, Canopis set upon him a caldron full of water, whose bottom was full of holes artificially stopped with wax; which, when it felt the heat of that furious idol, melted and gave way to the water to fall down upon it, and quench it. The water of our patience must only extinguish this fire; nothing but our tears, moderation, and sufferance can abate it. But this patience hath no further latitude than our proper respect; for in the cause of the Lord we must be jealous and zealous. 2. That we must not shrink from our profession, though we know it to be the fuel that maintains this fire. 3. That we think not much of the troublous fires that are thus sent to wait upon the gospel. 4. That we esteem not the worse of our profession, but the better. It is no small comfort that God thinks thee worthy to suffer for His name. This was the apostles’ joy, not that they were worthy, but “ that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for Christ “ (Acts 5:41). 5. Seeing the fuel is our integrity--and this they specially strike at--let us more constantly hold together, confirming the communion of saints, which they would dissolve. (T. Adams.) The gospel a fire We must look for a Scriptural use of “ fire” which shall have some bearing upon the subject of division and discord as caused by the gospel. We find such a use in the very idea of kindling. If the gospel was a mere tame and spiritless influence, a mere soothing and stroking down of human faults and passions, a mere palliative and balsam for the wounds and sufferings, for the wrongs and woes of fallen nature, it would have differed in many other respects from the thing which Jesus Christ brought us from heaven; but certainly and most evidently in this, that it would have caused no strifes and no contentions, no violences and no discords. It is because the gospel is first and above all else a “ fire,” enkindled and sparkling, pervading and transforming the whole body and substance of the being to which it is effectually applied, that it brings with it this irritating, this provoking, this exasperating influence upon every bystanding and surrounding being which repudiate, and “ we will have none of it.” It needs but a little reflection to make all hearts echo the statement. There are those in this day who tell us that the real gospel is a mere enforcement or suggestion, or, if you will, revelation of charity. We ask what is meant by “ charity,” and we find that it is a sort of easy going tolerance for all creeds and all religions, a good-natured “ live and let live” for all the philosophies, and all the philanthropies, and all the superstitions, and all the idolatries which have entered into the heart of man, as the truth and the whole of truth, the duty and the whole of duty, whether toward God or toward man. Now at present we are only concerned to say so much as this, that if the gospel had thus entered the world, if this had been the idea of it as Christ and the apostles preached it, it would have raised no hostility; it could not possibly have had the history which we know Christianity has had, as flinging abroad upon the earth “ division” or a “ sword” ; and for this simple reason that it would not have had in it one single characteristic of “ fire.” Men would have been perfectly willing under Nero or Domitian to let Christians alone, if they would only have glided about among their contemporaries as men whispering peace and safety, hinting at a new divinity, one among many, each having some claim, and none having an exclusive claim to the belief and faith of mankind; a new divinity to occupy one niche of a crowded and world-wide pantheon--“ Jesus and the resurrection.” Athens would have let this alone; Rome would have let this alone; human nature would have made room for this, because it would have put oil or water in the place of fire; because it would have been a mere religion of negatives and platitudes, stirred by no storm and brightened by no ray. “ I came to cast fire upon the earth,” and although fire has many beautiful and many comforting aspects, this is in virtue of a quality which makes it also, and before all else, penetrating and exploring, consuming and purifying, a power, first, formidable and destructive; then, secondly, an influence brightening and warming, cheering and comforting. It is thus with the sign, it is thus, also, with the thing signified. I. THE GOSPEL A FIRE IN THE HEART. The gospel, entering a heart, begins with kindling. There is much in that heart. We speak not only of hearts which the Lord suddenly opened at Philippi or Corinth to listen to the preaching of a new faith, when all round and all antecedent had been Jewish or Pagan; we speak of hearts to which gospel sounds, whether of word or of worship, are but too familiar, and we say that, even in these, if a new reality is ever by the grace of God given to the gospel, there is much fuel ready for the burning, much as to which the gospel would be nugatory if it did not burn up--probably many known sins, certainly a multitude of frivolities and vanities, which to let alone would be to say “ peace” where there is none; which to let alone would be to live the life in the sleep of death, but which to assail is to bring a “ sword” between soul and spirit, to proclaim war to the knife against many inveterate habits, and to cause a revolution in the most cherished tenacities of the being; and it is just in proportion as this first office of fire is faithfully and effectively done that any other can be safe or even true. Thoroughness in yielding ourselves to the purifying, is the condition alike of the illuminating and the warming, and the comforting. It is just where the fire is not allowed to consume that it refuses to burn brightly for companionship or for cheering. II. THE GOSPEL A FIRE IN THE WORLD. This, which is the real struggle of the gospel in the heart, is also its real struggle in the world. If the gospel would begin and end with comforting, it would be welcomed everywhere; if it would settle down as a mere pleasant guest in the chamber and at the social table, making all easy all round, saying or sounding as if it said, “ Live as you list and all shall be peace at the last,” nothing could be more popular; then it would have the promise, in commonest parlance, of two worlds--the life that is and the life that shall be. It is this uncompromising character, this call for decision and for a whole heart, this demand for a life wholly given, in purpose and affections to the Lord who bought it, which makes the gospel a “ sword” for such as will not have it for a “ fire” ; and yet, brethren, it is just this uncompromising character which makes it a power, and which makes it a charm, and which makes it a gospel. Oh, we could any of us construct a religion which should cry “ peace” when there is none; we could any of us make a gospel, using a few phrases and elements of the real one, which should be accommodating, and which should be complimentary, and which should be plausible, and which, therefore, should be fashionable; and which, just in the same degree, would leave every sore festering, and every woe desolating, and every vice and crime destroying, of the old Adam and of the fallen and of the sin-spoilt man. But what should we have done, when we had done all this to perfection? We should not have evoked one grand heroism such as lies at the bottom even of the ruined humanity; we should not have evoked one echo from the slumbering temple of the God-made man; we should have done nothing whatever towards the actual want, and the real hunger, and the one despair of the soul, which feels that its true wretchedness is separation from God, and that its true cure would be the getting back home. “ I am come to send fire on the earth.” So Jesus speaks; and we, who have one breath of God in us, feel that “ fire” is the element wanting. We want the water of cleansing, and we want the wind of scourging, and we want the earthquake of demolishing; and oh, what we want above all, is the “ fire” which does all these things, and which yet adds to them all the grace of transforming, and the grace of kindling, and the grace of inspiring, and the grace of enabling, and the grace of the new life. It is the “ fire” which has made Christianity great; it is not the mere washing with the water of a new innocence; it is not the light of the lamp of information even as to the mysteries of grace and redemption: it is the enkindling of Christian souls with the fire of love, and the fire of zeal, and the fire of an out-spoken boldness, and the fire of even an impatient and intolerant hatred of misery and wickedness. It is this which has done great things in the earth in the name of Christ and God; it is this which has demolished idols; it is this which has at last toppled down slavery; it is this which has made missionaries strong, and martyrs brave, and churches militant; it is this which has provoked indeed the rage of the world and devil; but it has also shown enemies, open and secret, that “ greater is He that is with us than he that is in the world.” “ I am come to send fire upon the earth, and what would I, but that it were already kindled?” It is kindled now. Ages and generations have lived in the blaze of that fire, and Christ, who knows what is in man, loves that “ fire” better than the tame sluggishness, the lifeless torpor, the false peace which prevails everywhere where that “ fire” comes not. “ Already kindled!” Is it kindled round us? Is it kindled in us? Are we a stagnant, torpid, lifeless multitude? or, are we of the kindled, inspired, living, and life-breathing few? For few still are they in whom this Spirit of God is, not for selfish comfort, but for inspired power. Let us hazard some little, let us encounter some little, that we may please Him who said--“ Oh, that it were already kindled,” because He loved the “ fire “ rather than the chill, because He loved the enthusiasm rather than the half-heartedness. (Dean Vaughan.) The fire which Christ kindles on earth 1. A fire which warms what is cold. 2. Purifies what is impure. 3. Consumes what is evil. (Van Oosterzee.) The controversy which Christ has brought on earth 1. How we are to wish for it. 2. How we are to fear it. 3. How we are to endure it. (Schenkal.) Suffering, a baptism For the Christian a threefold baptism is necessary. 1. The water baptism of sprinkling. 2. The spiritual baptism of renewal. 3. The fire baptism of trial. (Van Oosterzee.) The discord which Christ has brought upon earth 1. A surprising phenomenon, if we look at-- (1) The King (Psalms 72:1-20.). (2) The fundamental law of the kingdom of God (John 13:35). 2. An explicable phenomenon if we direct our eye to (1) The severity of the gospel. (2) The sinfulness of the human heart. 3. A momentous phenomenon. This strife is a proof of the high significance, and means for the establishment, the purification, and the victory of Christianity. (Van Oosterzee.) The truth in the Church I. Let us consider THE DESIGN OF OUR LORD’ S ADVENT, AS HERE BY HIMSELF. Indeed, each peculiar aspect in which our Lord’ s work is viewed by Him is a characteristic variety, which tends both to enlarge and rectify our views on the subject. When He contemplates His work in relation to the fallen condition of our race, His announcement of His design is this--“ I am come to seek and to save the lost.” When He views it in relation to the redemption He was to accomplish, He speaks of it as being “ a ransom price for many.” When He views it in its relation to God, His exclamation to the Father is “ I have come to glorify Thee on the earth.” When He viewed it in regard to Himself, His representation was, that He had come into this far country “ to get Himself a kingdom.” And when He viewed it in relation to the world at large, He announced Himself as the Light of the world--as “ a light to lighten the Gentiles” --as “ the Bread that came down from heaven, of which if a man eat he will never die “ --as having living Water to bestow, of which “ whosoever drinketh shall never thirst” as Him who had come “ not to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.” In all these representations the same great idea is either expressed or shadowed forth-namely, that the mystery of our Lord’ s incarnation and life and passion had no other design, nothing less than the undoing of all that sin had produced in our world--that out of that dark and formless chaos into which the whole spiritual creation here had been thrown, He might produce a new order of things, where for man there should be purity, dignity, and joy; and for God, the re-establishment in glory and in majesty of His full authority over the heart and the conscience of man. The announcement of our Lord’ s passion and work given in the passage before us, belongs to the last of the classes above enumerated; those, namely, in which its general bearings on the ignorant, the guilty creatures of our race, is proclaimed. In the Old Testament prophecy, the advent of the Messiah had been described as an event which should result in the purging away from the Church of God of all filth, “ by the spirit of burning” ; in the utterance of the prophetic voice it had been foretold of the Messiah, that He “ should sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, to purify the sons of Levi, and purge them like gold and silver, that they should offer unto God an offering in righteousness.” In these passages the idea of purification and refinement is most distinctly brought before us by the symbolic language in which the design of the Messiah’ s mission is described; and it is in reference apparently to the same idea, applying to Himself this description of the Messiah, that our Lord uses the words now before us. By some interpreters, indeed, their application has been restricted to those dissensions and fiery controversies which the religion of Christ has, through the hostility of mankind, been instrumental in producing in our world. And to this they have been led by the allusion our Lord Himself makes to these dissensions in subsequent verses of this chapter. But this interpretation can hardly be admitted, for these dissensions and controversies are not necessary, far less essential, parts of our Lord’ s work, but clearly the results springing out of the evil state of man’ s heart, and it cannot be to the collateral and accidental results of the circumstances among which He comes, that our Lord alludes “ I am come to send fire on the earth.” It does appear a very weak and impotent interpretation of such an assertion to represent it as meaning nothing more than the quarrels among men, which may be its result. By the fire here spoken of, which our Lord had said He came to send on the earth, is to be understood that purifying, remodelling, renovating power which He came to diffuse through the mass of our race. He came not merely to deliver a message, and to do by it an appointed work, but by means of that message and in consequence of that work, to set the world on fire. He came to revolutionize the world by infusing into it a new element of spiritual life and activity. In short, to melt and fuse the whole fabric of earthly relations, that out of its elemental parts His plastic hand may construct a more perfect form of being, and thereby cover this earth which God has made with a race of beings worthier of Him who made them, and of that fair and fertile world which He has given them to inhabit. This great change which our Lord had come to commence finds its basis in His sacrificial work; and the means by which it is to be carried forward are the promulgation of the mighty truths connected with that work. So long as sin remains, evil, and gloom, and sorrow, must overhang our earth: but let sin be removed, and the removal of the cause will be followed by the cessation of all the evils the presence of that cause has occasioned and perpetuated. Now the only way in which sin can be removed from the conscience of the man by whom it has been committed, is by his being fully forgiven all the guilt of sin, and perfectly cleansed of all the pollution of sin, by God. But will God, can God, thus purify the sinner? The answer comes to us from the cross of Christ. The fire which consumed the sacrifice upon that mystic altar was fiercer than the fire of Tophet; but it was a fire that cleanses, that brings renovation and purity to a world of polluted and perishing sinners. As it was necessary that this fire should be kindled first on the altar of atonement, so it is only as our torch is irradiated on that altar, that we can spread the sacred flame through the world. The only means by which we can hope to ransom and purify our fallen race, is by making known to each individual of it the great facts and doctrines connected with the sacrificial work of Christ. All other means will prove inefficient. Thus is this doctrine adapted to the great objects for which it was designed. The religion of Jesus Christ has been sent forth by its great Author, as a mighty fire, to purify and remodel the world. In accomplishing this great work, Christianity begins with individuals, and by successive conquests over the corruptions and guilt of individual souls, advances to the salvation of multitudes, and the renovation of the race. The “ fire” which Christ sent into the world is to enwrap the whole world in its purifying blaze; but then it i§ to do so only by being kindled in heart after heart, and warming and sanctifying home after home. And wherever this sacred fire is experienced, it will stretch forth its lambent flame to fasten on new objects, and accomplish new transformations. It comes not like the lightning, appearing suddenly in the east, and darting instantaneously to the west. It comes with a slow, steady, and advancing flame. At first its light falls amidst the corruptions of some solitary path; but gradually it extends its light, and heat, and purifying influence, until, passing into a mighty conflagration, it encircles whole countries and continents. As she advances to the accomplishment of her purpose, and attainment of her triumph, she must, of necessity, come into collision with much that men have been accustomed to value and to revere. Many of the forms of social life, many of the bulwarks of earthly policy, many of the institutions of human intercourse, are the mere offspring of sensual taste and habits, or, at the best, mere artificial contrivances for the effecting of a compromise between the good and the evil that are strangely mixed up in the tissue of our mortal life. Every advance Christianity makes in our world must be connected with conflict. Not a single bosom is surrendered to her occupancy without a struggle. II. I have now to direct your attention for a little to OUR KORD’ S OF ARDENT DESIRE FOR THE OF THAT WORK WHICH HE THUS CAME INTO THE WORLD : “ I am come to send fire on the earth: I would that it were already kindled!” If you examine the chronology of the gospel history, you will find that the discourses of which my text forms a part were delivered by our Lord within a very short time--three or four weeks, at the very utmost, of His crucifixion. As Heuttered these words, then, He had His sufferings full in view, and was in the immediate prospect of entering upon those scenes of unparalleled agony through which He passed to the accomplishment of His work. With the feelings that then occupied His bosom these words are in full harmony. The considerations which thus induced our Saviour so ardently to desire the accomplishment of His work are to be sought, doubtless, in the consequences that were to result from the accomplishment of that work; and though these can never be present to our minds with the force that occupied His, yet it may be permitted to us without presumption to institute an inquiry into these considerations, and the effect it may be supposed they would have in causing Him thus to long for their realization. Allow me, then, to refer to a few of the consequences of the kindling of that fire the Saviour came to send upon the earth. 1. And first, the diffusion of Christianity stands closely connected with the promotion of the Divine glory in the world. In consequence of the prevalence of sin, the glory of God, as manifested in this portion of His universe, has been fearfully obscured. 2. In the diffusion of Christianity, our Lord traced the fulfilment of His own gracious purpose to men, and the success of His own work in their behalf; and this prospect naturally prompted the desire expressed in the words before us. When our Lord became incarnate, and entered on the work of His humiliation, it was in order that by means of that work He might bring to pass the design and purpose which had eternally occupied the Infinite mind. Is it to succeed, or is it to fail? He anticipated the joy of the angels, as they witnessed sinner after sinner converted unto God. He foretasted--a foretaste peculiar to Himself--the joy of bringing many sons unto glory. And as all these prospects in bright manifestation and in firm assurance pressed on His view, who can wonder that His bosom should have thrilled with ardent desire, and His cry should have been with regard to that fire, by which these results were to be secured--“ I would that it were already kindled” ? 3. Our Lord saw in the extension of Christianity, a vast increase to the purity and moral goodness of the world; and this filled His mind with delight and intense desire that the work were already begun. To a mind possessing any degree of intellectual vigour, and not altogether destitute of right moral feeling, the state of a thinking, accountable, and immortal being like man, lying under the polluting, degrading, destroying power of sin, cannot fail to raise emotions of the deepest pain. And knowing that in that purifying fire He had come to send on the earth was to be found the only real and effectual remedy for this sad state of things, who can wonder that His sacred bosom should have expanded with an ardent desire which gave itself vent in the exclamation--“ I would that it were already kindled!” 4. The bearing of His religion on the happiness of mankind must also have actuated the Saviour in desiring its speedy and steady diffusion. When we cast our eye over the condition of our race, we behold man universally engaged in the eager pursuit of happiness, often baffled in the pursuit, and constrained in disappointment of spirit to exclaim--“ Who will show us any good?” But in the gospel of Jesus Christ there is a panacea for man’ s ills, and an antidote for man’ s sorrows. Wherever it spreads, the people that “ sat in darkness see a great light,” and upon them that dwelt in the region of the shadow of death, a light shines. 5. The force of these considerations is greatly enhanced by the fact, that the triumphs of Christianity are progressive, and that her conquests are perpetual. “ All nations shall be blessed in Christ, and all nations shall call Him blessed.” Nor shall this continual extension of territory in any degree endanger the stability of the kingdom itself. With many earthly empires the shouts of their victorious arms have passed into the knell of their approaching doom. Rome fell through the vastness of her dominions, and the very multitude of her conquests. Spain fell from her proud preeminence among the nations of Europe, from the time that her chivalry gained for her new empires on the other side of the Atlantic. And Britain, invincible within her own sea-bound shores, has ere now found the same defeat in consequence of the wide extent of her foreign possessions. But no such contingencies threaten the empire of Christ. However vast, or however far it spreads, the eye of Omniscience watches over it, and the arm of Omnipotence secures its safety. It is emphatically and absolutely “ an everlasting kingdom.” All things else with which man has to do are destined to decay. Amidst the ruins of earthly kingdoms, amidst the dissolution of the terrestrial system, amidst the wild crash of worlds it shall remain unshaken and unharmed; “ the Lord thy God, the Lord thy lawgiver, the Lord thy judge, He will save thee!” How glorious the prospect thus expanded before us! What a gush of exhilarating and triumphant emotion is it calculated to excite in every renewed and holy mind! With what feelings of unutterable delight must it have been associated in the mind of the Redeemer, who could view it in all its vastness, and appreciate it in all its glory! and with what earnestness must He have entertained the desire that the fire by whose sacred flame all this was to be effected were already kindled! Oh, my hearers, let us see to it that the fire burns in our own bosoms, and that there it is carrying forward its salutary work. God forbid that we who are seeking the spread of the gospel throughout the world, should either be destitute of its power, or but slightly influenced by its spirit. The times in which we live, demand that we should be men of earnestness, energy, and perseverance. Those, sirs, are not times for the mere idleness of religious profession, for the more refinements and enjoyments of Christian association. (W. L. Alexander, D. D.) The fire of contention Upon a close examination of the text, and a comparison with the following verses, there can be no doubt whatever, that the sending fire upon earth, indicates nothing less than what it at the first glance appears to import, namely, the production of great and violent contention and animosity. When the religion of a crucified Saviour was originally made known to the world, greatly varied: even within a single family circle, was the reception which it met with. Some, when they had heard the word, received it with joy, and cried out, with the Ethiopian, “ See, here is water; what doth hinder me to be baptized?” While others, only observing of the preacher of Jesus and the Resurrection, “ He seemeth to be a setter forth of strange gods,” persisted in their ancient course, and loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. Placed in such circumstances, it was almost impossible for the Christian members of a household, with whatever circumspection and caution they might walk, to avoid giving offence. Though they kept silence, and refrained even from good words, their conduct was a tacit reproach to their connections. When they refused to offer the drink-offerings of those dumb idols, or to make mention of their name with their lips, they sufficiently declared their opinion of those that did it, as of men labouring under gross delusion. Now we may observe how sensitive to the slightest apparent contempt of their opinions the spiritually ignorant and superstitious are. Again, the Christians could not, on any terms, partake of the pleasures which their unconverted friends chiefly esteemed; many of them were unclean, and many of them were cruel, teeming with all abomination and pollution. They were compelled, therefore, to stand aloof in their festivities, and as children of light, to have no communion with the works of darkness. This must, according to all experience and observation of the characteristics of weak and vicious men, have contributed in no small degree to engender a spirit of bitterness. The slave of vice cannot bear the eye that looks mournfully on his evil indulgences. Finally, Christianity incapacitated the professor from attaining to many worldly honours and emoluments, and hence another struggle while a parent’ s ill-judging affection endeavoured to impose upon a child conformity to existing iniquities, that his prospects in this life might not be blighted, and the other as resolutely persisted in the determination to witness a good confession before men, lest his prospects in eternity should suffer a much more fatal blight. How soon such contentions might call into action the most malignant passions of the heart, may be judged from examples nearer to our own times, in which a rational resistance to unreasonable, though originally kind desires, has stirred up the most inveterate hostility. But in all this we only see the natural consequences of a pure and undefiled religion coming in contact with the evil passions of man’ s unconverted heart. There was nothing hostile to the peace of the world in Christianity itself, and it became the innocent cause of much disquietude and tumult, merely because man would not suffer man to enjoy liberty of conscience. (W. H. Marriott, M. A.) The gospel as afire How often we have found the air on a summer’ s day hot, oppressive, and stagnant, Not a breath of wind stirs the leaves which hang parched or weltering in the burning rays of the sun. The very birds are silent, as though unable to breathe. Suddenly the thunder peals, and the great rain-drops patter upon the ground. Then the storm bursts forth in all its fury. Flash succeeds flash with startling rapidity, the thunder rocks the very buildings in which we are sheltered, and the rain descends in a fierce deluge. At length the storm ceases, and then what a change has passed over the scene! Before, there was a peace; but it was the peace of inanimation and death; now there is a peace, but it is the peace of blessed life. The air is cool and fresh, the trees assume their verdant hues, the flowers give forth their sweetest fragrance, the birds make the groves echo again with their glad melody; in a word, all nature is peaceful with a deep exuberant vitality. And so with the gospel; it arouses men from their deadly lethargy, producing sorrow, distress, and anguish; but after this there comes a peace, even “ the peace of God, which passeth all understanding.” (O. Spenceley.) Fire purifies I remember, some years ago, when I was at Shields, I went into a glass-house; and, standing very attentive, I saw several masses of burning glass of various forms. The workman took a piece of glass and put it into one furnace, then he put it into a second, and then into a third. I said to him, “ Why do you put it through so many fires?” He answered, “ Oh, sir, the first was not hot enough, nor the second; therefore we put it into a third, and that will make it transparent.” (G. Whitefield.) An aggressive gospel Fire is the life and the light of the world, and, as a symbol, deserves to be studied. Its power has never been ascertained. Every effort made to subdue it is attended with the consciousness of its unconquerable nature. It melts iron, burns marble, changes granite into dust, feeds on wood, evaporates water; and yet, when properly used and ministered unto, it is the health and life of the world. Such is the gospel. Receive it into the soul, and it changes the miser into the benefactor, the slothful into the diligent, and the lukewarm into the fiery apostle who, like Jeremiah, finds a fire in his bones which will consume if it finds not vent. 1. The purpose is avowed--“ I am come to send fire.” Not to bring, but “ send.” 2. This fire is sent. It is here, and is yet to be more manifest. 3. The outlook is one of endeavour. Christ is organizing for victory. 4. The urgent need of the Church to receive this fire. 5. Instead of being alarmed when the gospel produces excitement, we are to look for it. 6. Christ longs to have the fire kindled. 7. Behind every fervent prayer is the unreached desire of Christ. 8. The plan is fixed, the fire is to be kindled in the individual heart. (J. D.Fulton, D. D.) The question of Christian missions stated and explained I. THE MISSION OF CHRIST WAS FOR THE MOST ENDS. 1. To present an atonement to the Divine government for the sin of man. 2. To overthrow the rebellious power which had usurped the dominion of this world. 3. The redemption of innumerable multitudes of our race from the consequences of their apostasy. 4. The formal assumption and complete discharge of His mediatorial characters. II. THESE ENDS COULD ALONE BE AT A MOST PAINFUL EXPENSE. 1. We cannot conceal the fact that Christianity may affect political systems. 2. It is further admitted that Christianity must produce a variety of innovations. 3. Very unnatural divisions in society have apparently been fomented by Christianity. 4. Christianity must be viewed in connection with those persecutions which it has experienced. 5. Christianity has drawn forth some acts, on the part of its adversaries, which have more effectually exposed the depravity of human nature than any other occasion could have admitted. 6. The religion of Jesus Christ has very frequently been perverted to designs most estranged from its character, and abhorrent to its spirit. 7. The augmentation of moral responsibility has necessarily attended the establishment of Christianity. III. THE OF THESE ENDS THE VAST EXPENSE TO THEIR . 1. Here, then, we find an apology for our warmest zeal and firmest courage, in extending Christianity. We but imbibe the spirit and follow the steps of our Exemplar. 2. And here, too, we learn that this unconquerable temper, this inexpressible ardour, is of the first importance in every department of missions. Nothing half-hearted should be betrayed in our institutions at home, or efforts abroad. 3. In this spirit of unshrinking courage, and unabating ardour, let us proceed. We carry the commission of Him who “ came to send fire on the earth.” We may blow the flame, we may spread the conflagration; what will he, if it be already kindled? All must yield to the gospel of Christ or be consumed by its progress. (R. W. Hamilton, D. D.) Fire--the want of the tinges I. THE HISTORY OF THE GOSPEL. 1. It begins with a revelation, contained in the Bible. Bending over the page, we are struck with the extraordinary doctrines herein revealed. As we believe the doctrine of Divine love, we feel it to be a truth which sets the soul on fire with joy, gratitude, and love. 2. I have commenced the history of the gospel with the book; but, remember, the gospel does not long remain a mere writing; it is no sooner thoroughly read and grasped than the reader becomes, according to his ability, a preacher. We will suppose when a preacher whom God has truly called to the work proclaims thin gospel, you will see for a second time that it is a thing of fire. Observe the man! If God hath sent him, he is little regardful of the graces of oratory; he counts it sheer folly that the servants of God should be the apes of Demosthenes and Cicero; he learns in another school how to deliver his Master’ s message. He comes forward in all sincerity, not in the wisdom of words, but with great plainness of speech, and tells to the sons of men the great message from the skies. The one thing of all others he abhors, is to deliver that message with bated breath, with measured cadence, and sentences that chill and freeze as they fall from ice-bound lips. I would not utter too sweeping a sentence, but I will venture to say that no man who preaches the gospel without zeal is sent of God to preach at all. 3. In tracing this history of the gospel, I would have you observe the effect of the preaching of such a one as I have described. While he is delivering the truth of a crucified Saviour, and bidding men repent of sin and believe in Christ, while he is pleading and exhorting with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven, do you see the fire flakes descend in showers from on high! One of them has dropped just yonder and fallen into a heart that had been cold and hard before; observe how it melts all that was hard and iron-like, and the tears begin to flow from channels long dried up. 4. Opposition is aroused next. There is no good doing if the devil does not howl. II. Secondly, LET US STUDY MORE THE OF THE GOSPEL AS FIRE. 1. First, fire and the gospel are notable for ethereal purity. 2. The gospel is like fire, again, because of its cheering and comforting influence. He that hath received it finds that the cold of this world no longer pinches him; he may be poor, but the gospel’ s fire takes away the chilliness of poverty; he may be sick, but the gospel gives his soul to rejoice even in the body’ s decay; he may be slandered and neglected, but the gospel honours him in the sight of God. The gospel, where it is fully received into the heart, becomes a Divine source of matchless consolation. Fire, in addition to its warmth, gives light. The flaming beacon guides the mariner or warns him of the rock: the gospel becomes to us our guide through all the darkness of this mortal life; and if we cannot look into the future, nor know what shall happen to us on the morrow, yet by the light of the gospel we can see our way in the present path of duty, ay, and see our end in future immortality and blessedness. Life and immortality are brought to light by the gospel of Jesus Christ. 3. A third likeness between the gospel and fire is its testing qualities. No test like fire. That piece of jewelry may seem to be gold; the colour is an exact imitation; you could scarcely tell but what it was the genuine metal. Ay, but the melting pot will prove all; put it into the crucible, and you will soon see. Thus in this world there are a thousand things that glitter, things which draw admirers, that are advocated in the name of philanthropy and philosophy, and I know not what beside; but it is wonderful how different the schemes of politicians and the devices of wise men appear when they are once put into the fining pot of the gospel of Jesus Christ. 4. A further parallel between the gospel and the fire lies in their essential aggressiveness. 5. Our religion is like fire, again, because of its tremendous energy and its rapid advance. Who shall be able to estimate the force of fire? Our forefathers standing on this side the river, as they gazed many years ago upon the old city of London wrapped in flame, must have wondered with great astonishment as they saw cottage and palace, church and hall, monument and cathedral, all succumbing to the tongue of flame, tit must be a wonderful sight, if one could safely see it, to behold a prairie rolling along its great sheets of flame, or to gaze upon Vesuvius when it is spouting away at its utmost force. When you deal with fire, you cannot calculate; you are among the imponderables and the immeasurables. I wish we thought of that when we are speaking of religion. You cannot calculate concerning its spread. How many years would it take to convert the world? asks somebody. Sir, it need not take ten minutes, if God so willed it; because as fire, beyond all reckoning, will sometimes, when circumstances are congenial, suddenly break out and spread, so will truth. Truth is not a mechanism--and does not depend upon engineering. God may, when He wills it, bring all human minds into such a condition that one single text such as this, “ This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners,” may set all hearts on a blaze. Vainly do we reckon the missionary costs so much, and only so many can therefore be sent. Ay, but God works most by weakest means full often, and sometimes achieves by his poorest saints works which He will not perform by those who have every visible appliance. 6. Once more, the gospel resembles fire in this, that it will ultimately prevail. III. Lastly, if the gospel be thus like fire, LET US CATCH THE FLAME. 1. If this fire shall really burn within us, we shall become from this very moment fearless of all opposition. That retired friend will lose the strings which bind his tongue; he will feel that he must speak as God shall bid him; or if he cannot speak, he will act with all his might in some other way to spread abroad the savour of Immanuel’ s name. That coward who hid his head, and would not own his profession, when the fire burns, will feel that he had rather court opposition than avoid it. 2. If we catch this flame we shall, after having defied all opposition, weary utterly of the mere proprieties of religion which at this present time crush down like a nightmare the mass of the religious world. 3. If we shall catch this fire, we shall not only become dissatisfied with mere proprieties, but we shall all of us become instant in prayer. Day and night our soul will go up with cries and moanings to God, “ O God, how long, how long, how long? Wilt Thou not avenge Thine own elect? Will not Thy gospel prevail? Why are Thy chariots so long in coming? Why doth not Christ reign? Why is not the truth triumphant? Why dost Thou suffer idolatry to rule and priestcraft to reign? Make haste, O God, grasp Thy two-edged sword and smite, and let error die and let truth win the victory!” It is thus we shall be always pleading if this fire burns in our spirits. 4. This will lead us to eager service. Having this fire in us, we shall be trying to do all we can for Christ. (C. H. Spurgeon.) The fire Christ kindles I. Here we have one of those statements of Christ which have been and still is made use of by superficial, ill-disposed unbelievers, IN ORDER TO BRING HIM AND HIS INTO . If all His many statements, declarations, and utterances, which inculcate love and good-will to mankind, leave them cold and indifferent; those which speak of the destructive tendency of His religion inflame them with hatred and malice towards Him, and the object of His life and work. As soon as they hear that Christ Himself said, “ I am come to send fire on the earth,” and again, “ Think not that I am come to send peace on earth, I am come not to send peace, but the sword,” their anger is uncontrollable. With an air of righteous indignation, they exclaim, “ All this Christ’ s followers have faithfully carried out to the detriment of mankind.” To justify their assertion, they refer us to the persecution and bloodshed instigated and perpetrated by those who bore His name, and strenuously maintain that all was done in His name and by His authority. These implacable enemies of Christ and His religion do not shrink from making Christ Himself responsible for all the cruel and barbarous deeds wrought at one time or other by professing Christians. They have indeed the testimony of history on their side, where all such cruelties and inhumanities have been recorded and transmitted to posterity. But we have a right to demand of those who sit in judgment over others, not to be so unjust as to make Christ and His religion responsible for them. We shall, no doubt, at once be told to read our text, for in it Christ expressly says that He came to send fire on the earth; and we shall be asked to read further on, where He says that He did not come to send peace on earth, but the sword. Of course Christ speaks of fire and the sword, but by no means in the sense His enemies or mistaken friends would have it. In the ordinary life fire need not be a destructive element, nor the sword a weapon with which to kill others; for fire has also many very useful qualities, it imparts heat and light, and the sword is wielded to defend and uphold justice. That Christ employs these figuratively, and as such representing forcibly great and important spiritual truths, there is not a shadow of doubt. The fire He means is no other than His holy love, kindling within man a sacred flame of devotion for everything good, true, and just; and the sword He speaks of is no other than the Spirit of God, who wields the mighty word of God. II. IS FIRST OF ALL A POWER BEFORE IT CAN BE THAT WHICH IT IS IN REALITY AND TRUTH, VIZ., A DIVINE POWER TO RENEW AND MAN. It would not have been a Divine power for the spiritual good of man had it not such a twofold tendency and effect; for as man has become despoiled by sin, God’ s holy love manifested in Christ has first of all to destroy this pernicious element in him before it can effectually accomplish its Divine mission for him. The fire Christ kindles in the heart of fallen, sinful man is meant to consume all ungodliness and unholiness, all the idols that may be enshrined there; and if our own will and consent allow this work to be effected, the sacred fire of love, of devotion to God and our fellow-men, will be kindled in the purified and sanctified temple of our heart. If Christ’ s love is, however, obstinately resisted, the unholy fire will remain burning within man, never to be extinguished. Christ’ s fire, however, destroys, in order to rebuild within us a glorious temple crowned with the inscription, “ Holiness unto the Lord.” III. If Christianity were only a destructive power, we could have gladly dispensed with it, for there are enough of such powers and agents at work in nature and society, in the individual and among nations. THE PRIME OBJECT OF IS, FOR THE HUMAN RACE, NOT TO DESTROY MAN’ S LIFE, BUT TO SAVE IT; not to separate man from man, but to unite all men closely and intimately by one bond of love as brothers of one common Father in heaven. Christianity, as a new life-giving power, only destroys that which hinders man’ s growth in holiness, godliness, and righteousness, thus retarding his spiritual development and progress heavenwards. The holy fire burning on the altar of a believing Christian’ s heart not only consumes all impurity in him, but kindles a sacred flame of love and devotion in him towards God and the true well-being of his fellow-man. (A. Furst, D. D.) Missionary enthusiasm This fire which our Lord came to send was a Divine enthusiasm inspired by His Spirit for the glory of God, for the highest good of man--an enthusiasm enwrapping like flame the faculties of soul and body, transfiguring weak and commonplace natures by the purifying and invigorating energy of a supernatural force. “ I can do all things,” said St. Paul, “ through Christ that strengtheneth me.” This enthusiasm has, undoubtedly, many other outlets, many other effects. The missionary spirit is one of its chief, its noblest manifestations--the spirit which burns to carry the name and kingdom of Christ wherever there are souls to be saved and blest. What, then, let us ask, are the elements which go to make up the missionary spirit? Or, rather, what are the convictions by which the sacred flame is kept alive within the soul? There are, I apprehend, three main elements, three ruling and inspiring convictions, at the root of missionary enthusiasm. 1. Of these, the first is a deep sense of the certainty and importance of the truths of the gospel. The apostles were the first missionaries, and we see in their writings how deeply they felt both the importance and the certainty of their message. St. Paul speaks of “ preaching among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ.” St. Paul prays that the Ephesians may have the eyes of their understanding so enlightened as to “ know what is the hope of their glory, and what the riches of their calling and their inheritance among the saints.” St. Paul’ s language has sometimes been spoken of as hyperbolical and inflated, but only so because the great living facts which were so present to the apostle’ s soul are hidden from the soul of the speaker. If, my brethren, it be indeed true that the everlasting Son of God left the glory which He had with the Father before the world was, and took our poor nature upon Him, and had a human mother, and lived on this earth for thirty-three years, and then died in pain and shame to rise from death, to rise from the grave in which He was laid, to return, still robed in the nature in which He had died and risen, to the glories of His heavenly home--if this be a fact, it is trivial to speak of it as “ an important fact.” It distances in point of importance everything else that has occurred in human history. What in the world are all the triumphs, all the failures, all the humiliations, all the recoveries, of which human history speaks, in comparison with this? What heart have we to dwell on them when we have really stood face to face in spirit with- the incarnation and the passion of the Son of God? This is what men like Xavier or Martin have felt; and this sense of the overwhelming importance of the facts of redemption has not, in the cases of these eminent missionaries, been weakened by any suspicion whatever, created by a sceptical atmosphere of thought around them, about the truth of the facts. The apostles had had no doubts about the facts. “ I know whom I have believed,” cries St. Paul. “ We have not followed cunningly devised fables,” protests St. Peter. “ We were eye-witnesses of His majesty.” “ That which we have seen and heard,” says St. John, “ declare we unto you, for the life was manifested, and we have seen it, and declare unto you that eternal life which was with the Father and was manifested unto us.” In the mind of the apostles the truths of the Christian revelation centred, every one of them, in the living person of Christ--God and man; and an utter devotion to His person, based on a profound conviction of the reality in detail and as a whole of those truths, was at the root of that spirit of enterprising charity which went forth to convert the world. In the heart of those first missionaries, as so constantly since, the crucified Son of God whispered daily, hourly, that He might keep alive within them the sacred flame: “ Behold what I have borne for thee! What hast thou done for Me?” 2. And the second conviction which goes to make up missionary enthusiasm is a sense of the need which man has of revealed truth. The apostles were possessed by this element also of that sacred flame which Christ came to send upon the earth. The apostles did not invest contemporary heathenism with that halo of false beauty which has been more or less fashionable in Christendom ever since the renaissance. They saw in heathendom the kingdom of darkness. Its material civilization, its splendid literature, its vast organizations civil and military, its social and political traditions, were nothing to them or less than nothing. “ We know,” said St. John--“ we know that we are of the truth, and the whole world lieth in wickedness. All that is of the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world, and the world passeth away and the lust thereof.” The highest civilization, so termed, was in St. Paul’ s eyes just as much in need of the gospel as the rudest types of savage life. He had as much to do for the cultivated heathens who listened to him on the Areopagus of Athens as for the wild heathens of the Mediterranean islands, who after their rude fashion showed him no little kindness when he was saved from his shipwreck, for he saw everywhere error and sin-error which obscured the real nature of God and the true destiny and the highest interest of man--and sin which made man God’ s enemy, the antagonist of God’ s uncreated nature as the perfect being. The conviction that those who were not in Christ were lost--lost unless they could be brought to Him to be illuminated, to be gifted with a new nature, to be washed, to be sanctified, to be justified before the presence of the All-holy--this was the second element of conviction which urged the apostles onwards through the world to convert it--which urged them on even to martyrdom. 3. And the third conviction that goes to make up the missionary spirit is a belief in the capacity of every man for the highest good--for salvation through Christ. Intellectual dulness, want of imagination, want of what people have taken to calling lately “ sweetness and light,” want of moral fervour and quickness--these are not barriers. Doubtless some minds, some natures--I would rather say some souls--present more points of contact with the gospel than do others. Some, I admit, present very few indeed; but no child of Adam is so constituted as to be incapable of receiving the truth which is necessary to his highest good; and the true missionary knows that if he can only get deep enough beneath the surface, beneath the crust of habit formed by sensuality, by indifference, by prejudice, he will at length find a home for truth--he will at length find that which will respond to it in the secret spring of the soul. Nelson used to tell young midshipmen who were entering the navy that they ought to look forward, every one of them, as a matter of course, to commanding the channel fleet, or at least to commanding a line-of-battle ship. And this faith in general capacity for success is still more necessary in the Christian missionary. He looks upon every child of man as bearing within him capacities for the highest greatness--capacities which have only to be roused and developed by the assured grace of God. Now, this faith in humanity--in what it may be made by grace--is assailed in our days on the ground that character and circumstances are, after all, too imperious to be set aside--that they, as a matter of fact, make us what we are--that it is folly to think of overruling them by any doctrine or secret influence that can be brought to bear. And this is not a new idea. The learned physician Galen, who wrote in the third century of the Christian era, and who as a heathen was strongly prejudiced against the Church of Christ, remarks with reference to the education of children, “ The cultivator can never succeed in making the thorn bear grapes, for the nature of the thorn is, from the first, incapable of such improvement.” And then he goes on to say that if the vines which are capable of bearing such fruit be neglected they will either produce bad fruit or none at all. Here Galen marks out what, in his opinion, could really be done with human nature--certainly we must remark, within very narrow limits indeed--and what, in his opinion, it is folly to attempt. Tertullian, an eminent Christian writer of the period, in his treatise on the human soul, admits that the bad tree will bring forth no fruit if it be not grafted, and that the good tree will produce bad fruit unless it be cultivated. So much for nature, but then Tertullian proceeds, “ And the stones will become the children of Abraham if they be formed to the faith of Abraham, and the generation of vipers will bring forth fruits meet for repentance if they expel the poison of malignity. “ For such,” he says, “ is the power of Divine grace which, indeed is more powerful than nature.” The heathen Celsus probably expressed a general opinion among his friends when he said it was literally impossible to improve a man who had grown old in vice before his conversion. Cyprian, who was afterwards Bishop of Carthage and a martyr for Christ, had taken, he tells us, exactly the Fame view of the impossibility of changing natural habit. How he learnt the power of God’ s grace he tells us in a most remarkable passage of one of his extant letters. “ Receive,” he says to his correspondent, “ that which must be experienced before it can be understood. When I lay in the darkness, in the depths of the night, when I was tossed hither and thither by the billows of the world, and wandered about with an uncertain and fluctuating course, I deemed it a matter of extreme difficulty that any one could be born again--could lay aside what he was before, while his corporal nature remained what it was. How, said I, can there be so great a transformation as that a man should all at once lay aside what is innate from his very organization, or, through habit, has become a second nature? How should a man learn frugality who has been accustomed to luxuries? How should he who has been clad in gold and purple condescend to simple attire. The man who has been surrounded with public honours take to privacy, or another exchange admiring troops of dependents for voluntary solitude? The allurements of sense, I said to myself, are surely very tenacious. Intemperance, pride, anger, ambition, lust--these must, when once indulged, they must perforce, retain their hold. So I said to myself, for I was, in truth, entangled yet in the errors of my former life, and did not believe that I could be freed from them; and so I complied with the vices that still cleaved to me, and in despair of amendment submitted to my evil inclinations as if they were part of my nature. But when the stain of my former life had been washed out by the laver of regeneration, a pure and serene light was poured into my reconciled heart. When the second birth received from heaven through the Spirit had changed me into a new man, things formerly doubtful were confirmed in a wonderful manner. What had been closed before became open before my eyes; what had been dark was now illuminated; power was given to do what had seemed difficult; the impossible had become possible. I can see now that my former life, being of fleshly origin and spent in sin, was a life of earth. The life which the Holy One has kindled in me is a life from God.” This testimony has been re-echoed since by thousands and thousands of Christians and, therefore, the barriers of habit enshrined within venerable traditions which the Christian missionary encounters to-day in China or in India, however serious they may be as practical obstacles, are not really insurmountable. By and by the gospel leaven will surely begin to ferment, and then these vast, ancient, complicated societies will heave and break till they open a way to the influences of the gospel, if not so swiftly, yet as surely, as do the uncultivated New Zealanders and Polynesians. To doubt this is to lose faith, if not in the gospel, at least in humanity--in the capacity of every being for coming to the highest truth, for coming to God in Christ. (Canon Liddon.) Luke 12:50I have a baptism to be baptized with--Intensity in Christian service I. OF THIS CHRIST HIMSELF WAS THE PERFECT EXAMPLE. Fervour reached white heat in the Son of Man, and the service of the kingdom received the whole of it. Do you think these words were spoken calmly? As we listen to the Speaker, we are conscious of the strain, the tension of spirit, the travail of soul! And what was it that moved the Saviour so profoundly, that made His soul “ exceeding sorrowful” ? His death on the cross, and burial in Joseph’ s tomb; but not these things regarded by themselves; death and the grave had less terror for Him than for the saintliest of His followers; but He thought of these in their august and solemn relations to His redeeming work. In His cross and passion, love to God and love to man were mysteriously and perfectly blended; His surrender to God was absolute and entire, wanting nothing; while the appeal of His love to man, unsurpassed in tenderness, maintains to-day its unrivalled influence and power. St. Paul used Christ’ s word--“ straitened,” in another and most significant connection: “ The love of Christ constraineth us.” Christ was Himself “ constrained,” that He might “ constrain” His servants by His own great love to the end of time. This revelation of love to God and man in the death of Christ by no means adequately accounts for the agitation of the Saviour’ s soul. We must go deeper; unless we do so we have no sufficient clue to the mystery of this hour. The beginning of Christ’ s passion was reached; already He is the Sin-bearer. Our text, then, is not the cry of the hireling, bent only on accomplishing his day, longing eagerly for the last hour and the close of his task; it is something infinitely nobler, the cry of the “ only-begotten of the Father,” shut up, urged, pressed, filled with pain, panting as one oppressed in breathing, till His Father’ s will is done. Behold the perfect Example I If we wish to gauge this intensity, and know how great it is, let us place it side by side with our own low aims, calculating love, measured efforts, and frequently barren lives. Strangers to devotion, to intense devotion, cannot properly serve under such a King. II. CAN WE. WITH THIS PATTERN BEFORE US, GET ANY HINTS THE SPRING OF SUCH ? HOW is the fire kindled? What is the secret? When Christ spoke, He was in close touch with His Father. The Baptism was appointed; not self-chosen, not accidental, but set down in the Father’ s will; recognized as being there, and accepted in the teeth of natural shrinking. Surely this is evidence of fellowship without a break, high and habitual fellowship with God, therefore, is one secret of intense life in souls. A second secret of intense life, then, is familiarity with Holy Scripture. Men of the Bible may be furnaces, icebergs they can never be. And the passage, taken as a whole, indicates clear insight into the sins and sorrows of men, and a true estimate of our needs. The Speaker “ knew what was in man” ; was in close contact with man; saw our ruin, accepted the risks, and rendered at all costs the needed help. A third secret of intense life is, keep touch with men. We want to kindle the holy fire and keep it burning--then brethren, we must hold much converse with Christ. The planets get light and heat from the sun; we from the Sun of Righteousness. We must look into the face of Christ and gain power for work by habitual, sustained, and abundant communion with Him. III. We are now in a position To SOME OF THE SALIENT OF THIS IN SERVICE. It is not concern about our own safety; by the whole diameter of the globe it is divided from that. How much solicitude we expend on ourselves! Are we God’ s sons? Are our evidences clear and bright? Definite answers to such inquiries we ought to get. Till we get them this holy passion can find no sufficient room within us. The intense spirit, the Christ-spirit, only possesses souls that can swing out of self. All Christ’ s anxiety and travail of soul was about others--about God, His Father, the revelation of His mind, the establishment ofHis rule, and the winning of men to obedience--about man, His brother, his waywardness and misery; the remedy, how it could be provided and how applied. We must be like Him I The noblest in us is impossible while we are occupied with ourselves. The mother at the bed-side of her fever-stricken child forgets self, so does the fireman as through flame and smoke he rushes to the rescue. Then heroism grows sublime, and becomes an inspiration. This intensity is not distinguished by exemption from trial, even the trial of apparent failure. Certain discoursings on earnestness in Christian work are depressing. We see how the purest are often most tried, and the best and most skilful husbandmen have longest to wait for the fruit. “ It is enough for the servant to be as his Lord.” What equipment was His--wisdom, stature, favour with God and man; and the Holy Spirit withoutmeasure. What Divine patience! The crown of enduring influence and ultimate success intensity like our Master’ s will assuredly wear. When Christ spoke, it appeared as if His was the only soul fired by this passion. Like Pompey’ s pillar, He was solitary, conspicuously alone I Then the good soil received the precious grain of wheat; it died, and from that moment was no longer alone! Paul’ s letters are rich in passages which breathe the intense spirit of our text. The case of John, the beloved disciple, is, if possible, more remarkable. He caught fire early; the holy passion was aglow in him. After the Council at Jerusalem he disappeared from view. For fifty years we hear nothing of him; but in the calm, loving utterances of his Epistles, and the penetrating light of his profound Gospel, we have evidence of the strength of a long hidden fire. It glowed till the century ended, when other fires were extinguished. Thus Christ reproduced Himself--the fire-circle enlarged; candidates for this baptism multiplied; and to-day no power is so fresh, so vigorous, and so aggressive as the power of Jesus Christ. Enduring influence and final triumph still lie with intense earnestness. It brings into line every power we possess, and allies each with the power of God. “ Why could not we cast him out?” cried the humiliated disciples. “ Because you didn’ t believe you could,” was Christ’ s startling reply. The intense man ever believes he can; faith in God renders all things possible. The man of faith “ burns his way when he cannot bore it” ; and while the calculating halt in the initial stages of their task and cannot succeed, he stands radiant with the joy of an accomplished work. Everywhere we have machinery; power is the thing wanted. “ I gained no theology from Dr. Chalmers,” said Robertson, of Irvine, “ but I gained enthusiasm.” (J. R. Wood.) The Surety’ s baptism The baptism of the Son of God, here spoken of by Himself, was the baptism of wrath; for He who was made sin for us must be baptized with this baptism. It is the knowledge of this fiery baptism of our Divine Surety that gives to us the reconciliation and the peace which, as sinners, we need. It was of this fiery baptism that He Himself spoke when He said, “ Now is My soul troubled.” This baptism the Son of God must undergo; and He knew this. It was appointed Him of the Father, and arranged in the eternal covenant. “ I have a baptism to be baptized with.” He knew it; He knew the reason of it; He knew the result of it; and He knew that it could not pass away from Him. He had come to fulfil all righteousness; He had come to be made a curse for us. In this awful utterance of our Substitute, as He looked forward to the cross, we have-- I. A LONGING FOR THE BAPTISM. He desired its accomplishment. He knew the results depending on it, and these were so divinely glorious, so eternally blessed, that He could not but long for it--He could not but be straitened till it was accomplished. The cup was inexpressibly bitter, but the recompence for drinking it was so vast, that He could not but long for the hour when it should be put into His hands. II. THE OF FEAR AND BITTER ANGUISH IN IT. He was truly man, both in body and soul. His Divine nature did not relieve Him of one grief, or make His sufferings mere shadows. It fitted Him for being filled with more sorrow than any man could be. It conferred on Him an awful, we may say a Divine, capacity of endurance, and so made him the subject of sharper pain and profounder grief than otherwise he could have been. III. THE IN REGARD TO ITS . Like Paul, He was in a strait between things which pressed in opposite ways, and which must continue to press till the work was done. 1. He was straitened between the anticipated pain, and the thought of the result of that pain. 2. He was straitened between grace and righteousness. Till the great sacrifice was offered, there might be said to be conflict between these two things. Between His love to the sinner and His love to the Father there was conflict; between His desire to save the former and His zeal to glorify the latter there was something wanting to produce harmony. He knew that this something was at hand, that His baptism of suffering was to be the reconciliation; and He pressed forward to the cross, as one that could not rest till the discordance were removed--as one straitened in spirit till the great reconciliation should be effected. (H. Bonar, D. D.) The sense in which Christ was “ straitened” The manner in which our Saviour here expresses Himself, fully evinces that His heart was greatly set upon this important baptism. He was straitened till it was accomplished! The word sunechomaia, which is here translated “ straitened,” will admit of the following variations or different readings of our Lord’ s words: 1. How am I pressed together, and under a ponderous weight of imputed sin, and its dreadful concomitants! The Lord laid on Him, as the Head of the Church, and Surety of the covenant--the iniquities of us all. And He bore our sins in His own body on the tree. To be thus straitened was no way inconsistent with the final accomplishment of the work in which He stood engaged: for His work of suffering is over, and Jesus our Saviour is straitened no more!” His being thus straitened in His human views of the work, and in the feelings of human nature, does not suppose Him to be merely human, though it certainly proves Him to have been really human. Each nature operates in Him, according to its essential properties. The Divine nature knows all things; upholds all things; rules all things; and acts, by its presence, everywhere. The human nature was born, yielded obedience, died, and rose again. But it is the same person, the same Christ, that acts all these things; the one nature being His, no less than the other. 2. How am I straitened, may be read thus--How am I held fast in the grasp of almighty justice, and bound fast with cords (Psalms 118:27) of legal authority, and bonds of covenant engagements! Infinite love to His people, and to the honour of Deity as demanded by the person of the Father, bound Him fast in bonds, which secured eternal salvation. Justice held fast the bondsman, till all demands were fully paid. But when His baptism was accomplished, His person was free, and His people redeemed. Immanuel is straitened no more; He is held under judgment no more; when He became innocent (as the mediator of His people) or free from all sin, and had wrought all righteousness, justice could demand no more. He was delivered for our offences, and rose again for our justification. That baptism which so straitened our Lord, my brethren, hath made us for ever free indeed! O Thou immortal Deliverer of sin-bound captives, accept and maintain in Thy free people, perpetual hallelujahs to Thy redeeming name! 3. Again, How am I straitened, may be understood--how am I afflicted and distressed in mind. My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, said our agonizing Lord. O what love is here! He took our sorrows, He bore our stripes, He endured the curse for us; and thus He made our peace for ever. 4. Once more. How am I urged and constrained. For this sense of the word, see 2 Corinthians 5:14. Jesus was first bound with His people in union indissoluble. He could not bat feel the strongest desire for their redemption, whose persons and welfare lay so near His heart. He was urged by the desire of having the work accomplished. Justice called upon Him for her right; and the joy set before Him excited Him to His important baptism, out of which He knew He should surely emerge, and ascend to the enjoyment of the glory which He had with the Father before the world was. His baptism is now accomplished, and He is straitened no more! Who, then, shall bind the members, since the Head is free? (J. Stevens.) Christ’ s baptism of suffering The phraseology is by no means unusual which represents afflictions and trials as a baptism with which an individual must be baptized. In addressing the sons of Zebedee, Christ had asked, “ Can ye drink of the baptism that I drink of, and can ye be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?” In the Old Testament, moreover, the Psalmist speaks of “ entering into deep water,” which is manifestly the same imagery as that employed in the New. There is a peculiar beauty in this form of expression, when the party to whom it is applied is a righteous and God-fearing man. Baptism is the being dipped in the water, the being sprinkled with the water, and not the being drowned or completely overwhelmed. The form of expression denotes that, however tremendous the affliction may be, it shall not be finally destructive; nay, that it shall issue in addition to what has already been attained. For the word “ baptism,” in its very essence, has reference to some essential change, so that the man when baptized is presumed to enter on a state from which he had been previously excluded. It will be needful that you carry with you this general view of baptism, as rightly introductory to, and symbolical of, an alteration in circumstances or state, if you would enter fully into our Lord’ s meaning when He speaks in our text--“ But I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!” The whole structure of the sentence is in exact keeping with the common notion of baptism, seeing that a condition of greater freedom is evidently looked forward to by Christ, as certain to result from those waves of fire through which He had to pass. He laboured under a species of bondage prior to His agony and death; and the consequence of the agony and death would, He knew, be deliverance from this bondage. There is, therefore, peculiar fitness in His describing that agony and death as a baptism with which He should be baptized. A change was to take place; and for the bringing about of that change, immersion in a deep ocean of trouble was actually indispensable. I. CHRIST’ S AGONY AS A BAPTISM. Now, it was a stupendously great work which our blessed Lord undertook in His mission to earth. He had assumed human nature in union with the Divine, and thus stood in the attitude of the representative of mankind. He was no solitary and isolated being acting out for Himself the duties which, as a creature, He owed to the Creator; He was the Surety of the whole of our race; and in the very minutest circumstance of His life we have a close and important concern. He took our transgressions just as well as those of all others living on the earth, and cast them into the waves, and then they rolled on an immensity of wrath, and the innocent Surety bowed down, and trembled, and sank beneath the impetuous torrent. Not, however, that this is the only reason why our Lord’ s agony and passion may be characterized as a baptism. We have spoken to you of baptism as introductory to some alteration in state or condition. The word only applies to cases in which some change is presumed, as the result of immersion, to have taken place either literally or symbolically. But, with respect to the sufferings of Christ, they agree in every point with the declaration which limits the applicability of the phrase. The baptism of our Lord was such, that length of time was not needful in order to give effect to endurance. Each instant of our Surety’ s anguish, seeing that He was God as well as man, was equivalent to such countless ages of human punishment, that it was enough for justice that he should be immersed in the water, and then quickly emerge. This fallen creation, tottering under the curse, was then plunged into an abyss of wrath, and sparkled as a renovated thing so soon as He arose above its surface. The agony in Gethsemane was only for a brief season; the ignominy of the crucifixion was soon brought to a close; the imprisonment of the grave quickly gave way; and then He who “ bore our sins in His own body on the tree,” was literally baptized with the baptism of bitterness. The woe, infinite in extent, was but finite in duration--“ Thou wilt not leave My soul in hell; neither wilt Thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption.” He must descend into darkness, that the waves and the storms might go over Him. Anguish--He must endure it; contumely--He must submit to it; the hidings of His Father’ s face--even this, the bitterest and most grievous of all, must be encountered. But then this enduring, this wrestling, they were but for a brief season. He did not tarry in the waters, though it was needful He should be covered by them. And thus the emerging and immersion follow so closely one on the other, that you cannot better describe the great work than by saying of our Lord, that He had “ a baptism to be baptized with.” II. IN WHAT IT WAS THAT THE SAVIOUR WAS TILL THIS BAPTISM WAS . The work of redemption was not complete, and Christ therefore was “ straitened,” as unable to exhibit a finished deliverance. The Spirit was not yet poured out on His followers; and therefore was He “ straitened,” inasmuch as He could not preach the deep mysteries of His gospel. Conflict with Satan was not concluded, and therefore was he “ straitened” in His human nature, being still exposed to all his attacks. And, lastly, He had not yet won the headship over all things, and therefore was He “ straitened” by being circumscribed in Himself, in place of expanding into myriads. These, with like reasons, serve to explain, in a degree, the expression of our text; though we frankly confess that so awful and inscrutable is everything connected with the anguish of the Mediator, that we can only be said to catch glimmerings of a fulness which would overwhelm us, as we may suppose, with amazement and dread. III. LET US COMMEND TO YOU, IN , THE NOBLE DESIRE OF ST. PAUL. “ That I may know Christ, and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being made conformable unto His death.” There is to be wonderful analogy between the firstborn and His people, and we call on you to examine whether you find it realized in your own experience. Unto each of us there remains the baptism of death; a baptism in the truest and most literal sense; for we do but pass through the Jordan, and not stay in the waters. But are we “ straitened?” Do we feel ourselves “ straitened” till this baptism is accomplished? Let us have no evasion and no subterfuge. We are predestined to be conformed to the image of God; and as He was” straitened,” so, if we belong to Him, shall we also be “ straitened.” Who can be a real Christian and not feel “ straitened?” It is our very profession that we are but strangers and pilgrims below; that our home is above. There is “ a law in our members warring against the law of our mind--the good that we would we do not--the evil that we would not we do” --“ we bear about with us a body of sin and death” --“ we see only through a glass darkly” --“ it doth not yet appear what we shall be.” Are we not then “ straitened?” I would give my soul to heavenly music, to communings with the glorious beings of the invisible world; but the flesh clogs the spirit, weighs it, and presses it down, and thus am I “ straitened.” I would love God with all my heart, with all my soul, and with all my strength; abstracting myself from things that perish in the using, and centring myself on the joys that are laid up for the faithful; but my affections are seized on by the creature; the visible prevails over the invisible, and thus I am “ straitened.” I would mount even now on the wings of faith, realizing the promise that “ they who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount with wings as eagles.” I would walk to and fro through the inheritance of the saints, but the things of time hang lead on the pinion, and thus I am “ straitened.” I would have my thoughts by day and my dreams by night coloured by the pencil of Christian hope; but indwelling corruption throws a stain on the picture, and thus I am “ straitened.” (H. Melvill, B. D.) The Lamb of God hastening to the altar Christ’ s eagerness for the consummation of His sacrificial mission sublimely pathetic and heroic. I. The cross loomed up in His thought with increasing vividness and more absorbing interest toward the last. II. Eager for the suspense to be changed to certainty. For the Father’ s glory to be magnified. For the ending of the curse, and the beginning of the blessing. III. Eager to make the supreme proof of His love to sinners, and to see the result. “ I, if I be lifted up,” etc. IV. Eager to return by the gateway of the cross to the Father’ s bosom. (Homiletic Review.) Christ’ s longing for the completion of His work The great truth which the text exhibits, is the entire and intense devotedness of Christ to the completion of His mediatorial suffering, with a view to its subsequent and sublime results. I. We have to show, first, THAT THE SAVIOUR THE DEEP CONCERN WHICH THE TEXT FOR THE OF HIS WORK ON EARTH. 1. To say that He had not been beguiled or surprised into the work of our redemption would be saying but little, He had undertaken it intelligently, and with the distinct foresight of all the liabilities which it involved. He had looked into the darkest recesses of depravity in the human heart, and had sounded the lowest depths of human misery, before He came to expiate the one or relieve the other. 2. To say that He had not been forced into the great undertaking, would be saying but little. 3. To say that the ardour evinced in the text for the completion of His work was not of new or sudden growth, would be saying but little. A large and interesting class of Scriptures exist to prove that there never was a moment in which, even prior to His incarnation, He did not anticipate its completion with similar intensity of desire. 4. To say that He did not neglect the work which was given Him to do, would be saying but little. “ My meat,” said He, “ is to do the will of Him that sent Me, and to finish His work” --in other words, His devotedness was entire. “ For their sakes,” said He, “ I sanctify Myself” --and He did so. 5. And not only was His devotedness entire, including the consecration of all His powers, it was eager and intense, not allowing the unnecessary delay of a moment, nor admitting of the slightest increase. To say that four thousand years were allowed to elapse prior to His advent, is no objection whatever to this statement. It only reminds us that His devotedness, ardent as it was, was yet regulated by wisdom--that His zeal was not the zeal of improvident precipitation--that He did not sacrifice one interest to another. II. BUT WHY THIS EAGER AND INTENSE DESIRE TO REACH THE GOAL OF HIS ? Surely He was not in love with suffering! Let us proceed, secondly, to specify some of the reasons which account for it, and we shall find that it was not only explicable and justifiable, but infinitely necessary--well for a guilty world that His zeal was not a particle less. 1. For what? He had undertaken to minister to the relief of a world groaning in its misery--and all that misery was before Him. He did not--by necessity of nature He could not--content Himself, as we do, with vague impressions of human woe. He saw it with a distinctness and felt it with a power which made it all His own. He felt that its every sigh and its every struggle was, in effect, a distinct appeal that He would hasten the work of deliverance, and He was straitened until the work was accomplished. 2. But there was more than misery to be remedied--there was guilt, the cause of it all--and that He had undertaken to atone for. He knew the history of sin. 3. But more still There was more than the misery of man to be remedied--more than the rights of justice to be satisfied; there was the character of God to be embodied and made manifest as the God of love--and He had undertaken that. And hence the anxiety of Christ to perform the act which should prove it. For to wipe off every stain from the character of God, and to present it in its real glory, infinitely outweighed with Him every ether consideration. 4. And this reminds us of another reason to account for His eagerness to reach the cross--the glory which should accrue to God in the salvation of mankind. III. But we have to show, thirdly, THAT THOUGH THE GREAT CRISIS IS PASSED, THE CONCERN OF CHRIST FOR THE OF MAN IS . True, as far as that concern involved suffering it has ceased. 1. Would you admit that a person discovered urgency for an object if he lost not a moment in arranging for its attainment? No sooner had the Saviour emerged from the tomb than He summoned His disciples, and began to prepare them for their missions to the ends of the earth. 2. Does a person discover intense concern for an object, if he consecrates all his power to its attainment? The Saviour did this. As soon as He could say in His mediatorial capacity, “ All power is mine,” He added, “ Go preach the gospel to every creature.” 3. Does a person discover intense concern for an object if he not only consecrates all his own power to it, but if the first use which he makes of that power be to secure and employ the agency of others? In the loftiest sense, the Saviour did this. The first agency which He engaged after He ascended the mediatorial throne was that of the Holy Spirit--the great agent of the universe. 4. Does a person discover intense concern for an object, if he commands and lays under tribute the instrumentality of every one belonging to him for its attainment? 5. But speak we of the fact that Christ has thus laid all the members of His Church under solemn obligation, as a proof of His unabated solicitude for human salvation; from the concluding Book of Scripture, the Book of the Revelation, there is reason to believe that He has engaged the agency of every angel in heaven for the same object. 6. “ But why this continued solicitude on the part of Christ?” it may be asked. Has not His great sacrifice been not only offered, but accepted? and is He not now exalted in consequence to the right hand of God?” Yes; but His concern relates now to the proclamation of His atoning sacrifice throughout the world, and to the salvation of those who rely on it. Having provided the means of salvation, He is now for pressing on to the end. IV. Brethren, WHAT SHOULD BE THE OF THIS SUBJECT? If the devotedness of Christ to the salvation of man was such that He not only agonized on the cross, but even agonized for it, and if His Divine solicitude be still undiminished--then, surely, the Christian cannot render less than entire devotedness to the same object. Accordingly, the Saviour claims every Christian here for Himself. Your character is to be a reproduction of the character of Christ. The disinterestedness which appeared in Christ is to reappear in you. The tenderness of Christ--His untold solicitude for human souls--is to live over again in your tones of entreaty, your wrestling prayers for their salvation. The blood of the cross itself is, in a sense, to stream forth again in your tears of anguish, your voluntary and vicarious self-sacrifice to draw men to Christ. 2. But if we thus sympathize with Christ, we shall see the importance of everything calculated to promote the object of His solicitude. Viewed in connection with these objects, nothing we do is insignificant--an act apparently trivial, a word, a look, acquires a character of infinite moment. 3. But this reminds us, next, that if we truly sympathize with Christ, we shall not be satisfied with merely providing the means of usefulness, or with putting them into action--we shall be deeply anxious to see the end of all such means accomplished. The Saviour was not only straitened till He had reached the cross--till He had provided salvation; all the solicitude which He then felt for the means, He now feels for the end. 4. But this subject reminds us, brethren, finally, that if we truly sympathize with Christ, we shall be conscious of deep humiliation at our past apathy, and of holy impatience and concern to see the designs of His death realized in the salvation of our fellow-men. And ask we for motives to this? Is it nothing that Christ expects it? Is it nothing that He has turned His whole self into a sacrifice, compared with which nothing else deserves the name? and that He has devolved it on us to multiply as far as we can the copies of His character in our own? Is it nothing, again, that others have felt this? Yes; the duty is not only obligatory but practicable, for others have felt it. And should it not urge our languid movements into zealous activity when we reflect that “ the time is short” ? 5. And achieved it shall be. How should the prospect quicken our activity and inflame our desire! To think that the scene of the Saviour’ s humiliation shall be the scene of His ultimate triumph. (J. Harris, D. D.) The shadow of the coming cross Those who maintain that the crucifixion was an afterthought in the mind of Christ: that no vision of it clouded His pathway, and no place was assigned for it when He began first to preach and to teach, have read those narratives to very little purpose. Holman Hunt, the modern “ evangelist of art,” was much nearer the truth on this matter when he painted his celebrated picture, “ The Shadow of Death,” in which he clearly reveals his opinion that, whilst yet a horny-handed workman in the obscure carpenter’ s shop at Nazareth, making yokes and ploughs for the husbandmen of Galilee, the shadow of the coming cross fell upon the pathway of Christ, and gave an unwonted solemnity to a young manhood, in all else so natural. (J. Cuttell.) Luke 12:51-53 Suppose ye that I am come to give peace on earth?--Strife engendered by the gospel We try to soften this terrible prophecy by our comments. As if we could explain facts which are notorious to every reader of history, to every one who has had experience of what is passing in his own time I As if we could convince any reasonable persons that there have not been, that there are not, these strifes in families; that the gospel of Christ has not provoked them, and does not provoke them still t Or as if our Lord, supposing He is the Prince of Peace, as we say He is, wanted our help to vindicate Him from the charge of being the Author of war t Surely we may trust Him with His own character. All that is required of us is, that we should let His words come to us in the fulness of their power and their condemnation. Goodness and gentleness do stir up what is opposed to them in us; we know that they do. Our sectarian animosities are kindled by the message of God’ s goodwill to men; we know that they are. Can we not understand then, how, coming among a set of hostile factions, which abhorred one another, but observed a conventional decency in their strife, Christ stirred up their rage to its very depths? Cannot we understand how the fury of both burned for awhile against Him--a hollow truce being established between them by the presence of a common enemy? Did it not revenge itself for that restraint afterwards? Did not every hearth and household become a battle-field in that war? This was the state of Jerusalem, as its own historian describes it in the latter days. He can give us the narrative calmly, Jew though He was. When Jesus looked forward to it, He was straitened with agony. He felt in every fibre of His own being what was coming upon His land. There may have been moments when the evil spirit thrust the thought full upon Him: “ Would it not be better to shrink from Thy task? If this is the effect of the peace which Thou proclaimest, why not let them welter on without any announcement of God’ s kingdom?” Such suggestions have been continually made to His followers, when they have spoken of peace, and when those to whom they have spoken have made them ready for the battle. If He was tempted in all points like them, He cannot have been free from this kind of anguish, Nor will He have overcome the tempter with any other weapons than those with which He has furnished them. He must have said, for Himself and for them, “ My work is with the Lord, and My judgment with My God. In His own time My Father will accomplish His purpose. The hollow alliances of sects will end in more fierce and frantic war. But through that war wilt come the discovery of the peace which passeth understanding, the peace which lasts in the midst of the world’ s tribulations; that peace will be established through the whole creation.” (F. D. Maurice, M. A.) Religious divisions I. Let us inquire, then, into THE WITH REGARD TO THE EFFECTS OR OF THE MISSION OF CHRIST, Christ’ s mission into our world has two sets of effects. There are its effects upon the Christian believer, and its effects upon human society. 1. There are its effects upon the true believer of the gospel. These are manifold and great. (1) Let us take, in the first place, the effect upon the believer in respect of his relation to God. That effect is peace. Our text was never meant to deny it. “ We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” But such as are in Him have “ peace from God the Father.” He gives them that peace. “ Peace,” He has said, “ I leave with you; My peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.” (2) Consider, in the second place, the effect upon the believer as regards his own dispositions and feelings. Here also it is peace. “ The fruit of the Spirit is peace.” “ The kingdom of God is righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.” Christ came to take the bitterness and enmity out of our hearts, and to reconcile us to God. (3) In the third place, attend to the effect upon the believer with reference to his fellow-believers. Again the effect is peace. He is united to them in love. (4) Notice, lastly, the effect upon the believer with reference to them that are without. True it is that Christ came to draw a people for Himself out of the world. “ Come out from among them, and be ye separate,” is indeed His call to every sinner to whom the gospel is preached. Let us go on to consider its effects upon human society. 2. The effects, or consequences upon human society may be divided into ultimate and immediate. (1) Those that are ultimate. They are of the happiest kind. The description in the passage from which our text is taken does not suit them at all. Scripture pourtrays them in most attractive terms. “ The mountains,” we are told, “ shall bring peace to the people, and the little hills, by righteousness.” “ He shall come down like rain upon the mown grass; as showers that water the earth. In His days shall the righteous flourish, and abundance of peace, so long as the moon endureth” (Psalms 72:3; Psalms 72:6-7; Psalms 72:10-11; Psalms 72:17; Isaiah 2:4; Isaiah 11:6-10). The prediction of the angels shall be verified, and on earth there shall be peace. (2) The immediate consequences. When we look into these, far different scenes present themselves. But we must distinguish. (a) An immediate consequence of the mission of Jesus is the very opposite of division. Wicked confederacies are occasioned by it. “ The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the Lord, and against His Anointed, saying, Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us.” Pharisees and Sadducees cry together, “ Away with Him; crucify Him.” Herod and Pontius Pilate join hands over His grave. (b) But, secondly, and to come at last to the doctrine of the text, division and strife among men are also immediate results of the mission of our Lord. II. Having thus arrived at the subject which the text brings before us, and having ascertained what place, among the effects of Christ’ s mission, belongs to that particular effect of it which we have now to consider, we go on to advert to SOME OF THE FEUDS AND BROILS WHICH JESUS , The schisms and dissentions which our Lord sends on the earth may be classified. 1. In families. An example is furnished in the family circle of Jesus Himself. His brethren, we are told, did not believe in Him (John 7:1-10). His own kinsmen took umbrage at His doctrine and claims. An instance of alienation in its earliest stage occurs in the case of the man who was born blind (John 9:1-41.). 2. Christ makes strife among friends and companions. An instance occurred in the case of Himself and His disciples (John 6:60-66). Then, again, what a breach did Christ make between Saul of Tarsus and the allies at Damascus, to whom the former had letters from the authorities in Jerusalem. We are told that they took counsel to kill Him, watching the gates day and night (Acts 9:19-24). 3. Christ makes strife in the general community. There are many examples of this. Paul’ s preaching at Antioch in Pisidia (Acts 13:42-50; Acts 18:12-17; Acts 19:23-34). 4. Christ sends division into the visible Church. Take the following practical illustrations of the fact. (1) There is the controversy which arose at the time of the feast of tabernacles, as recorded (John 7:40-53). (2) We have the history of the labours of Paul and Barnabas at Iconium Acts 14:1-7). (3) Next, let us attend the great apostle to Corinth, and consider his eventful sojourn there. The record is in Acts 18:1; Acts 18:4-8, “ After these things Paul departed from Athens, and came to Corinth.” “ And he reasoned in the synagogue every Sabbath, and persuaded the Jews and the Greeks. And when Silas and Timotheus were come from Macedonia, Paul was pressed in the spirit, and testified to the Jews that Jesus was Christ. And when they opposed themselves, and blasphemed, he shook his raiment, and said unto them, Your blood be upon your own heads; I am clean: from henceforth I will go unto the Gentiles. And he departed thence, and entered into a certain man’ s house, named Justus, one that worshipped God, whose house joined hard to the synagogue. And Crispus, the chief ruler of the synagogue, believed on the Lord with all his house; and many of the Corinthians hearing believed, and were baptized.” What was it that fell out at Corinth on this occasion? There was a disruption of the Church. Paul, as his manner ever was, began by addressing himself to those to whom belonged ,, the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises.” A disruption ensued, as we have said. (4) Let us attend the Apostle of the Gentiles once more, and consider what befel during his ministry at Ephesus:--“ And it came to pass, that while Apollos was at Corinth, Paul having passed through the upper coasts, came to Ephesus.” “ And he went into the synagogue, and spake boldly for the space of three months, disputing and persuading the things concerning the kingdom of God. But when divers were hardened, and believed not, but spake evil of that way before the multitude, he departed from them, and separated the disciples, disputing dally in the school of one Tyrannus. And this continued by the space of two years; so that all they which dwelt in Asia heard the word of the Lord Jesus, both Jews and Greeks (Acts 19:1; Acts 19:8-12; Acts 19:18-20). III. Thus have we examined the successive schisms and feuds that sacred history shows to have arisen from the mission of our Lord. It is now time that we shortly advert to THE PROPER CAUSES TO WHICH THESE ARE TO BE TRACED. We have just said that Paul was not blameworthy in regard to the divisions with which he had to do. Although, however, Paul did not do wrong, it by no means follows that wrong was not done. Strife and separation, especially in the worship and service of God, are not good, and blame must lie somewhere on account of them. Where, then, ought the blame to be laid? We shall specify some causes which reason and Scripture point to, as lying at the foundation of all religious strife, and you will then be better able to judge in the distribution of the blame. 1. There is the existence of sin. “ From whence come wars and fightings among you? Come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members?” The first, the greatest, and the worst division of all, was produced by sin. It was sin that set God and man at variance. Next came division between man and his fellow, and this was the native effect of sin. The fatal schism between Cain and his brother, had sin at the root of it. Sin must create discord. There never will be peace in the world or in the Church, until it is cast out. 2. There is Satan’ s rule in the world. Satan, my brethren, has his dark kingdom amongst us. And is he the friend of peace? Delighting in strife tot its own sake, he delights in it also as an instrument of gratifying his malice against Christ, and of injuring the kingdom of Christ. We say, then, that the rule of the crafty god of this world is a cause, and a prime one, of the divisions that take place. 3. There is the enmity of the wicked. Is it not true that the Church of God everywhere is hated by the world? This hatred is not unfruitful. It has raised persecutions of every form; and its emissaries have gone forth, alas! too seldom in vain, to create envyings, strifes, heresies, schisms in the Church 1 IV. It remains to say somewhat on THE BETWEEN THE WHICH ARE FOUND TO BE OF CHRIST’ S MISSION ON EARTH, AND THOSE RESULTS WHICH HAVE BEEN . We have already adverted to the nature of the latter, and given specimens of the glowing language of Scripture concerning them. To the former they bear no resemblance--they are not only different--they are contrary. But God, who makes all things helpful to His designs, and the very mischiefs that flow from sin, the world, and the devil, and are meant to thwart Him, conducive to the execution of His plans, has established an important relation between the two. 1. Present divisions will enhance the enjoyment of the final unity and peace. The sweetness of pleasure is increased by the recollection of pain that preceded it. The memory of disease heightens the relish of health. 2. Divisions now prepare the way for the peace and unity that are to come. Divisions testify of the existence of evils of which they are the natural fruits. By their means the attention of the Church is turned to these evils and fixed down upon them. And believers will err much if they seek to heal divisions in any other way. Let them beware of patching up a premature peace. The outward form of unity is a mockery, and the maintenance of it a hypocrisy and a sin, when unity of heart and principle does not exist. It is only a pernicious semblance of peace that can be reached, so long as the roots of discord and schism are not pulled up. (A. Gray.) Variance caused by the gospel Among a low caste people at Ellenpur near Gondah in Northern India, there has been a great struggle to draw the converts back into heathenism. The following case, as described by Mr. B. H. Badeley, an American missionary, we give as an illustration. In the jungle lived a man and his wife who had several children, and a young girl eighteen years of age. This uneducated village girl was very brave in her endurance of persecution for Christ’ s sake. She had learned to love the Saviour by attending the services at the house of the native preacher and noticing the conduct of his wife. Several months before her baptism she told her relatives that it was her purpose to become a Christian; but they would not hear of it, and threatened to kill her if she dared to take such a step. She continued, however, to attend the preaching, and the Lord Jesus drew her towards Himself. One Sunday after the service, her relatives came in a body to take her away. Her infuriated mother fell upon her, and made several attempts to harm her, but was prevented. The native teacher told the people that if the girl wished to go with them they could take her, but if she chose to stay among the Christian families she was at liberty to do so. They then used every effort to make her willing to go, promising her fine clothes, jewels, presents, and rich food, but in vain. They besought her not to disgrace them by becoming a Christian, but she only answered that she had become a Christian in heart and could not change. At last, on their promising not to do her any harm, the native preacher, fearing a disturbance, let her go. Then they carried her to another village some miles away, shut her up, threatened to kill her, endeavoured to change her purpose by incantations; but all in vain: she remained firm. At last they decided to give her up, and brought her to the native preacher, saying: “ Here, take her; we can do nothing with her.” Shortly after this we had the pleasure of baptizing her. Luke 12:54-57 How is it that ye do not discern this time?--Signs of the times I. THE ASPECT OF OUR OWN AGE. 1. The times are sadly darkened with superstition. 2. A parching wind of unbelief is sweeping over the Churches. 3. Religious apathy abounds. The remedies for this are-- (1) Prayer. (2) Personal activity. 4. There is an evident withdrawal of the Holy Ghost from this land. The earth has her harvest, but where is the harvest of the Church. Where are revivals now? The Spirit is grieved, and is gone from the Church; and why is it? Have Christian men become worldly? It is true that you can scarcely tell a Christian from a worldling, nowadays? O for more holiness, then; this is the demand which the times make upon us. Ye men of God, be holy, yea, be ye perfect even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect. Has unbelief restrained the dew and rain of the Spirit? Is it true that He cannot do many mighty works among us because of our unbelief? O for more faith, then. Put up the prayer, “ Lord, increase our faith,” and rest not day nor night till the prayer be heard. II. Now, I have to use the text in reference to THE TIMES WITHIN US. There is a little world within our bosom, which has its winds and its clouds, and if we are wise we shall watch. First, I shall speak to believers. Believers, there are times with you when the cloud rises out of the west, and straightway ye say, There cometh a shower. Times of refreshing-you have had them; look back upon them, they are choice memories. You must have the Spirit of God, or how can you live? Much more, how can you bring forth fruit unto perfection? Watch for these showers, then, and when they come, use them. Open your heart, as the earth opens her furrows after a long drought, when there are great gaping cracks in the soil ready to drink in the shower. Let your heart be receptive of the Divine influence. Wait upon the Lord, and when the Lord comes to bless you, be like Gideon’ s fleece, ready to imbibe and retain the dew, till you are full of it. Believers, we have to speak to you also about spiritual drought, for you have such seasons, “ Ye see the south wind blow, and ye say, There will be heat; and it cometh to pass.” You have your droughty times--at least, I have mine. They may be sent in chastisement. We do not value the blessing of the Spirit enough, and so it is withdrawn. Sometimes they may be intended to try our faith, to see whether we can strike our roots deep down into rivers of waters which never dry, and tap the eternal springs which lie beneath, and yield not to the summer’ s drought. Perhaps our times of drought are sent to drive us to our God, for when the means of grace fail us, and even the Word no longer comforts us, we may fly to the Lord Himself, and drink at the well-head. Perhaps, however, this drought has been occasioned by ourselves. Worldliness is a south wind, which soon brings a parching condition upon the spirits of men. My last and most solemn work is now to come. I have to speak to sinners. Ungodly men are fools before God, but they are very often the reverse of fools in common life. They know what weather there will be, they can read the signals of the skies. Now I ask them to use the wit they have, and of themselves judge that which is right. If you lived in Palestine, when you saw a cloud you would expect a shower. When you see sin, do you not expect punishment? (C. H.Spurgeon.) Sign of a coming shower Miss Rogers, in her “ Domestic Life in Palestine,” says:--At Haifa, I was sitting one day in the oriel window at the British consulate, with the Rev. Dr. Bowen (the late lamented bishop of Sierra Leone); black clouds came travelling quickly from the west over the lead-coloured sea. Dr. Bowen observed, in the words of Christ, “ When ye see a cloud rise out of the west, straightway ye say, There cometh a shower; and so it is.” He had scarcely uttered the words, when the clouds spread, and fell in a tremendous torrent; the sea swelled, and rolled heavily to the shore; the ships looked as if they would break away from their anchors, and loud peals of thunder made the casemented recess in which we sat tremble violently. Why even of yourselves Judge ye not what is right?--Christ appealing to the man within the man To judge what is right, in the matter here under notice, is to form a right conclusion as to the question of questions, “ What think ye of Christ?” And, you observe, our Lord speaks of a possibility of drawing the true answer, not from “ evidences” commonly so called, not from “ signs of the times,” not from miracles, not from proofs of power exhibited to the senses, but from within--from something inside the man, saying to him, God is here. Adistinction is made in the text between a discernment of truth by “ signs,” and a judgment upon it exercised from within. It is quite clear that the words “ of yourselves” express something more intimate, more essential to the man, than that action of the mind upon external evidences for the want of which He has just reproved them. The “ signs” are clear, He says, but you ought not to want them. There is that in you which ought to have “ judged what is right,” as to Me and My gospel, without waiting for other evidence of wonder or sign. Brethren, there is something in us to which Jesus Christ appeals, besides the mere intellect. It is quite clear that Jesus Christ, when He was upon earth, placed not one part but the whole of the man in the judgment-seat before which He pleaded. If He had been satisfied with a formal assent to His revelation; if His object had been to reckon His followers by millions, and to cover the inhabited world with churches, without further question as to the state of hearts towards God, or as to the character of lives in the view of eternity; He might have said, “ How is it that, with evidence so conclusive, ye do not discern this time?” but He would never have gone on to say, “ Yea, and why even of yourselves judge ye not what is right?” This addresses that compound thing, that complex being, of which intellect is but one element, and not the noblest. Jesus Christ stands upon earth, and, seeing us as we are, as such speaks to us. When He has gained our first attention, if so it be, by miracles, He goes on to reason with us concerning ourselves. He reminds us that there is that in us which makes us first rebels against duty, and then cowards before conscience; rovers in pursuit of satisfactions which come not, and slaves in the prospect of inevitable death. He deals with us as persons not all intellect; persons whose life is lived in many homes and many regions, of thought and feeling, of memory and hope, of companionship and affection, making it indispensable that one who comes to us with an effectual treatment of our actual condition should not only convince our understandings as to his claims and his credentials, but also (and much more) draw our hearts towards himself as the very rest and home and satisfaction of our being. And as this is His aim, so this is His method. He stands here in the midst of us, and His first words are, “ When ye pray, say, Our Father.” Say it, whosoever you be, and whatsoever. It is a revelation, pure and simple--lie brings it to us out of the great heaven--and yet He is able to appeal to us, His audience, as to the self-evidencing character of this which He says. “ Even of yourselves,” He says, judge what I say. Is it not good? is it not true? is it not verified within? And so of the rest. “ Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” Does not He who thus speaks bring His own witness with Him? Well must lie know us. “ Never man spake like this man.” Try whether this word, which is so good, so pure, so lovely, has not, in the very being so, its evidence of Deity in the speaker. Is there not here the very knowledge of the Omniscient? Is there not here that very Fountain of goodness, whose thoughts are at once ours and not ours? Is not this what I mean by God? Shall I not rest and nestle at once under the shadow of this wing? (Dean Vaughan.) The meanness and falseness of the common excuses for irreligion and immorality These words appear, by the parallel places in the other evangelists, to have been originally designed against those amongst the Jews, who from dislike of the strictness of our blessed Lord’ s morality, pretended ignorance of His Divine mission, after He had given abundant proofs of it; when yet, without any separate proofs of it at all, the main things which He taught carried their own evidence along with them, and every man’ s heart bore witness to their truth. “ The Pharisees came forth, with the Sadducees also, tempting Him, and sought of Him a sign from heaven” (Matthew 16:1; Mark 8:11). But He, with no less dignity than prudence, refused to gratify a curiosity, both ill-meaning and endless; and “ sighing deeply in His spirit,” as St. Mark informs us, at this perverse disposition of theirs; told them, with a kind, because needful, severity of speech, where the defect lay. “ A wicked and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign” : your sinful inclinations and lives, not the want or the desire of sufficient evidence, prompt you to this demand: and “ verily I say unto you, there shall be no sign given,” no such visible manifestation of Divine glory as you insolently require, vouchsafed “ to this generation:” nor is it requisite. “ When ye see a cloud rise out of the west, straightway ye say, there cometh a shower, and so it is. And when ye see the south wind blow, ye say there will be heat, and it cometh to pass. Ye hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky and of the earth: but how is it that ye do not discern this time?” That is: on other occasions you appear very able to judge of things by the proper indications of them. How can you then, with any colour of sincerity, pretend, that amidst so many prophecies fulfilled, and so many miracles performed, you have not, after all, sufficient conviction, that this is the season when the Messiah should appear, and that I am He? Nay, as to the principal part of My doctrine, which is the real cause of your antipathy to the whole; as to the great precepts of pure religion and uniform virtue, and your need of repentance and faith in God’ s mercy; what occasion is there for any farther demonstrations of them, than your own hearts, if honestly consulted, will not fail to afford? “ Yea, and why even of yourselves judge ye not what is right?” Now this method of reasoning is equally applicable to unbelievers and cavillers in all ages. It is in vain for them to invent new difficulties, or magnify old ones, concerning the authority of our religion; while the reason of things, the truth of facts, and the nature of God and man continue to exhibit so full proof of those fundamental articles of it, the eternal obligation of moral duties, the sinfulness of every one’ s nature and life, the necessity of repentance, and humble application for pardon and grace. And, since the true quarrel of such persons is against these doctrines, and these cannot be shaken; they had much better reconcile themselves to the whole, than make fruitless attacks upon one part; in which, if they were to succeed (as they never will), they would, in point of argument, be almost as far from their favourite scheme, of liberty to do what they please, and think highly of themselves notwithstanding, as they were before. For the whole of their case is: they perplex things on purpose, in order to complain that they are not clear: walk with their eyes wilfully shut, and then insist that they cannot be blamed if they stumble, for it is quite dark, and they do not see a step of their way. For the confirmation of this, let us take a view of the fundamental parts of practical religion--those which men are most apt to fail in--and see which of them all any one can fairly say he was ignorant of, or doubtful about, and had not the means of sufficient light to direct his steps. 1. To begin with the belief and worship of Almighty God. Is not every man capable of seeing, let him be ever so little acquainted with nature, that the heavens and the earth, the order of the seasons, the returns of day and night, the whole frame of things in general, is full of use and beauty; and must be the work of amazing power, wisdom, and goodness? And what He hath made, no doubt but He governs and superintends. This is the plain obvious account of things, that one should think must almost offer itself of course to every common mind, without any learning at all; and the deepest learning gives it the strongest confirmation. And what, then, hath any one to plead for himself, if he lives regardless of Him “ in whom he lives, and moves, and hath his being” ; without gratitude to His bounty. 2. Let us now proceed to the duties which we owe to our fellow-creatures. The sense of these, because they are of more immediate importance to the good of society, God hath imprinted with greater strength on our minds than even that of our obligations to Himself. As it must be the Will of Him, who is so just and good to us all, that we should be just and good to one another, and from this principle, as the root, every branch of right behaviour springs; so He hath planted in our hearts a natural love of equity, a natural feeling of kind affection; a natural conscience, applauding us when we act according to these dispositions, condemning us when we violate them; and seldom do we deserve its reproaches, but either at the time, or soon after, we undergo them. 3. The third part of our duty is the government of ourselves, according to the rules of sobriety, temperance, and chastity. Now who doth not know, that the observance of these virtues is right and fit: that the violation of them is prejudical to the reason, the health, the reputation, the fortunes, the families of men, and introduces riot and madness, confusion and misery into the world? 4. But further yet: Doth not every man know in his conscience, that, plain as his duties to God, his fellow-creatures, and himself are, he hath more or less transgressed them all; that he hath a nature continually prone to transgression; that, therefore, he needs both pardon for what is past, and assistance for the time to come; and that he can have neither but through God’ s undeserved mercy? Upon the whole, since most of the main branches of our duty are thus obvious to our understandings of themselves; and all of them are constantly taught us, by the holy scripture, by the laws of our country, by the opinion and consent of the wisest and best of mankind, by the instructions of persons appointed for that purpose; what account do we imagine we shall possibly be able to give, why religion, so easily apprehended, is so little practised by us! If any doubt of the reality of the command; the reason is, that they desire to doubt: and how can we flatter ourselves that anything is excusable, which proceeds from a disposition of mind so grossly and wilfully wrong? Suppose a servant of ours had purposely kept out of the way of receiving our orders, or invented perplexities and cavils about the meaning of them, or the certainty of our having delivered them, because he had no mind to obey them: would that justify him? Should we not immediately tell him, that what he easily might and clearly ought to have known and understood, he was inexcusable, if he would not know and understand? And what must we think of our great Master in heaven, if we try to impose on Him with devices and tricks, that will not pass amongst ourselves? But in reality men have not this excuse, if it were one. They do know how they ought to behave; they do know that they ought “ to live soberly, righteously, and godly in this world, looking for” the recompences of another; and they well know in the main what particulars this obligation comprehends; how grievously they have fallen short of them, and what need they have to repent and humbly beg forgiveness and strength, through Him who hath procured us a title to both. We can easily deceive ourselves; we can make specious pleas one to another for our failings; which the occasion that we have for allowances in our turn incline us often to look upon very favourably in our neighbours. But, in the sight of God, supposing a thing incumbent on us, and supposing it easily known to be so; what can be said to the purpose why we did not perform it? “ We were poor and ignorant.” But we were not, or we needed not to have been, ignorant in this particular. “ We were suspicious and doubtful.” But our doubts were affected, not real; or partial, not honest and upright. Still there are some, especially in some circumstances, who are to a much greater degree excusable for the sins they are guilty of than others. But yet all excuse is not a justification; and will least of all prove such to those who, instead of endeavouring to act right, set themselves to contrive reasons why their acting wrong should be dispensed with. It is true, the very best have their faults, and faults not indulged shall be forgiven us; if we are truly sorry for them, and earnestly apply to God’ s mercy through Christ for pardon, and carefully watch against the return of them. (T. Secker.) Luke 12:58-59 When thou goest with thine adversary Agreeing with the adversary This solemn exhortation of our Lord’ s may be viewed in different points of light, as intended to subserve various purposes, both in civil and religious life. 1. It may refer to the case of debtor and creditor If in a way of trade, or for the support of ourselves and families, we owe anything to any man, the debt ought to be honourably paid, or at least compounded to the satisfaction of the creditor, lest, if he proceed to extremities, we suffer by our delays, and fall victims to our own stubbornness and obstinacy. The apostle’ s command is, that we Should owe no man anything, but love one another, and render to all their dues. 2. The text may refer to persons offended and injured, and those especially on whom the offence or injury may justly be charged. 3. If not originally intended, the text may at least be applied to the case of a sinner, who is exposed to the displeasure of an offended and justly incensed God. I. Observe WHAT IS IMPLIED IN OUR WITH OUR MAKER, UNDER THE IDEA OF AN . 1. In order to our coming to an agreement with our holy and righteous Adversary, we must be thoroughly sensible of our alienation from God, of the enmity of our hearts against Him, and be led to view with deep distress the breach and the separation which sin has made. Mourning and humiliation are the forerunners of joy and exaltation, and a lively hope arises out of holy despair. 2. Being thus awakened and convinced, the eye of faith must be directed to the Saviour, who is the great peace-maker betwixt God and us. Jesus is both the wisdom of God, and the power of God, the man of His right hand, whom He hath made strong for Himself. Hence the language of God to the sinner is, “ Let him take hold of My strength, that he may make peace with Me; and he shall make peace with Me” (Isaiah 27:5). 3. The eye of faith being fixed upon the Saviour, as the only medium of reconciliation, we must next implore forgiveness and acceptance in the sight of God. II. THE TIME AND MANNER IN WHICH WE ARE TO AGREE WITH OUR AND . 1. It must be done “ quickly,” without delay, and “ whilst thou art in the way with Him.” The utmost solicitude is required in a matter of such high importance. 2. Reconciliation with God must be sought immediately; because the present opportunity is the most favourable. Now thou art “ in the way with Him,” in the way of obtaining mercy, and of finding favour in His sight. Now that He affords us means of grace, and especially when He gives us a disposition to improve them, it becomes us to hearken to the first calls of His Word, and fall in with the first motions of His Spirit. III. Briefly notice THE MOTIVES BY WHICH THE IS . 1. If this agreement be not speedily effected; He that was an adversary will remain an adversary still; and of all enemies God is the most powerful, and the most dreadful. In His favour is life, and His loving-kindness is better than life; His displeasure therefore is worse than death, even in its most hideous and terrific forms. 2. This awful Adversary will deliver over the incorrigible to the “ Judge,” to whom all judgment is committed, and whose office it is to pass the final and irrevocable sentence. Before Him shall be gathered all nations, and we must all appear before the judgment-seat of Christ, to receive according to the deeds done in the body, whether they be good or whether they be evil. Our God shall come, and shall not keep silence: a fire shall devour before Him, and it shall be very tempestuous round about Him. 3. The Judge having passed sentence on the offender, will deliver him to the “ officer” whose business it is to carry the sentence into full effect. In the last great day the angels will be employed in gathering together the elect from the four winds of heaven, in gathering the wheat into the garner, and binding up the tares in bundles to burn them with unquenchable fire. 4. The officer will “ cast into prison,” where the evil angels are already reserved in chains of darkness unto the judgment of the great day, and where the disembodied spirits of wicked men are still waiting their final Jude 1:6; 1 Peter 3:19). (B. Beddome, M. A.) The controversy between man and God Here is a high controversy between man and God. This is not one of those disputes in which plaintiff and defendant are working one against the other with all those subtleties and chicaneries which, in the hands of ingenious advocates, can place the best rights in peril. The court is one in which every one of us is quite sure of justice, and nevertheless in which every one of us is quite sure of condemnation. Come, and let us weigh well the excellence of the counsel which would urge us to an immediate endeavour to the settlement of our quarrel, and that, too, on the principle that if our adversary once bring us before the judge there will be no alternative to our being “ cast into prison,” and our remaining there till we have “ paid the last mite.” Now, when you have once given a spiritual character to the passage before us--when, that is, you have abstracted your thoughts from litigation in a mere human court, and settled that our Lord was speaking of a controversy between man and God--it will become evident that our text announces the chief truths both of the law and of the gospel; of the law which brings us in as guilty, of the gospel which proposes to us a method of deliverance from our adversary whilst we are yet “ in the way.” The position of every one of us--whether he be duly alive to it or not--is that position which gives him God for his adversary. But, still further, he is actually on the way with this adversary--on the road with him, to bring the cause before the magistrate. For this of which we affirm that it could hardly take place, except the party were all awake to his condition of having some cause about to come on at a human tribunal, holds good of every living man who (whether he heed it or not) is daily drawing nearer to the judgment-seat of Christ. So that there is the most thorough accuracy in the description of our text, when applied without exception to every child of man. It is not in this life that he will be brought to that trial by which his state for eternity shall be unalterably fixed; but he is on his way to the trial. Let him walk what path he will out of the many which present themselves to the steps of wandering man, it is a path which inevitably conducts him direct to the court and to the bar. He may swerve from all that is right; he may change the precise line, and be continually deviating to the one side or the other; but he is always advancing to the dreaded tribunal, where on His throne of light sits the anointed Judge of humankind; for there is no escape from this universal enactment--“ It is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment.” Neither in all these wanderings--wanderings which must lead to the same termination--is there any escaping, even for a solitary moment, from the adversary whom our sins have called up. Go what winding or intricate way you may towards the court in which you have been cited to appear, as though it were your own shadow inseparable from you whilst there is nothing to interrupt the fierce blaze of the sun, the adversary is with you that you may not suddenly make your way to the bar, and there find no accuser. Oh, awful condition of every one of us l And we cannot forbear from dwelling for a moment on one peculiar word in the text, the peculiarity of which may have escaped your attention; that is, the word “ hale.” “ Lest he hale thee to the judge.” The word implies the being dragged violently, by main force. Up to this word the description is almost that of two parties, who though they have a dispute are walking quietly together, as if they had agreed to refer it to the judge, and to abstain in the meanwhile from any altercation. There is no evidence of anything like struggle between the two; the accuser is using no violence with the accused. But at this word there passes a total change over the picture; as though on the very threshold of the judgment-hall, just when the two were about to enter, the accused drew affrightedly back--made desperate resistance--but seized as in an iron grasp by his accuser, were thrown down before the judge. May not this indicate what otherwise we have no means of positively asserting--that often at the very last moment of a life of worldliness and indifference; aye, and when, so far as bystanders can judge, the departing man is going off the scene without a fear and without a struggle, there is an awful trepidation and repugnance--the soul being roused into a sense of its tremendous position, shrinking back as though it would find some mode of escape, and passionately pleading if but for an hour’ s delay. Such an expression would seem to admit us as spectators of the final fearful struggle, exhibit to us, whilst there is externally every appearance of quietness, that shuddering attempt at retreat when retreat is impossible, which must prove beyond all power of description, what a tremendous thing it would be the being found unprepared to die. If anything can make you dread the being unprepared to die, it is that. If anything can scatter the delusion which is often caused by the apparent composedness of the dying, though they have lived careless of religion, it is that. You may not mind the having your adversary always at your side; you may walk as unconcerned as though you were not thus compassed, until--ah! until the foot is on the threshold of the court, and then--O God, look graciously upon us, and spare us the ever knowing the grief, the strife, the more than mortal agony, which make up the one expression “ hale thee to the judge.” But is there, then, no possibility of escape for the accused, if he once come with his accuser before the judgment-seat? Evidently not. The whole stress of our Lord’ s representation lies upon this. Without giving any reasons for the fact, it is assumed as incontrovertible. You are exhorted, you observe, to “ give diligence as thou art in the way” ; it being most distinctly implied that there is no place for diligence afterwards. But how long shall we be “ in the way “ ? I know not where this mysterious threshold is; I know only that it may be everywhere. The man who is standing at my side one instant may have crossed it the next. One finds it in the crowded street; another on the solitary mountain; a third upon the waters. This man reaches it after years and years of painful walking; that whilst his step has lost nothing of its youthful spring. Where is this mysterious threshold; where the precincts of this terrible court? Anywhere-everywhere! Then is only for this one moment that we can pronounce ourselves “ in the way.” (H. Melvill, B. D.) Lessons Note here-- 1. That God and man were once friends. 2. That God and man are now adversaries. 3. That man, and not God, is averse to reconciliation and agreement. 4. That it is the wisdom, the duty, and interest of fallen man, speedily to accept of terms of peace and reconciliation with God. 5. That an eternal prison will be their portion who die in their enmity against God. (W. Burkitt.) Fatal result of delaying to come to agreement William III. made proclamation when there was a revolution in the north of Scotland, that all who came and took the oath of allegiance by the 31st of December should be pardoned. Mac Inn, a chieftain of a prominent clan, resolved to return with the rest of the rebels, but had some pride in being the very last one that should take the oath. He consequently postponed starting for this purpose until two days before the expiration of the term. A snow-storm impeded his way, and before he got up to take the oath and receive a pardon from the throne, the time was up and past. While the others were set free, Mac Inn was miserably put to death. In like manner, some of you are in prospect of losing for ever the amnesty of the gospel. He started too late and arrived too late. Many of you are going to be for ever too late. Remember the mistake of Mac Inn! (Dr. Talmage.) . Luke 13:1-5 The Galileans, whose blood Pilate had mingled Teachings from tragedies We shall miss the very point of Christ’ s teaching if we suppose that he meant to lessen our sense of the inseparable connection between sin and punishment. What, then, did He mean? He meant this: That every personal visitation, whether by violence or by accident, is not to be regarded as a retribution for a personal sin; that we are too short-sighted to judge, and that we are too sin-stricken ourselves to overlook, in our condemnation of others, our own need of repentance. The main purpose of such startling events is to arouse individuals and society at large to a recognition and to a repentance of their own sins. He appears to me to have opposed on the one hand the levity of those who ignore the connection between natural and moral evil: and, on the other hand, He rebuked the narrowness of those who connected individual sorrows befalling others with individual sins. In all ages and in all lands this hydro-headed fallacy has asserted its power. The ordeal in mediaeval times was based on it (the noble having the ordeal of fire and the bondman the ordeal of water), and the “ wage of battle” has not yet lost its hold on the nations, and even Christians regard war as a decisive appeal to the Lord of hosts, to show on which side right lies, though history abundantly shows that often might has won and right has lost. This is the principle on which people have constantly based their judgments, and do so still, though in different form. If you clamber the hills at the back of Penmaenmaur you will see the stones which are said by the people to be quiet players, who were petrified by the judgment of God for playing the game on Sunday. You smile at that; but there are multitudes now who, hearing of a disaster on the railway, will call it a judgment if it happens on Sunday, an accident if it happens on Monday. I. THINK OF THE FOLLY OF THIS SHORT-SIGHTED . 1. It presupposes that this is the world of punishment, whereas Scripture and experience alike testify that it is the world of probation. 2. The folly of these hasty judgments of ours also appears from their constant contradiction by unmistakable facts. It was of the wicked, not of the righteous, that the Psalmist said: “ They are not plagued as other men.” Indeed, we should lose faith in a righteous God altogether if this world were the only stage on which His purposes are worked out. There is a good story told of John Milton which will illustrate this point, though-I do not vouch for its accuracy. It is said that when the great poet was living in Bunhill-fields, forsaken and blind, old and poor, one of the despicable sons of Charles I. paid him a visit, and said: “ Do you not see, Mr. Milton, that your blindness is a judgment of God for the part you took against my father, King Charles.” “ Nay,” said the poet of the Commonwealth, “ If I have lost my sight through God’ s judgment, what can you say of your father, who lost his head?” Well, that is a fair example of the confusions and contradictions which arise from endeavours to interpret, by our shortsighted notions, the far-reaching purposes of God. 3. And what will be the result if men are taught to look for Divine decisions now, before the appointed revelation of the righteous judgment of God? Why this that wicked men will be emboldened in wickedness so long as they seem to escape all rebuke and disaster--and they often do. They are profligate, but not punished: prayerless, yet crowned with blessings; dishonest, yet succeed all the better in their ventures; cruel and hard, yet make money faster because they are so; and soon they will call darkness light and light darkness; and will go on recklessly, amid the sunshine of prosperity, to a hell they do not believe in! Well might our Lord rebuke the hasty judgments of men on account of their folly. II. But, apart from its folly, THERE IS SIN IN THIS HABIT TOO OFTEN, IF NOT ALWAYS. 1. It leads even religious people to a kind of untruthfulness which the King of truth always and everywhere condemns. They cannot help seeing the contradictions and anomalies I have alluded to, and they naturally shut their eyes to those which do not fit in with their theory. If, for example, helpless people are crushed in a theatre, it is a “ judgment,” but if in a church, it is an “ accident.” If an evil happens to themselves, it is a “ trial” ; but if it comes to another, it is a “ warning.” But all this is untrue and unreal, and, therefore, it is abhorrent to our Lord. Yes, and it is detected by a sharp-eyed world, which adduces it as a proof of the unreality and unfairness of religious people, and so our testimony for the King of truth is weakened. Jesus meant what He said when He uttered those memorable words: “ He that is of the truth heareth My words.” 2. Besides, there is often harshness in those judgments of ours on other people. We think and say that they are sinners above all others because they suffer such things. This hard condemnation of others was one of the chief sins of the Pharisees, and it called forth some of the sternest words our Lord ever uttered. 3. I am not sure but what the thought of other people’ s sins is comforting and pleasant to us; presenting a contrast by which we may throw up into relief our own virtues. And such self-complacency was a third sin Jesus saw in His hearers. (A. Rowland, LL. B.) A direct application I. SHOULD TEACH US TRUTHS (Luke 13:1; Luke 13:4). II. IT IS THE OF THE HUMAN MIND TO JUDGE RASHLY (Luke 13:2). III. THE SPIRIT OF THE OF HUMAN . “ I tell you, Nay.” IV. WE SHOULD AT ALL TIMES LOOK AT HOME. “ Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.” (A. F. Barfield.) Judgments and repentance I. We are to speak on the common, but erroneous idea, that THE OF AN MAY BE FROM THE BY WHICH HE IS . We can affirm it to be an axiom received by the men of every generation, that punishment and sin are so near relatives, that to perform the one is to incur the other. And the axiom is a true axiom, though in certain instances it may be wrongly applied. It is a truth, a truth to which hereafter the unrolled history of the universe shall bear witness, that human guilt provokes God’ s wrath; and that the greater a man’ s offences the sterner shall be the penalties with which he is visited. And we think it altogether a surprising thing that this truth should have retained its hold on the human mind; so that in the worst scenes of moral and intellectual degeneracy it hath never been completely cashiered. We think it a mighty testimony to the character of God as the ‘ hater and avenger of sin that even the savage, removed far away from all the advantages of Revelation, is unable to get rid of the conviction that guilt is the parent to wretchedness, and that, let him but see a fellow-man crushed by an accumulation of disaster, and he will instantly show forth this conviction by pointing to him so branded with flagrant iniquities. But whilst the common mode of arguing thus leads to the establishment of certain truths, it is in itself an erroneous mode. This is the next thing which we go on to observe. The Jews concluded that the Galileans must have been peculiarly sinful, since God had allowed them to be butchered by the Romans. They showed, therefore, that they believed in an awful connection between sinfulness and suffering, and so far they were witnesses to one of the fundamental truths of Revelation. But, nevertheless, we gather unquestionably from Christ’ s address, that it did not follow that because these Galileans were massacred they were sinners above all the Galileans. Now, if we would attend to the course and order of God’ s judgments, we should presently see, that although wherever there is suffering there must have been sin, still nothing can be more faulty than the supposition that he who suffers most must have sinned most. There is no proportion whatsoever kept up in God’ s dealings with His creatures between men’ s allotments in this life, and their actions. On the contrary, the very same conduct which is allowed to prosper in one case entails a long line of calamities in another. II. Now this brings us to our second topic of discourse. We have shown you the erroneousness of the inference drawn by the Jews; AND WE DO ON TO THE REPROOF WHICH THEY MET WITH FROM THE . We bid you, first of all, observe that Jesus, in no degree, denies the actual sinfulness of the murdered Galileans. He only sets himself against the idea which had been formed of their relative sinfulness. What they had suffered was, undoubtedly, a consequence of sin in the general--for if there were no sin, there could be no suffering. But the calamity which overtook them was no more necessarily the produce of particular sin, than was the blindness of the man concerning whom the disciples asked, “ Who did sin, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Sinful, then, the Galileans were, and, because sinful, they also suffered. But of their sinfulness we all partake, and, what then is to exempt us from partaking of their suffering? We are taught by our text that if we repent we shall be delivered; if we repent not, we must perish. And I just wish to set before you, with all plainness and simplicity, THE EXACT PLACE WHICH IN THE OF OUR TO GOD. There has been much mistake abroad on this matter, and both repentance and faith have been wrongly exhibited by a diseased theology. A man is not pardoned because he is sorry for his sins. A man is not saved because he believes upon Christ. If you once say that it is because we do this or that, that we are accepted of God, you make the acceptance a thing of works, and not one of grace. If we say to an individual, Repent and believe and thou shalt be saved, the saying is a true saying, and has the whole of God’ s Word on its side. But if we say, Repent, and because penitent, thou shalt be forgiven, we represent repentance as the procuring cause of forgiveness, and thus do fatal violence to every line of the gospel. Repentance is a condition, and faith is a condition, but neither the one or the other is anything more than a condition. In itself there is no virtue in repentance--in itself there is no virtue in faith. That repentance must precede pardon is clear from every line of the scheme of salvation; but that repentance must precede coming to Christ is a notion fraught with the total upset of this scheme. We deny not that a legal repentance, as it may be termed, is often beforehand with our turning to the Mediator; but an evangelical repentance is not to be gotten except from it. It is a change of heart--it is a renewal of spirit--it is the being translated from darkness to light, the being turned-from dead works to serve the living and true God. And if all this mighty renovation is to pass upon man, ere it can be said of him that he has truly repented, then he must have betaken himself to the Redeemer’ s fulness in order to obtain the very elements of repentance, and this is distinctly opposed to his possessing those elements as qualifications for his drawing from that fulness. Of all things, let us avoid the throwing up ramparts between the sinner and the Saviour. I am bold to say that, if the gospel be conditional, the only condition is a look. “ Look unto Me, and be ye saved.” (H. Melvill, B. D.) The judgments of God -This story is often used, it seems to me, for a purpose exactly opposite to that for which it is told. It is said that because these Galileans, whom Pilate slew, and these eighteen on whom the tower of Siloam fell, were no worse than the people round them, that therefore similar calamities must not be considered judgments and punishments of God; that it is an offence against Christian charity to say that such sufferers are the objects of God’ s anger; that it is an offence against good manners to introduce the name of God, or the theory of a Divine Providence, in speaking of historical events. They must be ascribed to certain brute forces of nature; to certain inevitable laws of history; to the passions of men, to chance, to fate, to anything and everything, rather than to the will of God. No man disagrees more utterly than I do with the latter part of this language. For as surely as there is a God, so surely does that God judge the earth; and every individual, family, institution, and nation on the face thereof; and judge them all in righteousness by His Son Jesus Christ, whom He hath appointed heir of all things, and given Him all power in heaven and earth; who reigns, and will reign till He hath put all enemies under His feet. Our Lord does not say--Those Galileans were not sinners at all. Their sins had nothing to do with their death. Those on whom the tower fell were innocent men. He rather implies the very opposite. We know nothing of the circumstances of either calamity; but this we known that our Lord warned the rest of the Jews, that unless they repented--that is, changed their mind, and therefore their conduct, they would all perish in the same way. And we know that that warning was fulfilled, within forty years, so hideously and so awfully, that the destruction of Jerusalem remains as one of the most terrible cases of wholesale ruin and horror recorded in history; and--as I believe--a key to many a calamity before and since. Like the taking of Babylon, the fall of Rome, and the French Revolution, it stands out in lurid splendour, as of the nether pit itself, forcing all who believe to say in fear and trembling--Verily there is a God that judgeth the earth--and a warning to every man, class, institution, and nation on earth, to set their houses in order betimes, and bear fruit meet for repentance, lest the day come when they too shall be weighed in the balance of God’ s eternal justice, and found wanting. But another lesson we may learn from the text, which I wish to impress earnestly on your minds; These Galileans, it seems, were no worse than the other Galileans; yet they were singled out as examples, as warnings to the rest. It is as if they were punished, not for being who they were, but for being what they were. History is full of such instances; instances of which we say and cannot help saying--What have they done above all others, that on them above all others the thunderbolt should fall? Was Charles the First, for example, the worst, or the best, of the Stuarts; and Louis the Sixteenth, of the Bourbons? Look, again, at the fate of Sir Thomas More, Bishop Fisher, and the hapless monks of the Charterhouse. Were they sinners above all who upheld the Romish system in England? Were they not rather among the righteous men who ought to have saved it, if it could have been saved? And yet on them--the purest and the holiest of their party--and not on the hypocrites and profligates, fell the thunderbolt. What is the meaning of these things?--for a meaning there must be; and we, I dare to believe, must be meant to discover it; for we are the children of God, into whose hearts, because we are human beings and not mere animals, He has implanted the inextinguishable longing to ascertain final causes--to seek not merely the means of things, but the reason of things; to ask not merely How? but Why? May not the reason be--I speak with all timidity and reverence, as one who shrinks frompretending to thrust himself into the counsels of the Almighty--but may not the reason be that God has wished thereby to condemn not the persons, but the systems? That He has punished them not for their private, but for their public faults? Looking at history in this light, we may justify God for many a heavy blow, and fearful judgment, which seems to the unbeliever a wanton cruelty of chance or fate; while at the same time we may feel deep sympathy with--often deep admiration for--many a noble spirit, who has been defeated, and justly defeated, by those irreversible taws of God’ s kingdom, of which it is written--“ On whomsoever that stone shall fall, it will grind him to powder.” We may look with reverence, as well as pity, on many figures in history, such as Sir Thomas More’ s; on persons who, placed by no fault of their own in some unnatural and unrighteous position; involved in some decaying and unworkable system; conscious more or less of their false position; conscious, too, of coming danger, have done their best, according to their light, to work like men, before the night came in which no man could work; to do what of their duty seemed still plain and possible; and to set right that which would never come right more: forgetting that, alas, the crooked cannot be made straight, and that which is wanting cannot be numbered; till the flood came and swept them away, standing bravely to the last at a post long since untenable, but still--all honour to them--standing at their post. When we consider such sad figures on the page of history, we may have, I say, all respect for their private virtues. We may accept every excuse for their public mistakes. And yet we may feel a solemn satisfaction at their downfall, when we see it to have been necessary for the progress of mankind, and according to those laws and that will of God and of Christ, by which alone the human race is ruled. And we shall believe, too, that these things were written for our example, that we may see, add fear, and be turned to the Lord. (C. Kingsley, M. A.) Accidents, not punishments I. First, LET US TAKE HEED THAT WE DO NOT DRAW THE RASH AND HASTY FROM , THAT THOSE WHO SUFFER BY THEM SUFFER ON ACCOUNT OF THEIR SINS. NOW, mark, I would not deny but what there have sometimes been judgments of God upon particular persons for sin; sometimes, and I think but exceedingly rarely, such things have occurred. Some of us have heard in our own experience instances of men who have blasphemed God and defied Him to destroy them, who have suddenly fallen dead; and in such cases, the punishment has so quickly followed the blasphemy that one could not help perceiving the hand of God in it. The man had wantonly asked for the judgment of God, his prayer was heard, and the judgment came. And, beyond a doubt, there are what may be called natural judgments. You see a man ragged, poor, houseless; he has been profligate, he has been a drunkard, he has lost his character, and it is but the just judgment of God upon him that he should be starving, and that he should be an outcast among men. You see in the hospitals loathsome specimens of men and women foully diseased; God forbid that we should deny that in such a case--the punishment being the natural result of the sin--there is a judgment of God upon licentiousness and ungodly lusts. And the like may be said in many instances where there is so clear a link between the sin and the punishment that the blindest men may discern that God hath made Misery the child of Sin. But in cases of accident, such as that to which I refer, and in cases of sudden and instant death, again, I say, I enter my earnest protest against the foolish and ridiculous idea that those who thus perish are sinners above all the sinners who survive unharmed. Let me just try to reason this matter out with Christian people; for there are some unenlightened Christian people who will feel horrified by what I have said. To all those who hastily look upon every calamity as a judgment I would speak in the earnest hope of setting them right. 1. Let me begin, then, by saying, do not you see that what you say is not true? and that is the best of reasons why you should not say it. Does not your own experience and observation teach you that one event happeneth both to the righteous and to the wicked? It is true, the wicked man sometimes falls dead in the street; but has not the minister fallen dead in the pulpit? 2. The idea that whenever an accident occurs we are to look upon it as a judgment from God would make the providence of God to be, instead of a great deep, a very shallow pool. Why, any child can understand the providence of God, if it be true that when there is a railway accident it is because people travel on a Sunday. I take any little child from the smallest infant-class form in the Sunday-school, and he will say, “ Yes, I see that.” But then, if such a thing be providence, if it be a providence that can be understood, manifestly it is not the Scriptural idea of providence, for in the Scripture we are always taught that God’ s providence is “ a great deep” ; and even Ezekiel, who had the wing of the cherubim and could fly aloft, when he saw the wheels which were the great picture of the providence of God, could only say the wheels were so high that they were terrible, and were full of eyes, so that he cried, “ O wheel!” If--I repeat it to make it plain--if always a calamity were the result of some sin, providence would be as simple as that twice two made four; it would be one of the first lessons that a little child might learn. 3. And then, will you allow me to remark, that the supposition against which I am earnestly contending, is a very cruel and unkind one. For if this were the case, that all persons who thus meet with their death in an extraordinary and terrible manner, were greater sinners than the rest, would it not be a crushing blow to bereaved survivors, and is it not ungenerous on our part to indulge the idea unless we are compelled by unanswerable reasons to accept it as an awful truth? Now, I defy you to whisper it in the widow’ s ear. And now, lastly--and then I leave this point--do you not perceive that the un-Christian and unscriptural supposition that when men suddenly meet with death it is the result of sin, robs Christianity of one of its noblest arguments for the immortality of the soul? Brethren, we assert daily, with Scripture for our warrant, that God is just; and inasmuch as He is just, He must punish sin, and reward the righteous. Manifestly He does not do it in this world. I think I have plainly shown that in this world one event happeneth to both; that the righteous man is poor as well as the wicked, and that he dies suddenly as well as the most graceless. Very well, then, the inference is natural and clear that there must be a next world in which these things must be righted. If there be a God, He must be just; and if He be just, He must punish sin; and since He does not do it in this world, there therefore must be another state in which men shall receive the due reward of their works; and they that have sown to the flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption, while they that have sown to the Spirit, shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting. Make this world the reaping place, and you have taken the sting out of sin. II. Now to our second point. WHAT USE, THEN, OUGHT WE TO MAKE OF THIS VOICE OF GOD AS HEARD AMIDST THE SHRIEKS AND GROANS OF DYING MEN? 1. The first inquiry we should put to ourselves is this: “ Why may it not be my case that I may very soon and suddenly be cut off? Have I a lease of my life? Have I any special guardianship which ensures me that I shall not suddenly pass the portals of the tomb?” And the next question it should suggest is this: “ Am not I as great a sinner as those who died? If in outward sin others have excelled me, are not the thoughts of my heart evil? Does not the same law which curses them curse me? It is as impossible that I should be saved by my works as that they should be. Am not I under the law as well as they by nature, and therefore am not I as well as they under the curse? That question should arise. Instead of thinking of their sins which would make me proud, I should think of my own which will make me humble. Instead of speculating upon their guilt, which is no business of mine, I should turn my eyes within and think upon my own transgression, for which I must personally answer before the Most High God.” Then the next question is, “ Have I repented of my sin? I need not be inquiring whether they have or not: have I? Since I am liable to the same calamity, am I prepared to meet it? Do I hate sin? Have I learned to abhor it? For if not, I am in as great danger as they were, and may quite as suddenly be cut off, and then where am I? I will not ask where are they? And then, again, instead of prying into the future destiny of these unhappy men and women, how much better to inquire into our own destiny and our own state! 2. When we have used it thus for inquiry, let me remind you that we ought to use it also for warning. “ Ye shall all likewise perish.” “ No,” says one, “ not likewise. We shall not all be crushed; many of us will die in our beds. We shall not all be burned; many of us will tranquilly close our eyes.” Ay, but the text says, “ Ye shall all likewise perish.” And let me remind you that some of you may perish in the same identical manner. You have no reason to believe that you may not also suddenly be cut off while walking the streets. You may fall dead while eating your meals--how many have perished with the staff of life in their hands! Ye shall be in your bed, and your bed shall suddenly be made your tomb. You shall be strong, hale, hearty, and in health, and either by an accident or by the stoppage of the circulation of your blood, you shall be suddenly hurried before your God. Oh: may sudden death to you be sudden glory! But it may happen with some of us, that in the same sudden manner as others have died, so shall we. But lately, in America, a brother, while preaching the Word, laid down his body and his charge at once. You remember the death of Dr. Beaumont, who, while proclaiming the gospel of Christ, closed his eyes to earth. And I remember the death of a minister in this country, who had but just given out the verse-- “ Father, I long, I faint to see The place of Thine abode; I’ d leave Thine earthly courts and flee Up to Thy house, my God,” when it pleased God to grant him the desire of his heart, and he appeared before the King in His beauty. Why, then, may not such a sudden death as that happen to you and to me? (C. H. Spurgeon.) Lessons 1. We may hence learn to beware of rashly judging others. Let us think of the guilt which we should thus incur, and also of the retribution in kind, which we should thereby prepare for ourselves. 2. We may hence learn not to be too hasty in interpreting afflictive dispensations of Providence against ourselves. We may sometimes hear a person who is labouring under great reverses, or heavy bodily distress, express himself thus, “ Surely I must be a very great sinner, else such things could never have been laid on me.” If his meaning, in expressing himself thus, be that he is a great sinner in himself, that he suffers less than he deserves, that he might justly be cast off altogether, and that he ought to humble himself under the rod, and consider well what ought to be amended in his feelings and character--nothing can be more proper. But if his meaning be, that such sufferings are a proof that he is a sinner beyond others, and that he is still unpardoned and unrenewed, and that God is treating him as an enemy, and probably will cast him off for ever--nothing can be more hasty. The truth of the case may be the very opposite; and, if his humility be real, probably is the very opposite. Let all afflicted souls learn to seek to God for the sanctified use of their trouble, and support under it; and let none vex themselves with dark surmises whose trust is in the God of mercy. 3. We may hence learn to be thankful for our own preservation. When we hear of the heavy calamities, and the sudden removal of others, let us bless God for our own safety. What but His kind care has preserved us? Let us be thankful for our ordinary and daily preservation, and especially for signal deliverances. Let us be thankful, too, for our quietness and safety during our solemn religious services. When we think what blindness, unbelief, wandering of thought, and varied sinfulness, mix even with our very best services, and especially with our worst, how thankful should we be that the Lord has not broken in and made a breach on us, and mingled our blood with our sacrifices. 4. We learn from this passage, that it is our duty to mark and improve calamities, and especially violent and sudden deaths. It is right to speak of them to each other, with a view to our mutual benefit. When God’ s judgments are abroad in the earth, the inhabitants of the world should learn righteousness. “ Be ye also ready: for, in such an hour as ye think not, the Son of Man commeth.” 5. But there is one other lesson from this passage, on which I am especially desirous of fixing your attention, namely, the necessity of genuine repentance. Our Lord Himself, here says twice, “ Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.” Consider, then, what is implied in repentance unto salvation; and seek to become possessed of it. (James Foote, M. A.) The massacre of the Galileans There is no account in Josephus, the only Jewish contemporary historian, of this massacre of the Galileans. The oldest account of it is in Cyril of Alexandria, about four hundred years after it occurred, and runs thus: “ For these [Galileans] were followers of the opinions of Judas of Galilee, of whom Luke makes mention in the Acts of the Apostles, who said that we ought to call no man master. Great numbers of them refusing to acknowledge Caesar as their master were therefore punished by Pilate. They said also that men ought not to offer to God any sacrifices that were not ordained by the law of Moses, and so forbade to offer the sacrifices appointed by the people for the safety of the Emperor and the Roman people. Pilate, thus being enraged against the Galileans, ordered them to be slain in the midst of the very victims which they thought they might offer according to the custom of their law, so that the blood of the offerers was mingled with that of the victims offered.” It is also conjectured that this interference of Pilate in slaying these Galileans was the cause of his quarrel with Herod, who resented his interference until a reconciliation took place by his sending Christ to him as one under his own jurisdiction. (M. F. Sadler.) An accident wrongly described I remember that terrible accident which occurred on the Thames--the sinking of the “ Princess Alice” steamboat. It appalled everybody, and we called it a “ mysterious providence.” I remember reading in the newspapers that when the collision occurred the boat “ cracked and crumbled like a matchbox” --that was the sentence used. Why did it do so? Not by a special providence, but because it was built like a matchbox--as slim and as flimsy: and the providence that ended so fatally was, as usual, not the providence of God, but the reckless greed of man. (J. Jackson Wray.) Scrutable providences Modern science has brought the world a fifth gospel. In it we read that God commands us to give Him our whole heads as well as our whole hearts, for that we cannot know Him nor obey Him till we discern Him in every minutest fact, and every immutable law of the physical universe, as in every fact and law of the moral. It is barely two hundred years since the great Cotton Mather preached a famous sermon called “ Burnings Bewailed,” wherein he attributed a terrible conflagration to the wrath of God kindled against Sabbathbreaking and the accursed fashion of monstrous periwigs! For years after his time the Puritan colonies held fasts for mildew, for small-pox, for caterpillars, for grasshoppers, for loss of cattle by cold and visitation of God. They saw an Inscrutable Providence in all these things. But when their children had learned a better husbandry and better sanitary conditions the “ visitations” ceased. When, in Chicago, a night’ s fire undid a generation’ s toil, spreading misery and death broadcast, was that horror in the least degree inexplicable? Every man who, within thirty years, had put up a wooden house in a city whose familiar breezes were gales, and whose gales were hurricanes, solicited that rain of fire. They who, hasting to be rich, fell into the snare of cheap and dangerous building, digged, every man, a pit for his neighbour’ s feet as well as for his own. The inscrutable aspect of the calamity was that it had not come years before. And the Providential lesson would seem to be that laws of matter are laws of God, and cannot be violated with impunity. When the earthquake well-nigh swallowed up Peru, five or six years ago, men stood aghast at the mysterious dispensation. But heaven has not only always declared that tropical countries are liable to earthquakes, but had taught the Peruviaus through hundreds of years to expect two earthquakes in a century, travelling in cycles from forty to sixty years apart. The citizens of Arica have not only this general instruction, but that special warning which nature always gives. A great light appeared to the south-east. Hollow sounds were heard. The dogs, the goats, even the swine foresaw the evil and hid themselves. But the simple men passed on and were punished. Before the Alpine freshets come the streams are coffee-coloured. Even the tornadoes of the tropics, which are instantaneous in their swoop, so plainly announce themselves to old sailors that they reef sails and save ship and life, while only the heedless perish. The simoon gives such certain and invariable warnings that the caravan is safe if it be wary. Herculaneum and Pompeii were built too far up the mountain. And that the builders knew quite as well as the excavators of the splendid ruins know it now. But they chose to take the risk. And to-day their cheerful compatriots gather their heedless vintage and sit beneath their perilous vines still nearer to the deadly crater. St. Petersburg has been three times inundated, and after each most fatal calamity processions filled the streets and masses were said to propitiate the mysterious anger of God. Peter the Great, who built the city, was the successor of Canute. He ordered the Gulf of Cronstadt to retire, and then set down his capital in the swamps of the verge of the Neva. Whenever the river breaks up with the spring floods, the trembling citizens are at sea in a bowl. Only three times has the bowl broken, so much money and skill have been expended upon it. But when a March gale shall drive the tide back upon the river, swollen and terrible with drifting ice, drowned St. Petersburg will be the pendant for burned Chicago. (J. JacksonWray.) Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish True repentance True repentance is a change of mind, accompanied by a sincere renunciation of sin. Its evidences are-- 1. A consciousness of the evil of sin. 2. Self-condemnation. 3. A sense of unworthiness. 4. Great grief on account of the sin committed. 5. A truthful confession before God. 6. Prayer for power to resist temptation. 7. A mind open to good impressions. 8. Its emblem among plants is a “ bruised reed.” 9. Its model among men is Christian weeping before the Cross, but afterwards Christian rejoicing in hope. This is “ repentance that needeth not to be repented of “ I desire to die,” said Philip Henry, “ preaching repentance; if out of the pulpit, I desire to die repenting.” (Van Doren.) A faithful warning A young woman, being requested to join a Christian Society, stated that she had a tract given her when a scholar in a Sunday-school, in which tract an account was given of a young woman who died happy. This girl in her illness called her sister to her, and affectionately said, “ Sister, if you do not repent of your sins, and turn to Jesus Christ, where God is you can never come.” This so impressed the young woman that she never forgot it. She added, “ Wherever I was, whatever I was doing, this was always on my mind, ‘ where God is you can never come.’ I was very much distressed at-my situation, and could find no peace.” She eventually, came to Jesus, became happy in the enjoyments of the pardon of her sins, through faith in the atonement of Christ Jesus, and lived in the expectation of realizing what her faith anticipated. All sin must be repented of If seven robbers were to get into a man’ s house, even though six of them were discovered and made prisoners, and sent off to jail, yet, as long as the seventh was known to be concealed in some secret corner, the master of the house could not well feel himself out of danger. Or, if a bird has fallen into a snare, and is only caught by a single claw; or, if any animal has been caught in a trap, though it should be only by the leg, yet they are both in as much danger as if their whole bodies were entrapped. Thus it is that certain destruction awaits us, unless all sin, even the very least, be repented of. Pharaoh, after having been smitten with many plagues, at last consented to let the people go, provided they left their sheep and cattle behind them. But this would not satisfy Moses. He, acting for God, says, “ All the flocks and herds must go along with us; not a hoof shall be left.” So Satan, like Pharaoh, would keep some sin in us as a pledge of our returning to him again; and even though sin be taken away, he would wish the occasion of sin to remain. For instance, he might say, “ Leave off gaming; but still there is no occasion to burn the cards and throw away the dice.” “ You must not do your enemy any injury, but there is no occasion for you to love him.” But God’ s language is of a different sort. He says that the occasion of sin, though it be dear as a right hand, must be cut off; if we retain an eye for Satan to put his hook into, he will be sure to insinuate himself, and the latter end may be worse than the beginning. (F. F. Trench.) What repentance cannot do Suppose I should preach the gospel in some gambling-saloon of New York, and suppose a man should come out convicted of his wickedness, and confess it before God, and pray that he might be forgiven. Forgiveness might be granted to him, so far as he individually was concerned. But suppose he should say, “ O God, not only restore to me the joys of salvation, but give me back the mischief that I have done, that I may roll it out.” Why, there was one man that shot himself; what are you going to do for him? A young man came to Indianapolis, when I was pastor there, on his way to settle in the West. He was young, callow, and very self-confident. While there he was robbed, in a gambling-saloon, of fifteen hundred dollars--all that he had. He begged to be allowed to keep enough to take him home to his father’ s house, and he was kicked out into the street. It led to his suicide. I know the man that committed the foul deed. He used to walk up and down the street. Oh, how my soul felt thunder when I met him 1 If anything lifts me up to the top of Mount Sinai, it is to see one man wrong another. Now suppose this man should repent? Can he ever call back that suicide? Can he ever carry balm to the hearts of the father and mother and brothers and sisters of his unfortunate victim? Can he ever wipe off the taint and disgrace that he has brought on the escutcheon of that family? No repentance can spread over that. And yet how many men there are that are heaping up such transgressions! (H. W. Beecher.) Repentance I. THE THAT LED TO THIS ABOUT . II. THE NATURE OF . 1. The relation of repentance to faith. In order of time they spring up together in the soul. In order of nature faith must precede repentance. We cannot turn from sin without Christ, and we cannot come to Christ without faith. 2. Repentance consists of three elements. (1) Godly sorrow for sin. 1. Not mere sorrow for sin, for there is much sorrow because sin is an evil and brings punishment, yet no godly element in it. 2. It is the sorrow of a man more concerned for his guilt than his misery, whereas worldly sorrow is more concerned for the misery than the guilt, and would plunge into deeper guilt to escape the misery. 3. Illustrations of worldly sorrow (Pharaoh, Ahab, Judas). 4. The true spirit of godly sorrow is that of the prodigal--“ I have sinned before heaven, and in Thy sight.” Also David’ s sorrow Psalms 51:1-4). (2) Confession of sin. 1. This is an essential part of repentance. (Often a relief to guilty men to confess their crime.) 2. It must be very thorough and humbling and heart-searching. 3. It is connected with the continuous forgiveness of believers 1 John 1:7). (3) Turning from sin to God. 1. The godly sorrow must have a practical result, in the way of proving its genuineness and attesting itself by fruits. 2. Necessity of reparation recognized by civil law (cases of libel). But there are injuries in which no reparation can be made (murder). 3. In cases of Pharaoh, Ahab, Judas, no turning from sin to God, though there may have been sorrow and confession of sin. 4. There must be a turning from all sin--from the love and the practice of that which is sinful. III. THE OF . 1. Jesus spoke-the words of the text in a spirit of prophecy. (Forty years after, at siege of Jerusalem, the Jews felt the meaning of the “ likewise” of the text.) 2. Preachers cannot now say that, but they can say that if you do not repent you will perish everlastingly. (T. Croskery, D. D.) The necessity of repentance 1. That those who meet with more signal strokes than others, are not, therefore, to be accounted greater sinners than others. The Lord spares some as great sinners, as He signally punisheth. I tell you, nay. Reasons of this dispensation of Providence: 1. Because of God’ s sovereign power and absolute dominion, which He will have the world to understand--“ Is it not lawful for Me to do what I will with Mine own?” (Matthew 20:15.) 2. Because we are now under the mixed dispensation of Providence; not the unmixed, reserved to another world, when all men shall be put into their unalterable state. 3. Because the mercy of God to some is magnified by His severity on others. 4. Because in very signal strokes very signal mercies may be wrapped up. 5. Because this dispensation is in some sort necessary to confirm us in the belief of the judgment of the great day. USE 1. Then learn that unordinary strokes may befall those that are not unordinary sinners; and therefore be not rash in your judgment concerning the strokes that others meet with. 2. Then adore the mercy of God to you, and wonder at His sparing you, when ye see others smart under the hand of God. 3. That the strokes which any meet with, are pledges of ruin to impenitent sinners. But “ Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.” Reasons of this are-- 1. Because they show how hateful to God sin is, in whomsoever it is Isaiah 42:24). 2. Because they show how just God is. He is the Judge of all the earth, and cannot but do right. 3. Because whatever any meet with in the way of sin is really designed for warning to others, as is clear from the text (see 1 Corinthians 10:11-12). 4. Because all those strokes which sinners meet with in this life are the spittings of the shower of wrath that abides the impenitent world, after which the full shower may certainly be looked for. USE 1. Be not unconcerned spectators of all the effects of God’ s anger for sin going abroad in the world; for your part and mine is deep in them. There is none of them but says to us, as in the same condemnation, “ Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.” 2. Consider, O impenitent sinners, how can ye escape, when your ruin is insured by so many pledges thereof from the Lord’ s hand, while ye go on in sin? 3. The strokes that others meet with are loud calls to us to repent. That is the language of all the afflicting providences which we see going on in the world. To confirm this, consider-- 1. God does not strike one for sin with a visible stroke, but with an eye to all. 2. Thereby we may see how dangerous a thing sin is to be harboured; and if we will look inward, we may ever see that there is sin in us also against the God of Israel. 3. How much more do strokes from the hand of the Lord on ourselves call us to repent? (Hosea 2:6-7). USE 1. We may see that none go on impenitently in a sinful course, but over the belly of thousands of calls from Providence to repent, besides all those they have from the Word. 2. Impenitency under the gospel cannot have the least shadow of excuse. The calls of Providence common to the whole world, are sufficient to leave the very heathens without excuse (Romans 1:20); how much more shall the calls of the Word and Providence, too, make us inexcusable if we do not repent? I come now to the principal doctrine of the text. I. EXPLAIN THE NATURE OF . 1. What it is in its general nature. 2. How it is wrought in the soul. 3. The subject of true repentance. 4. The parts of repentance. I come now to the application of the whole. And here I would sound the alarm in the ears of impenitent sinners, to repent, and turn from their sins unto God. O sinners, repent, repent; ye are gone away to your lusts and idols, turn from them; ye have turned your back on God, turn to Him again. In prose curing this call to repentance, I shall-- 1. Endeavour to convince you of the need you have to repent. 2. Lay before you a train of motives to repentance. 3. Show you the great hindrances of repentance. And-- 4. Give directions in order to your obtaining repentance. (1) Labour to see sin in its own colours, what an evil thing it is Jeremiah 2:19). What makes us to cleave to sin is false apprehensions we have about it. To see it in itself would be a means to make us fly from it. For this end consider-- 1. The majesty of God offended by sin. Ignorance of God is the mother of impenitency (Acts 17:30). 2. The obligations we lie under to serve Him, which by sin we trample upon. 3. The wrath of God that abides impenitent sinners. 4. The good things our unrepented-of sins deprive us of. 5. The many evils which are bred by our sin against the honour of God, our own and our neighhour’ s true interest. (1) Be much in the thoughts of death. Consider how short and uncertain your time is. (2) Dwell on the thoughts of a judgment to come, where ye shall be made to give an account of yourselves. (3) Meditate on the sufferings of Christ. (4) Pray for repentance, and believingly seek and long for the Lord’ s giving the new heart, according to His promise (Ezekiel 36:26). (T. Boston, D. D.) Nature and necessity of repentance I. NATURE. 1. Repentance implies godly sorrow for sin. 2. Repentance involves hatred of sin. 3. Repentance includes reformation. This, as it respects both the affections of the heart and the conduct of the life, is the crowning excellence of this evangelical virtue. II. . “ Except … perish.” 1. This is the decision of God respecting all men. 2. The facts point this way. Sinners have perished--sinners distinguished by no peculiarity of guilt--sinners, therefore, in whose case there was no more reason to anticipate the righteous judgments of heaven than there is to anticipate it in other cases. What God has done in these instances, there is every reason to believe He will do in others like them. This is the argument of our Lord, and it comes to us in unabated force. 3. The moral government of God requires it. 4. Also the moral character of God. Sin is abhorrent to His nature. As a holy God, He must regard it with absolute abhorrence and ceaseless displeasure. To suppose otherwise is to suppose God either to approve or to be indifferent to what is directly opposite to Himself, and worthy of His eternal rebuke. It is to suppose God to hate, or wholly disregard His own perfections and glory. But can a spotless God hate Himself? Can His own infinite perfection become an object of indifference to Himself? Can He fail to abhor sin with a measure of indignation proportioned to the purity and infinitude of His nature? (N. W. Taylor, D. D.) Of repentance We should labour to make good use to ourselves of God’ s judgments on others. Why? God expects it; this is the way to prevent the execution on ourselves. How? 1. “ Learning righteousness” (Isaiah 26:9); faith, seeing Him execute threatenings; fear, beholding His severity; obedience, sure want of that is the cause; love, whilst we escape. 2. Forsaking sin: “ Sin no more” (John 5:14). All sin, because every sin is pregnant with judgment; therefore it summons to search and try, etc., especially those sins which brought wrath on others. Observe providences; use means to discover what is the Achan, &c. We have great occasion to practise this. Wrath is kindled and burns, &c.; the cup of indignation goes round; the sword has had a commission, &c.; the scars and smarting impressions continue in bodies, estates, liberties. Let us learn to believe, to tremble, to love. Let us forsake sin, our own; the sins that have unsheathed the sword, mixed this bitter cup. Make not this warning ineffectual with the Jews’ supposition. Rather hear, believe, apply what Christ says, Except I repent, &c. I. FROM THE , CHRIST, IN THAT HE TEACHES . Repentance is an evangelical duty; a gospel, a new-covenant duty. This should not be questioned by those who either believe what the gospel delivers, or understand what it is to be evangelical; but since it is denied, let us prove it. And first from this ground. 1. Christ taught repentance. But He taught nothing but what was evangelical. 2. It is excluded by the covenant of works. No room for repentance there. 3. It is required in the gospel (Acts 17:30). 4. It was preached by the apostles (Luke 24:47; Acts 2:28; Acts 3:19). 5. It was the end of Christ’ s coming (Matthew 9:13) to call sinners. 6. It was purchased by Christ’ s death (Acts 5:31). 7. It has evangelical promises. 8. It is urged upon evangelical grounds (Matthew 3:2; Mark 1:14-15). 9. It is the condition of the prime evangelical mercy. God offers, gives remission of sins, upon condition of repentance. What Christ commands us, Himself does practise (Luke 17:3). If he repent, forgive him. So Acts 3:19, and Acts 2:38. 10. It is confirmed by the seal of the covenant of grace. Baptism is the seal of repentance. 11. It is a fundamental of Christianity (Hebrews 6:1). 12. It is the way to life (Acts 11:18). 1. It reproves those who reject this duty as legal. Certainly those who find not this in the gospel, have found another gospel besides that which Christ and His disciples preached. 2. Exhort. To practise this duty evangelically, that is most congruous. Directions: (1) Undertake it for evangelical ends. The end gives nature and name to the action. If your aims be legal, mercenary, the act will be so. Go not about it only to escape hell, avoid wrath, satisfy justice, remove judgments, pacify conscience. Ahab and Pharaoh can repent thus, those who are strangers to the covenant of grace. How then? Endeavour that you may give God honour, that ye may please Him, that you may comply with His will, that you may never more return to folly. Confess, to give honour, as Joshua 7:19, get hearts broken, that you may offer sacrifice well pleasing. (2) Let evangelical motives lead you to the practice of it. Act as drawn by the cords of love. The goodness of God should lead you to it (Romans 2:1-29.). (3) In an evangelical manner, freely, cheerfully, with joy and delight; not as constrained, but willingly. (4) Repent that ye can repent no more. This is an evangelical temper, to be sensible of the defects and failings of spiritual duties. (5) Think not your repentance is the cause of any blessing: it is neither the meritorious nor impulsive cause; it neither deserves any mercy, nor moves the Lord to bestow any. (6) Think not that your repentance can satisfy God, or make amends for the wrongs sin has done Him. (7) Ye must depend upon Christ for strength, ability to repent; all evangelical works are done in His strength. (8) Ye must expect the acceptance of your repentance from Christ. (9) Think not your repentance obliges God to the performance of any promise, as though He were thereby bound, and could not justly refuse to bestow what He has promised to the penitent; for He is not obliged to fulfil it till the condition be perfectly performed. Imperfect repentance is not the condition; God requires nothing imperfect. If He accomplishes His promise upon our weak detective endeavours, it is not because He is by them engaged, but from some other engaging consideration. Now our repentance is defective, both in quantity and quality, measure and manner, neither so great nor so good as is required. Why, then, does God perform? How is He obliged? This entry is longer than a Bible module can hold. The rest is at https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/bi/ Luke 13:6-9A certain man had a fig-tree The barren fig-tree I. THE IN WHICH THIS TREE WAS PLACED. In a “ vineyard” ; not on some neglected waste-ground. Under culture and care. This is the condition of those favoured with the privileges and blessings of the gospel dispensation. This is especially the condition of those who are members of the Christian Church. 1. Who have been professedly brought out of the world into the Church. 2. Who are favoured with the spiritual means and ordinances of the gospel. 3. Who are the subjects of the especial and rich promises of the new covenant. 4. Unto whom the graces and blessed influences of the Holy Spirit are freely imparted. 5. Who are the objects of the Divine care and complacency. We are directed-- II. To THE OF THE . He came seeking fruit (Luke 13:6). This expectation was reasonable. God expected this from the Jews. He required them to be more wise, and holy, and obedient, than the heathen who surrounded them. God requires this from all favoured with the privileges and blessings of the gospel economy. He particularly requires and expects it from His own professing people--the members of His Church. He expects-- 1. Their hearts to yield the fruits of holy graces. 2. Their lips to yield the fruit of thanksgiving and praise. 3. The fruits of obedience in the life. 4. The fruits of usefulness, by the employment of their powers and talents in His service. III. THE ’ S . IV. THE COMMAND THE ISSUES. “ Cut it down; why cumbereth it the ground?” (Luke 13:7). 1. This sentence was not a hasty one. There had been three years’ care, and labour, and forbearance. God exercised His great long-suffering towards the Jews. So to men in general. So to fruitless professors in the Church. To all God manifests patient and enduring forbearance. 2. A sufficient reason is assigned for the order given. “ Why cumbereth it the ground?” It was worthless in itself. It occupied precious ground. It took up the nutritive portions of the soil, that useful fruitful trees required. V. THE REQUEST THE VINE-DRESSER . “ He said, Lord, let it alone this year also,” etc. (Luke 13:8). He denies not the allegations of the owner. He vindicates not the final continuance of the tree. But he entreats-- 1. For a short period of suspense of the sentence. One year. One year only! One round of the seasons. One year’ s showers and sunshine. 2. He engages to give it special attention. “ I will dig about it, and dung it” (Luke 13:8). I will try and search out the cause, and use all reasonable means to remedy it. He further adds-- 3. His willingness then to obey the order of the proprietor. This is not only implied, but directly stated. “ If it bear fruit, well” --well for the tree, the proprietor, and the vine-dresser; “ And if not, then thou shalt cut it down” (Luke 13:9). This pleading for the cumberer has often been verified in the prayers of the parent, the friend, the minister; but it is true in the highest and best sense of the Lord Jesus. He ever lives to intercede. (J. Burns, D. D.) The barren fig-tree I. Notice THE OF THE TREE, the place where it stands. It is in God’ s vineyard, and our Lord tells us how it came there. The vineyard was not its natural situation. It did not spring up there, nor was it brought there by accident. God Himself had it planted there. An emblem, brethren, of our situation at this hour, and of the way in which we came into it. II. See next WHAT IS FROM THIS TREE. Is it that it shall take root and grow where it is planted, and receive the showers of heaven as they fall on it? We may say, “ Yes” ; but God says, “ No, this will not satisfy Me; what I want of it is fruit--not wide-spreading branches and luxuriant foliage; the wild fig-tree of the desert will give me these. I must have of that tree something answering to the situation in which I have placed it, and to the care and pains I have bestowed on it. I come to it seeking fruit.” And what is this fruit? It is not those things which some of us perhaps have now in our minds, the social and moral virtues, charity, honesty, and such like. These are all good in their way, but these are fruits of nature’ s growth. The wild fig-tree will produce them. The heathen and idolater will bring them forth. The tree our Lord speaks of is a tree in a vineyard, a planted and cultivated tree, and something more than fruit of this common kind is expected from it. God wants fruit from us corresponding to the privileges He has bestowed upon us; not only more fruit than any heathen could render Him, but fruit of another kind-Christian fruit, such fruit as nothing but the gospel of Christ can produce, and none but men planted in His Church, and brought under the influence of that gospel, ever yielded Him. III. And now go on to another point in the parable--THE THIS FIG-TREE DRAWS ON ITSELF. Observe, the owner of the vineyard does not forget the tree when he has planted it, nor does he sit at home waiting for his servants to bring him the produce of it when there is any; he is described as coming again and again into his vineyard, and going up to this tree and examining it. “ He came and sought fruit thereon” ; he was anxious about the matter, anxious, not only to gather the fruit if he could find any, but also not to overlook it if there should be some. None watch us like God. We do not see Him as He stands by our side; the great Observer of us is invisible and His scrutiny a silent one; we think no more of Him perhaps than a tree in our garden thinks of us as we walk by it; but He marks every one of us every hour with the most searching attention. He listens to our words, He acquaints Himself with our doings. IV. Observe THE OF GOD WITH THIS TREE. “ Behold, these three years I come seeking fruit on this fig-tree, and find none.” There is surprise, you observe, expressed in this language; surprise, it may be, at the unfruitfulness of such a tree in such a place; but still more, it is surprise at God’ s patience towards Him, that these words seem chiefly to express. The Lord speaks in them as though He Himself were wondering at His own patience. V. But mark THE AT LAST AGAINST THIS TREE. It is a displeasure which has long been kept under. It comes upon us after long forbearance with us. It is something which has triumphed over great love and great patience; not the flowing of a stream that has always had a free course, moving along in an unobstructed channel, it is a river bursting through harriers which have long damned it up, and pouring forth its accumulated waters in a desolating heap. Look here. The patient owner of this tree becomes all at once determined on its destruction. For three years he goes up to it, searching among its leaves for fruit; he comes away disappointed, but yet silent. There is no blaming of the tree, no complaining of it. The people in the vineyard, who have witnessed all this, may have ceased to notice it, or if they still notice it, they may say, “ That tree is safe. Unfruitful as it is, for some strange reason our master loves it, and so well does he love it that he will never remove it.” But all at once comes the command, “ Cut it down; why cumbereth it the ground?”’ And what follows? Is the tree at once levelled? No; for notice-- VI. THE MADE FOR IT. The dresser of the vineyard answering, said unto him, “ Lord, let it alone this year also, till I shall dig about it and dung it; and if it bear fruit, well; and if not, then after that thou shalt cut it down.” Here, doubtless, a heavenly scene is laid open to us. There is but one Mediator who can interpose effectually between God and man. Ministers, parents, and friends, may say concerning this or that sinner, “ Lord, let him alone” ; but Christ is not thinking here of any of these. He has Himself in His thoughts; He is anticipating His employment at His Father’ s right hand whither He is going. He is the vinedresser who pleads for this worthless tree to save it from destruction. And how natural and touching are the terms in which His intercession is made! Not one word does He utter against this barren tree. Not one word does He say of all the labour He has bestowed upon it. With a wonderful pity and condescension, He seems to trace its long unfruitfulness to His own neglect. “ Lord, let it alone. The fault may be mine. I have not done for it all I might. Henceforth I will do more. It shall become the special object of My labour and care.” And then comes in these words a glance at all the glorious consequences that would follow. “ If it bear fruit, well,” our translators say, but there is no word answering to “ well” in the original. Our Lord does not say what would follow the fruitfulness of this tree. He breaks off as though He could not say. It seems as though all the glory and delight resulting to His Father and Himself from a sinner’ s salvation had rushed into His mind and silenced Him. “ If it bear fruit--O, the happiness for that poor sinner, and O, the unutterable joy for Thee and Me!” But, mark you, it is only a year that the Intercessor asks for this tree, one year, a limited season. After that, He says, He will interpose no longer; and more--He will acquiesce in the sentence of its destruction; “ Thou shalt cut it down.” I know not, brethren, how this language may strike some of you, but there seems to me something very fearful in it. Who is it that promises here to acquiesce after a little in the entire destruction of every unfruitful hearer of God’ s truth among us? It is none other than He who has shed His heart’ s blood for our salvation, and who has all our life long been pleading that we may be spared. It is painful to have a kind earthly friend give us up, but to be given up, and given up to certain destruction, by the blessed Jesus, the kindest of all friends, One who bears with and loves us as none but Himself can bear and love--think what we will of it, there is something appalling in this. It is like a father who has cherished fondly a son, a worthless son, while all around have been calling out for justice on him--it is like that father’ s being at last forced to say, “ I can hold out no longer. I can do no more. Let justice have him.” (C. Bradley, M. A.) The parable of the barren fig-tree I. FROM THE SCOPE OF THE PARABLE WE MAY NOTE-- 1. That temporal judgments inflicted on some should excite others to fear God’ s Divine wrath and vengeance. 2. No person ought to be rash to censure others on whom temporal judgments befall: there is no knowing either love or hatred by anything that is under the sun. II. EXPLAIN THE TERMS. 1. By “ a certain man,” is meant the great God. 2. By “ vineyard” is meant the Church of God. (1) The Church is taken out of the field of this world. (2) Walled or fenced in. (a) Defended by special providences, etc. (b) By holy angels. 3. But why does our Lord compare professors of religion to fig-trees? (1) He may allude to the practice of those who had vineyards in the land of Canaan, in which they frequently planted not only vines, but fig-trees. (2) It may be because a fig-tree that brings forth good figs requires much heat of the sun. So professors of Christianity cannot thrive so as to bring forth good fruit, but under the Divine and warm influences of the Sun of Righteousness, and the blessed gospel of God’ s grace. (3) Because no tree is commonly more fruitful than the fig-tree. (4) A fig-tree bears choice fruit. (5) Fig-trees bear fruit all the year (see Jeremiah 17:7; Psalms 92:12-14). (6) There are some barren fig-trees; they are not of the right kind, but seem a bastard sort of plants. So some professors, who, though they are planted in Christ’ s vineyard, yet are barren or fruitless; they are not true believers, but mere counterfeits, professors, that have the name of spiritual fig-trees, but not the nature. 4. “ Came and sought fruit thereon.” (1) God takes notice of every particular person that is planted in His vineyard. (2) God expects fruit from each. (3) If there be but one member in the Church that is fruitless, God will soon find him out. 5. By “ three years,” I understand to be meant that time God is pleased to afford to a people, a certain time being here mentioned to denote an uncertain. (1) The first year may denote the beginning of the means of grace, which God affords to men. (2) The second year, the proper time that fig-trees bear fruit, if not the first year, then it is expected that it brings forth fruit the second. (3) Or it may imply that God expects sinners should bring forth quickly after they sit under the means of grace. (4) Moreover, it may denote that the means of grace may not be of long continuance. (5) Also it may signify God’ s patience. 6. “ Cut it down,” &c. God will not always bear with fruitless professors. (1) God may direct His speech to His Church, and to the subordinate vinedressers. “ Cut it down” by excommunication. (2) Or God may speak to Jesus Christ. Smite his root, let him wither. (3) Give him up to his own heart’ s lust. (4) Leave him to delusions. (5) Death. Inferences: 1. Let such as are planted in God’ s vineyard tremble if not fruitful in grace. The Church will be no sanctuary to such. 2. Some who are in Christ’ s vineyard were never planted there by God. 3. Men may have leaves, and even the appearance of fruit, and may seem to grow and flourish for a time, yet, nevertheless, may not bring forth the true and saving fruits of the Spirit. 4. The barren soul shall not stand long in God’ s vineyard. 7. The reason why this barren fig-tree is cut down. (1) It is good for nothing. (2) Another tree might grow where it stands. (a) Barren professors cumber poor ministers by their cross and peevish spirits. (b) They cumber the spirits of their pious parents. (c) They cumber the minds of serious Christians, members of the same Church, who are ashamed to hear of their pride, passion, idleness, &c. (d) They are a sad incumbrance to the whole vineyard. (e) They are cumbersome to God Himself (Isaiah 1:14). (f) They grieve and afflict the Spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ. (g) They grieve the Holy Spirit. 8. “ Let it alone this year also.” (1) Barren souls are spared through Christ’ s prayer and intercession. (2) God is slow to anger, unwilling immediately to cut down unfruitful professors. 9. Why does Christ intercede for sinners? (1) Because He died for them. (2) Because He ever lives to make intercession with the Father. (3) Because He knows that if He interceded not, no sinner could live a moment longer. (B. Keach.) The fig-tree spared another year I. OF THOSE WHO HAVE A PLACE IN THE CHURCH OF CHRIST, SOME ARE BUT BARREN . Even among the twelve there was a traitor; and Christ has forewarned us that there will always be hypocrites mingled with His people. By the barren fig-tree, however, is meant, not only the plausible hypocrite, but all merely nominal Christians; all who, having the means of grace, do not improve them. Yes, my brethren, all of you are included, who, while you attend in this house of God; while you bend the knee before Him; while, sabbath after sabbath, you hear the gospel-sound, listen to its warnings, its invitations, its free and gracious promises; to whom, monthly, are offered the sacramental pledges of redeeming love: still continue far from the kingdom of God; by your life and conversation show, that you are none the better for the opportunities you enjoy; still live in indulged sin, or, at least, bring forth no fruit to the glory of God; are still careless, irreligious, worldly, vain. II. THE BARREN CANNOT ESCAPE THE EYE OF GOD. He sees the heart and inmost thoughts. He cannot, and will not, be mocked. III. GOD EXPECTS FRUIT FROM US. And justly so. 1. Ask yourselves, then, brethren, do you bear fruit answering to your profession of repentance? Are you risen from an unconverted state, and walking in newness of life? 2. Do you bear fruit answerable to your profession of faith? You profess to believe in Him who has bought you with His blood. Are you living no more to yourselves, but to Him who died for you? 3. Is the fruit you bear suitable to the opportunities and means of grace which you enjoy? Highly are you favoured, brethren; you are members of a pure Church; you assemble to a pure form of worship. The Word of God, the sacraments are yours; to you is the gospel preached. Might not the Lord of the vineyard have laid the axe to the root? Why is it thou art spared? Because God is patient long suffering, merciful, and He would have thee repent. IV. OBSERVE THAT IN GOD MERCY. Well might justice say, “ Cut it down.” But there is an Advocate in heaven. Behold One interceding at God’ s right hand: “ Let it alone this year Also, till I shall dig about it and dung it: and if it bear fruit, well.” Blessed be God, for us mercy hath rejoiced against judgment. We are yet spared; and to what end hath Christ Jesus been thus long-suffering? It is that He may show yet richer goodness; that He may try more abundant means. “ Let it alone, till I shall dig about it, and dung it.” “ And if it bear fruit, well.” All care and pains will have been well bestowed, if, after all, the sinner bear fruit to God. God’ s mercy will be magnified; His grace exalted. V. And now, lastly, OBSERVE THE SURE DOOM OF THOSE WHO STILL :--“ If not” (if the tree then bear no fruit), “ then after that thou shalt cut it down.” It is, then, possible to weary out the patience of God Himself. It is possible, by a hard and impenitent heart, to let the day of grace go by. There may, there will come a time, when mercy shall cease to plead, and leave room for judgment only; when Christ Himself will give up His intercession. O, awful state I when the Saviour Himself withdraws; when His Spirit, grieved, resisted, quenched, finally quits the stony heart. Then follows death-like insensibility--a fearful apathy to all spiritual things, or, it may be, a daily growth in all iniquity, till at length the sinner’ s cup is full. (E. Blencowe, M. A.) The barren fig-tree I. THE OF THE FIG-TREE. 1. This “ certain man” denotes God. To Him everything belongs. “ The earth is His, and the fulness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein.” But the Church is peculiarly His, as it is called by His name, and formed to show forth His praise. 2. But who is intended by the fig-tree? It cannot be a real Christian. All the truly regenerate are fruitful. They are not equally, but they are really, fruitful. The character here intended is a man placed in the external and visible Church, and enjoying all the privileges of such a favoured situation. It was once the highly favoured Jew. It is now the highly favoured Christian, blessed with all the religious advantages of Judaism, multiplied, improved, perfected: it is now the highly favoured Briton, born not only in a land of freedom and science, but of gospel grace. It is thou who wast brought up in a godly family, and favoured with the prayers, the instructions, the examples, the tears, of pious parents. It is thou who hast a name and a place in His sanctuary, from Sabbath to Sabbath, where “ thine eyes see thy teachers: and thy ears hear a voice behind thee, saying, This is the way, walk ye in it, when you turn to the right hand, and when you turn to the left.” II. THE OF THE . 1. His observation. 2. His disappointment. 3. His patience. “ These three years.” Why did He not complain the first year? Why did He not destroy it the second year? Why does He bear with it to the end of the third? Why?--To teach us-that judgment is His strange work--that He delighteth in mercy; that He waiteth to be gracious; that He is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. III. THE OF --“ Cut it down; why cumbereth it the ground?” Here we see-- 1. That they who derive no benefit from the means of grace are detrimental. 2. Unprofitableness under the means of grace is exceedingly provoking to the Most High. And can we wonder at this when we consider what a waste it is of time; what an abuse it is of privilege; what a contempt it is of the Divine goodness; what a disregard it is of the soul and eternity I Sin is to be estimated not by its grossness, but its guilt. And what aggravates guilt? The light we possess; the obligations we are under; the restraints we break through. 3. God possesses justice as well as mercy; and though He bears long, He will not bear always. “ Sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily” ; and, as the consequence, the heart of the sons of men is often fully set in them to do evil. But how absurd, as well as dangerous, is such perverse reasoning! Is forbearance forgiveness? No. IV. THE OF THE VINE-DRESSER. 1. He pleads for the suspension of the stroke. “ Let it alone this year also.” Thou hast borne with it long, I own, already; oh! bear with it a little longer. And why is He so desirous of sparing the sinner a little longer in this world? Because, in order to our having the grace of repentance, it is necessary that we should have space for repentance: because while there is life there is hope; but “ when once the master of the house is risen up, and hath shut to the door,” opportunity is over, importunity vain. 2. He engages to use additional means to produce fertility--“ Till I dig about it, and dung it.” The Word shall be preached with more fervour than before. The minister shall be particular in describing his case, in alarming his fears. Friends shall warn, admonish, invite. Conscience shall awake and reprove. Disappointments shall show him the vanity of the world. Sickness shall invade his frame. Death shall enter his family, and smite a connection by his side. The day in which he lives shall be dark and cloudy. He shall hear of “ distress of nations with perplexity; the sea and the waves roaring; men’ s hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth: for the powers of heaven shall be shaken.” And can he retain his ungodliness through such a year as this? 3. Here is the supposition of future produce. “ If it bear fruit, well.” Well for the owner (John 15:8). Well for the vine-dresser, as his labours will be rewarded. Well for the vineyard; it will be adorned, enriched, and replenished. Well for the tree itself, as it will escape the punishment of barrenness, and obtain the blessing of fruitfulness. 4. Here is the doom of final impenitence. Even the patience of the Saviour may be exhausted. (W. Jay.) Judgment threatening, but mercy sparing I. To all unprofitable, untruthful sinners, we utter this hard, but needful sentence: TO CUT YOU DOWN WOULD BE MOST . It is right and reasonable to fell barren trees, and it is just as right and reasonable that you should be cut down. 1. This will appear in the first place, if we reflect that this is the shortest and the surest way to deal with you; it will cost the least trouble, and be most certainly effectual in removing you from the place to which you are an injury rather than a benefit. 2. Another reason makes the argument for judgment very powerful, namely, that sufficient space for repentance has already been given. 3. Sinner, I argue thy case somewhat harshly, thou thinkest. All this while there has been no sign of improvement whatever in thee. 4. But there are other reasons why “ Cut it down” is most reasonable, when we consider the owner and the other trees. (1) First of all, here is a tree which brings forth no fruit whatever, and therefore is of no service. It is like money badly invested, bringing in no interest; it is a dead loss to the owner. What is the use of keeping it? The dead tree is neither use nor ornament; it can yield no service and afford no pleasure. Cut it down by all manner of means. And even so with thee, sinner; what is the use of thee? (2) But there is a worse consideration, namely, that all this while you have been filling up a space which somebody might have been filling to the glory of God. Where that barren tree stands there might have been a tree loaded with fruit. (3) Moreover, and to make bad worse even to the worst degree, all this while ungodly men are spreading an evil influence. II. Our second most solemn work is to remind thee, O impenitent sinner, that FOR GOD TO HAVE SPARED YOU SO LONG IS A VERY THING. That the infinitely just and holy God should have spared you, unconverted man, unconverted woman, up till now, is no small thing, but a matter for adoring wonder. 1. Let me show you this. Consider, negatively, God is not sparing you because He is insensible towards your sins: He is angry with the wicked every day. 2. It is not because the offence is at a distance, and therefore far from His observant eye. 3. Mark, sinner, He has spared you not because He was unable to have destroyed you. He might have bidden the tiles fall from the roof, or the fever might have smitten you in the street; the air might have refused to heave your lungs, or the blood might have ceased its circulation in your veins. The gates to death are many. The quiver of judgment is full of sharp arrows. The Lord has but to will it, and your soul is required of you. You will be no more missed than one sere leaf is missed in a forest, or one dewdrop in a thousand leagues of grass. Judgment needs but a word to work its utmost vengeance, and withal you are so provoking that the marvel is that Divine severity has spared you so long. Admire and wonder at this longsuffering. 4. Remember that this wonder is increased, when you think of the fruit He deserved to have had of you. A God so good and so gracious ought to have been loved by you. 5. And ah, my hearers! I have to touch upon a very solemn part of the business now, when I notice again that some, perhaps, here present have been guilty of very God-provoking sins. Shall God be always provoked? Shall mercy be preached to you for ever in vain? It is a marvel, it is a wonder that these God-provoking sins have so long been borne with, and that you are not yet cut down. III. And now, WHAT IS THE REASON FOR ALL THIS ? “ Why is it that this cumber-ground tree has not been cut down? The answer is, because there is One who pleads for sinners. But what has been the secret cause that you have been kept alive? The answer is, Jesus Christ has pleaded for you, the crucified Saviour has interfered for you. And you ask me “ Why?” I answer, because Jesus Christ has an interest in you all. (C. H.Spurgeon.) Lessons from the fig-tree 1. This parable cuts up all pleas of negative goodness. Unproductiveness is decidedly criminal. 2. This parable calls on you to examine yourselves, whether you be barren or fruitful; and to follow out the result aright, whatever it may be. 3. This parable calls on us all to be thankful to the Lord for sparing us hitherto. It gives this call to us without exception, and especially if any of us have been spared in the time of great danger, restored from severe sickness. 4. Let none of us so abuse God’ s sparing mercy as to presume on it for the future; but let us all improve the present season without delay, and hold ourselves in constant readiness for death. (James Foote, M. A.) The barren fig-tree The principles underlying this parable are, briefly, these: That much will be required of those to whom much has been given; that, if those to whom much has been given fail to meet that which is required of them, sentence of destruction will be pronounced against them; and that, though the execution of this sentence may be deferred at the intercession of Christ, it will certainly be carried out if there be no repentance and amendment manifested. I. GOD HAS PLACED US IN THE MOST FOR THE FORTH OF FRUIT. The privileges of the Jews were small in comparison with those which we enjoy. They had the prophets; we have the Son of God. Let us never forget that responsibility is proportional to privilege. II. GOD EXPECTS FRUIT FROM A TREE ON WHICH HE HAS SUCH . If we have so much more than others, we ought to be just so much better than they. The fruit in this case is that of character--what we are rather than what we do: what we do only in so far as that is the genuine outcome and spontaneous revelation of what we are. Righteousness, meekness, fidelity--in a word, moral excellence springing from our faith in Christ, and our devotion to Him--that is the fruit which God expects to find in us as the occupants of His vineyard. III. GOD OF ON ALL WHO, HAVING HAD SUCH , BRING FORTH NO FRUIT (see John 15:6;Matthew 7:19). The Jews are one example of this; the seven Churches in Asia are another. If we wish to secure permanent prosperity, we must remember that we can do so only by maintaining constant fruitfulness in works of faith and labours of love, and holiness of character. When these disappear, and barrenness sets in, then there will come the sentence, “ Cut it down.” IV. THIS , ON THE BARREN FIG-TREE, IS NOT AT ONCE CARRIED INTO . For all such respite as interposes, in any case, between evil desert and its immediate punishment, men are indebted to the intercession of Christ. V. A RESPITE IS NOT A PARDON. Only a postponement. Take care not to regard God’ s forbearance, which is meant to give space for repentance, as an actual manifestation of indifference, or approval. Guilt after such forbearance, and against it, will be greater than before. (W. M. Taylor, D. D.) Of Christ seeking fruit, and finding none Those who enjoy the means of fruitfulness should bring forth fruit; those who are planted in the Lord’ s vineyard, and have a standing under the means of grace, should be fruitful. This is clear in the words, and indeed in every part of this parable. 1. They are planted in the vineyard for this purpose. That is the proper place for fruit-trees; another place than the vineyard would serve them, if they were not set there for fruit. 2. The Lord, who gives them place here, expects it. He is said to come and seek fruit (Luke 13:6-7). It is that which he has just cause to look for. 3. He heinously resents it when he finds no fruit, and expresses his resentment to the dresser of his vineyard. It is an abuse of his patience; the longer he bears with such barrenness the more it is abused. It is a provocation that he will not bear long with. After three years’ forbearance, he passes that severe sentence,” cut it down.” 4. It is an injury to the place where they stand. They cumber the ground, that is the reason of the sentence (Luke 13:7). It takes up that room which might be better employed; it sucks away that moisture which would make others fruitful; it overdrops the plants that are under it, hinders the spreading and fruitfulness of others. A better improvement might be made of the ground; it is a loss to the owner of the vineyard, when such a plant is suffered, καταργεῖ; which may signify the spending the heart of the ground to no purpose (Luke 13:7). 5. Those who have most tenderness for such, can have no ground to seek a long forbearance of this barrenness. The dresser of the vineyard will venture to beg no more forbearance than one year, after that he yields it up to excision (Luke 13:8-9). 6. All labours and pains, all care and culture, in digging about and dunging it, is lost upon it. Those whom the Lord employs to use all means for their improvement, have nothing left them in the issue, but occasion of sad complaint, that they have laboured in vain, spent their strength for nought Isaiah 49:4). 7. Such will certainly be ruined. Where fruit is not found, nothing can be expected but cutting down. The lord of the vineyard will not spare them, and the dressers of the vineyard will not longer intercede for them. All in a little while agree in that fatal conclusion, “ cut it down.” All these, and each of them, make it evident, that those who are planted under the means of grace, are highly concerned to bring forth fruit. The most pertinent and profitable inquiry, for further clearing of this truth, will be, what fruits it is they should bring forth? What we are to understand by fruit, and that fruitfulness which is so much our duty? And of this I shall give you an account by the quality, quantity, and continuance of it. To these heads we may reduce those severals, whereby the Scriptures express to us what this fruit is. I. FOR QUALITY. It must be good fruit. Grapes, not “ wild grapes.” 1. Real. A show, an appearance of fruit will not suffice. If it be not real, it has not a metaphysical goodness, much less a moral or spiritual. The fig-tree in the gospel made some show of fruit; but Christ finding none upon it really, He cursed it, and it withered (Matthew 21:19). It must not be like the apple of Sodom, which has nothing to commend it, but only a fair outside. Fair appearances may delude men, and pass for better fruit with them than that which is good indeed. But God is not, cannot be mocked; it is He that comes to seek fruit, and it is not the fairest shows will satisfy Him, it must be real. 2. It must be such as imports a change of the soul that brings it forth. 3. It must be distinguishing fruit; such as no trees can bring forth but those that are good, and such as will make their goodness apparent (Matthew 7:16; Matthew 7:20); such as may approve ye to God and your own consciences to be trees of righteousness, the planted of the Lord, and such as may make this known to men too, so far as by visible acts it may be known; such as may carry a conviction with them to the consciences of others, that you are indeed what you profess yourselves to be, such as will leave them no just exception against it (1 Peter 3:16). 4. Seasonable. That it may be good fruit, it must be brought forth “ in due season” (Psalms 1:1-6.; Matthew 21:41). The lord of the vineyard looks for fruit in his season (Mark 12:2; Luke 20:10). There is a season for everything (Ecclesiastes 3:1), and then, if ever, it is good. 5. Sound. A fair skin is not enough to commend fruit for good, if it be rotten within. And so is our fruit, if the inward temper and motions of the heart be not correspondent to the outward actions and expressions. II. For the . It ought to be much (John 15:5; John 15:8). There should be-- 1. A fulness of fruit. Those that enjoy the means, must not only bring forth fruit, but be fruitful; should bear abundance. Heart and life should be filled with it (Philippians 1:11). 2. A proportionableness to the means of fruitfulness, to the plenty and power of them. So much as will answer the care and pains is taken with them. If a man take more pains, and be at more charge in opening the roots of a tree, and dunging it, and pruning it, in fencing and watering it, and it bring forth less or no more fruit than another that has no such care and pains taken with it, it will scarce pass for a good, a fruitful tree. That is barren ground, which brings forth less, after all care and culture, than that which has less tillage. 3. An increase. Those who enjoy the means of fruitfulness, must grow more and more fruitful. The longer they stand in the vineyard, and continue under the means of grace, the more fruit they should bear. You expect not much of a tree the first year; but after it is of standing to bear, you expect that it should every year increase in fruitfulness, and bring forth more and more. So the Lord expects from us. 4. Variety. Their fruit must not only be much of some sort, but of every sort. They must not only abound in some kind of fruit, but must bring forth fruits of all kinds. III. For . It must be lasting fruit. Of which in three particulars. 1. The fruit they bear must continue, It must not wither and come to nothing before the Lord of the vineyard come to reap it. 2. They must continue bearing fruit. The good ground did approve itself to be good, because it brought forth fruit” with patience” (Luke 8:15). They only are good and fruitful ground, who persevere and hold out in bearing fruit. 3. They must be bearing it always; not only semper, as a tree that fails not of fruit once a year, but ad semper, as if a tree should bear fruit all the year long. Use 1. This leads us to take up a lamentation for the barrenness of the place, the unfruitfulness of the people of this land. Use 2. For exhortation. If those that enjoy the means of fruitfulness ought to bring forth, then are you highly concerned to take notice of it as your duty, to be fruitful, and to comply with the Lord herein. (D. Clarkson, B. D.) The parable of the fig-tree I. Those whose lot it is to live within the pale of the visible Church, are a highly favoured people. Compared with the rest of mankind, they are like an enclosed field or garden, in the cultivating or adorning of which the proprietor lays out great pains and expense. II. God requires, and has a right to expect, that those who are so highly favoured should bring forth fruits of a corresponding kind. It is the peculiarity of the gospel that privilege precedes duty, but it is always taken for granted that duty shall follow. III. There is often great ground for lamentation and complaint, that those who are favoured by God, in point of privilege, fail in rendering Him homage. How many are there who despise the goodness, and long-suffering, and forbearance of God! How many are there who know not this the day of their merciful visitation! IV. God is justly and sorely provoked by such conduct. “ Cut it down,” says He, “ why cumbereth it the ground? “ What is the use of its remaining longer, but to fill up room in that garden on which I have bestowed so much pains, to intercept the light of the sun from the other trees that are bearing fruit, to draw away the sap from them? V. God is pleased to spare unprofitable members of the Church, and to extend their day of grace, notwithstanding all their provocations. (T. McCrie, D. D.) Bringing forth fruit Every man is expected to be fruitful in some way or other; there is no situation in which a man cannot bring forth some good fruit. Servants may bring forth good fruit before their superiors. I heard, the other day, of a servant, a godly person, who wished to change her place. “ Has your master been unkind? Did he not give you wages enough?” “ No; he gives more than I shall have elsewhere; but they are so wicked, I can’ t bear their ways. I would rather work harder, with less wages, than stay to see their evil doings.” Dear brethren, I pray this for you--that God would teach you to hate sin wherever you see it, and that you would not jest at it, or wink at it. I wish to make you all good Christians under the influence of that grace that can alone make you wise to salvation. Masters, you may do much good. I once heard an anecdote of a poor servant maid. She went to live in a house, but after some time wanted to leave her place. She was recommended to stay, as they were religious people. “ Oh,” said she, “ I will go to no such house as this again; for, while master and mistress pretend to be very pious when they are out, they are devils at home. Let me rather go where the righteous are a sneer, and where righteousness is utterly despised.” I tell you that true righteousness creates heaven in men’ s houses; and where the fear of God is there is righteousness in every department, and it is the glory of the family circle. (Rowland Hill, M. A.) The figless fig-tree In regard of God, we ought to be fruitful. First, for that He hath deserved it. Secondly, He seeks for it. Thirdly, and when He finds it, He counts Himself honoured and glorified by it. First, HE HATH FRUIT FROM US, in that He hath bought us at a dear rate from our vain conversation, to serve Him all our days in holiness and righteousness; He hath chosen us to be “ a peculiar people unto Himself, zealous of good works,” and make choice of us before others, that we should be fruitful, and that our fruit should abide and abound. He hath made us His own workmanship, by the effectual calling of grace, and “ created us to good works to walk in them.” He hath planted us, hedged us about, manured, us, watered us with the sweet dews of His Word and gospel from heaven; trimmed us with His pruning hook of judgments and corrections. “ And what could He do more for us that He hath not done?” God hath set in hope, planted in hope, watered in hope, of some answerable return, and shall it be denied? or canst thou imagine that God hath took all this pains with thee, and bestowed all this cost upon thee, that thou shouldest bear green boughs or gay blossoms only? Secondly, HE HATH SOUGHT IT OF US, as our text speaks. Now seeking implies divers things: First, an earnest desire to find the thing sought for, as Luke Matthew 13:45. Such an earnest desire hath God to find fruit on us, whom He hath planted in His Church, as appears by those pathetical speeches which He uses, Deuteronomy 5:29; Deuteronomy 32:29; Psalms 81:13; Hosea 6:4. And in this chapter, Luke 13:34; Luke 19:41-42. By all which, and many such like, it appears that He doth seek seriously and fervently for fruit, and is much grieved when He is deceived in His expectation. Secondly, Seeking imports diligence and frequency. It is no rare but a continued act. So Son 3:1-4; Luke 15:8; 2 Timothy 1:17. Thus God comes and seeks for fruit, not once, not twice, and then gives over, but He comes often. Thirdly, Seeking implies mildness and gentleness, Thirdly, WE SHOULD BRING FORTH FRUIT, FOR THAT GOD HOLDS HIMSELF BY IT. “ Herein is My Father glorified” (saith Christ) “ that you bear much fruit” (John 15:8). Secondly, We ought to have a special regard to the credit of the gospel, which is the doctrine of God’ s grace, and teacheth men to be fruitful, “ in denying all ungodly lusts, and in living soberly, righteously, and godly in this evil world” (Titus 2:11-12). Thirdly, God will have a special care of us. The Israelites in their conquests were forbidden to lift up an axe against any tree that bare fruit Deuteronomy 20:19-20). God will provide for all fruitful Christians in public calamities (Ezekiel 9:4). Fourthly, “ It shall be unto us according to our fruit” (Jeremiah 17:10).. We read that Xerxes adorned the plane-tree, and hung it with many rich and precious jewels, because He delighted in the shade thereof; much more will God adorn fruitful trees, for that He delights in the fruit thereof. In this life He will reward with glory and honour. A fruitful Christian carries a heaven in his heart, joy and comfort Son 7:7), a happy and blessed communion that is between Christ and him; and hereafter there is a blessing abides him for Hebrews 7:8). And thus you have heard what reason we have to be fruitful, both in respect of others, and of ourselves as well as others. Lastly, If we cast our eyes upon the whole creation, and every creature therein that God hath made, we may be stirred up and provoked to fruitfulness. The heaven, the earth, the sea, and all therein, are fruitful in their kind; and shall man be barren and fruitless, for whom all these are fruitful? (N. Rogers.) God the Owner of the vineyard Now briefly of the owner’ s peculiar interest and propriety therein. It is His vineyard. How His? Is He the owner and possessor of no more but that? and the fig-tree mentioned thereon growing? “ The whole earth is the Lord’ s and the fulness thereof; the round world, and they that dwell therein,” saith the Psalmist (Psalms 24:1), and yet in regard of the affection that He bears unto the Church, He doth in a manner count Himself owner of nothing but this. The Church is the peculiar inheritance of the Lord, He doth more respect it than He doth all the world besides. “ The Lord’ s portion is His people, Jacob is the lot of His inheritance,” saith Moses (Deuteronomy 32:9); they are His peculiar ones (Exodus 19:5-6); His glory (Isaiah 46:13); Hisornament (Ezekiel 7:20); His throne (Jeremiah 4:21); His diadem Isaiah 62:3); His Hephzibah (Isaiah 62:4); His only delight is in her. 1. He hath chosen them from the rest of the world. “ Only the Lord hath a delight in thy fathers to love them, and He chose their seed “ after them, even you above all people, as it is this day,” said Moses to Israel Deuteronomy 10:15). The Lord “ hath chosen Zion, He hath desired it for His habitation” saith David (Psalms 132:13-14). “ Ye are a chosen generation” saith Peter (1 Peter 2:2). God chooseth for His love, and loves for His choice; they are called His by election. 2. He hath purchased His inheritance with a great price; the whole world cost Him not so much as His Church did, it was bought with blood. He hath entered into a league and covenant with His Church, to become their God, and take them for His people, and so He hath not with the world besides (Hosea 2:13; 1 Peter 2:10). Man is frequently resembled to a tree in Scripture; so Job 19:10; Daniel 4:10-11; Daniel 4:14; Daniel 4:20; IsaJe 11:19; Ezekiel 17:24; Matthew 3:10; Matthew 7:17-19; Matthew 12:33. The resemblances are many; take we notice of some. 1. In respect of shape, a tree hath its root, trunk, or body, boughs, branches, and smaller twigs issuing from thence. Man’ s head is his root, his body answereth the trunk or stock of a tree, his arms and legs are his boughs and branches, his fingers and toes the smaller twigs. Only here is the difference, man is arbor inversa, a tree turned upside down, saith the philosopher. For the root or head of a tree standeth on the earth, and extendeth itself towards heaven in the stock, boughs, and branches of it. But man (this mystical tree) hath his head upwards, as his root; and his branches and boughs grow downward to the earth: to teach us (saith one) whence we have our sap, moisture, and nourishment, not from the earth below, as the tree hath (which was Esau’ s blessing), but from the dew of heaven, which was the blessing of Jacob (Genesis 27:28-29). 2. In respect of growth, there is some good resemblance. A tree is first tender in the twig, then stiff in the stock; and lastly, withered and doating in the age of it.. So man in his childhood and infancy is flexible, easily inclining to virtue or vice, as he is taught and instructed. Like wax, he is apt to receive any impression that shall be put upon him, and (as Pliny speaketh of the fir-tree) the nearer it is to the root, the more smooth it is, and less knotty. So the nearer man is to infancy and childhood, the less sinful and freest from vicious courses; but when he once comes to be stiffened, and confirmed in the strength of his stock by man-age, then he waxeth more tough and violent in his courses (as did Rehoboam and Joash): the cider we grow, usually the worse we are. Adam was worse in his breeches than he was before; so is it with his sinful posterity. And as man grows thus in his youth, so he is drooping in his age. Let him be as strong as the oak, as tall as the cedar, as straight as the pine-tree, as green and flourishing as the laurel or bay-tree; when age seizeth on him, his strength is weakened, his tallness abated, his straightness crooked, his greenness withered. 3. There are several sorts and kinds of trees; some greater than others, and some taller; some straighter, some broader; some younger, some elder; some barren, some fruitful; so is it amongst men. All are not of the same rank and quality, some are of high degree, others low (Psalms 61:2). Some exalted, others brought down. Saul was a tall tree, “ higher than others by the head and shoulders.” Zaccheus was a low tree, lower than the people by head and shoulders. Absolom was a goodly green, straight tree, none in Israel to be compared with him for beauty. Mephibosheth was a tree lame and crooked from his childhood, by a fall that he got out of his nurse’ s arms. Some are fruitful, others unfruitful. Of which more hereafter. 4. In respect of outward state and condition the resemblance holds. High trees are subject to greatest dangers, being exposed to the violence of the winds, blasts of lightning, the dints of thunderbolts, and usually the higher the less fruitful. Low trees are subject to the browsing of beasts, trampling down with feet, and twenty other annoyances. The tree of a middle stature is chiefly safest, and beareth the best fruit. Thus it is with man. Those in high place he open to the winds of alteration, to the lightnings of disasters, to the thunderings of envy and malice. “ How are the mighty overthrown” (said David in his epitaph for Saul). Oh! “ how are they fallen?” how often are they split with the weight and greatness of their own boughs? 5. Trees are not without their diseases, as Pliny showeth, nor is man without his. The same author tells us that, to that time, three hundred several diseases were discovered, which man was subject unto (some philosophers say two thousand, and that there is two hundred to which the very eye of man is incident). Sure I am, there is no tree subject to so many diseases as the body of man is. 6. In respect of the use, man may be resembled unto a tree; some trees are for building, others for burning, being once felled. So it is with all mankind, being felled by death; some are for the building up of “ that house which is not made with hands” (2 Corinthians 5:1), others for fuel in hell, “ their end is to be burned” (Hebrews 6:8). Other resemblances we might acquaint you with, but I must observe measure. Let not this that hath been said be passed over without some useful application. (N. Rogers.) A fig-tree It was no ordinary nor trivial tree, but of a noble and generous kind (called upon by other trees to be king over them), and brought forth sweet and delicious fruit (Judges 9:10). Why a fig-tree should be mentioned rather than any other tree, some reasons may be rendered, as this in general: The fig-tree was very common in Judea, and frequently planted in their vineyards, for that the vine delighteth much in its neighbourhood and shade; and thence is it that we so frequently find them joined together in the Scripture (Deuteronomy 8:8; 1 Kings 4:25; Psalms 105:33; Joe 1:7; Joe 2:22; Amos 4:9; Haggai 1:12). More particularly, in reference to the synagogue of the Jews, and that state, the fig-tree, above other trees, did best set forth their condition. The fig-tree is a succulent plant, full of leaves and luxuriant branches; so did that nation come out, and spend its sap in outward observations and ceremonies, contenting itself with the fair leaves of out ward profession, crying out, “ The temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord,” drawing near with their lips when their hearts were far off. Again, the fig-tree is the first that buddeth, but the last whose fruit is ripe; the Jews budded long before the Gentiles (and it is to be prayed for that the time of their ripe fruit may be hastened), but the fulness of the Gentiles must come in before their ripening can be expected, as the apostle shows (Romans 11:25-26). In reference to the Christian Church under the New Testament, the fig-tree is named in respect of sundry properties, wherein it doth hold resemblance. 1. The fig-tree is full of sap and moisture, it is the most juiceful of any tree, the root of it doth abundantly feed it; so doth Christ His Church, He is the Root of it, and on the Root depends the firm standing thereof, and the life of every branch; from this Root we have our radical moisture, from His fulness we derive grace, and grace for grace (John 1:16). 2. The fig-tree is fruitful above other trees. It hath fruit one under another, insomuch that one fig thrusts off another, through its abundance. The Egyptian fig-tree (saith Sclinus) bears fruit seven times in a year; pull off one fig, and another breaks forth in the place thereof very shortly after. So fruitful is the Church of God and every sound member of it; they are “ filled with the fruits of righteousness” (Philippians 1:11). 3. The fruit of the fig-tree is a most delicious fruit: “ Shall I leave my sweetness?” said the fig-tree (Judges 9:11). And such is the fruit ofevery good Christian, acceptable and pleasing both to God and man. What the apostle speaks of the works of charity (Philippians 4:8; Hebrews 13:16) may be said of every other gift and grace, “ it is an odour of a sweet smell, a sacrifice acceptable and pleasing unto God” ; we are “ a sweet savour unto God” (saith the apostle). The fruits of our graces are God’ s dainties (Son 6:2). 4. The fig-tree is forward in putting forth; it foretells a summer, as our Saviour shows (Matthew 24:32). God’ s people are “ a willing people” Psalms 110:3). Forward to every good work that God requires to be Galatians 1:16; 2 Corinthians 8:10; 2 Corinthians 9:2). Even in this sense the godly may be said to be Primitive Dei, the first-fruits of God. And this their forwardness promiseth a summer; it brings a blessing upon a nation. 5. The fig-tree makes not so glorious a show as do other trees, it neither blooms nor blossoms, and yet bears abundantly: so is it with the sound Christian, he makes not that show that the hypocrite doth, but he is more fruitful (Matthew 6:3-4; Matthew 6:6; Luke 18:11-14). The harlot exceeds the chaste matron in gaudy attire, as the Church of Rome doth ours. 6. The fig-tree best bears the brunt of winter storms, and is freest from summer’ s thunder (saith Pliny), that never strikes it. Sure it is that the godly Christian is best armed for hard weather, and best enabled to go through variety of conditions (Philippians 4:12-13). Nor do the thunderbolts of an angry God ever strike him; that thunder and lightning which comes from the throne comes through the rainbow, the covenant of grace and mercy, before ever they come at him (Revelation 4:5). 7. Amongst all trees there is none whose leaf doth so much resemble the hand of a man as doth the fig-tree’ s. The leaf of the asp resembles the tongue, but the leaf of the fig-tree, man’ s hand. Christianity sets us to work; it stands, not in a verbal profession, but in action (Mt John 13:17; James 1:22). (N. Rogers.) Trees The heathens of old were idolatrous in multiplying gods to themselves, even to the number of thirty thousand (saith Hesiod); whatever they best liked, that they created a god, and so of whatever they most feared. Of a clap of thunder they made a Jupiter, of a tempest at sea they made a Neptune, of an earthquake they made a Pluto, &c. And to these their created gods they erected temples, altars, and consecrated the goodliest and fairest trees that they met withal; which ancient practice of dedicating this and that kind of tree to several gods as proper and peculiar to them was always observed (saith Pliny), and yet remaineth to this day. Thence Lucian took occasion to deride the practice of those times, feigning their idol-gods to sit in Parliament, and every one making choice of that tree which he most fancied. Jupiter makes choice of the oak for its strength, Apollo of the bay-tree for its greenness, Neptune of the poplar for its length, Juno of the eglantine for its sweetness, Venus of the myrtle tree for its beauty. Minerva sitting by, demanded of her father Jupiter what might be the reason, that seeing there were so many fruitful trees, they all made choice of those trees which were fruitless. He answered her, Ne videamur fructu honore vendere, that we may not be thought to chaffer our honour away for fruit. “ Well,” said Minerva, “ do you what you please; I, for my part, make choice of the olive for its fatness and fruitfulness. All commended her choice, and were ashamed at their own folly. This you will say is but a fiction; and it is no other, but it discovered the folly of men of that generation, and so it may do of ours. In elections and choices fruitful trees are least of all regarded. The ambitious he seeks after unprofitable honour, high place, rule, and government, and would be advanced above the rest of his brethren; he affects the cypress for its tallness (a tree that great men much esteem of, and nourish in their walks, but it is hardly made to grow), and when it is come up, the fruit is good for nothing, the leaves of it are bitter, the scent strong, neither is the shade thereof wholesome. The young gallant is for the double-coloured poplar, all for form and compliment. Oh, there is much of a gentleman in that, the leaves of this tree are soft, and full of down, which soon flies away like the down of the thistle into the air; this tree is an emblem of dissimulation. The flattering courtier likes well the clasping ivy, which yet is an enemy to all trees and plants, it undermineth walls, and is good only to harbour serpents and venomous creatures, insomuch that Pliny wonders it should be honoured by any, or counted of any worth; and yet heathen emperors have used to make them garlands of it, and wear them on their heads. Rehoboam too much affected these ivy codds (1 Kings 12:8). And it is the fault of greatness. The covetous worldling prefers the ash to all other trees; he loves to bear the keys, and delights in being the jailer of his wealth. The body and bulk of this tree is hard and tough, and the leaves unwholesome to any beast that doth not chew the cud. This entry is longer than a Bible module can hold. The rest is at https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/bi/ Luke 13:10-17A woman, which had a spirit of infirmity eighteen yearn-- Two pulpits I. Observe one thing at the outset: HOW MANY THERE ARE IN THE BIBLE RECORD WHO GIVE HELP ALL ALONG THE AGES. Put alongside of this story the account previously given of the man healed of leprosy, and the other man at the same time cured of palsy. Of this last we have precisely the same record--“ And immediately he rose up before them, and took up that whereon he lay, and departed to his own house, glorifying God.” In close connection with these cases there are mentioned “ multitudes,” but no personal particulars are furnished. The pages of God’ s Word are crowded with such incidents. The woman of Samaria, the man of God that came to Eli, the lad who gave his bread and fishes at Tiberias--all these have had a mention, but nothing more to identify them in the inspired annals. It is really of little consequence who we are; it matters more what we are. II. Observe, in the second place, THAT EVEN IN EXTREME OF DISEASE ONE MAY EXHIBIT A SUPREME AND FAITH. This woman was evidently in a most deplorable condition; she was actually doubled up with deformity. When a believer is smitten terribly, he is not always just in the mood to be reasonable. Every nerve is quivering with agony; he cannot see the wisdom nor the fairness of its infliction. The more common danger for a Christian under trial is that he shall sink into a state of stupor, of listlessness, or despair. A great numbness settles upon the soul. There are pains which lie a great distance lower than the bottom of the grave. The poet Cowper, tearing out a leaf from his own awful experience, says, “ There are as truly things which it is not lawful for man to utter as those were which Paul heard and saw in the third heaven; if the ladder of Christian life reaches, as I suppose it does, to the very presence of God, it nevertheless has its foot in the very abyss.” Now against both of these baleful postures of mind, the passionate and the listless, does this thought of preaching the gospel from a pulpit of patient suffering for the great glory of God array itself. It is wise to keep in mind the fact that souls may be won to the Cross by a life on a sick-bed just as well as by a life in a cathedral desk. Pure submission is as good as going on a foreign mission. III. Right here, therefore, observe, in the third place, AN IS OFFERED OF THE MYSTERY AND THE PURPOSE OF . Pain is a sort of ordination to the Christian ministry. It furnishes a true believer with a new pulpit to preach from. A wise man will do better to learn this lesson early. I am anxious now to bring this thought close to our own minds and hearts at once. In the rooms of the American Tract Society, in New York, were until lately standing two objects which I studied for some meditative years, once a month, at a committee meeting. One is a slight framework of tough wood, a few feet high, so bound together with hasps and hinges as to be taken down and folded in the hand. This was Whitefield’ s travelling-pulpit; the one he used when, denied access to the churches, he harangued the thousands in the open air, on the moors of England. You will think of this modern apostle, lifted up upon the small platform, with the throngs of eager people around him; or hurrying from one field to another, bearing his Bible in his arms; ever on the move, toiling with herculean energy, and a force like that of a giant. There, in that rude pulpit, is the symbol of all which is active and fiery in dauntless Christian zeal. But now look-again: in the centre of this framework, resting upon “ the slender platform where the living preacher used to stand, you will see a chair--a plain, straight-backed, armed, cottage-chair; rough, simple, meagrely cushioned, unvarnished, and stiff. It was the seat in which Elizabeth Wallbridge, “ the dairyman’ s daughter,” sat and coughed and whispered, and from which she went only at her last hour to the couch on which she died. Here again is a pulpit; and it is the symbol of a life quiet and unromantic and hard in all Christian endurance. Every word that invalid woman uttered--every patient night she suffered--was a gospel sermon. In a hundred languages the life of that servant of God has preached to millions of souls the riches of Christ’ s glory and grace. And of these two pulpits, which is the most honourable is known only to God, who undoubtedly accepted and consecrated them both. The one is suggestive of the ministry of speech, the other of the ministry of submission. IV. Hence, WE MAY EASILY LEARN WHAT MIGHT BE ONE OF THE MOST OF A CHRONIC INVALID. NO one can preach from any pulpit without the proper measure of study. Sick people are always in danger of becoming egotistic and selfish, and the best relief from that is for each child of God to busy himself in labouring for others’ salvation. Said the intelligent Doddridge, even while he was lingering in the last hours of his life, “ My soul is vigorous and healthy, notwithstanding the hastening decay of- this frail and tottering body; it is not for the love of sunshine or the variety of meats that I desire life, but, if it please God, that I may render Him a little more service.” Such a purpose as this will lead a Christian to thoughtful examination of what will make his efforts most pertinent. He will study doctrine. He will study experience too. V. SOME PEOPLE RECOVER FROM LONG ILLNESS; CHRIST HEALS THEM, AS HE DID THESE MEN IN THE STORY. SO there is one more lesson for convalescents--what are they going to do with their lives hereafter? (C. S.Robinson, D. D.) The lifting up of the bowed down I. Our first subject for consideration is, THE BOWING DOWN OF THE . We read of this woman that “ she had a spirit of infirmity and was bowed together, and could in no wise lift up herself.” 1. Upon which we remark--first, that she had lost all her natural brightness. Alas, we know certain of the children of God who are at this moment in much the same condition. They are perpetually bowed down, and though they recollect happier days the memory only serves to deepen their present gloom. 2. This poor woman was bowed towards herself and towards that which was depressing. She seemed to grow downwards; her life was stooping; she bent lower and lower, as the weight of years pressed upon her. Her looks were all earthward, nothing heavenly, nothing bright could come before her eyes; her views were narrowed to the dust, and to the grave. So are there some of God’ s people whose thoughts sink evermore like lead, and their feelings run in a deep groove, cutting evermore a lower channel. You cannot give them delight, but you can readily cause them alarm. “ All these things are against me,” say they, for they can see nothing but the earth, and can imagine nothing but fear and distress. We have known certain prudent, but somewhat unfeeling, persons blame these people, and chide them for being low-spirited; and that brings us to notice next-3. That she could not lift up herself. There was no use in blaming her. Of what use is it to advise a blind person to see, or to tell one who cannot lift up herself that she ought to be upright, and should not look so much upon the earth? This is a needless increase of misery. Some persons who pretend to be comforters might more fitly be classed with tormentors, h spiritual infirmity is as real as a physical one. 4. Note further about this poor woman, that bowed down as she was both in mind and body, she yet frequented the house of prayer. Our Lord was in the synagogue, and there was she. II. I invite you, secondly, to notice THE HAND OF SATAN IS THIS BONDAGE. We should not have known it if our Lord had not told us, that it was Satan who had bound this poor woman for eighteen years. 1. He must have bound her very cunningly to make the knot hold all that time, for he does not appear to have possessed her. You notice in reading the evangelists that our Lord never laid his hand on a person possessed with a devil. Satan had not possessed her, but he had fallen upon her once upon a time eighteen years before, and bound her up as men tie a beast in its stable, and she had not been able to get free all that while. The devil can tie in a moment a knot which you and I cannot unloose in eighteen years. 2. Satan had bound the woman to herself and to the earth. There is a cruel way of tying a beast which is somewhat after the same fashion. I have seen a poor animal’ s head fastened to its knee or foot, and somewhat after that fashion Satan had bound the woman downward to herself. So there are some children of God whose thoughts are all about themselves; they have turned their eyes so that they look inside and see only the transactions of the little world within themselves. They are always lamenting their own infirmities, always mourning their own corruptions, always watching their own emotions. The one and only subject of their thoughts is their own condition. If they ever change the scene and turn to another subject it is only to gaze upon the earth beneath them, to groan over this poor world with its sorrows, its miseries, its sins, and its disappointments. Thus they are tied to themselves and to the earth, and cannot look up to Christ as they should, nor let the sunlight of His love shine full upon them. 3. This poor woman was restrained from what her soul needed. She was like an ass or an ox which cannot get to the trough to drink. She knew the promises, she heard them read every Sabbath day; she went to the synagogue and heard of Him who comes to loose the captives; but she could not rejoice in the promise or enter into liberty. So are there multitudes of God’ s people who are fastened to themselves and cannot get to watering, cannot drink from the river of life, nor find consolation in the Scriptures. They know how precious the gospel is, and how consolatory are the blessings of the covenant, but they cannot enjoy the consolations or the blessings. Oh that they could! They sigh and cry, but they feel themselves to be bound. 4. There is a saving clause here. Satan had done a good deal to the poor woman, but he had done all he could do. He can smite, but he cannot slay. The devil may bind you fast, but Christ has bound you faster still with cords of everlasting love, which must and shall hold you to the end. That poor woman was being prepared, even by the agency of the devil, to glorify God. III. I want you to notice in the third place THE AT HIS WORK. We have seen the woman bound by the devil, but here comes the Liberator, and the first thing we read of Him is that-- 1. He saw her. His eyes looked round, reading every heart as He glanced from one to another. At last He saw the woman. Yes, that was the very one He was seeking. We are not to think that He saw her in the same common way as I see one of you, but He read every line of her character and history, every thought of her heart, every desire of her soul. 2. When He had gazed upon her, He called her to Him. Did He know her name? Oh, yes, He knows all our names, and His calling is therefore personal and unmistakable. 3. When the woman came, the great Liberator said to her, “ Woman, thou art loosed from thine infirmity.” How could that be true? She was still as bent as she was before. He meant that the spell of Satan was taken off from her, that the power which had made her thus to bow herself was broken. 4. Our Lord proceeded to give her full enlargement in His own way: He laid His hands on her. She suffered from want of strength, and by putting His hands upon her, I conceive that the Lord poured His life into her. The warm stream of His own infinite power and vitality came into contact with the lethargic stream of her painful existence, and so quickened it that she lifted up herself. The deed of love was done: Jesus Himself had done it. IV. I will not linger there, but invite you now to notice THE LOOSING OF THE BOUND. 1. She was made straight we are told, and that at once. Now, what I want you to notice is this, that she must have lifted herself up--that was her own act and deed. No pressure or force was put upon her, she lifted up herself; and yet she was “ made straight.” She was passive in so much as a miracle was wrought upon her, but she was active too, and, being enabled, she lifted up herself. What a wonderful meeting there is here of the active and the passive in the salvation of men. 2. The most remarkable fact is that she was made straight immediately; for there was something beyond her infirmity to be overcome. Suppose that any person had been diseased of the spine, or of the nerves and muscles for eighteen years, even if the disease which occasioned his being deformed could be entirely removed, what would be the effect? Why, that the result of the disease would still remain, for the body would have become set through long continuance in one posture. But this woman was cured entirely, instantaneously, by the power of the Lord. 3. The cure being thus perfect, up rose the woman to glorify God. What did she say? It is not recorded, but we can well imagine. It was something like this: “ I have been eighteen years in and out among you; you have seen me, and know what a poor, miserable, wretched object I was; but God has lifted me up all in a moment. Blessed be His name, I have been made straight.” What she spoke with her mouth was not half of what she expressed. No reporter could have taken it down; she spoke with her eyes, she spoke with her hands, she spoke with every limb of her body. V. Fifthly, let us reflect upon our REASON FOR THE LORD JESUS TO DO THE SAME THING TO-DAY as he did eighteen hundred years and more ago. What was His reason for setting this woman free? 1. According to His own statement it was, first of all, human kindness. Tried soul, wouldst thou not loose an ox or an ass if thou sawest it suffering? “ Ay,” sayest thou. And dost thou think the Lord will not loose thee? Hast thou more bowels of mercy than the Christ of God? 2. More than that, there was special relationship. He tells this master of the synagogue that a man would loose his ox or his ass. Perhaps he might not think it his business to go and loose that which belonged to another man, but it is his own ass, his own ox, and he will loose him, And dost thou think, dear heart, that the Lord Jesus will not loose thee He bought thee with His blood, His Father gave thee to Him, He has loved thee with an everlasting love: will He not loose thee? 3. Next, there was a point of antagonism which moved the Saviour to act promptly. He says, “ This woman being a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan hath bound.” Now, if I knew the devil had tied anything up I am sure I would try to unloose it, would not you? We may be sure some mischief is brewing when the devil is working, and, therefore, it must be a good deed to undo his work. But Jesus Christ came into the world on purpose to destroy the works of the devil; and so, when He saw the woman like a tied-up ox, He said, “ I will unloose her if for nothing else that I may undo what the devil has done.” 4. Then think of her sorrowful condition. An ox or an ass tied up to the manger without water would soon be in a very sad plight. Pity it, poor thing. Hear the lowing of the ox, as hour after hour its thirst tells upon it. Would you not pity it? And do you think the Lord does not pity his poor, tried, tempted, afflicted children? Those tears, shall they fall for nothing? Those sleepless nights, shall they be disregarded? That broken heart which fain would but cannot believe the promise, shall that for ever be denied a hearing? Hath she Lord forgotten to be gracious? Hath He in anger shut up the bowels of His mercy? Ah, no, He will remember thy sorrowful estate and hear thy groanings, for He puts thy tears into His bottle. (C. H.Spurgeon.) The infirm woman in the synagogue I. Our first reflection, as we look at this brief narrative, is that it furnishes us, on the part of the woman, with an illustration of TO THE PUBLIC WORSHIP OF GOD. A characteristic of devout and earnest religion in all ages. Public worship bears on it the stamp of Divine approval. See you neglect it not. II. Our second reflection is, that the text supplies an illustration of THE AND POWER OF JESUS CHRIST. Not only was the woman in the synagogue with her ailments; the Lord was there also with His wondrous grace. He did not neglect external ordinances. Jesus, then, was in this synagogue, and as usual He was on the look-out for some good work to do. He had a quick eye for suffering and sorrow. No sooner did He see this woman, than He healed her. What power, and what compassion! He exercises the same today. Earth has no sorrow that He cannot heal. And besides curing diseases, He can heal sins. III. I observe, next, that the text supplies an illustration of THE BLESSED OF BEING FOUND IN THE WAY OF DUTY. TO the synagogue, at the time of worship, this woman went. Likely enough she was tempted to absent herself for one reason or another, just as we are tempted now; but she refused to listen to the temptation. She chose the better part of obeying God’ s law, and in doing so she was blessed beyond all expectation or hope. Little did she think, when she left home, what mercy was in store for her. Had she stayed in the house, or gone to see her friends, or been anywhere but where she was, she would have missed it all. So may we always, when in the way of duty, expect a blessing. IV. I remark, once more, that the text supplies an illustration of THE OF A HEART ALIVE TO THE ON IT. As soon as the woman was made straight, she “ glorified God.” Even if she had never spoken a word, she would have been a monument to the Divine praise. Sun and moon and stars, as they shine in the heavens, declare the glory of God. All great productions glorify their author. So this healed woman glorified her Healer. And not only so, but also audibly, there and then, before all. (W. Walters.) An infirm woman cured on the Sabbath I. THE STATE OF THE WOMAN. Diseased in an extraordinary degree, and for a very long period. II. THE CHANGE BY THE POWER OF JESUS. This case presented no difficulty to Him. Yet, to new-model the diseased frame, to make straight what was crooked, to relax what had been rigid for many years, required a power as great as that of creation. III. THE MEANS . He used no resources of art, no remedies whatever; He even employed no means to astonish or surprise; He made no display of His power. He said nothing of the violence or inveteracy of the disorder; nothing to influence the imagination either of the woman herself or of the spectators. Conscious of possessing the power of curing all diseases, He exercised it by merely declaring the simple fact that her disorder was removed; while she exhibited the most undeniable proofs of complete restoration, by standing in a firm and erect position. IV. We have next to observe THE BY THIS MIRACLE, first, on the woman, and then upon the ruler of the synagogue. 1. The effect on the woman was highly pleasing. She was delighted with the change which she instantly experienced; and her heart rose in gratitude to God, who alone, she was convinced, could have effected so wonderful a cure. 2. How different was the effect of this miracle on the mind of the ruler of the synagogue! Instead of directing his attention to the display of power, such as he had never witnessed before; instead of thinking of the goodness which had voluntarily removed so distressing a disease from a person so helpless; instead of sympathizing with the unexpected and rapturous happiness of the woman, he thought only of the captious objections which an enemy might raise. V. We have, lastly, to inquire, WHY THIS MIRACLE WAS DOSE ON THE SABBATH? Our Saviour graciously condescended to reason, and He reasoned, as upon all other occasions, in the clearest and most conclusive manner. His mode of reasoning is always best adapted to the object which He had in view. Here it was sufficient to show, that the ruler of the synagogue, and all other Jews, did actions every Sabbath deliberately and intentionally, which, though humane and unavoidable, were not more so than the relief which He had just conferred upon the unfortunate woman. “ Hypocrites;” said He, “ who is there among you, that doth not on the Sabbath loose his ox or his ass from the stall, and lead him away to watering? And must not this woman, a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan hath kept bound these eighteen years, be released from this bond on the Sabbath-day?” Thus our Saviour argues from the practice which they themselves sanctioned, which led to the conclusion that the action He had done was still more laudable, because an act of greater humanity. (J. Thomson, D. D.) The crooked woman made straight I. THE WOMAN. 1. The nature of her complaint. Probably her spine was affected, so that she could not stand erect. Such a deformity, while humiliating to all, would be particularly trying to a female. 2. Its duration. A sharp affliction, if short, is much easier borne than a lighter one that is long continued, as in this instance. II. THE CURE SHE . 1. Where she was cured. In the synagogue. In spite of her deformity, she did not absent herself from the sanctuary. Well for her that she did not! 2. The manner in which she was cured. Two things are mentioned. (1) The gracious words which our Saviour uttered. As in the case of the ten lepers, she is declared to be cured before the act was performed. But with Christ, purpose anal accomplishment, willing and doing, are identical. When He speaks, the thing is as good as done; when He commands it is sure to stand fast. (2) The condescending act He performed. 3. How she felt when cured. It is said that “ she glorified God,” by which is meant that she adored and magnified His holy name for the wonderful deliverance she had experienced. There are many ways in which we are to glorify Him, and this is one of the most important. It might have been supposed that all present would have joined with her in praising God; such, however, was not the case. Other feelings than those of grateful homage and adoration were called forth, which leads us to the next particular, namely-- III. THE WHICH HER CURE . In this, the concluding part of the narrative, we have-- 1. The charge. 2. The defence. 3. The result. It is shown in regard to two classes. (1) The ruler and his party. “ And when He had said these things all His adversaries were ashamed.” They felt that no answer could be given to what Jesus had been saying; they were therefore speechless and confounded. (2) The multitude. “ All the people rejoiced.” The miracle had been so signal, and the subsequent vindication had been so complete, that they gave unequivocal demonstrations of their gladness and delight. In applying this subject there are three classes to which it more especially speaks. 1. The wretched vassals of sin and Satan. The condition of this poor sufferer may be regarded as emblematic of every individual who is tied and bound with the chains of his iniquities. Let the sinner’ s cry therefore be, Lord, loose this miserable soul of mine, which Satan hath so long bound in his slavish fetters. 2. Those whose minds are too much enthralled by earthly affections. It was the misfortune of this woman that her eyes were bent downward, but what was her unavoidable calamity is our wilful sin. Our souls cleave to the dust, and we seek, not the things above, but the vain and perishable objects of time and sense. O how important is it that we Should be lifted up from such a grovelling condition, and be liberated, in order thereto, from the thraldom of this present evil world! 3. The downcast and sorrowful. (Expository Outlines.) A daughter of Abraham Set me to look at a downright extraordinary creature, not merely plain but positively ugly--like the woman whom Christ healed, who had been plagued with a devil of infirmity eighteen years, and was now doubled up, hideous--and tell me whether if you look at that woman long enough you will see her beauty. No! The more I look at her, the less I like her--the longer I behold her, the faster I run away from her. But I am called back to her by one little touch. Christ claims for her no beauty, invests her with no fancied fairness. “ She, too, is a daughter of Abraham.” This is all. But this was enough; for Christ knew that by this appeal He lifted the poor, stricken, bowed creature of infirmity, and gave her a place with the rest of Abraham’ s children. He called upon the patriotism of the Jews--and they had a patriotism, though but a narrow one. Their cavilling was put an end to at once. This is the secret. The only way to conquer natural disgust at ugliness and sickness and disease, is to set these unsightly objects in the light of Divine Love. “ One is your Master, even Christ, and all ye are brethren.” Bring these poor degraded wretches, and ask us to love them individually, and we fail to do it. To lift them out of the misery in which they rest, and to make them lovable, you must set them in the light of the great Fatherhood of God and His passionate love of humanity. A man goes into a sickroom, and there poor humanity is at its worst; there you may find the bottom of all man’ s meanness, his cowardice, his want, and his weakness; there you may see nature in decay, as ugly as the working of a continual want and weakness can make it, But as you cross the threshold of the sickroom, the great need of the patient is more than all; and if you come as the angel of healing, as the angel of true service, the heart is too full and the hand too busy for you to stop to look either for beauty or for ugliness, and that love which prompts to the duty makes labour light. The poor sick person is not less tiresome, or less offensive, or less tedious, but the feeling which prompted disgust has gone. When men declared the possibility of walking on hot iron if the heart were pure and the conscience unstained, they did but figure the great power of Innocence. Una with her lion is but weak, but Una in her innocence is strong. And that which Innocence is thus so truly fabled to do, Divine Love surely does, overleaping difficulty and overcoming disgust. Christianity does not ask us to believe that ugly things are lovely; but, filling man with true love and holy enthusiasm, makes him able to endure the sight of foulness and meanness, that he may cleanse and raise the foul and mean. Thus “ one touch of nature makes the whole world kin.” Is not this poor woman a daughter of Abraham? Is not this poor degraded wretch a brother? I remember that before England got rid of her great disgrace of slavery, the abolition people used to distribute handbills, headed with a picture of a chained negro; the poor thick-lipped black asking, “ Am I not a man and a brother?” We all acknowledged the claim. But if he had said, “ Am I not a beauty?” I should have answered, “ No, my brother; you are certainly not a beauty. I decline to admire you.” Should he reply, “ This is all a matter of taste,” I should answer in turn, “ I don’ t believe a word of it. To my eyes you are very particularly ugly.” But when he kneels there before me, and lifts up his poor chained wrists, and puts up that plea for his own humanity--“ Am I not a man and a brother?” then, poor, scourged, broken, jaded as he is, I own him. He has a spark of true manhood in him, and shall be scourged, reviled, and sold in bondage no longer. Thus the scheme of the Christian religion completes itself. It has the manliest scorn for meanness, and the manliest pity for weakness. (G. Dawson, M. A.) Freedom realized through believing Once the Emperor of Russia had a plan by which he was to liberate the serfs of that country. There were forty millions of them. Of some of them, their whole time was sold; of others, only a part. The emperor called around him his council, and wanted to have them devise some way to set the slaves at liberty. After they had conferred about it for six months, one night the council sent in their decision, sealed, that they thought it was not expedient. The emperor went down to the Greek Church that night and partook of the Lord’ s Supper, and he set his house in order, and the next morning you could hear the tramp of soldiers in the streets of St. Petersburg. The emperor summoned his guard, and before noon sixty-five thousand men were surrounding that palace. Just at midnight there came out a proclamation that every slave in Russia was for ever set free. The proclamation had gone forth, and all the slaves of the realm-believed it. They have been free ever since. Suppose they had not believed it? They never then would have got the benefit of it. The highest emancipation A very old Greek myth represents Prometheus chained to a rock by command of Jupiter, who then sent an eagle to feed upon his liver in the daytime, which the god caused to grow again at night. Hercules, however, it was said, killed the eagle, and set suffering Prometheus at liberty. Let this fable, or the narrative in your lesson, remind you that naturally you and all are bound by Satan to his slavery and drudgery, by evil tempers and passions, by bad habits, and in other ways. How the drunkard is enthralled by his craving for drink; the miser by his thirst for gold; and others by their minding of earthly things! And how disappointments and anguish, like evil birds, prey upon their spirits. But Christ looses from every infirmity of the soul caused by sin or Satan. And just as a freed bird warbles its joy-throb in the note of thrilling gladness, so we should praise God with joyful lips, as well as glorify Him by our life and best service. “ Massa, me will be your slave for ever,” said a negro to the kind Englishman who, at great cost, had emancipated him. What shall we do for Jesus, who delivers us from such greater evils? (Henry R. Burton.) Luke 13:18-19 Unto what is the kingdom of God like?--On the kingdom of God The kingdom of God is an expression of various significations in the sacred volume. Sometimes is meant by it the universal dominion of the Deity; sometimes the final blessedness to which the saints are heirs; and in a more confined sense it frequently signifies the gospel state, or Church of Christ. In this last sense, it is used in the text; and the thing signified is illustrated by a comparison, remarkable for that aptness and beauty, with which all our Saviour’ s parables are distinguished. I. We are first led by the resemblance, to which our Saviour likens His kingdom, to remark THE OF IS ITS . Seeking for the symbol with careful consideration, He chooses one, proverbial among the Jews for littleness, the smallest object possessed of life and expansive force. Small as is the symbol, it is not smaller than the thing it was designed to represent. An obscure prophecy was the first germ of Christianity, and its only label, a simple rite: the prophecy-God’ s promise to the woman, and sacrifice--the rite. We have ever to bless our God that-as early as death laid claim to our race, the seed, whose fruit is to nourish us into immortality, was sown by His hand; and in due season made to spring up into lively appearance before an expecting and wondering world. II. This brings me to remark, from the image which Christ furnishes in the text of “ the kingdom of God,” ITS . In the visible ministry of the Messiah and promulgation of the gospel it assumed its definite appearance. This took place under the most unfavourable circumstances. The soil in which it appeared was incongruous with its nature, and the clime inclement. In its genuine state Christianity had to withstand many a blast; to endure both chilling cold and scorching heat; to encounter everything which could threaten to check its growth, and crush it in the dust. But it was a plant of an inherent vigour, which no climate could kill, nor rudeness impair; and, under the fostering care of Him who rules all seasons and disposes all events, it grew daily, it rose in height, and spread the wonder of the world; it became established. III. This brings me to observe, THAT THE PARABLE CARRIES US FORWARD TO A GROWTH AND STATE OF THE GOSPEL KINGDOM. Though now it presents the sure refuge to all people, its branches are not filled; there is room for much further growth, and dread occasion for much pruning. As yet, defiling vines cling to the stately tree, obstructing its spread, and defacing its beauty. As yet, the Jews “ look” not “ on Him whom they pierced” ; and to many Gentile tribes, the Cross is “ foolishness.” As yet, there is need to cry to the children of men, “ Know the Lord” ; and many of them are fluttering wildly, and wandering into dangers, for want of the places in which they may find rest and shelter. But the figure by which the Church is described, and which has appeared hitherto so apt and exact, apprises us of a mature and triumphant state of our Redeemer’ s kingdom. The plant of the little seed, through its progressive growth, is to attain to a perfect height, and strength, and greatness. It is to become a “ great tree” ; yea, greater than all the trees that are in the earth. Its root is fixed; and it shall continue to extend its growth till all the inhabitants of our world rejoice in the shadow of the branches of it. The Christian religion is composed of such elements; there are in it such principles and arrangements as suggest of themselves that if it be true it is designed for universal extension and perpetual duration. We have now considered the beautiful and exact resemblance furnished by Christ of “ the kingdom of God.” There are inferences from this subject of great weight and variety. Let me entreat your patience while I adduce only a few which are too instructive to be omitted. 1. The first is, that this is one of those singularly important comparisons or parables which are not only illustrative but prophetic. 2. Another important inference from what has been said is, that the gospel is the object of constant providential care. 3. The last inference I shall make from our Saviour’ s lively representation of His kingdom is, the encouragement it is calculated to afford to His pious people. (Bishop Dehon.) It is like a grain of mustard-seed The mustard-seed “ The kingdom of heaven is like to a grain of mustard-seed--which indeed is is the least of all seeds.” It is no exception to the law of growth which prevails throughout nature, and exemplifies how what is mightiest is often the product of what is apparently feeblest. Not only the giant oak, capable of defying the fiercest storms, but whole forests which yield materials for a nation’ s fleets, may have lain wrapped up within a single tiny acorn. In history, whatever has been most enduring and has exerted most influence, has been born in obscurity and feebleness, and grown up by almost imperceptible stages--whereas, whatever has, like the gourd of Jonah, arisen to its full height of a sudden, has withered and died away with the same rapidity that it arose. But Christianity is the most striking instance of the kind. Its fountain-head is the manger of a stable in a small Judeau town. There is a strange unobtrusiveness about the character and mission of the Author and Finisher of our faith. When we know who He was, the only begotten Son of God, and what His purpose was--the salvation of the world--we might expect to see Him take up a position full in the world’ s view, attracting to Himself man’ s whole attention, making kings His deputies, and philosophers His apostles, and orators His heralds, and armed captains His attendants. But no! the manger of a stable was His cradle--poverty, hard labours, great sorrows, keen sufferings, were His constant companions. It was the little seed-corn which had to be dropped into the ground and die ere the earth could bear a harvest of righteousness and peace. It was that by the preaching of which a few poor, illiterate Galilean fishermen were called upon to brave anal overcome the opposition which all the wealth, authority, antiquity, military force, taste, and philosophy, as well as ignorance and sin, of the world, could muster against them, to conquer the prejudices of the Jews, to undermine the superstitions under which Rome had grown up to be the mistress of the world, to confound the subtleties and wisdom of the Greeks, and to dispel the darkness of heathenism. It looked the most hopeless of tasks. There are instruction and warning for us in that. The gospel is the most emphatic protest against judging of things by their outward appearance. It is the solemn and decisive testimony of God to the superiority of spiritual principle over material magnificence. It casts down power and might to exalt spirit and truth. Many persons have an eye only to behold external and worldly greatness. There is no hope for any one, however, so long as he persists in looking at things with that dull, unspiritual eye. The gospel, in all that is distinctive of it, is spiritual, and can only be spiritually discerned. The parable having told us that the gospel in its origin is small, weak, and apparently insignificant, proceeds to speak of its growth, of its amazing progress. From the least of seeds it becomes the greatest of herbs; from an almost invisible grain it rises into a tree, where the birds of the air find shelter. It is unnecessary to insist that the history of the last eighteen hundred years has amply verified this representation. The Church, which at Pentecost only numbered a few score of persons, soon counted its adherents by thousands, burst the trammels of Judaism, and, even in the lifetime of its first apostles, established itself, without any other instrumentality than the foolishness of preaching, in all the large towns of the civilized world. All Europe and America are now more or less under its sway, and it is advancing with slow but sure steps to the conquest of the entire earth. It is more important to observe, as the text specially calls on us to do, that this long history is throughout a growth--that it may be fitly likened to a seed becoming a tree. Let us so look at it for a little, and see what lessons it has for our profit. 1. This is the first. The whole of Christianity, in so far as it is true, once lay in a small compass. All the truths, all the institutions, all the virtues which it embodies, may be traced back to a single life as their germ. The mustard tree was wholly in the mustard-seed. The oak, great although it now is, once lay wrapped up entire in the acorn. All that properly belongs to it lay folded there. Nothing save what is foreign and hurtful, nothing save excrescences and parasites, have come from any other source. The influences of light and heat, and wind and dew, have only brought out what was there from the first, It is so, likewise, with Christianity. It has grown up through eighteen hundred years, it covers now a very large portion of the earth, but all that truly belongs to it even at this hour has sprung from the lowly life of Jesus. All that is good in its creeds, its institutions, the conduct it inspires, has germinated from some word of His--has lain as a thought in His mind or an affection in His heart; and whatever man has introduced of his own into religious belief or practice is only an excrescence, a parasite, a cause of weakness and decay. The lowliest life ever lived on earth has thus been infinitely the most fruitful. The least of all seeds has become the greatest among herbs. 2. The seed has not only all the rudiments of the future tree within it, but the life which unfolds them and sends out first the root and trunk, and then the branches, leaves, blossoms, and fruit. And the word of the gospel has likewise an indestructible principle of vitality, which cannot be repressed, cannot be arrested. It grows by the very necessity of its nature, under the influence of grace, just as the living seed, by the very necessity of its nature, under a genial sky cannot remain in the ground, but sends up blade and bud and branch. There is in this assertion no latent fatalism. Although the gospel has indeed been in history like a tree growing out of a living seed, it follows not that human will has had nothing to do with its progress. There is nothing in history, properly so called, with which human will has not had to do. Every improvement it tells of has been effected by human self-denial and toil. The country we live in was once covered with putrid morasses and gloomy forests, and yielded only a scanty and impure subsistence to a few hordes of wandering savages. Now its morasses are dried up, its forests cleared away, large cities stand thick strewn over it, its well-cultivated plains yield food enough for millions, and its industry produces an annual revenue the most enormous. What has wrought the change? Labour, and labour alone--labour of mind and of body. Not an inch of conquest has been won without mental exertion and physical toil, without anxious thought and an active hand. Religion is no exception to this rule, but its most striking example. It has had nobler and more numerous martyrs and missionaries--has called forth more heroic labours and costlier sacrifices--than all other causes together. And this is quite consistent with the fact that the gospel grows by a life of its own--that though man’ s labour is needed to apply and diffuse it, he neither makes it nor puts life and fruitfulness into it--that he receives it with these in itself, so that if he cast it into the ground it will spring and grow up of its own Divine energy, and according to its own Divine laws. 3. Growth implies increasing divergence and definiteness of parts and functions. It is a separation of the one into the many, a change from the simple to the complex, from the vague to the distinct. The seed out of which a plant issues is at first uniform in tissue and composition, but soon it divides into two parts, afterwards new contrasts appear in each of these, and it is by endless such changes that the complex combination of tissues and organs in a perfect plant is produced. While the parts are thus increased in number, each of them becomes more prominent in itself, more sharply distinguished from others, and more strictly confined to its own special use. Wherever growth takes place, this is the process traceable. It is what we see in every herb, in every animal, in civilization, in government, language, science, and art. Different as all these are in themselves, there is only the one way in which they can grow, in which they can truly progress. The kingdom of God conforms to the same conditions. Its history has consisted throughout in the evolution of doctrines, institutions, and modes of life, out of a very simple germ. Our elaborate systems of theological science so far as true, our manifold institutions for religious and benevolent purposes so far as good, our endlessly diversified modes of social being so far as right, are developments of the living word of the gospel, in which, however, they lay enfolded only as the tree in its seed, as results in their principle, as special and definite dogmas in broad and general statements. Those who say, “ Let us cast to the winds our creeds, our systems, our definite dogmas, and return to the primitive simplicity of apostolic men,” forget that God has not left it to the world’ s own will to return of a sudden, or to return at all, to the point from which it has taken eighteen centuries for it to advance. They might as well counsel us to throw off all the laws and institutions, all the countless arrangements of the elaborated civilization in which we live, and retrograde to the rude and simple life of the earliest dwellers in Asia and Europe. We are where we are, where long ages of thought and toil have placed us, and, even if ungrateful enough to desire it, there is no going back for us now. 4. The growth of the kingdom of God has been continuous. We may fail to measure its progress from day to day, because it is not rapid, but slow, not with observation, but without it. There is still another truth involved, and it is one which we must not despise because it is simple. Growth requires time. God has everywhere placed that as an inevitable separation between germination and maturity, between the seed and the perfect tree. Let us conform, then, to the condition. When we are despondent or angry because our labours in a Christian cause are not crowned with immediate success, we are no wiser than the little child who deposits a seed in the ground and is grieved not to see it springing up on the very day it has done so. (R. Flint.) The mustard-seed and the leaven I. THE GERM OF THE KINGDOM. 1. It is something new. Watch that sower: he takes the seed and plants it in his garden. The seed suits the soil, but it was not in the soil at first. It came from above, out of the sewer’ s hand. 2. The germ is small at first: “ like to a grain” --a very small particle--“ of mustard-seed, which a man took.” II. ITS GROWTH. III. THE GLORY OF THE KINGDOM. 1. The kingdom is one, though it belongs to all ages and nations. Christ speaks of a kingdom, never of kingdoms. A tree is a unity, for though it has many leaves and branches, it has but one root and one life-sap. Those who are sundered by seas, and ages, and thousands of influences, are all made one by Christ. 2. It is a world-wide kingdom. As the tree is for every bird from any quarter of heaven that wishes its shelter, so Christ’ s religion is for all sorts of people. 3. And it blesses, and only blesses. It creates and increases all that is bright and joyous. Christ’ s is a kingdom of love, of help, of grace, of salvation, and heaven is its end. 4. It will become very great though very small in its beginnings. (J. Wells, M. A.) The external progress of the kingdom as illustrated by the growth of the mustard-seed It is ever important to remember that Christianity, at first like a small grain of seed, spread throughout the world, until the nations of the earth came to flock like birds to its protecting shelter, by no aid except its own inherent spiritual power. There was nothing to help it in the character of its early teachers. There was nothing to make its progress easy in the conditions of the Jewish and Gentile worlds. It came to the Jewish world, and found it saturated with thoughts of Jewish exclusiveness, and full of hopes of an earthly Deliverer. There was nothing in the teaching of this Messiah to appeal to the one, or to pander to the other. It told the Jew that his dreams of a temporal Messiah were futile, that it was a kingdom of spiritual power--not supported by external force or conquering by arms--which it had come to establish amongst men. Thus, though it appealedto no religious or national instinct in the Jew, though it was hostile to both, Christianity triumphed. Nor, again, in the Gentile world, represented by the two great nations of Greece or Rome, was there any congenial soil for the little seed of early Christendom to take root in, and find its sustenance. The Greek world was full of the pride of intellect, and the worship of sensuous beauty, and to it Christianity came with no scheme of a newfangled philosophy, with no subtleties of scholastic ethics. The preaching of the Cross of Christ, the teaching of a religion of self-sacrifice and love, so simple that the child could understand it, was its message. It presented as the object of their adoration and worship no incarnation of physical beauty, no image of physical strength, but a Nazarene upon a cross--His features so marred with sorrow that there was no beauty in Him that they should desire Him. And yet this Christianity had an inherent force of its own, before which the intellectual pride and the philosophic genius of Greece had to bow at last in submission. St. Paul preached at Athens, and not a few but felt as they listened, within sight of their own Academy, and beneath the shadow of honeyed Hymettus where the sages had trod, that this new preacher taught, with a power not of this world, a grander faith, which must outlast even the city of the Violet Crown. The wave spread still westward to Rome--proud mistress of the world. It fared as ill with her material and political strength as it had done with the intellectual force of Athens. To those who worshipped force and were glutted with military conquests, this new faith came preaching tenderness, forgiveness, charity. To Rome, who saw her eagles swoop in the farthest east and west, it proclaimed the supremacy of spiritual triumphs-it preached the deliverance of the captive--the brotherhood of nations. At first only whispered in prison cells, or flung to the beasts of the arena, or its holy symbol grasped in feeble hands, and pressed to dying breasts of martyrs, the religion of Christ soon won its way over every obstacle, and at last Christianity entered the imperial palace, and wore the diadem of the Caesars: Now, when we turn from these triumphs of Christianity to examine what means she employed for her propagation, we can find nothing, humanly speaking, to account for it. Twelve men--Jews, without hereditary distinction; without political influence; without (except in one or two cases) intellectual acquirements--these were the men who--without any aid on earth; with a gospel that was opposed to every national, and philosophic, and religious prejudice of Jew, and Greek, and Roman; which was hostile to every feeling of pride and selfishness in the human heart--accomplished the grandest and most stupendous revolution the world had ever seen. People say sometimes that they find it hard to believe the miracles on which Christianity is based--surely the grandest, greatest miracle is the existence of Christianity itself. If, then, there were nothing in the outside world to which it appealed; nothing in the natural hearts of men which it came to satisfy: if we cannot discover in the characters of those who preached it any human reason to explain its progress--how are we to account for the spread of Christ’ s kingdom, except by attributing it to some spiritual power of its own? (T. T. Shore, M. A.) Luke 13:20-21 It Is like leaven The hidden leaven The kingdom of heaven, or the work of God in the soul, is like leaven. 1. It at once occurs to us that leaven is something foreign to and different from the meal in which it is hidden; that it does not spring from or arise out of any fermentation in the meal; for, if left to itself, the meal would decay, and would never become leavened. Leaven has therefore to be introduced. It must be inserted, or, as the word here expresses it, “ hidden.” And this implies that “ the kingdom of God cometh not with observation.” Yet it comes, it is not there, it does not grow in a man, it does not come in the natural birth, it is not born “ of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God” ; therefore, wherever there is the work of holiness in the soul of the sinner, it is “ a new birth unto righteousness,” he is “ delivered from the power of darkness and translated into the kingdom of God’ s dear Son.” 2. Then, it is clear, in the next place, that grace in the heart will be an abiding work--it will be energetic and permanent. Howsoever and wheresoever a man receives grace, whether in regeneration, at baptism, in approaching God’ s table, in the reading or the preaching of the Word, through the instrumentality of sickness or tribulation; whatever the time, or the date, or the circumstance, it will be active, and it will put forth energy in the soul. The very purpose and object of it is that it may leaven and produce a revolution, a rejuvenation, a transformation in the heart in which it is lodged. Therefore, brethren, we have no saving grace, unless it is working in our souls, and working mightily and effectually. 3. Next, it is clear that the result will be in those in whom it is hidden that it will be assimilated, and that it will produce effects similar to itself. Though the leaved be a foreign infusion into the meal, yet the leaven acts upon the meal, and makes it partake of its flavour, and like the leaven in taste, and action, and result; so that it assimilates. And is it not so in regard to grace got into a man’ s heart? It is not to be upon him as a mere scion--tied to a tree, but not incorporated with the tree; but it is to be in him, as a graft inserted in the stock and incorporated with the stock, so that it is no longer the old graft, but it is producing genuine fruit; instead of the crab, the apple from the garden of Eden shall be the result. Even so the grace of God in the soul of man works in him. 4. But it is a comfort to think, in the next place, that the assimilating operation of this leaven is gradual and progressive. It is not all at once. It is what may be in existence some time before it is discoverable in its results. Its progress is slow, but certain. 5. And it is pervasive. The leaven leavens on until it pervades the whole mass. A man, if he has the grace of God, cannot be good in one week and bad in another. 6. And then, brethren, the crown of the whole is, that the leaven shall ultimately pervade the whole mass. Before it is complete the whole mass is assimilated, and prepared, and so the kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven hid in meal. Yes, brethren, this is indeed the ground of our encouragement. He is faithful, “ who also will do it” ; and again, “ God is faithful” who will “ perform” ; and again, it is said, God “ worketh in you both to will and to do” ; and, if He works in you, can the work fail?” (R. Hall, M. A.) The growth of the kingdom You tell your child that this pine-tree out here in the sandy field is one day going to be as large as that great sonorous pine that sings to every wind in the wood. The child, incredulous, determines to watch and see whether the field-pine really does grow and become as large as you say it will. So, the next morning, he goes out and takes a look at it, and comes back and says, “ It has not grown a particle.” At night he goes out and looks at it again, and comes back and says, “ It has not grown a bit.” The next week he goes out, and looks at it again, and comes back, and says, “ It has not grown yet. Father said it would be as large as the pine-tree in the wood, but I do not see any likelihood of its becoming so.” How long did it take the pine-tree in the wood to grow? Two hundred years. Then men who lived when it began to grow have been buried, and generations besides have come and gone since then. And do you suppose that God’ s kingdom is going to grow so that you can look at it and see that it has grown during any particular day? You cannot see it grow. All around you are things that are growing, but that you cannot see grow. And if it is so with trees, and things that spring out of the ground, how much more is it so with the kingdom of God! That kingdom is advancing surely, though it advances slowly, and though it is invisible to us. You will remember our Master’ s beautiful parable, where He says, “ The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal till the whole was leavened.” I suppose you know what that means. I go into your kitchen when you are baking bread, and ask, “ What is that you are stirring into that flour?” You say, “ It is yeast.” I ask, “ What is it for?” You say, “ It is to raise the bread.” I imagine that it is to raise it in a way that shall be perceptible to my senses, and say, “ Let me see it do it.” You set the bread away in a warm place, or at the south, in a cool place, if you can find one, and you say, “ Now it will rise.” After watching it closely for a while, I say to you, “ I do not see that it has risen at all.” You say, “ Bless you, my child, you cannot see it rise!” I go away, and stay till I think it will have come up, if there is any such thing as its coming up, and then go back, but I cannot see that it has undergone any change. I wait and wait and wait, and at last say, “ I do not believe it is going to rise.” And you say, “ It has risen already,” and tear it open; and lo! it is full of holes; and you say, “ Now do not you believe that it has risen? It has been rising all the time, only you could not see it rise.” Christ says that His kingdom is just like that. It is a great kingdom, which extends all over the world, and into which He has put the leaven of Divine grace. That grace is like yeast, and it works in this kingdom of Christ. You cannot see it, even if you watch for it; but there it is; and if, after a while, you go and look at it, you will be convinced that it has been working, by the results which it has produced. You will find that things have been done, though you could not see them done. Men are becoming better the world over, though you cannot trace the process by which they are becoming better. Christ’ s kingdom goes forward from age to age, though you cannot discern the steps by which it is going forward. While men, as individuals, pass off from the stage of life, God’ s work does not stop. (H. W. Beecher.) The leaven I. THE KINGDOM OF GOD IN THE HEART IS LIKE LEAVEN HID IN MEAL. It is SO, first of all, because something which does not belong to human nature, something which does not originate there, is introduced into it. The leaven was not in the meal from the first, did not inherently belong to it; on the contrary, a woman took the leaven and hid it in the meal. The meal did not change itself: and no more does man change himself. It is only a power not his own which can change him. Bug the doctrine of the Cross is indeed in a heart as leaven in meal. It is as if hid in the heart. You cannot see it. You cannot touch it. It ferments within, concealed from feeble human sense; a secret power of life at the centre of the soul; a silent, unobtrusive power slowly but surely working its way outwards. Before the gospel can change the heart in any degree, before it can act either quickly or slowly, it must of course be in the heart, actually in it, and not outside of it, however near to it. The leaven did not, and could not, produce any change in the meal until the woman opened the mass of meal and put the leaven into the midst of it. Leaven in one comer of a room will not leaven meal in another; and no less absurd is it to suppose that, if the gospel be merely in your intellects, and the world be in your hearts, the gospel so placed will renew your hearts and sanctify your lives. The manner, also, in which leaven acts on meal illustrates singularly well the manner in which the gospel of the kingdom, the truth as it is in Christ, acts on the heart and life. Leaven changes the nature, yet does not destroy the substance of meal. Meal leavened remains meal, but endowed with new properties, and adapted for new uses. It acquires another character, another appearance, another fragrance and taste. So the gospel does not destroy any inherent power or faculty of the mind, but gives to all its powers and faculties a different character, a new direction. It does not even destroy the natural peculiarities distinctive of individuals. Again, different men have been endowed with intellect, sensibility, and will, in very different proportions. In one man intellect greatly preponderates; in another sensibility; and in another will. There are some who seem, as it were, all intellect, who analyze everything, reason out everything--who can find no rest until they see clearly the naked truth--who must have their grasp firmly on principles before they can proceed at all, but who are exceedingly self-contained as to the expression of feeling, and from whose lips anything like sentiment or poetry would sound unnatural and unreal. There are others whose minds, although far inferior in closeness of intellectual grasp and keenness of intellectual penetration, yet possess a delicacy and depth of feeling which render them, perhaps, still more worthy of admiration. There are others who with very moderate endowments, either intellectual or moral, command the greatest respect, and win implicit confidence through their force, decision, and rectitude of will. Now, one of these forms of character may be more desirable than another, and a better form than any of them, an ideally best form, might be one in which the three elements--intellect, sensibility, and will--were equally mingled. But certain it is that all the forms exist, and that their distinctive features have their ground in the original constitution of individuals. Certain it is also that the gospel does not reduce these forms to one common type. It has no tendency even to lessen any of their characteristic peculiarities. Again, the gospel acts like leaven, because it works from within outwards in all directions. Leaven diffuses itself through the mass in which it is hid equally all round until the whole is leavened. So the gospel is a power which does not exert itself, as it were, only in one straight line, but in every direction all through the nature. It does not seize on one faculty of the soul and change it, and then advance to another faculty and change it, and so on till the whole man is changed. It does not deal with the will at one time, with the feelings at another, and the intellect at another, waiting until it has affected a complete conquest in the one region of human nature before it proceeds to the others; but it grasps all the elements and faculties of the soul at once, and works on all simultaneously. This diffusion of the gospel through the life is like that of leaven in meal, secret, gradual, and complete. It is secret. The operation of the Spirit in the regeneration of man is as invisible as the operation of leaven in the conversion of meal into bread. No eye but that of God can trace it. II. Having thus endeavoured to show that the gospel works in the heart of the individual like leaven in meal, I have now to show THAT IT WORKS AFTER THE SAME MANNER IN SOCIETY. It is a twofold process--special and general. There is a special action of part on part, and also a general action of the whole on each part. There is a special action of part on part. Christ, when He had communicated of His life and Spirit to His apostles, for instance, enabled them too, poor and despised and unlearned as they were, to communicate of the same to others, and so to become in their turn the leaven of the world. In a mass of meal subjected to the action of leaven, each leavened particle acts upon all those in immediate contact with it, leavening more deeply the only partially leavened, and conveying the leaven to those which have not previously come under its power; and not otherwise is it in society, where every individual who has experienced in himself the efficacy of the gospel becomes for the circle of his influence, as leaven, to work still farther. He communicates of the grace which he has received. Besides this special action of part on part, of individual on individual, there is also, as I have said, a general action of the whole on each part of society, on the individual. The gospel is not without influence even where it is not closed with as the power of God unto salvation. It so far imbues, or at least modifies, by its spirit all the laws, institutions, and usages of society, that none, not even those most hostile to it, live as they would have done if it had not been. It improves both the characters and conduct of men in every case, although it may be only seldom that it works a genuine conversion in them. It demonstrates its energy more or less even on those who count themselves unworthy of eternal life. Let us draw from history an illustration or two. The civilizations of antiquity rested on force. Slavery was their central fact. It is only slowly, only step by step, that society has emancipated itself from this condition of things. St. Paul sent back a fugitive slave to his master, the runaway convert Onesimus, to Philemon; and neither in the Old Testament nor the New is there any explicit statement against slavery. The spirit of the gospel condemns it, but not the letter. The spirit of the gospel, however, gradually put forth its Divine power. Little by little the slave of antiquity gave place to the serf of the Middle Ages, attached to the soil, but also protected by it; little by little feudal Europe ripened into industrial Europe, and the serf became the hired labourer; little by little free labour and commerce rose into importance, and brought with them security of person and property, the spirit of independence, the sense of human equality, the power of self-government, a truer conception of justice, the arts of peace, a new and broader and far more Christian civilization. Our own day has seen the ancient tyranny of man over man, in its double form of pure slavery and of serfage, receive two signal and heavy blows, one on the old continent and the other on the new, and on both, in Russia and in America alike, the present has proved itself stronger than the past--what is pagan has had to succumb before what is Christian. Take another example. See what the gospel has done in the domestic circle. The pagan family, with its deplorable degradation of the woman, continued for generations within the Church. That was cast off at length, but the grave error of despising and depreciating domestic life was introduced. The Reformers were gradually led to perceive that the family required not to be suppressed, but only to be sanctified; yet their views of it were pervaded by a narrow and legal spirit which has borne bitter fruits, and which society has been ever since outgrowing. The true conception of the family is of far more recent date than the Reformation, and is still vague and imperfect. If we ask to whom this progress is due, no one can distinctly tell us, for it is a silent and secret movement which has been little if at all associated with individual and party names. It comes of that unceasing purpose which runs through the ages, widening the thoughts and sympathies of men. It comes of that invisible power which dwells in the gospel and works through humanity, leavening it more and more, transforming it more and more into the holy, beautiful, and glorious kingdom of God. (R. Flint.) The leaven I. GRACE OUT OF US. The leaven was not in the meal to begin with, but was put into it by the woman. And so we must go out of ourselves to find the source and supply of grace. We are glad to know that this leaven is sometimes in young hearts very early, before they can remember, even from their birth; but in every case it is the same heavenly leaven. It brings a new life into the soul. II. GRACE FOR US. The leaven is for the meal: anywhere else it is useless, lost. Planted in the soil, it decays; left in the open air, it wastes. As God has made leaven for the meal, so all His grace is for the soul of man. And God’ s grace is for the sinful only. God the Father does not need it; Jesus Christ does not need it; the Holy Ghost does not need it; the angels in heaven do not need it--they have no sins to be forgiven, no wants to be supplied; the angels who fell have it not in their offer. The riches of God’ s grace are all to be used, and to be used by sinners like us. III. GRACE IS US. The woman in baking opens up the meal with her hands, puts the leaven in the centre, and covers it over. The Roman Catholics seem, many of them, to forget that the leaven must be in them. The Italian brigand wears carefully on his breast a cross and charms which the priest has blessed. He must have the sign on the breast, though he has not a particle of the thing signified within. You have heard of “ the Holy Stairs” at Rome. They belonged, it is said, to the house of Pontius Pilate, and were mounted by our Saviour on the last day of His life. One of the popes granted nine years of indulgence for each of the twenty-eight steps, to every one who climbed them on his knees, with a contrite heart. Pius VII. in 1817 “ renewed this indulgence, but perpetually, and declared that it may be applied also to the souls in purgatory” ; and the last pope approved of that declaration. It is most humbling to see hundreds at the present day climbing these stairs on their knees and kissing them, and fancying that their souls have somehow got much profit by the exercise. The marble steps have been severed three times with wood to protect the marble from being worn away I and you notice that the marble in the centre has been worn down two or three inches. Luther was climbing these stairs, when the words flashed upon him, “ The just shall live by faith.” Filled with shame, he rushed off, and from that day remembered that grace is something within and not without the man. In the Middle Ages wicked kings often gave orders that they should be buried in a monk’ s frock. Wearing such a dress, they hoped that Peter would be deceived, and would let him into heaven. And Popish errors often lurk among Protestants; for all the errors of Romanism have their origin in fallen human nature. Lord Macaulay tells that a Colonel Turner was hanged for burglary fully two hundred years ago. At the gallows he told the crowd that he had received great comfort from one reflection: he had never entered a church without taking off his hat. Ah! you may find traces of such mistakes nearer home. There is room in your little heart for the whole kingdom of heaven; but it must be in your heart, else all the outward observances in the world won’ t profit you. For the leaven never leavens till it is hid in the meal. So grace has no power till it is planted in your inmost part. IV. GRACE SPREADS IN US. It has been found out quite lately how the leaven spreads. It grows like a plant with the most amazing rapidity. When the meal has enough of water and warmth, the leaven multiplies itself on every side. Though it seems dead and small, it is yet a living thing with an enormous greed of growth, which is one of the greatest wonders in the wonder-world of chemistry. Leaven does not spread in unground grain, for the hard covering resists its entrance. And so the coatings of our pride must be taken away, and our spirits must be made contrite, and then shall the leaven spread. O my God, is Thy leaven in me? Is it spreading within me? V. GRACE SPREADS, OR SHOULD SPREAD, THROUGH AND THROUGH US. For it is like leaven hid in three measures of meal till the whole was leavened. Your tea-table yields a good illustration of a spreading power like that of leaven. The melted sugar goes through every drop of your tea and sweetens it; the cream mixes itself with the whole cupful, and colours it. God’ s grace should likewise give a heavenly sweetness and colouring to the whole life. It does more than touch, it influences; it does more than influence, it controls all. We may take the three measures of meal for the three chief parts of our nature--the body, the mind, and the heart. Our nature is not diseased as an apple or a potato is diseased, but as the blood is diseased when poison courses through the whole. Nor is our nature like those newly-built ships, which have many watertight compartments, one of which may be filled with the inrushing sea, while the rest remain dry. The parts of our nature lie together like the three measures of meal, so that the leaven can pass easily from the one to the other, and so through all. Grace will thus mix itself up with your home-life, your school-life, and by and by, with your public life. Spreading silently through the whole, it will, by uniting all the graces upon you, make your character gracious and graceful. VI. GRACE SHOULD SPREAD THROUGH US INTO OTHERS. The leaven wins over all the meal to its own side, and makes it like itself. A clerk who hated swearing entered one of our large offices where nearly all were profane. Soon not an oath was heard. His example, by a happy contagion, prevailed among all his associates. A minister, whose church was situated near the barracks, one day said to a soldier, “ I wonder at you soldiers; you can go up to the cannon mouth, and you have not courage to pray before your comrades.” “ You are mistaken,” was the reply. “ A recruit lately came into our room, and the first night he knelt down to pray. A shower of pillows, belts, and shoes fell upon him. He did so for five nights. On the fifth night, one of the wildest men in our company shouted, ‘ Halt, lads! that’ s enough; he can stand fire!’ That wild man knelt down by his side, and now most of the men in our room engage in prayer, and several of us have become professors of Christ.” (J. Wells, M. A.) Luke 13:23-24 Lord, are there few that be saved?-- Unpractical questions about religion The man that asked this question has long been dead, but the character lives, and it is not among the rarest exhibitions that we see. We carry to the Bible, if not the very same question he put to the Saviour, yet questions as unpractical and irrelevant, or if not in every sense irrelevant, yet premature and of minor importance; and so it is when you have the opportunity of conversing with clergymen and others, for whose theological knowledge and science in the Scriptures you have some respect. Your questions are such as these, “ What is likely to be the future condition of such as die in infancy?” Cannot you trust them in the hands of God? Are you afraid that He will do them injustice? “ What is the probability of the salvation of the heathen?” And why do you wish to estimate that! Is not this one thing clear, that their condition for the present life, and their prospects for the life to come, would both he far better, provided they had the gospel? And is it not manifestly your duty to do all that is in your power to send them the gospel? What, then, do you want more? Why expend all your charity in wondering, and wishing, and hoping, and pitying? Let it rather flow forth in its appropriate channel, in action. Do something. Promote foreign missions. That is the way to care for the heathens. Another is curious to know if we shall recognize each other in heaven. That is taking it for granted that we shall get there. Let us make sure of heaven, before we agitate the question of recognition. And then let us be satisfied with this, if our heavenly Father sees that it will be conducive to the happiness of the children whom He has adopted from earth that they should recognize each other and recollect the relations and renew the intimacies of life, it will be so, and if not, it will be otherwise. There are those who investigate the Scriptures primarily for some historical purpose, or to resolve some prophetical question. Others consult these oracles but as critics; and still others, only as cavillers, anxious to see how much they can discover to find fault with. They wonder what this passage means, or how it is possible to reconcile this part of the Bible with that, or what could have induced our Saviour to express Himself as He is reported to have done on certain occasions which they will specify; and the conclusion to which they come, perhaps, after all, is that this is a very strange and unintelligible volume; they can make nothing out of it. Ah! and is it so that they can make nothing out of it? Can they not make out of it what their duty is? Do they not but too plainly perceive that it is something, which they have no disposition to do, and is not this the secret of their fault-finding? (W. Nevins, D. D.) Silence of Scripture on irrelevant questions Thus, a Government sends forth a colonist; hut gives him just information enough to enable him to perform his particular work. A general charges an inferior officer with a special duty; but here, too, there is silence as to whatever does not belong to this duty. To enlarge the official directions given in either case, so as to include all the knowledge the superior may possess, would perplex the agent and withdraw his attention from that which concerned his work to that which did not concern it. And if we are to expect such silence in a parent’ s dealings with a child, and in a Government’ s dealing with a subaltern, how much more reason have we to expect it in the dealings of God with man! God knows all things, and endures from eternity to eternity! Man comes into the world knowing nothing, lives at the best a life which endures for a few years, and in this short life is charged with the momentous work of preparing for the eternity to come. Silence, then, on all irrelevant questions is what we would expect in the revelation of an all-wise God, and of the irrelevancy He is the sole Judge. Prying into the secret things of God reproved I. THE . II. THE ANSWER GIVEN TO IT. I. The question is put in very general, and seemingly inoffensive, terms; yet probably a great deal of Jewish pride and uncharitableness couched under it. This busy man’ s inquiry proceeded from an ill-natured hope of being confirmed in the national persuasion, that God was not the God of the Gentiles; but had reserved future happiness for the Israelites alone. But supposing there was no ground for imputation either of ill-will or vanity; still all such questions--for this is a leading one to many others--are useless and irreverent. Since, then, God is just, He will make none miserable farther than they deserve; since He is good, He will both pardon and reward in such degree as is fit; and since He is wise, what appears disorder and confusion to our short sight will appear in the end perfect regularity and proportion. But why was our nature formed so liable to fall short of it, in the sad degree that we often do? II. Part of the text, to which I now proceed, REFUSE TO GRATIFY THE QUERIST’ S , AND RETURN AN ANSWER that it was not the business of mankind to pry into what God had hid, but mind what He had revealed, and to master another kind of difficulty, that of fulfilling His commands; that multitudes indeed, who professed religion, would finally appear to have professed it in vain; but this was a matter not to raise idle speculations upon. One fatal mistake of believers in religion hath always been an absurd notion that their steady faith in it, their zeal to support and spread that faith, their punctilious observance of certain forms, their constant practice of some precepts, and their periodical pretences of sorrow for having wilfully lived in the neglect of the rest; that one or other of these things would be accepted, instead of true piety and virtue. Immediately after the text He declares, that neither acknowledgment of His authority, nor attendance on His teaching, nor anything else, shall avail the workers of iniquity. They who have not been thus forewarned go on indeed with great ease; but it is not in religion that they go on. Doubtless common decency and outward regularity are very valuable things--would God more attention were paid to them! But still with these there may be little true sense of duty to God, or even man; little care that the heart and affections be such as they ought; nay, much indulgence of very criminal actions, either concealed from the world or approved by it. In short, almost everything may be right in the opinion of those around us, perhaps in our own: and almost everything wrong in the eyes of our Maker. That most men act wickedly is no more an objection against religion, than that most men act unwisely is against common prudence. That so many fail by taking a wrong course is only a warning to make sure of taking the right. And if in that several duties are painful, it is not Christianity that hath made them so. All its peculiar precepts are easy in themselves, and assistances to the practice of the rest. (T. Secker.) The number of the saved A natural question to any one who thinks seriously of the destiny of human life. 1. Probably prompted in this instance merely by curiosity. This Jew, educated from childhood under a creed in which the most rigid aspects of the doctrine of election were taught, came to Christ in the hope that he might get some authoritative statement of the mystery of predestination from this One whom he regarded as a prophet of God. Christ replies, “ Strive,” &c. Whether there be few or many saved is no business of yours; what you have to do is to make your own calling and election sure; that cannot be accomplished by indulging in idle speculations about other people, but by struggling yourself with your whole energy, to enter into and be within the narrow door that leads to salvation. Not easy work, but difficult; not a question about your opinions, but a question of action. Agonize as wrestler, and be content with nothing but admittance. 2. Another sense in which we may put the question. Are there few or many who show in their lives that they are being delivered, because of their faith and love towards Christ, from their sins, and that the gospel they profess is producing in them the Christian spirit--the spirit of love, purity, truth, gentleness, considerateness, kindness, righteousness? This seems to have been the very light in which Jesus Christ Himself viewed the matter of salvation, for He goes on, after this man puts his question, to cast discredit upon the religion of opinions and observances, and to insist upon doing the will of God as being the only security. It is when we put the question in this sense, that we may discover ground for some serious reflections. Are there many whose lives are savingly affected by the religion they profess? Is the Christian spirit being realized in Christian society? Are there few or many of whom you can confidently assert that there is a deliverance from sin actually going on, and of goodness being attained, which is the fruit of their faith and love towards Christ? For my own part, the sad conviction is frequently borne in upon me that, when thus tested, the question admits almost of only one reply. How seldom is it that when we go to Church we expect to be made spiritually better, to be saved from our everyday sins, and to get such convictions and strength as may make us liker and liker the Master in life and character? (N. Macleod.) Luke 13:24 Strive to enter in at the strait gate Christ’ s warning against formalism This has been called “ a serious answer to an idle question. ” The answer is not only serious, but rendered with striking skill and power. The questioner was a single Pharisee. The answer is directed to the whole sect. The question related to the “ few” that might be saved. The answer emphasizes the “ many” who are in danger of being lost. The question was idle and speculative. The answer is an appeal to immediate action and earnest endeavour. I. THE TASTES OF MEN. It is undeniable that men love forms for their own sake. It is self-evident also that some degree of form is indispensable to spiritual religion. “ I am from above, ye are from beneath.” Here is the gulf opening at every point between God and men. Hence to bridge this gulf some visible forms become necessary. These forms are harmless as long as they fulfil their end. But the moment when, for any reason, the form becomes more attractive than the spiritual fact for which it stands, when the bridge detains rather than forwards the seeking faith of the soul, when for any reason a man begins to love the road more than the communion to which it leads, the altar more than the name that sanctifies it, the cross more than the Crucified, then he begins to pervert needed means of worship into unlawful ends. He is ministering to worldly tastes, and though he still call it religion, he is in fact a formalist, a promising Pharisee. II. THE OF THE MIND IS ANOTHER BROAD ROAD TO . The philosophic formalist is like a man standing on the bank of a stream, whose passage is his only salvation; but he has no thought of crossing. He is engaged in calmly trying the depth of the channel at different points. He surveys the scenery of the opposite shore with a critical eye. He measures the swiftness of the current, and carefully estimates its force per cubic foot. He notes the colour and density of the water, and asks with considerable interest about how many make the crossing safely. All this information he shuts away in his note-book, and seems rather well content with the result. It would seem farcical if it were not sadly true that multitudes of men and women, in our own day, imagine this to be religion; or more exactly, they live and die in the hope that through these processes of inquiry they are drawing nearer to a rational faith. The progress of the intellectual formalist is a sheer delusion, tie only circles round and round the holy mystery. He is ever learning, but never coming to a knowledge of the truth. III. THE SELF- OF THE NATURAL HEART IS ANOTHER FERTILE SOURCE OF IN . It was on this road that the questioner in the text had gone astray. Now, our Lord’ s treatment of this many-headed evil was sharp and brief. “ Strive to enter in at the strait gate.” Here is, at once, the knell of all false hopes and the cure of all wrong methods in religion. See how much these words contain. 1. The genuine spiritual life has a single gate of entrance. It is the gate. Many shall seek to enter in by other gates--gates imagined or invented--but they shall not be able. There is but one gate. 2. This one gate is a “ strait gate” also. It was too narrow for the swelling robes and expanding phylacteries of the Pharisee. It is too narrow still for the routine of the formalist or the philosophy of the intellectualist. It is too strait for inflated self-righteousness. If these shall enter, it must be by some other gate; yet there is but one, and this is strait. But this strait gate is wide enough for repentance and faith. It is high enough for humble sinners who will stoop to enter. 3. The gate is not only one gate, and narrow, but a deadly effort is required to pass it. Strive to enter in. A better word would be “ agonize.” Agonize to enter in at the strait gate. (J. B. Clark.) Earnestness in seeking salvation We know that more than seventy thousand immortal beings pass daily into their fixed eternal state, and that for six thousand years nearly thirty millions a year have gone to the unseen world; and the thought must unavoidably force itself upon every mind, Are the largest portion of them lost? Must we believe a great part of these myriads live here but to acquire a title to everlasting woe? Such inquiries are natural, and we can scarcely resist the impulse to make them. Jesus Christ was perfectly able to answer them. Let us, then-- I. In the first place, TO HOW HE THEM. It has generally been thought that our Lord’ s reply was a tacit censure upon all such questions; but it may have been a censure upon the spirit and motives of the man rather than upon his inquiry. Our Saviour took no notice of him, but directed His answer to all around, and said unto them, “ Strive to enter in at the strait gate.” The Jews supposed that all of their nation would be saved, and all the Gentiles lost; and if the inquirer asked in this uncharitable spirit, we may conclude that this was the reason why our Lord took no notice of him. Or the person who put the question may have been himself a wicked man, neglecting his own salvation, and actuated by an idle curiosity concerning the fate of others, and therefore unworthy of a reply. We need not suppose, then, that our Lord meant to condemn all such inquiries. We cannot well avoid them. We cannot look upon the thronging multitudes around us without having the question forced upon us, What is to be their future fate? We must cease thinking before we can cease asking, “ Are there few that be saved?” And, indeed, it seems necessary to ask, in order to form some judgment respecting the eternal destiny of others, for how can we make any efforts for their salvation if we cannot estimate their danger? The Bible itself gives us aid in such inquiries. It tells us that a vast multitude, which no man can number, shall stand before the throne; and yet it teaches that of those who grow up to years of maturity there are few that go in at the strait gate, and many that enter the broad way to death, and thus, in fact, replies to the question in our text. II. Again we may observe, THAT THERE IS ANOTHER VERY COMMON MISTAKE WITH REGARD TO THE MEANING OF OUR TEXT, Our Saviour says, “ Many shall seek to enter in, and shall not be able.” Some understand this to refer to the gate of salvation; that is, many shall seek on earth to enter that gate, or to become Christians, but shall not be able; and accordingly they proceed to give us many reasons why they shall not be able; as, for instance, they seek, but do not seek earnestly enough, or they seek for a time and then fall away. But the true meaning seems to be, many at the last day shall seek to enter into the gate of heaven, but shall not then be able. III. Having noticed these erroneous views of our text, we may now observe, in the third place, THAT THE GREAT POINT OF IT IS, TO URGE UPON US IN THE WORK OF OUR . The straitness and difficulty is in ourselves, not in anything of God’ s imposing. The entrance upon eternal life is like a narrow gateway, wide enough to admit every individual, but nothing more. If a man comes to it with a great bulky burden upon his shoulders, he will find it impossible to force a passage; but if he will lay down his load of pride and worldliness, his lusts and pleasures, instead of attempting to carry them with him in the way to heaven, there will be nothing to impede his entrance; he can slip through easily, and travel in that narrow way comfortably. Just in proportion as we renounce sin will the pathway to heaven become plain and easy. IV. But here, my brethren, is difficulty enough; God has revealed the way of life clearly; Jesus, by His work on earth and in heaven, smoothes that way, and renders it accessible to all; BUT THE GREAT MATTER IS TO MEN TO THAT IN WHICH WOULD HINDER THEIR . V. But, my brethren, if ye will not do what yourselves must acknowledge to be reasonable now, HEAR WHAT CHRIST SAYS YE MAY NO --“ Many, I say unto you, will seek to enter in, and shall not be able.” How vividly does the Bible describe the awful disappointment of those who are to be thrust out of Christ’ s presence at the judgment day! One would think that when they found themselves on the left hand of the Judge, that would convince them that there was no room for hope. But no; our Lord represents them as pleading still for admission, “ Lord, Lord, open unto us.” And when He answers, “ I know you not,” still they will not give over, but plead, “ When saw we Thee an hungered, and fed Thee not, or thirsty, and gave Thee no drink?” and long after the fatal word, “ Depart from Me, ye cursed,” has been uttered, their pleadings may follow their ascending Judge to move His compassion. Vain cries! but dreadful! (W. H. Lewis, D. D.) I. THOSE ALONE WHO STRIVE ENTER IN AT THE STRAIT GATE. Every part of redemption is connected with striving, and the Christian under its influence must work out his salvation with fear and trembling. Within his own household there are enemies, for his “ heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked,” and he must watch and be sober. Is he on a race? to reach the goal he must lay aside every incumbering weight, and with his eye steadily fixed on the prize, he must not faint by the way, nor cease to strive till he has secured the end of his labour. From fears without and fightings within, the Christian is kept ever active, and through much tribulation he must enter the kingdom of God. The heart of a Christian is a field of action in which two powerful armies are engaged--grace and corruption. New strength in acquired by resistance, and day by day opposing powers wax feebler and feebler; and the Christian retiring from a well-sustained conflict exclaims, “ Oh, death I where is thy sting? oh, gravel where is thy victory?” “ Thanks be to God for His unspeakable gift.” On the obtaining of salvation II. FEW THUS STRIVE, AND FEW ARE SAVED. Many wish salvation, but few strive to enter in at the strait gate. The word “ many” in our text may either refer to a great number or to mankind generally. Few are to be found who do not seek in one way or other, or at some time of their life, to enter in at the strait gate; but they do not strive, and thus are excluded. Conscience accuses, fears alarm, and they seek salvation; but their hearts are either too much carnalized or they do not value sufficiently the salvation of the soul. Hence they merely seek, and do not strive. They would have no objection to enter in at the strait gate by seeking when they found it convenient; but to strive, and that for a continued time, is out of the question. They would willingly enter into heaven; but to take it by violence requires too much exertion for their dispositions. (A. Robertson, M. A.) The dangers of formality, and the difficulties of salvation I. THE NATURE OF THE . 1. Objectionable, as indicating an exclusive and self-righteous spirit. 2. Objectionable, as indicating an undue curiosity upon a subject which God has concealed from human view. II. THE SOLEMN TO WHICH IT GAVE RISE. The Christian is exposed to the ridicule of the scoffer, the contempt of the scorner, and the sneers of the profane. His conduct is misrepresented, his words misinterpreted, and his motives misunderstood. His religion is termed hypocrisy, his faith presumption, his holiness self-righteousness, his strict walk with God an arrogant assumption of superiority over men, and his diligent attendance on the means of grace and ordinances of religion a mere observance of useless forms and ceremonies. His wisdom is called folly, his patience pusillanimity, his meekness cowardice, his sobriety avarice, his almsgiving an ostentatious display of benevolence; and his zealous exertions for the temporal and spiritual welfare of man and the honour and glory of God are stigmatized as unhallowed attempts to promote his own worldly interests and to advance his own worldly reputation. These oppositions from without are abetted by the corruptions of the heart within, which “ is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked,” and is ever inventing excuses for indulging in forbidden gratifications and for resting in a mediocrity of spiritual attainments. Add to these considerations the devices and stratagems of the arch enemy of God and man, by which he deludes men into a false security and seduces them into the commission of sin, exaggerating the enjoyment and concealing the danger of the forbidden fruit, and saying, as he did of old, “ Ye shall not surely die,” and who does not see the necessity of vigilance, circumspection, and active exertion to secure the favour of God, according to our Saviour’ s exhortation, “ Strive to enter in at the strait gate “ ? III. Such being the difficulties which beset the path of life, we are at no loss to account for THE TRUTH WHICH CHRIST BRINGS FORWARD TO ENFORCE THAT --“ For many will seek to enter in, and shall not be able” ; the meaning of which is, that many have thoughts and faint desires of heaven who will never be found among the heirs of glory. The spectators might wish the happy lot of the successful racer or the victorious combatant in the public games of Greece, and sigh for the laurels which crowned his brow and the acclamations which awaited his return home; but such idle and empty wishes could never secure the prize. Even the prophet who “ loved the wages of unrighteousness” could exclaim, “ How goodly are thy tents, O Jacob, and thy tabernacles, O Israel! Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his.” But desires like these may be felt without the slightest approximation to the object desired. It is to covet a treasure and refuse to dig for it. It is to know of a “ pearl of great price” and grudge the expense of buying the field where it is deposited. It is to wish for the abundance of the harvest and decline the labour of cultivating the soil. Alas! how great is the number of those who in regard to the kingdom of heaven put the wish for the act, who idle away their time, and “ spend their strength for nought,” through all the stages of an unprofitable existence, and then sink down, astonished and confounded, into that gulf of endless perdition from which they have never made any real effort to escape. (H. Hughes.) Warning against formalism I. A CURIOUS . 1. This question, though curious, is very natural. (1) Natural to pry into the future. (2) To desire to know the future spiritual condition of mankind is most natural. 2. If such an inquiry was proper at all, it was proper to make it of Christ. (1) Because He knew all about it. (2) Because He would readily answer it if best. II. THE MASTER’ S ANSWER. 1. Not satisfactory to the curiosity-seeker. (1) This fact deserves careful notice. (2) This fact a direct rebuke to all mere curiosity-seeking. This applies to science, art, literature, and religion. 2. Christ’ s answer most satisfactory to the real inquirer after truth. (1) Because of its eminently practical character. (2) Because of its stirringly earnest character. (3) Because of its solemnly warnful character. This warning implies (a) the possibility of self-deception on the part of professing Christians; (b) that self-deception will not exonerate any from condemnation in the day of judgment; (c) that the condemnation of all workers of iniquity will be irreversible. (4) Because of its delightfully encouraging character to all true Christians. Lessons: 1. Christ ever raised the practical above the theoretical. So should we. 2. Christ ever raised the spiritual above the secular. So should we. 3. Christ ever raised the substance above the form. 4. Christ here reveals the reason of men’ s aversion to true godliness. 5. Christ here plainly declares the irretrievable misery to which such aversion inevitably leads. (D. C. Hughes, M. A.) Strive to enter in 1. A weighty requirement. 2. A just requirement. 3. A beneficent requirement. 4. A practicable requirement. (Van Oosterzee.) The broad way and the narrow . Certain, inevitable movement of human beings is implied in the whole passage. Our Lord regards the multitudes around Him as all in motion--none quiescent, none fixed and centred. We are not dwellers, we are travellers. We are all on the way--we are not stopping even here and now. I see the staff in your hand! I see the dust on your sandals! I hear the tread of a thousand feet I Onward and away each one goes, by the way that he chooses, and he shall never rest--not in deepest sleep, not in stillest midnight--for one moment, until he passes through the gate of death to some way everlasting. MORAL IS ALSO . This is a far more serious and important kind of progress. If we could stay our spirits amid this universal vicissitude, and keep them in fixed conditions, the outward change would be of less moment. But the moral progress is as constant, and infinitely more important, than any change that can be apprehended by the senses. It is a solemn thought that the one process or the other is going on m every one of us, without the intermission of a day or an hour. True, many a man does not feel himself to be growing either better or worse sometimes for a long time; and therefore he yields to the delusion that it is really so. Vessels that are in the habit of trading on the great rivers, going up and coming down, stay at this port or that, sometimes for days, trading or waiting. The waters sweep past them, but they are motionless, anchored in the river or moored to the quay. So some men are under the delusion that they can moor themselves, as moral beings, to certain circumstances and states, in such a manner that there shall be no difference between yesterday and today, between to-day and to-morrow. They seem to think that they can anchor moral character in the stream of life, and hold it in the same place for months or years. It can never be done. THERE ARE ONLY TWO WAYS. The broad and the narrow. Along one or other of these has every mortal pilgrim gone. By one or other of these is every living man travelling now. Let us look now at these two ways. Take the broad way first, if for no other reason because it is the broad way. It is the most manifest and obtrusive, and the nearest to us naturally. Begin at the beginning of it. It has a gate. A gate is a place of entrance--to a city, or a field, or a country. As a religious term it means the beginning of a course or onward career. There are critical and decisive points in life to which men come. There are gates of decision, narrow or wide, through which they pass into the course which lies within. He is speaking to reasonable and responsible men of their acts of choice, in the decisive times and places in life. He is speaking of the entering in at either gate of those who know that they so enter. And yet the knowledge may not be very express or clear. From want of reflection, from want of observance of the real character and consequences of things, men may go on from youth to age without being aware that they pass through “ gates “ at all. They live as they list, or as they can. All this is consistent with the spirit of the passage, “ wide is the gate!” One may go through it and hardly know it is there. And the way is broad. All kinds of persons may walk in it. The man of the world may work out his schemes, gather his money, and achieve his position. The pleasure-seeker may eat and drink, and dance, and sleep, and sing. The sensual man, who kills his moral life and vilifies the Divine image within him, may pass on unchecked. The formalist may count his beads, and say his prayers. These persons are not all alike. Some are much worse than others, some are on the darker side of the road, some are on the side nearest the narrow way, “ not far from the kingdom of God.” They cast many a look to that better way, and perhaps some day they may enter it. In saying that there are but two ways, we do not abolish the distinctions of morality. Let them all stand. They do not touch the essence of the truth that a man is going in the main one way or another. As a moral being, having in him the element of progressiveness, he must, on the whole, be either rising to life or sinking to ruin. Again, following our Lord’ s description, we come to a gate, and He calls it a “ strait gate.” There is thus an undisguised difficulty in salvation. The way is narrow, but the gate that gives entrance to it is narrower still. The beginning of some great enterprises among men is sometimes very easy and imperceptible. A great palace is to be built. The beginning of the work is, that a man lays a measuring line quietly to the ground, or a workman with a spade turns up a piece of turf. A company of men start for the ascent of Mount Blanc. But they do not go up at first, they go down by a river side, then their path slopes gently up through the pine woods, and it is not at the beginning of their undertaking that they find hardship and toil. But this work of returning to God, in the case of one who has not kept the narrow way from the first, is most difficult at the beginning. The most miserable and agonizing moment to the prodigal son must have been that which preceded the resolution to arise and to go to his father. The question occurs: How is this? Is it by Divine arrangement? In one sense it is not. “ God will have all men to be saved.” “ He is not willing that any should perish.” The way, which to us has a strait gate and is practically narrow, is, in fact, as made by Him, wide in its gate and broad as a way; while, On the other hand, the way, which to us is so broad, seen from the heights will seem narrow. So much depends on the point of view I The angels looking down on the broad way may see that it is really narrow. They may say: “ How strait the gate! What a pressure upon conscience to get through How narrow the way! Girded with penalty, overhung with danger, ending in death!” Looking at the narrow way they may say: “ How wide is the gate! Wide as the Divine nature. How broad is the way! Broad as the everlasting love of God--penalties all exhausted, promises hanging like ripening fruit, and helps ready at every step of the progress!” But our point of vision is not the angelic one. We need to know what the way is to us. Christ stands on our own plane of life when He describes the way; to us, practically, it is narrow, and the gate of entrance to it is strait. To lay aside figure, the gate can be none other than repentance--the leaving of one life behind and entering on another. Therefore, the gate is strait! O how strait, when a man sees that he cannot pass in with one allowed sin, not even a little one! “ Narrow is the way.” True, it is not so narrow to most Christian people as it ought to be. It is not so narrow to any traveller on it as it ought to be. We shall close by naming three inducements to walk in this narrow way. 1. The gate is strait, but it is always open. You come to a nobleman’ s park, and you look in through the gate. The gate is massive, high, broad, and beautiful. But it is shut. You can look through the bars of it, but you cannot get in. All its width and magnificence avail you nothing as a means of entrance. Passing on, you come to a little wicket-gate which opens into a narrow footpath over rugged ground, but which leads up and away to the hills where the light is shining. That little wicket-gate is open, day and night! 2. The narrow way is narrow; but it grows wider as you go on. It grows wider, lighter, pleasanter, easier--that is the law of the road. The very opposite result takes place on the broad way of self-indulgence. That becomes narrower and darker and more full of peril as men go along in it. 3. The end is everlasting life. Who can tell the meanings, hidden in the heart of God, that these words contain? It “ leadeth unto life.” Ah, is not that enough to reconcile us to it all--its straitness, its narrowness, all its steeps and roughnesses? Is not that enough to draw us into it as by the gravitation of eternity--the end is “ everlasting life” ? (A. Raleigh, D. D.) Earnestness in religion, recommended and enforced I. THE WHICH THE INTO HEAVEN. 1. An object, when viewed under different aspects, assumes different hues, and presents itself in different forms. 2. But while the gospel is humbling, it is also holy in its tendency. It is a doctrine according to godliness. II. I ADVERT TO THE CAUSES OF THAT WHICH MANY IN THE CONCERN OF THEIR SOUL WILL . 1. One obvious reason why many seek to enter in and are not able is that they seek not in the appointed way. 2. Another cause of that disappointment which many will experience is the unseasonable time at which they commence the attempt of entering in at the strait gate. They make no preparation for the coming of the Bridegroom till His approach is actually announced. 3. Another reason why many will fail in their attempt of obtaining admission into heaven is the irresolute and indecisive manner in which that attempt is prosecuted. 1. Consider the magnitude of the object for which you are exhorted to strive. It is the life of your soul. 2. Consider the consequences of not complying with this admonition. 3. Consider, lastly, the certainty of success which awaits your compliance with the admonition. “ Your labour shall not be in vain in the Lord.” Strive, and ye shall enter in. (E. Cooper.) Striving for heaven Look for a moment at the nature of these difficulties--at the magnitude of these obstacles. They may be arranged under three heads. I. EXAMPLE. Who has power to breast himself against the influence of popular sentiment, ever flowing in one direction, and always with an urgent and resistless tide? The spirit of the world, which is antagonistical to that of the gospel, moulds its habits, and manners, and opinions, which, though they be not always opposed to the outward forms of religion, are always at variance with its inward and humble spirit. Religion has never acquired such an ascendency in the world, that there was not always a heavy balance in the scale of popular influence against it; so that almost the first difficulty which presents itself to the mind of that man, who is beginning seriously to ponder the question of a personal consecration to God, is that which rests in the contempt that awaits such a change, and the overpowering influence of that scornful sentiment and adverse example which prevail around him. Men are enslaved by the power of example. Its influence over them is like a mighty spell, which it requires a superhuman power to break. Need I say that he who goes to heaven must go there in the face of this influence? Not a soul ever entered the strait gate but he came in direct conflict with this power, and, through grace, triumphed over it. II. But let us look at the influence of HABITS AND CUSTOMS. The sinner is accustomed to sin. Every one of his habits, of a moral nature, has been formed under its influence. It is the atmosphere in which he has lived, and moved, and breathed. It has encircled him from the first dawn of life. From such a heart have our habits sprung, and in such a soil have they taken root. Who is ignorant of the power of habit? Even where it holds no relation to the moral feelings, it is often so strong as to produce involuntary action. Now, these habits, so deeply rooted, so long cherished, so undisputed in their sway, and so ascendent in their power, are every one of them, like so many cords, binding us to our idols and our lusts. Under their mighty impulse the sinner is rushing on to ruin. I ask, if anything short of that great, and determined, and-desperate struggle, indicated in the word “ strive,” agonize to enter, can give us emancipation from this dreadful power?--freedom from this debasing thraldom? III. There is a still more serious difficulty than any which I have yet named. The sinner, to enter the strait gate, MUST CONTEND AGAINST THE FORCE OF NATURE ITSELF, AND WITH A POWER THAT SHALL SUBDUE IT. The moral nature of man is wholly corrupt. There is not a single chord in the heart that vibrates to the love of God blow, you will observe, that it is this state of the heart that renders man susceptible to temptation. It is this which gives to the world such a mighty power over him--which renders him so easy a prey to its allurements, its fascinations, its deceitfulness, and to the wiles of the devil. But it is necessary that I should say a word upon the nature and extent of that aid which God proffers us. Do you not know that there are many who suppose that God offers to remove these difficulties Himself, and exempt the sinner from all responsibility in reference to them? God makes no such offer to any sinner. The Saviour says, “ Strive to enter in at the strait gate.” Would He address such language as this to the sinner if there were no difficulties in his way, or if He expected to remove them all Himself? By no means. The truth is, God does not propose to take one of these difficulties out of the way. He simply offers to help the sinner to overcome them. If a man, launching his bark from the shore at Chippewa, should row vigorously till he had reached the centre of the Niagara, and should then haul in his oars, and commit his frail vessel to the power of the current, would he have any reason to expect that he should reach the opposite shore? If he had the energies of a giant, would that prevent his being carried down the cataract, and buried in the gulf below? An expectation of reaching the opposite shore entertained by that man, when folding his arms and whistling to the fury of the current, would be just as reasonable as an expectation of reaching heaven entertained by the sinner who sees himself borne down on the current of worldliness and sin to the gulf of perdition, and yet will make no resolute efforts to resist the tide and bear himself to a place of safety. Of what avail is it that the Spirit of God, omnipotent in His power, tenders His aid to the sinner, and visits his heart, if, after all, that sinner cannot be roused to such a state of feeling and effort as are indicated by the emphatic language of our Saviour used in the text? Believe me, dying sinner, the Spirit of God has not come into the world that He might leave you to slumber while He fights your enemies, and through mighty obstacles opens to you the way to the kingdom of heaven. This is not the manner m which He teaches us to fight the good fight of faith. But it is time to conclude. 1. From our subject, thus discussed, we see why it is that so few, even of those who have some solicitude about their salvation, and are strictly moral in their deportment, and always respectful towards religion, ever attain to a satisfactory and well-established confidence of their interest in God’ s love. They have never made thorough work of religion. They have rested in its forms. They have shunned its crosses. 2. Again: Is it not clear from our subject that there are many in the Church on earth who will never enter heaven? (J. W. Adams, D. D.) The strait gate “ But we thought,” perhaps some one may say, “ that the message of the gospel which preachers have to deliver was a smiling invitation; these words sound like grave, urgent counsel.” That is what they are--grave, urgent counsel. If any one said to you in a soft, sentimental tone, “ Make money,” you would be ready even to laugh; Rot because you consider money-making an unattractive occupation, which indeed it is not but because you know that it is not easy to make money. You do not need to be told to do this thing, but only how to do it. There are many things we are willing enough to do, if we only knew how to do them. But there are others we do not like to do, although we ought to do them; partly because of difficulties, which might nevertheless be overcome, and partly because the ends proposed, the rewards offered, are not attractive to us. Of course every one to whom we should say, “ There is another life after this: would you like it to be a happy one?” would answer, “ Certainly I should.” But if no one expects to get a comfortable place here without taking trouble; why should any one expect to get a comfortable place hereafter without taking any? Still, when we say, “ Enter ye in at the strait gate,” if one word disheartens, another comforts. The word “ strait” perhaps brings us to a pause; but the word “ enter” beckons us forward. We should not be urged to “ enter were entry impossible. If the entrance looks narrow, it is less difficult than it looks. Every one feels a truth in our Lord’ s words about the two ways; the one, easy and crowded, yet neither safe nor honourable; the other, difficult and unfrequented, and yet the best way, indeed the only right one. But though we all feel we have truth here, yet we may treat this old Scripture saying very much as we do an old weapon of which, when we look at it, we cry, “ Ah, you were sharp and strong once; you have been wanted in the world; but you are not needed now: rest where you are; ours is a quiet time; and should we ever have to fight, we will find new weapons, of a better make.” And even if we do not thus treat our Lord’ s saying, we may yet feel some perplexity as to its application. We must look about, then, to find a gate into the meaning of these words; and when we have found one, we must go along the pathway of our thought with care and steadiness. Who shall help us to the meaning of Christ’ s words? He Himself shall help us. He Himself travelled on the narrow path, when He might have taken the broad one. And did He not call Himself both a door and a way, saying, “ I am the door,” “ I am the way” ? He who, quickened and strengthened by another’ s example, walks as that other walked, does as he did, hopes as he hoped, and leaves the crowd as he left it, makes that other his “ way.” On the one hand, then, we have a Teacher who invites us to trust in and follow Him as a Saviour; and, on the other, a Saviour who offers us life, and yet, as a Teacher, instructs us that we must overcome many difficulties if we would gain it. How can we reconcile these things? He who spoke of the strait gate, we say, Himself went into the way of righteousness thereby. He who told us of the narrow way, walked therein, knew its sorrows, was acquainted with its griefs. He chose the narrow way when He might have taken the broad one and have travelled it with a most able guide and companion by His side, and a most brilliant end before Him. We often speak of a brilliant career. What career so bright with outward victory as Christ’ s would have been, if He had accepted the magnificent proposals of the devil? His way would have been broad, and thronged with admiring attendants. But He took the way of goodness instead of the way of greatness. He went down among the poor instead of up among the proud. He sacrificed Himself to others instead of others for Himself. And the mighty work He did was this: He made “ the way” that was impassable to any but Himself, passable to others who should follow in His footsteps. By taking the way, He became the way; by taking the way of righteousness, He became the way of salvation. Even in the perils of ordinary life, if any one man will dare to take a new course, and it prove a successful one, many will dare to follow him. And he usually benefits us in two manners; he makes our obstacle less, and our courage greater. When, then, Jesus Christ says invitingly to all, “ Follow Me,” speaking as a Saviour; but says also to each, “ Take up your cross, and, carrying that, follow Me” --teaching us that the way is hard, we do not feel that urgent counsel is inconsistent with cheering invitation. We can reconcile the words that seem discouraging with the words that so much encourage. For every one of us there still remains his own difficulty; but our Saviour has so encountered and overcome the great difficulties that beset human nature in its progress to perfection and blessedness, that every one of us has a good hope of success through Him. Not only are obstacles removed and courage imparted, so that we can do what we could not, and will dare what we would not; but we are assured of an enabling power, even Christ’ s Spirit bestowed on us by God, and an unfailing protection, even an Almighty Providence ever working around us. Christ is more than an Example shining from the past; He is a Power working in the present. (T. T. Lynch.) The narrow leads to the broad Through the narrow we come into the broad; by a narrow intricate channel into the wide sea full of riches; by a narrow and perilous pathway into the great city, so stately, so secure. The attainment of true knowledge, the performance of true work, fidelity to “ pure religion,” are not easy. Commencement and continuance have alike their difficulty. The gate is strait; the way narrow. But in order to obtain many a state of advantage in which we may “ walk at liberty” --find, that is, our path pleasantly wide and the country round us pleasantly open--is anything more requisite than exact careful attention at the outset of our endeavour, and exact careful regard to our own course as we go along? No: often this is enough. Perhaps all of us can read a printed page as easily as if we were rolling in a rapid chariot upon a broad level road. But the Alphabet was our “ strait gate,” and along the “ narrow way” that our Spelling-Book opened before us we had to go, for a long time, slowly and carefully. If we have learned a handicraft, we had our “ strait gate” and our “ narrow way,” skilful as we may now be. In most courses of life we have our special first troubles; but our trial is not over when our entry has been made--we cannot proceed without a steady purpose, a good courage, and a staff. And no man can be, or can reasonably expect to be, a Christian, without the same attention at the outset, and considerateness on the course as are demanded of him if he would be merchant or mechanic, artist or man of science, discoverer or patriot, or even if he would learn to read a book. But more than attention at first and care afterwards are required for the spiritual life--to be a true Christian, and indeed to be a true man in any worthy department of human activity. The renunciation of much that others accept, and even the abandonment of much that, but for the work in hand, you would retain, may be required of you. This renunciation is a “ strait gate” ; and “ separateness,” though it be separateness from sinners--and some sinners are pleasant people--is a “ narrow way.” Christ was alone amid the crowd in His unruffled wisdom, before He was alone on the cross in the grasp of death, man’ s enemy. His “ narrow way” lay through the populous city before it entered the valley of the shadow of death. There are other narrow ways along our streets than the pavements. One man riding in his coach may be travelling on the narrow way of honour and duty, and the foot-travellers may be hastening on at rapid pace upon the broad road. Now it may be the poor, and now the rich, that is in the wrong way, or in the right. The confession of an error, the avowal of a conviction, economy of money or time, abandonment of habit, are often “ strait gates,” which stand quite plainly before us, and need no finding. But our Saviour speaks of men “ not finding” the strait gate. And He Himself, as the Teacher of Israel, was a gate that many of His countrymen failed to find. They could not see that He would lead them to welfare. Had He been a strong soldier, He would have seemed to them the broad plain way to prosperity! He that notices a yellow stain in the rocks, and does not perceive that it means gold, misses a gate. A suggestion comes, a proposal is made, tidings are brought: “ There is a gate here,” says one man; but another “ cannot see it.” For all of us there are gates we cannot miss seeing; and for all of us there are gates which we may overlook, and so miss a great good, even the greatest. Many fail to find their gate because they are looking for the grandly difficult rather than the humbly difficult. (T. T. Lynch.) Difficulty of religion It appears, then, that it is not an easy thing to enter in; that it is a hard and difficult matter for a man to be saved. Now let us see some particulars in which it is difficult. Let us observe some of those points of religion, in which if we would succeed, we are bound to strive; and where if we strive not we shall not enter in. 1. One thing which is of very frequent occurrence, and in respect of which men ate very commonly mistaken, is their attendance on the worship of God. You think it perhaps enough to attend when it is convenient, to come when you can spare time from business or pleasure; once on the Sunday, or not even thus often. But is this striving to enter in? Many of you know well that if you were really to strive you could attend more frequently, more regularly. Be not, then, deceived. The way is narrow, the gate is strait; strive to enter in, or you approach in vain. 2. Or consider now the doctrines of Christianity. Many of you perhaps think very little about them, deem them above your comprehension, and never take pains to understand them. Or if you do, you complain that they are hard to discover, and difficult to understand. And so indeed they are, to the natural man, to the mind that is unenlightened by the Spirit of truth. But never imagine that this excuses you from the duty of searching into them, “ or that here you may safely walk in the broad path, neglecting to learn what God has thought fit to teach. 3. If there be any here who spend no time, take no anxious thought, give no diligent attention to know the things that belong to their peace; to them I say, you are mistaken, you are in danger, you must strive, or you will not enter in. 4. Or take the account which the Scriptures give of what a Christian ought to practise. Is it not a constant warfare, a continual effort, to mortify the flesh, to renounce the world, and to resist the devil? It is when we fail, to renew the contest; when we faint, to recover strength; when we succeed, still to press forward; to seek ever more and more excellent gifts; and to run as in a race, every day of our lives, unto the very hour of death, that we may win the prize. Is this a hard saying? Is this view of our duty as Christians difficult and discouraging? It may be so. But the question is not whether it be a difficult one, but whether it be the true one. Could it be the true one, unless it were difficult? Could any view of the way to be saved be correct, unless it pointed to a narrow path, to a strait gate, and bid us strive, in order to enter in? (C. Girdlestone, M.A.) The strait gate I. A GATE WHICH IT IS MOST TO ENTER. 1. Because it is the gate of the city of refuge. Outside of Christ the sword of fire pursues us swift and sharp. From God’ s wrath there is but one escape, and that is by a simple faith in Christ. Believe in Him, and the sword is sheathed, and the mercy and the love of God will become your everlasting portion; but refuse to believe in Jesus, and your innumerable sins, written in His book, shall be laid at your door in that day when the pillars of heaven shall reel, and the stars shall fall like withered fig-leaves from the tree. Oh I who would not wish to escape from the wrath to come? 2. It is desirable to enter this gate, because it is the gate of a home. What sweet music there is in that word “ home” ! Jesus is the home of His people’ s hearts. We are at rest when we get to Christ. We have all we want when we have Jesus. 3. Moreover, it leads to a blessed feast. Happy the man who believes in Jesus, for he becomes at once content, complacent, and at ease. Not only does he find rest in Christ, but good cheer and great delight, halcyon peace, and hallowed satisfaction are the portion of his lot. 4. It is the gate which leads to Paradise. And who would not wish to pass through it when he considers the lot of those outside the gate? II. THERE IS A CROWD OF PEOPLE WHO WILL SEEK TO ENTER AND WILL NOT BE ABLE. 1. Some are unable to enter because the pride of life will not let them. 2. Some are unable to enter because they carry contraband goods with them. When you land in France, there stands the gendarme who wants to see what you are carrying in that basket. If you attempt to push by you will soon find yourself in custody. He must know what is there; contraband goods cannot be taken in. So at the gate of mercy--which is Christ--no man can be saved if he desire to keep his sins. He must give up every false way. 3. Not a few are unable to enter in because they want to postpone the matter until tomorrow. 4. Others, and these are in the worst plight of all, think that they are in, and that they have entered. They mistake the outside of the gate for the inside. Conclusion: Thus it is that a crowd--I had almost said a countless crowd--of people nowadays seek to enter in, but for manifold reasons they are not able to do so. And yet there is a more appalling aspect to the same fact. “ Many, I say unto you, will seek to enter in, and shall not be able.” Panic-stricken, the dying man sends for the minister whom he never went to hear when his health was good and hours hung heavy on his hands. Some years ago I was awakened about three o’ clock in the morning by a sharp ring of the door-bell. I was urged without delay to visit a house not very far from London Bridge. I went; and up two pair of stairs I was shown into a room the occupants of which were a nurse and a dying man. There was nobody else. “ Oh, sir,” said she, “ Mr. So-and-so, about half-an-hour ago, begged me to send for you.” “ What does he want?” I asked. “ He is dying, sir,” she replied. I said, “ I see that. What sort of a man was he?” “ He came home last night, sir, from Brighton. He had been out all day. I looked for a Bible, sir, but there is not one in the house; I hope you have got one with you.” “ Oh,” I said, “ a Bible would be of no use to him now. If he could understand me I could tell him the way of salvation in the very words of Holy Scripture.” I spoke to him, but he gave me no answer. I spoke again; still there was no reply. All sense had fled. I stood a few minutes gazing at his face, till I perceived he was dead. His soul had departed. That man in his lifetime had been wont to jeer at me. In strong language he had often denounced me as a hypocrite. Yet he was no sooner smitten with the darts of death than he sought my presence and my counsel, feeling no doubt in his heart that I was a servant of God, though he did not care to own it with his lips. There I stood, unable to help him. Promptly as I had responded to his call, what could I do, but look at his corpse and go home again? He had, when too late, sighed for the ministry of reconciliation, sought to enter in, but he was not able. There was no space left him then for repentance; he had wasted the opportunity. (C. H. Spurgeon.) The two ways I. THESE ARE BUT TWO ROADS in which all mankind are travelling; in the one or the other of which each of us is at this moment. These two roads are called, from the ends to which they severally lead, the way of destruction and the way of life. The Scriptures speak of no other. If we go on in the way of destruction, we shall surely come to destruction; if we walk in the way of life, we shall as surely attain eternal life. Accordingly, the Scriptures speak of men under two names only; as believers or unbelievers; as servants of sin, or servants of holiness; as children of God, or children of the devil. They recognize no middle state; no path running between the two great roads, in which we may walk without the fear of hell, even though we may have no very bright hope of heaven. II. THE WAY OF IS IN THE TEXT BY THE MARKS. 1. The gate is wide. There is no difficulty in entering in. There needs no self-denial, no striving, no mastery over ourselves. Our own hearts naturally carry us towards it. 2. And as the gate of entrance is wide, so is the way broad. It is broad, because it admits of many paths, all forming, however, but one road, and all leading but to one end. The ways of sin are various; the devices of Satan for man’ s destruction are manifold. Moreover, it is easy travelling there. Smooth and pleasant to the flesh. 3. As the gate is wide, and the way broad, so there are many that go in thereat. This is another mark of the way of destruction. It is well trodden; it is thronged with travellers. III. Now turn to consider THE WAY OF LIFE. See what are its marks. In every respect we find it the very opposite to the way of destruction. 1. In the first place, the gate is strait, that is, narrow and confined. The gate of the way of destruction is wide, and stands open before us, inviting us to come in. But the gate of life is not so easy to enter. And why? Has God made it hard? Is He unwilling that we should find the path of life? Surely not. But our own corrupt hearts love it not. 2. And after we have entered, we find that the way is narrow. There are many paths leading to destruction; there is but one that leads to life. “ Without holiness no man shall see the Lord.” And what is holiness? It is to believe in Jesus Christ, to love God, and to have His Holy Spirit dwelling in us; to deny ourselves, that we may do His will; to raise ourselves by faith and prayer above the world, and to set our affections on things above. 3. No wonder, then, that the other mark of the way of life is this, “ Few there be that find it.” It is a way but little travelled, Men love ease; they naturally care for the pleasures of the body which are at hand, It is hard to be persuaded to think of spiritual joys. (E. Blencowe, M. A.) The strait gate In proportion to the importance of any kingdom is the stringency of the conditions of entrance. In the meantime we shall forget that there is a kingdom of heaven. We shall look into the kingdoms of the earth which men account important, imperial, worthy of possession; and I guarantee to find upon the portals of all such kingdoms these words: “ Strait is the gate, and narrow is the way.” It will be something to find that inscription above the gates which open upon all the kingdoms which men who sneer at religion think important. Then, if we can read this inscription in their own handwriting upon the gates which open on their petty empires, what if we shall find the same words written--only written by the hand of God--over the portals which open on the city of the Great King? We shall thus be enabled to see that Divine revelation, though often above human reason, is not always opposed to it; and that God will have a judgment against us--irresistible, penetrating, and terrible--on account of the very principles which we ourselves have laid down in those departments of life which we considered important. Here is the kingdom of human learning: Knowledge, critical acquaintance with letters, ample and accurate information about history, power of scientific inquiry, collation, analysis, all that is known by the name of learning; and over the gate of that kingdom I find this inscription, “ Strait is the gate, narrow is the way.” A man does not by shaking his little arms shake himself into scholarship; it is not done by a wave of the hand. It is done in yonder way:--See l where the man gets up before the lark, before the sun calls him with its voice of light, who trims his lamp, and goes over yesterday’ s lesson in critical review before he begins to-day’ s study; pulls himself up by every variety of discipline; cudgels his memory, stores his mind with all kinds of literature; who works after the sun has gone away, to take the morning with him to some distant clime, turning over the pages of his book--not as you turn over the pages of your light reading--but reading every word, studying every sentence, extracting the gold from every book. We say, “ Why are you doing this?” “ Because,” he says, “ I am determined to be a subject in the kingdom of learning, and the motto over the gates is this, ‘ Strait and narrow is the gate, the road.’” So we begin already to admit the principle of the text, that in proportion to the scope and importance of any kingdom is the stringency of the conditions of entrance. Here is a little kingdom, which we shall characterize as the kingdom of merely muscular competition. Men are going to try muscular force with their fellow-men--they are going to have a boat race. You and I cannot walk along the riverside and instantly take into our heads the notion that we will have a spin with these men and beat them all. That can’ t be done. Strait is the gate and narrow is the way that leads even to athletic supremacy. A man who has been drilled, disciplined, exercised, will beat you, except a miracle be wrought for your advantage. So we are getting nearer and nearer to the principle that in proportion to the importance of any object, the scope of any kingdom, the consequence of any condition of affairs, is the narrowness of the road, is the straitness of the gate. It is the same with all kinds of intellectual supremacy. Granted that there may be inspired geniuses here and there--let us allow that some men may have had a short and easy road to intellectual power and supremacy--still the rule holds good: That he who would be highest must toil most perseveringly and conscientiously. Here, for example, is a man who wishes to excel in authorship. You read his book. You don’ t see all that lies behind the book. You don’ t see the rough outline which he first sketched--writing offhand, as it were; on, and on, and on--blotting, and interlining, and erasing. There it is; just a rough manuscript, with hardly any shape--a line of thought running through it which he alone can see. He lays it aside and takes up another sheet; brings then the rough draft, writes over many parts with care, compression, condensation, that he may give it point and pertinence. He burns the first draft; lays the second aside, lays it by for six months, until he has become another man, viz., a critic of his own productions. He takes up his manuscript again for the last time--goes through it, striking out everything that is opposed to taste, inserting, improving, refining, curving, enriching, and expending himself upon it. Ask why? He says, “ I mean this book to live after I have been taken away. I mean this to be a testimony. I mean this to be the last, richest, best expression of my attainments and my convictions; therefore I have expended myself fully upon its preparation.” What is it that is written over the man’ s study and over the man’ s desk? This: “ Strait is the gate, narrow is the way.” No doubt there are men who can write beautiful nothings by the mile, sell them in the morning, and have them forgotten at sundown. But the writers who wish to enrich all coming generations, to stimulate the most distant posterity, have not the knack of shaking out of their coat sleeves the standard literature of the country. It is a question of preparation, self-culture, self-control, and putting out the stress of the whole being upon it. Then, at least, a man deserves to succeed. The effort after all may not be masterly, the man may fail to attain the position at which he has aimed; but “ in all labour there is profit,” and the man himself is fuller and stronger for the very industry which he has put forth. We are thus enabled to say that the entrance to the kingdom of heaven is necessarily the straitest, narrowest of all. What are other kingdoms to the Kingdom of Life? When you have learned all that books can convey to you, what is your kingdom? When you have obtained all the money that you can possibly own, what is the kingdom of pecuniary means? When you have sharpened, quickened, stimulated, and enriched your brain to the highest possible point, what is the kingdom of mere intellectual force and supremacy when compared with the kingdom of Life in God? As, therefore, this is held to be the highest kingdom of all, where is the unreasonableness of making the conditions of entrance into this kingdom the most exacting and stringent of all? We are thus prepared to say, that by so much as men have the power to strive for inferior kingdoms will they be witnesses against themselves if they fail to strive after the highest kingdom of all. Men are continually getting up evidence which will be used for them or against them in the day of judgment. The day of judgment may be the shortest day that ever dawned, may be but a moment, because every man will judge himself, and one look at God’ s face will mean destiny I By so much as we have the power to strive and have admitted the principle of striving, in relation to inferior kingdoms, are we preparing a judgment against ourselves if we have not accepted the conditions of entrance into the Divine empire. Let us now have a judgment day. There is no occasion to wait ten thousand years for the day of judgment. We can have it now! Let the eloquent man be judged, the man who has made the uses of speech his study from his earliest days. Hear his statement, but fail to follow his example: “ I copied with my own hands six times the most voluminous histories of my country, that I might attain to what I supposed were the excellencies of their style. I disqualified myself for appearing in ordinary society by disfiguring my personal appearance, in order that I might bind myself to study by day and practice of speech by night. I have put pebbles in my mouth to cure my stammering; I have run up the steepest hills in the country that I might strengthen my lungs; I have harangued the sea that I might obtain power over tumultuous elements; if you would follow me along the road, walk it as I have done, inch by inch.” And he has never thought about God’ s kingdom--kingdom of light, and life, and truth, and beauty! Hear God. “ Thou wicked and slothful servant, thou knewest, thou didst understand all about care and pains and discipline and culture, thou oughtest therefore--“ And the man has no answer. No man can answer God when he comes face to face with his Maker! He may chaffer with Him now; he may utter his little speeches against his Maker now. But when it comes to the last reckoning of all, when a man takes up his life in his hand and says, “ This is what I have done,” God will point out to the man in his own life the things which will damn and consume him! What is this kingdom of which we have been speaking? It is called the Kingdom of Life. There are two gates, and only two. Two roads, and only two. Two destinies, and only two. The gate, the way leading to destruction--the way leading to life. (J. Parker, D. D.) On striving to enter in at the strait gate I. EXPLAIN THE . By the strait gate, we are to understand the entrance into that way which leads to life; and to enter in as the strait gate denotes the commencement of holiness in the heart of man. The same thing is denoted by conversion--by making a new heart--by giving God the heart--by reconciliation to God--by repentance for sin--by faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ. The gate is said to be strait or difficult, on account of the difficulties of entering it. The expression is designed to show us that m commence a religious course is difficult. The difficulty arises, not from the nature of religion, but from the depravity of the heart. Hence the text requires us to “ strive to enter in at the strait gate.” The sinner must summon all the powers of his soul to the performance of his duty, and to put himself upon the utmost exertion, of which as a moral being he is capable, in the work of turning to God. 1. The understanding must be duly employed. 2. Conscience must perform its appropriate part in connection with all the moral sensibilities of the soul. 3. The will or the heart--that faculty of the soul by which man chooses and refuses, loves and hates--is also to be properly exerted. II. ENFORCE THE . 1. It is a command of God. 2. The command is perfectly reasonable. The requisition is, that man should do that, neither more nor less, which, as a moral being, he is qualified to do; that he should put those moral faculties which God has given him upon their appropriate exertions; in a word, that he summon all the faculties of his soul to the single point of doing as well as he can do. 3. It is only by compliance with the precept in the text, that man will perform his duty, and secure his salvation. All who shall seek the favour of God and eternal life without striving, i.e., seek these blessings without that full, and vigorous, and appropriate exertion of all the moral faculties of the soul, must fail of final salvation. This is plain from the nature of the case. If duty is not seen, if obligation is not felt, if the will or heart does not comply, no obedience is, or can be rendered. 4. I would further enforce the injunction, from the case of those who make no efforts to perform the duty, and the manner in which the Divine Spirit converts the sinner. It is a momentous fact--a fact which, in one respect, even after all the displays of mercy in the work of redemption, saves this guilty world from the midnight of despair--that the Spirit of God renews the heart of man through the truth. “ Of His own will begat He us with the word of truth.” The very object, and the only object, for which the Spirit strives with sinners, is to give truth its proper effect on the mind, the conscience, and the heart; and the thing, and the only thing, which He does, in regeneration, is actually to secure this effect. But how? Does the Spirit of God give effect to truth, when that truth is unthought of; and when the sinner effectually shuts it away, alike from his understanding, and his conscience, and his heart? Has such a thing ever been known or heard of, in all the earth, that God has converted a stupid sinner, continuing stupid? This entry is longer than a Bible module can hold. The rest is at https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/bi/ Luke 13:25-30 When once the Master of the house hath risen up False dependence on Church privileges In the eyes of Him who “ seeth not as man seeth,” who readeth the heart and weigheth actions in the balances of the sanctuary, the worker of iniquity is not only the man who disregards religion and commits open wickedness; but also he who, if he avoid certain sins, avoids them not because he fears God or is constrained by Christ’ s love, and who, if motives were analyzed, would be found to have regard to the good opinion of the world, rather than to the will and the glory of Him who called him into being. You must search your hearts. You must see whether God be first in your hearts; whether your great fear be the fear of offending Him--your great desire, the desire of pleasing Him; whether “ old things have passed away,” and “ new things” --new tendencies, new upon outward privileges. “ The kingdom of God is within you.” I do not depreciate the means of grace. The “ workers of iniquity” may be those who delight in sermons and never miss a sacrament. This is not my assertion; I draw no picture from imagination; I ask you not to conjecture a case. But I may suppose the judgment past; the Son of Man hath appeared in the clouds of the heavens; He hath gathered to Himself a great company from the east and west, from the north and South; yea, with “ a multitude which no man can number, out of every people and tribe and tongue,” He hath sat down to the banquet, to which, from the beginning, He had invited our race. And there are numbers excluded: some “ speechless,” as though conscience-stricken, forced to own to themselves the justice of their exclusion. But there are others who press on with a bold front, as though they believed that “ the door” had been closed by mistake, and would be opened to them so soon as they knocked. Who are these? Are these the open despisers of religion--the extortionate, the adulterer, the profane, the neglecter of ordinances, the scorner of mysteries, the scoffer at righteousness? Nay, not so. I never read of such as knocking for admission. Such may be of those who cry passionately to the rocks and to the hills to cover them; but not, so far as we are told, of those who expect entrance when the door has been closed. These are rather persons who lived in the profession of Christianity; whom the Sabbath saw regular in attendance on the ordinances of the Church; of whom ministers were hopeful, because they always found them using the means of grace; who, nevertheless, were uncircumcised at heart, and had not given themselves up for “ a habitation of God through the Spirit.” Yes, ye diligent hearers, ye constant communicants l take ye this on the authority of the Judge Himself; ponder this when ye go hence; be heedful that ye rest not satisfied with your state if ye have no better evidence than is thus to prove worthless at the last. The parties who shall “ knock,” and who shall then be rejected as “ workers of iniquity,” shall be those who can say--and that too without being contradicted--We have eaten and drunk in Thy presence, and Thou hast taught in our streets.” (H. Melvill, B. D.) Almost saved, yet rejected There are multitudes who will go a long way towards heaven and then stop short. They will give up everything but one thing for Christ, and therefore are they near heaven; but they keep that one, and therefore must they be excluded at the last. And it will be their having been so near which shall give such terror and fearfulness to the final exclusion. Almost believers upon earth, they are almost guests at the marriage-supper above. Oh! that voice--the known voice of the Redeemer--the voice which had often been heard in the proclamations of the gospel--how thrillingly will it come from the midst of the rejoicing assembly! how terrible will be the utterance, I know you not, whence ye are I Any voice rather than that voice. It will remind the almost Christian of what had been once in his power. His very recognition of the voice will so force on him the conviction that he might have made a covenant with Christ, that perhaps the bitterest thing of all in his banishment from heaven will be that the sentence proceeds from such lips. He could bear it better if an angel or an archangel syllabled the decree--though the voice might be awful as that of “ many waters” when the fierce storm has roused them. But the voice which he had been wont to hear in the sanctuary, the voice which had spoken to him of pardon, the voice which even from the Cross had breathed the touching words, “ Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do “ --the voice which, as he was used to think, had addressed him in friendship, and promised him immortality--to hear this voice, too well remembered, bidding him “ depart” when he knocks for admission--terror of terrors! keenest, hardest thing of all! What shall torment a man in hell like the consciousness that he had been almost in heaven? Thus it is to be. The men who “ have eaten and drunk in Christ’ s presence” are to go to the very gate, to see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob admitted to the banquet, to distinguish the voice of the Redeemer as answer is made to them from the celestial hall, and then they are themselves to “ go away into outer darkness!” Well may our Lord add, as He does, “ There shall be weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth.” I would that this might warn you; that this might startle you. If there are any of you who are resting on outward duties and privileges, and have not given your hearts to the Lord, oh! do not shrink from self-examination; be not afraid to know the worst. The “ Master of the house” hath not yet “ risen up and shut to the door.” You may still secure for yourselves admission at the last. Depart from Me Exile from God This world basks in the sunshine of Deity, and it scarcely knows the genial summer which it thereby enjoys. We would attempt to measure the extent of the blessing by considering the consequences of its withdrawal. When the solemn words, “ Depart from Me,” shall have died away upon the ears of the banished multitudes, in what state of being will they find themselves? What sort of existence will stretch out before them? “ Absence from God,” this is their sentence. We would inquire into what that sentence carries with it. We may sometimes have fancied that the wicked will hurry from the Divine presence with a feeling of relief in escaping from the Omniscient eye. Such is the traditional representation, in painting, of the flight of the condemned from the face of the Judge; yet more true perhaps would be that which should depict them as standing without power of motion, struck and chilled to the very heart at the doom, the miserable consequences of which may then just begin to be foreboded, “ that they should henceforth see Him no more.” Let us, then, endeavour to deduce some of these consequences, and hence argue back to the blessings which we now enjoy and so little appreciate. I. THERE IS A SENSE IN WHICH GOD CANNOT BE SAID TO BE ABSENT FROM ANY PART OF HIS . A being may be termed present in a place either by inclusion of person or by manifestation of his face. Now as God cannot be confined personally in any single locality, so therefore must He be present personally everywhere; there can be no spot from which He is essentially shut out. This is what is expressed by the Psalmist, “ If I ascend up into heaven Thou art there; if I go down to hell Thou art there also.” He speaks, you observe, of a presence of God even in hell. Yet does the text make the doom of the impenitent a doom of exile from God. Depart from Me!: what a banishment is this I It tells of a land where the heavens are as brass, and the earth as iron; where the prospect is bound in on every side by adamantine rocks, which allow no sight of better things beyond, no voices from holier shores to penetrate; where, never for one single moment, may the spirits of the inhabitants escape beyond the barriers of what they see and touch and hear, to the imagination of beings more pure and gentle and powerful than themselves; where the idea of good can never arise; but within and without, above and around, evil continually shall be the one overwhelming vision. Depart from Me! Who can picture the loneliness and desolation of the soul thus cut off from God? We have heard how prolonged solitary confinement issues in the overthrow of reason, in the prostration of all mental and bodily powers. But if the absence of man, and the voice of man, and the companion ship of man, be so disastrous to his fellow-man, who shall measure the consequences of the entire withdrawal of God from His creature, who delineate the terrific desolation of that prison-house where God is not? II. We have reasoned that the absence of God from the future world of the lost will be a source of infinite sorrow, as being the immediate destruction of religion; AND TO FROM A WORLD IS TO A MAIN ELEMENT OF . We would add that in departing from God we shall leave behind all that is beautiful in art or ennobling in knowledge. Now it is very observable in the history of mankind how the arts and sciences have been connected in their origin and growth with religion. Astronomy was early mixed up with the worship of the sun and stars. The colossal remains of ancient days are, in almost all cases, those of fabrics designed for purposes of religion. Similarly, since the Incarnation of Christ, it has been the Church of Christ which has been the mother and fosterer of learning. Poetry, music, sculpture, painting, architecture, have been inspired in their loftiest efforts by religion. Again, the history of civilization is the history of Christianity; where ever true religion prevails, wherever the Church of Christ is planted, there do you find human life in its most secure and refined state. We owe whatever is noble in literature, or beautiful in painting, or sublime in science, not to the natural development of our secret powers unassisted by Divine grace, but all these things are the result of a working of the Spirit of God in the spirit of man. It is not unaided human intellect which has produced those glorious works which are the heirlooms of the world, but human intellect, warmed, quickened, supported--in a word, inspired by the great God Himself. Thus God is to man’ s mind what the sun is to the physical world. It is the bright shining of the sun which draws out the vegetation of the ground, which ripens the fruit, and paints the flower. The more potent the rays of the sun, as in tropical climates, the more gigantic are the products of the soil, the more luscious the fruit, the more gorgeous the plumage. Even so with the world of mind. The more clear the vision of God, the more exalted is the development of the creature. Hence the angels are more excellent than man, because they see more of God. Hence the purer our religion, the less clouded our knowledge of God, the more rapid will be the growth of our own mental powers. It is the presence of God which educates the soul of man, ennobles its conceptions, enlightens its understanding, inflames its imagination, directs its judgment. You may call it the religious sentiment. But what is a religious feeling but the presence of God felt sensibly in the depths of our nature? And, if so, you will at once perceive another dread result of man’ s banishment from God. To command the wicked to depart from God is to command all the powers of man’ s mind to stand still for ever. Away from God men will be able neither to think or to do ought that is excellent or attractive. To send him away from God is to freeze all the currents of man’ s soul. No goodly invention, no sound of melody, no line of beauty can ever be known in that world where God is not. Who has not felt how a cloud passing athwart the sun upon a summer day takes all the loveliness from the landscape, all radiance from the sky, all sparkling from the waters, all balm from the air, and causes a chill to run through the limbs, which a moment before exulted in the sensation of life? And even such a coldness is that which will pervade the whole moral being of those from whose world God shall in His wrath withdraw Himself. Conclusion: The doctrine which we would enforce is, that religion is to be looked at and represented as a joy and solace, not as a yoke of bondage. Our great fault is that we do not sufficiently strive to render our most holy faith attractive. Surely it has in it the capacity to vanquish opposition by its very sympathies with our common requirement. Let us then, one and all, cast away the idea of religion as a yoke, a bondage, a work, and take it to ourselves as (what God intended it) a foretaste of the pleasures at His own right hand. (Bishop Woodford.) The sinner in presence of the judgment I. THE SINNER WILL BE BY THE OF HIS SINS. If, during this earthly life, an evil conscience is the most cruel tormentor, a two-edged sword for the sinner, he will feel its stings the most-- 1. At his departure from this life. (I) All self-delusions will vanish when the fragile body breaks down, the world with its possessions disappears, and time will be no more. (2) All terrors attack the soul of the sinner--his sinful past, his helpless present, and an inevitable and hopeless eternity. 2. At the approach of judgment, when the sinner’ s conscience will be-- (1) Its own witness, because in the presence of Divine omniscience it will understand how useless it is to tell a false hood, or to bring forth excuses, and how utterly impossible to conceal anything. (2) Its own accuser, as it will be obliged to make a sincere self-accusation concerning many faults and heinous crimes which were concealed in life. (3) Its own judge, as it will condemn the folly of its aberrations, the vanity of worldly attachment, the perversity of delaying conversion, &c., and it will itself approve the sentence pronounced by God. II. THE SINNER WILL BE BY THE OF . 1. Jesus Christ, to whom the Father has committed all judgment, will, as God, avenge the insulted Divine dignity because of contempt and ingratitude, and His grieved humanity, because the sinner refused to give alms, and committed so many unjust actions against his neighbour. 2. As Man. He who was before the mild Mediator and Intercessor in behalf of the sinner will be now the inexorable Judge. 3. As Redeemer He will demand an account, because the sinner has scorned His precious blood, and has slighted the graces offered to him; and because he has been the cause of the ruin of other souls. 4. As Model of a virtuous life, He will convict and confound the sinner. III. THE SINNER WILL RE UTTERLY BY THE AGAINST HIM. 1. This sentence will be as dreadful as hell itself. (1) Deprived for ever of the Beatific Vision. (2) Condemned the creature by its Creator, man by his God, the Christian by his Redeemer. (3) Cursed--the soul, the body, all the senses and faculties. 2. This sentence will be perfectly just, for the punishment will be-- (1) Proportionate to the multitude of sins, and to the wickedness, knowledge, and position of the sinner. (2) The portion of the infidel and reprobate sinner only, who, as he was not willing to believe and repent in time, ought to suffer in eternity. 3. The sentence is irrevocable. 4. It will be forthwith executed. (De la Rue.) The disappointments which will take place at the day of judgment I. SOME OF THE HUMAN RACE WILL BE SHUT OUT OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD WHO HAVE . 1. Of this number will be all those who, leave the world relying upon their own righteousness. 2. Of this number are all those persons who place their reliance on external religious services. 3. Of the same number is the enthusiast. Enthusiasm is a reliance for religious knowledge, dispositions, and duties on immediate and supernatural communications from God. No such communications exist in fact. Those which are mistaken for them are only the suggestions of a wild and heated imagination. 4. Of the same number also are those persons who rely upon a decent and amiable behaviour. 5. Of the same number also are they who rely upon what are called the moral duties of life. 6. Another class of men who will be exceedingly disappointed hereafter, will consist of those who rely on what may be called a religious character. 7. Persons who believe themselves to be religious because others believe them to be of this character constitute another class of those who will experience this dreadful disappointment. 8. Another class of these persons is composed of those who place their religion in the knowledge, and not in the obedience of Divine truth. 9. Another class of the same persons is formed of those who place their reliance upon their zeal. “ It is good,” saith the Apostle Paul, “ to be zealously affected always in a good thing” (Galatians 4:18). A cold, stupid, heartless professor of religion, absorbed in the concerns of this world, gives little evidence that his profession is sincere; and, if he be a Christian, is a disgrace to the name, and a spot upon the character of religion. Yet there is a zeal which is not according to knowledge. 10. Another class of the persons under consideration is formed of those who place their hope in a faith which is without works. II. OTHER PERSONS, WHOM THESE TO SEE SHUT OUT, WILL BE . 1. Of this number there will be a multitude of such as, in this world, have lived in humble and despised circumstances. 2. In this number will be found great multitudes who have been our own friends, companions, and equals in the present world. 3. In this number will be included also a multitude of persons who, in this world, appear to be religious, and are, on that account, despised by others. 4. Of this number also will be found those whose acknowledged characters and opinions have, in many respects, been different from ours. III. THAT THE BY THIS WILL BE VERY GREAT. Weeping and gnashing of teeth are glowing images of extreme anguish; and this anguish is, by our Saviour, attributed to the twofold disappointment mentioned in the text. What less can be believed from the nature of the subject? The disappointment will follow strong and high-raised expectations, and, in many instances, undoubting confidence. It will be a final disappointment. It will be a disappointment of every object for which we can hope, of every good which we are capable of enjoying. Concluding remarks: From these solemn and affecting considerations we can hardly fail to derive many, and those most important, practical lessons. 1. We are strongly urged by them to the most watchful care in determining what the genuine religion required by the gospel is. 2. With these solemn considerations in view, let me also urge every member of this assembly to examine the ground of his own hope of salvation. 3. These considerations strongly urge us to entertain very humble apprehensions of our own character. 4. These considerations powerfully compel us to exercise charitable thoughts towards others. (T. Dwight, D. D.) The doom of self-deceivers I. THE SPOKEN OF. SELF-. II. THEIR . Thrust out of the kingdom. III. THE SIGHT THEY WILT, WITNESS. The joy of the redeemed. IV. THE SORROW WITH WHICH THEY WILL BE , “ Weeping and gnashing of teeth.” (A. F. Barfield.) Thrust out of the kingdom of heaven “ One day,” says a lady, speaking of her early years, “ when I was returning home, I saw my dear mother sitting on a bank in the orchard weeping bitterly. I thought she was weeping on account of my father’ s death. I went to her, and asked her why she wept so? Her answer was, ‘ I may well weep to see my children taking the kingdom of heaven by violence; while I myself shall be shut out.’ As well as I was able I pointed her to the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world; from that time the work of grace in her soul began.” The heathen entering the kingdom of God An Indian chief who had aided in the missionary work in his own tribe, the Ojibwa tribe, related this incident:--“ An Indian boy of his tribe was taught to read, and presented with a New Testament, of which he became very fond. From that he learned to love the Saviour of whom he read such wonderful things in that wonderful book, and became a devout and sincere Christian. His chief passed many an hour with him in religious conversation. One day the boy sent for the chief who had instructed him, to come over to his father’ s cabin, for he was sick. On going there he found him in bed, suffering under a burning fever. Taking out from under his blanket his New Testament, which he had loved to read, he gave it to the chief and said: ‘ Here, I want you to take this, and when they bury me, please put this under my head. ‘ Why,’ asked the chief, ‘ do you wish it put there?’ The dying lad replied: ‘ I want it there, so that as I rise in the resurrection I can give it to Jesus as I see Him come.’ Not long after the young Christian spirit left the fevered body, and the cabin in the wilderness, for a palace on the plains of glory.” So dies many a missionary convert just learning the rudiments of the gospel. There are last which shall be first.Reversings I. SOME WHO ARE FIRST IN NATURAL GIFTS ARE LAST IN GIFTS. II. SOME WHO ARE FIRST IN ARE LAST IN . III. SOME WHO ARE FIRST TO START IN THE RACE ARE LAST AT THE GOAL. IV. SOME WHO ARE FIRST IN AT ONE TIME ARE LAST IN IT AT ANOTHER, 1. The fall of the race itself is a case in point. 2. The casting away of the Jews and the calling of the Gentiles is another case. 3. The extinction of the Christian Church in many Eastern lands is a fact of the same kind. Concluding remarks: 1. These spiritual transpositions are the exception, not the rule. Other things being equal, the first will remain first. First in means, first in results; first in asking, first in receiving; first in faith, first in righteousness; first in self-culture, first in self-conquest; first in well-doing, first in well-being. When it is otherwise, something is wrong. The first place is not lost till it is abused. 2. Whilst this action of God is sovereign, it is never arbitrary. Men reap what they sow, and as they sow. (J. E. Henry,M. A.) Lessons 1. Let us mark the authority of this passage in favour of strictness in religion. There is, indeed a spurious strictness about trifles which neglects the weightier matters of the law, and which is worthless; but there is a proper and commendable strictness in adhering faithfully to all the duties of religion, which is required by the command to enter in by the strait gate. Let who may call it preciseness, but let us be steady to our principles and to our duty. 2. Let us neither over-rate nor under-rate the difficulties which lie in our way to heaven. But let us view them exactly as they are, that we may neither be inactive nor disheartened. 3. Let us remember, that whatever these difficulties may be, they must be overcome, else we are undone. Necessity will make the sluggard toil, and the coward fight; but what necessity is equal to this? 4. Let us carefully improve the present season. If we knock now, it shall be opened unto us; but we shall knock too late after the door is finally shut. 5. Let us not trust in Church privileges. Let us not say, “ The temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord are we” ; but let us so improve the means of grace here, that we may be prepared for glory hereafter. 6. Let us realize to our minds the separation which will take place when men shall either be admitted into heaven, or cast off for ever; and, in doing so, let us follow the one party in the path of faith and holiness to glory; and let us sedulously avoid the course of the other, saying, each of us, “ O my soul, come not thou into their secret; unto their assembly, mine honour, be not thou united.” 7. As we are among the very first in point of privileges, let us not be the last in point of improvement. Much having been given to us, much will be required of us. 8. Finally, while we give ourselves diligently to the business o| salvation, let us look for success in the way of dependence on Divine grace implored by prayer. This alone can enable us to overcome the difficulties which lie in our way; and this will enable us to do so effectually. (James Foote, M. A.) The reversal of ordinary judgments Probably all thoughtful and religious people have often been disgusted at the readiness of the unthinking to pass judgment on their fellow-men, and to assign them their due praise or blame. And thoughtful spirits have longed for real justice, and have consoled themselves by thinking of that great reversal of human judgments which assuredly awaits us when we shall stand before the judgment-scat of the All-seeing and All-just. In order to bring home forcibly to our minds the full conviction that God will judge His creatures hereafter far differently from the way in which we commonly judge them now, it may be well for us to consider a few plain facts bearing on the case, facts which make it quite inevitable that God should set aside our hasty and ill-considered verdicts concerning good and bad people. 1. We forget that the sources or roots of holiness and of sin are often the same in great measure. Vices are often virtues run to seed. Prudence in its old age often turns into miserliness. Virtues, by their exuberant and luxuriant growth, men dig their own graves. “ Be not righteous over-much: why shouldest thou destroy thyself?” seems often a very needful warning. And it very commonly happens that decayed virtues appear worse than born vices. Corruptio optimi est pessimum. For instance, scarcely any misanthropy is in a way so savage as that of disappointed faith in mankind. Misanthropy, if it be chiefly discontent with the actual condition of men, and hopeless yearning for their improvement, is not altogether far from the kingdom of God. As it surveys the meanness and the paltriness of mankind, it may well exclaim in the language of Jesus, “ My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken us?” In general it is perfectly plain that the sources of sanctity and sinfulness are often in great measure the same. This is the grain of truth in the common saying, “ The greater the sinner, the greater the saint.” Force of character tells in either direction. A very vivid nature is the source of both good and evil. Depth of feeling gives a man a great tendency to go wrong in this bewildering world, and also a great recuperative power when he has gone wrong. At the final judgment we can well understand that there must be a great reversal of ordinary human judgments. God will look to the roots of character in us; and we shall then see that the foundations of heroic virtues have been laid is many a forlorn soul which we thought overpowered and slain by evil in this life. And perhaps they will rank higher in the celestial kingdom, who have thus in grief and shame laid the foundations of a glorious temple of God, than those who have, with but little trouble, built for God a poor, common, little meeting-house of decent respectability. “ Many that are first shall be last, and the last first.” Perhaps the truest of the elect may be saved the last in point of time, the last to leave the wrecked ship of a storm-beaten humanity. 2. Further, we must remember that some sins which from an external point of view seem equally great, are in reality very different in their importance and significance. Of some sins we may say that they express the real and true nature of the man committing them. He is, as it were, terns in illis, wrapped up in them. They are the outcome of his truest and most permanent self; whereas, in other cases, like that of David, sins often seem quite transient phenomena, as it were eclipses of a man’ s real nature, hardly so much a man’ s own doing as that of some alien or hostile spirit which has seized him; instances of demoniacal possession, and not of natural or innate wickedness. Such assuredly was the sin of the minister, Arthur Dimmesdale, in Hawthorne’ s “ Scarlet Letter.” Such sinful actions form an exception to the general rule; they do not help to form a persistent habit of sinning. On the contrary, they are like the exacerbations and paroxysms which often precede recovery in the case of bodily maladies; they are the work of the evil spirit tearing the soul with especial fury just before it is cast out. Thus it sometimes happens that a man’ s whole after life is the better for a fall, which has shown him the hatefulness of sin, and also his own weakness. 3. Again, sins which admit of high aspirations are in reality far less dangerous than less gross Pharisaic sins, which are not clearly recognized as sins, and which in consequence do not seem to call for repentance. Publicans and harlots are more likely to repent and change than those Pharisees whose sins are so intensely respectable that they seem almost virtues. Baptized or consecrated selfishness is the greatest hindrance to true goodness. 4. Again, in trying to forecast the future judgment of God, we must take account of the terrible mystery of inherited evil tendencies--tendencies which are often much increased by bad education. Many people are born blind spiritually, because their parents have sinned. Just as Nature often produces bodily abortions, so no doubt does it often produce spiritual abortions. There are myriads of hapless souls which never had any real probation at all in this life. 5. Lastly, in the case of the more strictly religious virtues our judgments are often glaringly false--e.g., concerning reverence and the merits of faith. Much that passes for reverence is merely irreligious indifference. Men do not wish to be troubled by religion in their daily life, so they erect for it a shrine far remote from all the feelings and actions of ordinary life. And this banishment of their Creator they call reverence for Him. To talk of God as if He were an unmeaning abstraction is often considered reverent; to talk of God as if He were our Father, our Guide, and our unfailing Friend, is often considered irreverent. Moreover, some men are so entirely reverent in heart, so utterly filled with an abiding sense of the reality of religion, that they are comparatively careless of their manner. Pierced through and through by a sense of God’ s presence, it never strikes such men that they need prove their reverence. And so reverence itself sometimes causes apparent irreverence. Probably Elijah would be reproved for irreverence if he were to worship in a ritualistic church; for the true altar of the Eternal was deep down in the prophet’ s awe-struck heart, and he would probably care but little for any external altar. Again, we err greatly in our ordinary judgments of doubters in religion. Doubt is often a really hopeful sign, just as pain of body is often a sign that paralysis is passing away. Doubt is often only a sort of moulting in the spiritual world, the moulting of the soaring eagle wings of faith. Hence it often has a very real value. (A. H. Craufurd, M. A.) Luke 13:31-32 Go ye and tell that fox “ That fox” The attempt of the Pharisees to frighten Jesus Christ out of Perea drew from Him a prompt and sharp rejoinder. The answer was to the effect that no such threats could influence the purpose or in the least degree accelerate the movements of the Nazarene. His work was near an end, but He would have no hurry or panic. He would cast out demons and perform cures to the last day that His predestined stay in Perea would permit. If Herod wished to put a hasty stop to such works, so much to the discredit of Herod. As for the menace to His life, Jesus despised it. He was going up to Jerusalem, knowing that He would be killed. But Herod could not kill Him. At the outset of His ministry an angry crowd in Galilee had tried to make an end of Him, but they could not. The Prophet could not die but at Jerusalem. The metaphor here was in the opprobrious epithet applied to Herod Antipas--“ that fox.” Evidently it expressed, and was meant to express, that the Lord Jesus saw through and despised the cunning wiles of the Tetrarch. Many writers on the Gospels, both in Germany and among ourselves, have been anxious to protect our Saviour from the charge of speaking disrespectfully of a ruler, and have therefore tried to show that this epithet was in reality hurled against the Pharisees, who had affected so much Solicitude for His life. In the present case, it is as plain as words can make it that Jesus stigmatized Herod as “ that fox.” The man was a selfish intriguer, neither good nor strong, but cunning, subservient to those above him, a sort of jackal to the imperial lion at Rome, but ruthless to any who were beneath him and within his grasp. Probably it was this metaphor that suggested to Jesus that of the hen protecting her brood, which immediately follows. He looked on Herod and men of his stamp as devourers of the people. As for Himself, He might seem to be weak and unable to save Himself, but He was the best friend of the people; and if they would only gather to Him, He would cover them with the wings of His protection, so that no fox could do them hurt. But the Pharisees, and ultimately the misguided people too, took part with the fox against Him. And why should it be thought strange that Jesus could entertain and express a feeling of scorn for what is mean and wicked? Some of our moralists assert too roundly that mortal man has no right to feel contempt. There is a contempt that is ignoble, and there is a contempt that is noble. The ignoble is that which rests on mere conventionalism and prejudice, as when one despises another for being less highly born or less richly provided than himself. It flourishes among conventional professors of religion who yet sing the praises of humility. Such hauteur could not find place in the breast of our Saviour, and ought not to be harboured by any Christian. Wherever it enters it hardens the heart, dries up the sympathies, inflates the sense of self-importance, and induces a cold indifference to the wants and woes of others. But there is a noble scorn that may dwell in the heart along with tender compassion and fervent love. If there be a genuine appreciation of what is good and true, the obverse side of it must be a healthy contempt for what is wicked and false. (D. Fraser, D. D.) Righteous reproach He does not hesitate to call Herod a fox--a mere cunning, designing man, only courageous when there is no danger at hand; scheming and plotting in his den, but having no true bravery of heart; an evil-minded person, whose whole character is summed up in the word “ fox.” What I did Jesus Christ, then, call men names? Not in the usual sense of that expression. Did He call Herod a fox out of mere defiance or spite? He was incapable of doing anything of the kind. When Jesus Christ spoke a severe word, the severity came out of the truth of its application. Is it not a harsh thing to call a man a liar? Not if he be false. Is it not very unsocial to describe any man as a hypocrite? Not if he be untrue. Wherein, then, is this wickedness of calling men names? In the misapplication of the epithets. It is wicked to call a man true, if we know him to be untrue. There is an immoral courtesy; there is a righteous reproach. We do not use harsh words when we tell men what they really are. On the other hand, it is a matter of infinite delicacy to tell a man what he really is, because, at best, we seldom see more than one aspect of a man’ s character. If we could see more of the man, probably we should change our opinion of his spirit. In the case of Jesus Christ, however, He saw the inner heart, the real and true quality of the Tetrarch; and, therefore, when He described Herod as a fox, He spoke the word of righteousness and of truth. It was not an epithet; it was a character in a word; it was a man summed up in a syllable. Let us, therefore, be very careful how we follow this example, because we ought to have equal knowledge before we take an equal position in this respect. On the other hand, let us beware of that simulation of courtesy, which is profoundly untrue, which is despicably immoral--the kind of thing which sets itself to catch the favour and the flattery of the passing moment. (J. Parker, D. D.) Christ’ s work cannot be stopped We thought that Jesus Christ’ s labour would be cut short by this message from Herod. Jesus Christ must finish what He has begun. But is it not in the power of the great and the mighty to say to Christ, “ You must stop at this point” ? It is in their power, truly, to say it, and when they have said it they may have relieved their own feelings: but the great, the beneficent, the redeeming work of the Son of God proceeds as if not a word to the contrary had been said. The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers took counsel together against the Lord, and against His anointed; and behold their rage came to nothing, and their fury recoiled upon themselves! “ He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh; the Holy one shall have them in derision.” Are we opposing Jesus Christ? Are we in any way setting ourselves against the advancement of His kingdom? It will be an impotent rage. Go and strike the rocks with your fist- perhaps you may batter down the granite with your poor bones. Try! Go and tell the sea that it shall not come beyond a certain line, and perhaps the hoary billows will hear you, and run away and say they be afraid of such mighty men. Try! You have nothing else to do, you may as well try. But as for keeping back this kingdom of God, this holy and beneficent kingdom of truth--no man can keep it back, and even the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. Men may rage; men do rage. Other men adopt another policy; instead of rage and fury and great excitement, they set themselves against the kingdom of God in an indirect and remote way. But both policies come to the same thing. The raging man who pulls down the wooden cross and tramples it underfoot, and the man who offers a passive resistance to the progress of the kingdom of heaven, come to the same fate. The light shines on, noontide comes, and God gets His own way in His own universe. (J. Parker, D. D.) Perseverance in the path of duty An example of the marvellous power to be found in the motive of duty is afforded in the seven years’ march of David Livingstone from the coast of Zanzibar toward the courses of the Nile. What else, indeed, could have so well sustained him in his trials with savages, and noxious insects, and nearly impassable jungles, and starvation, and prostrating disease, and prospective death? “ In this journey,” he writes, in the calmest style of self-examination, “ I have endeavoured to follow with unswerving fidelity the path of duty The prospect of death in pursuing what I knew to be right did not make me veer to one side or the other.” And so this sublime hero struggled on until, while apparently engaged in the act of prayer, he passed from a kneeling posture on earth to an enthroned position in heaven. Luke 13:33I must Reconciliation with life Sooner or later we all of us have to learn to say those words, “ I must” ; and our whole character, good or evil, saved or lost, will depend upon the way in which we learn to say, “ I must. ” How we should learn to say, “ I must,” is the subject of this morning’ s sermon. “ Nevertheless, I must walk to-day, and to-morrow, and the day following.” Not to the Son of Man alone, but to every man there come inevitable days of life. No human can escape the necessity of saying at some hour, “ I must.” Even Napoleon has his St. Helena. We say, “ I will” ; and the next day find ourselves saying, “ I must.” God never suffers us to say the one for many hours without compelling us to say the other. Thoughtlessly we go our way, and look up to find ourselves facing the inevitable. There it is, steadily confronting us. It is hard as the face of a precipice. We cannot go around it. We cannot climb over it. We must stand still before it. There is no word of our English speech which we more cordially dislike than this same short word “ must.” We will not brook it when spoken to us by other men. Any friendship would be broken by it. Love knows nothing of it. Liberty consists in refusing to speak it when kings proclaim it, or any foreign might commands it. Men have died rather than yield to it. Yet consider how large a portion of our daily life is put before us, and how much of our own personality is given to us under some form of necessity; and how large consequently is the work of reconciliation to be accomplished, if it be possible, between the “ I wills” and the “ I musts” of our lives. There is, to begin with, the “ must” of heredity. We cannot vacate our inherited individuality and choose another and a happier. We have to accept ourselves as we were born. Besides this primal necessity of our birth, there are the fixed grooves of natural law in which our lives must run, and all the forms of circumstance to which our individualities must be fitted. In the midst of these physical, industrial, and social necessities our space of spirit and freedom seems small as the cage of a bird, and hard sometimes as the treadmill of a beast of burden. Every day, every hour, has its limitations and thraldom of spirit for us. Pain is an insult to the spirit. Sickness is humiliation of the soul. Death is the triumphing as of an enemy over us. I have been expressing thus our common feeling of irreconcilableness to much that seems inevitable in human life. In order that we may learn to say “ I must” in any true and free way, we should look more intently into the nature of this great compulsion which is laid upon us all. What is it? It wears ofttimes a face of fate. Is that its only and eternal countenance? Is there any thoughtfulness for us behind it? What or whose is this will which must be done on earth as in heaven? Our tone and temper when we say “ I must” will depend very vitally upon our belief concerning the character of the Power whose grasp is the inevitableness of human life. To what voice, and to what voice alone, in the universe may a man answer, “ I must,” and “ I will” ? For this also is true that there can be no reconciliation for us with the inevitable, no happy harmony of our spirits with our circumstances and our necessities, until in some way we have learned to answer, “ I will,” from within our own free hearts, whenever that Voice from without speaks to us its inevitable “ You must.” The two voices from without and from within must become one, keyed to the same note and making one music, before life can be harmony and peace. I might say that it is religion which does this blessed work; that I have seen religion reconciling men and life; and that religion has joined soul to life so happily that henceforth no man can put them asunder. I might urge that only when we gain clear perception that every inevitable thing is a Divine thing, every word “ You must” in our life a word of God, only then can we begin to answer with good heart, “ I will.” I might set in order the reasons for believing that beneath this whole appearance of inevitableness in human life and history there is a will of Divine righteousness, and a heart of infinite love. When we feel the touch of the love of God in the hand of fate, our hearts can say through all our tears, “ Thy will be done.” I might urge further that our present life, with its civilized temptations, and its polite lies of the devil, and its fashionable demons of unbelief and unrighteousness, lays upon all true men an urgent necessity of realizing the presence of the living God on this earth, if indeed we would keep the faith and the hope of a man’ s spirit amid the shams, and shames, and tumults of our world. I might urge you to try this religious way of reconciliation with life, to seek for some sign of God’ s presence, and to wait for some revelation of God’ s pure will, in all the events which come to you, and which you must meet in your way of life. But there is a nearer argument than this. There is clearer proof of this one true way of happy and harmonious life than even these evidences of our reason and conscience. It is shown to us--the true life, in its full strength, its noble harmony and peace, is all revealed to us--in the Christ of the Gospels. That was the life of perfect reconciliation with the world. When only twelve years old, what must be as His duty and His ministry was already Jesus’ will of life. “ I must” and “ I will” strike one note in His Diviner speech. When He said, “ I must be about My Father’ s business,” it was with no cheerless tone, with no heartless voice of resignation. It was His meat to do the will of Him that sent Him. Knowing this world to be God’ s world, and perceiving life in it to be God’ s will, what He must do was what He would do, and every necessity of His ministry was welcome as a messenger from God’ s presence. The tragic inevitableness of His life--that dark shadow which He saw stealing over His path long before the disciples noticed any sign of its approach--the need of His sufferings and death, which even when He went down His trial-way they could not understand or believe--the cruel necessity of His betrayal, and the crucifixion in a world of sin, which Jesus saw must needs be the cup which it was the Father’ s will not to let pass from Him--all this was not enough to set His heart at strife with the way which to-day, and to-morrow, and the day following, He must walk, to make Him cease to call God’ s ordained hour, “ My hour,” or to go, eager and strong, to meet it. “ Howbeit I must go on My way to-day and to-morrow, and the day following: for it cannot be that a prophet perish out of Jerusalem.” In this obedience unto death the will of God which is to be done on earth and the will of man are one and the same pure will. (Newman Smyth, D. D.) Luke 13:34O Jerusalem, Jerusalem The Saviour’ s sorrow over lost men I. WORDS LIKE THESE, SPOKEN AT SUCH A MOMENT, LET US SEE, AS FAR AS WORDS CAN DO, INTO THE OF JESUS’ HEART. They are a wonderful expression of His deep-seated desire to save from ruin the worst of men, to save the unwilling, to save to the very last. 1. If ever excess of guilt could have alienated the Saviour and steeled Him against mercy, it must have been Jerusalem’ s. Her privileges had been surpassing. 2. But if sinners’ sins cannot destroy Christ’ s willingness to save them, neither can their unwillingness to be saved. You thrust the outstretched arms away: they are stretched cut still. You say, “ I will not” : He still says, “ I will.” He would that you would; prays you to turn; waits for your turning; grieves that you will not; but watches to welcome with joy the first poor timid tokens of your heart’ s relenting. Thus He maintains His Divine supremacy of love; offering to the spiritual universe the stupendous contrast of a willing God and an unwilling sinner. 3. Refusal, then, does not overbear this extraordinary desire of God to save us. Neither can delay out-weary it. On the contrary, time only tests to the utmost the sincerity of the Divine mercy. The perseverance of the Saviour is the measure of His love. II. In the next place, THIS OF THE SAVIOUR TELLS US HOW HE BLESSES THOSE WHO WILL BE . Strong love like His is gentle as it is strong. Only let the mighty Lover, who made you, gather you to Himself, and you will see how He will cradle you like a mother. I read it in these words, that, when He gathers men, He gathers them to His heart. They are a cry of love. Love seeks to have the loved one near, and is ever reaching forth and calling out to draw unto itself for the joy of having what it loves. Let me say it reverently: it is the deep desire of God in our Lord Jesus Christ to bring the most impure and evil of us all into as close a relation to Himself as can be. Let us remember, the place of nearness is the place of safety. To be under the shadow of wings meant in Hebrew ears to be where mercy reigned through blood-shedding, and a gracious covenanted God guarded His faithful people. It means the same thing here. For shelter from the doom, which, for their national sins, had already sent its forewarning signs over the political horizon, Jesus called His fellow-citizens to Himself. For shelter against impending judgment overhanging every sinful soul, He calls us to repentance and to faith. It is not safety alone that by this image the Lord offers us in His tenderness. Have you not seen how, when it is night and the sky over all has spread out wings of darkness to gather all things to rest; and in the soft still gloom the airs are hushed and the birds are dumb and the beasts make no stir, but all things sleep, down to the very flowers which shut their little cups and hang their leaves in dewy rest; have you not seen how then the brood is gathered by the hen to sleep upon her breast, and be curtained over with her wings? Who does not know how they pillow there upon the down, cherished by her body’ s warmth, till morning light? It is not I, it is the Lord, who says that it is so with His saved people. The soul that comes to Him finds in Him rest as well as shelter. Rest for the laden conscience in His blood; rest for the weary will in His powerful spirit; rest for the sad heart in being loved by His love and cherished in an infinite Divine comfort. III. So far I have spoken of what He would have done had the Jerusalemites gathered at His call; WHAT HE WILL DO IF WE GATHER TO HIM. Fain would I linger here; but my text forces me to a contrast from which my soul shrinks. Its words give deeper insight still into the Redeemer’ s heart. Underneath the joy of salvation it touches a fount of tears. It is, in truth, his last wail of sorrow over men who would not be saved. Remember, these are funeral words. Israel’ s day is done; Israel’ s hope is dead; Israel’ s doom is sealed. All the toil is ended; and no huff. Farewell to merecy, for her God deserts her temple. Farewell! It is just? I know it is, most just. They have deserved it? Yes, with a thousandfold deserving. So have we all, and not one of us can blame the righteousness which condemns. But, men and brethren, love weeps when justice smites. The Lamb sorrows in His wrath. And it only makes justice the more awful when you see that it has so much of pity in it and so little of poor personal triumph or ungenerous readiness, that the Judge yearns and wails over the soul He dooms. (J. O. Dykes, D. D.) The hen and chickens The maternal love and courage of birds have been celebrated in the literature of all nations. Even the Mussulman admires it; witness the Moslem story of the white dove. One came before Mohammed with two fledglings tied up in a cloth, which he had taken from the wood. The mother dove had bravely followed. Mohammed commanded that the cloth should be opened; on which the dove flew down, and covered her trembling offspring with her wings. Then the prophet directed that the mother and her young should be restored unhurt to the nest in the wood, and took the opportunity to teach a good lesson-- “ From Allah’ s self cometh this wondrous love; Yea, and I swear by Him who sent me here, He is more tender than a nursing dove, More pitiful to men than she to these.” To appreciate the feeling of Jesus Christ for Jerusalem, we must remember how complete was His knowledge of its sin. Let it not be thought strange that the will of the people of Jerusalem should be allowed to resist and defeat the mercy of the Son of God. The whole history of the nation was one of often-repeated resistance to the will of Jehovah, and rejection of His grace. The Lord desired to save, but never would force salvation on any nation or any creature. Indeed, a forced salvation would be futile, and mercy received against one’ s will could do no good. The illustration used by our Lord implied that danger was at hand. Observe a hen in the open field, happy with her chickens running about her, picking and chirping in the sunshine. Suddenly a hawk appears in the air, or some mischievous animal comes slyly over the ground. On the instant the hen calls her brood to her, covers them with her wings, and is ready for their defence. Timid enough at other times, she is brave for her chickens, and will die rather than let one of them be lost. So the Lord Jesus, perceiving the danger which hovered over Jerusalem long before the Jews were aware of it, was willing to cover and save them. So also is it in every age and every nation. He who is the Saviour of the world sees the approaching perdition of ungodly men, and is willing to deliver them. Those who come to Him He will in no wise cast out. What a simple way of salvation! And how sure and perfect the defence! When lambs are startled, they run to the ewes; the kids to the she-goats. Among the fiercest animals, the young run to their mothers for protection, and these will guard their offspring at whatever peril to themselves. But no quadruped, wild or tame, can cover her young so completely as a bird can do with her folding wings. Therefore is this last the apt illustration of the -sufficiency of Christ to save. Those who trust in Him are completely covered by His righteousness and strength. On this wise has Divine salvation always been revealed. The Psalms frequently refer to the favour and protection of Jehovah as the shadow of outstretched wings (Psalms 17:8; Psalms 36:7; Psalms 57:1; Psalms 61:4; Psalms 63:7; Psalms 91:4). Our Redeemer’ s lament over Jerusalem shows what His heart is toward all mankind. It is a grief to Him to have His offer of salvation slighted, a joy to have it embraced. Bow unhappy the mother-bird while any of her brood continue astray and heedless of her call! What manner of persons Christians ought to be! What joy of faith, what restfulness of love should be under the covert of His wings! What nearness, too, to one another, and what obligation to brotherly kindness! The brood are packed very closely under the hen. (D. Fraser, D. D.) Willingness to save I. Now, first, observe THE OF GOD TO ISRAEL WHICH THIS VERSE BRINGS OUT BEFORE OUR VIEW. 1. We observe God’ s sovereignty manifested in the choice of Israel. “ O Jerusalem, Jerusalem.” Why, we ask, should Jerusalem be singled out from all other nations of the earth? Why should the people of Israel receive God’ s special teaching, and be made examples of His peculiar mercies? The Bible tells us that God dealt with Israel as He did not deal with any other nation on the face of the earth--that He gave them special instruction, that He communicated unto them special advantages, that their advantages were many every way, that is, in every point of view, but chiefly, because not to the Assyrians, not to the Egyptians, not to any other remarkable nation of antiquity, but to the Jews were committed the oracles of God. We can only account for this by God’ s sovereignty. 2. We notice also the manifestation of God’ s grace in the messages which He sent to this highly favoured people--“ O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee.” God’ s prophets, God’ s messengers, those who were specially inspired or taught by His Holy Spirit, who alone can give understanding of the counsels of God, were sent to Israel. Why? Can we trace anything in their history which made them in a special manner deserving of such a favour as this? Nothing of the kind. Their whole history is a history of God’ s lovingkindness and man’ s ingratitude. 3. Observe, again, the mercy of God’ s character manifested in His dealings towards them. It was not one prophet, but many, that God sent; not one messenger, but various messengers--and one after another the messengers and prophets were ill-treated. 4. I notice, further, God’ s love--the love of God’ s character in His dealings with them. For what was His revealed purpose towards the children of Israel when He sent to them the prophets, and gave them instruction as to His will? It was to gather their children together as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings!--to gather them together, to be unto them protection and safety. 5. Further, God’ s unchangeableness was manifested in His dealings with Israel. Observe the language of the Saviour, “ How often would I have gathered thy children!” It was not one or two manifestations of God’ s grace which Israel had received, but many. Every repetition of His mercy is a proof of His unchangeableness. 6. And yet there is a solemn view of this subject, for the verse immediately following the text speaks of God’ s justice in His dealing with Israel. “ Behold your house is left unto you desolate.” 7. And then observe, further, God’ s faithfulness in the final issue of His dealings with Israel. “ For I say unto you, ye shall not see Me henceforth, till ye shall say, “ Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord.” There are representatives of Israel after the flesh who shall occupy that favoured position. They shall receive the Saviour whom their forefathers rejected. And thus is it that God has, as it were, concentrated the rays of light which manifest His own character, in order that they may fall upon this single point--His willingness to save the sinful, the unworthy, the lost, and the undone. II. But now, to pass from this, what is the special instruction which we ourselves, to whom the oracles of God are come, may derive from what we have read and examined, concerning our Lord’ s willingness with reference to guilty Israel? We may learn, Christian brethren, WHAT WE HAVE TO DO WITH THE , WITH THE , AND WITH THE OF GOD. 1. Learn what we have to do with the purposes of God. Observe, it was God’ s sovereign purpose, with which His creatures could not interfere, to choose Jerusalem--to choose, that is, the nation of Israel, as a nation honoured and privileged above all other nations. We may be sure of His willingness to save, because even His sovereignty is revealed so as to set forth in prominence this willingness. 2. What have we to do, then, with the messages of God? “ How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation?” 3. What, then, have we to do with God’ s salvation, but to regard it as set forth to us in connection with our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ? Observe, He speaks in the text as One who is able to save. He claims the attributes of Deity when He says, “ How often would I have gathered thy children together!” The Man Christ Jesus, in the midst of His humiliation, speaks with the authority of God. But not only is He able to save, but willing. (W. Cadman, M. A.) Choice may become habit It is most necessary that the “ instinct of migration” shall not be resisted, for such resistance means the loss of power to emigrate. In a recent article in a scientific paper upon the “ Everglades of Florida,” we read that so enfeebled have the birds that there resort become through failure to use their wings in flight that now they find it almost impossible to rise when pressed hard by their enemies. Even so is it with human souls. The “ will not” becomes the “ cannot.” There is a process of deterioration that ends at last in death. Slaves of choice become slaves of habit. (W. W. Wells.) The moorhen and her young An angler, in Hampton Court Parle, disturbed a moorhen who had just hatched, and watched her anxiety and manoeuvres to draw away her young. She would go a short distance, utter a cry, return, and seemed to lead the way for her brood to follow. Having driven her away, that he might have a better opportunity of watching her young ones, she never ceased calling them: and they made towards her, skulking amongst the rushes till they came to the other side of the pond. They had only just left the shell, and had, probably, never heard the cry of their mother before. Divine magnanimity When Socrates was sentenced by the Athenian judges, the executioner wept as he handed him the fatal hemlock to drink. Christ knew the judges and rulers of Jerusalem would condemn Him to death, yet tie weeps over them. In the former case, the executioner weeps over the executed, here the case is reversed. Truly, Socrates displayed the character of a philosopher, but Jesus Christ that of a God. Luke 14:1-6 He went into the house of one of the chief Pharisees The gospel for the seventeenth Sunday after Trinity I. WE HERE BEHOLD OUR SAVIOUR IN THE SOCIAL CIRCLE. Jesus was not a recluse. He had a kind and social heart. He came to instruct, benefit, and redeem men, and He took pleasure in mingling with them. With all His holiness, majesty, and glory, He was a meek and social being, worthy of all admiration and imitation. II. WE HERE HAVE A TO CHRIST’ S . There is reason to suspect that His invitation to this Pharisee’ s house was for no friendly purpose. The Pharisees, as a class, hated Jesus, and were intent upon bringing Him into condemnation; and this man had distinguished friends with him on this occasion, who were no exception. This is proven from what occurred when they all got together in the house. Immediately in front of Christ, and in a manner thrust upon His notice, was “ a certain man that had the dropsy.” How he got there is to be inferred. Evidently he was placed there to tempt our Lord to commit Himself. Yes, even their hard and bitter hearts were so assured of the Saviour’ s goodness, that they felt warranted in building on it their plot to ruin Him. Sabbath day as it was, their convictions were deep and positive that He would not pass by the opportunity for exercising his marvellous power to cure the invalid they had stationed before Him. And that one incidental fact speaks volumes. It tells of the constant stream of healing power dispensed by the Saviour wheresoever He went. As the very cloud that would cover the sun with darkness bears the bow which the more beautifully reflects his glory, so the very wrath and malignity of these designing hypocrites did the more magnificently attest the gracious goodness of our Lord. Nor did they miscalculate. Knowing full well the nature and intent of the arrangement, and comprehending all the ill use the treacherous watchers around Him meant to make of it, He did not flinch from His wont, nor suffer His merciful power to be diverted or constrained. III. BUT HOW BASE THE BROUGHT BEFORE US IN THE CONDUCT OF THESE MEN! To wish to unseat and injure one of whose goodness they were so thoroughly convinced, was in itself a self-contradictory wickedness almost beyond comprehension. Shame on a zeal that attaches sanctity to such hypocrisy, or honour to such cowardice! IV. WE HERE BEHOLD THE TRUE SPIRIT OF THE LAW. The Sabbath was not ordained for itself and its own sake; nor as a mere arbitrary act of Divine sovereignty; but for the good of the living beings concerned in its observance. V. WE BEHOLD FROM THIS , THAT AN ABOUT THINGS, IS APT TO HAVE, AS ITS , IF NOT ITS ROOT, SOME HIDDEN AND . It was not that they so loved God’ s appointments, or that they were so devoutly concerned to obey them; but anxiety for a bludgeon to break the head of Him whose pure teachings were undermining their falsehood and tyranny. It was not God, but greed; not righteousness, but honour, place, and dominion; not concern for Moses and the prophets, but for themselves and their own consequence. On the occasion before us, there was a marked concern about honours and place. This was the inspiration of their assumed sanctity, and all their superior orthodoxy was only a sham for pride and lust of power. And only too apt is this to be the case in every intolerant and uncharitable ado about the mere “ mint, anise, and cummin” of the faith. VI. BUT THE END OF THE WHOLE MATTER IS ALSO HERE SHOWN US. Such a spirit has no favour with God, and has nothing good to expect. (J. A.Seiss, D. D.) They watched HimWhat may be learnt from watching Christ If we watch Christ also, we see how exalted piety instructs the worldly-minded. 1. He condescends to accept in friendly spirit the invitation that appeared to be friendly. 2. He explains and defends the right use of the Sabbath. 3. He rebukes pride by inculcating humility. 4. He unfolds to those around Him the nature of true humility. 5. From humility as His subject, in the presence of the proud, He proceeds to speak of hospitality in the presence of the selfish. 6. Our Lord distinguishes between the hospitality of ostentation, and the hospitality of true benevolence. 7. He deduces His instruction from passing events or from surrounding objects. 8. Seated at the supper, He utters to His host and the guests the parable of the Great Supper. (Van Doren.) Healing on the Sabbath Is it lawful to do anything but heal on the Sabbath day? Certainly not; that is the purpose of the day; it is a day of healing. If, therefore, in the very complex arrangements of our modern life, we are trying to interfere with anything that is customary on the Sabbath day, we should ask whether we are interfering with that which has a healing effect, or whether we are interfering with that which has an injurious effect; because there are many things that in their outward form are “ works” that nevertheless in their general effects are healing. (T. T. Lynch.) The coming Sabbath We have been thinking and speaking of a miracle done on the Sabbath. It is evident that our Saviour had a preference for the Sabbath as a time for working miracles. How, then, is it with respect to ourselves--we who, many of us, would be glad to have a miracle wrought on our behalf, and yet have no right whatever to expect one? It is just thus--we are waiting for the Sabbath. In other words, it was intended, no doubt, to be taught us by our Saviour’ s practice, that there is a special time of rest coming, when all the various troubles that hamper and injure us will be utterly removed--our burdens unbound; our fevers cooled for ever; our weakness changed to strength; all our heaviness lightened; our blind eyes made clear; our deaf ears unstopped; our feet filled with vigorous leaping blood; and all that is within us lighted up with joy, even as the house was lighted up, and music and dancing sounded in it, when the prodigal came home. There is a Sabbath coming; and as Christ wrought His cures upon the Sabbath, when He was upon earth, we are taught to look on to a day of cure that is coming--that Sabbath, namely, of rest, into which we hope to enter hereafter. It may be needful for our perfection, and the perfection of our friends, that we should still be burdened; but we are quite sure that, after the round of the six days, there will come the seventh; we are quite sure, when the time of trial has ended, the boon of health will be granted. (T. T. Lynch.) The dropsyDropsy a figure of avarice Dropsy is a disease which in general attacks only those of an advanced age. In a similar manner, from indifference to God and celestial things, and attachment to earthly goods, arises avarice--a vice to which many fall victims, especially in advanced years. I. BETWEEN DROPSY AND AVARICE. 1. In the thirst occasioned by both. 2. In the sufferings occasioned by both. (1) Want of rest and joy. (2) Pains throughout the whole body. 3. In the dangerous character of the respective diseases. (1) Avarice is difficult of cure. (2) Should the avaricious man be converted, there is the utmost danger of his relapsing into his former sins. (3) Avarice frequently causes premature death. (4) Avarice causes everlasting death. II. DEATH THE FROM BOTH . 1. Death and the grave warn us to despise earthly goods. 2. The judgment warns the avaricious to tremble on account of their possessions. For they provoke God-- (1) By their injustice and hard-heartedness, which are often the cause of sins crying to heaven. (2) By the false confidence which they place in their goods. 3. Eternity teaches us to covet unfailing goods. (Venedien.) Grief aiding thought Here, then, stands the man that had the dropsy. Does he object to a miracle on the Sabbath day? It is surprising how our own necessities give an internal light to our principles. Many a thing that has been wholly dark to a man, so that he has said, “ I cannot understand it,” becomes translucent to him as soon as God has lighted up a grief within him. Put a grief inside a thought, and it is astonishing how much clearer the thought is. This man had clear views of the Sabbath--very clear views. The dropsy had given him those views. (T. T. Lynch.) Luke 14:7-11 He put forth a parable to those which were bidden Christ’ s great text book “ When He marked how they … ” The book of daily life was Christ’ s great text-book. What every man did, gave Him a subject; every word He heard started a novel theme. We poor preachers of the nineteenth century often cannot find s text, and say to one another, “ What have you been preaching about? I wish I could get hold of another subject or two.” Poor professional dunderheads! and the great book of life--joy, sorrow, tragedy, comedy--is open night and day. Jesus Christ putforth a parable, not after He had been shutting Himself up for a fortnight, and reading the classic literature of immemorial time, but “ when He marked how they … ” Keep your eyes open if you would preach well keep your eyes open upon the moving panorama immediately in front of you, omit nothing, see every line and every hue, and hold your ear open to catch every tone, loud and sweet, low and full of sighing, and all the meaning of the masonry of God. Jesus Christ was, in this sense of the term, preeminently an extemporaneous speaker, not an extemporaneous thinker. There is no occasion for all your elaborate preparation of words, if you have an elaborate preparation of yourself. Herein the preacher would do well, not so much to prepare his sermon as to prepare himself--his life, his manhood, his soul. As for the words, let him rule over them, call them like servants to do his behest, and order them to express his regal will. What sermons our Saviour would have if He stood here now! He would mark how that man came in and tried to occupy two seats all to himself--a cunning fallow, a man who has great skill in spreading his coat out and looking big, so as to deceive a whole staff of stewards. What a sermon lie would have evoked on selfishness, on want of nobleness and dignity of temper! How the Lord would have shown him how to make himself half the size, so as to accommodate some poor weak person who had struggled miles to be here, and is obliged to stand. I have been enabled to count the number of pews from the front of the pulpit where the man is. I paused there. My Lord--keener, truer--would have founded a sermon on the ill-behaviour. He would have spoken about us all. He would have known who came here through mere curiosity, who was thinking about finery and amusement, who was shopkeeping even in the church, buying and selling to-morrow in advance; and upon every one of us, preacher and hearers, lie would have founded a discourse. Do you wonder now at His graphic, vivid talk? Do you wonder now whence He got His accent Can you marvel any longer to what He was indebted for His emphasis, His clearness, His directness of speech, His practical exhortation? He put forth a parable when He remarked how they did the marketing, dressed themselves, trained or mistrained their families, went to church for evil purposes, spake hard words about one another, took the disennobling instead of the elevating view of their neigh hours’ work and conversation. The hearers gave that preacher His text, and what they gave lie took, and sent back again in flame or in blessing. (Joseph Parker, D. D.) Sit not down in the highest roomLessons 1. That Christianity is intended to enter into our whole conduct, not only when we are engaged in religious exercises, but even in our social intercourse with our fellow-creatures. Nothing, you see, can be a greater mistake than to suppose that religion is to be confined to the church or to the closet. It is intended to regulate our thoughts and passions, and to dispose us always to cherish those dispositions which are amiable. 2. We infer from this passage that humility is a disposition essential to true Christianity, which ought to be exercised, not only on great occasions, but at all times; and that it does not consist merely in speeches, but includes actions done even in the most common intercourse of life. 3. Nothing can be more true than the declaration of our Saviour in the eleventh verse: “ For whosoever exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.” In uttering this maxim He addresses human feelings. He allows that all men aspire after distinction and honour, but requires that these should be sought after by humility. For he who is not humble, but cherishes pride and vanity, shall be subjected to mortification and disgrace. On the other hand, all are ready to raise the humble man, and to rejoice in his exaltation. Even if he should pass unnoticed by his fellow-creatures, the exercise of humility will constantly improve him, and will at length enable him, with the blessing of God, to attain the true dignity which belongs to superior excellence: “ For the kingdom of heaven is his.” (J. Thomson, D. D.) Christ’ s table-talk Some interesting volumes have been published under the title of Table-Talk. That of Luther is well known, in which many striking sayings of the great reformer are preserved, which would otherwise have sunk into oblivion. To other works of a biographical character, the above designation might have been appropriately given, especially Boswell’ s “ Life of Johnson.” We need not say that its chief charm, the one feature in which its interest and value pre-eminently consists, is not the incidents it contains, but the conversational observations which are recorded. The table-talk, however, of Luther and Johnson, instructive and important as it was, is not for a moment to be compared with that to which we are permitted to listen on the present occasion. We have in this chapter, as well as in many other parts of the gospel narratives, the table-talk of Christ. And while in His more public addresses, “ never man spake like this man,” the same can be said of Him with equal truth concerning all He uttered in those social gatherings to which, from various motives, He was occasionally invited. The gospel inculcates good manners There are no manners so refined and graceful as those taught in the gospel, because the gospel refers all to the heart. The habit of “ pushing,” as we expressively call it, whether in affairs of smaller or greater importance, seems expressly discountenanced by the spirit of the gospel, and something very different is taught. We who have to bring up our children to make their way in life, should be careful how far we stimulate in them the pushing instinct. Do not encourage them to be loud and clamorous in asking, and to make the interest of “ Number one” the point of only or first importance, and to thrust others aside. Doubtless we have much counter-opinion to meet on points like these, but let us hold to it that the manners which are pervaded by the evangelical spirit and temper are the true manners, both for the gentleman and the man of the world. It is said, “ If we do not look after ourselves, no one else will.” Certainly, as our great poet says, “ Self-love is not so vile a sin as self-neglecting.” But this is not the point. It is a self-love indulged so far that it becomes indifferent to the rights of others; it is the restless desire to get out of our proper place, and seize that which belongs to another, which is condemned. The world is always glad of people who are bent upon doing their duty and who keep their place, and takes delight in putting down those who do not know their place, and would grasp at honours not their due. Christ’ s lesson is one that comes home to us. It is not in the first instance a lofty and spiritual lesson, but a hint for our behaviour in the world of every day. And it is observable that He appeals to two very powerful passions--the sense of shame and the love of honour. If, in effect He says, you will persist in snatching at honours or advantages to which you are not entitled, you are on your way to be ridiculed, perhaps to be disgraced. If, on the other hand, you take a low place, lower, possibly, than that to which you are entitled, the chances are all in your favour. You may be promoted, and your promotion will bring honour upon you. An Oriental proverb says, “ Sit in your place, and no man can make you rise.” In other words, at life’ s feast sit down where all will accord you room, where none will dispute your right to be--a place that is lowly, therefore not envied; and there you may sit in peace and comfort. No man can disturb you in a place secured to you by the good will and respect of your neighbours. How much better this than to be contending for a position which the spite of others will not permit you to enjoy, and from which, sooner or later, you are likely to be removed. To how lofty a religious application is this lesson carried in the parable of the Pharisee and the publican! (E. Johnson, M. A.) Amongst the lowly We are all the subjects of love and of truth. We should indeed be dishonoured by absence from the feast; but as present, we show our fitness for honour by placing ourselves at the disposal of our royal host. We take the lowest room, and in that bright presence not the remotest corner is dark. Admission even, without promotion, is happiness. But Love, with his truth-anointed eyes, will soon see at which of the lesser tables we are suited to preside; among which group of guests we may best receive and dispense joy; and in what place and office of the festival we shall find our strength most free for generous exertion. Possibly, Love may see that we shell find it the truest promotion to remain in the lowest room and keep the door, and make those happy who, not fitted as yet to occupy high places, were nevertheless thought worthy of admission. Some of the great must always remain amongst the lowly, lest these become neglected and desponding, and a lowly heart is needed for this service. Perhaps our Saviour was sitting in a humble place, that the humbler part of the company might see and hear Him; and had declined, though with acknowledgment, the courteous request of the Pharisee that He would “ come up higher.” (T. T. Lynch.) Promotion not to be sought apart from ability There is a weapon much used in the contests of life--the elbow. We elbow our way on in the world. And there is another weapon, less regarded, but powerful--the knee. We must stoop the back to succeed in husbandry; and we must bend the knee to subdue the evil power that assails us from below, the enemy, whose strength is in his pride. And humility is not a temper to be put off on promotion; it is our safeguard in the sorrows of our early career, our ornament in elevation. At the first, like a shield--beautiful as well as protective; and at the last, like health--safety as well as beauty. If, then, you ask, Am I sure of promotion if I take the lowest place? Yes, sure, we reply, if you take it with a lowly heart. But many seek promotion, as if it were--in a spiritual, that is, in a real, sense--possible, apart from true ability. Will any one blame the sapling for desiring to become an oak? or even the little forget-me-not for wishing to be made the memorial of some good man’ s friendship? No; nor will we blame any man for asking a field for his strength, and an opportunity for his talent. Rut many seek promotion with little thought of service and capacity. As if one should come to us, complaining of his lot, and we should say, “ I need a captain for one of my ships; will you take the post?” “ Captain of a ship,” he exclaims, “ I never was at sea.” “ Oh,” but we say, “ there are two hundred men on board to do your bidding.” “ Ah,” but he cries, “ I could not even tell them what sails to unfurl.” “ But,” we add, “ the ship is going on a lucrative voyage; the captain will be well remunerated.” “ Ah,” he says, “ I could take the money.” And, indeed, that is what he seeks. Men may not know how to earn a loaf, still less how to make and to bake one; but they know that they could eat it. They may know themselves unable to fulfil a high function, yet they do not deem a high chair unsuitable for them, because the cushion is soft! True promotion, however, is like that of the captain, who is the first man in the rule of a storm, and the last man in flight from a peril. No man should wish for degrees of wealth and praise unsuited to his inward attainments. He cannot indeed be rich to good ends, to his own welfare or his neighbour’ s, without being wise and good. He cannot honestly and safely receive the praise of men unless he deserves their love. Humility is then the necessary condition of all true and abiding promotion. All going forward that comes of a vain heart comes to a bad end. Vanity raised us; into “ vanity” we sink. We have but stepped on, to be put back again. Now we begin with shame to take the lowest room. Humility does not imply, but is inconsistent with, baseness of spirit. It knows self as feeble, because it knows God as strong. It is the vision of God’ s glory that gives us the discovery of our own poverty; we feel, but not abjectly, our dependence upon Him. We are utterly yet hopefully dependent. It is He who shall appoint to us our places, we seeking first to do the duties next us in the best way; content with a low place because of a good work, wishing for a higher one because of a better. Through humility the lowest things are well done; and as we rise, we shall need the knowledge that experience of such work will bring us, for we shall need to direct, and still occasionally to perform, labours which once exclusively occupied us. The wise master-builder is acquainted with the humbler tools and meaner services his work needs, and so can both control and encourage all the workmen he employs. Humility may fail to secure earthly promotion, and yet the capable man will often rise through it to places of serviceable power and pleasant esteem. Results in this world do not at once and invariably illustrate spiritual laws, but they frequently do so. (T. T. Lynch.) Take the lowest room Most persons agree to say that their earliest religious days were their happiest and best. May not this be traced, in part at least, to the fact that, at the beginning, we all take “ a lower place” than we do afterwards? Was not it that then you were least in your own eyes--that your feelings were more child-like--that you had more abasing views of the wickedness of your own heart than now? Or, you say, “ My prayers are not effectual. I do not get answers when I pray, either for myself or others; and, in consequence of this discouragement, prayer has become lately a different thing to me, a thing without life, a thing without reality--then I remind you, Those that point their arrows high must draw theirbows down low. You must “ go lower.” Remember that it was to one who felt herself “ a dog” that our Lord said, “ O woman, great is thy faith;” and then gave her everything she asked--“ Be it unto thee even as thou wilt.” Be sure there is “ a lower room” in prayer than you have yet found. You must discover it, and go down into it, or you cannot find real peace of mind. Now, let us go into this matter a little deliberately. You use the ordinances of the Church and the private means of grace. It is well. Do you look for peace because you do this You say, “ No; I look for peace because I trust in Christ.” That is better. But there is “ a lower room” than that; and therefore a better way than that. We get forgiveness--and peace, the fruit of forgiveness--not because we do anything, or believe anything, or because we are anything--but because God is God, and because Christ is Christ. It is the out-flowing of the free sovereignty of God’ s eternal grace, which, by believing, we take--and we, where are we?--but for that grace, in hell! You are to feel the amazing distance which there is between you and a holy God. “ God, be merciful.” That is “ the lowest room;” and the way home is nearer and quicker--“ I tell you that man went down to his house justified.” (J. Vaughan, M. A.) True humility “ Sit down in the lowest room.” But first, let me guard my meaning. To say, “ I am not a child of God, He does not love me,” this is not to “ sit down in the lowest room.” This lowers God’ s grace, but it does not lower you; rather, it puts you up. Neither is it to “ go down, and sit in the lowest room “ to reason upon any duty; it is above that--“ Who am I that I should do such a work as this?” Do you not know that you are one thing, and the grace of God that is in you is another thing? Nor yet is it to “ take the lowest room “ to be ignorant of, or to deny the possession of talents which God has given you. Still less is it intended that these words should extend to heaven, and that we should be content with the “ lowest place” in the “ many mansions.” I can never for a moment hold with those who say, “ Let me get only within the gate of heaven, and I shall be satisfied.” Avoiding, then, these misinterpretations, let us now consider what is the real meaning of the words. First, towards God. What is “ the lowest room” towards God? Now I conceive it to be, to be content simply to take God at His word, without asking any questions, or raising any doubts, but to accept, at His hand, all that God graciously vouchsafes to give you, the pardon, and the peace; to be a receptacle of love, a vessel into which, of His free mercy, He has poured, and is pouring now, and will go on to pour for ever, the abundance of His grace. Next, it is to be just what God makes you, to rest where He places you, to do what He tells you, only because He is everything, and you are nothing, conscious of a weakness which can only stand by leaning, and an ignorance which needs constant teaching. But now, how to man? This is the point which I wish to view this morning as practically as I can. But unless the relationship is right with God, it is quite useless to expect it will be right with man. Then make the well-balanced sense of what you are, and what God is, the inner sense of weakness and strength which makes true humility, a subject of express, special prayer; that when you pass into company, you may be able to know, by a quick perception, what your own proper part is--to speak, or to be silent; to take a lead, or to go into the shade. But whichever it be, bare prepared yourself to put self out of sight; do not make yourself the hero of what you say, specially when you speak of personal religion. I)o not expect, or lay yourself out for notice, but seeks others’ preferment. Anything approaching to argument would be an occasion which would especially call for this self-discipline of “ taking the lowest room.” Be on your guard, then, that self does not go up. Have a strong jealousy for the right, and fight for it; but do not confound your victory and the vindication of truth. If there be anything particular to be said, or any work to be done, and you see another willing to do it, and who can do it better than you, stand by, and let that other speak or act. But if there be not such a one, it will be as true humility to go boldly forward, and do it yourself. Only copy your great Pattern, and retire out of sight the moment it is said or done. If there be one among those you meet who is less thought of than the rest, show to that one the more kindness and attention. Do not put yourself up into the chair of judgment upon any man; but rather see yourself as you are--everybody is inferior in something, far worse than that man in somethings. If you wish to do good to any one, remember that the way is not to treat him as if you were above him, but to go down to his level, below his level, and to speak to him respectfully. Sympathy is power; but there is no sympathy where there is self. If, brethren, you have failed in any relation towards God or man, the reason is mostly that you have not yet gone “ low” enough. If you have not peace--if you have few or no answers to prayer--here, probably, is the chief cause. Therefore just try the remedy, “ Go and sit down in the lower room.” If you are troubled with suggestions of infidelity, the main reason is this, intellect has gone up too high. You are sitting as judge upon the Bible, when you ought rather to be the culprit at its bar. Be more a little child, handling the immensities of the mind of the Eternal. “ Go and sit down in the lower room.” And if you have not succeeded in your mission of life, this is the root; if you will go and be less, you will do much more. (J. Vaughan, M. A.) Friend, go up higherFriend, go up higher We have been taught to regard this parable as a counsel of prudence, and of a somewhat worldly prudence, rather than as a counsel of perfection. Some of our best commentators so read it, while they confess that thus read, it enforces an artificial rather than a real humility, that it even makes an affected humility the cloak of a selfish ambition which is only too real and perilous. What this interpretation really comes to is this, that when our Lord was speaking to men who eagerly grasped at the best places, all He had to give them was some ironic advice on the best way of securing that paltry end, in the hope that, if they learned not to snatch at what they desired, they might by-and-by come to desire something higher and better. Is that like Him? Do you recognize His manner, His spirit, in it? Can you possibly be content with such an interpretation of His words? I. Even if we take the parable simply as A COUNSEL OF , considering the lips from which it fell, there is surely much more in it, Why may we not take it as enjoining a genuine and unaffected humility; as teaching that the only distinction which deserves a thought is that which is freely bestowed on men of a lowly and kindly spirit? Why may we not take it as setting forth a truth which experience abundantly confirms, viz., that even the most worldly and selfish of men have a sincere respect for the unworldly; that the only men who they can bear to see preferred before themselves are those of a spirit so gentle and sweet and unselfish as not to grasp at any such preference or distinction? II. BUT MAY WE NOT TAKE IT AS A COUNSEL OF ? In the Church, as well as in the world, we find men and women of a pushing, forward spirit, a selfish and conceited temperament, who covet earnestly the best seat rather than the best gift, and the first place rather than the prime virtues; who never doubt that, let others be where they will, they are entitled to sit down in the highest room. And, curiously enough, it is the comparatively ignorant who are most deeply convinced of their own wisdom; the narrow mind which is most sure that it is always in the right; those who have the least in which to trust, who trust in themselves; those who are most incompetent to rule, who are most ambitious of rule, most vexed and incensed if they are not suffered to rule. What they most need, then, is to hear a Voice, whose authority they cannot contest, which bids them take a lower place, both in the Church and in their own conceit, than that which on very slender evidence they have assumed to be their due. On the other hand, happily, we find many men and women in the Church, who are either naturally of a meek and quiet spirit, or who, by the grace of God, have so far tamed and subdued their natural self-will and self-conceit as to show, by word and deed, that they are familiar with their own weakness, and are on their guard against it. And when the Voice comes to them, “ Friend, go up higher, take a more honourable post, not that you may be better seen or receive praise from men, but that you may serve them better, on a larger scale, or in a more public way,” no one is more unaffectedly surprised than they are. Yet these are precisely the men whom we all delight to honour and to see honoured. Because they abase themselves, we rejoice in their exaltation. III. Does, however, even this wholesome and pertinent lesson on humility exhaust the spiritual meaning which we are told this parable must have? By no means, I think. WE MAY READ IT IN A SENSE IN WHICH EVEN THE COMMAND, “ GO DOWN LOWER,” MAY BECOME WELCOME TO US, AND MAY REALLY MEAN, “ COME UP HIGHER.” How often does our Lord compare the kingdom of heaven--i.e., the ideal Church--to a feast to which all are invited, and all may come without money and without price I And when we listen to the call, come into His kingdom, and sit down at His table, how often does the first joy of our salvation fade into disappointment and dismay as we perceive that His salvation is in large measure a salvation from ourselves, that His call is a call to share in His own self-sacrificing love, His unthanked toil, or even His poverty, shame, and affliction! When we first apprehend what His call really means, does it not seem to us as if it were a command to come down, not only from all that we once took pleasure or pride in, but also from the very honours and enjoyments which we had looked for in His kingdom and service? Alas, how we misread His love! For what can any call to the cross be, but a call to the throne? (S. Cox, D. D.) The outward place reacting upon the inward spirit Does the Lord here inculcate a feigned humility? By no means: He simply enjoins that a man should mortify his individual pride and self-seeking--an act of self-discipline which is in itself always wholesome and beneficial. If the man deserved the lowest or a lower place, then all was right; he took that to which alone he was fairly entitled. If he took a place below what he was entitled to, then he left it to the master of the feast, the only fountain of honour, to redress matters. Anyhow he set an example of “ minding not high things,” but “ in lowliness of mind esteeming others better than himself.” It is to be remembered that in one of any real worth, the outward act would react on the inward spirit. The pride of spirit is fostered by outward self-assertion, and mortified by outward self-abasement. (M. F.Sadler.) Pride and humility before the Divine Prince With respect to the spiritual meaning of the parable, we have a remarkable key to it in Proverbs 25:6-7. The Lord must have had this place in His eye; He must have meant Himself by the “ prince,” for it was He who, as the Wisdom of God, inspired this passage. All pride, all self-assertion, all seeking of great things takes place in the presence of a King, the supreme Fountain of Honour, the Lord of both worlds, the present and the future. It is very necessary for us to remember this, for the shame and confusion of face which in this parable is represented as the lot of mortified pride does not always follow it in this world. Self-assertion, self-assumption, forwardness, and boasting, do not always entail a disgraceful fall upon the man who displays them. The meek do not as yet “ inherit the earth” ; though, if we can trust the words of Christ, they assuredly will. David asks, how is it that ungodly men “ speak so disdainfully, and make such proud boastings.” Men who are ambitious and self-seeking at times attain to the height of their ambition, provided, of course, that they have other qualities, such as prudence, cleverness, and perseverance. But a day is coming when the words of Christ with which the parable concludes (verse 11), will be verified in the case of every man. He Himself is the “ King” before whom all pride displays itself, and before whom it will be abased. And there is the greater reason that He should do so, for when He had the highest place in the universe next to the Eternal Father, He abased Himself, and took the lowest place, even the place of the cross of death, in order that He might exalt those who have “ followed the example of His humility.” The Judge at that day will remember and humble every act of pride, just as He will remember and reward every act of humility. Does this seem too much? Not for One who numbers the hairs of our heads, and without whose permission no sparrow falls, and who has engaged to bring every idle word into judgment, and make manifest the secrets of all hearts. Should it not, then, be a matter of prayer that God may humble us here rather than hereafter? It may be very bitter to have our pride mortified now, but it will be a thousandfold more bitter to have it mortified before men and angels, above all in the presence of the Prince whom our eyes have seen. (M. F.Sadler.) The inferior seat preferred It is said that General Gordon used to sit in the gallery of the church among the poor until, his fame becoming known, he was asked to sit in the luxurious seats appointed for the grandees, but that he preferred to keep the seat in which he had so long sat unnoticed and unknown. Whosoever exalteth himself shall be abased On the vice of pride I. THE VICE OF PRIDE IS FOOLISH FROM ITS VERY NATURE. We ought all to be deterred from pride by the fact that the proud endeavours to deceive both others and himself by pretended advantages; and also that, instead of gaining honour and favour, he usually renders himself contemptuous and odious. Yet it will help us to a more thorough conviction how utterly unfounded and foolish pride is if we meditate-- 1. On the nothingness of man. (1) In the natural order. (a) What were we, say one hundred years ago? Nothing! No one thought of us. No one needed us. God called us from nothingness to life because He is good. (b) What are we now? We are not able to prolong our life for one minute unless God preserves it; we are subject to frailty of body and soul. (c) What are we to be ere long? We are to pass like a shadow: to die. (2) In the order of grace. (a) What have we been? Born in sin; and sinners by our own actions. (b) What are we to-day? Perhaps hardened in sin, or lukewarm. At best, exceedingly weak. (c) What shall we be at last? Dreadful uncertainty! Either converted, persevering, happy for ever, or obdurate, relapsing, reprobate for ever. Can we still remain proud, instead o! imploring in the dust the Divine mercy and grace? 2. On the greatness of God. II. THE VICE OF PRIDE IS FATAL IN ITS 1. In reference to God. (1) Apostasy; (2) viciousness; (3) obduracy. 2. In reference to human society. (1) Anarchy, caused by the undermining of the pillars of social welfare, fidelity, piety, etc. (2) Revolution: when haughty governments oppress the people, or when the insolent masses refuse to submit to order. (3) Ruin of families, caused by dissensions. 3. In reference to individuals. The proud man is deprived of-- 1. Inward peace, which is never enjoyed by a soul enslaved by her own passions, and at variance with God. 2. Outward peace, since it is continually clouded by real or imaginary opposition, affronts, humiliation, and contempt. 3. The enjoyment of true happiness. Although the proud have their triumphs, yet they are insufficient to satisfy man’ s heart, which will always crave for something more. Haman. (Repertorium Oratoris Sacri.) Of humility I. I AM TO WHAT TRUE IS, AND WHEREIN IT . 1. With regard to superiors in general, true humility consists in paying them cheerfully and readily all due honour and respect in those particular regards wherein they are our superiors, notwithstanding any other accidental disadvantages on their side, or advantages on ours. 2. Towards our equals, true humility consists in civil and affable, in courteous and modest behaviour; not in formal pretences of thinking very meanly and contemptibly of ourselves (for such professions are often very consistent with great pride), but in patiently permitting our equals (when it shall so happen) to be preferred before us, not thinking ourselves injured when others but of equal merit chance to be more esteemed, but, on the contrary, rattler suspecting that we judge too favourably of ourselves, and therefore modestly desiring that those who are reputed upon the level with us may have shown unto them rather a greater respect. 3. With regard to our inferiors, humility consists in assuming to ourselves no more than the difference of men’ s circumstances, and the performance of their respective duties, for preserving the regularity and good order of the world, necessarily requires. (1) There is a spiritual pride in presuming to sin, upon the sense of the virtues we are in other respects endued with. This was the case of Uzziah, king of Judah. (2) There is a spiritual pride of vainglory in affecting a public appearance of such actions as in themselves are good and commendable. This was the great fault of the Pharisees (Mark 12:38). (3) There is a spiritual pride of men confidently justifying themselves, and being wholly insensible of their own failings, while they are very censorious in judging and despising others. (4) There is still a further degree of spiritual pride in pretending to merit at the hands of God. (5) There is yet a higher degree of this spiritual pride in pretending to works of supererogation. Lastly. There is a spiritual pride in seeking after and being fond of mysterious and secret things, to the neglect of our plain and manifest duty. It remains that I proceed at this time to propose some arguments to persuade men to the practice of it. And first, the Scripture frequently lays before us the natural ill consequences of pride, and the advantages arising from true humility, even in the natural course and order of things. Pride makes men foolish and void of caution (Proverbs 11:2). It makes men negligent and improvident of the future; and this often throws them into sudden calamities (Proverbs 1:32). It makes men rash and peevish, obstinate and insolent; and this seldom fails to bring down ruin upon them (Proverbs 16:18). It involves men perpetually in strifes and contentions; and these always multiply sin, and are inconsistent with true happiness (Proverbs 17:19). It makes men impatient of good advice and instruction, and that renders them incorrigible in their vices Proverbs 26:12; Proverbs 26:16; Proverbs 28:26). Secondly. The next argument the Scripture makes use of, to persuade men to the practice of humility, is this that pride, as ’ tis usually of natural ill consequence, so ‘ tis moreoverparticularly hateful to God, who represents Himself as taking delight to bring down the lofty and to exalt the humble. ‘ Tis the observation of Eliphaz in the book of Job, Job 22:29 and Job 33:14-17). An instance of which is the description of the haughtiness and the fall of Nebuchadnezzar (Daniel 4:30), and the instance of Pharaoh Exodus 5:2), and that of Herod (Acts 12:21). Another example is that of Haman, in the Book of Esther. Thirdly. The third and last motive the Scripture lays before us, to recommend the practice of humility, is the example of God Himself and of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. In a figurative manner of speaking, the Scripture does sometimes ascribe humility to God, and recommends His condescension as a pattern for us to imitate. “ The Lord, who dwelleth on high … humbleth Himself to behold the things that are in heaven, and in the earth” (Psalms 113:6): “ Though the Lord be high, yet hath He respect unto the lowly” (Psalms 138:6). And the same manner of speaking is used by God Himself (Isaiah 57:15). These are the principal arguments the Scripture makes use of to persuade men to the practice of humility in general. There are, moreover, in particular, as many peculiar distinct motives to practise this duty as there are different circumstances and varieties of cases wherein it is to be exercised. Without practising it towards superiors, there can be no government; without exercising it towards equals, there can be no friendship and mutual charity. Then, with regard to inferiors; besides the general example of Christ’ s singular and unspeakable condescension towards us all, there are proper arguments to deter us from pride upon account of every particular advantage we may seem to have over others, whether in respect of our civil stations in the world, or of our natural abilities, or of our religious improvements. If the advantages of our civil stations in the world tempt us to proud and haughty behaviour, we may do well to consider that argument of Job 31:13 : “ If I did despise the cause of my manservant or of my maidservant when they contended with me, what then shall I do when God riseth up?” And Job 34:19 : “ Heaccepteth not the persons of princes, nor regardeth the rich more than the poor; for they are all the work of His hands.” Which same argument is urged also by the wise man: “ He that oppresseth the poor reproacheth his Maker” (Proverbs 14:31). (S. Clarke, D. D.) Humility not the way of the world The world’ s rule is the exact opposite of this. The world says, “ Every man for himself.” The way of the world is to struggle and strive for the highest place; to be a pushing man, and a rising man, and a man who will stand stiffly by his rights, and give his enemy as good as be brings, and beat his neighbour out of the market, and show off himself to the best advantage, and try to make the most of whatever wit or money he has to look well in world, that people may look up to him and flatter him and obey him: and so the world has no objection to people’ s pretending to be better than they are. (C. Kingsley.) God the true disposer of men If God is really the King of the earth, there can be no use in any one setting up himself. If God is really the King of the earth, those who set up themselves must be certain to be brought down from their high thoughts and high assumptions sooner or later. For if God is really the King of the earth, He must be the one to set people up, and not they themselves. There is no blinding God, no hiding from God, no cheating God, just as there is no flattering God. He knows what each and every one of us is fit for. He knows what each and every one of us is worth; and what is more, He knows what we ought to know, that each and every one of us is worth nothing without Him. Therefore there is no use pretending to be better than we are. (C. Kingsley.) Pride east down Charles V. was so sure of victory when he invaded France, that he ordered his historians to prepare plenty of paper to record his exploits. But he lost his army by famine and disease, and returned crestfallen. Humility exalted The day Sir Eardley Wilmot kissed his Majesty’ s hands on being appointed Chief Justice, one of his sons, a youth of seventeen, attended him to his bedside. “ Now,” said he, “ my son, I will tell you a secret worth your knowing and remembering. The elevation I have met with in life, particularly this last instance of it, has not been owing to any superior merit or abilities, but to my humility, to my not having set up myself above others, and to an uniform endeavour to pass through life void of offence towards God and man.” Humility a safeguard A French general, riding on horseback at the head of his troops, heard a soldier complain, “ It is very easy for the general to command us forward while he rides and we walk.” Then the general dismounted, and compelled the grumbler to get on the horse. Coming through a ravine a bullet from a sharp-shooter struck the rider, and he fell dead. Then the general said, “ How much safer it is to walk than to ride!” Lowliness allied to loveliness A humble saint looks most like a citizen of heaven. He is the most lovely professor who is the most lowly. As incense smells the sweetest when it is beaten the smallest, so saints look fairest when they lie lowest. (T. Secker.) Humility allied to modesty The humble soul is like the violet, which grows low, hangs the head downwards, and hides itself with its own leaves; and were it not that the fragrant smell of his many graces discovered him to the world, he would choose to live and die in secrecy. (Sunday Teachers’ Treasury.) Humility the essence of Christianity St. Augustine being asked “ What is the first article in the Christian religion?” replied, “ Humility.” “ And what the second?” “ Humility.” “ And what the third?” “ Humility.” Luke 14:12-14 Call the poor The Church’ s duty to the poor A recent advertisement on our city walls struck me as singularly suggestive; it contained the words, “ God and the poor. ” Such a conjunction of words is most remarkable: the highest and the lowest, He who owns all things, and they who own nothing: it is a conjunction of extremes, and though it looked very extraordinary on a placard, yet if you examine the Old and New Testaments the idea will be discovered almost more frequently than any other. I. THE OF GOD TO THE POOR. There is a strange mingling of terror and tenderness in God’ s language in relation to the poor; terror towards their oppressors tenderness towards themselves. Take the former Proverbs 17:5; Isaiah 10:2; Jeremiah 22:13; Amos 5:11; etc.). Such are some of the sentences of fire in which God speaks of the oppressor of the poor. We now turn from terror to tenderness. We shall hear how God speaks of the poor themselves. The lips that spoke in fire now quiver with messages set to music (Isaiah 58:6-7). There is an extract which I must give from God’ s ancient legislation, and as I read you will be able to say whether ever Act of Parliament was so beautiful Deuteronomy 24:19-21). And why this beneficial arrangement? A memorial act; to keep the doers in grateful remembrance of God’ s mighty interposition on their behalf. When men draw their gratitude from their memory, their hand will be opened in perpetual benefaction. II. THE OF THE POOR TO THE CHURCH. “ The poor ye have always with you.” For what purpose? As a perpetual appeal to our deepest sympathy; as an abiding memorial of our Saviour’ s own condition while upon earth; as an excitement to our most practical gratitude. The poor are given into the charge of the Church, with the most loving commendation Of Christ their companion and Saviour. 1. The poor require physical blessing. Christ helped man’ s bodily nature. The Church devotes itself more to the spirit than to the flesh. This is right: yet we are in danger of forgetting that Christianity has a mission to the body as well as to the soul. The body is the entrance to the soul And is there no reward? Will the Lord who remembers the poor forget the poet’ s benefactor? Truly not! (Psalms 41:1). 2. The poor require physical blessing; but still more do they require spiritual blessing. The harvest is great, the labourers are few. Do you inquire as to recompense? It is infinite! “ They cannot recompense thee, but thou shalt be recompensed at the resurrection of the just.” And yet they can recompense thee! Every look of the gleaming eye is a recompense! Every tone of thankfulness is a repayment. God is not unrighteous to forget our work of faith. If we do good unto “ one of the least of His brethren,” Christ will receive the good as though offered to Himself. Terrible is the recompense of the wicked! “ Whoso stoppeth his ears at the cry of the poor, he also shall cry himself, but shall not be heard.” Much is being said about Charity. They have carved her image in marble; they have enclosed her in gorgeously coloured glass; they have placed on her lofty brow the wreath of immortal amaranth; poesy has turned her name into rhythm, and music has chanted her praise. All this is well. All this is beautiful. It is all next to the best thing; but still the best thing is to incorporate charity in the daily life, to breathe it as our native air, and to express it in all the actions of our hand. “ Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus.” “ If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven.” You will then be one with God! “ Hearken, my beloved brethren, Hath not God chosen the poor of this world rich in faith, and heirs of the kingdom which He hath promised to them that love Him?” Then do not contemn the poor. “ He that giveth, let him do it with simplicity.” (J. Parker, D. D.) Christian beneficence I. THE DUTY OF A TO DO GOOD; to lay himself out to do good to every one within his reach. 1. This arises from the very nature of the Christian character. Gratitude to Christ leads him to copy the Saviour, “ who went about doing good.” 2. The duty of laying ourselves out to do good arises from our Christian calling. When the Holy Spirit of God makes a difference between sinners who are living in ungodliness and walking after the vanity of their minds, why does He make that difference? God calls forth His people to be witnesses for Him, in such a manner that those who are blind to His glory in creation, and who neglect His glory in revelation, cannot refuse to acknowledge it when it is evidenced and reflected from the people that He has called by His grace. When God’ s people go forth doing good, when they manifest self-denial, when they are willing to “ spend and be spent,” in order to contribute to the temporal necessities or to the spiritual welfare of their fellow-creatures, there is something in these actions which tells upon the heart that is closed to all other means of receiving the knowledge of God’ s glory and salvation. II. THE OBJECT OF . When a Christian does good, or tries to abound in any good work, it must not be from (1) personal vanity, (2) a desire of human applause, (3) for worldly recompense. His sole inducement must be the love of Christ; his one object the glory of God; his whole desire to advance the temporal and spiritual good of mankind. III. THE ’ S to lay himself out to do good unto all men, without looking for anything again. “ They cannot recompense thee; but,” etc. (W. Cadman, M. A.) Christian feasting Much Of the impressiveness of our Lord as a preacher arose from the miracles He performed in confirmation of the divinity of His mission, and the truth of His doctrine; much also from His adapting Himself to the state and conditions of His hearers; and much also from His deriving His instructions and encouragements from present objects and occurrences, for this always gives a freshness to our discourse, and a superiority to the artificialness of study. He sees a sower going forth to sow, and for the instruction of the people is led to deliver a parable on the good seed of the kingdom. I. THE OF THE ADDRESS. “ Then said He also to him that bade Him.” Concerning this invitation let us make four inquiries. 1. Who was it that bade Him? It was one of the chief Pharisees, a man of some substance and respectability, probably a ruler of the synagogue, or one of the Sanhedrim. We never read of any of the Sadducees inviting our Lord, nor do we ever read of the Herodians inviting Him. Though the Pharisees were the bitterest enemies of Christ, they had frequent interviews with Him. 2. For what was He bidden? Some suppose that this was a common meal, but the narrative requires us to view it as an entertainment, or some kind of festivity. 3. When was He bidden? We are told that it was on the Sabbath day. 4. Why was He bidden? He was invited by Martha from a principle of duty and benevolence, and she and Mary hoped to derive some spiritual advantage from Him. I wish I could think that this Pharisee invited our Lord under the influence of similar motives. But from whatever motive they were impelled tie went not to eat and drink only. No, He went about His Father’ s business, this He constantly kept in view. He knew what His work required. He knew that the Good Shepherd must seek after the lost sheep until He find it. My brethren, you must here learn to distinguish between Him and yourselves. He had nothing inflammable in Him. The enemy came and found nothing in Him. But you have much remaining depravity, and are in danger from external circumstances; you therefore, must watch and pray lest you enter into temptation; you are safe when in the path of duty, there God has engaged to keep you. Let us learn from the Saviour’ s conduct to exercise good behaviour, that others may not have occasion to speak evil of us on account of our religion. Consider-- II. WHAT OUR SAVIOUR FORBIDS. He said, “ When thou makest a dinner or a supper, call not thy friends, nor thy brethren, neither thy kinsmen, nor thy rich neighbours; lest they also bid thee again, and a recompense be made thee.” This “ supper or dinner” supposes something costly, for you observe that in the following verse it is called “ a feast.” Observe, it is not absolutely wrong to invite our friends, or our brethren, or our rich kinsmen, or our rich neighbours; but our Saviour looks at the motive here, “ lest a recompense be made thee” ; as much as to say, there is no friendship or charity in all this. And the apostle says, “ Let all things be done with charity.” You are to show more hospitality than vanity, and more charity than ostentation, and to be more concerned for those who want your relief. This brings us to consider-- III. WHAT HE ENJOINS. “ But when thou makest a feast, call the poor, the maimed, the lame, and the blind.” Here we see what a variety of evils and miseries are incident to the human race. Here are “ the poor,” without the necessaries of life; “ the maimed,” whose hands are unable to perform their office; “ the halt,” who are indebted to a crutch to enable them to walk at all; “ the blind.” Here we learn, also, the proper objects of your compassion, and the fittest subjects of your charity. It is not necessary that you should always have “ the poor, the maimed, the halt, and the blind” at your table. You may fulfil the Saviour’ s design without this, and do as Nehemiah did, “ send portions to those for whom nothing is prepared.” IV. WHAT OUR SAVIOUR INSURES. “ And thou shalt be blessed; for they cannot recompense thee: for thou shalt be recompensed at the resurrection of the just.” 1. The blessedness: “ Thou shalt be blessed.” Blessed even in the act itself. Oh, the pleasures of benevolence! How blessed is it even in the review! for this blessedness can be continued and improved on reflection. How superior in the performance to sordid entertainments! “ Thou shalt be blessed” --blessed by the receiver. Think of Job. He says, “ When the ear heard me, then it blessed me, and when the eye saw me, it gave witness to me. Because I delivered the poor that cried, and the fatherless, and him that had none to help him. The blessing of him that was ready to perish came upon me; and I caused the widow’ s heart to sing for joy.” What do we see yonder when we enter Joppa with Peter? “ When he was come they brought him into an upper chamber: and all the widows stood by him weeping, and showing the coats and garments which Dorcas made while she was with them.” “ And thou shalt be blessed” --blessed by the observers. Who does not observe? And who observes and does not bless on such occasions? Few, perhaps none of us, knew personally a Reynolds, a Thornton, or a Howard, of whom we have read; but in reading their history, when we come to their names we cannot help blessing them, and thus the words of the Scripture are fulfilled, “ The memory of the just is blessed.” “ And thou shalt be blessed.” Above all, blessed by God Himself, upon whom everything depends, “ whose favour is life, and whose loving-kindness is better than life.” He blesses personally and relatively. He grants you spiritual and temporal blessings. David says, “ Let them curse, but bless Thou.” 2. The certainty of this blessedness--“ For they cannot recompense thee.” This seems a strange reason, and would tend to check rather than encourage a worldly man. The foundation of this reason is this, that charity must be recompensed. If the poor cannot do this themselves, some one else must undertake it for them, and therefore God Himself must become answerable; and it is much better to have God to recompense us than to rely upon a poor dying creature. Paul therefore, says, to those who had made a collection to relieve him, and had sent it by the hands of Epaphroditus, “ My God shall supply all your need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus.” If, therefore, the thought ever occurs to your mind, “ I know not those persons who have relieved me; I shall never be able to repay them,” so much the better, for then God must, and if there be any truth in His word, if there be any love in His heart, He will. 3. The time of this bestowment--“ For thou shalt be recompensed at the resurrection of the just.” Not that this will be done then exclusively, for, as we have already shown, there are advantages attending charity now. But it will be principally then, publicly then. The apostle says to the Corinthians, “ Judge nothing before the time, until the Lord come, who both will bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and will make manifest the counsels of the heart; and then shall every man have praise of God.” Then will it be done perfectly. It is not wrong to look for advantage in religion. But you should be upon your guard not to entertain a notion of meritoriousness in any of your doings. No, the reward is of grace, not of debt. (W. Jay.) Christ’ s counsel to his host Our Lord does not here enjoin neglecting and refraining from one’ s friends, kinsfolk, and neighbours, to entertain only the poor, maimed, halt, and blind. What He says is, when you make a dinner or supper--that is, as He immediately explains, a feast--let it be, not for those with whom you are accustomed to associate, but rather for the destitute and forlorn outside your circle. It is a question, you see, not at all of social fellowship, but of expenditure, and of the objects to which our great expenditures should be devoted. When you would lavish trouble and money, says Christ, let the lavishing be, not for your own personal gratification, not with the view of securing some enjoyment or obtaining some benefit for yourself, but for the blessing of others. The point on which the whole admonition turns, and to which it refers, is largeness of outlay. This is obvious. Our Lord is thinking and speaking, not of, an ordinary meal such as might be spread any day, but of a feast, like the “ great supper” of the parable that follows: and remember the occasion of His words, the circumstances under which they were uttered. He was dining on the Sabbath, in the house of one of the chief Pharisees, who had Him to eat Bread with him; and everything indicates that it was no common dinner at which He was present, but an entertainment on a large scale, got up probably with much pains, and regardless of cost. Christ noticed, we are told, how those who were bidden chose out the chief rooms; nay, such were the unseemly contests among the guests for precedence, and the rude struggling for the best places, which He witnessed, that when at last the tumult had subsided, and all were arranged, He could not forbear remarking on it in tones of rebuke. Evidently the meal was a grand affair, a banquet numerously attended and by many notable and distinguished persons. Contemplating, as He sat there, the profusion, the sumptuousness; picturing what it had cost--the amount of money, labour, and worry, and perhaps sacrifice, that had been expended on it--and penetrating that it was all mainly for selfish ends, with the idea and in the hope of some advantage through it; Christ turns His great mournful eyes upon the many with the words: “ When you would make such another feast as this, my friend, at so much trouble and cost, instead of calling to it your rich friends, who are likely to recompense you for it, you should call to it the destitute and afflicted, who are unable to recompense you, and thus be blessed at the resurrection of the just.” The inner point and spirit of which form of words was this: “ Ah! my friend, it is a mistake to make your great outlays of strength and treasure with a view to your own gratification and aggrandisement, for it is poor recompense at the best, after all. These great outlays should be reserved rather to meet the needs and ameliorate the unfortunate condition of others; for the blessing of that, though more ethereal and less palpable, is infinitely more worth. You should not burden yourself to win ought of present enjoyment or acquisition for yourself. If you burden yourself at all, it should be to supply some want or serve some interest of the necessitous around you.” And the lesson remains for us. Let your extensive expenditures, your toils and worries, and hardships and sacrifices, be for those outside who require ministry, rather than for yourself. When it is a question of your own personal amusement or pleasure, of your own worldly comfort or gain, be content to spend but little; don’ t make a fuss, or lie awake anxiously, or go out of your way for that. If you do so at all, do it when the welfare of others is concerned, when there are others to be succoured or saved by it; reserve for such ends the incurring of heavy cost, the taking on of heavy burdens of thought and care. (S. A. Tipple) Christian entertainments Jesus Christ did not intend that the rich should never have communion with one another, or hold intercourse with one another; that would be as absurd as it would be impracticable. The idea is that, having had your own fellowships and enjoyments, having eaten the fat and drunk the sweet, you are to send out a portion to him that hath none, and a blessing to him who sits in loneliness and sadness of heart. I had a wonderful dream some time ago--a singular dream. It was about the Mansion House and the Lord Mayor. I saw the great banquet ing hall filled, and I looked and wondered at the people, for they had such a peculiar expression upon their countenances. They seemed to be closing their eyes, and so they were. Alas! they were all blind people, and all over fifty years of age. It was the great Lord Mayor of London himself who had invited all the blind people over that age in London to meet one another, and have one happy night, so far as he could make it, in the ancient banqueting hall. No loving cup was passed round, lest accidents should occur; but many a loving word was spoken, many a sigh full of meaning was heaved--not the sigh of misery, but the sigh of thankfulness. And then a strange silence fell upon all the guests, and I heard a voice from above saying in the English tongue quite distinctly, “ They cannot recompense thee, but thou shalt be recompensed at the resurrection of the just.” Then the banqueting hall seemed to be filled with spectators--glad witnesses--as if, at last there were upon the earth some fine touch of Christian feeling, some recognition of the mystery of charity and the boundlessness and condescension of Christian love. (J. Parker, D. D.) True Christian festivity I. It should be . Not extended merely to those from whom we expect a similar return. II. It should be . Extended to those who are generally neglected. III. THIS WILL BE . With the blessing of the poor now, and the commendation of the Judge hereafter. (Anon.) Christian hospitality Our Lord really means that hospitality is first to be exercised towards those who need it, because of their narrow means, and to whom kindness of this sort is more pleasant, because they receive such little notice from the world. These are to be first recipients of our hospitality, and after them our friends, relatives, and neighbours, who may be supposed to be able to ask us again. This, of course, is directly contrary to the practice of the world. Now I do not think that we obey this injunction of the Lord by following its spirit (as the saying is) rather than its letter. It has been said that “ the essence of the beatitude, as distinct from its form, remains for all who give freely, to those who can give them no recompense in return, who have nothing to offer but their thanks and prayers,” and that “ relief, given privately, thoughtfully, discriminately, may be better both for the giver, as less ostentatious, and for the receiver, as tending to the formation of a higher character than the open feast of the Eastern form of benevolence.” But it is to be noticed that the Lord is not speaking of relief, i.e., of almsgiving, but of hospitality. It is one thing to send relief in a basket to some poor person from your house, and quite another yourself to proffer to the same person food upon your own table of which you and he jointly partake. By relief or alms you almost of necessity constitute yourself his superior; by hospitality you assume that he is far more on the same level with yourself. Partaking of food in common has, by the absolutely universal consent of mankind, been esteemed a very different thing from the mere gift of food. If it be said that such hospitality as the Lord here recommends is contrary to the usages of even Christian society amongst us, we answer, “ Of course it is” ; but, notwithstanding this, it is quite possible that the Christianity of our Christian society, of which we have so high an opinion, may be very imperfect indeed, and require reformation, if not regeneration, and that “ the open feast of the Eastern form of benevolence” may be worthy of more imitation amongst ourselves. Look at the extravagant cost of some entertainments--viands set before the guests simply because they are costly and out of season--and consider that the difference between a fair and creditable entertainment and this extravagance would enable the giver to act ten times more frequently on the principle which the Lord inculcates, and for which he would be rewarded; consider this, and the folly of such waste, not to say its wickedness, is manifest. (M. F. Sadler.) A model feast I cannot think there is no connection with Divine things in the counsels Christ gave to His host about making a feast. I think He meant more than to alter a custom, or change social habits. What He advised went deeper, and had a profounder intention than that. He was reaching down to the foundation of things; showing how God deals with men, and what are the principles, or what is the measure and scope of His kingdom. He pourtrays a model feast. And if I mistake not, the portraiture is a pattern of things in the heavens. A place at the feast, I think He means to say, does not depend upon social grade, position, or attainments, but upon the needs of those who are called. Necessity, misery, helplessness, were to be the qualifications--poor, maimed, halt, blind. Friends and rich neighbours were not to be left out; they might come and share the joy and blessing--the joy of ministering and doing good to others; but the sore and the stricken were to be the guests; the invitations were to be sent specially to them. The ado, the preparation, the plentifulness, and the freeness of the feast, must be all for them, to bless them, and make them glad. That is God’ s feast. That is how God does. He prepares a feast for man roman the sinner, man the miserable, man the outcast, the hungry, the starved, the diseased, the dying; and He throws it open, and bids them all come, and sends to fetch them in. And when they gather, He lets His rich friends, the angels, rejoice with Him; for “ there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth.” (W. Hubbard.) The poor invited to a feast When I was quite a little boy, there lived in my father’ s house a man whom, as I look back, I, in common with most who knew him, cannot help regarding as, perhaps, the holiest man we were acquainted with. He lived a life of singular devotion and self-denial, and seemed to walk constantly in the presence of God. Some little time ago, when m Liverpool, I accidentally came across the person in whose house be had lodged in the days when he had first devoted himself to God, when he was quite a young man, before his connection with my own beloved father was as close as it afterwards became. This good man, who kept the house in which this gentleman lodged, told me a few anecdotes about him, and, amongst others, I remember the following: “ Ah, Mr. Aitken!” said the man, “ I shall never forget Mr. C’ s Christmas dinner.” I said, “ I wish you would tell me about it;” and he replied, “ I will.” “ Christmas Day came near, and Mr. C called up my wife, and said to her, ‘ Now, I want you to make the very best dinner you possibly can; I am going to give a dinner-party.’ ‘ Well, Mr. C,’ she said, ‘ you have been a long time in my house, and I never heard you talk of giving a dinner-party yet; but I will see to it that it is a right good dinner, and there shall be no mistake about it.’ ‘ Do your best,’ he said; ‘ I am going to invite my friends, and I want everything to be done properly.’ My wife set to work and got a very good dinner indeed. Christmas Day came. Towards evening we were expecting the gentlemen to turn up who had been invited by our lodger; we did not know who they were, but we made sure they would be people worthy of the occasion. After a time, there came a knock at the door. I opened the door, and there stood before me a man clothed in rags. He had evidently washed his face, and got himself up a little for the occasion; at the same time he was a beggar, pure and simple. He said, ‘ Does Mr. C live here?’ ‘ Yes,’ I replied; ‘ he lodges here, but you cannot see him; he is just going to sit down to dinner.’ ‘ But,’ said the man, ‘ I was invited to come here to dinner this evening.’ You may imagine my horror and astonishment; I could scarcely contain myself. ‘ What!’ I said; ‘ you invited to come here this evening, a man like you?’ I had scarcely got the words out of my mouth before I saw another poor, miserable specimen of humanity crawling round the corner; he was another of Mr. C ‘ s guests. By-and-by, there was a round dozen of them, or something like a score; and in they came, the most haggard, miserable, woe-begone objects you could possibly conceive. They went into my wife’ s nice, smart-looking dining-room, with that grand white cloth, and all the good things which had been so carefully prepared. It almost took one’ s breath away to see them. But when we saw the good man himself, setting to work, like the Master of old (who girded Himself to serve His disciples)--setting to work to make these men happy, and help them to spend a pleasant evening, without stiffness or formality, we thought, ‘ After all, he is right. This is the best sort of dinner-party;’ and we did not grudge the labour we had bestowed.” Now, I have told that little anecdote in order to illustrate the fact that our Lord’ s teaching on such subjects is eminently practical, and that when He gives a suggestion, you may be sure that it is a very sensible and sound one. (W. H. Aitken, M. A.) Call the poor Pococke informs us, that an Arab prince will often dine before his door, and call to all that pass, even to beggars, in the name of God, and they come and sit down to table, and when they have done retire with the usual form of returning thanks. It is always customary among the Orientals to provide more meats and drinks than are necessary for the feast! and then, the poor who pass by, or whom the rumour of the feast brings to the neighbourhood, are called in to consume what remains. This they often do in an outer room, to which the dishes are removed from the apartment in which the invited guests have feasted; or otherwise, every invited guest, when he has done, withdraws from the table, and his place is taken by another person of inferior rank, and so on, till the poorest come and consume the whole. The former of these modes is, however, the most common. (Biblical things not generally known.) Feeding the hungry It was the custom of St. Gregory, when he became pope, to entertain every evening at his own table twelve poor men, in remembrance of the number of our Lord’ s apostles. One night, as he sat at supper with his guests, be saw, to his surprise, not twelve but thirteen, seated at his table; and he called to his steward, and said to him, “ Did not I command thee to invite twelve? and, behold! there are thirteen.” And the steward told them over, and replied, “ Holy father, there are surely twelve only.” And Gregory held his peace; and, after the meal, he called forth the unbidden guest, and asked him, “ Who art thou?” And he replied, “ I am the poor man whom thou didst formerly relieve;” but my name is ‘ The Wonderful’ and through Me thou shalt obtain whatever thou shalt ask of God. Then Gregory knew that he bad entertained an angel; or, according to another version of the story, our Lord Himself.” Christ-like hospitality It is said of Lord Chief Justice Hale that he frequently invited his poor neighbours to dinner, and made them sit at table with himself, if any of them were sick, so that they could not come, he would send provisions to them from his own table. He did not confine his bounties to the poor of his own parish, but diffused supplies to the neighbouring parishes as occasion required. He always treated the old, the needy, and the sick with the tenderness and familiarity that became one who considered they were of the same nature with himself, and were reduced to no other necessities but such as he himself might be brought to. Common beggars he considered in another view. If any of these met him in his walks, or came to his door, he would ask such as were capable of working why they went about so idly. If they answered it was because they could not get employment, he would send them to some field to gather all the stones in it, and lay them in a heap, and then pay them liberally for their trouble. This being done, he used to send his carts, and caused the stones to be carried to such places of the highway as needed repair. Luke 14:15 Blessed is he that shall eat bread in the kingdom of God.Unreal winds There are a great many ways of turning a conversation when it happens to be suggestive of disagreeable truth, or to convey advice which we should prefer not to take, or to reveal to us points in our character which we should wish to keep hidden, even from ourselves. But of all the various devices resorted to for this purpose the pious ejaculation is usually the most successful, as well as by far the easiest. If it fail to change the subject, it at least causes an awkward pause, after which there is a fair prospect of an altered tone in the general talk. I. GLANCE AT THE SCENE. The Saviour had been putting some pointed questions respecting personal religion to His host and fellow-guests. Feeling that things had gone far enough in their present direction, and yet that by no possibility could exception be taken to anything that had been said, the guest introduced to our notice in the text attempts to dismiss to heaven those heavenly things which are not easily acclimatised to earth; to project into the future those “ very excellent things” which were felt to look best at a distance; to refer the whole subject to another world, and to change the venue, as I believe lawyers would say, by a formal remark--indisputable but unpractical--“ Blessed is he that shall eat bread in the kingdom of God.” II. Let us see HOW THIS SPEECH WAS MET. All unreal ejaculations are evasive, self-deceiving (like Balaam’ s), or procrastinating; or all three. The ejaculation of the text was most likely all three. It was certainly evasive. And the Saviour met it by pointing out that the blessedness which the speaker, and others like him, professed to desire, was precisely that from which they were most ready to excuse themselves the moment it was offered to them; that “ the kingdom of God” was something present, and not something merely future; that they could enjoy what they professed to regard as its blessings now; but that there were many other things which for the time being they very decidedly preferred. III. NOW WHY DID HE WHO WOULD NOT “ BREAK THE BRUISED REED OR QUENCH THE SMOKING FLAX” THUS THOSE WHO WERE SAYING WHAT WAS VERY GOOD? I should say, He did not discourage otherwise than by suggesting that they should weigh the import of their words and test their” reality. “ By thy words,” said our Saviour, “ thou shalt be justifed, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned. He did not mean, of course, that we shall be judged by these alone; but that they will be taken into account. And for a moment, drawing away our thoughts from our bad words, let us ask ourselves whether our good words may not prove, after all, the more condemning, and waft over ages and ages, as the verdict of the Most High, the echo of His words by Isaiah long ago, “ This people honoureth Me with their lips, but their heart is far from Me.” (J. C.Coghlan, D. D.) Luke 14:16-24A certain man made a great supper Parable of the great supper I. THE . Indicating the treasures of Divine wisdom, forethought, power, love, expended upon the work of redemption. II. MEN’ S OF OTHER THINGS--not things sinful in themselves, but worldly pursuits, occupation, s, pleasures--to the rich provision of the Divine bounty, and their consequent slighting of the Divine invitation. III. LOVE TURNS TO . IV. GOD’ S ARE NOT BY THE AND OF MAN. The house is filled. If one guest refuses to come, another is brought in to occupy his place. Drop your crown, and another man will lift it and place it on his brow. (Anon.) The gospel feast I. THE OF THE GOSPEL. 1. Its readiness. Nothing for man to do but come. The feast has been preparing from the foundation of the world. 2. The gospel’ s abundance. Grace enough in God’ s heart to include all the world. 3. The condescension of the gospel. No favouritism. Absolutely free. The vilest soul is good enough to be saved. 4. The gospel’ s urgency. Not force, but moral earnestness. 5. The gospel’ s triumph. Christ’ s blood is not shed for nought. II. THE OF THE GOSPEL. 1. The gospel finds no favourable reception from-- (1) The gospel-hardened. Every invitation rejected does but set more firmly in opposition a will already opposed to Christ. The heart grows stubborn and indifferent. (2) The proud. (3) The preoccupied. When Mark Antony began his famous speech with the words, “ Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears,” he well knew that he might as well toss his words to the idle winds that swept over the dead body of his friend, as address an audience who paid him no attention. In the preaching of the gospel, the very fact that people are interested in it, talking about it, working for it, heralding it far and wide, is a guarantee of its effectiveness. We must make men think about their souls. So long as their oxen, or their stores, or their wills, or their ships are in their minds, Christ cannot get in. (4) The self-satisfied. Here is the trouble with many a man of amiability and worth. He has a pleasant home, friends he delights in, social ties, all possible comforts. He needs to see that this is Dot enough. He ought to hunger and thirst after righteousness, and at the gospel feast he might be filled. 2. The gospel is tolerably certain to find reception among-- (1) The needy. (2) The neglected. (A. P. Foster.) The gospel supper I. THAT GOD HAS MADE AMPLE IN THE GOSPEL FOR ALL OUR . That provision is here set forth under the similitude of a great supper. That the gospel supper may be thus designated will appear if we think of-- 1. Its Author. It has been provided by God himself. 2. The expense at which it was procured. Almost incredible sums have been expended in the getting up of sumptuous entertainments. But what were they when compared with the expense incurred here? To provide this banquet, the Son of God became incarnate, lived a life of reproach, of poverty, of persecution, and died the accursed death of the cross. 3. The greatness and variety of the blessings which are set before us. And what tongue of man or angel can describe them in their ineffable importance? They include all the treasures of grace here, and all the inconceivable treasures of glory hereafter. II. THAT OF THE MOST KIND ARE GIVEN US TO COME AND PARTAKE OF WHAT GOD HAS . 1. The characters to whom they were addressed. First, to the Jews only. Then to all men. 2. The manner in which the invitations should be applied. Moral compulsion. 3. The motives by which they should be enforced. (1) That the provisions are all duly prepared. “ Come; for all things are now ready.” The Saviour has been made flesh; He has finished the work which was given Him to do; the sacrifice He offered has been accepted; the Spirit has been poured out from on high; the ministry of the gospel is instituted; the sacred canon is complete. (2) The amplitude of the preparations. “ And the servant said, Lord, it is done as thou hast commanded, and yet there is room.” Although so many have been gathered in, the seats are not all occupied. III. THAT THE DIVINE , OF WHICH WE ARE SO FREELY INVITED TO PARTAKE ARE BY MANY AND . The excuses offered are-- 1. Various. 2. Frivolous. 3. Evasive. IV. THAT THOSE WHO DESPISE THE OF THE GOSPEL CANNOT DO SO WITHOUT THE GUILT, AND WITHOUT TO THE MOST AWFUL DANGER. (Expository Outlines.) The marriage feast We know that, in every department of life, happiness, health, honour, and prosperity, involve two essential elements, one of which is a provision for these things in nature and society, and the other of which is an appropriation of that provision by those to whom it is offered. And this last is as indispensable as the first. That which makes the offer and the provision of any validity or usefulness is the circumstance that there is some one to accept it. Let us look, for one moment, at this. God has made great provision of the elements of nature. Light--oh, how abundant! how beautiful! how sweet!--and all that will accept this boon of God shall have the benefit of it. The blind cannot. The wilfully blind cannot; for although there is light enough for thrice ten thousand times as great a population as that which inhabits the globe, if a man endungeons himself purposely, and shuts out the light from the room where he dwells, the abundance of the provision and the offer make no difference with him. He loses it and all its blessings. There is heat enough, and there are sounds enough, for the comfort and for the solace of the human soul; and yet, unless men accept these things, the mere fact that they have been offered to all, and that they are abundant, will do them no good. We know that in respect to those great qualities of nature the abundance of provision does not enforce acceptance. The great prime necessities of life, such as food, raiment, shelter--God has put the elements of these things within our control, and there is provision for all the wants of men, and for the growing needs of society: but if men refuse to work; if they refuse to practice frugality; if they will not put forth skill, the God of nature and the God of grace lets them pine, and lets them starve, as much as if there had been no pro vision. The earth does not reveal its secrets except to those that search for them; and the rains, and the sun, and the soil, do nothing, except to the seed that is hid in the crevices of the ground. The summer is barren to the sluggard. There is provision enough for all the wants of men, if they accept them on the conditions on which they are proffered; but if they do not accept them on these conditions the abundance does not insure to their benefit. When men violate the laws of their being, however innocently or ignorantly, they are made to suffer the penalties of those violated laws, and sickness and pain come in. And when a man is sick, though all remedies are provided, and though the most skilful physicians are called to their bedside, these will do no good if he will not accept the remedies that skill has found out, and that kindness is proffering. These facts are familiar to us. They go to illustrate and confirm the general statement that something more is required than a provision and a proffer. Thus far I have spoken of the physical laws of nature. It may be said that this is not in the moral realm, and that the analogy is not a fair one. Therefore, I proceed to show that in the moral realm the constitution of things is even more marked than in the physical realm. We know that a man’ s happiness or misery in this life depends upon the manner in which he exercises his faculties. That is to say, it is not a matter of indifference which way a man uses the powers of his mind, any more than which way a man turns the key when he winds his watch. Turning it one way ruins it, and turning it the other way expedites it. It makes a difference which side of the blade of a knife you use if you would cut wood. It makes a difference which way you work a machine. One way of working it agrees with its nature, and the other way of working it disagrees with its nature. And so it is with a man’ s mind. It was meant to act in conformity with certain definite principles and results. If it conforms to these there is happiness, and if it does not there is misery. We also see in human society--which is as divinely-ordained as is human life itself; for a man’ s organs are no more fitted to be put together to make the individual man than individual men are fitted to co-operate together in society--we see in human society this same law evolved with terrible certainty at large. If men seek happiness, honour, love, there is abundant provision for them in society. All things are ready. They are accessible by right conduct. If men neglect the provision for happiness, and honour, and love, they will miss these ends, and that, too, although God is good and kind, although there is a providence that is supervising human society--a Providence that will not suffer a sparrow to fall to the ground unnoticed--a Providence that knows that we are in need of raiment, and shelter, and food, and nourishing care. If men do not accept voluntarily the provision of these things which is made in society, there is no providence that will rescue them from the wretchedness that will ensue from disobedience. The administration of God is full of goodness; but goodness in the Divine administration is employed according to law. All philanthropy, all humanity, and all sympathy and succour, carried down to grog-shops and to the Five Points, will not assuage one pang, and will not rescue one wretch, unless he is willing to return and co-operate, and bring himself under the influence of remedial law. Now, at this point we reach again the Word of God, and are prepared to receive its declarations, with all corroborations and presumptive analogies in its favour. The feast of the gospel is spread. The King, in His great bounty, sends His servants forth to say to all, “ Come to the marriage supper.” To lay aside the figure, God makes the proffer of forgiveness, of amnesty for the past, and of unbounded joy and happiness for the future. If you accept the provision, which is ample enough for every human being on the globe, you are blessed; but if you neglect it, or refuse it, that provision, if multiplied a myriad times, would be of no more avail to you than light to the blind, sound to the deaf, or food to the dead. It is a provision that is invalid if you fail to accept it. If you take it you live; if you reject it you die. Although, then, the doctrine of the Fatherhood of God is one of the most blessed doctrines of the Bible, and one of the most animating to our hope, we must not pervert it, and suppose that, because God administers as a universal Father, therefore, all sorts of men, under all sorts of circumstances, are perfectly safe. I would not take away one single whit of the beauty, or attractiveness, or encouragement of the thought that God loves, and that everything that love can do will be done to make men happy here, safe in death, and glorious hereafter; but I warn you not to suppose that everything can be done merely because God loves. There are limitations even in an infinite God. (H. W. Beecher.) The great supper I. “ A certain man made a great supper” --the movement originated with himself, in his own mind--HIS OWN FREE BOUNTY--his own generosity--his unsolicited willingness to make others partakers of his richenjoyments. The man here supposed represents Almighty God Himself; and the action here ascribed to Him represents the preparation of Christianity--that rich and saving feast for a perishing world. It originated (if aneternal purpose can properly be said to have had a beginning) in His own mind, His own free love, His own unsolicited willingness to make fallen men partakers of His own happiness, “ that they might be filled with the fatness of His house--that they might drink of the river of His pleasures” Psalms 36:8). See, then, the nature of the preparation. It is the mode adopted by Divine wisdom to render it a right thing--a righteous thing--for a sovereign Lawgiver and upright Judge to deal with convicted rebels as a pardoning father and a sympathizing friend; it is, in the language of St. Paul, that “ God may be just, while He justifies the ungodly” (Romans 3:19-26; Romans 5:6-8). Behold, also, the extent of the preparation. It knows no earthly bounds, it extends to heaven; its value is not to be measured by earth, but is to be found in the harmonized perfections of God. II. Now look at the TO IT. He said to his servant, at the supper time, Go and “ say to them who were bidden, Come; for all things are ready.” This represents the commission to preach the gospel. St. Paul was determined to know nothing else, and preach nothing else. He accounted it the most distinguishing and the most exalted of the favours bestowed upon him, that he should declare among the Gentiles the “ unsearchable riches of Christ” --in other words, the preparation of the Great Supper. And he exhorted--i.e., he pressed the invitation upon men--earnestly, that they might “ not receive the grace of God in vain” ; and urgently, because the time was short: “ Now,” he said, “ is the appointed time, now is the day of salvation” (2 Corinthians 6:1-2). III. And now having so spoken of the preparation and the invitation, our next theme is a painful one--THE THAT THIS MET WITH. The force of this portion of the parable lies in this--that the objects which, in their effects, became destructive, were in themselves lawful and right. The contrast is not between sin and duty, but between duty and duty--between duty number two and duty that ought always to be numberone. The contrast is not between the house of gambling and the house of God--it is not between intemperance and uncleanness on the one side, and prayer and praise on the other; no, it is not that phase of human guilt that is exhibited; the contrast is rather between the countinghouse and the church, the shop and the house of God, domestic enjoyments and secret prayer. The contrast is between the attractions which the lawful occupations of this world possess for the natural heart of man, and the secret repugnance felt by that heart to the enjoyments of God. IV. But the parable does not end there; the servants came in and repeated this answer, and the master was not satisfied; then he told the servants “ to go out into the streets and lanes of the city, and to bring in the poor and the maimed, and the halt and the blind.” There is an intimation in this part of the parable that a power would accompany the invitation such as would not be refused--such as would secure a company--such as would not leave the seats around the Master’ s table unoccupied, but, on the contrary, that his house should be filled. Now, think of this secret power. Here, again, we refer to the persons and resources of the Godhead. Jesus said, “ I will pray the Father, and He shall give you another Comforter, that He may abide with you for ever.” He shall present the preparation for the supper, and He shall urge the invitation, so as to supersede all pre-engagements, and put an end to all excuses. He has power to secure a gracious result without the slightest interference with the free operation of the moral machine that He has made. Nothing else can secure this; there is to be no force, and yet the result is to be secured; no action constrained, and yet the character totally altered. “ Thy people shall be willing in the day of thy power” (Psalms 110:1-7.). The will rules the man; and who rules the will? There is revelation of a secret power, which, touching the will, secures all that follows in the man’ s life with perfect freedom. Look at a large and complicated machine under the control of a little fly-wheel; that locked, the machine is stationary; that liberated, the machine goes on. See, the machine is stationary, and ignorant violence is made use of to make it go on, but in vain--blows are aimed at it to make it go on, in the wrong place, all in vain--it may be broken, but it cannot by violence be made to work--sledge-hammers are raised on it in vain; but see, a little child, properly instructed, with a little finger frees the fly-wheel, and the whole machine goes forward in its work; every arm, and every lever, and every wheel performs its appointed action duly and freely. It was that touch that did it--that touch is promised, of God, to us--in hope of it we preach,without it we preach in vain; all is sounding brass and tinkling cymbal without this. (H. McNeile, D. D.) A great feast I. With regard to THE NATURE OF THE FEAST. “ A certain man made a great supper and bade many.” What, then, is this feast which our Lord has provided, and of which He has sent His servants to invite men to come and partake? First, as bread satisfies hunger, and is necessary to sustain life, so Jesus Christ is that true bread which cometh down from heaven--the bread of the soul--the bread that alone can satisfy and sustain the spiritual and eternal life of man. His flesh is given as meat, and His blood as drink; and this is the feast. I cannot enlarge upon the particulars of this feast, but observe that a feast is not merely bread, it is fulness of bread; it is a rich provision--there is variety of provision. This the gospel gloriously attests; here is everything that man can want; here is not only pardon for the guilty, reconciliation for him that is at enmity with God, but all the rich provision of grace, all the fulness and comfort of the Spirit of God; all the plenitude of His promises is here; there is nothing that the soul can eat or desire, in any state or condition in which it is seen, but is to be found here; in the gospel feast there is all that is wholesome, suited to its tastes, its appetites, its desires, its lofty capacities, and capable of fully and eternally satisfying them. Here, then, the children of God see their privilege. The Saviour is an omniscient Saviour and an omnipresent Saviour--a Saviour present with the Church, knowing every case, every heart, and every want; and He has in Himself fulness to satisfy every longing desire or wish. II. We are to consider THE OF THOSE WHO WERE FIRST BIDDEN TO THIS FEAST, AND FOR WHOM IT WAS . I say specially provided; for you will recollect that these persons were the children of the promise--the heirs of the covenant. “ Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem.” So St. Paul says, “ the gospel is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first.” The three principal grounds on which men slight the gospel are here referred to--they are common, not to the Jews only, but common to the Gentiles. The first ground is wealth. The first said, “ I have bought a piece of ground, and I must needs go and see it.” The disposition of mind by which a man is induced to seek the increase of wealth is opposed to the gospel This disposition is so fatal to many that it operates, as in the ease of the parable, utterly to exclude them from tasting the supper. It does not so fill and choke up the appetite--it does not so corrode the taste as to prevent their enjoying, as to prevent their fully partaking of this blessing, but it eats them off altogether--they cannot taste of this supper. Is it not so with your hearts, while you are coveting the world? Can you enjoy Christ? You cannot! 2. The second disposition of mind which excludes men from tasting the supper of the gospel grace, is that which involves them in the vortex of this world’ s cares. This is figured in the parable by the yoke of oxen--“ I have bought five yoke of oxen, and must needs go and prove them.” 3. Another said, “ I have married a wife” ; and therefore he was in a greater strait than the other two--he said positively, “ I cannot come!” This parable is against those moral people--those honest people--those people whose lives are so irreproachable and blameless in everything except the matter of their salvation. It applies to those that are comparatively enlightened, to those that would be shocked at gross immorality, to those who would not exhibit in their lives, on any account, those vices which they condemn in others; but sin sits enthroned in their heart, in the shape of a secret and subtle covetousness, in a character that absorbs them in their pleasures, and steals and weans their affections from God. And this is, perhaps, the most awful case of all. Go and preach the gospel to those who have no ground of justification; and if you can get them to listen to the gospel, they will fall down at your feet and confess their sin. Examine, trace in your hearts the working of this worldliness, consider the objections that hold you back from Christ, and you will find that they resolve themselves into the excuses of those who were first bidden to this feast. It is the land and the oxen, it is the pleasure of this world, all which perish in their using, and will leave you hungry and naked, and poor and wretched at the bar of God! I come now to speak of-- III. THE OF THOSE WHO REALLY DID ENTER IN AND PARTAKE OF THIS SUPPER. You will observe that those who were thus bidden the second time were described by this character, which marked the destitution of man: “ Bring in hither the poor and the maimed, and the halt and the blind” ; for this was the spiritual condition of the Gentile world. It marks their destitution--they are poor, they are without God and without hope in the world. In the heathen countries they were without Christian ordinances, without Christian Sabbaths, without Christian instruction. The verse also relates to those who might justly make excuse upon any ground than that of the gospel invitation; who might by self-abasement and humility of spirit say, “ How can it be? How can it be that the Prince, the King, and Lord of this supper should send for me? You must be deceiving, you must be making game of me--you must intend some derision; the invitation cannot be for me.” “ Go,” says the King, “ and compel them to come in; go and tell them how large the offer is.” (J. Sutcliffe.) The feast only for those who can appreciate it Now why is it difficult to us to represent to ourselves this unwillingness? Because we always think of the great supper simply as so much unmeasured happiness, so much unmixed delight. It will be happiness, it will be delight, but only to those who can appreciate it; not to the base, not to the selfish, not to the false, not to the weak, not to the impure. It will be the highest happiness of which human nature is capable; but it can only be tasted by those who are of kindred nature to Him who gives it. Those who would not come when they were invited would not have found it a happiness if they had come. Now this, the very principle of the parable, is just as applicable to our daily life as it is to any such critical moment as the parable supposes. We are invited to a spiritual feast; to a feast of that happiness which is got from perfect self mastery, from peace with our consciences, from having no cloud between us and those whom we love, from having no cloud between us and God. We know perfectly well that this is a very real happiness. We have had foretastes of it now and then, quite enough to show what it is like. But this duty, which thus seems ever to pursue us and give us no rest, it is so exacting, it is so dull, it is so unrewarded, what wonder that we turn away? No, indeed it is not. There are those who find it so; those, namely, who refuse the invitation, and go to this and to that; and then--not in repentance, but in sullen acquiescence; not because their hearts are touched, but because they fear consequences, and because they are disgusted with the pleasure which they have preferred to duty--come back, like Balaam, to obey in deed but not in spirit. Such men learn what is meant by the words “ None of those men who were bidden shall taste of My supper.” To them the supper is no supper at all. To them that obey in an unloving, discontented, sulky mood there is indeed no happiness in obedience. They obey, and find no peace in obedience. They deny themselves for the sake of others, and instead of loving those whom they thus benefit all the more, they love them all the less. They conquer the outburst of temper, and substitute an inward brooding of ill-will. They resist temptation, and feel a kind of resentment against Providence for having put this hard task upon them. They come, but they do not taste the supper, for they refused it. But it is a real pleasure, a pleasure above all other pleasures, to those who come heartily and gladly, who make the needful sacrifice with a ready spirit and with a resolute cheerfulness, forcing away from their minds all gloomy suggestions and all discontented feelings, recognizing in the trifle which calls them as sure a summons from the Great King as if it had been the royal messenger Death; seeing in each invitation to Christian effort a call, not to pain, but to joy; not to a task, but to a supper; not to a loss, but to a service in the King’ s court. (Bishop Temple.) The gospel feast I. A TYPE OF THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST. 1. Of the nature of the gospel. A supper. It is God’ s provision to satisfy the soul’ s hunger. 2. Of the abundance of God’ s provision in the gospel. A great supper. (1) Every want of the soul can be satisfied by the gospel. (2) Satisfied for ever. 3. Of the freeness of the gospel. (1) In the grace which provided it. (2) In the generousness which invites to it. II. A TYPE OF THE THE GOSPEL . 1. The term used to express this treatment is very noticeable. Excuse. Not positive refusal, yet not acceptance. 2. The excuses mentioned are noticeable. (1) Though often rendered, how untenable. Feast occurring probably in evening, would not have interfered with land speculator or enterprising farmer; and the young husband could have taken his bride with him. (2) Though differing in their phases, how similar in spirit. Setting personal gratification above the claims of God. III. A TYPE OF THE EFFECT OF THIS ON THE DIVINE MIND. 1. The Divine resentment is here stated. 2. Fresh orders are given. 3. New decree declared. Lessons: 1. The provision God has made for us in Christ--how satisfying and abundant. 2. Excuses for procrastination--how common--how dangerous. 3. When God says, “ None of those who were bidden shaft taste,” etc., seals the doom of such. (D. C. Hughes, M. A.) On receiving the grace of the gospel The eating of bread mentioned in previous verse imports the enjoyment of eternal goods, both for necessity and delight, in heaven. But our Lord here takes that man off, and us in him, from a general admiration of their happiness in heaven, to a particular application of the means conducing to that happiness, even the receiving the grace of the gospel. They that would eat bread, or enjoy fellowship with God in heaven, must first eat bread, or partake of the gospel-provision here on earth. I. THE WAY TO ENJOY THE ETERNAL, GOOD THINGS IN THE KINGDOM OF GLORY IS TO CLOSE WITH THE GOOD THINGS IN THE KINGDOM OF GRACE. 1. “ Eating bread” implies most intimate and immediate union with God. 2. It denotes the abundant supply of all wants. 3. The full and familiar enjoyment of good company. 4. Complete satisfaction in the fruition of all contents and delights. II. WHAT ARE THOSE GOOD THINGS WHICH WE ARE TO CLOSE WITH IN THE KINGDOM OF GRACE? 1. Spiritual privileges provided for us in the grace of the gospel (IsaZec 13:1). Reconciliation, adoption, remission, sanctification, vocation, salvation. This gospel provision is the plank after the shipwreck, or the ark in the midst of the deluge. No other way of escaping destruction or obtaining salvation. 2. Spiritual ordinances for the conveying of spiritual privileges, and ensuring them. Preaching. Sacraments. 3. Spiritual graces for the improvement of spiritual ordinances Galatians 5:22). These are the clusters of grapes to make us in love with the Holy Land, notwithstanding oppositions. This fruit grows nowhere but in Christ’ s garden. The Vine which bears it is Himself. 4. Spiritual duties for the expression of spiritual graces. Praying; hearing; exhorting one another, etc. III. HOW ARE WE TO CLOSE WITH THESE GOOD THINGS 1. We are to receive them by faith, embracing the grace of the gospel John 1:12). 2. We are to walk as we have received Christ (Colossians 2:6); leading a holy life by virtue drawn from Him through our union with Him; giving the world a proof in our holy life of the virtue in Christ’ s death for rectifying our crooked nature. IV. WHY WE MUST CLOSE WITH GOOD THINGS, IF WE WOULD ENJOY ETERNAL. Because the one is part of the other. Saints in heaven and saints upon earth make up but one family. Grace is the beginning of glory; some compare it to the golden chain in Homer, the top of which was fastened to the chair of Jupiter. Grace will reach glory, and it must precede glory. Use 1. This informs us-- (1) That it is good for man now to draw near to God (Psalms 73:28). It tends to his everlasting happiness. (2) See their vanity who draw back from God, or bid God depart from them when He comes near them in the means of grace vouchsafed to them Psalms 73:27; Job 21:14). Sin divides between God and the soul. Use 2. Yet this doth not make, but many may partake of gospel mercies in the kingdom of grace, and yet never come to glory. Those who have slighted their privileges and advantages will receive the greater condemnation. Use 3. Would you come into the kingdom of glory? (1) Come into the kingdom of grace. (2) Live as under the laws of this kingdom of grace. (a) Perform allegiance to God, yielding yourself to Him. (b) Expect protection from God, and draw nigh to Him (James 4:8). (c) Pray that the territories of the kingdom of grace may be enlarged more and more upon the face of the earth. (d) Prepare for the translation of the kingdom of grace into the kingdom of glory (1 Corinthians 15:24; 1 Corinthians 15:28). (John Crump.) Refusing the Divine call The election of the just, and the reprobation of the wicked, are inscrutable mysteries. Yet, as much as is necessary for us to know, Jesus reveals to us in this parable, without satisfying vain curiosity. I. ON THE CALL TO MEN. 1. Nature of this call. (1) It is Divine. (2) It is holy. (3) It is a free call. (4) it is a universal call. 2. Manner of this call. (1) God calls men outwardly: by teaching and preaching, in order to take away the darkness of understanding caused by original sin. (2) God calls me inwardly: by the inspiration of Divine grace. II. ON THE OF THE . 1. Cooperation with the Divine call is necessary. 2. Man often refuses to co-operate with the Divine call: (1) Because he is attached to earthly things. (2) Because he is enslaved by the vice of pride. (3) Because he is the slave of his own flesh. As the Jews lost all taste for the manna, because they longed for the fleshpots of Egypt, so all taste for the sweetness of spiritual joys is lost by carnal lust. III. ON . Most awful is the judgment of being excluded from Divine charity and communion; but, at the same time, it is most just. 1. The wrath of the king against those who were invited, but who refused to come, was just. With God, wrath is not the eruption of passion, but the zeal of justice, directed against him who, by not accepting His loving invitation, has insulted His infinite majesty. 2. The sentence pronounced by the king was just. (1) God does whatever is necessary for our salvation. (2) But man, the sinner, is not willing to be saved (Matthew 23:37). Man must do what he is able to do, and pray for what he is not able. 3. His sentence of reprobation is most just. (1) He gives them up to the desires of their heart, as He suffered those who were invited to go after their business (Romans 1:23, etc.). (2) God invites others instead of those who were first invited, that His house may be filled, and that the latter may be for ever cut off from the hope of recovering their place. Thus David was elected instead of Saul; Matthias instead of Judas. (3) He condemns irrevocably those who decline the invitation Proverbs 1:24-26). (Nicolas de Dijon.) The great supper I. THE . 1. The time of the invitation. Evening. At the introduction of the gospel dispensation. 2. The nature of the invitation--“ Come.” (1) Free. (2) Generous. (3) Direct. 3. The persons by whom the invitations were sent--“ His servants.” Apostles, disciples, etc. II. OF THE . 1. The unanimity of their refusals. 2. The various reasons which they assigned. (1) The inspection of new-bought property. (2) Engrossing business. (3) Domestic duties. III. FURTHER ISSUED. 1. How extended the commission. 2. How benevolent the arrangement. 3. How urgent the appeal. (1) That in the gospel, abundant provision is made for the spiritual wants of mankind. (2) That the invitations of Divine mercy include all ranks and conditions of men. (3) That these invitations are free and full, and urgently and sincerely presented by the Lord Jesus Christ. (4) That only self-excluders will be refused a place at the feast of salvation. (5) That it is the duty and interest of all, immediately and gratefully to obey the invitation and sit down at the gracious banquet. (J. Burns, D. D.) The great feast, and its Maker I. THE MAKER OF THE FEAST. Christ God-Man, or God in Christ, is a bountiful Benefactor to man. God in Christ is here called a Man-- 1. By way of resemblance; those properties of any worth appearing in man, or spoken of man, being more eminently in God: as (1) Sovereignty; (2) pity; (3) rationality. 2. By Ray of reality. (1) In respect of Christ, by whom this gospel-provision is, wherein God shows Himself such a Benefactor. Christ has (a) the blood of a man; (b) the bowels of a man; (c) the familiarity of a man. (2) In respect of man for whom this gospel-provision is, wherein God shows Himself such a Benefactor. The grace of the gospel is called “ the kindness and love of God our Saviour toward man.” And that-- (a) by way of distinction from other creatures in general; (b) by way of opposition unto fallen angels in particular. (3) In respect of the ministers of the gospel, through whose hands this gospel-provision is distributed. Uses. 1. Observe the condescension of God. 2. The advancement of man. II. THE FEAST. Supper--chief meal of the day: intimating the abundance of the provision made for the recovery of lost man. 1. What is this gospel-provision for the good of souls? It is the only way of man’ s salvation since the Fall, begun in grace, and swallowed up or perfected in glory. 2. How does the provision appear to be so plentiful? (1) Look at the Maker of the feast. God, rich in mercy, great in love. (2) The materials. Christ Himself. The sincere milk of the word. The promises. Work of grace in soul. Sum up all this: here is solidity, plenty, variety; here is for necessity and delight, for health and mirth. ‘ Tis a great supper. (3) The vessels. Ordinances: “ golden vials full of odours.” (4) The guests. Such as are clothed with the righteousness of Christ. Kings and priests unto God. (5) The attendants. Ministers instructed by God. III. THE PERSONS BIDDEN. 1. Adam was invited, and with Him the whole race of mankind. 2. Noah was invited, and with him the old world. 3. Abraham was invited, and with him the whole nation of the Jews. 4. Moses was invited, and with him the Jews had a fresh invitation under that pedagogy of his which was to bring them to Christ. Uses: 1. Information. This shows us God’ s desire for man’ s happiness. He not only propounds a way for man to be happy, but invites man to accept of it. How inexcusable, then, is man if he refuse. 2. Caution. (1) Though men are thus generally invited, yet other fallen creatures have not so much as an invitation; so that there is somewhat of distinguishing mercy in the very invitation (Hebrews 2:16). (2) Though men are thus generally invited, yet they are very hardly persuaded really to close with the invitation. (3) Though men are thus generally invited, yet they will not be continually invited. (4) Though men are thus generally invited, yet they will be as generally rejected, if they continue slighting God’ s invitation. 3. Be exhorted to hearken to this call and invitation of God. To move you to accept: consider seriously-- (1) God communes with us in a way of familiarity (Isaiah 1:18). (2) God commands us in a way of authority (1 John 3:23). (3) God beseeches us in a way of entreaty (2 Corinthians 5:20). (4) Upon refusal, God threatens us in a way of severity Proverbs 1:24; Proverbs 1:32). They who will not fecal upon these gospel dainties, “ shall eat of the fruit of their own way.” They that sow the wind of iniquity shall reap the whirlwind of misery. (John Crump.) The gospel feast I. WITH RESPECT TO THE . Although the dispensations of God to Jew and Gentile may be different, the declaration of the gospel is the same. It is especially worth noting how perfectly free from all impossible conditions, on the part of man, is the gospel invitation. II. Now look at THE WAY IN WHICH THIS WAS . “ They all with one consent began to make excuse.” They wanted to do something else instead. And in this reply we see a lesson, how, when the passions of man are set against the truth, how additionally hard and presumptuously bold they make the heart. The spirit which actuated these excuses was worldliness--preferring something to God. And this is strictly true of every one who has not really closed with the gospel invitation now. III. Observe again, that THE PERSONS FROM THE GOSPEL-FEAST ARE THOSE WHO HAVE BEEN BIDDEN TO IT; the invitation is, therefore, real: God means what He says. It was in all good faith that the invitation was given, and it is in all seriousness that God speaks when the invitation has been refused. I warn you against making excuses to-day, lest when you would accept the Lord’ s gracious invitation, you cannot; lest you become too blind to read, too lame to go to the house of God, and too deaf to hear--altogether too infirm to get any good. Now, I repeat to you, you know these things are true; you understand these things; you are perfectly well aware that what I say is the exposition of the parable, and you are perfectly aware that as long as you neglect God’ s invitation, you are wrong. You cannot say, “ Lord, forgive me, for I know not what I do.” You do know; your conscience speaks to you now: do not harden it by neglect. 1. I would, in conclusion, say, take these four considerations home with you: Consider, first, to-night, dear brethren, before you lay your heads upon your pillows, the greatness of the Host that invites you. Consider His love, His power, if you apply to Him, to overcome every hindrance, His grace to give you all needful strength, His mercy, which will embrace you in His arms, and take you to His heart. 2. The excellence of the feast. He sets before you salvation, pardon, peace, eternal life. Are not these things worth having? Are they not necessary to the welfare of your soul? Where can you get them, but in the way you are called to accept now? 3. The blessedness of partaking of this gospel-feast. 4. The misery of refusing--of never tasting the gospel-supper--never, never!--never knowing pardon of sin--never knowing peace of conscience. (J. W. Reeve, M. A.) The great supper I. THE FEAST. This is the gospel which God has provided for mankind and sinners. Great preparations had to be made before it was available for men. The law which we had broken had to be satisfied; the penalty which we had incurred had to be endured; the obedience in which we had failed had to be rendered. None of these things, however, could be done by man for himself. Christ therefore took human nature, etc. 1. A feast in respect of the excellence of the provision which it sets before us. Pardon of sin, favour with God, peace of conscience, renewal of the heart, access to the throne of grace, the comforts of the Holy Spirit, the exceeding great and precious promises of the Scriptures, and a well-grounded hope of eternal life. 2. A feast in respect, of abundance, for the supply is inexhaustible. 3. A feast in respect of fellowship. The blessings of the gospel are for social, and not simply for private, life; and what circle of earthly friends can be put into comparison with that into which we enter when we seat ourselves at the gospel table? Communion, not only with best and wisest of earth, but with redeemed before throne; yea, fellowship with Father, and His Son Jesus Christ. 4. A feast in respect of joy. The Giver of it and the guests at it rejoice together. II. THE INVITED GUESTS. The invitation to this feast is given to every one in whose hearing the gospel is proclaimed. A great privilege, also a great peril. God’ s invitation is not to be trifled with or despised. In the court language of Great Britain, when a subject receives an invitation to the royal table, it is said that her Majesty “ commands” his presence there. So the invitations of the King of kings to His gospel banquet are commands, the ignoring of which constitutes the most aggravated form of disobedience. III. THE GIVEN BY THOSE FIRST INVITED, TO THE CALL, WHICH HAD BEEN TO THEM. Animated by one spirit, moved by one impulse, under the influence of the same disposition, they all began to make excuse. Each of them considered some worldly thing as of more importance to him than the enjoyment of the feast; and that is just saying, in another way, that they all treated the invitation as a matter of no moment. Their excuses were all pretexts. If the heart is set on anything else, it cannot be given up to Christ; and every excuse that is offered for withholding it, whether the excuse itself be true or not, does not give the real reason for His rejection. That must be sought in the fact that the heart is set on something else which it is not willing to part with, even for Him. It is the old story. “ One thing thou lackest:” but that one thing is everything, for it is the love of the heart. IV. THOSE WHO DECLINE TO COME TO THE FEAST SHALL BE FOR EVER FROM ITS . V. THE OF THIS BY , GOD’ S HOUSE SHALL BE FILLED AT LAST. (W. M. Taylor, D. D.) The love of this world is a hindrance to salvation I. REASONS WHY THE LOVE OF THIS WORLD IS A TO . 1. On account of its power over the heart. (1) It is not attentive to the greatness of Divine grace. (2) It disregards the means of this grace, through which the sinner must be brought to the fellowship of it. (3) It hardens the heart against the repeated invitations of God. (4) It does despite to the free grace of God, which has at once provided everything necessary for our salvation, and invites us to partake of it without any personal desert. 2. On account of its nature. (1) It is directed to what is earthly, perishable. (a) To goods and pleasures. (b) To honour, influence, and consideration. (c) To ties and connections. (2) It prefers that to what is heavenly and eternal. (3) It lays claim, in doing so, to a right frame of mind (Luke 14:18-19), considering itself to have a proper excuse, and thus manifests its ingratitude, levity, and obstinacy. II. PROOF THAT THE LOVE OF THE WORLD IS SUCH A . 1. From the consequences resulting to the despisers. (1) They draw upon themselves the anger of God. (2) They forfeit the offered salvation. 2. From the subsequent procedure of God, who still manifests His mercy and grace; (1) In that He continues to invite men to the blessings of salvation; (2) and even the most wretched of men; (3) and all, without exception, in the most pressing manner. (F. G. Lisco.) The gospel feast Though this parable resembles, in some respects, that of the marriage feast in the twenty-second chapter of Matthew, it is a distinct and independent parable. 1. What those gospel blessings are to which we are here invited under the comparison of a feast. We are invited, then, to partake of the blessing of knowledge, saving knowledge, the knowledge of God, the knowledge of the truth. 2. Let us observe what is implied in coming to this feast. It supposes, then, a desire and endeavour to obtain these blessings, and an actual acceptance of them just as they are offered. 3. God employs His servants to invite persons of all descriptions to this feast. 4. We are reminded by this parable that multitudes reject the gospel invitation with vain excuses. 5. Once more, this parable teaches that, however many may have hitherto refused the invitation, ministers are bound to persevere in most earnest endeavours to bring in sinners. The office of ministers, in this respect, is weighty and responsible. (James Foote, M. A.) God’ s banquet From the earliest ages it has been common to speak of God’ s merciful provisions for fallen men under the imagery of a fast. Thus Isaiah sung: “ In this mountain shall the Lord of Hosts make unto all people a fewest of fat things, a feast of wine on the lees, of fat things full of marrow, of wines on the lees well refined.” And so familiar was this conception to the ancient Jews, that many of them were led to indulge the grossest notions about feasting and banqueting in the kingdom of the Messiah. Many of the Rabbins took it literally, and talked and wrote largely about the blessed bread and plenteous wine, and delicious fruits, and the varieties of fish, flesh, and fowl, to be enjoyed when once the Messiah should come. It was to this coarse eating and drinking that the man referred whose exclamation--“ Blessed is he that shall eat bread in the kingdom of God” --called forth this significant parable. But, although the Jews much perverted the idea, it still was a proper and expressive figurative representation of gospel blessings. The Saviour Himself takes up the idea, approves and appropriates it, and proceeds to speak of the provisions of grace as a δειπνον--a supper--a feast--a banquet. Very significant also is this imagery. 1. A feast is not a thing of necessity, but of gratuity. If a man makes an entertainment to which he invites his friends and neighbours, he does it out of favour and good feeling towards them. It is because he takes an interest in their happiness, and is pleased to minister to their enjoyment. And precisely of this nature is the blessed gospel. 2. Again: a banquet is furnished at the cost of him who makes it. And so the gospel comes to men free of expense to the guests. All that it embraces is proposed without money and without price. 3. A banquet also implies the spreading of a table, plentifully supplied with all inviting, wholesome, and pleasant viands. It is an occasion when the very best things, and in the greatest profusion, are set before the guests. True, “ the kingdom of heaven is not meat and drink” ; but it is to our inner life what the most precious viands, are to the body. The soul has appetites, and needs meat and drink as well as the physical man. It must be fed, nourished, and refreshed with its appropriate spiritual aliment, or the man must starve and die, notwithstanding the abundance of the things which he possesseth. And this life-giving spiritual food is what God has provided for us in the gospel. 4. A banquet is also a social thing. It involves the coming together of multitudes to exchange civilities, to form and strengthen fellowships, and to enjoy communion with each other, as well as with the maker of the feast. The gospel embraces a holy fellowship of believers with believers, and of each with God. It embraces a coming together of men in common brotherhood and communion with each other and with the Master, as full of sweetness, cheer, and blessedness as the viands of which they are invited to partake. Christianity is a social religion. (J. A. Seiss, D. D.) Come; for all things are now ready The gospel invitation I. THE FEAST. 1. The author of this feast. 2. The provisions. (1) Abundant. (2) Various. (3) Statable. 3. The characteristics of the feast. (1) It is a sacrificial feast. (2) It is a great and universal feast. (3) It is a gratuitous feast. (4) It is a heavenly feast, II. THE --“ Come.” Now this implies distance. All men far from God, etc. Prodigal 1. To what must they come? To the Word of God. To the preached gospel Romans 10:15). 2. How must they come? By repentance. Humbly, believingly, unreservedly, immediately. 3. To whom may this invitation be addressed? To the young, middle-aged, and to the old. To the moralist, profligate, and backslider. To the rich and poor, the learned and illiterate. III. THE MOTIVE URGED--“ For all things are now ready.” 1. The Father is ready. To embrace the repenting prodigal. 2. The Son is ready. To speak forgiveness and peace. 3. The Spirit is ready. To regenerate and save. 4. Ministers are ready. “ And now then as ambassadors,” etc. 5. The ordinances are ready. And you are freely welcome. 6. The Church is ready. To own you as her sons, etc. 7. Angels are ready. To bear the tidings of your repentance to glory. (J. Burns, D. D.) The gospel invitation The invitation to come is in harmony with the kingdom of heaven, and in harmony with the character of man. An invitation implies a happiness. When a calamity or a sorrow is before us, we are not invited to it--we are drawn hither by an irresistible power. But when earth has a joyful event, or one that promises happiness, invitations are issued, because it is not conceivable that man would need to be driven toward happiness. Thus the invitation harmonizes with the kingdom of Christ, for it is a happiness. Whether you contemplate that kingdom as reaching through eternity with its blessedness, or as filling earth with its virtue and faith and hope, it is the highest happiness of which we can conceive. It is, indeed, a feast of love, of knowledge, of virtue; and hence is a blessedness worthy of the word “ Come.” The word is also in harmony with the character of man, for, being a free agent, he is not to be forced towards blessedness, but only invited. I. Now this word “ COME” NO DEEP MYSTERY. It is not a tantalizing request to do what we cannot do. It is not irony, as though one should say to a blind man, “ See this rose!” or a deaf mind, “ Oh! please hear this music.” The Bible is the last book in the world to be accused of trifling with the soul, for it is the soul it loves, and for it it prays and weeps. It is not to be inferred from this that the heart can correct itself and forgive itself and sanctify itself; but what is to be inferred is that the will is not a mockery, not a dead monarch, but is a king upon a throne, and can command the soul to go many a path that leads to God. You can all start upon a heavenly road, for there is not a movement of the heart toward God that is not a part of this large “ Come.” Where the human ends and the Divine begins no one can tell, any more than in nature one can tell where the rain and earth and sunshine cease to work in the verdure, and where they are supplanted by the presence of God. There is no tree that stands in the woods by its own act. God is there. So no Christian stands up strong in his own sole effort. God’ s grace is somewhere. But yet, for all this, great is the power and responsibility of the soul. Nothing in religion can be true that renders void the law of personal effort. II. But we pass by this “ coming,” and go to the second thought--“ ALL THINGS ARE READY.” I shall not restrict myself here to the exact import of the text, but shall accept of the words in all their breadth and application. 1. Religion is ready for you. Having passed through myriad shapes--Pagan, Mosaic, Grecian, Roman--religion seems to have found in the gospel of Christ a final readiness for human use. Reason may learn to deny all religion, science may hear and then teach atheism, but when the thought turns to a positive religion, there is at last one ready, the religion of our Lord; it is ready for you and me. But when we have declared it ready as a philosophical system, we have only told half the truth, for to this it adds the readiness of an ever-living Father and Saviour standing by each of you as a mother, and waiting to welcome you. 2. Let us proceed now to our second head: You are ready for this religion. I do not mean that you feel ready, for there are doubts and sins that stand between the soul and religion. The obstacle is not in the world without, but within. But I have said you are ready. In what sense? In this: that your life has come to its responsible, intelligent years. The lineaments of God--knowledge, wisdom, reason, love, hope, life--have all unfolded, and here we are all to-day, moving in all the spiritual qualities of Deity, and yet are willingly in the vale of sin. The ignorance of youth has passed away: we are children no more. Vice has revealed her wretchedness, and virtue her utility and beauty, and with intellects so discerning, and with an experience so complete, and then clothed with the attributes of God, we are all marching to the grave, a solemn gateway between action and judgment, between time and eternity. These facts make me declare we are ready for that sentiment called religion, that makes man one with God. I confess that we all are ready for the gospel of Christ--ready for its virtue, its mediation, its sunny hopes. 3. Society is ready for you to accept the gift. I hope that old day has wholly gone when men were afraid to profess Christianity lest an outside world might ridicule the “ new life.” Little of this fear is any longer per ceptible. I imagine that the growth of individual liberty--the growth of the consciousness of it, rather--has silenced both the ridicule and the sensibility to it. It is only ignorance and narrowness that ever ridicule the profession of religion. But we pass from this conscious readiness to that of need and fact. Society is toiling to-day under the awful calamities of vice, slavery, dishonour, and crime, and is sorrowfully ready for millions of wicked ones to read and imitate the life of Jesus Christ. When society was ruled by brute force, as in the days of Caesar or Peter the Great, it mattered little what might be in the hearts of the populace, for, if it was crime, there was a policeman for each citizen; and if it was sorrow in the heart of woman or child or slave, nobody cared. But in our day, when the vice of the heart breaks out, and there is more reliance upon education than upon the knout or chains, and when the upper classes have reached an education that makes indifference to sorrow impossible, in such an age society begs the Christian religion to come to its help. In the old empire of Cyrus there were, all along the highways, criminals with hands or feet cut off, or heads of offenders raised up, to keep the populace in constant fear. What that age demanded in its heart was not a gospel, but an ever-present police. It did not know of anything better. But our land, based upon the nobleness and equality of man, and springing up out of brotherly love, and every day strengthening this sentiment by education, silently begs that its millions, high and low, shall come unto Jesus Christ. (David Swing.) The banquet 1. The Lord Jesus Christ Himself is ready. No banqueter ever waited for his guests so patiently as Christ has waited for us. 2. Again, the Holy Spirit is ready. That Spirit is willing to come to-night at our call and lead you to eternal life; or ready to come with the same power with which He unhorsed Saul on the Damascus turnpike, and broke down Lydia in her fine store, and lifted the three thousand from midnight into midnoon at the Pentecost. With that power the Spirit of God this night beats at the gate of your soul. Have you not noticed what homely and insignificant instrumentality the Spirit of God employs for man’ s conversion? There was a man on a Hudson river-boat to whom a tract was offered. With indignation he tore it up and threw it overboard. But one fragment lodged on his coat-sleeve; and he saw on it the word “ eternity” ; and he found no peace until he was prepared for that great future. Do you know what passage it was that caused Martin Luther to see the truth? “ The just shall live by faith.” Do you know there is one--lust one--passage that brought Augustine from a life of dissolution? “ Put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh to fulfil the lusts thereof.” It was just one passage that converted Hedley Vicars, the great soldier, to Christ: “ The blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin.” Do you know that the Holy Spirit used one passage of Scripture to save Jonathan Edwards? “ Now, unto the King, eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God, our Saviour, be glory.” 3. The Church is ready. 4. The angels of God are ready. 5. Your kindred in glory are all ready for your coming. Some of these spirits in glory toiled for your redemption. When they came to die, their chief grief was that you were not a Christian. They said: “ Meet me in heaven” ; but over their pillow hung the awful possibility that perhaps you might not meet them. (Dr. Talmage.) God’ s anxiety for man’ s salvation I. GOD IS VERY URGENT WITH MEN TO ACCEPT OF GOSPEL- FOR THE GOOD OF THEIR SOULS. He speaks once and again (Jeremiah 7:25). This truth will thus appear: 1. By the several acts of God put forth in gospel-provision for man’ s salvation. (1) He has prepared the provision without any desert or desire of ours Titus 3:4-5). (2) The means of grace are vouchsafed to many that do not improve them Matthew 11:16-17; Matthew 11:21). (3) God propounds a way, and offers help to do us good, before we inquire after it (Isaiah 65:1). (4) God forbears His wrath when we do not presently close with His mercy. He stays, though man lingers. (5) God reproves where we are defective, and happy are the wounds of such a friend. He who first reproves is unwilling to punish. (6) God stops our way when we are running headlong to our own misery Hosea 2:6). Many times He keeps us short that He may keep us humble. (7) God makes us consider our ways, and recollect our thoughts, whither our course tends (Haggai 1:5). (8) Notwithstanding our obstinacy, God persuades us by a sweet and holy violence. He not only stops our way, but changes our wills. 2. By the manner of God’ s speaking to sinners in the Scriptures. (1) By way of interrogation--“ Why will ye die?” (Ezekiel 18:31). (2) By way of lamentation (Luke 19:41-42). (3) By way of protestation with the strongest asseveration (Ezekiel 33:11). Uses. 1. This informs us that the destruction of man is a thing displeasing to God. 2. But though God be thus urgent about the salvation of man, yet He is quick and peremptory in the destruction of many. Although He seem to come slowly to punish man, yet His hand will fall heavily upon those who abuse His patience. 3. Answer God’ s urgency with you to accept of gospel-provision. (1) Be urgent with your own hearts to turn to the Lord by faith; and then be as urgent to bless His name for turning them. (2) Urge your hearts to turn from all sin by true repentance. II. THE SENT OUT. 1. All the prophets. 2. Pre-eminently, Christ Himself. 3. The servants of Christ. III. THE TIME OF SENDING THE . Supper-time; the fulness of time, the very nick of time for man’ s redemption. Now is the accepted time; improve it. IV. THE MANNER IN WHICH THE MESSAGE IS TO BE . By word of mouth. Uses. 1. Information. (1) The gift of utterance is very requisite for a minister (Ephesians 6:19). (2) The calling of the ministry is very useful (Titus 1:2-3). 2. Ministers should not only preach with their tongues, but likewise with their hearts feelingly, and with their lives. 3. Let us be thankful to God that the Word of faith is so nigh us in the preaching of the Word (Romans 10:6-8). Manna falls at our very doors; we have but to step out and take it up. V. THE WORD OF --“ Come.” 1. Whither God would have us come. (1) To ourselves (Luke 15:17). (2) To His people (Hebrews 12:22). (3) To Him. (a) The Father would have us come (Jeremiah 4:1). (b) The Son would have us come (Matthew 11:28). (c) The Spirit would have us come (Revelation 22:17). He comes to us, that we may come to Him to get victory over our sin. 2. By what means we should come. (1) By the use of all means of grace (Psalms 95:6). (2) By the exercise of the truth of grace, and especially the acting of faith Hebrews 11:6). (3) By pressing forward towards the perfection of grace (Philippians 3:12). 3. In what manner we should come. (1) Humbly (Luke 15:19). (2) Speedily (Luke 19:6). (3) Joyfully, as we come to a feast. VI. THE OF ALL THINGS. 1. The mind of God, concerning the salvation of all His elect, is ready 2 Timothy 2:19). 2. The work of Christ for the recovery of lost man is ready (Hebrews 10:12). The incarnation, passion, resurrection, and ascension of Christ, are all over. 3. The remission of sin upon the score and account of Christ is ready Nehemiah 9:17; 2 Corinthians 5:19). 4. The glorious inheritance in heaven is now ready (Hebrews 2:16). Uses. 1. For information. Man has nothing to do toward his own happiness, but to receive what God has prepared, and to walk as he has received it. The receiving is by faith. 2. For caution. Though all things be said to be “ now ready,” we must not think, as if all were hut now ready: we must know that Christ is the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world (Revelation 13:8), so that Christ’ s blood in its virtue, and God’ s acceptation was of force for man’ s salvation long before He came personally into the world. Then, again: though all things are said to be “ now ready,” yet there is much to be done before all the elect come to heaven; many enemies of Christ must be pulled down, etc. 3. Be exhorted to answer this readiness of God. (1) Be ready to receive this grace of the gospel. (2) Be ready to express this grace of the gospel. (a) In acts of piety towards Him. (b) In acts of charity towards men. (John Crump.) The invitation Now we come to our Lord’ s description of what a really religious life is. He gives it to us under the figure of a feast. Let us try and get some lessons from this; for when our Lord employs a figure, we may be sure He has a meaning in it. What are the thoughts connected with the figure? In the first place, A FEAST IS FOR THE OF OUR NATURAL , is it not? We go to a feast, not that we may be hungry, but that we may be fed. This entry is longer than a Bible module can hold. The rest is at https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/bi/ Luke 14:25-26 If any man come to Me, and hate not, etc The statute-law of discipleship I. THE NATURE OF THIS OF A TRUE OF CHRIST. 1. An esteem of Christ above all. 2. The heart renounces its property in all things of the world, in the day of its closing with Jesus Christ. 3. The soul resigns all to the Lord; lays down all at His feet, to be disposed of as He will. 4. The soul accepts of Christ for, and instead of the things resigned. 5. The soul is disposed to part with them, when the Lord calls for them; has an habitual readiness to part with them for Christ. 6. There is in the soul a new power of living, without them, on Jesus Christ; a life which is an absolute mystery to every Christless soul (John 6:57). We now proceed-- II. To confirm the doctrine of the text, or show, that no man can be a true disciple of Christ, to whom Christ is not dearer than what is dearest to Him in the world. For this purpose, consider-- 1. That the soul cannot truly lay hold on Christ, hut it must of necessity part with the world--“ No man can serve two masters” (Matthew 6:24). 2. It is impossible that the love of God, and the love of the world (the persons and things of the world), can at the same time be predominant in the heart. One of them must of necessity be uppermost. 3. That if Christ be not dearer to us than the world, fhere is no universal resignation, which is necessary to prove the sincerity of the heart. 4. That if Christ is not loved supremely, there is a root wanting, the fruit of which is necessary to evidence sincerity. Because of the deceitfulness of your heart, it will be good to be very distinct and particular in this point, on which eternity depends. In consequence I would advise you-- (1) To give up with all your lusts. You have held the grip long, let it now go--“ Ephraim shall say, What have I to do any more with idols?” Hosea 14:8). (2) To lay down at the Lord’ s feet your nearest and dearest relations, so as that you may never break with Christ for them: His favour, truths, and ways, must be dearer to you than they. And sure I am, ii thou meetest with Christ at His table, thou wilt say, “ Henceforth know we no man after the flesh.” (3) Lay down at the Lord’ s feet your substance in the world, be it great or small, houses and lands, goods, etc., that He may dispose of them as He may see meet. (4) Lay down at the Lord’ s feet your credit and esteem in the world. This is often a great idol, and goes betwixt many a man and Christ. (5) Lay down at the Lord’ s feet your ease and liberty (Acts 21:13). (6) Lay down at Christ’ s feet your desires. Your desires shall be to your spiritual Husband, who shall choose for you your inheritance (Psalms 47:4). (7) Lay down at the Lord’ s feet your life. Let your bodies be given now to the Lord, not only for service, but also for a sacrifice, if He requires it. I now proceed-- III. To offer some reasons why Christ is dearer to His true disciples than what is dearest to them in the world. Among other reasons the following are mentioned. 1. Because to every true disciple, sin, of all bitter things, is the bitterest. 2. That God is man’ s chief end; and when He made him, He made him pointing towards Himself as His chief end (Ecclesiastes 7:29). 3. That as there unquestionably is, so they have seen, a vanity and emptiness in all things of the world, even the things that are dearest to Psalms 119:96). 4. Because they find Christ of all objects the most suitable to them, and therefore He cannot but be dearer to them than the dearest thing in the world. 5. Because He is their greatest benefactor; His unparalleled benefits command their hearts to be all His: He has done for them what none other could do. 6. Because they are sensible that whatever they have in the world, they have it through and by Him. And so they behold Him as the fountain of all their mercies. Thus-- (1) They have the enjoyment of their blessings through Him. (2) They have the comfort of them through Him. 7. Because, if it were not so, Christ would have no Church in the world. If imprisoning, banishing, spoiling of goods, fields and scaffolds reeking with the blood of the saints, would have deterred all persons from following Christ, there had been no Church in the world this day. But God will have a Church in spite of devils and wicked men. (T. Boston, D. D.) Christ worthy of our highest esteem I. WHAT IS IN THE LOVE HERE SPOKEN OF. 1. An esteem and valuation of Christ above all worldly enjoyments whatsoever. 2. A choosing Him before all other enjoyments. 3. Love to Christ implies service and obedience to Him; the same love that when it is between equals is friendship, when it is from an inferior to a superior is obedience. Love, of all the affections, is the most active; hence by those who express the nature of things by hieroglyphics, we have it compared to fire, certainly for nothing more than its activity. The same arms that embrace a friend, will be as ready to act for Him. 4. Love to Christ implies an acting for Him in opposition to all other things; and this is the undeceiving, infallible test of a true affection. 5. Love to Christ imports a full acquiescence in Him alone, even in the absence and want of all other felicities: men can embrace Christ with riches, Christ with honour, Christ with interest, and abundantly satisfy themselves in so doing; though perhaps all the time they put but a cheat upon themselves, thinking that they follow Christ, while indeed they run only after the loaves. II. THE REASONS AND MOTIVES THAT MAY INDUCE US TO THIS LOVE. 1. That He is best able to reward our love. 2. That He has shown the greatest love to us. III. THE SIGNS, MARKS, AND WHEREBY WE MAY DISCERN IT. 1. A frequent and indeed a continual thinking of Him. “ Where your treasure is,” says our Saviour, “ there will your heart be also.” That is, whatsoever you love and value, that will be sure to take up your thoughts. 2. The second sign of a sincere love to Christ, is a willingness to leave the world, whensoever God shall think fit to send His messenger of death to summon us to a nearer converse with Christ. “ I desire to be dissolved, and to be with Christ,” says St. Paul. 3. A third, and indeed the principal sign of a sincere love to Christ, is a zeal for His honour, and an impatience to hear or see any indignity offered Him. A person truly pious will mourn for other men’ s sins, as well as for his own. (R. South, D. D.) Loving Christ above all, the character of His true disciples I. Let us consider WHAT IT IS TO BE WORTHY OF CHRIST. And this we find is very well explained in the passage just now referred to by this expression, “ he cannot be My disciple” ; that is, ha cannot be a sincere Christian; he may call himself by that name. II. To consider THE LOVE OF CHRIST AS IN WITH, AND TO THE LOVE OF FRIENDS, and all other worldly interests. Such affections have deep and firm foundation in nature and reason. As this may be justly attributed to God as its Author, and His wisdom and goodness shine in it, religion is not intended to root it out, or in any degree to weaken the bonds of humanity. But the immediate ends of these natural relations are not the highest ends of our being. We are capable of nobler pursuits and higher enjoyments than the ease and conveniences of our present condition. It is the predominant affection which constitutes the character and temper of a man. The covetous is he in whom the love of wealth prevails over all other inclinations; the ambitious, in whom the love of honour; the voluptuous, in whom the love of sensual pleasures. Each of these will sacrifice every other interest to his idol, and every other desire, which is even natural to him, yet not so strong. But to preserve an universal harmony in the mind of man, and to constitute a truly religious and virtuous character, the love of God and of goodness ought to be predominant. Other affections are not to be rooted out, but this must be supreme; and they gratified and indulged only by its permission, and so far as not to be inconsistent with it. This is the true meaning of my text. For what I would principally observe for illustrating this subject is, that the love of Christ, and the love of God and goodness, is just the same. And as moral excellence is the inseparable character of the Deity, so it is absurd to pretend that we love Him without loving it; that we love the holiest and best of all Beings without loving holiness and goodness itself. Again, let us consider that to be worthy of Christ, to be His true disciples, and obtain His acceptance, it is absolutely necessary that we should adhere to Him inviolably, that we should hold fast the profession of our faith without wavering, and be stedfast and immovable in good works. For they only who endure to the end shall be saved, and to them alone who remain faithful unto death, the crown of life is promised. Now, the only possible security of this stedfastness, is love to Christ, and to religion and virtue above all. I shall only add that a stedfast and universal obedience to Him is imported in our being worthy of Christ, or His sincere disciples. It remains now that we make some application of this subject; which may be the better done, because our Saviour Himself has gone before us in applying it to one of the highest and most difficult points in the practice of religion, that is, to the case of suffering persecution. For can there be any sincere affection to God, to our Saviour, and to His cause of pure religion and virtue, if it be not a prevailing affection, stronger than any other, which opposes it in the heart? But, we may apply this also to other and mere ordinary purposes in the practice of religion. If the commanding love of Christ be a sufficient defence against the strongest temptations, it may well support the mind against lesser ones. Our affection to our friends and worldly interests may mislead us by flattery as well as terror: and their insinuating smiles may prove a snare as well as their frowns. Besides this, there are other temptations which derive their force from the same root, the love of our intimate friends; and are only defeated by the same principle, a superior affection to Christ. There is nothing more common in the world than for men’ s families to be snares to them; while to make a large, or (as they pretend) a competent provision for them, they violate their consciences, and sin against God, either by direct injustice, or, at least, by such immoderate solicitude and incessant toil as is inconsistent with piety, leaving no room for the exercises of it; or by such narrowness, and withholding more than is meet, as is directly contrary to charity. But let us remember that this is to render ourselves unworthy of Christ, by loving sons or daughters, or other worldly interests more than Him. Besides, distresses befalling our friends, their deaths and misfortunes, which, considering the vicissitude of human affairs, are always to be expected, and they are to some minds, at least, among the most sensibly affecting trials in life; these are to be supported on the same principle. (J. Abernethy, M. A.) Lore for Christ greater than love for a sister There is a beautiful story, which some of you will probably know, as it forms the groundwork of one of the best tales of modern times, and which affords a noble example of what I have just been saying. The daughter of a poor Scotch farmer--her name was Helen Walker--after her father’ s death, supported her mother by her unceasing labour, and by submitting to every privation. She had a sister, many years younger, whom she brought up and educated, and loved as her own child. This sister, however, brought great grief and shame upon her. She fell into foul sin. She was delivered of a child. The child was found dead. The mother was tried for child-murder. This trial was a terrible one for poor Helen. Notwithstanding her sister’ s sin, she could not forget how she had loved her; she could not cast her out of her heart: she longed that her sister’ s life should be spared, so that she might have time to repent. A fearful temptation assailed her. It seemed as though her sister’ s life hung upon her word--a single falsehood might save her. If she would but say that her sister had made any preparations for the birth of the child, or had ever mentioned it to her, her sister would be acquitted. Her sister implored her; her love for her sister rent her heart; but Helen said, It is impossible for me to swear to a falsehood. Whatever betide, I must speak the truth. Thus the sister was condemned to death; and the thoughtless looked upon Helen as hardhearted. But she had shown that she loved God above her sister. She now showed how deeply she loved her sister, with a love far deeper than it would have been, had she attempted to save her life by a lie. She resolved to take up a petition herself to the King, to spare her sister’ s life. She walked to London barefoot, a journey of above four hundred miles; such a journey in those days, a hundred years ago, being far more difficult and dangerous than it is now; and though she was only a poor, helpless peasant, such was the energy and boldness with which her love inspired her, that she gained the King’ s pardon, carried it back on foot, and arrived just in time to save her sister’ s life. I have told you this story, because it is such a beautiful example of the right proportion between love and duty, whereby both are greatly strengthened--of the right proportion between our love to God and our love to our earthly friends. It is an example too, which if we kept it in mind, might often help to admonish us of our duty. For the temptation which Helen Walker resisted is a very common one, and comes across us in a number of shapes. We are often tempted to do something that is not quite right, to say something that is not strictly true, for the advantage, as we deem it, of those whom we love; and because our love is feeble and shallow, and shrinks from pain and sacrifices, we yield to the temptation. Sometimes the temptation may be very strong. You, who are fathers, may see your wives and children suffering from want. At such a time evil thoughts will rise up; you will think you may do anything to save your wife and children from starving. So you may, and ought to do everything, everything in your power, and even beyond your power, provided it be not against the law of God. Whatever is, you should shrink from, remembering our Lord’ s words, that, unless you love Him above wife and child, you cannot be worthy of Him. (J. C. Hare, M. A.) Love of Christ greater than love of relatives While discussing this passage one day, I noticed that a beam of sunlight had fallen upon the mass of glowing coal in the grate, and where the sunlight fell the bright redness was turned into absolute blackness. “ Ah!” thought I, “ there is the meaning of this passage.” As the glowing coal appears black beneath the far more intense light of the sun, so Christ asks that the light of our love for Him should be so intense as to render our earthly loves even as hatreds in comparison. In reality, although the red coal appears black under the sunlight, it is still as hot as before, yea, hotter than before, because of the added heat from the sun; so our love for friends and relatives, though it should appear as hatred beneath our love for Christ, will not be quenched by it, but added to, and rendered deeper and purer. (H. Stanley.) Christ demanding hatred The word “ hate” is a strong word, and I believe that it points both to strong feeling and strong action. The words “ hate his own life also” are the key to the whole aphorism. A disciple is to hate his relatives and friends in the same sense in which he is to hate himself. In what sense, then, can a man hate himself? He can hate what is mean and base in himself. He can hate his own selfish life. To cling to life is natural; to desire ease and comfort is natural; to gratify the appetites is natural; but all this natural life, whenever it comes into collision with the spiritual side of our being, may be even hated. It is not merely that the Christian may, after a struggle, prefer to remain true to God and Christ, rather than gratify the selfish cravings of his own natural life; he may positively hate these selfish cravings when they are tempting him to forsake his duty. The word may be paradoxical; but is it too strong? Have we never felt disgusted at our own selfishness? Have we never experienced a strong revulsion of feeling when we have been tempted by “ our own life” --by our natural liking for what is agreeable to that life--to shirk our duty, and to do something mean and base? In the old Greek drama, Admetos is disgusted with the life which, in selfish cowardice, he has purchased by the sacrifice of his wife Alkestis. And we can well conceive that many a Christian martyr may have felt disgusted with his own life, when he was tempted to preserve it at the cost of denying his Lord. It is thus, then, that a man may hate himself. Not in the bald, literal sense; for he still cares for his own true best life, and wishes that to be developed and strengthened. But he does: in a sense, hate himself when the self in him rises in rebellion against God and Christ and duty. Now, in this sense also, a man may hate his relatives and friends. He may hate that in them which is mean and base. He may hate that in them which seeks to drag him away from Christ. (T. C.Finlayson.) Luke 14:27 And whosoever doth not bear his cross, etc On taking up the cross Christiani sunt cruciani, says Luther, Christians are cross-bearers. It is in their hearts to bear the cross, whatever it be, whensoever Christ shall require it; and they do actually bear it whenever they are called to it. They do not flinch from it, nor decline it, nor turn from it, by any indirect or unlawful course. I. WHAT IS MEANT BY THE CROSS. 1. The cross includes loss and damage, the greatest losses as well as the least; the loss of all outward things, as well as the loss of any. When Christ was nailed to the cross, He was bereaved of all, and fastened to it naked; He had not so much as His garments left; they who brought Him to the cross divided these amongst them. He that is not willing to part with all, to follow Christ, when he cannot fully and faithfully follow Him without quitting all, he is not worthy of Him, unworthy the name of a Christian. 2. It speaks shame and reproach. It was serviie supplicium, a base ignominious suffering, to which none were exposed but the vilest of men. It was a suffering proper to slaves and fugitives; there was not the meanest freeman amongst the Romans but was above it. Hence shame and the cross are joined together (Hebrews 12:2). Hence that expression, “ bearing His reproach” (Hebrews 13:13), i.e., bearing the cross. No coming to Christ but in this posture, when the Lord calls to it. 3. It imports pain and torture. The cross was a most grievous and painful suffering. Ausonius calls it paenae extremum, the extremity of torture. And Cicero, crudelissimum teterrimumque supplicium, the most cruel and horrid suffering. When Ignatius was going to be exposed to the fury of wild beasts for the name of Christ, he cries, “ Now I begin to be a disciple.” 4. It imports death itself. The cross was ultimum supplicium, the last thing that could be suffered. Cruelty was herein terminated, and could go no further, at least to the sense of the sufferer. It was the worst kind of death. II. WHAT IT IS TO BEAR THE CROSS. 1. You must make account of it. Calculate what it will cost you. 2. A resolution to bear the cross, whatever it be, how heavy, or grievous, or tedious soever it may prove; a firm, and hearty, and settled resolution to bear it, is a virtual bearing of it beforehand (verse 33). 3. You must be always ready for the cross, always preparing for it, whether it seem near, or whether it seem further off. One paraphraseth the words thus, “ Whosoever doth not come to Me with a preparation of mind to suffer anything rather than part with Me, he is not for My turn.” This is to bear the cross daily, as Christ requires (Luke 9:1-62.). Though every day do not afford a cross, yet every day we bear the cross by daily preparing for it 1 Corinthians 15:31). Even when the cross seems far off, much more when it is in view, you must be preparing for it, if you be Christians indeed; and the Lord will take your readiness to bear it for a bearing of it, when He sees good to prevent it. 4. It speaks actual undergoing it when it is laid on us. But when the Lord brings it to us, we must actually take it up. He is no disciple for Christ that will not do it. III. THE MANNER OF BEARING THE CROSS. 1. A Christian endeavours to bear the cross patiently. That while the cross oppresses his outward man, he may possess his soul in patience. Not the patience of the Stoics, a senseless stupidness; nor the patience of the heathen, a mere yielding to necessity; but a due sense of the pressure, with a quiet submission to the hand of God, whoever be the instrument, without murmuring, repining, disquietment, or despondency. 2. He endeavours to bear it cheerfully. That which is bearing the cross here is taking up the cross (chap. 9.). Christ bore His cross willingly; Simon of Cyrene was compelled to bear that cross. Christ would have us come after Him, bear it as He did. It should not be a forced, but a voluntary act. 3. He endeavours to bear it fruitfully. The cross is dry wood, and so was Aaron’ s rod; but as that blossomed, so does this bring forth fruit, when improved (Hebrews 12:11). This puts the followers of Christ upon seeking the sweet fruits of peace and holiness in the bowels of devouring calamities; to get spiritual gain and advantage by outward loss; to grow richer unto God by worldly impoverishment; to converse more with God when separated from friends and relations; to value more the love of Christ when they smart by the world’ s hatred; to partake more of holiness when he partakes less of the ease, peace, plenty of the world; to make use of the cross for the crucifying of the flesh; to make sin more hateful and dreadful, the conscience more tender, the world less tempting, more contemptible, grace more active and lively, the word more sweet and effectual, prayer more fervent and affectionate, the appearing of Christ more lovely and desirable, the conversation more heavenly. To hear the cross as a disciple of Christ, is to bring forth more fruit in bearing of it. (D. Clarkson, B. D.) The Christian’ s cross I. THE CROSS IS THE LOT OF . Persecution and troubles have always attended the people of God. And the reasons of it are evident. 1. The malice of Satan, who knowing himself to be cast off by God, he hates God with an implacable hatred; and since the Lord is above the reach of his malice, he falls upon those who are dearest to Him, the people of God. 2. The enmity of the world. The world would be sure to cross, to afflict and persecute what it hates; and the disciples of Christ are hated by the John 15:19). Not only that part of the world which evidently lies in wickedness, but the more refined part of it which dresseth up itself in a form of godliness. Those who have no more but the form, hate those that haw the power, because this is a real reproof and conviction of the vanity and insufficiency of outward forms, how specious soever; and that which detects them is hated by them (1 John 5:19). 3. There is a necessity of the cross upon a manifold account. (1) To distinguish true disciples from hypocrites and pretenders. When Christ may be professed and followed with ease, and safety, and credit, multitudes will follow Him, every man will profess Him whose hearts are not with Him. But when the cross comes, that makes a distinction. (2) To try His disciples, that He may have an experiment of their affection and faithfulness to Him: “ Who is on my side? Who?” says Jehu (2 Kings 9:33). So says Christ, when He brings out the cross; let Me now see who is for Me, let Me see who it is that will bear the cross for Me. (3) For the advantage of grace. A Christian is not complete unless he have on his whole armour; and it is the cross puts us upon putting of it on; it would lie rusting by us, if we were not roused to the use of it by the frequent approaches of the cross. (4) To take us off from the world. The cross embitters the world to us, and confutes those vain conceits which make us fond of it. The vizard falls off by which it had deluded us, and now we may perceive what aa impostor it was, when, for all its fair promises, we meet with nothing but vanity, and enmity, and vexation, and hard usage. And will it not seem lovely? Or can we doat on it any longer? The cross lets us not only see, but feel what the world is. (5) To tame the flesh, and keep it under, which otherwise would grow headstrong, and bear down all the restraints of grace, and hurry us into carnal excess--“ Every branch that beareth fruit He purgeth it” (John 15:1-27.). He lops off the luxuriances of natural corruption. And how is this done? Why, a sharp cross will be effectual to do it, when the Lord takes it into His hand and useth it for this purpose! (6) To endear heaven to us. The ark was more acceptable to Noah’ s dove when she found no rest to the soles of her feet on the face of the earth. II. A CANNOT AVOID THE CROSS WITHOUT SINNING AGAINST CHRIST. III. HE THAT WILL SIN AGAINST CHRIST TO AVOID THE CROSS, CANNOT BE A . This being proved, it will appear an evident truth, that he that doth not, will not, bear the cross, is not, cannot be a Christian. (D. Clarkson, B. D.) Luke 14:28-30 For which of you, intending to build a tower The Christian builder Our Lord on purpose mentioned a tower rather than any other building, perhaps to signify that the top of our spiritual building must reach to heaven, or otherwise it will be vain to build. A Christian, then, is a man that builds a tower, a noble building, not a cottage, and therefore should count the cost. I. WHAT SORT OF A TOWER THE BUILDS. 1. A tower is no small building, but a noble structure; and so is the believer’ s spiritual building. (1) Infinite wisdom is the contriver of it. (2) The Lord Jesus Christ is the foundation of it. 2. It is a noble building, or a famous tower, because the design of it is to preserve the soul from all its enemies, and from all dangers whatsoever, to eternal life. 3. This spiritual building may be called a tower, because a Christian is a soldier, and this building is to be his fortress; and if he builds on Christ, or rightly upon the only foundation, he need not fear all the gunshot of Satan, sin, the flesh, and the world, though he must expect to be battered severely by these enemies. 4. It may be called a tower, because the Christian builds for another world. He must gradually proceed until he reaches heaven. II. WHY IS A SAID TO BUILD THIS TOWER? 1. Because he is to believe in Jesus Christ, i.e., to build on Him. 2. But note that it is God who finds all the materials. III. EVERY SHOULD THE MATTER SO WELL AS TO COUNT THE COST. Why? 1. Because it will be a very costly building to him. (1) He must give up all his cursed sins and lusts, though as dear to him in times past as a right hand or eye. (2) He must expect it will cost him the loss of whatsoever he once accounted gain. (3) He must part with all his former companions, and expect they will mock and deride him, and may be his own wife also. 2. Because great storms may rise, and floods come, and beat upon his high tower; and he should count the damage he may sustain in such storms. 3. Because he is not able either to begin, nor to build, or lay one stone by his own strength; and if he knows not this, or does not utterly despair of any power or ability of his own, he will never be able to finish, and then men “ will mock him,” etc. 4. He must account how rich, how strong, and able he is in Jesus Christ; and if He knows that Christ is his strength, he counts the cost aright; and if he depends wholly, constantly, and believingly upon Jesus Christ, he need not fear but he shall have wherewith to finish this famous tower, i.e., the salvation of his precious soul. Application: 1. This reprehends all rash and inconsiderate persons, who, through some sudden flash of zeal (which may prove like a lava flood) set out in a visible profession of Christ and the gospel. 2. This may inform us of the reason there are so many who grow cold, and soon falter, and fall off, or decline in their zeal and seeming love to Christ, His truth, and people. They counted not the cost--what corruptions they must mortify, what temptations they must withstand, what reproaches they must expect to meet with, what enemies they may find, and what relations they may enrage and stir up against them. 3. Let all from hence be exhorted to count the cost before they begin to build, and not expose themselves by their inconsiderateness to the reproach of men, either to the grief of the godly, or to the contempt and scorn of the wicked. 4. Yet let none from hence be discouraged, or decline closing with Christ, or with His people; for if they are sincere and gracious persons, they will understand that the almighty power of God is engaged to help them. 5. Count also all the external charge, which a visible profession of Christ may expose you to; for the interest of Christ, and the charge of His Church, must be borne. 6. How great is the work of a Christian. No lazy life. 7. Let all learn on what foundation to build, and not refuse the chief cornerstone. Depend wholly upon God in Christ. His money pays for all. Yet you shall not miscarry for want of money to finish, if in all your wants you go to Him by faith and prayer. (B. Keach.) Importance of consideration Nelaton, the great French surgeon, once said that if he had four minutes in which to perform an operation on which a life depended, he would take one minute to consider how best to do it. (Baxendale’ s Anecdotes.) Purposes should be weighed Before proceeding to any work, we should weigh it. Letters are charged in the post office according to weight. I have written and sealed a letter containing several sheets. I desire that it should pass; I think it will; but I know well that it will not be allowed to pass because I desire that it should or think that it will. I know well it will be tested by imperial weights and measures. Before I plunge it beyond my reach, I place it on a balance before me, not constructed to please my desire, but honestly adjusted to the legal standard. I weigh it there, and check it myself by the very rules which government will apply. So should we weigh our purposes in the balance, before we launch them forth in action. (W. Arnot.) The religious life exceeds human resource He is not, in our Lord’ s estimation, the true spiritual builder, such as will bring his work to a successful end, who, counting the cost, finds that he has enough, as he supposes to finish the building which he has begun; but the wise and happy builder is he who counts and discovers that he has not enough, that the work far exceeds any resources at his command, and who thereupon forsakes all that he has, all vain imagination of a spiritual wealth of his own; and therefore proceeds to build, not at his own charges at all, but altogether at the charges of God, waiting upon Him day by day for new supplies of strength. (Archbishop Trench.) Counting the cost I. TRUE IS COSTLY. A poor man is suddenly made a prince; it will cost him the giving up of his former manners, and will involve him in new duties and cares. A man is set on the road to heaven as a pilgrim: does he pay anything to enter by the wicket-gate? I trow not: free grace admits him to the sacred way. But when that man is put on the road to heaven it will cost him something. It will cost him earnestness to knock at the wicket-gate, and sweat wherewith to climb the Hill Difficulty; it will cost him tears to find his roll again when he has lost it in the arbour of ease; it will cost him great care in going down the Valley of Humiliation; it will cost him resistance unto blood when he stands foot to foot with Apollyon in conflict. What, then, is the expense? 1. If yea would be Christ’ s, and have His salvation, you must love Him beyond every other person in this world. 2. Self must be hated. I must mortify the flesh with its affections and lusts, denying myself anything and everything which would grieve the Saviour, or would prevent my realizing perfect conformity to Him. 3. If we would follow the Saviour, we must bear our cross. He who has the smile of the ungodly, must look for the frown of God. 4. We must follow Christ, i.e., act as He acted. 5. Unreserved surrender of all to Jesus. If you possess a farthing that is your own and not your master’ s, Christ is not your master. II. WISDOM THAT WE SHOULD COUNT THE COST. 1. If you do not count the cost, you will not be able to carry out your resolves. It is a great building, a great war. Faith and repentance are a lifework. 2. To fail in this great enterprise will involve terrible defeat. Half-hearted Christians, half-hearted religious men, may not be scoffed at in the public streets to their faces, but they are common butts of ridicule behind their backs. False professors are universally despised. Oh! if you must be lost, be lost as anything but hypocrites. III. COST IT MAY, TRUE IS WORTH THE COST. 1. The present blessings of true religion are worth all the cost. 2. What recompense comes for all cost in the consolation afforded by true godliness in the article of death? 3. Christ asks you to give up nothing that will injure you. 4. Christ does not ask you to do anything that He has not done Himself. (C. H.Spurgeon.) Ill-considered beginnings This parable stands in juxtaposition with that of the Great Supper, and is plainly designed to supplement its lesson, and preclude any perversion of its meaning. In the one you have the freedom of gospel privileges, in the other you have the costliness of gospel responsibilities. You that are following me so readily, says the Saviour, “ consider what you do.” As builders of a spiritual house, are you incurring a new and a serious outlay; are you prepared to face it? As warriors on a spiritual campaign, you are challenging new and uncompromising enemies; are you able to confront them? Far better leave an undertaking alone, than, after starting it, have thereafter to abandon it, especially when, as in the present case, it attracts the observation of so many watchful eyes, and provokes the resentment of so many jealous hearts. Beware lest you waken the world’ s hostility by your pretensions to strength when you begin, and live to incur its mockery by your confession of weakness when you desist.” That, then, is the drift of this passage. Of course, only one side of the truth is here brought before us. It is not only on account of the views of outsiders, their spitefulness when a man commences, and their contempt when he leaves off, that our Saviour bids those who would join Him count the cost. There are other and worse consequences to be faced by him who begins and who ceases in this matter, than the pointing of a worldling’ s finger or the wagging of a worldling’ s tongue, and for these we must look elsewhere. But so far as it goes the parable is both pertinent and pungent, the lesson of it plain, the application unavoidable. He that will build a tower necessarily invites attention, provokes scrutiny, sets speculation astir, and these not always of the kindest or most favourable sort. Publicly he succeeds, if success be in store for him; but publicly, too, he must fail. Exactly so is it with the assuming of a Christian position. Let a man bear in mind that for this, if for no other reason, he is wise to think well ere beginning, remembering that the eye of the world is upon him. Not only is this matter of a Christian profession and a spiritual life a necessarily public undertaking; it is also a very costly one. And the higher the ideal we erect for ourselves, the more important and commanding the position we assume, the greater the outlay we must face. True, let me remind you again, the building of the tower may turn out in the end the most gloriously profitable investment that is open to us. When the walls are complete, and the headstone brought forth with shoutings of “ grace, grace unto it,” it may prove a magnificent and an everlasting habitation, repaying a thousandfold, both in shelter and in splendour, the disbursements its erection occasioned. But, meanwhile, these disbursements may be trying. And let every man weigh the solemn fact, the assuming of a Christian profession and the maintenance of the Christian life may in some cases involve a serious price. Nor will any be able to say that the estimates for the building of the tower have been kept in the background by Scripture; they are clearly drawn up, and faithfully presented. And what is the expenditure they specify? This among other things (let the context testify): the hatred of father and mother and sisters and brethren, the losing of one’ s own life, the taking up of the cross, the forsaking all a man hath. These be strong words, but, brethren, they are Christ’ s, and there are those, many and many a one, who have found them no whit beyond the facts. This brings me to the third point in the parable, for which we are now prepared, namely, the consequence that too often takes place from a rash and ill-considered beginning. For a time the building proceeds. He has founded it in accordance with God’ s appointment, he rears it in conformity with God’ s plan. But there comes a period when the enterprise gets costly. It touches him on the side of his comfort, touches him on the side of his pride, and the unaccustomed drain begins. It is first a call on his time, time he wanted to use an he liked; next a wrench of affection, the severance of a tie which was dear to the flesh, but which Christian principle forbade; next, the sudden disappointing of desire--desire which only a disciple of Christ would possibly have been asked to deny himself; then an inroad on his purse. And thus there comes a time when in his own heart of hearts the ominous uncertainty begins, even though shame for a time makes him persevere. “ Have I not gone too far?” he is now beginning to ask of himself, “ and may not this tower of mine bear curtailing, without any loss to the general design? God will make allowance for my poverty, and the world will be unaware of the difference, or approve of it.” So, lesser inconsistencies creep in; lesser incompletenesses make themselves manifest; there is a saving here and a saving there. Already the man’ s life has fallen below his profession; the execution of the building is not up to the plan, and the end of it all throws its shadow before. We all know what that was. Alas, he had not sufficiently examined himself; he had not sufficiently counted the cost. He did not know all he was doing when he separated himself from the world’ s companionship, and resolved to take up the cross of Christ. Better never to have asserted a superiority to the world at all, than, having assumed the position by leaving it, thereafter to renounce it by going back. When Pliable re-entered the City of Destruction with the mud of his expedition bespattering his clothes, and its terrors still pale on his face, the city was moved round about trim, and we read that some called him foolish for going, and others called him wise for coming back. But I can fancy that even these did not quite take the erring one back to their arms, nor forget the facts of his escapade, and that all the time he went in and out in the midst of them the consciousness never faded from their hearts, the sneer never passed from their lips. And when the man who has begun to build the tower of a religious profession, and is compelled to leave it unfinished, slinks back to the comrades his enterprise has offended, saying, “ Brothers, I find I have made a mistake; I am, after all, no better than yourselves; I will henceforth make amends for my folly by dwelling in a house and sitting at a table like your own,” think you that the world will have any sympathy or respect for him? It may applaud him to his face, but behind his back there will ever be the pointed finger and the whispered scoff: “ That man began to build, and was not able to finish.” For, oh! here is the solemn thought. The man may change his mind, but the fabric he has reared remains notwithstanding, the monument of his pride and his folly alike, unhonoured, untenanted, and unfinished. There the building stands, in the words of seeming sincerity the man has spoken, in the Christian teaching he has published, in the Christian schemes he has launched, all which he has long since abandoned, because he had failed to lay his account with the difficulties, had forgotten to count the cost. And through all time the unfinished fabric shall remain, the sorrow of the Church and the triumph of the world, ay, and perhaps throughout eternity too, as the rebuke of conscience and the taunt of the lost. Hitherto we have moved only along the strict lines of the parable, and narrowed ourselves to the special thought that the Saviour was enforcing at the time. But there are several thoughts in connection with the passage before us, which, though not exactly in it, are so closely akin to it and so naturally suggested by it, that we cannot quite omit them. 1. And first, are there any among us who have been saying to themselves, “ But we have been building the tower. Ours has been a Christian profession ever since our earliest years. And really we have had no experience of the difficulties of which you speak. So far as we know, our operations have wakened no one’ s envy, and provoked no one’ s hostility.” And do you think, therefore, that the statements already made as to the costliness of a Christian profession are overdrawn and exaggerated, suitable perhaps to the times in which the Saviour spoke, but scarcely suitable to our own. Remember, however, ye who speak thus, that there is an evil quite as bad as unfinished building, and that is unstable building. 2. Then, again, it follows from all this, that we are to be cautious and careful in our judgments as to those around us, whom we might have expected to build, but who seem to hesitate. Of the utterly indifferent, who have never yet faced the matter nor once realized the claims of Christ, we do not, of course, speak. But there are others who have not yet taken up a Christian position, not from want of thought, but rather because they are thinking so deeply. They, at any rate, are sensible of the cost, and are settling down to count it. And that is better than the conduct of the man who complacently offers God a service that costs him nothing, and perseveres in his presumption, or of the man who rashly begins what is costly, and then desists. 3. But thirdly, a word in closing to this very class,--the backward and reluctant. Brother, you are counting the cost. You do well to count it. Christ here counsels you to count it. And you feel, do you, that it is a risk that you cannot honestly face? Far better, do you say, to be a consistent man of the world than an imperfect professor of religion--like him who began the tower, and was not able to finish? True, again; but is your state of hesitation therefore defensible? Do you think Christ bids any man sit down and count the cost of the project only that he may renounce it altogether? Nay, verily; it is only that out of a deep sense of your weakness you may be driven to ask the needed strength from Himself, and, knowing that you have not the wherewithal to carry on the fabric He nevertheless seeks you to rear, you may be thrown on the helpfulness and ready supplies of Him who giveth liberally and upbraideth not. (W. Gray.) Religion The great fact which our Lord designs to illustrate is this--that numbers embrace the gospel from reasons that are not conclusive, and when stronger reasons, as they appear to them, arise in their intercourse with social life, they lightly renounce a creed they lightly adopted. I. First, there are THOSE WHO ACCEPT MERELY FROM IMPULSE, They are constitutionally the creatures of impulse. One man is the creature of feeling; another is more the creature of intellectual conviction; another is more borne away or decided in his course by fact. The Scotchman must have strong arguments; the Irishman must have eloquent appeals; and the Englishman must have hard matter of fact. Each nation has its idiosyncracy; each individual his peculiar temperament. Men who are the creatures of strong and impetuous emotion, subscribe to a creed, if I may use the expression, on the spur of the moment, and because they feel profoundly, they think they are convinced, and that the creed which they adopt is demonstrable and necessarily true. Now, I answer--this will not be sufficient to keep you steadfast. This is commencing the “ tower,” before you have laid a fit foundation; this is plunging into a conflict whilst you have not the weapons that will enable you to conquer. Feeling in religion is right; but feeling must not be all. An eloquent appeal may move you, but it ought not to decide you. II. In the second place, there is THE OF THE CROWD. Many men are religious in a crowd, who are most irreligious when alone. They like what seems to be popular; they can be Christians in the mass, but not Christians when insulated from others. Many a soldier is a coward when alone, but he becomes a hero in his rank and place in the battalion. III. There is a third sort of religion--THE OF MERE . People often accept the religion of those they love, and with whom they associate. IV. There are others whose religion is simply the religion of tradition. An outside robe; not the inner life. V. There is another religion which may be called, THE OF . This religion is nourished by all the beautiful and the romantic. It is the religion of Athens rather than the religion of Jerusalem--the religion of painters and of poets, rather than the religion of thinking and intellectual minds. VI. There is another religion which is equally false; and that is THE OF MERE FORM. It regards the outer aspect of things; not the inner light. This is not a religion that will stand. VII. And in the next place let me add, there is THE OF . If some profess Christianity from sentimental sympathy with its beautiful parts, and others profess Christianity from admiration of its ritual, or its form, there are others who profess Christianity from deep intellectual apprehension of it; and yet theirs is a religion that will not stand. VIII. And, lastly, there is another religion which will still more surprise you when I say that it also may be a religion that will not stand--THE OF . It is possible for conscience to be in religion, and yet your heart not to be the subject of living and experimental Christianity. You will go to the house of God because your conscience would torment you if you did not do so. But is this the beautiful, the blessed, the happy religion of Jesus? Such service is slavery; such duties drudgery; and such a religion is a ceaseless and perpetual penance, and not “ righteousness and peace in the Holy Ghost.” (J. Cumming, D. D.) On counting the cost THE COST THE . 1. In order to be the disciples of Christ, there is much that we must instantly renounce It is a profession of holiness: it, therefore, demands the immediate renunciation of criminal and forbidden pleasures. By His gospel, and by His Son, God has “ called us, not to uncleanness, but to holiness” ; so that he that despiseth the precepts of purity, despiseth not man but God. 2. The Christian profession is spiritual, and therefore requires the renunciation of the world. 3. In order to be a disciple it is necessary, in the concerns of conscience, to renounce every authority but that of Christ. The connection of a Christian with the Saviour is not merely that of a disciple with his teacher; it is the relation of a subject to his prince. “ One is your Master, even Christ.” 4. The cost of which we are speaking relates to what we are to expect. In general, to commence the profession of a Christian, is to enter upon a formidable and protracted warfare; it is to engage in an arduous contest, in which many difficulties are to be surmounted, many enemies overcome. The path that was trod by the great Leader is that which must be pursued by all his followers. 5. The cost of the Christian profession stands related to the term and duration of the engagement--“ Be thou faithful unto death.” It is coeval with life. II. WHY, WE SAY, IS IT FOR THOSE WHO PROPOSE TO BECOME TO “ COUNT THE COST” ? 1. It will obviate a sense of ridicule and of shame (see the context). 2. It will render the cost less formidable when it occurs. 3. If it diminishes the number of those who make a public and solemn profession, this will be more than retrieved by the superior character of those who make it. The Church will be spared much humiliation; Satan and the world deprived of many occasions of triumph. III. THE REASONS WHICH SHOULD OUR TO CHRIST, THE COST WHICH ATTENDS IT. 1. His absolute right to command or claim our attachment. 2. The pain attending the sacrifices necessary to the Christian profession greatly alleviated from a variety of sources. 3. No comparison betwixt the cost and the advantages. (R. Hall, M. A.) True heroism: counting the cost The cost of a Christian profession, if it be genuine and true. Alas! to be called Christian, to have the Christian name, to pass muster with the world as a Christian, is a light and little thing; and as John Bunyan well paints in his admirable portraiture of the false as well as the true professor; “ There are many By-ends, who like to go with religion when religion goes in silver slippers, who love to walk with him in the street, if the sun shines and the people applaud him, but such By-ends will not pass muster in the great day.” They may be esteemed members of the visible Church, but the question is, “ Will they stand the test in the great day, when the Lord comes to reckon with the servants?” If, indeed, we understand the Christian profession as Jesus portrays it, we cannot suppose it is a thing that does not require to be weighed well. There is a cost, there is a sacrifice to be counted upon, there are difficulties and dangers to be looked forward to, there is much to be borne up against that will be hard to bear, and on these things we are to decide. If a man must thus deny himself in order to be a soldier of his country, how much more must he deny himself to be a soldier under the Captain of his salvation? He requires us to renounce His enemies, who are our foes, let us not forget, though we naturally regard them as our friends. Our sympathies are with them, and our desires and tastes lead us captive after them. A man must make his election; will you have Jesus to be your Redeemer? But we must not glance only at what a man must forego, but at what he must undergo; and here is the part of the cost that many shrink from. For instance, a young man is entangled in the midst of worldly connections, and he begins to look more serious, and to go to church, and to read his Bible regularly, and to find out that he is disinclined to go to the theatre, and to scenes of rioting and revelling, and to join the multitude to do evil. He knows what will follow, but the cross must be taken up. He will be laughed at by the silly and ungodly. And therefore, brethren, there is a cost; a man must undergo shame and the cross; it will not do to dismiss it, to muzzle it, to step over it even in order to escape it, for, as the Master tells us, “ If any man will come after Me, he must bear his cross” daily and hourly. If a man counts the cost, he counts also the help and succour he shall find; for he knows his weakness, and he learns his strength; and if he finds himself encompassed with danger, he will not rush into the temptation, but he will nestle beneath the Almighty wings, and shelter beneath the ark of safety. In the first place, if a man count the cost of taking up the standard, and enlisting in the army of Christ, he has to obey the simple claims of Christ as one in whom there is power and authority. And then, brethren, let us not forget that if the service of Christ has its sorrows, it has its joys; if it has its self-denials, it has its self-indulgences; if here there are thorns and briers, the world above has everlasting flowers, and heavenly violets, and sweet-smelling lilies, that shed a fragrance around all and above all; and though the way may be narrow, it is a straight one; it has no pitfalls, no traps, no bitter fears, no dark forebodings, no haunting spirits, but it has the “ promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come.” It saves a man from a thousand snares, it shields him from a thousand dark remorses, it guards him from a thousand fearful misgivings, and enables him to look God and man in the face. Can the world, or the service of the world, do that? Then, to sum up all, if we cast into the balance of gains “ life everlasting,” surely that must make the scale touch the ground, and the opposite scale strike the beam. “ What shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?” “ I reckon,” said one, who had large experience of the world’ s trials, “ that the sufferings of the present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.” “ For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.” Can language go further? And that is not the language of a fanatic or a fool, but of the Spirit of God, teaching us through one whom He had taught with Divine wisdom, that overcoming is heroism. The heroism of the Cross--that is true heroism. (H. Stowell, M. A.) Holiness: the cost I. WHAT IT COSTS TO BE A TRUE . 1. It will cost a man his self-righteousness. He must be content to go to heaven as a poor sinner saved only by free grace, and owing all to the merit and righteousness of another. “ Sir,” said a godly ploughman to the well-known James Hervey, of Weston Favell, “ it is harder to deny proud self than sinful self. But it is absolutely necessary.” 2. It will cost a man his sins. No truce with any one of them. This also sounds hard. Our sins are often as dear to us as our children: we love them, hug them, cleave to them, and delight in them. To part with them is as hard as cutting off a right hand, or plucking out a right eye. But it must be done. 3. It will cost a man his love of ease. He must take pains and trouble, if he means to run a successful race towards heaven. He must be careful over his time, his tongue, his temper, his thoughts, his imagination, his motives, his conduct in every relation of life. 4. It will cost a man the favour of the world. He must count it no strange thing to be mocked, ridiculed, slandered, persecuted, and even hated. II. WHY THE COST IS OF SUCH GREAT TO MAN’ S SOUL. There are many persons who are not thoughtless about religion: they think a good deal about it. They are not ignorant of religion: they know the outlines of it pretty well. But their great defect is that they are not “ rooted and grounded” in their faith. For want of “ counting the cost” myriads of the children of Israel perished miserably in the wilderness between Egypt and Canaan. For want of “ counting the cost” many of our Lord Jesus Christ’ s hearers went back after a time, and “ walked no more with Him.” For want of “ counting the cost,” hundreds of professed converts, under religious revivals, go back to the world after a time and bring disgrace on religion. They begin with a sadly mistaken notion of what is true Christianity. They fancy it consists in nothing more than a so-called “ coming to Christ,” and having strong inward feelings of joy and peace. And so, when they find after a time that there is a cross to be carried, that our hearts are deceitful, and that there is a busy devil always near us, they cool down in disgust, and return to their old sins. And why? Because they had really never known what Bible Christianity is. For want of “ counting the cost,” the children of religious parents often turn out ill, and bring disgrace on Christianity. And why? They had never thoroughly understood the sacrifices which Christianity entails. They had never been taught to “ count the cost.” III. Hints which may help men to count the cost rightly. Set down honestly and fairly what you will have to give up and go through if you become Christ’ s disciple. Leave nothing out. But then set down side by side the following sums which I am going to give you. Do this fairly and correctly, and I am not afraid for the result. 1. Count up and compare, for one thing, the profit and the loss, if you are a true-hearted and holy Christian. You may possibly lose something in this world, but you will gain the salvation of your immortal soul. 2. Count up and compare, for another thing, the praise and the blame, if you are a true-hearted and holy Christian. You may possibly be blamed by man, but you will have the praise of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost. 3. Count up and compare, for another thing, the friends and the enemies, if you are a true-hearted and holy Christian. On the one side of you is the enmity of the devil and the wicked. On the other, you have the favour and friendship of the Lord Jesus Christ. Your enemies at most can only bruise your heel. They may rage loudly, and compass sea and land to work your ruin; but they cannot destroy you. Your Friend is able to save to the uttermost all them that come unto God by Him. 4. Count up and compare, for another thing, the life that now is and the life to come, if you are a true-hearted and holy Christian. The time present, no doubt, is not a time of ease. It is a time of watching and praying, fighting and struggling, believing and working. But it is only for a few years. The lime future is the season of rest and refreshing. Sin shall be east out. 5. Count up and compare, for another thing, the pleasures of sin and the happiness of God’ s service, if you are a true-hearted and holy Christian. The pleasures that the worldly man gets by his ways are hollow, unreal, and unsatisfying. They are like the fire of thorns, flashing and crackling for a few minutes, and then quenched for ever. The happiness that Christ gives to His people is something solid, lasting, and substantial It is not dependent on health or circumstances. It never leaves a man, even in death. 6. Count up and compare, for another thing, the trouble that true Christianity entails, and the troubles that are in store for the wicked beyond the grave. Such sums as these, no doubt, are often not done correctly. Not a few, I am well aware, are ever “ halting between two opinions.” They cannot make up their minds that it is worth while to serve Christ. They cannot do this great sum correctly. They cannot make the result so clear as it ought to be. But what is the secret of their mistakes? It is want of faith. That faith which made Noah, Moses, and St. Paul do what they did, that faith is the great secret of coming to a right conclusion about our souls. That same faith must be our helper and ready-reckoner when we sit down to count the cost of being a true Christian. That same faith, is to be had for the asking.. “ He giveth more grace” (James 4:6). Armed with that faith we shall set things down at their true value. Filled with that faith we shall neither add to the cross nor subtract from the crown. Our conclusions will be all correct. Our sum total will be without error. (Bishop Ryle.) On the folly of profession without forethought I. The entrance upon, and progress in, a religious life, may, with some considerable propriety, be TO THE OF A TOWER. Something to be done by us. Many graces to be exercised, many temptations to be resisted, many enemies to be vanquished, and many duties to be performed. The power of religion must first be felt, then a profession of it made, and, last of all, care taken to adorn the profession; the whole of which may be compared to building a tower, because-- 1. There must be a foundation to support the building. Christ--the foundation of doctrinal, experimental, and practical’ religion. 2. It is a work of labour and difficulty. Requires exertion of all the strength we have, and every day fresh supplies out of the fulness of Christ. 3. A gradual work. A tower reaching to heaven. Patient continuance in welt-doing. 4. A visible work. The Christian is a spectacle to world, angels, and men. His sufferings make him so; his conduct, so different from that of others, makes him so; and though the springs of his life are “ hid,” yet the workings and effect of it are manifest to the world. Grace makes a visible change in the temper and conversation. 5. A durable work. True religion is like a strong and well-built tower, secure itself, and a security to its builder. The foundation and materials of it are both lasting. II. THIS WORK CALLS FOR GREAT CAUTION AND . 1. The Christian will consider beforehand the certain and necessary expense. (1) Remorse for past sin. (2) Conflict with spiritual enemies. (3) Corruptions to be mortified. 2. To this he will add the possible and contingent expense. Not only what it must, but what it may, cost him. Friends may desert him, enemies assail, and a thousand obstacles be thrown in the way to discourage him. 3. There is another kind of expense which such a one will also take into account, not only what it will cost him, but what--if I may be allowed to use the expression--it must cost God, before He can finish his work. The Spirit of God must afford him His continual aid, and Christ’ s strength must be made perfect in his weakness. No spiritual duty can be performed without a Divine influence. 4. To the labour and expense he is at, he will oppose tim benefits and advantages hoped for. The cross is the way to the crown. 5. Where this caution and circumspection is neglected, it is an instance of egregious folly, and will expose to universal shame and contempt. (B. Beddome, M. A.) Unfinished works Such uncompleted buildings, open to all the winds and rains of heaven, with their naked walls, and with all that has been spent upon them utterly wasted, are called in the language of the world, which often finds so apt a word, This man’ s, or that man’ s Folly; arguing as they do so utter a lack of wisdom and prevision on their parts who began them. Such, for example, is Charles the Fifth’ s palace at Granada, the Kattenburg at Cassel. They that would be Christ’ s disciples shall see to it that they present no such Babels to the ready scorn of the scornful; beginning as men that would take heaven by storm, and anon coming to an end of all their resources, of all their zeal, all their patience, and leaving nothing but an utterly baffled purpose, the mocking-stock of the world; even as those builders of old left nothing but a shapeless heap of bricks to tell of the entire miscalculation which they had made. Making mention of “ a tower,” I cannot but think that the Lord intended an allusion to that great historic tower, the mightiest and most signal failure and defeat which the world has ever seen, that tower of Babel, which, despite of its vainglorious and vaunting beginning, ended in the shame, confusion, and scattering of all who undertook it (Genesis 11:1-9). (Archbishop Trench.) Luke 14:31-32 Or what king, going to make war Consider before you fight I. First, then, THERE ARE SOME HERE WHO ARE NOT THE FRIENDS OF GOD, and in this case he that is not with Him is against Him. If you could have what you wish there would be no God. If it were in your power you would never trouble yourself again with thoughts of Him. You would like to live, you say, as you list, and I know how you would list to live. It would be anyhow, rather than as God commands. Now, as you are engaged in antagonism with Him, just think awhile--Can you expect to succeed? Let me put a few things before you which may, perhaps, make you think the conflict too unequal, and thus lead you to abandon the thought at once. Think of God’ s stupendous power! What is there which He cannot do? Think, again, O rebellious man, you have to deal not only with almighty, but with an ever-encompassing power. Think, again, how much you are personally in His hand! It is well also to remember the mighty army of the Lord of hosts, and that you live amidst the creatures of God, who all are ready to do His bidding. Remember, moreover, what is the extent of God’ s wisdom, and that His foolishness is greater than your highest knowledge. Yet there is another matter I want you to recollect, you that are the enemies of God--that you have a conscience. You have not got rid of it yet. It is not put out; and God has ways of making it to become a terrible plague to you, if you do not accept it as a friend. One other reflection, for I must not keep you thinking on this point long--it is this. Remember you must die, and therefore it is a pity to be at enmity with God. Here is this, too, to think of, there is a future state, so that when you die you have to live again. I should not choose to enter upon the realm of spirits without having God to be my friend. Besides, let me say, you cannot hope to succeed, all experience is against you; there never was one yet that, either in this state or the next, has fought with God and conquered. II. And now we turn the subject, so as to look at THE SECOND CONTEST, IN WHICH I TRUST MANY ARE ANXIOUS TO BE ENGAGED, Some young spirit that has been touched with a sense of its own condition, and somewhat aroused, may be saying, “ I will be God’ s enemy no longer; I will be His friend.” Bowing the knee, that heart cries, “ Oh God, reconcile me unto Thyself by the death of Thy dear Son. I throw down all my weapons; I confess my guilt; I plead for mercy. For Jesus’ sake vouchsafe it to me.” “ But,” says that soul, “ if I am the friend of God, I must be the foe of Satan, and from this day I pledge myself to fight for ever with Satan till I get the victory, and am free from sin.” My dear friend, I want you to stop. I do not wish you to make peace with the evil one, but I want you to consider what you are at. There are a few things I would whisper in your ear, and one is, that sin is sweet. Remember, again, you may be enticed by friends who will be very pressing. You can give up sin just now, but you do not know who may be the tempter at some future time. If she should allure thee, who has tempted so well before! Then again, remember, man, there is habit. You say you will all of a sudden give up your sins and fight Satan. Do not tell me that; can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? Again, you think you will give up sin, but ridicule is very unpleasant, and when the tinges comes to be pointed at you, and they say, “ Ah, so you have set up for a saint, I see” ; when they put it as they only can put it, in such a sharp, cutting, grating manner, can you stand that! And yet further, let me say to you, you that are for going to heaven so zealously--gain, gain is a very pretty thing, a very pleasant affair. Who does not like to make money? You know, if you can be religious and grow rich at the same time, that will just suit some of you. Think of this then, for the trial will come to you in the shape of yellow gold, and it will be hard to keep yourself from the glittering bait which the god of this world will lay before you. I am putting these things to you, so that you may calculate whether you can carry on the war against the devil with all these fearful odds against you. If I were a recruiting-serjeant I should not do this. He puts the shilling into the country lad’ s hand, and the lad may say fifty things. “ Oh, never mind,” says the gallant soldier, “ you know, it is all glory, nothing but glory. There, I will just tie these ribbons round your hat. There are some long strips of glory to begin with, and then all your days it will be just glory, glory for ever; and you will die a general, and be buried at Westminster Abbey, and they will play the ‘ Dead March in Saul,’ and all that kind of thing.” Now I cannot thus deceive or try to cheat men to enlist under the banner of the Cross. I do not desire to raise objections to it; all I want of you is to count the cost, lest you should be like unto him who began to build without being able to finish. (C. H. Spurgeon.) The Christian war The doctrine here is, that a sinner who designs to close with Christ, and become His disciple, should first consult matters well, and then take courage and not fear any enemy, but resolutely pursue his great and good design. I. SHOW WHAT A POOR SINNER, WHO DESIGNS TO ENTER UPON THIS WAR, SHOULD CONSULT. 1. He should consult the charge of this war. He who spares one beloved lust will be worsted and lose the field. 2. He should consult what great hardship he must undergo. 3. He should consult the cause and absolute necessity of the war. 4. He should consult the length or duration of the war. 5. He must consider at whose charge the war is to be carried on and maintained. Christ’ s riches and treasures are infinite and inexhaustible. 6. He should carefully consider the manner and time when he must enlist, and what armour he must wear (Hebrews 3:13; Ephesians 6:14-17). 7. He must consider the strength, policy, wrath, and cruelty of Satan and other enemies. 8. He must be sensible of his own weakness, and never engage in his own name or strength. 9. He must consider the power and irresistible strength of his Captain, the Lord Jesus Christ. 10. He must consider the covenant of peace, the oath and promises of God the Father to Christ as Mediator, and in Him to all believers; also, how in that covenant all the elect are put into Christ’ s hand, not only to redeem them, to renew them, but also to aid, help, and assist, and to fight for them; yea, and to strengthen and support them. 11. He must consider the relation in which they stand to their Captain. He has espoused and married them for ever. 12. They should also know that all their enemies are already conquered. 13. They should consider the honour of God, and the honour, exaltation, and glory of their Captain, and prefer that above their lives. While we seek His glory, He will seek our good. 14. They should consider the nature of the crown for which they fight. II. SHOW WHY SINNERS SHOULD SIT DOWN AND THESE THINGS BEFORE THEY ENTER INTO THESE WARS. 1. Because man is naturally self-confident, and thinks he can do wonderful things by his own strength; but did he know how weak be is, and how deceitful his heart is, and all the powers of his soul, he would not pride it so in himself, nor ever venture to go forth in his own strength against one who is so much stronger than he. 2. Because all who ever engaged these enemies, not considering their own weakness, but went out in their own strength, were put to flight and utterly beaten. 3. Because our Lord would have none of His soldiers be surprised, either by the power, wrath, malice, or subtlety of the enemy. 4. That we may be better prepared for the worst. Forewarned, forearmed. Application: 1. This informs us that the work of a Christian is no easy, but a very hard and difficult, work. 2. It may inform us what the reason is that so many professors, who seemed zealous in times of peace and liberty, have deserted in an hour of trial and persecution. They did not sit down and consider the strength of their enemies. 3. It may be of use to all poor convinced sinners that purpose to follow Jesus Christ, first of all to ponder and well weigh the nature, troubles, and difficulties of a Christian life. 4. It also may tend to convince us of the great strength and power of Satan and other enemies of our souls, and the need we have to be well armed and to stand always upon our watch and never give way to self-confidence. 5. It shows also the woeful condition of unbelievers, who have not the power of Christ to help and assist them. (B. Keach.) Unequal to the war Louis XII., King of France, sent an army into Italy to take the kingdom of Naples, which had been given to Louis XI. by King Rene of Provence. When Alfonso, King of Naples, heard that Louis and other enemies were coming against him, he looked round for help, and actually begged the Sultan of Turkey to aid him. Not getting assistance in this quarter, and having no army fit to oppose that of Louis, he made peace with him, gave up Naples, accepted the Duchy of Anjou, and went to live there. First weigh, then venture Count Von Moltke, the great German strategist and general, chose for his motto, “ Erst wagen, dann wagon” (First weigh, then venture), and it is to this he owes his great victories and successes. Slow, cautious, careful in planning, but bold, daring, even seemingly reckless in execution, the moment his resolve is made. Vows must ripen into deeds, decision must go on to performance. (H. O.Mackay.) Luke 14:33 He cannot be My disciple Christ requires supreme regard I. THE WHICH JESUS CHRIST US TO FORSAKE IN ORDER TO OUR HIS . In our text Jesus Christ authoritatively asserts the absolute right and the first claim to all that we have and to all that we are. Ourselves and our possessions are to be His. We are to consider ourselves not as proprietors, but only as stewards. 1. Christ requires us to forsake the world and the things of the world. 2. Christ requires us to exercise self-denial, and to bear the cross daily. 3. Jesus Christ requires us to forsake our own relatives, whenever they would hinder us from following Him. 4. Jesus Christ requires you to forsake even life itself rather than renounce Him and His cause. II. THE OF OUR BEING HIS IF WE REFUSE TO COMPLY WITH HIS . “ He cannot be My disciple.” The solemn and authoritative manner in which this decision is pronounced ought very deeply to affect our hearts. Christ, you perceive, does not say that such a man is an inconsistent disciple, or an ungrateful disciple, or a half-hearted disciple; but He says that he is not a disciple at all; nay, says He, “ he cannot be My disciple.” He may profess to be a disciple, and he may be acknowledged as a disciple by others, but he is not one: and though men and angels should declare, “ Behold a disciple indeed!” Christ would reply, “ I know him not!” And this decision, be it remembered, my brethren, is not mine, but Christ’ s. III. THE MEANS AND THE MOTIVES WHICH JESUS CHRIST AFFORDS TO INDUCE AND TO ENABLE US TO COMPLY WITH HIS . And here I intend to show that we ought to forsake all for Christ, because it is the most reasonable and advantageous duty that we can discharge. 1. We should forsake all that we have for Christ, because He commands us to do so. 2. We should forsake all that we have for Christ, because He hath loved us and given Himself for us. 3. We should forsake all that we have for Christ, because He has promised to enable us to do so if we ask Him. 4. We should forsake all for Christ, because He can give us infinitely more than we can relinquish for His sake. (J. Alexander.) An Indian’ s all An Indian, on being asked how it was that he came into the kingdom of Christ so easily, at once replied, “ We are commanded to forsake all. The white man have to give up his house; but I have no house. The white man have to give up his riches; but I have no riches. The white man have to give up his farm; but I have no farm. Indian have nothing to give up but his blanket, and I throw off my blanket very easily.” Yielding all to Christ In America a farmer felt convinced that he was not living to Christ as he ought, with that warm-hearted earnestness which characterises those who are born again. He was a large farmer, and had a great number of stacks in his yard. He went into the centre one day, and threw himself on his face, and said he would have it out with God. He prayed to Jesus Christ, and found forgiveness through His righteousness. He got up to tell his wife and children. It was Pentecost-like. Peter said, “ Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.” The farmer believed it, and went home, but he had not reached the fence ere he was arrested by a voice which said there was something more. He stopped, and cried out, “ O Lord, what more? is there anything more, and I will give it Thee?” He went back to the spot where he was bound to Christ, and reiterated again, “ What more, O Lord; is there any more I can do?” And something told him that he had not given up the stackyard to the Lord. He burst out, “ Lord, I yield; take the stack-yard--take the horses--take the farm!” He returned to his wife and children. But there was something else; he had a large balance at the bank. He had been a prosperous man, and was counting on the better time when he could hold a palatial residence for himself and family. That money was not given to the Lord; but he cried out, “ Take it, Lord; I give it all up.” And instead of building a residence he built a chapel, and supported the ministers of God, and went to the camp meeting, and gave his stack-yard, farm-houses, his wife and children, into the hand of the Lord. He used the money in the bank judiciously, and it is a pleasure to him to lend waggons to his poorer neighbours, and plough their fields. (Handbook to Scripture Doctrines.) Luke 14:34-35 Salt is good Salt that is genuine, and salt that is saltless Among the substances that enter into the composition of this globe of earth, salt is a very important one, being of essential use in the economy of the world, and eminently conducive to the preservation of human life. It may be regarded as the grand conservative principle of nature, whose office is to keep this earth, the habitation of man, in a wholesome state, to check the progress of decay and corruption, and promote the health and wellbeing of the animal world. To fit it for these important purposes, the All-wise Creator, who communicates to every element its peculiar character, has given it the quality of being soluble in water, and has thus made it capable of diffusing itself over the whole globe, impregnating the various departments of nature, and penetrating the finest fibres of vegetable and animal substances--a hidden agent that, by means of the element that holds it in solution,conveys its salutary influence to every region of creation. Suspended in strong infusion in the ocean, it preserves its immense reservoirs from putrefaction, and makes them the means of conveying health to the shores they wash, and salubrity to the atmosphere that rises above them; while it further serves, by increasing the gravity of the waters, to aid in buoying up the tribes that inhabit and the ships that navigate them. It is largely deposited in the heart of the earth, in rocks and strata. It is also found to enter into the composition of plants, some of which yield it in large quantities, and even to form an ingredient in the bodies of animals. If this element were withdrawn, the great deep, we have reason to think, would become a putrid pool, the air would consequently be a pestilential vapour, and vegetable and animal life would quickly be extinct. Now our Lord here speaks of salt in a figurative sense, using it as an illustration to declare the excellence and usefulness of the Christian character, as exemplified in those who maintain it faithfully and consistently; and the loss of all excellence, the shipwreck of all valuable attainments and of all good hope, in those who forsake and abandon the principles and spirit with which they once started on the Christian race. I. THE AND OF THE The disciples of Christ are destined to the same office in the moral world that salt supplies in the natural--namely, to check the progress of corruption, and diffuse salubrity and health; and while they preserve their appropriate character, they fulfil this high destination. Sound in principle and exemplary in conduct themselves, they serve to arrest corruption in others; savouring the things of God, they communicate the same unction to others; active and beneficent, they extend a beneficial influence around them. The faithful followers of Christ are like “ good salt,” in respect of those principles of truth which they embrace and maintain. For error corrupts the mind, and, insinuating itself through its faculties, “ will eat as doth a canker,” and blend in all its communications; truth is the healing salt that arrests its progress and defeats the operation of the poison. Again, the true disciples are like good salt in respect of that temper of mind, and those good and gracious affections, which they cherish and manifest. For the truths of the gospel, when received in faith, fail not to renovate the heart and inspire it with corresponding dispositions: they necessarily awaken an unfeigned piety and holy reverence toward God, a simple, child-like dependence on Christ, a genuine benevolence toward men, a true humility, a spirit of sympathy with the afflicted, a desire to do good to all, a disposition to forgive injuries and to overcome evil with good. Now this temper of mind has a healing efficacy: like salt, it is diffusive, and tends to preserve the atmosphere of life from the putrid exhalations of selfishness, envy, and malevolence; it gives also a grateful relish and gracious aspect to society, fostering and maintaining in healthful exercise the substantial blessings of mutual esteem, friendship, and harmony. In a word, the true disciples are like good salt in respect of their whole conduct in life; which, while they act in character, cannot fail to have a beneficial influence, since it both presents a model to be copied, and suggests the motives and arguments that commend it. For their whole manner of life, if candidly interpreted, shows that they are governed by high and heavenly principles--that they are “ not of the world, but of the Father.” II. THE RUINED AND UNHAPPY OF THOSE WHO ABANDON THAT . If he who bears the Christian name lose the distinctive qualities of his Christianity--if he relinquish those principles of truth which he has professed--if he forsake the Christian temper--if, forgetful of heavenly things, he immerse himself in the world and live for himself, for gain, for pleasure, and not for Christ--alas! “ the glory is departed,” the usefulness of his character as a guide or example is at an end; he becomes, if not a betrayer, yet a deserter, worthless and contemptible, fit only to be “ cast out, and trodden under foot.” 1. The salt loses its savour when professing Christians lose their relish for those Divine truths that peculiarly distinguish the gospel and make it what it is. 2. The salt loses its savour when professing Christians lose their relish for the duties of religion. 3. The salt loses its savour when professing Christians imbibe the love and become conformed to the spirit of the world. 4. The salt loses its savour when the professor of religion falls into open immorality. Finally, the salt has lost its savour when the soul learns to vindicate its errors and without shame to persist in them--when reproof is unwelcome, when expostulation is offensive, and the man is anxious rather to defend his character than amend his ways--when, deaf to admonition and rebuke, he wilfully yields himself to the snare of the devil, to be “ led captive at his will.” How calamitous such termination of what was hopeful in its beginning! (H. Gray, D. D.) Grace in crystals It would take all time with an infringement upon eternity, for an angel of God to tell one-half the glories in salt-crystal. So with the grace of God; it is perfectly beautiful. Solomon discovered its anatomical qualities when he said, “ It is marrow to the bones.” I am speaking now of a healthy religion--not of that morbid religion that sits for three hours on a gravestone reading Hervey’ s “ Meditations Among the Tombs.” I speak of the religion that Christ preached. I suppose when that religion has conquered the world that disclose will be banished. But the chief beauty of grace is in the soul. It takes that which was hard, and cold, and repulsive, and makes it all over again. It pours upon one’ s nature what David calls “ the beauty of holiness.” It extirpates everything that is hateful and unclean. It took John Bunyan the foul-mouthed, and made him John Bunyan the immortal dreamer. It took John Newton, the infidel sailor, and in the midst of the hurricane made him cry out: “ My mother’ s God, have mercy upon me!” It took John Summerfield from a life of sin, and by the hand of a Christian edged-tool maker, led him into the pulpit that burns still with the light of that Christian eloquence which charmed thousands to Jesus whom he once despised. Ah! you may search all the earth over for anything so beautiful or beautifying as the grace of God. Go all through the deep mine-passages of Wielitzka, and amid the underground kingdoms of salt in Hallstadt, and show me anything so exquisite, so transcendentally beautiful as this grace of God fashioned and hung in eternal crystals. Again, grace is like salt, in the fact that it is a necessity of life. Man and beast perish without salt. What are those paths across the Western prairies? Why, they were made there by deer and buffalo going to and coming away from the salt “ licks.” Chemists and physicians, all the world over, tell us that salt is a necessity of life. And so with the grace of God: you must have it or die. I know, a great many people speak of it as a mere adornment, a sort of shoulder-strap adorning a soldier, or a light, frothing dessert brought in after the greatest part of the banquet of life is over. So far from that, I declare the grace of God to be the first and the last necessity. It is a positive necessity for the soul. You can tell very easily what the effect would be if a person refused to take salt into the body. The energies would fail, the lungs would struggle with the air, slow fevers would crawl through the brain, the heart would flutter, and the life would be gone. That process of death is going on in many a one because they take not the salt of Divine grace. Again, I remark, that grace is like salt in abundance. God has strewn salt in vast profusion all over the continents. Russia seems built on a salt cellar. There is one region of that country that turns out ninety thousand tons in a year. England and Russia and Italy have inexhaustible resources in this respect. Norway and Sweden, white with snow above, white with salt beneath. Austria yielding nine hundred thousand tons annually. Nearly all the nations rich in it--rock-salt, spring-salt, sea-salt. Christ, the Creator of the world, when He uttered our text, knew it would become more and more significant as the shafts were sunk, and the springs were bored, and the pumps were worked, and the crystals were gathered. So the grace of God is abundant. It is for all lands, for all ages, for all conditions. It seems to undergird everything. Pardon for the worst sin, comfort for the sharpest suffering, brightest light for the thickest darkness. Again, the grace of God is like salt in the way we come at it. The salt on the surface is almost always impure--that which incrusts the Rocky Mountains and the South American pampas and in India; but the miners go down through the shafts and through the dark labyrinths, and along by galleries of rock, and with torches and pickaxes find their way under the very foundations of the earth, to where the salt lies that makes up the nation’ s wealth. To get to the best saline springs of the earth huge machinery goes down, boring depth below depth, depth below depth, until from under the very roots of the mountains the saline water supplies the aqueduct. This water is brought to the surface, and is exposed in tanks to the sun for evaporation, or it is put in boilers mightily heated, and the water evaporates, and the salt gathers at the bottom of the tank--the work is completed, and the fortune is made. So with the grace of God. It is to be profoundly sought after. With all the concentrated energies of the body, mind, and soul, we must dig for it. Superficial exploration will not turn it up. Then the work of evaporation begins; and as when the saline waters are exposed to the sun the vapours float away, leaving nothing but the pure white salt at the bottom of the tank, so, when the Christian’ s soul is exposed to the Sun of Righteousness, the vapours of pride and selfishness and worldliness float off, and there is chiefly left beneath, pure, white holiness of heart. Then, as in the case of the salt, the furnace is added. Blazing troubles, stirred by smutted stokers of darkness, quicken the evaporation of worldliness and the crystallization of grace. Have you not been in enough trouble to have that work go on? But, I remark again, that the grace of God is like the salt in its preservative quality. You know that salt absorbs the moisture of articles of food, and infuses them with brine which preserves them for a long while. Salt is the great anti-putrefactive of the world. Experimenters, in preserving food, have tried sugar, and smoke, and air-tight jars, and everything else; but as long as the world stands, Christ’ s words will be suggestive, and men will admit that, as a great preservative, “ salt is good.” But for the grace of God the earth would have become a stale carcass long before this. That grace is the only preservative of laws, and constitution, and literatures. Just as soon as a government loses this salt of Divine grace it perishes. We want more of the salt of God’ s grace in our homes, in our schools, in our colleges, in our social life, in our Christianity. And that which has it will live--that which has it not will die. I proclaim the tendency of everything earthly to putrefaction and death--the religion of Christ the only preservative. My subject is one of great congratulation to those who have within their souls this gospel antiseptic. This salt will preserve, them through the temptations and sorrows of life, and through the ages of eternity. (De Witt Talmage, D. D.) The salt that has lost its savour He that is ungodly would be ungodly still. And why? Because the salt has lost its savour. The mischief is not without--it is within. The wretched houses, the rent-books, the pawnshops, are but symptoms--are but the efflorescence of a deep-seated disease--and if we are wise, we shall aim not at putting them to rights, except where grievous distress and impending ruin call for ready rescue; but we shall aim far deeper--we shall be ever musing on and seeking an answer to the question, “ Wherewith shall it be seasoned?” And this is just the question which has been occupying so many Christian hearts, and employing so many Christian hands, now for some years in this our land. I called it the most fearful and difficult problem of our times; and every one who has fairly grappled with it will bear me in saying so. No special philanthropic agency will so much as touch the whole matter, however widely and efficiently supported. Each one of these, alone, is but opposing a feeble resistance for a time to the vast and gathering mass as it rolls and plunges downward. “ Improve the dwellings of these poor people.” Yes; of all mere remedial measures, doubtless this is the most obvious and lies nearest the surface. But how slow the progress; how distant and almost hopeless the result. Then again: “ Improve their Sundays.” By all means. The general observance of the Lord’ s day in our land is perhaps the most powerful instrument and the surest pledge for future good, which we possess. But again, How? For here once more we are beset with difficulties. You will be easily able to apply remarks of the same character to those various other agencies which are at work for this most salutary and beneficent purpose. (Dean Alford.) Christianity the salt of the earth A wealthy, irreligious, shrewd business man in Illinois was approached by a member of the Church of Christ for a subscription towards building a meetinghouse. He cheerfully put down his name for two hundred dollars, and then remarked, “ I give that as a good business investment. I would rather give two hundred dollars every year than not to have the gospel preached in this community.” “ How is that?” he was asked. “ You do not pay any heed to the gospel. Why are you interested in having it preached?” “ Oh,” he replied, “ I live here with my family, and my property is around here; without the influence of Christianity the condition of society would soon become such that neither property nor life would be safe. I would not be willing to live in any community where the gospel was not preached!” These views of a hardheaded man of the world are confirmed by all experience. Christianity is the salt of the earth. Only the utterly abandoned would be content to live where its influence had ceased to be felt. Religion should be practical if it is to be influential William Smith, a Primitive Methodist local preacher, had a business letter shown to him from a manufacturer of cloth. The concluding paragraph was a rather high-flown rhapsody about revivals, and some sermon that had been to him (as he said) “ wines on the lees.” His pair of eyes keenly watched the reader of the letter, to whom he said, when the reading was concluded, “ What do you think of that?” Answer: “ I don’ t think I should have written the last paragraph.” Response: “ I should think not; I only wish the fellow would put his religion into his cloth instead of his invoices.” Salt I. LOOK AT WHAT IS HERE SO . “ Salt is good.” Salt is a necessary of life, and it is an essential element of true altar service. There was no real sacrifice without salt. 1. It is the symbol of the covenant of everlasting mercy, but of ever lasting mercy as the basis of a sinner’ s new life. There is a purpose of grace. God wills not the death of sinners, but their re-union with Him as the God of life. That purpose does not change. God pursues it in spite of the infatuation, the wilfulness, the ingratitude of men; and “ He will have all men to be saved, and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” “ Salt is good.” It is the salt of the great sacrifice for sin. “ It is the salt of the covenant of thy God.” He receives, and pardons, and renews, and cleanses all who believe on His Son Jesus Christ. No man can be saved but through the Divine mercy, and by an action of the Divine Spirit on mind and heart. 2. Salt symbolizes not only God’ s covenant of mercy with man, but man’ s covenant with God. Salt was a human offering on the altar, according to a Divine appointment. It meant, on the part of the offerer, the laying aside of enmity; it meant the submission of the offerer to the terms of the Merciful Sovereign; it meant the surrender of the will--of the life--to the Divine service. Salt symbolizes human consecration. 3. Salt is also the principle of counteractive grace. Antiseptic. The new principles of Divine life in the spirit arrest moral decay; work against the downward, earthly, immoral tendencies and temptations of the heart. 4. Salt symbolizes the preventive, corrective, life-nourishing power of the Christian society in the world. 5. Salt is also the principle of peace. “ Peace with God” comes of salt within. With surrender to Him reconciliation is “ effected; and there is now no condemnation, and no dread, and no discord--man and God live in harmony the perfectest. II. THE SAVIOUR’ S LESSON THE OF THE SALT. Salt symbolizes God’ s covenant of mercy in its unchangeableness; and there can be no deterioration of that; but there may be a careless feeling concerning its excellence, its necessity, and its grace. Salt symbolizes man’ s covenant with God--the principle of entire self-surrender; it symbolizes the principle of counteractive grace both in the individual and the Church; and it is the principle of individual and social peace. Of these our Lord declares-- 1. The possibility of deterioration. “ If the salt have lost its savour.” Rock salt exposed to the atmosphere becomes utterly tasteless and insipid; it comes to lack all the essential characteristics of its own nature. Whatever the truth may be on the Divine side of the great fact of human redemption, on the human side we are obliged to admit the possibility of a fall from grace. It is involved in the very fact that it is a free human spirit which is being dealt with. 2. Christ marks here three things as characteristic of men in this state. (1) They are useless for any good purpose whatever--useless in the Church, useless in the world. What shall be seasoned with such salt? It is useless to make anything grow. It is a heap and nothing more--neither man nor beast can ever be the better for its existence. (2) Such characters are utterly contemptible. They are neither fit for the land nor yet for the dunghill, which, if it does not grow itself, helps other things to grow. (3) And last of all they are rejected with utter disdain. “ It is henceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out and trodden under foot of men.” It must not be allowed even to occupy the place of the real thing. There can be no fellowship between life and death. (The Preacher’ s Monthly.) . Luke 15:1-2 This man receiveth sinners, and eateth with them Christ’ s influence with the masses The masses were drawn to Christ’ s teachings. I. THE REASONS FOR THIS . 1. All lack of affectation--no parade of greatness, no false assumption of humility. His manner was what beauty is to the landscape, what the sublime, majestic repose of the ocean is to the ocean’ s greatness. His manner ever reflected the moral grandeur of His being. 2. The originality of His methods. 3. The grandeur and claims of His doctrines. 4. The authority with which He spoke. 5. The adaptation of style and matter to the people. 6. His profound earnestness. 7. His scathing denunciation of the hypocrisy of the ruling sects. II. THE EFFORTS OF THE SCRIBES AND TO UNDO THIS . Not because they loved men, but because of caste, of pride, and cold-hearted selfishness. III. CHRIST’ S MANNER OF MEETING THIS . He takes every opportunity to overcome their prejudice, and enlighten their minds, seeking to impress upon them the superior glories of the new disport sation. (W. E.McKay.) Christ receiving sinners I. THE OF SINNERS CHRIST WILL RECEIVE. 1. Sinners of all ages. 2. Sinners of all stations. 3. Sinners of all degrees. II. INTO WHAT JESUS SINNERS. 1. Into His forgiving grace and favour. 2. Into His family. 3. Into His heaven. III. THE WAY AND MANNER IN WHICH CHRIST SINNERS. 1. In the way of acknowledgment and confession. 2. In the way of repentance, or turning from sin. 3. In the way of humility and faith. Now as to the manner: 1. Most freely. 2. Most tenderly. 3. Most readily. Application: 1. The subject is one to which every believer’ s heart responds. 2. The subject is full of encouragement to the inquiring sinner. 3. The subject is limited to the present life. Here only He receives. (J. Burns, D. D.) This man receiveth sinners These words were originally spoken as a reproach against our Lord. When we repeat them it is with widely different feelings. They are to us a message of joy--nay, the only true grounds of joy and hope to man. I. THE PERSONS TO. “ This man” : “ sinners.” 1. The contrast in its most general aspect. They--“ sinners” --evildoers, violators of God’ s law. He--“ holy; separate from sinners.” 2. Take the outward life of both. His--faultless, beneficent. Theirs--the reverse. 3. Consider the spirit of His life, and of theirs. Perfect love and confidence in God; perfect love and devotion to the good of man. They, governed by selfishness; destitute of faith; living under influence of impulse, passion, etc. II. THE BETWEEN THESE TWO CLASSES OF PERSONS. 1. What should you expect? A man is known by his companions. Like seeks like. 2. Yet, He receiveth sinners. (1) To mercy and pardon. (2) To grace and guidance. (3) To love and friendship. 3. And all this He does (1) freely; (2) readily; (3) eternally. III. WHAT IS OUR IN THIS SUBJECT? 1. To some, none. But why, and how? Are they not sinners? How, then, can they be saved? Is there another who can thus receive? 2. Do you fear to come? Why? Consider His words of invitation and promise. Consider His acts of welcome and beneficence. 3. Are we received? See that you never abandon His protection. (W. R. Clark, M. A.) Christ receiving sinners I. WHO IT IS THAT SINNERS? 1. “ This man.” That Christ was “ man,” may easily be shown from the united and ample testimony of Scripture. Revelation makes no attempt to conceal this fact. It treats it as a matter that is necessary to be known, and as fully and readily to be believed, as His essential and eternal divinity. Godhead without manhood could have effected no atonement for the world’ s transgression. 2. But “ this man” was Divine, He was God “ manifested in the flesh,” combined all the glory of the Deity with all the weakness of man--all the infirmities of the creature--with acts and attributes splendid and incomprehensible! He was frail as flesh, yet omnipotent as God. Thus was our nature infinitely enriched, though sin had beggared it of all worth. 3. “ This man” gave to the universe the most amiable, attractive, and stupendous manifestation of the Deity ever witnessed, a “ manifestation” altogether different from any which had been previously afforded. Here was no throne of sapphire, no city of pearl, no retinue of celestials, no blaze of unapproachable brightness, no footpath on the firmament, no chariot rolling “ on the wings of the wind,” and studded with the stars of the skies. The majestic symbols of the presence and power of the Infinite were kept back, and here was man in weakness, destitution, reproach, suffering, and death. “ This man” showed how low the Deity could stoop, how much the Deity could love, how infinitely the Deity could redeem, with what frail and broken things the Deity could rebuild His moral universe. II. HOW THIS MAN SINNERS. 1. He “ received” them universally; His arms of love are ready to embrace all. 2. “ Christ received sinners “ without upbraiding them on account of their sins. 3. Observe the delightful and blessed certainty that “ sinners” have of being “ received” by Him. III. WHAT DOES CHRIST’ S OF SINNERS ? To what are they received? The world receives its votaries, but only to oppress them with its vexations and vanities. Satan receives sinners, but only to slavery and wretchedness. Doth Christ receive them? It is-- 1. To a state of reconciliation with Himself; He casts around them His Divine complacency, makes and calls them “ His friends.” 2. Christ “ receives sinners” into a state of holiness. He sanctifies all the powers of the intellect, all the affections of the heart, and all the actions of the life. 3. Christ “ receives” them under the special protection and guidance of His providence. They rest under the pavilion of the Almighty Redeemer, are encircled as with a wall of fire, and fenced round and defended by the angels of glory. 4. Christ “ receives” them into the full immunities of His kingdom of grace. In that kingdom “ all things are theirs.” 5. Christ “ receives the sinners” He thus sanctifies and blesses into heaven. This is the last and greatest gift of God in Christ. This will perfect every holy principle and every religious joy. (E. Horton.) Jesus receiving sinners I. THE WORDS, AS THEY WERE , CONTAIN A FALSE AND CALUMNY. “ This man receiveth sinners, and eateth with them.” The fact itself was undeniable: but what interpretation did the Pharisees wish to put upon it? 1. They meant to insinuate that the followers of Jesus consisted chiefly of worthless and disreputable characters; and this was false. 2. These murmurers meant to insinuate, further, that Jesus loved the company of sinners for its own sake; and this again was false. 3. Or, perhaps, they meant to insinuate, that those whom He favourably received continued sinners still; and this was as false as the rest. II. THE SAME WORDS EXPRESS A MOST TRUTH. They truly describe-- 1. The persons on whose behalf the Son of Man is interested--“ This man receiveth sinners.” (1) None but sinners--among the race of Adam, at least--have any concern or part in Jesus Christ. (2) The vilest of sinners are not shut out from partaking in that mercy, which is equally needful to the most virtuous. (3) Once more--sin still dwelleth even in those who have partaken of the mercy of Christ; yet doth He not cast them off. And why? Because He is not displeased to behold sin in His followers? God forbid! No--but because He delights to see them “ fighting manfully” against it, and gradually overcoming it through the power of His grace. 2. The regard which He shows toward them--He “ receiveth them, and eateth with them.” (1) He receives them to His own favour, and to that of His Father. (2) He receives them to spiritual communion with Himself, and with His Father. (3) He receives them, finally, to His visible presence in the kingdom of His Father. (J. Jowett, M. A.) Christ receiving sinners I. THE IMPIOUS CALUMNY . You all know that the proverb has been accepted in all ages, and clothed in all languages, “ A man may be ever known by his associates.” Tell me his friendships, and I will tell you his nature, for according to his companionships must be his character. Now these Pharisees would force home this proverb upon the holy Saviour. Could He come forth from that Father’ s bosom, could He have just stepped into this naughty world out of that world of holy love, and not be the Friend of publicans and sinners?--ay, the very best Friend they ever had, for He came to seek and to save the chief, as He said most feelingly who had not been a publican and a sinner, but a Pharisee and a sinner. This shall be to eternity His praise and glory. But then it is said, or it is thought, by some Pharisees and scribes, that such a reception of the sinner is a patronage of his sin--that such a gospel of free grace has a perilous tendency to release man from moral duty; that if good works do not enter into the ground of the sinner’ s salvation, no obligation remains for the performance of them by the man--just as these Pharisees implied that receiving sinners was to be a patron of their sin. Refute this error whenever it shows itself, as the Lord refuted the slander of the scribes--by the revealed mind of God. I mean by the pure word of Scripture; on the one hand saying, “ Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according unto His mercy He saved us” ; and on the other hand affirming “ That faith should work by love.” II. THE TRUTH . The eater never did bring forth such sweetness as when this testimony was extorted from wicked men. Why this revelation of the Father’ s will? My brethren, the great foundation of all Divine revelation, from the forfeiture of Paradise downward through all its prophecies, and through all its promises, the great foundation of all revelation lies in this little fact, “ God receives sinners.” Open your Bible, read through the Scripture; it gives you the character of God. Surely the errand of the beloved Son must be in harmony with that character. Listen! hear the declaration of your Father’ s mind: “ I have no pleasure in the death of him that dieth, saith the Lord.” Listen to the exhortations of your Father’ s love: “ Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let Him return unto the Lord, and He will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon.” Listen to the proclamation of His own name: “ The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin.” Hear His promise: “ I have blotted out as a thick cloud thy transgressions, and as a cloud thy sins: return unto Me; for I have redeemed thee.” Hear His remonstrance: “ How shall I give thee up, Ephraim? how shall I deliver thee, Israel? how shall I make thee as Admah? how shall I set thee as Zeboim? Mine heart is turned within Me, My repentings are kindled together. I will not execute the fierceness of Mine anger, I will not return to destroy Ephraim; for I am God, and not man.” Oh! declarations, expostulations, proclamations, promises, remonstrances, surely these must have their sign and seal in Him, of whom it was said, “ See Him, and you see the Father” ; of whom it could be said, “ The voice of those human lips is the very echo of the voice of God.” (J. P. Eyre, M. A.) The approachableness of Jesus I. First let us PROVE THE OF CHRIST, though it really needs no proof, for it is a fact which lies upon the surface of His life. 1. You may see it conspicuously in His offices. Our Lord Jesus is said to be the Mediator between God and man. Now, observe, that the office of mediator implies at once that he should be approachable. Another of His offices is that of priest. The priest was the true brother of the people, chosen from among themselves, at all times to be approached; living in their midst, in the very centre of the camp, ready to make intercession for the sinful and the sorrowful. So is it with our Lord. You may be separated from all of human kind, justly and righteously, by your iniquities, but you are not separated from that great Friend of sinners who at this very time is willing that publicans and sinners should draw near unto Him. As a third office let me mention that the Lord Jesus is our Saviour; but I see not how He can be a Saviour unless He can be approached by those who need to be saved. 2. Consider a few of His names and titles. Frequently Jesus is called the “ Lamb.” I do not suppose there is any one here who was ever afraid of a lamb; that little girl yonder, if she saw a lamb, would not be frightened. Every child seems almost instinctively to long to put its hand on the head of a lamb. O that you might come and put your hand on the head of Christ, the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world. Again, you find Him called a Shepherd: no one is afraid of a shepherd. Timid, foolish, and wandering though you may be, there is nothing in the Good Shepherd to drive you away from Him, but everything to entice you to come to Him. Then again, He is called our Brother, and one always feels that he may approach his brother. I have no thought of trouble or distress which I would hesitate to communicate to my brother, because he is so good and kind. Brethren, you can come to the good elder Brother at all hours; and when He blames you for coming, let me know. He is called, too, a Friend; but He would be a very unfriendly friend who could not be approached by those He professed to love. If my friend puts a hedge around himself, and holds himself so very dignified that I may not speak with him, I would rather be without his friendship; but if he be a genuine friend, and I stand at his door knocking, he will say, “ Come in, and welcome; what can I do for you?” Such a friend is Jesus Christ. He is to be met with by all needy, seeking hearts. 3. There is room enough for enlargement here, but I have no time to say more, therefore I will give you another plea. Recollect His person. The person of our Lord Jesus Christ proclaims this truth with a trumpet voice. I say His person, because He is man, born of woman, bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh. 4. If this suffice not, let me here remind you of the language of Christ. He proclaims His approachability in such words as these, “ Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” 5. The old proverb truly saith that “ actions speak louder than words,” and therefore let us review the general ways and manners of the Redeemer. Yon may gather that He is the most approachable of persons from the actions of His life. He was always very busy, and busy about the most important of matters, and yet He never shut the door in the face of any applicant. Not once was He harsh and repulsive. His whole life proves the truth of the prophecy, “ The bruised reed He will not break, and the stocking flax He will not quench.” 6. But, if you want the crowning argument, look yonder. The man who has lived a life of service, at last dies a felon’ s death! The cross of Christ should be the centre to which all hearts are drawn, the focus of desire, the pivot of hope, the anchorage of faith. Surely, you need not be afraid to come to Him who went to Calvary for sinners. II. I now shall proceed, with as great brevity as I can command, TO THIS GREAT TRUTH. 1. I illustrate it by the way which Christ opens up for sinners to Himself The coming to Jesus which saves the soul is a simple reliance on Him. 2. Thitruth is further illustrated by the help which He gives to coming sinners, in order to bring them near to Himself. He it is who first makes them coming sinners. 3. I might further illustrate this to the children of God, by reminding you of the way in which you now commune with your Lord. How easy it is for you to reach His ear and His heart! A prayer, a sigh, a tear, a groan, will admit you into the King’ s chambers. 4. The approachableness of Christ may also be seen in the fact of His receiving the poor offerings of His people. 5. The ordinances wear upon their forefront the impress of an ever approachable Saviour. Baptism in outward type sets forth our fellowship with Him in His death, burial, and resurrection-what can be nearer than this? The Lord’ s supper in visible symbol invites us to eat His flesh and drink His blood: this reveals to us most clearly how welcome we are to the most intimate intercourse with Jesus. III. In the third place, we come TO ENFORCE THIS TRUTH; or, as the old Puritans used to say, improve it. 1. The first enforcement I give is this: let those of us who are working for the Master in soul-winning, try to be be like Christ in this matter, and not be, as some are apt to be, proud, stuck-up, distant, or formal. 2. There is this to be said to you who are unconverted--if Jesus Christ be so approachable, oh I how I wish, how I wish that you would approach Him. There are no bolts upon His doors, no barred iron gates to pass, no big dogs to keep you back. If Christ be so approachable by all needy ones, then needy one, come and welcome. Come just now! 3. The last word is--if Jesus be such a Saviour as we have described Him, let saints and sinners join to praise Him. (C. H. Spurgeon.) Open house for all comers I. JESUS SINNERS. 1. This was and is a great fact--our Lord received, and still receiveth sinners. A philosopher wrote over the door of his academy, “ He that is not learned, let him not enter here” ; but Jesus speaketh by Wisdom in the Proverbs, and says “ Whoso is simple, let him turn in hither: as for him that wanteth understanding, let him eat of My bread, and drink of the wine which I have mingled” (Proverbs 9:4-5). He receives sinners as His disciples, companions, friends. “ This man receiveth sinners” ; not, however, that they may remain sinners, but to pardon their sins, to justify their persons, to cleanse their hearts by the Holy Spirit. 2. I want your attention to another thought--namely, the consistency of this fact. It is a most consistent and proper thing that this man should receive sinners. If you and I reflect awhile we shall remember that the types which were set forth concerning Christ all seem to teach us that He must receive sinners. One of the earliest types of the Saviour was Noah’ s ark, by which a certain company not only of men but also of the lowest animals were preserved from perishing by water, and were floated out of the old world into the new. Moreover, the Master has been pleased to take to Himself one or two titles which imply that He came to receive sinners. He takes the title of Physician, but as He told these very Pharisees a little while before, “ The whole have no need of a physician, but they that are sick.” There is no practice for the physician in a neighbourhood where every man is well. 3. Observe the condescension of this fact. This man, who towers above all other men, holy, harmless, undefiled, and separate from sinners--this man receiveth sinners. 4. Notice the certainty of this fact. 5. Do observe the unqualified sense in which the sentence is put, “ This man receiveth sinners.” But how? What sort of sinners? How are they to feel? How are they to come? Not a word is said about their coming, or their preparation, but simply, “ This man receiveth sinners.” One man came on his bed--indeed, he did not come, but was brought by other people; Jesus received him all the same for that. II. Now, I wanted to have spoken upon the second head, but I have not had sufficient forethought to store up the time, so we must only say of that just this: that Jesus Christ having once received sinners, enters into the most familiar and endearing intercourse with them that is possible. HE FEASTS WITH THEM--their joys are His joys, their work for God is His work for God. He feasts with them at their table, and they with Him at His table; and He does this wherever the table is spread. It may be in a garret, or in a cellar; in a wilderness, or on a mountain; He still eateth with them. This He does now in the ordinances and means of grace by His Spirit; and this He will do in the fulness of glory, when He takes these sinners up to dwell with Him. (C. H. Spurgeon.) An appeal to sinners Many a true word has been spoken in jest, and many a true word has been spoken in slander. Now the scribes and Pharisees wished to slander Christ; but in so doing they outstripped their intentions, and bestowed upon Him a title of renown, 1. First, then, THE . The doctrine is, not that Christ receiveth everybody but that He “ receiveth sinners.” Christ receives not the self-righteous, not the good, not the whole-hearted, not those who dream that they do not need a Saviour, but the broken in spirit, the contrite in heart--those who are ready to confess that they have broken God’ s laws, and have merited His displeasure. Now, let us remark, that there is a very wise distinction on the part of God, that He hath been pleased thus to choose and call sinners to repentance, and not others. For this reason, none but these ever do come to Him. There has never been such a miracle as a self-righteous man coming to Christ for mercy; none but those who want a Saviour ever did come, and therefore it would be useless for Him to say that He would receive any but those who most assuredly will come. And mark, again, none but those can come; no man can come to Christ until he truly knows himself to be a sinner. The self-righteous man cannot come to Christ; for what is implied in coming to Christ? Repentance, trust in His mercy, and the denial of all confidence in one’ s self. His very self-righteousness fetters his foot, so that he cannot come; palsies his arm, so that he cannot take hold of Christ; and blinds his eye, so that he cannot see the Saviour. Yet another reason: if these people, who are not sinners, would come to Christ, Christ would get no glory from them. When the physician openeth his door for those who are sick, let me go there full of health; he can win no honour from me, because he cannot exert his skill upon me. The benevolent man may distribute all his wealth to the poor; but let some one go to him who has abundance, and he shall win no esteem from him for feeding the hungry, or for clothing the naked, since the applicant is neither hungry nor naked. A great sinner brings great glory to Christ when he is saved. II. Now, then, THE . If this Man receiveth sinners, poor sin-sick sinner, what a sweet word this is for thee I Sure, then, He will not reject thee. Come, let me encourage thee this night to come to my Master, to receive His great atonement, and to be clothed with all His righteousness. Mark, those whom I address are the bona fide, real, actual sinners, not the complimentary sinners, not those who say they are sinners by way of pacifying, as they suppose, the religionists of the day; but I speak to those who feel their lost, ruined, hopeless condition. Come, because He has said He will receive you. I know your fears; we all felt them once, when we were coming to Christ. Doth not this suffice thee? Then here is another reason. I am sure “ this Man receiveth sinners,” because He has received many, many before you. See, there is Mercy’ s door; mark how many have been to it; you can almost hear the knocks upon the door now, like echoes of the past. You may remember how many wayworn travellers have called there for rest, how many famished souls have applied there for bread. Go, knock at Mercy’ s door, and ask the porter this question, “ Was there ever one applied to the door that was refused?” I can assure you of the answer: “ No, not one.” III. Now the last point is AN . If it be true that Christ came only to save sinners, my beloved hearers, labour, strive, agonize, to get a sense in your souls of your own sinnership. (C. H. Spurgeon.) Christ receives all In the New Testament the Lord seems to have selected some of every kind and class to show that He will receive all. 1. He will receive the rich--Joseph of Arimathea. 2. The poor--Lazarus the beggar. 3. The learned--Dionysius the Areopagite. 4. Physicians--Luke. 5. Soldiers--the Roman centurion. 6. Fishermen--the apostles. 7. Extortioners--Zaccheus. 8. Tax-gatherers--Matthew. 9. Thieves--the dying robber. 10. Harlots--the woman who was a sinner. 11. Adulterers--the woman of Samaria. 12. Persecutors and murderers--Paul. 13. Back sliders--Peter. 14. Persons in trade--Lydia. 15. Statesmen and courtiers--the eunuch of Ethiopia. 16. Families--that at Bethany. 17. Whole multitudes--those on Day of Pentecost. (Van Doren.) Christ’ s treatment of sinners There are two classes of sins. There are some sins by which man crushes, wounds, malevolently injures his brother man: those sins which speak of a bad, tyrannical, and selfish heart. Christ met those with denunciation. Thorn are other sins by which a man injures himself. There is a life of reckless indulgence; there is a career of yielding to ungovernable propensities, which most surely conducts to wretchedness and ruin, but makes a man an object of compassion rather than of condemnation. The reception which sinners of this class met from Christ was marked by strange and pitying mercy. There was no maudlin sentiment on His lips. He called sin sin, and guilt guilt. But yet there were sins which His lips scourged, and others over which, containing in themselves their own scourge, His heart bled. That which was melancholy, and marred, and miserable in this world, was more congenial to the heart of Christ than that which was proudly happy. It was in the midst of a triumph, and all the pride of a procession, that He paused to weep over ruined Jerusalem. And if we ask the reason why the character of Christ was marked by this melancholy condescension, it is that He was in the midst of a world of ruins, and there was nothing there to gladden, but very much to touch with grief. He was here to restore that which was broken down and crumbling into decay. An enthusiastic antiquarian, standing amidst the fragments of an ancient temple surrounded by dust and moss, broken pillar, and defaced architrave, with magnificent projects in his mind of restoring all this to former majesty, to draw out to light from mere rubbish the ruined glories, and therefore stooping down amongst the dank ivy and the rank nettles; such was Christ amidst the wreck of human nature. He was striving to lift it out of its degradation. He was searching out in revolting places that which had fallen down, that He might build it up again in fair proportions a holy temple to the Lord. Therefore He laboured among the guilty; therefore He was the companion of outcasts; therefore He spoke tenderly and lovingly to those whom society counted undone. (F. W. Robertson, M. A.) Christ’ s demeanour towards sinners The heathen philosopher Seneca made a practice of dining with his slaves, and when challenged for an innovation so directly in the teeth of all customary proprieties and so offensive to the Roman mind, he defended himself by saying that he dined with some because they were worthy of his esteem, and with others that they might become so. The action and its defence was alike admirable, and read a salutary lesson to the aristocrats of Rome. But it was even a greater shock to the Pharisees, and if possible even more unaccountable, that Jesus should prefer the society of notorious sinners to their own irreproachable manners and decorous conversation. They could not understand why a teacher of holy life, instead of frowning upon the notoriously profligate, should show a preference for their society. Our Lord’ s explanation is ample and thorough. He devotes, therefore, the three parables recorded in this chapter to this purpose. It is perhaps worth remarking that on one point He felt that no explanation was required. Even the Pharisees did not suspect Him of any sympathy with sin. These critics of His conduct had not failed to remark that in His presence the daring profanity and audacious license of wicked men were tamed. Those who so narrowly criticized our Lord’ s conduct might have seen its reasonableness had they been able to look at it from another point of view. With equal surprise they might have exclaimed: “ Sinners receive this Man and eat with Him.” These dissolute and lawless characters could themselves have explained the change. They were attracted to Jesus, because together with unmistakable sanctity, and even somehow appearing as the chief feature of His sanctity, there was an understanding of the sinner’ s position and a hopefulness about him which threw a hitherto unknown spell over them. Separate from sinners, as they had never before felt any one to be, He seemed to come closer to their heart by far than any other had come. He had a heart open to all their troubles. He saw them through and through, and yet showed no loathing, no scorn, no astonishment, no perplexity, no weariness. Instead of meeting them with upbraiding and showing them all they had lost, He gave them immediate entrance into His own pure, deep, efficient love, and gladdened their hearts with a sense of what they yet had in Him. Therefore men whose seared conscience felt no other touch, who had a ready scoff for every other form of holiness, admitted this new power and yielded to it. The contrast between this new attitude of a holy person towards the sinner and that to which men had commonly been accustomed has been finely described in the following words: “ He who thought most seriously of the disease held it to be curable; while those who thought less seriously of it pronounced it incurable. Those who loved their race a little made war to the knife against its enemies and oppressors; lie who loved it so much as to die for it made overtures of peace to them. The half-just judge punished the convicted criminal; the thoroughly just judge offered him forgiveness. Perfect justice here appears to take the very course which would be taken by injustice.” It is this, then, that calls for explanation. And it is explained by our Lord in three parables, each of which illustrates the fact that a more active interest in any possession is arroused by the very circumstance that it is lost. I. The first point, then, suggested by these parables is THAT GOD SUFFERS LOSS IN EVERY SINNER THAT DEPARTS FROM HIM. This was what the Pharisees had wholly left out of account, that God loves men and mourns over every ill that befalls them. And this is what we find it so hard to believe. II. Secondly, these parables suggest THAT THE VERY FACT OF OUR BEING LOST EXCITES ACTION OF A TENDER KIND TOWARD US. God does not console Himself for our loss by the fellowship of those who have constantly loved Him. He does not call new creatures into being, and so fill up the blank we have made by straying from Him. He is not a Sovereign who has no personal knowledge of His subjects, nor an employer of labour who can always get a fresh hand to fill an emptied post: He is rather a Shepherd who knows His sheep one by one, a Father who loves His children individually. He would rather restore the most abandoned sinner than blot him from his place to substitute an archangel. Love is personal and settles upon individuals. It is not all the same to God if some other person is saved while you are not. These parables thus bring us face to face with the most significant and fertile of all realities--God’ s love for us. This love encompasses you whether you will or no. Love cannot remain indifferent or quiescent. Interference of a direct and special kind becomes necessary. The normal relations being disturbed, and man becoming helpless by the disturbance, it falls to God to restore matters. A new set of ideas and dealings are brought into play. So long as things go smoothly and men by nature love God and seek to do His will, there is no anxiety, no meeting of emergencies by unexpected effort, hidden resources, costly sacrifice. But when sin brings into view all that is tragic, and when utter destruction seems to be man’ s appointed destiny, there is called into exercise the deepest tenderness, the utmost power of the Divine nature. Here where the profoundest feeling of God is concerned, where His connection with His own children is threatened, Divinity is stirred to its utmost. This appears, among other things, in the spontaneity and persistence of the search God institutes for the lost. III. The third point illustrated by these parables is THE JOY ON THE OF THE SINNER. “ Joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth more than over ninety and nine just persons which need no repentance.” The joy is greater, because the effort to bring it about has been greater, and because for a time the result has been in suspense, so that when the end is attained there is a sense of clear gain. The joy of success is proportioned to the difficulty, the doubtfulness of attaining it. All the hazards and sacrifices of the search are repaid by the recovery of the lost. The value of the unfallen soul may intrinsically be greater than the value of the redeemed; but the joy is proportioned, not to the value of the article, but to the amount of anxiety that has been spent upon it. (M. Dods, D. D.) The devil’ s castaways received by Christ “ Mr. Whitfield,” said Lady Huntingdon, “ these ladies have been preferring a very heavy charge against you. They say that in your sermon last night you made use of this expression: “ So ready is Christ to receive sinners who come to Him, that He is willing to receive the devil’ s castaways.” Mr. Whitfield pleaded guilty to the charge, and told them of the following circumstance. “ A wretched woman came to me this morning, and said: ‘ Sir, I was passing the door of your chapel, and hearing the voice of some one preaching, I did what I have never been in the habit of doing, I went in I and one of the first things I heard you say was that Jesus would receive willingly the devil’ s castaways. Sir, I have been in the town for many years, and am so worn out in his service, that I may with truth be called one of the devil’ s castaways. Do you think that Jesus would receive me? “ I,” said Mr. Whitfield, “ assured her that there was not a doubt of it, if she was willing to go to Him.” From the sequel it appeared that this was a case of true conversion, and Lady Huntingdon was assured that the woman left a very charming testimony behind her, that though her sins had been of a crimson hue, the atoning blood of Christ had washed them white as snow. Publicans and sinners drawn to Christ; or, the wisdom of gentleness Rigorous courses hath ordinarily produced sad effects. Thou seest that those drops that fall easily upon the corn ripen and fill the ear, but the stormy showers that fall with violence beat the stalks down fiat upon the earth, which being once laid, are afterwards kept down without hope of recovery through weeds’ embracements. Have you never known any that have been sent faulty to the jail who have returned flagitious and vile? (N. Rogers.) The worst capable of much White paper is made of dunghill rags. God can so work the heart of the vilest wretch with beating and purifying as it shall be fit to write His laws upon. (N. Rogers.) Murmuring Murmuring is a sin betwixt secret backbiting and open railing; a smothered malice which can neither utterly be concealed, nor dare openly be vented. Remedies against this evil: First, keep thy heart from pride, envy, passion, for from hence flows murmuring, malignity, whispering. Seldom do we murmur at those below us, but above us. (N. Rogers.) Luke 15:3-7 What man of you, having an hundred sheep Lost, sought, found The three parables in this chapter fall into two sections, each setting forth separately one-half of a great truth, and both in combination exhibiting the whole. 1. The first two parables illustrate conversion on its Divine side. Christ had to seek these lost publicans and sinners in order to find them. 2. The third parable illustrates conversion on its human side, and was intended to imply that these publicans and sinners would never have been received by Christ unless they had sought Him. 3. The three parables combined illustrate conversion on both its Divine and human sides, and, consequently, the complete truth: God seeking man, and man seeking God; and the twofold search rewarded, by God and man finding each other. I. Lost. 1. In the first parable the loss falls mainly on what is lost. By sin (1) man loses himself; (2) man loses protection; (3) man loses comfort. 2. In the second parable the loss is sustained exclusively by the owner, and is considerable. One out of ten pieces. (1) The piece of silver was lost in the house, not in the street. (2) The piece of silver was lost to usefulness. 3. In the third parable we have a double loss. The nature and extent of the loss reach their climax here. Of two sons the father loses one--the loss of one-half as against the loss of one-tenth or one-hundredth. The son has only one father; and losing him he loses all. (1) Measure God’ s loss, as represented in this parable. Man is lost to Him not by death, but by depravity, which is far worse. (2) Consider man’ s loss. No possible compensation. The loss of God is the poverty, the forsakenness the degradation, the bondage of the soul. II. SOUGHT. 1. In the first two parables the seekers are DIVINE. Let us endeavour to trace them. (1) The shepherd represents (a) the self-sacrificing seeker; (b) the persevering seeker. (2) The woman represents the careful and painstaking seeker. How suggestive of the minute and searching work of the Holy Spirit--Christ’ s fan and Christ’ s fire. 2. The seeker in the last parable is HUMAN, and it is just here that all experience, and the plan of salvation laid down in Scripture, would lead us to expect to find him, and exactly as here portrayed. Now we see where the other parables have been leading us, and to understand that their help is imperatively required. For notice-- (1) Light dawns upon the prodigal and conviction pierces his soul. He passes through three preliminary states of experience as a lost man. First, danger and misery, when he begins to be in want; then uselessness and degradation, when he is sent into the fields to feed swine; and, finally, guilt, when he says, “ I have sinned.” (2) Hope now arises within his convinced and enlightened soul. How is this hope to be accounted for? Undoubtedly on the ground that the person he had sinned against was his father. But the moment it arose it would be confronted by a variety of opposing forces. The very thought of this filial relationship would summon before the memory the fact that it had been broken by an unpardonable outrage on a father’ s love. Conscience, again, would discourage the hope by urging the necessity of a now impossible reparation. And reason would finally tend to crush it by representing the folly of return now that having had, and having spent his portion, there was nothing to return for. It is well to remember all this. God is indeed our Father, and in that fact lies the sinner’ s hope to-day. But how much there is to hinder us from taking advantage of it! “ God is my Father, but I have disowned Him. He has lavished His gifts upon me, but I have wasted them. What, then, can I expect but rejection if I return?” And yet the hope survives. The sinner still clings, and clings desperately, to the fact that God is his Father. Where did he get it from? Not from Nature, net by intuition, not through the deliverances of consciousness or the processes of deduction. From any one or all of these sources man may get his idea of God, but not his idea of a heavenly Father. No sinner ever said “ My Father” until Christ taught him to do so. One voice, and one alone, has proclaimed this relationship, and thus formed the basis for the sinner’ s hope--namely, His who said: “ No man cometh to the Father but by Me.” And to maintain this struggling hope against contending forces is tim Good Shepherd’ s work. (3) The prodigal returns--the last stage, and the one without which all the others are traversed in vain. The strongest conviction of our sinfulness, the deepest remorse for it, and the clearest knowledge of the way out of it will avail nothing unless we arise and go to our Father. III. FOUND. 1. Notice the finding. The shepherd finds the sheep, the woman the piece of silver, the father and the son each other. Christ has found the sinner and done what He, as the Good Shepherd, alone could do, opened and revealed the way back to God, encouraged the sinner to return, and provided the basis of reconciliation. The Holy Spirit has found the sinner and done what He, as the careful and painstaking Seeker, alone could do, wrought conviction and repentance. The sinner now does what neither Christ nor the Holy Spirit can do for him, but, with the help of both, finds the Father, to the peace and joy of his soul. The train of evangelical thought is now complete, and this trinity of parables made to illustrate the work of the Blessed Trinity in converting the sinner from the error of his way. 2. Notice the finding as it is regarded by heaven and earth. (1) The father receives the son with every demonstration of love and joy. (2) There is joy in the presence of the angels of God. And this joy is quite natural, for, first, the angels are perfectly pure and unselfish beings, and therefore spontaneously rejoice in the felicity of others. Then, again, they move eternally within that sphere the centre of which is the source of blessedness, and, therefore, delight to see wretched men brought into fellowship with the blessed God. And, lastly, much of their happiness consists in doing God’ s will. (3) All this, however, is in marked contrast with the conduct of the elder brother who “ was angry and would not come in” to join in the general joy. He even repudiated the relationship of his brother, and contemptuously referred to him in his father’ s presence as “ this thy son.” He ventured to do what the father never did, threw the past in his teeth, and begrudged the hospitality which the poor starveling received. Who is this elder brother? Without question the Pharisee, either Jew or Christian. The men who stand aloof from their prodigal brethren, and who reproduce in our day the old, hard, sectarian, loveless spirit, are those who are here condemned. The man who revels in his father’ s bounty, who plumes himself on his own worthiness of it, who will not share it, is the elder brother and the Pharisee. (J. W. Burn.) Lost and found I. The . 1. The scene. 2. The classes that were attracted by Jesus (Luke 15:1). 3. The classes that were not drawn to Jesus (Luke 15:2). Reputable and scrupulous, but fault-finding, narrow-minded, and bigoted. II. THE TWO . 1. Characteristics common to both. (1) Lost souls. (2) A seeking Saviour. (3) The great joy which the recovery brings both to the heart of the Redeemer, and of all who truly love Him. 2. Characteristics peculiar to each. Lessons: 1. Character is tested by sentiment and sympathy. (1) The character of our Lord by His gracious sentiments and sympathies for the outcast and the most depraved. (2) The character of the Pharisees and scribes is seen in their faultfinding at Jesus for His loving sympathies for those whom they despised. 2. The real condition of mankind is revealed in these parables--Lost. 3. The nature of Christ’ s mission is here shown--To save. 4. The twofold method of salvation is here seen. (1) Christ’ s personal care. (2) Christ’ s work through the Church. 5. The universal sympathy and gladness over the salvation of souls is beautifully suggested. 6. How does our character stand this test? (D. C. Hughes, M. A.) Lost and found I. THE SINNER LOST. II. THE SINNER VALUED AND PITIED. III. THE SINNER SOUGHT. IV. THE SINNER FOUND AND RESCUED. V. THE SINNER AND SAVED. VI. THE SINNER SAVED THE OF . Conclusion: 1. Let the restored and saved give thanks to their Deliverer. 2. Let the spiritually lost accept, in penitence and faith, the tender and proffered ministrations of Christ, (J. R. Thomson, M. A.) Third Sunday after Trinity I. NOTICE THE PICTURE THESE PRESENT OF THE PLAN AND ESTATE OF THE . There was once a time when God was pleased with all that He had made, and when all His creatures were happy m Him. The universe was once one blessed flock, with the Lord as their Shepherd, all blessed in those sequestered realms which knew no blight or tumult of sinful disorder, and where everything was pervaded with innocence, tranquillity, and peace. A wilderness is not necessarily a desolate and empty place. Any wide, grassy plain, hidden away from the common world, and undisturbed in its quiet, would satisfy the Scriptural use of the word. Such were the favourite pasture-grounds of the Orientals, and such was the universe of holy beings ere sin had made its disturbing inroads upon it. The starry plains were peopled only with unfallen creatures, secure, tranquil, and joyous in the smiles of their Maker. All rational beings were but one flock, and their shepherd was God. And the condition of man answered to this picture. He was as a new piece of silver, bright, precious, and bearing upon him the image and superscription of the Almighty. There was no darkness in his understanding, no perverseness in his heart, no fears, no regrets, no sighs, no pains, no dimness. II. BUT THIS SCENE WAS SOON BY ANOTHER. A cloud arose upon the sweet morning of our world. One of the happy flock disappeared from its fellowship with its comrades. It was lost; wide-wandering from the Lord, in a world that smoked with curses and wretchedness. III. NOTICE, THEN, THE OF DIVINE FOR THE OF THE LOST. There was but one of a hundred gone. Ninety-and-nine remained. But precious in the eye of God is even one soul. It is a jewel capable of adding to the glory and grandeur of heaven. It is a radiant and living offshoot of Deity, capacitated to live and shine though stars should languish and expire. Though abused, prostituted, starved, and ruined by sin, it may still be made a part of the immortal intellect, heart and life of the universe. And its calamities are not of such a sort but that infinite Wisdom and Goodness has resources by which God can be just, and yet receive it again into His favour, the more interesting for ever because of this disaster. A plan of operation for its recovery has accordingly been instituted. And wonderful are the steps of the heavenly expedient. The Shepherd Himself goes after the lost sheep. He does not merely send servants to find it. He comes Himself. In this going forth is involved the incarnation and earthly life of the Lord Jesus Christ, and His whole providence in the Church, and through His word and sacraments. Or, to use the other figure, He lighteth a candle and personally searches every dark corner that He may come upon the lost piece which cannot help itself. This candle is the illuminating Word, which He causeth to shine around and upon us; and the sweeping which He does is the stir of His providence and Spirit, moving to touch the hearts of the unfortunate lost. In paradise already this candle was lit, when God gave promise of a coming Saviour; and all through and in His Church, in every age, this sweeping has been going on, and always for the finding of souls, and the bringing of them to light and salvation. With a thousand influences He plies men. He sends them the Word of His gospel. He stirs about their dark resting-places. He disturbs their guilty repose. He deprives them of their impure attachments. He makes them realize the evil and bitterness of departing from God. He takes hold upon them by the powers of His grace. He taketh up every willing one, to strengthen him with His help, and to beautify him with the sanctification of His Spirit. IV. NOTICE ALSO THE RESULT. The lost sheep is restored. The piece of silver is recovered. Or, exchanging the imagery of the parables for literal terms, the sinner is completely changed--returned from his alienated and lost condition--made a true penitent. This is the direct object of all the arrangements and ministrations of grace. V. AND THIS OCCURS THERE IS JOY. It is the end of gracious interference achieved. It is the fruit of the travail of the Saviour’ s soul realized. It is the aim of God’ s most wonderful works accomplished. And everything is full of gladness. “ There is joy in heaven” ; and the implication is that it is joy throughout heaven, from centre to circumference--joy on the throne, and joy in those who serve under it--joy in the heart of God, and among all the hosts of God--joy for Christ’ s sake, for the penitent’ s sake, for heaven’ s sake--joy that a broken link has been repaired in the holy creation of God--joy that another precious jewel has been added to the crown of redeeming love--joy that there is born another tenant for the mansions of glory--joy that another symptom has transpired of the ultimate recovery of all the downtrodden fields of creation which sin has overrun. (J. A. Seiss, D. D.) The parable of the lost sheep I. In the first place, I call attention to this observation: THE ONE SUBJECT OF THOUGHT to the man who had lost his sheep. This sets forth to us the one thought of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Good Shepherd, when He sees a man lost to holiness and happiness by wandering into sin. The shepherd, on looking over his little flock of one hundred, can only count ninety-nine. This one idea possesses him: “ a sheep is lost!” This agitates his mind more and more--“ a sheep is lost.” It masters his every faculty. He cannot eat bread; he cannot return to his home; he cannot rest while one sheep is lost. To a tender heart a lost sheep is a painful subject of thought. It is a sheep, and therefore utterly defenceless now that it has left its defender. And a sheep is of all creatures the most senseless, and the most shiftless. What is it which makes the Great Shepherd lay so much to His heart the loss of one of His flock: What is it that makes Him agitated as He reflects upon that supposition--“ if He lose one of them” ? 1. I think it is, first, because of His property in it. The parable does not so much speak of a hired shepherd, but of a shepherd proprietor. “ What man of you having an hundred sheep, if he lose one of them.” The sheep are Christ’ s, first, because He chose them from before the foundations of the world--“ Ye have not chosen Me, but I have chosen you.” His, next, because the Father gave them to Him. How He dwells upon that fact in His great prayer in John 17:1-26.: “ Thine they were, and Thou gavest them Me” ; “ Father, I will that they also, whom Thou hast given Me, be with Me where I am.” We are the Lord’ s own flock, furthermore, by His purchase of us; He says, “ I lay down My life for the sheep.” This thought, therefore, presses upon Him, “ One of My sheep is lost.” 2. Secondly, He has yet another reason for this all-absorbing thought--namely, His great compassion for His lost sheep. The wandering of a soul causes Jesus deep sorrow; He cannot bear the thought of its perishing. Such is the love and tenderness of His heart that He cannot bear that one of His own should be in jeopardy. 3. Moreover, the man in the parable had a third relation to the sheep, which made him possessed with the one thought of its being lost--he was a shepherd to it. It was his own sheep, and he had therefore for that very reason become its shepherd; and he say to himself, “ If I lose one of them my shepherd-work will be ill-done.” What dishonour it would be to a shepherd to lose one of his sheep! II. Now we come to the second point, and observe THE ONE OBJECT OF SEARCH. This sheep lies on the shepherd’ s heart, and he must at once set out to look for it. 1. Observe here that it is a definite search. The shepherd goes after the sheep, and after nothing else; and he has the one particular sheep in his mind’ s eye. 2. An all-absorbing search. 3. An active search. 4. A persevering search. III. Now, we must pass on very briefly to notice a third point. We have had one subject of thought and one object of search; now we have ONE BURDEN OF LOVE. When the seeking is ended, then the saving appears--“ When he hath found it, he layeth it on his shoulders, rejoicing.” Splendid action this! How beautifully the parable sets forth the whole of salvation. Some of the old writers delight to put it thus: in His incarnation He came after the lost sheep; in His life He continued to seek it; in His death He laid it upon His shoulders; in His resurrection He bore it on its way, and in His ascension He brought it home rejoicing. Our Lord’ s career is a course of soul-winning, a life laid out for His people; and in it you may trace the whole process of salvation. But now, see, the shepherd finds the sheep, and he layeth it on his shoulders. 1. It is an uplifting action, raising the fallen one from the earth whereon he hath strayed. It is as though he took the sheep just as it was, without a word of rebuke, without delay or hesitancy, and lifted it out of the slough or the briars into a place of safely. 2. This laying on the shoulders was an appropriating act. He seemed to say, “ You are my sheep, and therefore I lay you on my shoulders.” 3. More condescending still is another view of this act: it was a deed of service to the sheep. The sheep is uppermost, the weight of the sheep is upon the shepherd. The sheep rides, the shepherd is the burden-bearer. The sheep rests, the shepherd labours. “ I am among you as he that serveth,” said our Lord long ago. 4. It was a rest-giving act, very likely needful to the sheep which could go no further, and was faint and weary. It was a full rest to the poor creature if it could have understood it, to feel itself upon its shepherd’ s shoulders, irresistibly carried back to safety. What a rest it is to you and to me to know that we are borne along by the eternal power and Godhead of the Lord Jesus Christ I IV. We close by noticing one more matter, which is--THE ONE SOURCE OF JOY. This man who had lost his sheep is filled with joy, but his sheep is the sole source of it. His sheep has so taken up all his thought, and so commanded all his faculties, that as he found all his care centred upon it, so he now finds all his joy flowing from it. I invite you to notice the first mention of joy we get here: “ When he hath found it, he layeth it on his shoulders, rejoicing.” “ That is a great load for you, shepherd!” Joyfully he answers, “ I am glad to have it on my shoulders.” The mother does not say when she has found her lost child, “ This is a heavy load.” No; she presses it to her bosom. She does not mind how heavy it is; it is a dear burden to her. She is rejoiced to bear it once again. “ He layeth it on his shoulders, rejoicing.” Remember that text, “ Who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame.” (C. H. Spurgeon.) Last and found I. THE SINNER’ S --“ Lost.” The stray sheep and the missing silver are the emblems of every unrenewed soul. But men refuse to lie under this imputation. In what do we differ from those whom you call Christians? they ask. We are as upright, honest, and generous as they. How are we lost? In what did the lost sheep of the parable differ from tim ninety and nine in the fold? Not in appearance, but in condition. It was lost because it had wandered away from the shepherd. The missing piece of silver was coin of the realm, as well as the nine safe in the purse; but it was lost because it was out of its owner’ s reach. Sinners are lost, not because they are unlike other men, but because they are out of right relations to God. II. THE SINNER’ S FRIEND. The fact that God makes any attempt to save lost men proves that He is the sinner’ s Friend. What has He to gain by the reclamation of the missing? He is not so poor that our restoration will greatly enrich Him. In comparison with the infinite expanse of His universe, this world is but a bubble of foam on the crest of an ocean surge. He has no lack of worshippers and servants. But these parables teach that there is still more of Divine affection in this search after the lost. III. THE SINNER’ S RESCUE. God’ s plan of salvation is not a failure. It cost largely to make the redemption of the soul possible. Before the shepherd could come within reach of his wandering sheep, he must bruise and weary himself with his rough travel. Before God could lay the hand of help and healing on any man, the God-man must be despised and rejected, scourged, mocked, crucified. But none of these things stop the way; over them all and through them all the compassionate God presses on after His lost world “ until He find it.” IV. THE SINNER’ S RETURN. “ Rejoice with me.” “ Joy in the presence,” etc. How happens it that there is such a contrast between the indifference of earth and the ecstasy of heaven? We here see things as they are in themselves; those yonder look at them in their relations. The conversion of a soul is not an isolated matter. It inevitably affects the character and condition of multitudes. (E. S. Attwood.) The lost sheep I. THE LOST SHEEP--THE SINNER. 1. Both act in the same manner. 2. Both share the same fate. II. THE GOOD --JESUS CHRIST. 1. He possesses a numerous flock, as Creator and as Redeemer of mankind. 2. However numerous the flock may be, He is aware of every loss He sustains. (1) His solicitude for every one of His sheep knows no limits.(2) Being omniscient, He knows all the dangers that may befall the flock and any of the sheep. 3. He leaves the ninety-nine in the desert. (1) He does not leave them through carelessness, or without protection. (2) Our Savior displayed a greater solicitude for the welfare of the sinner, because it. (1) Christ goes after the sinner, warning and exhorting him by the voice of conscience, by inspirations, by the kindness with which He received sinners when He dwelt visibly among them, by His whole life, passion, and death. (2) Christ searches for the lost sinner, following him over the abysses, through thorns, over mountains. He searches until He finds him, or until it has become impossible to find him, because he is lost, because of final obduracy. 5. And when He has found the sheep, when the Sinner does not refuse to seize the hand extended towards him-- (1) He lays it upon His shoulders, facilitating the beginning of conversion by imparting abundant graces, so that the sinner is rather carried than proceeds himself. (2) He carries the sheep home to partake again of the communion of saints. (3) He rejoices, and makes His friends and neighbours rejoice with Him. (Repertorium Oratoris Sacri.) Parable of the lost sheep I. THE . Man has wandered-- 1. From the authority of God. 2. From the family of God. 3. In the way of peril and death. 4. The sinner would wander endlessly, but for the intervention of Divine grace. II. THE KINDLY . 1. He compassionated man in his fallen and ruined condition. 2. He actually came to seek the wanderer. 3. When found He restores him. III. THE JOYOUS RESULTS. 1. The Shepherd rejoices in the attainment of His gracious purposes. 2. Angels rejoice. 3. The restored wanderer rejoices. 4. All spiritual persons acquainted with the sinner’ s restoration rejoice. (J. Burns, D. D.) The lost sheep brought home I. THE SINNER’ S NATURAL . 1. In want. 2. In danger. 3. Helpless. II. THE CONDUCT OF CHRIST TOWARDS THE SINNER. 1. He misses him. 2. He seeks him. 3. He finds him. 4. He bears him home. III. THE FEELING WITH WHICH THE GREAT OF THE CHURCH CARRIES ON THIS BLESSED WORK. Not pity, compassion, kindness, nor yet love; but joy, and joy overflowing: joy so great that the Divine mind cannot hold it, but must call upon the whole creation to come and share its abundance. (C. Bradley, M. A.) The lost sheep This is one of those parables which, by its simplicity, presents the full tenderness of the gospel message to mankind, gathered, as it were, into a strong focus of emphasis. I. THE HIGH , ON THE PART OF JEHOVAH, OF THE SOUL OF MAN. In the narrative of the sheep, the shepherd is represented as thinking with greater anxiety of the one straying from his flock, than of the ninety-nine who are safe under his eye. He feels sure of them, and quits them without apprehension, intent rather upon the restoration of the one than upon the preservation of the many. We are not to presume that Christ withdraws His care and His regard from His own people in His anxiety to add more to His fold. He has never left His true disciples comfort less; but “ the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost,” abides with them alway. But the Saviour, when He spoke this parable, wanted to show that His heart was large enough to love, and His fold was wide enough to hold, both the flock already gathered and the sheep which had wandered away. II. Look, secondly, at an expansion of the same idea in THE OF THE IN BACK THE SHEEP THAT WAS LOST. It was passing kind to bring it back at all; but what a depth of kindness is there in the manner of that bringing back! “ When he hath found it, he layeth it on his shoulders.” Oh, my friends, what touching tenderness is here! a tenderness “ passing the love of woman.” Have you not often seen a mother chase a wayward child, and when she overtakes it, seize it with a petulant clutch, and almost drag it back to the door of the cottage, chiding and sometimes chastising it the whole way? But there is no upbraiding here. The wanderer has no excuse. He has been ungrateful; he has broken down the fences which love had built for his security; he has despised the guardianship which would have shielded him, he has been obdurate under the mildness which would have gently governed him; he has quarrelled with the fare which sovereign bounty had provided him. But there are none of these things flung sternly in his teeth. There is no anger in the Shepherd’ s eye. It is all pity. III. Now look at THE AND OF THE . “ I have found that which was lost.” “ Found” and “ lost,” these are the two contrasting words, and their meaning is unspeakable. What a losing! What a finding! It is a rescue from perdition. Not a mere human estimate of being lost, but God’ s estimate. And there is a difference between the two ideas as vast and wide as the difference between the finite and the infinite. We deem it no small thing to lose the valuable purchase of years of anxiety and toil; but what must be Christ’ s estimate of His own loss, when He feels that He has lost the purchase of His blood, His pleading, and His prayers; that human infatuation has actually torn itself away from the embrace of Calvary; and that the coinage of the Cross--the wealth that poured, stamped with a Saviour’ s crown of thorns, from Mercy’ s mint--is cast aside for nought! And what must be the sinner’ s estimate of his own perdition, when from its darkest depths he feels its cruellest curse, and has only light enough to see to count the priceless sum at which his soul was bought, but which he has contemned, and scorned, and flung away! IV. THE WHICH GREET THE ’ S RETURN WITH HIS SHEEP. His heart is too full to keep the gladness to himself. There is such chainless ecstasy thrilling in his soul that he must have all his friends about him to help him in his triumphant celebration. “ Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep which was lost.” What condescension is there in this sympathy! Oh could we but gauge the satisfaction with which Jesus will look upon “ the travail of His soul,” then we should know something of the depth of the love with which He loves us. But the ocean is too wide for our gaze to see the further shore, it is too deep for our poor plummet to fathom. We cannot know the bitterness of the cup He drank to the foul dregs; we cannot feel the agony which the sleeping disciples might not watch, when the drops of blood were sweat upon the ground; we cannot tell the galling stab of nail and thorn and spear, nor lift the weight of the rough, crushing cross. No; we cannot understand the huge encyclopaedia of Calvary, nor study to the full profundity of its melting lore the lexicon of dying love; and so we cannot measure out the joy with which the purchase of that death will be received, and the trophies of that tragedy be counted up. But we shall be allowed to share in it! Not only shall we be rejoiced ever, but we shall rejoice over others. (A. Mursell.) The last sheep Never forget that the whole drama of Redemption--the Incarnation, the Ministry, the Cross, the Resurrection, the Ascension--was all but one long search for the lost sheep, and carrying it homerejoicing. The whole race of man was the lost sheep until Christ found it. All we like sheep had gone astray. “ All the souls that are were forfeit once, And He who might the vantage best have took, Found out the remedy.” Other sheep were His--millions of spiritual creatures thronging the heaven of heavens. But here was this atom-world, floating on the infinite bosom of the bright and boundless air, the ruined habitation of a fallen race. To this poor ruined atom-world He came down all these steps of the infinite descent. Why? Because God is love. I. LET US ALL BE PITIFUL. As for sin, indeed, we cannot hate it too much. But for the sinner we should feel nothing but compassion. II. LET NONE DESPAIR. None has sinned too deeply to be forgiven. Come to Christ with your burden. There is heavenly medicine; there is lustral water at the wicket gate. III. THINK NOBLE OF GOD. (Archdeacon Farrar.) The lost sheep I. There is, first, GOD’ S OVER THE SINNER. Usually, in depicting a lost sinner, we dwell on the miseries which he has brought upon himself, and the blessings which he himself has forfeited. But this and the succeeding parables differ from the ordinary representations of the subject, in that they set before us the loss which God has sustained in the wandering and rebellion of His children. This view of the matter may well give careless sinners food for serious reflection. You are God’ s. By virtue of your very creaturehood you belong to Him. Your hearts, your lives, your service, ought all to be given to Him; but they are not, and this is no mere thing of indifference to Him. He misses you. He, on whom the universe hangs, and who might well be excused if He had no concern for you, misses your love. He hungers for your affection. Yea, He has used means of the most costly character to find you out, and to bring you back. Why will you continue to disregard Him? II. But, in the second place, we have here set before us THE SINNER’ S OWN . He is like a lost sheep. Now, while, as we have seen, this means that God has lost him, we must not forget that, on the other side of it, the analogy also bears that the sinner has lost himself. There are few more helpless creatures than a wandered sheep. It is, comparatively speaking, an easy thing to convince the sinner of his guilt, but it is a hard matter to get him to own his helplessness. He will persist in attempting his own deliverance. He will seek to satisfy God’ s law for himself, and to find his own way back to happiness. The sheep will run to the shepherd when he appears, and welcome him as its helper, looking up in dumb gratitude into his face. But the sinner, in this respect more stupid even than the sheep, too often runs from the Shepherd and will have none of His assistance. III. We have here, in the third place, THE MEANS USED FOR THE SINNER’ S . All the way from heaven to Calvary Jesus came to seek lost sinners. He was going after that which was lost when He sat by the well of Sychar, and conversed with the woman of Samaria; when He called Matthew in His toll-booth, and when He summoned Zaccheus from the branch of the sycamore-tree whereon he was perched. He was going after that which was lost when He shed forth His Spirit upon Pentecost, and inspired His servants to proclaim His truth with power; and He is still going after that which is lost in the events of His providence, whereby He rouses the careless to reflection; in the searching words of His earnest ministers, who statedly declare His love, and speak home to the hearts of their fellow-men; and in the strivings of His spirit, whereby, often when they can give no account of the matter, men’ s minds are strangely turned in the direction of salvation. But we must hasten on to describe the finding. When, it may be asked, is a sinner found by Christ? The answer is, When, on his side, the sinner finds Christ. What is seen in heaven is Christ laying His loving hand upon the sinner, sad the angels hear Him, saying--“ I have found that which was lost” ; but what is seen on earth, is the sinner laying his believing hand on Christ, and men hear him crying--“ I have found my Deliverer. I will go with Him, for salvation is with Him.” But these are not two distinct things--they are involved the one in the other, so that you cannot take the one from the other without destroying both. But there is yet another aspect of this finding which must in nowise be lost sight of. I mean the tenderness of the shepherd. IV. THE JOY BY GOD OVER THE SINNER’ S RETURN. The home-coming here can hardly be identical with the finding of the lost one. It must rather, I think, be understood of the introduction of the saved one into heaven, by Jesus, at the last. Yet the joy over him is not delayed till then, though at that moment it becomes higher than before. Let me illustrate. You have lost your child, and one of the most trusted members of your family has set out in search of her. He is long away, and weary days and weeks you wait for news. At length, however, there comes from the great city a telegram from the seeker, saying that he has found his sister, and that he is making arrangements for bringing her home as soon as possible. Of course, the mere receipt of this message gives you joy; but when at length your loved one is brought home, that joy is intensified, and you call together your friends to celebrate with you her return. Now, your gladness at the receipt of the telegram corresponds to the joy in heaven over the sinner’ s repentance, while your higher joy at the home-coming of your child is symbolical of the gladness which will be caused by the entrance into heaven of each new ransomed spirit. Nor need we wonder at this joy it is over a successful enterprise. It is over the deliverance of another soul from ruin. (W. M. Taylor, D. D.) The Good Shepherd in three positions Let us behold our great Shepherd-- I. IN THE SEARCH “ Until He find it.” 1. No rejoicing is on His countenance. He is anxious for the lost. 2. No hesitation is in His mind. Despite roughness of way, length of time, or darkness of night, He still pursues His lost one. 3. No anger is in His heart. The many wanderings of the sheep cost Him dear, but He counts them as nothing, so that He may but find it. 4. No pausing because of weariness. Love makes Him forget Himself, and causes Him to renew His strength. 5. No giving up the search. His varied nonsuccesses do not compel Him to return defeated. Such must our searches after others be. We must labour after each soul until we find it. II. AT THE CAPTURE. “ When He hath found it.” Mark the Shepherd when the sheep is at last within reach. 1. Wanderer held. How firm the grip! How hearty! How entire! 2. Weight borne. No chiding, smiting, driving; but a lift, a self-loading, an easing of the wanderer. 3. Distance travelled. Every step is for the Shepherd. He must tread painfully all that length of road over which the sheep had wandered so wantonly. The sheep is carried back with no suffering on its own part. 4. Shepherd rejoicing to bear the burden. The sheep is so dear that its weight is a load of love. The Shepherd is so good that He finds joy in His own toil. 5. Sheep rejoicing, too. Surely it is glad to be found of the Shepherd, and so to have its wanderings ended, its weariness rested, its distance removed, its perfect restoration secured. III. IN THE HOME-. “ When He cometh home.” 1. Heaven is home to Christ. 2. Jesus must carry us all the way there. 3. The Shepherd’ s mission for lost souls is known in glory, and watched with holy sympathy: in this all heavenly ones are “ his friends and neighbours.” 4. Jesus loves others to rejoice with Him over the accomplishment of His design. “ He called together His friends.” See how they crowd around Him! What a meeting! 5. Repentance is also regarded as our being brought home (see verse 7). 6. One sinner can make all heaven glad: (see verses 7, 10). (C. H.Spurgeon.) Saving the lost The sinner is set forth in the parable as a silly, wandering sheep. And it suggests what is true--that sin is not always a matter of premeditation. Sin is oftentimes an ignorance, a misunderstanding, a darkness of mind. A young man does not at eighteen say, “ Now I will waste my time and squander my money, ruin my health, and hurt as many by my influence as I can.” That is not the way the thing is done. It would not be true to so represent it, any more than it would have been true for Christ to have represented the sheep as getting together in one corner of the fold, and saying, “ Now let us get out and run off into the woods, and get bitten by wolves, and be killed.” Neither sheep nor men act in that way. Men wander off--they get led astray--they get farther away from virtue than they ever expected to be--they are lost before they know it. Looking at him from one point of view, the sinner is to be condemned; looking at him from another, he is to be pitied. In this latter light it is that the parable presents him to us. My friends, let us catch the spirit of the Saviour, as we go in and out among men. Men are like ice. You can melt them sooner by being warm toward them, by centring the rays of a great, earnest, glowing love upon them, than by going at them with hammers of threat and warning, and trying to beat them down and pulverize them. Sandstone kind of men can be treated in that way; but when you hit a man in that style made of granite, the hammer recoils, to the injury of the palm that held it. June is better than December to quicken life and growth in the natural world; and if you want people to blossom and get fruitful spiritually, pour around them the warm, genial atmosphere of God’ s penetrative and stimulative love. My people, refresh your memories to-day with the real object of Christ’ s incarnation. He did not come to publish certain sublime truths, He did not come to found a Church, to build up a religious hierarchy, to introduce habits of prayer, and peculiar views of God and duty. He came absorbed, rather, with one thought--devoted to one sublime, unselfish mission. It was to go after His lost sheep. This yearning, this irrepressible desire, it was, which burned and glowed in His whole life, as the pure fire glows in the diamond. This it was which gave fervour and intense beauty to His life. Before Christ came, who cared for the lost? Who cares for the bleaching bone in the wilderness?--it may be the bone of an ox, or a dog, or a man; who cares which? It is a dry and lifeless bone, and nothing more. It has no connection with our beating flesh, no relation with our living thought. Who cares for the shell on the shore? The waves have heaved it up from the caverns of the deep, and ground it into the sand: there let it lie. What hunter cares for the scattered feathers which some fierce hawk has torn from the back and breast of its prey? Why mourn over a bunch of soiled plumage? Had the hunter seen the hawk pounce on it, he might, perchance, have shot the hawk, and spared the bird; but the bird is lost. Why look? why mourn? why care? So little man cared for man before Christ came. The life of Christ was wonderful, because it was full of leeds nobody else had ever done. His very sympathies were a revelation. Ask Film as He rises from His agonizing prayer in the garden, when a thicker darkness than subsequently draped the earth lies on His soul; and He says again, “ I came to save the lost.” Ask Him as he sinks fainting beneath the cross; and amid His panting are shaped the selfsame words--“ To save the lost.” Ask Him as He hangs on the cross itself, about to yield up the ghost; and His quivering lips reply, “ I came to save the lost; and here My task is finished.” We are like vases of rare tint and exquisite workmanship, which, shattered by some violent stroke, have been regathered in all their fragments, and so carefully rejoined, and glued with transparent cement, that no eye can detect where were the lines of rupture. The seeking love of God found us in fragments, and made us over into a perfect whole. If any of you have children, or friends, or relatives, far away from God, widely wandering from the truth of statement and life, I trust you will not be discouraged. Hope and pray always. Die as you have lived, hoping and praying. Build your hope on the seeking love of Christ. Ally your life with His in this work. Help reform society; help reform the Church, so that people shall not stare and look astonished when a really bad man or wicked woman is saved--when a soul that has in very fact been lost, and which was found in its sins as a lamb found in some dark, stony gorge, nearly dead from exposure and wounds, is brought to the fold. (W. H. H. Murray.) The danger of the soul astray One soul, gone astray, is in greater danger than the rest. It has fallen, first from creation, and then from redemption. It has fallen from its Divine acceptance, both in the first Adam and in the second. It is “ twice dead.” “ The last state of that man is worse than the first.” “ There remaineth no more sacrifice for sin.” “ It is impossible for those who were ones enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost, and have tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come, if they shall fall away, to renew them again unto repentance.” There is no second “ baptism for the remission of sins.” That one lost soul is in the way which leads beyond the boundaries of grace. Every day brings it nearer to the fatal brink. Dangers are ever thickening; temptation waxing mightier; sins are hourly multiplied; the dye is daily blacker; life is fast wearing away, eternity fast coming on; therefore the Good Shepherd speeds apace with a hasty step, to find that one sheep which is lost. (H. E. Manning.) Search prompted by love Following the law of love, He seems to leave the faithful, that He may seek for sinners. As there is a fold in heaven, so there is a fold on earth, a visible fold-the Church, in which He gathers His lost sheep. There is, besides, within that visible fold, another fold unseen, His own encircling Presence, the circuit of His own watchful care, within which the faithful and obedient are securely sheltered. These are they who walk stedfast in baptismal purity. They keep close to the eye and to the pathway of their Lord, going in and out by the gates of obedience. These are the ninety and nine who keep close to the feet of the Good Shepherd. For a while He passes them by, that He may seek sinners who, after baptism, fall from grace. For many are they who go out of this inward fold. They go out into ways of this world, the tangled masses of this wilderness, losing themselves by losing sight of Him; and, by losing sight of Him, losing their own souls. What is this wilderness but sin? Every several sin that man commits is a wilderness to that man’ s soul, whether it be a sin of the flesh, as lust, gluttony, excess; or a sin of the spirit, as inward impurity, pride, anger, hardness of heart, sloth, or falsehood--whatever it be, that sin is a wilderness in each man’ s soul, in which he is lost. For sin raises a cloud between the soul and the gaze of the Good Shepherd’ s face. The sinner closes the eye which guides him; he loses the light of that countenance which shone upon the track of life. His will breaks away from the will of our Divine Guide, by which will he was sanctified; for so long as His will and our will are united, we are drawn by a thread of gold, which leads us in the way of life; but when, by sin, we start back and snap asunder that guiding clue, we are straightway lost. (H. E. Manning.) The sheep that was lost and found I. THE OF GOD’ S SEARCH FOR THE SINNER. “ What man of you,” saith Christ, with that touch of surprise that we so often trace when He found men blind to truths that seemed to Him clear as day, “ having a hundred sheep, if he lose one of them, doth not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness and go after that which is lost?” What else could he do? What could be more natural? He would be certain to go; his duty, his thought of loss to himself, his affection for the animal he had so long taken care of, his thought of all the poor thing was suffering, all would urge him forth. The inference followed, none could mistake it, that God would do the same for His erring and lost children, that He could not do otherwise, that to do otherwise would be unnatural. A similar relation to that which the shepherd bore the sheep, God bears to men. Let one of them lose himself, and it would be impossible for God to rest till He found the lost one. Duty, if I may use the term, the inward, self-created imperative, by which God must be true to Himself, would urge Him forth. II. THE OF GOD. We are told a great deal about God being wearied out with us, anti so offended with our wrongdoing as to give up trying to make us better. That is not Christ’ s doctrine about God. In His mind He saw the Father going after the lost sheep unweariedly, and never, never resting till He found it and brought it home. Only when it was laid to sleep in the fold could God’ s perseverance of love take any rest. There is no pause in God’ s work till He find us. It is God who will find us, and not we Him, and He will re,ver rest till we are laid on His strong shoulder, and understand His love, and rest in His peace. No, not if it takes half an eternity to find us, will He give up the search. The law of God has made it plain that He will not find us in this comforting way till we repent, and the greater part of His search consists in so working on our lives as to make us cry with the prodigal, “ I will arise and go to my Father.” And that is severe and punishing work. III. THE JOY OF GOD IN . It is pleasant, when we think how easily we get tried, to consider this unwearyingness of God, and that however long He persevere, His interest cannot be exhausted by pursuit or by success. Pursuit is agreeable enough to us, for as long as a thing is unreached it charms, but our dangerous moment is the moment of success. “ When we have laid our hand on the goal, if it be pleasure, we too often give it a languid assent; if it be the good of another, we are too often so weary as not to be interested any longer. That is the weakness of our mortal nature. It is nothing to be proud of, as some think. It is want of power, of imagination, of capacity. Were we greater in heart and brain, victory of pleasure, success in good would double our joy. An infinite nature has infinite delight and interest. The joy of God in redeeming the lost is, then, the last truth the parable teaches. It is frank, complete, ungrudging, unmixed. (Stopford A. Brooke, M. A.) The shepherd misses one when it has strayed from the flock The Redeemer’ s knowledge is infinite; He looks not only over the multitude generally, but into each individual. When I stand on a hillock at the edge of a broad meadow, and look across the sward, it may be said in a general way that I look on all the grass of that field: but the sun in the sky looks on it after another fashion--shines on every down-spike that protrudes from every blade. It is thus that the Good Shepherd knows the flock. Knowing all, He misses any one that wanders. He missed a world when it fell, although His worlds lie scattered like grains of golden dust on the blue field of Heaven--the open infinite. (W. Arnot.) God mindful of the unit Next, much comfort may be gathered from this point in hand. Though the godly are but few, yet (we see) God will be nevertheless mindful of them. If but one sheep go astray, He will fetch it home; if but one great lost, He will look it up; if but one sinner repents, there shall be joy in heaven for him; if but one prodigal come home, he shall be received. With man it is otherwise; who will bestow gathering of one apple upon some top bough, or send a reaper into a field for one ear of wheat standing in some corner of it? Or what husbandman will beat over his straw again for one grain of corn, or winnow over all his chaff for a few grains of wheat? But God will not lose an apple, not aa ear, not one kernel; He will winnow a great heap for a few grains, as He did the old world for Genesis 7:7; 1 Peter 3:20). And it is no rare thing, but often seen that God sends many of His servants to thresh or winnow in great assemblies of chaff, and yet after divers years’ pains and sore sweating labour, they get but one grain of corn. After all their toil they convert but one or two souls, whom God in His providence hath sent them, by all their pains to save. (N. Rogers.) Christ seeking the lost No place did He leave unsought to find His own; in the wilderness we see here He seeks the sheep; in the house, as we read in the next, He seeks the great; in the world He seeks up the prodigal and lost son. He goes to Samaria to seek the woman; to Bethany to seek up Mary; to Capernaum to seek the centurion; to Jericho to seek Zaccheus; no place that He left unsought or unsanctified. (N. Rogers.) Christ’ s sympathy for sinners 1. A yearning sympathy. 2. An active sympathy. 3. A tender sympathy. 4. A joyful sympathy. (C. E. Walker.) The tendency to wander There is in sin a centrifugal tendency, and the wanderings of this wanderer could be only further and further away. If, therefore, it shall be found at all, this can only be by its Shepherd’ s going to seek it; else, being once lost, it is lost for ever. (Archbishop Trench.) No instinct to return The sinner is like the strayed sheep, the most stupid of animals. The cat, the dog, the horse, when lost, find their way home--who knows how?--but the sheep has no such instinct. (J. Wells.) Tact in teaching How easily they all understood Him! But how few Christian people there are who understand how to fasten the truths of God and religion to the souls of men. Truman Osborne, one of the evangelists who went through this country some years ago, had a wonderful art in the right direction. He came to my father’ s house one day, and while we were all seated in the room, he said, “ Mr. Talmage, are all your children Christians?” Father said, “ Yes, all but De Witt.” Then Truman Osborne looked down into the fireplace, and began to tell a story of a storm that came on the mountains, and all the sheep were in the fold; but there was one lamb outside that perished in the storm. Had he looked me in the eye, I should have been angered when he told that story; but he looked into the fireplace, and it was so pathetically and beautifully done, that I never found any peace until I was sure I was inside the fold, where the other sheep are. (De Witt Talmage, D. D.) God seeking after men The distinction between Christianity and all other systems of religion consists largely in this: that in these others men are found seeking after God, while Christianity is God seeking after men. (T. Arnold, D. D.) Seeking a lost shep One evening in 1861, as General Garibaldi was going home, he met a Sardinian shepherd lamenting the loss of a lamb out of his flock. Garibaldi at once turned to his staff, and announced his intention of scouring the mountain in search of the lamb. A grand expedition was organized. Lanterns were brought, and old officers of many a campaign started off full of zeal to hunt the fugitive. But no lamb was found, and the soldiers were ordered to their beds. The next morning Garibaldi’ s attendant found him in bed fast asleep. The attendant waked him. The general rubbed his eyes; and so did his attendant when he saw the old warrior take from under the covering the lost lamb, and bid him convey it to the shepherd. The general had kept up the search through the night until he had found it. Even so doth the Good Shepherd go in search of His lost sheep until He finds them. (Sunday School Times.) Tenderness of the Good Shepherd Among the hills of our native land I have met a shepherd far from the flocks and folds, driving home a lost sheep--one which had “ gone astray,” a creature panting for breath, amazed, alarmed, footsore; and when the rocks around rang loud to the baying of the dogs, I have seen them, whenever it offered to turn from the path, with open mouth dash fiercely at its sides, and so hound it home. How differently Jesus brings back His lost ones! The lost sheep sought and found, He lifts it up tenderly, lays it on His shoulder, and retracing His steps, returns homeward with joy, inviting His neighbours to rejoice with Him. (T. Guthrie, D. D.) Seeking the lost A lady, while passing along one of our public streets, in pulling off her glove, pulled from her finger a very valuable jewelled ring, which, before she could secure it, rolled into the gutter. She stood hesitatingly on the brink of the filthy puddle for a few moments, as if considering what to do, when she bared her fair arm, and plunging her hand into the gutter, secured her treasure. Ah! there is the treasure of the precious soul lost in many a vile sink of human poilu tion, and to save it we must be willing to follow the Saviour’ s example, and to go to the vilest outcasts with the glad tidings of salvation. From the parable of the lost sheep we are impressed with the thought of the Saviour’ s deep personal interest in every sinner. One sheep went astray, and this careful Shepherd missed even that one. The sinner, in his wanderings, is apt to think that Christ does not notice him; that amid the vastness of the affairs of the universe which occupy the Divine mind, he, if not overlooked, is but little attended to. But this is a dangerous mistake. There is not a step which the sinner can take in his departure from God which the watchful eye of the Shepherd does not follow; and the loved child is not more surely missed from the affectionate family circle than is every sinner who departs from the living God. (J. R. Boyd.) One sheep against “ ninety and nine” A traveller describes a scene which he once saw that strongly reminded him of this parable: “ On the Aletsch glacier I saw a strange, a beautiful sight--the parable of our Lord reacted in the letter. One day we were making our way with ice-axe and alpenstock down the glacier, when we observed a flock of sheep following their shepherd over the intricate windings of the crevasses, and so passing from the pastures on one side of the glacier to the pastures on the other. The flock had numbered two hundred, all told. But on the way one sheep had got lost. One of the shepherds, in his German patois, appealed to us if we had seen it. Fortunately one of the party had a field-glass. With its aid we discovered the lost sheep far up, amid a tangle of brushwood, on the rocky mountain side. It was beautiful to see how the shepherd, without a word, left his hundred and ninety-nine sheep on the glacier waste (knowing they would stand there perfectly still and safe), and went clambering back after the lost sheep until he found it.” In search of stray sheep Uncle John Vassar, the celebrated colporteur of the American Tract Society, who tramped the country over from Illinois to Florida, used to describe himself as the “ Shepherd’ s Dog.” He did not claim to be a shepherd, for he put great power upon an educated and ordained ministry. He regarded himself only as a faithful dog, hunting after the stray sheep of the Master’ s flock, and endeavouring to bring into the fold those Christless souls who were wandering over the devil’ s commons. A young clergyman says that he once overtook Uncle John Vassar on the road (in Duchess county), and made some inquiry as to the residence of a friend. Uncle John gave him the information, and then promptly inquired, “ My young friend, are you a Christian?” The ministerial brother told him that he hoped he was. A few words more passed, and Vassar pushed on, remarking that “ he was in a hurry to look up some sheep.” When the clergyman reached his friend’ s house, he told them that he had met a crazy man on the road, who was hunting after sheep. The family laughed heartily, and said, “ Why, that was John Vassar, our Duchess county missionary, and the sheep that he is in search of are the Lord’ s.” Anxieties of pastoral care St. Francis, reflecting on a story he heard of a mountaineer in the Alps, who had risked his life to save a sheep, says, “ O God, if such was the earnestness of this shepherd in seeking for a mean animal, which had probably been frozen on the glacier, how is it that I am so indifferent in seeking my sheep?” Seeking the wanderer An American bishop, speaking of the personal love and earnestness which in Christian work prove, with God’ s blessing, so successful, related that a youth belonged to a Bible-class, but at last the time came when he thought fit to discontinue his attendance, and to otherwise occupy his time. The class assembled, but his place was empty, and the leader looked for the familiar face in vain. He could not be content to conduct the Bible-reading as usual, ignorant as to the condition and whereabouts of the missing one. “ Friends,” he said, “ read, sing, and pray; my work is to seek and find a stray sheep;” and he started off on the quest. “ The stray sheep is before you,” said the bishop to his hearers. “ My teacher found me, and I could not resist his pleading; I could not continue to wander and stray whilst I was sought so tenderly.” (The Quiver.) Until he find it The Savior does not go after the wandering sheep for a mile or so in the wilderness, and then, because the way is wet or weary, or because the clouds of evening are gathering, say to Himself, “ Well, I have done as much as this ridiculous and stupid sheep deserves. There was no occasion that the sheep should wander away from the fold. It is its own folly. Let it reap the fruit of its own folly. I have done all I can; I will go home now.” Not at all. He goes on and on and on. He does not consider how tired He is. He has not done His business until He has found the sheep and put it on His shoulder, and brought it back again rejoicing. (H. P. Hughes, M. A.) Search for soul-jewels A jeweller received a very valuable diamond to be re-set. He wrapped it up carefully, and laid it away; but, when it was wanted, it could not be found. Its loss would ruin the jeweller. He searched everywhere; day after day, doing nothing else till he found it. At last he discovered a bit of the paper, in which the jewel had been wrapped, among the ashes of a fireplace. He then sifted all the ashes made after reception of the jewel, and was overjoyed to discover the lost treasure perfectly uninjured. What diligent search, then, should be made for lost but immortal soul-jewels! Rejoicing. Christ’ s joy in saving sinners I. CHRIST’ S ANXIETY TO SAVE THE LOST. 1. He knows the sinner’ s present condition. (1) Destitution. (2) Peril. (3) Feebleness. No strength apart from Christ. 2. He adopts active means for the sinner’ s recovery.. (1) He seeks. (2) He finds. II. HIS JOY OVER THEIR . 1. This joy is represented by the shepherd laying the lost sheep upon his shoulder, and carrying it home rejoicing. We know why the shepherd acts thus. The sheep is wearied and distressed by its wanderings. If let loose, it might again escape and wander farther than ever from the fold. If it were allowed to walk by the shepherd’ s side, it might be devoured by beasts, who are watching for their prey even in the shepherd’ s presence. You must all see from this representation how safe you, the redeemed of Christ, are. 2. But Jesus not only rejoices Himself in your salvation, He also calls upon the angels of heaven to participate in His joy. : 1. Warning to the indifferent. 2. Comfort to the penitent. (Canon Clayton.) Christian joy at a sinner’ s conversion About three hundred years after the time of the apostles, Caius Marius Victorius, an old pagan, was converted from his impiety, and brought over to the Christian faith; and when the people of God heard this, there was a wonderful rejoicing, and shouting, and leaping for gladness, and psalms were sung in every church, while the people joyously said one to another, “ Caius Marius Victorius is become a Christian! Caius Marius Victorius is become a Christian!” Dear reader, it may be that you are an old offender. What joy would be made among the best of people by your conversion! Some of your dearest friends would be ready to dance with delight; and hundreds, who know what a hardened rebel you have been, would sing and shout for joy of heart, “ Old---- has become a Christian!” Oh, that you might be led to cause this happiness on earth; and there is this at the back of it--the holy mirth would reach to the highest heaven! (C. H. Spurgeon.) Joy of a community in recovering the lost The following anecdote was told to Todd by an old hunter in the forests of America: “ I had been out all winter alone trapping for furs. It was in March, when I was hunting beaver, just as the ice began to break up, and on one of the farthest, wildest lakes I ever visited. I calculated there could be no human being nearer than one hundred miles. I was pushing my canoe through the loose ice, one cold day, when just around a point that projected into the lake, I heard something walking through the ice. It made so much noise, and stepped so regularly, that I felt sure it must be a moose. I got my rifle ready, and held it cocked in one hand, while I pushed the canoe with the other. Slowly and carefully I rounded the point, when, what was my astonishment to see, not a moose, but a man, wading in the water--the ice water! He had nothing on his hands or feet, and his clothes were torn almost from his limbs. He was walking, gesticulating with his hands, and talking to himself. He seemed to be wasted to a skeleton. With great difficulty I got him into my canoe, when I landed and made up a fire, and got him some hot tea and food. He had a bone of some animal in his bosom, which he had gnawed almost to nothing. This entry is longer than a Bible module can hold. The rest is at https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/bi/ Luke 15:8-10 Either what woman having ten pieces of silver Man resembled to silver coin 1. And that in regard of matter. No metal except gold (which indeed is most solid and perfectly concocted with sufficient heat, so that it never corrupteth by rust) is to be compared with it. So man is the excellentest of all God’ s creatures except angels, and but a little inferior unto them Psalms 8:5). 2. In regard of lustre. For albeit silver in the ore be base and unsightly to look on, yet coming out of the mint purified and fined, it is beautiful. Thus, though man, while he was in the lump of clay, was without beauty; yet being formed, God put upon him great glory and majesty (Psalms 8:1-9.), so that in beauty and fairness he excelled all other visible creatures, as by those relics yet remaining, and to be found in sinful men, we may gather. As the complexion of David (1 Samuel 16:12). The beauty of Absalom, in whom there was not a blemish from top to toe (2 Samuel 14:1-33.). The stature of Saul (1 Samuel 10:1-27.) 3. In regard of stamp. Money hath some impress and image on it, as the Jewish shekel, which on the one side had Aaron’ s rod, and on the other side the pot of manna. So the Romans had Caesar’ s image upon their coin, whereby they acknowledged subjection; and the coin which Jacob paid unto the Shechemites was stamped with a lamb (Genesis 33:19). Thus had man the image of his Maker, which God stamped on him as a mark of his possession. 4. Money hath its stamp and form from regal authority; it must be refined and made (for it makes not itself) by the prince’ s royalty. Thus man was the work of God’ s bands (Psalms 100:1-5.), and His alone (Job 10:8). 5. Silver hath a good sound above other metals. And hence it was that trumpets of silver were commanded by the Lord to be made (Numbers 10:1-2) for shrillness and clearness. Thus man above other creatures had a tongue given him to praise his Maker with, which is therefore called the glory of man (Genesis 49:6; Psalms 16:9). 6. Silver commands all things, and answers all things, as speaketh Solomon Ecclesiastes 10:19). There is nothing (whether holy or profane) but are at the beck and command of it. Such a commanding power had man by his creation over all creatures (Psalms 8:6). “ Thou hast made him to have dominion in the works of Thy hands” ; such authority God gave him Genesis 1:28), willing him to “ rule over the fishes of the sea, over the fowls of heaven, and over every beast that moveth upon the earth.” Silver is not all of a like worth; there are different pieces and of different value. The Jews had their gerah, and half shekel, and shekel (Exodus 30:13), with divers other corns of silver. So all were not of a like degree in the creation, though all excellent and good; for God observed order from the beginning. Amongst the angels some are superior, and some inferior; there are degrees amongst them (Colossians 1:16). (N. Rogers.) The lost coin I. LOOK AT THE THING LOST, AND YOU WILL FIND SEVERAL POINTS OF THEREBY . 1. It was a coin. That is to say, it was not simply a piece of a precious metal, but that metal moulded and minted into money, bearing on it the king’ s image and superscription, and witnessing to his authority wherever it circulated. 2. But the corn was lost, and this suggests that in sinful man the image of his Maker has gone out of sight, and the great purpose of his being has been frustrated. His intellect does not like to retain God in its knowledge; his heart has estranged its love from God; and his life is devoted to another lord than his Creator. He is lost. 3. Yet he is not absolutely worthless. The coin, though lost, has still a value. If it can be recovered, it will be worth as much as ever. 4. But yet, again, this coin was lost in the house. The woman did not let it fall as she was crossing the wild and trackless moor, neither did she drop it into the unfathomed depths of ocean. Had she done so, she would never have thought of seeking for it; she would have given it up as irrecoverable. Now, this points to the fact that the soul of the sinner is recoverable. It is capable of being restored to its original dignity and honour. It has in it still potentialities as great and glorious as those which ever belonged to it. II. This brings me to the consideration of THE SEARCH, WHEREIN WE HAVE ALSO SOME THINGS WHICH ARE TO THIS PARABLE. Eastern houses, unlike our own, are constructed in such a way as to keep out the light and heat of the sun as much as possible. They have few windows, and even the few which they have are shaded with such latticework as tends to exclude rather than admit the sunbeam. Hence the rooms are generally dark; and so, even if the coin were lost at noonday, the light of a candle would be required to seek for it. Nor was there, in Eastern dwellings, the same scrupulous cleanliness that we love to see in so many homes around us. The floors were often covered with rushes, which, being changed only at rare intervals, collected a vast amount of dust and filth, among which a piece of money might be most readily lost. Hence the lighting of a candle and the sweeping of the house were the most natural things to be done in such a case. But whom does this woman represent? and what, spiritually, are we to understand by the lighting of a candle and the sweeping of the house? The woman, in my judgment, symbolizes the Holy Spirit, and I look upon the means which she employed in her search for the lost coin as denoting the efforts made by the Holy Spirit for the recovery of a lost soul. Now let us see what these were. She lighted a candle, and swept the house, and searched diligently. The light most evidently represents the truth; but what are we to make of the sweeping? Some would take it to illustrate the purifying work of the Holy Ghost in the heart. But that view cannot be maintained, since the purifying of the soul is not a work in order to, but rather subsequent upon, its recovery. I take it rather, therefore, to represent that disturbance of settled opinions and practices--that turning of the soul, as it were, upside down--which is frequently seen as a forerunner of conversion; that confusion and disorder occasioned by some providential dealing with the man, such as personal illness, or business difficulties, or family bereavement, or the like, and which frequently issues in the coming of the soul to God; for here also chaos often precedes the new creation. Truth introduced into the heart, and providential disturbances and unsettlements in order to its introduction--these are the things symbolized by the lighting of the candle and the sweeping of the house. The truth which the Holy Spirit employs for the purpose of conversion is the Word of God, all of which has been given to men by His own inspiration; and the especial portion of that Word which He uses for His saving work is the wondrous story of the Cross. III. We come now, in the third place, to look at THE JOY OVER THE COIN; and here, as before, we shall restrict ourselves to that which is peculiar to this parable. In the story of the lost sheep, while the social character of the joy is certainly referred to, the speciality in the gladness of the shepherd over its finding lay in the fact, to which prominence is given in the appended note of interpretation, that it was greater than over the ninety and nine which had never strayed. Here, however, the peculiarity is in the sociality of the joy. God’ s joy, if I may dare to use the words, needs society to make it complete; and the fact that there are those beside Him to whom He can make known the story of each recovered soul, redoubles His own gladness, and diffuses among them His own Divine delight. Nor let it be supposed that this is a mere fanciful idea, for which there is no foundation in Scripture apart from the teaching of this parable. What says Paul? “ God hath created all things by Jesus Christ; to the intent that now, unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places, might be known through the Church the manifold wisdom of God” Ephesians 3:10). Now, these words mean, if they mean anything at all, that through means of the Church, God designed to show to principalities and powers in heavenly places His manifold wisdom. In the manifestation of this wisdom God has His highest work, and, in its appreciation by spiritual intelligences, through the Church of Christ, He has His greatest joy. (W. M. Taylor, D. D.) The search of love Type of a soul ignorant of its death, utterly unconcerned with the thought of sin. Yet a coin, having image and superscription. It may be covered with dust, it may be half defaced or hidden under heaps of rubbish; but it has not returned, and cannot return, into the uncoined state. Meet emblem of man’ s soul in its lowest estate. “ I am God’ s coin,” said one of old; “ from His treasure-house I have wandered.” And it is because we are God’ s, that He seeks. I. GOD’ S LOVE LIGHTS A LAMP OF IN THE WORLD. Though you may care little about your lost soul, God cares for it much. He has lit His candle--the candle of Divine revelation, and He is throwing its illumination upon you. Hinder not, thwart not, His search for your soul. Love herself might light the candle, and yet the lost coin not be found under the long accumulation of dirt--of easily-besetting sins and long-indulged habits. So the parable goes on to speak of a sweeping. II. THE LOVE OF GOD SWEEPS THE HOUSE, WHICH IS THE MAN. Is not this the real meaning of that sickness, that bereavement, that disappointment which seemed to you so casual, or so wanton, or so cruel? It was the love of God still. III. THE SEEKING IS UNTO FINDING. Love will not stay till she finds. Help her. Kick not against the goad. IV. TREAT THE TEXT AS A PRECEPT. Light a candle, sweep the house, and seek diligently till you find. (Dean Vaughan.) The lost groat I. THE LOST GROAT. 1. It is a symbol of the human soul. (1) The soul seems to be of little value, if considered in its imperfections, in its inability to perform supernatural acts, and even more so, if compared to the holy angels, who are purer than gold, brighter than diamonds. (2) Nevertheless, the groat, as a coin, has its value. So is the human soul of great value, because it is created according to the image and likeness of God, redeemed by His precious blood, sealed by the Holy Spirit. Thus it is raised to a supernatural state, and enabled to merit the glory and bliss of heaven. 2. How the groat, the human soul, is lost. (1) By the deceitfulness of the devil, who, driven by envy and hatred, endeavours to deprive the Divine Master of His coin, the coin of its splendour. He buries the soul in the mire of sin. (2) Through the fault of man. Whilst he is unmindful of being God’ s own property, undervalues the worth of his soul, keeps company with thieves, his soul is lost. 3. The consequences are most deplorable. (1) The lost soul is covered with the filth of sin, from which it can never cleanse itself by its own power. (2) The value of the soul diminishes. The merits of the past are lost, the power of ignorance and concupiscence increases. (3) The coinage disappears. Sin deforms the Divine image and likeness; at its entrance grace leaves the soul; and man falls under the curse and displeasure of God. II. THE SEEKING WOMAN. 1. This “ woman” is the Church. 2. The “ candle” is Christ, the light of the world. 3. The “ friends and neighbours” are the angels and saints. (W. Reischl.) The parable of the lost silver I. AS THE SILVER WAS TO THE WOMAN, SO ARE OUR SOULS IN THE SIGHT OF GOD OUR SAVIOUR. We estimate a person’ s value for a thing by the price he gives, the sacrifice he makes, to obtain or recover it. How dear, then, was man to God, who loved him when fallen; yea who so loved the world, that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him, should not perish, but have eternal life. II. AS THE PIECE OF MONEY WAS LOST TO THE WOMAN, SO IS EVERY ONE WHO IN SIN LOST TO GOD. He is alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in him. III. AS THE WOMAN FOR HER LOST , AND SPARED NO PAINS TO RECOVER IT; SO DOES JESUS CHRIST SEEK THE SOUL THAT IS LOST BY SIN. IV. AS THE WOMAN CALLS HER FRIENDS AND TO REJOICE WITH HER, FOR THE LOST PIECE FOUND; SO IS THERE JOY IN HEAVEN, IN THE OF THE ANGELS OF GOD, OVER ONE SINNER. For this joy, Jesus endured the cross, despising the shame. Thus He sees of the travail of His soul, and is satisfied. And His joy is shared by the angels that surround His throne. 1. Let this parable, then, rebuke self-righteousness; let it teach humility. 2. Again--let this parable suggest the most powerful motive to instant repentance. For what motive is there, like Christ’ s enduring and seeking love? (E. Blencowe, M. A.) Man’ s fall God’ s loss This parable pictures God as the Redeemer of man in three different modes or attitudes--shall I say of feeling? I. The first division of the picture represents GOD AS AS A LOSS TO HIMSELF THE STATE OF SIN INTO WHICH MAN HAS FALLEN. No one but God could have ventured thus to represent God. God mourns the fall of man as a lost treasure, as something in which He delighted, and of which sin has robbed Him. God has a property of the heart in man’ s welfare. II. In the second part of the picture, God is AS MAKING AN EFFORT FOR THE OF MAN FROM THE SIN AND MISERY INTO WHICH HE HAS FALLEN. The fact of atonement is here; the quickening work of the Holy Ghost is here, and the manifold ministry to man is here; by all which God is seeking to bring men to Himself and save them from sin; and the more one seeks to look at this, the more one feels how true it is that the inflexible righteousness of God, that the infinite love of God, is full of a determination not to let His human treasure go without an effort to recover it. III. The third point is that GOD AND THE GOOD ANGELS REJOICE IN HEAVEN OVER THE OF MEN. (A. Hannay.) A priceless gem I. THE HOMELY STORY. 1. It may seem like a little thing to you--this sixpence; but what is great to a child is not small to the father; and that is not little to God that is great to any man. He who knows all about the homes, and the hearts that beat in London in such homes, knows that sometimes the difference between sixpence and no sixpence may mean all the difference between food and no food, shelter and no shelter for the night, ease from pain, or no ease from pain. Oh, what magic that prosaic thing, the piece of silver, can work! Look at our Nonconformist father. Lawrence. See him seated under a hedgerow on the morning of the great Puritan exodus in 1662; see him looking as if fit to die, for he thinks about his hungry and homeless little ones. What is it that suddenly makes the eye flash, and the face quiver, and the foot spring? Only the sight of a lost piece of silver. He had just found a sixpence in the ditch before him, and it fairly seemed to him as if it had come down into that ditch from the very Throne of thrones that very moment. 2. The central person in this story is a woman--not some stately Cleopatra, not some gay Herodias, not some grand lady with face beautiful as a dream, and step graceful as a wave, who, having possessed ten gems of rarest water, or ten pearls of great price, has lost one of them; but only a poor village woman, who, having saved up for the rent, or a rainy day, ten pieces of silver, has lost one. She searches; finds; calls her neighbours together to rejoice with her. The event was not enough to electrify a cabinet but it was enough to lighten her heart, and to send a sensation all through her little world. II. THE DIVINE MEANING. 1. Look at the coin, and then think of the value of the soul. Souls look through those waiting, gazing eyes around me, souls look out from those listening ears, souls thrill along those nerves. Souls! Why will ye cleave to the dust? Awake, know yourselves, and try to think about your own unimaginable value. 2. Look at the coin lost, and think of the soul lost in the house of this world. Some years ago the men working on the Thames Embankment--laying its foundations--found a lost piece of silver, stamped with the image of a Roman Emperor. Perhaps that piece of silver had been lost 1,800 years. My spirit flashes back to that spot, and to that moment, and I see the scene just how it all happened. I see a man coming down from the green solitudes of Camberwell, where the Roman station is, coming down to the edge of the river. I see him cross from what we now call the Surrey side, to what we now call the city side. I see him, as he step| out of the boat, take his purse out to pay the ferryman, and I see the piece of silver slip from his fingers through the water, and there it stuck in the black slime of the river. It was for ages lost to the purpose for which it was made. It might as well not have been silver. Now I say there are souls lost like that coin. 3. Look at the coin lost, but not knowing that it is lost, and think of the soul lost in this house and not knowing that it is lost. The frivolist. The sensualist. The formalist. These no more know they are lost than does the coin when it has rippled along the floor and slipped into a chink in the darkness! But it is a fact all the same. Once, certain explorers on an Arctic expedition were working their way through the still, gray air in the eternal silence, when they suddenly came upon an antique, spectral-looking ship locked in blocks of ice. They boarded it, and one man took his lantern and ran down the campanion-ladder into the state-cabin. He held it up. He found all the ship’ s company there. There sat the captain, with his hand upon the log-book; and there sat the mate, and there sat the doctor, and there sat the others. “ Captain!” There was no stir. He cried again, “ Captain!” But there was only the silence that creeps and shudders. “ Captain!” He held his light up again and flashed it around--and what did that light reveal? Dead hands! dead lips! dead eyes!--dead men! The cold that had been strong enough to steel them through, and to freeze the life of their blood, had been strong enough to arrest the touch of Decay’ s hastening fingers, and to keep fixed in the form and attitude of life Death itself, and to keep it thus--so it was said--for nearly half a century. Oh I man do but think of what it is of which I am speaking. Dead souls! Lost souls! 4. Look at the search which this woman is making in the house, and think of the Holy Spirit’ s part in searching for the lost soul. There was once heard in the Isle of Wight a little girl say to her mother, when sweeping the cottage floor, “ Mother, mother, pull the blind down, the sunshine makes the room so dusty.” And so it is that the light in the house of the Interpreter may seem to make the room dusty, but it seems to create what it only reveals: it makes us think that we are worse than we are when we are only wiser than we were; it make us see ourselves, see our Saviour, and then, “ there is joy in the presence of the angels of God.” (C. Standford, D. D.) The lost silver piece I. First, the parable treats of man, the object of Divine mercy, as LOST. 1. Notice, first, the treasure was lost in the dust. The woman had lost her piece of silver, and in order to find it she had to sweep for it, which proves that it had fallen into a dusty place, fallen to the earth, where it might be hidden and concealed amid rubbish and dirt. Every man of Adam born is as a piece of silver lost, fallen, dishonoured, and some are buried amid foulness and dust. Thou art lost by nature, and thou must be found by grace, whoever thou mayst be. 2. In this parable that which was lost was altogether ignorant of its being lost. The silver coin was not a living thing, and therefore had no consciousness of its being lost or sought after. The piece of money lost was quite as content to be on the floor or in the dust, as it was to be in the purse of its owner amongst its like. It knew nothing about its being lost, and could not know. And it is just so with the sinner who is spiritually dead in sin, he is unconscious of his state, nor can we make him understand the danger and terror of his condition. The insensibility of the piece of money fairly pictures the utter indifference of souls unquickened by Divine grace. 3. The silver piece was lost but not forgotten. The woman knew that she had ten pieces of silver originally; she counted them over carefully, for they were all bet little store, and she found only nine, but she well remembered that one more was hers and ought to be in her hand. This is our hope for the Lord’ s lost ones, they are lost but not forgotten, the heart of the Saviour remembers them, and prays for them. 4. Next, the piece of silver was lost but still claimed. Observe that the woman called the money, “ my piece which was lost.” When she lost its possession she did not lose her right to it; it did not become somebody else’ s when it slipped out of her hand and fell upon the floor. Those for whom Christ hath died, whom He hath peculiarly redeemed, are not Satan’ s even when they are dead in sin. They may come under the devil’ s usurped dominion, but the monster shall be chased from his throne. 5. Further, observe that the lost piece of money was not only remembered and claimed, but it was also valued. In these three parables the value of the lost article steadily rises. This is not very clear at first sight, because it may be said that a sheep is of more value than a piece of money; but notice that the shepherd only lost one sheep out of a hundred, but the woman lost one piece out of ten, and the father one son out of two. To the Lord of love a lost soul is very precious: it is not because of its intrinsic value, but it has a relative value which God sets at a high rate. 6. The piece of money was lost, but it was not lost hopelessly. The woman had hopes of recovering it, and therefore she did not despair, but set to work at once. I congratulate the Christian Church too, that her piece of money has not fallen where she cannot find it. I rejoice that the fallen around us are not past hope; yea, though they dwell in the worst dens of London, though they be thieves and harlots, they are not beyond the reach of mercy. Up, O Church of God, while possibilities of mercy remain! 7. One other point is worthy of notice. The piece of silver was lost, but it was lost in the house, and the woman knew it to be so. What thankfulness there ought to be in your minds that you are not lost as heathens, nor lost amid Romish or Mohammedan superstition, but lost where the gospel is faithfully and plainly preached to you; where you are lovingly told, that whosoever believeth in Christ Jesus is not condemned. Lost, but lost where the Church’ s business is to look after you, where it is the Spirit’ s work to seek and to find you. This is the condition of the lost soul, depicted as a lest piece of silver. II. Secondly, we shall notice the soul under another condition, we shall view it as SOUGHT. By whom was the piece of silver sought? 1. It was sought by its owner personally. 2. This seeking became a matter of chief concern with the woman. 3. Now note, that the woman having thus set her heart to find her money, she used the most fit and proper means to accomplish her end. First, she lit a candle. So doth the Holy Spirit in the Church. But she was not content with her candle, she fetched her broom, she swept the house. If she could not find the silver as things were in the house, she brought the broom to bear upon the accumulated dust. Oh, how a Christian Church, when it is moved by the Holy Spirit, cleanses herself and purges all her work! 4. Carefully note that this seeking after the lost piece of silver with fitting instruments the broom and the candle, was attended with no small stir. She swept the house--there was dust for her eyes; if any neighbours were in the house there was dust for them. You cannot sweep a house without causing some confusion and temporary discomfort. It is to be remarked, also, that in the seeking of this piece of silver the coin was sought in a most engrossing manner. 5. This woman sought continuously--“ till she found it.” III. The piece of silver FOUND. Found! 1. In the first place, this was the woman’ s ultimatum, and nothing short of it. She never stopped until the coin was found. So it is the Holy Spirit’ s design, not that the sinner should be brought into a hopeful state, but that he should be actually saved: and this is the Church’ s great concern, not that people be made hearers, not that they be made orthodox professors, but that they be really changed and renewed, regenerated and born again. 2. The woman herself found the piece of money. It did not turn up by accident, nor did some neighbour step in and find it. The Spirit of God himself finds sinners, and the Church of God herself, as a rule, is the instrument of their recovery. 3. Now notice when she had found it what she did--she rejoiced. The greater her trouble in searching, the higher her joy in finding. What joy there is in the Church of God when sinners are converted! 4. Next, she calls her friends and neighbours to share her joy. I am afraid we do not treat our friends and neighbours with quite enough respect, or remember to invite them to our joys. Who are they? I think the angels are here meant; not only the angels in heaven, but those who are watching here below. The angels are wherever the saints are, beholding our orders and rejoicing in our joy. The joy is a present joy; it is a joy in the house, in the Church in her own sphere; it is the joy of her neighbours who are round about her here below. All other joy seems swallowed up in this: as every other occupation was suspended to find the lost silver, so every other joy is hushed when the precious thing is found. (C. H. Spurgeon.) The lost piece of money I. WHAT BEFELL THIS WOMAN. She had ten pieces of silver, and of these she lost one--only one. That lost piece is man’ s soul. We were not always, not once, not at first, what we are now. II. WHAT THIS WOMAN DID TO FIND THE MONEY. She did everything proper in the circumstances. She could not have done more. Assuming that the woman symbolizes the Spirit of God, the candle shining in her hand is the Bible, God’ s revealed Word, which He takes and carries into the recesses of the sinner’ s soul, revealing its foulness and danger and misery, and making him feel his need of a Saviour. As to the sweeping, which disturbs the house and reveals a foulness that, so long as it lay unstirred, was perhaps never suspected: that may indicate the convictions, the alarms, the dread discoveries, the searchings and agitations of heart, which not unfrequently accompany conversion. It is not till the glassy pool is stirred that the mud at the bottom rises to light; it is when storms sweep the sea that what it hides in its depths is thrown up on the shore; it is when brooms sweep walls and floor that the sunbeams, struggling through a cloud of dust, reveal the foulness of the house; and it is agitations and perturbations of the heart which reveal its corruption, and are preludes to the purity and peace that sooner or later follow on conversion. III. THE WOMAN’ S JOY AT FINDING THE PIECE OF SILVER. There is a peculiar pleasure felt in recovering what we have lost; or in having anything placed beyond the reach of danger which we are afraid of losing. No boat making the harbour over a glassy sea, its snowy canvas filled by the gentle breeze, and shining on the blue waters like a sea bird’ s wing, is watched with such interest, or, as with sail flapping on the mast, it grates on the shingle, is welcomed with such joy, as one which, leaving the wreck on the thundering reef, comes through the roaring tempest, boldly breasts the billows, and bringing off the half-drowned, half-dead survivors, shoots within the harbour amid flowing tears and cheers that, bursting from the happy crowd, rise above the rage and din of elements. (T. Guthrie, D. D.) The Bible a moveable light The candle is a moveable light, carried by the woman from place to place. Wherever a lost piece of money is to be sought, there the candle must be carried that the searching may be thorough. This carrying of the candle, first into one place and then into another, is the Church’ s part in seeking for lost souls. While the whole truth for man’ s salvation is presented in Holy Scripture, and any man who would inquire as to the way of life may there find the light he needs to guide him aright, men do not readily search the Scriptures for themselves, that their own souls may be saved. In recognition of this neglect, illustrated in one way under the image of the wandering sheep, in another under the image of the lost piece of money, the necessity for the active work of seeking is acknowledged by the Church, as it is here taught by the Saviour. (Calderwood.) A woman’ s loss You will have noticed that whereas in the other two parables of “ the sheep,” and “ the prodigal,” it is “ a man” who is represented as rejoicing over the returning one--here it is “ a woman.” This may, indeed, be only to show that every kind of affection combines in the joy over the penitent--the man’ s strength and the woman’ s tenderness. But there may be more. At least, almost all the ancient divines have seen another sense in it. They consider that under the female appellation is meant here, as in many other places, the Church; and that the thought intended to be conveyed is of the Church having sustained the loss, and the Church, as a Church, seeking diligently for the lost one. And yet not altogether the Church, as something distinct and independent in itself--but the Church as that in which the Holy Ghost dwells--the HolyGhost acting through the means of grace which constitute a Church. So, in the three parables, they would see the Trinity all combined in the same feeling of love and happiness--the Son designated by the Shepherd; the Holy Spirit in the Church, by the woman; and the Father, by the parent of the prodigal. A great thought and a true one, even though the steps by which we here arrive at it may appear to some fanciful. Certain it is, that every soul which is in a condition to perish, is lost, not only to God, but to the Church. And well were it if the Church always so regarded it. And well if every member of the Church so felt it a personal loss to himself that any one single soul should die, that he could not help but stir up himself, and stir up others, to seek that soul till it was found. Would that the Holy Ghost were going forth in the one great Catholic Church, uniting in this feeling and in this resolve--that she would give herself no rest so long as there was one precious soul committed to her care which was lying undiscovered and unredeemed. For mark, brethren, the woman--different in this from the shepherd and the prodigal’ s father--seeks a thing which her own folly and her own carelessness had lost. First, she “ lights a candle” --the well-known emblem in the Bible of three things--first, the Spirit ofGod in a man’ s soul; secondly, the Word of God; thirdly, the consistent lives of ministers and other servants of God. And these three together make the great detective force, and so ultimately the great restorative power which God uses in this world. O that every Church had lighted their candle! O that our candles were burning better! O that the Holy Ghost--prayed for and honoured, cherished and magnified in His own office--were here to be a great Illuminator in the midst of us! O that every baptized person were shining as he ought to be, in his daily walk, in good works, and kind acts, and witnesses of God’ s truth in this world! O think you, brethren, how then would the dark places of our land begin to grow bright again! How would the whole house shine! How would the poor lost ones be found! So, with the lighted candle, the woman went to “ sweep the house.” It is a great commotion and disturbance to “ sweep” ; but then it leads to cleanliness and order. So God’ s sweepings are severe things! But then it is only to brush away what had no right to be there. It is only to disclose precious things out of the rubbish. And there are precious things in our souls so covered with dust that they need sweeping. Afflictions will come, and scatter to the winds the incrusted sediment that has been so long thickening upon a man’ s mind. And for the time, while the sweeping is going on, the confusion and the obscurity will seem only the greater. But you will not presently complain--you will not regret the turmoil--when the costly thing, that was almost hidden, sparkles again in the hand of its great Proprietor. Sweep our house, Lord, for we need it--not with the bosom of destruction, though we deserve it--but sweep away, Lord, as thou knowest best, every “ refuge of lies” where our soul lies buried! All the parables agree in the one, blessed, crowning thought--“ till she find it.” It is not a light achievement. It was not a day’ s work--it was not a week’ s work--or a year’ s work--the recovery of that soul of yours. Many an enterprise was begun and laid down again, and never ended by men, in that very interval which elapsed between the time when God--your faithful, untiring God--began to deal with your soul, and the time when He made you go to Him. (J. Vaughan, M. A.) The Church’ s neglect of souls Sometimes, in visions of a mournful fancy, I seem to see this Mother-Church of ours sitting within her ancient and noble house, sitting as a woman exceeding fair, but very cold and still; and so she sitteth with her hands folded before her, as though she said to herself, “ I shall be a lady for ever; f shall not sit as a widow, neither shall I know the loss of children.” And year by year, century after century, the dust falls and gathers, and falls in the silence around her, and all things are covered as with a shroud, and the precious coins are lost to sight and buried deep beneath. And then I seem to see her arousing herself at last from her long waking dream, and looking about with dismay for her lost treasures--bestirring herself to find them, sweeping the dust away here and there, bringing to light with busy toil many a shining effigy of the great King. And then I seem to hear indignant voices of those who clamour and storm against her for disturbing quiet things, and making unnecessary agitation, and raising an unpleasant dust; all the rich people, and the comfortable people, and the people that are well at ease, and all that have no care for souls--all are angry with her, and cry out to her, “ Why can you not sit still as you did before, and if the dust falls, let it fall, and if the coins of the King be lost, let them be lost? only trouble us not, only do not vex our souls with all this stir and dust.” Once again I seem to see her that sometime sat as a queen and was not moved; I seem to see her disconcerted and perplexed, anxious to recover the lost, yet anxious not to give offence; I see her hesitate and quail, and lay aside her search with sorrow, and sit down again, but not at ease; I see the dust begin to fall and settle again, and fall and gather around her thicker and thicker, until every shining coin be lost beneath the growing litter of neglect. Last of all, I see a day arise, black with wind and rain, against that ancient house wherein the woman sits; I see the tempest of God’ s anger loosed upon it, I see the lightning of His indignation launched against it; I see her crushed and buried beneath the wreck, among the silver pieces which she lost and did not find. (R. Winterbotham, M. A.) The Oriental setting of this parable The touches about lighting the candle (or better, lamp, or light), sweeping the house, and seeking diligently, and calling the friends and neighbours together, are not without some pertinent modem Oriental illustrations. Most of the native houses are without glass windows, and are very dark when shut up. Often the windows are small, and sometimes kept shut, as a rule depending on the door for light. They are dark places. The floor, too, is often earth, or perhaps mortar, and very dirty. Where animals dwell with the family, as is very common, the dirt is such as is best left to the imagination. In such cases the particulars mentioned in verse eight are by no means superfluous. So, too, the calling of the friends and neighbours together. One of the difficulties in picking up the Arabic language among the common people is the paucity of subjects of conversation. Little is to be heard except bargaining among the men, and accounts of the most ordinary household operations among the women--except in the case of some rather public scolds, whose voices, without a particle of exaggeration, sounds to the Occidental like the falling and rattling of boards. The occasion of losing and finding a piece of money would be a piece of great good fortune to the gossips, as the writer has actually witnessed. It would be an incident for a nine days’ talk. And such terrible busybodies as they are I Every one knows, at least, all his or her neighbours’ business, and more besides, to an extent not readily defined. The woman who loses and finds a piece of money would not be long in calling her friends and neighbours together; nor would they be slow to come even uninvited. The babel of telling the story and commenting and congratulating is not to be imagined in our land. The talk could be heard a long distance. (Professor Isaac H. Hall.) The ten pieces of silver In the three parables recorded in this chapter there is so evidently a progress and ascent of thought, they mount so naturally to a climax in their revelation of the redeeming love of God, that if at any point we fail to make that progress out, if we encounter anything in them which wears the aspect of an anti-climax, we are checked, disappointed, perplexed. And yet in the second of these parables there is at one point an apparent retrocession, where all else implies a forward and upward movement of thought. Every one can see how immense an interval there is between the one sheep lost out of a hundred, and the one son out of two, and that the younger--and in the Bible commonly the dearer--of the two. But where is the connecting link? How should the lost piece of money be dearer to the careful housewife than the lost sheep to the faithful shepherd, who knows and cares for every one of his flock and calleth them each by his name? One out of ten marks a great advance upon one out of a hundred indeed; but would it not be less to lose even ten silver coins than a single sheep--less in value, less in love? The answer to that question, the solution of the difficulty, is to be found in an Eastern custom, the application of which to the parable before us all commentators on it have, so far as I know, overlooked. The women of Bethlehem, and of other parts of the Holy Land, still wear a row of coins sewn upon their heart-dress, and pendant over their brows. And the number of the coins is very commonly ten, as I, in common with other travellers, have ascertained by counting. The custom reaches back far beyond the Christian era. In all probability, therefore, it was not simply a piece of silver which was lost out of her purse by the woman of our parable, but one of the ten precious coins which formed her most cherished ornament; and this would be a loss even more vividly felt than that of the shepherd when one out of his flock of a hundred went astray. So that immense as is the advance from both the care of the shepherd for his sheep, and of the pride of the woman in the burnished coins which gleamed upon her forehead, to the yearning and pitiful love of the father for his prodigal and self-banished son, we can nevertheless find a link between the first and last terms of the climax, and trace an advance even between the grief of the shepherd over his stray sheep, and that of the woman over her lost coin. A piece of money in her purse might easily be stolen or spent; but a coin from the head-dress could not be so much as touched by any stranger, nor even taken from its wearer by her husband unless she cut it off of her own accord and placed it in his hands. It was safe, sacred, dear. It was a strictly personal possession, and might very well be an heirloom--like the “ silvers” of the Swiss women--hallowed by many fond and gracious memories. (A. G. Weld.) Broken harmony If, as has been alleged, the ten pieces of silver form the bride’ s necklace, and constitute a marriage token, like our wedding ring, the work of the whole is marred by the destruction of its unity. And thus we can gauge more accurately God’ s loss by man’ s sin. The oneness of the creative plan is broken. From those beings whom God made for the harmonious unfolding of His purposes, for the manifestation of His glory, and for the beautifying of His universe, one order has broken loose and impaired the symmetry and perfect working of the whole. (J. W. Burn.) Lost to use Whatever ornamental or symbolical uses this coin might serve, it was the Roman denarius, and had, therefore, a money value. Stamped with the monarch’ s image and superscription, it was a means of purchase, and was capable of self-multiplication in the way of usury. So, made in the Divine likeness, man is the current coin of the Lord’ s universe. He is so constituted in mind and body as to be of use to God in executing His sovereign purposes, and in multiplying himself in sought and rescued souls. No agency for these ends is comparable to man, and men failing in this high vocation are lost. And how many are thus lost? lost as utterly to usefulness as though they themselves, as well as their talent, were wrapped in a napkin and buried in the earth! And amongst them are many who are painfully anxious about their precious souls, but are lost because they act as though there were no precious souls but their own. For the solemn admonition of the Saviour holds good here: “ Whosoever will seek to save his life shall lose it, and whosoever shall lose his life for My sake and the gospel’ s, the same shall save it.” (J. W. Burn.) Lost in the house What a meaning this parable has for those who are lost in a Christian home, school, sanctuary, and who, while neither blasphemers, nor infidels, nor libertines, and while maintaining a nominal connection with God and His cause, are lost! Lost to duty, with all around them conducive to consecration; lost to the love of God, while daily loaded with Divine benefits! (J. W. Burn.) The Spirit’ s work in the soul He is Christ’ s fan and Christ’ s fire. He thoroughly purges His floor and throws a lurid light on the sinner’ s state. He sweeps away the cobwebs of error by His powerful convictions, and pours the truth of sin and righteousness and judgment into the mind. He overturns the temple of formalism by the might of His power and lays bare the hollowness of those who worship God with their lips while their hearts are far from Him. The dust of self-deception flies as His sharp appeals to the conscience leave the self-deluded without excuse. Some dire affliction clears the soul of its worldliness, and the lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God are confronted with their doom. He strips the sham of all his dissimulation by the manifestation of the stern realities of God and of eternity, and demonstrates the futility of the profession of religion without the possession of its power. Often His work has to be repeated. Encumbrances removed are replaced and removed again. Hunted from one corner the sinner takes refuge in another, and is still pursued. Nor does the Spirit cease to strive with man until resistance becomes hopeless obduracy, and until the final quenching of His light leaves the sinner in outer darkness. (J. W. Burn.) The utility of disturbance And as mere habit and neglect hide souls from themselves, and from the just sympathy and care of their fellows, God’ s Spirit sends its great disturbing agencies into the society, the nation, the age, or into the narrower bounds of the family. The besom does not really make the new dust; but it only brings the old and long-gathering deposit more, for a time, into the air and upon the lungs. The messengers of the gospel are, for the time, regarded as “ turning the world upside down.” Or God’ s providences in calamities, and wars, and social revolutions, show men the magnitude of past hereditary errors. The besom of judgment goes shaking society out of its torpor and equanimity. It was so in Luther’ s day, and in Calvin’ s. It was so in the Puritans of our ancestral Britain, and in their colonists who crossed to this country. God, by them, broke up many a pile of quiet litter; and brushed aside many a film of long-settled green mould, picturesque in its verdure, or venerable in its grey, hoar antiquity, which had gathered upon the national conscience. But a Bunyan, and a Milton, and a Baxter, and an Owen, and a Howe were precious medals brought out by the besoming; and constitutional freedom and national morality, and English literature, and Christian piety were greatly enriched by the agitation. It was so in the revolution that made us a nation. It was so in the agitations that went over Europe in the train of our first revolution. It was so in our last great struggle. It has been so in modern missions. Would you put that shaking and bosoming peremptorily and effectually down? We hear, behind the turmoil and the thick streaming clouds of dust, as God’ s great besoms sweep along, the words of an august cry: “ I will overturn, and overturn, and overturn until He, whose right it is to reign, shall come.” (W. R. Williams.) God’ s search for the lost God is as incapable of being indifferent towards His lost mankind, as is a mother towards her lost child. Lost mankind are not only His lost, but His lost children. His piece of money is money indeed, for originally it came out of the mine of His eternal nature. Heathen poets, Christian apostles, and modern philosophy are agreed that mankind “ are His offspring.” And does not the Source of all hearts feel? And is He not concerned for His lost? In the Divinity of indifference I cannot believe. And yet I am strongly inclined to think that, to many, one great offence of the gospel is, that it is too gracious, too tender, too womanly. They can conceive God to have Almighty power, infinite wisdom and justice, but they cannot give Him credit for infinite affection. They know that a woman will light a candle and go into every hole and corner, stooping and searching, until she find that which she has missed; but they have no idea that this can be a true parable of God’ s concern for His lost children. They are not surprised to find a heart in my Lady Franklin: they are not surprised at any measures that she may set on foot to recover the lost one. They are not surprised that the British and American Governments should be concerned to seek, and if possible, to save Sir John and his crew. No one said, they are not worth the expense and labour of seeking, because they are few. Not far from a million pounds were sacrificed in this search. Besides money, good brothers were not found backward to expose their own lives to danger, in the distant hope of finding and relieving their missing brothers. Have the English Government and people so great a concern to recover their lost, and has God none? Better say that a drop contains more than the ocean, that a candle gives more light than the sun, that there are higher virtues in a stream than in its source, and that the creature has more heart than God. Otherwise confess, that the gospel is infinitely worthy of the heart of God; and never more imagine the great Father to find rest under the loss of His human family, in the consolation: “ They are nothing compared with My universe, they will never be missed. (J. Pulsford.) Lost treasure In the parable of the lost coin the first thing that strikes us is, that something considered of value had been lost. The lighting of the candle, the sweeping of the house, the diligent search, everything else being laid aside to attend to this matter, all showed that the thing lost was regarded as quite important. So when the soul of man becomes lost through sin, the most valuable object in the world is lost. Whether we reflect upon the soul’ s vast power of endless progress; its wonderful capacity of investigating the universe, from the lowest depths of earth to the highest star; its ability to hold converse and communion with the great God Himself, and there to find its highest delight; its rapidity of thought by which it can move through the universe in the twinkling of an eye; or the great interest that has been manifested in it by all heaven--we must see its amazing value. The exceeding value of man’ s soul is seen in what Jesus has done for it. Men often put forth great efforts for very insignificant objects. But when we see the Saviour leave His bright throne in the heavens, and become a homeless wanderer upon the earth, that He might save lost souls, we are able to form some estimate of the soul’ s value. Oh, yes; in Calvary we see how much is lost when the soul is lost! This is the precious thing that was lost. What a loss I The loss of reputation, of wealth, of health, of property, of life--all are nothing to such a loss as this. And such is man’ s position out of Christ. (J. R. Boyd.) Luke 15:10 Joy in the presence of the angels of God Joy among the angels over repenting sinners I. THE CLASS AS BEING EXCITED BY THE EMOTION OF JOY OVER A SINNER’ S . “ The angels of God” --uncorporeal, immaculately holy, composed of various orders, active messengers of God to men. II. Why do the angels rejoice when a sinner repents? 1. Because true repentance culminates in that holiness of heart and life which is the chief glory of the angels. 2. Because the moral character of a sinner’ s influence is for ever changed by his conversion. 3. By repentance and conversion a sinner escapes eternal retribution for his sins, and secures moral fitness for eternal life. III. WHAT LESSONS DO WE LEARN FROM THESE FACTS? 1. That we manifest the spirit of the angelic race when we labour to lead sinners to Christ and rejoice over their conversion. 2. That the preaching with which the angels sympathize is of that type best calculated to bring sinners to repentance. 3. The appalling peril of a sinner over whose repentance no angels have rejoiced. Sin has but one logical issue--eternal death. Give the angels a chance to rejoice to-day over your repentance. (S. V. Leach, D. D.) Heaven’ s joy over the repenting sinner I. The truth here declared. 1. The joy mentioned is special. 2. The joy is shared, originated by God Himself. II. THE CAUSE OF THE ANGELIC JOY. 1. A sinner. 2. Not the sinner while engaged in sin. 3. One sinner that repenteth. 4. Repentance stands before us here showing plainly two sides. (1) Produced by the grace of God. (2) A deliberate act on the part of the sinner. It is the confluence of these two streams that issues in true repentance. III. WHY SUCH SHOULD BE SHOWN. 1. When a sinner repents, God’ s purpose is effected. 2. Christ’ s kingdom is enlarged. 3. A soul is saved. Conclusion: 1. Behold the value of a single soul. 2. Observe the necessity of repentance. (W. S. Bruce, M. A.) Angels and men I. THE NATURE AND OF ANGELS. Spiritual beings of high dignity and capacities. 1. Their might. They excel in strength. The army of God. 2. Their power. Great mental endowments. 3. Their purity. II. THEIR JOY AT THE AND OF SINNERS. 1. It proceeds from their superior knowledge of what man’ s place in the intelligent universe is: his Divine origin, and sublime destiny. 2. The conversion of a sinner brings joy to the angelic hosts, because thereby their liege Lord is honoured, His name exalted, His grace magnified, His rule acknowledged, and His word found not to have returned to Him void. 3. Their happiness is to see happiness, and conversion is the first step to a sinner’ s happiness. III. THE DUTY UPON , TO DO THAT WHICH MAY AUGMENT BOTH THEIR JOY AND OURS. We must engage in good works, and endeavour, each in his own vocation and ministry, to lead sinners to repentance. (D. Moore, M. A.) Angels joyful over the repentance of a sinner I. VIEW THE SCENE ON EARTH WHICH THE TEXT SPREADS BEFORE US. What is its nature? To the carnal eye it presents nothing that is attractive or worthy of regard. It opens to our view, not an individual in a state of hilarity and mirth, indulging himself in sensual delights; but a poor weary, heavy-laden sinner, repenting of his transgressions. 1. Repentance includes brokenness of heart. 2. Self-abhorrence enters into the spirit of true repentance. 3. Godly sorrow for sin is an essential ingredient of evangelical repentance. 4. The spirit of prayer is always associated with repentance. 5. Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ is connected with scriptural repentance. II. LET US GLANCE AT THE SCENE. 1. Angels are benevolent beings; partaking largely of the moral qualities of the Deity, of the beneficence and compassion of His nature, they feel interested and delighted in whatever promotes the welfare and happiness of God’ s intelligent creatures. 2. Angels are joyful at the repentance of a sinner, because a splendid victory is achieved. 3. Angels are joyful at the event, because an immortal being is saved. 4. There is joy among the angels at this occurrence, because God is glorified in it--each person in the Trinity. (Essex Remembrancer.) Angels rejoice over repenting sinners I would employ this subject in order-- I. TO REMIND OF CERTAIN DUTIES WHICH THEY OWE. We learn, then, from the words before us, that the repentance of sinners is, to these holy beings, an occasion of rejoicing; and this may be supposed to arise, in the first place, from the reverence and love which they indulge for the character and authority of God. In a kingdom where the sovereign, ruling in equity and in mercy, dwells generally in the affections of his loyal subjects, when rebellion and treason lay down their arms and sue for mercy, the circumstance is surely hailed by every loyal subject as a matter of sincere rejoicing. 2. The joy indulged by angels over the repentance of a sinner, may be considered as arising, secondly, from that spirit of benevolence, that love to human nature, which forms, of course, one principal feature in their character, as it is an attribute of that God, whom, in this respect as well as in others, they must be considered to resemble. They, therefore, rejoice over the repentance of a sinner, because it is the beginning of his own salvation, and also, because it is the beginning of blessedness which is likely to extend, in a greater or less degree, to all around him. 3. The joy indulged by angels over the repentance of a sinner may be considered as arising, thirdly, from the interest they take in the spread of the Redeemer’ s kingdom. 4. Another reason, probably, which has sometimes been referred to, why angels rejoice over the repentance of a sinner is, that they may have been instrumental, though in a way unknown to us, in bringing that sinner to repentance. For it has been said, there is nothing extravagant in supposing that He who so frequently employs, in the salvation of the souls of men, the instrumentality of human agents, should sometimes employ, though in a way unknown by us, the instrumentality of angels; and if so, we find in this circumstance another reason why angels indulge the joy referred to in the text, over the repentance of a sinner. II. That while these words supply admonition and instruction to Christian believers, they ARE ALSO AND FITTED TO SUPPLY TO . III. BY WAY OF AND REPROOF, TO ADDRESS A WORD OR TWO TO THE AND . First of all observe what a contrast there is between the joy that angels express on the repentance of a sinner and your unconcern about your own repentance. Once more I would observe, still addressing myself to persons of the same description, if, according to the declaration of my text, there be “ joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth,” then may we not suppose that, if there be such a thing as joy in hell, there is joy there over every one that goeth on in his iniquity? (J. Crowther.) The joy of heaven over a repentant sinner I. In the first place, ATTEND TO THE EVENT ITSELF THUS --“ a sinner that repenteth.” In the first part of this statement we are all included, being all sinners. From the second part we may be excluded, for we may not be all penitents. There are also stupid unconcerned sinners, who look no farther than the body. There are light-minded, careless sinners, whom sorrow never clouds, to whom pleasure in every form is welcome, and into whose hearts no serious thought ever enters. And there are worldly-minded sinners, who have no time, no inclination, and no leisure, for religion. There are also procrastinating sinners, who admit the necessity, but delay the duty, of repentance. Nay, there are even, in some measure, convinced and awakened sinners, whose convictions have not terminated in conversion. Like Cain, they complain, and they wander, and they reckon somehow, that God is hard, and that they are suffering more than they can bear. Like Esau, they weep, but it is for an earthly portion, and because they succeed not according to what they reckon due to their talents, their skill, or their industry. Or, like Ahab, they may clothe themselves in sackcloth, and sit in ashes, and walk steadily for a season, but still their hearts are not right with God. The repentance supposed is not a seeming but a real repentance, and is in complete harmony with the law and the gospel. The law is honoured by the terror which it produces: the gospel is honoured by the peace which it maintains. God is obeyed, and the penitent himself praises God, and says, He hath delivered mine eyes from tears, my feet from falling, and my soul from hell. II. Let us proceed now, then, to meditate on THE OF THE EVENT IN THE TEXT. “ There is joy,” says our Lord, “ in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth.” Think, then, in the first place, of the high character, of the high rank of the order of beings now spoken of as rejoicing--Angels, who occupy a higher place in the scale of creation than men. 2. In the second place, we may consider the intensity, the universality of the feeling that is produced. It might be true to say of the angels in heaven, that they rejoice, though the joy was but slight or transient, although it pervaded only a part of the heavenly host. The idea, however, conveyed to us here is the idea, not of a slight or of a transient, but of a deep and of a permanent impression, and it is the idea, moreover, not of joy only among a few, but of joy among all, of but one feeling and one expression of feeling, through all the innumerable company of angels. 3. Again we may think, in the third place, of the season at which such joy is stated as commencing, not when the sinner enters heaven, not when his repentance issues in eternal life. 4. I have only to state in the last place that each case of conversion is supposed here to be of sufficient magnitude to produce this joy. There is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth. Numbers are not necessary in order to convey to us the idea of value or importance. No doubt there was great joy on the day of Pentecost; and when thousands were converted, no doubt there was great joy afterwards, when 5,000 were added to the Church; no doubt there was great joy again, when a multitude of the priests and of the people believed; but still each individual as marked in heaven’ s book, may be considered as a fit occasion for praising God, and as serving to minister to the delight of angels. Or we shall even take it in another light--you may suppose that one soul converted may, in special circumstances, or at particular seasons, or because of the individual character, be of great importance, even as the conversion of Paul included within itself the conversion of thousands--even as Paul was a chosen vessel, and took many from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God. (J. Geddes, D. D.) The birth of a soul a cause of joy Let it admonish us to beware that we repine not at the bringing in of any into the state of grace. Shall heaven smile and earth frown? Shall the angels be glad and we sad? Shall we mock, scorn, deride, yea persecute our brethren for no other cause but this; that they have made heaven merry by their repentance and turning? Wretched creature, cursed caitiff, that dares thus do. Is there not joy in the whole family upon the birth of a little infant? Is not the father glad that a child is born unto him, the mother glad she is delivered, the servants glad that the family is enlarged, the children glad that their number is increased? If any be discontented it is some baseborn, an Ishmael--the son of the bondwoman not of the free. (N. Rogers.) Joy in heaven over repenting sinners I. WHO REJOICE? 1. God the Father. 2. The Son of God. 3. The blessed angels. II. WHY DO THEY REJOICE? 1. God the Father rejoices-- (1) Because His eternal purposes of grace, and His engagements to His Son, are then fulfilled. (2) Because bringing sinners to repentance is His own world. (3) Because it affords Him an opportunity to exercise mercy, and show His love to Christ by pardoning them for His sake. (4) Because it gratifies Him to see them escape from the tyranny, and from the consequences of sin. 2. The Son of God rejoices-- (1) Because He has given them their life. (2) Because in repenting they begin to return His love, and acknowledge the wisdom of His dispensations. 3. The angels rejoice-- (1) Because God rejoices. (2) Because it is their disposition to rejoice in the happiness of others. (3) Because God is glorified and His perfections are displayed in giving repentance and remission of sins. Inferences: 1. From this subject we infer the incalculable worth of the human soul. 2. From this subject we infer that the consequence of dying in an impenitent state will be unspeakably dreadful. 3. From this subject we infer that all who repent will certainly persevere and be saved. Suppose, for one moment, that such may fall and perish? Would God, would Christ, would angels then rejoice to see sinners repent? 4. What an astonishing view does this subject give us of the benevolence of angels. Though they are perfectly happy, and though our character and conduct must to them appear inconceivably hateful, yet they forget themselves to think of us; they forget their own happiness to rejoice in ours. 5. From this subject we may learn whether we are prepared for heaven. We presume none will deny that preparation for heaven implies something of a heavenly temper. If, then, we are thus prepared we have something of such a temper. Like the angels, we are pleased with God’ s sovereignty, and rejoice when sinners repent. We desire and pray that the kingdom of God may come and His will be done on earth as it is in heaven. (E. Payson, D. D.) Joy of the angels This assurance, coming from the lips of Jesus Himself, exhibits Christianity, both in its spirit and in its grandeur. I. THE SPIRIT OF . The fact which Jesus teaches hero is that gladness and surprise, that joy and gratified affection, with which love welcomes at last its alienated but unsurrendered objects. In one word, my friends, our Saviour, in the passage before us, shows the identity of the great sentiment of love in heaven and upon earth, in the depths of Divine love and in the heart of man. He appeals to those affections which are most profoundly interwoven in our being. He exhibits the spirit and power of the gospel as not above or foreign to the elements of our own consciousness, but intimately allied to it. He based this appeal upon that which can be demonstrated from the most familiar and common experience. But let me say further, under this head, that by the light of this central love and compassion we should interpret the different parts as well as the grand whole of the gospel. All the sayings of Jesus Christ are to be interpreted in harmony with that spirit; we must take the deep essence and substance of the gospel. We are to receive what grows out of that--what most accords with its general sentiment. And I say what most accords with the general sentiment of the gospel, with the deep spirit and substance of the gospel, is this simple doctrine, that God cares for the sinner, for the vilest and most abandoned sinner who is upon earth. In a mother’ s heart there is a love that cannot be altered and exhausted, and that will claim that abandoned sinner when he comes back. So in the Infinite bosom, and in the bosoms of all heavenly beings, their exists the same love; the spirit that sent Jesus Christ on earth is that spirit; the purpose of Christ’ s mission is to declare that spirit. That is the peculiarity of the gospel over and above everything else. Precisely where man’ s faith falls and man’ s hope falters, is it that the gospel becomes clear and strong. II. THE OF . ITS AS in the announcement of Jesus. The declaration in the text reveals two things--the nature of man and his spiritual relations. It exhibits man as a living soul, and as a member of the great family of souls. It strips away all conventionality from him. Christianity is primal democracy, lifted far above anything that either pro or con bears that name in our day as a party distinction. It is the great doctrine of man higher than his conditions, nobler than any material good. Why? Because he is a living soul; because within him there are deathless powers; because he is allied to God by a nature that no other being on this earth bears, and faculties that no other creature on this footstool possesses. And this is the source of ‘ its great achievement in modern civilization. Subtile theorists ask what Christianity has done for the progress of man. Christianity has thus sown the seeds of all progress, laid the foundation of all truth in government, and of all righteousness in society. It has been the master-key to all the grand efforts that man has made to be delivered from bondage, from oppression, from social wrong. It is the soul of liberty; it is the oriflamme that leads the hosts of humanity forward from effort to effort, to higher and higher social attainments. This is what Christianity has contributed to civilization and progress; it is the spring of all the, noble efforts of all time. In the next place, it reveals the relations of man to the whole spiritual universe--his relationship to all spiritual beings. Christianity is the complement of scientific truth in the spiritual facts it reveals to us; and nothing is more grand than man’ s relation to spiritual beings--than the fact that the universe is filled up with blessed intelligences. I do not need to see them, or hear them, to be convinced of this fact; I know by surer sight than the eye, by more certain hearing than the ear, that they exist; I know it by my vital consciousness of a God and of a heaven. And Christianity interprets that fact. It shows man, poor, wretched, vile as he may be, linked with these innumerable relations. And what else does it show? It shows identity of nature in all spiritual things on earth and in heaven. Oh, if you could tear all the Bible in strips, but leave this one saying of Christ, what mighty truth and consolation there would be in it! “ There is joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth.” How much that reveals to us--lets in upon us. Joy in heaven! Then there are beings in heaven capable of joy, just like ourselves--beings in sympathy with us. Joy in heaven! Oh, forlorn and wayward brother! you are despised of men, and scorned, and perhaps feel that you ought to be; you have sinned vilely and grossly; but do you know what you are? There might be joy not only in that earthly home that nestles among the hills where your poor mother is praying for you to-day, but also great joy in heaven. What a revelation of an identity of nature--of a celestial sympathy! Moreover, there is not only sympathy, but there is solicitude there. God is anxious for your return. (E. H. Chapin, D. D.) Joy in heaven over a repentant sinner I. THE OBJECT OVER WHICH ANGELS REJOICE. 1. A sinner. Vile, apostate, rebellious man. 2. A sinner in a particular state of mind. A sinner that repenteth. What is repentance? It is a state of mind adapted to our condition: such a disposition as is suited to our state. It is an affecting discovery of our situation, our wants, our danger. It is a bewailing of our sad condition. With an almost broken heart the sinner comes to the Saviour’ s feet, crying, with emotions of heart never before felt, with emotions which no language can fully express--“ O save me, I have sinned, I have sinned! O save me, or I perish!” II. THE GROUNDS OF THIS STRANGE JOY. 1. We may trace it to love. Love, when fixed on a right object, and exercised in a right manner, is a source of happiness. It is so on earth; and love makes heaven chiefly what it is as a world of joy. 2. Another ground of this joy of angels over a repenting sinner is their delight in the Divine glory. 3. They behold in the repentance of a sinner the advancement of the great work of grace, and receive in him a new pledge of its final accomplishment. III. THE REASONS FOR WHICH OUR LORD HAS MADE US WITH IT. 1. It was no doubt to vindicate His own conduct in calling and saving heinous transgressors. 2. It shows us that there is something in repentance which is pleasing to God--that there is something in repentance of an excellent character. 3. These things are recorded to comfort and encourage the broken heart. (C. Bradley, M. A.) Repenting sinners, a source of joy in heaven I. In the first place, then, WE HAVE THE WHICH IS HERE , A SINNER . Not the most noteworthy object, some of the wise ones of this world would be tempted to say--not the most noteworthy object earth could present to the eye of God. There are many fairer and brighter scenes upon earth to attract the regard of her God and King. Man’ s vagrant gaze is always wandering hither and thither in search of some scene of interest, or some form of beauty, on which for a moment it may rest; but who thinks of gazing with interest and hope, unless instructed out of the gospel of Christ, upon one sinner that repenteth? No; it is the halls of science, and the temples of art, and the statesman’ s cabinet, and the battle-field of nations, which centre all man’ s regard. Wherever the battle-cry of keenly conflicting interest is swelling on the ear, where brave words are being spoken, and brave deeds being done, thither man’ s eye restlessly turns. It is the rising and the setting suns of empire, the waxing and the waning tide of greatness; the rise, culmination, and decline of those stars that lead man’ s social progress; the chiefs and the heroes who are set far on in the van of the world--these offer to man the theme of his loftiest contemplations. And perhaps it is by the cradle of social reforms--it is by the birthplace of political revolutions and reformations that man’ s purest and holiest vigils are held. My brethren, I am not here to deny the interest which may attach to any of these scenes or occasions. There is not one of these elements, so pregnant with future results to society, which are at work now, seething and surging in that great moral fermenting vat which we call society, that the angels do not look upon. That great battle which is being fought in every age, and perhaps never more earnestly fought than now--the battle which the ancients, for want of a better name, called the battle of the Gods and Titans--what we know as the battle of Chaos and Creation, Anarchy and Order, Might and Right, Slavery and Liberty--all these they look upon; nothing of this is hidden from their gaze. We do rightly to take deep interest in all these things, to let our hearts be stirred by them all. All these, God’ s angels look upon; nothing is hidden from their sight. But one thing they see through all these--amidst all these great interests of society--one thing they see, which for them has more momentous interest, because they see that it has more pregnant consequences; it is the spectacle of one sinner that repenteth, one poor man, it may be. All that interest, remember, is concentrated upon the individual. I say there is that man wrestling in the sweat and agony of his soul with his spiritual tyrants and task-masters, he is bidding them defiance, he is casting them forth; but no trumpet-call summons the world to be spectator of his conflicts. There is nothing to distinguish his battle, so as to attract the eye of the man of this world. No, it will be in silence, silence that sometimes gives no outward indications of what is passing--silence, perhaps, only broken by these pleadings of a broken and contrite spirit, half uttered, half articulate, which God sees and answers as prayers--perhaps it may be thus that the repentant sinner will carry on and complete the work. Repentance is just the first stage and the first sign of that new life of the Christian, that life of which the Saviour said, “ Ye must be born again” --that life which cannot come into a human spirit save by the work ofGod’ s living Spirit within man’ s heart. No man can work this transformation of himself, no man is strong enough to wrestle with this great monster of evil by himself. I say repentance is just the first stage of that new Divine life of which the Saviour spoke, in which a man, being freed from sin, has progressively his fruit unto holiness, and the end thereof life everlasting. II. Direct your thoughts to THE JOYFUL OF THE HERE . The progress of a soul through the various stages of its redemption excites, for the most part, very little interest upon earth. It connects itself with no great human interests, and it ministers no aid to purely human designs. But how differently is it regarded in heaven! Scribes and Pharisees, if they like, may mock at repentance; sophists and infidels, if they like, may jest at the penitent tear, or the pleading and struggling groan of a broken and contrite spirit; but I say to you, Christ says to you by my lips--I am speaking His own words--that “ there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over even one repenting sinner.” Brethren, we should teach ourselves to believe this. We cannot see it; nature does not seem to care for us; all we look upon seems to take little care for us in regard to our spiritual experience, but God and His angels watch us earnestly, and no sigh is breathed and no tear falls that is not caught and cherished by the spirits that are before the throne. I say this repentance, the soul turning away from sin by the power of the grace of Christ which it has received, awakens supreme interest, is a matter of intense importance to all dwellers in the spiritual world. Aye! as the soul thus rises from the dust to adorn herself with the only jewels that Christ cares for--jewels of penitence, humility, and charity--methinks there are God’ s angels then harping with their harps, prepared to celebrate with vestal strains the indissoluble union of a repenting and ransomed spirit with its Lord. Those are the joyful watchers of the spectacle. III. Now, in the third and last place, in bringing these remarks to a conclusion, I dwell upon the rising interest to which I have already averted more fully. Let us inquire WHAT IS THE SECRET OF THIS WHICH THEY FIND IN THE OF A SINNER, and of their exulting joys. Of course we can only understand a portion of this matter, and only a portion of that portion can be brought within the limits of a brief discourse. 1. But, first, I should say that the angels of God who look upon all that is passing upon earth, all the scenes of interest that earth presents--scenes in which we are bound to take an interest, in which certainly the Christian ought not to be behindhand in his interest as compared with his fellow-men--look upon a repenting sinner as the directest and completest result of Christ’ s working upon earth, and, therefore, they abundantly rejoice. He who was with God, who was God, by whom all things were made, became flesh and dwelt among us; and here, in a sinner repenting, you have the directest result of His Incarnation. 2. A second reason is this. In a sinner repenting we must remember there is a rising up of a fresh witness to God’ s righteousness, a fresh subject of God’ s kingdom in the universe, and, therefore, do the angels rejoice. 3. Lastly, in a sinner repenting, the angels see the widening of the kingdom of the Redeemer. They see that He sees increasingly of the travail of his soul, and is satisfied, and, therefore, one thinks they rejoice. He is their King as well as ours; their Master as well as ours. (J. B. Brown, B. A.) Joy of the angels over even one repentant sinner How loving are the angels to men; for they rejoice over one sinner that repenteth. There she is, in that garret where the stars look between the tiles. There is a miserable bed in that room, with but one bit of covering, and she lieth there to die! Poor creature! many a night she has walked the streets in the time of her merriment; but now her joys are over; a foul disease, like a demon, is devouring her heart! She is dying fast, and no one careth for her soul! But there, in that chamber, she turns her face to the wall, and she cries, “ O Thou that savedst Magdalene, save me; Lord, I repent; have mercy upon me, I beseech thee.” Did the bells ring in the street? Was the trumpet blown? Ah! no. Did men rejoice? Was there a sound of thanksgiving in the midst of the great congregation? No; no one heard it; for she died unseen. But stay. There was one standing at her bedside, who noted well that tear; an angel, who had come down from heaven to watch over this stray sheep, and mark its return; and no sooner was her prayer uttered than he clapped his wings, and there was seen flying up to the pearly gates a spirit like a star. The heavenly guards came crowding to the gate, crying, “ What news, O son of fire? “ He said, “‘ Tis done.” “ And what is done?’ they said. “ Why, she has repented.” “ What! she who was once a chief of sinners? has she turned to Christ?” “‘ Tis even so,” said he. And then they told it through the streets, and the bells of heaven rang marriage peals, for Magdalene was saved, and she who had been the chief of sinners was turned unto the living God. It was in another place. A poor neglected little boy in ragged clothing had run about the streets for many a day. Tutored in crime, he was paving his path to the gallows; but one morning he passed by a humble room, where some men and women were sitting together teaching poor ragged children. He stepped in there, a wild Bedouin of the streets; they talked to him; they told him about a soul and about an eternity--things he had never heard before; they spoke ,of Jesus, and of goodtidings of great joy to this poor friendless lad. He went another Sabbath, and another; his wild habits hanging about him, for he could not get rid of them. At last it happened that his teacher said to him one day, “ Jesus Christ receiveth sinners.” That little boy ran, but not home, for it was but a mockery to call it so--where a drunken father and a lascivious mother kept a hellish riot together. He ran, and under some dry arch, or in some wild unfrequented corner, he bent his little knees, and there he cried, that poor creature in his rags, “ Lord, save me, or I perish” ; and the little Arab was on his knees--the little thief was saved I He said--“ Jesus, lover of my soul, let me to Thy bosom fly” ; and up from that old arch, from that forsaken hovel, there flew a spirit, glad to bear the news to heaven that another heir of glory was born to God. I might picture many such scenes; bat will each of you try to picture your own? You remember the occasion when the Lord met with you. Ah! little did you think what a commotion there was in heaven. If the Queen had ordered out all her soldiers, the angels of heaven would not have stopped to notice them; if all the princes of earth had marched in pageant through the streets, with all their robes, and jewellery, and crowns, and all their regalia, their chariots, and their horsemen--if the pomps of ancient monarchies had risen from the tomb--if all the might of Babylon and Tyre and Greece had been concentratedinto one great parade, yet not an angel would have stopped in his course to smile at those poor tawdry things; but over you the vilest of the vile, the poorest of the poor, the most obscure and unknown--over you angelic wings were hovering, and concerning you it was said on earth and sung in heaven, “ Hallelujah, for a child is born to God to-day.” (C. H. Spurgeon.) Why should angels rejoice in the success of redemption? To this question we reply generally, that redemption is the mightiest display of the Divine attributes; and that, wrapt as angels are in admiration and adoration at their Maker, whatever sets forth His properties must be to them a fresh source of praise and ecstasy. Without doubt we must add to this general account, the affection which they entertain towards men as members of the family of creation, their consequent desire for their happiness, and their knowledge that happiness is secured by repentance towards God, and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. But probably the joy in question results mainly from the glory accruing to God, or from the manifestation which redemption puts forth of the attributes of Deity. And therefore we shall chiefly labour to show you how the scheme of our salvation was a new discovery of God to heavenly beings, and why, therefore, there should be joy in the presence of those beings whensoever a sinner takes hold of the obedience proffered in the gospel. Now, the wisdom, the power, and the goodness of God--under which all His other attributes are comprehended--these constitute the glorious majesty of our Creator; and of these, weare bold to affirm, our redemption is the noblest manifestation. If this be once proved, you will readily understand why angels rejoice over penitent sinners. Angels must be gladdened by every exhibition of the high prerogative of their Maker; and if redemption be signally such an exhibition, then redemption--as wrought out for all, or as applied to individuals--must signally minister to their joyousness. (H. Melvill, B. D.) In the heavenly empire A pious Armenian calling on Mr. Hamlyn, a missionary at Constantinople, remarked, that he was astonished to see how the people were waking up to the truth; how even the most cultivated were seeking after it as for hidden treasure. “ Yes,” said he, “ it is going forward; it will triumph; but, alas! I shall not live to see it, alas! that I am born an age too soon.” “ But,” said Mr. Hamlyn, “ do you remember what our Saviour said, ‘ There is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth’ ? You may not live to see the truth triumphant in this empire; but should you, by Divine grace, reach the kingdom of heaven, and be with the angels, your joy over your whole nation, repentant and redeemed, will be infinitely greater than it could be on earth.” He seemed astonished at this thought; but after examining the various passages to which I referred him, he yielded to the evidence with the most lively expressions of delight. “ O fool, and slow of heart,” said he, “ to read the gospel so many times without perceiving such a glorious truth! If this be so, no matter in what age a Christian is born, nor when he dies.” The greatness of repentance Repentance is a great thing, or the angels of God would not rejoice over it. It is no insignificant matter. If we did not understand it, and all the consequences that flow from it, and did not quite perceive all the reasons why angels rejoice, yet we should naturally conclude that it must be great from this fact. Suppose we entered a strange city end found the bells ringing out a merry peal from every tower, the cannon roaring out their harsh joy from every fort, the streets at night blazing with illuminations, every countenance cheerful, the whole land vocal with joy, and all keeping jubilee together; why, we should say, “ This great and intelligent people would not rejoice thus over a trifle; some great thing must have taken place” ; if we did not know what it was. Oh! enter heaven when a sinner has repented, and find it all jubilee! Must it not be a great thing that would fill heaven thus with bliss? The repentance of a sinner does it. And then mark, it is not the conversion of a nation like China, with its three hundred millions of inhabitants, nor India with its myriads of idolaters, nor blood-stained Madagascar, nor Tahiti, nor New Zealand: not the conversion of an empire, but the conversion of a single soul. Not merely the soul of some great persecutor, like Saul of Tarsus, whose conversion may at once change the aspect of a country, and release it from intolerance and murder, and introduce it to liberty and joy. Not the conversion of a mighty monarch, who, once a despot, is now become through Christianity the father of his country. Not the conversion of a philosopher, whose great name might be supposed to add celebrity to Christianity. Not the conversion of a great poet, who had prostituted his genius to celebrate vice, and now consecrates it to the glory of God who gave him the intellect. No, but the conversion of “ a sinner,” apart from all the personal circumstances in which that sinner might be found: any sinner; the inhabitant of a workhouse--the pauper’ s child--or the pauper himself; for it is repentance, stript of all that is adventitious, all that might otherwise gather around it. It is the dropping of all these, and it is the bowing down of any human heart in the attitude of submission to God, and in the purpose of forsaking sin: it is that, which angels rejoice over. (J. A. James.) Luke 15:11-32A certain man had two sons.The prodigal and his brother I. GOD’ S OF THE . 1. The alienation of the heart from God. (1) Homelessness. (2) Worldly happiness is unsatisfying. Husks are not food. (3) Degradation. 2. The period of repentance. (1) The first fact of religious experience which this parable suggests to us is that common truth--men desert the world when the world deserts them. The renegade came to himself when there were no more husks to eat. He would have remained away if he could have got them, but it is written, “ no man gave unto him.” And this is the record of our shame. Invitation is not enough; we must be driven to God. And the famine comes not by chance. God sends the famine into the soul--the hunger, and thirst, and the disappointment--to bring back his erring child again. (2) There is another truth contained in this section of the parable. After a life of wild sinfulness religion is servitude at first, not freedom. Observe, he went back to duty with the feelings of a slave: “ I am no more worthy to be called thy son, make me as one of thy hired servants.” Any one who has lived in the excitement of the world, and then tried to settle down at once to quiet duty, knows how true that is. To borrow a metaphor from Israel’ s desert life, it is a tasteless thing to live on manna after you have been feasting upon quails. It is a dull cold drudgery to find pleasure in simple occupation when life has been a succession of strong emotions. Sonship it is not; it is slavery. A son obeys in love, entering heartily into his father’ s meaning. A servant obeys mechanically, rising early because he must; doing, it may be, his duty well, but feeling in all its force the irksomeness of the service. Sonship does not come all at once. 3. The reception which a sinner meets with on his return to God. The banquet represents to us two things. (1) It tells of the father’ s gladness on his son’ s return. That represents God’ s joy on the reformation of a sinner. (2) It tells of a banquet and a dance given to the long lost son. That represents the sinner’ s gladness when he first understood that God was reconciled to him in Christ. There is a strange, almost wild, rapture, a strong gush of love and happiness in those days which are called the days of first conversion. When a man who has sinned much--a profligate--turns to God, and it becomes first clear to his apprehension that there is love instead of spurning for him, there is a luxury of emotion--a banquet of tumultuous blessedness in the moment of first love to God, which stands alone in life, nothing before and nothing after like it. And, brethren, let us observe--This forgiveness is a thing granted while a man is yet afar off. II. GOD’ S WITH A SAINT. The true interpretation seems to be that this elder brother represents a real Christian perplexed with God’ s mysterious dealings. We have before us the description of one of those happy persons who have been filled with the Holy Ghost from their mother’ s womb, and on the whole (with imperfections of course) remained God’ s servant all his life. For this is his own account of himself, which the father does not contradict. “ Lo! these many years do I serve thee.” We observe then: The objection made to the reception of a notorious sinner--“ Thou never gavest me a kid.” Now, in this we have a fact true to Christian experience. Joy seems to be felt more vividly and more exuberantly by men who have sinned much, than by men who have grown up consistently from childhood with religious education. Rapture belongs to him whose sins, which are forgiven, are many. In the perplexity which this fact occasions, there is a feeling which is partly right and partly wrong. There is a surprise which is natural. There is a resentful jealousy which is to be rebuked. And now mark the father’ s answer. It does not account for this strange dealing by God’ s sovereignty. It does not cut the knot of the difficulty, instead of untying it, by saying, God has a right to do what He will. He does not urge, God has a right to act on favouritism if He please. But it assigns two reasons. The first reason is, “ It was meet, right that we should make merry.” It is meet that God should be glad on the reclamation of a sinner. It is meet that that sinner, looking down into the dreadful chasm over which he had been tottering, should feel a shudder of delight through all his frame on thinking of his escape. And it is meet that religious men should not feel jealous of one another, but freely and generously join in thanking God that others have got happiness, even if they have not. The spirit of religious exclusiveness, which looks down contemptuously instead of tenderly on worldly men, and banishes a man for ever from the circle of its joys because he has sinned notoriously, is a bad spirit. Lastly, the reason given for this dealing is, “ Son, thou art always with Me, and all that I have is thine.” By which Christ seems to tell us that the disproportion between man and man is much less than we suppose. The profligate had had one hour of ecstasy--the other had had a whole life of peace. A consistent Christian may not have rapture; but he has that which is much better than rapture: calmness--God’ s serene and perpetual presence. And after all, brethren, that is the best. (F. W. Robertson, M. A.) A mirror of mercy 1. First, then, in that he is called a young man, there is noted in him want of knowledge and experience as the ground and fountain of all his folly, he knew not as yet what his father was worth unto him. And, therefore, he is not afraid to forsake him. This is to teach us that none forsakes the Lord, but such as do know Him not, and understand not that in so doing they forsake their own mercy. As beasts that know not the value of pearls care not to trample them under their feet, or as young children laugh at the death of their parents, because they know not for the present what they lose thereby, but afterwards remember it with grief; so blinded man without remorse runs away from God, not knowing what he lost by departing from the Lord, for He is light, and they go into utter darkness that go from Him. He is life, and they are but dead who abide not in fellowship with Him. One example of this we have in the elect angels; they are never weary to behold His excellent Majesty; they find ever new matter of joy in His face. 2. Secondly, in this prodigal child is noted here, that natural rebellion which is in all men; that they will not submit themselves to the will of God their Heavenly Father, but will follow their own wills. 3. The third evil noted here in this prodigal is his hypocrisy; he calls him in word father, but in deed did not so account of him; he carried not toward him the heart of a child; this is a part of that poison wherewith Satan hath infected our nature. Is there any comparison between that which thou givest the Lord and that which thou gettest from Him? 4. That he seeks a portion of his father’ s goods, but not his father’ s favour and blessing, represents to us the earthly minds of naturalists, who prefer the gifts of God to God Himself. (Bishop Cowper.) The parable of the prodigal Captain Sir W.E. Parry observes, “ There is nothing even in the whole compass of Scripture more calculated to awaken contrition in the hardest heart than the parable of the Prodigal Son. I knew a convict in New South Wales, in whom there appeared no symptoms of repentance in other respects, but who could never hear a sermon or comment on this parable without bursting into an agony of tears, which I witnessed on several occasions. Truly He who spoke it knew what was in man.” It is the prince of parables, a gospel within the gospel, a mirror of man, an artless yet profound little drama of human ruin and recovery. Wonderful, indeed, is its power to touch the sensibilities. “ I have wept but once these forty years, said a veteran military officer, and that was when I heard Jesse Bushyhead, the Cherokee preacher, address his countrymen from the parable of the Prodigal Son, the tears flowing faster than he could wipe them away.” (A. G. Thomson, D. D.) The parable of fatherhood I. LET US FOLLOW THE SINNER IN HIS . In this part of the picture we shall perceive that sin is vicious in principle, ruinous in operation, and ever multiplying its destructive issues. (1) SIN IS VICIOUS IN . 1. What is the unexpressed but fundamental axiom of all sin? A human being exists to pursue his own gratification, without regard to the will of God. That is it. 2. The younger son acts out the rule of life ascribed to him. For observe, the employment of the resources of existence for self-indulgence he claims as a right. “ Father, give me the portion of goods that falleth to me.” 3. Now definite plans for self-indulgence follow. His notions of life and felicity are not a theory, but meant to be a practice; and he does his best to be ready for it. 4. Notice, next, the haste of sin. “ Not many days after, the younger son gathered all together.” It might have been the most sublime and hallowed enterprise in the world. The rapidity of his movements must not be attributed exclusively to the impetuosity of youth, but to the precipitancy of all sinful passion. 5. Remark, finally, here, the presence of God is “ unfriendly to sin.” “ And took his journey into a far country.” Banishment from home would have been accounted a great hardship, if it had been enjoined as a duty. The toils and perils of the road would have occasioned no little murmuring, if his hard travail had contemplated any other end than selfenjoyment. He is eager to swallow his indulgences, and equally anxious to be beyond his father’ s eye and all the restraints of home. “ Let me alone” is the impatient cry of sin to all remonstrance. “ A far country” is always the coveted paradise of fools. II. SIN IS RUINOUS IN . “ And there wasted his substance in riotous living.” III. SIN IS EVER ITS ISSUES. There is no standing still in good or evil. The wheels of human progress never rest on their axles. 1. Instead of attaining to happiness, he is overtaken by poverty. 2. Now Providence fights against him. Nature is in the universal league against transgression. 3. He is already feeling the pinch of wrong-doing. “ And he began to be in want.” The fruit of evil deeds is revealing its poison. He finds himself in the grasp of premonitory pangs. 4. Observe next, that the old principle is to be worked in new ways. “ And he went and joined himself to a citizen of that country.” You see that he has not become a citizen himself. He is still a stranger. He cannot absolutely settle down out there. No. A man cannot find entire satisfaction in a life of self-enjoyment without God. With nothing but worldly things he cannot attain to rest. 5. He now sinks to a lower level of degradation. A swine-herd! 6. Take notice, further, that the swine-herd is prepared to accept his shame. “ And he would fain have filled his belly with the husks which the swine did eat.” Ever since he left his father’ s house his inclinations have descended lower and lower. He tried to fill, to satisfy himself with them, but he could not. They merely stayed his hunger. There was a bitterness in their flavour which something in his palate nauseated. The pleasure of eating was gone. The food of a beast cannot satisfy the soul of a man. 7. Last of all, his schemes of felicity and methods of relief are all overturned together. “ And no man gave unto him.” It does not mean, that no man gave him swine’ s food. The swine-herd had the care of the husks, and ate plenty of them, but he could not enjoy them. “ No man gave unto him” what could satisfy and bless a human soul. Man is the highest creature in the world; but if you seek your happiness or your deliverance from misery at his hands, you must end in failure. “ Citizens” out in that country, “ far” from God, could not surround a prodigal with the good which a father’ s love at home can alone supply. “ No man gave unto him,” because no man had anything to give. II. LET US WATCH THE SINNER IN HIS . There are four elements of repentance here requiring analysis. 1. . “ And when he came to himself, he said, How many hired servants of my father’ s have bread enough and to spare!” Sin creates a sort of moral insanity. While spurred by appetite and in the race after indulgence, the mind is actuated by a species of frenzy. “ I perish with hunger!” There is the memory of a better past in that exclamation. This same recalling of brighter hours bows the spirit into the dust. “ This is truth the poet sings, That a sorrow’ s crown of sorrow is remembering happier things.” Bygone years to a sinner, however in his beginning, is a glance up an ascending incline towards sunnier days. 2. . “ I will arise and go to my father.” He no sooner discerns his hapless state, than he determines to leave it. You are to imagine him prostrate, brooding in indecision or despair. But he will lie no longer in inaction. He protests, “ I will arise,” and he rises. 3. OF GUILT. His resolution, while unenfeebled by hesitation, was not formed in insensibility to his evil. He sees most distinctly the relation of sin towards God and towards himself. (1) The relation of sin towards God. “ I have sinned against heaven.” Evil insults the purity and despises the love of God. It destroys His moral order, and spurns the felicity which He offers. (2) The relation of sin towards himself. “ And am no more worthy,” etc. His sense of ill-desert is real and deep. 4. RETURN TO GOD. His was no empty vow. III. LET US BEHOLD THE SINNER IN HIS . 1. NOTICE GOD’ S OF THE OF . “ When he was yet a great way off, his father saw him.” He had not seen his father, but “ his father saw him.” Unconsciously to the son, the love of the father has been drawing him all the way. If he had lost the image of his father from his memory, he would never have attempted to return. 2. OBSERVE GOD’ S WELCOME TO THE . (1) The tenderness of God is wonderful, He “ had compassion.” Great reason had God to be angry with that sinful creature, with me, with you; but He “ had compassion.” (2) How willing God is to succour! “ His father saw him, and had compassion, and ran” to welcome him. “ Ran,” --willingness is too feeble an epithet to denote the impulse. There is eagerness in “ ran.” God is hasting to save and bless. (3) Pray do not overlook God’ s readiness to accept and pardon just as you are. “ Saw,” “ had compassion,” “ ran,” “ and fell on his neck, and kissed him.” 3. NOW TURN TO BEHOLD HOW GOD HIS ON THE . The father is not going to treat his son as an “ hired servant.” God’ s forgiveness must be God-like. God’ s love is always greater in experience than in our most sanguine wishes and brightest hopes. 4. LISTEN TO GOD’ S TO HIS TO SHARE HIS JOY. “ Bring hither the fatted calf, and kill it; and let us eat and be merry.” “ Merry” is an old Saxon word. Its meaning has somewhat narrowed and lowered in our later tongue. “ Be merry,” here, in the original is “ rejoice.” A feast betokens gladness among all nations. The occasion is great, and great is to be the exultation. “ Let us eat and rejoice.” The father does not ask his household to be glad and he himself remain only a spectator of the universal delight. It is, “ Let us eat and rejoice.” It is God’ s own joy that He would have His creatures share and proclaim. (Bishop Alexander.) The prodigal son I. AN OF THE AND THE CONDUCT OF MAN IN HIS NATURAL AND SINFUL STATE. 1. Absence of gratitude, or any sense of obligation to his father. 2. Impatience of his father’ s government. 3. Breaking away from his father’ s control. 4. Squandering his father’ s property contrary to his father’ s intention. 5. But his schemes all failed to make him happy. II. WHEN MEN BEGIN TO FEEL THEIR WANT, THEY TAKE COURSES TO DELIVER . One flies to his worldly companions; another to scepticism; another to business; another to pleasure; another to some external reformation; another determines to read his Bible a little more, and to pray a little more--not meaning by prayer his heart really coming back to God, but the utterance of some words and going more frequently on his knees. That is not prayer. Prayer is the child coming back to his Father; prayer is the heart meeting God; prayer is the heart delighting in God, pouring out its desires into the bosom of infinite Love, and feeling that God is there. You must get back to God through the mediation, the merit, and the sacrifice of the Lord our Righteousness and our Redeemer. All other refuges will fail: all other processes will fail: you may have convictions, and then you may do this, that, or the other that I have described; still you are in want. Husks, husks, husks are all you have received by staying away from your Father’ s house. III. THE NATURE OF AND --the way to get home to our Father. The young man is said to have come to himself: that means that he was beside himself before. Hence you find that the Word of God denominates sinners “ fools” : and because they are practically so foolish, they would rather remain undisturbed in their sins for a few days, than go through the bitterness of repentance and the self-denial of religion now, that they may wear an eternal crown, and live in immortal peace. There is another proof of the derangement of the human heart. It is the feeling which men have, that they can be happy away from God, and that they know more about the secret of happiness than the God who made them. So repentance is turning to our right mind. Repentance is beginning to look at things aright--beginning to reason, and feel, and purpose, and act aright. The young man determines to come home, to confess his sin without any palliation. The willingness to humble ourselves, that is coming home. Look for a moment at this young man, and see how difficult it was for him to come home, and how impossible it would have been, if he had not humbled his pride. In the first place he had to go back in his rags. “ There is not a child in the village but will see me; and they will say, That is the young man who went out in such splendid style; and they will point the finger at me and mock me” : and yet says be, “ I will arise and go.” IV. GOD’ S OF THE SINNER. (E. N. Kirk.) The efficacy and joy of repentance I. THE PARABLE. It can stand the two tests which Byron declared to be decisive upon the merit of literary creations. It pleases immediately, and it pleases permanently. The rose needs no essay to prove that it is a rose. This is fragrant with the breath of Christ, and coloured with the summer of His touch. 1. The prodigal’ s sin. (1) In its origin it is selfishness. (2) In its progress it is dissipation. (3) In its result, sin is famine and degradation: in action, the life of the stye, which is sensuality; in thought, the system of the stye, which is materialism. One of the citizens of that country sends him “ into the fields to feed swine.” (4) But the essence of his sin is the miserable determination to remove as far as possible from his father’ s presence. 2. The prodigal’ s repentance. “ He came to Himself.” He had been outside his true self before. When a man finds himself, he finds God. 3. The reception of the lost son. For every step the sinner takes towards God, God takes ten towards him. We will not dwell upon the particulars of that great reception. Enough to mention “ the first stole” ; the ring of honour; the shoes forbidden to slaves; the sacrificial feast; the father’ s voice passing into the chant of a wondrous liturgy; and seen and heard across the darkening fields by the elder brother as he unwillingly faces homeward the long line of festal light, the symphony of instruments, and the choirs of dancers. II. OF . 1. Its efficacy. Not in the nature of things; not inherent in it. The sinner is in an awful land, where every rock is literally a “ rock of ages” ; where the facts which some men call spiritual are bound by a fatal succession quite as much as the facts which all men call material; where God is frozen into an icicle, and no tender touch of miracle can come from His law-stiffened fingers; where two and two always make four, and your sin always finds you out. To remove this impotence and inefficacy of repentance, Jesus lived and died. Repentance is His indulgence, flung down from the balcony by our great High Priest. Repentance is His gift; the efficacy of repentance is His secret. 2. Its joy. (1) There are two considerations which have always been urged by masters of the spiritual life. (a) To judge the inner life only by the joy of which it is conscious is a sort of spiritual epicureanism. “ The tears of penitents are the wine of angels” ; but they were not intended to intoxicate those who shed them. (b) Past sin, even when its guilt is pardoned, has penal consequences upon the inner life. It continues in the memory with its poisoned springs and in the imagination with its perilous susceptibilities. (2) Yet they know not the mind of God to whom penitence is only bitter. There are “ Tears that sweeter far Than the world’ s mad laughter are.” There is a triumphant, a victorious delight, which leads the will along the narrow way, and will not be gainsaid. It is a mutilated Miserere which omits the verse “ Make me to hear joy and gladness, that the hones which Thou hast broken may rejoice.” By one of those apparent contradictions which lies at the root of the Christian life, a perpetual yearning after pardon is consistent with a perpetual serenity of hope. God would mould His penitents that they may combine sorrow with joy; that they may hear at once a sigh in the depths of their souls, and a music far away. There must be in the renewed nature something of the iron that has been moulded in His furnace, and something of the rose which has been expanded in His sunshine. The life of Frederick the Great, by a writer of transcendent genius, contains incidentally a record of the death of an English general defeated in Canada. Twice only did the unhappy officer rouse himself out of the mortal stupor into which he fell from a broken heart. Once he sighed heavily--“ Who would have thought it?” Many days after he said with more animation--“ Another time we will do better.” And then “ the cataracts of soft, sweet sleep” rushed down upon the weary man. Do not these two sentences give us this view of the twofold aspect of repentance?--the first, the humiliation of the beaten soldier as he comes to himself;the second, his hope through Christ as he catches the music of the march of victory. (Bishop Wm. Alexander.) The pearl of parables I. WE SHALL NEED TO GROUP AT THE OUTSET THE WHICH SHOW THIS YOUNG MAN’ S AT THE MOMENT WHEN THE STORY GIVES HIM . (see Luke 15:11-12). 1. He was estranged from all love for his father. His affections had been soured and turned before he made this abrupt demand. He addressed his father as to a division of his estate in a cool, technical way. 2. He was away from his home (see Luke 15:13). His father’ s residence which he had left is pictured in the parable, with the family life in it, by two or three strokes of a master hand. Even the servants had enough and to spare. Feasts were not unknown. Music and dancing were part of the entertainment. But it is plain that the old father meant to be master there; and that was precisely the condition of life this impulsive youth resolved to escape. 3. He had fallen into poverty (see Luke 15:14). Removed from influences which had hitherto kept him in check, he began the career of a profligate and debauchee. A little time spent in this voluptuous folly sufficed to run through his fortune. 4. At last he sank to the lowest, and became a servant. He went and offered himself to a master. The citizen of that country put him at the very worst business he had for any menial to do. 5. At this moment the young man was actually hungering in the presence of his beasts (see Luke 15:16). So far from having the right to despise the lowly creatures of his charge, the prodigal began the rather to envy them. The picture must be turned now to show just how it illustrates the condition of a sinner alienated from his Father in heaven. His own pride of heart lies at the bottom of his departure; he wants to be master of himself. Gathering together all his resources of time, talent, energy--all his powers of mind and body--he rushes away into the world of dissipation and lust. Now he goes to the devil directly and hires himself out, and Satan accepts him at his own valuation, and puts him among the swine. II. LET US NOW SEEK FOR THE WHICH DISPLAY THIS ’ S ENTIRE CHANGE IN PURPOSE AND FEELING BY WHICH HE WAS AT LAST LED BACK TO HIS HOME IN AND PEACE. (see Luke 15:17). 1. First of all, he began to think “ I thought upon my ways and turned my feet unto Thy testimonies.” The expression here is as singular as it is strong--“ When he came to himself.” A sort of madness was in his heart. He seeswhere he is, and what he is, and what he has so long been doing. 2. Then he began to remember. That is Scripture counsel for us in these later times--“ Remember from whence thou art fallen.” The prodigal recollected the kindness of his home in the days gone by. 3. Then he began to regret. His grief over the wickedness of his career is shown by the softness and gentleness of his forms of meditation. We discover no demonstrations of spite. 4. Then he began to hate. Abruptly, but for ever, he throws up his engagement with his cruel master. He renounces absolutely all the associations of his life in this far country. 5. Then he began to resolve (see Luke 15:18-19). So critical is this as a point in his experience, that we must analyze it step by step to the end. (1) He resolved he would arise. If he was actually bent on making a change, he must be up on the instant and out of this. Nothing could be gained by delay. (2) He resolved he would go to his father. To whom else could he go? Drudgery was here, freedom was yonder. Shame was here, honour was yonder. Slavery was here, duty was yonder. Starving was here plenty and to spare were yonder. (3) He resolved to speak to his father. Observe, in this little speech he says over and over again to himself there is not one word about food or raiment, or future fortune. He is going to get the awful past right before he begins on anything else. He decides that he will confess before he begins to plead; what he wants is pardon. (4) He resolved to be obedient to his father. Unworthy of sonship, he will ask for a servant’ s place. Indeed, now he has come to see that the lowest position in his father’ s house is higher than the highest he ever discovered in all these reckless, wicked days since he left it. Here, again, we must pause to turn the story, so as to see in all plainness how it illustrates the process of mind and behaviour through which a contrite sinner returns to his Father in heaven in the hour of his resolve. These steps are all homeward steps. III. There remains for our study now only one more grouping of particulars which show THIS ’ S WHEN AT THE LAST HE ARRIVED IN HIS OWN COUNTRY, AND CAME TO HIS FATHER’ S HOUSE. 1. He carried out his purpose of arising and going to his father (see Luke 15:20). It would have done no good just to resolve and then sit still there among the swine. 2. He carried out his purpose of confessing his sin to his father (see Luke 15:21). Perhaps he had been fainting with hunger; but hope would tell him of comfort by and by. Perhaps he would meet a train of travellers, who would laugh at his sorry look and condition; but he would think of help coming before long. Perhaps his heart wholly sank at the moment when from the last hill he saw his home; but he would be sure to fall back on his sure faith in his father’ s affection. 3. He carried out his purpose of full obedience of his father. To be sure, not a word was said about his being a servant any more. He was a sou now, and all the old honour had come with the robe and the ring. But the unspoken resolve still remained in his heart (see Hebrews 5:8). (C. S.Robinson, D. D.) The prodigal son I. THE SON’ S FORTUNE, AND HIS WAY OF IT. What, then, was his fortune? Man is gifted with health, by which he is able to enjoy life--strength, to provide for its necessities--faculties (such as common sense, reason, the understanding), to guide him to God as his true happiness--affections, to endear him to others, and others to him. Appetites of various and valuable sorts. The appetite of eating and drinking, which affords legitimate pleasure and real advantage when moderately indulged; the appetite for seeing, which opens a door to much useful discovery and delight, which enables us to admire on every hand the infinite wisdom, power, and goodness of our Creator and our God; the appetite for hearing, by which Divine knowledge gets admittance into the soul, by which the agreeable converse of our friends, and the delightful strains of heavenly melody, may be enjoyed and indulged in. These, and many others are precious items in the portion which God bountifully bestows upon His children. They should be enjoyed at His discretion, according to His command, and for His glory. Not so, however, the sinner. Like the prodigal, he gathers his riches, and takes his journey into a far country--that is to say, he wanders far from God and heaven. The prodigal becomes a worldling; he carries his portion into the unregenerate world, and there wastes his substance in riotous living. His gifts are debauched and misused; they are all made the servants of sin. Hunger eaters to gluttony; thirst to drunkenness; the eye administers to lust; it reads wicked looks, delights in wanton shows, in pomp, and vanity, and folly. The ear drinks in blasphemy, irreligion, and indecency. The heart is made the residence of evil affections; the head and understanding, of wicked, ungodly, infidel principles. The summer of life is spent in bringing to maturity the seeds of evil which were scattered in its spring--the autumn, in the neglect of what is good, and in the ingathering of what is bad, the poisoned fruits of a debauched manhood. The winter of life comes on, and in its train sharp disease, racking pains--a bloated, enfeebled, disordered carcase--a foolish head, an unregenerate heart, a guilty conscience. There is now no more capacity for enjoying pleasure; the sight is gone, the hearing lost, the appetite vanished, the strength decayed, the health squandered, the affections debased, the faculties degraded--the whole substance wasted in riotous living. II. HIS AND . “ And when he had spent all there began to be a mighty famine in that land.” So it is with sinners. They derive their pleasure from sensual enjoyments--the indulgences of the flesh; but, when they spend their strength, there is an end of these indulgences. The eye refuses to see, the ear to hear, the members to stir, in obedience to the miserable slave of sin. “ And he would fain have filled his belly with the husks that the swine did eat.” It is among the miseries of sinners that the appetite for wicked indulgence increases as the capacity for gratifying it decays. The longer the heart has been exercised in iniquity, the deeper will be the corruption with which it is tainted. “ And no man gave unto him.” Be assured, sinner, this is a true picture of the world. While you can treat them--while you have anything that they can devour, they will praise andflatter you; but, when your substance is gone, you will find it true that no man will give unto you--none of your sinful companions. They have their own devouring lusts, their filthy lusts, to gratify. Do you think that they will deny themselves for your necessities? “ And when he came to himself” --mark the expression, as though he had been in a fit of madness. It isthus the sinner is here spoken of; yea, and elsewhere the Holy Ghost says, “ Madness is in their hearts while they live.” “ I will arise,” etc. Here, then, were no excuses, no palliations--no saying others were in fault, I was led astray, I have not been as bad as some--no promises of great things for the future--no saying, I will devote myself to thy service, I will fight thy battles, I will do wonders for thy cause; but a simple declaration of guilt and wretchedness: “ I have sinned, I am unworthy; I do not deserve the character of thy son; make me as one of thy servants; regard me as one of them.” He resolves to plead, not his merit, but his misery, and he puts his resolve into execution. For-- III. “ HE AROSE AND CAME TO HIS FATHER.” “ He arose and came” : it is important that you should mark this--he did not rest content with mere resolutions of repentance. He did not say, “ I will arise and return,” and all the while stay where he was, desiring still to feed on husks. This too many do. “ And while he was yet a great way off,” etc. Oh, the melting tenderness of our God and Saviour! He watches the very first movements towards repentance. (T. D. Gregg, M. A.) The reformed prodigal I. LET US INQUIRE WHO THE YOUNGER SON IS TO . The parable is addressed to the scribes and Pharisees; but there was nothing in their character which resembled what is ascribed to the younger son, or that could admit a comparison with him. But, as we are told, it was delivered in the presence of publicans and sinners, who had assembled in crowds to hear Jesus, it cannot be doubted that it was that class who are portrayed by the younger son. The publicans and sinners are never represented in the Gospels as influenced by the religious opinions which prevailed among the Jews, but rather as led by their feelings; just as the younger son is exhibited in the parable. They are, however, drawn as more easily instructed, and more susceptible of repentance and reformation. II. LET US NEXT POINT OUT WHAT USEFUL WE MAY DERIVE FROM THE CONDUCT OF THE YOUNGER BROTHER. 1. We see that extravagance and licentiousness are usually followed by want. Whoever, then, practices these vices, cannot plead ignorance of their natural and unavoidable consequences. Nor do evil effects belong to these vices alone; for every other vice has its peculiar evil consequences which accompany its train, as uniformly as a shadow goes along with a moving substance when the sun shines. Thus, even truth from the mouth of a known liar is usually received with incredulity, and always with suspicion. Pride is incessantly exposed to imaginary affronts and real mortifications, which cause to the unhappy victim many agonizing moments. The vain man is miserable when he is doomed to negligence and contempt, instead of receiving the coveted and expected praise. The gratification of revenge, in reality, consists of the pains of the rack. 2. As the evil consequences of sin are thus so evident to all, we ought to be convinced that this knowledge was intended to lead us to amendment. Such, indeed, is represented as the effect produced on the young man in the parable. His sufferings occasioned not only that repentance which consists in strong feelings, but that reformation which consists in a change of conduct. This is exhibited as genuine and sincere; it was speedy, nor was it partial but universal. III. OUR IS NEXT CALLED TO THE ELDER BROTHER. We have concluded that the younger brother was designed to represent the publicans and sinners. Nor can we have any doubt that, under the similitude of the elder brother, the scribes and Pharisees are intended. It is true the character given of the elder brother is good--that he had served his father many years, and never transgressed his commands. But we must not overlook the circumstance that this favourable character is given by himself, while his conduct exhibits an opposite picture, bearing a close resemblance to the scribes and Pharisees; for they deemed themselves not only faultless but meritorious, as they are represented by the Pharisee in the parable, who thanked God for his superiority to others, and plumed himself because he fasted twice in the week, and gave tithes of all his possessions. Like the great body of the Pharisees, the elder brother is selfish and indifferent about others. He is angry at the fond reception given to his penitent brother, envious of the marks of favour conferred on him, and mortified at the supposed preference to himself by his noble-minded father. Had he possessed any natural affection he would have cordially testified his delight at the return of his long-lost brother. Had he felt as he ought to have done, he would have learned that his own happiness was highly enhanced; for there is no joy so elevated and refined as that which a good man feels at the return of a son, or a brother, or a friend, to God and duty. IV. Lastly, THE CONDUCT OF THE FATHER IN THE PARABLE IS TO THE OF OUR FATHER. (J. Thomson, D. D.) The prodigal son 1. This young man was laying his life-plans, and his first idea was to get away from his father. 2. Freedom from restraint leads to recklessness. 3. Recklessness leads to want. 4. Want leads to recollection. 5. Recollection leads to repentance. 6. Repentance leads to reformation. 7. Reformation leads to restoration. 8. Restoration leads to rejoicing. 9. Rejoicing over the returning prodigal is well; but the conduct and character of the elder brother are immeasurably better. (T. Kelly.) The parable of the prodigal son I. SELF-WILL LEADS TO . II. LEADS TO WANT. III. WANT AWAKENS MEMORY. IV. MEMORY LEADS TO AND RETURN. (Geo. Gerrard.) The prodigal Let us regard it as giving a picture of man-- I. IN THE DIGNITY OF HIS ORIGIN. This young man was the son of a father who could bestow on him a large fortune, and surround his life with comfort and splendour. He was born to dignity. The destitution and misery to which he had reduced himself was not his natural heritage. “ We are also His offspring.” II. IN HIS DESIRE FOR . All sins may be regarded as the unfolding of this single sin of selfishness. Hence the necessity that we should enter the Kingdom of God, where He asserts and maintains His dominion over us. III. IN THE LIBERTY ALLOWED HIM, WITH THE RISK OF ITS ABUSE. When a man feels that the service of God is not perfect freedom, that he can better himself in some condition of his own seeking, God allows him to make the trial. The foolish experiment discovers at length to him that he is not really free by throwing off his former yoke. He has but exchanged it for a far heavier one. 1. We learn from this that the apostasy of the heart begins before the apostasy of the life. 2. Man abuses the liberty allowed him, and abandons himself to the dreadful possibilities of sin. Liberty is indeed a noble endowment, yet it is terrible to have the power to ruin ourselves. We can gain nothing by contending with our Maker. IV. IN THE MANNER OF HIS . This recovery is possible. Such is the glad sound of the gospel. Let us trace the steps by which the prodigal gained the favour he had forfeited. 1. He was made to feel his utmost need. 2. His reformation commenced in thought. 3. He was sensible of the honour he had rejected. 4. He resolves to cast himself upon the mercy of his father. 5. He frames the design of his confession. Sin is acknowledged in its root--“ before Thee.” 6. Still remaining as a son, he desired to be reckoned a servant. V. IN THE WITH WHICH HEAVEN THE EVIL OF HIS LIFE. God draws nigh unto those who draw nigh unto Him. When the face is turned towards God, the long journey is relieved by the arrival of mercy before we have trodden every weary step. 1. The penitent is raised to a position of honour. 2. There was sympathy awakened for him in the father’ s household. 3. The joy was suited to the time--“ it was meet.” But this intensity of joy could not, in the nature of things, long continue. He, too, must shortly settle down to the sober tasks of duty. The excitement of a great crisis must not be the permanent condition of the soul, or her energies would be consumed at too high a rate; and, instead of the glow of health, there would be the burning of a fever. Excessive joy must subside into the patience of faith, and the labour of love. (The Lay Preacher.) The parable of the prodigal son I. THE SON LEAVES HIS FATHER’ S HOUSE. 1. Why did he leave? (1) Youth is the time of imaginations. The prodigal son promised to himself a joyful life outside of his father’ s house. (2) Youth is desirous of sensual pleasures. (3) Youth desires to be independent, and will not obey. 2. How did he leave? (1) The ungrateful demand. (2) The going astray. II. THE SON IN A FOREIGN COUNTRY. 1. He wastes his substance. 2. He begins to be in want. Poverty is the condition of the soul that seeks happiness in the world. By losing his God, the sinner loses everything. 3. His degradation. He who would not perform the daily work in the house of his father, is now obliged to labour as a hired servant. 4. He envies the brute beasts. III. HIS RETURN AND . 1. The causes of his return. (1) It was caused by his misery. The famine calls him back whom satiety had led away. God visits with grace him whom He visits with affliction. (2) Forsaken by all the world, he returned to himself. The first condition of conversion is knowledge of one’ s self, and the knowledge of the condition of our soul. (3) He saw the misery of his condition. 2. The steps he takes in order to return. (1) He makes a firm resolution, not deferring his return to a later time, nor being deterred by difficulties. (2) He still remembers the kindness of his father. (3) He acknowledges the enormity of his sin. 3. His reception. (Repertorium Oratoris Sacri.) The prodigal son Look at the prodigal son-- I. IN HIS OF HONOUR AND . Upright. Innocent. Happy. God his Father. Eden his home. The earth his domain. Angels his companions. All that Divine wisdom and love could provide, he possessed. An ample portion was his inheritance. II. IN THE OF HIS CLAIM. What did he really want.? Where could he be more dignified or happy? But he seeks to have his portion to himself. He desires to do with it as he pleases. He seeks to throw off parental restraints and control. III. IN HIS . 1. This wandering is very gradual and insidious. 2. Increasingly rapid. 3. Awfully dangerous. IV. IN HIS AND MISERY. Profligacy is followed by want; extravagance by misery. V. IN HIS . (J. Burns, D. D.) The prodigal’ s return I. REASON RESUMES HER . II. THE HE ADOPTS. 1. He determines on an immediate return to his forsaken home. 2. He resolves freely to confess his sins. 3. He resolves to be content with any place in his father’ s dwelling. III. THE COURSE WHICH HE CARRIES OUT. 1. Immediately; without delay. 2. And he perseveres in his homeward course. (J. Burns, D. D.) The sequel I. THE HAPPY MEETING. II. THE HEARTY . III. THE BANQUET. IV. THE COLD-HEARTED ENVY OF THE ELDER BROTHER. Lessons: 1. How generous and pure is the benevolence of the gospel. It is of God, and from Him, and resembles His tender and infinite love. 2. How hateful is an envious self-righteous spirit. It is the sprit of the evil one, and therefore from beneath. 3. Happy they who have repented of sin, and who have been received into the Saviour’ s family of love. (J. Burns, D. D.) The prodigal son I. THE ’ S . He disliked all parental restraint. He broke the principle involved in the “ first commandment with promise.” In his father’ s house vice was out of place. He made the world his servant, little thinking how soon he should be under its most cruel tyranny. He was sadly deceived. We must never forget that all wasting of our gifts is a sin. Man is made for a noble purpose; his duties touch eternity, and are given for use in time. Shall we, for even a moment, dare assume that it is no concern of ours how we employ our powers? II. THE ’ S DESPAIR. His situation is portrayed by the one graphic description of Christ: “ There arose a mighty famine in that land.” We are pointed to the darkest word in human history, precursor of the pestilence and death. It tells of the stony bed where the brook once ran. It tells of the fruitless trees, with branches prematurely stripped of their foliage.” It tells of the grass of summer all burned away. His property was all wasted, and despair was settling down upon his soul. His life was a failure in such a land; his “ riotous living” was beginning its curse. No want of the human heart, good or bad, is ever satisfied here. Even the disciple’ s anticipation is of a time when he shall awake in Christ’ s likeness. Just so, the nobler desires turned earthward are more insatiate still. Epicure was never satisfied. The sustenance of vicious desires only awakens new ones. The drunkard drinks deeper week by week, his thirst deepened with every draught of the mocking cup. The miser’ s lust burns fiercer as the gold in his chest becomes heavier. III. THE ’ S . We are told of an English soldier, wounded and faint, left by the retreating army to die. Helpless and motionless he lay, expecting his death, screened from the burning sun by an overhanging cliff. While his strength was ebbing fast there alighted just before his face a greedy, ravenous bird, waiting for the end to come. Thoughts of himself becoming the prey of that loathsome bird gave him a now energy, and he slowly arose and at last was saved. In almost a like helpless state the prodigal “ came to himself.” Two thoughts convinced him of his insane course--the abjectness of his misery, perishing with hunger; and the remembrance of the joys in the father’ s house. It was thus the dissolute John Newton became himself again. But for a like critical resolve John Bunyan would ever have remained the same worthless profligate as in his youth. A moral coward may face the cannon’ s mouth, but only a hero will turn from his sin. There is a splendour in such a moral conflict. Caesar’ s political fats depended upon his passing the Rubicon; and yet the same resolution is demanded in the ease of every sinner. IV. THE ’ S WELCOME. Words are powerless in declaring the richness of such a reception. The prodigal loved his father because his father had first loved him. Day after day the hired servants had asked in vain, When will his love grow less? But it never ceased. (D. O. Mears.) The prodigal son I. THE SPIRIT OF THE SON AT THE . His underlying aim is to look out for himself. He wanted his father’ s goods, but not his presence. This is the germ of sin--an independent, proud, unloving spirit toward God. II. THE . Not many days after he found that he could be independent, he started off on his journey. He who does not pray and obey God, rapidly withdraws from Him. God is not in his thoughts, and therefore he soon ceases to appreciate the character which God loves. The true generosity, which is love to men for their good, is lost. He loves men for what they are worth to please himself. Reverence is lost. The courage of gentleness is lost. Abhorrence of wickedness is lost. He sees wit in the rejection of Divine authority, courage in anger, manliness in vice. III. THE LIFE OF . He chose the company that fitted his spirit. He sought others for what he could get out of them; they sought him for what they could get out of him. He had plenty of company as long as he had substance to waste on them. What he spent on them was wasted. What they gave him was wasted. The whole traffic was utter loss on both sides. They had not only outward possessions, but a wealth of intellect, affection, beauty, genius. They wasted it all. This the seeker for self and not God always does. He uses his talents to cover up his real aims and passions. Art has been made the handmaid of Sin. Music is called in to adorn the hideous nakedness of vice. IV. THE . The famine began when he had used up all he had. When all is gone, Nature herself turns against the prodigal. The world is a desert to a sinner who has run through the gifts of God, and he is absolutely certain to run them through in a little while. Alas for him when his own treasures are squandered, and the famine smites the far country! His one friend he has east off to win the admiration of the friends he had chosen; and they have cast him off as soon as his goods are gone. V. THE NEW . No extreme of degradation could be greater than this to the mind of the Jew. He became the servant of a foreigner, whom the Jew despised. He tended swine, which were hateful to the Jew. He was hungry for the food which the swine fed on, and couldn’ t get it. Yet even this degradation was his own choice. VI. THE . “ He came to himself.” Awakening to his wretchedness, he remembers one friend. Oh, if God were not a friend, the prodigal would sink into despair and hell when he comes to himself. He sees now where he is, that he has brought himself into this poverty. Many call God cruel after they have wasted the abundance of gifts from him. They have received all they ask for, have made no acknowledgment, have wasted all, and then, finding themselves wretched, they say that God has done it. But not so this prodigal. He said, “ I have sinned.” VII. THE RESOLVE. He is awakened to a hope of pardon and gracious reception. But this does not hinder the full confession of his sin. He accepts the deepest humiliation. He seeks now not to maintain his pride, but to confess the truth. VIII. THE RETURN. He acted at once. Honest repentance always does. Resolves postponed are lies. Men befool themselves with them. He did not wait to cleanse himself and get a more becoming dress. He was not earning enough to keep himself alive, far less could he save enough to better his appearance. Besides, there was nothing in the far country which money could buy that would make him in the least degree presentable at home. The gay and costly attire which he wore when he was spending his living with harlots was as repulsive to his father as his rags. He was not to become better in order that he might go to his father, but he was to go to his father in order that he might be made better. Yet he went back, not to claim anything. His father had given him once all he had asked for, and he had taken it as if it had belonged to him, had wasted it, and ruined himself by it. He went back to make confession. IX. THE MEETING. He was yet a great way off when the father saw him. Love is quicker than youth, loftier than pride, mightier than Satan. The love of God is compassion. It suffers with the penitent. It would even spare the recital of the sad history. (A. E. Dunning.) The prodigal son Six touching scenes. I. A SINFUL LIFE. 1. A young man chafing under the restraints of home. This chafing arose-- (1)From a false view of true liberty. (2) From a false view of true happiness. (3) From a false view of self-guidance. 2. A young man demanding his portion of the inheritance. This demand arose-- (1) From a desire to be independent of his father. (2) From a desire to lay out his life and means according to his own plan. 3. The young man receiving “ the portion which befell him.” (1) The father recognized his son’ s free agency. (2) The father saw that his son’ s heart was already estranged from him. (3) The father felt that the bitter experiences of life alone, if anything, would undeceive his self-deluded and wilful son. II. THE FROM HOME. 1. The departure was not long delayed. 2. The young man took all he could claim. III. HIS MODE OF LIFE WHEN ONCE FROM THE OF HOME. 1. His life riotous. 2. His substance wasted. IV. THE RESULT OF HIS SELF-ELECTED LIFE. 1. Famine. 2. Want. 3. Degrading service. 4. Hunger. V. THE . 1. Situation realized. 2. Reflection commenced. 3. Decision resolved on. 4. A plea constructed. 5. Decision executed. VI. THE FATHER’ S LOVE. 1. Love’ s long range of vision. 2. Love’ s tenderness. 3. Love’ s generosity. 4. Love’ s joy. Lessons: 1. The infinite contrast--man’ s selfishness and God’ s love. 2. The infinite folly--man breaking away from God. 3. The infinite grace--God embracing, forgiving, and honouring the returning prodigal. (D. G. Hughes, M. A.) The prodigal son I. THE ’ S SIN. 1. Discontent. 2. Departure. 3. Wilful waste. II. HIS . 1. Extreme poverty. 2. Deep degradation. 3. Woful want. III. HIS . 1. Awakening. 2. Penitence. 3. Resolution. IV. HIS . 1. Return. 2. Confession. 3. Welcome. Applications: 1. Too many imitate the prodigal in his sin, but not in his repentance. 2. The Father is ever ready to meet and receive, with a kiss of affection, the returning prodigal. 3. God is exalted to have mercy. There is grace for the chief of sinners. Whosoever will, may return. Come home, prodigal! (L. O. Thompson.) The prodigal I. WILFUL. II. . III. . IV. WANTING. V. . VI. WALKING HOME AGAIN. VII. WELCOME. (J. Sanderson, D. D.) The prodigal’ s wandering, return, and reception I. A SINNER’ S AND FROM GOD. 1. A sinful state is a state of departure from God. 2. An extravagant or spendthrift. 3. A wretched or destitute state. 4. A servile and slavish state. 5. A state of perpetual dissatisfaction. 6. A state of deadness or death. II. THE SINNER’ S RETURN TO GOD, AND THE MANNER THEREOF. The first demonstration of his return is-- 1. Consideration of his father’ s kindness. 2. By comparison, he saw his misery. 3. The view he got of the superiority of his father’ s house. 4. Determination. 5. Confession. 6. Self-condemnation. 7. Humble submission. 8. Filial confidence. 9. His obedience. III. THE SINNER’ S . 1. The father’ s affection to his returning child. 2. Eyes of mercy: he saw him as from a mountain. 3. Bowels of mercy: he feels compassion. 4. Feet of mercy: “ he ran,” while his son “ came” only. 5. Arms of mercy: “ he fell on his neck.” 6. Lips of mercy: “ he kissed him.” The provision presented. 1. He came in rags. “ He put the best robe upon him, a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet” (see also Isaiah 61:10). 2. He came hungry. “ Bring hither the fatted calf, and kill it; and let us eat, and be merry” (see also John 6:54). 3. Great joy. “ Let us be merry” (see Luke 15:10); “ Let them also that love thy name, be joyful in Thee (Psalms 5:11). 4. The conduct of the elder brother (25-30) serves as a reproof to the Pharisees, who were displeased at the conversion of the Gentiles. (T.B. Baker.) Parable of the prodigal son I. Sinners regard God no farther than to gain from Him whatever they can. II. Sinners waste the blessings which they receive from His hands, and reduce themselves to absolute want. III. Afflictions are very often the first means of bringing them to a sense of their condition. IV. When they first acquire this sense they usually betake themselves to false measures for relief. V. This situation of a sinner is eminently unhappy. VI. The repentance of the gospel is the resumption of a right mind. Among the things which the sinner realizes, when he first comes to himself, are the following. 1. His own miserable condition. 2. That in the house of his heavenly Father there is an abundance of good. 3. A hope that this good may be his. I shall now proceed in the consideration of the progress of a sinner towards his final acceptance with God as it is exhibited in the text. With this design, I observe-- I. True repentance is a voluntary exercise of the mind. II. True repentance is a filial temper, disposing us to regard God as our parent, and ourselves as His children. III. True repentance is followed, of course, by a confession of sin. IV. A real penitent feels that all his sins are committed against God. V. A real penitent is, of course, humble. VI. A real penitent brings nothing to God, but his want, shame, and sorrow. VII. A true penitent executes his resolutions of obedience. VIII. God is entirely disposed to receive the sincere penitent. IX. The richest provision is made for the enjoyment of the sincere penitent. X. There is a peculiar joy in heaven over the repentance of returning sinners. (T. Dwight, D. D.) Bitterness of prodigal sin I. THE ’ S SIN. Dissatisfaction. Alienation. Estrangement. II. THE ’ S MISERY. Sooner or later every sinner must be taught that to be estranged from God is to be estranged from happiness. III. THE ’ S AND RETURN. 1. Sanity returns. 2. Comparison of the present with the past. 3. Resolution to return. His condition has conquered his pride. 4. Confession. 5. Action. IV. THE ’ S . 1. The Father’ s advance. 2. Acknowledgment of sin and unworthiness. 3. Honour and dignity. 4. Festivity and rejoicing. (J. H. Thomson, M. A.) Sin and its consequences I. THE ’ S SIN. 1. Alienation of affection. There was the root of his rebellion. His heart had wandered from its early tenderness, and had become warped, by yielding to a sinful lust of freedom, from its filial love. From this alienated heart, in natural sequence, flowed his after disobedience and sin. With the heart thus alienated, you can the more readily explain the prodigal’ s impatience of restraint, hankering after present licence of enjoyment, and departure from the house of his father. All these followed as the natural consequences of estranged affection. A yoke that is felt must always be galling; an enforced servitude stirs up within the man all latent feelings of rebellion. Hence, when the principle of filial love was gone, the restraint of the home became irksome, the desire for independence grew into a passion, and then followed the project of the journey into a far country, and of the uncontrolled rioting in the portion of goods. II. THE OF SIN. It were to defeat our own purpose to affirm that there are no pleasures in sin. The world would never continue in its ways if it reaped no gratification. There is, doubtless, something congenial to the wayward heart in the objects of its fond pursuit, and there is often thrown a blinding charm about the man, beneath whose spell unholy he fancies every Hecate a Ganymede, and dallies with deformity which he mistakes for beauty; but our point is this, that in every course of transgression, in every departure of the human spirit from God, there is debasement in the process, and there is ruin in the inevitable end. 1. Homelessness. 2. Waste and degradation. 3. Abandonment and famine. (W. M. Punshon, LL. D.) The prodigal son 1. The fact that we are sinners is no reason why we should stay away from our God. 2. We do not require to work some good thing in us before God can love us. The sinner may come to God just as he is, through Jesus Christ. The parable firsts represents man in his departure from God. The son was at home, surrounded with all the comforts of home, and secure in the affection of his father; but he became dissatisfied, and wished to depart and be independent. How like to man’ s conduct towards his God I There have been vast efforts of learning and of metaphysical skill put forth to account for the origin of evil, but we will find nowhere a better explanation than that furnished by God Himself: “ God made man upright, but he hath sought out many inventions.” When the prodigal had apostatized in heart from his father, he then went and demanded his portion of goods. He is going to set up for himself, and demands his rights. As has been observed, his demand sounds as if he had been consulting his lawyer, and was particularly anxious to put his claim into strictly legal phraseology. The father made no opposition, but let him have his portion of goods. He saw that his heart was gone, and why should he retain his body? God has given to us a portion of goods. It is those things which men possess in common, irrespective of their character. When, however, man takes these gifts and seeks to employ them independent of God, and even against God, he plunges into fearful guilt and misery. What is meant by the prodigal son going into a far country? It is doubtless intended to represent the spiritual distance of the soul from God while in a state of unbelief. Our consciousness of sin makes us dread to think of God, and that dread ripens into absolute enmity--“ The carnal mind is enmity against God.” When in this state of mind men put all thought of God as far away from them as they can. As you have seen a man bow a disagreeable visitor out of his house, so men put God far from them, saying, “ Depart from us, we desire not a knowledge of Thy ways.” Oh! into what a far country has the sinner wandered when he has reached this state! And the longer he continues in it the wider becomes the distance between him and God, till at last he drifts into the dark sea of eternal death. When the prodigal got into the far country we are told that he began to be in want. This was a sad termination to his high prospects of enjoyment. Doubtless he thought that if he could only be once independent, and get away from all parental control, his wants would all be supplied. But now his trouble is only beginning. Lie has reached the far-off land of hope and promise, where all his desires were to be gratified, but he finds instead that there is a “ mighty famine in that land.” Thus end all men’ s attempts to be happy away from God. And the sooner we become convinced of this the better, that we may no longer fill our souls with disappointment and grief, by seeking happiness where it cannot possibly be found; for except those who have found peace in Christ, the whole race in the scramble after the world may be classed under two heads--those who have been disappointed with the world, and those who are going to be. In this state of famine and distress the prodigal “ joined himself to a citizen of the country.” We would have supposed that his sufferings, his bitter disappointments, his pinching wants, would have sent him home at once. But no--man’ s last resource is to go to God. When he fails in one worldly project, he turns to another; and as each new plan fails to give him the satisfaction he expected, he concludes that the reason is that he has not yet got enough of the world, and so with new vigour he takes a fresh start. Man thinks that his happiness is to be found without, when it is only to be found within. There can no more be happiness in a foul heart, than there can be ease and comfort in a diseased body. This last change of the prodigal, accordingly, did not mend his condition at all; on the contrary, it sank him into a deeper degradation. This entry is longer than a Bible module can hold. The rest is at https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/bi/ Luke 16:1-8 There was a certain rich man, which had a steward Christ’ s servants are stewards I. SHOW WHAT THINGS THEY ARE WITH, THAT ARE NOT THEIR OWN. 1. All earthly good things, as riches, health, time, opportunities. 2. Also spiritual goods, viz., the gospel and its ministration, spiritual knowledge, gifts, grace, the worship of God, and His ordinances, promises, providences, and care of His holy temple or vineyard. II. SHOW WHY WE MUST IMPROVE ALL THINGS THAT ARE IN OUR HANDS. 1. Earthly things. (1) Because, whatsoever we have put into our hands is to advance the honour of our great Lord and Master, Jesus Christ, and to refresh, comfort, and support the whole household where we are placed. (2) Because we have nothing that is our own; it is our Lord’ s goods. (3) Because if we are not faithful in the least, it may stop the hand of Christ from giving the greater things to us. (4) It will be otherwise a wrong and great injustice to the poor, or to such for the sake of whom they that are rich are entrusted with earthly wealth, in withholding that which is theirs by Christ’ s appointment from them; and so a clear demonstration of unfaithfulness both to God and man; and it may provoke God to take away from them what they have. (5) Because we must in a short time be called to give an account of our stewardship; we must expect to hear Christ say, “ What have you done with My gold and silver, My corn, My wool, and My flax? How is it that My poor have wanted bread and clothes, and My ministers have been neglected and forced to run into debt to buy necessaries to support their families?” (6) Because if these good things be not rightly and faith fully improved as Christ commands, His poor and His ministers may be exposed to great temptations, and their souls borne down and sorely discouraged; and Satan may get advantages against them, for many snares and dangers attend outward want; moreover the name of God and religion may also thereby be exposed to the contempt of the world. Who can believe we are the people of God, when they cannot see that love to one another among them which is the character of true Christians? Or how should they think that we believe the way we are in is the true way and worship of God? 2. Spiritual things. (1) The gospel and its ministration, because it is given to the end that we may profit thereby. It is Christ’ s chief treasure, and that which He intrusts very few with. If not improved, He may take it away from us, as He has already from others. When that goes, God, Christ, and all good goes, and all evil will come in. (2) Spiritual gifts, knowledge, etc., because given for the use and profit of the Church; and they that have them are but stewards of them, which they are commanded to improve (1 Peter 4:10). Use: Get your accounts ready; you know not but this night Christ may say, “ Give an account,” etc. (B. Keach.) All men are stewards of God A friend stepping into the office of a Christian business man one day, noticed that he was standing at his desk with hit, hands full of banknotes, which he was carefully counting, as he laid them down one by one. After a brief silence the friend said: “ Mr. H----, just count out ten pounds from that pile of notes and make yourself or some other person a life member of the Christian Giving Society!” He finished his count, and quickly replied, “ I’ m handling trust funds now!” His answer instantly flashed a light on the entire work and life of a Christian, and the friend replied to his statement with the question, “ Do you ever handle anything but trust funds?” If Christians would only realize that all that God gives us is “ in trust,” what a change would come over our use of money! “ I’ m handling trust funds now.” Let the merchant write the motto over his desk; the farmer over the income of his farm; the labourer over his wages; the professional man over his salary; the banker over his income; the housekeeper over her house expense purse; the boy and girl over “ pocket money” --and what a change would be made in our life. A business man who had made a donation of one thousand pounds to a Christian enterprise, once said in the hearing of the writer--“ I hold that a man is accountable for every sixpence he gets.” There is the gospel idea of “ trust funds.” Let parents instruct and train their children to “ handle trust funds” as the stewards of God’ s bounty, and there will be a new generation of Christians. The proper improvement of temporal possessions I. That the common maxims of human wisdom in the conduct of worldly affairs, and even those of carnal and unjust policy, may be usefully applied for our direction in the concerns of religion, and they reproach the folly and slothfulness of Christians in working out their salvation; the children of this world are wiser in their generation than the children of light.” II. The second observation is, that riches and other gifts of providence are but little in comparison with the greater and more substantial blessings which God is ready to bestow on His sincere and faithful servants; that these inferior things are committed to Christians as to stewards for the trial of their fidelity, and they who improve them carefully to the proper ends for which they were given, are entitled to the greater benefits which others forfeit, and render themselves unworthy of, by negligence and unfaithfulness. This is the meaning of the 10th and 11th verses--“ He who is faithful in that which is least, is faithful also in much; and he who is unjust in the least, is unjust also in much; if, therefore, you have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will commit to your trust the true richest” We may further observe upon this head, that God hath wisely ordered the circumstances of this life in subordination to another. The enjoyments of our present state are the means of trying our virtue, and the occasions of exercising it, that so by a due improvement of them to that purpose, we may be prepared for the perfection of virtue, and complete happiness hereafter. This might be illustrated in a variety of particular instances--indeed, in the whole compass of our worldly affairs, which, according as they are conducted, either minister to virtue or vice. By the various uncertain events of life, as some are tempted to different distracting passions, to eager, anxious desire, to fear and sorrow, so there is to better disposed minds an opportunity of growing in self dominion, in an equal and uniform temper, and a more earnest prevalent desire of true goodness, which is immutable in all external changes; in afflictions there is a trial and an increase of patience, which is of so much moment as to be represented in Scripture as the height of religious perfection. Knowledge, likewise, is capable of being greatly improved for the service of mankind; and all our talents of this sort, which are distributed promiscuously to men, though little in themselves, and with respect to the main ends of our being, yet to the diligent and faithful servant, who useth them well and wisely for the cause of virtue, and under the direction of its principles, they bring great returns of real and solid benefit, which shall abide with him for ever. Thus it appeareth that Divine Providence hath wisely ordered the circumstances of our condition in this world, in our infancy of being, so that by the proper exercise of our own faculties, and the industrious improvement of the opportunities which are afforded us, we may be prepared for a better and happier state hereafter. But if, on the contrary, we are unjust to our great Master, and to ourselves, that is, to our highest interest, in the little, which is now committed to us, we thereby forfeit the greatest good we are capable of, and deprive ourselves of the true riches. If in the first trial which God taketh of us, as moral agents during our immature state, our state of childhood, we do not act a proper part, but are given up to indolence and sloth, and to a prodigal waste of our talents, the consequences of this folly and wickedness will naturally, and by the just judgment of God, cleave to us in every stage of our existence; of which there is a familiar instance every day before us in those unhappy persons who having from early youth obstinately resisted the best instructions, for the most part continue unreclaimed through their whole lives, and bring themselves to a miserable end. Let us, therefore, always consider ourselves as now under probation and discipline, and that eternal consequences of the greatest moment depend upon our present conduct. III. The third observation is, THAT THE THINGS OF THIS WORLD TO OUR TRUST ARE NOT OUR OWN, BUT THE OF ANOTHER; BUT THE GIFTS OF GOD, GRANTED AS THE REWARD OF OUR THEM , HAVE A NEARER AND MORE TO , AND A STRICT WITH OUR . “ And if you have not been faithful in that which is another’ s, who will give you that which is your own?” (Luke 16:12.) The things which are said to be another’ s, are, the unrighteous mammon, and others like it; God is the sovereign proprietor of them; they are foreign to the constitution of the human nature, and their usefulness to it is only accidental and temporary. But the other goods, virtuous integrity and the favour of God, enter deeper into the soul, and by its essential frame are a never-failing spring of joy and consolation to it in every state of existence. It is very surprising that a man, who so much loveth and is devoted to himself, being naturally and necessarily so determined, should be so ignorant, as many are, what that self really is, and thereby be misled to place his affections on something else instead of it. By the least attention every man will see that what is meant by himself is the same person or intelligent agent, the thinking, conscious “ I,” which remaineth unaltered in all changes of condition, from the remembrance of his earliest thoughts and actions to the present moment. How remote from this are riches, power, honour, health, strength, the matter ingredient in the composition of the body, and even its limbs, which may be all lost, and self still the same? These things, therefore, are “ not our own,” meaning by that, what most properly and unalienably belongeth to ourselves; we hold them by an uncertain, precarious tenure, they come and go, while the same conscious, thinking being, which is strictly the man himself, continueth unchanged, in honour and dishonour, in riches and poverty, in sickness and health, and all the other differences of our outward state. But, on the contrary, state of religious virtue, which it is the intention of Christianity to bring us to, and which is the immediate effect of improving our talents diligently and faithfully, that “ kingdom of God which is righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost” ; this is of a quite different kind, it entereth into our very selves, and closely adhereth to us; it improveth our nature, refineth and enlargeth its noblest powers; it is so much “ our own,” as to become our very temper, and the ruling bent of our minds; there is nothing we are more directly conscious of in ourselves than good dispositions and good actions proceeding from them, and the consciousness is always accompanied with delight. The good man is therefore “ satisfied from himself,” because his satisfaction ariseth from a review of his goodness which is intimately his own. (J. Abernethy, M. A.) Stewardship I. THE OFFICE OF STEWARD. 1. A steward is a man who administers a property which is not his own. His relation to property is distinguished on the one hand from that of those who have nothing to do with the property, because the steward has everything to do with it that he can do for its advantage; and, on the other hand, from that of the owner of the property, because the steward is no sense the owner of it, but only the administrator. His duty towards it is dependent on the will of another, and it may terminate at any moment. 2. The office of a steward is before all things a trust. It represents in human affairs a venture which the owner of a property makes, upon the strength of his estimate of the character of the man to whom he delegates the care of the property. 3. An account must at some time be rendered to some one. (1) We are accountable to public opinion. (2) To our own conscience. (3) To God. If man has no account to give, no wrong that he does has the least consequence. If man has no account to give, no wrong that is done to him, and that is unpunished by human law, will ever be punished. If man has no account to give, life is a hideous chaos; it is a game of chance in which the horrible and the grotesque alternately; bury out of sight the very last vestiges of a moral order. If man has no account to give, the old Epicurean rule in all its profound degradation may have much to say for itself (1 Corinthians 15:32). II. HUMAN LIFE IS A . We are stewards, whether as men or as Christians; not less in the order of nature than in the order of grace. 1. Every owner of property is in God’ s sight a steward of that property, and, sooner or later, He will demand an account. Has it, however little, been spent conscientiously; or merely as the passion or freak of the moment might suggest? 2. Or, the estate of which we are stewards is a more interesting and precious one than this. It is situated in the world of the mind, in the region where none but knowledge and speculation and imagination and taste have their place and sway. Yet all this is not ours, but God’ s. He is the Author of the gifts which have laid out the weed of taste and thought and knowledge; and each contributor to that world, and each student, or even each loiterer in it, is only the steward, the trustee, of endowments, of faculties which, however intimately his own when we distinguish him from other men, are not his own when we look higher and place them in the light of the rights of God. “ Give an account of thy stewardship.” The real Author and Owner of the gifts of mind sometimes utters this summons to His stewards before the time of death. He withdraws the mental life of man, and leaves him still with the animal life intact and vigorous. Go to a lunatic asylum, that most pitiable assortment of all the possibilities of human degradation, and mark there, at least among some of the sufferers, those who abuse the stewardship of intelligence. 3. Or, the estate of which we are stewards is something higher still. It is the creed which we believe, the hopes which we cherish, the religion in which we find our happiness and peace as Christians. With this treasure, which He has withheld from others, God has entrusted us Christians, in whatever measure, for our own good, and also for the good of our fellow-men. Religion, too, is a loan, a trust; it is not an inalienable property. 4. And then, growing out of those three estates, is the estate of influence--that subtle, inevitable effect for good or for ill which man exerts uponthe lives of those around him. The question is, what use are we making of it; how is it telling upon friends, acquaintances, servants, correspondents, those who know us only from a distance--are we helping them upwards or downwards, to heaven or to hell? Surely a momentous question for all of us, since of this stewardship events may summon us before the end comes to give account. 5. And a last estate of which we are but stewards, is health and life. This bodily frame, so fearfully and wonderfully made, of such subtle and delicate texture that the wonder is that it should bear the wear and tear of time, and last as long as for many of us it does--of this we are not owners, we are only stewards. It is most assuredly no creation of our own, this body; and He who gave it us will in any case one day withdraw His gift. And yet how many a man thinks in his secret heart that if he owns nothing else, he does at least own, as its absolute master might own, the fabric of flesh and bones, nerves and veins, in which his animal life resides: that with this, at least, he may rightfully do what he will, even abuse and ruin and irretrievably degrade, and even kill; that here no question of another’ s right can possibly occur; that here he is master on his own ground, and not a steward. Oh, piteous forgetfulness in a man who believes that he has a Creator, and that that Creator has His rights! Oh, piteous ingratitude in a Christian, who should remember that he is not his own, but is bought with a price, and that therefore he should glorify God in his body no less than in his spirit, since both are God’ s! Oh, piteous illusion, the solemn moment for dissipating which is ever hurrying on apace! The Author of health and life has His own time for bidding us give an account of this solemn stewardship--often, too, when it is least expected. (Canon Liddon) Moral stewardship I. MEN ARE . 1. In regard to their talents. (1) Time. (2) Money. (3) Physical, mental, and moral abilities. 2. In regard to their privileges. Each privilege is a sacred talent, to be utilized for personal, spiritual end. Golden in character. Uncertain in continuance. 3. In regard to their opportunities. Men are responsible not only for what they do, but also for what they are capable of doing. II. MEN ARE ONLY. Whatever we have, we have received, hold in trust, and must account for to God. III. THE DAY IS COMING. 1. The day of reckoning is certain. 2. Uncertain as to the time. 3. Divine in its procedure. God Himself will make the final award. 4. Solemn in its character. 5. Eternal in its issues. Learn-- 1. That moral responsibility is a solemn thing. 2. It is imposed upon us without our own consent. 3. That we cannot avert the day of reckoning. 4. That upon the proper use of our talents shall we reap the reward of life and blessedness. 5. That unfaithfulness to our solemn responsibilities will entail eternal disgrace and everlasting reprobation. (J. Tesseyman.) The stewardship of life I. THE TRUST REPOSED IN US--“ Thy stewardship.” Stewardship is based upon the idea of another’ s proprietorship. 1. Of the Divine Proprietorship. 2. Stewardship implies interests entrusted to human keeping and administration. 3. Stewardship implies human capability. Faithfulness cannot be compelled by an omnipotent Ruler. It is a subject of moral choice. II. THE END OF OUR AS HERE --“ Give an account. Thou mayest be no longer steward.” Moral responsibility is the solemn heritage of all rational intelligences. 1. The stewardship may be held to be determinable at death. Moral power continues, and moral obligations and duties rest on the spirit. So, there will be stewardship in eternity. But here the concern is with “ the deeds done in the body.” 2. Stewardship may practically be determined before the last hour of mortal history. (The Preacher’s Monthly.) The unjust steward 1. We are stewards, not proprietors. 2. Let me urge upon you to be faithful in whatsoever position in life you may be. 3. It is only as you are in Christ, and Christ in you, that you will be able to realize your true position, and act with true faithfulness. (A. F. Barfield.) Christian prudence I. THE TO THIS. 1. Because we are dependent on God. 2. Because we are accountable to Him. II. ITS PROPER NATURE. 1. In general. (1) It is provident of the future. (2) It conceals not from itself the true state of matters. (3) It is inventive of means for its well-being. (4) It forms its purpose with greatest determination. (5) It discloses clearly who or what can be of service to it for the accomplishment of its purpose. (6) It does not content itself with purposes, but goes immediately to action. (7) It employs the time without delay. (8) It transacts everything with careful consideration. 2. In particular. (1) It employs temporal goods in well-doing. (2) It is mindful of death and the day of reckoning. (3) It has an eye to eternal bliss. III. THE OF IT. 1. It obtains the approval of the Lord and Judge of all. 2. It renders us capable and worthy of receiving greater, truer, abiding goods. (F. G. Lisco.) Lessons:-- 1. A regard to our own interest is a commendable principle. The great fault which men commit is, that they mistake the nature as well as the means of happiness. 2. There is another object which our Saviour has in view. It is to compare the sagacity and exertion which worldly men employ in order to attain their ends with the lukewarmness and negligence of the children of light. Do we not see with what ardour and perseverance those who place their happiness in wealth pursue their grand object? 3. We learn from parable, and the observations of our Saviour which accompany it, the manner in which riches may be applied for the advancement of happiness. 4. From this passage we may learn the benefit which good men may derive from observing the vices which prevail around them. This lesson our Saviour has taught us. By seeing vice, as it appears in the world, we may learn the nature and character, the effects and consequences of it. 5. But the principal object of this parable was evidently to teach us that the exercise of forethought is an important duty required of all Christians. Forethought, then, is necessary to reformation. It is not less necessary to improvement. For does not improvement presuppose that we seek or watch for opportunities of exercising our benevolent affections--of doing good and kind actions--and of supplying the importunate wants of the needy and the destitute? (J. Thomson, D. D.) The unjust steward an example in one respect If we were to wait for perfect men, men perfect in all parts and on all sides of their character, before admiring them or asking others to admire them, whom should we admire? what models or examples could we hold up before our children or our neighbours? Instead of turning so foolishly from the instruction human life offers us, we detach this quality or that from the character of men, and admire that, without for a moment meaning to set up all the man was or did as a complete model, an exact and full epitome of human excellence. We can call the attention of our children to the dexterity of a cricketer or a juggler without supposing, or being supposed, to make him the beau ideal of mental and moral character. We can admire Lord Bacon as one of “ the greatest” and “ wisest” of mankind, if we also admit him to have been one of “ the meanest.” We can quote an eminent sceptic as a very model of patience and candour, yet deplore his scepticism. Both we and the Bible can detach noble qualities from the baser matter with which they are blended, and say, “ Imitate these men in what was noble, pure, lovely,” without being supposed to add, “ and imitate them also in what was mean, weak, immoral.” Why, then, should we deny our Lord the liberty we claim for ourselves? What should we expect of Him but the mode of teaching which pervades the Bible throughout? Above all, why should we suppose Him to approve what is evil in the men He puts before us, unless He expressly warns us against it, when we ourselves, and the inspired writers, seldom make any such provision against misconception? Read the parable honestly, and, according to all the analogies of human and inspired speech, you will expect to find some excellent quality in the steward which you will do well to imitate; but you will not for an instant suppose that it is his evil qualities which you are to approve. Do any ask, “ What was this excellent quality?” Mark what it is, and what alone it is, that even his lord commends in the Unjust Steward. It is not his injustice, but his prudence. “ His lord commended him because he had done wisely” --because on a critical occasion he had acted with a certain promptitude and sagacity, because he had seen his end clearly and gone straight at it. Did he not deserve the praise? (S. Cox) Our stewardship I. IN THE PRESENT LIFE EVERY ONE OF US HAS THE AND PLACE OF A STEWARD. II. THE TIME OF OUR WILL HAVE AN END. 1. It will end certainly at death. 2. It may end suddenly. 3. Our stewardship, once ended, shall be renewed no more. When death comes, our negligences and mismanagement are fatal. III. ON OUR CEASING TO BE , AN ACCOUNT OF OUR WILL BE . 1. Who must give an account? I answer, every one that lives and is here a steward. 2. To whom? And this is to God; to God by Christ, to whom all judgment is com-mitred. 3. Of what will an account be demanded? The text says, of our stewardship, i.e., how we have acted in it while it lasted. 4. When will such aa account be demanded? The Scripture tells us-- (1) Immediately upon every one’ s going out of his stewardship. (2) Most solemnly at the last day. 5. what is conveyed in the expression, “ Give an account of thy stewardship” ? (1) That God will deal with every one in particular. (2) That notice is taken, and records kept of what every one now does, and this in order to a future judgment, when all is to be produced, and sentence publicly passed. (3) Every one’ s account called for to be given, shall be according to the talents wherewith he was entrusted. Application: 1. Is every one in the present life to be considered as a steward of all that he enjoys? How unreasonable is pride in those who have the largest share of their Lord’ s goods; as they have nothing but what they have received, and the more their talents, the greater the trust. 2. What cause of serious concern have all that live under the gospel, left, as stewards of the manifold grace of God, they should receive it in vain, and have their future condemnation aggravated by their present advantages, as neglected or abused? 3. Will the time of our stewardship have an end? What a value should we put upon it, as a season in which we are to act for eternity. 4. The believer has no reason to faint under the difficulties of his stewardship; seeing it will have an end, a most desirable one; and neither the services nor sufferings of the present time are worthy to be compared to the glory to be revealed. 5. When our stewardship ends, must an account be given up? It is hence evident, that the soul survives the body, and is capable of acting and of being dealt with in a way of wrath or mercy, according to the state in which it goes away; and hereupon-- 6. How great and important a thing is it to die; it being to go in spirit to appear before God, and give an account of all that we have done in the body, and to be dealt with accordingly? What is consequent upon it? (Daniel Wilcox.) Faithful stewardship In this parable the man was dispossessed from his place because he wasted goods which did not belong to him. He had been in various ways careless. The particular nature of his carelessness is not specified; but this is specified--that he was to be dispossessed because he was not faithful in the management of the property of another. Our subject, then, is: The use of funds not your own, but intrusted to your administration or keeping. Men think they have a complete case when they say, “ Here is a power in my hand for a definite end, and I shall use it for that end; but I find that it is a power which may accomplish more than that: it can do good for more than the owner. I can use it and derive benefit from it. I can also benefit the community by my operations. Besides, it will never be known. Therefore men who are weaker than I will not be tempted by my example to do the same thing. It will never injure the owner, it will help me, through me it will benefit many others, and no evil shall come from it.” This would seem to make the thing secure; but let us examine the matter. 1. It would not be honest, and therefore it would not be wise, to use other people’ s property for our own benefit, secretly, even if it were safe. If it did them no harm, if it did you good, and if nobody knew it, it would not be honest. You have no business to do it under any circumstances. And it does not make it any better that you have managerial care over property. In that event the sin is even greater; for you are bound to see to it that it is used for the purposes for which it was committed to your trust, and not for anything aside from that. 2. No man has a right to put property that is not his own to all the risks of commerce. What if a man thus employing trust funds does expect, what if he does mean, so and so? That is nothing. He might as well throw a babe out of a second-story window, and say that he hoped it would lodge in some tree and not be hurt, as to endanger the property of others held in trust by him, and say that he hopes it will not come to any harm. What has that to do with it? The chances are against its being safe. 3. No man has a right to put his own character for integrity and honesty upon a commercial venture. No man has a right to enter upon an enterprise where, if he succeeds, he may escape, but where, if he fails, he is ruined not simply in pocket, but in character; and yet this is what every man does who uses trust funds for his own purposes. He takes the risk of destroying himself in the eyes of honest men. He places his own soul in jeopardy. 4. No man has a right to put in peril the happiness, welfare, and good name of his family, of the neighbourhood, of the associates and friends with whom he has walked, of the Church with which he is connected, of his partners in business, of all that have been related to him. 5. No man has a right to undermine the security of property on which the welfare of individuals of the community depends in any degree. (H. W.Beecher.) The Sunday-school teacher--a steward I. First, then, THE STEWARD. WHAT IS HE? 1. In the first place the steward is a servant. He is one of the greatest of servants, but he is only a servant. No, we are nothing better than stewards, and we are to labour for our Master in heaven. 2. But still while the steward is a servant, he is an honourable one. Now, those who serve Christ in the office of teaching, are honourable men and women. 3. The steward is also a servant who has very great responsibility attached to his position. A sense of responsibility seems to a right man always a weighty thing. II. And now, THE ACCOUNT--“ Give an account of thy stewardship.” Let us briefly think of this giving an account of our stewardship. 1. Let us first notice that when we shall come to give an account of our stewardship before God, that account must be given in personally by every one of us. While we are here, we talk in the mass; but when we come before God, we shall have to speak as individuals. 2. And note again, that while this account must be personal it must be exact. You will not, when you present your account before God, present the gross total, but every separate item. 3. Now remember, once again, that the account must be complete. You will not be allowed to leave out something, you will not be allowed to add anything. III. And now, though there are many other things I might say, I fear lest I might weary you, therefore let me notice some occasions when it will be WELL for you all to give an account of your stewardship; and then notice when you MUST give an account of it. You know there is a proverb that “ short reckonings make long friends,” and a very true proverb it is. A man will always be at friendship with his conscience as long as he makes short reckonings with it. It was a good rule of the old Puritans, that of making frank and full confession of sin every night; not to leave a week’ s sin to be confessed on Saturday night, or Sabbath morning, but to recall the failures, imperfections, and mistakes of the day, in order that we might learn from one day of failure how to achieve the victory on the morrow. Then, there are times which Providence puts in your way, which will be excellent seasons for reckoning. For instance, every time a boy or girl leaves the school, there is an opportunity afforded you of thinking. Then there is a peculiar time for casting up accounts when a child dies. But if you do not do it then, I will tell you when you must; that is when you come to die. (C. H.Spurgeon.) A certain rich man had a steward We learn here incidentally, how evenly balanced are the various conditions of life in a community, and how little of substantial advantage wealth can confer on its possessor. As your property increases, your personal control over it diminishes; the more you possess, the more you must entrust to others. Those who do their own work are not troubled with disobedient servants; those who look after their own affairs are not troubled with unfaithful overseers. (W. Arnot.) Give an account of thy stewardshipAn account demanded 1. An account of the blessings received, children of prosperity. 2. An account of the fruit of trial, members of the school of suffering! 3. An account of the time measured out to you, sons of mortality! 4. An account of the message of salvation received, ye that are shined upon by that light which is most cheering! (Van Oosterzee.) How much owest thou unto my Lord?--The obligations of Great Britain to the gospel I. Our first appeal must be made to rest upon the BROAD BASIS OF OUR AS A NATION. How much, I ask, do we of this land owe to the God of all mercies, as inheritors of the noble patrimony of a constitutional government; as dwelling under the shadow of equal law; as enriched with a commerce which allies us with the most distant extremities of the earth; as honoured, in the great brotherhood of nations, for our literature, for our science, for our vanguard position in all the ennobling arts of life; as rich in agencies for promoting the physical and moral happiness of all classes of our people, providing for the young, the old, the fallen, the outcast--for the poor a shelter, and for the sick a home; as enjoying a liberty of thought and conscience, free as the winds which sweep round our shores, and yet as having a governing power over the opinions of other nations, which controls more than half the world? For how much of such blessings we are indebted to our Christianity, we may admit, it is not easy to determine. Here, then, I rest my first appeal to your gratitude as possessors of a national Christianity. Religion, says Burke, is the basis of civil society, and education in its truths is the chief defence of nations. It hallows the sanctions of law. It puts the seal of heaven on social order. It ministers to learning and the liberal arts. It strengthens the foundations of civil liberty. It refines the habits of domestic life. It makes each home that embraces it a centre of blessing to the neighbourhood, and every country that adorns and honours it a centre of light unto the world. And this is the religion which by the gospel is preached unto you. “ How much owest thou unto my Lord?” II. But let me urge a claim upon your gratitude, in the next place, ARISING OUT OF THAT PURE AND FAITH, WHICH IN THIS COUNTRY IT IS OUR TO ENJOY. “ How much owest thou unto thy lord,” for the glorious light and liberty of the Protestant faith, for the recovered independence of our ancient British Church, for the Protestantism of Ridley, and Latimer, Jewel, and other faithful men, who witnessed for the truth of God by their teaching, and some of them with their blood? 1. How much do we owe for a permanent standard of religious faith--for a “ form of sound words” which yet bows implicitly to the decision of the sacred oracles to approve its soundness? 2. Again, how much do we owe for the clearer views--brought out anew as it were from the concealment and dust of ages--of the method of a sinner’ s acceptance and justification, through faith in the merits of Christ to deliver, and by the influences of His Spirit to restore. 3. Again, we owe much to the men of those times for their vindication of the great principles of political and religious freedom, and the services thereby rendered to the cause of moral progress in the world. III. I must not conclude, brethren, without urging upon you one form of gratitude, which, to those who have experience of it, will be far more constraining than any! have yet brought before you, I mean THE DEBT WHICH YOU OWE TO THE GOD OF ALL GRACE AS BEING OF THE SPIRIT AND HOPES OF THE GOSPEL. And I ask how much owest thou for a part in Christ, for a sense of forgiveness, for the weight lifted off the burdened conscience. (D. Moore, M. A.) The universality of debt to God I. I turn at first TO THE and ask, How much owest thou unto my Lord? II. Is any here A LOVER OF MORE THAN A LOVER OF GOD? How much owest thou unto my Lord? “ He was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.” O will ye defraud Jesus of the travail of His soul, by making an idol of the world and bowing down before it as before your God? III. Are any among you offending God, BY OF HIS LAWS, OR OF HIS GREAT . IV. There are persons who have IN . “ Ye did run well, who hath hindered you?” O take with you words of penitence and sorrow, and turn to the Lord your God. V. Once more. LET ME ADDRESS THE SERVANT OF CHRIST, and say, How much owest thou unto my Lord? (R. P. Buddicom.) Man’ s debt to his Maker I. I might remind you, in the first place, of our obligations to God, AS OF HIS HAND. He not only made us, but He preserves us; “ in Him we live, and move, and have our being.” Are there no obligations that we have incurred, in consequence of our constant reception of these varied mercies at the hands of God? II. But I proceed to take another view of our subject, and to remind you HOW WE ARE TO GOD AS SINNERS AGAINST HIS LAW. You will remember that the blessed Saviour teaches us to look upon sins in the light of debts. Surely there is none present who would have the hardihood to say that he owes nothing (Jeremiah 2:22-23). III. Let me remind you next, of DUTIES THAT HAVE BEEN . Alas I how long a list might here be made, in the catalogue of unworthiness, ingratitude, and guilt! To say nothing of our unprofitableness, under the public ordinances and means of grace, what says conscience as to our daily communion with God in privacy and retirement? IV. I must remind you, further, of THAT HAVE BEEN . We have, first, the opportunities of gaining good, and then the opportunities of doing good. V. But there is yet another view of our subject. How much do we owe unto Him, as those who have hopes of pardon through His mercy in Christ Jesus? (W. Cadman, M. A.) Owing to God A merchant, who was a God-fearing man, was very successful in business, but his soul did not seem to prosper accordingly; his offerings to the Lord he did not feel disposed to increase. One evening he had a remarkable dream; a visitor entered the apartment, and quietly looking round at the many elegancies and luxuries by which he was surrounded, without any comment, presented him with the receipts for his subscriptions to various societies, and urged their claims upon his enlarged sympathy. The merchant replied with various excuses, and at last grew impatient at the continued appeals. The stranger rose, and fixing his eye on his companion, said, in a voice that thrilled to his soul, “ One year ago tonight, you thought that your daughter lay dying; you could not rest for agony. Upon whom did you call that night?” The merchant started and looked up; there seemed a change to have passed over the whole form of his visitor, whose eye was fixed upon him with a calm, penetrating look, as he continued--“ Five years ago, when you lay at the brink of the grave, and-thought that if you died then, you would leave a family unprovided for--do you remember how you prayed then? Who saved you then?” Pausinga moment, he went on in a lower and still more impressive tone--“ Do you remember, fifteen years since, that time when you felt yourself so lost, so helpless, so hopeless; when you spent day and night in prayer; when you thought you would give the world for one hour’ s assurance that your sins were forgiven--who listened to you then?” “ It was my God and Saviour!” said the merchant, with a sudden burst of remorseful feeling; “ oh yes, it was He!” “ And has He ever complained of being called on too often? “ inquired the stranger, in a voice of reproachful sweetness. “ Say--are you willing to begin this night, and ask no more of Him, if He, from this time, will ask no more of you?” “ Oh, never! never!” said the merchant, throwing himself at his feet. The figure vanished, and he awoke; his whole soul stirred within him. “ O God and Saviour I what have I been doing! Take all--take everything I What is all that I have, to what Thou hast done for me? “ Luke 16:8 And the Lord commended the unjust stewardThe unjust steward teaching a lesson prudence I. HOW MIXED UP WITH EACH OTHER ARE VIRTUES AND VICES, GOOD AND EVIL, IN THIS HUMAN WORLD. In fact, no bad man is without some redeeming quality; and no good man (who is merely man) is without some taint or defect that mars the harmony and soils the whiteness of character. In the best men there is something to regret; in the worst there is something to admire and to imitate. What, e.g., can possibly be worse than the general conduct of this steward? Here he is treated with generous confidence by his employer, and he is guilty first of a carelessness in dealing with his master’ s property, which amounts to a breach of trust, and next of a deliberate effort to gain credit for personal generosity, and to make provision for his own future by falsifying the bonds in his keeping, which represent debts due to his employer. The man’ s moral nature, we say, must have utterly broken down, before such conduct could have been possible; and yet our Lord discerns an excellence glittering amidst this moral darkness. He puts forth His hand, and He isolates from the corruption which surrounds it in the steward’ s character, and He lifts up on high, that it may be admired and copied in Christendom to the very end of time one single virtue--the virtue of prudence. II. THE HIGH VALUE OF ; its need and function in relation to the life and future of the soul. Prudence is in man what providence is in Almighty Cod. Its great characteristic is, that it keeps its eye upon what is coming; it looks forward to the future that really awaits us. What is that future? Nothing, most assuredly, nothing that lies within the compass of the few years, if indeed, there are to be a few years, that will precede our disappearance from this visible scene, but the existence beyond, of whatever character it be, to which, so far as we know, there is neither term nor limit. We know what to think of the men who trifle with baubles when great earthly interests are trembling in the balance, in those solemn moments which come and pass, and come not again, the moments on which all depends. Who can forget Carlyle’ s description of the unhappy Louis XVI., when, in his endeavour to escape from the triumphant revolution, he was brought to a standstill by the suspicious officiousness of some of the petty local authorities of Varennes? A little nerve would have enabled the king to escape the barrier that his enemies had thrown across the public road, by making a slight circuit in his carriage through the adjoining fields, and in twenty minutes or half an hour he would have been safe among his friends; and the course of his own life and all European history might have been very different, to say the least, from the event. But he hesitated, and hesitation was ruin. He hesitated, and as they showed him into the parlour of the village inn he discussed, with the good-humoured courtesy that belonged to him, the precise quality of the burgundy that was placed upon the table. But meanwhile events outside were shaping themselves irrevocably into the fatal grooves of that long procession of humiliation and suffering which ended with the guillotine. This life, for many of us, is the halt at Varennes. It is incumbent on us first of all to feel how immense are the issues that depend on the use we make of its fleeting moments. We must bear in mind that its opportunities are as brief as the consequences that depend on them are incalculable. This power of anticipating the reality, the reality as distinct from the appearance, is the first ingredient of religious prudence. We, too, have the sentence of dismissal hanging over us; but do we understand what it means, as did the unjust steward in the parable? For the second business of prudence is to take measures to prepare for that which is coming on us, and to lose no time in doing so. We must not let things drift, and trust for a good issue to some imaginary chapter of accident; we must make friends, as did the steward, who will receive us in this new future into their houses. And who are those friends? Clearly the friends suggested by the parable are the poor. The story of Fernandez de Cordova, who wrapped up in his robe the leper who was lying deserted by all men on the roadside, and who set him down on his bed to find indeed that he had passed away, but also to trace on his brow, on his hands, on his feet, the marks of His sacred passion, embodies why the poor can be said to be received into everlasting habitations. They are not alone, they are identified with One who has shared their sufferings without sharing their weakness; and who knows well how to reward that which is done to Himself in them. Yes, most assuredly, one Friend there is whose power to help us is without limit. He can help us through our passage to our new home, for He died that by His death He might destroy him that hath the power of death, and deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage. And He can provide for us when we get there, since among His parting words were these: “ In My Father’ s house,” etc. Are our relations with Him such as to warrant our claiming His help in the hour of need? (Canon Liddon.) Lessons from the children of this world 1. From their sagacity learn to forecast how to please God; to forearm ourselves against all assaults and wiles of Satan; to fore-think, and to be in some measure provided beforehand of needful and proper expedients for any exigent or cross accident that may probably befall us. 2. From their industry learn not to be slothful in doing service, not to slack the time of our repentance and turning to God; to run with constancy and courage the race that is set before us; to think no pains, no travel, too much, that may bring us to heaven; to work out our salvation to the uttermost with fear and trembling. 3. From their hypocrisy and outward seeming holiness learn to have our conversations honest towards them that are without, not giving the least scandal in anything that may bring reproach upon the gospel; to shun the very appearances of evil; and having first cleansed the reside well, to keep the outside handsome too, that by our piety, devotion, meekness, patience, obedience, justice, charity, humility, and all holy graces, we may not only stop up the mouth of the adversary from speaking evil of us, but may also win glory to God, and honour and reputation to our Christian profession thereby. 4. From their unity learn to follow the truth in love, to lay aside vain janglings, and opposition of science falsely so called; to make up the breaches that are in the Church of Christ, by moderating and reconciling differences, rather than to widen them by multiplying controversies, and maintaining hot disputes; to follow the things that make for peace, and whereby we may edify one another. This doing, we may gather grapes of thorns; make oil of scorpions; extract all the medicinal virtue out of the serpent, and yet leave all the poisonous and malignant quality behind. (Bishop Sanderson.) Ninth Sunday after Trinity; It was a piece of sheer rascality from beginning to end. There was no honesty in the man. He was out and out a child of this world--an example of the bad faith and base principles which govern in those who have no fear of God before their eyes. Though he did most unjustly, he yet did “ wisely.” There was a cunning, skill, calculation, farsightedness, and perfection of adjustment of means to his ends, worthy of all praise, if only it had been used in a better cause. And it is just here that we find the chief point in this parable. Separating the morality of the deed from the wit that directed it, the Saviour fixes upon the skill and prudence of this unjust man as an illustration of the foresight and calculation which should mark our conduct with reference to the necessities that are upon us in relation to eternity. There are three things specially noticeable in the case of this shrewd villain, in which his example furnishes copy for our imitation. 1. He considerately directed his thoughts towards the future. His worldliness and wickedness we are of course to eschew. But as he looked forward to his needs when his stewardship was ended, so are we to have respect to the solemn realities of the judgment and another life. 2. The unjust steward was also very diligent in improving his time, and making the most of his opportunities. If ever there was energy in him, it was now called into the fullest activity. Here was wisdom. Had he waited, postponed, delayed, the opportunity would have passed. O that miserable delusion. Time enough yet! How many has it utterly and irremediably ruined! 3. The unjust steward made very efficient use of very transient possessions. The control of his master’ s estates was in process of passing for ever from his hands. But he was wise enough to make them yet tell for his advantage in the beyond. And in allusion to this the Saviour says, “ Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness” ; that is, of the deceitful and fleeting riches of this world; “ that when ye fail they may receive you” --or, ye may be received--“ into everlasting habitations.” There is nothing so fleeting and uncertain as riches. But fleeting, deceptive, and uncertain as they are, so long as they are in our hands, they may be turned to good account, and made to tell advantageously upon our eternal peace. We cannot buy admission into heaven with money. But we can add to our blessedness with money, and attain to higher rewards in heaven by a right disposition of the possessions of this life. “ He that giveth to the poor, lendeth to the Lord” ; and the same shall be returned again with interest. “ The liberal soul shall be made fat.” Closehanded miserliness, and reckless waste and speculation, are as sinful and incompatible with piety, as profaneness and unbelief. (J. A. Seiss, D. D.) Worldlings an example to Christians I. THEY MORE CLEARLY THE OF EFFORT TO ENSURE SUCCESS. It was so with this unjust steward. Must do something. It is so with the politician, lawyer, business man. Instead of merely hoping, wishing, they put their shoulder to the wheel. II. THEY MORE CLEARLY THE NEED OF THOUGHT, , ON THE METHODS TO BE ADOPTED. III. THEY ARE MORE WILLING TO MAKE . IV. THEY MORE MAKE SELF-. Take stock. See whether they are advancing or going backward. (J. Ogle.) The wisdom of making provision for the future I. IT IS PART OF GREAT WISDOM TO PROVIDE FOR THE FUTURE. 1. This appears by the care and practice of all wise, rational men. 2. It appears by the care and labour of irrational or mere animal creatures. 3. It appears to be a point of great wisdom, because God Himself bewails the folly of His people of old upon this respect (Deuteronomy 32:29). 4. It must needs be great wisdom to provide for the future well-being of our souls, because all that were ever esteemed to be wise before or above all other things preferred this matter (Hebrews 11:25-26; 2 Corinthians 4:18). 5. Because there is no avoiding our entering into an endless state of joy or sorrow. 6. Because the soul far exceeds in worth the body and all things in this world. 7. Because God from eternity studied and provided for the future good of our souls and bodies for ever. 8. Consider how soon I or any may fail, how soon the youngest may like a flower fade away; it may be this year, this month, this week, nay, this night. 9. If you are not provided for your future state, consider how dismal at death your state will be. Is it not the highest wisdom to prevent or seek to escape the greatest evil, and be possessed of the greatest good? 10. Consider that God has found out a way to make us happy for ever; and observe what promises He has made to such as before all things seek the kingdom of heaven and His righteousness. 11. How have many thousands bewailed their great folly in not providing for the time to come! II. WHAT FUTURE TIME IS IT SUCH WISDOM TO PROVIDE FOR? 1. Against that time when the means of grace may fail, or all provision for the future may utterly be cut off, or our understanding fail. 2. The hour of death. 3. The day of judgment. III. SHOW WHEREIN A WISE AND PRUDENT CARE TO PROVIDE FOR THE FUTURE . 1. We ought to think of our future state, into which we shall and must pass, when the soul shall be separated from the body. (1) Think of the certainty of a future state of joy or sorrow. (2) The nearness of it, 2. Consider the necessity of your knowing Christ, or of being united to Him by faith; for unless you truly believe in Jesus Christ, you cannot be prepared for the time to come. 3. This wisdom consists in a careful use of the means God affords, and has ordained, in order to faith, or a sinner’ s believing in Christ Jesus. (1) Prayer. (2) The hearing of the Word (Isaiah 42:23). Conclusion: 1. This reproves such as pursue the world as if they came into it for no other end but to eat and drink and heap a little white and yellow earth. 2. It reproves such as prefer the world above the Word, and the body above the soul. 3. It reproves such as put the evil day afar off, as if we spoke of things that will be long before they come. 4. It commends those who are heavenly, it shows the saints only are truly wise. (B. Keach.) Lessons that the Church may learn from the world Note some respects in which the world shames the Church. 1. There is the clearness of vision with which the worldly man perceives the object of his pursuit. 2. There is the unremitting effort with which, in relation to the attainment of this world’ s good, men pursue their object. Religion is not so real to most of us as markets and money are to merchants. 3. Think how careful men of the world are to use all their resources for the attainment of their end. No drones. No square men in round holes.. 4. Think how determinedly the children of this world refuse to be deterred from prosecuting their schemes by the temporary failure of their efforts. 5. Is it not true that even the children of light themselves prosecute their worldly affairs in far more vigorous fashion than their religious duties? Does not care sometimes wellnigh crowd prayer out of our lives? Are we not all too prone to count our own private business that which must be done, and God’ s work that which may be done? (J. R. Bailey.) An example of wisdom from the unjust steward I. THE WISDOM OF THIS WORLD. There are three classes of men. Those who believe that one thing is needful, and choose the better part, who believe in and live for eternity; these are not mentioned here: those who believe in the world, and live for it: and those who believe in eternity, and half live for the world. Forethought for self made the steward ask himself, “ What shall I do?” Here is the thoughtful, contriving, sagacious man of the world. In the affairs of this world, the man who does not provide for self, if he enter into competition with the world on the world’ s principles, soon finds himself thrust aside; he will be put out. It becomes necessary to jostle and struggle in the great crowd if he would thrive. With him it is not, first the kingdom of God; but first, what he shall eat, and what he shall drink, and wherewithal shall he be clothed. Note the kind of superiority in this character that is commended. There are certain qualities which really do elevate a man in the seals of being, lie who pursues a plan steadily is higher than he who lives by the hour. You cannot but respect such an one. The value of self-command and self-denial is exemplified in the cases of the diplomatist who masters his features while listening; the man of pleasure who is prudent in his pleasures; the man of the world who keeps his temper and guards his lips. How often, after speaking hastily the thought which was uppermost, and feeling the cheek burn, you have looked back in admiration on some one who held his tongue even though under great provocation to speak. II. In contrast with the wisdom of the children of this world, the Redeemer SHOWS THE OF THE OF LIGHT. Now the want of Christian wisdom consists in this, that our stewardship is drawing to a close, and no provision is made for an eternal future. We are all stewards. Every day, every age of life, every year, gives us superintendence over something which we have to use, and the use of which tells for good or evil on eternity. Childhood and manhood pass. The day passes: and, as its close draws near, the Master’ s voice is heard--“ Thou mayest be no longer steward.” And what are all these outward symbols but types and reminders of the darker, longer night that is at hand? One by one, we are turned out of all our homes. The summons comes. The man lies down on his bed for the last time; and then comes that awful moment, the putting down the extinguisher on the light, and the grand rush of darkness on the spirit. Let us now consider our Saviour’ s application of this parable. There are two expressions to be explained. 1. “ Mammon of unrighteousness.” Mammon is the name of a Syrian god, who presided over wealth. Mammon of unrighteousness means the god whom the unrighteous worship--wealth. It is not necessarily gold. Any wealth; wealth being weal or well-being. Time, talents, opportunity, and authority, all are wealth. Here the steward had influence. It is called the mammon of unrighteousness, because it is ordinarily used, not well, but ill. Power corrupts men. Riches harden more than misfortune. 2. “ Make to yourselves friends.” Wise arts, holy and unselfish deeds, secure friends. Wherever the steward went he found a friend. The acts of his beneficence were spread over the whole of his master’ s estate. Go where he would, he would receive a welcome. In this way our good actions become our friends. And if it be no dream which holy men have entertained, that on this regenerated earth the risen spirits shall live again in glorified bodies, then it were a thing of sublime anticipation, to know that every spot hallowed by the recollection of a deed done for Christ, contains a recollection which would be a friend. Just as the patriarchs erected an altar when they felt God to be near, till Palestine became dotted with these memorials, so would earth be marked by a good man’ s life with those holiest of all friends, the remembrance of ten thousand little nameless acts of piety and love. (F. W. Robertson, M. A.) The superiority of the worldly man’ s wisdom to the godly man’ s I. Our first object is TO THE FACT, THAT “ THE OF THIS WORLD ARE WISER IN THEIR THAN THE OF LIGHT.” We hold unreservedly, in both these respects, the wisdom of “ the children of this world” is a vast deal more conspicuous than the wisdom of “ the children of light.” You need only cast your eye over the busy group of the world’ s population, and you will observe for the most part a fixedness of purpose which is altogether admirable. If a man have turned his desires on the amassing of money, he will not be driven aside, even for a solitary moment, from the business of accumulation; it will be plain to all around him, that he is literally given up to the influence of one engrossing and domineering passion; and if pleasure and ambition do exert over him authority, they are but tributaries to the prominent desire, and in no sense the principal in the empire of his heart. The case is exactly the same with the man of ambition: he has fastened his wishes on some lofty point in the scale of human preferment, and it is not the syren voice of voluptuousness, and it is not the stern ruggedness of the upward path, by which he can be induced to turn away his eagle glance from the shadowy prize which floats above him. But if we turn from “ the children of this world” to “ the children of light,” we shall not find the fixedness and constancy of purpose which we see indicated in “ the children of the world.” But we go on to observe, in the second place, that wisdom is to be discovered in the choice and employment of means as well as in fixedness and constancy of purpose; and thus we think in this respect the comparison will go against “ the children of light.” You cannot fail to observe among the men of the world a singular shrewdness in finding out the methods most likely to effect their designs, and as singular a diligence in trying and adapting them. You will see nothing irrelevant, nothing which in all probability is likely to frustrate in place of forwarding, no risks run unless the chances of advantage do more than apparently counterbalance the chances of damage. You will not find them endangering their property by exposing it to sharpers, as a Christian does his piety by bringing it in contact with unrighteousness. You will not observe them so dull of apprehension, when there are opportunities of personal aggrandizement to be improved, as religious men appear when God affords them occasions to become better acquainted with Himself. You will not detect in them that indiscreetness in making associations with parties who are not likely to help them, which you see in believers running heedlessly into fellowship with unbelievers. The complaint of the prophet has lost nothing of its force in coming down through a succession of centuries; “ Men are wise to do evil, but to do good they have no knowledge.” And if in the choice of means, pre-eminence of wisdom must be denied to “ the children of light,” then in the employment of means we fear they still less can be held supreme. If you take “ the children of light” in the Church where they are professedly giving their whole soul to the service of God, and take “ the children of this world” on the exchange, when avowedly occupied with their temporal aggrandizement, on which side will yon find the most devoted attention to the business in hand? If you take “ the children of light,” when met by difficulties in their heavenward career, and “ the children of the world” when stopped in the path of human preferment, which will set themselves with the most out and out energy to overleap the impediments? If you take “ the children of light” when scoffers are around them jeering their piety, and “ the children of the world “ when sarcasms are being passed on covetousness or ambition, which will he most moved II. We come now to THE CAUSES TO WHICH THE UNDER REVIEW MAY BE TRACED. In the first place it would seem well-nigh impossible that the delights of the next world should exert as powerful and pervading an influence as the delights of the present world, which address themselves directly to our senses. “ The children of the world” have nothing to do but to follow the dictates of their senses; while we do almost say, that “ the children of light” begin by doing violence to their senses. And thus, while worldly men may bring mind and body, and life together to the pursuit of their end, godly men have the body as well as the mind from the outset to the termination of their career to combat with; and if it be lawful to bring forward these truths, by way of excuse they may clearly be adduced, as accounting for the fact that the ungodly exhibit greater constancy of purpose than the godly; or in other words, that “ the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light.” Again, the unrighteous have only to do with one world; whereas the righteous have necessarily to do with two worlds. If I make the amassing of wealth my end, I may give to it an undivided and an undistracted attention, I concern not myself with the things of eternity; and what then shall interfere with my pressing on in the pursuit of the things of time? It is widely different with “ the children of light.” There must be earthly matters just as well as heavenly matters which require their attention; they cannot detach themselves from commerce, or from labour, or from study, and care only for the soul as ii there were no body to provide for, just as the worldly care only for the body as if there were no soul to provide for; and though it may be perfectly true, according to some of our foregoing remarks, that the minor interests may be, and ought to be, made subservient to the major; it is equally true that the difficulty is almost incalculable of so using the present world as not to abuse it, and following the occupations of earth with the dispositions of heaven. (H. Melvill, B. D.) The children of this world wiser than the children of light The words are a comparison, in which we have-- 1. The persons compared, “ the children of this world,” and “ the children of light.” It is a very usual phrase among the Hebrews, when they would express anything to partake of such a nature or quality, to call it the son or child of such a thing. Thus good men are called “ the children of God,” and bad men “ the children of the devil” ; those who mind earthly things, and make the things of this world their greatest aim and design, are called “ the children of this world” ; and those who are better enlightened with the knowledge of their own immortality, and the belief of a future state after this life, are called “ the children of light.” 2. Here is the thing wherein they are compared, and that is, as to their wisdom and prudence. 3. The object of this prudence, which is not the same in both; as if the sense were that “ the children of this world are wiser than the children of light” as to the things of this world; but here are two several objects intended, about which the prudence of these two sorts of persons is respectively exercised, the concernments of this world and the other; and our Saviour’ s meaning is, “ that the children of this world are wiser in their generation,” that is, in their way; viz., as to the interests and concernments of this world, “ than the children of light “ are in theirs; viz., as to the interests and concernments of the other world. 4. Here is a decision of the matter, and which of them it is that excels in point of prudence, in their way; and our Saviour gives it to the “ children of this world” ; they “ are wiser in their generation than the children of light.” I. I SHALL TO CONFIRM AND THE TRUTH OF THIS, BY THE SEVERAL PARTS AND OF WISDOM. 1. They are usually more firmly fixed and resolved upon their end. Whatever they set up for their end, riches, or honours, or pleasures, they are fixed upon it, and steady in the prosecution of it. 2. “ The children of this world” are wiser in the choice of means in order to their end; and this is a great part of wisdom, for some means will bring about an end with less pains, and difficulty, and expense of time than others. 3. “ The children of this world” are commonly more diligent in the use of means for the obtaining of their end; they will sweat and toil, and take any pains, “ rise up early, and lie down late, and eat the bread of carefulness” ; their thoughts are continually running upon their business, and they catch at every opportunity of promoting it; they will pinch nature, and harass it; and rob themselves of their rest, and all the comfort of their lives, to raise their fortune and estate. 4. The men of the world are more invincibly constant and pertinacious in the pursuit of earthly things; they are not to be bribed or taken off by favour or fair words; not to be daunted by difficulties, or dashed out of countenance by the frowns and reproaches of men. 5. The men of the world will make all things stoop and submit to that which is their great end and design; their end rules them, and governs them, and gives laws to all their actions; they will make an advantage of everything, and if it will not serve their end one way or other, they will have nothing to do with it. II. GIVE SOME ACCOUNT OF THIS BY WHAT “ THE OF THIS WORLD” HAVE ABOVE “ THE OF LIGHT.” 1. The things of this world are present and sensible, and, because of their nearness to us, are apt to strike powerfully upon our senses, and to affect us mightily, to excite our desires after them, and to work strongly upon our hopes and fears: but the things of another world being remote from us, are lessened by their distance, and consequently are not apt to work so powerfully upon our minds. 2. The sensual delights and enjoyments of this world are better suited, and more agreeable to the corrupt and degenerate nature of men, than spiritual and heavenly things are to those that are regenerate. 3. The worldly man’ s faith and hope, and fear of present and sensible things, is commonly stronger than a good man’ s faith and hope, and fear of things future and eternal. Now faith, and hope, and fear, are the great principles which govern and bear sway in the actions and lives of men. 4. The men of the world have but one design, and are wholly intent upon it, and this is a great advantage. Application to one thing, especially in matters of practice, gains a man perfect experience in it, and experience furnisheth him with observations about it, and these make him wise and prudent in that thing. But good men, though they have a great affection for heaven and heavenly things, yet the business and necessities of this life do very much divert and take them off from the care of better things; they are divided between the concernments of this life and the other, and though there be but one thing necessary in comparison, yet the conveniences of this life are to be regarded; and though our souls be our main care, yet some consideration must be had-of our bodies, that they may be fit for the service of our souls; so that we cannot always and wholly apply ourselves to heavenly things, and mind them as the men of the world do the things of this world. 5. The men of the world have a greater compass and liberty in the pursuit of their worldly designs, than good men have in the prosecution of their interests. The “ children of light” are limited and confined to the use of lawful means for the compassing of their ends; but the men of the world are not so strait-laced; they are resolved upon the point, and will stick at no means to compass their end. Concluding remarks: 1. Notwithstanding the commendation which hath been given of the wisdom of this world, yet upon the whole matter it is not much to be valued and admired. It is, indeed, great in its way and kind; but it is applied to little and low purposes, employed about the concernments of a short time and a few days, about the worst and meanest part of ourselves, and accompanied with the neglect of greater and better things. This ii wisdom, to regard our main interest; but if we be wrong in our end (as all worldly men are), the faster and farther we go, the more fatal is our error and mistake. “ The children of this world” are out in their end, and mistaken in the main; they are wise for this world, which is inconsiderable to eternity; wise for a little while, And fools for ever, 2. From what hath been said, we may infer, that if we lose our souls, and come short of eternal happiness, it is through our own fault and gross neglect; for we see that men are wise enough for this world; and the same prudence, and care, and diligence, applied to the concernments of our souls, would infallibly make us happy. 3. What a shame and reproach is this to the children of light! (Archbishop Tillotson.) Sagacity commended It is merely the wisdom, the practical sagacity, the savoir faire of the steward that is commended to our attention and imitation. A bad thing may be well done. The most admirable qualities--industry, perseverance, bravery, quickness--may serve to accomplish a wicked as well as a righteous purpose. Few can withhold a tribute of applause from the forger who successfully copies a very difficult banknote, or elaborates a professedly medieval document so as to deceive even the experts. No one commends the morality of David when he played the madman at Gath, and scrabbled on the gate; but who has not smiled at his skill in meeting the occasion, in overreaching all his enemies, and making them serve him by the simple device of hiding the brightest intellect of the age under the vacant, silly stare of the idiot? The wisdom of the unjust steward, which we are invited to admire, appeared mainly in his businesslike apprehension of the actual situation in which he was placed, and his sagacity and promptitude in making the most of it. He looked the facts in the face. He did not buoy himself up with delusive hopes. He did not waste his brief opportunity in idle expectations. He manfully faced the inevitable, and this was his salvation. The ability to do so is a great part of what is known as a strong character (Marcus Dods, D. D.) The true wisdom. Our Lord pronounced the children of this world “ wise in their generation” ; and who can doubt that thousands who are lost would, with God’ s blessing, be saved, did they bring the same prudence, and diligence, and energy to their eternal, as they do to their temporal interests? But in how many people is consummate wisdom joined to the greatest folly? They are wise enough to gain the world, and fools enough to lose their souls. Convince a man that the only way to save his life is to part with his limb, and he does not hesitate an instant between living with one limb and being buried with two. Borne into the operating theatre, pale, yet resolute, he bares the diseased member to the knife. And how well does that bleeding, fainting, groaning sufferer teach us to part with our sins rather than with our Saviour. If life is better than a limb, how much better is heaven than a sin? Two years ago a man was called to decide between preserving his life, and parting with the gains of his lifetime. A gold-digger, he stood on the deck of a ship that, coming from Australian shores, had--as some all but reach heaven--all but reached her harbour in safety. The exiles had been coasting along their native shores: and to-morrow, husbands would embrace their wives, children their parents, and not a few realize the bright dream of returning to pass the evening of their days in happiness amid the loved scenes of their youth. But as the proverb runs, there is much between the cup and the lip. Night came lowering down; and with the night a storm that wrecked ship, and hopes, and fortunes, all together. The dawning light but revealed a scene of horror--death staring them in the face. The sea, lashed into fury, ran mountains high; no boat could live in her. One chance still remained. Pale women, weeping children, feeble and timid men must die; but a stout, brave swimmer, with trust in God, and disencumbered of all impediments, might reach the shore, where hundreds stood ready to dash into the boiling surf, and, seizing, save him. One man was observed to go below. He bound around his waist a heavy belt, filled with gold, the hard gains of his life; and returned to the deck. One after another, he saw his fellow-passengers leap overboard. After a brief but terrible struggle, head after head went down--sunk by the gold they had fought hard to gain, and were loth to lose. Slowly he was seen to unbuckle his belt. His hopes had been bound up in it. It was to buy him land, and ease, and respect--the reward of long years of hard and weary exile. What hardships he had endured for it! The sweat of his brow, the hopes of day and the dreams of night, were there. If he parts with it, he is a beggar; but then if he keeps it, he dies. He poised it in his hand; balanced it for a while; took a long, sad look at it; and then with one strong, desperate effort, flung it far out into the roaring sea. Wise man I It sinks with a sullen plunge; and now he follows it--not to sink, but, disencumbered of its weight, to swim; to beat the billows manfully; and, riding on the foaming surge, to reach the shore. Well done, brave gold-digger! Ay, well done, and well chosen; but if “ a man,” as the devil said, who once spoke God’ s truth, “ will give all that he hath for his life,” how much more should he give all he hath for his soul? Better to part with gold than with God; to bear the heaviest cross than miss a heavenly, crown! (T. Guthrie, D. D.) Luke 16:9 Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness The right use of unrighteous mammon By the “ mammon of unrighteousness” we are very clearly to understand money; but why it has been so called by Christ is not so evident. Perhaps the simplest, as it is certainly the most obvious explanation, is because it is so frequently unrighteously acquired, and so much more frequently as the man’ s own possession, and not as a trust of which he is merely a steward. But, however the epithet “ unrighteous” may be accounted for, the thing which it characterizes is money. Now, there is a time when that shall fail. Death says to each man, “ Give an account of thy stewardship, for thou mayest be no longer steward.” We can carry with us nothing out of this world. Money cannot-simply and only as money--be transferred into the world beyond; but it may be so used in this world as to add to and intensify a Christian’ s happiness in the next. We are familiar with the fact, in our daily lives here, that money may become the means of procuring that which is better than itself. Thus knowledge is better than wealth; yet by a wise use of wealth we may acquire knowledge. So, by a judicious employment of money as trustees for God, in communicating to the necessities of the saints, we shall secure that those whom we have thus relieved shall receive us into everlasting habitations. This use of money will not purchase our admission into heaven; but it will make friends for us there, whose gratitude will add to our enjoyment, and increase our blessedness. It will not open the gates for our entrance. Only Christ is the door. Through Him alone can we gain ingress. But it will affect what Peter calls the “ abundance” of our entrance, for it will secure the presence there of those who have been benefited by our faithful stewardship; and, chiefest of all, it will be rewarded with the approbation of Him who will say, “ Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of the least of these My brethren, ye did it unto Me.” It is of grace alone, through Christ, that we are permitted to enter heaven; but once there, the measure of reward will be graduated according to that of our faithfulness here as “ good stewards of the manifold bounties of God.” Those who have been helped and blessed by our service will lead us up to the throne, and say, “ This is he of whom we have often spoken, and to whom we were so much beholden in the life below” ; and He who sitteth thereon will reply, “ Well done: let it be done unto him as unto the man whom the King delighteth to honour.” Thus, though money cannot be taken with us into the future life, we yet may so employ it here, in stewardship for God, as to send on treasure before us into heaven, in the shape of friends, who shall throughout eternity redouble and intensify our happiness. (W. M. Taylor, D. D.) The mammon of unrighteousness “ Mammon” is just the Syrian word for money, and it is called “ unrighteous “ or “ unjust” because those to whom our Lord was speaking had made their money by injustice. It was as little their own as the unjust steward’ s was. The steward was unjust because he had not regarded himself as a steward; and in so far as we have forgotten this fundamental circumstance, we also are unjust. We may not have consciously wronged any man or defrauded any; but if we have omitted to consider what was due to God and man, the likelihood is we have more money than we have a right to. The name, indeed, “ unrighteous mammon,” is sometimes sweepingly applied to all wealth and material advantages, because there is a feeling that the whole system of trade, commerce, and social life is inextricably permeated with fraudulent practices and iniquitous customs--so permeated that no man can be altogether free, or is at all likely to be altogether free, from all guilt in this matter. Take any coin out of your pocket and make it tell its history, the hands it has been in, the things it has paid for, the transactions it has assisted, and you would be inclined to fling it away as contaminated and filthy. But that coin is a mere emblem of all that comes to you through the ordinary channels of trade, and suggests to you the pollution of the whole social condition. The clothes you wear, the food you eat, the house you live in, the money you are asked to invest, have all a history which will not bear scrutiny. Oppression, greed, and fraud serve you every day. Whether you will or not you are made partakers of other men’ s sins. You may be thankful if your hands are not soiled by any stain that you have wittingly incurred; but even so, you must ask, What compensation can I make for the unrighteousness which cleaves to mammon? how am I to use it now, seeing I have it? Our Lord says, “ You are to make friends with it, who may receive you into everlasting habitations.” You are so to use your opportunities that when your present stewardship is over you may not be turned out in the cold and to beggary, but may have secured friends who will give you a welcome to the eternal world. It is the same view of the connection of this world and the next which our Lord gives in His picture of the last judgment, when He says, “ Inasmuch as ye have done it,” etc. Those whom we have done most good to are, as a rule, those whom we have most loved; and what better welcome to a new world, what more grateful guidance in its ways, could we desire than that of those whom here on earth we have loved most dearly? Can you promise yourselves any better reward than to meet the loving recognition and welcome of those who have experienced your kindness; to be received by those to whom you have willingly sacrificed money, time, opportunities of serving yourself? (Marcus Dods, D. D.) A profitable investment The old Jewish writers tell us of a certain avaricious Rabbi who was very anxious to invest his wealth to the best advantage. A friend undertook to do this for him. One day the Rabbi asked the name of the investment from which he was assured he would receive the highest interest. His friend answered, “ I have given all your money to the poor.” You know, that if you were going to take a journey into some foreign country, you would change your English money for the currency of the place to which you were bound. You would convert your sovereigns, and bank notes, and shillings, into dollars, or roubles, or francs, or what not. Well, remember that we all have to take a journey into a land beyond the grave, where our money, and our pride, and our intellect, and our strength, and our success will not avail us--these will not be the currency of the country. Let us change our currency now, and get such property as faith, love, purity, gentleness, meekness, truth--these alone will pass current in the better country. Consecrate your wealth, or your work, or your influence, or whatever you have to God. (H. J.Wilmot Buxton, M. A.) Making friends of mammon Probably most of us understand that we are to do what good we can with our “ goods” now, in order that when we die we may receive the reward of our good deeds. But that is a very partial and imperfect reading of the words. It is true that our Lord promises us an eternal reward: but “ eternity” is a word that covers the present and the past as well as the future. It is true He promises that, if we make friends of mammon, then, when mammon fails us, our “ friends will receive us” ; and it is also true that mammon will fail us when we die, for it is very certain that we cannot carry it out of the world with us, even in the portable form of a cheque-book. But may not mammon fail us before we die? May we not, even while we are in this life, lose our money, or find that there are other losses for which no money can compensate us? We know very well that we may, some of us know it only too sadly, Riches have wings for use, and not only for show. It is not only the grim face of Death that scares them to flight; they flee before a thousand other alarms. The changes and accidents in which they fail us are innumerable; there are countless wounds which gold will not heal, endless cravings which it will not satisfy. And the very point and gist and value of our Lord’ s promise is that, whenever mammon fails us, in life and its changes and sorrows no less than in death, if we have previously made friends out of it, these friends will open eternal tabernacles in which our stricken spirits may find refuge and consolation. It is this present, this constant, this eternal reward of a wise use of our temporal possessions on which we need most of all to fix our thoughts. And, remember, we all need it, the poor no less than the rich. For we all have some acquaintance with mammon, though for some of us, happily, it is a very distant acquaintance. We all have a little money, or money’ s worth, at our control, and may take one of two courses. Well, now, suppose a man has lived long enough to feel his feet and to consider the courses that are open to him, and to be sincerely anxious to take the right course and to make the best use he can of his life. All around him he sees neighbours who are pushing on with the utmost eagerness in the pursuit of fortune, who are sacrificing ease, culture, pleasure, health, and at times conscience itself, in their love for that which St. Paul pronounces to be a root of all evil, a temptation and a snare, and which Christ says makes it very hard for a man to enter the kingdom of God. He has to determine whether or not he will join in this headlong pursuit--whether he, too, will risk health of body, culture of mind, and sensitive purity of conscience, in the endeavour to grow rich, or richer than he is. He sees that the dignity and comfort and peace of human life depend largely on his being able to supply a large circle of wants, without constant anxiety and care; but be also feels that he has many wants, and these the deepest, which mere wealth will not supply. Accordingly, he resolves to work diligently and as wisely as he can, in order to secure an adequate provision for his physical necessities, and to guard his independence; but he resolves also that he will not sacrifice himself, or all that is best and purest and most refined in himself, to the pursuit of money and what it will fetch. Hence, so far as he can, he limits his wants; he keeps his tastes simple and pure; and by labours that do not absorb his whole time and energies he provides for the due gratification of these tastes and wants. Hence also he gives a good deal of his time and energy to reading good books, let us say, or to mastering some natural science, or to developing a taste for music and acquiring skill in it. He expects his neighbour, who had no better start nor opportunities than he, to grow far richer than he himself has done, if his neighbour think only of getting and investing money. And therefore he does not grudge him his greater wealth, nor look on it with an envious eye; he rather rejoices that he himself has given up some wealth in order to acquire a higher culture, and to develop his literary or artistic tastes. Here, then, we have two men, two neighbours, before us. The one has grown very rich, has far more money than he can enjoy, more even perhaps than he quite knows how to spend or invest, but he has hardly anything except what his money will procure for him. The other has only a modest provision for his wants, but he has a mind stored with the best thoughts of ancient and modern wisdom, an eye which finds a thousand miracles of beauty in every scene of Nature, and an ear that trembles under the ecstasy of sweet harmonious sounds. By some sudden turn of fortune, mammon fails them both; they are both reduced to poverty: both, so soon as they recover from the shock, have to make a fresh start in life. Which of the two is better off now? Which of them has made real friends to himself out of the mammon while he had it? Not the wealthier of the two assuredly; for, now that he has lost his wealth, he has lost all that he had: he has lived only to get rich; when his riches went, all went. But the other man, the man who read and thought and cultivated Ins mental faculties, he has not lost all. His money has gone, but it has not taken from him the wise thoughts he had gathered from books, or his insight into the secrets and beauties of Nature, or the power to charm from the concord of sweet sounds. He is simply thrown more absolutely on these inward and inseparable possessions for occupation and enjoyment. While he had it he made friends to himself out of the mammon of unrighteousness; and, now that it has failed him, those friends receive him into tabernacles which are always open, and in which he has long learned to find pleasure and to take rest. Poor and imperfect as this illustration is, for there are losses in which even Science and Art, even Nature and Culture, can give us but cold comfort--it may nevertheless suffice to make our Lord’ s words clear. For, obviously, if a man give a good part of the time he might devote to the acquisition of wealth to religious culture, instead of to merely mental culture; if he take thought and spend time in acquiring habits of prayer and worship and obedience and trust, in acquainting himself with the will of God and doing it; if he expend money, and time which is worth money to him, in helping on the works of the Church and in ministering to the wants of the sorrowful and guilty--he, too, has made to himself friends out of the mammon of unrighteousness, and friends that will not fail him when mammon fails him, but will receive him into tabernacles of rest. However poor he may be, he can still pray, and read his Bible, and put his trust in God, and urge the guilty to penitence, and speak comfort to the sorrowful; and, by his cheerful content and unswerving confidence in the Divine goodness, he may now bear witness, with an eloquence far beyond that of mere words, to the reality and grandeur of a truly religious life. Faith, hope, charity, righteousness and godliness, patience and meekness, will not close their doors against him, because mammon has slammed his door in his face. These are eternal friends, who pitch their tabernacles beside us wherever our path may lead, and who welcome us to the rest and shelter they afford all the more heartily because we have not where to lay our head. (S. Cox.) The earthly life a heavenly training It has been observed by an eminent critic, that the words, “ mammon of unrighteousness” might be better rendered, “ mammon of deceitfulness” ; for Christ never condemned the possession of wealth as in itself an unrighteous thing. It is very often the righteous reward of praiseworthy toil. But He speaks of it as deceitful, because he who trusts to it will find that its promises are lies, and will fail at last, leaving him miserably alone; and with this failure Christ contrasts the certainty of eternal possessions. We can enter now into the meaning of the parable. If the riches of life--which are only one and a comparatively insignificant circumstance in man’ s earthly history--may prepare him for eternity, then it follows that every circumstance of life--our wealth or our poverty, our work or our rest--may form a training. Here, then, seems to be the thought which Christ has shadowed forth in this earthly form--Every circumstance of man’ s life may become a training for immortality. It is obvious that if this be true it is of supreme importance. But how is it possible for all our life to become a training for immortality? or, to use the words of Christ, how may we so make friends of our earthly circumstances, that when they have passed, we may have been prepared by their employment for the everlasting habitations? The tenth and eleventh verses of this chapter imply two great principles on which this possibility is founded--the eternity of God’ s law, and the perpetuity of man’ s character. On the one hand, it is possible to make every circumstance of life part of one grand training, because the law of the immortal life is the law of a blessed life here. “ He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much; and he that is unjust in the least is unjust also in much.” These words imply that the law of God which guides us here extends over all worlds. The life of time is ruled by no different law from that which prevails in the great life of eternity. The faithfulness which makes men blessed here, is the same law of life which creates their blessedness there. This is obviously the first great principle that renders it possible for us to make our present circumstances an education for the everlasting world. If the law which prevails there were essentially different from that which prevails here, then no present conduct, no employment of the earthly, could prepare for the heavenly; we should have to learn a new rule of life, and every present circumstance would be vain as affording a preparation for the life to come. This is all we need know of the future, as far as regards our present conduct. This thought may perhaps be made clear to every one by taking an illustration with which we are all familiar. We know that in different countries different customs are adopted and different laws prevail. Actions, which in this land would be thought natural, would be considered absurd in another. Deeds, which in one land are common, might else where be regarded as crimes. The man who would travel into other countries must first of all acquaint himself with their social customs, and study the requirements of their laws. He thus prepares himself to enter other lands without danger, and live another life without difficulty. Now we have a journey to make at no distant period into another world. We stand looking at its dim outlines, seeing friend after friend depart, waving us their sad, solemn farewells, and knowing that we must soon set out for that distant region. But the law, whose fulfilment is love, pervades every world of the blessed. The love of God, which forms the Christian blessedness in this low earth, is the source of the highest angels’ bliss in the great eternity. Therefore we have no new law of life to learn. The other fact requisite to show this is the perpetuity of human character. See verse 11: “ If therefore ye have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon,who will commit to your trust the true riches?” In their deepest meaning these words involve this principle--“ Unfaithful in time, unfaithful in eternity.” Some illustration of this perpetuity of human character is afforded us by the difficulty of changing men’ s characters in this world. How, for instance, can you change the character of a hard, selfish, worldly man? You cannot do it by reasoning. We know not what state may await us after death, but as far as we can gather from the teachings of the Bible, death immortalizes character. All life’ s affections, and fellowships, and friendships--all the revelations we have of human nobleness and grandeur--if they teach us more of God by revealing the Godlike, become adiscipline for eternity. Every glory in nature--the pomp of autumn, the rejoicing beauty of the spring, the splendour of the sunset, or the majesty of the starry hosts--everything, in fact, in the outer world which raises our thoughts to the Divine, becomes a training for the immortal. Every dark temptation that makes us strong in resistive might; every gloomy doubt that by its conquest helps to strengthen our faith, every sorrow that drives us to repose more utterly on the eternal love, becomes a schooling for the higher world, where the presence of the Father is boundless joy. In conclusion, let us observe the practical application of the words of our text. They are a call to action. The duty to which Christ here summons us is to watch the formation of character. They contain also a lesson of encouragement. (E. L. Hull, B. A.) The Christian’ s farewell to business I. A IMPORTS A LOOK BEHIND. What is there in the Christian’ s last look at the world? It is a fact that that look must be taken. We may avoid many things, but not that. Of the end of business we can have no doubt. If it end not before death, it will at death. When the end comes, there will be a tenderness in the adieu. Of course, there will be much to make a farewell pleasant. Business will be an object of not unmingled regret. 1. But still, we say, there must be tenderness in the adieu. It is an adieu. 2. But there are other sources of regret. Business has been a source of positive enjoyment. It has supplied a wholesome excitement. It has exercised the active powers. 3. Nor can we omit to remark that when the Christian fails in death, he leaves, in business, that which has been the channel and scene of spiritual things. It is in business he has “ exercised himself to godliness.” The place of work has been the place of prayer. II. Let us now contemplate the Christian IN THAT BRIGHT WHICH IS BEFORE HIM WHEN HE LEAVES THE WORLD, as he looks forward to “ the everlasting habitations” to which he will be “ received” at his failure in death. That ground is Christ. It is not because we are by good works entitled to it, that we can obtain an inheritance above. 1. And, therefore, I remark, first, that though secular life closes at death, the Christian retains all that made that life holy and noble. With many, business was an end; with him, it was a means. With many, the thought, the care, the aim, the ambition, were all comprised in this outward world with him the outward world was but a glass, a tool, a stepping-stone. 2. And while the Christian retains his principles, which made his business good and holy and happy, those principles are transferred to a better sphere at death. 3. The Christian, in failing at death, will be able not only to expect the continuance of holy activity in a better sphere, but to connect his past with his future activity. (J. A. Morris.) Wealth changed into the coin of heaven Every rich man who is growing selfish and using all his money for earthly uses only should study this parable. It would surely cure him. Money may be made a grand thing both now and hereafter; for by liberality you can change it into the current coin of heaven. You are like an orphan maid I read of, whose kind master allowed her to give away the fruit of his garden, that she might raise up friends for herself among the neighbours. Wealth thus used is worthy of its name, which is just weal writ large. (J. Wells.) Mammon Mammon, the world--ah, is it not adverse to the interests of our souls? What then? Believer, adversary though it be, you may make it your friend. A skilful seaman, when once fairly out to sea, can make a wind from the west carry him westward! he can make the wind that blows right in his face bear him onward to the very point from which it blows. When he arrives at home, he is able to say, the wind from the west impelled me westward, and led me into my desired haven. Thus if we were skilful, and watchful, and earnest, we might make the unrighteous mammon our friend; we might so turn our side to each of its tortuous impulses, that, willing or unwilling, conscious or unconscious, it should from day to day drive us nearer home. (W. Arnot.) The everlasting dwellings I. WHAT KIND OF ARE THESE? 1. The sweetest peace reigns m them, as regards the body. (1) There is no earthly burden. (2) There are no afflictions or tribulations. 2. The sweetest peace, as regards the soul. (1) There is no struggle. (2) There is no peril. 3. The greatest joy reigns in them. II. FOR WHOM ARE THE ? 1. Not for sinners (Revelation 21:27). (1) The unjust. (2) The uncharitable. (3) The unbelieving. (4) Drunkards. (5) The unchaste. (6) The slothful. (7) Blasphemers. 2. Only for the just. To heaven we are led-- (1) By unwavering faith. (2) By childlike humility. (3) By a strenuous combat. (4) By true justice. (Joseph Schuen.) How the little may be used to get the great I. First, then, I desire to consider briefly that strange, new standard of value which is set up here. On the one side is placed the whole glittering heap of all material good that man can touch or handle, all that wealth can buy of this perishable world; and on the other hand there are the modest and unseen riches of pure thoughts and high desires, of a noble heart, of a life assimilated to Jesus Christ. The two are compared in three points--as to their intrinsic magnitude, as to their quality, as to our ownership of them. Of the great glittering heap our Lord says: “ It is nothing, at its greatest it is small” ; and of the other our Lord says: “ At its smallest it is great.” All the wealth of all the Rothschilds is too little to fill the soul of the poorest beggar that stands by their carriage door with hungry eyes. The least degree of truth, of love, of goodness, is bigger in its power to fill the heart than all the externals that human avarice can gather about it. Can we thus enter into the understanding of Christ’ s scale and standard, and think of all the external as “ that which is least,” and of all the inward as “ that which is much” ? The world looks at worldly wealth through a microscope which magnifies the infinitesimally small, and then it looks at “ the land that is very far off” through a telescope turned the wrong way, which diminishes all that is great. But if we can get up by the side of Jesus Christ and see things with His eyes and from His station, it will be as when a man climbs a mountain, and the little black line, as it seemed to him when looked at from the plain, has risen up into a giant cliff; and all the big things down below, as they seemed when he was among them, have dwindled. That white speck is a palace; that bit of a green patch there, over which the skylark flies in a minute, is a great lord’ s estate. Oh, dear brethren, we do not need to wait to get to heaven to learn heaven’ s tables of weights and measures! One grain of true love to God is greater in its power to enrich than a California of gold. Take, again, the second antithesis, the “ unrighteous mammon” and “ the true riches.” That word, “ unrighteous” in its application to material good, is somewhat difficult. If we keep strictly to the antithesis “ unrighteous” must be the opposite of “ true.” The word would then come to mean very nearly the same as “ deceitful” --that which betrays. And so we have presented to us the old familiar thought that external good of all sorts looks to be a great deal better than it is. It promises a great many things that it never fulfils, tempting us as a fish is tempted to the hook by a bait which hides the hook. But the inward riches of faith, true holiness, lofty aspirations, Christ-directed purposes, all these are true. They promise no more than they perform. They bring more than they said they would. No man ever said, “ I have tasted Thy love, and lo! it does not satisfy me! I have realized Thy help, and lo! it has not been enough!” And then the last contrast is between “ another’ s” and “ your own.” Another’ s? Well, that may mean God’ s; and therefore you are stewards, as the whole parable that precedes the text has been teaching. But I am not sure that that is the only, nor indeed the principal reference of the word here. And I think when our Lord speaks of all outward possessions as being, even whilst mine, another’ s, He means to point there, not only to the fact of stewardship, but also to the fact of the limitations and defects of all outward possessions of outward good. That is to say, there is no real contact between the outward things that a man has and himself. The only things that you really have, paradox as it sounds, are the things that you are. All the rest you hold by a very slight tie, like the pearls that are sewn upon some half-barbarous Eastern magnate’ s jacket, which he shakes off as he walks. So men say, “ This is mine!” and it only means “ It is not yours.” There is no real possession, even while there is an apparent one, and just because there is no real contact, because there is always a gap between the man and his goods, because he has not, as it were, gathered them into himself, therefore the possession is transient as well as incomplete. It slips away from the hand even whilst you hold it. And just as we may say, “ There is no present, but everything is past or future, and what we call the present is only the meeting point of these two times,” so we may say, there is no possession, because everything is either coming into my hands or going out of them, and my apparent ownership is only for a moment. I simply transmit. “‘ Twas mine, ‘ tis his, and has been slave to thousands.” And so it passes. And then consider the common accidents of life which rob men of their goods, and the waste by the very act of use, which gnaws them away as the sea does the cliffs; and, last of all, death’ s separation. What can be taken out of a man’ s hands by death has no right to be called his. II. Notice for a moment the other broad principle that is laid down in these three verses, as to THE HIGHEST USE OF THE LOWER GOOD. Whether you are a Christian man or whether you are not, this is true about you, that the way in which you deal with your outward goods, your wealth, your capacity of all sorts, may become a barrier to your possessing the higher, or it may become a mighty help. There are plenty of people, and some of them listening to me now, who are kept from being Christians because they love the world so much. The world thinks that the highest use of the highest things is to gain possession of the lowest thereby, and that truth and genius and poetry are given to select spirits and are wasted unless “ they make money out of them. Christ’ s notion of the relationship is exactly the opposite, that all the out ward is then lifted to its noblest purpose when it is made rigidly subordinate to the highest; and that the best thing that any man can do with his money is so to spend it as to “ purchase for himself a good degree,” “ laying up for himself in store a good foundation that he may lay hold on eternal life.” III. And now let me say one last word as to THE WHICH THUS THE LOWEST AS A MEANS OF MORE FULLY THE HIGHEST. You will be “ faithful” if, through all your administrations of your possessions, there runs, first, the principle of stewardship; you will be “ faithful” if, through all your administration of your earthly possessions, there runs, second, the principle of sacrifice; you will be “ faithful” if, through all your administration of your earthly possessions, there runs, third, the principle of brotherhood. (A. Maclaren, D. D.) Wise expenditure Christ here tells us plainly which is the path of wisdom. When we see a man making ducks and drakes of his money, we call him a fool--and so he is, from our point of view, because he might be acquiring solid advantages with what he is wasting. But, from the point of view of the gospel, we are just as great fools ourselves, for those solid advantages of which we speak are probably as far from being eternal as the others; keeping our eyes fixed upon the everlasting future, we must admit that every penny spent upon ourselves is as much wasted as if we had chucked it into the river. Do not then ask me, “ May I allow myself this luxury?” or “ May I not indulge this taste?” Of course you may, as long as it is harmless, but you will be wiser if you don’ t, for you might with the same money be making friends for eternity. This saying of our Lord, then, is, in its fulness, for those that can receive it, and they are, perhaps, as few as they are happy; when we get to heaven and behold the richness of their reward, the overflowing happiness of those who have spent and been spent in making others happy, we shall wonder how we could have been so stupid as to waste our money on ourselves. For the rest of us, it is a principle which we must acknowledge humbly, even if we have not strength of mind to act upon it much at present. We may still decide, perhaps, to live up to our income, to live according to our rank, to maintain a certain style, and so on, but we will not be such contemptible hypocrites as to pretend that this is the path of Christian wisdom. The principle which Christ lays down we shall keep before our eyes, and we shall pray that it may sink little by little into our hearts, until it begin to bear fruit in our lives--the principle, I mean, that every penny spent on self is wasted, every penny we can learn to part with is saved because laid up with Him. (R. Winterbotham, M. A.) Charity the road to wealth You want to double your riches, and without gambling or stock-jobbing. Share it. Whether it be material or intellectual, its rapid increase will amaze you. What would the sun have been, had he folded himself up in darkness? Surely he would have gone out. So would Socrates. This road to wealth seems to have been discovered some three thousand years ago; at least it was known to Hesiod, and has been recommended by him in the one precious line he has left us. But even he complains of the fools who did not know that half is more than the whole. And ever since, though mankind have always been in full chase after riches, though they have not feared to follow Columbus and Gama in chase of it, though they have waded through blood, and crept through falsehood, and trampled on their own hearts, and been ready to ride on a broomstick, in chase of it, very few have ever taken the road, albeit the easiest, the shortest, and the surest. (J. C. Hare.) Luke 16:10-13 Faithful in that which is least On living to God in small things 1. Notice how little we know concerning the relative importance of events and duties. We use the terms “ great” and “ small “ in speaking of actions, occasions, plans, and duties, only in reference to their mere outward look and first impression. Some of the most latent agents and mean-looking substances in nature are yet the most operative; but yet, when we speak of natural objects, we call them great or small, not according to their operativeness, but according to size, count, report, or show. So it comes to pass when we are classing actions, duties, or occasions, that we call a certain class great and another small, when really the latter are many fold more important and influential than the former. We are generally ignorant of the real moment of events which we think we understand. 2. It is to be observed that, even as the world judges, small things constitute almost the whole of life. 3. It very much exalts, as well as sanctions this view, that God is so observant of small things. He upholds the sparrow’ s wing, clothes the lily with His own beautifying hand, and numbers the hairs of His children. He holds the balancings of the clouds. He maketh small the drops of rain. 4. It is a fact of history and of observation that all efficient men, while they have been men of comprehension, have also been men of detail. Napoleon was the most effective man in modern times--some will say, of all times. The secret of his character was, that while his plans were more vast, more various, and, of course, more difficult than those of other men, he had the talent, at the same time, to fill them up with perfect promptness and precision, in every particular of execution. There must be detail in every great work. 5. It is to be observed that there is more real piety in adorning one small than one great occasion. This may seem paradoxical, but what I intend will be seen by one or two illustrations. I have spoken of the minuteness of God’ s works. When I regard the eternal God as engaged in polishing an atom, or elaborating the functions of a mote invisible to the eye, what evidence do I there receive of His desire to perfect His works! No gross and mighty world, however plausibly shaped, would yield a hundredth part the intensity of evidence. An illustration from human things will present a closer parallel. It is perfectly well understood, or if not, it should be, that almost any husband would leap into the sea, or rush into the burning edifice to rescue a perishing wife. But to anticipate the convenience or happiness of a wife in some small matter, the neglect of which would be unobserved, is a more eloquent proof of tenderness. 6. The importance of living to God in ordinary and small things, is seen in the fact that character, which is the end of religion, is in its very nature a growth. Application: 1. Private Christians are here instructed in the true method of Christian progress and usefulness. 2. Our subject enables us to offer some useful suggestions, concerning the manner in which Churches may be made to prosper. 3. Finally, some useful hints are suggested to the ministers of Christ. (H. Bushnell, D. D.) The value of little things “ Who has despised the day of small things?” Not the sagacious men of the world, to whom experience has taught the necessity of husbanding the minutes that make up days, and the pence that grow to pounds. I. OUR LIVES FOR THE MOST PART ARE MADE UP OF LITTLE THINGS, AND BY THESE OUR IS TO BE TESTED. There are very few who have to take a prominent place in the great conflicts of their age, and to play their part in the arena of public life, The vast majority must dwell in humbler scenes, and be content to do a much meaner work. The conflicts which a Christian has to maintain, either against the evil in his own soul, or in the narrow circle where alone his influence is felt, appear to be very trivial and unimportant, yet are they to him the battle of life and for life, and true heroism is to he shown here as well as in those stander struggles in which some may win the leader’ s fame, or even the martyr’ s crown. It will stimulate us to faithfulness in such little things if we bear in mind the way in which the Master regards the humblest works that are done, and the poorest sacrifices that are made from a pure feeling of love to Him. He can recognize and bless the martyr-spirit even though it be shown in other ways than the endurance of bonds, or the suffering of death. There is not a tear of sympathy with the sorrows of others which we shed that falls without His knowledge. His presence is with us to encourage and strengthen us in these little as in the greater trials, and faithfulness here will have its own reward. II. LITTLE DEFECTS WEAKEN THE OF MANY VIRTUES. “ One sinner” (the wise man tells us) “ destroyeth much good,” and then following out the principle he proceeds to show by an expressive illustration how a little sin or even folly m a good man may rob him of much of the power that otherwise he would possess for good. “ Dead flies cause the ointment of the apothecary to send forth a stinking savour, so doth a little folly him that is in reputation for wisdom and honour.” The world is always on the watch for the faults of Christians. But the point on which we wish chiefly to insist is that men’ s estimate of our character is regulated chiefly by their observation of little things. III. LITTLE THINGS TO THE OF . Under the operation of varied causes, of whose power over us we are hardly-conscious, we are continually growing in holiness or sinking lower and lower in sin, by a process so gradual as to be scarcely perceptible. Conversion may be sudden, but not sanctification. Our power of resistance is to grow by constant exercise; our love, fed by the ministry of Providence and grace, is to burn with an ever brighter and purer flame; our path is to be like the shining light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day. Thus, by listening to every voice of instruction, by using every opportunity, by watchfulness in the least things, are we to attain spiritual increase. There is a part of our Lancashire coast on which the sea is making steady encroachments. Those who have long been familiar with its scenery can point you to places over which the tide now rolls its waters, where a few short years ago they wandered along the grassy cliff, and stood to watch the play of the wild waves beneath. From year to year the observer may note continued alteration--fresh portions of the cliff swept away, and the bed of the ocean becoming ever wider. Were he to ask for an account of these changes, some would tell him that during a terrible tempest the sea had rolled in with more than its usual violence and carried away great fragments of solid earth--and fancy that thus they had told the whole story. His own eyes, however, gave him fuller information. He sees around him preparations for the desolations of the coming winter. Other places are now menaced with the fate of their predecessors, and the work is already being done--the process may be gradual, but sure--every tide of more than ordinary power is contributing something towards it--“ by little and little” the work advances, and all is making ready for the fiercer storm which shall put the final stroke to what may seem to be the work of a night, but is in reality that of weeks and months. This is a picture but too true of incidents in the spiritual life of man. Sometimes the successive steps of the process are all hidden, and we see only the sad result; in others its advances may be more distinctly marked. (J. G. Guinness, B. A.) Gradual attainment of holiness Holiness of character is not a thing into which we can jump in a moment, and just when we please. It is not like a mushroom, the growth of an hour. It cannot be attained without great watchfulness, earnest effort, much prayer, and a very close walk with Jesus. Like the coral reef which grows by little daily additions until it is strong enough to resist the mighty waves of the ocean, so is a holy character made up of what may be called littles, though in truth each of those littles is of vast importance. Little duties prayerfully discharged; little temptations earnestly resisted in the strength which God supplies out of the fulness which He has made to dwell in Jesus Christ for His people; little sins avoided, or crucified; these all together help to form that holy character which, in the hour of need, will be, under God, such a sure defence to the Christian. (A. C. Price, B. A.) Fidelity in little things In every thought, word, and act of an intelligent agent, there is a moral principle involved. 1. Fidelity in little things commends itself to us, when we consider our inability to estimate the prospective value, power, and influence of the smallest things. 2. Fidelity in little things commends itself when we consider that it is only by attention to small things that we can hope to be faithful in great. Great events often turn on little hinges. Chemists say, one grain of iodine will impart its colour to seven thousand times its weight in water. So, often, a little deed containing a great moral principle will impart its nature to many hearts and lives. 3. Attention to small things is important, as it relates to our individual character. Its effect is subjective as well as objective. A beautiful character reaches its climax by progressive development. You cannot paint it on the life. It must be inwrought. 4. The example given us by Christ, our great prototype, should prompt us to fidelity in little things. 5. We should exercise the strictest fidelity in all things, small and great, because we are to be judged in view of these things. (J. W. Bledsoe.) On religious principle Consider the excellence of religious principle 1. In the energy of its operation. (1) Promptness in decision. (2) Determination to do one’ s duty. (3) Courage. (4) Self-denial. 2. In the uniformity of its effects. 3. In the extent of its influence. It prompts to the discharge of every duty, and to the avoidance of every sin. 4. The simplicity of its character. 5. The perpetuity of its existence. Undecaying and immortal. (Essex Remembrancer.) Faithful in little, faithful in much Now let us look, for a moment or two, at these three principles. I. From the highest point of view, TRUE KNOWS NO BETWEEN GREAT AND SMALL DUTIES. From the highest point of view--that is, from God’ s point of view--to Him, nothing is great, nothing small, as we measure it. The worth and the quality of an action depends on its motive only, and not at all on its prominence, or on any other of the accidents which we are always apt to adopt as the tests of the greatness of our deeds. The largeness of the consequences of anything that we do is no measure of the true greatness or true value of it. So it is in regard to God Himself, and His doings. What can be little to the making of which there goes the force of a soul that can know God, and must abide for evermore? Nothing is small that a spirit can do. Nothing is small that can be done from a mighty motive. Faithfulness measures acts as God measures them. “ Large” or “ small” are not words for the vocabulary of conscience. It knows only two words--right and wrong. The circle that is in a gnat’ s eye is as true a circle as the one that holds within its sweep all the stars; and the sphere that a dew-drop makes is as perfect a sphere as that of the world. All duties are the same which are done from the same motive; all acts which are not so done are alike sins. Faithfulness is one in every region. Large or small is of no account to the Sovereign eye. “ He that receiveth a prophet in the name of a prophet shall receive a prophet’ s reward,” because though not gifted with the prophet’ s tongue, he has the prophet’ s spirit, and does his small act of hospitality from the very same prophet-impulse which in another, who is more loftily endowed, leads to burning words and mighty deeds. Faithfulness is faith fulness, on whatsoever scale it be set forth! II. Then--in another point of view, IN SMALL DUTIES IS EVEN GREATER THAN IN GREAT. Great things that are great because they seem to have very wide-reaching consequences, and seem to be lifted up upon a pinnacle of splendour; or great things that are great because there was severe resistance that had to be overcome before we did them, and sore temptations that were dragging us down on our way to the performance of them--are really great and lofty. Only, the little duties that had no mighty consequences, no glittering splendour about them, and the little duties that had not much strife with temptation before they were done, may be as great, as great in God’ s eye, as great perhaps in their consequences, as great in their rewards, as in the other. Ah, my brother, it is a far harder thing, and it is a far higher proof of a thorough-going persistent Christian principle woven into the very texture of my soul, to go on plodding and patient, never taken by surprise by any small temptation, than to gather into myself the strength which God has given me, and, expecting some great storm to come down upon me, to stand fast and let it rage. It is a great deal easier to die once for Christ than to live always for Him. It is a great deal easier to do some single mighty act of self-surrender, than daily--unnoticed, patiently--to “ crucify the flesh with its affections and lusts.” Let us neither repine at our narrow spheres, nor fancy that we can afford to live carelessly in them because they are narrow. The smallest duties are often harder--because of their apparent insignificance, because of their constant recurrence--harder than the great ones. But do not let us forget that if harder, they are on the whole more needful. The world has more need of a great number of Christian people doing little things like Christians, than it has need of one apostle preaching like an apostle, or one martyr dying like a martyr. The mass of trifles makes magnitude. The little things are greater than the great, because of their number. They are more efficacious than the single lofty acts. Like the air which in the lungs needs to be broken up into small particles, and diffused ere it parts with its vitalizing principle to the blood, so the minute acts of obedience, and the exhibition of the power of the gospel in the thousand trifles of Christian lives, permeating everywhere, will vitalize the world and will preach the gospel in such a fashion as never can be done by any single and occasional, though it may seem to be more lofty and more worthy, agency. Honour the trifles, and you will find yourself right about the great things! Lastly: IN THAT WHICH IS LEAST IS THE FOR, AND SECURES OUR HAVING A WIDER SPHERE IN WHICH TO OBEY GOD. Of course, it is quite easy to see how, if once we are doing, what I have already said is the harder task--habitually doing the little things wisely and well, for the love of Christ and in the fear of God--we shall be fitted for the sorest sudden temptations, and shall be made able to perform far larger and far more apparently splendid acts. Every power strengthens by exercise. Every act of obedience smoothes the road for all that shall come after. And, on the other side, the same process exactly goes on to make men, by slow degrees, unfaithful in all. Tampering with a trifle; saying, Oh, it is a small matter, and I can venture it; or, It is a little thing, too little for mighty motives to be brought to bear upon it--that ends in this--“ unjust also in much.” My brother, life is all great. Life is great because it is the aggregation of littles. As the chalk cliffs in the South, that rear themselves hundreds of feet above the crawling sea beneath, are all made up of the minute skeletons of microscopic animalculae; so life, mighty and awful as having eternal consequences, life that towers beetling over the sea of eternity, is made up of these minute incidents, of these trifling duties, of these small tasks; and if thou art not “ faithful in that which is least,” thou art unfaithful in the whole. He only is faithful that is full of faith. (A. Maclaren, D. D.) Guilt not to be estimated by gain I. The great principle of the text is, that he who has sinned, though to a small amount in respect of the fruit of his transgression--provided he has done so by passing over a forbidden limit which was distinctly known to him, has, in the act of doing so, incurred a full condemnation in respect of the principle of his transgression. In one word, that the gain of it may be small, while the guilt of it may be great; that the latter ought not to be measured by the former; but that he who is unfaithful in the least shall be dealt with, in respect of the offence he has given to God, in the same way as if he had been unfaithful in much. 1. The first reason which we would assign in vindication of this is, that, by a small act of injustice, the line which separates the right from the wrong is just as effectually broken over as by a great act of injustice. There is no shading off at the margin of guilt, but a clear and vigorous delineation. It is not by a gentle transition that a man steps over from honesty to dishonesty. There is between them a wall rising up unto heaven; and the high authority of heaven must be stormed ere one inch of entrance can be made into the region of iniquity. The morality of the Saviour never leads him to gloss over beginnings of crime. 2. The second reason why he who is unfaithful in the least has incurred the condemnation of him who is unfaithful in much, is, that the littleness of the gain, so far from giving a littleness to the guilt, is in fact a circumstance of aggravation. There is just this difference. He who has committed injustice for the sake of a less advantage has done it on the impulse of a less temptation. Nay, by the second reason, this may serve to aggravate the wrath of the Divinity against him. It proves how small the price is which he sets upon his eternity, and how cheaply he can bargain the favour of God away from him, and how low he rates the good of an inheritance with Him, and for what a trifle he can dispose of all interest in His kingdom and in His promises. It is at the precise limit between the right and the wrong that the flaming sword of God’ s law is placed. It is there that “ Thus saith the Lord” presents itself, in legible characters, to our view. It is there where the operation of His commandment begins; and not at any of those higher gradations where a man’ s dishonesty first appals himself by the chance of its detection, or appals others by the mischief and insecurity which it brings upon social life. II. Let us now attempt TO UNFOLD A FEW OF THE THAT MAY BE DRAWN FROM THE OF THE TEXT, both in respect to our general relation with God, and in respect to the particular lesson of faithfulness which may be deduced from it. 1. There cannot be a stronger possible illustration of our argument than the very first act of retribution that occurred in the history of our species. What is it that invests the eating of a solitary apple with a grandeur so momentous? How came an action, in itself so minute, to be the germ of such mighty consequences? We may not be able to answer all these questions; but we may at least learn what a thing of danger it is, under the government of a holy and inflexible God, to tamper with the limits of obedience. 2. Let us, therefore, urge the spirit and the practice of this lesson upon your observation. It is evangelizing human life by impregnating its minutest transactions with the spirit of the gospel. It is strengthening the wall of partition between sin and obedience. It is the teacher of righteousness taking his stand at the outpost of that territory which he is appointed to defend, and warning his hearers of the danger that lies in a single footstep of encroachment. It is letting them know that it is in the act of stepping over the limit that the sinner throws the gauntlet of his defiance against the authority of God. It may appear a very little thing, when you are told to be honest in little matters; when the servant is told to keep her hand from every one article about which there is not an express or understood allowance on the part of her superiors; when the dealer is told to lop off the excesses of that minuter fraudulency which is so currently practised in the humble walks of merchandise; when the workman is told to abstain from those petty reservations of the material of his work for which he is said to have such snug and ample opportunity; and when, without pronouncing on the actual extent of these transgressions, all are told to be faithful in that which is least, else, if there be truth in our text, they incur the guilt of being unfaithful in much. It may be thought, that because such dishonesties as these are scarcely noticeable, they are therefore not worthy of notice. But it is just in the proportion of their being unnoticeable by the human eye, that it is religious to refrain from them. These are the cases in which it will be seen, whether the control of the omniscience of God makes up for the control of human observation--in which the sentiment, that “ Thou God seest me!” should carry a preponderance through all the secret places of a man’ s history--in which, when every earthly check of an earthly morality is withdrawn, it should be felt that the eye of God is upon him, and that the judgment of God is in reserve for him. (T. Chalmers, D. D.) Faithfulness in little things In our text the Master declares that fidelity, which is an element of conscience, must be thorough. It must not be an optional thing, chosen when we see that it will be better than any other instrument to secure a desired end. It must belong to every part of life, pervading it. It must belong to the least things as much as to the highest. It is not a declaration that little things are as important aa great things. It is not a declaration that the conscience is to regard all duties as of one magnitude and of one importance. It is a declaration that the habit of violating conscience, even in the least things, produces mischief that at last invalidate it for the greatest, and that is a truth that scarcely can have contradiction. I propose to illustrate this truth in some of its relations to life. In the first place, I shall speak of the heedlessness and unconscientiousness with which men take up opinions and form judgments, on every side and of every kind, in daily life. In regard to events, men seldom make it a matter of conscience to see things as they are, and hear things as they really report themselves. They follow their curiosity, their sense of wonder, their temper, their interests, or their prejudices, instead of their judgment and their conscience. There are few men who make it a point to know just what things do happen of which they are called to speak, and just how they happen. How many men were there round the corner? “ Twenty,” says the man, quickly. There were seven. How long did you have to wait? “ Two hours, at least.” It was just three-quarters of an hour by the watch. So, in a thousand things that happen every day, one man repeats what his imagination reported to him, and another man what his impatient, irritable feelings said to him. There are very few men that make it a matter of deliberate conscience to see things as they are, and report them as they happen. This becomes a great hindrance to business, clogs it, keeps men under the necessity of revising their false impressions; expends time and work; puts men on false tracks and in wrong directions; multiplies the burdens of life. But its worse effect is seen in the judgments and prejudices which men are liable to entertain about their fellow-men, and the false sentences which they are accustomed to issue, either by word of mouth or by thoughts and feelings. In thousands of men, the mind, if unveiled, would be found to be a Star-chamber filled with false witnesses and cruel judgments. The effect in each case may be small, but if you consider the sum-totals of a man’ s life, and the grand amount of the endless scenes of false impressions, of wicked judgments, of causeless prejudices, they will be found to be enormous. This, however, is the least evil. It is the entire untrustworthiness of a moral sense which has been so dealt with that is most to be deplored. The conscience ought to be like a perfect mirror. It ought to reflect exactly the image, that falls upon it. A man’ s judgment that is kept clear by commerce with conscience ought to reveal things as they are, facts as they exist, and conduct as it occurs. Now it is not necessary to break a mirror to pieces in order to make it worthless. Let one go behind it with a pencil, or with a needle of the finest point, and, with delicate touch, make the smallest line through the silver coating of the back; the next day let him make another line at right angles to that; and the third day let him make still another line parallel to the first one; and the next day let him make another line parallel to the second, and so continue to do day by day, and one year shall not have passed away before that mirror will be so scratched that it will be good for nothing. It is not necessary to deal it a hard blow to destroy its power; these delicate touches will do it, little by little. It is not necessary to be a murderer or a burglar in order to destroy the moral sense; but ah! these million little infelicities, as they are called, these scratchings and raspings, take the silver off from the back of the conscience--take the tone and temper out of the moral sense. Nay, we do not need even such mechanical force as this; just let the apartment be uncleansed in which the mirror stands: let particles of dust, and the little flocculent parts of smoke, settle film by film, flake by flake, speck by speck, upon the surface of the mirror, and its function is destroyed, so that it will reflect neither the image of yourself nor of anything else. Its function is as much destroyed as if it were dashed to pieces. Not even is this needed; only let one come so near to it that his warm breath falling on its cold face is condensed to vapour, and then it can make no report. Now there are comparatively few men who destroy their moral sense by a dash and a blow, but there is many a man whose conscience is seared as with a hot iron. The effect of this is not merely to teach us the moral lesson that man is fallible; it is to diminish the trust of man in man. And what is the effect of diminishing that? It is to introduce an element which dissevers society, which drives men away from one another, and takes away our strength. Faith in man, trust in man, is the great law of cohesion in human society. And so this infidelity in little things and little duties works both inwardly as well as outwardly. It deteriorates the moral sense; it makes men unreliable; it makes man stand in doubt of man; it loosens the ties that bind society together, and make it strong; it is the very counteracting agent of that divine love which was meant to bring men together in power. The same truth, yet more apparently, and with more melancholy results, is seen in the un-trustworthiness and infidelity of men in matters of honesty and dishonesty. The man that steals one penny is--just as great a transgressor as if he stole a thousand dollars? No, not that. The man that steals one single penny is--as great a transgressor against the laws of society as if he stole a thousand dollars? No, not exactly that. The man that steals one penny is--just as great a transgressor against the commercial interests of men as if he stole a thousand dollars? No, not that. The man that steals a penny is just as great a transgressor against the purity of his own conscience as if he stole a million of dollars. The danger of these little things is veiled under a false impression. You will hear a man say of his boy, “ Though he may tell a little lie, he would not tell a big one; though he may practise a little deceit, he would not practise a big one; though he may commit a little dishonesty, he would not commit a big one.” But these little things are the ones that destroy the honour, and the moral sense, and throw down the fence, and let a whole herd of buffaloes of temptation drive right through you. Criminals that die on the gallows; miserable creatures that end their days in poorhouses; wretched beings that hide themselves in loathsome places in cities; men that are driven as exiles across the sea and over the world--these are the ends of little things, the beginnings of which were thought to be safe. It is these little things that constitute your peculiar temptation and your worst danger. (H. W.Beecher.) Little things tests of character Can you discover a man’ s character more accurately by his public, extraordinary acts, than by his ordinary, everyday conduct and spirit? Which is the true Marlborough--the general in the field winning brilliant victories, or the peculator in his chamber manipulating papers for defrauding the public treasury? Which is the real man--Lord Bacon on the bench, or Lord Bacon with open palm behind his back feeling for bribes? Which is the true woman--the lady in the parlour courteously receiving her guests, or the termagant rendering home wretched by everyday exactions and scoldings? Jesus teaches that the little things of everyday life reveal true character, and show the man as he is in himself, by referring to the ordinary tempers by which he is governed. Is it not plain, when simply announced, that general conduct in little things is a truer test of a man’ s real character than occasional isolated acts could be? 1. Little things make up the vast universe. The clouds gather up the rains in moisture, and part with them in drops. The stars do not leap fitfully along their orbits, but measure with equal movement each consecutive mile. All the analogies of nature point to the minute as essential to the harmony, glory, and utility of the whole. And little things are as necessary in their places in the moral, as in the physical world. 2. Jehovah is observant of little things. Sparrows. Lilies. Jehovah neglects nothing. Nothing is so little as to be beneath His notice. His providence regards with equal distinctness a worm and a world, a unit and a universe. You are unlike your God and Saviour if you neglect little things. 3. Little things engross the most of life. Great events are only occasional. Frequency and regularity would take away from their greatness, by rendering them common. We shall find little to do, if we save our energies for great occasions. If we preserve our piety for prominent services, we shall seldom find place for its exercise. Piety is not something for show, but something for use; not the gay steed in the curricle, but the plough-horse in the furrow; not jewellery for adornment, but calico for home wear and apron for the kitchen. 4. Attention to little things is essential to efficiency and success in accomplishing great things. Letters are little things, but he who scouts the alphabet will never read David’ s psalms. The mechanic must know how to sharpen his plane, if he would make a moulding; the artist must mix colours, if he would paint landscapes. In every direction the great is reached through the little. He will never rise to great services who will not pass through the little, and train his spiritual nature, and educate his spiritual capabilities. Through faithfulness in the least he rises to faithfulness in the much, and not otherwise. 5. Little things are causes of great events, springs of large influences. To know whether a thing is really small or great, you must trace its results. Xerxes led millions to the borders of Greece. It looked to the world like a big thing. The whole vast array accomplished nothing. It turned out a very small business. The turning of a tiny nee.lie steadily toward a fixed point is a little common thing, but it guides navies along safe and sure paths, over unmarked oceans. So a magnetic word has guided a soul through a stormy world to a peaceful haven. A simple, secret prayer has pierced and opened clouds to pout down showers of spiritual blessings upon a city or state. 6. Conscientiousness in little things is the best evidence of sincere piety. 7. Faithfulness in little things is essential to true piety. The principle of obedience is simply doing what the Lord requires because He requires it. There is nothing little if God requires it. The veriest trifle becomes a great thing if the alternative of obedience or rebellion is involved in it. Microscopic holiness is the perfection of excellence. To live by the day, and to watch each step, is the true pilgrimage method. (J. L. Burrows, D. D.) Trial of fidelity Here are two great truths suggested to us. 1. That we are here in this world merely on trial, and serving our apprenticeship. 2. That it is our fidelity that is tried, not so much whether we have done great or little things, but whether we have shown the spirit which above all else a steward should show--fidelity to the interests entrusted to him. The two verses following, in which this is applied, may best be illustrated by familiar figures. “ If,” says our Lord, “ ye have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will commit to your trust that which is real?” He considers us all in this world as children busy with mere playthings and toys, though so profoundly in earnest. But, looking at children so engaged, you can perfectly see the character of each. Although the actual things they are doing are of no moment or reality; although, with a frankness and penetration not given to their elders, they know they are but playing, yet each is exhibiting the very qualities which will afterwards make or mar him, the selfish greed and fraud of one child being as patent as the guileless open-handedness of the other. To the watchful parents these games that are forgotten in the night’ s sleep, these buildings which as soon as complete are swept away to make room for others, are as thorough a revelation of the character of the child as affairs of state and complicated transactions are of the grown man. And if the parent sees a grasping selfishness in his child, or a domineering inconsiderateness of every one but himself, as he plays at buying and selling, building and visiting, he knows that these same qualities will come out in the real work of life, and will unfit their possessor for the best work, and prevent him from honourable and generous conduct, and all the highest functions and duties of life. So our Lord, observant of the dispositions we are showing as we deal with the shadowy objects and passing events of this seeming substantial world, marks us off as fit or unfit to be entrusted with what is real and abiding. If this man shows such greed for the gold he knows he must in a few years leave, will he not show a keener, intenser selfishness in regard to what is abiding? If he can trample on other people’ s rights for the sake of a pound or two, how can he be trusted to deal with what is infinitely more valuable? If here in a world where mistakes are not final, and which is destined to he burned up with all the traces of evil that are in it--if in a world which, after all, is a mere card-house, or in which we are apprentices learning the use of our tools, and busy with work which, if we spoil, we do no irreparable harm--if here we display incorrigible negligence and incapacity to keep a high aim and a good model before us, who would be so foolish as to let us loose among eternal matters, things of abiding importance, and in which mistake and carelessness and infidelity are irreparable? (Marcus Dods, D. D.) We are being watched A merchant sees among his clerks one whose look and bearing are prepossessing, and he thinks that by and by this lad might possibly make a good partner; he watches him, but he finds him gradually degenerating into slipshod ways of doing his work, coming down late in the mornings, and showing no zeal for the growth of the business; and so the thought grows in his mind, “ If he is not faithful in that which is another man’ s, how can I give him the business as his own? I can’ t hand over my business to one who will squander what I have spent my life in accumulating; to one who has not sufficient liking for work to give himself heartily to it, or sufficient sense of honour to do it heartily whether he likes it or no. Much as I should like to lift him out of a subordinate situation, I cannot do so.” Thus are determined the commercial and social prospects of many an unconscious youth, and thus are determined the eternal prospects of many a heedless servant of God, who little thinks that the Master’ s eye is upon him, and that by hasting to be rich he is making himself eternally poor, and by slackness in God’ s service is ruining his own future. (Marcus Dods, D. D.) Influence of little things A jest led to a war between two great nations. The presence of a comma in a deed lost to the owner of an estate one thousand pounds a month for eight months. The battle of Corunna, in 1809, is said to have been fought, and the life of that noble officer Sir John Moore sacrificed, through a dragoon stopping to drink while bearing despatches. A man lighting a fire on the sea-shore led to the Rev. John Newton’ s honoured labours and life of usefulness. Little kindnesses We sin by omitting cheap acts of beneficence in our daily walk and among our early companionship. The web of a merciful life is made up of these slender threads. (J. W. Alexander, D. D.) Little sins A man who was hung at Carlisle for house-breaking declared that his first step to ruin was taking a halfpenny out of his mother’ s pocket while she was asleep. Another offender, convicted of housebreaking at Chester, said at the gallows, “ You are come to see a man die. Oh! take warning by me. The first beginning of my ruin was Sabbath-breaking. It led me into bad company, and from bad company to robbing orchards and gardens, and then to housebreaking, and that has brought me to this place.” Faithfulness shown in restitution of wrongful gains A brother in the ministry took occasion to preach on the passage, “ He that is unjust in the least is unjust also in much.” The theme was, “ that men who take advantage of others in small things have the very element of character to wrong the community and individuals in great things, where the prospect of escaping detection or censure is as little to be dreaded.” The preacher exposed the various ways by which people wrong others; such as borrowing, by mistakes in making change, by errors in accounts, by escaping taxes and custom-house duties, by managing to escape postage, by finding articles and never seeking owners, and by injuring articles borrowed, and never making the fact known to the owner when returned. One lady the next day met her pastor, and said, “ I have been to rectify an error made in giving me change a few weeks ago, for I felt bitterly your reproof yesterday.” Another individual went to Boston to pay for an article not in her bill, which she noticed was not charged when she paid it. A man going home from meeting said to his companion, “ I do not believe there was a man in the meeting-house to-day who did not feel condemned.” After applying the sermon to a score or more of his acquaintances, he continued, “ Did not the pastor utter something about finding a pair of wheels?” “ I believe not, neighbour.” . He spoke of keeping little things which had been found.” “ Well, I thought he said something about finding a pair of wheels, and supposed he meant me. I found a pair down in my lot a while ago.” “ Do you,” said his companion, “ know who they belong to? Mr. B. -- lost them a short time ago.” The owner was soon in the possession of his wheels. (Vermont Chronicle.) Unfaithfulness in little A king appointed one servant over his gold treasure, another over his straw. The latter’ s honesty being suspected, he was angry because the gold had not been trusted to him. The king said, “ Thou fool, if thou couldst not be trusted with straw, how can any one trust thee with gold?” (Archbishop Trench.) Momentary unfaithfulness to be avoided A Corsican gentleman, who had been taken prisoner by the Genoese, was thrown into a dark dungeon, where he was chained to the ground. While he was in this dismal situation the Genoese sent a message to him, that if he would accept of a commission in their service, he might have it. “ No,” said he; “ were I to accept your offer, it would be with a determined purpose to take the first opportunity of returning to the service of my country. But I would not have my countrymen even suspect that I could be one moment unfaithful.” Ye cannot serve God and mammonThe crime of avarice I. REASONS WHY AVARICE SHOULD BE GUARDED AGAINST. 1. The avaricious man usually leads a miserable life, making no use of his wealth. 2. Avarice takes away a man’ s peace of mind. (1) The avaricious man is in constant disquietude-- (a) Through terror of losing his possessions. (b) Through envy of others, and the craving to possess their property. (c) Through desire to accumulate more wealth. (2) The avaricious man is inconsolable at the loss of his riches. 2. Avarice is a base vice, and the source of many other vices. 3. Avarice almost inevitably leads to eternal ruin. II. MEANS TO BE ADOPTED FOR AGAINST AVARICE. 1. Endeavour to know yourself, your inclinations, passions, desires; and examine yourself in order to ascertain whether you cannot find some symptom of avarice within yourself. Such symptoms are-- (1) A greater confidence in temporal goods than in Almighty God (Psalms 52:7). (2) Unscrupulousness in the manner of acquiring temporal goods. (3) Excessive grief at the loss of temporal goods. (4) If you do not use temporal goods for the glory of God, nor for your own and your neighbours’ needs. 2. Strive to keep from your soul the vice of avarice, (1) By continual struggle against the concupiscence of money and riches Psalms 62:10). (2) By the exercise of opposite virtues, especially that of Christian charity. You will experience the joys earned by these virtues. (3) By supplication for the removal of the temptation. (Chevassu.) The two masters “ No man can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other: or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon” (Matthew 6:24). In one point of view, this sounds very strangely; for nothing is more certain than that we can serve two masters. Every child that is dutifully reared serves two masters--its father and its mother; and it is quite possible for one to be a servant of a whole family of masters. But in order that this may take place, it is indispensably necessary that the masters should be alike in feeling, and identical in interest. But if masters are antagonistic the one to the other, if their interests are not only different but conflicting, if to serve one of necessity puts you in opposition to the other, then it is impossible to serve two. And the more you look at it the plainer it becomes. Suppose one man represents perfect honour, and another represents perfect meanness, and you undertake to serve both of them, what sort of success will you have? Suppose one man be called Truth, and another be called Falsehood, and you attempt to serve both of them, is it not plain that you will either hate the one and love the other, or else hold to the one and despise the other? You cannot serve both at the same time. No man can serve purity and lust at the same time. No man can serve good nature and anger at the same time. Are God and mammon, then, antagonistic? And what are the ways in which man is looked at from the two spheres--the Divine and the earthly? Mammon regards man as a creature of time and this world, and thinks of him, plans for him, educates him, and uses him, am it, like the beast of the field, he only had existence here, and as if his existence was only related to the comforts that belong to this state of being. But God looks upon man as a creature of eternal duration, passing through this world. The chief end and interest of men are also viewed antagonistically. In short, man in his immediate and visible good, is that which mammon regards. On the other hand, God regards not indifferently the interests of our body; but more He regards the interests of our being. Mammon builds men in the finer traits which they possess in common with animals. God would build men in those traits which they have in common with Him. One builds for this world exclusively. The other builds for this world and the next. There is nothing more certain than that a man’ s character depends upon his ruling purpose. Let us look at it. A man may be a thoroughly worldly man--that is, all his ruling aims, and desires, and expectations, may make him worldly; and yet he may be observant of external religious services. A man is not to be supposed to be less a worldly man because when the Sabbath day comes round he knows it. He maybe, also, a believer in the gospel, and in the most evangelical and orthodox type of doctrine--as an idea. It is quite possible for a man to be supremely worldly, and yet to have strong religious feelings. There is nothing more common than instances which go to show that we like as a sentiment things that we do not like as an ethical rule. Nay, it is possible for a man to go further, and yet be a thoroughly worldly man. And here it is that the distinction comes in. Although a man may be a servant of mammon, and may serve him with heart and soul; yet, externally, there may be a great many appearances that look as though he was serving God. And men really seem to think that they can serve God and mammon [ 1. There is reason m believe that the morality of multitudes of men, though they are good in some degree, leaves out that which alone can make it a ground of complacence and trust. A man may be a moral man, and leave out the whole of the life to come. The Greeks were moral men, many of them. The Romans were moral men, many of them. 2. There is reason to fear that the religion of multitudes of professors of religion is but a form of church-morality. You may tell me that this is a misjudgment. I hope it is. But what sort of lives are we living, when it is possible to misinterpret them? What if I should have occasion to say the same things about your allegiance to the government that I have said about your religion? There is not a man of any note in the community about whose allegiance you have any doubt. If I point to one man, you say, “ He is not true to his country.” If I point to another man, you say, “ He is loyal” ; and you state facts to prove it. You say, “ When his personal interest came in collision with the interest of the country, and one or the other had to be given up, he gave up his personal interest.” But when God’ s claims come in collision with your personal interests, God’ s claims go down, and your personal interests go up. Now, there ought to be no cause for doubt that you are Christians. A man is bound to live towards his country so that there shall be no mistake about his patriotism. And God says, “ You are bound to live towards Me so that in some way men shall see that you are My children.” You are bound to live in everything as you do in some things. You are attempting, partly through ignorance, partly by reason of carelessness, and partly on account of too low an estimate of the sacredness of your religious obligations, to serve God with your right hand, and mammon with your left; and men see it, and they doubt you; and that is not the worst of it--they doubt God, they doubt Christ, they doubt the reality of religion. And to be the occasion of doubt concerning matters of such grave importance, is culpable. No man, therefore, has a right to allow any mistake to exist in the matter of his Chris tian character. There is need, Christian brethren, of severe tests in this particular. You need to settle these questions: “ Where is my allegiance? Am I with God, and for God supremely?” (H. W. Beecher.) The two contrary masters, or the inconsistency of the service of God and the world For the opening and prosecuting of which words, consider-- 1. What these two masters are. 2. What it is to serve them. 3. How none can serve them both. 4. Why none can serve them both. 5. The use and application. For the first of these, these two masters are God and the world, but with much difference, as we may see severally. God is a Lord and Master absolutely, properly, and by good right in Himself; being in His own nature most holy, most mighty, most infinite in glory and sovereignty over all His creatures. Again, He is a Lord and Master in relation to us: and not only by right of creation and preservation as we are men and creatures, but also by right of redemption and sanctification, as new men and new creatures. 1. He hath made a covenant with us, first of works, and then of grace. 2. He hath appointed our work. 3. He hath as a Master appointed us liberal wages, even a merciful reward of eternal life. Thus is God a Lord and Master. Now, on the other side, the world is called a master or lord, not by any right in itself, of over us, but-- 1. By usurpation. 2. By man’ s corruption, and defection from the true God. 3. By the world’ s general estimation, and acceptation of the wealth and mammon, as a lord and great commander; which appeareth-- (1) By subjecting themselves to the basest services of wealth for wealth. (2) By affecting wealth as the chief good. (3) By depending (as servants on their masters) on their wealth. Concerning the service of these masters, we must mark, that our Saviour saith not, A man cannot serve God that hath riches, but, He cannot serve God and riches. For he that cannot distinguish between having the world, and serving the world, cannot understand this text and conclusion of Jesus Christ. Our Lord well knew it was lawful both to have, and to seek, and to use the world holily and humbly. But how may we conceive that one cannot be servant to two masters, or to these two? In these conditions: 1. Not at the same time. 2. Not in their proper commands; for as they are contrary lords, so they command contrary things, and draw to contrary courses. One calls to works of mercy, charity, compassion, liberality, and the like; the other to cruelty, and unmercifulness, to shut our eyes from beholding our own flesh, to shut our ear from the cry of the poor, to shut our purse and hand from the charitable relief of Christ’ s poor members. And how can one man obey both these in their contrary commands? 3. No man can serve two masters in sovereignty, unless they be subordinate one to the other, and so their commands concur in order one to another, and cross not one another. The reasons whereof are these: 1. A servant is the possession of his master; and one possession can have but one owner and possessor at once. 2. The servant of the world sets up his wealth as an idol in his heart; by which the worldling forsakes the true God, and turns to most gross idolatry. So of the second reason. 3. The apostle (Romans 6:16) asks thus, “ Know ye not, that to whomsoever ye give yourselves as servants to obey, his servants ye are whom ye do obey, whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness?” But the distinction implies that they cannot obey both together. 4. No man can serve these two masters, because a man cannot divide his heart between God and the world; and if he could, God will have no part of a divided heart, as Elijah said in that case (1 Kings 18:20). How may I know what master I serve? 1. Whom hast thou covenanted withal? God or the world? To whom hast thou wholly resigned thyself? Is thy strength become God’ s? Is thy time His? thy labour His? 2. Every servant is commanded by his master. God’ s servant knows his Lord’ s mind and pleasure, and readily attempts it, even in most difficult commandments. 3. Every servant receives wages of his own master, and thrives by his service. Of whom doest thou receive wages? 4. Which of these two masters lovest thou best? He that is thy master, thy affection must cleave to him, as is said of the prodigal. 5. If thou beest the servant of God, thy wealth is His servant as well as thyself. (T. Taylor, D. D.) Oneness of service What we all want is unity of character. We are, most of us, too many characters folded up into one. This want of unity of character is the chief secret of almost all our weakness. No life can be a strong life which has not a fixed focus. Another consequence of this uncertainty of aim and this divided allegiance is that we really are missing the goodness and happiness of everything. We have too much religion thoroughly to enjoy the world, and too much of the world thoroughly to enjoy religion. Our convictions haunt us in the world, and our worldliness follows us even to our knees. But there is a worse consequence than this. The Holy Spirit is grieved in us, and Christ is wounded, and the Father is dishonoured. For, which is worse, to be half loved or not to be loved at all? Where you have a right to all, is not partial love a mockery and an insult? The question, the all-important question is, What is the remedy? But first, before I speak of that, let me draw your attention to a distinction which is not without its force. The word “ masters” in the text does not actually carry the meaning of “ masters “ and “ servants” in the ordinary acceptation of the phrases. It might be literally translated, according to the root of the word, “ proprietors” or “ lords.” “ No one can serve two proprietors.” This emphasizes the sentence. God has a property, all property, in you. By right you are His. The world is not your proprietor. You are not made to be the world’ s But now I return to the question, “ How can we best attain to serve one lord?” I should answer first, without hesitation, by making that one Master, or Proprietor, or Lord, the Lord Jesus Christ. And more than this. God has given the govern merit and the sovereignty of this world till the day of judgment, to Jesus Christ. Therefore He is our Proprietor and our Master. Therefore I say, begin with believing that you are forgiven. Let Jesus--as your own dear Saviour--occupy His right place in your heart. The rest is quite sure. You will want no other Masher. All life is service. The happiness or the unhappiness of the service depends on who is the master. If self is the master, the service will be a failure! If the world is the master, the service will soon become drudgery I If Christ is the master, the service will be liberty; the law will be love, and the wages life, life for ever. If self, and the world, and Christ, be all masters, the diluted service will be nothing worth. There will be no “ service” at all. Self will go to the top, and self will be disappointed. But if the “ Master” be one, and that one God, that concentration will give force to every good thing within you. Life will be a great success. The service will be sweet. (J. Vaughan, M. A.) Impossible to serve God and mammon We cannot possibly serve both God and mammon. “ When you see a dog following two men,” says Ralph Erskine, “ you know not to which of them he belongs while they walk together; but let them come to a parting-road, and one go one way, and the other another way, then will you know which is the dog’ s master. So while a man may have the world and a religious profession too, we cannot tell which is the man’ s master, God or the world; but stay till the man come to a parting-road. God calls him this way, and the world calls him that way. Well, if God be his master, he follows truth and righteousness, and lets the world go; but if the world be his master, then he follows the flesh and the lusts thereof, and lets God and conscience go.” It is always so. The lukewarm can never be trusted, but the heartily-loving are ever loyal. Luke 16:14-18 The Pharisees also, who were covetous Lovers of money Those “ lovers of money” heard what things? As rulers of the people they heard the parable of the “ unjust steward,” and their own doom as men entrusted with the priceless riches of God’ s teaching pronounced: “ How is it that I hear this of thee?” They heard, “ He that is faithful in that which is least” --money--“ is faithful also in much.” I. “ LOVERS OF MONEY” DERIDE A STRICT . “ Be faithful in the least.” Many of the customs of trades and professions are out of harmony with the gospel teaching on strict conscientiousness. II. “ LOVERS OF MONEY” DERIDE THE OF THE GOSPEL ON . Self-denial and a race for wealth are incompatible things: “ Ye cannot serve God and mammon.” III. “ LOVERS OF MONEY” DERIDE THOSE WHO CALL THE PURSUIT OF RICHES THE WORSHIP OF “ MAMMON.” IV. “ LOVERS OF MONEY” NEED ROUSING BY A STERNER . Was not the Saviour impelled to the utterance of the parable of “ Dives and Lazarus” --look at it--by the looks of contempt implied in the word ἐξομυκτήριζον, the distended nostril and curled lip of these Pharisees? Does this help to explain our Lord’ s unusual severity: “ In hell he lift up his eyes, being in torment” “ Nothing will shake “ the lover of money” but stern teaching, and not always that. (Clerical World.) Ye are they which justify yourselves before menMen often highly esteem what God abhors Show how and why it is that men highly esteem that which God abhors. 1. They have a different rule of judgment. God judges by one rule; they by another. God’ s rule requires universal benevolence; their rule is satisfied with any amount of selfishness, so it be sufficiently refined to meet the times. The world adopts an entirely different rule, allowing men to set up their own happiness as their end. But God’ s rule is, “ Seek not thine own.” God regards nothing as virtue except devotion to the right ends. The right end is not one’ s own, but the general good. Hence God’ s rule requires virtue, while man’ s rule at best only restrains vice. Men very inconsiderately judge themselves and others, not by God’ s rule, but by man’ s. Here I must notice some of the evidences of this, and furnish some illustrations. Thus, for example, a mere negative morality is highly esteemed by some men. Again, a religion which is merely negative is often highly esteemed. So also of a religion which at best consists of forms and prayers, and does not add to these the energies of benevolent effort. Again, the business aims and practices of business men are almost universally an abomination in the sight of God. Professed Christians judge themselves falsely, because they judge by a false standard. One of the most common and fatal mistakes is to employ a merely negative standard. The good Christian in the world’ s esteem is never abrupt, never aggressive, yet he is greatly admired. He has a selfish devotion to pleasing man, than which nothing is more admired. Now, this may be highly esteemed among men; but does not God abhor it? (C. G. Finney, D. D.) God knoweth your hearts. The heart-searcher:-- I. This truth is eminently calculated to deepen our sense of the unapproachable greatness of the God with whom we have to do. II. This truth illustrates, not the greatness only, but also the forbearance and mercy of God. III. This truth should teach you, my brethren, the folly, not to dwell on the guilt, of formality and hypocrisy. IV. This truth is adapted to console and encourage the often misjudged and afflicted people of God. V. This truth assures us beforehand of the equity of the Divine awards at the judgment-day. (C. M. Merry.) God’ s knowledge of the heart At the present day many persons have photographs of their faces taken, which they present to their friends. But if it were possible to have an album of photographs taken of our sinful souls, revealing and blazoning forth all the evil deeds they had each done, all the evil words they had ever spoken, and all the evil thoughts they had ever thought, how hideous and horrible would such pictures be! Would any man dare to give his true soul-photograph to any brother man? I think not; and far less to his friends. Yet the things and thoughts we would thus conceal from others, and even from ourselves, are all known to God. He has full and faithful photographs of all; for He is perfectly cognizant of every single one of our evil deeds, and words, and imaginations. Nay, possibly we unwittingly carry about with us complete photographs of our own souls. May not the unsaved soul carry this record with it at death? May not unsaved sinners be thus both their own self-accusers and witnesses before the judgment-seat of Christ? Nor can anything except His blood, “ which cleanseth from all sin,” blot and wash out the record of our iniquities, and prepare the soul, by the grace of God, to receive the image of His Son. (Sir James Simpson.) Every man presseth into it Violence victorious I. THE STATE OF THE CHURCH IN THE NEW . 1. A kingdom. 2. The kingdom of heaven. II. THE OF THOSE WHO SEEK THIS KINGDOM. Violent. 1. Between us and the blessed state we aim at there is much opposition; and therefore there must be violence. (1) The means of grace and salvation are opposed from within us. (2) There is also opposition from the world. (a) Snares and delights, to quench our pleasure in the good things of the Spirit. (b) Fears, terrors, and scandals, to scare us from doing what we ought. 2. God will have this violence and striving, to test the truth of our profession. 3. God will have us get these things with violence, that we may value them more when we have them. 4. The excellence of the thing requires violence. 5. The necessity requires it. The kingdom of heaven is a place of refuge as well as a kingdom to enrich us. III. THE SUCCESS OF THIS . The violent take the kingdom by force. Why? 1. Because it is promised to the violent (Matthew 7:7; Revelation 3:19-21). 2. The spirit whereby a man is earnest is a victorious spirit. The Spirit of God possesses them; and with His help they cannot fail. 3. Only the violent take it, because God offers it on this condition alone. 4. Only the violent can prize it when they have it. (R. Sibbes, D. D.) Taken by force Let us look in a large way at this important truth. Everything great on earth has to be achieved by long, earnest, persistent toil. If you seek to become master of any art, any literature, any science, any accomplishment, you do not sit down and say, “ God is the giver of all good, and I shall not be so arrogant as to strive for that which He alone can bestow.” You know very well it can only be had by meeting every obstacle and conquering it. The very value of the thing is estimated often by the straining endeavour, the unconquerable zeal, and the cease less labour which are requisite to its attainment. We so often see only the results in certain lives, and not the long processes which have been leading up to those results, that we are tempted sometimes to forget this. A poet writes some verses that cause the whole nation’ s soul to burn and glow; an orator makes some speech that thrills his country to its very heart’ s core; a philosopher observes some phenomena which open up a whole field of scientific truth. We are dazzled with the success; we are forgetful of the long, patient hours of study and of thought which have gone before. Millions had seen apples fall before Newton did, and it revealed nothing to them; millions had seen the kettle lid blown off by steam before Watt did, and it suggested no thought to them; millions had lost their dearest friend before Tennyson lost Hallam, and they wrote no “ In Memoriam” ; millions had watched nations reeling with the shock of revolution before Burke gazed on the shattered throne and the polluted altar of France, and no burning words of eloquence fell from their lips or from their pen. To the souls trained in patient thought the revelation of great truth comes--or rather, what are common facts to others are revelations to them. Don’ t call these things accidents. “ The accidental falling of an apple was the cause of the discovery of the laws of gravity,” says a popular treatise. A fearful untruth. The cause of the discovery was the long period of deep self-sacrificing thought which Newton had given to Nature. “ What a lucky man Newton was to have that apple fall before him!” said a young man once, in my hearing. “ Rather,” said a thoughtful man, standing by, “ what a lucky apple to fall before Newton!” There is a world of truth in that. So one might go through the whole range of human experience and culture, and everywhere the kingdom that you want to become master of has to be taken by force. The door is opened to the persistent knocking. The bread is given to the unwearied demand. The treasure is found by the one who has been seeking. Now we come to the highest life of all--to the culture of that part of our nature which transcends all else. Is it not this great principle which pervades all the physical and mental world; which we see in every tiny plant as it struggles through the earth towards the light, in every mighty oak scarred with the lightnings and storms of ages, in every torrent that fights its way towards the ocean; which we see in every achievement of physical science, in every path she has constructed across mountain or morass, in every railroad for which she has torn and blasted a way through the granite of the earth; which we see in every great painting that has glowed with beauty on the canvas, in every great work of the sculptor who has made the cold marble breathe and live; which we see in every page of every great book in which Science records her facts, or poet, or historian, or philosopher has penned his researches and his thoughts--is not, I say, this great principle, which thus meets us everywhere--in all noble results, and all great achievements, in every department of human thought and life--to be found anywhere in the grander life of the immortal soul? Surely itis, brethren, and we ignore the teaching of Christ and of His apostles if we regard Christ’ s religion as merely a means by which we are to be saved from all trouble and responsibility about the future. There are people who tell you that all you have to do is to “ accept Christ,” “ believe in Him,” and then He has done all for you--you need have no more anxiety or trouble. All through those Epistles, which are so full of the gospel of the grace of God, and where Christ and Him crucified is the central fact of the Christian faith, the apostle, in words which thrill with the living power of deep personal experience, speaks of the Christian life as a ceaseless, protracted, fearful struggle. Be exhausts things sacred and profane to find imagery to depict and to impress this truth. The Christian life is a race for which no previous preparation is too careful; in which every nerve is to be strained, and on which all our force is to be concentrated, that we may “ obtain the prize” (1 Corinthians 9:24-27). (T. T. Shore, M. A.) Luke 16:17 Than one tittle of the law to fall Power and perpetuity of law If you have read the Pentateuch, and especially the books of Exodus and Leviticus, with care, you have perhaps wondered why a system of laws, so complicated, so careful of little things, so rigidly exact in its directions about them, should ever have been enacted. Viewing it in certain aspects, it may be that a sort of half suspicion has crossed your minds that legislation of this kind is really unworthy of such a being as God. But when the purpose of its Divine Author is seen, when the relation of the Law of Moses to the Jews as a separated people and to the gospel dispensation is fully understood, the whole system appears in quite a new light. The marks of Divine wisdom and goodness are clearly discernible in all its parts, even in its minutest details. This Mosaic code is “ the Law” spoken of in the text. It embodies many precepts of universal application and eternal authority--it included, indeed, the whole moral law; but as a code, it was enacted for a specific end, and was to continue in force for a specific period. Until this end was gained, and this period completed, not a jot or tittle of it could be annulled. The system possessed all the mighty power of law--nothing could set it aside. To regard or to treat any one of its provisions as an effete or antiquated or useless thing, was, in effect, to charge the Divine Lawgiver with folly. Hence the strong language in which our Lord asserts its power and its perpetuity until the fulness of the time had come. “ Heaven and earth may pass away, but one jot or tittle of the law cannot fail.” These words announce a great truth; what is here affirmed of the law in a distinctive sense is true of law universally. God, who called the universe into existence by the word of His power, governs it according to the counsel of His own will. Now the great truth which the text asserts is this, viz., THAT THE LAWS WHICH GOVERN THE ARE OF MORE THAN THE ITSELF--that it is of unspeakably more importance that the former should be maintained than that the latter should exist--that all the creatures of God, rational and irrational, should obey the laws to which He has been pleased to subject them, that they should work in harmony with these enactments, than that any or all of them should be kept in being. Glorious as are all the works of God, yet if you should take any one of them, consider it apart from all others, or view it as a mere isolated thing, you would perceive little, if any, excellence in it. It would indeed bespeak the creative energy of Him who made it, but you could not discover from it alone whether He is wise and good, or the reverse. It is only when you regard it in its relations to other things, and ascertain why it was made, and see its exact fitness to an end, that its real “ glory and greatness as a work of God shine forth. How beautiful to us is the spectacle of a field of waving corn? Its very verdure is refreshing to the eye, because adapted to the structure of our organ of vision, while its yellow ripeness gives the promise of an abundant supply of the food we need. But--if we may imagine such a thing--transfer it to a world of creatures with a constitution totally unlike ours, its beauty would vanish because its fitness to an end would be lost. The glory of creation, then, arises mainly from the benign ends and perfect adaptations of its countless parts. And hence it is that the universe must be, as we have already said, under law to God, and that the maintenance of the laws which govern it is vastly more important than the existence of the universe itself. In the working of the stupendous mechanism of the heavens, all is orderly and harmonious so long as the law which governs its movements is obeyed. But suppose the reverse of this to be the case--that the law of gravitation was liable to incessant interruptions, that the forces which produce the beautiful steadiness we now observe operated according to no fixed rule, either as to direction or degree, so that satellites should rush off into boundless space, or dash furiously against each other, and the planets, starting from their orbits, should wander at their will through immensity, or should be suddenly deluged with the fogs or the flames (as the case may be) of a comet, while this fair earth of ours, according as chance drove her near to or far distant from the sun, were converted into a fiery furnace or a globe of ice. We may try to fancy the state of things under such a reign of anarchy, though the boldest imagination must come far short of the reality. But the main question is, can we suppose that God would suffer, even for a moment, such a lawless universe to exist? No. He is a “ God of order,” and it were far better to remand creation to its original nothingness, than to permit disorder and confusion thus to gain the mastery over it; better annihilate it at once, than not maintain its laws in full supremacy and force. “ Heaven and earth may pass away, but one jot or tittle of the laws shall not fail.” Let us, if you please, take another illustration from THE EARTH ON WHICH WE DWELL. Here, too, we observe a grand and complicated system of physical operations incessantly going on, of physical laws perpetually at work. But suppose that the whole of this wonderful economy of nature were mysteriously disturbed--that her processes, apparently so complicated, yet never confused, were suddenly left to chance, and were subject to no laws, so that men sowed fields and reaped nothing, and then again where they planted nothing they reaped abundance; so that their food one day ministered nourishment, and the next deadly poison; nor could they tell whether the water they drank would quench or increase their thirst; that the darkness of night, the light of day, the heat of summer, the frost of winter, lasted through periods so indefinite, and were liable to changes so great and sudden, that none could predict what a moment would bring forth; I ask, again, could God permit this goodly earth of ours to fall into a condition so utterly lawless and so destructive to all the creatures that dwell upon its surface? No indeed. Better a thousandfold that it were blotted from existence than that it should become such a prey of anarchy, such a plaything of chance, without law, without life--a world as dishonouring to its Maker as it would be intolerable for man. But let us come nearer home and TAKE AN FROM MAN HIMSELF. In whatever aspect we view him, whether as a physical, social, intellectual, or moral being, we find him the subject of laws--of laws unchangeable as the eternal Lawgiver Himself; and harsh as the announcement may sound, it is nevertheless true that not to maintain these laws would be far greater evil than the destruction of the human race; better that men should perish than that these laws should be set aside. We may not trifle with any one of these laws, to which He who “ formed us of clay and made us men” hath subjected our physical nature. If we do, it is at our peril; for although these laws are not enforced by precisely the same penalty, yet we should ever remember that each has a penalty of its own; and whether it be more or less severe, we must endure the punishment if we venture to violate the law. Let the motive which prompts a man to disregard the laws of health, or the manner in which the thing is done, be what it may; let him, for example, turn night into day--whether he be a student, whose intense zeal for knowledge keeps him at his books when he should be in bed, or a miserable sensualist, who gives his midnight hours to revelry and banqueting--the inevitable result to him will be a ruined constitution. God will not modify the order He has established so as to suit the convenience of your depraved appetites; He will not change His laws to accommodate either the unwise student or the miserable sensualist. “ Heaven and earth shall pass, but not one jot or tittle of His law.” So it is with men considered as SOCIAL BEINGS. There are laws of social life ordained of God, and though we cannot always trace their operation so distinctly as we can the working of those which govern the material creation, we may still be certain that the former are just as uniform and immutable as the latter. We only need to open our eyes and look at what is going on around us to be convinced of this truth. Economy, diligence, prudence, truthfulness, unswerving probity, on the one hand, and extravagance, self-indulgence, falsehood, deceit, trickery, on the other, do not yield their respective fruits at random or by chance. No. There is a law which renders these results invariable. “ A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, nor a corrupt tree good fruit.” The trickster, the time-server, the two-faced flatterer, may secure the position or the office on which his heart is set, but real honour and lasting power he never wins. God’ s law forbids it. And the experience of all ages embodied in the proverbs of all nations, as well as the word of eternal truth, proves that in the long run such men always reap their proper reward, and go at last to their own place. Thus far we have viewed the teaching of our text mainly as it bears upon men’ s present interests and their earthly life. It contains lessons of still higher moment. We know that this world is the prelude of another, and even here below we have, in the relation of youth to age, a striking image of the relation which subsists between this world and the next, between our present life and the everlasting life to come. He who wastes the period which God has allotted to make a man of him--a period short indeed, as it consists of only a few years, but sufficient for the purpose if rightly improved--wastes what he never can replace. Such is the law of our present earthly existence, and in it we see shadowed forth the law of our future and eternal life. The very gospel, which brings life and immortality to light, emphatically proclaims that sin and suffering are conjoined by a law immutable as the eternal throne. It is surely needless for me to bring arguments to substantiate the charge that you are a sinner against God. Your own conscience confesses it, “ your own heart condemns” you. Well, this word of Him who cannot lie tells you, in terms too plain to be misunderstood, that perish you must for ever, unless saved through the righteousness and atonement of the Son of God. “ Heaven and earth shall pass away, but one jot or tittle of the law cannot fail.” Let me, in conclusion, add as a word of warning, that the instrument with which the devil most successfully assails the young and the old is scepticism in regard to the momentous truth taught in the text. This is his grand temptation, and was the weapon with which he gained his dismal triumph over the common mother of our race. “ Why not eat of the tree of knowledge,” he asked, “ that stands in the midst of the garden--its form so beautiful to the sight, its fruit so sweet to the taste?” “ I am under a law,” replied Eve, “ that forbids me to touch it, and it is enforced by the awful penalty of death.” “ But surely,” rejoined the tempter, “ you must have misapprehended the meaning of your Maker; it is not to be supposed that He will ever inflict upon you a punishment so dreadful for an offence so trifling.” Alas! “ She took, she ate, earth felt the wound, and Nature from her seat sighing, gave signs of woe that all was lost.” Precisely so does the same “ father of lies” deceive the youth with reference to the connection that subsists between the springtide and the summer and autumn of our present life. He who is old enough to understand anything, however inconsiderate of the personal bearing of the truth, knows perfectly well that he must sow the seed if he would reap the harvest. (J. Forsyth, D. D.) Luke 16:19-31 There was a certain rich man Dives and Lazarus I. THE OF DIVINE ON EARTH ARE NOT ALWAYS EVENLY BASED UPON A OF HUMAN DESERT. 1. The rich man is not offered as a luminous exhibition of personal worth (see Luke 16:19-21). 2. On the other hand, Lazarus was a beggar, and frightfully diseased. His condition was pitiable. But it does not follow that he had been immoral, nor that he was under judgment for crime. Neither of these men represented in the parable took his moral state, or received his everlasting reward, from his earthly lot. II. THE AS TO A MAN’ S WITH GOD TURNS ON . 1. The name which this poverty-stricken invalid bears is all that is given us at this stage in the story to indicate that he was a religious man. It is simply the ancient Eleazar put into the New Testament Lazarus--the Hebrew translated to Greek--and means “ God is my help.” It is plain that our Lord Jesus designed this as a sufficient description of him. As Alford shrewdly remarks, he purposed “ to fill in the character of the poor man.” He doubtless gave the appellation, as Bunyan bestowed the name of his hero in Pilgrim’ s Progress: he called his name “ Christian” because he was a Christian. And this beggar here is called “ God is my help,” because he was a good man, living according to his light by the help of God. 2. But the other man’ s character is under a full exhibition. He was luxuriously self-seeking. He lavished his wealth upon himself, and fed his appetites unrestrainedly. He was inhumane. The very brutes in Perea were less brutal than Dives. The rich man was not only in his conduct heartless, but in his custom irreligious; for the Jewish law demanded consideration of the poor with a hundred reiterated precepts; these he habitually disobeyed. And in the end of the tale we have the intimation that, above everything else, Dives never paid any attention to what Moses and the prophets were thundering in his ears from the Scriptures about making preparation for another world which was lying out beyond this. We reach the conclusion that in this parable the rich man represents a worldly sinner. III. Again: WE LEARN HERE THAT DEATH IS THE EVENT WHICH USHERS IN THE CERTAIN OF EACH HUMAN SOUL. 1. Both of these men died. 2. Both of these men found themselves living after they had died. IV. WHAT COMES AFTER DEATH IS TO US OF FAR MORE THAN WHAT COMES BEFORE. 1. For, first, it gathers up now into itself whatever went before, and includes all its consequences. 2. And then what chines after death introduces fresh and heavy experiences of its own. The contrast is offered of highest felicity with most extreme suffering. That other life will be quite as sensitive as this, and possibly more so. Power of suffering may be augmented. There will be recognition of friends and relatives and neighbours in that new existence. These souls all appear to know each other in those moments of terrible candour. And they understand each other, too, at last; there is great plainness of speech among them. V. THE GOSPEL REACHES ITS LIMIT IN THIS STATE OF OUR . 1. There will be no increase in the ordinary means of grace. 2. No novel form of address will be possible (Luke 16:30-31). (C. S.Robinson, D. D.) The rich and the poor, here and hereafter The case is that of one who had great wealth, and enjoyed it, and lived handsomely, but took no thought to the poor brother outside. He had his evil things in the same hour in which the brother in the grand house had his good things; and this went on, day after day, white the two men neared another life: but when that life began, there came a change. Now, it seems clear, from the way in which the case is put, that this change, which was in fact a revolution, and brought with it a precise reversal of the states of those two men, came in a line of predetermined events. It implies the working of a law, which may have been fulfilled in countless instances already, and is destined to act and rule so long as the lots of men are unequal in this life. If this be so, it ought to make those of us uneasy, who perceive, in comparing themselves with their neighbours, that they are having their good things now. It seems a just inference from this parable, which was undoubtedly intended as a lesson and a warning for us all, that Almighty God, the Righteous and Just, although He may for the present permit the poor to suffer, has made a law in the due execution whereof there may be expected a complete upset of conditions by and by, on our passage into another life. Many years ago, in the early winter, I found myself one evening at a rich man’ s table, with others bidden to the feast. We had our good things. Nothing was wanting to the completeness of our entertainment in which appeared, in their order, all delicious viands, with condiments and delicacies, and whatsoever is pleasant to the eyes and good for food. There shone the precious metals, and rare porcelains and crystal, while, amidst roses and other choice flowers appeared, in rich warm hues as of the ruby and the topaz, the fruit of the vines of distant lands. As one surveyed the cheerful company under the soft brilliancy of many lights, it was a pleasant scene; in their lifetime they were receiving their good things; and not as dissolute revellers, but after the way of the highly respectable, to whom all this came as to men and women to the manner born, and living, as became their station, the life of the rich and the free. In less than an hour after leaving that scene, I found myself descending, by dim and muddy steps, the basement of a miserable house in the same city, and entering a room some feet below the level of the sidewalk. What light there was in that forlorn apartment came from a dull tallow candle; the feeble ray fell on bare walls and a bare floor, and showed no furniture but an old bedstead, without clothes or bedding, or so much as a truss of straw. On the floor sat two children, thinly clad, crouching close to an old rust-eaten stove, in which a faint redness glimmered through the choked-up ashes, the very mockery of a fire. The little ones had no food; their mother, they said, was abroad to see if she could get them a bit of something to eat, while a neighbour had given her the candle by the aid of which I made out the pitiful scene. There was the other side of the parable; the old, old story: “ and likewise Lazarus evil things.” Under the winter’ s evening, the two rooms told their separate stories to the Lord; the “ good things” there, the “ evil things” here; just as it has been from the beginning. Alas I the heart dies down at such contrasts. Who could look on two such pictures within the same hour, and admit that things are as they ought to be in this world? And if, at such a moment, he remembers the words of the parable, it cannot but occur to him, as was just now said, that there must be a hidden law of adjustment, whose working will be revealed in due season. He must say to himself: It cannot be that these things are to last for ever; and moreover, it cannot be that he who is indifferent to them while they last can finally go unpunished. Indifference on these points is crime; and crime must bring retribution. We have, then, in the words of our Lord in the parable a very serious intimation; and, in common daily experience, an argument of great persuasive force urging us to heed it. It is one of the gravest of questions how we are to deal with the terrible problems thus raised; problems which could not be more urgent or more practical; which relate to both worlds at once; to the estates of men in this life, and to the estates of those same men in the life hereafter. We want light on a dark question; infidelity and anti-Christian social science fail us here; the latter amuses us with a jack-a-lantern, leading nowhere but into greater embarrassments; the former blows out what light remains, and by destroying society reduces all men everywhere to present terror and ultimate barbarism. Fortunately for the human race there are ideas as different from infidel or socialistic notions as light from darkness; ideas put forth by our blessed Lord, and kept afloat by the powerful agency of that religion which He founded and sustained. In these ideas, fully realized and widely applied, resides the only hope of relief. Let us recall them to our thoughts and see in what subtle and perhaps unsuspected way they help us all--the poor who are in misery here, and the rich who are in peril hereafter. First, then, Christianity never has attempted to eliminate the rich as a class. It is God’ s will that there shall always be the rich and the poor. But although the rich are permitted to be among us and to have a place in His Church, yet another thing is true. They are told that their riches are a real and a deadly peril; as if a man had in his house what might at any moment take fire or explode and destroy his life. And, more than this: the vast difference between them and the poor is one of those which seem to be unfair and unjust, in a human point of view. I mean that if you take man and man there is no reason a priori why the rich man should not be in the poor man’ s place and the poor man in the rich man’ s, and often no reason can be found in the characters of the men themselves. “ Why is not that poor brother where I am and I in his place? It seems scarcely just to him now; it cannot go on for ever.” If all the rich felt thus the sorrows of the poor would be at end, even for this life; and the rich would feel thus if they were penetrated with the spirit of the gospel. Even so much as there is (and blessed be God! there is much of this nobility of Christian love), has done and is doing a vast deal of good, and alleviating the misery and sorrow of the poor. (Morgan Dix, D. D.) Dives and Lazarus I. THE RICH MAN IN HIS AND . II. LAZARUS IN HIS POVERTY. 1. A beggar. 2. Homeless. 3. Afflicted in person. III. THE DEATH OF LAZARUS. 1. At his death he becomes the subject of angelic minis tration. 2. He is conveyed in triumph to glory. IV. THE DEMISE OF THE RICH MAN. 1. His riches could not save him from death. 2. They could only secure him an imposing funeral. Lessons: 1. That piety on earth is often allied with poverty and suffering. 2. That earthly prosperity and magnificence are no proofs of the Divine favour. 3. That whatever be our condition in this world, we are travelling towards another. 4. That death is inevitable to all stations and ranks. (J. Burns, D. D.) Dives and Lazarus after death I. WE SEE LAZARUS IN THE ABODE OF THE BLESSED. His state is one of-- 1. Repose, after the toils of life. 2. Dignity, after the humiliating scenes of his earthly adversity. 3. Abundance, after want. 4. Bliss, after grief and sorrow. II. WE ARE TO DIVES AS TO THE REGIONS OF THE LOST. “ In torments.” 1. Torments arising from the awful change he had experienced when death removed him from his wealth and luxuries on earth. 2. Torments from unallayed desires. He seeks now even for one drop of water, but in vain. 3. Torments from the bitter and despairing anguish of his doomed spirit. 4. Torments of keen self-reproach. 5. Torments from the direct infliction of the righteous wrath of God. 6. Torments from having the world of joy and glory within the range of his distracted vision. III. WE ARE OF HIS PRAYERS. 1. For the alleviation of his own agonies. 2. For additional means to save his brethren. Lessons: 1. How awful it is to die in a carnal, unregenerate state. 2. How connected are the concerns of time with the realities of eternity. “ Whatsoever a man sows that shall he also reap.” 3. How all-important is real personal piety. 4. The sufficiency of the means appointed for man’ s salvation. (J. Burns, D. D.) Lessons from the parable 1. Let us learn here that “ one thing is needful” --the care of the soul. What can riches do without this? 2. Let us learn, that, if the word of God revealed in the Scriptures, if the gospel of Jesus Christ, if the promises and the warnings written there, do not convince us, do not turn us to God--then nothing would. 3. Observe from this parable, that hell will be the portion not only of the grossly wicked, the swearer, the adulterer, the drunkard, the dishonest, the liar; for we read not, that the rich man was any of these: yet he perished. 4. What comfort may this parable give to the Christian in suffering! (E. Blencowe, M. A.) The rich man and Lazarus I. THE . 1. In their external circumstances. (1) One rich; the other poor. (2) One elegantly clothed; the other as a beggar. (3) One sumptuously fed; the other desiring the rich man’ s crumbs. (4) One in health; the other physically wretched. (5) One socially influential; the other in beggarly isolation. 2. In their spiritual condition. (1) One exulting in his wealth; the other contented in his poverty. (2) One satisfied with his earthly possessions; the other seeking treasure in heaven. (3) One selfish and ungodly; the other a self-sacrificing believer. 3. In their eternal destiny. (1) One cast into hell; the other carried into heaven. (2) One tormented; the other comforted. (3) One associated with demons; the other in companionship with Abraham. (4) One in unalterable anguish; the other in permanent blessedness. II. THE LESSONS. 1. As to Providence. (1) Worldly prosperity no proof of acceptance with God. (2) Poverty and distress no proof of Divine abandonment. (3) Worldly isolation compatible with Divine companionship. 2. As to spiritual life. (1) Ease, luxury, and social elevation do not lead to spiritual-mindedness. (2) Beggary, physical helplessness, and deprivation of all worldly comforts, not able to wean the believer from God. (3) The Holy Scriptures God’ s best guide to spiritual truth. 3. As to the future state. (1) That man has an immortal nature. (2) That death does not affect the constituents of this nature in respect either to (a) Its consciousness; (b) memory; (c) conscience. (3) That death does not affect the moral condition of this nature. (4) Heaven and hell, respectively appointed for the good and bad. (5) Heaven and hell, eternally separated by an impassable gulf. (D. C. Hughes, M. A.) A wealthy but sad family I. A WEALTHY FAMILY. “ Wore purple and fine linen every day.” Probably the great magnates of the neighbourhood. II. A LARGE FAMILY. Six brothers. III. A FAMILY WHICH DEATH HAD VISITED. “ The rich man died and was buried.” Death will neither be bribed by wealth, nor wait for preparation. IV. A FAMILY, ONE OF WHICH WAS IN HELL. Secular wealth is sometimes soul-degrading. V. A FAMILY WHOSE WERE ALL ON THE ROAD TO RUIN. VI. A FAMILY WHOSE BROTHER AT THE IDEA OF REUNION. VII. A FAMILY WHO ALL THE MEANS THEY NEEDED OR WOULD EVER HAVE FOR . (Anon.) Opportunity for charity “ There was a certain beggar named Lazarus, which was laid at his gate.” This is a fact of importance in the history of Dives. Lazarus enters on the stage not merely to present a striking contrast to the rich man’ s state, but as one with whom the latter had relations. Lazarus represents opportunity for the exercise of humanity. That is the chief if not the sole purpose for which he appears in the first scene. (A. B. Bruce.) Wealth making friends for the future What a vastly greater benefit Dives might have gained through Lazarus, had he only turned his acquaintance with him to account in good time. Had he made of him a friend with his worldly possessions he might have been his companion in paradise. But now, so far from attaining that felicity, he cannot even obtain the little favour he craves. (A. B. Bruce.) Contrasts This parable is full of sharp contrasts. 1. There is the contrast in the life of these two men. The one rich, the other a beggar. The rich man had great possessions, yet one thing he lacked, and that was the one thing needful. Lazarus, the beggar, was after all the truly rich man, “ as having nothing, and yet possessing all things.” 2. Next, there is a contrast in the death of these two men. 3. And there is a contrast in the after time for these two men. The rich man was buried, doubtless, with great pomp. Some of us have seen such funerals. What extravagance and display take the place of reverent resignation and quiet grief! Of the beggar’ s burial place we know nothing. 4. But the sharpest contrast of all is in the world beyond, from which for a moment Jesus draws back the veil. (H. J. Wilmot Buxton, M. A.) Dives and Lazarus I. THE UNEQUAL OF THE GIFTS OF AMONGST MANKIND. II. THE OF THINGS THAT TAKES PLACE AT DEATH. III. THE THAT TAKES PLACE AT DEATH BETWEEN THE AND THE WICKED. IV. THE VIEW THAT IS TAKEN OF THIS LIFE WHEN ONCE THEY GET OUT INTO THE FUTURE. V. THE OF THE THAT GOD HAS GIVEN TO CONFIRM ALL THESE THINGS. (J. E. Beaumont.) Dives and Lazarus I. THE OF DIVES IN HIS TWO STATES OF . 1. In this world Dives was possessed-- (1) Of an abundance of earthly good. (2) He knew how to enjoy this abundance, according to the usual meaning of this phraseology. (3) He was probably, so far as pertains to human nature in these circumstances, possessed of entire ease of mind. 2. At death his situation was in all respects reversed. (1) He was disembodied. (2) In absolute want of all things. (3) Despised. (4) Miserable. II. THE OF LAZARUS IN THE PRESENT WORLD, AND IN THE FUTURE. 1. In this world, Lazarus was-- (1) In a state of the most abject poverty. (2) Miserable. 2. In the future world he was-- (1) Rich in the abundance of all things. (2) Honourable. (3) Happy. (T. Dwight, D. D.) The rich man and Lazarus I. THE BETWEEN THESE TWO MEN. 1. The parable speaks of a rich man and a poor man; and the resemblance between them may be traced, first, in the mortality of their bodies. They were both men, sinful men, and consequently dying men. No sooner is it said that “ the beggar died,” than it is added, “ the rich man also died.” And thus must end the history of us all. 2. These men resembled each other also in the immortality of their souls. The soul of the poorest amongst us is as immortal as the soul of the richest. 3. To these two points of resemblance between these men, we may add a third, not indeed absolutely expressed here, but, like the fact we have just alluded to, evidently to be inferred--accountableness to God. It was not chance which placed them where they are. They went thither from a bar of judgment. II. Let us proceed to notice, secondly, THE BETWEEN THESE TWO MEN, WITH THE GROUNDS OR REASONS OF IT. They differed in two points. 1. In their earthly portion. How great a contrast! Where shall we find its origin? It warns us against judging of men’ s character by men’ s condition. That diversity of condition, which we may wonder at but cannot alter, which has prevailed more or less in every age and nation notwithstanding every attempt to put an end to it, that diversity must be traced to the sovereign will of God. And He suffers, or rather He establishes it, because it is conducive to our welfare and His own glory. (1) It serves to show us, among other things, the poverty of the world and the all-sufficiency of God. (2) Besides, this diversity of condition, this mixture of poverty and riches on the earth, answers a further end--it proclaims to thoughtless man another world. There must be a world in which the just Governor of the universe will assert His justice, will vindicate His character, and render to the sons of men according their works, 2. The two men it speaks of differed in their eternal condition. (C. Bradley, M. A.) The contrast in eternity The first truth here suggested is that by the allotments of His providence in the present world, God does not distinguish between the righteous and the wicked. It has been the grief of many good men, that the dispensations of providence in this world afford so little evidence of the impartiality and rectitude of the Divine government. Whether it be to show the comparative meanness and significance of all earthly good, or that the Father of mercies is kind even to the evil and unthankful, or to illustrate their own impenitence and obduracy, or to give them the opportunity of filling up the measure of their iniquity! or to accomplish all these purposes--the fact is unquestioned--that thus far in the history of the world, by far the greater portion of those who, like the rich man in the parable, have fared sumptuously every day, have been of the wicked rather than of the righteous. The real disposition of the Divine mind toward holiness and sin must be exhibited in the distribution of good and evil in accordance with their respective characters. The present world, therefore, is but the season of trial, with a view to a future retribution. We must look beyond, if we would see the line of demarcation between the friends and foes of God drawn with visible and permanent distinctness. This difference will be clearly and distinctly made, at the end of the world. The time of trial on the earth was never designed to be long. Human life with all its invaluable opportunities, is but “ a vapour that appeareth for a little while and then vanisheth away.” Every man then enters upon allotments, which, so far from being influenced by his earthly standing, are exclusively determined by his moral character. There will be a difference of character, of place, of society, of employment, of prospects. They will be unlike in every conceivable particular. (G. Spring, D. D.) Worldly gratification and its terrible mockery My friends, do you remember that old Scythian custom, when the head of a house died? How he was dressed in his finest dress, and set in his chariot, and carried about to his friends’ houses; and each of them placed him at his table’ s head, and all feasted in his presence? Suppose it were offered to you, in plain words, as it is offered to you in dire facts, that you should gain this Scythian honour, gradually, while you yet thought yourself alive. Suppose the offer were this: You shall die slowly; your blood shall daily grow cold, your flesh petrify, your heart beat at last only as a rusted group of iron valves. Your life shall fade from you, and sink through the earth into the ice of Caina; but, day by day, your body shall be dressed more gaily, and set in higher chariots, and have more orders on the breast--crowns on its head, if you will. Men shall bow before it, stare and shout round it, crowd after it up and down the streets; build palaces for it, feast with it at their tables’ heads all the night long; your soul shall stay enough within it to know what they do, and feel the weight of the golden dress on its shoulders, and the furrow of the crown-edge on the skull--no more. Would you take the offer, verbally made by the death-angel? Would the meanest among us take it, think you? Yet practically and verily we grasp at it, every one of us, in a measure; many of us grasp at it in its fulness of horror. Every man accepts it, who desires to advance in life without know ing what life is; who means only that he is to get more horses, and more footmen, and more fortune, and more public honour, and--not more personal soul. He only is advancing in life, whose heart is getting softer, whose blood warmer, whose brain quicker, whose spirit is entering into living peace. And the men who have this life in them are the true lords or kings of the earth--they, and they only. (John Ruskin.) The parable of the rich man and Lazarus I proceed to observe the vast difference between men’ s conditions in this world and the other. The rich man prospered here, and was afterwards tormented. And it is very agreeable to the wisdom of God to make such a difference between men’ s conditions in this world and the other, and that for these two reasons: 1. For the trying of men’ s virtue. 2. In order to the recompensing of it. From this consideration of the difference between the condition of men in this world and the other, we may infer-- (1) That no man should measure his felicity or unhappiness by his lot in this world. (2) We should not set too great a value upon the blessings of this life. (3) We should not be excessively troubled if we meet with hardship and affliction here in this world, because those whom God designs for the greatest happiness hereafter may receive evil things here. (4) We should do all things with a regard to our future and eternal state. (Archbishop Tillotson.) The true valuation of man In this life, under the managery of ordinary Providence, the worst men may abound with the good things of this life, and better men are sometimes shortened and want even the necessary conveniences of life. Of this I shall speak but a word, because it is a matter of easy observation. This David, Job, and Jeremiah stumbled at. That right, property, and title are founded in nature, not in grace. God gave the world and the things thereof unto the sons of men. If I would prove this to be mine, I must prove my title, not by miracle, but as the law and usage of the country where I dwell do state and determine; therefore I will say no more in this particular. I. That if we would take a right estimate of man, we must consider him in respect to a double state--here and hereafter--and that for these two reasons: 1. Because there is less of man here and more hereafter. 2. Because man is more valuable than this world represents him to be. I. The first of these I will make appear in three particulars, that there is less of man here and much more hereafter. 1. In respect of his time and continuance in being. 2. In this state there is less of right judgment of things and persons. Things here go under false appearances, and persons here are under the power of lying imaginations. 3. Less of weal or woe is in this state than in the other, for men in this state do not fully reap the fruit of their own ways; they do not come to the proof of the bargain they have made. In the respects before mentioned and others that possibly might be superadded, it appears that there is less of man in this world. But I may also adjoin, by way of exception, some particulars to the contrary, for I must acknowledge that in some respects our being in this world is very considerable. I will instance in three particulars-- 1. In respect of man’ s possibility. 2. In respect of man’ s opportunity. 3. In respect of man’ s well-grounded faith and expectation. I now come to the second reason. Why, if we would make a just estimate of man, we must consider him in respect to his double state of existence, in time and in eternity. For man is a much more valuable creature than his affairs in this world represent him to be, and this I will make appear in three particulars. Because-- 1. Man is here in his state of infancy; yea, he is as it were imprisoned and encumbered with a gross, dull, and crazy body. 2. In this state man is neither as he should be, nor, if he himself well consider, as he would be. The state of man in this world doth represent him subject to the same vanity that all other creatures lie under (Job 17:14). This state represents a man as very low and mean because he is subjected to low and mean employments--fit only to converse with other creatures. This present state represents a man in a condition of beggary, dependence, and necessity (Job 1:21). This state represents a man as worn out with solicitude and care for himself, as being tormented with fear, and more to seek than any other creature. This state represents man to be in danger from him that is next him, and of his own kind; for so is the world through sin become degenerate, that one man, as it were, is become a wolf to another. Lastly, the state of man in this life represents his condition other ways than indeed it is; that is, it represents a man the object of the devil’ s envy, usurpation, and tyranny. He is called the “ Prince of the power of the air, the spirit that worketh in the children of disobedience” (Ephesians 2:2). For the close of this particular I shall add a word or two of application. And-- 1. If so be there is less of man here and more hereafter, if when we would take a right estimate of man we must consider him in respect of his double estate, hereafter as well as here, then those persons are guilty of the greatest madness and folly that consider themselves only in order to this life; whereas these men have souls to save or to lose, and there is another state that will commence and begin after the expiration of this. 2. My next inference from what hath been said is--that we should not be tempted in this life to do anything to the prejudice of our future state, the state of eternity; but to let things be considered according to the true worth and value, lest they find cause to repent, when it is too late, of the pleasures they took in their unlawful actions. II. The second proposition is--that the state of man in the life to come holds a proportion to his affairs in this life. 1. Let it be understood that I have no intention at all to speak one word to countenance the creature’ s merit with God, for that I conceive to be incompatible to the condition of the highest angel in glory properly to merit anything at the hand of God. 2. Again, when I say the state of man in the world to come holds a proportion to his affairs in this world, you must not understand it means worldly circumstances of wealth, honour, pleasure, strength, or worldly privileges. Therefore in the affirmative, two things there are belonging to men in this state which are the measures of our happiness in the future state-- (1) The internal disposition and mental temper. (2) The illicit acts which follow the temper and are connatural to it. These are our acquisitions, through the grace and assistance of God, which always is to be understood as principal to all good, though it be not always expressed, for all good is of God. And for this I will give you an account that it must be so. 1. From the nature of the thing, for goodness and happiness are the same thing materially; in nature they are the same, as malignity and misery are the same in nature too. 2. From the judgment of God, and those declarations which He hath made of Himself in the Scriptures, which everywhere declare that He will render to every one according to right (Romans 2:6-8). Then let men look well to their mental dispositions, and to their moral actions. This is of a mighty use in religion to understand the true notion of moral actions. From the words of the text I shall observe briefly two things more--First. That worldly prosperity is no certain forerunner of future happiness; for this is a thing heterogenial, and is from distinct and quite other causes. The providence of God governs the world, and the laws of the kingdom of Christ are quite different things. 1. Let no man make himself a slave to that which is no part of his happiness. 2. Let him take his chief care about that which is in certain conjunction with happiness, and that is the noble generous temper of his soul, and the illicit acts of his mind. Secondly. We see from hence that men change terms, circumstances, and conditions, one with another in the world to come. For an account of this-- 1. Things many times are wrong here, but they will not be wrong always. 2. The present work is to exercise virtue. This is a probation state, a state of trial, and if so, there must be freedom and liberty of action. 3. The final resolution and last stating of things is reserved to another time when no corrupt judge shall sit, but He shall come that shall judge the world in righteousness. The use I will make of this is-- 1. Therefore, do not envy any one’ s condition; it is not safe, though glory attend upon it for a while (Psalms 37:1). 2. Satisfy thyself in thine own condition if it be good and virtuous, for then it is safe. 3. Have a right notion and judgment of the business of time, which is to prepare for the future state. I will conclude this discourse with these four inferences: 1. Then it is folly and madness for men--as frequently they do--to estimate or consider themselves wholly or chiefly by their affairs in this world, and by the good things thereof, such as are power, riches, pleasures. 2. Then it is the great concernment of our souls not at all to admit of any temptation or suggestion to do anything in this life to the prejudice of our state in eternity. 3. Then it is fairly knowable in this state, and by something thereof as a foregoing participation or sign, what our state and condition for sort and kind will be in the world to come. 4. Then faith and patience to go through the world withal, for the day draws on apace for the stating and rectifying of things, the proportioning of recompense and reward to action, and the completing and consummating what is weak and imperfect for the present. He is unreasonably ira patient and hasty who will not stay and expect the season of the year and what that brings, but mutters and complains of injury and hard measures because he cannot have harvest in seed-time. (B. Whichcote.) The sin of neglecting to be charitable Here are three great aggravations of the rich man’ s uncharitableness-- I. That here was an object presented to him. II. Such an object as would move any one’ s pity, a man reduced to extreme misery and necessity. III. A little relief would have contented him. 1. That unmercifulness and uncharitableness to the poor is a very great sin. It contains in its very nature two black crimes. (1) Inhumanity; it is an argument of a cruel and savage disposition not to pity those that are in want and misery. (2) Besides the inhumanity of this sin, it is likewise a great impiety toward God. Unmercifulness to the poor hath this fourfold impiety in it--it is a contempt of God; an usurpation upon His right; a slighting of His providence; and a plain demonstration that we do not love God, and that all our pretences to religion are hypocritical and insincere. 2. That it is such a sin, as alone, and without any other guilt, is sufficient to ruin a man for ever. The parable lays the rich man’ s condemnation upon this, it was the guilt of this sin that tormented him when he was in hell. The Scripture is full of severe threatenings against this sin (Proverbs 21:13). Our eternal happiness does not so much depend upon the exercise of any one single grace or virtue, as this of charity and mercy. Faith and repentance are more general and fundamental graces, and, as it were, the parents of all the rest: but of all single virtues, the Scripture lays the greatest weight upon this of charity; and if we do truly believe the precepts of the gospel, and the promises and threatenings of it, we cannot but have a principal regard to it. I know how averse men generally are to this duty, which make them so full of excuses and objections against it. 1. They have children to provide for. This is not the case of all, and they whose case it is may do well to consider that ii will not be amiss to leave a blessing as well as an inheritance to their children. 2. They tell us they intend to do something when they die. It shows a great backwardness to the work when we defer it as long as we can. It is one of the worst compliments we can put upon God to give a thing to Him when we can keep it no longer. 3. Others say, they may come to want themselves, and it is prudence to provide against that. To this I answer-- (1) I believe that no man ever came the sooner to want for his charity. David hath an express observation to the contrary (Psalms 37:25). (2) Thou mayest come to want though thou give nothing; in which case thou mayest justly look upon neglect of this duty as one of the causes of thy poverty. (3) After all our care to provide for ourselves, we must trust the providence of God; and a man can in no case so safely commit himself to God as in well-doing. But, if the truth were known, I doubt covetousness lies at the bottom of this objection: however, it is fit it should be answered. (1) I say, that no man that is not prejudiced, either by his education or interest, can think that a creature can merit anything at the hand of God, to whom all that we can possibly do is antecedently due; much less that we can merit so great a reward as that of eternal happiness. (2) Though we deny the merit of good works, yet we firmly believe the necessity of them to eternal life. (Archbishop Tillotson.) Thoughts 1. Riches constitute a serious, though not insuperable, obstacle to one’ s salvation; and poverty, in itself undesirable, is, in a spiritual aspect, less dangerous than riches. 2. Before Him who seeth not as man seeth, the millionaire has no advantage over the mendicant. 3. The soul is the same self-conscious existence immediately after death that it was before; and death ushers some, at once, into a state of conscious enjoyment, and some into a state of conscious misery. 4. They that would not, while probationers, cry to God for mercy, will, in eternity, look in vain for mercy to either God or man. 5. Those whom God designs to save He finds it necessary to chasten, so that life’ s evil things may wean them from the world and fit them the better to enjoy an eternity of good things. But there are men of the world who have their portion in this life. They prefer enjoying the pleasures of sin for a season, rather than to suffer affliction with the people of God, and hence they in their lifetime receive their good things, but are tormented in the world to come. 6. While here, sinners are urged to cross the moral chasm which separates them from saints, for Christ has bridged it; but after death it becomes to them an unbridged, impassable gulf. 7. How deluded are they who suppose that converse with the dead is possible, or that the unseen world can, in that way, be partly unveiled. An inspired book was God’ s wise and chosen mode of acquainting us with spiritual truths, and he who has this book, yet disregards its teachings, will, in eternity, reap the bitter consequences. (T. Williston.) Dives and Lazarus I. THE FUTURE STATE IS ONE OF . II. THE FUTURE STATE IS ONE INTO WHICH MEMORY ENTERS AS A FACTOR OF OR MISERY. III. IN THE FUTURE STATE IS FELT IN THOSE WHO ARE STILL IN THE BODY. IV. GOD BESTOWS UPON US HERE AND NOW ALL THE WHICH ARE NEEDFUL TO PREPARE FOR THE FUTURE STATE. Conclusion: 1. The seriousness and solemnity of this earthly probation. 2. The folly of those who use this life simply for their own gratification. 3. The nearness of eternity. 4. The justice of God’ s requirement of assent to His truth and compliance with His demands. 5. The importance of an immediate acceptance of the gospel, and immediate preparation for judgment. (J. R. Thomson, M. A.) Luxury disregarding severing Mdlle. Taglione, the celebrated dancer, spent her last London season at Her Majesty’ s Theatre in 1847. She said she would not return to London, being dissatisfied with the admiration which she received. The season was exceptionally brilliant, “ though it was said that bread was dear, and the misery of the people great.” “ One would never suspect it,” said the famous dancer, “ to see so many splendid equipages, and so many diamonds on the white shoulders of the ladies.” Wanton extravagance “ The age cannot be very good,” remarked Hannah More, “ when the strawberries at Lady Stormonth’ s breakfast last Saturday morning cost one hundred and fifty pounds.” Too respectable for hell A wealthy merchant of Philadelphia, who would not listen to the gospel message in health, sent for me at his deathbed. I told him, “ I have nothing new to tell you. You are a sinner, and here is a Saviour. Do you feel your guilt, and will you take a Saviour?” “ No. There must be some better place than hell for a man of my respectability.” (S. H.Tyng, D. D.) Riches and perdition Ay, and so it is with the wicked man nowadays. He gets rich, but what is the use of being wealthy if you must be damned? Fool that he is, if he buys a gold coffin, how would that help him? Suppose he is laid out with a bag of gold in each hand, and a pile of it between his legs, how will that help him? Others seek to get learning, but what is the good of learning if you sink to perdition with it? Take up the learned man’ s skull, and what is the difference between that and the skull of the merest pauper that scarcely knew his letters? Brown unpalpable powder, they both crumble down into the same elements. To die in a respectable position, what is the use of it? What are a few more plumes on the hearse, or a longer line of mourning coaches? Will these ease the miseries of Tophet? Ah! friends, you have to die. Why not make ready for the inevitable? Oh! if men were wise, they would see that all earth’ s joys are just like the bubbles which our children blow with soap; they glitter and they shine, and then they are gone, and there is not even a wreck left behind. (C. H. Spurgeon.) The just retribution of selfishness How marvellously just was the retribution of selfishness! with what wonderful precision was the punishment adapted to the sin! During the life of Lazarus, he had laid at the rich man’ s gate, whence he could behold the pomp, and hear the revelry, that reigned in the gorgeous mansion; and he had asked only for the crumbs that fell from the table, and even these were denied him. But after death the rich man and the beggar are literally made to change places. Dives is placed where he can be a spectator of the happiness of Lazarus; and he desires, but desires in vain, a single drop from those gushing fountains which he saw on the other side of the gulf. You cannot but observe how accurately Dives has become what Lazarus was, and Lazarus what Dives. Lazarus was the beggar, now Dives is. Lazarus saw, though he did not share the abundance of Dives; Dives now sees, but only sees, the abundance of Lazarus. Lazarus asked for crumbs, and Dives asks for a drop. Crumbs were refused, and now even the drop is withheld. Thus the selfish man is made to feel his selfishness through being placed in the precise position of the supplicant, whom his selfishness had caused him to neglect. It may be thus in regard to every other sin, that the wicked will be so circumstanced in futurity, that their sins will be forced on their recollection, and thus conscience be kept for ever on the alert--for ever on the fret. And all--for indeed these are things too dreadful to be dwelt on long--all we can say is, that if the selfish man is to beg in vain from the victims of his selfishness, if the envious is to be forced to gaze on the splendour of those whom he envied, if the seducer is to be made to feel himself for ever the seduced--yea, if punishment is to be so exactly the picture of crime, that a man shall seem to be eternally receiving in his own person the very wrongs that he did to others, so that every stroke beneath which he writhes will appear as the reflected blow of his own violence rebounding on himself, then, indeed, must we be living under a government which will vindicate its righteousness; and he who, in Scriptural language, “ sows the wind,” must be a spectacle of justice when compelled to “ reap the whirlwind.” (H. Melvill, B. D.) Self-denial necessary to salvation This rich man was no opera sinner, but he was simply living to and for self; he enjoyed life, as men say, to the full; he got out of it all the satisfaction he could; self was the centre round which his thoughts, his time, his money revolved; he indulged his taste for fine dress and good food without restraint. In the face, then, of this awful warning, ask yourself the question, Can it be said that my life is marked by self-denial? do I, for Christ’ s sake, and for that only, do that which is against my natural inclinations, and leave undone that which I should otherwise be inclined to do? or, on the other hand, is it my constant aim and desire to get as much enjoyment for myself as I can in life, if not to the loss and injury of others, yet without any particular thought or care about them? And it will not do to reckon as acts of self-denial instances in which our wills and inclinations have been thwarted, either by others, or by the direct action of God’ s providence. We must all of us endure a great many crosses and disappointments whether we will or no; no doubt the rich man had occasionally his cares and vexations. These do not leave the stamp of the cross upon our lives, except when they are made to minister to our spiritual good through a willing and loving acquiescence in the will of our Heavenly Father. They may become only the occasion of fresh sin in the shape of fretfulness and discontent. Self-denial is something very different from these. It is the habit of mind which leads us in everything to ask, not how may I best please myself, but, how may I best serve God and aid the souls and bodies of others? Take, for instance, the question of time. We are naturally selfish about our time; we like to spend it in the manner which most gratifies self. Self-denial will set us about asking, Can I, by giving this or that hour which I should otherwise devote to amusement, bring any aid or pleasure to others? Or again, take the question of money. We naturally like to spend our money on ourselves, or on some object which brings gratification to self. Self-denial will suggest to us to give up something which we should otherwise have liked in order to devote the money to God. And do not let us shrink back as though self-denial were some hard, bitter thing: it brings with it greater pleasure than self-indulgence. And we may begin, if we have never practised it before, by small acts; God accepts even the cup of cold water given for Christ’ s sake. (S. W.Skeffington, M. A.) Conscious existence after death I. THERE IS SUCH A THING AS OF --AND OF --AFTER DEATH. II. THIS OF MAY BE ONE OF INTENSE MISERY. III. WHAT IT WAS IN THE RICH MAN’ S EARTHLY LIFE WHICH LED TO SUCH RESULTS. (Gordon Calthrop, M. A.) The mind made a hell A great and rich man in one of our towns in the West was once taken sick and lost his mind. When he recovered from his sickness he was still a deranged man. He seemed never to know his own wife or children. He forgot all his old friends. For seven long years he was in this unhappy state. One day, while sitting in the room where his daughters were, he sprang from his chair and cried out in great joy, “ Thank God I am out at last!” I cannot describe the scene of that hour. He embraced and kissed his daughters. He wept with joy on the bosom of his wife, and acted as if he had not seen them for many years. At last he said to them, “ For seven long years I have been in a burning hell. It was a horrible cavern of lakes and rocks and mountains of fire. I saw millions there, but could find no friend. I was ever burning, yet never consumed; ever dying, yet never dead. No light of the sun shined there, and no smile of God was seen. I remembered there every sinful thing I had done, and was tormented in my soul. I thought of the sufferings and death of that blessed Saviour, and how I had treated Him. There was no rest to my soul day nor night. I had no hope there. Yet I wandered in madness to find some way of escape. At last, as I stood on the top of a high rock blazing with heat, I saw in the distance a little opening like the light of the sky. I jumped headlong down, and with all my powers made my way towards it. At last I climbed up to it, and worked and struggled through; and, blessed be God, here I am again, with my beloved wife and children.” Now, my friends, suppose there is no such place as hell. Suppose some one should be so foolish as to hope that there is no such place. Yet remember, that if God can make a man’ s own mind such a hell as this while he is yet in this world, He can find a still more fearful hell for him in the world to come. (Bishop Meade.) Where is hell? “ Where is hell?” was the question once asked by a scoffer. Brief but telling was the reply, “ Anywhere outside of heaven.” (Biblical Museum.) No relief possible in hell It is an overpowering reflection! but we have sometimes emboldened ourselves to inquire what would bring relief and support to the lost in hell? What could soften the keenness of that flame? And two considerations have raised themselves in our mind as those which, could they be indulged, might yield the assuagement that we had ventured to suppose. 1. The first consideration we should demand is, that the sufferer of the doom might feel that it was inevitable. The idea of fate sets us free from the sense of blame. 2. The second consideration which might subdue the fierceness of infernal agonies, would be that they are undeserved. It would be joy to the prisoners, could they only reflect, “ We are the victims of arbitrary justice!” Spirit has not, however, passed into such regions with either of these consolations, nor found them there! Spirit never, in fearful soliloquy, spake: “ Necessity wrought this chain, and malignity locked it!” Spirit never exclaimed: “ Despite of myself, I was dragged hither, and here in violation of all truth and equity I am chained!”… It is the converse of these thoughts that deepens the outer darkness, that accumulates the horrors of the pit. “ It need not have been.” What a self-upbraiding! “ Justice had none other recourse.” What a self-condemnation! “ Why would ye die?” is the rebuke for ever in their ear! “ We indeed justly,” is the confession for ever on the tongue! (R. W. Hamilton.) Final impenitence It is something--it is a step towards higher reaches of faith, to be well assured of the existence and reality of this invisible realm, in which the spirits of the departed energize (for surely such is the plain teaching of the parable) after they are severed from the body, and go through all the processes of consciousness, thought, and feeling. It is something to believe, or rather something to realize the truth, that there is indeed a world, more thickly peopled with the spirits of the departed than this earth is with the bodies of the living; and that among the inhabitants of this world there are movements of mind, actings of the will, the memory, the understanding, the affections: on the one hand, a spiritual intercommunion with Christ and the members of Christ, fetching deepest peace into the soul; on the other, all the agitations of fear, remorse, compunction, and despair. The realm is to us a shrouded realm, but surely not the less real because we cannot apprehend it with our senses. Let us now consider briefly what the text implies of the circumstances, sentiments, and character of the rich worldling, who is represented as undergoing torments. I. As to his circumstances. It is sufficiently indicated that he was a Jew by descent. He calls Abraham father, and Abraham, though separated from him by a great gulf, though unable to render him assistance, or comply with his request, does not refuse to recognize hire. “ Abraham said unto him, Son, remember.” What! a son of Abraham, and yet an outcast! Circumcised the eighth day, and yet a reprobate! A child of God’ s covenant, and yet a vessel of wrath fitted to destruction! II. From the position and circumstances of this rich worldling, we next proceed to consider his sentiments. He is represented as imploring Abraham to save his five brethren from the doom in which he had irretrievably involved himself, by sending them an unearthly warning of the reality of a future state of existence, and of its horrors for the ungodly. It does not seem that every spark of natural affection, exile from God and from happiness though he be, is extinguished in this man’ s breast. III. Let me mention a third point, still more favourable to his salvation, than the two preceding, but still quite insufficient to secure it: this is, that so far as appears from the narrative, he had not been guilty of any crime, of any gross or palpable offence whatever. He had not hurled blasphemous defiance against the Most High. My brethren, these remarks may serve to confute the fatal error of those in whose estimation the only real sins in existence are sins of commission. How many are there who congratulate themselves on the many wrong things which they have never done. What, then, was the sin, a wilful and impenitent continuance in which ensured the eternal loss of this worldling’ s soul? The sin, in its root (for every sin has a root, a state of mind out of which it springs and to which it is referable), was unbelief. But I must hasten on to point out the particular development of unbelief with which this narrative presents us. If a man have no realizing apprehension of a future state, still more if he entertain doubts respecting some revealed” particulars of that state, the natural consequence, the practical operation of such views, will be a living for this world. All beyond the grave is, in such a man’ s apprehensions, hazy, indistinct, uncertain. His aim was to enjoy himself, to lead a life of ease and self-indulgence. He secluded himself, as much as he could, from annoying sights and distressing sounds. Whenever, accidentally, misery or want met his eye, he turned away as from an object distressing to contemplate. And hence, probably, more than from any settled hardness of heart, sprang his culminating offence, his entire lack of service to God’ s poor. Behold then, brethren, in these words, the origin and development of that sin which, cherished to the end of his days, issued in the ruin of his soul--practical unbelief; a living unto self and for this world; an entire forgetfulness of the wants of others. Nothing flagrant, nothing vicious, nothing openly immoral, but quite enough to conduct him to that awful realm, where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched. My brethren, our subject admits of, or rather it challenges, a close application to our own circumstances, and that in regard both of the times on which we are fallen, and of the place in which our lot is cast. 1. A subtle disbelief of the spiritual world in general, and of a future state of existence (at least on the side of eternal punishment), is fast insinuating itself into the minds of the respectable, the educated, and thoughtful classes. Again, there is a growing, and even avowed, disbelief among the most earnest and thoughtful men of the day on the subject of eternal punishment. And here I would remark that disbelief of the future world, in any of its aspects, is very closely connected with disbelief of the unseen world which is at present around us. I shall suppose, then, the case of a man who, while orthodox in all the main articles of his religious belief, and nominally a member of the Church, has allowed his faith in things unseen and eternal to be secretly sapped. In that he resembles Dives. 2. The second point to which I shall call your attention, in applying to our own consciences the warning of the text, is the atmosphere of religious privilege, which my academical hearers specially, but those residing in the city also in good measure, habitually inhale. Yet who does not know that, where no corresponding zeal and spirituality exist in the heart, this frequency of religious ordinance and privilege acts rather as a soporific than as a stimulant, makes eternal things more hazy and less substantial than they were, when worship more rarely recurred? 3. Now, our Lord, in the parable before us, represents this development of resources as having a dangerous tendency, as contributing something material to strengthen the impenitence of the natural heart. (Dean Goulburn.) Natural affection distinguished from the faith and love of the gospel We desire to show what light she parable throws on the obligation and the motives of Christian benevolence: First, by setting before us, in the rich man, a character in which that grace is deficient; and, secondly, by setting before us, in Lazarus, a fitting object for its exercise. I. We find in the rich man a character devoid of Christian benevolence, or the Christian principle of benevolence; and this defect rendered all his goodness of any other sort unavailing. For that he was good in some points and in a certain sense we gather from the conclusion of the parable. And why does he select his brothers alone, from the victims of his example? It must be--it can only be--from the relentings of fraternal tenderness. The earnestness of his prayer, that they might not “ also come to the place of torment,” marks the still remaining sensitiveness of his natural sensibilities, and the strength of his natural affection. In the first place--how little is that sensibility and natural affection to be depended upon, which even the condemned in the place of torment may feel! What! will you build your hope of heaven on a virtue which you may share in common with the accursed inmates and inhabitants of hell? Will you plume and pride yourselves on your kindly feelings, or your goodness of heart, as a security that all is well, and that ultimately, somehow or other, you cannot but be happy, when you see much of that kindliness of feeling, and what you call goodness of heart, in the regions of everlasting woe? Learn, then, ye who are living in friendship with the world, yet still in conscious enmity against God--loving perhaps your brother, according to the flesh, with much tenderness of human affection, yet untaught to love your God with all your heart, and to love your neighbour for His sake--learn to estimate the real worth, or rather worthlessness, of your much.vaunted goodness of heart. It is not a goodness that will carry you to heaven. But, in the second place, we must put the case more strongly still. We must observe that this natural sensibility and affection, when the views are thus enlarged by taking in eternity as well as time, may become itself the very source of misery and torment. It is evidently so represented in the case of this rich man. His solicitude about his brothers very much increased his own sufferings, and aggravated the agony of his own hopeless condetonation. This is a very striking and appalling view to take of the misery awarded to the impenitent and unbelieving. It shows how the very best, the most amiable and generous, feelings of the unrenewed and unregenerated soul, may become themselves the means and occasions of its sorer punishment. Experience even here on earth shows, that affection makes us partakers of the sufferings as well as the joys of our fellow-creatures and friends. His love to his brothers on earth superseded his love to his Father in heaven. And fitly therefore now, that very love is made to minister the punishment due to him for his breach of the first and great commandment. He loved his brethren independently of God. He made them partakers of his pleasures; and partakers also of his sin. Have you no fear, I ask--that in the very attachment you are now forming--in the very affection you are now indulging--in the friendship and love which every day is rendering more intense, as you lavish on its object all proofs and tokens of tenderest regard--you may be but treasuring up the very instruments of wrath against theday of wrath? Cultivate the charities of social and domestic life; but be sure that you cultivate them as in the sight of God, and in the full and steady prospect of eternity. II. We turn now to the other party in this scene, the other figure in this picture. We consider the beggar, and his claim to sympathy and relief. It is a claim which the benevolence of mere natural feeling overlooked, but which the benevolence of Christian principle insists upon having regarded. It is in this light, accordingly, that the Christian considers his fellow-men; as being either actually partakers, or capable of yet becoming partakers, of the grace and the glory of God. This is the ground of the esteem in which he holds them--this the measure of the value he assigns to them. How different is this esteem of men, on account of the worth and value of their souls, from the careless and casual sympathy of mere natural compassion, and how vastly more effectual as a motive of benevolence? The man of natural kindness and sensibility, touched with the sight of woe, and moved to pity and to tears, may utter the voice of tenderness, and stretch forth the hand of charity. But the object of his compassion has no great importance or value in his eyes. All the interest he takes in him is simply on account of his present suffering. But now, if you were to view that individual in the light in which Christianity represents him; as one of those whom the Father willeth to save, and for whose souls He gave His own Son to die; how would the intensity of your concern in Him be deepened, and how would your sense of obligation to Him be enhanced! Again, how different is this Christian view of the preciousness of every human being, from the view which mere infidel philanthropy takes! On the infidel hypothesis--what at the best, in the eye of enlightened benevolence, is the race of man? A succession of insects--creatures of a day, fluttering their few hours of shade and sunshine, and then sinking into endless night. Is it worth while to fret and toil much for such a generation? It is the gospel alone that shows the real value of man--of individual man--as having a spirit that will never die; and enforces the regard due to him from his fellow-men on the ground of his being the object of the regard of their common God. See, then, that you love him as God loves him. God is kind to the evil and to the unthankful, because He would have them to be saved. Be you kind to them also; and with the same view. Abound towards them in all good works. Melt their hearts, though hard and sullen as lead, by heaping your benefits as coals of fire upon their heads. (Dr. Candlish.) The rich man’ s prayer I. A good act at a wrong time. II. A good prayer for a wrong purpose. III. A good effort with no effect. (The Preacher’s Analyst.) Son, rememberThe retributive power of memory Those who believe in the immortality of the soul must also believe in the immortality of its faculties--reason, memory, conscience. I. WHAT, THEN, IS MEMORY? LET US FIRST DEFINE THE FACULTY. Every one is aware of the fact that the knowledge which we have once acquired, the things we have seen and done, the experiences that we have had, though not always present to the mind, are nevertheless so retained, that the same things may be, and often are, recalled to our mental notice. Every one is fully conscious of such a fact in his own history. We designate this fact by the term memory. This entry is longer than a Bible module can hold. The rest is at https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/bi/ Luke 17:1-4 It is impossible but that offences will come Where sin occurs, God cannot wisely prevent it The doctrine of this text is that sin, under the government of God, cannot be prevented. 1. When we say IT IS TO PREVENT SIN UNDER THE OF GOD, the statement still calls for another inquiry, viz.: Where does this impossibility lie? Which is true: that the sinner cannot possibly forbear to sin, or that God cannot prevent his sinning? The first supposition answers itself, for it could not be sin if it were utterly unavoidable. It might be his misfortune; but nothing could be more unjust than to impute it to him as his crime. Let us, then, consider that God’ s government over men is moral, and known to be such by every intelligent being. It contemplates mind as having intellect to understand truth, sensibility to appreciate its bearing upon happiness, conscience to judge of the right, and a will to determine a course of voluntary action in view of God’ s claims. So God governs mind. Not so does He govern matter. The planetary worlds are controlled by quite a different sort of agency. God does not move them in their orbits by motives, but by a physical agency. I said, all men know this government to be moral by their own consciousness. When its precepts and its penalties come before their minds, they are conscious that an appeal is made to their voluntary powers. They are never conscious of any physical agency coercing obedience. Where compulsion begins, moral agency ends. Persuasion brought to bear upon mind, is always such in its nature that it can be resisted. By the very nature of the case, God’ s creatures must have power to resist any amount of even His persuasion. There can be no power in heaven or earth to coerce the will, as matter is coerced. The nature of mind forbids its possibility. God is infinitely wise. He cannot act unwisely, The supposition would make Him cease to be perfect, and this were equivalent to ceasing to be God. Here, then, is the case. A sinner is about to fall before temptation, or in more correct language, is about to rush into some new sin. God cannot wisely prevent his doing so. Now what shall be done? Shall He let that sinner rush on to his chosen sin and self-wrought ruin; or shall He step forward, unwisely, sin Himself, and incur all the frightful consequences of such a step? He lets the sinner bear his own responsibility. Thus the impossibility of preventing sin lies not in the sinner, but wholly with God. Sin, it should be remembered, is nothing else than an act of free will, always committed against one’ s conviction of right. Indeed, ii a man did not know that selfishness is sin, it would not be sin in his case. These remarks will suffice to show that sin in every instance of its commission is utterly inexcusable. II. We are next to notice some . 1. “ If God is infinitely wise and good, why need we pray at all? If He will surely do the best possible thing always, and all the good He can do, why need we pray?” Because His infinite goodness and wisdom enjoin it upon us. 2. Objecting again, you ask why we should pray to God to prevent sin, if He cannot prevent it? We pray for the very purpose of changing the circumstances. If we step forward and offer fervent, effectual prayer, this quite changes the state of the case. 3. Yet further objecting, you ask--“ Why did God create moral agents at all if He foresaw that He could not prevent their sinning?” Because He saw that on the whole it was better to do so. Concluding remarks: 1. We may see the only sense in which God could have purposed the existence of sin. It is simply negative. He purposed not to prevent it in any case where it does actually occur. 2. The existence of sin does not prove that it is the necessary means of the greatest good. 3. The human conscience always Justifies God. This is an undeniable fact--a fact of universal consciousness. (C. G. Finney, D. D.) The evil and danger of offences 1. The first is a time of persecution. Offences will abound in a time of persecution to the ruin of many professors. 2. A time of the abounding of great sins is a time of giving and taking great offence. 3. When there is a decay of Churches, when they grow cold, and are under decays, it is a time of the abounding of offences. Offences are of two sorts. I. SUCH AS ARE TAKEN ONLY, AND NOT GIVEN. The great offence taken was at Jesus Christ Himself. This offence taken, and not given, is increased by the poverty of the Church, These things are an offence taken and not given. II. THERE ARE GIVEN AND TAKEN. 1. Offences given: and they are men’ s public sins, and the miscarriages of professors that are under vows and obligations to honourable obedience. Men may give offence by errors, and miscarriages in Churches, and by immoralities in their lives. This was in the sin of David; God would pass by everything but offence given: “ Because thou hast made My name to be blasphemed,” therefore I will deal so and so. So God speaks of the people of Israel: these were My people, by reason of you My name is profaned among the Gentiles. These are the people of the Lord; see now they are come into captivity, what a vile people they are. Such things are an offence given. 2. Offences taken. Now offences are taken two ways. (1) As they occasion grief (Romans 14:1-23.). See that by thy miscarriage thou “ grieve not thy brother.” Men’ s offences who are professors, are a grief, trouble, and burden to those who are concerned in the same course of profession. “ Offences will come” ; and therefore let us remember, that God can sanctify the greatest offences to our humiliation and recovery, and to the saving of our Church. Such is His infinite wisdom. (2) Given offences occasion sin. But offences given are an occasion of sin, even among professors and believers themselves. The worst way whereby a given offence is thus taken, is, when men countenance themselves in private sins by others’ public sins; and go on in vices because they see such and such commit greater. Woe unto us if we so take offence. Again, a given offence is taken, when our minds are provoked, exasperated, and carried off from a spirit of love and tenderness towards those that offend, and a]l others, and when we are discouraged and despond, as though the ways of God would not carry us out. This is to take offence to our disadvantage. I shall give you a few rules from hence, and so conclude. (a) The giving offence being a great aggravation of sin, let this rule lie continually in your hearts, That the more public persons are, the more careful they ought to be that they give no offence either to Jew or Gentile, or to “ the Church of Christ.” (b) If what I have laid down be your first and your main rule, I doubt where this is neglected there is want of sincerity; but where it is your principal rule, there is nothing but hypocrisy. Men may walk by this rule, and have corrupt minds, and cherish wickedness in their hearts. (c) Be not afraid of the great multiplication of offences at this day in the world. The truths of the gospel and holiness have broke through a thousand times more offences. (d) Beg of God wisdom to manage yourselves under offences: and of all things take heed of that great evil which professors have been very apt to run into; I mean, to receive and promote reports of offence among themselves, taking hold of the least colour or pretence to report such things as are matter of offence, and give advantage to the world. Take heed of this, it is the design of the devil to load professors with false reports. (J. Owen, D. D.) Of the necessity of offences arising against the gospel I. In the first place, it will be proper TO WHAT THE OF THOSE AIDE WHICH HINDER THE OF THE GOSPEL OF TRUTH. And though everything that is faulty in any kind does in its measure and degree contribute to this evil; yet whoever considers the state of the Christian world, and the history of the Church in all ages from the beginning, will find that the great offences which have all along chiefly hindered the progress of true Christianity, are these which follow. 1. Corruption of doctrine. The Jewish believers, even in the apostles’ own times, contended for the necessity of observing the rites and ceremonies of the law of Moses; and this gave just offence to the Gentiles, and deterred them from readily embracing the gospel. After this, other offences arose from among the Gentile converts, who by degrees corrupting themselves after the similitude of the heathen worshippers, introduced saints and images, and pompous ceremonies and grandeur into the Church, instead of true virtue and righteousness of life. 2. The next is divisions, contentions, and animosities among Christians, arising from pride, and from a desire of dominion, and from building matters of an uncertain nature and of human invention upon the foundation of Christ. The great offence, I say, which in all nations and in all ages has hindered the propagation of the gospel of truth, has been a hypocritical zeal to secure by force a fictitious uniformity of opinion, which is indeed impossible in nature; instead of the real Christian unity of sincerity, charity, and mutual forbearance, which is the bond of perfectness. 3. The third and last great offence I shall mention, by which the propagation of true religion is hindered, is the vicious and debauched lives, not of Christians, for that is a contradiction, but of those who for form’ s sake profess themselves to be so. II. Having thus at large explained what is meant in the text by the word “ offences,” I proceed in the second place to consider IN WHAT SENSE OUR SAVIOUR MUST BE TO AFFIRM THAT IT IS BUT SUCH WILL COME; or, as it is expressed in St. Matthew, that it must “ needs be” that offences come. And here there have been some so absurdly unreasonable as to understand this of a proper and natural necessity; as if God had ordained that offences should come, and bad accordingly predestinated particular men to commit them. But this is directly charging God with the sins of men, and making Him, not themselves, the author of evil. The plain meaning of our Saviour, when He affirms it to be impossible but that offences will come, is this only--that, considering the state of the world, the number of temptations, the freedom of men’ s will, the frailty of their nature, the perverseness and obstinacy of their affections; it cannot be expected, it cannot be supposed, it cannot be hoped, but that offences will come; though it be very unreasonable they should come. Men need not, men ought not, to corrupt the doctrine of Christ; they need not dishonour their religion by unchristian heats, contentions, and animosities among themselves; much less is there any necessity that they should live contrary to it, by vicious and debauched practices; and yet, morally speaking, it cannot be but that all these things will happen. III. I proposed to consider in the third place, WHY A WOE IS, BY WAY OF AND , AGAINST THE PERSONS BY WHOM THESE COME. Thus it appears plainly in general, that the necessity here mentioned of offences coming, is no excuse for those by whose wickedness they come. It is because they are offences of an extensive nature. IV. THE I SHALL DRAW FROM WHAT HAS BEEN SAID, ARE-- 1. From the explication which has been given of these words of our Saviour--“ It is impossible but that offences will come” --we may learn, not to charge God with evil, nor to ascribe to any decree of His the wickedness and impieties of men. 2. Since our Saviour has forewarned us that it must needs be that such offences will come as may prove stumbling-blocks to the weak and inattentive, let us take care, since we have received this warning, not to stumble or be offended at them. 3. And above all, as we ought not to take, so much more ought we to be careful that we never give, any of these offences. (S. Clarke.) On the vitiating influence of the higher upon the lower orders of society If this text were thoroughly pursued into its manifold applications, itwould be found to lay a weight of fearful responsibility upon us all. We are here called upon, not to work out our own salvation, but to compute the reflex influence of all our works, and of all our ways, on the principles of others. And when one thinks of the mischief which this influence might spread around it, even from Christians of chiefest reputation; when one thinks of the readiness of man to take shelter in the example of an acknowledged superior; when one thinks that some inconsistency of ours might seduce another into such an imitation as overbears the reproaches of his own conscience; when one thinks of himself as the source and the centre of a contagion which might bring a blight upon the graces and the prospects of other souls beside his own--surely this is enough to supply him with a reason why, in working out his own personal salvation, he should do it with fear, and with watchfulness, and with much trembling. But we are now upon the ground of a higher and more delicate conscientiousness than is generally to be met with; whereas our object at present is to expose certain of the grosset offences which abound in society, and which spread a most dangerous and ensnaring influence among the individuals who compose it. Let us not forget to urge on every one sharer in this work of moral contamination, that never does the meek and gentle Saviour speak in terms more threatening or more reproachful, than when He speaks of the enormity of such misconduct. There cannot, in truth, be a grosser outrage committed on the order of God’ s administration, than that which he is in the habit of inflicting. There cannot, surely, be a directer act of rebellion, than that which multiplies the adherents of its own cause, and which swells the hosts of the rebellious. And, before we conclude, let us, if possible, try to rebuke the wealthy out of their unfeeling indifference to the souls of the poor, by the example of the Saviour. (T. Chalmers, D. D.) Our liability to cause others to offend A father tells us how he once started alone to climb a steep and perilous hill, purposely choosing a time when his children were at play, and when he thought that they would not notice his absence. He was climbing a precipitous path when he was startled by hearing a little voice shout, “ Father, take the safest path, for I am following you.” On looking down, he saw that his little boy had followed him, and was already in danger; and he trembled lest the child’ s feet should slip before he could get to him, and grasp his warm little hand. “ Years have passed since then,” he writes, “ but though the danger has passed, the little fellow’ s cry has never left me. It taught me a lesson, the full force of which I had never known before. It showed me the power of our unconscious influence, and I saw the terrible possibility of our leading those around us to ruin, without intending or knowing it; and the lesson I learned that morning I am anxious to impress upon all to whom my words may come.” (Archdeacon Farrar.) Cause of offence to the young The owner of the famous Wedgwood potteries, in the beginning of this century, was not only a man of remarkable mechanical skill, but a must devout and reverent Christian. On one occasion, a nobleman of dissolute habits, and an avowed atheist, was going through the works, accompanied by Mr. Wedgwood, and by a young lad who was employed in them, the son of pious parents. Lord C sought early opportunity to speak contemptuously of religion. The boy at first looked amazed, then listened with interest, and at last burst into a loud, jeering laugh. Mr. Wedgwood made no comment, but soon found occasion to show his guest the process of making a fine vase; how with infinite care the delicate paste was moulded into a shape of rare beauty and fragile texture, how it was painted by skilful artists, and finally passed through the furnace, coming out perfect in form and pure in quality. The nobleman declared his delight, and stretched out his hand for it, but the potter threw it on the ground, shattering it into a thousand pieces. “ That was unpardonable carelessness!” said Lord C , angrily. “ I wished to take that cup home for my collection! Nothing can restore it again.” “ No. You forget, my lord,” said Mr. Wedgwood, “ that the soul of that lad who has just left us came innocent of impiety into the world; that his parents, friends, all good influences, have been at work during his whole life to make him a vessel fit for the Master’ s use; that you, with your touch, have undone the work of years. No human hand can bind together again what you have broken.” Lord C----, who had never before received a rebuke from an inferior, stared at him in silence; then said, “ You are an honest man,” frankly holding out his hand. “ I never thought of the effect of my words.” There is no subject which many young men are more fond of discussing than religion, too often parading the crude, half comprehended atheistic arguments which they have heard or read before those to whom such doubts are new. Like Lord C----, they “ do not think.” They do not, probably, believe these arguments themselves, and they forget that they are infusing poison into healthy souls, which no after-efforts of theirs can ever remove, A moment’ s carelessness may destroy the work of years. (Christian Age.) Luke 17:5-6 Increase our faith Increased faith prayed for 1. Observe, that faith is susceptible of being increased. 2. There are important reasons why an increase of faith should be desired, (1) An increase of faith is connected with an increase of holiness. (2) The increase of faith is connected with the increase of comfort. (3) The increase of faith is connected with the increase of usefulness. (The Preachers’ Treasury.) Prayer for increase of faith I. THE OF CHRIST POSSESS FAITH. There can be no increase where there is no possession. II. AN OF FAITH IS . This will appear from-- 1. The power and goodness of its Author. 2. The progressive nature of religion. 3. The admonitions of the Bible. 4. The experience of the saints. III. AN OF FAITH IS GREATLY TO BE DESIRED. We infer this-- 1. From its nature. It is a Divine gift, and its existence is attributed to the operation of God (Colossians 2:12). That which God works in us must be desirable: as He is an infinitely good Being, His works must necessarily bear a resemblance to Himself. 2. From its effects. These refer-- (1) To our own personal salvation. We are justified by faith--saved by faith-Christ dwells in our hearts by faith--we stand by faith--live by faith--Walk by faith--and have boldness of access to God by faith. (2) To the victories we gain over our enemies. By the shield of faith we quench the fiery darts, etc. (Ephesians 6:16). We conquer the world by 1 John 5:4). The ancient worthies by faith “ subdued kingdoms,” Hebrews 11:33-34). (3) To the moral influence of our example. IV. MEANS SHOULD BE USED TO SECURE AN OF FAITH. To accomplish this object-- 1. Study the character of its Author. Meditate on the power, wisdom, and goodness of our Lord Jesus Christ. Think meanly of the Saviour, and you will have little confidence in Him; but think greatly and highly of Him, and you will trust in Him heartily, and believe in Him fully. 2. Get a more extensive acquaintance with the promises of God. 3. Be on your guard against everything that will deaden or damp the ardour of your faith. Carnal company, worldly cares, spiritual supineness, filthy and foolish conversation--all tend to sap the foundation of your faith, and destroy your dependence upon God. In conclusion, we address a word-- 1. To those who have no faith. 2. To those whose faith has declined. 3. To those whose faith remains in full vigour. (Theological Sketchbook.) Prayer for more faith A prayer adapted to every part of the Christian life. I. THE GENERAL IMPORT OF THE PRAYER: “ LORD, OUR FAITH.” 1. Faith has respect to revealed truth as its immediate object; and in the New Testament it more especially relates to Christ as the substance of all the promises. 2. In praying for an increase of this principle, the apostles acknowledged that their faith was weak. 3. In praying for more faith, they also acknowledged their own insufficiency to produce it (Ephesians 2:8; Philippians 2:13). 4. In directing their prayer to Christ, they virtually acknowledge His Divinity. 5. This prayer might in some measure be answered at the time, but was more especially so after our Lord’ s ascension. II. THE REASONS WHICH RENDER THIS PRAYER TO ALL . If we are truly the followers of Christ, yet our faith is weak at best, and needs to be increased, and that for various reasons-- 1. On account of its influence in obtaining other spiritual blessings, for they are bestowed according to the measure of faith. 2. Its influences under dark and trying providences--Nothing but faith can sustain us under them (Psalms 97:2). 3. Its influence on the deep mysteries of Divine truth, which faith only can receive and apply. 4. The influence of faith on our life and conduct renders this prayer peculiarly suitable and ira portant. 5. Our spiritual enjoyments, as they are derived wholly from the promises, are proportioned to the degree of faith. 6. Its importance in the hour of death renders it unspeakably desirable. (Theological Sketchbook.) The increase of faith I. THE NATURE OF FAITH. An influential belief in the testimony of God. This necessarily implies in all cases the absence of all indifference and hostility to the truth which is its object, and also a state of heart or moral sensibility which is adapted to receive its appropriate influence. It is easy to see what the character must be, formed by the power of such a principle. Holiness, perfect holiness in man, in all its peace and hopes and joys, is nothing more nor less than the truths of the gospel carried into effect by faith. Let there be the impress of the gospel on the heart and life, and what dignity and perfection of character--what noble superiority to the vanities of the world--what lofty conceptions of God and the things of a future world--what a resemblance to the Son of God would be furnished by such a man I Such is the nature of faith. II. THE MEANS OF ITS . 1. Prayer. The suppliant at God’ s throne is surrounded by Divine realities. Nor is there a spot on earth where the tendencies of the heart to depart from God are more effectually counteracted, and where the soul comes in more direct contact with the objects of faith, than the closet. Prayer directly leads to the mortifying of unbelief in its very root and element, by opening a direct intercourse with heaven. 2. Our faith may be increased by examining the evidence of Divine truth. God always deals with us as intelligent beings. 3. To the same end we must cherish a deep and an abiding sense of the mean and degrading nature of earthly things. 4. Closely connected with this subject is the kindred one of keeping death and eternity continually in view. 5. Another means of increasing faith is its repeated exercise, in retirement and meditation, as well as in the business of life. 6. Important to the same end are just views of the truth and faithfulness of God. God has given to His people exceeding great and precious promises. The only ultimate foundation on which faith can rest in these promises is the unchangeable truth of God. III. THE OF OUR FAITH. This appears-- 1. From the character it gives. All the defects and blemishes of Christian character may be traced to the want or the weakness of faith as their cause. It is through the imperfection of this principle that the character of man is formed so much by the influence of objects that here surround him. Every man is what his object is. 2. From the consolations which faith imparts. It is not only the prerogative of faith that it adds to our peace and our joys in the prosperous scenes of life. Its power is still more triumphant in scenes of affliction and trial. To the eye of faith every event has a tendency and an aim. 3. From the glory for which it prepares. Preparation for the glory that shall hereafter be revealed must be begun in this world. It must be begun in that character, which is the only true appropriate preparation for the services and joys of heaven. If the character be formed here by the exclusive influence of the objects of sense, if all the desires and affections be confined to these, there can be nothing in the world of spirits to meet and satisfy a single desire of the soul. The character, then, must be formed by other objects--the desires and affections of the soul must be fixed on things above--it must thus become capable of heavenly joys, or in vain were it admitted into heaven itself. But it is by faith, and by faith only, that the influence of these Divine and glorious realities can be felt in our present state. (N. W. Taylor, D. D.) The necessity of increased faith I. THE OBJECT OF THE ’ . Their “ faith.” 1. We ought, my friends, to be extremely careful of our faith--both of its rightness and of its strength, first of all--when we consider the position which faith occupies in salvation. Faith is the salvation-grace. We are not saved by love; but we are saved by grace, and we are saved by faith. We are not saved by courage, we are not saved by patience; but we are saved by faith. That is to say, God gives His salvation to faith and not to any other virtue. 2. Be anxious about your faith, for all your graces hang upon it. Faith is the root-grace: all other virtues and graces spring from it. 3. Take heed of your faith, because Christ thinks much of it. 4. Next, Christian, take good care of thy faith, for recollect faith is the only way whereby thou canst obtain blessings. It is said of Midas, that he had the power to turn everything into gold by the touch of his hand; and it is true of faith--it can turn everything into gold, but destroy faith, we have lost our all; we are miserably poor because we can hold no fellowship with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ. 5. Next, my friends, take care of your faith perpetually, because of your enemies; for if you do not want faith when you are With friends, you will require it when you have to deal with your foes. Faith has quenched the violence of the flames, shut the mouths of lions, and out of weak hess it has made us strong. It has overcome more enemies than the whole host of conquerors. Tell me not of the victories of Wellington; mention not the battles of Napoleon; tell me of what faith has done! Oh! if we should erect a monument to the honour of faith, what various names should we carve on the mighty pedestal! 6. And now for a sixth reason. Take care of your faith, because otherwise you cannot well perform your duty. Faith is the foot of the soul by which it can march along the road of the commandments. Love can make the feet move more swiftly, but faith is the foot which carries the soul. Faith is the oil enabling the wheels of holy devotion and of earnest piety to move well, but without faith the wheels are taken from the chariot, and we drag along heavily. With faith I can do all things, without faith I shall neither have the inclination nor the power to do anything in the service of God. 7. Take care of your faith, my friends, for it is very often so weak that it demands all your attention. II. THE HEART’ S DESIRE OF THE . They did not say, “ Lord, keep our faith alive: Lord, sustain it as it is at present,” but “ Increase our faith,” For they knew very well that it is only by increase that the Christian keeps alive at all. Napoleon once said, “ I must fight battles, and I must win them; conquest has made me what I am, and conquest must maintain me.” And it is so with the Christian. It is not yesterday’ s battle that will save me to-day; I must be going onwards. 1. “ Increase our faith” in its extent--the extent of what it will receive. Increase my faith and help me to believe a little more. I believe I have only just begun to learn the A B C of the Scriptures yet, and will constantly cry to the Lord, “ Increase my faith,” that I may know more and believe more, and understand Thy Word far better. “ Increase my faith” in its extent. 2. “ Increase my faith” in its intensity. Faith needs to be increased in its power as well as in its extent. We do not wish to act as some do with a river, when they break the banks, to let it spread over the pasture, and so make it shallower; but we wish, while it increases in surface, that it may increase likewise in its depth. III. THE PERSON TO WHOM THE THEIR PRAYER. The Lord. They went to the right Person. Let us do the same. (C. H.Spurgeon.) Praying for an increase of faith I. WE SHOULD USE THIS PRAYER FOR THE OF . Let any Christian examine his own heart and he will see how sadly he needs this, how narrow is the limit of his knowledge of Christ, how circumscribed his views of His love, His sympathy, His compassion, His excellency; how mean his apprehension of His power and majesty and present glory. The excellency of Christ can only be communicated now to the soul by the exercise of faith. II. And not only for the enlargement of spiritual knowledge, but for IN GRACE as well should this prayer be used. That we may be established in the simplicity and fulness of the gospel. The fulfilment of this prayer will bring this to pass; it is included in the gift of increased faith. Increase of faith brings clear views of the mercy of the gospel, it corrects the natural uprisings of pride in our hearts, it checks the carnal reasonings of our minds, it convinces of the absolute truth of all that the Bible teaches about our need of the gospel. It will lead to the discovery of error, the detection of sophistry, the avoidance of unscriptural teaching, however specious it may be. III. This prayer should also be used in order THAT OUR OF SATAN’ S MAY BE CLEAR. It is in proportion as our faith is increased, that “ we are not ignorant of his devices.” (H. M. Baker.) The increase of faith That “ faith” is “ a gift of God” --as much a “ gift” as any other sovereign act of His power--I need not stay to prove. We have to do this morning with another thought--that the growth and the “ increase” of “ faith,” at every successive stage, is a distinct act of Almighty power. We know, indeed, that everything which is of God has in it essential tendency, nay, an absolute necessity in itself to grow. If you do not wilfully check the grace of God that is in you, that grace will, and must, in obedience to the law of its being, increase. We lay it down, then, as a certainty that “ faith” is a thing of degrees. One believer never reaches the same degree in this life as another. Each believer is in different states of belief, at different periods of his own life. St. Paul speaks of a brother who is “ weak in the faith” --St. Stephen and St. Barnabas are commended as men “ full of faith.” But it is easy for us to see traces of “ increase of faith” in the lives of the apostles themselves. Have not we seen progress in the mind of the St. Peter in the Gospels and the St. Peter in the Epistles? In St. John also, from the time when he could call fire from heaven, to the hour when he could stand so meekly at the cross’ s foot? You will see the same in St. Paul’ s mind if you compare what he says of himself in his Epistles to the Romans and the Corinthians, which were his early Epistles, with his triumphant assurance in his Epistles to Timothy, which were his last Epistles. If, then, “ faith” be a thing capable of degrees, every man must be responsible for the measure of his attainment of that grace in the sight of God. There are various “ degrees of faith” in the world; but they are all placed in their various degrees with distinct design. It is intended, in the Divine economy of God’ s Church, that there should be “ degrees of faith,” to answer His purpose; but that eternal purpose Of God is still consistent with man’ s responsibility in the matter. The various degrees make that beautiful variety, out of which God brings His own unity. They give occasion for kind judgment, and Christian forbearance, and helpfulness one to another, seeing that the man of “ much faith” must not despise, but must recognize as a brother, and help on, the man who is said to be a man of “ little faith.” One man has “ faith” sufficient to lead him to entire separation from the world, and to undergo great mortification--another has not got so far. Let the halting, lingering one--the soul that still keeps too much in this world--remember what the apostle says, that it is “ faith” which “ overcomes the world,” and therefore let him pray, “ Lord, increase my faith.” One can carry all mysteries, and liken mysteries--another loses his “ faith” when he comes to mysteries. But he who knows his own heart best, that man knows most how fitting the supplication is, everywhere, “ Lord, increase my faith.” There are three reasons here why it is important to ask this petition. If any one of you is without any promised blessing of God, it is simply because he has not “ faith” about the matter. Again, God has established a direct proportion between a man’ s faith and a man’ s success: “ according to your faith be it unto you.” And, once more, remember, there are degrees in heaven; and, according as we reach here “ in faith” we shall reach there “ in glory.” “ Lord, increase our faith!” The man simply says it, and there comes over his mind such a sudden sense of God’ s amazing love to him, in the redemption of his soul, that everything else looks perfectly insignificant, in the thought of his own acceptance with God. “ Lord, increase our faith!” --and we have such communion with things unseen, that death has no power. (J. Vaughan, M. A.) The victorious power of faith Men are just like the disciples. They hear religion preached; they believe the things that are said; and at times the truth glances through the exterior coating and strikes their moral sense. The ideal of truth presented to them seems beautiful and sweet. In a white light it is to them. Thousands and thousands of men there are who hear the gospel preached every Sunday, and think there is nothing more beautiful than meekness, nothing more beautiful than humility, as they are presented to them. These are excellent qualities in their estimation. They believe in love. They believe in everything that is required in a true Christian character. It meets their approval. Their reason approves it. Their judgment approves it. Their taste approves it. Their moral sentiments approve it. And yet, when they ask themselves, “ How shall I practise it?” they fall off instantly, and say, “ It is not possible for me. I never can do it in the world.” Take gentleness. Here is a great rude-footed, coarse-handed man, gruff and impetuous, and careless of everybody, who sits and hears a discourse on the duty of being gentle; and as the various figures and illustrations are presented, he says, “ Oh, how beautiful it is to be gentle!” But the moment he gets out of the church, he thinks, “ The idea of my being gentle! I gentle? I gentle? Somebody else must do that part of religion. I never can. It is not my nature to be gentle.” Men have an ideal of what is right; and they believe in the possibility of its realization somewhere; but they do not think they are called to that thing. They do not believe it is possible for them. There are avaricious men, I suppose, to whom, on hearing a discourse on benevolence in a church, it really shines, and who say, “ Oh, this benevolence, though it is well-nigh impossible--how beautiful it is!” But when it begins to come home to them, and the question is, “ Will you, from this time forth, order your life according to the law of benevolence?” they fall off from that and say, “ I cannot; it is impossible.” And if Christ were present and such men were under the influence of His teaching, they would turn to Him and say, “ Lord, if this is true, it is true, and I must conform to it; but you must increase my faith. I must have some higher power. I cannot do it without.” And Christ would encourage them, and say (not rebukingly, as it seems in the letter, but very comfortingly), “ Do not think it is so hard. It is difficult, but not so difficult as you suppose. Do not think it to be so impossible that I must work a miracle for you before you can accomplish it.” If you have faith, if you rouse up those spiritual elements that are in you, if you bring them under the illumination of God’ s own soul, and they are inspired by the Divine influence, there is that power in you by which you can subdue all your lower nature, and can gain victories over every single appetite and passion, and every single evil inclination and bad habit. Let the better nature in man once more come into communion with God, and it is mightier than the worse nature in man, and can subdue it. Yen will fail of the secret and real spirit of this passage, if you do not consider its meaning as not only an interpretation, but as an interpretation which is designed to give courage and hope and cheer to those who desire to break away from bad tendencies and traits, and to rise, by a true growth, into the higher forms of Christian experience. Let us consider, then, the practical aspect of this matter. When a strong nature is snatched from worldliness, and begins to live a Christian life, what are the elements of his experience, reduced to some sort of philosophical expression? First, the soul is brought into the conscious presence, and under the recognized power, of the Divine nature. This is with more or less distinctness in different individuals. Consider how men are brought to a religious life. One man has been a very worldly and careless man, until, in the universal whirl of affairs, a slap of bankruptcy, like the stroke of waves against the side of a ship, smashes into his concerns, and he founders. He saves himself, but all his property goes to the bottom. And there he is, humbled, crushed, mortified. And it is a very solemn thing to him. But he never had any preaching before that gave him such a sense of the unsatisfactoriness of this life. Others come into a religious life by the power of sympathy. They are drawn toward it by personal influence. They go into it because their companions are going in. In a hundred such ways as these God’ s providence brings people into the beginnings of a Christian life. But when a man has once come into it, his very first experience, usually, whether he be exactly conscious of it or not, is the thought that he is brought into the presence of a higher Being--a higher Spirit--than he has been wont to think was near him. God begins to mean something to him. This sense of God’ s presence is that which is the beginning of faith in him. It opens the door for the Divine power to inflame his soul; that is, for the Divine mind to give strength and inspiration to the nobler and higher part of his mind--to his reason; to his whole moral nature; to that which is the best and highest in him. By the enlarging, by the education, by the inspiration of a man’ s nature, in this direction, the beginnings of victory are planted. And now, all the forces of a man’ s nature, and all the foregoing habits of his life, beginning here, will soon be so changed as to come into agreement with his higher feelings which will be excited by the inshining of God’ s soul. Men think it is mysterious; but it is not mysterious. Take a person of some degree of sensibility--a young woman, for instance--who has been living in a vicious circle of people. Her father and mother--emigrants--died on landing. She was of good stock, and had strong moral instincts; but she was a vagrant child, and was soon swept into the swirl of poverty and vice. Although too young to become herself vicious, yet she learned to lie, and steal, and swear--with a certain inward compunction--until by and by some kind nature brought her out of the street, and out of the den, and into the asylum. And then, speedily, some childless Christian woman, wanting to adopt a child, sees her, and likes her face and make, and brings her home to her house. This is almost the first time she has had any direct commerce with real truth and real refinement; and at first she has an impulse of gratitude, and admiration, and wonder; and in the main she is inspired by a sense of gladness and of thankfulness to her benefactress. But as she lives from day to day, she does not get over all her bad tendencies. Because she has come to live with and to be the daughter of this woman, she does not get over the love of lying, and tricks, and dirtiness, and meanness, and littleness. The evil does not die in an instant from her nature. Yet there is the beginning of that in her which will by and by overcome it. There is in her a vague, uninterpreted sense of something higher and better than she has known before. And it is all embodied in her benefactress. She hears her sing, and hears her talk, and sees what kindnesses she does to others, and how she denies herself. And if she be, as I have supposed her to be, a child of strong, original moral nature, she will, in the course of a year, be almost free from the taint of corruption; almost free from deceits; almost free from vices. And it will be the expulsive power of new love in her soul that will have driven out all this vermin brood of passions. As long as she is in the presence of this benefactress, she will feel streaming in upon her nature those influences which wake up her higher faculties, and give them power over her lower faculties. When men are brought into the Christian life, and they begin to dome into communion with God, the higher part of their nature receives such a stimulus that it has power to nominate the lower part--to control pride; to hold in restraint deceits; to make men gentle, and mild, and sweet, and forgiving, and noble, and ennobling. The direct influence which the spirit of God has upon the human soul, is to develop the good and expel the evil tendencies that are in it. There will be a change in our outward conformities to society; to institutions; to new duties. There will be the acceptance of standards of morality which before we have not accepted. But important as these things are, they are but auxiliaries. There is this one work which the new life begins to accomplish--namely, the readjustment of the forces of the soul. It changes the emphasis. When, therefore, a man enters into a Christian life, not only does he come into communion with God, but his nature is newly directed. He begins to make the upper, the truly spiritual, the love-bearing elements in him dominate over the others. No man can change his faculties, any more than he can change his bodily organization; and yet, his disposition may be changed! The Lord says, “ If you have faith as a grain of mustard-seed, you can say to this sycamine tree, Be thou plucked up by the roots, and cast into the sea.” Hard as it is to transplant the tree of your soul, difficult as it is to sever the roots that hold it down, the Master says, “ There is power to do it.” However many faults you may have, that branch their roots out in every direction, and difficult as it is to transplant them by the ordinary instrumentalities; nevertheless, faith in the soul will give you power to pluck them up by the roots, and east them from you, or transplant them to better soil, where they will grow to a better purpose. I preach, not simply a free gospel, but a victorious gospel. I preach a gospel that has been full of Victories and noble achievements, but that has not yet begun to show what its full power and what all its fruits of victory are to be. No one, then, who has been trying to overcome his faults, need despair. (H. W. Beecher.) Prayer for increase of faith Consider the increase of faith as it regards its principle. Faith may, in one respect, be considered as a principle of grace in religion. There is a difference, you know, between the faculties which are natural and a principle of religion--such as faith, or love, or justice, or rectitude. The faculties, of course, would grow spontaneously and naturally, though they may be encumbered by much ignorance and want of tuition; yet that circumstance will not extinguish the faculties, and instruction and tuition cannot raise them above their proper and natural level. This, however, is not the case with religious principle: it may exist or it may not exist, just according to circumstances; and it may exist, unquestionably, in different degrees of vigour and power, in the very same person, under different circumstances and at different periods of life. 1. Faith, as a principle, must have means of existence. But that faith is, in one view of the case, the fruit of teaching, is evident from this single fact--it rests, you know, upon knowledge: and it rests upon knowledge notthe growth of the understanding and the judgment in their natural exercise, but knowledge communicated to the soul by the teaching of the Spirit in the revelations of God. Then, if the teaching, brethren, on which faith rests is imperfect, of course the faith itself must be feeble and imperfect. There is one view, indeed, in which the truth on which faith terminates, never can be supposed to be obscure, or little, or imperfect at all, but another in which it may. The first case to which I refer--I mean the first mode of instruction--is that which is communicated simply from the Bible; and the second case to which I refer is that of the ministry. But it is evident that you may have a very clear statement of the truth; it may be fully exhibited--exhibited in all its just proportions, and yet, at the same time, there maybe an indisposition on the part of the hearer, or the reader, to receive that truth which is thus proposed. There are two parts here: there is the truth as it is proposed to us, and the recipient of the truth. Now, if the objects of faith are ever so clearly and ever so fully exhibited; if God, in the exercise of His grace and mercy--Christ, in His Divine and atoning character--and you do not receive these truths, it follows that you are destitute of faith; and, if you receive these truths but partially, you can have but a very partial and feeble faith. I think the reason why faith is feeble, in the sense to which I have referred, and from this particular cause, is not so much the fault of the understanding, as the fault of the heart--it is not an intellectual, but it is a moral cause. The Bible does not speak of the head of unbelief wickedly departing from the living God, but it speaks of the heart of unbelief wickedly departing from God. There may be an indisposition in our hearts to receive the truth. Then here is the grand cause, I think, why teaching, which is in itself adequate and perfect and true, produces very little faith through an indisposition on the part of the hearer of the truth to receive it--and its fruits cannot consequently be borne. Faith may be considered as a principle, in another view of the subject, as the fruit and consequence of persuasion and of promise; but then the promise may be imperfectly exhibited to us, or it may be imperfectly entertained by us, and consequently, the faith which rests on promise will be feeble on these accounts. If you seek the fulfilment of the promises of God on any particular point, seeking a fitness in yourselves for their fulfilment, and take your fitness to the promises, you may be assured of this--it will not be accomplished; but if you look to Christ, and His merit, and His intercession, and expect the fulfilment of the promises of God in the fitness of the Saviour’ s merit, then you may receive those promises in all their fulness. When a mistake, respecting the accomplishment of any promise of God is entertained--respecting the mode of its fulfilment, the mistake generally refers to the sovereignty of God; and we are expecting, I think, from the sovereignty of God just what God expects from our own faith. I do not here speak of faith as a moral fitness; no, but as something else--simple trust in the grace and promised provisions of the gospel. There is connection between the fulfilment of the promise on the part of God and the exercise of faith on the part of the sinner. I shall not stop to reason why it is so in the gospel: we find it is there. Oar Saviour could not do, in certain circumstances, many mighty works, because of the unbelief of the people: our Saviour cannot do now for us any of those great and mighty works which He hath promised lie will do, because of our unbelief. Here is God, in all the fulness and plenitude of His affection--here is the Saviour, in all the infinitude of His merit--here is the promise of life, in all its length and breadth, standing out to our view, exciting our confidence, winning our faith; but, after all, so little is that faith, that we can receive but little; and God cannot, in the sovereignty of His mercy, accomplish what He is infinitely willing to do. Faith, as a principle, in another view of the case, may be considered as the Holy Spirit’ s influence; but then, that spiritual influence may be but imperfectly submitted to on our part; and if so, then of course our faith will be weak. For, as faith is a religious principle, and a very high religious principle, of difficult exercise and difficult existence, it will follow, that it can only be exercised by the agency and the power of the Spirit of God resting upon the soul. If I could be a believer naturally, I could be a Christian naturally--I could be saved naturally, I could attain to holiness naturally--I could enjoy the highest holiness and felicity naturally. I should not be a dependent creature at all, if I could believe naturally. No; it is by various manifestations and--if you will allow the expression, I use it in an innocent way--various impulses of the Spirit of God on the mind, by which we are led to believe. The power to believe is communicated by spiritual agency and influence; the act of believing is the act of the person who receives that influence. I think that the power of faith may exist, and yet not be exercised, or, if exercised at all, exercised very improperly; just as the power and volition of the limbs are distinct one from the other. I may have the power of volition, and yet I may sit perfectly still at the same time. I may not exercise the power I possess, or I may exercise it. You know there is a difference between a moral agent and a necessary agent. A necessary agent will perform his actions necessarily. The inferior animals, who are destitute of reason, of judgment, of will, of choice, why, of course, they are just what they are by the instincts and impulses of nature, over which they have no control at all. But this cannot be said of man: man, in any circumstances, must be considered a moral agent; therefore the influences of the Spirit of grace are communicated, you will perceive, to aid our infirmities and give us power to believe; but the power may exist, and yet the act may not exist. Is it not true that many minds are visited by the Spirit of God with His illuminations and spiritual influences, and yet faith is never put forth, so to speak, in any saving form? For if saving faith grows out of spiritual influence, it will follow that the presence of that spiritual influence is necessary, in order to the exercise of faith; and one of the great reasons why our faith is so feeble--why we are rather shut up in the darkness of unbelief so often--is, thatwe do not lay our hearts open to that spiritual influence which is promised and which is vouchsafed to us. “ Increase our faith.” This is the prayer of the text, that God would increase our faith; and if faith cometh by teaching--cometh from the promise of God--cometh from the spiritual influence, let us receive the teaching simply--let us receive the promise as it is exhibited in the Word--let us lay our hearts open to the influence of the Spirit of God; and that faith which appears a timid, feeble, cowardly thing, in our experience, will grow and increase till it comes to be mighty and powerful. 2. I remark that the exercises of faith may not be equal to the occasion calling for those exercises; and under these circumstances the faith will be felt as feeble, and the person possessing it, as needing influence. Allow me to remark here, that many of the duties of religion are, properly speaking, duties of faith. But the duty depending on us, on the part of religion, or, if you please, on the part of God, may be greater than the faith; and if it be, then, of course, feebleness will be felt on the part of the Christian who has to do the duty. Those duties which I call duties of faith may vary; and, in passing from one class of duties to another, the Christian may feel that his faith and his grace, which were adequate and sufficient for the duties of one state, are found not to be adequate or sufficient for the duties of another state. Now I think this is often felt. For instance, Abraham, the father of the faithful and the friend of God, dwelling in patriarchal simplicity in the bosom of a happy family--in sweet, hallowed, and sublime communion with God, having received the accomplishment of the covenant blessings promised to him at various times and in various circumstances; and Abraham, offering his son Isaac, appears in very different circumstances. The faith which was found sufficient for one circumstance, would not be sufficient for the other. Jacob, dwelling in the land of promise, in the midst of smiling fields, luxuriant corn, bleating flocks, flowing streams, and a smiling sky; and Jacob, dwelling in the midst of famine, in the death of his flocks, in the loss of Joseph his son, would be a man in very different circumstances. The faith which would support Jacob’ s mind when his family was entire and happy would scarcely support Jacob’ s mind when his favourite son was gone. Is it not just so now? Here is the Christian youth, living in the bosom of his family, cheered on in his piety by the advice, counsels, and prayers of his parents, all zealous to make him happy, to make him secure, to make him useful, to make him honourable: and the Christian youth goes out into the world, to meet its buffetings, its toils, its anxieties, its frowns. There is a great difference between that youth dwelling in the bosom of a happy family, and that man in the midst of the blighting crosses of the world. The patience which would preserve that youth, scarcely will preserve that man; the faith which would soothe and make his soul happy in favourable circumstances, will scarcely make him happy in the midst of unfavourable. And submissiveness to the crosses of life must be sustained by faith; but the burden, you know, may be greater than the faith, and if it is found to be so, whatever our strength may be in other circumstances, still you will find yourselves feeble then. I think there is more difficulty--much more difficulty--in attaining to a quiet, resigned, patient spirit, in the midst of the troubles of life, than there is in the discharge of the active duties of life. The faith which enables a man to pass the common road of life in peace and happiness will scarcely be sufficient to enable him to pass the valley and shadow of death without fear. We must feel the touch of affliction, and the touch of death; and, perhaps, the prayer of the text may be very appropriate to us when we change circumstances, and we may have to pray, “ Lord, increase our faith!” 3. And let me, thirdly and finally, remark that the accidents to which our religious feelings and experience may be exposed, in this state of probation and trial, may tend to weaken faith, and make the prayer of the text necessary--“ Lord, increase our faith!” The privilege of justification may not be forfeited by the loss, we think, of many of its attendant and accompanying privileges and joys. A man may retain his acceptance with God, and yet he may lose very much of that comfort, peace, joy, love, and those excesses of feelings which he enjoyed before; for all these blessings flow from God, and are immutable, in that respect, above all accident; yet, let it be remembered, that, the recipient of the whole is the human heart; and if these blessings are to dwell in a sorrowful soul, they will receive some tint, some colouring, I think, from the character of the soul receiving them. Now the difficulty of attaining confidence in God, in the decay of our spiritual joys, will be evident from this fact. There will be a great difficulty in maintaining that kind of faith in the promised provisions of the grace and love of God, the death of Christ, and so on, necessary even to preserve and keep the soul in spiritual life. Now, I say, the difficulty of maintaining a firm, unshaken trust in God, in the midst of this wreck, though necessary, is very difficult. How often is it that the Christian feels like a timid seaman, when the ship in which he first sails begins to rock, and the elements to howl, and the waves to dash I Fears arise, though the storm makes it necessary that he should have more confidence, more courage, fortitude, calmness, than before. Yet so it is with Christian life. It is extremely difficult to maintain confidence in the midst of the storm, though that confidence is more necessary, and I dare say you will feel the necessity of offering the prayer of the text, “ Lord, increase our faith!” (J. Dixon, D. D.) Increased faith the strength of peace principles It was not for the sake of working miracles that the apostles sought increased faith; it was not in order to bear their present or future trials; neither was it to enable them to receive some mysterious article of the faith; but their prayer referred to a common everyday duty enjoined by the gospel--the forgiving those who do us wrong. I. LET US THE PRAYER ITSELF. Notice what this prayer confesses. 1. It confesses that they had faith. 2. It confesses that while they had faith, they had not enough of it. 3. That they could not increase their own faith. 4. That the Lord Jesus can increase faith. II. I want to show now THE OF FAITH BEARS UPON OUR POWER TO FORGIVE OTHERS. 1. Faith increases our confidence in Jesus, so that we shall not suspect Him of setting us an impracticable task. 2. Between faith and forgiveness a very close connection will be seen if we inquire what is the foundation of faith. The mercy of God. 3. The joy of faith is a wonderful help to forgiveness. 4. A spirit of rest is created by faith, which greatly aids the gentle spirit. 5. Faith, when it is strong, has a high expectancy about it, which helps it to bear with the assaults of men of the world. A man readily puts up with the inconvenience of the present, when he has great joys in store for the future. III. Notice HOW THE LORD JESUS CHRIST THE PRAYER FOR FAITH. 1. By assuring them that faith can do anything. 2. By teaching them humility. (C. H. Spurgeon.) An increase of faith I. WE PRAY FOR AN OF FAITH ALSO THAT ITS OBJECT MAY BECOME MORE REAL. We hold spiritual things too loosely. II. AN OF FAITH WILL MAKE THE GOSPEL A GREATER POWER IN OUR LIFE. We are tried by various circumstances, and tempted by the world, the flesh, and the devil. When we see Abraham on Moriah, Job on the top of the heap, Hezekiah on a bed of sickness, Jeremiah in the dungeon, the three Hebrew youths before Nebuchadnezzar, Daniel in the den, Paul fighting with wild beasts at Ephesus, and the martyrs in the flames, faith demonstrates the power and grace of God. Has it occurred to you that trials and temptations are the best occasions to show Christ to the world? In the instances we have named, as well as in thousands of others, God’ s glory shone brighter than in the temple strain, or the worship of the synagogue. III. WE NEED A FAITH TO PREPARE US FOR THE UNKNOWN FUTURE. (The Weekly Pulpit.) Only God can increase faith Faith is not a weed to grow upon every dunghill, without care or culture: it is a plant of heavenly growth, and requires Divine watching and watering, (C. H. Spurgeon.) Luke 17:6 Faith as a grain of mustard seed The force of faith We must not imagine that these words give any encouragement to an idle and childish expectation of any startling and ostentatious outcome of a true faith in Jesus Christ; as though God’ s grace could ever be used to win for any one the wonder and admiration of His fellow-men, or displayed in any abrupt and fruitless miracle, for our excitement or aggrandizement. It is a far higher and nobler power which is really promised by our Lord even to the least measure of true faith in Him: a power which is far more fruitful and more mysterious than the mere working of a wonder which would only be like a conjuring trick on a large scale. For what He really here teaches us, as though in a short and vivid parable, is this: that since His coming upon earth, there is a new kind of force astir in the history and in the souls of men--a force which in the speed and certainty of its action can surpass all the ordinary means by which men scheme and work--a force which is effective far beyond all likelihood that we can see in it, so that even its least germ is able to achieve results of inconceivable difficulty and greatness: and for the secret, the character, of this new force He points us to the one spring and motive of the Christian life--to faith. Now, before we leave the outward form in which this truth is taught us, let us notice one point in it: that it is to a seed that our Lord compares the beginning of faith in a man’ s heart: to a grain of mustard seed: which indeed is the least of all seeds: but when it is grown it is the greatest amongst herbs, and becometh a tree, etc. He seems thus to teach us that all true faith is ever and everywhere growing: not a dead, self-contained thing, but a seed, filled with an almost infinite power of growth in strength and range and beauty. However poor and mean and worthless it may seem, there is that in it which will in due time and with due care force its way into the light and strive towards heaven itself, till the little speck of hope becomes a branching, fruitful wealth of life and beauty, a resting-place and shelter for those who hover round its boughs and find refreshment and protection in its gentle strength. Now I ask you to consider whether we ever meet with any character which does thus seem to escape from the ordinary restrictions of cause and effect: to exert a force far beyond all the likelihood that we can discover: and to achieve results which sober and practical men would never have expected from it? Is there any temper of mind and will which makes a way through insuperable obstacles, and forces mountainous difficulties to yield it service and obedience? Well, in the first place, do we not see a strange foreshadowing of such supernatural effectiveness, and a wonderful contrast between what might reasonably have been looked for and what is actually achieved, in the life and work of men who have a large degree of faith in themselves? Do we not see in what we know of history and politics, and in our own experience too, that the men who do great deeds, who leave a mark behind them, who bend stubborn circumstances to their will, who influence other men (bearing into their hearts the passions or the policy which they have themselves conceived), are always the men who have a firm faith in their own judgment, and a resolute conviction that they will achieve what they have set themselves to do: so that they are not always explaining and apologizing and qualifying and standing on the defensive, but rather going straight forward and fearlessly calling upon others to follow them? But, secondly, there is a nearer reflection of that which the text means, and a higher and more mysterious efficacy, in the power which some can wield by faith in their fellow-men. I trust we all know something of the strange influence by which some men seem able to discover and draw out and strengthen all that is good and hopeful in those with whom they have to do. The change which is wrought by one who meets his fellows with a simple, earnest trust and hope is just the contrary of that miserable atmosphere of dingy mist and cold in which a cynic lives and thinks and acts: distrusting and depreciating others till they cease to show him anything but those meaner, harsher elements in their character which he seems resolute and glad to find. There can hardly be a happier or more fruitful and wonderworking life than his in whose company men are always stirred to brightness and unselfishness just because he always believes that they are purer and better than they are: by whose trustful expectation they are reminded of what they once desired and hoped to be, so that the long-forgotten ideal seems again to come within their reach, and they live, if only for a while, by a light which they never thought to see again. For thus this quickening and enlightening power of faith in our fellow-men changes the whole air and aspect of a life: and he who is thus trustful and hopeful draws out in one man the timid and hidden germ of good, and engenders in another the grace and warmth which his faith presumes; and the dullest heart is startled into sympathy with the charity which believeth all things, and hopeth all things: so that everywhere this faith is greeted by the brightness which itself calls out, as the sun is welcomed by the glad colours which sleep until he comes. (F. Paget, D.D.) Luke 17:7-10 But which of you, having a servant plowing or feeding cattle The ploughing servant The one thing on which our Lord wishes to concentrate our attention is not the spirit in which God deals with His servants, but rather the spirit in which we should serve God--not what God thinks of our work, but rather how we should regard it ourselves. The Christian belongs to God; therefore God has a right to all the service he can render. And, when he has rendered it all, he may not indulge in self-complacency as if he had done anything extraordinary, or had deserved any special commendation; for even at the best he has done no more than he ought to have done, since soul, body, and spirit, in all places and in all cases, everywhere and at all times, he is the property of God. I. THE OF THE LIFE. The Christian’ s “ day” is not one merely of twelve hours; but throughout the twenty-four he must be ready for any emergency, and must meet that at the moment when it rises. Always he is under obligation to his Lord; and “ without haste,” but also “ without rest,” he must hold himself absolutely at the disposal of his Master. All his time is his Lord’ s; he can never have “ a day off.” He is to be always waiting and watching until death. II. THE SPIRIT IN WHICH SUCH DEMANDS OUGHT TO BE MET BY US. 1. We must meet them with patience. No murmuring or whimpering over our lot, as if it were tremendously hard, and as if we were undergoing a species of martyrdom. 2. And then, on the other side, we are not to stroke ourselves down complacently after we have met the demand upon us, as if we had done something extraordinary. Pride after toil is just as much out of place here as murmuring under tell. 3. We are not to think about ourselves at all, but of God, of what He has been to us and what He has done for us, and of what we owe to Him; and then, when we get to a right and proper estimate of that, our most arduous efforts and our most costly sacrifices will seem so small in comparison, that we shall be ready to exclaim, “ We are unprofitable servants! All that we have done does not begin to measure the greatness of our indebtedness to Him for whom we have done it!” 4. Thus, in order to comply with the exactions of the Christian life, in the spirit which this parable recommends, we have to become reconciled to God through Jesus Christ. It is the sense of redemption and the consciousness of regeneration whereby we have become no longer servants, but sons, alone, that will impel us to reckon ourselves as not our own, and to do without a murmur, and without the least self-complacency, all that God requires at our hands. When the life of a beloved son is hanging in the balance, no one can persuade his mother to take rest. You may tell her that others are watching, that everything is being done that can be done, that it is her “ duty” to take a respite; but you might as well speak to the deaf, for she is his mother, and her mother-love will not let her be content with less than her own personal ministry to her boy. But does she think then of doing merely her duty to him? Is she measuring her conduct then by any standard of rectitude Nothing of the kind! She has risen above all standards and all duty. So with ourselves and the service of God. Love lifts us above legalism. (W. M. Taylor, D. D.) The parable of the unprofitable servant I. THE NATURE OF THE SERVICE GOD . That we do His bidding. 1. This He has revealed in His Word. 2. For this He has given us the capacity and powers which are essential. The obedience He claims must possess the following characteristics. (1) It must be the obedience of love. (2) It must be spiritual. (3) It must have respect to all His commandments. (4) It must be constant. (5) It must be persevering fidelity unto death. II. THE SUPPORT HE GIVES TO IT. This is implied in His sitting down to “ eat and drink” (Luke 17:7-8). Notice-- 1. God gives ability for the service. 2. He provides daily food for the soul. 3. He gives satisfaction and peace in the service. III. THE DIVINE WITH RESPECT TO THIS SERVICE. Doth the master “ thank that servant because he did the things that were commanded,” etc. (Luke 17:9)? Now the force of this will be seen when it is remembered-- 1. That no man can go beyond the Divine claims in his obedience. 2. God’ s goodness to man is ever beyond the services He receives from him. 3. That man’ s best services are, in consequence of his infirmities, frail and imperfect. Learn-- 1. How necessary is humility even to the most exalted saints. 2. In all our obedience, let us set the glory of God before us. 3. Those who refuse to obey the Lord must finally perish. (J. Burns, D. D.) Extra service Are these indeed the words of Him who said, “ Henceforth I call you not servants, but friends” ? This is a picture of a hard, unlovely side of life--a slave’ s life and a slave’ s service, without thanks or claim for thanks. We ask, I repeat, and not unnaturally, where such a representation of Christian service fits into that sweet and attractive ideal which Christ elsewhere gives us under the figure of the family relation--sons of God, confidential friends of Christ. We hasten to say, No; but itwill require a little study to discover why we may say no, and to fix the place of this parable in relation to others of a happier tone. 1. Observe, in the first place, that it is not unusual for our Lord to draw a disagreeable picture in order to set forth His own love and grace. Unjust judge. Churlish man refusing bread to neighbour! We must not be repelled by a figure, therefore. Let us try to see what facts and conditions of Christian service are intended to be expressed by this parable. The parable answers to the fact in being a picture of hard work, and of what we call extra work. The service of God’ s kingdom is laborious service-service crowded with work and burdens. Christ nowhere represents it as easy. No Christian can shut himself up to a little routine of duty, and say, I will do so much, within such times, and no more. So long as a man’ s work is merely the carrying out of another’ s orders, it will tend to be mechanical and methodical: but the moment the man becomes identified in spirit with his work; the moment the work becomes the evolution of an idea, the expression of a definite and cherished purpose; the moment it becomes the instrument of individual will, sympathy, affection; above all, the moment it takes on the character of a passion or an enthusiasm--that moment it overleaps mechanical trammels. The lawyer is not counting the number of hours which duty compels him to work. He would make each day forty-eight hours long if he could. He has a case to gain, and that is all he thinks of. The physician who should refuse to answer a summons from his bed at the dead of night, or to visit a patient after a certain hour of the day, would soon have abundance of leisure. Pain will not measure its intervals by the clock, fever will not suspend its burning heats to give the weary watcher rest: the affliction of the fatherless and widow knocks at the doors of pure and undefiled religion at untimely hours. Times and seasons, in abort, must be swallowed up in the purpose of saving life and relieving misery. I need not carry the illustrations farther. You see that the lower a type of service, the more mechanical and methodical it is; and that the higher types of service develop a certain exuberance, and refuse to be limited by times and seasons. 2. A second point at which the fact answers to the parable, is the matter of wages; that is to say, the slave and the servant of Christ have neither of them any right to thanks or compensation. What God may do for His servants out of His own free grace and love, what privileges He may grant His friends, is another question; but, on the hard business basis of value received, the servant of God has no case. What he does in God’ s service it is his duty to do. “ God,” as Bengel remarks, “ can do without our usefulness.” God has no necessary men. 3. Now, then, we reach the pith of the parable. It is spoken from the slave’ s point of view; it deals with service of the lower, mechanical type. Now the moment a man puts himself on that lower ground, and begins to measure out his times and degrees of service, and to reckon what is due to himself, that moment he runs sharply against this parable. That moment Christ meets his assertion of his rights with this unlovely picture. The parable says to him, in effect, “ If you put the matter on the business basis, on the ground of your rights and merits, I meet you on that ground, and challenge you to make good your claim. I made you: I redeemed you, body and soul, with My own blood. Everything you have or are, you owe to My free grace. What are your rights? What is your ground for refusing any claim I may see fit to make upon you? What claim have you for thanks for any service you may render Me at any time?” And the man cannot complain of this answer. It is indeed the master’ s answer to a slave; but then, the man has put himself on the slave’ s ground. To the servile spirit Christ asserts His masterdom. He has no word of thanks for the grumbling slave who grudges the service at his table after the day’ s ploughing; but to the loving disciple--the friend to whom His service is joy and reward enough, and who puts self and all its belongings at his disposal-it is strange, wondrous strange, but true, nevertheless, that Christ somehow slips into the servant’ s place. Strange, I repeat; but here is Christ’ s own word for it: “ Let your loins be girded about, and your lights burning.” Here is a picture of night-work, you see. “ And ye yourselves like unto men that wait for their lord, when he will return from the wedding; that when he cometh and knocketh, they may open unto him immediately.” Here are the servants, weary, no doubt, with the day’ s work, but waiting and watching far into the hours of rest for their master, and flying with cheerful readiness to the door at his first knock. What then? “ Blessed are those servants, whom the master when he cometh shall find watching: verily I say unto you, that he shall gird himself, and make them to sit down to meat, and will come forth and serve them.” The amount of the matter is, that for him who gives himself without reserve to Christ’ s service, Christ puts Himself at his service. When he accepts Christ’ s right over him with his whole heart, not as a sentence to servitude, but as his dearest privilege, counting it above all price to be bought and owned by such a Master, he finds himself a possessor as well as a possession. “ All things are yours, and ye are Christ’ s.” (M. R. Vincent, D. D.) The Christian’ s obligation to God The instruction of this parable supposes-- I. THAT THE MASTER HERE IS THE LORD AND MASTER OF US ALL--THE GOD THAT MADE US AND THE THAT DIED FOR US. II. THE WHICH WE ARE TO RENDER TO THIS DIVINE LORD. 1. The text takes it for granted that we are engaged spontaneously and habitually in serving this great Master according to our several stations in His household. 2. But besides this there is a further idea in the service described in the parable--that of duties succeeding each other without intermission. 3. The text also conveys the idea that the good servant postpones personal ease or indulgence to his master’ s command and interest. III. THE LOW WHICH THE FORMS OF HIMSELF AFTER ALL HE HAS DONE OR CAN DO FOR HIS LORD. Doth your goodness extend to the infinite Creator? Do your minute services at all weigh in the view of the infinite fulness of eternal glory, and the majesty of Him that sits upon the circle of the heavens? (D. Wilson, M. A.) The spirit of a true servant of God “ People talk of the sacrifice I have made in spending so much of my life in Africa. Can that be called a sacrifice which is simply paid back as a small part of a great debt owing to our God, which we can never repay? Is that a sacrifice which brings its own blest reward in healthful activity, the consciousness of doing good, peace of mind, and a bright hope of a glorious destiny hereafter? Away with the word in such a view and with such a thought! It is emphatically no sacrifice. Say, rather, it is a privilege. Anxiety, sickness, suffering, or danger, now and then, with a foregoing of the common conveniences and charities of this life, may make us pause, and cause the spirit to waver, and the soul to sink; but let this be only for a moment. All these are nothing when compared with the glory which shall hereafter be revealed in and for us. I never made a sacrifice. Of this we ought not to talk, when we remember the great sacrifice which He made who left His Father’ s throne on high to give Himself for us.” (Dr. Livingstone.) The dutiful servant We used to be roused and stirred by the clarion call of duty, as well as soothed and comforted by the tender breathings of love. And here the call comes to us loud and clear, waxing even louder as we listen and reflect. “ Do your duty; and when you have done it, however laborious and painful it may be, remember that you have only done your duty. Do not give yourselves airs of complacency, as though you had achieved some great thing. Do not give yourselves air of martyrdom as though some strange thing had happened to you. Neither pity yourselves, nor plume yourselves on what you have done or borne. Do not think of yourselves at all, but of God, and of the duties you owe to Him. That you have done your duty--let this be your comfort, if at least you can honestly take it. And if you are tempted to a dainty and effeminate self-pity for the hardships you have borne, or to a dangerous and degrading self-admiration for the achievements you have wrought, let this be your safeguard, that you have done no more than your duty.” It is in this strain that our Lord speaks to us here. 1. And is it not a most wholesome and invigorating strain, a strain to which all in us that is worthy of the name of man instantly and strongly responds? The very moment we grow complacent over our work, our work spoils in our hands. Our energies relax. We begin to think of ourselves instead of our work, of the wonders we have achieved instead of the toils which yet lie before us and of how me may best discharge them. So soon as we begin to complain of our lot and task, to murmur as though our burden were too heavy, or as though we were called to bear it in our own strength, we unfit ourselves for it, our nerves and courage give way; our task looks even more formidable than it is, and we become incapable even of the little which, but for our repugnances and fears, we should be quite competent to do. 2. And then how bracing is the sense of duty discharged, if only we may indulge in it. And we may indulge in it. Does not Christ Himself teach us to say “ We have done that which it was our duty to do?” He does not account of our duty as we sometimes account of it. If we are at work in His fields, He does not demand of us that we should plough so many acres, or that we should tend so many heads of cattle. All that He demands of us is that, with such capacities and opportunities as we have, we should do our best, or at lowest try to do it. Honesty of intention, purity and sincerity of motive, the diligence and cheerfulness with which we address ourselves to His service, count for more with Him than the mere amount of work we get through. The faithful and industrious servant is approved by Him, however feeble his powers, however limited his scope. And He would have us take pleasure in the industry and fidelity which please Him. He would have us account, as He Himself accounts, that we have done our duty when we have sincerely and earnestly endeavoured to do it. 3. We need not fear to adapt any part of this parable to our own use, if only we take to ourselves the parable as a whole. For, in that case, we shall not only add, “ We are unprofitable servants,” so often as we say, “ We have done that which it was our duty to do” ; we shall also confess that every moment brings a fresh duty. We shall not rest when one duty is discharged, as though our service had come to an end; we shall be content to pass from duty to duty, to fill the day of life with labour to its very close. We shall not be content only, but proud and glad, to wait at our Master’ s table after we have ploughed the soil and fed the cattle. And even when at last we eat and drink, we shall do even that to His glory--eating our bread with gladness and singleness of heart, not for enjoyment alone, but that we may gain new strength for serving Him. (S. Cox, D. D.) We are unprofitable servantsThe inevitable imperfectness of human works Life is a work, a service. Our best works are but faulty. This consideration ought-- I. TO LEAD US TO VIEWS OF ALL OUR WORK. II. TO GUARD US FROM IN VIEW OF THE FELT OF OUR SERVICE. III. TO PREVENT US FROM TOO GREAT IN THE MERIT OF OUR . IV. TO US TO , SEEING THAT WHEN WE HAVE DONE THE UTMOST OUR WORK IS YET BUT . Mark the great claims upon us for labour. 1. From the great Master of all, the doing of whose will is necessary for the welfare of His entire household. 2. From the world, in order to promote its benefit by our culture, instruction, and example. 3. From our own life, that its best interests and happiness may be secured. (Anon.) The Scripture-doctrine of the unprofitableness of man’ s best performances, an argument against spiritual pride; yet no excuse for slackness in good works and Christian obedience I. I propose to explain WHAT THE PHRASE OR TITLE OF HERE MEANS. II. I proceed now, secondly, to consider HOW MUCH IT , AND HOW FITLY IT BECOMES, SUCH TO MAKE THEIR HUMBLE BEFORE GOD, OF THE OF ALL THEIR ; worthless, I mean, with respect to God, not otherwise: for they are not worthless with respect to angels, or to other men; more especially not to our own souls, but that, by the way, only to prevent mistakes. III. I proceed now, thirdly and lastly, to observe, THAT SUCH HUMBLE AS I HAVE BEEN HERE , MUST NOT HOWEVER BE SO AS TO AFFORD ANY EXCUSE OR COLOUR FOR IN OUR BOUDEN DUTIES; or for pleading any exemption or discharge from true Christian obedience. (D. Waterland, D. D.) Reliance on religious observances Now of course there is a danger of persons becoming self-satisfied, in being regular and exemplary in devotional exercises; there is danger, which others have not, of their so attending to them as to forget that they have other duties to attend to. I mean the danger, of which I was just now speaking, of having their attention drawn off from other duties by their very attention to this duty in particular. And what is still most likely of all, persons who are regular in their devotions may be visited with passing thoughts every now and then, that they are thereby better than other people; and these occasional thoughts may secretly tend to make them self-satisfied, without their being aware of it, till they have a latent habit of self-conceit and contempt of others. What is done statedly forces itself upon the mind, impresses the memory and imagination, and seems to be a substitute for other duties; and what is contained in definite outward acts has a completeness and tangible form about it, which is likely to satisfy the mind. However, I do not think, after all, that there is any very great danger to a serious mind in the frequent use of these great privileges. Indeed, it were a strange thing to say that the simple performance of what God has told us to do can do harm to any but those who have not the love of God in their hearts, and to such persons all things are harmful: they pervert everything into evil. 1. Now, first, the evil in question (supposing it to exist) is singularly adapted to be its own corrective. It can only do us injury when we do not know its existence. When a man knows and feels the intrusion of self-satisfied and self-complacent thoughts, here is something at once to humble him and destroy that complacency. To know of a weakness is always humbling; now humility is the very grace needed here. Knowledge of our indolence does not encourage us to exertion, but induces despondence; but to know we are self-satisfied is a direct blow to self-satisfaction. There is no satisfaction in perceiving that we are self-satisfied. Here then is one great safeguard against our priding ourselves on our observances. 2. But again, if religious persons are troubled with proud thoughts about their own excellence and strictness, I think it is only when they are young in their religion, and that the trial will wear off; and that for many reasons. Satisfaction with our own doings, as I have said, arises from fixing the mind on some one part of our duty, instead of attempting the whole of it. In proportion as we narrow the field of our duties, we become able to compass them. Men who pursue only this duty or only on that duty, are in danger of self-righteousness; zealots, bigots, devotees, men of the world, sectarians, are for this reason self-righteous. For the same reason, persons beginning a religious course are self-righteous, though they often think themselves just the reverse. They consider, perhaps, all religion to lie in confessing themselves sinners, and having warm feelings concerning their redemption and justification--and all because they have so very contracted a notion of the range of God’ s commandments, of the rounds of that ladder which reaches from earth to heaven. But the remedy of the evil is obvious, and one which, since it will surely be applied by every religious person, because he is religious, will, under God’ s grace, effect in no long time a cure. Try to do your whole duty, and yon will soon cease to be well-pleased with your religious state. 3. But this is not all. Certainly this objection, that devotional practices, such as prayer, fasting, and communicating, tend to self-righteousness, is the objection of those, or at least is just what the objection of those would be, who never attempted them. When, then, an objector fears lest such observances should make him self-righteous, were he to attempt them, I do think he is over-anxious, over-confident in his own power to fulfil them; he trusts too much in his own strength already, and, depend on it, to attempt them would make him less self-righteous, not more so. He need not be so very fearful of being too good; he may assure himself that the smallest of his Lord’ s commandments are to a spiritual mind solemn, arduous, and inexhaustible. Is it an easy thing to pray? And so again of austerities; there may be persons so constituted by nature as to take pleasure in mortifications for their own sake, and to be able to practise them adequately; and they certainly are in danger of practising them for their own sakes, not through faith, and of becoming spiritually proud in consequence: but surely it is idle to speak of this as an ordinary danger. And so again a religious mind has a perpetual source of humiliation from this consciousness also, viz., how far his actual conduct in the world falls short of the profession which his devotional observances involve. 4. But, after all, what is this shrinking from responsibility, which fears to be obedient lest it should fail, but cowardice and ingratitude? What is it but the very conduct of the Israelites, who, when Almighty God bade them encounter their enemies and so gain Canaan, feared the sons of Anak, because they were giants? To fear to do our duty lest we should become self-righteous in doing it, is to be wiser than God; it is to distrust Him; it is to do and to feel like the unprofitable servant who hid his lord’ s talent, and then laid the charge of his sloth on his lord, as being a hard and austere man. At best we are unprofitable servants when we have done all; but if we are but unprofitable when we do our best to be profitable, what are we, when we fear to do our best, but unworthy to be His servants at all? No I to fear the consequences of obedience is to be worldly-wise, and to go by reason when we are bid go by faith. (J. H. Newman, D. D.) Unprofitable servants A sentence which requires thought. At first sight we might be inclined to say, “ If a servant does all which he is deputed to do, can that servant in any way be an unprofitable servant?” But look at the matter a little more closely, and see how the balance lies. All service is a covenant between two parties. The servant covenants to do certain works, and the employer covenants to provide for his servant certain wages, food, and accommodation. If the agreement be a just one, and if both do their duty according to the agreement, neither can truly say he is a gainer or a loser in respect of the other. What the servant gives in work he receives back in money, food, and accommodation. What the master pays he receives back in the benefit and comfort which he derives from the servant’ s work. Each gets back what he gave; his own in another shape. But how is it between a man and his Creator? Let me for a moment suppose a ease--quite impossible I fear--but the case of a man who has fulfilled all the ends for which he was created. How does the case now stand? God has endowed that man with life, and all its powers of body, mind, and soul; with all its influences and opportunities; and God has watched over him and kept him and blessed him. Now if that man be a kind and useful man to! all his fellow-creatures with whom he has to do, and if he uses rightly all his possessions, and if he honours God and loves his neighbour, that man has done his duty. But is God the gainer? He has only received back His own. It is all His own property, His gift; it is but His right. The creature hath done his duty; but the Creator has not benefitted. How can a man be “ profitable” to his Creator? But “ profit” is to have your own back with increase; and if that be profit, there is no profit here. The man is still, in reference to his master, “ an unprofitable servant.” Now let us look at it as a matter of fact. So far are we, even the best of us, from having “ done all these things” which are commanded of us, and so fulfilled our duty, that the question is, Have we really kept any one single commandment that God ever gave? Or put it in another way, in which Christ placed it, Is there a person in the world to whom your conscience will tell you that you have really done your whole duty in everything? (J. Vaughan, M. A.) The defects of our performances an argument against presumption I. THE UTMOST WE CAN DO IS NO MORE THAN OUR BOUNDEN DUTY. Our creation places us under a debt which our most accurate services can never discharge. Alas! all we do, or all we can suffer in obedience to Him, can bear no proportion to what He has done and suffered for us. And if our best services cannot discount His past favours, much less can we plead them in demand of His future. And therefore whatever farther encouragement He is pleased to annex to our obedience, must be acknowledged as a pure act of grace and bounty. II. AFTER WE HAVE DONE ALL, WE ARE . God is a being infinitely happy in the enjoyment of His own perfections, and needs no foreign assistance to complete His fruitions, No--our observance of His commands, though by His infinite mercy it be a means of advancing our own, is yet no addition to His felicity, which is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever, and consequently our most dutiful performances cannot lay any obligation of debt on our Creator, or presume upon any intrinsic value which His justice or gratitude is bound to reward. III. THE ITSELF CANNOT BE ON AS AN ACT OUR OWN, BUT MUST BE TO THE OF DIVINE GRACE WORKING IN US; and that all the value of it is derived from the mediation and atonement of Christ. It is His Holy Spirit that kindles devotion in our breast, infuses into us good desires, and enables us to execute our pious resolutions. This single reflection should, methinks, be sufficient to subdue every high and insolent conceit of our own righteousness, that in our best performances to God we give Him but of His own, and that even our inclination and ability to serve Him we receive from Him. To our Redeemer only belongs the merit and glory of our services, and to us nothing but the gratitude and humility of pardoned rebels. (J. Rogers, D. D.) The praise of service belongs to God Here is a little stream trickling down the mountain side. As it proceeds, other streams join it in succession from the right and left until it becomes a river. Ever flowing, and ever increasing as it flows, it thinks it will make a great contribution to the ocean when it shall reach the shore at length. No, river, you are an unprofitable servant; the ocean does not need you; could do as well and be as full without you; is not in any measure made up by you. True, rejoins the river, the ocean is so great that all my volume poured into it makes no sensible difference; but still I contribute so much, and this, as far as it goes, increases the amount of the ocean’ s supply. No: this indeed is the seeming to the ignorant observer on the spot; but whoever obtains deeper knowledge and a wider range, will discover and confess that the river is an unprofitable servant to the sea--that it contributes absolutely nothing to the sea’ s store. From the ocean came every drop of water that rolls down in that river’ s bed, alike those that fell into it in rain from the sky, and those that flowed into it from tributary rivers, and those that sprang from hidden veins in the earth. Even although it should restore all, it gives only what it received. It could not flow, it could not be, without the free gift of all from the sea. To the sea it owes its existence and power. The sea owes it nothing; would be as broad and deep although this river had never been. But all this natural process goes on, sweetly and beneficently, notwithstanding: the river gets and gives; the ocean gives and gets. Thus the circle goes round, beneficent to creation, glorious to God. Thus, in the spiritual sphere--in the world that God has created by the Spirit of His Son--circulations beautiful and beneficent continually play. From Him, and by Him, and to Him are all things. To the saved man through whom God’ s mercy flows, the activity is unspeakably precious: to him the profit, but to God the praise. (W. Arnot.) The creature has no absolute merit I. In the first place, he must so say, and so feel, because he is a CREATED being. Mere dead matter cannot exert any living functions. The saw cannot saw the sawyer. The axe cannot chop the chopper. They are lifeless instruments in a living hand, and must move as they are moved. It is impossible that by any independent agency of their own they should act upon man, and make him the passive subject of their operations. But it is yet more impossible for a creature to establish himself upon an independent position in reference to the Creator. Every atom and element in his body and soul is originated, and kept in being, by the steady exertion of his Maker’ s power. If this were relaxed for an instant he would cease to be. Nothing, therefore, can be more helpless and dependent than a creature; and no relation so throws a man upon the bare power and support of God as creaturely relation. II. In the second place, man cannot make himself “ profitable” unto God, and lay Him under obligation, because he is constantly AND UPHELD BY GOD. III. In the third place, man cannot be “ profitable” to God, and merit His thanks, because all his GOOD WORKS DEPEND UPON THE AND OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. Our Lord’ s doctrine of human merit is cognate with the doctrine of Divine grace. 1. In the first place, we see in the light of our Lord’ s theory of human merit, why it is impossible for a creature to make atonement for sin. 2. In the second place, we see in the light of this subject why the creature, even though he be sinlessly perfect, must be humble. 3. And this leads to a third and final inference from the subject, namely, that God does not require man to be a “ profitable” servant, but to be a faithful servant. Whoever is thus faithful will be rewarded with as great a reward as if he were an independent and self-sustaining agent. Nay, even if man could be a “ profitable” servant, and could bring God under obligation to him, his happiness in receiving a recompense under such circumstances would not compare with that under the present arrangement. It would be a purely mercantile transaction between the parties. There would be no love in the service, or in the recompense. The creature would calmly, proudly, do his work, and the Creator would calmly pay him his wages. And the transaction would end there, like any other bargain. But now, there is affection between the parties--filial love on one side, and paternal love on the other; dependence, and weakness, and clinging trust, on one side, and grace, and almighty power, and infinite fulness on the other. God rewards by promise and by covenant, and not because of an absolute and original indebtedness to the creature of His power. And the creature feels that he is what he is, because of the grace of God. (W. G. T. Shedd, D. D.) Unprofitable servants A.L.O.E., in “ Triumph over Midian,” writes: “ You have not your due,” were the words which a wife addressed to a husband, who had been deprived of some advantage which she considered to have been his right. “ May God be praised that I have not my due! “ he replied. “ What is my due as a sinner before God? What is my due from a world which I have renounced for His sake? Had I chosen my portion in this life, then only might I complain of not receiving my due.” Our Duty The faithful performance of duty in our station, ennobles that station whatever it may be. There is a beautiful story told of the great Spartan Brasidas. When he complained that Sparta was a small state, his mother said to him: “ Son, Sparta has fallen to your lot, and it is your duty to adorn it.” I (the Earl of Shaftesbury) would only say to all workers, everywhere, in all positions of life, whatever be the lot in which you are cast, it is your duty to adorn it. Luke 17:11-19 Ten men that were lepers The ten lepers I. THEIR . Defiled. Separated. II. THEIR TO CHRIST. 1. Observe the distance they kept from His person. 2. The earnestness of their prayer. 3. The unanimity of their application. 4. The reverence and faith they evinced. III. THE CURE WROUGHT. IV. THE THANKS BY THE AND THE OF THE NINE. 1. The willingness and power of Christ to heal. 2. The application to be made. 3. The return He demands of those He saves. 4. The commonness of ingratitude. (J. Burns, D. D.) The ten lepers I. THE STORY WORK ON AND BORDERS. Jesus met the lepers “ in the midst of” --that is, probably, along the frontier line between--“ Samaria and Galilee,” on His way east to the Jordan. Their common misery drew these natural enemies, the Jews and the Samaritans, together. The national prejudice of each was destroyed. Under these circumstances the border was a favourable retreat for them. The border population is always freer from prejudice and more open to influence. II. THE STORY SHOWS THAT THERE IS A SENSE IN WHICH MEN CAN PRAY. The lepers prayed. That weak, hoarse cry affecting]y expressed their sense of need--one characteristic of true prayer. Their standing afar off further expressed their sense of guilt--another characteristic of acceptable prayer. Their disease was a type of the death of sin. Their isolation expressed the exclusion of the polluted and abominable from the city of God. III. THE STORY SHOWS THAT THERE IS A SENSE IN WHICH GOD ANSWERS THE PRAYERS OF MEN. IV. THE STORY SHOWS NOW THE FORM OF MAY EXIST WITHOUT ITS SPIRIT. V. THE STORY SHOWS US THAT A DEGREE OF FAITH MAY EXIST WITHOUT LOVE, AND SO WITHOUT SAVING POWER. There was a weak beginning of faith in all the ten. It is shown in their setting out without a word, though as yet uncleansed, for Jerusalem. This must have required faith of a high order. If it had worked by love all would have been saved. This was one trouble with the nine, and the radical one--they did not love. Calvin describes their case, and that of many like them. “ Want and hunger,” he says, “ create a faith which gratification kills.” It is real faith, yet hath it no root. VI. THE STORY SHOWS US THE SIN OF , AND THE PLACE WHICH FILLS WITH GOD. The Samaritan was the only one who returned, and he was the only one saved. “ Birth did not give the Jew a place in the kingdom of heaven; gratitude gave it to a Samaritan.” Blessings are good, but not for themselves. They are to draw us to the Giver, they are tests of character. True gratitude to God involves two things, both of which were found in the leper. 1. He was humble; he fell at Jesus’ feet. He remembered what he had been when Jesus found him, and the pit whence he was digged. If blessings do not make us humble, they are lost upon us. 2. Gratitude involves, also, the exaltation of God. The leper glorified God. A German, who was converted, expressed himself afterward with a beautiful spirit of humility and praise: “ My wife is rejoicing,” he said, “ I am rejoicing, my Saviour is rejoicing.” On another occasion he said, “ I went this evening to kiss my little children good-night. As I was standing there my wife said to me, ‘ Dear husband, you love these our children very dearly, but it is not a thousandth part as much as the blessed Saviour loves us.’” What spirit should more characterize God’ s creatures than gratitude? What should we more certainly look for as the mark of a Christian? God blesses it. He blessed the leper; He cleansed the leprosy deeper than that in his flesh, the leprosy of sin. The nine went on their way with bodies healed, but with a more loathsome disease still upon them, the leprosy of ingratitude. We classify sins. “ We may find by and by that in God’ s sight ingratitude is the blackest of all.” There is an application of this truth to Christians which we should not miss. Gratitude gives continual access to higher and higher blessings. The ungrateful Christian loses spiritual blessings. If we value the gift above the Giver, all that we should receive in returning to Him we lose. (G. R. Leavitt.) The ten lepers I. THE WHICH THEY ALL . 1. A healthy body. 2. Restoration to society. 3. Re-admission to the sanctuary. II. THE OF THE NINE. III. THE LOSS BY THE NINE IN OF THEIR . Lessons-- 1. In the bestowment of His grace, God is no respecter of persons. 2. Our Lord regards moral and religious obligations as more important than those which are positive and ceremonial. 3. Answers to prayer should be received with thanksgiving. (F. F. Gee, M. A.) The lepers Affliction quickens to prayer; but those who remember God in their distresses often forget Him in their deliverances. 1. Observe the condition in which Jesus found the applicants. 2. Observe the state in which Jesus left them. 3. Their subsequent conduct. I. THE GREAT EVIL AND OF . 1. It is a sin so very common that not one in ten can be found that is not guilty of it in a very flagrant manner, and not one in ten thousand but what is liable to the charge in some degree. It is a prevailing vice among all ranks and conditions in society. 2. Common as this sin is, it is nevertheless a sin of great magnitude. Should not the patient be thankful for the recovery of his health, especially where the relief has been gratuitously afforded? Should not the debtor or the criminal be thankful to his surety or his prince, who freely gave him his liberty or his life? (1) It is a sin of which no one can be ignorant; it is a sin against the light of nature, as well as against the law of revelation. (2) Ingratitude carries in it a degree of injustice towards the Author of all our mercies, in that it denies to Him the glory due unto His name, and is a virtual impeachment of His goodness. (3) Unthankfulness brings a curse upon the blessings we enjoy, and provokes the Giver to deprive us of them. II. THE MEANS BY WHICH THIS EVIL MAY BE . 1. Be clothed with humility, and cherish a proper sense of your own meanness and unworthiness. 2. Dive every mercy its full weight. Call no sin small, and no mercy small. 3. Take a collective view of all your mercies, and you will see perpetual cause far thankfulness. 4. Consider your mercies in a comparative view. Compare them with your deserts: put your provocations in one scale, and Divine indulgences in another, and see which preponderates. Compare your afflictions with your mercies. 5. Think how ornamental to religion is a grateful and humble spirit. 6. There is no unthankfulness in heaven. (B. Beddome, M. A.) The ten lepers 1. The first thing I would have you notice is, that the ten were at first undistinguishable in their misery. That there were differences of character among them we know; that there were differences of race, of education, and training, we know too, for one at least was a Samaritan, and under no other circumstances, perhaps, would his companions have had any dealings with him; but all their differences were obliterated, their natural antipathies were lost, beneath the common pressure of their frightful misery--their very voices were blended in one urgent cry, “ Jesus, Master, have mercy upon us.” “ One touch of nature,” says the great poet, “ makes the whole world kin” : true, and alas I never so true as when that touch of nature is the sense of guilt. This is the great leveller, not only of the highest and lowest, but of the best and worst, effacing all distinctions, even of moral character; for, when one attempts to weigh one’ s sin and count it up, it seems impossible to establish degrees in one’ s own favour--one feels as if there were a dreadful equality of guilt for all, and one was no better than another. 2. I would have you notice, in the second place, the apparent tameness of their cure. Our Lord neither lays His finger on them, nor holds any conference, but, merely tells them to go and show themselves to the priests, according to the letter of that now antiquated and perishing law of Moses. Never was so great a cure worked in so tame a fashion since the time of Naaman the Syrian; well for them that they had a humbler spirit and a more confiding faith than he, or they, too, would, have gone away in a rage and been never the better. Now, I think we may see in this a striking parable of how our Lord evermore deals with penitent sinners. He does not, as a rule, make any wonderful revelation of Himself to the soul which He heals; there is no dramatic “ scene” which can be reported to others. There is, indeed, often something very commonplace, and therefore disappointing, about His dealings with penitents. He remits them to their religious duties--to those things which men account as outward and formal, and therefore feeble, which have indeed no power at all in themselves to heal the leprosy of sin, such as the means of grace, the ministry of reconciliation. In these things there is no excitement; they do not carry away the soul with a rush of enthusiasm, or fill it with a trembling awe. 3. And, in the third place, I would have you notice the unexpected way in which He addressed the one who came back to express his heartfelt gratitude.” “ Arise, go thy way, thy faith hath made thee whole.” Now, it is obvious that these words were just as applicable to the other nine as to him, for they, too, had been made whole, and made whole by faith; all had believed, all had started off obediently to show themselves to the priests, and all alike had been cleansed through faith as they went. Does it not seem strange that He took no notice of the gratitude which was peculiar to the one to whom He spake, and only made mention of the faith which was common to them all? Did He not do it advisedly? Did He not intend us to learn a lesson thereby? We know that this story sets forth as a parable our own conduct as redeemed and pardoned sinners. We know that the great bulk of Christians are ungrateful; that they are far more concerned in lamenting the petty losses and securing the petty gains of life, than in showing their thankfulness to God for His inestimable love. What about them? Will unthankful Christians also receive the salvation of their souls? I suppose so. I think this story teaches us so, and I think our Lord’ s words to the one that returned are meant to enforce that teaching. All were cleansed, though only one gave glory to God; even so we are all made whole by faith, though scarcely one in ten shows any gratitude for it. The ingratitude of Christian people may indeed mar very grievously the work of grace, but it cannot undo it. “ Thy faith hath made thee whole” is the common formula which includes all the saved, although amongst them be found differences so striking, and deficiencies so painful. There are that use religion itself selfishly, thinking only of the personal advantage it will be to themselves, and of the pleasure it brings within their reach. But these are certainly not the happiest. Vexed with every trifle, worried about every difficulty, entangled with a thousand uncertainties, if all things go well they just acquiesce in it, as if they had a right to expect it; if things go wrong they begin at once to complain, as though they were ill-used; if they become worse, then they are miserable, as though all cause for rejoicing were gone. Now, I need not remind you how fearfully such a temper dishonours God. When He has freely given us an eternal inheritance of joy, a kingdom which cannot be shaken, an immortality beyond the reach of sin or suffering, it is simply monstrous that we should murmur at the shadows of sorrow which fleck our sea of blessing, it should seem simply incredible that we do not continually pour out our very souls in thanksgiving unto Him that loved us and gave Himself for us. But I will say this, that our ingratitude is the secret of our little happiness in this life. Our redeemed lives were meant to be like that summer sea when it dances and sparkles beneath the glorious sun instead of which they are like a sullen, muddy pool upon a cloudy day, which gives back nothing but the changing hues of gloom. It is not outward circumstance, it is the presence or absence of a thankful spirit which makes all the difference to our lives. Gratitude to God is the sunshine of our souls, with which the tamest scene is bright and the wildest beautiful, without which the fairest landscape is but sombre. (R. Winterbotham, M. A.) Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity Three impressive and instructive pictures are described in this gospel. I. A OF , whom affliction influenced to much seeming goodness and piety. It is a beautiful and comforting truth, that there is no depth of suffering, or distance from the pure and the good to which sin may banish men in this world, where they are debarred from carrying their sorrows and griefs in prayer to God. A man may be guilty, leprous, cast out, cut off, given up as irretrievably lost; and yet, if he will, he may call on God for help, and the genuine, hearty, earnest, and real cry of his soul will reach the ear of God. II. A OF DIVINE POWER AND GRACE for their relief, very unsatisfactorily acknowledged and improved. Dark-day and sick-bed religion is apt to be a religion of mere constraint. Take the pressure off, and it is apt to be like the morning cloud and the early dew, which “ goeth away.” Give me a man who has learned to know and fear God in the daytime, and I shall not be much in doubt of him when the night comes. But the piety which takes its existence in times of cloud and darkness, like the growths common to such seasons, is apt to be as speedy in its decline as it is quick and facile in its rise. There are mushrooms in the field of grace, as well as in the field of nature. III. AN OF LONELY , resulting in most precious blessings superadded to the miraculous cure. There was not only a faith to get the bodily cure, but a faith which brought out a complete and practical discipleship; an earnest and abiding willingness, in prosperity as well as in adversity, to wear the Saviour’ s yoke. (J. A. Seiss, D. D.) Only trust Him As these men were to start straight away to the priest with all their leprosy white upon them, and to go there as if they felt they were already healed, so are you, with all your sinnership upon you, and your sense of condemnation heavy on your soul, to believe in Jesus Christ just as you are, and you shall find everlasting life upon the spot. I. First, then, I say that we are to believe in Jesus Christ--to trust Him to heal us of the great disease of sin--though as yet we may have about us no sign or token that He has wrought any good work upon us. We are not to look for signs and evidences within ourselves before we venture our souls upon Jesus. The contrary supposition is a soul-destroying error, and I will try to expose it by showing what are the signs that are commonly looked for by men. 1. One of the most frequent is a consciousness of great sin, and a horrible dread of Divine wrath, leading to despair. If you say, “ Lord, I cannot trust Thee unless I feel this or that,” then you, in effect, say, “ I can trust my own feelings, but I cannot trust God’ s appointed Saviour.” What is this but to make a god out of your feelings, and a saviour out of your inward griefs? 2. Many other persons think that they must, before they can trust Christ, experience quite a blaze of joy. “ Why,” you say, “ must I not be happy before I can believe in Christ?” Must you needs have the joy before you exercise the faith? How unreasonable! 3. We have known others who have expected to have a text impressed upon their minds. In old families there are superstitions about white birds coming to a window before a death, and I regard with much the same distrust the more common superstition that if a text continues upon your mind day after clay you may safely conclude that it is an assurance of your salvation. The Spirit of God often does apply Scripture with power to the soul; but this fact is never set forth as the rock for us to build upon. 4. There is another way in which some men try to get off believing in Christ, and that is, they expect an actual conversion to be manifest in them before they will trust the Saviour. Conversion is the manifestation of Christ’ s healing power. But you are not to have this before you trust Him; you are to trust Him for this very thing. II. And now, secondly, I want to bring forward WHAT THE REASON IS FOR OUR IN JESUS CHRIST. No warrant whatever within ourself need be looked for. The warrant for our believing Christ lies in this-- 1. There is God’ s witness concerning His Son Jesus Christ. God, the Everlasting Father, has set forth Christ “ to be the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the sin of the whole world.” 2. The next warrant for our believing is Jesus Christ Himself. He bears witness on earth as well as the Father, and His witness is true. 3. I dare say these poor lepers believed in Jesus because they had heard of other lepers whom He had cleansed. III. WHAT IS THE ISSUE OF THIS KIND OF FAITH THAT I HAVE BEEN ? This trusting in Jesus without marks, signs, evidences, tokens, what is the result and outcome of it? 1. The first thing that I have to say about it is this--that the very existence of such a faith as that in the soul is evidence that there is already a saving change. Every man by nature kicks against simply trusting in Christ; and when at last he yields to the Divine method of mercy it is a virtual surrender of his own will, the ending of rebellion, the establishment of peace. Faith is obedience. 2. It will be an evidence, also, that you are humble; for it is pride that makes men want to do something, or to be something, in their own salvation, or to be saved in some wonderful way. 3. Again, faith in Jesus will be the best evidence.that you are reconciled to God, for the worst evidence of your enmity to God is that you do not like God’ s way of salvation. (C. H. Spurgeon.) The ten lepers I. A COMPANY. II. A COMPANY. 1. The occasion of the surprise. (1) They suddenly met Jesus. (a) Life is full of surprises. (b) To meet Jesus is the-best of all life’ s surprises. 2. The effects of this surprise. (1) Hope was enkindled within them. (2) Prayer for mercy broke forth from them. (3) Healing of their dreadful malady was experienced by them. III. AN COMPANY. 1. Consider the number healed. 2. The cry which brought the healing. 3. The simultaneousness of the healing. 4. The ingratitude of the healed. (1) Only one returned to acknowledge the mercy. (2) This one a stranger. (3) The ungrateful are those of the Master’ s own household. (4) Are these representative facts? 5. Consider the special blessing bestowed on the grateful soul. (1) Not only healed in body, but also in soul. (2) Soul-healing ever requires personal faith. (D. C. Hughes, M. A.) The ten lepers I. THEIR . It was-- 1. Unanimous. 2. Earnest. 3. Respectful and humble. II. THEIR CURE. 1. A wonderful manifestation of Christ’ s power. He is a rich Saviour, rich in mercy and rich in power. 2. Great faith and obedience exhibited on their part. III. THE BY ONE OF THESE HEALED MEN. 1. Prompt. 2. Warm, hearty, earnest. 3. Humble and reverential. More so, observe, than even his prayer. When he cried for mercy, he stood; when he gives thanks for mercy, he falls down on his face, The thankfulness of this man was elevated also. It was accompanied with high thoughts of God, and a setting forth, as far as he was able, of God’ s glory. He is said in the text to have “ glorified God.” And observe how he blends together in his thankfulness God and Christ. He glorifies the one, and at the same time he falls down before the other, giving Him thanks. Did he then look on our Lord in His real character, as God? Perhaps he did. The wonderful cure he had received in his body, might have been accompanied with as wonderful an outpouring of grace and light into his mind. God and Christ, God’ s glory and Christ’ s mercy, were so blended together in his mind, that he could not separate them. Neither, brethren, can you separate them, if you know anything aright of Christ and His mercy. (C. Bradley, M. A.) The ten lepers 1. Look at the afflicted objects. 2. Observe the direction of the Divine Physician. The Saviour, by sending the lepers to the priest, not only honoured the law which had prescribed this conduct, but secured to Himself the testimony of the appointed judge and witness of the cure; for, as this disease was considered to be both inflicted and cured by the hand of God Himself, and as He had cured it, He thus left a witness in the conscience of the priest, that He was what He professed to be. 3. Follow these men on the road, and behold the triumphant success of Christ’ s merciful designs. Christ’ s cure was not only effectual, but universal. No one of the ten is excepted as too diseased, or too unworthy; but among all these men there is only one that we look at with pleasure. He was a stranger. 4. Contemplate more closely the grateful Samaritan. What a lovely object is gratitude at the feet of Mercy! 5. But what a contrast is presented by the ungrateful Jews. 6. Yet how gently the Saviour rebukes their unthankfulness. He might have said--“ What! so absorbed in the enjoyment of health as to forget the Giver! Then the leprosy which I healed shall return to you, and cleave to you for ever.” But, no; He only asks--“ Are there not found any that returned to give glory to God, save this stranger?” And, turning to the man prostrate in the dust at His feet, Jesus said, “ Arise, go to thy house, thy faith hath made thee whole.” Concluding lessons-- 1. This subject shows the compassion of the Saviour. 2. Let each ask himself, “ Am I a leper?” 3. See the hatefulness of ingratitude. (T. Gibson, M. A.) Gratitude for Divine favours I. WE ARE FAVOURS FROM GOD. No creature is independent. All are daily receiving from the Father of lights, from whom “ cometh every good and perfect gift,” and “ with whom there is no variableness, nor shadow of turning.” Our bodies, with all their powers; and our souls, with all their capacities, are derived from Him. But whilst the beneficence of the Supreme Being is, in one sense, general; it is, in another, restricted. Some are more highly favoured than others. Some have experienced remarkable interpositions of Divine providence. Some have been raised up from dangerous illness. Some have been advanced in worldly possessions. Some are the partakers of distinguished privileges. Such are those who are favoured with the dispensation of the gospel. II. THAT THESE FAVOURS SHOULD INDUCE A RETURN. 1. Gratitude will not be regarded as unsuitable. We always expect this from our fellow-creatures who participate in our bounty. 2. Commendation is another suitable return. Make known the lovely character of your merciful Redeemer to others. 3. Service is another suitable return. “ Wherefore, we receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved, let us have grace whereby we may serve God acceptably, with reverence and with godly fear.” 4. Humiliation is a suitable return. This Samaritan prostrated himself before his Divine Healer. How unspeakable is the felicity of that man, who, deeply humbled under a sense of the manifold mercies of God, can lift up his eyes to the great Judge of quick and dead, and say in sincerity, “ Lord, my heart is not haughty, nor my soul lofty, neither do I exercise myself in great matters, nor in things too high for me; I have surely behaved and quieted myself as a child that is weaned of its mother: my soul is even u a weaned child!” 5. Honour is a suitable return. This Samaritan was not, perhaps, acquainted with our Lord’ s divinity; but he regarded Him as some extraordinary personage, and, as was customary in such cases, he prostrated himself before Him, as a token of great respect and veneration. Entertain the most exalted conceptions of Him; you cannot raise your thoughts too high: “ He is God over all, blessed for ever.” III. THAT THIS RETURN IS TOO . The cause of this forgetfulness is to be traced, in general, to the influence of inward depravity; and nothing is a clearer proof of the corruption of our nature; but there are other causes, co-operating with this, of which we may mention two. First: Worldly prosperity. Honey does not more powerfully attract bees than affluence generates danger. Secondly: Worldly anxiety is another cause of this forgetfulness. IV. WE MAY OBSERVE, THAT TO NEGLECT A RETURN OF TO GOD IS HIGHLY . Nay, it is exceedingly sinful. What insensibility does it argue, and what criminality does it involve! It is a virtual denial of the Divine providence. (T. Gibson, M. A.) The earnestness of personal necessity One fact is brought most powerfully before us here, and that is-- 1. The personal necessity of these ten men. So strong was it that it gained a victory over national prejudices of the fiercest kind, and we find the Samaritan in company with the Jew. Amongst men not conscious of a common misery, such a union might have been looked for but in vain; the Jew would have loathed the Samaritan and the Samaritan would have scorned the Jew. And there is too much reason for supposing that a want of personal religion is tile cause of much of that fierce estrangement which characterizes the different parties and denominations of the religious world in the present day. Did men realize their common sinfulness, the deep necessity which enfolds them all, we can well believe that much of the energy which is now wasted in profitless controversy and angry recrimination, would be spent in united supplication to the One, who alone can do ought for the sinner in his need. 2. Again we see how personal necessity triumphs over national prejudice, in the fact that the Samaritan is willing to call upon a Jew for safety and for help. Under ordinary circumstances he would have held no communion with Him at all, but the fact that he was a leper, and that Jesus could cure him, overcame the national antipathy and he joins his voice with that of all the rest. And surely thus also is it with the leper of the spiritual world; when he has been brought truly to know his state, truly to smart under its degradation and its pain, truly to believe that there is One at hand by whom he can be healed, the power of the former pride and prejudice becomes broken down, and he cries out in earnest to the long-despised Jesus for the needed help. 3. We have now seen the power of personal necessity in overcoming strongly-rooted prejudice; let us next proceed to consider it as productive of great earnestness in supplication. The supplication of these men was loud and personal; they lifted up their voices, and fixed on one alone of Jesu’ s company as able to deliver them, and that one was Jesus Christ Himself. And we can well understand how this plague-stricken family united their energies in a long, earnest cry to attract the attention of the One that alone could make them whole. Theirs was no feeble whisper, no dull and muffled sound, but a piteous, an agonizing call which almost startled the very air as it rushed along. Nor can we marvel if God refuse to hear the cold, dull prayers which for the most part fall upon His ear; they are not the expressions of need, and therefore find little favour at His hands; they come to Him like the compliments which men pay to their fellow-men, and meaning nothing, they are taken for exactly what they are worth. 4. And mark, how by the loudness of their cry these unhappy men expose their miserable state to Christ--the one absorbing point which they wished to press upon His notice was the fact that they were all lepers, ten diseased and almost despairing men. In their case there was no hiding of their woe, they wished the Lord to see the worst. (P. B. Power, M. A.) He was a SamaritanThe Samaritan’ s gratitude It is necessary to notice the saving element in this man’ s gratitude. We can imagine the other nine saying to him as he turned back, “ We are as grateful to God as you are, but we will return our thanks in the temple of God. There are certain acts of worship, certain sacrifices ordained in the law by God Himself. In the due performance of these we will thank God in His own appointed way. He who healed us is a great Prophet, but it is the great power of God alone which has cleansed us.” Now the Samaritan was not content with this. His faith worked by love, taking the form of thankfulness. He at once left the nine to their journey, and, without delay, threw himself at the feet of the Lord. He felt that his was not a common healing--not a healing in the way of nature, by the disease exhausting itself in time. It was a supernatural healing, through the intervention of a particular servant of God; and this servant (or, perhaps, he had heard that Jesus claimed to be more than a servant, even the Son of God) must be thanked and glorified. If God had healed him in the ordinary course, the sacrifices prescribed for such healing would have sufficed. But God had healed him in an extraordinary way--by His Son, by One who was far greater than any prophet; and so, if God was to be glorified, it must be in connection with this extraordinary channel of blessing, this Mediator. (M. F. Sadler.) Gratitude heightens the power of enjoyment Man’ s gratitude is, I have often thought and said, a sixth sense; for it always heightens the power of enjoyment. Suppose a man to walk through the world with every sense excited to its utmost nerve: let there be a world of dainties spread before him and around him, and the aromas of all precious fragrances steeping his senses in delicious and exquisite enjoyment; let the eye be gladdened and brighten over: the knowledge, and the hand tighten over the grasp of present and actual possession, yet let him be a man in whose nature there wakes no keen sensation of grateful remembrance, and I say that yet the most delightful sensation is denied him. Grateful-thankfulness is allied to--nay, forms an ingredient in--the very chief of our deepest enjoyments,and purest springs of blessedness. Gratitude gives all the sweet spice to the cup of contentment, and the cup of discontent derives all its acid from an ungrateful heart. (E. P. Hood.) Unexpected piety “ And he was a Samaritan.” Thus frequently, in like manner, have we been surprised at the the finding of gratitude to God in most unexpected places and persons. We have often seen that it is by no means in proportion to the apparent munificence of the Divine bounty. It is proverbial that the hymn of praise rises more frequently from the peasant’ s fireside than from palace gates--more frequently from straitened than from abounding circumstances. Wherefore let us ourselves adore the exalting graces of the Divine goodness, which makes the smallest measure of God’ s grace to outweigh the mightiest measure of circumstantial happiness. As long as God merely gives the gilded shell--the scaffolding of the palace--He gives but little; and it has been frequently said that He shows His disregard of riches by giving them to the worst of men frequently; but to possess a sense of His mercy and goodness, that exceeds them all. (E. P. Hood.) Ingratitude for Divine favours The Staubach is a fail of remarkable magnificence, seeming to leap from heaven; its glorious stream reminds one of the abounding mercy which in a mighty torrent descends from above. In the winter, when the cold is severe, the water freezes at the foot of the fall, and rises up in huge icicles like stalagmites, until it reaches the fall itself, as though it sought to bind it in the same icy fetters. How like this is to the common ingratitude of men! Earth’ s ingratitude rises up to meet heaven’ s mercy; as though the very goodness of God helped us to defy Him. Divine favours, frozen by human ingratitude, are proudly lifted in rebellion against the God who gave them. (C. H. Spurgeon.) Where are the nine?--Ingratitude towards God I. THE OF . 1. The ungrateful Christian acts against the voice of his conscience. (1) Natural reason acknowledges the duty of gratitude. (2) The general consent of mankind brands with infamy the ungrateful. 2. Ingratitude sinks the human being below the level of the brute creation. 3. Ingratitude is infinitely ignominious, because directed against God. (1) God exhorts us so often to be grateful. (2) His beneficence is unlimited. (3) All His benefits are gratuities. (4) The ungrateful man denies, in fact, the existence of God. II. THE OF . 1. Temporal consequences. (1) God threatens to deprive the ungrateful of the blessings received Luke 9:26). God has ever been the absolute owner of whatever He gives; and He gives and takes according to His good pleasure. (a) He threatens so to direct events that His gift shall become a curse instead of a blessing to the ungrateful receiver. (b) To refuse whatever he may ask for in future. (c) To send chastisements upon him so as to convince him that He is the Lord. (2) God fulfilled His threatenings (a) on our first parents; (b) on Israel; (c) on Nebuchadnezzar. (d) Your own life and the life of your acquaintances will bear similar testimony. 2. Everlasting consequences. If the sinner remain ungrateful to the end of his earthly life, he will be deprived of all Divine gifts for all eternity. He will be deprived-- (1) Of the Word of God, instead of which he will incessantly hear only the words of Satan. (2) Of the celestial light against which he closed his eyes; in punishment of which he will be buried in everlasting darkness. (3) Of the Beatific Vision, instead of which he will behold only the vision of devilish deformity. (4) Of the sacramental means of salvation. (5) Of heavenly peace and joy. (Horar.) The causes of ingratitude “ The nine, where?” Thus Christ with censure, sadness, surprise inquires. There are more than nine sources of ingratitude. But there are nine, and each of these men may represent some one. I. One is CALLOUS. He did not feel his misery as much as some, nor is he much stirred now by his return to health. Sullen, torpid, stony men are thankless. Callousness is a common cause of ingratitude. II. One is . He is more like shifting sand than hard stone, but he never reflects, never introspects, never recollects. The unreflecting are ungrateful. III. One is PROUD. He has not had more than his merit in being healed. Why should he be thankful for what his respectability, his station, deserved? Only the humble-hearted are truly grateful. IV. One is ENVIOUS. Though healed he has not all that some others have. They are younger, or stronger, or have more friends to welcome them. He is envious. Envy turns sour the milk of thankfulness. V. One is . The Healer is scorned, persecuted, hated. The expression of gratitude may bring some of such hatred on himself. The craven is always a mean ingrate. VI. One is the result of acknowledging the benefit received. Perhaps some claim may arise of discipleship, or gift. VII. One is WORLDLY. Already he has purpose of business in Jerusalem, or plan of pleasures there, that fascinates him from returning to give thanks. VIII. One is . He would have expressed gratitude if the other eight would, but he has no independence, no individuality. IX. One is . By and by. Meanwhile Christ asks, “ Where are the nine?” (Urijah R. Thomas.) The sin of ingratitude There are, speaking broadly, three chief reasons for unthankfulness on the part of man towards God. First, an indistinct idea or an under-estimate of the service that He renders us; secondly, a disposition, whether voluntary or not, to lose sight of our benefactor; thirdly, the notion that it does not matter much to Him whether we acknowledge His benefits or not. Let us take these in order. I. There is, first of all, THE TO MAKE LIGHT OF A OR BENEFIT . Of this the nine lepers in the gospel could hardly have been guilty--at any rate, at the moment of their cure. To the Jews especially, as in a lesser degree to the Eastern world at large, this disease, or group of diseases, appeared in their own language to be as a living death. The nine lepers were more probably like children with a new toy, too delighted with their restored health and honour to think of the gracious friend to whom they owed it. In the case of some temporal blessings it is thus sometimes with us: the gift obscures the giver by its very wealth and profusion. But in spiritual things we are more likely to think chiefly of the gift. At bottom of their want of thankfulness there lies a radically imperfect estimate of the blessings of redemption, and until this is reversed they cannot seriously look into the face of Christ and thank Him for His inestimable love. II. Thanklessness is due, secondly, TO LOSING SIGHT OF OUR , AND OF THIS THE NINE LEPERS WERE NO DOUBT GUILTY. Such a thanklessness as this may arise from carelessness, or it may be partly deliberate. The former was probably the case with the nine lepers. The powerful and benevolent stranger who had told them to go to the priests to be inspected had fallen already into the background of their thought, and if they reasoned upon the causes of their cure they probably thought of some natural cause, or of the inherent virtue of the Mosaic ordinances. For a sample of thanklessness arising from a careless forgetfulness o! kindness received, look at the bearing of many children in the present day towards their parents. How often in place of a loving and reverent bearing do young men and women assume with their parents a footing of perfect equality, if not of something more, as if, forsooth, they had conferred a great benefit upon their fathers and mothers by becoming their children, and giving them the opportunity of working for their support and education. This does not--I fully believe it does not--in nine cases out of ten imply a bad heart inthe son or daughter. It is simply a form of that thanklessness which is due to want of reflection on the real obligations which they owe to the human authors of their life. III. Thanklessness is due, thirdly, TO THE SPIRIT. If prayer be efficacious the use of it is obvious; but where, men ask, is the use of thankfulness? What is the good of thankfulness, they say, at any rate when addressed to such a being as God? If man does us a service and we repay him, that is intelligible: he needs our repayment. We repay him in kind if we can, or if we cannot, we repay him with our thanks, which gratify his sense of active benevolence--perhaps his lower sense of self-importance. But what benefit can God get by receiving the thanks of creatures whom He has made and whom He supports? Now, if the lepers did think thus, our Lord’ s remark shows that they were mistaken--not in supposing that a Divine Benefactor is not dependent for His happiness on the return which His creatures may make to Him--not in thinking that it was out of their power to make Him any adequate return at all--but at least in imagining that it was a matter of indifference to Him whether He was thanked or not. If not for His own sake, yet for theirs, He would be thanked. To thank the author of a blessing is for the receiver of the blessing to place himself voluntarily under the law of truth by acknowledging the fact that he has been blest. To do this is a matter of hard moral obligation; it is also a condition of moral force. “ It is very meet, right, and our bounden duty, that we should at all times, and in all places, give thanks unto Thee, O Lord, Holy Father, Almighty Everlasting God.” Why meet? Why right? Because it is the acknowledgment of a hard fact--the fact that all things some of God, the fact that we are utterly dependent upon Him, the fact that all existence, all life, is but an outflow of His love; because to blink this fact is to fall back into the darkness and to forfeit that strength which comes always and everywhere with the energetic acknowledgment of truth. Morally speaking, the nine lepers were not the men they would have been if, at the cost of some trouble, they had accompanied the one who, “ when he saw that he was healed, turned back, and with a loud voice glorified God, giving Him thanks.” (Canon Liddon.) I. THE OF . Praise neglected 1. Here note--there are more who receive benefits than ever give praise for them. Nine persons healed, one person glorifying God; nine persons healed of leprosy, mark you, and only one person kneeling down at Jesus’ feet, and thanking Him for it! 2. But there is something more remarkable than this--the number of those who pray is greater than the number of those who praise. For these ten men that were lepers all prayed. But when they came to the Te Deum, magnifying and praising God, only one of them took up the note. One would have thought that all who prayed would praise, but it is not so. Cases have been where a whole ship’ s crew in time of storm has prayed, and yet none of that crew have sung the praise of God when the storm has become a calm. 3. Most of us pray more than we praise. Yet prayer is not so heavenly an exercise as praise. Prayer is for time; but praise is for eternity. 4. There are more that believe than there are that praise. It is real faith, I trust--it is not for me to judge it, but it is faulty in result. So also among ourselves, there are men who get benefits from Christ, who even hope that they are saved, but they do not praise Him. Their lives are spent in examining their own skins to see whether their leprosy is gone. Their religious life reveals itself in a constant searching of themselves to see if they are really healed. This is a poor way of spending one’ s energies. II. THE OF TRUE . 1. Living praise is marked by individuality. 2. Promptness. Go at once, and praise the Saviour. 3. Spirituality. 4. Intensity. “ With a loud voice. 5. Humility. 6. Worship. 7. One thing more about this man I want to notice as to his thankfulness, and that is, his silence as to censuring others. When the Saviour said, “ Where are the nine?” I notice that this man did not reply. But the adoring stranger did not stand up, and say, “ O Lord, they are all gone off to the priests: I am astonished at them that they did not return to praise Thee!” O brothers, we have enough to do to mind our own business, when we feel the grace of God in our own hearts! III. THE OF . This man was more blessed by far than the nine. They were healed, but they were not blessed as he was. There is a great blessedness in thankfulness. 1. Because it is right. Should not Christ be praised? 2. It is a manifestation of personal love. 3. It has clear views. 4. It is acceptable to Christ. 5. It receives the largest blessing. In conclusion: 1. Let us learn from all this to put praise in a high place. Let us think it as great a sin to neglect praise as to restrain prayer. 2. Next, let us pay our praise to Christ Himself. 3. Lastly, if we work for Jesus, and we see converts, and they do not turn out as we expected, do not let us be cast down about it. If others do not praise our Lord, let us be sorrowful, but let us not be disappointed. The Saviour had to say, “ Where are the nine?” Ten lepers were healed, but only one praised Him. (C. H. Spurgeon.) God looks after “ the nine” I. CHRIST HAS A PERFECT OF ALL UPON WHOM HE CONFERS SPECIAL GRACE AND , AND A PERFECT OF THE KIND AND MEASURE OF HIS . II. WHILE THE SOUL WILL BE AMPLY BY JESUS, THE OF WILL BE AFTER AND DEALT WITH BY HIM. (J. M. Sherwood, D. D.) But where are the nine? I. There are many men even now who, like the nine thankless lepers, have FAITH ENOUGH FOR THE HEALTH OF THE BODY, or even for all the conditions of outward comfort and success, but have not faith enough to secure the health and prosperity of the soul. That is to say, there are many who believe in so much of the will of God as can be expressed in sanitary laws and in the conditions of commercial success, but who do not believe in that Will as it is expressed in the laws and aims of the spiritual life. St. John’ s wish for his friend Gains (3 John 1:2) is a mystery to them; and it may be doubted whether they would care to have even St. John for a friend if he were constantly beseeching God to give them health of body only in proportion to their health of soul, and prosperity in business only in proportion to their growth in faith and righteousness and charity. II. If we look at the case of these nine lepers a little more closely, we shall find only too much in ourselves and our neighbours TO EXPLAIN THEIR , or, at least, to make it both credible and admonitory to us. 1. They may have thought that they had done nothing to deserve their horrible fate, or nothing more than many of their neighbours, who yet passed them by as men accursed of God; and that therefore, it was only just that they should be restored to health. 2. They may have thought that they would at least make sure of their restoration to health before they gave thanks to Him who had healed them. 3. They may have put obedience before love. Yet nothing but love can save. 4. The nine were Jews, the tenth a Samaritan; and it may be that they would not go back just because he did. No sooner is the misery which had brought them together removed, than the old enmity flames out again, and the Jews take one road, the Samaritan another. When the Stuarts were on the throne, and a stedfast endeavour was made to impose the yoke of Rome on the English conscience, Churchmen and Nonconformists forgot their differences; and as they laboured in a common cause, and fought against a common foe, they confessed that they were brethren, and vowed that they would never be parted more. But when the danger was past these vows were forgotten, and once more they drew apart, and remain apart to this day. 5. Finally, the nine ungrateful, because unloving, lepers may have said within themselves, “ We had better go on our way and do as we are bid, for we can be just as thankful to the kind Master in our hearts without saying so to Him; and we can thank God anywhere--thank Him just as well while we are on our way to the priests, or out here on the road and among the fields, as if we turned back. The Master has other work to do, and would not care to be troubled with our thanks; and as for God--God is everywhere, here as well as there.” Now it would not become us, who also believe that God is everywhere, and that He may be most truly worshipped both in the silence of the heart and amid the noise and bustle of the world, to deny that He may be worshipped in the fair temple of nature, where all His works praise Him. It would not become us to deny even that some men may find Him in wood and field as they do not find Him in a congregation or a crowd. But, surely, it does become us to suggest to those who take this tone that, just as we ourselves love to be loved and to know that we are loved, so God loves our love to become vocal, loves that we should acknowledge our love for Him; and that, not merely because He cares for our praise, but because our love grows as we show and confess it, and because we can only become “ perfect” as we become perfect in love. It surely does not become us to remind them that no man can truly love God unless he love his brother also; and that, therefore, the true lover of God should and must find in the worship of brethren whom he loves his best aid to the worship of their common Father. He who finds woods and fields more helpful to him than man is not himself fully a man; he is not perfect in the love of his brother; and is not, therefore, perfect in the love of God. (S. Cox, D. D.) Impediments to gratitude The moment when a man gets what he wants is a testing one, it carries a trial and probation with it; or if, for the instant, his feeling is excited, the after-time is a trial. There is a sudden reversion, a reaction in the posture of his mind, when from needing something greatly, he gets it. Immediately his mind can receive thoughts which it could not entertain before; which the pressure of urgent want kept out altogether. In the first place, his benefactor is no longer necessary to him; that makes a great difference. In a certain way people’ s hearts are warmed by a state of vehement desire and longing, and anybody who can relieve it appears like an angel to them. But when the necessity is past, then they can judge their benefactor--if not altogether as an indifferent person, if they would feel ashamed of this--still in a way very different from what they did before. The delivery from great need of him is also the removal of a strong bias for him. Again, they can think of themselves immediately, and their rights, and what they ought to have, till even a sense of ill-usage, arises that the good conferred has been withheld so long. All this class of thoughts springs up in a man’ s heart as soon as he is relieved from some great want. While he was suffering the want, any supplier of it was as a messenger from heaven. Now he is only one through whom he has what rightfully belongs to him; his benefactor has been a convenience to him, but no more. The complaining spirit, or sense of grievance, which is so common in the world, is a potent obstacle to the growth of the spirit of gratitude in the heart. So long as a man thinks that every loss and misfortune he has suffered was an ill-usage, so long he will never be properly impressed by the kindness which relieves him from it. He will regard this as only a late amends made to him, and by no means a perfect one then. And this querulous temper, which chafes at all the calamities and deprivations of life, as if living under an unjust dispensation in being under the rule of Providence, is much too prevalent a one. Where it is not openly expressed it is often secretly fostered, and affects the habit of a man’ s mind. Men of this temper, then, are not grateful; they think of their own deserts, not of others’ kindness. They are jealous of any claim on their gratitude, because, to own themselves grateful would be, they think, to acknowledge that this or that is not their right. Nor is a sullen temper the only unthankful recipient of benefits. There is a complacency resulting from too high a self-estimate, which equally prevents a man from entertaining the idea of gratitude. Those who arc possessed with the notion of their own importance take everything as if it was their due. Gratitude is essentially the characteristic of the humble-minded, of those who are not prepossessed with the notion that they deserve more than any one can give them; who are capable of regarding a service done them as a free gift, not a payment or tribute which their own claims have extorted. I will mention another failing much connected with the last-named ones, which prevents the growth of a grateful spirit. The habit of taking offence at trifles is an extreme enemy to gratitude. There is no amount of benefits received, no length of time that a person has been a benefactor, which is not forgotten in a moment by one under the influence of this habit. The slightest apparent offence, though it may succeed ever so long a course of good and kind acts from another, obliterates in a moment the kindnesses of years. The mind broods over some passing inadvertence or fancied neglect till it assumes gigantic dimensions, obscuring the past. Nothing is seen but the act which has displeased. Everything else is put aside. Again, how does the mere activity of life and business, in many people, oust almost immediately the impression of any kind service done them. They have no room in their minds for such recollections. (Canon Mozley.) Gratitude is a self-rewarding virtue How superior, how much stronger his delight in God’ s gift, to that of the other nine who slunk away. We see that he was transported, and that he was filled to overflowing with joy of heart, and that he triumphed in the sense of the Divine goodness. It was the exultation of faith; he felt there was a God in the world, and that God was good. What greater joy can be imparted to the heart of man than that which this truth, thoroughly embraced, imparts? Gratitude is thus specially a self-rewarding virtue; it makes those who have it so far happier than those who have it not. It inspires the mind with lively impressions, and when it is habitual, with an habitual cheerfulness and content, of which those who are without it have no experience or idea. Can the sullen and torpid and jealous mind have feelings at all equal to these? Can those who excuse themselves the sense of gratitude upon ever so plausible considerations, and find ever such good reasons why they never encounter an occasion which calls for the exercise of it, hope to rise to anything like this genuine height of inward happiness and exultation of spirit? They cannot; their lower nature depresses them and keeps them down; they lie under a weight which makes their hearts stagnate and spirit sink. They cannot feel true joy. They are under the dominion of vexatious and petty thoughts, which do not let them rise to any large and inspiriting view of God, or their neighbour, or themselves. They can feel, indeed, the eagerness and urgency of the wish, the longing for a deliverer when they are in grief, of a healer when they are sick; but how great the pity I how deep the perversity! that these men, as it were, can only be good when they are miserable, and can only feel when they are crushed. (Canon Mozley.) Instances of ingratitude What then, brethren, is the conclusion from the whole subject? Why, that the man who contents himself with one act of dedication to God’ s service, however sincere, and there stops; one who is content with a few proofs of obedience and faith, however genuine, with a few tears of godly sorrow, however penitent--content with such things, I say, and there stops; such an one will neither have the approval of his Saviour while he lives, nor the comforts of his religion when he comes to die. Time will not allow me to enlarge on the signs of this spiritual declension, too often, it is to be feared, the forerunner of a final falling away from God. Of such perilous condition of soul, however, I could not point out a surer sign than ingratitude. Every day we live gives back to activity and life some who had been walking on the confines of the eternal world, who had well-nigh closed their account with this present scene; and here and there we behold one resolving to perform his vows, coming back to glorify God, and determined henceforth to live no more unto himself, but unto Him that died and rose again. But why are these instances of a holy dedication to God’ s service after a recovery from sickness so few? “ Were there not ten cleansed? but where are the nine?” Again, sometimes we witness the spectacle of a highly privileged Christian family. In the life of the parents is seen a holy and consistent exhibition of Christian character; the incense of prayer and praise burns brightly and purely on the family altar, and every arrangement of the household seems designed to remind us that God is there. We look for the fruits of this. The parents are gone to rest; they are safe and happy, and at home with God; and of the children, perhaps, there are one or two that follow their steps, viewing religion as their chief concern, making the glory of God the aim of all they say or do, and the promises of God more than their necessary food. But why are the rest of the children living, as it were, on their parents’ reputation, content with reaching a certain point in the Christian race, and that point not a safe one--one which leaves them to be saved only by fire, only rescued as brands from the burning--ten indeed were cleansed; “ but where are the nine?” Again, we look upon an assembly of Christian worshippers. They listen with interested and sustained attention; the breath from heaven seems to inspire their worship; and wings from heaven seem to carry the message home: here and there is a heart touched, a reed bruised, a torpid conscience quickened into sensibility and life, but the others remain as before, dead to all spiritual animation, immortal statues, souls on canvas, having a name to live but are dead. Whence this difference? They confessed to the same leprosy, they cried for the same mercy, they met with the same Saviour, and were directed to the same cure, and yet how few returned to their benefactor. One, two, or three in a congregation may come and fall at the feet of Jesus, but there were thousands to be cleansed; where are the ninety times nine? But take a more particular illustration. Once a month, at least, in every church, passing before our eyes, we look upon a goodly company of worshippers; they have been bowing with reverence before the footstool of the Redeemer; they have been singing their loud anthems to the praise of the great Mediator; they have been listening to the word of life with all the earnestness of men who were ignorant, seeking knowledge; guilty, desiring pardon; hungry, wanting food; dying, imploring life; but, mark you, v/hen the invitations of the dying Saviour are recited in their ears, when the commemorative sacrifice of Christian faith and hope is offered to them, when mercy in tenderest accents proclaims to every penitent worshipper, “ Come unto Me all ye that are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest,” then many who seemed to be in earnest are in earnest no longer; the memorials of the Saviour’ s death and passion are spread before them in vain, and all we can do is to look with sorrow on the retiring throng and exclaim, “ There were ten that seemed to be cleansed, but where are the nine?” (D. Moore, M. A.) Thanksgiving Ingratitude!--there is a fault we all of us easily recognize and heartily condemn. And even in a “ matter where it would seem almost incredible, even in a matter such as that brought before us by the miracle of the ten lepers, even in the matter of recovered health, there is strange room for ingratitude. Who can believe it, even of himself? who can believe the quickness with which the memory of sickness, and of all its prayerful longings, can be wiped out of our hearts when once the tide of returning strength has swept up again into our veins? It is the natural that so beguiles us. Health is our natural condition, and there is a strange sway exercised over our imagination and our mind by all that is natural. The natural satisfies and calms us by its very regularity. Its response to our expectations seems to give it some rational validity. It is right, for it is customary; and its evenness and sequence smother all need of inquiry. It was this which bewildered us in sickness--that it had wrenched us out of our known-and habitual environment; it had thrown us into uncertainty; we could not tell what the next minute might bring; we had lost standard, and measure, and cue; we had no custom on which to rely. And then, in our distress and in our impotence, we learned how our very life hung on the breath of the Most High, in whose hands it lay to kill or to make alive; then we knew it, in that awful hour of withdrawal. But, with health, the normal solidity returns to the fabric of life; the all-familiar walls range themselves around us; the all-familiar ways stretch themselves out in front of our feet; we can be sure of to-morrow, and can count and can calculate, not because the usual is the less wonderful, hut simply because it is the usual. We move in it unalarmed, unsurprised, and God seems again to fade away. There are other matters which occupy their attention: the wonder of the feeling of new life; the sense of delicious surprise; the desire to see whether it is all true, and to experiment, and to test it. And, then, their friends are about them, their friends from whom they have been parted for so many bitter years; they are being welcomed back into the brotherhood of men, into the warmth and glow of companionship. Oh, come with us, many voices are crying; we are so glad to have you once more among us!” It is not said in the story that they did not feel grateful: grateful, no doubt, with that vague, general gratitude to God the good Father, with which we, too, pass out of the shadows of sickness into the recovered life, under the sun; among our fellows. They may well have felt genial, grateful; only they did nothing with their gratitude, only it laid no burden of duty upon them; it was not in them as a mastering compulsion which would suffer nothing to arrest its passionate will to get back to the feet of Him before whom it had once stood and cried, “ Jesu, Master--for Thou alone canst--do Thou have mercy on me.” “ When He smote them they sought Him.” It all happens, we know, over and over again with us. We are, most of us, eager to find God when we are sick, when the normal round of life deserts us, and by its desertion frightens and bewilders us; but so very few of us can retain any hold on God in health, in work, in the daily life of the natural and the constant. And by this we bring our faith under some dangerous taunts. Who does not know them? The taunt of the young and the strong: “ I feel the blood running free, and my heart leaps, and my brain is alive with hope; what have you to tell me, you Christians, with your message for the sick and for the dying? I have in me powers, capacities, gifts; and before me lies an earth God given and God blessed; and you bring me the religion of the maimed, and the halt, and the blind, a religion of the outcast and the disgraced, a religion of hospitals and gaols; what is all this to me?” And the taunt of the worker: “ I have will, patience, endurance, vigour; by this I can win myself bread, can build myself a house, can make my way.” Those taunts are very real, and living, and pressing: how shall we face them? First, we will be perfectly clear that for no taunts from the young, the successful, and the strong, and for no demands either from the workers or the wise, can we for one moment forget or forego the memory of Him who was sent to heal the broken-hearted, and to comfort the weary and the heavy-laden; and who laid His blessing upon the poor, and the hungry, and the unhappy. No, we will withdraw nothing. But have we no living message for the strong and the young, for the happy and the wise? In what form, let us ask, ought religion to offer itself to these? Thanksgiving! That is the note of faith by which it employs and sanctifies not only the poverty and the penitence of sinners, but also the gladness of work and the glory of wisdom. And has our Christian faith, then, no voice of thanksgiving? Nay, our faith is thanksgiving. Thanksgiving!--this is our worship, and in the form of thanksgiving our religion embraces everything that life on earth can bring before it. This entry is longer than a Bible module can hold. The rest is at https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/bi/ Luke 17:20-21 The kingdom of God is within you The kingdom of God It is a kingdom of the mind, the will, the feeling, and the conduct. “ My kingdom is not of this world,” formed in a material fashion, resting on visible forces, but within, seated in the heart, the intellect, and feeling. Give over, then, straining your eyes investigating the heavens, the kingdom of God is among you; the words will bear this rendering, being almost identical in meaning with the words found in John’ s Gospel (chap. 1., verse 26), translated thus--“ In the midst of you standeth One whom ye know not.” The laws and principles of the kingdom were fully incorporated in Christ, they evolved out of His Person like light from the sun. He informs them that the kingdom is already present with them, that it bad actually commenced its operations, and that its spiritual vibrations were then felt. What, then, is this kingdom? 1. It is a kingdom of new convictions producing new conversions and outward reforms. It deals with these three forces of the human character--impulse, will, and habit. Once it gets a proper hold of these powers it makes the character an irresistible force. When religious impulse is grasped by the will and transformed into life, the character is such that the gates of hell cannot prevail against it. 2. It is the kingdom of life, or a living kingdom here, rather than an earthly kingdom yonder. It is new life kindling new ideas and forming fresh habits. Sometimes it steals in upon the mind as silently as light. Look at the woman of Samaria, how natural, the new ideas were deposited into her mind, and with what marvellous rapidity they changed the current of her thoughts and the habits of her life. 3. It is a kingdom of new impressions concerning self, God, man, life, time, and eternity. No person ever equalled the founder of Christianity as an impression-maker, impressions of the highest and purest type were set in motion, as reconstructive agencies by Him; and they are still at work leavening society, and they are divinely destined to continue until the whole universe of God is entirely assimilated with the Divine nature, and thus cause righteousness and holiness to shine everlastingly throughout God’ s dominion. 4. It is the kingdom of love--love revealed in the light of the Fatherhood of God, God being known as a Father, naturally creates a filial reverence in man, which at once becomes the mightiest force in reclaiming the lost. Like creates like is a recognized principle in ancient and modern philosophy, as well as in Christian theology. (J. P. Williams.) The kingdom which cometh not with observation These words of our Lord open to us an abiding law of His kingdom; an enduring rule of that dispensation under which we are. 1. It is “ a kingdom” ; most truly and really a kingdom. Nay, even in some sort a visible kingdom; and yet at the very same time it is-- 2. A kingdom “ which cometh not by observation” ; unseen in its progress, seen in its conclusion; unheard in its onward march, felt in its results. Let us, then, follow out a little more into detail this strange combination of what might almost seem at first sight direct contradictions. I. And first see HOW THIS WAS THE OF ITS OPENING ON THIS EARTH. It was then manifestly a “ kingdom.” The angels bore witness of it. Their bright squadrons were visible upon this earth hanging on the outskirts of Messiah’ s dominion. They proclaimed its coming: “ Unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.” “ Glory to God in the highest; peace on earth, good-will towards men.” Nay, the world felt it: “ Herod was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him.” The instincts of the unbelieving monarch made him tremble before the King of Saints. It was “ a kingdom” which was coming. Yet it “ came not with observation.” The King of Israel was born obscurely. Angels appeared to herald Him; yet none save shepherds saw them. There was veil enough over each circumstance of His life to make the dull eye of the world miss the true meaning of characters it could not help seeing. And afterwards, in the life of Christ, it was the same. The world was stirred, troubled, uneasy, perplexed. It felt that it was in the presence of a strange power. An undefined, unknown, yet real presence was with it. But it knew Him not. It was as if some cloud was shed round Him through which the world could not pierce. “ The kingdom” was even now amongst men, and yet its coming was unseen. II. And so, AFTER THE DEATH AND OF CHRIST, “ THE KINGDOM” WENT ON. Still it came, reaching to every part of the earth, but never “ with observation.” III. Once more; SEE HOW THIS IS STILL IN EACH HEART THE LAW OF ITS . There also none can ever trace its beginnings. Some, indeed, may remember when first they felt its life within them, when first they were duly conscious of its power--though this is far from universally the case where it is most truly planted--but even in these cases, this consciousness was not its true beginning; any more than the first faint upgrowth of the tender blade is the beginning of its life; any more than the first curling of the water is the breath of heaven which it shows: no; life must be, before it is able to look back into itself and perceive that it does live. Being must precede consciousness. And as it is at first given, so does it grow. It is the receiving a life, a being, a breath. It is the passing over us of God’ s hand, the in-breathing of His Spirit. This is its secret history; and this men cannot reach. And yet it is “ a kingdom” which is thus set up. Wheresoever it has its way, there it will be supreme. It makes the will a captive, and the affections its ministers, and the man its glad vassal. Though it “ cometh not with observation,” yet it is indeed “ a kingdom.” Now, from this it behoves us to gather two or three strictly practical conclusions-- 1. This is a thought full of fear to all ungodly men. Depend upon it this kingdom is set up. It is in vain for you to say that you do not perceive it, that you see it not, nor feel it; this does not affect the truth. It is its law that “ it cometh not with observation” ; that from some it always is hidden. Your soul had--if you be not altogether reprobate, it still has, however faintly exercised--the organs and capacities for seeing it. But you are deadening them within yourself. 2. This is a quickening thought to all who, in spite of all the weakness of their faith, would yet fain be with our Lord. Is this kingdom round about us? Have we places in it? How like, then, are we to His disciples of old; trembling and crying out for fear as lie draws ninth to us! How like are we to those whose eyes were holden, who deemed Him “ a stranger in Jerusalem” ! How do we need His words of love; His breaking bread and blessing it; His making known Himself unto us; His opening our eyes! How should we pray as we have never prayed before, “ Thy kingdom come!” 3. Here is a thought of comfort. How apt are we to be east down; to doubt our own sincerity, to doubt His working in us, to doubt the end of all these tears, and prayers, and watchings! Here, then, is comfort for our feeble hearts. Small as the work seems, unobserved as is its growth, it is a kingdom. It is His kingdom. It is His kingdom in us. Only believe in Him, and wait upon Him; only endure His time, and follow after Him, and to you too it shall be manifested. (Bishop Samuel Wilberforce.) God’ s kingdom without observation 1. The manner in which the gospel was first introduced was without external show and ostentation. Worldly kingdoms are usually erected and supported by the power of arms. 2. The external dispensation of Christ’ s kingdom is without ostentation. His laws are plain and easy to be understood, and delivered in language level to common apprehension. The motives by which obedience is urged are pure and spiritual, taken not from this, but the future world. His institutions are few and simple, adapted to our condition, and suited to warm and engage the heart. 3. The virtues which the gospel principally inculcates are without observation, distant from worldly show, and independent of worldly applause. 4. As the temper of the gospel, so also the operation of the Divine Spirit in producing this temper, is without observation. It is not a tempest, an earthquake, or fire; but a small, still voice. It is a spirit of power, but yet a spirit of love, and of a sound mind. The fruits of it, like its nature, are kind and benevolent. They are love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, meekness, and goodness. 5. The blessings of God’ s kingdom are chiefly invisible, and without observation. The rewards which the gospel promises are not earthly and temporal, but heavenly and spiritual. They are not external power, wealth, and honour; but inward peace, hope, and joy here, and everlasting felicity hereafter. We will now attend to the reflections and instructions which our subject offers to us-- 1. If the kingdom of God is now among us, we are all without exception bound to acknowledge it, and submit to it. 2. We learn that it concerns every one, not only to submit to God’ s kingdom, but to submit to it immediately. 3. We are here taught that we have no occasion to run from place to place in order to find the grace of God, for we may obtain it in any place where His Providence calls us. For the Spirit is not confined to certain places, its influences are not at human disposal, nor do its operations come with public observation. You are to receive the spirit in the hearing of faith. Its influence on the heart is not like an overbearing storm, but as the gentle rain on the tender herb, and the dew on the grass. 4. We learn from our subject that true religion is not ostentatious. It seeks not observation. The true Christian is exemplary, but not vain. He is careful to maintain good works, but affects not an unnecessary show of them. 5. It appears that they only are the true subjects of God’ s kingdom who have experienced its power on their hearts. 6. As the kingdom of God comes not to the heart with observation, we are incompetent judges of the characters of others. (J. Lathrop, D. D.) The secret workings of Divine grace The workings of God’ s grace are, for the most part, not only beyond, but contrary to our calculation. It is not said that “ the kingdom of God is not with observation,” but “ the kingdom of God cometh not with observation.” And the principle is this--that the greatest and plainest effects are produced by causes which are themselves unnoticeable. God is mounting up to His grand design; but we cannot see the steps of His ascent. If you pass from the history of the Church to any other province in God’ s empire, you will find them all recognizing the same law. It seems to be the general rule of all that is sublime, that its motions shall be unseen. Who can discern the movements of the planets--whose evolutions we admire, whose courses guide our path? The day breaks and the day sets; but who can fix the boundaries of the night, the boundaries of the darkness? You may watch the departing of summer beauty--as the leaves are swept by the autumn wind--but can the eye trace its movements? Does not everything--in the sky and in the earth--proclaim it--as all nature follows its hidden march--that “ the kingdom of God cometh not with observation” ? Or, let any man amongst you, read but a very few of the leading passages of his own life, and let him observe what have been the great, deciding events of his history--determining, if I may so speak, the very destinies of his forces. Were they those he anticipated? Did his great joys and sorrows rise in the quarters from whence he expected them to rise? Did not the great circumstances of his life arise from events quite unexpected? And did not those things which he counted little, greatly rise and extend themselves--for evil or for good? And what does all this attest-in providence and in nature--but that “ the kingdom of God cometh not with observation” ? But we are now led to expect, by what we have read, and what we have seen, and what we have felt, in outward things, that we shall find the truth of the text, also, when we come to the experience of a man’ s soul; and that the “ kingdom of God cometh not with observation.” A very pious mother is deeply anxious about the soul of her son. Her fond affections, her holy influences, her secret prayers-have all been bearing to that one point, of her child’ s conversion to God, for many years. But have that mother’ s prayers died, because those lips are hushed? “ Has God forgotten to be gracious,” when man ceases to expect? Nay--in His own way, and in His own hour,” the kingdom” comes. (J. Vaughan, M. A.) Quiet growth of the Church In his other work, the Acts of the Apostles, St. Luke beautifully illustrates these words of our Lord. The Book of the Acts gives us the history of the early Christian Church for about two-and-thirty years after the death of Christ. It may well surprise a thoughtful reader of this book to remark how little progress Christianity seems to have made at the end of that period, so far as the outward life of man was concerned. Nothing amounting to a great social change is here recorded. The Church had not put down heathen sacrifice, nor demolished a single idol temple. Scarcely yet did men’ s public and social life show any traces of it. The gospel had as yet no local habitation; in looking down upon the crowded dwellings of the great cities of the empire, you would not as yet have seen a spire. Nay, nearly three centuries elapsed after the period described in the Acts of the Apostles, before buildings gave any note of the great moral revolution which had taken place in the minds of men; before the Basilica was diverted from its original purpose as a court of justice to the great end of Christian worship, and in the semicircular recess, where the praetor and his assessors had sat to lay down the law of the empire, now the bishop and his attendant presbyters were installed around the holy table, to expound the higher law of the kingdom of heaven. But yet, though the visible impression made by Christianity upon human life and manners was thus slight during the period referred to, we may be quite sure that the gospel was then fermenting with peculiar power in the hearts and minds of men. If the kingdom of God did not come with observation, this was no proof at all that it was not within men--that it was not in the very centre of their inner life. If the powers that be, and the wise men after the flesh, at first thought it beneath their notice; if Trajan and Pliny regarded Christians merely in the light of an obstinate and eccentric set of fanatics; this was no proof that a great social revolution was not preparing in the lower strata of society, and eating away, like subterraneous volcanic fire, the crust upon which existing institutions stood. The mustard-seed had been cast into the earth, and it was swelling and bursting beneath the soil. The leaven had been thrown into human nature; and its influences, though noiseless and unseen, were subtlely and extensively diffusing themselves through the whole lump. Christ’ s religion was to win its way noiselessly, like Himself. Because its blows against existing institutions were so indirect, because they were aimed so completely at the inward spirit of man, the great men and the wise men after the flesh completely overlooked them, and dreamt not how they were undermining the whole social fabric of heathenism. The scanty notices of Christianity by authors contemporary with its rise have been thoughtlessly made a ground of objection against it by sceptics. The believer will rather see in this fact a confirmation of the Lord’ s profound word. The kingdom of God was not to come, and it did not come, with observation. (Dean Goulburn.) Secrecy of Divine visitations Such has ever been the manner of His visitations, in the destruction of His enemies as well as in the deliverance of His own people;--silent, sudden, unforeseen, as regards the world, though predicted in the face of all men, and in their measure comprehended and waited for by His true Church. See Luke 17:27-29; Ex Isaiah 37:36; Acts 12:23; Isaiah 30:13; Luke 17:35 - 36. And it is impossible that it should be otherwise, in spite of warningsever so clear, considering how the world goes on in every age. Men, who are plunged in the pursuits of active life, are no judges of its course and tendency on the whole. They confuse great events with little, and measure the importance of objects, as in perspective, by the mere standard of nearness or remoteness. It is only at a distance that one can take in the outlines and features a whole country. It is but holy Daniel, solitary among princes, or Elijah the recluse of Mount Carmel, who can withstand Baal, or forecast the time of God’ s providences among the nations. To the multitude all things continue to the end, as they were from the beginning of the creation. The business of state affairs, the movements of society, tile course of nature, proceed as ever, till the moment of Christ’ s coming. “ The sun was risen upon the earth,” bright as usual, on that very day of wrath in which Sodom was destroyed. Men cannot believe their own time is an especially wicked time; for, with Scripture unstudied and hearts untrained in holiness, they have no standard to compare it with. They take warning from no troubles or perplexities, which rather carry them away to search out the earthly causes of them, and the possible remedies. Pride infatuates many, and self-indulgence and luxury work their way unseen,--like some smouldering fire, which for a while leaves the outward form of things unaltered. At length the decayed mass cannot hold together, and breaks by its own weight, or on some slight and accidental external violence. (J. H.Newman, D. D.) The coming of the kingdom to individuals Truly, at a christening we may well reflect that the kingdom of God comes “ not with observation.” And if in later years, as too generally is the ease, the precious grace thus given is lost and sinned away, and nothing but the stump or socket of the Divine gift remains without its informing, spiritual, vital power, then another change is assuredly necessary, which we call conversion. And what is conversion? Is it always a something that can be appraised and registered as having happened at this exact hour of the clock--as having been attended by such and such recognized symptoms--as announced to bystanders by these or those conventional or indispensable ejaculations--as achieved and carried out among certain invariable and easily described experiences? Most assuredly not. A conversion may have its vivid and memorable occasion, its striking, its visible incident. A light from heaven above the brightness of the sun may at midday during a country ride flash upon the soul of Saul of Tarsus; a verse of Scripture, suddenly illuminated with new and unsuspected and quite constraining meaning, may give a totally new direction to the will and the genius of an Augustine; but, in truth, the type of the process of conversion is just as various as the souls of men. The one thing that does not vary, since it is the very essence of that which takes place, is a change, a deep and vital change, in the direction of the will. Conversion is the substitution of God’ s will as the recognized end and aim of life, for all other aims and ends whatever; and thus, human nature being what it is, conversion is as a rule a turning “ from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God,” that a man may receive forgiveness of his sins and an inheritance among them that are sanctified. And this great change itself, most assuredly, “ cometh not with observation.” The after-effects, indeed, appear--the spirit of self-sacrifice, the unity of purpose which gives meaning, solemnity, force to life, the fruits of the Spirit--love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, in such measure as belongs to the requirements of the individual character. Certainly, when the kingdom of God has come into a soul the result may be traced easily enough, but the kingdom of God cometh in this case, too, at least, as a general rule, “ not with observation.” (Canon Liddon.) Religion is an inward principle, rind cabinet be forced Men love excitement, and to be able to say, “ Lo, here is Christ! or, lo, there!” and they will eagerly run after the preacher who can best minister to this love of excitement. But religion is an inward principle, a work of personal self-denial and effort. Vegetation as a general rule, is more advanced by the gentle dews and moderate showers than by torrents of rain or the bursting of water-spouts; so is the work of salvation, by the daily dews of Divine grace, more than by extraordinary revivals. Let us not disparage revivals, for some truly deserve the name; but let us be assured that the work of God is not confined to them, and we fear is not often in them at all--that churches may have some piety which have no great annual season of excitement--that the best state of things is, where no communion passes without the adding of faithful souls--that all healthy growth in nature and grace is gradual and from within--and that “ the kingdom of God cometh not with observation.” (W. H. Lewis, D. D.) The kingdom within I. IS AN INWARD AND . It is, says our Saviour, “ within you.” This is a representation which differs from the ordinary opinion of men. If it be within us, then-- 1. It is not determined by geographical boundaries, by latitude or longitude. 2. It does not consist in an observance of ordinances. This is a representation which accords with what we find in the sacred pages. God forms His estimate of the characters of men, not by their actions, or their language, or their opinions, or by anything of a merely outward nature; but by the temper and frame of their hearts. II. TRUE THE SOUL TO THE AND REIGN OF GOD. 1. It is spoken of as a kingdom. Now a kingdom is not a scene of anarchy and rebellion; it is distinguished by order and due subordination. 2. But this is not all. Not only is there subordination, but all is under the immediate control of God. (1) God is the author and preserver of that spiritual and Divine principle in which true religion consists. (2) God has appointed all the means by which it is maintained. 3. Mere necessary submission is not enough. It implies a voluntary subjection of the heart to the authority of God. (Dr. Harris.) The kingdom of God I. The text is a WARNING AGAINST VIEWS OF . There is a form of evil in our own day against which we make a strong protest. There are men in our midst who say, “ Lo here; or, lo there.” At last the truth has been discovered. Jacob is come to Bethel, and has dreamed a marvellous dream. We speak of men who sow seeds of discord through pretended light and holiness. They disturb the peace of the church, and lead the unwary astray. II. The great truth which our text suggests is THE NATURE OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD, yea, the reign of God in men’ s hearts and lives. The Jews expected a startling demonstration of the supernatural to their material advantage; Christ effected a moral reformation, and laid the foundation for a spiritual commonwealth. We quote the opening sentences of “ Christus Consummator,” a recent work of great beauty by Canon Westcott: “ Gain through apparent loss; victory through momentary defeat; the energy of a new life through pangs of travail--such has ever been the law of spiritual progress. This law has been fulfilled in every crisis of reformation; and it is illustrated for our learning in every page of the New Testament.” Such, in a few words, is the basin of that empire of truth which the Son of God founded, and is now enlarging by His Word and Spirit. III. In conclusion, observe how emphatic the Saviour is in directing the attention of His hearers to the fact, THAT THE KINGDOM OF GOD IS NOT AN , BUT A REALITY IN THE SOUL--“ the kingdom of God is within you.” The seat of the’ government is in the heart. (The Weekly Pulpit.) The inner heaven It is evident that a “ kingdom” necessarily implies a ruling power, and entire subordination to the governing principle. But many minds (might I not almost say most?) have not even this. There is no governing principle at all, unless it be to please self; and a kingless heart must be a weak and miserable thing! There is sure to be disorder, and confusion, and wretchedness--where there is anarchy; and a man’ s heart is of that character--so impulsive, so restless; so sensitive to influences of every kind; so capricious; so many coloured, that it actually requires a controlling rule which should be a sovereign over it. Nothing else will do. A multitude of rulers could not answer the purpose. They would only weaken and distract. There must be One, and that One supreme, and absolute, and alone. Now it is Christ’ s promise that He will come into every heart who is willing to receive Him. He comes a King. Now see what follows. Christ was a Saviour before He was a King. He rose from His cross to His throne. “ He humbled Himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.” Wherefore God also hath highly exalted Him, and given Him a name which is above every name. He enters therefore the heart a Saviour-King. What, then, is the first thing which He brings? What is the first act of sovereignty--what the ground of His kingdom? Pardon, peace, and rest to the soul. It cannot be but that the first discovery, and on every fresh realization of such a fact as that, there must be great joy. “ Can it be true? O what a happiness! What perfect joy! He is mine and I am His, and nothing shall ever divide us.” So peace makes joy; and joy and peace, uniting, make love. Oh! it is a strangely-beautiful kingdom where love--love in high authority--love in power--love in awe-issues its mandates; and love, love in expectation, love in perfect accord, love eager on the wing, gives constant echo to every will of His Sovereign’ s heart. But are there no laws in that “ kingdom” of peace and love? The strictest. No man--such is the constitution of our nature--no man could be happy who is not ruled, and ruled with a very firm hand. We all like, we all require, and we all find it essential to our being to be under authority and restraint; and the more imperative the power, so it be just and good, the happier we are. These are the essentials, the very characteristics of the inner kingdom which is now in every believer’ s soul; only, that which is here, is only the dim reflection of all which is so perfect there; still, it is the same heaven in both worlds. And a man that has once that “ inner heaven” in his heart, how independent he is of all accidents, and of all external circumstances. Surely, when death comes, it will be a very little step to that “ kingdom “ indeed, and to his kindred above. (J. Vaughan, M. A.) Where is the heavenly kingdom If you ask me what my definition of the kingdom of heaven is, if you ask me where I place it, I will tell you. Show me a man who is just, who is honest, who is benevolent, who is charitable, who loves his God, who loves his fellow-men; show me such a man; yea, bring him here, stand him by my side, and I care not what be the colour of skin, nor what be his name, or the name of his nation, or what his social standing, or what his financial position, or what be the degree of his intellectual development; I wilt point my finger at that man’ s breast, and say: “ There, within this man’ s breast is the kingdom of heaven.” If you ask me again to show you the kingdom of heaven, I will say: “ Bring me a woman that is pure, that is affectionate, that is loyal to her sense of duty, that is sympathetic and charitable of speech, that is patient, whose bosom is full of love for the Divine Being and for those of her race with whom she is brought in contact; yea, bring that woman here, stand her by my side; and I care not whether she be Caucasian or African, whether she be of this nation or of that, care nothing about her intellectual development; and I will tell you that the kingdom of heaven is within that woman’ s soul.” Aye, within such a man and such a woman is a kingdom boundless in extent, perpetual in its expression of power, majestic in its appearance, indefatigable in its energy, Divine in its quality--a kingdom of which there can be but one king, and that is God; a kingdom for the sovereignty of which there is but one being fitted--the Infinite Spirit. And this, as I understand it, is the glory of man and the glory of woman: that within them there is a realm of capacity, of faculty, of sense, of aspiration, of sentiment, of feeling, so fine, so pure, so noble, so majestic and holy, that its natural king is Infinite Love. It was to introduce Himself to this realm, to establish His throne and possess it in this kingdom, that Jesus, the Son of God and the Son of Man, alike conjoining in Himself the Divine and the human in harmonious conjunction, representing the sympathy of the lower and the majesty of the higher world, descended to this earth, and is today seeking through the operation of His Spirit, entrance to possession. It is over this kingdom within, He reigns, if He reign at all. It is within this kingdom that He energizes. It is out of this kingdom that His glory has to proceed. Not in that which is nominal and technical; not in that which is verbal and formal; not in that which is in accordance with custom and tradition, is the Saviour present. And they who look for Him in these things shall not find Him; bat they who search to discern Him in spirit and life, in holy expression of consecrated faculty in the energy of capacities dedicated to God, shall find Him, and they shall find that in these He is all in all. (W. M. Hay Aitken, M. A.) Luke 17:22-24 One of the days of the Son of Man Mistaken desires for Jesus I. JESUS A CHANGE OF FEELING ON THE PART OF HIS IN TO HIS . They will desire to see one day a visible appearance of the Son of Man. If you have the spirit of Jesus, if He has come to you so that you know Him to be your Saviour and Friend, you cannot be free from such changes of feeling in reference to Him. No. There come to you times in which you think, “ Surely my life in Christ is not pouring on me so clearly and warmly as it might do.” You are inclined to murmur out such plaints as, “ I cannot see His face, though I have eagerly looked for it; waiting to catch some beams of the wondrous glory resting on it, and be able to say, ‘ It is the Lord.’ I want to feel His strong hand holding me up; but I do not grasp it, though I stretch out mine before, behind, on each side. My prayer this morning was that I might find to-day to be a day for a personal and new contact with Jesus.” So there is a sense in which your feeling in reference to Him is somewhat changed. The day has come “ when ye desire to see one of the days of the Son of Man.” II. JESUS HERE THE FAILURE OF SUCH DESIRES FOR HIS . “ Ye shall not see it.” He does not want His people to indulge in vain dreamy longings. He does not want to frustrate hopes that at the bottom might express loyalty to Him, but are mistaken as to the way in which their purport is to be achieved. He could not grant that which would not be for the honour of God; that which would be to the hurt of those who desired only one day of the Son of Man. III. JESUS HERE THAT THERE WILL BE FALSE MADE IN TO HIS . “ They shall say to you, ‘ See here! or see there!’” From history we find that there has hardly ever been a time of special trouble in the world, hardly ever a time of formality and deadness in the Church, but men have risen up to declare that the Son of Man was just coming, and that plans should be adopted to meet Him. But that is not the kind of expectation I want to warn you against; it is not the one that you are most in danger of succumbing to. But is there not a tendency to gather religious meetings under the idea that because you thus gather together Jesus will manifest Himself? Is there not a tendency to believe that, if you can get up a great organization to carry out a Christian purpose, obtain plenty of money, and seem to succeed outwardly, Jesus is there? Is that not saying, “ See here, see there” ? Against all that sort of thing His words ate meant to bear. You may gather meetings; you don’ t necessarily gather with Christ. You may get wealth to support your efforts; that is not a proof that Christ approves them. You may find numbers to sustain certain plans; that is no pledge, on the part of those numbers, that they are moving under the leading of Christ. You must learn that there is no power of life in those things by themselves. I do not despise meetings, wealth, or numbers. There is a certain value to be attached to them; but that value is just equivalent to any number of cyphers, good for something when you put one, two, or other numeral before them. So gather all kinds of people, money, and meetings; but until you put Christ into them they are of no real value. It is the power of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus that is to be desired, not the power of external agencies. Pray that your heart may be brought more and more into sympathy with His, and that you may more and more clearly know that you are living on the Son of God by faith. Then you will not need anybody to point out the Son of Man to you when He comes. You do not need anybody to tell you that there is light in this place--you know it; and when Christ appears, His servants will know it without going by the reports of others, without following any one. We shall know it by the power He Himself will exert. Meantime we have to walk by faith, and not by sight. (D. G. Watt, M. A.) And why not While the Lord was yet on earth the days of the Son of Man were but lightly esteemed. The Pharisees spoke of them with a sneer, and demanded when the kingdom of God should come. “ Is this the coming of Thy promised kingdom? Are these fishermen and peasants Thy courtiers? Are these the days for which prophets and kings waited so long?” “ Yes,” Jesus tells them, “ these are the very days. The kingdom of God is set up within men’ s hearts, and is among you even now; and the time will come when you will wish for these days back again, and even those who best appreciate them shall ere long confess that they thought too little of them, and sigh in their hearts for their return.” 1. We are bad judges of our present experiences. 2. We seldom value our mercies till we lose them. I. Consider THE of the text. 1. Our Lord meant that His disciples would look back regretfully upon the days when He was with them. In a short time His words were true enough, for sorrows came thick and threefold. At first they began to preach with uncommon vigour, and the Spirit of God was upon them. But by and by the love of many waxed cold, and their first zeal declined; persecution increased in its intensity, and the timid shrank away from them; evil doers and evil teachers came into the Church; heresies and schisms began to divide the body of Christ, and dark days of lukewarmness and halfheartedness covered them. 2. These disciples would look forward sometimes with anxious expectation. “ If we cannot go back,” they would say, “ Oh that He would hurry on and quickly bring us the predicted era of triumph and joy. Oh for one of the days of the Son of Man.” II. AN ADAPTED TO AT THIS PRESENT MOMENT. 1. Days of holy fellowship with Jesus may pass away to our deep sorrow. While the Beloved is with you, hold Him, and do not let Him go. He will abide if you are but eager for His company. 2. Days of delightful fellowship with one another. Let us labour in love, zeal, humility; for a continuance of these all our life long. 3. Days of abundant life and power in the Church. III. A MEANING ADAPTED TO THE . When on your deathbed you will be willing to give all you possess to he able once again to hear the voice of God’ s minister proclaiming pardon through the blood of Jesus. Emotions formerly quenched will not come back; you resisted the Spirit, and He will leave you to yourself; and yet there will be enough, perhaps, of conscience left to make you wish you could again feel as when almost persuaded to be a Christian. (C. H. Spurgeon.) Days of holy privileges Two kinds and sets of days are here contrasted: coming days and days that are now. The general thought is very natural and very human. It might be said to almost any one at certain periods of life, that he will one day be looking back upon that period wiG, regretful fondness, even though it may not be entirely bright or altogether enjoyable while it is passing. Days of childhood, though many restrictions have fettered, and many faults may have saddened them; days of school life, though often complained of at the time as days of burdensome lessons, arbitrary rules, and irritating punishments; days of early struggle, and hope long deferred, in the practice of a profession; days of uncertain health or variable spirits, while opinion, faith, and habit, are anxiously shaping themselves, and the aspects and prospects of life are in many ways both gloomy and formidable; of all these, and many other examples might be added to them, it might yet be said with great truth by an experienced looker-on to the person passing through them: “ Days will come when ye will be desiring to see one of these days over again, and when, alas, you shall not see it! Yes, you may well prize, while you have them, the days that are now, though they may be very far from perfect, either in opportunity or in circumstance; for assuredly you will one day be desiring one of them back--no tears and no prayers of yours will be of any avail to recall it.” When our Lord said here to His disciples: “ The days will come when ye will desire to see one of these days” --“ days of the Son of Man,” He calls them--“ and ye shall not see it,” there was a solemnity and a pathos in the prediction far beyond the universal experience of which we have spoken. There was much to make the days of that time far from enjoyable. They were days of unrest; they were days of toil; they were days of anxiety; they were days also of perplexity and bewilderment in spiritual things. They were very slowly and very intermittently realizing very elementary conceptions. They had no such hold of great hopes or great faiths as might have made their heaven all brightness, whatever their earth might be. They were always disappointing their Master by some expression which betrayed ignorance, or by some proposal which threatened inconsistency, which must have made, we should have thought, the very memory of those days of the Son of Man a bitterness rather than a comfort. Yet it is quite plain that our Lord looked upon those as in some sense happy days for them. “ The days will come when ye will desire to see one of them, and sorrow because ye cannot.” “ Can ye make the children of the bride-chamber fast while the bridegroom is with them?” And in that last clause He touches the one point, which makes those happy days for them, whatsoever their drawbacks, and whatsoever their discomforts; it was the personal presence of the loved and trusted Lord. In that one respect they would be losers even by the accomplishment of redemption. “ A little while,” He said, as the end drew on, “ a little while, and ye shall not see Me, and verily I say unto you, that then ye shall weep and lament, while the world is rejoicing, then ye shall be sorrowful, though at last your sorrow shall be turned into joy.” Yes; when He speaks of a sorrow in separation,and then of a joy growing out of it, He combines in a wonderful and a merciful way the natural and the spiritual, recognizes the difficulty of rising into the higher heaven of faith, and yet points us thither for the one real and one abiding satisfaction. We have had no such personal experiences as these which the text tells of--none of those companyings with Jesus, as He went in and out among the disciples. It is only from afar off that we can contemplate that living companionship. It is only by a remote emulation that we can desire one of those days of the Son of Man. In the hope of catching some distant ray of that glory travellers have sometimes sought the land of Christ’ s earthly sojourn, if so be they might live themselves back into the days of His ministry and of His humanity. But others, with a truer and a deeper insight, have sought their inspiration in the holy Gospels, have read and pondered those four sacred biographies till they could see and hear Him in them, without those distractions of surrounding imagery and scenery which can but divert the soul from that heavenlier wisdom. “ He is risen; He is not here.” It is not in hallowed ground, any more than in imaginative dreaming, that we shall find, in this far-off century of the gospel, the best and most life-like conception of what the text calls “ the days of the Son of Man.” Rather shall we seek to frame our idea of them--first, in the most human and personal contact with such wants and woes as He came to seek out and to minister to; and, secondly, in the diligent study and imitation, so far as we may, of those characteristics and those ministries which, in our own day and generation, make the nearest approach, however distant it must be, to the character and ministry below of the Divine Son Himself. To acquaint ourselves, not as unconcerned hearers, but as sorrowing sympathizers, with the actual condition at our very doors of the toilers and sufferers by whose labour--alas! too often by whose sacrifice--the wealth and luxury, nay, the comforts and conveniences of the higher English life, are made what they are; not to shrink from the contemplation with a sentimental repugnance, but to compel ourselves to take notice of it, and to encourage by word and deed, by giving and feeling, all the serious enterprises by which English manliness, and English philanthropy, and English Christianity, late or early seek and strive to grapple with it. Thus, on the one side, we shall be realizing the days of the Son of Man. For this was the earth which He came to save, and this was the man whom He took upon Him to deliver. True, He did not become Himself the denizen of an overgrown city. He did not take our flesh in the midst of that swarming hive of humanity, imperial Rome. He did not wait for that latest age which should develop into its gigantic proportions such a metropolis as this London. But no monstrous growth and no uttermost corruption was out of the ken and scope of His incarnation. The days of the Son of Man are wherever Christ and misery stand face to face. Whosoever tries to bring Jesus Christ into one lodging-house or one alley of sinning, suffering London, is doing more to realize to himself, and to others, the ministry of the Saviour, than if He tried to track His earthly footsteps through Palestine, or to picture in vivid imagination the very occupations and employments of the days of His flesh. (Dean Vaughan.) Luke 17:26-27 As it was in the days of Noe Wherein are we endangered by things lawful? I. WHEN DO LAWFUL THINGS BECOME SIN TO US? 1. When they become hindrances in our way to heaven, instead of helps as they were intended to be. 2. When our hearts are wrapped up in them. II. HOW WE MAY JUDGE OF OUR HEARTS, AND KNOW WHEN THEY AND OFFEND IN THE PURSUIT, USE, AND OF LAWFUL THINGS. 1. When our desire of, and endeavours after, worldly things grow strong and vehement and very eager and impatient. 2. When you have raised expectations and hopes of great contentment and satisfaction from your comforts. 3. When the obedience and willing submission of the soul is brought off to any worldly comfort, and the soul stoops to its sceptre, and the faculties, like the centurion’ s servants, do as they are bid. Such comforts which are slavishly obeyed are sinfully enjoyed. 4. When the soul groweth very tender and compassionate towards such a comfort, and begins to spare that above other things; then that becomes a lust, and lust is very tender and delicate, and must be tenderly used. 5. When the care, anxiety, and solicitude of the soul runs out after the comforts of this life, saying, “ What shall I eat? what shall I drink? How shall I live and maintain my wife and children? what shall I do to get, to keep such or such a thing?” 6. That comfort which thou art not dead unto, neither is that dead to thee, thou wilt hardly enjoy with safety to thyself, or thou wilt part withal but upon severe terms. 7. If, after God hath been weaning us in a more special manner by His word and rod, and taking off our hearts from our worldly comforts, yet the strong bent of the soul is towards them, it argues much carnal love to them that we are not crucified to those comforts. III. WHAT ARE THE SINS THAT ATTEND THE SINFUL USE OR ABUSE OF LAWFUL ? I will confine myself to the sins in the text. 1. The first sin in their eating and drinking, etc., was sensuality. 2. Pride, ease, and idleness generally go together. 3. Security follows. (H. Wilkinson, D. D.) The revelation of the Son of Man The revelation of the Son of Man is an event which takes more shapes than one in this passage. 1. First our Lord indicates that it implies a period of danger in one place and of the possibility of escape in another place--of safety in the field and not in the house, of safety without, but not within. The revelation of the Son of Man thus takes the shape of a critical period, such as might happen during a siege, or the destruction of a dwelling or of a whole city--where life would be in peril within the walls, but might be saved beyond the walls, and where safety lay only in immediate flight: lingering would be ruin, a quick departure from the doomed city the only way of escape. That is one aspect of the revelation of the Son of Man. And Christ exhorts His disciples, and all who hear Him, to escape with their lives--to escape with the higher life, the better life. Let not the love of property interfere with the love of life; lose all rather than lose life; and let not the love of the lower life interfere with the preservation of the higher life--the life of the spirit, the true life of man. Lose life itself rather than lose that; for in preserving that, all is preserved. 2. Then our Lord speaks of ,the day of the Son of Man--or, altering the phraseology, of the night of the Son of Man--when He is revealed. In that night there shall be two in one bed--the one taken and the other left; two women grinding at the mill--the one taken and the other left; two men in the field--the one taken and the other left. It is a time of separation which is indicated; the figure of the siege disappears, and new figures take its place. It is a time, though not of apparent outward danger, yet of judgment; but on what principle the judgment takes place, these words do not of themselves determine. For aught that appears, it may be a separation of accident or of caprice; it is a separation, and that is all we know. But when the disciples say further, “ Where, Lord?” He utters a proverb which casts light on the judgment and also on the siege and separation: “ Wheresoever the body is, thither will the eagles be gathered together,” a parable that may have been old or new, it matters not; the meaning is plain, and it is twofold. (1) It evidently means that the judgment is one which is true to nature. Our Lord gives the principles on which the judgment or separation proceeds. It is the dead carcass on which the eagles prey. It is the corrupt city, the corrupt State, the corrupt heart, on which judgment is pronounced: the judgment is not one of accident or caprice, but of truth, of righteousness. That is the principle of separation and judgment. And (2) in answer to the question “ Where, Lord?” Jesus gives, I think, another lesson on this matter,--viz., that this revelation of the Son of Man is not a single and solitary act of judgment at some future and far-distant day, but that it is a revelation often made--made, now on a country, now on a people, now on a Church, now on a system. The revelation of the Son of Man is not a thing of time and place, it is an eternal law in the dispensation of God. The judgment of God is proceeding every day; it is proceeding quietly and unseen. It is only now and then that men’ s eyes are open to behold it, and then the judgment is revealed. But it is not the less true that God’ s judgment proceeds day by day, whether it is seen and revealed or not. Corruption shall bring about its own recompense--not at a particular time or place; not in some one notable instance years or centuries hence, but wheresoever the carcass is, there will the eagles be gathered together. (A. Watson, D. D.) Luke 17:32 Remember Lot’s wifeAlmost saved, yet lost Lot’ s wife--a nameless sinner in a half-forgotten age! I. WHAT IS THERE TO IN THE CASE OF LOT’ S WIFE? See Genesis 19:26. So soon and so sudden is her disappearance from the stage of history. She only appears long enough to disappear again. She is like a spectre, rising from the earth, moving slowly across our field of vision, and then vanishing away. Hence her history is all concentred in a single point, and that the last. It has no beginning, and no middle, but an end--a fearful end. Its course is like that of the black and silent train, to which the match is at last applied, and it ends in a flash and an explosion. 1. The first distinctive feature in the case of Lot’ s wife is, that she was almost saved. The burning city was behind; she had been thrust out from it by angelic hands, her husband and her children at her side; the chosen refuge not far off, perhaps in sight; the voice of the avenger and deliverer still ringing in her ears. 2. But, though almost saved, she perished after all. What I want you to observe is not the bare fact that she perished, as have millions both before and since, but that she perished as she did, and where she did. Perdition is indeed perdition, come as it may, and there is no need of fathoming the various depths of an abyss, of what is bottomless. But to the eye of the spectator, and it may be to the memory of the lost, there is an awful aggravation of what seems to be incapable of variation or increase in the preceding and accompanying circumstances of the final plunge. He who sinks in the sea without the hope or opportunity of rescue may be sooner drowned than he who for a moment enjoys both; but to the heart of an observer how much more sickening and appalling is the end of him who disappears with the rope or plank of safety within reach, or in his very hand, or of him who slips into the bubbling waters from the surface of the rock which, with his failing strength, he had just reached, and on which for a moment of delicious delusion he had wept to imagine himself safe at last! 3. Another distinctive feature in the case of Lot’ s wife is, that her destruction was so ordered as to make her a memorial and a warning to all others. The pillar of salt may have vanished from the shore of the Dead Sea, but it is standing on the field of sacred history. The Old and New Testaments both give it place; and as it once spoke to the eye of the affrighted Canaanite or Hebrew, who revisited the scene of desolation, so it now speaks to the memory and conscience of the countless multitudes who read or hear the law and gospel. II. OF WHAT USE CAN THE BE TO US? 1. We, like Lot’ s wife, may be almost saved. This is true in a twofold sense. It is true of outward opportunities. It is also true of inward exercises. 2. Those who are almost saved may perish--fearfully perish--finally perish--perish in reach, in sight of heaven--yes, at the very threshold of salvation. Whatever “ looking back” may have denoted in the type, we know full well what may answer to it in the antitype. Whatever may have tempted Lot’ s wife to look back, we know the multiplied temptations which lead sinners to do likewise. And this terrible example cries aloud to those who are assailed by lingering desires for enjoyments once abandoned, or by sceptical misgivings, or by evil habits unsubdued, or by disgust at the restraints of a religious life, or by an impious desperation such as sometimes urges us to eat and drink, for to-morrow we die;--to all such this terrible example cries aloud, “ Remember Lot’ s wife” --her escape and her destruction. 3. They who are, like Lot’ s wife, almost saved, may not only, like her, be destroyed in the very moment of deliverance but, like her, so destroyed as to afford a monumental warning to all others that the patience and long-suffering of God are not eternal. God has made all things for Himself, even the wicked for the day of evil. They who will not, as “ vessels of mercy,” glorify His wisdom and His goodness, must and will “ show His wrath and make His power known,” as “ vessels of wrath fitted to destruction.” They who will not consent to glorify Him willingly must be content to glorify Him by compulsion. This is true of all who perish, and who, therefore, may be said to become “ pillars of salt,” standing, like milestones, all along the broad road that leadeth to destruction, solemn though speechless monitors of those who throng it, and planted even on the margin of that great gulf which is fixed for ever between heaven and hell. But in another and a more affecting sense, it may be said that they who perish with the very foretaste of salvation on their lips, become “ pillars of salt” to their successors. What a thought is this--that of all the tears which some have shed in seasons of awakening, and of all their prayers and vows and resolutions, all their spiritual conflicts and apparent triumphs over self and sin, the only ultimate effect will be to leave them standing by the wayside as “ pillars of salt,” memorials of man’ s weakness and corruption, and of God most righteous retributions. Are you willing to live, and, what is more, to die, for such an end as this? (J. A. Alexander, D. D.) Lot’ s wife I. HER . 1. She had a pious husband. 2. She had heavenly visitors. 3. She had Divine warning. 4. She had seen the wicked punished. II. HER OFFENCE. 1. She acted under the impulse of feeling. 2. She acted under the impulse of unbelief. 3. She acted under a disregard of law. 4. She acted in contempt of warning. III. HER . She was punished-- 1. Suddenly. 2. Seasonably. 3. Righteously. 4. Exemplarily. IV. THE WARNING administered. “ Remember” ! 1. Not to delay. Flee at once. 2. Not to hesitate. Look not back. 3. Not to draw back. Danger is behind. In conclusion: 1. See here a monument of Divine wrath. 2. See here a beacon to warn coming generations. (A. Macfarlane.) Seasonable truths in evil times I. WHAT ARE WE TO ABOUT LOT’ S WIFE? Her sin, and her punishment. A sudden and a deadly stroke was dealt her, for her sin of apostasy. II. WHY ARE WE TO LOT’ S WIFE? 1. Because her example is recorded for that purpose. 2. For our warning. 3. That we fall not into the same condemnation. III. HOW ARE WE TO LOT’ S WIFE? 1. Reflectively. 2. Meditatively. 3. With holy fear, reverence, and adoration. IV. WHAT AND WHEN IS THE SPECIAL TIME THAT LOT’ S WIFE IS TO BE BY US? It is good to remember her frequently; but we are in a special manner to remember Lot’ s wife in the time of declining; in declining times remember her that you do not decline. Thus our Saviour Christ brings her in for to be remembered by us, that we do not look back, as she looked back. We are to remember her in times of security, of great security. She is to be remembered by us also, in time when God doth call upon His people by His dispensations to go out of Sodom, and make no delay; for so our Saviour also presses it to you, “ Let not him that is on the housetop go down,” etc., but “ remember Lot’ s wife.” God would have no delay then: so when God calls upon a people to come out of Sodom; make no delay, but “ remember Lot’ s wife.” Thus we see what the time is. V. WHAT GOOD SHALL WE GET BY LOT’ S WIFE? Is there any good to be gotten by remembering Lot’ s wife? Yes, much every way: Something in a way of instruction, something in a way of caution. 1. If this story of Lot’ s wife be true, and do live in our memory, then, why should not we stand and admire, and say, Lord, how unsearchable are Thy judgments, and Thy ways past finding out? Here are four, and but four that came out of Sodom, and yet one of the four were destroyed. God may deliver our family in the time of common calamity, and yet some of our house may suffer. God in the midst of judgment doth remember mercy; in the midst of mercy He remembers judgment. 2. If this story of Lot’ s wife be true, and do live in our memory, then here we may learn by way of instruction, and see how far a man or woman may go in religion, and yet come short at the last. 3. If this story of Lot’ s wife be true, and do live in our memory; then you may learn and see by way of instruction; that the best relations will not secure from the hand of God, if we continue evil. 4. If this story of Lot’ s wife be true, and do indeed live in our memory, then here you may see what an evil thing it is to look back upon that which God hath delivered us from. 5. If this story of Lot’ s wife be true, and live in our memory; here we may learn by way of instruction, that former deliverance will not secure us from future destruction: she was delivered with a great deliverance, and yet destroyed with a great destruction. 6. If this story of Lot’ s wife be true, and live in our memory, then here we may learn by way of instruction: it is ill sinning when God is punishing; it is good begging while God is giving: but oh, it is ill sinning while God is punishing. 7. If this story be true, and live in your memory, then here you may learn, that those that are exemplary in sinning, shall be exemplary in punishing. 8. If this story of Lot’ s wife be true, and do live in our memory; then here we may see what an evil thing it is to mischoose in our choosing time. 9. If this story of Lot’ s wife be true, and do live in our memory; then here we may see by way of instruction, that though God will lay out an hiding-place for His people, in times of public calamity; yet if they sin in the way, they may perish or miscarry in the very face of their hiding-place. 10. If this story of Lot’ s wife be true, and do live in our memory; then here we may learn by way of instruction, that it is possible that a religious family may have a black mark of God’ s indignation. 11. And the main of all is this. If the story of Lot’ s wife be true, and do live in our memory: oh, what an evil thing is it to look back, and to decline in declining times. How quick was God with Lot’ s wife for looking back. She never sinned this sin before; it was the first sin that ever in this kind she committed; and she might have said: “ Why, Lord, it is the first time that ever I committed it, and indeed I was taken before I was aware thus to look back: I did not consider well of what I did.” But God turned her presently into a pillar of salt; God was quick with her. Why? For to show thus much, God will be quick with apostates. And thus I have given you these things by way of instruction. 12. As many I might give you in a way of caution, but to instance only in one. If this story of Lot’ s wife be true, and do live in our remembrance; by way of caution, why should we not all take heed how we look back to worldly interests, in the day when the Son of Man shall be revealed, or in this day of the gospel when the Son of Man is revealed. You see what became of Lot’ s wife for her looking back; and therefore why should we not all of us take heed how we look back or decline, in this day that the Son of Man is revealed? VI. You will say, WHAT SHALL WE DO THAT WE MAY NOT DECLINE; what shall we do that we may so remember Lot’ s wife, that we may not decline, or look back in declining times? 1. If you would not look back in declining times, shut your eyes and your ears against all the allurements and threatenings of the world. 2. If you would not look back in declining times, consider, in the fear of the Lord, what an evil thing it is to look back. Thereby you lose all you have wrought, thereby you will lose all your losses. There is much gain in losing for Jesus Christ. By looking back you will lose all the losses and the gain thereby. Thereby you will lose the testimony of your own integrity. Yet, saith God, Job held fast his integrity. Thereby, also, you will lose the comfort of those glorious times that are to come. (W. Bridge) Remember Lot's wife I. WHAT IN THE CONDUCT OF LOT’ S WIFE TO LIVE IN OUR . 1. Her sin. (1) Inordinate worldly attachment. (2) Carelessness. (3) Ingratitude. (4) Disobedience. 2. Her punishment. (1) Immediate. (2) Aggravated. Better for her to have perished in Sodom than on the way to Zoar. (3)Signal. A monument before the world of God’ s power and faithfulness, and His righteous displeasure against apostasy. II. LET US DRAW NEAR AND READ THE ON THIS . 1. The danger of apostasy. 2. Past and present mercies are no security for future safety, unless suitably improved. 3. The evil of worldly attachments. III. WITH WHAT OUGHT WE TO LOT’ S WIFE? 1. With gratitude for our own preservation though we have acted a similar, nay, a more guilty part. (1) She was warned once; we have been warned a thousand times. (2) She looked back; but have not we turned back? (3) She looked back once; we have both looked and turned back over and over again. (4) We have looked back and turned back, although we had her example of warning before our eyes. 2. To increase our salutary fears. (W. Atherton.) A woman to be remembered I. THE WHICH LOT’ S WIFE ENJOYED. The mere possession of religious privileges will save no one’ s soul. Men need besides, the grace of the Holy Ghost. II. THE SIN WHICH LOT’ S WIFE . “ She looked back.” That look was a little thing, but it revealed the true character of Lot’ s wife. Little things will often show the state of a man’ s mind even better than great ones, and little symptoms are often the signs of deadly and incurable diseases. A straw may show which way the wind blows, and one look may show the rotten condition of a sinner’ s heart (Matthew 5:28). 2. That look was a little thing, but it told of disobedience in Lot’ s wife. When God speaks plainly by His Word, or by His messengers, man’ s duty is clear. 3. That look was a little thing, but it told of proud unbelief in Lot’ s wife. She seemed to doubt whether God was really going to destroy Sodom: she appeared not to believe there was any danger, or any need for such a hasty flight. But without faith it is impossible to please God. 4. That look was a little thing, but it told of secret love of the world in Lot’ s wife. Her heart was in Sodom, though her body was outside. She had left her affections behind when she fled from her home. Her eye turned to the place where her treasure was, as the compass-needle turns to the pole. And this was the crowning point of her sin. III. THE WHICH GOD ON LOT’ S WIFE. 1. A fearful end. 2. A hopeless end. Conclusion: Suffer me to wind up all by a few direct appeals to your own heart. In a day of much light, and knowledge, and profession, I desire to set up a beacon to preserve souls from shipwreck. I would fain moor a buoy in the channel of all spiritual voyagers, and paint upon it, “ Remember Lot’ s wife.” (1) Are you careless about the second Advent of Christ? Alas, many are! They live like the men of Sodom, and the men of Noah’ s day: they eat, and drink, and plant, and build, and marry, and are given in marriage, and behave as if Christ was never going to return. If you are such an one, I say to you this day, Take care: “ Remember Lot’ s wife.” (2) Are you lukewarm, and cold in your Christianity? Alas, many are! They try to serve two masters: they labour to keep friends both with God and mammon. If you are such an one, I say: (3) Are you halting between two opinions, and disposed to go back to the world? Alas, many are! They are afraid of the cross: they secretly dislike the trouble and reproach of decided religion. They are weary of the wilderness and the manna, and would fain return to Egypt, if they could. If you are such an one, I say to you this day, Take care: “ Remember Lot’ s wife.” (4) Are you secretly cherishing some besetting sin? Alas, many are! they go far in a profession of religion; they do many things that are right, and are very like the people of God. But there is always some darling evil habit, which they cannot tear from their heart. Hidden worldliness, or covetousness, or lust, sticks to them like their skin. They are willing to see all their idols broken, but this one. If you are such an one, I say to you this day, Take care: “ Remember Lot’ s wife.” (5) Are you trifling with little sins? Alas, many are! They hold the great essential doctrines of the gospel. They keep clear of all gross profligacy, or open breach of God’ s law; but they are painfully careless about little inconsistencies, and painfully ready to make excuses for them. “ It is only a little temper, or a little levity, or a little thoughtlessness, or a little forgetfulness.” If you are such an one, I say to you this day, “ Take care: ‘ Remember Lot’ s wife.’” (Bishop Ryle.) A solemn warning 1. It is a solemn warning, when we think of the person Jesus names. He does not bid us remember Abraham, or Isaac, or Jacob, or Sarah, or Hannah, or Ruth. No: He singles out one whose soul was lost for ever. He cries to us, “ Remember Lot’ s wife.” 2. It is a solemn warning, when we consider the subject Jesus is upon. He is speaking of His own second coming to judge the world: He is describing the awful state of unreadiness in which many will be found. The last days are on His mind, when He says, “ Remember Lot’ s wife.” 3. It is a solemn warning, when we think of the person who gives it. The Lord Jesus is full of love, mercy, and comparison: He is one who will not break the bruised reed nor quench the smoking flax. He could weep over unbelieving Jerusalem, and pray for the men that crucified Him; yet even He thinks it good to remind us of lost souls. Even He says, “ Remember Lot’ s wife.” 4. It is a solemn warning, when we think of the persons to whom it was first given. The Lord Jesus was speaking to His disciples: He was not addressing the scribes and Pharisees, who hated Him, but Peter, James, and John, and many others who loved Him; yet even to them He thinks it good to address a caution. Even to them He says, “ Remember Lot’ s wife.” 5. It is a solemn warning, when we consider the manner in which it was given. He does not merely say, Beware of following--take heed of imitating--do not be like Lot’ s wife/’ He uses a different word: He says, “ Remember.” He speaks as if we were all in danger of forgetting the subject; He stirs up our lazy memories; He bids us keep the case before our minds. He cries, “ Remember Lot’ s wife.” (Bishop Ryle.) Remember Lot’ s wife I. LOT’ S WIFE, AND LEARN THE PERILS OF . How terrible her fate! What could be more awful? 1. It was dreadful physically. She lost her life. 2. It was dreadful socially. Her husband was made a widower, her daughters orphans. 3. It was dreadful spiritually. She died in the very act of disobedience. Worldliness was at the root of her sin. She looked back with regret at the valuable possessions that were being abandoned. Let us beware. Prosperity is perilous. Gain and godliness are frequently divorced. II. LOT’ S WIFE, AND SEE HOW IT IS TO BEGIN WELL AND END ILL. Some are like certain African rivers of which we have read. Rising in some secluded and rocky upland, they increase in volume and beauty as they flow along. Their course is marked by fertility on either side. But instead of rolling on till they reach the ocean and help to swell its waters, they gradually sink and are lost in the sand of the desert. Esau; Saul; Solomon; Judas. Let us not be high-minded, but fear. Let us watch and be sober. III. LOT’ S WIFE, AND BEHOLD THE FOLLY AND SIN OF DELAY. She lingered and perished. Had she not hesitated, she had not been destroyed. Decision is essential to success in all departments of life. “ Despatch is the soul of business.” A wealthy man was once asked the secret of his prosperity. His answer was significant: “ I always recollect what my father said to me when I was a boy--If you have a thing to do, go and do it.” No doubt this had much to do with his accumulation of riches. So, too, salvation must be gone about at once. It is no matter for delay. “ No hurry “ is Satan’ s masterpiece. It is the almost universal sin. Hear the confession of an old man:--“ When I was young, I said to myself, ‘ I cannot give up the world now, but I will do it by and by. When I have passed the meridian of life, then I shall be ready to attend to the concerns of my soul.’ But here I am, an old man. I feel no readiness nor disposition to enter upon the work of my salvation. In looking back I often feel that I would give worlds if I could be placed where I was when I was twenty years old. There were not half as many difficulties in my path then as there are now.” An artist once requested that he might be allowed to take the Queen’ s likeness. Time and place were fixed. Her Majesty was there to the moment. He was not. When he came he found, instead of the royal lady, her message. She left word that she had been, gone, and should not return. The King of kings offers to give us His image. He wishes us to resemble Him. The Incarnate One says, “ Follow Me.” But He has appointed the period and the locality in which we are to obtain this Divine likeness--the present world and the present time. “ Seek ye the Lord while He may be found.” (T. R. Stevenson.) The doom of the lingerer I. WITH REGARD TO HER SIN, the state of mind discovered, and the aggravations with which it was attended. Thus, we cannot fail to see in it a low and debased degree of earthly-mindedness, a heart fixed and bent on getting its worldly stuff--ready to incur difficulty for it, danger for it--ay, and the anger of God for it. In this particular connection, the warning of her example seems to be proposed in the text. In that day, when the signs of an advent Saviour are upon you, be not anxious about your worldly possessions. Let the things that are in the house remain in the house, the things that are left in the field be left in the field. “ Remember Lot’ s wife.” Again, there was in this sin of Lot’ s wife the crime of disobedience, with all its actual accompaniments of defiant rebellion and contemptuous unbelief. She had been especially charged that she must not look back, and she did look back; she had been told she must escape for her life, and she loitered even behind her husband. See how many things meet here--the authority of God is spurned, the word of the angel is disbelieved, the wisdom or necessity of the command is questioned, and the impious prerogative laid claim to “ Our eyes are our own; we may look on what we will: who is Lord over us?” Now it is easy to see what gives to those offences against a positive precept their character of deep offending. In the case of offences against the principle or spirit of a law, a treacherous and facile conscience will raise a cavil, and even make for itself excuse to the conscience, as not able to do this, when command takes the form of “ Do this” or “ Refrain from that.” We are then made to feel that we are brought face to face with God; we are confronted with the broad, plain letter of His written law. Room for mistake or cavil or misinterpretation, there is none; we must offend with our eyes open, and cast ourselves headlong into the depths of presumptuous sin. But once more, there was in the sin of the woman much of deep and signal ingratitude. Her life had been one of marked and distinguishing mercies. Solemn warding this, to all of us who have been brought up religiously; for those who have in early life enjoyed great spiritual opportunities: it seems that when such people fall, none fall so low; the light that was in them becomes darkness, and, as our Lord teaches, there is no darkness so thick as that. It is like being borne away to perdition on the wings of God’ s mercy. II. On the AWFUL with which the wife of Lot was visited I will only insist as showing how peculiarly aggravated in God’ s sight must have been the nature of her sin. Her end was marked by all those circumstances of anger and terror which seem to foreclose all hope. First, it was that which we pray against in our Litany as sudden death; that is, not sudden in the sense of being wholly unlooked-for--that may be a great blessing--but sudden as unprepared-for--sudden, as finding us with nothing ready for our meeting with God, with our hearts yet in the world, and our faces turned that way. III. Now to gather up a few LESSONS from our subject. 1. “ Remember Lot’ s wife” as an example of the folly, the danger, the wickedness of trifling with what you know to be wrong, of committing little sins, breaking little precepts, and going on to Satan’ s ground only a very little way. All little sins, all slight tamperings with conscience, all partial returns to once forsaken evil, all compromises with a renounced and repented habit, are as first steps to a hopeless and disastrous fall. Like Lot’ s wife, we may only intend to look and look, and then turn back again. Rut we find we cannot turn back; the witchcraft of an evil nature is at work within us; we have seven wicked spirits to contend with now, where, before, we had but one, and so by little and little we are led within the charmed circle of evil till there is no going back and no escaping. 2. “ Remember Lot’ s wife” as an example of the possibility of falling from the most hopeful spiritual condition. How confidently should we have argued of her state; how confidently might she have argued of her own, when, of four persons to be saved out of those vast populations, she was chosen as one. 3. “ Remember Lot’ s wife” as a warning to us that there must be no delays, no haltings, no slackened diligence, in running the race that is set before us. “ Escape for thy life” --life spiritual, life temporal, life eternal--lose one and you lose all; and you may lose all by becoming weary and faint in the running. (D. Moore, M. A.) Lot’ s wife I. Consider, in the first place, THE HOPEFUL ; or, Lot’ s wife fleeing from Sodom. It has been thought--and there is considerable reason for the thought--that she was a native of Sodom. When Lot separated from Abraham and went to live at Sodom, we read nothing of his having a wife or children; this is one reason for conjecturing that he married after he came to live at Sodom. Another is her evident attachmerit to Sodom, which, though to be accounted for on other reasons, may have been all the stronger, if that were the place of her nativity and early life. A third reason is, that Lot’ s “ easily besetting” sin, which was covetousness and love of the world, would probably have tempted him to form such a connection with one of the daughters of Sodom, on account of some supposed worldly advantage. Oh! let not Christians despise the word of warning, whispered by the mere probability that Lot married a native of Sodom--an unconverted and worldly-minded person. But although worldly-minded herself, her husband was a religious person, and she had many opportunities of redeeming her character and turning to the Lord. Yet she rejected them. When the testing-time came, she preferred the world to God. II. THE SERIOUS OFFENCE; or Lot’ s wife looking back. The world is the great clog upon the wheels of piety. III. THE . (J. Hambleton, M. A.) Remember Lot’ s wife Separation is the only way of escape. We must flee from the world, or perish with it. I. THAT THIS WOMAN WAS LOT’ S WIFE. 1. She was united in the closest possible bonds to one who, with all his faults, was a righteous man; and yet she perished. O ye children of godly parents, I beseech you look to yourselves that ye be not driven down to hell from your mother’ s side. 2. Being Lot’ s wife, remember that she had since her marriage shared with Lot in his journeys and adventures and trials. If you cling to the world and cast your eye back upon it you must perish in your sin, notwithstanding that you have eaten and drank with the people of God, and have been as near to them in relationship as wife to husband, or child to parent. 3. Lot’ s wife had also shared her husband’ s privileges. She received the merciful warning to escape as well as her husband, and she was urged as much as he to flee from the wrath so near at hand. Thus is it with many of you who are enjoying all sorts of Christian privileges and are yet unsaved. 4. Lot’ s wife had shared in her husband’ s errors. It was a great mistake on his part to abandon the outwardly separated life but she had kept to him in it, and perhaps was the cause of his so doing. I suppose he thought he could live above the world spiritually, and yet mingle with its votaries. II. “ Remember Lot’ s wife,” and recollect THAT SHE WENT SOME WAY TOWARDS BEING SAVED. III. Remember that though she went some way towards escape SHE DID PERISH THROUGH SIN. 1. The first sin that she committed was that she lingered behind. 2. Having slackened her pace, the next thing she did was she disbelieved what had been told her. Faith may be as well exhibited by not looking as by looking. Faith is a look at Christ, but faith is a not looking at the things which are behind. She saw the bright dawning and everything lit up with it, and it came across her mind--“ It cannot be true, the city is not being destroyed. What a lovely morning I Why are we thus running away from house, and goods, and friends, and everything else on such a bright, clear morning as this?” She did not truly believe, there was no real faith in her heart, and therefore she disobeyed the law of her safety and turned her face towards Sodom. 3. Having got so far as lingering and doubting, her next movement was a direct act of rebellion--she turned her head: she was bidden not to look, but she dared to look. Rebellion is as much seen in the breach of what appears to be a little command as in the violation of a great precept. You will be judged according to the going of your heart. It your heart goes towards the mountain to escape, and if you hasten to be away with Christ to be His separated follower, you shall be saved: but if your heart still goes after evil and sin, His servants ye are whom ye obey, and from your evil master you shall get your black reward. IV. Remember that HER DOOM WAS . 1. Remember that she perished with the same doom as that which happened to the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah, but that doom befell her at the gates of Zoar. 2. The worst point, perhaps, about the perishing of Lot’ s wife lay in this, that she perished in the very act of sin, and had no space for repentance given her. It is a dreadful thing to die in the very act of sin, to be caught away by the justice of God while the transgression is being perpetrated. (C. H.Spurgeon.) Lot’ s wife I. OF HER SIN--she looked back. What fault was there in that? you will say. I answer-- 1. There was disobedience in it, because it was against the express command of God, given by an angel, “ Look not behind thee” (Genesis 19:17). 2. There was unbelief in it; not believing the words of the angel, God’ s messenger, who had assured her in the name of God that He would destroy Sodom, “ Hasten hence, lest thou be consumed in the iniquity of the city” Genesis 19:13). Now she would look back, to see whether the prediction and warning were true. An unbelieving heart will easily be perverted and enticed into a rebellion against God, and those that cannot trust God will not be true to Him. 3. There was worldliness in it, or an hankering of mind after what she had left in Sodom; and so this looking back was a look of covetousness, a kind of repentance that she had come out of Sodom; for people are wont to look back who are moved with a desire and remembrance of their former dwelling. So Lot’ s wife looked back because she had left her heart behind her. There were her kindred, and friends, and country, and that pleasant place which was as the garden of God (Genesis 13:10). From thence this woman came, and thither she would fain go again; as if she had said, And must I leave thee, Sodom, and part for ever from thee! Affectation of worldly things draweth us from ready obedience unto God (Philippians 3:8). 4. There was ingratitude for her deliverance from that dreadful and terrible burning which God was bringing upon the place of her abode. It is said, “ The Lord was merciful to him” (Genesis 19:16). He could not pretend to it out of any merit, and might have smarted, for his choice showed weakness in not resting on God’ s word: “ I cannot escape to the mountain, let some evil take me, and I die” (verse 19). Only this God required at his hands, that he and his family should make haste and begone. Now, to disobey God in so small a matter was in her great ingratitude. The sins of none are so grievous to God as of those that have received much mercy from Him: “ After such a deliverance as this, should we again break Thy commandments?” (Ezra 9:13-14). Oh I think what it is to despise the mercy of Christ, who came from heaven to deliver us; and shall it be slighted? II. OF HER --she was turned into a pillar of salt. 1. It was sudden. Sometimes God is quick and severe upon sinners, surprising them in the very act of their sin; as Lot’ s wife was presently turned into a pillar of salt. So Zimri and Cosbi unladed their lives and their lusts together (Numbers 25:8); and Herod was smitten in the very act of his pride (Acts 12:23); “ The same hour was the thing fulfilled upon Nebuchadnezzar” (Daniel 4:33); “ In that night was Belshazzar the king of the Chaldeans slain” (Daniel 5:30). Thus many times judgment overtaketh the wicked in the very instant of their sin; and God will give the sinner no time. Therefore we should not tempt and presume upon His patience. Surely it is!the greatest mercy to have grace to repent; but it is also a mercy to have space to repent. But God’ s patience must not be wearied. 2. It was strange. For here a woman is turned into a pillar of salt. Strange sins bring on strange punishment. The stupid world is not awakened by ordinary judgments, but looks upon them as some chance or common occurrence; and therefore God is forced to go out of the common road, and diversify His judgments, that by some eminent circumstance in them He may alarm the drowsy world to take notice of His hand. 3. It was shameful; for she is made a public and lasting monument of shame to herself, but of instruction to us. I must show how profitable it is for us to meditate on this instance, even for all those who are called from wrath to a state of rest and glory. 1. That it concerneth such not only to consider the mercies of God, but also now and then the examples of His justice, that “ we may serve Him with fear, and rejoice with trembling” (Psalms 2:11). We are in a mixed estate, and therefore mixed affections do best. As we are to cherish the spirit or better part with promises and hopes of glory, by which the inner man is renewed day by day, so we are to weaken the pravity of the flesh by the remembrance of God’ s judgments, not only threatened, but also actually inflicted!; for instances do much enliven things. Now, what was done to them may be done to us--for these judgments are patterns of providence--and if we would blow off the dust from the ancient providences of God, we may easily read our own doom or desert at least. The desert of sin is still the same; and the exactness of Divine justice is still the same; what hath been is a pledge and instance of what may be. 2. That not only modern and present, but ancient and old judgments are of great use to us, especially when like sins abound in the age we live in, or we are in danger of them as to our own practice. If others have smarted for disobeying God, why not we, since God is impartially and immutably just, always consonant and agreeable unto Himself? His power is the same, so is His justice and holiness. 3. This particular judgment is monumental, and so intended for a pattern and spectacle to after ages; and it is also here recommended by the Lord Himself--“ Remember Lot’ s wife.” He exciteth us to look upon this pillar, and therefore certainly it will yield many instructions for the heavenly life. (1) This seemeth to be a small sin. What I for a look, for a glance of her eye, to be so suddenly blasted into a pillar of salt! This seemeth to be no great fault; but it teaches us that little faults in appearance many times meet with a great judgment. There may be much crookedness in a small line; and the matter is not so much to be regarded as the majesty and authority of God that commandeth--as in garments the dye is more than the stuff. But that I may at once vindicate God’ s dispensation, and enforce the caution, I shall prove-- (a) That sin is not to be measured by the external action, but by the circumstances. (b) This woman’ s sin is greater than at first appeareth. For here was-- (i.) A preferring her own will before the will of God. God said, Look not back; but she would look back. (ii.) There was a contempt of the justice and wrath of God, as if it were a vain scarecrow: “ Do we provoke the Lord to jealousy? are we stronger than He?” (1 Corinthians 10:22). (iii.) Here is also a contempt of the rewards of obedience, as in all sin Hebrews 12:15-16). (iv.) There was an abuse of the grace offered for her escape and deliverance (Romans 2:4). All these four things are in every deliberate sin, seem it never so small. (c) Because we think we may preserve the smaller sins for breed, and that God is more severe in remembering these than we are faulty in committing them. Therefore think of and seriously consider that small sins are the mother of great sins, and the grandmother of great punishments. As little sticks set the great ones on fire, and a wisp of straw often enkindleth a great block of wood, so we are drawn on by the lesser evils to greater, and by the just judgment of God suffered to fall into them, because we made no conscience of lesser. The lesser commandments are a rail about the greater, and no man grows downright wicked at first, but rises to it by degrees. (2) This was a sin committed by stealth. As she followed her husband, she would steal a glance, and look towards Sodom; for it is said, “ His wife looked back from behind him” (Genesis 19:26). God can find us out in our secret sins; and therefore we should make conscience, as not to sin openly, so not by stealth. In short, to be an open and bold sinner in some respects is worse than to be a close and private sinner, because of the dishonour done to God, and the scandal to others, and the impudence of the sinner himself; but in other respects secret sins have their aggravations. (a) Because if opens sins be of greater infamy, yet secret sins are more against knowledge and conviction. (b) This secret sinning puts far more respect upon men than God; and this is palliated atheism. (3) The next lesson which we learn hence is, that no loss of earthly things should make us repent of our obedience to God, but that we should still go on with what we have well begun, with out looking back. “ No man, having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God” (Luke 9:62). From the whole-- 1. Remember that in getting out of Sodom we must make haste. The least delay or stop in the course of our flight may be pernicious to us. 2. That till our resolutions be firmly set for God and heaven, and there be a thorough bent and bias upon our hearts, and the league between us and our secret lusts broken, after we have seemed to make some escape, we shall be looking back again--“ For where our treasure is, there our heart will Matthew 6:21). 3. That to look back, after we have seemed to escape, doth involve us in the greatest sin and misery. The apostle tells us (2 Peter 2:20-21). 4. That if we would not go back, we must not look back. Evil is best stopped at first; the first breakings off from God, and remitting our zeal and watchfulness. He that keeps not a house in constant repair will be in danger of having it fall down upon him. So, if we grow remiss and careless, and keep not a constant watch, temptations will increase upon us. (T. Manton.) Remember Lot’ s wife 1. Remember Lot’ s wife, in the hour of conviction of sin. The Holy Spirit strives. The danger of damnation is seen and felt as never before. “ Up! flee for your life!” is the voice of the Spirit. Delay, hesitation, casting longing looks back on a life of sin, then, may be fatal. You may lose the golden opportunity. 2. Remember Lot’ s wife in the hour of fiery temptation. The only safety is in precipitate flight. Escape from the presence of the tempter. To parley, to hesitate, to cast a look at the proffered bait, is all but certain ruin. 3. Remember Lot’ s wife, when any question of duty is pressed upon you. This woman had no excuse for hesitation or reluctance. A clear, Divine call to duty cannot be trifled with without incurring fearful risk, if not of the loss of life physical, at least life spiritual. 4. Remember Lot’ s wife, amid the assaults of unbelief. 5. Note what Christ says in Luke 9:62, “ No man, having put his hand to the plough, and looking back,” etc. (1) He is not intent on the work in hand. (2) His earthly ties and interests are stronger than those which pertain to heavenly things. (3) He has really surrendered himself to temptation. (Anon.) A danger-signal Over sand-bars and hidden rocks in the sea are sometimes placed buoy-bells, which are rung by the action of the waves. So God has set great danger-signals in the sea of time. Such is the story of Sodom and Lot’ s wife. 1. Remember her surroundings. Sin is often seemingly beautiful and attractive. Beware of the alluring power of evil associations. 2. Remember her danger. This world is a Sodom, and against it has been declared the condemnation of God’ s law. 3. Remember her warning. Sacrifice everything. Look not back for companions or possessions. Delay not for a better opportunity, for greater conviction, etc. Linger not in the plains of a professed morality. 4. Remember her delay. Procrastination is most perilous. 5. Remember her disobedience. 6. Remember her doom. Disobedience develops into the deadly fruit of death. (G. Elliott.) The danger of looking back There is a story of a high mountain on whose top was a palace filled with all treasures, gold, gems, singing birds--a paradise of pleasures. Up its sides men and women were climbing toreach the top; but every one who looked back was turned into stone. And yet thousands of evil spirits were around them, whispering, shouting, flashing their treasures, singing love-songs to draw their eyes from the treasure at the top, and to make them look back; but every one that looked back was turned into stone. So is every one who is seeking heavenly treasures tempted by earthly music and sinful joys; but whosoever yields is lost. (W. Baxendale.) Punishment of Lot’ s wife As might be expected, conjecture has been busy as to the manner in which this transformation was effected. There is no harm in such speculations, if they are not allowed to go farther than this, that they only seek to account for a result by natural agents, where natural agents would be sufficient--that they acknowledge the interfering hand of God in the matter, whether He create for the purpose a new thing in the earth, or merely press into His service the means and agency which exist already. In the present instance, it does not seem an impossible thing that judgment upon Lot’ s wife should have been brought about by natural causes; in other words, that in consequence of her standing still too long, she might get covered with the sulphureous matter which was being rained from heaven, and this, congealing and encrusting upon her person, would make her appear as a pillar of salt. In fact, of the leading features of the phenomenon, traces remain in the physical geography of the neighbourhood to this day. Thus, of the petrifying qualities of the waters of the Dead Sea we have many trustworthy accounts; whilst, as illustrative of the saline property of the waters, one of our great Eastern travellers tells us, that after bathing in them he found a thin crust of salt upon his face, and a similar crust left upon the shore wherever the waters had overflowed. By natural agents or by a miracle, however, it is certain that Lot’ s wife has been made to stand in the midst of that awful plain, a petrified monument of God’ s displeasure against backsliders, for upwards of two thousand years; for, “ I have seen it,” said Josephus, “ and it remains at this day.” The testimony of later Christian travellers as to the identity of the scene we should have to receive with more caution. Stones with the Jews, we know, were a kind of standing revelation. The story of them was handed down from father to son with a jealous reverence; so that it is not unlikely that among our Lord’ s hearers were men who, in common with Josephus, had visited this heaven-blighted spot, and on whose minds these words would tell with solemn force--“ Remember Lot’ s wife.” (D. Moore, M. A.) Do not run any risk On the coast of Normandy, where Mont St. Michael stands, the sea goes out about five miles, and comes in like a racehorse. In 1875, two ladies were at some ruins on the sands. “ Come away,” said the elder, “ don’ t run any risk.” “ Just let me finish this sketch,” replied the other, an English young lady. While she sketched, the tide rushed in, and she was drowned. Luke 17:33 Shall lose it Life through death I. IT IS OF US TO A LOWER GOOD, IN ORDER TO GAIN A HIGHER. Not always, but almost always. The good things of this world are of several sorts, very unlike one another. Consider the sensualist, the man of pleasure, what is called the man of the world. Now it is idle to say, that the pleasures of sense are not real pleasures. Pleasure is not altogether out of the question amongst higher things, as is proved by such examples as those of Pericles, Caesar, and Bonaparte; but pleasure supreme is simply fatal to a great career. It may give you an Alcibiades, but never a Leonidas. So, too, of money. Here again it is idle to say that money is of no account. All that is higher, and all that is lower, must be cheerfully given up. Money must be the one thing he goes for. This, indeed, is the price of money, as of everything else; and he must pay it. But, at all events, he must give up the lower good. He must not be a man of the world. He must be abstemious in eating; temperate in drinking; temperate in all things. He must rein in his appetite. Good personal habits--habits of self-restraint, must be well established. And so of fame. But neither the scholar, the artist, nor the orator, must be idle, or avaricious. The lore of pleasure and the love of money are both of them fatal to these higher aims. Learning grows puny and trivial, when waited on by sensual delights; while the love of gain eats into it like rust. So, too, of art. Growing either voluptuous, or sordid, it falls like an angel from heaven. And so of eloquence. It flies from lips that are steeped in pleasure; it will not quiver in fingers that clutch at gold. The ambition of scholarship, of art, of eloquence, is a lofty ambition, and it will not tolerate much baseness. The scholars of antiquity were, for the most part, severe and temperate men. The scholars of the Middle Ages were the cloistered and ascetic monks. The votaries of art, too, with rare exceptions, have wasted away in martyrdom to their calling. Thus it is that the Temple of Fame keeps a stern sentinel standing ever at her gateway of Corinthian brass. And every comer is challenged with such questions as these: Canst thou live on bread and water? Art thou willing to be poor? If not, avaunt! And so of all sorts of earthly good. Each sort has its price; and may be taken at that price. But two or more sorts may not ordinarily be taken by one and the same purchaser. The lower must be sacrificed to the higher. The coarser must give place to the finer. Such is the well-established method of our ordinary life. Every step of our earthly progress is a sacrifice. We gain by losing; grow by dwindling; live by dying. Our text, it is plain, is but an extension of this well-established method to the entire range and circle of our interests. What is seen to be true of earthly advantages considered in reference to one another, is here declared to be true of all these advantages together, when considered in relation to the life eternal. This world and the next world are set in opposition to each other. Body and soul are put at variance. And all that a man may win of worldly good, it is taught, he must be ready to sacrifice, if need be, in order to save his soul. You may call the demand a hard one; but all the analogies of our ordinary life endorse and favour it. In many dark corners of the earth are sitting men to-day, who have abandoned almost everything for Christ. And their feeling is that they have barely done their duty: that a necessity is laid upon them; that they must suffer for Christ; and by and by die for Him. And the stern warrant for it all is in our text: “ He that findeth his life, shall lose it; and he that loseth his life for My sake, shall find it.” God be praised, if we, in our sphere, are spared the fullest execution of this warrant. The spirit of it, however, we may never wish to escape. Our hearts are to hold themselves always reedy for the fiercest discipline. Personal ease and comfort, houses and lands, friends, reputation, and even life itself, are to be reckoned cheap. We are to hold them in low esteem. So relaxed must be our grasp, that the slightest breath of persecution may suffice to sweep them swiftly and clean away. II. The second law referred to, and the counterpart of the one we have now considered, is this: BY FIRST THE HIGHER GOOD, WE ARE TO ENJOY THE LOWER, AND ARE MORE LIKELY TO SECURE IT. The principle is, that no worldly good of any sort can be well secured, or properly enjoyed, if pursued by itself and for its own sake. This may be seen in our most ordinary life. The man, whose aim is pleasure, may indeed, secure it for a while; but only for awhile. It soon palls upon his senses, disgusts and wearies him. It is easy of proof, that more is really enjoyed, more of mere pleasure is there, among business men, in the brief intervals of business, than among those with whom pleasure may be said to be a profession. Pleasure, in a word, is far sweeter as a recreation than a business. And so of gold. The man who strains all his energies of soul and body to the acquisition of it, never properly enjoys it. He enjoys the activity which the chase imposes upon him; but not the gold itself. He best enjoys gold, because he best knows the uses of it, who is occupied by higher thoughts and aims. It is God’ s decree, that gold shining useless in a miser’ s coffers, shall never gladden the one who gathered it. And so also of fame. If pursued for its own sake, the chase is often a bootless one. Selfish ambition almost always betrays itself, and then it provokes men to defeat and humble it. General Zachary Taylor, the twelfth President of the United States, spent forty years of his life in comparatively obscure, but very faithful service, at our Western outposts; receiving no applause from the country at large, and asking for none; intent only upon doing promptly and efficiently the duties laid upon him. By and by events, over which he had exercised no control, called him into notice upon a broader theatre. And then it was discovered how faithful and how true a man he was. The Republic, grateful for such a series of self-denying and important services, snatched him from the camp, and bore him, with loud acclaim, to her proudest place of honour. And this was done at the cost of bitterest disappointment to more than one, whose high claims to this distinction were not denied, but who had been known to be aspiring to the exalted seat. And so through our whole earthly life--in all its spheres, and in all its struggles. To lose is to find; to die is to live. It is so in our religion. We begin by abjuring all; we end by enjoying all. Am I charged with preaching that “ gain is godliness” ? Not so, my friend. But godliness is gain. It begins by denouncing and denying all; it ends by restoring all. First it desolates; then it rebuilds. Its mien, in approaching us, is stern and terrible. It blights our pleasures; strips us of our possessions; smites our friends; and lays our vaunted honours in the dust. And then, when all is done, when the desolating work is finished, when our very lives are spent and worried out of us, the scene changes as by a miracle, and all is given us anew. God, we find, is not merely in all; but He includes all, is all. And we learn, assuredly, from our own blessed experience, that “ no good thing will He withhold from them that walk uprightly.” Nay, it is of the very essence of our religion to forget and deny ourselves. Two remarks seem to grow naturally out of our subject. 1. We may learn the great mistake committed by men of the world in their chase after worldly good. They make it an end. 2. We may learn why it is the happiness of Christians is so imperfect. (R. D.Hitchcock, D. D.) Luke 17:34 The one shall be taken, and the other shall be left One taken, and the other left Every great act of God has the effect of dividing, separating, and judging men. So great are the diversities among men, so various their characters, so various by nature, and so endlessly varied by education and habit, that, when God acteth before them in any great or signal way, forthwith those who seemed to be much alike, are found to be really very different. The mercy that is balm to one, is poison to his next neighbour; the trial, which to one is easy and simple, is to his neighbour destruction and inevitable woe. To be born in a Christian country, to be the son of careful and godly parents, to be baptized in infancy, to be trained in the knowledge of God, to have natural abilities, to have education, to have station, or wealth, all these things have this effect of dividing men, and trying their hearts. To those who are obedient, and endeavour to please God, all these things are high blessings, choice gifts of God. Each of them enables a man to render God better service, to please Him better, to do more good, and to make higher attainments of holiness and happiness. But to the disobedient they are all so many downfalls. Every such thing brings out more, and makes more conspicuous and hopeless the inner disobedience; each one of them exhibits more strikingly the spirit of inward rebellion, which, but for these things, might have been comparatively unseen. Illness tries us; health tries us; every day, as it passes, tries us in innumerable ways; tries, and trains us; tries what we are now, and tries whether we will be better; furnishes matter for our judgment, and gives us the means of improvement, so that judgment may not be our ruin. And so we go on being tried, being balanced, and sifted, and searched, thousands of times, many times more than we suppose or conceive, every day of our life. We think of the great trials, but the little ones, which we do not think of, try us still more. It is very observable that, in the account given of the judgment-day by our Lord in the Gospel of St. Matthew, the doom of the righteous and wicked is made to depend on grounds wholly unexpected by each. They are alike represented as exclaiming, in astonishment and surprise, “ Lord, when saw we Thee an hungered, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison?” Full of fears, no doubt, and hopes about things which they do remember, nothing doubting that this or that great act (as they think it), is to be the one on which everything is to turn, for weal or woe, they seem alike struck with astonishment to find that things which they have wholly forgotten, which they neither observed when they happened, nor can recall since, have been laid up in the mind of the Judge, to be the ground of their last and inevitable doom. “ Lord, when saw we Thee an hungered, or athirst, or sick, or in prison, and ministered, or ministered not unto Thee?” this, I say, is one of the striking things revealed of that awful time. And another is, the alteration which that day shall make; when last shall be first, and first last; when not only the ranks of the earth shall be in many instances reversed, but when the estimations of the earth shall be found to be entirely mistaken; apparent saints taking their place among the hypocrites departing to everlasting fire; publicans and sinners, purified by repentance, their robes washed in the blood of the Lamb, entering, among the blessed, into the joy of their Lord. And the text teaches us a third and different lesson still; how those who have been side by side upon earth, alike in condition, opportunity, and encouragement, to all human sight much alike in mind or temper; not much unlike, perhaps, in apparent earnestness and spiritual attainment, shall then be found, one on the right hand, and one on the left hand; one be taken, taken to joy, caught up to meet the Lord in the air, so as to be ever with Him; and the other left, to woe and despair for ever. Children of one family, bred alike, and taught alike, who have learned to say the same infantine prayers, have known the same friends, read the same books, loved the same pleasures; if one is earnest in his prayers, and, in his secret obedience, serves God faithfully, and the other persists in unfaithfulness and disobedience,--shall it not surely be so with them, that one shall be taken in that day, and the other left? What, then, shall we do? With this reality of trial on us, and this reality of judgment before us, the one more searching than we can trace, the other likely to be more unexpected than we can foresee, how are we to walk to be safe? how to pass through the present trial, how to meet the future judgment? Simply by turning with all our hearts and souls to our duties, and our prayers. We do not need any particular excitements of mind, or any particular glow of sentiments; we want to be in earnest, and the good Spirit of our God, by which we were sealed in baptism unto the day of our redemption, will help us to our safety. (Bishop Moberly.) The great division 1. The meaning of the text being established, we have next to inquire what the lessons are which it is designed to teach us. When it is considered in relation to its context, it becomes plain that the primary intention of the passage is to denote the suddenness with which the day of the Lord will come upon the inhabitants of the earth. “ Of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but My Father only.” There will be no perceptible check or change in the current of human affairs to warn us of its coming. Men will be engaged to the very last in the ordinary occupations of life, “ as in the days of Noe” and “ as in the days of Lot,” “ eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage.” Nor shall the great and final partition of good and evil be preceded or prefigured by any partial and gradual severance. Men and women shall be united in their daily tasks, and even in the most familiar intercourse of domestic life, between whom there shall be a great gulf fixed in that day. 2. There is a further lesson which may be derived from the text, and which it is also without doubt intended to convey. It is one which is set forth more or less plainly in other places of Holy Scripture. The children of this world and the children of light cannot be absolutely distinguished, so long as we see through a glass, darkly. Our estimate of another’ s character is after all nothing better than an inference from phenomena, and our powers of inference are at least as fallible in this as in all other matters. The warmest friendships, the most endearing ties, can afford us no unmistakable guarantee that those with whom we are thus outwardly united, are both almost and altogether such as we are. 3. There is, however, a third inference to which we are naturally led by the words before us, and to which I desire particularly to direct your attention at present. However closely and undistinguishably men are mingled together in this world, however various, minute, and delicate are the shades of character by which they are severally differenced, however hopeless it may appear, I will not say for man, but for Absolute Wisdom and Absolute Justice, to draw a broad line between the children of this world and the children of light, the text seems to imply, what we are elsewhere taught, that they will ultimately be divided into two and only two classes. But I think the text goes beyond this, at all events in the way of implication. For it not only tells us that such a sharp line as I have described will ultimately be drawn between the evil and the good, but it seems also to tell us that the line exists already, although we may be unable to discern it. For inasmuch as it represents the day of judgment as coming upon men unprepared, discovering them in the midst of their daily avocations, finding persons of the most opposite characters united in the closest intercourse without a suspicion of their incompatibility, and then at once awarding to every man his everlasting doom; is it not reasonable to infer that the grounds of that award exist already, although they are not in every instance cognizable by us? At this point, however, we are met by a difficulty. Our experience of the world and of human life appears to teach us a different lesson. No doubt there are good men and there are bad men on the face of the earth--good men who are acknowledged to be so even by those who are farotherwise, and bad men who are confessed to be so even by themselves. But the great mass of mankind seems to belong to an intermediate and indifferent body, consisting of those who are neither saints nor reprobates, neither fit for eternal life nor deserving of eternal death. The longer the world lasts, the more complicated the developments of society become, the more does this appear to be the case. The visible confusion of the moral world may only serve to cover a clear and well-defined line of demarcation. And, as much, on the one hand, that is outwardly and materially honest, and just, and pure, and lovely, and of good report, when traced to its true source would be found to be of the earth, earthy; so we must remember that “ the Lord knoweth them that are His” ; that, “ the kingdom of God,” which “ is within” us, “ cometh not with observation” ; and that as “ the wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, or whither it goeth; so is event one that is born of the Spirit.” But we shall do well to recollect, in addition, that we see men ordinarily in a transitional and undeveloped state. The good or the evil that is in them may not have had time to come to a head, or may be over shadowed by old habits which hang about a man like parasites, but which can hardly be said to form a part of his proper self. But as each man’ s probation draws near its close, it may be that his character is altogether simplified and stereotyped. Then it is that the awful decree goes forth: “ He that is unjust, let him be unjust still.” Mere experience, then, can decide nothing against the teaching of holy Scripture on this point, although it may not actually confirm it. On the other hand, it is worthy of observation, that a great thinker, whose name marks an era in the history of modern philosophy, in endeavouring to frame a religious system a priori, was led to a result altogether coincident with the doctrine under consideration. After raising the two following questions: first, Whether man can be neither good nor evil? and then, Whether man can be partly good and partly evil? he decides against the former, in opposition (as he confesses) to the prima facie dictates of experience, upon the ground that moral neutrality in any voluntary act is an impossible conception; and he disposes of the latter, by observing that no act has any intrinsic moral worth, unless it spring from a deliberate adoption of the moral law as our universal principle of action. I have cited this writer’ s testimony mainly because he cannot be accused of any undue partiality towards the distinctive peculiarities of the Christian system. But it is not difficult to translate his arguments into Scriptural language. For, on the one hand, it is our Lord Himself who proposes the dilemma, “ Either make the tree good, and his fruit good; or else make the tree corrupt, and his fruit corrupt” : and, on the other, His apostle tells us that “ Whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all.” (W. B. Jones, M. A.) Divine sovereignty in the death of men I. WHAT IS IMPLIED IN GOD’ S ACTING AS A . 1. His acting as a sovereign implies that He always acts after the counsel of His own will, without consulting the will, or pleasure, or counsel of any other being. 2. His acting as a sovereign implies that He always acts not only without the counsel, but without the control, of any created beings. II. IN WHAT HE ACTS AS A IN TAKING AWAY THE LIVES OF MEN. Here it may be observed-- 1. That He acts as a sovereign in respect to appointing the time of every one’ s death. 2. God acts as a sovereign in determining not only the time, but the place of every one’ s death. 3. God acts as a sovereign in respect to the means of death. 4. God acts as a sovereign in regard to the circumstances of death. He takes one, and leaves another, under the very same circumstances. He takes one, and leaves another, according to the order in which He has been pleased to place their names in death’ s commission, regardless of all exterior circumstances or distinctions. 5. God acts as a sovereign in calling men out of the world, whether they are willing or unwilling to leave it. 6. God displays His awful sovereignty by calling men out of time into eternity, whether they are prepared or not prepared to go to their long home. III. WHY GOD ACTS AS A IN THIS VERY CASE. Several plain and pertinent reasons may be mentioned. 1. Because He has an independent right to act as a sovereign in taking away the lives of men. He is the former of their bodies, and Father of their spirits. In Him they live, and move, and have their being. 2. God acts as a sovereign in the article of death, because He only knows when and where to put a period to human life. 3. Another reason why God disposes of the lives of men as a sovereign, in all those respects which have been mentioned, is because He is under indispensable moral obligations to dispose of His own creatures in the wisest and best manner. Application: 1. If God acts as a sovereign in taking away the lives of men, then the aged have great reason of gratitude for the continuance of life. 2. If God acts as a sovereign in taking away the lives of men, then they ought to maintain a constant and realizing sense that their lives are uncertain. 3. If God acts as a sovereign in taking away the lives of men, then they ought to avoid every mode of conduct which tends to stupify their minds, and create an insensibility to the uncertainty of life. 4. If God acts as a sovereign in taking away the lives of men, then it is not strange that He causes so many sudden and unexpected deaths. 5. It appears from what has been said that there is a solid foundation for the most cordial and unreserved submission under the heaviest bereavements. They come from the hand and heart of a holy, wise, and benevolent Sovereign, who has a right to take one, and leave another, and who never afflicts willingly, or grieves the children of men. (N. Emmons, D. D.) Eternal separation The Rev. Dr. Witherspoon, formerly president of Princeton College, America, was once on board a packet-ship, where, among other passengers, was a professed atheist. This unhappy man was very fond of troubling every one with his peculiar belief, and of broaching the subject as often as he could get any one to listen to him. He did not believe in a God and a future state, not he! By and by there came on a terrible storm, and the prospect was that all would be drowned. There was much consternation on board, but not one was so greatly frightened as the professed atheist. In this extremity he sought out the clergyman, and found him in the cabin, calm and collected in the midst of danger, and thus addressed him: “ Oh, Doctor Witherspoon! Doctor Witherspoon! we are all going; we have but a short time to stay. Oh how the vessel rocks! We are all going! Don’ t you think we are, doctor?” The doctor turned to him with a solemn look, and replied in broad Scotch, “ Nae doubt, nae doubt, man, we’ re a’ ganging; but you and I dinna gang the same way.” (W. Baxendale.) Luke 17:37 Wheresoever the body is God’ s judgments The twofold inquiry that always greets the prophet is Where? and When? These two questions are prompted by curiosity and self-interest. The passionate desires of human nature to know the future are testified to by the whole history of superstition and imposture. Even inspired prophecy has been treated in the spirit of this desire. Our Lord teaches us how such questions should be answered, and how such a spirit should be dealt with. He does not answer the “ Where” and “ When” ; not even in the revelation to His beloved disciple does He do so. I. Observe how in A VERY REAL SENSE HE DOES ANSWER THE . The answer in effect is this: My judgment shall come upon the earth as come the vultures upon the dead by an unerring and terrible instinct. So truly then as there is ripeness for judgment, and wherever there is that ripeness, there shall come the judgment of the day of the Lord. II. MARK WHAT THESE WORDS TELL US THE GREAT LAWS OF GOD’ S . These judgments are not arbitrary judgments, but are joined to the offence by a natural and necessary law. Where there is ripeness for them there is no escape from them; but they only fall where there is that ripeness. We learn also, that before the last and crowning judgment there must be many lesser and preliminary days of judgment. III. WHERE ARE WE TO LOOK FOR SIGNS OF OUR LORD’ S COMING? Not to the heavens far off, but at the dead thing which lies, it may be, at your very feet. Can we discern here and there the corpse that calls and the eagles of judgment that come at its calling. In the case of individuals it is not wise to judge; but with families, churches, nations, there is no judgment sound but a present judgment. The practical lesson is, “ Judge therefore, yourselves, brethren, that ye be not judged by the Lord.” (Bishop Magee.) The carcass and the eagles In the sphere of human life, that which is the life of things is their use. When that is spent, all things else conspire to have them not only disabled but abolished. On sea and land where man is not, it may be only contingent, though usual, that where the carcass is, there the eagles are gathered together; but where man is, it is certain. Steam and electricity are new ideas, new forces by which man has extended his command over material resources indispensable for his existence. As surely as these new ideas are introduced, there is found to be implied in them destruction as well as creation. A host of things in which there was life because there was use become refuse and old lumber--hand-looms, wooden ships, mail coaches--and with regard to them the question is how they are to be got rid of. A new gun is invented in America or in England, and all the stands of arms in all places of arms throughout the world become lumber until they have undergone a process of conversion which is a process of destruction. Belshazzar’ s feast is not a spectacle pleasing to gods or men, that small part of mankind excepted for whom the lights flare upon rude riot and excess. It may be a product of civilization and of national struggles and aspirations. It is not exuberant life, but rampant disease and corruption, and as such it is marked for dissolution and destruction. Always when it is at its height there is to be seen the handwriting on the wall, telling that tyranny and oppression have but their day, that they are weighed in the balance and found wanting, that the next thing to heedless excess is destruction. The doctrine of constitutional liberty gains a footing in a country ignorant of it before--the result, if not at once, inevitably is, that institutions, laws, privileges, class distinctions, offices and officers, lose what vitality they had, and with regard to them, as with regard to all that is dead, the question is, what is the swiftest and most effectual method of destruction. In every department of human life the same process is at work, that which lives and grows necessitating the dissolution and removal of that which is useless and corrupt. In this view of it, the process is a necessary part of the fulfilment of the Divine order on the side of progress and improvement. It is beneficent. That which so often makes it seem other than beneficent--and this too has to be recognized as a fact--is the redundance of vested interests--it is that in so many instances the interests and affections of men and nations are linked rather with what may have been once good than with that which being better is destined to dissolve and to replace it. This is why destruction which goes along with creation is so often a painful and terrible experience. It is not unfortunate or unnecessary for mankind that Belshazzar and his courtiers should have but their day, or rather their night; but, when the handwriting on the wall makes its appearance, the mighty king and his court cannot well be expected to welcome it. There is comfort and satisfaction for a benevolent and thoughtful mind in the reflection that the sanatory arrangements of the universe are as wonderful as any of the other arrangements in it; but for men and nations whose habits and feelings are involved in the existence and perpetuation of what is opposed to them and inconsistent with them, these arrangements cannot but be felt to act often in a harsh, peremptory, ruthless, unsparing manner. It is well, however, to accustom ourselves to look at them in the proper light, namely, as beneficent, not only that we may not miss or misread a great deal which is written for our learning in the pages of history, but that in the changing fashions of our theology we may be always mindful of one thing, to recognize God as not a God of the dead but of the living. (J. Service, D. D.) The gathering of the eagles It will be necessary here to compare the ancient and modern interpretations of the verse--“ for wheresoever the carcass is, there will the eagles be gathered together.” 1. The generally received modern interpretation sees here the great law of Divine judgment condensed into one terrible image. The “ carcass,” according to this, is the putrid carrion; the “ eagles” are, strictly speaking, vultures. Thus, to the modern mind, we have here the condensed image of the continuous judgment of God. In hot countries God has so moulded the instincts of the winged scavengers of cliff and peak, that far away, as they wheel and circle over the awful depths into which the traveller looks with reeling brain, they scent the slain in battle, or the bodies that taint the air. So, wherever there is a body of moral and spiritual death--something rotten in Church or State--the vultures of judgment, the punishers and avengers that belong to it in the very nature of things, come mysteriously from their places, and with boding voices, deepening upon the breezes, gather round the spoil. So with Jerusalem falling to pieces in its last decomposition and self-dissolution. The flap of avenging wings was heard overhead by prophetic ears. The vultures were wheeling on the steaming air, under the vault of the Syrian sky, barking in the far mountain glens, and collecting together to gorge themselves upon the “ glittering rottenness.” This view is not only rhetorically powerful, but something more and higher. 2. Notwithstanding this, the ancient interpretation represents more truly the Divine thought in the symbol of the eagles and their food. And so this image of the eagle belongs to the glorious Lord and to His Christ. And His people are as His eaglets--nay, themselves eagles of God. Is it not written--“ Ye have seen how I bare you on eagles’ wings” ? And more fully--“ As an eagle stirreth up her nest, fluttereth over her young, taketh them, beareth them on her wings: so the Lord alone did bear him.” Is not the Church the woman to whom were given “ the wings of the eagle, that great eagle,” which is Christ? Even here and now, wherever the corpse is, wherever Jesus is evidently set forth crucified, there, mysteriously raised above earthly things, made lofty and royal in their graces, Christ’ s eagles “ gather round” Him who is the spiritual food and the life eternal of all such eagles. The meaning, then, on the whole, according to this interpretation, is as follows: The “ carcass” --the corpse of Jesus Christ as crucified--that is the meeting-point of human souls, the centre of attraction in the world of spirits. The Lord of nature, in the Book of Job, says of the eagle, His creature--“ she abideth upon the rock from thence she seeketh the prey; her eyes behold afar off … where the slain are, there is she.” The Lord of grace adds His application--as the eaglets gather round the corpse, so the souls of men, and especially of the elect, gather round Jesus. Ay, and round Jesus, not always as the eternal Word, not always as in His glory, but in the pathetic beauty of His weakness, staggering under the weight of His cross. Nay more, dying, with the red drops of the Passion upon His brow; dead--nay, fallen in His sacred helplessness. There are mysterious instincts inevery heart that turn to Jesus crucified. Keen and swift as eagles for the prey are Christians for the Lord who died. It is the same underlying thought with that noble utterance in the twelfth chapter of St. John. There the few Greeks are to that prophetic eye the first shoreward ripple of the great springtide of humanity which is to break in thunder at His feet. The lifting up a few feet above the soil of Golgotha becomes, by a majestic irony, the elevation above the earth, the centre of attraction for uncounted souls. “ I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto Me.” So He seems to promise--“ I, if I be fallen upon the earth, the helpless, lifeless, ruined thing which men call a corpse, will yet gather round Me every eagle that clasps the crag, or soars upward with the sunlight in his glorious eye.” (Bp. Wm. Alexander.) The gathering of the eagles 1. These words have many meanings for us. First we may think of them as referring to the fall of Jerusalem. There indeed was the body, the dead corrupt body of the Jews, who had refused to hear the message of salvation, and had taken and slain the Son of God outside the wall of their fated city. And where the body was, there were the eagles gathered together. That enemy, of which the prophets had spoken long ago, had come, and encompassed Jerusalem in on every side. The Roman eagles glittered upon their helmets, and flashed upon their standards. They set up their banners for tokens, even within the sacred courts of the temple, and so was fulfilled the prophecy of the “ abomination of desolation standing in the holy place.” 2. Again, we take the words of the text as applying to the hour of death, and first of the death of the body. Whoever has stood at a good man’ s death-bed must feel that the dying man is not alone, nor allowed in that last hour for any pains of death to fall from God. Where that poor worn-out body lies, there are the eagles of God’ s host gathered together, strengthening, comforting the dying man, ready to bear his soul as swift as on eagles’ wings to Paradise. There is a beautiful fancy of the East which makes Azrael, the angel of death, speak thus to a dying saint:-- “‘ Thou blessed one,’ the angel said, ‘ I bring thy time of peace, When I have touched thee on the eyes, life’ s latest ache will cease; God bade me come as I am seen amid the heavenly host,-- No enemy of awful mould, but he who loveth most.’” So looks the Christian on death, as being a fair and gracious messenger from God, bringing to the captive liberty, and to the weary rest. “ Wheresoever the body is, thither will the eagles be gathered together.” 3. These words are terribly true of the death of the godless and impenitent. Julian, the apostate emperor, took for his crest an eagle pierced through the heart by an arrow feathered from his own wing, and as a motto the words, “ Our death flies to us with our own feather.” So every sinner who dies impenitent knows that the arrow of remorse which pierces him is of his own making, that the dark spectres, which are gathered like eagles around him, are of his own inviting. 4. Once more, and in another and brighter sense, we will take tile text as applying to the Blessed Sacrament of the altar; so it has always been understood by the old writers of the Church. One of them says-- “ Where the sacred body lieth, eagle souls together speed; There the saints and there the angels find refreshment in their need. And the sons of earth and heaven on that one Bread ever feed.” When we kneel at that altar and receive the Body of our Lord, we are not alone. The very word “ Communion” teaches us that we are encompassed by a great cloud of witnesses. Not only are we in that Sacrament made one with Christ, and with all true members of His Church, but we join in the work of saints and angels, and they take part with us. Thus we say, “ With angels and archangels, and all the company of heaven, we laud and magnify Thy glorious name.” “ Wheresover the body is,” wheresoever the Body of Jesus Christ is present in the Sacrament, there will the faithful worshippers be gathered together like eagles, and there too will be high and holy ones present, although unseen by us, making the altar a ladder between earth and heaven, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon it. (H. J.Wilmot Buxton, M. A.) . Luke 18:1-8 Men ought always to pray, and not to faint The strange weapon-All-prayer While Christian was in the Palace Beautiful, they showed him all the remarkable objects in the armory, from the ox-goad of Shamgar to the sword of the Spirit. And amongst the arms he saw, and with some of which he was arrayed as be left the place, was a single weapon with a strange, new name--“ All-prayer.” When I was a child, I used to wonder much what this could have been--its shape, its use. I imagine I know something more about it in these later years. At any rate, I think Bunyan found his name for it in one of the New Testament Epistles: “ Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit” Ephesians 6:18). It so happens, also, that we have two parables of our Lord given us in the eighteenth chapter of Luke to one end, “ that men ought always to pray, and not to faint.” One of these parables teaches the lesson of importunity, the other teaches the lesson of sincerity. And it does not need that we draw from this collocation the subtle suggestion that want of importunity and want of sincerity are what weaken the weapon of all-prayer, and render faint the heart of the Christian who wields it. We know that we do not pray always, and that we do not always pray. I. Let us take up this matter of in the outset. At first sight it gives perplexity to some students of the Bible. We must notice that Christ does not identify His Father, the “ Hearer of Prayer,” with this judge in the parable in any sense whatsoever. The very point of the illustration turns upon his superiority. God is just, and this man was unjust. This petitioner was a lonely widow and a stranger; God was dealing with His own elect. The woman came uninvited; Christians are pressed with invitations to ask, and knock, and seek. The unjust judge never agreed to listen to the widow; God has promised, over and over again, that it shall be granted to those that ask. The judge may have had relations with this woman’ s adversary which would complicate, and, in some way, commit him to an unnecessary quarrel in her behalf, if his office should be exercised in defence; God is in open and declared conflict, on His own account, with our adversary, and rejoices to defeat his machinations, and avenge His own chosen speedily. Hence, the whole teaching of the story is directed towards our encouragement thus: If we would persist with a wicked judge that regarded nobody, God nor man, then surely we would press our prayers with God. What is the duty then? Simply, go on praying. II. Let us move on to consider, in the second place, this matter of in prayer, suggested by the other parable. To men of the world it must be a subject of real wonder and surprise, to use no more disrespectful terms, why so many petitions offered by the people of God prove fruitless. To all this, Christians ought to be able to reply that prayer follows laws and respects intelligent conditions, just as every other part of God’ s plan of redemption does. We are accustomed to say to each other that God always hears prayer. No, He does not. The wisest man that was ever inspired says distinctly, “ He that turneth away his ear from hearing the law, even his prayer shall be abomination.” And in the New Testament the apostle explains the whole anomaly of failure thus: “ Ye ask and receive not, because ye ask amiss.” For one thing, self-conceit destroys all sincerity in prayer. For another thing, spits against others destroys all sincerity in prayer. Listen to the Pharisee’ s preposterous comparison of himself in the matter of money and merit with the publican almost out of sight there in the corner. Inconsistencies in life also destroy sincerity in prayer. Purity from evil is a prime condition of success. (C. S. Robinson, D. D.) The duty of persevering in prayer I. OUR DUTY. That which is here inculcated implies that we pray-- 1. Statedly. 2. Occasionally. There are many particular occasions which require us to pray. (1) Prosperity, that God may counteract its evil tendency (Proverbs 30:9). (2) Adversity, that we may be supported under it (James 5:13). (3) Times of public distress or danger, to avert the calamity (2 Chronicles 7:14). 3. Habitually. We should maintain a spiritual frame of mind. To pray thus is our duty; “ We ought,” etc. (1) It is a duty we owe to God. He, our Creator, Preserver, and Redeemer, has commanded it. (2) We owe it also to our neighbour. The edification of Christ’ s mystical body depends, not only on the union of every part with the head, but on the whole being fitly framed together, and on every joint supplying its proper nourishment (Ephesians 4:16 : Colossians 2:19). But if we be remiss in prayer, we shall be incapable of administering that benefit, which other members have a right to expect from us. (3) We owe it to ourselves. A “ spirit of supplication” is as necessary to the soul, as food to the body. Nor can we feel any regard for our souls, if we do not cultivate it. II. THE THAT ATTEND IT. When we set ourselves to the performance of it, we shall find difficulties-- 1. Before we begin to pray. Worldly business may indispose our minds for this employment. Family cares may distract and dissipate our thoughts. Lassitude of body may unfit us for the necessary exertions. We may be disabled by an invincible hardness of heart. A want of utterance may also operate as a heavy discouragement. 2. While we are engaged in prayer. The world is never more troublesome than at such seasons. The flesh also, with its vilest imaginations will solicit our attention. Nor will Satan be backward to interrupt our devotions. 3. After we have concluded prayer. When we have prayed, we should expect an answer. But worldliness may again induce a forgetfulness of God. Impatience to receive the desired blessings may deject us. Ignorance of the method in which God answers prayer may cause us to disquiet ourselves with many ungrounded apprehensions. Unbelief may rob us of the benefits we might have received (James 1:6-7). Whatever obstructs God’ s answers to prayer, disqualifies us for the future discharge of that duty. (Theological Sketch-book.) The nature and duty of prayer I. THE NATURE OF PRAYER. 1. An expression of our sense of God’ s infinite superiority. 2. An expression of our dependence upon God. 3. A declaration of our obligation to God. 4. A declaration of our faith in God’ s ability to grant us anything our circumstances may require. There are several things necessary to constitute true prayer, and which form its constituent parts. (1) Faith is one essential. (2) Sincerity is another ingredient in true prayer. (3) Humility. II. We notice THE DUTY OF PRAYER. Prayer is a duty, if we consider it-- 1. As a Divine injunction. 2. It appears a duty, if we consider God as a prayer-hearing God. 3. It is a duty, if we consider the beneficial effects of prayer. (1) Prayer brings great benefits to ourselves. It brings us into closer communion with Christ. (2) Prayer is a powerful antidote to, and one of the most effectual safeguards against, worldly-mindedness. (3) By prayer we get divinely enlightened. (4) Prayer brings with it advancement in personal holiness. (5) Prayer is a powerful stimulant to every Christian grace. He who lives in the habitual exercise of sincere and earnest prayer cannot remain in a lukewarm, inactive, lethargic state. (Essex Remembrancer.) Men ought always to pray Why? 1. Because the King wills it. Because it is an edict of eternal wisdom and truth, the command of absolute righteousness and justice, the direction of infinite goodness and love. 2. Because it is an instinct and faculty of our nature, part and parcel of our mental manhood; and as the all-wise Creator has endowed us with the power, and not only the power, but the tendency to pray, we cannot and do not fulfil His will, or rightly use our capabilities, unless we pray. 3. Because it is a privilege, a precious privilege conferred. The maker of the machine can mend and manage it; and He who created us--body, mind, and spirit--invites us to bring our bodily needs, hunger, thirst, aches, pains, and infirmities; our mental cares, griefs, doubts, perplexities, and depressions; our spiritual wants, fears, forebodings, sins, and weakness--to Him in prayer. 4. Because our state and condition is one of perpetual peril, and weakness, and need. The sin on our conscience condemns us, and we cannot undo it. We all get the heartache, and we cannot cure it. We can neither condone our offences, nor lighten our conscience, nor carry our sorrows, nor hush our complainings, nor dry our tears! 5. Because in the infinite love and mercy of God to poor sinners a new and living way hath been opened for us into the presence of God, so that not only doth the sinner gain a hearing, but he has an infinite guarantee that his prayers shall prosper, and his petitions shall be fulfilled. 6. Because our needs, our perils, our personal insufficiency, are “ always” with us; because the throne of prayer is always accessible, and the Hearer of prayer is always willing; and because the power and privilege of prayer has a direct connection with the whole sphere of our daily life, and the whole circle of our daily needs. 7. Because no really earnest and reliant prayers can possibly be in vain. We are apt to faint in our petitionings if the gift we seek is long delayed. (J. J.Wray.) Prayer The “ ought” of Christ outweighs all the objections of infidelity, and is stronger than the adverse conclusions of a material science. 1. Prayer should be constant. “ Can we, indeed,” says Augustine, “ without ceasing bend the knee, bow the body, or lift up the hands?” If the attitude and the language of prayer were essential to its being truly offered, the command of Christ would seem to be exaggerated. But understand it as the soul’ s attitude to God, and it is no exaggeration. “ That soul,” says Dr. Donne, “ which is ever turned toward God, prays sometimes when it does not know that it prays.” The testimony of the Christian father accords with this. After admitting that formal, oral prayer must have its pauses and intermissions, Augustine says, “ There is another interior prayer without intermission, and that is the longing of the heart. Whatever else thou mayest be doing, if thou longest after the Sabbath of God, thou dost not intermit to pray.” Thus the whole life becomes, what Origen conceived the life of the Christian should be, “ one great connected prayer.” The importance of constancy in it arises from the place it holds in man’ s spiritual life. Prayer is to the soul what the nerves of the body are to the mind--its medium of communication with a world that else were unperceived and unrealized. 2. Prayer should be earnest. There is danger of our prayer degenerating into a dead form, or perfunctory service--worse than no praying at all. The simple remedy is to deepen the desire or sense of need which prompts to prayer, and is the essence of prayer. “ If thou wishest not to intermit to pray,” says one of the Christian fathers, “ see that thou do not intermit to desire. The coldness of love is the silence of the’ heart; the fervency of love is the cry of the heart.” This warmth of desire is the product of a clear persuasion of the value of prayer as a means of help and strength. 3. Another quality of true prayer is, patient confidence in God. “ Shall not God avenge His own elect which cry day and night unto Him, though He bear long with them.” There are two sure and solid grounds of confidence. One is found in God’ s righteous character, by which He is constrained to rectify wrong and establish the right; and the other is found in His positive love for the suppliant. 4. One other quarry should mark true prayer, namely, humility. (A. H.Currier.) The necessity of praying always, and not fainting Our Lord Jesus Christ, has kindly intimated to all that have business at the court of heaven the necessity of so managing themselves that they still hang on there, and not faint, whatever entertainment they meet with during the dependence of their process. I. The first thing to be considered, is, OUR LORD’ S KIND OF THIS WAY OF HIS FATHER’ S COURT. 1. I shall show the import of Christ’ s making this intimation to petitioners at His Father’ s court. (1) The darkness that is naturally on the minds of poor sinners, with respect to heaven’ s management about them. We may say, as Jeremiah 5:4, “ Surely these are poor, they are foolish: for they know not the way of the Lord, nor the judgment of their God.” (2) Christ’ s good-will to the sinner’ s business going right there Exodus 28:29). (3) That our Lord sees sinners are in hazard of fainting from the entertainment they may meet with during the dependence of their process Hebrews 12:3). (4) That they that shall hang on, and not faint, shall certainly come speed at length. 2. The weight and moment of this intimation. This will appear, if it is considered in a fourfold light. (1) Jesus Christ, who makes it, has experienced it in His own case. Now, if this was the manner with the great Petitioner, how can we expect it should fare otherwise with us? (2) He is the great Prophet of heaven, whose office it is to reveal the manner of the court to poor sinners. (3) He is the only Intercessor there, the Father’ s Secretary, the Solicitor for poor sinners there. II. The second thing to be considered, is, THE WAY OF THE COURT OF HEAVEN, IN WITH SOME , DURING THE OF THEIR PROCESS. Here I shall give you-- 1. A swatch of that way; and-- 2. Some reasons of that way, whereby to account for it in a suitableness to the Divine perfections. 1. (1) Oft-times there is deep silence from the throne (Matthew 15:23). (2) Oft-times they get a very angry-like answer. The woman of Canaan got a couple of them, one on the back of another: “ But He answered and said, I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel. It is not meet to take the children’ s bread, and to cast it to dogs” (Matthew 15:24; Matthew 15:26). (3) Disappointed expectations are a piece of very ordinary entertainment there: “ We looked for peace, but no good came: and for a time of health, and behold trouble” (Jeremiah 8:15). (4) Many a time, looking for an answer, Providence drives a course apparently just contrary to the granting of their petition; so is fulfilled that Psalms 65:5, “ By terrible things in righteousness wilt Thou answer us, O God of our salvation.” (5) Oft-times the Lord, instead of easing the petitioner, lays new burdens on him: “ We looked for peace, but no good came; and for a time of health, and behold trouble” (Jeremiah 8:15). Instead of curing the old wound,there are new ones given. 2. (1) This way is taken with petitioners in the court of heaven; for thereby God is glorified, and His attributes more illustrated than otherwise they would be. In this view of it, Paul welcomes it in his own case, though it was hard to sense: “ And He said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for My strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly, therefore, will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me” 2 Corinthians 12:9). (2) Hereby the state of petitioners is tried, and a plain difference constituted between hypocrites and the sincere: “ He that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved” (Matthew 24:13). (3) Hereby the graces of believing petitioners are tried, both as to the reality and strength of them; particularly their faith and patience (1 Peter 1:6-7). (4) Hereby believers are humbled, and taught that they hold of free grace. The exalting of grace is the great design of the whole contrivance of the gospel. (5) This way is taken for honour of the word: “ Thou hast magnified Thy word above all Thy name” (Psalms 138:2). (6) It is taken to make them long to be home. III. The third thing to be considered, is, THE DUTY OF THE TO HANG ON, AND NOT TO FAINT, THEY MEET WITH. We may view it in these things following. 1. They must never lift their process from the court of heaven: “ Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life” (John 6:67-68). 2. They must never give over praying, but “ pray always.” And Satan sometimes plies distressed souls to give up with it, as what they may see they will do no good with, for that God will not hear them. But that is a deceit of hell which ye must never yield to. 3. They must carry all their incident needs in new petitions to the same throne of grace, where the former petition may have been long lying, and still unanswered; and so pursue all together. The latter must not drive out the former, nor the former keep back the latter. It is one of the ways how the Lord keeps His people hanging about His hand without fainting, by sending them several loads above their burden; which loads He takes off soon at their request; and so makes them go under their burden the more easily. These short incident processes, that get a speedy answer, confirm their faith and hope in waiting on for the answer of the main. 4. They must continue in the faith of the promise, never quit the gripe of it; but trust and believe that it shall certainly be accomplished, though the wheels of providence should seem to drive out over it and in over it Romans 4:19-20). Consider-- 1. If ye faint and give over, your suit is lost, ye have given up with it. 2. He is well worth the waiting on. (1) Though He is infinitely above us, He has waited long on us. (2) The longer you are called to wait for a mercy, ye will readily find it the more valuable when it comes. (3) His time will be found the due time (Galatians 6:9); the best chosen time for the mercy’ s coming; witness the time of Isaac’ s birth. (4) Ye shall be sure of some blessed of fallings, while ye wait on (Psalms 27:14). 3. They have waited long, that have lost all, by not having patience to wait a little longer (Exodus 32:1-35.; 1 Samuel 13:8; 1 Samuel 13:10). Therefore “ let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing” James 1:4); “ for in due season ye shall reap, if ye faint not” Galatians 6:9). (T. Boston, D. D.) Petitioners at the court of heaven encouraged; or, the happy issue of praying always, and not fainting I. First, I SHALL SHOW WHAT IS THAT MAY MEET WITH AT THE COURT OF HEAVEN, UNDER WHICH THEY WILL BE IN HAZARD OF . I mentioned several particulars at another occasion; I offer now only three things in general. 1. The weight and pressure of their heavy case itself, whatever it is, may be long continued, notwithstanding all their addresses for help. 2. There may be no appearance of relief (Psalms 74:9). 3. They may get incident weights laid on them, as a load above their burden (Psalms 69:26). These are like drops poured into a full cup, ready to cause it run over; like smart touches on a broken leg, inclining one readily to faint. II. The second thing to be spoke to, is, WHY ARE IN HAZARD OF FROM SUCH AT THE COURT OF HEAVEN. 1. Natural weakness. “ All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field” (Isaiah 40:6). On this very view the Lord “ pitiesHis children” (Psalms 103:13-14). 2. Conscience of guilt: “ My wounds stink, and are corrupt; because of my foolishness” (Psalms 38:5-6). Guilt is a mother of fears, and fears cause fainting. 3. Unacquaintedness with the methods of sovereignty: “ Thy way is in the sea, and Thy path in the great waters, and Thy footsteps are not known” Psalms 77:19). 4. A strong bias to unbelief and walking by sense, quite contrary to our duty and interest (2 Corinthians 5:7). We are apt to be impressed more with what we see and feel in Providence, than what we hear from the Word. III. The third thing to be considered is, THE LORD GIVES SUCH TO ANY OF HIS . Negatively. 1. It is not for mere will and pleasure. Satan will be ready to suggest this, and pose the party with such questions as these, For what use is all this delay? 2. It is not because He has no pity on you, nor concern for you under your burden. 3. It is not to signify to you that you should give it over, and trouble Him no more with your petition; as the hasty unbelieving heart is ready to take it, and to give over duty because there is no sensible appearance of success: “ I said I will not make mention of Him nor speak any more in His Jeremiah 20:9). 4. Lastly, It is not because He is resolved not to hear you at any rate, cry as long as ye will. But positively, in general, it is for holy, wise, becoming ends; it is necessary for His glory and your case. But particularly-- 1. It is for the honour of the man Christ. It contributes to it-- (1) In that thereby the petitioners are conformed to His image, in the suffering part thereof. (2) Thereby He gets the more employment as the great Intercessor, and is more earnestly applied to than otherwise He would be. Longsome pleas give the advocates much ado; and longsome processes at the court of heaven bring much business to the Mediator, and so much honour. (3) It affords Him the most signal occasion of displaying His power in combating with and baffling the old serpent, next to that He had on the 2 Corinthians 12:9). 2. To magnify the promise. 3. To keep up the mercy, till that time come, that, all things considered, will be the absolutely best time for bestowing it (John 11:14-15). IV. The fourth thing to be spoke to is, WHAT IS THE IMPORT OF THIS MADE FOR THIS END? It imports-- 1. That sinners are ready to take delays at the court of heaven for denials. 2. That importunity and resolute hanging on, and repeated addresses for the supply of the same need, are very welcome and acceptable to Christ and His Father. There is no fear of excess here; the oftener ye come, the more resolute ye are in your hanging on, the more welcome. 3. That the faith of being heard at length, is necessary to keep one hanging on without fainting (Psalms 27:13). 4. That the hearing to be got at length at the court of heaven is well worth the waiting on, be it ever so long. It will more than counterbalance all the fatigue of the process, that is kept longest in dependence. V. The fifth thing in the method is, THE OF SUCH BEING HEARD AT LENGTH. 1. They are doubtless God’ s own children, elect believers, whatever they think of themselves (Luke 17:7). 2. The nature, name, and promise of God, joins to insure it. He is good and gracious in His nature (Exodus 34:6-9). 3. Such prayers are the product of His own Spirit in them, and therefore He cannot miss to be heard (James 5:16). 4. Our Lord Jesus has given His word on it, and so has impawned His honour they shall be heard: “ I tell you that He will avenge them speedily.” VI. Sixthly, How THEY SHALL BE HEARD TO THEIR HEART’ S CONTENT. 1. They shall at length see that their prayers have been accepted. I do not say they shall at length be accepted, but they shall see they have been so. 2. They shall get an answer of their petitions to their heart’ s satisfaction Matthew 15:28). “ The needy shall not always be forgotten: the expectation of the poor shall not perish for ever” (Psalms 9:18). 3. They shall be fully satisfied as to the long delay, and the whole steps of the procedure, however perplexing they were before (Revelation 15:3). 4. They shall get it with increase according to the time they waited on, and the hardships they sustained during the dependence of the process. The fruit of the promise, the longer it is a-ripening, the more bulky it is. 5. Lastly, their spiritual enemies that flew thick and strong about them in the time of the darkness, shall be scattered at the appearance of this light 1 Samuel 2:5). VII. Seventhly, How IT SHALL BE , THE LONG DELAY. 1. It shall be speedily in respect of the weight and value of it when it comes: so that the believer looking on the return of his petition, with an eye of faith perceiving the worth of it, may wonder it is come upon so short onwaiting (2 Corinthians 4:17). 2. It shall come in the most seasonable nick of time it can come in Galatians 6:9), when it may come to the best advantage for the honour of God and their good: and that which comes in the best season, comes speedily. To everything there is a season; so fools’ haste is no speed. 3. It shall come as soon as they are prepared for it (Psalms 10:17). 4. It shall not tarry one moment beyond the due and appointed time Habakkuk 2:3). 5. Lastly, it will be surprising, as a glaring light to one brought out of a dungeon, though he was expecting it. (T. Boston, D. D.) The necessity of prayer I. With regard to the necessity of prayer, THE GERM OF THIS AS OF OTHER , IS TO BE FOUND IN OUR NATURE, and affords one illustration of the truth of that profound exclamation, “ O testimony of a soul, by nature Christian!” Of moral truth there is an inward engraving, a light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world. “ The virtues,” says a modern writer, “ were like plants half developed in some gloomy shade, till Christ poured His sunshine upon them, and made them flourish with luxuriance.” It is important, then, to ground the necessity of prayer on the dictates of nature as well as on the teaching of Revelation, thereby resting it on a double authority, each of which lends support to the other. For anything to be original in our nature, it must possess certain properties; in looking back to the beginning of our race it ‘ will present itself without any external origin, and it will continue to exist under conditions most diverse and at all times. We examine, then, the history of the past, we take up the book which contains the first records of our race in order to discover whether this communing with God existed from the first--to see what the first human souls did. All the elements of prayer were present in Adam’ s intercourse with his Maker; man, rational and dependent; God, Almighty, Omniscient, and Good; and--communications between the two. We trace the instinct of prayer continuing in fallen man, else it might have been supposed that it was a part of his supernatural equipment, and had no foundation in his natural life. In Adam’ s sons this instinct survived; Cain and Abel offered sacrifices, and sacrifices are the outward expression of prayer; there was an ascent of the mind to God, a real ascent at least in one case, for “ by faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain.” In an unfallen state, the instinct of the soul was to turn to the Author of its life, with joy and thankfulness; in a fallen state, the instinct of the soul is to turn to Him through its need of pardon and its sense of weakness; but in both states there is the instinct to turn to Him, though the leading reasons for doing so may be different. Looking back, then, into the past by the light of the only record which can safely guide us, we find the practice of prayer from the first without any external command or origin, and therefore it preserves one mark of an instinct of nature. But an instinct to be acknowledged must not only be able to claim antiquity on its side but also universality. That which is a genuine part of human nature will always be a part of human nature. If that which marked human life in its earlier stages, disappears in times of advanced civilization and culture, it may be doubted whether it was a pure instinct of our nature, and be attributed either on the one side to an original revelation or on the other to a defective or barbarous condition. It must, however, be admitted that in matters of religion, the mark of antiquity in an instinct has a special value; we can see in it “ natural religion” before it has been tampered with. If we want to learn the habits of an animal, we must see it in its native freedom, and not only after it has been trained and domesticated. The instinct of prayer, however, does not lack the second property, universality; we find it both in the highest and lowest states of civilization, in places and races widely sundered both in position and circumstance. If we examine the practices of barbarous nations; if we turn to the ancient religions of the East; if we look at Greece and Rome in the plenitude of their intellectual power, we find that in some form or shape the necessity of prayer and homage to a superior Power is admitted, and in no nation is the instinct entirely obliterated. In the root of human nature there is a sense of dependency, and a sense of guilt; natural religion is based on these two, the correlatives of which are prayer and atonement--the actions respectively proper to the frail, and to the sinful. It is useless to speak of the instinct of prayer as of something imported into our nature: that which is simply imported does not make its home so fixed and sure, that no lapse of time or change of circumstances has the power to dislodge it. I have dwelt at some length on the instinctive character of prayer, because on it I first ground its obligation; we ought to pray out of deference to an instinct with which God has endowed us, for by our higher intuitions and instincts He expresses His will, and to neglect to act in accordance with them, is to disobey His voice within us. Moreover, this instinct of prayer is an imperious one; it is one which will assert itself, even when it has been set aside, and its presence denied. There are moments in life when men are superior to their own principles, and human systems fail to silence the deep cry of the heart; when men pray who have denied the power of prayer. “ That men ought always to pray,” then, is the teaching of nature, and prayer as a matter of natural religion is an express duty. II. We pass now from the sphere of the natural to the super-natural, from nature to grace, TO FIND ANOTHER BASIS FOR THE OF PRAYER. Prayer meets us with a two-fold claim in the domain of revealed religion; it is necessary as a means of grace, it is necessary also as a fulfilment of an express command of God; these are two sides, the one objective, the other subjective, of the same truth. It will be observed, that the necessity of prayer viewed in this connection is derived from the prior necessity of grace. “ Every man is held to pray in order to obtain spiritual goods, which are not given, except from heaven; wherefore they are not able to be procured in any other way but by being thus sought for.” In the New Testament, that grace is a necessity for the supernatural life is an elemental truth. Grace is to that life what the water is to the life of the fish, or the air to our natural life--something absolutely indispensable. “ Being justified freely by His grace.” “ By grace ye are saved.” “ By the grace of God I am what I am; and His grace which was bestowed upon me was not in vain.” “ Grow in grace.” “ He which hath begun a good work in you will perform it.” In following the operations of grace from the commencement of the spiritual life to its end, five effects have been enumerated--it heals the soul, it produces a good will, it enables the good which was willed to be brought about in action, it makes perseverance in good possible, it leads to glory. Thus grace is, from first to last, the invisible nourishment of the soul’ s life, and prayer is the means in man’ s own power of gaining grace; it is through prayer that the different effects of grace are wrought in us. We ask God for spiritual healing--“ Heal my soul, for I have sinned against Thee.” “ O cleanse Thou me from my secret faults.” We need Divine help for resisting temptations--“ When Christ was baptized and prayed, the heavens were opened, showing that after Baptism prayer is necessary to man in two ways, to overcome the inward proneness to evil, and the outward enticements of the world and the devil.” Temptations to be resisted with sanctifying effect must be resisted in the power of prayer; slight temptations may perhaps be vanquished by natural effort, or overthrown by an opposite vice, but such victories are not registered in heaven. Again, in order to advance in the spiritual life, in the development of virtues, prayer is a necessity--the apostles prayed, “ Lord, increase our faith.” The increase of the interior life simply consists in the growth of different virtues and graces, and these virtues are formed by the combined action of grace and free-will; these are the two factors, the raw material so to speak, from which the fabric is manufactured. A continual supply of grace is needed for the increase of each virtue, and therefore prayer is needed, not only in general, but also with definite reference to the support of the virtue which we have to exercise, or in which we are most conscious of defect. He says “ prayer and grace are of the same necessity; grace is necessary for salvation, hence it ought to follow that prayer also is necessary; but why should prayer be ordained in relation to eternity, unless it he for the sake of obtaining grace?” There are, however, two limits to the power of prayer which we must not forget in its relation to grace. Prayer is itself dependent on grace in the spiritual life, and an act of prayer for grace is a correspondence with a grace which has been already given. “ The Spirit,” St. Paul says, “ also helpeth our infirmities; for we know not what we should pray for as we ought.” “ Grace,” St. Chrysostom asserts, “ precedes our prayers always.” The good thought or desire is a touch from another world; the angels of God descended as well as ascended on “ Bethel’ s Stair.” The beginnings of life, whether natural or supernatural, are from God; but the continuation and increase of life depend also on human co-operation. Again, prayer as a means of grace must not take the place of Sacraments. The revelation which proclaims the necessity of the one, also asserts the obligation of the other. Prayer is the respiration of the soul; Sacraments, its medicine and food; both alike necessary, though the one constantly, the other occasionally. III. The obligation to pray is NOT, however, TO BE VIEWED SIMPLY IN TO OUR OWN BENEFIT. Prayer is also an act of religion, an act of obedience to a Divine precept which we should be bound to perform, even if no grace came to us from its performance. This objective view of the necessity of prayer is one less familiar, but hardly less important. Now from this doctrine flow two results. The omission and neglect of prayer involve not only a loss of grace, but constitute a distinct sin; it is a sin against religion, and against charity. Religion is a moral virtue, whose province it is to show due honour and reverence to Almighty God; to cease to pray therefore, is to fail to exercise a moral virtue, and that the highest. What justice is towards the creature, religion is towards God--that by which we seek to give Him His due. To neglect prayer, is also to sin against charity. Charity presents three objects--God, ourselves, others--all of whom are to be loved: but when prayer is omitted we fail in the exercise of the love of God, for we desire to hold converse with those whom we love; the love of our neighbour we fail in also, for he needs our prayers; and the love of our soul we fail in, by the neglect of a duty upon which our spiritual life depends. It remains for us to notice when this precept of prayer is binding, so that the omission of it becomes a sin. When Christ says, “ men ought always to pray,” it is evident that He does not mean that no other duty should be fulfilled; but that at all times, whatever we are doing, the spirit of prayer should be preserved. IV. We have now to view THE OF PRAYER AS A . Those who do not admit that prayer has power with God, yet acknowledge that it has power with us, and allow that it possesses a reflex influence on those who use it. The soul by communing with God becomes like God, receives from His perfections supplies of light, of power, and love according to its needs. The subjective effects of prayer are as manifold as the Divine perfections. It is said that constant intercourse between creatures causes them to resemble one another, not only in disposition and habits, but even in features. Old painters always made St. John like unto his Master in face. They instinctively imagined, that closeness of communion between the beloved disciple and his Lord had occasioned a likeness in features and expression. The first basis of its obligation will remind us that we must not regard our nature as entirely corrupt, and its voice as always misleading, but that in it, fallen as it is, there are vestiges of its original greatness, and intuitions and instincts which are to us an inward revelation of the mind and will of God. The second reason for the necessity of prayer, will explain perhaps the cause of weakness in the hour of temptation--our lack of grace. Further, we must be careful to regard prayer not only as a means of grace but as a duty, and thus fulfil it without reference to our own delight or profit in the act. If, again, we complain of our earthliness and worldliness, and the difficulty which we have in fetching our motives of action from a higher sphere, may it not be that we have failed to realize the importance of prayer in its subjective effect upon character, and have thought to gain a ray of heavenly brightness without the habitual communing with God upon the Mount? (W. H. Hutchings, M. A.) Necessity of prayer Prayer is natural to men. The knowledge of our own weakness is soon forced upon us, but with this conviction there comes another, the sense of dependence on One--great, loving, and wise. Out of these springs the necessity of prayer, which is the language of the frail to the mighty--the confession of need, and the instinct of trust. Every known religion attests this irresistible impulse to pray. Men, indeed, will be found to deny, or to undervalue the evidence of this instinct of prayer; but there are times which wring prayer from prayerless lips; times of danger, when all classes find prayer the most appropriate and natural utterance of their lips; times of heartfear, when the whole spirit sends up from the depths of confusion and darkness an exceeding bitter cry, wherein terror and doubt mingle with the unquenchable instinct of prayer; times when, perhaps, death is approaching, and the dark, unexplored confines of the other world begin to loom vast and vague upon an awakening conscience, and the firm citadel of stoutly maintained unbelief is swept away, and prayer rushes forth in such a despairing shriek as burst from the lips of Thistlewood--“ O God, if there be a God, save my soul, if I have a soul!” It is not the approach of danger or the feeling of fear only which calls forth prayer. The irresistible disposition is experienced under the influence of feelings widely different from fear. The contemplation of the universe, and the incomprehensible Being who embraces all things, so wrought upon the mind of Rousseau that, in the restlessness of his transports, he would exclaim, “ O great Being! O great Being!” The majesty and splendour of nature, brightening and kindling under the beams of the sun, rising upon the rocky heights of Jura, and circling the sky with flame, filled the soul of Voltaire with such awe that he uncovered his head, and, kneeling, he cried, “ I believe--I believe in Thee! O mighty God, I believe!” If the language of prayer is thus natural to all men, and forced at times from reluctant lips, it is natural, with an inexpressible sweetness, to hearts accustomed to communion with God. The cultivated instinct becomes a rich enjoyment, and an unutterable relief. The high duty becomes the highest privilege. (Bishop Boyd Carpenter.) Times unfavourable to prayer There are times when prayer is natural to the most careless; but there are also times when all things tend to deaden the spirit of prayer in the most thoughtful and prayerful of God’ s children. Such times are times of great and extensive activity, when pleasure is busy, and even enjoyments are full of toil. In the ceaseless industry of business and gaiety, amusement becomes hard work. Hard work brings weariness, and weariness is followed by an indisposition for any exertion of the spirit. Such, too, are times of a widespread feeling of uneasiness, when a vague apprehension seems to have seized hold upon the minds of all classes, and a strange sense of insecurity begets an unreasoning and universally felt fear. Such are times of noisy religionism and demonstrative piety, when the minds of men are galvanized into an unnatural activity through the spirit of an unwholesome rivalry; when convictions are degraded into opinions, and toil dwindles into talk, and organized Christian effort is strangled in discussion; when an impracticable tenacity of trifles and a stupendous disregard of principles throws the appearance of vitality over a degenerate and dead pietism. In such times the lulling influences of a strained activity, an undefined terror; and a selfasserting, heart-distracting zealotism steal over the spirits of the most watchful of Christ’ s servants, and often diminish insensibly their vigilance and earnestness in prayer. A convergence of such times into one period Christ described, and on the description He founded His warning that “ men ought always to pray.” (Bishop Boyd Carpenter.) Patient prayer One day, returning home from a morning meeting of the Holiness Convention, I came across a little boy standing at a house door, and crying bitterly. I tried to comfort him, but he only cried the more. Just then his mother came out, and when I inquired what was wrong with him, I found he was crying because his mother would not give him his breakfast before the right time. Similarly, we, as God’ s children, often make bitter repinings, and have hard thoughts about the Lord, because He does not answer our prayers at the time, and in the way that we expect. His ways are not as our ways, nor is His time always our time; but that in some way or other, and in the right way, and at His own time--not a moment too soon, not a moment too late--He will perform that which is good for us and to His glory. (J. G. Forbes.) Constant exercise in prayer When a pump is frequently used, but little pains are necessary to obtain water; the water pours out at the first stroke, because it is high; but if the pump has not been used for a long time the water gets low, and when you want it you must pump a long while, and the water comes only after great efforts. It is so with prayer. If we are instant in prayer, every little circumstance awakens the disposition to pray, and desire and words are always ready. But if we neglect prayer it is difficult for us to pray. Shall we pray, or shall we not? A distinguished man of science, an Englishman, was reported in the newspapers the other day to have said to an assembly in the American capital, “ I am not a praying man.” He was not bemoaning himself, or making confession of sin, or even uttering regret. If he did not speak boastfully, he certainly spoke without any sense of shame, and apparently with some degree of superiority over the commonplace and lag-behind people who still think it right to pray. Another distinguished man, an Englishman likewise, not a man of science, but a man of profound thought, was asked on his deathbed how he felt, and his reply was, “ I can pray, and that’ s a great thing.” In his judgment prayer was the highest service to which a whole man can give himself; not something to be left to the ignorant and feeble, but to be risen to, and aspired after by the greatest intellect and the most illumined mind. Which of the two was right? Which of them possessed the truest conception of the whole duty and privilege of man? I. Let us see WHAT MAY, OR , INDUCE A MAN TO TAKE THE IN THE AVOWAL, “ I am not a praying man.” 1. He may take this position who is conscious of no want which scientific study and material good cannot satisfy. But what shall we say of such a man as this? Is he a true type of our common humanity, or of our most educated humanity? Or, rather, is he not less than a man--only part of a man? The intellect is not the soul, and intellectual pleasure cannot satisfy the soul, or, if there be some souls which profess to be satisfied with it, it only proves how untrue souls may be to their own highest capacities. 2. He may take this position who is separated from mankind by the non-possession of anything of the nature of a religious faculty. An old Greek said, “ You may find peoples without cities, without arts, without theatres; but you can find no people without an altar and a God.” An Englishman, not a believer in Christianity, said that upon accurate search, religion and faith appear the only ultimate differences of man” --those which distinguish him from a brute. 3. He who has ascertained that God cannot, consistently with His own laws, or will not, for some other reason, hear prayer, may take the position implied in the saying, “ I am not a praying man.” But where is such a man to be found? To know that God cannot answer prayer consistently with His own laws, implies a knowledge which is properly Divine. 4. He who would justify his position must be conscious that he has no sins to be forgiven. And if any one should aver that his conscience acquits him, we should say (1 John 1:8; 1 John 1:10). 5. The man who would justify himself in saying, “ I am not a praying man,” must have already attained all moral excellence, or be conscious of power to attain it by his unaided efforts. In this matter we discern the blindness that has fallen on men. They can see very clearly the power that is needed to produce physical results, but not that which is needed to produce moral. And in this they only prove how much sense has acquired dominion over them. II. THE REASONS FOR NOT PRAYING WHICH MEN, IF HONEST ABOUT , WOULD AVOW. 1. Prayer is distasteful to them. They have no heart for it. This is a sure sign of being spiritually out of health. Seek the aid of the Healer of souls. 2. They feel that prayer is inconsistent with their habits of life. Then change those habits. “ Wash you, make you clean.” (J. Kennedy, D. D.) Hindrances to prayer 1. There Is the objection that, God having infinite wisdom to determine what is best, and almighty power to accomplish His decree, there is nothing for His creatures to do but submit with reverence and trust. If prayer cannot change His mind, it is useless, and, moreover, an impertinence; if it could, it would be a loss, since it would involve a sacrifice of greater wisdom to less--a result which can only be conceived of as a punishment. The answer to this is, that God in giving human beings a real freedom, a power to choose whether certain events shall be one way or the other, has really, so far as we can see, for wise purposes, limited His own. In short, there is a margin of greater or less good, of manageable error, of permissible evil, which God can set apart for our freedom to exercise itself in, without the world escaping His control. The premise, therefore, from which this objection starts, that “ whatever is, is best,” is not true in the large sense of those words. Whatever is best under all the circumstances, under the circumstances of our crime, negligence, or error, but not the best that might have been had we reached forth our hand to take what lay within our power. It may be better if we do not pray, that we should miss some blessings God has in reserve for those who seek Him in love and trust, but this is not the best that might have been. It is the will of God in relation to our negligence; but our trust and importunity would have called into action a higher and more generous law of His loving nature. 2. The next objection is that of the imagination filled and overpowered by the thought of the vastness of the material universe. “ Do you suppose,” men ask, “ that a petty, individual life, a worm crawling on the surface of one of His smallest planets, can be an object of particular consideration and interest to the Almighty Creator?” Why not? Is the Almighty Ruler compelled to distinguish between imperial and provincial cares like an earthly monarch? Because He is here with some suffering infant, taking its inarticulate moan into His mighty and pitiful heart, is He less in the planet Neptune, or is His power withdrawn from the glowing masses of future worlds? There is no egotism in thinking that man--any man--is more important in the Divine regard than a mass of matter, however long it has lain under the Creator’ s eye, and however much it may impose upon our imagination. 3. Practical hindrances to prayer are found where the speculative barriers we have been considering do not exist. Mental indolence is one of the greatest of these hindrances, and mental indolence is a much more prevalent and serious fault than bodily indolence. No one can really pray without using his understanding, engaging his affections, and making an effort of will. Prayer is work, and hard work. We must go to the Saviour, and ask His aid. “ Lord, teach us to pray.” (E. W. Shalders, B. A.) Belief in prayer the outcome of need realized As to the so-called scientific challenge to prove the efficacy of prayer by the result of simultaneous petition. A God that should fail to hear, receive, attend to one single prayer, the feeblest or worst, I cannot believe in; but a God that would grant every request of every man or every company of men, would be an evil God--that is no God, but a demon. That God should hang in the thought-atmosphere, like a windmill, waiting till men enough should combine and send out prayer in sufficient force to turn His outspread arms, is an idea too absurd. God waits to be gracious, not to be tempted. “ But if God is so good as you represent Him, and if He knows all that we need, and better far than we do ourselves, why should it be necessary to ask Him for anything?” I answer, What if He knows prayer to be the thing we need first and most? What if the main object in God’ s idea of prayer be the supplying of our great, our endless need--the need of Himself? What if the good of all our smaller and lower needs lies in this, that they help to drive us to God? Hunger may drive the runaway child home, and he may or may not be fed at once, but he needs his mother more than his dinner. Communion with God is the one need of the soul beyond all other need; prayer is the beginning of that communion, and some need is the motive of that prayer. Our wants are for the sake of our coming into communion with God, our eternal need. In regard, however, to the high necessities of our nature, it is in order that He may be able to give that God requires us to ask--requires by driving us to it--by shutting us up to prayer. For how can He give into the soul of a man what it needs, while that soul cannot receive it? The ripeness for receiving is the asking. The blossom-cup of the soul, to be filled with the heavenly dews, is its prayer. When the soul is hungry for the light, for the truth--when its hunger has waked its higher energies, thoroughly roused the will, and brought the soul into its highest condition, that of action, its only fitness for receiving the things of God, that action is prayer. Then God can give; then He can be as He would towards the man: for the glory of God is to give Himself. We thank thee, Lord Christ, for by Thy pain alone do we rise towards the knowledge of this glory of Thy Father and our Father. (G. Macdonald, LL. D.) The adaptability of nature to prayer A waterfall is a scientific object only in a very rude way. But when every drop of its waters has been manipulated and controlled by the human will till the mills of a Lowell or a Lawrence display from every spindle and shuttle the presence of human intelligence and power, then the untamed river begins to sparkle with the brilliancy of science, and to murmur its praises from every ripple. That is, the more mind-power is mingled with matter-power, the more scientific is the compound result. The uniformity of the waterfall is far less scientific, than the diversity of the waterwheel. Automatic mechanisms, machines that adjust themselves to change, throwing themselves out of gear at the least obstacle or breakage, ringing a bell as a signal of distress, increasing or diminishing combustion, changing position, as in the case of a lathe to meet all the convolutions of a gun-stock, have a far higher scientific character than a carpenter’ s drawing-knife, or a housewife’ s spinning-wheel, which display less of diversity and more of uniformity. It was once supposed that the solar system is so balanced that the loss of a grain of weight, or the slightest change of motion, would dislocate and destroy the whole system. It was a higher science, not a lower, that has since taught us that exact uniformity is by no means necessary to the stability of the system, but that oscillation and change are fully provided for in the original plan. The principle holds good that the modifications of a mind power introduced into a material mechanism advance its scientific rank, and increase rather than diminish the proof of the presence of law and order in its working. I was riding, a few years since, about one of the rural cities of the State of New York with one of the most distinguished preachers at the metropolis. We were speaking of the curious fallacies involved in Tyndall’ s famous prayer-gauge conundrum. Just then we drove up to the city water-works. I told him that if he would go in with me I thought we could find a good illustration of the manner in which God may answer prayer without interfering with any of the laws of nature. The point, let us remember, is, that the power of an intelligent will can be so introduced among the forces of matter as to have perfect uniformity in the working of those forces, while diversity appears in their results. The building we entered was furnished with a Holley engine. As we stood by the steam gauge we observed constant and considerable changes in the amount of steam produced. As there was no cause apparent in or about the engine itself, we asked for an explanation. “ That,” said the engineer, “ is done by the people in the city. As they open their faucets to draw the water the draft upon our fires is increased. As they close them, it is diminished. The smallest child can change the movements of our engine according to his will. It was the design of the maker to adjust his engine so that it should respond perfectly to the needs of the people, be they great or small.” Just then the bell rung, the furnace-drafts flew open, the steam rose rapidly in the gauge, the engineer flew to his post, the ponderous machinery accelerated its movement. We heard a general alarm of fire. “ How is that?” we asked. “ That,” he said, “ was the opening of some great fire-plug.” “ And how about the bell? What did that ring for?” “ That,” he said, “ was to put us on the alert. You saw that the firemen began to throw on coal at once. A thousand things have to be looked after when there is a great fire. It won’ t do to leave the engine to itself at such times.” In a moment there came a lull. The great pumps moved more deliberately. In another minute a roar of steam told us the safety-valve had opened, and soon the great engine had returned to its ordinary, sleepy motion. “ Wonderful,” said my friend; “ the whole thing seems alive. I almost thought it would start and run to the fire itself.” “ I think this one of the grandest triumphs of science,” said the engineer, as he bade me good-bye. The illustration is a good one, but others of the same sort are at our hand on every side. The uniformity of nature is, in fact, one of its lesser attributes. Its great glory is in its wonderful adaptability. Its greatest glory is its unlimited capacity to receive mind-forces, and to mingle them with its matter-forces in perfect harmony, and in infinite variety of combination. If human science has been able to do so much to overcome the eventless uniformity of nature in its wildness and crudeness, shall we deny to the Divine omniscience the power to effect the slightest modifications necessary in answering the prayers of His children? Nay, shall we deny to Him the power so to adjust the original mechanism of the universe that prayer with its appropriate action may directly modify that mechanism, as the child’ s thirst and his little hand can open a faucet and change the action of the great water-works miles away. Or, is it at all unscientific to believe that other intelligent agents may, in answer to prayer, be “ caused to fly swiftly,” as the little bell aroused the engineer. Or can science offer any valid objection if we say that God Himself holds the forces of nature in His own hand; waiting, for high moral reasons, “ to be inquired of by the house of Israel to do these things for them “ ? (Prof. J. P. Gulliver.) Prayer answered after death Let me tell you that if any of you should die with your prayers unanswered, you need not conclude that God has disappointed you. I have heard that a certain godly father bad the unhappiness to be the parent of some five or six most graceless sons. All of them as they grew up imbibed infidel sentiments, and led a libidinous life. The father who had been constantly praying for them, and was a pattern of every virtue, hoped at least that in his death he might be able to say a word that should move their hearts. He gathered them to his bedside, but his unhappiness in dying was extreme, for be lost the light of God’ s countenance, and was beset with doubts and fears, and the last black thought that haunted him was, “ Instead of my death being a testimony for God, which will win my dear sons, I die in such darkness and gloom that I fear I shall confirm them in their infidelity, and lead them to think that there is nothing in Christianity at all.” The effect was the reverse. The sons came round the grave at the funeral, and when they returned to the house, the eldest son thus addressed his brothers:--“ My brothers, throughout his lifetime, our father often spoke to us about religion, and we have always despised it, but what a sermon his deathbed has been to us! for if he who served God so well and lived so near to God found it so hard a thing to die, what kind of death may we expect ours to be who have lived without God and without hope?” The same feeling possessed them all, and thus the father’ s death had strangely answered the prayers of his life through the grace of God. You cannot tell but what, when you are in glory, you should look down from the windows of heaven and receive a double heaven in beholding your dear sons and daughters converted by the words you left behind. I do not say this to make you cease pleading for their immediate conversion, but to encourage you. Never give up prayer, never be tempted to cease from it. (C. H. Spurgeon.) Prayer is manly “ Men ought to pray.” Let none misunderstand us when we lay stress on the word “ men.” Of course, Christ does not mean one sex merely; He immediately afterwards speaks of “ a certain widow.” His reference is to the human race at large. We are assured by Paul that in Him there is “ neither male nor female.” Nevertheless, we eagerly take advantage of the word thus used by our Saviour that we may affirm and maintain the manliness of prayer. The assertion is far from unnecessary, and every one who is acquainted with public opinion will, we think, agree with us. Is there not a notion abroad that prayer is a somewhat feeble, sentimental, effeminate pursuit? Are we not often reminded by travellers on the continent of the fact that churches and cathedrals are chiefly filled by women? Sandy Mackaye, in “ Alton Locke,” describes a certain congregation as made up of “ babies and bonnets,” and we know what the inference is. Dr. J. Martineau felicitously speaks of those who regard it “ a fond superstition and womanly weakness to ask God anything.” Don’ t we all recollect the account given of Tom Brown when, on arriving at school, he was pelted, chaffed, and ridiculed, because he kneeled beside his bed? Perhaps the last-named incident is more significant than any or the whole of the preceding ones, since there is nothing about which boys are so ambitious as to seem manly. The occurrence is, therefore, a feather which, as it flies, shows the way of the wind. The idea that prayer is unworthy of us as men is utterly unreasonable and untrue. Is it not manly to do right? No one disputes it. We get our word virtue from the Latin vir, a man; to be moral is to be manly. By parity of argument, to do right generally must be manly; prayer is right, God would not will it were it not; therefore it is manly. (T. R. Stevenson.) Universal prayer Remember, you can pray for any need--for lengthened life, as Hezekiah did; for help, as Daniel did; for light, as Bartimeus did; for mercy, as David did; for rain, as Elijah did; for a son, as Hannah did; for grace, as Paul did. You can pray, too, anywhere; in the deep, like Jonah; on the sea or the house-top, like Peter; on your bed, like Hezekiah; in the mountain, like Jesus; in the wilderness, like Hagar; in the street, like Jairus; in a cave, like David; on the cross, like the dying thief. You can pray, too, anyhow; short, like Peter and the publican; long, like Moses at the consecration of the Tabernacle, or Solomon at the dedication of the Temple. You can pray in silence, as Hannah did in the Temple; in your secret thoughts, as Nehemiah did before Darius; or aloud, like the Syro-Phenician woman; in tears, like Magdalen; in groans, or songs, as David did. You can pray any time. In the morning, like David; at noon, like Daniel; at midnight, like Silas; in childhood, like Samuel; in youth, like Timothy; in manhood, like the centurion; in age, like Simeon; in sickness, like Job; or in death, like Jacob and the dying Christ. And all of them were heard by the Hearer of prayer. I pray you, learn to pray! Link yourselves to the throne of God. Prayer will stand you in good stead every day of your mortal life! will make you joyful in the hour of death; and by the power of prayer you shall scale the mount of God! Pray! (J. D. Wray.) Perseverance in prayer: or, strike again “ God’ s seasons are not at your heel: If the first stroke of the flint doth not bring forth the fire, you must strike again. That is to say, God will hear prayer, but He may not answer it at the time which we in our own minds have appointed; He will reveal Himself to our seeking hearts, but not just when and where we have settled in our own expectations. Hence the need of perseverence and importunity in supplication. In the days of flint and steel and brimstone matches we had to strike and strike again, dozens of times, before we could get a spark to live in the tinder; and we were thankful enough if we succeeded at last. Shall we not be as persevering and hopeful as to heavenly things? We have more certainty of success in this business than we had with our flint and steel, for we have God’ s promise at our back. This entry is longer than a Bible module can hold. The rest is at https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/bi/ Luke 18:9-14 Two men went up into the temple to pray.Whom the Lord receives Observe, from the parable-- I. HOW GOD LOOKS UPON THE HEART, RATHER THAN UPON THE OUTWARD . It is not the spoken service that is regarded, but the hidden words of the heart. II. THE OF MAN’ S GOOD WORKS TO OBTAIN . III. THE WAY OF IS SHOWN IN WHAT WE ARE TOLD OF THE . IV. WE SEE WHAT SPIRIT GOD OF AND IN US. Not those who are satisfied with themselves are commended of Him, but those who see and deplore their sinfulness. As a bird must first stoop to fly, so must the soul humble itself ere it finds God. “ Behold a great wonder,” says Augustine, “ God is high; exalt thyself, He flees from thee: humble thyself, and He stoops to thee.” Because, as the Psalmist says, “ Though high, yet hath He respect unto the lowly, but the proud He knoweth afar off.” So the Pharisee returned from the temple as poor as he came, while the publican, whom he despised, wondering how he dared to come, returned made rich by God’ s kiss of forgiveness and peace. Little do men know who among them are blessed. God’ s angels of joy do not always enter where they most naturally are supposed to go. (A. H. Currier.) Self-exaltation and self-abasement I. SELF-. 1. This spirit is against God, on whom all depend, before whom all men are dust and uncleanness. 2. Is ignorance, no man having real spiritual knowledge could allow this spirit to dwell in him. 3. Is guilty ignorance, for the Old Testament Scriptures expose and condemn this spirit (Ezekiel 21:26; Deuteronomy 17:20; Deuteronomy 8:14; Habakkuk 2:4; Isaiah 65:5). 4. Is pleasant to corrupt human nature, flattering to natural pride. 5. Is contrary to the mind of God. 6. Is a subtle, hypocritical spirit, often appearing as religious. 7. Deceives the heart it occupies. 8. Defeats itself, for it ends in abasement and shame. II. OTHERS. 1. This spirit is but another form of pride; others are despised in contrast with self, which is exalted. 2. Is against God, breaking both the law and the gospel, which enjoin loving neighbour as self. 3. Is against the precepts and example of Jesus, who despised not the poorest and outcast, the fallen and foul. III. SELF-. 1. Often branded by worldly men as meanness of spirit or cowardice. 2. Is acceptable to God, and according to Christ’ s example. 3. May bring on us some loss or inconvenience for a season, that must be borne as a cross. 4. Has blessing now, and recompense of honour hereafter. 5. The chief example of self-abasement being blessed thus, is that of our Lord Himself (Philippians 2:5-11). 6. In the publican’ s case, the blessing began at once. Application: 1. “ Every one” marks universal rule or principle. 2. Warn those who have not humbled themselves before God Exodus 10:3). 3. No justification possible for man, but by self-abasement in repentance and faith. 4. The Holy Spirit convinces of sin, etc. 5. Encourage the first thoughts of self-abasement by examples of 1 Kings 21:9), and Manasseh (2 Chronicles 33:12-19). (Flavel Cook.) The Pharisee and the publican I. THE AIM OF THE PARABLE. 1. Stated (Luke 18:9). 2. Suggestive-- (1) That self-righteousness is possible. (2) That self-righteousness and contempt for others are closely allied. (3) That self-righteousness grows from the root of self-deception. (a) The self-righteous calls upon a heart-searching God. (b) The self-righteous despise men. II. OF THE PARABLE. 1. The contrasted characters. (1) The prayer of the Pharisee. (a) There is thanksgiving--but is it gratitude to God? (b) There is reference to personal excellencies before God--but is it in humility? (c) Thus prayer may be a mockery, and therefore a sin. (2) The prayer of the publican. (a) There is keen remorse--but not despair. (b) There is deep awe in God’ s presence--but an appeal to His mercy. (c) Thus, the most agonizing prayer may be heartfelt and believing. III. THE LORD’ S COMMENT ON THE PARABLE. 1. The self-exalting prayer of the Pharisee He condemns. 2. The contrite petition of the publican He approves. 3. The reality of answers to prayer He affirms. 4. Christ here enunciates a solemn truth (Luke 18:14). Lessons: 1. Conformity to religions forms no proof of true piety. 2. True penitence ever seen in self-abasement. (D. C. Hughes, M. A.) The Pharisee and the publican Our Saviour’ s design in this parable was-- 1. To condemn a censorious disposition, a groundless contempt and bad opinion of others. 2. To correct those false notions of religion which lead men to overlook its principal duties. 3. To expose and reprove that part of selflove which makes us proud of our righteousness. 4. To recommend repentance and humility towards God as the first step to amendment. 5. Lastly, to caution us against all pride and conceit in general. (J. Jortin, D. D.) Remarks on the parable 1. How vain must be the hope of those who expect heaven because they are not so wicked as others. 2. Let us beware how by comparing ourselves with others we are led to despise them. 3. No sinner, after such an example as that of the publican, can have any excuse for not praying right, immediately. 4. Every one of us must be humbled before God, if we would partake of His mercy. (N. W. Taylor, D. D.) Belief in the virtues of others Who does not believe others virtuous, would be found, were the secrets of his heart and life known, to be himself vicious. We may lay it down as an axiom, that those who are ready to suspect others of being actuated by a regard to self-interest, are themselves selfish. Thieves do not believe in the existence of honesty; nor rakes in virtue; nor mercenary politicians in patriotism; and the reason why worldlings regard religious people as hypocrites is their own want of religion--knowing that were they to profess a warm regard for Christ, the glory of God, and the salvation of souls, they would be hypocrites. (T. Guthrie, D. D.) Satisfaction with external ceremonial acts Let us do this Pharisee justice. He put in a claim for something done, as well as something left undone: “ I fast twice in the week; I give tithes of all that I possess.” But this was ceremonial goodness. We must distinguish: moral goodness is goodness always, and everywhere. Justice, mercy, truth, are the same under the tropic and at the pole, in the year 4000 before Christ and 4000 after Christ. But ceremonies are only good at certain times, and under certain circumstances. Fasting, if it make a man peevish, is no duty. Tithes are a way of supporting God’ s ministers; but the Church or the State may provide another way, and then tithes cease to be duties. Now observe why Pharisaical men find it easier to be content with ceremonial observances than with moral goodness. They are definite acts, they can be counted. Twice a week the ceremony is done. Go over my fields; not a tenth sheaf or shock is left standing. Search my stalls: not a tenth colt or calf is kept back. But moral goodness is more a state of heart than distinct acts. Take the law of love; you cannot at night count up, and say, “ It is all done,” for love has no number of acts. (F. W. Robertson.) The Pharisee and the publican Pharisee and publican, they both went up, as to a common home, to the great national temple. The Pharisee and the publican had this in common--they understood that prayer is a serious business--the highest business of man--that it is the highest and, if I may so say, the most noble, the most remunerative occupation in which a human being can possibly engage. Man has not always thus understood the real capacity of his soul--the real greatness of his destiny. There are thousands in this great city at this moment who do not understand it. Enervated by pleasure, or distracted by pain, absorbed in the pursuit of material objects, driven hither and thither by gusts of passion, slaves of the lust of the eyes or of the pride of life, men forget too easily why they are here at all, and what they have to do in order to fulfil the primal object of existence. When once a man has these fundamental truths well in view, the importance of prayer becomes immediately apparent. Prayer to something--prayer of some kind--is the higher language of humanity in all places,at all times. Not to pray is to fall below the true measure of human activity, just as truly as not to think. It is to surrender the noblest element of that prerogative dignity which marks men off as men from the brutes. Heathens have felt this; Deists have felt it. Jews felt it with an intensity all their own; and, therefore, when the two men, the Pharisee and the publican, went up into the temple to pray, they simply obeyed a law which is as old and wide as human thought. They gave expression to an instinct which cannot be ignored without wronging that which is noblest and best in our common humanity. Not to pray is not merely godless: it is, in the larger sense of the term, inhuman. They both obeyed this common, this imperious instinct; but here the difference begins. It was not the practice of the Pharisee, or the fact of his thankfulness, which made him less justified than the publican. What was it? My brethren, it was simply this--that the Pharisee had no true idea at all present to his mind, impressed upon his heart, of what it is that makes the real, the awful difference between God and His creatures. It is not chiefly that God is self-existent while man’ s is a dependent form of life. It is that God is, in Himself, in virtue of the necessary laws of His being, that which we are not--that He is perfectly, essentially holy. Until a man sees that the greatest difference of all between himself and his Creator lies, not in metaphysical unlikeness of being, nor yet in the intellectual interval which must separate the finite from the infinite mind, but pre-eminently in the moral chasm which parts a sinful, a sinning will, from the one all-holy, he does not know what he is doing in approaching God. Practically, for such a man, God is still a mere symbol, a name, whose most essential characteristic he has no eye for; and thus, like the Pharisee of old, he struts “ into the awful presence, as if it were the presence of some moral equal, only invested with larger powers and with a wider knowledge than his own. While the angels above prostrate themselves eternally before the throne, crying, “ Holy, holy, holy,” proclaiming by that unvaried song the deepest difference between created and uncreated life, the Pharisee has the heart to turn in upon himself an eye of tranquil self-approval--to rejoice, forsooth, that he is not as others--to recount his little charities and his petty austerities--to enwrap himself in a satisfaction which might be natural if a revelation of the most holy had never been made; for observe, that the Pharisee does two things which speak volumes as to the real state of his soul. 1. He compares himself approvingly with others. “ I thank Thee that I am not as other men, or even as this publican.” He assumes that in God’ s sight he is better than others. But I ask, has he warrant for the assumption? He supposes that sin is measured solely by its quantity and weight, and not by the opportunities or absence of opportunities in the sinner. We know--every living conscience knows--that it is otherwise. If any one point is clear in our Lord’ s teaching it is this--that to whom much is given of him shall much be required, and, as a consequence, that in the case of the man to whom much is given a slight offence may be much more serious than a graver crime in another, at least in the eyes of the Eternal Justice. This consideration should prevent a readiness to compare ourselves with any others. We know nothing about them. We know not what they might have been had they enjoyed our opportunities. They may possibly be worse than we are; they may be better. 2. The Pharisee reflects with satisfaction upon himself. He may, he thinks, have done wrong in his day. Everybody, he observes, does so more or less. He is, as far as that goes, not worse than other people. In other matters he flatters himself that, at least of late years, he is conspicuously better. He has kept out of great sins which the law condemns and punishes. He could never by any possibility have been taken as a member of the criminal classes. He fasts twice a week according to rule: he pays his tithes conscientiously: he is fully in every particular up to the current standard of religious respectability. Surely, he thinks in his secret heart, surely God cannot but feel what he feels himself--that he bears a very high character--that he is entitled to general respect. And the publican has nothing toplead on his own behalf. He may have been a Zaccheus; he may have been a legal robber; but he can think of himself, whatever he was, in one light only--as a sinner standing before one Being only, the holy, the everlasting God. The Pharisee is nothing to him, not because he is indifferent, but because he is mentally absorbed--prostrate before One who has filled his whole mind and heart with a sense of unworthiness. “ Out of the deep have I called to Thee, O Lord. Lord, hear my voice! Oh, let Thine ears consider well the voice of my complaint. If Thou, Lord, wilt be extreme to mark what is done amiss, O Lord, who may abide it? But there is mercy with Thee.” That is his cry. That cry is condensed into the blow on the chest--into the “ God be merciful to me, a sinner.” (Canon Liddon.) True thoughts of oneself In the old tombs of our cathedrals--in this cathedral three centuries ago--there were frequently two figures on the monuments, one of the deceased king, or knight, or bishop, resting above in his full robes of state as he wore them abroad in life, and another, beneath, of a thin, emaciated skeleton, which recalled to the eyes of the beholder the realities of the grave below. It is well, Christian brethren, to have in thought this double image of ourselves--what we are before the world, if we like, but, in any case, what we are before our God. It was the Pharisee’ s misery that he thought only of how he looked to others. It was the publican’ s blessing that he cared only for what he was before the eyes of God. Let us struggle, let us pray, while yet we may, for a real knowledge of ourselves. Let us endeavour to keep an account of that inward history which belongs to each one of us, and which will be fully unravelled at the Judgment--to which every day that passes adds its something--of which God knows all. To do this may take trouble, but the result is worth a vast deal of trouble. Anything is better, in religious matters, than that which St. Paul calls “ beating the air” --an aimless religion which moves perpetually in a vicious circle, because it has no compass--because it has no object. The more we know of God, the more we shall have reason to be dissatisfied with self--the more earnest will be our cry for help and mercy to Jesus Christ, who took our nature upon Him, and who died upon the cross that He might save the lost, that He might save us. There is no real reason for anxiety if we will but come to Him simply with broken hearts. Now, as in the old time, “ He filleth the hungry with good things, but the rich He hath sent empty away.” The Pharisee and the publican stand before Him in the ranks of His Church from age to age. They are, in fact, eternal types of human character, and to the end of time, the world’ s judgment between them is falsified, and this man--the publican--goes down to that last home which awaits us all, justified, rather than the other. (Canon Liddon.) The Pharisee and the publican Suffer me to attempt to disabuse your minds of some of the misconceptions which have grown up around this parable, and which prevent (as it seems to me) the real point of its teaching coming home to our hearts. 1. In the first place, I think that we generally fail to understand the respective positions of the two men in regard of character. There ought, I think, to be no mistake about it that the Pharisee was the better man of the two in every practical sense. Of course it is possible that this Pharisee was a mere hypocrite, like many of his class, and that his account of himself was false; but there is no hint of such a thing, and it would be a perfectly gratuitous supposition. Taking his own account of himself as substantially true, it cannot be denied that he had much cause to give thanks to God for what he was. If he had thanked God with humility that he was not like other men, remembering that his comparative innocence was due to God’ s grace and to the advantages of his position and training, he would have done well. I do not know how we can thank God too much for keeping us back from evil. But he gave thanks that he was not even as that publican, and this of course goes against him in our estimation, because we know that the publican was nearer to heaven than he was. And yet, if he had humbly thanked God that he had been saved from the bad traditions of the publican’ s business, and the bad surroundings of the publican’ s life, we could not have blamed him. There are some occupations, some ways of making a living, so beset with temptations, in which a man is so dependent for success upon his own sharp dealings, in which he is so driven to take advantage of the follies and vices of others, that we may well thank God that we have been delivered from them. It is indeed sad to see Christian people entangled in these perilous and hurtful pursuits, obliged to defend themselves from the accusations of conscience by building up false and unchristian principles of morality. 2. Another misconception there is which I wish to point out to you, and that is the mistaken notion (as it seems to me) that the publican was actually justified by his lowly demeanour and self-condemning words. Our Lord does not say that. He says the publican was justified rather than the other. I imagine that neither was truly justified, but of the two the publican was nearer being justified than the PhariSee. Far as he yet was from the kingdom of heaven, he was not nearly so far as the Pharisee, for he was in the right way. In his humility he stood as it were on the threshold, and there was nothing to hinder his entering in if he was prepared for the necessary sacrifice; whereas the Pharisee had missed the entrance altogether, and was getting further and further from it. But never let us think that our Saviour meant this for an example of sufficient repentance. If the publican went back, as so many do after the same outbreak of self-reproach, to his exactions and extortions, to his tricks of trade, his petty deceits, and his unrighteous gains--if he went home from the temple to cook his accounts with the government, or to sell up some poor wretch who could not meet his demands; do you think that his beating upon his breast and calling himself a miserable sinner would avail him aught? Nay, it would but increase his condemnation, because it would show that his conscience was alive to his sin. What our Lord means to impress upon us in this parable is the fatal danger of spiritual pride, which made the Pharisee, with all his real cause for thanksgiving, to be further off from the kingdom and righteousness of God than the publican whom he despised. The spirit of self-righteousness is such a blinding spirit; it warps and distorts the whole spiritual vision. What should have been a prayer in the mouth of the self-righteous Pharisee was turned into a glorification of himself; and instead of asking God to make him better, he told God how good he was. And this brings me to the third and last misconception of which I shall speak. It is that of imagining that the spirit of self-righteousness must always take the same form which it presents in the parable; that Pharisaism must always be the proud relying upon the outward observances of religion; but, in fact, as a very little observation will show us, it has as many different forms as there are fashions in religion. The modern British Pharisee amongst ourselves, when he gave thanks that he was not like other men, would never think of speaking like the Pharisee in the parable; he would more probably say something of this sort--“ God, I thank Thee that I am not as other men are, priest-ridden, idolaters, superstitious, or even as this benighted Ritualist. I never fast, I never think of giving tithes,” and so on. The error of the Pharisee was in substance this, that he thanked God that he punctually performed those duties which came quite natural to him, and that he sought to turn God’ s attention to other people’ s faults by way of exalting his own merits. Now, this is an error which is constantly reappearing under one guise or other. We are always disposed to thank God that we are not as this Dissenter, or as that Romanist, when all the while they may be living nearer to God than we in honesty of intention and purity of heart. We are always apt to imagine that we can commend our faith by protesting against other people’ s errors, and our practice by condemning faults to which we are not tempted. (R. Winterbotham, M. A.) Acceptable and unacceptable prayer 1. A contrast in attitude and manner. 2. A contrast in spirit. 3. A contrast in prayer. 4. A contrast in reception. (J. R. Thompson, M. A.) The purpose of the parable From the introduction it might be inferred that the chief purpose for which the parable was spoken was to rebuke and subdue the spirit of self-righteousness. To do this effectively is not easy, though that is no reason why it should not be attempted. Another service, however, was probably also kept in view by the Speaker, which was much more likely to be accomplished, viz., to revive the spirit of the contrite, and embolden them to hope in God’ s mercy. This is a service which contrite souls greatly need to have rendered them, for they are slow to believe that they can possibly be the objects of Divine complacency. Such in all probability was the publican’ s state of mind, not only before but even after he had prayed. He went down to his house justified in God’ s sight, but not, we think, in his own. He had not “ found peace,” to use a current phrase. In technical language, we might speak of him as objectively, but not subjectively, justified. In plain English, the fact was so, but he was not aware that the fact was so. In saying this, we do not forget that there is an instinct, call it rather the still small voice of the Holy Spirit, which tells a penitent, “ there is hope in God,” “ there is forgiveness with Him, that He may be feared” ; “ wait for God, as they that wait for the dawn.” But a man who beats his breast, and dares not look up, and stands afar off in an attitude which seems an apology for existence, has some difficulty in trusting this instinct. To fear and despond suits his mood rather than to hope. There are physical reasons for this, not to speak of spiritual ones. The whole behaviour of the publican speaks to a great religious crisis going on in his soul. For that beating of the breast, and that downcast eye, and that timid posture, are not a theatrical performance got up for the occasion. They bear witness to a painful, possibly a protracted, soul-struggle. But one who passes through such a crisis suffers in body as well as in mind. His nerves are sorely shaken, and in this physical condition he is apt to become a prey to fear and depression. He starts at his own shadow, dreads the postman, trembles when he opens a letter lest it should contain evil tidings, can scarce muster courage to go into a dark room, or to put out the light when he goes to bed. How hard for a man in this state to take cheerful views of his spiritual condition, to rejoice in the sunlight of Divine grace. In the expressive phrase of Bunyan, used with reference to himself when he was in a similar state, such an one is prone rather to “ take the shady side of the street.” Is it improbable that one object Christ had in view in uttering this parable and the judgment with which it winds up, was to take such contrite and fear-stricken ones by the hand and conduct them over to the sunny side? (A. B. Bruce, D. D.) Forgiveness most needed A friend of mine--a missionary preacher--being once called upon to give spiritual consolation to a sick man on the point of death, asked him what he could do for him. “ Pray for me,” was the reply. My friend said that he would do so most willingly, but added, “ For what shall I ask?” The man answered, “ You know best.” The preacher told him that this was not so, and that he, himself, could alone know what he wanted. Still the dying man would say nothing but, “ You know best. I leave it to you.” At length my friend left him, promising to return in a short time, and hoping that then he might be able to say what it was he wanted to pray for. When the preacher returned, the man directly said, “ I have been a great sinner; I want forgiveness.” (Bishop Walsham How.) After confession of sin comes forgiveness We do not always know that we are forgiven; we are not told that the publican knew he was pardoned, although I think that as he went down to his house he must have had some sense of the fact that he was accepted of God. But still we do not always know of our forgiveness. I once visited a canal boatman on his death-bed, and I never remember to have seen a man more affected or more repentant of his sins. Yet he could not grasp the fact of his forgiveness. I tried all I could to bring it home to him, but unsuccessfully. Yet in my own mind I have no doubt that he was forgiven. In order to be pardoned I do not think it necessary to have a firm conviction that we are pardoned. In fact, it is logically absurd to think so. (Bishop Walsham How.) The humble prayer the best You can fill an empty jug with clear water from the spring; but it would be foolishness to bring to the spring a jug already full. The Lord has no blessing for the heart that is full of haughtiness; that He reserves for the heart emptied of self. And remember that, after all, it is the worthiest who are the most humble. It is the best filled stalk of corn that bends its head the lowliest. (Sunday School Times.) The Church is a place for prayer These two men went up to the temple “ to pray” --not to meet their friends, nor that they might comply with a respectable custom, nor for the purpose of agreeably passing away an hour in varying the ordinary tedium of every-day engagements. No, but to pray: And surely, this should be our great object when we come up to the temple of God. Many seem to think, that to hear the sermon is the great end they have in view when they enter a church; but God has said, “ My house shall be called an house of prayer.” If we had a petition to present to an earthly monarch, our great endeavour on entering the presence chamber would be to approach the throne, and make our wants and desires known. We would not think it the most important part of the proceeding to have a little conversation with the servants or attendants that stood around, nor would we feel satisfied by their giving us some information as to the character of the august personage who is indeed present himself, the way in which his favour may be conciliated, or his gifts procured. These things might be very important, but the king, the king is the absorbing idea--the servant is a minor consideration. (A. Gladwell, B. A.) The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himselfLessons from the Pharisee’ s prayer There are three cautions which the Pharisee impresses on us; “ for these things were written for our learning,… he being dead, yet speaketh.” And in the first place, let us beware of pride. This is the great lesson the parable inculcates. Spiritual pride incapacitates a man for receiving the blessings of the gospel; it is the great obstacle which the Spirit of God has to struggle with and overthrow. Secondly, let us beware of formality in religion. We are all born Pharisees--more anxious to appear than to be Christians. To conclude, let us beware of resting in anything short of the atoning blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. (A. Gladwell, B. A.) Pharisaical prayers “ God, I thank Thee” --such in spirit, and almost in word, was the expression of the great Roman historian, Tacitus--“ I thank Thee I am not as the miserable sect called by the infamous name of Christians, odious to all mankind.” “ God, we thank Thee,” said the philosopher of France, “ that we are not like those benighted men who converted the barbarous tribes, or erected the Gothic cathedrals.” “ I thank Thee,” said the splendid Pope Leo X., “ that I am not as this ignorant monk, Martin Luther.” “ God, we thank Thee,” said the great movers of the political and social revolutions of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in England, “ that we are not as those fanatics,” the blind poet of Bunhill Row, and the wandering tinker of Bedford, or the scrupulous bishop who could not accept the Act of Settlement, or the Lincolnshire pastor who spent his long life in itinerant preaching; and yet those early Christian martyrs, those mediaeval missionaries and monk of Wittenberg, were mightier in the long run even than Tacitus, or the encyclopaedists of France, or the philosophers of the Renaissance. And those wayward Christians in England, as they seemed to be, John Milton, the author of “ Paradise Lost,” John Bunyan, the author of “ The Pilgrim’ s Progress,” Bishop Ken, author of the Morning and Evening Hymns, John Wesley, the author of the religious revival in England, went down to their graves as much deserving of the praise of true statesmen and philosophers, even as Clarendon and Bolingbroke, as Walpole and Hume. (Dean Stanley.) The prayer of pride When Philip, king of Macedonia, laid siege to the fair city of Samos, he told the citizens that he came a-wooing to it; but the orator well replied, that it was not the fashion in their country to come a-wooing with a fife and a drum: so here we may behold this Pharisee in the posture of a beggar or petitioner, “ going up to the temple to pray,” and yet telling God he standeth in no need of Him; as if, saith Chrysostom, a beggar, that were to crave an alms, should hide his ulcers, and load himself with chains, and rings, and bracelets, and clothe himself in rich and costly apparel; as if a beggar should ask an alms in the robes of a king. His “ heart did flatter him in secret, and with his mouth he did kiss his hands,” as Job speaketh (Job 31:27). Coming before his Physician, he hideth his sores, and showeth his sound and healthful parts, in a dangerous case; like a man struck in a vein, that voideth his best blood, and retaineth his worst. And this is against the very nature of prayer; which should lay us at the feet of God, as nothing before Him; which should raise itself and take its flight on the wings of humility and obedience; which should contract the mind in itself, and secure it from pride; which should depress the soul in itself, and defend it from vainglory; which should so fill it that there may be no room for hypocrisy. Then our devotion will ascend as incense, “ pure and holy” Exodus 30:35), seasoned with the admiration of God’ s majesty, and the detestation of ourselves. (R. Farindon, D. D.) The Pharisee’ s mistake The mistake of this Pharisee was, that he compared his outward life with the lives of disreputable people, and so took to himself the credit of exalted superiority. He should have looked in the other direction. Ii you would come to a just estimate of your character, look at those better than you, and compare yourself with them; look at those whom God has set for our examples, the prophets, the apostles, and the Lord Jesus Christ, and measure yourself by them; look at the holy ten commandments, and try yourself rigidly by their requirements; and this Pharisaic trust and pride in your own goodness will melt away like frost before the sun. (J. A. Seiss, D. D.) An egotistical utterance With what prominence and frequency he flourishes the big “ I!” “ I thank thee that I am not as other men.” “ I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess.” The whole utterance contains thirty.three words, of which one refers to God, five are “ I’ s,” and the remaining twenty-seven are either commendations of himself, or allusions to others in unfavourable contrast with his own superiority. Self--self--self--in utmost intensity runs through the whole of it. There isnot a trace of genuine devotion in the entire piece. There is a marvellous thrusting forward of ego, to which all the references to God, the temple, and other people, are made subservient. (J. A. Seiss, D. D.) The fine prayer The celebrated Professor Francke, who founded the great Orphan Asylum, in Halle, was walking one day in the fields with one of his colleagues. All at once the voice of a person praying drew their attention. They stopped, and on looking observed behind a bush two children on their knees, one of whom was praying fervently to God. The two professors listened, and were edified with the devotion which the young Christians seemed to possess. When the prayer was ended, the children rose. “ Well,” said the one who led the devotions, with a self-complacent air, “ didn’ t I make a fine prayer?” This last remark caused Francke and his companion a painful surprise. But after a moment’ s reflection, one of them remarked: “ This child has shown openly what often passes in our minds. How often, when God has disposed us to pray with some fervour in presence of our brethren, do we rise from our knees with a secret vanity; and if shame did not restrain us, we should ask with this child, ‘ have not I made a fine prayer?’” The poorest the best Lucian, in one of his dialogues, relates the case of two men going into the theatre to play on the harp: one harp was covered with gold and jewels, but its strings broke, and the admiration of the spectators was changed to contempt; the harp of the other man was a very poor and common one, yet it gave out the sweetest sound, and delighted all. The former harp represents the Pharisee, who plays upon his outside worth and fair appearance; the latter harp resembles the poor publican. (Preacher’s Promptuary.) Need, not magnificence, the best aid to prayer When Morales, the painter, was invited by Philip the Second to court, he came in such a magnificent costume, that the King, in anger, ordered a sum of money to be paid him, and so dismissed him. The next time they met he appeared in a very different dress, poor, old, and hungry, which so touched the heart of the King, that he immediately provided him with a revenue which kept him in comfort for all the future. So when men come to the throne of grace it is not their magnificence but their very want which touches the heart of God. (W. Baxendale.) Self-praise in prayer His prayer is like the pillar of brass which Trajan erected to himself in Rome, and which he covered with the record of his own triumphs. His prayer is a sort of monument over the tomb of his own dead heart, upon which he inscribes his fancied virtues. (J. Wells.) God be merciful to me a sinner. Humility of prayer I. WHEN DO WE PRAY WITH ? Learn this from the publican. It is when we acknowledge the infinite majesty of God and our own misery. II. WHY MUST WE BE HUMBLE IN OUR PRAYERS? 1. God demands that we should pray with humility. 2. Reason itself teaches the same. Who would pay any attention to a proud beggar? III. WHAT WE ARE TO DO IN ORDER TO LEARN TO PRAY WITH . A humble prayer can only proceed from a humble heart. Therefore endeavour to become humble of heart, by employing the following means: 1. Being convinced that humility is a grace of God, pray to Him that He may give you this beautiful virtue. 2. Call frequently to your mind what you are in real truth. (1) What is your single self in comparison with the more than one thousand millions of men? You seem to disappear in the prodigious multitude. (2) What are you relative to your body? Dust and ashes. (3) What are you relative to your soul? True, your soul is the image and likeness of God; but what have you made of this Divine image by your sins of the past and of the present? And as to the future, when you reflect on your sins, have you not every reason to tremble before the severe judgment of God? 3. When you approach God in prayer, call to mind who God is in all His splendour and majesty, and who you are--a wretched sinner, a beggar sunk into the greatest misery, a culprit sentenced to death. And then, overwhelmed with the burden of your misery, speak from the depth of your heart to Him who alone is able to deliver you. And if you are troubled with distractions during your prayer, humble yourself again before your Lord and Master, and implore Him that He may not suffer you to commit new sins by negligence; but cease not praying in spite of distractions, and your prayer will be acceptable to the Lord. (J. Schmitt.) The publican’ s prayer This is the only thought which befits a living man in the presence of his Creator. What other link can come between the God of holiness and love, and the sinner, but mercy! “ God be merciful.” I. In these few words of the contrite soul there is AN WHICH GOD WILL NEVER REJECT. It is the plea God loves. “ God be merciful to me because I am a sinner.” David knew that blessed argument when he said: “ Lord pardon my iniquity, for it is great.” God has made a book, and it is for sinners; God has filled it with promises, and they are for sinners. He has given His own Son, and it is only for sinners. II. THE WAY TO OBTAIN THIS FITTING OF MIND. It is to be reached in the same way as the publican attained it. His whole mind appears to have been occupied with God, the rest was only secondary. Most persons when they try to cultivate penitence, look into themselves. It is the study of God, not of ourselves, which makes the penitent mind. Nothing makes sin seem so sinful and so hateful as the contemplation of the love of God. III. WHOEVER WOULD BE TRULY A MUST HAVE RIGHT VIEWS OF MERCY. It is an easy thing to say “ God have mercy upon me.” Upon the just apprehension of what this mercy is depends the whole power and acceptability of the prayer, If God, simply by an act of sovereignty, forgave a sin and remitted the punishment, it would not be mercy. Before God can show Himself merciful to a sinner He must receive a satisfaction and an equivalent. That satisfaction is Christ. (J. Vaughan, M. A.) The cry that opens heaven 1. When I come to analyze this prayer of the publican, I find in it, in the first place, an appreciation of his sinfulness. He proved himself honourable, and there were a great many admirable things about him, and yet he utters this cry of self-abnegation. What was the matter with him? Had he lost his reason? Had some low, contemptible cowardice seized upon him? O, no. For the first time in all his life he saw himself. He saw he was a sinner before God, utterly helpless and undone. At what moment that discovery flashed upon him I know not; but standing there in the court of the temple, surrounded by all the demonstrations of holiness and power, his soul has extorted from it the anguish-bitten cry of my text. 2. I pursue the analysis of my subject still further, and I find in this publican’ s prayer the fact that he expected nothing except mercy. He might have said: “ I am honest in all my dealings. When ten dollars are paid to me for tax, I hand it over to the Government. If you look over all my books you will find them right. My life has been upright and respectable.” He made no such plea. He comes and throws himself on God’ s mercy. Are there any in this house who propose, by making their life right, to commend themselves to God? Do you really think you can break off your bad habits? Where then are we to be saved? Is there no balm for this mortal wound of my soul? Is there no light for this Arctic night? Is there no hope for a lost sinner? Yes; and that is what I came to tell you about. Mercy. Free mercy. Pardoning mercy. Suffering mercy. Infinite mercy. Omnipotent mercy. Everlasting mercy. 3. I push this analysis of my text one step further, and I find that this man saw that mercy would be of no advantage to him unless he pleaded for it. He did not say: “ If I am to be saved, I will be saved, and if I am to be lost, I will be lost. There is nothing for me to do.” He knew that a thing worth having is worth asking for, and therefore, he makes the agonizing cry of my text. Mark you, it was an earnest prayer, and if you look through this Bible you will see that all the prayers that were answered were earnest prayers. But, mark you this, the publican’ s prayer was not only earnest, it was humble. The Pharisee looked up; the publican looked down. I remark further, there was a ringing confidence in that prayer. He knew he would get the blessing if he asked for it; and he did get it. (De W. Talmage, D. D.) A sinner praying for mercy I. THE HE ASKS IS MERCY: “ God be merciful to me.” . Did you ever ask yourselves what mercy is? It means, in common language, pity Shown to me miserable for pity’ s sake. Strictly speaking, it ceases to be mercy, if the miserable have any claim on us. It takes then the character of justice. And mercy has exactly the same meaning in Holy Scripture. It signifies God’ s kindness extended to miserable man of God’ s own pure goodness. II. We may turn now to THE IN WHICH THIS MAN PRAYS. He says, “ God be merciful to me a sinner.” He prays in a character that corresponds exactly with the temple services, and also with the blessing he supplicates. There at the altar falls the sacrifice, and who needs a sacrifice but the sinful? He pleads for mercy, and who needs mercy but the guilty? And it a blessed thing for a sinful man to be thus willing to take his own proper ground when he prays. He must take it, if he means to obtain God’ s mercy. All the mercy that exists in God, bound less as it is, is mercy for sinners. III. Observe now THE MANNER IN WHICH THIS PRAYS. And here again all is in harmony. His manner accords well with his character and his petition. 1. He is a sinner, and consequently he prays most humbly. 2. This publican prayed also very earnestly. He “ smote upon his breast.” No matter what led him to do so. It was doubtless a mixture of feelings. Indignation against himself, a sense of his own pollution and misery, a thrilling apprehension of coming wrath--these things took possession of his mind; they agitated him; and like a man driven to extremities he could not restrain his agitation, he smote himself as he cried for mercy. He became exceedingly earnest in his prayer for it. He prayed for nothing else; he thought of nothing else. Mercy is everything with him. IV. There is yet another circumstance in the parable to be noticed--THE SUCCESS OF THIS MAN’ S PRAYER. 1. It was, first, abundant success, success beyond his petition. 2. His success was also immediate. (C. Bradley, M. A.) The publican’ s prayer I. Observe THE OBJECT OF THE ’ S PRAYER. 1. The light of nature teaches man there is a God, a supreme Being, and Governor of the world. There is not a rational creature to be found upon the earth but admits this truth. And, hence, all attend to same kind of worship. 2. Revelation makes known to man the true God in His nature and attributes, and exhibits His conduct towards the children of men. 3. But we must remember that God is never savingly known, even by those who have the Volume of Divine revelation, by the unassisted powers of nature. Hence, in addition to Revelation, it is necessary that the mind be enlightened, in order to its perception of Divine truth. And to do this is the exclusive prerogative of the Holy Spirit. II. THE SUBJECT OF HIS --“ mercy” ; and the description he gives of himself--“ a sinner.” “ God be merciful to me a sinner!” 1. On the part of man, here are two things implied: (1) Misery. A sense of deep wretchedness, as being sunk in iniquity--totally depraved, and in every part polluted. The truly awakened sinner feels that he is spiritually diseased; and that, “ from the crown of his head to the soul of his foot, he is wounds, and bruises, and putrefying sores.” (2) A deep sense of unworthiness. The truly contrite soul brings no qualifications; no merit, no sacrifice of his own; but comes as a sinner, and having for his only plea, the mercy of God in Christ Jesus. 2. There are also two things, in the exercise of mercy, on the part of God, which the spiritually enlightened sinner especially regards. (1) Pity, or compassion. When the Holy Spirit brings the sinner to a saving knowledge of God, He enables him to look up to his heavenly Father, as the God of compassion. (2) Pardon, or forgiveness. “ I, even I,” says God, “ am He that pardoneth iniquity, transgression, and sin.” The Holy Spirit teaches all true believers that the justice of God is for them, and on their side, as well as His mercy. III. WHAT THIS PRAYER IMPLIES, WHEN OFFERED TO GOD IS A PROPER SPIRIT. 1. True humiliation for sin. Even after the manifestation of forgiving love, the man who enjoys it feels deeply humbled before God. 2. This prayer, when offered in a proper spirit, implies evangelical repentance. God says (Ezekiel 36:31). 3. This prayer implies submission to the righteous judgment of God. In conclusion, we learn from this subject-- 1. That the ground (or cause) of a sinner’ s justification is out of himself. 2. Learn that no outward reformation, even though accompanied by the strictest attention to religious duties, can save the soul. 3. Learn that no sensible sinner, no humble penitent, need feel discouraged in approaching the God of mercy for pardon. 4. Learn, finally, to beware lest you make the mercy of God an excuse for your continuance in sin. (T. Gibson, M. A.) A sermon for the worst man on earth I. THE FACT OF IS NO REASON FOR DESPAIR. 1. This man who was a sinner yet dared to approach the Lord. Emphatically he applies to himself the guilty name. He takes the chief place in condemnation, and yet he cries, “ God be merciful to me the sinner.” If this man who was the sinner found forgiveness, so also shall you if you seek it in the same way. 2. Next, remember that you may not only find encouragement in looking at the sinner who sought his God, but in the God whom he sought. Sinner, there is great mercy in the heart of God. 3. Moreover, the conception of salvation implies hope for sinners. That salvation which we preach to you every day is glad tidings for the guilty. Salvation by grace implies that men are guilty. The very name of Jesus tells us that He shall save His people from their sins. 4. Let me further say that, inasmuch as that salvation of God is a great one, it must have been intended to meet great sins. Think you God would have given His dear Son to die as a mere superfluity? 5. If you will think of it again, there must be hope for sinners, for the great commands of the gospel are most suitable to sinners. 6. If you want any other argument--and I hope you do not--I would put it thus: great sinners have been saved. All sorts of sinners are being saved to-day. II. A SENSE OF CONFERS NO RIGHT TO MERCY. You will wonder why I mention this self-evident truth; but I must mention it because of a common error which does great mischief. This man was very sensible of his sin insomuch that he called himself THE SINNER; but he did not urge his sense of sin as any.reason why he should find mercy. I want you, therefore, to learn that a sense of sin gives no man a right to grace. III. My third observation is this: THE OF THEIR GUIDES MEN TO RIGHT ACTING. When a man has learned of the Holy Spirit that he is a sinner, then by a kind of instinct of the new life, he does the right thing in the right way. 1. This man went straight to God. 2. He went with a full confession of sin. 3. He appealed to mercy only. IV. THE OF IS THE WAY OF PEACE. “ God be merciful to me a sinner,” was the prayer, but what was the answer? Listen to this: “ This man went down,” etc. (C. H. Spurgeon.) The penitent’ s prayer The arrangement of these words is perfect. On one side is Deity--alone--without an attribute, far grander in that solitude than if ten thousand titles had been added to His name--“ God.” On the other--thrown into the greatest possible distance--is man; and he, too, is alone; and his whole being is put into one single expression--it is not a description, it is a synonymy--“ me, a sinner.” And between these two extremes--spanning the distance, and uniting the ends--is one link--simple--grand--sufficient--“ mercy,” nothing but “ mercy” Ñ “ Godbe merciful to me a sinner.” I may mention, for the sake of those who do not happen to know it, that there are three points in the original, which could not well be rendered in our version; but which make this strong language stronger still. There it is, “ the God,” and “ the sinner” ; as if the publican wished to give the greatest possible definiteness to all his expressions;--“ the God” --the good God--“ be merciful to me” ; as though he were the only man on the face of the earth who needed the forgiveness--no comparisons, no distractions, no deductions; the mind concentrated, the mind absorbed, upon the one guilty self, “ The God be merciful to me the sinner.” And in the very phrase which he selects--“ be merciful,” --there is rolled up atonement; it is, “ be propitiate.” Doubtless that man had been taught to see mercy all in sacrifice; to recognize no pardon out of covenant, and no covenant out of blood. “ The God be propitiate to me the sinner.” I think you will see, brethren, that there is great force in that distinction of language. Weakness always deals in generalities. A man is general in his thoughts and his expressions till he begins to be in earnest; and the very moment he begins to be in earnest, he is individual. Hear men, as men generally speak about God. They say, “ the Almighty” ; and they say, “ the Almighty is very good,” and, “ we are all of us bad,” and, “ none of us are as good as we ought to be” ; that is the language of natural religion, if, indeed, it be religion at all. It is loose, because it cannot afford to be accurate; it shuns just what a spiritual man loves-personality. How different is the teaching of the Holy Ghost! The soul cannot be particular enough; it lives in exactnesses; it individualizes everything. “ The God be propitiate to me the sinner.” To make true prayer--or, which is the same thing--to make true peace, two things are wanted. Some persons, to a certain extent, attain the one, and some the other; while, because they do not, at the same moment, attain both, the end is frustrated. The truth lies in unity. The one thing is to exalt God very high; and the other, to demean self very low. If you lift up the attributes of God, and do not proportionably debase yourself, you are in danger of running into presumption. If you take deep views of your sinfulness, and do not, at the same time, magnify the grace of God, you will run into despair. A God high in His glory, and self down in the dust, that is best; and let me advise you to look well to it whether you are doing these two things with parallel steps. (J. Vaughan, M. A.) The ingredients of real mercy To make forgiveness--to make real “ mercy” --four things are required. God must be Himself just in doing it. The forgiven man must be perfectly sure that he is forgiven. The forgiveness must not incline the forgiven man to go and sin again, but it must stop him. And the rest of mankind must see no encouragement in that man’ s pardon to go and do like him, but rather see the strongest argument not to do it. Now, in God’ s way of “ mercy” these four things meet. First, God is lust, because He never remits a penalty till He has received an equivalent; the sinning soul has died in its covenant Head, and God keeps His word; and the very same attribute which compels God to punish man out of Christ, in Christ obliges God to pardon Him. Secondly, that forgiven man can never doubt his acceptance, because he knows that the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ outweighs the universe. The infinity of Christ is in the ransom. Either he is perfectly pardoned, or the Son of God has died in vain. Thirdly, that pardoned man cannot go and sin again, because, unless he loves Christ, he is not forgiven; and if he does love Christ, he cannot love the sin which crucified Him; he cannot go and do lightly again that which grieves and wounds Him whom now his soul holds more precious than all the world. And, fourthly, the whole world in that man has seen sin in its greatest possible magnitude, because it has seen sin drag down to this earth and crucify the Lord of life and glory; the law is more honourable than if the whole world had perished; since, sooner than one iota of that law should be set aside, the Son of God has kept that law by His life, and satisfied it by His death; so sin is made viler by the very act which cancels it; and pardon is no more the parent of peace, than peace is the mother of holiness. That is mercy. (J. Vaughan, M. A.) The publican’ s prayer I. The substance of this prayer evinces deep OF SIN. II. . He admits the righteousness of his condemnation, and sues for mercy. III. FAITH. He took hold of God’ s promises, and made his appeal. (W.M. Taylor, D. D.) Earnestness is brief Earnestness does not express itself in long, inflated, pompous sentences. It is brief; it is simple. The moment has arrived when victory, long doubtful as the tide of success ebbed and flowed, may be won by one splendid, dashing, daring attack--the order is given in one brief word, Charge! On the distant waves a flag is seen, now sinking in the trough and again rising on the crest of the foaming billows; and beneath that signal, clinging to the fragment of a vessel that lies many fathoms down in the depths of ocean, are two human forms--and all the cry that sounds from stem to stern is, “ A wreck, a wreck!” and all the order, “ Lower the boat!” words hardly uttered when she drops on the water, and, pulled by stout rowers, is leaping over the waves to the rescue. One late in the deserted streets sees the smoke creep, and the flames begin to flash and flicker from a house whoso tenants are buried in sleep; he bounds to the door and thunders on it--all his cry, “ Fire, fire!” Peter sinks amid the boisterous waves of Galilee and all the prayer of lips the cold water kisses is, as he stretches out his hand to Jesus, “ Save me, I perish!” And with the brief, urgent earnestness of one who seeing his danger, knows that there is no time, and believing in God’ s great mercy, feels that there is no need for long prayers, the publican, like a man who in falling over a crag catches the arm of a friendly tree, throws his whole soul into this cry, these few, blessed, accepted words, “ God be merciful to me a sinner!” (T. Guthrie, D. D.) Justification as the result of prayer Brethren, we have here a pregnant word as to the possibilities and capabilities of worship. Two men went up into the temple to pray, and one of the two returned to his house justified. What is it to be justified? All true doctrine teaches us a great difference between being justified and being sanctified. Justification is an act, sanctification is a process. Both are of God. But whereas the one may be the act of a moment, restoring the sinner to the Divine acceptance by a simple forgiveness through the blood of Jesus, the other in most cases is the work of a lifetime, consisting in the gradual formation of a new character by the daily influence of the Spirit of Grace. There are other uses of the word, but this is its meaning when it is applied accurately. Now, of course, there is a sense in which justification stands at the beginning of the Christian course, and needs not, and indeed suffers not to be repeated. When a man comes to himself in the far country, and says, “ I will arise and go to my Father,” and when he not only says but does, and not only starts for, but arrives at, the home where the Father dwells, and receives from Him the kiss of peace, and the ring of the everlasting covenant then and there, that is his justification. God for Christ’ s sake freely forgives, bestows upon him the Holy Spirit, and, unless some terrible thing should happen afterwards, sets him in the sure way, of which the end is heaven. “ Therefore, being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” But our Lord Himself here speaks of a man going down to his house from a particular act of worship either justified or not justitied. And this seems to give an importance, quite beyond our common estimate, to such a service as this in which we are now engaged. You may say, indeed, that this particular occasion was the justification, in the first and fullest sense, of this publican. Now first, you may say, he felt himself a sinner, now first he sought mercy, and when he went back to his house he went back for the first time, and for all time a pardoned and accepted man. But this idea of restriction seems to have been imported into the parable. Is there anything in our Lord’ s words to imply that either the prayer of the Pharisee or the prayer of the publican was a single and isolated one, never offered before, suggested by some crisis of the life, sudden and not to be repeated? Was it not rather the habit of the two minds thus to express themselves? Would the Pharisee be a different man to-morrow, not the exception, and not the perfection that he now thinks himself? And would the publican when he came again to the temple be no longer the sinner of sinners, but an improved, and altered, and sanctified man? Where is all this in the parable! If not, then the justification spoken of may be repeated tomorrow, and we have before us the thought of the issues of worship rather than the thought of the issues of a fundamental spiritual change. This man went down to his house justified, on this particular occasion, rather than the other. The justification spoken of is forgiveness, or absolution. Brethren, the justified man wants forgiveness; the man who has bathed the whole body needs afterwards to wash the feet. This man has brought his load of sin with him to the temple; he has come guilty and burdened, conscience accusing, and convicted. He has left undone that which he ought to hare done since he last worshipped, he has done that which he ought not to have done since he last worshipped, there is no health in him; this morning he has come, just as he is, to the God of his life; he has sought no intervention, and no intermediation of priest, or of sacrifice; he has come straight to God. He has taken for granted God’ s knowledge of each of his transgressions, as well as of that root and spring of evil, which is the fallen and sinful self; and now, pre-supposing all this, he has simply to ask for mercy, which is, being interpreted, kindness to the undeserving, and he has received the answer of peace, and so now he goes back to his house justified. What of the other? His return is not described; it is left under the veil of a parable. The publican is justified beyond, or in comparison with, or rather than, the Pharisee--such is the Greek. Dare we suggest on the strength of this reticence two kinds or two degrees of justification, one the higher and more complete, but the other, though lower, perhaps sufficient? Let us look at the prayer, and judge by it of the answer, “ God, I thank thee for my satisfactory condition, for my exemplary conduct, for my exceptional, my unique freedom from the otherwise universal wickedness of mankind.” What is there here to suggest the thought of a justification, of which the other name is absolution, or forgiveness? What is there here to be forgiven? Not having asked, he surely has not received, a boon which is only acceptable, and only appropriate to the sinner. (Dean Vaughan.) Christian humility “ The best of God’ s people have abhorred themselves. Like the spire of a steeple, minimus in summo, we are least at the highest. David, a king, was yet like a weaned child.” Manton is not very clear about the steeple, but he means that the higher a spire rises towards heaven the smaller it becomes, and thus the more elevated are our spirits the less shall we be in our own esteem. Great thoughts of self and great grace never go together. Self-consciousness is a sure sign that there is not much depth of grace. He who over-values himself under-values his Saviour. He who abounds in piety is sure to be filled with humility. Light things, such as straws and feathers, are borne aloft; valuable goods keep their places, and remain below, not because they are chained or riveted there, but by virtue of their own weight. When we begin to talk of our perfection, our imperfection is getting the upper hand. The more full we become of the presence of the Lord the more shall we sink in our own esteem, even as laden vessels sink down to their water-mark, while empty ships float aloft. Lord, make and keep me humble. Lift me nearer and nearer to heaven, and then I shall grow less and less in my own esteem. (C. H.Spurgeon.) Sin a personal affront to God Sin is a personal affront, whose bitter consequences only the forgiveness of God Himself can remove, and toward which, with the publican, we must implore Him to be merciful. It does not read, “ Nature be merciful,” nor “ Laws of my constitution be merciful,” nor “ Society be merciful,” nor, “ I will be merciful to myself,” but, “ God be merciful;” --nor yet, “ God be merciful to sin in general,” but “ to me a sinner.” (Bishop Huntington.) A negro’ s prayer My uncle, the Rev. Dr. Samuel K. Talmage, of Augusta, Georgia, was passing along the street one day and he met a black man, who stepped out into the street, leaving the pavement, took his hat off, and bowed very lowly in the presence of my uncle. My uncle said to him: “ My dear fellow, why do you stand there and make such a low bow to me?” “ Oh,” he replied, “ massa, I owe you more than any one on earth.” “ Why,” inquired my uncle, “ what do you mean?” “ Well,” said the man, “ I was going along the street the other night, and I had a heavy burden on my back, and I was hungry and sick, and I saw your church was lighted, and I thought I would just stand at the door a minute and listen, and I put down my burden and listened, and I heard you say: ‘ God be merciful to me a sinner.’ And you said that any poor soul that could utter that prayer from the heart could get to heaven, and I shouldered my burden and I went on home, and I went in the house, and I sat down, and I folded my hands, and I said: ‘ God be merciful to me a sinner,’ but I felt no better; I felt worse. And then I got down on my knees, and I said it again: ‘ God be merciful to me a sinner.’ I felt no better. This entry is longer than a Bible module can hold. The rest is at https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/bi/ Luke 18:16 Suffer little children to come unto Me Christ’ s favour to little children displayed 1. These children were not brought to Christ to be taught, for they were not yet capable of receiving instruction; nor could they profit by His preaching, or put any questions to Him. Those who are grown up to years of understanding, have need to be busy in getting knowledge now, that they may redeem the time they lost, through the invincible incapacities of their infancy. 2. Nor were they brought to Christ to be cured, for it does not appear that they needed it. Little children are indeed liable to many distempers, painful, mortal ones. The physicians have a book among them, “ De Morbis Infantum” --on the diseases of infants. Death and its harbingers reign even over them who have not sinned after the similitude of Adam’ s transgression, but these children were strong and healthful, and we do not find that anything ailed them. 3. They were brought to Christ to be blessed; so they meant when they desired that He would touch them: the sign is put for the thing signified. I. HOW WE MUST BRING OUR LITTLE TO CHRIST. 1. By surrendering them to Him in Holy Baptism. 2. We must bring them to Christ, by seeking to Him for them, as those who are surrendered to Him. They are to be but once baptized, but they are to be daily prayed for, and the promise sealed to them in their baptism put in suit and pleaded with God in their behalf. (1) Be constant in praying for your children; pray for them as duly as for yourselves, as St. Paul for his friends, making mention of them always in every prayer. (2) Be particular in praying for them; pray for each particular child, as holy Job offered burnt-offerings for his sons, according to the number of them all; that you may be able to say, as Hannah, “ For this child I prayed” : pray for particular blessings for your children, according as you see their case requires, for that grace which you observe their natural temper (or distemper rather) calls for. 3. We must bring them to Christ, by submitting them to the disposal of His Providence. I have read of a good man, whose son being disposed of in the world, met with great affliction, which he once very feelingly complained of to his good father, who answered (according to the principle I am now upon), “ Anything, child, to bring thee to heaven.” 4. We must bring them to Christ, by subjecting them, as far as we can, to the government of His grace. Having laid their necks under the yoke of Christ in their baptism, we must teach them to draw in it, and use our interest in them, and authority over them, to keep them under that easy yoke, and bring them up in the nurture and admonition of our Lord Jesus. II. HOW CHRIST WILL RECEIVE THE . 1. He took those children up in His arms; and so we may hope He will take up our children in the arms of. His power and providence, and of His pity and grace. 2. He put His hands upon those children. (1) If He set us and ours apart for Himself, as His own peculiar people, we may say He puts His hand upon us and ours: as the buyer lays his hand on the goods he has agreed for, they are now his own; as Jacob put his hand on the head of Joseph’ s sons, to signify not only his blessing them, but his adopting them, and taking them for his own, “ Let my name be named upon them.” This we hope Christ does for our children, when we bring them to Him; He owns them for His; and we may say they do in some degree belong to Christ, are retainers to His family. (2) If He give His Holy Spirit to us and ours, it may truly be said, He puts His hand upon us and them. The Spirit is sometimes called the finger of God, and sometimes the hand of God, so that Christ’ s putting His hand upon us, not only puts us into a relation to Him, but works a real change in us; lays hold on the soul for Him, and puts His image, as well as superscription, upon it. The laying on of hands was a ceremony used in conferring the Holy Ghost; and this we pray for, and hope for, from Christ, for our children, when we bring them to Him. 3. He blessed them. He was desired to pray for a blessing for them, but He did more, He commanded the blessing, blessed with authority; He pronounced them blessed, and thereby made them so; for those whom He blesseth are blessed indeed. Christ is the great High Priest, whose office it is to bless the people of God, and all theirs. III. THE . 1. Let me hence address myself to children, to little children, to the lambs of the flock, to the youngest who can hear with understanding: will not you be glad to hear this, that the Lord Jesus Christ has a tender concern and affection for you; and that He has blessings in store for you, if you apply yourselves to Him, according to your capacity? Lay yourselves at Christ’ s feet, and He will take you up in His arms. Give yourselves to Him, and He will give Himself in His grace and comforts to you. Lie in His way, by a diligent attendance on His ordinances, and He will not pass by without putting His hand on you. And if you value His blessings aright, and be earnest with Him for His blessings, He will bless you with the best of blessings, such as will make you eternally blessed. (1) Let us then still bring them to Him, by faith and prayer, according as their case requires. (2) Let us bring them up for Him. Let not your children rest in a mere natural religion; that is good, it is necessary, but it is not enough. You must make them sensible of their need of Christ, of their lost and undone condition without Him; must endeavour to lead them into the mysteries of our reconciliation to God, and our redemption from sin and wrath, by a Mediator; and O that they may experimentally know Him, and the power of His resurrection! And as in other accomplishments of your children, so in the business of religion, which is their best and true accomplishment, you must, as they come to be capable, put them on to advance. 3. Let this encourage us, who are parents, concerning our children; and enable us to think of them with comfort and hope, in the midst of our cares about them. When we wish well to them, we would willingly hope well; and this is ground of hope, that our Lord Jesus has expressed so much favour to little children. (1) This may comfort and encourage the tender careful mothers in nursing them, that they are carrying those in their arms whom Christ has taken up in His. (2) This may comfort and encourage us if our children labour under any bodily weaknesses and infirmities, if they be unhealthful and often ailing, which is an allay to our comfort in them; let this serve to balance that, If they belong to Christ, and be blessed of Him, they are blessed indeed; and nothing amiss of that kind shall be any prejudice to their blessedness, or diminution of it, but may, being sanctified, become rather a friend and furtherance to it. Many have been the wiser and better, the more humble and heavenly, for their having borne the yoke of affliction in their youth. (Matthew Henry.) A mother’ s concern for her children I feel a sympathy with what a woman said to me. I was told to come to her dying couch, and administer the sacrament. I went with an elder. She said: “ I want to belong to the Church. I am going up to be a member of the Church in heaven; but I don’ t want to go until I am a member of the Church on earth.” So I gave her the sacrament. And then she said: “ Now, I am in the Church, here is the baby, baptize him; and here are all the children, baptize them all. I want to leave them all in the Church.” So I baptized them. Some years after, I was preaching one day in Chicago, and at the close of the service, a lad came upon the platform, and said: “ You don’ t know me, do you?” “ No,” said I. “ My name is George Parish.” “ Ah,” said I; “ I remember, I baptized you by your mother’ s dying bed, didn’ t I?” “ Yes,” he said: “ You baptized all of us there, and I came up to tell you that I have given my heart to God. I thought you would like to know it.” “ I am very glad,” I replied; “ but I am not surprised. You had a good mother; that is almost sure to make a boy come to God if he has a good mother.” (De W. Talmage, D. D.) Christianity and the destiny of children When I was at Dhoas, writes a missionary’ s wife, my husband opened the new chapel, which holds one hundred and fifty people. Sixty-five persons were baptized; among the rest several women. I proposed meeting them alone on Tuesday evening. One very nice-looking woman had a sweet-looking girl at her side, about ten years old. I said, “ Amah, would you like me to teach your daughter?” With an indescribable look of tenderness she drew her to her side, and putting her arm around her, said, “ This is my only one.” “ Have you not had more children?” I asked. “ Ah I yes, ma’ am, I have had six; but they are dead. Yes, they all died, five of them, one after the other; they all died.” “ And you, poor thing, how sorry you must have been!” “ Heigh-ho! how sorry! Too much trouble! took; too much expense. After the first died I took sacrifices to the temple, and made worship to the idol, and told him I would give him all I could if my second might live; but he died. Then my heart was very sore; and when my third came, I went to a guru, and took a cloth, and fowl, and rice; and he said muntrums, and made pujah (worship); but no, that child, he died. My heart was like fire, it burned so with sorrow. I was almost mad; and yet I tried some fresh ceremony for every child.” “ What did you think had become of the spirits of your children?” I asked. “ You knew their bodies died, but did you think much of their spirits?” “ Ah! that was the thing that almost made me mad. I did not know. I thought perhaps one devil took one, and another took another; or perhaps they were gone into some bird, or beast, or something, I did not know; and I used to think and think till my heart was too full of sorrow.” “ But, Amah,” I replied, “ you do not look sorry now.” With a look almost sublime, she said, “ Sorry now! Oh, no, no! Why, I know now where my children are. They are with Jesus. I have learned that Jesus said, ‘ Suffer little children to come unto Me.’ My sorrow is all gone, and I can bear their not being with me. They are happy with Him, and, after a little while, I shall go to Him too, and this little girl, my Julia, and my husband too.” (A. G.Thomson, D. D.) Children the true saints of God Mr. Gray had not been long minister of the parish before he noticed the odd practice of the grave-digger; and one day when he came upon John smoothing and trimming the lonely bed of a child which had been buried a few days before, he asked why he was so particular in dressing and keeping the graves of infants. John paused for a moment at his work, and looking up, not at the minister, but at the sky, said, “ Of such is the kingdom of heaven.” “ And on this account you tend and adorn them with so much care,” remarked the minister, who was greatly struck with the reply. “ Surely, sir,” answered John; “ I canna make ower braw and fine the bed-covering o’ a little innocent sleeper that is waitin’ there till it is God’ s time to wauken it and cover it with white robe, and waft it away to glory. Where sic grandeur is awaitin’ it yonder, it’ s fit it should be decked out here. I think the Saviour will like to see white clover spread abune it; dae ye no think sae tae, sir?” “ But why not thus cover larger graves?” asked the minister, hardly able to suppress his emotions. “ The dust of all His saints is precious in the Saviour’ s sight.” “ Very true, sir,” responded John, with great solemnity, “ but I canna be sure wha are His saints, and wha are no. I hope thear are many of them lyin’ in this kirkyard; but it wad be great presumption to mark them oot. There are some that I’ m gey sure aboot, and I keep their graves as nate and snod as I can, and plant a bit floure here and there as a sign of my hope, but daurna gie them the white shirt,” referring to the white clover. “ It’ s clean different, though, wi’ the bairns.” (A. G. Thomson, D. D.) The blessed influence of children Children are the salvation of the race. They purify, they elevate, they stir, they instruct, they console, they reconcile, they gladden us. They are the ozone of human life, inspiring us with hope, rousing us to wholesome sacrifice. If, in the faults which they inherit, they show us the worst of ourselves, and so move us to a salutary repentance, they also stimulate our finer qualities; they cheat us of weary care; they preach to us, not so much by their lips as by their innocence; their questions set us thinking, and to better purpose than the syllogisms of philosophers; their helplessness makes us tender; their loveliness surprises us into pure joy A child is a sunbeam on a winter sea, a flower in a prison garden, the music of hells over the noise of a great city, a fragrant odour in a sick-room. If any one thinks this exaggerated, I am sorry for him. It is literally true for me, and for tens of thousands who have far more right to it. These fingers tingle with a kind of happiness while I am writing about them here. My chilly friend need not have my joy if he does not believe in it, or care for it; I will not force it on him, but he shall not take mine from me. (Bishop of Rochester.) 1. With respect to THE COMMAND in the text. Those persons may be said to fulfil it, in the first place, who afford to children a Christian example. Now, let us consider here, what features of character may be best exemplified, so as to produce a good effect. One peculiar trait in the character of our Lord Jesus Christ was His consideration of human infirmity. “ We have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities.” 2. Not only should our instructions be religious, but eminently evangelical, in order to benefit the young. In preaching, it is found that the preaching of mere morality, however luminous and explicit, and however judiciously and powerfully enforced, produces but very little effect. 3. Remember that all human instruction needs to be frequently repeated. Even adults, whose minds are not volatile as those of children, need “ line upon line, line upon line, precept upon precept, precept upon precept.” 4. Allow me to call your attention, also, to another very important fact, namely, that without the influence of the Holy Spirit, no valuable effect can be produced. II. In the text there is an allusion, also, to the character of THE we may derive from the communication of such instructions: “ Of such is the kingdom of God.” It might, indeed, be remarked here, that there is an admirable adaptation between what is taught, and the end you wish to produce--the means are exactly united to the end proposed. But-- 1. Consider how much good is produced by the influence of habit. Now, when you have to do with children, you have to do with those whose minds are susceptible; and you may be instrumental in forming their habits, and in putting them on their guard against the dangers to which they are exposed. 2. Many to whom we address ourselves on the concerns of their souls, complain of want of time and of the distracting influence of the things of the world. But when you take youthful minds into your hands, you have to do with those on whom worldly cares have no influence. 3. The things of the world produce, naturally, a kind of indurating influence. It tends to sink them down to that very situation in which the soul naturally wishes to be. And not only is there in the minds of children a tenderness of feeling for the reception of these great and important truths, but also a freshness and vigour for the exhibition of these truths, and for the exhibition of them to the greatest advantage. (R. Treffry.) Why children should come to Jesus I. THE OF TO-DAY SHOULD COME TO JESUS BECAUSE THEY NEED JUST SUCH A TEACHER, SAVIOUR, AND FRIEND. I remember a company of blind children from an asylum waiting at the door of one of our churches for some one from within to lead them to their place. Parents and teachers can lead a child to the door of a good life, but Jesus only can lead into goodness and heaven. II. ANOTHER REASON WHY , AND LITTLE , SHOULD COME TO JESUS IS, THAT THEY ARE NOT SO FAR FROM HIM AS THOSE WHO HAVE GROWN OLD IN SIN. Every child is born close to heaven’ s gate. Children’ s hearts have fresh affections that turn to Jesus almost as readily as climbing plants in June wind about their proper support. If those plants lie along the ground till August they can hardly be made to climb at all so late in their life. III. ANOTHER REASON FOR COMING TO JESUS IS HIS SPECIAL LOVE FOR THEM. (W. C. C. Wright.) Children taken to Christ Jesus is still calling little children to Him. His arms are ever open to receive them, and His lips parted to bless them. He loves them for their likeness to His own purity and gentleness. He would keep them gentle and pure, that He may present them perfect to His own Father. Let us beware of throwing any impediment between them and their Saviour; of suffering our indifference or neglect, our flimsy theories, hard doctrines, or evil examples, to prevent these little ones from seeing and loving the Son of Mary; from being folded in the arms of His grace, and being blessed by the influences of His religion and life. I. LET US NOT FORBID THEIR COMING TO HIM IN THE RITE OF BAPTISM. If this is one of the calls which Jesus makes to little children; if He says to them, by a fair interpretation of the language of this rite, “ Come to Me through the consecrated waters,” let us suffer them to go, and not stand in their way with our doubts, our fears, or our apathy. Let that heavenly dew be shed on the opening buds, and shed early. Say not that they are without stain, and therefore need not the purifying wave. Jesus Himself, who in a still higher sense was stainless, Jesus Himself was baptized. Say not that they do not know in what office they are participating. You know it, and feel it; and if they know it not now, they will know hereafter. If you will but reflect that it is the bringing of little children openly to Jesus, placing them in His arms, and yielding them to His blessing, you will have learned the whole reason, nature, and plan of the ordinance at once, because your heart has been your teacher. And you will gladly suffer little children to go in this way to their Friend, and never think of forbidding them. II. Suffer them to go to Him, secondly, BY ALL THE MEANS OF A TRULY . Continue the intimacy which was commenced at the font. Make them acquainted with every expression of His countenance, with every grace and sweetness of His character. We forbid their going to Christ, if in any way we make them, or help them to make themselves proud, vain, revengeful, cunning, or selfish. We lead them to Christ by teaching them to know and love Him entirely, to feel the whole divinity of His lowly yet lofty virtues, to appreciate thoroughly and justly the glory of His humility, the dignity of His meekness, the heroism of His long-suffering, the harmonious perfection of His character, with which everything worldly is in necessary discord. III. WE CAN HARDLY TEACH THEM THIS, UNLESS WE FEEL IT . Let us lead them, then, to Jesus, by the hand of our own example. Let us be especially cautious that our own selfish interests, bad passions, blind excesses are not placed in their way, to be stumbling blocks to their tender feet. IV. Lastly, IT MAY BE THAT OUR MUST DEPART BEFORE US ON THE UNKNOWN JOURNEY, AND WITHOUT US. We must suffer them to go to the arms of Jesus in the world of spirits. It is hard to part with them--but by the effort of an humble resignation, we must suffer them to go. It may be that the Saviour hath need of them. We may know that there also He will love them, and watch over them, and lead them; and that His love, presence, and guidance are better for them than ours. (F. W. P. Greenwood, D. D.) My fruit-tree I had a comely fruit-tree in the summer season, with the branches of it promising plenteous fruit; the stock was surrounded with seven or eight little shoots of different sizes, that grew up from the root at a small distance, and seemed to compose a beautiful defence and ornament for the mother tree; but the gardener, who espied their growth, knew the danger; he cut down those tender suckers one after another, and laid them in the dust. I pitied them in my heart, and said, “ How pretty were these young standards! How much like the parent! How elegantly clothed with the raiment of summer! And each of them might have grown to a fruitful tree.” But they stood so near as to endanger the stock; they drew away the sap, the heart and strength of it, so far as to injure the fruit, and darken the hopeful prospects of autumn. The pruning-knife appeared unkind indeed, but the gardener was wise; for the tree flourished more sensibly, the fruit quickly grew fair and large, and the ingathering at last was plenteous and joyful. Will you give me leave, Velina, to persuade you into this parable? Shall I compare you to this tree in the garden of God? You have had many of these young suckers springing up around you; they stood awhile your sweet ornaments and your joy, and each of them might have grown up to a perfection of likeness, and each might have become a parent-tree: but say, Did they never draw your heart from God? Did you never feel them stealing any of those seasons of devotion, or those warm affections that were first and supremely due to Him that made you? Did they not stand a little too near the soul? And when they had been cut off successively, and laid one after another in the dust, have you not found your heart running out more towards God, and living more perpetually upon Him? Are you not now devoting yourself more entirely to God every day, since the last was taken away? Are you not aiming at some greater fruitfulness and service than in times past? If so, then repine not at the pruning-knife; but adore the conduct of the heavenly Husbandman, and say, “ All His ways are wisdom and mercy.” But I have not yet done with my parable. When the granary was well stored with excellent fruit, and before winter came upon the tree, the gardener took it up by the roots, and it appeared as dead. But his design was not to destroy it utterly; for he removed it far away from the spot of earth where it had stood, and planted it in a hill of richer mould, which was sufficient to nourish it with all its attendants. The spring appeared, the tree budded into life again, and all those fair little standards that had been cut off, broke out of the ground afresh, and stood up around it (a sweet young grove) flourishing in beauty and immortal vigour. You know not where you are, Velina, and that I have carried you to the hill of paradise, to the blessed hour of the resurrection. What an unknown joy it will be, when you have fulfilled all the fruits of righteousness in this lower world, to be transplanted to that heavenly mountain! What a Divine rapture and surprise of blessedness, to see all your little offspring about you at that day, springing out of the duet at once, making a fairer and brighter appearance in that upper garden of God, and rejoicing together (a sweet company), all partakers with you of the same happy immortality; all fitted to bear heavenly fruit, without the need or danger of a pruning-knife. Look forward, by faith, to that glorious morning, and admire the whole scheme of providence and grace. Give cheerful honours beforehand to your Almighty and All-wise Governor, who by His unsearchable counsels has fulfilled your best wishes, and secured your dear infants to you for ever, though not just in your own way; that blessed hand which made the painful separation on earth shall join you and your babes together in His own heavenly habitation, never to be divided again, though the method may be painful to flesh and blood. Fathers shall not hope in vain, nor “ mothers bring forth for trouble: they are the seed of the blessed of the Lord, and their offspring with them” (Isaiah 65:23). Then shall you say, “ Lord,here am I, and the children that Thou hast given me.” For He is your God, and the God of your seed in an everlasting covenant. Amen. (Written by Dr. Watts to a lady on the death of several young children.) Run to Jesus An affectionate mother, when reading this passage with her little girl, said, “ I would have led you forward to Jesus.” “ You would not have needed,” replied the child, “ I would have run.” Luke 18:17 Receive the kingdom of God as a little child Receiving the kingdom of God as a little child I. To begin with, let me deal with THE SECRET THOUGHT OF THE , expressed by their actions though not spoken in words. 1. And, first, it is pretty clear that the disciples thought the children were too insignificant for the Lord’ s time to be taken up by them. 2. Again, I suppose that these grown-up apostles thought that the children’ s minds were too trifling. Despise not children for trifling when the whole world is given to folly. 3. “ Ay,” say they, “ but if we should let the children come to Christ, and if He should bless them, they will soon forget it. No matter how loving His look and how spiritual His words, they will go back to their play, and their weak memories will preserve no trace of it at all.” This objection we meet in the same manner as the others. Do not men forget? 4. Perhaps, too, they thought that children had not sufficient capacity. 5. To put the thought of the apostle into one or two words: they thought that the children must not come to Christ because they were not like themselves--they were not men and women. The child must not come to the Master because he is not like the man. How the blessed Saviour turns the tables and says, “ Say, not, the child may not come till he is like a man, but know that you cannot come till you are like him. It is no difficulty in the child’ s way that he is not like you; the difficulty is with you, that you are not like the child.” Instead of the child needing to wait until he grows up and becomes a man, it is the man who must grow down and become like a child. II. Now we pass to our second head, namely, THE OPEN OF OUR LORD, wherein He sets forth His mind upon this matter, 1. Looking at it carefully, we observe, first, that He tells the disciples that the gospel sets up a kingdom. Was there ever a kingdom which had no children in it? How then could it grow? 2. Next, our Lord tells us that the way of entering the kingdom is by receiving. “ Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child shall in no wise enter therein.” We do not enter into the kingdom of God by working out some deep problem and arriving at its solution; not by fetching something out of our selves, but by receiving a secret something into us. We come into the kingdom by the kingdom’ s coming into us: it receives us by our receiving it. Now, if this entrance into the kingdom depended upon something to be fetched out of the human mind by study and deep thought, then very few children could over enter it; but it depends upon something to be received, and therefore children may enter, 3. The next thing in the text is that if we receive this kingdom, and so enter into it, we must receive it as children receive it. III. THE GREAT given by our Lord in the text. (C. H.Spurgeon.) Luke 18:18-30 Good Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?-- The rich youth’ s address to Christ I. THE TRAITS OF IN THE BY THIS YOUNG MAN. 1. The question itself was of supreme importance. 2. The question was a personal one. 3. The question was put at an interesting period of life. 4. The question was put by one who possessed an abundance of riches. 5. The question was put with feelings of great modesty and respect. 6. The question was put with great sincerity and earnestness of spirit. II. THE DEFECTS WHICH WERE BY THE SAVIOUR. 1. He evidently expected salvation by the works of the law. 2. He was held in bondage by one reigning idol. 3. He was unwilling to yield to the extensive requirements of the Saviour. III. THE LESSONS WHICH HIS HISTORY . 1. The exceeding deceitfulness of earthly riches. 2. That we may go far in religious practices, and yet not be saved. 3. We are in great danger from spiritual deception. 4. Religion requires a total surrender of ourselves to God. (J. Burns, D. D.) Thou knowest the commandmentsKeep the commandments I. INQUIRE INTO THE DESIGN WITH WHICH OUR SAVIOUR SPOKE THESE WORDS. His aim was to expose ignorance, self-righteousness, and insincerity, in one whom the spectators were doubtless admiring for his apparent devotion. 1. The man was ignorant of Christ’ s real character. 2. He expected life as the reward of his own merit. 3. He was not sincerely willing to sacrifice anything for the kingdom of heaven’ s sake. II. TO PROMOTE A SIMILAR DESIGN BY A OF THEM TO . “ If thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments.” These words, duly considered, may-- 1. Convince us of sin. There is no doubt, that we ought to keep the commandments. But, have we done so? 2. Drive us to Christ as a Refuge. 3. Guide the steps of the justified believer. The curse of the law it at an end--not its obligation. (J. Jowett, M. A.) Yet lackest thou one thingOne weak spot When Jesus tells us that we cannot be His disciples so long as we lack one thing, does He mean that we must have supplied every moral defect, must have attained every grace, must have vanquished every spiritual enemy, and, in fact, have ceased to sin, before we can be His disciples? That would be simply saying that none of us can hope to be a Christian unless he is morally perfect; and that of course involves the converse, that every true Christian is thus morally perfect, The shock this statement gives to our common sense, and its manifest contradiction of the whole drift of the New Testament, at once drives us from any such interpretation. We find a consistent meaning, I suppose, if we understand Him as declaring that no heart is really Christianized, or converted, so long as there is any one conscious, deliberate, or intentional reservation from entire obedience to the Divine will. So that if I say, Here is one particular sin which I must continue to practise; all the rest of my conduct I freely conform to God’ s law, but this known wrong I must continue to do--then I am no Christian. If you single out some one chosen indulgence, however secret--a dubious custom in business, a fault of the tongue or temper--and, placing y our hand over that, reply to the all-searching commandment of the Most High, “ This I cannot let go; this is too sweet to me, or too profitable to me, or too tightly inter woven with my constitutional predilections, or too hard to be put off” --then the quality of a disciple is not in you. There is a portion of your being which you do not mean, or try, to consecrate to heaven. And that single persistent offence vitiates the whole character. It keeps you, as a man, as a whole man, on the self side or world-side, and away from Christ’ s side. For it not only shuts off righteousness from one district of your nature, and so abridges the quantity of your life, but it inflicts the much more radical damage of denying the supremacy of the law of righteousness, and thus corrupts the quality. It practically rejects the heavenly rule when that rule crosses the private inclination. And that is the essence of rebellion. (Bishop F. D. Huntington.) The test-point When Jesus spoke thus of one thing fatally lacking to the Jewish ruler, He spoke to us all. But with this difference: that one subtle passion which spoils the whole character for us may not be his passion. With him it seems to have been avarice; he could not bear to turn his private property into public charity. His religion broke down just there: in other respects he had done admirably; he had kept other commandments to the letter--aye, to the letter; not perhaps in the spirit, for all true obedience has one spirit. But so far his literal, formal obedience came, and there gave out. But then you may happen to be so constituted that such an abandonment of wealth would be a very small sacrifice--one of the least that could be required of you; you are not naturally sordid; you are more inclined to be prodigal; and so this would not be a test-point with you. But there is a test-point about you somewhere. Perhaps it is pride; you cannot bear an affront; you will not confess a fault. Perhaps it is personal vanity, ready, to sacrifice everything to display. Perhaps it is a sharp tongue. Perhaps it is some sensual appetite, bent on its unclean gratification. Then you are to gather up your moral forces just here, and till that darling sin is brought under the practical law of Christ, you are shut out from Christ’ s kingdom. I have no right to love anything so well that I cannot give it up for God. God knows where the trial must be applied. And we are to know that wherever it is applied, there is the one thing lacking, unless we can say “ Thy will be done,” and bear it. The gospel does not propose itself as an easy system--easy in the sense of excusing from duty. Were we not right then, in the ground taken at the outset, that the power of Christianity over the character is proved by the thoroughness of its action rather than by the extent of surface over which its action spreads? It displays its heavenly energy in dislodging the one cherished sin, in breaking down the one entrenched fortress that disputes its sway. At the battle of Borodino, Napoleon saw that there was no such thing as victory till he had carried the great central redoubt on the Russian line. Two hundred guns and the choicest of his battalions were poured against that single point, and when the plumes of his veterans gleamed through the smoke on the highest embrasures of that volcano of shot, he knew the field was won. It matters very little that we do a great many things morally irreproachable, so long as there is one ugly disposition that hangs obstinately hack. It is only when we come to a point of real resistance that we know the victory of faith overcoming the world. Finally, our renewing and redeeming religion delights to reach down to the roots of the sin that curses us, and spread its healing efficacy there. It yearns to yield us the fulness of its blessing; and this it knows it cannot do till it brings the heart under the completeness of its gentle captivity to Christ. Submission first; then peace, and joy, and love. “ Jesus beholding him, loved him” ; yet sent him away sorrowing. How tender, and yet how true! tender in the sad affection--true to the stern unbending sacrifice of the Cross! It is because He would have us completely happy that He requires a complete submission. “ One thing” must not be left lacking. Whosoever would enter into the full strength and joy of a disciple must throw his whole heart upon the altar. (Bishop F. D. Huntington.) How hardly shall they that have riches enterThe danger of riches Rather, if one asked, What peril have riches? one might ask, What peril have they not? First, then, they are wholly contrary to the life of Christ and His passion. That cannot be the safe, the happy lot, which is in all things most opposite to His. Unlike Him, we must ever here be; for we are sinners, He alone, as man, was holy; we are His creatures, He our God. But can it be safe not to be aiming, herein also, to be less unlike? Can it be safe to choose that which in all its pomp and glory was brought before His eye as man, to be wholly rejected by Him; to choose what He rejected, and shrink back from what He chose? This, then, is the first all-containing peril of riches. They are, in themselves, contrary to the Cross of Christ. I speak not now of what they may be made. As we, being enemies, were, through the Cross, made friends, so may all things, evil and perilous in themselves, except sin, become our friends. The Cross finds us in desolation, and they, He says, “ have received their consolation” ; it finds us in evil things, and they are surrounded by their good things; it comes in want, and they have abundance; in distress, and they are at ease; in sorrow, and they are ever tempted even to deaden their sorrows in this world’ s miserable joys. Happy only in this, that He who chasteneth whom He loveth, sprinkles His own healthful bitterness over life’ s destructive sweetness, and by the very void and emptiness of vanity calls forth the unsatisfied soul no more to “ spend money on that which is not bread, or its labour on that which satisfieth not.” But if it be so hard for the rich to seek to bear the cross, it must be hard for them truly to love Him who bore it. Love longeth to liken itself to that it loves. It is an awful question, my brethren; but how can we love our Lord if we suffer not with Him? 2. Then it is another exceeding peril of riches and ease that they may tend to make us forget that here is not our home, Men on a journey through a stranger’ s, much more an enemy’ s, and linger not. Their hearts are in their home; thither are their eyes set; they love the winds which have blown over it; they love the very hills which look upon it, even while they hide it; days, hours, and minutes pass quickly or slowly as they seem to bring them near to it; distance, time, weariness, strength, all are counted only with a view to this, “ are they nearer to the faces they love? can they, when shall they reach it?” What then, my brethren, if our eyes are not set upon the everlasting “ hills, whence cometh our help” ? what if we cherish not those inward breathings which come to us from our heavenly home, hushing, refreshing, restoring, lifting up our hearts, and bidding us flee away and be at rest? What if we are wholly satisfied, and intent on things present? can we be longing for the face of God? or can we love Him whom we long not for? or do we long for Him, if we say not daily, “ When shall I come and appear before the presence of God?” 3. Truly there is not one part of the Christian character which riches, in themselves, do not tend to impair. Our Lord placed at the head of evangelic blessings, poverty of spirit, and, as a help to it and image of it, the outward body of the soul of true poverty, poverty of substance too. The only “ riches” spoken of in the New Testament, except as a woe, are the unsearchable riches of the glory and grace of Christ, the riches of the goodness of God, the depth of the riches of His wisdom, or the riches of liberality, whereto deep poverty abounded. 4. Poverty is, at least, a fostering nurse of humility, meekness, patience, trust in God, simplicity, sympathy with the sufferings of our Lord or of its fellow (for it knows the heart of those who suffer). What when riches, in themselves, hinder the very grace of mercifulness which seems their especial grace, of which they are the very means? What wonder that they cherish that brood of snakes, pride, arrogance, self-pleasing, self-indulgence, self-satisfaction, trust in self, forgetfulness of God, sensuality, luxury, spiritual sloth, when they deaden the heart to the very sorrows they should relieve? And yet it is difficult, unless, through self-discipline, we feel some suffering, to sympathize with those who suffer. Fulness of bread deadens love. As a rule, the poor show more mercy to the poor out of their poverty, than the rich out of their abundance. But if it be a peril to have riches, much more is it to seek them. To have them is a trial allotted to any of us by God; to seek them is our own. Through trials which He has given us He will guide us; but where has He promised to help us in what we bring upon ourselves? In all this I have not spoken of any grosser sins to which the love of money gives birth: of what all fair men would condemn, yet which, in some shape or other, so many practise. Such are, hardness to the poor or to dependents; using a brother’ s services for almost nought, in order to have more to spend in luxury; petty or more grievous frauds; falsehood, hard dealing, taking advantage one of another, speaking evil of one another, envying one another, forgetting natural affection. And yet in this Christian land many of these are very common. Holy Scripture warns us all not to think ourselves out of danger of them. (E. B. Pusey, D. D.) The deceitfulness of riches Notice the deceitfulness of all kinds of riches. Riches may corrupt the very simplest of you. Take care. How many men have received hold of the gallows and hanged themselves just through the deceitfulness of riches. We could trace the history of many a man, and see how he died in the bank, that great mortuary. The man began simply, and was a right genial soul. He brought with him morning light and fresh air wherever he came; and as for cases of poverty, his hand knew the way to his pocket so well that he could find that pocket in the dark. As for religious services, he was there before the door was opened. He never thought the Sabbath day too long. He loved the sanctuary, and was impatient until the gates were opened unto him. He even went to the weekevening services. But then he was only a working man, and only working men should go out into the night air! What does it matter about a few working men being killed by the east wind? The man whose course we are tracing doubled his income and multiplied it by five, and then doubled it again, and then found that he must give up the prayer-meeting. Certainly. Then he proceeded to double his income, and then he gave up the Sunday evening service. There was a draught near where he sat, or there was some person in the third pew from his the appearance of whom he could not bear. How dainty my lord is becoming! Oh, what a nostril he has for evil savour! He will leave presently altogether. He will not abruptly leave, but he will simply not come back again, which really means practically the same thing. He will attend in the morning, and congratulate the poor miserable preacher on the profit of the service. Did he mean to do this when he began to get a little wealthier? Not he. Is he the same man he used to be! No. Is he nearer Christ? He is a million universes away from Christ. He is killed by wealth. He trusted in it, misunderstood, misapplied it. It is not wealth that has ruined him, but his misconception of the possible uses of wealth. He might have been the leader of the Church. There was a lady, whose husband’ s personalty was sworn at millions, who was unable to attend one of the ladies’ meetings organized for the purpose of making garments for the poor, and she said that she could no longer attend, and therefore her subscription would lapse. Let it lapse. If it were a case in connection with this Church I would not have named it. It is because distance of space and time enable me to refer to it without identification that I point the moral, and say that where such wealth is, or such use of wealth, there is rottenness of soul. (J. Parker, D. D.) You cannot take your riches with you into the kingdom if you are going to trust in them If you are going to offer them to Christ and sanctify them to His use, let us know of it. You cannot bring your intellectual pride with you. If you are going to consecrate your intellect to the study of the profoundest mysteries, if you are going to cultivate the child-like spirit--for the greater the genius the greater the modesty--bring it all! You can bring with you nothing of the nature of patronage to Christ. It is because He has so little, He has so much; because He is so weak, He is so strong. You cannot compliment Him: He lies beyond the range of eulogy. We reach Him by His own way--sacrifice, self-immolation, transformation. A great mystery, outside of words and all their crafty uses, but a blessed, conscious, spiritual experience. Blessed are those to whom that experience is a reality. (J. Parker, D. D.) Who, then, can be saved?--Who, then, can be saved? The difficulties of salvation, however, do not arise from the want of power in God, for nothing is too hard for Him; He can as easily save a world as He could at first create one. Nor does it arise from any want of sufficiency in Christ, for “ He is able to save to the uttermost them that come unto God by Him” ; yes, to the uttermost of our desires and necessities, and in the last extremity. The difficulties therefore arise from the nature of salvation itself, and our sinful aversion to It. I. LET US NOTICE MORE SOME OF THE IN THE WAY OF OUR . 1. The truths to be believed are some of them very mysterious, and, as Peter says, “ Hard to be understood.” 2. The sacrifices to be made are also in some degree painful. That which cost our Saviour so much must surely cost us something. 3. The dispositions to be exercised are such as are contrary to the natural bias of our depraved hearts. 4. The duties to be performed. Is there no difficulty more especially in renouncing a customary or constitutional evil, and keeping ourselves from our own iniquity? 5. The trouble and danger to which religion exposes its professors. II. ATTEMPT TO ANSWER THE INQUIRY IN OUR TEXT. “ Who, then, can be saved?” If men were left to themselves, either in a natural or renewed state, and if God were not to work, or to withhold His hand after He had begun to work, none would be saved, no, not one. 1. Such shall be saved as are appointed to it. Of some it is said, “ God hath chosen them to salvation, through sanctification of the Spirit, and belief of the truth.” 2. Those shall be saved who are truly desirous of it. 3. Those who come to Christ for salvation shall be sure to obtain it. 4. Such as endure to the end shall be saved. (B. Beddome, M. A.) Lo, we have left all and followed TheeThe happiness of self-denial I. SELF-DENIAL IS TO BE . 1. In the first place, it does not consist in giving up one temporal and personal good for a greater temporal and personal good. For this is self-gratifying instead of self-denying. Any entirely selfish person would be willing to do this. One man will sacrifice his property to gratify his ambition, which he esteems a greater good. Another man will sacrifice his property to gratify his appetite, which he esteems a greater good. Another will sacrifice his property to gratify his revenge, which he esteems a greater good. But none of these persons, in these cases, exercise the least self-denial. 2. Nor, secondly, does self-denial consist in giving up a less temporal and personal good for a greater personal and eternal good. The most corrupt and selfish men in the world are willing to give up any or all their temporal and personal interests for the sake of obtaining future and eternal happiness. 3. But, thirdly and positively, self-denial consists in giving up our own good for the good of others. Such self-denial stands in direct contrariety to selfishness. II. TRUE SELF-DENIAL IS OF THE HIGHEST PRESENT AND FUTURE . This will appear if we consider-- 1. The nature of true self-denial. It consists, as we have seen, in giving up a less private or personal good for a greater public good; or in giving up our own good for the greater good of others. And this necessarily implies disinterested benevolence, which is placing our own happiness in the greater happiness of others. When a man gives up his own happiness to promote the greater happiness of another, he does it freely and voluntarily, because he takes more pleasure in the greater good of another than in a less good of his own. 2. Those who have denied themselves the most have found the greatest happiness resulting from their self denial. 3. The great and precious promises which are expressly made to self denial by Christ Himself. Conclusion: 1. It appears, then, that self-denial is necessarily a term or condition of salvation. 2. It appears, also, that the doctrine cannot be carried too far. 3. If Christianity requires men to exercise true self denial, then the Christian religion is not a gloomy, but a joyful, religion. It affords a hundredfold more happiness than any other religion can afford. 4. It appears from the nature of that self-denial which the gospel requires that the more sinners become acquainted with the gospel, the more they are disposed to hate it and reject it. All sinners are lovers of their own selves, and regard their own good supremely and solely, and the good of others only so far as it tends to promote their own private, personal, and selfish good. 5. It appears from the nature of that self-denial which the gospel requires why sinners are more willing to embrace any false scheme of religion than the true. (N. Emmons, D. D.) Christian discipleship I. TO BE THE OF THE SAVIOUR, IS TO SUSTAIN A OF HIGH AND . 1. We cannot hold this relationship to the Son of God without believing the testimony given concerning Him, in the Scriptures. 2. Believing in Christ, we must be excited to a practical obedience to His commands, and an imitation of the excellences displayed as an example to man. 3. That same principle of faith will excite also to public profession of the Saviour’ s name, and active exertion in His cause. 4. Combine in your own characters the principles and the conduct to which we have now adverted. Believe on the Son of God; give an obedience to His perceptive will, and imitate the excellences He displayed; profess publicly that you will be His, and be active and zealous in the promotion of His designs; and then will you indeed and honourably be among those who “ follow Him.” II. THAT IN THIS , PAINFUL MUST OFTEN BE MADE. Sacrifices for the name’ s sake of the Son of God are justified and called for, by reasons which might be expanded in very extensive illustration. Remember for whom they are made. For whom? For Him who built the fabric of the universe, and over whose wondrous creation the “ morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy.” For whom? For Him who is “ the brightness of the Father’ s glory, and the express image of His person,” in whom “ dwells all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.” For whom? For Him who “ was rich, but for your sakes became poor,” etc. Remember for what these sacrifices are made. They are made for the enjoyment of peace of conscience. They are made for a restoration to the image and the friendship of God. They are made for the refinement and ennobling of the nature. It is to be observed again-- III. THAT PRESENT IN THE CAUSE, AND AS THE OF THE SAVIOUR, ARE TO ISSUE IN A REWARD. 1. The Saviour promises advantage to be possessed in the present life. In following Christ, we are blessed with repose of conscience; we are exalted to fellowship with God; we are endowed with capacities for improving in the knowledge of mysteries, identified with the highest welfare of our being; we become the companions of the excellent of the earth, and the innumerable company of angels; we are urged to a rapid increase in the graces which dignify the character, and are a pledge of the sublimity of the final destiny; we are supplied with strong consolation for sorrow, and firm support for death; and prospects are opened which stretch away to the immensities of immortality. Are not these “ a hundredfold” ? Here is the “ pearl of great price” : and well may we resolve to be as the merchant, and “ sell” or “ forsake” all we have, and buy it! 2. The Saviour promises advantage to be possessed in the life to come. It is a wise regulation in the decisions of Providence, that our chief reward is reserved for another state of existence. The Almighty intends that, in this world, our lives shall be those of trial; and that the stability of our graces should be proved, by the rigid and sometimes painful discipline to which we are exposed. (J. Parsons.) Christian relationships Homes, parents, brethren, wives, children, are things to be desired, because they call forth the highest and purest affections, the exercise of which sheds abroad in the heart the highest and sweetest human joy and satisfaction. Now a man’ s conversion to the faith of Christ, though it at times, perhaps almost always, estranged him from a heathen home and family, gave him another home, and a far wider family, attached to him in far firmer and closer, and withal more holy bonds, and these were brethren and sisters, fathers and mothers in Christ. The exercise of purified love and affection, and, we may add, reverence towards these, would diffuse through his heart a far holier and deeper joy than he had ever experienced in his former unholy heathen state. Take, for instance, the last chapter of the Epistle to the Romans; look at the number of Christians to whom the apostle sent salutation. In no one case were these salutations a mere heartless form. In every case they were accompanied by the overflow of Christian love, by memories of how they had laboured and suffered together in the same holy cause; in most cases, perhaps, they were the greetings of a father to his children in the faith. What a sea of satisfaction and holy joy does all this disclose! And so it was, though, of course, in different degrees, and under various forms, with every Christian who had given up any worldly advantage for Christ’ s sake. (M. F. Sadler.) Luke 18:31-34 Behold we go up to Jerusalem The entrance into the Passion season I. WE GAZE AT THE LORD, AND INQUIRE HOW HE ENTERED THE SEASON OF PASSION. 1. Not unprepared, but with a full, clear consciousness-- (1) not only of His sufferings in general, but also in all their particulars; and (2) of the relation between His sufferings and the Divine Word and will. 2. His consciousness afforded Him the peace, courage, and decision to endure the sufferings willingly and patiently. II. WE GAZE AT , AND INQUIRE HOW WE SHOULD ENTER THIS SEASON OF THE CHURCH YEAR. 1. Not like the world, whose custom is to celebrate it with all kinds of amusement and folly; but, as the followers of Christ, let us get ready to accompany the Lord in His season of suffering. 2. Yet not like the twelve, of whom we read that they understood none of these things. We must know why and for whom the Lord suffered and died. 3. The blind man of Jericho is a good example to show how we should enter in with the Lord as He approaches His sufferings. (1) He appeals again and again for mercy. (2) He concentrates all his desires into one plea--that he might see. And the Lord opens his eyes. (Schaffer.) A study for a doctrine of the atonement I shall proceed, accordingly, to indicate some personal ways in which it seems to me we may learn to enter, in some degree, into Jesus’ consciousness that He must needs suffer. Yet only in some degree, and in no full measure, can we hope to comprehend in our human experience the mind that was in Jesus. The open and most natural way of thought for us to take, in our desire to understand this most sacred truth, seems to me to be in general as follows: Study what forgiveness of injuries involves to the most Christian man or woman, learn what forgiveness of wrong may cost the most Christlike heart, and from such knowledge gain the means of understanding why the Christ from God must needs suffer on the Cross. If we have not been compelled by some bitter experience of our own to learn the moral necessities of suffering in forgiving sin, let us search with reverent sympathies the depth of the trouble into which others have been plunged by some erring one to whom they were bound by vital ties; learn how father, mother, wife, must needs suffer in the continued charity, and shielding love, and ever open forgiveness of the home towards one who has gone forth from it, unworthy of it, and been lost in the world. Such in general is the vital method, the personal way, in which we may study the doctrine of the atonement of Christ for the sin of the world. Let me briefly indicate several more definite truths which we may find in such study of the Cross. First, In our experience of forgiveness, and its moral necessities, we find that there must be penitence or confession on the part of the person who has done wrong. The sense of justice and right which demands confession of wrong and restitution is as human and as Divine as the love which would forgive an offence, and accept another’ s willingness to make restitution. Secondly, Human forgiveness involves a painful knowledge of the wrong which has been inflicted. Forgiveness is always born of suffering. You surely cannot forgive a friend if you have never known and felt the hurt of his unkindness. Some suffering for the injury received is an indispensable condition, or antecedent, of the exercise of forgiveness. Thirdly, We approach now another element in the history of human forgiveness, which is of deep moral significance; viz., the suffering of the injured person must be so discovered to the wrong-doer that he can know it, and have some appreciation of it, in order that forgiveness may be granted and received, and its perfect work accomplished. But you will ask, Is it not the glory of the forgiving spirit to hide its sense of hurt? And the human forgiveness is never more than a polite fiction, if there is not in the hour of reconciliation this frank declaration and acknowledgment of the wrong done, and the suffering received from it. One thing in it seems to me clear as conscience. That wronged man cannot forgive his repentant enemy by treating his sin as though it had been nothing, by making light of it as though it had not cost him days of trouble, by hiding it in his good nature as though it were not an evil thing. Somehow that sense of injustice in his soul must find vent and burn itself out. Somehow that sense of wrong must manifest itself, and in some pure revelation of itself pass away. It cannot pass forever away except through revelation, as the fire expires through the flame. Yet in forgiveness justice must be a self-revealing flame, and not a consuming fire. Something like this has been the process of all genuine human reconciliations which I have observed. As an essential element of the reconciliation there was some revelation of pure justice. There was no hiding of the wrong. On either side there was no belittling the injury. There was no trifling with it as though a sin were nothing. It was no thoughtless forgiveness out of mere good nature, in which the heart’ s deeper sense of righteousness was not satisfied. I have left myself time only to point to the way by which we may ascend from this our human experience of forgiveness to the Cross of Christ, and the necessity for it in the love of God. It is a part of the penalty of sin that in every human transgression some just one must needs suffer with the guilty. This is a natural necessity of our human, or organic, relationship. And because we are so bound up together in good and in evil, we can bear one another’ s burdens, suffer helpfully for another, and to a certain extent save one another from the evil of the world. Now, according to these Gospels, God in Christ puts himself into this human relationship, and, as one with man, bears his burden and suffers under the sin of the world. The Father of spirits in His own eternal blessedness may not suffer with men; but in Christ God has humbled Himself to our consciousness of sin and death. In Christ the eternal love comes under the moral law of suffering, under which forgiveness may work its perfect work. More particularly, in the life and death of Christ these several elements which we have found belonging essentially to our experience of reconciliation with one another, have full exercise and scope. For Christ, identifying Himself with our sinful consciousness, makes a perfect repentance for sin and confession of it unto the Father. Christ experiences our sin as sinful, and confesses it. And again, Christ realizes the cost of the sin of the world. His loneliness of spirit, the cruel misunderstandings of Him by all men, His Gethsemane, His Cross--all realize the cost and suffering of sin, and in view of such sufferings of the Son of Man sin never can be regarded as a light and trifling thing. And still further, Christ reveals to the world what its sin has cost, and enables man who would be forgiven to appreciate it, and to acknowledge it. (N. Smyth, D. D.) They understood none of these things. Misunderstanding Christ The disciples’ failure to understand the Master suggests an always timely question for the followers of Jesus: What misunderstandings of Christ may still be lingering in Christianity? The question is the more pertinent and the more necessary because one reason for the disciples’ failure to perceive the things that were said by Jesus on His way to the Cross, was the knowledge of Him which they already possessed. Two truths in particular which they had learned better than any one else concerning Jesus, they allowed to stand in the way of their further understanding of Him. They had been taught His wonderful power. They had been eye-witnesses of His mighty works. They began to believe that Jesus could do anything. This truth of the power of the Son of Man they were ready to receive, and they stopped with the knowledge of it. He who had power from God could not be taken and killed by the Pharisees. So they grasped with eager hope the truth that Jesus was the promised Messiah of Israel, and missed the deeper truth of His character, that God so loved the world. Then again the truth which they had learned better than any others of Jesus’ wonderful kindness, and justice, and humanity, in their partial view of it, may have hidden from their eyes the full revelation which He would have them perceive of His Divine life. How could He who had power over death, and who had so pitied two sisters that He had restored their brother to them, and who had enveloped their lives in a friendship of wonderful daily thoughtfulness--how could He, having all power, go away from them, leave them comfortless, throw them back again upon the world, and disappoint their high hopes of Him? No wonder Peter thought it was impossible, and even said impulsively, “ Be it far from Thee, Lord!” The truth of Christ’ s friendship which they did know prevented them from understanding the diviner secret of God’ s sacrificial love for the world, which they might have learned. So they who knew the Lord best, misunderstood Him the most; and Jesus went before His disciples in a deeper purpose and a diviner thought than they perceived. Our text reads like a devout apology of the disciples for their singular misunderstanding of Jesus Christ. The providence of God had taught them their mistake. And very instructive for us is the method by which God corrected the false perception of the disciples, and opened their eyes to true and larger knowledge of the Lord. They overcame their misunderstanding, and were brought to better understanding of Jesus Christ, through the trial and the task of their faith. These two, trials and tasks, are God’ s ways of correcting men’ s imperfect faiths. For you will recall how those disciples, at the time of the crucifixion, and while they were waiting in Jerusalem, learned in their disenchantment, and were taught through that fearful strain and trial of their faith, as they had never been before, of what Spirit Jesus was, and what His real mission to this world was; and thus they were prepared to see and to become apostles of the risen Lord. That trial of their faith, while Jesus was mocked, and scourged, and delivered to death, and crucified between two thieves, and buried--all the light blotted from their skies, all the proud ambition broken in their souls--yet in His death a new, strange expectancy awakened in their hearts, and on the third day a vision seen which made all things a new world to them--that trial of their faith was the Lord’ s method of teaching the disciples what before had remained hidden from them even in the plainest words of Jesus. And then this knowledge of the new, larger truth of Christ’ s work was rounded out, and filled full of a steady, clear light to them, by the task immediately given them to do in the name of the crucified and risen Lord. They learned at Pentecost what Christianity was to be. (N. Smyth, D. D.) Luke 18:35-43A certain blind man sat by the wayside The blind man’ s pertinacity and cure This teaches us-- I. THE OF THE SEIZING OF . II. THE OF , IN THE AFFAIRS OF THE SOUL. III. THE ROOT OF THIS OF ACTION--OF THIS --WAS FAITH. IV. THE SIGHT IS USED IN CHRIST, AND IN GOD. (Anon.) Blind Bartimeus I. WHICH BESET US IN COMING TO CHRIST FOR MERCY. 1. Our own blindness. 2. Impediments that others cast in the way. II. ACTIONS OF FOR OUR COMING TO CHRIST. 1. Jesus stood still. 2. On Jesus showing Himself favourable, then at once did multitude. 3. In eagerness to go to Jesus, man left garment behind (Mark 10:50). Must cast off custom and habit of sin. Then, going to the Saviour will be easy, and prayer will be heard and answered. III. ; EFFECT . 1. What the poor man willed, the Lord granted. 2. A new follower. Application: 1. Let no worldly hindrances debar from Christ. 2. Many encouragements to go. Go. 3. Having gone, truly, wholly--surely follow Him. (Clergyman’s Magazine.) The soul’ s crisis I. Now, looking stedfastly that this may be the case, I wish to speak very pointedly to you about two or three things. First, when Jesus passed by the blind man it was to that man A DAY OF HOPE. It was an hour of hope to that blind man, and if Jesus passes by now this is an hour of hope to you. But, does He pass by? I answer--Yes. There are different respects in which this may be interpreted of our Lord’ s conduct. In a certain sense He has been passing by some of you ever since you began to discern right from wrong. More especially is is a time of Christ’ s passing by when the gospel is preached with power. II. Secondly, as it was a time of hope to that poor blind man, so was it especially A TIME OF . You that anxiously desire salvation, regard attentively these words. A man cannot be saved by what he does; salvation is in Christ, yet no man is saved except as he seeks earnestly after Christ. 1. This man listened attentively. 2. He inquired with eagerness what it meant. 3. When this man had asked the question, and had been told in reply that Jesus of Nazareth passed by, notice what he did next, he began to pray. His cry was a prayer, and his prayer was a cry. 4. After this man had thus pleaded, it is noteworthy that Jesus stood still and called him. That much-prized, though all patched and filthy garment, he threw right away; it might have made him a minute or two slower, so off he threw it, and away he flung it. Ah! and it is a great mercy when a poor soul feels that it can throw away anything and everything to get to Christ. 5. Once more. When this man had come to Jesus, and Jesus said to him, “ What wilt thou that 1 should do unto thee?” the man returned a straightforward and intelligent answer, “ Lord, that I might receive my sight.” 6. Still, I cannot withhold one other remark. That which really brought salvation to this blind man was his faith, for Christ says, “ Thy faith hath saved thee.” Now, here is the greatest point of all--faith! Faith; for work without faith is of little worth. Faith is the great saving grace; it is the real life-germ. III. It was also AN HOUR OF CRISIS. IV. Lastly, remember that this hour of Jesus passing by is AN HOUR THAT WILL SOON BE GONE. Did you notice that word, “ Jesus of Nazareth passeth by?” (C. H. Spurgeon.) The passing Christ recognized As people do not recognize that Christ passeth near to them when they are in health, even so they do not see as they ought His hand in their sickness. An invalid lamented to a lady who came to see her, that she had abused her health before it was taken from her. The friend replied, “ I hope that now you will take care not to abuse your sickness.” Assuredly we abuse our sickness when we do not see the hand of God in it, and do not allow Jesus of Nazareth, who passeth by our bed, to bring us nearer to Himself. (E. J. Hardy, M. A.) Enthusiasm rebuked Blind Bartimeus has to encounter obstructionists; the unsympathizing crowd interfered to silence the man. “ Hold thy peace, Bartimeus; have done with all this frenzied excitement; Christ has other things to do than listen to thee!” So long ago was it a settled matter that a man may get excited about anything in the wide world except about Christ! You are quite at liberty to get excited about the latest war news, about politics, about the race-course, about the money-market, about anything you like, save the interests of your soul. Yes; these highly respect able people of eighteen hundred years ago have left a numerous progeny. There are always plenty of persons ready to give good advice to seeking souls, or to young Christians, after this fashion: “ Keep quiet, my friend; don’ t get excited; hush! don’ t make a noise about such things; whatever you do, keep calm, and don’ t make a fuss.” I observe that the devil has his own fire-brigade, who are always ready with their hose--waiting to throw cold water on any little flame that the Holy Spirit kindles, and to offer sedatives to any startled sinner who is beginning to be in earnest about his soul. These excellent people will tell you that it is all right and proper to be religious, to be earnest up to a certain point, but you must be careful not to go beyond this. When you come to inquire what this point is, you make the astonishing discovery that it is just the point at which religion begins to do one any real good! Be earnest, so long as your earnestness does not bring you salvation; be pious, so long as your piety fails to reveal the living God to your heart; but be sure and stop short of receiving God’ s gift of everlasting life, or you will be going too far! (W. M. Hay Aitken, M. A.) The blind sister A year ago last winter an affecting scene occurred in the streets of Baltimore. Two little sisters were looking through a large store window at the toys within, and trying to describe what they saw to a little blind sister who was with them. They were exhausting their feeble powers of description to bring home to the mind of their blind companion what they saw, although she listened greedily. But, after all, they failed to present anything more than an imperfect representation. The gentleman who saw the circumstance said that it was extremely touching, that they tried hard to describe the collection in the store, but they could not do it. That is just like our trying to tell you of Christ. Opening the eyes of faith By merely opening my eyes all the glories of light burst upon me. I take in at a glance the human face or the stretch of magnificent scenery. I gaze across the vast ocean, or, looking up through the night, I grasp millions of worlds and embrace infinitude. What an amazing result from merely opening the eyes and looking up! How often, too, a single incident, the meeting of a particular friend or the encountering of some difficulty or danger, or the gaining of a little information, colours the whole of a man’ s subsequent life--indeed, gives him an entirely different direction and turn. His whole attitude is altered by what occupied but a moment. It is, then, quite in accordance with God’ s arrangement and man’ s world that great things should depend on very simple matters. And the belief that Jesus is the Son of God, though a simple thing, though not a complex, laborious, lengthened operation, is yet the very act most fitted to open the soul for God. It is not labour that is required for the reception of God. It is the feeling of emptiness, and desire to receive. It is trust in God, the belief in His great love. No labour will enable a man to behold the light of the sun or the multitude of the stars, but opening his eyes will. Opening the eyes to God’ s great love in Christ, receiving that marvellous display of God’ s inmost heart, that opens the heart, that brings into true accord with God, that gives a wholly different outlook on the world, that alters a man’ s entire attitude. (J. Leckie, D. D.) The cure of blind Bartimeus Let us therefore review THE OF THE HISTORY BEFORE US--arid endeavour to derive SOME USEFUL FROM IT. One of the characters of our Saviour’ s miracles was publicity. Impostors require secrecy and darkness. Thus He recovered this man before a multitude in the highway, and close to the city of Jericho. Several of our Saviour’ s miracles seem to have been unintentional. Thus it is said, “ As He entered a certain village, there met Him ten men, that were lepers, who stood afar off.” Thus again we read, that “ when He came nigh to the gate of the city of Nain, behold, there was a dead man carried out, the only son of his mother, and she was a widow.” And so here: “ It came to pass, that as He was come nigh unto Jericho, a certain blind man sat by the way-side begging.” You may ask then, Was His finding these objects accidental or designed? Unquestionably, designed. He was not taken by surprise. He saw the end from the beginning. His plan was formed; and He was “ working all things after the counsel of His own will.” Our Saviour is acquainted with all our sins, but He requires us to confess them; He understands all our wants, but He commands us to acknowledge them; He is always graciously affected towards our case, but He would have us properly affected with it ourselves. He knew the desire of this man, but He would know it from him himself; and therefore, when he was come near, He asked him, saying, “ What wilt thou that I shall do unto thee?” So here: as soon as Bartimeus received sight from the Lord Jesus, “ he followed Him in the way, glorifying God.” We may view this two ways. It was first an evidence of the reality and perfection of the cure. In other cases where human skill has removed blindness by couching, the restored orbs cannot be immediately used; light is admitted into them by degrees; the man cannot measure distances, nor judge with accuracy; and he is not fit to be left to himself. But it is said our Lord “ did all things well.” His manner distinguished him--the man saw at once clearly; and was able to conduct himself. Secondly, it was an improvement of the greatness of the mercy. “ I can never,” says he, “ discharge my obligations to such a gracious and almighty Friend. But let me devote myself to His service--let me continually ask, ‘ Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?’” From the narrative thus explained, I would take occasion to bring forward four admonitions. 1. BE THAT YOU ARE ALL IN THE OF --and that without Divine illumination, you are no more qualified for the concerns of the moral world than a blind man is for those of the natural world. 2. BE THAT, WITH REGARD TO THE REMOVAL OF THIS , YOU ARE IN AS HOPEFUL A AS THIS POOR MAN. In all these miracles our blessed Lord holds Himself forth as the all-sufficient helper of sinners. 3. BE TO IMITATE THE OF THIS BLIND BEGGAR, IN CRYING FOR MERCY. And especially let your importunity, like this poor man’ s, appear with regard to two things. First, like him, seize the present moment. Let not the opportunity afforded you be lost by delay. Secondly, like him, be not silenced by discouragement and opposition. 4. If He has healed you!--if you can say, “ One thing I know, that whereas I was blind, now I see.” LIKE , BE CAREFUL TO FOLLOW THE SAVIOUR. This is the best way to evidence your cure. This is also the best way to improve your deliverance. Thus you will “ show forth the praises of Him who hath called you out of darkness into His marvellous light.” Follow Him, then, as an imitator of His example. (W. Jay.) What wilt thou that I shall do unto thee?-- A worshipper questioned All who come to church should come not to keep up an ancient form, do a duty, discharge an obligation, but to meet with Christ. And we do meet with Him (Matthew 18:20). And He asks of each the question in the text. Three classes of replies. 1. The reply of some is, “ Let us alone--leave us.” Diogenes wished Alexander, as the greatest favour he could bestow, to “ stand out of my sunshine.” Christ stands between some men and what they imagine to be sunshine. (1) How ungrateful is such a reply. What pain and grief it must give Him who died to save us. (2) How mad it is. If we could succeed we should have destroyed our only hope--broken the only bridge by which we might return. 2. The reply of others is, “ Lull our consciences to rest.” They want ease, but not holiness, pardon without change of heart. (1) How vain is such a search. Christ’ s offers are always coupled with requirements ( Matthew 11:28-30; Matthew 5:8). (2) How utterly worthless it would be. It would be a sham, and we should know it and despise 2:3. The reply of others is, “ Cleanse, purify, renew us.” Like this man they ask for sight. Like the leper they ask to be made clean. They cry in their doubts and fears, “ I believe; help Thou mine unbelief.” And such never come in vain. Christ meets with them, and though they touch but the hem of His garment, grants, their requests Luke 4:18). (J. Ogle.) Blindness and the blind Much as blind people lose by not having the use of their eyes, they have often made themselves not only useful, but even distinguished. Professor Sanderson, of Cambridge, England, lost his sight when only a year old, but became a great mathematician. Dr. Blackwood was master of Greek, Latin, Italian, and French, and a poet of no mean degree. Dr. Henry Moyes was skilled in geometry, optics, and astronomy, and he could judge very accurately of the size of any room in which he happened to be by the effects of his voice. John Metcalf, an Englishman, was employed first as a wagoner, and afterwards became a surveyor of highways. By the help of a long staff, he would traverse the most difficult mountain roads, and was able to do more than many men accomplish with their eyes open. William Metcalf laid out roads and built bridges. Euler, the mathematician, was blind. John Gough, who was an accurate botanist and zoologist, was also blind. Lord Cranbourne, blind from his childhood, published, a history of France for the young. Huber, who has written such an interesting book about bees, was blind. Homer was blind. The same was true of Ossian and Milton. Zisca, the famous Bohemian general, performed great acts of valour after the loss of his sight. The Rev. J. Crosse, vicar of Bradford, England, was blind, but as he knew the Church service by heart, he was able to conduct public worship with impressiveness and solemnity, only requiring the help of another person to read the lessons for him. (J. N. Norton, D. D.) Spiritual blindness and sight To be vain is to be blind, and to persist in blindness, and in the ignorance of one’ s blindness, and to refuse the opportunities of sight. To be worldly is to be blind; to grope among the dusty ways, the opaque and earthly objects of this lower sphere, contented with their darkness, or expecting light to shine out from it--is to be grossly blind. To be without religion, to look not up above for cheering and guiding light, to seek not the rays of that eternal Sun, which alone can warm and invigorate the soul--that is to be blind. But to be humble is to see. To feel that we are ignorant, that we are weak, that we are poor, and that the darkness within needs illumination from the Light above, and to pray for that illumination is to have our eyes opened, and to see. To receive Jesus as the author and finisher of our faith, to go to Him for the precept and example, the doctrine and direction which we so much need, and which we can obtain from no one but from Him who was sent to us from the Father of lights, is to be cured of our blindness, and to receive our sight. To follow His blessed steps, to write His instructions on the tables of our hearts, to shun all allurements and pass over all obstacles which interfere with the duty of discipleship, is to walk as children of the light and of the day. (F. W. P. Greenwood, D. D.) . Luke 19:1-10A man named Zaccheus.-- Zaccheus the publican I. THE ENTRY. II. A . 1. This curiosity unusual. (1) A rich man anxious to see Jesus. (2) A rich man overcoming hindrance that he might gratify such curiosity. (3) Are there any here anxious to see Jesus? (4) Are you willing to seek Him now? III. A . 1. In the unexpected detection. 2. In the unexpected summons by name. 3. In the unexpected declaration of Jesus. IV. AN UNUSUAL . 1. In its alacrity. 2. In its obedience. 3. In its sincerity. (1) What an example to follow! (2) What blessedness such obedience ever brings! V. AN -FOR . 1. In its spirit. 2. In its argument. VI. A GENUINE . 1. Shown in his implied confession. 2. In his sincere reformation. 3. In the fact of his salvation. VII. THE MISSION AND PURPOSE OF CHRIST. Practical questions: 1. Have you ever desired to see Jesus? 2. Have you ever truly sought to find Jesus? 3. Have you ever believed on Jesus? 4. If not, will you now? (D. C. Hughes, M. A.) The Christian not of the crowd Shall we have no interest in Him? Shall we not desire to see of Him all that we can? We cannot, indeed, with all our endeavours and reaching upward, see His countenance and person, as Zaccheus did, by mounting into a tree; but we may see much more than he did, who saw Him but in the flesh, not yet glorified. We may see Him in spirit, we may behold Him through faith, and in such glory as Zaccheus had not power to conceive. We may have in our hearts the tokens of His presence, and we may receive from Him the earnest of that glory with which He will clothe His people, that they may be like unto Him. But then, again, after they have begun to entertain something like a wish and desire, do not many desist, from the fear of being thought singular, from the dread of appearing unlike other people! They dare not make themselves so conspicuous. And yet what rules of modesty will not people break, what public notice will they not brave, when some attractive spectacle of this world’ s pomp and splendour is to be seen I Then the man of gravity, then the female of delicacy, are seen to make no scruples of mounting up above the heads of the crowd into the most preposterous and ludicrous positions. (R. WEvans, B. D.) The conversion of Zaccheus I. HOW DID HAPPEN TO BE ? He wanted to see Jesus, what sort of a man (τίςἐστιν) He was--a low motive, but it was the salvation of Zaccheus. It is surprising that he should never have seen or heard Jesus, when Jericho was so near Jerusalem, and Jesus was so famous a prophet. The ignorance of intelligent men concerning religion is astonishing. We should encourage people to go to see who Jesus is, pray that they may go, from curiosity if from no higher motive. Taking Zaccheus’ s standpoint, the awakening of his curiosity probably explains how he happened to be converted. From Christ’ s standpoint we get a different view. He had Zaccheus in mind, so it appeared. When He came to the tree and called his name and bade him come down, He said, “ To-day I must abide at thy house.” “ I must.” This was among the events in the fixed, predetermined order of those last solemn days. “ To-day” the seeking sinner and the seeking Saviour were to meet. “ We see from the story,” says Dr. Brown, “ that we may look for unexpected con versions.” II. WHAT ? Suppose he had been asked the question that evening. He would have given different answers. He would have spoken of the influence of Bartimeus, or of Matthew. Again, he would speak of the call of Jesus, the brief, thrilling words, beginning with his own name. Or, in another mood, he would say, “ It was because I heeded, first the voice within, and then that voice Divine. I converted myself. I listened. I came down. I received Him. How fortunate that I took that resolution!” At another time he would emphasize the work of the Holy Spirit. “ I never should have taken the first step, the thought of it would never have lodged in my mind, without some power from without moving me. It was not like me. It was contrary to the whole course of my life. It must have been the work of the Holy Ghost.” So it is in the case of every convert. Each answer would contain a phase of the truth. III. WHEN WAS ? “ Somewhere between the limb and the ground” --Moody. The prodigal was converted when he said, “ I will arise,” Zaccheus when he said, “ I will go down.” There is no interval between surrender and conversion. If Zaccheus had died as he moved to descend, he would have been saved. God does not delay us. He gives when we take. IV. WHAT WERE THE OF THE OF ? 1. He received Christ. Notice that it was Zaccheus who received Christ. We must receive Him before He can receive us (John 1:12). 2. Joyfulness. He received Him joyfully. 3. Zaccheus “ stood.” He made, that is, an open confession. It was harder to do this than to climb the tree. This, every true convert will do Romans 10:6-10). 4. Confession and reformation. (G. R. Leavitt.) The seeker sought I. THE OF . A Hebrew name with a Greek termination, signifying “ pure.” A man may have a noble ancestry and an ignoble calling--a good name and a bad reputation. There is an important difference between a man’ s reputation and a man’ s character. Reputation is what men say about us, character is what a man is. 1. We may learn from this verse something about Zaccheus’ s social standing. “ He was the chief among the publicans.” Some men are exposed to special temptations from the positions they hold. A dishonest calling blunts our finest sensibilities, hardens our heart, and degrades our whole nature. 2. We may learn from this verse something about Zaccheus’ s secular position. “ And he was rich.” II. THE OF . Curiosity, which is commonly regarded as a dangerous disposition, is natural to man, and may be serviceable in the most sacred pursuits. It excites inquiry, it stimulates research, and it leads to the solution of many of the dark problems of life. 1. In this case curiosity awakened an earnest desire to see Jesus. 2. In this case curiosity overcame the difficulties that were in the way of seeing Jesus. III. THE CALLING OF . 1. This was a personal call. Christ not only knew his name, but his nature. He knew the place he occupied, and the thoughts he cherished. 2. This was an urgent call. “ Zaccheus, make haste, and come down.” The coming of Christ is unexpected, and His stay brief. He is passing to-day, and may have passed to-morrow. What we have to do must be done quickly. 3. This was an effectual call. “ And he made haste, and came down.” What a mighty energy there is in the word of Christ! At His word the blind received their sight, and the dead started to life again. IV. THE OF . “ This day is salvation come to thy house.” Personal contact with Christ ensures special blessing from Christ. When Christ is present with us, there will be light in the eye, music in the voice, and gladness in the heart. 1. This was a present salvation. (1) What a marvellous change was wrought in his character! The dishonest man became honest, the selfish man became generous, and the sinful man became righteous. (2) What a glorious change was wrought in his service! Instead of living for self, he began to live for the Saviour; instead of seeking the things of time, he began to seek the things of eternity. 2. This was a practical salvation. “ And Zaccheus stood, and said unto the Lord, Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor.” This is a splendid liberality. He does not give a tenth, not a fifth, but the half. He does not say I will leave at my decease, but I give during my lifetime. When Christ comes to abide in a rich man’ s house, he will open his heart to give to the poor. (J. T. Woodhouse, M. A.) The character of Zaccheus I. THE MAN. 1. His nationality. A Jew. 2. His official position. Chief among the publicans. 3. His financial condition. Rich. As is too often the case, Zaccheus, perhaps, owed his official position more to his purse than his purity--more to what he had than to what he was. From the view I get of Zaccheus, I am not surprised that “ he was rich.” Those who compass chieftancy and riches are the men who know how to step out of the beaten track, and without regard to sneers or criticism, can “ run” and “ climb,” in order to accomplish their object. He possessed certain traits of character which are the secret of success in every department of human endeavour. 1. He was self-reliant. He did not passively rely upon others for his inspiration and resolves. He was a man of originality of thought and purpose--a sort of genius in method and movement. 2. He was prompt and persevering. Zaccheus knew how to handle an opportunity. An old Latin maxim says: “ Opportunity has hair in front, but behind she is bald; if you seize her by the forelock, you may hold her but if suffered to escape, not Jupiter himself can catch her.” By the style of the man, and the fact that his ancestry is not mentioned, I am inclined to think that Zaccheus began life a poor boy. The majority of those who have risen to riches and honour, have come up through the rough regions of toil and poverty, and were not ashamed afterwards to work with their own hands, though possessed of thousands of this world’ s goods. 3. His purpose. “ To see Jesus, who He was.” Why so anxious to “ see” ? why not be content with hearing? There were thousands who had seen Him and formed their opinions as to “ who He was,” and were not backward in telling them. The Pharisee would have told him: “ He is a devil” ; the scribe, “ a fanatic” ; the priest, “ a blasphemer” ; the Rabbi, “ a heretic” ; the poor, “ a prophet” ; the many, “ an impostor” ; the few, a “ God.” Zaccheus could not afford, therefore, to trust to hearsay; and so, like a wise man, he made up his mind to see for himself. He was a good judge of human nature, and could form a pretty correct opinion of a man, by getting a good square look at him. The noblest purpose that can actuate the human heart is expressed in these three little words: “ To see Jesus.” 4. His failure. “ Could not for the press, because he was little.” Here is a man earnestly trying “ to see Jesus,” who is opposed and defeated by obstacles he had no hand in producing, and over which he had no control. (1) “ The press,” and (2) “ Little of stature.” He had no hand in producing either of these, and yet they defeated him. But, was that fair? Has Zaccheus had a fair chance? Whether fair or not, he has had all the chance he will have, unless he makes another. 5. His determination. “ He ran before and climbed into a sycamore.” Here we get an idea of the force and fibre of the man. He did not waste his precious time in upbraiding himself for being “ little,” or finding fault with his surroundings. He simply started off in search of a better vantage ground. No time is more unprofitably spent than that which is used in finding fault with our instruments and surroundings. Zaccheus never would have been “ chief among the publicans, and rich,” if he had not learned to make a virtue out of necessity, and turn even failure into a pedestal from which to reach a grander success. When a man’ s conscious littleness compels him to “ run” and “ climb,” he will master his obstacles and get a better knowledge of things than the men who think they can see all there is to be seen without climbing. In a world like this, where we are all “ little” in so many places, no man will reach the highest success unless he feels his littleness and knows how to “ climb.” Learn from this narrative that all barriers give way before the man who has made up his mind to see Jesus Christ. (T. Kelly.) The conversion of Zaccheus Zaccheus was undoubtedly, up to this time, a worldly, grasping, wicked man; who, though a Hebrew by birth and education, had so far forgotten God, and allowed the love of money to master him, that in his business relations he did not always observe the laws of equity or the principles of righteousness. The impression I get of him from the narrative is, that he was a sharp, shrewd, business man; a man whose judgment in business matters was unusually good, and who, if he did any business at all, would be sure to make money. The love of money, and the conscious power to make it, cannot exist in the same person without great possibilities of evil. Ambition. Rivalry. But though Zaccheus was a grasping, selfish man, yet I am profoundly impressed with his independent spirit and individuality of character. He is a striking illustration of the fact that neither riches nor worldly position can satisfy the cravings of the human soul; and that a ready response is accorded to gospel overtures, sometimes where we least expect it. A mere surface reading of the narrative can give us no adequate idea of the force of character it required to face the tremendous discouragements which Zaccheus had to meet in becoming a follower of Jesus Christ. I notice just two of these:-- 1. He had no character to begin with. His whole environment tended to keep him as he was. The very social atmosphere in which he lived tended to blight every aspiration and hope of becoming a better man. However badly he might act, he had nothing to lose, for he was already an outcast from society. Another serious and humiliating fact which Zaccheus had to face was-- 2. His dishonest business transactions. “ If I have taken anything of any man by false accusation, I restore him fourfold.” That kind of restitution would soon seriously impoverish the bank accounts of some people. It would compel many of our mushroom aristocracy and sky-rocket millionaires to go to the almshouse, or turn their hands to honest labour, and “ earn their bread by the sweat of their brow.” Zaccheus does not use the words, “ If I have taken anything,” as though he were in doubt, and wished to leave a similar doubt on the mind of others. His guilt is clearly implied in his own words. And no person who did not carry the making of a noble Christian character would have made such a declaration would have deliberately entered upon a course of life which, at the very outset, involved the unearthing of a life of fraud and dishonesty, which no doubt no person could have proven, and perhaps of which nobody had the slightest suspicion. Now let us turn to the incident of this memorable day. Notice here-- I. HOW PUSH AND TURN DEFEAT INTO VICTORY. A few moments ago he was completely defeated--“ could not see Jesus” for the “ press.” Now he has a better view of Him than any man in the crowd. So the earnest seeker will always find that the very “ press” of isms and sects and critics that surround the Saviour, and which compel him to “ run and climb,” to think and act for himself, will be the means of securing for him a clearer and more satisfactory view of Jesus Christ than he could have possibly obtained on the ordinary highway of common effort. 1. Observe the movements of Jesus. (1) “ He came to the place,” --He always does. No man ever yet started out with the full purpose to see Jesus Christ and frilled. (2) His method. He “ looked.” 2. Notice the order and significance of the descriptive words in this verse: “ When Jesus came to the place, He looked … and saw … and said.” That is the order of description needed, but, alas, sadly lacking in our churches. We have too many who can look without seeing; they possess so little of the Master’ s spirit that they can pass along the highways of life, and through orchards of sycamores, and never set eyes on a sinner anxious “ to see Jesus.” II. THAT PROMPT, ALWAYS SECURES THE DIVINE AND . 1. The Saviour’ s command. “ Zaccheus, come down.” This command was both startling and unexpected. Zaccheus had no thought of being addressed personally by the Saviour, or of being called upon to come down in the presence of the crowd. In coming in vital contact with Jesus Christ, the seeker always finds new, unexpected things happening; and, like Naaman, is soon made to see that God’ s way is not man’ s. 2. The Saviour’ s perfect knowledge of the seeker. “ Zaccheus, come down.” There is something unutterably precious in the fact that God is intimately acquainted with all our names. No person can assume any attitude of service, or self-sacrifice, or supplication before God, without having his very name associated with the act. “ Zaccheus, come down.” Implying that his character and wants were as well known as his name. 3. The prompt obedience of Zaccheus. The conversion of Zaccheus reached not only his head and his pocket, but it also reached his conscience. No conversion, however loudly proclaimed, will be of any lasting value unless it includes and practically displays a New Testament conscience. (T. Kelly.) Zaccheus a type of the Christ-seeker I. HOW TO SEEK CHRIST, AS BY . 1. We must go in the way along which He appoints us to go. (1) Christ’ s way is that of the sanctuary. (2) Christ’ s way is that of the Holy Scriptures. (3) Christ’ s way is that of the closet. 2. We must go with earnest resolution. Be not deterred by station, connections, business occupation, or fear of abuse or ridicule. 3. We must go in time. There comes a last opportunity to each. It may be to-day. II. WHAT COMES OF SUCH SEEKING OF CHRIST? 1. Christ stops in His course to take note of the seeker. 2. He comes to such homes and blesses them. Where Jesus enters, salvation goes. 3. He makes the seeker’ s heart just and tender. 4. He defends us against persecution. Conclusion-- 1. Have you ever thus sought Christ? 2. What effect has your Christian profession had on your life? (P. C.Croll.) Lessons from this passage From an attentive consideration of the distinct parts of this passage of St. Luke’ s Gospel, we may derive many useful truths and salutary reflections. 1. First, let us, like Zaccheus, have a view to the improvement of our minds in piety and virtue, even in the gratification of curiosity. Instead of flocking, with childish folly, to such trifling amusements as are unworthy of a rational being, we should endeavour to combine pleasure with instruction, and the employment of time with advantage. While thousands would have crowded with joy to see a pageant, a triumph, or the barbarous spectacle of Roman games, “ Zaccheus ran and climbed up into a sycamore tree to see our Lord pass by” ; and when He honoured him so far as to take up His abode with him for that day, he not only received Him joyfully, but, without doubt, listened to His conversation with reverence, and heard the glorious truths which His lips revealed with adoration and praise. “ This day is salvation come to this house.” 2. The hospitality of Zaccheus, and his great satisfaction on this occasion, may direct us also in the choice and entertainment of our friends. The common intercourses of the world are too often nothing but associations of pleasure or confederacies of vice. 3. We may further learn from our blessed Lord’ s conduct towards Zaccheus, to banish from our minds those uncharitable prejudices which so strongly marked the character of the Jews. (J. Hewlett, B. D.) Lessons 1. Let the desire of all of you, in coming up to the house of God, be, like that of Zaccheus, to see Jesus. You may see Him, and should earnestly desire to see Him, by knowledge and faith, in the glories of His person, character, and redemption. If you obtain a sight of Him, and come to know who He is, in this way, you will be like Abraham, who “ rejoiced,” or “ greatly desired,” to see His day, and saw it, and was glad; and the words will then be applicable to you, in their best sense, “ Blessed are your eyes, for they see.” 2. See that those of you who profess to be Christians give the same evidences of conversion as Zaccheus. Remember that repentance is to be judged of, not so much by its terror at the time, as by its permanent effects on the heart and life. You must, like Zaccheus, “ bring forth fruits meet for repentance.” (James Foote, M. A.) He sought to see JesusObstacles The experience of Zaccheus, in his efforts “ to see Jesus,” is a striking illustration of a universal fact in human history. Men are constantly opposed and thwarted, in their efforts to do right, by obstacles and enemies which they never produced. Satan, for instance, is the persistent opposer of all who seek “ to see Jesus Christ.” But man had no hand in producing Satan; he was here before man came, and, for aught I know, here because he saw man coming. You may start out to see Huxley, or Tyndall, or any of the great philosophers or scientists, and Satan will pay no attention to you; but if you start out “ to see Jesus Christ” he will instantly summon his resources, and form a “ press” against you. How persistently he follows the young Christian with the fascinations of the world on the one hand, and the “ press” of discouragements on the other. Then the laws of heredity come in and raise up obstacles, the full power of which our limited knowledge does not enable us to compute. We all take on hereditary damage, of one kind or another, from our ancestry. This, of course, is soon rendered vastly more serious by our own moral behaviour, and the result is a dwarfed, squattish spiritual stature. So that the ordinary “ press” of the world’ s cares and attractions is quite sufficient to shut us out from God and a saving view of Jesus Christ. So Zaccheus found himself defeated. “ Could not.” Mark the descriptive words here: “ Chief,” “ Rich,” “ Could not.” Then chieftancy and riches cannot do everything for a man. Official position and wealth go only a little way in removing the distressing and annoying phases of life. Human power, however commanding and extensive, soon reaches the solid masonry of the impossible, upon which the only thing it can scribble is the little words, “ Could not.” Let us add another descriptive word, and we shall see how it was that Zaccheus failed. “ He was little.” The words “ little” and “ could not” are closely related in human affairs. Every man is “ little “ somewhere--“ little” in spots. No man is fully hemisphered on both sides of his nature. (T. Kelly.) Making an effort to see Jesus The ants are a little people, but they are exceeding wise. People that want size must make up for it by sagacity. A short man up in a tree is really taller than the tallest man who only stands on the ground. Happily for little men, the giants have seldom any great wit. Bigness is not greatness; and yet smallness is in itself no blessing, though it may be the occasion of a man’ s winning one. It is not pleasant to see every one about you a bigger person than yourself. And this is a sight many do see who are not dwarfs in stature. But Zaccheus was a dwarf in stature; and, notwithstanding, had become a man of consideration. But they called him “ Zacchy,” or even “ little Zacchy” sometimes no doubt; and, rich as he was, and firm hold as he had on many people, he was far from happy. Though small, he was strong; but then, though strong, he was sour. He despised the religious people, and yet did not like to be despised by them. Many men knew he was cleverer than they, but they never forgot he was shorter! This man could not come at Jesus for the press. Though not a blind man, he had his difficulties in seeing. But he would very much like to see Jesus, what kind of man He was. People pointed him out, and said, “ That’ s Zaccheus; isn’ t he a little fellow?” The short man felt a curiosity as to the personal appearance of the famous Prophet. We may be sure Zaccheus had heard good things of Jesus Christ. And he was soon to hear good words from Him, words more healing, more fragrant, than the Jericho balsams. Zaccheus had gone on before. You must get at your tree before you can climb it! He makes haste, runs, climbs, for he is very eager in this business; and he not only sees Jesus, but, what is much better, is seen by Him. If a man looks for God, God knows that he is looking. He that seeks is sought. Take trouble to win a blessing harder for you to get than for others, and you shall have one bestowed on you better than you sought for. (T. T. Lynch.) Difficulties overcome We have all read and heard of the “ pursuit of knowledge under difficulties,” and of the remarkable way in which these have often been overcome. The shepherd, with no apparatus save his thread and beads, has lain on his back on the starry night, mapped the heavens, and unconsciously become a distinguished astronomer. The peasant boy, with no tools save his rude knife, and a visit now and then to a neighbouring town, has begun his scientific education by producing a watch that could mark the time. The blind man, trampling upon impossibilities, has explored the economy of the beehive, and, more wondrous still, lectured on the laws of light. The timid stammerer, with pebbles in his mouth, and the roar of the sea-surge in his ear, has attained the correctest elocution, and swayed as one man the changeful tides of the mighty masses of the Athenian democracy. All these were expedients to master difficulties. And now notice the expedient which Zaccheus adopts to overcome his difficulties. Yonder, in the way where Jesus is to pass, is a sycamore-tree. It stands by the wayside. Its roots are thick and numerous, its girth is ample, its wide-spread arms may be called gigantic, its leaf resembles the mulberry, its fruit is like that of the fig--indeed it is a member of the fig family. An itinerant preacher in the backwoods once puzzled himself and his hearers with an elaborate criticism about this tree. He and his audience were familiar only with the sycamore of their fiat river bottoms, which are tall as a steeple, and smooth as hypocrisy. “ Why,” said the orator, “ a squirrel can’ t climb them,” and the conclusion reached was that the sycamore must have been a mulberry tree. But Dr. Thomson, who retails this anecdote, assures us that the sycamore is every way adapted to the purposes for which Zaccheus used it, for he saw one in which were a score of boys and girls, who could easily look down aport any crowd passing beneath. Zaccheus fixes his eye upon the sycamore in the distance. If he were upon one of its branches his object would be gained; but then he is not a boy. Besides, he is a rich man, and the chief amongst the publicans, and what will the people say if he climbs it to see Jesus of Nazareth? Yea, what will the boys say and do, who are perhaps on the tree already? There is a struggle going on within his bosom, but there is not a single moment to lose, for Jesus is coming. Regardless of what others may say, he beeches like a boy again; he runs to the tree and climbs it. (Dr. McAuslane.) Zaccheus, make haste and come downOur Saviour’ s visit to Zaccheus Our Saviour for the first time invited Himself to a man’ s house. Thus He proved the freeness and authority of His grace. “ I am found of them that sought Me not” (Isaiah 65:1.) We ought rather to invite Him to our houses. We should at least cheerfully accept His offer to come to us. Perhaps at this hour He presses Himself upon us. Yet we may feel ourselves quite as unlikely to entertain our Lord as Zaccheus seemed to be. He was a man-- 1. In a despised calling--a publican, or tax-collector. 2. In bad odour with respectable folk. 3. Rich, with the suspicion of getting his wealth wrongly. 4. Eccentric, for else he had hardly climbed a tree. 5. Excommunicated because of his becoming a Roman tax- gatherer. 6. Not at all the choice of society in any respect. To such a man Jesus came; and He may come to us even if we are similarly tabooed by our neighbours, and are therefore disposed to fear that He will pass us by. I. LET US THE WHICH PRESSED UPON THE SAVIOUR TO ABIDE IN THE HOUSE OF . He felt an urgent need of-- 1. A sinner who needed and would accept His mercy. 2. A person who would illustrate the sovereignty of His choice. 3. A character whose renewal would magnify His grace. 4. A host who would entertain Him with hearty hospitality. 5. A case which would advertise His gospel (Luke 19:9; Luke 10:1-42). II. LET US INQUIRE WHETHER SUCH A EXISTS IN TO . We can ascertain this by answering the following questions, which are suggested by the behaviour of Zaccheus to our Lord:-- 1. Will we receive Him this day? “ He made haste.” 2. Will we receive Him heartily? “ Received Him joyfully.” 3. Will we receive Him whatever others say? “ They all murmured.” 4. Will we receive Him as Lord? “ He said, Behold, Lord.” 5. Will we receive Him so as to place our substance under the control of His laws? (Verse 8.) If these things be so, Jesus must abide with us. He cannot fail to come where He will have such a welcome. III. LET US FULLY WHAT THAT . If the Lord Jesus comes to abide in our house-- 1. We must be ready to face objections at home. 2. We must get rid of all in our house which would be objectionable to Him. Perhaps there is much there which He would never tolerate. 3. We must admit none who would grieve our heavenly Guest. His friendship must end our friendship with the world. 4. We must let Him rule the house and ourselves, without rival or reserve, henceforth and for ever. 5. We must let Him use us and ours as instruments for the further spread of His kingdom. (C. H. Spurgeon.) God calls men dawn I. NOTICE SOME OF THE HEIGHTS FROM WHICH GOD’ S PEOPLE ARE FETCHED DOWN BY THAT GOSPEL. 1. High thoughts of self-importance (2 Corinthians 10:4-5). 2. Natural efforts, or legal endeavours (Romans 10:3). 3. From the basis of false hopes (Job 8:13). 4. From carnal confidence (Jeremiah 2:37). 5. From vain apologies for sin. II. THEIR IN COMING DOWN. 1. In spiritual consideration (Psalms 119:59). 2. In deep anxiety for salvation (.Acts 16:30). 3. In despair of salvation but by God (Jeremiah 3:23). 4. In gracious resolutions (Luke 15:18). 5. To self-denying practices (Matthew 16:24). 6. To God’ s righteousness (Romans 3:21). III. SOME REMARKS ON THE DAY OF . 1. It is our new birth-day (Isaiah 43:1). 2. A day of despatch--Come down (Hebrews 3:15). 3. Of love and kindness (Ezekiel 16:6). 4. Of union between Christ and the soul (Hosea 2:20). IV. REASONS WHY THE LORD CALLS US DOWN. 1. Because it is God’ s design in the Gospel (Isaiah 2:11-17). 2. Because ascending too high is very dangerous. 3. That free grace may be exalted. 4. That we may meet with Christ (Isaiah 57:16). :-- 1. How high and lofty man is in his natural state. 2. Hence God humbles him for his eternal good. 3. The nature of true faith is coming down. 4. Admire the riches of God’ s grace towards us. (T. B. Baker.) Christ’ s words to Zaccheus I shall give you a division which you will not be able to forget, or if you do forget it, you will have nothing to do but simply to turn to the Bible, and look at the text, and the punctuation will give you the heads. I. Look, then, at the first word, “ .” Christ addresses this man by name; He saw him before he went up into the sycamore, and he had not been long there when He called out to him, “ Make haste and come down.” Oh! but some people say that ministers have no business to be so personal. Well, my friends, they are very unlike their Master, the great model Preacher, if they are not personal. II. Take the next two words for our second head--“ MAKE HASTE.” We are told in the sequel that Zaccheus did not halt between two opinions, but came down quickly and received Christ joyfully. If you, my unconverted hearer, will listen to me, what I wish to say to you is this--make haste and come to Jesus, for you will never find a more favourable opportunity than the present. Wait ten thousands, years, and your sins will not be fewer; God’ s mercy will not be greater. The fool who, wishing to cross a river, lay down on its bank till the water would run past, is only a faint emblem of you, if you delay. “ Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation.” That clock says “ now” ; this pulse says “ now” ; this heart says “ now.” The glorified in heaven and the lost in hell, the one by their songs, the other by their wails, together cry, “ Make haste.” But, once more, make haste, for your salvation may soon become extremely difficult. Sin is like a fire, it may soon be quenched if the cold water engines are brought to play upon it in time; but let it burn on a few hours, and perhaps a city is laid in ashes. Sin is like a river, the further from the fountain-head the greater the volume, the more rapid and irresistible the current. Sin is like a tree: look at your sapling, your infant’ s arm may bend it: let a few years pass away, a few summers shine upon it, and a few winters blow upon it, and that tree will hurl defiance at the loudest storm. So with the sinner: he gets accustomed to all the appeals, and becomes gospel proof. Again, make hasten your salvation may become extremely difficult, if not altogether impossible. Man is a bundle of habit, and habit becomes second nature. You ask, “ How long may a man live on in sin, and yet be saved?” I reply, Do not try the experiment--it is a very dangerous one. “ Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved.” Make haste, and learn that He has suffered for you what you deserved as a sinner, and obeyed for you what you owed as a creature. This may be your last opportunity. III. Look, now, at the last three words, and you will find our third head: “ AND COME DOWN.” Zaccheus was upon one of the many branches of the sycamore; and you, my unsaved friend, are upon one of the many branches of the great, mighty-spreading, world-embracing tree of human corruption, and I call upon you in the name of my Master to “ come down.” Now, I wish to be charitable, but I do solemnly declare that I cannot find the branch of atheism, even on the tree of human corruption. At all events, if there be such a branch, I hesitate not to say it is the rottenest one on the whole tree. Come down from it! Then there are other branches: scepticism, drunkenness, pride, etc. (W. Anderson.) Effectual calling 1. Now, first, effectual calling is A VERY TRUTH. You may guess this from the fact that Zaccheus was a character whom we should suppose the last to be saved. He belonged to a bad city--Jericho--a city which had been cursed, and no one would suspect that any one would come out of Jericho to be saved. Ah! my brethren, it matters not where you come from: you may come from one of the dirtiest streets, one of the worst back slums in London, but if effectual grace call you, it is an effectual call, which knoweth no distinction of place. But, my brethren, grace knows no distinction; it is no respecter of persons, but God calleth whom He wills, and He called this worst of publicans, in the worst of cities, from the worst of trades. Ah! many of you have climbed up the tree of your own good works, and perched yourselves in the branches of your holy actions, and are trusting in the free will of the poor creature, or resting in some worldly maxim; nevertheless, Christ looks up even to proud sinners, and calls them down. 2. Next it was a personal call. 3. It is a hastening call--“ Zaccheus, make haste.” God’ s grace always comes with despatch; and if thou art drawn by God, thou wilt run after God, and not be talking about delays. 4. Next, it is a humbling call. “ Zaccheus, make haste and come down.” God always humbles a sinner. Oh, thou that dwellest with the eagle on the craggy rock, thou shalt come down from thy elevation; thou shalt fall by grace, or thou shalt fall with a vengeance, one day. He “ hath cast down the mighty from their seat, and hath exalted the humble and meek.” 5. Next, it is an affectionate call. “ To-day I must abide in thy house.” 6. Again, it was not only an affectionate call, but it was an abiding call. “ To-day I must abide at thy house.” When Christ speaks, He does not say, “ Make haste, Zaccheus, and come down, for I am just coming to look in” ; but “ I must abide in thy house; I am coming to sit down to eat and drink with thee; I am coming to have a meal with thee.” 7. It was also a necessary call. “ I must abide.” It is necessary that the child of God should be saved. I don’ t suppose it; I know it for a certainty. If God says “ I must,” there is no standing against it. Let Him say “ must,” and it must be. 8. And, now, lastly, this call was an effectual one, for we see the fruits it brought forth. Open was Zaccheus’ s door; spread was his table; generous was his heart; washed were his hands; unburdened was his conscience; joyful was his soul. Sinner, we shall know whether God calls you by this: if He calls, it will be an effectual call--not a call which you hear, and then forget, but one which produces good works. (C. H. Spurgeon.) He was gone to be guest with a man that is a sinnerThe sinner’ s Saviour The old contempt of the sinner’ s Saviour lingers in the world still. In one way or other the charge is repeated, that Christianity is too lenient to the sinner, that it tends to discourage the naturally amiable and virtuous, and looks too favourably upon the vicious and disreputable, etc. How easily could we turn the tables upon these slanderers, for usually those who talk thus have but a scanty supply of morals and virtues themselves. I. WE ADMIT THE TRUTH OF THE CHARGE. Jesus did go to be guest to a man that was a sinner, and did so not only once, but as often as He saw need. He went after the sheep which had gone astray, and He had a wonderful attraction for the disreputable classes. 1. The object of Christ, and the design of the gospel, is the saving of sinners. 2. Our Lord does actually call sinners into the fellowship of the gospel. 3. The man Christ Jesus does very readily come to be guest with a man who is a sinner, for He stands on no ceremony with sinners, but makes Himself at home with them at once. 4. Our Lord goes further, for He not only stands on no ceremony with sinners, but within a very little time He is using those very sinners who had been so unfit for any holy service--using them in His most hallowed work. Note how He makes Zaccheus to be His host. 5. Ay, and the Lord favoured Zaccheus, the sinner, by granting him that day full assurance of salvation. II. WE DENY THE WHICH IS BY THE CHARGE brought against our Lord. Jesus is the friend of sinners, but not the friend of sin. 1. Christ was guest with a man that was a sinner, but He never flattered a sinner yet. 2. Neither does the Lord Jesus screen sinners from that proper and wholesome rebuke which virtue must always give to vice. 3. Again, it is not true, as I have heard some say, that the gospel makes pardon seem such a very easy thing, and therefore sin is thought to be a small matter. 4. Nor, though Christ be the friend of sinners, is it true that He makes men think lightly of personal character. 5. It has been said that if we tell men that good works cannot save them, but that Jesus saves the guilty who believe in Him, we take away all motives for morality and holiness. We meet that again by a direct denial: it is not so, we supply the grandest motive possible, and only remove a vicious and feeble motive. III. WE REJOICE IN THE VERY FACT WHICH HAS BEEN TO, that Jesus Christ comes to be guest with men who are sinners. 1. We rejoice in it, because it affords hope to ourselves. 2. We rejoice that it is true, because this affords us hope for all our fellowmen. 3. We rejoice that this is the fact, because when we are waiting for the Lord it cheers us up with the hope of fine recruits. I remember a sailor, who before conversion used to swear, and I warrant you he would rattle it out, volley after volley. He became converted, and when he prayed it was much in the same fashion. How he woke everybody up the first time he opened his mouth at the prayer-meeting! The conversion of a great sinner is the best medicine for a sick Church. (C. H. Spurgeon.) The half of my goods I give to the poorGifts to the poor He gives half his goods to the poor. Was he under any obligation to do so? are we? Certainly not: nor to give half our time, or half our thought. But there have been men who have given the chief part of their time and thought to the poor: and as there are so many who give the poor none of their time, or thought, or money, is it not well that there should be a few otherwise minded? Is money more precious than time and thought that a man should not give that, if so inclined? Zaccheus was so inclined. And were a man in our day to spend half his fortune in promoting the comfort, education, health, virtue, and piety of the poor, would not his name be fragrant both in earth and heaven? But there are very many people who cannot give half their goods to the poor, for they have not as yet secured half enough for the wants of their own household. Let these, then, give time and thought. (T. T. Lynch.) Doing good promptly Zaccheus saith not, “ I have given,” as an upbraider of God; or, “ I will give,” as a delayer that means to give away his goods after his death, when he can keep them no longer; but he saith, “ I give,” to signify that his will is his deed, and that he meaneth Dot to take any days of payment for the matter; for as before he ran apace to see Christ, and came down hastily to entertain Christ in his own person, so doth he here give quickly to relieve Christ in his needy members. This is Zaccheus’ s last will and testament that he maketh before his death, and seeth the same proved and performed before his eyes. If, therefore, we desire to do any good to any of our poor brethren, let us learn of Zaccheus to do it quickly while we are alive, for time will prevent us, and death will prevent us. (H. Smith.) I restore him fourfoldThe duty of restitution I. THE OF THIS DUTY. 1. The nature of justice, which consists in rendering to every one what belongs to him. 2. Holy Scripture (Exodus 22:1-31.; Leviticus 6:1-30.; Numbers 5:1-31.). 3. Restitution is a duty so indispensable, that without it there is no salvation. Tell me, can we be in a slate of salvation, when we have no love to God, and no love to our neighbour? But the man who refuses to make restitution loves not God, for he despises His laws and tramples upon His authority; nor does he love his neighbour, for he voluntarily persists in wronging him, and withholding from him his rights. II. WHAT IS FOR THE OF THIS DUTY? 1. We must examine with care whether we have ever wronged our neighbour, and in how many modes we have done it. Allege not for your excuse, example, custom, the necessity of acting like others. All this is of no avail now in the sight of the Omniscient--will be of no avail hereafter at the bar of God. 2. Restitution should be prompt. “ I will, at some future time, make restitution.” But when? You as yet know not the time, and perhaps it may never arrive. 3. Restitution must be full and entire. Fearful lest he should not fully recompense them, his generous heart makes the resolution, and his piety is ready instantly to execute it. In view of this subject I remark-- 1. How small is the number of those who are saved! We know that thousands of frauds are daily committed, and yet how few acts of restitution do we witness! 2. What great discoveries shall be made at the day of judgment. 3. This subject teaches us the nature of true religion. It consists in benevolence to man as well as love to God, and assures us that without the former we can never exercise the latter. 4. This subject should lead us to avoid the very beginning of sin, and to pay the most scrupulous attention to the duties of truth and justice. Thus we shall be prevented from defrauding our fellow-men; thus, if necessity ever requires it, we shall be able easily to make full restitution. 5. Show by your conduct, ye who have in any degree defrauded your fellow-men, that you feel the force of conscience and the truth of God; imitate Zaccheus, and make restitution. (S. K. Kolloch, M. A.) Restitution The duty which the Christian world needs to learn over again, just now, is the duty of malting restitution for wrong-doings. Shame is not enough; remorse is not enough; confession is not enough; there must also be restitution. It is a melancholy and mortifying fact, that we often meet with men of the world, making no claim to being religious, whose honour and integrity put to shame the hollow pretensions of nominal Christians. When the chief councillor of Sultan Selymus advised him to bestow the marvellous wealth which he had taken from the Persian merchants upon some charitable hospital, the dying Turk answered that God would never be pleased with such an offering, and commanded that the spoils should be restored to the owners. I. Restitution should be PROMPT. Dr. Finney, in his interesting autobiography, tells of a young woman, the only child of a widow, who once came to him in great distress. She had stolen, whenever she could, various trinkets, etc., from her schoolmates, and desired his advice as to what she ought to do. He told her that she must make restitution, and also confess her sin to those whom she had wronged. This, of course, was a great trial, but her repentance was so sincere, that she began at once to follow his advice. As she went on with the mortifying task, she remembered more and more; some persons to whom she made restitution saying, “ She must be crazy, or a fool,” while others were deeply touched. They all readily forgave her. The unhappy girl had stolen a shawl from Bishop Hobart’ s daughter, and when her spiritual adviser insisted on its being returned, she folded it in a paper, rung the bell at the bishop’ s door, and handed the parcel to the servant, without a word of explanation. Conscience whispered that she had not done her whole duty, and that somebody might be wrongfully suspected. She immediately went back to the house, and asked for the bishop. She was shown into his study, and told him all the truth. The good bishop, with all his impulsiveness and warmth of heart, wept aloud, and laying his hand on her head, prayed God to forgive her, as he did. Restitution was now made, and her peace was full and complete. The young woman became a devout Christian, adorning the doctrine of God our Saviour by a blameless, useful life, and, at a ripe old age, entered upon her everlasting inheritance. II. Restitution should not only be prompt, BUT FULL AND ENTIRE. Halfway measures will serve no good purpose. It would be as well to keep back the whole of ill-gotten gains, as a part. (J. N. Norton, D. D.) The nature of restitution I. For the ACT. Restitution is nothing else but the making reparation or satisfaction to another for the injuries we have done him. It is to restore a man to the good condition from which, contrary to right and to our duty, we have removed him. II. For the latitude and extent of the object, as I may call it, or THE MATTER ABOUT WHICH IT IS . It extends to all kind of injuries, which may be reduced to these two heads; either we injure a person with or without his consent. 1. Some injuries are done to persons with their consent. Such are most of those injuries which are done to the souls of men, when we command, or counsel, or encourage them to sin, or draw them in by our example. 2. Injuries are done to persons without their consent. And these, though they are not always the greatest mischiefs, yet they are the greatest injuries. And these injuries are done either by fraud and cunning, or by violence and oppression: either by overreaching another man in wit, or overbearing him by power. III. As to the manner HOW IS TO BE MADE. 1. Thou art bound to do it voluntarily, and of thy own accord, though the person injured do not know who it was that did him the injury, though he do not seek reparation by law. 2. Thou must do it in kind, if the thing be capable of it, and the injured party demand it. Thou must restore the very thing which thou hadst deprived thy neighbour of, if it be such a thing as can be restored, and be still in thy power, unless he voluntarily accept of some other thing in exchange. 3. If thou canst not restore it in kind, thou art bound to restore it in value, in something that is as good. As for spiritual injuries done to the souls of men, we are bound to make such reparation and compensation as we can. Those whom we have drawn into sin, and engaged in wicked courses, by our influence and example, we are to endeavour by our instruction and counsel to reclaim them from those sins we led them into, and “ to recover them out of the snare of the devil.” IV. AS TO THE MEASURE AND OF THE WE ARE TO MAKE. Zaccheus here offers fourfold, which was much beyond what any law required in like cases. 1. Where restitution can be made in kind, or the injury can be certainly valued, we are to restore the thing or the value. 2. We are bound to restore the thing with the natural increase of it; that is, to satisfy for the loss sustained in the meantime, and the gain hindered. 3. Where the thing cannot be restored, and the value of it is not certain, we are to give reasonable satisfaction, that is, according to a middle estimation; not the highest nor the lowest of things of the kind. 4. We are at least to give by way of restitution what the law would give, for that is generally equal, and in most cases rather favourable than rigorous. 5. A man is not only bound to restitution for the injury which he did, but for all that directly follows upon his injurious act, though it were beyond his intention. (Archbishop Tillotson.) On restitution I shall speak to you at large concerning the necessity of restitution, and the obligations to it; because when this point is established, the performance of it speedily and completely will appear to be unquestionable parts of this duty. I say that we are obliged to restitution--first, as we are men, by the law of nature. It is an original law, graven on the hearts of all men, that every man ought to possess, and have the undisturbed use of his own proper goods. Now, can any acquisition, which was unjust in the moment wherein it was made, become just, and a man’ s rightful property, in succeeding moments? Can it be lawful to keep what it was unlawful to take? Therefore restitution is the only method by which these disorders can be repaired; and it is indispensably necessary on natural principles. But his natural honesty was further instructed on this point by the revealed law. Considered as a Jew, he was under an additional obligation by the law of Moses. For the Levitical law regulated exactly the proportions in which restitution was to be made in different cases; as, “ five oxen for an ox, and four sheep for a sheep.” To this argument may be added that which arises from the example of holy men under the Old Covenant, whose conscience would not suffer them to retain goods obtained unjustly, and who considered the law of restitution as sacred and inviolable. Among which examples, that of Samuel is remarkable, in the eleventh chapter of his first book: “ And Samuel said unto all Israel, Behold, I am old and grey-headed.” Zaccheus thought himself bound to restitution on a third principle--as a penitent, by the conditions of repentance. There is, in one respect, a remarkable difference betwixt robbery and most other sins. The crime of the latter may pass away, and be cancelled, upon our sincere repentance, and prayers for the Divine forgiveness; but the crime of the former continues as long as we retain the fruits of it in our hands. Does any man think of presenting his robberies to God and to His Church? Many persons, I fear (in former times particularly), have sought to make this impious exchange, pretending to give unto God what they had stolen from their neighbour. Besides this general engagement to make restitution, as a penitent, by the conditions of repentance, Zaccheus found himself under a fourth--and that a particular obligation, derived from the nature of his occupation, as a publican; that is, a collector of the tribute which the Jews paid to the Romans. Thus it is, that a reformed Christian, or one converted to Christianity, must begin the exercise of his religion. And it is in this fifth view that I consider Zaccheus making restitution; namely, as a proselyte, or convert to Jesus Christ. The Divine grace had now touched his heart, and inspired him with a resolution to break those bonds of iniquity in which he had been holden, and to qualify himself for that forgiveness which Christ offers to sinners only on this condition. Enough has been said, I trust, to show the necessity of restitution. A few words will be sufficient to show that it ought to be performed speedily and completely. I am willing (says one) to restore even at present; but I must be allowed to compound the matter: I cannot resign the whole, but I am ready to give up a part. This is the last mistake and fault which the example of Zaccheus condemns and corrects, when he declares, “ I restore fourfold.” Now, this surplus, is it justice, or liberality? It partakes of both. For it is just to restore beyond the exact amount; because, besides the lawful interest of his money which our neighbour has been deprived of, every robbery occasions some inconvenience and detriment that cannot be completely repaired by a mere restitution of the things taken. It is better, therefore, to exceed than fall short. (S. Partridge, M. A.) Restitution must be made Hundreds of thousands of dollars have been sent to Washington during the past few years as “ conscience money.” I suppose that money was sent by men who wanted to be Christians, but found they could not until they made restitution. There is no need of our trying to come to Christ as long as we keep fraudulently a dollar or a farthing in our possession that belongs to another. Suppose you have not money enough to pay your debts, and, for the sake of defrauding your creditors, you put your property in your wife’ s name. You might cry until the day of judgment for pardon, but you would not get it without first making restitution. In times of prosperity it is right, against a rainy day, to assign property to your wife; but if, in time of perplexity, and for the sake of defrauding your creditors, you make such assignment, you become a culprit before God, and may as well stop praying until you have made restitution. Or suppose one man loans another money on bonds and mortgage, with the understanding that the mortgage can lie quiet for several years, but as soon as the mortgage is given, commences foreclosure--the sheriff mounts the auction-block, and the property is struck down athalf-price, and the mortgagee buys it in. The mortgagee started to get the property at half-price: and is a thief and a robber. Until he makes restitution, there is no mercy for him. Suppose you sell goods by a sample, and then afterward send to your customer an inferior quality of goods. You have committed a fraud, and there is no mercy for you until you have made restitution. Suppose you sell a man a handkerchief for silk, telling him it is all silk, and it is part cotton. No mercy for you until you have made restitution. Suppose you sell a man a horse, saying he is sound, and he afterward turns out to be spavined and balky. No mercy for you until you have made restitution. (De W. Talmage, D. D.) Restitution The Rev. B. Sawday was about eighteen years since in the wellknown establishment of Messrs. Hitchcock, St. Paul’ s Churchyard. A silver watch was stolen from his bedroom, and no trace could be discovered of the missing property. Ten years passed away. About four years since he preached a startling discourse upon repentance and restitution. His words evidently made a deep impression upon the hearers. During the ensuing week a young man came up to Mr. Sawday requesting an interview. In a few words the young man said, “ It was I who stole your watch, some years since, at Messrs. Hitchcock’ s. I am very sorry, and I am deeply, anxious to settle the matter. Here, I’ ll give you £10 to squash it. I was passing your chapel last Sunday, and saw your name; I thought I would go in and hear you, and your sermon broke me all to pieces; I have been wretched and miserable ever since.” “ Thank God! “ said Mr. Sawday. “ No,” he added, “ I cannot take £10; the watch was only worth £4: I’ ll take that; but I’ m far more anxious that you should confess your sin to God, and obtain His pardon and grace.” “ That,” quietly added the man, “ I have sought, and I believe obtained.” One of Mr. Sawday’ s deacons was greatly troubled about the very plain speech of the pastor in regard to this very address, and expressed his fear that such preaching would drive people away from the chapel. The good man, however, was silenced by the sequel. (Henry Varley.) Restitution necessary to peace Some years ago, in the north of England, a woman came to one of the meetings, and appeared to be very anxious about her soul. For some time she did not seem to be able to get peace. The truth was, she was covering up one thing she was not willing to confess. At last the burden was too great; and she said to a worker, “ I never go down on my knees to pray, but a few bottles of wine keep coming up before my mind.” It appeared that, years before, when she was house keeper, she had taken some bottles of wine belonging to her employer. The worker said: “ Why do you not make restitution?” The woman replied that the man was dead; and besides, she did not know how much it was worth. “ Are there any heirs living to whom you can make restitution?” She said there was a son living at some distance; but she thought it would be a very humiliating thing, so she kept back for some time. At last she felt as if she must have a clear conscience at any cost; so she took the train, and went to the place where the son of her employer resided. She took five pounds with her; she did not know exactly what the wine was worth, but that would cover it, at any rate. The man said he did not want the money; but she replied, “ I do not want it; it has burnt my pocket long enough.” (D. L. Moody.) Evidences of true conversion I. When the gospel is cordially received and fully embraced, it subdues a man’ s ruling sin. II. Evidence of Christian character is to be sought, not so much in what a man says, as in what he does. III. On the disposal of property, there is a wide difference between the opinions of men and the instructions of Jesus Christ. (Chas. Walker.) Triumph over hindrances I. THE OF were twofold: partly circumstantial-partly personal. Partly circumstantial, arising from his riches and his profession of a publican. Now the publican’ s profession exposed him to temptations in these three ways. First of all in the way of opportunity. A publican was a gatherer of the Roman public imposts. Not, however, as now, when all is fixed, and the government pays the gatherer of the taxes. The Roman publican paid so much to the government for the privilege of collecting them; and then indemnified himself, and appropriated what overplus he could, from the taxes which he gathered. There was, therefore, evidently a temptation to overcharge, and a temptation to oppress. To overcharge, because the only redress the payer of the taxes had was an appeal to law, in which his chance was small before a tribunal where the judge was a Roman, and the accuser an official of the Roman government. A temptation to oppress, because the threat of law was nearly certain to extort a bribe. Besides this, most of us must have remarked that a certain harshness of manner is contracted by those who have the rule over the poor. They come in contact with human souls only in the way of business. They have to do with their ignorance, their stupidity, their attempts to deceive; and hence the tenderest-hearted men become impatient and apparently unfeeling. Another temptation was presented: to live satisfied with a low morality. The standard of right and wrong is eternal in the heavens--unchangeably one and the same. But here on earth it is perpetually variable--it is one in one age or nation, another in another. Every profession has its conventional morality, current nowhere else. Among publicans the standard would certainly be very low. Again, Zaccheus was tempted to that hardness in evil which comes from having no character to support. The personal hindrance to a religious life lay in the recollection of past guilt. Zaccheus had done wrong, and no fourfold restitution will undo that, where only remorse exists. II. Pass we on to THE TRIUMPH OVER . In this there is man’ s part, and God’ s part. Man’ s part in Zaccheus’ case was exhibited in the discovery of expedients. The Redeemer came to Jericho, and Zaccheus desired to see that blessed Countenance, whose very looks, he was told, shed peace upon restless spirits and fevered hearts. But Zaccheus was small of stature, and a crowd surrounded Him. Therefore he ran before, and climbed up into a sycamore-tree. You must not look on this as a mere act of curiosity. They who thronged the steps of Jesus were a crowd formed of different materials from the crowd which would have been found in the amphitheatre. He was there as a religious Teacher or Prophet; and they who took pains to see Him, at least were the men who looked for salvation in Israel. This, therefore, was a religious act. Then note further, the expedients adopted by Zaccheus after he had seen and heard Jesus. The tendency to the hardness and selfishness of riches he checked by a rule of giving half away. The tendency to extortion he met by fastening on himself the recollection, that when the hot moment of temptation had passed away, he would be severely dealt with before the tribunal of his own conscience, and unrelentingly sentenced to restore fourfold. God’ s part in this triumph over difficulties is exhibited in the address of Jesus: “ Zaccheus, make haste and come down; for to-day I must abide at thy house.” Two things we note here: invitation and sympathy. Invitation--“ come down.” Say what we will of Zaccheus seeking Jesus, the truth is Jesus was seeking Zaccheus. For what other reason but the will of God had Jesus come to Jericho, but to seek Zaccheus and such as he? We do not seek God--God seeks us. There is a Spirit pervading time and space who seek the souls of men. At last the seeking becomes reciprocal--the Divine Presence is felt afar, and the soul begins to turn towards it. Then when we begin to seek God, we become conscious that God is seeking us. It is at that period that we distinguish the voice of personal invitation--“ Zaccheus!” Lastly, the Divine part was done in sympathy. By sympathy we commonly mean little more than condolence. If the tear start readily at the voice of grief, and the purse-strings open at the accents of distress, we talk of a man’ s having great sympathy. This entry is longer than a Bible module can hold. The rest is at https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/bi/ Luke 19:11-27A certain nobleman went into a far country Parable of the pounds I. CHRIST’ S ABSENCE IS A PERIOD OF . II. THE NATURE OF THE IS TWOFOLD. 1. The obligation to loyalty involved in Christ’ s king ship and our citizenship. 2. The obligation to fidelity involved in Christ’ s lordship, and our service and trust. III. CHRIST’ S RETURN WILL BE THE OF ACCOUNT AND . (J. R. Thomson, M. A.) Parable of the pounds I. IN CHRIST’ S KINGDOM THE FEATURE IS SERVICE. Instead of fostering a spirit of self-seeking, Christ represents Himself as placing in the hands of each of His subjects a small sum,--a “ pound” only, a Greek mina. What a rebuke to ambitious schemes! There is nothing suggestive of display, nothing to awaken pride. All that is asked or expected is fidelity to a small trust, a conscientious use of a little sum committed to each for keeping. This is made the condition and test of membership in Messiah’ s kingdom. II. IN CHRIST’ S KINGDOM SERVICE, HOWEVER SLIGHT, IS SURE OF REWARD. The faithful use of one pound brought large return. Christ asks that there be employed for Him only what has been received from Him. Augustine prayed, “ Give what Thou requirest, and require what Thou wilt.” “ Natural gifts,” says Trench, “ are as the vessel which may be large or small, and which receives according to its capacity, but which in each case is filled: so that we are not to think of him who received the two talents as incompletely furnished in comparison with him who received the five, any more than we should affirm a small circle incomplete as compared with a large. Unfitted he might be for so wide a sphere of labour, but altogether as perfectly equipped for that to which he was destined.” The parable sets before us the contrasted results of using, or failing to use for Christ, a small bestowment. When this is faithfully employed, the reward, though delayed, is sure. III. IN CHRIST’ S KINGDOM, FAILURE TO SERVE, RESULTS IN LOSS OF TO SERVE. One servant neglected to use his pound, and, on the king’ s return, the unused gift was taken from him. This denotes no arbitrary enactment. The heart that refuses to love and serve Christ loses by degrees the capacity for such love and service. This is the soul’ s death, the dying and decaying of its noblest faculties, its heaven-born instincts and aspirations. IV. IN CHRIST’ S KINGDOM, SERVICE, OR NEGLECT OF SERVICE, GROWS OUT OF LOVE, OR THE WANT OF LOVE, TO CHRIST. The citizens “ hated the king, and would not have him to rule over them.” The idle servant “ knew that he was an austere man.” In neither case was there love, and hence in neither case service. Love to Christ is indispensable to serving Him. (P. B. Davis.) Trading for Christ I. EVERY IS ENDOWED BY HIS . All that a man hath, that is worth possessing, all that he lawfully holds, partakes of the nature of a Divine endowment; even every natural faculty, and every lawful acquisition and attainment. II. OF THE THINGS CHRIST HAS GIVEN US, WE ARE . Now stewardship involves what? It involves responsibility to another. We are not proprietors. III. IN OUR USE OF WHAT CHRIST HAS TO US, HE EXPECTS US TO KEEP HIMSELF AND HIS OBJECTS EVER IN VIEW. What we do, is to be done for His sake. If we give a cup of cold water to a disciple, it is to be in the name of a disciple, it is to be given for Jesus’ sake. Whatever we do is to be done as to Him. If we regard a day as sacred, we must regard it unto the Lord. If we refuse to regard a particular day as sacred, that refusal is to be as unto the Lord. If we eat, we are to eat to the Lord. If we refuse to eat, that refusal, again, is to be as unto the Lord. Brethren, we have not yet entered sufficiently into the idea of servitude, and yet the position of servitude is our position. Towards Christ we are not only pupils--we are not only learners--we are as servants. We have a distinct and positive vocation. IV. This passage reminds us that THE SAVIOUR WILL COME, AND CALL US TO ACCOUNT FOR THE USE OF ALL THAT HE HAS TO US. V. IN THE PAST WILL NOT JUSTIFY IN THE PRESENT. (S. Martin, D. D.) Parable of the pounds Notice the following points: 1. The “ pound” had been kept in a napkin--to show sometimes, as people keep a Bible in their house to let us see how religious they are. But the very brightness of the Book proves how little it is read. It is kept for the respectability of it, not used for the love of it. The anxious faithless keeper of the pound had perhaps sometimes talked of his fellow-servants “ risking their pounds in that way” ; adding “ I take care of mine.” But spending is better than hoarding; and the risks of a trade sure to be on the whole gainful are better than the formal guardianship of that which, kept to the last, is then lost, and which, while kept, is of no use. 2. The pound is taken away from the unfaithful servant, and given to the ablest of the group. Let the man who is ablest have what has been wasted. Let all, in their proportion, receive to their care the advantages which have been neglected, and employ these for themselves and for us. 3. Notice next, how it fares with the different servants when the king and the master return. Those who had been faithful are all commended and rewarded. The king shares his kingdom with those who had been faithful to him in his poverty. They have gained pounds, and they receive cities. The master receives those into happiest intimacy with himself, who, in his absence, have been faithfully industrious for him. These good men enter into his joy. He delayed his coming; but they continued their labours. They said not, “ He will never come to reckon with us; let us make his goods our own; we have been busy, let us now be merry.” “ Outer darkness!” How expressively do the words represent both the state of man before his soul’ s good is gained, and his state when that good has been lost! Who that has gained shelter, and is one of the many whose hope, whose interests are one, who have light and warmth and sometimes festive music, would be cast forth again into the cold, dark, lonely night? 4. There are for each man two ways of gain--the direct and the indirect, increase and interest. How comes increase? It comes by the plenty of nature, which enables us to add one thing to another, as gold to iron and wood; by the productiveness of nature, which out of one seed yields many; by the application of skill to nature, through which we extract, connect, and adapt nature’ s gifts, and, first fashioning took, then fashion many things. But all were to little purpose without combination. And whatever of ours another uses, paying us for the use, yields us interest. We depend for the increase of our possessions on our connection with others, our combination with them. And we can always employ our “ talent” indirectly, if we cannot directly; usually, we can do both. We can both sow a field and lend money to a farmer. We can attend to work of our own, and sustain the work of others. We can teach, and help, and comfort; and we can subscribe in aid of those who do such work of this kind as we cannot ourselves perform. (T. T. Lynch.) The servants and the pounds I. THERE ARE HERE TWO SETS OF PERSONS. We see the enemies who would not have this man to reign over them, and the servants who had to trade with his money. You are all either enemies or servants of Jesus. II. We now advance a step further, and notice THE OF THESE . Their lord was going away, and he left his ten servants in charge with a little capital, with which they were to trade for him till he returned. 1. Notice, first, that this was honourable work. They were not entrusted with large funds, but the amount was enough to serve as a test. It put them upon their honour. 2. It was work for which he gave them capital. He gave to each of them a pound. “ Not much,” you will say. No, he did not intend it to be much. They were not capable of managing very much. If he found them faithful in “ a very little” he could then raise them to a higher responsibility. He did not expect them to make more than the pound would fairly bring in; for after all, he was not “ an austere man.” Thus he gave them a sufficient capital for his purpose. 3. What they had to do with the pound was prescribed in general terms. They were to trade with it, not to play with it. (1) The work which he prescribed was one that would bring them out. The man that is to succeed in trade in these times must have confidence, look alive, keep his eyes open, and be all there. (2) Trading, if it be successfully carried on, is an engrossing concern, calling out the whole man. It is a continuous toil, a varied trial, a remarkable test, a valuable discipline, and this is why the nobleman put his bondsmen to it, that he might afterwards use them in still higher service. (3) At the same time, let us notice that it was work suitable to their capacity. Small as the capital was, it was enough for them; for they were no more than bondsmen, not of a high grade of rank or education. III. Thirdly, to understand this parable, we must remember THE WHICH WAS ALWAYS TO THEM. They were left as trusted servants till he should return, but that return was a main item in the matter. 1. They were to believe that he would return, and that he would return a king. 2. They were to regard their absent master as already king, and they were so to trade among his enemies that they should never compromise their own loyalty. 3. I find that the original would suggest to any one carefully reading it, that they were to regard their master as already returning. This should be our view of our Lord’ s Advent? He is even now on His way hither. IV. Now comes the sweet part of the subject. Note well THE SECRET DESIGN OF THE LORD. Did it ever strike you that this nobleman had a very kindly design towards his servants? Did this nobleman give these men one pound each with the sole design that they should make money for him? It would be absurd to think so. A few pounds would be no item to one who was made a king. No, not it was, as Mr. Bruce says, “ he was net money making, but character making.” His design was not to gain by them, but to educate them. 1. First, their being entrusted with a pound each was a test. The test was only a pound, and they could not make much mischief out of that; but it would be quite sufficient to try their capacity and fidelity, for he that is faithful in that which is least will be faithful also in much. They did not all endure the test, but by its means he revealed their characters. 2. It was also a preparation of them for future service. He would lift them up from being servants to become rulers. 3. Besides this, I think he was giving them a little anticipation of their future honours. He was about to make them rulers over cities, and so he first made them rulers over pounds. (C. H. Spurgeon.) Accountability and reward 1. We may learn that Christians have received special advantages, and that every one is accountable to God for the use or abuse of them. 2. From this parable we may learn that no man is so obscure or contemptible as to escape the penetrating eye of the Judge of the world; either because he has done nothing but evil, or done no good. No man is so mean, or poor, or wicked, as to be over-looked or forgotten. No man is so insignificant nor so feeble as not to have duties to perform. -3. From this parable also we infer that all who shall improve will be rewarded; and that the reward will be in proportion to the improvement. 4. The advantages which God bestows, when improved, shall be increased, so as to form additional means of progress; while he who misimproves his present means and opportunities shall be deprived of them. 5. Those who reject Jesus Christ shall be punished in the most exemplary manner (Luke 19:27). (J. Thomson, D. D.) Lessons 1. That our Lord’ s absence, here attributed to His having gone to receive a kingdom, does not conflict with other representations of the reason of such absence, viz., to send forth the Holy Spirit, and “ to make intercession for us.” 2. That the period of our Lord’ s absence is definite in its duration, “ until the times of restitution of all things” (Acts 3:21), and also under the absolute authority of the Father (Acts 1:7). 3. That our duty is not to be prying into the mysteries of our Lord’ s coming, or spending precious time in making useless calculations in respect to the time when He will come, but to “ occupy” till He come. (D. C. Hughes, M. A.) Christ’ s spiritual kingdom I. THE PROPER NATURE OF THE KINGDOM. 1. The Son of God from heaven is King. 2. He has received the kingdom in heaven. He will give lull manifestation of it from heaven; and return. II. THE PRESENT STATE OF THE KINGDOM. Although a heavenly kingdom, it yet stretches over the whole human race upon earth; for on earth He has-- 1. Servants, as stewards of entrusted gifts. 2. Enemies, who grudge His heavenly glory. III. THE FUTURE OF THE KINGDOM SHOWS IT TO BE A ONE, from the manner in which rewards and punishments are to be distributed; which is-- 1. Righteous and beneficent in the gracious apportionment of reward to those of approved fidelity. 2. Just and righteous in the punishment-- (1) of the faithless; (2) of avowed enemies. (F. G. Lisco.) Parable of the pounds I. THE DESIGN OF THIS PARABLE. 1. It corrects false notions about the immediate appearance of God’ s kingdom as temporal and visible. 2. It teaches that Christ would take His departure from earth, and delay His return. 3. It enforces the need of present fidelity to our trust. 4. It illustrates the folly of expecting good from the future if the present be neglected. 5. It contains the promise of our Lord’ s return. II. WHEN WILL HE COME TO US ? 1. Either at our death. 2. Or, at the last day to institute judgment. 3. The time for either, for both, is unknown to us. III. CLASSES PASSED UPON IN AS HERE . 1. This parable contains no reference to the heathen. 2. Those who improved their pounds were approved and rewarded according to the measure of their fidelity. 3. He that knew his master’ s will and neglected his trust was reproved and deprived of his pound. 4. The Lord’ s enemies, who would not have Him to reign over them, were punished with the severity their hate and wicked opposition merited. IV. SOME LESSONS. 1. Our Lord’ s return has already been delayed 18--years. 2. We are not to infer from this that He never will return. 3. He that is faithful only in the visible presence of his master, is not entirely trustworthy. 4. Each one of the ten servants received ten pounds. The outward circumstances of none are so meagre that in them each one may not equally serve his Lord. 5. If the parable of the talents refers to inward gifts, which are equally distributed, then the parable of the pounds refer to our opportunities for doing good, which to all are alike. 6. Improved opportunities increase our capacity to do and get good. They are like money at interest. After Girard had saved his first thousand, it was the same, he said, as if he had a man to work for him all the time. 7. Neglected opportunities never return. You cannot put your hand into yesterday to do what was then neglected, or sow the seeds of future harvests. 8. Even if we knew that the Lord would return to-morrow, to-day’ s work should not be neglected. “ Trade ye herewith, till I come.” (L. O.Thompson.) The pounds 1. The departure of the nobleman to the far country, and his sojourn there until he should receive his kingdom, intimate that the second coming of the Lord was not to be immediate. 2. The true preparation for the coming of the Kingdom of the Lord, is that of character. The “ pound” given to each, is the common blessing of the gospel and its opportunities. I. THE GOOD AND SERVANT WHO MADE HIS ONE POUND INTO TEN. Symbolizing the conduct and blessedness of those who make the most of their enjoyment of the gospel blessings. They do not despise the day of small things. They do not trifle away their time in idleness, or waste it in sin; but finding salvation in the gospel, through faith in Jesus Christ, they set themselves to turn every occupation in which they are engaged, and every providential dispensation through which they may be brought, to the highest account, for the development in them of the Christian character. II. ANOTHER WAY OF DEALING WITH THE COMMON OF THE GOSPEL IS IN THE CASE OF HIM WHO HAD HIS POUND TO FIVE. He had been a real servant; but his diligence had been less ardent, his devotion less thorough, his activity less constant, and so the Lord simply said to him, “ Be thou also over five cities.” The representative of the easy-going disciple. There are some who will be saved, yet so as by fire, and others who shall have salvation in fulness; some who shall have little personal holiness on which to graft the life of the future, and who shall thus be in a lower place in heaven for evermore, enjoying its blessedness as thoroughly as they are competent to do, yet having there a position analogous it may be, though of course not at all identical, with that occupied by the Gideonites of old in the promised land. III. THE SERVANT WHO HID HIS POUND IN THE EARTH, AFTER HE HAD SOUGHT TO KEEP IT FROM BEING INJURED, BY IT IN A NAPKIN. He lost everything by an unbelieving anxiety to lose nothing. He was so afraid of doing anything amiss, that he did nothing at all. The representative of the great multitude of hearers of the gospel, who simply do nothing whatever about it. They do not oppose it; they do not laugh at it; they do not argue against it; their worst enemies would not call them immoral; but they “ neglect the great salvation,” and think that because, as they phrase it, they have done no harm, therefore they are in no danger. But Christ requires positive improvement of the privileges which He bestows. IV. THE CONDUCT OF THOSE WHO HATED THE , AND SAID, “ We will not,” etc. Open enemies. (W. M. Taylor, D. D.) Occupy till I comeThe traffic of the kingdom Our Lord leads us into the great mart, and cries, “ Occupy till I come.” I. The Lord gives every man a fair start in this business, and old obligations are paid. II. The Lord backs all the just and legal promissory notes of His merchantmen. “ I am with you.” III. The Christian trader has influential partnership. “ Co-workers with God.” IV. Success in this business requires extensive advertisement. 1. By expression of word. 2. By expression of deportment. V. Diplomacy is essential. When to expend, when recruit. VI. True effort and success will flow from intense earnestness. VII. In this business nothing succeeds like success. His talents--are we improving them? (D. D. Moore.) Occupation I. LIFE OUGHT TO BE ONE OF . World a great workshop. II. WORK SHOULD BE AS FROM CHRIST. He says, “ Occupy.” We must make sure that our occupation, or any part of it, is not in opposition to His will. III. WORK TRULY LEADS TO AND FOR HIGHER WORK. “ Occupy till I come.” When He came it was to give kingdoms instead of pounds. The schoolboy does not need costly books. The young apprentice has his hand and eye trained by working on cheap materials. Every duty faithfully discharged is a step on God’ s ladder of promotion. Do not wait for some great opportunity. The born artist makes his first pictures with a bit of chalk or burnt stick. IV. THE WHOLE LIFE SHOULD BE AND GUIDED BY THE THOUGHT OF CHRIST’ S COMING. “ Occupy till I come.” The irrational creatures instinctively and necessarily perform their parts. The earth was kept by them till the householder, man, appeared. But the thought of Christ’ s coming, the thought of meeting Him to give in our account, is necessary for man’ s right living here. Some say that men are simply to act their part, without thinking of a future. But a man cannot do this. As the sailor, the traveller, knows whither he is going before he sets out, and makes his preparations and steers his course accordingly, so must we. A ship simply set adrift--a traveller merely wandering on--is most unlikely to reach any happy haven. We must give account. We are moving on to the Judgment-seat of Christ. Duties done or neglected, opportunities improved or wasted, will meet us there. (E. F. Scott.) We will not have this man to reign over usChrist’ s spiritual kingdom and its rejection by men 1. THAT CHRIST HATH A KINGDOM; for all things concur here which belong to a kingdom; here is a monarch, which is Christ; a law, which is the gospel; subjects, which are penitent believers; rewards and punishments, eternal life and eternal torment. 1. Here is a monarch, the mediator, whose kingdom it is. Originally it belongeth to God as God, but derivatively to Christ as Mediator (Ps Philippians 2:10-11). 2. There are subjects. Before I tell you who they are, I must premise that there is a double consideration of subjects. Some are subjects by the grant of God, others are subjects not only by the grant of God, but their own consent. 3. The law of commerce between this sovereign and these subjects (for all kingdoms are governed by laws). 4. Rewards and punishments. (1) For punishments. Though the proper intent and business of the gospel is to bless, and not to curse, yet, if men wilfully refuse the benefit of this dispensation, they are involved in the greatest curse that can be thought of Joh 3:19). (2) Rewards. The privileges of Christ’ s kingdom are exceeding great. (a) For the present, pardon and peace. (b) Hereafter eternal happiness. II. That in all reason THIS KINGDOM SHOULD BE UNTO-- 1. Because of the right which Christ hath to govern. He hath an unquestionable title by the grant of God (Acts 2:36). And His own merit of purchase (Romans 14:9). 2. This new right and title is comfortable and beneficial to us. 3. It is by His kingly office that all Christ’ s benefits are applied to us. As a Priest, He purchased them for us; as a Prophet, He giveth us the knowledge of these mysteries; but as a King, He conveyeth them to us, overcoming our enemies, changing our natures, and inclining us to believe in Him, love Him, and obey Him (Acts 5:31). 4. Our actual personal title to all the benefits intended to us is mainly evidenced by our subjection to His regal authority. 5. We shall be unwillingly subject to His kingdom of power if we be not willingly subject to His kingdom of grace. 6. This government, which we so much stick at, is a blessed government. Christ Himself pleadeth this (Matthew 11:30), “ My yoke is easy, and My burden is light.” It is sweet in itself, and sweet in the issue. III. WHAT MOVETH AND MEN SO MUCH TO DISLIKE CHRIST’ S REIGN AND . 1. The evil constitution of men’ s souls. This government is contrary to men’ s carnal and brutish affections. It comes from an affectation of liberty. Men would be at their own dispose, and do whatsoever pleaseth them, without any to call them to an account (Psalms 12:4). 3. It proceeds from the nature of Christ’ s laws. (1) They are spiritual. (2) They require self-denial. Information. 1. It showeth us whence all the contentions arise which are raised about religion in the world. All the corrupt part of the world oppose His kingly office. 2. It informeth us how much they disserve Christianity that will hear of no injunctions of duty, or mention of the law of faith, or of the new covenant as a law. Besides that they take part with the carnal world, who cannot endure Christ’ s reign and government, they blot out all religion with one dash. If there be no law, there is no government, nor governor, no duty, no sin, no punishment nor reward; for these things necessarily infer one another. 3. It informeth us what a difficult thing it is to seat Christ in His spiritual throne, namely, in the hearts of all faithful Christians. 4. It informeth us of the reason why so many nations shut the door against Christ, or else grow weary of Him. 5. It informeth us how ill they deal with Christ who have only notional opinions about His authority, but never practically submit to it. Exhortation. If we would distinguish ourselves from the carnal world, let us resolve upon a thorough course of Christianity, owning Christ’ s authority in all things. 1. If we be to begin, and have hitherto stood against Christ, oh I let us repent and reform, and return to our obedience (Matthew 18:3). 2. Remember that faith is a great part of your works from first to last John 6:27). 3. Your obedience must be delightful, and such as cometh from love (1 John 5:3). 4. Your obedience must be very circumspect and accurate (Hebrews 12:28). 5. It is a considerable part of our work to look for our wages, or expect the endless blessedness to which we are appointed (Titus 2:13). (T. Manton, D. D.) When He was returnedThe Lord’ s return Some weeks ago a great procession was in Chicago. On Sunday evening before, the park was filled with tents and people, in preparation for the display on Tuesday. Passing down the avenue, a lad said, as we crossed the railway track: “ Did you see that long train of cars, sir? They are going after the knights.” “ Yes, I saw them,” was the reply. “ My cousin is one of them, sir; he is a sir-knight. I wish I was one,” said the boy. “ Why?” said the gentleman. “ Oh! they look so pretty, and they’ ll have a big time, sir.” “ Yes,” said the man, “ but it is a great expense--one or two millions, and the interest of the money would support all the poor in the city.” “ I never thought of that,” said the boy; “ and we are poor.” Having asked his age, residence, and place of work, the gentleman said, “ Do you go to church and Sunday-school?” “ Yes,” said the boy. “ Did you ever hear of Jesus? Yes, indeed.” “ Do you know He will come again--come in glory, with all the angels, with all the prophets, kings, martyrs, holy men, and children, and with all the babies that have ever died?” “ W-e-l-l,” said the boy, “ I don’ t believe this procession, big as it is, will be a fleabite to that one, do you, sir?” “ No, indeed,” said the man; “ and remember, also, that when He comes in glory He will give places to every one who has been faithful to Him; even a boy may shine in that great Company.” “ Well, sir,” said the lad, “ I will tell you what I think. I had rather be at the tail-end of Jesus’ procession than to be at the head of this one. Wouldn’ t you, sir?” Even so it will be. But His enemies, what of them? Slain before Him. There are His servants, His family, and His enemies; there is glory, reward, and judgment. Which for you and me? Three ways of treating God’ s gifts There are three ways in which we may treat God’ s gifts; we may misuse them, neglect them, or use them to good purpose. A tool-chest is a very handy thing. The boy who has one can do good work with it, if he wishes. But if he uses the chisel to chip the noses of statuettes, or the hammer to drive nails into choice pictures, or the hatchet to cut and hack the young trees in the orchard, that tool-chest becomes anything but a valuable acquisition to the family. A sharp knife is a good thing, but in the hand of a madman it may do untold damage. So education and natural talent are good things when rightly used; but there is no rogue so dangerous as the educated or talented rogue. Neglect, too, destroys. The sharpest tool will by and by rust, if left unused. The bread for our nourishment, if unused, will soon change into a corrupt mass. The untended garden will be quickly overrun with weeds. The sword that is never drawn at last holds fast to the scabbard. And so the learning and the talents that lie idle soon begin to deteriorate. An Eastern story tells of a merchant who gave to each of two friends a sack of grain to keep till he should call for it. Years passed; and at last he claimed his own again. One led him to a field of waving corn, and said, “ This is all yours.” The other took him to a granary, and pointed out to him as his a rotten sack full of wasted grain. On the other hand, the proper use of talents brings its own reward. Cast forth the seed, and the harvest is sure. The sculptor’ s chisel carves out the statue. Beneath the hand of man great palaces grow up. And beyond and above all, there is the consciousness that every good use of a talent, every noble act done, is adding a stone to the stately temple that shall be revealed hereafter. (Sunday School Times.) Thou hast been faithful in a very littleFaithfulness in little things There is a principle in this award which regulates God’ s dealings with us in either world. And it is this--the ground and secret of all increase is “ faithfulness.” And we may all rejoice that this is the rule of God’ s moral gifts--for had anything else except “ faithfulness” been made the condition, many would have been unable, or at least, would have thought themselves unable, to advance at all. I should have no hesitation in placing first “ faithfulness” to convictions. So long as a man has not silenced them by sin, the heart is full of “ still small voices,” speaking to him everywhere. There is a duty which has long lain neglected, and almost forgotten. Suddenly, there wakes up in your mind a memory of that forgotten duty. It is a very little thing that, by some association, woke the memory. An old sin presents itself to your mind in a new light. A thought comes to you in the early morning, “ Get up.” Presently, another thought says, “ You are leaving your room without any real communion with God.” Those are convictions. Everybody has them--they are the movings of the Holy Ghost in a man--they are the scintillations of an inner life which is struggling with the darkness. But, be “ faithful” to them; for if you are unfaithful, they will get weaker and weaker, and fewer and fewer, till they go out. But if you are “ faithful” to them, there will be an increase--stronger, more frequent, loftier, more spiritual, they will grow--till it is as if your whole being were penetrated with the mind of God;and everything within you and around you will be a message, and the whole world will be vocal to you of Christ. Next to this “ faithfulness” to convictions, I should place “ faithfulness in little things” to men--and this of two kinds. It is of the utmost importance that you be scrupulously accurate and just in all your most trivial transactions of honour and business with your fellow-creatures. And, secondly, every one of us has, or might have, influence with somebody. The acquisition and the use of that influence are great matters of “ faithfulness.” (J. Vaughan, M. A.) Soul-growth depends on fidelity To employ well the present, is to command the future. And that for two reasons. One, the natural law, which pervades all nature, rational and irrational, that growth is the offspring of exercise. And the other, the sovereign will of a just God to increase the gifts of those who use them. But whence “ faithfulness” ? How shall we cultivate it? First, think a great deal of God’ s faithfulness--how very “ faithful” He has been to you--how “ faithful” in all the little events of your life, and in all the secret passages of your soul. Steep your mind in the thought of the faithfulness of God to you, in all your little things, till you catch its savour. Look at it till the finest traits reflect themselves upon your heart. And, secondly, go, and do to-day some one “ faithful” thing. Do it for Christ. Be “ faithful” where your conscience tells you you have been faithless. (J. Vaughan, M. A.) Faithful in little A Persian king when hunting wished to eat venison in the field. Some of his attendants thereupon went into a village near, and helped themselves to a quantity of salt for their master. The king, suspecting what they had done, made them go back and pay for it, with the remark, “ If I cannot make my people just in small things, I can at least show them that it is possible to be so.” The joy of faithful work There comes over to our shores a poor stonecutter. The times are so bad at home that he is scarcely able to earn bread enough to eat; and by a whole year’ s stinting economy he manages to get together just enough to pay for a steerage passage to this country. He comes, homeless and acquaintanceless, and lands in New York, and wanders over to Brooklyn and seeks employment. He is ashamed to beg bread; and yet he is hungry. The yards are all full; but still, as he is an expert stonecutter, a man, out of charity, says, “ Well, I will give you a little work--enough to enable you to pay for your board.” And he shows him a block of stone to work on. What is it? One of many parts which are to form some ornament. Here is just a querl or fern, and there is a branch of what is probably to be a flower. He goes to work on this stone, and most patiently shapes it. He carves that bit of a fern, putting all his skill and taste into it. And by and by the master says, “ Well done,” and takes it away, and gives him another block, and tells him to work on that. And so he works on that, from the rising of the sun till the going down of the same, and he only knows that he is earning his bread. And he continues to put all his skill and taste into his work. He has no idea what use will be made of those few stems which he has been carving, until afterwards, when, one day, walking along the street, and looking up at the front of the Art Gallery, he sees the stones upon which he has worked. He did not know what they were for; but the architect did. And as he stands looking at his work on that structure which is the beauty of the whole street the tears drop down from his eyes, and he says, “ I am glad I did it well.” And every day, as he passes that way, he says to himself exultingly, “ I did it well.” He did not draw the design nor plan the building, and he knew nothing of what use was to be made of his work; but he took pains in cutting those stems; and when he saw that they were a part of that magnificent structure his soul rejoiced. Dear brethren, though the work which you are doing seems small, put your heart in it; do the best you can wherever you are; and by and by God will show you where He has put that work. And when you see it stand in that great structure which He is building you will rejoice in every single moment of fidelity with which you wrought. Do not let the seeming littleness of what you are doing now damp your fidelity. (H. W. Beecher.) Laid up in a napkinLaziness in the Church This part of the parable is meant to teach the necessity of developing our forces, and bringing them into use in Christian life. The duty of the development of power in one’ s self as a part of his allegiance to Christ is the main thought. So, also, is it wrong for one affecting to be a Christian to confine his development and increase simply to things that surround him and that strengthen him from the exterior. It is not wrong for a man to seek wealth in appropriate methods and in due measure; it is not wrong for a man to build up around himself the household, the gallery, the library; it is not wrong for a man to make himself strong on the earthward side; but to make himself strong only on that side is wrong. Every man is bound to build within. Indeed, the very one of the moral functions which inheres in all religious industries is that, while a man is building himself exteriorly according to the laws of nature and society and of moral insight, he is by that very process building himself inwardly. He is building himself in patience, in foresight, in self-denial, in liberalities; for often generosity and liberality are in the struggle of men in life what oil is in the machine, that make the friction less and the movement easier. So it is wrong for men to build themselves up simply for the sake of deriving more pleasure from reason, from poetic sensibility, and from all aesthetic elements; but it is not wrong for them to render themselves, through education, susceptible to finer and higher pleasures. Not only this, but we learn from a fair interpretation of this parable that men are not to be content with their birthright state. It is not enough that a man has simply the uneducated qualities that are given to him. Life educates us so far as the gift of the hand and the foot is concerned. In so far as secular relations are concerned, the necessities of business and the sweep of public sentiment are tending constantly to educate men to bring out all that there is in them. In the higher spiritual life it is not always the case. Men are content with about the moral sense that they have, if it averages the moral sense of the community; about the amount of faith that comes to them without seeking or education; about the amount of personal and moral influence that exists in social relations. But the law of the gospel is: Develop. No man has a right to die with his faculties in about the state that they were when he came to his manhood. There should be growth, growth. Going on is the condition of life in the Church or in the community just as much as in the orchard or in the garden. When a tree is “ bound” and won’ t grow, we know that it is very near to its end: and a tree that will not grow becomes a harbour of all manner of venomous insects. Men go and look under the bark, and seeing them consorting here and there and everywhere, say: “ That is the reason the tree did not grow.” No, it was the not growing that brought them there. And so all sorts of errors and mistakes cluster under the bark of men that stand still and do not unfold--do not develop. This being the doctrine, I remark, in the first place, that one may be free from all vices and from great sins, and yet break God’ s whole law. That law is love. Many say to themselves, “ What wrong do I do?” The question is, What right do you do? An empty grape-vine might say, “ Why, what harm do I do?” Yes, but what clusters do you produce? Vitality should be fruitful. Men are content if they can eat, and drink, and be clothed, and keep warm, and go on thus from year to year; because they say, “ I cheat no one; I do not lie or steal, nor am I drunk. I pay my debts, and what lack I yet?” A man that can only do that is very poorly furnished within. And in no land in the world are men so culpable who stand still as in this land of Christian light and privileges. You are not saved because you do not do harm. In our age--in no land so much as in ours--not doing is criminal. The means of education, the sources of knowledge, the duties of citizenship, in this land, are such that to be born here is--I had almost said to take the oath--to fulfil these things. You cannot find in the New Testament anything that covers in detail each one of these particulars; and yet the spirit of the New Testament is--Grow, develop according to the measure of opportunity. That being so, there never was an age in which we had so much right to call upon men for fulness of influence and for the pouring out of their special and various talents in every sphere of duty. There never was a time, I think, in which it was so well worth a man’ s while to live. In former days a man might say: “ I know nothing of all these things; how can I be blamed?” but no man can say that to-day. No man that works at the blacksmith’ s forge can say: “ Well, I was a blacksmith.” A man may be a blacksmith, and yet educate himself. No man can say: “ I am a carpenter; how should I be suspected of knowledge?” If you do not have knowledge, you are not fit to be a carpenter. It is not enough that a man should increase his refinement; he is to increase it under the law: “ It is more blessed to give than to receive.” It is not enough that a man should pursue, ploughing deeply and uncovering continually, the truths of economy; he should seek for those truths that he may have that with which to enlighten and strengthen other men. (H. W. Beecher.) The natural heart unveiled in the great account I. First, lying at the bottom of all here, in the character of the natural mind, there comes out “ the evil heart of unbelief” --A FATAL OF THE GOD--an entire heart-ignorance of God, estrangement from God, believing of the devil’ s lie concerning God, in place of God’ s blessed revelation concerning Himself--“ Thou art an austere man,” a hard master, very difficult to please. Still, still, the natural conscience will bear stern witness to the reality of a Divine judgment and law. And so, as often as the fallen heart is forced into near contact with God, this is its language--scarce uttered consciously even to itself, and much less uttered audibly to others--“ Thou art an austere man,” a hard master, demanding things unreasonable, impossible for us weak creatures! Need I say that it is a lie of the devil, a foul calumny on the blessed God? A hard master? Oh, “ God is love.” II. Second, and inseparably connected with this first feature in the character, see a second--A DARK, JEALOUS DREAD OF SUCH A GOD, prompting the wish to be away from Him--“ I feared Thee, because Thou art an austere man,” a hard master! The fear is obviously that of dark distrust, jealousy, suspicion. It is the opposite of confidence, affection, love. How, in fact, can such a God be loved? III. And now, connected inseparably with these two features of character, even as the second with the first, see the third feature in the character--completing it--even AN UTTER FOR ALL , ACTIVE SERVICE OF GOD, “ For I feared Thee--Lord, behold, here is Thy pound, which I have kept laid up in a napkin; for I feared Thee, because Thou art an austere man.” Impossible to serve such a God--impossible, first, to love Him; and, next, impossible to serve a God unloved. Oh, love is the spring of service; distrust, jealousy, suspicion, are the death of it. But this man thinks he has served God tolerably well. “ Lord, behold, here is Thy pound” ! In the exceeding deceitfulness of the natural heart, does he contrive to persuade himself that he has given God no serious cause of offence with him. It is the more strange he should be able so to persuade himself, inasmuch as in his own word, “ thy pound,” he confesses that it was the property of another--of a Master who had lent it to him for a purpose, which, assuredly, was not that of keeping it laid uselessly up. “ And He called His ten servants and delivered them ten pounds, and said unto them, ‘ Occupy till I come’” --“ occupy,” that is, traffic diligently, trade, “ till I come.” Oh, what is thus the whole Christian life but a busy commerce--a trading for God, for the good of all around us, for eternity? Fain I would have you to note--although it belongs less to my main theme--that, if you take the three features of character which we have seen in the text, and simply reverse them one by one, you shall have the whole character of God’ s regenerated child--of the renewed heart--that heart of which it is written, “ A new heart will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you; and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh.” Thus, 1. First, substitute for that word of the apostle, “ The god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine into them,” the one which follows it, “ God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath Shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” For the mournful entire heart-ignorance of God, substitute the blessed promise fulfilled, “ I will give them a heart to know Me, that I am the Lord.” For the evil heart of unbelief, crediting the devil’ s lie concerning God, substitute that heaven-born faith, “ We believe and are sure that Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God” --“ We have known and believed the love that God hath unto us.” And you have the foundation of the whole character of the new creature in Christ Jesus. 2. Secondly, for that fear of dark and jealous dread which springs of unbelief, substitute the love that springs of faith, “ We love Him, because He first loved us” --“ My beloved is mine, and I am His” --and you have the new heart in its very soul. 3. And thus, thirdly, for the utter indisposition to God’ s cheerful service, substitute that heart for all service, “ Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?” A practical inference or two before I close (1) First, there is to be a judgment day. Do you believe it? (2) Second, how worthless, in that day, will be all merely negative religion--“ Lord, behold, here is Thy pound, which I have kept laid up in anapkin!” And as for all attempts to occupy neutral ground in the kingdom of Christ, what dreams they are! (3) But, thirdly, be it carefully noted that this, properly speaking, is not yet the Judge, but the Prophet, telling beforehand of the Judge, and of the judgment to come. (C. J. Brown, D. D.) “ Out of thy own mouth will I judge thee” Now the general truth that I would deduce from this narrative, and endeavour to establish, may be expressed in these terms. That insensibility and inaction with which mankind are to so great an extent chargeable, as touching religion, are indefensible on every ground, unsusceptible of apology from any quarter, and incapable of being justified on any principles whatsoever, being inconsistent with what is enjoined by every man’ s belief, however loose and erroneous it may be. 1. It is a principle universally admitted among men that every subject should receive a degree of attention proportioned to its intrinsic magnitude and our personal interest in it; and in things purely secular they endeavour to carry this principle into practice. But not to dwell too long on this, I pass to another principle of common life-- 2. Which is sinned against in religion, that of employing the present for the advantage of the future. What man of you is there whose schemes do not contemplate the future, and whose labours do not look to that which is to come? 3. And here I am reminded of another inconsistency into which many fall. I refer to the unjustifiable and unauthorized use which they make of the fact of the Divine benevolence in their speculations upon religion. A use which they would blush to make of it in reference to any other subject. What would you think of the man who should found all his expectations of health, and affluence, and happiness, on the simple fact of the Divine benignity, and should infer from the truth that God is good, that he shall never know want or feel pain? 4. There is another common principle unhesitatingly admitted among men, on which I would remark in this connection, as being denied a place among the first truths of religion--the principle of not expecting any acquisition of considerable value without much precedent labour and pains taken for it. 5. There is yet one other principle ,of common life, which, we have to complain, is not acted upon in religion. It is that of adopting always the safer course. (W. Nevins, D. D.) Unto every one which hath shall be givenThe law of use The idea is that having is something quite other than mere passive, possession--the upturned, nerveless palm of beggary. Having, real having, is eager, instant, active possession, the sinewy grip. Having is using. Anything not used is already the same as lost. It will be lost by and by. In this sense of having, the more we have, the more we get; the less we have, the less we get. This is law, universal law. I. THIS LAW OF USE IS LAW. Muscular force gains nothing by being husbanded. Having is using. And to him that hath, shall be given. He shall grow stronger and stronger. What is difficult, perhaps impossible today, shall be easy to-morrow. He that keeps on day by day lifting the calf, shall lift the bullock by and by. More than this. Only he that uses shall even so much as keep. Unemployed strength steadily diminishes. The sluggard’ s arm grows soft and flabby. II. THIS LAW OF USE IS LAW. Real possession is muscular. The toil, care, sagacity, and self-denial required in getting property, are precisely the toil, care, sagacity, and self-denial required in keeping it. Nay, keeping is harder than getting, a great deal harder. Wise investments often require a genius like that of great generalship. Charles Lamb, in one of his essays, expresses pity for the poor, dull, thriftless fellow who wrapped his pound up in a napkin. But the poor fellow was also to be blamed. Those ten servants, who had the ten pounds given them, were commanded to trade therewith till the master came. III. THIS LAW OF USE IS MENTAL LAW. Even knowledge, like the manna of old, must needs be fresh. It will not keep. The successful teacher is always the diligent and eager learner. Just when he has nothing new to say, just then his authority begins to wane. Much more is mental activity essential to mental force. It is related of Thorwaldsen that when at last he finished a statue that satisfied him, he told his friends that his genius was leaving him. Having reached a point beyond which he could push no further, his instinct told him that he had already begun to fail. So it proved. The summit of his fame was no broad plateau, but a sharp Alpine ridge. The last step up had to be quickly followed by the first step down. It is so in everything. Ceasing to gain, we begin to lose. Ceasing to advance, we begin to retrograde. IV. THIS LAW OF USE IS ALSO MORAL LAW. Here lies the secret of character. There is no such thing as standing still. There is no such thing as merely holding one’ s own. Only the swimmer floats. Only the conqueror is unconquered. Character is not inheritance, nor happy accident, but hardest battle and victory. The fact is, evil never abdicates, never goes off on a vacation, never sleeps. Every day every one of us is ambushed and assaulted; and what we become, is simply our defeat or victory. Not to be crowned victor, is to pass under the yoke. If prayer be, what Tertullian has pictured it, the watch-cry of a soldier under arms, guarding the tent and standard of his general, then the habit of it ought to be growing on us. For the night is round about us, and, though the stars are out, our enemies are not asleep. H the Bible be what we say it is, we should know it better and better. Written by men, still it has God for its Author, unfathomable depths of wisdom for its contents, and for its shining goal the battlements and towers of the New Jerusalem. So of all the virtues and graces. They will not take care of themselves. Real goodness is as much an industry, as much a business, as any profession, trade, or pursuit of men. (R. D.Hitchcock, D. D.) Spiritual investments I. LET US SEEK TO GIVE FULL TO THE HERE , BEFORE WE ATTEMPT TO SHOW ITS REACH. 1. The meaning of our Lord’ s words is certainly clear. Consider that the pounds represent any sort of gift or endowment for usefulness--any capacity, resource, instrument, or opportunity for doing good to our fellow men. He does not really possess anything; he only “ occupies” it; it is actually lent money, and belongs to his Lord. 2. The illustrations which suggest themselves in ordinary experience will make the whole matter our own. We are simply reminded once more of the working of the universal law of exercise. Our bodily members and our intelluctual faculties are skilled and invigorated by activity, and injured seriously by persistent disuse. An interesting example of cultivating alertness of observation is related in the life of Robert Houdin, the famous magician. Knowing the need of a swift mastery and a retentive memory of arbitrarily chosen objects in the great trick of second-sight, he took his son through the crowded streets, then required him to repeat the names of all the things he had seen. He often led the lad into a gentleman’ s library for just a passing moment, and then afterwards questioned him as to the colour and places of the books on the shelves and table. Thus he taught him to observe with amazing rapidity, and hold what he gained, till that pale child baffled the wise world that watched his performances. But, highest of all, our spiritual life comes in for an illustration. Here we find that, in what is truly the most subtle part of our human organization, we are quite as remarkable as elsewhere. Even in our intercourse with God, we bend to natural law. He prays best who is in the habit of prayer. His very fervour and spirituality, as well as his fluency, are increased by constant practice. Thus it is with studious reading of the Scriptures Thus it is with the constant and devout reference of one’ s life to God’ s overruling providence. And thus it is with preparedness for heaven. Piety altogether is as capable of growth as any possession we have. He who has, gains more; he who leaves unused what he has, loses it. II. A FEW PLAIN OF THIS . 1. Begin with the duty of Christian beneficence. Any pastor of a Church, any leader of a difficult enterprise, is acquainted with the fact that the best persons to ask for a contribution, with a sublime faith and a most cheerful expectation of success, are those who have just been giving largely, those who all along have been giving the most. Such Christians are prospered by the exercise. Their hearts and their purses alike are distended with the grace and the gold. 2. Take also the duty of teaching God’ s truth to those who always need it. Does a wise man lose his learning by communicating it freely? Rather, are not those the best scholars who do hardest work in teaching the dullest pupils with the most patience? 3. Again, take our consistency of demeanour. This, if anything, would seem most personal and most incommunicable. A Christian who cares nothing for what people say of him deteriorates in fidelity. He who tries hardest to disarm criticism by a godly demeanour will grow in correctness and satisfaction. He need not become more rigid and so more unamiable. 4. Just so, once more, take into consideration all kinds of ordinary Church activity. Those efficient believers, who are generally in the lead when each charitable and energetic work is in its turn on hand, are not so prominent just because they are ambitious and officious, nor because they love conspicuousness; but because being in one sort of earnest labour, they learn to love all labour for Christ. Most naturally, they grow unconsciously zealous for Him. III. This is going far enough now: we reach in proper order SOME OF THE MANY LESSONS WHICH ARE BY THE . 1. It is high time that Christians should begin to apply business maxims to their spiritual investments. 2. Think joyously of the irresistible working of all these Divine laws of increase, if only we are found faithful. 3. Just here also we begin to understand what our Lord means when He tells us that “ a man’ s life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth” (Luke 12:15). We have no doubt that such a man as that in the parable, who hid his pound in the napkin, was far more disturbed over the care of it than either of those who had their ten or five pounds hard at work. Unemployed wealth, unimproved property, is but a perplexity, and generally enslaves the man who sits down to watch it. What we put to use--of our heart as well as of our money--is what We own; the rest owns us. 4. Finally, mark the sad reverse of all we have been dwelling upon. Observe that the pound taken away from this man was not his profit, but his capital. Hence, he had no further chance; the very opportunity of retrieval was gone. (C. S. Robinson, D. D.) The napkin of secret doubt “ Dost thou believe this doctrine that I ask thee of? Dost thou hold it firmly?” “ Indeed I do, sir. I keep it most carefully.” “ Keep it carefully! What dost thou mean?” “ I have it, sir, folded away in a napkin.” “ A napkin! What is the name of that napkin?” “ It is called secret doubt.” “ And why dost thou keep the truth in the napkin of secret doubt?” “ They tell me that if exposed to the air of inquiry it will disappear; so, when asked for it, I shall not have it, and shall perish.” “ Thou art foolish, and they that have told thee this arc foolish. Truth is corn, and thou wilt not be asked for the corn first given thee, but for sheaves. Thou art as if keeping thy corn in the sack of unbelief. The corn shall be taken from thee if thou use it not, and thyself put in thy sack of unbelief, and drowned in the deep, as evil-doers were punished in old times.” (Thomas T. Lynch.) Destroyed through disuse The following extract from Mr. Darwin’ s recently published life will, perhaps, explain the cause of his rejection of Christianity. The words are his own: “ I cannot endure to read a line of poetry: I have tried lately to read Shakespeare and found it so intolerably dull that it nauseated me. I have also almost lost my taste for pictures or music My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts, but why this should have caused the atrophy of that part of the brain alone on which the higher tastes depend. I cannot conceive If I had to live my life again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry, and listen to some music at least once a week: for perhaps the parts of my brain now atrophied would then have kept alive through use.” “ It is an accursed evil to a man,” he writes in 1858, “ to become so absorbed in any subject as I am in mine.” We cannot be accused either of want of sympathy or want of charity if, in the light of what Darwin has told us of his religious history, we sum up his scepticism in those words which we have italicized--“atrophy of the brain.” The law of increase “ The Times,” speaking of the Exhibition of the Royal Academy, says, “ No doubt people ought to bring to a collection of pictures, or other works of art, as much knowledge as possible, according to the old saying that if we expect to bring back the wealth of the Indies, we must take the wealth of the Indies out with us. Learning and progress are continual accretions.” This witness is true. He who studies the works of art in an exhibition of paintings, being himself already educated in such matters, adds greatly to his knowledge, and derives the utmost pleasure from the genius displayed. On the other hand, he who knows nothing at all about the matter, and yet pretends to be a critic, simply exhibits his own ignorance and self-conceit, and misses that measure of enjoyment which an entirely unsophisticated and unpretending spectator would have received. We must bring taste and information to art, or she will not deign to reveal her choicest charms. It is so with all the higher forms of knowledge. We were once in the fine museum of geology and mineralogy in Paris, and we noticed two or three enthusiastic gentlemen in perfect rapture over the specimens preserved in the eases; they paused lovingly here and there, used their glasses, and discoursed with delighted gesticulations concerning the various objects of interest; they were evidently increasing their stores of information; they had, and to them more was given. Money makes money, and knowledge increases knowledge. A few minutes after we noticed one of our own countrymen, who appeared to be a man of more wealth than education. He looked around him for a minute or two, walked along a line of cases, and then expressed the utmost disgust with the whole concern: “ There was nothing there,” he said, “ except a lot of old bones and stones, and bits of marble.” He was persuaded to look a little further, at a fine collection of fossil fishes, but the total result was a fuller manifestation of his ignorance upon the subjects so abundantly illustrated, and a declaration of his desire to remain in ignorance, for he remarked that “ He did not care a rap for such rubbish, and would not give three half-crowns for a waggonload of it.” Truly, in the matter of knowledge, “ To him that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance; and from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath.” (C. H. Spurgeon.) Luke 19:28-40 Ascending up to Jerusalem Christ journeying to Jerusalem I. THE MANNER IN WHICH HE WENT. The only occasion on which we find Him riding. Fulfilment of a prophecy. II. THE HE MET WITH. III. THE SORROW OF WHICH HE WAS THE SUBJECT, THE HE . 1. A benevolent wish. 2. An alarming sentence. 3. A melancholy prediction. Conclusion: Let us remember for our warning, that gospel opportunities when slighted will not be long continued. (Expository Outlines.) “ He went before” These are some of the thoughts which are suggested to our minds, as we see Jesus in the Scripture before us, taking the first place in the progress to Jerusalem and death. The position was emblematical as well as actual; and it suggests some teachings for us which are very calculated to bring comfort to our souls. Let us glance, first of all, for a moment, at the motion and position in itself. See the alacrity and willingness of Jesus to enter all suffering for us. And what do we learn here, but that His heart was in the sad work which He had undertaken to do. The thoroughness of Christ’ s love is brought before us here. He was thorough in love. Mark, too, Christ’ s assumption of the position of a leader. He knew the place that had been assigned to Him by the Father; it was headship in suffering, as well as in glory; He took up at once, in that last journey, His rightful place. See, too, how our blessed Lord takes up a double position. He is at once leader and companion; His little company were one with Him; He with them; but yet a little before them. He talks with us, while He goes on before; He does not separate the leader and the companion; His lordship over us is so sweet, that He heads us as friends; having a common interest in all He does. And now, there is great teaching and comforting for us in all this. In the first place, we who follow Christ have to explore no untried, untrodden way. It is thus our comfort that we have always one to look to. Ours is no interminable road, no lonely, solitary path. Jesus, if only we can see aright, is never very far ahead. The mowers who mow in line, have much more heart during the burden and heat of the day, when their scythes sweep through the grass, keeping time to the stroke of a fellow-workman in front. The steadfastness of Christ’ s purpose is also forcibly suggested to us here. Firmly and intelligently, with a full knowledge of the indignity and death before Him, our Lord started forth, and took the headship of His little band on His way to Jerusalem. That steadfastness is of immense importance to us. Were there the least wavering in Christ’ s character, we were undone. And we hold on to this steadfastness now. We believe Him to be the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever; we see Him now acting from the cross, in the same spirit wherewith He journeyed to it. And now, let us in our trial-times see how Jesus has “ gone before” in all. Is the path of weariness the one marked out for us; behold upon it the One who sat wearied upon Jacob’ s well; no longer weary, it is true, but remembering well all earth’ s wearinesses of body and spirit; and offering us His company on the trying path. Or, is it that of rejection? No thornier road is there on earth than that of biting poverty--poverty, with all its temptations and stings; well! Jesus was poor, and hungered and athirst, and had not where to lay His head. Before the poor; right on upon this path, is the figure of the Lord; let them but feel that He is their Lord, and they shall no longer be distressed at being the world’ s casts-off; our being a cast-off of the world will not much matter, if we be companions of the Son of God. Then comes death itself--the last journey; the way from which human nature shrinks; the one which, despite rank or wealth, it must surely tread. Here, if we be inclined to faint, Jesus can be seen by His people, if only they believe. (P. B. Power, M. A.) The Lord hath need of himThe Lord’ s need This trifling incident contains big principles. I. It gives us AN IDEA OF . Tendency of the age is to the seen. But mind kicks against it. Mind is like a bird, which pines in a cage. Here is hope for religion--the mind kicks against artificial conditionings. If you like you may say the mind likes, like a bird, to make its nest. True! but it wants above it not a ceiling but a sky. You can’ t cramp mind in your nutshell organizations. Shut it behind walls--and then it will ask, Who is on the other side of the wall? Providence involves two things. First--idea of God preserving, guarding our being and well-being. He preserves, though we don’ t see the way. How did Christ know that the colt was to be found at this stated moment? and that the owner would part with his property? Similarly, we must allow for the knowledge of God. The second thing involved in Providence is the idea of government. II. IN IS GIVEN TO LITTLE THINGS AS WELL AS GREAT. “ A colt tied.” It is demeaning God’ s economy--some will say. That all depends on your conception of God’ s economy. He numbers the hairs of our head. He sees when the sparrow falls. III. GOD HOLDS EVERY TO SHOW ITSELF WHEN WANTED. Everything, in God’ s order, has its time, and is not itself till that time reveals it. Sea-wrack on the sea-beach is ugly, slimy, hideous. But the same sea-wrack in a pool? How it spreads itself and makes every tiny filament beautiful! So prophecy in human history needs to be corroborated by the event, before it can fairly be understood. Apparently little events--what worlds of good or evil may turn on them! IV. OF THE OF LIFE. They go to the man for the colt. Would not common sense ask, What have you to do with the colt? Simply, “ The Master hath need of him.” You have a favourite daughter. One day she is not well--only a cold, you think. But she grows feverish, and you call in the doctor. Doctor prescribes, but still the sweet one sickens; and one day in his solemn look the mother reads the hard sentence--her child must die. Why is it? “ The Lord hath need of it.” (J. B. Meharry, B. A.) One Lord “ The Lord our God is one Lord,” so there may be no debate about the direction of our worship, about the Owner of our powers, about the Redeemer of our souls. See how this operates in practical life. The disciples might naturally feel some little difficulty about going to take another’ s man’ s property; so the Lord said unto them, “ If any man say ought unto you, ye shall say the Lord hath need of them, and straightway he will send them.” But suppose there had been a thousand lords, the question would have arisen, which of them? But there is one Lord, and His name is the key which opens every lock; His name is the mighty power which beats down every mountain and every wall, and makes the rough places plain. What poetry there is here! Why, this is the very poetry of faith. It is not mere faith; it is faith in flower, faith in blossom, faith in victory! Thefulfilment of minute prophecies Not the fulfilment of sublime predictions, so called; but the fulfilment of little, specific, minute, detailed prophecies. God does nothing unnecessarily, speaks nothing that seems exaggeration or superabundance. There is a meaning in the most delicate tint with which He hath varied any leaf; there is a significance in the tiniest drop of dew which ever sphered itself in beauty on the eyelids of the morning. And that Christ should go into Jerusalem upon an ass, and a colt the foal of an ass! That is not decorative talk; that is not mere flowery prophecy, or incidental or tributary foretelling. In all that we should account little and of inconsequential moment is fulfilled to the letter. What then? If God be careful of such crumbs of prophecy, such little detailed lines of prediction, what of the life of His children, the redeemed life of His Church? If not one tittle could fall to the ground respecting things of this kind--matters of order, arrangement, sequence--is He unrighteous to forget the greater when He remembers the less? Will He count the hairs upon your head, and let the head itself be bruised? Will He paint the grass, and let the man fall to decay? Is He careful about birds floating in the air, and careless about lives redeemed by the sacrificial blood of His Son? (J. Parker, D. D.) Ownership A nobleman who had a magnificent garden was ill in bed, and ordered his butler to go into the hot-house and bring him the finest bunch of grapes he could find. He came to the hot-house, he opened the door, he examined all the clusters--he fixed on the best--he brought out his knife and cut it. Just as he did so, a cry was raised, “ There’ s a man in the hot-house I there’ s a man in the hot-house!” The gardeners, young and old, dropped their spades and water-pots, and ran to the hot-house. As they glanced through the glass, sure enough, there stood the man, and in his hand the Queen Cluster--the very one which they had been watching for months--the one which was to take the prize at the Horticultural Show I They were furious--they were ready to kill him--they rushed in and seized him by the collar, “ What are you about!” they said, “ How dare you!--you thief!--you rascal!--you vagabond!” Why does not he turn pale?--why does he keep so cool?--why does he smile? He says something--the gardeners are silent in a moment--they hang their beads--they look ashamed--they ask his pardon--they go back to theirwork. What did he say to make such a sudden change? Simply this--“ Men! my lord bade me come here and cut him the very finest bunch of grapes I could find.” That was it! The gardeners felt that the hot-house, the vine, and every cluster on it was his. They might call it theirs, and propose to do this and that with it--but really and truly it was his who built the house, and bought the vine, and paid them for attending to it. Just so, dear children, the Lord has a claim on all we possess; our souls, our bodies, our tongues, our time, our talents, our memories, our money, our influence, our beloved relatives. “ Ye are not your own” ; and whenever He has need of anything we must let it go” --we must learn to yield it up to Him as cheerfully as the owner yielded up his colt. (J. Bolton, B. A.) Why we are needful to God “ Why was it?” asked Mrs. N---- of her own heart as she was walking homewards from the communion-table. “ Why was it?” she almost unconsciously exclaimed aloud. “ Oh, I wish somebody could tell me!” “ Could tell you what?” said a pleasant voice behind her, and looking around, she saw her pastor and his wife approaching. “ Could you tell me,” said she, “ why the Saviour died for us? I have never heard it answered to my satisfaction. You will say it was because He loved us; but why was that love? He certainly did not need us, and in our sinful state there was nothing in us to attract His love.” “ I may suppose, Mrs. N----,” said her pastor, “ that it would be no loss for you to lose your deformed little babe. You have a large circle of friends, you have other children, and a kind husband. You do not need the deformed child; and what use is it?” “ Oh, sir,” said Mrs. N--, “ I could not part with my poor child. I do need him. I need his love. I would rather die than fail of receiving it.” “ Well,” said her pastor, “ does God love His children less than earthly, sinful parents do?” “ I never looked upon it in that way before,” said Mrs. N. (Christian Age.) Every good man is needful to complete God’ s design An expert mechanician constructs a certain axle, tempered and burnished, to fit the hub of a certain wheel, which again he fashions as elaborately to fit the axle, so that a microscope detects no flaw; and now nothing can take the place of either but itself; and each is labour lost without the other. True, they are only an axle and a wheel, each a single one, a minute one, a fragile one; not costly in material, nor remarkable in structure; but in the absence of either, the chronometer which should decide the arrival of England’ s fleet at Trafalgar must hang motionless. Every good man is such a fragmentary and related instrument in the hands of God. He is never for an hour an isolated thing. He belongs to a system of things in which everything is dovetailed to another thing. Yet no two are duplicates. Nothing can ever be spared from it. The system has no holidays. Through man’ s most dreamless slumbers it moves on, without waiting for delinquents. (Austin Phelps.) Blessed be the King that cometh. Jesus our meek and humble King I. OUR KING IN . 1. Jesus is our King. (1) The prophecies announce Him as such. (Isaiah 9:6; Zechariah 9:9.) (2) He avowed Himself a King. (Matthew 11:27; John 18:37.) (3) He proved by the power of His will that He was a King. Matthew 21:3.) 2. Jesus is our humble King. (1) He refused royal honours. (John 6:15.) (2) In opposition to the presumption of the Jews, He would never act nor appear as King. (John 18:36.) (3) He debased Himself in all humility. 3. Follow Him in His humility. (1) By contrition and a sincere confession of your sins. (2) By resignation in adversities. (3) By humility in earthly happiness. II. OUR MEEK KING. This may be seen-- 1. From the purpose of His coming--of His Incarnation. He comes as a Friend and Saviour; and wants to be loved, not feared. 2. From His earthly life. (1) He was full of love and mercy towards the suffering, whom He invited to come to Him. (2) He was full of mercy and tenderness towards sinners and His own enemies. 3. From the experience of your own life. Jesus came to you as a meek King-- (1) In your afflictions, to console you. (2) In your sins, which He bore in patience. (3) In your conversion, the work of His mercy. Strip yourself of the old man with his deeds, as the Jews stripped themselves of their garments, and let Jesus walk over your former self. 4. Learn of your King to be meek of heart also. (Matthew 11:29.) (1) As a superior towards your subjects. (2) Towards sinners and your enemies. (3) In tribulations and afflictions. (Stauss.) Praise thy God, O Zion I. First, we shall observe here PRAISE. In the thirty-seventh verse every word is significant, and deserves the careful notice of all who would learn aright the lesson of how to magnify the Saviour. 1. To begin with, the praise rendered to Christ was speedy praise. The happy choristers did not wait till He had entered the city, but “ when He was come nigh, even now, at the descent of the Mount of Olives, they began to rejoice.” It is well to have a quick eye to perceive occasions for gratitude. 2. It strikes us at once, also, that this was unanimous praise. Observe, not only the multitude, but the whole multitude of the disciples rejoiced, and praised Him; not one silent tongue among the disciples--not one who withheld his song. And yet, I suppose, those disciples had their trials as we have ours. 3. Next, it was multitudinous. “ The whole multitude.” There is something most inspiriting and exhilarating in the noise of a multitude singing God’ s praises. 4. Still it is worthy of observation that, while the praise was multitudinous, it was quite select. It was the whole multitude “ of the disciples.” The Pharisees did not praise Him--they were murmuring. All true praise must come from true hearts. If thou dost not learn of Christ, thou canst not render to Him acceptable song. 5. Then, in the next place, you will observe that the praise they rendered was joyful praise. “ The whole multitude of the disciples began to rejoice.” I hope the doctrine that Christians ought to be gloomy will soon be driven out of the universe. 6. The next point we must mention is, that it was demonstrative praise. They praised Him with their voices, and with a loud voice. If not with loud voices actually in sound, yet we would make the praise of God loud by our actions, which speak louder than any words; we would extol Him by great deeds of kindness, and love, and self-denial, and zeal, that so our actions may assist our words. 7. The praise rendered, however, though very demonstrative, was very reasonable; the reason is given--“ for all the mighty works that they had seen.” We have seen many mighty works which Christ has done. 8. With another remark, I shall close this first head--the reason for their joy was a personal one. There is no praise to God so sweat as that which flows from the man who has tasted that the Lord is gracious. II. I shall now lead you on to the second point--their praise found vent for itself in AN SONG. “ Blessed be the King that cometh in the name of the Lord. Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest.” 1. It was an appropriate song, if you will remember that it had Christ for its subject. 2. This was an appropriate song, in the next place, because it had God for its object; they extolled God, God in Christ, when they thus lifted up their voices. 3. An appropriate song, because it had the universe for its scope. The multitude sung of peace in heaven, as though the angels were established in their peaceful seats by the Saviour, as though the war which God had waged with sin was over now, because the conquering King was come. Oh, let us seek after music which shall be fitted for other spheres! I would begin the music here, and so my soul should rise. Oh, for some heavenly notes to bear my passions to the skies! It was appropriate to the occasion, because the universe was its sphere. 4. And it seems also to have been most appropriate, because it had gratitude for its spirit. III. Thirdly, and very briefly--for I am not going to give much time to these men--we have . “ Master, rebuke Thy disciples.” But why did these Pharisees object? 1. I suppose it was, first of all, because they thought there would be no praise for them. 2. They were jealous of the people. 3. They were jealous of Jesus. IV. We come now to the last point, which is this--AN . He said, “ If these should hold their peace, the very stones would cry out.” Brethren, I think that is very much our case; if we were not to praise God, the very stones might cry out against us. We must praise the Lord. Woe is unto us if we do not! It is impossible for us to hold our tongues. Saved from hell and be silent! Secure of heaven and be ungrateful! Bought with precious blood, and hold our tongues! Filled with the Spirit and not speak! (C. H. Spurgeon.) The triumphal entry Christ’ s triumphal entrance into Jerusalem is one of the most noted scenes in gospel story. It is a sun-burst in the life of the Son of Man. It is a typal coronation. It is a fore-gleam of that coming day when Jesus shall be enthroned by the voice of the universe. I. THE SCENE. II. THE CHIEF LESSON BY THE SCENE: SHOULD BE TO THE SERVICE OF CHRIST. There was feeling and thrill and deep life and outbursting emotion in the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem, and He approved it all. I argue for the equipment of enthusiasm in the service of Christ. There should be a fervency of spirit that will radiate both light and heat. The faculties should be on fire. There are higher moods and lower moods in the Christian life, just as there are higher moods and lower moods in the intellectual life. Every scholar knows that there are such things as inspirational moods, when all the faculties awaken and kindle and glow; when the heart burns within; when the mind is automatic, and works without a spur; when the mental life is intense; when all things seem possible; when the very best in the man puts itself into the product of his pen; when the judgment is quick and active, the reason clear and far-seeing, and the conscience keen and sensitive. These are the moods in which we glory. These are the moods which give the world its long-lived masterpieces. These are the moods which we wish to enthrone in the memories of our friends. You remember Charles Dickens’ s charming story, “ David Copperfield.” In it there is pictured the parting that took place between the two young men, Steerforth and Copperfield. Young Steerforth, putting both hands upon Copperfield’ s shoulders, says: “ Let us make this bargain! If circumstances should separate us, and you should see me no more, remember me at my best.” Steerforth is only a type of us all. Every one of us wishes to be remembered at his best. I argue for man’ s best in the religious life. Man is at his best only when he is enthusiastic. Enthusiasm is power. It is the locomotive so full of steam that it hisses at every crack and crevice and joint. Such a locomotive carries the train with the speed of wind through hill and over valley. It has been enthusiasm that has carried the Christian Church through the attainments of ages. By enthusiasm, when it is in an eminent degree, men propagate themselves upon others in matters of taste, of affection, and of religion. Iron cannot be wielded at a low temperature. There must be heat, and then you can weld iron to iron. So you cannot weld natures to each other when they are at a low temperature. Mind cannot take hold of mind nor faculty of faculty, when they are not in a glow. But when they are in a glow they can. We see this exemplified in society. Hundreds and hundreds of men, who are rich in learning, ponderous in mental equipment, ample in philosophical power, who are low in degree of temperature, and who labour all their life, achieve but little. You see right by the side of these men, men who have no comparison with them in native power or in culture, but who have simplicity, straightforwardness, and, above all, intensity, and what of them? Why, this: they are eminent in accomplishing results. There are people, I know, who have an antipathy to enthusiasm and emotion in religion. They object that we cannot rely upon enthusiasm. They forgot that if it spring from the grace of God it has an inexhaustible fountain. One hour enthusiastic people cry “ Hosanna” ; but the next hour they cry “ Crucify.” I deny that the hosanna people of Jerusalem ever cried “ crucify.” The charge that they did is without a single line of Scripture as a basis. Peter and James and John, and men of that class, did they cry “ crucify” ? Yet the hosanna people were made up of such. In a city in which there were gathered from all parts of the nation not less than two millions, there were certainly enough people of diverse minds to create two parties diametrically opposed, without requiring us to slander the grace of enthusiasm, and circulate false reports about the hosanna people. I stand by the hosanna people, and fearlessly assert that there is no proof against their integrity. Enthusiasm I That is what the Church needs. It is only the enthusiast who succeeds. Enter the history of the cause of Christ, and there also will you find the statement borne out. What was Paul, the chief of Christian workers, but an enthusiast? Rob Paul of his enthusiasm, and you blot out of existence the churches of Corinth and Ephesus and Galatia and Thessalonica and Troas. Rob him of his enthusiasm and you annihilate the Epistles to the Romans, Corinthians, Ephesians, and the Pastoral Epistles. This day of palm branches has been duplicated and reduplicated ever since the triumphal entrance of Jesus into Jerusalem, and this reduplication will continue until Jesus is ultimately and for ever crowned on the great day of final consummation. The world is full of hosannas to the Son of David. The humble Christian school of the missionary in foreign lands is a hosanna sounding through the darkness of heathendom. The philanthropic institution that rises into sight all over Christendom is a hosanna to the Son of David echoing through civilization. The gorgeous cathedral, standing like a mountain of beauty, is a hosanna to the Son of David worked into stone and echoing itself in the realm of art. The holy life of every disciple, which is seen on every continent of the earth, is a hosanna to the Son of David ringing throughout all humanity. These hosannas shall be kept until the end come, and then all the universe of God’ s redeemed will peal forth the grand Hallel in the hearing of eternity. (David Gregg.) Enthusiasm in religion What is your religion if it have no enthusiasm in it? Who wants a wooden Christianity or a logical Christianity only? Christianity loses its power when it loses its pathos. Every religion goes downward when it loses the power of exciting the highest, most intelligent, and most courageous enthusiasm. Some of us have need to be cautioned against decorum. Alas! there are some Christian professors who do not know what it is to have a moment of transport and ecstasy, unutterable emotion--who never, never go away upon the wings of light and hope, but are always standing, almost shivering--eating up their dry logic, and never knowing where the blossom, the poetry, and the ecstasy may be found. Christianity should excite our emotion and make us sometimes talk rapturously, and give us, sometimes at least, moments of inspiration, self-deliverance, and victory. It was so in the case before us. The whole city was moved. There was passion, there was excitement on every hand. But, then, am I advocating nothing but emotion, sensibility, enthusiasm? Far from it. First of all, let there be intelligent apprehension, and profound conviction respecting truth. Let us see that our foundations, theological and ethical, are deep, broad, immovable. Then let us carry up the building until it breaks out into glittering points, farflashing pinnacles, and becomes broken into beauty. (David Gregg.) The coming King I. THE FORMED OF OUR LORD BY THE CROWD. “ King.” II. HIS . “ In the name of the Lord.” Divine commission attested. 1. By His words. 2. By His works. III. THE WHICH COME WITH THE KING. “ Peace” and “ glory.” IV. THESE EVERY ADVENT OF “ THE KING THAT COMETH IN THE NAME OF THE LORD.” 1. It was so at His first coming. 2. It shall be so at His second coming. It is so when the King comes to reign in the sinner’ s heart. (J. Treanor, B. A.) Hosannas to Jesus I. THAT WHICH MAKES MEN , AND WORTHY OF --lofty genius, heroism, expansive benevolence, mighty achievements--all that intensified and sublimely illustrated to a degree infinitely beyond what is possible to attainment by ordinary mortals, THE LORD JESUS, AND HIM TO OUR HOMAGE AND PRAISE, Take-- 1. Genius. What is genius? Genius originates, invents, creates. Talent reproduces that which has been, and still is. The spindles in our mills, the locomotives in our shops represent genius. The swift play of the one, and the majestic tread of the other across the continents on paths of steel, is genius in motion. Now turn the light of these definitions upon the Lord Jesus Christ, and see if He has not genius worthy of our best praise. It were folly to deny creative genius to Him, by whose word the worlds sprang into being, and by whose power they continue to exist. It were folly to deny originality to the Alpha and Omega of all mind and matter, life and spirit. Folly again to deny superior intellectual acumen to Him, who is the light of all intellect, the inspirer of all right thought, the incentive to all noble action. The blind saw, and the deaf heard, and the dumb spake, and the dead awoke. As to the modifying influence which Coleridge says is implied in the highest type of genius, it has been truly affirmed: The genius of Christ, exerted through His gospel in which His Spirit presides, has made itself felt in all the different relations and modifications of life. Take the next element of distinction that men applaud. 2. Heroism. Spontaneous is the homage paid to heroes. In some lands they are deified and worshipped. Heroism! Produce another example, such as Jesus of Nazareth, from the long list of the world’ s illustrious! Take the next quality in lofty manhood that men extol-- 3. Benevolence. Of this Jesus was the perfect personification. 4. Wonderful achievement receives applause from men. The multitude praised God “ for all the mighty works that they had seen.” Our works may be good, Christ’ s are mighty as well as good. We visit the sick, Christ cures them. II. HIS PRAISES HAVE BEEN SUNG IN ALL AGES, ON ACCOUNT OF HIS OF ALL HOMAGE IN HEAVEN AND IN EARTH. Abraham, the representative of the patriarchal age, looked forward to His day with glad anticipations, and praised the promised seed. Jacob, in his dying predictions, sang of the Shiloh, and waited for His salvation. Moses chose for the subject of his eulogy the Prophet like unto himself, unto whom the people should hearken. David in exalted strains sang of His character and works, His trials and triumphs, His kingdom and glory, and died exulting, “ Blessed be the Lord God of Israel from everlasting and to everlasting. Let the whole earth be filled with His glory. Amen and Amen.” The prophets all rejoiced in Zion’ s delivery and Judah’ s King. At His birth, angels and shepherds and sages sang His praises. As in some of the old monasteries one choir of monks relieved another choir in order that the service of praise might not cease, so as one generation of the children of God has retired to its rest, another has caught up the glad strains of hosannas to Christ, and in this way they have been perpetuated down the centuries. III. THERE ARE THOSE, HOWEVER, WHO WOULD THE PRAISES OF GOD’ S PEOPLE: YEA, WORSE, THEM . We learn from our text that this was the desire of the Pharisees on this occasion. Thus, the wicked and unbelieving now would stop all ascriptions of praise to Christ. They would quench the flames of devotion that the Holy Ghost kindles in the hearts of believers. “ Praise Nature! Sing odes to the landscape! Worship the beautiful in what your eyes see, the tangible, that of which you have positive knowledge through the certification of your senses! Don’ t be wasting your devotion on the unseen, the unknowable, the mythical, the intangible!” --so says the Agnostic. “ Do homage to Reason! Let Reason be the object of your worship; its cultivation the effort of your life! What wonders it has accomplished in science and philosophy!” --so says the Rationalist. “ Sing of wine, feasting, sensuality! Bacchus is our god. Praise him! Worship him!” says the Profligate. “ Sing of wars, and of victories, and of conquests! Apollo is the god whom we worship, and whose praises we resound. Therefore, spread your palms with paeans of triumph at the feet of victors!” --so say Conquerors. Standing erect, with his thumbs thrust in the arm-holes of his vest, his chest thrown forward and his head backward, like an oily, overfed, bigoted Pharisee, “ Sing of me,” says the Self-Righteous. “ Praise the Saviour!” says the believer, and the call receives a response. (N. H. Van Arsdale.) The stones would immediately cry outGuilty silence in Christ’ s cause I. Our Saviour means to intimate, that THIS SILENCE WOULD BE VILE. Let us, then, proceed with this dismal business, and arraign this fearful silence. 1. We tax it, first, with the most culpable ignorance. If you found a man, who was entirely insensible to Milton’ s “ Paradise Lost,” or Cowper’ s “ Task,” dead to the touches of Raffael’ s pencil, to all the beautiful and sublime scenery of nature, to all that is illustrious and inspiring in human disposition and action, you would be ready to say, “ Why, this senselessness is enough to make a stone speak.” But where are we now? Men may be undeserving of the praise they obtain; or if the praise be deserved in the reality, it may be excessive in the degree; but there can be no excess here. It is impossible to ascribe titles too magnificent, attributes too exalted, adorations too intense, to Him who is “ fairer than the children of men,” who is the “ chief among ten thousand, and the altogether lovely.” Now to be insensible to such a Being as this, argues, not merely a want of intellectual, but of moral taste, and evinces, not only ignorance, but depravity. He who died, not for a country, but for the world, and for a world of enemies--He awakens no emotion, no respect. Shame, shame! 2. We charge this silence, secondly, with the blackest ingratitude I need not enlarge on this hateful vice. The proverb says, “ Call a man ungrateful, and you call him everything that is bad.” The Lacedaemonians punished ingratitude. “ The ungrateful,” says Locke, “ are like the sea; continually receiving the refreshing showers of heaven, and turning them all into salt.” “ The ungrateful,” says South, “ are like the grave; always receiving, and never returning.” But nothing can equal your ingratitude, if you are silent. For you will observe, that other beneficiaries may have some claim upon their benefactors, from a community of nature or from the command of God; but we have no claim, we are unworthy of the least of all His mercies. 3. We tax this silence with shameful cruelty. We arc bound to do all the good in our power. If we have ourselves received the knowledge of Christ, we are bound to impart it. If the inhabitants of a village were dying of a disease, and you had the remedy, and held your peace; if you saw a fellow-creature going to drink a deadly poison, and instead of warning him you held your peace; if you saw even a poor stranger going to pass over a deep and deadly river, upon a broken bridge, and you knew that a little lower down there was a marble one, and you held your peace; is there a person, that would ever pass you without standing still and looking round upon you and exclaiming, “ You detestable wretch, you infamous villain, you ought not to live!” “ If these should hold their peace, the stones would cry out.” How is it, then, that we have so much less moral feeling than the lepers had, when they said, “ This is a good day,” and reflecting upon their starving babes said, “ If we altogether hold our peace, some evil will befall us; let us therefore go and tell the king’ s household” ? II. Secondly, our Saviour seems to intimate, that THIS SILENCE IS . Now we often express a difficulty by an obvious impossibility. The Jews said, “ Let Him come down from the cross, and we will believe on Him.” Their meaning was, that they could not believe on Him; for the condition seemed to them impossible. The Saviour here says, “ You impose silence upon these disciples, but this is impossible; yes, they will hold their peace when dumb nature shall become vocal, and not before.” “ If these should hold their peace, the stones would cry out;” that is, their principles will actuate them, their feelings must have operation and utterance. If you could enter heaven, you would find that there He attracts every eye, and fills every heart, and employs every tongue. And in the Church below there is a degree of the same inspiration. 1. The impressions that Christ makes upon His people by conviction are very powerful. 2. The impressions He produces by hope are very powerful. 3. The impressions He produces by love are very powerful. He so attaches His disciples to Himself by esteem and gratitude, as to induce them to come out of the world, to deny themselves, to take up their cross, and to be willing to follow the Lamb whithersoever He goeth. III. Our Saviour here intimates further, that THIS SILENCE WOULD BE USELESS. “ If,” says He, “ those of whom you complain were to hold their peace, you would gain nothing by their silence; there would not be a cessation of My praise, but only a change of instruments and voices; rather than My praise should be suspended, what they decline others would be sure to rise up to perform; if these should hold their peace, the stones would cry out.” 1. First, we shall glance at the supposed silence. 2. And, secondly, observe the improbable instruments that are employed to perpetuate the testimony. It is not said, “ If these should hold their peace the angels would cry out, men would cry out” ; no; “ the stones would cry out.” Can stones live? can stones preach and write and translate the Scriptures? Can they aid in carrying on such a cause as this? Why not? He can employ, and often does employ, the most unlikely characters. The wrath of man praiseth Him. We see this in the case of Henry the Eighth. It is of great importance to know whether we are God’ s servants, or whether we are God’ s enemies; but as to Him, He can employ one as well as another. This was the case with Saul of Tarsus. He was a persecutor once; but then he was called by Divine grace, and preach the faith that once he endeavoured to destroy. All the Lord’ s people once were enemies: but He found a way into their hearts, and He made them friends. They were all once “ stones” ; but of these stones God has “ raised up children unto Abraham.” They were as hard as stones, as insensible as stones, as cold as stones; but they are now flesh, and every feeling of this flesh is alive to God. 3. Thirdly, notice the readiness of their appearance. “ If these should hold their peace, the stones would immediately cry out.” “ The King’ s business requires haste” ; both because of its importance, and the fleeting uncertainty of the period in which He will allow it to be performed. 4. Then, lastly, observe the certainty of their appearance, when they become necessary. The certainty of the end infers the certainty of all that is intermediately necessary to it. Upon this principle, our Saviour here speaks; it is, I am persuaded, the very spirit of the passage. “ My praise” --as if He should say--“ must prevail; and therefore means must be forthcoming to accomplish it, and to carry it on.” Let us, first, apply this certainty as the prevention of despair. Secondly; as a check to vanity and pride. My brethren in the ministry, we are not--no, we are not essential to the Redeemer’ s cause. We are not the Atlases upon which the Church depends; the government is upon His shoulders who filleth all in all. Thirdly; as a spur and diligence and zeal. (W. Jay.) All ought to praise God Have we not heard, or have I not tom you years ago, of some great conductor of a musical festival suddenly throwing up his baton and stopping the proceedings, saying “ Flageolete!” The flageolete was not doing its part of the great musical utterance. The conductor had an ear that heard every strain and tone. You and I probably would have heard only the great volume of music, and would have been glad to listen with entranced attention to its invisible charm, but the man who was all ear noted the absence of one instrument, and throwing up his baton, he said, “ Flageolet.” Stop till we get all that is within us into this musical offering. So I want our hymn of praise to be sung by every man, by every power in his soul. (J. Parker, D. D.) Luke 19:41-44 He beheld the city, and wept over it Christ weeping over Jerusalem I. THE OF CHRIST, AND HIS TEARS IN THEIR TO THE GUILTY CITY. 1. He remembered days of old. On these sinners the object of His mission seemed entirely lost. 2. But with the self-denying love of a patriot, and the grace of a Saviour, He looked beyond His own sufferings, and fixed His eye on theirs. What an appeal to His pity was there I The city was beleaguered and lost--the dwelling of Holiness was laid waste. 3. The sentence is broken and incomplete. It is eloquently completed by the tears, which are the natural language of compassion, and express its intentness beyond all words. What the present might have been! II. THE BEARING OF THE RECORD ON . 1. There are things which pre-eminently belong to your peace. 2. The period allotted to you for attending to them is definite and brief. 3. Should your day close, and leave you unsaved, your guilt will be great, and your condition remediless. 4. This is a spectacle calling for the profoundest lamentation. 5. The tears of Jesus prow His unextinguished compassion for the guilty. (John Harris.) The tears of Jesus I. LOST . “ Oh, that thou hadst known the things which belong unto thy peace.” II. LOST .--“ Even thou in this thy day. Nations and men have their day: 1. Youth. 2. Special occasions, as Confirmation. 3. Religious strivings within our own manifold opportunities, which may be prized and used, or neglected and abused. III. LOST SOULS.--“ But now they are hid from thine eyes.” (Clerical World.) Jesus weeping over perishing sinners I. THAT GOSPEL ARE TO THE PEACE OF MANKIND, They are the things which belong unto our peace. Here let us more particularly observe-- 1. What those things are to which our Lord refers. The blessings of grace in this world. Deliverance--from bondage, condemnation, and guilty fears Psalms 116:16; Isaiah 12:1; Psalms 34:4); and holiness--both of heart and life (Obadiah 1:17; Romans 6:22). The blessings of glory in the eternal state. An eternal life of rest, felicity, honour, and security (Romans 2:6-7). 2. How these things are conducive to our peace. They belong unto our peace as they produce sweet tranquillity of mind (Ecclesiastes 2:26). This arises from peace with God (Romans 5:1); peace of conscience 2 Corinthians 1:12); a peaceable disposition (James 3:18,); the joy of victory (Romans 8:37; 1 Corinthians 15:37); and the joy of hope Romans 5:2; Romans 14:17). Our text teaches us-- II. THAT THESE MUST BE KNOWN TO BE ENJOYED. “ Oh that thou hadst known,” etc. The knowledge thus necessary must be-- 1. A speculative knowledge; that is, we must have a correct view of them as they are exhibited in God’ s Word--For we are naturally without them Romans 3:16-18). We must seek them to obtain them (Job 22:21; Isaiah 27:5). And we must understand them in order that we may seek them aright: we must understand the nature of them; the necessity of them; and the way to obtain them (Proverbs 19:2). The knowledge here required must also be-- 2. An experimental knowledge. This is evident--From the testimony of inspired apostles (2 Corinthians 5:1; 2 Corinthians 13:5; 1 John 5:19). And from the nature of gospel blessings; spiritual sight, liberty, and health, must be experienced to be enjoyed. Our text teaches us-- III. THAT A SEASON IS US FOR THE OF THESE . 1. This season is here called our day, because it is the time in which we are called to labour for the blessings of peace (John 6:27; Philippians 2:12-13; 2 Peter 3:14). 2. This season is favourable for seeking the things here recommended; for they are set before us (Deuteronomy 30:19-20); we have strength promised to seek them with (Isaiah 40:31); and we have light to seek them in (John 12:36). Hence, we should also recollect-- 3. This season is limited: it is only a day. Our text also teaches us, with respect to gospel blessings-- IV. THAT IT IS GOD’ S WILL THEY SHOULD BE ENJOYED BY US. This is certain 1. From the wish of Christ--“ O that thou hadst known,” etc. Such a wish we find often repeated by God in His Word, and expressed in the kindest manner; see Deuteronomy 5:29; Deuteronomy 32:29; Isaiah 48:18. 2. From the tears of Christ. These demonstrate the sincerity of His wish Deuteronomy 32:4); the great importance of godliness (1 Timothy 4:8); and the dreadful doom of impenitent sinners (Romans 2:8-9). 3. From the visitations of Christ. He visited us by His incarnation; and He still visits us by the strivings of His Spirit, the gifts of His providence, and the ministry of His Word. V. THAT ALL WHO SEEK THESE ARIGHT WILL OBTAIN THEM. VI. THAT THE OF THESE IS WITH . (Theological Sketch-book.) The tears of Jesus We are told three times of Christ weeping: in this passage; in John 11:35; in Hebrews 5:7. 1. JESUS WEPT IN WITH OTHERS. At Bethany. 1. It is not sinful to weep under affliction. 2. The mourner may always count on the sympathy of Jesus. 3. When our friends are mourning, we should weep with them. II. THE TEAR OF JESUS’ . Text. 1. Observe the privileges which were granted the Jews, and neglected. 2. Observe the sorrow of Jesus for the lost. III. THE TEARS OF . Probably the Agony in Gethsemane is alluded to in Hebrews 5:7. 1. Think not that because you suffer you are not chosen. 2. Nor that you are not a Christian because you feel weak. (W. Taylor, D. D.) The tears of Jesus I. Our Lord, by His tears over Jerusalem proclaims to us THE DUTY OF LOOKING AT THE THINGS OF THIS WORLD IN THEIR TRUE LIGHT, of estimating all that surrounds us, not as it appears to the hope, the fear, the enthusiasm, the pride of many, but as it is viewed in the sight of God, whose judgment shall alone stand, when the false standards and false excitements of the moment have passed for ever away. His tears speak to us the same lesson which He elsewhere taught in words, “ Judge not after the appearance, but judge righteous judgment.” For there was apparently little to draw forth the tears of our Blessed Lord at that moment. And is it not so now, my brethren? Do we not exult and rejoice in things, and persons, and scenes which would call forth only tears from our Saviour? Oh that we may strive to see things in their true light--that is, in the light of the eternity in which we shall soon find ourselves I oh that we may estimate them, not by the standards of sense and time, but in the true balance of God’ s unerring judgment II. And, secondly, we see, as from other passages of Holy Scripture, THE OF SIN, in that sin has the power of calling forth tears from the Saviour in the midst of so much exultation and beauty. Ah! my brethren, nothing is so truly mournful as sin. It is the great evil of life; neither poverty, nor sickness, nor slanderous words, nor the contempt of the world, have any real sting in them apart from this. Take sin away, and the world becomes a Paradise. Take sin away, and the lives of the unfortunate are filled with happiness. It is sin which has cast a blight over existence on every side of us: trace each form of suffering and sorrow around you to its ultimate source, and you will find that source to be sin. Alas! brethren, there are many who come to Church, Sunday after Sunday, and even approach the Holy Communion, and yet know nothing of their own hearts, and the deadly poison of unrepented sin, which dwells within them, and the real peril in which their souls are placed. (S. W.Sheffington, M. A.) Christ weeping ever Jerusalem Tears, looked at materially, admit a very ready explanation; they are secreted by a gland, they are drawn from the fluids of the body, and are rounded and brought down by the law of gravitation. The poets give the spiritual meaning, when they call tears the blood of the wounds of the soul, the leaves of the plant of sorrow the hall and rain of life’ s winter, the safety valves of the heart under pressure, the vent of anguish-showers blown up by the tempests of the soul. If God had a body He would weep. God does grieve, and ii He had a corporeal nature, tears would not be inconsistent with all the recognized attributes of Deity. There is an eloquence in tears which is irresistible. There is a sacredness in tears which almost forbids the discussion of weeping. There is a dignity in tears which makes them consistent with the utmost intelligence and strength and nobility of character. There are men with hard heads, cold hearts, good digestion, and full purses, who know nothing of tears; but he who values true manhood and spiritual riches will not envy such men. “ Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted.” 1. Jesus wept as a man, as the man Christ Jesus, as the perfect man Christ Jesus. “ Behold the man.” To the utmost extent of human sadness was Jesus grieved, when “ He beheld the city, and wept over it.” 2. Jesus wept as a Jew. The broadest love may be discriminating, and may include strong individual attachments. Jesus was interested in every land and in every race. No land or race was shut out from His heart. But there were special attachments to Palestine, and strong ties to the holy city. 3. Jesus wept as a teacher. Light had come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. And this was the condemnation. He was conscious of a pure heart in His teaching, and He saw the corruption of the human heart in the rejection and contempt of His instructions. 4. Jesus wept as a foreteller, as a prophet. He who was the brightness of the Father’ s glory, and the express image of His person, declared the mind and will and heart of God, when, beholding this doomed city, He wept over it. 5. Jesus wept as the Messiah. He was the woman’ s seed promised in Paradise. He was the Shiloh seen by Jacob. He was the prophet revealed to Moses. He was the Prince of peace spoken of by Isaiah. To Him gave all the prophets witness. The law was His shadow. Much was written in the Psalms and prophets concerning Him. His history and character, His words and works, fulfilled various scriptures written by inspired men. His claim to the Messiahship was distinct and full and clear. Yet He was despised and rejected of men. Yet when He came to His own, His own received Him not. This was a sorrow for His Father’ s sake. He was the fufilment of His Father’ s ancient and oft-repeated promise. He was His Father’ s unspeakable gift. What a requital of infinite and eternal love! And this was a sorrow for the people’ s sake. Instead of receiving Him they were looking for another. But Jesus knew that theft eyes would fail by looking in vain. 6. Jesus wept as a Saviour. He looked upon those who would not be saved, and wept over them. Measure His sorrow by His knowledge and by His hatred of sin; measure His sorrow by His own freedom from sin; measure His sorrow by the love of His great heart. To see evil, and to be unable to remedy it, is anguish; but to see evil, and to be able and willing to remove it, and to be baffled by the wilfulness and waywardness of the sufferer or of the evil-doer, is anguish keener and deeper still. Jesus knew all this when “ He beheld the city, and wept over it.” 7. Jesus wept as God manifest in flesh. The God grieved and the man wept. The Divine nature does suffer, and these tears reveal the fact. The whole nature of the Christ, the Redeemer of men, was sad, when Jesus on this occasion wept. These tears, then, were the tears of a man, a patriot, a teacher, and a prophet. They were the tears of the Messiah and the Saviour and the God-man. They were both human and divine, tears of pity and patriotism, tears of sympathy and of displeasure, tears of a wounded spirit and of a loving soul. (S. Martin, D. D.) The tears of Jesus 1. The tears of Jesus Christ are compassionate tears. Like His heavenly Father, He has no pleasure in the death of him that dieth. The office of the Judge is not His willing office. It made Him sorrowful to see men sin. It made Him sorrowful to see men reject the gospel. It made Him sorrowful to see men choose their own misery. 2. Again, the tears of Jesus are admonitory, warning--some have even called them terrible tears. He would not have wept, I think we may say with confidence, merely because a little pain, or a little suffering, or even a little anguish and misery, lay before us. He shrank not from pain: He endured suffering--yea, the death of the Cross. He faced anguish and misery, and flinched not. There was only one thing which Jesus Christ could not endure--or, if He endured it for an hour Himself, certainly could not advise others, nor bear others, to encounter without Him--and that was the real displeasure, the prolonged hiding of the countenance, the actual, terrible, punitive wrath of God. It was because He foresaw that for impenitent, obstinate, obdurate sinners, that He wept these bitter tears. I call them admonitory tears; I will even consent to call them terrific tears. They seem to say to us, “ Oh, presume not too far!” 3. I will add another thing. The tears of Jesus were exemplary tears. As He wept, so ought we to weep. We ought to weep tears of sorrow over our sins. We ought to weep tears of repentance over our past lives, over our many short-comings and backslidings, omissions of good and commissions of evil, lingering rebelling obstinate sins, cold poor languishing dying graces. But more than this. We ought to weep more exactly as He wept. He wept not for Himself: so also, in our place, should we. 4. I will add, without comment, a fourth word--the tears of Jesus Christ are consolatory tears. Yes, this, in all their accents, is the sweet undersong--Jesus Christ cares for us. The tears of Jesus are, above all else,consolatory. They say to us, “ Provision is made for you.” They say to us, “ It is not of Christ, it is not of God, if you perish.” They say to us, “ Escape for your life--because a better, and a higher, and a happier life is here for you!” (Dean Vaughan) Christ weeping over sinners I. WHAT OUR LORD DID: “ He beheld the city, and wept over it.” 1. He wept for the sins they had committed, and the evil treatment which He Himself should receive at their hands. 2. He foresaw the calamities which were coming upon them, and desired not the woful day. 3. Spiritual judgments also awaited them, and this was matter of still greater lamentation. 4. The final consequence of all this also affected the compassionate Saviour; namely, their everlasting ruin in the world to come. II. Consider WHAT OUR LORD SAID AS WELL AS DID, when He came near and beheld the city--“ If thou hadst known,” etc. Here observe-- 1. The whole of religion is expressed by knowledge. Not speculative, but such as sanctifies the heart and influences the conduct--the holy wisdom that cometh from above. 2. That which it chiefly concerns us to know is, “ the things which belong to our peace.” 3. There is a limit to which this knowledge is confined. “ This thy day.” 4. When this time is elapsed, our case will be for ever hopeless: Now the things which belong unto thy peace “ are hid from thine eyes!” Improvement. (1) did Christ weep for sinners; and shall they not weep for themselves? Does not God call us to weeping; and does not our case call for it? (2) Let us beware of rejecting the gospel, and trifling with our privileges, lest we be given up to final impenitence. Insensibility is the forerunner of destruction: (3) Let those who are truly acquainted with the things which belong to their peace be thankful, and adore the grace which has made them to differ. (B. Beddome, M. A.) . Christ weeping over Jerusalem I. I observe, in the first place, that THERE ARE CERTAIN THINGS, THE OF WHICH IS TO YOUR ETERNAL PEACE. 1. It deeply concerns you to know, for example, in what situation you stand, with respect to God and the world to come. 2. Again, it deeply concerns us to know, whether God, by any means, may be reconciled, to those who have set themselves in opposition to His will. 3. Once more, it deeply concerns you to know, what state of mind is required in you, in order that you may profit by the grace and mercy of your dying Saviour. II. I observe, secondly, that THE SON OF GOD IS MOST THAT WE SHOULD KNOW THESE THINGS. III. , THE OF CHRIST WILL NOT STOP THE COURSE OF HIS JUSTICE, IF THESE THINGS BE FINALLY . 1. HOW inexcusable is the thoughtless sinner, who, after all, will not know the things which belong unto his peace! 2. But reflect, on the other hand, how welcome will every returning sinner be! (J. Jowett, M. A.) The Saviour’ s tears over Jerusalem The sight of Jerusalem, then, as Jesus was about to enter it, suggested the thought of national misery and degradation. He looked on the Temple, the place where the adorations and sacrifices of successive generations had been offered; it was now profaned. He looked on the city, the metropolis of Judaea, and the scene of high solemnities, and it was peopled by transgressors; was soon to be reduced by the might of a conquering power, its streets to be drenched with blood, and its buildings to be razed. Our Lord might chiefly allude to outward calamity, but can we doubt that the moral state of Jerusalem’ s inhabitants was what gave Him most concern? The doom spoken of descended as an act of vengeance, inflicted by God. But Jesus thought also of a still more pitiable wreck. He reflected on the consequences of unpardoned sin. It was not merely the overthrow of tower and palace, the destruction of what had been for so long a “ house of prayer” ; this called not forth an expression of such deep concern. It was principally an idea of the spiritual ruin coming upon such as had transgressed against so much light and warning, and who had resisted such earnest and oft-repeated pleadings. I. In further speaking from these verses, we may consider, first of all, the words to imply, that the people of Jerusalem HAD ENJOYED A “ DAY” --OF GRACE, NOW DRAWING TO A CLOSE--a time which had not been followed by suitable and adequate improvement. II. Let us consider our Lord’ s manifestation of feeling and His words on this occasion, as showing THE OF IN TIME TO THE THINGS THAT “ BELONG TO OUR PEACE.” III. It would appear that THERE IS A SET TIME ALLOWED FOR DOING THIS. Though it were true that the spirit of God ceases not to strive with man; though there were not danger of the sinner being wholly given up to his idols, yet to defer so great a work is hazardous and foolish. Is that the best time for turning to God when languor and decay are attacking the frame? IV. Our Saviour’ s declaration, when He bewailed Jerusalem’ s impenitence, is A PLEDGE OF HIS CONCERN FOR THE STATE OF SINNERS . Observe how long-suffering He was, saying still, “ Turn ye at My reproof.” They had slain His prophets; they were about to shed His blood; they had cast dishonour on the law and appointments of the Most High, provoking Him to anger; yet Jesus’ sorrow showed the grief that filled His soul. These were the words of One who knew no guile, and to whom iniquity was abhorrent. Be encouraged therefore, O sinner, however many thine iniquities and pungent thy sense of guilt, to seek His favour. (A. R.Bonar, D. D.) Jesus weeping over sinners I. SIN IS NO TRIFLE. II. EVERY MAN HAS HIS DAY OF . But mercy has its limits. The day of grace will close. III. THE SINNER’ S DOOM IS SEALED WHEN CHRIST GIVES HIM UP. The die cast salvation beyond reach. Hope gone. IV. IT IS A LOST SEASON OF MERCY AND THAT WILL SO THE OF THE LOST. (J. M. Sherwood, D. D.) Tears on beholding a multitude of men There is always something heart-moving in the sight of a multitude of men. The Persian Xerxes shed tears as he watched the interminable ranks march past him on the way to Greece. The iron Napoleon once melted as he reviewed the vast army which followed him to his Russian campaign. And when the proudest, sternest, and most unfeeling hearts have shown emotion, what should we expect from the pitiful Son of God? Whenever He saw the multitude, and especially the city multitude, He was moved with compassion. That mass of life, heaving and throbbing like a troubled sea; that ceaseless tramp of eager feet and confused roar of innumerable voices; that measureless volume of mingled hope and despair; that infinitely varied array of faces, old and young, careless and anxious, joyous and miserable,--of laughing girls and broken-hearted widows, of jocund joys and haggard old men, with hungry looks; that incongruous procession of wealth and poverty, of want and superfluity, of rags and velvet, of vulgarity and refinement, of respectability and vice, of plump and well-fed life and vagrant homelessness, of purity and shame, of sweet religious hope and dismal despair, of titled splendour and nameless vagabondism, of feet winged with hope climbing to ambition’ s goal and of feet hurrying to the dark river to end the tragedy of bitter memories in one last cold plunge; that myriad-headed life, with all its selfish isolations, its fierce loneliness amid the jostling crowd, its every heart knowing its own bitterness or gloating over its own joy, unknown and unsympathized with by its neighbours; that awful race of passion and frenzied quest in which the runners forget that they are immortal souls with God’ s image stamped on every face. How was it possible for Him, to whom all souls were dear--all the children of the heavenly Father--how was it possible for Him to look upon that, or think of it, without emotion melting into tears? What man or woman of us can think of it without sharing in its pity and pathetic interest? (J. Greenhough, M. A.) Christ’ s compassion for the Jewish people I. INQUIRE WHAT THERE WAS IN THE STATE OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE, WHICH SO MOVED THE OF OUR LORD. The privileges of the Jewish people were above all lands. They were blessed with a divine theocracy; and to them belonged, amongst other most important privileges, the oracles of God. What could God have done which He had not done for them? The compassion of our Lord was moved, therefore--By their inflexible obstinacy. Theirs was the sin of men who hate the light, lest by it their deeds should be reproved! 2. Inveterate hostility. That greatness and power, when abused, should be hated, would not excite our surprise; but that goodness and mercy, when exercised, should be hated, might well excite our surprise, were it not abundantly proved in their history. 3. By their impending judgments. II. WHAT THE PRESENT STATE OF THAT PEOPLE CALLS FOR FROM OUR HANDS. (W. Marsh, M. A.) The tears and lamentations of Jesus I. First, we are to contemplate OUR LORD’ S INWARD GRIEF. 1. We note concerning it that it was so intense that it could not be restrained by the occasion. The occasion was one entirely by itself: a brief gleam of sunlight in a cloudy day, a glimpse of summer amid a cruel winter. That must have been deep grief which ran counter to all the demands of the season, and violated, as it were, all the decorum of the occasion, turning a festival into a mourning, a triumph into a lament. 2. The greatness of His grief may be seen, again, by the fact that it overmastered other very natural feelings which might have been, and perhaps were, excited by the occasion. Our Lord stood on the brow of the hill where He could see Jerusalem before Him in all its beauty. What thoughts it awakened in Him! His memory was stronger and quicker than ours, for His mental powers were unimpaired by sin, and He could remember all the great and glorious things which had been spoken of Zion, the city of God. Yet, as He remembered them all, no joy came into His soul because of the victories of David or the pomp of Solomon; temple and tower had lost all charm for Him; “ the joy of the earth” brought no joy to Him, but at the sight of the venerable city and its holy and beautiful house He wept. 3. This great sorrow of His reveals to us the nature of our Lord. How complex is the person of Christ! He foresaw that the city would be destroyed, and though He was divine He wept. While His nature on the one side of it sees the certainty of the doom, the same nature from another side laments the dread necessity. 4. In this our Lord reveals the very heart of God. Did He not say, “ He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father” ? Here, then, you see the Father Himself, even he who said of old, “ As I live, saith the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn,” etc. 5. From a practical lesson, we may remark that this weeping of the Saviour should much encourage men to trust Him. Those who desire His salvation may approach Him without hesitation, for His tears prove His hearty desires for our good. 6. This, too, I think is an admonishment to Christian workers. Never let us speak of the doom of the wicked harshly, flippantly or without holy grief. 7. Let me add that I think the lament of Jesus should instruct all those who would now come to Him as to the manner of their approach. While I appealed to you just now were there any.who said, “ I would fain come to Jesus, but how shall I come” ? The answer is,--come with sorrow and with prayer, even as it is written, “ they shall come with weeping, and with supplications will I lead them.” As Jesus meets you so meet Him. III. We are now to consider our LORD’ S VERBAL . These are recorded in the following words: “ Oh that thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace! but now they are hid from thine eyes.” 1. First, notice, he laments over the fault by which they perished--“ Oh that thou hadst known.” Ignorance, wilful ignorance, was their ruin. 2. The Lord laments the bliss which they had lost, the peace which could not be theirs. “ Oh that thou hadst known the things that belong unto thy peace.” 3. But our Lord also lamented over the persons who had lost peace. Observe that He says,--“ Oh that thou hadst known, even thou. Thou art Jerusalem, the favoured city. It is little that Egypt did not know, that Tyre and Sidon did not know, but that thou shouldst not know!” Ah, friends, if Jesus were here this morning, He might weep over some of you and say--“ Oh that thou hadst known, even thou.” 4. Our Lord wept because of the opportunity which they had neglected. He said, “ At least in this thy day.” It was such a favoured day: they aforetime had been warned by holy men, but now they had the Son of God Himself to preach to them. 5. The Lord Jesus mourned again because He saw the blindness which had stolen over them. They had shut their eyes so fast that now they could not see: their ears which they had stopped had become dull and heavy; their hearts which they had hardened had waxen gross; so that they could not see with their eyes, nor hear with their ears, nor feel in their hearts, nor be converted that He should heal them. Why, the truth was as plain as the sun in the heavens, and yet they could not see it; and so is the gospel at this hour to many of you, and yet you perceive it not. 6. Lastly, we know that the great flood-gates of Christ’ s grief were pulled up because of the ruin which He foresaw. (C. H. Spurgeon.) The tears of Jesus Strangely mysterious are these tears! But they were as real as they are mysterious--solemnly and awfully real--the bitterest that ever descended from a grief-stricken countenance. They were the tears of a man, but the expression of Deity; and viewing them in the light of the ancient love and peculiar complacency with which Jerusalem and its inhabitants had been divinely regarded, we may designate them as the tears of disappointed affection. How briny and how many have been such tears, as they have fallen, hot and scalding, from the eyes of broken-hearted weepers! There are the tears of the father, welling up from the depths of parental love, in thinking of his prodigal boy. There are the tears of the mother, wept over a lost daughter--tears that had been less bitter had the green turf received them instead of a memory of shame. Bitter, indeed, are such tears, but not so intensive of sorrow as “ the tears of Jesus wept over lost souls.” I have read somewhere of a traveller who found a fragment of an arch among the ruins of Jerusalem; and by calculating on the principles of architectural construction, he proved that the arch, when complete, must have spanned the gulf that was near the city, and have rested on the other side. That ruined arch, to the eye of that traveller, indicated what it originally was, as contrasted with what it then was. Sin in the soul reveals the same thing. In man, apart from sin, we see what the soul was made to be. In sin we see what the soul is--a noble thing in ruins. It is solemnizing to walk amidst the vestiges of some sacred temple--to pick up here and there fragments of what were once objects of beauty and strength; to see in one place pieces of an antique window; in another, the segment of a colossal pillar; elsewhere, a remnant of tracery work, with bits of rich and curious mosaic. But what must have been the emotions of Jesus, as He stood there before the collapsed powers, and contemplated the desecrated sanctities of human temples!--souls once so fair in beauty, and so glorious in strength, that the Creator looked upon them, and “ behold, they were very good!” Now so completely a wreck that as the Saviour looked, “ He beheld and wept!” How fearful is the power belonging to man! Here we see the Son of God--One whose might and dominion over all material forces, satanic agencies, and physical ailments were absolute. No power stood in His way as a resisting medium save one; and this was a power of resistance that opened the floodgates of soul-sorrow, drew tears from His eyes, and broke forth in the convulsive exclamation: “ O Jerusalem! Jerusalem!” In the light of these tears what awful responsibility is seen to clothe the human spirit! What power of will!--of a will that can resist the Divine will! “ How often would I, but ye would not!” (G. H. Jackson.) Tears a true mark of manhood If it really was so, as has been gathered from Epiphanius, that some of the ancient Christians, or persons who bore the name, wished to expunge from the canon of Scripture what is said of the Saviour’ s weeping on these two occasions, as if it had been unworthy of so glorious a Person to shed tears, it was very strange, and betrayed at once a sinful disrespect for the inspired Word of God, a leaning to the doctrines of Stoical pride and apathy, and an ignorance of what constitutes real excellence of human character. It is certainly a mark of imbecility to be given to weep for trifling reasons; but to weep occasionally, and when there is an adequate cause, instead of being a weakness, is perfectly compatible with true courage and manly sense, nay, is, in fact, a trait in the character of the majority of the most heroic and stout-hearted men of whom we read, either in sacred or profane history. As examples of this from Scripture may be mentioned, Abraham, Isaac, Joseph, David, Jonathan, Hezekiah, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezra, Nehemiah, Peter, and Paul. Who more firm than the apostle of the Gentiles?--yet he thus writes to the Philippians, “ Many walk, of whom I have told you often, and now tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ, whose end is destruction.” As for King David, that “ mighty valiant man, and man of war,” the ancestor, and, in some respects, the type of Christ, it is worthy of notice that he wept at the very place were Jesus now wept; for it is thus written, in the account of his fleeing from Jerusalem, on the rebellion of Absalom, “ David went up by the ascent of Mount Olivet, and wept as he went up, and had his head covered; and all the people that were with him covered every man his head, and they went up, weeping as they went up.” Nor is it foreign to the defence of this act of weeping, as consonant with the character of the brave, to produce the authority of heathen writers. Homer, then, attributes tears to several of his heroes, Virgil to AEneas, and their respective historians to Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Cato, Brutus, Marcellus, and Scipio; and one of the Latin poets says, “ Nature shows that she gives very tender hearts to mankind, by giving them tears. This is the best part of our disposition or feeling.” Beyond a doubt, the tenderness which our Lord now displayed harmonized with, and set off by contrast, the wonderful resolution which animated Him, when “ He turned not back,” but “ set His face like a flint” to what was now before Him. (James Foote, M. A.) The tears of love I heard the other day of a bad boy whom his father had often rebuked and chastened, but the lad grew worse. One day he had been stealing, and his father felt deeply humiliated. He talked to the boy, but his warning made no impression; and when he saw his child so callous the good man sat down in his chair and burst out crying, as if his heart would break. The boy stood very indifferent for a time, but at last as he saw the tears falling on the floor, and heard his father sobbing, he cried, “ Father, don’ t; father, don’ t do that: what do you cry for, father?” “ Ah! my boy,” he said, “ I cannot help thinking what will become of you, growing up as you are. You will be a lost man, and the thought of it breaks my heart.” “ Oh, father!” he said, “ pray don’ t cry. I will be better. Only don’ t cry, and I will not vex you again.” Under God that was the means of breaking down the boy’ s love of evil, and I hope it led to his salvation. Just that is Christ to you. He cannot bear to see you die, and He weeps over you, saying, “ How often would I have blessed you, and you would not! “ Oh, by the tears of Jesus, wept over you in effect when He wept over Jerusalem, turn to Him. (C. H. Spurgeon.) If thou hadst known, even thouChrist’ s lament over Jerusalem Let us observe, briefly, that in our Lord’ s lament over the doomed city there is to be traced a threefold vein of feeling. 1. The tears and words of Jesus Christ are the tears and words of a true patriot, for Jerusalem was the heart and head of the nation. It was, politically speaking, more what Paris is to France than what London is to England, and although Christ’ s ministry had been largely spent in Galilee, we know from St. John’ s Gospel that at the great festivals He had laboured often and continuously in the sacred city. It may be thought that there was no place for patriotism in the heart of Jesus Christ--that coming as He did from heaven with a mission to the whole race of men, and with a work to do for each and for all, He could not thus cherish a mere localized and bounded enthusiasm--that, as all had interest in Him, His interest must reciprocally be for all and world-embracing--that as in Him, according to His apostle, “ there is neither Greek nor Jew, barbarian nor Scythian, bond nor free,” but all are one, so He must have been Himself incapable of that restricted and particular concentration of thought and feeling and action upon the concerns of a single race or district which we practically understand by patriotism. My brethren, there is an element of truth in this. Jesus Christ, although a Jew by birth, belonged by His freedom from local peculiarities to the whole human family. He was, in a higher, more comprehensive, more representative sense than any before Him, human. All that was best, all that was richest in humanity, had its place in Him, and this is, at any rate, one import of the title by which He was commonly wont to speak of Himself as the Son of Man. But His relation to the whole race did not destroy His relation to His country any more than it destroyed His relation to His family--to His mother, to His foster-father, to those first cousins of His who, after the Hebrew manner, are called His brethren. Certainly He subordinated family ties as well as national ties to the claims of the kingdom of God--to His Father’ s business as He called it when only twelve years old. But because He kept these lower sympathies, claims, obligations, in their proper place, He did not ignore--He did not disavow them. To Him, as the Son of Mary, His family was dear; to Him, as the Son of David, the history of His country was dear. He would have parted with something of His true and deep humanity had it been otherwise; and therefore when He gazed on the city of His ancestors (for such it was) and saw in vision the Roman conqueror already approaching, and casting up earthworks on that very hill on which He was standing, and then by and by entering the sacred city with fire and sword, nor resting from His work till he had ploughed up the very foundations, till not one stone had been left upon another, His Jewish heart felt a pang of anguish which became tears and words. “ If thou hadst known, even thou at least in this thy day the things which belong unto thy peace! but now they are hid from thine eyes.” 2. But the lamentation of Christ over Jerusalem had a higher than any political or social meaning. The polity of Israel was not merely a state: it was a church as well. It was the kingdom of God among men. It is this which explains the passionate emotion towards Jerusalem which abounds in the Psalter--the joy in her glory, in her beauty, in her world-wide fame--the enthusiasm which can “ walk about Zion and go round about her andtell the towers thereof” --the anger deep and strong which cannot forget that in the day of Jerusalem it was Edom which joined in the cry for her destruction--the woe which cannot, which will not, be comforted when she lies before the heathen in her ruin and her desolation. It was as a theocratic kingdom--as we should say, a Church--that Jerusalem and the whole Jewish polity was so dear to the religious Jew; and this aspect of the sacred city underlies those words which Jesus spoke on the road from Bethany. Once more. Jerusalem was not merely a country or a church; it was a hive of men and women: it was a home of souls. Among these, to each of these, the Divine Christ had preached, but had preached in vain it was not the threatened architecture of the Herodian temple which drew tears from those Divine eyes. It was not chiefly the tragic ending of a history rich in its interest and its incident. It was the condition, the destiny, the eternal destiny of the individual men and women of that very generation to which Christ had ministered? What of them? They had heard Him; and what were they after hearing Him? Ah! it was over those souls for which He was presently to shed His blood that Jesus wept His tears. It was souls that for Him made up Jerusalem. And it is in this last sense that our Lord’ s words come most closely home to us. Our influence upon our country, upon our portion of the Church, is necessarily very, fractionally small. We are each one as a private soldier in a great army, who has only to obey orders that are given by others; but in our individual capacities it is otherwise. Here as single souls we decide as well as act. Here we are free to make the most of opportunities: we are responsible for doing so. And opportunities come to us as we walk along the path of life, as Christ came to the Jews eighteen centuries ago. They come to us: we see them coming. We know that they are at hand--that they are close upon us. We know--we might know--that they will not be within our reach always--perhaps not to-morrow. It is the time, the solemn time, of our visitation. It is some friend who has brought before us for the first time the true meaning, the true solemnity, the blessedness of life. It is some change of circumstances, some great soul-subduing sorrow which has forced upon us a sense of the transitory nature of all things here below. It is some one truth or series of truths about our Divine Lord, His person, or His work, unknown, or known and rejected before, which has been borne in upon us with a strength and clearness of conviction which we cannot, if we would, possibly mistake, and which involves obedience, action, sacrifice, as its necessary correlatives. It is an atmosphere of new aspirations, of higher thoughts, of longings to be other and better than we are, that has, we know not how, taken possession of us. It is the presence and the breathing, could we only know it, of a heavenly Friend who haunts our spirits that, if we will, He may sanctify them. Christ--in one word--has been abroad by His Spirit in the streets and secret passages of the soul, as of old He was abroad in the by-ways and the temple-courts of Jerusalem; and the question is, Have we welcomed Him?--Have we held Him by the feet, and refused to let Him go except He bless us? We are worse off though we may not trace the deterioration. We have suffered if not without yet assuredly within. We have been tried, and failed; and failure means weakness entailed upon, incorporated into, the system of the soul. (Canon Liddon.) Tenth Sunday after Trinity We have here, not only weeping but tearful lamentation, weeping accompanied with voice and words; and the weeper is the God-man, Christ Jesus. Eternal Deity is not an unfeeling Almightiness. He has a heart, and that heart can be touched, and grieved, and moved with compassion, and stirred with emotions. I. GOD INTENDS GREAT THINGS FOR THOSE TO WHOM HE HAS GIVEN HIS WORD AND . He had chosen Jerusalem, and set up His temple there, and made it the centre of His most particular dealings with the elect nation, that it might reflect His glory, show forth His praises, and be the crown and rejoicing of the whole earth. The thing meant to be reached and made the everlasting possession of its people, is here summed up by the Saviour in the word “ peace; not mere rest from disturbance and strife; nor yet only health and well-being, as the word often denotes in the Old Testament; but that which is the subject of Divine promise, the highest results of God’ s mercy and favour, the true Messianic blessing of everlasting freedom from the distresses and consequences of sin, and exaltation to near and holy relationship with God and heaven. And great things are meant for us, even the same things of “ peace” which pertained at first to the ancient Jerusalem. II. THERE IS A DAY OR SEASON WHEREIN TO KNOW AND ATTEND TO THE THINGS THAT RESPECT THIS “ PEACE.” And unto us have their forfeited privileges now descended. This is our day, beaming with all the light and blessings which once belonged to the Jews, only marked by an easier ritual and a better economy (Hebrews 12:18-24). III. THE DAY OF GRACE HAS ITS OVER WHICH GOD’ S SAVING MERCIES DO NOT FOLLOW THOSE WHO THEM. There was a Jewish age which ended in judgment, and the cutting off of those who failed to improve it; and so this present age must also end. The day of grace is limited, on the one side, by the lateness of the period in life at which the gospel comes to a man, and, on the other, by the failure of the faculties necessary to handle and use it. It is also quite possible for one’ s day of grace to terminate while yet both reason and life continue. There may be a loss of the external means and opportunities of salvation, or such a separation from them, as for ever to prevent our reaching it. And where there has been long and persistent resistance of grace, habitual suppression of religious convictions and feelings, wilful refusal to fulfil known duty, and persevering withstanding of the influences and impulses of the Spirit of God, there is not only a possibility, but great danger of bringing on a state of callous indifference, and incapacitation which puts the offender beyond the reach of salvation. IV. THE OF THE DAY OF GRACE, WITHOUT HAVING SECURED THE FOR WHICH IT WAS , IS AN AWFUL . In the case of Jerusalem it brought tears and lamentations from the Son of God. (J. A. Seiss, D. D.) The solicitude of Christ for incorrigible sinners I. SPECIFY SOME OF THE MORE OBVIOUS OF MEN. There are several classes of people who, to say the least, are greatly exposed to unyielding impenitence, and who give fearful indication of final ruin. 1. This may be affirmed of men of a sceptical turn of mind. Such men are very apt never to become pious. 2. Another class of persons who are rarely made the subjects of grace are those of notoriously loose and vicious habits. 3. It may also be remarked, that men who are in the habit of making light of sacred things, and trifling with God, seldom become men of piety. If they can scoff at religion, if they can deride its conscientious disciples, there is little reason to believe they will ever become its disciples themselves. 4. In the same melancholy multitude are likewise found all those who are ardently and eagerly attached to the world. 5. There is another class of men who exhibit fearful symptoms of deep degeneracy, and they are those whose chosen companions are the guilty enemies of God and all righteousness. Men cannot habitually associate with those who are destitute of all moral principle, and have no fear of God before their eyes, without partaking of their character. 6. Those persons also give strong indications of being incorrigible, who have become hardened under religious privileges. 7. Still more hopeless are those who have outlived conviction, and resisted the Holy Spirit. 8. There is one class of persons more whose condition is as hopeless as that of any we have mentioned; I mean, the hypocrite and self-deceiver. II. We proceed, in the second place, to inquire, WHAT THERE IS IN THE OF SUCH PERSONS TO EXCITE THE AND OF CHRIST. 1. Their determined rejection of offered mercy. This is like a dagger to Christ’ s heart. 2. Their perversion of the means of grace. 3. Their utterly depraved character. And now, in conclusion, I cannot forbear remarking, in the first place, how unlike the Spirit of Christ is the apathy of the people of God in view of the perishing condition of impenitent men. Secondly, our subject strongly enforces, the importance of a diligent and anxious improvement of the day and means of salvation. Once more, in view of our subject, we may not avoid the inquiry, Are there none in this assembly towards whom the Saviour is now exercising the same tender compassion, which He exercised over incorrigible Jerusalem? I only add, in the last place, if such are the compassions of Christ towards guilty sinners, what confidence may we have that He will save all that come to Him. (G. Spring, D. D.) Christ weeping over Jerusalem I. WHY DID HE WEEP? It has been supposed that the picture of that approaching ruin and desolation which was coming so rapidly upon the unconscious capital, at once appalled and overwhelmed Him. He sketches that picture in strong and rapid strokes Himself (Luke 19:43-44). And that which added to it an element of profoundest gloom, was the unconsciousness of those whom such a doom was threatening. Scarce a soul in Jerusalem seems to have been greatly sensible either of the national decadence or of its own individual peril. Must it not have been this that made Him weep? I do not doubt that it was an element in that Divine and unmatched sorrow. But that sorrow loses its profoundest significance unless we see that it had another and deeper element still. What is it, that in the thought of a wise and good man costs him the deepest pang when he encounters the waywardness and wrong-doing of his own child? Is it merely that, as he looks forward, he sees the inevitable misery which that waywardness will entail? But you may be sure that such a parent is thinking of something else with a keener anguish still. He is thinking, “ What must the nature be that is so insensible to love and duty and goodness!” He is thinking, “ What are the moral sensibilities of one to whom baseness and ingratitude and wrong-doing are such easy and instinctive things!” He is thinking, “ What have I to hope for from a child whose ruling impulse come out in deeds like these!” And even so, I think, it was with Christ. Nay, we are not left to our surmises. His own words tell us what made Him weep: “ If thou thine eyes.” It was this spectacle of human insensibility, of eyes that would not see, and of ears that would not hear, that broke the Saviour down. The love of goodness, the longing for righteousness, the aspiration for nobleness and spiritual emancipation--these were dead in them. And it was this that made Christ weep. II. And this brings me to that other question suggested by these tears of Christ. WHAT DID THEY MOVE HIM TO DO. Remember, that so far as the Jerusalem of that day was concerned, He Himself intimates the case to have been hopeless. And when that scornful indifference on their part was exchanged at last for a distinctive enmity, with that needless prodigality, as doubtless it seemed even to some of His own disciples, He flung away His life. Flung it away? Aye, but only how soon and how triumphantly to take it again! Such a history is pregnant with lessons for to-day. There are a good many of us, who from the elevation of a thoughtful observation, are looking down on the city in which we live. How fevered and faithless and morally insensible seem multitudes of those who live in it. How can such a one look down on all this and not weep? God forbid that such a spectacle should leave any one of us insensible or unmoved! But when that is said, let us not forget that with Christ weeping was but the prelude and forerunner of working. There were tears first, but then what heroic and untiring toil! I hear men say, no matter what good cause invites their cooperation, “ It is of no use. Most men are bound to go to the devil; it is the part of wisdom to get out of the way and let them go as quickly as possible” ; and I brand all such cries, no matter in what tones of complacent hopelessness they may utter themselves, as treason against God and slander against humanity. Faithlessness like this is a denial of God, and of goodness as well. And as such, it is an atheism with which no terms are to be made nor any truce to be kept. For, high above our blinded vision there sits One who, as He once wept over Jerusalem and then died for it, now lives for Jerusalem and for all His wayward children, and who bids us watch and strive with Him for those for whom once He shed His blood! And if He is still watching, even as once He wept over His creatures, God forbid that of any human soul you and I should quite despair! And therefore least of all our own souls. And so, while we weep, whether it be over the evil that is in others or in ourselves, our tears will be rainbows, bright with the promise of an immortal hope. Aye, far above the sorrows and the sins of the city that now is, we shall see the splendours of the New Jerusalem that is yet to be. (Bishop H. C. Potter.) The sinner’ s day I. THAT THE SINNER HAS HIS DAY OF MERCY AND HOPE. 1. It is a period of light. Night is the season of darkness. 2. A period of activity. We must work now, or never. 3. An exceedingly limited period. “ A day.” But a step from cradle to tomb. 4. The present period is our day. II. THIS DAY IS WITH THINGS WHICH BELONG TO THE SINNER’ S PEACE. By peace here we understand the welfare, the salvation of the sinner. The peace of God is the pledge and earnest of every blessing. Now, in this day we have-- 1. The gracious provisions of peace. Christ has made peace by His cross, and before us is the cross lifted up. 2. The invitations and promises of peace belong to this day. 3. The means of obtaining peace belong to this day. III. THAT IF THESE THINGS ARE NOT KNOWN NOW, IN THIS OUR DAY, THEY WILL BE FOR EVER HIDDEN FROM OUR EYES. Now observe-- 1. The future state of the sinner is one of night. As such it is a period of darkness. 2. This state of night will be everlasting. : We learn-- 1. That the sinner’ s present state is one of probation and mercy. 2. That God sincerely desires the salvation of souls. 3. That all who lose their souls do so by their own impenitency. (J. Burns, D. D.) Christ’ s lamentation over Jerusalem I. THE OF WHICH IT GIVES US. Here we perceive-- 1. The Saviour’ s deep interest in the state of man. 2. The Saviour’ s compassion to the chief of sinners. II. The sentiments it conveys. 1. That there are things belonging to a man’ s peace which it becomes him to know. 2. That there is a day in which a man might know these things. 3. That if this day be wasted these things will be hidden from him. (Essex Remembrancer) Three times in a nation’ s history These words, which rang the funeral knell of Jerusalem, tell out in our ears this day a solemn lesson; they tell us that in the history of nations, and also, it may be, in the personal history of individuals, there are three times--a time of grace, a time of blindness, and a time of judgment. This, then, is our subject--the three times in a nation’ s history. When the Redeemer spake, it was for Jerusalem the time of blindness; the time of grace was past; that of judgment was to come. I. THE TIME OF GRACE. We find it expressed here in three different modes: first, “ in this thy day” ; then, “ the things which belong to thy peace” ; and thirdly, “ the time of thy visitation.” And from this we understand the meaning of a time of grace; it was Jerusalem’ s time of opportunity. The time in which the Redeemer appeared was that in which faith was almost worn cut. He found men with their faces turned backward to the past, instead of forward to the future. They were as children clinging to the garments of a relation they have lost; life there was not, faith there was not--only the garments of a past belief. He found them groaning under the dominion of Rome; rising up against it, and thinking it their worst evil. The coldest hour of all the night is that which immediately precedes the dawn, and in that darkest hour of Jerusalem’ s night her Light beamed forth; her Wisest and Greatest came in the midst of her, almost unknown, born under the law, to emancipate those who were groaning under the law. His life, the day of His preaching, was Jerusalem’ s time of grace. During that time the Redeemer spake the things which belonged to her peace: but they rejected them and Him. Now, respecting this day of grace we have two remarks to make. First: In this advent of the Redeemer there was nothing outwardly remarkable to the men of that day. And just such as this is God’ s visitation to us. Generally, the day of God’ s visitation is not a day very remarkable outwardly. Bereavements, sorrows--no doubt in these God speaks; but there are other occasions far more quiet and unobtrusive, but which are yet plainly days of grace. A scruple which others do not see, a doubt coming into the mind respecting some views held sacred by the popular creed, a sense of heart loneliness and solitariness, a feeling of awful misgiving when the future lies open before us, the dread feeling of an eternal godlessness, for men who are living godless lives now--these silent moments unmarked, are the moments in which the Eternal is speaking to our souls. Once more: That day of Jerusalem’ s visitation--her day of grace--was short. A lesson here also for us. A few actions often decide the destiny of individuals, because they give a destination and form to habits; they settle the tone and form of the mind from which there will be in this life no alteration. We say not that God never pleads a long time, but we say this, that sometimes God speaks to a nation or to a man but once. If not heard then, His voice is heard no more. II. THE TIME OF . If a man will not see, the law is he shall not see; if he will not do what is right when he knows the right, then right shall become to him wrong, and wrong shall seem to be right. III. THE TIME OF . It came in the way of natural consequences. We make a great mistake respecting judgments. God’ s judgments are not arbitrary, but the results of natural laws. The historians tell us that Jerusalem owed her ruin to the fanaticism and obstinate blindness of her citizens; from all of which her Redeemer came to emancipate her. Had they understood, “ Blessed are the boor in spirit,” “ Blessed are the meek,” and “ Blessed are the peacemakers” ; had they understood that, Jerusalem’ s day of rum might never have come. Is there no such thing as blindness among ourselves? May not this be OUT day of visitation? First, there is among us priestly blindness; the blindness of men who know not that the demands of this age are in advance of those that have gone before. Once more, we look at the blindness of men talking of intellectual enlightenment. It is true that we have more enlightened civilization and comfort. What then? Will that retard our day of judgment? Jerusalem was becoming more enlightened, and Rome was at its most civilized point, when the destroyer was at their gates. Therefore, let us know the day of our visitation. It is not the day of refinement, nor of political liberty, nor of advancing intellect. We must go again in the old, old way; we must return to simpler manners and to a purer life. We want more faith, more love. The life of Christ and the death of Christ must be made the law of our life. (F. W. Robertson, M. A.) The things belonging to our peace I. THERE ARE THINGS WHICH BELONG TO OUR PEACE. Peace has a large signification; it implies not only the inward feeling of the mind, but generally our happiness and welfare. The things which belong to our peace are provided for us and pressed upon our acceptance in the Gospel of Christ. And this peace must be sought for personally by each one on his own behalf. But it concerns his everlasting peace that the sinner should undergo a change of heart. II. THERE IS A TIME IN WHICH WE MAY SECURE THOSE THINGS THAT MAKE FOR OUR PEACE. Now is that time, and now is the only time. Of to-morrow neither you nor I are secure. Now is the time in which you may seek the Lord, and in which He will be found. III. THERE IS A TIME WHEN THEY WILL BE FOR EVER HID FROM OUR EYES. There is such a thing as a hard and obdurate heart--there is such a state as final impenitence--there is such a calamitous condition as that of a lost soul. (H. J. Hastings, M. A.) Christ’ s appeal to the heart I. THIS THY DAY. The day of thy visitation, the day when God’ s goodness and grace were especially near thee; the day of dawning hopes and bright promises; the day which, if it had been welcomed and used aright, might have coloured, ennobled, and redeemed all the rest. It was the day when, as youths, we left our father’ s house to take our place in the busy world, when thoughts of duty and honour, of true work and faithful service, were fresh and strong in our breasts, when we were resolved, God helping us, there should be no idle hours, no corrupting habits, no dread secrets which could not be breathed or even thought of in the sanctity of the home, or in the presence of our sister or our mother. Or, it was the day when some heavenly vision of the beauty of goodness, of the sacredness of service, of the helpfulness of prayer, of the nearness of God to your innermost soul, filled your heart with its glow and peace, and you longed and vowed ever to cherish the kindly light, ever to obey the heavenly voice, ever to walk with God, and repose in Him. Or, it was the day when, after some sad fall, or after many reckless, wasted years, you came to yourself, you saw from the very edge the precipice to which you had come, you felt keenly and bitterly the misery of the shame into which you had sunk, and, for the first time, Christ’ s vision of the face and heart of God, of the Father seeking the poor prodigal, brought penitence and hope; when thoughts of Christ, with His words of forgiveness and help and peace, seemed welcome and consoling to you, as rest at last to the sleep less brain, or kindly, gentle care to the fever-stricken patient. II. IF THOU HADST KNOWN AT LEAST IN THIS THY DAY. ‘ Tis one of the sorrows of life that we spend a lifetime in gaining the needful experience. “ Human experience,” says Coleridge, “ like the stern-lights of a ship at sea, too often only illuminates the faith we have passed over.” The youth does not know the value of the school till alter he has left it, or the comfort and charm of the home till it is broken up and he is alone in the world; the man does not know the value of time, or health, or money, or character, till harsh misfortune or his own fault have deprived him of them; we do not fully realize how much we needed the companionship, example, and sympathy of friends till death has snatched them from us. And so with spiritual blessings and opportunities. III. THE THINGS THAT BELONG ONTO THY PEACE. The life of Christ in the heart. The service of our heavenly Father here and now. (J. T. Stannard.) Our day of grace As God dealt with the city of Jerusalem, so He deals with us as individuals. God has given us a day of grace-has given a time wherein to repent of sin and prepare for another world. This day and this period is circumscribed. It is, as it were, a circle described around us; and when we pass over that boundary., then the day of grace is past and gone; the spirit has ceased to strive, and our doom is fixed for ever. I will illustrate this from history. One of the kings of Syria made war upon Egypt, which was at that time an ally of the Roman republic. When the news reached the Roman senate, they despatched into Egypt two senators, one of whom was a dear friend of the king. They went direct to the camp of the Syrian monarch, who came forth to meet them; but the senator, refusing to recognize him as his friend, at once put him upon his choice--to raise the seige and withdraw his army out of Egypt, or to forfeit his friendly relation with Rome, who would at once send forth her legions and compel him. To this he endeavoured to give an equivocal answer: he would consider over it or he would consider of it at another time. But this was not enough for the Romans; the senator, therefore, with the wand he had in his hand, drew a circle around him on the sand where they stood, and demanded his answer and decision ere he left it. He had to make his choice: he decided to withdraw his army, and then the senator extended his hand and recognized his friend. In a similar way God has drawn a circle around us, and demands us to make a choice. That circle is our day of grace. May we, then, to-day, while it is called today, harden not our hearts, lest God should swear in His wrath we shall not enter into His rest! (A. Jones.) “ In this thy day” Thy day! If when the sun sets in the west we were not sure whether he would rise on the morrow, oh what an evening it would be! ONE DAY! “ Thy day!” How precious! But if the day is allowed to pass, and the work of the day not done, how terrible the sunset! Jerusalem had her day; the day was passing--it was past. Jerusalem did not know her day, and did not notice that it had passed. Jerusalem, with her day done, was laughing: Jesus, looking on lost Jerusalem, wept. This is not of private interpretation--it is written for our sakes. Our city has a day; ourselves have a day. Throughout this day it is peace--your peace--pressing like the air around us. The night cometh, when that light of life is gone. Men mistake the meaning of Emmanuel’ s tenderness. This entry is longer than a Bible module can hold. The rest is at https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/bi/ Luke 19:45-46 My house is the house of prayer The purified temple Regarding the Church as an institution, with its possessions, its laws, its days of worship, its rulers, its teachers, its outward services, we may find for ourselves a lesson in this incident. And that lesson is, that the spiritual character of the Church is everything, and that its first object is to deepen in men’ s hearts the sense of the Divine and the spiritual. When that great end is lost sight of, the Church has parted with her strongest claims upon the world, and it has forfeited also its privilege as a witness for God on the earth. The spiritual influence is the first and chief purpose of the Church of Christ. The lesson of this narrative comes home to us in these days, when so much time and thought are given to the outer framework of Church forms and usages; and that lesson may be needed to correct our spirit of bustling and restless energy in what is at the best only the machinery of spiritual life, and not spiritual life itself. There is no class of men who are more in danger of losing the true meaning of religion than those who are employed in its service. If I were to seek for cases in which spiritual truth had been travestied and turned to not only secular but profane purposes, I do not know that I could find them more readily than in men to whom all sacred words and acts have grown so familiar that they have ceased to express spiritual facts at all. Those who are always engaged in religious works are apt to lose the sense of their sacredness. No man more needs to be on his guard against an unspiritual life than the man who is perpetually employed in spiritual offices. He brings within the courts of God’ s house what ought to be left without; he forgets his high spiritual functions in the bustle and care which attend them; and it is really no absolute guarantee of a religious and spiritual life that a man’ s profession is the teaching of religion. Christ’ s words and acts read us all a lesson, then; they tell us that in the most sacred occupations of life there may be found cares and anxieties which are less religious, and which are apt to swallow up too much of a man’ s time and thoughts. There is another temple of a different kind, of which a word may be said. The whole Christian body is, in the words of the New Testament, a temple of God. There is a sacredness in that temple, the spiritual community of Christians, if we would only think of it, much greater than in the Temple of Jerusalem, or in any building devoted to holy uses. And just as the whole Christian community is a temple sacred to God, so each individual heart is in itself a temple where God Most High is honoured and worshipped. (A. Watson, D. D.) Lessons from Christ’ s cleansing of the temple 1. Abuses are apt to creep into the Church. Let us be on our guard against their first introduction. 2. The Church is much indebted, under God, to those who have had the courage to stand forward as real reformers. Hezekiah; Josiah; the English reformers. They are indeed the benefactors of the Church who successfully exert themselves to correct doctrinal and practical errors, and to promote the scriptural administration of ordinances, discipline, and government. Thus, the progress of corruption is arrested, the beauty of Christianity is restored, and the glory of God, and the religious, and even civil, interests of men are promoted. 3. It is the duty of us all, according to our several places and stations, to do what we can to reform whatever abuses may exist in the Church in our own times. 4. Let this purification of the temple lead us to seek the purification of our own hearts. 5. In all we attempt for the benefit of others, or of ourselves, let us imitate the zeal which our Master displayed on this occasion. To be useful to man, or acceptable to God, we must be deeply in earnest--we must have the Spirit of Christ in this respect. Neither fear, nor shame, nor sinful inclination should restrain us in such cases. (James Foote, M. A.) Christ’ s indignation aroused by irreverence In contemplating this action we are at first sight startled by its peremptoriness. “ Is this,” we say to ourselves--“ is this He who is called the Lamb of God? He of whom prophecy said that He should neither strive nor cry; He who said of Himself, “ Come to Me; I am meek and lowly of heart” ? Is there not some incongruity between that meek and gentle character and those vehement acts and words. No, my brethren, there is no incongruity. As the anger which is divorced from meekness is but unsanctified passion, so the false meekness which can never kindle at the sight of wrong into indignation, is closely allied, depend upon it, to moral collapse. One of the worst things that the inspired Psalmist can find it in his heart to say of a man is, “ Neither doth he abhor anything that is evil.” Bishop Butler has shown that anger, being a part of our natural constitution is intended by our Maker to be excited, to be exercised upon certain legitimate objects; and the reason why anger is as a matter of fact generally sinful is, because it is generally wielded, not by our sense of absolute right and truth, but by our self-love, and, therefore, on wrong and needless occasions. Our Lord’ s swift indignation was just as much a part of His perfect sanctity as was His silent meekness in the hour of His passion. We may dare to say it, that He could not, being Himself, have been silent m that temple court, for that which met His eye was an offence first against the eighth commandment of the Decalogue. The money brokers were habitually fraudulent. But then this does not explain His treatment of the sellers of the doves, which shows that He saw in the whole transaction an offence against the first and second commandments. All irreverence is really, when we get to the bottom of it, unbelief. The first great truth that we know is the solitary supremacy of the Eternal God; the second, which is its consequence, the exacting character of His love. God is said, in the second commandment, to be a “ jealous God.” (Canon Liddon.) Christ dealt immediately with wrong What He might have done! He might have said, “ Well, this temple will one day, and that day not far distant, be thrown down. I shall not interfere with this abuse now, because in the natural order of things it will be overturned along with this structure.” Jesus Christ did not know what it was to trifle so. I don’ t know that Jesus Christ knew the meaning of the word expediency, as we sometimes prostitute it. He saw wrong. If that wrong would in five minutes work itself out, that was no consideration to Him. Meanwhile, to Him five minutes was eternity! (J. Parker, D. D.) The cleansing of the temple I shall endeavour to call your attention to one or two of the most marked features. And in the first place, I would bid you notice our blessed Lord’ s zeal, that zeal of which the Psalmist said, speaking prophetically, “ the zeal of Thine house hath even eaten me” Psalms 69:9). 2. But again, the conduct of our Lord shows us the reverence that is due to God’ s house. The Jewish temple was emphatically a “ house of prayer,” it was a place where God had promised His special presence to those who came to worship. And there are some things which, like oxen and sheep, are things not clean enough to be brought into the temple of God; all evil feelings, and pride, and unkindness, and envy, and self-conceit, and other wicked emotions may not be brought into God’ s temple; they must be driven out with scourges, they must not be tolerated. Then also there are some things which, like the doves, though pure in themselves, have no business in the temple of God; the cares of this world, things necessarily engaging our attention at other times, may not enter these doors: God’ s church is intended to be as it were a little enclosed spot where worldly things may not enter. But again, the tables of moneychangers must not be here; this is no place for thoughts of gain, it is a profanation of God’ s temple to bring them here. And, lastly, Christian brethren, we cannot but be reminded, by our Lord’ s cleansing of the temple in the days of His flesh, of that awful cleansing of His temple which will one day take place, when all that is vile and offensive shall be cast out of His temple, and everything that maketh a lie cast into the lake of brimstone. (H. Goodwin, M. A.) The Louse of prayer I. Our first inquiry is--WHAT IS OUR LORD’ S VIEW AS TO THE PURPOSE AND END WHICH HE DESIGNS HIS EARTHLY TEMPLES TO SERVE? And this is the answer--“ My house is the house of prayer.” He calls us here to pray. The work to which He sets us in the sanctuary is mainly devotional. 1. As first, that common or united prayer is needful for man. Prayer itself is almost an instinct of nature. Man must worship. And he must worship in company; he must pray with others. 2. Another observation which the Divine idea in regard to the earthly sanctuary suggests is, that common or united prayer is acceptable to God. 3. Common or united prayer is efficacious to obtain Divine gifts. Otherwise, God would not assign to it so foremost a position in the worship of the sanctuary. II. MAN’ S FROM THIS DIVINE IDEA ABOUT THE HOUSE OF GOD ON EARTH. “ Ye have made it a den of thieves.” There is man’ s perversion of God’ s design. You know, of course, what the particular sin was which these words of our Lord were intended to reprove. It was the appropriation on the part of these Jews of a portion of the temple enclosure to purposes of worldly barter. This was the way in which the Jewish people lost sight of the Divine idea in regard to their temple. And though it is not possible for men now to commit precisely the same offence, I fear it would not be difficult to trace a corresponding sin, even in the present altered condition of the church. It is possible now to desecrate sacred places and offices to purposes of worldly gain. It is possible to make a traffic of spiritual functions and emoluments. But, my friends, these are not the only things in which a departure from God’ s idea about His sanctuary may be marked now. There are others, of another complexion and character, it is true, but not the less to be reprehended. It is to these that I would more especially call your attention. 1. Let me say, then, that some pervert God’ s idea by making the house of prayer a house of preaching. With them the sermon is almost everything. They are impatient of all else to get to that. Prayers, and lessons, and psalms, and creeds, are all just to be endured as a sort of preliminary to that. 2. I remark again, that some depart from God’ s intention with respect to the sanctuary by making the house of prayer “ a house of mere Sunday resort.” They must pass the day somewhere; they must get through it somehow, and so, as it is customary, and seemly, and respectable, they will go to church. They are as well there, they think, as anywhere else; but, alas! this is all. 3. I remark, in the next place, that some pervert this design by making the house of prayer “ a house of formal service.” Their service is no more than lip service. (G. M. Merry.) “ My house is the house of prayer Nor are there wanting examples, in all succeeding ages, of the conscientious and religious regularity with which the faithful ever attended the public means of grace. Thus, for example, “ Zacharias and Elizabeth walked in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless.” The just and devout Simeon “ waited for the consolation of Israel, and came by the Spirit into the temple of the Lord.” These, so striking examples of such excellent men, and the uniform and continuous practice of the faithful in all ages, show that the public worship of God is an institution of Divine authority. That there is a God is the first suggestion of unassisted reason, and that God ought to be worshipped is the foundation and first principle of all religion. Accordingly, we have reason to believe, that public worship began with the beginning of the world, and that it has been continued and maintained in all countries and in all times, and under every form of religion that man has devised or God instituted. The ancient Jews for example, dedicated a seventh part of their time to the service and worship of God. We may also remark, that, from the earliest ages, not only particular times, but also particular places, were set apart and consecrated to these sacred services. In the darkest times of heathen idolatry, when there were “ gods many, and lords many,” magnificent temples were built, stately altars erected, costly sacrifices offered, solemn rites celebrated, and the elegant arts of painting and sculpture, poesy and music, were called into the service of dumb idols. In after times, when the children of Israel were in the wilderness, and had no fixed nor settled abode, the tabernacle was erected by God’ s special command, and richly endowed with sacred utensils and ornaments for His solemn worship. I. PUBLIC WORSHIP IS TO DISPLAY THE GLORY OF GOD. As the court of an earthly monarch derives its dignity from the splendour and number of its attendants, so the church, “ the court of the Lord,” shows forth the majesty of the Most High by its multitudes of humble worshippers. II. PUBLIC WORSHIP IS ALSO TO PROMOTE AND THE OF PURE AND . Prayer kindles and keeps up the spirit of piety in the soul. And if the “ house of prayer “ be thus holy, how great should be the purity of those who frequent it? Here, again, let the royal Psalmist be our director, “ Praise is comely for the upright.” (A. McEwen.) The house of prayer “ My house is the house of prayer.” This is as true of that portion of the holy body which we call the Church visible or militant as it is of the rest. The object of the visible Church is not solely philanthropic, although the Church’ s duty is to do good unto all men, specially to them that are of the household of faith. It is not solely the moral perfection of its members, although the purification to Himself of a peculiar people zealous of good works was certainly a main object of its founder; still less is it the prosecution of inquiry or speculation, however interesting about God, because we already know all that we ever really shall know in this state about Him. We have on our lips and in our hearts the faith that was once delivered to the saints. This temple, visible and invisible, is thus organized by its Divine founder throughout earth and heaven to be a whole of ceaseless communion with God; and as its heavenly members never, never for one moment cease in their blessed work, so by prayers, broken though they be and interrupted--by prayers and intercessions, by thanksgiving and praise, private and public, mental and vocal, the holy Church throughout the world doth acknowledge Him who is the common centre of light and love to all its members, whether on this side the veil or beyond it. Into this temple also there sometimes intrudes that which moves the anger of the Son of Man, for this spiritual society has its place among men. It is in the world, although not of it, and it thus sometimes admits within its courts that which cannot bear the glance of the All-Holy. And especially is this apt to be the case when the Church of Christ has been for many ages bound up with the life and history of a great nation, and is, what we call in modern language, established--that is to say, recognized by the State, and secured in its property and position by legal enactments. I am far from denying that this state of things is or may be a very great blessing, that it secures to religion a prominence and a consideration among the people at large, which would else be wanting to it, that it visibly asserts before men the true place of God as the ruler and guide of national destiny; but it is also undeniable that such a state of things may bring with it danger from which less favoured churches escape. To be forewarned, let us trust, is to be forearmed; but whenever it happens to a great Church, or to its guiding minds, to think more of the secular side of its position than they think of the spiritual--more, it may be, of a seat in the Senate and of high social rank than of the work of God among the people; if, in order to save income and position in times of real or supposed peril, there is any willingness to barter away the safeguards of the faith, or to silence the pleadings of generosity and justice in deference to some uninstructed clamour, then be sure that, unless history is at fault as well as Scripture, we may listen for the footfalls of the Son of Man on the outer threshold of the temple, and we shall not long listen in vain. Churches are disestablished and disendowed to the eye of sense, through the action of political parties; to the eye of faith by His interference who ordereth all things both in heaven and in earth, and who rules at this moment on the same principles as those which of old led Him to cleanse His Father’ s temple in Jerusalem. (Canon Liddon.) God’ s house a house of prayer “ My house shall be called the house of prayer.” Here is a law for the furniture and equipment; here is a definition of the object and purpose of a material Christian church. There are great differences, no doubt, between the Jewish Temple and a building dedicated to Christian worship; but over the portals of each there might be traced with equal propriety the words, “ My house shall be called the house of prayer.” No well-instructed, no really spiritual Christian thinks of his parish church mainly or chiefly as a place for hearing sermons. Sermons are of great service, especially when people are making their first acquaintance with practical Christianity, and they occupy so great a place in the Acts of the Apostles, because they were of necessity the instrument with which the first teachers of Christianity made their way among unconverted Jews and heathens. Nay, more, since amid the importunities of this world of sense and time the soul of man is constantly tending to close its eyes to the unseen, to the dangers which so on every side beset it, to the pre-eminent claims of its Redeemer and its God, sermons which repeat with unwearying earnestness the same solemn certainties about God and man, about the person, and work, and gifts of Christ, about life and death, about the fleeting present and the endless future, are a vital feature in the activity of every Christian Church, a means of calling the unbelieving and the careless to the foot of the cross, a means of strengthening and edifying the faithful. Still, if a comparison is to be instituted between prayers and sermons, there ought not to be a moment’ s doubt as to the decision; for it is not said, “ My house shall be called a house of preaching,” but “ My house shall be called the house of prayer.” Surely it is a much more responsible act, and, let me add, it is a much greater privilege, to speak to God, whether in prayer or praise, than to listen to what a fellow-sinner can tell you about Him; and when a great congregation is really joining in worship, when there is a deep spiritual, as it were an electric, current of sympathy traversing a vast multitude of souls as they make one combined advance to the foot of the eternal throne, then, if we could look at these things for a moment with angels’ eyes, we should see something infinitely greater, according to all the rules of a true spiritual measurement, than the effect of the most eloquent and the most persuasive of sermons. “ My house shall be called the house of prayer” is a maxim for all time, and if this be so, then all that meets the eye, all that falls upon the ear within the sacred walls, should be in harmony with this high intention, should be valued and used only with a view to promoting it. Architecture, painting, mural decoration, and the like, are only in place when they lift the soul upwards towards the invisible, when they conduct it swiftly and surely to the gate of the world of spirits, and then themselves retire from thought and from view. Music the most pathetic, the most suggestive, is only welcome in the temples of Christ, when it gives wings to spiritualized thought and feeling, when it promotes the ascent of the soul to God. If these beautiful arts detain men on their own account, to wonder at their own intrinsic charms, down among the things of sense; if we are thinking more of music than of Him whose glory it heralds, more of the beauty of form and colour than of Him whose Temple it adorns, then be sure we are robbing God of His glory, we are turning His Temple into a den of thieves. No error is without its element of truth, and jealousy on this point was the strength of Puritanism, which made it a power notwithstanding its violence, notwithstanding its falsehood. And as for purely secular conversations within these walls, how unworthy are they in view of our Redeemer’ s words! Time was, under the first two Stuarts, when the nave of the old St. Paul’ s was a rendezvous for business, for pleasure, for public gossiping, so that Evelyn the diarist, lamenting the deplorable state to which the great church was reduced, says that it was already named a den of thieves. Is it too much to say that the Redeemer was not long in punishing the desecration of His Temple? First there came the axes and hammers of the rebellion, and then there came the swift tongues of fire in 1660, and the finest cathedral that England ever saw went its way. Would that in better times we were less constantly unmindful of the truth that its successor is neither a museum of sculpture nor yet a concert-room, and that He whose house it is will not be robbed of His rights with permanent impunity. (Canon Liddon.) The regenerate soul is a house of prayer “ My house shall be called the house of prayer.” This is true of every regenerate soul. When it is in a state of grace the soul of man is a temple of the Divine presence. “ If any man love Me, and will keep My words, My Father will love him, and we will come unto him and make our abode with him.” Christ’ s throne within the soul enlightens the understanding, and kindles the affections, and braces the will, and while He thus from His presence-chamber in this His spiritual palace, issues His orders hour by hour to its thinking and acting powers, He receives in return the homage of faith and love, a sacrifice which they delight to present to Him. So it is with God’ s true servants, but alas! my brethren, if you and I compare notes, what shall we say? Even when we desire to pray we find ourselves in the outer court of the soul surrounded all at once with the tables of the money-changers, and with the seats of the men who sell the doves. Our business, with all its details, follows us in the churches, follows us into our private chambers, follows us everywhere into the presence of our God. Our preparations for religious service, the accidents of our service, occupy the attention which is due to the service itself. Sometimes, alas! we do not even try to make the very first steps towards real prayer, and steps which ordinary natural reverence would suggest; we lounge, we look about us, just as though nothing in the world were of less importance than to address the Infinite and Eternal God. But sometimes, alas! we do close the eyes, we do bend the knee, we try to put force upon the soul’ s powers and faculties, and to lead them forth one by one, and then collectively to the footstool of the King of kings; when, lo! they linger over this memory or that, they are burdened with this or that load of care, utterly foreign to the work in hand. They bend, it is true, in an awkward sort of way in the sacred presence beneath, not their sense of its majesty, not their sense of the love and the beauty of God, but the vast and incongruous weight of worldliness which prevents their realizing it. And when a soul is thus at its best moments fatally troubled and burdened about many things, God in His mercy bides His time; He cleanses the courts of a Temple which He has predestined to be His for ever, He cleanses it in His own time and way; He sends some sharp sorrow which sweeps from the soul all thoughts save one, the nothingness, the vanity of all that is here below; and so He forces that soul to turn by one mighty, all-comprehending act to Himself, who alone can satisfy it; or He lays a man upon a bed of sickness, leaving the mind with all its powers intact, but stripping from the body all the faculties of speech and motion, and then through the long, weary hours the man is turned in upon himself; and if there is any hope for him at all, if at that critical moment he is at all alive.to the tender pleadings of the All-merciful, he will with his own hands cleanse the temple; he sees the paltriness of the trifles that have kept him back from his chiefest, from his only good; he expels first one and then another unworthy intruder upon the sacred ground. The scourge is sharp, the resistance it may be persevering; the hours are long, and they are weary, but the work is done at last. (Canon Liddon.) Irreverence rebuked When Walter Hook (afterwards Dean of Chichester) was Vicar of Coventry, he was once presiding at a vestry meeting which was so largely attended as to necessitate an adjournment to the church. Several persons kept their hats on. The vicar requested them to take them off, but they refused. “ Very well, gentlemen,” He replied, “ but remember that in this house the insult is not done to me, but to your God.” The hats were immediately taken off. Luke 20:9-19A certain man planted a vineyard Lessons 1. Let us be thankful that God has planted His vineyard among us. We are situated, not in any of the deserts, or wastes, or commons, of the world, but in the vineyard, in “ a garden inclosed,” in the very garden of the Lord. 2. Let us inquire whether we be rendering to the Lord of the vineyard the fruit which He expects in its season. 3. Beware of resembling these wicked husbandmen in their conduct, lest you also resemble them in their doom. What reception, then, are you giving to God’ s ministers, and especially to God’ s beloved Son? 4. In the last place, see that you give to the Lord Jesus that place in your spiritual building which is His due. Let Him be both at its foundation and at its top. Let Him be both “ the author and the finisher of your faith.” (J. Foote, M. A.) God’ s manifold mercy Like the drops of a lustre, which reflect a rainbow of colours when the sun is glittering upon them, and each one, when turned in different ways, from its prismatic form shows all the varieties of colour, so the mercy of God is one and yet many, the same yet ever changing, a combination of all the beauties of love blended harmoniously together. You have only to look at mercy in that light, and that light, and that light, to see how rich, how manifold it is. (C. H.Spurgeon.) Fruitfulness the test of value Years ago in Mentone they estimated the value of land by the number of olive-trees upon it. How many bearers of the precious oil were yielding their produce? That was the question which settled the value of the plot. Is not this the true way of estimating the importance of a Christian Church? Mere size is no criterion; wealth is even a more deceiving measure, and rank and education are no better. How many are bearing fruit unto the Lord in holy living, in devout intercession, in earnest efforts for soul winning, and in other methods by which fruit is brought forth unto the Lord? (Sword and Trowel.) Abused mercy Nothing so cold as lead, yet nothing more scalding if molten; nothing more blunt than iron, and yet nothing so keen if sharpened; the air is soft and tender, yet out of it are engendered thunderings and lightnings; the sea is calm and smooth, but if tossed with tempests it is rough beyond measure. Thus it is that mercy abused turns to fury; God, as He is a God of mercies, so He is a God of judgment; and it is a fearful thing to fall into His punishing hands. He is loath to strike, but when He strikes, He strikes home. If His wrath be kindled, yea, but a little, woe be to all those on whom it lights; how much more when He is sore displeased with a people or person! (John Trapp.) The Son rejected Turning to the parable, notice-- I. THE OWNER’ S CLAIM. His right and authority are complete. God presses His right to our love and service. Blessings are privileges, and privileges are obligations. II. THE OWNER’ S LOVING . There never was an earthly employer who showed such persistent kindness towards such persistent rebellion. The account of servants sent again and again, in spite of insults and death, is a faint picture of His forbearance towards Israel. Mercies, deliverances, revelations, pleadings, gather, a shining host, around all their history, as the angelic camp was close to Jacob on his journey. But all along the history stand the dark and bloodstained images of mercies despised and prophets slain. The tenderness of God in the old dispensation is wonderful; but in Christ it appears in a pathos of yearning. III. THE . IV. THE . It was just, necessary, complete, remediless. V. THE FINAL OF THE SON. (Charles M. Southgate.) The rejected Son I. GOD’ S IN HIS . The great truths of the Old Testament are from the prophets rather than from the priests. The grand progress of truth has depended upon these fearless men. The age without its prophet has been stagnated. The priesthood is conservative; prophecy, progressive. The true prophet is always great; truth makes men great. Only by a clear understanding of the accumulating prophecies of the Old Testament can we appreciate the Divine care. In this lesson as to the care of God for His vineyard, Christ has marked the distinction between the functions of the prophets and Himself. They had spoken as servants; He as the Son. In such a comparison is seen the transcendent revelation of God in Christ. He was the heir. The interests of the Father were identical with His own. It was in such a comparison that Christ declared the infinite grace of God in the incarnation and its purpose. II. THE OF MEN. The whole attitude of God toward His Church is that of an infinite condescension and pity. 1. The attitude of these men toward the truth. The greatest conflicts have been between the truth of God and the personal desires of men. 2. This antagonism is manifested in the treatment of those who are righteous. In one sense he who accepts a truth becomes its personation, and as a consequence must bear all the malignity of those who hate that same truth. Witness the treatment of the prophets in evidence. Because Micaiah uttered that which was displeasing to the government of Israel he was scourged and imprisoned. Because the prophet Jeremiah gave an unwelcome prophecy to his king, although it was the word of the Lord, he was thrown into a dungeon for his courage. No better fate awaited the prophet Isaiah than to be sawn asunder by order of the ruler of God’ s chosen people. It was the high priest who obtained a decree for the expulsion of Amos from Jerusalem. 3. This antagonism to the prophets of the truth is only a lesser expression of a burning hatred toward God. The spirit of hatred to the prophets would result in the killing of the Son of God. Whether the truth or man or God stands in the way of this lust for power, the result is the same. III. THE POWER OF THE PEOPLE. Repeatedly this truth is brought out in the life of Christ. “ They sought to lay hold on Him, but feared the people.” In these few words we recognize the corrective of the terrible accusation against human nature. If such a history is the expression of what is universal, then we must discern the fact that the truth is more safe in the hands of the many than of the few. IV. THE OF THE OWNER OF THE . In the parallel account of this parable in Matthew, we read the question of Christ: “ When the lord, therefore, of the vineyard cometh, what will he do unto those husbandmen?” In all history this same truth has been often witnessed. The rejecters of God are self-rejected from Him. The power that is not used for God is taken from us and given to those who will use it. There are two practical suggestions very intimately connected with this theme that we briefly notice. First: The greatest hindrance to Christ’ s kingdom may come from those who are the highest in the administration of its affairs. Second: The stupidity of wickedness. These very men who robbed God were robbing themselves. By planning to possess the vineyard they lost it. By attempting to keep the owner away they cast themselves out. God controls His own kingdom and Church. “ The stone which the builders rejected, is become the head of the corner: this was the Lord’ s doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes.” (D. O. Mears.) Parable of the vineyard let to husbandmen I. THE OF WHICH THE PARABLE IS are objects which were familiar in Palestine, or common in warm countries; a vineyard, a proprietor, and tenants. II. Let us next attend to THE OBJECTS WHICH OUR SAVIOUR HAD IN VIEW IN THIS PARABLE; or, what is the same thing, inquire what are the important truths contained in it. The objects of our Saviour in this parable seem to be 1. To point out the singular advantages bestowed on the Jews as a nation. 2. Their conduct. 3. Their punishment. 4. The transference of their advantages to others Inferences: 1. From this passage we may learn that we, as Christians, possess a portion of that kingdom which the Lord Jesus came to establish. For the Christians came in the place of the Jews. This kingdom consists in privileges, in blessings, in superior knowledge, and superior means of improvement. Of those privileges we have much cause to be grateful, but none whatever to be proud. For they were not given because we were better than other nations: but they were bestowed solely that we might cultivate and improve them, and become the blessed instruments of conveying them to others. 2. That if we cease to bring forth the fruit of holiness, the kingdom of God will also be taken from us. God has given us much, and therefore of us much will be required. (J. Thomson, D. D.) The Herodians and Pharisees combined against Jesus 1. The combination of men of opposite sentiments, in a particular case, affords no proof that truth and justice are connected with their temporary union. 2. In the conduct of the scribes and Pharisees on this occasion we see the disgraceful artifices which malice leads men to employ. 3. From this passage we may observe the perfect knowledge which Jesus had of the characters, principles, and intentions of His enemies. 4. The wisdom of Jesus was also conspicuous on this occasion. Had He been a mere man, we should have said He was distinguished by presence of mind. Now His wisdom is strongly displayed here. He might have refused to answer the question of the Pharisees and Herodians, as the Pharisees had done to Him. Or He might have given some dark enigmatical reply which they could not have perverted. But, instead of doing so, He gave a plain decided answer, without fear or evasion. 5. The fearless regard to truth which the Lord Jesus displayed on this occasion deserves to be carefully noticed. He did not mean to decline answering the question, Whether it was lawful to pay taxes to Caesar. On the contrary, He instantly declared that it was lawful; and not only lawful, but obligatory, as they themselves had unwillingly confessed. For the allusion to the denarius struck them forcibly; and they went away admiring the person whom they had come to expose and overwhelm. 6. Lastly, we may observe the disposition which our Saviour always showed to direct the attention of His hearers to the duty which they owed to God. If, then, we are to render to God the things that are God’ s, we must render everything to God; for everything we have belongs to Him--our capacities, our opportunities, our advantages, our blessings. (J. Thomson, D. D.) It will grind him to powderThe madness of opposing Christ “ It is said that a hundred thousand birds fly against the lights of the lighthouses along the Atlantic coast of the United States, and are killed annually.” So says a slip cut from this morning’ s newspaper. We need not be afraid in these excited times that captious cavillers will put out our hope. The dark wild birds of the ocean keep coming forth from the mysterious caverns; they seem to hate the glitter of the lenses. They continue to dash themselves upon the thick panes of glass in the windows. But they usually end by beating their wings to pieces on the unyielding crystal till they fall dead in the surf rolling below. (C. S.Robinson, D. D.) The wreck of infidelity Some years ago, a man and his wife were found living in a wretched broken-down house in a low part of London; and although the husband was down with illness, his only bed was a little straw, with a coarse dirty wrapper for a covering, and a brick for a pillow. An old chair and a saucepan appeared to be the only other furniture on the premises, while the wife in attendance was subject to fits, which made her for the time more like a wild animal than a woman. Though reduced to so wretched a condition, this man was really gifted and educated; and in days of health and strength he had worked with his pen for an infidel publisher. What, then, was the cause of his downfall? It so happened that the sufferer answered this question himself; for, casting his dull, leaden-looking eyes around the room after a visitor had entered, he remarked, “ This is the wreck of infidelity!” Luke 20:20-26 They watched Him Christ was watched, and so are we The chief priests and rulers of the Jews watched Jesus, but not to learn the way of salvation. They watched Him with the evil eyes of malice and hatred, desiring to take hold of His words, to entangle Him in His talk, that they might accuse Him, and deliver Him up to die. He loved all men, yet He was hated and rejected of men; He went about doing good, yet they tried to do Him harm. The enemies of Christ are ever watching for our fall, eager to hear or to tell any evil thing about us, ready to cast the stone of slander against us. You know that the whitest robe first shows the stain, let us remember whose purity we wear if we have put on Christ. Let us strive “ to walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil.” If we are tempted to say or do something which is equivocal, though the way of the world, let us pause and ask ourselves whether it will bring discredit on our faith, whether it will dishonour our Master. But there are others who watch us, and in a different manner. The Church in Paradise watches the Church on earth and prays for it. Our path of life is compassed by a great cloud of witnesses; the saints who have fought the battle and won the crown, they watch us. St. Paul, resting after his good fight, and his many perils, is watching to see how we are fighting against sin, the world, and the devil. St. Peter, restored to the side of Jesus, watches to see if any of us deny their Lord. St. Thomas, no longer doubtful, watches to see if our faith be strong. Holy Stephen watches us when the stones of insult and persecution assail us; the forty martyrs, who died for Jesus on the frozen pool at Sebaste, watch us when the world looks coldly on us, and many another who passed through fire and water watches us in our battle and the race that is set before us. Thus with the enemies of God watching for our fall, and the saints of God watching for our victory, let us watch ourselves, and let our cry be, “ Hold Thou me up that my footsteps slip not.” (H. J.Wilmot-Buxton, M. A.) Cowards are like cats Cowards are like cats. Cats always take their prey by springing suddenly upon it from some concealed station, and, if they miss their aim in the first attack, rarely follow it up. They are all, accordingly, cowardly, sneaking animals, and never willingly face their enemy, unless brought to bay, or wounded, trusting always to their power of surprising their victims by the aid of their stealthy and noiseless movements. (Dallas, “ Natural History of the Animal Kingdom.”) Whose image and superscription hath it?--The Divine image in the soul 1. The Divine image ought to be our highest glory. 2. Let the Divine image which we bear be a constant exhortation to serve God. 3. Never defile the Divine image by sin. 4. Endeavour to increase every day the beauty of the Divine image. 5. Respect the Divine image in your neighbour. (Bishop Ehrler.) Man is God’ s property More than all visible things, we ourselves, with the faculties of body and soul, are God’ s. Man is God’ s image, God’ s coin, and therefore belongs to God entirely. I. ON WHAT IS THIS DIVINE FOUNDED? 1. On creation. Man is God’ s property. (1) As God’ s creature. All that is created belongs to God, by whose omnipotence it was made. (2) As God’ s creature he bears the Divine image. 2. On redemption. (1) The soul of the first man was a supernatural image of God, created in original justice and sanctity. (2) In consequence of the first sin, the soul was deprived of sanctifying Romans 5:12). (3) God had compassion on man, and found means (through the Incarnation) to restore His image in the human soul. II. FROM THIS DIVINE . 1. We should render to God our soul. (1) Our understanding. (2) Our will. (3) Our heart. 2. Our body and all its members. (Grimm.) The medal made useful One day, when Martin Luther was completely penniless, he was asked for money to aid an important Christian enterprise. He reflected a little, and recollected that he had a beautiful medal of Joachim, Elector of Brandenburg, which he very much prized. He went immediately to a drawer, opened it, and said: “ What art thou doing there, Joachim? Dost thou not see how idle thou art? Come out and make thyself useful.” Then he took out the medal and contributed it to the object solicited for. Render unto Caesar the things which he Caesar’ sCaesar’ s due and God’ s due I. THAT KINGS AND PRINCES HAVE A CERTAIN RIGHT AND DUE TO THEM BY GOD’ S , WHICH IT IS NOT LAWFUL FOR ANY MAN TO KEEP FROM THEM. This is plain here as if Christ had said: “ It is of God, and not without the disposing and ordering of His Providence, that the Roman Emperor hath put in his foot among you, and is now your liege and sovereign: you yourselves have submitted to his government, and have in a manner subscribed unto that which God hath brought upon you; now, certainly, there is a right pertaining to him respectively to his place. This he must have, and it cannot be lawful for you, under any pretext, to take it from him.” So that this speech is a plain ground for this. But what is Caesar’ s due? 1. Prayer for him (1 Timothy 2:1). (1) That he may be endowed with all needful graces for his place. (a) Wisdom. (b) Justice. (c) Temperance, i.e., sobriety and moderation in diet, in apparel, in delight, etc. (d) Zeal and courage in God’ s matters. This it is which will make kings prosper (1 Kings 2:2-3). (2) That he may be delivered from all dangers to which he is subject in his place. Kings are in danger of two sorts of enemies. (a) Enemies to their bodies and outward state. Traitors. Conspirators. (b) Enemies to their souls. Flatterers. 2. Submission to him. By this I mean “ an awful framing and composing of the whole man respectively to his authority.” And now here, because I mention the whole man, and man consisteth of two parts; therefore I will declare, first, what is the submission of the inner man due to a king by the Word of God; and then, what is the submission of the outward man. 1. Touching the submission of the inner man, I account the substance of it to be this--“ A reverent and dutiful estimation of him in regard of his place.” “ Fear the Lord and the king,” said Solomon. As the “ fearing of God” argueth an inward respectiveness to His Divine majesty, so the fearing of the king intends the like, the heart carrieth a kind of reverent awe unto him. And this is that honouring the king which St. Peter giveth charge 1 Peter 2:17). Honour is properly an inward act, and we honour a superior when our respect is to him according to his dignity. That this reverent estimation of a king, which I term the substance of inward submission, may be the better understood, we must consider touching it two things. (1) The ground of it is a right understanding of the state and condition of a king’ s place. (a) Its eminence. (b) Its usefulness. (2) Now the companion of this reverent esteem of Caesar is a ready and willing disposition to perform to him and for him any service he may require. 2. I come now to speak of the outward submission, which is that which is for the testification and manifestation of the inward. An outward submissiveness without an inward awfulness were but hypocrisy; to pretend an inward respect without giving outward evidence thereof, were but mockery. This outward submission is either in word or in action. It includes-- (1) Conformity to the laws. (2) Yielding of the person in time of war. (3) Furnishing supplies. II. THAT IT IS NOT LAWFUL FOR ANY MAN TO DEPRIVE GOD OF THAT WHICH IS HIS DUE. “ You are careful,” saith our Saviour, “ as it seemeth, to inquire touching Caesar’ s right, as if you were so tender conscienced that you would not keep ought from him that were his. It becometh you to be, at the least, as careful for God; there is a right also due to Him, look you to it, that you give it Him.” Thus is the doctrine raised, God must have His due as well as the king his. Nay, He is to have it much more; “ He is the King of kings, and Lord of lords. By Him it is that earthly kings do reign. He beareth rule over the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whosoever He will.” Let me begin by explaining what is here meant by the Lord’ s due. The conscionable performance of any good duty is in some sense the Lord’ s due, because the same is required by Him; and so even that which was spoken of before, by the name of Caesar’ s due, is God’ s due, because the law of God binds us to it. When we speak, therefore, of God’ s due, we intend thereby that which is more properly and more immediately be, longing to Him. For example’ s sake--in a house, whereof every room and corner is the master’ s, yet that where he lieth himself is more particularly called his; so whereas all good services, even those which appertain to men, are the Lord’ s, He being the commander of them, yet those are more precisely and specially termed His which belong to Him more directly. And of the dues of this sort we are now to treat; and these may justly be referred to two general heads. The first I may call His “ prerogative,” the other His “ worship.” Under God’ s” prerogative” I comprehend two things. 1. “ That the things which concern Him must have the pre-eminence.” 2. “ That He must have absolute obedience in all things.” And now I come to the next part of His due, “ His worship.” By His worship is understood that more direct and proper service which we do to God for the declaration of our duty to Him, of our dependence on Him, and of our acknowledgment both to expect and to receive all good and comfort from Him. Here the particulars to be considered of, under this head of worship, are-- 1. “ That He must be worshipped.” 2. “ That He must be so worshipped as Himself thinks good.” (S. Hieron.) Duty discriminated “ Go with me to the concert this afternoon?” once asked a fashionable city salesman of a new assistant in the warehouse. “ I cannot.” “ Why?” “ My time is not my own; it belongs to another.” “ To whom?” “ To the firm, by whom I have been instructed not to leave without permission.” The next Sabbath afternoon the same salesman said to this clerk, “ Will you go to ride with us this evening?” “ I cannot.” “ Why?” “ My time is not my own; it belongs to another.” “ To whom?” “ To Him who has said, ‘ Remember the Sabbath-day to keep it holy.” Some years passed, and that clerk lay upon his bed of death. His honesty and fidelity had raised him to a creditable position in business and in society, and, ere his sickness, life lay fair before him. “ Are you reconciled to your situation?” asked an attendant. “ Yes, reconciled; I have endeavoured to do the work that God has allotted me, in His fear. He has directed me thus far; I am in His hands, and my time is not my own.” (W. Baxendale.) Religion and politics It is a common saying that religion has nothing to do with polities, and particularly there is a strong feeling current against all interference with politics by the ministers of religion. This notion rests on a basis which is partly wrong, partly right. To say that religion has nothing to do with politics is to assert that which is simply false. It were as wise to say that the atmosphere has nothing to do with the principles of architecture. Directly nothing, indirectly much. Some kinds of stone are so friable, that though they will last for centuries in a dry climate, they will crumble away in a few years in a damp one. There are some temperatures in which a form of a building is indispensable, which in another would be unbearable. The shape of doors, windows, apartments, all depend upon the air that is to be admitted or excluded. Nay, it is for the very sake of procuring a habitable atmosphere within certain limits that architecture exists at all. The atmospheric laws are distinct from the laws of architecture; but there is not an architectural question into which atmospheric considerations do not enter as conditions of the question. That which the air is to architecture, religion is to politics. It is the vital air of every question. Directly, it determines nothing--indirectly, it conditions every problem that can arise. The kingdoms of this world must become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ. How--if His Spirit is not to mingle with political and social truths? (F. W. Robertson.) No division of allegiance Our Lord here recognizes no division of allegiance. He does not regard man as under two masters--as owing duty to Caesar and duty to God. Is there a trace in all His other teaching that He contemplated such a division? Did ever a word fall from Him to indicate that He looked upon some obligations as secular and others as sacred? No; God is set forth by Him always and everywhere as the sole Lord of man’ s being and powers. Nothing man has can be Caesar’ s in contradiction to that which is God’ s. Christ claims all for the Sovereign Master. Body, soul, and spirit, riches, knowledge, influence, love--all belong to Him; there is but one empire, one service, one king; and life, with all its complexity of interest, is simple--simple as the Infinite God who has given it. Rightly understood, therefore, the great precepts of the text are in perfect accord with the doctrine of God’ s sole and supreme lordship over every thought, and faculty, and possession of man. “ Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’ s.” Why? Who enacts it? Who has the right to require it? The answer is “ God.” It is a part of your religious obedience to be a loyal citizen. Within the sphere that belongs to him Caesar claims your service as the ordained representative and minister of God. Civil obedience is an ordinance of the Church; civil society is the creation of God Himself. It is He who, through the earthly ruler, demands your tribute. The result, the order, and the progress of society are His work; and thus the principle of all duty is ultimately one. The inclusion of the lower obedience in the higher has been well illustrated from the world of nature. The moon, we know, has its own relation to the earth; but both have a common relation to the sun. The moon’ s orbit is included in the earth’ s orbit, but the sun sways and balances both of them; and there is not a movement of the moon in obeying the inferior earthly attraction, which is not also an act of obedience to the superior spheres. And just so, God has bound up together our relation to “ the powers that be “ in this world, with our relation to Himself. He has set us under rulers and in societies as a kind of interior province of His mighty kingdom, but our loyalty as subjects and our duty as citizens are but a part of the one supreme duty which we owe to Him. (Canon Duckworth.) Secular and religious duties not in conflict I. Our secular and spiritual relations are coexistent and co-relative in fact. II. The obligations which arise from each are to be recognized equitably, and the respective duties performed faithfully. III. They ought not to be in conflict, but mutually helpful. Both are of God, and with Him are no discords. IV. Application of the principle to-- 1. Secular business, society, politics, etc. 2. Soul culture, worship, Christian work. (Anon.) Luke 20:27-38 There were, therefore, seven brethren The world to come I. THAT THERE IS ANOTHER WORLD. Our Lord calls it that world. It is evidently opposed to “ this world” (Luke 20:34); “ the children of this world.” We know a little of this world. Oh that we knew it aright! Oh that we saw it with the eyes of faith! The world of which we speak is a world of light, and purity, and joy. There is “ no night there” (Revelation 21:25). Hell is eternal darkness; heaven is eternal light. No ignorance, no errors, no mistakes; but the knowledge of God in Christ begun on earth is there completed; for we shall know even as we are known (1 Corinthians 13:12). II. IT WILL BE A GREAT MATTER TO OBTAIN THAT WORLD. Notice our Saviour’ s words, “ they which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world.” Oh, it will be a great matter to obtain that world I It will be a matter of amazing grace and favour. And oh, what a matter of infinite joy will it be! III. SOME KIND OF IS TO THE OF THAT WORLD. “ They which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world.” This worthiness includes merit and meetness; or, a title to glory, and a fitness for it. Both these are necessary. But where shall we look for merit? Not in man. IV. THE OF THE PRESENT WORLD WILL NOT SUBSIST IN THE WORLD TO COME. Our Lord says, “ They neither marry, nor are given in marriage.” This expression is not intended to disparage that kind of union; for marriage was ordained by God Himself, while yet our first parents retained their original innocence. But in heaven this relation will cease, because the purposes for which it was instituted will also cease. Nor shall the glorified need the aid of that domestic friendship and comfort which result from the married state, and which are well suited to our embodied condition; for even in paradise the Creator judged it was not “ good for man to be alone” (Genesis 2:18). But in heaven there will be no occasion for the lesser streams of happiness, when believers have arrived at the fountain. Oh, let us learn from hence to sit loose to all creature comforts. V. IN THAT WORLD DEATH WILL BE FOR EVER . This is a dying world. VI. THE BLESSED OF THAT WORLD SHALL BE LIKE THE ANGELS. “ They are equal unto the angels.” VII. THE OF THE BODY WILL PERFECT THE BLISS OF GOD’ S PEOPLE. “ They are the children of God, being the children of the resurrection; they shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world, and the resurrection from the dead.” (G. Burder.) Lessons Creatures on the brink of the grave should not forget it, nor refuse to look into it. 1. Be reminded that we have persons resembling the Sadducees in our own times. There are some who seek to subvert the leading truths of religion; and the method they pursue is very like that followed by the Sadducees of old. They rarely make the attack openly, like honest and generous assailants; but they start difficulties, and endeavour to involve the subjects of inquiry in inextricable perplexity. 2. Let us be suitably affected by the doctrines of immortality and the resurrection here taught. 3. Once more, let us improve this passage in reference to the endearing relations of life. We are here reminded that death is coming to break them all up, and that short is the time we are to sustain them. Far be it from us to regard them with indifference. Religion requires us to fulfil their duties with all affection and faithfulness. Yet, they are of very limited duration, and very little value, in comparison with eternity. (James Foote, M. A.) The Sadducees silenced I. GIVE SOME ACCOUNT OF THE :--A small number of men of rank and affluence, who had shaken off such opinions and practices as they deemed a restraint upon their pleasures. They acknowledged the truth of the Pentateuch, but rejected the tradition of the elders. They also denied a future state, and believed that the soul dies with the body. II. THE OF THE . III. HOW JESUS CHRIST ACTED ON THIS . 1. He removed the difficulty which had puzzled the Sadducees. They had not studied the Scriptures with sufficient attention, and a sincere desire of understanding their meaning. If they had done so, they could not have doubted of a future state. If, again, they had reflected on the power of God, they would have concluded that what might appear difficult or impossible to man, is possible and of easy accomplishment with God. He then explained the difficulty. It is to be observed, however, that He speaks only of the righteous. On this subject our Saviour reveals two important truths,--First, that the righteous never die; and, secondly, that they become like the angels. 2. Our Saviour, then, having removed the difficulty which had embarrassed the Sadducees, and having at the same time communicated new and important information concerning the world of spirits, next proceeded to prove from Scripture the certainty of a future state. He argued from a passage in the Book of Exodus, where God is represented as speaking from the burning bush to Moses, and saying, “ I am the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob” (Exodus 3:6). It is here particularly to be observed, that the force of our Saviour’ s argument rests upon the words, I am the God. Had the words been I was the God, the argument would be destroyed. IV. ATTEND TO THE WHICH WE MAY JUSTLY DRAW FROM THIS SUBJECT. 1. A difficulty arising from our ignorance is not sufficient to disprove or weaken direct or positive evidence. 2. Although a future state is not clearly revealed in the Books of Moses, yet it is presupposed, for the passage here selected can be explained only on the assurance that there is such a state. 3. From our Saviour’ s declaration here, we also obtain the important information, that the righteous, after their removal from this world by death, do not sink into a state of sleep or insensibility; for the passage which He quotes implies that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, after death, remained alive, and still continued to acknowledge and serve God; for all these things are included in what our Saviour says. Now, the inference we draw is, that what is true respecting the patriarchs we may safely extend to all good men, that they are all in a similar situation. 4. While informed by our Saviour, in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, that immediately after death angels are employed to conduct the spirits of the righteous to paradise, we are also assured here by the same authority, that they shall be made like to the angels. When to these we add the passage quoted above, from the Epistle to the Hebrews, respecting the office of angels, it appears necessarily to follow that the righteous shall be elevated in rank and situation; for they shall associate with celestial beings, and consequently will receive all the benefits which can arise from society so pure and exalted. Nor can we help believing that while thus mingled with angels they will be engaged in similar duties and employments. (J. Thompson, D. D.) The world to come I. THAT THERE IS ANOTHER STATE OF BEING BESIDE AND BEYOND THE PRESENT STATE. None can deny the importance of the question, “ If a man die, shall he live again?” 1. The traditions of universal belief. It is said that there is not, perhaps, a people on the face of the earth which does not hold the opinion, in some form or other, that there is a country beyond the grave, where the weary are at rest. Yet this universality of belief is no proof; it is but a mere presumption at best. 2. Certain transformations which take place in nature around us. Such as that of the butterfly from the grave of the chrysalis, and spring from the grave of winter. Such analogies, however, although appropriate as illustrations, are radically defective as proofs. The chrysalis only seemed dead; the plants and trees only seemed to have lost their vitality. 3. There is, again, the dignity of man. But while much may be said on one side of this question, not a little can be said on the other. “ Talk as you will,” it has been said, “ of the grandeur of man--why should it not be honour enough for him to have his seventy years’ life-rent of God’ s universe? 4. It is by the gospel alone that life and immortality have been brought to light. II. THAT THE FUTURE STATE IN MANY IS WIDELY FROM THE PRESENT STATE. They differ-- 1. In their constitution. “ The children of this world marry, and arc given in marriage;” but there will be nothing of this kind in heaven. The institution of marriage is intended to accomplish two great objects. (1) the propagation of mankind. But in that world the number of the redeemed family will be complete, and hence marrying and giving in marriage will be done away. (2) Mutual help and sympathy. 2. In the blessedness enjoyed. (1) Negative. “ Neither can they die any more.” (2) Positive. “ They shall be equal unto the angels--in nature, immortality, purity, knowledge, happiness.” It is further added, that they will be “ the children of God, being children of the resurrection.” To the blessing of adoption several gradations appertain. What is spoken of here is the highest. The apostle refers to it in those striking words, “ Because the creature itself shall be delivered,” etc. (Romans 8:21-23). III. THAT BEFORE THIS STATE CAN BE ENTERED UPON, CERTAIN PRE- ARE . None can attain the world but those which shall be accounted worthy. Two things may be here noticed. 1. Our guilty persons must be accepted. That can only be done through the Lord Jesus--winning Christ, and being found in Him, not having on our own righteousness. 2. Our sinful nature must be renewed. Worthiness and meetness are often used as synonymous terms. Thus we read in one place, “ Bring forth fruits worthy of repentance” ; in another, “ Bring forth fruits meet for repentance.” So with the worthiness in the passage before us; it is to be understood as indicating meekness for the heavenly inheritance. Now, nothing that defileth can enter there. Holiness of heart and life is an essential qualification. The pure alone shall see God. (Expository Outlines.) Mercy weaves the veil of secrecy over the future Once, we have somewhere read, there was a gallant ship whose crew forgot their duties on board by the distant vision of their native hills. Many long years had passed over them since they had left their fatherland. As soon as one of their number caught, from the top mast, the first glance of his home-scenes, he raised a shout, “ Yonder it is! yonder it is!” That shout shot like electricity through every heart on board, all sought to catch the same glance, some climbed the masts, others took the telescope, every eye was on it, and every heart went forth with the eye; every spirit was flooded with old memories and bounded with new hopes. All thoughts of the vessel on which they stood, and which was struggling with the billows, were gone; they were lost in the strange and strong excitement. The vessel might have sprung a leak, run on shore, or sunk to the bottom for ought they thought about her. The idea of home filled and stirred their natures; the thought of the land in which their fathers lived and perhaps their mothers slept; the land of their childhood, and the land of a thousand associations so swallowed up every other thought, that their present duties were utterly neglected. Somewhat thus, perhaps, it would be with us, were the particulars of the heavenly world made clear and palpable to our hearts. The veil of secrecy drawn over them is woven by the hand of mercy. (D. Thomas, D. D.) Reticence of the Bible in regard to heavenly happiness Casper Hauser was shut up in a narrow, dimly-lighted chamber when a little child. He grew to manhood there. He never saw the earth or the sky. He knew nothing about flowers or stars, mountains or plains, forests or streams. If one had gone to him and tried to tell him of these things, of the life of men in city or country, of the occupations of men in shop or field, the effort would have been a failure. No words could have conveyed to him any idea of the world outside of his cell. And we are like him while shut up in these bodies. The spirit must go out of its clay house before it can begin to know anything definite about life in the spirit world. (Christian Age.) Equal unto the angelsEquality with angels Glorified saints are equal to the angels. I. IN THEIR . II. IN THEIR SUBLIME WORSHIP. III. IN THEIR (Psalms 103:20; Zechariah 12:8). Like angels, the dead in Christ shall henceforth excel in strength. Weariness and fatigue shall be for ever unknown. IV. IN THEIR SERVICE (Hebrews 1:14). V. IN LOVING . We read of angels that they “ do His commandments, hearkening to the voice of His word.” VI. IN THEIR EARNEST STUDY OF THE MYSTERY OF LOVE. Speaking of the Gospel and its priceless privileges and blessings, Peter says, “ Which things the angels desire to look into” (1 Peter 1:12). VII. IN THE JOYFUL WHICH THEY FEEL IN THE OF SINNERS. VIII. IN THEIR YOUTH. Angels grow not old, as men on earth do. They wear no traces of age; revolving years tell not on them. (P. Morrison.) Equality of men with angels I. MEN ARE CAPABLE OF BEING MADE EQUAL TO THE ANGELS. That man is capable of equalling the angels in the duration of their existence, may be very easily shown. Originally he was, like them, immortal. But what man once possessed, he must still be capable of possessing. Equally easy is it to show that man is capable of being made equal to the angels in moral excellence. The moral excellence of creatures, whether human or angelic, consists in their conformity to the law of God. Originally he was perfectly holy; for God made man upright, in His own image, and this image consisted, as inspiration informs us, in righteousness and true holiness. Man is then capable of being made equal to the angels in mural excellence. Man is also capable of being raised to an intellectual equality with the angels, or being made equal to them in wisdom and knowledge. The image of God in whack he was created, included knowledge, as well as righteousness and true holiness. He was, as inspiration informs us, but little lower than the angels. But this small intellectual inferiority, on the part of man, may be satisfactorily accounted for, without supposing that his intellectual faculties are essentially inferior to those of angels, or that his mind is incapable of expanding to the full dimensions of angelic intelligence. It may be accounted for by difference of situation, and of advantages for intellectual improvement. Man was placed on the earth, which is God’ s footstool. But angels were placed in heaven, which is His throne, His palace, and the peculiar habitation of His holiness and glory. They were thus enabled approach much nearer, than could earth-born man, to the great Father of lights; and their minds were, in consequence, illuminated with far more than a double portion of that Divine, all-disclosing radiance which diffuses itself around Him. If the mind of an infant can expand, during the lapse of a few years, to the dimensions of a Newton’ s mind, notwithstanding all the unfavourable circumstances in which it is here placed, why may it not, during an eternal residence in heaven, with the omniscient, all-wise God for its teacher, expand so far as to embrace any finite circle whatever? Little, if any, less reason have we to believe that he is capable of being made equal to them in power. It has been often remarked that knowledge is power; and observation must convince every one that it is so. Man’ s advances in knowledge have ever been accompanied by a proportionate increase of power. A knowledge of metals gave him power to subdue the earth. But we have already seen that man is capable of being made equal to the angels in knowledge. Again, man is capable of being raised to an equality with the angels in glory, honour, and felicity. The glory of a creature must consist principally in the intellectual and moral excellences with which he is endued; and we have already seen that in these respects man is capable of being made equal to the angels. II. THAT IN THE FUTURE WORLD, GOOD MEN SHALL BE MADE EQUAL TO THEM IN EACH OF THESE . The fact that men are capable of being made equal to the angels, goes far to prove the truth of this proposition. From the appearance of Moses and Elijah on the mount of transfiguration, it seems evident that they possessed power of various kinds, of which we are destitute. They had power to descend from the mansions of the blessed, and to return, and also, as it should seem, to render themselves visible or invisible, at their pleasure. Indeed it is certain, that in some respects at least, the powers of the righteous must be greatly increased, or they would be unable to sustain that far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory, and honour, and felicity, which is reserved for them in the future world. There is a dreadful counterpart to this truth, which, though not mentioned in our text, must be briefly noticed. Every argument, which proves that good men are capable of being made equal to the holy angels, may justly be considered as proving, with equal clearness, that wicked men are capable of equalling the fallen angels, who kept not their first estate. (E. Payson, D. D.) In the resurrection saints are as angels I. IN HEAVEN THE SAINTS ARE HOLY AS THE ANGELS ARE HOLY. II. IN HEAVEN THE SAINTS, LIKE THE ANGELS, SHALL ENGAGE IN ACTS AND . 1. I say acts and exercises, for while heaven is to be a place of rest, it is not to be a place of idleness. In heaven the saints are to be as angels, and angels, we know, are active in the service of God. 2. In particular, the saints, like the angels, engage in singing the praises of God. 3. Further, the saints, like the angels, are engaged in contemplating the works of God, and especially His wonders in providence and redemption. 4. Yet further, in heaven the saints, like the angels, are engaged in works of love. The angels, we have seen, are actively employed in the service of God. The whole method of the Divine procedure, so far as it comes under our view, seems to be carried on by a system of means or instruments. God fulfils His purposes by agents employed by Him who are blessed themselves and conveying blessings to others, who are happy and diffusing happiness. Even in inanimate creation on earth we find that nothing is useless; everything has a purpose to serve: the stone, the plant, the animal, every part of the plant and animal has a purpose to serve; it may be an end in itself, but it is also a means towards another end. The ear aids the eye, and the touch aids the ear and eye, and every member aids every other; it is good in itself, and is doing good to others. But these inanimate objects perform their work unknowingly, unconsciously. It is different with angels and the spirits of just men made perfect. They perform their allotted work knowing what they are doing, and blessed in the doing of it. Modern science shows us how much material agency can do. Take, as an example, the electric telegraph, which is every day carrying messages past your place. A methodical action is performed at one end of a wire, and in a few moments an intelligent communication is given at the other end, hundreds of miles away. It is a proof of the capacity of body. We know that our Lord’ s body after His resurrection appeared and disappeared, and acted no one could tell how. But in the resurrection our bodies will be like His, spiritual and celestial. They will therefore be fit ministers to the perfected spirit--not, as here, hindrances at times, but always helps, and ready to fulfil the will of the spirit. (J. McCosh, D. D.) The mortal and the immortal Ours is a dying world, and immortality has no place upon this earth. That which is deathless is beyond these hills. Mortality is here; immortality is yonder! Mortality is below; immortality is above. “ Neither can they die any more,” is the prediction of something future, not the announcement of anything either present or past. At every moment one of the sons of Adam passes from this life. And each swing of the pendulum is the death-warrant of some child of time. “ Death,” “ death,” is the sound of its dismal vibration. “ Death,” “ death,” it says, unceasingly, as it oscillates to and fro. The gate of death stands ever open, as if it had neither locks nor bars. The river of death flows sullenly past our dwellings, and continually we hear the splash and the cry of one, and another, and another, as they are flung into the rushing torrent, and carried down to the sea of eternity. If, then, we would get beyond death’ s circle and shadow, we must look above. Death is here, but life is yonder! Corruption is here, incorruption is yonder. The fading is here, the blooming is yonder. Blessed words are these: “ Neither can they die any more.” It is not simply, Neither shall they die any more, but neither can they die any more. Death, which is now a law, an inevitable necessity, shall then be an impossibilty. Blessed impossibility! Neither can they die any more! They are clothed with the immortality Of the Son of God; for as the Head is immortal, so shall the members be. Ah, this is victory over death! This is the triumph of life! It is more than resurrection; for it is resurrection, with the security that death can never again approach them throughout eternity. All things connected with that new resurrection-state shall be immortal, too. Their inheritance is unfading. Their city, the new Jerusalem, shall never crumble down. Their paradise is as much beyond the power of decay as it is beyond the reach of a second serpent-tempter. Their crowns are all imperishable; and the white raiment in which they shine shall never need cleansing or renewal. (H. Bonar, D. D.) Moses showed at the bushThe living God of living men I. GOD IS THE GOD OF ALL MEN, HOWEVER FROM EACH OTHER THEY MAY BE. It would be difficult, if not impossible, to name three men so closely related to each other, and yet so conspicuously different from each other, as were Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Abraham is of the grandest heroic type--heroic in thought, in action, and, above all, in that faith which is the inspiration both of the highest thinking and of the noblest forms of conduct. But what a falling off is there in Isaac! He hardly seems his father’ s son. Quiet, thoughtful, a lover of ease and good fare, with no genius for action, his very wife chosen for him as if he were incompetent even to marry himself, unable to rule his own household, unable even to die--it would almost seem, when his time was come, that he fades out ofhistory years before he slips his mortal coil. Jacob, again, strikes one as unlike both his father and his grandfather. We think of him as timid, selfish, crafty, unscrupulous, with none of the innocence of Isaac, little or none of the splendid courage and generosity of Abraham. What I want you to mark, then, is the grace of God in calling Himself, as He did for more than a thousand years by the mouth of His servants the prophets, the God of each and all of these three men. Different as they were from each other, they are all dear to Him. He has room enough in His heart for them all. Rightly viewed, then, there is hope for us and for all men in this familiar phrase. If God is not ashamed to call Himself their God, may He not, will He not, be our God too, and train us as He trained them, till all that is weak and selfish and subtle in us is chastened out of us, and we recover the image in which He created us? II. GOD OUR FATHER WILL NEVER LET HIS DIE. The text our Lord quoted was this: To Moses at the bush--between four and five hundred years, that is, after Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were dead--Jehovah had said, “ I am,” --not I was--“ the God of Abraham, and of Isaac, and of Jacob.” But how could He still be the God of these men if they had long been extinct? He is not the God of dead men, but of living men. The three patriarchs were very certainly not living in this world when God spoke to Moses. They must, therefore, have been living in some other world. Dead to men, they must have been alive unto God. Obviously, then, men do not all die when they die. 1. Because our Lord saw in God the God of Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, He inferred that these men could not die; that even when they did die, they must have lived on unto God. And that after all is, I suppose, the argument or conviction on which we all really base our hope of immortality. “ Art Thou not from everlasting, O Lord my God, mine Holy One? We shall not die.” The eternity of God implies the immortality of man. 2. But our Lord at least reminds us by His words of another ground for hope. Nature has many symbols which speak of a life capable of passing through death, a life which grows in volume, in power, in beauty, by its submission to death. Every spring we behold the annual miracle by which the natural world is renewed into a richer, lovelier life. Year by year it emerges from its wintry tomb into the fuller and more fruitful life of summer. We may not care to base any very weighty arguments on these delicate and evanescent yet continually-recurring symbols; but, nevertheless, they speak to our imagination and our hearts with a force and a winning persuasiveness beyond that of logic. III. What is to hinder us from arguing that, if God is still their God, and they still live unto Him, then GOD MUST EVEN NOW BE ON THE AND WHICH HE UPON THEM HERE, and carrying it on to still larger and happier issues? If they live, and live unto God, must they not be moving into a closer fellowship with Him, rising to a more hearty adoption of His will, a fuller participation of His righteousness and love? No one of you will question the validity of such an argument as that, I think. You will all gladly admit that, since he still lives, Abraham must by this time be a far greater and nobler man than he was when he left the earth, and must be engaged in far nobler discoveries and enterprises. Christ’ s answer to the Sadducees I. WE WILL IT AS AN AD HOMINEM, AND SHEW THE FITNESS AND FORCE OF IT TO THOSE WITH WHOM OUR SAVIOUR . 1. We will consider what our Saviour intended directly and immediately to prove by this argument. And that was this, That there is another state after this life, wherein men shall be happy or miserable according as they have lived in this world. And this doth not only suppose the immortality of the soul, but forasmuch as the body is an essential part of man, doth, by consequence, infer the resurrection of the body; because, otherwise, the man would not be happy or miserable in another world. 2. The force of this argument, against those with whom our Saviour disputed, will further appear, if we consider the great veneration which the Jews in general had for the writings of Moses above any other books of the Old Testament, which they (especially the Sadducees) looked upon only as explications and comments upon the law of Moses; but they esteemed nothing as a necessary article of faith, which had not some foundation in the writings of Moses. And this seems to me to be the true reason why our Saviour chose to confute them out of Moses, rather than any other part of the Old Testament. 3. If we consider further the peculiar notion which the Jews had concerning the use of this phrase or expression, of God’ s being any one’ s God. And that was this” that God is nowhere in Scripture said to be any one’ s God while he was alive. And, therefore, they tell us, that while Isaac lived, God is not called the God of Isaac, but the “ fear of Isaac.” I will not warrant this observation to be good, because I certainly know it is not true. For God doth expressly call Himself “ the God of Isaac,” while Isaac was yet Genesis 28:10): “ I am the Lord God of Abraham thy father, and the God of Isaac.” It is sufficient to my purpose that this was a notion anciently current among the Jews. And therefore our Saviour’ s argument from this expression must be so much the stronger against them: for if the souls of men be extinguished by death (as the Sadducees believed) what did it signify to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to have God called their God, after they were dead? 4. The great respect which the Jews had for these three fathers of their nation, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. They, who had so superstitious a veneration for them, would easily believe anything of privilege to belong to them: so that our Saviour doth with great advantage instance in them, in favour of whom they would be inclined to extend the meaning of any promise to the utmost, and allow it to signify as much as the words could possibly bear. So that it is no wonder that the text tells us, that this argument put the Sadducees to silence. They durst not attempt a thing so odious, as to go about to take away anything of privilege from Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. II. ENQUIRE WHETHER IT BE MORE THAN AN AD HOMINEM. The following considerations would appear to indicate that our Lord really meant the matter to be regarded as settled fact. 1. If we consider that for God to be any one’ s God doth signify some very extraordinary blessing and happiness to those persons of whom this is said. It is a big word for God to declare Himself to be any one’ s God; and the least we can imagine to be meant by it, is that God will, in an extraordinary manner, employ His power and wisdom to do him good: that He will concern Himself more for the happiness of those whose God He declares Himself to be, than for others. 2. If we consider the eminent faith and obedience of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Abraham left his country in obedience to God, not knowing whither he was to go. And, which is one of the most unparalleled and strange instances of faith and obedience that can be almost imagined, he was willing to have sacrificed his only son at the command of God. Isaac and Jacob were also very good men, and devout worshippers of the true God, when almost the whole world was sunk into idolatry and all manner of impiety. Now what can we imagine, but that the good God did design some extraordinary reward to such faithful servants of His? especially if we consider, that He intended this gracious declaration of His concerning them, for a standing encouragement to all those who, in after ages, should follow the faith, and tread in the steps of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. 3. If we consider the condition of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in this world. The Scripture tells us, that “ they were pilgrims and strangers upon the earth,” had no fixed and settled habitation, but were forced to wander from one kingdom and country to another; that they were exposed to many hazards and difficulties, to great troubles and afflictions in this world; so that there was no such peculiar happiness befel them, in this life, above the common rate of men, as may seem to fill up the big words of this promise, that God would be their God. 4. Then, we will consider the general importance of this promise, abstracting from the particular persons specified and named in it, viz., Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; and that is, that God will make a wide and plain difference between good and bad men; He will be so the God of good men as He is not of the wicked: and some time or other put every good man into a better and happier condition than any wicked man: so that the general importance of this promise is finally resolved into the equity and justice of the Divine Providence. And now having, I hope, sufficiently cleared this matter, I shall make some improvement of this doctrine of a future state, and that to these three purposes. 1. To raise our minds above this world, and the enjoyments of this present life. 2. The consideration of another life should quicken our preparation for that blessed state which remains for us in the other world. 3. Let the consideration of that unspeakable reward which God hath promised to good men at the resurrection, encourage us to obedience and a holy life. We serve a great Prince who is able to promote us to honour; a most gracious Master who will not let the least service we do for Him pass unrewarded. This is the inference which the apostle makes from his large discourse of the doctrine of the resurrection (1 Corinthians 15:58). Nothing will make death more welcome to us, than a constant course of service and obedience to God. “ Sleep (saith Solomon) is sweet to the labouring man” : so after a great diligence and industry in “ working out our own salvation,” and (as it is said of David) “ serving our generation according to the will of God,” how pleasant will it be to fall asleep! And, as an useful and well-spent life will make our death to be sweet, so our resurrection to be glorious. (Archbishop Tillotson.) Resurrection: an Easter-day Sermon In the words of the text, the ground on which our Blessed Lord declares the resurrection of men to rest, is well worthy of our deepest attention. He does not say that because He Himself was ere long to be crucified and to rise again, therefore mankind should also rise. He goes down even deeper than this, to the very root of all hope and life for man; to that on which His own incarnation and death and resurrection rest; to the very foundation of being--even the nature of God Himself. Because God is God; the living and unchangeable God; because He has called us into existence, and made us what we are; because He has revealed Himself as our God; and taken us into covenant with Himself, therefore, man shall not--man cannot,-perish. But there is another most blessed and comforting truth taught us in the text; without which resurrection would cease to be a blessing, would lose all power to console and strengthen, would become a dark and dismal phantom. God is the God,--not of solitary and separate souls,--but the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob; the God of father and son and grandson; the God who has appointed and preserves the order of human society, upholds its relationships, and will not disappoint the pure and sweet affections which have been nurtured in them. Would Abraham be the same Abraham if there were no Isaac; Isaac, the same Isaac, if there were no Abraham and Jacob? Nay, if the dishonour of forgetfulness were, in the life beyond the grave, thrown on the human loves and affections which have been born on earth, would God be the same God? (J. N.Bennie, LL. B.) Luke 20:41-44 How say they that Christ is David’ s son?--David, Christ’ s ancestor “ How say they that Christ is David’ s son?” Reading David’ s history, we might exclaim, “ How, indeed!” Son of David, Son of God: is not this like son of sin, son of grace? But if in the ancestor sin abounded, in the descendant grace much more abounded; and wisdom will inquire whether there is any relation between the superabounding grace and the abounding sin. We may think of Christ as a spiritual David, and we may think of David as a natural Christ, in this way: we may suppose a nature like Christ’ s, but without what we know He possessed--a governing, harmonizing spirit of holiness. Imagine that. Imagine one whose natural endowments resembled Christ’ s, but without the presiding spirit of holiness; then, we say, you would have another variety of David’ s life--one more distinguished by nobleness, but one marked and saddened with many an act of dishonour. On the other hand, if you suppose David to become perfectly spiritual, to have that presiding holiness which Christ had; amongst all the ancient saints, there would have been none so like the Lord Jesus Christ, though still less than He. And thus it is that we have in David the nature of Christ, but without the Divine harmonic regulation; and we have in Christ the nature of David, but not now with the fleshly irregularities, not sullied by blots, not made the shame as well as in part the glory of Israel, but utterly free from evil. Christ is, then, considered as David’ s descendant, the inheritor of his sensibilities, which shine in our Lord with completest lustre. He is also the inheritor of his contests; and our Lord overcomes with unvaried and complete victory those temptations which assaulted His ancestor. And by being at once the possessor of his sensibilities and the inheritor of his contests, He becomes the expiation of his sins. You will often find in the history of families that troubles accumulate, and as it were ripen, until they are “ laid upon” some one individual; that on this individual rests the burden of evil which has been slowly accumulating. Now, you may have a case in which it seems that the burden of evil so rests that the man is borne down, crushed, and destroyed; and here you say, through the wickedness of his House, this, the last descendant, is utterly shaken and ruined. But you may also have a successful fight; the burden is on the back, but the strength is in the man. This is at once the most burdened and most powerful individual sprung from the race. It is he who, grappling with the evil in its fullest strength, shall retrieve the fortunes of the family. There are historic cases which illustrate that principle. In every family history evil goes on worsening, or good goes on strengthening; and we may have instances of men borne down by the evil, and other instances of men oppressed very greatly and yet triumphing, and so retrieving honour and fortune. Now our Lord Jesus Christ was a spiritual David; He shares--possesses, indeed, to the full--David’ s sensibilities; He engages in the moral contests in which David so often failed; and He becomes the expiation of David’ s sins--that is to say, He utterly annuls that power of sin so manifest and hateful in David, and brings in a strength of holiness which, as gradually diffused in the breasts of men, shall cause the instrument that else would be discordant to be a harp of joy--shall refine from earthly alloys that sacred metal which, as God’ s gold, he will work up into the ornaments and harps of heaven. (T. T. Lynch.) Luke 20:45-47 Beware of the scribes The sins of the scribes and Pharisees The scribes were doctors of the law, who read and expounded the Scripture to the people. They were possessed of the key of knowledge, and occupied the seat of Moses. The Pharisees were a kind of separatists among the Jews, as their name indeed denotes. When Jesus speaks to these men, He no longer wears His wonted aspect. His language is not that of compassion and tenderness, but of stern denunciation. It is important that Jesus should be presented to us under these two aspects, of forgiving mercy and of relentless wrath, in order to stimulate hope and to repress presumption. In the text Jesus proceeds to indicate the grounds of that woe He had denounced upon the scribes and Pharisees. He points out to the people the crimes with which they were chargeable, and the hypocrisy of their conduct. It is worthy of notice that He does not content Himself with speaking to the guilty parties alone. He unveils their character before the face of the world. They were deceiving the people by their pretences, and therefore the people must he warned against them. The same thing is true of all pretenders in religion. Truth and justice, and love for the souls of men, alike demand that such pretences should be made manifest. The first charge adduced against the scribes and Pharisees in the text is, that they shut up the kingdom of heaven against men--that they neither entered into it themselves, nor suffered those who were entering to go in. When the question is put, what methods did they take to accomplish this? the easiest and perhaps the most natural answer would be, that it was by their extraordinary strictness and outward purity. The mass of the people were regarded by them as little better than heathens. They abjured the society of such men; and one special ground of offence against Jesus was, that He did not imitate them in this respect. It might be readily presumed, then, that by such austerities as marked their outward conduct, they rendered religion altogether so repulsive as to deter the common people from inquiring into its claims, rather than to invite them to submit themselves to its authority. Thus, it may be supposed, they shut up the kingdom of heaven against men. It is notorious that such an accusation as this has been always preferred against the pure ministers of a pure religion. The duty of the minister is to declare the truth as he finds it in the Bible, and to act upon the directions he has there received. In thus preaching and acting, however, many may be shut out from the kingdom of heaven; it is not he who has dosed its gates against them, but God Himself. But the supposition is very far from being correct, that the Pharisees were accused of shutting the kingdom of heaven against men by the strictness and austerity to which they pretended. We shall discover the real grounds of the accusation by comparing the text with the parallel passage in the Gospel according to Luke. It is there said (Luke 11:52): “ Woe unto you lawyers, for ye have taken away the key of knowledge: ye enter not in yourselves, and them that were entering in ye hindered.” The way, then, in which they shut the kingdom of heaven against themselves and others, was by taking away the key of knowledge. In order to this, let us endeavour to ascertain the precise position of the Pharisee, and the place which he assigned to the word of God. Let us observe how he used the key of knowledge, and by what precise instrumentality he shut up the kingdom of heaven against men. The Pharisees did not deny men the use of the Bible. They did not conceal the knowledge of its contents. The people heard it read from year to year in their synagogues. It was explained to them, and their attention solicited to its truths. How, then, could it be said that they had taken away the key of knowledge? The answer to the question is to be found in the fact, not that they withheld the word of God, but that they made the commandment of God of none effect by their tradition. They refused to acknowledge the fact that God is the only teacher and director of His Church. They added to His word instructions of their own. The Divine authority, if it is to be preserved at all, must stand apart from and be superior to all other authority. The claims of God are paramount, and so soon as they cease to be so, they cease to be Divine. In other words, God is no longer God--His worship is rendered vain--and His commandments become of none effect. Thus the key of knowledge is altogether taken away, and the kingdom of heaven is shut against men. The fact that the commandments of men occupied such a place at all vitiated their whole doctrine and worship, deprived men of the key of knowledge, and shut up the kingdom of heaven against them. Such a Church ceased to be a blessing, and had become a curse to the nation. It was a Church not to be reformed, but to be destroyed. It was rotten at the very heart, and nothing remained for it but woe. But the text is pregnant with instruction and admonition to all the professed disciples of Christ. It impresses upon us the doctrine that the kingdom of heaven is opened by knowledge. This is the key that unlocks the celestial gates. We cannot obtain an entrance to it in any other way. The lock will not yield to any other power. Not that all kinds of knowledge are equally available. This is life eternal, to know God and Jesus Christ whom He hath sent. To be ignorant of Christ is to be shut out o! heaven. To know Jesus Christ is to open up the kingdom of heaven. The highest gifts, the most shining acquirements, cannot bring us a footstep nearer heaven. Nothing else avails to open up the kingdom to men but the knowledge of Jesus Christ. From the text also we learn this doctrine, that the ministers of the Church have in a certain sense the power of shutting up the kingdom of heaven against men. They are set up as lights of the world. Their business is to instruct the ignorant. If they neglect the duties or pervert the designs of their office, how are men to acquire the knowledge of the truth? From the doctrines set forth in the text, let us lay to heart the following practical instructions: 1. Let us learn to read the Bible, and to listen to its truths, in the assurance that our eternal destiny depends upon the knowledge of them. 2. Let ministers also learn their proper vocation as porters to the kingdom of heaven, and let them beware of handling the Word of God deceitfully. Let us now proceed to examine the second charge which Jesus brings against the scribes and Pharisees. It is conveyed in these words “ Woe unto you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye devour widows’ houses, and for a pretence make long prayers; therefore ye shall receive the greater damnation.” The crime of the Pharisees was not one, but manifold, and Jesus, in faithfulness, accumulates His charges against them. Lest for a moment they should forget the heinous character of these charges, He recapitulates with each the coming doom which awaited them. This second sin which Jesus charges against the Pharisees is of a very aggravated kind. It is devouring the houses of widows. Not contented with making void the commandments of God, these men were guilty of the most hateful practices. Having usurped a treasonable authority in Divine things, their lives were characterized by acts of atrocious oppression and cruelty. Insinuating themselves into the confidence of the weak and the defenceless, they made their high religious profession a covert for the basest covetousness. They become robbers of the widow and the fatherless. Such wickedness of conduct might have been expected as the sure result of the corruptions they had introduced into the Divine worship. Purity of faith is the surest guardian of integrity of life. In the case of the Pharisees the wickedness was peculiarly hateful. The sin of which they were guilty was devouring houses, or, in other words, involving families in ruin, by appropriating and devouring the substance which belonged to them. But this sin was accompanied with a threefold aggravation. First, the houses they involved in ruin were the houses of widows. Secondly, their sin was yet farther aggravated by being committed under the pretext of religion. They committed robbery under the guise of piety. Thirdly, they made an extraordinary profession of religious zeal. They not only prayed with a view to the more easy perpetration of robbery, but their prayers were long. Widows were their easy dupes. Thus we are directed to one of the marks which indicate the mere pretender to godliness, and by which we shall be able to detect and expose the hypocrite. For the pretender in religion, having necessarily some selfish object in view, and not being animated by a love of the truth, may be expected to turn his profession to the best possible account. And whether for the purpose of gratifying his vanity, of acquiring power and influence, or of increasing wealth, he will always find his readiest instruments in silly and restless women. Hence, too readily, among despisers of religion, the reproach has been taken up against the true and living Church, that its most active promoters, and most zealous adherents, are women, and that the prayers of its members are only for a pretence. Surely it would be to infer rashly to conclude, that because the ministers or members of a Church were signalized by fervent and frequent prayer, and because devout and honourable women, not a few, were among its most zealous friends, such a Church was guilty of the Pharisaic crime, and justly lay under the reproach and the woe denounced in the text. Let us examine and see. No one can read the personal history of Jesus without perceiving how, in the days of His earthly ministry, He had among His most honoured and endeared disciples devout women not a few, whose rich gifts He did not despise, and whose devoted love He did not spurn. Who was it that blamed the expenditure of a very precious box of ointment? Is it, on the other hand, an unfailing mark of a hypocrite to make long prayers? Doubtless there have been many, in every age, who have assumed the form of godliness while denying its power, who have drawn near to God with the mouth, and honoured Him with the lips, while their hearts have been far from Him. But if hypocritical pretenders affect this devotion, is it not an evidence that prayer is the proper and true life Of the believer? Why should the Pharisee pretend to it, if the religious propriety of the thing itself were not felt and acknowledged? The hypocrite does not affect that which does not essentially belong to godliness. Jesus did not accuse the Pharisees, and pronounce a woe upon them, because they received the support of women, even of widows, nor because of the frequency or length of their prayers. Abstracted, however, from the peculiar circumstances and aggravations with which the sin was accompanied in the actual practice of the Pharisees, the thing condemned in the text is, prayer which is uttered only in pretence, and prayer which has a selfish and worldly end in view. Widows were the objects against whom the Pharisees put in practice their artful hypocrisy. But it is obvious that whosoever may be the objects of the deception, the essential character of the sin remains the same. Nor is the nature of the sin affected by the extent of the pretended devotion. The pretence is the thing blameworthy. It is true the sin becomes more heinous in proportion to the height of the profession, and the Pharisees are worthy of greater damnation, because they not only pretended to devotion, but to very high flights of it. Leaving out of view, however, such aggravating circumstances as these, that their prayer was long, and that the widows and the fatherless were their prey, we have the essential character of the sin set before us, as at least worthy of damnation, namely, making a profession of religion for the purpose of advancing worldly interests, and securing the ends of earthly ambition. The Pharisees of our day, then, who lie under the woe pronounced by Jesus, are-- 1. Those ministers who enter upon and continue in their office for a piece of bread. The most pitiable being among all the afflicted sons of humanity is he who has assumed the holy office of the ministry for the sake of worldly ends and objects. 2. But the Pharisaic crime is by no means limited to ministers. Those people are guilty of it, in whatever position they are placed, who, for the sake of good repute, from fear of worldly loss, or from the desire of worldly gain--or who, actuated by any earthly or selfish motive whatever, make profession of a religion which they do not believe. We have yet to examine a third charge which Jesus brings against the scribes and Pharisees. He accompanies the recital of it with a denunciation of the same woe he had already twice invoked upon them. “ Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte; and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves.” The apostles of deceit and falsehood have often manifested a zeal in the propagation of their principles which is fitted to minister a severe reproof to those who know and who believe the truth. This does not arise from the circumstance that the apostles of error are possessed of more energy and activity of mind than the friends of truth, but because they have frequently a more hearty interest in the advancement of their cause. Let there be an opening for worldly advancement, and the gratification of worldly ambition, and the way is crowded with rival and eager candidates. There is no remissness of effort among them. The conquests of early Christianity were rapid and wide, because its apostles had strong faith and untiring zeal. From what has been stated, it will be manifest that it is not the fact of making proselytes or converts against which the woe of Christ is denounced. This, on the contrary, is the great duty which He has laid upon all His disciples; and the illustrious reward He hath promised to the work is, that they who turn many to righteousness shall shine as the stars for ever and ever. A church is doing nothing if it be not making proselytes. It is a dead trunk ready for the fire. They did not care to make their converts holier and better and happier men. They made them twofold more the children of hell than themselves. It was enough that they assumed the name and made the outward profession. It will be instructive to examine for a little the methods they adopted for preserving their influence, extending their power, and crushing the truth. We will thus be able to understand more perfectly the grounds of the condemnation pronounced against them, and how their zeal should have produced such fruits. 1. In the ninth chapter of the Gospel according to John we find the record of a miraculous work of Jesus, in opening the eyes of a man who had been blind from his birth. The Pharisees became aware that such a miracle had been wrought, and with great propriety made immediate and diligent inquiry into the reality of the fact. The means, then, by which they sought to quench the truth--to induce a denial of the manifest power of God, and to retain the people as their proselytes and followers--were to bring against Jesus the accusation of breaking the law of the land. He who did so, they argued, must be a sinner--he could not come from God, and to follow him would be certain destruction. 2. Throughout the narratives of the evangelists there are scattered abundant evidences of another instrument of proselytizing employed by the Pharisees. It is the language of reviling and scorn. They ridiculed the poverty of the disciples. Doubtless by such reviling and mockery they might attain a certain measure of success. 3. Another instrument of the Pharisees for making and retaining proselytes, was misrepresentation and calumny. They watched the words of Jesus that they might have something to report to His disadvantage. 4. The Pharisees made converts by force. They took up the weapons of persecution and vigorously employed them. The charge as expressed, pronounces woe against them, because of their great zeal in making proselytes, and because of the lamentable results which followed upon their conversion. (W. Wilson.) . Luke 21:1-4 This poor Widow hath cast in more than they all The widow’ s mites Our Lord wished to see “ how the multitude cast money into the collection-chest” --not only how much--anybody could have discovered that--but in what manner and spirit it was being done: reverently or irreverently--as unto God or as unto man--so as to display or so as to conceal the offering--with a conscientious aim to give all that was due, or a self-convicted sense that a part thereof was being withheld. The searching eye of the Master struck through the outward demeanour of each passing worshipper, right down to the motive that swayed the hand. He was reading the heart of each giver. He was marking whether the gift was the mere fruit of a devotionless habit--a sheer affectation of religious liberality--or, as it ought to be, a humble and sincere token of gratitude and consecration to God. These were the inquiries that were engaging the mind of our Lord on this memorable occasion. We are not informed how long He had sat or what discoveries He had made before the arrival of the “ poor widow,” but He noticed that she gave but two “ mites” ; and knowing that this was all she had, He discerned the unselfishness and love that prompted an offering which would perhaps be her last oblation on the altar of the Lord. This act of unfeigned devotion touched Him at once, insomuch that He immediately called His disciples, and drew their attention to so striking and instructive a case. It was her gift, rather than any other, that attracted the greatest interest in the courts of heaven. It was her offering, rather than any other, that was alone worthy of a permanent record in the Gospel History and the “ books of eternal remembrance.” And why? Not only because she gave “ all her living,” but because she gave it unto the Lord “ with all her heart.” Not at all in a spirit of petulance or desperation, as might have been the case; not at all because she saw want staring her in the face, and thought it no longer worth her while to retain the paltry coins she possessed. On the contrary, it was the fineness of the woman’ s spirit, the richness of her gratitude and love, the wealth of her self-forgetfulness and trust under the severity of her trials, that gave her little gift the exceeding rareness of its value. She was neither despairing nor repining, but “ walking by faith” and in contentment, reflecting that, not withstanding her indigence, there was none to whom she was so great a debtor as unto the Lord her God, who in His providence had given her all she had, or ever had had, or ever would have, temporal and spiritual. And out of the depths of her adoration and thankfulness she says unto herself, “ I will go,” in my poverty and sincerity, “ and pay my vows unto the Lord in the presence of all His people,” cast my slender and only offering into the sacred treasury, and await the goodness of His hand in “ the land of the living.” The other worshippers were giving variously, but all “ of their abundance” ; or, as the Revised Version has it, “ of their superfluity.” They never missed what they gave. They were sacrificing nothing to enable them to give. They could have given more, some of them far more, and never have felt the slightest pressure in consequence. But the “ poor widow” had not an iota more to offer. She gave her “ uttermost farthing,” and she gave it gladly. (J. W.Pringle, M. A.) The duty of almsgiving 1. It is necessary and scriptural that there be public voluntary contributions for pious and charitable purposes. 2. Both the rich and the poor should contribute to pious and charitable purposes, and that according to their respective ability. 3. It concerns us all to see that our contributions be such, in respect of the principles and motives from which they flow, as will meet with the Divine approbation. 4. Be exhorted to cast liberally into the offerings of God, by the encouraging considerations which are placed before you in His Word. (1) Remember that the eye of the Lord Jesus Christ is upon you. (2) Remember, again, the considerations connected with the amazing kindness of your God and Saviour to you. (3) Be exhorted, once more, to give liberally, by the consideration of the promise of an abundant recompense, both in this world and in the world to come. (James Foote, M. A.) The anonymous widow It is related of Father Taylor, the sailor missionary of Boston, that on one occasion, when a minister was urging that the names of the subscribers to an institution (it was tile missionary cause) should be published, in order to increase the funds, and quoted the account of the poor widow and her two mites, to justify this trumpet-sounding, he settled the question by rising from his seat, and asking in his clear, shrill voice, “ Will the speaker please give us the name of that poor widow?” (Christian Age.) The widow’ s mite When it is said that this mite was all this woman’ s living, it must, of course, mean all her living for that day. She threw herself upon the providence of God to supply her with her evening meal or night’ s lodging. From what she gave, which the Lord brought to light and commended, the expression “ I give my mite” has passed into a proverb, which in the mouths of many who use it is ridiculous, if not profane. What ought to be the mite of one in a good business which yields him several hundreds a year clear profit? What ought to be the mite of a professional man in good practice, after all reasonable family claims are provided for? A man with an income of at least two or three hundred a year once said to me, when I called upon him for assistance in keeping up a national school, “ I will think about it, sir, and I will give you my mite.” He did think, and his mite was two shillings. Contrast this with the following. Two aged paupers, having only the usual parish pay, became communicants. They determined that they would not neglect the offertory; but how was this to be done, as they were on starvation allowance? Well, during the week before the celebration, they did without light, sat up for two or three hours in the dark, and then went to bed, and gave the few pence which they saved in oil or rushlights to be laid on the altar of God. (M. F. Sadler.) Giving his all A gentleman was walking late one night along a street in London, in which stands the hospital where some of our little friends support a bed (“ The May Fair Cot,” in Ormond Street Hospital) for a sick child. There were three acrobats passing along there, plodding wearily home to their miserable lodgings after their day’ s work; two of them were men, and they were carrying the ladders and poles with which they gave their performance in the streets whenever they could collect a crowd to look on. The third was a little boy in a clown’ s dress. He trotted wearily behind, very tired, and looking pale and sick. Just as they were passing the hospital the little lad’ s sad face brightened for a moment. He ran up the steps and dropped into the box attached to the door a little bit of paper. It was found next morning there. It contained a sixpence, and on the paper was written, “ For a sick child.” The one who saw it afterwards ascertained, as he tells us, that the poor little waif, almost destitute, had been sick, and in his weary pilgrimage was a year before brought to the hospital, which had been a “ House Beautiful “ to him, and he was there cured of his bodily disease. Hands of kindness had ministered to him, words of kindness had been spoken to him, and he had left it cured in body and whole in heart. Some one on that day in a crowd had slipped a sixpence into his hand, and that same night as he passed by, his grateful little heart gave up for other child-sufferers “ all the living that he had.” It was all done so quietly, so noiselessly; but oh I believe me, the sound of that little coin falling into God’ s treasury that night rose above the roar and din of this mighty city, and was heard with joy in the very presence of God Himself The giving out of abundance and out of penury “ Mamma, I thought a mite was a very little thing. What did the Lord mean when He said the widow’ s mite was more than all the money the rich men gave?” It was Sunday afternoon, and the question was asked by a little child of eight, who had large, dark, inquiring eyes, that were always trying to look into things. Mamma had just been reading to her the story from the Bible, and now she wanted it explained. Mamma thought for a few minutes, and then said, “ Well, Lulu, I will tell you a little story, and then I think you will understand why the widow’ s mite was more valuable than ordinary mites. There was once a little girl, whose name was Kitty, and this little girl had ever so many dolls, almost more than she could count. Some were made of china, and others were made of wax, with real hair and beautiful eyes that would open and shut; but Kitty was tired of them all, except the newest one, which her auntie had given her at Christmas. One day a poor little girl came to the door begging, and Kitty’ s mother told her to go and get one of her old dolls and give it away. She did so, and her old doll was like what the rich men put into the treasury. She could give it away just as well as not, and it didn’ t cost her anything. But the poor little beggar girl was delighted with her doll. She had never had but one before, and that was a rag doll; but this one had such lovely curly hair, and she had never seen any lady with such an elegant pink silk dress on. She was almost afraid to hold it against her dirty shawl, for fear of soiling it; so she hurried home as fast as she could, to hide it away with her few small treasures. Just as she was going upstairs to their poor rooms, she saw through the crack of the door in the basement her little friend Sally, who had been sick in bed all summer, and who was all alone all day, while her mother went out washing, to try and earn money enough to keep them from starving. As our little girl looked through the crack she thought to herself, ‘ I must show Sally my new dolly.’ So she rushed into the room and on to the bed, crying, ‘ O Sally! see!’ Sally tried to reach out her arms to take it, but she was too sick; so her little friend held up the dolly, and as she did so, she thought, ‘ How sick Sally looks to-day! and she hasn’ t any dolly.’ Then, with one generous impulse, she said, ‘ Here, Sally, you may have her.’ Now, Lulu, do you see? The little girl’ s dolly was like the widow’ s mite--she gave her all.” The largest giver The late Bishop Selwyn was a man of ready wit as well as of devout Christian feeling. In his New Zealand diocese it was proposed to allot the seats of a new church, when the Bishop asked on what principle the allotment was to be made, to which it was replied that the largest donors should have the best seats, and so on in proportion. To this arrangement, to the surprise of every one, the Bishop assented, and presently the question arose who had given the most. This, it was answered, should be decided by the subscription list. “ And now,” said the Bishop, “ who has given the most? The poor widow in the temple, in casting into the treasury her two mites, had cast in more than they all; for they of their abundance had cast into the treasury, but she had cast in all the living that she had.” (W. Baxendale.) A Welsh boy’ s offering It is related of a little Welsh boy who attended a missionary meeting that when he had given in his collecting card and what he had obtained from his friends, he was greatly distressed because he had not a halfpenny of his own to put in the plate at the meeting. His heart was so thrilled with interest in the work that he ran home and told his mother that he wanted to be a missionary, and asked her to give him something for the collection, but she was too poor to give him any money. He was disappointed and cried; but a thought struck him. He collected all his marbles, went out, and sold them for a penny, and then went to the meeting again and put it on the plate, feeling glad that he was able to do something to promote the cause of missions. What one halfpenny can do A son of one of the chiefs of Burdwan was converted by a single tract. He could not read, but he went to Rangoon, a distance of two hundred and fifty miles; a missionary’ s wife taught him to read, and in forty-eight hours he could read the tract through. He then took a basket full of tracts; with much difficulty preached the gospel at his own home, and was the means of converting hundreds to God. He was a man of influence; the people flocked to hear him; and in one year one thousand five hundred natives were baptized in Arracan as members of the Church. And all this through one little tract I That tract cost one halfpenny! Oh! whose halfpenny was it? God only knows. Perhaps it was the mite of some little girl; perhaps the well-earned offering of some little boy. But what a blessing it was! (Bowes.) The gifts of the poor Sarah Hosmer, while a factory girl, gave fifty guineas to support native pastors. When more than sixty years old she longed so to furnish Nestoria with one more preacher that, living in an attic, she took in sewing until she had accomplished her cherished purpose. Dr. Gordon has well said, “ In the hands of this consecrated woman, money transformed the factory girl and the seamstress into a missionary of the Cross and then multiplied her sixfold.” But might we not give a thousand times as much money as Sarah Hosmer gave, and yet not earn her reward? The true worth of money After all, objects take their colour from the eyes that look at them. And let us be assured that there is an infinite difference in the sight of an eye which is the window of a sordid soul and an eye from which looks a soul that has been ennobled by the royal touch of Christ. There are some eyes that read upon a piece of gold nothing but the figures that tell its denomination. There are others, thank God, that see upon it truths that thrill and gladden and uplift. If the lust of gold has blinded your eyes to all else but its conventional value, go to the feet of Christ, and to His question, “ What wilt thou that I should do unto thee?” answer, “ Lord, that mine eyes might be opened.” And when you have learned to look through money into that infinite reach that lies beyond it, you will have learned the lesson of the gospel. You may then be a “ rich Christian,” making earth brighter and better, and building for yourself in heaven “ everlasting habitations.” Liberal giving In a sequestered glen in Burmah lived a woman, who was known as Naughapo (Daughter of Goodness). Sire was the Dorcas of the glen--clothing the naked, feeding the hungry, soothing the afflicted, and often making her little dwelling the home of the poor, that they might enjoy the privilege of the neighbouring school. Mrs. Mason, the missionary, visiting her, was struck with the beauty of her peaceful home--evidently a spot which the Lord had blessed … The day before she left, apedlar had called with his tempting fabrics for sale; but though this poor woman was in poor garments, she had but one rupee for purchases, while on the following morning she and her family put thirteen rupees into Mrs. Mason’ s hand, to be deposited in the mission treasury. (Mrs. Wylie’ s “ Life of Mrs. Mason.”) Noble giving General Gordon had a great number of medals, for which he cared nothing. There was a gold one, however, given to him by the Empress of China, with a special inscription engraved upon it, for which he had a great liking. But it suddenly disappeared, no one knew when or how. Years afterwards it was found out by a curious accident that he had erased the inscription, sold the medal for ten pounds, and sent the sum anonymously to Canon Millar, for the relief of the sufferers from the cotton famine at Manchester. (E. Hake.) Luke 21:5-6 Adorned with goodly stones and gifts On the object and use of the sanctuary I. THE UNDER WHICH CHRIST UTTERED THESE WORDS. Every attentive reader of Holy Scripture must have remarked this fact, in the history of the Bible, viz., that whenever and wheresoever God revealed His choice of a spot among the sons of men, to “ place His Name there” --where He might be especially present with them, to receive their worship, and to bestow on them His blessing--that spot was always directed and made to be as great a contrast, and as much superior as possible to all other places in which men ordinarily abode. But all this, as the same attentive reading of Holy Scripture must also convince us, was immediately directed to its own great and specific objects. It was designed by God to lead their thoughts upward to Himself. The temple had been a great probationary blessing to the Jews; it had been ordained of old by God, for the advancement of their essential and everlasting good; and it was now foredoomed to such ruin and desolation, that “ there should not be left in it one stone upon another, which should not be thrown down,” only because of the way in which they had abused their privileges, trampled on their mercies, and forgotten the covenant while they walked in the very presence of their God. II. : 1. These words of our Lord give no sort of encouragement to the notion which has often prevailed, and has been much repeated in our days, of its being utterly immaterial what kind of fabric we dedicate to the Most High; that all must be alike to Him, and the meanest sufficiently acceptable in His sight; inasmuch as “ He dwelleth not in temples made with hands,” and can be as well honoured within walls of clay, as beneath the stateliest roof that ever was raised by man. When men live, according to their respective degrees, in a state which God has prospered--dwelling, if not, like David, in “ houses of cedar,” at least in those of competence and comfort--it is not for them to suffer the “ Ark of God to remain within curtains” ; and though to the wanderer in the desert, or the colonist in his new settlement, the best tent or cot he could procure might be meet for the service of his God, yet it is not so for a society of Englishmen, dwelling in the very bosom of their highly favoured country and Church. How far are we using our Redeemer’ s sanctuary upon earth, in such a manner as that, when this fails, we may be received into “ a building of God; a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens” We must not forget the possibility there is that we might be walking in the judicial blindness of Israel, whilst we are possessed of all the light, and all the means of grace, with which the Christian Church is entrusted. (J. Puckle.) Admiration for the outward form rather than for the spiritual meaning Is there any one Christian, however austere, who, on entering the body of our cathedral not for the first time but the twentieth, and allowing his eye to wander along its avenue of columns, or into the depth at once so mysterious and so impressive, of the distant choir; or towards those arches, at once light and bold, which, like a vigorous vegetation on each pilaster, throw out and intertwine their stems at the centre--is there any one who has not said to himself, How beautiful this is! what harmony! what unison among all these stones! what music in this architecture! what poetry in this edifice! Those who reared it are dead, but though dead they still speak to us; and their conception, full of adoration, their conception, a species of prayer, is so united to their work, that we think we feel it and breathe it as we advance within these walls which carry us over a vista of ages. Such is our feeling; and if we are not alone, we can scarcely help giving it utterance. Thus, doing: what the disciples did when they exclaimed, What stones! what buildings! might we not hater ourselves addressed by our Lord in words of reproof, “ Is it this you are looking at?” And why should we not be reproved if our soul goes no farther than our eye, if it stops where our eye is obliged to stop; if symbols, appearances, visible things, hold it captive; ii the splendours of art chain down our heart to the earth instead of raising it to heaven? This is the censure which Jesus Christ passes on His disciples. He had looked into their souls, and there detected that lust of the flesh, that lust of the eye, and that pride of life, which are the three connecting chains by which the enemy of God links us closely to outer darkness. The man and the Jew were equally revealed in that involuntary exclamation; man, dazzled by whatever is seen, and filled with contempt for what is not seen; the Jew, proud of the exterior pomp of a worship, the deep meaning and internal idea of which had long escaped him, and attaching himself obstinately to the law--in other words, a shadow, at the very moment when this law was more than ever a shadow. Is it this you are looking at? What! these few grains of dust, which are large only because you are little? What! these gifts extorted by fear, vanity, and custom, from individuals who refused to begin by giving themselves to God? What! the gorgeous falsehood of these marbles and gildings, of all those ornaments, the pious import of which has long since been forgotten? Is it this you are looking at? (A. Vinet, D. D.) Looking at the true grandeur of Christianity Christianity has taken a form in the world; it has become visible. Travelling over ages, and propagating itself in the world, it has assumed a place among the things to which the world pays regard; and besides this grandeur of space and duration which procures it a species of respect on the part of the most indifferent, it has, by its intellectual grandeur (I mean by the grandeur of the ideas which it expresses, and those which it suggests), captivated the regard and admiration of thinkers. Thus is it great after the fashion of the world. Beware of admiring it most of all for that grandeur. Let us fear lest its true grandeur escape our notice. Let us not allow our eye to be misled, and oblige Jesus Christ to say to us again, “ Is it this you are looking at?” How great our misfortune if we should have entered the empire of the invisible only to link ourselves more securely to the visible, and if in the kingdom of spirit we should have been able only to find the world! How miserable, if trusting to those vain and hollow words, “ The temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord,” we should neglect, as the prophet says in the same place, thoroughly to amend our ways and our doings (Jeremiah 7:4-5). To look only to this twofold greatness of Christianity, the material and intellectual, is truly to do like the first companions of Jesus Christ, to fix our look upon stones. “ fast thoughts, secular traditions, splendid recollections, all these are stones; cold materials, hard and dead. There are other stones, living stones, which form together a spiritual building, a holy priesthood (1 Peter 2:5). (A. Vinet, D. D.) Warnings 1. That sin has laid the foundation of ruin in the most flourishing cities and kingdoms; Jerusalem, the glory of the world, is here by sin threatened to be made a desolation. 2. “ That the threatenings of God are to be feared, and shalt be fulfilled, whatever appearing improbabilities there may be to the contrary. It is neither the temple’ s strength, nor beauty, that can oppose or withstand God’ s power. (W. Burkitt.) The destruction of the temple foretold With this scene before them they must have found it harder still to acquiesce in the thought of the destruction of the city and temple. But the prediction of their overthrow contained an important lesson for the disciples and for us. It is this-- I. AND SYSTEMS OF OPPOSED TO CHRIST, HOWEVER STRONG AND THEY MAY APPEAR, ARE DOOMED TO . They have no guarantee for their continuance and perpetuity in the splendour and massive strength of their temples, Error is weak and on the road to downfall, no matter how strong it looks, and truth is strong and on the way to victory, no matter how weak and insignificant it appears. Other religions besides Judaism have illustrated these truths. It was thus with the ancient Greek and Roman religions. When Paul went to Ephesus, where the goddess Diana was worshipped, her temple so magnificent and stately was regarded as one of the seven wonders of the world. What was thus witnessed in the ancient world, wherever and whenever its religions came in contact and conflict with Christianity, is repeated in every age. It is being witnessed to-day in Japan and in India where long-established systems of religion, with imposing rites and magnificent temples, are gradually being undermined by the influence of the gospel. The splendid and massive structures in which those religions have been enshrined have no power to preserve them. They are crumbling before the preaching of the Cross. They belong to those transitory “ human things,” whose fate a brilliant English historian compares to that of icebergs drifting southward out of the frozen seas. So long as the equilibrium is sustained you would think they were stable as the rocks. But the sea-water is warmer than the air. Hundreds of fathoms down the tepid current washes the base of the berg. Silently in those far deeps the centre of gravity is changed, and then, in a moment, with one vast roll, the enormous mass heaves over, and the crystal peaks which had been glancing so proudly in the sunlight are buried in the ocean for ever.” II. THE OF CHRIST ARE TO EXPECT AND BE ON THEIR GUARD AGAINST AND FALSE CHRISTS. “ Many shall come in My name, saying, I am Christ, and shall deceive many.” The liability to be deceived by such impostors exists in all men. For in the souls of all there is an expectation of, or longing for, a mighty deliverer like the Messiah of the prophets. If Jesus is rejected, or not confidently believed in as the true Christ, some false Christ is likely to win their faith and lead astray. III. JESUS TEACHES HIS THAT BEFORE HIS FINALLY THEY MUST HEAR AND SUFFER AND WITNESS MANY AND THINGS AS IN ITS OF THE WORLD. “ Ye shall hear,” he said, “ of wars and rumours of wars … Nation shall rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom; there shall be earthquakes in divers places; there shall be famines … They shall deliver you up to councils; and in synagogues ye shall be beaten; and before governors and kings shall ye stand for My sake for a testimony unto them.” But the fearful prophecy was mingled with words that spanned the dark cloud with a rainbow of hope. “ Be not troubled,” He said; “ these things must needs come to pass … these things are the beginning of travail.” “ They must needs come to pass,” because they were the inevitable consequences of sin--the retribution long delayed but steadily accumulating, for the sins ofthe nation in the past. IV. IN THIS WITH SIN AND FALSE THEY SHOULD RELY FOR DEFENCE AND FOR VICTORY UPON THE DIVINE HELP. Luke 21:7-28 Master, but when shall these things be?Judaism overthrown I. THE MASTER’ S WARNING FALSE CHRISTS. 1. Many will assume the daring role. (1) Some saying, “ I am Christ.” (2) Others saying, “ The time draweth near.” 2. There is danger of being deceived. “ Take heed,” etc. II. THE MASTER’ S IN RESPECT TO WHAT MUST PRECEDE HIS COMING. 1. The great events which must precede. (1) Political commotion. (2) Physical changes. (3) Social distresses. 2. The persecution that must precede. (1) Its severity. (2) Its advantage. (3) Support under it. (4) Assurance and counsel in view of it. 3. Jerusalem’ s destruction must precede it. (1) This destruction was then near. (2) This destruction terrible. Lessons: 1. Christ’ s wonderful knowledge of future events. (1) He foreknew the destiny of all nations. (2) The opposition with which Christianity would be met. (3) The trials His disciples would have to endure. (4) Christ knows no surprise. 2. Christ’ s wonderful ability to maintain His gospel and to sustain his followers. (1) No power can overthrow it. (2) His followers will triumph. 3. Jerusalem’ s destruction symbolizes the dreadful doom of those who reject Christ. (D. C. Hughes, M. A.) The end When I was a Sunday-school scholar--after I had finished reading my library books--I would look at the words on the last pages, “ THE END,” and underneath these words were pictures; some of them I remember. There was a hand holding an inverted torch, and it seemed to say, “ The flame is dying out, this is the end.” Another picture was a candlestick with a candle burned almost out, and the last flickering light of the candle said, “ The light is going out, soon it will leave you in darkness.” In another book a man was seen as having left his house, the door was closed and he was shut out in the outer darkness. He was walking in a narrow path, and just before him there was a pitfall, and in it were the words, “ The end” ; truly man steps out of this life into the next. There was a picture I saw only once, but I can never forget the impression that it left on my mind. It was a midnight scene, with the moon and stars lighting up the darkness that hung over a graveyard, and on a tombstone more prominent than the rest were these impressive words, “ The end.” So there is an end to a book, an end to our days, our months, our lives, and an end to everything on earth. There is an end of working, of learning, and, whether neglected or improved, there will be an end of all our teaching. Sabbath-school scholars and teachers, “ Work while it is day, for the night cometh when no man can work.” (American Sunday School World.) Experience of an earthquake The traveller Humboldt gives an interesting account of the first earthquake he witnessed. It was at Cumana, in South America. The first shock came after a strange stillness. It caused an earthquake in his mind, for it overthrew in a moment all his lifelong notions about the safety of the earth. He could no longer trust the soil which up to that day had felt so firm under his feet. He had only one thought--universal, boundless destruction. Even the crocodiles ran from the river Orinoco howling into the woods; the dogs and pigs were powerless with fear. The whole city seemed “ the hearth of destruction.” The houses could not shelter, for they were falling in ruins. He turned to the trees, but they were overthrown. His next thought was to run to the mountains, but they were reeling like drunken men. He then looked towards the sea. Lo! it had fled; and the ships, which a few minutes before were in deep water, were rocking on the bare sand. He tells us that, being then at his wit’ s end, he looked up, and observed that heaven alone was perfectly calm and unshaken. Many strange things are yet to come upon the world--earthquakes, overturnings, upheavings. But amid them all, as the Book tells us, the Christian shall look up to the heavenly One, “ Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever,” and to His heavenly home which cannot be moved. (From “ Bible Echoes,”) Frequency of earthquakes An earthquake is only a volcano hushed up. When Stromboli and Cotopaxi and Vesuvius stop breathing, let the foundations of the earth beware. Seven rheum and earthquakes in two centuries recorded in the catalogue of the British Association. Trajan, the Emperor, goes to ancient Antioch, and amid the splendour of his reception is met by an earthquake that nearly destroys the Emperor’ s life. Lisbon, fair and beautiful at ten o’ clock on November 1, 1755, in six minutes sixty thousand have perished, and Voltaire writes of them: “ For that region it was the last judgment, nothing wanting but a trumpet!” Europe and America feeling the throb. Fifteen hundred chimneys in Boston partially or fully destroyed. But the disasters of other centuries have had their counterpart in our own. In 1812 Caracas was caught in the grip of the earthquake; in 1822, in Chili, one hundred thousand square miles of land by volcanic force upheaved to four and seven feet of permanent elevation; in 1854 Japan felt the geological agony; Naples shaken in 1857; Mexico in 1858; Mendoza, the capital of the Argentine Republic, in 1861; Manilla terrorised in 1863; the Hawaiian Islands by such force uplifted and let down in 1871; Nevada shaken in 1871, Antioch in 1872, California in 1872, San Salvador in 1873, while in the summer of 1883 what subterranean excitements! Ischia, an island of the Mediterranean, a beautiful Italian watering-place, vineyard clad, surrounded by all natural charm and historical reminiscence; yonder Capri, the summer resort of the Roman emperors; yonder, Naples, the paradise of art--this beautiful island suddenly toppled into the trough of the earth, eight thousand merrymakers perishing, and some of them so far down beneath the reach of human obsequies that it may be said of many a one of them as it was said of Moses, “ The Lord buried him.” (Dr. Talmage.) It shall turn to you for a testimonyThe testimony of life The tale of it shall live on. The light of their lives shall shine through their forms and reveal the inner glory in eternity. This is the eternal recompense--revelation. The revelation of the Christlike spirit in a world where to be Christlike is to be glorious and blessed; where the scars of battle are marks of honour, and the martyr’ s brow is anointed like Christ’ s with the oil of joy and gladness through eternity. And now what are we doing which shall turn to us for a testimony at that day? A testimony of what? What is the record that shall be read out about us? What hidden things shall the book of remembrance reveal? How much is said and done daily because we love God and must do His will at whatever cost? Many a clever stroke of business is done, no doubt; many a happy speculation; or perhaps a brilliant trick, or next door to it. Quite right, quite fair, no doubt, as business goes in these days, but not the kind of thing which will turn to you for a testimony when it is read out on high. Realize it. Set it before your mind’ s eye. Beings of angelic truth, purity, charity, all round you, circle beyond circle; and Christ, who lived that life which it makes us blush to read about, in the midst. And what is there in your life in tune with it; which you will hear read out with joy in that great company; which makes you the blessed freeman of that world in which “ the Lamb who was slain” is King? What deeds do we leave for recompense at the resurrection of the just? No matter what the world thinks about it, the real question is, What do we think of it ourselves? In the quiet hours when the world is shut out, and its babbling is silent, what do we think of it? There is a sterner, surer Judge within than any that the world can set to weigh us. How stand we before that tribunal? It will prophesy to us how we shall stand before the bar of Christ at last. (J. B. Brown, B. A.) I will give you a mouth and wisdomChrist’ s promise the support of His despised ministers I. THE here implied, viz., that the apostles should not fail of adversaries to oppose them. This, indeed, was to be no small argument of their apostolic mission. For such as engage themselves in the service of that grating, displeasing thing to the world, called “ truth,” must expect the natural issue and consequent of truth, which is a mortal hatred of those who speak it. The next thing offering itself to our consideration is, how this enmity (especially in the apostles’ time, which the words chiefly point at) was to exert itself. 1. For gainsaying; the word in the Greek is ἀντειπε͂ιν, importing opposition in disputation, with an endeavour to repel or confute what is alleged by another. And thus we find the apostles frequently and fiercely encountered by adversaries of very different persuasions, by Jews and Gentiles, and the several sects belonging to both. They were perpetually railed at as deceivers and impostors, even while they were endeavouring to undeceive the world from those wretched impostures and delusions which had so long and so miserably bewitched it: in a word, they were like physicians exchanging cures for curses; and reviled and abused by their froward patients, while they were doing all they could for their health and recovery. But-- 2. The other branch of the opposition designed against the apostles and ministers of Christ is expressed by “ resisting” ; a word importing a much more substantial kind of enmity than that which only spends at the mouth, and shows itself in froth and noise; an enmity which, instead of scoffs and verbal assaults, should encounter them with all that art could contrive or violence execute; with whips and scourges, cross and gibbet, swords and axes; and though bare words draw no blood, yet these, to be sure, would. And such were the weapons with which they were to act their butcheries upon the Christians; till at length, through all the sorts and degrees of cruelty, the same martyrdom should both crown and conclude their sufferings together. II. CHRIST’ S PROMISE TO HIS OF SUCH AN FROM ABOVE AS SHOULD AND MASTER ALL THEIR ’ . 1. For the thing promised, “ a mouth and wisdom” , that is, an ability of speaking, joined with an equal prudence in action and behaviour. Which things we will consider first singly, and then in conjunction. And-- (1) For the ability of speaking conferred upon the apostles. It was highly requisite that those who were to be the interpreters and spokesmen of heaven should have a rhetoric taught them from thence too; and as much beyond any that could be taught them by human rules and art as the subjects they were to speak of surpassed the subject of all human eloquence. Now this ability of speech, I conceive, was to be attended with these three properties of it. (a) Great clearness and perspicuity. (b) An unaffected plainness and simplicity. (c) A suitable and becoming zeal or fervour. (2) The other and next is that of wisdom, the noblest endowment of the mind of man of all others, of an endless extent, and of a boundless comprehension; and, in a word, the liveliest representation that a created nature can afford of the infinity of its Maker. And this, as it is in men, is properly the great principle, directing them how to demean themselves in all the particular passages, accidents, and occasions of human life, which being in the full compass of them indeed innumerable, to recount and treat of them all here would be next to impossible; but as for that wisdom which most peculiarly belonged to the first dispensers and ministers of the gospel, I shall only mention two instances, in which it most remarkably shows itself, namely-- (a) That they opposed neither things nor persons, any further than they stood in their way in the ministry of it. On the contrary, “ I am become all things to all men,” says St. Paul, and that neither to gain favour nor interest, but only converts to Christianity (1 Corinthians 9:22). (b) The other instance of the wisdom given by our Saviour to His apostles was their resolute opposing all doctrines and interests whatsoever, so far as they stood in opposition to the gospel. 2. The person promising, who was Christ Himself: “ I will give you a mouth and wisdom.” I lay particular stress and remark upon this, because Christ seems by this very thing to give His disciples an assurance of His resurrection. For surely they could not expect to receive gifts from above, while the giver of them was underground. III. BY WHAT MEANS CHRIST THOSE GIFTS UPON HIS AND ; and that we find was by the effusion of the Holy Ghost, the author and giver of every good and perfect gift, ministerial gifts more especially. (R. South, D. D.) A scoffer silenced One evening, a few years ago, while a few believers in Christ were holding an open-air meeting in the Caledonian Road, London, a man commenced to mock the speaker and taunt him with being paid half-a-crown to come and preach to the people, and even went so far as to charge the preacher with telling a parcel of lies. No notice was taken of the mocker for some little time, but as he persisted in making a disturbance, and declaring that the person addressing the meeting did it for money, and that it was a good thing for him to be able to get half-a-crown so easily, the gentleman stopped short in his discourse, and turning to the scoffer, said, “ My dear friend, it is you that are uttering untruths; I do not preach for half-a-crown, but for a crown, ‘ a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, shall give me;’ and He will give you one too if you will only go to Him and ask for it.” The disturber said but little after this, and stayed till the meeting closed. A martyr’ s beautiful reply That was a beautiful reply of Margaret Maitland, Scotland’ s maiden martyr, to her persecutors. They had bound an aged Christian to a stake far out between low and high tide, and Margaret herself to another stake nearer the shore. They hoped that, seeing the struggles and painful death of her companion, she would be terrified and would recant. She gazed on the awful scene with deep sympathy, but without any manifestation of fear. When they asked her, “ Margaret, what do you see yonder?” she replied, “ I see Christ suffering in the person of one of His saints.” She knew that when her turn came to be suffocated by the rising tide Christ would be with her also; that He would share in her sufferings; that He would sustain her in the terrible ordeal. This is the kind of faith we need for ourselves and for the Church. In your patience possess ye your souls Patience It should rather read, By your endurance ye shall gain possession of your lives. It is also “ ye shall bring your spiritual life safely through the coming troubles.” It was a sore trial for the early Christians to he severed from their holy places, from their city home. In that sundering of cherished ties there lay, we may well believe, an agony that changed the very nature of those who endured it. But it taught them to look far afield, to bow down at no single shrine, and sent them forth to evangelize the world. Out of the ruin of their most cherished relics there grew up a more noble conception of the Church. Age after age each time of change has seemed to bring with it the end; at each crisis have been heard the same appeals to heaven, the same despair of earth; and yet to those who had patience the evil time has passed away, and men have found themselves living in a fresh air of hope with expanded vision and larger powers for good. Our tranquility is little affected by news of distant suffering. It is the old Horatian difference between the eyes and the ears. We fancy that our own troubles are far the worst the world has ever been called on to undergo. Warnings come from older men to whom the dark cloud seems to cover the heavens. The young see the sunshine coming up with soft rich colours of promise from behind the storm. Are there any peculiar causes for alarm? I. The alarm is as old as Christendom. II. The existence of some life is a cheering thing. III. We need more manliness in our religion; more that will attract bard-knit men. IV. If the Christian faith is to declare its Divine origin in the face of vehement attack or learned contempt, it cannot be by shutting itself up in safe sanctuary and refusing to enter the field with its antagonists. It is not without anguish that we rise “ out of our dead selves to better things.” Yet there is no other way for the nobles of mankind. (Dean Kitchin.) On patience The possession of our souls is a very emphatical expression. It describes that state in which a man has both the full command, and the undisturbed enjoyment, of himself; in opposition to his under going some inward agitation which discomposes his powers. Upon the least reflection it must appear, how essential such a state of mind is to happiness. He only who thus possesses his soul is capable of possessing any other thing with advantage; and, in order to attain and preserve this self-possession, the most important requisite is, the habitual exercise of patience. I know that patience is apt to be ranked, by many, among the more humble and obscure virtues; belonging chiefly to those who groan on a sick bed, or who languish in a prison. If their situation be, happily, of a different kind, they imagine that there is no occasion for the discipline of patience being preached to them. But I hope to make it appear, that, in every circumstance of life, no virtue is more important, both to duty and to happiness; or more requisite for forming a manly and worthy character. It principally, indeed, regards the disagreeable circumstances which are apt to occur. But in our present state, the occurrence of these is so frequent, that, in every condition of life, patience is incessantly called forth. I. UNDER . We are provoked, sometimes by the folly and levity of those with whom we are connected; sometimes by their indifference, or neglect; by the incivility of a friend, the haughtiness of a superior, or the insolent behaviour of one in lower station. Hardly a day passes, without somewhat or other occurring, which serves to ruffle the man of impatient spirit. Of course, such a man lives in a continual storm. He knows not what it is to enjoy a train of good humour. Servants, neighbours, friends, spouse, and children, all, through the unrestrained violence of his temper, become sources of disturbance and vexation to him. In vain is affluence; in yam are health and prosperity. The least trifle is sufficient to discompose his mind, and poison his pleasures. His very amusements are mixed with turbulence and passion. I would beseech this man to consider of what small moment the provocations which he receives, or at least imagines himself to receive, are really in themselves; but of what great moment he makes them by suffering them to deprive him of the possession of himself. II. UNDER . Are we not, each in his turn, doomed to experience the uncertainty of worldly pursuits? Why, then, aggravate our misfortunes by the unreasonable violence of an impatient spirit Perhaps the accomplishment of our designs might have been pregnant with misery. Perhaps from our present disappointment future prosperity may rise. III. UNDER . No man is, or can be, always his own master. We are obliged, in a thousand cases, to submit and obey. The discipline of patience preserves our minds easy, by conforming them to our state. By the impetuosity of an impatient and unsubmitting temper, we fight against an unconquerable power; and aggravate the evils we must endure. IV. Patience under injuries and wrongs. To these, amidst the present confusion of the world, all are exposed. No station is so high, no power so great, no character so unblemished, as to exempt men from being attacked by rashness, malice, or envy. To behave under such attacks with due patience and moderation, is, it must be confessed, one of the most trying exercises of virtue. But, in order to prevent mistakes on this subject, it is necessary to observe, that a tame submission to wrongs is not required by religion. We are by no means to imagine that religion tends to extinguish the sense of honour, or to suppress the exertion of a manly spirit. It is under a false apprehension of this kind that Christian patience is sometimes stigmatized in discourse as no other than a different name for cowardice. On the contrary, every man of virtue ought to feel what is due to his character, and to support properly his own rights. Resentment of wrong is a useful principle in human nature; and for the wisest purposes was implanted in our frame. It is the necessary guard of private rights; and the great restraint on the insolence of the violent, who, if no resistance were made, would trample on the gentle and peaceable. Resentment, however, if not kept within due bounds, is in hazard of rising into fierce and cruel revenge. It is the office of patience to temper resentment by reason. V. UNDER AND . This is the most common sense in which this virtue is understood; as it respects disease, poverty, old age, loss of friends, and the other calamities which are incident to human life. In general, there are two chief exercises of patience under adversity; one respecting God, and another respecting men. Patience with respect to God, must, in the days of trouble, suppress the risings of a murmuring and rebellious spirit. Patience in adversity, with respect to men, must appear by the composure and tranquility of our behaviour. The loud complaint, the querulous temper, and fretful spirit, disgrace every character. They show a mind that is unmanned by misfortunes. We weaken thereby the sympathy of others; and estrange them from the offices of kindness and comfort. The exertions of pity will be feeble, when it is mingled with contempt. (H. Blair, D. D.) On patience Now the feelings unavoidably disagreeable to us, and tempting us to impatience, are chiefly pain, sorrow, fear, and anger. 1. Pain: under which may be comprehended also sickness, restlessness, and languid lowness. 2. The next source of impatience before mentioned is sorrow: which sometimes is mere sympathy with the calamities of others. 3. The next cause of impatience, mentioned before was fear. 4. The last trial of our patience, of which I proposed to speak, is anger. (T. Secker.) Patient self-possession in times of trial Be collected, that you may be strong; stand still, and stand firmly, if you can do nothing else; do not slip back, or step aside, or attempt anything wrong or questionable. Patience is not merely a passive submission to evil, a dull, stupid, unfeeling indifference, like the insensibility of wood or stone; it is the result of thought; it implies effort; it is a sort of active bearing up of oneself under the pressure of calamity, which at once indicates self-possession and secures it; it reacts upon that from which it proceeds, and causes it to become stronger and stronger. I wish now to request your attention to some of the advantages which flow from obedience to the precept, in the case of Christians, when called to suffer great affliction, or when exposed to the fear of impending calamity. 1. In the first place, there is the consciousness of not increasing the affliction by sin. If a Christian is impatient, and gives way to fretfulness and temper, or other forms of restiveness under trouble, he not only loses the advantage of calmness and self-possession, but his conscience receives a fresh injury; his proper religious feelings are hurt; his inward personal peace is disturbed; and thus the trouble presses upon him with double weight. It is a great blessing not to be exposed to this. 2. In the next place, self-possession in a time of trouble will enable an individual to take a just view of his actual circumstances, and of the nature and ends of the Divine infliction. We are under the rule and guidance of One who has always an object in what He does--an object worthy of Himself, and connected with the peace and holiness of His Church. 3. In the third place, the man who has full possession of himself in a time of affliction will be able to engage in certain exercises of mind which trouble calls to, but which are impossible, or next to it, when the soul is disturbed by agitation and excitement. “ In the day of adversity consider.” “ Call upon Me in the day of trouble.” “ Glorify Me in the fire.” “ Enter into thy chamber.” “ Be still, and know that I am God.” “ My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, neither faint when thou art rebuked of Him.” But none of these things can be done, or done well, if the man is not quiet, patient, and self-possessed; if he is the victim of hurry, alarm, consternation, and surprise. 4. Observe, fourthly, that it is only by such self-possession as the text inculcates, that an individual will be able to select and apply the proper means of escape from calamity, or which may help him to meet it, or to counteract its effects. 5. In the last place, obedience to the text, explained as an exhortation, will best prepare a man for the end and result of trouble, whatever that result may be. If the cloud and the calamity pass away, and the man be fully delivered from it, he will be able to look back with serenity and gratitude, free from self-reproach or shame. If it terminate fatally, for himself or others, he will be able to acquiesce, with intelligent faith, in the Divine will. (W. Binnie, D. D.) The soul won by patience The Authorised Version reads, “ In your patience possess ye your souls.” It bids the imperilled Christian, fortified by promise, to endure to the end, keeping his soul tranquil and trustful. A beautiful precept, yet inferior, both in reading and rendering, but most certainly in the latter, to one other, which is that of the Revised Version, “ In your patience ye shall win your souls.” For the imperative we substitute the future; in other words, for precept we read promise. This is one change--for “ possess” we read “ win” ; for a soul given in creation, we are biddento look for a soul to be given in glory. The case is one of those in which the word before us always means to acquire, and never means to possess. Now we turn from a comparison of renderings to the application of the saying itself. “ In your patience ye shall win your souls,” “ some of you shall be put to death,” “ ye shall be hated of all men,” “ not a hair of your head shall perish,… in your patience ye shall win your souls.” Death itself shall not prevent this; for the soul here spoken of is the life’ s life, the thing which unbelief and unfaithfulness can alone forfeit for any man, the thing which is saved by faith, the thing which is acquired, gained, won in the exercise of patience. There is a lower truth in the saying in reference to this present life. Multitudes of human lives have been won by patience; the histories of battles and sieges are in large part histories of the triumph of patience; cities would have been lost, and fields would have been lost, but for the grace of patience in the commanders and the leaders. But certainly the converse is true; in patience has been defeat, has been disaster, has been bloodshed, a thousand and ten thousand times; the analogy of earth and time gives support to the promise when we read it as it was spoken of the soul and of things heavenly. What is patience as Christ speaks it? The Greek word for patience is made up of two parts, one meaning continuance, and the other meaning submission; so that the combined term may be defined as submissive waiting, that frame of mind which is will ing to wait as knowing whom it serves, willing to endure as seeing the Invisible; recognizing the creaturely attitude of subjection to the Creator; recognizing also the filial relationship which implies a controlling hand and a loving mind in heaven. Submissive waiting, this is patience, and we see, then, why great things should be spoken of it, why it should even be made the sum of Christian virtues, why to it rather than to any other grace, the promise should be affixed, “ In your patience” --in the exercise, resolved and unwearied, of the grace of submissive expectancy--“ ye shall at last win your souls.” “ Then the soul is not yet won?” Yes and no; the soul, the true life of each one, is already redeemed, bought, bought back with precious blood; and the soul, the life’ s life of each one, is already committed to us by Christ Himself for omnipotent keeping. “ I know,” St. Paul writes, “ whom I have believed, and I am persuaded that He is able to guard my deposit” --the soul which I have committed to Him--“ against that day.” This is true. Our Lord speaks not here to contradict His own word, or to vitiate His own work, which says quite indiscriminately in Holy Scripture, “ Ye were saved,” that is, on Calvary; “ Ye have been saved,” this is, in redemption; “ Ye are being saved,” that is, in the work of grace; “ Ye shall be saved,” that is, in the day of glory. But, in fullest consistency with all these, there is room for a promise, “ Ye shalt win your souls.” Let no man presume. There is a sense in which the life’ s life hangs suspended on that mark, as St. Paul calls it, which is the goal of the race. “ I,” he says, “ count not myself to have apprehended.” There is a grace of submissive expectancy; still, and because there is this, there is a something yet in front of me. At present I do not quite possess even my own soul. Oh! it often eludes me when I would say, “ All my own I carry with me.” Oh I there are many misgivings and doubtings in us, even in the things most Surely believed. I cannot always command the life’ s life, which is the soul, when I would carry it with me to the mercy-seat. I find earth and the world, flesh, and sense oftentimes too strong and too predominately present with me just when I would be at my very best for prayer and praise. I cannot pretend to say that I have quite attained even to the possession of my own innermost being. A great promise. Now let us lose ourselves for a moment in the contemplation of this promise, “ Ye shall win your souls” ; and then in one last word see the connection of it with the realm and region of patience. “ In your patience ye shall win your souls” : at last my soul shall be my own. That is the promise. It is a wonderful interpretation of a wonderful saying appended to the parable of the unrighteous steward: “ If ye have not been faithful in the use of that which was so precarious and so fugitive that even while you had it it might rather be called “ another’ s” --the possession in greater or lesser measure of the substance of this world--“ who,” our Lord asks, “ who should give you that which is your own” --that which is your own, still to be won--the soul, the life’ s life of thistext? Patience may lack, often does lack, one at least of its ingredients; there might be a waiting which was no submission, which, on the contrary, was indolence, was procrastination, was dallying, the man sitting still, and letting alone, and waiting upon chances which are no grace at all, but the opposite; or there might be a submission which was no enterprise, and waiting upon Providence with more or less of the resignation which is the ape and shadow of patience, which has in it no doing nor daring for Christ, no present running and fighting, and, therefore, no future crown. But who shall speak the praises of the real gospel, Christian, spiritual patience? (Dean Vaughan.) Making for ourselves souls The revised translation restores this word of Jesus to its original force. The Lord did not bid His disciples simply to possess their souls in patience. He told them that through endurance they were to win their souls. Souls, then, are for us to win. Literally the word used by Jesus means, procure for yourselves souls. Life is to be to us, in some sense, an acquisition of soul. This active verb used by Jesus in relation to the soul is suggestive. How may the disciples acquire their own souls? Are we to work with the Creator in making our own souls? We are to go into life, and, as men in business gain possessions, we are to procure our souls from life. Souls, then, may not be such ready-made products of nature as we are accustomed to imagine; the souls of men are possibly but the seeds of immortality. They may be the germs scattered by a spiritual power in this soil of the flesh, and destined to spring up, and to grow, if we do not succeed in killing them, into the powers of an endless life. In what ways are we to set about procuring for ourselves souls? The first thing for us to do is the thing which those men had already done to whom Jesus gave this promise that they should win their souls. What they had done--the first decisive step which they had taken in the work of finding their lives--was not, indeed, to acquaint themselves with all knowledge, or to peer into all mysteries. They had not even lingered at the doors of the school of the Rabbies. But when One who spake as never man spake, and who looked into men’ s souls with the light of a Divine Spirit in His eye, came walking upon the beach where they were mending their nets, and bade them leave all and follow Him, they heard their own being commanded as by the King of truth, and at once they left all and followed Him. They counted not the cost; they obeyed when they found themselves commanded by God in Christ. This promise, “ Ye shall win your souls,” was addressed to men who had surrendered themselves wholly to that which they had seen, and knew of God. It was a pledge of soul made to men who had the wills of disciples. This prime condition of winning our souls remains unchanged, and no simpler or more searching words for it can be framed than those first requirements of Jesus Christ of every man--“ Repent,” “ believe.” If a man wishes in all sincerity to gain his own soul, he must begin by turning with a will from the sin of the world which he knows has laid foul, destructive hand upon his life; he must rise, and meet duty, trusting himself with all his heart to every whisper of truth and echo of God within him. The first step in the way of acquiring our souls, let me repeat, is the decision of discipleship. I answer then, secondly, we are to acquire soul by living now with all the soul we do have. If we are to win souls from life, we must put our whole souls into life; but the trouble with us is that we often do not. We live half-hearted, and with a certain reserve often of ourselves from our every-day life in the world. But you remember how Jesus insisted that His disciples should serve God and love man with all their souls, and with all their strength. The way to gain more soul and better is to live freely and heartily with all the soul we do have. Christ alone may show us what a whole-hearted, whole-souled life should be. He completes lives. He gives soul and heart abundantly in life. Has He not said we are to love God with all our minds, and all our hearts, and all our strength? “ Yes,” some one thinks, “ but how can I in my little tread-mill of a life, in my circumscribed sphere, put my whole soul into it, live with all my might? I wish I had an opportunity of life into which I could throw all my soul--but what am I and my little place? I know I am not living with all my heart.” But you may I You may, if you are willing to learn Jesus’ secret, and to find your life while losing it. Perhaps in the very effort it may cost us to put our hearts into little things--to do common things as disciples heartily as unto the Lord--may be the exercise of soul which God has appointed for us that thereby we may gain capacity of spirit for the whole service of heaven. Right here it may help us to come back to our text. In your patience ye shall win your souls. Not many of those disciples to whom Jesus was then speaking became distinguished Christians. They had no great part to play in this world. All but three or four of the twelve are only names to us. But every man of them had a splendid chance to win soul by endurance. God gives to common people this opportunity of winning on earth souls large enough and good enough to appreciate by and by what heaven is. Patience may be the making of a soul. That regiment of men is held all the morning waiting under fire. They broke camp with enthusiasm enough to sweep them up to any line of flame. But they are held still through long hours. They might show splendid courage in action; but the orders arc to stand. Only to stand still under fire! But that day of endurance is enough to make a veteran of the recruit of yesterday. The discipline of waiting under life’ s fire makes veteran souls. Through the habit of endurance God trains often his best souls. If you keep up heart in your life of trial, by that patience what a soul for God’ s kingdom may be won! (Newman Smyth, D. D.) How to use life How different life must look--how different what we call sometimes its strange providences must look--to the eye of one above who can see souls, and how they are forming for the endless life! And our own souls--is this world absorbing and exhausting them, or by the grace of God are we transmuting all our work and experience of life into more soul and sweeter? My friends, am I not bringing to you from this word of the Lord a very simple yet all-sufficient test for everything you are doing or planning in your lives? Can I acquire soul by it? Be sure, any course of life which causes any shrinkage of soul is not right. The open Christian life is constant enlargement of heart. Long ago the Hebrew poet looked up, and saw that the soul that runs in the way of the Lord’ s commandments is enlarged. “ Be ye also enlarged,” said an apostle, in Jesus’ name. His gospel does not come to you and me with a close system of restrictions confronting us on every hand with unnatural restraints. Christ does for us what Satan offered to do for Christ, but never had the power to do--He gives us all the kingdoms of this world, because He gives us receptive souls and pure hearts for all God’ s works and worlds. All things are yours, for ye are Christ’ s, and Christ is God’ s. Yon shall be disciples of the Divine Man. You are here for a little while to procure for yourselves souls, and to help others win their souls. God’ s Spirit is here with you to give you hearts in sympathy with all Godlike things. Grieve not that Holy Spirit. Beware of anything which helps kill soul. A man’ s life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth. Acquire soul! (Newman Smyth, D. D.) Self-winning This baby has to learn to see. He has eyes, sound, clear, lovely orbs into which a mother’ s eye looks as into deep wells of love, but when he emerges into consciousness and begins to take note of things around him, hold up a ball before him, and see how aimless is his grasp at it. His eye has not yet learned to calculate distances. You know how the blind, when restored to sight, have to learn to see: sight and seeing are not the same things. Sight is a gift of nature. Seeing has to be won. That blind man whom Jesus healed did not at once receive power to see. At the first touch he said, “ I see men, for I behold them as trees, walking,” in vague outline, confused, like the blending of trees in a grove. When Jesus laid His hand upon him a second time, he saw all things clearly. We see the same truth as related to special training of the senses. We have all heard the story of “ eyes and no eyes.” One man will see the material for a volume where another sees nothing but stocks and stones. And, going still deeper, there is that moral something which we call self-mastery. In how many do you see it? How many men do you see who make their thoughts work on given lines; who have their hand on the gates which shut out vain and wicked thoughts; in whom the whole moral and spiritual nature is obedient to law, and is marshalled and massed and directed by a supreme will? We say a man is self-possessed. What do we mean by that, but that there resides in the man a power which holds all his faculties at command, and brings them to bear in spite of all distractions? There can be no better phrase to express it. He possesses himself. He can do what he will with that side of the self which he chooses to use. Man’ s self must develop powers of resistance and control. It must be so completely in hand that he can say to wind and water, “ You shall not possess me and carry me whither you will. Rather shall you do my bidding, and grind my corn, and turn my lathe, and carry me whither I will.” “ Nature, red in tooth and claw,” roars and pants and rages after him. He must win his life from her jaws. And no less does the truth hold higher up. As we follow human nature upward, it is only the antagonists that change. The contact and the conflict are perpetuated. The Bible is full of this. It may indeed be said that the underlying truth of the whole Bible, working itself out through the successive stages of history and the infinite varieties of human experience, is, how shall a man win his own soul? A whole economy of secret, spiritual forces is arrayed against this consummation. Hence it is that Paul says, “ We that are in this tabernacle do groan.” Hence we are told of a wrestle which is not with flesh and blood, but with spiritual hosts; marshalled and organized evil in the spiritual realm; princes of darkness. So, too, our Lord told Peter of an unseen terrible power, fired with malignant desire to sift him as wheat. And under the stress of this fact, the whole current of New Testament teaching settles down into one sharply-defined channel; that spiritual mastery, self-possession, self-wielding, are the outcome only of patient effort and discipline protracted up to the very end. Accordingly we hear an apostle, far on in his Christian career, saying, “ I keep my body under.” The great feature of this text is that Christ points us away from circumstances to souls. You stand some day by the ocean swept with a tempest. It is a grand spectacle. A score of things in the clouds and in the waves appeal to yam You mark the height of the billows, their tremendous volume and swiftness axed power, their mad struggle round the sunken reefs; but after all it is not the grandeur or the terror of the scene which most enchains you. Your interest is concentrated on that ship yonder. You forget the spectacle of the maddened ocean as you watch her fight with it. The question which fills your mind is not how long the storm is going to continue, or whether it is likely to become more severe. It is whether the ship will ride out the gale. And so all circumstances take their character from their relation to man’ s soul. The question is whether the man will ride out the storm of circumstance; the whole significance of circumstance turns on whether it will conquer the man or be conquered by him; whether it will swallow up the soul, or whether the man will bring his soul alive and entire out of the tempest. This is the way in which Christ, as He is pictured in the text, looks out upon that horrible tempest of blood and fire; and this is the attitude of the whole Bible toward the struggle and convulsion of this world. Through it all God has His eye on man’ s moral destiny. To us, often, the principal things are the war and the confusion, the dislocation and the overturning. To Him the principal thing is the destiny of that soul in the midst of the storm. Will the man win his soul or not? Circumstances will adjust themselves if men are right. The great struggle in God’ s eyes is not between parties or sects or opinions. It is between the soul and the world. Victory is the man’ s overcoming the world; not one side of the world getting the better of the other; not the victory of the man’ s native force of will and physical power over the things which assail his fortune or his reputation, but the perfecting of his spiritual manhood in the teeth of all the loss and damage and pain which this world can bring to him. You and I will win this battle if we shall win our souls. (Newman Smyth, D. D.) Patience, the precious little herb Two little German girls, Brigitte and Wallburg, were on their way to the town, and each carried a heavy basket of fruit on her heart. Brigitte murmured and sighed constantly; Wallburg only laughed and joked. Brigitte said: “ What makes you laugh so? Your basket is quite as heavy as mine, and you are no stronger than I am.” Wallburg answered: “ I have a precious little herb on my load, which makes me hardly feel it at all. Put some of it on your load as well.” “ O,” cried Brigitte, “ it must indeed be a precious little herb! I should like to lighten my load with it; so tell me at once what it is called.” Wallburg replied, “ The precious little herb that makes all burdens light is called ‘ patience.’” Jerusalem shall be trodden downThe desolation of Jerusalem confirms our faith in God’ s promises Samuel Rutherford says: “ We too often believe the promises as the man that read Plato’ s writings concerning the immortality of the soul. So long as the book was in his hand, he believed what was said; but as soon as he laid it down, he began to imagine that his soul was only an airy vapour that perisheth with the expiring of the breath. It would greatly help to preserve us from this, and strengthen our faith, if we oftener compared Scripture with Scripture, and prediction with fulfilment.” Two rabbis, we are told, approaching Jerusalem, observed a fox running up the hill of Zion. Aged Rabbi Joshua wept, but Rabbi Eliezer laughed. “ Wherefore dost thou weep?” demanded Eliezer. “ I weep because I see what was written in the Lamentations fulfilled: ‘ Because of the mountain of Zion which is desolate, the foxes fall upon it.’” “ And therefore do I laugh,” said Rabbi Eliezer; “ for when I see with my own eyes that God has fulfilled His threatenings to the letter, I have thereby a pledge that not one of His promises shall fail, for He is ever more ready to show mercy than judgment.” Restoration of the Jews In the year 1808, the generous Lewis Way, when riding with a friend in Devonshire, had his attention drawn by a companion to some stately trees in a park they were passing. “ Do you know,” said his friend, “ the singular condition that is attached to these oaks? A lady who formerly owned this park, stipulated in her will that they should not be cut down until Jerusalem should again be in possession of Israel; and they are growing still.” Mr. Way’ s heart was deeply moved by this incident. The idea of the restoration of the Jews took possession of his mind. In the following year he succeeded in forming the London Society of the Jews. The labours of this and other kindred societies have since been so graciously owned, that in England and on the Continent there are now thousands of Jewish converts, many of whom are ministers of the gospel, some of them preachers and students whose names have become almost household words in the Church of Christ. There shall be signsSigns of the times The mere simple relations of these portentous appearances strike us with horror: and Josephus, who has left us a full history of these times, informs us that they all actually happened at that tragical period. When he enters upon the subject, he uses some of the very words of this chapter, proposing to speak of the signs and prodigies which presignified the approaching desolation; and he mentions the following horrendous prognostications: A star, in the shape of a sword, or a comet, pointing down upon the city, was seen to hang over it for a whole year. There were other strange and unaccountable meteors seen in the aerial regions: armies in battle-array, and chariots surrounding the country and investing their cities; and this before sunset. The great gate of the temple, which twenty men could scarcely shut, and which was made fast with bolts and bars, opened of its own accord to let in their enemies: “ for so,” says Josephus, our wise men understood the omen. At the ninth hour of the night a great light shone upon the temple and the altar, as if it had been noon-day; and at the feast of Pentecost, when the priests went at midnight into the temple to attend their service, they first heard a kind of noise as of persons removing from a place, and then a voice, “ Let us away from hence.” And what Josephus relates is confirmed by Tacitus, a Roman historian of the same age who had no connection with the Jews. 1. There seems to be a correspondence and propriety in it, that there should be a kind of sympathy between the natural and moral world; that when the kingdoms of the earth are tossed and agitated, the earth itself should totter and tremble under them; that when the light of the rational world, the splendour of courts and kingdoms, is about to be extinguished or obscured, the sun and moon, and other lights of the material world, should abate their glory too, and, as it were, appear in mourning; that when some grand event is hastening to the birth, that terribly illustrious stranger, a comet, should make us a visit, as its harbinger, and shake its horrendous tail over the astonished world; that when peace is broke among the nations, the harmony of the elements should likewise be broken, and they should fall into transient animosities and conflicts, like the restless beings for whose use they were formed. There is an apparent congruity and propriety in these things, and therefore the argument is at least plausible; but as it is drawn only from analogy, which does not universally hold, I shall not lay much stress upon it. And yet, on the other hand, as there is an obvious analogy, which does unquestionably hold in many instances, between the natural and moral world, the argument is not to be utterly disregarded. 2. These unusual appearances are peculiarly adapted to raise the attention of mankind, and prepare them for important revolutions. There is a propriety and advantage, if not a necessity, especially with regard to that part of mankind (and there are always many such upon earth) whose benefit is intended by these extraordinary events and revolutions, that they be prepared for them. And they cannot prepare for them without some general expectation of them; and they can have no expectation of them without some warning or premonition of them. Now the ordinary appearances in nature cannot answer this end, because they are ordinary, and therefore not adapted to rouse and fix the attention; and because they really have no such premonitory signification. And as to the Word of God, it may have no direct perceivable reference to such extraordinary periods; and, therefore, can give us no previous warning of their approach. But these unusual phenomena are peculiarly adapted to this end: their novelty and terror catch the attention of the gazing world. Such premonitions would be striking illustrations of the goodness and equity of his administration, who does not usually let the blow fall without previous warning, and they would contribute to the right improvement of such dispensations. This, therefore, I think, we may look upon, at least, as a probable argument; especially if we add that, as these unusual appearances are, in their own nature, fit to be premonitions, so-- 3. It seems natural to mankind to view them in that light; and they have been universally looked upon in that light in all ages and countries. As to the Jews, the matter is clear; for Josephus tells us, that their wise men actually put this construction upon those alarming appearances, which preceded the destruction of Jerusalem. And as they had been accustomed to miracles for the confirmation of their religion, they were even extravagant in their demands of this sort of evidence upon every occasion; as we find in the history of the evangelists. As to the Gentiles, this was the general sentiment of all ranks among them, not only of the vulgar, but of their poets and philosophers. From mankind’ s generally looking for miracles to prove a religion Divine, and from impostors pretending to them, we justly infer that God has so formed our nature, that it is natural to us to expect and regard this sort of evidence in this case: and that God does adapt himself to this innate tendency, and has actually wrought true miracles to attest the true religion: and we may, with equal reason, infer from the superstitions of mankind, with regard to omens and prodigies, that God has given a natural bent to our minds to look for them; and that in extraordinary periods he really does give such previous signs of future events. 4. History informs us, that such unusual commotions and appearances in the natural world, have, with a surprising regularity, generally preceded unusual commotions and revolutions in the moral world, or among the nations of the earth. When an hypothesis is supported by experiments and matters of fact, it ought to be received as true. And this argument will appear decisive, ii we find, in fact, that such commotions and revolutions in the world have been uniformly preceded by some prodigies: for such an uniformity of such extraordinary periods, cannot be the effect of chance, or of blind natural causes, unadjusted and undirected by an intelligent superior power; but it must be the effect of design, a wise and good design, to alarm the world, and put them in a proper posture to meet these grand occurrences. There is nothing more natural, nothing which astronomers can compute with more exactness, than eclipses of the sun and moon; and yet these have so regularly and uniformly preceded the first grand breaches, and the total overthrow of kingdoms and nations, that we cannot but think they were intended to signify such revolutions; and thus mankind generally interpreted them. A total eclipse of the sun happened before the captivity of the ten tribes by the Assyrians; before the captivity of the Jews in Babylon; at the death of Christ, about thirty-seven years and a half before the last destruction of Jerusalem; and about the same number of years before the slaughter of six hundred thousand Jews under Adrian; before the conquest of the Babylonians by the Medes; and before the fall of the Mede-Persian, Grecian, and Roman empires. Upon the whole, let us endeavour to put ourselves in a posture of readiness to meet with all events that may be approaching. Though I know not these futurities, yet I know it shall be well with them that fear God: but it will not be well with the wicked;neither shall he prolong his days, which are as a shadow; because he feareth not before God. (President Davies, M. A.) Second Sunday in Advent This coming is not at death. Death is nowhere called the coming of Christ. It may be the going of the saints to Him, but it is not His coming to them, in any such sense as that in which we declare in the Creed: “ He shall come to judge the quick and the dead.” Though, in some sense, always present, there are respects in which He is quite absent, in which He has been absent since the day of His ascension from the Mount of Olives, and in which He will continue to be absent until mankind “ shall see the Son of Man coming in a cloud, with power and great glory.” And in that same sense in which He is now absent from the earth, He is again to come to the earth, when “ every eye shall see Him, and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of Him.” I. Let us, therefore, in the first place, ASSURE OF THE AND OF THE , THAT THE LORD JESUS CHRIST IS REALLY AND TO RETURN AGAIN IN PERSON TO OUR WORLD. This is the more important, as the tendencies are to neglect and explain away this article of the faith. It was a vital and characteristic part of the faith and hope of the early Christians to look forward to, and to expect, the coming again of the Lord Jesus. Indeed the whole success of redemption itself is conditioned upon His return. To strike it out, would confound the whole system of salvation, carry utter confusion into all attempts intelligently to believe or defend the gospel as of God, and dry up the heartiest and hopefullest springs of faith, holiness, and Christian life. II. With this point settled, let us look next at THE SIGNS WHICH THE SAVIOUR AS THE HERALDS OF HIS SECOND COMING. These are given with great particularity in the text before us. Luther distinguished them into two leading classes; and we may safely follow him in this, as also in his exposition of the words which describe them. 1. He finds in the text a Divine prediction of an ever-growing earthiness, sensuality, and unbelief, on the part of the great mass of men, as the day of judgment draws near. There is to be no millennium of universal righteousness, liberty, and peace, before Christ comes; but “ evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived” (2 Timothy 3:13). 2. The second class is given with equal distinctness, and embraces many wonders in nature, so imposing as to challenge universal observation. III. Finally, let us glance at THE SORT OF WHICH THE OF THESE SIGNS OF THE SAVIOUR’ S COMING SHOULD BEGET AND NURTURE IN OUR SOULS. Luther well read the human heart, when be said, “ There be very few who would not rather that the day of judgment might never come.” But this is not the way in which our Saviour would have us affected by this subject. It is indeed a terrible thing for the guilty, and is meant so to be, that it may break up their false security, and arouse them to repentance and a better life; but it is designed to be a joy and consolation to all true believers. It is intended to be a thing of precious promise and of glad hope to them. (J. A. Seiss, D. D.) Terror produced by a meteoric shower During a great meteoric shower in South Carolina, an eye-witness writes: “ I was suddenly awakened by the most distressing cries that ever fell on my ears. Shrieks of horror and cries for mercy I could hear from most of the negroes of the three plantations, amounting in all to about six hundred or eight hundred. While earnestly listening for the cause, I heard a faint voice near the door calling my name. I arose, and taking my sword, stood at the door. At this same time I still heard the same voice beseeching me to rise, saying: ‘ Oh, my God! the world is on fire!’ I then opened the door, and it is difficult to say which excited me the most--the awfulness of the scene, or the distressed cries of the negroes. Upwards of a hundred lay prostrate on the ground--some speechless, and some with the bitterest cries, but with their hands raised imploring God to save the world and them. The scene was truly awful, for never did rain fall much thicker than the meteors fell towards the earth; east, west, north, and south it was the same.” Encouragement from Christ’ s promised advent I. The persons unto whom these words are uttered, in the particle “ your” : “ Lift up your heads.” II. What things they are of which our Saviour here speaks, in the first words of the text: “ Now when these things begin to come to pass.” III. The behaviour which our Saviour commends unto us, in these words: “ Look up, lift up your heads.” IV. Last of all, the reason or encouragement; words of life and power to raise us from all faintness of heart and dulness of spirit: “ For your redemption draweth nigh.” It will not be amiss a little to consider whence it comes to pass that in the late declining age of the world so great disorder, distemper, and confusion have their place: and it shall yield us some lessons for our instruction. 1. And, first of all, it may seem to be natural, and that it cannot be otherwise. For our common experience tells us, that all things are apt to breed somewhat by which themselves are ruined. How many plants do we see which breed that worm which eats out their very heart! We see the body of man, let it be never so carefully, so precisely ordered, yet at length it grows foul, and every day gathers matter of weakness and disease, which, at first occasioning a general disproportion in the parts, must at the last of necessity draw after it the ruin and dissolution of the whole. It may then seem to fall out in this great body of the world as it doth in this lesser body of ours: by its own distemper it is the cause of its own ruin. For the things here mentioned by our Saviour are nothing else but the diseases of the old decaying world. The failing of light in the sun and moon--what is it but the blindness of the world--an imperfection very incident to age? Tumults in the sea and waters--what are they but the distemper of superfluous humours, which abound in age? Wars and turnouts of wars are but the falling out of the prime qualities, in the union and harmony of which the very being of the creature did consist. Scarcely had the world come to any growth and ripeness, but that it grew to that height of distemper that there was no way to purge it but by a general flood, “ in which, as it were in the baptism, its former sins were done away” Hosea 4:17). 2. But you may peradventure take this for a speculation, and no more; and I have urged it no further than as a probable conjecture. And therefore I will give you a second reason. Besides this natural inclination, God Himself hath a further purpose in it. He that observes the ways of God as far as He hath expressed Himself, shall find that He hath a delight to show unto the world those that are His; to lift them up on high, and mark and character them out by some notable trial and temptation. To draw this down to our present purpose: To try the strength, the faith, the love, the perseverance of those who are His, God is pleased to give way to this tumult and danger in the last days. This entry is longer than a Bible module can hold. The rest is at https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/bi/ Luke 21:29-33 Behold the fig-tree and all the trees The parable of the fig-tree I. OF THE PARABLE. 1. Shows course and sequence of events as certain and necessary as the processes of nature. All is in progress. Be sure of the issue. Be alive to the tokens of its approach. 2. The incongruity of the comparison is its instruction. Its purpose to fix attention not on an end, but on a beginning; not on what going, but on what coming; not on tokens of dissolution, but on hidden life stirring beneath, after last storm to break out into the “ kingdom of God.” II. USE OF ITS . 1. See that it belongs to you. 2. Live under the sense of what is coming. You need it-- (1) To prevent this present world from absorbing you. (2) To prevent it from depressing you. (Canon T. D. Bernard.) The big clock Do you know that God has a big clock, bigger than any one you have ever seen, bigger indeed than Big Ben at Westminster. But this big clock does not make any noise, you can never hear it ticking; and it does not strike, but yet it goes on, year after year, year after year, marking the time. What do you think is the face of this clock? It is the earth; the fields and meadows and hedgerows in every part of the world--that is the face of this clock. And what do you think are the figures upon this dial? They are flowers and birds and leaves. God’ s big clock does not tick, but it lives; it does not strike the hours, only some flowers open out or die away when the hour has come. Isn’ t that what Jesus meant when He said, Look at the fig-tree and all the trees; they are beginning now to put out buds. Very well; you know by that that this is spring-time, and by that you know that summer is coming near. The buds tell what o’ clock it is by the time of year. When you were learning to tell the time on the face of the clock on the mantel-shelf, how did you begin? Was it not by first learning the quarters? When the long hand was half-way down on the right, you knew it was a quarter past; when it was half-way up on the left, you knew it was a quarter-to; and when it was down between these, you knew it was half-past; and when it was up between them you knew the clock was going to strike the hour. Well, just as there are four quarters in our clocks so there are four quarters in this big clock we are speaking about. The first quarter is springtime, half-past is summer, quarter-to is autumn, and when winter comes the year is ended. When you look at the trees and flowers you can pretty well tell what o’ clock it is by the year. But standing between the quarters of the clock there are other figures. How many of these are there altogether? Twelve, are there not? And how many months are there in a year? You know--twelve. So, you see, this clock has got all the figures, and, what is stranger still, it marks all the figures by flowers and fruits; for there are different flowers that come out every month of the year. If a smart boy were to keep his eyes about him, and understood things as he walked in the country, when he found certain trees beginning to bud and certain flowers beginning to peep up, he would say, This must be the month of January; for these always come out in January. Later on, if he saw some others, he would say, This must be “ February; for these always come out in February. And so through all the year, if he was clever, he would find the flowers and trees telling him what month it was. But there is something stranger still about this clock of God’ s; and you must remember it, so that from time to time during the year you may learn to use your eyes and notice what God is doing in the fields. It is this: God’ s clock tells the hours of the day as well as the months of the year. The months are the twelve figures; but you know that between the twelve figures there are the little minutes, and these minutes are made up of moments. Now the minutes in God’ s big clock are days, and the moments are hours, and the clock tells them all. What then can be the meaning of this big clock? Surely it is to tell us that time is passing. Does it not plainly say that if we do not grow right in the springtime of our life, we shall not be able, when the summer comes, to go back to the springtime and mend what has been wrong? You would not like to grow up wicked, would you? Then learn to grow as the flowers grow. How is that? By always looking at the sun, and taking its light, and following it, for the flowers follow the sun with their heads, and so they become beautiful. Do you the same with Jesus--follow Him with your hearts. (J. R. Howatt.) Heaven and earth shall pass awayHeaven and earth shall pass away It is something to startle us, and make us ask ourselves, if indeed such things can be; whether He is in earnest who says so, and whether the world which practises upon us by its looks as though it were eternal, is indeed such an imposter, and we who believe it, so foolish and so ignorant! Yet so it is. Now, it seems to some of you, I dare say, as to most men, that this is a great deal more astonishing than that anything so inconsiderable, materially considered, as a man, should pass away, as you see happen every day by death. It seems a pity to break to pieces so goodly a machine as heaven and earth, and uproot its adamantine basis. But if so, I think you are wrong. It seems to me nothing at all astonishing, that anything for which we have no longer a use should finally be thrown aside, or broken up, and the old materials put to some other purpose, be it an ordinary implement, or be it a world. It seems to me very reasonable and very likely in itself, that, in the infinite wisdom and power of God, one world should be ripened, so to say, out of another, as you see the fruit come out of the flower, and the flower out of the bud, so that the first shall decay before the higher one can be perfected. It is very reasonable that, as a mere manifestation of power, in order to show to his creatures the strength of His right hand, and the absolute independency of His will, God should dash in pieces, from time to time, or consume by the breath of His nostrils, what was made by His word, and stood only by His sufferance. Besides, in the elements out of which heaven and earth are made, there is no thought or feeling; they are brute, dead things; and are capable neither of pain nor pleasure. Whether they abide or not in the forms into which God has thrown them, it is the same to them; no harm is inflicted on them; they are as unconscious of change as they are impotent to feel or will. But, if heaven and earth must pass away, another consequence will follow, which is to every one of us of awful importance. If the earth, such as it now is, shall be utterly destroyed, manifest it is, that our present life, and cares, and pleasures, and occupations, all that men make their happiness of, will likewise he brought to an end. And this brings me to another point--and a reason for the passing away of the present world, which I have not yet mentioned, though it might easily occur to any thoughtful mind. It is a condemned world; sentence is passed upon it! And it is condemned, because it is guilty, and all over polluted! And do not wonder at this, for you know with what feelings we regard a chamber or a house in which a murder, or some abominable crime, has been committed; how we shrink from it and abhor it, and hate the sight of it, and should think it the greatest misery in the world, if we have any feelings worthy of man, to be compelled to take up our abode within it. A sort of guilt, as well as involuntary pollution, seems to attach to the very floors and senseless walls which have witnessed the crime, and have not fallen down or opened upon the wicked in the midst of their wickedness. And we should rejoice at seeing them pulled down to the ground, and the last memorial of the crime removed from our eyes! Well, so it is exactly in regard to the world in which we live, with all its majestic mechanism, its living forces, and all the ornaments which God’ s hand has thrown round about it. It is stained with six thousand years of sin. And this brings us to another portion of the question. If heaven and earth shall pass away, shall anything succeed into their room, or shall that space which they occupied be utterly blank and desolate? The answer is, no. So to say, there shall rise two new worlds, or such a change as comes to the same thing, out of the ruins of it; even as out of the earth destroyed by the flood there sprung forth that in which we now dwell. There shall be the new heavens and new earth, in which dwelleth righteousness, and the face of God’ s countenance shineth for evermore--the habitation of those who have lived and died in the Lord. And on the other hand, the world, where the light is darkness, and the life is death, and the good is evil, and weeping, and wailing, and gnashing of teeth are the voice thereof--even the habitation of the ungodly for ever and ever. And this gives you the true reason, dear brethren, why the judgment is now suspended, and sun and moon are shining, and night and day, and spring and harvest, come and go, and all things remain as at the beginning. It is that God’ s last dispensation upon earth may have full room and time to display itself in all its combinations with human good and evil, before the voice from the throne shall proclaim that it is finished. It is that, in the sight of all His creatures, the patience and long-suffering of God, which leadeth to repentance, might have full space and opportunity in which to show themselves, and vindicate to the uttermost the exceeding forbearance of our heavenly Father even towards them that perish I It is that, year after year, His saints may be gathered in till, in the fulness of time, the flock which he has given to Christ shall have been called out of all nations and languages, and the Saviour be satisfied in the sight of His soul’ s travail. (J. Garbett.) My words shall not pass awayThe words of Jesus permanent I. The words of Jesus Christ, the words which He spoke for our direction, for our purification, for our comfort, for our redemption, have not passed, and shall not pass away. Our human intellect accepts them with reverence, and must ever retain them. Our human passions acknowledge their salutary power, and look up to them for perpetual control and guidance. Our human fears are soothed by them, and cannot let them go. Our human hopes are informed, elevated, and sanctified by them, and constantly resort to them for refuge, and lean upon them for rest. All our human affections have borrowed from them Divine light and warmth, and must reflect that light and warmth for ever. II. “ Heaven and earth shall pass away.” Giving to this sentence an individual application, we may feel that heaven and earth pass away from the sight of all of us. Fancies as brilliant as the blue vault above us, promises as fair, expectations and resolves as high, and possessions which we have deemed as firmly founded as the earth itself, have vanished, and will again vanish; and what is there left behind? The words of Christ are left, when the visions break, and the possessions disappear--words of patience, and courage, and comfort, always left for the strengthening of our hearts, if our hearts will hear and accept them. The words of Jesus arc the promises of God the Father to the souls of men. When eyes are growing dim, and the heart is ceasing to beat, and heaven and earth are passing away, as they surely will from all of us, what remains for the soul’ s help and reliance but the words of Jesus, which are the promises of God? III. And let us remember that the words of Jesus, attested as they arc by the Father who sent Him, permanent as time has proved them, true, and satisfying, and lasting as the human soul has found them, are not only the promises of God for man’ s hope and trust, but the law of God for man’ s final judgment. As such they will remain, when heaven and earth, in any and every sense, have passed away. The words of Christ, essentially permanent, and surviving all change, will meet our souls in the last day, and be pronounced upon them, for acquittal or for doom. And certain and necessary it is, that the sentence which will be adjudged unto us hereafter by those words, will be in strict accordance with the observance or the neglect with which we treated them here, before our present heaven and earth had passed away. (F. W. P. Greenwood, D. D.) The ineffaceable word On one occasion when William Dawson, the Yorkshire Preacher, was giving out a hymn, he suddenly stopped and said: “ I was coming once through the town of Leeds, and saw a poor little halfwitted lad rubbing at a brass plate, trying to rub out the name; but the poor lad did not know that the harder he rubbed the brighter it shone. Now, friends, sing:-- ‘ Engraved as in eternal brass The mighty promise shines; Nor can the powers of darkness rase Those everlasting lines.’” Then, as though he saw the devil rubbing, he said: “ Satan cannot rub it off-- ‘ His hand hath writ the Sacred Word With an immortal pen.’” The enduring words An infidel in London had a wife who possessed a Bible which she regularly read; being annoyed at this, the man, who had frequently threatened to do so, threw the book upon the fire. This appears to have taken place at dinner-time. He then left home to go to his work, but soon returned to see if the last vestige of the volume had disappeared. The woman, who naturally felt distressed at her loss, said she thought it must be completely burned; but her husband stirred the ashes to see if such was the case, when he read what fastened itself upon his mind, and led to his conversion--“ Heaven and earth shall pass away, but My word shall not pass away.” The sister of this man was the wife of a London pastor; and just when the Bible was burning she was earnestly praying for her brother’ s conversion. (Sword and Trowel.) Luke 21:34-35 Surfeiting and drunkenness Gluttony and drunkenness to be avoided I. I will attempt to show you THE EVILS AND OF THESE SINS WHICH OUR SAVIOUR HERE US AGAINST. Be it known to you, then, that miserable are the effects and fruits of these vices. Gluttony and greediness drove our first parents out of Paradise. They tell us that Heliogabalus used to bring his parasites into dining-rooms that had deceitful floors, and thence they fell and were destroyed. This is but an emblem of the ruin which attends those who are addicted to immoderate eating and drinking. Besides what I have said already, I will farther show you the pernicious effects of this luxurious practice in these five particulars. 1. This vice is generally fatal to men’ s estates, as the wise man observes, and therefore dissuades from this folly (Proverbs 23:20-21). 2. How unspeakably pernicious is this sin to the body as well as the estate! 3. This sin is injurious not only to the body of man, but to his mind and soul, his better and move refined part. Its operations are stifled and choked, its faculties are rendered dull and useless, and the excellent spirit which was made to look up to heaven bows down to the earth, becomes gross and carnal, and is plunged into dirt and mire. 4. Luxurious eating and drinking are the nurses of wantonness and uncleanness. 5. Contempt and disgrace are the just reward of luxury. II. I am to lay down CERTAIN RULES AND WHEREBY YOU MAY ORDER ARIGHT IN THE USE OF THE OF MEAT AND DRINK. These are things natural and necessary, and therefore lawful and innocent in themselves. 1. Offend not as to quantity; eat and drink no more than what is requisite. Nature is content with slender provision, and Christianity maintains the same moderation. 2. Offend not as to quality, that is, be not over-curious in the choice of your meats and drinks. 3. Desire not to fare more costly than is agreeable to your condition. 4. Be careful that you spend not too much time in eating and drinking. 5. (And which is near a-kin to the former rule) Make it not your grand business to eat and drink. 6. Then these bodily refreshments of meat and drink are lawful and commendable, when they are accompanied with charity towards the needy. 7. Let your eating and drinking be attended not only with charity, but with all other testimonies of religion and serving God. Among the pagans their tables were sacred. It should be much more so among Christians, that is, we should make them serviceable to virtue, and to the promoting of our own and others’ spiritual good. III. I will propound to you some HELPS AND . 1. That you may not offend God by the extravagant use of meats and drinks, begin within, and strive to check your undue appetites there. Intemperance and luxury begin at the heart; stifle it there. 2. You may be helped in the discharge of the duty which I have been treating of, by understanding your selves aright, by considering your excellent nature and make. 3. To antidote you against this immoderation in meats and drinks, think seriously of the dreadful judgments of God which attend this sin (see Isaiah 5:11; Amos 6:1, etc.). 4. Think of death and judgment, and the serious consideration of these will be serviceable to check you in your intemperate courses. (John Edwards, D. D.) Ruined by drink The following fact is related by a worthy clergyman, who lived and officiated not far from this place. “ There are persons so hardened in sin, and so totally given up of God, that neither sickness nor death can make any impression on them. I remember one of this unhappy description, in the county of Essex, whom I both visited during his illness, and interred after he was dead. He was a clever fellow, and of good family, but so totally depraved, that when one of his bottle companions wrote to inform him that he was about to die and go to hell, and desired to know what place he should bespeak for him there, he sat down and gave him for a reply, that he did not care where it was if there was only brandy and rum enough. Thus he lived, and soon after died a martyr to spirituous liquors, cursing and blaspheming, notwithstanding all that could be done to bring him to a better mind. Being possessed of two bank bills, of the value of ten pounds each, which was all the little property he had left,--‘ Now,’ said he to a person who stood by, ‘ when I have spent these in brandy and rum, I shall be content to die and go to hell.’ He sunk, however, before they were expended, and left just enough to bury him.” (Essex Remembrancer.) The luxury and worldliness of the present age I. First, THE WARNING. To whom is that warning addressed? “ Take heed to yourselves;… for as a snare shall it come on all them that dwell on the face of the whole earth.” You see there is a contrast drawn between yourselves and the whole earth. “ Yourselves” shows us to whom the warning is spoken--it is to the Church. To His own washed, saved, sanctified ones, He says, “ Take heed to yourselves.” He says to them, “ Take heed to yourselves, lest at any time your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting, and drunkenness, and the cares of this life.” Mark that expression, at any time. It would seem as though the prophecy has a continuous bearing, from the time that it was delivered up to the end of the world--that this warning is spoken to the Church of God in all ages. Take notice here that the heart is spoken of as meaning the inner life of a Christian. Take heed lest the springs of spiritual life be weakened by the cares, or the frivolities, or the ease, or the luxury, or the gains, or the occupations of this present life. The word “ overcharged” literally means “ weighed down.” You see that not only surfeiting and drunkenness are spoken of, but “ the cares of this life.” On the one hand the Lord speaks of all the glare of earth, on the other hand He speaks of the toil of earth. II. Now, see THE REASON OF THE WARNING--“ For as a snare shall it come upon all them that dwell upon the face of the whole earth.” The meaning of this is, that the day of the Lord will take the world by surprise. III. Thirdly, we come to speak of THE PRECEPT UPON THE WARNING, and the reason of the warning--“ Watch ye, therefore, and pray always, that ye may be accounted worthy to escape all these things that shall come to pass, and stand before the Son of Man.” You may have marked in history, that before empires fell, or great capitals were destroyed, luxury in the empire or in the capital had reached a climax. It was so at Herculaneum and Pompeii; it was the case at Rome. Every species of indulgence, luxury, and comfort seemed to be gathered together by the inhabitants around, when the burning mountain poured forth its flames, while streams of lava buried the cities, and hurried the people into eternity. And so, when Rome was taken by the Goths, or northern nations, it had reached the highest point of luxury, pomp, and pride. So Babylon is described in the Revelation--whatever that Babylon means--it is described as saying, just before it is destroyed--“ I sit as a queen, and am no widow.” In the very heigh of her pomp--in the very zenith of her pride--in the midst of her magnificence, God casts her down, and she sinks likelead in the mighty waters. It will be so, doubtless, with the nations of the world--with the kingdoms of professing Christendom--with the great capitals of Europe; there will be pride, and luxury, and magnificence, and men will be passing their time in ease and affluence, and self-indulgence, “ when sudden destruction shall come upon them, as travail upon a woman with child, and they shall not escape.” Watch ye, therefore; watch against the prevailing taste for show--watch against the prevailing love of ease--watch against the selfishness of the age, the luxury that creeps even into the Church; watch and take heed, brethren, lest you tread in the world’ s footsteps. (W. Pennefather, M. A.) A heart overcharged with care I. Let us, think, then, in the first place of WHERE THIS REALLY APPLIES TO US--When is the heart “ overcharged with care” ? Distinguish between care and sorrow. Goal sends sorrows but He never sends cares. No one can doubt the necessity Or sorrow, it has a part in our development which nothing else can fulfil, and, there fore, as long as God loves us and would do His best for us we may be sure we shall suffer, and that such suffering never need be a curse, but care always must. Who are the most miserable to-day? Not the sorrowful, but the careworn. When Christ said “ Take heed lest your hearts be overcharged with care,” He pointed to life’ s great tyranny. When, then, does this concern us? The word means “ oppressed,” “ weighed down.” 1. Then it is true when the heart is not able to rise. Spiritual aspirations have not quite died out nor are heavenward promptings ever felt, but the soul cannot respond to them; response needs thought, time, effort, and these cannot be spared, so life is absorbed by the earthly, and the higher things are as though they were not. Then, indeed, the heart is overcharged (oppressed, weighed down) with care. 2. So, too, is it when the heart has no room for the play of its best affections. So I say is it right to be so absorbed by business that we are practically lost to everything else, are practically slaves to money-getting, and deadened to those influences and enjoyments by which our better nature is developed and the deep places of our heart satisfied? We cannot believe it is. 3. And so, too, when the heart finds care to be a burden that crushes it. God means us to be free from oppression. His promises and requirements and the provisions of His grace all point to that: “ Come unto Me and I will give you rest,” says He, “ peace I leave with you, My peace I give unto you,” “ be careful for nothing,” “ take no anxious thought,” “ the peace of God which passeth all understanding shall keep your heart and mind.” II. Consider WHAT OUR LORD SAYS ABOUT THIS STATE. “ Take heed!” He says, “ take heed to yourselves lest at any time your hearts be overcharged with care.” That is, you may fall into this state unawares, to avoid it needs much watchfulness. Glance at two or three facts which blind us to the perils of a care-burdened heart. 1. For instance, it seems inseparable from duty. The tendency of our time is opposed to calm life, and even to calm pauses in the midst of life. How seldom one sees a really quiet face! Care need not be, that is. Let us not be misled into it with the idea that it is unavoidable, that we cannot perform our proper task and keep our proper place without being oppressed by it. Christ’ s “ Take heed!” means that if we will, for all appearance to the contrary, we may escape the evil. 2. Them, it seems consistent with devotion to Christ. That is another point which makes us think lightly of care--there seems to be no sin in it. But see the company this keeps in the text: “ Hearts overcharged with surfeiting and drunkenness and cares!” “ Surfeiting and drunkenness and cares” --these are classed together in the mind of Christ. Then failure in these matters, as much as failure in the other, is to be abhorred as disloyalty to God. Care springs from very evil roots, from unbelief and waywardness and very often from an idolatrous spirit. Therefore let us not go into it or live in it deceived as to its nature, as though it were harmless, but let us shrink from it alarmed at our Lord’ s warning: “ Take heed!” --“ Take heed lest at any time your heart be overcharged with care.” 3. Then, too, it seems the natural result of temperament. That is another fact which blinds us to its evil, for we are apt to excuse certain forms of wrong-doing if we have, as we think, a tendency to them. Let us give up making light of the sin of care because it is natural, and of thinking that because it is natural it is unconquerable. Consider, thirdly, III. WHAT THIS WORD OF OUR LORD YET FURTHER IMPLIES. The command not under any circumstances to have “ hearts overcharged with care,” is a most solemn assurance that this is possible. We can rise to some measure of it at once, but its full measure is the fruit of spiritual culture. Briefly notice the lines this culture must take. 1. We must train ourselves to undertake nothing but at the bidding of God. Cares are largely due either to a consciousness that we have taken our affairs into our own hands and must be responsible for the result, or to a feeble realization that having obeyed God we are His servants and are thus under His protection. Deliberate obedience is one of the great secrets of peace. 2. And we must train ourselves to commit our cares fearlessly to Him. Many of them are self-imposed, and, as I implied, it will not be easy to lose their burden. We must avoid such. 3. I need only add that we must train ourselves to regard communion with God as our first duty. For that communion is the basis of the faith I speak of. (C. New.) Luke 21:36 Watch ye, therefore, and pray always Christian preparation for the coming of the Lord The subject of our inquiry to-day will be--“ What practical effect ought the doctrine of the Lord’ s second coming to have on you and me, living when and where and as we do? ” On the certainty of that coming, I need, I suppose, say very little. On the manner of that coming, we possibly may not be agreed; the time of it is expressly and purposely concealed from us. Two things, therefore, seem to me to have a right, as elements, to influence our practice in this matter; the absolute certainty that the day will come, and the absolute uncertainty when it will come. In fact, in both these respects we are in much the same situation as we are, when in health and strength and the prime of life, with regard to the day of our death. We know that it must be; but no sign appears of its immediate approach. And from this example, so common and so well understood, we may perhaps be able easily to deduce our duty in the other case. The wise course with regard to the inevitable day of one’ s death appears to be this: never to lose sight of the certainty of it, but to keep ourselves ever ready, while at the same time we do not morbidly brood over the fact, nor allow it to interrupt our duties in life. And here, as in that other case, we must avoid a diseased and restless state of anticipation, as well as the opposite extreme of entire forgetfulness. But perhaps it may be said, In laying down rules for the one consideration, that of our own deaths, are we not also including the other, the expectation of the coming of the Lord? Certainly, in some particulars the two great events coincide; but by no means in all. And it may be profitable for a few moments to ask ourselves wherein they are identical, and wherein each has its region peculiar to itself. They coincide in that each event, as far as we are concerned, will put a limit to this our present state of existence; but they differ, in that the one will do this for ourselves alone; the other, for all mankind. And this is a strictly practical consideration; for I suppose few of us are so selfish as to confine our anticipations and provisions to ourselves alone, but we all extend them over those who are to come after us. The certainty, then, of the day of the Lord will influence those provisions, if we look on it as bringing the limit of this state of time; we shall be rather anxious to do present good with our substance, making moderate provision for our successors, than to lay the foundations of great possessions, and starve our charities to do so. Again, they differ, in that the one brings to ourselves alone the final state; the other completes the great scheme of redemption. The number of God’ s elect will be accomplished, and His glorious kingdom will have come. And such a consideration, while it may not have much distinctive influence upon our individual Christian lives, ought to have much upon our regard of our relative duties, and our efforts for spreading Christ’ s gospel on earth. (Dean Alford.) On preparing for Christ’ s coming rather than for death Of all the subjects on which we may speculate as to our own state and destination, perhaps none is so mysterious, none so difficult to form a definite idea of, as the condition of the dead after the act of death; on the other hand nothing is more simple and clear, than their state after the coming of the Lord. There is, then, this consideration, which is worthy at least of our notice; that the looking for and waiting unto the day of the Lord brings us something more definite, something immediately following it of a more tangible kind, more calculated to make a deep impression on us, than the contemplation of the day of our own death. The realities consequent on the one are and must be, even to the strongest faith, shrouded in a mist which is to us impenetrable; the other, with its realities, stands forth boldly before us, marked out in all its features by the hand of Christ Himself. So that the man who waits for the Lord’ s coming is likely to be more definite, more assured, more manly and determined in whatever effects on his character such anticipation may have, than he who merely looks forward to his own death. Moreover, when we compare the two as to the question, which best befits the Christian as an object of thought and expectation--we cannot, I think, hesitate a moment. The New Testament is full of exhortations to watch and prepare for the Lord’ s coming. From His own discourses while on earth in the flesh, through those of the apostles in the Acts, through the Epistles of St. Paul, St. Peter, St. James, St. John, St. Jude, even to the latest written words of the Spirit in the Revelation, no command is more frequent, none more solemnly impressed on us, than that we should keep that great event constantly in view, and be ever ready for it. Whereas we shall hardly find one exhortation, addressed directly to us as Christians, to be ready for the day of our own death. And why so? clearly not because such readiness is not necessary--far from it indeed--but because the greater absorbs the less: because the promise of our ascended Saviour--His return to us--His coming to take account of His servants--includes in it all that the other possibly could do, and very much more; because death is at the best but a gloomy thing, bearing trace of the curse, accompanied with pain and sorrow, whereas the Lord’ s coming is to His people a thought full of joy--the completion of their redemption, the beginning of their reign of glory. (Dean Alford.) Preparation of heart We want, in our preparation for the day of the Lord, lightness of heart; hearts which we can lift up to heaven where our treasure is; hearts which are not tied down to this earth--not cleaving to the dust. And how may we lighten our hearts? The first lightening--the first rolling off of the burden which weighed so heavily on them, is the work of God’ s Spirit in the day of His power; is that setting free from the load of sin by the blessed effects of justifying faith in Christ, in which the law of the Spirit of life makes us free from the law of sin and death. But how may we best keep them, when thus lightened, from again accumulating a burden, and being weighed down from their proper object of contemplation and desire? Listen to our Lord’ s command. It is the surfeiting of this world’ s employments and pleasures which thus clogs the heart. This, then, of all things is to be shunned, if we would be prepared for that day. You cannot, beloved, be casting yourselves fully into the arms of the world, and be prepared for the coming of the Lord. The two things are absolutely incomparable. If you choose the part of eagerness about things present, that day will come upon you unawares--whether it come with the sign in the clouds and the resurrection trumpet, or with the sinking of the flesh and heart, the curtained chamber; the bedside group fading away from the failing vision. (Dean Alford.) The command to watch Two facts concerning His advent are plainly stated and they are all that a majority of His Church will perceive, namely: that we are ignorant of the time of the end; that it will be sudden. I. THE READY SOUL IS THE . II. THE READY SOUL IS THE . III. THE READY SOUL IS THE . (De Witt S. Clark.) The safety of prayer Our Lord did not so much urge the duty of praying as the safety of prayer. I. To this, then, let us first turn our thoughts. Jesus mentioned as the special aim of prayer: “ That ye may be accounted worthy to escape all these things,” i.e., calamities, that their city, nation, race, and, in fact, the human family were liable to experience, but yet might escape if only they would seek to be accounted “ worthy” to do so. The word “ worthy” as here used calls for examination; for if it be taken in the sense of deserving because faultless, there is no use in saying anything about it: we are not that; and we never can so be “ accounted worthy,” having already committed aggravated offences against God without number, which have brought compromises of guilt and stains upon our souls. The idea of merit, however, which the word “ worthy” usually carries with it, is not at all intended in this verse. The verb used is a military term really, meaning to conquer, to win a victory, to prevail against another, against an enemy, against baffling influences and hindering circumstances. Hence the meaning of the word in the text is: that they might be able to prevail and escape all the calamities Jesus had been speaking of. The Revised Version sustains this interpretation. It gives the text: “ But watch ye at every season, making supplication that ye may prevail to escape all these things that shall come to pass, and to stand before the Son of Man.” It was not that He counselled His disciples to deserve or merit safety through their good conduct, although their good conduct was to be as binding as ever, but to pray that they might be tenacious of purpose, unyielding, and therefore, successful in overcoming temptation, walking so faithfully with their Lord Jesus Christ, as to practise good conduct and persevere in it. II. Mind, they were to pray that they might be tenacious. On that they ought to resolve; ought to set out to be tenacious in Christian living, in overcoming human oppositions, surmounting temporal obstacles, social hindrances, threats of rulers, frowns of society, oppositions of families, clamours of self-interest, desires for enjoyment, and lusts that ruin the soul--bearing their cross to follow after Jesus; but still, in addition to all this,nay in order to accomplish all this, they were to make continual and systematic applications to the Host High God. Wherever you have failed tell it to God; in perfect frankness confess it to Him, and ask Him to account you worthy to escape all forces of temptation, and all calamities that are, or are to be, consequent on sin; or as the Revised Version has the text: “ Make supplication that you may prevail to escape,” every evil of ungodliness, whether already wrought in the callousness of your heart, or in a weakness of character growing out of self-love, or in the fearful sorrows that are to be experienced on Christ’ s rejection of your undying soul in the judgment day. (Dr. Trumbull.) Watching I. WATCH OVER YOUR (Mark 7:20). II. WATCH OVER THE . See to it that mind and heart are ever filled with such suggestions as can carry the stamp of Christ’ s approval. III. WATCH OVER YOUR . Your life has to be lived in the midst of hindering difficulties and influences. Then understand your life. Know the power of your circumstances. IV. WATCH OVER YOUR . You will have opportunities (1) of growing in grace; (2) of showing faithfulness to your Lord; (3) of serving Him in your daily sphere. (The Weekly Pulpit.) Watching I. ITS . The very quintessence of all faith; the very reason why faith is necessary for the true life. The soul in which burns the light of faith looks forward, and by looking forward is helped to step forward, expecting some strange yet true results. The will is strengthened to assert itself, sometimes on ventures which appear without foundation, but which are based upon the reality of what is to come. So the Christian can go forward with confidence and security. 1. From the call of Abraham to the present day, the supreme attitude of God’ s children has been that of expectancy. 2. Just as the Israelites looked for the first coming of the Messiah, so Christians look for the second coming in power and great glory. II. THE OF . 1. It is a power which, though often latent and unobserved, is still a power of incalculable force. The unknown reserve of spiritual influence which lies at the root of the sincerely Christian character. 2. The watcher is always ready. No haziness about life, or uncertainty about its aims. (Anon.) Watchfulness See that sentry at the gate of an encampment or a fortress--mark his measured tread, his martial port, his anxious thoughdetermined countenance--his quiet and searching glance, as he repeats his constant walk--that soldier is awake; but he is more--he is upon his guard--his mind is full of his important trust--he feels the weight of his responsibility. But see--his frame becomes relaxed, his form grows less erect, his movements lose their regular mechanical succession--his look is vacant or abstracted, he no longer looks afar off and at hand in search of approaching danger, he has either forgotten it, or ceased to reckon it so imminent. And yet the man is wide awake; not only are his eyes still open, but they see surrounding objects; all his senses are still active, and his mind, though distracted from his present duty, is as much at work as ever; for no sooner does the slightest sound arouse him, than, as if by magic, he recovers his position and the tension of his muscles, he resumes his measured walk, his mingled air of circumspection and defiance, and his look of bold but anxious scrutiny. Even before, he was awake; but now he is awake and at the same time on his guard. Precisely the same difference exists between a simple wakefulness in spiritual matters--a wakefulness of understanding, conscience, and affection, and the active exercise of spiritual vigilance; this is impossible without the other, but the other does not necessarily involve this. In both cases, that is, in the literal and spiritual case supposed, there is a sensible gradation of remissness or the opposite. We have seen the sentry wholly losing for a moment the recollection of his solemn trust; but this is not the only way in which he may unconsciously betray it. Look at him again. Every look, every motion, now betokens concentration of his thoughts and feelings on the danger which impends, and against which he is set to watch. Perhaps he is now motionless, but it is only that his eye may be more steadfastly fixed upon the point from which the enemy’ s approach is apprehended. In that point his whole being seems to be absorbed. And you can see at a glance that he is ready, even for the first and faintest intimation of a moving object on that dim horizon. But while he stands like a statue, with his face turned towards that dreaded point, look beyond him and behind him, at those forms which are becoming every moment more and more defined against the opposite quarter of the heavens. He hears them not, because their step is noiseless; he sees them not, because his eye and all his faculties are employed in an opposite direction. While he strains every sense to catch the first intimations of approaching danger, it is creeping stealthily behind him, and when at last his ear distinguishes the tramp of armed men, it is too late, for a hostile hand is already on his shoulder, and if his life is spared, it is only to be overpowered and disarmed without resistance. And yet that soldier was not only awake, but on his guard--his whole being was absorbed in contemplation of the danger which impended; but, alas, he viewed it as impending only from one quarter, and lost sight of it as really approaching from another. We may even suppose that he was right in looking where he did, and only wrong in looking there exclusively. There was an enemy to be expected from that quarter, and if this had been the only one, the sentry’ s duty would have been successfully performed; but he was not aware, or had forgotten, that the danger was a complex one--that while the enemy delayed his coming, another might be just at hand, and thus the very concentration of his watchfulness on one point defeated its own purpose, by withdrawing his attention from all others. By a slight shifting in the scene, I might present to you the same man or another, gazing not at one point only, but at all; sweeping the whole visible horizon with his eye as he maintains his martial vigil. See with what restless activity his looks pass from one distant point to another, as if resolved that nothing shall escape him, that no imaginable source of danger shall remain unwatched. That man might seem to be in every sense awake and on his guard--surprise might seem to be impossible--but hark! what sound is that which suddenly disturbs him in his solitary vigils? he looks hastily around him, but sees nothing, yet the sound is growing every moment louder and more distinct; “ a voice of noise from the city” --“ the voice of them that shout for mastery” --“ the voice of them that cry for being overcome” ! Doubt is no longer possible--it is--it is behind him--yes, the enemy for whom he looked so vigilantly, is within the walls, and the banner which he thought to have seen waving at a distance, is floating in triumph just above his head. The cases which I have supposed are not mere appeals to your imagination. They are full of instruction as to practical realities. They vividly present to us in figurative forms the actual condition of the soul in reference to spiritual dangers. (J. A. Alexander, D. D.) Before the Son of ManBefore the Son of Man I. RIGID OF HIS . 1. Consecration. Implies self-surrender. The doctrine of the Cross lies at the threshold of Christian living. 2. Purity. Involves thought of the heart, speech, actions. 3. Non-resistance. “ Overcome evil with good.” This is the law of the New Testament, though not of nations or of the world. 4. Forgiveness of injury. Goes beyond passive indifference. Exacts positive affection. II. DUTY OF BEFORE HIM. Every time we hear the gospel, we “ stand before the Son of Man.” Every time we witness His ordinances, we are brought face to face with Him. How? Either condemned or justified. Christ is the great Refiner of men. It is our duty to stand before Him. 1. Because His is the only perfect standard. He makes no mistakes. 2. Because it is the only way to secure His favour. Once men put Him on trial; now the order is reversed. He demands that every man be put to the test, to show his quality. To refuse to submit to Christ’ s judgment, is to confess cowardice. 3. Because by this we reach our proper place. The scientific principle is here applied. It is a species of “ natural selection” --“ the survival of the fittest.” Conclusion: To stand before the Son of Man implies-- 1. Your life in harmony with His. 2. Watching and prayer. 3. His favour and divinest blessing. (H. S. Lobingier.) Luke 21:37-38 The Mount of Olives Contemplations on Olivet It will not be difficult to conceive how our Lord passed this sleepless night on the Mount of Olives. I. NIGHT OVER THE DOOM OF THE CITY WHICH HAD HIM. Can we wonder that His thoughts that night were sad? Meet the facts fully and attentively, of-- 1. Christ’ s grief over the apostate city. 2. Christ’ s grief over the doomed city. He knew the inseparable connection between sinning against Christ and impending doom. II. NIGHT UPON HIS WHICH THE END. Desecration of the Holy City; slaughter and dispersion of God’ s people; dire international struggles; decadence of faith, etc. III. NIGHT OF THE CLOSING EVENTS OF HIS EARTHLY CAREER. He clearly read each incident of His nearing anguish, and He carefully confronted it all. Nothing could divert Him from His goal IV. NIGHT FOR THE TO HIS NEARING DEATH. 1. Why this readiness to meet death? He would save others; not Himself. 2. For whom this readiness to die? For false friends and hating foes. (W. HJellie.) Work and prayer The life of the Lord Jesus on earth was a true human life; and it is only as we fully recognize this fact that we can find in it an example for our guidance. Here is a brief but instructive record of one important portion of His ministry on earth--itself a type of His whole course. The day was given to work--the evening to quiet rest, meditation, and prayer. Both were necessary to the fulfilment of His mission, and both arc essential to the completeness of our Christian character. Here are two elements of Christian excellence, apparently apposite, yet both must be blended in one who would attain to the fulness of the stature of a perfect man in Christ Jesus. Many have tried, are trying, to separate them. There have been ages, there are still individuals and parties in whom there is an excess of the devotional--an excess, because it is to the exclusion of the active part. Man can never pray too often or too earnestly; but if his whole ideas of religious duty be confined to the reading of so-called spiritual books, the attendance on the public worship of God, or the performance of certain acts of private devotion--if the whole time that is not spent thus is regarded as something removed from the sphere of religion--if the ordinary work of the world be looked on as something that is fitted to lower the tone of the soul, and to interfere with spiritual earnestness--if even active service for Christ be depreciated, then the true character of a Christian life is altogether forgotten. There is the opposite danger, and it is perhaps that into which we are most prone to fall. Ours is the age of activity--from every side come to the Christian calls for earnest labour, for the overthrow of error, for the enlightening of ignorance, for the diffusion of the Gospel, for the relief of suffering and poverty, for the advancement of the numberless institutions which seek the advancement of Christ’ s kingdom. Demands of this character are incessant; and if obedience to them be the whole of our religion--if such engagements prevent heart-searching, God-seeking, quiet, meditation, and earnest prayer--ii they draw us away from that self-communion which is the true prelude to communion with God--if all is bustle, excitement, outward struggle, there is sure to be weakness. I. It will not need much argument to prove that ACTIVE LABOURS FOR CHRIST ARE AN PART OF DUTY. The life of Christ is the model for all true human lives. In the perfection of His self-sacrifice, in His readiness for all kinds of service, in His eagerness to search out opportunities for blessing man, in His indifference to every motive or feeling that would have held Him back in His ministry of love--in the resolve so early announced, that He must be about His Father’ s business, our great Master inspires and guides us. His own teachings indicate clearly that His followers are not to be recluses dwelling apart from their kind, but men taking their place in the world’ s associations and movements, that they may affect them for good. They are the salt of the earth, and that salt must be applied to the mass which it is to season and preserve, else where were its value? Surely it argues no want of charity to say that all these pleas argue an absence of true love to Christ. Men complain of want of opportunities, want of adaptation, want of intellect, when their one grand deficiency is want of heart. Love will quicken languid feelings, multiply the few talents, ennoble that which else were mean, breathe courage into trembling hearts, and make the foolish wise to win souls. Difficulties that to sluggards seem insuperable, will but stimulate its ardour and reveal its strength. II. THE MAN MUST HAVE HIS TIMES FOR AND PRAYER. This is the other lesson taught by the brief record of the last week of our Lord’ s ministry on earth. Now as the crisis draws near and the cross is in immediate prospect, still more does His spirit crave that retirement in which, with strong crying and tears, He can make His supplication to His heavenly Father. To us the spectacle is alike sublime and mysterious, yet full of instruction. The glories which belong to the God cannot make us forget that He has become in all respects like to us, and that as our elder brother He teaches us our need, and shows us where we must seek for strength and succour. For we, too, need our times of rest for meditation, self-examination, and prayer. Soul and body in this follow the same law. Science tells us, and experience confirms the truth, that food is not more needful for the body than rest. Want of sleep will exhaust and kill as well as want of food. So with the soul. Asleep in the full sense it ought never to be, but rest, cessation of conflict, labour, and trial, it does need. Constant excitement, unrelaxing toil, unceasing struggle, would have the same effect on it as on the body. We feel, in our bodily life, need for even more than the night of sleep. Who can tell the blessing to the world, even as a mere physical good, of the Christian Sabbath? Our Good Shepherd knows our need, and therefore He has still waters to which He leads His flock--“ waters of testings,” where our spirits, exhausted by work or warfare, may find the refreshment they require. He calls us, therefore, to rest and prayer, that we may find the “ renewing of the Holy Ghost.” Thus the earnest worker is prepared to be the most importunate pleader with God, and the fervent prayer, in its turn, fills the soul with the inspiration of a burning zeal and the confidence of an assured faith. (J. G. Rogers, B. A.) . Luke 22:1-2 Sought how they might kill Him The conspiracy against Christ This chapter gives us a sad and sorrowful relation of the chief priests’ conspiracy against the life of our blessed Saviour; in which we have three particulars observable: 1. The persons making this conspiracy, the chief priests, scribes, and elders; that is, the whole Jewish sanhedrim, or general council; they all lay their malicious heads together, to contrive the destruction of the holy and innocent Jesus. Thence learn, that general councils have erred, and may err fundamentally, both in matters of doctrine and practice; they did not believe Jesus to be the Messias, after all the miracles wrought before their eyes, but ignominiously put Him to death. 2. The manner of this conspiracy against the life of our blessed Saviour; it was clandestine, secret, and subtle. They consulted how they might take Him by craft, and put Him to death. Learn thence, that Satan makes use of the subtlety of crafty men, and abuseth their parts as well as their power for his own purposes and designs: the devil never sends a fool on his errand. 3. The circumstance of time when this conspiracy was managed, at the feast of the passover. (W. Burkitt) Luke 22:3-6 Then entered Satan into Judas Progressive wickedness Men do not become great villains at once. Souls are not like meteoric bodies, that are blazing amongst the stars at one moment, and the next in some dark pit on earth, wrapped in a noxious and sulphurous smoke. They are rather like trees, they fall by degrees. See that great monarch of the forest! For years disease has been in its roots, and a long succession of foul insects have been gnawing at its vitals. Slowly and silently the decline goes on. At first the outward symptoms are scarcely visible. A few withered leaves on one of its branches on a certain spring are first noticed by the old woodman. The next spring, and not only withered leaves are seen, but perhaps a leafless branch or: two. Thus through many a long year the deterioration proceeds, until at last it is rotten to the core, and only awaits some slight breeze blowing in the right direction to strike it down. One morning a gentle gust of air sweeps through the wood, the tree falls with a crash that shakes its neighbours, vibrates through the forest, and appals the district with its boom. Luke 22:7-13 Go and prepare us the passover Preparation for the Last Supper Passover just at hand. Day of preparation. The Lamb to be offered is Himself. “ Go and prepare--get ready--for Me; let it be heart-preparation.” 1. This preparation was general. All Old Testament teachings, histories, prophecies, and events were a preparation for the death on the cross. “ Go, prepare to meet Me around that table of commemoration.” 2. When, or at what time, concerned the disciples. Your time to prepare is now. 3. The character of this command. Imperative. “ Go.” Now Grotius, who lived to be fifty before he made this preparation, said, “ I have passed the whole of my life laboriously doing nothing.” Cast away your sins, your prayerlessness. “ I have lost ten years; I give the rest to Jesus,” should be the resolution of youth. 4. You will need to carry nothing in there. The feast is prepared. (S. H.Tyng, D. D.) Preparation for the Lord’ s Supper Part of the preparation for the Lord’ s Supper consists in learning about Christ. Unless we know Him we cannot remember Him. If we know little about Him our remembrance of Him will be poor and shallow. Suppose you were asked to do something, to illuminate your house or to plant a tree, in remembrance of some one of whom you had never heard--Bocchoris, for instance--you might do it; but what sense would there be in your doing it? You know nothing about him. What you did would be a mere external and formal observance. If I told you that according to Manetho he was the only monarch belonging to the twenty-fourth dynasty of Egyptian kings, he would still be nothing more than a name to you. Was he a good king or a bad king? Did he build temples, pyramids, great public works, make canals, establish wise and beneficent laws, fight famous battles, contribute to the civilization and happiness of his people, or did he do nothing? Was his reign long and glorious? Was he remembered after his death with love and honour? Or was his memory execrated? You don’ t know; I believe no one knows. His name stands in a list of ancient kings, that is all we can say, and to do anything in remembrance of him would be an unmeaning ceremony. Remembrance must be based on knowledge, and the richer our knowledge the more vivid is our remembrance. When there is to be any public celebration of a great man, when a statue is to be erected or a building opened in his honour, the newspapers tell us about his life, and about what he did for the country; and speeches are delivered to recall the grounds on which his memory deserves to be perpetuated. And so a large part of the proper preparation for the Lord’ s Supper consists in learning all we can know about the Lord Jesus Christ. The four Gospels are the best preparation for the service. (R. W. Dale.) The last passover I. CHRIST’ S DESIRE TO EAT THE . This in another place is expressed in the strongest terms (Luke 22:15). Now, this he might do for the following reasons: 1. It was the Lord’ s passover, so called in Exodus 12:11. 2. Hereby he gave an undeniable proof, that He was made under the ceremonial as well as moral law. 3. This was His last passover, and had an immediate relation to His subsequent sufferings. 4. The company with which He was to eat the passover, and the gospel ordinance He was about to institute in its room, might increase the ardour of His desire. Hence those tender words: “ I shall eat the passover with My disciples.” II. Notice THE PLACE IN WHICH CHRIST WOULD EAT THIS . Not in Herod’ s, or the High Priest’ s palace; for He who took upon Him the form of a servant, did not affect state and grandeur. Not in the magnificent dwelling of a Roman officer, or Jewish ruler, where He might be attended with a numerous retinue of servants; He came not to be ministered to, but to minister. Now this may be considered as emblematical Ñ 1. Of the gospel Church. 2. It may resemble the renewed and sanctified heart. “ Commune with your own heart” (Psalms 4:4). “ Enter into your own chamber” (Hebrews) The furnished room may also resemble a heart endowed with all the gifts, and adorned with all the graces of the Spirit. Luke 22:14-20 With desire I have desired to eat this passover with you The last passover--Christ’ s desire for it “ This passover before I suffer! “ It tells us, surely, that there was some connection between the passover and the suffering of Christ, and a special connection in this passover at which He and His disciples were now sitting down. Let us think of some of the reasons why the Saviour desired so earnestly to join in this last passover before He suffered. 1. One reason was, that the passover had now reached its end, and found its full meaning. The ancient covenant, which changed the slaves of Egypt into God’ s servants, gives place to the new, which changes his servants into His sons, and commences that golden chain, “ If children, then heirs: heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ,” etc. And here, too, are the means of the redemption. The passover, which sprinkled with the blood of the covenant the door-posts in the land of Egypt, descends until its last victim dies beneath the shadow of the cross of Christ. Its efficacy is gone, for He has appeared who is to finish transgression, to make an end of sin, and to bring in an everlasting righteousness. At best it was a shadow, but now the great reality has come, “ Christ our passover, sacrificed for us.” It is no unconscious victim, but one who freely gives Himself, the just for the unjust, that He may bring us to God. 2. Another reason why Christ desired to be present at this passover was, for the support of His own soul in the approaching struggle. “ Before I suffer!” He had a terrible conflict to meet, for which He longed, and at which He trembled. We may feel startled at the thought that the Son of God should be dependent on such aid at such a moment. And yet it is in keeping with all His history--with the whole plan of redemption. The Divine and human are inseparably interwoven in the life and work of Christ. 3. We are led naturally to this further reason--that Christ desired to be present at the last passover because His friends needed special comfort. “ To eat this passover with you before I suffer.” He desired to make His converse with them at this passover in the upper chamber a strength and consolation to them against the sore temptations they were to encounter. And may we not believe that Christ still prepares His people for what may be lying before them, and that He employs His comforts “ to prevent” them--to go before them--in the day of their calamity. When darkness isabout to fall, God has lamps to put into the hand by anticipation. He who made His ark go before His ancient people in all their wanderings, causes the consolations of His Word to smooth the way of them that look to Him. He knows what painful steps are before us in the journey of life, what privations, what bereavements--it may be that the most solemn step of all must ere long be taken--and He desires to eat this passover with us “ before we suffer.” 4. The last reason we give for Christ’ s desire to be present at this passover is, that it looked forward to all the future of His Church and people. At the close of the last passover, Christ instituted that communion of the Supper which has come down through many generations--which goes forth into all the world as the remembrance of His death and the pledge of the blessings it has purchased for us. How frail this little ark which His hand has sent out on those stormy waters, but how safely it has carried its precious freight! And this presence of His, at the first communion, looks still further--on to the period when, instead of His Spirit, we shall have Himself. He desired to take His place in person at the first communion in our world, and when the great communion opens in heaven, He shall be seen in His place once more. (J. Ker, D. D.) The Lord’ s Supper We need not look for great things in order to discover great truths. To those who reach after God he will reveal his deepest secrets through things insignificant in themselves, within the routine of common lives. No event occurs more regularly than the daily meal. None, perhaps, gathers around it so many pleasant associations. Its simplest possible form, in Christ’ s time, consisted in eating bread and drinking a cup of wine. Into this act, one evening, He gathered all the meaning of the ancient sacrifices; all sacred and tender relations between Himself and His followers, and all the prophecies of His perfected kingdom. I. THE . “ They made ready the passover.” Note concerning the making ready that-- 1. It was deliberate. The room was selected and secured. The hour was appointed. Two of the disciples were chosen to prepare the lamb and to spread the table. The Lord’ s Supper is not less, but far more, rich in meaning than was the ancient passover. It requires the preparation of mind and heart made by private meditation, and by the gathering together beforehand of disciples for prayer, conference, and instruction. 2. It was exclusive, “ I shall eat the passover,” Christ said, “ with My disciples.” No others were invited, because no others were fitted to share in the ceremony which He was to inaugurate. 3. It was familiar. He drew closer to His disciples as the time approached in which He was to teach them how to celebrate His great act for the redemption of the world. Such times must be cherished as the warm, spring hours of spiritual growth. 4. It was solemn. The shadow of the greatest tragedy in the world’ s history, close at hand, hung over them, as they went through the silent streets to the prepared guest chamber. His manner, His words, His actions, were filled with the consciousness of it. II. THE POINTED OUT. 1. It leads each true disciple to self-examination. 2. It helps to reveal to Himself She false disciple. Judas knew that he was out of place in that upper chamber. The Lord’ s table, which symbolizes the most intimate fellowship with Him, is a means of leading selfish men to begin to realize the awful and utter loneliness of sin. 3. It helps us to realize the baseness of a false confession of Christ. III. THE SUPPER . 1. A new sacrifice. Oxen, sheep, and doves had for centuries been slain as a sign that through life offered in sacrifice, human life that had been forfeited by sin might be restored. But from that night the broken bread takes the place of all these, and represents to us the body of Christ given as a sacrifice for sinners. 2. A new covenant. 3. A new kingdom, which was begun when first Christ through the Holy Spirit began to rule in one human heart. (A. E. Dunning.) The happiness of attending The Communion During the sunshine of his prosperity, Napoleon I. thought little of God and religious duties. But when his power had been broken, and he was an exile at St. Helena, he began to see the vanity of earthly things, and became earnest and attentive to religion. Then it was that he returned a very remarkable answer to one who asked him what was the happiest day in his life. “ Sire,” said his questioner, “ allow me to ask you what was the happiest day in all your life? Was it the day of your victory at Lodi? at Jena? at Austerlitz? or was it when you were crowned emperor?” No, my good friend, replied the fallen emperor, “ it was none of these. It was the day of my first communion! That was the happiest day in all my life!” Sacramental service--I. HOW INTENSE THE SAVIOUR’ S LOVE FOR US MUST HAVE BEEN, in that His desire was not extinguished by the knowledge that it was to be His death-feast. II. HOW CLOSE HIS WITH MEN, as shown in that He desired to spend such an hour in their company. III. HOW EAGER THE MASTER WAS TO MAKE THE REALIZE THE OF THE HE WOULD FOR THEM, and to give them a pledge of it for their assurance. “ I will not eat any more thereof, until it be fulfilled,” etc. The Lord’ s Supper, then instituted, is thus designed to be-- 1. An evidence of Christ’ s undying love. 2. An assurance of His intimate fellowship. 3. A confirmation of His promise of the everlasting blessedness. (Anon.) The Last Supper I. THE . This preparation is suggestive of three things. 1. The dispensation in which Christ and His apostles still were. 2. The all-comprehensive knowledge possessed by Christ. 3. That in the midst of enemies Christ still had friends in Jerusalem. II. The passover eaten. 1. Our Lord’ s punctuality (Luke 22:14). 2. Our Lord’ s intense desire in respect to this passover. (1) Because the last He would celebrate with them. (2) Because He would impress them with the connection between Himself as God’ s Lamb, and the paschal lamb. (3) Because He would awaken in them an intense desire for His second coming, when He would sit down with them in the Kingdom of God. III. THE . 1. By the establishment of an ordinance which commemorates the true passover (see 1 Corinthians 5:7). 2. By the assurance of the better hope which this ordinance affirms Hebrews 7:19-22). 3. By the emblematic re-crucifixion of our Lord, which should inspire them to a constant remembrance of His personal love for them (1 Corinthians 11:24). Lessons: 1. Retrospection essential. (1) Bread broken. (2) Wine poured out. 2. Introspection essential (1 Corinthians 11:28). 3. Prospection essential (1 Corinthians 11:26). (D. C. Hughes, M. A.) The cup of sneering and of Communion I. THAT BETWEEN CHRIST AND WILL BE RENEWED IN HEAVEN. Even on this side heaven, seasons of pure spiritual communion are not denied us. This exhausts the Saviour’ s idea. His words are to be taken not literally, but spiritually. The wine is put for the thing represented--the joys and the felicities of the final state, and to drink the wine newwith Him is to partake the inmost pleasure of His soul. II. THIS WILL BE PERFECT AND UNMIXED. We receive only in part; and this necessarily renders every act of communion imperfect. But in heaven it will be otherwise. Our nature will be so purified and transformed, as that every power and every property will be an avenue to convey the stream of life and glory into the soul. The fellowship will be that of perfected spirits. There will be no darkness in the understanding, no error in the judgment, no guilt in the conscience, no sin in the heart. III. THIS WILL RE AND ETERNAL. Sublime and refreshing as are the seasons of spiritual joy which we experience on earth, they are, generally speaking, but of short duration. Here perpetuity of enjoyment is impossible, but there it is certain. The union between the Saviour and the soul will never be dissolved, and therefore the fellowship will never end. Here we are overtaken by fatigue and exhaustion, but there we shall be endowed with immortal vigour; here sickness and infirmity often intervene, but there the inhabitants shall never say they are sick; here we enjoy communion at intervals, there it will be eternal. IV. THIS WILL BE BY THE AND THE OF THE WHOLE CHURCH. It is no common joy which we experience even in the most private communion; but this joy is heightened when we can blend with other souls in harmony with our own. What, then, must be the communion of the coming world, where we shall hold immediate fellowship not only with God and the Redeemer, but at the same moment, and in the same act, with angels and the whole Church of the redeemed? Delightful is the union and fellowship of minds on earth! When heart communes with heart it is like the mingling dew-drops on the flower. But this union will be heightened in heaven. There we shall find none but kindred minds, with which it will be impossible not to unite. The blessedness of the future world is in reserve for those only who belong to the kingdom of God on earth. Into the heavenly communion none will be received, but those who have here held fellowship with a risen and glorified Saviour. (R. Ferguson, LL. D.) He took bread, and gave thanks, and brake it The Holy Communion I. HOLY --WHAT IS IT? 1. It is Christ’ s own ordinance. Being a communicant is the test of the reality of your Christian profession. 2. It is the command of the Great Master. Emphatic, plain, straightforward, definite. A test of our faithfulness RS the servants of Christ. 3. It is the dying wish of the best of Friends. You cannot disregard it, and be true to Him. 4. Its great importance is taught plainly by the teaching and practice of the early Church. It was at first the only act of united worship. And it was celebrated at least every Lord’ s Day. II. WHAT IS ITS NATURE? 1. It is a memorial. A picture for all time of Christ’ s body broken and blood shed for the sins of man. (1) A memorial to God the Father. In our prayers we say, “ through Jesus Christ our Lord” ; or some such words; i.e., we plead before the Father what He has done for us. In the Holy Communion we say, “ for Jesus’ sake” not in words, but in the very acts which He Himself has taught us. Thus it is our highest act of prayer. (2) A memorial to ourselves. How easily we forget. This refreshes our memory, and rekindles our love. (3) A memorial to an unthinking or unbelieving world. A witness to men that we believe in Jesus, who lived and died and still lives for us. 2. It is a means of grace. Jesus Himself is pleased in this ordinance of his own appointment to give us Himself. 3. It is a bond of union between ourselves and others. In partaking together one sacred food we, made one with Jesus, are brought nearer to one another. (1) A bond of union between those who belong to the same earthly family. (2) A bond of union between those who belong to the same congregation. (3) A bond of union between all Christians who love the Lord Jesus. (4) A bond of union between those who are resting in paradise. III. WHO OUGHT TO COME? 1. Those who know how poor their love is, and want to love God more. 2. Those who are trying to serve God, and fail because they are weak, and need strength. 3. Those who are sinful, but desire to become holy. 4. Those who are careful and troubled about many things, and long for rest. IV. WHO OUGHT NOT TO COME? 1. Those who are sinning, and do not want to give up their sin. 2. Those who think themselves good enough. The selfsatisfied obtain no blessing, for they seek none. V. HOW TO COME. 1. Humbly. Why? Because we are not worthy to come. 2. Trustingly and simply. Taking God at His word, and not asking questions. 3. Earnestly. Meaning what we are doing. Not because others come, but because we realize that in our sinfulness and our unworthiness we find the strongest reason why we ought to come. 4. Reverently. Humbly realizing the presence of Jesus, and earnestly desiring His blessing. 5. Regularly. Have a fixed rule about it. Do not leave it to be done at any time when it is convenient or suits you. 6. More and more frequently. As you grow older you ought to be more earnest, and in order to serve God better you must seek more help. The grown-up man is not content with the same amount of food as the child; and the man who is desirous to grow up into the full measure of the stature of Christ, needs more spiritual nourishment than the man who is only a babe in Christ. 7. Early. When your thoughts are fresh, your heart free from cares and worries, your mind undisturbed by worldly things. Give to God the best you can. Let Him have the first of the day. (C. J. Ridgeway, M. A.) The Holy Communion I. THE ITSELF. II. ITS . 1. A Divine ordinance. 2. A perpetual ordinance. 3. A binding and obligatory ordinance. 4. It should be a frequent ordinance. No Lord’ s Day without the Lord’ s Supper. III. THE SPIRIT IN WHICH IT SHOULD BE . 1. Deep humility of mind. 2. Grateful love to Jesus. 3. Faith. 4. Love to all mankind. 5. Joyous hope. IV. THE ARISING FROM TO THIS COMMAND OF CHRIST’ S. 1. The soul will be strengthened. 2. Christ will be increasingly precious. 3. Holiness will be increased. 4. Heaven will be desired. Application: 1. Address regular communicants. Come in a right spirit. Be watchful, humble, prayerful, etc. 2. Address irregular communicants. Why so? It is disobedience, inconsistency, injurious to yourselves, Church, world. 3. Those who never commune at all. (1) The conscientiously doubtful. Do you hate sin? Believe in Christ, etc. Are you willing to obey him? Then draw near, etc. (2) Those who are really unfit for the Lord’ s table, are also unfit for death, judgment, eternity. (J. Burns, D. D.) The Sacrament of Holy Communion In preserving this festival, we are urged alike by affection and duty. I. THE ACT. 1. To stir up your pure minds by way of remembrance, we may point out the simplicity of this act. 2. But though simple it is significant. The material forms and visible things, represent spiritual and invisible realities. 3. The participation of this Sacrament is a manifestation of Christian unity (1 Corinthians 10:16-17). 4. This act is commemorative. 5. This ordinance is also sealing. A pledge of Divine mercy. A covenant act. 6. This Sacrament is also prospective. “ Till He come.” II. THE COMMAND. “ This do.” 1. Unanimously. 2. Frequently. 3. Gratefully. 4. Reverently. 5. Worthily. “ Discerning the Lord’ s Body.” (R. M. Willcox.) The Lord’ s Supper The Lord’ s Supper--what a title! How full of memories, how it carries us back into the very heart of the past! What a solemn night it tells of--what a meeting--what a parting! The Lord’ s Supper, however often it is celebrated, always ought to carry us back to the institution. For the little company of the disciples it was a night of gloom. The week had opened amid Hosannas; for a moment it had seemed as if the Saviour was to be the hero and the idol of the multitude. But the acclaims died away. The bitter hostility of the rulers reasserted itself in a series of angry or crafty assaults; and now we are on the very eve of that other and most opposite cry--“ Away with Him; crucify Him. His blood be on us, and on our children.” The fortunes of the new gospel, as man must judge, were that night at the very lowest ebb. As the event advances it is made quite evident that this is a parting meeting, and that the Lord and Master knows it. He speaks of Himself as departing, not on a temporary journey, but by a violent death. People who are bent upon explaining away everything that is remarkable, still more everything that is superhuman in the Gospels, have denied that the words “ Take, eat, this is My Body; Drink ye all of this, for this is My Blood,” were words of institution at all. They say that they were merely a pathetic way of typifying to the disciples His approaching death, and had nothing to do with any future commemoration of it when He should be gone. It is not necessary to argue this point, because we have the clearest testimony from the earliest date rationally possible; the testimony of friends and foes; of Christians and Pagans; of St. Paul and St. Luke; of Pliny no less than Justin Martyr, that those who heard the words did understand them as words of institution, and did act upon them as such. The breaking of the bread, the coming together to eat the Lord’ s Supper were phrases of perpetual recurrence as soon as there was any Church founded, and wherever that Church spread itself over Asia and Europe; and that custom, always, and everywhere, explained itself by going back to the scene in the guest-chamber the night before the Crucifixion. But now, if the words had this meaning, the thought comes upon us with great force, how wonderful is it that our Lord, knowing that tiffs was His last night upon earth as a man in flesh and blood, instead of regarding it as an end, looks upon it as a beginning, speaks of it as a preliminary, a necessary preliminary to results foreseen and foreknown, in particular to what He calls the remission or dismissal of sins, and gives directions for the perpetual remembrance of His approaching baptism of blood, in an ordinance which is to have for its marked feature the symbolic eating and drinking of His own Body and Blood. Brethren, this is a great thought. Our Lord in the same night in which He was betrayed, the very night before tie suffered, did not look upon that betrayal or upon that passion as a disaster, as a blow struck at His work, or His enterprise, but rather as its necessary condition. It is the fore-ordained consummation. The same night in which He was betrayed, and in the clearest foresight of His Crucifixion, He founds an ordinance, He institutes a sacrament in express recognition, and for the everlasting remembrance, of His death of violence and torture, of ignominy and agony. “ Well, now let us pass on to the very words of the institution, so much more surprising and startling than if they had merely spoken of commemorating His death--“ Take, eat, this is My Body” ; “ Drink ye all of this, for this is My blood.” It would not have been at all startling, and not at all surprising, if our Lord had hidden His disciples to come together from time to time to meditate upon His cruel and suffering death. A mere man might have thought of this, might even have made it a religious service to go over the particulars of His passion, partly as a memorial to a lost friend, and partly for the encouragement of serious, devout, and humble living. But this cannot be said of the expressions before us--“ Take, eat, this is My Body.” “ Drink this, for it is My Blood.” So far from this being the common language of a dying friend, it would be language of which all would shrink from the hearing or the uttering. Brethren, it speaks for itself, that they must have regarded Him who said, “ Take, eat, this is My Body,” as one altogether different from any common, or any merely human person. It would be cruelty, it would be impiety, it would be insanity in any friend, living or dying, to use such expressions concerning himself. They say this, if they say anything, “ My death shall be your life;” “ My body is given, My blood is outpoured for you.” In that death is involved the life of the world. In that separation of flesh and blood which is the act of dying, the sins of the world are taken away; yet this is not as a single isolated fact just to be accepted, just to be relied upon, without corollary or consequence--not so. “ I, the dying, the once dead, shall be alive again after death, and be your life, not as a dead man, but as one alive after death; so must you deal with Me. You must receive Me into your hearts, you must, as it were, eat Me and drink Me, so that I may enter into your very being, and become a part of you; not as a man in human form treading upon the earth, companying with you as a man with his friends, but in a totally different manner, as one that died and was dead, but who now liveth to die no more; as one that has died and risen again; as one that is now in heaven; as one that has the Holy Spirit, and sends Him forth for perpetual indwelling in the hearts of His people. “ So eat, so drink, for refreshing, and for sustentation.” The flesh profiteth nothing” ; no, not though you could hold in the hand and press with the teeth the very body of the Crucified. The flesh, even the sacred flesh, profiteth nothing; “ it is the Spirit that quickeneth.” One moment of spiritual contact with the risen and glorified is worth whole centuries, whole millenniums, of the corporeal co-existence. (Dean Vaughan.) The advantages of remembering Christ I. We are to inquire, first, WHAT IS IMPLIED IN CHRIST. 1. There is evidently implied in this remembrance a knowledge of Him, a previous acquaintance with Him. He must have occupied much of our thoughts, have entered into our hearts, and been lodged in the deepest recesses of our minds. 2. Hence to remember Christ implies a heart-felt love for Him. 3. Hence to remember Christ implies also a frequent and affectionate recalling of Him to our minds. II. Let us proceed to inquire why CHRIST HAS LEFT US THIS COMMAND TO HIM. 1. He has done this for a reason which ought greatly to humble us tie has said, “ Remember Me,” because He knows that we are prone to forget Him. 2. But our proneness to forget Christ is not the only reason why He has commanded us to remember Him. He has given us this command, because He desires to be remembered by us. 3. The great reason, however, why Christ has commanded us to remember Him, is this--He knows that we cannot think of Him without deriving much benefit to ourselves. III. WHAT, THEN, ARE THE FROM AN OF JESUS? This is our third subject of inquiry; let us proceed to consider it. 1. The first of these benefits is comfort to the soul, when wounded by a sense of sin. 2. An habitual remembrance of Christ has a tendency also to elevate our affections. 3. This heavenly-mindedness would lead us to a third benefit resulting from this remembrance of Christ--patience and comfort in our afflictions. 4. The remembrance of Christ tends also to keep alive within us a holy hatred of sin. Nothing makes sin appear half so hateful, as the cross of Christ; nothing so effectually checks it when rising in the soul, as the thought of a dying Saviour. O let me never crucify the Son of God afresh! IV. BUT IF WE WOULD CHRIST, LET US NOT FORGET THE COMMAND GIVEN US IN THE TEXT. “ This do in remembrance of Me.” We soon forget objects which are removed from our sight; and our Lord, who knows and pities this weakness of our nature, has given us an abiding memorial of Himself. He has appointed an ordinance for this very purpose, to remind us of His love. (C. Bradley, M. A.) Christ wanting to be remembered The Holy Communion is the memorial of our Redeemer’ s sacrifice. I. CHRIST WANTS TO BE FOR WHAT HE HAS DONE FOR US. We never must forget the past, or lose sight of Calvary. Great Prophet, we must ever think of what He has done to teach; Great Priest, what He has done to atone; and Great King, what He has done to win the allegiance and devotion of our hearts. II. OUR LORD WANTS TO BE IN WHAT HE IS DOING FOR US. He lives to carry on and to carry out His work of grace in our hearts and lives. III. CHRIST WANTS TO BE FOR WHAT HE IS UNDER PLEDGE TO DO. We anticipate the coronation of our King, and the marriage-supper of the Lamb. Veils hide Him now; we long for the vision of His face. (R. Tuck, B. A.) The Holy feast 1. A feast of charity. 2. A feast of commemoration. 3. A feast of sanctified communion. 4. A feast of hope. (J. B. Owen, M. A.) The Sacrament of Holy Communion I. A FROM CHRIST--“ Do this.” 1. Addressed by our Lord (1) to the apostles, and (2) through them to the whole catholic Church. 2. Spoken as a Friend to His friends. 3. Spoken instructively. As our Prophet. 4. Spoken authoritatively. As our King, Christ expects us to keep this our military oath with Him. If an earthly commander had but to say to his servant, “ go,” and he went; and “ come,” and he came; how much more “ ought we to be in subjection to the Father of spirits and live?” “ See then, oh believer, that ye refuse not Him who speaketh.” Do not come to the Holy Table-- (a) formally; (b) grudgingly, or of necessity. But come-- (a) humbly; (b) reverently; (c) faithfully. II. AN MOTIVE--“ In remembrance of Me.” (R. S. Brooke, M. A.) The cup of reconciliation Warburton and Tucker were contemporary bishop and dean in the same cathedral. For many years they were not even on speaking terms. It was on a Good Friday, not long before Warburton’ s death; they were at the Holy Table together. Before he gave the cup to the dean, he stooped down, and said in tremulous emotion, “ Dear Tucker, let this be the cup of reconciliation between us.” It had the intended effect; they were friends again to their mutual satisfaction. (Christian Age.) The Lord’ s Supper I. THE OF THIS HOLY RITE. “ This do” --that is, do what I am doing. To do what Jesus did we are to take bread and wine. And we are to take this bread and wine, not for an ordinary meal--for they “ had supped’ ; and St. Paul says, “ If any hunger, let him eat at home,” --but for a sacramental feast, a means of feeding in our souls upon the Body and Blood of Christ our Saviour. Again, if we would do what Jesus did, we must, before we eat that bread and drink that wine, have them consecrated: “ Jesus blessed” ; and, as St. Paul says, “ the cup of blessing which we bless.” Next, we are to have a minister to consecrate them. We do not find that any disciples meeting together could consecrate the elements, for in Matthew we are told, that “ Jesus blessed it and brake it, and then gave it to the disciples and said, Take, eat, this is My Body.” Again we find, that in doing this, our Lord accompanied it with prayer. II. THE PURPOSE OF THE LORD’ S SUPPER--“ do this in remembrance of Me.” The remembrance of Jesus may be considered actively or passively--“ this do in remembrance of Me” --that is, to remind Jesus of us, or to remind us of Jesus. The expression may be applied both ways, and may be profitably considered in either view. We have need of reminding Christ of us, of our necessities, our wants, our joys, and our sorrows, as in Isaiah 43:26. In Numbers 10:9, we have the same truth of reminding God of us set before the Jews, and so s gain in Malachi 3:16-17. In this view of these words, we have then this truth set before us that, in that holy ordinance, we remind Jesus of His covenanted mercy, of His dying love, the price it cost Christ to purchase our souls, the greatness of His promises, the reality and truth of our faith in Him, the necessity we have to bring before Him our weakness and our woes. We remind Him that we do indeed believe in Him, and that, believing in Him, we cling to His precious covenant. In taking of the memorials of His dying love, we remind Him that we are those of whom He has said, “ He that believeth on Me, though He were dead, yet shall he live, and whosoever liveth and believeth on Me shall never die.” But again, the remembrance of Jesus, taken passively, implies that we remember Jesus; our remembrance of Jesus implies, not merely a remembrance of one act of the Saviour, of one truth, or one fact connected with His gospel or His life, but a remembrance of Himself. He does not say, do it in remembrance of the cross-do it in remembrance of the garden, but, do it in remembrance of Me--My person--My offices--My qualities--My whole being--Christ Jesus our Redeemer--ourFriend. Remembrance of Jesus must vary in intensity, and affection, and character, in proportion to our knowledge of His love, His grace, His kindness, and His truth, and of our habitual abiding in Him in our own souls. III. WHO ARE THE PERSONS THAT OUGHT TO PARTAKE OF IT? IV. THE DUTY OF IT. It was given for disciples. (J. Baylee, D. D.) The Lord’ s Supper an emblem and memorial I. It is AN EMBLEM. The question is, then, what unseen things do these simple objects represent? 1. The human nature of Christ; His incarnation. 2. The death of Christ, too, is shadowed forth in this ordinance. We have more than bread before us in it, it is bread which has been broken; and more than wine, it is wine which has been poured forth. 3. The consecrated elements are emblematical also of the great end and design of our Lord’ s incarnation and death. II. Let us now go on to another view of this ordinance. IT IS A MEMORY. “ This do,” He says, “ in remembrance of Me.” But it is not Himself simply considered, that our Lord calls on us here to remember; it is Himself as these emblems set Him forth, given and bleeding for us; it is Himself in His humiliation, sufferings, and death. Why the institution of an ordinance to bring things like these to our remembrance? 1. Partly, perhaps, on account of the joy Christ Himself feels in the recollection of them. His heart overflows with joy at the thought of His cross and passion, and He would have us think of them and sympathize with Him in His joy. 2. The remembrance of Christ’ s incarnation and death is of the utmost importance to us; therefore also He may have established this memorial of them among us. “ All our fresh springs” are in our crucified Lord, and therefore He brings Himself frequently before us as our crucified Lord that we may go to Him as the great source of our mercies, and take of His blessings. 3. There is another reason to be given for the setting up of this memorial of our Lord’ s sufferings--it is our liability to forget them. (C. Bradley, M. A.) Christ’ s vicarious death A single verse, written on paper, now yellow with age, hangs on the wall of a nobleman’ s study in London. It has a remarkable history, and has, in two notable instances, at least, been blessed of God to conversion. The verse was originally composed by Dr. Valpy, the eminent Greek scholar and author of some standard school books. He was converted late in life, and wrote this verse as a confession of faith:-- “ In peace let me resign my breath, And Thy salvation see; My sins deserve eternal death, But Jesus died for me.” On one occasion Dr. Marsh was visiting the house of Lord Roden, where he held a Bible reading with the family. He mentioned Dr. Valpy’ s conversion by way of illustration in the course of his remarks, and recited the verse. Lord Roden was particularly struck with the lines, wrote them out, and affixed them to the wall of his study, where they still are. Lord Roden’ s hospitable mansion was often full of visitors, among whom were many old army officers. One of these was General Taylor, who served with distinction under Wellington at Waterloo. He had not, at that time, thought much on the subject of religion, and preferred to avoid all discussion of it. But soon after the paper was hung up he went into the study to talk with his friend alone, and his eyes rested for a few moments upon the verse. Later in the day Lord Roden upon entering his study came upon the general standing before the paper and reading it with earnest face. At another visit the host noticed that whenever General Taylor was in the study his eyes rested on the verse. At length Lord Roden broke the ice by saying, “ Why, General, you will soon know that verse by heart.” “ I know it now by heart,” replied the general, with emphasis and feeling. A change came over the general’ s spirit and life. No one who was intimately acquainted with him could doubt its reality. During the following two years he corresponded readily with Lord Roden about the things which concerned his peace, always concluding his letters by quoting Dr. Valpy’ s verse. At the end of that time the physician who attended General Taylor wrote to Lord Roden to say that his friend had departed in peace, and that the last words which fell from his dying lips were those which he had learned to love in his lifetime. A young relative of the family, an officer who served in the Crimea, also saw it, but turned carelessly away. Some months later Lord Roden received the intelligence that his young acquaintance was suffering from pulmonary disease, and was desirous of seeing him without delay. As he entered the sick-room the dying man stretched out both hands to welcome him; at the same time repeating Dr. Valpy’ s simple lines. “ They have been God’ s message,” he said, “ of peace and comfort to my heart in this illness, when brought to my memory, after days of darkness and distress, by the Holy Ghost the Comforter.” The ordained memorial I. THE MAIN OBJECT OF THE SUPPER IS A . “ In remembrance of Me.” We are to remember not so much His doctrines, or precepts, as His person. Remember the Lord Jesus at this Supper-- 1. As the trust of your hearts. 2. As the object of your gratitude. 3. As the Lord of your conduct. 4. As the joy of your lives. 5. As the Representative of your persons. 6. As the Rewarder of your hopes. Remember what He was, what He is, what He will be. Remember Him with heartiness, concentration of thought, realizing vividness, and deep emotion. II. THE ITSELF IS . 1. Simple, and therefore like Himself, who is transparent and unpretentious truth. Only bread broken, and wine poured out. 2. Frequent--“ as oft as ye drink it,” and so pointing to our constant need. He intended the Supper to be often enjoyed. 3. Universal, and so showing the need of all. “ Drink ye all of it.” In every land, all His people are to eat and drink at this table. 4. His death is the best memory of Himself, and it is by showing forth His death that we remember Him. 5. His covenant relation is a great aid to memory; hence He speaks of--“ The new covenant in My Blood.” We do not forget Adam, our first covenant-head; nor can we forget our second Adam. 6. Our receiving Him is the best method of keeping Him in memory; therefore we eat and drink in this ordinance. No better memorial could have been ordained. III. THE OBJECT AIMED AT IS ITSELF . Since we are invited to come to the holy Supper that we may remember our Lord, we may safely infer that-- 1. We may come to it, though we have forgotten Him often and sadly. In fact, this will be a reason for coming. 2. We may come, though others may be forgetful of Him. We come not to judge them, but to remember Him ourselves. 3. We may come, though weak for aught else but the memory of His goodness. 4. It will be sweet, cheering, sanctifying, quickening, to remember Him; therefore let us not fail to come. (C. H. Spurgeon.) The Sacrament better than a sermon Frequently to me the Supper has been much better than a sermon. It has the same teaching-power, but it is more vivid. The Lord is known to us in the breaking of bread, though our eyes have been holden during His discourse. I can see a good meaning in the saying of Henry III., of France, when he preferred the Sacrament to a sermon: “ I had rather see my Friend than hear Him talked about.” I love to hear my Lord talked about, for so I often see Him, and I see Him in no other way in the Supper than in a sermon; but sometimes, when my eye is weak with weeping, or dim with dust, that double glass of the bread and wine suits me best. (C. H. Spurgeon.) The ends for which the Holy Communion is appointed 1. It is appointed to be a memorial of Christ. 2. It is a standing evidence of the truth of Christianity. 3. It furnishes an opportunity of the open profession of the Christian religion in general, and, especially, of our trusting in the sacrifice of Christ for forgiveness and acceptance with God. 4. Another end of the Lord’ s Supper is to be an act of Church fellowship, or communion. 5. The Lord’ s Supper gives an opportunity of covenanting with God, and engaging to be the Lord’ s. He who partakes of the Communion is, by that very act, as completely and voluntarily bound to serve the Lord, as if he had engaged aloud to do so in the plainest terms of speech, or subscribed, with his own hand, a written deed to that effect. It follows, too, by necessary consequence, that, though he is not bound to anything to which he was not in duty bound before, yet, if he abandon himself to sin, he is justly chargeable with breach of engagement. This argument does not rest on anything peculiar to the Supper; but it applies to it with particular force. 6. Another very comprehensive end of this ordinance is to be a means of cherishing all the graces of the Divine life. We say of cherishing them, not of implanting them; for, though the grace of God is not to be limited, and may reach the heart, for the first time, in any circumstances, those who partake of the Lord’ s Supper ought already to be possessed of the Christian character in some degree. 7. Once more, this ordinance is intended to lead our thoughts forward to our Lord’ s second coming. It is not only retrospective, but prospective. It is not only a remembrance of something past, but an anticipation of something future. (James Foote, M. A.) Remembering Jesus In remembrance of Him! What a flood of recollections comes back to us as we think on these words. To every class, age, and character amongst us those words are spoken. To you babes and children He says, “ Do this in remembrance of Me, the Child Jesus, who for you once lay as a babe in the manger at Bethlehem, who for your sakes grew as a child in favour with God and man, who was obedient to His parents, a gentle, holy Child; do this, be obedient, be gentle, be loving, keep your baptismal vow in remembrance of Me.” It speaks to you, young men, and says, “ Do this, keep yourselves pure, flee fleshly lusts which war against the soul, be helpful, be earnest, not slothful in business, labour honestly in your appointed task, do this in remembrance of Me, who as a young man was pure and earnest and helpful, who laboured patiently and obscurely in lowly Nazareth.” He speaks to all Who have money or time or influence at their disposal, He says, “ Do this, go about doing good, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, comfort the fatherless and the widow; never turn your face from any poor man; if thou hast much, give plenteously, if thou hast little do thy diligence to give gladly of that little, do this in remembrance of Me, the Man Christ Jesus, who went about doing good, who gave up all time, glory, honour, wealth, life itself, for others, who sought out the ignorant and those who were out of the way, who dried the widow’ s tears, who ministered to the sick, who was not ashamed to help and comfort even the publican and the fallen woman, who suffered hunger and thirst, and want, and insult for His people; O you, who are called by My name, do this in remembrance of Me, for in that ye do such things unto the least of My people, ye do it unto Me, and verily ye have your reward.” To you who are anyways afflicted and distressed lie speaks and says, “ Do this in remembrance of Me, bear this cross meekly in remembrance of that bitter cross of Mine, for what sorrow is like unto My sorrow, what night of agony can equal that night in Gethsemane, what grave can now be without hope since that one grave in the Garden which was unsealed on Easter morning?” (H. J. Wilmot Buxton, M. A.) The memorial of Jesus I. THE OF A DEEPLY DEVOTED FRIEND. II. THE OF A FRIEND. III. WHAT DO WE BY OUR WITH THIS COMMAND? His death, as a sacrificial atonement for our sins, and as the most remarkable display of His love for us, though sinners. IV. In commemorating Christ’ s death by this ordinance, WE RECALL THE , , AND SHAME HE ENDURED ON OUR BEHALF. V. Reflect that THESE THINGS, MORE THAN ALL OTHERS, ARE WORTHY OF BEING HELD IN . VI. HERE, TOO, WE KEEP IN IN WHICH EVERY HAS THE SAME , AND WHICH PRESENT TO ALL THE SAME MOST AND SOLEMN ASPECTS. VII. Once more, in the same direction of thought, we observe that, IN THE OF DEEDS OF PROWESS AND , THE REMOTER THE PERIOD OF THEIR , THE LESS IS THE BY THEM, while in relation to the great event which we this day commemorate, THE REMOTER THE AGE AND , THE DEEPER WILL BE THE FELT IN IT, AND MORE WILL THEY BE WHO IT. VIII. IN THIS ARE CALLED UPON TO AN UNSEEN FRIEND, UNTIL THE PERIOD OF HIS . IX. FROM THE SIMPLE NATURE OF THE SYMBOLS , WE INFER THAT THIS IS TO BE AS THE CHURCH, AND AS THE WORLD. X. Notice the OF THIS COMMAND AS FROM ALL OTHERS BY DIVINE . This commemorative command is not issued to us so much in the manner of a Lord and lawgiver, as in the character of a claim of gratitude and affection. The Creator commands thus, “ Do this and live; or, fail to do, and die.” So does the Lawgiver command--“ Thou shalt do this in fear of Me, and of the penalties of disobedience.” But our Lord’ s command in the text speaks to us in a very different manner. He does not say, “ Do this in fear of Me as God,” but “ Do this in remembrance of Me, as Redeemer” --“ Do this, I beseech you, as you love Me, and as I have loved you. I have done My work--‘ It is finished.’ Now do your part in remembrance of this finished work.” In obeying this command, we obey it as having especial and peculiar reference to the Mediator. Other commands, like those of the moral law, respect the providence and moral government of God, and the benefit of man--this one directly issues from, and gives glory to, the dying Redeemer, the God-man, “ the Author and Finisher of our faith.” In His other commands Christ addresses us as our Master, our Shepherd, our Divine and Supreme Teacher--in this He instructs us in our duties to God, to our neighbour, and to ourselves. All His other commands appear to point in the direction of various rights and duties; this command only points REWARDS: others, away from Himself--this, to Himself, “ Do this in remembrance of ME--in remembrance of My body, My blood, My death. That death which I endured for your sakes, do you at least remember for My sake.” (J. R. Leifchild, M. A.) Design of the Lord’ s Supper I. . 1. “ In remembrance of Me” --the end. 2. “ Do this” --the means. II. . 1. The bread, or Christ’ s body, represents His personality, or the Incarnation. 2. The wine, or Christ’ s blood, represents His work, or the Atonement. 3. The bread and wine, the body and blood, represent the incarnate career. III. . An immortal witness to the crucifixion (1 Corinthians 11:20). IV. (Luke 22:20). The engagement both Divine and human. V. (1 Corinthians 10:17). VI. . Personal membership in Christ is universal co-membership of Christ’ s people. VII. (Matthew 26:29). The dirge glides into the paean. Hint of the new heavens and new earth. Bridegroom and bride at the same marriage-supper of the Lamb (Revelation 19:6-9). (National Baptist.) The blood of the new covenant I. THE NEW OF AND LIFE. The new reminds of the old. From the old we may learn what to look for as essential features of the new. Take three illustrations: 1. The covenant with Noah, on leaving the Ark. 2. The covenant with Abraham, on entering Canaan. 3. The covenant with Moses, on leading the people from Egypt. The new covenant is an engagement between God and man, through Christ, who acts as representative of God to man and of man to God. It implies mutual pledges. On God’ s side is pledged forgiveness; remission of sins; and life, in its fullest, highest meaning. On man’ s side is pledged the obedience of faith. II. THE BLOOD WHICH SEALS AND THE . Look again at the three cases mentioned. Each covenant was sealed with blood. Noah took of the clean beasts for his offering, which devoted the spared lives to the service of God. Abraham divided the creatures, when he entered into his covenant. And Moses sprinkled with blood both the book and the people, when the covenant was ratified. Why always with blood? Because the blood is the symbol of the life, and, so, shedding blood was a symbolical way of taking a solemn vow to give the whole life to obedience. Then see how Christ’ s blood becomes the seal of the new covenant. Take Christ as Mediator for God. He condescended to our weakness, and pledged His very being, His very life, to His faithfulness towards us. In this sense He is God’ s sacrifice. Take Christ as mediator for man. And in this He is man’ s sacrifice. Then two things come to view. 1. He seals our pledge that we will spend life in obedience, serving God up to and through death. In accepting Christ as our Saviour, we acknowledge that He has taken this pledge for us. 2. In giving His blood, His life, to us to partake of, Christ would give us the strength to keep our pledge. Illustrate by the Scottish Covenanters, opening a vein, and, signing with their life-blood the “ Covenant” on the gravestone, in Greyfriars Church, Edinburgh. What, then, is the pledge which we take afresh in each sacramental act? Obedience unto death. The obedience of faith. What is the pledge we receive afresh in every sacramental act? The assurance of Divine forgiveness, and eternal life. Why do we take the sacramental emblems together? In order that we may be mutual witnesses; and then true helpers one of another in keeping our pledge. (The Weekly Pulpit.) Luke 22:21-23 The Son of Man goeth The Son of Man, and His going I. THE SON OF MAN. 1. Reference of the appellation. Nothing is more certain than that the appellation, “ the Son of Man,” belongs to Jesus Christ, and is peculiar to Him. 2. Origin of the appellation (see Psalms 18:17). 3. Meaning of the appellation. When the Messiah is termed “ the Son of Man,” the term fixes the mind both on the reality of His manhood, and on the circumstances which distinguish Him among men. It marks Him as truly a man, a descendant of man; but it as really marks Him as standing out from the rest of men. The leading thoughts suggested by the designation, “ the Son of Man,” as given to our Lord Jesus Christ, are these: that He is a real man, truly a partaker of human nature; that He is a perfect man, the normal man, man as he should be; that He is the representative man, the second Adam, charged with the responsibilities of the race; that He is the God-man, a true man in union with the true God; finally, that He is the predicted man, the great subject of New Testament prophecy; a man, a son of man--the man, the son of man. II. THE GOING OF THE SON OF MAN. The predestined, predicted “ going” of this Son of Man comes now to be considered. “ The Son of Man,” said the Son of Man Himself, goeth, “ goeth as was determined, goeth as it is written.” Heaven was His original abode--earth was His present residence; but it was not intended to be His permanent dwelling-place. He had come from heaven to earth, and was to go from earth to heaven. When He came, He came not unsent. He was commissioned to do a great work, and, when that work was accomplished, He was to return to Him that sent Him. 1. He went to the grave. 2. He went to the grave as it is written. Before proceeding farther in tracing the Son of Man’ s amazing journey, it may be well for us here to stop and inquire how, when He went thus to the grave, He went “ as it is written” ? Here, there are three remarks which deserve our attention-- (1) He went in the character in which it was written He should go; (2)He went in the disposition in which it was written He should go; and (3) In many of the particular and even minute details of His progress, He went “ as it was written.” (1) He suffered and died as a public person, the representative of His people, the victim of sin. He suffered for us, the just in the room of the unjust; and this is as it was written. (2) He went, as we have seen, in the spirit of the most entire self-devotedness, cheerful resignation, magnanimous fortitude. No man took His life from Him; He laid it down of Himself. And all this was written of Him. (3) The agony in Gethsemane was as it was written; also His betrayal, the particular insults and injuries done Him, the manner in which His death was accomplished the circumstances of His funeral, etc. 3. He went to heaven. 4. He went to heaven as it is written. (D. Brown, D. D.) Luke 22:24-30 He that is greatest among you let him be as the younger How to be the greatest in Christ’ s Kingdom I. THERE IS A AND NATURAL DESIRE IN MAN FOR . 1. It is taken for granted that the principle exists universally. 2. It is admitted that the desire is an inherent principle. 3. It is therefore a holy and righteous principle. 4. It is a necessary principle. II. THE BEST MEN MAY FAIL TO THE TRUE WAY TO HONOUR AND DIGNITY. 1. The cause of the disciple’ s failure. This strife arose in the absence of the Saviour 2. The spirit of their failure. “ Accounted.” Carnal, external, worldly ambition. 3. The manifestation of their failure. III. TO CHRIST IN TRIAL FOR THE HIGHER SPHERES AND HONOURS IN HIS KINGDOM. 1. Adherence to Christ brings us into contact with the greatest trials. 2. All true disciples cleave to Christ, even in His trials. 3. Christ will honourably acknowledge and reward fidelity in His disciples. (1) It is honour as reward for humble service. (2) It is distinguished honour. (3) It will be satisfying honour. (T. M. Evans.) The evils of worldly ambition I. THE DISPUTE AROSE-- 1. Out of ignorance as to the nature of the kingdom of Christ. 2. Out of the worldly ambition of their own hearts. II. THE LORD REBUKED THIS SPIRIT OF WORLDLY . By drawing their attention to His own example. Application: 1. Show the widespread prevalence of this worldly ambition in the Church. 2. Urge lowliness of mind. (1) By the strong commendation Christ bestows on it. (2) By the injury done to the cause of Christ, when His followers manifest the opposite spirit. (F. F. Goe, M. A.) Lessons 1. Beware of a proudly aspiring and envious spirit. Seek not to rise on the ruins of others, or by trampling on others. 2. Remember wherein true greatness consists, and follow after it. It consists in high attainments in piety and usefulness. 3. Whatever your attainments may be, be humble, if you would be great. 4. Let the disciples of Christ continue with Him, notwithstanding every trial. (James Foote, M. A.) Self-seeking I. The narrative we are considering discloses what effect SELF-SEEKING HAD on the disciples. 1. It blinded their eyes to the glory of the Son of God. They saw, indeed, His mighty works, and longed to be able to do such works themselves; but the hidden life of righteousness and peace and love they did not see and were not yet capable of seeing. Darkness cannot comprehend the light. Men seeking conspicuous places cannot understand the mind which was in Christ Jesus, who made Himself of no reputation, humbled Himself, and became obedient even to the death of the cross. 2. The self-seeking spirit plunged the disciples into a quarrel on the eve of a great occasion. 3. The self-seeking spirit put the disciples into a false attitude of presumption, undertaking more than they were able to do. “ Jesus answered and said, Ye know not what ye ask.” 4. The spirit of self-seeking confused their notions of dominion. They had adopted the maxims of the Gentiles, and were in danger of believing that a man was great simply because he exercised authority. II. SELF-. 1. The courage of self-sacrifice. It shrinks back from no danger, fears no hardship, and is superior to all suffering. He took the twelve disciples apart and said unto them: “ We go up to Jerusalem; and the Son of Man shall be betrayed, condemned, and crucified.” Knowing all things that should be accomplished, He went forward; He went forward that they might be accomplished. 2. The universality of self-sacrifice. Because this is the way of the Son of Man, therefore it must become the way of every man. Each man is to take up his cross. Each man is to become like the man. 3. The reward of self-sacrifice. Spiritual promotion comes according to just and immutable law. 4. The kingdom of self-sacrifice. They would reverse the maxims of the Gentiles, and reckon the servant greater than the Master.(Edward. B. Mason.) “ As he that doth serve” Dr. Muhlenburg gave a beautiful illustration of obedience to his Master when he once took up a tray of dishes in St. Luke’ s hospital and carried them down to the kitchen. Some one meeting him, and protesting against his doing such menial work, he quickly said, “ What am I, but a waiter in the Lord’ s hotel?” The law of service The desire for distinction is one of the radical principles of our nature; never so crucified and buried but that, in unexpected ways and moments, it may revive, and rise again in power. In the world we find it, and in the Church. Charles V. could lay off the imperial purple, but could not so easily dispossess himself of the imperial will. Simon Stylites, on his pillar in the Lybian desert, was as willing to draw crowds out after him as any most lordly Bishop of Alexandria. The decrepit anchorite, in spite of his austerities, was still a man; his stomach hungry for bread, his heart hungry for applause. This subtle passion is strongest in the middle and more athletic period of life. It comes in between the love of pleasure, which besets our youth, and the love of gain, which besets our age. Though liable to desperate abuse, this passion, like every other, was benevolently given. If it causes wars, and builds up oppressive institutions, poisoning the hearts and cursing the lives of men, it is likewise one of the sharpest spurs to honourable toil, inspires the grandest achievements, and strikes its deepest roots into the deepest natures. It is, then, not to be fought against, as an enemy to virtue, but drawn into service rather, as an ally. I. TRUE IS NOT EITHER BY A , OR THE BUZZ OF POPULAR . Exalted stations add nothing to human stature. A great reputation may chance to balloon a very little man. II. TRUE IS NOT EVEN BY THE OF GREAT , OR GREAT . Hero-worship is a perpetual fact in history. Mankind are sadly prone to be fascinated by mere ability, or what is so esteemed, irrespective of its exercise; by mere learning, irrespective of its aims and uses. We encounter this idolatry in every walk of life. Much lamentation is poured out over what is called dormant power--Cromwells that lead no armies, Newtons that write no “ Principia,” Miltons that build no lofty rhymes. Men are named in every circle, of whom it is remarked that they are possessed of great abilities, if they would only exercise them; or possessed of great learning, if they would only use it. No doubt there is such a thing as having one’ s talent, a real talent, laid up in a napkin. But there is probably much less of waste in this way than is commonly supposed. There is a meaning, perhaps, in that feature of the Gospel parable, which represents the idle talent as being a solitary and single one; a talent in some one direction, as that of a mere chemist, mathematician, linguist, or logician. Ability of this sort, thus partial, limited, and narrow, may doubtless be content to slumber, or exercise itself only in trifling. But true greatness cannot justly be predicated of any such ability. Real power has fulness and variety. It is not narrow like lightning, but broad like light. The man who truly and worthily excels in any one line of endeavour, might also, under a change of circumstances, have excelled in some other line. He who eight times led conquering legions into Gaul, could also write matchless commentaries describing their exploits. He who fought at Marengo and Austerlitz, could also build Alpine roads and construct the Code Napoleon. He who sang “ Paradise Lost,” could also pen ablest state papers. III. THE IDEAL AND MEASURE OF , AS SET BEFORE US BY CHRIST HIMSELF, IN . He who does the greatest amount of good in this world is the greatest man. This is the Christian sentiment. It is also at bottom the universal sentiment. The Titans of ancient fable, who piled mountains together, and stormed the heavens, were not great, only huge. Hercules was great by virtue of the twelve great labours which he performed. Grecian art, faultless as it was, failed of being great by being sensual. Hindoo generals are not great leaders, for, though they wield vast masses of men, they wield them to little or no purpose. He is not great, who merely wastes the nations; only he is great who saves and serves them. This rule, which the historic judgment of the world thus proceeds upon, is more an instinct than a principle. Christianity lays it down with emphasis as the highest law. According to this law, he only is great of heart who floods the world with a great affection. He only is great of mind who stirs the world with great thoughts. He only is great of will who does something to shape the world to a great career. And he is greatest who does the most of all these things, and does them best. As to the particular sphere in which a man shall lay out the labour of his life, this must b.e determined by a wise regard to individual tastes, talents, and circumstances. Each must choose for himself the employment and sphere best suited to his gifts. But all must choose with one heart, one purpose, in the fear of God, and under the light of eternal realities. IV. THE MOTIVES TO THE OF SUCH A RULE OF LIFE ARE OBVIOUS AND STRONG. 1. It is the key to happiness. God is infinitely happy in His boundless beneficence. Christ was happy in giving Himself up a sacrifice for the world. In all ages, the happiest of men have been the busiest and most beneficent. 2. It enhances power; relative power and actual power. He who works for God and man, with the least of solicitude about himself, has all the forces of Providence working with him. All these forces are powerful, so is he; and their triumph is his triumph. Moreover, the benevolent affections are the best stimulants of the intellect, the best allies and energizers of the will. Henry Martyn was twice the man for going to Persia that he would have been had he remained in England; and consequently has twice the fame. It is by dying that we live. It is only the good and the self-denying who rule us from their urns. 3. It is noble. Selfishness is pitiful and paltry. (R. D. Hitchcock, D. D.) He that serveth--The servant of sinners We find in these words a double reference--first, to the character, and secondly, to the office, of the Son of Man; to His character as the lowly one, to His office as the servant. For the purpose of bringing both these things before His disciples, He makes use of those marvellous words, “ I am among you as the Serving One.” Consider three things in reference to this service. I. ITS HISTORY. It is not with His birth in Bethlehem that Christ’ s service begins. His visit to our first father in paradise was its true commencement. After that we find Him, age after age, visiting the children of men, and always in the character of one ministering to their wants. At His ascension He only entered on a new department of service; and as the Advocate with the Father, the Intercessor, the Forerunner, we see Him still serving. Nor, when He comes again in strength and majesty, as King of kings and Lord of lords, does He lose sight of His character as the Ministering One Luke 12:37). II. LET US THE NATURE OF THIS SERVICE. It is in all respects like Himself--like Him who, though He was rich, for our sakes became poor. 1. It is willing service. His varied rounds of service are no heavy task. He is the willing servant of the needy. 2. It is a loving service. Out of no fountain save that of love could such amazing, such endless acts of service flow. The loving and the serving are inseparable. 3. It is self-denying service. To continue ministering, day after day, in the midst of reproach, and opposition, and rejection, was self-denial and devotedness such as man can hardly either credit or conceive. 4. It is patient, unwearied service. He has compassion on the ignorant, and on them that arc out of the way. He breaks not the bruised reed; He quenches not the smoking flax. By day or by night we find Him ever girt for service. 5. It is free service. It cannot be bought, for what gold could purchase it? Neither does it need to be bought, for it is freely rendered. III. ITS ENDS AND OBJECTS. It is to sinners that this service is rendered; and there is much in this to exhibit the ends which it has in view. This gracious servant of the needy is willing to be employed by any one, no matter who, let him be the poorest, and the sickliest, and the feeblest of all who ever sought a helper, a protector, or a guide, on their way to the kingdom. (H. Bonar, D. D.) The life of service Let us ask ourselves why our Lord has done so much for mankind in proposing a life of service as the true life of man. Service, I apprehend, is thus necessary in some shape for all of us, because it involves the constant repression of those features of our nature which constantly tend to drag it down and degrade it. Aristotle remarked, more than two thousand years ago, that all our faulty tendencies range themselves under the two heads of temper and desire--bad temper or ill-regulated desire. When the one element is not predominant in an undisciplined character, you will find, in some shape, the other, and sometimes you will find the one and sometimes the other at different periods in the life of the same man. Now, service--that is, the voluntary undertaking of work in obedience to the Higher Will--is a corrective to each of these tendencies. 1. It is a corrective, first of all, of temper in its ordinary and everyday form of self-assertion or pride. The man who serves from his heart cannot indulge in self-assertion; he represses self if he tries to perform his service well. Each effort, each five minutes, of conscientious service has the effect of keeping self down, of bidding it submit to a higher and more righteous will; and this process steadily persevered in ultimately represses it, if not altogether, yet very considerably. And what a substantial service this is to human nature and to human character. Be sure of this, that self-assertion, if unchecked, is pitiless when any obstacle to its gratification comes in its way. The self-asserting man delights in making an equal or an inferior feel the full weight of his petty importance; he enjoys the pleasure of commanding in the exact ratio of the pain or discomfort which he sees to be the cost of obedience; and thus, sooner or later, selfassertion becomes tyranny, and tyranny, sooner rather than later, means some revolt which carries with it the ruin of order. The tyrant in the State, in the family, in the office, in the workshop, is the man bent on the assertion of self; and, despite the moments of passing gratification which he enjoys, such a tyrant is really more miserable than his subjects, for the governing appetite of his character can never be adequately gratified; it is in conflict with the nature of things, it is in conflict with the laws of social life, it is in conflict with the Divine will; and when it is repressed, curbed, crushed by voluntary work in obedience to a higher will, a benefit of the very first order has been conferred on human nature and on human society. 2. And in like manner work voluntarily undertaken in obedience to a higher will corrects ill-regulated desire. Distinct from gross sin is the slothful, easy, enervated, self-pleasing temper which is the soil in which gross sin grows. The New Testament calls this district of human nature concupiscence--that is to say, misdirected desire--desire which was meant to cleave to God--at least, to centre in God the eternal beauty, but which, through some bad warp, does, in fact, attach itself to created objects, and generally to some object attractive to the senses. This evil can only be radically cured by making God the object of desire--that is to say, by a love of God; and a true love of God will express itself in service--the service of man as well as of God (1 John 4:20). Service keeps this ill-regulated desire at bay, and it centres the soul’ s higher desire or love more and more perfectly on its one legitimate object. And then, incidentally, it braces character, and this is what is wanted if a man is to escape from the enervation of a life of sensuous and effeminate ease. (Canon Liddon.) The glory of service Helpfulness is the highest, quality of the human life. Service is the crowning glory of man. The serving type is the noblest type of all the manifold varieties of human development. The principle of the text is not to the effect that service is one and the same with, or altogether made up of, what we know as the activities of life. “ And if I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and if I give my body to be burned, and have not love, it profiteth me nothing.” That it is not always what we call the most active life which is the most useful. Activity is not all of service. There is the moral power static, as well as the moral power dynamic. Again, let us note that service does not discard the element of beauty or the splendour of intellectual gifts. Beauty, rightly so named, binds up ever within it a factor of highest value. A beautiful picture is nothing less than a moral force in the world. The Madonna face, the Madonna form, through the centuries rebuke coarseness, teach purity, uplift human thoughts, refine human souls. So with flowers. Their beauty has a moral value. The window-sill which lifts them up is twice blessed. It blesses him who plants and him who passes. The law of service, as proclaimed by highest authority, refuses her not beauty as an ally. All that is meant is that, when Beauty stands by herself, divorced from Service, hen the latter is higher, nobler. So also of the splendour of mental gifts. This splendour also may rest upon, may add a new beauty and a new power to that which is the highest type of human life. But when it stands off by itself, when it offers itself as a substitute for or a rival of service, then to the latter must be given the pre-eminence. Measured by the true standard of human greatness, the inventor of the Calculus is less of a man than the founder of London’ s ragged schools. It is better and it is nobler to help one poor, vicious human life into a pure and happy immortality than it is to weigh the sun or to write equations for the planets. The same must also be said when high station is brought into comparison with helpfulness. But let us turn to the direct consideration of the great canon of human worthiness. I. IS MORE LIKE, IN MORE PERFECT HARMONY WITH, THE DIVINE BEAUTY, WITH THAT DIVINE BEAUTY WHICH HAS ITS EVENER UPON NATURE’ S FIELD AND IN THE HUMAN SOUL. Even upon His material works has God stamped the law of sympathetic service. Read this written out in the clouds of the sky. These are the great water-carriers of the world. And how diligently, how joyously, they carry on their labour of love t The huge masses skip and whirl and chase each other like lambs at play; but, however weary, they never think of laying down the burden which they bear. And the mountains, too, are in service. Look upon the Andes, vertibral ridge of a continent. They are a giant hand raised to catch and redistribute the moisture of the trade-winds from the Atlantic, thus sending it back across the plains in healthful and life-giving streams. And water, too, serves. By one of its lines cold is carried southward, and by another heat is carried northward, thus diminishing the inequalities of temperature and making the earth a pleasant residence for man. So is it through every department. Nature is an organism. Not a drop of water leads a selfish life, not a wind-blast is without its mission. And let that human life which dares to lift heavenward the formal profession as the fulfilment of the Divine demand--let such a one take his rebuke from ocean’ s lips! Let him hear it sounding in the winds of heaven! Let him hear it thundered forth by the everlasting mountains. Human lives are not wanted in this world for ornament. God has prettier things for this purpose. And such a life, I say, is in full harmony with the Divine. For a long time the world and man knew not God. In this ignorance and blindness we can well imagine men asking the question, “ What is God?” To whom is He like? Is He the Zeus of the celestial world, full of vindictiveness and passion? Is He the Oriental monarch, luxuriously lounging in the palace room of the universe? And while men so questioned, the door of heaven opened, and a Divine one in visible form walked forth before the eyes of men. And this form, what was it? “ That of a servant.” He bore men’ s burdens. He healed men’ s sicknesses. He comforted human sorrows. He went about doing good. He gave His life a ransom for many. And now that the Divine Spirit is in the world the manifestation is the same. He, too, cowries in service. He is the Advocate, the Comforter, His the soft hand which wipes away the falling tear and binds up the broken heart. Such is the Divine, such is Deity. II. But, in the second place, OF ALL MORAL FORCES, IS THE MOST POTENT IN THE OF . There is nothing which grounds a man in truth and righteousness so firmly, there is nothing which lifts him up so surely, as the doing of good to others. This, indeed, is only the highest illustration of a law wide as the realm of human life. The bird which sings for others gladdens its own heart with its song. The brook which flows with music for listening ears grows more clear and limpid as it flows. Old ocean’ s mighty tides and racing gulf streams, which ever serve the need of man, paint the great deep with its spotless blue, and bring safety and life to all the mighty host which march and counter-march within its hollow bed. In doing good, everything in God’ s universe gets good. Service of others is highest service of self, and the best way for any man to grow in grace is to move forward into service. III. But, again, IS MORE LASTING, MORE , THAN ELSE OF HUMAN LIFE. “ Whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. But charity never faileth.” Bad as is this world, it is good enough to transmute and to hold immortality within it. The beauty of the beneficent deed, the widow’ s two mites, the alabaster box of ointment, Sir Philip Sidney’ s cup of cold water; the passing shadow of Florence Nightingale, which the dying soldier strove to kiss; above all, the patient and gentle self-denial of the Christ life--these are pictures which this world--God’ s world, after all--will not let fade. The suns of centuries rise and set upon them. Consider what this canon of human worthiness calls for of those who would receive honour under it. 1. This, first of all: personal goodness. In this world of ours the tares grow together with the wheat. Service of man calls for a servant first of all; and this can no one of us be who is not disinterestedly in love with his kind, and true and pure in all his works. To do good works which shall endure we ourselves must be good. 2. In the second place, the canon of the text demands that we should be willing to help when help is required. 3. The law of the higher type also makes this a duty. We should seek opportunities for doing good. The glory of the patriarch of Uz was written in these words, “ The cause that I knew not I searched out.” 4. The principle of the text teaches also the obligation of self-training. If we do not know how to help now, why, then, we should learn. If we are unfit for service now, we must make ourselves fit. Congenital infirmities may be corrected. The inertia of selfish idleness and of grasping covetousness may be overcome by him who, upon his knees, opens his heart to the entrance of the Divine Spirit. The enthusiasm of humanity may be caught from the example and inspiration of Jesus Christ. The mill-wheel will cease to revolve when the waters of the rushing stream are cut off; the moving train will stop when the glowing heat cools within the hidden chamber; and charity in this world will degenerate into a professional schedule without inspiration and without power when the name of Jesus is no longer writ by the hand of Faith upon its banner. (S. S. Mitchell, D. D.) Servus servorum I. OUR LORD’ S . 1. In the world our Lord was not one of the cultured few on whom others wait. He was a working-man, and in spirit Servant of servants. 2. In the circle of His own disciples He was one that served. 3. In celebration of Holy Supper, He was specially among them “ as He that serveth,” for He washed His disciples’ feet. 4. In the whole course of His life, Jesus on earth ever took the place of the servant or slave. His ear was bored by His entering into covenant. “ Mine ears hast thou digged, or pierced (Psalms 40:6 (margin); Exodus 21:6). His office was announced at His coming, “ Lo, I come to do thy will!” (Psalms 40:7; Hebrews 10:5-9). His nature was fitted for service: He “ took upon Him the form of a servant” (Philippians 2:7). He assumed the lowest place among men (Psalms 22:6; Isaiah 53:3). He cared for others, and not for Himself. “ The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve” (Mark 10:45). He laid aside His own will (John 4:34; John 6:38). He bore patiently all manner of hardness (1 Peter 2:23). II. THE WONDER OF IT--that He should be a servant among His own servants. The marvel of it was rendered the greater-- 1. As He was Lord of all by nature and essence (Colossians 1:15-19). 2. As He was superior in wisdom, holiness, power, and in every other way, to the very best of them (Matthew 8:26-27; John 14:9). 3. As He was so greatly their Benefactor (John 15:16). 4. As they were such poor creatures, and so unworthy to be served. III. THE OF IT. We must look for this to His own nature. 1. He is so infinitely great (Hebrews 1:2-4), 2. He is so immeasurably full of love (John 15:9; 1 John 3:16). IV. THE OF IT. 1. In cheerfully choosing to fulfil the most lowly offices. 2. In manifesting great lowliness of spirit and humility of bearing Ephesians 4:1-3; Philippians 2:3; 1 Peter 5:5). 3. In laying ourselves out for the good of others. Let self: sacrifice be the rule of our existence (2 Corinthians 12:15). 4. In gladly bearing injustice rather than break the peace, avenge ourselves, or grieve others (1 Peter 2:19-20; 1 Peter 3:14). 5. In selecting that place in which we receive least, and give most; choosing to wait at table rather than to sit at meat. (C. H. Spurgeon.) Christlike service A true character can never be built on a false foundation; on the denial of a fact or on pretending not to see it. There are greater men and less; stronger and weaker; wiser and less wise; men fit to rule and men fit only to be led; some who can teach and others whose business it is to learn. The right relationship between men.is to be reached, if at all, by a manly acknowledgment of the facts which divide them and the individual superiorities which set one above another. It is he who can rightly say, “ Master and Lord am I” ; who can also say with the fullest emphasis, “ I am among you as the servant” ! I. Since, then, THE MORAL OF THIS SERVICE were those which gave it worth, let us try in a few words to disentangle these moral characteristics and understand them. They may be summed up, I think, in these two: in unselfish love as the root-virtue, and in lowliness of mind as the specific shape which love must take when it girds itself to serve. II. Taking, then, these words of Jesus, “ I am in the midst of you as your attendant,” to be virtually OF HIS WHOLE ON EARTH and the spirit of His entire career, we find that His life may be described thus: it was a voluntary service of other men, rooted in pure love for them, and carried out with such lowliness of mind as deems no office degrading which can be lovingly rendered. Notice next, more expressly than we have yet done, that such lowly, loving service of others was not in His case an occasional effort or a mere ornament of character exhibited now and then. It formed the staple of His life. Christ came, not to be ministered unto, but to minister; not to enrich Himself, either with nobler or baser wealth, but to impoverish Himself that He might make many rich. With Him it is not, as with other men, “ I will sit at table, and do you wait on Me” ; but it is, “ you sit at table, and I will wait.” III. But is this, after all, A MORE WAY WHICH JESUS HAS SHOWN? Wherein is it more excellent? The King’ s Son came among us. We called Him our “ Lord and Master,” and we said well; but He was as one who served us! Now we know that the Father on high is like unto Him. The divinest part of His relationship to His creatures lies here, that being Lord of all He makes Himself the servant of all. How is He by day and night creation’ s unwearied watcher, provider, attendant, benefactor! The lions roar and He feedeth them. Not a sparrow falls but He heeds it. The lilies spin not, yet He clothes them. True, patient minister to each creature’ s need, in whose loving eyes nothing is too minute to be remembered nor too mean to be served; He is for ever with tender humble carefulness laying His might and His providence and His inventiveness and His tastefulness at the service of all creation. What! cries out the heart of the proud, is this your conception of the Eternal? Were not all things made for His glory, then? Yes, indeed, for His glory; but not in the ignoble sense we so often intend! Not made to be sacrificed to His pleasure. Not made for a boastful display of His omnipotence or skill; nor as mere trappings or attendants to lend dignity to His court. Away with such vain thoughts, borrowed from the barbaric and vulgar splendour of an Oriental despotism! Verily, the universe is the mirror of its Creator’ s glory; but it is so because it shows Him to be prodigal of His love, lavishing His care upon the least, stooping to adorn the poorest, and made then supremely glad when He can see His creatures glad. The glory of God; where is it? that He ministers to all! His blessedness; what is it? to make others blessed! I see, then, that when the Son came among us as a servant, it became Him as a son to do so, for it became the Father whose Son He was. It was a prolongation only, although a right marvellous one, of that character whose Divineness men had been slow to see, but which God the Maker had pencilled with light across His creation. (J. O. Dykes, D. D.) Continued with Me in My temptationsThe solitariness of Christ in His temptations We get here a wonderful glimpse into the heart of Christ, and a most pathetic revelation of His thoughts and experiences; all the more precious because it is quite incidental, and, we may say, unconscious. I. THE TEMPTED CHRIST. “ In My temptations” --so He summed up His life! The period to which He refers lies between the wilderness and the garden, and includes neither. His whole ministry was a field of continual and diversified temptations. No sham fight. 1. Let us think of the tempted Christ, that our conceptions of His sinlessness may be increased. His was no untried and cloistered virtue, pure because never brought into contact with seducing evil, but a militant and victorious goodness, that was able to withstand in the evil day. 2. Let us think of the tempted Christ, that our thankful thoughts of what He bore for us may be warmer and more adequate, as we stand afar off and look on at the mystery of His battle with our enemies and His. 3. Let us think of the tempted Christ, to make the lighter burden of our cross and our less terrible conflict easier to bear and to wage. So will He continue with us in our temptations, and patience and victory flow to us from Him. II. THE LONELY CHRIST. The most solitary man that ever lived. His nearest kindred stood aloof from Him. Even in the small company of His friends, there were absolutely none who either understood Him or sympathized with Him. Talk of the solitude of pure character amid evil, like Lot in Sodom, or of the loneliness of uncomprehended aims or unshared thoughts--whoever experienced that as keenly as Christ did? The more pure andlofty a nature, the more keen its sensitiveness, the more exquisite its delights, and the sharper its pains. The more loving and unselfish a heart the more its longing for companionship; and the more its aching in loneliness. That lonely Christ sympathizes with all solitary hearts. If ever we feel ourselves misunderstood and thrown back upon ourselves; if ever our heart’ s burden of love is rejected; if our outward lives be lonely and earth yields nothing to stay our longing for companionship; if our hearts have been filled with dear ones and are now empty, or but filled with tears, let us think of Him and say, “ Yet I am not alone.” He lived alone, alone He died, that no heart might ever be solitary any more. III. THE CHRIST. His heart was gladdened by loving friends, and He recognized in their society a ministry of love. Where there is a loving heart there is acceptable service. It is possible that our poor, imperfect deeds shall be an odour of a sweet smell, acceptable, well-pleasing to Him. Which of us that is a father is not glad at his children’ s gifts, even though they be purchased with his own money, and be of little use? They mean love, so they are precious. And Christ, in like manner, accepts what we bring, even though it be chilled by selfishness, and faith broken by doubt, and submission crossed by self-will. (A. Maclaren, D. D.) I appoint unto you a kingdomCalled to a kingdom There was once a young prince, heir to the throne of Russia, who was giving himself to every form of dissipation. He took up his residence in Paris, and entered heartily into all its gaieties. One evening, as he u as seated with a number of young profligates like himself, drinking, gambling, and making merry, a message was privately conveyed to him that his father was dead. Pushing away from him the dice and the wine-cup, he rose up and said, “ I am emperor!” and forthwith announced that his must henceforth be a different kind of life. Young men, I have to tell you tonight of a kingdom to which you are called. To you the Lord Jesus says, “ I appoint unto you a kingdom, as My Father hath appointed unto Me.” To no meaner rank are you to aspire than to that of “ kings and priests unto God.” But when the day came that Saul was actually to be made king, the youth was “ not to be found.” He had hid himself among the stuff. Saul concealed amid the baggage, perhaps the commissariat for that large assembly of people; hidden, tall fellow as he was, amid the heap of boxes and baskets of all kinds--is he not a picture of many a young man whom God is calling to a kingdom, but who is chin-deep in business, so absorbed in worldly matters that he cannot attend to the affairs of his soul? (J. T.Davidson, D. D.) Luke 22:31-34 Satan hath desired to have you The temptation of St. Peter Our Lord is conversing here with His dear disciples a little before His crucifixion. In the tenderness of His heart, He almost thanks them for their faithful adherence to Him (Luke 22:28-30). And now comes a sudden transition, showing us the strong feeling at work at this time in our Lord’ s breast. He thinks the next moment of the perils these men will have to pass through in their way to those thrones, and gives them abruptly a warning of one of them. I. We must begin with THIS WARNING. 1. See in it our Lord’ s knowledge of the invisible world. We know nothing of Satan but what we are told. But the Lord Jesus does see him as he goes about and He not only sees him, He can look into his heart and discern the secret purposes and desires of it. 2. See next here the crafty policy of Satan. “ He hath desired to have you,” our Lord says; “ you especially; you, believers in Me, rather than the Jews or heathen around you; you, My most beloved disciples,” etc. Why? Because they stood more in his way than any others. 3. We may see here the limited power of Satan. He cannot touch one of these men without God’ s permission. II. Leaving now the other disciples, let us look at THE EFFECT OF THIS WARNING ON ONE OF THEM, PETER. “ Simon, Simon, behold, Satan hath desired to have you.” 1. Observe, that it excited his love. If mere feeling could have made a martyr, Peter was already prepared to be one. 2. And observe again--this warning did not shake Peter’ s self-confidence. And yet it was given in a manner calculated to shake it. It made no impression on him or a very faint one. 3. And mark again--this warning did not prevent Peter’ s fall. III. We may come now to another point in the text--THE TENDER MERCY OF OUR LORD TO PETER HIS SELF- AND FALL, or rather, in anticipation of his self-sufficiency and fall. “ I have prayed for thee,” He says, “ that thy faith fail not.” 1. We must be struck at once, I think, with the lowliness of this language. Our Lord has been speaking just before in the almost unveiled dignity of the Godhead. He has been manifesting, too, a knowledge of Satan and a knowledge of the human heart such as none but the infinite Jehovah can possess; and yet when His fallen apostle is to be rescued, what does He say? “ I will rescue him” ? or, as in Paul’ s case, “ My grace is sufficient for him” ? No; He speaks now as a feeble man; “ The mighty God only can rescue him. I have prayed for him.” What a view does this give us of our Lord’ s humility! And what a view, too, of the awful nature of sin! of the difficulty of extricating even a servant of God out of it! 2. Observe, too, the peculiar tenderness of His love for those who are peculiarly tempted. 3. And there is the intercession of our Lord to be noticed here--its influence on our preservation from sin or recovery from it. Faith lies at the root of every grace. It is that within us which first lays hold of the Lord Jesus, and it is that which keeps hold of Him. It seems the lowest, the poorest, and meanest of all graces, but it is notwithstanding the most active and operative of all; it secretly does the most. (C. Bradley, M. A.) The sifting of Peter I. THE OF PETER. The character of Peter is a very marked one. His character stands out in bold prominence and relief, like an object situated on a height, and seen between us and a clear sky. We notice at once his natural sincerity and boldness, his vehemence and self-confidence; his liability to be hurried away by the tide of events and the current of prevailing feeling. We perceive that as a disciple of Christ he is under the guardian care and grace of heaven; but we discover sin lurking within, and bursting forth from time to time as the liquid fire of the volcano breaks out from the mountain whose surface may be covered with the loveliest foliage. His love to Jesus was genuine and sincere--for with all his failings Peter was no hypocrite; yet he not infrequently resists the will of his Master, and at times is positively ashamed of Him. He is zealously affected in every good thing, but his zeal is often unthinking and impetuous, and proceeds from a self confident and self-righteous rather than a humble and trustful spirit of dependence on God; and it comes forth when it should be restrained, and fails when it should flow. II. OF PETER BY SATAN. “ Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat.” We see that we are to regard our temptations as coming from Satan the tempter, the accuser. He who rebelled against God in heaven seeks to thwart His will on earth. “ The devil entered into Judas Iscariot,” whom he hurried from one crime to another till he laid violent hands on himself. May he not succeed also with his brother apostle? In tempting us Satan takes advantage of two circumstances. He employs the world to seduce us, and he addresses the corruption of the heart. First, he takes advantage of the circumstances in which we are placed, and of the worldly and sinful character of those with whom we mingle. Breathing as we do an infected atmosphere, we are apt to take in malaria which breeds moral disease. III. THE OF PETER, THROUGH THE PRAYER OF JESUS HIS FAITH. It is of vast moment that Christians should know wherein lies the secret of their strength. It lies first of all in the intercession of Christ, and secondly in their remaining faith. 1. It does not lie primarily in yourselves--in the liveliness of your feelings or the strength of your resolutions. Purposes formed in our own strength are like the writing upon the sand, which is swept away by the first breath of the tempest or the first swelling of the tide. The believer’ s steadfastness does not lie in himself, but in another. His strength is in the foundation on which he rests, and that foundation is the Rock of Ages. How was it that Peter was restored? The cause was to be found in the work of Christ. “ I have prayed for thee.” He was recovered, not by the meritorious power and efficacy of his own prayers, but by the prayers of Christ. When Peter was brought to repentance he prayed; but there is a previous question--What brought him to repentance? If Christ had not first prayed for him, he had never prayed for himself. 2. There was, however, a secondary power, and this was Peter’ s faith. IV. THE COMMAND, “ WHEN THOU ART , THY .” In this conversion there was much searching. This we learn from the interview with which our Lord favoured Peter after His resurrection. “ Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou Me?” was the question; and Peter could answer. Brethren, according to the sins of which you are conscious, so let your love and zeal now be in the service of God. (J. McCosh, D. D.) The sifting of life The figure which Christ here makes use of in order to describe the severe ordeal through which Peter, the most prominent of all the disciples, was to pass, is a very significant one; and we cannot believe that it was used by chance, or without full intention. The sifting of wheat is a most hard and thorough, but a most necessary, process. The wheat, as it has grown, has become associated with the protecting chaff, which it is necessary should be blown away, and with the foreign substances taken from the earth and from the air, which must be separated. Before the wheat is ready for use, it must be sifted or winnowed; no pains must be spared to make the process as thorough as possible. Only an enemy to the wheat, or a disbeliever in its true powers, would desire to spare it such an ordeal. As it falls, after such a process, into the receptacle which has been prepared for it, solid and clean, its value is greatly enhanced. There is now no doubt about its true nature and the work to which it should be put. It carries out all the points of the analogy to notice that Peter is not promised that he shall be saved from the sifting process: no hand is put forth to hold him securely sheltered; no cloud wraps him away from danger. Peter is too valuable to be thus treated. If he is wheat he must be sifted. I. And so we learn the great lesson from Christ, that ARE AS AND FOR THE SOUL AS IS FOR THE WHEAT. The winds of temptation blow, and the poor, lightly-weighted souls are carried away; while the strong ones are stripped of many things in which they trusted, and the true power of principle becomes more evident in their lives. The question of the winnowing floor is always being repeated: Are you wheat or chaff? 1. There is the shifting of change of position, the pouring from vessel to vessel--a process under which the light grains are removed, and which finds its parallel in the change of life’ s demands. You are rich, and the question the next day is, Can you stand poverty? or you are poor, and the sudden access of prosperity tests your real ability and weight. Will the one rob you of your spirit, or the other of your humility? If they will, then you have been sifted with the result of proving that you are but chaff. Changes from joy to sorrow or from sorrow to joy, from light to dark or from dark to light--those have revealed the substance of many a man to us; and we have said, “ I thought that he could stand it better,” or we have exclaimed, “ What a noble man he is! He is just as he was before, not puffed up by his exaltation, not broken by dejection.” 2. And there is the sifting of progress: ideas and men all pass through that. New tests are applied, just as ever new sieves, with closer and closer meshes, wait for the falling grain with sharper discrimination at each stage of the process. The truth of one generation or one age of life is sifted before it is accepted by the next. Some accretion, some profitless protecting husk, is cast off, and the substance is more valuable than ever. The man finds, after life’ s experience, that not one particle of the truth as to honesty, virtue, and God has proved itself false, although he smiles at the childish conceptions which enshrined it for him, and which long ago passed away; and with each generation God’ s truth is made simpler and clearer to the eyes of all. II. BUT WHAT HAS SATAN TO DO WITH IT? Satan rejoiced at the anticipation of this process and longed to see it begin, because he did not believe that Peter could stand it; he does not believe that any man can, and he longs, therefore, to see men come under the test. At first this sifting seems to give evil the advantage. But the meaning of those words of Christ’ s gradually comes out: “ Fear not them that kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do.” There is an ultimate kernel of life which the sifting cannot touch. It is a reality which defies all the processes of ultimate solution which can be brought against it. That is the belief which makes a man strong to endure temptation, brave to pass through all changes, courageous to march with all progress of ideas. It was to the soul that Christ spoke; on it all His work was based. When He had once seen that soul conscious of itself and of its power in the heart of a man, He was not afraid to let the world sift him, though he might be a man with as many weaknesses and foibles as Simon Peter. Let them be shaken off and blown away, like corrupting substances or infolding chaff. When that was all done the man remained. III. I think, then, that we can understand that tone of confidence with which Jesus speaks of the trial which is to befall His great disciple. To His eye the conditions are not hopeless. He does not deprecate the struggle, but rather in it anticipates the defeat of Satan. But the tone of confidence is still more sublime when THE MEANS OF AND VICTORY are considered. The whole of the sifting process administered by its great master and confident authority, Satan, is to be brought to bear; and yet Peter will not succumb because Christ has prayer for him that his faith fail not. See how Christ puts Himself against the world. Through that prayer the life of Peter was made strong to bear the ordeal; through that prayer he was able to defy the world and Satan. That prayer told of the relation which He had established between that disciple for whom, and the Father to whom, it was offered. He stood between the two. The subject, the offerer, the receiver of the prayer, were one in their purpose and desire to overcome and baffle Satan. Defeat was impossible. (Arthur Brooks.) Christ’ s warning to Peter 1. The greatness or nearness of the danger. There are some souls that there is no delaying or dallying with them; but if ye will save them at all, ye must save them quickly; ye must deal roundly and nimbly with them if ever ye intend them any good. The Spirit of God, He speaks quick, and He speaks often, again and again, where He would prevent from danger. 2. The security of the person warned. Peter was not more in danger than he was insensible of his danger. 3. The affection of the Monitor or person that gives the warning; that is also in the doubling of the appellation. It is a sign Christ’ s heart was much in it, and that He bore a singular love and respect to Peter, in that He does thus passionately admonish him. Love is full of solicitude and carefulness for the party beloved. The matter of the admonition or the warning itself. 1. The persons aimed at. They are here said to be you. He spake before to Peter in the singular, Simon, Simon; now it is you, in the plural. To signify thus much unto us; that there’ s the same condition of all believers as of one. That which befalls one Christian it is incident to all the rest. The reason of it is this--because they all consist of the same natures, and are acted by the same principles. (1) You believers, rather than other men. Satan’ s aim is especially at such, to get them. As for wielded and ungodly persons, who are yet in their unregenerate condition, he has them already. And there are two considerations especially which do lay ground to this practice in him. (a) That absolute antipathy and hatred and contrariety which is in him to goodness itself, yea, to God Himself, who is the chiefest good. The devil, because he hates goodness itself, therefore he assaults it wherever he finds it. (b) It proceeds from that envy and pride which is in him. (2) You eminent believers rather than other Christians. This is the manner of Satan to cast his sticks most at those trees which are fullest of fruit; where he spies more grace than ordinary, there especially to lay his chiefest assaults. There is a double reason for it which does encourage him to it--First, it is the greater victory; and secondly, it is the greater advantage. He does more, both in it and by it. The use of this to ourselves is--First, to teach Christians not to trust to their own habitual graces nor to the number or measure of them. Secondly, we learn, hence, not to pass uncharitable censures upon the servants of God which are under temptations, as to conclude them therefore to be none of His servants. (3) You apostles and ministers rather than other eminent believers. I. The DESIGN itself--Satan hath desired you. As here is Satan’ s restraint, so moreover his malice and boldness of attempt. 1. Here is implied Peter’ s ignorance and present unadvisedness. He was not aware of this attempt of Satan. So is it likewise with many others of God’ s servants. Satan does secretly lay siege unto their souls, and they do not discern it. It is a great piece of skill to know indeed when we are tempted, and to be apprehensive that we are under a temptation. 2. We see here also the love of Christ, who helps our ignorance in this particular, and advises us where we are less regardful 3. Here is also, as sometimes, the eminency and conspicuousness of the temptation. (1) To have you to corrupt you. (2) This were enough to make us look about us; that Satan would have us to corrupt us, but yet that is not all--he would have us to afflict us too. As Satan would weaken our faith, so also darken our comfort; and as he would draw us into sin, so likewise trouble us and torment us for it. II. The of it. And to sift or winnow you as wheat. 1. Take it in an ill sense; as Satan’ s intent, so to winnow you, is to shake and remove you. This expression shows the unweariedness of Satan in his attempts upon the godly, and his several courses which he takes with them, to annoy them. He shifts them and he removes them from one temptation to another. But-- 2. It may also be taken in a good sense; and so, as expressing to us the event of Satan’ s practices, though beyond his own desire and intention. The winnowing of the corn in the fan, it is not for the hurt of it, but for the good of it. And they fit them also for future service. We see here how also God outwits Satan and destroys his own plots by himself. (J. Horton, D. D.) Peter’ s sifting I. THE WHICH OUR LORD MAKES IN PRAYING FOR HIS . Why single out Simon for this peculiar distinction? Because he was the weakest, the most in danger, the most liable to fall. His rashness and impulsiveness would expose him to the fiercest assaults, and render him least able to resist. Let us learn from this that the easily tempted ones are they to whom Christ’ s sympathy and helpfulness go out in most tender interest. II. THE NATURE OF THE HELP WHICH CHRIST GAVE TO PETER IN HIS PERIL. 1. Notice the individuality of this intercession. “ For thee.” Each one of us is the object of Christ’ s particular watchfulness and care. 2. Christ made His supplication before the danger came. “ I have prayed.” He did not wait until the disciple was in the snare before He sought help for him. 3. The petition itself. What did Jesus ask for His imperilled disciple? Not that he might escape the trial, for he needed just this experience, not even that he might not fail; but that his faith might not fail, might not suffer an utter and endless eclipse as had that of Judas. III. THE RESULT OF PETER’ S SIFTING. Chaff sifted out, pure wheat left. IV. THROUGH HIS PAINFUL , SIMON WAS TO BE A MORE HELPFUL MAN. “ When thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren.” He was to use his new knowledge, gained by his sad and painful experiences, in blessing others. Whatever God does for us, He wants us to do in turn for others. All the lessons He teaches us, He wants us to teach again. (J. R. Miller, D. D.) The benefits of sifting There are defects in many Characters which apparently can be removed only by some terrible experiences like those of Peter. This seems to have been true of David. Mingled with all his noble qualities, qualities which made him, when purified, the man after God’ s own heart, there were many evil elements of which his nature had to be cleansed; and he also was allowed to fall into Satan’ s hand to be sifted. But from that sifting he came a new man, cleansed and enriched. Many of David’ s sweetest songs received their inspiration from the experience of his fall and eclipse, and from the painful chastening he endured. In every matured life, however many the noble qualities, there are also many faults and defects bound up with the good. For example, one has firmness, and firmness is a good quality; but it is yet a very chaffy firmness. Some of it is stubbornness; part is selfish pride; part is most unamiable obstinacy. There is a good element there, but there is also much chaff which must be blown away before it can be noble, Christlike firmness. By and by, when mid-life has come, and when the defects have been sifted out, you will see a firmness stable as a rock, yet gentle as the heart of a little child. It has been cleansed of its chaff in the gusts of trial, and is now pure, golden wheat. Or there is pride in the character. It makes a man arrogant, self-willed, haughty. But pride is not altogether an evil quality. It has in it an element of nobleness. It is the consciousness of dignity, of Divine birthright, of power. As it appears, however, in early years, there is much in it that is offensive and bad. The man must be winnowed until the unlovely qualities are removed, till the arrogance and the selfwill are gone. At length you see the old man, after many experiences of trial and pain, lordly and regal still, but gentle, humble, benevolent, with a sweet spirit, using his noble gifts for lowly service, with his fine hands washing the feet of humble disciples. Pride has not been destroyed; it has been sifted, cleansed, and sanctified. Or take gentleness; even this quality, beautiful as it is, may be very chaffy. It may be weakness; it may be the absence of firmness, mixed up with timidity and want of strong moral principle. The gentleness is golden, but the defects must be got out. Take, once more, what we call temper. A man is easily provoked, swept away by sudden gusts of anger. Now, temper itself is not a bad quality. It is not to be destroyed, as we sometimes say. Without temper a bar of steel becomes like lead. A man without temper is weak and worthless. We are to learn self-control. A strong person is one who has a strong temper under perfect mastery. These are simple illustrations of the sifting which Peter experienced. Every one has, in greater or less degree, to pass through the same processes in some way. Sometimes the separation and cleansing go on quietly and gradually, under the kindly culture of the Spirit. Sometimes afflictions are God’ s messengers--sickness, or sorrow, or pain. Sometimes temptation is necessary, thebuffeting of Satan. All of us have in us by nature, even after regeneration, much that is unlovely, much that can never enter heaven, and must in some way be got out of us. In Guido’ s painting of “ Michael and the Dragon” the archangel stands upon the fallen foe, holding a drawn sword, victorious and supreme; but the monster beneath him yet lives. It cowers and writhes. It dares not lift up its head, but it is not yet slain. This is a symbol of the conquest of grace over the old nature in the best of us. It is not dead, though under our feet; and this old evil must be got out. The process may be tong and painful, but Christ is looking on, and every experience of sifting should leave us a little purer. Thus it is that even our falls, if we are Christ’ s, make us holier. Evil habits conquered become germs of character. An old man sat dreaming one day about his past, regretting his mistakes and follies, and wishing he had never committed them. He made a list on paper of twenty things in his life of which he was ashamed, and was about to seize an imaginary sponge and rub them all out of his biography, thinking how much more beautiful his character would have been if they had not been committed. But to his amazement he found that if there were any golden threads running through his life, they had been wrought there by the regrets felt at wrongs; and that, if he should wipe out these wrong acts, he would destroy at the same time whatever of nobleness or beauty there was in his character. He found that he had got all his best things out of his errors, with the regret and the repenting which followed. There is a deep truth here--that our mistakes and our sins, if we repent of them, will help in the growth and upbuilding of our character. We can make wrong the seed of right and righteousness. We can transmute error into wisdom. We can make sorrows bloom into a thousand forms like fragrant flowers. Our very falls, through the grace and tender love of Christ, become new births to our souls. In the hot fires of penitence we leave the dross, and come forth as pure gold. But we must remember that it is only Christ who can make our sins yield blessing. (J. R. Miller, D. D.) St. Peter’ s sifting and conversion 1. The secret may be told in a few words. The cause and spring of the most obvious defects in the apostle’ s character was that large and assured confidence in himself which made him so quick to speak, so prompt to act. But, throughout Scripture, as in human nature, self-confidence is opposed to faith or confidence in God. Everywhere, too, we are told that God dwells only in the humble, lowly, contrite heart. So that if God was to take up His abode with Peter, if the impulsive and vehement strength of the man was to be schooled into stedfastness and hallowed by the indwelling of the Holy Ghost, in order that, being himself divinely moved and led, he might rightly lead the Apostolic Company during those first critical months in which the foundations of the Church were laid, then, obviously, his self-confidence must be purged out of him, and replaced by the humility with which God delights to dwell. On no other terms could he be fitted for the work to which he was called. And therefore it was that Satan “ obtained” him--obtained, i.e., permission to sift and purge self-trust out of him. If the process was severe, the task and honour for which it prepared him were great; and greatness is not to be achieved on easy terms. It is a cruel spectacle, one of the saddest on which the stars have ever looked down--a brave man turned coward, a true man turned liar, a strong man weeping bitterly over the very sin which of all sins might well have seemed impossible to him! But would anything short of this open and shameful fall, this fracture at his strongest point, have sufficed to purge him of that self-confidence which we have seen to be so potent and so active in him up to the very instant of his fall? And if nothing else would have so suddenly and sharply sifted it out of him, and wrought into him the humility which fitted him to receive the Holy Ghost and to found the Church which Christ was about to redeem with His precious blood, shall we complain of the severity of the process by which he was purged from a dangerous self-trust and made meet for a task so honourable and blessed? Shall we not rather ask that we too may be sifted even by the most searching trials, if we too may thus be made partakers of the Holy Ghost, and be qualified for a Divine service? 2. So far, then, we have seen how Satan obtained Peter, that he might sift him. But if Satan obtained, Christ prayed for him, and even obtained him in a far higher sense; for He obtained that Peter should only be “ sifted,” and that the sifting should issue in his “ conversion.” It is to this second part of the process that we have now to turn our thoughts; for the conversion of the apostle was no less gradual, and no less complete and wonderful, than his fall. Event meets and answers event, false steps are re,rod, broken threads are taken up and worked in, triumphs of faith are set over against failures in faith, denials are retrieved by confessions; the evil in the man is sifted out of him, the good cultivated, consolidated, made permanent; and in and through all this strange and mingled discipline we see the grace of God at work to prepare him for the most honourable service and the highest blessedness. Let us be sure, then, that God has a plan for us no less than for Peter, a plan which dominates all our fugitive impulses, and changeful passions, and broken purposes, and unconnected deeds. Our lives are not the accidental and purposeless fragments they often seem to us to be. God is so disposing them as that we may be sifted from all evil, converted to all goodness, His end for us being that we may become perfect and entire, lacking nothing. (S. Cox, D. D.) Satan’ s prayer, and Christ’ s Three parties are before us in these words--three parties to a crisis--the sinner, the sinner’ s friend, and the sinner’ sfoe. A conflict is revealed to us--a conflict between two of the parties with reference to the third. The conflict is a conflict of prayer. It is by prayer that tile great rivals strive for the mastery. Of the two prayers, that of Satan is first in order. The adversary speaks first, and makes his request. Jesus follows him. The suit of Jesus is founded upon the adversary’ s demand, and is shaped accordingly. There is the prayer of Satan, and then there is the counter-prayer of our Lord. How fares it with the two requests? The answer is favourable--favourable to both. Is Satan’ s prayer granted? It is. Yes! Satan succeeds in his application, and Peter is banded over to him to be sifted as wheat. It is easy to discover the reason. He might boast that if he had been allowed to subject Peter to the ordeal Jesus would not have been able to carry Peter safely through; and that, if he had been suffered to try, he could have plucked the sheep from the Shepherd’ s hands. It is necessary that Satan’ s defeat be directly and manifestly the work of Christ. The prayers, then, are granted. Let us see what their import is. Satan’ s request is, that he may be allowed to tempt Peter. He expresses his desire to have Peter, that he may sift him as wheat. He would sift him as wheat; that is, in the same way. Wheat is sifted by being shaken up and down. He would sift Peter by the shock and agitation of great and sudden trials. He would sift him as wheat; that is, for the same purpose. Wheat is sifted that it may be known what amount of wheat there is, and what amount of chaff, as well as for other reasons. He would sift Peter, in order to show what measure of genuine faith is in him, and perhaps to show that no true faith is in him, and that Peter himself, with his great professions, is chaff entirely, and not wheat at all! What now is the prayer of Jesus? Does it betray any fear? It might seem to betray fear, if it were that Satan’ s request should be denied. But He prays not that the trial may not come. What, then, does Jesus pray for? “ I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not.” His request is that Peter’ s faith may not be wholly or finally overborne. It is that Peter may not have too little faith for the emergency that is at hand to keep him from being an apostate and a castaway. The Saviour has a glorious purpose with reference to the serpent. He means to plant His own foot on the serpent, and to bruise his head. Let us now deduce some lessons from the scene which has been surveyed. These prayers may afford us much instruction. 1. For one thing, we learn somewhat of the malice of the devil. He knows nothing of love or pity. 2. But if the malice of the devil appears, so do the love and compassion of Jesus. The contrast between them is beautiful. The spectacle of Satan praying against Peter and Jesus praying for him brings out in strong relief the kindness of the Friend that sticketh closer than a brother. The sympathy of Jesus is also here exemplified. 3. Again, there is a lesson here, that ought not to be lost upon us, respecting the craft and hypocrisy of Satan. In the very presence of God we find him trying to hide his malice under cover of something like a zeal for uprightness and truth. His insinuation is that Peter’ s religion is but a pretence; and he would fain appear as a friend of truth, who is prepared to show this if he is allowed. His motive, forsooth, is less to do harm to Peter than simply to unmask him for the sake of truth, and to prove him to be what he really is. He does not want to corrupt Peter’ s mind; oh, no! He would merely show it to be corrupt already! But there is a lesson, on the other hand, to encourage and comfort us. Jesus is watchful, and Jesus is wise. 4. One lesson more. We may learn the excellence of faith. Mark the testimony of the Saviour Himself: “ I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not.” And we have not the testimony of Jesus alone. We have Satan’ s involuntary tribute to this capital grace. It was the faith of the apostle that he was about to assail, and, if possible, to extinguish. Peter had signalized himself by his faith. It was his faith that produced his renowned confession, “ Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.” The confession was gall and wormwood to Satan; he could not forget or forgive it; and he denounced, in his rage, and determined to strike at, the faith from which it sprang. He dislikes, and he fears, the faith of God’ s people. And not without reason. It is faith that unites us to Christ, and keeps up the communication with His fulness. If the foe can but break that blessed bond of connection, he will have us for his own. (A. Gray.) Satan’ s power is limited 1. The Bible doctrine of Satan’ s existence is strikingly corroborated by the devilish in society. 2. His existence has been revealed in mercy to us. 3. He has the will to destroy us, but not the power. 4. He is ever active. 5. We are saved from his cruel and hellish hate by the intercession of Christ. (Anon.) I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail notChrist’ s prayer for Peter I. The FACTS involved in the occurrence. 1. It was an hour full of trial and danger for all the disciples. 2. Peter especially was in danger. 3. Christ prayed, not simply for them all, but for Peter particularly and personally. 4. The specific point in his spiritual condition to which the prayer was directed, was the preservation of his “ faith.” 5. Christ also advised him of all the facts in the case--of the greatness of the peril, the source of it, and the duty of the hour. II. The TRUTHS it teaches for all time. 1. Christ really interposes to save His people when in peril. 2. He intercedes for particular persons. 3. Christ’ s intercessions go into effect only through the moral or spiritual state of the disciple. 4. Faith is the special element of the Christian’ s security. 5. Christ’ s prayers, as well as His design and desire, as to each one, look beyond the individual to others. “ Strengthen thy brethren.” 6. Christ’ s intercessions are not in vain, but take effect even when they seem to fail. (M. Valentine, D. D.) Divine help in temptation Now, what the Lord said to Peter, He still virtually says to all His people: “ I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not.” When Mrs. Winslow was bereaved of an affectionate husband, deprived of fortune, and in a strange land, and friends far away, “ The enemy,” she said, “ seemed to sift me as wheat. I would steal away and weep in agony, for I lost my hold and confidence in Him who had said, ‘ I will never leave thee nor forsake thee.’” This buffeting of the adversary, however, was but for a season, for afterwards, through the helpful grace of her Lord, her faith revived, and she was able to say, “ He is all and everything He said He would be. He is my joy by night and by day, my stay in trouble, my strength in weakness, the lifter-up of my head, my portion for ever. God be praised! God be praised!” Not less touching is the recorded conflict and triumph of a young disciple. A Christian mother, not long ago, finding, as she sat beside her dying boy, that Satan had been dealing with him, said, “ Does he ever trouble you, George?” “ Oh yes; he has been very busy with me, especially when I have been weak, telling me I was too great a sinner and could not be saved.” “ And what did you say?” “ I told him I had a great Saviour” ; and then he added, “ I think the tempter is nearly done with me now.” Some weeks before his death he had been saying, “ There is light in the valley” ; and turning to his mother, he said very solemnly, “ Ah, it would be a dark valley without a light!” On the last day of his life she said to him, “ Is there light in the valley now, George?” “ Oh, yes, yes!” And when further asked, “ Is Satan done with you now?” “ Well, I think he is almost. He is lurking near, however; but Jesus is nearer.” (R. Macdonald, D. D.) Christ’ s praying for Peter In this adversative but, there is a threefold antithesis or opposition, which may be here observed and taken notice of by us. First, an opposition of the persons, Christ against Satan. It is the devil that assaults, but it is the Saviour that labours to divert it. And there is a great matter in this--a potent assistant is a great encouragement against a potent assailant. Now, thus is Christ, in comparison of Satan. He has the greater prevalency with Him, especially in approaches to God, and the requests which He makes to Him for His people. The second is, the opposition of actions or performances, praying against desiring. Satan has but desired, yea, but Christ has prayed. But He choses rather here to do it by prayer, that He might hereby sanctify this performance to us, and show us the efficacy of it as to the vanquishing of temptations themselves. The third is, the opposition of success, establishment against circumvention. Satan has desired to have you, but I have so ordered the matter that thy faith shall not fail notwithstanding. His attempts upon thee shall be in vain. Which latter now leads me from the first general part to the second here in the text; to wit, the matter of Christ’ s prayer, or the thing itself requested by Him in these words, “ That thy faith fail not.” For the negative--First, to consider that what it is not. Where we may observe that it is not that Peter might have no temptation befall him; that, one would have thought, had been more suitable. When He had said before “ Satan hath desired to have you,” we might have expected He should have said next, “ but I have prayed that he shall have nothing to do with you.” This it pleases God to suffer and permit upon divers considerations. First, for their greater abasement and humiliation. The servants of God are apt sometimes, where grace is not more watchful in them, to be advanced and lifted up in themselves. Secondly, as to breed humility, so also to breed compassion and tenderness of spirit to others. Christians, as they are apt sometimes to be too well opinionated of themselves; so also to be now and then too harsh and rigorous towards their brethren. Thirdly, God suffers His servants to be tempted for the honour of His own grace in supporting them and keeping them up, and for the confusion likewise of the enemy in his attempts upon them. Let us not, then, have our armour to get when our enemy is coming upon us, but be furnished aforehand; and remember that we trust not to any grace which we have already received, but be still labouring and striving for more. The second is the positive part of it in the words of the text, “ that thy faith may not fail.” To take them absolutely as they lie in themselves, and so they do signify to us the safety of Peter’ s condition; and, together with him, of all other believers. Their faith, it shall not fail. This, it may be made good unto us from sundry considerations. 1. The nature of grace itself which is an abiding principle. Faith is not a thing taken up, as a man would take up some new fashion or custom, but it is a thing rooted and incorporated in us, and goes through the substance of us, it spreads itself through the whole man, and is, as it were, a new creature in us. 2. The covenant of grace, which is an everlasting covenant. “ I will make an everlasting covenant with them” (Jeremiah 32:40). 3. The spirit of grace, which is not only a worker but an establisher and a sealer of this faith in us, and to us (2 Corinthians 1:20). That the servants of God they shall have their faith much upheld in such conditions. We have this implied, that a steadfast faith is a singular help in temptation. Now, the efficacy of faith in temptation is discern-able in these particulars-- (1) As it pitches us upon the strength and power of God. That which keeps up a soul in temptation, it is an almighty power, it is a power which is above all the powers of darkness itself. (2) Faith helps in temptation as it lays hold upon the promises of God. (3) As it lays hold upon Christ, and pitches us, and fastens us upon Him, we are so far safe and sure in temptation, as Christ has any hold of us and we of Him. When the stability of a Christian is said to depend upon the prayers of Christ, this is exclusive of any virtue or merit of their own. The consideration of this doctrine is very much still for the comfort of believers, as to this particular. They may from hence, in the use of good means, be very confident, and persuaded of their perseverance, because they have Christ praying for them. And there arc two things in this that make for them. The one is, as I said, first, the acceptance which Christ is sure to have with His Father. Secondly, As there is Christ’ s acceptance, so the constancy of His interceding for us. If Christ should only pray for us sometimes we might seem to be no longer upon sure terms, than such times as He prayed for us; “ but now He ever liveth to make intercession for us.” (J. Horton, D. D.) When thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren Peter helped by his fail to strengthen his brethren I. On the first view of such a crime as Peter’ s, WE SHOULD SUPPOSE THAT ALL HIS OVER HIS , ALL HIS ABILITY TO DO GOOD, HIS TO IMPART TO OTHERS, WERE LOST, AND THAT FOR EVER. At the most, he could only hope to be forgiven, and to live as an unnoticed believer, brooding in the shade over his ingratitude and content to take an obscure place during the remainder of his life. For consider in what position he would now be placed. 1. First his own shame would naturally bring with it a sense of weakness, and would furnish a good reason for concentrating his efforts upon himself. 2. His brethren in such a case would naturally lower their opinion of him. 3. His brethren would naturally feel that a man of such glaring sins was not the man to be put foremost in their efforts to do good outside of the Church. II. But, notwithstanding all this, it may be true, under a system of grace, that THE OF WHICH IS MADE BY A SIN MAY TURN INTO A TO HIM WHO IS ALLOWED TO FALL INTO IT. In this case it is not sin, but an outward sin that is the source of good, and this is accomplished, not in the ordinary course of things, but through the grace of the gospel. Of two persons in the same moral condition before the eye of God one may be untempted and so far forth innocent, while the other yields to a temptation, before which the first also would have fallen, had it been allowed to assail him. Now I say in such a case as this the outward sin may under the gospel be made a blessing to him who commits it; nay, more, the blessing may extend beyond himself to all around him. He may become a wiser, better, stronger Christian than he was before. 1. And this will be made apparent, if we consider that in this way he arrives at a better knowledge of his own character and is impressively warned against his own faults. 2. But secondly, a person who is thus recovered from his sins has the practical power derived from a renewed hope of forgiveness. 3. A person in Peter’ s condition appeals to the affections of the Church, and he has a closer hold upon them than if he had never become a kind of representative of Divine grace. (T. D. Woolsey.) The ministry of a converted man I. JESUS EMPLOYS SOULS TO DO HIS WORK. The testimony of living men glorifies Christ. II. A MAN CAN GIVE A REASON FOR HIS FAITH. II workman who has been employed in the manufacture of machinery is best able to explain the principles and manner of its work. III. A MAN CAN SPEAK . IV. A MAN SPEAKS WITH , AS NO ONE ELSE CAN. Learn-- 1. The strength of the ministry. 2. Grace is given to be employed for others. 3. We must use means, and be very diligent in the use of them, if we would strengthen our brethren. (Canon Fremantle.) Second conversion I. WHAT IS MEANT BY SECOND . It implies that there has been a first conversion; that is, a principle of true piety has been implanted in the bosom, but it has hitherto been there in a weak, imperfect form. The heart has been changed, but the change is superficial and defective. The repentance is sincere, but not deep and thorough. The faith is real, but not strong and controlling. The love is genuine, but inconstant and feeble. And so of all the Christian graces; they exist in him who has had a first conversion, but in an imperfect, partially developed state, weak, unstable, unsymmetrical, and bearing but little fruit in the life. Now the effect of a second conversion is to take the subject out of this low, inadequate, and ineffective state of piety, and raise him higher, and make him more faithful in the Divine life. The antecedents of this change are often very similar to those that precede first conversion. It commences in a serious, scrutinizing view of one’ s spiritual state and prospects. The subject of this change becomes dissatisfied with his present type of religion. As he passes through this second conversion as I call it, he seems to himself to enter into a new spiritual region. He sees Divine things in a clearer and more affecting light than he ever did before. II. ITS REALITY AS A MATTER OF . The apostles before and after Pentecost. Through the gift of the Spirit they rose to holier love, to a more spiritual faith and hope in Christ, and to a greater consecration to His service. The late Dr. Judson, of the Burmah Baptist Mission, after he had been years in his field of labour, earnestly engaged in his work, and no doubt as a true Christian man, experienced a change in his religious feelings and views which, in all its essential elements, may properly be regarded as a second conversion, and which gave a new impulse and a new power, as well as a greatly increased spirituality, and joy, and hope, to the whole of his subsequent life. The late Judge Reeve, of Litchfield, furnishes another remarkable example illustrating the point now under consideration. For many years after he professed religion he was saris fled to keep up the usual routine of religious observances, but with little of the life and enjoyment of a clear, indwelling spirit of piety. Then he passed through a great and most decided change in his Christian experience and character, in which he felt as if old things had indeed passed away, and all things had become new to him. From that time till the close of his life he enjoyed great nearness to God and peace of mind, and his path became like that of the sun, shining more and more unto the perfect day. III. WHY A SECOND IS TO PREPARE ONE TO BE TRULY AND USEFUL IN THE LIFE, or in promoting the spiritual good of others. 1. It is necessary because first conversion is often very superficial. It does indeed change the heart and turn the affections towards God and Divine things; but the whole inner man is far from being subdued to the obedience of Christ. Much land remains yet to be possessed. 2. A second conversion is often necessary to bring the soul into a nearer union and a deeper sympathy with Christ. 3. This second conversion of which I speak, brings those who are the subjects of it to see and feel the miserable condition of such as are out of Christ and perishing in sin. 4. Second conversion qualifies those who are the subjects of it, to do good in the most acceptable and successful manner. It begets a new spirit of humility, tenderness, and love in the soul; gives tone to the voice and look to the eye, imparts an aspect of benevolence and kindness to the whole manner and style of address, and makes it entirely apparent, when attempting to do good to others, to converse with them for example on the subject of personal religion, that you are moved to it by real concern for their salvation. This, beyond anything else, disarms opposition, subdues prejudice, gives access to the heart and conscience, and is well-nigh sure to render your efforts successful. 5. When the heart is deeply imbued with the feelings implied in second conversion, God’ s presence maybe expected to be with you, to guide and crown with success your endeavours to do good to others. (J. Hawes, D. D.) Conversion and strengthening I. . 1. The essential, primary idea is that of a corporeal turning round, without anything to limit it. But to this original notion, which is inseparable from the word, usage in many cases adds certain accessory notions. One of these is, the idea of turning in a definite direction; that is, towards a certain object. The difference is that between a wheel’ s turning on its axis and a flower turning towards the sun. But in some connections there is a still further accession to the primary idea; so that the words necessarily suggest, not the mere act of turning, nor the act of turning in a definite direction, but the act of turning from one object to another, which are then, of course, presented in direct antithesis to one another. Thus the magnetic needle, if mechanically pointed towards the south, is no sooner set at liberty than it will turn from that point to the north. In this case, however, there is still another accessory motion added to the simple one of turning, namely, that of turning back to a point from which it had be[ore been turned away. And this idea of return or retroversion may, of course, be repeated without limit, and without any further variation of the meaning of the term used, which is still the same, whether the turning back be for the first or second, tenth or hundredth time. All these distinctions or gradations may be traced also in the spiritual uses of the term. As thus applied, conversion is a change of character, that is, of principles and affections, with a corresponding change of outward life. Now, such a change may be conceived of, as a vague, unsettled, frequently repeated revolution of the views and feelings, without any determinate character or end. But the conversion spoken of in Scripture is relieved from this indefiniteness by a constant reference to one specific object to which the convert turns. It is to God that all conversion is described as taking place. But how, in what sense, does man turn to God? The least and lowest that can be supposed to enter into this conception is, a turning to God, as an object of attention or consideration--turning, as it were, for the first time to look at Him, just as we might turn towards any object of sense which had before escaped attention or been out of sight. 2. Sometimes, again, the idea is suggested that we not only turn to God, but turn back to Him. This may at first sight appear inconsistent with the fact just stated, that our first affections are invariably given to the world and to ourselves. But even those who are converted, for the first time, from a state of total alienation, may be said to turn back to God, in reference to the great original apostasy in which we are all implicated. As individuals, we never know God till we are converted. As a race, we have all departed from Him, and conversion is but turning back to Him. But this expression is still more appropriate, even in its strict sense, to the case of those who have already been converted, and are only reclaimed from a partial and temporary alienation, from relapsing into sin, or what is called, in religious phraseology, declension, and, in the Word of God itself, backsliding. That the term conversion may be properly applied to such a secondary restoration, is apparent from the language of the text, where it is used by Christ Himself, of one who is expressly said to have had faith, and faith which did not absolutely fail. II. Conversion tends to the OF OTHERS. In answer to the question, How does conversion tend to this result? the general fact maybe thus resolved into three distinct particulars: 1. It enables men to strengthen others. 2. It obliges men to strengthen others. 3. It disposes men to strengthen others. The convert is enabled to confirm or rescue others by his knowledge of their character and state. He knows, not only what he sees in them, but what he feels or has felt in himself. He knows the difficulties of the restoration--how much harder it is now to excite hope or confirm faith, how much less effective either warning, or encouragement, or argument is now than it once was--how precarious even the most specious reformation and repentance must be after such deflections. This advantage of experimental knowledge is accompanied, moreover, by a corresponding liveliness of feeling, a more energetic impulse, such as always springs from recent restorations or escapes. Out of this increased ability arises, by a logical and moral necessity, a special obligation. This is only a specific application of a principle which all acknowledge, and which the Word of God explicitly propounds, “ To him that knoweth to do good and doeth it not, to him it is sin.” It needs not so much to be explained or established, as to be exemplified from real life. The recognition of the principle is there unhesitating and unanimous. He who has been recovered from the power of a desperate disease by a new or unknown remedy, is under a peculiar obligation to apply it, or at least to make it known, to all affected in like manner. Hence the unsparing, universal condemnation of the man who, from mercenary motives, holds in his possession secrets of importance to the health or happiness of others. He who is mercifully saved from shipwreck, often feels especially incumbent on himself the rescue of his fellows. He must do what he can even though he be exhausted; how much more if he is strengthened. The heart must beat in concord with the reason and the conscience. And it does so in the ease of the true convert. (J. A. Alexander, D. D.) Strengthening the brethren That the brethren may be weak in faith, in love, in humility, and in some departments of Christian duty, is clearly implied in the command to strengthen them. But this cannot be done by abandoning them. How, then, can it be accomplished? 1. By being always in the place, and punctually discharging the duty which the Lord requires of you, according to your covenant. 2. By the spirituality of those who are turned from any particular course of sinfulness. 3. The brethren may be strengthened by our meekness, and other mild graces. 4. Nor should this work of strengthening the brethren, be a matter of mere contingence. It must be undertaken systematically. Each Christian should adopt a system of doing good, and carry it out in all the branches of a Christian life. 5. He should strengthen them, by meeting with them in circles for prayer. 6. He will also encourage them, by praying for them. 7. He will encourage them by his conversation. (J. Foot, D. D.) Peter after his restoration I. First, it is HIS DUTY. He has gone astray, and he has been brought back; what better can he do than to strengthen his brethren? 1. He will thus help to undo the evil which he has wrought. Peter must have staggered his brethren. 2. Besides, how can you better express your gratitude to God than by seeking to strengthen your weak brethren when you have been strengthened yourself? 3. Do you not think, too, that this becomes our duty, because, doubtless, it is a part of the Divine design? Never let us make a mistake by imagining that God’ s grace is given to a man simply with an eye to himself. 4. By the way, the very wording of the text seems to suggest the duty: we are to strengthen our “ brethren.” We must do so in order that we may manifest brotherly love, and thus prove our sonship towards God. 5. Let us see to it, dear friends, if we have been restored, that we try to look after our weak brethren, that we may show forth a zeal for the honour and glory of our Lord. When we went astray we dishonoured Christ. II. Now secondly, HE HAS A FOR IT. This Peter is the man who, when he is brought back again, can strengthen his brethren. 1. He can strengthen them by telling them of the bitterness of denying his Master. He went out and wept bitterly. 2. Again, Peter was the man to tell another of the weakness of the flesh, for he could say to him, “ Do not trust yourself.” 3. But he was also qualified to bear his personal witness to the power of his Lord’ s prayer. He could never forget that Jesus had said to him, “ I have prayed for thee.” 4. And could not Peter speak about the love of Jesus to poor wanderers? 5. And could not Peter fully describe the joy of restoration? III. And now, lastly, the restored believer should strengthen his brethren, because IT WILL BE SUCH A BENEFIT TO HIMSELF. He will derive great personal benefit from endeavouring to cherish and assist the weak ones in the family of God. 1. Brother, do this continually and heartily, for thus you will be made to see your own weakness. 2. But what a comfort it must have been to Peter to have such a charge committed to him! 3. And, brethren, whenever any of you lay yourselves out to strengthen weak Christians, as I pray you may, you will get benefit from what you do in the holy effort. (C. H. Spurgeon.) Christ’ s command to Peter 1. Here is an enlargement of personal conversion, to fraternal or brotherly confirmation. He that is converted himself, he must strengthen his brethren. And that in divers respects-- (1) In a way of faithfulness, as closing with that end for which they are converted themselves. The reason why God does bestow such a measure of grace or comfort upon this or that particular Christian, it is not for himself only, but for others, that so they may be so much the better, or comfortabler for his sake. (2) In away of thankfulness, “ When thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren” ; upon this account likewise, we cannot better testify our acknowledgments of God’ s goodness, in the bestowing of grace or comfort upon our own souls, than by imparting and communicating it to others. True thankfulness, it hath, for the most part, joy with it. (3) Out of zeal to the glory of God. We should endeavour others’ conversion, that so God may have more glory by it. The more that sinners are converted, the more is God honoured. (4) Out of love to ourselves and our own good. The more we strengthen others, the more indeed do we confirm ourselves, whether in grace or comfort. This oil, it increases in the spending; and this bread in the breaking of it. And to him that thus hath, it shall be given. This is done divers ways, as-- (a) By discovering and laying open the flights of sin, and the subtilties of the spiritual enemy. (b) By quickening and exciting and stirring up one another to good, we do hereby strengthen our brethren. There is nothing does more strengthen men in goodness, than the practice of goodness. (c) By imparting and communicating of our own experiences, we do hereby likewise strengthen our brethren; when we shall show them what good we ourselves have found by such and such good courses. This is a means not only to draw on, but to confirm others with us. To help us, and enable us hereunto, we must labour especially for such graces as are conducing to the practice of it, as-- (1) A spirit of discerning, whereby to judge aright of the case and condition which our brethren are in. It is a great part of skill in a physician, to be able to find out the disease, and to know the just temper and constitution of his patient’ s body; and so is it also for a healer of souls. (2) A spirit of love and tenderness and condescension. There is a great deal of meekness required in a spiritual strengthener and restorer (Galatians 6:2). (3) A spirit of faith, whereby we do believe ourselves those things which we commend to others. 2. The confinement of brotherly confirmation to personal conversion. He that will strengthen his brethren, he must himself be first of all converted. Peter, till himself be converted, he cannot confirm or strengthen his brethren, whether in comfort or grace. When we say, he cannot do it, this holds good according to the notion of a threefold impossibility which is in it. (1) In regard of the performance; he cannot strengthen his brethren in this respect, who is himself unconverted. The reason of it is this: because persons in such a condition, they are devoid of those graces which are requisite to such a performance. (2) Cannot do it, in regard of acceptance; God will not take it so well from him, in his making and pretending to do it; neither is it altogether so satisfactory to men. (3) Cannot, in regard of success. He that is himself unconverted and unexperienced in his own heart, he cannot speak so profitable to others, and to the good of their souls. Nothing goes to the heart so much as that which comes from it. (J. Horton, D. D.) Luke 22:33 Both to prison and to death Religious emotion That violent impulse is not the same as a firm determination--that men may have their religious feelings roused, without being on that account at all the more likely to obey God in practice, rather the less likely. As a general rule, the more religious men become, the calmer they become; and at all times the religious principle, viewed by itself, is calm, sober, and deliberate. Let us review some of the accidental circumstances I speak of. 1. The natural tempers of men vary very much. Some men have ardent imaginations and strong feelings; and adopt, as a matter of course, a vehement mode of expressing themselves. No doubt it is impossible to make all men think and feel alike. Such men of course may possess deep-rooted principle. All I would maintain is, that their ardour does not of itself make their faith deeper and more genuine; that they must not think themselves better than others on account of it; that they must be aware of considering it a proof of their real earnestness, instead of narrowly searching into their conduct for the satisfactory fruits of faith. 2. Next, there are, besides, particular occasions on which excited feeling is natural, and even commendable; but not for its own sake, but on account of the peculiar circumstances under which it occurs. For instance, it is natural for a man to feel especial remorse at his sins when he first begins to think of religion; he ought to feel bitter sorrow and keen repentance. But all such emotion evidently is not the highest state of a Christian’ s mind; it is but the first stirring of grace in him. A sinner, indeed, can do no better; bat in proportion as he learns more of the power of true religion, such agitation will wear away. The woman who had been a sinner, when she came behind our Lord wept much, and washed His feet with tears. It was well done in her; she did what she could; and was honoured with our Saviour’ s praise. Yet it is clear this was not a permanent state of mind. It was but the first step in religion, and would doubtless wear away. It was but the accident of a season. Had her faith no deeper root than this emotion, it would soon have come to an end, as Peter’ s zeal. 3. And further, the accidents of life will occasionally agitate us--affliction and the pain; bad news; though here, too, the Psalmist describes tile higher excellence of mind, viz., the calm confidence of the believer, who “ will not be afraid of any evil tidings, for his heart standeth fast, and believeth in the Lord.” In times of distress religious men will speak more openly on the subject of religion, and lay bare their feelings; at other times they will conceal them. They are neither better nor worse for so doing. Now all this may be illustrated from Scripture. We find the same prayers offered, and the same resolutions expressed by good men, sometimes in a calm way, sometimes with more ardour. Observe how calm Job is in his resignation: “ The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” And on the other hand, how calmly that same apostle expresses his assurance of salvation at the close of his life, who, during the struggle, was accidentally agitated:--“ I am now ready to be offered … I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness.” These remarks may suffice to show the relation which excited feelings bear to true religious principle. They arc sometimes natural, sometimes suitable; but they are not religion itself. They come and go. They will gradually lose their place within us as our obedience becomes confirmed--partly because those men are kept in perfect peace, and sheltered from all agitating feelings, whose minds are stayed on God; partly because these feelings themselves are fixed into habits by the power of faith, and instead of coming and going, and agitating the mind from their suddenness, they are permanently retained so far as there is anything good in them, and give a deeper colour and a more energetic expression to the Christian character. Now, it will be observed, that in these remarks I have taken for granted, as not needing proof, that the highest Christian temper is free from all vehement and tumultuous feeling. But, if we wish some evidence of this, let us turn to our Great Pattern, Jesus Christ, and examine what was the character of that perfect holiness which He alone of all men ever displayed. And can we find anywhere such calmness and simplicity as marked His devotion and His obedience? When does He ever speak with fervour or vehemence? Consider the prayer He gave us; and this is the more to the purpose, for the very reason that He has given it as a model for our worship. How plain and unadorned is it! How few are the words of it! How grave and solemn the petitions? What an entire absence of tumult and feverish emotion! To conclude: Let us take warning from St. Peter’ s fall. Let us not promise much; let us not talk much of ourselves; let us not be high-minded, nor encourage ourselves in impetuous bold language in religion. (J. H. Newman, D. D.) Luke 22:39-46 The mount of Olives The mount of Olives The mountains are Nature’ s monuments. Like the islands that dwell apart, and like them that give asylum from a noisy and irreverent world. Many a meditative spirit has found in their silence leisure for the longest thought, and in their Patmos-like seclusion the brightest visions and largest projects have evolved; whilst by a sort of overmastering attraction they have usually drawn to themselves the most memorable incidents which variegate our human history. And, as they are the natural haunts of the highest spirits, and the appropriate scenes of the most signal occurrences, so they are the noblest cenotaphs. I. OLIVET REMINDS US OF THE SAVIOUR’ S PITY FOR SUCH AS PERISH (see Luke 19:37-44). That tear fell from an eye which had looked into eternity, and knew the worth of souls. II. THE MOUNT OF OLIVES REMINDS US OF THE ’ S AGONY TO SAVE. III. The Mount of Olives is identified with the supplications and intercessions of Immanuel, and so suggests to us the Lord Jesus as THE GREAT EXAMPLE IN PRAYER. 1. Submission in prayer. In praying for His people, the Mediator’ s prayer was absolute: “ Father, I will.” But in praying for Himself, how altered was the language! “ Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from Me: nevertheless, not as I will, but as Thou wilt.” 2. Perseverance in prayer. The evangelist tells that there was one prayer which Jesus offered three times, and from the Epistle to the Hebrews 5:7, we find that this prayer prevailed. 3. The best preparation for trial is habitual prayer. Long before it became the scene of His agony, Gethsemane had been the Saviour’ s oratory. “ He ofttimes resorted thither.” IV. The Mount of Olives recalls to us THE SAVIOUR’ S FOR HIS OWN. I fear that the love of Christ is little credited even by those who have some faith in His finished work, and some attachment to His living person. (James Hamilton.) Being in an agonyJesus in the Garden of Gethsemane Jesus commenced His sacred Passion in the garden for these reasons: I. BECAUSE HE TO OBSERVE A PIOUS CUSTOM. 1. It was His custom, after He had preached and wrought miracles, to retire and betake Himself to prayer. 2. It should be our custom, too, to recollect ourselves in prayer, especially when the day’ s work is over. II. BECAUSE CHARITY AND URGED HIM. 1. Charity towards the master of the house, who, having left the supper-room at His disposal, should not be molested by the seizure of Jesus. 2. Love and obedience to His heavenly Father. III. IN ORDER TO FULFIL THE TYPE OF DAVID. When Absalom had revolted against his father, David and the people went over the brook Kedron, and they all wept with a loud voice. Christ went over the same brook now, accompanied by His faithful friends. IV. AS SECOND ADAM HE WOULD MAKE IN A GARDEN FOR THE SIN OF THE FIRST ADAM WHICH HAD BEEN IN A GARDEN. (J. Marchant.) Gethsemane Now let us look at this scene of pain and agony in the lifo of Christ, and see what lessons it supplies to us. And I remark-- I. IT WAS . “ He was removed from them.” He was alone. How weird and sombre the word! How it throbs with painful life I And does not your experience substantiate the same thing? What a recital you could give of pain, and sorrow, and heartache, and stern conflict you have borne and sustained in solitude into which your dearest earthly friend must not enter. But I remark further that this scene in the life of Jesus was one of-- II. INTENSE . It is an hour of supreme agony! The betrayer is at hand, the judgment hall, the mockery, the ribald jeers of the populace, the desertion of His friends, the false charges of His enemies, the shame and pain of the cross are just before Him. The bitterness of death is upon Him. III. EARNEST PRAYER. “ He prayed the more earnestly.” What! Christ pray? Did He need the help of this provision of the Infinite Father to meet the exigencies of sinful dependent man? Yes, the Man Jesus needed to exercise this gift. It was the human Christ that was suffering. Prayer is an arrangement in the economy of infinite wisdom and goodness to meet the daily needs of Human lives. But see again, in this time of great suffering there is-- IV. DEVOUT TO THE DIVINE WILL. “ Nevertheless not My will, but Thine, be done.” Christ hero reveals a force and beauty of character of the highest and most perfect kind. When a man can be thus brought to put himself into harmony with the Divine plan and purpose, so as to say in true submission and surrender, “ Thy will be done,” he gets to the very heart of the saint’ s “ higher life” on earth; this is about as fall a “ sanctification” as can be attained this side heaven. This is one of the grandest, the greatest, and hardest, yet the sweetest and most restful prayers I know. “ Thy will be done.” This prayer touches all things in human life and history from centre to circumference, nothing is left outside its sweep and compass. It is the life of heaven lived on earth--the soul entering into deep and abiding sympathy with the character and will of God, and going out in harmony with the Divine plan to “ do and suffer” all His righteous will. What are some of the lessons suggested by this suffering scene in the life of Christ? 1. Every true man has his Gethsemane. It may be an “ olive garden,” where is everything to minister to the senses, and meet the utmost cravings of the human heart so far as outer things are concerned. Or, it may be out on the bleak unsheltered moor, where the cutting winds and blinding storm of sickness and poverty chill to the very core of his nature: or in any of the intermediate states of life, but come it does. 2. To pass through Gethsemane is a Divine arrangement, a part of God’ s plan for perfecting human lives. Christ was there not merely because it was His “ wont” or habit, but as part of a Divine plan. He was drawn thither by unseen forces, and for a set or definite purpose. It was just as much the will of God as was any other act or scene of His life. 3. To pray for the cup to pass from us should always be subject to Christ’ s condition, “ If it be Thy will.” 4. God ever answers true prayer, but not always in the way we ask. Of this we may be sure, that He will either lift us from the Gethsemane of suffering, or strengthen us to bear the trial 5. In great suffering, submission to the Divine will gains strength for the greater trial beyond. 6. I learn, finally, this grand lesson, that I would by no means miss--that in all, above, and beyond, and through all, the Lord God reigns. (J. T.Higgins.) Jesus in Gethsemane I. Upon the very threshold of our lesson lies the weighty truth: WOE’ S CUP SHOULD BE TAKEN WHEN IT IS THE MEANS OF HIGHEST . Wasted suffering is the climax of tragedy. Many broken hearts would have lived could it have been clear that the crushing woe was not fruitless. Unspeakable the boon if earth’ s army of sufferers could rest on the knowledge that their pain was service. II. FROM OUR LORD’ S EXAMPLE WE LEARN THE IN SORROW OF UPON HUMAN AND DIVINE , III. OUR LORD’ S CRUCIAL IN THE GARDEN AGONY THE MAJESTY OF THE HUMAN WILL AND ITS MASTERY OF EVERY TRIAL IN PERFECT TO THE DIVINE WILL. However superhuman Jesus’ suffering, He was thoroughly human in it. He had all our faculties, and used them as we may use ours. It is no small encouragement that the typical Man gives us an example of perfect obedience, at a cost unknown before or since. In the mutual relations of the human and Divine wills all merit is achieved and all character constructed. IV. JESUS’ SOUL COULD HAVE BEEN “ EVEN UNTO DEATH” ONLY AS HIS WERE . V. ’ S PAINTS SIN’ S GUILT AND RUIN IN AND COLOUR. It is easy to think lightly of Sin. VI. THROWS LIGHT UPON THE WOE OF LOST SOULS. VII. OUR LESSON GIVES TO THE FACT AND OF WITH GOD. Our Lord’ s agonized words, “ If it be possible,” establish the rigidity and absoluteness of governmental and spiritual conditions. God’ s will and plans are objective realities; they have definite and all-important direction and demands. (S. L. B. Speare.) The will of God the cure of self-will Awful in its bliss, more awful yet is the will in its decay. Awful power it is, to be able for ourselves to choose God; terrible to be able to refuse Him. We have felt, many of us, the strangeness of the power of will in children; how neither present strength, nor persuasion, nor love, nor hope, nor pain, nor punishment, nor dread of worse, nor weight of authority, can, for a time, bend the determined will of a little child. We are amazed to see a power so strong in a form so slight and a mind so childish. Yet they are faint pictures of ourselves whenever we have sinned wilfully. We marvel at their resisting our wisdom, knowledge, strength, counsel, authority, persuasiveness. What is every sinful sin but a resistance of the wisdom, power, counsel, majesty, eloquent pleadings of Almighty God in the sinner’ s soul? What is it, but for the soul which He hath made, to will to thwart His counsel who hath made it, to mar His work, to accuse His wisdom of foolishness, His love of want of tenderness, to withdraw itself from the dominion of God, to be another god to itself, a separate principle of wisdom and source of happiness and providence to itself, to order things in its own way, setting before itself and working out its own ends, making self-love, self-exaltation, self-gratification, its object, as though it were, at its will, to shape its own lot as much as if there were no God. Yea, and at last, it must will that there be no God. And in its worst decay, it accomplishes what it wills, and (awful as it is to say) blots God out of its creation, disbelieving that He is, or will do as He has said, or that He will avenge. Whoever wills that God wills not, so far dethrones God, and sets up his own will to dispute the almightiness and wisdom of the eternal God. He is a Deicide. It matters not wherein the self-will is exerted, in the very least things or the greatest. Antichrist will be but the full unhindered growth of self-will. Such was the deep disease of self-will, to cure which our good Lord came, in our nature, to fulfil the leather’ s will, to will to suffer what the Father willed, to “ empty Himself and become obedient unto death, and that the death of the Cross.” And since pride was the chief source of disease in our corrupted wills, to heal this, the eternal Son of God came as now from His everlasting glory, and, as a little Child, fulfilled His Father’ s will. And when He entered on His ministry, the will of His Father was the full contentment, refreshment, stay, reward, of His soul, as Man. And then, whereas the will of God is done either by us, in active obedience, or on us and in us by passive obedience or resignation in suffering, to suffer the will of God is the surest, deepest, safest, way to learn to do it. For it has least of self. It needeth only to be still, and it reposeth at once in the loving will of God. If we have crippled ourselves, and cannot do great things, we can, at least, meekly bear chastening, hush our souls and be still. Yet since, in trials of this soul, the soul is often perplexed by its very suffering, it may be for your rest, when ye shall be called to God’ s loving discipline of suffering, to have such simple rules as these. 1. It is not against the will of God even strongly to will if it should be His will, what yet may prove not to be His will. Entire submission to the will of God requireth absolutely these two things. Wholly will whatsoever thou knowest God to will; wholly reject whatsoever thou knowest God willeth not. Beyond these two, while the will of God is as yet not clear unto thee, thou art free. We must indeed, in all our prayers, have written, at least in our hearts, those words spoken by our dear Lord for us, “ Not as I will, but as Thou.” We shall, in whatever degree God hath conformed our will to His, hold our will in suspense, even while yet uncertain, ready to follow the balance of His gracious will even while we tremblingly watch its motions, and our dearest earthly hopes, laid therein, seem ready gradually to sink, for the rest of this life, in dust (2 Samuel 16:10). And so thou, too, whatever it be which thou willest, the health and life of those thou lovest as thine own soul, the turning aside of any threatened scourge of God, the healing of thine aching heart, the cleansing away of harassing thoughts or doubts entailed upon thee by former sin, or coldness, or dryness, or distraction in prayer, or deadness of soul, or absence of spiritual consolation, thou mayest without fear ask it of God with thy whole heart, and will it wholly and earnestly, so that thou will therein the glory of God, and, though with sinking heart, welcome the will of God, when thou knowest assuredly what that will is. 2. Nor again is it against the will of God that thou art bowed down and grieved by what is the will of God. And even when the heaviness is for our own private griefs, yet, if it be patient, it, too, is according to the will of God. For God hath made us such as to suffer. He willeth that suffering be the healthful chastisement of our sins. 3. Then, whatever thy grief or trouble be, take every drop in thy cup from the hand of Almighty God. Thou knowest well that all comes from God, ordered or overruled by Him. How was the cup of thy Lord filled, which He drank for thee? 4. Again, no trouble is too small, wherein to see the will of God for thee. Great troubles come but seldom. Daily fretting trials, that is, what of thyself would fret thee, may often, in God’ s hands, conform thee more to His gracious will. They are the dally touches, whereby He traces on thee the likeness of His Divine will. There is nothing too slight wherein to practise oneness with the will of God. Love or hate are the strength of will; love, of the will of God; hate, of the will of devils. A weak love is a weak will; a strong love is a strong will. Self-will is the antagonist of the will of God; for thou weft formed for God. If thou wert made for thyself, be self thy centre; if for God, repose thyself in the will of God. So shalt thou lose thy self-will, to find thy better will in God, and thy self-love shall be absorbed in the love of God. Yea, thou shalt love thyself, because God hath loved thee; take care for thyself, because thou art not thine own, but God careth for thee; will thine own good, because and as God willeth it. “ Father, nevertheless, not as I will, but as Thou.” So hath our Lord sanctified all the natural shrinkings of our lower will. He vouchsafed to allow the natural will of His sacred Manhood to be “ amazed and very heavy” at the mysterious sufferings of the cross, to hallow the “ mute shrinking” of ours, and guide us on to His all-holy submission of His will. (E. B.Pusey, D. D.) Christ’ s preparation for death 1. The prayer of Christ. In a praying posture He will be found when the enemy comes; He will be taken upon His knees. He was pleading hard with God in prayer, for strength to carry Him through this heavy trial, when they came to take Him. And this prayer was a very remarkable prayer, both for the solitariness of it, “ He withdrew about a stone’ s cast” (Luke 22:41) from His dearest intimates--no ear but His Father’ s shall hear what He had now to say--and for the vehemency and importunity of it; these were those strong cries that He poured out to God in the days of His flesh Hebrews 5:7). And for the humility expressed in it: He fell upon the ground, He rolled Himself as it were in dust, at His Father’ s feet. 2. This Scripture gives you also an account of the agony of Christ, as well as of His prayer, and that a most strange one; such as in all respects never was known before in nature. 3. You have here His relief in this His agony, and that by an angel dispatched post from heaven to comfort Him. The Lord of angels now needed the comfort of an angel. It was time to have a little refreshment, when His face and body too stood as full of drops of blood as the drops of dew are upon the grass. 1. Did Christ pour out His soul to God so ardently in the garden, when the hour of His trouble was at hand? Hence we infer that prayer is a singular preparative for, and relief under, the greatest troubles. 2. Did Christ withdraw from the disciples to seek God by prayer? Thence it follows that the company of the best men is not always seasonable. The society of men is beautiful in its season, and no better than a burden out of season. I have read of a good man, that when his stated time for closet-prayer was come, he would say to the company that were with him, whatever they were, “ Friends, I must beg your excuse for a while, there is a Friend waits to speak with me.” The company of a good man is good, but it ceases to be so, when it hinders the enjoyment of better company. One hour with God is to be preferred to a thousand days’ enjoyment of the best men on earth. 3. Did Christ go to God thrice upon the same account? Thence learn that Christians should not be discouraged, though they have sought God once and again, and no answer of Peace comes. If God deny you in the things you ask, He deals no otherwise with you than He did with Christ. 4. Was Christ so earnest in prayer that He prayed Himself into a very agony? Let the people of God blush to think how unlike their spirits are to Christ, as to their prayer-frames. Oh, what lively, sensible, quick, deep, and tender apprehensions and sense of those things about which He prayed, had Christ! Though He saw His very blood starting out from His hands, and His clothes dyed in it, yet being in an agony, He prayed the more earnestly. I do not say Christ is imitable in this; no, but His fervour in prayer is a pattern for us, and serves severely to rebuke the laziness, dulness, torpor, formality, and stupidity that is in our prayers. Oh, how unlike Christ are we! His prayers were pleading prayers, full of mighty arguments and fervent affections. Oh, that His people were in this more like Him! 5. Was Christ in such an agony before any hand of man was upon Him merely from the apprehensions of the wrath of God with which He now contested? Then surely it is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God, for our God is a consuming fire. 6. Did Christ meet death with such a heavy heart? Let the hearts of Christians be the lighter for this when they come to die. The bitterness of death was all squeezed into Christ’ s cup. He was made to drink up the very dregs of it, that so our death might be the sweeter to us. (J. Flavel.) The agony in Gethsemane I. Meditating upon the agonizing scene in Gethsemane we are compelled to observe that our Saviour there endured a grief unknown to any previous period of His life, and therefore we will commence our discourse by raising the question, WHAT WAS THE CAUSE OF THE GRIEF OF ? Do you suppose it was the fear of coming scorn or the dread of crucifixion? was it terror at the thought of death? Is not such a supposition impossible? It does not make even such poor cowards as we are sweat great drops of blood, why then should it work such terror in Him? Read the stories of the martyrs, and you will frequently find them exultant in the near approach of the most cruel sufferings. The joy of the Lord has given such strength to them, that no coward thought has alarmed them for a single moment, but they have gone to the stake, or to the block, with psalms of victory upon their lips. Our master must not be thought of as inferior to His boldest servants, it cannot be that He should tremble where they were brave. I cannot conceive that the pangs of Gethsemane were occasioned by any extraordinary attack from Satan. It is possible that Satan was there, and that his presence may have darkened the shade, but he was not the most prominent cause of that hour of darkness. Thus much is quite clear, that our Lord at the commencement of His ministry engaged in a very severe duel with the prince of darkness, and yet we do not read concerning that temptation in the wilderness a single syllable as to His soul’ s being exceeding sorrowful, neither do we find that He “ was sore amazed and was very heavy,” nor is there a solitary hint at anything approaching to bloody sweat. When the Lord of angels condescended to stand foot to foot with the prince of the power of the air, he had no such dread of him as to utter strong cries and tears and fall prostrate on the ground with threefold appeals to the Great Father. What is it then, think you, that so peculiarly marks off Gethsemane and the griefs thereof? We believe that now the Father put Him to grief for us. It was now that our Lord had to take a certain cup from the Father’ s hand. This removes all doubt as to what it was, for we read, “ It pleased the Lord to bruise Him, He hath put Him to grief: when thou shalt make His soul an offering for sin.” “ The Lord hath made to meet on Him the iniquity of us all.” Yet would I exhort you to consider these griefs awhile, that you may love the Sufferer. He now realized, perhaps for the first time, what it was to be a sin bearer. It was the shadow of the coming tempest, it was the prelude of the dread desertion which He had to endure, when He stood where we ought to have stood, and paid to His Father’ s justice the debt which was due from us; it was this which laid Him low. To be treated as a sinner, to be smitten as a sinner, though in Him was no sin--this it was which caused Him the agony of which our text speaks. II. Having thus spoken of the cause of His peculiar grief, I think we shall be able to support our view of the matter, while we lead you to consider, WHAT WAS THE OF THE GRIEF ITSELF? Trouble of spirit is worse than pain of body; pain may bring trouble and be the incidental cause of sorrow, but if the mind is perfectly untroubled, how well a man can bear pain, and when the soul is exhilarated and lifted up with inward joy, pain of body is almost forgotten, the soul conquering the body. On the other hand the soul’ s sorrow will create bodily pain, the lower nature sympathizing with the higher. III. Our third question shall be, WHAT WAS OUR LORD’ S SOLACE IN ALL THIS? He resorted to prayer, and especially to prayer to God under the character of Father. In conclusion: Learn-- 1. The real humanity of our Lord. 2. The matchless love of Jesus. 3. The excellence and completeness of the atonement. 4. Last of all, what must be the terror of the punishment which will fall upon those men who reject the atoning blood, and who will have to stand before God in their own proper persons to suffer for their sins. (C. H. Spurgeon.) Gethsemane I. Come hither and behold THE SAVIOUR’ S WOE. We cannot do more than look at the revealed causes of grief. 1. It partly arose from the horror of His soul when fully comprehending the meaning of sin. 2. Another deep fountain of grief was found in the fact that Christ now assumed more fully His official position with regard to sin. 3. We believe that at this time, our Lord had a very clear view of all the shame and suffering of His crucifixion. 4. But possibly a yet more fruitful tree of bitterness was this--that now His Father began to withdraw His presence from Him. 5. But in our judgment the fiercest heat of the Saviour’ s suffering in the garden lay in the temptations of Satan. “ This is your hour and the power of darkness.” “ The prince of this world cometh.” II. Turn we next to contemplate THE OF OUR LORD. 1. A temptation to leave the work unfinished. 2. Scripture implies that our Lord was assailed by the fear that His strength would not be sufficient. He was heard in that He feared. How, then, was He heard? An angel was sent unto Him strengthening Him. His fear, then, was probably produced by a sense of weakness. 3. Possibly, also, the temptation may have arisen from a suggestion that He was utterly forsaken, I do not know--there may be sterner trials than this, but surely this is one of the worst, to be utterly forsaken. 4. We think Satan also assaulted our Lord with a bitter taunt indeed. You know in what guise the tempter can dress it, and how bitterly sarcastic he can make the insinuation--“ Ah! Thou wilt not be able to achieve the redemption of Thy people. Thy grand benevolence will prove a mockery, and Thy beloved ones will perish.” III. Behold, THE BLOODY SWEAT. This proves how tremendous must have been the weight of sin when it was able so to crush the Saviour that He distilled drops of blood I This proves, too, my brethren, the mighty power of His love. It is a very pretty observation of old Isaac Ambrose that the gum which exudes from the tree without cutting is always the best. This precious camphire-tree yielded most sweet spices when it was wounded under the knotty whips, and when it was pierced by the nails on the cross; but see, it giveth forth its best spice when there is no whip, no nail, no wound. This sets forth the voluntariness of Christ’ s sufferings, since without a lance the blood flowed freely. No need to put on the leech, or apply the knife; it flows spontaneously. IV. THE SAVIOUR’ S PRAYER. 1. Lonely prayer. 2. Humble prayer. 3. Filial prayer. 4. Persevering prayer. 5. Earnest prayer. 6. The prayer of resignation. V. THE SAVIOUR’ S . His prayers did speed, and therefore He is a good Intercessor for us. “ How was He heard?” 1. His mind was suddenly rendered calm. 2. God strengthened Him through an angel. 3. God heard Him in granting Him now, not simply strength, but a real victory over Satan. I do not know whether what Adam Clarke supposes is correct, that in the garden Christ did pay more of the price than He did even on the cross; but I am quite convinced that they are very foolish who get to such refinement that they think the atonement was made on the cross, and nowhere else at all. We believe that it was made in the garden as well as on the cross; and it strikes me that in the garden one part of Christ’ s work was finished, wholly finished, and that was His conflict with Satan. I conceive that Christ had now rather to bear the absence of His Father’ s presence and the revilings of the people and the sons of men, than the temptations of the devil. I do think that these were over when He rose from His knees in prayer, when He lifted Himself from the ground where He marked His visage in the clay in drops of blood. (C. H. Spurgeon.) The agony of Christ I. THE PERSON OF THE . 1. The dignified essential Son of God. 2. Truly and properly the Son of Man. Had our nature, body, soul. II. THE AGONY WHICH HE ENDURED. 1. The agony itself. (1) Deep, intense mental suffering. (2) Overwhelming amazement and terror. 2. The cause of Christ’ s agony. It arose-- (1) From the pressure of s world’ s guilt upon Him. (2) From the attacks of the powers of darkness. (3) From the hiding of the Divine countenance. 3. The effects of the agony. He fell to the ground, overwhelmed, prostrated, and sweat as it were, great drops of blood. III. THE PRAYER WHICH HE OFFERED. “ He prayed more earnestly.” Observe-- 1. The matter of His prayer. It was for the removal of the cup (Luke 22:42). As man, He had a natural aversion to pain and suffering. 2. The spirit of His prayer was that of holy submission, devout resignation. 3. The manner of His prayer. 4. The intensity of His prayer. The success of His prayer. Application: 1. Learn the amazing evil of sin. 2. The expensiveness of our redemption. 3. The sympathy of Christ (Hebrews 4:15). 4. The necessity of resignation to the will of God. (J. Burns, D. D.) The Saviour’ s bloody sweat I. THE CAUSES OF THE BLOODY SWEAT. 1. A vehement inward struggle. (1) On the one hand He was seized by fear and horror of His passion and death. (2) On the other hand He was burning with zeal for the honour of God and redemption of men. (3) How great will be the anguish of the sinner at the sight of everlasting death and the endless pains of hell! 2. The representation of all the sins of the past, present, and future. 3. The consideration that His passion would prove useless to so many. II. THE MANNER OF HIS BLOOD. 1. He sweat blood in the strict sense of the word. (1) Natural blood. (2) In a natural way. 2. He was full of sorrow. 3. He fell upon His face. (J. Marchant.) The witness to the power of prayer I. AN ACT OF REAL PRAYER IS GREAT, , AND ; a spirit in an energy of pure, subdued, but confident desire, rising up and embracing, and securing the aid of the mighty Spirit of God. If we can believe the power of prayer, we may put forth the force of the soul and perform that act. How then can we learn that power? My answer is, From Christ. Everywhere Christ is the Representative Man. This in two senses. 1. He is human nature in sum and completeness as it ought to be. To see humanity as God imaged and loved it, to see humanity at its best, we must see our Master. 2. And Christ represents to us perfect human conduct. To see how to act in critical situations we must study Christ. In critical situations? Yes! there is the difficulty, there also the evidenced nobleness of a lofty human character. I need hardly say (for you know who Christ was) the most critical moments in human history were the moments of the Passion. Oh, perfect example! Oh, severe and fearful trial! Christ knelt alone amidst the olives, in the quiet garden, in the lonely night, and Dear, His weary, sleepy followers. It is a simple scene, but Christ’ s spirit was in action. What was the significance of the act? It was very awful. It was an “ agony,” a life-struggle, a contest. Much was involved in that moment of apparent quietude, of real struggle; but one lesson at any rate is important. Examine it. Here we have a witness to the power of prayer. II. THE AGONY WAS A CONTEST. What was the nature of the struggle? It was a contest with evil; of that we are certain, although the depth and details are wrapped in mystery. Anyhow the struggle was with a force of which, alas! we ourselves know something. No one can live to the ago of five-and-twenty, and reflect with any degree of seriousness on himself or on the world around him, without knowing that evil is a fact. We find its cruel records in the blood-stained pages of history. We listen, and amidst whatever heavenly voices, still the wail of its victims is echoing age after age down the “ corridors of time.” Our own faults and follies will not efface themselves from the records of memory; in the brightness of the flaring day of life they may fade into dim and shadowy outline, but there are times of silence--on a sick-bed, in the still house at midnight, in the open desolation of the lonely sea--when they rise like living creatures, spectral threateners, or blaze their unrelenting facts in characters of fire. Their force was not realized in the moment of passion. But conscience bides its time, bears its stern, uncompromising witness when passion is asleep or dead. Sin is a matter of experience. It has withered life, in fact, in history, with the deathly chill and sadness of the grave. Somehow all feel it, but it is prominent and stern before the Christian. He can never forget, nor is it well he should, that we are in a world in which, when God appeared in human form, He was subjected to insult and violence by His creatures. That is enough. That is, without controversy, the measure of the power, the intensity of evil. If there is to be a contest with evil, it is clearly a contest with a serious enemy. III. HOW CAN WE THROW BACK SO FIERCE A POWER? THE ANSWER BROADLY IS, . Religion is a personal matter; it must hold a universal empire over the being of each of us; it must rouse natural forces only by being in possession of supernatural power. Brothers, to possess a religion which can conquer sin we must follow our Master in the severity of principle, of conviction, of unflinching struggle. The external scene of His trial was simple, but He fought, and therefore conquered. Certainly He fought with evil, “ being in an agony.” IV. “ FOUGHT WITH EVIL.” “ What do you mean?” you ask. Evil! Is evil a thing, an object, like the pyramids of Egypt, or the roaring ocean, or an advancing army? Evil is the act of choice of a created will. It is the rejection by the creature of the laws of life laid down, not as tyrannical rules, but as necessary truths, by the Creator. Evil takes three active forms, so says Scripture, so we have learned in the Catechism: the accumulated force of bad opinion, that is “ the world” ; or the uncertain revolt of our own corrupt desires, that is “ the flesh” ; or a living being wholly surrendered to hatred of the Creator, that is “ the devil.” Think of the last. You realize the severity of the contest in remembering that you fight with a fiend. Satan is a person. In this is he like ourselves. Of man it is said “ he has thoughts of himself.” This is true of Satan; he can think of himself, he can purpose with relentless will, he can plan with unparalleled audacity. There are three specific marks of his character-- 1. He is inveterate in his hatred of truth, lie is a liar. 2. He is obstinate in his abhorrence of charity, pure intention, and self-sacrificing devotion. He is a murderer. 3. He shrinks from the open glory of goodness. He is a coward. To “ abide in the truth,” to “ love good,” and “ love one another with a pure heart fervently,” and to have holy fearlessness in the power of God is to be in direct opposition to him. From this it is evident that our contest is with a tremendous enemy, and that against us he need never be victorious. My brothers, there are two shadows projected over human life from two associated and mysterious facts--from sin, from death. In that critical moment when the human will is subjected to the force of temptation and yields to its sway, in that solemn moment when the human spirit is wrenched away for a time from its physical organism, there is a special power dangerously, not irresistibly, exercised by the being who is devoted to evil. A hint of this is given in Scripture in the allusion to the spirit “ that now worketh in the children of disobedience,” a hint of this dark realm certainly in the prayer by the grave-side that we may not “ for any pains of death fall “ from God. There is a shadow-land. How may we contemplate it without hopeless shuddering, how think of entering it without despairing fear? Now here is a primary fact. Christ our strength as well as our example boldly entered, and in the depths of its deepest blackness conquered the fiend. “ He was made sin” ; “ He became obedient unto death” ; and for all who will to follow Him, His love, His devotion is victorious. “ We are more than conquerors through Him who loved us.” Yes! In union with Christ we can do what He did. O blessed and brave One! We may follow His example and employ His power. His power! How may we be possessed of it? In many ways. Certainly in this way. It is placed at the disposal of the soul that prays. This is in effect the answer of Christ’ s revelation to the question, Why should we pray? Two facts let us remember and act upon with earnestness. 1. The value of a formed habit of prayer. Crises are sure to come and then we are equally sure to act on habitual impulse. Christ learned in His humanity and practised Himself in the effort of prayer, and when the struggle reached its climax, the holy habit had its fulfilment. “ Belong in an agony He prayed.” And-- 2. It is in moments of contest that real prayer rises to its height and majesty. “ When my heart is hot within me,” says the Psalmist, “ I will complain” ; and of Christ it is written, “ Being in an agony He prayed more earnestly.” Prayer, too, as the Christian knows, is not always answered now in the way he imagines most desirable, but it is always answered. If the cup does not pass, at least there is an angel strengthening the human spirit to drain it bravely to the dregs. Subjectively, there is comfort; objectively, there is real help. What might have been a tragedy becomes by prayer a blessing; desire which if misdirected might have crushed and overwhelmed us, becomes when truly used with the Holy Spirit’ s assistance a raw material of sanctity. Certainly from prayer we gain three things: a powerful stimulus, and strength for act or suffering; a deep and real consolation; and the soothing and ennobling sense of duty done. (Canon Knox Little.) Our Lord’ s bloody sweat There are some who only suppose that by this phraseology the mere size of the drops of perspiration is indicated. But the plain meaning of the language is that the sweat was bloody in its nature; that the physical nature of our Lord was so deranged by the violent pressure of mental agony that blood oozed from every pore. Such a result is not uncommon in a sensitive constitution. The face reddens with blood both from shame and anger. Were this continued with intensity, the blood would force its way through the smaller vessels, and exude from the skin. Kannigiesser remarks, “ If the mind is seized with a sudden fear of death, the “ sweat, owing to the excessive degree of constriction, often becomes bloody.” The eminent French historian, De Thou, mentions the case of an Italian officer who commanded at Monte-Mars, a fortress of Piedmont, during the warfare in 1552 between Henry II. of France and the Emperor Charles V. The officer, having been treacherously seized by order of the hostile general, and threatened with public execution unless he surrendered the place, was so agitated at the prospect of an ignominious death that he sweated blood from every part of his body. The same writer relates a similar occurrence in the person of a young Florentine at Rome, unjustly put to death by order of Pope Sixtus V., in the beginning of his reign, and concludes the narrative as follows: “ When the youth was led forth to execution, he excited the commiseration of many, and, through excess of grief, was observed to shed bloody tears, and to discharge blood instead of sweat from his whole body.’” Medical experience does so far corroborate the testimony of the Gospels, and shows that cutaneous hemorrhage is sometimes the result of intense mental agitation. The awful anguish of Him who said, “ My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death,” was sufficient cause to produce the bloody perspiration on a cold night and in the open air. (J. Eadie, D. D.) The angel who strengthened Jesus On a certain occasion, when the Rev. J. Robertson had been preaching one of a series of sermons, on “ Angels in their revealed connection with the work of Christ,” Dr. Duncan came into the vestry and said: “ Will you be so kind as to let me know when you are going to take up the case of my favourite angel?” “ But who is he, Doctor?” “ Oh! guess that.” “ Well, it would not be difficult to enumerate all those whose names we have given us.” “ But I can’ t tell you his name, he is an anonymous angel. It is the one who came down to Gethsemane, and there strengthened my Lord to go through His agony for me, that He might go forward to the cross, and finish my redemption there. I have an extraordinary love for that one, and I often wonder what I’ ll say to him when I meet him first.” This was a thought Dr. Duncan never wearied of repeating, in varied forms, whenever the subject of angels turned up in conversation. Succoured by an angel In the Ecclesiastical History of Socrates there is mention made of one Theodorus, a martyr put to extreme torments by Julian the Apostate, and dismissed again by him when he saw him unconquerable. Rufinus, in his History, says that he met with this martyr a long time after his trial, and asked him whether the pains he felt were not insufferable. He answered that at first it was somewhat grievous, but after awhile there seemed to stand by him a young man in white, who, with a soft and comfortable handkerchief, wiped off the sweat from his body (which, through extreme anguish, was little less than blood), and bade him be of good cheer, insomuch that it was rather a punishment than a pleasure to him to be taken off the rack. When the tormentors had done, the angel was gone. Angelic ministry The only child of a poor woman one day fell into the fire by accident, and was so badly burned that he died after a few hours’ suffering. The clergyman, as soon as he knew, went to see the mother, who was known to be dotingly fond of the child. To his great surprise, he found her calm, patient, and resigned. After a little conversation she told him how she had been weeping bitterly as she knelt beside her child’ s cot, when suddenly he exclaimed, “ Mother, don’ t you see the beautiful man who is standing there and waiting for me?” Again and again the child persisted in saying that “ the beautiful man” was waiting for him, and seemed ready, and even anxious, to go to him. And, as a natural consequence, the mother’ s heart was strangely cheered. (W. Baxendale.) The safeguard against temptation “ Satan,” says Bishop Hall, “ always rocks the cradle when we sleep at our devotions. If we would prevail with God, we must wrestle first with our own dulness.” And if this be needful, even in ordinary times, how much more so in the perilous days on which we are entering? Whatever we come short in, let it not be in watchfulness. None like to slumber who are expecting a friend or fearing a foe. Bunyan tells us “ that when Hopeful came to a certain country, he began to be very dull and heavy of sleep. Wherefore he said, ‘ Let us lie down here, and take one nap.’ ‘ By no means,’ said the other, ‘ lest sleeping, we wake no more.’ ‘ Why, my brother? Sleep is sweet to the labouring man; we may be refreshed, if we take a nap.’ ‘ Do you not remember,’ said the other, ‘ that one of.the shepherds bid us beware of the Enchanted Ground? He meant by that, that we should beware of sleeping.’” “ Therefore let us not sleep, as do others; but let us watch and be sober.” Slumbering and backsliding are closely allied. (R. Macdonald, D. D.) Luke 22:47-53 Judas, betrayest thou the Son of Man with a kiss The traitor’ s kiss I. A TRAITOR AMONG THE . Many of them were weak in faith and carnal in apprehension, but only one a traitor. II. THE OF HIS TREASON. Betrayed Lord into cruel hands of foes. Professed followers of Christ may betray Him to the scorn of the world, giving the sceptic arguments for his infidelity, and the worldly excuses for rejection of Christ. III. THE MANNER OF THE . A kiss. 1. It was the accepted token of affection. 2. It was here prostituted to the basest of uses. 3. It was received with lamblike meekness by Him who knew it meant treachery. IV. THEY BETRAY THE SON OF MAN WITH A KISS WHO-- 1. Compliment and deny Him with the same lips, 2. Profess to be united with Him at His table, and then act as lovers and servants of the world. 3. Exalt His humanity to the skies, and deny His rightful divinity and the efficacy of the atonement. (Homiletic Review.) Christ betrayed by Judas I. BY WHOM CHRIST WAS . “ Judas, one of the twelve.” Not an occasional disciple who had fastened himself upon the Lord’ s company, not one of the seventy who had been sent forth by two and two; one of the called, the chosen; one singled out from the great mass of mankind for the office of a foundation-stone in the Church of God. II. Let us consider SOME OF THE OF THIS CONDUCT ON THE PART OF JUDAS. Judas was not only equal with the rest of the apostles, but he was allowed to carry the bag, which would certainly appear to invest him with a sort of official superiority. III. THE ENDS FOR WHICH CHRIST’ S WAS . That it was of mere permission we know. God has abundance of snares for taking the wise in their own craftiness; He has ten thousand accidents at command by which to mar a well-concerted plot. Yea, even after the capture had been effected, twelve legions of angels waited the bidding of Christ to rescue Him from the traitor’ s power. But God will not avail Himself of these means. IV. Let us now consider some of the MORAL LESSONS which seem to be conveyed to us by this history. 1. We see how needful it is that we, each one of us, look well to the state of our own hearts. Here is a man who knew the truth, who had preached the truth, who had wrought miracles for the sake of the truth; and yet became a castaway. Now, why was this? He “ held the truth in unrighteousness.” The man who has been a hypocrite in religion is very rarely recovered; he deceives others, but yet more fatally does he deceive himself. 2. Again: the history teaches us how little security against our falling away, there is in the possession of eminent spiritual advantages. “ Judas Iscariot, one of the twelve.” 3. Again: we learn from this history how insensible and unperceived is the progress of the downward course in sin. When a man once enters on the way of transgression, he can never tell where he shall stop. Neither wickedness nor holiness attain to their full stature all at once. We cannot suppose that Judas had the remotest thought of his treachery when he first accepted the invitation to become one of the apostles. 4. The enslaving power of the love of this present world. (D. Moore, M. A.) The treason of Judas 1. Hence in the first place we learn, that the greatest professors had need be jealous of their own hearts, and look well to the grounds and principles of their professions. 2. Learn hence also, that eminent knowledge and profession puts a special and eminent aggravation upon sin. To sin against clear light is to sin with a high hand. It is that which makes a sad waste of the conscience. 3. Learn hence, in the third place, that unprincipled professors will sooner or later become shameful apostates. 4. Moreover in this example of Judas you may read this truth--that men and women are never in more imminent danger than when they meet with temptations exactly suited to their master-lusts, to their own iniquity. O pray, pray, that ye may be kept from a violent suitable temptation. Satan knows that when a man is tried here, he falls by the root. 5. Hence, in like manner, we are instructed, that no man knows where he shall stop when he first engages himself in a way of sin. 6. Did Judas sell Christ for money? What a potent conqueror is the love of this world! How many hath it cast down wounded? What great professors have been dragged at its chariot-wheels as its captives? Pliny tells us that the mermaids delight to be in green meadows, into which they draw men by their enchanting voices; but saith he, there always lie heaps of dead men’ s bones by them. A lively emblem of a bewitching world! Good had it been for many professors of religion if they had never known what the riches, and honours, and pleasures of this world meant. 7. Did Judas fancy so much happiness in a little money, that he would sell Christ to get it? Learn, then, that which men promise themselves much pleasure and contentment in, in the way of sin, may prove the greatest curse and misery to thorn that ever befel them in the world. 8. Was there one, and but one, of the twelve that proved a Judas, a traitor to Christ? Learn thence, that it is a most unreasonable thing to be prejudiced at religion, and the sincere professors of it, because some that profess it prove naught and vile. 9. Did Judas, one of the twelve, do so? Learn thence, that a drop of grace is better than a sea of gifts. Gifts have some excellency in them, but the way of grace is the more excellent way (1 Corinthians 12:31). Gifts, as one saith, are dead graces, but graces are living gifts. There is many a learned head in hell. These are not the things that accompany salvation. It is better for thee to feel one Divine impression from God upon thy heart than to have ten thousand fine notions floating in thy head. Judas was a man of parts, but what good did they do him? 10. Did the devil win the consent of Judas to such a design as this? Could he get no other but the hand of an apostle to assist him? Learn hence, that the policy of Satan lies much in the choice of his instruments he works by. No bird, saith one, like a living bird to tempt others into the net. Austin told an ingenious young scholar the devil coveted him for an ornament. He knows he hath a foul cause to manage, and therefore will get the fairest hand he can to manage it with the less suspicion. 11. Did Judas, one of the twelve, do this? Then, certainly, Christians may approve and join with such men on earth whose faces they shall never see in heaven. 12. Did Judas, one of the twelve, a man so obliged, raised, and honoured by Christ, do this? Cease then from man, be not too confident, but beware of men. “ Trust ye not in a friend, put no confidence in a guide, keep the door of thy lips from her that lieth in thy bosom” (Micah 7:5). (J. Flavel.) The betrayal I. LET US TARRY AWHILE, AND SEE OUR LORD AND . 1. It is appointed that He must die, but how shall He fall into the hands of His adversaries? Shall they capture Him in conflict? It must not be, lest He appear an unwilling victim. Shall He flee before His foes until He can hide no longer? It is not meet that a sacrifice should be hunted to death. Shall He offer Himself to the foe? That were to excuse His murderers, or be a party to their crime. Shall He be taken accidentally or unawares? That would withdraw from His cup the necessary bitterness which made it wormwood mingled with gall. (1) One reason for the appointment of the betrayal lay in the fact that it was ordained that man’ s sin should reach its culminating point in His death. (2) Beyond a doubt, however, the main reason for this was that Christ might offer a perfect atonement for sin. We may usually read the sin in the punishment. Man betrayed his God. Therefore must Jesus find man a traitor to Him. There must be the counterpart of the sin in the suffering which He endured. You and I have often betrayed Christ. It seemed most fitting, then, that He who bore the chastisement of sin should be reminded of its ingratitude and treachery by the things which He suffered. (3) Besides, brethren, that cup must be bitter to the last degree which is to be the equivalent for the wrath of God. (4) Moreover, we feel persuaded that by thus suffering at the hand of a traitor the Lord became a faithful High Priest, able to sympathize with us when we fall under the like affliction. 2. Now let us look at the treason itself. You perceive how black it was. (1) Judas was Christ’ s servant, what if I call him His confidential servant. (2) Judas was more than this: he was a friend, a trusted friend. (3) The world looked upon Judas as a colleague of our Lord’ s. (4) Our Lord would look upon Judas as a representative man, the portraiture of many thousands who in after ages have imitated his crime. 3. Observe the manner in which Christ met this affliction. (1) His calmness. (2) His gentleness. II. Grant me your attention while we make an estimate of the man by whom the Son of Man was betrayed--JUDAS THE . 1. I would call your attention, dear friends, to his position and public character. (1) Judas was a preacher; nay, he was a foremost preacher, “ he obtained part of this ministry,” said the Apostle Peter. (2) Judas took a very high degree officially. He had the distinguished honour of being entrusted with the Master’ s financial concerns, and this, after all, was no small degree to which to attain. The Lord, who knows how to use all sorts of gifts, perceived what gift the man had. (3) You will observe that the character of Judas was openly an admirable one. I find not that he committed himself in any way. Not the slightest speck defiled his moral character so far as others could perceive. He was no boaster, like Peter. 2. But I call your attention to his real nature and sin. Judas was a man with a conscience. He could not afford to do without it. He was no Sadducee who could fling religion overboard; he had strong religious tendencies. But then it was a conscience that did not sit regularly on the throne; it reigned by fits and starts. Conscience was not the leading element. Avarice predominated over conscience. 3. The warning which Judas received, and the way in which he persevered. 4. The act itself. He sought out his own temptation. He did not wait for the devil to come to him; he went after the devil. He went to the chief priests and said, “ What will ye give me?” Alas! some people’ s religion is grounded on that one question. 5. We conclude with the repentance of Judas. He did repent; but it was the repentance that worketh death. The man who repents of consequences does not repent. The ruffian repents of the gallows but not of the murders and that is no repentance at all. Human law, of course, must measure sin by consequences, but God’ s law does not. There is a pointsman on a railway who neglects his duty; there is a collision on the line, and people are killed; well, it is manslaughter to this man through his carelessness. But that pointsman, perhaps, many times before had neglected his duty, but no accident came of it, and then he walked home and said, “ Well, I have done no wrong.” Now the wrong, mark you, is never to be measured by the accident, but by the thing itself, and if you have committed an offence and you have escaped undetected it is lust as vile in God’ s eye; if you have done wrong and Providence has prevented the natural result of the wrong, the honour of that is with God, but you are as guilty as if your sin had been carried out to its fullest consequences, and the whole world set ablaze. Never measure sin by consequences, but repent of them as they are in themselves. (C. H. Spurgeon.) Treachery to Christ I. Observe, THE PERSON --Judas. One on whom the Saviour had conferred many benefits, and who had made an open profession of His name. Betrayest thou! II. Observe, the PERSON --Jesus. The title which Jesus here assumes, in calling Himself the Son of Man, may teach us the following things-- 1. That He is really and properly Man, as well as truly Divine. 2. The phrase, Son of Man, seems intended to denote the meanness of Christ’ s origin, and the poverty of His outward condition. 3. Christ’ s assumption of this character may teach us to consider Him as the Saviour of all nations; or of all that ever will be saved, out of every kindred, tongue, and people: He is not the Son of this or that particular people, but the Son of Man, and the Saviour of all them that believe, by whatever name they may be distinguished. 4. The term Son of Man seems to have been prefigured and foretold as a title which belonged to the expected Messiah. III. THE WHICH JESUS PUTS TO THE TRAITOR: “ Betrayest thou the Son of Man with a kiss?” Improvement: 1. We have here a loud call to be jealous of our own hearts, and to exercise a holy watchfulness over them. More especially, if we regard our immortal interests, let us carefully avoid the following things-- (1) Self-confidence. The fear of falling is a good security against it. (2) The secret indulgence of any sin: this was the ruin of Judas. (3) Beware of a profession without principle, the form of godliness without the power. Those who have no root in themselves will soon wither away. 2. We see how far a person may go in the way to heaven, and yet fall short of it. 3. Let us admire and adore the infinite wisdom of God, who brought so much real good out of so much aggravated evil. (B. Beddome, M. A.) He touched his ear, and healed himJesus the Restorer Jesus wrought a miracle to repair the mischief which Peter had done. Thus, by one act, in one moment, Christ made Himself the repairer of the breach. The evil, which His follower had done, was cancelled; and, through the kind interposition of a special act, the injured man was none the worse--but rather the better--and the harm, of which a Christian had been the occasion, was neutralized by his Master. I do not know what we should any of us do if we might not hope that this is still one of the blessed offices of Christ. We go through life meaning to do good; but oh! how often--through some ignorance, or indiscretion, or self-will-doing exactly the reverse! Happy is it for us if we might believe that Christ comes after us to undo the harm--nay, that by one of His gracious transformations, He comes afterwards to turn to benefit the very thing which we have done hurtingly. In the retrospect of life there was, it may be, a long period before you knew God--when your influence was all on the wrong side; your example and your words were always for the world, and sometimes for what was positively sinful! How many a bad and well-nigh deadly “ wound” must you have been making during those years upon the minds of those among whom your remarks and your actions were being flung about with such utter carelessness! How many a young companion, years back, may have learnt then to carry with him a life-long scar through some idle word of yours. Through the infinite patience, and the abounding grace of our God and Saviour, you have become a Christian; and you now love the Lord Jesus Christ as you love nothing else in earth or heaven; and, at this moment, you could not have a bitterer thought than to think that you had ever done anything to keep a soul from Jesus; or to give a moment’ s pain to one of His little ones. Now, may you take it as one of the wonderful provisions of your new state--as one of the blessings into which you have been admitted--that the Christ, whom you now call yours, will prevent the consequences of what you did in those days of sinful blindness--that He will restore what you destroyed, that fins bloom to that delicate conscience, it may be, of one of your early friends; that He will rectify the ill--that He will “ touch” with His own virtue the afflicted part, and that He will “ heal” all that “ wound.” Why may we not believe all this? Was not that the spirit of the Man, that night, when He stood upon the Mount of Olives? And is He not the same Restorer now? Do not think because man made your trouble, therefore God will not deal with the trouble. It rests with you. If you bring a sin to Christ believingly, He will take away that sin. If you bring a sorrow to Christ believingly, He will take away that sorrow. (J. Vaughan, M. A.) Luke 22:55-62 Peter followed afar off Decision of character enforced I. WHAT IS IMPLIED IN THE LORD AFAR OFF. Not giving the whole heart’ s affection to Him. II. WHAT USUALLY INDUCES ANY PERSONS TO DO SO. 1. The fear of man. 2. The love of the world. III. WHY WE SHOULD TO FOLLOW HIM FULLY. 1. It is dishonourable to God to follow Him afar off. 2. It is ruinous to our peace to be undecided in religion. 3. To follow the Lord afar off is injurious to the general interests of religion. Allow me, in closing, to inquire-- 1. Do you follow the Lord at all? 2. If you are following the Lord, how are you following Him? Is your heart in your professed subjection to Jesus Christ.? What motive influences your conduct? (W. Mudge.) Peter I. THE MAN. A man of great natural audacity and force; coarse, homely, rugged, stout, tenacious, powerful, of that class of men, not large, who break down old wails, and bring in new ages. And yet a man of variable impulses, and of changeful moods. Under strong excitement, he stood firm as a granite rock. Hence his surname, “ Peter.” But the quick heat might be quickly chilled. And then the granite crumbled. The rock became a sand-heap. His judgment could not always be trusted. His greatest strength was sometimes his greatest weakness. His large, warm heart over mastered him. It was hard for him to be parted from his friends. It was hard for him to go against the wishes and opinions of his associates. Even those with whom he might be casually in contact, had undue power over him; not from lack of positive convictions of his own, but because his great, hungry heart craved sympathy and fellowship. He wanted men to think well of him, and feel kindly towards him. An over-weening love of approbation was his one great weakness. And so he lay, as such men always do, very much at the mercy of his companions and his circumstances. II. THE SIN OF PETER. There was really no excuse for it. Its was in no personal danger. All he had to fear was a momentary contempt from servants and soldiers. Yet the paltry desire of standing well in the estimation of those who happened to be about him, menials as they were, caused him to prove false to his Lord. Miserable man! It makes us blush to think of him; so brave in meeting swords and clubs, so cowardly in meeting sneers. III. HIS . The reproving look of Christ, standing meek among His buffeters, and soon to start for Cavalry, was too much for the false and recreant disciple. “ He wept bitterly,” they tell us; and we may well believe it, for he was at heart a good, true, brave man, and when he came to himself he despised and abhorred himself for the momentary weakness which had allowed him so basely to deny his Lord … And so his character stands before us in proportions that do not appal and mock us as something quite miraculous and above our reach. While we stand in awe of him as an apostle, we are able to embrace him as a man, and walk on after him towards heaven. Nay, our interest in him is altogether peculiar. Majestic in his original endowments, we admire him. Inexcusable in his fall, we pity him. Elastic and fearless in his subsequent career, we accept it as a full and glorious atonement for every slip and every error of his life. If he was cowardly in the courtyard of Caiaphas, he made up for it by being a hero at his crucifixion, when he asked his tormentors to nail him to the cross with his feet turned upwards into heaven. IV. THE BEARING OF OUR SUBJECT is direct and obvious. It might not be quite right theologically, to thank God for Peter’ s sin. But since he did sin, we certainly ought to be very thankful for the record of it. Had Judas alone offended, afterwards perishing by his own hands, and sinking to his own place, Christians, once sinning, might well grow desperate. Had Peter stood, as John did, unshaken and unsullied, our hard struggle with manifold infirmities would be far harder than it is. But now we have a sinning Peter before us; an apostle grievously sinning, but grandly recovered. And while we blush to look upon him, there is comfort in the sight. Be encouraged, my feeble, imperfect, wavering brother, not indeed to sin, nor yet to think lightly of sin; but if you have sinned, to go and sin no more. Remorse belongs to Judas. Penitence to Peter. Penitence, and a better life. (R. D. Hitchcock, D. D.) The Lord turned and looked up in PeterPeter’ s sin and restoration I. A grievous sin. 1. Its elements. (1) Falsehood. (2) Cowardice. (3) Profanity. (4) Persistence. 2. Its aggravations. (1) His close connection with Christ. (2) His recent special privileges. (3) The repeated warnings given him. (4) His strong professions of devotion (5) The urgent demands of the time and place. 3. Its instigations. (1) The failure was surprisingly sudden; (2) of brief duration; (3) never repeated. 4. Its chief causes. (1) Self-confidence. (2) Blindness to near danger. (3) Neglect of precautions. (4) The fear of derision. II. A . 1. How was it brought about? (1) By a predicted coincidence (Luke 22:60). (2) By the Saviour’ s penetrating glance (Luke 22:61). (3) By the action of memory. 2. What proof have we of its genuineness? (1) His contrite sorrow. (2) His amended life. Learn: 1. The weakness of the strongest. 2. The sufficiency of Christ’ s grace. (M. Braithwaite.) The repentance of St. Peter First we learn the possibility of perfect repentance after grace has been forfeited; of a return to God from sin committed after special favours and gifts of love. Further, there was a wonderful mercy overruling St. Peter’ s fall, bringing out of it even greater good. It was made to teach him what otherwise he seemed unable to learn. He needed to learn distrust of self. And thou who despondest at some past fall, hast thou no similar lesson to learn of deeper humility, of closer dependence on God? Hast thou had no self-trust? Has thy strength always been in prayer and watching? And the key-note of his Epistles is--“ Be clothed with humility.” “ Be sober, and watch unto prayer.” May not this be thy case--that the foundations of thy life need to be laid lower, in a more perfect self-abasement; a deeper humility: a more entire leaning upon God, a more complete abandonment of all high thoughts, independence of will, self glorying, vanity, spirit of contradiction, and such-like; that beginning afresh, these hindrances being removed, thou mayest hide thyself from thyself, hide thyself in a perpetual recollection of the Divine presence and support, as the only stay and safeguard of thy frail, ever-falling humanity? Moreover, St. Peter is not merely the assurance to us of the possibility of a perfect restoration after falling from God, he is also the model of all true penitents. The first main element of St. Peter’ s recovery was a spirit of self-accusation, a ready acknowledgment of sin and error. Here, then, is one essential element of true repentance--self-accusation at the feet of Jesus. And how needful a lesson to learn well. The saddest part of our sin is, that we are so slow to confess it. Sin ever gathers round it an array of self-defences. Subtleties and evasions, special pleadings, shrinkings from humiliation, lingerings of pride, all gather round the consciousness of sin, and rise up instantly to hinder the only remedy of guilt, the only hope of restoration. Again, from St. Peter we learn that faith is a main element of restoration, preserved to him through the intercession of his Lord--“ I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not.” Now faith is not the belief of any particular dogma, nor is it the same as a spirit of assurance, neither is it any peculiar feeling appropriating some special promise; but it is the bent, the aim of the whole soul. It is the prevailing direction of all the powers of man toward God; it is the apprehension of the inner man embracing, grasping the invisible; living in things which are unseen and eternal, and raising him out of the sphere of sight which lives in things that are temporal. Faith may lay hold of one particular promise at one time, of another at another. And thus he had learnt to regard sin in the light of another world--sin abstractedly in itself, as a loss of spiritual life, as a thing abhorrent to God, as an utter contrariety to all that his soul was aspiring after. To rise thus above all the worldly consequences of sin, all its mere temporal effects, to read one’ s sin in the light of God’ s countenance, to view it as we shall view it on our death-bed, stripped of all accidents, with its awful consequences, as we pass into eternity--this is the attribute of faith; and through the preservation of his faith, as our Lord assures us, St. Peter arose from his fall. Oh! how much need have we to pray, “ Lord, increase our faith” ; that we may see our sins in their true form and colour. The sense of sin depends on our view of sanctity. As we grow better, we see sin clearer. As we have more of God, we realize evil more vividly. The greatest saints are therefore the deepest penitents. The bright light of purity in which they live sets off more vividly the darkness of the spots which stain the field of their souls’ life. The more they advance, the more truly they repent. As, e.g., we see more the power of truth, the more we are ashamed of our deceits. As we perceive love and largeness of heart, so we despise our selfishness. The more God shines into us, the more we loathe our own vileness. We judge by the contrast. There is one more feature of a true repentance which is exhibited in St. Peter. His repentance turned upon his love of the person of Christ. This had been long the moving principle of his life. His indignation at the idea of his Master’ s suffering: his refusing to be washed before the administration of the blessed Sacrament; his taking the sword, and then striking with it; his entering the judgment-hall--were all impulses of a fervent, though unchastened, love--a love to our Lord’ s person. And this was the secret power of that look which our Lord, when He turned, cast upon him. It may seem as though St. Peter’ s love to our Lord were too human, too much that of a man toward his fellow. It did indeed need chastening, increased reverence, more of that deep, adoring awe which St. John earlier learnt; and which St. Peter learnt at last in the shame and humiliations of his fall. But love to our Lord must needs be human--human in its purest, highest form. The Incarnation of God has made an essential change in the relations between God and man, and so in the love that binds us. He took our nature, and abideth in that nature. He is Man eternal, as He is God eternal. He loves, and will evermore love us, in that nature, and through its sensations, and He draws us to love Him through the same nature, with the impulse of which humanity is capable. He loved with a human love, and He is to be loved in return with a human love. He consecrated the human affections to Himself in His human form as their proper end, so that through His humanity they might centre upon the eternal Godhead. Love is of the very essence of repentance, and love is ever associated with a person, and the true movement of the deepening and enduring love of penitents circles around the Person of Jesus Christ and Him crucified. In conclusion, I would briefly point out two habits of devotion necessary to be cherished, in order that the grace of such a repentance as we have been contemplating may be the more worked in us. One is the habit of meditation on the Person of Jesus Christ. Again, love can be cherished only by habitual intercourse, or ever-renewed inward feeding on the beloved object. If there be no converse, or communion of thought, love must decline and die. And how can an invisible person become the object of love, except by inward contemplation? But it is not in the nature of the human heart to love another, unless that other become a constant companion, or unless his beauty and amiableness become strongly impressed on the soul, and be borne always in remembrance. The grace of God moves and operates according to the laws of humanity. Grace is above nature, but it is according to nature. It acts on nature, and raises nature up to tile level of God, but is human still. What, then, would stir the heart to love according to nature, the same will stir the heart to love above nature. And what is this but the contemplation of the object, followed by an habitual feeding upon it? The second point is this: we must learn to measure the guilt of our sins by the sorrows of God in the flesh. We have no proper rule of our own by which to measure the guilt or sin. Sin has ruined this lower creation of God. Sin brought the flood and the fire of Sodom, and it has in its train disease, and famine, and war. It has created death, and made death eternal. All these are as certain rules and proportions by which we can form some estimate of the guilt of sin. But they are partial and imperfect measures, after all. The only true and adequate measure is the blood of God Incarnate and the sorrows of His sacred heart. Learn, then, to look at sin in this connection--not sin in the aggregate, but individual sins. Measure by this price the special besetting sin of thy nature. Weigh it in the scale against the weight of the sacrifice which bowed to the cross the Incarnate God. (Canon T. T. Carter) Peter’ s presumptuous sin and sorrowful repentance I. AND ARE VERY SIGNS OF AND IN . Trust in God is one thing, and trust in ourselves is another; and there is reason to think that they will differ as much in the success that attends them as they do in the powers upon which they are founded. It is in vain for you to promise yourselves a superiority under trials and temptations, unless you lay the right foundation, by imploring the aid and assistance of God’ s Holy Spirit, whose province only it is to confirm the faithful to the end. II. From this example of St. Peter we may learn also WHAT LITTLE REASON THERE IS TO PROMISE SUCCESS AGAINST WHICH ARE OF OUR OWN SEEKING. St. Peter had warning given him, and was told by One whose word he might have taken, that he was not able to undergo the trial, which he seemed so much to despise. But try he would, and learnt to know his own weakness in his miscarriage. God knows our strength better than we ourselves do; and therefore, when He has warned us to avoid the occasions of sin, and to fly from the presence of the enemy, it is presumption to think ourselves able to stand the attack, and our preparations to meet the danger must be vain and ineffectual. When we strive not lawfully, even victory is dis-honourable, and no success can justify disobedience to orders. III. From the example of St. Peter we may learn now GREAT THE OF REGULAR AND ARE. Good Christians, though they may fall like other men through passion, or presumption, or other infirmities, yet the way to their repentance is more open and easy; their minds, not being hardened by sin, are awakened by the gentlest calls, and the sense of virtue revives upon the first motion and suggestions of conscience. St. Peter fell, and his fall was very shameful; but his repentance was as surprising and remarkable as his fall. IV. You may observe that THE SINS OF THE BEST MEN ARE WITH THE SENSE OF SORROW AND . It is impossible to have a sense of religion, to think of God and ourselves as we ought to do, without being affected with the deepest sorrow for our offences. When men are truly concerned, they do not consider what they are to get by their tears, or what profit their sorrow will yield. The soul must vent its grief; and godly sorrow is as truly the natural expression of an inward pain as worldly sorrow, however they differ in their causes and objects. (Bishop Sherlock.) Peter’ s sin, and Peter’ s repentance I. PETER’ S SIN. 1. The sin itself. It was the denial of his Lord. He denied that he knew Jesus. He was ashamed to own his connection with Jesus. And he yielded to the impulse of his shame and base fear. 2. But, secondly, let us attend to the circumstances of Peter’ s sin. We cannot take the measure of it, or see it in a just light, till these are considered. The circumstances are of two sorts. (1) In the first place, there are the aggravating circumstances-- (a) The first circumstance of an aggravating nature was the rank he held among the followers of Jesus. Peter was more than an ordinary disciple. He was one of the twelve. He was an apostle. Moreover, he was one of the three nearest to the Lord in intercourse and love. (b) The second circumstance of aggravation was, that Peter had been warned of his danger. (c) It was also an aggravating circumstance in the case, that Peter had made great professions. When we read the sad story of his threefold denial, we are disposed to exclaim, What can this mean? Is this the bold confessor who was the first to avow his faith in the Messiahship of Jesus? (d) Fourthly, Peter’ s sin took aa aggravation from the circumstance that it was committed in the presence of Jesus. (e) Peter denied his Lord at a time of love. He had just received the Holy Communion. And now the Passion of the Saviour was begun: (2) The extenuating circumstances in Peter’ s case. It is no less important to mark these, than to consider, as has been done, such as were of an aggravating nature. (a) First, then, it was an extenuating circumstance that he was surprised into the commission of his sin. The denial of his Lord was not deliberate. (b) Secondly, an important circumstance of extenuation was, that the sin was contrary to the tenor of Peter’ s life. (c) It should not be overlooked, that it seems to have been Peter’ s love for Christ that exposed him to the temptation by which he was overcome. (d) Fourthly, Peter was comparatively ignorant. Some allowance must be made, in the case of our apostle, for the prejudices which affected the universal Jewish mind. We must not judge him as if he had understood, as we do, or as he himself did afterwards, by what means it was that the peculiar work of Jesus, as the Messiah, was to be accomplished. (e) It is fit we should remember that the hour and the power of darkness were come. II. PETER’ S . 1. Its origin. (1) Christ’ s prayer was the procuring cause of it. (2) The instrumental cause. (a) Christ’ s look. (b) Christ’ s word. (3) The influence of the Spirit of God was the efficient cause. 2. The signs, tokens, and manifestation of Peter’ s repentance. (1) He went out. A change came over his feelings, and he could remain no longer in the society of the irreligious servants and officers. (2) He deeply mourned for his sin. (3) He sought the society of Christ’ s disciples. (4) His love to the Lord revived. 3. The acceptance of Peter’ s repentance. (1) A message sent through the holy women. (2) Christ’ s interview with him alone. (3) The more public interview in Galilee. 4. Peter’ s repentance thus graciously accepted, what were the issues of it? He was the boldest of the bold, from that time forward, in confessing Christ. There was less boasting than there had been before; but he never flinched again. There were no more denials. (A. Gray.) Peter’ s restoration I. First, LET US LOOK AT THE LORD, WHO LOOKED UPON PETER. 1. I see in that look, first, that which makes me exclaim--What thoughtful love! Jesus is bound, He is accused, He has just been smitten on the face, but His thought is of wandering Peter. He looked to others, but He never looked to Himself. I see, then, in our Lord’ s looking upon Peter, a wondrously thoughtful love. 2. I exclaim next, what a boundless condescension! He had acted most shamefully and cruelly, and yet the Master’ s eye sought him out in boundless pity! 3. But then, again, What tender wisdom do I see here! “ The Lord turned, and looked upon Peter.” He knew best what to do; He did not speak to him, but looked upon him. 4. As I think of that look again, I am compelled to cry out, “ What Divine power is here! This lock worked wonders. I sometimes preach with all my soul to Peter, and, alas! he likes my sermon and forgets it. I have known Peter read a good book full of most powerful pleading, and when he has read it through, he has shut it up and gone to sleep. I remember my Peter when he lost his wife, and one would have thought it would have touched him, and it did, with some natural feeling; yet he did not return to the Lord, whom he had forsaken, but continued in his backsliding. See, then, how our Lord can do with a look what we cannot do with a sermon, what the most powerful writer cannot do with hundreds of pages, and what affliction cannot do with even its heaviest stroke. II. LET US LOOK INTO THE LOOK WHICH THE LORD GIVE TO PETER. Help us again, most gracious Spirit! 1. That look was, first of all, a marvellous refreshment to Peter’ s memory, “ The Lord turned, and looked upon Peter.” He saw the Man whom he loved as he had never seen Him before. This was He who called him, when he was fishing, to become a fisher of men; this was He who bade him spread the net, and caused him to take an incredible quantity of fishes, insomuch that the boat began to sink, and he cried out, “ Depart from me; for I am a sinful man, O Lord” ; this was He who had made him walk on the water, and at other times had rebuked the winds, and raised the dead. This was He with whom Peter had been upon the Mount of Transfiguration! 2. Next, that turning of the Master was a special reminder of His warning words. Jesus did not say it in words, but He did more than say it by His look. “ Ah, Peter! did not I tell you it would be so?” 3. Surely it was, also, a moving appeal to Peter’ s heart. 4. What do you think that look chiefly said? My thought about it, as I turned it over, was this: When the Lord looked upon Peter, though He did refresh his memory, and make an appeal to his conscience, yet there was still more evidently a glorious manifestation of love. If I may be permitted humbly and reverently to read what was written on my Master’ s face, I think it was this--“ And yet I love thee, Peter, I love thee still! Thou hast denied Me, but I look upon thee still as Mine. I cannot give thee up.” 5. Again, this look penetrated Peter’ s inmost heart. It is not every look that we receive that goes very deep. 6. One fact may not escape our notice: our Lord’ s look at Peter was a revival of all Peter’ s looking unto Jesus. The Lord’ s look upon Peter took effect because Peter was looking to the Lord. Do you catch it? If the Lord had turned and looked on Peter, and Peter’ s back had been turned on the Lord, that look would not have reached Peter, nor affected him. The eyes met to produce the desired result. 7. This look was altogether between the Lord and Peter. Nobody knew that the Lord looked on Peter, except Peter and his Lord. That grace which saves a soul is not a noisy thing; neither is it visible to any but the receiver. III. Now I must go to my third point: LET US LOOK AT PETER AFTER THE LORD HAD LOOKED AT HIM. What is Peter doing? 1. When the Lord looked on Peter the first thing Peter did was to feel awakened. Peter’ s mind bad been sleeping. 2. The next effect was, it took away all Peter’ s foolhardiness from him. Peter had made his way into the high priest’ s hall, but now he made his way out of it. 3. The look of Christ severed Peter from the crowd. He was no longer among the fellows around the fire. He had not another word to say to them; he quitted their company in haste. It is well for believers to feel that they are not of the world. Oh, that the arrows of the great Lord would this morning pierce some soul even as a huntsman wounds a stag! Oh, that the wounded soul, like Peter, would seek solitude! The stag seeks the thicket to bleed and die alone; but the Lord will come in secret to the wounded heart, and draw out the arrow. 4. That look of Christ also opened the sluices of Peter’ s heart; he went out, and wept bitterly. There was gall in the tears he wept, for they were the washings of his hitter sorrow. 5. Yet I want you to notice that that look of Christ gave him relief. It is a good thing to be able to weep. Those who cannot weep are the people that suffer most. A pent-up sorrow is a terrible sorrow. (C. H. Spurgeon.) Condemned by a look When Sapores, King of Persia, raised a violent persecution against the Christians, Usthezanes, aa old nobleman, a courtier, that had served in Sapores’ government in his minority, being a Christian, was so terrified that he left off his profession. But he, sitting at the court-gate when Simon, an aged holy bishop, was leading to prison, and rising up to salute him, the good bishop frowned upon him and turned away his face with indignation, as being loth to look upon a man that had denied the faith: Usthezanes fell a weeping, went into his chamber, put off his courtly attire, and broke out into these words: “ Ah, how shall I appear before the great God of heaven whom I have denied, when Simon, but a man, will not endure to look upon me; if he frown, how will God behold me when I come before his tribunal?” The thought of God’ s judgment-seat wrought so strongly upon him, that he recovered his spiritual strength, and died a glorious martyr. (Spencer.) Peter’ s penitence Dr. Moody Stewart was once praising some preacher to Dr. Duncan, who said, “ He’ s too unbroken for me; plenty of learning and talents, but too unbroken yet.” You speak about being broken in business, do you know anything of being broken in heart? The man who has been broken himself will he tender to other broken men. There is a story told in the Early Church how, if the cock crowed when Peter was preaching and the echoes came into the Church, he could go no further. The sermon was cut short; but when he began again there would be an unction and tenderness in it which would satisfy the most broken sinner in the congregation. (J. Whyte.) God connects His moral commands with natural objects Instead of giving His moral command as a mere abstract announcement addressed only to the ear, which would then be in danger of being forgotten, He linked His words with objects which appealed to the eye, and were fitted to call up, when the eye rested upon them, the moral ideas connected with them. Though driven out of Eden, God has pursued the same plan in educating and disciplining man out of the consequences of the fall, as He pursued in Eden to keep him from falling. He connected his whole moral history as closely as before with the objects around him. Everything with which he deals preaches to him. The thorns and thistles coming up in his cultivated fields remind him of the curse; and the difficulties and disabilities which he finds in earning his daily bread are proofs and punishments to him of his sin. As truly as God made the tree of life to be a sacrament, as it were, in the midst of Eden, to keep alive in Adam’ s heart perpetually the conditions of life; as truly as Jesus associated the moral lesson to Peter with the crowing of the cock, so truly does God still make nature one of the great powers by which dead consciences and sluggish memories are awakened. Our moral experiences and actions are thus as closely linked with the trees and flowers as they were in Paradise. In our progress through life we are continually impressing our own moral history upon the objects around us; and these objects possess the power of recalling it, and setting it before us in all its vividness, even after the lapse of many years. Our feelings and actions pass from ourselves and become a part of the constitution of nature, become subtle powers pervading the scenes in which we felt and performed them. They endow the inanimate earth itself with a kind of consciousness, a kind of moral testimony which may afterwards witness for or against us. We cannot live in any place, or go through any scene, without leaving traces of ourselves behind in it; without mixing up our own experiences with its features, taking its inanimate things into our confidence, unbosoming ourselves to them, colouring them with our own nature, and placing ourselves completely in their power. They keep a silent record of what we are and do in the associations connected with our thoughts and actions; and that record they unfold for us to read when at any time we come into contact with them. And hence the significance of God’ s own words, “ He shall call to the heavens from above, and to the earth, that He may judge His people.” There is a moral purpose, as I have said, in all this. It is not for the mere vivifying of our feelings of pleasure or pain that the objects of nature are endowed with this strange power of association. God meant it to perform a most important part in our moral training. He meant it to remind us of sins which we should otherwise have forgotten, and to awaken our consciences that would otherwise have slumbered. By associating our sinful thoughts and actions with outward objects, He designed that they should be brought and kept before us in all their reality in order to produce the proper impression upon us, instead of allowing them to sink into the vague, ghostly abstractions which past sins are apt to become in the mind. And not seldom has this silent power of witness-bearing, which lurks in the scenes and objects of nature, been felt by guilty men, bringing them to a sense of their guilt. (H. Macmillan, LL. D.) The effect of an external agency, in order to quicken a dead conscience and reuse a torpid memory George MacDonald, in his story of “ Robert Falconer,” relates a well-authenticated incident of a notorious convict in one of our colonies having been led to reform his ways, through going one day into a church, where the matting along the aisle happened to be of the same pattern as that in the little English church where he worshipped with his mother when a boy. That old familiar matting vividly recalled the memories of childhood, “ the mysteries of the kingdom of innocence,” which had long been hid and overpowered by the sins and sufferings of later years. An unfortunate outcast, sunk in misery and vice, wandering in the streets of a large city, meets suddenly a child carrying a bunch of some common wild flowers--hawthorn, cowslips, or violets. A chord is touched which has long slumbered in the outcast’ s bosom. The innocent past comes back; the little child sitting on the fond mother’ s knee; the long, happy wanderings in the summer woods and hawthorn-shaded lanes; the cottage home, with all its old-fashioned ways and dear delights; all this sweeps over her like a blissful dream at the sight or smell of these humble wild flowers. Overpowered by the recollections of the past, and the awful contrast between what she was and might have been and what she is now, she turns away and weeps bitterly, perhaps to see at that moment the tender, reproachful eye of Him whom she has long denied, fixed upon her, and to hear His words of pity, “ Go in peace, and sin no more.” Two young men are spending their last evening together amid the rural scenes in which they have been bred. They are going up to the great city on the morrow to push their fortunes, and are talking over their plans. While they are conversing, one of those little Italian boys who penetrate to the remotest nooks with their hurdy-gurdies, comes up and plays several tunes, which attract their attention, and draw from them a few coins. The young men part. One prospers by industry and talent; the other gives himself up to dissipation, is sent adrift, and becomes a wreck. Worn out with debauchery, and in the last stage of disease, he sends for his former friend. They meet; and at that moment the sound of a hurdy-gurdy is heard in the street. It is the little Italian boy playing the same tunes which he played on that well-remembered evening when the friends bade farewell to the country. It wanted but this to fill up the cup of the dying man’ s shame and sorrow. All that he has hazarded for the pleasures of the city comes rushing upon his memory. He has lost his money, his health, his character, his peace of mind, and his hope of heaven; and he has gained in exchange sorrow, pain, privation, an insupportable weariness of life, and a dread of death. That sound of the Italian hurdy-gurdy comes to him like the crowing of the cock to Peter. It is the turning point of his life. It awakens within him “ the late remorse of love” ; and he dies in the peace of Divine pardon and acceptance. All these are not mere fancy pictures; they are true to life; they have often happened, and the number of them might be indefinitely increased. Such examples impress upon our minds the solemn truth that there is nothing really forgotten in this world. (H. Macmillan, LL. D.) Lessons from the fall of St. Peter 1. Mark and admire the honesty and impartiality of the sacred historians. All four state this blot on Peter’ s character; and their combined account presents it fully and with many dreadful aggravations. 2. Let the example of Christ, in this case, teach us to pity and to seek to restore the fallen. 3. Let us consider Peter’ s denial of his Lord as a warning to us all. We may soon become very guilty, and be exposed to shame in an unguarded moment; and there is hardly any sin we may not be guilty of, if left to ourselves. 4. Let us be on our guard against the particular causes that led more immediately to Peter’ s fall. (1) Self-confidence. (2) Indecision. (3) Fear of man. (4) False shame. (5) Bad company. 5. Let those who, like Peter, have fallen, imitate Peter in his repentance. (James Foote, M. A.) The repentance of Peter I. PETER’ S . 1. The repentance of Peter is ascribed, in the first instance, to a circumstance apparently unimportant. The crowing of a cock. How observant then ought we to be o! all which surrounds or befals us; and how anxious to obtain from it instruction in righteousness! 2. The text ascribes it also to the interposition of Christ. Without this, the warning voice of the cock would have been heard in vain. 3. But what followed the look which the compassionate Saviour directed towards His fallen apostle? It was a look of the mildest reproof and the tenderest pity, but the lightning’ s flash could not have done more. Piercing his heart, it produced there that serious reflection from which his contrition sprung. II. PETER’ S SORROW. 1. His sorrow was of a softening nature. “ He wept.” It was not that horror of soul, which has its origin solely in fear, and leaves the heart as hard as it finds it. It was the sorrow which springs from love, and fill the breast with the tenderest emotions, while it disquiets and humbles it. 2. But the sorrow of Peter was acute, as well as softening. He not only wept, but he wept” bitterly.” And bitterly does every sinner weep, who really bewails his transgressions. 3. The sorrow of Peter was, further, a secret sorrow; a grief which sought retirement. “ He went out” when he wept. Not that he was now afraid to acknowledge Christ, or unwilling to condemn himself for the crime which he had committed; but like penitent Ephraim, “ he was ashamed, yea, even confounded” ; and he sought where to give vent to his sorrow unseen, and to implore undisturbed that mercy which he so greatly needed. And every real penitent is often “ sitting alone.” Flying from scenes of vanity which he once loved, and from society which his folly once enlivened, he retires to his closet, and there, when he has shut his door, he communes with his heart, prays to his offended Father, and weeps. III. WHAT EFFECTS PETER’ S . 1. An increasing love for his Lord. 2. Greater zeal and boldness in the service of Christ. (C. Bradley, M. A.) Peter’ s repentance I. THE LOOK OF JESUS. We cannot picture to ourselves the countenance he exhibited, or the point and pungency of the sentiment it conveyed; but I observe it was doubtless the look of offended dignity; it was the look of insulted friendship; it was the look of betrayed confidence; it was the look of keen and humiliating reproof, and such reproof the whole of Peter’ s conduct justly merited. I observe, further, that the look of Jesus was a look which conveyed conviction. And, once more, it was a look of compassion. What a conflict of feeling must have been produced by the emotions displayed on this deeply interesting occasion. Humbled by reproof, pursued by conviction, melted by love, what tongue can describe his grief, or what artist give a hue sufficiently deep to the manifestation of his contrition I These are the feelings--a knowledge of which must be acquired in the most impressive and affecting school in the world. These are feelings--a knowledge of which must be acquired on Mount Calvary. The man who has been brought to look on Him whom he has pierced has an idea more clear, a conception more strong of the feelings of Peter than the art of eloquence, or the line of the pencil can convey. II. THE WHICH THE LOOK OF JESUS REVIVED. 1. The recollection of previous obligation. 2. The recollection of oft-repeated and solemn protestations of fidelity and affection. 3. The recollection of the scene at the Last Supper. III. THE EFFECTS . 1. The retirement he sought. True repentance flies to solitude, and shrinks even from sympathy. 2. The depth of his sorrow. Concluding lessons: 1. Consolation to those who, like Peter, weep bitterly in secret. Special news of Christ’ s resurrection sent to Peter: “ Seek him in his solitude, and tell him that the Lord waits with open arms to receive him.” 2. But remember that the great moral of the whole is caution. Learn, therefore, by way of application in the first place, the necessity of guarding vigilantly against the approaches of temptation. Learn, secondly, from this subject, the necessity of prudence in making a profession, but of integrity in acting up to it when it is made. Learn, then, in the last place, the necessity of decision of character in matters of religion. (J. Thorp.) The Saviour’ s look upon Peter Doubtless it was a look of blended significance. There must have been in the Saviour’ s countenance an expression of mingled emotions. At a single glance there may have been conveyed to Peter what would have required many words to express. I. It doubtless spoke to him REPROOF. An impressive reminder of the great wrong he had done. II. It was, too, a GRIEVED LOOK. Such a look as a kind mother turns upon a wayward son who has wronged her. III. It was, at the same time, A PITYING LOOK. The Saviour felt for Peter in his wretched condition. Forgetting His own great impending sorrows, He had it in His heart to sympathize with poor, unhappy Peter. He knew that, notwithstanding all he had done, he was a genuine disciple, and that the time of reflection would soon come, when he would be overwhelmed with grief. IV. And, still further, it was a LOOK. The Lord knew how deep would be Peter’ s self-reproach and anguish of soul when he came to himself, and that he would be tempted to despair of forgiveness. So by this look he would inspire him with hope. (Christian at Work.) Knowledge of self through Christ He remembered. He realized under the eye of Jesus what he had been doing. A glance of God into his soul revealed his loss of himself. Beholding his Lord, as he stood in the calm triumph of His Divine manhood looking into his timid soul, he could not help knowing himself in his weakness and shame. Not a word was spoken. God does not need to speak to judge us. He will only need to look upon us. One look of divinity is enough to convince of sin. Peter the denier, under the eye of the Son of God, became at once Peter the penitent. And we know how afterwards Peter the penitent became Peter the man--firm as the rock--the true Peter, hero of faith, and made worthy at last of meeting and returning with joy the look of the risen and ascended Lord among the sons of God on high. These effects of Jesus’ flashings of God upon Peter show very simply and plainly Jesus’ method of convincing men of sin, and of lifting them up through repentance to real and everlasting manliness. No man ever felt Jesus’ eye upon him, and went away without a look into his own heart which he had never had so clearly before. Some men went away from Christ to the judgment. The thoughts of many hearts, as Simeon foresaw, were revealed by him. Jesus’ gospel, therefore, being thus intensely personal, real, and revealing, is the most honest thing in this whole world. It is no form, no fiction of life, no exaggeration of feeling, no mere speech about God and the world to come; it is the one essentially and perfectly honest thing in this world of words and forms and fictions of life. Now let me specify two or three particulars which are brought out in Jesus’ revelation of men to themselves. He made men, whom His divinity searched, understand that they were personally responsible for their own real characters. He did not allow His disciples to condemn men for their misery, or their misfortunes, or the consequences of their circumstances, or any of those influences which meet from beyond their own wills in men’ s lives. But He made every soul of man realize that within life’ s circumstances there is a living centre of personal responsibility. Jesus made men understand, also, that in their sinning they have to do with personal beings. We do not sin against abstractions, or against a system of commandments only; we are persons in a society of persons of which God is the centre and the source. All sin is against the realities of a most personal universe. Sin strikes against beings. Peter sinned against the Lord who had chosen him, and who was about to die for him. The sinfulness of sin is not that it is simply a transgression of a law; but it beats against love. All sin is against love, against all love; for it is sin against the living, personal being of God. Again, as Jesus Christ showed men themselves in their sins, he showed them also that those sins of theirs are something which God cannot endure for ever. They must not be. They shall not be. God cannot always endure them, and be the God He is. Jesus said He did not come to judge the world; and yet again He said, “ Now is the judgment of this world.” God on high cannot suffer us to go on in this way for ever. He must redeem us and make us like Himself, or He must do something else worthy of Himself with us. This is morally certain. And one thing more is clear as a star in the mystery of Godliness. There is one thing more which we need to know which Jesus makes as bright as day in His gospel of God to man. When Peter was at Jesus’ knees saying in the first honest instinct of a man who saw himself, “ I am a sinful man,” Jesus stood over him radiant like a God, and said, “ Fear not.” Such is God’ s lovely attitude towards every penitent at the feet of His Almightiness! Fear not! Sin is forgiven and all its darkness made bright in the love which reveals it. The cloud of our sky becomes a glory at the touch of the sun. If we will not come to the light to be made known and to be forgiven, then we remain in tile darkness. Penitence is holding ourselves up in God’ s pure and infinite light, and letting Him shine our darkness away. Fear not; sin is vouchsafed forgiveness in the same love which it shows to sin, and condemns it. (Newman Smyth, D. D.) Peter went out, and wept bitterlyPeter’ s repentance I. OBSERVE HOW NEAR THE SIN OF PETER COMES TO THAT OF JUDAS. 1. Peter, like Judas, surrenders his Lord to His foes. 2. The sin of Peter, like that of Judas, was the act of an intimate and confidential friend. 3. This denial by Peter occurred immediately after the Supper, and after witnessing the agony of Christ in the garden. 4. Peter’ s denial was in the face of his own protestations to the contrary, and of Christ’ s recent and explicit warning. 5. Peter’ s denial was aggravated by repetition, and at each repetition he contracted deeper guilt. 6. This sin of Peter was committed in the very presence and hearing of the Lord. II. YET, WITH ALL THESE , THE SIN OF PETER MUST BE FROM THAT OF JUDAS. 1. For instance, Peter’ s sin was sudden, under strong temptation; while the sin of Judas was deliberate and long-premeditated. 2. Then, too, the motives by which the two were prompted--Peter, by a natural fear and the instinctive love of life; Judas, by the most sordid of all the passions that move the human heart--the base love of gold. 3. In Peter’ s case there was no heart-denial of his Lord; it was only of the lips. 4. In Peter there was only the suppression of his discipleship. III. THE BETWEEN THE TWO MEN AFTER THEY ARE BROUGHT TO A OF THEIR GUILT. 1. Judas is judicially abandoned; Peter, only temporarily deserted. 2. In the case of Judas there was only remorse; in that of Peter, sincere repentance. 3. In Judas there was a total and final rejection of Christ; in Peter, a loving return to Him. 4. Judas sealed his guilt by his suicide; Peter sealed his repentance by a life of consecration to his Master’ s service. Concluding reflections: 1. You have the plainest evidence, in all the actions of Judas and of Peter, that they were flee and responsible, acting under the power of motives. 2. We see in Peter’ s fall the wonderful discipline by which he was graciously prepared for his work, revealing to us that paradox of the gospel, how grace, in its power, brings evil out of good, and transmutes the poor, fallen, erring sinner into the accepted messenger of God. 3. These two, Judas and Peter, are the types, respectively, of the only two classes of sinners. The difference between sinner and saint is found in the behaviour of the two in respect to their sins--the one persisting in it, the other weeping bitterly. (B. M. Palmer, D. D.) . Luke 23:1-7 Then said Pilate The conduct of Christ contrasted with the conduct of other public characters I. Amongst the philosophers of the heathen world not one can be named, who did not admit some favourite vice into his system of good morals; and who was not more than suspected of some criminal indulgence in his own practice; not one, whose public instructions were without error, and whose private conduct was without reproach. In the character of Jesus Christ no such imperfection can be traced. In His addresses to His followers, He taught virtue unpolluted by impurity: and in His practice He exemplified what He taught. II. In the most distinguished of our contemporaries, we always find some weakness to pity or lament, or only some single and predominant excellence to admire. In each individual the learning or the activity, the counsel or the courage, only can be praised. We look in vain for consistency or perfection. The conduct of Christ betrays no such inequality. In Him no virtue is shaded by its correspondent infirmity. No pre-eminent quality obscures the rest. Every portion of His character is in harmony with every other. Every point in the picture shines with great and appropriate lustre. III. In the heroes, which our fables delight to pourtray, we are continually astonished by such exploits as nothing in real life can parallel; by the achievements of sagacity that cannot be deceived, and of courage that cannot be resisted. We are either perplexed by the union of qualities and endowments incompatible with each other, or overpowered by the glare of such excellencies and powers, as nature with all her bounty never bestowed upon man. Jesus Christ has surpassed the heroes of romance. In contemplating His character we are not less surprised by the variety of His merits, than delighted by their consistency. They always preserve their proportion to each other. No duty falls below the occasion that demands it. No virtue is carried to excess. IV. In the most exalted of our fellow-creatures, and even in the practice of their most distinguished virtues, we can always discover some concern for their personal advantage; some secret hope of fame, of profit, or of power; some prospect of an addition to their present enjoyments. In the conduct of Christ none of the weakness of self-love can be discovered. “ He went about doing good,” which He did not appear to share, and from which He did not seem to expect either immediate or future advantage. His benevolence, and His alone, was without self-interest, without variation and without alloy. V. It is a very general and a very just complaint, that every man occasionally neglects the duties of his place and station. The character of Christ is exposed to no such imputation. The great purpose of His mission indeed, appears to have taken, entire possession of his thoughts. VI. The pretended prophet of Arabia made religion the sanction of his licentiousness, and the cloak of his ambition. VII. An impostor, of whatever description, though he has but one character to support, seldom supports it with such uniformity as to procure ultimate success to his imposition. Jesus Christ had a great variety of characters to sustain; and He sustained them all without failure and without reproach. VIII. Men in general are apt to deviate into extremes. The lover of pleasure often pursues it till he becomes its victim or its slave. The lover of God sometimes grow into an enthusiast, and imposes upon himself self-denial without virtue, and mortification without use or value. From such weakness and such censure the character of Christ must be completely exempted. He did not disdain the social intercourse of life, or reject its innocent enjoyments. IX. While we are displaying the various merits which adorned the personal character of Christ, one excellence more must not be passed in silence; the rare union of active and passive fortitude; the union of courage with patience; of courage without rashness, and patience without insensibility. X. Such, then, is the unrivalled excellence of the personal character of Jesus Christ. Such is the proof which it affords that He was “ a teacher sent from God” ; and such is “ the example which He has left us, that we should follow His steps. (W. Barrow.) Pontius Pilate I. PILATE WAS WEAK--MORALLY WEAK. He sinned in spite of his better self. He was thoroughly convinced of the innocence of his prisoner. His conscience forbad him to inflict punishment. He made strenuous efforts to save Him. And yet, after all, He gave Him up to death, and furnished the soldiers needed for carrying out the sentence. How many in our day resemble him! Are not some of you as weak as he was? Have you not had convictions of duty as strong as his, and maintained them for a while as stoutly as he did, and yet failed at last to carry them out? Remember that convictions of sin and duty do not keep men from sin; nor do they excuse sin. Beware of substituting religious knowledge or sentiment for religious principle. II. PILATE WAS WORLDLY. This explains his weakness. His feelings were overpowered by a selfish regard to his own interest. III. PILATE WAS . Here was the secret of that fatal power which the world exerted upon him. He was worldly because his life was not guided and governed by true religion. “ This is the victory that overcometh the world--even your faith.” (R. P. Pratten, B. A.) Pontius Pilate Let us consider, then, the strange behaviour of Pontius Pilate after our Lord’ s formal acquittal. I. HE THE SAVIOUR TO BE , BUT HE DOES NOT SET HIM FREE. II. HE DOES NOT SET HIM FREE, BUT TO BE FREE FROM HIM--to get rid of Him. III. HE TO GET FREE FROM HIM, BUT HIM AGAIN AND AGAIN. 1. “ I find no fault in this Man” --Pilate has minutely and thoroughly investigated the case of Him who was so eagerly accused by the people, and the result of this examination was the Lord’ s acquittal. Well done, Pilate! you have taken the right way; only one step more, and the case will be honourably concluded! As a just judge you are bound to follow up your verdict by release. The little bit of nobleness which Pilate showed on his first appearance was fast declining, as generally happens when it is not founded on the fear of God. When a man has gone as far as to question what truth is, he will soon follow up his questioning with, What is justice? what is faith? what is virtue? The inevitable result of a perverse state of heart is that it must daily beget new perversities. Because Pilate was not moved by love of truth, it was impossible for him to be moved for any length of time by a sense of justice. He declares the Saviour to be free from guilt, but he does not set Him free. Even since the times have become Christian, and since men have become members of the Church of Jesus Christ, it is an universal fact that Pilate’ s conduct has been repeated. Men have declared the Saviour free, but have not set Him free. Pilate was a Roman, and a Roman maxim it has ever been in Christianity to pay every possible outward respect to the Saviour, but not to set Him free. The Romish Church especially bound what ought especially to be free--the Word of Jesus Christ--the Bible--the gospel. They declare the Word of the Saviour to be free, but do not set it free. In the Middle Ages, under plea of its preciousness, they bound it with iron chains. At present they bind it by the approval of bishops, by episcopal approbation. Even in these days this Church has dared to brand Bible Societies as plague sores. Pontius Pilate was a Roman to whom truth was nothing, justice little, his own interest everything; therefore he did not set the Saviour free, though he declared Him to be entitled to freedom. And a Roman maxim it bus been to this very day to declare the Saviour free, but not to free Him. It is to the glorious Reformation that the honour belongs of having broken the chains by which Rome bound the Saviour. In the Church of the Reformation, our dear evangelical Church, Jesus is not only declared to be free, but is free. Freely He governs our Church; freely He communicates with every believing soul. May we, therefore, say that Pilatism exists no longer in evangelical Christianity? Ah! no, dearly beloved, we must sorrowfully confess that Satan did not fail to find an entrance again through a back door. For, among the numerous Christians who glory in Protestant freedom, many do not allow the Saviour to speak except at church on Sunday. He is not allowed to raise His voice during the week, nor in their own homes. What is this but declaring the Saviour to be free, and keeping Him bound? They bind Him to altar and pulpit; they hear Him every week or fortnight, but further advance is denied their Saviour. He is not permitted to leave the church nor go with them to their home. Mere church attendance is Pilatism; the Saviour is declared to be free, but He is not set free. “ Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if any man hear My voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with Me.” But, my friends, tot us who have given up our heart to the Saviour, to occupy a place in His throne-room, would it not be a subtle Pilatism if we lock the Saviour within the heart, and not set Him free for the whole life? Not only in the heart is the Saviour to have free range, but in the home, in your nursery and drawing-rooms, in your workshop, in your society, in your dally life and conversation, He is to be free, and the free ruler of your life. Oh, my friends, strive against Pilatism! Do not lock your Saviour in your church, nor in your heart, but allow Him to dispose of you how He will and where He will. The more He is allowed to shape a man’ s life, the more freedom will that man enjoy. Therefore, once again, away with Pilatism! Do not only declare the Saviour to be free, but set Him free indeed! II. PILATE DOES NOT SET THE SAVIOUR FREE, BUT TO GET FREE FROM Him He does not give Jesus His liberty, for fear of the people. He endeavours to get free from Jesus because he fears Jesus. The quiet dignity of the King of Truth grows more and more painful to him. The whole matter, which at first he thought a great ado about nothing, is taking such a turn that he feels quite uneasy. “ Is He a Galilaean?” he asks. The Saviour was no Galilaean. It is from Bethlehem of Judaea that the Messiah of Israel has come! but the people say He is a Galilaean. This is sufficient for Pilate. He had oftentimes trenched upon Galilee, and had thereby become the bitter enemy of Herod, the tetrarch of Galilee. But now it is most opportune to him, that Galilee is a province beyonds his jurisdiction. Let Herod burn his fingers in this affair. At least, he, Pilate, will be rid of a case which is getting more and more troublesome. Do you know those people that practise in our day the most contemptible kind of Pilatism? They cannot explain the powerful impression which the exalted personage of the God-man makes upon man. The pale beauty of His cross appears an unnatural rebuke to the frivolous ideal of life which they have entertained. His stretched-out pierced hands are quivering hints and points of interrogation, and signs of pain and sorrow. His humiliating crucifixion bears so loud an evidence against their pride of ancestry, pride of culture, and pride of riches, that they endeavour to get free from Him at any cost. “ He is a Galilaean” : thus runs the old Jewish lie, which history confuted long ago. A Galilaean Rabbi could never--no, never--become so potent, that eighteen centuries would circle around him like planets round the sun. But those men who endeavour to get free from the God-man, will always grasp at this straw of a miserable fiction. He is a Galilaean! He is a Galilaean, and they think they have discovered the magic spell by which they can with some show of reason get rid of their belief in the God-man, who has given His life a ransom for a sinful world. “ He is a Galilaean,” they say, and with that they send the Saviour away. They send Him to sceptical philosophers, urging, “ Natural philosophy has explained this, and teaches us that miracles are impossible. Philosophy is a competent judge of the person of Jesus Christ, and of His miracles; and philosophers, not we, have to decide. And we submit to their judgment.” It makes them somewhat uneasy to know that there are likewise believing philosophers; that a Copernicus begged from the Crucified no other mercy than was received by yonder malefactor; that a Kepler, a Newton were true followers of Jesus, and believed in His miracles, and had faith in His words. On this point, therefore, they maintain a silence as deep as that of the tomb. Or they send the Saviour to sceptical historians, saying, “ It is by history that the authenticity of the Bible is to be tested, and this science has broken a staff over the Scriptures.” It is nothing to their purpose that believing historians place a high value on the Bible, that one of them has pronounced Jesus Christ to be the very key of history. This testimony, however, they care fully overlook. Or they send the Lord Jesus to sceptical theologians, saying, “ There are so many theologians who deny the divinity of Jesus, and theologians ought certainly to be possessed of the true knowledge.” They overlook the believing divines who exist too, and who ought to know at any rate as well as they. In short, fidelity and justice concerning the Lord Jesus are quite out of the question with those people. They will get free from the Lord Jesus at any hazard; therefore they seek for Herods wherever they may be found. III. ! Foolish prudence! After all, they will not get free from the Saviour. Having entered a man’ s life, Jesus comes again and again, this way or that way, whatever may have been the turnings and windings of that life. Pilate endeavours to get free from the Saviour, but gets Him again and again. Pilate gets Jesus again from Herod, and receives Herod’ s friendship besides. Pilate, on his part, to be sure would fain have renounced his friendship for Herod, if by so doing he had only got rid of the Lord Jesus. But his new friend had sent back the Saviour, and thus Pilate was obliged, much against his will, to concern himself further with the Saviour, and bring to an end a case which to himself was becoming more and more painful. And in the same condition in which Pilate was will all those who think and act like him ever be. Having once met the Saviour, they never get entirely free from Him, however they may struggle and whatever cunning devices they may make to accomplish this end. In the end they will avail nothing. Jesus comes again. His form assumes a more and more sorrowful aspect. His face becomes more grave and clouded. Jesus comes again. Each sound of the church bell reminds them, each Sunday admonishes them of Him. Jesus comes again. They do not get free from Him. They anxiously debar their home, their family, from His influences. Nevertheless, since the Spirit bloweth where it listeth, they cannot prevent their wives, nor daughters, nor sons from being converted; and every converted one is a living reproach to the unconverted. They cover, as it were, their heart with a coat of mail; they palisade their conscience; they fall into the habit of smiling at holy things; they affect the utmost indifference towards the God-man. Thus they live, thus they die; and when they are dying, again Jesus Christ is there; and in their dying moments His word sounds: Son of man, how often would I have drawn thee unto Me, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and thou wouldst not! (Emil Quandt.) The character of Pilate The estimate which history has put upon Pilate is fair. We talk of artistic combinations and poetical justice. But no art and no poetry can come up to that dramatic intensity of contrast in which history makes such a man as Pilate judge and executioner of Jesus Christ. It is as in another generation when such a man as Nero sits as judge of such a man as St. Paul. We know Pilate by ten years of his jurisdiction. A cruel Roman viceroy, he had created and had quelled more than one rebellion by his hard hand. He is one of a type of men such as you find in Napoleon’ s history, who have their eye always on the Emperor, and always mean to win his favour. For the Pilates of the world this backward look to their chief supplies the place of law. Does Tiberius wish it? Then one answers “ Yes.” Does Tiberius dislike it? Then one answers “ No.” In the long run such a second hand conscience fails a man. It failed Pilate. Tiberius recalled him. But Tiberius died before Pilate could appear at court. And, then, neglected by everybody, scorned, I think, by those who knew him best, Pilate, who had no conscience now he had no Tiberius, killed himself. Was there, in that loathsome despair of the life of a favourite whose game is played through, was there always the memory of one face, of one prisoner, of one execution? Did he remember that day when he tried to wash off guilt with water: Did he remember how the sky blackened on that day, and men said nature itself testified against the wrong which that day saw? (E. E. Hall, D. D.) Luke 23:8-12 When Herod saw Jesus, he was exceeding glad Divine reserve; or, Christianity in relation to our mental moods I. THAT ALL REVEAL TO THE MENTAL MOOD IN WHICH THEY ARE . That which is looked for, is found or thought to be found. The same person or principle examined through the respective media of sympathy and antipathy, will reveal aspects the most different. It is of vital importance to remember this fact in all our investigations of creeds, or balancings of contradictory evidence, so that we may escape both the traductions of prejudice and the blindings of partiality. The non-recognition of this truth has induced the grossest misrepresentations of social life, of individual belief, and of denominational doctrine. II. THAT THE DIVINE BEING OUR MENTAL MOODS. Apparently, Herod was in a pleasing state of mind. Superficial observers would have been delighted with his animated and cordial bearing. What could be more gratifying to Christ than that Herod was “ exceeding glad” to see Him? There was no royal hauteur, no cold rebuff, no vengeful triumph. Why, then, that awful silence? Could Herod have done more to conciliate the favour of his renowned prisoner? Was it not an act of incomparable condescension for Herod to wear a smile in the presence of a reputed blasphemer and seditionist? For Christ’ s significant reserve there must be some peculiar but satisfactory reason. It was not fear of the judge, for He was the judge’ s Creator and Sovereign; it was not contempt, for He entertains a just regard for all the creatures of His hand; it was not constitutional sullenness, for none could be more open and engaging than He; it was not consciousness of guilt, for His most rancorous foes failed in their attempts at crimination. Why, then, did Christ thus treat a man who was “ exceeding glad” to “ see Him” ? The only satisfactory answer which we can suggest is that Herod’ s gladness did not arise from a proper cause; or, in other words, was no true index to his mental mood. Christ looked deeper than the smile which lighted Herod’ s countenance, or the mere blandishment of his manner; He discriminated the mood of mind, and acted accordingly. III. THAT CERTAIN MENTAL MOODS DEPRIVE MEN OF THE RICHEST OF . Why that solemn silence on the part of Christ? Because of Herod’ s mental mood. The judge wished his curiosity gratified, he had heard of the great wonder-worker, and longed to behold His feats of skill, or His displays of power. Christ knew the treatment proper for the oblique-minded judge, and acted accordingly: He would not work miracles to gratify a king; He would smile on a child, or dry the tear of misery, but He would not court the applause or solicit the patronage of royalty. To whom, then, will the Lord Jesus deign to reveal Himself in tender speech or loving vision? Is there any intellect on whose conflicts with scepticism He will bestow His attention? Is there any heart on whose strugglings with sin He will lift up the light of His countenance? Since He was silent before Herod, will He be communicative to any of His creatures? He shall answer for Himself, “ To this man will I look.” Suppose the Divine speaker had paused here, what inquisitiveness and suspense would have been occasioned! “ To this man” ; to which man, blessed Lord, wilt Thou look? to the man who has slain kings, and wandered to the throne of power through the blood of the warrior and the tears of the widow? to the man who has enrolled his name among the proudest of conquerors? to the man who boasts attachment to the cold exactitudes of a heartless theology? to the man arrayed in purple, and enshrined in the splendour of a palace? is this the man to whom Thou wilt look? Nay! ‘ Tis a grander spectacle which attracts the Divine eye--to the man “ that is poor, and of a contrite spirit, and that trembleth at My word” (Isaiah 66:2).Here, then, we have two conditions of Divine communion, viz., contrition and reverence: apart from these there can be no spiritual fellowship. In Herod these conditions were not found; hence Christ was dumb i So with us: if we would truly worship God we must fulfil the conditions herein demanded. To be more distinct on this part of the subject, I may enumerate a few classes of hearers, whose mental moods deprive them of spiritual enjoyment: 1. Men of violent personal antipathies. Such persons confound the minister with his message; so that if any whim has been assaulted, or any favourite dogma contravened, they forthwith resort to misinterpretation, they turn every appeal into a personality, and that which was intended as a blessing they pervert into a curse! God will not commune with them: they fulfil not the conditions of fellowship--they are neither contrite nor reverent--and Christ answers them nothing! 2. Men of large speculative curiosity. Herod belonged to this class. They wish to pry into the secrets of the Infinite: not content with the ample disclosures which the Divine Being has graciously granted, they would penetrate into the deepest recesses of His nature, and scale the loftiest altitudes of His universe. They conceive a philosophic dislike for the common-place truths of Christianity; and regard with patronising pity the minister who lingers on the melancholy hill of Calvary. Such men would understand all mystery: they would break the silence of the stars, or detain the whirlwind in converse: they would summon angels from their high abode and extort the secrets of heaven, they would even dare to cross-examine the Deity Himself on the propriety of His moral government! God will answer them nothing. 3. Men who accept rationalism as their highest guide. They reject all that reason cannot comprehend. Their own intellect must see through every subject, otherwise they consider it as worthy only of repudiation. They read the New Testament as they would read a work on mathematics, or a treatise on physical science, expecting demonstration of every point. Such men leave the Bible with dissatisfaction. Christ treats them with silence: their flippant questions elicit no response: their feeble reason plunges in hopeless confusion--Infinitude refuses to be grasped in a human span, and Eternity disdains to crowd into one little intellect its stupendous and magnificent treasures. 4. Men who delight in moral darkness. Such men have no objection to theological discussion; they may even delight in an exhibition of their controversial powers, and, at the same time, hate the moral nature and spiritual requirements of the gospel. So long as attention is confined to an analysis of abstract doctrines they listen with interest, but the moment the gospel tears away the veil from their moral condition--reveals their depravity--upbraids their ingratitude--smites their pride--and shakes their soul with the assurance of judgment and eternity, they sink back into sullenness, they take refuge in infidelity, or they curse and blaspheme! Your Herods care not for moral betterance; they wish their fancies gratified--they desire their questions answered, but they persist in following thedevices of their imagination, and imprisoning themselves in the bond-house of bestial passion. The text suggests-- IV. THAT MEN SO RESORT TO . “ And Herod with his men of war set Him at naught, and mocked Him, and arrayed Him in a gorgeous robe, and sent Him again to Pilate.” This is a striking illustration of the manner in which the truth has been treated in all ages. Men have approached the Bible with foregone conclusions, and because those conclusions have not been verified they have revolted, and assumed an antagonistic attitude. Ample illustration of the proposition might be adduced from the history of infidelity, bigotry, and persecution: but instead of lingering on this department of the subject we hasten to indicate the practical bearing of the thesis on the matter more immediately in hand. As an assembly of men responsible in some degree for the dissemination of Christian truth, it is important to understand how we can best fulfil our mission. In prosecuting this inquiry let me remind you of three things: 1. That the Bible is God’ s appointed representative. What Christ was to Herod, the Scriptures are to us, viz., the embodiment of Divine truth and love. The very fact of our having the Bible, involves a tremendous responsibility. 2. That the Bible must be approached in a sympathetic spirit. 3. That we are responsible for our manner of reproducing the Bible. (J. Parker, D. D.) Imitating the silence of Christ There lived in a village near Burnley a girl who was persecuted in her own home because she was a Christian. She struggled on bravely, seeking strength from God, and rejoicing that she was a partaker of Christ’ s sufferings. The struggle was too much for her, but He willed it so; and at length her sufferings were ended. When they came to take off the clothes from her poor dead body, they found a piece of paper sewn inside her dress, and on it was written, “ He opened not His mouth.” (W. Baxendale.) Remarkable reticence Moltke, the great strategist, is a man of lowly habits and few words. He has been described as a man “ who can hold his tongue in seven languages!” (H. O. Mackay.) Herod Antipas: religious curiosity Most of us will admit that this is an age of much curiosity about religion. The phrase would seem to include three things. First, curiosity about religion as an interesting phase of human thought. Then, curiosity about religion as exhibited in the picturesque and commanding personages who have founded new faiths. But yet again there may be curiosity about religion as a possible manifestation of the extra-natural or supernatural. Revivalism and spiritualism make the flesh creep not altogether unpleasingly. August and ancient ceremonials haunt the imagination with their weird magnificence. The verses which I have read bring before us the very type of irreligious or non-religious curiosity about religion, and of the punishment which awaits it. I. In the passage itself let us note, in the first place, THE OF HEROD ANTIPAS WITH JESUS. 1. Herod did not take any active part in the greatest tragedy of time. 2. It will be necessary for our purpose to consider, secondly, Herod’ s position in the religious world of his day. That he was a Sadducee would seem to be certain from profane history, and from a comparison of St. Matthew with St. Mark. 3. The character of Herod Antipas may be thought too black to contain even a warning for any of us. He was but a promising pupil in the school of which Tiberius was a master; a meaner trickster, a punier liar, a feebler murderer. He was “ the fox,” as our Lord called him, not the wolf. Yet in one respect he was not so unlike some of us. A mist of superstition hung over the unclean pool of lust and hatred which he had made his soul. He was alternately repelled and attracted by Christ. That he was not incapable of religious curiosity the text sufficiently witnesses. Some in our day might exclaim that it was perhaps unfortunate that an opportunity was lost of gratifying the curiosity of a person so interesting--as if Christ was Incarnate to amuse dilettanti. But He who knows all men and what is in man knew better. The blood-stained hands are held out “ half caressingly.” The voice which commanded the head of John Baptist to be given to the daughter of Herodias pours forth its flood of superficial questions. He will not waste one miracle or one word. As they of old loved to teach, the silent Jesus, working no sign, is a prophecy and a sign to us. “ He answered him nothing.” II. The whole incident thus becomes full of lessons to us. A thoughtful, meditative reader stops in awe. If we feel the awfulness of that silence, we shall, I think, recognize the truth of that which I am about to say. There is, no doubt, a sort of curiosity about religion which is the necessary result of quickened intellectual, nay, of quickened spiritual life. But the smiting of the people of Beth-shemesh is net recorded for nothing. Free inquiry is one thing, free-and-easy inquiry is another. If we play with God, it is at our own risk. The question is--what do you believe? We stand fronting eternity, not with the many propositions which we affect to believe or think we believe, but with the few which we do believe. Can we make an act of faith in God? We see Him standing mute before the curiosity of Herod Antipas, and we say, “ Save us, oh save us, from that silence!” (Bishop Win. Alexander.) I. HEROD BEFORE JESUS. Our Lord before Herod 1. See idle curiosity at its best. 2. Idle curiosity disappointed. (1) Our Lord came not into this world to be a performer. (2) Herod had already silenced the Voice; no wonder he could not now hear the Word. (3) Herod might have heard Christ hundreds of times before if he had chosen to do so. (4) Christ had good reason for refusing to speak to Herod this time, because He would not have it supposed that He yielded to the pomp and dignity of men. 3. Idle curiosity curdles into derision. II. JESUS IN THE OF HEROD. Although no blows are recorded, I greatly question whether our Divine Master suffered anywhere more than He did in the palace of tiered. 1. Fully in earnest for the salvation of souls, and in the midst of His griever’ s passion, He is looked upon as a mountebank and a mere performer, who is expected to work a miracle for the amusement of an impious court. 2. Then to think of our Lord’ s being questioned by such a fop as Herod! 3. Then the ribaldry of the whole thing! 4. It was no small pain to our Lord to be silent. 5. Think of the contempt that was poured upon Him. (C. H. Spurgeon.) The silence of Jesus I. , BE ITS SOURCE, GETS NOTHING OUT OF THE . If you bring a full pitcher to a spring, you can get nothing from that spring. II. IN SIN WILL PREVENT US FROM GETTING ANY ANSWER TO OUR FROM . When you want an answer from the telephone, you not only put your ear to the instrument, but you also say to those about you, “ Hush! I want to hear.” If you would hear Christ you must say “ Hush” to the murmuring of sin. III. THE OF MAKES THE SILENT. (W. M. Taylor, D. D.) Luke 23:18 Release unto us Barabbas Barabbas or Christ? We speak of the choice in the Lord’ s passion, which is-- I. A SIGN OF THE LORD’ S GRACE AND . II. A SIGN OF THE PEOPLE’ S DEEP SHAME AND GUILT. 1. It was six o’ clock in the morning. Conscience-smitten, as never before, Pilate perceives the mob--the Lord in their midst, with a white garment, and the crown of thorns on His head--returning from Herod, and approaching his palace. “ Suffered under Pontius Pilate” --thus it runs in our imperishable creed, surely not to erect a monument to a weak man, but to warn us every Sunday. Christ suffered under indecision and doubt, under fear of man and flattery of man. We speak, however, of the peoples choice. It was the custom to release unto them a prisoner at the feast. Pilate tries to avail himself of that custom. They shall decide with perfect clearness and consciousness. The decision shall be made as easy as possible for them. They shall examine and compare. “ Whether of the twain will ye that I release unto you?” --thus asks Pilate. We have to make the same decision. Here, Christ, with the word of truth and life, which answers the deepest cravings of our heart; a light in our path which has never deceived any one. There, the wisdom of the world, with its devious ways and vain speech; with its final bankruptcy of all knowledge, asking, What is truth? Here, a love that seeks our salvation, that remains always true, even when human love is wavering; a love that never suffers the redeemed to be torn from its hand. There, selfishness, falsehood, and cunning; and finally, the comfortless advice, See thou to that! Here, forgiveness and peace; there, in spite of outward prosperity and splendour, a sting in the conscience that cannot be removed. Here, even in times of tribulation, the conviction: “ The Lord is with me; His rod and His staff, they comfort me.” There, in times of want and distress, murmuring obstinacy and despair. Here, hope that lasts beyond death, and that anchors itself in the mercy and promises of God, therefore, even in dying, able to triumph: “ O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?” There, illusion upon illusion, for we never know what may happen, until death at last dispels every illusion I Who could still be doubtful about the choice? It is true many for a time allow others to decide for them. They move along as they are directed; they believe because others have told them so. Many avoid the decision even when commanded by the Word of God. But this is sure: There will come serious hours for each one, according to God’ s design and will, when he must decide of his own free will, when the refusal to decide will be practically a decision. There is only the question: Are we capable of choosing? Are we really free? Does the decision lie in our hand? Indeed, there arise unbidden so many voices in the heart against it; so many evil influences act upon us from childhood. The heart is by nature deceitful above all things--now most exultant, now afflicted unto death. Luther, as you know, wrote a little book on the bondage of the will, or “ that free will is nothing.” He compared it to a staff without life, a hard, cold stone. In this Luther is right, and is on the side of Paul, who says, “ So then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy” (Romans 9:16). It is true that deep in our hearts there is a tendency to resist the truth, a proneness to sin and sensuality, a spirit that says “ No” to the word and will of God. But, on the other hand, God embraces us with His unseen arms, and in spirit speaks to us. Conscience can be silenced, but not killed; the hunger for the life and peace of God will be felt again and again. As the flower is attracted toward the sun, the bird of passage to the south, the iron to the magnet, so the human heart is drawn to God and His Word. Both are destined for each other. We can and ought to choose; that is our privilege and responsibility: our salvation is left in our own hands. II. A SIGN OF THE PEOPLE’ S DEEP SHAME AND GUILT. Israel also had a choice. But in choosing it incurred the deepest shame and guilt. “ And they cried out all at once, saying, Away with this Man, and release unto us Barabbas!” There is no wavering nor delay, no answer to the question, “ What evil hath He done?” There is no inward struggle, and no examination, but the most frivolous levity, which is swift to condemn, even in the holiest and most important cause. Indeed, Pilate warns them several times, and God’ s voice warns them through him, to think and to deliberate once more. But their levity turns into stubbornness and hardening of the heart. How many still decide for unbelief without hesitation, without having carefully examined! They merely repeat what others maintain; they merely follow their own natural inclination. They are opponents of faith, not because they reflect too much, but because they reflect too little. It is a simple condition of equity that one should examine before rejecting, and that one should compare what Jesus gives with what the world offers. Levity, however, does not examine, it postpones. It finds pleasure in the moment, and avoids all that is disagreeable. When hours of distress and helplessness again come upon us, our only resources are falsehood and deceit--human help and human counsel, which soon shall be changed into shame. Alas! how many there are whose thoughtlessness turns into stubbornness, and from that into entire surrender to the power of darkness. (W. Hahnelt.) Barabbas or Jesus All time is one history of this one manifold choice. Every evil deed since Adam’ s fall has been belief in Satan and disbelief in God, a choice of Satan, his service, his wages, his kingdom, his sins, and his everlasting doom, instead of the glad obedience, the beauty of holiness, the sweet harmony, the everlasting glory of the ever-blessed God. Even heathens, from the relics of paradise, knew of this choice. They pictured to themselves man, at the outset of life, standing where two ways parted, pleasure alluring him to “ a way full of all ease and sweetness” ; virtue, with a holy majesty, calling him to present toil, and an inheritance with God. And they unknowing! They knew that they made an evil choice, they owned of themselves sorrowfully, “ I know and approve what is best, I follow what is worst.” “ I knew what I ought to be; unhappily, I could not do it.” They knew what they chose, but not whom they chose, or whom they denied. More fearful is the contest in Israel, because they knew more. “ They chose,” Scripture says, “ new gods.” “ If it seem evil unto you to serve the Lord,” says Joshua, when his own warfare was accomplished, “ choose you this day whom you will serve; but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” “ How long halt ye between two opinions?” says Elijah; “ if the Lord be God, follow Him; but if Baal, then follow him.” Darker still and more evil was the choice, when Holiness Itself, “ God, was manifest in the flesh.” “ This is the condemnation, that light was come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.” But His Godhead was still veiled in the flesh. His glory was not yet revealed, “ the Spirit was not yet given.” More deadly the choice became, when the weakness of His human nature was taken up in the glory of His Divine, and He was “ declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the Spirit of Holiness, by the resurrection from the dead.” Hence the evil of some subtle sin, which the soul perhaps knows not to be sin, only it knows that, were its parents by, it would not do it. It has made an evil choice; and that choice cleaves to it, perhaps, through years of helpless strife and misery. The first evil choice is the parent of all which follows. It has chosen Satan instead of God; and now, before it can again choose aright, it must undo that first choice, and will that all had been unchosen which it ever chose out ff God. But there is no safety against making the very worst choice, except in the fixed, conscious purpose in all things to make the best. The last acts are mostly not in a person’ s own power. They “ who compass themselves about with sparks” cannot themselves quench the burning. They who make the first bad choice are often hurried on, whether they will or no. Each choice, so far, involves the whole character. The one choice is manifoldly repeated. The roads part asunder slightly; yet, unmarked, the distance between them is ever widening, until they end in heaven or in hell. Each act of choice is a step toward either. It is a bitter memory to think that we have so often chosen out of God. But we can never amend our choice, unless, in bitterness of soul, we own that it has been amiss. We can never come to true penitence unless we learn the intense evil of the manifold wrongness of our choice. Hard is it to own this, that all has to be undone and begun anew, that the whole choice is to be reformed; and therefore it is hard truly to turn to God and be saved. (E. B. Pusey, D. D.) Renouncing Christ Albert, Bishop of Mayence, had a physician attached to his person, who, being a Protestant, did not enjoy the prelate’ s favour. The man seeing this, and being an avaricious, ambitious world.seeker, denied his God, and turned back to Popery, saying to his associates, “ I’ ll put Jesus Christ by for a while till I’ ve made my fortune, and then bring Him out again.” This horrible blasphemy met with its just reward; for next day the miserable hypocrite was found dead in his bed, his tongue hanging from his mouth, his face as black as a coal, and his neck twisted half round. I was myself an ocular witness of this merited chastisement of impiety. (M. Luther.) Luke 23:25 He delivered Jesus to their will--The illegal trial and condemnation of our Lord I. THE TRIAL OF CHRIST FOR HIS LIFE WAS MANAGED MOST AND AGAINST HIM, BY HIS JUDGES. 1. Was Christ thus used when He stood before the great Council, the Scribes and Elders of Israel? Then surely great men are not always wise, neither do the aged understand judgment. (Job 32:9.) 2. Hence also we learn, that though we are not obliged to answer every captious, idle, or ensnaring question, yet we are bound faithfully to own and confess the truth, when we are solemnly called thereunto. 3. Once more, hence it follows, that to bear the revilings, contradictions, and abuses of men, with a meek, composed, and even spirit, is excellent and Christ-like. II. NOTHING COULD BE PROVED AGAINST OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST WORTHY OF DEATH OR OF BONDS; YET WAS HE TO BE NAILED TO THE CROSS, AND THERE TO HANG TILL HE DIED. 1. A most unjust and unrighteous sentence: the greatest perversion of judgment and equity that was ever known to the civilized world, since seats of judicature were first set up. Pilate should rather have come down from his seat of judgment, and adored Him, than sat there to judge Him. Oh! it was the highest piece of injustice that ever our ears heard of. 2. As it was an unrighteous, so it was a cruel sentence, delivering up Christ to their wills. This was that misery which David so earnestly deprecated--“ O deliver me not over to the will of mine enemies” (Psalms 27:12). But Pilate delivers Christ over to the will of His enemies; men full of enmity, rage, and malice. 3. It was also a rash and hasty sentence. Trial of many a mean man hath taken up ten times more debates and time than was spent about Christ. They that look but slightly into the cause, easily pronounce and give sentence. 4. As it was a rash and hasty, so it was an extorted, forced sentence. They squeeze it out of Pilate by mere clamour, importunity, and suggestions of danger. In courts of judicature, such arguments should signify but little; not importunity, but proof, should carry it. But timorous Pilate bends like a willow at this breath of the people; he had neither such a sense of justice, nor spirit of courage, as to withstand it. 5. As it was an extorted, so it was a hypocritical sentence, masking horrid murder under a pretence and formality of law. 6. As it was a hypocritical, so it was an unrevoked sentence. It admitted not of a reprieve, no, not for a day; nor doth Christ appeal to any other judicature, or once desire the least delay; but away He is hurried in haste to the execution. Blush, O ye heavens! and tremble, O earth! at such a sentence as this. In what manner did Christ receive this cruel and unrighteous sentence? He received it like Himself, with admirable meekness and patience. He doth as it were wrap Himself up in His own innocency, and obedience to His Father’ s will, and stands at the bar with invincible patience and meek submission. 1. Do you see what was here done against Christ, under pretence of law? What cause have we to pray for good laws, and righteous executioners of them? 2. Was Christ condemned in a court of judicature? How evident then is it, that there is a judgment to come after this life? When you see Jesus condemned, and Barabbas released, conclude that a time will come when innocency shall be vindicated, and wickedness shamed. 3. Here you see how conscience may be overborne and run down by a fleshly interest. 4. Did Christ stand arraigned and condemned at Pilate’ s bar? Then the believer shall never be arraigned and condemned at God’ s bar. Christ stood at this time before a higher Judge than Pilate; He stood at God’ s bar as well as his. Pilate did but that which God’ s own hand and counsel had before determined to be done. (J. Flavel.) The act of a moment and its results I. IT WAS ONLY THE ACT OF A MOMENT THIS OF JESUS TO THE JEWS, BUT IT SEALED THE DOOM OF PILATE. Of many important acts it may be said that they are done both suddenly and slowly. In one way or another the decision must be made in a moment: and yet these momentary acts are not so isolated from all the life as they seem. Our life is truly one; all parts and all events of it are closely joined together. Each event is at once a cause and an effect--a link which grows out of a former link, and out of which in turn a new link is formed. Thus it happens that we could account for any strange-seeming word a man speaks, or act he does, if we could only go back far enough into his history, and see deeply enough into his character. His life has been slowly moving round towards the point it now has reached. Into the house which bad been slowly preparing to receive him, the guest has suddenly stepped. There has been a removal of obstacles which would have hindered, or a heaping up of obstacles which make it impossible to proceed. In a word, character and habit decide a man’ s action at any moment of test and trial; and character and habit are not things of a moment. It is not always unfair, therefore, to judge a man by the act of a moment, or by his attitude under sore and sudden temptation. These things reveal the secrets of his character and life, perhaps to himself, certainly to other men; well if only he is willing to learn at the first lesson where his weakness is, and so make up the breach before the next assault. Peter was walking carelessly for hours, or days, before that terrible stumbling and fall in which his very heart was broken, and all his fancied righteousness and courage fell in a moment into ruins about him. In one of the western towns of the United States, a young man stood one day in the midst of a group of gay companions. A public house was open on the one side of the street, and the building of the Y.M.C.A. on the other. He was being pressed to go into the tavern, but suddenly he turned from all his companions, and amid their jests and laughter, entered the Y.M.C.A. rooms. From that moment his path in life was plain; he had committed himself on the right side. But was there no preparation for the sudden act? I am sure there was. If we knew all the story, we would find there was a godly home behind him. Many a warning conscience had given him. In a moment Pilate yielded to the request of the chief priest, and did this fatal act; but a whole life of selfishness and self-indulgence and cruelty had prepared him for that moment, and made it certain that when the time of trial came, he would do the wrong thing. Young men may be sure of it that there will come a time when they will be suddenly put to the test. II. PILATE TRIED TO RID HIMSELF OF THE OF THIS ACT, BUT HE COULD NOT DO IT. There are some things of which we can easily divest ourselves. We can tear them off and throw them away in a few moments. I can change my dress and make myself, in outward appearance, another man. There are some things that cleave to us always and everywhere. I cannot destroy my personality; through all changes! remain myself, conscious of my own personal identity. One of the commonest excuses men make in such circumstances is, I did it under pressure. Some men are sensitive to the pressure of duty, of honour, of obligation, of truth, of love, of pity. This pressure is irresistible. When these influences are behind them, they must go on, no matter what lies in front. It was in this way that Christ was pressed to the cross, and many of Christ’ s servants to the scaffold and the fire. “ I cannot do otherwise, God help me,” were Luther’ s words when this pressure was strong upon him. There are many, however, who scarcely feel such pressure at all, but who are keenly alive to every touch of popular applause, of the blame of men, of the sharp edge of ridicule, of the fear of loss and pain. By the force of popular opinion, they could be pressed anywhere, into anything. It is putting the same thing in other words to say, that men try to get rid of their responsibility for wrong-doing by throwing the blame upon others, and upon God. “ It is the way I was brought up.” “ You see I was led into it.” “ A man in my position must do such things.” “ Every one does it, and you may as well be out of the world as out of the fashion.” “ It is a weakness incidental to my constitution.” “ Circumstances shut me in, so that I could do nothing else” ; as if a man should not rather die than do the wrong! Pilate washed his hands. He tried, in the most public and solemn way, to cast off his responsibility; but though he had a better excuse than thousands have who sin against conscience and a sense of duty, we see, as we look back upon his case, that it was impossible for him to put the blame on any one else. When he delivered Jesus to the Jews, it was his own deliberate act, done against his conscience, not to speak of any supernatural warning; and he must take the consequences. And Pilate’ s future history was very sad and hopeless. Responsibility is a thing I cannot get rid of. The gospel of Christ does not remove it. “ Every man shall bear his own burden.” “ Every one of us shall give account of himself unto God.” If I have done wrong, let me bravely confess it, and seek the grace of God to avoid the temptation again. Thus out of weakness I shall rise to strength, and my very errors and mistakes may be stairs leading me up to God. III. PILATE’ S GUILT WAS GREAT, BUT NOT SO GREAT AS THAT OF THE JEWS, WHO CHOSE AND JESUS. That there are degrees of guilt is clearly taught by our Lord Jesus. Some shall be beaten with many stripes, and some with few. Christ does not exculpate Pilate, but He tells him, “ He that delivered Me unto thee hath the greater sin.” Such choices--not sudden decisions like Pilate’ s on partial knowledge and under pressure, but calm, quiet, almost unconscious acts of choice--we are making day by day. (W. Park, M. A.) Jesus delivered to their will I. WHAT WAS THIS WILL? What was the moving spring of their fierce resolution that Jesus of Nazareth should die? 1. It was their will that this stern censor of their manners and morals should die. 2. They willed that the witness to the truth should die. The Lord belonged to another world, which they did not care to enter; a world which troubled their selfish, sensual lives. It distracted them with visions, it oppressed them with dread. 3. They willed that this teacher of the people, this friend of publicans and sinners, should die. They were a ruling class, almost a caste. And such rulers hate none so bitterly as those who speak loving, quickening, emancipating words to the poor. As society was then constituted in Judaea, that meant that He or the rulers must fall. 4. There was something deeper and more malignant than this. It was their will that their Saviour should die. One cannot shake off the impression, reading the gospel narrative, that the rulers knew Him. This was the will of the Jews. But-- II. WHAT, , WAS THE WILL OF GOD? St. Peter explains it Acts 2:23). To understand this, we must consider-- 1. That it was not possible that the God-man should be holden of death. The flesh, the outer man, they killed. But what is the outer man, and what is death? They willed that He should die, but what He was, what they hated, could not die. God delivered it into their hands that they might see that they were powerless, that what they hated and had arrayed themselves against was eternal. His death made His life immortal, His witness to the truth eternal. 2. Through death the power of Christ, His witness to the truth, His witness against sin, His redemptive work for mankind, became living, nay, all-pervading and almighty realities in the world. Hidden for a moment by His death, the power reappeared, and reappeared to reign. Jesus delivered to their will was slain; but the world was soon filled with men who were charged with the spirit of Jesus, and who made His death the gospel of salvation to mankind. (J. B. Brown, B. A.) Luke 23:26 Simon, a Syrenian The Cross-bearer There is a series of very beautiful pictures in the cathedral at Antwerp, which represent Christ hearing His cross from the Praetorium to Calvary. These pictures embody the popular idea of Christ’ s weakness and exhaustion. In one He stands calm and erect, in another He is bending under the weight of the cross, and in another He has fallen beneath the load that was laid upon Him. It is at this stage of the proceedings that Simon, who is passing by, is arrested, and compelled to bear the cross after Christ. I. THIS WAS A CROSS. Simon had no choice but to bear it. And so it is still. No life without a cross. 1. Suffering is a cross we are compelled to bear. To some life is a perpetual cross-bearing. It may be a physical cross, or a mental cross, or a spiritual cross, but day by day they must bear it. 2. Death is a cross we are compelled to bear. 3. Every attempt to follow Christ and to bear His cross will be a determined struggle. II. THIS WAS AN CROSS. The trials we anticipate in life seldom overtake us, but those we least expect are laid upon us. The cross is often laid upon us at an unexpected time, and in an unexpected place; but there is no escape, it must be borne. 1. Sometimes the cross we bear is self appointed. It is so with much of the physical pain and social distress we see around us. These afflictions come upon us unexpectedly, but they are often the fruit of our own folly and sin. 2. Sometimes the cross we bear is divinely appointed. If Simon’ s cross was unexpected, Christ’ s was foreseen. The cross was not a surprise to Christ. If Simon’ s cross was compulsory, Christ’ s was voluntary. III. THIS WAS AN CROSS. “ To bear His cross.” Had not Simon rendered this brief service to Christ, his name might never have been known; but now it shall be held in everlasting remembrance. The cross ennobles man both for time and eternity; it is an honourable cross. 1. This was a cross borne for Christ. We often hear of Christ bearing the cross for sinners, but here is a sinner bearing the cross for Christ. The value of the cross depends upon the spirit in which we take it up. 2. There is something very beautiful in the thought that the cross borne for Christ is borne with Christ. Whether it be His cross or ours, we share His companionship. (J. T. Woodhouse.) Bearing Christ’ s cross The memorable thing is, that it is Christ’ s cross which must be borne. You are not to think that every cross is the cross which the Saviour requires you to take up. Many a cross is of our own manufacture; our troubles are often but the consequences of our own sins; and we may not dignify these by supposing them the cross which is to distinguish the Christian. Crosses they may be; but they are not the cross which was laid upon Simon, and which had first been borne by Christ. The cross of Christ is endurance for the glory of God and the futherance of the gospel. “ This is thankworthy,” says St. Peter, “ if a man for conscience towards God endure grief, suffering wrongfully.” But our comfort is, that the cross which we must carry has been already carried by Christ; and therefore, like the grave which He entered, been stripped of its hatefulness. It might almost be said to have changed its very nature, through being laid on the Son of God; it left behind it its terribleness and oppressiveness. And now it is transferred to the disciple; it is indeed a cross, but a cross which it is a privilege to bear--a cross which God never fails to give strength to bear; a cross which, as leading to a crown, may justly be prized, so that we would not have it off our shoulders until the diadem is on our brow. “ If ye be reproached for the name of Christ” --and this is a cross--“ happy are ye, for the Spirit of glory and of God resteth upon you.” Together with this memorial, he would show, by a powerful instance, that in religion a temporizing policy is sure to defeat itself; so that, to fly from the cross is commonly to meet it dilated in size, and heavier in material. And he had one more truth to represent at the same time--the beautifully comforting truth, that He has borne what His followers have to bear, and thereby so lightened it, that as with death, which He made sleep to the believer, the burden but quickens the step towards an exceeding and eternal weight of glory; and that He might effectually convey all this through one great significative action, was it ordered, we may believe, in the providence of God, that as they led away Jesus carrying the cross, like Isaac with the wood for the burnt-offering, the soldiers laid hold on one Simon of Cyrene, and compelled him to bear the cross. (H. Melvill, B. D.) Luke 23:27-31 Daughters of Jerusalem The daughters of Jerusalem I. WHY DID THE OF WEEP? 1. He was innocent. All they had heard about Him was favourable. 2. He was benevolent. His gifts were uncommon and priceless. Wherever He went, He left behind Him the footprint of mercy. 3. He was the hope of the people. The glory had departed; the land was under a curse, and the people groaned under the Roman yoke. But Jesus, although opposed to every public demonstration in His favour, had, by His teaching and example, aroused the public aspiration. II. WHY DID JESUS REFUSE THEIR ?--“ Weep not for Me.” 1. Weep not, My death is a necessity. It is not an accident, or the effect of unrestrained animosity, but the fulfilment of an old covenant, older than the earth or the heaven. Justice demands it before the prisoners of hope can come forth. 2. Weep not, I can bear it all. Hard as it may seem to bear the reproach as an evil-doer, and to suffer the enmity of those whom I have not offended, yet, my heart’ s desire is to suffer in the sinner’ s room. 3. Weep not, tears will avail nothing now. The plea of the tear is the most effective. Had the appeal of the tear been made before Pilate, humanly speaking, the evidence might have been taken, and the prisoner acquitted, but then it was too late. Weeping did not make the cross lighter, or the pains of death any the less. 4. Weep not, the course I am to take will ultimately wipe away all tears. The sorrow of to-day will be exchanged for peace and joy hereafter. The death on the cross will remove sorrow from the heart of the penitent, and tears will cease to flow. III. WHICH, THEN, IS THE RIGHT CHANNEL OF TEARS? “ Weep for yourselves and for your children.” Sin is the cause of sorrow. (The Weekly Pulpit.) Weep not for Me I. Let us consider them as addressed to that part of the multitude WHO HAD IN HIS DIVINE MISSION, and submitted to His authority. Their sorrow for our Lord did not spring from the proper source. His truest disciples partook of the common misapprehensions of their countrymen about the nature of Messiah’ s kingdom. Yet sorrow was their proper mood of feeling. And why, my friends, should they have wept for themselves and their children, in looking upon the sufferings of their Lord? 1. We reply, because their sins occasioned Christ’ s sufferings. It were well for us oftener to weep thus for ourselves. 2. They should have wept for themselves and their children, because they should no more hear Christ’ s instructions. II. ANOTHER CLASS, BESIDES TRUE , MINGLED IN THE CROWD, WHICH CHRIST TOWARDS CALVARY. Let us consider the application of our text to them. It was the natural feelings, which prompt us to take part in any circumstances with the distressed, and which are pained, when innocence, or, at least, benevolence is oppressed, that caused their tears to pour down. Bight and worthy were these emotions, so far as they went; but they had deeper cause for sorrow than anything they thought of when they wept. They should have wept for themselves and for their children. 1. Because away from them were about to be taken the word of salvation, the admonitions and warnings of the Lord. 2. They should have wept for themselves and for their children, because this act by which Christ was taken away would speedily bring judgment upon their nation. To this our Lord had most express reference, as He showed by the language which follows the text. (S. Martin.) Wherefore should I weep? These words are especially noteworthy, because they constitute the last connected discourse of the Saviour before He died. All that He said afterwards was fragmentary and mainly of the nature of prayer. A sentence to John, and to His mother, and to the dying thief: just a word or two looking downward, but for the most part He uttered broken sentences, which flew upwards on the wings of strong desire. I. He said to the weeping women, “ WEEP NOT.” There are some cold, calculating expositors who make it out that our Lord reproved these women for weeping, and that there was something wrong in their sorrow--I think they call it “ the sentimental sympathy” of these kind souls.Blame these women! No, bless them again and again. It was the one redeeming trait in the dread march along the Via Dolorosa; let it not be dreamed that Jesus could have censured those who wept for Him. These gentle women appear in a happy contrast to the chief priests, with their savage malice, and to the thoughtless multitude with their fierce cry of “ Crucify Him, crucify Him!” They seem to me to have shown a noble courage in daring to express their sympathy with one whom everybody else hunted to death. 1. There can be nothing ill about the weeping of these women, and therefore let us proceed to say, first, that their sorrow was legitimate and well founded. It is little marvel that they should weep and bewail when they saw the innocent one about to die. 2. I think, too, that this weeping on the part of the women was a very hopeful emotion. It showed some tenderness of heart, and tenderness of heart, though it be but natural, may often serve as a groundwork upon which better and holier and more spiritual feelings may be placed. 3. Having said this much, we now add that on our Lord’ s part such sorrow was fitly repressed; because after all, though naturally good, it is not more than natural, and falls short of spiritual excellence. It is no proof that you are truly saved, because you are moved to great emotions whenever you hear the details of the crucifixion, for the Bulgarian atrocities excited you equally as much. I think it good that you should be moved, as I have said before, but it is only naturally and not spiritually good. This feeling, too, may stand in the way of something a great deal better. Jesus would not have these women weep for one thing, because they were to weep for another thing which far more seriously demanded their weeping. Ye need not weep because Christ died one-tenth so much as because your sins rendered it necessary that He should die. To weep over a dying Saviour is to lament the remedy; it were wiser to bewail the disease. II. Now we pass on from “ Weep not” to “ WEEP.” Though Jesus stops one channel for tears, He opens another and a wider one. Let us look to it. 1. First, when He said, “ Weep for yourselves” He meant that they were to lament and bewail the sin which had brought Him where He was, seeing He had come to suffer for it; and He would have them weep because that sin would bring them and their children into yet deeper woe. 2. I beg you now to look again into the reason why our Lord bade them weep. It was, first, for their sin, but it was next for the impending punishment of their sins. (C. H. Spurgeon.) “ Weep for yourselves” One who knew Whitefield well, and attended his preaching more frequently, perhaps, than any other person, said he hardly ever knew him go through a sermon without weeping: his voice was often interrupted by his tears, which sometimes were so excessive as to stop him from proceeding for a few moments. “ You blame me for weeping,” he would say; “ but how can I help it when you will not weep for yourselves, though your immortal souls are on the verge of destruction, and for aught you know, you are hearing your last sermon, and may never more have an opportunity to have Christ offered to you?” (J. R. Andrews.) The grace of tears When Christ was bearing His cross, He saw some women with their children in their arms, and He said to them, “ Weep not for Me, weep for yourselves.” Am I wrong in saying He is looking down at this congregation now and saying, “ Weep for yourselves” ? Yes, we will and must compassionate ourselves. The further from the heart religion is for some of you the better; and I don’ t wonder at it. I can apologize for you, for I know something of the disenchantment, humiliation, and bewildering experience which comes to a man when he is sent to pity himself. Let our prayer, believing brothers and sisters, be the prayer of St. Agustine: “ Lord Jesus give me the grace of tears.” Those are the tears God will one day wipe away from our eyes--£1,000 for one of them! (W. Whyte.) What shall be done in the dry? The green tree and the dry A word in explanation. The green tree is Christ; the dry tree in the first judgment is the Jewish nation; and the dry tree in the last judgment is the unconverted world. By a “ green tree” Christ does not mean a young and tender tree, but rather one full grown and flourishing. By “ the dry,” He means a tree withered, worthless, and dead. With respect to the first judgment He may mean this: “ If the Romans so treat the innocent Jesus, how will they treat the guilty Jerusalem?” or He may mean, “ If the Jews so punish Me, how will God punish them?” With respect to the second judgment, He surely means--“ If God so bruise the innocent for the transgressions of others, how will He punish the guilty for their own iniquities?” I will now, with God’ s help, try to open up to you this solemn text. We bare here two trees: one green--the other dry. I will show you, first, the glory and destruction of the green tree; and then, the shame and end of the dry. I. THE GLORY AND OF THE GREEN TREE. In meditating upon the glory of the green tree, we had better keep the substance of it and the shadow of it apart from each other. To do so, we will look first at the natural tree, and next at the Saviour, who is represented by it. In the midst of yonder wilderness, overrun with all manner of weeds and poisonous plants, there lies an humble patch of dry, bare ground. From the midst of the dry, barren ground, where nothing ever grew before, there rises up a young tree, tall and fair to look upon. Higher and higher it grows, until its shadow falls upon the tops of the loftiest trees around it; higher and higher, until all the trees in the wilderness are but weeds when compared with it. Now turn to the reality. Christ is that tree of God. In his birth, He grew out of ground that was barren. As a man, He grew in stature, and wisdom, and favour, and glory, until there was none such upon the face of the earth; until tie stood alone as the great tree of life in the midst of the perishing; until He bid fair to stretch forth His branches to the uttermost ends of the world. Look back to the green tree. How beautiful it is! It has no crooked boughs, or twisted branches. There are no worm eaten or withered leaves: every leaf is as fresh as when first unfolded from the bud. There are no weather-beaten, time-stained flowers: every flower is perfect. There are no bitter or rotten fruits: all its fruits are ripe and uninjured. From the lowest root to the highest leaf, it is without a fault. Behold in this some faint picture of Jesus. His birth was as pure as the creation of an angel. His childhood was as spotless as sunshine. His thoughts were as clear as the river of God. His heart was a well of love. His soul was a great deep of light. His life was unstained by the shadow of evil. He was the admiration of angels. He was the joy of God! Look back again to the green tree. Mark its promise. Leave that tree untouched, and what will it become? Will it not reach up to heaven, and spread till it overshadows the world? Who will it leave without a shelter? What diseases will it not cure? What hunger will it not satisfy? Will it not grow into a universal blessing? Behold in this the shadow of Jesus! Had He dwelt upon earth until now, what would He not have done for mankind! If in three years He healed such crowds of diseased persons, what multitudes would He have cured in eighteen centuries! Oh, when we think of it, the glory of that green tree of God! Wonderful, wonderful Jesus! how can we now turn from the brightness of Thy glory, to the gloom of Thy sorrow? Oh! who shall tell the tale of destruction? The axe and the flame from beneath, and the glittering arrows from above, stripped and rent, and levelled all Thy glory. Thou wast slain and buried off the face of the earth! II. And now I pause; and turn from Christ’ s cross to CHRIST’ S --“ What shall be done in the dry?” We have looked for a few moments atthe glory and destruction of the green tree. We turn to the shame and end of the dry. Look then, O unconverted man or woman, at that dry tree. It is springtime: thousands of plants around are putting forth green leaves; but not a leaf appears upon it. It is summer: the gardens are white, and many-coloured with flowers; but it stands as bare as it stood in spring. It is autumn: the orchards are golden and red with fruit; but it remains black and dead. Sinner I thou art that dry tree. Thousands around you are fruitful trees in the garden of God; they bring forth ripe faith, and tender love, and sweet hope, and mellow peace, and the fruits of joy and humility. God gathers their fruit in its season, and rewards them an hundredfold. But you are barren, without faith, without love, without hope, without peace, without joy, without humility; you stand unmindful alike of God’ s commands, of God’ s warnings, and of God’ s forbearance--a withered cumberer of the ground. But the evil is still worse. You are taking up the room which others might occupy with advantage to the world, were you but removed. Look again, O unconverted man or woman, at that dry tree. The showers that soften the folded buds, and spread open the tender leaves of living trees in springtime, rain down upon it in abundance; but, alas; it only rots the more. The sunshine that ripens many a flower into fruit, and sweetens many a fruit into maturity, beams down upon it from day to day; but, alas! it only decays the faster. Sinner! thou art that dry tree. The gospel, which has softened many hard hearts, has made yours more callous. God’ s mercies help to make you worse. Like the cross, the chief of all His gifts to you, they are “ the savour of death unto death.” Before I conclude, I would give you all a word of warning, and a word of encouragement. Remember, O unconverted man or woman, that this fearful question,” What shall be done in the dry?” remains still unanswered. As certain as I see the sufferings of Jesus, I see the sufferings of the lost. I can doubt no more. Penitent, a word to thee. In my bitter text there is some sweetness for thee. Penitent, if they have done these things in the green tree, why should you die? If Jesus died, why should net you live? What if He died for you! (H. G. Guinness.) The miseries of lost souls exceed those of Christ I suppose He meant, “ If I, who am no rebel against Caesar, suffer so, how will those suffer whom the Romans take in actual rebellion at the siege of Jerusalem?” And He meant next to say, “ If I who am perfectly innocent, must nevertheless be put to such a death as this, what will become of the guilty?” If when fires are raging in the forest, the green trees full of sap and moisture crackle like stubble in the flame, how will the old dry trees burn, which are already rotten to the core and turned to touch-wood, and so prepared as fuel for the furnace. If Jesus suffers who hath no sin, but is full of the life of innocence, and the sap of holiness, how will they suffer who have long been dead in sin, and are rotten with iniquity? As Peter puts it in another place, “ For the time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God: and if it first begin at us, what shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel of God? And if the righteous scarcely be sayed, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear?” Note well that the sufferings of our Lord, though in some respects far beyond all conceivable woes, have yet some points about them in which they differ with advantage from the miseries of lost souls. For, first, our Lord knew that He was innocent, and therefore His righteousness upheld Him. Whatever He suffered He knew that He deserved none of it: He had no stings of conscience, nor agonies of remorse. Now, the sting of future punishment will lie in the indisputable conviction that it is well deserved. The finally impenitent will be tormented by their own passions, which will rage within them like an inward hell; but our Lord had none of this. There was no evil in Him, no lusting after evil, no self-seeking, no rebellion of heart, no anger, or discontent. Pride, ambition, greed, malice, revenge, these are the fuel of hell’ s fire. Men’ s selves, not devils, are their tormentors; their inward lusts are worms that never die, and fires that never can be quenched: there could be none of this in our Divine Lord. Again, lost souls hate God and love sin, but Christ ever loved God and hated sin. Now, to love evil is misery; when undisguised and rightly understood sin is hell. Our Lord Jesus knew that every pang He suffered was for the good of others: He endured cheerfully, because He saw that He was redeeming a multitude that no man can number from going down to the pit: but there is no redeeming power about the sufferings of the lost, they are not helping any one, nor achieving a benevolent design. The great God has good designs in their punishment, but they are strangers to any such a purpose. Our Lord had a reward before Him, because of which He endured the cross, despising the shame; but the finally condemned have no prospect of reward nor hope of rising from their doom. How can they expect either? He was full of hope, they are full of despair. “ It is finished” was for Him, but there is no “ It is finished” for them. Their sufferings, moreover, are self-caused, their sin was their own tie endured agonies because others had transgressed, and He willed to save them. They torment themselves with sin, to which they cleave, but it pleased the Father to bruise the Son, and the necessity for His bruising lay not in Himself, but in others. (C. H. Spurgeon.) Luke 23:33 There they crucified Him The crucifixion I. THE PLACE WHERE OUR LORD . Calvary, or Golgotha: a small eminence, half a mile from Jerusalem; the common place of execution, where the vilest offenders were put to death. 1. The place where Jesus suffered marks the malignant design of His enemies. 2. The place as mentioned by the evangelist marks His strong affection. 3. We may also add that this directs us to the place where we must look for mercy. II. THE NATURE OF CHRIST’ S --“ THEY HIM.” 1. The death of the cross, though selected by Jewish malignity, would be the fulfilment of prophecy. 2. In our Lord’ s suffering the death of the cross there was something analogous to what we as sinners had deserved; and probably it was with a view to represent this that the Jews were suffered to crucify Him. 1. A lingering death. 2. A most painful death. 3. A death attended with reproach and infamy. 4. The death of the cross was an accursed death, both in the esteem of God and man (Galatians 3:13). III. THE COMPANY IN WHICH HE : THEY WITH HIM “ TWO , ONE ON THE RIGHT HAND, AND THE OTHER ON THE LEFT.” 1. On the part of His enemies this was designed to render His death still more ignominious and shameful, and was no doubt contrived between Pilate and the chief priests. 2. But on the part of God we may see something of the wisdom of this appointment. Prophecy was hereby fulfilled, which said that He should be numbered with transgressors (Isaiah 53:11; Mark 15:27-28). (Theological Sketch-book.) The cross a revelation of human sinfulness There is a picture I have seen somewhere, painted by a celebrated artist, in which one aspect of the crucifixion is very significantly represented, or rather suggested. It is intended to bring before the mind the after scenes and the after hours of that memorable day, when the crowd had gone back again to pursue its wonted business in Jerusalem, when the thick gloom had been dispelled, and the clear light shone once more on that fatal spot called Calvary. The body of the Master had been conveyed to the sepulchre, the cross itself lies extended on the ground, and a band of little children, bright with the glow of childhood’ s innocence, led thither by curiosity or accident, are represented as bending over the signs left around of the bloody deed which has that day been accomplished. One of the children holds in his hand a nail, but a short time ago piercing the hand or the foot of the patient Sufferer, and stands, spell-bound with horror, gazing at it. And upon every face the painter has plainly depicted the verdict which innocence must ever give with regard to that dreadful tragedy. It is so we would desire to consider the subject and the scene. The heart, conceiving aright the amazing impiety culminating at the cross, may well take this attitude of wonder, surprise, horror. The cross comes to be God’ s great indictment against man. I. The first word of the text may be looked upon as furnishing us with the first count of this indictment against man. IT , FIXES THE SCENE OF THE TRAGEDY AS HERE UPON EARTH. “ There they crucified Him.” The place where the commonest criminals were led out to die a lingering death. Earth has her mysteries, and this is one of them. The mystery of iniquity culminates here. It has lifted up its impious hands against God. II. The second word of the text furnishes us with a further point in the indictment, as indicating HUMAN AGENCY. “ There they crucified Him.” The actors in this eventful drama were men, those among whom Christ had wrought His miracles and exercised His pure and beneficent ministry.. And it was a typical act--such an act as man perpetrates every day. Envy, hatred, indifference, nailed Christ to the tree; and while these exist in the heart, what spirit shall stand excused? III. The third word of the text may be looked upon as enforcing the indictment, since it implies A AND ACT. “ There they crucified Him.” What hardness and callousness of heart was exhibited here! It was necessary that sin should show its exceeding sinfulness, once and for all, truly detestable that it might be detested, heinous and black as perdition, that even our sinful spirits might shrink back in awe and trembling. For this is what all sin is tending to: contempt and callousness at the sight of suffering worth, scorn of innocence, hatred of a purity which condemns our darker deeds, rejection of God Himself if His claims interfere with our selfish schemes. IV. The final and hopeful word of the text sheds a light upon this indictment, as indicating A DIVINE WORKING AMID ALL. “ There they crucified Him.” Strangely enough, it is the Victim Himself who invests all else with worth, and makes the contemplation of such a deed alone profitable to us. When Socrates entered into prison, they said of it that it was a prison no longer; the dishonour and the infamy had passed away in the presence of such resplendent worth. So, but more memorably, it is at the cross. The place is nothing; the actors sink into insignificance; and of the act itself we care nothing, save as it stands associated with Him. There is a law of compensation in all things. Bend the bough of the giant oak for a moment, and it springs back with a momentum proportionate to its strength. And so it is with this Divine One who has bent before the strong blast of the adversary, for of Him it is written, “ I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto Me.” (Walter Baxendale.) Christ lifted up I. Remember that JESUS HAD THE CHANCE OF BEING LIFTED UP AS A MONARCH ALREADY, AND HAD IT. 1. Men offered it to Him (John 6:15; John 12:13). 2. The devil offered to make Him a king also (Matthew 4:9). 3. Jesus has been offered the true dominion of the whole world in this showy sort of way, over and over again in human history since. II. Understand that JESUS WAS TO BE LIFTED UP AS A FOR SIN; hence, lifted on a cross, not on a throne. 1. Consider the spectacle which is proposed for our imagination. Let us seem to see the Saviour already nailed in crucifixion. Christ was lifted up as an object of scorn and contumely (see Luke 10:35-36). Christ was lifted up as an object of pity and love. At the foot of the cross a faithful few still lingered: men and women who believed in Him, and clung to Him even in these fallen fortunes to the very last. 2. Consider, once more, the force exerted by this spectacle. In the announcement of our Lord already quoted, He says that if He be lifted up He will draw all men unto Him; but in our version the single word men is printed in italics. Some have wasted time in asserting that Jesus meant what they name as “ the elect” ; some have said that He meant all Jews; and others have declared that He intended to include all things whatsoever, as well as men, unto His uses and His sovereignty. He would gather all money; He would collect all commerce; He would subjugate all power; He would attract all art; He would receive the trophies of all science; He would bring in to Himself the gains of all enterprise. In a word, the kingdoms of a united world should become the kingdoms of our Lord and His Christ. III. Recollect that THE FINAL GLORY OF JESUS CHRIST WILL BE TO BE LIFTED UP AS THE SON OF GOD AND THE PRINCE OF LIFE. 1. God raised Him up from the grave, having loosed the pains of death. This was the great argument of Simon Peter on the day of Pentecost. The raising of Jesus from the grave was the pledge of His exaltation to the throne of heaven (see Acts 2:30-32). 2. The Lord has lifted Christ up to a place at His right hand (see Philippians 2:9-11). Satan’ s kingdom is to be subdued (see Revelation 12:10). All the realms of this world are to give their tribute to that of Christ (see Revelation 11:15). The kings of the earth are to bring their honour in to beautify His capital city. The Church is to be the Lamb’ s wife. The King’ s daughter is all glorious within. 3. Believers must lift Him up as the one Saviour of lost souls. It is just Christ crucified who is the only Saviour. (C. S. Robinson, D. D.) The crucifixion of Christ I. WE PROPOSE TO NOTICE THE UNDER WHICH THE OF OUR LORD JESUS WAS . 1. It will be observed that the place at which He suffered deserves our notice: “ The place which is called Calvary.” This place appointed for the death of Jesus, to use the language of Bishop Taylor, “ was a place eminent for the publication of shame, a hill of death and of dead bones, polluted and impure.” Nor must we account it to be a trifling, insignificant circumstance in the Redeemer’ s humiliation that this was the spot upon which we find He passed His last moments, and that He was to bow the bead, and to give up the ghost. 2. You will observe that the mode of death which the Lord Jesus Christ endured at this place also deserves our notice: “ When they were come to the place which is called Calvary, there they crucified Him.” (1) A most painful death. (2) An exceedingly ignominious death. 3. It must also be observed that the society in which our Redeemer at this place suffered deserves notice. 4. The conduct of the spectators who witnessed the sufferings of our Saviour also demands our notice. II. THE WHICH THE OF THE LORD JESUS HAS WITH THE OF DIVINE MERCY AND THE WELFARE OF THE HUMAN RACE. Here there are three important facts to be noticed. 1. The crucifixion of the Lord Jesus was the special result of the Divine foreknowledge and determination. 2. And more particularly, The crucifixion of our Lord Jesus, was a perfect and efficacious atonement for human sin. 3. The crucifixion of our Lord Jesus being clearly the result of the Divine foreknowledge and determination, and being a proper and efficacious atonement for human sin, “ it was at the foundation of the mighty mediatorial empire.” III. THE VIEWS IN WHICH THE OF OUR LORD JESUS SHOULD BE . 1. We shall contemplate it as affording the most affecting exhibition of the exceeding sinfulness of sin. 2. We must contemplate our Lord’ s crucifixion as being an astonishing display of the riches of Divine love. 3. We must contemplate the crucifixion of our Lord Jesus, as furnishing the grand theme for ministerial proclamation. (J. Parsons.) Emphasis Scripture depends more upon the power of facts than of figures and illustrations. In human literature big words are used to overlay small ideas.; verbiage is laid on as paint; the theme is smothered under the gaudy clothing; and sense is rendered tributary to sound. Not so here. When the sacred writers have anything to describe, they depend upon the force of the thing itself, and not upon the manner of its telling. All they seem to strive at is plainness; simply to chronicle the event, and let it speak for itself. I. THERE they crucified Him. Where? What land contracted the disgrace of such an act as crucifying the Lord of glory? Surely some land where He had not become known; some foreign country where His holy words bad never fallen on the people’ s ears; some distant principality where the music of His voice had never touched the echoes into sympathy. It must have been in some uncultured territory where no temples were erected; where civilization left no footprint, and where no god was known. Was it in some savage wild where barbarism revelled? and where untrained passion clamoured for a holocaust, and for drink-offerings of blood? No; it was not in such a land that they crucified Him. It was in the laud where He was best known--the land He had hallowed by His advent, and blessed with His ministry; the land of His labours, where His mightiest miracles had been done, and His tenderest teachings had been uttered. Not in a godless realm without a temple or a shrine; but where they bowed the knee, and built the altar, and burned the sacrifice. A realm where they cried, “ Lord, Lord” ; where, with broad phylactery, the Pharisee rehearsed the law; and where the temple lifted its golden vanes beneath the sky, as the tribes went up with offerings to the Lord. It was in no barbarous seclusion, but in a region where the borrowed arts of tutored Rome flourished, and where the legacies of Solomon were respected and enshrined. It was in Galilee, on whose soil He made His first alighting, and whose fields and lanes, gardens and mountain groves, He had hallowed with His public ministries and His private communions. In Jewry, whose coasts were consecrated by His labours, THERE. they crucified Him! II. There THEY crucified Him. Who are “ they” ? Who did this deed? What wicked hands were red with this precious blood? Were they those of some hireling assassins from afar, who were running riot in Jerusalem for a time?. Had violence got the upper hand of law and order, and was Jesus the victim of a turbulent incursion of foreign marauders? Or had the Roman tyrant despatched some myrmidon to put to death a teacher of doctrines which wrapped up liberty in their articles, lest men should grow too free in mind to brook subserviency as citizens? No; neither hypothesis is right. The execution bore the imprimatur of the government. It was a State transaction. Preceded by a trial, and surrounded with all the pomps and formulas of law. It was the act of the people. What people? The Jews. The very men whom He had chosen as His own peculiar and anointed ones. III. There they Him. Look at the deed. Crucified Him! In a place which should have for ever resounded with the praises of His name; and by a people who should have enshrined Him in their hearts, and handed down His worship to their children’ s children, He was crucified. They did not decorate the land with sculptured memorials of His fame; they did not build altars to His praise; they did not wait upon Him, adore Him, love Him., No; they crucified Him. IV. Once more we shift the emphasis from the deed to the victim. There they crucified HIM. O look at Him--Him who is thus pierced; look at Him, and mourn! Whom did they crucify? It was customary to wreak this punishment upon their greatest criminals. But here is Barabbas walking free; the notable robber, suspected of crimes untold, loose on the pavements of Jerusalem. Yet, “ He,” this Jesus, is handed over to be crucified. What! then is He a greater robber than Barabbas, that He is to be crucified? Is this why He may not be released? He has stolen away that which Barabbas could not touch. He has taken from the law its curse. He has torn from death its sting. He has despoiled the grave of its terror and its victory. Is not this a notable robber? But, O unnatural retribution which clamours for the cross, for such an One as this! Yet so it is. They crucified “ Him” --Him, “ the Lord of life and glory.” The meek, the kind, the gentle, Man of Nazareth; they crucified Him--who goes about teaching good, spreading good, doing good; lifting the fallen, helping the needy, lighting the dark; they crucify Him. And, alas! brethren, Calvary is not merely at Jerusalem; the place of a skull is not only at Golgotha. Look over the arena you have crossed during the last week of your life, and you will traverse a Calvary there. You may see the place where the cross has been reared afresh there. You may trace the details of the drama there. Oh! think not, ye daily triflers with the grace of the loving God, that there is no place near you where Jesus is not crucified. Every spot you stain by sin; everywhere where you have trampled on the fair commands of God; everywhere where the Spirit has been quenched, and the restraint neglected--is a Calvary; and THERE, in that unwilling and listless heart of yours--THERE you “ crucify afresh the Lord of glory, and put Him to an open shame.” (A. Mursell.) The death of Jesus, and its effects I. In meditating upon these words, I would direct your attention, first, to the MANNER of Jesus’ death, and then to its EFFECTS. 1. Jesus dies with a sense of inward freedom. The Bible speaks of the bondage of death. What a tad impression does a death-bed give of the bondage of man, how painfully does it bring home to us the fact that man is not free, that he is in servitude to death! Hence men have given Death a sceptre and a sword, have put a scythe into his hand and a crown upon his head. But in the death of our Lord we see nothing of all this. Very different is His death from ours. When death comes upon us, it generally takes us by surprise, and herein too does it prove its might, in that it makes men its captives and its prey, before ever they are aware of its approach. In most cases, Death administers a sleeping-draught before he deals the final blow; and it is in a state of sleep and of dreaminess that by far the greater proportion of the dying go their way into that long slumber. But when death came to Jesus, it found Him waking. How regal is the impression it conveys! And let me here remind you, to what an apparent chance it is we owe it, that we see Jesus die in such a kingly way. 2. Christ dies with the clearest consciousness. Would that the experience of each of you in that hour may be, that when all earthly lights have faded from your view, God, as a great sun, will fill the eye of your soul! What a genial warmth would then be shed upon the cold last hour! how would the thought of God bridge the gulf which separates time from eternity! Even Christ had thoughts of His own in the closing hours of His life; He thought on His people; He thought on all the past of His earthly history. But when the last moment came, the thought with which He bowed His head was the thought of God. He died with a clear consciousness of what lay before Him. 3. He dies with the fullest assurance. This is testified by His dying cry. He knows that it is into the hands of the Father that He is giving up His Spirit. We are not, God be praised! without instances of blessed death-beds among ourselves. II. Such a death cannot be without effect upon those who witness it. It will quicken the pious and susceptible; it will awe the hard-hearted and ungodly. When the centurion of the Roman guard saw what had happened, he glorified God, saying, “ Truly this was a righteous man,” or “ Truly this was the Son of God.” To die with perfect consciousness, like Jesus, is, indeed, a privilege which is not granted to every child of God; and it is this that makes death so sad, if not to him who suffers, at least to the relatives and friends who stand by. To witness a Christian die fully conscious and self-possessed, is such a sublime and elevating scene! And the full assurance on a bed of death with which Christ commended His spirit to His Father, He grants in mercy to His children too. (A. Tholuck.) The Passion of our Lord I. We should notice that these sufferings of our blessed Lord were most REAL; that He did indeed suffer all this, most truly; that in that body which “ was prepared” for Him, He did bear every possible sting of physical agony; that He was held up in this fierce strife with pain, until He had explored all its secrets. His mind and human spirit were really the seat of every storm of deepest sorrow which the heart of man could know. II. Next to it we should ever bear in mind, beneath the Cross, that all these sufferings were--FOR US. We must “ look on Him whom we have pierced.” III. That these sufferings were NEEDFUL. It becomes us to speak with the deepest reverence when we say that anything is rendered needful by the character of God. Rather is it the truest reverence to see that thus it must have been, if man wore to be redeemed at all; that there was, in the very perfection of God’ s character--the one fixed centre of all being--a necessity for this infinite suffering; that the nature which had sinned must pay the price of sinning, must bear the wrath it had deserved; that without it there could not be, in the world of God’ s holy and righteous love, forgiveness and restoration for the fallen and the separated; that “ Christ must needs have suffered.” (Bishop Samuel Wilberforce.) The crucifixion I. THE OF CHRIST, AS THE FEARFUL OF THE HATRED OF MAN. 1. This is seen in the central act of this awful tragedy. (1) The most painful of all forms of punishment. (2) The most degrading. Not a Jewish, but heathen, punishment, and that on the worst of criminals. 2. This is shown in the scene. (1) The place (Hebrews 13:11-13). (2) The companionship. (3) The insulting taunts. II. THE OF CHRIST, AS HIS ALL- LOVE. 1. AS seen in the infinite contrast between Christ and His taunting murderers. (1) The nature of the contrast. (2) The elevation and matchlessness of the spirit of this conquest of love. 2. As seen in Christ’ s readiness and ability to save. (1) The contrast in the spirit of the two thieves. (2) The contrast in the eternal destiny of the thieves. (3) The condition on which their respective destiny hung. III. THE OF CHRIST, AS IN ITS BEARING ON THE DESTINY OF THIS GLOBE, AND ON THE PRESENT OF MEN. 1. The illustration which the darkness furnishes in respect to the changes which this earth is to undergo. (1) The greatness of the change (2 Peter 3:8-12). (2) The purpose of the change (2 Peter 3:13; Romans 8:19-22). 2. The illustration which the rending of the temple’ s veil furnishes in respect to present salvation (Hebrews 10:19-20). Lessons: 1. The ignorance of sinners of the possibilities of the evil nature within them. 2. The ignorance of sinners of the real enormity of their sins. 3. The ignorance of sinners of what God is doing for them, even when they are hating Him. (D. C. Hughes, M. A.) A look at the three crosses Just look at the one on the right. Its victim dies scoffing. More tremendous than his physical anguish is his scorn and hatred of Him on the middle cross. If the scoffer could get one hand loose, and lie were within reach, he would smite the middle sufferer in the face lie hates Him with a perfect hatred. I think he wishes he were down on the ground, that he might spear Him. He envies the mechanics who, with their nails, have nailed Him fast. It was in some such hate that Voltaire, in his death hour, because he thought he saw Christ in his bedroom, got up on his elbow, and cried out: “ Crush that wretch!” What had the middle cross done to arouse up this right-hand cross? Nothing. Oh, the enmity of the natural heart against Christ! The world likes a sentimental Christ or a philanthropic Christ; but a Christ who comes to snatch men from their sins, away with Hirer Men say: “ Back with Him from the heart. I will not let Him take my sins. If He will die, let Him die for Himself, not for me.” There has always been a war between this right hand cross and the middle cross, and wherever there is an unbelieving heart, there the fight goes on. Here from the right-hand cross I go to the left. Pass clear to the other side. That victim also twists himself upon the nails to look at the centre cross--yet not to scoff. It is to worship. He, too, would like to get his hand loose, not to smite, but to deliver the sufferer of the middle cross. He cries to the railer cursing on the other side: “ Silence! between us is innocence in agony. We suffer for our crimes. Silence !” Gather around this left-hand cross. O! ye people, be not afraid. Bitter herbs are sometimes a tonic for the body, and the bitter aloes that grow on this tree shall give strength and life to thy soul. This left-hand cross is a repenting cross. Likewise must we repent. You say: “ I have stolen nothing.” I reply: We have all been guilty of the mightiest felony of the universe, for we have robbed God--robbed Him of our time, robbed Him of our talents, robbed Him of our services. This left-hand cross was a believing cross. There was no guess-work in that prayer; no “ if” in that supplication. The left-hand cross flung itself at the foot of the middle cross, expecting mercy. Faith is only just opening the hand to take what Christ offers us. Tap not at the door of God’ s mercy with the tip of your fingers, but as a warrior, with gauntleted fists, beats at the castle gate, so, with all the aroused energies of our souls, let us pound at the gate of heaven. That gate is locked. You go to it with a bunch of keys. You try philosophy: that will not open it. You try good works: that will not open it. A large door generally has a ponderous key. I take the Cross and place the foot of it in the socket of the lock, and by the two arms of the Cross I turn the lock and the door opens. Now come to the middle cross. We stood at the one and found it yielded poison. We stood at the other and found it yielded bitter aloes. Come now to the middle cross, and shake down apples of love. You never saw so tender a scene as this. You may have seen father, or mother, or companion, or child die, but never so affecting a scene as this. It was a suffering cross. It was a vicarious cross--the right-hand cross suffered for itself; the left-hand cross for itself; butthe middle cross for you. My hand is free now, because Christ’ s was crushed. My brow is painless now, because Christ’ s was torn. My soul escapes, because Christ’ s was bound. When the Swiss were, many years ago, contending against their enemies they saw these enemies standing in solid phalanx, and knew not how to break their ranks; but one of their heroes rushed out in front of his regiment and shouted--“ Make way for liberty!” The weapons of the enemy were plunged into his heart, but while they were slaying him of course their ranks were broken, and through that gap in the ranks the Swiss marched to victory. Christ saw all the powers of darkness assailing men. He cried out: “ Make way for the redemption of the world.” All the weapons of infernal wrath struck Him, but as they struck Him our race marched out free. To this middle cross, my dying hearers, look, that your souls may live. (Dr. Talmage.) The Cross I. THE . The horrible fact. (1) This form of punishment was most painful, lingering, ignominious. (2) In the case of our Lord, in every sense, unjust, unpardonable, and an exhibition of frenzied selfishness and cruelty. 2. The prophetic place--“ Calvary.” (1) Outside the city (Hebrews 13:11-12; Leviticus 16:27). 3. The wonderful prayer. (1) The lovingness of its plea. (2) The strength of its argument. (3) A model for all Christians. (4) A proof of Christ’ s interest in all sinners. 4. The meanness of human nature (Luke 23:35-37; Luke 23:39). 5. The significant superscription. (1) Significant in the title given to Jesus. (2) Significant in the languages in which it was written. II. LESSONS. 1. The crucifixion of Christ reveals the fearful prerogative of free agency. 2. The unfathomable depths of human depravity. 3. What horrible crimes may be perpetrated in name of holiest principles. 4. How God’ s most gracious purposes may be wrought out by man’ s most heinous malevolence. (D. C. Hughes, M. A.) Who crucified Jesus? He that says he did not crucify Christ is His greatest crucifier; he that will confess that they were his blasphemies which spat upon His face, his briberies that nailed His hands to the cross, his gluttony and drunkenness that gave Him gall to drink, his wrath and malice that pierced Him in the side, his disobedience against magistrates that bruised Him in the head, his wanton apparel that stripped Him of His robe, he that will not only die with Christ in his arms, as old Simeon did, but acknowledge that Christ died by his arms, he shall find peace at the last, and righteousness with the God of his salvation. What became of our Saviour’ s reed, and of His robe, we find in holy Scripture--they were taken from Him by the soldiers; but it is not written whether any man took up the crown of thorns, as if that were our share, or any man’ s else who is goaded with true compunction. And to say truth, all the sins which we do commit, let us make the best of them, are but thorns and briers; but if we confess them in humility, and ask pardon in tears and contrition, then they are corona spinea, a crown of thorns. (Bishop Hacket.) Luke 23:34 Father, forgive them, for they know not The unknown depths of sin I. HOW DO SINNERS COME AT THEIR NOTION THAT SIN IS SO AN AFFAIR? 1. They have a very limited view of their own feelings and purposes while in a course of sin; and infer that they cannot be very guilty, because they have never been conscious of a very evil intention. 2. Many derive their limited views of their sins from their meagre conceptions of the Divine law. 3. Others erect a bar to conviction of personal guilt out of materials taken from infirmities incident to human nature. 4. Others diminish their conceptions of their guilt, by comparing themselves with greater sinners. 5. Sin appears very different according to the different light and circumstances in which it is seen. 6. Again, delay of punishment goes to confirm men in the opinion that sin is a trifle. II. THAT THEIR VIEWS OF SIN ARE LIMITED, OR THAT SIN IS QUITE ANOTHER THING IN FACT, FROM WHAT IT IS IN THE SINNER’ S . 1. It is very different in its effects from what they esteem it. 2. Sin is very different if we consider the state of heart which gives birth to it. 3. The costly expiation for sin shows it to be no trifle. 4. The retributions of eternity will make sin to appear quite another thing from what it is here esteemed. (P. Cooke.) Prayer for a murderer Joseph Robbins was a bridge watchman on a railway. He was murdered by a neighbour who wanted to get his money. The murderer was caught directly after. During the trial he made this confession in open court:--“ I knew that Robbins had just received his month’ s wages, and I resolved to have his money. I got a shot-gun and went to the bridge. As I came near to the watch-house, on looking through the window, I saw Robbins sitting inside. His head and shoulders only could be seen. I raised the gun, took aim and fired. I waited a few minutes to see if the report of the gun had alarmed any one, but all was still. Then I went up to the watch-house door, and found Robbins on his knees praying. Very plainly I heard him say: ‘ Oh, God, have mercy on the man who did this, and spare him for Jesus’ sake.’ I was horrified; I did not dare to enter the house. I couldn’ t touch that man’ s money. Instead of this, I turned and ran away, I knew not whither. His words have haunted me ever since.” Christ’ s pardoning mercy “ God is great in Sinai. The thunders precede Him, the lightnings attend Him, the earth trembles, the mountains fall in fragments. But there is a greater God than this. On Calvary, nailed to a cross, wounded, thirsting, dying, He cries, ‘ Father, forgive them, they know not what they do!’ Great is the religion of power, but greater is the religion of love. Great is the religion of implacable justice, but greater is the religion of pardoning mercy.” (Senor Castelar.) The first word of the dying Jesus Let the first word of the dying Jesus be the subject of our meditation. It is-- I. A word of peace in the storm of suffering. II. A word of love in the tumult of hatred. III. A word of excuse amid the depths of wickedness. (A Stucker.) I. OBSERVE THE ITSELF. Christ’ s intercession on the cross 1. The magnitude of the blessing prayed for. 2. The extreme unworthiness of the objects. 3. The heinous nature of their offence. 4. The efficacy of the petition in securing the blessing prayed for. II. THE PLEA BY WHICH THE IS --“ THEY KNOW NOT WHAT THEY DO.” 1. It is such as would have not been found by any other advocate. 2. It is a plea which shows theft sin has different degrees of guilt, according to the circumstances under which it is committed. 3. It is a plea which teaches us that for some there was no mercy, though there might be for those on whose behalf it was offered. There is a sin unto death, which has no forgiveness in this world, nor in that which is to come Matthew 12:32). 4. Though their ignorance afforded a plea for mercy, they were not to be pardoned without repentance. Application: 1. We see there is that in the nature of sin which surpasses all our conceptions. 2. Still, we learn that notwithstanding the evil nature of sin, there is no reason for despair, not even for the chief of sinners. 3. The conduct of our blessed Lord is set before us in this instance as an example, teaching us what must be our spirit towards our enemies and persecutors. Stephen followed this example, and we must learn to do the Acts 7:60; Matthew 5:44-45). (Theological Sketch-book.) Christ’ s prayer for ignorant sinners I. SIN IS FOUNDED IN MUCH . 1. Men are ignorant of its extreme evil in the sight of God. 2. Men are ignorant of the baneful influence of sin upon themselves. They are not aware how it hardens the heart, stupifies the conscience, settles into habit, and at length gains complete ascendency. 3. Men are ignorant of the pernicious effect of sin on others. Few sins are confined to the transgressor only: they have a relative influence. 4. Men are ignorant of the dreadful consequences of sin in another world. There is a future state of gracious reward for the righteous, and of awful retribution for the wicked. II. IS NO EXCUSE FOR SIN. In some instances it mitigates offence. 1. Ignorance itself is sin. In all cases it is so, where the capacity and opportunity of knowledge are afforded. 2. The law of God condemns all sin, every kind and degree of sin. 3. Every act of sin implies a sinful nature: it springs from a depraved heart. III. OF SIN IS AN ACT OF DIVINE MERCY, AND THE FRUIT OF THE SAVIOUR’ S . From the subject learn-- 1. To regard the intercession of Jesus in the forgiveness of sins. 2. To imitate Jesus in the forgiveness of injuries. (T. Kidd.) Father, forgive them! I. WE SEE THE LOVE OF JESUS . II. WE SEE THAT LOVE ITSELF. Love can use no better instrument than prayer. To this present our Lord Jesus continues to bless the people of His choice by continually interceding for them (Romans 8:34; Hebrews 7:25). III. WE SEE FOR WHAT THAT LOVE PRAYS. Forgiveness is the first, chief, and basis blessing. Forgiveness from the Father can even go so far as to pardon the murder of His Son. Forgiveness is the great petition of our Lord’ s sacrifice. Love admits that pardon is needed, and it shudders at the thought of what must come to the guilty if pardon be not given. IV. WE SEE HOW THE LOVING JESUS PRAYS. Are there any so guilty that Jesus would refuse to intercede for them? V. WE SEE HOW HIS PRAYER BOTH WARNS AND WOOS. It warns, for it suggests that there is a limit to the possibility of pardon. Men may so sin that there shall remain no plea of ignorance; nay, no plea whatever. It woos, for it proves that if there be a plea, Jesus will find it. VI. WE SEE HOW HE FROM THE CROSS. He teaches us to put the best construction on the deeds of our fellow-men, and to discover mitigating circumstances when they work us grievous ill. He teaches us to forgive the utmost wrong (Mark 11:25). He teaches us to pray for others to our last breath (Acts 7:59-60). That glorious appeal to the Divine Fatherhood, once made by the Lord Jesus, still prevails for us. Let the chief of sinners come unto God with the music of “ Father, forgive them,” sounding in their ears. (C. H. Spurgeon.) The prayer of Christ for His murderers You have in these words an affecting prayer, enforced by a plea equally affecting. I. Your attention is invited to the prayer, which, in whatever light regarded, is fitted to awaken profound emotion and salutary reflection. 1. Observe the persons on whose behalf it was presented--the men who perpetrated the most flagitious and sanguinary deed that ever stained with its pollutions the face of the earth--the men who crucified the Son of God. The moral turpitude of their crime was aggravated by two considerations. In the first place, the victim of their ferocity was guiltless of the smallest offence. They were guilty of innocent blood! In the next place, their conduct was aggravated by the more than ordinary rancour, the pitiless hatred with which they pursued Him to the grave. 2. Not less remarkable is the subject of the prayer itself. It amounts to nothing less than that the men who nailed Him to the cross might live to put off the savage nature which could revel in the blood of innocence, and, through repentance and faith, be qualified for an eternal alliance with Himself in the glory of His mediatorial kingdom. Such is the compassion of Jesus Christ. 3. The time and the circumstances of this prayer render it peculiarly interesting. That which renders it worthy of particular notice, as illustrative of the grace of Christ, is, that He offered it up just at the time of His suspension on the cross, at the moment when His agonies were most severe, when His nerves were racked with keenest suffering. His languor and exhaustion might be greater afterwards, but His sensibility to pain was, perhaps, most exquisite at this critical moment. Yet this is the point of time at which He breathes forth the desires of His soul for mercy on His destroyers. There are two observations suggested by this fact. In the first place, the calmness, the self-possession, the sustained dignity of the mind of the Redeemer at this appalling crisis, demonstrate the fixed resolution with which He was bent on the design of His death. In the second place, I observe, that there was a remarkable fitness in the prayer of Jesus Christ, presented by Himself at this awful season. He suffered and He died as the Lamb of the great sacrifice for the expiation of human guilt. And being Himself both the victim and the priest, there was a peculiar fitness in His also interceding on behalf of the guilty, at the time when, as the High Priest of our profession, He was offering the blood of atonement. II. This prayer is accompanied by a plea not less remarkable and affecting. “ For they know not what they do!” 1. How far were the men who crucified our Lord ignorant of the nature of the transaction in which they were engaged? That they were implicated in innocent blood they knew; but that their crime was still more deeply coloured from the supernatural dignity of their victim, of this they were ignorant. 2. How far, then, was this their ignorance a plea for their forgiveness? The plea does not proceed, I conceive, on the concession of their comparative innocence, but upon the hopeless and inevitable ruin into which these blinded wretches were hastening to plunge. It was the dreadful ruin to which the blind madness of these men was hurrying them onwards, that awakened the pity of the Redeemer, even amidst the agonies of His own broken heart, and drew from His suppliant voice that prayer, “ Forgive them, Father! they know not what they do!” Oh, how mysterious, how ineffable, the compassion of Jesus Christi The prayer itself contained a touching proof of the infinite mercy of the Redeemer; but, if possible, the plea by which He enforces that prayer, multiplies that proof, and places His love to miserable men in a light still more affecting and overwhelming. (N. Emmons, D. D.) Christ’ s prayer for His murderers The words of the dying are wont to be much observed. When men depart out of the body, they are usually more serious and divine, and speak with greater weight. Especially the speeches of the godly dying are to be regarded, who, having laid aside worldly affairs and earthly thoughts, are wholly exercised in the contemplation of heavenly things. Now certainly, if any man’ s dying speeches are to be observed, Christ’ s are much more. I. Christ’ s request, “ Father, forgive them.” “ Father” is a word of confidence towards God and of love to His enemies; He mentioneth the sweetest relation. “ Father” is a word of blandishment, as children, when they would obtain anything at their parent’ s hands, cry, “ Father!” Christ speaks as foreseeing the danger and punishment which they would bring on themselves as the fruit of their madness and folly, and therefore He prays, “ Father, forgive them.” This act was provocation enough to move God to dissolve the bonds of nature, to cleave the earth, that it might swallow them up quick, or to rain hell out of heaven upon them. Lesser offences have been thus punished, and one word from Christ’ s mouth had been enough. But, “ Father, forgive them.” We hear nothing but words of mild pity. When He says, “ Forgive,” He means also convert them; for where there is no conversion there can be no remission. I shall look upon this prayer under a twofold consideration. I. Let us look upon it AS A MORAL ACTION. He doth not threaten fearful judgments, but prayed for His enemies; there was no stain of passion and revenge upon His sufferings (1 Peter 2:21). One great use of Christ’ s death was to give us lessons of meekness and patience and humble suffering. In this act there is an excellent lesson. Let us look upon the necessary circumstances that serve to set it off (1) For whom He prays; (2) When He prays; (3) Why He prays; (4) In what manner. Information: 1. It informeth us that the love of Christ is greater than we can think or understand, much less express. 2. That all sins, even the greatest, except that against the Holy Ghost, are pardonable. 3. That remission of sins is the free gift of God, and the fruit of His pity and grace. Christ asketh it of His Father. 4. That pardon of sins is a special benefit. Christ asked no more than, “ Father, forgive them.” It is a special benefit, because it freeth us from the greatest evil, wrath to come (1 Thessalonians 1:10). And it maketh us capable of the greatest blessing, eternal life (Titus 3:7). 5. That love of enemies, and those that bare wronged us, is an high grace, and recommended to us by Christ’ s own example. Sure it is needful that we should learn this lesson, to be like God (Luke 6:36). 6. Reproof of those that are cruel and revengeful. How different are they from Christ who are all for unkindness and revenge, and solicit vengeance against God’ s suffering servants with eager aggravations! Oh, how can these men look upon Christ’ s practice without shame! How can they look upon these prodigies of love and grace, and not blush! II. The next consideration of this prayer of Christ is AS A TASTE AND PLEDGE OF HIS AND . So it is prophesied: “ He was numbered with the transgressors, and He bare the sins of many, and made intercession for the transgressors” (Isaiah 53:12). 1. It is an instance of Christ’ s love and bowels to sinners; He loved mankind so well that He prayed for them that crucified Him. Look on the Lord Jesus as praying and dying for enemies, and improve it as a ground of confidence. 2. See what is the voice and merit of His sufferings, “ Father, forgive them.” This is the speech that Christ uttered when He was laid on the cross. Abel’ s blood was clamorous in the ears of God (Genesis 4:10). Christ’ s blood hath another voice, it speaketh to God to pacify His wrath, and to pardon us, if penitent and believing sinners; it speaketh to conscience to be quiet, God hath found out a ransom. 3. In the mediatory consideration it hinteth the coupling of His intercession with His satisfaction. On the cross, there He dieth and there He prayeth; He was both priest and sacrifice. 4. This is a pledge of His constant intercession in heaven. 5. It shows the nature of His intercession. 6. The success of Christ’ s intercession, “ Father, forgive them.” Was He heard in this? Yes; this prayer converts the centurion, and those above “ three thousand” (Acts 2:41), and presently after five thousand more Acts 4:4). In the compass of a few days above eight thousand of His enemies were converted. Christ is good at interceding; His prayers are always heard (John 11:42). II. I come now to the argument used, “ They know not what they do.” (T. Manton, D. D.) A prayer for ignorant sinners I. THAT IS THE USUAL CAUSE OF ENMITY TO CHRIST. “ These things” (saith the Lord) “ will they do, because they have not known the Father, nor Me” (John 16:3). 1. What was their ignorance, who crucified Christ? Ignorance is two-fold, simple or respective. Simple ignorance is not supposable in these persons, for in many things they were a knowing people. But it was a respective particular ignorance, “ Blindness in part is happened to Israel” (Romans 11:25). They knew many other truths, but did not know Jesus Christ. In that their eyes were held. Though they had the Scriptures among them, they misunderstood them, and did not rightly measure Christ by that right rule. (1) They supposed Christ to arise out of Galilee, whereas He was of Bethlehem, though much conversant in the parts of Galilee. And (2) they thought, because they could find no prophet had arisen out of Galilee, therefore none should. Another mistake that blinded them about Christ, was from their conceit that Christ should not die, but live for ever John 12:34). Thus were they blinded about the person of Christ, by misinterpretations of Scripture-prophecies. 2. Another thing occasioning their mistake of Christ, was the outward meanness and despicableness of His condition. 3. Add to this, their implicit faith in the learned rabbles and doctors, who utterly misled them in this matter, and greatly prejudiced them against Christ. Let us see, in the next place, how this disposed them to such enmity against Christ. And this it doth three ways. (1) Ignorance disposes men to enmity and opposition to Christ, by removing those hindrances that would otherwise keep them from it. As checks and rebukes of conscience, by which they are restrained from evil; but conscience binding and reproving in the authority and virtue of the law of God; where that law is not known, there can be no reproofs, and therefore we truly say, that ignorance is virtually every sin. (2) Ignorance enslaves and subjects the soul to the lusts of Satan, he is “ the ruler of the darkness of this world” (Ephesians 6:12). There is no work so base and vile, but an ignorant man will undertake it. (3) Nay, which is more, if a man be ignorant of Christ, His truths, or people, he will not only oppose, and persecute, but he will also do it conscientiously, i.e., he will look upon it as his duty so to do (John 16:3). 1. How falsely is the gospel charged as the cause of discord and trouble in the world. It is not light, but darkness, that makes men fierce and cruel. As light increases, so doth peace (Isaiah 11:6; Isaiah 11:9). 2. How dreadful is it to oppose Christ and His truths knowingly, and with open eyes? Christ pleads their ignorance as an argument to procure their pardon. 3. What an awful majesty sits upon the brow of holiness, that few dare to oppose it that see it! 4. The enemies of Christ are objects of pity. Alas, they are blind, and know not what they do. 5. How needful is it before we engage ourselves against any person or way, to be well satisfied and resolved that it is a wicked person or practice that we oppose. II. THAT THERE IS WITH GOD FOR SUCH AS OPPOSE CHRIST OUT OF . I have two things here to do: 1. To open the nature of the forgiveness, and show you what it is. 2. To evince the possibility of it, for such as mistakingly oppose Christ. For-- 1. Forgiveness is God’ s gracious discharge of a believing penitent sinner from the guilt of all his sin, for Christ’ s sake. 2. Now, to evince the possibility of forgiveness for such as ignorantly oppose Christ, let these things be weighed. (1) Why should any poor soul, that is now humbled for its enmity to Christ in the days of ignorance, question the possibility of forgiveness, when this effect doth not exceed the power of the cause; nay, when there is more efficacy in the blood of Christ, the meritorious cause, than is in this effect of it? (2) And as this sin exceeds not the power of the meritorious cause of forgiveness, so neither is it anywhere excluded from pardon by any word of God. III. THAT TO FORGIVE ENEMIES, AND BEG FOR THEM, IS THE TRUE AND OF THE SPIRIT. 1. Let us inquire what this Christian forgiveness is. And that the nature of it may the better appear, I shall show you both what it is not and what it is. (1) It consists not in a stoical insensibility of wrongs and injuries. (2) Christian forgiveness is not a politic concealment of our wrath and revenge because it will be a reproach to discover it, or because we want opportunity to vent it. This is carnal policy, not Christian meekness. (3) Nor is it that moral virtue for which we are beholden to an easier and better nature and the help of moral rules and documents. (4) Christian forgiveness is not an injurious giving up of our rights and properties to the lusts of every one that hath a mind to invade them. But, then, positively, it is a Christian lenity or gentleness of mind, not retaining, but freely passing by the injuries done to us, in obedience to the command of God. This is forgiveness in a Christian sense. 2. And this is excellent, and singularly becoming the profession of Christ, is evident, inasmuch as this speaks your religion excellent that can mould your hearts into that heavenly frame to which they are so averse, yea, contrarily disposed by nature. Inference 1. Hence we clearly infer that Christian religion, exalted in its power, is the greatest friend to the peace and tranquillity of states and kingdoms. 2. How dangerous a thing is it to abuse and wrong meek and forgiving Christians? 3. Let us imitate our pattern Christ, and labour for meek forgiving spirits. I shall only propose two inducements to it--the honour of Christ, and your own peace: two dear things indeed to a Christian. (J. Flavel.) The first cry from the cross I. Let us look at this very wonderful text as OF OUR LORD’ S . 1. The first point in which we may see the character of His intercession is this--it is most gracious. Those for whom our Lord prayed, according to the text, did not deserve His prayer. 2. A second quality of His intercession is this--its careful spirit. You notice in the prayer, “ Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do,” our Saviour did, as it were, look His enemies through and through to find something in them that He could urge in their favour; but He could see nothing until His wisely affectionate eye lit upon their ignorance: “ they know not what they do.” 3. We must next note its earnestness. 4. It is interesting to note, in the fourth place, that the prayer here offered helps us to judge of His intercession in heaven as to its continuance, perseverance, and perpetuity. 5. Think yet again, this prayer of our Lord on earth is like His prayer in heaven, because of its wisdom. He seeks the best thing, and that which His clients most need, “ rather, forgive them.” That was the great point in hand; they wanted most of all there and then forgiveness from God. 6. Once more, this memorable prayer of our crucified Lord was like to His universal intercession in the matter of its prevalence. II. The text is OF THE CHURCH’ S WORK. As Christ was, so His Church is to be in this world. 1. Christ’ s prayer on the cross was altogether an unselfish one. He does not remember Himself in it. Such ought to be the Church’ s life-prayer, the Church’ s active interposition on the behalf of sinners. She ought to live never for her ministers or for herself, but ever for the lost sons of men. 2. Now the prayer of Christ had a great spirituality of aim. You notice that nothing is sought for these people but that which concerns their souls, “ Father, forgive them.” 3. Our Saviour’ s prayer teaches the Church that while her spirit should be unselfish, and her aim should be spiritual, the range of her mission is to be unlimited. 4. So, too, the Church should be earnest as Christ was; and if she be so, she will be quick to notice any ground of hope in those she deals with, quick to observe any plea that she may use with God for their salvation. 5. She must be hopeful too, and surely no Church ever had a more hopeful sphere than the Church of this present age. If ignorance be a plea with God, look on the heathen at this day--millions of them never heard Messiah’ s name. Forgive them, great God, indeed they know not what they do. III. A word, in conclusion, TO THE . Remember your ignorance does not excuse you, or else Christ would not say, “ Forgive them” ; they must be forgiven, even those that know not what they do, hence they are individually guilty; but still that ignorance of yours gives you just a little gleam of hope. “ Bring forth, therefore, fruits meet for repentance.” But there are some here for whom even Christ Himself could not pray this prayer, in the widest sense at any rate, “ Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do,” for you have known what you did, and every sermon you hear, and especially every impression that is made upon your understanding and conscience by the gospel, adds to your responsibility, and takes away from you the excuse of not knowing what you do. You know that there is sin and God, and that you cannot serve both. You know that there are the pleasures of evil and the pleasures of heaven, and that you cannot have both. (C. H. Spurgeon.) Christ’ s forgiveness This prayer included many. It included all who had any share in the mockery, and crucifixion, and death of Christ. It included the.Roman governor, who had given authority to crucify Him; the Roman soldiers, whose duty it was to see the sentence carried out into execution; the Jewish priests and rulers, who cried out for judgment; the multitude, who were stirred up by their religious guides and rulers. All these various classes were ignorant of the true nature of the deed which they were committing, but all were not equally ignorant. Some knew more than others; and according to their greater knowledge was their guilt, according to their ignorance was their personal share in the prayer offered at the cross. Not one of these knew altogether what he was doing, or how great was the sin in which he was taking part; and each of these individuals or groups of individuals has some one or many to correspond to them in our own day and amongst ourselves in this age. The cross is for ever the sign of the world’ s darkest crime: it reveals what is lying at the root of all sin; and it opens up the nature of that dread conflict which is ever going on between the kingdom of darkness and the kingdom of God. Christ’ s prayer to His Father is to be regarded in the further light of a declaration of forgiveness, and an assurance of it. Forgiveness is easier for God to give than for man to take. Forgiveness cannot be received by every one. If a man says he forgives me, I can only accept his word if I believe that I need his forgiveness--in other words, if I am conscious that I have offended him and done something wrong. If I am in my own mind sure that I hare not injured him, I decline to place myself on the footing of a forgiven man. I put away his forgiveness, I refuse to take the benefit of it, and I stand towards him as one claiming to have as much right to forgive him as he to forgive me. And if we transfer this comparison from earth to heaven, and inquire into the forgiveness which comes from God, we shall find that the only channel through which we can receive it is by accepting forgiveness as men who have done wrong, and who know the wrong they have done, and have confessed it and hated it. There are many who have passed a long way through the journey of life before they find out what they have been doing. Youth has often to pass into age before a man truly says, “ Remember not the sins of my youth” ; the hour of anger has to pass away before a man hears the voice of conscience, “ Doest thou well to be angry.” Perhaps it is only to-day that we see yesterday’ s faults, and not until another year may we see the faults of this; the scales fall away from our eyes, and we marvel that follies which are now so plain were not observed by us; we wonder how it was possible for us to do what we did, and not see its true character all the while. Conscience does not arouse us, and it is often not until the voice of memory cries aloud that the soul of a man is awakened, and his past life looks to him as if he had been walking in his sleep. Is it not time for every one to bestir himself, and ask whether he knows what his present life and actions mean? But there is another turn which we may give to the words. We may accept them as expressing our own spirit and our own life. And until we have received them into our hearts as the law of our own being, we have failed to see their true beauty and power. As He was in the world, so are we in the world. (A. Watson, D. D.) Ignorance and forgiveness What makes so wide a difference between Judas and those who carried out what Judas had begun? The answer is in the text: they knew not what they did. Doubtless they knew that He was innocent; but of His person, office, authority, they had no conception. Their ignorance did not wipe out their sin, but it did palliate it. It mitigated the awful blackness of the crime which they wrought. It brought it within the limits of Divine mercy. I. OUR SINS OF NEED PARDON. 1. In matters that concern the soul, much of our ignorance is simply the fruit of neglecting or despising information. 2. A vast amount of religious ignorance springs from a willingness to be misled. Let a book appear that controverts the clearly defined truths of evangelical belief. Let popular clamour lift its voice in wild hue and cry against creeds and dogmas. Multitudes of men are at once ready to fall in with such a drift, not because they have carefully satisfied their minds that the current is bearing them in the right direction, but because it is in accord with what they wish were true. II. WHAT IS IT WHICH MEN DO NOT KNOW? There is an ignorance of our own doings which is absolutely marvellous. Visiting a factory not long ago I was shown a machine which produces a little article of commerce with an inconceivable rapidity. But the ingenious inventor had contrived an apparatus which registered every one produced. If it were a hundred in every minute, each one was noted by the contrivance that created it. But it is a strange fact that man, with all his powers of consciousness, keeps himself in utter ignorance of much that makes up his action. Our actions flow out from us into the great world so unheeded that they are forgotten as soon as done; as water through the parted marble lips of a statue which does duty as a fountain. 1. Men know not the origin of what they do. Has it never puzzled, while it saddened you, to talk with some friend in the last stages of consumption? The hectic flush if on his cheek. There is an unnatural lustre in his eye. His breathing is short and hurried. A hollow cough continually interrupts his speech. But he tells you that he is perfectly well. Of course he sees these symptoms. He freely acknowledges that they are unfavourable. But then be is thankful that his lungs are wholly unaffected. It is the seat and origin of the disease of which he is ignorant. Precisely identical is the way in which many treat the whole question of sin. 2. Equally is it true that the vast majority of men know not the effects of what they do. How thoughtlessly we sin I We may not think when we scatter sparks into a powder magazine, but it is none the less dangerous to do so. (Bishop Cheney.) Prayer for murderers In 1831, when the cholera first broke out in Hungary, the Sclavic peasants of the north, were fully persuaded that they had been poisoned by the nobles, to get rid of them. They accordingly rose in revolt, and committed the most dreadful excesses. A gentleman who, up to that moment, had been very popular with the poorer classes, was seized by them, dragged from his house into the streets, and beaten for several hours, to make him confess where he had concealed the poison. Weary, at last, with inflicting blows, the frenzied mob carried him to a blacksmith’ s shop, and applied hot ploughshares to his feet. Exhausted with this excruciating torture, the innocent sufferer, finding all explanations and entreaties vain, fell back from weakness, apparently about to expire, when the dying prayer of his Lord and Saviour escaped his lips: “ Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do!” The savage fury of the peasantry was calmed in a moment, as if by a miracle; and convinced of the innocence of their victim, and the enormity of their crime, they fled in terror from the place. And cast lotsOn gambling Christ had been condemned to death, and His property was being disposed of. He had no real estate. He was born in a stranger’ s barn, and buried in a borrowed sepulchre. His personal property was of but little value. His coat was the only thing to come into consideration. His shoes had been worn out in the long journey for the world’ s redemption. Who shall have His coat? Some one says: “ Let us toss up in a lottery and decide this matter.” “ I have it!” said one of the inhuman butchers. “ I have it!” “ Upon My vesture did they cast lots.” And there, on that spot, were born all the lotteries the world has seen. On that spot of cruelty and shame and infamy there was born the Royal Havana lottery, in which some of you may have had tickets. There was born the famous New York lottery, which pretended to have over £144,400 worth of cash prizes. There was born the Topeka, Kansas, Laramier City, Wyoming Territory lotteries. There was born the Louisville lottery, with diamonds and pearls, and watches by the bushel. There was born the Georgia lottery, for the east and the west. There was born the Louisiana lottery, sanctioned by influential names. There was born the Kentucky lottery, for the city school of Frankfort. All the lotteries that have swindled the world were born there. Without any exception all of them moral outrages, whether sanctioned by legislative authority, or antagonized by it, and moral outrages though respectable people have sometimes damaged their property with them, and blistered their immortal souls for eternity. Under the curse of the lottery tens of thousands of people are losing their fortunes and losing their souls. What they call a “ wheel of fortune” is a Juggernaut crushing out the life of their immortal nature. In one of the insolvent courts of the country it was found that in one village £40,000 had been expended for lotteries. All the officers of the celebrated United States Bank which failed were found to have expended the embezzled moneys in lottery tickets. A man won £10,000 in a lottery. He sold his ticket for £8,500, and yet had not enough to pay charges against him for tickets. He owed the brokers £9,000. The editor of a newspaper writes: “ My friend was blessed with £4,000 in a lottery, and from that time he began to go astray, and yesterday he asked of me ninepence to pay for a night’ s lodging.” A man won £4,000 in a lottery. Flattered by his success, he bought another ticket and won still more largely. Another ticket and still more largely. Then, being fairly started on the road to ruin, here and there a loss did not seem to agitate him, and he went on and on until the select men of the village pronounced him a vagabond and picked up his children from the street, half-starved and almost naked. A hard-working machinist won £400 in a lottery. He was thrilled with the success, disgusted with his hard work, opened a rum grocery, got debauched in morals, and was found dead at the foot of his rum casks. Oh, it would take a pen plucked from the wing of the destroying angel, and dipped in human blood, to describe this lottery business. A suicide was found having in his pocket a card of address showing he was boarding at a grog-shop. Beside that he had three lottery tickets and a leaf from Seneca’ s “ Morals “ in behalf of the righteousness of self-murder. After a lottery in England there were fifty suicides of those who held unlucky numbers. There are people who have lottery tickets in their pockets--tickets which, if they have not wisdom enough to tear up or burn up, will be their admission tickets at the door of the lost world. The brazen gate will swing open and they will show their tickets, and they will go in, and they will go down. The wheel of their eternal fortune may turn very slowly, but they will find that the doom of those who reject the teachings of God and imperil their immortal souls is their only prize. (Dr. Talmage.) What is gambling? Gambling is risking something more or less valuable with the idea of winning mote than you hazard. Playing at cards is not gambling unless a stake be put up, while on the other hand a man may gamble without cards, without dice, without billiards, without ten-pin alley. It may not be bagatelle, it may not be billiards, it may not be any of the ordinary instruments of gambling, it may be a glass of wine. It may be a hundred shares in a prosperous railroad company. I do not care what the instruments of the game are, or what the stakes are that are put up--if you propose to get anything without paying for it in time, or skill, or money, unless you get it by inheritance, you get it either by theft or by gambling. A traveller said he travelled one thousand miles on Western waters, and at every waking moment, from the starting to the closing of his journey, he was in the presence of gambling. A man, if he is disposed to this vice, will find something to accommodate him; if not in the low restaurant behind the curtain, on the table covered with greasy cards, or in the steamboat cabin, where the bloated wretch with rings in his ears winks in an unsuspecting traveller, or in the elegant parlour, the polished drawing-room, the mirrored and pictured halls of wealth and beauty. This vice destroys through unhealthy stimulants. We all at times like excitements. There are a thousand voices within us that demand excitements. They are healthful, they are inspiriting, they are God-given. The desire is for excitement; but look out for any kind of excitement which, after the gratification of the appetite, hurls the man back into destructive reactions. Then the excitement is wicked. Beware of an agitation which, like a rough musician, in order to call out the tune, plays so hard he breaks down the instrument. God never yet made a man strong enough to endure gambling excitements without damage. It is no surprise that many a man seated at the game has lost and then begun to sweep off imaginary gold from the table. He sat down sane. He rose a maniac. The keepers of gambling saloons school themselves into placidity. They are fat, and round, and rollicking, and obese; but those who go to play for the sake of winning are thin, and pale, and exhausted, and nervous, and sick, and have the heart-disease, and are liable any moment to drop down dead. That is the character of nine out of ten of the gamblers. You cannot be healthy and practise that vice. It is killing to all industry. Do you notice that, just as soon as a man gets that vice on him, he stops his work? Do you not know that this vice has dulled the saw of the carpenter, and cut the band of the factory-wheel, and sunk the cargo, and broken the teeth of the farmer’ s rake, and sent a strange lightning to the battery of the philosopher. What a dull thing is a plough to a farmer, when, in one night in the village restaurant, he can make or lose the price of a whole harvest I The whole theory of gambling is hostile to industry. Every other occupation yields something to the community. The street sweeper pays for what he gets by the cleanliness of the streets; the cat pays for what it eats by clearing the house of vermin; the fly pays for the sweets it extracts from the dregs of a cup by purifying the air and keeping back pestilence; but the gambler gives nothing. I recall that last sentence. He does make a return, but it is in the destruction of the man whom he fleeces, disgrace to his wife, ruin to his children, death to his soul. (Dr. Talmadge.) Luke 23:35-37 He saved others, let Him save Himself God in sovereignty often selects as His instruments those who have no desire to be subordinate to His will Some passengers on the ship’ s deck may be walking forward, and some walking aft, and some standing still; but all, and all alike, are borne onward to their destiny by the breath of heaven in the sails, and according to the will of the pilot who holds the helm in his hand. This world in space is like a ship on the sea. Of the teeming multitudes that crowd its surface, some intelligently and willingly walk in the way of God’ s commandments, others violently resist, and others cleave sluggishly to the dust like clods of the earth; but our Father is at the helm--he will make all subservient to His purpose. Every atom will be compelled to take its place and contribute its own share to the establishment of His kingdom and the redemption of His people. The sovereignty of God is a precious doctrine. Providence is sweet to them that believe: “ Casting all your care upon Him; for He careth for you.” Apart from the meaning of their words, the scuffing of these scribes was overruled by God for the accomplishment of His own purpose. By their conduct they unconsciously fulfilled the prophecy of Scripture regarding the Messiah. This reviling constituted one of the marks by which those who waited for redemption in Israel should know the Redeemer when He came. “ A root out of a dry ground: no form nor comeliness--no beauty that He should be desired: rejected and despised: they shall look on Him whom they have pierced.” (W. Arnot.) Himself He cannot save The King’ s Son has offered Himself as hostage for certain subjects that were held in captivity by a foreign power. He has gone into their place, and they have on the faith of this transaction been set free. Precisely because they have been set free, He cannot now escape. He has saved others by the substitution of Himself in their stead, and therefore Himself He cannot save. In order to explain fully how Jesus, having saved others, could not also save Himself, we must refer to the history of redemption. Bear in mind that we live under a Divine administration that has been well ordered from the beginning. When an architect begins to lay the foundation of a building, he has the perfect plan already before his eye. Although it be only a man’ s covenant, it is not carried forward by fits and starts according to the changing circumstances of the times. The design is completed from the first, and its execution is carried forward, it may be from generation to generation, all in accordance with the first design. Much more certain and evident it is that God, who sees the end from the beginning, framed His plan at first, and conducts His administration from age to age according to that plan. The way of salvation for sinful men is not left uncertain, to be modified by the accidents of the day. The gospel does not take its character from passing events. It is, indeed, a transaction between the unchangeable God and erring man; but it takes its character from the Source whence it springs, and not from the objects to which it is directed. It partakes of the immutability of its Author: it has nothing in common with the caprice of men. It has come from heaven to earth, not to receive, but to give an impression. The sun’ s rays when they reach the earth meet with a various reception. At one time they are intercepted before they touch its surface by an intervening subordinate orb; at another time the earth itself keeps out the light from that side of it whereon we stand: at one place, even when the rays are permitted to reach us, they stir corruption into greater energy; at another time they paint the flowers and ripen the fruit, stimulating life and gilding the landscape with varied beauty. But whether they are kept at a distance or received, whether when received they make corruption more corrupt, or make beauty more beautiful, the sun’ s rays are ever the same; they remain true to their celestial character, and are never changed by the changing accidents of earth. They retain all the purity of the heaven they come from, and contract none of the defilement of the earth they come to. (W. Arnot.) If Christ had saved Himself, man would have been left unsaved A traveller in an Asiatic desert has spent his last bit of bread and his last drop of water. He has pursued his journey in hunger and thirst until his limbs have given way, and he has at length lain down on the ground to die. Already, as he looks on the hard dry sky, he sees the vultures swooping down, as if unwilling to wait till his breath go out. But a caravan of travellers with provisions and camels comes up. Hope revives in his fainting heart. They halt and look; but as the poor man cannot walk, they are unwilling to burden themselves, and coldly pass on. Now he is left to all the horrors of despair. They have saved themselves, but left him to die. A ship has caught fire at sea. The passengers and crew, shut up in one extremity of the burning ship, strain their eyes and sweep the horizon round for sight of help. At length, and just in time, a sail appears and bears down upon them. But the stranger, fearing fire, does not venture near, but puts about her helm, and soon is out of sight. The men in the burning ship are left to their fate. How dreadful their situation, when the selfish ship saved itself from danger, and left them to sink! Ah! what heart can conceive the misery of human kind, if the Son of God had saved Himself from suffering, and left a fallen world to the wrath of God! (W. Arnot.) Refusing to save himself A soldier on duty at the palace of the Emperor at St. Petersburg, which was burnt a few years ago, was stationed, and had been forgotten, in one suite of apartments that was in flames. A Greek priest was the last person to rush through the burning rooms, at the imminent risk of his life, to save a crucifix in a chapel, and, returning, he was hailed by the set, try, who must in a few instants more have been suffocated. “ What do you want?” cried the priest. “ Save yourself, or you will be lost.” “ I can’ t leave,” replied the sentry, “ because I am unrelieved; but I called to you to give me your blessing before I die.” The priest blessed him, and the soldier died at his post. Happiness in saving others One of the Russian emperors, Alexander, when hunting, and riding in front of his suite, heard a groan which arrested him; he reined in his horse, alighted, looked round, and found a man at the point of death. He bent over him, chafed his temples, and tried to excite him. A surgeon was called, but he said “ He is dead.” “ Try what you can do,” said the Emperor. “ He is dead,” replied the surgeon. “ Try what you can do.” At this second command, the surgeon tried some processes; and after a time a drop of blood appeared from a vein which had been opened; respiration was being restored. On seeing this the Emperor, with deep feeling, exclaimed, “ This is the happiest day of my life; I have saved the life of a fellow-creature.” If being thus useful in saving a man from death imparted such happiness to the Emperor, how much greater will our joy and satisfaction be if any of our efforts result in saving a soul from death. Let us try what we can do. There is the greatest encouragement for the largest faith, for Christ is able to save to the uttermost all who come unto God through Him. Saving others by sacrifice of self The plague was making a desert of the city of Marseilles; death was everywhere. The physicians could do nothing. In one of their counsels it was decided that a corpse must be dissected; but it would be death to the operator. A celebrated physician of the number arose, and said, “ I devote myself for the safety of my country. Before this numerous assembly, I swear in the name of humanity and religion, that to-morrow, at the break of day, I will dissect a corpse, and write down as I proceed what I observe.” He immediately left the room, made his will, and spent the night in religious exercises. During the day a man had died in his house of the plague; and at daybreak on the following morning, the physician, whose name was Guyon, entered the room and critically made the necessary examinations, writing down all his surgical observations. He then left the room, threw the papers into a vase of vinegar, that they might not convey the disease to another, and retired to a convenient place, where he died in twelve hours. Before the battle of Hatchet’ s Run, a Christian soldier said to his comrade, “ You are detailed to go to the front, while I am to remain with the baggage. Let us change places. I’ ll go front, you remain in camp.” “ What for?” said the comrade. “ Because I am prepared to die, I think; but you are not.” The exchange was made. The thought of the self-sacrifice of his friend, and his readiness for the exposure of life or the realities of death, led the unsaved soldier to repentance and a like preparation for life. A vessel had driven on the rocks in a storm, and was hopelessly lost. Another vessel had gone out in the blind desire to do something, but a long way off she stopped and watched. That was all, but it was not very much. The men, however, dared venture no further; it would be life for life, and they were not great enough for that. Nelson, the ship’ s lad, said, “ Cap’ n, I’ m going to try and save those men.” And the captain said, “ Nelson, if you do, you’ ll be drowned.” And Nelson replied--no nobler reply was ever given--“ Cap’ n, I’ m not thinking of being drowned, I’ m thinkin’ of savin’ those men.” So he and a shipmate took the boat, and went to the wreck, and saved every man who was there. Saving others:--A few years ago a vessel was wrecked on the southwest coast of this country; and with these words I close. It became known to the hamlets and villages, the towns and districts, that this vessel was wrecked, that men were seen clinging to the rigging. The life-boat was launched, and away the men went, and were a long while at sea. Darkness set in, but the people on the coast lighted fires; they kindled great flames so that the sailors might be aided, that the life-boat might be guided on its return to shore. After awhile they saw it returning, and a great strong man, of the name of John Holden, who was on the coast, cried aloud, as with a trumpet, to the Captain of the life-boat, “ Hi! hi! have you saved the men?” The Captain answered, “ Ay, ay, I have saved the men,” and all hearts were filled with gladness. But when the boat reached the coast it was found that one man was left clinging to the mast. “ Why did not you save him?” said Holden; “ why did not you save him?” “ Because we were exhausted,” said the Captain, “ and we thought it better to attempt to get safely to shore for those we had rescued and for ourselves. We should all have perished if we had remained another five minutes attempting to save one man.” “ But you will go back--you will go back to the rescue? “ They said no, they had not the strength, the storm was so fierce. Holden threw himself on the shingle, and lifted up a prayer to God louder than the storm that God would put it into the hearts of some of those people to go to the rescue of this one man, just as Jesus Christ came to rescue one lost world. When he had ceased praying six men volunteered to accompany him, and John Holden, with six men, were prepared to go and rescue that one man. If seven men will go to the rescue of one man, how many men shall we send to save Africa? These men were preparing to start when the good old mother of John Holden came rushing down, and threw her arms around his neck, and said, “ John, you must not go. What can I do if You perish? You know your father was drowned at sea, and it is just two years since your brother William left; we have never heard a word of him since. No doubt he, too, has perished. John, what shall I do if you perish?” John said, “ Mother, God has put it in my heart to go, and if I perish He will take care of you.” And away he went; and after awhile the life-boat returned, and when he neared the coast a loud voice was raised, “ Hi! hi! John, have you saved the man?” John answered in a trumpet voice, “ Yes, we have saved the man; and tell my mother it is my brother William we have saved.” Now, there is your brother man the wide world over; haste to the rescue even if you perish in the attempt. (J. S. Balmer.) Self-sacrificing love The helmsman who stood at the wheel in the burning steamer till he brought her to the shore, and then dropped backed into the flames, conscious that he had saved the passengers; the soldier who, to save his fugitive comrades, blew up the bridge over which they had crossed, though he knew that he himself would be blown up with the bridge; the Arab, dying of thirst in the desert, yet giving his last drop of water to his faithful camel, may be cited as types of Christ in his self-sacrificing love. Not many years ago there was a colliery accident in the north of England. The mine was flooded, and there were still some of the miners imprisoned below. Rescue parties were made up and sent down. It was a hard piece of work, and they had to work in relays. One man, however, it was noticed, kept working all the time. Others told him that he would kill himself, and asked him to stop and rest. But he answered: “ How can I stop? There are some of my own down there.” Is it not in some such way that Christ came down to seek His own on earth, and to give His life for them? (Sunday School Times.) Luke 23:38A superscription also was written over Him The superscription affixed to the cross of Christ It was the custom of the Romans, that the equity of their proceedings might more clearly appear when they crucified any man, to publish the cause of his death in a table written in capital letters, and placed over the head of the crucified. And that there might be, at least, a show and face of justice in Christ’ s death, He also shall have His title or superscription. The worst and most unrighteous actions labour to cover and shroud themselves under pretentions of equity. Sin is so shameful a thing that it cares not to own its name. Christ shall have a table written for Him also. 1. The character or description of Christ contained in that writing: “ The King of the Jews.” 2. The person who drew His character or title. Pilate, who was His judge, becomes now His herald to proclaim His glory. 3. The time when this honour was done Him. When at the lowest ebb; amid shame and reproach. I. THE NATURE AND QUALITY OF CHRIST’ S TITLE OR . 1. An extraordinary title. Instead of proclaiming Christ’ s crime, it vindicates His innocence. 2. Public. Written in three languages. 3. Honourable. Thus the cross became a throne of majesty. 4. A vindicating title. 5. A predicting and presaging title. 6. An immutable title. II. WHAT HAND THE DIVINE HAD IN THIS . 1. In overruling the heart and hand of Pilate in the draught and style of it, and that contrary to his own inclination. 2. Herein the wisdom of Providence was gloriously displayed, in applying a present, proper, public remedy to the reproaches and blasphemies which Christ had then newly received in His name and honour. The superstitious Jews wound Him, and heathen Pilate prepares a plaster to heal Him: they reproach, he vindicates; they throw the dirt, he washes it off. Oh, the profound and inscrutable wisdom of Providence! 3. Moreover, Providence eminently appeared at this time, in keeping so timorous a person, a man of so base a spirit, that would not stick at anything to please the people, from receding or giving ground in the least to their importunities. 4. Herein also much of the wisdom of Providence appeared, in casting the ignominy of the death of Christ upon those very men who ought to bear it. Pilate was moved by Divine instinct at once to clear Christ and accuse them. 5. The Providence of God wonderfully discovered itself (as before was noted) in fixing this title to the cross of Christ, when there was so great a confluence of all sorts of people to take notice Inference 1. Hence it fellows that the Providence of our God can and often doth overrule the counsels and actions of the worst of men to His own glory. He is never at a loss for means to promote and serve His own ends. 2. Hence likewise it follows, that the greatest services performed to Christ accidentally and undesignedly, shall never be accepted nor rewarded of God. Pilate did Christ an eminent piece of service. He did that for Christ that not one of His own disciples at that time durst do; and yet this service was not accepted of God, because he did it not designedly for His glory, but from the mere overrulings of Providence. 3. Would not Pilate recede from what he had written on Christ’ s behalf? How shameful a thing is it for Christians to retract what they have said or done on Christ’ s behalf? 4. Did Pilate affix such an honourable, vindicating title to the cross? Then the cross of Christ is a dignified cross. How did the martyrs glory in their sufferings for Christ? Calling their chains of iron, chains of gold; and their manacles, bracelets. I remember it is storied of Ludovicus Marsacus, a knight of France, that when he, with divers other Christians of an inferior rank and degree in the world, were condemned to die for religion, and the jailor had bound them with chains, but did not bind him, being a more honourable person than the rest, he was offended greatly by that omission, and said, “ Why do you not honour me with a chain for Christ also, and create me a knight of that illustrious order?” 5. Did Pilate so stiffly assert and defend the honour of Christ? What doubt can then be made of the success of Christ’ s interest, and the prosperity of His cause, when the very enemies thereof are made to serve it? Rather than Christ shall want honour, Pilate, the man that condemned Him, shall do Him honour. And as it fared with His person, just so with His interest also. 6. Did Pilate vindicate Christ in drawing up such a title to be affixed to His cross, then hence it follows that God will, sooner or later, clear up the innocence and integrity of His people who commit their cause to Him. (J. Flavel.) Luke 23:39-43 And one of the malefactors which were hanged railed on Him The impenitent malefactor I. THIS MAN’ S OF CHRIST suggests several things for our consideration. “ He railed on Him.” 1. What inhumanity. The suffering of Jesus ought surely to have moved his heart to pity. 2. The friendlessness of the majestic Sufferer touched him not. 3. His like condition to the Sufferer by his side touched no chord of sympathy in his breast. II. THE WAS AN . He had probably never seen Christ before. On this account he was less guilty than many at Calvary that day; and less guilty than thousands who hear the gospel to-day, but still reject Christ. According to light and privileges is our responsibility. But this robber had ground enough to warrant his belief in Christ. His companion bad, yet he joined those who railed upon Jesus. III. CHRIST’ S OF THE . Pitying silence. He will answer no man’ s prayer to prove His power. His word, His Church, the Christian, are the miracles that must testify to His power to save. (G. E. Jones.) The impenitent thief I. HUMAN LIFE ENDING AN UTTER MORAL WRECK. II. HUMAN LIFE ENDING ON THE GALLOWS. III. HUMAN LIFE ENDING IN SIGHT OF THE CROSS. IV. HUMAN LIFE ENDING IN DESPAIR. (The Lay Preacher.) The two malefactors I. . Here we have a true picture of human nature as it appears amidst difficulties, and dangers, and sufferings, the appropriate fruits of sin. A care to avoid pain is universally prevalent, but a care to avoid sin is comparatively of rare occurrence. Of this conduct one of the malefactors crucified with Christ afforded a lamentable example. But the other, however bad he had previously been, however much hardened or debased, was brought to true repentance. There was an invisible energy touching his soul and melting it into contrition; the power of the cross of Christ was felt, and it proved the Redeemer to be great in sufferings. Yes, this criminal became humble, his heart believed, and his faith penetrated the vail of the incarnation, realizing what was concealed from an eye of sense, even a ground of hope for his guilty soul. II. . 1. Let us see the greatness and the glory of the Saviour’ s character. What power I what grace! what dominion over the invisible world! 2. The language of the text supplies a plain proof of the separate and happy existence of the spirits of just men after death. 3. The sufficiency of the sacrifice for sin made by the death of Christ, is illustrated by the case we have considered. He contemplated sinners, the chief of sinners, when he offered Himself to God. 4. What different effects may result amidst a sameness of circumstances and opportunities. Here were two of similar character, both exceedingly wicked, with death in immediate prospect; one becomes a penitent seeking his salvation, the other remains hardened in his sins. 5. The subject suggests the language of encouragement and of caution. (Essex Remembrancer.) The two robbers To defer the time of conversion, and as a pretext for persevering in the ways of sin, the worldly-minded flatter themselves with three principal delusions. 1. One delays his conversion because he imagines that a time of sickness and suffering will present a more favourable opportunity to think of it. He flatters himself that he will not be carried away by a violent or sudden death; that a long and slow malady, during the course of which he will have time to reflect, and to make an account of his ways, will permit him to prepare himself for the meeting with his God. But how does he know whether a malady, under the weight of which the very organism of the constitution sinks, will not oppress his senses, dull his spirit, take from his mind its energy, and paralyze his faculties? Who can be ignorant that, in such a case, nothing is more usual than hesitations, adjournments, and delays, seeing the man has accustomed himself to the deceitful hope of a recovery, sooner or later? 2. A second reason, as I said, for which the worldly-minded defer their conversion is, that they suppose that at the hour of death Providence will work miracles of salvation, other and more efficacious than those which they have been able to enjoy during their life; and that the most pressing invitations of grace, the most irresistible attractions of the Holy Spirit, the most powerful manifestations of Divine love will be afforded. Where has God promised such manifestations? Nowhere. But so be it; what does this prove? When the heart is hardened by a long course of sin, will it not resist the evidence of truths the best established, and facts the most palpable, even the most powerful miracles of salvation? 3. Lastly, impenitent sinners defer their conversion upon the pretext that, at the time when they shall see death to be near, love of the world will disappear from the heart, carnal passions will be extinguished, and the soul will open itself to the influence of the truths of the Word of Life. But if the experience of many centuries is not sufficient to attest that such a time has not upon the soul that regenerating power which is supposed; that, instead of detaching himself from the things of earth, the unregenerated man will strive to attach himself more, and to cling more strongly, to measures which may prolong his existence in this world; that so far from becoming more susceptible to the beauty of truth and love, a long course of resistance renders the heart incapable of feeling their attractions, surely the example of the dying robber will be sufficient to dispel for ever those fatal delusions. Not only is this robber not touched by the truth, but he repels it; not only does he continue to sleep in the security of sin, but he is incensed against the Word; and whilst shame and remorse should have closed his lips, he unites with the multitude to insult the Saviour of the world: and to all his other sins he adds an impudent irony against the Son of God; he crowns all his crimes by blasphemy. After that, will you still count, O all you who defer your conversion, on the changes that accompany death, as if they could miraculously break the chain of your sins, or promote your eternal salvation? Three things have struck us in the history of the unconverted robber: first, that death was not startling; second, that extraordinary succour of grace was not received; third, that he aggravated his condemnation and hardened himself in circumstances, which it seems should have ameliorated his state. The conversion of his companion in iniquity presents to us reflections of quite another nature. And can you doubt, that if in this moment some one had been able to bring down the converted thief from the cross, had been able to lavish upon him the succours of art, and, in the end, cicatrize his wounds: if one could have contrived to arrest the fever to which he was a prey, to give him the use of his members; to restore him to life; can you doubt that, such being his feelings, the remainder of his earthly existence would have been other than a noble demonstration of the power of the faith and love which lived in his soul? (Dr. Grandpierre.) The crucified malefactors I. Let us consider WHEREIN THESE TWO WERE ALIKE. 1. They were alike in respect to depravity of heart. 2. They were alike in respect to their knowledge of Christ. 3. They were alike in practice--both malefactors. 4. They were alike in condemnation. II. WHEN THEY BEGAN TO DIFFER. Apparently it was when the darkness began. And we can easily believe that such an unexpected and solemn miracle, on such an awful occasion, did make a deep impression upon the minds of all the spectators of the crucifixion of the Lord of glory, and more upon some than others. III. WHEREIN THEY AND FINALLY . Here it may be observed-- 1. That one realized the wrath of God abiding upon him, whilst the other did not. This poor, perishing criminal was thoroughly awakened from his long and habitual stupidity, and clearly saw his dangerous condition; which is usually the first step to conversion. He might, however, have seen and felt such danger, and with his eyes open gone to destruction. But-- 2. His awakening was followed with conviction. He not only realized that he was exposed to everlasting misery, but was convinced, in his conscience, that he deserved it. 3. He renounced his enmity to God, and became cordially reconciled to His vindictive justice. 4. Having exercised true love, repentance, and submission towards God, he exercised a saving faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Thus the two malefactors began to differ while hanging on the cross; and they continue to differ as long as they lived, and will continue to differ as long as they exist. What has been said in this discourse may serve to throw light upon some important subjects which have been supposed to be dark and difficult to understand. 1. It appears from the conduct of the penitent malefactor, that the doctrine of unconditional submission is founded in fact. He really felt and expressed a cordial and unreserved submission to God, when he expected in a few moments to sink down into the pit of endless destruction. 2. It appears from the views and exercises of the penitent malefactor, that the doctrine of repentance before faith is founded in fact. 3. It appears from the views and feelings of the penitent malefactor, that the doctrine of instantaneous regeneration is founded in fact. 4. It appears from the conduct of God towards the two malefactors, that He acts as a Sovereign in renewing the hearts of men. 5. The conduct of the impenitent malefactor shows that no external means or motives are sufficient to awaken, convince, or convert any stupid sinner. 6. It appears from the fate of the impenitent malefactor, that impenitent sinners have no ground to rely upon the mere mercy of Christ in a dying hour. It is, therefore, presumption in any sinners to live in the hope of a death-bed repentances. 7. It appears from the conduct and the condition of the penitent malefactor, that sinners may be saved at the eleventh or last hour of life, if they really repent and believe in Christ. (N. Emmons, D. D.) Lessons from the three crosses on Calvary I. THE WAGES OF SIN IS DEATH. 1. Death to the sinner--the death of the body, and afterwards the death of the soul in hell. 2. Death to the Saviour, who knew no sin, but bears our iniquities on the cross. 3. Death to the saint; for though on him the second and more awful death, the death of the soul, hath no power, yet he cannot escape the death of the body; for all saints since Abel have had to pass through the river Jordan, save two, Enoch and Elijah. God must be just; and nothing short of death is sin’ s just recompense. Oh that you would turn to Him whose “gift is eternal life, through Jesus Christ our Lord!” II. Another lesson we learn from this solemn scene is, that THE GROW WORSE AND WORSE. Perhaps the lost thief was brought up by pious parents; most likely he was taught to kneel before God by his mother, and was led up to the temple, and heard the sweet music echo among its marble arches, when the worshippers sang God’ s praises. Often had he wondered, and perhaps wept, when hearing the history of Joseph, and Samuel, and Daniel. But, alas! he was led away by little and little, adding sin to sin, until sinning became a habit, and habit became confirmed and strengthened, till he walked openly with the ungodly, stood in the way of sinners, and at last sat down in the seat of the scorner; and though rebuked, remained hardened, and went down a doomed man to hell. You cannot indulge one sin without opening the door for others. The man who begins by walking in the downhill path of sin, goes on to running, until he falls headlong into hell. III. THERE ARE NONE TOO BAD TO BE . Art thou a thief? As the thief on the cross was saved, so mayest thou; take heart, and cry to Jesus. Art thou a blasphemer? The blasphemer, Bunyan, was saved, and so mayest thou; take heart, and cry to Jesus. Art thou a harlot? The harlot, Mary, was saved, and so mayest thou; take heart, and cry to Jesus. Art thou a murderer? There may be some such here; for God knows there are not only murders that never saw the light, but “ he that hateth his brother is a murderer.” But oh! the murderer David was saved, and so mayest thou; take heart, and cry to Jesus. Saul of Tarsus, whose hands were dyed with the blood of Stephen, was washed with the blood of Jesus. I saw, not long since, lying on the bed of sickness and death, a poor outcast woman, whose spirit has since departed. She spoke to this effect to a dear friend of mine:--“ I have been, not five, not ten, not fifteen, but twenty years living in open and loathsome sin; but I have found that Christ will cast out none--no, not the most hell-deserving sinner who cries to Him. And now I amdying; but I am happy, for ‘ the blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanseth me from all sin.’ And when I am gone, let these words be written on my tombstone--‘ So foolish was I, and ignorant, I was as a beast before Thee. Nevertheless I am continually with Thee: Thou hast holden me by my right hand. Thou shalt guide me with Thy counsel and afterward receive me to glory.’” Oh, whoever you are, Christ can save you! IV. Learn, too, from Calvary that WHEN A SINNER IS SAVED, IT IS BY FAITH IN JESUS. How can I prove to you the faith of the penitent thief? By his wonderful prayer. (H. G. Guinness, B. A.) Dost not thou fear God?-- The restraining principle And what is this fear? This fear is a solemn dread of the creature in presence of the Creator. Well, then, with real thought on the Passion, why must we feel, as a prominent principle, a fear of God? 1. The Cross, my brothers, witnessed to two things--God’ s awful and necessary judgments on human sin. It must be so. God could not be God if it were otherwise. The atonement is nothing else but the fearful statement of Divine holiness in relation to sin. Our first clear intimations of God, it has been truly argued, are not conclusions from reasoning on final causes, or evidences from the harmonies of a material world. No; they are the voice of conscience, and the self-evident consistency of the moral law. It is always possible to conceive, so it has been wisely said, all sorts of changes in the structure of the material world, and we find no difficulty to the intellect, whatever may be said about the imagination in the revelation of its final transformation by fire--that unimagined and yet inevitable catastrophe. But one thing is impossible--we cannot conceive right being otherwise than right, and wrong than wrong; we cannot imagine created dissonances in the harmony of the moral law, and what is that but saying that there are eternal necessities in the being of our Creator? And if so, being good, His judgment must be severe, must be awful, on persistent sin. We say so in our saner moments, but how are we to feel the truth of our saying? The answer is--Calvary. 2. But this fear is also a serious apprehension of the dreadfulness of evil in itself. The Cross showed the intensity of the love of God, and, by the form of the revelation, was revealed His knowledge of our fearful danger. The genius of Michael Angelo made the Sibyls splendid on the ceiling of the Sistine from the magnificence of proportion quite as much as from the softness of colour. Proportion is the secret of lasting charm. It is holy fear that is the principle of proportion in the relation of the creature--the fallen creature--to his Creator. To see God in suffering is, by grace, to have a proportionate affection. By it we are restrained, by it we are awed and solemnized, by it we act as men should in the felt presence of their Maker, by it we learn, in fact, our proper place. (Canon Knox Little.) The fear of God gives harmony to life As the glow of a solemn sunrise gives to the tracts of impenetrable vapour a splendour which illumines and transforms, changing into awful beauty the cloud-folds of the slate-grey morning on the mountains, which were otherwise but the draperies of a sulking storm, so the fear of God gives harmony and colour to the more murky cloud]ands of the inner life. It is, it is indeed, to each of us a distinct and necessary element in that solid and faithful perseverance to which, and to which alone, is promised the reward of victory. Amidst the mysteries and miseries of this lower life; amidst its simple joys, its unspeakable sorrows; amidst the delirium of ambition, the intoxication of pleasure, the heart-corroding of daily care, the numbing frosts of encroaching worldliness, the blinding mists of severe temptations, we may be--if we will to realize its meaning--we may be arrested by the spectacle of the Passion; and among its fruitful and tremendous lessons, it teaches restraint of the tempest of our lower desires, brings us some sense of the vast issues of eternity, and says to us in accents which we may hear above the surge of the surf and the breaking of the billows, “ Look to your Representative; contemplate the dignity, the mystery of His sorrow; whether high in rank or among (what the world calls) the dregs of society, whether with great gifts or with few attainments, walk as a creature in presence of his Creator; have a care what you are doing; live as those who live, but who have to die, or those who now in time must soon feel the pressure of eternity. Child, child of such an awful, such a splendid sacrifice, fear God! (Canon Knox Little.) Nothing amissThe dying thief’ s testimony to our Lord “ Nothing amiss” --what does that mean, as used here? Literally, it means “ nothing out of place” --unsuitable, unbecoming, improper. Does it mean, then, “ He has not been guilty of crimes like ours--of robbery, violence, insurrection, murder” ? With nothing of that sort was He ever charged; and none in the city, good or bad, could be a stranger to the one charge brought against Him; for the whole country, as well as the crowded streets of the metropolis, was full of it. He was dying under the charge of high treason against heaven--of blasphemy--of not only laying claim to royal honours, but malting Himself equal with God. I take it, therefore, that in saying, “ This Man has done nothing amiss,” his words must mean, “ He has made no false claim: He said, ‘ I am the Christ,’ but in that He did nothing amiss; ‘ I am the King of Israel,’ but in that He did nothing amiss; He called Himself the Son of God, the Light of the world, the Rest of the weary, the Physician of the sick at heart, but in this He did nothing amiss.” Not that I for a moment suppose that this penitent criminal had knowledge enough to say all this as I have said it; but I feel confident that he had gleams of it, and that I have not gone beyond the spirit of his testimony to the innocence of our Lord. Amidst the buzzings about this new kind of criminal--innocent, by universal consent, of all the ordinary crimes, yet charged with a crime never before laid to the charge of any--some account of the marvellous works ascribed to Him, and of the words of heavenly grace He was said to have uttered, might easily reach this man’ s ear; and just as the wind bloweth where it listeth, so that grace which is the Spirit’ s breath upon the soul might send what he heard like arrows into a softened breast--as not seldom it does even still. (D. Brown, D. D.) Luke 23:42 Lord, remember me when Thou comest into Thy kingdom The penitent robber’ s faith and prayer I. HIS FAITH. “ When Thou comest into Thy kingdom.” When Charles I. of England, or Maximilian, the brilliantly brief Mexican emperor, were about to suffer death, suppose such an expectation had been expressed to them! It would have been considered a sickly taunt. Not so this. II. HIS REQUEST. “ Remember me.” “ God is not unrighteous to forget” Christian labour of love, but here was a miserable culprit who had never done Jesus any good turn. Charles II. and Louis Napoleon rewarded friends of their exile, but how about this request? What could he expect to be remembered for? 1. As a penitent sinner. 2. As one who has trust in a perfect Saviour. (Charles M. Jones.) The dying thief I. THIS FAITH TO US AS IN A FIRM AND THAT JESUS IS THE CHRIST; THAT HE HAS POWER TO HELP; AND THAT THE HELP HE GIVES IS HELP. On one side of Christ was a believer, on the other an unbeliever. Both in their pain pleaded with their more august and noble fellow-Sufferer. What said the unbeliever? “ If Thou be the Christ, save Thyself and us.” Contrast with this the appeal which faith presents. It at once addresses Christ as Lord: “ Lord, remember me when Thou comest into Thy kingdom.” The unbeliever refused to regard Jesus as the Christ, except on the condition of a temporal deliverance. Had Christ commanded the nails to loose their hold, and the cross to fall; had He healed the wounds and assuaged the pain; he might then in his turn have acknowledged Him as Lord. But the believer imposes no condition, he asks no proofs; but with the iron smarting in his flesh, and the death-pain thrilling through his frame, he finds a voice to call his Saviour by His rightful name. Mark, too, the confidence of the penitent in the power of God to save. You meet with no dubious “ if” ; the prayer he offers is simple in its trustfulness. “ Lord, remember me when Thou comest into Thy kingdom.” He saw the triumphal arches decked with bright garlands from the tree of life, and angels waiting with the regal diadem, for the King of glory to come in and take His crown. And mark, too, the spirituality of his faith. He knew that Christ had the power to save his body from the pangs of death; yet it was for no such boon as this he asked. He hankered not after what he was leaving in the past. He thought of that with shame, and shuddered to recall it. He wanted to forget it in the brightness of a future kingdom, whence sin is banished, and shame is barred from entering. He felt for his soul. His faith looked above and beyond; above, to God’ s right hand, and to the throne where angels worshipped, and the spirits of the just bowed down; and beyond, further than mortal gaze can soar, further than dwarfish time can reach, into the eternal ages. II. THIS TEACHES US OF THE OF FAITH. It has often to contend both against experience and example. If ever there was a time when there seemed to be a strong excuse for disbelief, it was at the time that this dying malefactor displayed his faith. Speaking humanly, was it likely that that should be the Christ? What had the prophets said concerning Him, centuries before His coming? They had tuned trumpet and harp and voice to loudest, sweetest sound to tell of the dignity of His person, and the glory of His reign. They had depicted in vivid hues the splendour of His conquests, and His royal majesty. And what have we here? The convicted malefactor of man’ s tribunal, the puppet of man’ s small authority, belying, as it seemed, His own high pretensions, by the very weakness which He shows, and swallowing, if we may so say, His asseverations of immortality by His obedience to such a death. What! this the Christ! This bleeding, groaning, suffering, expiring clay; is this the royal King, the heaven-sent Messiah? Is there any might to save within that pallid arm? Is there any light under that glazing eye to scare the king of terrors from his prey? These were the thoughts which made the Jews refuse belief, and pour derision upon Christ. These were the semblances, in spite of which the dying thief believed, and called his dying Master, “ Lord.” The conduct of others, as well as the condition or predicament of Christ, was against his faith. He knew that Jesus, while hanging on the cross, had heard the taunts of the rulers, the insults of the soldiery, and the ribald mockery of the common people. As yet, the sack-clothed veiling of the sun had not abashed them; the crimson blushing of the indignant sky had not rebuked them to forbear; the shuddering earthquake, and the gathering pall of night had not chid their railing tongues to silence. Amazing faith! This man believed when all others disbelieved. He worshipped when all the rest were mocking. He adored when all the universe seemed in arms. III. But the narrative shows us, too, THE OF FAITH; AND WITH A GLANCE AT THESE WE CLOSE. The faith of the dying thief secured a favourable response from Christ; was afterwards verified by facts; and is now triumphant in heaven. What, think you, accounts for the difference between these two thieves? Why was the heart of one a thief’ s heart to the last, hard as the millstone, reviling Christ, and hissing forth his last breath in insult at the Sufferer, while that of the other softened into a heart of flesh, and surged with sympathy for the innocence of the expiring Lord? It was faith in Christ which made the difference; the faith which worketh by love, and is the condition of the new creature in Christ Jesus; this accounted for the change wrought upon the penitent, and it justified the sinner. His guilt was removed; his iniquities were pardoned. The moment that the Master said, “ This day shalt thou be with Me in paradise,” that moment he found peace with God, and felt the “ great calm” deep in his soul. What reeked he of the cross, the pain, the wounds? Here was a victory for his faith. Let yours gain equal conquests, and it shall lead you to a like inheritance. We spoke just now of the apparent unreasonableness of this man’ s faith. Let us here speak a word of its justification, and therefrom let reason learn to reserve her verdicts and her judgments till the time be ripe. Had those sage reasoners, who thought the Saviour dead because His clay was cold, waited but three short days, and then looked into His tomb, they would have seen the faith of the dying thief justified in the vacant vault, the empty shroud, and the unknotted bands. (A. Mursell.) The dying robber saved I. THE OF THIS MAN. 1. He was not a pagan, but a Jew--a believer in the true God. 2. A believer in future existence and retribution. 3. He had become a hardened wretch. II. NOTICE HIS TRUE . This is evidenced-- 1. In his viewing sin in its relation to God. 2. In his acknowledgment of his own guilt. 3. In his reproving the conduct of the other robber, and his anxiety for his welfare. III. HIS STRONG FAITH. He believed-- 1. That Christ had a kingdom. 2. That He would hear requests. 3. That He would grant blessings. IV. His PRAYER. 1. Short; but a single sentence. 2. Humble; he only asked to be remembered. 3. Reliant. Remember all my past bad life; but remember, too, that I am dying trusting in Thy grace. 4. Earnest. The petition of an awakened sinner on the brink of eternity. 5. It included all he needed. V. CHRIST’ S ANSWER. Conclusions: 1. If Christ heard prayer when passing through His awful suffering upon the cross, will He not hear now that He is exalted to be a Prince and a Saviour? 2. The conversion of this man shows how quickly Christ can save. 3. Salvation is all of grace, and not of works or merit. 4. Christ can not only justify and give us a title to heaven in a short time; He can also quickly sanctify and make us “ meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light.” 5. One robber was taken and the other left. 6. This is the only case of death-bed conversion recorded in the Bible. (J. L. Campbell.) Marks of an accepted faith I. TRUE FAITH IS SELF-; IT IS ROOTED AND IN SINCERE . If I merit not condemnation, I need no pardon; and until I discern distinctly and fully that I am guilty, and righteously condemned, I cannot feel my need of pardon; and not feeling my need of it, I cannot desire it. The thief hanging at the Saviour’ s side did feel his guilt. II. BUT HIS FAITH WAS ALSO , FULL, . He sees his guilt; he feels his peril; he thinks that he discerns in Jesus evidence of power to help him; and at once and earnestly his suit is urged, “ Lord, remember me.” No conditions are proposed, no terms offered; he throws his hopes on the mere mercy of Him he styles Lord. And truly this is the genuine temper of true faith. III. HIS FAITH WAS FRANK AND OPEN. There is a noble ingenuousness in this appeal of the dying thief that is worthy of all admiration, and of all imitation too. He spake not to one courted, admired, and applauded, but to one despised, calumniated, condemned, and hanging beside Him on a cross. There is here discovered a matchless moral grandeur in this dying thief. IV. HIS FAITH WAS ; IT LOOKED THROUGH AND OVER ALL MERE OUTWARD . V. THE OBJECT FOR HAS RESPECT TO THE HIGHER OF A LIFE BEYOND THE GRAVE. (W. T. Hamilton, D. D.) The penitent malefactor I. Notice in the dying thief THE OF GENUINE . 1. He begins to rebuke the reviling malefactor. 2. He confesses his sin, and acknowledges the equity of his sentence. 3. He vindicates the character of Christ, while he unequivocally condemns himself. 4. His repentance is accompanied by faith in Christ. 5. And earnest prayer to Him. II. View THE CONDUCT OF OUR LORD TOWARDS HIM. 1. Though Christ would take no notice of a reviler, nor give any answer to the language of reproach, yet He would attend to the plea of mercy; and to the plea of one of the most unworthy, and the least likely to obtain it. He would hear the prayer of a perishing sinner whose heart was contrite, even in the hour of death. What condescension, and what love! 2. He answered him without delay. 3. As the petition had implied much, so did the answer. 4. The promise is pronounced with a solemn asseveration; “ Verily, I say unto thee.” This bears the form of an oath, and gives the fullest assurance for the performance of the promise (Hebrews 6:18). Reflections: 1. We may observe, that there is a great difference between the conduct of this dying malefactor, and that of many dying penitents who are supposed to be converted. They often speak confidently of their state, and of their going to heaven; but this poor man did not, though Christ said so of him. He prayed that he might be saved; and after what Christ said, he might believe that he should; but he himself said not a word of that. The strong language that was used was Christ’ s, and not his. 2. There is a request on Christ’ s part as well as on ours: He desires to be remembered by us (1 Corinthians 11:24). He does not need it as we do; but love desires it, and wishes to live in the mind of its objects. (Theological Sketch-book.) The dying thief 1. The triumph of faith over great difficulties. 2. How Christ honours the exercise of faith. 3. How the favour of Christ abates the force of earthly trouble. 4. The way to the kingdom of glory is by a suffering Saviour. 5. Necessity gives life to prayer. (J. S. Bright.) The penitent thief I. THE BY THE DYING . 1. Marvellous, coming from such a petitioner. 2. Marvellous, being offered in such circumstances. 3. Marvellous, in the spirit it revealed. 4. Marvellous, in its substance and purport. II. THE YET MORE REPLY OF CHRIST. 1. The manner in which it was given excites our wonder; no delay or suspense, no conditions or qualifications. 2. When we look into the answer itself, we are amazed at its fulness, richness, and appropriateness. (1) The place in which the delightful meeting was to occur: “ Paradise.” (2) The society of which the dying penitent was assured: “ With Me.” (3) The immediacy of the happiness promised: “ To-day.” Suggestions: 1. A blessed prospect is, in this language of our Divine Lord, opened up before those who are looking forward to death as the step into life. 2. A suitable prayer is, in the language of the penitent, suggested to our hearts. 3. The narrative affords encouragement to those who have long sinned, but who now sincerely repent and earnestly desire salvation. (J. R.Thomson, M. A.) The saved malefactor I. His . A malefactor, a criminal of the basest sort, probably selected for crucifixion on this very account, to put greater shame upon Jesus. Then, none need despair. II. NO ONE HAS ANY RIGHT TO PRESUME. While this one is taken, the other is left. All do not repent at the eleventh hour. III. NO MAN HAS A RIGHT TO EXPECT WITHOUT GIVING OF FAITH AND . In the case of the penitent thief, there was-- 1. A conviction of sin. 2. Faith in the Son of God. 3. Prayer. 4. Concern for others. 5. Testimony to Jesus. (Canon Fremantle.) The penitent thief I. THE EXAMPLE OF THE THIEF IS ADAPTED TO EXCITE, EVEN IN GREAT , A ON THE AND OF GOD, IF THEY WILL RETURN TO HIM AND TO THEIR DUTY. Here was a man who had committed a crime for which by his own confession he deserved to die. His faith, and the manner in which he showed it, were doubtless very commendable; and yet they seem to have been rather too highly extolled. The behaviour of Christ under His sufferings, and the wonderful circumstances attending His crucifixion, might easily induce an unprejudiced man to think that He could be no ordinary person, much less a malefactor; and these things, joined to the knowledge which this man, being of the Jewish nation, might have had before of Christ and of His ministry, might well induce him to acknowledge Him for the Messias. But then it is likewise to be considered that he ran no risk, as to his worldly concerns, in so doing; the world could not use him worse; and his miseries had placed him beyond earthly fear and hope, beyond the reach of malice and cruelty. To his repentance, then, is to be ascribed the gracious reception which he found; his repentance was sincere, and God was pleased to accept the will for the deed. For, since God is no respecter of persons, where the same dispositions are found, the same favour will be extended. The consequence thus far seems to be just. II. The second use of the text, which ought always to be joined with the first, IS TO MEN FROM VICE, AND A DELAY OF , BY SHOWING THEM HOW LITTLE REASON SUCH HAVE TO EXPECT THAT THEY SHALL EVER SO QUALIFY , AS TO BECOME FIT TO OBTAIN THE FAVOUR WHICH WAS TO THIS MAN. 1. To abuse and provoke the lenity and long-suffering of God in this manner, to be wicked because He is good, is monstrously base and perverse, and shows a very dangerous depravity. 2. Sin, if it be not resisted, grows daily upon us, and makes the return to righteousness mere and more difficult and improbable; and he who cannot find in his heart to amend, even whilst he is a novice in iniquity, will be less disposed to it when time and custom have hardened him. 3. Sin is of a most infatuating nature, and corrupts not only the heart, but the understanding; and who knows where it may end? 4. As all other habits can no other way be removed than by introducing contrary habits, which is the work of patience, resolution, and repeated attempts; the same must hold true concerning sinful habits. So that though a change of mind and a purpose of amendment may be wrought soon and suddenly, yet a change of behaviour, which is the only sure proof of amendment, requires time and labour; and it is hard to conceive how a late repentance can change bad habits, unless we suppose that the alteration for the better, which is just beginning in this world, may be carried on and completed in the next. But concerning this the Scriptures are silent; and who would risk his soul upon conjectural hopes? 5. Since sinners have perhaps often designed and purposed, and resolved, without performing, they will have too much reason to suspect the sincerity of their own hearts, and to rely but little on a change of purpose which present and pressing danger extorts from them. Add to this, that a sinner may be removed out of this world suddenly and without any warning, or that many infirmities of body or mind may deprive him in a great measure of his understanding, and render him incapable of performing any rational act of any kind, and consequently the act of repenting. 6. The gospel requires from all men improvement and perseverance. A late repentance, such as it is, at the close of a bad life, can seldom exert the first of these duties, and never the second. 7. An intention to do just enough to save ourselves from perdition, and no more, is putting ourselves in a very dangerous situation. A cold and faint attempt to enter in must be attended with the hazard of being shut out. (J. Jortin, D. D.) A sinner’ s repentance The word repentance does not mean simple regret. It is a change of mind; an alteration of thought, feeling, and conduct. When a sinner truly repents he does more than lament the past, dread the future, and ask for mercy. He hates his sin, not only for the punishment it brings, but for itself. It is no longer in harmony with his taste. Holiness is no longer his aversion. However sudden may have been the dying thief’ s repentance, it was an entire change of heart and character, and would have resulted in an entire change of conduct had his life been prolonged. In proof of this, consider some of the elements of this repentance. I. There was FOR GOD. He said to his companion “ Dost thou not fear God.” The absence of this fear is the main characteristic of the ungodly. “ There is no fear of God before their eyes.” II. The dying thief indicated for his former life of sin. “ We indeed justly, for we receive the due reward of our deeds.” He was suffering the agonies of crucifixion. But the torture did not provoke him to complain of the severity of the sentence. He felt himself to be a criminal. He confessed it before his companion and the crowd. We infer from the entire narrative that he was a sincere penitent. He did honestly lament his wickedness. It was more than regret for the consequences; it was remorse for the sin. This is an element in all true repentance. III. In the repentance of the dying thief there was OF . He said of Jesus, “ But this man hath done nothing amiss.” False penitence, which laments only the discovery, the shame, the punishment of sin and not sin itself, may regret the lack of virtues which bring rewards, but does not really appreciate and admire goodness for its own sake. It is otherwise with those who “ unfeignedly repent.” IV. This repentance included a OF CHRIST. The dying thief testified to all around his admiration of Christ’ s character. By what he had heard from others, by what he had himself witnessed, he felt assured that Jesus was innocent. And he did not hesitate to declare this. A faithful confession of Christ will always follow sincere repentance. But how much such confession involves! V. FAITH was illustriously manifested in this repentance. The dying thief said, “ Lord, remember me when Thou comest in Thy kingdom.” He called Jesus “ Lord” --as possessing authority, a right to rule. He ascribed to Him kingship, for he spoke of His kingdom. This was wonderful. There was no outward indication of lordship, there were no insignia of royalty. Jesus was a captive, condemned, insulted, crucified; yet does the dying thief salute Him as a king! King? Where are His royal robes? They have torn from Him even His ordinary dress! King? Where is His throne? That cross of shame on which He hangs! Yet poor, vanquished, insulted, murdered, the dying thief has faith to recognize Him as a king, and able to confer royal gifts! VI. The repentance of the dying thief manifested itself in PRAYER. Where there is true repentance there will be true prayer. In every case of conversion it may be said, as was said of Saul of Tarsus, “ Behold he prayeth.” Such prayer will be humble, believing, and obedient. And our prayers will not be merely for benefits we are to receive passively, but for strength and opportunity to serve God actively. We shall regard it as the best of all benefits to be numbered with His subjects, to be employed as His servants, to be remembered in His kingdom. Can repentance, when it includes such a spirit of prayer, be a trifling change in one who has neglected prayer, disbelieved its efficacy, disliked its exercise? VII. The repentance of the dying thief already began to bring forth the GOOD WORKS of zeal for God and charity towards man. He honoured Christ before the world, and proclaimed the gospel of the kingdom. He also felt for the sad state of his companion in crime, and sought with his dying breath to lead him to repentance. However recent his own convictions he must make them known. He could not let his companion die impenitent without a word of remonstrance. He could not withhold the discovery he had made of a Saviour who could do more for them both than take them down from the cross. (Newman Hall, LL. B.) The penitent robber I like Luke’ s description of these two men better than any other. He does not call them thieves: he calls them malefactors--that is, doers of evil, without specifying the exact form of crime to which they had committed themselves, and which had brought upon them the agonies of crucifixion. I am quite willing that one of them should be called a thief: he was small and mean of mind, and there was nothing in his speech that did not become a very low and vulgar order of intellectual and moral conception. But the one who is usually spoken of as the penitent thief proved himself in this last distress to be one of the greatest men that ever lived in the world. If you analyze his speech you will find that in philosophy, in audacity of thought, in width and penetration of conception, no greater speech was ever made by human lips. I am, therefore, prepared to defend this malefactor on the intellectual side, and to redeem him from the debasement of his association with a man of a nutshell mind and of a foul tongue. This is one of the stories in the Bible that must be true, by the mere force of its audacity. It never could have entered the mind of a romancist that such a man, under such circumstances, could have made such a speech. All the disciples are mean men, intellectually, compared with this dying malefactor. They never discovered, up to the time of the crucifixion, intellectual vigour enough to conceive a figure like this. They have painted women well, they have done justly by a thousand beautiful incidents in the life of their great, sweet Lord, but no man like this have they ever dreamed into being. He was real--he did say these words. They stand out from all other words so grandly as to be their own best testimony and vindication. What did this dying malefactor do to prove his intellectual greatness? He saw the Lord in the victim. What did all the other minds round about him? What vulgarity always does and must do--reviled, derided, scorned the weak, defied the impotent, crushed the worm. It was like them, worthy of them; in so doing they did not debase Christ; they wrote themselves little men. It is a great thing for thee, poor coward, to revile a man both of whose hands are nailed, and whose feet are pierced with iron, and whose temples are bleeding because of the cruel thorn. Art thou very witty, mighty in mind, very chivalrous and nobly heroic to speak derisive words of any man in such circumstances? Observe how all other men looked upon Christ just them All the disciples had forsaken Him, and fled away. The women were standing in helpless tears, dejected and speechless. All the people round about, big and little, were mocking and deriding the great Sufferer. One of the malefactors was saying, “ If Thou be the Christ, save Thyself and us.” Little minds have all little scales of proof. If Jesus had come down from the cross and taken the two thieves with Him, that would have settled everything in the mind of the malefactor, but it would have only settled it for the moment. He would have taken from that wider liberty to repeat his petty felonies. He must be a thief, that man, and he would have made his calling and election sure. But in the midst of all this abandonment on the one hand, derision, contempt, and scorn on the other, an unexpected and unlikely voice says “ Lord” to the dying Nazarene. It was a great thought, it was an audacious utterance. Viewed in relation to the time anti all the convergent circumstances of the case, to have said “ Lord” then was to have seen the sun amid the darkness of midnight, to have penetrated the gloom of countless generations and ages, and to have seen all the stars in their keenest glitter of light far away above the dense and lowering gloom. Dost thou see big things in the dark, my friend, or art thou terrified by thine own shadow? What mind hast thou? A forecasting and prophetic mind, a seeing mind, a prophetic brain; or art thou dazed by lights that seem to have no relation and harmony, and confounded by voices coming from a thousand different quarters at once? Hast thou shaping power of mind, a grand power, all but creative, which orders chaos into Cosmos, which makes the darkness reveal its jewellery of stars? Where are thou in this great religious thinking? Learn from a strange teacher that Victim and Lord are compatible terms. Learn that a man may transiently be at the very depth of his history, that he may come up from that with a completer strength and a fuller lustre to the height of his power. “ He made Himself of no reputation; He took upon Him the form of a servant; He became obedient unto death.” Dust thou only know a king when he is upon a throne? Dost thou require a great label in red letters to be put around a man’ s neck to know just what he is? Dost thou know no man can be a great man who lives in a little house? Sayest thou of thy small vulgarized mind, “ The man who lives amid all these bricks must be a huge man” ? Dust thou never see a third-class passenger in a first-class carriage? What sort of mind hast thou? O that the Lord God of Elijah and Elisha would open thine eyes, poor servant, to see within the thronging soldier-host a circle of angels; keen as lightning, terrible as fire, defensive as almightiness! This malefactor, a man who could have played with thrones and nations, did more than see the Lord in the victim, and yet it was something exactly on the same line of thought. He saw life beyond death. Consider where he is: on the cross, bleeding, his life oozing out of him in red drops; his breath will presently be gone. Is he throttled, killed?--is he a beast thrust through that will baptize the earth with red water, and exhale and blend with the infinite azure? He is not conquered: he dies to live. “ Lord,” said he, “ remember me when Thou comest into Thy kingdom.” “ But you are dying.” --“ No.” “ You are to be buried.” --“ No.” “ It is your last hour.” --“ No. I cannot die: if this Man take me in charge, death will be but a momentary shadow. I will come up into a larger life. This Man breathes eternity, and creates kingdoms, and sets up empires, and gives away thrones. I cannot die if He take charge of me.” Whoever made so grand a speech in circumstances so unlikely to have suggested such an outcome? What is your speech? A sad farewell--something little better than a whine--the whimper of a subdued nature--the tremulous breath of one whose strength is all gone? Or dost thou languish into life? Dost thou hear the angels singing, “ Sister spirit, come away” ? What is thy faith doing for thee? Be not shamed by a malefactor. The dying malefactor spoke up for Christ. Into what strange circumstances we are often drawn--our friends gone or dumb, our enemies deriding and mocking, and our defence spoken by a strange tongue! We are better known than we think for; all our help comes from unexpected quarters. The true man is not utterly deserted: some one will arise from a corner unthought of to speak a kind word for him. The malefactor said, “ This Man hath done nothing amiss.” It was a bold thing to say: the court had condemned Him, the High Priest had reviled Him, the sentiment of the times was against Him, the mob had hustled Him to Golgotha; and the malefactor undertook from that high court to reverse the decree, and to pronounce the Son of God to be unworthy of such a death! We have our chances of speaking for Christ--how do we use them? He is still upon the cross--who speaks for Him? I have heard men speak for Christ whose way of doing it I have envied, and who were the very last men in the world, I thought, who could ever have spoken up for such a Lord. They have spoken with the pathos of gratitude; they have spoken with the directness of a burning and earnest conviction. Were they ministers in the usual sense of the term? No, but they were ordained prophets of God. We can be exemplars where we cannot be advocates: we can live a life where we cannot make a speech: every man amongst us can do something to proclaim, not the innocence only, but the infinite and incorruptible holiness of Jesus Christ. This malefactor saw the kingdom beyond the cross. Great man--piercing mind--audacious thinker. Is there a man here of such spirit and temper? It is not in man; it is a revelation of the Holy Ghost. God opens strange mouths to speak His truth. Just see, then, how our selfishness differs. The little thief said, “ Save me, take me down from the cross,” the big thief said, “ Never mind the present: let it be a kingdom when it comes--an ulterior salvation, an ulterior destiny.” Selfishness indeed, but on a nobler scale. The small mind wanted an immediate benefit; the great mind said, “ Let us go through this tunnel into the great kingdom, into the beautiful landscape. When we shoot out of this darkness--Lord, remember me!” Perhaps not selfish either. Did not this dying malefactor say more in that interview with Christ than some of us have ever said in our lives? He defended Him, he hailed Him Lord, he ascribed to Him a kingdom, he triumphed over death, he saw the crown above the cross. Christianity invites and encourages vigour of intellect. (J. Parker, D. D.) The dying thief I. We see here an illustration of THE CROSS IN ITS POWER OF DRAWING MEN TO ITSELF. It is strange to think that, perhaps, at that moment the only human being that thoroughly believed in Christ was that dying robber. The disciples are all gone. The most faithful of them are recreant, denying, fleeing. Brethren, it is just the history of the gospel wherever it goes. It is its history now, and in this congregation. The gospel is preached equally to every man. The same message comes to us all, offering us the same terms. And what is the consequence? A parting of the whole mass of us, some on one side and some on the other. As when you take a magnet, and hold it to an indiscriminate heap of metal filings, it will gather out all the iron, and leave behind all the rest! “ I, if I be lifted up,” said He, “ will draw all men unto Me.” The attractive power will go out over the whole race of His brethren; but from some there will be no response. In some hearts there will be no yielding to the attraction. Some will remain rooted, obstinate, steadfast in their place; and to some the lightest word will be mighty enough to stir all the slumbering pulses of their sin-ridden hearts, and to bring them, broken and penitent, for mercy to His feet. To the one He is “ a savour of life unto life, and to the other a savour of death unto death.” And now, there is another consideration. If we look at this man, this penitent thief, and contrast him, his previous history, and his present feelings, with the people that stood around, and rejected and scoffed, we get some light as to the sort of thing that unfits men for perceiving and accepting the gospel when it is offered to them. Why was it that scribes and Pharisees turned away from Him? For three reasons. Because of their pride of wisdom. “ We are the men who know all about Moses and the traditions of the elders; we judge this new phenomenon not by the question, How does it come to our consciences, and how does it appeal to our hearts? but we judge it by the question, How does it tit our rabbinical learning? They turned away from the cross, and their hatred darkened into derision, and their menaces ended in a crucifixion, not merely because of a pride of wisdom, but because of a complacent self-righteousness that knew nothing of the fact of sin, that never had learned to believe itself to be full of evil, that had got so wrapped up in ceremonies as to have lost the life; that had degraded the Divine law of God, with all its lightning “ splendours, and awful power, into a matter of “ mint and anise and cummin.” They turned away for a third reason. Religion had become to them a mere set of traditional dogmas, to think accurately or to reason clearly about which was all that was needful. Still it is not sin in its outward forms that makes the worst impediment between a man and the cross, but it is sin plus self-righteousness which makes the insurmountable obstacle to all faith and repentance. And then we see here, too, the elements of which acceptable faith consists. Mark what it was that he believed and expressed--I am a sinful man; all punishment that comes down upon me is richly deserved: This man is pure and righteous; “ Lord, remember me when Thou comest into Thy kingdom.” That is all--that is all. That is the thing that saves a man. How much He did know--whether he knew all the depth of what he was saying, when he said, “ Lord!” is a question that we cannot answer; whether he understood what the “ kingdom” was that he was expecting, is a question that we cannot solve; but this is clear--the intellectual part of faith may be dark and doubtful, but the moral and emotional part of it is manifest and plain. “ My Saviour! My Saviour! He is righteous: He has died--He lives! I will stay no longer; I will cast myself upon Him!” II. This incident reminds us not only of the attractive power of the cross, but of the prophetic power of the cross. We have here THE CROSS AS TO AND THE KINGDOM. Pointing out, and foretelling: that is to say, of course, and only, if we accept the scriptural statement of what these sufferings were, the Person that endured them, and the meaning of their being endured. But the only thing I would dwell upon here, is, that when we think of Christ as dying for us, we are never to separate it from that other solemn and future coming of which this poor robber catches a glimpse. The crown of thorns proclaims a sovereignty founded on sufferings. The sceptre of feeble reed speaks of power wielded in gentleness. The cross leads to the crown. He who was lifted up to the cross, was, by that very act, lifted up to be a Ruler and Commander to the peoples. “ Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness before Him in the day of judgment.” “ Lord, remember me when Thou comest into Thy kingdom.” III. Here is the CROSS AS AND OPENING THE TRUE . “ This day shalt thou be with Me in paradise.” It is of more practical worth to note: the penitent’ s vague prayer is answered, and over-answered. Remember thee I thou shalt be with Me, close to My side. Remember thee when I come! this day shalt thou be with Me. And what a contrast that is--the conscious blessedness rushing in close upon the heels of themomentary darkness of death. At the one moment there hangs the thief writhing in mortal agony; the wild shouts of the fierce mob at his feet are growing faint upon his ear: the city spread out at his feet, and all the familiar sights of earth are growing dim to his filmy eye. The soldier’ s spear comes, the legs are broken, and in an instant there hangs a relaxed corpse; and the spirit, the spirit--is where? Ah! how far away; released from all its sin and its sore agony, struggling up at once into such strange divine enlargement, a new star swimming into the firmament of heaven, a new face before the throne of God, another sinner redeemed from earth! (A. Maclaren, D. D.) The penitent malefactor I. THE AND OF THIS MAN. The Evangelists St. Matthew and St. Mark describe him as a “ thief” ; and in the text St. Luke denominates him a “ malefactor.” It may not, therefore, be improper to trace the progress of iniquity in such persons; and to show the causes which contribute to form their mischievous and wretched characters. By this means inexperienced persons may be warned against the beginnings of evil, and the guardians of youth reminded of the responsibilities under which they lie. Among these causes we may specify-- 1. The want of a sound religious and moral education. 2. The violation of the Sabbath is another fruitful source of evil. 3. The keeping of bad company, which is another frightful source of evil. 4. Habits of intemperance, The circumstances of the man who is described in our text were awful indeed. His end was actually come. Even to the holiest of men death is an affair of awful moment. It dissolves our earthly frame; it severs our connection with every person and object beneath the sun; it ends our short day of trial; and it forces us into a state which eternity will never reverse. The fear and trepidation which naturally arise, even in a good mind, at the arrival of death, are terribly heightened by that consciousness of guilt which the malefactor before us must have felt. II. HIS CONDUCT UPON THIS . 1. He reproved the rashness and impiety of his impenitent fellow-sufferer. 2. He acknowledged the justice of the sentence under which he lay. “ We indeed,” said he, suffer death “ justly.” It is an ill sign when persons who are punished for their faults are loud in their complaints of undue severity. 3. He bore witness to the innocence of Jesus. “ This man,” said he, “ hath done nothing amiss.” 4. He made a direct application to Christ for mercy. Turning his languid eyes to Jesus, he said, “ Lord, remember me when Thou comest into Thy kingdom.” III. THE ANSWER WHICH CHRIST : “ Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, To-day shalt thou be with Me in paradise.” 1. This answer secured to the man the requisite preparation for future glory. If he was to be in paradise that day, he must on that day be qualified for its joys and employment. That this great work should be instantaneously wrought is not at all surprising when we consider its Author. 2. The answer of our Lord marks the true nature of man. 3. Our Lord’ s answer teaches us that those who die in Him immediately enter into rest. No longer period of time elapses after the believing soul has left the body before its superior happiness begins. (J. Jackson.) Folly of trusting to a death-bed repentance Do not trust a death-bed repentance, my brother. I have stood by many a death-bed, and few indeed have there been where I could have believed that the man was in a condition physically (to say nothing of anything else) clearly to see and grasp the message of the gospel. I know that God’ s mercy is boundless. I know that a man, going--swept down that great Niagara--if, before his little skiff tilts over into the awful rapids, he can make one great bound with all his strength, and reach the solid ground--I know he may be saved. It is an awful risk to run. A moment’ s miscalculation, and skiff and voyager alike are whelming in the green chaos below, and come up mangled into nothing, far away down yonder upon the white turbulent foam. “ One was saved upon the cross,” as the old divines used to tell us, “ that none might despair; and only one that none might presume.” (Maclaren.) A wonderful prayer What if the two greatest believers that ever lived were at that moment hanging side by side! What if the faith of the far greater Believer, more sorely tried than it had ever been before, was strengthened in that hour of deepest need by the unshaken faith of the dying criminal beside Him, as He had before been strengthened, whether in mind, or body, or both, by an angel in the garden! What if the faith expressed in that prayer encouraged the Saviour of the world to believe in Himself and in His Father, by showing that some one else believed in Him still! What if the words, “ When Thou comest in Thy kingdom,” brought the kingdom as a living reality for a moment before His mind, and put life into His fainting spirit! Why, then, if this were so, we can understand why such faith should be given to such a man. He would have an opportunity of manifesting it as no one else ever had before or since, and by so manifesting it, of rendering to the Incarnate Son of God perhaps the greatest help that He ever received from any human being. (S. Minton, M. A.) Great faith manifested Oh! what wondrous, yea, miraculous faith! How much had it to contend against! 1. Against the circumstances of the ease. Admit that the converted thief had witnessed Jesus’ miracles, and had heretofore conceived high notions of our Lord’ s divinity and power; now when he saw that very Jesus, his Companion in death, nailed to the cross by his side, surely (humanly speaking), it was enough to stagger his faith, and lead him to join in the godless taunts of the godless men around him. 2. His faith had to contend against the voice of the times. For the whole national spirit was against Jesus, crying, “ Away with Him, crucify Him.” 3. Example was against him. All around him are unbelievers; and we know well how contaminating is the society of unbelievers. And, further, his faith leads him to re prove sin in others: “ Dost thou not fear God, seeing thou art in the same condemnation” --even in the very man who in all probability was his accomplice in crime; for he adds, “ We indeed justly, for we receive the due reward of our deeds” (Luke 23:41). Well, I think his faith cannot be accounted for upon any principle derived from the nature of the case. What would you think of some politician now-a-days clinging to some favourite scheme of reform, when the spirit of the age was against him, the voice of his fellow-countrymen, his friends, and his neighbours pronounced his cherished scheme Utopian and ridiculous? The man would not be able to withstand all; and very likely he would abandon his project for ever as he finds himself thus alone in his views, or gain for himself the no very enviable appellation of a man of unsound mind. How, then, I ask, can you account for his unflinching faith? Oh! he was taught by God’ s Holy Spirit, and that Spirit supplies with strength in the hour of need, with comfort in trouble and tribulations. And He only can make us call Jesus “ Lord, even the Lord of our salvation.” (F. McGlynn, M. A.) A wonderful request It was a wonderful request. What a faith did it exhibit! He recognized a King in the dying Man, and saw that the Cross was the high road to His throne; he felt and proclaimed his own immortality, and knew himself no destructible thing, though the ministry of death was breaking down the fleshly tabernacle; but once assured that he had yet to enter on untried and unlimited destinies, he therefore asked to be remembered when all this sin and suffering should have passed away, and another and a wider range of being should spread before him. And “ remember me.” He only asked to be remembered; but it was the memory of a King, trod that King Messiah, Lord of the invisible world, in whose chambers he solicited a place; and thus he evinced a thorough faith in the saving power of Jesus. What advantage in the being remembered by Jesus, unless Jesus could procure for him that pardon which He had been asking for His crucifiers? What advantage the being remembered by a king, except that as king he must have authority to portion out allotments of happiness? So that it is no overwrought or exaggerated statement that the dying thief exhibited all the tokens which can ever be demanded of a genuine conversion. There was confession of sin, there was spirituality of mind, there was anxiety for others, there was the fullest recognition of Christ’ s power to deliver, and there was a mighty faith which, nothing daunted by all the circumstances of apparent helplessness and defeat, were sufficient to confound and overcome distance, sprang beyond the line of death and shame, and seemed to gaze on the palace and the crown; and though he had not an opportunity of showing by an altered life that his heart was renewed, yet his faith in Christ was so stupendous an act, that no one can doubt that, had space been allowed for development, every action would have proved its reality. (H. Melvill B. D.) “ Lord, remember me!” Legh Richmond, the author of “ The Dairyman’ s Daughter,” in one of his visits to the Young Cottager, found the little girl asleep, with her finger lying on a Bible, which lay open before her, pointing at these words, “ Lord, remember me, when Thou comest in Thy kingdom!” “ Is this casual, or designed? thought I. Either way is remarkable. But, in another moment, I discovered that her finger was indeed an index to the thoughts of her heart. She half awoke from her dozing state, but not sufficiently so to perceive that any person was present, and said in a kind of whisper, ‘ Lord, remember me--remember me--remember--remember a poor child; Lord, remember me!’” Christ as Saviour The last hours of Jesus were spent almost in silence. Teaching is at an end. His prophetic office is fulfilled. His priestly work has begun. The time has come to endure. But in the few words which He did utter He seemed to be all Saviour--never before so affectingly and impressively Saviour. I. THERE IS A . Could Jesus interest Himself in such an one? Is he not beneath His notice? Ah! the Saviour can only know man as man. It is our nature as men, with all its mysterious, dread, and ineffable possibilities, that Jesus came to redeem. A dying malefactor contrite, is nearer to Jesus than a living king impenitent and estranged from God. II. THE LORD IS VERY . He did not breathe a word about that past guilty life. You and I would probably have recalled to the malefactor his terrible career, and would have felt it our duty to impress upon him a due sense of that evil state. A Saviour could not do that. Well, the Lord knew that no one ever turns to God whose heart is not already bruised and broken. When poor souls go to the Lord, it is not smiting which they need, but healing. Jesus blotted out the dreadful past, and unrolled the vision of the future. Our Lord seemed to say, “ Yes, I will remember thee, but thy ‘ sins and thine iniquities will I remember no more.’” III. HOW ANXIOUS OUR BLESSED SAVIOUR WAS TO ASSURE THE OF THE MERCY WHICH HE COVETED! “ Verily I say unto thee.” It was only in moods of special intensity and on occasions peculiarly solemn that our Lord resorted to the asseveration. Verily I say unto thee. How the all-pitying Saviour shone forth in this emphatic expression! IV. THE GREAT WAS TO THE LAST MOMENT IN THE WELFARE OF OTHERS. V. IT WAS RIGHT TO PRAY TO THE LORD JESUS. (H. Batchelor.) To-day shalt thou be with Me in paradiseThe mercy of Christ to the penitent thief I. LET US THE AND OF THE IN THIS PASSAGE. 1. As to the means of his conversion. He was a Jew, and had probably some general knowledge of the prophecies concerning the Messiah. And no doubt what he witnessed of our Lord’ s extraordinary meekness and patience under His sufferings, and His prayer for His murderers, greatly confirmed his faith in Him, as the Redeemer promised to the fathers. This shows us the importance of maintaining a becoming temper under all the provocations we are called to meet with, in the respective situations in which we are placed, that if any obey not the Word, they may, without the Word, be won by our good conversation in Christ. 2. Observe the evidence he gave of the reality of the change. 3. The prayer which he presents to our dying Lord. We see in his prayer the exercise of faith in the Redeemer, and of hope in His mercy. His genuine humility is also apparent. All he presumes to ask is to be remembered by Christ. He says nothing about receiving the brightest crown He has to bestow, or the largest mansion He has at His disposal. 4. The gracious answer which our Lord made to his urgent request. And was ever answer so satisfactory, gracious, and consolatory? II. SOME OF THE LESSONS THE OF THE DYING THIEF IS TO TEACH US. 1. It SHOWS US the sovereignty and freeness of the Divine mercy. 2. We have here a striking proof of the unspeakable efficacy of the atoning blood of Christ. 3. It becomes us to admire the almighty power of Christ, in subduing the hearts of sinners, and bringing the disobedient to the wisdom of the just. 4. We shall do well to notice the prevalency of prayer, in the instance before us. For this convinced, praying sinner no sooner asks than he receives, no sooner seeks than he finds, and no sooner knocks than the door of mercy is opened unto him. 5. The subject furnishes us with a specimen of the nature of true conversion, in every age. 6. This rich display of grace is intended to animate us in our endeavours, under the most discouraging circumstances, to bring sinners to repentance. (Essex Remembrancer.) Christ’ s greatest trophy I. CHRIST’ S POWER AND TO SAVE SINNERS. I believe the Lord Jesus never gave so complete a proof of His power and will to save as He did upon this occasion. In the day when He seemed most weak, He showed that He was a strong deliverer. In the hour when His body was racked with pain, He showed that He could feel tenderly for others. At the time when He Himself was dying, tie conferred on a sinner eternal life. II. IF SOME ARE SAVED IN THE VERY HOUR OF DEATH OTHERS ARE NOT. There is warning as well as comfort in these verses, and that is a very solemn warning too. They tell me loudly, that though some may repent and be converted on their death-beds, it does not at all follow that all will. A death-bed is not always a saving time. They tell me loudly that two men may have the same opportunities of getting good for their souls, may be placed in the same position, see the same things, and hear the same things--and yet only one of the two shall take advantage of them, repent,believe, and be saved. They tell me, above all, that repentance and faith are the gifts of God, and are not in a man’ s own power; and that if any one flatters himself he can repent at his own time, choose his own season, seek the Lord when he pleases, and, like the penitent thief, be saved at the very last--he may find at length he is greatly deceived. I want you to beware of letting slip good thoughts and godly convictions, if you have them. Cherish them and nourish them, lest you lose them for ever. Make the most of them, lest they take to themselves wings and flee away. Have you an inclination to begin praying? Put it in practice at once. Have you an idea of beginning really to serve Christ? Set about it at once. III. THE SPIRIT ALWAYS LEADS SAVED SOULS IN ONE WAY. Every saved soul goes through the same experience, and the leading principles of the penitent thief’ s religion were just the same as those of the oldest saint that ever lived. 1. See, then, for one thing, how strong was the faith of this man. He called Jesus “ Lord.” He declared his belief that He would have “ a kingdom.” 2. See, for another thing, what a right sense of sin the thief had. He says to his companion, “ We receive the due reward of our deeds.” Would you know if you have the Spirit? Then mark my question--Do you feel your sins? 3. See, for another thing, what brotherly love the thief showed to his companion. He tried to stop his railing and blaspheming, and bring trim to a better mind. “ Dost not thou fear God,” he says, “ seeing thou art in the same condemnation?” There is no surer mark of grace than this! Grace shakes a man out of his selfishness, and makes him feel for the souls of others. IV. IN CHRIST WHEN THEY DIE ARE WITH THE LORD. It was a true saying of a dying girl, when her mother tried to comfort her by describing what paradise would be. “ There,” she said to the child, “ there you will have no pains, and no sickness; there you will see your brothers and sisters, who have gone before you, And will be always happy.” “ Ah, mother!” was the reply, but there is one thing better than all, and that is, Christ will be there.” V. THE ETERNAL PORTION OF EVERY MAN’ S SOUL IS CLOSE TO HIM. “ Today,” says our Lord to the penitent thief, “ to-day shalt thou be with Me in paradise.” He names no distant period; He does not talk of his entering into a state of happiness as a thing “ far away,” He speaks of to-day--“ this very day in which thou art hanging on the cross.” How near that seems! The very moment that believers die they are in paradise. Their battle is fought; their strife is over. They have passed through that gloomy valley we must one day tread; they have gone over that dark river we must one day cross. They have drank that last bitter cup which sin has mingled for man; they have reached that place where sorrow and sighing are no more. Surely we should not wish them back again! We are warring still, but they are at peace. We are labouring, but they are at rest. We are wearing our spiritual armour, but they have for ever put it off. We are still at sea, but they are safe in harbour. We have tears, but they have joy. (Bishop Ryle.) Conversion of the dying thief I. THE OF THIS . 1. The former character of this person. 2. The means whereby the change was accomplished. Conversion is God’ s work, but He usually employs certain means in effecting it. (1) The words which the Saviour uttered. (2) The spirit which the Saviour displayed. 3. The evidences he manifested of the reality of his conversion. (1) He warned and reproved his fellow-sufferer. (2) He made an open confession of his guilt, and acknowledged the justice of his sentence. (3) He vindicates the character of Christ. (4) He prays to Christ, and exercises unbounded confidence in Him. II. WHAT THOSE LESSONS ARE WHICH WE SHOULD LEARN FROM THIS EVENT. 1. Let us admire the riches of Divine grace. Oh how great, how unexpected, and especially how rapid was the change. 2. How striking a proof is here afforded of the Saviour’ s power. What must that energy be, which, under such circumstances, could snatch this man as a brand from the burnings. 3. The danger of delay is another lesson we may deduce from this narrative. Suppose a person had once leaped unhurt from some projecting rock into the deep precipice below, would that justify others in running the same risk? Madness of the maddest kind would it be. (Expository Outlines.) The great moral miracle of the Cross I. THE SCENE OF THIS MORAL MIRACLE. II. THE BROUGHT BEFORE US ON CALVARY. III. THE BY THE DYING SINNER. “ Lord, remember me, when Thou comest into Thy kingdom.” 1. It is a prayer that is offered up. The first prayer ever offered by him. The prayer of this penitent malefactor was sincere. 2. It was the prayer of faith; he believed in the power and willingness of the Saviour to bless Him. 3. It recognizes the supreme authority of the Saviour as a King. 4. In this prayer we see, too, his faith in the doctrine of the immortality of the soul. 5. This prayer is distinguished by humility. 6. This prayer is distinguished by fervour. IV. THE ANSWER OF THE DIVINE SAVIOUR. This answer directs our thoughts to the home of the righteous after death--paradise. In this answer of the Saviour, another great doctrine is implied--That the soul of man is immaterial; that it lives and acts when the frail body lies in the silent tomb. In this answer of the Saviour we are taught that the righteous soul, in leaving the body, ascends immediately to God. In this answer of the Saviour, too, we see His power and willingness to save--to save “ to the uttermost.” (H. P. Bowen.) Christ preaching on the cross You are all aware that God’ s ordinary engine for the conversion of sinners is the preaching of His Word. We think that it was so here. Lifted on the cross, Christ used it not only as an altar, but as a pulpit, from which to deliver the most touching of sermons. It was not merely that He preached by the beauty of His patience and His meekness; there must indeed have been a voice in this which ought to have spoken to the most hardened of the multitude, producing conviction of His innocence, and contrition for the share taken in His condemnation and crucifixion; but we may consider the prayer which Christ uttered for His murderers as most strictly the sermon which the malefactor heard, and which, carried home to his heart by the Spirit of God, wrought in him the change so quickly and strikingly developed. “ Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” These, we think, were the words which penetrated the conscience of the thief, and assured him that the being who hung at his side was none other than the promised Saviour of the world; for there was contained in that prayer a distinct claim to the being the Christ--for since the Jews crucified Him for pretending to be the Messiah, Christ’ s saying that they knew not what they did, amounted to an assertion that He actually was the Messiah. If there were pardon for those who crucified Christ, there must be also for every offender; and hence the thief, if once led to believe that Jesus was the Christ, would be further led to see forgiveness possible, and thus apply to his fellow-sufferer for salvation. So that in that short prayer which we have characterized as the sermon of Christ, there was all the publication of the gospel, which is ordinarily made effectual, by God’ s Spirit, to conversion. This entry is longer than a Bible module can hold. The rest is at https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/bi/ Luke 23:44-45 There was a darkness over all the earth The three hours’ darkness What a call must that mid-day midnight have been to the careless sons of men! They knew not that the Son of God was among them; nor that He was working out human redemption. The grandest hour in all history seemed likely to pass by unheeded, when, suddenly, night hastened from her chambers and usurped the day. Every one asked his fellow, “ What means this darkness?” Business stood still: the plough stayed in mid-furrow, and the axe paused uplifted. It was the middle of the day, when men are busiest; but they made a general pause. Around the great death-bed an appropriate quiet was secured. I doubt not that a shuddering awe came over the masses of the people, and the thoughtful foresaw terrible things. Those who had stood about the cross, and had dared to insult the majesty of Jesus, were paralyzed with fear. I. First, let us view this darkness as A MIRACLE WHICH AMAZES US. 1. It may seem a trite observation that this darkness was altogether out of the natural course of things. Since the world began was it not heard that at high noon there should be darkness over all the land. It was out of the order of nature altogether. Some deny miracles; and if they also deny God, I will not at this time deal with them. He may make certain rules for His actions, and it may be His wisdom to keep to them; but surely He must reserve to Himself the liberty to depart from His own laws, or else He has in a measure laid aside his personal Godhead, deified law, and set it up above Himself. 2. Further, this miracle was not only out of the order of nature, but it is one which would have been pronounced impossible. It is not possible that there should be an eclipse of the sun at the time of the full moon. The moon at the time when she is in her full is not in a position in which she could possibly cast her shadow upon the earth. The Passover was at the time of the full moon, and therefore it was not possible that the sun should then undergo an eclipse. This darkening of the sun was not strictly an astronomical eclipse; the darkness was doubtless produced in some other way: yet to those who were present it did seem to be a total eclipse of the sun--a thing impossible. 3. Concerning this miracle, I have also further to remark that this darkening of the sun surpassed all ordinary and natural eclipses. It lasted longer than an ordinary eclipse, and it came in a different manner. According to Luke, the darkness all over the land came first, and the sun was darkened afterwards: the darkness did not begin with the sun, but mastered the sun. It was unique and supernatural. 4. Again, this darkness appears to have been most natural and fitting. Like the earthquake and the rending of the veil of the temple, it seems a proper attendant of the Lord’ s passion. II. Secondly, I desire you to regard this darkness as A VEIL WHICH . 1. What I see in that veil is, first of all, that it was a concealment for those guilty enemies. Did you ever think of that? It is as if God Himself said, “ I cannot bear it. I will not see this infamy! Descend, O veil!” Down fell the heavy shades. 2. But further, that darkness was a sacred concealment for the blessed Person of our Divine Lord. So to speak, the angels found for their King a pavilion of thick clouds, in the which His Majesty might be sheltered in its hour of misery. It was too much for wicked eyes to gaze so rudely on that immaculate Person. 3. This darkness also warns us, even us who are most reverent. This darkness tells us all that the Passion is a great mystery, into which we cannot pry. God veiled the cross in darkness, and in darkness much of its deeper meaning lies; not because God would not reveal it, but because we have not capacity enough to discern it all. 4. Once again, this veil of darkness also pictures to me the way in which the powers of darkness will always endeavour to conceal the cross of Christ. We fight with darkness when we try to preach the cross. III. Now we pass on to speak of this darkness as A SYMBOL WHICH . The yell falls down and conceals; but at the same time, as an emblem, it reveals. 1. The darkness is the symbol of the wrath of God which fell on those who slew His only begotten Son. God was angry, and His frown removed the light of day. 2. The symbol also tells us what our Lord Jesus Christ endured. The darkness outside of Him was the figure of the darkness that was within Him. In Gethsemane a thick darkness fell upon our Lord’ s Spirit. His day was the light of His Father’ s face: that face was hidden and a terrible night gathered around Him. 3. Again, I think I see in that darkness also what it was that Jesus was battling with; for we must never forget that the cross was a battle-field to Him, wherein He triumphed gloriously. He was fighting then with darkness; with the powers of darkness of which Satan is the head; with the darkness of human ignorance, depravity and falsehood. IV. I come to my fourth point, and my closing words will deal with THE WHICH . Do you see the sympathy of mature with her Lord--the sympathy of the sun in the heavens with the Sun of Righteousness? It was not possible for Him by whom all things were made to be in darkness, and for nature to remain in the light. 1. The first sympathetic fact I see is this: all lights are dim when Christ shines not. 2. Next, see the dependence of all creation upon Christ, as evidenced by its darkness when He withdraws. It was not meet that He who made all worlds should die, and yet all worlds should go on just as they had done. If He suffers eclipse, they must suffer eclipse too; if the Sun of Righteousness be made to set in blood, the natural sun must keep touch with Him. There is no light for any man except in Christ; and till you believe in Him thick darkness shall blind you, and you shall stumble in it and perish. 3. Another practical lesson is this: If we are in the dark at this time, if our spirits are sunk in gloom, let us not despair, for the Lord Christ Himself was there. (C. H. Spurgeon) The veiled cross I. THE OF THIS . 1. It indicated the going out of the world’ s Light. 2. It represented the ignorance of the Gentiles, and the malignity of the Jews. 3. It reminds us of the mystery of the Atonement. II. THE EFFECTS OF THE UPON THOSE WHO THE CROSS. 1. It increased the solemnity of the event. 2. It veiled His agony from those who were around. 3. It whispered warning to the impenitent. (A. Rowland, LL. B.) Luke 23:45 The veil of the temple was rent The rent veil This miraculous event was plainly typical of several important things. 1. This was a type of the violent rending of Christ’ s body on the cross. 2. This typified our Lord’ s own entrance into heaven. 3. This miracle intimated that, by the death of Christ, the ceremonies of the law were, at once, explained and abolished. 4. This miracle intimated that the distinction between Jew and Gentile was at an end. 5. The rending of the veil typified evangelical freeness of access to the throne of grace. 6. The miraculous rending of the veil was typical of Christ’ s having opened up, by His death, an entrance into heaven for all His followers. (James Foote, M. A.) The rent veil of the temple I. THE VEIL IS REMOVED FROM . Surrounded by this ethereal light, how pale and sickly is the lamp of philosophy--how shallow are the findings of human reason--how contemptible and unintelligible are the mutterings of infidelity! Both for the reach and the grandeur of its discoveries, Christianity stands alone. Not only is it a mighty advance on all which went before, but it includes within itself that which will take infinite ages to evolve. II. NATURE IS . It is a fact of which we ought never to lose sight, that there is no discrepancy between the readings of Nature and the higher readings of the Christian Book. Christianity did not come to ignore nature, but rather to unveil her more hidden life and beauty. Amid those disturbing forces which we everywhere find to be at work, we are reminded that the present condition of our world does not correspond with its original integrity; that all nature stands in need of a grand renovation; that this chancre must be brought about by the exertion of Divine power; and that the present throes of creation will result in some mightier birth. All nature will be delivered from the bondage of corruption; and the glorious liberty of the children of God will be preceded by making all things new. Such is the light which Christianity sheds over the constitution, design, and final condition of this material world. III. TRUTH IS . We say not that this rending of the veil has left no mystery in the great wide field of revelation. Such a result would have been no positive advantage. Progress in discovery and in knowledge seems to be involved in the idea of mental existence and activity. Mind is endued with exhaustless power, and that power must be directed to pursuits and employments corresponding with the dignity of its nature, and the elevation of the ground to which it is raised. For this element of our nature, provision is made in that fulness of revelation which is reserved for another state of being. Heaven is a world of everlasting development. IV. THE VEIL IS LIFTED FROM THE GRAVE. For the revelation of this immortality we are indebted to the advent and the ministry of Christ. He brought life and incorruption to light. V. THE FUTURE IS . It was like a morning without a dawn on which the Saviour rose from the dead. His resurrection was not only the triumph of Life over Death, but it became the pledge and assurance of a glorious immortality. (R. Furguson, LL. D.) Luke 23:46 Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit That dying believers are both warranted, and encouraged, by Christ’ s example, believingly to commend their souls into the hands of God I. WHAT IS IMPLIED IN A ’ S OR HIS SOUL INTO THE HAND OF GOD AT DEATH? 1. That the soul outlives the body. 2. That the soul’ s true rest is in God. 3. The great value believers have for their souls. He thinks but little of his body comparatively. 4. These words imply the deep sense that dying believers have of the great change that is coming upon them by death; when all visible and sensible things are shrinking away from them and failing. They feel the world and the best comforts in it failing; every creature and creature-comfort failing: For at death we are said to fail (Luke 16:9). Hereupon the soul clasps the closer about its God, cleaves more close than ever to Him: “ Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit.” 5. It implies the atonement of God, and His full reconciliation to believers, by the blood of the great Sacrifice; else they durst never commit their souls into His hands: “ For it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living Hebrews 12:29). 6. It implies both the efficacy and excellency of faith, in supporting and relieving the soul at a time when nothing else is able to do it. II. WHAT WARRANT OR HAVE SOULS TO COMMIT , AT DEATH, INTO THE HANDS OF GOD? I answer, much every way; all things encourage and warrant its so doing: for-- 1. This God, to whom the believer commits himself at death, is its Creator; the Father of its being: He created and inspired it, and so it hath relation of a creature to a Creator; yea, of a creature now in distress, to a faithful Creator (1 Peter 4:19). 2. As the gracious soul is His creature, so it is His redeemed creature; one that He hath bought, and that with a great price, even with the precious blood of Jesus Christ (1 Peter 1:18). This greatly encourages the departing soul to commit itself into the hands of God; so you find Psalms 31:5). 3. The gracious soul may confidently and securely commit itself into the hands of God when it parts with its body at death; not only because it is His creature, His redeemed creature, but because it is His renewed creature also. All natural excellency and beauty goes away at death (Job 4:1-21. ult.), but grace ascends with the soul; it is a sanctified, when a separate soul; and can God shut the door of glory upon such a soul, that by grace is made meet for the inheritance? Oh, it cannot be! 4. As the gracious soul is a renewed soul, so it is also a sealed soul; God hath sealed it in this world for that glory, into which it is now to enter at death. Surely, if God have sealed, He will not refuse you; if He have given His earnest, He will not shut you out; God’ s earnest is not given in jest. 5. Moreover, every gracious soul may confidently cast itself into the arms of its God, when it goes hence, with “ Father, into Thy hands I commit my spirit.” Forasmuch as every gracious soul is a soul in covenant with God, and God stands obliged, by His covenant and promise to such, not to cast them out, when they come unto Him. As soon as ever thou became His, by regeneration, that promise became thine (Hebrews 13:5). 6. But this is not all; the gracious soul sustains many intimate and dear relations to that God into whose hands it commends itself at death. It is His spouse, and the consideration of such a day of espousals may well encourage it to cast itself into the bosom of Christ, its head and husband. It is a member of His body, flesh and bones (Ephesians 5:30). It is His child, and He its everlasting Father (Isaiah 9:6). It is His friend.“ Henceforth,” saith Christ, “ I call you not servants, but friends” (John 15:15). What confidence may these, and all other the dear relations Christ owns to the renewed soul, beget, in such an hour as this is! 7. The unchangeableness of God’ s love to His people gives confidence they shall in no wise be cast out. They know Christ is the same to them at last as He was at first the same in the pangs of death as He was in the comforts of life. Having loved His own which were in the world, He loved them to the John 13:1). He doth not love as the world loves, only in prosperity; but they are as dear to Him when their beauty and strength are gone, as when they were in the greatest flourishing. If we live, we live to the Lord; and if we die, we die to the Lord. So then, whether we live or die, we are the Lord’ s (Romans 14:8). Deduction 1. Are dying believers, only, warranted and encouraged thus to commend their souls into the hands of God? What a sad strait, then, must all dying unbelievers be in about their souls? Such souls will fall into the hands of God, but that’ s their misery, not their privilege. They are not put by faith into the bands of mercy, but fall by sin into the hands of justice. 2. Will God graciously accept, and faithfully keep what the saints commit to Him at death? How careful then should they be to keep what God commits to them, to be kept for Him while they live. 3. If believers may safely commit their souls into the hands of God, how confidently may they commit all lesser interests, and lower concernments into the same hand. 4. Is this the privilege of believers, that they can commit their souls to God in a dying hour? Then how precious, how useful grace is faith to the people of God, both living and dying? 5. Do the souls of dying believers commend themselves into the hands of God? Then let not the surviving relations of such sorrow as men that have no hope (J. Flavel.) The last words of Christ Jesus Christ did not die for Himself, any more than He lived for Himself; and He not only “ died, the Just for the unjust, to bring us to God,” but the manner of His dying was a lesson and a pattern for us. That is the Christian way of dying--the way for all to die; and who would wish, or could imagine, any fitter or happier way? Who would not, in this sense, say, “ Let me die the death of my Saviour, and let my last end be like His!” And how it disarms our helplessness of its terrors! “ I am powerless,” it seems to say, “ and therefore I commend to Thine omnipotence this frail and sensitive soul, which came at first from Thy creating hand. I do so reverently, but I do so confidently, for I do so as a child who calls Thee, ‘ My Father.’” I have said it expresses dependence--and so it does; but in Christ’ s case, and even in our own, the confidence expressed is more prominent still. In His case there seems a suggestion of the words, “ No man taketh My life from Me, but I lay it down of Myself” ; “ I, as My own act, commend it, Father, to Thee.” We do not possess that power; our souls are “ required” of us. But, more than that, we are accustomed to think of dying as the most terrible crisis of our history; the hour of supreme peril to our souls; the appalling event which decides our fate for ever. It is a great mistake. Our dying does not decide our future fate: it is our living which does that; the course we have taken, the choices we have made when opportunities were in our hands, and we used them, or threw them away! And therefore, I say, the peril of living is greater far than any peril there can be in dying. I commend My spirit into Thy hands to be delivered. Consider any human spirit now; consider your own. Before it are great possibilities of good and of evil. It must be so. If we can be God’ s true children, and live with, and become like our Father, it is terrible to fail of this; and it is more dreadful still--it is an indescribable degradation--not even to care about it. Since, then, we are in this case; capable of being God’ s children, but hindered and prevented from being so by our evil, there is supreme need for us each to cry, “ Father, hear met deliver me! Into Thy hands I commend my spirit--my sin-stained spirit. I am Thine. Save me!” I commend my spirit into Thy hands, to be made pure. The deliverance and reformation which the Scriptures say that we require, they describe by the strong expressions “ a new birth,” “ a new creation.” They say that is needed in order that we may stand “ without blame” before God. Does not our sad experience say the same? God prescribes it. God promises to perform it, and on us. (T. M. Herbert, M. A.) Soul-resignation into the hands of God Yea, and it is a very profitable thing for us to do it hereby we make a virtue of necessity; and where can we lodge our souls in safer hands? If a man cannot keep a thing himself, but must betrust and deposit it in other hands, will he not do it in the safest hands that he can find? Now three things there are that are required to a safe hand: power, wisdom, and love. If I deposit a thing in a man’ s hand to keep, he must be able to keep it for me against violence, else his hand is no safe hand; though he be able and have power to keep it for me, yet if he be prodigal and lavish, and not wise, I shall not count his hand a safe hand to keep my depositum: but though he be never so wise, yet if he be not my friend, I shall not betrust him with any great matter: but if a man be able, wise and friendly, then his hand is a safe hand to keep my depositum. And again if we do not commend, commit, and resign ourselves and souls into His hands, we must be responsible for them ourselves. “ What benefit shall we get thereby? Much every way. This resignation of our souls and selves unto God is an inlet to many mercies, graces, and comforts. As for mercies and blessings; what greater blessing can there be in in this world than to enjoy one’ s-self; under God to enjoy one’ s-self, and to be free from all things? As it is an inlet unto many blessings, so it is an inlet unto many graces and duties. What grace or duty will ye instance in? Will ye instance in prayer? It opens the sluices of prayer; and, as one speaks well, though you pray never so long or loud, yet if you do not resign up your soul and will unto God, your prayer is but nonsense, and a contradiction in re. As it is an inlet unto many graces, so it is an inlet also unto many comforts; yea, indeed, unto all our comforts: for what comfort can a man have in himself or condition, till he hath truly resigned and given up himself and soul and will unto God? but being done, ye may freely go about your business. If a man have a suit in law, and have left his cause in the hand of an able, careful friend and lawyer, he is quiet; much more may we be quiet, when we have left and lodged our case and way and soul with God. Well, but then how is this work to be done that we may truly resign and give up ourselves, our souls, and our wills unto God? It is not to be done slightly and overly, but seriously and solemnly. It is an ordinary thing with men to say, “ The will of the Lord be done.” As this work is not to be done slightly and overly, so neither is it to be done forcedly and lastly, but freely and firstly. As it is not to be done lastly and forcedly, so it is not to be done partially, and by halves, but fully and totally. “ I am Thine,” saith David to God, “ Oh, save me” (Psalms 119:94). As this resignation must not be done partially, and by halves, so it must not be done conditionally, but absolutely. As this resignation is not to be done conditionally, so it is not to be done passively, and in a way of submission only, but actively. It is one thing for a man to submit unto God’ s will, and another thing to resign up himself and will to the will of God. As this resignation is not to be done passively, so it is not to be done deceitfully and feignedly, but in all plainness and sincerity. Well, but when is this work to be done? It is to be done daily. There are some special times and seasons which do call for this work. I will name five. When a man doth convert and turn unto God. When a man is called forth unto any great work, or service, or employment, especially if it be beyond his own strength and power. When a man is in any great danger, distress, and affliction, then he is to resign and give up himself and will unto God. And if you would be able to do this work of soul-resignation in the day of your death rightly, then use yourself to do it every day. That is easily done which is often done. (W. Bridge, M. A.) The soul given to God Be sure that you do not give away your soul from God to anything else whilst you live. If you have given away your soul unto other things whilst you live, it will be a vain thing for you to say Christ’ s words when you come to die. When men come to their death, ye know they do ordinarily make their wills; and in the first place they say, I give my soul unto God; then if they have lands, or houses, or money, they give them to their wives, children, relations and friends, according to their pleasure. But suppose, now, that a man shall give land or house to such or such a child or friend, which he hath sold or given away before, shall his will stand in force? Will not all men say, This he could not give away, for he had sold that or given that before? So in regard of one’ s soul; though upon my death I say, As for my soul, I give that to God; yet if I have sold away my soul before, for unjust gain, or have given away my soul before unto filthy pleasures, how can I resign and give that to God when I die; will not the Lord say, Nay, this is none of yours to give, this you had sold or given away before? Oh, then, be sure of this, that whilst you live, you do not sell or give away your soul from God, for then death-bed resignation will be but as the act and deed of a man that makes his will when he is not compos mentis. (W. Bridge, M. A.) Luke 23:47-49 Certainly this was a righteous man The Cross, the source of compunction Many reasons have been given to account for that providence of God which determined that the Cross should be the kind of death that Christ should die; and that He should not end His life by sword or fire, by which the animal victims in the Old Testament which were types of Him were slain and offered. It is usual to explain the choice of this mode of death by showing its correspondence with various types and prophecies. Christ could not have been the antitype of the brazen serpent which was lifted up; neither could the prophecy--“ they pierced My hands and My feet” have been fulfilled by Him, unless He died by crucifixion. This reply, however, only removes the inquiry another step off; to prove that our Lord’ s death is the accomplishment of type and prophecy may be useful as an argument whereby to identify Him as the Messiah, but it can cast no light upon the events themselves. The revealing beforehand of that which was to come to pass, was a merciful provision to aid our faith and lead our minds to Christ, but it did not determine the things which should happen; any form of death might have been equally revealed by prophet and lawgiver. Passing by without mention many mystical expositions, the extreme torture of this kind of death has been assigned as a cause for its selection. Some have considered it the most painful death which a human being could undergo. Moreover, the Cross added to actual pain another, and an extremely delicate kind of torment--shame and humiliation. We can conceive another reason why our Lord died by crucifixion, and one with which in the line of thought we are pursuing we are especially concerned; Christ willed to die by a death which was itself a spectacle. They “ came together to that sight.” The brazen serpent was lifted up for the express purpose of being looked upon. Christ ascribes power to the fact of His elevation upon the Cross--“ I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto Me.” His death became an object of attraction, because it was an object of contemplation; the eye of sense, and the eye of a devout imagination could gaze upon His crucified form. The text describes the effects produced upon those persons who were standing before the Cross, when Christ died. Both the centurion and the people were deeply moved. They were representatives of different nations; and they illustrate the impressions which the Cross would make upon the mind and heart of man; there must be convictions in the mind concerning the person of the Sufferer before the heart can be touched with compunction. In the centurion we see the working of the Cross upon the human mind: in the people, upon the human heart. Together these represent the Cross as “ the source of compunction.” I. THE PASSED THROUGH A MENTAL AS HE WATCHED JESUS. St. Mark says the centurion “ stood over against Him” --that is--was in full view of the Cross; he was able then to see very distinctly the end. He was probably closer to Christ than any one else, for he was stationed there for the purpose of watching Him. The power of this sight may be estimated by considering the man who was impressed by it--his calling, race, and position. He was an unlikely person to be affected by such a sight. He was not present from any motive of curiosity, like many who were in that crowd. He was there on duty. Further, the centurion was not likely to be convinced through previous instruction; he did not come to the Cross with the religious training of the Jew. Another element in reckoning the power of the Cross upon the mind of the centurion is his position; he was the subject of an unprecedented impression. It was not a current of sensation with which he fell in, but which he seems to have led and inaugurated. He stands out as the first and prominent exponent of the thought and feeling which the Cross had stirred. Whilst, however, we are trying to form some estimate of the power of the Cross from the extreme unlikelihood of the person who was affected by it; we must on the other hand take notice of certain events which, accompanying Christ’ s death, aroused the mind of the centurion. His faith was an intelligent faith, and not the product of a passing excitement or heated imagination; it rested on evidences. We must look to these, or otherwise we shall be in danger of regarding his faith as a sort of unreasoning impulse; and besides this, the inquiry will lead to some very solemn thoughts concerning our Lord’ s death. The loud cry which Christ uttered when He died, astonished the centurion. When he “ saw that He so cried out, and gave up the ghost, he said, Truly this man was the Son of God.” Faith is the gift of God, but God gives also sensible helps to create dispositions for receiving His gifts. External grace appeals through the senses, whilst internal grace acts on the mind and will. The man was by this cry aroused either from indifference or hostility or contempt, and brought into a condition of receptiveness of Divine truth. There was another ground of faith connected with this cry, which also had its share in convincing the centurion. In the text St. Luke says when he “ saw what was done, he glorified God.” St. Matthew is more explicit, and mentions the earthquake as causing fear. Christ was like Samson, He manifested His strength more in His death than in His life. II. BUT BESIDES THE EFFECT UPON THE , THE CROSS ITS POWER UPON THE CROWD OF PERSONS WHO HAD TO WITNESS THE . They had cried, “ Crucify Him, crucify Him!” when Pilate had brought Him forth, His raiment dripping with the precious blood; but death produced a reaction, which pity could not excite. When the murderer sees death written upon the face of his victim, the passion which had prompted the deed melts into fear and remorse. The people felt that they had a share in that passion, had been instrumental in causing it; and the result was a new sorrow--new, as an experience, yet long ago predicted. Their sorrow was the fulfilment of the prophecy--“ They shall look on Me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for Him” ; it was an epoch in the history of moral convictions. Their compunction was a result of grace, and not the mere cooling of vindictive passion. Those people had assembled out of curiosity and malice; they had come hither without any dispositions for receiving grace, but the Cross overcame them. The Spirit of God used that Cross as the instrument of a deep conviction of sin; and they became the first-fruits, the earnest of that which should afterwards be the normal effect of the Passion. Mourning for sin would henceforth be excited by the thought--“ Jesus, my love, is crucified.” Compunction was a great grace. At the moment when the sin of man had culminated, for God to unlock His treasures and begin to bestow them is an astounding evidence of His quenchless love! That those very persons who had rejected Him should thus be visited inwardly with a subduing and softening unction from the Holy One is a marvel of Divine forbearance. : There are three thoughts, which are of practical importance in enabling us now to experience the power of the Cross as a source of compunction. 1. Our sins caused the Passion. We did not drive the nails into His hands or pierce His side, but--“ He hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows … He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities … the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all.” He “ bare our sins in His own body on the tree.” As the crowd who smote their breasts returned, they each one felt “ I had a part in that.” What the outward share in that Passion was to the actual offender, that our sins are in relation to the Cross as a mystery. 2. Again, the Cross was not endured for mankind as for a multitude in discriminately, but for each individually. Every human being might truly say, “ He loved me, and gave Himself for me.” 3. Once more--as the constant recurrence to the thought of Christ’ s omniscience seems to bring the Cross close to us; so to regard His remembrance of all that happened on Calvary, now that He is in glory, is another help to meditation on the Passion. The memory of Christ, uninfluenced by the passage of time, can look back on every detail of the Passion. He is not capable of forgetfulness, who is the same yesterday, today, and for ever; each event, each sorrow, each pang is treasured up in His memory with a recollection more vivid than the creature can possess. Though in His glory, He is the same Jesus who suffered; and the marks of suffering abide--the sacred wounds, which are the perpetual memorials of His Passion. As with the eye of the soul we now behold Him and hold communion with Him, the remembrance of Calvary will pass from Him to us, and the spirit of compunction cause the heart to mourn over sin. Such thoughts may help us to gaze upon the Cross with a true sorrow. Whether it be the conversion of a whole life we need, or the renewal of some part of it, or victory over some habit of sin, we must place ourselves with the crowd before the Cross and pray for the manifestation of its power on our own minds and hearts. If there is the sense of lack of dispositions, the Cross can create them; only let us continue to contemplate it. Fire melts ice; the sun unfolds the flowers; the Cross can melt the hardened heart, and draw out from it new graces. (W. H. Hutchings, M. A.) Luke 23:48 Smote their breasts The spectators of the crucifixion smiting their breasts I. CHRIST ON THE CROSS. Look on the multitude now--see how they who before had triumphed in His misery, are struck with deep astonishment. One says, “ Surely this was a righteous man.” Another says, “ This is the Son of God,” “ And all the people who came together to that sight seeing what had passed, smote their breasts and returned.” They came to the execution with eager haste and bitter zeal. They retired slow, silent, and pensive, with downcast looks and labouring thoughts. Their smiting their breasts indicated some painful sensations within. 1. It expressed their conviction of the innocence and divinity of this wonderful sufferer. Whatever sentiments they bad entertained in the morning, they had now seen enough to extort from them an acknowledgment that this was a “ righteous man” --this was the “ Son of God.” This character Jesus had openly assumed; and with unwavering constancy He maintained it to the last. (1) Observe His calmness. Amidst the rudest and most provoking insults, He discovered no malice or resentment toward His enemies; but all His language and behaviour was mild and gentle. When He was reviled, He reviled not again; but committed Himself to Him who judgeth righteously. (2) See His benevolence. He attended to the case of His afflicted mother, and commended her to the care of His beloved disciple. He wrought a miracle to heal an enemy wounded in the attempt to seize Him. He extended mercy to a malefactor who was suffering by His side. (3) Consider His humble piety. He maintained His confidence in God; called Him His God and His Father; and into His hands committed His Spirit. Such distinguished piety, benevolence, and constancy, under trials like His, showed Him to be a righteous man--to be more than man. And heaven itself bare solemn testimony in His favour. The darkness which overspread the land was evidently supernatural. 2. Their smiting their breasts was expressive of their compassion for this innocent and glorious Sufferer. Their rage, which had been wrought up to the highest strain, now began to subside, and give way to the tender feelings of humanity. 3. This action expressed a deep remorse of conscience. II. CHRIST IN THE HOLY . To behold this Divine Saviour in the flesh, and to see Him expire on the cross, was the lot only of those who lived in His day. But the frequent contemplation of His death is a matter of so much importance, that He was pleased, just before He suffered, to appoint an ordinance for the purpose of exhibiting His death to our view, and bringing it to our remembrance. Here He is set forth crucified before our eyes. Do we turn away from this ordinance? We have little reason to think we should have attended the crucifixion on any higher motive than mere curiosity. If a real regard to Him would have invited us to follow Him to the cross, the same regard will invite us to come and see Him at His table. 1. Have any of you entertained indifferent notions of Christ and His religion? Come here, and reflect on those characters of divinity which He exhibited. 2. Here meditate on the worth of your souls. 3. Here behold the great evil of sin. 4. Here meditate on the wonderful mercy of God. 5. Look here and behold an instructive example of patience and resignation. 6. Look to Christ and learn to despise the world. 7. Look to Christ, and learn meekness and forgiveness. (J. Lathrop, D. D.) The great sight I. THE SIGHT. It is the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth. You have often heard of it; have you thought of it until you could see it? Have its different incidents been grouped in your mind so as to form a complete picture? Try to realize it. II. THE LESSONS OF THE SIGHT. 1. The first lesson to which we beg your attention is the antagonism of sin to God. As if to show to the universe the true nature and tendency of sin in all its forms, all classes of worldlings were grouped around the Cross; each had an opportunity of expressing its feelings; and how awfully significant and awfully condemnatory was the part which they acted! All classes--the religious world, and the learned world, and the sceptical world, and the fashionable world, and the money-loving world, ay, and the ordinary working world--all combined to show the murderous nature and the God-defiant attitude of sin. 2. But if this sight teaches the antagonism of sin to God, it also teaches us God’ s hatred of sin. We cannot account for the Saviour’ s sufferings if they have not some connection with the sin of man. Even a heathen could understand, that if an innocent being suffers, it must be because of the sins of others. Kajarnak, a chieftain inhabiting the mountains of Greenland, notorious for the robberies and murders he had perpetrated, came down to where a missionary in his hut was translating the Gospel of John. His curiosity being excited by the process, he asked to have it explained; and when the missionary told him how the marks he was making were words, and how a book could speak, he wished to hear what it said. The missionary read to him the narrative of the Saviour’ s sufferings, when the chief immediately asked, “ What has this Man done? Has He robbed anybody--has He murdered anybody?” “ No,” replied the missionary, “ He has robbed no one, murdered no one; He has done nothing wrong.” “ Then why does He suffer? why does He die?” “ Listen,” said the missionary; “ this Man has done no wrong, but Kajarnak has done wrong; this Man has not robbed any one, but Kajarnak has robbed many; this Man has murdered no one, bat Kajarnak has murdered--Kajarnak has murdered his wife, Kajarnak has murdered his brother, Kajarnak has murdered his child; this Man suffered that Kajarnak might not suffer; died that Kajarnak might not die.” “ Tell me that again,” said the astonished chieftain; and by the repetition of the story the hard-hearted murderer was brought in contrition and tears to the foot of the Cross. Even so the Bible tells us, “ He was wounded for our transgressions, and bruised for our iniquities; He bore our sins in His own body on the tree.” 3. But if this sight teaches such a fearful lesson in reference to God’ s hatred of sin, thank God it also teaches that a way has been prepared by which men may escape from sin’ s consequences. He who became our Sin-bearer did not lay down the load till He had borne our sins away. He did not cease to suffer until He could say, “ It is finished.” III. THE WHICH THE OF THE SIGHT IS FITTED TO AWAKEN. 1. The first feeling which it naturally excites is that of which the bystanders were the subjects, when, “ beholding the things which were done, they smote their breasts, and returned” --a feeling of shuddering horror at the magnitude of their offence. 2. But the sight is also fitted to awaken the apprehension of danger. This feeling, in the case of His murderers, mingled with the horror with which they regarded their crime. They did not understand the doctrine of the Messiahship sufficiently to know that even His death might become the ground of their pardon; and a fearful foreboding of punishment, as well as an appalling consciousness of guilt, led them to smite their breasts when they beheld the things that were done. And, no doubt, the Cross is fitted to awaken this feeling in every sinner to whom it has not imparted the hope of salvation. For nowhere is the evil desert of sin so strikingly exhibited. 3. But the sight is also fitted to awaken hopeful feelings. Whether any of the men who smote their breasts were led to cherish the hope of pardon, the narrative does not say; but we doubt not that some of them were among the three thousand who, on the day of Pentecost, found that the blood which they had shed was a sufficient atonement for the sin of shedding it, and that the death which they had been instrumental in effecting was the occasion of their endless life. Even so does the Cross proclaim pardon to you, and by it all who believe are justified from all things. The same sight which awakens in you an appalling sense of sin, and a fearful apprehension of punishment, tells you, that though you have done so wickedly and deserved to endure such suffering, there is pardon in Christ for you. Look at it until the peace which it speaks takes possession of your souls--look until you understand what Christ has done for you--look until your fears are dispelled--look until the boundless love which it reveals awakens in you the beginnings of a new and better life--look with the assurance that you cannot look in vain, for He, whose promise never fails, has said, “ Look unto Me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth.” (W. Landels.) Mourning at the sight of the Crucified I. First, then, let us ANALYZE THE GENERAL which this text describes. “ All the people that came together to that sight, beholding the things which were done, smote their breasts, and returned.” They all smote their breasts, but not all from the same cause. Others amongst that great crowd exhibited emotion based upon more thoughtful reflection. They saw that they had shared in the murder of an innocent person. No doubt there were a few in the crowd who smote upon their breasts because they felt, “ We have put to death a prophet of God.” In the motley company who all went home smiting on their breasts, let us hope that there were some who said, “ Certainly this was the Son of God,” and mourned to think He should have suffered for their transgressions, and been put to grief for their iniquities. Those who came to that point were saved. II. We shall now ask you TO JOIN IN THE , each man according to his sincerity of heart, beholding the Cross, and smiting upon his breast. I shall ask you first to smite your breasts, as you remember that you see in Him your own sins. Looking again--changing, as it were, our stand-point, but still keeping our eye upon that same, dear crucified One, let us see there the neglected and despised remedy for our sin. Still keeping you at the cross foot, every believer here may well smite upon his breast this morning as he thinks of Who it was that smarted so upon the Cross. Who was it? It was He who loved us or ever the world was made. III. Remember that AT CALVARY, NOTES ARE NOT THE ONLY MUSIC. After all, you and I are not in the same condition as the multitude who had surrounded Calvary; for at that time our Lord was still dead, but now He is risen indeed. Look up and thank God that death hath no more dominion over Him. He ever liveth to make intercession for us, and He shall shortly come with angelic bands surrounding Him, to judge the quick and dead. The argument for joy overshadows the reason for sorrow. Lastly, there is one thing for which we ought always to remember Christ’ s death with joy, and that is, that although the crucifixion of Jesus was intended to be a blow at the honour and glory of our God--though in the death of Christ the world did, so far as it was able, put God Himself to death, and so earn for itself that hideous title, “ a deicidal world,” yet never did God have such honour and glory as He obtained through the sufferings of Jesus. Oh, they thought to scorn Him, but they lifted His name on high! (C. H.Spurgeon.) Lessons at Calvary 1. See here accumulated evidence of the truth of Christianity. Think of the fulfilled prophecies already noticed. 2. See here the true atonement for sin, and receive it by faith. 3. See here, and admire, the love of the Father, and of the Son to perishing sinners. This display of the Father’ s love far surpasses any other which He has given. 4. See here the certainty and the dreadful nature of the punishment of the obstinately wicked in the other world. 5. See here your example. What I chiefly refer to at present is His patient submission to His sufferings. 6. See here the most powerful motives to repentance, the mortification of sin, and the prosecution of holiness. In the last place, see here every encouragement to perishing sinners to come to Christ for safety, and to believers to rejoice more and more in confidence in His merits. (James Foote, M. A.) Luke 23:50-56A man named Joseph Joseph of Arimathea 1. We have here an illustration of the slow process by which some are brought to the full acknowledgment of the truth. 2. An illustration of how the very extremity of a cause brings fresh adherents from unexpected quarters. 3. An illustration of how the true character, the real spirts and power of a man, may be manifested in a single act. (M. Hutchison.) Joseph of Arimathea I. HE WAS A OF JESUS . II. HE WAS LED TO BOLDLY AND OPENLY CHRIST, A great trial brought out his character more clearly. When most of those who had followed Jesus during His ministry had forsaken Him and fled, then the weak one was made strong. III. HE WAS, ALL THIS TIME, WAITING FOR THE KINGDOM OF GOD. Quietly preparing himself for full development of Christian character. And he was blessed in so doing. In His own good time God revealed Himself to this timid, yet faithful, disciple. (H. G. Hird, B. A.) Laid It in a sepulchreSignificance of Christ’ s burial The burial of the Lord is a part of the gospel. Thus St. Paul (1 Corinthians 15:4). 1. His burial was an assurance that His resurrection was a reality: for His Body was taken down by friends in the presence of foes who knew that He was dead, and deposited by them, not in a common tomb, but in a cave, hollowed out of a hillside, with a great stone rolled to block up the entrance, which was guarded by the soldiers of Pilate. 2. His burial also was the last humiliation offered to Him; for, though Joseph and Nicodemus and the women who assisted performed it as a work of piety and love, yet in it He was not the less associated with us, whose bodies must be committed to the ground, earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. He was the Incorruptible, and yet was buried, and they prepared to embalm Him as if He had been corruptible. In birth from a womb, and in burial in a tomb, He was one with His sinful brethren. 3. His burial is in a remarkably mysterious way connected with our baptism. The font represents the grave of the Lord, in which, as having died with Him, we are mystically and sacramentally buried, and from which we rise again, endued with new life from Him, as He rose from His grave endured with new life (Colossians 2:12; Romans 6:1-4). (M. F.Sadler.) Our Lord’ s burial It is strange that so few have preached on the subject of our Redeemer’ s burial. I. Supposing ourselves to be sitting in the garden with our eyes fixed upon the great stone which formed the door of the tomb, we first of all ADMIRE THAT HE HAD A GRAVE AT ALL. We wonder how that stone could bide Him who is the brightness of His Father’ s glory; how the Life of all could lie among the dead; how He who holds creation in His strong right hand could even for an hour be entombed. 1. Admiring this, we would calmly reflect, first, upon the testimony of His grave that He was really dead. Those tender women could not have been mistaken; their eyes were too quick to suffer Him to be buried alive, even if any one had wished to do so. Jesus was a real Man, and truly tasted the bitter pangs of death. 2. The testimony of the grave to Christ’ s union with us. Before me rises a picture. I see the cemetery, or sleeping place, of the saints, where each one rests on his lowly bed. They lie not alone, but like soldiers sleeping round their captain’ s pavilion, where He also spent the night, though He is up before them. The sepulchre of Jesus is the central grave of God’ s acre; it is empty now, but His saints lie buried all around that cave in the rock, gathered in ranks around their dear Redeemer’ s resting.place. Surely it robs the grave of its ancient terror when we think that Jesus slept in one of the chambers of the great dormitory of the sons of men. 3. Very much might be said about the tomb in which Jesus lay. (1) It was a new tomb, wherein no remains had been previously laid, and thus if He came forth from it there would be no suspicion that another had arisen, nor could it be imagined that He rose through touching some old prophet’ s bones, as he did who was laid in Elisha’ s grave. As He was born of a virgin mother, so was He buried in a virgin tomb, wherein never man had lain. (2) It was a rocky tomb, and therefore nobody could dig into it by night, or tunnel through the earth. (3) It was a borrowed tomb; so poor was Jesus that He owed a grave to charity; but that tomb was spontaneously offered, so rich was tie in the love of hearts which He had won. That tomb He returned to Joseph, honoured unspeakably by His temporary sojourn therein. 4. Now, note that our Lord’ s tomb was in a garden; for this is typically the testimony of His grave to the hope of better things. Just a little beyond the garden wall you would see a little knoll, of grim name and character, the Tyburn of Jerusalem, Golgotha, the place of a skull, and there stood the Cross. That rising ground was given up to horror and barrenness; but around the actual tomb of our Saviour there grew herbs and plants and flowers. A spiritual garden still blooms around His tomb; the wilderness and the solitary place are glad for Him, and the desert rejoices and blossoms as the rose. He hath made another paradise for us, and He Himself is the sweetest flower therein. 5. Sitting over against the sepulchre, perhaps the best thought of all is that now it is empty, and so bears testimony to our resurrection. 6. Yet another thought comes to me, “ Can I follow Christ as fully as these two women did? That is to say, can I still cling to Him though to sense and reason His cause should seem dead and laid in a rocky sepulchre? Can I like Joseph and Magdalene be a disciple of a dead Christ? Could I follow Him even at His lowest point?” II. WE REJOICE IN THE HONOURS OF CHRIST’ S BURIAL. 1. Its first effect was the development of timid minds. Joseph and Nicodemus both illustrate the dreadful truth that it is hard for them that have riches to enter into the kingdom of God; but they also show us that when they do enter they frequently excel. If they come last they remain to the last. If cowards when others are heroes, they can also be heroes when even apostles are cowards. Brave are the hearts which stand up for Jesus in His burial. I like to remember that the burial of the Lord displayed the union of loving hearts. The tomb became the meeting-place of the old disciples and the new, of those who had long consorted with the Master, and those who had but newly avowed Him. Magdalene and Mary had been with the Lord for years, and had administered to Him of their substance; but Joseph of Arimathea, as far as his public avowal of Christ is concerned, was, like Nicodemus, a new disciple; old and new followers united in the deed of love, and laid their Master in the tomb. A common sorrow and a Common love unite us wondrously. III. I must now pass to a third point. While sitting over against the sepulchre WE OBSERVE THAT HIS ENEMIES WERE NOT AT REST. They had their own way, but they were not content; they had taken the Saviour, and with wicked hands they had crucified and slain Him; but they were not satisfied. They were the most uneasy people in the world, though they had gained their point (see Matthew 27:62-66). Christ is dead, but they are afraid of Him! He is dead, but they cannot shake off the dread that He will vanquish them yet. They are full of agitation and alarm. Nor was this all; they were to be made witnesses for God--to sign certificates of the death and resurrection of His Anointed. In order that there might be no doubt about the resurrection at all, there must be a seal, and they must go and set it; there must be a guard, and they must see it mustered. The disciples need not trouble about certifying that Jesus is in the grave, these Jews will do it, and set their own great seal to the evidence. These proud ones are sent to do drudges’ work in Christ’ s kitchen, to wait upon a dead Christ, and to protect the Body which they had slain. IV. And now our last thought is that while these enemies of Christ were in fear and trembling WE NOTE THAT HIS WERE RESTING. It was the seventh day, and therefore they ceased from labour. The Marys waited, and Joseph and Nicodemus refrained from visiting the tomb; they obediently observed the Sabbath rest. I am not sure that they had faith enough to feel very happy, but they evidently did expect something, and anxiously awaited the third day. They had enough of the comfort of hope to remain quiet on the seventh day. Now, beloved, sitting over against the sepulchre while Christ lies in it, my first thought about it is, I will rest, for He rests. What a wonderful stillness there was about our Lord in that rocky grave. The great stone shuts out all noise, and the Body is at peace. Well, if He rests, I may. If for a while the Lord seems to suspend His energies, His servants may cry unto Him, but they may not fret. He knows best when to sleep and when to wake. As I see the Christ resting in the grave, my next thought is, He has the power to come forth again. The rest of the Christian lies in believing in Christ under all circumstances. Once more, it will be well if we can obtain peace by having fellowship with our Lord in His burial. Die with Him, and be buried with Him; there is nothing like it. I desire for my soul while she lives in the Lord that, as to the world and all its wisdom, I may be as a dead man. (C. H. Spurgeon.) . Luke 24:1-10 Now upon the first day of the week, very early in the morning, they came unto the sepulchre The first Easter morning The realm of nature a symbol of the realm of grace. 1. The gloomy night. 2. The much-promising dawn. 3. The breaking day. (Van Oosterzee.) The first pilgrims to the Holy Sepulchre 1. How mournful they go thither. 2. How joyful they return. (Van Oosterzee.) Easter brightness How on Easter morning it began to be bright-- 1. In the garden. 2. In human hearts. 3. Over the cross. 4. For the world. 5. In the realm of the dead. (Van Oosterzee.) Easter morning The first rays of the glory of Christ in the dawn of the Easter morning. 1. The stone rolled away. 2. The glittering angels. 3. The hastening women. (Arndt.) The open grave The open grave of the Risen One-- 1. An arch of His triumph. 2. A bow of peace denoting heavenly favour and grace. 3. A door of life for the resurrection of our spirit and our body. (Hofacker.) Easter among the graves 1. The stone of the curse Ye rolled away therefrom. 2. There dwell angels therein. 3. The dead are gone out therefrom. (Rantenberg.) The Easter festival A festival of-- 1. The most glorious joy. 2. The most glorious victory. 3. The most glorious faith. 4. The most glorious hope. (Schmid.) The Lord’ s Day Stations on the line of your journey are not your journey’ s end, but each one brings you nearer. A haven is not home; but it is a place of quiet and rest, where the rough waves are stayed. A garden is a piece of common land, and yet it has ceased to be common land; it is an effort to regain paradise. A bud is not a flower, but it is the promise of a flower. Such are the Lord’ s Days; the world’ s week tempts you to sell your soul to the flesh and the world. The Lord’ s Day calls you to remembrance, and begs you rather to sacrifice earth to heaven and time to eternity, than heaven to earth and eternity to time. The six days not only chain you as captives of the earth, but do their best to keep the prison doors shut, that you may forget the way out. The Lord’ s Day sets before you an open door. Samson has carried the gates away. The Lord’ s Day summons you to the threshold of your house of bondage to look forth into immortality--your immortality. The true Lord’ s Day is the eternal life; but a type of it is given to you on earth, that you may be refreshed in the body with the anticipation of the great freedom wherewith the Lord will make you free. (J. Pulsford.) Why seek ye the living among the dead?--The living not among the dead I. THE FACT BY THE ANGEL IS, AS WE CAN SEE WHEN WE LOOK BACK ON IT, AMONG THE BEST IN HUMAN HISTORY. For forty days the apostles continually saw Jesus Christ risen, touched Him, spoke with Him, ate add drank with Him as before His death. They staked everything upon this fact. It was to them a fact of experience. One or two people may be hallucinated, but not a multitude. A large number of people will not easily be so swayed by a single interest or a single passion as to believe simultaneously in a story that has no foundation in fact. II. The fact of the resurrection is the ground of THE of the angels with the holy women--“ Why seek ye the living among the dead?” But is this question applicable only to them during that pause when they felt the shock of the empty tomb? Let us consider. 1. First of all, then, it would seem that we may literally seek the living among the dead if we seek Christ in a Christianity, so termed, which denies the resurrection. If Christ’ s body never left the grave, if it has somewhere mingled with the dust of earth, then, however we may be attracted by His moral teaching, we have no ground for hoping in Him as our Redeemer: there is nothing to prove that He was the Son of God in the way He pointed out, or that He has established any new relation between earth and heaven. 2. But nearly the same thing may happen in cases where the resurrection is not denied, but, nevertheless, men fail to see what habits of thought about our Lord it involves. His life is continued on among us; only its conditions are changed. “ Lo, I am with you alway,” etc. “ I am He that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore.” To think of Him as only one of the great teachers of the world, who have come and disappeared, is to lose sight of the significance of His resurrection from the grave; it is to rank Him in thought with men whose eminence has not saved them from the lot of mortality, and whose dust has long since mouldered in the tomb. It is to lose sight of the line which parts the superhuman from the human. It is to seek the living among the dead. 3. Yet more literally do we seek the living among the dead, if without formally rejecting Christianity we give the best of our thought, of our heart, of our enthusiasm, to systems of thought, or to modes of feeling, which Jesus Christ has set aside. 4. We may not be tempted in these ways to seek the living among the dead teachers or dead elements of old or untrustworthy ways of thinking. But there is a risk of our doing so, certainly not less serious and very much more common, to which we are all exposed. As you know, our Lord’ s resurrection is a moral as well as an intellectual power. While it convinces us of the truth of Christianity it creates in us the Christian life. We are risen with Christ. The moral resurrection of Christians is a fact of experience. Resurrection from the grip of bad habits, from the charnel-house of bad passions, resurrection from the enervation, corruption, and decay of bad thoughts, bad words, bad deeds, to a new life with Christ, to the life of warm and pure affections, the life of a ready and vigorous will, of a firm and buoyant hope, of a clear strong faith, of a wide and tender charity. But, as a matter of fact, how do we risen Christians really act? We fall back, willingly or wilfully, into the very habits we have renounced. Our repentance is too often like the Lent of Louis the Fourteenth; it is a paroxysm, followed, almost as a matter of course, by the relapse of Easter. To do the great French monarch justice, he did not expect to find Christ’ s presence in sin and worldliness, as do they who complain of the intellectual difficulties of faith and prayer, while their lives are disposed of in such a manner, that it would be wonderful indeed if faith and prayer could escape suffocation in that chaos of everything save the things which suggest God. (Canon Liddon.) Christ, a quickening Spirit 1. Observe how Christ’ s resurrection harmonizes with the history of His birth. Others have all been born in sin, “ after Adam’ s own likeness, in his image,” and, being born in sin, they are heirs to corruption. But when the Word of Life was manifested in our flesh, the Holy Ghost displayed that creative hand by which, in the beginning, Eve was formed; and the Holy Child, thus conceived by the power of the Highest, was (as the history shows) immortal even in His mortal nature, clear from all infection of the forbidden fruit, so far aa to be sinless and incorruptible. Therefore, though He was liable to death, “ it was impossible He should be holden” of it. Death might overpower, but it could not keep possession; “ it had no dominion over Him.” He was, in the words of the text, “ the Living among the dead.” And hence His rising from the dead may be said to have evinced His Divine origin. Such is the connection between Christ’ s birth and resurrection; and more than this might be ventured concerning His incorrupt nature were it not better to avoid all risk of trespassing upon that reverence with which we are bound to regard it. Something might be said concerning His personal appearance, which seems to have borne the marks of one who was not tainted with birth-sin. Men could scarce keep from worshipping Him. When the Pharisees sent to seize Him, all the officers, on His merely acknowledging Himself to be Him whom they sought, fell backwards from His presence to the ground. They were scared as brutes are said to be by the voice of man. Thus, being created in God’ s image, He was the second Adam: and much more than Adam in His secret nature, which beamed through His tabernacle of flesh with awful purity and brightness even in the days of His humiliation. “ The first man was of the earth, earthy; the second man is the Lord from heaven.” 2. And if such was His visible Majesty, while tie yet was subject to temptation, infirmity, and pain, much more abundant was the manifestation of His Godhead when He was risen from the dead. Then the Divine essence streamed forth (so to say) on every side, and environed His Manhood as in a cloud of glory. 3. He ascended into heaven, that He might plead our cause with the Father Hebrews 7:25). Yet we must not suppose that in leaving us He closed the gracious economy of His Incarnation, and withdrew the ministration of His incorruptible Manhood from His work of loving mercy towards us. “ The Holy One of God” was ordained, not only to die for us, but also to be “ the beginning” of a new “ creation” unto holiness in our sinful race; to refashion soul and body after His own likeness, that they might be “ raised up together, and sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.” Blessed for ever be His holy name! before He went away He remembered our necessity, and completed His work, bequeathing to us a special mode of approaching Him, a holy mystery, in which we receive (we know not how) the virtue of that heavenly body, which is the life of all that believe. This is the blessed Sacrament of the Eucharist, in which “ Christ is evidently set forth crucified among us” ; that we, feasting upon the sacrifice, may be “ partakers of the Divine nature.” (J. H. Newman, D. D.) Easter good news I. We take THE ANGEL’ S first as the grand truth here--“ He is risen!” Who is thus risen? Who was dead, and has thus sprung from the grave to life? It is Christ Jesus the Lord, who died for our sins, is risen for our justification. The Saviour is no more a sufferer; His sacrificial deed is done. 1. How deeply instructive and interesting is the Gospel history of this great resurrection miracle! Take this great truth away from the Church, all faith is then vain, all hope destroyed, and the whole majestic building of Christianity falls and crumbles into ruins for ever. 2. We delight, then, to go with these godly women to the tomb of Christ, and while, perhaps, we bring too some humble offering of pure hearts to Him, to find how little it is needed, while we hear some glad tidings of His power, and rejoice in His risen glory. II. THE ANGELS’ . This may be considered as twofold. 1. As a gentle reproof for want of faith. With all their praiseworthy affection for Christ, even when dead, these devout women, last at the cross, and first at the sepulchre, showed great forgetfulness of the Redeemer’ s words, and their want of faith, as of the other disciples, appears thus gently reproved. 2. This is a faithful expostulation to Christians even now. True religion gives gladness, not deep gloom. (J. G. Angley, M. A.) The Lord is risen indeed I. CERTAIN which gather around the place where Jesus slept “ with the rich in His death.” Though He is not there, He assuredly once was there, for “ He was crucified, dead, and buried.” 1. He has left in the grave the spices. We will not start back with horror from the chambers of the dead, for the Lord Himself has traversed them, and where He goes no terror abides. 2. The Master also left His grave-clothes behind Him. What if I say He left them to be the hangings of the royal bedchamber, wherein His saints fall asleep? See how He has curtained our last bed! 3. He left in the tomb the napkin that was about His head. Let mourners use it to wipe away their tears. 4. He left angels behind Him in the grave. Angels are both the servitors of living saints and the custodians of their dust. 5. What else did our Well-beloved leave behind Him? He left an open passage from the tomb, for the stone was rolled away; doorless is that house of death. Our Samson has pulled up the posts and carried away the gates of the grave with all their bars. The key is taken from the girdle of death, and is held in the hand of the Prince of Life. As Peter, when he was visited by the angel, found his chains fall from off him, while iron gates opened to him of their own accord, so shall the saints find ready escape at the resurrection morning. One thing else I venture to mention as left by my Lord in His forsaken tomb. I visited some few months ago several of the large columbaria which are to be found outside the gates of Rome. You enter a large square building, sunk in the earth, and descend by many steps, and as you descend, you observe on the four sides of the great chamber innumerable little pigeon-holes, in which are the ashes of tens of thousands of departed persons. Usually in front of each compartment prepared for the reception of the ashes stands a lamp. I have seen hundreds, if not thousands, of these lamps, but they are all unlit, and indeed do not appear ever to have carried light; they shed no ray upon the darkness of death. But now our Lord has gone into the tomb and illuminated it with His presence, “ the lamp of His love is our guide through the gloom.” Jesus has brought life and immortality to light by the gospel; and now in the dove-cotes, where Christians nestle, there is light; yea, in every cemetery there is a light which shall burn through the watches of earth’ s night till the day break and the shadows flee away, and the resurrection morn shall dawn. So then the empty tomb of the Saviour leaves us many sweet reflections, which we will treasure up for our instruction. II. Our text expressly speaks of VAIN . “ Why seek ye the living among the dead? He is not here, but is risen.” There are places where seekers after Jesus should not expect to find Him, however diligent may he their search, however sincere their desire. You cannot find a man where he is not, and there are some spots where Christ never will be discovered. 1. In the grave of ceremonialism. 2. Among the tombs of moral reformation. 3. In the law. 4. In human nature. 5. In philosophy. III. We will again change our strain and consider, in the third place, ABODES. The angels said to the women, “ He is not here, but is risen.” As much as to say--since He is alive He does not abide here. Ye are risen in Christ, ye ought not to dwell in the grave. I shall now speak to those who, to all intents and purposes, live in the sepulchre, though they are risen from the dead. 1. Some of these are excellent people, but their temperament, and perhaps their mistaken convictions of duty, lead them to be perpetually gloomy and desponding. 2. Another sort of people seem to dwell among the tombs: I mean Christians--and I trust real Christians--who are very, very worldly. 3. Once more on this point, a subject more grievous still, there are some professors who live in the dead.house of sin. Yet they say that they are Christ’ s people. Nay, I will not say they live in it, but they do what, perhaps, is worse--they go to sin to find their pleasures. IV. I want to warn you against . Those good people to whom the angels said, “ He is not here, but is risen,” were bearing a load, and what were they carrying? What is Joanna carrying, and her servants, and Mary, what are they carrying? Why, white linen, and what else? Pounds of spices, the most precious they could buy. What are they going to do? Ah, if an angel could laugh, I should think he must have smiled-as he found they were coming to embalm Christ. “ Why, He is not here; and, what is more, He is not dead, He does not want any embalming, He is alive.” In other ways a great many fussy people do the same thing. See how they come forward in defence of the gospel. It has been discovered by geology and by arithmetic that Moses was wrong. Straightway many go out to defend Jesus Christ. They argue for the gospel, and apologize for it, as if it were now a little out of date, and we must try to bring it round to suit modern discoveries and the philosophies of the present period. That seems to me exactly like coming up with your linen and precious spices to wrap Him in. Take them away. V. THE AMAZING NEWS which these good women received--“ He is not here, but He is risen.” This was amazing news to His enemies. They said, “ We have killed Him--we have put Him in the tomb; it is all over with Him.” A-ha! Scribe, Pharisee, priest, what have you done? Your work is all undone, for He is risen! It was amazing news for Satan. He no doubt dreamed that he had destroyed the Saviour, but He is risen! What a thrill went through all the regions of hell! What news it was for the grave! Now was it utterly destroyed, and death had lost his sting! What news it was for trembling saints. “ He is risen indeed.” They plucked up courage, and they said, “ The good cause is the right one still, and it will conquer, for our Christ is still alive at its head. It was good news for sinners. Ay, it is good news for every sinner here. Christ is alive; if you seek Him He will be found of you. He is not a dead Christ to whom I point you to-day. He is risen; and He is able to save to the uttermost them that come unto God by Him. (C. H. Spurgeon.) The resurrection of Christ Let us consider, first, the evidences, and, second, the purposes of the second life of Jesus--the life after the crucifixion. I. AS TO THE OF CHRIST’ S , THERE ARE BOTH AND LINES OF PROOF WHICH GUARD THIS GREAT AND SUBLIME OF THE FAITH. 1. Jesus Christ actually died. A million and a half of awe-stricken witnesses saw Him die. 2. The second fact in the series of proofs is that Christ was buried. Interment is not often granted to crucified criminals. But Providence overruled the sordidness of the cautious scribes and priests, in order to multiply the witnesses to the resurrection. 3. The next fact is that the sepulchre somehow or other was emptied on the third day. How came the sepulchre to be emptied? There are only two theories. The rulers said the body was stolen out of it. The disciples said the body had risen from it. It is manifest that the enemies would not steal the body of Christ, and how improbable it is that His disciples should have done it. How could it have been done by twelve men against sixty, when Jerusalem was filled with an excited crowd, when the moon shone clearly in a cloudless oriental sky? No; it cannot be believed, and we are driven back therefore to the theory that He actually rose. 4. The internal evidence is equally convincing. Consider the existence and the spread of persecution for the testimony as to the resurrection of Christ. II. Consider THE WHICH THE IS TO WORK OUT IN . 1. It is a manifestation, a vindication of ancient prophecy and of the personal character of the Messiah as well. 2. It is a seal of the acceptance of the sacrifice of Jesus, and by consequence of infinite moment to confirm the hopes of the world. 3. It is an earnest of our own rising, a pledge of immortality for the race for which the Second Adam died. 4. Look at the resurrection as an encouragement. There is a great error, brethren, in Christendom just now, and that is that we believe in a dead Christ. He is not dead, He is living--living to listen to your prayers, living to forgive your sins. (W. M. Punshon, D. D.) The living Christ I. A FACT. Jesus among the dead! 1. The Saviour’ s perfect humanity. 2. The Saviour’ s perfect identity with the cause of man. II. A MORE FACT. Jesus no longer among the dead! 1. His mission to the tomb was accomplished. 2. His vision of immortality was realized. 3. The true object of faith was secured. (The Weekly Pulpit.) An Easter sermon I. THE OF THE . 1. If Jesus really died and then rose from the dead, materialism is completely overthrown. 2. Pantheism receives its death-blow with the establishment of Christ’ s resurrection. 3. All far-reaching scepticism is undermined. II. THE FACT OF THE . Conclusion: 1. We should live less in tombs. The grave is not half as large as we think. No life is buried there. Everything Christ-like is risen. Let life, not death, be our companion. 2. We must trust Christ implicitly. The living way has been set before us. He who is the life of the world has lighted its highway from the cradle, not to, but through the tomb. (D. O. Clark.) The living dead I. THE DEAD ARE THE LIVING. Language, which is more accustomed and adapted to express the appearances than the realities of things, leads us astray very much when we use the phrase “ the dead” as if it expressed the continuance of the condition into which men pass in the act of dissolution. It misleads us no less, when we use it as if it expressed in itself the whole truth even as to that act of dissolution. “ The dead” and “ the living” are not names of two classes which exclude each other. Much rather, there are none who are dead. Oh, how solemnly sometimes that thought comes up before us, that all those past generations which have stormed across this earth of ours, and then have fallen into still forgetfulness, live yet. Somewhere at this very instant, they now verily are! We say, they were, they have been. There are no have beens! Life is life for ever. To be is eternal being. Every man that has died is at this instant in the full possession of all his faculties, in the intensest exercise of all his capacities, standing somewhere in God’ s great universe, ringed with the sense of God’ s presence, and feeling in every fibre of his being that life, which comes after death, is not less real, but more real; not less great, but more great; not less full or intense, but more full and intense, than the mingled life which, lived here on earth, was a centre of life surrounded with a crust and circumference of mortality. The dead are the living. They lived whilst they died; and after they die, they live on for ever. And so we can look upon that ending of life, and say, “ it is a very small thing; it only cuts off the fringes of my life, it does not touch me at all.” It only plays round about the husk, and does not get at the core. It only strips off the circumferential mortality, but the soul rises up untouched by it, and shakes the bands of death from off its immortal arms, and flutters the stain of death from off its budding wings, and rises fuller of life because of death, and mightier in its vitality in the very act of submitting the body to the law, “ Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.” Touching but a part of the being, and touching that but for a moment, death is no state, it is an act. It is not a condition, it is a transition. Men speak about life as “ a narrow neck of land, betwixt two unbounded seas” : they had better speak about death as that. It is an isthmus, narrow and almost impalpable, on which, for one brief instant, the soul poises itself; whilst behind it there lies the inland lake of past being, and before it the shoreless ocean of future life, all lighted with the glory of God, and making music as it breaks even upon these dark, rough rocks. Death is but a passage. It is not a house, it is only a vestibule. The grave has a door on its inner side. God has taken our dead to Himself, and we ought not to think (if we would think as the Bible speaks) of death as being anything else than the transitory thing which breaks down the brazen walls and lets us into liberty. II. SINCE THEY HAVE DIED, THEY LIVE A BETTER LIFE THAN OURS. In what particulars is their life now higher than it was? First, they have close fellowship with Christ; then, they are separated from this present body of weakness, of dishonour, of corruption; then, they are withdrawn from all the trouble, and toil, and care of this present life; and then, and not least, surely, they have death behind them, not having that awful figure standing on their horizon waiting for them to come up with it I These are some of the elements of life of the sainted dead. What a wondrous advance on the life, of earth they reveal if we think of them I They who have died in Christ live a fuller and a nobler life, by the very dropping away of the body; a fuller and a nobler life by the very cessation of care, change, strife and struggle; and, above all, a fuller and nobler life, because they “ sleep in Jesus,” and are gathered into His bosom, and wake with Him yonder beneath the altar, clothed in white robes, and with palms in their hands, “ waiting the adoption, to wit, the redemption of the body.” For though death be a progress--a progress to the spiritual existence; though death be a birth to a higher and nobler state; though it be the gate of life, fuller and better than any which we possess; though the present state of the departed in Christ is a state of calm blessedness, a state of perfect communion, a state of rest and satisfaction; yet it is not the final and perfect state, either. III. THE BETTER LIFE, WHICH THE DEAD IN CHRIST ARE LIVING NOW, LEADS ON TO A STILL FULLER LIFE when they get back their glorified bodies. The perfection of man is, body, soul, and spirit. That is man, as God made him. The spirit perfected, the soul perfected, without the bodily life, is but part of the whole. For the future world, in all its glory, we have the firm basis laid that it, too, is to be in a real sense a material world, where men once more are to possess bodies as they did before, only bodies through which the spirit shall work conscious of no disproportion, bodies which shall be fit servants and adequate organs of the immortal souls within, bodies which shall never break down, bodies which shall never hem in nor refuse to obey the spirits that dwell in them, but which shall add to their power, and deepen their blessedness, and draw them closer to the God whom they serve and the Christ after the likeness of whose glorious body they are fashioned and conformed. “ Body, soul, and spirit,” --the old combination which was on earth is to be the perfect humanity of heaven. We have nothing to say, now and here, about what that bodily condition may be--about the differences and the identities between it and our present earthly house of this tabernacle. Only this we know--reverse all the weakness of flesh, and you get some faint notion of the glorious body. Why, then, seek the living among the dead? “ God giveth His beloved sleep” ; and in that peaceful sleep, realities, not dreams, come round their quiet rest, and fill their conscious spirits and their happy hearts with blessedness and fellowship. (A. Maclaren, D. D.) A present Christ I. THE TO THINK OF CHRIST AS PAST RATHER THAN PRESENT. 1. In His work of redemption. 2. In His converting power. 3. In His Pentecostal influences. 4. In His administration of earthly affairs. II. THE HARMFUL EFFECTS OF THIS upon the Church, collectively and individually, when indulged. 1. It tends to the exaltation of the purely dogmatic over the practical and experimental confession of Christ. 2. It encourages the substitution of speculative theories of Christ’ s atoning work, for the actual power and continuance of that work itself in its application to human needs. 3. It deprives the Church of its great incentive to an active co-operation in the saving work of the Redeemer. III. THE GROUNDS AND THE of the higher and absolutely true view of Jesus Christ as personally present at all times with His people, in the power and richness of His Divine life. His promise, “ Lo, I am with you alway, even to the end of the world.” Observe therefore-- 1. The necessity and comfort of habitually thinking of Christ as personally with us in the present varied needs and trials and duties of life. 2. The cheering prospect that death will only set us free, as it set Him free, from the restraints and limitations of this mixed world, and usher us into a state of boundless spiritual activity. 3. The uniqueness and authority of the gospel of Christ as the revelation of this life of the spirit, and as the power which can effectually save us from the fear and power of death. (H. R. Harris.) Christ is risen I. Christ is risen, and THE LAST HAS FALLEN. Death reigns no more. Sin has been vanquished by Christ’ s Cross, and the empire of the Prince of Darkness has been for ever destroyed. II. He has risen, and His OWN DIVINE WORDS HAVE BEEN . Christ claimed to be supernatural in every sphere of being. Easter substantiates His claim to mastery over death. If this promise has been fulfilled, so will all others be. III. He has risen, and THE DEAD HAVE NOT . Personal immortality for each of us, and reunion with the loved and lost. IV. Christ is risen, and NO LASTING CHURCH CAN REST ON A CLOSED TOMB. (W. M. Statham, B. A.) The resurrection of Christ As the resurrection of Christ is believed chiefly on the authority of His disciples, it is desirable to inquire respecting the circumstances in which they spoke. I. THEY DID NOT EXPECT THAT HE WOULD RISE FROM THE DEAD, NOR BELIEVE THAT HE HAD RISEN, EVEN WHEN IT WAS TOLD TO THEM. II. THEY COULD GAIN NOTHING BY IT, IF IT WERE UNTRUE. As a consequence of declaring His resurrection, they could foresee only affliction, reproach, and death. III. THE WERE AS WELL AS ANY OTHER MEN, TO KNOW WHETHER THE THINGS WHICH THEY WERE SO. The subjects respecting which they testified were cognizable by the senses. Had they been dark, abstruse principles--had they been some rare phenomena in the material world, but removed from inspection by the several senses, there would have been reason for suspecting their capacity to know, and fully to comprehend them. IV. CHRIST TO THEM MANY TIMES. Not once or twice only, but so often as to leave no room for doubt. V. There is one more circumstance which gives weight to the evidence that He had risen. This relates to THE MANNER IN WHICH HE AT VARIOUS TIMES to His disciples and others, who were associated with Him. The circumstances in which men’ s imaginations are wrought into the belief that they have seen spirits, are very peculiar. Except in cases of disease, they are not infested with these unfounded notions in open day, and in the society of their friends. The regions of the dead, the burial places of our acquaintance, and the scenes of some tragical event, are the favoured retreats of these terrors. But never in the enjoyment of health, in open day, and amongst tried friends, have men been known to be afflicted by these creations of their own minds. Now, it was not in scenes like these that Christ appeared to His disciples. And in most of these circumstances it is utterly impossible for the imaginations of men to form images which they might mistake for living beings. Nothing but a living man could perform the various things which the disciples have attributed to Christ. In conclusion: 1. Christ’ s resurrection must have been a matter of great joy to His disciples. Now, instead of looking forward only to days of shame, and years of disgrace, they began to anticipate glory, and honour, and immortality. 2. The resurrection of Christ establishes the truth of Christianity. 3. The resurrection of Christ is a victory over the power of death. 4. If our resurrection be demonstrably established by the resurrection of Christ, it becomes us to be cautious how we use these bodies in the present life. (J. Foot, D. D.) Lessons 1. In the fact of Christ’ s resurrection we have the great proof of His Divine mission, and a call to submit to Him as our teacher and Lord. 2. Let us improve this event as a demonstration that Christ’ s sacrifice was accepted, and an encouragement to trust in His righteousness for justification. 3. The resurrection of Christ is connected with the observance of the first day of the week as the Christian Sabbath. 4. Let us see that this event has its proper purifying effect on our heart and conduct. We are called to be conformed to the image of Christ in general, and we are particularly called to be conformed to Him in His death and resurrection. 5. The resurrection of Jesus Christ presents the pattern and pledge of the happy and glorious resurrection of all His followers. There will be a resurrection “ both of the just and of the unjust.” 6. The resurrection of Christ should keep us in mind that we shall stand before Him as our judge. (James Foote, M. A.) Angels as remembrancers But now it should be more carefully observed that this reminding the women of what had been said to them by Christ is probably but an example of what continually occurs in the ministration of angels. The great object of our discourse is to illustrate this ministration, to give it something of a tangible character; and we gladly seize on the circumstance of the angels recalling to the minds of the women things which had been heard, because it seems to place under a practical point of view what is too generally considered mere useless speculation. And though we do not indeed look for any precise repetition of the scene given in our text, for angels do not now take visible shapes in order to commune with men, we know not why we should not ascribe to angelic ministration facts accurately similar, if not as palpable, proceeding from supernatural agency. We think that we shall be borne out by the experience of every believer in Christ when we affirm that texts of Scripture are often suddenly and mysteriously brought into the mind, texts which have not perhaps recently engaged our attention, but which are most nicely suited to our circumstances, or which furnish most precisely the material then needed by our wants. There will enter into the spirit of a Christian, on whom has fallen some unexpected temptation, a passage of the Bible which is just as a weapon wherewith to foil his assailant; or, if it be an unlookedfor difficulty into which he is plunged, the occurring verses will be those best adapted for counsel and guidance; or, if it be some fearful trouble with which he is visited, then will there pass through all the chambers of the sou] gracious declarations which the inspired writers will seem to have uttered and registered on purpose for himself. And it may be that the Christian will observe nothing peculiar in this; there may appear to him nothing but an effort of memory, roused and acted on by the circumstances in which he is placed; and he may consider it as natural that suitable passages should throng into his mind, as that he should remember an event at the place where he knows it to have happened. But let him ask himself whether he is not, on the other hand, often conscious of the intrusion into his soul of what is base and defiling? Whether, if he happen to have heard the jeer and the blasphemy, the parody on sacred things, or the insult upon moral, they will not be frequently recurring to his mind? recurring, too, at moments when there is least to provoke them, and when it had been most his endeavour to gather round him an atmosphere of what is sacred and pure. And we never scruple to give it as a matter of consolation to a Christian, harassed by these vile invasions of his soul, that he may justly ascribe them to the agency of the devil; wicked angels inject into the mind the foul and polluting quotation; and there is not necessarily any sin in receiving it, though there must be if we give it entertainment in place of casting it instantly out. But why should we be so ready to go for explanation to the power of memory, and the force of circumstances, when apposite texts occur to the mind, and then resolve into Satanic agency the profanation of the spirit with what is blasphemous and base. It were far more consistent to admit a spiritual influence in the one case as well as in the other; to suppose that, if evil angels syllable to the soul what may have been heard or read of revolting and impure, good angels breathe into its recesses the sacred words, not perhaps recently perused, but which apply most accurately to our existing condition. We do not wish to draw you away, in the least degree, from the truth that “ the eternal uncreated Spirit of God alone, the Holy Ghost, is the author of our sanctification, the infuser into us of the principle of Divine life, and He only is able to overrule our wills, to penetrate the deepest secrets of our hearts, and to rectify our most inward faculties.” But surely it does not infringe the office of the Holy Ghost to suppose, with Bishop Bull, that “ good angels may, and often do, as instruments of the Divine goodness, powerfully operate upon our fancies and imaginations, and thereby prompt us to pious thoughts, affections, and actions.” They were angels, as you will remember, which came and ministered to our Lord after He had been exposed in the wilderness to extraordinary assaults from the devil. He had the Spirit without measure; but, nevertheless, as though to mark to us the agency which this Spirit is often pleased to employ, it was in and through angels that consolation was imparted; even as, in the dread hour of His last conflict with the powers of darkness, “ there appeared an angel unto Him from heaven, strengthening Him.” Not only, therefore, can I regard it as credible that angels stir up our torpid memories and bring truths to our recollection, as they did to the women at the sepulchre of Christ--I can rejoice in it as fraught with consolation, because showing that a created instrumentality is used by the Holy Ghost in the renewing our nature. And surely it may well excite gladness that there is around the Christian the guardianship of heavenly hosts; that, whilst his pathway is thronged by malignant spirits, whose only effort is to involve him in their everlasting shame, it is also thronged by ministers of grace, who long to have him as their companion in the presence of God; for there is thus what we might almost dare to call a visible array of power on our side, and we may take all that confidence which should result from being actually permitted to look on the antagonists, and to see that there are more with us than there are against. But it is hardly possible to read these words of the angels and not to feel how reproachfully they must have fallen on the ears of the women! how they must have upbraided them with want of attention and of faith. For had they but listened heedfully to what Christ had said, and had they but given due credence to His words, they would have come in triumph to welcome the living, in place of mournfully with spices to embalm the dead. But God dealt more graciously with these women than their inattention, or want of faith, had deserved; He caused the words to be brought to their remembrance, whilst they might yet inspire confidence, though they could hardly fail also to excite bitter contrition. (H. Melvill, B. D.) Risen A rising Saviour demands a rising life. For remember, brethren, there are two laws. One law, by which all men gravitate, like a stone, to the earth--another law, equally strong, the law of grace, by which every renewed man is placed under the attractive influence of an ascending power, by which he must be always drawn higher and higher. For just as when a man, lying upon the ground, gets up and stands upright, his upright posture draws up with it all his limbs, so in the mystical body of Jesus Christ, the risen Head necessarily draws up all the mystical members. The process of elevation is one which, beginning at a man’ s conversion to God, goes on day by day, hour by hour, in his tastes, in his judgments, in his affections, in his habits. First it is spiritual, then it is material. Now, in the rising spirit of the man, first he sees higher and higher elevations of being, and gradually fits for the fellowship of the saints and the presence of God. And presently, on that great Easter morning of the resurrection, in his restored body, when it shall wake up, and rise satisfied with its Redeemer’ s likeness, made pure and ethereal enough to soar, and blend and co-operate with the spirit in all its holy and eternal exercises. But what I wish to impress upon you now is, that this series in the ever-ascending scale begins now; that there is, as every believer fee]s, a daily dying, so there is also, as our baptism tells us, a daily resurrection. It is always well to take advantage of particular seasons to do particular proper things. Now to-day the proper thing is to rise, to get up higher. This Easter day ought not to pass without every one of us beginning with some new affection, some new work. (J. Vaughan, M. A.) Luke 24:13-35 Two of them went that same day to a village called Emmaus The journey to Emmaus I. WE SEE IN THIS , AS IN THE OTHERS, VERY OF OUR LORD’ S HABITS AND WAYS DURING HIS , His disciples and followers were always craving for publicity and display. He was always retiring from too much of that, carrying on His work as quietly as possible. And so here. Jesus rises alone--at the break of day. No mortal sees Him put on immortality. Bright angels stand as sentinels while He arrays Himself. It is enough that His disciples see the empty tomb, the grave-clothes, and “ the place where the Lord lay.” II. WE MAY SEE HOW EASILY STILL, IN THAT RISEN LIFE, HE ENTERS INTO WITH MEN; HOW LITTLE HE HAS IN JOINING ANY COMPANY, OR ANY TWO OR THREE WITH WHOM HE WISHES TO BE! III. THIS OF CHRIST IS LIKE A MESSAGE OF AND DIVINE REGARD, TO PLAIN, SIMPLE, MEN--to what we may call common men, who wear no distinction and possess no advantage whatever over their fellows. For who were these two men? No one knows anything about them. In all probability there was not much to know, except that they were disciples, that they loved Him. IV. WE HAVE AN HERE OF THE POWER OF SORROW TO HIM. They walked, and talked, and were sad. And then He drew near and went With them. V. THIS, HOWEVER, WE MUST OBSERVE, THAT IT IS NOT TO EVERY KIND OF TROUBLE AND SADNESS THAT HE GRANTS . Here you see He draws near at once to two sad men. But what are they saying? They are talking of Him “ Why are they sorrowing? They are sorrowing about Him. So our sorrow, if it is to be sanctified and turned into joy, must have Christ in it. VI. THERE IS A SORROW AND A SENT BY CHRIST, OR, AT ANY RATE, HELD BY HIM AROUND HIS PEOPLE. A sorrow kept, as it were, beyond the time when it might naturally be ended, kept for the accomplishment of some purposes of grace which could not be so well attained, perhaps not attained at all, if the darkness were melted away. To take the language of the passage, “ Our eyes are holden that we should not know Him,” even when He is with us. So, oftentimes, our eyes are holden that we should not know Him. Strange things happen to us, and we think not that His hand is upon them all. All the instruction we get in the darkness is from Him; but we do not know that it is from Him directly, and immediately, until the darkness is over. VII. IT IS A BLESSED MOMENT IN LIFE WHEN WE KNOW HIM, COME WHEN, AND HOW, AND WHERE IT MAY--WHEN WE ARE SURE THAT HE IS NEAR! In those moments we are glad of the present, and we look to the future without a fear. VIII. THEY ARE BRIEF, THEY ARE AS THE GLOW OF THE MORNING--NOT SETTLED AS THE OF THE DAY. “ They knew Him and” --what next? A long happy conversation, until the evening wore into the night, and the stars came out on high? A journey into Jerusalem again the next morning, with still more delightful discourse, to meet His surprised and rejoicing disciples there? Not so. “ And their eyes were opened, and they knew Him, and He vanished out of their sight!” Such is the end of all high communion times, of all vision-hours in this life. They are but brief. They can but be brief; there is more work to do, and more sorrow to drink, and more time to travel through; and Jesus in His glory retires, that these things may be done, and that He may come again when need shall be! He comes down to lift us up, to intensify our longings for heaven, to entice us home. And of course He does not stay. He is always coming, and always “ vanishing” out of our sight, that we may the more long for and labour after the place, the glory, the life in which He would have us for ever be. (A. Raleigh, D. D.) The walk to Emmaus I. THE WAY. 1. To these two disciples that was the way of sadness and gloom. 2. The sadness of those two disciples sprang from doubt or unbelief. 3. Though that was the way of sadness and doubt to those two disciples, yet they communed and reasoned together on the best themes. II. THE METHOD OF CHRIST’ S BY THE WAY. “ He talked with us,” “ and opened to us the Scriptures.” The manner was simple, clear, and cogent. Two or three things about Christ’ s method of communing with these disciples are worth a little attention. 1. It was sympathetic. He strikes a chord in their troubled hearts that vibrates at the touch of His matchless sympathy. 2. It was instructive. Seek instruction rather than rapture. 3. This talk by the way was animating. Not only did it relieve their gloom and sadness, it cheered, revived, and filled them with ardent icy, “ for they said one to another, Did not our heart burn within us while He talked with us by the way?” III. THE REST AND THE WHICH AWAITED THE AT THE END OF THE WAY. 1. A triumphant joy. 2. An intelligent faith in Him as the Redeemer of Israel. 3. The disclosure of Christ to those two disciples filled their hearts with confident hope. (J. T. Higgins.) The disclosure at Emmaus I. We note, in the beginning, THE OF A POSTURE OF MIND AKIN TO DOUBT AND . Heavy providences bear us down under them. Sudden, almost inexplicable, depressions settle upon our souls. The devil watches always for these opportunities, and plies us with adroit attack. II. Next, we see here THE VALUE OF AND OF VIEWS. The larger part of our seasons of hypochondria are to be dispersed by a frank conversation with sympathetic friends in relation to the matters of supreme interest to us both. III. THE ACTUAL OF CHRIST ALWAYS, TO THOSE WHO NEED HIM. Would it alarm us, if we suddenly discovered we had been talking with Him in person, instead of some boon companion we had met in our freedom? IV. Then we have a fine lesson concerning THE DIVINE REMEDY FOR ALL DOUBTS AS TO OUR SAVIOUR AND OUR . These bewildered disciples are led directly to the Divine Word (see Luke 24:25-27). V. In the next place, we may note here THE JESUS HAS IN EVERY TRUE WHO IS IN NEED OF HIS HELP. A whole afternoon did our Lord give of those forty days He had left to these disciples who were not known enough even to be described. Lot in life has nothing to do with the estimate which the Saviour forms of His followers. He came with those modest brethren to their destination. VI. We have now a lesson from the story which might give a help to any Christian at the communion table; THE REAL JOY IN EVERY FEAST IS TO HAVE THE LORD JESUS CHRIST TO US. “ Jesus has kept coming again ever since He went away.” VII. A single lesson more remains: we see THAT THE FIRST IMPULSE OF A SOUL, AT HAVING FOUND JESUS, IS TO GO AND TELL OTHERS OF HIS AT THE FEAST (see Luke 24:32-35). These happy disciples could not wait even till morning. The Lord had vanished, but His argument remained; “ while they were musing the fire burned.” Now they began to remember peculiar experiences along the way. Oftentimes a new disclosure of Christ’ s presence turns the believer back upon hours in which he now sees the Holy Spirit was dealing with him; why did he not recognize it sooner? Memories of communions are always precious, if the joy has remained. Life gathers a fresh impulse from the disclosure. We are sure that walk out to Emmaus with Jesus in companionship was wonderfully sweet; but the walk in back again over the same path was not without comfort. Every stone and bush would make them think of Him. (C. S. Robinson, D. D.) Easter Monday I. NOTICE THE BROUGHT TO VIEW. Two men. Devout Jews. Disciples of Jesus. They were in great perplexity and trouble of heart. Their faith had received a blow under which it greatly staggered. They reasoned the case with each other; but reason was too weak an instrument to give them relief. Mere earthly reason, when it comes to matters of faith and salvation, can do very little for us. They were moving through one of the most interesting and beautiful districts. Their way from Jerusalem to Emmaus lay by the tombs of the ancient Judges, by the old dwelling-place of Samuel, and through mountainous scenery as attractive as any in the Holy Land. But no charms of nature, however intermingled with sacred story, could soothe the trouble that was upon their souls. Those scenes of blood and murder which had been enacted at Jerusalem, and the sore disappointment which those scenes had entailed upon their most precious hopes, followed them, and clung to them, in spite of all the pleasant things around them. Nature, in all its loveliness, cannot supply the place of Christ, or give comfort to the soul that has lost Him. Yet the Saviour was with them, all unknown to themselves. In the form of a common traveller, journeying the same way, and after the same manner with themselves, He overtook them, and made one in their little company. There are many ways in which He comes to His people. He comes to them sometimes in the form of a plain gardener, or a servant. He comes sometimes in the form of a fellow-traveller. He comes sometimes in the form of a poor beggar. But, in some shape or other, He is never far from those who are in spiritual earnest, and devoutly struggling for the light. In our earthly way of looking at things, we do not always recognize the presence of our Saviour, and our eyes are holden that we do not know Him. It is the fault of our feeble faith, that we only think of Christ as far away--as hidden in the grave--or in some remote world to which the grave is the mysterious doorway. Hence so much of our trouble and doubtfulness. But it is an erroneous way of thinking of Him. He is not in the grave. He is not far off in some realm which separates Him for ever from all connection with this present world. He is risen. He is not far from every one of us. Wherever two or three are gathered together in His name, there He is. He is in the city, and He is in the country. He is in the garden among the flowers, and He is in the dusty highway. He is in our assemblies for devotion, and He journeys with us in our travels. He is with us, and speaking to us, even when we do not at all suspect that it is He. II. NOTICE HOW THE RISEN JESUS DEALS WITH THESE AND ONES. 1. He “ drew near, and went with them.” It is the will of our gracious Saviour to be near us, and to have us near Him. “ We have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feelings of our infirmities” Hebrews 4:15). When grief and trouble are upon His disciples, He takes it to heart, and is drawn towards them in loving sympathy. But, in addition to their mental troubles, these pilgrims were earnestly engaged with each other, trying to solve and master them. Earnestness of spirit is never unnoticed in heaven. 2. He questioned them as to their troubles and sadness. “ He said unto them, What manner of communications are these that ye have one to another as ye walk? and why are ye sad? It was a call to review the character of their trouble, as the basis for the formation of a better judgment. They had not looked at matters rightly. They had not gone deep enough into the facts for the proper conclusions. The cure for their disturbance was in the very things that disturbed them, if they would only learn to see them in their true aspects and relations. Did Christian people but view their anxieties aright, they would find in them cause for joy rather than discomfiture. Desponding soul, Jesus asks thee, Why art thou sad? Canst thou give Him a reason for thy disheartenment at what has happened? Review thy ground, and come to a better mind. 3. Having drawn out their story, He directed them to the Bible. After all, there is nothing that can so settle, satisfy, and comfort our troubled hearts and anxious doubts, as the records of the holy prophets. There the portrait of the Christ is fully drawn, and all that concerneth Him is amply disclosed. From them these disciples might have fortified themselves against all such sorrowful perplexities over their Master’ s death. The very first promise that was made of Him, told of a suffering as well as a triumphing Saviour. He was to be bruised, as well as to bruise. All the appointments of the law pointed to death and bloodshedding as the only possible way of remission of sins or recovery from condemnation. Precious indeed are these blessed Scriptures. Herein is light which giveth understanding to the simple, and which maketh wise unto salvation. Herein is balm for the troubled heart more than Gilead can furnish. Are we shaken in faith, and disturbed in our hopes? Jesus directs us to the Bible. 4. And having set them right in their reading of the Scriptures, the Saviour yielded to their entreaties, entered with them into their home, and made Himself known to them in the breaking of bread. Those who love the truth will be kindly disposed toward those who teach it; and those who admit Christ into their hearts will be anxious also to have Him abide in their homes. And those who in grateful consideration of His kindness receive Him into their houses, though they should not yet know with whom they are dealing, will soon have Him disclosed to them in all the certainties of an unmistakable faith. (J. A. Seiss, D. D.) The walk to Emmaus I. THE SORROWS AND DOUBTS OF THE TWO . II. THE SORROWS AND DOUBTS OF THE ARE MET BY A DIVINE . 1. He first rebukes their spiritual ignorance and unwillingness to believe. 2. They were, without being aware of it, mourning over the very things which formed Christ’ s peculiar glory and their own redemption. 3. To show this, He began at Moses, and explained in regular succession what the prophets had foretold concerning Himself. III. THE SORROWS AND DOUBTS OF THE WERE LOST IN THE SUPREME JOY OF THE RISEN JESUS FULLY . Lessons: 1. This narrative is an irrefragable proof of the reality of our Lord’ s resurrection. He was not an apparition nor a subjective vision. 2. God is ever near us, if we only had the spiritual vision to discern His presence. 3. To talk of Jesus and the things of the kingdom, is wise. At such seasons He draws near, and by His Spirit communes with us until our hearts burn with new hopes, and our eyes are filled with a revelation of His presence. 4. The Old Testament prophecies, inclusive of everything relating to Christ’ s Church, are, according to His own showing, an integral part of the Scriptures. 5. Failure to believe the Scriptures was the cause of the disciples’ blindness and sorrows. 6. How precious is a Christian’ s company. (T. S. Doolittle, D. D.) The walk to Emmaus I. TWO . 1. They were on a journey. So are we all. 2. They were in earnest conversation. (1) To converse is natural. (2) Our conversation should be wise, spiritual, helpful. 3. They were full of sadness. (1) Their sadness was natural. (a) Bright hopes were blasted. (b) ,an awful tragedy had been enacted. (2) But their sadness was sinful. (a) Because it arose from their unbelief in the testimony of the prophets. (b) Because it arose from their unbelief in the testimony of Christ Himself. (c) Yet how common is such unbelief among Christians? II. CHRIST IN HIS . 1. As ever near His sorrowing disciples. 2. As ever entering into their experience. 3. As rebuking their unbelief. 4. As the opener up of the Scriptures. (1) Christ ever honours the Scriptures. (2) Christ ever testifies to the genuineness and inspiration of the Scriptures. (3) Christ ever teaches that tie Himself is the central subject of the Scriptures. 5. As unexpectedly revealing Himself, (1) While their hearts were full of doubts, “ their eyes were holden that they should not know Him.” (2) The expounding of the Scripture restored them to a believing condition. (3) Their quickened faith resulted in hearts that burned. (4) Hearts that burn alone can see Jesus to know Him. (D. C. Hughes, M. A.) The walk to Emmaus I. THIS WALK TO EMMAUS THE STRANGE OF AND FAITH IN THE SAME BREAST. 1. The fact of their unbelief. 2. The unreasonableness of their unbelief. 3. The reality of their faith. II. THIS WALK TO EMMAUS THE LORD’ S IN HIS BUT . III. THIS WALK TO EMMAUS THE OF THE TRUE , THOUGH . 1. He is ever interested in those who unfold the Scriptures. 2. He is ever open to conviction. 3. His heart is ever stirred by the truth. 4. When he learns the truth, he is ever anxious to proclaim it to others. Lessons: 1. We learn that unbelief arises from the heart, and is an evidence of unwisdom. 2. That unbelief not only brings trouble to the heart, but blindness to the mind. 3. That perplexities are not solved by reasoning, but by the study of God’ s Word. 4. If our Lord and His apostles found in Moses and the prophets evidences of His Messiahship, why may not we? (D. C. Hughes, M. A.) The journey to Emmaus After He has comforted the weeping, disconsolate Magdalene, and graciously restored the fallen Peter, He hastens to lay hold of those sad wanderers who have ignorantly turned away from where they might have found light and consolation. The first word He addressed to them, after He had drawn out their thoughts and feelings by two questions which He needed not to ask, but which it was well they should answer, was a word of rebuke--“ O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken.” Thus do chiding and reproof oftentimes precede the most gracious manifestations. Our faults must be corrected before any real and lasting comfort can be administered. To remove all discomfort and distress, without touching the evil state of mind from which they spring, would be like relieving the patient’ s pain at the expense of aggravating his disease; it would be to countenance and encourage us in the wrong thoughts and feelings which it behoves us to abandon. Not thus does the Great Physician deal with the souls whom He loves. Injudicious earthly teachers may try to minister relief to distempered minds, by simply soothing their sorrows without correcting their faults, making them believe that all their troubles spring from something without themselves which will shortly be put right, instead of leading them to look within that they may correct what is wrong there; pleasing them with flattery when they should first pain them by rebuke; and thus, for the sake of yielding them a little momentary pleasure, inflicting on them a permanent injury. Not so the Saviour. How prone we are all to close our eyes to the things which we dislike--to believe only in those we like! The disciples were ready enough to listen to what seemed to justify their hopes of a coming kingdom: when He spoke of His sufferings they were equally ready to say, “ Be it far from Thee, Lord.” Whatever we may think of the manner in which the Old Testament writers were inspired--a question on which bold theorising is but a bold mistake, the conduct of our Lord on this occasion places the fact of their inspiration beyond all dispute among those who recognize His authority. “ Abide with us,” they said, “ for it is towards evening, and the day is far spent.” The reason of this request was the fascination of His speech--the effect it had produced on them in dispelling their doubts, reviving their drooping hopes, and quickening their languid affections. Such is the invariable consequence of converse with the Saviour. Such experience naturally awakens the desire that the fellowship may be prolonged. From souls who thus earnestly seek Him the Saviour will not withhold His gracious presence. “ He went in to tarry with” these disciples, and “ sat at meat with them” ; thus condescending not only to become their guest, but to place Himself so much on an equality with them, as to sit at the same table and partake of the same meal. Be this as it may, this portion of the narrative is beautifully representative of what often takes place in the experience of believers. Where the Saviour’ s presence is earnestly desired and prayed for, He not only grants the request, but enters into more intimate fellowship with the longing soul. But delightful as fellowship with Christ is to the truly Christian soul, the passage may very well remind us that there is something for us to do besides gratifying our desire, even for the highest spiritual enjoyment. Peter, on the Mount of Transfiguration, though he said, “ It is good for us to be here,” was not permitted to build tabernacles as he desired, because at the foot of the mountain there were distresses to be relieved. The two disciples, though they would fain prolong their interview with the Lord, must, just when their gratification is at the highest, be deprived of His presence, and return to Jerusalem to share their joy with others. And so we, sometimes, when we might greatly prefer quiet meditation and devotion to active service, must nevertheless, because the world needs our ministrations, go forth from communion with our Master to do the Master’ s work. I cannot conclude without calling attention to that which appears so conspicuously throughout the whole of the narrative--the marvellous condescension of our Lord. These are but weak disciples when He finds them--foolish, slow of heart to understand the Scriptures--their faith much clouded, though it does not relinquish its hold of Him. And how He condescends to their weakness, suits His instruction to their case, gradually leads them to a full preception of the truth and apprehension of Himself. Tenderly He deals with them, not breaking the bruised reed, nor quenching the smoking flax; but gathering the lambs in His arms, and carrying them in His bosom. (W. Landels.) Communion with Christ I. THIS SHOWS WHAT LIFE WOULD BE WITHOUT CHRIST. 1. When we fail to discern the presence of Christ our hearts are overwhelmed with grief. 2. When we fail to discern the presence of Christ our minds are clouded with doubt. II. THIS SHOWS WHAT LIFE MAY BE WITH CHRIST. 1. We should never forget that Christ is near to His disciples in all their sorrow. 2. We should never forget that Christ instructs His disciples in all their sorrows. III. THIS SHOWS WHAT LIFE SHOULD BE FOR CHRIST. 1. What did these men do? “ They rose up the same hour, and returned to Jerusalem.” It was night, and the distance considerable, but they went immediately to proclaim the Saviour’ s resurrection. If we have any word to speak, or any work to do for Christ, let us do it at once; for time is short, and life is uncertain. 2. What did these men find? “ And found the eleven gathered together.” Men are drawn together by common sympathies and common beliefs. Why were they together? For counsel and prayer. Why together at midnight? For secrecy and security. Seasons of personal danger should be seasons of united communion with God. 3. What did these men hear? “ The Lord hath risen indeed.” What joyful tidings these must have been! They not only heard of Christ’ s resurrection from others, but they had seen Him themselves. This is love’ s reward. The givers were receivers. Thus experience answers experience in the Divine life. 4. What did these men say? “ Told what things were done in the way,” etc. Personal testimony to the fact of Christ’ s resurrection. If Christ has appeared to you, rise up at once, and acknowledge Him before His people. It will cheer them, and confirm you. (J. T. Woodhouse.) The absent Lord appears I. THOUGH JESUS BE ABSENT, HIS MAKE HIM THEIR THEME. II. THE ABSENT JESUS COMES NEAR WHILE HIS TALE OF HIM. Blessed sequel to their saintly converse. And so it is to-day. “ Where two or three,” etc. It was a tender superstition which our fathers held--that to speak much of the absent or the dead brings them near. And the beautiful fiction becomes blessed fact, when we refer it to Jesus. He is the true Mentor whom Homer ignorantly celebrated. We have but to think of Jesus, talk of Jesus, wish for Jesus--and He is by our side. (A. A. Ramsey.) Jesus near, but unrecognized I. We shall note, first, REASONS WHY, IN THE VERY OF THEIR MASTER, SAINTS MAY NOT KNOW THAT HE IS NEAR. The first reason, then, why these good men did not perceive the presence of their Master was that “ their eyes were holden.” There was a blinding cause in them. What was it? 1. By some mysterious operation, their eyes, which were able to see other things, were not able to detect the presence of their Master, but they thought Him to be some common traveller. Still we are permitted to say that in their case, and in the case of a great many disciples, eyes have been holden through sorrow. 2. Again, in their case, in addition to the mysterious operation which held their eyes, which we do not attempt to account for, we have no doubt their eyes were holden with unbelief. Had they been expecting to see Jesus, methinks they would have recognized Him. 3. Whatever may have been mysterious about the holding of the disciples’ eyes, they were also somewhat holden by ignorance. They had failed to see what is plain enough in Scripture, that the Messiah must suffer, bleed, and die. At other times they may not see Him, because of something in the Master. Mark, as I have told you, says He appeared unto them “ in another form.” I suppose he means in a form in which they had not seen Him before. Perhaps you have only seen Jesus as your joy and consolation; under that aspect may you always see Him, but, remember, “ He shall sit as a refiner; He shall purify the sons of Levi.” When you are in the furnace, suffering affliction and trial and depression of spirit, the refiner is Christ, the same loving Christ in a new character. Hitherto you have seen Christ as breaking the bread of life to you, and giving you to drink of the water of life, but you must yet learn that His fan is in His hand, and He will throughly purge the floor of your heart. He is not another Christ, but He puts on another aspect, and exercises another office. II. Secondly, let us speak of THE MANNERS OF THE SAINTS WHEN THEY ARE IN SUCH A CASE. When their Master is with them and they do not know Him, how do they conduct themselves? First, they are sad; because the presence of Christ, if Christ be unknown, is not comfortable, though it may be edifying. It may be for rebuke, as it was to them; but it certainly is not for consolation. For joy we must have a known Christ. Next, these disciples, though they did not know that their Master was there, conversed together--a good example for all Christians. Whether you are in the full joy of your faith or not, speak often one to another. He who is strong will help the weak brother; if two walk together, if one shall trip perhaps the other will not, and so he will have a hand to spare to support his friend. Even if both saints are unhappy, yet some good result will come from mutual sympathy. Note, again, that though they did not know their Master was there, yet they avowed their hopes concerning Him. I cannot commend all that they said, there was not much faith in it, but they did confess that they were followers of Jesus of Nazareth. “ We trusted that it had been He which should deliver Israel. And, besides all this, to-day is the third day.” And they went on to let out the secret that they belonged to His disciples. “ Certain women of our company made us astonished.” They were under a cloud and sad, but they were not so cowardly as to disown their connection with the Crucified. They still avowed their hope. And oh, beloved, when your comforts are at the lowest ebb, still cling to your Master. But, passing on--these poor people, though very sad, and without their Master as they thought, were very willing to bear rebukes. Although the word used by our Lord should not be rendered “ fools,” yet it sounds somewhat bard even to call them inconsiderate and thoughtless: but we do not discover any resentment on their part because they were so severely chided. Souls that really love Jesus do not grow angry when faithfully rebuked. And then, they were willing to learn. Never better pupils, never a better Teacher, never a better school book, never a better explanation. Again, notice that while the two were willing to learn, they also wished to retain the Teacher and His instruction, and to treat Him kindly too. They said, “ Abide with us; the day is far spent.” They had been benefited by Him, and therefore they wished to show their gratitude to Him. Have you learned so much that you are willing to learn more? And, once more, though they did not know that their Master was with them, they were well prepared to join in worship. Some have thought that the breaking of bread that night was only Christ’ s ordinary way of offering a blessing before meat; it does not seem so to me, because they had already eaten and were in the middle of the meal when He took the bread and blessed it. III. Lastly, let us try to set forth THE ACTIONS OF WHEN THEY THEIR LORD. “ Their eyes were opened, and they knew Him.” What then? Well, first, they discovered that there had been all along in their hearts evidences of His presence. “ Did not our hearts burn within us while He spake with us by the way?” This heavenly heartburn never comes to any but through the presence of the Lord Jesus. The next thing they did was to compare notes. The one said to the other, “ Did not our hearts burn within us?” It is always a good thing for believers to communicate their returning enjoyment. Somehow we are rather chary as to speaking of our joys. Ought we to be so? Once again. These disciples, when they saw the Master, hastened to tell others about it. I notice that while they told of their Lord’ s appearing, they made mention of the ordinance which had been blest to them, for they especially said that He had been known to them in the breaking of bread. I like to see them mention that, for, though ordinances are nothing in themselves, and are not to be depended upon, they are blest to us. (C. H. Spurgeon.) Present, but unknown I. THE TIME WHEN THE WALK . 1. On the first of the forty days between resurrection and ascension. 2. Probably the longest period of intercourse with disciples between resurrection and ascension. II. THE NEW METHODS ADOPTED BY OUR LORD TO OPERATE ON THE MINDS ON THESE TWO MEN. He makes them first define their grief, and then state their belief. Here are two of the most instructive lessons in the Scriptures of the human soul as well as the Holy Scriptures. The first lesson is: measure your sorrow, see its nature and extent, and know exactly its bearings on your happiness. The second is: if you are in doubt and apprehensions, if you are tempted to distrust God and Christ, if scepticism or the worst horror of infidelity threaten your heart, go back to what you do assuredly believe. Find honest footing for yourselves. Rest on the great fundamentals that lie imbedded in the instincts, the granite substratum of nature and the basis of all real characters. Let us learn from the walk toward Emmaus what Christ expects of us in hours of darkness and dismay, and then we may hope that, when we get to Emmaus, He will reveal His glory. (A. A. Lipscomb, LL. D.) Jesus drawing near “ He drew very near,” solemnly uttered a youthful believer within a few hours of death. “ Who drew near?” anxiously inquired a friend who was present, fearful to hear her pronounce the word “ death.” “ Jesus,” she replied, with an unutterable earnestness of expression. “ I felt just now as if He stood close beside me.” Soon after she was asked by her sister if she would like her to pray with her. She gladly assented. But while she prayed the countenance of the dying one changed, the expression of supplication was succeeded by one of adoring contemplation--it would have been rapture but for its perfect calm. A kind of glow suffused her features, then faded gradually away, and before that prayer was ended she was gone. Her “ amen,” to it was her first hallelujah in heaven. Jesus had “ come again” and received her unto Himself. (Clerical Library.) Emmaus I. CHRIST HIMSELF THE THEME OF HIS ’ . II. CHRIST HIMSELF THE OF HIS OWN . III. CHRIST HIMSELF THE GUEST OF HIS OWN . IV. CHRIST HIMSELF THE OF HIS OWN . Practical lessons: 1. There is no teacher like Christ. 2. There is no friend like Christ. (J. R. Thomson.) The walk to Emmaus It may be asked, Why should not our Lord have declared Himself at once to these burdened friends? Why not with one word have assured them, as He did faithful Mary in the garden? The answer is suggestive. In them the stupendous miracle of the resurrection was to be established, not by one appearance, but by many; not by evidence of one kind, but of all kinds. Each fresh proof of the fact was to be a separate link in a chain of proofs, on which ages to come might hang their faith. The particular link to be wrought and welded on the road to Emmaus was the complete identity of the slain Jesus of Nazareth with the Messiah of Moses and Daniel, of David, Isaiah, and Malachi. Had He too soon revealed His personality to these oppressed disciples, they would have been unfitted, by their great joy, to receive this lesson and to witness its truth. But now they take it in eagerly. Their ears thirst for knowledge. Such was the sacred drama of the Emmaus road, and from the whole story we may instruct and comfort ourselves in several ways: 1. It is good for disciples to be together. Every appearance of the Lord immediately after His resurrection, save one, was made to disciples in groups. 2. The Lord may be much nearer to doubting disciples than they dream. 3. The source of much modern doubt about Christ is ignorance of the Scriptures as a whole. The real cure of doubt, therefore, lies in a more comprehensive study of the Word of God, and the only study that can be a perfect cure is that which shall “ begin with Moses,” and end with the Apocalypse. (J. B. Clark.) The hidden Christ No more picturesque and beautiful scene is depicted in the life of Christ, than this walk, after His resurrection, out to Emmaus. The innocent unconsciousness of the disciples pleases us like a scene in a drama. That trait, too, in the Lord, which led Him to keep in disguise, is peculiarly interesting. It interprets much of the Divine nature. One would have looked, according to the ordinary ideas of the Divine mind, and of its methods, for an open and prompt disclosure of Himself. But no. It was pleasant to Him, for some reason, to be with His disciples, to love them, to perceive their embarrassments, to instruct them, without letting them know that He was there. It was not deception. It was only a permitting them to have their own notions of Him undisturbed, while He exercised the full mission of love. This cannot be an unintended disclosure of the Divine nature. I will not call it mystic; and still less will I call it secretive; but there is a love of non-disclosure of personality during the operation of merciful grace, which has illustration in various other parts of the Gospel. One cannot but see that the Lord carried Himself to them just as in nature Divine providence is always carrying itself. Mercies move with wide-spread benefaction; set without interpreting themselves. Nature is blessing without saying, “ I bless.” Messages are coming through the air, and through Divine providence, from God; and yet, they do not say “ God.” God is present in a silent way always. A certain hidden element, or hiding element, there is in the Divine mind, God’ s blessings steal into life noiselessly. They are neither self-proclaiming, nor even self-announcing. I. THE LORD’ S IN WAYS IN THE DAILY WANTS OF HIS PEOPLE. He is to be found wherever the soul is ready to receive Him. In some tender moment, amidst cares and toils and sorrows, often there starts up the thought of the Divine presence with such majesty and beauty as a thousand sabbaths could not shadow forth in the ordinary experience of Christians. Though they did not see the Saviour, yet they saw His messengers--His blessed angels. Travellers over wide spaces that are unpopulous, hide their food in what are called caches, that, returning, they may have it at fit and appropriate points for their necessities. God fills the world with these spots of hidden food; and we meet Him and His mercies not alone in appointed places, in houses of entertainment, but in the wilderness--everywhere. Christ may be found at the well, if you come there to draw. Christ may be found at the receipt of custom, where Matthew found Him. Christ may be found behind the bier, where the widow found Him. Christ may be found on the sea, where the disciples found Him when they were fishing. He is moving with world-filling presence everywhere. But notably we may mention that Hod comes to His people in an undisclosed and unrecognized form in the hours of their despondency, as in the text. Or, to put it in other words, that which seems to us to be a cloud and darkness, is, after all, but the garment in the midst of which Christ is walking. All right occupations likewise, all duties, all daily fidelities, bring along with them a Divine presence. We are never alone. We are never doing things that are merely secular, if we know how to make them Divine. The most menial callings, routine occupations, things not agreeable in themselves, but necessary, and things of duty, all of them have or may have with them a Christ. II. THE FULL OF THE SOUL IN GOD’ S AND WHEN THE GIFT IS AWAY. “ Man never is, but always to be blessed,” has become a motto. Our joys are seldom with us. They are either remembered or they are anticipated. When we come where they are, how few of us there are that are soundly happy; how few there are that are full of joy and know it. How few there are that have a power in them of blessing, in any hour or in any day, or, still less, series of days! How few there are that can pluck from fortune, or from providence, or from Divine grace itself, fruits that shall be sweet to the taste while they are walking along the road of life! It is trite, that, “ Men do not know how to value health till they lose it.” It is the same with wealth. It is so of youth and age. For we take our measures as little children take snowflakes’ to examine them, and they are gone. They dissolve in the looking at them. Especially is this true of moral things--of moral treasures. Hours of religious peace, hours of spiritual delight, never seem so precious to us, hours of religious duty are never so dear to us, while we have them; and they are as it were, in their ministration, as when they are gone. In our religious life we are finding fault with our fare. In like manner is it in respect to our privileges in being workers together with God. While we have the privileges, how little we esteem them! and how much, often, we reluctate and begrudge both time and strength! Now it is an exceeding privilege for any one to be a worker together with Christ in the work of the Lord in this world. And so is it with the sanctuary. So is it with the blessings of the soul itself. Our inward thoughts, our inward strifes and resolutions, our very tears, our prayers, all that sacred history of the soul that is inherited upon earth, but is more heroic and more wonderful than the history of the battle-field or the history of empires--that lore unexpressed, that literature of eternity, the soul’ s inward life--at the time how little is there to us in it! how little of Christ! Ah! what a pity, my Christian brethren, it is that Christ should vanish out of sight just at the moment when He discloses Himself! What a pity it is that just as our mercies are going beyond our reach, they should for the first time seem to be mercies! In view of these simple remarks, may you not derive a motive for the better use of the present in all the relations of your life than you have been accustomed to? And ought we not, bearing this in mind, to make more of one another; more of our children; more of our parents; more of our brothers and sisters; more of our neighbours; more of the Church; more of the Bible-class; more of the Sabbath-school; more of all works by which we cleanse the morals of men, and raise up the ignorant, and prosper those that are unfortunate? May not life be filled fuller of blessings, if only we know how to redeem the time, and appreciate the opportunity to perceive the God that is near us? (H. W. Beecher.) The walk to Emmaus I. And, first--the first truth taught us by narrative--see here the importance of searching and understanding the Scriptures, and how a neglected or perverted Bible will bring sin and sorrow into the soul. II. As these two disciples pursue their melancholy journey--the deepening shadows of evening a feeble type of the gloom gathering on their souls--we have seen a third join them. LET US NOW TURN OUR TO THIS . His fellow-travellers knew Him not, but we know Him. I have said that we know not the name of one of these disciples. But the name of this wayfaring man we know. He is “ The Wonderful.” Wonderful was He in the glory which He had with the Father before the world was. Wonderful was He in His deep humiliation. But He is, above all, wonderful now, as He stands upon the earth, a mighty conqueror returned from His expedition into the territories of the King of Terrors--having “ by death destroyed death,” and become the resurrection and the life. He might have entered the city in regal pomp and equipage, with a retinue of angelic legions; but He prefers to enter these desolate hearts, and to awaken festive joy and triumphal acclamations there. What I desire to mark in the conduct of the Redeemer is the manner in which He makes himself known to these two disciples. For observe, my brethren, in the first place, that He does not at once reveal Himself to them; and why not? For reasons most obvious. They had, as yet, no idea of the atonement. When He foretold His crucifixion, declaring that it was necessary, Peter was indignant, and said, “ Be it far from Thee, Lord, this shall not be unto Thee.” Had He not instructed them before showing Himself, they would have been wholly unprepared rightly to welcome Him; they would, perhaps, like the apostles, have been “ terrified and affrighted, supposing they had seen a spirit.” It is certain they could not have been filled with the intelligent joy which sprang up in their souls when He was made known to them. In the next place, see how He prepares them for the manifestation He is about to make. It is by opening the Scriptures to them. He will not let their faith rest on the testimony of men or of angels. Convincing as was the vision on Mount Tabor, Peter, who was there and beheld the glorified Jesus, says, “ We have a more sure word of prophecy, whereunto ye do well that ye take heed.” And it is to this sure word that Jesus turns the minds of these disciples. He magnifies “ His word above all His name.” He teaches them that faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God. III. WHAT IS THE EFFECT OF THIS UPON THESE TWO ? Their souls are first consoled, then warmed, then heated. While Jesus is speaking the fire kindles; His words fall upon train after train of memory and hope and love, until everything is in a glow, and their hearts are burning within them. A burning heart! what a noble expression; there is something contagious in the very words; we cannot utter them without feeling a sacred ardour in our own hearts. Do you ask me what emotions burned in the hearts of these disciples? I answer, first, love. In the whole account of the Saviour’ s resurrection, we see the difference between the nature of women and of men. The former are less suspicious, more prompt, unhesitating, unquestioning in their confidence; and more true in their affection. Hence Jesus appeared first to women. It is to love that Jesus hastens to manifest Himself, and during the three days between the Saviour’ s crucifixion and resurrection it was only in the hearts of women that love would know no abatement. These disciples, however, had never ceased to love. To me the very ground of their unbelief is a tender proof of their affection. “ Him they saw not” --had they but seen Him; they saw a vision of angels, but saw ye Him whom our souls love? No, “ Him they saw not” ; and what if they saw thousands of angels, what if all the angels of heaven should appear, they cannot console us for our bereavement. They still loved, but their hearts bad been crushed by such a blow. The fire was almost extinguished; it is now fanned; the dying embers begin to glow, the smoking flax blazes up. They know not the stranger, but He speaks to them of One dearer to them than life; how much sweeter the memory of Him than the presence of all besides! Do you ask me what emotions burned in the hearts of these disciples? I answer, joy. “ The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple; the statutes of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart.” There is vouchsafed to them now a foretaste of the Pentecostal fire. Their hearts burn within them, burn with joy. In a word, and not to dwell too long upon this topic, the hearts of these disciples burned, not only with love and joy, but with the strangest, sweetest surprise. Their astonishment and rapture must have been overpowering an hour later, when “ their eyes were opened and they knew Him, and He vanished out of their sight.” What a moment that! What ages crowded into that moment! IV. In finishing this discourse, LET US EXTRACT FROM THIS HISTORY TWO LESSONS, and let the first be, The duty of living by faith, not by sight. When we open the sacred Volume we find that to faith nothing is impossible; but where is this omnipotent grace? Yet this entire narrative--the Saviour’ s rebuke of these disciples--the manner in which He instructs them--His sudden vanishing--all teaches us that it is not by the senses, but by faith in revealed truth that we are to walk. He appears to convince them of His resurrection, and to assure them of His constant care and faithfulness. He disappears, to teach that, though they have known Him after the flesh, henceforth they are only to know Him and commune with Him spiritually. Another lesson. Let us seek burning hearts. Faith is a great word; but there is a greater, more imperial word, it is Love. The life of love is a truer, higher life than that of faith; its strength failed not amidst all the unbelief of these disciples; and it will be perpetuated and perfected in heaven, when faith shall cease for ever. Let us seek burning hearts. Intellect is good, and imagination is good; but a heart on fire, a heart inflamed with love, is best of all. (R. Fuller, D. D.) What manner of communications are these?--Easter consolations The Lord’ s question was the language, not of reproof, but of sympathy. Something like reproof came later on: but as yet He can think only of their sadness. Their sadness was written, so the original word implies, in their countenances: but He, of course, saw deeper. And whether the allusion to the sadness formed part of His question, or belongs, as is probable, to the evangelist’ s description, does not really matter: the drift of the early part of His question was plain enough. I. WHAT WAS AT THE BOTTOM OF THE SADNESS OF THE TWO ? 1. It was, first of all, the sadness of a bereavement. They had been with Jesus, we know not how long; they had seen and heard Him: He had conquered a great place in their hearts. They had seen Him arrested, insulted, crucified, dead, buried. So far their sadness was that of the Magdalene, when she asked the supposed gardener where they had laid the sacred body. We most of us know something of the heartache of a great bereavement. 2. But, then, secondly, the sadness of the disciples was also caused by mental perplexity. Here, as elsewhere in the Gospels, we see the different bearing of men and women in the hour of sorrow. A woman is most distressed when her heart has lost its accustomed object. A man is by no means insensible to this source of sorrow; but he commonly feels a distress, which a woman does not feel, at least equally, when his intelligence, his sense of truth, is perplexed. 3. Once more, theirs was the sadness of a forfeited object in life, of a shattered career. They had, as they thought, given themselves to Jesus, to His cause and work, for good and all. They had embarked all the energy and resolve of life in that service, in that companionship, so full, as it seemed, of coming blessing and triumph: when lo! as it appeared, all had collapsed. II. IN OUR MODERN WORLD ARE TO BE SEEN, NOT SELDOM, OF CHRIST IN NAME, AND , WHO ARE LEAVING , AS IF ON THE POINT OF GIVING HIM UP. And He, as of old, joins them in “ another form,” so that their eyes are holden, and they do not know Him. He comes to them in His Church, which is in their eyes only a human institution; or in His Scriptures, which seem to them but a human literature; or in His Sacraments, in which they can discern nothing more than outward ceremonies. Yet He has a question to put to them, and a word of comfort to address to them, if they will but listen. For they are sad; sad for nearly the same reasons as were the two disciples on the Emmaus road. 1. First of all, there is the sadness of mental perplexity. The understanding has its fashions as well as the heart; its fashions of distress as well as its fashions of enjoyment. In our day, many men, who have not wholly renounced the name of Christ, are oppressed by what they call, not unreasonably, the mystery of existence. They see around them a world of nature, and a human world too. Each in a thousand ways creates perplexity and disappointment. Whence comes the natural world? If we lose sight of what faith teaches as to the creation of all things out of nothing by God, all is at once wrapped in darkness. Our risen Lord offers us the true solution. 2. Next, there is the sadness of the conscience. Where distinct acts of wrong-doing are not constantly and vividly present to the memory, there is a moral cloud brooding over the soul, from whose shadow escape is rarely possible. Our risen Lord reveals Himself to those who are weighed down by sin, as pardoning and blotting it out. He bare our sins in His own body on the tree; and it is the blood of Jesus Christ which cleanses us from all sin. But what is it that gives His death this power? It is that the worth and merits of His Person are incalculable, since He is the everlasting Son of God. And what is the proof of this which He Himself offered to His disciples and to the world? It is His resurrection from the dead. 3. Thirdly, there is that sadness of the soul which arises from the want of an object in life; an object to be grasped by the affections, to be aimed at by the will. This is a kind of melancholy which is common enough among persons who have all the advantages which money and position can secure: they do not know what to do with themselves. They devote themselves to expedients for diminishing the lassitude of existence; they apply first to this excitement, then to that: they spend their lives in trying to “ kill time.” What a disclosure of the hopeless misuse of life lies in that expression, “ killing time” ! To persons who are thus living without an object, Christ our Lord appears, once it may be at least; to teach them that there is something worth living for; the known will of the eternal God. (Canon Liddon.) Our Lord’ s question 1. This inquiry may be regarded as an instance of our Lord’ s tenderness and compassion towards His disciples. 2. Our Lord’ s question was an indication of His authority. He speaks not on]y as a friend, but as their Lord and Saviour. 3. The question might be proposed in order to teach both them and others the propriety of frequently putting a similar inquiry to themselves. 1. Is the general tenor of our conversation light and indifferent, or is it serious and edifying? 2. Does our conversation never border upon profaneness, even while it is free from the grosser expressions of it? 3. Is our conversation seasoned with salt, so as to minister edification to the hearers? 4. Are we careful as to the manner of our conversation, as well as to the matter of it; to see that the spirit of it corresponds with the subject of discourse? As spiritual things can only be spiritually discerned, so they can be communicated only by such as are spiritually minded. When our tongues are fluent, are our hearts warm and lively? In order that our conversation may be as becometh the gospel of Christ, let us observe the following directions: 1. Get a good treasure in your hearts, and let them be well stored with Divine truth; for it is out of this that the good householder bringeth forth good things. If the truth dwell in us richly in all wisdom, it will be like a well of water, springing up unto everlasting life. 2. Meditate much upon Divine subjects. “ Whilst I was musing,” says David, “ the fire burned.” What God communicates to us by our thoughts, we shall be ready to communicate to others in our words. 3. Seek Divine direction, and say with the Psalmist, “ Open Thou my lips, and my mouth shall show forth Thy praise.” If we were as full of matter as Elihu, yet what we utter would not tend to the glory of God, unless we are under the influence of His Holy Spirit (Psalms 51:15; Ephesians 5:18-19). 4. Carefully avoid whatever might prove an impediment to spiritual and edifying conversation. Shun carnal company, disregard the reproaches of ignorant and wicked men, and seek the society of experimental Christians. “ He that walketh with wise men shall be wise; but a companion of fools shall be destroyed” (Proverbs 13:20; Hosea 14:9). (B. Beddome, M. A.) A wise method of dealing with mourners Observe that, when the Saviour did come to these mourning ones, He acted very wisely towards them. He did not at once begin by saying, “ I know why you are sad.” No; He waited for them to speak, and in His patience drew forth from them the items and particulars of their trouble. You that deal with mourners, learn hence the way of wisdom. Do not talk too much yourselves. Let the swelling heart relieve itself. Jeremiah derives a measure of help from his own lamentations; even Job feels a little the better from pouring out his complaint. Those griefs which are silent run very deep, and drown the soul in misery. It is good to let sorrow have a tongue where sympathy hath an ear. Allow those who are seeking the Lord to tell you their difficulties: do not discourse much with them till they have done so. You will be the better able to deal with them, and they will be the better prepared to receive your words of cheer. Often, by facing the disease of sorrow the cure is half effected; for many doubts and fears vanish when described. Mystery gives a tooth to misery, and when that mystery is extracted by a clear description, the sharpness of the woe is over. Learn, then, ye who would be comforters, to let mourners hold forth their wound before you pour in the oil and wine. (C. H.Spurgeon.) Sad hearts Samuel Rutherford used to say, “ I wonder many times that ever a child of God should have a sad heart, considering what the Lord is preparing for him.” “ When we shall come home, and enter into the possession of our Brother’ s fair kingdom, and when our heads shall find the weight of the eternal crown of glory, and when we shall look back to pains and suffering, then shall we see life and sorrow to be less than one step or stride from a prison to glory, and that our little inch of time-suffering is not worthy of our first night’ s welcome home to heaven.” What things?--Faith and fact We naturally inquire, why did He ask this question? Not for His own sake, certainly. He not only knew, but was Himself the very subject of the narrative which He would obtain from their lips. “ What things?” He asks. I. Notice, first of all, the important circumstance that HE CALLS THEIR TO FACTS. It is an important circumstance. In the world, fact is our master; the truth is, after all, that which we need, and which controls us. No alchemy of logic, no splendour of fancy, can dissolve this. A man may live in an ideal world while he dreams, but waking brings him to solid earth, and to the slow and real steps of daily life. The ultimate question for us, with reference to everything that demands our allegiance or assent, is this: Is it fact? Christianity must submit to this test, as all other things. Men fancy that it does not meet the requirement. The impression is widely prevalent. We may not stop to enumerate all the circumstances that lead to this impression, and yet a few may be referred to. First of all, those circumstances that have existed in connection with widely-spread revivals of religion have impressed upon the minds of many critical observers the conclusion that Christianity is all a romance, a dream. It may be impossible, by any mere human criteria, to discriminate between that which is passional and earthly and that which is the work of the Spirit. God knoweth His own. It is not necessary for me to know whether my neighbour be a Christian; it is necessary for me to know that I am in communion with God. I am not bound to anatomize, dissect, and understand the working of his heart. I must deal with my own heart. A second circumstance that leads to this impression is the wide disparity between the profession of Christians and the manifestation of the power of the gospel in their lives. They cannot probe nor understand hidden life. Christianity seems unreal to them, because it is still and unobtrusive. A third cause of the impression is the persistent and earnest efforts, often reiterated, and especially prominent in our day, to do away with the historic basis of Christianity, and to construct a God out of human consciousness. They tell us that Christianity, after all, is only the religion of nature: it found a temporary manifestation here; but it existed before, and exists now, without revelation. That it is, indeed, the religion which nature demands, the outcry of the soul among all nations, civilized and barbaric, affirms; but that it is the religion that nature offers, the agony of the crucified, and the wail of the philosopher in the early ages, and the burden of those who in heathenism to-day cry out for light and confess their despair, all these deny. And yet we have those who placidly tell us that “ religion is storax, and chlorine, and rosemary; a mountain air, and the silent song of the stars is it.” A “ mountain air,” indeed, is such religion--very thin and very cold, where men soon gasp and die. Not thus did Christ and His apostles deal with the historic facts of Christianity. Here, you observe, He appeals to certain “ things,” upon the reality of which all His further dealings with these men, and all their hopes, are based. If these “ things” have not occurred--if these “ things” are not brought back vividly to their memory--if upon these “ things” and their actuality He cannot build His subsequent words, they are deluded and defrauded, and their hopes are vain. The Gospels themselves are a compend of almost naked facts. Men now, as well as then, have to deal with concrete actualities in Christianity and its attendant evidences. Let me refer to two or three. You remember that famous answer to the king who demanded a visible miracle: “ Your Majesty--the Jews.” They are an anomaly, a perpetual miracle among the nations. Living in every country, yet having no country; intermixed in trade, yet not in blood, with other nations; preserving their distinct identity; a people with a memory and a hope, who look longingly and passionately back to empty Jerusalem, and claim it still as their own, though for hundreds of years they have been only permitted to touch the precious stones of the foundation of their temple. How shall we explain their presence in the world? How are we to account for the circumstances which environ them? I see upon them the brand of blood, and I remember how, at the transaction in Jerusalem, they said, “ His blood be upon us.” If this Bible gives the true history of the Jews, their condition is explained; if not, no theorist, no philosopher, no student of the science of history can explain it to me. I look to the Church of God--and, that I may be more specific, to a single Church--not to the Church universal, whose outlines are not clearly visible. I look to a single Church, as an existing institution, as a fact in the community. I put it alongside of earthly institutions--of those various organizations which men have framed for benevolent, social, and literary purposes. I point to the perpetuity of the individual Church. I come to individuals. It is sufficient if there be a single man who realizes, in any considerable degree, that which the gospel promises concerning the restoration of man to ideal perfectness. Read over that wonderful catalogue which Paul gives us of the Christian virtues, in the thirteenth chapter of the First Epistle to the Corinthians. Think of a man who is wise, and patient, and pure, and long-suffering, and charitable, and unenvious, and hopeful, and truthful--all the virtues that you can catalogue. But he tells you all this is built upon his companionship with Christ--upon the power of faith in actual redemption through Christ. Is not such a case a fact in life, and has not such a fact come within your reach? But take another case. Let it be a woman, who, in her early womanhood, has given her heart, full of overflowing affection, to the one she trusted as her husband. He has deceived her. The world has dealt coldly with her. She has no longer a home or a husband, and her children look despair into her eyes as she turns to them. Yet there is a Book she clings to, and a sacred place of comfort; and the heart does not burst with agony. Alone! She declares she is not alone. That which no human sympathy could give--that which no human wisdom could teach--has been given and taught; strength has been put into that dismayed soul that makes her master of herself and of the world, notwithstanding its crushing power. Is not this a fact? And now I insist that these facts of which I have spoken have no significance, except they relate back to the facts to which these two men referred. The Lord’ s Supper, celebrated month by month, would have no explanation in facts, and no meaning as a ceremony, if it had not been an uninterrupted and perpetual memorial of an event that transpired. The Church has no foundation, if it be not founded on a real Christ and His authentic work among men. You will find that this monument of fact in the world rests upon Calvary; and Calvary itself thrusts its deep roots down to the earlier world. A solid basis of history is given us, such as no other religion has. This entry is longer than a Bible module can hold. The rest is at https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/bi/ Luke 24:36-49 Jesus Himself stood in the midst of them The first appearance of the risen Lord to the eleven I. THE OF OUR LORD’ S . No fact in history is better attested. 1. Observe, that when this person appeared in the room, the first token that it was Jesus was His speech: they were to have the evidence of hearing: He used the same speech. No sooner did He appear than He spoke. His first accents must have called to their minds those cheering notes with which He had closed His last address. They must have recognized that charming voice. He was a peace-maker, and a peace-giver, and by this sign they were given to discern their Leader. I want you to notice that this evidence was all the better, because they themselves evidently remained the same men as they had been. “ They were terrified and affrighted, and supposed that they had seen a spirit” ; and thus they did exactly what they had done long before when He came to them walking on the waters. They are not carried away by enthusiasm, nor wafted aloft by fanaticism; they are not even as yet upborne by the Holy Spirit into an unusual state of mind, but they are as slow of heart and as fearful as ever they were. If they are convinced that Jesus has risen from the dead, depend upon it, it must be so. 2. Thus far in the narrative they had received the evidence of their ears, and that is by no means weak evidence; but now they are to have the evidence of sight; for the Saviour says to them, “ Behold My hands and My feet, that it is I Myself” ; “ and when He had thus spoken, He showed them His hands and His feet.” John says also “ His side,” which he specially noted because he had seen the piercing of that side, and the outflow of blood and water. They were to see and identify that blessed Body which had suffered death. 3. Furthermore, that they might be quite sure, the Lord invited them to receive the evidence of touch or feeling. He called them to a form of examination, from which, I doubt not, many of them shrank; He said, “ Handle Me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see Me have.” The saints are not at the coming of their Lord to remain disembodied spirits, nor to wear freshly created bodies, but their entire manhood is to be restored, and to enjoy endless bliss. It will be of a material substance also; for our Saviour’ s Body was material, since He said, “ Handle Me, and see that it is I Myself; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see Me have.” 4. Still further to confirm the faith of the disciples, and to show them that their Lord had a real Body, and not the mere form of one, He gave them evidence which appealed to their common sense. He said, “ Have ye any meat; and they gave Him a piece of a broiled fish, and of an honeycomb. And he took it and did eat before them.” This was an exceedingly convincing proof of His unquestionable resurrection. In very deed and fact, and not in vision and phantom, the Man who had died upon the cross stood among them. II. OUR LORD’ S WHEN RISEN FROM THE DEAD. 1. Notice, first, that in this appearance of Christ we are taught that He is still anxious to create peace in the hearts of His people. No sooner did He make Himself visible than He said, “ Peace be unto you.” He has not lost His tender care ever the least of the flock; He would have each one led by the still waters, and made to lie down in green pastures. 2. Note again, that He has not lost His habit of chiding unbelief, and encouraging faith; for as soon as He has risen, and speaks with His disciples, He asks them, “ Why are ye troubled? and why do thoughts arise in your hearts?” He loves you to believe in Him, and be at rest. 3. Notice, next, that when the Saviour had risen from the dead, and a measure of His glory was upon Him, He was still most condescendingly familiar with His people. He showed them His hands and His feet, and He said, “ Handle Me, and see.” 4. The next thing is that the risen Lord was still wonderfully patient, even as He had always been. He bore with their folly and infirmity; for “ while they yet believed not for joy, and wondered,” He did not chide them. 5. Observe that our Saviour, though He was risen from the dead, and therefore in a measure in His glory, entered into the fullest fellowship with His own. Peter tells us that they did eat and drink with Him. I do not notice in this narrative that He drank with them, but He certainly ate of such food as they had, and this was a clear token of His fellowship with them. 6. Let me call your attention to the fact that when Jesus had risen from the dead, He was just as tender of Scripture as He was before His decease. 7. Once again, our Saviour, after He had risen from the dead, showed that He was anxious for the salvation of men; for it was at this interview that He breathed upon the apostles, and bade them receive the Holy Ghost, to fit them to go forth and preach the gospel to every creature. III. The light which is thrown by this incident upon THE NATURE OF OUR OWN . 1. First, I gather from this text that our nature, our whole humanity, will be perfected at the day of the appearing of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, when the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we that may then be alive shall be changed. Jesus has redeemed not only our souls, but our bodies. 2. I gather next that in the resurrection our nature will be full of peace. Jesus Christ would not have said, “ Peace be unto you,” if there had not been a deep peace within Himself. Be was calm and undisturbed. There was much peace about His whole life; but after the resurrection His peace becomes very conspicuous. There is no striving with scribes and Pharisees, there is no battling with anybody after our Lord is risen. Such shall be our life, we shall be flooded with eternal peace, and shall never again be tossed about with trouble, and sorrow, and distress, and persecution. 3. When we rise again our nature will find its home amid the communion of saints. When the Lord Jesus Christ had risen again His first resort was the room where His disciples were gathered. His first evening was spent among the objects of His love. Even so, wherever we are we shall seek and find communion with the saints. 4. Furthermore, I see that in that day our bodies will admirably serve our spirits. For look at our Lord’ s Body. Now that He has risen from the dead He desires to convince His disciples, and His Body becomes at once the means of His argument, the evidence of His statement. His flesh and bones were text and sermon for Him. 5. In that day, beloved, when we shall rise again from the dead we shall remember the past. Do you not notice how the risen Saviour says, “ These are the words which I spake unto you, while I was yet with you.” He had not forgotten His former state. It is rather a small subject, and probably we shall far more delight to dwell on the labours of our Redeemer’ s hands and feet; but still we shall remember all the way whereby the Lord our God led us, and we shall talk to one another concerning it. 6. Observe that our Lord, after He had risen from the dead, was still full of the spirit of service, and therefore He called others out to go and preach the gospel, and He gave them the Spirit of God to help them. When you and I are risen from the dead, we shall rise full of the spirit of service. He will use us in the grand economy of future manifestations of His Divine glory. Possibly we may be to other dispensations what the angels have been to this. Be that as it may, we shall find a part of our bliss and joy in constantly serving Him who has raised us from the dead. (C. H. Spurgeon.) A Divine visitation I. WHEN HE . 1. When they had been acting unworthily by fleeing from Him at His betrayal, and deserting Him at His trial. 2. When they were unprepared, and unbelieving, doubting His express promise, and refusing the testimony of His messengers. 3. When they greatly needed His presence, for they were like sheep without a shepherd. 4. When they were exercising the little life they had by coming together in loving assembly. So far they were doing well, and acting in a way which was likely to bring blessing. 5. When they were lamenting His absence, and thus proving their desire after Him. This is an admirable means of gaining His presence. 6. When certain among them were testifying concerning Him. Are not we in a similar condition? May we not hopefully look for our Lord’ s manifestation of Himself? II. WHAT HE SAID. “ Peace be unto you.” 1. It was a benediction: He wished them peace, 2. It was a declaration: they were at peace with God. 3. It was a fiat; He inspired them with peace. 4. It was an absolution: He blotted out all offences which might have spoiled their peace. III. WHAT CAME OF HIS . 1. He banished their doubts. Even Thomas had to shake off his obstinate unbelief. 2. He revealed and sealed His love upon their hearts by showing them His hands and His feet. 3. He refreshed their memories. “ These are the words which I spoke unto you” (Luke 24:44). 4. He opened their understandings (Luke 24:45). 5. He showed them their position. “ Ye are witnesses of these things” (Luke 24:48). 6. He filled them with joy (John 20:20). Peace be unto you.--Peace bestowed upon man I. Notice the nature of the blessing which the Lord Jesus proclaims. It is the blessing of “ Peace.” II. We observe the peculiar connection which the Redeemer implies this blessing to possess with Himself. He comes to them as the author of peace: and the peace which He wishes for them, He Himself gives. 1. Let it be considered that reconciliation with God arises wholly and exclusively from the sacrificial efficacy of the Saviour’ s sufferings. 2. Not only is reconciliation secured entirely by the sacrificial efficacy of His sufferings, but from the Lord Jesus Christ proceeds the mission of the Holy Spirit, whose office it is to apply actually to men the various blessings of redemption. III. The animating influence which the Lord Jesus designs a participation of this blessing to exercise over all those by whom it is enjoyed. 1. The possession of this spiritual peace is designed to act as a preservative against temptation. 2. As designed to be a consolation amidst sorrow. 3. As designed to be an incentive to activity. 4. As an exciting cause of gratitude. (J. Parsons.) The timely presence and salutation of Jesus I. With reference to THE OF THE VISIT we may remark, that the visits which Christ makes to His Churches are of two kinds. He sometimes comes in anger, to chastise them. In this manner He threatened to visit some of the Asiatic Churches. At other times He visits His Churches in a gracious manner, to comfort, animate, and bless them. This is evident, in the first place, from the language in which He addressed them; Peace be with you. This was no mere formal greeting on His lips, but the expression of a genuine desire for their welfare. Nay, more; it was an assurance that peace existed between God and them. Nor was this all: it was also the bestowment of His peace upon them. II. THE TIME WHEN THIS VISIT WAS MADE. 1. It was made at a time when the disciples were exceedingly unworthy of such a favour, and when they rather deserved to have been visited in anger. They had treated Him in a very unkind and ungrateful manner. 2. It was made at a time when the Church was very imperfectly prepared for it, and when very few among them expected it, or had any hope of such a favour. 3. The time when Christ made this gracious visit to His Church was a time in which it was very much needed. The faith, and hope, and courage of its members were reduced to the lowest point of depression, and unless revived by His presence, must soon have expired. 4. This visit was made at a time when the Church was employed in exerting the little life which yet remained among them, and in using proper means to increase it. Though assembling at this time was dangerous, so that they did not dare to meet openly, yet they did assemble, and they assembled in the character of Christ’ s disciples. This proved the existence of a bond of union among them, which drew them together. This bond of union consisted in sympathy of feeling. They all felt the same affections, the same apprehensions and anxieties, and the same sorrows, and all their thoughts centred in one object. This object was their crucified Master. 5. The gracious visit appears to have been made the very first time that the Church met after Christ’ s resurrection. This circumstance is highly indicative of His affection for them, of His unwillingness to leave them mourning one moment longer than was necessary, and of His strong desire to be again in the midst of them. We remark lastly, that this gracious visit was made on the Lord’ s day. And the next visit which He made to His Church was made on the next Lord’ s day. My brethren, should He not favour us with His presence on this occasion, let us consider this evil as the cause of His absence, and set ourselves to remove it without delay. (E. Payson, D. D.) The mission and equipment of the disciples I. THE --“ Peace be unto you.” These words were, no doubt, meant to allay the fears which were then agitating the disciples’ minds. In themselves they were fitted to bare this effect, as showing the spirit and purpose with which He had come among them. But they were also, and still more, fitted to have this effect, because of what they brought to their remembrance. They were, in fact, like His wounds, signs by which they might identify the risen Lord. The twofold utterance of this salutation is not with out significance. As Luke tells us, “ The disciples had beheld, touched, and gladly received their rebuke; but there is again a wondering among them before the final clear and tranquil assurance fills their hearts. As before through fear, so now through astonished joy, they cannot altogether and fully believe.” Their joy, though it has actual faith in it, “ does not reach to peace and joy combined in their fulness.” It has “ in its first vehemence and disquietude too little peace.” It is a “ violent joy, in which, notwithstanding its semblance of overpowering feeling, a deep and firm faith can scarcely fix its roots. Therefore the wise and patient Master gradually brings them to the peace of faith.” But we unduly limit the significance and scope of these words, if we view them only as designed to remove the fears of the disciples. Rather are we to regard them as the salutation which His resurrection brings to those for whom He died--the message borne by His wounds to all who look to Him for salvation. This resurrection as plainly as His advent proclaims, “ peace on earth and goodwill to men.” II. THE SENDING--“ As My Father hath sent Me, even so send I you.” This was fitly preceded by the salutation, inasmuch as the man who is to be the herald of peace to others needs to enjoy peace himself. How great the honour which He puts upon His servants in thus comparing their mission with His own! And we offer the following remarks, not as exhaustive, but only as possible helps to the interpretation: 1. That they are, in some measure, to represent Him before men even as He represented the Father, giving men, both by their life and their teaching, a representation of His character, so as to enable them to form a conception of what He was. Such was unquestionably their calling. They were to be living epistles of Christ. He was to live in them. 2. That they receive authority from Him in some measure, as He received authority from His Father. They speak in His name, as He spoke in His Father’ s name. They do His works, as He did the works of His Father. 3. That they are to be His messengers to mankind, as He was the Father’ s messenger, taking up and publishing among the nations the gospel which He first proclaimed. 4. That they are to prosecute their work in the same spirit as He did--a spirit of self-denial and benevolence, seeking not their own gratification, but the glory of God and the salvation of men. 5. That they must seek to do their work by the same instrumentality--not with carnal weapons, but by the spiritual forces which are mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds--not depending on human might or power, but on the Spirit of the Lord of hosts. 6. That they are to be in the world as He was--in it, though not of it--seeking no portion in it, nor making it their rest--desirous of remaining in it only while they have work to do--glad to leave it when their work is done. Such are some of the things which may be implied in their being sent by Him as He was sent by the Father. III. THE --“ He breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost.” IV. THE WORK TO BE DONE--“ Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained.” (W. Landels.) Behold My hands and My feetJesus on the evening of Easter Day I. Here we note first of all our LORD’ S OF AND IN BELIEF. We may venture to say that the disciples, seeing our Lord in the midst of them, ought to have recognized Him at once. They knew, from long companionship with Him, that there were no discoverable limits to His power over life and nature. That our Lord held His disciples responsible for such knowledge as this is plain from the words which He had used, earlier in the afternoon, when addressing the two on the Emmaus road; and from St. Mark we learn that on this occasion, too, He “ upbraided them with their unbelief and hardness of heart.” Yet, looking to St. Luke’ s report, what tender censure it is! Here certainly is no expression which betrays grief or anger. He meets their excitement with the mildest rebuke--if it be a rebuke. “ Why are ye disquieted? and why do critical reasonings arise in your hearts?” He traces their trouble of heart to its true source--the delusion which possessed their understandings about His being only a “ spirit.” In His tenderness He terms their unworthy dread a mere disquietude of the heart; they are on a false track, and He will set them right. What a lesson is here for all who, whether as fathers and mothers, or teachers, or clergymen, have upon their hands the immense responsibility of imparting religious truth to others! The first condition of successful teaching is patient sympathy with the difficulties of the learner. A great master was once asked, “ What is the first condition of successful teaching?” “ Patience,” he said. “ What is the second?” “ Patience.” “ What is the third?” He paused, then said, “ Sympathy.” And what a rebuke is here on the want of considerateness, of courtesy, of generosity, which so often disfigures our modern treatment of real or supposed religious error! Who can wonder at our failures to convince, when our methods are so unlike that of the Great Teacher! II. Here, too, we see OUR LORD’ S OF THE OF INQUIRY INTO THE OF OUR BELIEF. Undoubtedly the understanding has great and exacting duties towards Revealed Truth. If God speaks, the least that His rational creatures can do is to try to understand Him. And therefore, as the powers of the mind gradually unfold themselves, the truths of religion ought to engage an increasing share of each of them, and not least of the understanding. What too often happens is, that while a young man’ s intelligence is interesting itself more and more in a widening circle of subjects, it takes no account of religion. The old childish thoughts about religion lie shrivelled up in some out-of-the-way corner of a powerful and accomplished mind, the living and governing powers of which are engaged in other matters. Then, the man for the first time in his life meets with some sceptical book; and he brings to bear on it the habits of thought and judgment which have been trained in the study of widely different matters. He forms, he can form, no true estimate of a subject, so unlike any he has really taken in hand before: he is at the mercy of his new instructor, since he knows nothing that will enable him to weigh the worth or the worthlessness of startling assertions. He makes up his mind that science has at length spoken on the subject of religion; and he turns his back, with a mingled feeling of irritation and contempt, on the truths which he learned at his mother’ s knee. This is no imaginary case; and among the reasons which go to explain so sad a catastrophe, this, I say, is one; that the understanding has not been properly developed in the boy and the young man, with relation to religious truth. What is the law of that development? It is this: that as the mind grows, it learns to reinforce the teaching of authority by the inquiries of reverent reason. But do not suppose that, because it condescends to be thus tested by your understanding as regards its reality, it is therefore within the compass of your understanding as regards its scope. It begins with that which you can appraise; it ends in that which is beyond you: because while you are finite and bounded in your range of vision, it is an unveiling of the Infinite, of the Incomprehensible. III. Once more, NOTE HERE THE WHICH OUR LORD GAVE TO THE OF HIS . He does not turn them in upon themselves; He does not take their trouble, so to speak, sympathetically to pieces, and deal with its separate elements; He does not refute one by one the false reasonings which arise within them. He does not say to them, “ These disquietudes, these doubts, are mere mental disorders, or interesting experiences, and the mind itself can cure diseases which the mind has produced.” He would, on the contrary, have them escape from themselves; from the thick jungle of their doubts and fears and hopes and surmises: and come to Him. Whatever they may think, or feel; He is there, seated on a throne which enthusiasm did not raise, and which doubt cannot undermine; in His own calm, assured, unassailable Life. “ Behold My hands and My feet, that it is I Myself: handle Me, and see; for a mere spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see Me have.” “ Let us remind ourselves that whether we believe them or not, the facts of the Christian creed are true; and that faith only receives, but that it cannot possibly create or modify Christ and His gifts. Whether men believe or not in His eternal person, in the atoning virtue of His death, in the sanctifying influences of His Spirit, in the invigorating grace of His sacraments--these are certain truths. They are utterly independent of the hesitations and vacillations of our understandings about them. To ourselves, indeed, it is of great moment whether we have faith or not: to Him, to His truth, to His gifts, it matters not at all. “ The Lord sitteth above this waterflood” of our changing and inconstant mental impressions; “ the Lord remaineth a King for ever.” “ If we believe not, yet He abideth faithful; He cannot deny Himself.” (Canon Liddon.) The reality of the resurrection I. THE NATURE OF OUR LORD’ S RISEN BODY. It was the Body which had been born of the Virgin Mary, and had been nailed to the cross; the Body from which life had been expelled by the painful death of crucifixion, ere it had been buried in the grave of Joseph of Arimathea. This identity is insisted on by our Lord. “ I Myself.” “ Flesh and bones.” Our Lord’ s risen body, then, was literally the very body which had been crucified; and yet it had properties attaching to it which distinguished it. It was sown a natural body, that is a body governed by ordinary natural laws; and raised a spiritual body, that is, a body which, while retaining physical substance and unimpaired identity, was yet endowed and interpenetrated with some of the properties of spirit. II. Now, corresponding to the twofold character of our Lord’ s risen Body, visible and palpable on the one hand, and spiritual on the other, is THE OF THE WHICH HIM AMONG MEN. Religion is like a sacrament: it has its outward and visible signs and its inward fact, or thing signified. Of these, the latter is, beyond dispute, the more important. Religion, the bond between the soul and God, lives in the habits, or acts, whereby the soul adheres to, and communes with, the Infinite Source of life. It is made up of faith, hope, and love, pouring themselves forth at the feet of the Invisible King; it is by turns aspiration, worship, resolve; it expends itself in a thousand unheard, unuttered acts, whereby the human spirit holds converse with its Creator. Religion is thus in its essence altogether removed from the province of sense; we cannot feel, or see, or hear, these acts of the soul, which assert its presence. It belongs to the purely immaterial world; it is hid with the Father, who seeth in secret, and who is worshipped, if at all, in spirit and truth. On the other hand, religion has another aspect. It steps forth from the sphere of the supersensuous, which is its congenial home; it takes bodily form and mien, and challenges the senses of hearing, and sight, and touch. It appeals through the human voice to the ear of sense. It meets and fascinates the eye; it even presents itself, as in the outward elements of a sacrament, to the touch. It is represented by a visible society--the Church. This society has its ministers, its assemblies for worship, its characteristic rites, its public buildings--all of which fall within the province of sense. The visible Church is, as our Lord said, a city set on a hill, which cannot be hid. Again, religion is represented by a book--the Bible. The Bible, too, belongs to the world of sense, just as much as the Church. We see it, handle it, read it. It brings religion visibly into the area of history, of poetry, of philosophy, as embodied in a large ancient literature. In the same way, religion takes an outward, shape in the good works and characters of individual Christians. They arrest observation; they invite comment, examination, discussion; they belong just as much to the public life of mankind as do the lives of worldly or wicked men. By them, too, Jesus Himself stands in the midst of human society. In short, religion in the world has this double character--outward and inward. III. OUR LORD’ S PRECEPT, “ HANDLE ME, AND SEE,” IS TO TWO CLASSES OF MEN. 1. It is an encouragement for the timid. 2. It is a direction for the perplexed. (Canon Liddon.) The wounds of Jesus I wish to draw your attention to the simple fact that our Lord Jesus Christ, when He rose again from the dead, had in His body the marks of His passion. If He had pleased He could readily have removed them. I. OF WHAT USE WAS THE OF THOSE WOUNDS TO THE ? They were infallible proofs that He was the same person. Had not some such evidence been visible upon our Saviour, it is probable that His disciples would have been unbelieving enough to doubt the identity of His person. But, now, think! If Christ had to undergo in His countenance those matchless transformations, that must have been, first of all, connected with His bloody sweat, then, with His agony, and after that, with the transforming, or, if I may use such a word, the transmutation of His body into a spiritual body, can you not conceive that His likeness would be changed, that the disciples would scarcely know Him if there had not been some deeply graven marks whereby they would be able to discover Him? The disciples looked upon the very face, but, even then they doubted. There was a majesty about Him which most of them had not seen. Peter, James, and John, had seen Him transfigured, when His garments were whiter than any fuller could make them; but the rest of the disciples had only seen Him as a man of sorrows; they had not seen Him as the glorious Lord, and, therefore, they would be apt to doubt whether He was the same. But these nail-prints, this pierced side, these were marks which they could not dispute, which unbelief itself could not doubt. II. Let us turn to the second question: WHY SHOULD CHRIST WEAR THESE WOUNDS IN HEAVEN, AND OF WHAT AVAIL ARE THEY? 1. I can conceive, first, that the wounds of Christ in heaven will be a theme of eternal wonder to the angels. 2. Again, Christ wears these scars in His Body in heaven as His ornaments. The wounds of Christ are His glories, they are His jewels and His precious things. 3. Nor are these only the ornaments of Christ: they are His trophies--the trophies of His love. Have you never seen a soldier with a gash across his forehead or in his cheek? Why every soldier will tell you the wound in battle is no disfigurement--it is his honour. 4. Another reason why Jesus wears His wounds is, that when He intercedes He may employ them as powerful advocates. When He rises up to pray for His people, He needs not speak a word; He lifts His hands before His Father’ s face; He makes bare His side, and points to His feet. These are the orators with which He pleads with God--these wounds. Oh, He must prevail. 5. Jesus Christ appears in heaven as the Wounded One, this shows again that He has not laid aside His priesthood. If the wounds had been removed we might have forgotten that there was a Sacrifice; and, mayhap, next we might have forgotten that there was a Priest. But the wounds are there: then there is a Sacrifice, and there is a Priest also, for He who is wounded is both Himself the Sacrifice and the Priest. 6. There is another and terrible reason why Christ wears His wounds still. It is this. Christ is coming to judge the world. Christ has with Himself today the accusers of His enemies. And when Christ shall come a second time to judge the world in righteousness, seated on the great white throne, that hand of His shall be the terror of the universe. “ They shall look on Him whom they have pierced,” and they shall mourn for their sins. They would not mourn with hopeful penitence in time; they shall mourn with sorrowful remorse throughout eternity. III. WHAT DOES CHRIST MEAN BY SHOWING TO US HIS HANDS AND FEET? 1. He means this, that suffering is absolutely necessary. Christ is the head, and His people are the members. If suffering could have been avoided, surely our glorious Head ought to have escaped; but inasmuch as He shows us His wounds, it is to tell us that we shall have wounds too. 2. But next He teaches us His sympathy with us in our suffering. “ There,” says He, “ see this hand! I am not an high priest that cannot be touched with the feeling of your infirmities. I have suffered, too. I was tempted in all ways like as you are. Look here! there are the marks--there are the marks. They are not only tokens of My love, they are not only sweet forget-me-nots that bind Me to love you for ever. But besides that they are the evidence of My sympathy. I can feel for you. Look--look--I have suffered. Have you the heart-ache? Ah, look you here, what a heart-ache I had when this heart was pierced. Do you suffer, even unto blood wrestling against sin? So did I. I have sympathy with you.” 3. Christ wears these wounds to show that suffering is an honourable thing. To suffer for Christ is glory. 4. Lastly, there is one sweet thought connected with the wounds of Christ that has charmed my soul, and made my heart run over with delight. It is this: I have sometimes thought that if I am a part of Christ’ s Body, I am a poor wounded part; if I do belong to that all-glorious whole, the Church, which is His fulness, the fulness of Him that filleth all in all, yet have I said within me, “ I am a poor maimed part, wounded, full of putrifying sores.” But Christ did not leave even His wounds behind Him; even those He took to heaven. “ Not a bone of Him shall be broken,” and the flesh when wounded shall not be discarded--shall not be left. He shall carry that with Him to heaven, and He shall glorify even the wounded member. Is not this sweet, is not this precious to the troubled child of God? (C. H. Spurgeon.) The crucial test In an old legend it is said that Satan once appeared to an old saint and said, “ I am Christ,” when the saint confounded him, and exposed his pretensions, as he said, “ Then where are the nail-prints?” (H. O.Mackey.) They yet believed not for JoyPrimitive doubtings and their cure I. THE DOUBTS OF THE . II. THE LORD’ S WAY OF MEETING THE DOUBTS OF THE --“ He showed them His hands and His feet.” Strange as this kind of recognition, this way of fixing the doubted identity, may seem, it was satisfactory. The mother in the story knew her long-lost child by the scar on the shoulder received in infancy; so was the Son of God recognized by the nail-prints and the bruises of the Cross. But did the disciples need this? Were the loved features not the same as ever? Were the eyes that wept over Jerusalem not the same as before; or had the grave robbed them of their tenderness and lustre? Were the lips, from which came the gracious words of parting love, not the same as in the upper chamber at the last supper? Was the voice so altered, that they did not know its tones? No. These resemblances might all be recognized; but so many things threw doubt upon these recognitions. It is, then, to remove all doubt that He exhibits the marks of His Passion. And in doing so, He shows us the true way of dispelling doubt, of whatever kind it may be, viz., the fuller knowledge of Himself, as the dead, the buried, the risen, and living Christ. It is this that is the cure of all unbelief, the death of doubting, the cherisher of faith, the perpetual source of stability and peace; for the real cause of all doubting is imperfect knowledge of the Lord. (H. Bonar, D. D.) Too good to be true In the case before us, the disciples saw Christ manifestly before their eyes. To a certain extent they believed in His resurrection; that belief gave them joy, and at once that very joy made them unbelieving. They looked again; they believed once more; anon, a wave of joy rolled right over the head of their faith, and then afresh their doubts returned. If God had been half as merciful or a tithe as kind as He was, I could have believed it, but such exceeding riches of His grace were too much; such out-doings of Himself in goodness, such giving exceeding abundantly above what one could ask or even think, seemed too much to believe. We will at once attempt to deal with this temptation. I. To begin, LET ME ACCOUNT FOR IT. 1. It is little marvel that the spirit is amazed even to astonishment and doubt when you think of the greatness of the things themselves. The black sinner says, My iniquity is great; I deserve the wrath of God; the gospel presents me with a pardon, full and complete. I have laboured to wash out these stains, but they will not disappear; the gospel tells me that the precious blood of Jesus cleanseth from all sin. 2. Another reason for incredulity may be found in our sense of unworthiness. Note the person that receives these mercies, and you will not wonder that he believes not for joy. “ Ah,” saith he, “ if these things were given to the righteous I could believe it, but to me, an old offender, to me, a hardhearted despiser of the overflowing love of God that cannot be!” 3. Add to these the strange terms upon which God presents these things to poor sinners. The miracle of the manner equals the marvel of the matter. No works; simply trust thy soul with Christ. 4. And add to this one more thought--the method by which God proposes to work all this; that is to say, He proposes to pardon, and to justify the sinner instantaneously. II. Having thus tried to account for this state of the heart, may I have the help of God while I try to DO BATTLE WITH THE EVIL THAT IS IN IT, THAT WE MAY BE ABLE TO BELIEVE IN CHRIST! 1. Troubled heart, let me remind thee, first of all, that thou hast no need to doubt the truth of the precious revolution because of its greatness, for He is a great God who makes it to thee. Let no low thoughts of God come in to make you doubt His power to save you. 2. Again, let me remind you that the greatness of God’ s mercy should encourage you to believe that it comes from God. 3. Let me remind you again, that you may get another argument to put aa end to your fears about the greatness of God’ s mercy from the greatness of His providence. III. I close by USING YOUR VERY FEARS AS AN TO BELIEVE. If it be so joyous only to think of these things, what must it be to possess them If it gives such a weight to thy spirit only to think of being pardoned, adopted, accepted, and saved, what must it be really to be washed? (C. H.Spurgeon.) The final recorded meeting in Jerusalem I. THE WAITING (see Acts 1:4). II. THE BAPTISM (see Acts 1:5). III. CHRIST’ S , OR OF THE OLD . 1. Reminds them of former teaching. 2. Law, prophets, Psalms, etc., must be understood of Him. IV. THE OPENING OF THEIR . V. THE OF CHRIST’ S . 1. Repentance. 2. Remission of sins. 3. In His name. Christ the sole hope. 4. Among all nations. Missions an essential part of the Church. 5. Beginning at Jerusalem. VI. THE OF THE GOSPEL TO THEM. VII. AT . “ Tarrying,” when clone because of faith, is a fine proof of faith, and strengthens prayer, and is an exercise of humility. (G. Venables, S. C. L.) The Saviour’ s last words I. OF THE OLD . 1. Prophetic. (1) The books of Divine origin. (2) Its writers holy men. 2. Messianic. (1) In their spirit. (2) In their letter. (3) In their symbols. 3. Harmonic. (1) Moses, the prophets, and psalms distinct chords of one Christly anthem. (2) This wondrous unity of the Old Testament Scriptures an irrefragable proof of their essential divinity. II. NEED OF DIVINE TO THE OLD . 1. Suggested by Christ’ s exposition. 2. Proved in the disciples’ experience. 3. Corroborated in all generations. III. PRE- FOR HUMAN . 1. The death of Christ. 2. The resurrection of Christ. 3. Repentance and remission of sins. IV. AN OF A OF CHRIST. 1. TO bear witness of personal salvation through Christ. 2. To bear witness of personal interest in the salvation of others, V. AN NEED FOR FOR CHRIST. 1. This promise of the Father was the gift of the Holy Spirit (Acts 1:8). 2. This gift of the Holy Spirit was to endue the disciples of Christ with power for testimony. 3. This enducment with the power of the Holy Spirit essential for successsful bearing witness for Christ. Practical questions: 1. Are we all disciples of Christ? 2. Do we all bear witness for Jesus Christ? 3. Is our witnessing for Christ accompanied with the power of the Holy Spirit? 4. If not, why not? (D. C. Hughes, M. A.) The gospel for the world I. THE BASIS OF THE GOSPEL FOR THE WORLD. 1. This threefold division of the Scriptures suggestive in this connection. (1) As showing that Christ is the central glory of each and every part. (2) As showing in this the essential unity of all the parts. 2. The fulfilment of the Messianic prophecies of the Old Testament Scriptures most important in the evangelization of the world. (1) Because it proves the Divine origin of the Scriptures. (2) Because it shows the Divine authority with which the Christ of the Scriptures is invested as the world’ s Saviour. II. THE FOR THE OF THE GOSPEL TO THE WORLD. 1. A spiritual understanding of the Scriptures. (1) Concerning the fitness of a suffering and a triumphant Christ. (2) Concerning the essentials of gospel preaching. 2. Another qualification is Christian discipleship. 3. A third qualification is the special enduement of power. (1) This enduement of power by the Holy Spirit should be distinguished from the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, which is not a special, but general privilege of every Christian. (2) The condition for this enduement may be seen in the account given of the prayerful waiting therefor, before the day of Pentecost Acts 1:12-14; Acts 2:1-4). III. THE RETURN OF CHRIST TO HEAVEN, FOR THE SUCCESS OF THE GOSPEL IN THE WORLD. 1. The return of our Lord to heaven was necessary in order that the Holy Spirit might be sent. (John 16:7). 2. On the work of the Spirit depend the conviction and conversion of men, and the completion of the truth (John 16:8-14). IV. . 1. The world’ s great need--the gospel of Christ. 2. The Church’ s great responsibility to supply this need. 3. The importance of being equipped. (G. Venables, S. C. L.) Then opened He their understandingChrist illuminates the understanding I. WHAT IS IN THIS ACT OF CHRIST? 1. It implies the transcendent nature of spiritual things, far exceeding the highest flight and reach of natural reason. 2. Christ’ s opening the understanding implies the insufficiency of all external means, how excellent soever they are in themselves to operate savingly upon men, till Christ by His power opens the soul, and so makes them effectual. 3. Christ’ s opening the understanding imports His Divine power, whereby He is able to subdue all things to Himself. Who but God knows the heart? Who but God can unlock and open it at pleasure? II. BY WHAT ACTS CHRIST THIS WORK. 1. By His Word. 2. By His Spirit. He breaks in upon the understanding and conscience by powerful convictions and compunctions (John 16:8). When this is done, the heart is opened: saving light now shines in it; and this light set up, the spirit in the soul is-- 1. A new light, in which all things appear far otherwise than they did before. The names “ Christ” and “ sin,” the words “ heaven” and “ hell” have another sound in that man’ s ears, than formerly they had. 2. It is a very affecting light; a light that hath heat and powerful influences with it, which makes deep impressions on the heart. 3. And it is a growing light, like the light of the morning, which “ shines more and more unto the perfect day” (Proverbs 4:18). Inferences: 1. If this be the work and office of Jesus Christ, to open the understandings of men; hence we infer the miseries that lie upon those men, whose understandings, to this day, Jesus Christ hath not opened; of whom we may say, as it is Deuteronomy 29:4. 2. If Jesus Christ be the great Prophet of the Church, then surely He will take special care both of the Church and the under-shepherds appointed by Him to feed them. 3. Hence you that are yet in darkness, may be directed to whom to apply yourselves for saving knowledge. It is Christ that hath the sovereign eye-salve that can cure your blindness. 4. Since then there is a common light, and special saving light, which none but Christ can give, it is therefore the concernment of every one of you to try what your light is. “ We know that we all have knowledge” (1 Corinthians 8:1). These lights differ-- 1. In their very kind and natures. The one is heavenly, supernatural, and spiritual; the other earthly and natural, the effect of a better constitution or education (James 3:15; James 3:17). 2. They differ most apparently in their effects and operations. The light that comes in a special way from Christ, is humbling, abasing, and soul-emptying light; by it a man feels the vileness of his own nature and practice, which begets self-loathing in him; but natural light, on the contrary, puffs up and exalts, makes the heart swell with self-conceitedness 1 Corinthians 8:1). The light of God is practical and operative, still urging the soul--yea, lovingly constraining it to obedience. 3. They differ in their issues. Natural common knowledge vanisheth, as the apostle speaks (1 Corinthians 13:8). ‘ Tis but Mayflower, and dies in its month. “ Doth not their excellency that is in them go away?” (Job 4:21). But this that springs from Christ is perfected, not destroyed by death; it springs up into everlasting life. The soul in which it is subjected carries it away with it into glory. 4. How are they obliged to love, serve, and honour Jesus Christ, whom he hath enlightened with the saving knowledge of Himself? O that with hands and hearts lifted up to heaven, ye would adore the free grace of Jesus Christ to your souls! (J. Flavel.) On the understanding of Scripture I. OUR LORD TO PUT AN HONOUR ON THE . He might have taught His disciples without them. He might have enabled them by immediate inspiration, to understand all things which related to His person. His office, and Divine commission; to His death and sufferings, His resurrection, and the glory that should follow. But He chose rather to refer them to the living oracles, given by God unto their fathers. Let me solemnly ask you, beloved brethren, what value do you set upon the Scriptures? II. But, while vast numbers read not the Scriptures at all, MANY READ THEM, BUT THEM NOT. Their meaning is sealed up. If we would profit by the Scriptures, we must not read them like another book. III. That these remarks may be brought to some practical end, let us, finally, ask--DO WE READ THE WITH THIS , THAT, WITHOUT THE OF THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST, WE CANNOT THEM? It is our duty to search the Scriptures; it is the Lord alone who can enable us to understand them. 1. If this conviction be strong on our minds, it will lead us to read the Scriptures with earnest prayer. 2. Again, if we be under an abiding conviction that, without the teaching of the Spirit, we cannot understand the Scriptures, we shall read them with diligence and perseverance. 3. Once more, if we be deeply convinced of our need of the grace of God, we shall read the Scriptures with an obedient, humble, teachable spirit. (E. Blencowe, M. A.) The understanding opened I. THE CHANGE . The unlocking of the whole soul; the breaking down of all the barriers of pride, prejudice, and sin, which preclude the gospel, and prevent the cordial reception of its salutary truths. II. THE AUTHOR OF THIS CHANGE. The Lord Jesus Christ, by His Spirit. Inward illumination is necessary, because of-- 1. The insufficiency of human powers. 2. The inefficiency of outward means. III. The END of this change; the object which its Divine Author particularly regards; and this is, a right acquaintance with the holy Scriptures. “ Then opened He their understanding” ; why? to what end and purpose? “ That they might understand the Scriptures.” Here let it be carefully noted--the holy Scriptures are a complete revelation of the mind and will of God. But what is this understanding of the Scriptures, this right acquaintance with the Word of God, which evinces the teaching of the Spirit of Christ? 1. It is impressive. It is knowledge which touches and interests the heart. 2. It is progressive. The Spirit of Christ teaches gradually. “ More and more unto the perfect day.” 3. It is practical. This knowledge has influence on the spirit and conduct of men, an influence most salutary and important. (1) It humbles for sin. (2) It endears the Saviour. (3) It promotes holiness. From the whole we remark-- 1. The unhappy condition of those whose minds are yet closed against the light of the word and Spirit of Christ. Natural blindness is a melancholy affliction, but unspeakably more so this darkness of the soul! 2. The duty of such as desire Divine teachings. Think not highly of yourselves, but soberly as you ought to think. 3. The encouragement which the gospel gives to apply to Jesus Christ. This encouragement is large and free. (T. Kidd.) Understanding the Scriptures Whilst at prayer-meeting to-night, I learned more of the meaning of Scripture than ever before. Suitable frames of soul are like good lights, in which a painting appears to its full advantage. (S. Pearse.) The opened understanding This is in all probability as stupendous a miracle as any in the Lord’ s history. That men should in a moment receive a power of mental comprehension which they had not before, and that this power should enable them to see the true import and meaning of a book which had hitherto been closed to them, seems greater than any acts of healing, or feeding of multitudes, or stilling of tempests. It implies Divine power over our spiritual and intellectual nature such as God only can exercise. And yet it is the commonest of all miracles, and the one which survives amongst us. The opening of the mind and heart to the things of God is constantly now going on. To many--we may say to all--who submit their wills and understandings to God, the Scriptures are unlocked, a new light is shed upon every part of them, especially upon the works and words of the Lord. This power of a risen Christ we claim every time we put up to God one of the most familiar of all our prayers, that “ by patience and comfort of His holy Word we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life” in Jesus Christ. (M. F. Sadler.) Thus it is written, and thus it behoved Christ to sufferChrist’ s epitome of the gospel I. THE GOSPEL IS HERE AS THE OUTCOME OF THE OF GOD. It behoved Christ to suffer and to rise again, because it was included in God’ s redemptive purposes as revealed by His servants the prophets. Redemption was not an afterthought in the Divine mind. II. THE GOSPEL IS HERE AS ITSELF IN TWO FACTS: VIZ., ON THE AND THE OF CHRIST. III. THE GOSPEL, AS IN THESE TWO FACTS, IS HERE AS THE SUBJECT MATTER OF . Why? Unquestionably, because they are the most vital and essential doctrines of Christianity. They lie at the root of all experimental religion. IV. THE GOSPEL IS HERE AS IN ITS RESIGNS THE ENTIRE HUMAN RACE. IT IS TO BE “ AMONG ALL NATIONS.” V. THE GOSPEL IS HERE AS DIVINE MERCY TO THE CHIEF OF SINNERS. “ Beginning at Jerusalem.” (W. H. C. Harris.) The principles and proclamation of the gospel It would be difficult to find in the Word of God another paragraph which contains within itself more of the essential principles of the gospel than that to which this text belongs. I. THE GROUND ON WHICH THE GOSPEL RESTS: “ It behoved Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day.” There could have been no gospel if there had been no Cross; but the death, even of Jesus, would have had no efficacy for the removal of human guilt, if He had not risen from the grave. The one fact is invariably connected with the other in the Epistles. The honour of the law required a victim. Three doctrines unite to form a trinity of gospel truth: 1. The person of Christ as God incarnate. 2. The death of Christ as the sacrifice. 3. The resurrection of Christ as the witness to the other two doctrines. II. THE OF THE GOSPEL MESSAGE HERE : “ That repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His name.” It is a proclamation of the remission of sins. This pardon is-- 1. Full; 2. Free; 3. Immediate; 4. Irreversible. But it is not a proclamation of forgiveness alone. Two things, repentance and remission, are to go together. A man cannot have forgiveness and continue at the same time to indulge in sin. This mention of repentance is virtually the same thing as that insistence on faith so constantly found in the New Testament. Faith is the Christ ward side of repentance. Repentance is the sinward side of faith. III. THE ORDER IN WHICH THIS IS TO BE MADE: “ To all nations, beginning at Jerusalem.” The reasons of “ beginning at Jerusalem” were-- 1. To magnify the Divine mercy. 2. To secure a convincing illustration of the gospel’ s efficacy. 3. To establish a principle for the guidance of God’ s people in all ages. So the law is that our first efforts should begin in our own homes--“ beginning at Jerusalem” --but we are not to be content with working there. We must look abroad also “ to all nations.” (W. M. Taylor, D. D.) Christ’ s sufferings, resurrection etc.:-- I. THE OF CHRIST’ S AND . 1. That prophecy might be fulfilled (Zechariah 13:1). 2. That justice might be satisfied, and peace made (Romans 3:25-26). 3. To convince and confound His adversaries. 4. To confirm the faith of His disciples. 5. To conquer sin, death, and grave. 6. That He might be the firstfruits. 7. That after abasement He might be exalted. II. THE BLESSED EFFECTS . “ That repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem.” 1. The nature and necessity of repentance (Acts 5:31). 2. Full and free remission (Acts 13:39). 3. “ In His name,” or by His authority (Mark 16:15-16). 4. Beginning at Jerusalem in the first place (Luke 1:72). 5. And carrying it to all nations. III. THE . 1. The grace of Christ always prevents us (Luke 19:10). 2. Repentance and remission of sins are the fruits of Christ’ s death and resurrection (Romans 8:33-34). 3. Remission of sins also accompanied with the saving knowledge of salvation. 4. The gospel commission is without exception of nations, as God’ s people are in all nations. 5. Salvation is alone in the name of Christ. (T. B. Baker.) Two supreme necessities I. IT BEHOVED CHRIST TO SUFFER. 1. Because He must show the evil of sin; and this is only seen in its results. 2. Because He must vindicate the Divine honour; and this He could only do by bearing the penalty of sin. 3. Because His truth would oppose the natural inclinations of men, and they would be sure to make Him suffer. 4. Because He must render a perfect obedience to the Father; and this could only be tested and proved by suffering. II. IT BEHOVED CHRIST TO RISE. 1. Because His work was a commission, and some sign of its acceptance was needed. 2. Because His work was incomplete at death; part must be accomplished in renewed life. (The Weekly Pulpit.) Christ’ s death and resurrection foretold in Scripture I. THAT MESSIAH SHOULD SUFFER DEATH. 1. Foretold in the Pentateuch. Genesis 22:18. (2) Sacrificial slaying of beasts. 2. Foretold in the Prophets (Isaiah 53:1-12.; Daniel 9:25-26; Zechariah 12:10). 3. Foretold in the Psalms (Psalms 16:9-10). II. THAT IT BEHOVED HIM ALSO TO RISE AGAIN. 1. This was first foreshown in the same story of Isaac, wherein his sacrifice or suffering was acted. For from the time that God commanded Isaac to be offered for a burnt-offering, Isaac was a dead man; but the third day he was released from death. This the text tells us expressly, that it was the third day when Abraham came to Mount Moriah, and had his son, as it were, restored to him again: which circumstance there was no need nor use at all to have noted, had it not been for some mystery. For had there been nothing intended but the naked story, what did it concern us to know whether it were the third or the fifth day that Abraham came to Moriah, where he received his son from death? (see Hebrews 11:17-19). The same was foreshowed by the law of sacrifices, which were to be eaten before the third day. Some sacrifices were to be eaten the same day they were offered; but those which were deferred longest, as the peace-offerings, were to be eaten before the third day. The third day no sacrifice might be eaten, but was to be burnt: if it were eaten, it was not accepted for an atonement but counted an abomination. Namely, to show that the sacrifice of Messiah, which these sacrifices represented, was to be finished the third day by His rising from the dead: and therefore the type thereof determined within that time,beyond which time it was not accepted for atonement of sin, because then it was no longer a type of Him. 2. As for the prophets, I find no express prediction in them for the time of Christ’ s rising (for that of the case of the Prophet Jonah, I take to be rather an allusion then a prophecy) only in general, “ That Christ should rise again,” is implied both in that famous prophecy of Isa 53:1-12., and that of Zec 12:3. I come to the Psalms, where not only His rising again is prophesied of, but the time thereof determined; though at first sight it appears not so: namely, in that fore-alledged passage of the Sixteenth Psalm, “ Thou wilt not leave My soul in hell, nor suffer Thine Holy One to see corruption.” All men shall rise again, but their bodies must first return to dust, and see corruption. But Messiah was to rise again before He saw corruption. If before, then, the third day at farthest; for then the body naturally begins to see corruption. (J. Mede.) Necessity for Christ’ s sufferings Christ’ s sacrifice upon Calvary came along by a process of natural simplicity. His death is readily explicable, and yet after He died He said that that death was one of the foregone conclusions of history: “ Thus it behoved Christ to suffer.” Paul said “ Christ must needs have suffered.” “ Must.” It is well to think down deep thoughts into the “ musts” of history. The ages were surveyed--using the word of the civil engineer--before they were peopled and built upon, and the points were fixed which now century by century God is covering with facts and events. (C. H. Parkhurst.) Why it behoved Christ to suffer and to rise I. TO SUFFER. 1. It did not primarily behove Christ to suffer merely because the prophets had foretold that He should suffer and die; the necessity of His sufferings was rather the reason why prophets were directed to foretel a suffering Messiah. It behoved Him to suffer, that He might make a full and sufficient atonement for the sins of guilty man. It was the will of the Divine Father, and that will was sovereign and absolute, that Jehovah Jesus, the everlasting Son of the Father, should assume our nature, live in our world, and suffer in our stead. It was the voluntary engagement of the Son of God to accomplish His Father’ s will--“ Lo! I come; in the volume of the Book it is written of Me, I delight to do Thy will, O My God.” 2. I grant you there are collateral reasons why it thus “ behoved Christ to suffer.” “ Thus it behoved Him to suffer,” that He might exhibit a perfect pattern of all excellence, and of patience in the midst of suffering. In all His condescension, in all His meekness, in all His forgiveness, in all His charity, He has taught us how to live and how to suffer; and “ if we say we abide in Him, we ought to walk as He also walked.” 3. “ It behoved Him to suffer in our nature, and in our world, that He might, in some sense, ennoble and dignify the path of poverty and of suffering. 4. “ It behoved Him to suffer,” that from personal experience in our nature and in our world, He might know how to sympathise with His suffering people. 5. “ It behoved Him to suffer,” preparatory to that glory to which, as Mediator, He was to be exalted. “ Ought not Christ to suffer these things, and to enter into His glory?” Not unfrequently does it happen, that the path of suffering is the high road to honour and glory; and never does true greatness appear in a light so impressive and interesting, as when seen grappling with difficulties, struggling with opposition, and ultimately rising superior to all. Through what a scene of suffering and agony and blood did our Divine Saviour pass, preparatory to entering into His glory! And when He arrived at the heavenly world, what an outburst of triumph and joy do we hear! “ Worthy is the Lamb that was slain.” And let His suffering followers know, that if so be they suffer with Him, in His cause and in His state and temper, they shall also be glorified together. II. TO RISE AGAIN. 1. It behoved Him to rise, that in rising He might show that the redemption-price paid by the shedding of His blood was sufficient, and that it was accepted. 2. It behoved Him to rise from the dead, that in rising He might show that He had triumphed over death. 3. It behoved Him to rise., that in rising He might be “ the firstfruits of them that slept.” 4. It behoved Him to rise from the dead, that in rising He might assert and exercise His regal character and office as King of saints, as Lord of the earth. (R. Newton, D. D.) That repentance and remission of sins should be preached Christ’ s first and last subject From Matthew 4:17, coupled with this verse, we learn that repentance was the first subject upon which the Redeemer dwelt, and that it was the last which, with His departing breath, He commended to the earnestness of His disciples. He begins His mission crying, “ Repent” ; He ends it by saying to His successors the apostles, “ Preach repentance and remission of sins among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem.” I. Repentance--ITS ORIGIN. When we cry, “ Repent and be converted,” there are some foolish men who call us legal. Now, we beg to state, at the opening of this first point, that repentance is of gospel parentage. It was not born near Mount Sinai. If repentance is ever obtained by the poor sinner, it must be found at the foot of the Cross, and not where the ten commandments lie shivered at Sinai’ s base. And as repentance is of gospel parentage, I make a second remark, it is also of gracious origin. Repentance was never yet produced in any man’ s heart apart from the grace of God. II. But to pass forward from this first point to our second head, let us notice the of true repentance. I have thus, as best I could, feeling many and very sad distractions in my own mind, endeavoured to explain the essentials of true repentance, illumination, humiliation, detestation, transformation. III. And now, with all brevity, let me notice, in the third place, the of true repentance. Her first companion is faith. There was a question once asked by the old Puritan divines, “ Which was first in the soul, faith or repentance?” Some said that a man could not truly repent of sin until he believed in God, and had some sense of a Saviour’ s love. Others said a man could not have faith till he had repented of sin; for he must hate sin before he could trust Christ. So a good old minister who was present made the following remark: “ Brethren,” said he, “ I don’ t think you can ever settle this question. It would be something like asking whether, when an infant is born, the circulation of the blood or the beating of the pulse can be first observed.” Said he, “ it seems to me that faith and repentance are simultaneous. They come at the same moment. There could be no true repentance without faith. There never was yet true faith without sincere repentance.” We endorse that opinion. I believe they are like the Siamese twins--they are born together, and they could not live asunder, but must die if you attempt to separate them. Faith always walks side by side with his weeping sister, true repentance. There is another sweet thing which always goes with repentance, just as Aaron went with Moses, to be spokesman for him; for you must know that Moses was slow of speech, and so is repentance. Repentance has fine eyes, but stammering lips. In fact, it usually happens that repentance speaks through her eyes, and cannot speak with her lips at all, except her friend--who is a good spokesman--is near. He is called “ Mr. Confession.” This man is noted for his open-breastedness. Repentance sighs over the sin--confession tells it out. This entry is longer than a Bible module can hold. The rest is at https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/bi/ Luke 24:50-53 While He blessed them He was parted from them The ascension I. THE AS THE FACT OF CHRIST’ S LIFE. It was the consummation of all His glorious work for man, and henceforth man through Him becomes a conqueror too. “ He led captivity captive, He received gifts for men.” And with the baptism of these we are conquerors, in our temptations over the devil, in our gardens of agony over sorrow, and in the end over death and the grave, when we shall ascend to be with Him in glory. II. HIS AS HIS AS KING OVER ALL. Unseen but ever present. Ruling from His throne in heaven over all the affairs of the world till His enemies become His footstool. III. HIS IN TO HIS COMING AGAIN Acts 1:11). (R. Davey.) Our Lord’ s ascension I. NOTICE THE PLACE FROM WHICH OUR LORD . Near Gethsemane. Near Bethany. A familiar haunt. II. NOTICE THE OF OUR LORD’ S . His faithful apostles. III. NOTICE THE LAST ACT OF OUR LORD BEFORE HIS . Blessing. IV. THE OF CHRIST HELPS OUR , AND GIVES TO OUR OF THE FUTURE LIFE OF THE . V. CHRIST’ S IS THE PLEDGE OF THE LIFE OF THE . VI. WHEN OUR LORD INTO HEAVEN HE GAINED FOR US A GREAT AND , THE GIFT OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. (W. Bull, B. A.) The ascension In this quiet and unostentatious manner did our Saviour take His departure from this world. His exit was as noiseless--as little attended with pomp--as His entrance. He has finished the redemption of a world--He has vanquished the powers of hell--He has triumphed over death and the grave. 1. From His ascension, therefore, we may learn that heaven has been opened for us. He became our brother. He stood as our representative. There is not only comfort for us in the assurance of admission, but in the thought, that when admitted we shall find One so closely related to us occupying such an exalted place. 2. Our Saviour’ s ascension in the nature He wore while on earth may teach us that, though He be so highly exalted, He has sympathy with us still; though far removed from us as regards His bodily presence, the brotherly tie which united us has not been severed. 3. The presence in heaven--the exaltation to the throne of universal dominion of One so closely related to us, and having such sympathy with us, should give confidence to our prayers, leading us to desire and expect great blessings at His hands. 4. Finally. Let us be thankful for the privilege we enjoy in the exaltation of One who bears our nature. (W. Landels.) On the ascension of Christ First, let us consider the TIME of the occurrence-of this event. This interval, also, was sufficient in order to afford Him an opportunity of detailing much that to them would be highly interesting, in relation to His kingdom, to the preaching of His gospel, and to the establishment of His empire through the world. Once more, He continued a sufficient period of time on earth in order to afford the strongest evidence of the love He bore to His Church and people; that He would not even take possession of the promised crown, nor enter upon “ the joy set before Him,” till He had ordered all things relating to His kingdom. We notice, in the second place, the SITE OR SPOT at which this occurrence took place. “ He led them out as far as to Bethany.” I pass on, in the third place, to consider the MANNER in which the ascent of our Lord Jesus Christ took place. You will observe, first, that it was while He prayed--“ as He blessed them.” Observe, again, that it was while they werelistening to the interesting communications which our Lord had to impart. It belongs to this part of the subject to observe their solemn adoration of Him after that they saw Him no more. “ He was parted from them, and carried up into heaven: and they worshipped Him.” I hasten to the last point of our discourse--to consider THE GREAT ENDS AND OBJECTS OF THIS MOST . Christ has left our world--He is gone--He has gone to the mansions of heavenly glory; and for what purposes has He taken His departure. First, in order that He might celebrate a signal triumph over all His enemies. He has gone, secondly, to take possession of the well-earned reward, the stipulated recompense, to which His obedience and His suffering have so well entitled Him. Thirdly, He has gone to receive and to communicate that fulness which the Father had entrusted into His hands; and especially the gift of the Holy Ghost, which he bestows upon “ the rebellious also, that the Lord God might dwell among them.” Fourthly, He has gone to ensure and prepare a place for all His believing followers. I only add that He has gone thus to heaven in order to give an example and specimen of the manner in which He will come again in the clouds of Heaven. And is He gone? and have the heavens received Him? Then, first, let us send our hearts after Him. Secondly, in the absence of our Lord, let us abide closely in the fellowship of His Church. Like the disciples, let us resort to the temple; like the disciples, let us keep together. Let us not be scattered and disunited. Thirdly, this subject should lead us to cherish a cheerful confidence with respect to our entrance into eternity. And let this soothe our spirits when we are mourning over our dead. (G. Clayton, M. A.) The Lord’ s farewell I. THE LAST ACTS OF THE ON EARTH. 1. He selects a suitable place from which to take His departure. 2. He solemnly blesses His disciples. 3. He ascends up to heaven. 4. “ It came to pass, while He blessed them, He was taken up.” Did His ascension, then, interrupt and cut short the blessing? No; He still continued to bless as He went up. No--nor is the blessing yet at an end: for this is that Christ who, as St. Paul says, “ is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us.” II. THE FIRST ACTS OF THE AFTER HIS . 1. They worshipped Him. Remember that! The appointed teachers of the Christian religion “ worshipped” Christ; it was their very first act after they had ceased to behold Him. 2. They were filled with joy--great joy. Now therefore they rejoiced-- 1. On their Lord’ s account. “ If ye love Me,” He had said, “ ye would rejoice, because I said, I go to the Father.” And this their joy is now fulfilled. 2. On their own account. All was now plain in the system of that redemption, concerning which they had long formed such erroneous expectations. 3. In the use of appointed means they sought and expected His gifts of grace. In Jerusalem were they to receive the “ promise of the Father” ; therefore they at once returned thither. On their arrival, behold them “ continually in the temple, praising and blessing God!” continually--that is, at every appointed service. (J. Jowett, M. A.) Our Lord’ s attitude in ascending I. HIS HANDS WERE TO BLESS. 1. This blessing was no unusual thing. To stretch out His hands in benediction was His customary attitude. In that attitude He departed, with a benediction still proceeding from His lips. 2. This blessing was with authority. He blessed them while His Father acknowledged Him by receiving Him to heaven. 3. This blessing was so full that, as it were, He emptied His hands. They saw those dear hands thus unladen of their benedictions. 4. The blessing was for those beneath Him, and beyond the sound of His voice; He scattered benedictions upon them all. 5. The blessing was the fit finis of His sojourn here; nothing fitter, nothing better, could have been thought of. II. THOSE HANDS WERE PIERCED. This could be seen by them all as they gazed upward. 1. Thus they knew that they were Christ’ s hands. 2. Thus they saw the price of the blessing. His crucifixion has purchased continual blessing for all His redeemed. 3. Thus they saw the way of the blessing; it comes from those human hands, through those sacrificial wounds. 4. A sight of those hands is in itself a blessing. By that sight we see pardon and eternal life. 5. The entire action is an epitome of the gospel. This is the substance of the matter--“ hands pierced distribute benedictions.” Jesus, through suffering and death, has power to bless us out of the highest heaven. This is the last that was seen of our Lord. He has not changed His attitude of benediction, He will not change it till He shall descend in His glory. III. THOSE HANDS SWAY THE SCEPTRE. His hands are omnipotent. Those very hands, which blessed His disciples, now hold, on their behalf, the sceptre-- 1. Of providence: both in small affairs and greater matters. 2. Of the spiritual kingdom: the Church and all its work. 3. Of the future judgment and the eternal reign. (C. H. Spurgeon.) The Saviour’ s hand That wonderful hand of Christ! It was the same hand which had been so quickly stretched out to rescue Peter when sinking in Galilee’ s waves. It was that same hand which had been held in the sight of the questioning disciples on the third evening after they had seen it laid lifeless in the tomb. It was that same hand which incredulous Thomas must see before he would believe its risen power; it was that same hand which was extended to him not only to see, but to touch the nail-prints in its palm. It was that same hand which the disciples last saw uplifted in a parting blessing when the cloud parted Him from them. It was only after ten days that they realized the fulness of blessing which came from that extended, pierced hand of Christ. Peter at Pentecost must have preached with that last sight of it fresh in his memory, when he said, “ God hath made that same Jesus, whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ.” That hand, with its nail-prints, knocks at the heart’ s door for entrance. That hand, with its deep marks of love, beckons on the weary runner in the heavenly way. (F. B. Pullan.) Lessons from the ascension The ascension was the appropriate bloom and culmination of the resurrection. I. SINCE OUR LORD HAS , WE ARE NEVER TO THINK OF HIM AS DEAD, He has rounded the black and inscrutable Cape of Storms, and changed it for us henceforth into the Cape of Good Hope. It follows that all the great offices pertaining to His exaltation are in active exercise. 1. He stands in heaven to-day the Living Head of His redeemed Church. 2. He stands in heaven to-day our Priestly Advocate. 3. He stands in heaven to-day as the Controller of all things in God’ s providential government. II. SINCE OUR LORD HAS , WE ARE NEVER TO THINK OF HIM AS DISTANT. Contact of spirit with spirit--nothing can be nearer, more intimate. Christ’ s inner presence by the Holy Ghost is the special boon and issue of His ascension. III. SINCE OUR LORD HAS , WE ARE NEVER TO THINK OF HIM AS . He has not laid aside His brotherhood with us. To our Brother’ s heart prayer must find its way; from Him to us a perfect sympathy must ever flow. (W. Hoyt, D. D.) On the ascension of Christ I. In the first place, BY OUR SAVIOUR’ S INTO HEAVEN IT WAS MADE TO APPEAR THAT THE GREAT DESIGN FOR WHICH HE TO THE EARTH WAS . A solemn attestation was thus given by God to the virtue and efficacy of that great sacrifice which He offered by His death for the sins of the world. The ascension of Christ was the signal of His triumph over all the powers of darkness. II. It is, in the next place, to be viewed by us WITH RESPECT TO CHRIST HIMSELF, AS A MERITED TO HIS . As the Son of God, all glory belonged to Him for ever. III. In the third place, Christ ascended into heaven THAT HE MIGHT ACT THERE, IN THE OF GOD, AS OUR HIGH PRIEST AND . (H. Blair, D. D.) The ascension of Christ 1. This event had been foretold and typified in the Old Testament. See especially Psalms 68:1-35; Psalms 110:1-7. Moses, ascending the mount to receive the law, may be a type of Christ ascending to receive spiritual blessings for men. Elijah, taken up into heaven, and imparting a double portion of his spirit to his successor, was probably typical of Christ ascending and imparting the Pentecostal gift of the Holy Ghost. And the Jewish high priest, in passing from the holy place, which represented earth, to the most holy, which figured heaven, also foreshadowed the ascension of our Lord. 2. These predictions and types were now to be fulfilled. 3. To the top of this mountain our Saviour led His disciples, purposing to ascend visibly from thence. He might have taken His departure unseen by them, but He ascended openly, to confirm their faith in Him as the promised Messiah, to assure them of the certainty of the life in the world to come, and of their own exaltation to the place whither He had gone before. 4. The manner in which Christ was taken up from the midst of His disciples, as described in our text, was most interesting, and is worthy of our attention. In the very act of blessing them He was taken away. Oh, what a delightful consistency and loveliness of character we have in Jesus from the beginning of His mission to its close! The first assurance of His birth was accompanied by the cry of peace on earth and good-will to men; and here, He goes from the world with hands outstretched in benedictions upon those He left below. Surely if any man love not such a Saviour he deserves to be “ Anathema, Maranatha.” 5. But what feelings must have possessed the hearts of the disciples when they witnessed these things. 6. And where was He from whom they had been separated? His place on the eternal throne of glory had been resumed, and He sat there now not as God merely, but God-man, the great mediatorial king. 7. Such ware the leading circumstances attending the ascension of our Lord. (W. H. Lewis, D. D.) The ascension of Jesus I. THE OF THE . Only friends. Only the small band of the eleven apostles. II. THE PLACE. In the neighbourhood of Jerusalem, which had been the scene of many of our Lord’ s great miracles, where His most violent enemies resided, and where He had suffered death in the most public manner. Also near Bethany, a spot sufficiently retired to permit the assemblage of the eleven without exciting the vigilance of enemies. III. THE MANNER of Christ’ s ascension. The ascension seems to have been slow and gentle. The apostles could therefore view it distinctly and deliberately, so that they might be assured of its reality, and be able to describe it to others. No chariot nor horses of fire were seen like those which wafted the prophet Elijah to heaven; no violent whirlwind agitated the air, no blaze of glory dazzled the eyes, or overpowered the feelings of the anxious spectators. Every part of the scene accorded with the character of the mild and benevolent Jesus. Though a parting scene, there was nothing in it to terrify or depress the minds of the apostles. They were indeed surprised and filled with astonishment, but it was an astonishment which expanded, elevated, and delighted them; for we are told they returned to Jerusalem with great joy. IV. Let us next inquire WHAT REASONS CAN BE FOR THE OF JESUS, 1. First, then, it was necessary to complete the proof of His exalted rank and Divine mission. 2. The ascension was necessary in order that the Lord Jesus should complete His mediatorial functions. 3. It was necessary that Jesus should ascend to heaven, to receive the approbation and honour from His heavenly Father, which were to be given to Him as the Mediator and Redeemer of man. V. THE WHICH WE MAY DERIVE FROM THE OF JESUS. 1. It tends to complete our faith in Him. His miracles proved His Divine power; and His prophecies, His Divine knowledge. His death proved His own declaration, “ that He had power to lay down His life” ; His resurrection, “ that He had power to take it again.” In addition, His ascension showed that all the purposes of His coming to this world were finished, that He was going to return to the glory which He had with the Father before the world was; nay, that the glory of His human nature was to be increased in a high degree. Hereby, then, is our faith in Him enlarged, strengthened, and completed, for we have full assurance of the dignity and perfection of Jesus, and that the grit and benevolent purposes for which He visited this world were fully accomplished. 2. We are assured, also, as connected with the ascension of Jesus, of another event resembling it in manner, namely, the second coming of the Lord Jesus. 3. By the ascension of Jesus His promises to the righteous are fully ratified. (J. Thomson, D. D.) Tile Lord’ s ascension I. THE OF OUR LORD’ S . 1. The time. Not until after He had appeared to His disciples frequently, and conversed with them freely. He tarried with them forty days, to convince them of His resurrection, to instruct them in the knowledge of the truth, and to encourage them to stedfastness in the cause of the gospel. 2. The place of His ascension. Mount Olivet. This was a place to which He frequently resorted for secret prayer. So, also, the bed of sickness, though the believer may endure much agony there, is generally the spot whence his soul, released from trouble, ascends to the joys of heaven. 3. The ascension of Christ took place in the presence of numerous witnesses. There was no necessity for any persons being present when our Lord rose from the dead, because His appearing after His resurrection to those who knew Him before His crucifixion was a sufficient proof of His resurrection. 4. Another circumstance of which we are informed is, that this event took place while our Lord was employed in blessing the disciples. By this action He showed the strength and the duration of His affection for His disciples. 5. We are told, in Acts 1:9, that “ a cloud received Him out of their sight.” Clouds are frequently mentioned in Scripture as a medium through which the Lord in some degree manifested Himself to men. 6. The last circumstance we have to notice is, that our Lord’ s ascension was attended by angels. II. ITS ENDS, or the chief purposes for which He ascended. 1. Christ ascended in order to send down the gifts of the Holy Spirit. 2. Jesus Christ ascended into heaven in order to make intercession for His people. 3. Jesus Christ ascended in order that He might receive infinite power, happiness, and glory, as the reward of His humiliation. He is set down on His throne of glory to exercise dominion over the universe, but especially over His Church. 4. Our Lord ascended into heaven that He might prepare a place for His followers, and bring them home to Himself. III. Having considered the chief circumstances and ends of our Lord’ s ascension, we now come to consider, in the last place, THE EFFECTS WHICH THE OF THE EVENT SHOULD PRODUCE ON US. 1. It should lead us to pay the Redeemer that Divine homage which is so justly due to His name. 2. It becomes us to rejoice on account of our Lord’ s ascension. 3. Our Lord’ s ascension should lead us unhesitatingly to trust in Him for salvation. 4. Christ’ s ascension should encourage us to engage with liveliness in religious exercises. 5. The consideration of our Lord’ s ascension should raise our thoughts and affections to heaven. 6. Our Lord’ s ascension should carry forward our thoughts to His second coming. (James Foote, M. A.) From home to heaven It seems natural to wish to pass away from this world from the place which we call our home. How many persons--when they are in search of health in the mountains of Switzerland or by the lake side, in the watering places, or bright sunny spots, where they seek to fan the dying embers of life--when they find that their end is approaching, desire to go home to die. Those who go out to India in the Civil Service have this hope before them, that they shall spend their last days in England and die at home. So it was natural that our Saviour should choose to pass away from the familiar slope of Olivet, within sight of Bethany, the nearest place to a home that the Son of Man knew during His public ministry, that from this oft-frequented haunt He should ascend to His Father and our Father, to His God and our God. (W. Bull, B. A.) The parting blessing He departed from them in the act of blessing; He was still blessing when the cloud received Him out of their sight. And what was this but the natural climax of all our Lord’ s precedent life? That life had been one of continual blessing. And before we turn from this subject of “ connection,” does it not see m as though heaven and earth are here represented as connected with blessing? The lark, soaring up on high, seems nevertheless to connect the skies and earth by her train of song; thus binds Christ the heaven and the earth now. There is no sight; but from the height above drops blessing--blessing for all who will take it; no less blessing on His part because it may be refused by us; blessing which shall fall upon all believers now; and which shall soak into the thirsty bosom of the millenial earth when He is owned as King of all its kings and Lord of all its lords. And with this thought of connection comes that of activity also. We have not presented before us any careful thoughts of Christ about His own glory; the activity of His mind--yea, even of His body--was all being put forth on behalf of others. We can easily imagine how comforting thoughts flowed in upon the disciples when they remembered this. He ascended into the heavens while blessing them; and, if so, what but blessing could they look for from that other world? Those who knew Him not might look up with fear and trembling, and see the Judge upon His throne. The heavens contained nothing but woe for them; but Jesus, by entering heaven in the very act of blessing, taught His people how to look up, what there to see, and what thence to expect. There is yet one more thought which presses upon our minds in connection with this parting aspect of Christ. What He dropped on them they in turn were to drop upon the world. The last impression of their Lord was to exercise its peculiar power upon their after lives; and we may be well assured that so it did. Activity in blessing marked Jesus’ career to the very last; He was unwearied in well-doing. He has carried His energy with Him into heaven. Remembering, then, that all good things are given to us for others as well as for ourselves, let us use for others this word “ while,” in whatever teaching it conveys to our souls. Good things most truly perform their mission to us when they pass on through us to perform a ministry to others also. We never know the power of a good thing--how really good it is--until we begin to use it, to put it in the way of evolving its fragrance. (P. B. Power, M. A.) Christ departs while blessing Oh, what a fitting close to such a life as that of the Redeemer! He had come to bless the world, and He spent His every moment on earth in communicating blessings; and now, as though He were going within the veil to carry on the same gracious purpose, He quits the earth with extended hands, and the last words that He utters in mortal hearing are words of Divine benediction. What could be more worthy of His character? what more likely to assure and comfort His followers? It was not, you observe, when He had finished His benediction, but while He was pronouncing it, that Christ commenced His ascent; so that His departure may be said to have interrupted the blessing. And we are disposed to think that there was something in this which was designed to be pre-eminently significant. At all events, we are certain that the fact may be interpreted into lessons of general application and of no common merit. It was no proof, you see, that Christ did not love His disciples, and that He was not consulting their good, that He withdrew Himself from them. On the contrary, He was blessing them in leaving them. If there had been nothing in the departure itself from which to argue a blessing, there might have been place for suspicion; but the mode of departure irresistibly proves that Christ went away not in anger, but in tenderness. And though when anything analogous to His departure occurs it may not be possible to assure ourselves that the departing One has left us in the act of blessing us, it cannot be unreasonable to regard the history before us as in some measure a parable, and argue from it something general. When, for example, the spiritually-minded have enjoyed seasons of communion with the Saviour--seasons most blessed, which assuredly there are, though the cold and the worldly may think it merely enthusiasm to speak of the manifestations to the soul of the invisible Mediator--and when these seasons have been followed by others of less intimate fellowship, how apt are Christians to be troubled and cast down, as though it must have been in wrath that the Redeemer withdrew the tokens of His presence! But they should rather go in thought to the Mount of Olives, and behold how Christ parts from His disciples. Oh, it is not necessarily in displeasure that the Saviour withdraws Himself. If you could see Him depart, it may be that you would behold those extended arms, and hear the lingering benediction, and thus learn that He went away only because it was expedient for you--because He could bless you better and more effectually by temporal removal than through unbroken continuance amongst you. (H. Melvill, B. D.) The ascension and exaltation of Christ I. THE FOR THE . The small procession of Christ and the eleven apostles gradually increases till it consists of five hundred persons. They reach and climb the Mount of Olives. Then the arms which not long before had been stretched out upon the accursed tree are uplifted in prayer. A last smile He leaves for a legacy behind Him ere He quits the world--a smile involving whole oceans of meaning; and who can venture to fill up the outline, or clothe in words that blessing which He gives to His little flock whom He is leaving alone in the world? All He has to leave them is a blessing, and yet a blessing which is felt to be a shield of defence and a security in trial to them all. And, lo! while He is thus employed in blessing, the cloud that has been approaching on the breath of the gentle breeze rests on Christ’ s head and conceals His face, and obliterates His smile, and gathers around His uplifted arms, and surrounds His whole form and hides it from view. II. LET US FOLLOW CHRIST UPWARDS WITH THE WING OF FAITH. AS through a veil, though the disciples may not see Him, He sees them, and counts their tears. He sees, too, Jerusalem itself, and perhaps weeps over it again. But night has come over the landscape. The land below fades away from His view. Olivet, the Moabite mountains, the loftiest peak of all the Sinaitic range, have disappeared, and the cloud chariot plunges amidst the stars. Orion on the south, and the Great Bear on the norris, are left behind. The moon becomes Christ’ s footstool, and is then spurned away as He mounts higher still. Through the milky way, as through the multitudinous laughter of an ocean’ s billows, He pursues His course. The last star which, like a giant sentinel, keeps its solitary watch, and treads its enormous round on the verge of the universe, ceases to be seen, and the hollow and blank space which lies beyond is found to be peopled with an innumerable company of angels, who have come out to meet and to welcome their King and their Lord. And then the gates of the heavenly city appear, flaming with diamond and gold as with the lustre of ten thousand suns. From the angelic cavalcade the cry arises, “ Open, ye everlasting gates, that the King of glory may enter in” ; and it is met by the challenge from the walls, “ Who is this King of glory?” and the reply comes, “ The Lord of hosts, that is also the Man of Nazareth, the mighty in battle, He is the King of glory.” And, lo! the gates fly open, and the everlasting doors are unbarred, and thus the King of glory enters in, and the Man of Nazareth, amidst the acclamation of ten thousand times ten thousand and thousands of thousands, takes His seat upon the right hand of the Majesty on high. III. THE SENSE IN WHICH CHRIST MAY BE SAID TO HAVE TO BE EXALTED. 1. Christ is in the ascendant as the highest example of moral excellence. (1) No character, confessedly, can be named beside His in richness and depth, in pureness and simplicity, in dignity and truthfulness and affection. (2) No death, in grand unconsciousness, in profound submission, in absolute renunciation of self, in the spirit of forgiveness which pervades it, in its meekness, gentleness, and patience, can be named with that of Calvary. Truly said Rousseau, “ If the life and death of Socrates were those of a sage, the life and death of Jesus were those of a God.” 2. Jesus is the best specimen of the risen man. No other risen man has got beyond the lowest step in the stage leading up to the footstool of the throne on which the Man of Galilee is thus exalted. 3. Christ is one the history of whose faith is the most wonderful of all histories. 4. The moral and spiritual principles which were the teaching and the glory of Christ are those on which the happiness of the world present and the prospects of the world future are felt to be dependent. In conclusion: 1. What a cheering doctrine is that of Christ’ s exaltation. God has recognized His principles as the laws of universal government. 2. Let us seek to ascend. “ Excelsior.” (G. Gilfillan.) Great joyA strange joy, yet explicable They had parted from their beloved Master; they had to face a trying life now, without having Him near to counsel or to help; they would never see Him again, till they died. And yet they were glad. From the place of that last earthly parting they went away, not stricken to the earth, not stunned and stupefied, as we are after the like heart-breaking wrench, but in high spirits, cheerful and elate. “ They returned to Jerusalem with great joy!” Well, it is very strange. Perhaps the disciples, coming back to Jerusalem, could not easily have sorted out and explained to other people the reasons of their great joy. First, there was something very cheering about all the surroundings of Christ’ s departure. It was to be, the disciples knew; and the whole event was so different from what such a parting might have been. For one thing, it was so triumphant, so glorious, so miraculous, that it was proof irresistible that the work which brought the Redeemer to this world was finished successfully. And it was blessing His servants that the Redeemer left them. Sometimes, while here, He had spoken severely, and that not to His enemies only, but to His friends--to the great apostle Peter, “ Get thee behind Me, Satan” ; but all that was gone, and there was only kindness in the departing heart and voice. Now, as a second reason for this strange joy, let us remember that there was one great definite gain which was to come of Christ’ s going; and upon the enjoyment of that gain His Church was soon to enter now. The blessed Spirit, the Holy Ghost, could not come till the Saviour went; and He Himself had declared strongly that it would be gain for His disciples to lose Him if thus they received the blessed Spirit in His stead. They hardly understood, perhaps, the disciples, on the day Christ went--they did not understand, as we do now, all that the Holy Ghost would be, of light, strength, wisdom, joy, peace, strong consolation. It needed experience of His sympathy, His faithfulness, His patience, His almighty power, to make Christian people know what He is. But the disciples knew enough to make them anticipate His coming with joyful expectation; and for this reason, doubtless, among others, even from the spot where they had seen their Saviour for the last time in this life, they “ returned to Jerusalem with great joy.” We can think of a third reason for this joy on that parting day. It was a parting quite by itself. He went away, in visible form. It was better for His Church that He should; but, after all, He never left it. He went away, as concerns the material presence, which must be here or there. He abode yet in that Divine, real though unseen presence, which can be everywhere. Even as He departed from sight and sense, He uttered the sure and hopeful promise, “ Lo, I am with you alway, even to the end of the world.” He could be with the disciples He left, He can be with us day by day, as God is with us; present that is, to faith, not to sense, but as really, substantially, influentially present, as any thing or person we can touch or see. Beyond these spiritual consolations which might cheer under the departure of their Saviour, the disciples had yet another hope, which some might esteem as having something more substantial in it. Master and servants were to meet again. This same Jesus, now gone, is to come again in glory; and since that day, the Church is “ waiting for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” That will be the consummation of all things. Then, all will be well at last. (A. K. H. Boyd, D. D.) Joy in working for Christ In a recent great European war, the soldiers of both countries, when they were ordered to the seat of war, received the order enthusiastically, and marched to the front with waving of banners and singing. The joy of the disciples when called to win the world for Christ, seem to have been similar (Luke 24:52-53). If a father entrusts his son with a difficult piece of work, the boy does it joyfully and proudly. Should we have less joy in performing a great work entrusted to us by Christ? The counterbalance This statement is of more interest and importance to us than appears at first sight. It embodies a great principle; and that, one which enters continually into the Christian’ s life. The inward counterbalancing the outward--this is the great idea brought before us; and it will unfold itself, as we proceed to examine the circumstances under which the apostles were placed, when they thus “ returned to Jerusalem with great joy.” At the first glance, we should have supposed “ joy” to have been the very last emotion, which, at this particular time, would have swayed the apostles’ minds. We shall find no cause for it in anything outward. Nature seemed to indicate everything but joy. We should not have been surprised, had we been reading merely an ordinary narrative, to have heard that terror instead of joy was the leading feeling in the apostles’ minds. Another class of feelings, also, was calculated to arise within their breasts; and whatever emotions these were likely to be productive of, they were certainly not those of joy. The feelings which nature would have engendered under these circumstances were those of indignation and revenge. Then, there was the natural shrinking from sad associations. Were they to be affected by the outward only, almost every stone in Jerusalem would have a mournful voice for them, saying, “ Here He once was, but He is gone; and His place knoweth Him now no more.” But there were other and higher influences at work; there must have been, for we read, not of resignation, but of joy; and not only of joy, but of “ great joy” ; and to produce this, there must have been a great counterbalancing principle within the heart. The actual feeling of the apostles was that of “ great joy” ; and whence this great joy came we can easily see. All doubts were now removed. Coldly and damply, unbelief, from time to time, had struck in upon them; but it was now dispelled for ever. The veil’ s last fold was removed from their eyes; and they now stood forth upon firm ground, prepared to meet the world in the power of clear, inward light. Wherever there is full, clear, unclouded faith, and that in unhindered exercise--there, there is joy, and all the power that flows forth from a light and joyous heart. The disciples had seen also the exaltation of the One they loved. Moreover, they had now a union with the unseen. We can understand how a new light was now thrown on all old scenes; how a new destiny lay outstretched before the disciples’ eyes; how they felt that they had that which the world had not given, and which the world, therefore, could not take away; and, rich in all this, they turned from the place whence their Lord had ascended up on high, “ leading captivity captive,” and re-sought the place where He had been bound, and led as a lamb to the slaughter; all tears now wiped from their eyes, and their hearts filled with “ great joy.” Here, then, was the power of the inward to counterbalance the outward; and what says it to us as regards our own experiences? First of all it says: As with the disciples, so also with you; look not always for a change in the outward aspect of things, but look for the introduction of a new element therein, modifying, compensating, supporting, as the case may be. The outward remains unmoved; but it is met by the inward which pervades it, and puts forth its more than compensating power; there is, as the apostle says in 1 Thessalonians 1:1-10., “ much affliction, with joy of the Holy Ghost.” And now, with regard to ourselves. What is the power of the inward with us? In the first place, have we an inward living power within us which exercises an unmistakeable influence; and can compensate, energize, or support, as circumstances may require? It is surely impossible to have this without knowing it, there are so many circumstances which are calculated to call it into exercise, and in which, if it existed, it must have acted. Have we a felt and realized union with God, which influences us, so that we feel we have something which the would cannot see; and which, indeed, is not of the world at all? Our perceptions may be more or less vivid on these points, but have we a perception, so that there is as distinct an inward life as there is an outward? Moreover, are we conscious of how this “ inward” has acted? Have we felt when disappointed of earthly things, or in them, that, after all, there was nothing unduly to depress us: for that we had something else of infinitely more importance, in which we could not be disappointed? When darkness closed in upon us in the outward world, have we had distinct inward light, in which we could move, and see, and rejoice? When called upon to sacrifice any of the “ outward,” have we been enabled to do so because it was as nothing compared with the “ inward” --the possession of which soothed and comforted us, and kept us from being down-trodden by poverty, and being made to feel ourselves miserably poor? Let the believer also never be a gloomy man. If ever any men on earth had cause for gloom the apostles had, when they returned to Jerusalem; but they returned with “ great joy.” Let us not be gloomy in the world or to the world; let us show it that we have something more than it has. Perhaps men will believe that faith is a real power when they see if able to do something; when, acting from within, it can make us cheerful in times of sadness, and contented in times of reverse and poverty, and patient in times of weariness and pain, and ever hopeful for the future--our horizon being, not the valley of the shadow of death, but the glorious land which lies beyond. And who knows whether, thus looking beyond this earth, we may not lead others to ask whereon our eyes are fixed, and, it may be, that they also will look onward and upward and join us on our way. One Adrianus, in ancient times, seeing the martyrs suffer such grievous things in the cause of Christ, asked, “ What is that which enables them to bear such sufferings?” Then he was told of the “ inward” counterbalancing the “ outward” ; for one of them replied, “ Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him.” And thus was Adrianus won not only to conversion, but to martyrdom also, for he laid down his life manfully for Christ. (P. B. Power, M. A.) Continually in the temple, praising and blessing GodChristian worship I. THE OBJECT OF WORSHIP. 1. A human Christ. 2. A living Christ. 3. A glorified Christ. 4. A crucified Christ. II. THE PLACE OF WORSHIP. “ The temple.” Where two or three are met together in Christ’ s name. III. THE TIME OF WORSHIP. “ Continually.” Every day. No opportunity of doing homage to the Saviour should be missed. IV. THE FORM OF WORSHIP. “ Praising and blessing God.” Magnifying His mercy, and speaking good of His name. V. THE SPIRIT OF WORSHIP. “ With great joy.” The Christian rejoices in the Saviour’ s exaltation-- 1. For Christ’ s sake. Reward of redeeming work. 2. For his own sake. A pledge and guarantee of his acceptance and salvation. 3. For the world’ s sake. (T. Whitelaw, M. A.) Earnestness in using means of grace “ Continually in the temple!” Observe that! The disciples were now thoroughly assured that they had an Advocate in the heavenly temple, but this did not withdraw them from the earthly. On the contrary, they seem to have resorted with greater frequency to the courts of the Lord’ s house, well convinced, by the circumstance of their Master’ s departure, that they had an Advocate with God, and we may be sure that there is something radically wrong when a sense of the privileges of Christianity produces listlessness, and does not produce earnestness in the use of Christian ordinances. He is not a strong Christian who feels that he can do without sermons and sacraments, any more than it is the appetite of an energetic man, when there is no relish for food. It is no sign of good faith or well-grounded hope that the Christian seems beyond needing the means of grace; as well might you think it a sign of knowledge and security against shipwreck that the mariner was above consulting his chart or making observations. “ Those that be planted in the house of the Lord shall flourish in the courts of our God.” (H. Melvill, B. D.)